AFI Film Fest

In early November, N and I went to a few screenings at the AFI Film Fest. The best part of this specific film festival is that all the tickets are FREE! And you can get them online pretty easily...as long as you stalk the website and order them the instant they become available. But that's still much better than waiting for hours in line somewhere or entering a lottery, I think.

N did the web stalking and got tickets to tons of the screenings. I only ended up going to 3, though. There was an inordinately high proportion of Korean films in their offerings (I'm guessing due to the population of LA?), and I ended up going to 2 of those, plus 1 French film which was completely bonkers. It was about a tire (yes--like the ones that are on your car) that goes around murdering people by exploding their heads off. The beginning was actually pretty clever in a meta-ish kind of way, and then it just went downhill from there.

The Korean films I watched were both done by the pretty famous director Hong Sang-soo (Hahaha and Oki's Movie). The only other Hong Sang-soo film I've seen is Woman is the Future of Man, and I don't remember a single thing about it. In fact, I thought that I hadn't seen it until N claimed that we had watched it together a few years ago. So, apparently, I did see it. If you can trust N.

After watching Hahaha and Oki's Movie I concluded that I really dislike Hong Sang-soo's films. It was actually a double feature so we watched them back to back, which I'm sure did not help. By the end of Oki's Movie I was in a bad mood and wanted out of the theater. The films were filled with men who drink too much, become pathetic, and whine endlessly about women. Wow. Sooo uninteresting. Lots of whiny women in them, too.

Anyway, the AFI Film Fest is definitely a great benefit to living in LA. It has tons of free screenings, and they are all in the heart of Hollywood in famous theaters. Will definitely be going again next year...