Sort of the underclass version of "An Education," "Fish Tank" is the second feature from the daring and shrewd Andrea Arnold. It's not quite as deftly disturbing as her first full-lengther, "Red Road" (Arnold also made the Oscar-winning short "Wasp"). But that's like
saying an F5 tornado isn't quite a hurricane; if you're in either's path, you'll definitely be blown away.
Set in and around a bustling but depressing council estate (Britain's version of a housing project ) "Fish" charts the sexual awakening of a more p.o.'d than usual 15-year-old when her promiscuous single mum takes up with a charming new boyfriend. At first he
fulfills a long-absent, cool father figure gap in delinquent Mia's and her equally foul-mouthed, pre-teen sister's lives.
But especially in Mia's, who finds Connor's not-so-innocent physicality around her quite - um, pleasantly would be the word -discombobulating. The pleasant but in key ways elusive man has an irresistible way of discouraging and encouraging her percolating hormones. But when Mia uncovers certain secrets about Connor, she finds new justification for her free-floating anger - and acts that out in one of the most nail-biting and alarming ways seen on film in a long, long time.
Katie Jarvis, who plays Mia, is an amateur discovered arguing with her boyfriend at a train station. Some have suggested she may just be playing a version of herself here, but I think she really is a talented new actress. For one thing, she learned a distinctively personal version of hip hop dancing, which is Mia's one creative outlet and thin hope to build a better life, for the role. More to the point, Jarvis doesn't just rant and rage her way through the part; she locates every tentative, thrilling step of blooming adolescent desire with utter persuasiveness.
The Irish actor Michael Fassbender once again proves himself one of the great new talents on the scene with work that makes quite different demands on him than "Inglorious Basterds" and "Hunger" did. He brings out Connor's undeniably good qualities while never making excuses for his predatory, manipulative and even brutal sides.
Arnold, to her credit, refuses to either judge or drum up false sympathy for any of her unlikeable characters. This can get to be a bit much, especially if you have a limited tolerance for females screaming at each other in cockney accents. But she mitigates the kitchen sinkiness of it all with occasional flights of visual poetry. And while the use of handicam footage here is not as brilliant as "Red Road's" closed circuit surveillance stuff, it's good enough to solidify Arnold's standing as one of the smartest directors around when it comes to understanding, and elaborating upon, how the new voyeuristic media can affect and distort our personalities, behavior and fragile as ever self-images.

The Los Angeles Film Critics Association's awards dinner Saturday night was one of the more enjoyable events in the group's 35-year history of honoring the best in cinema. That's best as opposed to glitziest, which you can get your fill of on tonight's Golden Globes, at the Oscars in March and at most of the 250 or so bonehead celebrity-driven award programs that will pop up in between.
Which doesn't mean that LAFCA is against movie stars. Best actor winner Jeff Bridges was at the InterContinental Hotel event in Century City Saturday, as was the ultimate French movie star, career achievement recipient Jean-Paul Belmondo. But we love 'em for their work, not their iridescence (well, maybe some of that in Belmondo's case).
That approach, admittedly, doesn't always make for the liveliest show. But not the case this year. Things kicked off delightfully with Bridges, best music score winner (with the late Stephen Bruton) T-Bone Burnett and young country composer extraordinaire Ryan Bingham playing some moving tunes from their "Crazy Heart" collaboration.
Later, in a likeably rambling acceptance speech for his portrayal of that film's aging stage warrior Bad Blake, Hollywood child Bridges remembered to thank someone he's been neglecting through the passel of awards he's already won.
"The hardest thing as an actor is getting your foot in the door," Bridges said, acknowledging that he owes it all to his actor father Lloyd. "He carried me in at six months! He said, 'Here, take my kid!' The director said, 'He's laughing.' Dad: 'Well, just pinch him and he'll cry for you!'
"This award really means a lot to a homeboy," Bridges later added, getting of course a whooping round of applause from the L.A. scribes. There would be many more of those.
The critics themselves generally struck a nice balance between humor and scholarship when presenting the various categories. Some were in-jokes, such as Luke Y. Thompson's suggestion that departing L.A. Weekly film editor Scott Foundas - a workhorse of not only prodigious energy but also critical acumen and writing talent - might be from outer space while bestowing the production design award on the sci fi parable "District 9."
Others got familially, if dryly, personal, such as when former Daily News critic Glenn Whipp thanked best animated film director Wes Anderson for inspiring his seven-year-old son to act quirky like the characters in "Fantastic Mr. Fox" - and not like Whipp's neighbor's boy, who decided to emulate the dreadful Chipmunks "Squeakquel" instead and burst into the girls bathroom at school.
Anderson kept the deadpan humor going in his acceptance speech, reading excerpts from bad reviews his movies have gotten over the years, but ending on a pleasant note.
"Actually getting a prize from a group of critics . . . I'm going to remember this at least as clearly as those other things, and with much more gratitude," the "Rushmore," "Royal Tenenbaums" and "Darjeeling Limited" director said. "And I thank you, again, for your honesty through all of these years."
Master of cinematic irony Anderson wasn't the only witty award-winner. Christoph Waltz, so mesmerizing as "Inglorious Basterds'" calculating and ruthless SS Colonel Hans Landa, humbly thanked the critics for his supporting actor award with a warm, Austrian lilt to his voice. Then he cracked:
"The way I see it, to make a drama really complete and worthwhile it takes three players, like Adam, Eve and the snake . . or, in a way, the filmmaker, the audience and the critics!"
We're sure he meant that in the nicest way.
"Precious'" Mo'Nique reckoned the best strategy was to get personal in a big way. Accepting her award for best supporting actress, she admitted "When all of this first came into play, a lot of reporters asked me, 'What do you think about the critics?' I had to actually say to myself and to them, 'I don't know the critics. So I really don't know what to think about the critics because we have not been formally introduced.'"
Time to remedy that.
"So I would like for all the critics here to just shout your name out, so that way we can meet each other," Mo'Nique requested. There were laughs but few names on that first try.
"I'm serious as hell!" she said. "Y'all know my damn name, I should know all of your names. Please shout your name out!"
That time it worked. Thanks for the shout, Ms. Imes.
She got rather more serious for the rest of her acceptance speech. The next recipient, independent/experimental winner "The Anchorage's" co-director C.W. Winter, went directly for the very crucial service critics who still value film as art provide.
"Thank you for being the types of critics who see it as an obligation and as an urgency to consider a cinema that exists outside of the dominant economy," Winter said.
"The Los Angeles Film Critics is the only major critical organization in America that even gives an award like this - which is a situation that, of course, is absurd. At least in some part, by even having an award like this, the Los Angeles Film Critics hold onto this belief that cinema is a vast and barely mapped land."
One of the great exploratory movements of film history, the French New Wave, hits its 50th anniversary this year (well, give or take a year or two), and LAFCA's 35th awards were dedicated to that mind-expanding, form-exploding and, yes, critics-created cinema. There were several mentions of last week's loss of one of the key Nouvelle Vague auteurs, Eric Rohmer. But mainly, there was Belmondo. Hobbled by a stroke and barely able to walk, his hair a swept-back shock of snow white, the star of Jean-Luc Godard's "Breathless" and so many other game-changing classics still looked the picture of Gallic cool, surrounded by beautiful women and wearing that famous, confident smirk on his face the whole evening long.
"[Belmondo] became, for most of the world, the face of the New Wave," Vogue critic John Powers said in his introductory remarks. "And you have to say, what a face! You start with the boxer's nose. You have those lips which are perfect for smooching and smoking. You've got those eyes that are sexy now and ironic then. It's an amazing face. But he's not just a pretty face. He's, in fact, a marvelous screen actor.
"If you want someone to swashbuckle like Douglas Fairbanks, Belmondo will do it for you. If you want to charm women with silliness like Cary Grant, Belmondo will do it for you. If you want him to be effortlessly virile like Bob Mitchum, he will do it for you. If you want to have an honorable priest, he will be the honorable priest. If you want to have the ambiguous man who you can't tell whether or not is an informer, he will be that. Put simply, he could do anything . . . even get along with Jean-Luc Godard!"
Yes, we LAFCAns love our movie stars. We just make them earn it harder than outfits like the Hollywood Foreign Press Association do.
Critical knowledge of film history informed the presentation to the night's big winners, Kathryn Bigelow and her up-to-the-minute Iraq War drama "The Hurt Locker."
Henry Sheehan compared the best director's work to such American masters' as Howard Hawks, John Ford and Samuel Fuller.
"Wow, that was a very illustrious group of people," LAFCA's somewhat stunned best picture director said in her acceptance speech. "Directing is a very instinctual process. But sitting here tonight, I realized that, in fact, it's the critical process that takes place after you've made your film that allows you that space to analyze your instinct. It gives you a real insight as to why you made the movie. I think that's a real necessary part of the process."
And one, indeed, worth celebrating.

