Cinequest

Stream of the Week: THE TEACHER – a peek into communist dread

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THE TEACHER
THE TEACHER

In the superb drama The Teacher, it’s the mid-1980s and the Iron Curtain is still defining Czechoslovakia; (The Teacher is a Czech movie in the Slovak language). The title character’s position as a high school teacher makes her a gatekeeper to the children’s futures, and she’s unaccountable because she’s a minor Communist Party functionary. Wielding blatant academic favoritism and even overt blackmail, she uses the advantage of her political status for her own petty benefit – coercing shopping errands, car rides, pastries and other favors from the parents of her students. Finally, she causes so much harm to one student that some of the parents rebel and seek her ouster.

Will the other parents support them? What of the parents who benefit from the regime? And what of the majority of the parents who must decide whether to risk their own futures? The risk is real: the regime has already reassigned one parent, a scientist, to a menial job after his wife had defected.

The Teacher benefits from a brilliant, award-winning performance from Zuzana Mauréry in the title role. What makes this character especially loathsome is that she’s not just heavy-handed, but grossly manipulative. Mauréry is a master at delivering reasonable words with both sweet civility and the unmistakable menace of the unspoken “or else”.

The acting from the entire company is exceptional, especially from Csongor Kassai, Martin Havelka and the Slovak director Peter Bebjak as aggrieved parents. Writer Petr Jarchovský has created textured, authentic characters. Director Jan Hrebejk not only keeps the story alive but adds some clever filmmaking fluorishes as he moves the story between flashbacks and the present.

The Teacher was the best foreign film at the 2017 Cinequest.  It can now be streamed on Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.

Stream of the Week: PRODIGY

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PRODIGY
PRODIGY

The psychological thriller Prodigy begins with a psychologist (Richard Neil) being brought to a secret government “black site” to interview a dangerous prisoner. When he receives an orientation, he and we expect to see a superhuman sociopath like Hannibal Lector. But he enters the secure room to face a freckled-face nine-year-old girl (Savannah Liles). Her arms are pinned to her chair with restraints. We learn that there is an understandable reason for this.

She is abnormal in every way – in her super intelligence, in her telekinetic powers and in her capacity for performing monstrous and lethal acts. The two embark on a game of wits with very high stakes. There’s a deadline (literally) so the game is also a race against the clock.

It’s the first feature for writer-directors Alex Haughey and Brian Vidal. Haughey and Vidal have bet their movie, in large part, on the performance of a nine-year-old actor. Savannah Liles is exceptional as she ranges between a very smart little girl and a monstrous psychopath and between a vulnerable child and a person who has made herself invulnerable. It’s a very promising performance.

In the Cinequest program notes, Pia Chamberlain described Prodigy as “reminiscent of a cerebral episode of the Twilight Zone“, which is pretty apt. Just like the best of Rod Serling, Prodigy’s compact story-telling takes us to an environment that we can recognize, but which has different natural laws than the ones under which we operate.

Filmmakers have shocked us before with the juxtaposition of innocent looking children and their heinous deeds Sometimes those children have been created fundamentally evil (The Bad Seed, Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen) and sometimes possessed by evil (The Exorcist). Prodigy takes a different tack – exploring how a trauma can produce monstrous behavior and whether evil behavior is reversible.

Prodigy is a thinking person’s edge-of-the-seat thrill ride. I’m looking forward to the next work from Haughey and Vidal. Note that this trailer is in color, but the version of the movie that I screened at its world premiere at Cinequest was in black and white.  You can now stream Prodigy on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

 

https://youtu.be/I2a_q8gt6hA

THE LAST MOVIE STAR: reflections on a famous life

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Burt Reynolds and Ariel Winter in THE LAST MOVIE STAR

In The Last Movie Star, an aged action movie star (Burt Reynolds playing someone very similar to Burt Reynolds) examines his life choices.  It’s very funny and sentimental (in a good way).

Burt plays a thinly disguised version of himself – a retired movie star named Vic Edwards, who had played halfback at Tennessee instead of Burt’s Florida State.  The movie opens with opens with  a clip of the 70s Burt from the Smokey and the Bandit era.  But then there’s a stark cut to Burt today, looking every one of his eighty-two years.  Vic is in a depressing veterinary waiting room, about to get bad news about his pet.  We see that Vic lives a lonely existence, padding about his Beverly Hills home devoid of human recognition or contact.

Vic finds himself invited to be honored at a Nashville film festival.  Flattered and excited, he flies off to find that, instead of a ego-boosting tribute, the festival unleashes one indignity after another.  Humiliated and enraged, he  goes on a rogue road trip to his hometown of Knoxville, where he gets the chance to reflect on his life and make an important amend.

His road trip partner is his film festival driver, a nightmare of Millennial self-absorption, drama and bad attitude played by Ariel Winter (Alex Dunphy in Modern Family).   Winters’ character adds an Odd Couple thread to the comedy, and Winter brings down the house with a monologue on her history with psychotropic medication.

