Written by Hunter M. Daniels

DISCLOSURE: I have a film in the student competition portion of this festival. However, no one involved with any of the film’s I am covering is involved with the “10-10-10” student festival, as to my knowledge.

Ben X

Some films are lost in translation; I have a feeling that Ben X is amongst them. The film is clearly full of wordplay and double-entendre, (a trip over to IMDB explains that “Ben X” spoken quickly sounds like Danish for “I am nothing”), however, the English subtitles too often fail to capture the heart of what I am fairly sure is a witty screenplay.

Ben X, Belgium’s official selection for the Academy Awards, (it was apparently short listed, but didn’t garner a nomination), is a sort of character study of a young man with asperger syndrome mixed with a John Hughes film. The movie is unabashedly commercial and makes crowd pleasing choices at every turn, but it fails to feel earnest. Instead, the whole film takes on the feel of a cold and calculating affair.

The movie darts back and forth between the depressing, though breathtakingly shot, life of Ben and his more exciting online adventures with a beautiful and mysterious girl. As the film progresses and Ben begins to contemplate suicide his videogame obsession and his real world begin to blur. At times it feels like the film might descend into much darker territory and become a spiritual cousin to Elephant.  However, director Nic Balthazar doesn’t appear to have a truly dark bone in his body. As a result, the movie is consistently light and fluffy until its rushed finale that reveals 2 twists that everyone watching is sure to have guessed 20 minutes earlier.

Balthazar creates a beautiful looking film and what wordplay I could discern is clever, but the film never goes anywhere challenging and consequently never creates much emotion.

The crowd seemed to like it though.

Summerhood

Summerhood is a splendid film about how much life sucks as a kid. Writer/Director/Actor Jacob Medjuck has gone to great lengths to create a bittersweet film about the agony and the ecstasy of childhood at that last moment before hormones kick in and the goal changes from sneaking out at night to pull pranks to sneaking out to get into the girls cabins and, hopefully, their underwear.

The film is far from perfect, the third act completely loses focus and too much borrowed from Stand by Me (and what might be a temp score from The Shawshank Redemption), but there are flickers of brilliance to be found and a couple of great belly laughs along the way.  The acting is strong across the board, especially from Lucian Maisel who carries much of the emotional weight of the film. Also, John Cusack does wonders with the poignant narration in an un-credited role.

Medjuck seems to grasp fully how evil little boys are, especially at summer camp, (a place I was kicked out of for getting into too many fistfights, I was a scrappy fellow). The dialog is sharp, funny, and just dirty enough to be believable without reaching levels of gratuity. 

Look for the opening monologue, the first moment when Fetus sees Sundae, the hand holding scene and Kevin McDonald’s character reveal for moments that perfectly evoke childhood and virginity, both physical and emotional.

This isn’t a film for everyone, my girlfriend found it hard to relate to, but if you’ve ever been to camp, or prison, or the army, or college, this is a film that you should absolutely not miss. Not just one of the best I’ve seen in this festival, but also one of the best that I’ve seen about childhood, ever.

Remarkable Power

Remarkable Power is a new film that, were it not for the, (remarkably good), digital photography, might feel like it had been locked away since the mid-1990s. Everything in the film feels slightly retro. I thought the entire interconnected con-men genre had died, but UCSB grad Brandon Beckner follows in the steps of Scott Frank with this oft’ clever if slightly cliché film.

The interconnected LA stories concern a young loser who obsesses about a Tappy Tibbons style infomercial, the actor who starred in said infomercial, a 300 million dollar baseball star, a late night host about to be canned a bunch of totally unlikely Jewish mobsters, porn stars and other various assorted miscreants

The movie is full of laughs and features one spectacularly grotesque and hilarious death scene. The structure is also fun and reminiscent of the flashback-within-a-flashback style of SLC Punk!. First time writer/director Beckner has an eye for LA archetypes and quirky characters. Also, he has one hell of a casting director. This micro-budget feature boasts Kevin Nealon, Nora Zehetner, Tom Arnold, Kip Pardue, Jack Plotnick, Dule Hill and Christopher Titus all of whom are in top form, especially Zehetner who seems poised to be a go-to-girl for roles that Ellen Page might soon be to expensive to take.

However, the film is still flawed. It doesn’t end so much as it stops being on screen. Breckner was noticeably shaky during the question and answer session and admitted that he had recently cut roughtly 40 minutes of material from the film, a surprise considering the natural feel of the super tight pace. I don’t really feel comfortable judging what is obviously an unfinished project, but there is definitely some potential here for a fun evening double feature with Very Bad Things.