My Personal Top Ten

If you’ve been following this Blog there are not going to be a lot of surprises as to what I think were the best SIFF had to offer this year. To my way of thinking, if I can come out of the festival jazzed and excited about two or three titles (last year The Edge of Heaven and Man on Wire were the definite winners) than I count it as a success. When I have as many of them as I do this year than I count it as the best one I’ve ever had the pleasure to cover.

That’s no joke. I think there are five films, maybe six, which have a legitimate shot at being included on my year-end top ten list. Even better, I think there are another half-dozen or so that might end up as honorable mentions. This was, without question, a SIFF for the time capsule, and as 35th birthdays go here’s hoping mine is even half as awesome as this.

Without further ado, here are my picks as the ten best motion pictures of the festival. Please remember, it is impossible to see everything (still kicking myself over Séraphine, Treeless Mountain and North Face, hopefully I’ll get another chance before they year is out), so this list obviously reflects that fact. (For the record, I saw 84 films this year which isn’t a record for me, but it is definitely pretty darn close.)

1. In the Loop – No surprise here, I’ve been raving about Armando Iannucci’s extremely funny satire since the very moment the credits ended. This is as smart and as hysterical a comedy as I’ve seen in ages, maybe one of the best I’ve ever seen, and the more I think of it the more I’m starting to put it on the same level of say M*A*S*H or Network.

2. The Hurt Locker – Another no-brainer, Kathryn Beigelow’s latest a heart-stopping war epic that’s as harrowing and as chilling as these things come. The tension she builds is almost unbelievable, all of it anchored by a performance from Jeremy Renner that’s easily the best thing the guy’s ever done.

3. Tetro – Another one that grows on me the more I think of it. Frances Ford Coppola’s is a beautifully layered familial melodrama with a star-making performance by young Alden Ehrenreich and a borderline Oscar-worthy one from the luminous Maribel Verdú. It reminded my of my favorite films of Goddard and Truffaut, the legendary director of The Conversation and The Godfather making an idiosyncratic and highly personal film that is only going to get better with age.

4. The Cove – I wasn’t exactly fair to this one back when I first wrote about it. Admittedly, Louie Psihoyos’s investigative documentary unsettled me so much when it was over I had trouble talking about it. But this truly startling piece of investigative journalism is as exciting and – at times – as humorous as they come. It’s those last 20 minutes that knock your socks off, however, and it is a cold hearted human indeed who isn’t sickened by the disgusting horror show the director and his team were able to uncover.

5. Food, Inc. – More documentary happiness, this time concerning the food we buy at the store and are served at the fast food counter. I knew things were probably not as they should be, that government wasn’t doing all they can to make sure what we’re putting on the dinner table is safe. I just didn’t realize things were quite this bad, filmmaker Robert Kenner worthy of a boatload of kudos and commendations for showcasing it here.

6. Hansel and Gretel – This South Korean ghost story is beautiful, eerie and extremely scary, the whole thing feeling like a Tim Burton meets Guillermo del Toro fever dream with plenty of traditional Asian genre tropes thrown in for good measure. But director Pil-Sung Yim’s film never feels derivative. Instead, at times it is downright magic, the final 15 minutes as surreal and touching as anything I’ve seen this year.

7. Grace – Whoa, Nelly! That’s what I have to say about this one. Writer/director Paul Solet’s epic of childbirth and parenthood is chilling to the bone, disturbing, horrific and emotionally moving all at pretty much the same time. There are moments here burned into my memory forever, the last scene so unnerving I get shudders now just thinking about it.

8. That Evening Sun – There is not that much that is new about director Scott Teems latest effort, but when the story it tells is depicted with such subtlety, grace and strength there really doesn’t need to be. Even you thought Hal Holbrook was Oscar-worthy in Into the Wild, just wait until you see what he does here. If handled correctly, this could be his The Visitor and score him another nomination.

