Aimin' High

It will be interesting to see if the other five films fare any better. I screened three of them (and Judy Berlin) and was somewhat surprised to see that, for good or ill, they actually feel like film festival fare. That is, technical standards aren't state-of-the-art, and some of the stories are overly familiar.

While Judy Berlin shows clear signs of its director's potential, it is not a polished film. The black-and-white photography has a poetic feel for Long Island places, but Mendelsohn's abilities with characterization are uneven. You get the idea that his next film might be interesting, which is a feeling you often get at a film festival. After seeing Judy Berlin, I wasn't all that surprised that no distributor had picked it up following Sundance, even though Mendelsohn won the directing award there.

Such a Long Journey has an interesting backdrop: Bombay on the verge of the 1971 war with Pakistan. But director Sturla Gunnarsson hasn't fleshed out the story in credible ways. The film's key conflict -- whether the main character's son will go to the college his father has chosen for him -- just about defines "old hat." And the film strains for colorful effects, especially when the village idiot starts to gyrate and declaim. The wonderful actor Roshan Seth, who played a frustrated traditional Indian father to much subtler effect in Mississippi Masala, is largely wasted here.

Such a Long Journey is the weakest of the films I previewed. Southpaw is a well-made and touching documentary about Francis Barrett, an Irish traveler (Ireland's equivalent to a Gypsy, equally despised) who became an Olympic boxer. But again, this isn't fresh territory, as the blurbs themselves suggest: "half Rocky, half The Commitments," according to one commentator.

Orphans is by far the best of the films I saw. Its story of how four bereaved siblings rage through the Glasgow night just before their mother's funeral is an original vision of human suffering, endurance and solidarity.

So let's check the batting average here: Of the four films I saw, Shooting Gallery hits one home run and a couple of singles, and pops weakly to right. Which is nothing to be ashamed of. It probably makes for a higher slugging percentage than that of the upcoming Worldfest Houston, which sends far more batters to the plate than Shooting Gallery. Still, for the launch of a project such as this, I expected more.

According to Meistrich, this year's series was rather hastily assembled and promoted, largely because he was able to sell the idea much faster than he had expected. Maybe the next series, which opens in the fall, will have stronger promotion, and even stronger films.