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POSTED: Friday, April 16, 2010

He's more than a little biased, but ask Hawaii International Film Festival director Chuck Boller about this year's Spring Showcase and he'll explain how attractive this year's lineup is to hard-core movie buffs.

“;You can make the argument that each film is a gem,”; he said. “;This year, we're picking up movies from (the) Sundance (Film Festival), now that they're available to us.”;

More than 30 films will be screened at the Regal Dole Cannery Theatres over the next week, the majority of them for the first time in Hawaii, if not North America. “;Mao's Last Dancer,”; directed by Bruce Beresford and starring Chi Cao and Amanda Schull, will make its Hawaii debut tonight as the Spring Showcase's opening-night featured film; French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet's “;Micmacs”; will also make its Hawaii debut as the closing-night film on Thursday.

               

     

 

 

HIFF 2010 SPRING SHOWCASE         Presented by the Hawaii International Film Festival         » Where: Regal Dole Cannery Theatres, 650 Iwilei Road         » When: Today through Thursday         » Cost: $12 general admission; $10 for seniors, military and students; $8 for HIFF members (VIP memberships available)         » Info: 792-1577 or www.hiff.org

“;People don't realize we offer European cinema,”; said Boller, noting that a number of films this spring come from that region instead of Asia. “;I think this is the most films we've ever offered in the spring, which is a challenge because it takes away from screen time, since we only have two screens available to us this time around.”;

In addition to the European films in this festival, HIFF has announced a new partnership with EuroCinema Hawaii to host a “;festival within a festival”; this fall. EuroCinema Hawaii will coincide with HIFF's fall festival in October, with a special section of films, people and events that highlight the European film scene in Hawaii.

“;HIFF has long been a gateway into the United States for international cinema,”; said Boller. “;We know that our supporters will very much enjoy all that EuroCinema Hawaii has to offer and will welcome this very special festival.”;

HIFF continues to make it easy for film fans to purchase tickets to screenings, with three buying options available. Tickets may be ordered online, then printed out at home or picked up at will call at Dole Cannery. Tickets may also be bought in person at the HIFF box office directly across the theaters; no entry is allowed without a printed ticket.

 

'FIBERGLASS AND MEGAPIXELS'

Screens at 4:15 p.m. Sunday

Surf documentaries for the general public are few and far between, but this debut effort by the brother team of Derek and Craig Hoffmann qualifies as a welcome entry.

While pro surfers can rack up contest prize and endorsement money, it's those who document their moves on the waves who generally toil in relative anonymity. But that's changing, especially for those who brave the water to get spectacular shots.

Like the surfers who brave the winter North Shore surf, these photographers are equally enriched, more so in lifestyle and continuing passion for the sport. You can see the palpable thrill of getting great shots, as helmeted photographers surface to raise their water-housed cameras, point and shoot. It's all part of a media frenzy—and a true proving ground for the photographers.

Beyond the usual talking-head interviews and action footage, one distinguishing and helpful feature is the way the documentary incorporates on-shore footage of the surfers and photographers with graphics that identify them and their resulting shots.

Gary Chun, Star-Bulletin

 

'SUMMER WARS'

Screens 8:15 p.m. Monday

Summer Wars”; is the film U.S. fans of Japanese animation expected but didn't get with “;Ponyo”; last year: a gorgeous production with a story to back it up.

Looking at the synopsis, one has to wonder how the filmmakers could have pulled together two seemingly disjointed plot points into a coherent unit. Still, Japanese animation studio Madhouse and director Mamoru Hosoda pulled it off.

One plot involves Kenji Koiso, a socially awkward teen math prodigy, who is recruited by one of the most popular girls at his school, Natsuki Shinohara, to role-play as her boyfriend at her great-grandmother's 90th birthday party. The other deals with Kenji as he becomes entangled in a rogue entity's scheme to bring down Oz, a popular social network that wields considerable global influence.

The common thread is the Shinohara family, an upper-class clan with all the charms and quirks of any normal family. Watching them stand tall, in the traditional Japanese way, as the slickly produced virtual world teeters on collapse is a marvel to behold.

Jason S. Yadao, Star-Bulletin

 

'THE CHEF OF SOUTH POLAR'

Screens at 8:45 p.m. Wednesday and 3:30 p.m. Thursday

Nothing should be living at Dome Fuji Station, in the most frozen part of Antarctica. Even viruses can't survive here. Yet one pack of shaggy humans is in residence, a research crew of eight serving a one-year-plus term devoted to arctic science.

