The best of the 2024 SLO Film Fest

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June Squibb and Fred Hechinger appear in THELMA by Josh Margolin. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by David Bolen.

The 2024 SLO Film Fest has opened. I’ve screened over a dozen of the features, and here are four that you shouldn’t miss:

  • Thelma: The closing night film is a hoot, starring 93-year-old June Squibb (Oscar-nominated for Nebraska) in an action picture. Squibb plays a scammed senior who goes on a quest to recover her money from the scammers. Thelma is a lot more than a broad geezer comedy, and the relationship between Thelma and her foundering, Gen X grandson (Fred Hechinger) is very heartfelt. Squibb and Hechinger are both great, and Thelma also features indie favorite Parker Posey and the sweet final performance of Richard Roundtree (Shaft). It’s a surefire audience-pleaser, and I predict that Thelma will become a word-of-mouth hit when released in late June. See it first at the SLO Film Fest.
  • Chasing Chasing Amy: In this irresistible documentary, filmmaker Sav Rodgers tells his own highly personal story of finding sanctuary in a romantic comedy that ultimately spurs a both a filmmaking career and his transition to trans man. Rodgers weaves in parallel tracks, the origin story of the 1997 movie Chasing Amy, and thoughtful discussion of how that film, after 25 years of cultural evolution, has aged. We learn that Kevin Smith modeled the novelty of a straight man and a lesbian as inseparable soulmates after his real life friends; the core of Chasing Amy is a love affair sabotaged by the guy’s insecurities, mirroring Smith’s own less-than-two-year relationship with Joey Lauren Adams, who plays the titular character. Rodgers meets Smith himself, who becomes a mentor, and we get current on-camera interviews with Smith, Adams and other principals. Along the way, Rodgers matures from a gushing fan girl to a grownup who recognizes the personal flaws that complicate other people’s relationships. Chasing Chasing Amy seamlessly braids together the fictional love story in Chasing Amy with the stories of real life relationships, including his own.
  • Tokyo Cowboy: This charming dramedy centers on a Japanese corporate turnaround artist, Hideki (Arata Iura). Confident that he has the secret sauce to recharge any stagnant brand, he’s got a slick pitch deck (with a snapshot from his own childhood), and he’s engaged to the corporate vice-president he reports to. His company is about to liquidate a money-hemorrhaging cattle ranch in Montana, when he parachutes in for a quick fix. His Japanese beef consultant goes hilariously native, and Hideki, a smart guy, immediately sees that his idea for a quick fix was mistaken. Now unsettled and off the grid in an alien culture, Hideki recalibrates his values and his life goals. It’s the first narrative feature for director Marc Marriott, who, with cinematographer Oscar Ignacio Jiménez, creates a Big Sky setting that could reset any of us in need of self-discovery.
  • Riding Giants: Monday, April 29: The movie at the SLO Film Fest’s very first Surf Nite was this 2004 surf doc. Riding Giants focuses on the obsessive search for the best wave by some of the greatest surfers in history. We see “the biggest wave ever ridden” and then a monster that could be bigger.  The movie traces the discovery of the Half Moon Bay surf spot Mavericks.  And more and more, all wonderfully shot. IMO, Riding Giants ranks with Dana Brown’s Step into Liquid as the greatest surf documentary ever. Riding Giants was directed by Stacy Peralta, a surfer, a pioneer of modern skateboarding, and a founder of the Powell Peralta skateboard product company. Peralta, who also directed Dogtown and Z-boys, will attend the screening. Fittingly, Riding Giants screens at the Bay in Morro Bay – only one mile from the surf lanes at Morro Rock.

Here’s the trailer for Chasing Chasing Amy.

Under the radar at the 2024 SFFILM

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Isabelle Huppert and Tsuyoshi Ihara in Élise Girard’s SIDONIE IN JAPAN. Courtesy of SFFILM.

This year’s San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM) opens on Wednesday. SFFILM presents a wide-ranging slate of films from 40 countries. The opening and closing night films, Didi and Thelma, are justifiably generating the buzz. Here are four more under-the-radar recommendations.

