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 On Film: 3 Rivers Film Fest follows characters on a variety of personal journeys Friday, November 10, 2000 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
'Doing Time for Patsy Cline'
Ralph (Matt Day), an Australian farm kid from the middle of nowhere, possesses an airplane ticket to Nashville and a dream of country-music stardom. Boyd (Richard Roxburgh), a big-talking sharpie in a green Jaguar, says he's seen and done it all. His red-headed girlfriend Patsy (Miranda Otto), named after country legend Patsy Cline and could make a man crazy, to quote Cline's signature tune.
It doesn't take long for us to realize what the men cannot admit to themselves -- that their reach exceeds their grasp. The outsized ambition of mundane people drives this engaging deadpan comedy, which has a story that could have come straight from a Nashville lament. Indeed, that's the whole point.
Ralph hitches a ride with Boyd and Patsy, only to find himself in over his head when Boyd pulls a gun on him, tells him to drive fast and starts emptying the contents of the car with the police in close pursuit. The men wind up in jail awaiting trial after Boyd makes sure Patsy escapes.
Most of the rest of the movie alternates between their comic misadventures in a two-bit hoosegow and what appears to be a flash-forward in which the characters meet again in Nashville and begin the slow climb to stardom. Of course, for characters like these, no step forward can be achieved without at least one step sideways.
While director Chris Kennedy seems bemused by his characters and their delusions of grandeur, he also proves sympathetic to them and doesn't go out of his way to demean them. If some of it seems to stretch credulity, why, isn't this all about country music?
-- Ron Weiskind
'Adrenaline Drive'
Now, where have you seen this one before? A pair of innocent bystanders wind up with a suitcase full of mob cash that they run off with, only to find at least four different sets of adversaries closing in on them.
But "Adrenaline Drive" is Japanese, and creates a different rhythm from the burning-rubber overdrive of most American getaway films. The leads, Hikari Ishida and Masanobu Ando, are mild-mannered milquetoasts in unexciting jobs -- she's a nurse, he's a rental-car clerk.
One day, his car bumps one driven by a yakuza, or gangster (Kouichi Ueda). But an explosion at his headquarters injures him and wipes out the rest of the gang. The nurse (Ishida) happens on the scene and ultimately helps the clerk (Ando) make off with the loot.
The fun comes in the development of their relationship, her transformation from ugly duckling to swan and the personalities of their antagonists. Ueda's character may be an unusually durable yakuza but his obsession with regaining the loot despite his injuries becomes almost comic. Five yakuza wannabes are played by members of the Jovi Jova comedy troupe, and the combination of their ineptitude and their youth make them almost charming in a way.
And then there's the odd character like the purse snatcher who has a heart attack when he sees what's in Ishida's bag and that she won't stop chasing him.
Some of director Shinobi Yaguchi's tomfoolery grows wearying after a while, such as Ando's ability to outrun the young yakuzas despite a broken leg. But "Adrenaline Drive" offers a subtler type of rush.
-- Ron Weiskind
'Luminous Motion'
It's readily apparent that Phillip (Eric Lloyd) is no ordinary 10-year-old. He and his adored mother (Deborah Kara Unger) speed through towns across the country. She drinks and tumbles into motel beds with a procession of men, makes off with their cash and credit cards, and he watches from their Impala as the world whizzes by.
He couldn't be happier, he says. Phillip, a smart boy who reads textbooks in the back seat, says he cares only about two things: Being with his mother and being in motion. An automobile accident grounds them in Hackensack, N.J., with a decent man who runs a hardware store. He's kind to the mom, calls Phillip "Sport," wants to show him how to make a go-cart and even buys the boy a birthday present.
But Phillip doesn't want to be called "Sport" or build a go-cart. He wants to return to perpetual motion with his mother in tow. He forces them back onto the road and his descent into a disturbed, private orbit continues. Phillip may look like a boy who belongs on a sunny soccer field but he has already slipped down the rabbit hole -- and he's not alone there.
Watching director Bette Gordon's adaptation of the novel "The History of Luminous Motion" is like rubbernecking at an accident. Even though you're horrified by what you're seeing, you cannot turn away.
-- Barbara Vancheri
'Better Living Through Circuitry'
Long before a raver says, "The hippies talked about it for ages -- the dawning of the age of Aquarius," the parallels between the Woodstock generation and the kids with Teletubbies on their backs in this movie are staggering -- so much so that it may leave you wondering why the folks who came of age with Dylan get so turned off by the rave new world.
It's all about the music and coming together and scoring some acid and possibly casual sex.
Or as they say in the latest documentary to celebrate the scene, "It's about dancing first and foremost ... bringing people together ... creating this instant feeling ... creating this one-night oblivion where nothing outside that room matters."
Woodstock, anyone?
And best of all, there's no Joan Baez.
Nevermind the Phish-heads. Ravers are the hippies of their generation.
And this movie, more recruiting film than documentary, is testament to that shared feeling of the world as one big psychedelic party.
One guy can't stop talking about how much you empower yourself at a rave. The others just give variations on the central theme of paradise on acid, from the ravers to the stars.
One notable exception is the DJ Frankie Bones, who comes across -- in no small part because he's got this classic Brooklyn accent -- as refreshingly grounded and free of all that goofy hippie rhetoric, whether talking about the time he got a call to play in England to 5,000 people or comparing himself to John Travolta's character crossing the Brooklyn Bridge in "Saturday Night Fever."
He's kind of like the Bowser of the new millennium.
-- Ed Masley
'Secrets of the Shadow World'
What's this movie about? Oh, about 140 minutes.
Somehow conning the Rockefeller Foundation into handing him a grant, filmmaker George Kuchar, whose last epic, "Noche d'Amour," appeared in 1986, exposed a lot of film over a 10-year period.
But, first a little biography. Kuchar, 58, takes credit for more than 60 movies with such titles as "Nocturnal Immaculation" "Unstrap Me" and "Toosties in Autumn."
Get the idea? He's a poor man's Russ Meyer.
This latest release is a montage of a pastiche of a collage; i.e., random scenes of weird characters, bare bottoms, cheesy special effects and endless ramblings by Kuchar.
The subject matter is UFOs and aliens, but that's being too specific.
Just say "Secrets of the Shadow World" is strictly for Kuchar fans.
-- Bob Hoover
'Welcome Back, Mr. McDonald'
Director Koki Mitani begins the film "Welcome Back, Mr. McDonald" with a lengthy uncut scene, pivoting on the passings of cast and crew on the set of a fictional, top-rated Japanese radio drama. It's an unusual shot that suggests cinematography would play an important role in this comic look behind the microphone of the radio show, "Woman of Destiny."
But as Mitani begins introducing characters and their relationships, it becomes apparent that the concept of the opening shot had more to do with budgets than breaking ground.
He uses two cameras: one for following the central action and another for capturing the reactions of supporting players. As a result of the way they're used, cinematography plays a limited role in telling the story and the film appears amateurish and shallow.
The viable story line follows a good romantic radio script that becomes increasingly compromised during the live broadcast because of personal demands, ad libs and corporate concerns. Ultimately, it's stretched beyond recognition into a robust action/sci-fi/comic-drama/farce.
Chronic overacting by several key characters drags the film down to lowbrow, American sitcom standards. The non-shadowed white typeface of the English subtitles is frequently unreadable against light backgrounds, and with little physical action until the last minutes, long portions of important dialogue are missed.
-- John Hayes
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