For Madison cinephiles, this is the most wonderful time of the year: The 2010 Wisconsin Film Festival (WIFF) has arrived. The annual cinematic extravaganza will feature 192 films screened over five days; while this monumental amount of cinema undoubtedly contains a wealth of established masterpieces and hidden gems, it can also be pretty daunting to try to determine what, if anything, one should go see. Thus, it's no surprise that the question everyone's been asking me over the last few weeks is ""What's worth seeing?""
I'm pleased to be able to respond to such questions with a one-word answer: ""Plenty.""
Film festivals provide excellent opportunities to see independent films that haven't received widespread distribution, and this year's WIFF is no exception. Two movies in this vein that seem especially worthwhile are Benny and Josh Safdie's ""Daddy Longlegs"" (screens at 7:15 p.m. Thursday and 11:00 a.m. Saturday at the Chazen) and Bob Byington's ""Harmony and Me"" (screens at 7:45 p.m. Friday at the Union Theater).
""Daddy Longlegs,"" at once a charming family tale and a bohemian psychodrama, caused a serious stir when it premiered in New York in February; the film stars Ronald Bronstein, himself a director (whose 2007 debut ""Frownland"" delighted through its ability to inspire feelings of both empathy and disgust), as a knucklehead father of two young boys, played by the sons of Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo.
""Harmony and Me"" is a bone-dry comedy starring mumblecore heartthrob Justin Rice (kind of an oxymoron, I know). UW-Madison film professor J.J. Murphy writes that it's ""a film in which every single scene manages to work, while being woven into an intricate medley of idiosyncratic humor."" Byington will attend the screening; you might recognize him from his performance in Andrew Bujalski's last film, ""Beeswax.""
Not quite as new but still fairly recent is UW alum Michael Mann's ""Collateral"" (screens at 4:30 p.m. Friday at the Orpheum). Yes, it's that movie with Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx. So what? The New York Times' senior film critic Manohla Dargis is coming to town to introduce it; if for no other reason, one should attend in order to listen to the woman who is one of contemporary film criticism's foremost tastemakers.
Film festivals are an invaluable chance to get acquainted with recent developments in international cinema. This year's WIFF features a short retrospective of the work of South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho, best known in the US for his 2006 riff on the mega-monster genre, ""The Host"" (screens at 10:15 p.m. Thursday at the Orpheum). ""The Host"" was a major coup for Bong: It reaped critical praise here and became South Korea's highest-grossing film of all time.
The WIFF also serves the no-less-important function of excavating worthwhile films from bygone eras for another crack at wowing contemporary audiences. Among the most intriguing movies that have been resurrected for this year's fest are John Frankenheimer's 1964 WWII allegory ""The Train"" (screens at 10 p.m. Thursday and 6:45 p.m. Sunday at the Cinematheque), Elia Kazan's 1960 post-accident Montgomery Clift-vehicle ""Wild River"" (screens at 1:00 p.m. Saturday at the Cinematheque) and Sergio Leone's 1971 political spaghetti western ""Duck, You Sucker"" (screens at 2:00 p.m. Friday and 7:45 p.m. Saturday at the Cinematheque). All three promise to be unforgettable in highly distinctive ways—which is precisely what one expects of films called back from undeserving obscurity.
Documentary enthusiasts have plenty to be psyched about as well. I'm particularly excited to see Jennifer M. Kroot's ""It Came from Kuchar"" (screens at 9:45 p.m. Friday at the Play Circle Theater), which profiles the legendary underground filmmakers George and Mike Kuchar. The collective oeuvre of the brothers Kuchar includes such titles as ""Hold Me While I'm Naked,"" ""The Devil's Cleavage,"" ""Pussy on a Hot Tin Roof"" and ""Sins of the Fleshapoids;"" ""It Came from Kuchar"" will be preceded by George's 1989 travelogue ""500 Millibars to Ecstasy.""
Slightly less eccentric is Don Argott's ""The Art of the Steal"" (screens at 7:00 p.m. Wednesday and 1:15 p.m. Sunday at the Chazen), which raises thought-provoking questions about the relationship between art and its tax-paying public. The Village Voice's Melissa Anderson writes that the film's ""thorough research, bolstered by many fiery talking heads, makes it one of the most successful advocacy docs in recent years and may prompt some firsthand investigating of your own.""
Unfortunately I'll be so occupied with the aforementioned features that I won't be checking out any of the WIFF's many programs of short films, though I strongly encourage everyone else to do so. The beauty of the WFF is that you can walk into any theater in town between April 14 and 18 and see something worth talking about. If only the entire year were one long film festival.
Want more WIFF information without dealing with the hassles of the Internet? E-mail Dan at dsullivan@wisc.edu.
