The 46th Annual New York Film Festival called it a wrap this past weekend. Here are quick takes of some of the other films I saw at the fest and when you might be able to find them at your local theater.

Ashes of Time Redux

Wong Kar-Wai’s revamp of his own 1994 martial arts fantasy has inspired some of the most impassioned reviews I’ve read all year. So I’m kind of ashamed to admit that the movie inspired little emotion from me beyond bafflement. One never goes into one of the Hong Kong director’s films looking for a classic three-act narrative structure, but even by the standards of head-scratchers like 2046 and My Blueberry Nights, Ashes of Time Redux is next to impossible to follow.

In the press notes, Wong explains that the movie is a prequel of sorts to a famous four-part wuxia novel, which has been adapted to the screen countless times by Chinese filmmakers. Interested in doing something different with his own version, Wong decided to chronicle what happened to main characters before the book’s first chapter. It’s an inventive idea, but good luck trying to keep track of who the different characters are, let alone what they’re meant to be doing. As with most of Wong’s films, Ashes of Time Redux is ravishing to look at. Celebrated cinematographer Chris Doyle captures some incredible images of the endless desert where much of the action takes place and I liked the abstract combat sequences, which are unlike anything else in contemporary martial arts films. And it’s possible that the film will make more sense to me on repeated viewings…but I can’t say I’m all that eager to experience Ashes of Time Redux again anytime soon.

Opened theatrically on Friday

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Bullet in the Head

If I were a professor in film school and a student submitted a film like Bullet in the Head to me as their thesis project, I’d pass them with flying colors. Because as a technical experiment at least, this Spanish thriller from writer/director Jaime Rosales is fascinating. Here’s the basic plot: over the course of 85 minutes we watch as a middle-aged, bearded man meets with friends, scores some nooky, drives out to the country, stops at a roadside cafeteria and then shoots two undercover cops in the back of the head and flee from the scene of the crime.

Sounds fairly ordinary, right? Ah, but let me tell you the gimmick: we never hear any of the main characters speak. It’s not that they don’t talk to each other; on the contrary, they’re talking throughout the film. But we can’t actually hear what they’re saying–they’re lips move and nothing comes out. Rosales has filled the soundtrack with ambient noise (cars going by on the street, silverware clattering on dishes) but no dialogue, save for two lines towards the end of the movie. It’s a bold experiment that’s fun for film school grads in particular to talk about because Rosales is playing with a variety of cinematic elements–such as point-of-view and diagetic versus non-diagetic sound–that we all had to memorize to pass our exams. At the same time, I have to admit that Bullet in the Head isn’t that much fun to actually watch. In fact, large chunks of it are downright dull, especially since the thriller elements don’t kick in until the last twenty minutes. Consider this a film that’s best viewed in the classroom.

Currently without American distribution

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A Christmas Tale

French filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin has become a critical darling in recent years for sprawling family sagas like 2004′s Kings & Queen. Personally, I’ve never warmed up to the guy and his latest effort doesn’t do anything to change my mind. Clocking in at a hefty 150 minutes, A Christmas Tale often feels like a longer, even more eccentric version of Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums. Set over the Christmas holidays, the movie recounts the tense reunion of the extended Vuillard clan. Mama (screen legend Catherine Deneuve, still gorgeous after all these years) is dying from cancer and expects one of her three grown children to provide the necessary bone-marrow transplant she needs to beat the disease. But who will step up and help her? Her eldest daughter Elizabeth (Anne Consigny), who is bringing up an oddball teenage son? Maybe youngest son Ivan (Melvil Poupaud), provided it doesn’t put an additional strain on his problematic marriage? Or what about her middle child Henri (Mathieu Amalric, soon to be seen as the next Bond villain in Quantum of Solace)? Well, the only problem with him is that he’s a grade-A asshole. A Christmas Tale isn’t as formulaic and predictable as this brief recap makes it seem, but I can’t really say that I was all that captivated by the Vuillard’s various trials and tribulations. By the time New Year’s Day rolled around, I was more than happy to bid them adieu.

