Chattanooga Film Festival 2019: Part One, Day One
This was my first year attending the annual Chattanooga Film Festival, and my expectations were blown far out the door of the Chattanooga Theatre Center, into the river and the park beyond. While this festival has been an annual occurrence for Chattanooga for several years now, it retains a grassroots effort from a large staff of volunteers, and the love and respect for cinema is on full display from each volunteer as well as each attendee. With an eclectic selection between horror/thriller genre films, admirable arthouse endeavors, music-based films and documentaries, this year’s festival offered films and events for people of all tastes. I myself did not attend any of the events, but heard great things about the ones offered: from Joe Bob Brigg’s presentation on “How Rednecks Saved Hollywood,” to Crispin Glover’s touring show “An Evening with Crispin Glover,” live Dungeons and Dragons, a whiskey drinking competition, and more.
I simply chose to see as many films as possible. Thankfully I was able to check out a great number of them, and I’ll be going over them and my opinions on them step by step throughout these articles and over the next few days. This article will simply focus on the first day and the first two films I watched, which was a shorter day as well, since it began in the evening.
***Also, one important note before we get started: there were several of these films that were considered early cuts and in early stages of release, so my opinions reflect these early cuts of these films. As always, I encourage you to check out each film for yourself if you are interested, and take my opinions herein with a grain of salt. This goes for any and all film critics, but I feel this is especially important to note here that some of the final production for these films may have changed by the time you see them.***
Hail Satan?
Directed by Penny Lane
The first film I saw at CFF 2019 was a documentary called Hail Satan? directed by Penny Lane. Hot off of strong word of mouth from its premiere at Sundance earlier this year, this documentary definitely has a controversial but fun future in the 2019 film circuit. It tells the story of the Satanic Temple, a group of fast-growing Satanists who seek to promote religious liberty and equality by suing state governments for placing monuments to the Christian Ten Commandments on capitol grounds. They also seek to build a statue of Baphomet to place next to the first state that refuses to cave in and take down their monument, partially to promote religious equality, and partially just for the sake of rebellion and high-scale trolling.
Lane presents an unbiased and hilarious look at how the Temple’s protests and political maneuverings manage to stupefy the right-leaning politicians and local governments that get in their way, without overtly praising some of their more radical members who present more volatile and dangerous methods of rebellion. Full disclosure: I’m a Christian myself but I still found this film hilarious and informative, and I encourage anyone to check it out no matter their religious leanings. This, in my opinion, was by far the best documentary offering at this festival, and I highly recommend checking it out whenever and however you can. If you can see it with a crowd in a theater, do so, as it’s incredibly energetic and laugh out loud funny throughout a large majority of its run-time.
Verdict: See in Theaters — Full Price
Woman at War
Directed by Benedikt Erlingsson
Starring Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir, Jóhann Sigurðarson, Jörundur Ragnarsson
Woman at War tells the story of…a woman…at war. More specifically, she’s at war with the power company, the nuclear plant, and generally all forms of massive industrial complexes in her vicinity of Iceland. I’m sad to say this is the only non-English film I was able to catch this year, as I try to seek out foreign films in theaters as much as I can, but thankfully this feature was pretty good. The acting was pretty stellar across the board, with the main actress playing two different roles as identical twin sisters and giving them each distinct personalities and clear goals. The cinematography was excellent and the story was a good slice of eco-criticism that echoed some similar themes as Paul Schrader’s First Reformed did last year.
The one major complaint I had with this film was its score. Its score itself was not bad, but this film presented a gimmick whereupon any time a major part of the score was to be played, our protagonist would see a band physically playing the score’s instruments in the background. This gimmick was neat and quirky the first couple times, but is retained throughout the entire run-time of the film, and I feel it far overstayed its welcome. Even though this reoccurring visual motif annoyed me, it didn’t detract too much from the overall experience of watching the film, and I was always invested in what was happening on screen despite this purely artistic decision. If you can catch this in a theater do so, but I would recommend checking it out whenever possible. It’s a great character drama with an urgent message and admirable composition.
Verdict: See in Theaters — Matinee
Be sure to follow The Coffee-Break Collective on Facebook or on Medium here to follow up, as I’ll be writing continuously and posting the next three days of films I was able to see over time. If you liked this article, be sure to clap and follow as well, as your support is always appreciated!
Disclaimer: I review movies based on a 5-tier scale: See in Theaters-Full Price, See in Theaters-Matinee, Rental, Wait for Streaming, and Skip It. If a film is released straight to VOD or streaming, the rating will simply change to either Stream It or Skip It. If you disagree with this review, I encourage you to watch the film and as always, make up your own mind about it. Am I wrong? Am I spot on? Let me know in the comments below!
