Beyond the expected online blather about the chance to tip cold brews and meet hot actresses, there is one recurring theme in the 101 reasons fans submitted via social media to the Atlanta Film Festival about why they are looking forward to the city's longest-running cinema fest, March 23 through April 1.
"A break from the steady stream of Hollywood fatuousness," wrote one contributor to the list posted on the festival's website, www.atlantafilmfestival.com. "No Michael Bay," said another, referencing the "Transformers" director often associated with big studio excess.
Preparing to open its 36th edition, the Atlanta Film Festival still registers as "cool" -- the most oft-repeated phrase in the 101 list -- by specializing in independently made films that are often the product of great passions and low budgets..
From more than 1,500 worldwide submissions, festival organizers selected a slate of 125 narratives, documentaries and shorts (a handful of which will compete for grand jury prizes) for the 10-day screening extravaganza at Landmark’s Midtown Art Cinema and other sites. Notably, more than 50 features and shorts this year have Georgia ties.
Here are highlights of what's in store ...
"Life Happens"
The opening night selection aims to be a sisters-are-doing-it-for-themselves-with-a-little-help-from-their-friends dramedy, and with the expressive Krysten Ritter at the forefront, there is appeal.
But the movie overreaches on the cute factor and too often falls into sitcommy clichés.
In the opening scene, Kim (Ritter, who co-wrote the film with director Kat Coiro) and roommate Deena (a blandly blond Kate Bosworth) wrestle over the lone condom in the house as each entertains a male guest.
Deena wins.
Fast-forward a year, and Kim is a mom with a baby daddy who would rather continue his free-spirited life.
So comes the barrage of single-mom snafus -- many of them believable, of course -- as Kim must count on Deena and their other roommate, Laura (a disappearing-by-the-second Rachel Bilson in an unnecessary role), to baby-sit while Kim tries to return to the dating world.
The movie gets a kick from the always-charming Justin Kirk -- sporting a caterpillar mustache most of the film -- as Deena’s eventual boyfriend. And Ritter, who is sort of a more brittle Anne Hathaway, gives a sweetly sympathetic performance as Kim tries to realize that motherhood has its own rewards.
It’s too bad “Life Happens” isn’t better -- the film feels longer than its 100 minutes before reaching its inevitably huggy conclusion -- because there is an authentic story in there somewhere.
Showing at 7 p.m. March 23 at Landmark’s Midtown Art Cinema. MELISSA RUGGIERI
"Pig"
Take it as a compliment, not a concern, that Henry Barrial's amnesia drama has been compared to "Memento."
"Pig" is its own film, but it gives viewers the same edgy, tingling sensation of trying to piece together fractured clues as did Christopher Nolan's critically lauded 2000 drama starring Guy Pearce.
Here, the unnamed man suffering memory loss, played by Rudolf Martin, wakes up alone in the middle of the desert with a black hood over his dazed head, his hands tied behind his back, and the name "Manny Elder" scribbled on a scrap of paper in his otherwise empty pockets.
Half dead, he's discovered, conveniently enough, by a beautiful woman (Heather Ankeny) with a cute young son who helps nurse him to health in her home and who seems oddly willing to share her life with this mystery man. But everyone our confused hero encounters seems to act a little strange, especially Elder (Keith Diamond), who, it turns out, is the super at the scroungy Los Angeles apartment building where our lost antihero had a pad.
It's so cool charging down blind alleys with the tense and intense Martin, the unknown providing the film with a jangly charge, that you can't help but be a bit disappointed when "Pig" reaches a rather pat resolution.
Showing at 8:30 p.m. March 24 at Landmark’s Midtown Art Cinema. HOWARD POUSNER
"All Me: The Life and Times of Winfred Rembert"
One of the opportunities the Atlanta Film Festival affords is the chance to view documentaries that otherwise might be hard to find, given how rarely they receive a wide theatrical release and how many compete to be shown on PBS or a few adventurous cable channels. And what a shame it would be to miss out on meeting wonderful documentary subjects such as Winfred Rembert, who overcame an early life of prejudice and injustice to prevail as a self-taught artist who processes that pain into powerful and poignant memory paintings.
Now in his mid-60s and living in New Haven, Conn., Rembert grew up in a family of cotton-picking sharecroppers in Cuthbert, in southwest Georgia. Fleeing two men with shotguns down an Americus alley during a civil rights demonstration when he was a teen, he jumped into a car with keys in it and sped away. Arrested and held without charges for a year, he overtook a deputy and broke out, only to get caught and nearly lynched. Instead, he ended up serving seven years of a 27-year term in the Georgia State Prison at Reidsville.
