Cinequest

Cinequest: MARISA IN THE WOODS

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Patricia Jordá in MARISA IN THE WOODS

In the Spanish dramedy Marisa in the Woods, Marisa (Patricia Jordá) is at a personal and career crossroads.  She’s burnt out from her job with a touring theater troupe and takes a needed break.  Unfortunately, she doesn’t get any support from her network of friends and colleagues, all of whom are needier than she is.  Her bestie is literally hysterical, over-dramatizing everything in her life until it leads to a tragedy.  Finally, Marisa finds some empathy after reconnecting with a teacher from her past, who has changed gender.

Marisa in the Woods is an acid commentary on first-world problems and the complaints of the self-absorbed.  As Marisa bounces from one dissatisfied friend to another, we are treated to a tour of Madrid locations, all the way to the magical realism at the ending.

This is a very witty film, obviously influenced by early Pedro Almodóvar (not a bad thing), but without Almodóvar’s frenetic energy.  Marisa in the Woods is the first feature for writer-director Antonio Morales.  Its US premiere will be at Cinequest.

Cinequest: LUBA

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Nicole Maroon in LUBA

Exploring the challenges of co-parenting with an addict, the realistic Canadian drama Luba is topped off with a ticking time bomb finish.  Luba (Nicole Maroon) is a struggling single mom whose estranged husband Donnie (Vladimir Jon Cubrt of Hannibal and Designated Survivor) is a crackhead.  Donnie really loves his son, and Luba tries to let her son create some memories with his dad.

Unfortunately, Donnie is helpless to his addiction  At his best, he is manipulative, sponging Luba’s last few discretionary dollars.  At his worst, he is dangerously irresponsible.  Then Donnie decompensates and goes lethally out of control.

In a futile attempt to make ends meet, Luba lives a hamster wheel experience, bouncing between multiple crappy waitress jobs and childcare that she can’t afford.  Her only emotional and babysitting support comes from other busy moms and from Donnie’s sympathetic mother.  Co-star Vladimir Jon Cubrt wrote Luba and completely captures the essence of Luba’s life – she’s trapped without any moment of relief or enrichment for herself.

Luba doesn’t have unrealistic expectations.  She just wants to pay the rent on time, have some adult male companionship, and, being Canadian, play an occasional pickup game of ice hockey.  Cubrt’s screenplay vividly brings alive another fundamental truth – the grinding impact of living with an addict’s roller coaster of self-sabotage.   Luba’s attempts at moments of normality keep getting hijacked by Donnie’s selfishness.  Repeatedly, respite suddenly turns into panic.  This is Cubrt’s first screenplay, but he has written three original stage productions for the theater company he founded in Toronto.

Luba is the first feature for director Caley Wilson.  This an authentic and relatable drama with an ending that works as a thriller. Cinequest hosts Luba’s world premiere.

Cinequest: I HATE YOU

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Lawrence Kao and Lauren K. Montgomery in I HATE YOU

In the indie romantic comedy I Hate You, two very different twenty-somethings meet cute.  Kelly (Lauren K. Montgomery) has plunged from one relationship to another and is particularly angry that the terms of her lease force her to stay in an apartment with her ex and his horny new girlfriend.   Chi (Lawrence Kao) is an obsessive gamer who still lives with his mom.

Chi is not Kelly’s type but, then again, her type is a jerk.  He is, however, way less experienced than she is.  You’ve probably already guessed that they will get together, so that’s not really a spoiler.  But she’s a workaholic, and when she’s off her laptop, she wants to analyze their relationship.  Chi just wants a domestic life without much drama.

While following the usual arc of a romantic comedy, I Hate You mostly avoids dipping into rom-com clichés, and the ending is not predictable.   I Hate You was written by Brad Kageno and Pyung Kim and is Kageno’s debut as a feature director.

This is an amiable and entertaining film.  Cinequest hosts the US premiere of I Hate You.

Cinequest: HUNTING LANDS

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Marshall Cook in HUNTING LANDS

In the slow burn thriller Hunting Lands, Frank (Marshall Cook) is living a solitary life as a subsistence hunter in a forest cabin, a long pickup drive outside his northern Michigan hometown.  Frank is a guy with serious wilderness skills, loading his own ammo and field dressing the large mammals that he fells with a single shot.  He witnesses a serious crime in the woods and is immediately driven to make things right – but not in the way we expect.