HERE'S THE LIST:

1. Inglorious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)
2. Antichrist (Lars von Trier)
3. Thirst (Park Chan-wook)
4. The Secret of the Grain (Abdel Kechiche) and 35 Shots of Rum
(Claire Denis)
5. The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke)
6. In the Loop (Armando Iannucci)
7. The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow) and The Messenger (Oren Moverman)
8. Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman (Eric Bricker)
9. Up in the Air (Jason Reitman)
10. Funny People (Judd Apatow)

HERE ARE SOME REASONS WHY:

It's not just because Quentin Tarantino took all the things he does best, like manipulating language and referencing old movies and messing up time, to whole new levels of accomplishment. He also used those gifts to make "Inglorious Basterds" the most subversive war movie of them all.
And hellaciously good fun, too. But it's a mark of Quentin's masterful audacity that he had fans happily quoting Brad Pitt's redneckisms for weeks after totally ignoring their expectations of an action-packed "Dirty Dozen" with Jews.
Sure, there was some sick and flashy violence, and the final conflagration boasted a satisfyingly high body count. But there were no real combat scenes. And the movie was mostly all talk. Brilliant, revealing talk, about how war makes all who participate a bastard, how Germans could rightly reference America's own genocidal episodes (slavery, the Indian wars) without excusing their own racist madness, about how cinema works and works us over.
That last observation is really the bulwark for the film's firebomb treatise: Don't believe anything you see in a war movie. By going so over the top in it's crowd-pleasing, "artistic license" way with history, "Inglorious Basterds ' suggests that all war films are some kind of propaganda, whether they were made under Joseph Goebbels or by Howard Hawks or William Wellman. Or, for that matter, by Kon Ichikawa or Oliver Stone. War is by nature too emotional a matter for any filmmaker - whether hawk or dove, on our side or theirs - to approach with real objectivity. And their financial backers wouldn't appreciate the full, ugly truth, either; after all, while "Platoon" was criticizing everything Stone could think of about Vietnam, weren't those jungle firefights either?
Tarantino understands that the old adage, "truth is the first casualty of war," is only magnified by that incomparable lying machine, the movie camera.
The director's all-consuming passion for cinema hasn't prevented him from keeping his eyes wide open in this instance. In fact, it enhances the truly radical argument he makes every step of the film's unpredictable, voluble way. "Basterds'" stylistic homages and film references are sublime delights for the movie geek, but they also turn easy relationships audiences have developed with these things sideways - much like the film intends to do with our tendency to nod solemnly (while hoping for some good bloody action) at any picture that claims to tell us something real about war.
Some examples: The opening sequence has been rightly praised, and inevitably criticized in some quarters, for staging the Holocaust like a Spaghetti Western. Beats wrongheaded works such as "The Reader" and "Boy in the Striped Pajamas" that turned the crime into German family tragedies, but some folks will never see that. Anyway, the real stylistic coup in that first chapter is an old Hitchcock trick - show the audience something the people on screen don't know about - is turned into a very Quentin verbal one, simply by having SS superstar Hans Landa politely switch the farmhouse conversation from French to English, knowing that the Jews hiding beneath the floorboards won't understand as he coerces their protector into giving them up.
Landa also revels in his ability to think like his prey and how that makes him such an effective hunter, characteristics he'll later deny as he connives to save his own hide. Don't believe anything a movie character tells you, no matter how well-written and sparklingly delivered, is one of several lessons Landa has to teach us.
Speech also trips up Archie Hicox, the British film critic turned undercover operative, when his perfect German is made suspect by its unplaceable dialect in the basement tavern scene. This is where not only speech but Tarantino's vast knowledge of pop culture really come into play. In the earlier Paris sequence, he showed us how the German mountain movie genre contributed to a world-beating societal delusion, but the trivia game here lets us know what Karl May's Western novels and films like "King Kong" taught our enemies about the "real" America. Still, it's the Anglo reviewer's erroneous assumptions that lead to blood, and he pays for his mistaken reading with his genitals.
View that as a funny bit of contempt toward critics. I did, but I also saw it representing the moviegoer's tendency to believe too much of what they see on screen, and not getting the real picture before it's too late.
The same can be said of the film's entire Nazi high command. They're too bedazzled by the prospect of a glamorous premiere - of a film Goebbels made that looks just like one of the ones patriotic Hollywood pumped out during World War II - to see what's really coming. By the time Shosanna's Giant Face reads them the riot act, they're trapped.
Which leads us to "Inglorious Basterds'" most controversial function, that of a Jewish revenge fantasy. Debate the moral implications of it all you want, but I'll take these Nazi-terrorizers any day over the doomed, often one-dimensional victims of most Holocaust movies. Quentin even plays with the bizarre, primarily Hollywood tendency to give primacy to righteous gentiles and Satanically charismatic fascists over Jews in such pictures. Landa and the Basterds' hillbilly leader Aldo Raine have all the best lines, Turncoat Bridget von Hammersmark gets the movie star treatment in makeup, wardrobe and juicy situations, and Wehrmacht hero-turned-actor Fredrick Zoller plays the part of the decent average German - for awhile.
But it is massacre survivor Shosanna and the American Jews who make the ultimate sacrifices - and have a sheer blast doing it - that take out their worst mortal enemies. It never actually happened, but tell me: has there ever been a more satisfying turn of events in the history of Holocaust cinema?
They're not the ones who win the war though, and that's where "Inglorious Basterds" is at its most outrageously bold. It's Hans Landa, the top Nazi operative in France, who ensures Allied victory. He doesn't entirely get away with his self-serving chicanery (Aldo sees to that) but by becoming the biggest bastard of them all, Landa epitomizes what it takes to prevail against a formidable enemy. That's something every honest warrior knows, but few filmmakers have dared to acknowledge.
Now, just a few final words about the deceptively upfront Aldo. Why does this proud Southern cracker hate haters so much? The key is in his claim to some Indian blood. He's from the Smokey Mountains, and a Tennessee boy like Tarantino would know that means that Indian ancestry is likely Cherokee. There would be Raine family stories about relatives lost on the Trail of Tears, arguably the closest thing our nation's come to perpetrating its own Holocaust. I'm betting those never-explained rope burns on Aldo's neck are the result of being a white man who couldn't abide segregation in the Jim Crow South and tried to do something about it - and there were some of those, probably raised in families that had good reasons to deplore prejudice.
If "Inglorious Basterds" rubbed you the wrong way, well, Quentin clearly made a conscious choice to make it abrasive, I don't see how it can be accused of just being a film nerd's snarky attempt at tackling a serious subject. Tarantino certainly plays around with the material, and even his own approach to it (the lobby scene at the premiere mostly goofs around with the multilingual ideas he so cunningly works out elsewhere). But a deep thoughtfulness informs how every outlandish step and character get worked out all through "Inglorious Basterds." If you think Quentin's just a clever punk, fine, I'm not going to change your mind. But he's here to show us how we've been punked by a whole, historic genre of films.
At a time when our freshly Peace-prized president is talking troop buildups and exit dates out of both sides of his mouth, I can't think of any more valuable goal for a movie than to show us how to be skeptical of everything we hear. And see.
It's also something to keep in my mind while you're grooving on all of that dragons vs. helicopters stuff in the "movie that will change the way you look at movies," "Avatar." Plus ca change, baby, as our militarily unreliable but cinematically hip friends in France might say.
Interestingly enough, "Basterds" blew the doors off of war movies in the same year that films about our current, perhaps never-ending war on terror finally matured.
A garrulous British film, "In the Loop," hilariously laid out an incomprehensible web of deception between London and Washington that seems an awful lot like the one that got us into much of this mess. It's the most cynical satire of its kind since the Cold War "Dr. Strangelove," and even more than "Basterds," it's all talk. Doubletalk, how it's used, what's really behind it - for a reportedly post-literate film culture, 2009 sure was a great year for words.
Our current generation of soldiers finally got as honest a shake as conventional movies can give them with "The Hurt Locker" and "The Messenger," too (we'll leave the bone-headed, Vietnamish melodrama "Brothers" out of this conversation). The volunteer military may not be all that different from conscripted forces of the past, but Kathryn Bigelow's slightly overrated tour of an adrenalin-fueled Baghdad bomb-defusing squad nailed the crucial difference. "Hurt Locker" captured the highs of danger and bravery quite evocatively, without condescending to its subjects by turning them into damaged or deranged casualties.
The Messenger's casualty notification officers are damaged, physically and emotionally, in ways that soldiers have always been. But something about the sensitive, also beautifully spoken way in which co-writer and director Oren Moverman has them and the grieving widows, parents and children they bring bad news behave feels right most of the time. Maybe it's just another example of the Fog of War Movies, but I'd like to think that Moverman, who's seen combat in the Israel Defense Force, has a more honest - and honorable - agenda than most.
The fifth war movie on my top 12 list is "The White Ribbon" which, on its gray monochrome surface, is not really a war movie at all. Yes, World War I begins late in the narrative. But the story is set deep (really deep) inside northern Germany, a country that was never invaded during that conflict but lost the war anyway. It's about a small, pious and well-ordered community that, forced to cope with a little disorder, lays down the already not insubstantial law. The town's children can't help but notice this, recognize the hypocrisy at work and rebel in their properly brought-up ways against it. But they also internalize the dominant mindset, and you know where that led.
Michael Haneke proved that intelligent films about the German character in the first half of the 20th Century need not be simple-mindedly humanistic nor excuses for monstrousness. He's arguably the first director since Fassbinder to pull it off. Loved what ya did, Quentin, but we still need smart, serious films about this stuff. Always will.
Would it be glib to segue from the war theme now into the battle of the sexes? Yeah, it would. So let's just say that the two most striking films about men and women this year were pretty f-ing frightening.
Lars von Trier's "Antichrist," far more widely reviled than "Basterds" as some kind of sick joke, was hardly a put-on. I think it's Trier's deepest, darkest inquiry into his favorite subject, misogyny. What Charlotte Gainsbourg's grief-maddened wife and Willem Dafoe's rationally controlling husband do to each other is horrific. But Trier works it all out as the result not just of sexually related trauma, but of centuries of gynophobia, mutated down from church-sanctioned witch burnings to modern notions of normal psychology. Trier seems to think nature is also a culprit, and an unhinged woman some manifestation of chaos. But then he would, being a man, albeit one of the few who's ever been willing to confront his fears in such an unadulterated, public and artistic way. Maybe it'll help.
The Korean vampiress played by Kim Ok-vin in "Thirst" is another nasty piece of work, but more obviously oppressed until she's empowered by her bloodsucking Catholic priest lover (Song Kang-ho). He's kind of conflicted, as you might imagine. She pretty quickly sees the potential her new abilities give her to get back at those who done her wrong, and revels in her enhanced capacity for cruelty. But living death doesn't mean eternal happiness, even if she thinks she's finally found Mr. Right. Nor does it mean escape from guilt.
Vapid as those "Twilight" movies are, their popularity has now helped two outstanding foreign vampire films in a row (last year it was Swedish import "Let the Right One In") to get a foothold in American theaters. Doubt that many Twihards could handle Park Chan-wook's persuasive, withering take on undead romance. But it would certainly expand their imaginations, no matter how much they dislike it.
Gentler, more relatable takes on relationships popped up in other fine films of 2009, like the lovely and observant ethnic family pieces "The Secret of the Grain" and "35 Shots of Rum" from France, and Hollywood's two most bracing comedies-with-some-drama, "Up in the Air" and "Funny People." We need less combative love from movies, too, especially when they don't lie (and these four don't, much) about that making it any easier.
And we need movies to remind us of the glories of art, as no film did better this year than the architecture and photography documentary "Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman." To somewhat tortuously wrap this thing up, let's note that a lot of the great Modern designers celebrated in the film fled the Third Reich to settle and build their masterpieces in Southern California.
War, then, led to great creative work. Like, sometimes, with the movies. I can't deny that's true. How much truth there is in any of it, though, must be carefully examined.

