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With more emphasis on big-name stars and early screenings of upcoming Hollywood films, the focus of the new fest feels different from others.

Just beating to the punch next week’s return of the Sound Unseen Film Festival and the week after’ Black Film Festival. The land of 10,000 film festivals has another one: The Twin Cities Film Fest kicks off tonight.

I’m most looking forward to “Nowhere Boy,” which is a tale of the early years of John Lennon and the project that introduced married, then-41-year-old director Sam Taylor Wood to her now-lover, Aaron Johnson, who plays Lennon and was 18 at the time.

Over five days, the festival will include more than a dozen features, many of them locally made, and short films. For the full schedule, go to twincitiesfilmfest.org.

I’ve seen a few of the films in the festival and here’s what I know (all of these screenings are at Block E theaters in downtown Minneapolis):

“Conviction” — It’s a prototypical Hilary Swank role: a plucky, true-life heroine who doesn’t wear makeup. But “Conviction” rises above what sounds like TV-movie origins with great performances by Swank, Sam Rockwell, Juliette Lewis and Minnie Driver and with the powerful story of Betty Anne Waters, whose suicidal brother is in jail for a murder he didn’t commit and who resolves to free him by attending college, then law school and then reprepresenting him. (8 p.m. Thursday)

“The End

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of the Line” — Already available on video, but worth seeing, however you see it, this bummer of a documentary warns us that the day when the ocean produces no fish is not so far off. (2 p.m. Friday)

“Fair Game” — Another true story: What happened to covert CIA agent Valerie Plame after columnist Robert Novak, tipped off by a source inside the White House, outed her. But it’s really the complex story of the uniquely pressured marriage of Plame (Naomi Watts) and former ambassador Joseph Wilson (Sean Penn). (7 p.m. Saturday)

“A Good Day to Die” — It’s not the most beautifully put-together documentary, but it is a valuable, close-up look at Dennis Banks, whose role in the founding of the American Indian Movement has not been given its due. (6 p.m. Saturday)

“Night Catches Us” — Recriminations and betrayal among folks who hover around the Black Panther party in the ’70s. It’s not great, but Kerry Washington — as a woman whose strength holds several men together — is. (7 p.m. Thursday and 1 p.m. Saturday)

“Phasma Ex Machina” — Its low budget sometimes holds back this Minnesota-made chiller (some of the acting is iffy, and it could really use an atmospheric musical score). But the be-careful-what-you-wish-for story — a grieving young man who invents a machine that can bring back the dead — is quietly effective and has a nice little message about appreciating the time we have. (7 p.m. Wednesday)

“Waiting for Superman” — David Guggenheim (“An Inconvenient Truth”) turns his attention to flaws in our education system in this moving, cogent documentary. (7 p.m. Thursday)

“Secretariat” — Diane Lane stars in another true story, this one about the people behind the horse that won the Triple Crown in 1973. What works best is the stuff that focuses on the horse, particularly in his triumph at the Belmont Stakes. (7 p.m. Friday)

How many film festivals can you go to where the RZA himself presents a Lifetime Achievement award in the form of a sword to filmmaker & martial arts choreographer Yuen Woo Ping before screening his new film True Legend. Oh and after watching that and a fascinating Q&A, they showed a print of the first film Woo Ping directed, Snake in Eagle’s Shadow. And if you’re still not tired then, you can go and sing karaoke at an all-night party held at the Alamo Drafthouse’s sister lounge, The Highball. Yep, that is Fantastic Fest for you, and there’s nothing like it in the world. And I keep coming back every year because it’s that awesome.

I had to take a quick trip back to Los Angeles, so my first day at Fantastic Fest consisted of watching Patrick Hughes’ Red Hill, a kind of modern Aussie western, Yuen Woo Ping’s True Legend and Snake in Eagle’s Shadow, and a second screening of Jim Mickle’s Stake Land (which I first saw in Toronto and loved). But it was that “Woo Ping Experience” (that I’ll call it) that reminded me why I love this fest so damn much. It’s not just that they brought him out here, but it’s the love they have for him (he got two standing ovations) and also that Tim League decided to show one of his classics, too. Like I said, where else does that happen?

