AFI Fest 2014: Day three

AFI Fest, the longest-running international film festival in Los Angeles, has taken off at Hollywood Boulevard. Over the next week, directors from around the world, including new auteurs and renowned award-winners, will be making appearances at the TCL Chinese Theater, the Egyptian Theater and the Dolby Theatre to support their newest projects, with numerous awaiting fans in tow.

A&E; senior staff Sebastian Torrelio will be attending AFI Fest this week, scoping out the newest selections on the festival circuit, and films that may be coming to American audiences in the near future. On the third day of AFI Fest coverage, Torrelio’s schedule included two documentaries that rely on their subject’s interesting environments and two dramas that run heavy with the markings of growing independent filmmakers.

“Goodnight Mommy”
Directed by Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz
RADiUS-TWC

“Goodnight Mommy” is a bit of a demented motion picture, for better or worse. Elias and Lukas Schwarz play characters of the same name, two young brothers, practically identical in appearance that live alone with their mother (Susanne Wuest). Their mother returns home after some sort of accident, now with a heavily bandaged face and much more aggressive than she used to be. The boys are suspicious – their mother would never have done mean, punishing things to them, and this new woman, hiding behind a mask of sorts, has been acting too strangely for comfort.

As the brothers grow more and more resentful towards the woman they suspect not to be their mother, they themselves turn into darker personas to fight back. “Goodnight Mommy” uses a bone-chilling level of simplistic camerawork that turns the family’s house, a pristinely well-ordained upper-class abode, into a haunted mansion. Their white walls make each shadow look especially prominent, their basements and stairways shrouded in a deep blackness when the sun falls.

The last half hour itself is cringe-inducing, taking the boys’ obsession with the weird and dangerous to new levels, all resulting in one plot twist that effectively drives the purpose of the movie. Not that “Goodnight Mommy” would be better without the plot twist, but the movie as a whole is a well thought-out independent horror with surprising levels of imagination behind its gorgeous shots. Hiding behind the plot twist for most of its running time makes “Goodnight Mommy” seem desperate, letting the frightening nature of its conclusion ring a little more hollow than may have been intended.

“Manos Sucias”
Directed by Josef Kubota Wladyka

There is very little about “Manos Sucias” (“Dirty Hands”) that hasn’t been done before – its plot relatively straightforward and its characters fairly see-through. But director Josef Kubota Wladyka’s biggest asset comes with his setting, alongside the Pacific coast of Columbia, and that gives “Manos Sucias” its thrilling edge. Focusing on two young men, the naive Delio (Cristian Advincula) and the more matured though desperate Jacobo (Jarlin Martinez), Wladyka weaves the battle-torn areas of the Columbia drug trade into a believable story, one that soaks in the atmosphere of devastation that cartels and gangs have left behind.

“Manos Sucias” isn’t glamorous, letting its two main characters go about their mission, to carry a submerged torpedo in their battered fishing boat from point A to point B, with a frightening ease. Each roadblock along their way, of which there are predictably many, causes a bit of trauma for the two while bringing them closer together. “Manos Sucias” can’t help but feel short – with only a 84-minute run time – and simple, but lets its gritty action scenes go on without much to stop them. Towards its conclusion, “Manos Sucias” weaves a fairly satisfying tale without leaving much to interpretation. The viewer doesn’t leave the theater without a bit of respect for those who live their everyday lives needing to make truly difficult decisions, even when seeming to be on top of the world.

“The Salt of the Earth”
Directed by Juliano Ribeiro Salgado and Wim Wenders
Sony Pictures Classics

Director Wim Wenders, known for his work on films such as “Paris, Texas” and “Pina,” is probably one of the best documentarians alive today. That being said, “The Salt of the Earth” reflects his talents in very few ways. Instead, the film takes a look at the life and works of Sebastião Salgado, a Brazilian photographer and father to co-director Juliano Ribeiro Salgado. Sebastião has gone across the globe multiple times, taking his camera to the beginnings and ends of the Earth, though not necessarily in that order.

Sebastião began as a social photographer, taking shots of people in countries such as India, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Guatemala. He weaves incredible insight into the lives of gold mine workers, starving populations of Africa, warring states and plenty more in the film’s timespan. The documentary plays mostly as a series of black-and-white photographs with Sebastião overlaying his stories. As a retrospective on the works of a man’s career, “The Salt of the Earth” is nothing less than remarkable. But with Sebastião’s late career decision to start capturing nature within his lens, from rainforests to animals, big and small, existing in ways that seem almost mystifying, the piece turns into a history of our planet. Sebastião proves that the planet is not only still encompassed in its pre-industrial, primal shell, but it’s also still beautiful, and he does so with just the click of his camera.

“Tales of the Grim Sleeper”
Directed by Nick Broomfield
HBO Documentary Films

The most interesting aspect of director Nick Broomfield’s “Tales of the Grim Sleeper,” at least from a UCLA-perspective, is the documentary’s vicinity to home. Broomfield recounts the ominous past of Lonnie Franklin Jr., a Los Angeles man who was generally seen as friendly and helpful by his peers. Franklin Jr. was accused of murdering 10 women between 1985 and his arrest in 2010, and received national attention as the “Grim Sleeper,” an alleged serial killer finally ousted for his crimes after more than 25 years of “exhaustive” police work.

Broomfield’s job in filming his latest documentary comes down to two things: reveal the true aura of Franklin Jr.’s past among his community and prove that the Los Angeles Police Department cannot simply call its efforts “exhaustive” in a press conference and get away with it. He does a very good job with the former – Broomfield goes about Franklin Jr.’s South Central Los Angeles neighborhood searching for friends of Franklin Jr., many of whom are involved in prostitution rings. But Broomfield also attempts to overshadow the police’s efforts, using archival footage to examine how upsettingly non-urgent the 25-year search really was. Broomfield’s points are strong and his argument is valid, though he could widen the scope, especially when he has surviving victims sitting in his studio.

– Sebastian Torrelio