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Part 6

The following SIFF 2009 previews are offered in order of their press screening dates. Must-sees from this group are Fifty Dead Men Walking and Tetro.

Three Blind Mice (2008)
Monday June 8, 9:30pm, SIFF Cinema
Wednesday June 20, 9:30pm, Uptown Cinema

Three Australian sailors spend their final night on the town in Sydney before returning to their next tour of duty in the Persian Gulf. Hookers, parents, a backroom card game and plenty of alcohol fuel this occasionally humorous but unexceptional adventure. (94 minutes)

Kaifeck Murder (2008)
Saturday June 13, 10pm, Harvard Exit
Sunday June 14, 4:30pm, Harvard Exit

A professional photographer travelling the Bavarian countryside on assignment with his son, stumbles into a village where a mass murder was committed eighty years earlier. What looks like and starts off as a first rate spook show, falls into implausible coincidence that explains away every notion of the supernatural. (86 minutes)

Fifty Dead Men Walking (2008)

Saturday June 13, 6:30pm, Uptown Cinema
Sunday June 14, 1:30pm, Uptown Cinema

A member of the Irish Republican Army prospers for years as a British double agent in 1980’s Belfast. Director Kari Skogland’s white-knuckle ride through "the troubles" is a showcase for composite character Martin McGartland (Jim Sturgess), a "made" man, husband, father and trusted friend, who betrays all but his British contact (Sir Ben Kingsley) in this exhilarating but far-fetched political thriller. If Sturgess brilliant (Serpico meets Bloody Sunday) performance isn’t nominated for a best actor award this year, there is no justice. (119 minutes)

Tetro (2009)

Wednesday June 10, 7pm, Egyptian Theatre

A young American visits and attempts to reconcile with his long-estranged relative in Buenos Aires. Director-screen writer Francis Ford Coppola’s trio of characters: naïve Bennie (Alden Ehrenriech, a dead-ringer for Leo DiCaprio), older and volatile Tetro (Vincent Gallo) and the sensuous arbiter Miranda (Maribel Verdú) provide a compelling balance of pleasant and hostile interaction. An intoxicatingly beautiful combination of editing and warm black-and-white photography looks every bit the work of a gifted master who’s been at his craft for decades. The use of color for flashback scenes is fussy and distracting, but the exquisite look and style of Tetro is instantly recognizable as the work of the same filmmaker who created Rumblefish and The Outsiders. (120 minutes)

Amreeka (2009)
Saturday June 13, 6:30pm, Pacific Place Cinemas
Sunday June 14, 4pm, Pacific Place Cinemas

A Palestinian divorcee and her teenage son leave the West Bank to live with relatives in suburban Chicago. Amreeka is the sweet, reassuring story of a kind-hearted woman, and the troubles her extended family must overcome in a post 9/11 culture. The refreshingly even-handed representation of the good and bad in American society is reason enough to see and love this film. The characterization of sympathetic, non-belligerent middle-eastern immigrants is another. (97 minutes)