The San Francisco International Film Festival came to its curtain call Thursday night with the closing night film Unmade Beds, followed by a party at the Mezzanine club in SOMA. Instead of going, I reflected on the fact that I saw over thirty films at the festival this year. Not all of them good—some were terrible, some weren’t even worth writing about.
I’ll be having a rundown of the festival’s best and worst films Monday night LIVE on the air, as I’ll be joining the good folks at Worst Show on the Web for their second show focused on SFIFF. Be sure to tune in starting 8 PM, or you can download the show later at any time.
In the mean time, here’s what I have to say briefly about the festival this year... What threw me off a little was that while I’m usually more excited about the idea of discovering the smaller unknown gems in festivals, here I found a few of the best films to be the ones with a distribution deal already in place. Films like In the Loop, Adoration and Moon. The latter is particularly interesting given its big hype online.
There were also awards given during the festival. I’ve already written about the ones bestowed to Francis Ford Coppola and James Toback, but I also got to attend the Midnight Awards, which despite its more exclusive venue felt less informal. The award is still in its infancy, this only being its third year. It honors a young actor and actress who have made great contribution to both Hollywood and independent cinema. In their first year, they honored Rosario Dawson and Sam Rockwell. Last year it was Jason Lee and Rose MacGowan. This year it was time for Elijah Wood and Evan Rachel Wood.
The two participated in a lax evening conducted in a talk show format, hosted by writer Beth Lisick. Evan Rachel Wood was looking particularly stunning in a Chinese-style red-and-black dress, which she claimed to be a tribute to Wong Kar-wai, one of the directors she hopes to work with someday. It was light and not particularly eventful, but just as intimate and fun as promised, with the two stars looking rather overwhelmed upon realizing that, despite their young age, they’ve been professional actors for close to 20 years. At the end of the night the two were given the awards, which were martini shakers (decorative and functional!). One of the less hectic days of the festival, I must say. I'd offer to say something about the open bar and cheese buffet present, too, but that would just be bragging, and nobody likes that.
It occurred to me that many of the small ones I did manage to catch were particularly joyless and depressing. I like tragic films—in fact, I would more often than not prefer depressing stories over comedies—but I also value diverse tonal shifts more than consistent gloom. Delta, Troubled Water and Everything Strange and New were the more harrowing ones of the bunch, and while I didn’t dislike any of them (Delta in particular was gripping in its own inert way), ultimately there came the realization that at its glummest, film should still feel kinetic and alive.
None of them could compare to Once Upon a Time in the West, of course, but we knew that’s a raw deal.
Go here to see all the things I wrote about the films playing this year.
