Odd how these things work. I’ve lived in the Bay Area for 33 years. I even lived in Marin County the first 17 months of that (around the corner from the Rafael, actually). Yet until today, I don’t believe I have ever been in downtown Mill Valley. (Up until this year, every Mill Valley Film Festival event I’ve attended has been at the Rafael, rather than Mill Valley proper.)
Quaint little town, that Mill Valley. I had scarsely been out of my car for ten minutes before Peter Coyote passed me on the street, leaving behind crowds of people wondering where they had seen that face.
I came to Mill Valley, and the Sequoia theater to see Real Time, a strange comic drama from Canada playing at the Festival. A young, pathetic gambling addict in trouble with the mob (Jay Baruchel) has only an hour and 20 minutes to live. 
Why does he know the exact time? The hit man contracted to kill him (Randy Quaid with an outrageous Australian accent) likes the kid and wants to help him prepare for his death. Despite the silly accent, Quaid has never been better, turning what could have been a cliched killer with a heart of gold into the strangest sort of avenging angel. Older and wiser, he wants to knock some sense into his young charge before knocking him off. In this nearly two-actor film, Baruchel is also excellent, hilariously funny one moment and pathetic the next, as a man who blames every bad thing that’s happened to him on luck. I give Real Time a 
.
Unfortunately, I’d have to give the festival’s presentation of Real Time a considerably lower score. Although shot on 35mm film, the festival is screening the movie on video, and it looked like standard video to me. Even worse, the sides of the frame were cropped off to fit the standard video 4×3 aspect ratio. If the sides of Baruchel’s and Quaid’sfaces hadn’t been cropped off in several of the many two-shots, I might have even given the movie an A.
Real Time screens one more time at the festival: Friday, October 10, 9:45, again at the Sequoia.
Bayflicks 