Ride With the Devil: Director’s Cut
Ang Lee, U.S., 1999/2009, 158 min.
Sunday, Nov. 15, 6:30 p.m., Brown Hall
FREE PROGRAM

Between “The Ice Storm” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” Oscar®-winning director Ang Lee made the ambitious “Ride With the Devil.” Based on Missourian Daniel Woodrell’s novel, the Civil War film was shot entirely in Missouri and Kansas and boasted an ensemble cast of Tobey Maguire, Jewel, Tom Wilkinson, Skeet Ulrich, Jeffrey Wright, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Jim Caviezel and Mark Ruffalo. Lee has now revisited the film, restoring vital material. “Most of all, the new movie has breadth and pacing, more plot and action,” says Lee. “All the information is laid out. There’s a big action war sequence that is longer and more detailed. It feels more epic.”
With novelist Woodrell and a discussion of book-to-film translation.

Co-presented by the Missouri Center for the Book
and Washington University’s Film and Media Studies Program

Room and a Half
(Poltory komnaty ili sentimentalnoe puteshestvie na rodinu)
Andrey Khrzhanovsky, Russia, 2009, 130 min., Russian
SCREENING CANCELLED

Celebrated Russian poet and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Brodsky, who lived the latter half of his life in U.S. exile, was once asked whether he ever intended to return to see his fatherland. His reply – that if he did so, it would be anonymously – inspired this selection of the 2009 New York Film Festival, an ironic fairytale in which the poet travels by ship to the country of his youth. Crossing both geographical and temporal barriers, the film transports Brodsky back to the ‘50s and ‘60s and the country’s cultural capital, St. Petersburg. A fantastic voyage to the country’s past, “Room and a Half,” says Slant magazine, “brims forth with joyous bits of invention (such as a sequence where pianos, horns, and harps float above snowy St. Petersburg), mixes in handcrafted animated bits where cats and birds stand in for the people in Brodsky’s life, and peppers the poet’s lyrics across its soundtrack.”

Co-presented by AFI PROJECT: 20/20

Sam Steele and the Junior Detective Agency
Tom Whitus, U.S., 2009, 90 min.
Sunday, Nov. 22, 1 p.m., Tivoli 1

In this charming family film, Sam Steele Jr. wants to emulate his father, a renowned detective with the metro police. So with the aid of a new neighbor girl and her dog, Sam turns his clubhouse into the headquarters for the Junior Detective Agency. Meanwhile, Det. Sam Steele Sr. is having trouble catching the Cat (Luke Perry), a burglar who breaks into antique stores, museums and wealthy homes and leaves a taunting calling card. Tired of solving kiddie crimes, Sam Jr. decides to take on the Cat without the knowledge of his dad or mom (St. Louis actress Jilanne Klaus), and the plucky junior sleuths stumble across the scene of a crime in progress. “Sam Steele,” directed by SLIFF alum Tom Whitus (“Matchmaker Mary”), also boasts a delightful turn by veteran character actor M. Emmet Walsh (“Blood Simple”).
With director Whitus and co-star Klaus.

Sponsored by Rich and Judee Sauget and the Gateway Grizzlies

Saving Grace B. Jones
Connie Stevens, U.S., 2009, 120 min.
Friday, Nov. 20, 7 p.m., SLAM

Legendary actress and singer Connie Stevens (still beloved as Cricket from “Hawaiian Eye”) makes her belated but assured debut as a writer-director with the Missouri-shot drama “Saving Grace B. Jones.” After 17 years in a mental institution, troubled Grace (Oscar® winner Tatum O’Neal) arrives at the home of brother Landy (Michael Biehn of “The Terminator”) at the same time as 10-year-old Carrie ( Rylee Fansler), who’s sent from NYC to rural Missouri after the murder of her mother. The traumatized victims are welcomed by Landy, wife Bea (Penelope Ann Miller) and daughter Lucy (Evie Louise Thompson), but when a flood swamps the area, the once-placid surface of this small-town family is similarly roiled. The film’s deep cast includes Scott Wilson (“In Cold Blood”) and three-time Oscar® nominee Piper Laurie.
With director Stevens and stars Wilson, Fansler, Thompson, Gregory James and Tricia Leigh Fisher.

Sponsored by David Houlle, Sight and Sound Productions

Sleepwalking Land
(Terra Sonâmbula)
Teresa Prata, Mozambique, 2007, 97 min., Portuguese
Saturday, Nov. 14, 1 p.m., Frontenac 1

In the midst of Mozambique’s devastating civil war, an orphaned refugee wanders the countryside in search of his mother. His only companion is an elderly storyteller, and the only guide to finding his mother is a dead man’s diary. Together, the storyteller and diary lead him on a magical, macabre journey across war-torn landscapes to find the family he lost. Based on Mia Coutou’s acclaimed Portuguese novel of the same name, Brazilian director Teresa Prata’s transporting drama underscores the power of imagination in surviving, and ultimately overcoming, the catastrophe of war. Variety writes: “The unquantifiable toll of Mozambique’s long civil war suffuses ‘Sleepwalking Land,’ an emotionally affecting tale-within-a-tale (that) … works as a parable for a society struggling to cope with its evisceration.”

