Cinequest – Page 23 – The Movie Gourmet

Stream of the Week: THE BRAINWASHING OF MY DAD

May 10, 2016 by movie gourmet

Ever notice how people who watch a lot of Fox News or listen to talk radio become bitter, angry and, most telling, fact-resistant? In the documentary The Brainwashing of My Dad, filmmaker Jan Senko as she explores how right-wing media impacts the mood and personality of its consumers as well as their political outlook. Senko uses her own father Frank as a case study.

We see Frank Senko become continually mad and, well, mean. And we hear testimony about many, many others with the identical experience. Experts explain the existence of a biological addiction to anger.

Senko traces the history of right-wing media from the mid-1960s, with the contributions of Lewis Powell, Richard Nixon, Rush Limbaugh, Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch. Senko even gets right-wing wordsmith Frank Luntz on camera to explain the power of buzz words. If you don’t know this story (Hillary was right about the “vast, right-wing conspiracy”) , Senko spins the tale very comprehensively. If you do know the material (and my day job is in politics), it is methodical.

This topic is usually explored for its impact on political opinion. Senko’s focus on mood and personality is original and The Brainwashing of My Dad contributes an important addition to the conversation. One last thing about the brainwashing of Senko’s dad – it may not be irreversible…

I first reviewed The Brainwashing of My Dad for its U.S. Premiere at Cinequest 2016. The Brainwashing of My Dad is available streaming on Amazon Video, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Stream of the Week: MEET THE HITLERS

April 26, 2016 by movie gourmet

In the documentary Meet the Hitlers, we are introduced to those few people who choose NOT to change their birth name of “Hitler”. And it’s a varied bunch. We meet a delightfully confident Missouri teen girl, a workaday Ecuadorian whose parents didn’t know who Hitler was and an affable Utah oldster who might be the most jovial fellow ever to brighten up a chain restaurant. And there’s an Austrian odd duck burdened with enough personal baggage that he surely didn’t need this name. Do they see the name as a curse, and how has it affected them? It’s a theoretical question to us in the audience, but it’s compelling to see the real world responses of the film’s subjects.

And then there’s a mystery about three Americans who HAVE changed the name – because they are the last living relatives of Adolph Hitler. We follow the journalist who has been tracking them down for over a decade. (Documentarian Matt Ogens makes a great editorial choice as to whether to reveal their current names.)

Finally, there’s the disturbing saga of a New Jersey neo-Nazi who is NOT named Adolph Hitler but WANTS to be. Of course, anybody can choose to adorn themselves with a Hitler mustache and swastika tattoos and spew hatespeech, but his choices are affecting not just himself, but his children.

Some of these threads are light-hearted and some are very dark. Meet the Hitlers works so well because Ogens weaves them together so seamlessly. It’s a very successful documentary.

I first reviewed Meet the Hitlers for its premiere at Cinequest 2015. Now Meet the Hitlers is available for streaming rental from Amazon Video and Vudu and for streaming purchase from iTunes.

MY GOLDEN DAYS: the urgency of first love

April 7, 2016 by movie gourmet

The first love depicted in Arnaud Desplechin’s coming of age film My Golden Days is completely evocative. That first love is inevitable even if the young lovers don’t know it yet, and then filled with passion, importance, obsession, angst, conflict, breakups and makeups. And then it runs its course.

The performance of Lou Roy-Lecollinet as the unpredictable object of the young protagonist’s affection really elevates My Golden Days. Roy-Lecollinet has looks which won’t attract every guy, but would be irresistible to some. She’s able to convincingly play a girl with a devastating combination of confidence, forthrightness, charm, wit, impulsivity and a wandering eye.

That story makes up the core of My Golden Days, a flashback bookended by the contemporary, middle-aged version of the protagonist (Mathieu Amalric). The story of young romance is perfect – one that we can all recognize. But, in the epilogue, the Amalric character (who has lived a full and eventful life in the 15-20 years since) is oddly still fervently bitter about what happened years before; with that distance, most of us would look back with nostalgia or, at least, a wistful acknowledgement of lessons learned. I was a bit put off.

And what’s with the lame title My Golden Days, which makes this sound like the story set in a retirement home? The original title is Trois souvenirs de ma jeunesse which I think translates into Three Memories of My Youth – that would be better and there’s gotta be plenty of more appealing and descriptive titles.

