[my comments assume that you’ve already read the AFF description that I link to in each movie title]
The Killer Within — A really great documentary, perhaps the best I’ve seen at the whole festival. There’s nothing inventive about the filmmaking, it’s just a well-crafted telling of the story of a man who decides to stop keeping his secret, and the complicated results of his decision to go public with it. Fascinating insights into a complex situation. It’s been winning awards, so should appear on PBS this year, I’d hope.
Documentary Shorts 2 — Nearly a complete waste of time. Projection problems on top of a remarkably weak slate of material.
American Fugitive — Put me to sleep, and I think that may be a lifetime first for me! Could have been at least 30 minutes shorter; valuable historical context came far too late. I’m fascinated by the political history of Iran, so it was nice that this turned out to be essentially about the late 70’s / early 80’s Iranian revolution. If the filmmaker can figure out how to edit around the mindnumbingly slow pacing of the principal’s speech, and cut it down to less than an hour, he might have something worth picking up on PBS.
La Vie En Rose — good biopic; I was concerned about its length (2.5 hours) going in, but I didn’t notice it, which I guess is a pretty good endorsement. I was familiar with Edith Piaf’s singing but not a single bit of her story. This will be in theaters in the summer — go see it!
The Insurgents — I’ve been really conflicted about this narrative. On the one hand, I’m right with them on the politics, how reasonable and intelligent people can just get so pissed off about the raping of our democracy that they decide to resort to terrorism as a means of expression. But on the other hand, the actors that they cast for this were so impossibly attractive it pushed it over into cheesy. There’s no way I’m going to believe that Hottie Chick and Ripped Dude are going to form a terrorist cell and smash the state. Made for a nice sex scene though. Ha!