They finally did it. They made a robot.
I’m in my one hundredth* year covering Independent Film Festival Boston, and every year I reach hard to find ways to talk about it without sounding redundant. I guess there’re only so many times you can say “this is the best film festival around” without sounding a) like you’re biased**, and b) like a fraud***. The thing is, IFFBoston is a great fest, and it’s understandably near and dear to my heart. So I suppose I’ll always do my damnedest to get that across every year until I stop covering it****.
It helps when the mascot slash symbol of the fest is memorable. Thank goodness for that there robot.
It also helps when the lineup excites me, and this lineup excites me. So I took five films out of that lineup, watched them, and put down my thoughts about them in 1,000-something words in hopes that y’all reading this will consider going to see them. That said: There are tons of other movies worth considering if you***** head into the fest: Luce, by Julius Onah, sort of a splice of Funny Games and We Need to Talk About Kevin, without the violence and with frank, unflinching conversations about race and identity in America; The Death of Dick Long, the new film from one half of Daniels, being Daniel Scheinert, who you may remember as the team behind Harry Potter Farting Corpse Stalker Movie, aka Swiss Army Man; Loro, Paulo Sorrentino‘s 2.5 hour satirical assault on King Italian Perv Silvio Berlusconi; The Nightingale, Jennifer “Babadook” Kent‘s new period pseudo-revenge film; Lynn Shelton’s Sword of Trust; Lulu Wang’s closer, the very buzzed-over The Farewell; Riley Stearns’ The Art of Self Defense, which I want to see solely to add to my thesis regarding the Incel Origin Movies of 2019; and One Child Nation, documentary filmmaker Nanfu Wang’s investigation into China’s One-Child policy.
And that’s only a handful! You can go to IFFBoston.org to check the full lineup for yourself. You can then go to Paste Magazine to see which films I had the most to say things about.
*7th? I think?
**I am biased. Fight me.
***Because IFFBoston is the only festival I’ve ever attended.
****Hopefully never.
*****As you. As you head into the fest. You’re going. Period.
A Constant Visual Feast 