9. Small Crime – Director Christos Georgiou weaves an absolutely charming tale of romance and mystery that had me smiling pretty much start to finish. By and large, I couldn’t get enough of it, it’s saga of a small island policeman trying to uncover what happened to the town drunk while also falling in love with his town’s returning lone celebrity an effervescent joy start to finish. I’m hoping it gets some sort of domestic release, U.S. audiences deserving of experiencing the same pleasures here that I did.

10. Humpday – Another one I’m having trouble letting go of, the reservations I originally had about director Lynn Shelton’s bromance comedy beginning to evaporate like the morning dew. There is a dinner table conversation smack in the middle that completely blew my mind, the whole final third of the film a cacophony of heartbreak, friendship and hilarity that more than makes up for the fact the first third or so tends to be an overly talky bore.

...And the Winners Are

I apologize for being a little behind this year, but the following is the list of all the winners as announced during the SIFF Awards Brunch at the Space Needle for the 35th Annual Seattle International Film Festival. Also, I’ll be back a little later today with my personal favorite ten pictures from this year’s event.

With that – on with the award announcements!

Best Film Golden Space Needle Award
Black Dynamite, directed by Scott Sanders (USA, 2009) – MY THOUGHTS: What the f**k? You’ve got to be kidding me, right? Black Dynamite is a fun little movie and all but, best film material? On what planet? This is just wrong.

First runner up: The Necessities of Life, directed by Benoît Pilon (Canada, 2008)
Second runner up: (500) Days of Summer, directed by Marc Webb (USA, 2009)
Third runners up (tie): ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction, directed Kevin Hamedani (USA, 2009) and Morris: A Life With Bells On, directed by Lucy Akhurst (United Kingdom, 2008)
Fourth runner up: North Face, directed by Philipp Stolzl (Austria, 2008)

Rounding out the top ten: Marcello Marcello (Denis Rabaglia, Switzerland, 2008); Departures (Yojiro Takita, Japan, 2008); Patrik Age 1.5 (Ella Lemhagen, Sweden, 2008); Amreeka (Cherien Dabis, Canada, 2009) Humpday (Lynn Shelton, USA, 2009)

Best Documentary Golden Space Needle Award
The Cove, directed by Louie Psihoyos (USA, 2009) – MY THOUGHTS: This is much more like it. With a lot of great documentaries to choose from, both this one and Food, Inc. are the two I cannot get out of my head. A devastating and horrendous peek behind curtain the Japanese don’t want you to see.

First runner up: Sweet Crude, directed by Sandy Cioffi (USA, 2008)

Second runner up: William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe, directed by Sarah Kunstler and Emily Kunstler (USA, 2009)
Third runner up: Every Little Step, directed by James D. Stern and Adam Del Deo (USA, 2008)
Fourth runners up (tie): Food, Inc., directed by Robert Kenner (USA, 2008) and Facing Ali, directed by Pete McCormack (Canada, 2009)

Rounding out the top ten: Gotta Dance (Dori Berinstein, USA, 2008); Afghan Star (Havana Marking, Afghanistan, 2008); Dancing Across Borders (Anne H. Bass, USA, 2009); The Garden (Scott Hamilton, USA, 2008); Icons Among Us (Michael Rivoira, LarsLarson, Peter J. Vogt; USA, 2009)

Best Director Golden Space Needle Award
Kathryn Bigelow, for The Hurt Locker (USA, 2008) – MY THOUGTHS: Fantastic choice. One of the best movies of the year and deserving of every award and recognition it garners.

First runner up: Lynn Shelton, for Humpday (USA, 2009)
Second runner up: Kari Skogland for Fifty Dead Men Walking (UK/Canada, 2008)
Third runner up: Spike Lee for Passing Strange (USA, 2009)
Fourth runner up: Marc Webb for (500) Days of Summer (USA, 2009)

Best Actor Golden Space Needle Award
Sam Rockwell for Moon (United Kingdom, 2009) – MY THOUGHTS: No disagreeing here. In fact, my only hope that this win at SIFF is a precursor to the potential (although still sadly unlikely) Oscar nomination to come.

