Cucalorus

Cucalorus was an amazing experience and I'm happy that we were forced to go for this class, because who knows if I would've gone otherwise. Apart from having constant trouble with my pass and getting tickets, I loved every aspect of going out and seeing these films. I had a lot of trouble at City Stage for some reason because my pass kept breaking the app that they were using to scan the bar code, so I'm not sure if we were supposed to get tickets or not, but they would just be like, "Alright you're good, don't worry about it." I only got 3 confirmations in emails for tickets, and those were all from Thalian, so I probably could've seen more without a problem, but I decided that'd be pretty messed up.

I went to go see A Short History of Decay and Willow Creek on the first night, and I was very pleased with both of them.  A Short History of Decay was 1 of 2 of the movies I saw that wasn't "found-footage" or fake-documentary style. It was a very cute film that had me laughing really hard one minute and then depressed the next. At first I wasn't sure about the acting, it seemed kind of unnatural and stiff, but as the movie went on I began to get more and more immersed and the acting seemed to get a lot better. Stylistically, it wasn't anything special, but it made up for that in narrative. The humor and the message about family and illness are what made me really like this film. Also, seeing all of the familiar locations around Wilmington was pretty cool. 

Willow Creek was probably my favorite film of the ones I saw at Cucalorus. For this one too though, I wasn't sure at first if it would be any good. The beginning 10 minutes or so had me kind of iffy but once things got rolling, I was really into it. When the director, Bobcat Goldthwait, talked before the movie and told us it was found footage, I regretted choosing it, but Willow Creek pulled off found footage in a way I'd never seen before. It was fantastic. I think in part because some of the interviews with the townspeople were entirely real, and then the rest of the film felt just as real. The first half pretty much had me constantly laughing, and then there's a shift followed by a freaking awesome 19 minute long take that had me on the edge of my seat. Paranormal Activity doesn't hold a candle to the amount of suspense that Bobcat created in that scene. After his hilarious Q&A after the movie, I walked away appreciating the film even more. Definitely my favorite night of the festival.

On Friday, I saw The Sacrament. Now I'm not entirely sure how to feel about this one. On the one hand, the cinematography was amazing. On the other, it was found footage/fake-documentary style (where the cinematography is never that perfect) and I just didn't think it was the best choice for presenting the story. Going into it, I knew it was a cult movie, but when I saw the Kool-aid being prepared near the end, I kind of groaned on the inside like "Are they really just turning this story into a fictional retelling of the Jonestown massacre?" Well, it turns out after the Q&A that it was his intention to tell the story of Jonestown but to allow people to see the side that it wasn't a mass suicide, but rather a mass murder. I can understand that, because some people don't realize that these people were pretty much forced into killing themselves and if they resisted they were shot down. My other gripes would be the acting, which lacked in many scenes, and the entire absence of anything important or exciting happening for the first 45 minutes. Even though it was supposedly "found footage" style or documentary like, there were many shots that would've been impossible if they had stayed true to that throughout the entire movie. These narrative motivated shots kind of annoyed me because they weren't consistent and left me wondering what type of movie this was supposed to be. It also took me out of the realism because I kept thinking, "Where does this other camera exist in the world of the movie, if the main camera is focused on something else simultaneously?" Later on during the Q&A, the director made a lot of emphasis on how important realism was and how hard he had tried to make the movie seem realistic. I suppose he succeeded though with more casual viewers because I brought my roommate along and at the end he told me he thought the whole thing had been a real documentary.

Sunday night I saw See You Next Tuesday and $50k and a Call Girl, A Love Story. See You Next Tuesday was a very surreal experience. The acting was fantastic and I loved how the movie was shot. Most of the scenes were pretty dark, which I guess kind of reflected the dark comedy in the movie. It was hilarious in this weird, "Who does that!?" type of way. The family is quite dysfunctional and it was really entertaining seeing the dynamics between the pregnant sister, the lesbian sister, and the recovering drug addict mom. The only flaw I can think of was how when it ended I wanted to keep watching and see what happened to the family.
$50k and a Call Girl, A Love Story was another fake-documentary style movie and while it didn't annoy me as much as it did in The Sacrament, I still wish it had been done differently. I guess making movies that way is much cheaper, given how common it seemed to be at Cucalorus. The movie itself was really funny but also dynamic in that it showed a lot of serious moments and balanced the two out pretty well. Something just seemed a little off though, maybe it was the acting or the pacing, but I was taken out of the realism of the movie quite a bit. Yet when it was over, there were several people surprised to see that the main character hadn't actually died, since he was there to do the Q&A.

Overall, I had a great time at Cucalorus and would love to go again.