It could be wretched, but this is a congenial crew. And they have Jun Nishimura, crew chef, the Good Humor Man for their Popsicle town.

Nishimura (Masato Sakai) doesn't just spoon up grub. He crafts beautiful traditional meals out of food stashed outdoors in his natural freezer. At first everyone just chows down, but in time he has them appreciating foie gras with fig puree.

Director Shuichi Okita's film—based on the real Jun Nishimura's autobiographies—tells a captivating story through snapshots of rather wacky daily life.

During months of constant sunlight they play baseball, pouring out lines of juice that freeze into a diamond. In the days of constant darkness, one guy decides he's so in love with ramen that he makes himself sick once they run out of noodles. Another so craves butter that he curls up in a corner to eat a whole stick.

“;The Chef of South Polar”; is a wonderful little film about friendship and the bonding power of food so good it can give even the darkness a light side.

Betty Shimabukuro, Star-Bulletin

 

'I AM LOVE'

Screens at 6 p.m. tomorrow and 2 p.m. Wednesday

If it's an Italian film, there's gonna be food involved, and sure enough, food is a source of pleasure, seduction, identity and betrayal in “;I am Love.”;

The film opens with a grand dinner party hosted by the scion of a Milan-based garment manufacturing company. Ailing Edoardo Recchi Sr. is about to announce his successor, and as long expected, he names his son Tancredi (Pippo Delbono, who looks like an Italian Joe Moore).

But, in a surprise gesture, Recchi also names his handsome grandson Edoardo (Flavio Parenti), as he imagines it will take two men to replace him. More likely, he trusts Edo to keep the heart and soul of his company alive. Edo has spent his life pursuing his passions, among them, helping his friend Antonio (Edoardo Gabbrielli) open a restaurant.

When his grandfather dies, Edo is devastated to learn it was his father's intention all along to sell the company to a global corporation.

“;We will be richer,”; his sister tells him in consolation.

Edo eventually comes to terms with his family's wishes, but is crushed when his trusted mother, played by Tilda Swinton, reveals the biggest betrayal of all.

Swinton shows incredible range as Tancredi's stoic, elegant and business-like wife, who surrenders to passion when she meets Antonio. There is sex and nudity.

Nadine Kam, Star-Bulletin

 

'CAFE SEOUL'

Screens at 6:45 p.m. tomorrow and 1:30 p.m. Monday

Cafe Seoul”; is a serviceable melodrama about the loss and gain of family values and tradition in the form of a family dessert shop and the three brothers who lives have been shaped by it.

Since it's a Korea-Japan co-production, it's told through a young Japanese food writer (Takumi Saito) who finds the shop by accident in a rundown neighborhood of Seoul. Much of the story's exposition comes courtesy of a longtime customer who speaks Japanese (played with verve by Jeong Sook-yeong), and helpfully explains it all to the writer. As the writer, too, was raised in a family confectionery store, he finds a bond with the little dessert shop.

Good use of locations makes “;Cafe Seoul”; slightly better than your average TV K-drama, but the sentimentality is laid on pretty thick. A lot is made of taste memory and nostalgia for the old days, plus the seeming coincidences that drive the story are a bit much even for your standard melodrama.

Gary Chun, Star-Bulletin

 

'THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO'

Screens at 9 p.m. tomorrow

This is a potboiler, but entertaining enough to rise above its flaws—which include a 152-minute run time. Those who stick it out will see an especially dark murder mystery that presents Swedish society as corrupt and profoundly antagonistic to women.

A resounding success in Scandinavia, the film is based on the first volume of Stieg Larsson's “;Millennium”; trilogy. The source novel's title translates as “;Men Who Hate Women,”; which the movie bears out in spades.

Editor and reporter Mikael (Michael Nyqvist) is, in venerable noir fashion, hired by an aging rich man to conduct an investigation. The old man is head of a family of powerful industrialists and is obsessed with the murder of a niece 40 years earlier. Mikael gets a frosty welcome from the rest of the clan.

Eventually, he'll be joined by Lisbeth (Noomi Rapace), a leather-clad young woman with many tattoos and piercings who is, handily, a brilliant computer hacker. Though Mikael gets more screen time, his presence pales in the face of the hard-edged Lisbeth, whose rage peaks in one of the most memorable feminist revenge scenes you're likely to see (not for sensitive souls). In the end, he's a bit of a washout as a character—for a hard-nosed journalist, he has a decidedly wimpy streak.

Lacking any trace of subtlety, “;The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”; is grim but watchable, in the David Fincher mold.

