The Mill Valley Film Festival will be screening 63 Up – the latest in Michael Apted’s Seven Up series. Apted himself will appear at the screening. The Seven Up series is one of the great achievements in cinema history, certainly the greatest documentary series ever ,and on my list of Greatest Movie of All Time. Since 1964, we’ve had to wait seven years for each new chapter, and the latest is finally here.
Starting with Seven Up! in 1964, director Michael Apted has followed the same fourteen British children, filming snapshots of their lives at ages 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42 and 49 – and now at age 56. Choosing kids from different backgrounds, the series started as a critique of the British class system, but has since evolved into a broader exploration of what factors can lead to success and happiness at different stages of human life. (Apted was the hands-on researcher, not the director on Seven Up! and then directed the next eight films in the series.)
We have seen these characters live roller coaster lives. The surprise in 56 Up was how contented they seemed to be. They seemed to have independently reached a stage in their lives where they live with acceptance and satisfaction. Accordingly, it makes for mellow and pleasing viewing for us.
Michael Apted is a big time director (Coal Miner’s Daughter, Gorillas in the Mist). It is remarkable that he has returned so faithfully to his subjects in the Up series.
Because Apted includes clips from earlier films to set the stage for each character, you don’t need to watch all nine movies. Because there is so much turbulence in the earlier films and so little conflict in 56 Up , it would be ideal to first screen an edgier film like 35 Up or 42: Forty Two Up. The earlier films are difficult, perhaps impossible, to find streaming, but the entire series {Seven Up!, Seven Plus Seven, 21 Up, 28 Up, 35 Up, 42 Up, 49 Up, 56 Up} is available on Netflix DVDs. 56 Up stands on its own, and it’s streamable on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Kanopy.
The MVFF will screen 63 Up on October 8, and you can read more and buy tickets on page 15 of the MVFF program.
PARASITE, one of the prestige offerings at this year’s Mill Valley Film Festival
The Mill Valley Film Festival always showcases the prestige films that will be released during Award Season. It’s the best opportunity for Bay Area film goers to catch an early look at the Big Movies. Don’t wait until Thanksgiving – head to Marin in early October.
For example, last year’s festival featured Roma, Green Book, Shoplifters, If Beale Street Could Talk and Cold War. Those five films combined for 28 Oscar nominations and 7 Oscars. You get the idea.
THREE of the movies I am expecting to be the year’s best are playing at this year’s MVFF:
Parasite – This year’s Palme d’Or winner at Cannes. A family of poor scoundrels and a rich family become entangled in a thriller dramedy. Writer-director Bong Joon-ho is one of my favorite filmmkaers (Memories of Murder, Snowpiercer, Mother, Okja).
The Whistlers – from Romanian writer-director Corneliu Porumboiu (Police, Adjective), this is a fish-out-of-water crime comedy that won’t be released in the US until February 2020.
Jojo Rabbit – the anti-hate satire about a young boy and his shocking inappropriate imaginary friend. From the unpredictable director Taika Waititi (Hunt for the Wilderpeople).
Other highlights include:
The Irishman – Martin Scorsese’s latest gangster saga, with Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci; the film employs innovative anti-aging effects for the flashback scenes.
The Truth – Master director Hirokazu Kore-eda (Shoplifters) first non-Japanese film, with Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche and Ethan Hawke.
The Lighthouse – Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson are on a remote island in the 1890s. Major festival buzz about this contemplative movie.
63 Up – the latest in Michael Apted’s Seven Up series, one of the great achievements in cinema history (and Apted himself will appear at the screening).
Frankie – the always discomfiting Isabelle Huppert takes her family (Brendan Gleeson, Marisa Tomei, Greg Kinnear) on a roller coaster.
Ford v Ferrari – a Hollywood audience-pleaser with Matt Damon, Christian Bale and Tray Letts.
Seberg – Kristen Stewart stars as Jean Seberg (and will appear at MVFF). Also stars Maragret Qualley (Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, Novitiate).
Pain and Glory, the latest from Pedro Alomodovar.
Just Mercy – Southern justice with Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx, Tim Blake Nelson and Brie Larson. Major Oscar bait from Short Term 12’s Destin Daniel Cretton.
Knives Out – currently my favorite trailer, this is Rian Johnson’s (Brick, Looper) star-studded take on the English country home murder mystery.
