In the weeks leading up to as well as during the 2014 Wisconsin Film Festival, LakeFrontRow.com is proudly partnering with Arts Extract and Madison Film Forum in covering the festival. We plan to provide you with plenty of previews, reviews, interviews and more to help guide and enhance your festival experience this year. Synergy!
It’s Thursday which means the 2014 Wisconsin Film Festival is here, and while it seems cliche, it really does feel like there’s more than ever to see. This year, the festival returns to a very successful run at Sundance Cinemas, Cinematheque series in Hitchcock (Vertigo) and Jacques Demy (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Lola) are blending with festival programming, directors David Gordon Green (Joe) and Jeff Spitz (Food Patriots) will present their films in person, and there’s even a full day’s worth of movies at the Capitol Theater.
If there is one downside though (and that’s a big “if”), it’s that 150+ films can feel like a lot of ground to cover for the uninitiated. Fear not, beleaguered cinephiles. If you’re high on excitement but low on time, here are eight films spread out over all eight days to ensure maximum enjoyment at this year’s Wisconsin Film Festival:
Joe — David Gordon Green (April 3)
After a disappointing 2011 with The Sitter and the medieval stoner comedy Your Highness, it seemed like indie darling David Gordon Green’s turn for box office success had fallen flat. Last year’s bottle dramedy Prince Avalanche however, marked a return to form for the director, and Green’s latest, Joe, looks to be another quiet win. More Undertow than Pineapple Express, Joe stars Nicolas Cage as the titular ex-con-turned lumberer who finds redemption as a mentor to a neglected teen (Mud’s youngster, Tye Sheridan). With the malleable youth of Sheridan’s raw acting talent, Jeff Nichols’ Mud helped stoke the fires of Matthew McConnaughey’s resurgent “McConnaissance,” and as a fan of Cage’s work (both good and well, not so good), it’s this writer’s hope that Green can bolster the esteem of an actor once considered among the hottest and most gifted of Hollywood’s talent. If early word is to be believed, Joe’s rural Texas setting and plenty of blood and grit seem to show Cage is dead serious about this one.
Manakamana — Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez (April 4)
Do you remember Leviathan at last year’s festival? Do you remember enjoying Leviathan? Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab, the same group that produced Leviathan’s Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, has made another slow-burn with Manakamana. Like their predecessors’ abnormally passive approaches to filmmaking, Spray and Velez follow Nepalese pilgrims via static shots as they take short gondola rides on what was once a days-long quest to the legendary Hindu temple. Comprised of 10-minute long takes that would make any True Detective fan blush, Manakamana sounds like the structure of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope but in the patient search for tranquility rather than titillating suspense.
Short films from “Wisconsin’s Own” (April 5)
Well… duh. A dependable standout each and every year at the Wisconsin Film Festival, this year’s short films range from the ridiculous — Jordan Liebowitz’s “Bingo Night!” features a down-on-her-luck elderly woman who enlists two friends to rob their Madison-set bingo hall — to the contemplative — Tewosret Vaughn’s “Hill Stories” adopts documentary and cinema veritae stylings to tell three connected vignettes about a Vietnam vet, a working mother, and their visiting daughter.
Kumiko the Treasure Hunter — David Zellner (April 6)
David and Nathan Zellner follow up Kid-Thing, their Beasts of the Southern Wild by way of hicksville grotesque, with a story less grating but just as bizarre. Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter stars Rinko Kikuchi as a young woman who travels from Japan to Minnesota after becoming obsessed with the buried stash Steve Buscemi’s Carl Showalter stows away in Fargo. Does Kumiko know that despite the Coens’ misleading prologue, their 1996 masterpiece is purely fictional? Or has her mind become as warped and distorted as the film in her religiously rewound VHS tape?
Like Father, Like Son — Hirokazu Kore-eda (April 7)
Parenthood is tough enough already. Now imagine discovering that your biological son was accidentally switched in the hospital, and the boy you’ve come to love is not, in fact, your own. Or is he? Kore-eda’s previous effort, I Wish, focused on adolescent preoccupations, but Like Father, Like Son takes a turn for the responsibilities of the adult world as it poses a devastating question to Masaharu Fukuyama’s successful businessman and transcends a simple nature/nurture dichotomy. In addition to claiming last year’s Grand Jury Prize at Cannes, Kore-eda’s latest has even earned the director lofty comparisons to Yasujiro Ozu. If you listen closely, you can hear UW-Madison’s David Bordwell typing away at the notion.
Obvious Child — Gillian Robespierre (April 8)
Comedian Jenny Slate might be best known for dropping an f-bomb during her very first episode of Saturday Night Live, and that’s a shame, considering her one-year stint on NBC would give way to widespread success in recurring roles on Bob’s Burgers, House of Lies, and Kroll Show. Her latest project pairs her with director Gillian Robespierre, where Slate plays a Brooklyn stand-up who’s simultaneously fired, dumped and impregnated in a sour take on the romantic comedy. Can a possible abortion, the sticking point in Obvious Child’s plot, make for insightful humor? At the very least, it certainly looks to push any and all envelopes.
Cheatin’ — Bill Plympton (April 9)
Since winning an Academy Award for his short film Your Face, independent animator Bill Plympton’s made it a habit of popping up every so often with a new project. His distinctive hand-painted style has appeared in numerous promos for MTV and in 2004, Plympton produced another short, the dark comedy Guard Dog that received widespread acclaim. 10 years later, Plympton’s back again with a feature-length project. Featuring the artist’s fluid style, Cheatin’ uses part of its $100,000 Kickstarter campaign to digitally color Plympton’s drawings, fleshing out the tale of two misunderstood lovers in vivid, expressive detail. While the Wisconsin Film Festival plays host to a number of animated films this year, none seem as unique as this one.
Why Don’t You Play in Hell? — Shion Sono (April 10)
Easily the front-runner for the festival’s best title, Sion Sono mashes up styles as disparate as Takashi Miike and Michel Gondry in telling the insanely violent and violently insane story of a film crew’s unfortunate entanglements with a Yakuza gang’s business. Messy, hilarious, and undoubtedly sickening, Sono’s genre picture took home a People’s Choice Award in the “Midnight Madness” section of last year’s Toronto International Film Festival and could very well be to this year what Cheap Thrills and 13 Assassins were to Wisconsin Film Festivals past.
While you now have at least one pre-made schedule to follow, many of the aforementioned films play on multiple days during the festival, in addition to dozens of other great selections. You can check out the entire Wisconsin Film Festival schedule in today’s Isthmus or on the festival’s official website.