One Cinequest MUST SEE is WILD TALES, the darkly comic Argentine collection of revenge stories. Wild Tales has been a festival hit around the world and was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar. One of its vignettes features one of my favorite screen actors, Ricardo Darin (the Argentine Joe Mantegna). See it at Cinequest before it gets to Bay Area art houses in the next few weeks.
I liked the Nerd Olympics documentary SWEDEN’S COOLEST NATIONAL TEAM, which has its North American premiere tonight in Camera 12.
I’ll be watching the Norwegian comedy CHASING BERLUSCONI because I loved the filmmaker’s hilarious King Curling at the 2012 Cinequest.
I’ve also heard from some insiders that the Hungarian comedy FOR SOME INEXPLICABLE REASON is especially promising.
It’s time to dive into the 2015 version of the San Jose film festival Cinequest running from tomorrow through March 8. This year’s program looks GREAT. You can find my festival coverage, including both features and movie recommendations, on my Cinequest page (which you may wish to bookmark). Follow me on Twitter for the very latest.
Here are my 18 best bets at Cinequest 2015:
WILD TALES: the darkly comic Argentine collection of revenge stories. Wild Tales has been a festival hit (Cannes, Telluride, Toronto and Sundance) around the world and was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar. One of its vignettes features one of my favorite screen actors, Ricardo Darin (the Argentine Joe Mantegna). See it at Cinequest before it gets to Bay Area art houses on March 6. Ann Thompson (Thompson on Film) will be receiving a Media Legacy Award at the screening.
CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA: The ever-radiant Juliette Binoche plays an actress now relegated to the older role in her breakthrough play, with her younger role going to Kristen Stewart (All About Eve, anyone?). And Stewart just became the first American actress to win a César (the French Oscar) for this performance.
’71: Everybody says that this thriller about a British soldier trapped overnight in a hostile Northern Ireland neighborhood during the Troubles is pedal-to-the-metal intensity.
SLOW WEST: This offbeat Western with Michael Fassbender won a prize at Sundance.
QUEEN AND COUNTRY: Director John Boorman’s Korean War-Era quasi-sequel to his Hope and Glory. Boorman (Deliverance) will appear at the screening. Silicon Valley release on March 6.
L’ATALANTE: The 1934 masterpiece of French writer-director Jean Vigo, who died at age 29 soon after its completion. Richard von Busack, the highly respected film critic for Metro, will receive a Media Legacy Award at the screening.
Here are my pre-festival picks from among the films that I’ve seen:
DRAMA:
ANTOINE ET MARIE: A brilliantly constructed French-Canadian drama with two unforgettable characters.
THE CENTER: An absorbing and topical American indie drama about the seductiveness of a cult.
COMEDY:
LOS HAMSTERS: A biting darkly hilarious Mexican social satire.
DIRTY BEAUTIFUL: An American indie comedy that is decidedly NOT a by-the-numbers battle of the sexes.
DOCUMENTARY:
ASPIE SEEKS LOVE: A surprisingly sympathetic portrait of a guy looking for love like anyone else, but whose social skills are handicapped by Asberger’s.
MEET THE HITLERS: Tracking down real people burdened with the Fuhrer’s name, this successful doc weaves together both light-hearted and very dark story threads.
I’ve also gotten tips from insiders about some other very promising films (that I haven’t seen yet):
CORN ISLAND: Reportedly transcendent Georgian drama.
FOR SOME INEXPLICABLE REASON: Hungarian comedy.
GUARD DOG: dark and violent Peruvian thriller. US premiere.
MILWAUKEE: US indie sex and relationship comedy. World premiere.
THREE WINDOWS AND A HANGING: Searing Kosovan drama.
Take a look at the program and the passes and tickets. (If you want to support Silicon Valley’s most important cinema event while skipping the lines, the $100 donation for Express Line Access is an awesome deal.) You can download the Festival Guide from this page.
Cinequest Director of Programming/Associate Director Mike Rabehl
“Everybody always thinks that you watch a bunch of films and you pick what you would like – but it’s not like that.”
Michael Rabehl is Cinequest’s Director of Programming/Associate Director. He’s held the position of Director of Programming since 1996, which makes Cinequest 2015 the twentieth festival program that bears his mark.