Frank has nobody to talk to, and we see him silently triage the situation and begin a hunt for the perpetrator.  Silent observation comes naturally to a hunter, and we see him wordlessly patrolling the small towns in his pickup, as he tracks down his human prey.  We see what Frank sees, and one of the most pivotal characters is only seen in long shot until the last 15 minutes or so.

HUNTING LANDS
HUNTING LANDS

Hunting Lands is the first feature from writer-director Zack Wilcox, a story-teller who is thankfully willing to let the audience connect the dots.  Because Hunting Lands is only 83 minutes long, Wilcox can take his time watching Frank watch others.  Even as Frank is still and quiet, the audience is gripped by what he is going to do next.

An original character, Frank seems unusually self-aware for a hermit.  When he finally gets in a conversation, he turns out to be an articulate guy who understands and can explain why he has become a recluse.

Wilcox follows Billie Wilder’s screenwriting advice – “don’t hang around”; the ending is not even one second too long.  And Wilcox knows that a little ambiguity about what happens afterwards can pack a punch.

Cinequest will host the word premiere of Hunting Lands.

HUNTING LANDS

Cinequest: THE GO-GETTERS

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Tommie-Amber Pirie and Aaron Abrams in THE GO-GETTERS

The bawdy lowbrow comedy The Go-Getters centers on the antics of two almost lovable losers who go to absurd lengths to avoid making an honest dollar.  We meet Owen (Aaron Abrams) when, sleeping in an alley, he is awakened by being pissed on.  Soon Lacie (Tommie-Amber Pirie) enters the movie, lying in a fetal position on a restroom floor, vomiting on Owen’s shoes.

The two are denizens of a dive bar owned by Owen’s brother.  Owen is a hop-head whose gift is stealing his brother’s merchandise.  Lacie is a pill-popping hooker whose pimp operates out of a booth in the bar; the pimp says that his Blockbuster card is worth more than Lacie’s, uh, charms.  Lacie’s five-dollar hand job is so inept that one john fakes a male orgasm to get it over with.

These two are utterly base, venal and addiction-driven, which drives a comedy one might describe as a light look at substance abuse.  Hitting bottom, of course, is entirely individual.  These two have long since zoomed below what most of us would consider the bottom.  There’s really seems to be no limit to how low they’ll go.

The humor comes from their continual scheming to get something for nothing – or nothing except increasing loss of dignity.  The Go-Getters works as an absurdist exploration of an addict’s unceasing need to place his or her need above the interests of anyone else.  This comes across most effectively in a very funny scene where a taxi driver forces them to pay their fare, and each’s sense of depraved self-interest is revealed.

The Go-Getters‘ world premiere will be at Cinequest.

Cinequest: AMATEUR

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Jazmín Stuart in AMATEUR

The taut Argentine thriller Amateur reminds us of Psycho, but with more grisly killing and sexual perversity.  A new hire at a television station is combing through some old tapes and discovers a sex tape (hence the title).  He becomes obsessed with the woman in the tape and later meets her in real life. As in Psycho, a serial killer suddenly takes over the story, and Amateur plunges into tales of blackmail, kidnapping and a sordid back story of sexual exploitation.  Trying to solve the first murder, the police stumble along as the bodies pile up.

The original sex tape is only the first layer of voyeurism in Amateur. More and more characters video record and view the actions of others.

Jazmín Stuart is very good as a woman that the audience is likely to underestimate at the beginning of the film  There is a moment in Amateur when she has just had a consensual sexual encounter but her eyes start to signal that something is terribly wrong; it’s unforgettable.

Alejandro Awada is perfectly cast as a guy who seems formidable at first; we keep learning that he has more and more assets, including his trophy wife.  His easy-going affect of geniality and confident charm is an effective juxtaposition to the monster he is revealed to be.  Awada delivered another excellent supporting performance in the overlooked neo-noir The Aura.

The veteran producer Sebastian Perillo makes his writing and directing debuts with Amateur.  The US premiere of Amateur is at Cinequest.

Cinequest: 7 SPLINTERS IN TIME (OMPHALOS)

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Edoardo Ballerini in 7 SPLINTERS IN TIME

7 Splinters in Time has to be the trippiest film in this year’s Cinequest.  The detective Darius (Edoardo Ballerini – Corky Caporale in The Sopranos) is seriously confused.  He can’t remember large chunks of his past.  And then he’s confronted by an exact look-alike in a most unlikely place.  Soon, even more doppelgängers arrive in the story.  Darius is trying to figure out what’s going on- and so is the audience.