Motherless Brooklyn – the neo-noir from Edward Norton, who also stars.
Marriage Story – could be a career-topper from Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale).
Plus there’s a very special event for cinephiles – a screening of the 1988 art house classic The Unbearable Lightness of Being with director Philip Kaufman and star Lena Olin in attendance.
This year’s festival runs October 3-13 at four different Marin County venues (plus BAMPFA in Berkeley),. You can peruse the program and buy tickets at Mill Valley Film Festival.
Rojo is Argentine writer-director Benjamín Naishtat’s slow burn drama. Rojo is set just before the 1970s coup that some characters expect – but no one is anticipating how long and bloody the coup will be. Several vignettes are woven together into a tapestry of pre-coup moral malaise. Watch for the several references to desaparecida, a foreboding of the coup.
Ramen Shop is about a family’s reconciliation in light of troubled Singaporean-Japanese history. There’s a metaphorical foodie angle here, too, in the fusion of Singaporean pork rib soup with Japanese ramen stock.
Winter’s Night is Korean director Woo-jin Jang’s contemplation on a longtime marriage in which one partner has grown profoundly dissatisfied and both partners have become very confused about what to do about it. They are addressing this – or not – on a winter vacation to a remote monastery. This especially visual film (see the still below) makes full use of the frigid nights and the stark landscape to emphasize the wife’s emotional isolation.
I haven’t yet seen Loro, but master filmmaker Paolo Sorrrentino’s take on Italian scoundrel/prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is very promising. Sorrentino has already created two of the most brilliant films of this decade – The Great Beauty and Youth.
The Noir City film fest, always one of the best Bay Area cinema experiences, opens this weekend in San Francisco. Noir City is the annual festival of the Film Noir Foundation, spearheaded by its founder and president Eddie Muller. The Foundation preserves movies from the traditional noir period that would otherwise be lost. Noir City often plays newly restored films and movies not available on DVD or streaming. And we get to watch them in a vintage movie palace (San Francisco’s Castro Theatre) with a thousand other film fans.
Eddie Muller, whom you should recognize as the host of Turner Classic Movies’ Noir Alley series, has programmed this year’s version as NOIR CITY Reveals the Dark Side of Mid-Century America. The tagline is “Think the 1950s were buttoned-down and conservative? Think again.” Trench coats and fedoras are not required (and no smoking, please), but, other than that, you’ll get the full retro experience in the period-appropriate Castro.
You can’t stream three of the very best films in the fest: Nightfall, Pushoverand Blast of Silence. And Trapped, The Well, The Turning Point, The Scarlet Hour and Murder by Contract are pretty much impossible to find in any format. So, see it here or don’t see it at all. Trapped has just been restored by the Film Noir Foundation. This year’s program features eight movies on The Movie Gourmet’s list of Overlooked Noir.
Allen Baron in BLAST OF SILENCE
My personal favorites on the program:
Two underrated noir masterpieces on the same double bill: Nightfall and The Burglar. Nightfall features smoldering chemistry between Aldo Ray and Anne Bancroft as they hunt for hidden loot while on the run themselves. The core of The Burglar is the stellar lead performance of Dan Duryea as a tortured and worn-out guy – with one deep loyalty. There are plenty of noir moments – lots of shadows, uplit faces in the darkness, amoral, grasping characters and not one, but two noir vixens – Jayne Mansfield and Martha Vickers.
The cop-yields-to-temptation double feature with Pushoverand Private Hell 36. Tracking a notorious criminal, the cop (Fred MacMurray) in Pushover, follows – and then dates – the gangster’s girlfriend (“Introducing Kim Novak”) as part of the job, but then falls for her himself. He decides that, if he can double cross BOTH the cops and the criminal, he can wind up with the loot AND Kim Novak. (This is a film noir, so we know he’s not destined for a tropical beach with an umbrella drink.)
Another double feature, pairing the down-and-dirty Kiss Me Deadly and Stanley Kubrick’s groundbreaking Killer’s Kiss.
Sam Fuller and James Shigeta breaking ground by normalizing a Japanese-American protagonist in The Crimson Kimono.
The closing double feature with Sam Fuller’s brutal Underworld USA and that most emotionally bleak transition into neo-noir, the proto-indie Blast of Silence, which I’ve described as “a cauldron of seething hatred“.
