Los Angeles Film Festival: Reviews, A to Z

GO  BRANSON (USA) Instead of delivering the expected look-at-the-losers portrait of the titular Missouri town, frequently dismissed as a tacky Midwestern Vegas, director Brent Meeske’s compassionate documentaryexplores the struggles of several little-known performers who are drowning in debt and debating whether the time has finally come to move on with their lives. Many individual stories break the heart, but the most poignant tale belongs to “Jackson Cash,” a Johnny Cash impersonator who bears a great vocal similarity to the Man in Black but who also seems to have inherited the legend’s addiction problems, which threaten to destroy his brief, unlikely stab at stardom. (Regent, Sun., June 21, 7 p.m. & Tues., June 23, 4:30 p.m.) (Tim Grierson)

GO  BRONSON (U.K.) As the violent British felon turned award-winning poet and artist Charles Bronson (née Michael Gordon Peterson), actor Tom Hardy proves more than ready for his close-up, cackling, snarling and head-butting his way through Pusher director Nicolas Winding Refn’s mercifully unconventional biopic. With a grab bag of visual and sonic tricks borrowed from the likes of Kubrick and Peter Greenaway, Refn stages Bronson’s life as a kind of sociopathic vaudeville, with the character recounting his misadventures before an audience, while a series of abstract formalist flashbacks illustrate his violent journey from the crib to various other barred enclosures. The constant is Bronson’s art-making, which flourished behind bars but may, Refn and screenwriter Brock Norman Brock argue, have begun the first time he committed armed robbery — a stickup as a form of standup. (Mann Festival, Sat., June 20, 10 p.m.; Landmark, Sun., June 21, 10 p.m.) (Scott Foundas)

Convention

Embodiment of Evil

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CALIMUCHO (Netherlands) Dutch filmmaker Eugenie Jansen (Sleeping Rough) uses a real-life traveling circus as the backdrop for this scripted tale of a woman named Dicky (Dicky Kilian), who’s intent on raising the son of her late sister, a circus performer. Despite the film’s insight into the hardscrabble life of a one-tent big top, Jansen’s decision to shoot nearly every scene in tight medium shots while not always showing the face of the person who is speaking makes this slow-moving film even more maddening. (Majestic Crest, Sun., June 21, 1:30 p.m. & Mon., June 22, 9:45 p.m.) (Chuck Wilson)

GO  CALL IF YOU NEED ME (Malaysia) Long takes and lugubrious rhythms dominate director James Lee’s deglamorized account of low-level gangsters passing time in Kuala Lumpur. Anticipated themes of honor and loyalty abound, as country mouse Or Kia (Sunny Pang) comes to the big city to work in his cousin’s gang, but narrative takes a back seat to accumulating details, as vaguely seedy characters sit around chewing the fat and waiting for something to happen. There’s barely a sidearm in sight (the most lethal weapons here are the coffin nails sucked down by everyone in sight), but the smell of violence is palpable and meticulously entwined with the petty frustrations informing every move. (Landmark, Mon., June 22, 9:45 p.m.; Regent, Sat., June 27, 4 p.m.) (LG)

GO  CITY OF BORDERS (USA) The questions raised by Yun Suh’s vibrant documentary about the last days of Shushan, Jerusalem’s only gay bar (timed to the resignation of its owner from the Jerusalem city council), include whether the erstwhile clientele, struggling for recognition amid that holy city’s volatile mix of competing fundamentalisms, can sustain itself as a political constituency. Or does it make more sense to head out to greener pastures: Tel Aviv, maybe, or — strange but true — Cleveland? What’s certain amid so much uncertainty is that nightclub or no nightclub, political representation or none, nothing will prevent these people — man, woman, Arab, Jew ­­— from hopping fences, hooking up, making families. (Regent, Sun., June 21, 9:45 p.m.; Landmark, Tues., June 23, 7:30 p.m.) (Ron Stringer)

GO  COLD SOULS (USA) What is the shape and size of a human soul? And if you could remove your soul from your body, would you still be you? These are among the questions taken up by writer-director Sophie Barthes’ amusing existential divertissement about the little-known world of international soul-trafficking. During rehearsals for a production of Uncle Vanya, Paul Giamatti (playing himself) begins to feel weighed down by Chekhov’s lovelorn, chronically dissatisfied protagonist. So he puts his soul on deposit at a Roosevelt Island “soul-storage facility” (run by a kooky David Strathairn, not playing himself) that also deals in black-market, Russian-harvested souls ferried to the U.S. in the bellies of human mules. Maria Vasilyevna Voinitskaya Full of Grace? Not exactly. Cold Souls begins with a blast of self-assured ingenuity that it doesn’t quite sustain over the long haul, but Barthes’ low-fi futurism, generous good humor and respect for the audience’s literacy are easy to admire. (Mann Festival; Thurs., June 25, 7 p.m.; Regent, Sat., June 27, 1:30 p.m.) (SF)

CRITIC’S PICK  CONVENTION (USA) Convention is an unintentionally ironic title, considering both this film and AJ Schnack’s last — the poetic, quasi-installation Kurt Cobain: About a Son — illustrate the director’s proclivity for challenging the standards of nonfiction filmmaking. Not that this witty, sharp-eyed and effortlessly entertaining portrait of the city of Denver during the 2008 Democratic National Convention is so far removed from the vérité purism of Robert Drew or D.A. Pennebaker (if Frederick Wiseman had made the film, it would still be called Convention). But Schnack’s curious instinct is to remove the presidential and backstage politics entirely, instead focusing on the frenzied microcosm of cogs who often remain invisible if they’re doing their jobs well. From the tireless deputy city liaison whose mobility depends on learning from Mayor Hickenlooper how to drive his scooter and the poor Denver Post staffer who suffers a breakdown while facing impossible deadlines to the disorganized organizers who march their overreaching entitlement up and down the streets before hilariously getting trapped in a dead end, the film sees the logistics behind democracy in action. The eclectic Americana soundtrack is aces, as is Schnack’s formal rigor (the seamless multicamera shoot was helmed by a handful of notable documentarians, including My Country, My Country’s Laura Poitras and They Killed Sister Dorothy’s Daniel Junge). “I wonder if he’s nervous,” someone mumbles as Obama’s motorcade arrives, a delightfully appropriate query in a film about every person’s vital role in shaping society. (Majestic Crest, Mon., June 22, 7 p.m.; Landmark, Sat., June 27, 9:45 p.m.) (Aaron Hillis)