We go from place to place and, possibly, from time to time.  And Darius and/or his lookalikes keep showing up.  It’s as if one’s life were depixelated, digitally compressed and then defectively reassembled.  Artifacts from other periods of time – Polaroid camera, rotary phone, microfiche viewer – are clues that time travel may be involved here.

Story threads are braided together, some more vividly nightmarish than others.  There’s plenty of eye candy and sometimes there’s the feeling of Fellini on Dexedrine.  If you like your movies linear and unambiguous, you will likely be impatient until the explanation in the last 20 minutes.  But it’s fun to settle in and try to figure out what is going on.

7 Splinters is the feature film debut for writer-director Gabriel Judet-Weinshel.  To depict Darius’ different realities (what he calls the “fractured psyche”), Judet-Weinshel used 8mm, 16mm, 35mm film and analog still film, along with the full range of digital, from low-resolution 30-frame video to the large format digital Red Camera.  The effect is very cool.

Greg Bennick is excellent as the hyperkinetic mystery figure Luka.  Lynn Cohen is a howl as the salty curmudgeon Babs, Darius’ elderly neighbor.  Both are effective counterpoints to Ballerini’s chilly and stony Darius.

The beloved character actor Austin Pendleton plays The Librarian, a much more pivotal character than initially apparent.  Pendleton has a zillion screen credits, including Frederick Larrabee in What’s Up, Doc? and Gurgle in Finding Nemo.  I think I heard his character say, “You are the lizard warrior”.  It’s that kind of movie.

Cinequest hosts the world premiere of 7 Splinters in Time.  The film is listed under its alternative title of Omphalos, so you can find its screenings here in the Cinequest program.

Greg Bennick and Edoardo Ballerini in 7 SPLINTERS IN TIME

 

Movies to See Right Now

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Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell in THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI

Don’t forget to plan to attend Cinequest in San Jose and Redwood City from February 17 through March 11. My festival preview will be online this weekend.

I just watched the splendid Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri again, this time with The Wife.  Before the Oscars, you’re going to want to see Three Billboards and The Shape of Water.   (I’ve also written If I Picked the Oscars – before the nominations were announced.)  Here are the best movie choices in theaters this week:

  • The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro’s imaginative, operatic inter-species romance may become the most-remembered film of 2017.
  • Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri a powerful combination of raw emotion and dark hilarity with an acting tour de force from Frances McDormand and a slew of great actors.
  • Steven Spielberg’s docudrama on the Pentagon Papers, The Post, is both a riveting thriller and an astonishingly insightful portrait of Katharine Graham by Meryl Streep. It’s one of the best movies of the year – and one of the most important. Also see my notes on historical figures in The Post.
  • Pixar’s Coco is a moving and authentic dive into Mexican culture, and it’s visually spectacular.
  • Lady Bird , an entirely fresh coming of age comedy that explores the mother-daughter relationship – an impressive debut for Greta Gerwig as a writer and director.
  • I, Tonya is a marvelously entertaining movie, filled with wicked wit and sympathetic social comment.

Here’s the rest of my Best Movies of 2017 – So Far. Most of the ones from earlier this year are available on video. Here’s another current (and Oscar-nominated) choice:

  • Call Me By Your Name is an extraordinarily beautiful story of sexual awakening set in a luscious Italian summer, but I didn’t buy the impossibly cool parents or the two pop ballad musical interludes.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the actor Michael Shannon’s breakthrough film, Shotgun Stories. The first of director Jeff Nichols’ “Arkansas Trilogy”,  Shotgun Stories ranked #7 on my Best Movies of 2007.  Shotgun Stories is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Netflix and iTunes.

Turner Classic Movies is celebrating 31 Days of Oscars, so we have many good choices of movies that often play on TCM. My choice this week is one of the great American political movies – Network playing on February 24. Paddy Chayefsky’s Oscar winning original screenplay is both bitingly satirical and frighteningly prescient. Its leads, Peter Finch and Faye Dunaway both also won Oscars, as did Beatrice Straight for Supporting Actress. Director Sidney Lumet and five others from the cast and crew were nominated.

