Sunday, April 25, 2010

Day 4 continued: "Trucker" and "Barfly"


Today I was telling my wife that Ebertfest 12 has been a great festival --- as good or better than most.  This is due to movies like "Trucker" which was never released in my neck-of-the-woods.  I only knew that it existed after having read the festival line-up last month on http://www.ebertfest.com/.  This is one of those "slice of life" movies, as I have been describing them over the years, that Roger seems to favor each year.  "Come Early Morning" and "Tully" are two other examples, and both are well worth your time.

"Trucker" is a challenging film with an unflinching performance at its core.  Watching Michelle Monaghan's character evolve is mesmerizing, and we can see why Roger calls this a performance worthy of an Oscar nomination.  It's a shame that didn't happen..  "Trucker" is something special from beginning to end. 




Barbet Schroeder accompanied his film "Barfly" to the festival, and this was our fourth and final film of the day.  Moderator Kim Morgan guided the Q&A, and Schroeder spoke about Mickey Rourke being adaptive and overall pretty easy to get along with.  And what more can we say about Faye Dunaway, striking in her role as Wanda?  Rourke and Dunaway together conjure up images of "Leaving Las Vegas" at times - and I wonder if John O'Brien (who wrote LLV) was inspired by the Schroeder film. 

I know, I know --- no discussion of "Barfly" is complete without a mention of Charles Bukowski --- but I don't really want to get into that here. 

One more movie to go, and that will be the end of Ebertfest 12.

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