Sundance - Installment One: Under The Bombs, Recycled, Shorts Program V

I've seen a few Sundance screenings the past couple of days and here's some short reviews.

Under The Bombs - 3 and 1/2 out of 4 stars

This French-produced film based in Lebanon during the Israeli incursion into Lebanon during the summer of 2006 and lasted 31 days until a cease-fire was brokered, avoids making political statements about who was right and who was wrong and instead focused on the impact that it (and all wars) have on the innocents who are forced to live through war. Zeina is a woman who arrives in Beirut from Dubai during the massive Israeli bombings in search of her son, who she sent to stay with her sister in southern Lebanon. She is finally able to find a taxi driver who will take the dangerous and often broken roads to the south and may have some alterior motives of his own. This film was heartbreaking, human and raw (it was conceived and partially shot during the conflict itself), using mostly real non-actors to play the incidental characters. My favorite decision about the film was to not let the story linger on the personal aspects of the characters, but rather to end it in a way that leaves the audience reeling at the very real consequences that disagreeing factions can leave on civilians caught in the middle.


Recycle - 2 out of 4 stars

I had high hopes for this documentary in which the filmmaker returns to his hometown of Zarqa, Jordan, hometown of the infamous Iraqi insurgent leader Abu Musa al Zarqawi, to investigate the beginnings of what makes a person make the kind of choices that Zarqawi did. While it scratches the surface in interviews with a few sheiks in the city (economic hardships, religious persecution), it loses focus of both that investigation and the life of its main subject, a struggling religious man in a poor part of the city. The editing and information that director Muhammad al Massad chose to put in the film reflects some questionable and sometimes confusing choices and in the audience is left with too many questions about the motivations and characters - questions that seemed like the could have been answered if a more polished touch and deeper reporting were involved. The highlight - the main subjects young son, who he lets steer his truck around town and at one point directs his father to "hit that camel for me."


Shorts Program V - 3 out of 4 stars

One of the programs of short films presented at the festival, this one was entertaining enough to earn my recommendation. Nine shorts (3 of which were Isabella Rossellini's short and funny interpretations on how certain insects procreate) are in this group and they progressively get better as the program rolls on. The best are the final three - the Chinese August 15, which is the tale of two robbers who board a bus in rural China and the results; Sara St. Onge's film about a woman preparing her final wishes (rife with gallows humor) appropriately called The Funeral, and the Australian bizzaro short about teenagers and zombies, I Love Sarah Jane. Yeah, I'm a sucker for zombies.