The Boston International Film Festival kicks off today at the AMC/Loews Boston Common, running through the 14th. The Globe's Ethan Gilsdorf breaks down some of the offerings. What makes the BIFF different from the Boston Film Festival, the Independent Film Festival of Boston, the Boston Underground Film Festival, and the New England Film and Video Festival? Basically this: over 100 films that have been made with love, family money, and skill, that weren't accepted into the top tier of the festival circuit (Sundance, Toronto, New York, Boston Independent, etc), and that most likely won't find the light of theatrical distribution. Doesn't mean they're bad -- on the contrary, there will be some finds here if you're willing to roll the dice and pluck one or two of the "Sessions" on the BIFF schedule. What it does mean is that there are increasingly more filmmakers in the world than there are mass distribution points; the bazaar that is the Boston International Film Festival is a welcome annual attempt to correct the situation.
But you probably just want to know if the new Adam Sandler movie is any good. Fair enough. Wesley thinks so, Tony Scott really thinks so, and I think so too. There are some of you who can't countenance the thought of Sandler in anything; fine, be off with you. There are others who'll recoil from the notion of the star and screenwriters Judd Apatow and Robert Smigel addressing events in the Middle East with a comedy about an Israeli counterterrorist who really wants to be a New York hair stylist (see photo above). You're right, it's a dreadful idea. No, "You Don't Mess with the Zohan" does not represent nuanced political discourse. But Sandler is disarmingly sweet and so's the movie's overall tone. Also: knuckleheaded, sloppy, crass, politically naive, extremely silly, and funny in any scene that does not involve Rob Schneider, a vast forcefield of humor-suck who negates any and all comedy ions simply by showing up.
As Wes notes, they should have hired more Middle Eastern actors to play Middle Easterners -- one of the smaller but richer delights of this splattery farce is actor and stand-up comic Daoud Heidami as one of Schneider's more easygoing accomplices. Like I said, you already know whether you're interested in this, but it stands as one of Sandler's better entries, precisely because it doesn't go the "Click" route and take itself seriously.
If you have young kids, you already know you're going to "Kung Fu Panda," so all I'll say is that the story is a retread that will have your brains oozing out your ears while the visuals are lush and inventive, even beautiful. Except for Jack Black and Dustin Hoffman, the all-star vocal cast (Angelina Jolie, Seth Rogen, David Cross, Jackie Chan, Lucy Liu, Ian McShane) is woefiully underutilized.
It's a weirdly martial arts/kickboxing weekend all around, though. There's Sandler's action stunts in "Zohan," the regurgitated Shaw Brothers CGI of "Panda," some real Shaw Brothers classics at the Harvard Film Archive, the low-budget North Carolina tae kwon do farce "The Foot Fist Way" at the Kendall, and the surprisingly sharp and funny "Bigger, Stronger, Faster," a documentary in which bodybuilder Chris Bell looks at America's steroid addiction through the bulging, abused muscles of his two brothers. That's at the Kendall and the Coolidge; over at the Museum of Fine Arts is what's probably the single best movie of the weekend: "Up the Yangtze," a gorgeously shot documentary (see photos below) about a few of the lives being affected by China's massive Three Gorges Dam project. I know, sounds like medicine, right? It's not -- it's transfixing, emotionally haunting stuff, and Canadian director Yung Chang is one to watch.
