SXSW2006–Puppy/A Scanner Darkly/Animated Shorts/Wide Awake

PUPPY Just to sow that not all Australian movies are good, SXSW decided to give us Puppy. It’s the story of a young woman named Lizzie (Nadia Townsend from Danny Deckchair) who gets kidnapped by a crazy man named Aiden (Bernard Curry). He thinks that she is his ex-wife, so, of course, he ties her up so she can’t leave again.

It turns out that he should be on medication. He stopped taking it and went a little, well, funny…in the head.

For those of us who are tired of the Stockholm Syndrome, this is not the movie we want to see. Unless it’s incredibly well written (like Samurai X: Trust/Betrayal), there’s just no reason to believe that someone will fall in love with their captor. Especially when he ties her up, nearly rapes her and keeps her in the house with two vicious dogs.

When the tables get turned, things just get worse for the movie. She tortures him for a bit, then shaves him. Then we’re supposed to believe that she falls in love with him just because she sees how young he really is under the big, bushy beard. At least, that’s what I got out of it.

So, not a good one to start the day off with. But things got better.

A SCANNER DARKLY

This is definitely one of those movies that I need to see again. I was so tired, and the pacing was so weird, that I kept nodding off every five minutes or so.

But don’t let that be a review. I actually liked the movie.

It’s based on the Philip K. Dick novel about a guy named Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves). He is a drug addict, but he’s also working with the cops to try to stop a seller. He lives with Barris (Robert Downey, Jr.) and Luckman (Woody Harrelson), two druggies who are being investigated. His girlfriend, Donna (Winona Ryder), is possibly also being investigated. Of course, so is Bob.

The movie is set seven years in the future and there’s a new technology that helps the cops go undercover. They’re suits that scramble their identities. It turns the wearer into an indistinguishable blob.

So, how do you do that in a movie? Well, make it animated, of course. Richard Linklater decided to use the same roto-scoping technology he used on Waking Life, but it looks even better this time. And it really gives the movie a dream-like quality that Dick would probably actually be happy with since it’s inspired by his own drug addiction. Then again, he was never happy with much, so probably not.

The performances are great (even Keanu is…passable) and the script is funny and confusing sometimes at the same time. I’m sure that the next time I see it (in it’s fully completed form…there were some music cues that needed to be finished and some of the animation needed some cleaning up), I’ll love it.

ANIMATED SHORTS

This year’s crop of animated shorts was almost unimpressive. There were a lot of more or less experimental films this time, which I’m not usually all into.

There’s also the obligatory big budget studio short. This year it was right up front. “First Flight” is Dreamworks’ submission. It’s about a businessman who teaches a little baby bird how to fly. It’s sweet, sappy and pretty funny. Not great, but it’s worth seeing.

“Vaudeville,” “Chronicles Of A Professional Eulogist,” “Octave,” “Mural” and “The Heart Collector” are all pretty much just people with big ideas putting them into tiny movies. The animation is good in each case and, if you’re into that sort of thing, they’re kind of cool. But I won’t be searching them out to see again.

“Stalk” was a really bizarre and creepy short about a bunny that has a secret admirer. And it’s a really weird one, at that. All of the characters kind of look like that “We like the moon”/”Quizno’s” thing with the real eyes and mouth edited onto an animated character. A cool short with a really weird story.

“Playtime” was cool mainly because it had a bunch of old toys animated to a good beat.

“Tall Tales & Other Big Lies” was a funny story of a guy getting humped by a dog at a music festival.

“The Wraith Of Cobble Hill” was a cool claymation short about a boy in Brooklyn who is trusted with the keys to the store next door.

“I Am (Not) Van Gogh” is an experimental short (sort of) that combines live-action and animation. The voice-over made it memorable because the filmmaker was trying to get funding for the film we were watching.

“Filmstrip” is a really funny, well, filmstrip about a girl who is just trying to find love, but finds more than she ever wanted.

“Pilgrims_Progess” was a hilarious early computer game that suddenly went all political on us.

The best short was “The Zit,” a pretty simple story of a boy, a girl and a zit that held more than the boy ever thought it would. Good animation and a few gross-out moments make for one of the best shorts I’ve seen at the festival this year.

WIDE AWAKE

Ever wonder why you can’t sleep? So did Alan Berliner (director of Nobody’s Business and The Sweetest Sound). So he went to a few doctors and talked to his parents about why he’s an insomniac. He hasn’t slept will his whole life and, now that he has a family, he wants to cure himself.

Luckily, Alan has hours and hours of footage to cut into his documentary. Not just family movies, but stock footage, movie scenes, early film sequences, newsreels, found footage…the man is a packrat of media. It’s pretty amazing, actually.

Wide Awake really makes you think about sleep and what it means to our bodies. It makes you want to figure out why you can’t sleep and where your habits came from. It also makes you really tired. Not in a “I’m so bored” way, but it’s just kind of an exhausting film. Alan is so tired all the time that it kind of wears you out to spend an hour and a half with him talking about sleep. But that’s sort of what he was going for.

This is a great movie. Anyone who has ever had a sleepless night should see it. It’ll help. Trust me.