We wanted to write a nice story about the upcoming Denver International Film Festival--you know, an intelligent, sophisticated look at some of the world' s hottest independent films, courtesy of the crack staff here at Go-Go Magazine .

Problems: 1) we couldn' t afford tickets, 2) some members of our crack staff have something of a reputation as drunken idiots who throw things at the screen, 3) we know next to nothing about movie criticism (mise en scene? Puh-leeze), and 4) we're all out of gas. So instead, we finagled a few advance copies of a few flicks, sat down on the hard dirt floor of our shared hovel and gave 'em a watch. Without further ado, we present Go-Go's critically bankrupt take on five hot new movies. Don't say we didn't warn you.

Briar Patch

Briar Patch, a movie directed by Zev Berman, is a classic tale of love, deceit, and murder. Okay, perhaps it's not so classic a tale. This is a story that lulls you in to a false sense of predictability--I was initially skeptical. About 30 minutes in, I was looking at a story that looked like a typical husband-beats-wife while his psycho, but loyal, sidekick supports his every whim. Then the bat-tered wife runs off to her secret lover to rescue her from all of her pain and suffering. There's a big drawn-out struggle for life and death in the famous final scene. The good guy wins. Everyone's happy--the end! But, this isn't your typical formulated, audience polled big budget Hollywood Blockbuster. It was something much more interesting.

This is a good story with a solid cast of actors. I felt that there was depth and dimension to each character that made them believ-able. Inez Macbeth, played by Dominique Swain (Lolita, The Intern), is a dirt-poor, sheltered country girl living in the woods of Suffolk County, Virginia. She's the battered wife of Edgar, played by Henry Thomas (E.T., All the Pretty Horses), who embarks on a quest to find her true love, obviously not her husband, as predicted by her friend and psychic advisor, Butcher Lee played by Karen Lee (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Challenger). She believes that her wealthy lover Druden Hunt played by James Urbaniak (Sweet and Lowdown, The Sticky Fingers of Time) is the one. Edgar's creepy 'swamp hick' friend, Flowers, is played by Arie Verveen (The Thin Red Line, Caught). Debra Monk (The First Wives Club, Bulworth) plays Avon, a police officer that knows there's more going on around her than meets the eye but can't ever quite put her finger on it.

Overall, I enjoyed Briar Patch. If, like me, you aren't immediately drawn in, give it some time--because you will be. If my above description seems vague, it is. I don't want to give too much away, as this the type of movie where the less you know before you watch it the more you'll enjoy all its subtle little twists and turns, until you realize by the end that you're watching something different than what you may have initially thought. This movie is well-written, acted, and directed. The ending is creative. The only serious complaint I have is with the movie's audio track. The lines that had to be dubbed in after the movie was shot were painfully obvious. I hope the copy I watched had an un-mastered audio track because this was far too good of movie to have to be distracted by such inequities in the sound.

So, does the good guy win in this one? I would say that it's a matter of opinion. You'll know what I mean if you watch the movie. I would recommend that you do! --Rexual

Lost in La Mancha

Salvador Dali once said, "I don't need drugs, I am drugs." So is Terry Gilliam. And this film chronicles the yucky part where the drugs wear off and the harsh light of "reality" sets in. It's a documentary recording the director's epic aborted attempt at creating his own version of Don Quixote.

Along with directors like Junet & Caro (Delicatessen, City of Lost Children), Gilliam is one of the rare filmmakers who takes full visual advantage of the medium he works in. One of the few directors who asks the cinematic question, why make a movie like oh, say, Swimfan,when you could make a movie like Citizen Kane meets 1984 does Peter Pan on ayahuasca?

Since his stint as animator for Monty Python (the only Yank in the troupe), he has carved a niche in Hollywood as outsider on the inside. A maverick, a doomsday prophet dreaming in 3-D Technicolor yet almost always making money. With the exception of the brilliant Baron Munchausen, all of Gilliam's films have been financially successful and with the exception of the underwhelming 12 Monkeys, each has been a minor masterpiece. If you can appreciate his vision and respect his grown-up kindergarten ideals, this movie just might bring a tear to your eye. Not that it's a drag in any way! It moves at a brisk pace, eavesdrops on fascinating conversations with talented people and keeps you clutching your hair as Gilliam's obviously doomed production snowballs down an Andalusian hillside.

The set-up: after failing to collect enough money to produce the film Hollywood-style, Gilliam moves his fractured-fable production to Spain. A truly uncanny series of disasters comes to pass and wincing in horror, the audience's collective guts turn to gazpacho. Amongst other problems, the production's ideal outdoor backdrop is besieged by a rainstorm that'd make Noah say "Goddamn!" (Big buck equipment sails downstream in a flash flood.) And on the first days of filming, the aging lead actor's prostate flares up basketball-size. Normally not a big problem but when he's riding a horse 12 hours a day? Now, your average film geek (like yours truly) will tell you that, for whatever reason, there are certain productions that just CAN'T be done. One example is any film biography of Howard Hughes. And unless you enjoy being beat up by a bunch of effeminate theatre geeks, don't even think of saying "Macbeth" anywhere near a stage. Unfortunately, film adaptations of Don Quixote fall into this black hole category. Orson Welles unsuccessfully attempted to complete his version of Quixote for 20 years. Why this sort of thing happens to great artists instead of schlock-meisters like Jerry Bruckheimer is one of life's cruel mysteries.

