Forget Peoria – will it play in Boulder?
That may not be Robin and Kathy Beeck’s guiding mantra, exactly. But the sister founders of the Boulder International Film Festival pay heed to the challenge when seeking films for the four-day festival that opens Thursday.
It’s a promising lineup.
BIFF launches Year Two with “The Sisters,” directed by Arthur Allen Seidelman. Maria Bello stars in Richard Alfieri’s take on Anton Chekhov’s “The Three Sisters.” Bello plays Marcia Prior, one of four siblings who must tussle with each other and the ghost of their dead father.
While there was no press screening, the cast promises sharp moments. Erika Christensen, Mary Stuart Masterson and Alessandro Nivola play Marcia’s siblings. Rip Torn steps in as a longtime family friend. Bello will attend opening night.
“What Remains of Us,” closes the fest. François Prévost and Hugo Latulippe’s documentary follows Kalsang Dolma’s journey through Tibet to show inhabitants a videotaped message from the exiled Dalai Lama.
Some of this year’s 51 features and shorts shout “Boulder” from the top of the Flatirons, including Jerry Aronson’s remastered version of “The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg.” There’s also Stephen Auerbach’s “Race Across America,” which follows cyclists during a 3,000-mile trek.
“Boulder loves that kind of movie,” said BIFF executive director Robin over lunch in the restaurant above the festival’s Pearl Street headquarters. But the ambitions of the Beecks and the Boulder-based Colorado Film Society run deeper than feeding their Front Range denizens’ more obvious cravings.
“A great story,” the Beecks replied, nearly in unison, when asked what they look for when visiting other film festivals and navigating more than 600 submissions. Here are a few films that clarify what they mean.
Jean-Marc Vallée’s “C.R.A.Z.Y.” tells a coming-of-age story with visual flair and emotional authenticity. Zac, played for most of the film by the utterly watchable Marc-André Grondin, was born on Christmas Day 1960. Thanks to this auspicious birth date, he’s either blessed or cursed with a gift for healing, or so a chain-smoking soothsayer tells Zac’s mother (Danielle Proulx, who will be in Boulder). Dad, played with charm and infuriating machismo by Michel Côté, is a compelling and vexing figure for his sons.
Pierre Mignot’s camerawork moves with pleasing fluidity. Flights of Zac’s fantasies give way to the family’s realities, only to soar again. As handsome as “C.R.A.Z.Y.” is, the lion’s share of its budget went to securing the music. With songs by the Rolling Stones (which makes for the first exhilarating moment in a movie full of them), Patsy Cline and David Bowie, getting those rights could never be wrong.
“The Civilization of Maxwell Bright” places the blasphemous and the sacred in potent proximity.
Maxwell, an electronics store mini-mogul, is none too bright. But he is a male chauvinist of the first order. Maxwell’s version of an epiphany comes when he decides that the only woman he can deal with would a compliant mail-order bride from Asia. Did we mention he’s culturally crass?
Sometimes a movie is so closely aligned with its protagonist that it mimics the character’s dramatic arc with uncanny precision. With a guy as reprehensible as Maxwell, that’s a risky endeavor, one writer-director David Beaird and lead Patrick Warburton (“Seinfeld’s” David Puddy) pull off.
The credit for making this film touching isn’t theirs alone. Marie Matiko brings complexity to Mai Ling, the former Buddhist nun who marries the lout. Eric Roberts is Maxwell’s most loyal friend, a thankless gig.
“Maxwell Bright’s” early nastiness is overindulgent, but the final third of the movie delivers spiritual lessons with a grace that washes away the venal sins of the opening. (Warburton will be in town for the screening.)
“Maxwell Bright” is sure to invite passionate debate. BIFF is screening a number of documentaries that demand it.
Among them:
“Diameter of the Bomb,” about a suicide attack on Bus 32A in Jerusalem. Director Andrew Quigley reminds us that flesh, bone and blood go with the names of the dead in news coverage of suicide bombings.
Colorado director David Eckenrode’s “El Immigrante” about the senseless death of Eusebio de Haro, a young migrant shot by an elderly Texas rancher, is often as evenhanded as it is smartly elegiac.
Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s “Boys of Baraka” follows a group of at-risk boys from Baltimore’s meaner streets as they embark on a two-year program at a school in Kenya. When something disastrous happens midway through the movie, not only do the kids’ guardians lose their balance, this often powerful film stumbles as well.
Still, in an atmosphere that begs that movies engage tough issues, the BIFF slate of documentaries rises to the challenge.
Film critic Lisa Kennedy can be reached at 303-820-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com.
This article has been corrected, online. Due to a reporting error, it misidentified the actors in “C.R.A.Z.Y.” Zac is played by Marc-André Grondin. Michel Côté plays the father.