  • Sidonie in Japan: The great Isabelle Huppert stars in this French drama as a writer whose life has been shaped by grief. Her first success came from a book about her own traumatic loss; her life was reignited by a supportive husband, whom she has also now lost. A new translation of her first book finds her on a book tour of Japan. Sidonie eventually finds that she can explore the navigation of grief with her translator (Tsuyoshi Ihara), for whom still waters run deep, and the silent beauty of Japan’s gardens and temples, helps too. Add some magical realism, and Sidonie in Japan becomes a satisfying story of surviving painful episodes in life. The personal drama is leavened by fish-out-of-water comic touches as a Frenchwoman is introduced to the oft counterintuitive protocols of Japanese culture.
  • The Practice: This deadpan Argentine comedy is a triumph of absurdism. An Argentine yoga instructor living in Chile (Esteban Bigliardi) faces a set of challenges that most people find a way to overcome, including an ex-wife who doesn’t want him back, a nagging mother, a knee injury, a thieving student. Unfortunately, he is devoid of common sense and his every instinct is a misfire. A romantic opportunity arises, but will he find a way to self-sabotage that, too? Ever droll, this film by writer-director Martín Rejtman is very funny.
  • Mother Couch: In this nightmarish fever dream, Ewan McGregor plays a man trapped in an absurd situation – his obstreperous, estranged mother (Ellen Burstyn) is refusing to leave a couch in a furniture store. His adult siblings (Rhys Ifans, Lara Flynn Boyle), whom he barely knows, are present but not supportive. The oddly singular furniture store is itself a bizarre construction, and this fable of parental emotional abandonment just keeps getting ever more surreal. McGregor’s and Burstyn’s performances are very strong, and the depth of the cast is extraordinary: Taylor Russell, F. Murray Abraham and Lake Bell. Mother Couch is the first narrative feature for writer-director Niclas Larsson, an acclaimed director of car commercials, and it’s a remarkable calling card.
  • Banel and Adama: In this well-crafted and beautifully shot Senegalese drama, a 19-year-old couple live in a remote village, happily in love with each other, but chafing at cultural traditions. Banel suffers her nightmare of a mother-in-law, and Adama resists the burdens of community leadership that he knows he isn’t ready for. Can they find happiness in their village? Will they leave together? Their personal stories are set in a dramatic, drought-stricken landscape with houses buried in sand and dust.

Peruse the program and buy tickets at SFFILM. All my SFFILM coverage, including eventual full reviews, will be linked on my SFFILM 2024 page.

A scene from Martin Rejtman’s THE PRACTICE. Courtesy of SFFILM.

LA CHIMERA: six genres for the price of one

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Photo caption: Carol Duarte and Josh O’Connor in LA CHIMERA. Courtesy of Neon.

The star of the Italian genre-shifter La Chimera is really its director, Alice Rohrwacher, with her inventive storytelling. Rohrwacher’s story does have a protagonist, Arthur (Josh O’Connor – the marriage-age Prince Charles in The Crown); when we meet him, he is grubby, weary and returning to a Tuscan village where his heart has been broken by a woman and where he has been betrayed by friends. We wonder what has drawn this Italian-speaking Englishman back to a place that hasn’t treated him well.

He shows up at the villa of Flora (Isabella Rossellini), the mother of his disappeared girlfriend, Beniamina. Flora adores him, and her new housekeeper/companion/voice student Italia (Carol Duarte) is quite taken by him. He is also welcomed by a rabble of village ne’er-do-wells, as rowdy and vibrant as Arthur is surly, and as course as Arthur is cultured.

It turns out that these vulgar roughnecks are tombaroli – nighttime robbers of ancient Etruscan graves, who then sell the artifacts to a more sophisticated fence, to be trafficked in the shady marketplace of antiquity dealers, collectors and ethically-challenged museums. It turns out that Arthur, who seems to know a lot about archaeology, has a gift in water witching the locations of undiscovered tombs.

La Chimera, which has started out as a dramatic portrait of a man broken and alienated, becomes a heist procedural, and then a comic thriller, and a charming romance (as Italia gives Arthur “Italian lessons” in gestures, not vocabulary). There’s a sudden break in the fourth wall, a dream sequence with magical realism and even an homage to Mack Sennett. All the while, the tombaroli serve as a comic Grek chorus, right up to a neo-noir ending, dotted with yet more magical realism.

Here’s where La Chimera was a success for me. I always wanted to know what would happen next. I was continually surprised by the changes in tone. The Wife, however, thought that Rohrwacher threw in at least one genre too many.

But by bit, and rarely overtly, Rohrwacher unspools the mysteries of the backstory. Why is Arthur here? What happened to Beniamina? What is Arthur’s bond to these trashy scalliwags? Does Arthur have a professional training, a supernatural gift or both? By the end, we have a pretty good idea of the answers – well enough to make the story coherent without Rohrwacher spoonfeeding us all the exposition.