Snow
(Snijeg)
Aida Begic, Bosnia & Herzegovina, 2009, 100 min., Bosnian & English
Tuesday, Nov. 17, 6:30 p.m., Tivoli 3
Wednesday, Nov. 18, 9 p.m., Tivoli 1

“Snow,” the first feature from director Aida Begic, painstakingly documents the daily hardships of a war-scarred Bosnian village populated entirely by widows and orphans. In isolated Slavno, the surviving Muslim women manage to scratch out an existence, shunning the modern world. Young Alma wants to break the village’s self-imposed silence, and as the season’s first major snowstorm threatens to deepen the isolation, she forces the town’s women to confront both past and future. “Snow” won the Critics Week Grand Prize at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival.
With co-writer-art director Faruk Sabanovic.

Song From the
Southern Seas
(Pesn’ Juzhnykh Morej)
Marat Sarulu, Kazakhstan/Russia/France/Germany, 2008, 80 min., Russian
Friday, Nov. 13, 7:15 p.m., Frontenac 1
Sunday, Nov. 22, 2 p.m., Frontenac 1

In a beautiful but semi-desolate region of the Great Steppe, two couples – one Russian, the other Kazakh – have lived side-by-side for 15 years in relative harmony. But when the fair-skinned Russians give birth to a boy of decidedly darker skin, suspicion and acrimony arise and can only be dispelled by an ironic twist of family and fate. Alternating moods, from darkly somber to tender and wistful, writer-director Marat Sarulu’s film draws on Kazakhstan’s epic history to create a gritty, deeply compassionate tale of humor and cultural insight. “Song From the Southern Seas” is buoyed throughout by a soundtrack of folk-inspired melodies and makes bold use of hand-drawn shadow-puppet interludes that comment obliquely on the narrative. Ranking the film with such extraordinary Kazakh works as “Tulpan” and “Mongol,” Screen International calls it “an excellent example of accessible, cinema-specific, multilayered narrative.”

Spooner
Drake Doremus, U.S., 2009, 83 min.
Saturday, Nov. 14, 7:15 p.m., Tivoli 3

A used-car salesman who still lives with his parents, Herman Spooner (“Scooby-Doo’s” Matthew Lillard) is relatively content with his unfulfilling routine, but mom and dad have set his 30th birthday as a hard deadline for getting a place of his own, and his boss is putting on the pressure to bring in some numbers. Already headed for one of the worst days of his life, Spooner encounters yet another complication when he meets the girl of his dreams (Nora Zehetner of “Heroes”) only to discover that she is about to leave for the Philippines. Describing the film as “a pleasant mix of meet-cute romance and off-the-wall quirkiness,” Variety says that “Lindsay Stidham’s script percolates with straightfaced absurdities and amusing non sequiturs, occasionally recalling the trademark style of Hal Hartley.” Premiering at Slamdance, “Spooner” won the Outstanding Achievement in Filmmaking Award at the Newport International Film Festival.
With director Doremus.

St. Nick
David Lowery, U.S., 2008, 86 min.
Friday, Nov. 13, 7:15 p.m., Tivoli 3

In his gorgeously rendered first feature, writer-director David Lowery evokes the pastoral grandeur of Terrence Malick and David Gordon Green as a young brother and sister, played beautifully by real-life siblings Tucker and Savanna Sears, fend for themselves in the dangerous, unknown Texan landscape. Using sparse dialogue, Lowery composes “St. Nick” with a visual lyricism that lends it a dreamlike quality. Aaron Hillis of GreenCine Daily remarked: “Without a doubt, the best film at SXSW 2009 was writer-director David Lowery’s lovely, lived-in, slow-burning debut feature ‘St. Nick.’”
With writer-director Lowery.

Stolen Lives
Anders Anderson, U.S., 2009, 90 min.
Saturday, Nov. 14, 7:15 p.m., Frontenac 1
Sunday, Nov. 15, 7 p.m., Frontenac 1

A tense thriller, “Stolen Lives” explores every parent’s worst nightmare: the loss of a child. It has been eight years since the disappearance of his son, but Detective Tom Adkins (St. Louisan Jon Hamm of “Mad Men”) remains consumed by the event. When an early-morning phone call leads him to the mangled remains of a child who was buried alive 50 years ago, the evidence seems to shed new light on the mystery of his own son’s vanishing. Cutting back and forth from present day to the 1950s, the film skillfully weaves together two suspenseful narratives, with the striking similarities in the cases intensifying Adkins’ obsession. Josh Lucas and James Van Der Beek co-star.
With director Anderson.