Noir City runs from Friday, January 25 through Sunday, February 3. To see the this year’s Noir City program and buy tickets, go here. I’ll be there myself on this Friday and Saturday.
Make plans to attend Noir City film fest, always one of the best Bay Area cinema experiences, in San Francisco January 25-February 3. Noir City is the annual festival of the Film Noir Foundation, spearheaded by its founder and president, the Czar of Noir, Eddie Muller. The Foundation preserves movies from the traditional noir period that would otherwise be lost. Noir City often plays newly restored films and movies not available on DVD or streaming. And we get to watch them in a vintage movie palace (San Francisco’s Castro Theatre) with a thousand other film fans.
The 2019 Noir City will focus on film noir in the 1950s – from just after the genre’s peak to its transition into neo-noir. The festival tag line is, “Think the 1950s were buttoned-down and conservative? Think again.” The Film Noir Foundation has restored Trapped (1949), and the world premiere of the restored version will open the fest. Think about it – you can be in the first movie theater audience to see Trapped in sixty-nine years. Closing night will feature that most brutal and emotionally bleak of neo-noirs, Blast of Silence.
Three of the best films in the program are not available to stream, and five more are impossible to see outside of Noir City in any format. This year’s program features eight movies on The Movie Gourmet’s list of Overlooked Noir.
Noir City runs from Friday, January 25 through Sunday, February 3. To see the this year’s Noir City program and buy tickets, go here.
I’ll be posting a comprehensive Noir City preview on January 23. And you may run into me at Noir City as I cover the opening weekend.
Still from SAMMY DAVIS JR.: I’VE GOTTA BE ME. Photo courtesy JFI.
You can always count on a rich slate of documentaries at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, now running through August 5 in San Francisco, Palo Alto, San Rafael, Albany and Oakland. Here are my recommendations from this year’s crop.
Sammy Davis Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me: As a Baby Boomer who had dismissed Sammy Davis Jr. from the moment he publicly hugged Richard Nixon, I found this to be the most surprising doc (and my favorite) at the fest. I learned that Sammy’s 61-year career as a professional entertainer began at age three (with his first movie credit at age 7), a working childhood that left emotional needs It turns out that Sammy was a very, very talented but needy artist,, an uncomplicated man navigating several very complicated times. BTW there is some unbelievable dancing in Sammy Davis Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me. It is the SFJFF’s official Closing Night film at the Castro on July 29, but you can also catch it tomorrow in Palo Alto or August 4 in Oakland.
The Oslo Diaries: The inside story of the secret negotiations that led to the 1993 Oslo Accord as told by the surviving Israeli and Palestinian participants. It’s a remarkable story of finding trust out of distrust. Of course, what should have been a diplomatic triumph is now a poignant story of a missed, or at least delayed, opportunity at peace.
The Mossad: First-hand accounts of the most legendary operations of Israel’s legendary foreign intelligence service. This is a top-notch cloak-and-dagger doc (and my review suggests a companion film about another Israeli intelligence agency).
Satan & Adam: Adam, a young white Ivy Leaguer, takes a stroll through Harlem and encounters an older African-American street guitarist, who calls himself Mr. Satan. Adam, a talented amateur blues harmonica player sits in and soon the odd couple are a busking team. “Mr. Satan” is an alias for an artist of note. The odd couple novelty and Mr. Satan’s talent allows the act to soar. But Satan has emotional and medical issues, and Adam might be a better fit for a career in academia, so this is a story with plenty of unexpected twists and turns.
The Twinning Reaction: This startling and moving documentary tells the story of a Mad Men-era research project and its profound human impact. To perform a longitudinal study of nurture vs. nature, researchers INTENTIONALLY separated identical twins and placed them with families that the researchers kept in the dark for decades. My review compares The Twinning Reaction to a film in current release that covers the same facts.
My complete reviews of Sammy Davis Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me, The Oslo Diaries and Satan & Adam will appear when they are released in the Bay Area. You can peruse the entire SFJFF program and buy tickets and passes at San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.
From L:R – Subjects Adam Gussow and Sterling “Mr. Satan” Magee in a still from SATAN & ADAM. Photo courtesy JFI
Subject Gilda Radner in a still from LOVE, GILDA. Photo courtesy JFI.