I know when I mentioned all the great actresses I've watched this year in the Los Angeles Daily News, I said that the list was by no means complete. Still, I feel just, well, terrible about failing to include the following. Forgive me, ladies:

Marion Cotillard ("Nine" and "Public Enemies"), Maggie Gyllenhaal ("Crazy Heart"), Felicity Huffman ("Phoebe in Wonderland"), Diane Kruger and Melanie Laurent ("Inglorious Basterds"), Leslie Mann ("Funny People"), Gwyneth Paltrow ("Two Lovers"), Michelle Pfeiffer ("Cheri"),

Best thing about "It"?
It's not a rip-off.
"Michael Jackson's This Is It" offers a good, heaping helping of what anyone who goes to the movie is going for: the late superstar's fantastic dancing and spine-tingling vocals, both incredibly strong for a 50-year-old whom many of us were convinced had weirded himself out of his youthful vigor.
It's also a finely crafted concert film, made up though it is from hi-def rehearsal video for the blowout show Jackson died before ever actually staging. "It" even boasts some very nice movies-within-the-movie, productions Jackson commissioned to accompany the live performances. They're quality stuff - MJ inserted into classic black & white film noir footage for a "Smooth Criminal" fantasy, a whole new "Thriller" monster mash, sappy rainforest-and-butterflies "Earth Song" business that grows nicely apocalyptic - and they add welcome variety and pizzazz to what could have become a string of song-and-dance practices that, despite their uniform quality, could have become monotonous.
"It" didn't need to have any of these good things, of course. Pre-sold to a grieving mass market, it could have been two hours of Michael standing still while roadies moved amps behind him and still have made a fortune.
So let's give props to Kenny Ortega, who was directing the mega-concert, for putting a lot of concentration and effort into turning what was left behind into something approximating what that show would have been. "It" effectively builds in intensity and accomplishment from early songs to Jackson's best performance on the penultimate "Billie Jean" - his every step an emotional IED, all muscles working and flowing in electric harmony. Ortega also does a masterful job of intercutting several different rehearsals of the same songs without losing a beat; you wouldn't know they were separate takes if Michael's pants weren't constantly hopping from vivid orange to sparkly gold and back.
All the cinematic craft in the world wouldn't carry the show, however, if the main subject wasn't up to the job. As mentioned earlier, Jackson certainly is impressive at all he used to do best, even if the younger backup dancers sometimes, inevitably, appear more energetic and athletic. What turned out to be just as crucial a factor for this movie he never intended to make, though, was how watchable Jackson is when he's not singing and dancing.
And he mostly succeeds in that department, too. MJ does look pretty thin, but not unhealthy, thank God. There was only one sequence, shot in blue light, where that overworked face of his creeped me out. And while we hardly get a rounded or deep view of either the very complicated man or the painstaking artist (don't believe the hype that this is a thorough examination of the creative process), he does come across as likable, accessible and dedicated both to his craft and the simplistic but heartfelt messages he wanted to impart.
So, good show, Michael, may you rest in peace.
But Ortega and company could have made a better, more complete movie by acknowledging the profound troubles that dogged Jackson's life (and couldn't have helped but fuel his art). But, um, have we acknowledged that "It" is the state-of-the-industry definition of a commercial project, and therefore could not have been expected to make a single honest move that would potentially bum a paying customer out?
Perhaps we should all just be grateful that "It's" a good movie with, often, great music and choreography. It'd be safe to bet that that's what Michael would have wanted.
But I liked what I felt from the main film's last musical sequence (like a good hagiography should, "It" has maybe four extra endings after the closing credits roll, in case pretty much every dancer, musician and key grip in the movie telling us how wonderful Michael was didn't make the point). It's an incomplete "Man in the Mirror," a song that never seemed as profound to me as it did to the singer. But the fact that we don't hear the whole thing and Jackson sounds a bit unsure made me wonder how much he ever took his own call for self-examination to heart.
It's not the most sentimental or melancholy way to remember Michael Jackson. But it seems kind of necessary to keep in mind.

French director Claire Denis ("Beau Travail," "Friday Night") keeps distilling her insights into intimate relationships to finer and finer purity.
This one, about a Paris commuter train engineer and his college student daughter, is a collection of behavioral moments that seem deceptively banal initially, but lay the groundwork for rich character relationships and deep but never overemphasized emotional epiphanies. A marvelous exrtended family - of Lionel's (Alex Descas) co-workers, lovestruck neighbors (Nicole Dogue, Grégoire Colin), the mixed-race daughter Josephine's (Mati Diop) German aunt (Fassbinder stalwart - and ex-missus - Ingrid Caven), even a very tubby cat - brings out all kinds of conflicts to the supportive nuclear pair, and both forces them to reaffirm some bonds and locate those that they need to sever.
Working in a more straigthtforward visual style than usual with her poetic cinematographer Agnes Godard, Denis here does no less than update and Westernize (not to mention Africanize) Yasujiro Ozu's 1949 masterpiece "Late Spring." While "Rum" certainly has its own story and sensibility, it's almost breathtaking to watch the correlatives to "Spring" pile up, from the father-daughter road trip to the replacement of Ozu's lapping waves motif with oncoming train tracks to the father's final, solitary return home. Denis makes these moments and many others all her own, and with a filmmaker this formidable that's high homage indeed.
But that just shows how smart Denis is. Her artistic brilliance, which is something else again, comes across in a heart-stoppingly loaded sequence in a small bistro on a rainy night, in which all the main characters dance to The Commodores' "Nightshift" and reveal their preferences and hesitations through psychologically choreographed moves. It may be the best movie scene of the year - and though in its revalingly complete simplicity probably owes something to Ozu, great as the Japanese master, he never pulled off anything like this.

It is like most immigrant sitcoms, but then it isn't.
Cherien Dabis' feature debut is often persuasive about the wacky and sometimes soul-withering culture shock a Palestinian single mom and her adolescent son experience upon moving to a small town near Chicago. That's clearly because Dabis drew on her own background as the child of Arab expatriates in Ohio.
Sure, there's prejudice and fear, but Muna (Nisreen Faour) is indomitably optimistic about everything from assuming her equal status with all - something she definitely didn't enjoy back in the occupied West Bank - to the effectiveness of her marvelous American weight-loss treatment. The character could have used another shade or two of depression, but Faour keeps her realistic enough, and she earns our respect rather than just our sympathy.
"Amreeka" derives even more strength from the characters around Muna; her increasingly trouble-prone boy Fadi (Melkar Muallem) and the in-laws who take the new arrivals in. Few films have woven the problems faced by a suspected ethnic minority as seamlessly as this does with universal conflicts both generational and conjugal.
Though it hardly operates on the shocking, hilarious and insightfully multifaceted scale of last year's brilliant "Towelhead," "Amreeka" is at least as smart as it is sweet, and tough and dirty when it needs to be. You may even come to love it, and won't have to feel like a sap for doing so.

I saw Bobcat Goldthwait's super cynical squirmedy before Michael Jackson passed away. But even then it struck me as a great satire of the emotional and electornic overkill that attends a premature death in today's melodrama-craving culture.
Now, the movie not only seems downright prescient, but essential viewing for anyone who's heard an argument about whether Jackson's art or his scandals should be the focus of his afterlife. That would be just about anybody with access to a screen by now, and the repetitious contemplation (if you can call it that) had the usual, cheapening cultural effect.
Only, you know, bigger than ever.
Anyway, the desire for recognition at any cost fuels this imaginatively icky movie. Robin Williams does one of his superb, restrained jobs as Lance, a perpetually aspiring writer with a proverbial those-who-can't-do teaching job. His repulsive and all but friendless son Kyle (Daryl Sabara, no longer the cute boy from the "Spy Kids" movies) is one of the prime problem children at Lance's school, and he's no better at home. Abusive, defensive, obsessed with porn and - worst of all for his educated single father - stupid, Kyle's a walking parent's nightmare.
Until he dies in the most mortifying way imaginable. When Lance finds the body, he uses what literary talent he has to salvage the boy's nonexistent dignity in death.
This has the (presumably) unintended effect of turning the brat into a posthumous inspiration, the secretly sensitive poet most teenagers mistakenly believe they have deep within them. Soon, all the classmates who rightly hated Kyle can't stop sentimentally remembering their best friend.
The spillover effect on Lance is mighty pleasing - sex, sympathy and increasing media attention come ever more easily his way, encouraging him to keep "discovering" more of Kyle's moving writings, which of course secretly satisfies Lance's own yen for creative success.
With his third film, former shock comedian Goldthwait explores the tricky intersection where honesty, embarrassment and yearning collide more thoughtfully and compellingly than he's ever done. And with better laughs.
Not that that makes "World's Greatest Dad" any more comfortable to watch than his "Sleeping Dogs Lie" or "Shakes the Clown." But you really wouldn't want it to feel any other way. We've already gotten our jollies overrating the King of Pop's output and wallowing once again in his pathologies; we sure could use something that jars us into thinking about why we got so involved in all of that.

Three of the world's finest working auteurs reinvigorate much-abused
subgenres this week.
Park Chan-wook's "Thirst" may not be the first Korean vampire movie.
But I'll wager it's the first Korean Catholic vampire romance. Though
it borrows a number of plot points from Emile Zola's "Therese
Raquin," this bloody, lusty, morally contorted and madly funny
horror film brings fearsome life back to the legendary
characteristics that the teeny wooziness of "Twilight" and hipster
romanticism of "True Blood" have rendered all but toothless.
Here, hunger for blood and the flesh are all but interchangeable, as
an infected priest not only tries to seek the fluid he needs in the
most humane manner possible (he sucks the i.v. drips of terminal and
suicidal patients at the hospital where he's assigned to dispense
solace), but can't keep his horny hands off of the beaten-down wife
of a sickly childhood friend.
Song Kang-ho as the priest and Kim Ok-vin as the woman in question make for
the most combustible screen couple of the year, as his not-misplaced
guilt and her gleeful new sense of carnal empowerment lead to
superhot sex and outlandish, violent cruelty. Park, who has
mastered that peculiarly Korean style of retributive cinema with the
likes of "Oldboy" and "Lady Vengeance," finds more perverted innocence and
tragic complexity in the revenge theme than ever before, and uses the new
supernatural elements to intensify behavior and illuminate all kinds of psychological nuances. It's refreshing to see this stuff used this way, rather than for the usual task of enabling characters (and viewers) to wallow in fantasy.
To complete the package, "Thirst" is Park's best-looking film yet. The imagery is indelible (blood flowing out the Priest's flute as a precursor to his new afterlife), the compositional ideas inspired (of course people who have sudden, skin-frying health issues with sunlight would paint a shuttered room as bright white as they could).
This is truly what happens when genius goes gore.
"Thirst" has its noirish aspects as well (who knew James M. Cain
purloined so much from the 19th Century naturalist Zola?). Park
applies them with as much gruesome gusto as he does the vampire lore,
and it makes the movie even more of an extended scream.

