In our article on this year’s Pacific Rim Film Festival, we looked at three documentaries by filmmakers with local roots. Here are five more films to love at this year’s festival (Oct. 19-24):
CAFÉ SEOUL (Oct. 21, noon, Rio Theatre) An eager food writer stumbles upon a hole in the wall confectionary while visiting South Korea. Enamored with the quality of the sweets, he is soon pulled into a family’s inner drama, culminating in the laughably unlikely, but heartwarming nonetheless, face-off between two pastry chef brothers judged by a mafia boss who’s got his finger in both pies, so to speak. The film’s central message is the importance of honoring family tradition. Thankfully, it depicts this with some gusto: fist fighting, a chase scene and a taste-test montage add some spice to this sweet tale. (Georgia Perry)
JAKE SHIMABUKURO: LIFE ON FOUR STRINGS (Oc.t 20, Del Mar, 8pm) At 35 years old, Jake Shimabukuro is struggling, but not in any personal or financial sense. The ukulele superstar appears happily married, and his talent has given him a successful life. But Shimabukuro constantly vies for his own approval: “Maybe it’s because you don’t feel like you deserve it, and that’s why you works extra hard. For someone who doesn’t bother writing lyrics, he sure is eloquent. He also talks about a difficult childhood and how a YouTube video of him playing “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” changed his life. There is a Q&A with director Tadashi Nakamura after the film. (Jake Pierce)
MARIACHI GRINGO (Oc.t 24, 7pm, Rio Theatre) This year’s closing film at Pac Rim (as always, a benefit for the festival, and preceded by a performance from Mariachi California de Javier Vargas) stars Shawn Ashmore as a small-town white boy who finds escape from his suffocating life at a local Mexican restaurant, where he apprentices under a veteran mariachi guitarist. He finds his way to Guadalajara to pursue his new dreams, making for some entertaining cultural clashing. (Steve Palopoli)
NOODLE (Oct. 19, 6pm, Del Mar) The story of unprepared parents stuck with a child is as old as time—or at least as old as 1987’s Three Men and a Baby. In this version, a cleaning lady leaves her son at an apartment and doesn’t return. When the kid tries to escape, it’s more reminiscent of 1994’s Baby’s Day Out—except that instead of a baby, it’s a six-year-old Chinese boy. And instead of three villains chasing a youngster though New York, it’s two gorgeous sisters arguing in Israel. What ultimately unfolds is a touching but gripping mystery thriller about cultural tensions in a globalized world. (JP)
THE TOPP TWINS: UNTOUCHABLE GIRLS (Oct. 19, 8:30pm, Del Mar) We had a hunch that New Zealand was funnier than America when Flight of the Conchords emerged in 2007, but this documentary about a twin-sister lesbian yodeling duo proves that the Kiwis have perfected the art of creating comedy in unexpected musical places. The home video montages of Jools and Lynda Topp chasing goats, and the swanky candlelit interviews with their alter egos. They’re insanely talented, completely unprofessional and shamelessly political, and somehow it works. Probably because all they really care about is fun. (Janelle Gleason)
