Los Angeles Film Festival Guide 2008

A A A Comments (0) By L.A. Weekly Film Critics Wednesday, Jun 18 2008

GO WONDERFUL TOWN (Thailand) A Bangkok architect heads to a seaside Thai town to build a new resort complex and falls in love with a winsome hotel owner; their tentative romance is a sign of life in a landscape devastated by natural disaster. For his feature debut, Thai writer-director Aditya Assarat adopts a contemplative groove that owes debts to Asian art-house contemporaries Tsai Ming-Liang and Jia Zhangke. But if Wonderful Town’s aesthetics seem borrowed, its subject — village life in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami — feels piercingly specific. (AMC Avco Center, Sat., June 21, 7 p.m.; The Landmark, Tues., June 24, 9:45 p.m.) (AN)

Anvil! The Story Of Anvil

Ballast

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CRITIC’S PICK YOU, THE LIVING (Sweden) Too easy to call it Songs From the Second Tier, but the fact is that Roy Andersson’s follow-up to his much-admired millennial horror-show Songs From the Second Floor lacks that film’s concentration — even as it replicates its episodic structure, rueful humanism and basic aesthetic (what a colleague aptly describes as “New Yorker cartoons by Bergman”). But there are still enough beautiful, sui generis moments here for 10 films. Andersson’s static frames are among the most impeccably composed in contemporary cinema, conducive to both slow-burn slapstick (the most brilliant gag involves a clumsily removed tablecloth) and patiently unfurled beauty. A scene placing a pair of newlyweds in their (unexpectedly) mobile home is both an elegant visual joke and a plangent depiction of the desire to belong — a grateful moment of connection. (Billy Wilder Theater, Mon., June 23, 10 p.m. and Thurs., June 26, 4:30 p.m.) (Adam Nayman)

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