I greatly look forward to attending the Fresno Film Festival every spring, and this year Fresno Filmworks delivered a terrific and diverse lineup. I’m a bit late on these reviews, but here are my thoughts on three of the festival’s feature films.

“The Fairy”
Directed by: Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon, and Bruno Romy
Format: Big screen
Viewed: Friday 4/27/2012 with my wife at the Tower Theatre in Fresno
This romantic comedy made the perfect opening night movie, and it’s one of the best films I’ve ever seen at Filmworks. “The Fairy” follows a hapless hotel clerk as he falls in love with an off-kilter, wish-granting fairy. I remembered the writers/directors/stars of the movie from “L’iceberg,” an excellent Fresno Film Festival choice a few years ago. This fantastical movie was slapstick, charming, and a ton of laughs.

“Pina”
Directed by: Wim Wenders
Format: Big screen
Viewed: Saturday 4/28/2012 with my wife at the Tower Theatre in Fresno
I’ve never seen a film quite like “Pina” and probably never will. Director Wim Wenders and the dancers pay tribute to the late choreographer Pina Bausch. I sat awestruck with the intensity of the dancing and the beauty of the filmmaking, but it was the stories of cast members interwoven throughout that lent an emotional weight to the movie that made it truly breathtaking.

“A Separation”
Directed by: Asghar Farhadi
Format: Big screen
Viewed: Saturday 4/28/2012 with my wife at the Tower Theatre in Fresno
This Iranian drama, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, is one of the best movies I’ve seen in the past year. You wouldn’t think that a character study about a dissolving marriage would keep you on the edge of your seat. But “A Separation” is written with such heart-stopping suspense and intricate cultural nuance that it turns ordinary material into the extraordinary.

Also at the festival: I got a chance to see the gorgeous restoration of the Georges Méliès classic “A Trip to the Moon.” I will blog about that soon in a separate post. I also saw a ton of short films from all over the world. My favorite short was “L’equip petit,” which told the story of a sweetly inept team of 5- and 6-year-old soccer players. The panel discussion with Hmong American filmmakers Abel and Burlee Vang was also inspiring.

I went on a serious movie binge during Spring Break this past April, watching six films in eight days. I missed one night to attend a friend’s birthday party and one night to watch Kentucky beat Kansas in this year’s college basketball championship game. But I dedicated the rest of my evenings to movies. Here are some short reviews:

“50/50”
Directed by: Jonathan Levine
Format: DVD from Redbox
Viewed: Thursday 4/05/2012 by myself at home
Seth Rogen always equals “dude flick.” But I like Joseph Gordon-Levitt a lot, and I’m happy that I gave this little film about a young man trying to beat cancer a chance. While the overall plot was predictable, I felt unexpectedly moved by the many gestures of true friendship between the two stars. And several sequences between Gordon-Levitt and his mom, played by Anjelica Huston, broke my heart with their quietness.

“Casa de Mi Padre”
Directed by: Matt Piedmont
Format: Big screen
Viewed: Tuesday 4/03/2012 with my wife at the Regal Manchester
Will Ferrell movies usually mean brain candy, and this one is no exception. I would describe “Casa de Mi Padre” as a shameless mashup of every B-movie western you’ve ever seen. But this version adds indie-style sequences that intentionally linger way too long, deliberate editing mistakes designed as punch lines, a bizarre apology involving an animatronic white tiger, and an extended homage to “Scarface” that truly baffled me.

“Drive”
Directed by: Nicolas Winding Refn
Format: DVD from Redbox
Viewed: Sunday 4/01/2012 with my wife at home
I’ve seen “Lars and the Real Girl” and I know the Internet memes, but I don’t know a lot about Ryan Gosling. So I decided to see what the hubbub was about and watch “Drive,” where Gosling plays a Hollywood stuntman and getaway driver who becomes an unlikely killing machine. While it wasn’t my usual type of film, I appreciated the filmmaking and the ambiguous storylines. Plus, my wife and I enjoyed spotting “Hey, girl” moments throughout.

“Exporting Raymond”
Directed by: Philip Rosenthal
Format: DVD from Redbox
Viewed: Wednesday 4/04/2012 by myself at home
I’m not a big sitcom watcher, and I’ve never seen a full episode of “Everybody Loves Raymond.” But this documentary about the writer of the hit U.S. TV show traveling to Russia to oversee the making of an international spinoff resulted in many painfully awkward moments. The writer’s eccentricities and anxieties are hard to love, but any movie like this one about small moments of real cultural understanding are ultimately essential.

“Take Shelter”
Directed by: Jeff Nichols
Format: DVD from Redbox
Viewed: Friday 4/06/2012 with my wife at home
My wife and I missed seeing this highly acclaimed drama when Fresno Filmworks screened it late last year, so we were happy to see it available through Redbox. Michael Shannon plays a small-town father with a growing mental illness quite flawlessly. But we were most taken with the performance of Jessica Chastain as his wife, as she delivers a portrait of marital strength and fortitude unlike anything we’ve seen in a long time.

“The Rum Diary”
Directed by: Bruce Robinson
Format: DVD from Redbox
Viewed: Friday 3/30/2012 with my wife at home
I’ve always thought that Johnny Depp plays Hunter Thompson better than Hunter Thompson ever played Hunter Thompson. So even though “The Rum Diary” is an uneven and under-developed movie to go with the uneven and under-developed script from Thompson’s early unpublished novel, I didn’t mind. Watching Johnny Depp romp through 1950s Puerto Rico as a drug-addled “journalist” was well worth it.

