Movie-Fest 2011 Competition #2: Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes

Alright Movie-Fest'ers. Next competition. A $20 iTunes voucher - presentable upon attendance at Movie-Fest - will be awarded to the person who first emails me (daniel underscore mcclelland at hotmail dot com) the answer to these questions: 

1. Which Movie-Fest film has the highest score on Rotten Tomatoes?
2. And which has the second-highest score?
3. Which has the highest aggregated score on Metacritic?

Movie-Fest 2011 Schedule

          Movie-Fest 9: One-Word Titles
Schedule

9am 

11am 

11:07am 

12:20pm 

1:45pm 

2:15pm 

2:55pm 

4:30pm 

6pm 

6:30pm 

8:20pm 

10pm 

11:20pm 
Films (click the links for more info + trailer)

Rango - dir. Gore Verbinski - Starring: Johnny Depp

Vincent - dir. Tim Burton - Starring: Vincent Price

Freaks - dir. Tod Browning - Starring: Harry Earles

Collapse - dir. Chris Smith - Starring: Michael Ruppert

Lunch 

Runaway - dir. Kanye West - Starring: Kanye West

Bronson - dir. Nicolas Winding - Starring: Tom Hardy

Breakin' - dir. Joel Silberg - Starring: Lucinda Dickey

Dinner 

Submarine - dir. Richard Ayoade - Starring: Craig Roberts

Monsters - dir. Gareth Edwards - Starring: Scoot McNairy

Devil - dir. John Erick Dowdle - Starring: Chris Messina

The End 
Starting in: 

   

And if you'd like to watch all of the trailers back-to-back, you can here:

9am - Rango

9am - Rango - dir. Gore Verbinski - Starring: Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Bill Nighy
The day gets off to a great start with a deliriously messed up animated film. It casts Johnny Depp's titular lizard as a nearly literal fish-out-of-water in more than one sense. A lizard, lost in a desert, happens upon a town called Dirt that has run out of water. It's narrated by a group of mariachi owls who solemnly begin the movie with the solemn revelation that our hero, Rango, will die. This movie calls into question the art of storytelling in a borderline meta-textual way, whilst giving audiences a rollicking adventure set in the Wild West. The great thing about it is, the actors give real performances that totally shine through onscreen:

You'd be hard pressed to find a better family movie from 2011, because this one ranks amongst the greats already. Roger Ebert says "Rango is some kind of a miracle: An animated comedy for smart moviegoers, wonderfully made, great to look at, wickedly satirical, and (gasp!) filmed in glorious 2-D. Its brilliant colors and startling characters spring from the screen."

11am - Vincent

11am - Vincent - dir. Tim Burton - Starring: Vincent Price
Tim Burton made this short film in 1982. It's our second animated movie of the 'Fest and, like Rango, it's fairly meta. The film's about a young boy who loathes his pleasant suburban existence. He'd rather be horror film legend Vincent Price than boring old Vincent Malloy. Hilariously, it's actually narrated by Price himself, who said later that the film was "the most gratifying thing that ever happened. It was immortality—better than a star on Hollywood Boulevard." Clocking in a little under 7 minutes, Burton heaps on the atmosphere, as if he was trying to expunge Disney (where he worked early on) out of his system. It's set to a Dr Seussian poem, which you can read here. It features lush rhymes like this:

His thoughts, though, aren’t only of ghoulish crimes
He likes to paint and read to pass some of the times
While other kids read books like Go, Jane, Go!
Vincent’s favourite author is Edgar Allen Poe

You can listen to its main theme here:

11:07am - Freaks

11:07am - Freaks - dir. Tod Browning - Starring: Harry Earles, Rosco Ates, et. al.
Words can't describe this film. The Guardian put it well though - "undoubtedly before its time and no one has equalled it." Freaks is very old, and that's been vital to its longevity. It works as a product of age, despite being a critical and commercial flop. Still,  In 1932, Hollywood had no official ratings board to answer to, so the major players could produce 'prestige pictures' for one crowd and sleaze-riddled tabloid fare for another. In the case of Freaks, this film wants to cater to both crowds. The Onion wrote a great piece on it here, saying that the so-called Freaks' "matter-of-fact presence before the camera is what gives the film its elemental power" but of course, then there's the rather icky fact that the film's called, well, Freaks.

Thus, this is the first film in the 'Fest where the one-word title itself reveals a lot about the movie's intentions. It'll build up empathy from its audience, then pull the rug out from under you, revealing that people of all sizes can be, well, freaks. Its lurid, sordid, and exploitative; but it's also filled with empathy and a matter-of-factness that's unlikely to ever be paralleled. You can choose to be affronted, or you can excuse its behaviour because things were different back then. Because this film doesn't really have a trailer that I can link to, you can go watch this clip instead: http://youtu.be/pv93FCi4daA

12:20pm - Collapse

12:20pm - Collapse - dir. Chris Smith - Starring: Michael Ruppert
How is that a talking-head documentary can be described as "an intellectual horror film" or, in the case of Variety, "makes countless other political documentaries look like episodes of "Teletubbies"? Esteemed, credible, critics went gaga at this movie because its subject preaches about a coming Collapse in terms that are disturbingly hard to refute. And what a subject he is - the trailer itself asks you if he's a wacko.

