Boleta al Paraiso (Ticket to Paradise)
dir by Gerardo Chijona

The only Cuban film at this year’s festival, Ticket to Paradise is a difficult to describe. A group of wayward Cuban youths, led by the deliciously jailbait Alejandro, are left to fend for themselves on the streets of Havana. Alejandro figures out a way to get the group three square meals a day, free room and board, and all the comforts of home. His brilliant plan? To contract HIV and get into the government subsidized hospital. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes infuriating, this movie exposes a dark street logic that is not always comfortable to look at. 

Like Crazy
dir by Drake Doremus

To be fair, everyone else seemed to love this movie a lot more than I did, whereas I found it to be a bit cheesy and sentimental. Starring Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones, this is the story of a doomed first love (Though I had an interesting conversation with Matt Page afterward and he felt the love wasn’t doomed so I suppose it’s a film that leaves the audience to determine, to its credit). Anton Yelchin was more than capable, and quite believable and charming…but I felt the entire film lacked a certain depth that I was hoping for instead just skimming the surface.  

Perfect Sense 
dir by David Mackenzie

Dark and strikingly beautiful, strange and occasionally a touch silly, ‘Perfect Sense’ is not a perfect movie, but it’s worth seeking out for its unique vision that is hard to shake long after you’ve left its world behind. 

Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same d
dir by Madeline Olnek

One of the BEST movies of the entire festival. Hysterical and very much influenced by the sci-fi B-Movies from back in the day!! My favorite performance so far of the entire festival has been Lisa Haas’s performance as Jane, an earthling. I hope this movie gets bought so that the world can see it!!!

Salvation Boulevard 
dir by George Ratliff 

I had a really good time at this movie. I can’t remember ever enjoying Jennifer Connelly of Pierce Brosnan this much. They were SPOT on—the tone of the whole film was. Marisa Tomei as an old grateful dead fan was just too much!

HERE
dir by Braden King

Very slow moving and some of the dialogue was just laughable. The photography was excellent, but I’m not hanging it on my wall. This was probably my least favorite of the festival. 

Winter’s Bone
dir Debra Grakin
★★★1/2

Set in Missouri, a world unlike any I’ve ever known, Winter’s Bone weaves together a chilling tale of survival and desperation. Finding the proper balance between the slow tempo the landscape demands, and the frenetic energy of the story can’t be easy and Granik handles this task masterfully. She weaves together a taut, frightfully real tale of a teenage girl who is left to raise her two siblings after her father disappears, probably drug related, and her mother goes emotionally and physically unresponsive. Jennifer Lawrence as the warrior 17 year old who will stop at nothing to protect her family is sensational. Strong in a way that you don’t see from a lot of teenage girls, and focused only on survival, her performance is truly refreshing. Dale Dickey as the hardened, backwoods matriarch truly inhabits the locale and hands it back out with fervent fists. There are surely great things ahead for this film.

Waiting for Superman
dir Davis Guggenheim
★★★★

Owning his own guilt at putting his children in private school after being a champion for public schooling for over a decade, Davis Guggenheim channels those feelings in order to create a compassionate and sadly none-too-surprising expose of the American School system. Through the course of this doc you’ll meet some pretty amazing kids. Francisco, Bianca, Daisy, Anthony & others will touch your heart, each in different ways, and by the time the final credits roll you too will find yourself standing up demanding true education reform on a national scale. Make sure to bring kleenex though.

Please Give
dir Nicole Holofcener
★★★✰

Nicole Holofcener works in subtle hues and tones. Her skill lies not in great, bold brushstrokes, but in perfectly calibrating the way the air changes in a room after something is said that maybe shouldn’t have been. The nuance of her theme, and her devotion to capturing it. Because she does this well, and works entirely in the white, middle class arena, her films do tend to feel similar to one another. Extensions of each other. Sisters. In a way this is comforting. Oh, Nicole’s coming over for dinner tonight with her new film? You know what kind of an evening you’re getting.

As always, Catherine Keener steers the boat—this time as a guilt-ridden upper middle class New Yorker, who purchases antique furniture from families of the recently deceased and turns around selling the same pieces for quadruple the price and more. This practice makes her conscience howl so she settles this by giving money to every homeless person she encounters. Enter her teenage daughter with bad skin, her elderly neighbor whose apartment she has purchased in order to make her own more spacious, and her husband with a midlife crisis and you’ve got the makings of a Holofcener gem. So the fact that all the pieces don’t always fall into place isn’t necessarily as frustrating as it may be in a tale that is about pieces falling into place. Instead this tale is about how the pieces sort of hang there and shift occasionally without warning. The fact that a lot of the plot relies heavily on key points that most people are too poor to understand is only a mild annoyance.

happythankyoumoreplease
dir. Josh Radner

I’m not saying that I didn’t enjoy this movie, because I did. Very much at times actually. I’m not saying it didn’t have its really great moments, because it did. Malin Ackerman actually was quite touching and inhabited a whole different kind of character. But what I question is the sheer amount of films about New York City coming out lately that never seem to have any gay characters or characters of color in the principal cast. Of course minorities are everywhere in these films—just look at the cops, the social workers, the waiters, the judges, the quirky side character. But that’s about it. It’s a bit frustrating, and makes you consider the perspective of those making the film.

In this case, six late twenty-something New Yorkers attempt to navigate the city and their own relationship statuses, while holding their friends dear. Only this time it doesn’t star Jennifer Aniston! Instead, Josh Radnor directs himself in the lead role, a cheeky freelance writer who doesn’t seem to want to stop living the short story lifestyle in exchange for the novel. He meets a waitress named Mississippi—whose one dimensional character was described as “purposefully vague”—and a young boy lost on the subway with whom he has an instant connection. Young Michael Algieri is, naturally, the standout of this movie, and Josh Radnor doesn’t do a half bad job either. But had this movie even tried to show a true New York City with all it’s wonderful colors, it could only have benefited.