First runner up: Jim Sturgess for Fifty Dead Men Walking (United Kingdom, 2008)
Second runner up: Natar Ungalaaq for The Necessities of Life (Canada, 2008)
Third runner up: Mark Duplass for Humpday (USA, 2009)
Fourth runner up: Toni Servillo for Il Divo (Italy, 2008)

Best Actress Golden Space Needle Award
Yolande Moreau for Séraphine (France/Belgium, 2008) – MY THOUGHTS: Darn it! I knew I should have made more of an effort to see this one! Oh well. C’est la vie. That’s just how it goes sometimes, right?

First runner up: Catalina Saavedra for The Maid (Chile, 2008)
Second runner up: Trine Dyrholm, for Little Soldier (Denmark, 2009)
Third runner up: Nathalie Press for Fifty Dead Men Walking (UK/Canada, 2008)
Fourth runner up: Iben Hjejle for The Escape (Denmark, 2009)

For the rest of the winners, including the Jury prizes, please click here.

Getting My 'Justin' Deserts

The thing about writing this Blog and the uneasy relationship between it and SIFF is such that it becomes virtually impossible to write about everything you want to because, the moment one movie captures your imagination, you’ve got another three or four you’ve suddenly got to find away to fit in pretty much immediately.

I love the fact SIFF is so huge. I adore that they show so many different films from so many parts of the globe. I wouldn’t have them change a single thing about it. But all that said, it is a heavy workload, and trying to make your way through several hundred potentials and then write as quickly as you can about the ones that strike your fancy is as close to hopeless as anything I’ve ever done.

I only bring this up because I want to talk a little bit about actor Justin Kirk and as both the films he appeared in have already come and gone (and, potentially, might not hit theaters again) I’m doing this a little bit after the fact. But I liked both the emotionally moving melodrama Against the Current and the puzzle box black comedy thriller Four Boxes quite a little bit, and it seems remiss to not give them a shout-out each picture definitely deserves.

The first one is written and directed by relative newcomer Peter Callahan. It’s his second feature (I’ve never even heard of his first, Last Ball, so I can’t comment on its quality) and based on it I’m extremely excited to see what this guy can do next. The premise is risible. Paul Thompson (Joseph Fiennes) convinces his bartender best friend Jeff Kane (Justin Kirk) to be his chaperone as he attempts to swim the 150-mile length of the Hudson River. While the idea goes back to the pair’s childhood, the reasoning is altogether adult, Paul looking to commit suicide at the end of the journey on the anniversary of his wife’s death.

This movie should be horrid as you can almost hear the maudlin violins and see the melodramatic syrup run down the camera lens. And yet, by and large Callahan doesn’t go for the easy outs, refuses to pull the overly familiar heartstrings. Even better, he infuses the film with a ton of darkly acerbic humor that’s both bitingly funny and poetically moving, and even if the climactic moments do ultimately succumb to the usual three-Kleenex dynamic getting to the point is far more rhapsodic than I’d ever have imagined.

Four Boxes, while admittedly not working quite as well, is still a pretty potently nasty piece of work itself. Completely different in both subject matter and tone, this independent brain teaser follows two friends, Trevor (Kirk) and Rob (Sam Rosen), who earn extra cash going to funerals and selling off the dead guys stuff on eBay. Along with the latter’s girlfriend Amber (Terryn Westbrook), a woman who shares history with both men, the trio move in for the week in their latest target’s now-empty domicile, discovering a strange website bookmarked on his laptop apparently filming a terrorist completely unawares.

I had one of the central gags nailed right from the start, so the tension there never quite came together for me. The rest of the twists, however, are pretty darn wonderful. The best twist movies are ones where you can go back and discover all of the clues and puzzle pieces that could have given you the solution long before the climax, writer/director Wyatt McDill managing to do just that and more. Sure the movie is a con game, but it is one where the answers are all their for the deciphering, so even though most of what we’re watching is a sham the fact it all makes sense and is perfectly feasible in the end makes that fact pretty easy to take.

