Movie Review: 48th Denver Film Festival Round Up Days 1-6

The Denver Film Festival is back for its 48th edition and is once again happening in your own backyard, with some of the greatest films in the world playing at this massive festival. It kicked off on Friday, October 31 so, for the third year in a row, we sent our correspondent Julie River to watch as many movies as she could and report back on them.

The last few years saw some big name films, from The People’s Joker to Late Night With the Devil to I’m Still Here to Emilia Pérez, so who knows what the breakout film will be from this year’s festival. Below are some of the reviews that Julie wrote after the first half of the festival.

A Poet

In this fantastic Columbian comedy from Simón Mesa Soto, we meet one of the most pathetic characters I’ve ever seen in film, poet Oscar Restrepo (Ubeimar Rios). Renowned for the books of poetry he wrote in his youth, Oscar finds little recognition in his older age as he lives unemployed with family. While he doesn’t live with his teenage daughter Daniela (Alisson Correa), he has some contact with her and wants to be more involved in her life. Facing potential eviction from family members, Oscar takes up a teaching job at a local high school where he meets a talented young woman who writes poetry named Yurlady (Rebeca Andrade) and takes it upon himself to take Yurlady under his wing to nurture her talent. But taking on a protégé becomes more trouble than its worth, and Oscar becomes worried about ruining his already fragile reputation.

This was a delightfully funny comedy, though it gets a little dark at times when Oscar finds himself trying to defend himself against baseless accusations of inappropriate behavior with his young student. Ubeimar Rios portrays the pathos of this character brilliantly, as life continues to beat down Oscar at every turn. But the most compelling part of the film comes from Oscar’s desperate desire to become part of his daughter’s life, and the audience ends up rooting for the sad sack poet in his journey to strengthen his relationship with Daniela.

As someone who has been heavily involved with poetry, having recently released a book of my own, as well as someone who struggles with money, I found myself terrified at the moments when I related to Oscar’s character. But, in the end, as pathetic as Oscar gets, he’s genuinely a good man who just gets himself into bizarre situations, and that makes for some good-natured comedy that’s simply irresistible.

Rating: 92/100

Kontinental ‘25

In Cluj-Napoca, the capital of Transylvania, Orsolya (Eszter Tompa), a bailiff, is forced to evict a homeless man (Gabriel Spahiu) from the basement he’s living in so that the building can be turned into luxury hotels. But when the man commits suicide in response to his eviction, Orsolya spirals into a crisis around her job and her complicit role in state capitalist violence. In a series of conversations with friends, strangers, and even a priest, Orsolya seeks to find understanding in the wake of the tragedy.

The title of this film is apparently a reference to a classic Ingrid Bergman film called Europe ‘51, which I have never seen, and perhaps I could have appreciated it a bit more if I had. But the film, which focuses on a series of very long conversations mostly depicted in long shots, grew tedious and repetitive pretty quickly. While I could feel for Orsolya’s inner turmoil, her ways of going about finding understanding seemed odd. I especially didn’t appreciate the religious conversation with the priest, which seemed an unnecessary injection of orthodox morality into the film, which was especially odd as it immediately follows a scene where Orsolya takes solace in sex with a former student, presumably cheating on her husband. The concept is intriguing, and the format is ambitious, but ultimately it becomes a bit boring to watch a person have the same conversations about her guilt over and over again.

Rating: 71/100

Rose of Nevada

In a small, coastal British village that was marred by the tragic wreck of the fishing ship, the Rose of Nevada, in the 1990s, the villagers are astonished to see the presumably lost ship return in present day. The ship’s owners recruit a new crew of young men Nick (George MacKay) and Liam (Callum Turner). But, after their first fishing trip, the two deckhands find themselves transported back to the 1990s, being mistaken for the original crew of the ship just days before its scheduled to have its tragic accident.

First and foremost, this cinematography of this film was absolutely gorgeous, offering a gritty realism to what is essentially a science fiction film. But the sparse dialogue offers little in the way of narrative clarity, leaving viewers confused as to what they just saw. I had an extensive conversation with some other festival-goers after the film where we tried to figure out what was happening in the film and, as engaging as that conversation was, it would have been more satisfying if the film had been a little easier to follow. I certainly found myself rooting for Nick to find his way back home to his wife and child, but the confusing narrative still left a lot to be desired.

Rating: 82/100

Comparsa

In this stunning documentary made by local Colorado filmmakers in Guatemala, we learn of the tragedy of 41 girls who burned to death in a local “Safe Home” without anyone being held accountable. In the despair of all the gender-based violence in their country, two young sisters (Lesli Canela Pérez and Lupe Pérez) band together with a group of other local youths to put on a vibrant women’s arts festival, channeling their grief and fear into acts of artistic protest and defiance.

It was hard not to fall in love with this charming documentary, as the film’s two subjects, Lesli and Lupe, are models of resilience in the face of overwhelming tragedy. It’s a simple idea, and the film does a wonderful job of finding the story in something so simple. By the end of the film, the audience was deeply moved, which was brought even closer to home by the fact that the festival flew in Lesli and Lupe to show off some of the wonderful artistic creations they made. This film is a reminder that, no matter how deep the darkness gets, there is always hope.