True Legend PosterFirst, before I go any further, I must say that I totally enjoyed True Legend. Especially comparing it Snake in Eagle’s Shadow, which was made in 1978, it definitely seems like Woo Ping was trying to push the limits of martial arts yet again with this new film, both in terms of the fight choreography and the visuals. Maybe it’s because I’m admittedly not the most experienced in martial arts films, but I’ve never seen anything like it, and Chiu Man Cheuk truly kicks some serious ass in numerous fight sequences (they’re incredible, all martial arts fans need to see this!). It has a little taste of everything, all kinds of different fights (and a huge “battle” sequence at the end), and although the script is a bit rough around the edges, I enjoyed every second of it.

True Legend has three big acts set across different time periods and it follows Chiu Man Cheuk as Su Can who, while a kung fu / wushu expert, decides to leave the military during the Qing dynasty to start a family. But of course his evil “blood brother” eventually turns against him and comes back for him. The story is a bit convoluted and jumps around rather suddenly, but I loved the style, the characters, particularly the villain who is a lot darker than I would’ve ever expected, and I especially loved the fights. Plus, there’s a sequence or two where the “student has become the teacher” and it seems as if Woo Ping was inspired a bit by The Matrix (which he did the fight choreography for anyway) with some bullet time-like moments, but they were still great to see.

True Legend PosterAlthough I love seeing all kinds of new, obscure, and highly anticipated films at the different festivals, my favorite moments are the truly once-in-a-lifetime experiences I’ll never forget, that only each particular festival can offer. And at Fantastic Fest, the presentation with Yuen Woo Ping last night was one of those unforgettable experiences that I do believe only Tim League and Fantastic Fest could have (and did) deliver. Toronto Film Festival’s Midnight Madness head  Colin Geddes was even at the event to support Woo Ping and deliver his Lifetime Achievement sword (see a photo here). There was just something truly wonderful about seeing Woo Ping in person and RZA bowing to him and everything about the event.

Fantastic Fest isn’t your typical film festival. They can bring in big talent just as easily as some of the other more well-known mainstream fests, but it’s still as far from a mainstream fest as it can possibly be. It’s a place where film geeks, movie nerds, genre fans and everyone in-between can come and watch great films, meet great people, and just have a damn good time. This is now my third year attending and only my first full day at the fest, but I’m already having a blast. Yuen Woo Ping’s True Legend was a great martial arts escape and an amazing experience. I can’t wait to see what else Tim League has in store for us over the next few days, as I’m sure there’s a few more surprises and many more unforgettable evenings. Stay tuned for more coverage from Fantastic Fest from both Jeremy and myself.

With the immortal tagline “Greed is Good” Gordon Gekko earned Michael Douglas his only acting Oscar as Gekko became the poster deity for a generation of Wall Street traders/raiders, who, despite being impotent in pretty much every way except earning the dollar, are at least partially responsible for the healthy and robust economy we find ourselves in at the moment. Thanks.

Even if you don’t remember the movie, you remember the line, and if you were alive then you remember and recoil at the garish BIGness of the 80’s (the hair, the shoulder pads, the awful clash of colors, fuckin’ Wham) as fewer movies captured an era as succinctly as Wall Street. Myself, I try to not have any recollection of the 80s as they were not totally awesome, but at least gas was 74 cents a gallon. Sigh.

So what better time than now for director Oliver Stone (JFK, Nixon, W., Natural Born Killers) to revisit Gekko and his dastardly ways as time has shown that the Gordon Gekko of 1987 is a lamb compared to the lions of Wall Street today. As you can guess, any film with today’s economy as a major component in its story structure puts itself in the front running as the Feel-Good movie of the year. So please, don’t throw yourself off a building just yet while you look at the Teddy Ruxpin that used to be your 401K. Maybe you should invest about $10 of the approximately $300 you have left and acquire a ticket to Wall Street 2 as it’s an engaging enough if somewhat tonally mixed sequel to one of the seminal films of the decade where the words “Cyndi Lauper” were relevant.

If you remember from the first Wall Street:

Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) has been indicted for insider trading thanks to Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) wearing a wire. You’d think a paranoiac like Gekko would have patted him down, but you remember this was the 80s and homophobic guys all over the world thought you could get AIDS just by touching another man. Fox got a reduced sentence but still went to jail.