It’s time to get ready for one of the Bay Area’s top cinema events: the 38th annual San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF38), which opens July 19, and runs through August 5 at five locations throughout the Bay Area. The SFJFF is the world’s oldest Jewish film festival, and, with a 2017 attendance figure of 40,000, still the largest.
Here’s an early peek at the fest highlights:
Opening night’s Bay Area premiere of the Gilda Radner biodoc Love, Gilda, featuring segments of Radner’s diaries. Director Lisa D’Apolito and original SNL cast member Laraine Newman will attend.
Closing night’s presentation of another showbiz biodoc, Sammy Davis Jr.: I’ve Gotta Me, with director Sam Pollard in attendance. I’ve seen it, and it’s top rate.
The especially strong slate of documentaries, always a rich trademark of the SFJFF. I’ll be recommending a slate of Must See docs.
A first-time partnership with the Film Noir Foundation, with the Hungarian neo-noir Budapest Noir presented by its director Éva Gárdos and the Czar of Noir himself, San Francisco’s Eddie Muller.
The 1924 silent film The City Without Jews, recently discovered in a Paris flea market and now digitally restored and presented with a commissioned live score. It’s a rare Silent Era look at the resurgence of antisemitism in Europe.
And the always popular program of short films, Jews in Shorts. The SFJFF is newly an Academy Award qualifying festival in the Short Documentary Subject category.
One of the most appealing features of the SFJFF is that, wherever you live in the Bay Area, the fest comes to you. SFJFF will present film events at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, the Landmark Albany Twin in Albany, the CinéArts Theatre in Palo Alto, the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael, and the Piedmont Theater in Oakland.
Friday, May 18, you can see Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story on PBS’ American Masters. This is the riveting biopic of a glamorous movie star who invented and patented the precursor to wireless technology; that’s amazing enough, but Bombshell delves deeply into how Lamarr’s stunning face, her Jewish heritage, and mid-century gender roles shaped her career, marriages and parenting. Top notch.
In the last few years, one totally unexpected aspect of Lamarr’s life has become more well-known. She was a tinkerer/inventor who co-invented a radio guidance system for submarine torpedos, which she donated to the US military. The US Navy used this technology in WW II. Modern blue tooth technology stems directly from her innovation. Today her patent would be worth billions.
Bombshell adds layer upon layer to this tale of beauty and brains, as it traces Lamarr’s remarkable life. Hedy Lamarr had no control over being born a woman, being born to Jewish parents and being born to be a beauty. These three accidents of birth set the parameters of her journey – granting her access to some professional opportunities and stunting others, even threatening her life.
She burst into celebrity – and notoriety – at age 19, as the star of the film Ecstasy. Not only was Hedy the first actress filmed in full frontal nudity, she was the first screen actress to portray female orgasms. She was soon the young trophy wife of an Austrian industrialist, a formidable and fearsome supplier of munitions to Hitler. Hedy’s life seemed headed along the Bimbo Track, but she realized that her husband was powerful enough to keep her trapped in the marriage, but not powerful enough to protect her from the Nazis. At this point, she orchestrated an international escape that is the stuff of thrillers.
At age 24, often nominated as the most beautiful woman in the world, she launched a Hollywood career. Professional ups and downs, marriages and affairs and children followed, along with her work in technology.
Her beauty was often a blessing and sometimes a curse, but always affected her trajectory. Someone that beautiful is just different – the rest of us can’t help our reactions to her. But how many times can you be a trophy wife?
She was a person who survived troubling times, which left scars on her. How Hedy handled her Jewishness, how she raised her kids and how she was treated by the military are unsettling. Documentarian Alexandra Dean, Bombshell’s writer-director brings us witnesses, including Hedy’s children, to deliver an inside peek at a real life that would not be believable as a work of fiction.
I saw Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story last summer at the 2017 San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SJFF). It’s playing tomorrow night on PBS’ American Masters series.
Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie and Ben Foster in a scene from Debra Granik’s LEAVE NO TRACE, playing at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 4 – 17, 2018. Courtesy of SFFILM.
This year’s San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILMFestival) opens on April 4 and runs through April 17. As always, it’s a Can’t Miss for Bay Area movie fans. This year’s program is especially loaded. Here are some enticing festival highlights:
Leave No Trace is Debra Granik’s first narrative feature since her 2010 Winter’s Bone (which I had rated as the best film of that year). Leave No Trace stars Ben Foster and Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie as a dad-daughter team and co-stars Dale Dickey (so unforgettable in Winter’s Bone and Hell or High Water). Winter’s Bone launched the career of Jennifer Lawrence, and buzz from Sundance indicates that Leave No Trace might do the same for McKenzie.
