Sundance Sunday, January 22

A couple of good movies today.

Elena - set in Russia, Elena is married to Vladimir. They are both older and have children from previous relationships. Their marriage isn't very passionate, and she is more caretaker than wife. Her son's family is in need of financial help, and Vladimir is getting tired of giving them money. He says her son should be responsible for his own family, and why is it his (Vladimir's) responsibility to take care of them? They are strangers to him.

The movie moves very slowly. The first 5 minutes consists of a shot of a bird outside their home. The movie could have easily lost 20 minutes. There isn't that much story to it, but as it progresses I started to feel for Elena. She gets to a point where she makes a hasty decision that will solve all of her problems. I expected there to be consequences to her choice, but there were none. I guess I was a little disappointed that it had no real ending. I expected something.

And I didn't really understand what happened at the end with her grandson. He goes off with his friends and gets in a very vicious fight with some other boys. They are trying to kill each other, and I didn't understand who started the fight or what it was about. A little more explanation there would have been nice.

Excision - Pauline is a very disturbed teenager. She is very anti social and she fantasizes about performing surgery on strangers. She has lots of very twisted fantasies which are shown to us in all of their shocking details. There is quite a bit of blood in this, and it isn't for the squeamish. I saw quite a few walkouts in this movie.

Her mom is played by Traci Lords, and her pastor is played by John Waters. Nice bits of casting there. Waters is stunt casting, but Lords does a very good job playing Pauline's mother. She starts out as a very overbearing mother, but as Pauline's behavior gets worse, we start to sympathize with her mom. This girl should be committed.

I enjoyed the movie because it had an interesting story. It was disturbing, but I like movies that take chances and provoke a real reaction. I won't give away where the story goes, but the ending packs a real punch.