When I think about it, other than the novelty of the graverobbing, the plot points are individually familiar – a bitter release from prison, heartbreak from losing a love, the heist, the noirish fatalism. What keeps us on our toes is the inventiveness in the film’s evolving tone.

However, my head was also more involved than my heart, probably because I cared about the the Flora ad Italia characters so much more than I cared about Arthur.

The cast is very good, with Rossellini (what a treasure!) and Duarte as the standouts.

I appreciate a filmmaker who is always aware that she’s storytelling in cinema, instead of, for example, just filming a play. Rohrwacher takes full advantage of the opportunities to vary sequence, construction, and mood. La Chimera is a Must See for cinephiles.

Surf and Skate at SLO Film Fest

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DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS

This year’s San Luis Obispo International Film Festival, opening April 23, presents the richest Skate/Surf program that I’ve ever seen at a mainstream film festival. Here are the highlights.

  • Friday, April 26: The always popular Surf Night featuring Trilogy: New Wave. Expect the Fremont to be packed again with surfers enjoying drinks in the lobby and the Riff Tide surf band before the screening. The documentary Trilogy: New Wave profiles three emerging pro stars on the world tour as they travel together to some of the world’s top surf destinations. The young guys are engaging and the audience will be stoked by the cinematography.
  • Sunday, April 28: The award-winning 2001 skateboard documentary Dogtown and Z-boys with the 2023 short 4DWN. The director of Dogtown and Z-boys, filmmaker and skateboard icon Stacy Peralta will attend; a surfer and one of the pioneers of modern skateboarding, and a founder of the Powell Peralta skateboard product company, Peralta also wrote the 2005 Lords of Dogtown. Beforehand, the audience can enjoy custom skateboard designs, with live-screen printing of these custom designs by the San Luis Obispo High School Advanced Graphic Design class.
  • Monday, April 29: The movie at the SLO Film Fest’s very first Surf Nite was the 2004 surf doc Riding Giants, also directed by Stacy Peralta. Riding Giants focuses on the obsessive search for the best wave by some of the greatest surfers in history. We see “the biggest wave ever ridden” and then a monster that could be bigger.  The movie traces the discovery of the Half Moon Bay surf spot Mavericks.  And more and more, all wonderfully shot. Fittingly, Riding Giants screens at the Bay in Morro Bay – only one mile from the surf lanes at Morro Rock. IMO, Riding Giants ranks with Dana Brown’s Step into Liquid as the greatest surf documentary ever.
RIDING GIANTS

Other skate/surf films include:

  • the seminal 1978 skateboard film Skateboard.
  • the 2024 documentary Art and Life: The Story of Jim Phillips, chronicling the most important figure ever in skateboard art (most famously the Screaming Hand and the Santa Cruz Red Dot). Phillips is a very sympathetic guy with an interesting personal journey. It’s well-sourced deep dive into skateboard art, skateboard manufacturing, surfing art and rock poster art, and almost everything happens just up the coast in Santa Cruz.

The entire surf and skate program at SLO Film Fest shreds. Here’s a clip from for Riding Giants:

Movies to See Right Now

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June Squibb and Fred Hechinger appear in THELMA, the closing night film of both the SFFILM and the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by David Bolen.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – we’re all about the upcoming SFFILM and SLO Film Festivals. Both fests start next week, and I’ll soon be posting my recommendations from both programs. The closing night film for both San Frnacisco and SLO is Thelma, which will become a popular hit when it’s released into theaters in June.

CURRENT MOVIES

WATCH AT HOME

Richard Basehart in HE WALKED BY NIGHT

The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:

ON TV

Richard Roundtree in SHAFT.

Richard Roundtree died last year, before the release of his very sweet final performance in Thelma. Roundtree’s FIRST MOVIE role was as the iconic John Shaft in Shaft. He went on to over 250 more screen credits, including four more as John Shaft. Although in my mind, the biggest star of Shaft was Isaac Hayes’ music, Richard Roundtree was, along with Pam Grier, the most significant on-screen force in Blaxploitation cinema. Turner Classic Movies is airing Shaft, on April 22.

Who’s the black private dick that’s a sex machine to all the chicks?

First Look at the 2024 SLO Film Fest

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June Squibb and Fred Hechinger appear in THELMA by Josh Margolin. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by David Bolen.

