Nantucket offers up ease over edge - and a Meg Ryan tribute
When did summer get so competitive? This week sees the return of two high-profile, can't-miss events for locally based movie fans: the Provincetown International Film Festival (Wednesday through next Sunday; see accompanying article) and the Nantucket Film Festival (Thursday through next Sunday.)
P'town, celebrating its 10th anniversary, is the glitzier, edgier affair while Nantucket, going into its 13th year, is more of an easygoing pocket festival, but there the differences stop. Both lure beachgoers from the sun into the dark and both cherry-pick the best films from the year's first festival wave (Sundance, Berlin, Austin, Boston) to the point of occasional overlap.
Nantucket will honor Meg Ryan and Judd Apatow with special tributes this year. Here's a guide to 10 of the island's movie highlights.
"American Teen" Nanette Burstein's documentary follows four very different kids through their final year at an Indiana high school. Sounds like warmed-over reality programming (and art-grrl Hannah Bailey has already become a sort-of star following the film's Sundance premiere), but this is a surprisingly biting look at the pleasures and pressures of American adolescence.
"Baghead" The first mumblecore horror movie? Yes and no. The latest from super-indie filmmakers the Duplass brothers ("The Puffy Chair") follows a quartet of out-of-work actors into the woods, where they run into the title boogeyman. Fresh off of screenings at the Boston International Film Festival and the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, "Baghead" cranks down the production values of the slasher movie until the genre turns into low-fidelity comedy.
"Choke" Based on the cult novel by Chuck Palahniuk about a colonial theme park employee (Sam Rockwell) who's also a sex addict (recovering, maybe) and a scam artist. Yes, it's a comedy, albeit on the dark side. Anjelica Huston plays the hero's mother; actor Clark Gregg makes his directorial debut.
"Frozen River" Grand Jury Prize winner at this year's Sundance festival. Writer-director Courtney Hunt's drama casts the deathless Melissa Leo (TV's "Homicide") as an upstate New York working mom who turns to smuggling illegals over the border at a Mohawk reservation. Misty Upham plays her Native American opposite number.
"Man on Wire" One of this writer's personal favorites from Sundance 2008, James Marsh's documentary takes viewers back to Aug. 7, 1974, when French aerialist Philippe Petit illegally walked a high wire between the World Trade Center towers. The film works as both a suspenseful heist movie and as a eulogy to an era and to buildings that no longer exist.
"Operation Filmmaker" Actor-turned-director Liev Schreiber decided to hire an Iraqi film student named Muthana Mohmed as an intern on the 2003 production of the film "Everything Is Illuminated." Things didn't go quite according to plan. Nina Davenport's droll off-Hollywood documentary reminds us that no good deed goes unpunished.
"Secrecy" - A fascinating documentary inquiry into the new secrecy industry that has resulted in a massive increase in government information that you and I can't see. Good for national security, bad for us? Harvard's Robb Moss and Peter Galison pick apart the nuances with welcome balance.
"Sleep Dealer" Here's a novelty: A sci-fi movie set in the Third World. Writer-director Alex Rivera shows us a near future where Mexican laborers can work themselves to death in America without ever leaving home (two words: remote robotics). A work of low-budget vision.
"Transsiberian" The title train takes a week to travel from Beijing to Moscow; married tourists Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer have a week to get into big trouble with drug smugglers and other nefarious folk. Director Brad Anderson ("Next Stop Wonderland") takes a smart left turn into suspense thrillers.
"Trouble the Water" A Hurricane Katrina documentary with a difference, and that difference is Kimberly Roberts, a Ninth Ward resident who videotaped the disaster as it unfolded. Filmmakers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal frame her story within the larger picture of bureaucratic inertia, despair, and resilience.
