Milwaukee Film Festival 2020 - Movie Round Up

It's the most wonderful tiiiiiiime of the yeeeeeeeeeear! It's Milwaukee Film Festival. I was worried that the Film Festival was going to be another thing that the damn pandemic took from us. The good news is that MFF did an amazing job turning the whole thing virtual. It was my first year as a member of Milwaukee Film and it felt really good to support such a wonderful cause in such a weird time. What made it even better was that I won a contest and the prize was two free vouchers for a movie AND a pound of coffee from a local coffee shop. (I'm not a coffee drinker so I handed that over to my two Film Fest Viewing Buddies aka Garrett and Maggie). Part of the film fest that I love the most is the "well it's 8pm on a Tuesday night and I'm getting in the car and driving to a small, cool, theater in downtown Milwaukee to watch a documentary on competitive chicken showing in New Zealand. I won't get home until midnight 30 and I'll be trash for the first part of the next day but I have 0 REGRETS". The good thing is that film fest is just as magical from my couch in the suburbs with pizza and root beer floats because the company and the movies are still amazing.

Let's talk about movies, shall we?

 Stage: The Culinary Internship - A documentary about people going through a very intense cooking internship at a famous restaurant in Spain. It's some very serious gastronomy. Like, where you aren't particularly sure that the food is actually food because it's so fancy. The idea was interesting but there wasn't much context about the restaurant and I'd have liked if they would have gotten more in-depth with the interns. 3/5 stars.

Shiva Baby - As a Milwaukee Film member one of the perks during film fest is that you get access to a "Super Secret Members Only Screening" (actual name). What's super fun about the screening is that it's only available for one day AND you don't know what it is until you literally start the movie. This movie is about a young Jewish woman who is about to graduate college and feeling aimless and uninspired. She goes to sit shiva for a distant family friend and runs into her sugar daddy...who is married...and has a baby.... This movie was tense and awkward and there were many times where we were yelling "JUST RUN OUT THE DOOR. JUST GO". A fun thing about the movie was that the soundtrack sounded like a horror movie soundtrack. If you closed your eyes and just listened to the music you would think that there was about to be a body to be found in a basement, not a girl stress eating bagels and avoiding weird looks across the living room of a near stranger. 3.5/5 stars. 

Shorts: The Best Damn Fu*#king Midnight Shorts Ever. Sh*t.  (Again, this is the actual name.) The midnight shorts selection is a legendary part of Milwaukee Film. It's a collection of the weirdest, scariest, freakiest, "did I actually take mushrooms and forget" short films that the fest has to offer. My favorites were: "The Motorist" - we see a man get welded into a car after refusing to leave it in a weird ancient ritual. "Diabla"" - a woman gets revenge on her rapist with the help other other women who have been in similar circumstances.  "Little Miss Fate" - a weird, animated short that talks about the literal hand of fate. Also talking genitals. It was weird but not in a completely unheartwarming way. "Regrets" has had me checking the corners of dark rooms before I go to bed since I've seen it. 3.8/5 stars.

Lapsis - A man takes up a job laying cable (this is really a stand in for things like Uber, Lyft, Doordash, etc) in an effort to make enough money to treat his brother's sickness (it's like a constant fatigue due to the crush of everyday life). But as we all know, when things seem to go to be true, they usually are and that is the case here. Our lovable, slightly oafish main character bumbles his way through a world he doesn't really understand and unwittingly helps start a revolution. Side bar - if the robots from Boston Dynamics makes you cringe this will also make you cringe. Maggie and I were disappointed by the lack of true scifi or horror from the Fest this year, but between the shorts and his movie it helped scratch that itch for us. 4/5 stars.

Black Bear - Maggie and Garrett both had this on their lists of films they were interested in watching, so we went for it. I agreed because Garrett said Kit Harrington was in it. Garrett was wrong, it's just a guy that looked kind of like Kit Harrington. Audrey Plaza is the star of this movie as a screenwriter/actress who goes on a retreat out in rural New York. There's a big twist after the most AWKWARD dinner of all time. I liked the format of this one, and I liked Audrey Plaza's performance more than I anticipated, but I don't think this is going to be one that I really mull over for a long time after I've seen it. 3/5 stars.

Coded Bias - This movie is basically about artificial intelligence and it's flaws and how because of who it is developed by and the fact that it's still a developing field, it's got some racist tendencies. A great thing about this movie was how incredibly well women were represented with who they interview. A lot of the things in this documentary were pretty infuriating (do we have a constitutional right to avoid government sanctioned facial recognition? how safe is it to buy things with your face?) and led to some really thoughtful conversations. Almost not yelling. 3.4/5 stars.