So how does he select the 190 (short and feature) films in the festival? He’s looking primarily for quality, production values, strong writing and strong acting. “I like it when people think about the movie.” It’s “not all for me”, but “what an audience may like”. Rabehl is looking for movies of interest to Silicon Valley’s population, so he sifts especially carefully through the Asian, Spanish language and tech-oriented films. If a film will be released theatrically, the release must be after Cinequest’s run in late winter. (Last year, about ten Cinequest selections ultimately got a theatrical release).
About 80% of the films programmed at Cinequest are submitted by the filmmakers. Rabehl recruits the other 20%, after discovering them in other film festivals himself or with the help of his European and New York movie scouts.
Each year Cinequest receives about 2400 submissions. Rabehl leads screening teams (one team for narrative features, one for docs, one for shorts, etc.) who watch and evaluate every film. They winnow the total down by 92% – down to the 190 movies that actually make the festival program. One of those submissions, Miss India America, will receive its world premiere at the California Theater as a spotlight film.
There are more than enough submissions to fill the festival program. Rabehl says that this year there were “at least 71 titles that would have been great for us, but there’s just not enough space”. Keeping the filmmaker in mind, he says “We don’t want to be somebody’s world premiere at 9 AM”.
Rabehl laughed when I told him that people think that I see an unusually high number of movies (150-200) each year. He annually sees about 800, with 650 of them entered in his festival spreadsheet. Rabehl has personally seen all but two of the movies in this year’s Cinequest (all except for two high buzz choices that would be no-brainers for any film fest).
Each year Rabehl goes on scouting trips to identify possible Cinequest entries at other festivals – always to the Toronto International Film Festival and the Montreal World Film Festival and then to a different third fest each year. How does Rabehl navigate a film festival himself? He looks for films that “will work at Cinequest” and is always on the hunt for potential spotlight films.
At the industry-oriented Toronto fest in mid-September, he has the discipline to eschew the big Oscar-bait movies that will open soon as prestige Holiday movies (too early for Cinequest). Toronto has a professional audience, he notes, and Montreal (late August-early September) has more normal film fest audience.
Rabehl is able to be more of a “film fan” at Montreal. He values his enduring relationship with the strong national film programs of Norway and Belgium, which results in some wonderful nuggets for Cinequest. (Think of the hilarious King Curling in 2012.) At Montreal in 2013, he latched on to Ida, the jewel of the 2014 Cinequest – and since universally acclaimed, the winner of the 2015 Best Foreign Language Picture Oscar and #2 on my list of the Best Movies of 2014.
Throughout the year, Rabehl’s ascerbic observations make @cqMike the funniest guy on Twitter. But, in person, he is engaging, not particularly edgy; and deeply passionate about cinema.
Rabehl started helping Cinequest in 1994, and became its Director of Programming in 1996: “I kind of fell into it.” Rabehl had been making short films himself, and his producer had been programming Cinequest as a volunteer and was ready to move on. Rabehl met with Cinequest co-founder and CEO Halfdan Hussey over Thai food, discovered their common vision and the rest, as they say, is Silicon Valley cinema history. Rabehl “wasn’t thinking long-term, but it became long-term.” “I don’t like isolated work”, preferring the collaboration with others that putting together a film fest brings.
In Rabehl’s first Cinequest, the fest expanded to seven days (it’s now thirteen days) and attracted appearances by Kevin Spacey and Jackie Chan. That gave everyone a future glimpse into what Silicon Valley’s film festival has become today.
“When I see audience members excited about being here and talking to each other about the movies, that’s why I do this.”
TOMORROW: Mike Rabehl looks at the 2015 Cinequest.
The winning Nerd Olympics documentary Sweden’s Coolest National Teambrings us into a world that I didn’t know existed – international competition in memory sport. That subject is the first factor that elevates Sweden’s Coolest National Team above the familiar arc of the sports movie. We see people who can remember the exact order of a shuffled deck of cards, seemingly endless strings of binary numbers, even entire dictionaries. (The current world record for memorizing the order of a shuffled deck of cards is 21.19 seconds.) It is a jaw-dropping exhibition.
We meet the sport’s founder and several world champs, and we do end up at the World Memory Championship. Along the way, we see the universal aspects of competition – the pressure to perform, the rookie’s overconfidence, comeuppance for both the brash rookie and the complacent old champ. One competitor’s sister phones their parents to report “he got crushed”.