Tully stars Charlize Theron, is written by Diablo Cody and directed by Jason Reitman. Those three combined on the underrated game-changing comedy Young Adult, so my expectations are high. Theron and Reitman will attend the SFFILM screening.
Sorry to Bother You, described as a “taboo-breaker”, is an offbeat comedy about an African_American telemarketer whose career climbs when he discovers his “white voice”. Stars Lakeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson and Armie Hammer. Written and directed by Bay Area artist Boots Riley, Sorry to Bother You shook up both the Sundance and SXSW fests. Will release into theaters on July 8.
Lakeith Stanfield and Tessa Thompson in a scene from Boots Riley’s SORRY TO BOTHER YOU, playing at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 4 – 17, 2018. Courtesy of SFFILM.
First Reformed is a dark drama from director Paul Schrader, the screenwriter of Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and The Last Temptation of Christ. Ethan Hawke stars. Schrader will appear at SFFILM.
Godard, Mon Amour is, at the same time, a tribute to the genius of Jean-Luc Godard’s early cinema and a satire on the insufferable tedium of the political dilettantism that squandered the rest of Godard’s filmmaking career. This is a very inventive film, written and directed by Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist). I’ve seen it, and the more Godard films that you’ve seen, the more you will enjoy the wit of Godard, Mon Amour.
Claire’s Camerais the latest nugget from writer-director Hong Sang-soo, that great observer of awkward situations and hard-drinking. Claire’s Camera is set at the Cannes Film Festival, and the great Isabelle Huppert drops into the story. There’s an especially fine performance by Min-hee Kim (The Handmaiden). It’s not as surreal as last year’s Hong Sang-soo entry, Yourself and Yours, but just as observational and droll. Hong Sang-soo has a cult following at SFFILM, so there is certain to be an appreciative audience.
How to Talk to Girls at Parties: This is the North American premiere of the latest from writer-director John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Rabbit Hole). Mitchell will attend the screening. Premiered at Cannes.
Bad Reputation: Biodoc of Joan Jett – and Joan is attending!
Pick of the Litter: This doc by Bay Area filmmakers Dana Nachtman and Don Hardy was the feel-good hit at Cinequest. Adorable puppies strive to help the blind.
Tre Maison Dasan: This unwavering and emotionally powerful doc is my top pick from the World Premieres at SFFILM. In her feature debut as writer-director, Denali Tiller follows three kids with incarcerated parents. Unfettered by talking heads, Tre Maison Dasan invites us along with these kids as they interact with their families – both on the outside and the inside. Tiller will attend all screenings.
Along with Theron, Reitman, Schrader, Hazanavicius, Mitchell and Jett, there will be personal appearances by storied directors Gus Van Sant and Wayne Wang, actors Bill Hader, Tom Everett Scott, Jason Sudeikis and Henry Winkler, composer Danny Elfman and film historian David Thomson.
The 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILMFestival) opens this Wednesday. Here’s SFFILMFestival’s information on the program, the schedule and tickets and passes.
Throughout SFFILMFestival, you can follow me on Twitter for the very latest coverage.
A scene from Denali Tiller’s TRE MAISON DASAN, playing at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 4 – 17, 2018. Courtesy of SFFILM.
I’ve already seen almost twenty offerings from Cinequest 2018, and here are my initial recommendations. As usual, I focus on the world and US premieres. Follow the links for full reviews, images and trailers. I’ve also included some tips for making the most of the Cinequest experience under “Hacking Cinequest”.
MUST SEE
Bikini Moon: The Must See indie at this Cinequest, this gripping drama features a mesmerizing performance by the ridiculously charismatic Condola Rashad. It’s the first American feature for renowned filmmaker Milcho Manchevski. World premiere. Simply brilliant.
Condola Rashad in BIKINI MOON, premiering this weekend at Cinequest
SOMETHING YOU HAVEN’T SEEN BEFORE
7 Splinters of Timeis the trippiest film in this year’s Cinequest. Eye candy galore, as time travel goes wrong and doppelgängers abound. Listed in the Cinequest program by the alternative title of Omphalos. World premiere.