You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!’ So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’

Peter Finch’s iconic monologue in NETWORK

Cinequest 2018 is just around the corner

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Make your plans now to attend the 28th edition of Cinequest, Silicon Valley’s own major film festival. By some metrics the largest film festival in North America, Cinequest was recently voted the nation’s best by USA Today readers. The 2018 Cinequest is scheduled for February 27 through March 11 and will present almost 100 feature films and dozens of short films and virtual reality experiences from the US and over thirty other countries. And, at Cinequest, it’s easy to meet the filmmakers.

This year’s headline events include:

  • Celebrity appearances by William C. Macy, Andie McDowell, John Travolta, Charlie Sheen and Turner Classic Movie host Ben Mankiewicz.
  • Opening night film: Macy presents his new comedy Krystal, co-starring Rosario Dawson;
  • Closing night film: Brothers in Arms, a documentary on the making of Platoon, co-presented by the narrator, Sheen.
  • New movies with Peter Fonda, Burt Reynolds, Jon Hamm, Marion Cotillard, Hilary Swank, Piper Laurie, Rosamund Pike, Stanley Tucci, Melissa Leo, Kiefer Sutherland, Kal Penn, Robert Forster, Mathieu Amalric, Charlotte Gainsbourg, James McAvoy, Alicia Vikander and Michael Shannon.
  • New movies by directors Wim Wenders, Arnaud Desplechin, Melanie Mayron, Jan Sverak (Kolya) and Tony Gilroy.
  • The silent The Wind with Lillian Gish, projected in a period movie palace, the California Theatre, accompanied by world-renowned Dennis James on the Mighty Wurlitzer organ.

This year, Cinequest presents 74 world premieres and will host over 800 artists from over thirty countries.

Indeed, the real treasure at Cinequest 2017 is likely to be found among the hitherto less well-known films. In the past four years, the Cinequest gems Eye in the Sky, Wild Tales, Ida, The Hunt, ’71, Corn Island, The Memory of Water, Magallanes, Quality Problems, The Sense of an Ending, For Grace, Lost Solace, Class Enemy, Heavenly Shift, Oh Boy/A Coffee in Berlin and The Grand Seduction all made my Best of the Year lists.

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.

DVD/Stream of the Week: IDA – something to compare with this year’s best

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Ida

The big Prestige Movies are arriving in theaters and Oscar campaigns are being launched, so this week I’m giving you a movie that you can compare to 2017’s Oscar Bait – the recent Polish drama Ida.

The title character is a novice nun who has been raised in a convent orphanage. Just before she is to take her vows in the early 1960s, she is told for the first time that she has an aunt. She meets the aunt, and Ida learns that she is the survivor of a Jewish family killed in the Holocaust. The aunt takes the novice on an odd couple road trip to trace the fate of their family.

The chain-smoking aunt (Agata Kulesza) is a judge who consumes vast quantities of vodka to self-medicate her own searing memories. But the most profound difference isn’t that the aunt is a hard ass and that the nun is prim and devout. The most important contrast is between their comparative worldliness – the aunt has been around the block and the novice is utterly naive and inexperienced (both literally and figuratively virginal). The young woman must make the choice between a future that follows her upbringing or one which her biological heritage opens to her. As Ida unfolds, her family legacy makes her choice an informed one.

The novice Ida, played by newcomer Agata Trzebuchowska, is very quiet – but hardly fragile. Saying little, she takes in the world with a penetrating gaze and a just-under-the-surface magnetic strength.

Superbly photographed in black and white, each shot is exquisitely composed. Watching shot after shot in Ida is like walking through a museum gazing at masterpiece paintings one after the other. Ida was directed and co-written by Pawel Pawlikowski, who also recently directed the British coming of age story My Summer of Love (with Emily Blunt) and the French thriller The Woman in the Fifth (with Kristin Scott Thomas and Ethan Hawke). He is an effective and economic story-teller, packing textured characters and a compelling story into an 80 minute film.

Ida is also successful in avoiding grimness. Pawlikowski has crafted a story which addresses the pain of the characters without being painful to watch. There’s some pretty fun music from a touring pop/jazz combo and plenty of wicked sarcasm from the aunt.

Ida won 2015 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Picture and the International Critics’ Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. Ida was my pick as the best film at Cinequest, where it won the Jury Prize for Best Narrative Feature.

Ida is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.