Photo caption: Bruce Mau in MAU. Courtesy of BABKA.
The term visionary is overused, but it surely fits Canadian designer Bruce Mau, the subject of the documentary Mau.
I generally think of design as the means to make objects more pleasing and useful and attractive to consumers. But Mau observes that almost everything we experience is not natural – and therefore DESIGNED. And if designed, it can be RE-DESIGNED to be more beautiful, more sustainable, more intelligent and more humane.
Bruce Mau thinks big. He has been retained to redesign Coca-Cola. And to redesign the millennium-old pilgrimage experience of Mecca. And to redesign the nation of Guatemala.
Mau’s upbringing and his work is somewhat interesting, as is his aspirational exhibition project Massive Action. But the most compelling aspect of Mau is the exposure to how Bruce Mau THINKS. Mau essentially becomes the world’s best TED Talk.
TALE OF KING CRAB. Courtesy of Oscilloscope Films.
The Tale of King Crab, a story-telling masterpiece from Italy, begins with old Italian guys rehashing a local legend, and correcting each other on the details. That story concerns Luciano (Gabriele Silli), the town’s smartest and most interesting man – and also the local drunk. Luciano fixates on a grievance – the closing of a shortcut for shepherds. In spite of his own anti-social bent (and matted beard), Luciano falls into a romance. The grievance, the romance and his alcoholism combine to precipitate an accidental tragedy. We next see a sober and guilt-ridden Luciano searching for buried treasure at the barren tip of South America, an apparent priest among pirates.
TALE OF KING CRAB. Courtesy of Oscilloscope Films.
The Tale of King Crab is the first narrative feature for writer-directors Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis and for cinematographer Simone D’Arcangelo. D’Arcangelo’s work, in vibrant Lazio and desolate Tierra del Fuego, is stunning. The Italian segments were filmed in northern Lazio near Lago di vico.
Dotted with mystical elements and filled with stories within stories, this is an operatic fable, exquisitely told. I screened The Tale of the King Crab for the Nashville Film Festival. It has opened theatrically, including this week only at Laemmle’s Monica Film Center and NoHo 7.
Photo caption: Dale Dickey in A LOVE SONG. Courtesy of San Luis Obispo Film Fest.
A Love Song is a welcome starring vehicle for the longtime character actress Dale Dickey, whose every good night and every bad night is etched into the lines on her face. Dickey plays Faye, whom we meet camping alone in her travel trailer in the remote high desert of Western Colorado.
After a decades-long marriage, Faye has been widowed for seven years, paralyzed by grief in the first two. Now she moves confidently around her solo campsite, displaying her serious outdoor skills and an impressive touch for fishing for crawdads.
It is revealed that Faye is waiting for someone. She has invited a high school friend, whom she hasn’t seen for over three decades, to re-connect. That friend is Lito (Wes Studi), who has also been widowed after a long marriage.
A Love Song wistfully explores loneliness and how grief can impact the ability to love again.
Dickey is on screen almost every moment, and she’s great. Dickey has a way of making even her supporting performances unforgettable. She broke through as the scary meth matriarch in Winter’s Bone, and played the flinty bank teller in Hell and High Water.
Studi recently received a deserved lifetime Oscar. His performances as very scary Native American warriors in Dances with Wolves and The Last of the Mohicans sparked a very impressive body of film work.
Dickey and Studi have said that each had their very first on-screen kiss in A Love Song.
A Love Song is the first feature for writer-director Max Waterman-Silver, who uses his debut to show off his native Western Colorado. I found his direction inconsistent, but he delivered two perfect single-shot scenes, both of very long duration, one when Lito and Faye are sitting with guitars, the other when the two are standing outside Faye’s trailer.
Faye is occasionally visited by four Native American brothers with their little sister as their spokeswoman. Waterman-Silver’s sense of comic timing in these scenes is flawless.
Both The Wife and I were periodically distracted by holes or inconsistencies in the screenplay. At one point, the dog inexplicably vanishes (fortunately temporarily). And there’s no way that someone with Faye’s seasoning would hike up a mountain without water, especially when she can’t make it back down by nightfall.
