Independent film The Wackness is going to need a lot of help as it opens against Hancock this weekend, and it may have gotten just the boost it needed from the Los Angeles Film Festival. Jonathan Levine's nostalgic look at life in 1994 New York City-- which I really liked, by the way-- won the top audience award for narrative feature at the festival. It was joined, weirdly enough, by another movie I've actually seen and liked, <>Man on Wire, which won the audience's foreign feature prize.
Though Man on Wire is a documentary, it was beaten for the audience documentary prize by a movie that sounds pretty intriguing, Sacha Gervasi's Anvil! The Story of Anvil!. In case you were wondering what on earth would name itself "Anvil," it's about a Canadian heavy metal band. Variety has the full list of winners, which includes two prizes named for Target... ahh, corporate sponsorship.
The L.A. Film Festival isn't exactly Cannes, or even the New York Film Festival, but any festival prize is good for small films like The Wackness and Man on Wire, both of which will open this summer against the typical blockbuster fare. Both are very human-focused independent films and are incredibly accessible. Good for the LAFF audiences for picking out two movies that fellow audiences around the country are likely to enjoy.
