My Dad is 100 Years Old – Guy Maddin directs, but Isabella Rossellini does just about everything else in this 15-minute short made as a gift for the centennial anniversary of Roberto Rossellini's birth.  Aside from an enormous stomach to represent her dad, Isabella plays herself, her mother, and a slew of legendary filmmakers (Hitchcock, Chaplin, Fellini, David O. Selznick) as they all debate the career of the Italian director of groundbreaking neo-realism while Isabella (as herself) laments his less-than-spectacular popularity in modern cinema.

This short was a lot of fun, and I can't remember the Festival ever screening one short on its own before.

Hidden (Caché) – The latest from Michael Haneke is a disturbing, edge-of-your-seat thriller . . . in which nothing particularly frightening or shocking happens (okay, just that one thing, but it's not a root cause of being on the edge of your seat).  Daniel Auteuil plays Georges Laurent, the host of a television book review show who suddenly starts receiving videotapes in the mail.  The tapes, at least initially, contain footage shot from a stationary camera outside the home he shares with his wife (Juliette Binoche) and teenage son (Lester Makedonsky).  Upsetting, certainly, but nothing that make the local police want to do anything about it.  Then the tapes start arriving with child-like drawings of human faces with red stuff coming out of their mouths.  The tapes start arriving at Georges office, and his son receives deliveries at school, too.  And then there are Georges' nightmares, which slowly begin to make sense as Hidden unfolds.

The consensus is that Hidden was screwed out of the top prize at Cannes (it still took home Best Director, and two of the bigger jury prizes), and though it's a tight, immensely enjoyable little thriller, it didn't strike me as the best thing I've seen so far this festival.  I heard people say it was Haneke's most accessible film, but the open ending is going to turn a lot of people off.

Bangkok Loco – Featuring the best opening credits I've seen in a long time, this Midnight Madness offering from Thailand is a colorful, madcap comedy about the eternal battle between good and evil . . . wait for it . . . drummers.  Bay (Krissada Terrence, an a very physical role) is the young man trained to represent the Drum God in a once-a-decade face-off against the Demon Drummer.  But Bay is also accused of turning his landlady into a big pile of ground beef, and finds himself pursued by a police officer named Inspector Black Ears.  Song-and-dance numbers?  Check.  Really bad clothes and haircuts?  Check.  A hysterical drum-themed sex scene?  Check and check.  I don't know what they're smoking over there in Thailand, but between this and Citizen Dog, somebody might want to check that country's water supply.

Sorry, Haters – Like Manderlay, another story about an opinionated white chick sticking her nose where it doesn't belong while attempting to help out minorities.  Robin Wright Penn runs a successful urban music television station (the film's title references the network's MTV Cribs-ish cornerstone show) and hops into a cab driven by a Syrian named Ashade (Abdel Kechiche).  When she overhears a cell phone conversation Ashade is having, she butts in and offers to sick her lawyers on his troubles, which involve his brother's deportation from the US and likely execution back in the old country.  As the story progresses, we begin to learn Penn's character might have ulterior motives.

The acting is great (Sandra Oh and Élodie Bouchez appear in supporting roles), but the story, after being quite intriguing, becomes more and more of a letdown (and less and less believable) as the end draws closer.

Twelve and Holding – Finally – a film that knocked my socks off.  Michael Cuesta's follow-up to 2001's award-winning L.I.E. is about a trio of suburban 12-year-olds dealing with the accidental death of a popular neighborhood peer.  Jacob (Conor Donovan) is the twin brother of the deceased, focusing his rage on retribution by tormenting the killers while they're in prison.  Leonard (Jesse Camacho) is a fat kid from a fat family, and narrowly escapes death in the same accident that took Jacob's brother.  As a result, he loses his sense of taste and smell, and takes to eating nothing but apples, to the shock (and shocking ire) of his family.  Malee (Zoe Weizenbaum) has just gotten her first period and looks to launch into her romance career by putting the moves on one of the construction workers building houses in the field where the murder took place.

Using perfect music, splendid pace (focusing on big holidays gives us an accurate idea of how much time passes between incidents), carefully sewn dark humor, and the best elementary school recital scene since In America, Cuesta and screenwriter Anthony Cipriano knock this one clear out of the park.  But give a ton of credits to these three kids, especially Weizenbaum, who might possibly be able to take out Dakota Fanning in a You Got Served showdown of acting chops.

Takeshis' – I love Takeshi Kitano's films, but around the one-hour mark of Takeshis', I started wondering about the writer/director/editor/star's mental well being.  On the surface, the film has an interesting set-up: A Kitano look-a-like (played by Kitano) exists and his life merges and parallels with the real Kitano in unusual ways.  The doppleganger is a struggling actor who can't get taken seriously at auditions because he looks too much like the real deal.  So he pays the bills by working at a convenience story, wearing a uniform that would give the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat a run for its money.  So it's kind of like a reverse version of Dave.

I didn't have issues with the same actors having different roles in the lives of both the real Kitano and his alter-ego.  The off-putting flashes (of the future?  the past?  i still don't know) didn't totally push me over the edge, but the part where the film devolved into a crazy Blue Man Group performance involving a giant caterpillar made me want to get up and run through the wall, leaving a Sick-Boy-shaped hole behind.  Kitano was obviously exploring some important issues involving his fame, his television image versus his indie filmmaking image, and his critics, but that kind of thing should be kept between him and his shrink.