I spent my week plus at the Sarasota Film Festival hoping beyond hope to get thrilled by close encounters with great cinema. Though I saw many that were wonderful, there was only one blow-away film for me, but boy it blew me away. One of the festival artistic coordinators warned me against missing her favorite of the films showing because I thought it would be back in the theaters eventually because it had a 'big' star, John C Reilly. On her advice I went on the last day anyway.
I left the festival in 2010 thinking that no film would top Winter's Bone for me that year and I was absolutely right. This year I left the festival thinking the same because I saw Terri.
This film takes the decency and humanism in Tom McCarthy's films, most recently Win Win, and catapults it into the stratosphere. With a mind bending performance by the kid and the passionate direction of a near first timer, I can't explain the magnificent place this film put me. In the end, it is like Juno on steroids but so soft, supple and subtle.
And the word of mouth may have exploded into a much earlier than expected release this summer. Like Juno, it was intended for art houses at best, but I think the buzz from the happiness of those leaving the theater will take it somewhere much larger. Likely not to Juno 2008 $222+ million in the US levels, but certainly past any other art house film this year. Well at least I am predicting so.
At a Q&A I asked the director about filmmakers he liked. He mentioned John Hughes. When you see this as you must, keep your eye out for the magnificent Breakfast Club sequence that is so amazingly intimate, touching, funny, deep and sad all at once. This is what this film is, all of those things rolled up into what I will call in the end a great big happy pill that America needs badly right now.
Here's hoping they will take it.
I left the festival in 2010 thinking that no film would top Winter's Bone for me that year and I was absolutely right. This year I left the festival thinking the same because I saw Terri.
This film takes the decency and humanism in Tom McCarthy's films, most recently Win Win, and catapults it into the stratosphere. With a mind bending performance by the kid and the passionate direction of a near first timer, I can't explain the magnificent place this film put me. In the end, it is like Juno on steroids but so soft, supple and subtle.
And the word of mouth may have exploded into a much earlier than expected release this summer. Like Juno, it was intended for art houses at best, but I think the buzz from the happiness of those leaving the theater will take it somewhere much larger. Likely not to Juno 2008 $222+ million in the US levels, but certainly past any other art house film this year. Well at least I am predicting so.
At a Q&A I asked the director about filmmakers he liked. He mentioned John Hughes. When you see this as you must, keep your eye out for the magnificent Breakfast Club sequence that is so amazingly intimate, touching, funny, deep and sad all at once. This is what this film is, all of those things rolled up into what I will call in the end a great big happy pill that America needs badly right now.
Here's hoping they will take it.