Film
This year was the 27th annual festival, and blessed as always by the fairy-dust magical presence of summertime resident John Waters.
Considering the determination of the current administration to send America back to the 19th century (or even earlier, perhaps to the Dark Ages), “Lavender Men” supplies an entertaining — and valuable — history lesson.
If the destiny of documentaries is to become celebrity profiles, it could do worse than those screening at this year’s PIFF.
The film offers some intriguing twists and turns, and the excellent cast propels the narrative forward admirably. But the screenplay tries a bit too hard to dramatize character transformations in a short period of time.
Bottom line: for all of “The Phoenician Scheme”‘s visual glories, the whimsical portrait of a shady arms dealer who becomes a mensch in the bosom of family rings hollow — especially at the present moment.
Impish, absurd, and entertaining, “Pavements” tosses the musical biopic into a counterfactual blender.
The problem with “The Life of Chuck” isn’t that it’s bad, per se, but it’s nowhere near great, and that’s a waste of a lot of talent and potential. Imagine Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life” turned into a made-for-TV after-schoolspecial.
“Caught by the Tides” eludes the narcissistic congratulation found in self-referential cinema because it absorbs Jia’s early work to create something that has the shock of the new, as much as it builds on the past.
“Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” is an honest piece of grand entertainment, not as great as “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One,” but still pretty great.
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