Tag: SIFF

399: Queen of the Tetons was watched as part of the Seattle International Film Festival 2024! It had its showing on Sunday, May 12th as part of the festival, and it was the Seattle premiere of this film!

Bears Bears BEARS! Who doesn’t love a bear? Presumably someone who is not lost in the woods and surrounded by them. As long as the bear doesn’t have cocaine on its brain, you are threatening it, should be cool, right?

This documentary is about bears, but also a famous bear. 399 is her name. Given to her from whatever research study tagged her with that number at some point the past. She lives in Wyoming, and she is a GREAT mother bear. She has been popping out cubs for over a decade, and everyone knows about it. Why? Well, it turns out the greatest threat to a bear cubs life is…adult male bears. Because when they want to mate, if they see a lady bear with cubs, they will try to kill those kids. Because the lady bear has mother duties and doesn’t have time for sex. But, if her kids die. Then she will go to heat, and he can score. Life is really fucked up sometimes.

Bears don’t like strangers though. Or people. Or traffic. So they will avoid things like roads. But 399 realize that she can go next to the roads with traffic, and people, and male bears will leave her and her cubs alone. She can protect her cubs, by just being by people. Wild. So she does that. And has for years.

So 399 has become the most famous Grizzly bear in the area, and has hundreds of fans, who hang out and take pictures of her and her children, post hibernation, eating running playing and learning. And this has been true for a long, long time. However, when hanging out with people, and cars. There comes its own danger. And when cars and people gather and grow, to see the bear, that can put a lot of things in harms way, and be bad for the bears overall.

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH BEEEEEEEAAAAAAARS!

Now, what this documentary, eventually, is about is the want and need to keep Grizzly Bears on the protected species list. Because there is growing movements in these states to give them an official bear hunting season. And no one is going to argue that bears shouldn’t have their population maintained, but most groups want to wait for these two distinct groups to start spreading their genes out more, which has not yet occurred. The other issue is: Once bears get a hunting season, then the famous bears that like people and become well known, are going to be the ones who have to pay the price.

Imagine a famous bear for 18 years or so, and then someone just comes along and legally shoots her. When people have their whole career and focus on that bear and nature photography and bringing along conservation practices. That would be a kick in the gut, or, maybe a shot.

Now I am a big fan of not killing bears until their population levels are much higher. But I can’t do anything about those states who vote on this. I don’t think the documentary spent nearly enough time on this topic, since it seemed like the main goal. Instead, we get a lot of time on 399, sweet bear shots and videos, and interviewing some of her bigger fans. Which is fine. But I wasn’t a fangirl before, and don’t think I will suddenly rush off and join the bear cult now. (Too far away, give me a local bear cult and we will see…).

Although I do think I need to point out, that one rancher interviewed, who wanted to be able to defend his property from bear attacks by killing them, decided to say it in a way that is reprehensibly racist towards asylum seekers coming to America. It was wildly inappropriate, and you can tell it is something he says all the time, without realizing how dehumanizing he is being at all. And so of course I cannot ever be on a side with someone like that.

In conclusion. 399 bear is great. Documentary is just fine. Even better if you want to see bears running around.

2 out of 4.

Admissions Granted was watched as part of the Seattle International Film Festival 2024! It had its showing on Sunday, May 12th as part of the festival, and it was the Seattle premiere of this documentary!

Getting into college can be hard! After all, before you can even qualify, it takes most people at least 12 years to finish high school first. That is a big time commitment. If you don’t do it early on, who knows, you might run out of time. But finishing high school isn’t the only thing you have to do. You also have to take extra tests to show you are smart. You have to stand out, so might need to show you volunteered. Or participated in clubs. Or excelled in the arts. Or had hobbies. Or might need to be a great writer. Who knows!

But then colleges have to pick you. And they look at all these standards. And if they are public a certain percentage need to be in state. They need to make sure they have a diverse student body, and diversity can mean a lot of things. Now for one group of students, who had high marks, perfect scores, and extracurriculars, they had their eyes set on Harvard, and got denied. Now these students, realizing a lot of them were Asian American, founded the “Students for Fair Admissions” (SFFA) group, and decided to sue Harvard, for not including them because of their race. Using affirmative action AGAINST them.

This lead to bigger law suits, and multiple attempts, and eventually UNC got grouped together with it as well, for a lawsuit that would go against the Supreme Court, and threaten to end Affirmative Action forever.

This case was a good poster child for race war.

Now, this case did happen literally summer of 2023. So you might already know the result. If you care about this, you knew the result. But this let you know a lot of the players involved, and hear both sides talk passionately. And how many years this took, waiting for a majority supreme court to be Conservative. At this same time, there is talk of groups being used for alternative purposes. And using the people, even if they don’t care about them, because they just want Affirmative Action to go away.

