Tampa Film Fan

film fan finding:made in korea:a one-way ticket seoul-amsterdam; the proper care and feeding of an american messiah; mojave phone booth; the last western

(Screened at the Sunscreen Film Festival.) 

Made in Korea:A One-Way Ticket Seoul-Amsterdam is a documentary that relies more on a moving, memorable story than advanced filmmaking techniques. A Korean guy in his mid-twenties tells the story of his adoption by a Dutch couple and documents his heart-wrenching search for his birth mother in Korea. I got caught up in his story and enjoyed this movie more than I thought I would.  Even though the film is mainly about the man’s search for his birth mother, it touches on topics such as cultural taboos about adoption and the emotions felt by the adoptive parents as they watch their son on his search.

The Proper Care and Feeding of an American Messiah – I really liked this movie. It’s a quirky “mockumentary” about a guy who thinks he’s a messiah (not The Messiah) and rents the local civic center so he can share God’s message (assuming God gives it to him in time). His “miracles” include such wonders as catching fruit in his mouth. Very, very funny.

Mojave Phone Booth was my least favorite of the feature-length films that I saw at the festival. Four characters (whose lives are connected in unknown ways, as they always are in movies like this) rely on late-night phone conversations with a caring stranger at a deserted phone booth to help them sort out their troubled lives. The movie raised some great philosophical, metaphysical questions, but overall, I found this disjointed and a little boring.

The Last Western is a documentary about the residents of Pioneertown, California, a town originally built as a backdrop for B-movie westerns and now populated by eccentrics and has-beens. It was a bit of a downer, but I enjoyed learning about this town that I had never heard of before.