Day 3 of the Philadelphia Film Festival

For my day 3 I had three films on my schedule starting at 2pm on Sunday with the black and white South Korean film THE DAY HE ARRIVES.

The film directed by Sang-soo Hong, was about a director who has made 4 films, retired and is now teaching at a small school in the country. The film chronicles his 4-day visit to Seoul where the director, Seong-Jin is there to see a friend and possibly stir up some old demons.

The film was an interesting sort of slice of life piece as Seong-Jin wanders the city meeting new people and interacting with people of from his past. As the film moves forward we see Seong-Jin is a very troubled man and very destructive when it comes to his interpersonal relationships.

As his visit ends so does this bittersweet film about man is doomed to be alone as we watch him destroy relationship after relationship. I really enjoyed this film, but it’s not for everyone, as the screening I attended had a few walkouts who just couldn’t handle the loose narrative of the film.

The next film was a film I literally had only heard about the night before BUTTER. BUTTER was a last minute addition replacing a screening of ANONYMOUS and was so far one the biggest surprises and one my favorite films at the film festival thus far.

The dark comedy directed by Jim Field Smith is all about sex, lies and black mail in the world of mid-west butter carving. The film has an all-star cast with the likes of Hugh Jackman, Alicia Silverstone, Jennifer Garner and Olivia Wilde doing and saying things you probably wouldn’t expect in a film about butter carving.

By the time the credits rolled my face hurt from laughing so hard, the film somehow manages to be both a great dark comedy and extremely heartwarming at the same time which is no easy feat to be honest.

They are showing this film again Sunday October 30th at 2pm. I HIGHLY suggest you check it out, because it’s not due in theaters for another 3-4 months.

Finally, I sat down once again at the iHouse to see the much-hyped film from Norway HEADHUNTERS. I had rearranged my schedule to see this film after reading almost nonstop about it since Fantastic-Fest and was really excited to see it.

The first thing I noticed was they had properly framed the screen in 2:35 aspect ratio this time for HEADHUNTERS the way they should have for BATTLE ROYALE.

The film bothered me right out of the gate with its story about a headhunter who was also an art thief on the side. This is probably because the film felt the need to constantly scream at the audience about how clever it was. The thing about films like that is you know there is going to be huge twist at the end, so you then spend the whole films looking for clues for said twist.

The problem is when the twist hits its sloppy and barely believable to be honest. It really seemed like the director pulled it out of his ass and I was left rolling my eyes. Yup, I can see why they want to remake this for American audiences.

While I thought the film would have been an amazing short, I honestly felt by the end it had simply run out of steam. I really wanted to like this film, but I saw so many holes in the big tie up at the end I couldn’t accept it.

I had planned on checking out EUROPA but disappointed from HEADHUNTERS I called it a night.