Filmfest München: Vivir es fácil con los ojos cerrados (Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed)

Spanish writer/director David Trueba's "Vivir es fácil con los ojos cerrados (Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed)" is the kind of movie where angelic human beings with sympathizable troubles cross paths, hold hands, and find out that no problem can't be solved when you live by a quotable philosophy and your heart's in the right place. Earnest, accessible, resolutely middle-brow, it's no high art but a readily digestible, inoffensively sentimental semi-road-movie with strong production values.

Set during one of John Lennon's film shoots in southern Spain in the 1960's, the story follows a lonely school teacher, a runaway boy and a pregnant girl as they arrive in the sun-kissed seaside town and meet even more decent, down-on-their-luck countrymen trying to get by. As suggested, subtlety is not what the screenplay goes for, and the direction, pinning down the emotional cue of any given scene with a hammer, is also on the broad side. But with such aggressive appeals to the common niceness of people, some genuine feelings are bound to be struck, not least of which the simple sadness of reaching the end of a journey shared with kindred souls. Ultimately these scenes of endearment can't belie the fact that the movie as a whole is too neatly orchestrated for any organic dynamic to unfold. That or I'm just a heartless cynic.

Lead actor Javier Cámara is as effortlessly winning as always. No matter how potentially cringe-worthy the scenario, he swings it like a pro and softens whatever artificiality with a natural charm. The romantic production and costume design, the tenderly lit photography and the jazzy, melancholic guitar-based soundtrack are responsible for how gorgeous everything looks and sounds.

Filmfest München: Cold in July

The first half of American director Jim Mickle's southern noir "Cold in July" is altogether uninteresting, proving it takes a lot more than just thunderbolts, creepy, inarticulate old men and incompetent police officers to get the home invasion horror right. And purposefully going overboard on the cheese factor by recycling, magnifying familiar genre elements doesn't automatically make you cool, either, because that too has long been done. With a major change of course and the introduction of a new character halfway through the film, things do turn significantly for the better, leading the way to that promised final bloodbath, but overall nothing groundbreaking here.

This whole movie is a little silly, really, what with the synthesizer blazing gleefully in the background as people get ready to kill one another. The filmmaker is most likely aware of the ridiculousness and actively pursues it, but without a corresponding sharp sense of pacing and aesthetic, a self-deprecating B-movie stays a B-movie and it can only go so far. Which is not to say it won't find an audience. With liberal use of rifles, unhindered exercise of private justice and senior citizens acting tough in cowboy hats and wife-beaters, it doesn't get much more red state than this, and I'm sure that's all gravy to the steak-eating cinemagoers. You just wish there'd be a little more original idea, snappier execution and better characterization for the rest of us as well. Of the actors, Don Johnson is the obvious scene-stealer, bringing much-needed humor to the otherwise leaden proceedings.

Filmfest München: Under the Skin

With its narrative function turned way down and conceptual visuality way up, British writer/director Jonathan Glazer's idiosyncratic, highly experimental "Under the Skin" is less a feature film than a cryptic art project. 

Starring Scarlett Johansson as a man-eating alien, the movie is verbally uncommunicative to the extreme. Viewers are given virtually no clues as to the history, identity, motives, capabilities of this extraterrestrial and there's hardly a plot to speak of. Instead we just witness the arrival of this unknown being and the demise of her preys, everything unexplained and stupendously, shockingly, scorchingly stylized. It's almost impossible to describe how strange and arresting some of the movie's images look. They play with light, colors, exposure, dimensions to leave behind such an otherworldliness on screen you can't tell if it's pretty or grotesque anymore. Add to that an equally bizarre soundtrack with a main theme that's languid, sensual, dangerous, ritualistic, and you've got a fully immersive experience that's at once completely blank. A mesmerizing, bombastic vacuum. 

Judging the merits of something so willfully cooped up inside its own universe is tricky. For my taste, something essential is still missing from a cinematic production when it can't be told apart from a Björk music video. The astonishing achievement of the movie's art department is unquestionable though. Cold, carnal, seductive, disgusting, this film has footage that's traumatically beautiful.

Filmfest München: Dessau Dancers

A movie like "Dessau Dancers" doesn't really belong at a film festival. It means well, features entertaining dance numbers and has lots of innocuous, populist appeal, but artistic aspirations? Next to non-existent.