My Golden Days, which I saw at Cinequest, is a movie that anyone who is decades removed from first love should see.

Movies to See Right Now

March 18, 2016 by movie gourmet

Thriller meets thinker in Eye in the Sky, a parable from modern drone warfare starring Helen Mirren and with a wonderful final performance from the late Alan Rickman.

I also really liked the gripping Norwegian disaster movie The Wave, with its ticking clock tension and cool disaster effects. (Now hard to find.)

You have to look hard to find it now, but you should still try to see the awesome and authentic survival tale The Revenant on the BIG SCREEN.

Silicon Valley’s film fest ended this week, and here’s my Cinequest festival wrap-up.

In honor of the recently concluded Cinequest, my DVD/Stream of the Week is from the 2013 fest: The Sapphires, a triumph of a Feel Good Movie. The Sapphires is available to rent on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and to stream from Amazon Video, iTunes, Vudu, GooglePlay and Flixster.

The best movie pick on TV this week will come on March 20, when Turner Classic Movies will present Touch of Evil (1958). This Orson Welles masterpiece begins with one of cinema’s great opening scenes, as our lead characters walk from a Mexican border town into an American border town in a single tracking shot of well over 3 minutes. Unbeknownst to them, they are being shadowed by a car bomb. There’s a lot to enjoy here in this cesspool of corruption: a repellent sheriff-gone-bad played by Welles himself, one of Joseph Calleia’s finest supporting turns, one of Dennis Weaver’s first roles (written just for him by Welles) and Charlton Heston as a Mexican.

DVD/Stream of the Week: THE SAPPHIRES

March 15, 2016 by movie gourmet

In honor of the recently concluded Cinequest, here’s a nugget from the 2013 fest: The Sapphires is a triumph of a Feel Good Movie. Set in the 1960s, a singing group from an Australian Aboriginal family faces racial obstacles at home, but blossoms when the girls learn Motown hits to entertain US troops in Vietnam. Remarkably, Tony Briggs based the screenplay on his mother’s real experience – make sure you stay for the Where Are They Now end credits.

The ever amiable Chris O’Dowd (one of the best things about Bridesmaids) is funny and charming as the girls’ dissolute manager. Jessica Mauboy, who plays the lead singer, has a great voice for soul music. A surprisingly beautiful song by the girls’ mom, played by veteran actress Kylie Belling, is an especially touching moment.

The Sapphires is not a deep movie, but it is a satisfying one. It’s predictable and manipulative, but I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t enjoy it. The Sapphires is a guaranteed good time at the movies.

The Sapphires is available to rent on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and to stream from Amazon Video, iTunes, Vudu, GooglePlay and Flixster.

https://youtu.be/h2Ty4r6mvgg

Cinequest 2016: Festival Wrap-up

March 13, 2016 by movie gourmet

Andrew Jenkins in Chris Scheuerman's brilliant debut LOST SOLACE — Andrew Jenkins in Chris Scheuerman’s brilliant debut LOST SOLACE

We’ve completed a strong Cinequest 2016, and I’ve seen 36 feature films. All of my features on this year’s fest , along with recommendations on over twenty Cinequest 2016 films are on my CINEQUEST page. Here are the festival highlights (and lowlights).

PERSONAL FAVORITE: I loved writer-director Chris Scheuerman’s brilliant debut – the highly original psychological thriller Lost Solace.

BEST OF THE FEST: The Memory of Water: This Chilean drama explores grief, its process and its impact and was the most masterful filmmaking achievement at Cinequest 2016. Exquisite.

BIG MOVIES: The selection of this year’s Spotlight Films, the prime-time movies shown at the California Theatre, may have been Cinequest’s most successful ever. Cinequest programmers led off with a home run with the Opening Night rouser Eye in the Sky, the thriller-meets-thinker from Oscar-winning director Gavin Hood. The screening was preceded by Cinequest co-founder Halfdan Hussey’s interview of Hood, which was probably also the best ever on-stage interview in festival history.

The Cinequest audience also loved the next Spotlight Film, the Norwegian disaster movie The Wave. Arnaud Desplechin’s affecting coming of age film My Golden Days was also popular. I liked James Franco and loved Ed Harris in The Adderall Diaries. Cinequest’s Closing Night feature, the Australian drama The Daughter, packed a powerfully emotional punch.

