Whiskey Creek Film Festival 2011
Click on film titles to link to trailers. To view and print a schedule of the full 7 days of the festival, click here.
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Visit Chauvet cave in France through this wonderful 3-D documentary
"To call Cave of Forgotten Dreams a great movie isn't just an understatement, it's a wildly innacurate way to describe an experience that, it its immersive sensory pleasures and climactic journey of discovery, more closely resembles an ecstatic trance. -Ann Hornaday, Washington Post, July 7, 2011
"To call this movie fascinating is akin to calling the Grand Canyon large." -Curt Honeycutt, The Hollywood Reporter
Directed by Werner Herzog with an original score by Ernst Reijseger.
Screens Friday at 7:00pm; Saturday at 1:00pm;Sunday at 7:00pm; and Tuesday at 7:00pm. Rated G.
The Tree of Life
"Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation . . . 
while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" Book of Job
From Terrence Malick, the acclaimed director of such classic films as Badlands, Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line, The Tree of Life is the impressionistic story of a Midwestern family in the 1950's. The film follows the life journey of the eldest son, Jack, through the innocence of childhood to his disillusioned adult years as he tries to reconcile a complicated relationship with his father (Brad Pitt). Jack (played as an adult by Sean Penn) finds himself a lost soul in the modern world, seeking answers to the origins and meaning of life while questioning the existence of faith. Through Malick's signature imagery, we see how both brute nature and spiritual grace shape not only our lives as individuals and families, but all life.
Directed and written by Terrence Malik. Starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, and Jessica Chastain. Original music by Alexandre Desplat and cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki.
The Tree of Life will play Friday at 7:05pm; Saturday at 1:05pm; Sunday at 7:05pm; and Tuesday at 7:05pm. Rated PG-13.
Terri
"There are thousands of coming-of-age movies, but Terri is one where the point isn't losing one's virginity but rather gaining another's trust. It is painful, it is funny, and it marks the remarkable debut of Wysocki."
-Philadelphia Inquirer, August 5, 2011
A hit at the Sundance 2011 Film Festival, Terri is a moving and often funny film about the relationship between Terri (Jacob Wysocki), an oversized teen misfit, and the garrulous but well-meaning vice principal (John C. Reilly) who takes an interest in him. Terri is produced by the team behind Blue Valentine and Half Nelson.
What lifts Terri above its peers is not the plight of its protagonist or the film's sympathy for him, but rather the care and craft that the director, Azazel Jacobs, has brought to fairly conventional material.
-A.O. Scott, New York Times, June 30, 2011
Terri works, not least because, against expectation, it is a beautiful movie to look at, with an enchanted sense of place. -Anthony Lane, New Yorker
Directed by Azazel Jacobs (Momma's Man)
Terri will screen Friday at 9:30pm; Saturday at 9:30pm; Sunday at 3:30pm and 9:30pm; and Wednesday at 7:05pm. Rated R.
Sarah's Key
Sometimes the past can unlock the future
Based on the best-selling novel by Tatiana de Rosnay, Sarah's Key is a touching, gripping and beautifully told drama featuring Kristin Scott Thomas in a Cesar-nominated performance.
Paris, 1942. The Starzynski family - Wladyslaw, Rywka, ten-year-old Sarah and little Michel - occupy an apartment in the Jewish quarter. One day, their morning routine is broken by a sharp pounding on the door and by a group of French policemen announcing their intention to take the family away. Upon seeing the policemen, the resourceful Sarah locks Michel in a hidden cupboard, making him promise that he will not try to escape...
Paris, present day. Julia Jarmond (Kristin Scott Thomas) is an American journalist living in the French capital with her husband, Bertrand (Frederic Pierrot), and their teenage daughter. While Bertrand excitedly prepares the renovation of the Parisian apartment his grandparents own, Julia is busily researching a story she is writing on the notorious Vel d'Hiv round ups of 1942. After learning that Bertrand's family acquired the apartment during the war, Julia's inquisitive nature forces her to uncover the truth.