Opens theatrically November 14, 2008

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Gomorrah

The Godfather and The Sopranos have essentially defined our pop-culture image of the Italian-American branch of the Mafia, but we don’t often see screen representations of the Mob in its country of origin. Matteo Garrone sets out to change that with his relentlessly grim film Gomorrah, which provides a front-lines look at the gang wars that are currently plaguing some of Italy’s historic cities. Although its style and structure owes a lot to Fernando Meirelles’ hugely influential City of God, Gomorrah‘s setting ultimately helps it stand apart from that earlier picture. Garrone’s camera captures a cross-section of the Italian population, from a pair of young wanna-be gangsters who worship at the altar of DePalma’s Scarface, to a tailor who risks his career (and life) by selling designs to a Chinese-run sweatshop to the morally confused assistant of a businessman who makes his living leasing land for illegal toxic waste dumps. There are a lot of people, places and storylines to keep track of and, to be honest, Garrone sometimes lets the film get away from him. But Gomorrah‘s raw energy holds our attention even when the storytelling goes haywire. Warning: it may make you want to skip Italy on your next trip to Europe.

Opens Theatrically February 2009

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Night and Day

I don’t think I’ve met a more unlikeable protagonist this year than Sung-nam Kim (played by Yeong-ho Kim), the main character in Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo’s offbeat fish-out-of-water comedy Night and Day. A not particularly successful painter in his home country, Kim hops the first flight from Seoul to Paris when an acquaintance threatens to report him to the authorities for toking up on some prime weed. Moving into a crowded boarding house, he spends his days wandering the streets of the City of Lights in the company of various women, one of whom he’s actively trying to sleep with despite the fact that he’s got an adoring wife at home. Over the course of Night and Day‘s 140-minute runtime, we learn just how much of a dick this guy really is. This may sound intolerable, but I actually had a good time with the movie, thanks largely to Kim’s dryly hilarious performance and the director’s refusal to apologize or make excuses for the character’s bad behavior. Also, as a card-carrying Francophile, I’m pre-disposed to enjoy almost any movie set in Paris. Hear that M. Night Shyamalan? Maybe if you make your next movie in Paris, I’ll actually like it.

Currently without American distribution

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The Wrestler

The Wrestler is first and foremost an exercise in career rehabilitation for its star (Mickey Rourke) and its director (Darren Aronofsky), both of whom burst onto the scene to great acclaim, but saw their careers nosedive thanks to self-indulgence. In Rourke’s case, he squandered his talent by willingly appearing in crap like Wild Orchid before leaving acting behind for an ill-advised stint as a professional boxer. (He was also reportedly a terror to work with, turning up late and making egomaniacal demands.) Aronofsky, on the other hand, simply couldn’t let go of a little film called The Fountain. It took him six years to get that movie made and upon its blink-and-you-missed-it release in 2006, some people loved it, others hated it and the vast majority in between didn’t even know it existed. Given their recent track records, it’s not surprise then that Rourke and Aronofsky use The Wrestler as a back-to-basics cinematic boot camp. The film’s visual style is raw and stripped-down, lacking any of The Fountain‘s beautifully stylized cinematography. Rourke’s performance–to say nothing of his physical appearance–is similarly glamour free. The actor is subjected to dozens of emotional and physical blows throughout the film and one gets the sense that he’s enjoying taking the pain as much as Aronofsky is enjoying dishing it out from behind the camera.

From a plot standpoint, The Wrestler bears a passing resemblance to Sylvester Stallone’s final Rocky flick. As in that movie, an over-the-hill fighter is given one last shot at the big time, while also trying to patch up his relationship with an estranged child (played here by Evan Rachel Wood). There’s also a flicker of possible romance in each film; Rocky struck up a friendship with a local barmaid (although he was still too much in love with his dead wife Adrian to make a move) while Rourke is drawn to a stripper (Marisa Tomei) at a seedy New Jersey dive. Unlike The Italian Stallion though, Randy “The Ram” Robinson hasn’t already retired from the ring. Although his glory days as a Hulk Hogan-sized star are long gone, he continues to get body-slammed every weekend in rinky-dink shows in suburban gymnasiums. And while the thought of quitting occasionally crosses his mind, deep down he knows he’ll be a wrestler until the day he dies…which may be sooner than he thinks thanks to a serious heart condition.

Cleary, The Wrestler isn’t going to win points for originality. But it’s a solid, sturdy melodrama that tells its familiar story well. It is a shame that Aronofsky and screenwriter Robert Siegel are unable to flesh out the female characters. Both Wood and Tomei do the best they can in those roles, but they’re saddled with the film’s most tired clichés. Then again, they’re also the two people in this movie least in need of career rehab. All eyes are on Aronofsky and Rourke here and both men are fully aware that they’re being watched and judged. So congrats guys, you passed the exam. Now let’s see what you do next with that degree…

Opens Theatrically December 19, 2008

The cast and director of The Wrestler discuss the blood, sweat and tears that went into the making of this unlikely critical hit.