Swing

Swing swings. This is not a movie about a people, although it is. It is not a movie about a friendship, although it is that as well. It is not a movie about history, tragedy, life or music. It is about them all.

Director Tony Gatlif has made one of those rare films that probably wouldn't need dialogue at all, but such as there is serves as notation, almost, for the constant strain of Manouche guitar, of violins, of voices worn like old highways. Ostensibly about a 10 year-old boy named Max spending the summer in the French countryside with his Grandmother, it is really about Max's discovery of Gypsy music and culture. Guitar lessons with frustrated virtuoso Miraldo and woodland romps with a headstrong Gypsy girl named Swing teach Max to live life by ear, to realize the variety that his provincial Grandmother spent years studiously ignoring.

And while the characters glow with warmth, and Oscar Copp and Lou Rech do commendable work as Max and Swing, the star is the guitar. Music is woven into the threads of conversation. Great stretches of the film are devoted entirely to the sounds of gypsy culture, joyful and mournful, a celebration of life cooled by the awareness of death. Miraldo's mother, Puri Dai (played with depth by Helene Mershtein, who also possesses a heartbreakingly beautiful singing voice), describes her family's caravan being rounded up by the Nazis in a scene of quiet tragedy buttressed by historical accuracy. Hitler's slaughter of Europe's ancient migratory peoples is, sadly, one of the least-known elements of the Holocaust, and Mershtein's brief elegy serves to underline the overall improbability of Gypsy survival.

Musical, poetic, and in the end, as in life, sad. Swing is a movie without pretensions toward art house fluff or nods to the Hollywood of fast-fast-fast. It is a watercolor snapshot, the conflict of tradition with tradition-free society, an elegant dirge for a vanishing people. -- Alex Neth

GIGANTIC (A TALE OF TWO JOHNS)

Call them what you will: Nerdcore, avant-garde weirdos, leaders of the Nerd Liberation Front, or to paraphrase their manager, "puritan, bohemian art-fucks," it's impossible to deny They Might Be Giants have made an indelible contribution to progressive rock and roll. Like most of us who weren't enrolled entirely in AP classes in high school, I am/was only familiar with a couple of their songs "Anna Ng" and that Constantinople one. However, after screening this documentary I can thoroughly appreciate what TMBG (I guess?) stand for.

If you don't know them, they are: slightly less disorienting than The Residents, almost as catchy as The Violent Femmes, and only barely less "Canadian" than Bare Naked Ladies, ifyaknowwhatimean. They sing rocked-out polka songs through their noses and annunciate every word of their lyrics. They are the Led Zeppelin of the MENSA set. Ya either dig it or ya don't. And your enjoyment of their music is in direct proportion to how far into your teen years you spent in Boy or Girl Scouts. You big geek!

The Giants are the self-proclaimed "shitty Beatles." Which is John and which is Paul, no one dare say. A duo collaborating for nearly twenty years, they met as junior high students in Lincoln, Massachusetts. The film rigorously documents their career as a band from their inception playing NYC punk clubs to the present, at which time they play NYC punk clubs. Oh, they also play to a rabid, nationwide, and (as the musicians note) perpetually 15-20 year old fan base.

This movie has it all: The lows: coffee addiction and the "sell-out" years where their fans turn against them for (gasp!) getting a couple videos on MTV. The highs: championed by everyone from Frank Black to the Lincoln-Sudbury regional high school debate team and selling more e-albums than Sir-Mix-A-Lot in his prime. There's also a couple scenes (not for the squeamish) that involve goat fisting and virgin groupie sacrifice. Just kidding.

The film is a bit long for the non-fan but redeems itself by engaging the audience with fun stories told by ultra-quirky people. It . s one big set of buck teeth piercing through your Jell-O pudding snack! It's a great big Eagle Scout badge on your Boy Scout sash! --Pete Yribia

XX/XY

The relationship movie is what it is. Dark or light, funny or un, you have to actually care about the characters involved, or you might as well stare at the couch cushions for an hour and a half. Unfortunately, the mopey stiffs in XX/ XY make that Sofa Mart special seem downright interesting. A dark-hued, heavy-handed work by director/ writer Austin Chick, XX/ XY follows the weird dynamic of three college friends, Coles (Mark Ruffalo), Sam (Maya Stange) and Thea (Kathleen Robertson) who become lovers, grow up, become lovers again and then not.

Ruffalo does a good job as Coles, as Robertson does with the wild Thea, but Stange might as well be carved from green ash. She is meant to be Ruffalo's lodestar, but we can't imagine why someone at least mildly conflicted and intelligent would care about such a cipher. By the time the initial college threesome-vibe is gone and the old friends meet as adults, the experience grates. Why would Ruffalo want to leave his attractive, perceptive girlfriend Claire (played with elan by Petra Wright, who shows more genuine emotion in one scene than Stange does throughout) for the sake of one fling on the kitchen table? Were Stange's character developed even a little, the not-so-subtle lesson might actually ring true. As it is, the whole thing feels like the world's longest episode of thirtysomething filtered through Last Year at Marienbad . Plenty of coulda-shoulda-woulda--the whole thing is one long dissertation on the tragedy of love abandoned, which would be fine, except that the complete lack of chemistry and Chick's canned dialogue--not to mention his obvious directorial analogies, which bear the unmistakable stink of ego rampant "make hubris" inevitable triumph seem welcome.

There are plenty of good relationship movies. Dark ones, funny ones, even French ones. This, however, is not.

Photo by Thomas Ackermann

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