Admittedly, the idea to bring the story of the first generation of break dancers in the former East Germany to the big screen is enticing. But this central conceit, and basically the only raison d'être for the film, is treated in an offhand, heavily caricatured fashion so that any possible political, historical bite that might come from the colliding world views is promptly taken out. Other than that, the plot is a pile-up of clichés from unappreciative family members, a brotherhood under test to that roundly implausible finale. Having a good-looking but acting-wise unimpressive cast doesn't help. Technical aspects are standard, with a colorful soundtrack and some cute costume work providing perky 80's groove. The set design doesn't fly with me though, with the majority of scenes looking like they're shot right inside one studio.

It would be a lie denying the electric, happy current that charges through one's mind and feet when old-school beats drop and teenagers start twisting joints in disobedience against a repressive regime. But for a movie supposedly about rebellion, German director Jan Martin Scharf's work here is not nearly wild enough.

Filmfest München: Pelo malo (Bad Hair)

It takes a while before the Venezuelan youth drama "Pelo malo (Bad Hair)" gets to its point and the way it concludes feels more like a hesitant, anticipatory semicolon than a solid period. Even then, the narrative wanders a little between two ends, never quite focusing on one course. It's safe to say the movie's not the most compact, concentrated effort out there.

That said, by building her film around a nine-year-old boy who's bent on straightening his unruly curly hair for a school photo shoot, writer/director Mariana Rondón has found a beautiful angle to look at gender roles in today's Latin America. More directly concerned with sexuality of prepubescents than, say, "Billy Elliot", it examines those identity-defining moments in life where one's first confronted with attraction, and those are, needless to say, quietly volcanic moments. Convincingly written and gently played by Samuel Lange Zambrano, the film instantly gains a clarity and an edge when it deals with such precious, mysterious, terrifying episodes where a young person learns more about himself and grows further away from innocence.

Other than that, being a Latino film, a celebratory joie de vivre cannot miss. Though it's decidedly held back overall, there's one musical number in the movie featuring a grandma singing and dancing with her grandson. And the minute mouths are opened and bodies start swaying, it's just all second nature to them and cinematic fireworks for us.

Filmfest München: Wir waren Könige (The Kings Surrender)

I really wanted to love "Wir waren Könige (The Kings Surrender)" because there are segments in this police thriller where absolutely everything is done right and it's a pulse-quickening beauty to behold. Which is a surprise, considering the movie starts off with a bang only in the literal sense, as the opening raid scene, while choreographed and shot competently enough, lacks that extra kick of speed and gravity to make it great. At this point doubts that the film will wind up being just another slightly more refined TV-crime-film- well made but limited in scope and flair- would be justified.

But then the multiple storylines begin to expand and intersect in a fantastic mid-section, where the characters take form, the suspense mounts, the stakes get higher, the plot thickens. With authorial patience German writer/director Philipp Leinemann devises a web of conspiracy, corruption, coincidences and conflicting interests, which he then executes in a number of superbly timed, precisely staged, evocatively shot and scored scenes that are hugely impressive for their narrative clarity and technical finesse. Some of them pack such promise in their grand, atmospheric strokes it sends chills down your spine. The actors are also uniformly good, if more as a tight, complementary ensemble than individual stand-outs.

So it's a pity that the movie can't seem to find an ending that's explosive, satisfying enough, one that could elevate itself once and for all from the familiar, moralistic, Tatort-friendly format. Because after reaching such a level of complexity and scale, you get the feeling the story finally comes back down to settle in a small, modest place.

Filmfest München: The Skeleton Twins

There are movies that approximate life through a thoughtful mapping of all this tragicomic randomness around us. And then there are movies which try that route, plan a deliberate dosage of fun and misery in advance, but end up looking doubly phony. American writer/director Craig Johnson's "The Skeleton Twins", about two estranged siblings reuniting and facing their demons, falls unfortunately more into the second category. It's less a dramedy than a comedy that prefers not to be called a comedy and/or a drama that'd rather not be taken too seriously.

Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader are two of the most brilliant comedians of their generation but apparently feel the need to prove their dramatic chops as well. Which is a shame, really, not only because they are so much better at making us laugh, but also their rightly celebrated SNL-personas are so established by now that any foray into humor-free territory is immediately put at an enormous disadvantage. Both are by no means bad actors, but it only takes a few minutes of lip-syncing dual of "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" for everyone to see where their true instincts and genius lie.

And so we've got two immensely likable entertainers acting against their impulses in a movie that strives to stay real but feels from head to toe manufactured. That I don't believe for a second Wiig and Hader are playing twins is just the first of its problems.