It sounds more like a Saturday Night Live sketch than a feature film.  Darren “Requiem for a Dream” Aronofsky directing Mickey Rourke in a movie about a washed-up pro wrestler?  Who would pay to see that?  As it turns, a lot of people probably will.  Ever since The Wrestler debuted at the Venice Film Festival in September, it’s racked up awards and ecstatic reviews and Rourke is already an early favorite to score an Oscar nod.  Look for a full review of The Wrestler closer to its festival premiere date, but in the meantime, here some excerpts from the press conference with Rourke, Aronofsky and the film’s other star, Marisa Tomei, who plays a stripper that develops a tentative romance with Rourke’s muscleman.

Aronofsky on the origins of the film
“Awhile back, I was writing ideas for feature films and one of them was about a wrestler.  I think it came out of the idea that there have been so many boxing movies yet no one had done a serious film about wrestling.  And there are a lot of reasons for that.  So it started there and just sort of sat on my hard drive for years.  About six years ago, my producer and I started talking about it and he turned out to be a bigger fan of wrestling than I was when he was a kid.  And then the idea of casting Mickey Rourke came up.  At that same time we met with a writer named Robert Siegel, one of the original writers at The Onion.  He started to write the script and the project started to move.”

Rourke on getting into character
“I didn’t know much about wrestling at all, but we had a really extensive rehearsal period.  Darren hired a great stunt co-coordinator who is an actual judge at UFC fights and he brought in a team of pro wrestlers.  So while Darren went away on vacation for two months, he had a ring put up in his office and every day for two hours, he made me go to wrestling practice.  At first I didn’t get it because I was trained in boxing, which made it harder to learn wrestling.  I would have been better off if I’d never had a boxing lesson, because it almost broke every rule that I was ever taught.  Wrestling and boxing are like ping pong and rugby-they’re very different sports.  One sport you go out to cause as much damage as you can on your opponent and you pace yourself to do so and survive.  With the wrestling its all choreographed like a dance.  You work with the other person to pull of something that looks magical.”

Aronofsky on the film’s attention to detail
“The whole attitude was to stick us in real environments.  For the wrestling scenes, we put in real wrestling moves and filmed in front of real fans.  All of the wrestlers Mickey wrestled were real wrestlers; there are no stunt people.  There was a financial aspect to that, but the main motivation was to create as much reality as possible.”

Rourke on the battle scars he received during the film’s shoot
“What I wasn’t prepared for was that you actually get hurt in wrestling.  I got hurt more in the three months doing The Wrestler than I did in 16 years as a boxer.  I think I had three MRIs in two months.  And Darren would screech at me: ‘You’re only giving me 50%!’  I’m like, ‘I can’t fuckin’ move!’  I have to admit, I didn’t have a lot of respect for this sport at first.  Once I got over that hurdle, it gave me a newfound respect for the sport as far as it being entertainment.  These guys really lay their asses on the line and get hurt working off the adrenaline of the audience.  When they’re throwing themselves over the ring or body slamming, they’re putting a lot of stress on their body.  I was so glad when this movie was over.  I can honestly say it’s the best movie I’ve ever made and the hardest movie I’ve ever made and I was so goddman thankful the day we were done with it.”

Tomei on mastering the art of the striptease
“I had a similar experience to Mickey as far as getting ready for the part, although Darren did not put up a stripper pole in his office for me!  At first, I thought ‘Is this really dancing?’  And just like he was saying about wrestling, I learned that you’re really working off the adrenaline of the audience.  You’re entertaining them and there’s a strength to it.  It’s difficult, but I always like to go into things that I’m scared of.  I eventually found it…well, liberating isn’t the right word, but it was fun.  It was scary, but fun.”

Rourk on his training regimen
“I was already working out for something else, so once I knew we were doing this film, I started doing heavy training to put on about 26-40 pounds.  I tried to put it on the right way.  I ate a lot of protein and pumped a lot of iron.  I had a really terrific trainer from Israel whose a professional cage fighter and he was very disciplined with me.  He came over and yanked me out of bed every morning.  Even after we were shooting, we worked out an hour a day after filming was done.”

Rourke on getting his career back on track
“If I knew it would take me 15 years to get back in the saddle and work again because of the way I handled things, I really would have handled things differently.  I just didn’t have the tools. I’m doing things differently this time around understanding what it is to be a professional, be responsible and to be consistent. Those are things that weren’t in my vocabulary back then. Change for me didn’t come easy; I didn’t want to change until I lost everything until I realized that you better change, or, you know, blow your fucking brains out. Either you change and go on with life, or you’re just a piece of shit.”

The Wrestler screens at the NYFF on Sunday, October 12 at 8:30pm and opens theatrically on December 19.