Darien Taylor (Daryl Hannah) left Fox in a huff and…

… except for getting her eye torn out in Kill Bill no one has a clue as to what the hell actually happened to Daryl Hannah.

Wall Street 2: Wall Streetier (written by Allan Loeb and Stephen Schiff) opens in 2001 with Gordon Gekko getting out of Federal prison. He’s left with an empty money clip, some Jelly Bracelets, teased hair, and a cell phone the size of a Humvee. How it’s possible he lugged that thing around with one arm without developing a shoulder strain is a mystery. No one is there to pick him up.

Gordon is sad.

We fast forward to 2008 which, as you well remember, was a red-letter year in terms of our nation’s economy. Gordon Gekko is barely hanging around as it seems that Wall Street has passed him by and he’s still looking for a way in. He’s doing the lecture circuit (“You’re all pretty much fucked”) while peddling his new book Is Greed Good?

Money is all that he’s ever lived for as his Ex-wife’s had a nervous breakdown, his son Rudy (the little fat kid from Wall Street 1) is dead because of an overdose, and his daughter Winnie (Carey Mulligan) loathes him.

Speaking of Winnie, she’s writing for a liberal website and is shacking up with an up-and-coming broker named Jacob Moore (Shia LaBeouf).

Jacob seems to be doing all right despite working for a middle-of-the-road brokerage, a lot like Charlie Sheen at the beginning of the first Wall Street. His boss and mentor Lou (Frank Langella) has just given him a bonus in the low 7 figures, amidst rumors of his firm (called KZI) being in serious financial trouble. Lou assures Jacob that everything will be okay.

Everything is not okay as KZI’s stock nose-dives and the firm is on the verge of completely collapsing.

Lou and other heads of major financial corporations (read: old, rich white guys) meet at a Federal Reserve Bank to discuss what the hell is going on because if firms like KZI can get hammered in such a short amount of time then what’s to stop other well established institutions from being ground down to nothing. I think this is what’s called foreshadowing.

Lou believes something fishy is going on and he thinks his archrival Bretton James (Josh Brolin, rebounding nicely after Jonah Hex) is somehow behind it.

Someone proposes the Feds bail out KZI, but James strongly opposes and offers to buy out KZI at $3 a share. Since KZI’s stock was selling at $79 a share earlier in the month, everyone knows that KZI is pretty much getting A-raped, but there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

Faced with the prospect drastically reducing KZI’s 15,000 person workforce and atonement for appearing in The Box, Lou steps in front of a train. At age 75, Lou’s chances of survival going head-on against a train are not very optimistic. Lou has fallen and he can’t get up.

Jacob is sad.

Faced with the prospect of mortality, Jacob asks Winnie to marry him. She accepts, and hopes their getting married will finally force Jacob to kick Bumblebee out of the house because he’s annoying and you just want him to shut the fuck up.

Behind Winnie’s back, Jacob goes to see Gekko give a lecture and tell him that’s he’s going to marry Winnie. Because you really want to begin a marriage with some deceit. Gekko perks up because this may be his chance to form some kind of reconciliation with his daughter. Gekko sees that Jacob is a hustler just like he is/was so he offers Jacob some (barely) legal insider advice to help Jacob find out the details behind Lou’s suicide, like that Bretton James may have had more to do with KZI’s stock plummeting than is legally allowable. In return, Jacob gives Gekko pictures of Winnie, promises to do his best to facilitate a meeting between them, and gives him Megan Fox’ phone number.

Will Jacob get the truth as to what was really behind Lou’s suicide as he worms his way into Bretton James’ big strong financial arms? Will he also navigate his way around the cesspool the economy’s about to become since he’s about to get married and his mother (Susan Sarandon) keeps hitting him up for money? And is there any excuse for those monkeys in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull?

And what of the newly emasculated Gekko? Does he really want to mend things with his daughter, or is there another reason he’s so keen on seeing her?

Well, you won’t get any answers from watching the movie, because Wall Street 2 ends after 40 minutes, leaving you in a dark auditorium wondering what happened to the rest of the film. Because of the economy, there wasn’t enough in the budget to shoot the second and third acts. Sorry.