“Le Havre”
Directed by: Aki Kaurismäki
Format: Big screen
Viewed: Friday 3/09/2012 with my wife and our friend Gosia at the Tower Theatre in Fresno

This month marks a milestone for Fresno Filmworks, the all-volunteer nonprofit that brings first-run independent and international movies to the Central Valley. I served on the board from 2007 to 2009, and I still produce some of the organization’s creative collateral, so I’m very loyal to Filmworks and I’m fond of its mission. But March 2012 marks the group’s 10th anniversary, and it’s important for me to note how much I truly appreciate the work that Filmworks does each and every month. I’ve been introduced to many, many important voices through the movies they’ve brought to town, and those movies have, in turn, connected me with countless wonderful friends and neighbors in my community that I may not have otherwise gotten a chance to know.

Filmworks celebrated its 10th anniversary in typical fashion: by showing a low-key, understated gem of a monthly film. “Le Havre” is a comedic drama from Finland and France. It’s a political fairy tale featuring a shoeshine man and his ailing wife, an earnest young African refugee, a shadowy but soft-hearted police inspector, and a whole village of quirky characters. My favorite sequence was a rock ‘n roll performance by Little Bob that lingered onscreen way too long, like the best indie films often do to accentuate the wonderful, awkward perfection of the most imperfect scenes. Critics draw parallels between director Aki Kaurismäki and some of the great comedic masters of cinema, including Jacques Tati and Buster Keaton. In other words, the film was perfect for the evening: It simultaneously felt both old and new.

“Be Kind Rewind”
Directed by: Michel Gondry
Format: DVD from the public library
Viewed: Wednesday 2/22/2012 and Monday 2/27/2012 with my Journalism 1 students at Fresno City College

One regular day this past fall, I found myself taking an afternoon nap in the middle of the week. As I try to take naps as much as possible, the fact that I was napping wasn’t a big surprise. But I was rousted from this particular nap by a call from New York. It was Travis Larchuk on the line, a producer at NPR’s Morning Edition program, and he wanted me to get sound for him for a story. Since I’d never received a call from NPR before, I almost fell out of bed with excitement. Of course, I said yes.

I soon attended the eighth Swede Fest in downtown Fresno. The event’s founders, Roque Rodriguez and Bryan Harley, are friends of friends, but I had never attended before. The Swede Fest is the world’s only festival dedicated to “sweded” films. As Roque and Bryan say on their website, “a sweded film is a summarized, low-budget recreation of a popular movie– starring you!” Swede Fest gets its name from the 2008 movie “Be Kind Rewind,” starring Mos Def and Jack Black as two very unlikely neighborhood film heroes.

This past week, I showed “Be Kind Rewind” to my Journalism 1 students at Fresno City College. The class is an intro to mass communication course, and we watched the movie in two parts as we’re covering the chapter on film. I hadn’t seen the film for a few years since it played in theaters, so I was a bit worried that some of the references might come across as dated. But the students loved it! Director Michel Gondry has such a whimsical way of making art, from music videos to feature films. His imagination and his shooting style often converge in charming and unexpected ways, and the complex social lessons of the movie actually offer some terrific insights about the film industry and about how urban blight affects the imagination of the working class.

I was so glad that I’ve gotten a chance to revisit “Be Kind Rewind” and also attend Swede Fest 8. The festival turned out to be my favorite media event of the year, and I’m looking forward to checking out the next one in May. If I get the chance, I will definitely show the movie in class again. (Also: You can click here to hear Travis Larchuk’s story on NPR, which features the sound I gathered.)

“Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul”
Directed by: Fatih Akin
Format: DVD
Viewed: Friday 1/20/2012 with my wife and our friends Adam and Britt at our house

I have long admired the feature films of director Fatih Akin. His movies, which often focus on the difficult complications of being multi-racial and multi-cultural in an intolerant world, have been a staple for Fresno Filmworks over the years, including “Head On,” “The Edge of Heaven,” and “Soul Kitchen.” Akin is a German born of Turkish descent and he is about my age, so I directly identify with the identity politics and compromises that his fictional characters struggle with. As a third generation Chicano– which, to me, means that I am an American born of Mexican descent– I have written in personal essays about my own feelings of living between two worlds. Akin’s films capture many of those feelings perfectly.

I was surprised to discover that Akin directed the documentary “Crossing the Bridge” about the contemporary music and culture of Istanbul. My good friend Adam Marler is a bit of a collector when it comes to obscure rock and psychedelic music from around the world, so when he told me about Turkish psych-rock virtuoso Erkin Koray recently, an Internet search led me to Akin’s documentary.

As a movie, “Crossing the Bridge” was peculiar. The storyline of Akin and narrator Alexander Hacke wandering all over Istanbul together and stumbling across little music subcultures felt forced. But there were several real musical gems in the film, most notably the bratty, rapid-fire wordplay of rapper Ayben and the searing, soul-moving ballads of Aynur Dogan. “Crossing the Bridge” didn’t win any awards for moviemaking. But its mashup of musical voices seemed quite true to Akin’s cultural reality.