BIGGEST SENSATION: The hard-hitting and often excruciating Love Is All You Need?, the exploration of homophobic bullying and hate crimes, will be the Cinequest film that gets the most national attention.

MOST IMPRESSIVE DEBUT: Along with Lost Solace, I was also impressed by Chris Brown’s The Other Kids and Lori Stoll’s Heaven’s Floor.

BEST FOREIGN FILM: Along with The Memory of Water, I most admired Magallanes, a Peruvian psychological drama about those wrongs that cannot be righted. Magallanes won the jury award for international cinema. I also enjoyed the sex, intrigue and murder in the operatic Hungarian period drama Demimonde.

COMEDY: There really wasn’t a Can’t Miss comedy this year, but fans of absurdist deadpan comedy had The Modern Project and Lost in Munich. My Guilty Pleasure was the deliciously low brow A Beginner’s Guide to Snuff.

BEST ROMANCE: We don’t always have an extremely strong romance at the festival, but the Hungarian Fever at Dawn was just that – an urgent period romance between Holocaust survivors, with an unexpected nugget at the end.

BEST DOCUMENTARY: If I had to pick just one, it would be Chuck Norris vs. Communism, but I also liked Dan and Margot, The Promised Band and The Brainwashing of My Dad.

WORST OF THE FEST: Thankfully, there were not many stinkers at this year’s fest, but Remember Me was a disappointing clunker and The Blackcoat’s Daughter was utterly wretched.

See you at Cinequest 2017.

Cinequest: THE DAUGHTER

March 13, 2016 by movie gourmet

Cinequest Closing Night’s headliner is the tragic Australian drama The Daughter, which is emotionally powerful and ultimately devastating. Paul Schrader along with a passel of Aussie stars like Geoffrey Rush and Sam Neill portray characters entangled by a family secret that only some of them know. As the secret is revealed to the rest…(well, no spoilers here).

The characters that we first think are the most important recede in favor of seemingly secondary characters. as The Daughter drives toward its climax. As the characters evolve in prominence, our sympathies change, too. The Daughter is adapted from Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck and is so completely modernized that you’d never know that the source material is a century old.

The cast is superb, but the standouts are Anna Torn and Ewen Leslie, whose performances are absolutely heartbreaking. The Daughter is gripping and profoundly moving.

Cinequest: MY GOLDEN DAYS

March 13, 2016 by movie gourmet

My Golden Days, which I saw at Cinequest, is a movie that anyone who is decades removed from first love should see.

EYE IN THE SKY: thriller meets thinker

March 13, 2016 by movie gourmet

Thriller meets thinker in Eye in the Sky, a parable from modern drone warfare. Eye in the Sky poses this question: is it acceptable to neutralize the very worst evil in the world when it requires the simultaneous taking of the most innocent life?

If we are to pursue drone warfare as a morally acceptable military option, we must see what happens on the ground so we understand it. Eye in the Sky asks if we can stomach it once we’ve seen it.

Is the choice framed too simplistically in Eye in the Sky? No, the starkness of the choice in this film brings clarity to the question that we must ponder. Star Helen Mirren and director Gavin Hood have said in interviews that they expected married couples to argue different points of view after seeing this movie.

As Eye in the Sky’s star, Mirren commands the screen as few can and is especially fierce here. Jeremy Northam excels as the chief ditherer. Barkhad Abdi (Oscar-nominated as the Somali pirate in Captain Phillips) delivers another charismatic performance.

But this is Alan Rickman’s movie. In one of his final performances, Rickman plays the military commander who understands how difficult the choice is – because he’s already made it. Now he must navigate through all the other characters as they behave with varying degrees of belligerence, ambivalence and avoidance. It’s a supremely textured performance, layered with his wry humor, contained frustration and quiet determination.

At its Cinequest screening, director Gavin Hood said that he is as proud of Eye in the Sky as he is of his earliest films, A Reasonable Man and the Oscar-winning Tsotsi. He should be.

Cinequest: WHY ME?

March 13, 2016 by movie gourmet

In the paranoid Romanian drama Why Me?, an able young prosecutor is assigned to bring down a corrupt kingpin, but is frustrated at every turn. Is the system fixed? This is Romania, so you tell me. This is based on real events. However, there are much more entertaining examples of paranoid, cynical mysteries – and much, much better examples of Romanian cinema.