Walter Addiego, San Francisco Chronicle

 

'MID-AUGUST LUNCH'

Screens at 5 p.m. Tuesday and 4:15 p.m. Wednesday
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In “;Mid-August Lunch,”; middle-aged Italian singleton Gianni hasn't been able to work in three years because he's kept busy caring for his elderly mother.

The superintendent of his building soon comes calling for payment, with the threat of eviction, but then comes up with a way out for Gianni in this sweet, warm film with a light comedic touch.

Complaining of dermatitis, the super says he needs to go away to a mud spa—with a young, leggy blonde, no less—and asks Gianni to care for his mother for two days in exchange for erasing some of his debt.

Gianni agrees, but when the day comes, the super shows up with his mom and an elderly aunt in tow, in a no-pass-back deal.

The two women don't get along, and before you know it, Gianni is ailing and must call in his doctor. But the doctor has his own favor to ask. He needs someone to care for his mom while her regular caretaker is on holiday. This mom comes with a strict schedule of pill-taking and dietary no-nos, among them, no cheese and no tomatoes, two staples of Gianni's cooking.

Despite a rocky beginning, and happy that his ordeal is coming to an end, Gianni plans one last hurrah of a meal built around Italy's biggest summer holiday, the Pranzo di Ferragosto, or Feast of the Assumption.

Of course he runs the risk that the women—all blossoming in each other's company and his care—won't want to leave.

Nadine Kam, Star-Bulletin

 

'WAKING SLEEPING BEAUTY'

Screens at 8 p.m. Wednesday

It was an extraordinary decade that began badly. The “;Mouse House,”; the Walt Disney animation crew that churned out films every couple of years to bored and declining audiences, had, by the mid-'80s, pretty much given up. They were given little respect in Disney's corporate culture and had even been sent off to work in rented, ramshackle facilities.

To Walt Disney's nephew Roy, a quiet and unassuming member of the board, this simply wasn't right. Animation had created the Disney empire. So Roy Disney lobbied for new corporate blood, and the company brought in Michael Eisner and Frank G. Wells to run things.

Eisner and Wells went head-hunting as well, bringing in producers Jeffrey Katzenberg and Peter Schneider to rouse the animation department. It was new Hollywood butting heads with the old guard, a sheer host of towering, fragile egos.

But this unlikely team of rivals created an incredible run of animation successes, including “;The Little Mermaid,”; “;Beauty and the Beast,”; “;Aladdin”; and “;The Lion King”;—films that became the most profitable entertainment vehicles in history. “;Waking Sleeping Beauty”; is an insiders' view of this extraordinary decade, a kind of grand home movie directed by Disney producer Don Hahn and produced by Peter Schneider, president of animation and studio chairman.

Hahn uses home movies from the period, with voiceovers by the key players. It is a sentimental—although un-misty—look back at these type A personalities.

The soul of the film belongs to Howard Ashman, the Broadway writer who helped give a new sensibility and structure to animated film by incorporating musical theory. He wrote many of the songs that have since become modern classics.

Burl Burlingame, Star-Bulletin

 

'BEAUTIFUL ISLANDS'

Screens at 1:30 p.m. Sunday

Beautiful Islands”; is a documentary made with good intentions, but it's a film sorely in need of an editor.

While the sound of water can be a soothing, relaxing presence, here it's a source of potential devastation due to the specter of climate change and rising ocean water that puts island dwellers at risk.

Director Kana Tomoko and her crew take viewers to Tuvalu in the South Pacific; Venice, Italy; and Shishmaref, Alaska, to convey the extent of the devastation. It's eye-opening to see the Piazza San Marco awash in a foot of water.

The problem is, in a film that runs nearly two hours, there's about 15 minutes of footage that is interesting and on point, maybe 20 minutes if you want to be charitable. The rest involves a visually rambling, slow-moving travelogue that—in spite of the beauty of the cinematography—I found agonizing to watch. While waiting for the piazza to flood, for instance, the filmmakers were sidetracked by 20 minutes of pageantry of a Venetian ball and its costumes, as well as the history of a hotel there and drunken tourists singing in the street.

Repeated footage of palm trees underwater went on and on, belaboring the point, as did footage of ocean waves eroding beaches and foundations of homes in Alaska. In case you miss it from a five-minute medium shot, here's the five-minute close-up.

Just as desktop publishing put the power of print in the hands of people who should not be writing books, so has the inexpensive video camera put the power of film into the hands of people who don't know how to tell a story, even when it's a worthy one.