Screens Friday at 9:15pm; Saturday at 9:15pm; Sunday at 3:00 and 9:15pm; and Wednesday at 7:00pm. Rated PG-13. (Sarah's Key has now been confirmed. It will be screened at the advertised times.)
Buck
An ordinary man who has made an extraordinary life despite tremendous odds
"The Horse Whisperer" may be the stuff of Hollywood legend but the cowboy who inspired the novel and film is very real. Buck Brannaman – master horseman, raconteur and philosopher - is a no-excuses cowboy who travels the world sharing a hard-won wisdom that's often more about human relationships than about horses.
“Your horse is a mirror to your soul, and sometimes you may not like what you see. Sometimes, you will.” So says Buck Brannaman, a true American cowboy and sage on horseback who travels the country for nine grueling months a year helping horses with people problems.
Buck, a richly textured and visually stunning film, follows Brannaman from his abusive childhood to his phenomenally successful approach to horses. A real-life “horse-whisperer”, he eschews the violence of his upbringing and teaches people to communicate with their horses through leadership and sensitivity, not punishment."
Buck possesses near magical abilities as he dramatically transforms horses – and people – with his understanding, compassion and respect. In this film, the animal-human relationship becomes a metaphor for facing the daily challenges of life. A truly American story about an unsung hero, Buck is about an ordinary man who has made an extraordinary life despite tremendous odds. -Rob Thomas, Capitol Times, Madison
Directed by Cindy Meehl and featuring Buck Brannaman
Screens Saturday at 3:30pm and 7:05pm; Sunday at 1:05pm; Monday at 7:05pm; and Thursday at 7:05pm. Rated PG.
Midnight in Paris
Woody Allen has made a wonderful new picture . . . and it's his best, most 
enjoyable work in years. -Los Angeles Times
This is a romantic comedy set in Paris about a family that goes there because of business, and two young people who are engaged to be married in the fall have experiences there that change their lives. It's about a young man's great love for a city, Paris, and the illusion people have that a life different from theirs would be much better.
It is marvelously romantic, even though - or precisely because - it acknowledges the disappointment that shadows every genuine expression of romanticism. -A.O. Scott, New York Times, May 19, 2011
Directed and written by Woody Allen. Starring Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, and Kathy Bates.
Plays Saturday at 3:00pm and 7:00pm; Sunday at 1:00pm; Monday at 7:00pm; and Thursday at 7:00pm. Rated PG-13.
The Red Balloon and White Mane
Free shows on Friday (5:00pm) and Saturday & Sunday (1:30 pm)
THE RED BALLOON
Albert Lamorisse, France 1956, 34 min
Newly restored and available for the first time in almost a decade, Albert Lamorisse's The Red Balloon remains one of the most beloved children's films of all time. In this deceptively simple, nearly wordless tale, a young boy discovers a stray balloon that seems to have a mind of its own. Wandering through the streets of Paris, the two become inseparable, to the surprise of the neighborhood and the envy of other children. Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival, The Red Balloon has enchanted the young—and the young at heart—for decades, and it will surely find a new generation of fans with this rerelease.
WHITE MANE
Albert Lamorisse, France 1953, 40 min
In the south of France is a near-desert region called La Camargue. There lives White Mane, a magnificent stallion and the leader of a herd of wild horses too proud to let themselves be broken in by humans. Only Folco, a young fisherman, manages to tame him. A strong friendship grows between the boy and the horse, but they must elude the wrangler and his herdsmen to live freely. Janus Films is proud to bring this film, beloved by generations of French children, to North America in a glorious new restoration. (White Mane is presented in a new English translation, faithful to the original French voiceover and dialogue, spoken by Peter Strauss.)
Free screenings Friday at 5:00 pm, Saturday and Sunday at 1:30 pm.
Rated PG.