The 2024 SLO Film Fest opens on April 25 and celebrates its 30th festival, bringing its characteristic mix of aspirational cinema and sheer fun to California’s Central Coast. This year’s program will be presented at the Fremont, Palm and Downtown Centre in San Luis Obispo, and the Bay in Morro Bay. An encore week will play at at Paso Robles’ Park Cinemas May 1-5. There will also be a Virtual Encore for selected titles, also May 1-5.

Here are festival highlights:

  • The closing night film is a hoot – Thelma, starring 93-year-old June Squibb (Oscar-nominated for Nebraska) in an action picture. Squibb plays a scammed senior who goes on a quest to recover her money from the scammers. . I’ve seen it, and it’s a surefire audience-pleaser. Thelma also features indie favorite Parker Posey and the sweet final performance of Richard Roundtree (Shaft).
  • The opening night film is the family dramedy Ghostlight, also a Sundance hit, with the filmmakers in attendance.
  • The always popular Surf Night featuring Trilogy: New Wave. Expect the Fremont to be packed again with surfers enjoying drinks in the lobby and the Riff Tide surf band before the screening. The documentary Trilogy: New Wave profiles three emerging pro stars on the world tour as they travel together to some of the world’s top surf destinations. The young guys are engaging, and the audience will be stoked by the cinematography.
  • Surf night is only one part of the richest Skate/Surf program that I’ve ever seen at a mainstream film festival (and I’ll be writing more about it this week). Filmmaker and skateboard icon Stacy Peralta will attend the SLO Film Fest, which features two of his films, Dogtown and Z-boys and Riding Giants.
  • Actress/director Heather Graham will appear to receive an award, and present her new film Chosen Family.
  • A screening of Camera, filmed in Morro Bay, with appearances by star Beau Bridges and director Jay Silverman,
  • A 45th anniversary screening of the zombie classic Dawn of the Dead.
  • Audience favorites that reflect the 30 years of SLO Film Fest, including Double Indemnity, Big Night, Muriel’s Wedding, and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
  • I haven’t seen this Canadian horror comedy, but it has my favorite title in the fest: Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person.

There’s plenty more, with features, workshops and six programs of shorts. I’m screening my way through the program, and will post my MUST SEE recommendations before the fest opens. Peruse the program and get your tickets at SLO Film Fest.

First look at the 2024 SFFILM

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Izaac Wang stars as “Chris” in writer/director Sean Wang’s DÌDI, a Focus Features release. Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features / Talking Fish Pictures LLC © 2024 All Rights Reserved.

This year’s San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM) opens April 24, and runs through April 28. The fest is in-person, at the Marina, the Premier Theater at One Letterman, t Vogie, the Walt Disney Family Museum, and Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA).

The menu at SFFILM includes films from 40 countries, including 12 world premieres, 8 North American premieres and 5 US premieres. Peruse the program and buy tickets at SFFILM.

Here are more special elements of this year’s SFFILM:

  • The opening night film is the the highly-buzzed-about coming age dramedy Didi. This will be only the third festival for Didi, which was a hit at both Sundance and SXSW, and which is scheduled to be released on July 26. It’s the first narrative feature from director Sean Wang, who was Oscar-nominated for his documentary short Nai Nai & Wai Po.
  • The closing night film is a hoot – Thelma, starring 93-year-old June Squibb (Oscar-nominated for Nebraska) in an action picture. Squibb plays a scammed senior who goes on a quest to recover her money from the scammers. I’ve seen it, and it’s a surefire audience-pleaser. Thelma also features indie favorite Parker Posey and the sweet final performance of Richard Roundtree (Shaft).
  • Tributes to Joan Chen and Chiwetel Ejiofor.
  • Movies starring Chen, Squibb, Roundtree, Posey, Isabelle Huppert, Colman Domingo, Ellen Burstyn, Ewan McGregor, Rhys Ifans, Lara Flynn Boyle, Lake Bell, Taylor Russell,  F. Murray Abraham, Judy Greer, Julianne Nicholson, Elias Koteas and Paul Raci,

As usual, I’ll be looking for under-the-radar gems and posting my recommendations just before the fest’s opening. My coverage will be linked on my SFFILM 2024 page.

Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: Benoit Magimel and Juliette Binoche in THE TASTE OF THINGS. Courtesy of IFC Films.

This busy week on The Movie Gourmet – new reviews of Monkey Man and Matter of Mind: My Parkinson’s, plus first looks at the upcoming SFFILM and SLO Film Festivals.

