Movie Natters: May 2, 2008 Archive

MSPIFF: "Encounters at the End of the World"

Posted at 9:23 AM on May 2, 2008 by Euan Kerr

Whoever it was at the National Science Foundation who pushed through the grant which funded Werner Herzog's trip to the South Pole deserves some sort of an award.

The resulting film "Encounters at the End of the World," screened at the closing gala for the Minneapolis St Paul International Film Festival, is a classic Herzog blend of stunningly beautiful visuals, quirky interviews, all marked by the shadow of Herzog's conviction that humanity is doomed in a world filled with death and unpleasantness.

So it sounds a little strange, but Herzog fans know the power of this combination, and the location at the South Pole just amps up all the components. Herzog says he was inspired to go to the South Pole by footage shot under the sea ice at the pole by a diver friend.

(Herzog used some of that footage in "The Wild Blue Yonder" in 2005, where he constructed a tale of inter-planetary travel using the diving footage, film from the space shuttle, and a few specially shot scenes to hold it all together.)

On arriving at McMurdo base he quickly finds that the 1,100 or so people at the pole are there for many reasons, often apparently based on a wanderlust coupled with personal eccentricity. There's a bus driver, who used to be a banker, but later talked his way out of being hacked to death by a machete-wielding gang in South America after someone decided he was a kidnapper. There is a woman who drove a garbage truck from London down through Africa, and then travelled for three days through South America in a sewer pipe on the back of a truck.

And there is the philosopher truckdriver who remembers reading how humans are the way the universe gets to perceive it's own magnificence.

I look forward to seeing this film again.

MSPIFF's St Anthony run is now done, and now moves it's final screenings to the Oak Street. At last night's event Al Milgrom said the movie theater will be screening films through the summer.

Birds of a feather - or not: "Baby Mama" and "Then she found me"

Posted at 3:53 PM on May 2, 2008 by Euan Kerr

Last week "Baby Mama" took top box office honors. With "Iron Man" hurtling into the theaters this weekend "Then she found me" won't, but if there is any justice it'll do reasonably well.

Both films deal with women hearing the fertility clock ticking down.

In "Baby Mama" Saturday Night Live alum Tina Fey plays Kate a single woman who is told she is incapable of having a child goes the surrogate route, and ends up playing a surrogate mother role to Angie the woman she hires to bear her child (played by another SNL-er Amy Poehler.)

In "Then She Found Me" Helen Hunt plays April, a woman who is in need of a stable guy, but finds herself caught between two guys who are less than ideal. Her life gets even more complicated when her birthmother turns up out of the blue and tries to establish a relationship.

Both plots are contrived, and both are played for laughs and pathos. Yet it's remarkable how much more satisfying "Then she Found Me" is as a movie.

And it simply gets down to acting. Fey and Poehler are great at mugging their way through comic scenes, but when it comes to showing the angst and discomfort that both characters feel with themselves there's no great depth.

Helen Hunt on the other hand drags herself into some very dark places. (She also directed the film.) Having watched her on the sitcom circuit for so long it is startling to see her features almost peel under the tension of her situation.

She's going to be a director and actor to watch in coming years.

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