I Cover the Waterfront (Film Festival): Part 3
Eventually, Louis ends up accompanying Henry on some of his “Extra Man” gigs, and they are the saddest things ever. Wealthy, aging women desperate for respect as they sit next to rented men who are just happy to get a hot meal. These scenes are hard to watch, because you feel sad for every single person involved. I’m actually trying to decide whether the women in the movie are actually meant to be rich and well-regarded, or if they’re just mildy well-off and they’re playing dress-up. There’s something about them that seems like a cartoon idea of rich people. I can’t decide what to make of that.
And that’s true of the movie as a whole – I enjoyed it, but I can’t determine how well the pieces fit together. Is there a reason why Henry collects Christmas tree ornaments, or is it just a quirk? Is there a thematic connection between Louis’ voyeuristic interested in transvestites and Henry’s stolen play? I liked The Extra Man – it’s funny and well-acted and generally pretty absorbing, but it feels like there should be more there. Either it’s whizzing over my head or it’s just a story about how damaged people find one another.
In the end, it’s good but frustrating. However, any frustration is cancelled out by the fact that John C. Reilly sings.
Tanner Hall – Toward the end of the Festival, I start getting punchy. I’ll see a movie because I’m a fan of exactly one person who’s seventh- or eighth-billed. I didn’t even know what Tanner Hall is about, but Amy Sedaris was in the cast, so that was all I needed.
From first-time writer/directors Tatiana von Furstenberg and Francesca Gregorini, Tanner Hall is the story of a private school for girls, with considerably fewer pillow fights than you might hope. It mostly revolves around a group of four, two of whom knew each other as young girls. And man, there are a lot of things going on in this movie.Each of the leads has their own plot, and then there are a couple of multi-girl plots, and they’re trying to accomplish a whole lot in a single movie. It sort of felt like a season of a TV series crammed into a film. Certain plot elements come up early on and never show up again until the very end, and I think the open-ended storytelling of television would have helped it play out more smoothly.
Still, most of the individual storylines work quite well. There’s Fernanda, who’s carrying on an affair with the husband of one of her mother’s friends. She’s also trying to protect her group of friends from new girl Victoria, with whom Fernanda shares a history. Fernanda is really the emotional center of the movie, and she carries it off well, even as she makes some morally repellent choices.
And then there’s Kate, who enjoys flirting with English professor Mr. Middlewood (Chris Kattan – yes, you read that right). While it’s amusing for her, it becomes an obsession for Middlewood, who ends up destroying his life because she jokingly gave him the impression that he could get in her pants.
By the way, Amy Sedaris plays Mrs. Middlewood, and she is awesome as always. But really, her scenes are a weird fit for the rest of the movie. The movie’s mostly pretty dark, and then you have a long scene where Amy Sedaris berates Chris Kattan for not being able to get an erection. It was funnier than it sounds, but it’s still sort of jarring.
All in all, I enjoyed Tanner Hall, and I thought it worked quite well. However, it does feel a bit too stuffed – too many storylines for the running time. Still, it’s better to put in too much than to leave room for padding.
Cherry – My last film of the Festival. I had a complicated relationship with Cherry. I enjoyed watching it, and then on the way home I felt like I’d been suckered, and a couple of days later, I’m feeling more charitable.
Kyle Gallner (Beaver Casablancas on Veronica Mars) plays Aaron, a gifted student who starts college at 17. (They keep calling it “an Ivy League school”, but I’m not sure it’s ever named.) He
comes from a long line of engineers, and he’s very talented in the field himself, but what he really wants to do is draw. Openly disobeying his mother, he adds an art class to his course load, where he meets an older woman named Linda. They strike up a friendship, but Aaron’s hormones have him wanting more.
comes from a long line of engineers, and he’s very talented in the field himself, but what he really wants to do is draw. Openly disobeying his mother, he adds an art class to his course load, where he meets an older woman named Linda. They strike up a friendship, but Aaron’s hormones have him wanting more.But Linda has a daughter, Beth, who’s one of those scary girls that are way older than they’re supposed to be. She’s 14, and she has a crush on Aaron. So the mother’s too old, the daughter’s too young, and Aaron is a mess of teenage lust. Clearly, disaster looms. Complicating matters is Linda’s on-again/off-again cop boyfriend, played by Esai Morales (NYPD Blue).
I liked seeing the increasing drama in Aaron’s life while he tries to hold on to his academic standing. I was particularly happy to see The Daily Show’s Matt Walsh as Aaron’s engineering teacher. And in a rare turn for the actor, he plays a character who is not named “Matt Walsh”. He’s good at being supportive, but also a demanding taskmaster.
Cherry is mostly fun, but the sex and violence sometimes gets out of control and makes it very seamy. I think that’s what didn’t sit well with me after the fact – Aaron goes from zero to sixty in no time flat. A 17-year-old virgin who majors in engineering should not be able to face down an adult drug dealer without flinching. You get caught up while watching and it all makes some kind of sense, but afterwards, it just doesn’t work. After the fact, I couldn’t reconcile the way everything fit together. But in the end, not everything needs to hold up to scrutiny after the fact. Sometimes it’s good enough to be entertaining right up until the credits roll. It wasn’t the best of the Festival by a long shot, but it wasn’t a bad way to end the weekend.
And that was the 2010 Waterfront Film Festival – as ever, the good far outweighed the bad. In fact, other than the unnamed movie that put me to sleep, everything was entertaining, and a couple were excellent. Hey – come out and join me next year! It’ll be awesome.