I admire filmmakers who make their films short enough (82 minutes) so they can pace them slowly. The Wife, less patient with slow burns, still thought that it ran long.
The performances by Dickey and Studi are reason enough to watch this bittersweet, gentle, heartfelt and funny film. I saw A Love Song at the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival. It has been picked up for distribution by Bleecker Street, which plans a July 29 theatrical release.
Photo caption: Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Michelle Yeoh and James Hong in EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE. Courtesy of A24.
The mind-bender Everything Everywhere All At Once is often indecipherable and mostly dazzling. It’s as if a martial arts version of It’s a Wonderful Life were written by Terry Gilliam on LSD and Red Bull
Michelle Yeoh shines as Evelyn, the burned-out owner of the coin laundromat that she lives above. Evelyn is simultaneously tying to run the business, survive a crippling IRS audit, organize a birthday party for her cranky father and avoid facing her daughter Joy’s (Stephanie Hsu) having a girlfriend. Stressed out to the max, Evelyn is so emotionally neglectful of her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) that she doesn’t grok that he’s trying to divorce her (for emotional neglect).
Suddenly, Evelyn is plunged into a multiverse where a master villain named Jobu Topaki is wreaking carnage and sometimes inhabiting Joy’s body. And, just as suddenly, we are plunged into a mile-a-minute adventure like being inside a pinball machine. Every so often, Waymond is possessed by a multiverse good guy and blurts out a stream of exposition, but it’s best not to try to follow it.
An “everything bagel” appears – both literally and metaphorically. There’s a heartfelt message embedded that is much simpler than all the sci fi hoopla.
It takes a movie star like Yeoh (the martial arts star of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the Bond Girl in Tomorrow Never Dies, and the steely mom in Crazy Rich Asians).tio hold the center of this wacky extravaganza.
Jamie Lee Curtis in EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE. Courtesy of A24.
The rest of the cast is excellent, too. Ke Huy Quan, who, as a child, played Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom captures Waymond’s gentle cluelessness and domestic frustration. I especially loved 93-year-old James Hong (recognizable from his 450 screen credits) as Evelyn’s dad. The funniest performance is by a hilariously glammed-down Jamie Lee Curtis as the IRS agent.
Everything Everywhere All At Once is co-written and co-directed by the Daniels – Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. The pair is best known for getting $3 million to make the utterly transgressive Swiss Army Man, starring Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) as a flatulent corpse.
Everything Everywhere All At Once is a succession of zany action and eye candy with an avalanche of googly eyes at the climax. The best bits are:
a brilliant martial arts set piece with a fannypack as a weapon.
a fantasy of what Evelyn’s life would be if she hadn’t married Waymond, which turns out to be the real movie star life of Michelle Yeoh.
the moment in evolutionary history when hot dog fingers overcame real human fingers in natural selection.
a live action homage to the movie Ratatouille with a CGI racoon.
Stephanie Hsu in EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE. Courtesy of A24.
One more note: the costume design (Shirley Kurata) and makeup (Michelle Chung) for Joy when she’s possessed by the villain is inspired.
I’ve rarely seen so much imagination thrown up on the screen, mostly for the better. Everything Everywhere All At Once is kinda draining to watch and often frustrating, but its best moments are very, very good.
Photo caption: Seidi Haarla and Yuri Borisov in COMPARTMENT No. 6. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
In Compartment No. 6, an odd couple must share the same claustrophobic compartment in a dreadful train ride to Murmansk. She aims to see ancient petroglyphs, and he is heading to a job in a massive mining operation, but they’re really on a journey to human connection.
Compartment No. 6 won the Grand Prix, essentially the second place award, at Cannes; (in 2022, as in recent years, the Grand Prix winner is a much better movie than the winner of the more prestigious Palm d’Or).
Laura (Seidi Haarla) is a mousy Finnish college student in Russia, studying Russian language or archaeology – it’s not exactly clear. She is having a fling with a 40ish Russian professor, and Laura is more deeply invested in the relationship than is her new girlfriend. Laura is out of her depth with the girlfriend’s academic friends. The girlfriend cancels their planned trip at the last moment, and Laura, disappointed, still heads off to Murmansk on her own.