The film takes a rather darkly comic turn in the final moments I didn’t quite think were necessary, and there are some definite pacing problems especially during the opening act. But overall this is a fun little satire that kept me on my toes, and as I had the screener watching it a second time knowing the outcome was arguably even more fun than viewing it blind the first time around.

Kirk, best known for his work on the Showtime smash “Weeds,” is just great in both of these, turning in two completely different yet equally engaging performances. Not really familiar with him beforehand, the guy ahs a knack for getting inside the heads of the people he’s portraying making them feel honest and real. He’s someone worth keeping an eye on, and here’s hoping he gets the chance to stretch himself even more with future projects.

I spoke with the actor briefly in the lobby of the W Hotel about the two films and he was, even a little exhausted, pretty much a dream to chat with. I’m not going to bore you with all the details, but some of what he said about these two films I think deserves some coverage, not the least of which is how these two wildly different – yet in some ways eerily similar – projects came his way.

“They’re both comedies set in genres that are not usually comedic,” he admitted to me candidly. “But they are also still totally different, and they both came to me in totally different ways. Against the Current was pretty much a standard get. I loved the script a year or so before they go the money together to make the movie, and my friend Elizabeth Reaser was attached to be in it as well and so of we went! It was just one of those situations where you like the material and you want to be a part of it, it really isn’t much simpler than that.”

“With Four Boxes, that was a very special thing near and dear to my heart. The writer and director, Wyatt [McDill], was a childhood friend from the age 12. He was also a guy whose work I’ve always admired. He’s made some outstanding shorts, some great music videos, he’s a painter and is just really talented. He finally [wrote] his first feature and he sent me the script and I just loved it right away.”

“But, just because we had this history doesn’t mean there was any guarantee how things would be on day one walking on set, especially with someone who was your dear friend. More than that, there were other friends involved, and there was also going back home for the first time in a while to make it. But, boy, it couldn’t have worked out better. I really love the movie. It’s been a really cool experience and I’m so proud of what we accomplished.”

What about working with friends? Is that reason enough to make the film on its own? “I would never do a movie as a favor, so it was not that at all. I was very excited to work with Wyatt. I mean, I’ll give someone a ride to the airport as a favor, but as far as a movie, it takes too much out of you to do a movie just to be nice to someone. It’s draining and a lot of work. I did [Four Boxes] because I responded to the material and I like Wyatt’s work. I did not do it just because we were friends.”

There was a lot more we talked about in regards to both films, discussing how he worked on each character and what it took to bring them to life. We also talked about the nature of independent filmmaking as it is right now, and whether or not the marketplace is too saturated for films like these to be able to find an audience. We also, of course, talked about “Weeds,” but the information there was kept to an almost expected bare minimum, most of it hidden behind a toothy grin of utmost secrecy.

“I’ve been pretty lucky,” Kirk admitted to me somewhat coyly. “I mean, I’m on a television show most people don’t have and yet most people are aware of the show. It’s amazing to me, and I think DVD has really become a big thing that’s helped us become what we are.”

“It has become a phenomenon, yes, but I think that’s something that has been very cumulative. I was pretty sure things were going to work out, and I remember telling Mary Louise [Parker] around the first day or so of shooting that I thought we might have the chance to be around for a little while. I think it’s been a situation where the fan base has just grown over time, people discovering it through word of mouth and DVD.”

“Last year I really started to feel it. We had a great season. I’m thrilled to be a part of it, and for the most part I think it’s good, it’s really good show, and I think the powers that be have had the courage to destroy it and recreate when it was time to do that. When we burned our town down I think that was just great, because when you’re around for a little while I think that’s something you just have to do to keep the ideas flowing and fresh. It’s also something you absolutely cannot do again, so you know going into Season Five that it better be something new and different the audience will keep responding to.”

