By Dennis Hartley
The Seattle International Film Festival is in full swing, so over the next several weeks I will be sharing highlights with you. SIFF is showing 273 films over 25 days. Navigating such an event is no easy task, even for a dedicated buff. Yet, I soldier on (cue the world’s tiniest violin). Hopefully, some of these films will be coming soon to a theater near you…
Fat Kid Rules the World marks the directorial debut for Matthew Lillard (who surprised reviewers, including this one, by revealing previously untapped depth as an actor in The Descendants 
last year). Lillard’s film, a sort of Gen Y take on Boudu Saved from Drowning
(with a touch of Times Square
) centers on the travails of an obese, socially awkward high-school student named Troy (Jacob Wysocki) who lives in a cramped Seattle apartment with his ex-jarhead dad (Billy Campbell) and snotty younger brother. One day, our glum hero is seized by a suicidal impulse and throws himself in front of a bus. He is saved by guitarist/street kid/Oxy junkie Marcus (Matt O’Leary), who immediately demands $20 for the “service”. It’s the beginning of a beautiful friendship, with Marcus playing a punk rock Henry Higgins to the arrhythmic Troy’s Eliza Doolittle, encouraging him to locate his inner Cobain and learn to play the drums so they can storm the Seattle music scene. Marcus falls in love with a cute alternachick at school. He discovers rhythm. Life lessons are learned. Director and cast have their hearts in the right place, but the film becomes a tiresomely predictable parade of afterschool special clichés.
last year). Lillard’s film, a sort of Gen Y take on Boudu Saved from Drowning (with a touch of Times Square) centers on the travails of an obese, socially awkward high-school student named Troy (Jacob Wysocki) who lives in a cramped Seattle apartment with his ex-jarhead dad (Billy Campbell) and snotty younger brother. One day, our glum hero is seized by a suicidal impulse and throws himself in front of a bus. He is saved by guitarist/street kid/Oxy junkie Marcus (Matt O’Leary), who immediately demands $20 for the “service”. It’s the beginning of a beautiful friendship, with Marcus playing a punk rock Henry Higgins to the arrhythmic Troy’s Eliza Doolittle, encouraging him to locate his inner Cobain and learn to play the drums so they can storm the Seattle music scene. Marcus falls in love with a cute alternachick at school. He discovers rhythm. Life lessons are learned. Director and cast have their hearts in the right place, but the film becomes a tiresomely predictable parade of afterschool special clichés.
Four Suns is a film that Mike Leigh might make, if he was Czech. I don’t have any other reference point because I’m relatively unacquainted with contemporary Czech cinema. Of course, that’s why we attend film festivals…to learn about people from other lands (as our Geography teacher used to tell us). And you know, they really aren’t much different from us, as director Bohdan Slama reveals in his tragicomic mix of kitchen-sink drama and wry social commentary. A working class ne’er-do-well named Jara (Jaroslav Piesi) gets himself fired for smoking weed on the job. This is straining his credibility, both as a dad (he’s been admonishing his 16 year-old son about getting high with his friends instead of learning a trade) and as a husband (his wife has been giving him the cold shoulder). His only solace is hanging out with his best bud (and fellow man child) the Zen-like Karel (Karel Roden), who has a more tolerant spouse (she doesn’t seem to mind that Karel eschews job-hunting for walkabouts to communicate with rocks and shrubs). At some point however, even 37 year-olds have to grow up, and that’s never a pretty thing to watch…with or without subtitles. Episodic and leisurely paced, but worthwhile.
I predict that standup comic turned writer-director “Bobcat” Goldthwait will one day be mentioned in the same breath as Godard and Bunuel as one of cinema’s great agent provocateurs. OK, maybe not. But it does take a filmmaker with a unique talent for pushing buttons to kick off a “comedy” by skeet-shooting a baby. Now, before I get walkouts, let me say that in context of what follows in God Bless America, it fits. In this surprisingly sharp satire, a mashup of Idiocracy
, Falling Down, Heathers 
and Network, Goldthwait takes (literal) aim at The United States of Stupid. His disenfranchised antihero Frank (Joel Murray) is like Ignatius J. Reilly, railing against all who offend his sense of taste and decency (but armed with an AK-47). Already stewing over his ex-wife’s impending marriage, his little daughter’s detachment, his inconsiderate neighbors and his observation that most of his co-workers are obsessed with reality TV, Frank is pushed over the edge when he loses his job and is diagnosed with a brain tumor. Frank’s first target is an obnoxious reality TV star, but his hit list expands to include wing nut pundits, Teabaggers, Westboro Baptist Church-types…and the worst of the worst: people who yak on their cell phones in movie theaters and smug Yuppies who deliberately take up two parking spaces. Along the way, he is aided and abetted by a 16-year old girl (Tara Lynne Barr, in a scene-stealing performance) who “loves” what he’s doing. One more prediction: Decades from now, the American zeitgeist of the early 21st century will be neatly encapsulated by this money quote: “I don’t want my Daddy…I want an iPhone!!!”
, Falling Down, Heathers and Network, Goldthwait takes (literal) aim at The United States of Stupid. His disenfranchised antihero Frank (Joel Murray) is like Ignatius J. Reilly, railing against all who offend his sense of taste and decency (but armed with an AK-47). Already stewing over his ex-wife’s impending marriage, his little daughter’s detachment, his inconsiderate neighbors and his observation that most of his co-workers are obsessed with reality TV, Frank is pushed over the edge when he loses his job and is diagnosed with a brain tumor. Frank’s first target is an obnoxious reality TV star, but his hit list expands to include wing nut pundits, Teabaggers, Westboro Baptist Church-types…and the worst of the worst: people who yak on their cell phones in movie theaters and smug Yuppies who deliberately take up two parking spaces. Along the way, he is aided and abetted by a 16-year old girl (Tara Lynne Barr, in a scene-stealing performance) who “loves” what he’s doing. One more prediction: Decades from now, the American zeitgeist of the early 21st century will be neatly encapsulated by this money quote: “I don’t want my Daddy…I want an iPhone!!!”
Remember the “No Nukes” movement that gained momentum in the mid to late 70s and then fizzed after Chernobyl proved that those DFHs may have been on to something after all? Good times. Lots of (irradiated) water passed under the bridge. Everyone got distracted by their iPhones. Fast-forward to the announcement in 2010 that the U.S. was going forward with construction of the first nuclear power plant in three decades; corporate America swooned over the “Nuclear Renaissance” (short memories). Then, as if on cue, Fukushima happened in 2011. The Atomic States of America is a timely eco-doc that could serve as a perfect wake-up call for anyone who may have failed to connect those dots (i.e., the jury is still out on the “safety” of this energy source). Co-directors Don Argott and Sheena M. Joyce build their case with a sense of “doesn’t this piss you off?” urgency (a la Gasland
, reviewing the industry’s past sins and spotlighting present day travails suffered by communities adjacent to nuclear plants (like “cancer clusters”). Most importantly, the filmmakers boldly tackle the $64,000 question: How in the fuck did we get to this Bizzarro World scenario wherein the Atomic Energy Commission finds itself kowtowing to the nuclear power industry…instead of vice versa? Essential viewing.
, reviewing the industry’s past sins and spotlighting present day travails suffered by communities adjacent to nuclear plants (like “cancer clusters”). Most importantly, the filmmakers boldly tackle the $64,000 question: How in the fuck did we get to this Bizzarro World scenario wherein the Atomic Energy Commission finds itself kowtowing to the nuclear power industry…instead of vice versa? Essential viewing.Previous SIFF 2012 coverage: