If you’ve ever attended a Music Box Massacre, you know well that Movieside Film Festival founder Rusty Nails doesn’t skimp on the extra toppings; of course there’s the obligatory line-up of brain-bashing horrors both old and new (this year’s event sees the Music Box playing host to the Midwestern premiere of Bruce McDonald’s deliciously apocalyptic Pontypool in addition to projecting a print of the 1945 Boris Karloff classic Isle of the Dead), but on top of that you’ve got spectacular special guests, charity auctions for Vital Bridges, and dealer booths selling some of the best horror memorabilia around.

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Sometimes the setup for a film is so tantalizing that when the picture fails miserably, it hurts that much more. Pandorum is certainly one of these instances — a mysterious sci-fi horror freak-out that misses the horror altogether and bores the audience with asinine characters plodding through all-too-familiar territory. Take one part Event Horizon and equal parts Ghosts of Mars and The Descent, then mix them in a dirty blender, and that’s basically Pandorum. It takes a lot from what came before, then sullies things up by botching the execution, time and again. Instead of tension, viewers get frenzied editing. In the place of horror, there is literally a pool of fecal matter. As far as any kind of satisfying mystery, if the picture didn’t already lose its audience even before the halfway point, the rapid right turns in the finale aren’t going to blow anyone’s mind. Unfortunately for the filmmakers, the only thing they blow is a chance to deliver the goods.

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Anybody who likes a solid sci-fi action film probably loves Bruce Willis, and anybody who loves Bruce Willis would probably be willing to give his futuristic thriller Surrogates a chance. But, sadly, this movie doesn’t deliver for fans of the genre, for lovers of old Bruno, or for soulless robotic avatars, populating society in place of real humans.  

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Director Kevin Tancharoen makes it clear right from the start that he wants his remake of Fame to be something like the anti-American Idol, a celebration of hard work and dedication to craft. This message gets hammered home early on by Principal Simms (Debbie Allen), the head of the High School for the Performing Arts (P.A. for short), in a forceful speech to incoming freshmen about how if they want fame they’ll have to pay for it — in sweat.

And, for the first half-hour, the movie gets by on showing us just that. The opening montage of kids auditioning for the school has a seductive flow; the rapid editing gives the movie momentum, although it’s a little too quick to let us fully appreciate the dancing. Sadly, as we get to know this new crop of students, the energy quickly dissipates because, when it comes to their lives, screenwriter Allison Burnett leaves no cliché behind. Troubled youth from a broken inner-city home? Check. Driven dance diva who has no time for a personal life? Check. Classical pianist who really wants to sing R&B?
Check. Casting couch? Check. No supportive parents in the entire universe? Check, check, and check.

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Since the release of Roger & Me in 1989, Michael Moore’s name is rarely heard in the media without the preface of “controversial filmmaker” — and that’s when they’re being kind. Less receptive outlets tend to use terms like “left-wing lightning rod,” and, occasionally, “lying bastard.” With a 20-year career that’s taken on some of the most polarizing issues in the United States, his reputation as an incendiary liberal isn’t surprising, nor is it undeserved. While that reputation has made it difficult for his films to garner an objective reception, they’ve rarely, if ever, been boring. Bearing that in mind, the premise of Capitalism: A Love Story — two hours dedicated to the evolution of economic theory between 1932 and 2008 — threatened to be at least a little tedious. Any trepidation one might have going into the film, however, is unwarranted. Capitalism passionately incorporates elements from virtually all of Moore’s past efforts, from poor health care and mass layoffs to the devastation of being evicted from one’s home, giving it a cohesiveness that makes for a movie as inspiring and forceful as anything the director has done in his past. While it’s unlikely that this will be Moore’s last documentary, it feels like an opus, or, less dramatically, the end of a cross-country road trip that began and ended in Flint, MI, peppered with unsuccessful attempts to get inside the headquarters of General Motors.

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Adapting a book of short stories by postmodern master David Foster Wallace is an ambitious task for any screenwriter, but it’s an especially impressive undertaking for a first-time filmmaker. The Office actor John Krasinski makes his directorial debut with this bleak comedy that boasts a talent-filled roster of actors, but its loosely connected source material probably should have stayed on the shelf, rather than venturing onto the screen.

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Michael Moore is a man of many hats, both figuratively (director, activist, idealist), and literally (does he ever wear the same baseball cap twice?). When I sat down with a group of Michiganders for a hastily relocated interview — it was intended to take place at The Renaissance Center (General Motors headquarters) in Detroit, but Moore wasn’t allowed in the building — I wasn’t sure which version of Michael I was going to get. Would he be, as some television and radio outlets have implied, a crazed, rabid extremist spouting liberal rhetoric potent enough to turn the room into a bunch of hippies? Would he bring a bullhorn? Was this all a political stunt? I could be wrong, of course, but in reality I don’t think any of this was the case. Despite his hulking stature, he came across, if anything, as meek.

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My week at The International Film Institute got more exciting as it went along. If one has any interest in the entertainment business, L.A. is a great city for tourism, and the program takes advantage of that. Our group tooled around town in a stretch limo, had an unusually thorough tour of the Warner Brothers lot, and attended a press screening of Funny People at the impressive Arclight Hollywood Cinema. We were also lucky enough to be there during a rare U.S. visit by Hayao Miyazaki, who got a tribute at the AMPAS theater, where Pixar’s John Lasseter showed an amazing selection of clips and conducted a Q&A with the self-deprecating anime master.

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