Los Angeles Film Festival Guide 2008

GO  LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (Sweden) Terrible title, brilliant film. In ’70s Stockholm, an outcast albino boy named Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) is routinely bullied at school until a mysterious girl his age, Eli (Lina Leandersson), moves in next door. She too feels isolated and rejected from the world outside, but for very different reasons; could be, I dunno, something to do with her taste for human blood and ability to fly. Tomas Alfredson, whose prior credits are primarily on Swedish TV shows, makes an astute leap to the big screen with this coming-of-age/horror hybrid that not only delivers gorgeous wintry panoramas, but also the requisite metaphors — in this case, vampirism as both adolescent power fantasy and terminal-disease medicament. When it comes to preteens as eternal vampires, Kirsten Dunst in Interview With the Vampire used to be the gold standard; in Leandersson, I think we have a new champion. And if you ever wanted to know what exactly happens to vampires if they enter your house without being first invited across the threshold, this may be the first movie to show the consequences in graphic detail. (AMC Avco Center, Fri., June 20, 10:30 p.m.; The Landmark, Sat., June 21, 10 p.m.) (LYT)

Anvil! The Story Of Anvil

Ballast

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More About

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

GO  LOOT (USA) The loot being sought by Utah gadget inventor Lance Larson may lie in two spots — Japanese swords buried in a chest in the Philippines and jewelry hidden in an unknown Austrian residence. By coincidence, Larson stumbles upon two World War II vets who both claim to have left bounty behind during the war but who can’t recall the exact locations. In this artfully compact documentary, director Darius Marder follows Larson as he indefatigably attempts to pry — oh, so gently — useful nuggets of info out of the two old men. As patient as his subject, Marder lets Larson set the film’s sweetly melancholy tone, and that’s wise, because this Utah father of four turned treasure hunter has a touch of the poet about him. (Majestic Crest, Mon., June 23, 7 p.m. and Thurs., June 26, 4:30 p.m.; Italian Cultural Institute, Fri., June 27, 9:30 p.m.) (CW)

MADE IN AMERICA (USA) Stacy Peralta, director of the skate-and-surf-themed documentaries Dogtown and Z-Boys and Riding Giants, shifts his focus from the Westside to South-Central in this ambitious treatise on L.A. gang culture. Peralta’s previous films worked because they were autobiographical stories about unsung subcultures. Made in America is told in the same catchy style as Dogtown, but without the anchor of personal experience, Peralta’s tone becomes clichéd and pedantic. Nevertheless, the film serves as a vital reminder of South-Central’s ongoing, yet largely invisible, suffering. A close-up sequence of bereft mothers, each grieving for a child lost to gang violence, should be required viewing for every Los Angeles resident. (California Plaza, Fri., June 27, 8 p.m.) (SS)

GO  MAN ON WIRE (UK) Like the love child of Jean-Pierre Melville and Ripley’s Believe It or Not, Wisconsin Death Trip director James Marsh’s wildly entertaining docudrama revisits the peculiar case of French provocateur Philippe Petit’s 1974 tightrope walk between the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Petit had actually conceived of his stunt years earlier, when he first read about the WTC’s impending construction, then spent months casing the joint and recruiting the crack (and crackpot) team of collaborators who would aid him in his daredevil feat. From those raw materials, Marsh has crafted a melancholic valentine to a bombed-out icon of the Manhattan skyline, and a magnificently eccentric film about imagination, risk taking and creative self-expression. (Majestic Crest, Fri., June 20, 7 p.m.; The Landmark, Sun., June 22, 1 p.m.) (SF)

GO  MECHANICAL LOVE (Denmark) Phie Ambo’s documentary plays like Rod Serling–penned sci-fi, except that everything in it happened just last year. A Japanese engineer obsessively tries to re-create his family with robotic doppelgangers called “geminoids,” and can’t understand why his daughter is so creeped out by them; meanwhile, robotic baby seals prove comforting to mentally deteriorating seniors, who can benefit from the love of a pet but might not be capable of taking care of a living one. (Think really high-end Furbys.) Alas, no talk of robo-sex here, so let’s hope there’s a sequel. (Mann Festival, Thurs., June 26, 7 p.m.; The Landmark, Sat., June 28, 10 p.m.) (LYT)

MEDICINE FOR MELANCHOLY (USA) Following a one-night stand, two artsy 20-somethings slowly reveal themselves to each other over the course of a drifting all-day date in San Francisco. The twist? They’re both African-American in a city that isn’t. It’s a fresh way to approach old questions about blackness, but by the time the couple takes an afternoon amble through the Museum of the African Diaspora, it feels like director Barry Jenkins is flogging his theme. More penetrating are the expressions of actors Wyatt Cenac and Tracey Heggins: his eyes, enormous and gentle, and her smile, a soft reward on a sharp face. Jenkins wants to spark a discussion, but his film has the most to say when no one is talking at all. (The Landmark, Fri., June 20, 9:45 p.m.; Regent, Mon., June 23, 7 p.m. and Tues., June 24, 2 p.m.) (SS)