AFI Fest: A to W

 
GO  GOGOL BORDELLO NON-STOP (USA) At one point in this giddily entertaining documentary on New York–based “Gypsy-punk” band Gogol Bordello, a talking head remarks, “You have to invent freedom.” Director Margarita Jimeno spends five years following the sprawling band and its charismatic front man, Eugene Hutz (who’s acted in Everything Is Illuminated and Filth and Wisdom), while they do just that. As the camera traverses the globe, tilting from Hutz’ biography (including home movies from his native Kiev) to rehearsal footage, raucous live performances and interviews with various members of the Gogol collective, the film becomes a heady, inspiring discussion of art, politics and personal identity, and the points at which they all intersect. (ArcLight Hollywood, Sat., Nov. 1, 7:10 p.m.; Wed., Nov. 5, 12:30 p.m.) (Ernest Hardy)

 
CRITIC’S PICK  GOMORRAH (Italy) Matteo Garrone’s dramatic portrait of the notorious Italian Mafia organization Neapolitan Camorra focuses on the ancillary figures who, willingly or not, prop up the mob’s activities. The five interwoven narratives in this visceral but disciplined and beautifully acted movie show to devastating effect how ordinary men and women — and especially vulnerable boys desperate for masculine role models — get caught up in the seductive violence and are ruthlessly destroyed by the network’s hardened henchmen. It’s hard to tell whether the movie exaggerates the Mafia’s reach deep into and pollution of the infrastructure of everyday life, laying the groundwork for guerrilla-style civil war. Given Gomorrah’s arch referencing of the brutality in Coppola’s Godfather trilogy, I could wish Garrone were a little less excited himself by the brutality he stretches over 136 long minutes. And if he, too, like author Roberto Saviano (upon whose best-selling exposé Gomorrah is based), is forced to leave Italy for fear of mob reprisal, will he be denied entrance to the United States on the grounds that one of the Camorra’s real-life business ventures is helping to underwrite the rebuilding of the Twin Towers in New York? (ArcLight Hollywood, Sun., Nov. 2, 3 p.m.; Fri., Nov. 7, 9:30 p.m.) (Ella Taylor)

 
THE HIGHER FORCE (Iceland) The formula of a loser hilariously bumbling his way into a film-schooly gangster demimonde gets a tedious, slapdash run from Icelandic director Olaf Fleur (The Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela). David is a gopher for some geeky crooks, who mistakenly decide he has tracked down a notorious criminal named Harald last seen in Mexico. In fact, it’s just his landlord Harald, a crank who keeps cornering his “hobbitlike” tenant. The title belongs to a martial-arts video that inspires David, part of a callous back story that sees his kid brother killed in a hit-and-run in the first two minutes. (ArcLight Hollywood, Sat., Nov. 1, 3:30 p.m.; Sat., Nov. 8, 9:30 p.m.) (NR)

 
HI MY NAME IS RYAN (USA) Paul Eagleston and Stephen Rose’s documentary cops the Sundance-twee aesthetic wholesale, complete with end-credits Kimya Dawson song. Entirely appropriate for a profile of Ryan Avery, Phoenix teen musician/performance artist whose hyperpituitary condition makes him look (as a friend remarks) like a baby. Avery’s projects are short on technique and big on audience participation and property destruction. As a profile, Hi My Name Is Ryan is competent but shies away from Avery’s troubled background. As a portrait of Phoenix’s downtown arts scene, however, it’s occasionally hilarious, especially when interviewing avowed Avery nemesis Wayne Michael Reich, a local photographer who gets really, really angry at the teens who mess with him. (ArcLight Hollywood, Thurs., Nov. 6, 9:50 p.m.; Sat., Nov. 8, 12:30 p.m.) (Vadim Rizov)

 
GO  IDIOTS AND ANGELS (USA) Cult animator Bill Plympton’s hand-penciled expressionism is most recognizable from his shorts, likely because his deadpan, spatial-distorting sight gags often can’t sustain momentum in feature form, almost by design. Yet his beautifully creepy fifth film somehow transcends this limitation and proves his most fully realized yet — a grim fairy-tale comedy, told without a word of dialogue, about a truculent businessman who discovers angelic wings sprouting from his back. The mean bastard undergoes a spiritual awakening as his new appendages thwart his every transgression, a humiliating rise-fall-and-rise tale that affects a bar owner and his salsa-dancing wife, a conniving surgeon and a town full of arson victims. Less concerned with gags than nimble storytelling and wide-screen aesthetics (every brooding corner of the frame is blotted in monochromatic noir hues), Plympton mines elegance from the utterly gonzo. (ArcLight Hollywood, Wed., Nov. 5, 9:40 p.m.; Thurs., Nov. 6, 1 p.m.) (Aaron Hillis)

 
GO  THE JUCHE IDEA (USA) The latest of Interkosmos director Jim Finn’s reinhabitings of foreign propaganda films has all the comical cult oddity of a YouTube forward and, for Finn’s widening circle of festival and avant admirers, more intricate fiddling with ideology on vintage instruments. The archival playground this time is North Korea, where the Dear Leader espouses the titular ethos of socialism and self-reliance. Footage from shamed-comrade melodramas and mass parades alternates with restaged ESL lessons and Finn’s ironic framing story about a visiting filmmaker retooling her host country’s party line. With some effort, the satirical dialectic offers more than meets the eye. (Mann Chinese 6, Thurs., Nov. 6, 9:40 p.m.; ArcLight Hollywood, Sat., Nov. 8, 4:30 p.m.) (NR)