But what makes Sweden’s Coolest National Team so engaging is that its subjects are so fascinating. As one might expect, the competitors don’t seem particularly athletic and many are downright geeky. Several of the past world and Swedish champions are remarkably devoted to the sport and amazingly generous in helping younger memory sportsmen. Then there is the smug yuppie who dresses like he is giving a TED Talk and seeks to mold the sport into something that he can monetize.
And it has plenty of slyly funny moments – just as our yuppie complains about a former champ making the sport look like it’s just for oddballs, the old geek wanders through a competition with an alarming case of Plumber’s Butt.
The film’s epilogue notes that one of the subjects won the World Championship in 2013. He repeated his win in 2014.
Sweden’s Coolest National Team, which flies past the audience in a just-right 58 minutes, will have its North American premiere at Cinequest on February 25 and play again on February 27 and March 1, all at Camera 12.
The ever-absorbing The Center explores how someone of sound mind and normal disposition can be completely enveloped by a cult. The Center is writer-director Charlie Griak’s first feature, and it’s a very impressive debut.
We meet Ryan (Matt Cici), a talented guy with low self-esteem. He is highly functional and ultra-responsible, but it seems like nobody is in his corner. The first six minutes of this screenplay paint a detailed portrait of a guy who is crapped upon more than Job. No one encourages Ryan to do anything for himself, and he ends each night alone, with a beer and late-night TV. Then someone else shows personal interest in the hang-dog Matt, and he gradually slides into what at first seems the appreciation of his potential, but which is revealed to be a web of exploitation.
The audience recognizes some red flags before Ryan does, but every step in this story is credible – and there isn’t a cliché in sight. The keys to The Center’s success are the crafting of the Ryan character and the believability of the story. Ryan’s journey is compressed into a taut and compelling 72 minutes.
Matt Cici, who is in virtually every shot, is perfect as Ryan – a guy with plenty to offer, but whose lack of self-confidence sets him up for exploitation by everyone else. The acting is strong throughout The Center. Ramon Pabon is especially memorable as a twitchy loser who has been sucked into the cult. With piercing eyes, Judd Einan nails the role of the uberconfident, emotionally bullying cult founder. Annie Einan is excellent as Ryan’s world-weary sister, so burdened by their mother’s care that she can’t be there for Ryan until she spots the crisis in his life.
This spring, HBO will premiere documentarian Alex Gibney’s (Taxi to the Dark Side, We Steal Secrets, Client 9, Casino Jack and the United States of Money) expose of Scientology – Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief. Going Clear will be a big deal, and will beg the question, “How can smart, able people fall into this stuff?”. The Center should become the perfect narrative fiction companion to Going Clear.
One more thing – The Center was shot in St. Paul, Minnesota, a city that I’m not used to seeing in a movie. The Center’s sense of place (a place fresh and unfamiliar to many of us, anyway) adds to its appeal.
With The Center, Charlie Griak has shown himself to be a very promising filmmaking talent and has left a serious professional calling card. I can’t wait to see what he does next.
Cinequest will host the world premiere of The Center on February 27, and it will play again on March 1 and March 3, all in Camera 12.
Fairuza Balk, Ryan Merriman (rear) and Rick Ravanello in DOSE OF REALITY
To celebrate the beginning of Cinequest 2015, my weekly DVD/Stream is one of the hits of Cinequest 2013 – the American indie thriller Dose of Reality. Dose of Reality star Rick Ravanello also has the lead in Withdrawal, a short playing Cinequest 2015 in the BARCO Escape 1 Short Program on March 1, 7 and 8.
Dose of Reality packs wire-to-wire intensity and a surprise ending that no one will see coming. A woman is found in a bar’s restroom after closing time, apparently beaten and raped, but unable to remember by whom. Two bar employees are the only possible suspects. Both deny it, and the woman launches a series of searing mind games to determine her attacker.
Fairuza Balk (American History X, Almost Famous) commands the screen as the woman. Her character, starting from a place of utter victimization, becomes totally dominant over the men. The most interesting of the guys is played by veteran TV actor Rick Ravanello, (106 acting credits on IMDb). Ravanello’s eyes have an uncommon capacity to credibly take the character through dimness, cunning, tweaked impairment, guilt and terror.