But for a really radical take on those old hardboiled crime/femme
fatale shenanigans, "Lorna's Silence" is the place to go. This much
of a thriller isn't what you'd expect from Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne,
whose stripped-down, socially attuned minimalism makes Zola's novels
seem as Baroque as Bram Stoker's.
Indeed, some critics have complained that the Belgian brother act that has brought us such masterpieces of working class despair as "L'Enfant" and "Rosetta"
have no business messing with anything that involves . . . this . . .
much . . . plot.
Bosh. "Lorna's Silence" may be a thriller, but it's as
soul-dissecting as any of the Dardennes' other inquiries
into the decency-devastating desire for a good life.
The title character (Arta Dobroshi) is an undocumented Albanian trying to marry her way into Belgian citizenship. She's at the center of a complicated scheme in which her junkie husband Claudy (the directors' favorite screw-up, Jeremie Renier) will be purposely overdosed by her underworld handlers, freeing her to wed and make a Russian mobster EU legal in return.
Even though Lorna's relationship to Claudy is barely that of a disgusted and needy sibling, she gradually develops sympathy for the loser and a dangerous conscience for herself.
As its title suggests, "Lorna's Silence" adds a touch of Bergman to
the Dardennes' usual fealty to their great idol, Robert Bresson. It's
the study of an illegal waif's spiritual awakening in a world
far from God, and as profound a religious film as "Thirst" is in its
weird, demented way.
As much as Park finds great personal depth in erotic horror, the
Dardennes see in their most unlikely of black widows an emerging
humanist. By submitting genre expectations to their established styles and obsessions, the directors have created two of the year's most distinctive and thoughtful movies.

Words are figuratively and almost literally used as bludgeons
throughout "In the Loop." Densely packed with dialogue, ideas and
some of the darkest humor to grace a movie screen since "Dr.
Strangelove," this scathing British satire of Machiavellian politics
and the muddleheaded media that enables seems both absurd and frighteningly revelatory in equal, intense measure.
When a minor U.K. ministry functionary (Tom Hollander from the "Pirates of
the Caribbean" films) characteristically misspeaks on camera, peacenicks and warmongers from Whitehall to Washington try to manipulate him into
supporting their position re: the proposed invasion of a never-named
Middle Eastern country. Idealists, careerists and political
opportunists of all stripes repeatedly put their petty personal
concerns ahead of the potentially calamitous international crisis
they're all trying to game in some way or another, some bumblingly and other with appalling cunning.
Most outrageous among the latter is a Scottish government spinmeister
named Malcom Tucker (Peter Capaldi). A verbal bully whose vocabulary would leave Snoop Dogg blushing and speechless, the only thing fouler than
Malcolm's demeanor is his agenda. Even worse, when he has to go put out fires in the States, his lieutenant in London turns out to be an exact spiritual (and
burr-accented!) clone.
Capaldi created Tucker for writer-director Armando Iannucci's BBC
series "The Thick of It." While he stands out as "In the Loop's"
most memorable presence, everyone in the ensemble _ James Gandolfini,
Mimi Kennedy, David Rasche, Anna Chlumsky, Steve Coogan and a good
dozen more - does some of the most demanding work of their career.
Don't expect to get everything that's going on the first time you see
"In the Loop." But don't be surprised if you come out of it
understanding far better how we managed to get enmeshed in our
current thicket of wars.
You'll also probably laugh yourself to tears if you catch even half the dialogue. And if you catch what's really being said about how thousands get killed for no discernably decent reason, tears of dismayed recognition may flow as well.

One of the best movie actors of all time, James Mason brought intelligent sophistication to the most extreme emotional states. Whether playing a self-denying, suburban drug addict (Nicholas Ray's astoundingly unhinged "Bigger Than Life") an Irish rebel coming undone by his own criminal missteps in the enclosing Belfast night (Carol Reed's "Odd Man Out") or a European intellectual pursuing his pedophilic urges through low-rent America (Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita"), Mason reliably applied British class and craftsmanship to the most extreme psychological explorations, and never shied away from daunting behavioral discoveries.

The L.A. County Museum's Mason retrospective, starting Friday, is an exceptionally well-chosen sampling of the actor's best work. Check out their series catalogue below; for more information, got to lacma.org/film.

BIGGER THAN LIFE: James Mason on Film
July 17-August 1

James Mason was born in Yorkshire on May 15, 1909. Abandoning architecture for acting, Mason got his break in 1933 when Alexander Korda invited him to join the Old Vic. His prominence as a stage actor led to a string of low-budget British movies culminating in 1946 with his acclaimed performance as a wounded Irish revolutionary in Carol Reed's Odd Man Out. Arriving in Hollywood a year later, he rapidly became one of the cinema's most unlikely and distinctive leading men. Blessed with dark good looks and a mellifluous voice, Mason possessed an uncanny ability to suggest rampant emotion beneath a demeanor of absolute calm, and he projected an other-worldliness and melancholy that allowed him to play both romantic leads and charismatic villains. With age, Mason remained in demand as a prestigious supporting actor in a wide range of roles. Though known as a man who preferred his privacy to the public life of an international star, Mason was nonetheless an indefatigable worker: the last of his astonishing 151 films and television credits came in 1985, a year after he died of a heart attack at his home in Switzerland.

This centenary tribute comprised of ten films contains many of James Mason's most memorable performances: the mysterious, haunted sailor in the ravishing Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (screened in a new restored color print); the alcoholic, suicidal actor Norman Maine in A Star is Born (for which he received one of three Oscar nominations), the loving family man Ed Avery who is transformed into a psychotic bully by the new "miracle drug" cortisone in Bigger Than Life; the tragic, despotic visionary Captain Nemo in Disney's spectacular adaptation of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea; and, in a tailor-made role turned down by most Hollywood actors, Humbert Humbert, the erudite pedophile and sardonic narrator of Nabokov's and Kubrick's Lolita.

Bigger Than Life

July 17 | 7:30 pm and 9:30 pm | New 35mm print

Mason produced and hired Nicholas Ray to direct this striking film based on a New Yorker article about the hallucinatory side-effects of the new miracle drug cortisone. As Ed Avery, upstanding teacher, husband and father turned suburban Jekyll and Hyde, Mason gives one of his best performances, and Ray, using dramatic Rebel Without a Cause-style compositions and lighting, portrays his bedeviled hero with both horror and pathos. Released to indifferent not to say hostile reviews, the film is now acclaimed for its gothic depiction of repression and conformity in mid-century America. "Under Ray's masterful direction, James Mason is given three or four of the most beautiful close-ups I have had the chance to see since the advent of CinemaScope... An exceptional story, an excellent portrait of marriage. A film of implacable logic and sanity, Bigger than Life uses both those very qualities as targets, and scores a bull's-eye in every frame."--François Truffaut.

1956/color/95 min./Scope | Scr: Cyril Hume, Richard Maibaum; dir: Nicholas Ray; w/ James Mason, Barbara Rush, Walter Matthau.

Disney Family Matinee

20,000 Leagues under the Sea

July 18 | 4 pm | All tickets $5

Jules Verne's sci-fi fantasy is a story that reverberates for boys of all ages. It is the mid-1800s and a monstrous creature has been sinking ships off San Francisco; an expedition is dispatched to solve the mystery, but the sailors aboard soon discover that the monster is "the Nautilus," a futuristic submarine with a lush Victorian interior, owned by the brooding Captain Nemo, a brilliant messianic scientist who despises humanity and has built his own world under the sea. With its lavish production design and exciting underwater scenes--culminating in a giant squid attack--Disney's classic adaptation still moves the heart and stirs the imagination even after so many years.

1954/color/127 min./Scope | Scr: Earl Felton; dir: Richard Fleischer; w/ Kirk Douglas, James Mason, Paul Lukas, Peter Lorre.

Pandora and the Flying Dutchman
July 18 | 7:30 pm | New restored 35mm print

This sumptuous color film (shot by Jack Cardiff, the acclaimed cinematographer of The Red Shoes) is a heady mix of romance, fantasy, and poetic fatalism set in quaint Esperanza on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. As the seventeenth-century mariner doomed to sail the seas in search of a woman who will die for him, Mason is a magnificently eerie and brooding presence. Pandora, a willful chanteuse driven by strange passions (Gardner, at the height of her beauty), is his destiny.

1949/color/123 min. | Scr/dir: Albert Lewin; w/ James Mason, Ava Gardner. | Restored by George Eastman House in cooperation with Douris UK Limited. Restoration funded by The Film Foundation and the Franco-American Cultural Fund, a partnership of the Directors Guild of America, Societe des Auteurs, Compositeurs et Editeurs de Musique, the Motion Picture Association of America, and the Writers Guild of America, West.

