I write this around noon on Sunday the 8^th of March having just spent the past 12 hours watching 5 pre-release/foreign films in a setting called the Secret Film Festival held roughly yearly at a local theater here in Santa Cruz. The secret is the film themselves. The names of the films aren’t released. But what about when you get to the theater? Nope, sit in you seat and be quiet. The movie is about to start, so how about now? No such luck. Directly before the start of the film the host gives some clues in keyword form as to what you’re about to see. I was sandwiched between two major film buffs who could generally discern the title from the clues and then fist bump their awesomeness when the title screen verified their guess. And that how it went. For twelve hours. I’m not gonna lie, I drifted in and out, but I was more in then out thanks to coffee and excitement. And what follows are my sleep deprived thoughts on the movies themselves. 

Background: Friday night I got about 4 hours of sleep. I made it to bed around 2 or 2:30 and was up by 6:30 to go SCUBA diving. This was the last dive to complete my Rescue certification. It was a two tank dive, meaning we dive once, wait out a surface interval to get the nitrogen out of our systems then dive again. We finished up around 6pm. Diving is very physically demanding so I was pretty exhausted. But I have a mineralogy test on Tuesday. I need to know 70+ minerals backwards and forwards. I think can miss 17 before I fail completely, which would be very bad. So instead of sleeping I showered, redressed, ate a PB&J then headed to campus to sit in the room with all the rocks so I could attempt to learn via osmosis. I studied till about 10pm then headed back down the hill to meet up with the other guys I was going to the film festival with.

We bought our tickets, 13 bucks for 5+ movies, a sweet bargain, then ate gigantic burritos to try and stave on the inevitable hunger. Finally, to the theater, where we met up with still more friends. Once inside, we staked out a row and eagerly anticipated the first movie.

Sunshine Cleaning: A great, slightly more mainstream start to the night. This one is super crisp because I was awake the whole time, but is also contends with the added weight of everything that came after it. Regardless, it was a very fun romp with a great cast of characters, including a totally unobnoxious, quite possibly even cute, child actor. If you want to see two very attractive women cleaning up blood and guts with the wacky hi-jinks and emotional upheavals bound to ensue I’d totally recommend this one. It’d even been good for a date night if the significant other can handle moderate amounts of bodily fluids.

Cronocrimenes: I dozed off once, for the briefest of moments yet thanks to the redundancy built into the framing device I still feel I got what I needed from this movie. This was my favorite of everything I saw. The title in English means “Time Crimes”. The clues we were given were: Spanish, time-travel, crime. I was hooked before the title credits ran. It would be hard to say much beyond the clues I was given without ruining some of the suspense, even though I’ve been told the trailer gives too much away, so be forewarned. Also, don't let the trailer fool you, it's not a horror movie even though there are those elements. What I will say is that if you’ve been frustrated by the illogical writing of the time travel sequences from shows like Heroes and Lost this may be the antidote you’ve been seeking. Heartily recommended.

Let the Right One In: Swedish child vampire love. Imagine Twilight but with subtitles and balls to tell a real story. Many modern vampire movies toss out mythological conventions but sometimes embracing those restrictions fuels creativity instead of stifling it. I am reminded of an argument I heard advocating established poetic forms that said the best poets don't write free form because without a limit to push against its hard to break new ground. I think a similar idea applies here. I’ve heard there is an American remake in the works but I can’t imagine American audiences will accept half the shit the movie pulled. No, it was not a gore fest, but more a poignant tale about adolescence and the difficulties of being a child vampire or a human child trying to establish more adult relationships . Without question this was the most cinematically ambitious of all the movies we watched and was completely successful.

Skills Like This: This one was pretty zany and I think I enjoyed it more than my co-viewers did. It’s the story of a failing writer who decides to unleash his kleptomania on the world and loves every minute of it. The cartoonish front man is aided by some dear and loyal friends while a romance develops between him and the bank teller he originally heisted from. I really dug the romance, adored his friends and, for the most part, admired the main character. This may be an instance where a movie is made more for me than others, but screw it. I laughed enough and felt the drama enough to enjoy it in my completely altered state. Remember at this point it’s about 7-9am. This movie was enough to bounce me back awake for the final feature.

Chocolate: The ambiguous title bellies a beast of a movie. The thrust is that an autistic, almost Echo like girl, learns ridiculous amounts of martial arts by observation then proceeds to beat down some yakuza to get money owed to her mob mommy for some chemotherapy. I can’t believe you haven’t made up your mind yet. Autism, muy thai, mobsters. Get to watching.

Those were my thoughts. I managed to get all of this written before falling asleep Sunday. Daylight savings did not help. Its Tuesday evening now, the mineralogy test is over and I survived. I’ve touched up some grammar, punctuation and spelling but the above reviews are mostly unaltered and written in a near comatose fit of typing. Hope it gets you excited to go out and see some movies!

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