Tommy Battles the Silver Sea Dragon has to be the bravest and most artistically ambitious movie premiering at Cinequest. In his debut feature as director, writer, composer and star Luke Shirock has imagined a guy put on trial by his own subconscious. And it’s a musical. World premiere.
Voevoda: This is a well-crafted historical epic; what makes it different is the female protagonist – a guerilla rebel leader in 19th Century Bulgaria. US premiere.
The Wind: Okay, you may have already seen this if you’re about 100-years-old. But most of us haven’t experienced watching this Lillian Gish silent classic on the big screen of a period movie palace, the California Theatre, accompanied by world-renowned Dennis James on the Mighty Wurlitzer organ.
Edoardo Ballerini in 7 SPLINTERS IN TIME
THRILLERS
Amateur This taut Argentine thriller reminds us of Psycho, but with more grisly killing and more sexual perversity. US premiere.
Hunting Lands: This indie is a slow burn thriller about a recluse emerging from the woods to right a horrible wrong. First time writer-director Zack Wilson lets the audience connect the dots. World premiere.
Marshall Cook in HUNTING LANDS
SLICE OF LIFE
Luba: This realistic Canadian drama explores the challenges of co-parenting with an addict. There’s a ticking time bomb finish. World premiere.
Nicole Maroon in LUBA
COMEDY
Venus: This appealing Canadian transgender comedy is funny, touching and genuine. Transitioning is challenging enough, but a zany Indian family and a previously unknown biological son complicate matters. US Premiere.
Threesomething: This bawdy sex comedy comes with a smart and acid perspective on the “Are you OK?” generation. World premiere.
Debargo Sanyal(center) in VENUS
THE BEST OF WORLD CINEMA
Barefoot: This Czech historical drama is from director Jan Sverak, who won an Oscar for Kolya. Cinequest Director of Programming Mike Rabehl has secured the rare black-and-white director’s cut. I haven’t seen it yet, but the buzz is that it’s excellent.
Ismael’s Ghosts: I’ve been waiting for the chance to see this French drama, not yet released in the US. Stars Marion Cotillard, Mathieu Amalric and Charlotte Gainsbourg. From director Arnaud Desplechin (My Golden Days, A Christmas Tale, Jimmy P.),
AUDIENCE-PLEASERS
Venus: (see above).
The Pick of the Litter: I haven’t yet seen this feel-good documentary about adorable puppies trying to become Guide Dogs for the Blind. Directors Dana Nachman and Don Hardy made the sentimental recent Cinequest and PBS hit Batkid Begins.
BEFORE IT’S IN THEATERS – SEE IT HERE FIRST
Several Cinequest films already are planned for theatrical release later this year. I haven’t seen them yet, but you can see them first at Cinequest: Krystal, Submission, Borg/McEnroe, Beirut, Submergence, The Ashram, The Last Movie Star, What They Had, Where Is Kyra?, Love After Love and Brothers in Arms.
HACKING CINEQUEST
The renovation of the old Camera 3 Theater into 3Below Theaters & Lounge means that Cinequest will regain its Downtown San Jose vibe, with concurrent screenings at the 1122-seat California, the 550-seat Hammer and the 257-seat 3Below, all within 1600 feet of the VIP lounge at The Continental Bar. There will still be satellite viewing in Redwood City.
3Below has lost Camera 3’s middle aisle and replaced all the seats. The decor is sharp, and they’ve added a movable stage for performances, lectures and Q&As. The once notorious restrooms are remarkably clean (and no longer accessible from the neighboring parking garage, so they have a chance to stay that way).
At Cinequest, you can get a festival pass for as little as $165, and you can get individual tickets as well. The express pass for an additional tax-deductible $100 is a fantastic deal – you get to skip to the front of the lines!
Take a look at the entire program, the schedule and the passes and tickets. (If you want to support Silicon Valley’s most important cinema event while skipping the lines, the tax-deductible $100 donation for Express Line Access is an awesome deal.)
As usual, I’ll be covering Cinequest rigorously with features and movie recommendations. I usually screen (and write about) over thirty films from around the world. Bookmark my Cinequest 2018 page, with links to all my coverage (links on the individual movies will start to go live on Sunday February 25). Follow me on Twitter for the latest.