Given the discomfort of Russian train travel, this multi day trip is not for the faint-hearted anyway, but Laura is alarmed to find herself sharing a second-class compartment with a nightmare of a roommate. Ljoha (Yuri Borisov) is an obnoxious drunk, a slob leaving a trail of cigarette ashes and partially eaten sausage. This is a guy devoid of intellectual curiosity, who has never had an original thought. What he possesses in mass quantities is macho boorishness – his icebreaker is “are you traveling alone to sell your cunt?”
More restrained when he is sober, Ljoha is socially inept. As emotionally vulnerable as is Laura, so is Ljoha – he’s just trying very hard to hide it with bravado.
What is important to Laura – and to Ljoha? Fundamentally, each needs to find human connection. Compartment No. 6 takes us on their unpredictable journey. This is not a conventional hate-each-other-and-then-fall-for-each-other movie romance.
Compartment No. 6 is hardly an advert for Russian passenger trains. The train attendant is surly and officious, the running water doesn’t work, and the dining car menu is ever diminishing. The passengers are constantly smoking, and they have no ability to wash themselves. As the train winds northward, you can’t help but imagine the rancid odors.
Compartment No. 6 is the second feature for Finnish director and co-writer Juro Kuosmanen. Boy, I liked this movie.
Liu Haoran in Zhang Yi’s FIRE ON THE PLAIN. Courtesy of SFFILM.
This year’s San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM) has just opened and runs through May 1. The menu at SFFILM includes 130 films from 56 countries, with 16 world premieres and 10 North American or US premieres. Once again, a majority of the films were directed by female and non-binary filmmakers, and a majority of the movie in this years program have BIPOC directors. Here are my three top picks – all from international cinema.
My favorite SFFILM film so far is the character-driven neo-noir Fire on the Plain, the first film for director and co-writerZhang Yi (Ji Zhang on IMDb). Zhang takes us to northeastern China in1997, into a gritty industrial city whose tagline could be disappointment. Most of the adults seemed paralyzed by economic hopelessness. A serial killer is knocking off taxi drivers, and everyone is on edge. Shu (Liu Haoran) hangs out with his rowdy friends; he’s headed nowhere, and he’s OK with that. Only the spirited Fei (Zhou Dongyu) has a plan to escape the gloom. It looks like the story is building toward Fei emigrating with Shu, but a surprising murder occurs. The story reconvenes in 2005, and Shu and Fei are each in totally unexpected circumstances. Visually and thematically dark, Fire on the Plain winds toward a fittingly noir ending.
Julio César Chávez and Oscar De La Hoya in Eva Longoria’s LA GUERRA CIVIL. Courtesy of SFFILM.
The think piece documentary La Guerra Civil is the feature directing debut for actress (and veteran TV director) Eva Longoria. It explores issues of identity through the rivalry between boxing champions Julio César Chávez and Oscar De La Hoya. Chávez came from an impoverished Mexican childhood to dominate boxing in the late 1980s and 1990s, breaking record after record; Chávez became especially revered by Mexicans and Mexican-Americans. Exploding from East LA into the 1992 Olympics, the handsome and media savvy Oscar De La Hoya had a similar rags-to-champion profile. One might expect Mexican-Americans to embrace De La Hoya, even as he climbed toward a face-off with Chávez . But it was much more complicated than that, and De La Hoya feels the need to verbalize that he’s “Mexican enough”.
Juliet Binoche and Vincent Lindon in Claire Denis’ BOTH SIDES OF THE BLADES (FIRE). Courtesy of SFFILM.
One of the biggest films at SFFILM is anything but a first film – Both Sides of the Blade (also known as Fire) comes from French auteur Claire Denis (35 Shots of Rum, Let the Sunshine In). Sara (the ever rapturous Juliette Binoche) has built a ten-year relationship with Jean (Vincent Lindon) that has survived his prison sentence. Sara had previously been with François (Grégoire Colin), but left him because she valued Jean’s reliability, loyalty and decency. When François shows up again in their lives, Sara is drawn to him again. With Denis, Binoche and Lindon layering in all the complexities of these characters, this is not your average romantic triangle.
