Sidewalk ’17: The Weight

Missouri is the home of barbecue spare ribs and Provel cheese, so maybe it’s not surprising the villain of this Midwest border state noir is a weight loss counselor. She sells a healthy lifestyle and not so healthy drugs. Unfortunately, Thad Sitter got himself mixed up in her illicit business. When he suddenly disappears under mysterious circumstances, his ex-wife will defy the conspicuously unhelpful sheriff to find him in Thomas Rennier’s The Weight, which screens during the 2017 Sidewalk Film Festival.

Although Thad and Julie Sitter divorced, they still care deeply for each other. It was one of those complicated situations. Things weren’t so complicated between her and Sheriff Crane. She just dumped him—end of story. Of course, that means he has all kinds of bad attitude when she reports him missing. Sitter had been working for Gayle Benson’s weight loss clinic, where he served as the primary contact with her drug supplier. Benson sells a supposedly natural weight loss supplement to her clients that is apparently some kind of amphetamine compound. Obviously, this is problematic, but it also means it probably works. In any event, when her regularly supplier shorts them, Benson deals out some disproportionate payback, which Sitter is forced to clean-up. That also makes him a loose end.

When Benson hires a low-rent hitman with an ugly toupee to kill Sitter, he takes to the wind. Meanwhile, his wife’s Red Hot Riplet guzzling private investigator Jake Liebig starts nosing around the weight loss center for clues. Obviously, this will end badly for the majority of the characters, because that is how noirs roll. Unfortunately, the film craters after a nifty hardboiled second act.

Despite sharing little screen time together, Clayne Crawford and M.J. Brackin convince us the Sitters really do still care for each other. However, the real fun comes from Ken Hudson Campbell as Liebig, the private eye who looks rumpled and slovenly on a good day. Likewise, Heather Roop is entertainingly catty as the ruthless Benson.

The Weight has plenty of good Fargo-like small town skulduggery, but it collapses in a total face-palm moment that was probably intended send a message. Seriously, why? Alabamans can still enjoy their native son Crawford and the Missouri setting up to that point, but they will wish they could take the work-print back into the editing bay and recut it. Getting a mixed review, The Weight screens this coming Saturday night (8/26) as part of the Sidewalk Film Festival, in Birmingham.

Lost Without Translation: Littlerock

Atsuko Sakamoto is not your stereotypical tourist. She records her travels in a sketchpad rather than with a camera. She also speaks absolutely no English, yet there are plenty of polite young chaps willing to show her the sights, such as they are in Mike Ott’s Littlerock (trailer here), the winner of the 2010 “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You” Gotham Independent Film Award, which opens this Friday in New York (but does that mean they have to vacate their title?)

Sakamoto and her brother Rintaro decided to drive across America as a means of renewing their relationship. It was not working fantastically well even before their rental conked out in Littlerock, California. Basically cooling their heels waiting for a replacement to be delivered, they fall in with some of the local aimless youth. Rintaro speaks a spot of English and is a decent drinker, but it is Atsuko everyone is interested in, not surprisingly. She enjoys their company too, deciding to stay on while her brother continues on his way to San Francisco (much to his annoyance), setting in motion a brief but bittersweet love triangle.

For Littlerock’s third act, the Sakamoto siblings reunite, visiting the Manzanar, one of FDR’s relocation camps for Japanese citizens, where their grandfather was interned (a policy criticized by many Americans, like the Republican governor of Colorado, Ralph Lawrence Carr). Clearly, Ott intends their tour to be an emotional capstone that both undercuts and underscores Sakamoto’s good and bad experiences in Littlerock. While there is nothing but love for the people of Japan here, this heavy-handed moralizing only goes so far, particularly in light of the country’s continuing reluctance to come to terms with their own wartime record, as Li Ying’s Yasukuni clearly documents.

Still, at least Littlerock is actually headed somewhere, unlike much of the mumblecore it is not so distantly related to. Whether improvised or on the printed page of Ott’s screenplay, there are also some credibly pointed lines to be heard throughout the film. Cinematographer Carl McLaughlin gives it all an appropriately warm and hazy look, like a happily mild trip for the Easy Rider cats. However, Littlerock’s ace card is undeniably Atsuko Okatsuka’s luminous presence. Indeed, her performance as Sakamoto is realistically grounded and strikingly vulnerable.

Much like its titular laidback small town, Littlerock sort of lulls viewers with its lazy rhythms. There are better films awaiting distribution opportunities, but the eerily expressive Okatsuka earns it a mild recommendation. Essentially cinematic comfort food for hipsters, right down to the final serving of American guilt, Littlerock opens tomorrow (8/12) at the Cinema Village.