And is Season Five going to be new and different? Is it as strong as past ones? “Definitely. I thought last year was our best year ever, moving into that border town and all, and I admit I was a little worried going into this one because I didn’t think we had anything new going on. But, boy, do we ever have so many new, exciting things going on right now. I think Season Five, and I’m not just saying that because I have to or anything, really, is going to be our best one yet. [‘Weeds’] is a great gig. I feel extremely lucky.”

“I sometimes sit on set and look around, and not that I don’t believe there will be other great jobs, but this one has been just so great and I know I will look back on it fondly when it is over. But, it can’t go on forever. More importantly, I wouldn’t want it to. I wouldn’t want us to be around when I didn’t think it was good anymore. But that’s not how I feel right now. Right now I feel we’re doing great and as long as I keep feeling that way I don’t think we’ll be going anywhere anytime soon.”

With that said, I couldn’t help but pry Justin for a few cursory hints as to what exactly it is he’s so excited about for this upcoming season and asked him if there was anything he could reveal. His response wasn’t exactly a shock. “No,” he smiles at me. “I’m not going to say anything other than that. You have to watch it to find out.”

Shout Out to the PR Whiz Kids

Publicists are a strange bunch. They want to be your friends but they also know they need to keep you at arms length. At the same time, they also have an innate desire to make you happy, and having been one myself in the past I know this is a strange, almost surreal conundrum almost impossible to reconcile.

That said, the SIFF publicity team is the best I’ve ever had the pleasure to deal with. Over the last three years these guys, led by the irrepressible Jessica Toon (pictured, hopefully she won't kill me from lifting it from her Facebook page) have gone out of their way to make me feel valued and special. But I’m not the only one. As far as I can tell they do this with every single press person that comes through their office, whether they work for The Seattle Times, The New York Times or for Moviefreak.com.

I guess what I’m saying is that I owe them a heartfelt thank you. I know it is their job and all, but as far as teams go they tend to go above and beyond to the point I don’t think they quite get the recognition they deserve. While this little post here isn’t going to change that, let it be my simple way of saying thanks. I love these guys, and if SIFF ever decides to go in a different direction I sure as hell hope the one thing they do not change are the people making the decisions inside the press office.

All that said, I do have to admit going to parties with them is slightly hysterical. As groups of people are concerned, especially groups who spend a lot of time working with journalists, watching them trying to hold their liquor is borderline hysterical. Granted, it’s probably a good thing the majority of them aren’t drunks or alcoholics, but watching them imbibe might just be the funniest spectacle I’ve seen this entire festival. I’m just sayin’…

(Second picture is of Ted Fry, the sort of leader of the actual SIFF press office, also stolen from his Facebook page. Sorry Ted. I really am a meanie [and you thought I was kidding when I said that last year]. Again, no offense meant, I just think you guys deserve some recognition. Is it my fault your pictures are sort of embarrassing? I think not.)

A Tale Worth Following

My guess is that this isn’t a coincidence, but Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1952 film The Tales of Hoffman was broadcast on Turner Classic Movies the other night. The reason I bring this up is that this film plays central significance in Frances Ford Coppola’s latest opus Tetro, and having never seen it (let alone heard of it) I can’t begin to tell you how excited I was to DVR the darn thing.

Keeping this short, let me just say the film is totally surrealistic and completely unhinged. I adore Powell and Pressburger. Black Narcissus is one of my favorite motion pictures of all time, while Stairway to Heaven (or A Matter of Life and Death, depending on which title you want to go with) is so beautifully enthralling and emotionally captivating just thinking about it is enough to bring a tear to my eye.

But this movie is just crazy. A filmed version of the classic Jacques Offenbach opera, there are things going on here the likes of which I’d never even imagined. It’s a pop nightmare of love, anger, aggression and fantasy, and for anyone who ever said times have changed and that they just didn’t think of things then in the same way we do now let them take a look at this and see what the think of those statements as soon as it is over.

I almost hate to admit this, but I’ve had doll fantasies of my own. I think every girl has thought how cool it would be to be Barbie, how neat it would be to be perfect in every way almost to the point you could be plastic. This movie takes those sentiments to an entirely different level, however, and any dreams I may have had pale in comparison to the operatic elements acted out here.

