Now that the week of streaming is complete for the 46th Cleveland International Film Festival, I can finally review what I got the opportunity to watch!
About two weekends ago, I headed up to Cleveland to catch an in person premiere for a drama called Montana Story. My primary reasoning for seeing this was its leads, Owen Teague and Haley Lu Richardson. I’ve liked almost everything I’ve seen these two in, so I had high hopes for this drama, and it delivered! They play siblings, Cal and Erin, who have reluctantly returned home to see their comatose father in his final days. Both have a difficult past with him, as he is both their father, but they have different mothers, and extremely different interactions with him. Cal and Erin used to be extremely close until their father beat her so badly that she left. She cut off contact with Cal because he didn’t intervene at all. This film was really emotional, and given that it was set in Montana, the scenery was pretty gorgeous. Since seeing this film, I’ve seen a trailer for it twice, so you all will soon get your chance to see it, too!
This past week I was able to view three films via the festival’s streaming platform. First up was 18 1/2, which was a film fictionalizing what was said on the Nixon tapes in regards to Watergate during an 18 and a half minute gap. The tape was accidentally found by a White House transcriber, and she felt it was her duty to get this information out into the world. She meets up with a reporter named Paul, and the pair come up with a pretty convoluted way to listen to them that turns into chaos anyways. This film had a stellar cast, but I just couldn’t connect with this as much as I would have liked to. I felt it was cheaply made, and some of the characters were ridiculous. I’m sure that’s the point of it, but still, just not something that appealed to me in the end.
Next up I watched Samuel’s Travels, which was kind of wild. And a little graphic. Samuel is in some unknown European country looking for his father who he just found out about. Instead, he thinks he accidentally hits and kills a pig, who happens to belong to a really lonely woman. The pig is in fact alive, but the woman is touched by Samuel’s caring that she decides he needs to stay. That’s why Samuel wakes up butt ass naked and chained to a wall in a barn. She’s kind to him, but her father and neighborhood crush torment him endlessly. When Samuel does get the chance to escape, he comes to find that he was lonely before all of this and decides to stay. If that’s not the most messed up version of Stockholm Syndrome you’ve ever heard, then I must be pretty sheltered. As dark as this movie sounds, it was actually quite funny and overall a very interesting watch. I recommend it if it makes it to the masses someday.
Finally, I watched the Serbian comedy-drama, Celts. Well, I suppose that in 1993 when this film takes place, it’s still Yugoslavia, but I digress. A bunch of eight year olds gather for a Ninja Turtles themed birthday party, and thus, so do all of their parents. We get splices of each party numerous times throughout the night, but it’s the adults activities that garner more interest. All of these people are sexually and politically frustrated, so when they aren’t discussing the recent change in their country, they are busy hooking up with whoever the hell they want in various corners of the property. While they really aren’t the same, this film reminded me a lot of All My Friends Hate Me, that I got to watch during the Tribeca Film Festival last year. With that comparison, let me make this short and sweet: I liked this film quite a bit. Here’s hoping it finds its way to a US distribution down the road.