Review: Jungleland

By Abe Friedtanzer

There is a certain general structure that can be expected in films about fighters. A boxer or wrestler will be driven to succeed through sheer strength and commitment to their craft, and will usually have a firm supporter in their corner egging them on and ensuring that they don’t falter. Inevitably, an injury or some outside factor will threaten their physical ability, and that will be precisely the moment that everything is riding on their performance, including a large sum of money that will make or break their future. If that’s essentially the narrative framework, the richness of the characters and the performances is what’s needed to differentiate a specific film from the pack.

Let’s take a look at a new theatrical and VOD release, Jungleland…

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Borat's return in "Subsequent Moviefilm"

by Eric Blume

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, the sequel to Sacha Baron Cohen's 2006 smash hit, has arrived on Amazon, and just within the first days of its arrival, the film has the country buzzing on whether or not Rudy Guiliani thought he was going to get laid by a teenager, plus registered a hateful tweet from Trump (and a hilarious comeback from Cohen to Trump).  When is the last time a movie provoked that kind of high-level anxiety?

The original Borat movie was revelatory at the time, an extension of the mockumentary style we'd seen since the Spinal Tap days, but roping in the clueless general populace to create a brutal takedown on American stupidity, racism, and sexism.  But the approach from the Borat creative team felt fresh...

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Chi Film Fest: Palestine's Oscar submission "Gaza Mon Amour"

by Nick Taylor

I felt much warmer towards Gaza Mon Amour at its conclusion than when it began. The gradual expansion of its story and stabilization of its aesthetic strategies are what got me on its side. At its core, Gaza Mon Amour is buoyed by the mutual, barely spoken ardor between fisherman Issa (Salim Daw) and dressmaker Siham (Hiam Abbass), but the script gives near-equal attention to their work lives and the friends and family members that populate their lives. It’s an admirable scope, though one might wonder when Tarzan and Arab Nasser, the twin sibling writer/director duo behind Palestine’s International Film submission, are going to move their story forward. It’s not clear for the first half hour whether the film will find itself or collapse entirely...

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Abe’s AFI Fest Wrap

By Abe Friedtanzer

This was my first year covering AFI Fest, and also my first time covering a virtual festival during the festival itself. It was a positive experience on both fronts, and the viewing platform I used – the AFI Fest app for Roku – worked pretty well and including plenty of interesting conversations with talent.

AFI announced the following winners:

Audience Award - Narrative Feature WOLFWALKERS (DIR Tomm Moore, Ross Stewart)
Audience Award - Documentary Feature 76 DAYS (DIR Hao Wu, Weixi Chen, Anonymous)
Audience Award - Short Film LONELY BLUE NIGHT (DIR Johnson Cheng)
Grand Jury Prize – Animation TIGER AND OX (호랑이와 소) (DIR Seunghee Kim)
Grand Jury Prize – Live Action PILLARS (DIR Haley Elizabeth Anderson)
Special Mention - BLACK GOAT (DIR Yi Tang)
Special Mention  MAALBEEK (DIR Ismaël Joffroy Chandoutis)
Special Mention UMBILICAL (DIR Danski Tang)

I personally had the chance to screen 17 films, which represent a third of the features shown. I also saw 6 of the other films at Sundance, but it hardly seems fair to include some of my favorites, like Nine Days and Farewell Amor, in this piece since I already cited them in my Sundance wrap. Without further ado, I submit my choices for the best of this year’s AFI Fest...

Abe’s 'Jury-of-One' Top Five AFI Fest 2020 Films 

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Chi Film Fest: "Summer of 85"

Coverage from the 56th annual Chicago Film Festival

by Nick Taylor

One fun thing about not really watching trailers anymore is that a movie can surprise me pretty easily. For example, I knew from teasers that François Ozon’s Summer of 85 was pitching itself as the French answer to Call Me By Your Name. The story sees two incredibly handsome teenagers named Alex (Felix Lefebvre) and David (Benjamin Voison) have a life-altering romance during a life-changing special summer. But I completely missed the trailer that revealed a whole second narrative where a zombie-like Alex is being tried for an unspecified crime that sounds a lot like murdering David. 

So, there’s the part of Summer of 85 that’s very much Ozon doing a Call Me By Your Name-style romance and the part that's the melancholic aftermath...

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