Director Adam Rifkin cleverly inserts the 82-year-old Burt into his own movies to interact with the 36-year-old Burt.  We see Burt as one of the greatest guests ever on Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.  And we see him in Deliverance, brandishing a bow-and-arrow and clad in a sleeveless neoprene vest – there has never been a more studly image in the history of cinema.

The key to Burt Reynolds’ appeal is that unique combination of virility, and charm, his stunning physicality leavened by his not taking himself too seriously.  I’m ridiculously handsome, and isn’t that just ridiculous?

If you’re going to be sentimental, then be unashamedly sentimental.  Rifkin takes this to heart, which makes The Last Movie Star so emotionally satisfying as well as so damn funny.

I saw The Last Movie Star at Cinequest, where it was warmly received by the festival audience.  The Last Movie Star was released theatrically for about a minute-and-a-half (and on only ONE screen in the Bay Area).    Fortunately, now you can stream it on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Best Movies of 2018 – So Far

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Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie and Ben Foster in a scene from Debra Granik’s LEAVE NO TRACE< playing

I’ve posted my Best Movies of 2018 – So Far. Every year, I keep a running list of the best movies I’ve seen this year, adding to it as the year goes on.  By the end of the year, I usually end up with a Top Ten and another 5-15 mentions. Here’s last year’s list.

To get on my year-end list, a movie has to be one that thrills me while I’m watching it and one that I’m still thinking about a couple of days later.

This year, as usual, I took advantage of Cinequest in March and the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM) in April to preview some films that will be released later in the year.

My top pick so far this year is Leave No Trace.  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 is a brilliant coming of age film that stars Ben Foster and Thomasin McKenzie as a dad-daughter team who challenge conventional thinking about homelessness and healthy parenting. Winter’s Bone launched the career of Jennifer Lawrence, and Leave No Trace might do the same for newcomer McKenzie.  I saw Leave No Trace at the San Francisco International Film Festival.   My full review will appear after the film’s release in the Bay Area at the end of June.

You can see other top picks The Rider and The Death of Stalin in theaters right now and Quality Problems and Outside In are now streaming.

There’s more at Best Movies of 2018 – So Far.

THE RIDER

QUALITY PROBLEMS: a screwball comedy for the sandwich generation

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QUALITY PROBLEMS
Brooke Purdy in QUALITY PROBLEMS

The remarkably successful dramedy Quality Problems plunges us into a contemporary world that most of us in the sandwich generation recognize – a life so busy that the relative importance of our stress-inducers can blur. Something like the cake for your kid’s birthday party can seem as important as paying the bills or dealing with an aging parent. Until cancer reshuffles the deck. Quality Problems‘ insights in navigating modern life are accessible because it’s so damn funny.

Bailey (Brooke Purdy) and Drew (Doug Purdy) are a couple in their early forties with two school-age kids. Each is comfortable taking on one child-rearing or domestic task while handing off a competing responsibility to their partner. Each knows – and accepts – what the partner is – or is NOT – good at. Both have wicked senses of humor, and they are affectionate and even playful. Their relationship has weathered the usual financial and parental challenges, along with an episode where Bailey beat back breast cancer.

Brooke Purdy wrote the screenplay and also co-directed with Doug Purdy. The breezy banter between characters is often flat-out hilarious. This is not sitcom-grade humor, it’s much closer to a Hawksian screwball comedy. The characters deal with cancer and parental dementia with a dark humor that is realistic and funny.

Bailey’s single neighbor and bestie Paula (Jenica Bergere) is an essential member of the family’s support structure, but Paula and Drew loathe each other. Chained together because of their attachment to Bailey and the kids, every interaction sparks a new round of insults. This isn’t good-natured teasing – the jibes, in particular about his job and her reproductive health, are aimed to hurt. The Paula-Drew relationship adds some edginess to the mix and contributes to the film’s authenticity.

Watch for an uncredited cameo by the prolific and versatile character actor Alfred Molina (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Love Is Strange). Veteran Chris Mulkey is excellent as Bailey’s dad, who is sinking into dementia.

Quality Problems is the directing debut for Brooke and Doug Purdy, and I attended its world premiere at Cinequest.  Quality Problems can now be streamed from Amazon Prime, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

ISMAEL’S GHOSTS: indecipherable waste of talent

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Marion Cotillard and Charlotte Gainsbourg in ISMAEL’S GHOSTS

Suppose that you’re in mid-life, mid-career and mid-relationship, and your ex-spouse – whom you have thought dead for a decade – suddenly shows up.  In Arnaud Desplechin’s Ismael’s Ghosts, that is exactly what happens to a filmmaker (Mathieu Amalric) when his long-disappeared ex (Marion Cotillard) pops in.  So far, so good.  But then Ismael’s Ghosts begins to slide off the rails.

The filmmaker accompanies his ex-father-in-law, who is being honored in Israel, but then the story becomes unhinged and, finally, impossible to follow.  It’s just one indecipherable mess.