And this documentary goes into SO MUCH DETAIL. Like, yes, they both sides the argument. And that both sides have legitimate points of view, but not always the full story. For example, just having the best test grades does not mean one is going to be picked for college. There are so many factors involved, and the school is painting a giant picture, that there is something more, and SHOULD be something more. Similar to how the best person who applies for the job might not always get it. Because building diverse groups with different backgrounds and talents makes sense, you don’t want a team of all clones.

This is a frustrating thing, because there is clearly a right side, but the other side has valid points, and it doesn’t mean the absolute destruction of a program. It just means more clarity and changes are needed. But wildly enough with this documentary, there was a line or two at the very end, about asking some deep, deep questions about Harvard and their resources in general, that is such a mind blowing statement, I want a documentary purely on that.

In the end, Harvard isn’t the end all be all of places that must exist. There are so many good places, it shouldn’t be on a pedestal. I love how fair this documentary felt. No one was a bad guy. Well, one lawyer clearly was. But outside of that, people were people, even when yelling in each others faces protest chants outside the Supreme Court.

3 out of 4.

Sirocco and the Kingdom of Winds was watched as part of the Seattle International Film Festival 2024! It had its showing on Sunday, May 12th as part of the festival, and it was the Seattle premiere of this film!

Long winded titles about wind are long winded. What is this, some modern fantasy book series?

Well, yes, in the movie it is.

You see, Juliette and Carmen are sisters, and they are at a babysitters house, and bored! Well, Juliette is bored. And their babysitter is taking a quick nap, even if it is Juliette’s birthday. Also, this person has wrote the fantasy series Sirocco and the Kingdom of Winds. Eventually, some toy creation pops out, and makes a magical portal, that of course Juliette decides to jump into, forcing her older sister to follow.

And hey look, they are now weird cat people! And they are in the world of the books. Thankfully it isn’t scary, it is cool.

Until these goblin creatures find them, capture them, and break the toy so they cannot portal home. Oh, and then they also get separated. The older sister to be married off to the head goblin’s son, and the younger kid to be a maid to a visiting singer, Selma. The good news is, Selma is awesome, and powerful, and wants to help the girls. But the real person to help with the toy is going to have to Sirocco, and he is scary and controls big giant storms.

These goblin people look like they like to party though…

I was excited to show my kids their first FRENCH cartoon, and they still did get to see it. But unfortunately, it was dubbed. Oh no! Still a French cartoon, but the people who did the English voices aren’t noted anywhere, so I couldn’t tag them.

As for the movie, it is basically a Studio Ghibli’esque film. A giant focus on the child characters, and their feelings and facial expressions. Some danger, but nothing we think will actually win over at any point. A world of whimsy and strange shapes and structures. It hits all the marks, just is less anime and more whatever this style of French is called. I think if you like Ghibli films a lot, you would love this one.

Both of my kids enjoyed it a lot, including my youngest who made it very clear that she didn’t think she would like when I showed her the trailer, but she dug it a lot.

For the adults? Well, the story is relatively basic. And it is fine. But it is not something groundbreaking in any level. A tiny, cute story, that is relatively short. A nice break from the hardcore films of death and destruction out there.

2 out of 4.

Bonjour Switzerland was watched as part of the Seattle International Film Festival 2024! It had its showing on Saturday, May 11th as part of the festival, and it was the Seattle premiere of this film!

Hello, Switzerland! Yes, I know a little French, be impressed.

To set the stage for this film, you need to know about Switzerland. And you know what? I am going to quote Wikipedia here. “Switzerland has four national languages: mainly German (spoken natively by 62.8% of the population in 2016); French (22.9%) spoken natively in the west; and Italian (8.2%) spoken natively in the south. The fourth national language, Romansh (0.5%), is a Romance language spoken locally in the southeastern trilingual canton of Grisons.”

Four languages is a lot, but not really for Europe. A big German population, by a lot. Well, in this film, there is a referendum being brought up to change Switzerland from FOUR languages, to just ONE language. And it has gained some steam, but most people think it is absolutely silly. They like how unique everything is. And the way the law is on the ballot, they have to pick if they want it to take effect or not, and if they want it to pass, which language should be the one remaining?

Well, shockingly it passes. And due to apathy and other reasons, it looks like FRENCH is the winning language. This pisses off most people. As now many folks have to learn French, more than expected. And our main character, a cop (Beat Schlatter), is struggling to learn, and he will need to, to do his job.

He actually gets a big job, to go down to Ticino, an area of Switzerland that is mostly Italian speaking, because they are rising up and talking of separating from their country. Forming their own tiny nation, and will fight and attack to get it going. Oh boy. Politics, amirite?