What works with Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps-

1) Yes, he gets hated on because he stars in movies that have huge robots and hot girls, but there isn’t an actor his age that can hold the screen better than Shia LaBeouf. Yes, there’s Jesse Eisenberg possibly if he didn’t play the same nervous shump over and over. But Wall Street 2 is LaBeouf’s movie, as Gekko is a supporting role, and he makes every moment of his arc believable even if you can predict what Jacob’s going to do before he can. Don’t hate him because he’s a better actor than you as A-list directors Steven Spielberg and now Oliver Stone want to work with him. Hate him because he makes more money than you.

2) A mostly wordless dinner scene between Winnie, Gordon and Jacob is the best scene in the movie as you suffocate from the tension of familial wounds being reopened as new ones are being made (“You should know that that name doesn’t mean anything anymore”). If the rest of the movie were as well executed as this scene Wall Street 2 would be great instead of merely adequate.

3) You get to see that Bud Fox turns out okay, maybe even more than okay. But if you remember the first Wall Street, you’d know that his father wouldn’t be too proud.

4) Never has the word “bailout” gotten such a reaction from an audience. Yes, it’s referring to exactly what you think it is and it seems to be a great tension relief moment as the audience jeered when it was mentioned. You half expect someone to throw something at the screen.

5) An Education’s Carey Mulligan proves again why she deserved that Oscar last March a lot more than Sandra Bullock as Gekko’s passionate, yet remarkably clear-eyed daughter. In a couple of years she’ll be the new Kate Winslet, if she isn’t already that now.

What doesn’t work-

1) The movie’s biggest mistake was to make Gekko a kind of Good Guy for the majority of the movie, almost negating Michael Douglas’ performance from the first Wall Street. Yes, times have changed and age and prison might have mellowed Gekko, but his declawing never feels genuine. The scene of Gekko looking at a DVD should have been cut simply for the phoniness factor.

2) What I remember liking a lot about the Wall Street was its distinct lack of preachiness and conveying a message while not seeming like a message movie That can’t be said so much for Wall Street 2 as the “Hey, maybe Greed isn’t so good…unless you can get away with it and even then it has consequences” message is practically shown in subtitles for most of the second half.

Overall. It’s well acted, and more entertaining than not, yet Wall Street 2 never reaches the same level of consequence or staying power as the original. Should it stop you from seeing the movie? Of course not, but to expect more would not be a wise investment.

Jean-Luc Godard’s new wave masterpiece Breathless  is posture as statement. Posture as ideology. Conceived as a low-budget crime story, it hems closely to the structure of a criminal on the lam with a femme fatale at his side, and the fatalistic ending of its predecessors, but it may also be the first movie that treats an audience’s relationship and imitation of cinema as part of the narrative.

To be sure, Hollywood long mocked itself by using filmmaking as a backdrop for all sorts of films (be it a W.C. Fields picture, Singin’ in the Rain or Sunset Boulevard), and many of the pop art films of comedians (and filmmakers like Frank Tashlin) were well aware of the conventions they were practicing, but Breathless exists not just as a film, but as a commentary on both the familiar narrative it undertakes, but also the effect that cinema has on its audience. Jean-Paul Belmondo’s Michel Poicard draws his thumb across his lips as Humphrey Bogart did while he studies a picture of Bogie before seeing a movie. Michel is a gangster, but one that acutely aware of trying to be Bogart-esque. This is only one facet of what makes Breathless one of the great films fifty years on. My review of Criterion’s Blu-ray of Breathless follows after the jump.

Shot with a sixteen millimeter camera and a profession cast, the film is probably most famous for its jump cuts, which often break the rules of editing by not signaling where in time they’ve cut to. Godard happily abuses cinematic notions of time. Whether time has passed or not is unimportant, the film is more alive for this daring. Godard didn’t start this trend or patent using limitations to his advantage, but the film is definitely movie-smart, and as Quentin Tarantino has commented, the film works almost partly because of the sheer force of Godard’s love of cinema.