What does this have to do with SIFF? Not much, really, only the wonderfully imaginative Tetro tying this particular post to the subject matter at hand. But even if it didn’t this is just the kind of movie I love to champion and tell people about, a surrealistic wonder worthy of a second look over a half-century after it first appeared on theater screens.

After all, we can not look at the current state of film without familiarizing ourselves with what has come before, the masters of the medium setting the templates all current filmmakers now draw from. Even an Oscar-winning maestro like Coppola can’t help but stare at the forgotten impresarios like Powell and Pressburger and make modern commentary on what they accomplished, and if that isn’t reason enough to seek a treasure like The Tales of Hoffman out (as well as head to a theater showing Tetro) I don’t know what else would be.

Pressure

While sitting at the downtown Seattle W Hotel and chatting with a trio of my favorite local publicists waiting for actor Paul Giamatti to return from a quick cigarette break, the diminutive writer-director of his quirky new science fiction dramatic comedy Cold Souls Sophie Barthes exited the conference room where our interview was to take place and started conversing right along with us. Turns out she was excited about her last three interviews, all of them going so well she just had to come out and let the three ladies know about it.

“Seattle is fantastic,” she said with a gigantic smile, her thick French accent reverberating around the hallway. “They are so knowledgeable about cinema and they ask such wonderful questions. We’re enjoying this so much more than we did Sundance. The questions there were horrible!”

Talk about pressure. Suddenly I had that frantic piece of Billy Joel music reverberating around in my head as a little bit of sweat more than likely began to appear on my brow. Three not just good but great interviews in a row, and here I was the last print journalist of the afternoon standing in the hallway having to follow them up. Would my questions make the grade? Or would I be the one disappointment in a day filled, to that point at least, with probing insights and thoughtful discussions?

Granted, there was always the chance the director was exaggerating. “No, not at all,” stated a just returned Giamatti just as we were heading into the interview room. “It’s true. It has been great. I think we’ve all been surprised a little bit just how good these interviews have been. It’s nice.”

My own insecurity and fears as to how the interview went aside (for the curious, Giamatti and Barthes said afterwards I was more than up to par – hopefully they just weren’t being nice), I think these comments say a lot about the cinema loving climate here in Seattle. Not only do we celebrate and embrace the largest, most exhausting film festival in the world, we also know what we’re talking about when we discuss it afterwards.

I can’t tell you how nice that is to be reminded of. Living in our own Pacific Northwest bubble, we tend to forget just how passionate and knowledgeable we are around here. After all, thanks to moviegoers here films like The Stunt Man, Like Water for Chocolate, Two-Lane Blacktop, Il Postino and Memento got noticed to the point their respective studios decided to expand their releases for wider than they’d originally planned. In at least three of those cases, the films went on to become bona fide hits, while two have become cult favorites discussed and talked about long after their day in the art house screening room has come and gone.

As for Cold Souls? Well, in regards to the interview you’re unfortunately going to have to wait until the end of July to read the rest of that. As for the movie itself, it’s one of the best things I’ve seen at SIFF so far, and considering just how strong many of the more high profile entries at this year’s festival have been that’s really saying something. Funny, insightful, thought-provoking and poetically moving, this is what intelligent science fiction is all about, and I almost can’t wait to go into it all in greater detail later this Summer.

Spoofing Around

I need to be up in a little less than five hours so this is going to be brief. I’ve just returned home from watching director Scott Sanders’ blaxploitation spoof Black Dynamite and I feel the need to relate a couple of immediate observations.

1. Films like this must be seen with an audience. I actually had the screener sitting here at home but decided to go to the midnight SIFF showing all the same. Good thing I did, because I doubt I’d have laughed all that much without the packed house almost egging me on. The best midnight schlock works whether you have people watching it with you or not, true, but a halfway decent one can seem even better than it actually is if the crowd continually goes nuts. Against my better sense of reasoning, I ended up catching the bug – if only partially – and had a lot more fun than I probably should have.