I was actually looking forward to this movie.  I loved Desplechin’s My Golden Days, and I admire Cotillard and Charlotte Gainsbourg (who plays the filmmaker’s current partner).  But Ismael’s Ghosts is just a waste of their talent and my time.  I saw Ismael’s Ghosts at Cinequest before its US theatrical release.

Cinequest: BROTHERS IN ARMS

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BROTHERS IN ARMS

Brothers in Arms is a documentary on the making of Platoon, directed by Paul Sanchez, who played Doc.  Platoon, of course, won the Best Picture Oscar and launched the careers of many actors in its young cast.   Except for Tom Berenger, this was the first movie job for most of them. including Charlie Sheen, Johnny Depp and Willem Dafoe.

Director Oliver Stone, a Vietnam vet himself, assembled the cast two weeks before filming and put them through basic military training in the Philippine jungle under real military trainers.  The cast developed an usual bond during that process, as well as in coping with the mercurial Stone.

In Brothers in Arms, we get to hear from the actors (except for Dafoe, who was making a movie in South Africa) and the military advisers (but not from Oliver Stone).  There plenty of entertaining anecdotes and some insights into the filmmaking.

Cinequest: BERLIN FALLING

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Tom Wlaschiha and Ken Duken in BERLIN FALLING

In the intense German thriller Berlin Falling, Frank (Ken Duken) is a troubled vet hoping to reunite at Christmas with his estranged wife and kid.  But he picks up the hitchhiker Andreas (Tom Wlaschiha of Game of Thrones), who turns out to be any contemporary European’s worst nightmare (exactly what kind of nightmare is revealed at the end).  Andreas subdues Frank with a highly personalized threat and forces him him to engage in a horrific terrorist attack, complete with its own chilling Isis video.  It looks like there is no way out for Frank, and Berlin Falling ticks on like a time bomb to its uncompromising and violent conclusion.

With its comments on terrorism, immigration and xenophobia, Berlin Falling covers much of the same ground as this year’s German Oscar submission, In the Fade, but with a huge plot twist.  It’s the writing-directing feature debut for actor Ken Duken, who plays Frank.  It all works as a nail-biter, but it’s a bit exhausting.  I saw Berlin Falling at Cinequest.

Cinequest: SKULL

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SKULL

Skull, an absolutely bizarre film, is intended to be Indonesia’s first sci-fi film. Opening with a beautiful drone shot, Skull lurches forward with bits of mystery, romance, chases and shootouts until its “science unleashes the end of the world” finish.

The discovery of a giant skull threatens the underpinnings of many scientific theories and results in an international secret research project and a coverup by the Indonesian government.   Ani ( Eka Nusa Pertiwi), a young woman at the research project is about to become a victim of the coverup when her killer-to-be is whacked by Yos (played by writer-director Yusran Fuadi), and the two escape on a motorcycle roadtrip through the Indonesian hinterlands, ending up with Yos’ mentor in a watchtower high above the jungle.

The frenetic pacing screeches to an abrupt halt while the three banter in front of a static camera for maybe ten minutes – it’s not at all a bad scene, just jarringly different than the pace of the rest of the film.   The mentor gets in a couple sniffs of Ani’s hand, then rest of the assassins arrive and there’s a shootout.  Afterwards, there’s a visit to a philosopher who might have the key to the mystery.

Along the way, we have a SWAT team wearing skull masks, an exercise in mass voting by text (but is it hacked?) and a character exclaiming, “Dried Shit!”.  This paranoid thriller finally concludes with a Pandora’s box ending with odd, but very effective special effects.  Skull is also notable for its vivid colors and terrible translation in the English subtitles.

I saw Skull at a Cinequest screening with the cast and crew.  Yusran Fuadi made the film in 128 days of shooting over more than three years on 40 different locations in Java.  Each time he could save up $180 from his paycheck as a lecturer, he would gather the crew and shoot some more of the movie.  He said his major direction to leading lady Eka Nusa Pertiwi was a plea not to get pregnant in the next three years.

Cinequest: WHAT THEY HAD

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WHAT THEY HAD
Blythe Danner and Hilary Swank star as Ruth and Bridget Keller in WHAT THEY HAD, a Bleecker Street release.  Photo courtesy of Bleecker Street

In the family drama What They Had, two siblings (Hilary Swank and Michael Shannon) face their mom (Blythe Danner) sinking into Alzheimer’s, and their father (Robert Forster) refusing to take action.  To heighten the pressure, the out-of-town daughter wants to give the old folks more slack than does the local son.  He’s been dealing with this situation up close, and he’s fed up.  The dad is used to always being in charge, and he doesn’t cope well with needing help.

Despite the subject, What They Had is not a depressing movie, mostly because of the sunniness of Danner’s character.  This is a character-driven story that benefits from this stellar cast.  This is the first feature for writer/director Elizabeth Chomko, and she delivers an authentic and well-crafted story.

I saw What They Had at Cinequest.  An October 18, 2018 release is planned.  Here’s a clip.