But the effervescent, soulful Rembert does not dwell on how he was wronged, nor does director Vivian Ducat's “All Me.” Instead, it deeply details his story of perseverance and talent and follows him on a triumphant return to southwest Georgia for an exhibit at the Albany Civil Rights Institute. Rembert's old stomping grounds in Cuthbert look worse for wear, but his spirited stories, like the colorful dyes on his leather canvases, bring the scenes vividly back to life.
You grin with this large and large-spirited man when he proclaims at the embrace-filled exhibit opening, "You know what, y'all? I'm back home and I'm somebody."
Showing at 4:30 p.m. March 25 at Landmark’s Midtown Art Cinema. HOWARD POUSNER
"Boy"
Boy is a dreamer. An unabashed Michael Jackson fan -- he even considers the singer his favorite subject in school -- Boy spends his days engaging in stilted Jackson moves for his unimpressed female schoolmates and coming up with fanciful ideas about why his dad isn’t home.
Dad, as it turns out, is “in the can” for robbery.
Living in a Maori village in New Zealand with his “Nan,” a slew of cousins and his little brother Rocky, a youngster who believes he has superpowers, Boy is cautiously thrilled when his father, Alamein, whom he is named after, and a couple of low-life friends show up one night, free from “the can.”
There isn’t much plot in the 1984-set “Boy,” but, rather, a string of scenes illustrating Boy’s embrace of his goofy father, played by the film’s writer/director, Taika Waititi.
Alamein means well as he entertains his sons with sparklers, draws tattoos across Boy’s body and even trims his shaggy locks to better emulate Jackson, but he’s not the most responsible parent and is unsure of how to approach the role.
What makes “Boy” -- which has set film records for New Zealand -- so endearing are the performances from the grinning James Rolleston (Boy) and Te Aho Eketone-Whitu (Rocky). They’re unforced and realistic and lend the scrappy movie a genuine spirit.
Besides, it’s worth watching just to hear Musical Youth’s “Pass the Dutchie” and to watch the silly, Jackson-inspired dance sequence over the end credits.
Showing at 3 p.m. March 31 at Landmark’s Midtown Art Cinema. MELISSA RUGGIERI
Additional lineup highlights include (all at Landmark’s Midtown Art Cinema, unless noted) ...
"Roadmap to Apartheid," a documentary on the apartheid comparison often used to describe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, narrated by Alice Walker. 12:15 p.m. March 24.
"Varla Jean and the Mushroomheads," a "mockumentary" in which a slumping New Orleans cabaret chanteuse becomes consumed with the ill-conceived idea to create a children's TV show. 4:45 p.m. March 24.
"Not Yet Begun to Fight," world premiere of a documentary about five traumatized combat veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan who find solace while fly-fishing in Montana with a retired Vietnam-era Marine colonel. 7 p.m. March 24.
"Sweet Old World," from former Atlanta filmmaker David Zeiger, based on his very personal documentary "The Band." Zeiger's first drama is a story of a father's grief at the loss of his oldest son in a railroad accident, and the surviving son, who's heading soon to the Juilliard School, who frees him. 6:45 p.m. March 25.
"AKA Blondie," an intimate portrait of the infamous exotic dancer at Atlanta's Clermont Lounge. 9 p.m. March 25, Plaza Theatre.
"John Portman: A Life of Building," a documentary on the Atlanta architect. 7 p.m. March 26, Woodruff Arts Center.
"V/H/S," a horror anthology by six rising directors, partly filmed in Georgia, that recently played the Sundance Film Festival. 9:15 p.m. March 26.
"The Girls in the Band," a documentary about women who survived, and sometimes prevailed, in the sexist world of jazz, with appearances by Marian McPartland, Esperanza Spalding and Patrice Rushen. 7 p.m. March 28.
"Coal Rush," a West Virginia-set documentary in which locals take on a major coal company over contaminated water that they charge is the cause of widespread sickness. 7:30 p.m. March 29.
"That's What She Said," a gal-pals-go-wild-in-Manhattan comedy starring Anne Heche and directed by "True Blood" actress Carrie Preston, a Macon native. 7 p.m. March 30.
"In the Hive," Robert Townsend's drama about a hard-shelled 16-year-old given a last chance at an unorthodox alternative school full of other discarded boys. 2 p.m. March 31.
"The Cabin in the Woods" is a much-buzzed-about horror flick starring Chris Hemsworth ("Thor") about five friends for whom things go terribly wrong at a remote cabin in the, well, you know. It's directed by Drew Goddard (the "Lost" and "Alias" writer-producer), who penned the script with Joss Whedon. 7 p.m. March 31.
MOVIE PREVIEW
Atlanta Film Festival
March 23-April 1 at Landmark’s Midtown Art Cinema and other sites. 404-352-4225, www.atlantafilmfestival.com.
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