Hooray! The 17th annual St. Louis film festival starts up this weekend and will last for two weeks. I've worked it out that these will be the movies I plan on seeing:
Adam Resurrected: "Jeff Goldblum gives an acclaimed performance as Adam Stein, a charismatic patient at a mental institution for Holocaust survivors in early-'60s Israel. During the war, despite his status as a much-loved circus entertainer, Adam was shipped to a concentration camp, where the commandant (Willem Dafoe) forced him to act the part of a dog to survive. Incarcerated again at the asylum, Adam recognizes another such pitiable creature— a barking young boy raised in a basement on a chain— whom he works to save." I think its a comedy...
Humboldt County: "After a drunken one-night stand, tightly wound UCLA med student Peter Hadley finds himself stranded in picturesque Humboldt County at the family home of free-spirited Bogart. The judgmentally inclined Peter at first resists the eccentric enclave of pot farmers but slowly comes to embrace their easygoing life and ideals."
I've loved you so long: "Tells the story of two estranged sisters who reunite when Juliette (Kristin Scott Thomas) – who’s murdered her 6-year-old son – is released from prison after 15 years. Over the objections of her family, younger sibling Lea invites her sister to come live with her, and gradually a different Juliette emerges from the shadows of her terrible crime."
Let the Right One In: "Tells a darkly atmospheric, poetic and surprisingly tender story of adolescence … and vampirism. Fragile, anxious 12-year-old Oskar, regularly bullied by his stronger classmates, finds protection and friendship when 12-year-old Eli moves in next door. A pale, serious young girl, Eli only comes out at night, and her arrival coincides with a series of inexplicable disappearances and murders." And...it's in Swedish!!
Pretty Ugly People: "After shedding all her excess weight through gastric-bypass surgery, Lucy (Missy Pyle) fakes a serious illness to trick her estranged college friends into gathering together in the Montana wilderness. Lucy wants to show off her slim figure, with the hope that she’ll finally “feel like one of them,” but during four days of arduous hiking, she soon discovers that her friends have become as unfamiliar to her as her newly trim body. Faced with the rigors of the outdoors, these pretty people turn ugly, revealing their deepest fears and secrets."
Wendy and Lucy: "Down-at-heels Wendy, delicately played by Michelle Williams, begins a road trip that’s intended to take her to a job in Alaska, but her car breaks down in the Pacific Northwest, touching off a cascading series of economic disasters the includes the impoundment of beloved dog Lucy."
Yeast: "A Maddeningly un-self-aware, tyrannical and emotionally stunted young woman engaged in toxic relationships with two exasperated friends (Greta Gerwig and Amy Judd). With a physical aggressiveness and emotional violence that is undeniably feminine in nature, “Yeast” explores the grinding mechanics of friendships that have run their course. Mostly improvised, the film follows a few days in the lives of three women struggling to keep friendship alive in the face of a huge challenge: They know each other too well.
Adam Resurrected: "Jeff Goldblum gives an acclaimed performance as Adam Stein, a charismatic patient at a mental institution for Holocaust survivors in early-'60s Israel. During the war, despite his status as a much-loved circus entertainer, Adam was shipped to a concentration camp, where the commandant (Willem Dafoe) forced him to act the part of a dog to survive. Incarcerated again at the asylum, Adam recognizes another such pitiable creature— a barking young boy raised in a basement on a chain— whom he works to save." I think its a comedy...
Humboldt County: "After a drunken one-night stand, tightly wound UCLA med student Peter Hadley finds himself stranded in picturesque Humboldt County at the family home of free-spirited Bogart. The judgmentally inclined Peter at first resists the eccentric enclave of pot farmers but slowly comes to embrace their easygoing life and ideals."
I've loved you so long: "Tells the story of two estranged sisters who reunite when Juliette (Kristin Scott Thomas) – who’s murdered her 6-year-old son – is released from prison after 15 years. Over the objections of her family, younger sibling Lea invites her sister to come live with her, and gradually a different Juliette emerges from the shadows of her terrible crime."
Let the Right One In: "Tells a darkly atmospheric, poetic and surprisingly tender story of adolescence … and vampirism. Fragile, anxious 12-year-old Oskar, regularly bullied by his stronger classmates, finds protection and friendship when 12-year-old Eli moves in next door. A pale, serious young girl, Eli only comes out at night, and her arrival coincides with a series of inexplicable disappearances and murders." And...it's in Swedish!!
Pretty Ugly People: "After shedding all her excess weight through gastric-bypass surgery, Lucy (Missy Pyle) fakes a serious illness to trick her estranged college friends into gathering together in the Montana wilderness. Lucy wants to show off her slim figure, with the hope that she’ll finally “feel like one of them,” but during four days of arduous hiking, she soon discovers that her friends have become as unfamiliar to her as her newly trim body. Faced with the rigors of the outdoors, these pretty people turn ugly, revealing their deepest fears and secrets."
Wendy and Lucy: "Down-at-heels Wendy, delicately played by Michelle Williams, begins a road trip that’s intended to take her to a job in Alaska, but her car breaks down in the Pacific Northwest, touching off a cascading series of economic disasters the includes the impoundment of beloved dog Lucy."
Yeast: "A Maddeningly un-self-aware, tyrannical and emotionally stunted young woman engaged in toxic relationships with two exasperated friends (Greta Gerwig and Amy Judd). With a physical aggressiveness and emotional violence that is undeniably feminine in nature, “Yeast” explores the grinding mechanics of friendships that have run their course. Mostly improvised, the film follows a few days in the lives of three women struggling to keep friendship alive in the face of a huge challenge: They know each other too well.