Rating: 94/100

Natchez

In the small Mississippi town of Natchez that mostly survives off of tourism income from showing off the town’s beautiful antebellum houses, there’s a narrative of Southern pride being sold to tourists. But, as time marches on, more and more cracks are being made in that narrative, as the white homeowners have to start to grapple with the fact that their pride in their heritage is built on land that’s red with the blood of slavery. The film examines both the wealthy, white homeowners who lead the tourism industry, as well as the Black community members trying to educate both the white residents and the visiting tourists about the town’s horrific history of slavery and how the white citizens still benefit from that racism to this day.

This was a fascinating documentary, and I found it rather amazing that the film got all of these interviews with the white homeowners considering that the film was basically mocking them and condemning them. I found myself with very little sympathy for anyone white who was celebrating the history of the town, that is, until we got the brief segment about the town’s gay society, which holds fundraisers in old antebellum houses, dancing in drag on the memories of those slaves. It reminded me, uncomfortably, that even the white segment of the queer community can be woefully blind to their own racism. The film even builds up one of the little old gay men in town with Parkinson’s who gives tours of one of the houses as an almost sympathetic character, only to reveal his true nature towards the end of the film as he goes off on a violently racist tirade full of full-on n-bombs.

The film forced me to take a moment to evaluate some aspects of my own life and contemplate the internalized racism in the institutions I engage with on a daily basis and ways that I can combat that racism. And that should be the goal of a documentary like this: to make the viewer have those difficult conversations with themselves. In that respect, Natchez is a resounding success.

Rating: 96/100

Christy

One of the special presentations of the festival was Christy, the upcoming biopic of queer boxer Christy Martin (now Christy Salters) starring Sydney Sweeney in the title role. The film is poised to be a huge blockbuster, and the festival even preceded the film with an awards presentation of the festival’s inaugural “Outlaw Award,” given to the film’s star, Ben Foster, who played Christy’s lecherous and despicable trainer and husband, Jim Martin. I honestly knew very little about Sydney Sweeney aside from bizarre conservative memes saying weird things like “Sydney Sweeney’s boobs prove wokism is dead,” which seems to be a lot of pressure to put on the poor girl’s chest. But the recent controversy over Sweeney’s American Eagle jeans ad has left me with negative feelings about the actress. Still, maybe the fact that she was portraying a famous queer woman meant that Sweeney could be redeemed, and I tried to go in with an open mind.

The film tells the story of Christy (Sweeney), a coal miner’s daughter from West Virginia who took up boxing at a young age in the late ‘80s and quickly attracted the attention of promoters in the then-fledgling world of women’s boxing. Christy is exploring her queer sexuality in her young age, something that her conservative and closed-minded mother Joyce (Merritt Wever) is trying to get her to stop doing. Christy is soon paired with trainer Jim Martin (Foster) who is immediately a sexist jerk with almost no redeeming qualities. With Jim also wanting to squash Christy’s lesbian tendencies, he hastily proposes to her, and the two enter into a fairly passionless marriage. But Jim is a controlling, manipulative abuser who attempts to control every aspect of Christy’s life, leading to near tragedy.

Sweeney, to her credit, does an outstanding job of completely disappearing into the role of Christy, and, even though I didn’t know a lot about Sweeney before this film, I saw virtually none of her in Christy. It was a powerful performance that completely steps into the shoes of this character. But, aside from Sweeney’s stellar performance, the film didn’t have a lot else going for it. After a while, it started to feel like abuse porn, as an excessive amount of the film is dedicated to the abuse that Christy suffered at the hands of her husband. While I’m sure that the real-life Jim Martin was an absolute monster, I feel like Christy has to have had more accomplishments and more stories in her lifetime than simply escaping the man who abused her. In a two hour and 15 minute film, you would think that the story of one of the most important figures in women’s sports would have more facets to it and not simply be focused on abuse alone. Even Christy’s famous fight with Laila Ali (Naomi Graham) was depicted less as a challenge for Christy and more as another example of her husband putting her into uncomfortable and dangerous situations that she didn’t want to be in.

Foster’s performance made me wonder a little about the wisdom of giving him an award for this particular film. Foster’s portrayal of Jim Martin was very one-note, portraying him as a disgusting creep with absolutely no complexity to his character. With such a lack of redeeming qualities, it became hard to understand why Christy would consent to marrying such a man. Don’t abusers usually trick you early into the relationship into thinking they’re good people? Not Foster’s Jim Martin. He’s a jerk from the get-go, and Christy’s reasons for accepting his perfunctory proposal remained a mystery throughout the movie.

Another aspect that bothered me a bit was the fact that the abuse scenes seemed gratuitously violent, to the point where they would likely be triggering to the very abuse victims that the film is trying to empower. I think back to my review of the film Sorry Baby, which depicted a sexual assault in a very delicate way, with the actual assault happening off-camera, so that the film could tell its story without traumatizing the audience. Christy seems to have no such concerns about being delicate with its subject matter, and one particular shot of Christy’s leg muscle hanging severed from her leg seemed like it could easily have been cut. I feel like there had to be a more careful and delicate way to depict the abuse in this film while still stoking the appropriate outrage from the audience.

So while Sweeney is likely to be, rightfully, praised for her performance in this film, the story and the characters around her left a lot to be desired. There had to be a way to tell a more complex, multi-faceted story about this amazing woman’s life, and there had to be a way to add more complexity to Jim Martin’s character to make him more than a one-dimensional villain.

Rating: 75/100

Christy opens today nationwide.

Even though the Denver Film Festival has already started, some limited tickets and passes are still available to the festival if you want to see what you’re missing out on.