Los Angeles Film Festival Guide 2008

CRITIC’S PICK  BOOGIE MAN: THE LEE ATWATER STORY (USA) Just about everyone interviewed for Stefan Forbes’ fascinating documentary about Lee Atwater — whether Democrat or Republican pols, African-American bluesmen or hardened reporters — ends anecdotes about the Republican strategist’s dirty tricks with a titter that’s either nervous or ambivalently appreciative. Politically speaking, it may be enough to know that Atwater, who shamelessly drove race into the 1988 presidential campaign to destroy Michael Dukakis and win the election for George Bush Sr., was a disciple of Strom Thurmond who got along like a house on fire with Bush Jr. and taught Karl Rove most of what he knows about exploiting media. But Forbes adroitly fills out his picture of this “marsupial” little man with “the eyes of a killer” through the testimony of those who admired and/or loathed Atwater. Less persuasive is Forbes’ perfunctory, psychologically thin rummage through Atwater’s childhood for a traumatic event that would explain his utter ruthlessness. He finds one, but it’s much less interesting than the question of whether the blues-playing Southerner was a racist or merely a cynic, or the film’s revelations about the ambiguities of Atwater’s highly publicized remorse, with hand on Bible, as he lay dying (and largely ignored by the dynasty he had served so assiduously) of brain cancer. (Mann Festival, Sun., June 22, 7 p.m.; Regent, Mon., June 23, 4:30 p.m.; The Landmark, Fri., June 27, 1:45 p.m.) (Ella Taylor)

Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story

Dirty Hands: The Art and Crimes of David Choe

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More About

• AMC Avco Center
• Lee Atwater
• Lee Atwater Story
• Italian Cultural Institute
• Documentary Films

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Dirty Hands: The Art and Crimes of David Choe

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Heartbeat Detector

GO  THE CHOIR (South Africa) While not flinching from the harsh realities of his subject matter, Michael Davie succeeds in crafting a provocative and strangely sentimental documentary out of life in a South African prison. Carefully staged song-and-dance sequences alternate with footage of grueling captivity as the angel-voiced inmates of a Johannesburg penitentiary expiate their sins chorally and participate in the Best National Prison Choir competition. An alarming degree of access to prison life appears to have been granted the filmmakers of this ambitious work that explores both the redemptive power of song and living conditions in newly democratized South Africa. (The Landmark, Sun., June 22, 7:30 p.m.; Regent, Thurs., June 26, 9:45 p.m.) (John Tottenham)

CRITIC’S PICK  DIRTY HANDS: THE ART AND CRIMES OF DAVID CHOE (USA) “There’s a downside to making your dreams come true,” sayeth the titular “outlaw” graphic designer, and as long as it sticks to memorializing the feckless life and career that ran up against that seemingly inevitable moment of clarity, Harry Kim’s tagalong documentary has nearly as much run-amuck energy to burn as its self-destructive, supertalented subject. Then, after an hour or so of watching kleptomaniac tagger, muralist and magazine illustrator Choe say and do and (most urgently) paint whatever comes into his explosive head, there come — as an only possibly unintended consequence of so much self-will run riot — three months in a Tokyo jail cell (on assault charges) and the transformative epiphany at which those most invested, emotionally and otherwise, in the artist and his renegade career can only shake their bemused heads and avert their eyes. Had Choe, at this point, sidelined his filmmaker pal and seized control of the narrative, Dirty Hands might have delved deeper and ended up a bona fide confessio. As it stands, we’re left — more or less happily — with Kim’s wistful framing sequence of a dinosaur hunt amid the brothels and swamp lands of the Congo, along with dispirited glimpses of a counterculture hero suddenly (if erratically) impelled by a set of directives his acolytes and enablers dare not follow. (Majestic Crest, Sat., June 21, 9:45 p.m.; Mann Festival, Sun., June 22, 4 p.m. and Thurs., June 26, 4:30 p.m.) (RS)

GO  FINISHING HEAVEN (USA) Despite the fact that the principal subject of this true-life tale is gratingly obnoxious, the documentary itself is never less than enthralling. Director Mark Mann picks up the thread dropped in 1970 when promising NYU film student Robert Feinberg abandoned his film Heaven — briefly produced by Martin Scorsese and cast with denizens of New York’s downtown arts scene — and spent the next 30 years living aimlessly, avoiding work on the movie. Part gritty cautionary tale, part glittery survey of bygone eras in New York counterculture and American filmmaking, Finishing Heaven is an uncorked time capsule that speaks to the nature of creativity and the self-imposed barriers that artists create for themselves. (Regent, Wed.,June 25, 7:15 p.m.; The Landmark, Thurs., June 26, 2 p.m. and Sat., June 28, 1:30 p.m.) (Ernest Hardy)

GO  FOUR WIVES — ONE MAN (Iran/Sweden) The opening moments of this intriguingly multilayered documentary on a polygamous marriage in Iran let the viewer know that conversation will be frank. “The only thing my son thinks about is pussy,” says the elderly mother of the man in the equation. By turns funny, infuriating and depressing, Four Wives follows three years in the life of Heda, his wives and the 20 children who all constitute his family. It’s a complex but one-sided dynamic, as the women bicker amongst themselves about who’s most miserable or maltreated, toss profanities and threats Heda’s way, and suffer verbal and physical abuse — all as he threatens to bring a younger, more obedient wife into the fold. The film’s closing image is utterly heartbreaking. (The Landmark, Fri., June 27, 7:30 p.m. and Sun., June 29, 1 p.m.) (EH)