I'm not certain the film's producers made a decision on that one - Michael Ruppert accurately predicted the Global Financial Crisis years ahead of its eventual arrival, and now he's turned his attention to the culture of a post peak-oil world. Refreshingly, he's a chain-smoking, right-wing, former cop. So, not your usual bleeding heart liberal then. As The Onion says, the film's director wisely includes "several exceptionally poignant moments, [which] allows us to see an angry, lonely, vulnerable man whose life epitomizes the title as much as the globe does."

2:15pm - Runaway

2:15pm - Runaway - dir. Kanye West - Starring: Kanye West, Selita Ebanks
After Kanye West dropped his now infamous tirade against Taylor Swift (or on behalf of Beyonce?), the rapper / producer seemed to runaway from the spotlight. He became a recluse and only ventured out of his cave to fire retorts back against the Presidents and esteemed members of the press who stooped so low as to comment on the ramblings of a clearly off-kilter egomaniac. When he finally arrived back on the stage, he revealed what he'd been working on all that time: a monumental work, instantly added to the list of great hiphop albums, with some even daring to say it's rap's Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Depending on your perspective, Runaway is a companion film to the album; a 35-minute promotional video; an ego piece; a straight-up art movie; or a gigantic Thriller-esque music video. Everyone agrees on one thing though: it's not boring.

It's about a phoenix (or is it an angel?) who falls to earth and becomes Kanye's problem (or is he himself his problem?). There's a great article about it here, entitled "Towards a new rap aesthetic? Or: How Kanye West changed the art of rap videos"

2:55pm - Bronson

2:55pm - Bronson - dir. Nicolas Winding - Starring: Tom Hardy, Matt King
So Tom Hardy is already one of my favourite actors, and I've only seen him in a handful of films. He was one of the best things about Inception last year and he's going to be Batman's nemesis in The Dark Knight Rises next year. The reason he's making inroads into Hollywood? Bronson. The most unhinged, unforgiving, relentless and conflicting film since Fight Club. You spend the whole time rooting for a charismatic anti-hero, despite knowing that his actions are utterly reprehensible. This is watchable though, in the same way as Moulin Rouge, Strictly Ballroom and Romeo + Juliet were.

The movie's about a man who decides he wants to become Britain's most (in)famous prisoner. In the way that he's constantly stroking his own ego, this makes a good companion piece to Runaway. Anyway, check out the poster above for the type of praise that's been heaped upon this film. As The New York Times put it, "like Stanley Kubrick’s “Clockwork Orange” reimagined as a one-man stage show and stripped of any political implications. Bronson’s crimes become a kind of performance art, and the film becomes, bizarrely enough, the portrait of a genius misunderstood and marginalized by a bureaucratic and hypocritical social order."

4:30pm - Breakin'

4:30pm - Breakin' - dir. Joel Silberg - Starring: Lucinda Dickey, Ice T, Boogaloo Shrimp
This is 1984 at its best: break-dancing, awesome shoes, side-ponies, lycra, Kraftwerk, Chaka Khan and more break-dancing. The plot is paper-thin, but that's par for the course for this genre.

The dancing though? Phenomenal. As Variety put it: "[the] film is quite satisfactory and breezily entertaining on its own terms."

6:30pm - Submarine

6:30pm - Submarine - dir. Richard Ayoade - Starring: Craig Roberts, Yasmin Paige, Sally Hawkins

If Woody Allen, Ingmar Bergman and Wes Anderson all got together and made a baby... Submarine would be the result. It's the riveting tale of a teenage boy, caught between his own dreamworlds; his new girlfriend; her mother's illness; his parents' impending divorce; and the mullet-clad self-help guru who's moved next door.

This is love as many of us remember it in high school: awkward, mumbled, fumbled and ever hopeful. It's directed by the man who plays Moss in TV's The IT Crowd and, frankly, it's a damned good first film. Well deserving of its peak-time position in this year's Movie-Fest.

8:20pm - Monsters

8:20pm - Monsters - dir. Gareth Edwards - Starring: Scoot McNairy, Whitney Able

A good friend of mine summed up this film quite succinctly: "it's like [romance films] Before Sunset / Before Sunrise, but with Monsters in the background." Empire said it longer though: "An amazing achievement for a ‘first-time’ filmmaker, which measures up to the finest indies for performance and character-work, and the biggest blockbusters for jaw-dropping effects. And it has the year’s best sex scene, too."

For my own two cents: this has everything you'd ever need in a film. If locations are your thing, then the jungle and rivers and wasteland here are like nothing you've seen in ages. If romance is your bag, this has it in spades. If you like slow-paced character flicks, this is for you. If you're more into tanks, fight scenes, guns and special-effects, well... this is for you too. Perfect? Maybe.

10pm - Devil

10pm - Devil - dir. John Erick Dowdle - Starring: Chris Messina, Bojana Novakovic

Remember the guy who made The Sixth Sense and then Unbreakable and then Signs? Remember he then got crap? Well, he's in the producer's chair this time around, and it's the best decision he's made in years. He hands the directing reigns over to a couple of up-and-comers who hit the ball out of the bark with this tense, taught thriller that asks "what would you do if you realised the Devil was in the elevator with you.. and the lift had broken down midway up a skyscraper?" Bam, that's one scary-ass concept right there.

Thankfully, clocking it a crazy fast 80 minutes, this is one horror / thriller that doesn't outstay its welcome. It's  been included in this Movie-Fest because it's got fantastic cinematography, awesome music and an ambience that most modern horror films are sorely lacking. Check out the trailer below: