Best Bets for Boston's Best Film Festival
(plus: New WaPo reviews of "On Swift Horses" and "The Legend of Ochi")
I’ve been running around so much this week that I forgot to tell my local readers about this year’s edition – the 22nd – of the best little film fest in town, The Independent Film Festival of Boston. How late am I to the party? It started last Wednesday, but it runs through April 30th, so you still have time to catch some good stuff. Of the remaining line-up, I would recommend:
“Free Leonard Peltier” (Saturday, April 26, 2:00 p.m., Brattle Theatre), a documentary that doubles as a necessary history lesson and cri de coeur, no matter that the legendary Native American activist was released to indefinite house arrest as one of Joe Biden’s last acts in office
“Caught by the Tides” (Sunday, April 27, 1:00 p.m., Brattle Theatre), the latest from filmmaking master Jia Zhangke and an epic meditation on China’s past, present and future that uses footage amassed over three decades
“Zodiac Killer Project” (Sunday, April 27, 8:30 p.m., Brattle Theatre), a delightfully droll reverse engineering of a genre that has been done to serial death – the true crime documentary – with director/multimedia artist/brainiac Charles Shackleton repurposing pieces of a movie he was never able to make
“Rebel with a Clause” (Monday, April 28, 5:00 p.m., Brattle Theatre), a grammar documentary for all of us who are devoted to the Oxford Comma
“Friendship” (Monday, April 28, 7:00 p.m., Somerville Theatre), a comedy that pairs Tim Robinson, the King of Cringe, with Paul Rudd, the Duke of Cool –
– and the fest’s closing night feature, “Sorry, Baby” (Wednesday, April 30, 7:30 p.m., Coolidge Corner Theatre), a witty, heartsore tour de force from writer-director-star Eva Victor, about a young academic struggling to recover from a sexual assault with the help of friends, neighbors and the occasional random stranger.
Again, apologies for the late notice, but I hope you get to see these films, either at the festival (if you’re local) or when they turn up in theaters or on demand later this year. Further details and a full schedule at the IFFBoston website.