CURRENT MOVIES

WATCH AT HOME

THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD

The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:

ON TV

KILLER’S KISS

On April 18, Turner Classic Movies will present one my Overlooked Noir, a young Stanley Kubrick’s Killer’s Kiss; it will be on Noir Alley with an intro and outro by Eddie Muller. It doesn’t take long to realize that Killer’s Kiss is not a typical film noir – there’s Kubrick’s own bracing visual style, an interracial relationship and a comically absurd fight to the death. The cast matched a couple one-hit wonders with the pioneering African-American actor and civil rights activist Frank Silvera.

MONKEY MAN: a massacre, one bad guy at a time

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Photo caption: Dev Patel in MONKEY MAN, Courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Monkey Man is a vividly colored and kinetic revenge thriller staring its director and co-writer, the ever sympathetic Dev Patel. It’s also relentlessly violent and, ultimately, empty.

The story is simple, Kid (Patel) is driven to exact vengeance for an atrocity by killing the head bad guy, and so must first kill his way through scores, perhaps hundreds, of the minor bad guys, one or two at a time. I like seeing bad guys get violently chewed up as much as the next guy, but the vastness of the bad guy fodder in Money Man became tiresome.

Now, I love watching Dev Patel, so good in Slumdog Millionaire, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Lion, The Green Knight and The Personal History of David Copperfield. He is magnetic and equipped with what Manohla Dargis calls his “melting eyes that he can light up or expressively dim to create a sense of vulnerability”.

Monkey Man is clearly an homage to Bruce Lee, amplified by the filmmaking advances of the 50 years since Enter the Dragon. Indeed, Patel has studied Taekwando since childhood (not apparent when he’s playing a Dickensian character, for example).

We’ve always known that Dev Patel can act. Monkey Man proves that Dev Patel can carry an action picture. And Monkey Man, with its clever action sequences, speedy pacing and blazing color palette, proves that Dev Patel can direct, too.

When you have dispatch this many bad guys with one’s bare hands, some imagination is required. One instance, with a knife in the throat, will be talked about for decades.

Patel takes a shot at Hindu nationalism in India and a thinly-veiled swipe at prime minister Modi. I noted that Patel is a Brit of Gujarati Indian heritage, some generations removed from India itself. But the need to take on racism and intolerance is universal, so good for him.

Nevertheless, I left Monkey Man unsatisfied. The only unpredictability was whether Kid would kill the next bad guy with a kitchen utensil or the glass door of an oven. The next day, however, I thought about the kind of crap that teenage boys watch, and Monkey Man’s artsy filmmaking, the hint of a political message, and the Indian setting would constitute an elevated alternative. I just can’t think of why an adult cinephile would need to see it.

MATTER OF MIND: MY PARKINSON’S: real, uplifting, essential

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Photo caption. Isa and Veronica Garcia-Hayes in MATTER OF MIND: MY PARKINSON. Courtesy of PBS Independent Lens.

The surprisingly uplifting documentary Matter of Mind: My Parkinson’s shines a light on Parkinson’s disease, and what we need to know about it. An estimated one million Americans are living with Parkinson’s, and the key to Matter of Mind’s success is in introducing us to three of them – a Brooklyn optician, a San Francisco fitness trainer and an Alaskan cartoonist – and their families. On April 8, Matter of Mind: My Parkinson’s becomes available on PBS’ Independent Lens and the PBS App..

Parkinson’s is incurable and degenerative, and attacks motor abilities. Matter of Mind does not sugar coat the symptoms, ranging from from tremors, falling and speech impairment to dementia and depression. Nevertheless, there are now medicines and surgeries ((including deep brain stimulation)) that can impact the symptoms.

We watch the three subjects and their families, all engaging and relatable, explore the medical treatments, with their risks and tradeoffs, and adapt to getting the most out of their lives, even with Parkinson’s. Matter of Mind emphasizes the impacts on family members and the importance of family in supporting each sufferer’s response.

The 54-minute format of Independent Lens fits this subject matter exceptionally well – long enough to explain the science without becoming an eat-your-broccoli slog.

This is the second in a series of three documentaries on neurodegenerative diseases from co-writers and co-directors Anna Moot-Levin and Laura Green; the others are on ALS and Alzheimer’s. I’m usually not keen on disease movies, but Matter of Mind: My Parkinson’s is so good, and Parkinson’s so prevalent and inadequately understood, that this is essential viewing.