2. I can’t help but wonder why Michael Jai White, who stars as the title character and also co-wrote the screenplay, never became a star. I get that 1997’s Spawn wasn’t anything to write home about, but the guy has definite charisma and he kicks butt better than just about anyone. I’d sort of forgotten that, and it is more than a bit too bad he’s been relegated to throwaway supporting roles in forgettable motion pictures (save for his notable turn as Gamble in The Dark Knight) ever since that superhero spectacular bombed at the box office.

3. Spoofs, no matter how great some of the moments, good the performances or funny a few of the gags, need more than one joke to survive upon. You can only run on early momentum for so long, so by the time you’re suddenly cross-pollinating into multiple genres and throwing in Presidential kung fu nincompoops it’s more than a tiny bit too late.

4. Directors should introduce their films at SIFF screenings by reciting the trailer voiceover more often. It is hysterical, and gets things started on the absolute perfect tone.

That’s really it for now. From those four things I’m guessing you can take away the fact I was only moderately amused by Black Dynamite, but I did like the main character and, thanks to the audience, still managed to laugh a fair amount. In all honestly, as mezzo-mezzo I am with it all I’d much rather see a sequel to this than have Mike Meyers resurrect Austin Powers, and considering the latter’s fan base that’s probably saying one heck of a lot.

Night all. See you again sometime tomorrow.

Recollecting About the Hump

Just a quick post before I head out to see Guillermo Arriaga’s The Burning Plain, but I feel a little remiss for not including Lynn Shelton’s Humpday in my week two recap yesterday. The reason for this is that, in all honesty, I still can’t quite decide what I totally think about the much-buzzed comedy. It’s a good film, sometimes even a great one, but there is something about it that just keeps making me reticent to give it a whole-hearted recommendation.

The film revolves around two best friends, Ben (Mark Duplass) and Andrew (Joshua Leonard), who decide during the middle of a rather rambunctious party to take make a film for The Stranger’s annual amateur porn competition, Humpfest. They seem to think the idea of two straight men getting it on would be something akin to art, the duo almost daring one another to go through with the idea even though not a heck of a lot of thought has gone into their thought processes.

The movie has got to be the most ‘Seattle’ film I can possibly remember seeing. Shelton gets the look, feel and the vibe of the city absolutely spot-on, and she does it by refusing to insert a single shot of the Space Needle, too. I felt like I knew these people, knew exactly which neighborhoods they came from and/or were visiting, the whole thing ringing of an authenticity so many other projects strive for yet never are able to achieve.

Yet, as much love and discussion as this movie has generated since its Sundance debut, I found the first half more than a little bit frustrating. It’s a talk-heavy film and that’s an understatement, and I kept getting a Kevin Smith Clerks-like feeling from it all I had trouble embracing.

The thing is, the second half is pretty close to marvelous. Starting with a dinner table conversation between the two friends and Ben’s wife Anna (Alycia Delmore), the film starts building in both humor and emotion. It’s still very dialogue heavy but the words suddenly started carrying meaning for me, the layers beginning to peal back to reveal a saga of maturity and lost youth that honestly left me more than a little bit moved.

And yet I still hesitate over Humpday and I really don’t know why. I interviewed Shelton a couple of days back and I timidly didn’t share this reticence with her even though I knew I should have. At the same time, my enthusiasm over the pieces and the performances I liked are nearly without comparison, and speaking with her about those was pretty close to a wonderful joy.

I don’t know. This movie deserves more from me. It’s got a solid script, breezy direction and is acted by the three leads to near perfection. I should have included it yesterday and it is to my embarrassment and my folly that I did not. Bottom line, when it hits theaters in a couple of weeks I think people should check it out, and even if I have reservations here and there that doesn’t mean I still can’t recognize and endorse a thought-provoking comedy when I see one.

(As for the interview, check the main site next week for it, probably Wednesday. I hope to have the article written and up by then.)