OSCAR MICHEAUX: THE SUPERHERO OF BLACK FILMMAKING. Courtesy of TCM.
If you don’t know who Oscar Micheaux is, you should – so watch the documentary Oscar Micheaux: The Superhero of Black Filmmaking. As writer/director/producer, the African-American Michaeux created so-called “race films” – movies made for black audiences from a black perspective during the most shameful years of American racial segregation. Michaeux himself directed 42 feature films DURING Jim Crow.
There’s a lot in Oscar Micheaux: The Superhero of Black Filmmaking:
Micheaux’s pivotal sojourn in a cabin in, of all places, the Dakotas.
His very personal and hands-on distribution methods.
His discovery of Paul Robeson’s on-screen charisma, a full eight years before Robeson’s first Hollywood film (The Emperor Jones).
Micheaux’s comfort in portraying that most incendiary topic – interracial relationships.
How he slyly bent rules to avoid censorship.
I have seen some Oscar Micheaux films, and their stories, freed of the White Hollywood lens, are eyeopening. They allowed black audiences to see big screen characters that acted like real African-American – not the degrading stereotypes in Hollywood movies.
That being said, Michaeux did not make “Noble Negro” movies. His work is authentic, and criticized, for example, black preacher-hucksters who exploit religious devotion in the African-American community for their own venal and carnal appetites.
Oscar Micheaux: The Superhero of Black Filmmaking features a solid panel of expert talking heads to explain Micheaux’s place in cinema and in African-American history. The most compelling are screenwriter Kevin Wilmott and University of Chicago cinema professor/TCM host Jaqueline Stewart.
Animation is used sparingly and effectively, including one inspired segment to Gil Scott-Heron’s The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.
I watched Oscar Micheaux: The Superhero of Black Filmmaking on Turner Classic Movies, and it is streaming on HBO Max.
Tp honor Cinequest, now underway, here’s the best of the over thirty films that I reviewed at the 2019 Cinequest. The searing dystopian fable Buy Me a Gun takes place in an imaginary near future, in which Mexico’s conquest by narco cartels is so complete that all other institutions have collapsed.
Buy Me a Gun’s Mexico is a bandit society run by rival warlords and their fighters – a new feudal age with automatic weapons. It’s a world of cruelty, where all the mothers and teen daughters have been taken by the cartels as sex slaves. And it’s a surreal Mexico, desolate of people, the population having dwindled due to lack of women.
The cartel fighters spend essentially all of their time in four pursuits: the drug trade, raiding for women and girls, partying and playing baseball.
We meet one surviving man who is not in a cartel. Rogelio (Rogelio Sosa) has been imprisoned by a cartel to perform as the groundskeeper of the baseball field at their base. Rogelio is addicted to drugs, and he knows that his life is subject to the whim of any of the fighters at any moment, particularly the terrifying and gender-ambiguous cartel commander (Sostenes Rojas).
While Rogelio walks the tightrope of narco murderers, he is hiding a high stakes secret in plain sight. He has a 10-year-old daughter Huck (Mathilde Hernandez) who he is protecting from the fighters by pretending that she is a boy. If the cartel fighters discover his ruse, he will certainly be killed and his daughter will certainly become a sex slave. Because he can’t escape (and there is no place to escape TO), this is Rogelio’s best option, as harrowing as it is.
Rogelio Sosa and Mathilde Hernandez in BUY ME A GUN. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.
Huck is not the only child at the narco base – she has a pack of feral friends, some horribly disfigured from the environment of violence and the cartel’s cruelty.
While in the throes of his addiction, the groundskeeper is decent, resourceful and brave – devoted to his daughter in a hopeless situation. This is an extraordinary performance by Rogelio Sosa.
One childish mistake puts the dad and daughter in jeopardy. Will she escape the danger? Buy Me a Gun turns into a heart-pounding thriller.
Buy Me a Gun is written and directed by Julio Hernández Cordón, and it’s an impressive achievement, one of the most original films I’ve seen in this decade. One scene in particular, involving a trumpet and purple smoke to illustrate smoking drugs, is genius. Along with Huck, there are child characters that Hernández Cordón has named Tom and Sawyer.