Age of Consent
July 18 | 9:45 pm | Restored 35mm print courtesy Sony Archive

Powell and Mason, who was himself an accomplished painter and caricaturist, joined forces on this story of an aging painter who retreats to an island off Australia to replenish his creative juices. His muse and lover appears in the form of a young, voluptuous, and frequently nude Helen Mirren in her first major film. "A lovely erotic and idyllic comedy."--Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader.

1969/color/98 min. | Scr: Peter Yeldham; dir: Michael Powell; w/ James Mason, Helen Mirren.

The Reckless Moment
July 24 | 7:30 pm

A blend of character study and noir thriller, Ophüls' last American film centers on a respectable wife and mother (Bennett) whose middle-class life is shattered when she recklessly disposes of the body of her daughter's lowlife boyfriend, who has been accidentally killed in her garage. As she valiantly copes with an intrusive family and an inconvenient blackmailer (Mason at his most tortured and tender), Ophüls' circling camera further entraps his stoic heroine until she breaks down in a wrenching finale. Mason held Ophuls in high regard as he demonstrated by penning these affectionate lines: "A shot that does not call for tracks is agony for dear old Max. When separated from his dolly, he's wrapped in deepest melancholy."

1949/b&w/82 min. | Scr: Robert W. Soderberg, Henry Garson; dir: Max Ophuls; w/ Joan Bennett, James Mason.

Odd Man Out

July 24 | 9 pm
Mason achieved international leading-man status in this harrowing story of an Irish rebel who stumbles through the streets of Belfast until midnight, the object of a citywide manhunt. In the words of critic Pauline Kael: "The tormented, delirious Johnny, bleeding to death, seeks but does not find refuge on his way to the grave... those he encounters see him as a man beyond help; his final denunciation of a world without charity is one of the most memorable scenes on film. Carol Reed has always been at his best when dealing with outsiders--in Odd Man Out, he gives you an experience you can't shrug off."

1946/b&w/116 min. | Scr: F.L. Green, R.C. Sherriff; dir: Carol Reed; w/ James Mason, Robert Newton, Cyril Cusack.

A Star is Born

July 25 | 7:30 pm | Restored 35mm print

The part of Norman Maine, an alcoholic actor whose Hollywood star is falling as fast as his young wife's is rising, provided Mason with one of his signature roles, an Oscar nomination, and trivia fame thanks to the last line of the picture when Vickie Lester declares: "This is Mrs. Norman Maine." This sweeping musical comedy/drama, Cukor's first in color and CinemaScope, is ravishing to look at, fascinating to listen to, and heartbreaking to experience. At the film's core is Judy Garland who, despite problems that slowed down production--the shoot lasted ten months!--was at the height of her powers as an actress and singer. As for Mason, "I was having a wonderful time. Judy was a witty, lively, talented, touching, adorable woman. She had a quality which can only be compared to Charlie Chaplin's: always optimistic, always gay, always inventive."

1954/color/176 min./Scope | Scr: Moss Hart; dir: George Cukor; w/ Judy Garland, James Mason, Jack Carson.

5 Fingers

July 31 | 7:30 pm

Based loosely on a true story, this elegant espionage film set in Ankara in 1944 stars Mason as an Albanian-born valet working at the British embassy who teams up with an unscrupulous countess (Darrieux) to sell secret Allied documents to the Germans. An excellent screenplay made even better by the witty embellishments of Mankiewicz, "The tale becomes an irresistibly cynical comedy of manners in which the crafty gentleman's gentleman (a marvelous performance from Mason), scheming to promote himself as a member of the leisure classes, falls victim to his own pretensions. An irresistible treat."-- Time Out.

1952/b&w/108 min. | Scr: Michael Wilson; dir: Joseph Mankiewicz; w/ James Mason, Danielle Darrieux, Michael Rennie.

The Deadly Affair
July 31 | 9:30 pm

This sophisticated, adult spy thriller, based on a novel by John le Carré, stars Mason as a burnt-out security inspector in the Foreign Office who finds himself threatened by an espionage ring while investigating a colleague's suicide. On display are the genre's standard ingredients--intrigue, betrayal, and violent death--but Lumet's primary focus is on a fascinating group of characters brought vividly to life by a stellar international cast including Signoret, who gives gut-wrenching performance as a Holocaust survivor. Master cinematographer Freddie Young, of Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago fame, pre-exposed the film to give the images a psychological realism unique to the mid-sixties Cold War era. "Thematically it was a film about life's disappointments. I wanted to get that dreary, lifeless feeling London has in winter. I wanted to desaturate the colors."--Sidney Lumet.

1966/color/107 min. | Scr: Paul Dehn; dir: Sidney Lumet; w/ James Mason, Harriet Andersson, Simone Signoret, Maximilian Schell.

Lolita
August 1 | 7:30 pm

If ever an actor was born to play a fictional character it was James Mason as Humbert Humbert, the pedophile narrator of Nabokov's controversial best-selling novel. Hiding his dark and twisted desires behind the façade of a suave European academic, Humbert insinuates himself into the life of fourteen-year-old Lolita by marrying her sexually frustrated mother, a strident and suspicious presence conveniently silenced by a speeding car. Disguised as father and daughter, Humbert and his self-centered nymphet embark on a cross-country car trip closely shadowed by the chameleon-like Clare Quilty, Lolita's "true love." A visually striking adaptation of a novel that many felt could not be filmed, Kubrick's Lolita is a black comedy set in a vulgar America of shabby motels and fast-food stands, and a postmodern version of Pandora's Box in which the predator is destroyed by his own obsession. "A simple, lucid film, precisely written, which reveals America and American sex better than Melville."--Jean-Luc Godard.

1962/b&w/152 min. | Scr: Vladimir Nabokov, Kubrick; dir: Stanley Kubrick; w/ James Mason, Shelley Winters, Sue Lyon, Peter Sellers.

Below is the official list of award-winners from this year's just-completed edition of the Los Angeles Film Festival.
Can't comment on their worthiness; I didn't see any of 'em.
But I did find merit, if not greatness, in the half-dozen or so movies that I got to.
The scabrous British satire "In the Loop" was probably the best, a foul-mouthed, media-spinning marvel that, I'll wager, reveals more about how we really got into the Iraq War than any official, non-fictional account ever will. Smart, merciless and very densely packed.
Right after that I saw "Bronson," and boy, did that evening leave me thinking that British people must be the nastiest folks on Earth. This one is a very impressionistic, often Kubrickian (Larry Smith, an old collaborator of Stanley's, did the cinematography) take on a real-life English criminal who's made something of a celebrity out of himself with his sociopathic violence and jailhouse performance/installation art. Not quite up to the standards of the recent, truly brilliant "Hunger," but Tom Hardy's acting is as full-bodied - in every sense of the term - as anything to hit our screens this year.
"I Sell the Dead" is a shaggy Irish horror comedy in which a pair of 19th Century graverobbers (Dominic Monaghan and a perfectly cast Larry Fessenden) get themselves into increasingly absurd supernatural predicaments. Director Glenn McQuaid makes the most of a minuscule budget in this rollicking tribute to the Hammer films of the 1960s.
"Amreeka" is a better-observed-than-average immigrant warmedy, which writer-director Cherien Dabis based on her own Palestinian mother's experiences in the wilds of suburban Ohio (though the film is set in Illinois).
And across the state border, there are "The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia." It's a documentary about the semi-legendary, hell-raisin'est clan of pot-smoking, pharmaceutical-snortin' and occasionally tap dancing outlaws in the state. Johnny Knoxville and Hank Williams III had something to do with it, but the movie didn't turn out to be quite as crazy as you'd expect from all that. Nevertheless, a nice record of some proud screw-ups that neither romanticizes nor judges them too harshly.
Oh, and I saw "Public Enemies." In the context of a mostly indie film festival, Michael Mann's gloss on John Dillinger's eventful last year made its Hollywood slickness seem even less authentic than it might have otherwise. The film really could have used a couple members of the White family.

So, that was my festival. Now, without further ado, the official announcement:

FILM INDEPENDENT ANNOUNCES AWARD WINNERS

OF 2009 LOS ANGELES FILM FESTIVAL

Film Independent, the non-profit arts organization that produces the Spirit Awards and the Los Angeles Film Festival, announced its 2009 Los Angeles Film Festival award winners at a special event, presented by Target. The Los Angeles Film Festival ran from Thursday, June 18 to Sunday, June 28.

