RANKED: All of the non-competition films I saw at Film Fest Gent
1. Love is Strange
John Lithgow and Alfred Molina play Ben and George, a couple who, after nearly 40 years together, decide to get married. This winds up complicated their lives far more than simplifying it, and Love is Strange depicts the changes they go through both individually and as a couple following this decision. It's a true, true romance film--one where you wholeheartedly believe in the couple's dedication and love and passion for the other. It reminded me of Beginners in some ways--all good ones--and is easily one of the best films I've seen this year.
2. Pride
Pride depicts the historic union between an LGBTQ organization and a Welsh mining community in the 1980s. I'm gonna get a lot of flack for how much I liked Pride because it's a very surface-level-crowd-pleaser. One of the other critics here called it the "bread and butter sandwich of films" (and then went onto win the Grand Jury Prize for "strongest shade"). And sure, it is relatively straight-forward and vaguely emotionally manipulative, but it's also a good story. It's a really interesting and progressive union that feels worth shining some light on. There are a lot of nice performances from young British actors--Joe Gilgun is so, so marvelous, and Andrew Scott is quite subtle and tragic as well--as well as some firecrackers in ye olde British acting guard (Imelda Staunton, Bill Nighy, etc.). It's fun. I'm glad I saw it. It made me feel good.
3. Mr. Turner
Mr. Turner is an objectively better film than Pride: it's better shot, it's better scripted, it's better acted. That all said, though, Mr. Turner is a difficult film. It's one that I understand to be objectively good, but I struggled with it. It depicts the last 25 years or so of artist JMW Turner's life as he falls in and out of fashion with the art community. It's very funny and interesting in parts, but also tonally all over the place. Whereas most biopics portray their protagonist as kind of a bastard with a heart of gold, Mr. Turner takes this to an extreme. You might like Johnny Cash at the end of Walk the Line--you love him, despite his flaws--Mr. Turner doesn't give a shit if you like Turner by the end. I certainly didn't, as tragic as he may have been. It's going to be one worth seeing this awards season, but you may come away as uneasy as I felt.
4. 20,000 Days on Earth
This movie is really cool. That's just the best way I can describe it: cool. You feel cool when you watch it. You come away thinking Nick Cave is really cool (if you didn't think this already). It completely takes on the docu-concert-drama genre in an interesting way. I struggle with silly movies like Never Say Never and This Is Us because despite being marketed as documentaries, they always seem so woefully scripted. Musician-writer Nick Cave turns this on its head: why bother marketing as a documentary? Have a film that is essentially shot like a standard drama with everyone playing themselves. It's still a little staged, a little scripted, but ultimately feels more honest.
5. Fury
Fury is serviceable in every sense of the word. As far as World War Two films go, it's not adding anything particularly new to a dialogue about the horrors of war. It might be more graphically violent than Saving Private Ryan (though despite all the attention paid to gore in Fury, I think they're equally gross), but it still shows World War Two soldiers as fairly disturbed but still honorable men. Fucked up dudes with hearts of gold. That's fine. It tells the story of a tank crew spearheaded by Dad Pitt and featuring such artists ("artists") as Shia LaBeouf (not an artist) and Michael Peña (definitely an artist). After one of their gunners is shot and killed, total fucking n00b Logan Lerman joins their crew and they have to teach him how to commit murders ("How To Get Away With Murder"). The cinematography is quite good and interesting. I thought Dad Pitt was a strong performer, as well as Shia LaBeouf (I know). Logan Lerman doesn't do anything special beyond his trademarked Logan Lerman panic attack (see: The Perks of Being a Wallflower). It's not a bad film, it's not a great film. It's got some things, and it's also missing some things. No other film this season has Michael Peña in a top hat, though.
6. Adieu au Langage (in 3D)
There's a picture I see on Tumblr from time to time of a pigeon with a sign around its neck that says "I'm stupid." Either the movie is the pigeon or I'm the pigeon. This was my first Jean-Luc Godard film and well, you know, you get it. It didn't make any sense. It's a lot of footage of a dog shot on a iPhone plus nudity plus sensory overload. Don't let your mom see it because it'll confuse and upset her. Also: it should say a lot about how much I hated the final film on this list that the Godard film that I didn't even begin to understand gets ranked higher than...
7. White Bird in a Blizzard
This is one of the dumbest films I've seen in my whole life! It's so dumb. It's unbearably stupid. Kat (Shailene Woodley) has issues with her weird abusive mother Eve (Eva Green) who then just ups and vanishes one day. Where did she go? Who is the white bird? Is there a blizzard? No one cares. Every performer is acting like their an entirely different film than everyone else. There are a lot of bad wigs. The highlight of NO FILM EVER should be, "um, well, Thomas Jane is still pretty hot for being in his 40s." Just the worst. The worst!
8. The Loft
This is an American remake of a Dutch remake of a Belgian film. James Marsden, Karl Urban, Eric Stonestreet (???????!!!why???!!!), Wentworth Miller (lol), and Matthias Schoenaerts ("Belgium") star as five terrible men who share a stupid loft where they can keep their mistresses from their wives they hate (HASHTAG WIVES SUCK). It might actually be a little less stupid than White Bird in a Blizzard but it's wildly chauvinistic and obnoxious and still very stupid. No amount of shirtless Karl Urban can reverse misogyny (sry, Karl). They're having distribution issues in the States and to that I say GOOD RIDDANCE.









