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September 9 - 16, 1999

[Boston Film Festival]

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Rats

A Phoenix pick

Not even a midnight stroll through the Fenway can rival the revelations of James M. Felter's trenchant documentary about the rat infestation of DC's Willard Street (no joke). The film confirms quickly confirms your worst suspicions: these vermin scavenge and screw like crazy and are not above rape, sodomy, and gobbling their young.

But though there's plenty of footage of the little scamps in their Hefty Bag heaven, Rats actually transcends -- and, yes, redeems -- its bewhiskered subject matter. With the help of a candid parade of city officials and eccentric neighborhood folk, including a philosophical Jamaican crackhead, a prejudiced gay man, myriad garbage collectors, and a cagy cameo by Mayor Marion Barry, Felter makes reverberating points about bureaucracy, environmentalism, societal self-esteem, and racial inequity. Although the film gets a tad digressive, in the end, there's no question who the real rats are: as the camera zooms in on the still pink paw of a dead rodent, its skull clenched in the jaws of a trap, it's easy to mistake the delicate appendage for that of a human. Screens at the Copley Place Wednesday, September 15 at 7:45 and 10:10 p.m.

-- Alicia Potter


Film Festival Feature Films

| The Minus Man | The Tavern | Black Eyed Dog | The Last September | A Wake in Providence | Man of the Century | Pups | Dreaming of Joseph Leeds | Wisdom of Crocodiles | That's The Way I Like It | American Beauty | Mifune | Black Cat, White Cat | Hit and Runway | All the LIttle Animals | Me Myself I | The Alchemist and the Virgin | Trash | Old Man River | The Poet and the Con | Snow Falling on Cedars | Guinevere | East is East | American Movie | Rivers of Babylon | Two Ninas | Rats | Keepers of the Frame | The Runner |


More Boston Film Festival information, film descriptions, and show times



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