It’s a plenty compelling movie for the first 75 minutes, but Dose of Reality is all about the Big Surprise at the end – which is a shocker on the scale of The Crying Game. Afterward, I was able to reflect back and identify at least four clues in the story, but every one of the 250 audience members at Dose of Reality’s Cinequest world premiere was rocked by the surprise on first viewing. Actor Ravanello recounts that when he first read the script, he got to the end and blurted “No Fucking Way!”. Writer-director Christopher Glatis has a real winner in Dose of Reality.
Dose of Reality is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, GooglePlay and some other VOD outlets.
In documentarian Julie Sokolow’s suprisingly moving Aspie Seeks Love, we meet a geeky guy named David Matthews, and we can immediately tell that he has really bad social skills. He’s initially off-putting – he has a robotic speaking voice, he’s bringing up the wrong conversational subjects and any woman he meets can safely be predicted to run, run, run away. Then we learn that David (now age 47) was diagnosed with Asberger’s at 41. (Aspie is a self-descriptive term used by some folks with Asperger’s syndrome.)
David is determined to overcome his Asberger’s and find love. We follow David with his support group, his therapist and even along on some dates. We’re with him when he’s hanging around a pool table with three Aspie buddies; they’re talking about how difficult it is to navigate courtship rituals when you don’t have the ability to pick up cues – for example, whether a woman is ENCOURAGING or DISCOURAGING an escalation in physical contact. I really felt for these guys – non-verbal communication while dating can be hard enough to decipher without the handicap of an autism spectrum disorder. It’s heartbreaking that David spent 41 years (before his diagnosis) with people thinking that he was just a weirdo.
Small talk is a challenge, too. David says, “I’m a vegan”, which draws some interest. But he doesn’t understand why you shouldn’t follow that up with “It makes my body smell clean”.
Despite his disorder, David is really smart, artistic, and enjoys an ever present sarcastic sense of humor. I’m no softy, but I found myself really rooting for this guy. Okay – so he’s socially awkward, but he’s employed and stable, lives in his own house, is about to become a published author, is impeccably clean, doesn’t smoke drink or do drugs, has no criminal record – he must be right for SOME WOMAN out there. I live in Silicon Valley among engineers and David really isn’t THAT socially inept by comparison.
Possibly because David doesn’t really GET awkwardness, writer-director Julie Sokolow is able to follow him into situations that normal folks might find intrusive. Sokolow also edits, and the editing choices are just about perfect. Aspie Seeks Love is a gem.
Cinequest hosts the world premiere of Aspie Seeks Love on February 27, and it plays again on March 1 and March 4, all at Camera 12.
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.
You can see Meet the Hitlers at Cinequest on March 1, 2 and 7 at Camera 12.
In Fever, we meet two teen thrill killers (a la Rope and Compulsion). What makes Fever unique is the introduction of a third character – a woman who may have witnessed their getaway. She doesn’t immediately grasp the connection, but we then watch the story threads (hers and the boys’) get nearer and finally intersect. In another twist from the Leopold and Loeb set-up, the two boys are classmates who come from very different socioeconomic backgrounds.
Even with two killers in the story, the most compelling character is the woman, played with immediacy by Julie-Marie Parmentier. At first blush, she’s just a workaday optician who is gradually becoming less satisfied with her boyfriend. But, watching Parmentier’s sharply observant eyes, we soon become aware that there’s much more going on inside her.
Fever is the first time feature from writer-director Raphael Neale, and it shows that Neale is capable of inventing an unusual take on a familiar story and effectively pacing the tension in a thriller.
Fever gets its title from the Little Willie John song popularized by Peggy Lee, and there some very cool renditions of it in the movie. (And Fever is another of those French movies that make me so impressed with the intellectual content of some French public high schools.)
Cinequest will host Fever’s US premiere on February 26 at Camera 12, and it plays at Camera 12 again on February 28 and at the California Theatre on March 2.
The animated Heart String Marionette allows us to see what would happen if the Wallace and Gromit filmmakers remade Metropolis as Noh theater. Highly stylized, with the animated characters are often masked as in Noh, Heart String Marionette is an epic that addresses themes of independence and authority. Auteur M Dot Strange effectively uses color, with much of the film in cold blue hues that evoke a brooding menace; splashes of red bring up the action scenes. The music by Endika is essential to the film.
Watch the trailer and ask yourself if you would enjoy this for another 119 minutes. I didn’t, but I’m not the audience for this film.
