SIFF Week Four: Picks & Pans

JoJo Whilden © Cinemavault/Sony Pictures Classics

Buscemi and Miller as Interview’s journalist and starlet.

courtesy of SIFF

Carla Sánchez plays an actress in Madrigal.

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More About

• Sam Wagstaff
• BRIAN MILLER Neptune
• Eytan Fox
• Theatrical Plays
• Theater

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Cary Elwes plays Erik, a motivational speaker whose sound family structure is based on communication, daily morning workouts, and mutual respect. When Erik takes in his troubled nephew Roy (Evan Ellingson from 24) as a P.R. stunt, the teen shakes the delicate foundation of his success. That Erik is an insecure sham should come as no surprise to anyone who saw Little Miss Sunshine or any movie ever about motivational speakers. Coupled to the nonsurprise, Walk the Talk takes place in a bizarre acting vacuum where performers appear in the same scene but don't truly interact with one another. The script is already predictable, so the stilted delivery makes things worse. Still, there's a certain comfort in the film's familiar path. Like a Hallmark TV movie, you can duck out to make a phone call and come back 20 minutes later without really missing a beat. You smile at the end, but the memory is gone the moment you change the channel. (NR) FRANK PAIVA Egyptian: 9:15 p.m. Fri., June 15. SIFF Cinema: 3:45 p.m. Sun., June 17.

Yella

You've seen this movie before, only not in German. Fleeing an abusive and possibly dangerous ex-husband, Yella (the perpetually wary, skittish Nina Hoss) follows the prospect of a new job—and new life—to a sterile hotel and a series of glassy conference rooms, where she parses the spreadsheets of a traveling businessman who seems quite uninterested in her unhappy past. They form a team, traveling hotel to hotel, meeting to meeting, bluffing companies in need of investors, then exchanging envelopes full of cash in darkened parking lots. It's a shady limbo world that suits the businessman (Devid Striesow) just fine, and if their activities are illegal, that doesn't bother him, either. Yella seems OK with the financial deceptions, too, only she keeps suffering these recurrent ear problems caused by an automotive mishap early in the film. Why does she keep hearing the sound of roaring water? Would that Yella had concentrated on being a modern, Teutonic Bonnie and Clyde instead of answering that question. Swindlers—and later lovers—on the road is a movie that works in any language. Unfortunately, Yella's final narrative detour is just as universal, and just as much a gimmick. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Pacific Place: 7:15 p.m. Wed., June 13; 1:45 p.m. Sat., June 16.