PERSEPOLIS

At first, the announcement of this movie as the "secret screening" was pretty disheartening.  The first "secret screening" was Richard Kelly's incredibly bad SOUTHLAND TALES, and when they announced the title of this film my immediate reaction was, "what the hell is that?"  Then they explain that it's a French/Iranian animated film, which didn't raise my anticipation of seeing it any higher.  Then the film begins to play, and the animation isn't so impressive.  Little by little, my head began to sink as this was not why I bought a V.I.P. pass for this year's festival.  Then, about ten or fifteen minutes in to the show, the film grabs my attention, and with each passing frame from that point on I was completely enthralled by the story being told.
This is a coming of age story about a young girl's journey to adulthood through the difficulties of being raised during the different periods of the Iranian revolution.  Her parents and close relatives are all very politically active and strongwilled individuals who have no reservations of speaking or acting out against the current state of affairs.  As a young girl the main character witnesses the overthrow of the Iranian king, which sounds like fantastic news at the outset, but the country gradually falls into a government run strictly off of the Islamic religion's beliefs.  With each change in governmental policy things seem to not only change, but get worse and worse, and this little girl, to teenager, to young adult, to adult is our witness to each level of the country's evolution.
The fact that the film is animated will probably hinder it from reaching the classic status that it rightly deserves.  It's a perfectly executed story that had it been made live action with the resources it would need to make it as powerful as this animated version I can guarantee that it would be amongst the classics of world cinema.  Out of all of the films I've seen thus far this entire year, this is the first one I can safely say is an important piece of work.  Every element of the film blends perfectly together, from the sad, to the cheerful, to the funny, and the empowering into an animated film that is childish in its presentation, but completely mature and engrossing in its execution.  This is probably the "best" film I've seen all year.


SON OF RAMBOW

If there's one thing that can cheer a man up after sitting through a 90 minute film that makes you weep that your life isn't nearly as awful as you thought, it's a film that makes you weep that your childhood wasn't nearly as awesome as it could have been.  SON OF RAMBOW is the first film I've seen come out for this generation of youngsters that has the potential to reach the platitudes of the young adventure films from when I was a kid, with THE GOONIES and the almighty THE MONSTER SQUAD sitting atop the very, very tiny mountain.
SON OF RAMBOW is a British film about a young boy raised in the life of a strict religious culture.  It's a borderline Amish lifestyle, yet the boy attends a private school instead of the schooling recommended by the church members for the children raised in their way of life.  Also attending the private school is a troublemaking aspiring filmmaker.  The two meet up by chance in the hallway as the bad kid was thrown out mid-class for punishment, and the good kid was sent out because the class needed to watch the television for an assignment and the boy's religion doesn't permit television viewing.  In any case, the two boys begin to develop somewhat of an older brother bullies younger brother kind of relationship, and one day while the good kid goes to the home of the bad kid he accidentally begins to view a recorded home copy of FIRST BLOOD.  Having never before seen anything on a television, he becomes completely taken by the action film experience, and the two boys set out to make their own film together to submit to a young filmmaker's competition.  a film entitled SON OF RAMBOW.
Watching the development of the movie (not the actual movie, but the movie within the movie), along with the growing friendship of these two kids frome completely different upbringings, is something I don't recall experiencing to this degree ever before in this kind of film.  Watching the two boys try and pull off professional stunts, and write a story to put on to film, was one of the most enjoyable moments I've had at the theater.  This is a film that truly applauds creativity, imagination, dreaming, and working to achieve a goal.  It's a film that shows the importance of family and friendship, and the pure playfulness of what it was like to be a kid.  For as much as I love THE MONSTER SQUAD and THE GOONIES, I can honestly say that this film may be the only film that I've seen that really makes we want to be a kid again. 

KILTRO

This is a martial arts film from Chile starring a potentially great action film star to be.  The guy worked on the set of THE RUNDOWN as one of the stunt coordinators, as well as acting as The Rock's stunt double for a few of the shots.  So, the guy is big.  In fact, the guy is so big that his size may be what gets him noticed in the action genre to become a breakout star.  He doesn't do anything you haven't seen before, but he does do things that you haven't seen men 6'4'' and about 230 lbs. of pure muscle do before.  This guy is running around and doing flips and mid-air cartwheels as if he was someone half his size, but he pulls it all off naturally, and more so than anything else is that the guy actually has some acting chops.
I won't go much into the story, because it's somewhat irrelevant.  There's a man that's going around assassinating a bunch of martial arts masters, and somehow the martial arts clan that's being taken out one by one involves our main character and his love interest.  That's about all you need to know.
Because this film doesn't do anything that I haven't seen at some point it doesn't earn any really awesome points,  However, since I've never seen a man the size of the main character move as fast, or as agile as he then the film does get originality points there.  Not to mention, that the film takes full advantage of the stereotype that characters usually the size of the main character are just mindless brutes, so it earns double points of being aware of its genre's cliches and exploits them to humorous effect.  This film is worth watching if you get the chance, but mark the name Marko Zaror down as he can conceivably be the breakout action star that everyone thinks Tony Jaa is going to be.  Zaror may not be able to fight like Jaa, but he's certainly got more screen personality, and sooner or later that's all that any of the action stars are left with once the awe of their athletic ability dwindles away.


DAI NIPPONJIN

I probably spelled this incorrectly, but this was the late addition "secret screening" that was brought on board specifically at the request of Drafthouse owner Tim League.  This is a Japanese mockumentary that he hailed as pretty much the funniest thing in existence.  While the film did have some amusing moments, and a very hilarious finale, the remaining 80 minutes of footage is mildly humorous at best.  It's a very clever concept, and executed very well for what it was intending.  But, drop dead funny it wasn't.
In the instance that anyone actually has the capability to watch this I don't want to ruin it by giving anything away about what the movie is about, because part of the fun truly is finding out why a camera crew is following around this very uninteresting guy and making a documentary about him.  Again, the idea is highly clever, but there's a good deal of the film that isn't as funny as I thought it should have been, and after I saw the final 15 minutes (not including the end credits which is also a very funny moment) I realized why I didn't laugh as much as I thought I should have.
This was disappointing that I stayed up so damn late to watch it, but now I know to watch out for the stuff that Tim League brings on board without the knowledge of the other festival programmers as a major addition to the festival.  I probably would have enjoyed it a little more if I wasn't expecting something to live up to it needing to added as a "secret screening."