The only crappy thing about Buy Me a Gun is its title, which would better fit a shallow crime movie than such a profound fable.
I screened Buy Me a Gun the 2019 Cinequest before its theatrical release in Mexico. At the 2020 Ariel awards (Mexico’s Oscars) , it garnered eight nominations including for Best Picture, Director and Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor for Sostenes Rojas. Buy Me a Gun is now is now streaming on Amazon, AppleTV, and YouTube
Photo caption: Michael James Kelly and Elizabeth Hirsch-Tauber in 12 MONTHS. Courtesy of Cinequest.
The uncommonly authentic 12 Months traces the year-long span of a romance, using vignettes that are snapshots of the relationship’s evolution. Just like a real life relationship, 12 Months has moments that are playful and moments that are searing. It’s the Must See at this year’s Cinequest.
Ellie (Elizabeth Hirsch-Tauber) and Clark (Michael James Kelly) share a first date, which leads to another, and things get serious. Both Ellie and Clark are decent, smart, sincere and vulnerable; each has quirks, but neither is a bundle of red flags. Each deserves to find a partner, and, so, are they a fit?
Directed by Clinton Cornwell in his feature debut, 12 Months is entirely improvised. Cornwell is credited for the story, Hirsch-Tauber as executive story editor and Kelly as contributing writer. 12 Months is an especially promising calling card for all three.
12 Months soars in recognizing that relationships are rarely symmetrical. The two people involved generally experience different levels of attraction, security, commitment, confidence, comfort and maturity – and at different times.
And 12 Months understands that what a relationship can survive isn’t always predictable, whether it be depression, a sexual proclivity or an out-of-town work assignment.
Clearly, Cornwell, Hirsch-Tauber and Kelly are extremely keen and perceptive observers of relationship behavior (whether from their own or those of others). They don’t hit a single wrong note in12 Months.
Clark’s and Ellie’s best pals are played, respectively, by Christopher Mychael Watson and Lindsey Rose Naves, and they are hilarious.
Movies like 12 Months are why we have film festivals. Cinequest hosts the world premiere of 12 Months, and you can stream it at Cinejoy. View the trailer.
Michael James Kelly and Elizabeth Hirsch-Tauber in 12 MONTHS. Courtesy of Cinequest.
Photo caption: Lidia Vitale and Ludovica Mancini in Gabriele Fabbro’s THE GRAND BOLERO at Cinequest. Courtesy of Cinequest.
The Grand Bolero is set in winter 2020, early in COVID’s devastating assault on Northern Italy. Roxanne (Lidia Vitale), a middle-aged organ restorer, is locked down in a centuries-old church, along with her client Paolo (Marcelli Mariani). Lucia (Ludovica Mancini), a runaway young mute woman with no place else to shelter, arrives at the church. In an act of kindness, Paolo brings her into the church as an assistant to Roxanne. A salty curmudgeon, Roxanne cruelly resists, even when Palolo chides her, “you know what it’s like to be scared and alone.”
Indeed, Roxanne is a solitary person in a solitary profession, moving from church to church to repair the ancient organs.
But Lucia’s unexpected musical gift unlocks appreciation and then passion in the older woman. Passion evolves into obsession, propelling the story to an operatic finale.
Lidia Vitale and Ludovica Mancini in Gabriele Fabbro’s THE GRAND BOLERO at Cinequest. Courtesy of Cinequest.
The Grand Bolero is the most visually beautiful film that I’ve seen in some time. The interior scenes evoke the warmth of candlelight. The characters find relief from the lockdown in stroll through natural beauty characters find comfort in exteriors in the bright crispness of the northern Italian winter. It’s a remarkable first feature for director, co-writer and editor Gabriele Fabbro and his cinematographer Jessica La Malfa.
The all-absorbing power of organ music naturally complements a story of passion. Roxanne becomes transfixed as she watches Lucia’s bare shoulders heaving at the organ. The story climaxes as the dialogue is drowned out by an organ performance of Ravel’s Bolero.
The Grand Bolero is in competition for Best Narrative Feature at Cinequest and may be streamed through April 17 at Cinejoy.