"One of our goals at Film Independent is to help filmmakers build an audience for their work, and the Los Angeles Film Festival does just that," said Film Independent Executive Director Dawn Hudson. "We hope recognition at the Festival will allow these filmmakers to continue to find broad audiences for their terrific films."

The two top juried awards of the Los Angeles Film Festival are the Target Filmmaker Award and Target Documentary Award, each carrying an unrestricted $50,000 cash prize for the winning film's director. The awards were established by the Festival and Target to encourage independent filmmakers to pursue their artistic ambitions.

The Target Filmmaker Award recognizes the finest narrative film in competition at the Festival and went to Sam Fleischner and Ben Chace for Wah Do Dem (What They Do). The Target Documentary Award recognizes the finest documentary film in competition at the Festival and went to Juan Carlos Rulfo and Carlos Hagerman for Those Who Remain (Los Que se Quedan).

New this year, the Festival and Target established the Target Dream in Color Award to recognize a short film in the Festival's Future Filmmaker Showcase for high school students that inspires audiences to dream without boundaries and share culture in a unique and positive way. The prize includes a Target Gift card for the winning director and a desktop editing system for the winner's school media arts program. The Target Dream in Color Award was presented by Elizabeth Pena and given to Sam Rubin for Lipstick.

The Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature went to The Stoning of Soraya M., directed by Cyrus Nowrasteh and the Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature went to Soul Power, directed by Jeffrey Levy-Hinte. Eva Norvind's Born Without (Nacido Sin) won the Audience Award for Best International Feature.

The award for Outstanding Performance in the Narrative Competition went to Shayne Topp for his performance in Suzi Yoonessi's Dear Lemon Lima,. Given to an actor or actors from an official selection in the Narrative Competition, this is the sixth year the award has been given at the Festival.

The award for Best Narrative Short Film went to Antonio Mendez Esparza's Time and Again. The award for Best Documentary Short Film went to Anna Gaskell's Replayground. Jérémy Clapin's Skhizein won the award for Best Animated Short Film.

The Audience Award for Best Short Film went to Instead of Abracadabra, directed by Patrick Eklund. Grapevine Fires, directed by Walter Robot won the Audience Award for Best Music Video for Death Cab for Cutie.

Awards were given out in the following categories:

Target Filmmaker Award (for Best Narrative Feature)

Winner: Wah Do Dem (What They Do) written and directed by Sam Fleischner & Ben Chace

Producers: Sam Fleischner, Katina Hubbard, Ben Chace, Martha Lapham, Henry Kasdon

Cast: Sean Bones, Norah Jones, Kevin Bewersdorf, Carl Bradshaw

Film Description: Max's dream Caribbean cruise becomes a solitary odyssey after his girlfriend dumps him days before their departure. Now, he'll have to go with the Jamaican flow in this disarming and incisive debut feature.

The Target Filmmaker Award carries an unrestricted cash prize of $50,000 funded by Target, offering the financial means to help filmmakers transfer their vision to the screen. The award recognizes the finest narrative film in competition, and is given to the director. A special jury selects the winner, and all narrative feature-length films screening in the Narrative Competition section were eligible.

In bestowing Sam Fleischner and Ben Chace with the Target Filmmaker Award, the Jury stated:

"A film that could feel anecdotal but through its musical shifts and tone, and its vision of the world as a newly optimistic place, Wah Do Dem (What They Do) creates a strong and profound emotional narrative."

****

Target Documentary Award (for Best Documentary Feature)

Winner: Those Who Remain (Los Que se Quedan) directed by Juan Carlos Rulfo and Carlos Hagerman

Producers: Juan Carlos Rulfo, Carlos Hagerman, Martha Sosa Elizondo, Nicolas Vale

Film Description: (Mexico) This intimate and discerning depiction of the impact of migration on families left behind by loved ones who travel north emerges as a nuanced portrait of "the other side" of the immigration story.

The Target Documentary Award carries an unrestricted cash prize of $50,000 funded by Target, offering the financial means to help filmmakers transfer their vision to the screen. The award recognizes the finest documentary film in competition, and is given to the director. A special jury selects the winner, and all documentary feature-length films screening in the Documentary Competition section were eligible.

In bestowing Juan Carlos Rulfo and Carlos Hagerman with the Target Documentary Award, the Jury stated:

"With its generosity of spirit and lyrical grace that illuminates a human landscape with fresh eyes, Those Who Remain reminds us that documentaries can be both journalism and poetry."

****

Target Dream in Color Award (for Best Short in the Future Filmmaker Showcase)

Winner: Lipstick directed by Sam Rubin

Producer: The Film Workshop of SF Art & Film

Cast: Sam Rubin

Film Description: A boy locks himself in a bathroom. His mother wants to know if he is OK.

The Target Dream in Color Award was given to Sam Rubin for Lipstick and recognizes a film that inspires audiences to dream without boundaries and share culture in a unique and positive way. This award is the first time a cash grant was given to a participant in the Los Angeles Film Festival's Future Filmmaker Showcase, a short film program targeted to young and talented emerging filmmakers in high school.

In bestowing Sam Rubin with the Target Dream in Color Award, the Jury stated:

"We congratulate all the filmmakers on their extraordinary work. While we were impressed with the scope and diversity of all the high school shorts, we select Lipstick, a simple and powerful film, which can inspire other future filmmakers to make movies with very little. Using just two props, one location, and two actors, the filmmaker creates a compelling story about a character dealing with personal yet universal issues of identity and communication. It is a visual film with a strong point of view. In Lipstick, we see both a present and future filmmaker."

****

Outstanding Performance in the Narrative Competition

Winner: Shayne Topp in Suzi Yoonessi's Dear Lemon Lima,

Film Description: "As sweet and colorful as a snow cone, this delightful happy-sad confection follows an awkward Alaskan teen as she discovers her Yup'ik heritage while rallying her fellow misfits to compete in her school's Snow-storm Survivor competition."

In bestowing Shayne Topp with Outstanding Performance recognition, the Jury stated:

"For his sophisticated and nuanced comic performance in a role that is often played in less subtle ways by more experienced actors, the award goes to Shayne Topp from Dear Lemon Lima,."

****

Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature

Winner: The Stoning of Soraya M. written by Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh and Cyrus Nowrasteh and directed by Cyrus Nowrasteh

Producers: Stephen McEveety, John Shepherd

Cast: Shohreh Aghdashloo, Mozhan Marnò, Jim Caviezel

Film Description: Based on Freidoune Sahebjam's international bestseller, this visceral drama, which tells the true story of a tragic incident of oppression, conspiracy and betrayal, gathers tension and outrage as it builds to its inevitable conclusion.

This award is given to the narrative feature audiences liked most as voted by a tabulated rating system. Select narrative feature-length films screening in the following sections were eligible for the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature: Narrative Competition, International Showcase, International Spotlight, Summer Showcase, Outdoor Screenings at the Ford Amphitheatre, Dark Wave, Guilty Pleasures, and Special Screenings.

****

Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature

Winner: Soul Power directed by Jeffrey Levy-Hinte

Producers: Leon Gast, Jeffrey Levy-Hinte, David Sonenberg

Featuring: James Brown, Bill Withers, B.B. King, The Spinners, Celia Cruz and the Fania All-Stars, Muhammad Ali, Don King, Stewart Levine

Film Description: This blazing concert film documents "Zaire '74," the sister event to the famed Ali/Foreman "Rumbling in the Jungle," featuring previously unseen performances by James Brown, B.B. King, Bill Withers, Celia Cruz and others.

This award is given to the documentary feature audiences liked most as voted on by a tabulated rating system. Select documentary feature-length films screening in the following sections were eligible for the Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature: Documentary Competition, International Showcase, International Spotlight, Summer Showcase, Outdoor Screenings at the Ford Amphitheatre, and Special Screenings.

****

Audience Award for Best International Feature

Winner: Born Without (Nacido Sin) written & directed by Eva Norvind

Producers: Eva Norvind, Nailea Norvind, Donald K. Ranvaud

Featuring: José Flores, Graciela Flores, Alejandro Jodorowsky

Film Description: (Mexico) A remarkably frank portrait of the lives and loves of José Flores - a street musician, actor, father of six, and Romeo who was born without arms and stands only three feet tall.