What I've Been Reading

"The Virgin Suicides" by Jeffrey Eugenides. I've heard talk about this movie and new the basic premise (ugh its in the name) but didn't know much about it. I picked it up kind of randomly. The most interesting thing about this book was it's narrated in a "collective we". It's a bunch of neighborhood boys who you don't learn most of their names and they kind of function like one singular entity. I think it really works for this book and the type of story that this is. It's a short book and considering the subject matter isn't as depressing as I thought it would be.

"Time Traveler: A Scientist's Dream to Make Time Travel a Reality" by Dr Ronald L Mallet. A young man loses his father at 10 years old and becomes obsessed with the idea of time travel. He doesn't become a quack on the streets, he has a PhD and loves Einstein and has spoke to thousands about if time travel is actually a thing we can accomplish.

"The Devil All the Time" by Donald Ray Pollock.  This book kind of sounded like it was going to be a short story collection but really it was just a regular format book with a lot of interconnected stories. I really liked the format and the setting - the characters were well developed. It was mostly sad. But that's okay.

"The Old Guard, Book One: Open Fire": by Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernandez. Did you watch Old Guard, the netflix movie with the most beautiful woman in the world Charlize Theron? This is the graphic novel that it is based on. There was a couple of changes (more details on Andy, the Asian lady isn't in the book but there are others like her that they mention) but the movie stayed pretty close to the source material. I really liked it and am looking forward ot the next installment that comes out in September! Fun fact - the "is that your boyfriend?" scene in the kidnapper van? It's in the comic and the creators insisted that the scene be kept exactly the same as in the comic. Yay representation!

Book Review: "Berlin Now: The City After the Wall" by Peter Schneider

I read many history books, a borderline obscene amount. But I completely own up to having a fair amount of gaps in that knowledge that need filled especially - things that aren't war related. I love books that tie to very specific places or time frames and this book is certainly that - the city of Berlin after the fall of the The Wall (which fell in November 1991). This is the second Berlin specific book I've read that I've really enjoyed, the other one is this one! I've got a special place in my heart for Berlin. The "dirty, sexy, cheap" city is expansive, vibrant and the two times I've been there I've always found myself wanting more time there. While reading this book I was browsing AirBnB listings which is...self cruelty right now. See you on the otherside of this shitshow, Berlin. Mwah! 

Let's talk about what's interesting in this book:

-You know how in NYC on New Year's Eve a bunch of people gather in Time Square for the ball drop but an actual New Yorker would rather die then do that?  In Berlin on New Year's the location is Brandenburg Gate but the people there are mostly Italian. 

- The club scene in Berlin has always been a no holds barred, judgement free, free for all. (I mean, "Cabaret" is in Berlin between the wars for a reason).Hemingway said that nightlife in Berlin was "sordid, vicious and desperate". And you know Hemingway wasn't one to shy away from shenanigans.  The current club scene involves not opening until midnight on Saturday and staying open until Tuesday morning. There's no "hey we can't sell booze after 2am so go home" because they can sell booze...whenever. It's also much cheaper than other big party capitals in the world. I have endless questions about this. Can I bring a change of clothes? I'm going to get sweaty if I'm dancing for 3 days. Are there snacks? Can I order food to get delivered to the club? Is there a place for me to power nap if I need it?

-The Berlin Wall came down, but, where did it go? There are pieces of the Berlin Wall in at least 125 locations around the world (when I say pieces I mean large chunks not paperweights) including on the campus of a Hawaiian' community college and at the country estate of a Cognac heiress. Most of it however, was reprocessed and was used to build highways in the former East Germany. 

- There has been some really disturbing behavior against immigrants to Berlin, especially if they are obviously non-European (aka African immigrants, Asian immigrants). From the government AND from Germans. Immigrants had their passports confiscated, put in barracks, and had up to 12% of their paycheck seized. There's been some incredibly violent outbursts against these groups too, including a group of armed Germans burning down a building that housed a hostel for Vietnamese contract workers. Or more than one incident about far-right groups going on the prowl with baseball bats "looking for black people to beat up". 

Germany (like so many other countries) needs to take a look at themselves and figure out what fundamental attitudes need to change to make a better Berlin and Germany. Germany isn't just for Hoffmanns and Wagners it's also for Nguyens and Alis. You know who had a huge hand in rebuilding Berlin after the war? Immigrants. You know how when you think about German food you think about spaetzle but also kebobs? Hmm, wonder why.