Also starring Vincent Kucholl, Catherine Pagani, Silvia Jost, and Leonardo Nigro.

I don’t know if this is a Switzerland specific joke or not. But, tiny car and many people is still funny. Okay, first off, let me tell you about what I learned about the title as it is in Switzerland. It is called “Bon Schuur Ticino”. So, first off, Ticino is that one area with the Italians. They can be specific to them in the title, since they would know that, while us filthy Americans do not. But Bon Schuur? That is nonsense technically. It is how a German speaking Swiss would likely pronounce Bonjour. So a German speaking Swiss, speaking French, poorly. That is pretty clever, and something I never would have gotten on my own (thank you Swiss friend who saw this and laughed about it).

Now, onto the story. It is quite a very silly one. We have terrorism, and deceit. We have bombs going off and people getting kidnapped. We have old people potentially getting arrested or fined for just wanting to do their own thing. That’s right, we have a satire.

And like any satire, you have to know everything they are satire-ing, to get the full picture. That can be hard to get with a foreign flick whose own politics and social norms are so unlike your own. I am assuming there is a LOT of this movie that I just didn’t get and would have found it to be a lot more funny if I did. But alas, that is the problem with culture sometimes. As I am not a Swiss Scholar, I couldn’t even get the joke in its title.

Overall I can say it is an interesting and amusing movie. There are parts that still made me laugh, but a lot of parts that just fell flat, and I can only think to blame it on the fact mentioned above.

2 out of 4.

Fish War was watched as part of the Seattle International Film Festival 2024! It had its showing on Saturday, May 11th as part of the festival, and it was the World premiere of this documentary! You can see my interview of two of the directors here! 

Ah yes, wars over animals. They happen a lot in the Pacific North West. For example, may I inform you about the 1859 Pig War on the San Juan Island in Washington? When the United Kingdom and United States were trying to figure out how to split the land between Washington and Canada, the islands became a touchy subject. Both armies landed on San Juan and a pig was killed and they stayed there until eventually, the US got to keep those island groupings.

See? Lot of animal wars. Now, Fish War is a documentary mostly about events that took place a hundred plus years after the very small Pig War, but it unfortunately started before that. It started with the United States pushing around the native tribes and forcing them to sign treaties, often with wars and suffering involved. Things were forced and one sided. But the indigenous populations of Washington decided to sign a treaty on their own terms, before all of that, and they fought for specific rights. One of the biggest, was their right to still live and fish in the Puget Sound, of which it was said to be equal with the others that now lived there as well. A 50/50 split of the fishing in the sound.

But, in the early 1970’s, laws had made it illegal for the Native Americans to fish where they always had. So they kept doing it, kept getting arrested, and soon the split ended up being about 2/98%, not in their favor at all. The literal white man was taking all of the fish, and ignoring the treaty. So they decided to sue the State of Washington, the language was clear. And sure enough, the judges agreed with the tribes. The fishers of Washington were illegally over fishing the areas, and needed to limit their supplies greatly.

Unfortunately, a lawsuit win apparently isn’t enough. People ignored it. People got mad. People tried to be violent. The Attorney General of Washington made it his mission to get it overruled, and it kept going to the court for decades after, making the tribes constantly battle for what they had always deserved. You don’t always get the state of Washington to be the bad guy in stories, so it is very interesting when that shows up.

And you know what? They should have higher than 50% too. Fish War was not just a fascinating look at recent history in the Pacific North West, but it was a fascinating look at things that are still happening right now. Because overfishing and destroying of the salmons habitat have also occurred, and the legal system has consistently ruled that their rights are worth protecting, and if there are no fish at all, then the treaty is broken, so the ecosystems all must be protected as well. If you are an environmentalist, or care about Native American rights, this is a story for you.

Honestly, hearing this one old lady remember stories from the 70’s, how they got away with their civil disobedience and continued to fight for their rights filled me with wonder. She was so giddy at being able to stick it to the man, and knowing she was on the right side of history. These personal stories of people who just fifty years ago were fighting the good fight, and their fathers and mothers, and have to continue to fight this thing is absolutely mind boggling. Like, when will the United States stop harassing Native Americans? Based on the number of documentaries and stories I have seen lately, the answer is not fucking soon enough.

I always wonder what I would do in other people’s shoes during moments like these, and I can’t help but feel I would be a coward and run. So it is important to learn about and honor these local heroes. If we can learn lessons from them, we can learn that a regular person can be the change needed for the world, and it might help more people get involved.

I am happy Fish War is getting its World Premiere in this area, because it is solely about this area, and as a younger individual, it is something I never would have known without it. There is always so much more in the world going on, before we were around, and there will be a lot after it as well. We can only hope that we spend our time fighting for what is right, and helping others, so that many future generations can have the same benefits.