This award is given to the international feature audiences liked most as voted on by a tabulated rating system. Select international feature-length films, both narrative and documentary, in the Narrative Competition, Documentary Competition, International Showcase, International Spotlight, Summer Showcase, Outdoor Screenings at the Ford Amphitheatre, Dark Wave, and Special Screenings were eligible for the Audience Award for Best International Feature.

****

Best Narrative Short Film

Winner: Time and Again written & directed by Antonio Mendez Esparza

Producers: Florin Serban, Diana Wade

Cast: Pedro Santos, Erica Heras

Description: Pedro's dreams about his future are challenged by an unforeseen turn of events.

In bestowing Antonio Mendez Esparza with Best Narrative Short Film, the Jury stated:

"For its raw and atmospheric visual palette, bold use of real and rarely seen locations, and cast which brought a refreshing realism, the award goes to Time and Again, an ambitious portrait of an immigrant's struggle to find love in a new land."

****

Best Documentary Short Film

Winner: Replayground by Anna Gaskell

Producers: Anna Gaskell

Featuring: Brookti Berne, Harris Rosenberg, James Gray

Description: Roles are reversed in this hilarious reenactment of a children's quarrel.

In bestowing Anna Gaskell with Best Documentary Short Film, the Jury stated:

"The award goes to Replayground. The concept was so fresh and unexpected in its use of children's visions of their playground actions as content for a play that they would then be entrusted to cast and direct. A case of a brilliant premise carrying a film."

****

Best Animated Short Film

Winner: Skhizein by Jérémy Clapin

Producers: Wendy Griffiths, Stéphane Piera

Cast: Julien Boisseller, Theo Grimmelsen, Mado Debrus

Description: (France) After a 150-ton meteorite strikes, Henry's physical existence is forever altered.

In bestowing Jérémy Clapin with Best Animated Short Film, the Jury stated:

"The award goes to Skhizein, for its use of animation to tell a story no other medium could, that of a character who finds himself literally beside himself, creating an elegant interlocking of story animation and character."

****

Audience Award for Best Short Film

Winner: Instead of Abracadabra by Patrik Eklund

Producer: Mathias Fjellström

Cast: Simon J. Berger, Jacob Nordenson, Anki Larsson, Saga Gärde

Description: Tomas attempts to impress his family and the beautiful Monica with his dazzling feats of magic.

Awarded to the short film audiences liked most as voted on by a tabulated rating system. Short films screening in the Shorts Programs or before Narrative Competition, Documentary Competition, or International Showcase feature-length screenings were eligible for the Audience Award for Best Short Film.

****

Audience Award for Best Music Video

Winner: Grapevine Fires by Walter Robot

Music: Death Cab For Cutie

Description: When a wildfire rages through a small suburb, a boy must save his older brother, and in the process finds what is really important in life.

This award is given to the music video audiences liked most as voted on by a tabulated rating system.

Environmental calamity documentaries have pretty much settled into a post-"Inconvenient Truth" pattern: some horrible human abuse of nature is going to wreck the planet if we don't change our ways soon; visual evidence and talking heads reinforce the premise; then a laundry list of what people can do to stave off disaster gets optimistically - and not a little hectoringly - proposed in the last 10 minutes.
"End of the Line" doesn't deviate from this formula. But maybe because its subject, the industrialized overfishing of our oceans that could lead to the end of seafood as we know it just a few decades from now, lends itself to marvelous underwater photography and fascinating sociological complexity. Whether it's making fun of a pretentious London sushi restaurateur, pointing out the starvation potentiel for traditional African and Asian fishing communities or plunging us in among thinning but still beautiful schools of tuna and cod, Rupert Murray's film is as engaging as it is alarming.
And unlike most docs of this ilk (and our future fish-eating options), it always seems fresh.

The multiple Cesar Award-winner "Seraphine" doesn't go too far outside of the French tortured artist bio tradition. It differs from a lot of them, though, in that the film looks like it could have been painted by a master. Cinematographer Laurent Brunet and astounding lead actress Yolande Moreau make the movie an exceptional experience, whatever else may be conventional about it.
Moreau's lumpen intensity as the naive, somewhat nutty nature interpreter Seraphine Louis is a primal force in itself. Clomping around in noisy shoes, muttering in religious delirium and literally hugging trees, Moreau's Seraphine is unmistakably as addled as all of her neighbors and dismissive employers in the town of Senlis assume. But her single-minded urge to paint, often with colors she makes herself from crushed flowers, chicken blood and church candle wax, is a shrewd and disciplined endeavor. Moreau magnificently avoids presenting the frumpy, middle aged oddball as some kind of savant; she carefully reveals facets of Seraphine's personality and intellect even as she chart's the troubled woman's mental deterioration.
The film takes place in two basic acts. One in 1914 as the visiting German art collector Wilhelm Uhde (Ulrich Tukur) discovers his cleaning lady's extraordinary gift, gives her hope of fame and fortune, and then disappears as World War I brings an occupying army in from his Fatherland. The second half commences in the 1930s, when Uhde hooks back up with Seraphine, is even more impressed by her increasingly vivid flora canvases, lays more money on her than she's ever seen and . . . gets whacked by The Great Depression before he can mount her first major Paris exhibition, sending the fragile artist into a deeper emotional tailspin than ever before.
In Martin Provost's film, Uhde seems like a better-intentioned guy than the historical record of his actions may imply. And Provost's script apparently suggests too strongly that the artist was a raw, intuitive talent, when the many amazing paintings seen in the film unmistakably scream some degree of formal training. Clueless bourgeoisie, French snob and mad artist cliches pop up here and there, but the film's central virtues - especially Brunet's dark country nights and barely candlelit interiors - make a bracing, absorbing sit out of "Seraphine." And Moreau's the best actress I've seen in a movie all year.

Olivier Assayas' "Summer Hours" asks big questions about the future of France's great culture in an increasingly internationalized world. It could've been quite pretentious, like some of Assayas' more trippy, stylized efforts ("Demonlover, "Boarding Gate") turned out to be. But the director quite winningly grounds his issues in a simple, straightforward family drama that rings true at every turn. This is essay cinema made all the more thoughtful by its commitment to observed humanity.
Three adult siblings - academic economist Frederic (Charles Berling), designer Adrienne (Juliette Binoche) and athletic shoe company executive Jeremie (Jeremie Renier) - must decide what to do with the family's country home and its small but significant collection of art treasures after the passing of their mother (elegant Edith Scob, the muse of Georges Franju's incomparable series of 1960s psycho thrillers).
Frederic wants to keep the place, which previously belonged to Mom's uncle (and, probably, lover), a noteworthy artist, and the collection iintact for his own and Jeremie's children.
But as his tween daughter says when shown the family's two Corots, "They're nice, but not what I like."
"It's another era," adds Frederic's son, summing up the film's thesis in an offhand nutshell.
Adrienne lives and works in New York and is engaged to an American. Jeremie has just been promoted to a position in Beijing, where high, post- Olympics living costs will keep his growing family in Asia more than ever, even for vacations. Being the only one still in France, Frederic accedes to the others' desires to sell off the estate and its contents. What follows is an emotionally wrought but very civilized examination of just what beautiful objects are worth monetarily, culturally and sentimentally.
Subtly but relentlessly, Assayas' ponders whether France's patrimony is being undermined by globalization and its attendant financial pressures - or just evolving its own distinctive way of coping and enduring. Evidence that the nation's rigorous intellectual heritage is in jeopardy appears everywhere; its representative Frederic seems particularly ill-suited for trying to defend a difficult book he's written on a talk show that, like they are on U.S. TV, is really only about shouty reductionism.
Then again, the kids appear just as devoted, in their own way, to culture and nature as their ancestors. And it was Frederic's own mother who advised him to offload the family treasures once she was no longer around to preserve her beloved uncle's legacy.
Quite marvelously, "Summer Hours'" acknowledges that changing times can often coarsen life, but must be dealt with to preserve whatever can be salvaged, and to create the next generation of thought, expression and memories.