Nadine Kam, Star-Bulletin

 

'TYPEFACE'

Screens at 6:15 p.m. Wednesday

Typeface”; is one of those modest little documentaries that really should be used to ignite a fuse for an audience discussion afterward. There's a lot of meat there and more than a few loose cultural strings.

Ostensibly an examination of American typography, with a nod toward how typography is so prevalent in everyday life and yet unnoticed—like the air we breathe—the film focusses on the Hamilton Wood Type Museum, located in a struggling rural community north of Milwaukee, Wisc. Hamilton was the nation's leading manufacturer of wood-cut typography, used in letterpresses to make posters and signage, until the invention of digital fonts abruptly made it all obsolete.

The woodcut type is beautifully made, and the letterpress pieces produced by graphic artists are awesome, but they are few in number and it's difficult to get kids to appreciate the enormous technical and artistic work that goes into typography—not when they can scroll through a million fonts on their computers. As those with expertise in the trade die off, woodblock type fills Dumpsters across the land.

Director Justine Nagan's documentary likely suffers from too many subtexts, including the worrisome effort to keep an admittedly niche museum alive in a community that has had financial setbacks. But that's the very thing that provides such rich discussion material—at what cost do we distance ourselves from our artistic and cultural heritage?

Burl Burlingame, Star-Bulletin

 

'OPERATION BABYLIFT: THE LOST CHILDREN OF VIETNAM'

Screens at 11:30 a.m. Sunday

Although “;Operation Babylift”; is subtitled “;The Lost Children of Vietnam,”; the adoptees spirited out of Saigon in the last days of the Vietnam War aren't really lost—they're scattered across the United States, part of new families who embraced them.

Exactly 2,548 “;babies”; were flown out of Vietnam in a highly publicized—and politicized—event. One plane crashed on takeoff, killing hundreds. The babies were placed in cardboard boxes and strapped to the floor of Air Force C-5s and flown directly to America for a presidential photo op. The “;rescue”; was one bright spot in the brutal fall of Saigon.

In the 35 years since, these kids have apparently all grown up to be productive members of their extended community. Like most adoptees, they have second thoughts about their long-lost birth parents and wonder about their cultural heritage. Some have returned to Vietnam, and some have adopted Vietnamese children of their own. Only two years ago, citing fraud, the US canceled all Vietnam adoption programs, frustrating many.

Director Tammy Nguyen Lee, a “;boat”; refugee herself, scores well at touching the emotional core of what it means to be both adopted and deprived of heritage. The film does a delicate dance around the circumstances under which many of these children became “;orphans,”; particularly those of mixed race.

Burl Burlingame, Star-Bulletin

 

'THE SUMMIT: A CHRONICLE OF STONES'

Screens at noon tomorrow and 2:30 p.m. Sunday
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It's just a short step from genre to generic, and most American films fall into the latter category. Which is why international film festivals are so important—they help break us out of the culture box.

Of all the movie genres out there, mountain-climbing films have to be among the smallest. This new film from Japan instantly becomes one of the best in that tiny category, but don't let that fool you. It's a terrific film in any category, and a reminder that films can be made on almost any subject. The world isn't made of gangsters and monsters.

In Japan, the movie opened last year as “;Mt. Tsurugidake: Ten no Ki.”; Tsurugidake is a famous mountain in Japan's Hida Mountains, and “;ten no ki”; refers to triangulation stones placed by mappers as waypoints.

It takes place in 1907, when Japan was emerging as an international power, anxious to join the advanced nations of the world. The Tsurugidake region has not yet been thoroughly mapped by surveyors, so Japan's army orders Yoshitaro Shibasaki to hike up and get results, pronto. If he can't conquer the mountain immediately, he must be a coward.

(The Army is concerned because some rich civilians have formed an “;Alpine Club”; and want to be the first on the summit.)

Will Shibasaki make it? After all, unlike the pampered kids of the Alpine Club, he not only has to climb, he also has to build waypoints and survey the countryside.

“;The Summit”; is, of course, not really about reaching the top but the journey. The story is apparently based on true events and there is a wonderful twist at the end. Although the script is finely detailed and the acting is uniformly fine—particularly Tadanobu Asano as Shibasaki and Teruyuki Kagawa as Uji (who pretty much steals the film)—the real glory of the film is in the magnificent cinematography, in locations where must have been the devil to locate crews.

This is the directing debut of Daisaku Kimura, and it will be no surprise to find out that his previous work was as a cinematographer. The use of Vivaldi's “;Four Seasons”; as theme music is icing upon the peak.

Burl Burlingame, Star-Bulletin