3 out of 4.

WHY DINOSAURS? was watched as part of the Seattle International Film Festival 2024! It had its showing on Saturday, May 11th as part of the festival, and it was the World premiere of this film!

WHY DINOSAURS? shouts at you while asking the question…why do people get fascinated over dinosaurs?

Apparently they are badass and mysterious isn’t enough of an obvious answer.

The goal of this documentary is to try and get a deeper answer than that. And so it is going to look into the history of finding fossils and the science/time it takes to put things together. It is going to look into many real scientists who are on the field and have real stories, real successes, and real failures. It is going to look into some of the dinosaur experts who were used to work on Jurassic Park, the decisions they made with the dinosaurs, what they wanted them to do, and why they had them look or act in various different ways. Based on science!

And you know, kids and other people too are talked to I guess.

The camera man never gets love, so let’s love him now.

For a documentary to exist, I really hope it can bring something new to the table, and for the most part, I don’t think WHY DINOSAURS? does really anything at all new. There is a decent size chunk focused on Jurassic Park, its legacy, and talking with people involved in the film. If this was actually a documentary on Jurassic Park and its legacy and the making of the films and decisions, with a lot of deep dives, it would have given us something new and interesting to look at.

The most part however this just feels like an episode on any random nature show. Talking with scientists about paleontology and dinosaurs. There isn’t really anything new and interesting here. There are SO MANY TV show based documentaries that go into dinosaur deep dives and interesting people and research. I can’t name any, because its just something that is out there, or used to be out there. Like documentary shows on the making of food, or on cultural healing. These are just things out there.

I just don’t understand the added purpose of this documentary in the lexicon. Like, maybe it was just a labor of love, and good practice for other things. But the topic has been done more times than the number of extinct dinosaurs.

1 out of 4.

Tim Travers and the Time Traveler’s Paradox was watched as part of the Seattle International Film Festival 2024! It had its showing on Friday, May 10th as part of the festival, and it was the Seattle premiere of this film! You can see my interview with the director/writer and star here!

Tim Travers (Samuel Dunning) is a smart guy, a scientist, and a bit of an asshat. Oh, sounds like someone you know I am sure. He also seemingly has invented time travel on his own. He was able to go back in one time and see his past self. His past self didn’t expect that though. So Tim killed him.

Why would Tim do that? Because everyone knows about the famous time traveling paradox. About what would happen if you go back in time to kill yourself, or kill your grandpa. It is impossible. It doesn’t fathom or make sense. But Tim was about to do that. So WHAT is really going on here, and how did things break?

So while this is happening, another Tim comes back from the future, and the killings continue. They do until they don’t! Meaning, eventually, we get multiple Tim’s, all pondering and confused as to what is going on, and what does it mean for the science community. What can they do with this machine, can they make it better, and can they become GODS? Okay, no one is going to become a god.

But also during this time, a lot of them like to get drinks at the local bar. And there is some dating stuff happening with Delilah (Felicia Day), who certainly doesn’t believe a poop of this story.

Also starring Joel McHale, Danny Trejo, Keith David, Jeff Hilliard, Nicole Murray, and Stimson Snead.

Tim, Tim, Tim, and Tim. What can you say about a new time travel movie, when we have so many excellent ones out there? Because a time travel movie has to be able to stand on its own. It has to have new ideas, that aren’t too abstract or confusing. Well, they could be abstract or confusing if they leave fully into it. You know, like Primer. That one is famous for being so hard to get, while actually doing a great factual job at what it accomplished. Once you are able to map it out.

Tim Travers decides to launch itself more into the sillier aspects of time travel. Like, I got it for awhile. And then I stopped getting it. Then I stopped caring about getting it, and just focused on the strange story. If this thing IS actually based on some sort of time travel logic, and isn’t just shenanigans, I couldn’t tell you. I would be very impressed if it was! (But I think its just shenanigans, and I won’t hold it against them. But if you demand your time travel stories to be consistent with their rules, this one might not be it!)

As for the movie, Dunning is a strong lead for a indie picture like this. Whenever you have to play multiple people, I assume it has to be very tricky, especially if they all start to gain quirks and differences. And you know, acting as if someone is near you, but they aren’t, because you have to be spliced in later as the other part. Times uhhh, a large number. So for at least a movie of this size and budget it, he absolutely nailed it. Now, I don’t watch Doctor Who, nor do I want to, but he gives what I assume to be David Tennant Doctor Who vibes.

Again, this story is VERY silly. And its all over the place. And it has a strange amount of cameos that you would never have guessed, assuming you didn’t read my plot summary up above. It has heart, and some science behind it, which is more than a lot of films, so it becomes worht the time.

3 out of 4.