(For Chapter 1, go here. For Chapter 2, go here. For Chapter 3, go here.)

• Photo by Natalie Joy Howard

The 15th Annual Savannah Film Festival continues, but my work is done.

Although the event runs through next Saturday, my wife and I headed home Wednesday, with six features, one short and several celebrity sightings under our collective belt (a belt greatly expanded by the treats found here).

• Photo by Natalie Joy Howard

The highlight of the festival? It would have to be witnessing the great Stan Lee accept a Lifetime Achievement Award in front of an appreciative crowd. Lee was as charming, funny and gracious as always, noting the quality of the many films based on his comic books (“If I had known I was that good, I would have asked for a raise”) and acknowledging the prize bestowed upon him (“I want to thank you for your taste, your judgment, your acumen in deciding to award this to me”). Now 89, he’s long been a national treasure, and it was a kick seeing him in the flesh.

And now, on to the remaining films.

• IFC Films

ON THE ROAD — There was enough of a hint of all that jazz to director Walter Salles’ 2004 effort The Motorcycle Diaries, a look at the early years of Che Guevara, to signal that he might have been the proper person to bring Jack Kerouac’s landmark novel On the Road to the big screen. Instead, this look at the Beat generation ends up missing too many of its own beats to ever succeed. Enlisting his Motorcycle writer Jose Rivera as his accomplice, Salles approaches Kerouac’s raw, restless and spontaneous work in such a staid and conservative manner that the movie might just as well have been directed by the stodgy Richard Attenborough. Sam Riley and Garrett Hedlund deliver underwhelming performances in the two roles that simply must engage audiences from the get-go. Riley is aspiring writer Sal Paradise (the character based on Kerouac himself), who longs for the freedom of the open road; Hedlund is irresponsible hedonist Dean Moriarty (aka Neal Cassady), who joins him on many of his cross-country adventures. Salles and Rivera chart the men’s encounters in acceptable vignette fashion, but there’s very little sense of the thrill of discovery in what’s presented on screen, with the filmmakers dutifully checking off a CliffsNotes highlight before moving forward. I wonder what a director like David Cronenberg might have brought to the party; his whacked-out 1991 version of William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch wasn’t a complete success, but it exhibited a go-for-broke strategy that’s sadly missing in On the Road. Speaking of Burroughs, he appears here in the form of junkie-poet Old Bull Lee, played with the proper measure of eccentricity by Viggo Mortensen. And while it’s open season on Kristen Stewart these days, with the put-upon actress having to contend with hatred generally reserved for al-Qaeda operatives, she’s just fine in her too-few scenes as Dean’s first wife, the teenage Marylou; ditto for Kirsten Dunst as Dean’s second wife, Camille, Amy Adams as Old Bull Lee’s spouse, and Steve Buscemi as one of the bisexual Dean’s johns. These supporting players all add color and dimension to an otherwise sterile piece, not unlike interesting footnotes found peppering the pages of a dull college textbook.

Review of Quartet after the jump.

(For Chapter 1, go here. For Chapter 2, go here.)

I have to say, I can’t think of a better way to spend my * cough cough * ...th birthday than attending a premiere film festival in a beautiful city with my lovely wife Natalie by my side. But while I did receive two cards from her (one pictured above; incidentally, the inside reads, “'It’s not the years, it’s the mileage.’ Here’s to Being Well-Traveled. Happy Birthday”), most other celebrations will have to be delayed until we’re back in Charlotte, as Savannah Film Festival screenings wait for no man (or woman).

I actually saw the following films earlier this week, not on my actual birthday (Tuesday the 30th), but bear with me: There’s been so much going on that I’m still playing catch-up.