With Martial Solal’s music providing a jazzy feel, the film establishes a poseur cool. Michel is a criminal, who opens the film by shooting someone and is on the lam from the police. He hides out with his girlfriend Patricia (Jena Seberg). They may or may not love each other, and – like Contempt – the middle of the film is dedicated to the two talking to each other about their relationship. But they are also young and happy to make blatantly presumptions statements about love and sex. Patricia is also a journalist – though spends much of her time hawking the New York Herald Tribune – so she interviews the famous Frenchman Parvulesco (Jean-Pierre Melville), who offers amazing – if somewhat vacuous – platitudes.

It’s now impossible to talk about this film and not talk about Quentin Tarantino, who was a devote of Godard’s early in his career (up through Jackie Brown).  Godard often used the framework of genre to make his films, and Tarantino was obviously attracted to this narrative conceit and the energy and the palpable love of cinema. To that end both filmmakers are indebted to Jean-Pierre Melville (made resonate in Breathless with the Melville’s presence) and Sam Fuller. And Melville is the father to the new wave, both in his DIY spirit in making La Silence De La Mer, and in his love of crime fiction (Godard makes a reference to the main character of Bob Le Flambuer). But both Tarantino and Godard are dilettantes about genre; they like it as a framework to carry their narratives. And though it serves them well, it’s not their main focus in storytelling – it gives their early works a genre and structure to fall back on. The heart of Pulp Fiction is about people accepting change, or living differently, and here Godard is more interested in his love story of vacuous people and in people pretending to be who they are.

Though it might strike the casual viewer as unnecessary, one of the key scenes in the film is the interview with Melville, who says that his goal is to become immortal and then to die. Melville says a number of flamboyant things, and in that Godard ties this generations obsession with movies and mimicry with the works of Oscar Wilde, and any number of artists past, present and future fascinated with the idea of the created self. But Godard is too agile to settle for simple genre deconstruction – while his later works evolved to take on his concerns more provocatively. But what I’m drawn to here is how Godard’s structure in Breathless mimics Contempt, which may be his masterpiece. Contempt is about the dissolution of a marriage, and though the relationship in Breathless is much less poignant because it doesn’t have the collapse of a marriage beneath it, it’s a similar conversation about what love is and what it means to be in love. The ends are different, of course, and the conclusions are in parallel but reversed, but Breathless is a first draft version of some of his later concerns.

But as this was his first film and he was trying to sell himself more than his later works, it’s probably his most commercial. This is a crime story and Belmondo is a charming thug. It’s perfect casting, while Seberg makes for a great female lead – modern in her haircut and sexual attitudes. Being an English speaker, simply being a find by Otto Preminger for his American movies also has great symbolic value – she was an American actress! The film is the love child of American and French sensibilities, and though Godard found his voice with this, he’s making (as close as he came) to pop music. He didn’t lose that energy for quite some time (and his run from this to Weekend is one of the great artistic evolutions of any filmmaker), and eventually he pursued the obscure and odd (though I love his later Tout Va Bien, one of the most watchable films of his 70’s period) before delving into some video work which has meaning and purpose (but not for me). Godard has become a legend, a curmudgeonly figure happy to reject his honorary Oscar (fair enough) and readily available to talk shit about Steven Spielberg and Hollywood as a whole. But he captured something with Breathless. As the title suggests, this has the energy of a sprint, and that energy is timeless. And even fifty years later, infectious.

The Criterion Blu-ray improves on the standard def release with the new transfer. If you don’t have an HD television, it’s the same features, but the picture quality is upgraded, and noticeably so. The film is still presented in full-frame and in 1.0 monaural sound. But the quality is –as I’ve said – excellent. There’s a series of interview with Godard, Belmondo, Seberg, and Melville (27 min.) about the film from around period. This is followed by a 2007 interview with cinematographer Raoul Coutard and assistant director Pierre Rissient (23 min.). D.A. Pennebaker offers his thoughts on the film (11 min.) as does Jonathan Rosenbaum (11 min.). Also included is Mark Rappaport’s essay on Seberg (19 min.). There’s also a 1993 documentary on the making of the film, which covers numerous locations and some of the people involved in the making of (79 min.) including Jean-Paul Belmondo. One of Godard’s early short films “Charlotte et son Jules” (12 min.) is also included, along with the film’s theatrical trailer.