The Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival is one of the largest film festivals in the country, presenting more than 250 new films each year.
I am very excited to attend The 37th Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival again. This is the third time I will be attending this festival, but the first time I will be covering movies and events for That Moment In. The plan is to do full written reviews on the site and than recaps of movies and events on the Cinema Recall podcast.
The main rule I have is to avoid the trailers until after I see the movie, so I am only choosing features based solely on the plot descriptions and images alone.
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Tully
This marks the third collaboration between screenwriter Diablo Cody and filmmaker Jason Reitman and the second starring Charlize Theron following Juno and Young Adult. I know very little of this picture expect that Theron plays a struggling mother who gets a surprise visit from Mackenzie Davis who is there to take care of her. I wasn’t a fan of Young Adult but I thought Theron did a good job with Cody’s dialog. I enjoyed Juno when it was first released and it still remains a good accomplishment from Cody. I know many people are put off by her, but when you combine her words with Reitman’s direction, there is something that works and kind of magical about it.
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Have a Nice Day
This Chinese animated feature boasts a lot of the same style that reminds me a lot of early Ralph Bakshi (Heavy Traffic, American Pop). The story involves a gangster who steals money from his boss to pay for his girlfriend’s surgery. Director Liu Jian animated the film by himself and the process took three years to complete. I am intrigued about this and look forward to watching this. Read a pre-release review from David here.
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Killing Jesus
This tale of revenge centers around a young woman (Natasha Jaramillo) who after witnessing the death of her father, decides to take matters into her own hands and seek justice. This is the first feature I have seen from director Laura Mora Ortega and if this is good I will seek out more.
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Dragonfly Eyes
I read the concept of this and became interested right away. Director Xu Bing takes hours of surveillance footage and condenses it down to a narrative feature. It’s interesting to see how movie the blurs the line between reality and fiction and I am very curious if this feature can pull it off.
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Silicone Soul
This documentary is about the lives and relationships between men and their robotic love dolls. Think of a real life version of Lars and the Real Girl meets Her, and you have a pretty good indication of what to expect. However, I think this is going to delve more into how big A.I. technology will make these things become more and more human. These folks may seem odd to most people, but they may have found the kind of happiness we wish we had. I am intrigued.
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Disobedience
A Jewish woman (Rachel Wiez) who was banished for her homosexuality returns to the same community several years later. While there she starts up a relationship with the same woman (Rachel McAdams) that got her kicked out before. This marks the first English Language debut from filmmaker Sebastian Lello who brought us the Academy Award winning feature, A Fantastic Woman. I am very interested to see what he does with this story, which in my opinion doesn’t really engage my interests, but I do like the cast.
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Won’t You Be My Neighbor
I cheated on this one and did see the trailer before hand, but how could I not watch this? It’s Mr. Rogers. I remember watching him every day before kindergarten. He always talked to kids with the same level of respect he showed adults. Many movies and programs aimed at kids seem to talk down to them and just seem more interested in selling toys than teaching them anything good. Looking forward to this.
Do any of these features sound good? Are you attending the festival? Let us know in the comments. The Festival runs from April 12 to the 28.