• GreeneStreet Films

VIOLET & DAISY — Geoffrey Fletcher, who won a Best Adapted Screenplay for Precious a couple years ago, here makes his directorial debut with an original script he penned himself. Alexis Bledel and Saoirse Ronan play the title twofer, about the unlikeliest pair of killers yet seen on the screen. Violet (Bledel) is in her 20s while Daisy (Ronan) is just celebrating her 18th birthday — together, they rank among the nation’s top 10 paid assassins, although their off-the-job behavior largely consists of playing patty cake and holding out for new dresses from their favorite label. Their latest assignment requires them to kill a sad sack named Michael (James Gandolfini), but because he welcomes extermination, they find themselves hesitating, unsure how to approach a man who wants to die. Fletcher’s idea of having two female assassins as his leads turns the Tarantino template on its head, and in that respect, it’s a better watch than many of the countless rip-offs that have materialized in the roughly two decades since Pulp Fiction. But while Bledel and Ronan are both fine — the former gets to exhibit all the attitude as the vet of the team while the latter gets to display more emotion as the naïve recruit — Fletcher doesn’t allow us to get inside their minds to the extent required. We learn more about Michael than the ladies, which aids Gandolfini as he delivers the movie’s most soulful performance.

• Photo by Natalie Joy Howard

(The screening of Violet & Daisy was accompanied by appearances from Geoffrey Fletcher (above left), who received the festival’s Cinevation Award, and James Gandolfini, who joined Fletcher for a post-show Q&A.)

Reviews of When You Find Me and Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines after the jump.

(For Chapter 1, go here.)

Now here’s a sign after my own heart:

• Photo by Natalie Joy Howard

Alas, all creative loafing would have to wait, since the 15th Annual Savannah Film Festival was beckoning with its cinematic siren song. Here, then, are the first couple of films I caught at the event.

• The Weinstein Company

Silver Linings Playbook — Writer-director David O. Russell, who makes decent movies when he’s not being a complete jerk behind the camera (his temper tantrums with Lily Tomlin and George Clooney are well-documented, with the former skirmish captured for immortality on YouTube), follows The Fighter with this disarming seriocomedy about Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper), a former teacher who’s been released after a stint in a mental facility. Pat lost it after catching his wife Nikki (Brea Bee) in the shower with a fellow instructor, and no one’s quite sure if he’s really ready to be back in the real world again. His dad, Pat Sr. (Robert De Niro), suffers from OCD, resulting in a prickly relationship between the pair. Pat eventually meets someone who’s apparently as off-kilter as himself: Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), who’s had her own share of mood swings ever since the death of her husband. Adapted by Russell from Matthew Quick’s novel, Silver Linings Playbook easily overcomes its familiar beats (a sports brawl, a missed appointment, a climactic competition) thanks to a real attention to character detail, a nonjudgmental approach to all the flaws plaguing the players, and a cast that works beautifully together. Chris Tucker, who’s appeared in nothing but Rush Hour movies for the past 15 years, is a welcome addition as Pat’s buddy from his institution days, while De Niro’s late-career mugging actually works for a character who spends every moment fretting over the Philadelphia Eagles. Cooper’s fine as well, although it’s Lawrence who explodes off the screen. Already an Oscar nominee for Winter’s Bone and a franchise star due to both The Hunger Games and X-Men: First Class, she’s likewise solid gold in Silver.

Review of Flight after the jump.

While I’ve managed to avoid spending midnight in the garden of good and evil, my trip to the 15th Annual Savannah Film Festival has found me spending all hours in the theater of good, average and exceptional cinema.

• Photos by Natalie Joy Howard

OK, so a grasping reference to a literary work that’s almost two decades old might not seem like the hippest way to open a piece, but consider that John Berendt’s Savannah-set blockbuster novel still gets a lot of mileage in this Georgia town, as evidenced by this store display (statues, paperbacks, audiobooks, DVDs and CDs) my wife Natalie and I spotted just this afternoon:

In fact, as preparation for our jaunt to this festival — a prestigious and renowned event presented annually by the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) — we re-watched Clint Eastwood’s 1997 film version of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil the night before leaving home. Of course, our actual experience has proven to be nothing like the movie: We haven’t been invited into the home of one of the city’s nouveau riche, we haven’t seen any men walking invisible dogs or tying bees to their body, and we haven’t become BFFs with local drag legend The Lady Chablis (although we did spot a poster announcing her upcoming show dates).

No, our experience has actually been better.