The Great Colin Hanks

After recieving raves at Sundance, the highly pleasing star-struck comedy The Great Buck Howard had a gala screening on Friday night. In attendance were both writer/director Sean McGinly and up-and-coming star Colin Hanks.

The movie is a hoot, and while I can't do a full review what I can say is that this tale of a former college kid (Hanks) looking for direction in his life who ends up becoming the assistant for a once-famous mentalist ("I've been on The Tonight Show 51 times!") Buck Howard (wonderfully played by John Malkovich) as the entertainer readies a massive trick which will hopefully catapult him back into the national limelight. Along the way he learns about life, makes friends with an acerbic publicist (Emily Blunt) and tries to not let his angry father's (real-life dad Tom Hanks) displeasure as to his dropping out of law school get the better of him.

It reminded me quite a bit of the slightly similar 1982 Richard Benjamin minor classic My Favorite Year. That film was also about an aging celebrity trying to re-ignite a stalled career, the picture earning a much-deserved Oscar nomination for star Peter O'Toole and gave Mark Linn-Baker (who would go on to star in the television sitcom Perfect Strangers) one of his few decent theatrical roles.

I got the opportunity to sit down with Hanks a couple of hours before the local premier of his film and I asked him about these similarities. "That was actually, ironically, one of my favorite movies growing up as a kid. I absoluely loved that film. I was actually kind of honored when people [mention] that. I actually get excited when somebody mentions that because, for me personally, that was a really important movie from my childhood that I watched like every day."

"And, yeah, I can sort of see it. Same sort of vibe. No disrespect to [Mark] Linn-Baker but I hope I don't end up on Perfect Strangers. But, in all seriousness, that's a movie that's endured. It was a really funny film. And I hope we can achieve some of the same success. These movies last forever and they always seem to find an audience somewhere. Hopefully people will really like it."

"I just think [Buck Howard] is a delightful little movie and I tend to like those kind fo films that are just so entertaining and where you can notice all these small little things all the people do to make [you] laugh. But then, it takes very little to make me laugh. Well, not very little, I just find myself laughing at the little tiny things here and there, and if there are enough of those little tiny things and enough big things that I just think are really hilarious."

"And I just think everyone's so damn good in it," he continues emphatically before adding with a trademark deadpan smirk and a slight chuckle familiar to a certain two-time Academy-Award winning actor Hanks has known his entire life since birth, "myself excluded."

I'd have to disagree with that last statement. This is the best the actor has been, and also the first role he's had since his debut in Orange County that's really allowed him to showcase his talents. I'll have more of this interview (along with a full review) on the main site when The Great Buck Howard opens in theaters later this year.

In other SIFF news, I had to endure one of the more annoying midnight movie experiences the festival has probably ever given me. The new Takashi Miike (Audition) creation, the weirdly disjointed East meet West and goes back East Western Sukiyaki Western Django, had its premier, and it was definitely one of those movies where I quickly foudn myself wanting to be anywhere other than in my theater seat.

Not so mcuh because of the film itself (although, it must be admitted, that even for the always unusual and more than a bit unhinged Miike, this one was pretty awful), but more because of the idiot fan boy sitting next to me. Packed in like sardines due to a virtual sell-out, the gentleman to my left was one of those bizarre rubes that litterally laughed or made comments and giggled madly at everything. Every. Little. Thing.

A Man walked across the screen - he laughed.

A Person gets a sideways glance from an adrongynous gunslinger packing a samurai sword - he laughed.

A twangy guitar starts playing on the soundtrack - he laughed.

A close-up shot of a red and white rose - he laughed.

A wooden sign saying, "Nevada" - he laughed.

A dorkily dressed Quentine Tarantino, in a cameo, starts resciting a nonsensical poem in fractured stereotypical broken Japanese-tinged English while also attempting to maks a ridiculous Southern Accent - he laughed.

Okay, that last one was actually kind of funny (Tarantino not being remotely a decent enough actor to pull off Miike's intended satire even remotely well), but I'm sure you get my point. It didn't matter what was going on up on the screen, this guy was going to laugh and chortle and snort over and over and over again for every single second the movie was playing. It annoyed the living hell out of me, and at a certain point in the film I was starting to wish I had a Colt Revolver of my own so I could put myself out of my misery.

As for the movie itself, it didn't really work at all, the director not achieving anywhere near the acidic balance and ingenuity needed to make his satirical Kurosawa meets Leone meets Hawks meet Ford meet Eastwood mash-up work. There are some fantastic images (especially some of the highly inventive gory ones) and a couple of the jokes are actually kind of funny, but overall this thing is just sad, and for a filmmaker as talented as this one is I'd really hoped for a little bit more than this blank-filled misfire.

What else? The elegantly layed sci-fi thriller from Spain Timecrimes was one heck of a lot of fun, while the Colin Firth-Jim Broadbent (unfortunately titled) drama When Did You Last See Your Father? was solid if not quite as emotionally moving as it probably should have been. I also finally got to see the Danish entry Fighter and was more than impressed, while the extremely dark black comedy Choke (based on the cult novel by Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk) showcased another sensational performance by the always great Sam Rockwell (so amazing in David Gordon Green's Snow Angels) that's one of the best of I've seen this festival.