TONI ERDMANN this week at the Mill Valley Film Festival
The Mill Valley Film Festivalis underway – don’t miss Oscar hopeful Toni Erdmann this week; after the MVFF, Toni Erdmann won’t be screened again in the Bay Area until it opens theatrically on January 20, 2017.
You might be able to find the best movie of the year so far – the character-driven crime drama Hell or High Water. It’s atmospheric, gripping, and packed with superb performances. Hell or High Water is a screenwriting masterpiece by Taylor Sheridan. Must See.
Here are other movie choices:
Opening today, Girl Asleep, is an offbeat coming-of-age story with more than a splash of Australian magical realism. From a first-time woman director.
Another odd tale from Down Under is the uneven but entertaining period tale of revenge, The Dressmaker.
My DVD Stream of the Week is based on the Jane Austen novel Lady Susan, the sharply witty Love & Friendshipwith Kate Beckinsale. It’s now available on DVD from Netflix (and coming soon to Redbox) and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and DirecTV.
On October 10, Turner Classic Movies has The Haunting, which show us what happens when a paranormal investigator invites you to join him at a haunted house. Julie Harris and Claire Bloom wish they hadn’t said “Yes”. It’s one of the very scariest black-and-white films.
On October 13, TCM plays one of my Overlooked Noir, Raw Deal with its ménage à noir, some of the best dialogue in all of film noir and the superb cinematography of John Alton.
Toweris a remarkably original retelling of the 1966 mass shooting at UT Austin. Tower is a tick-tock of the 96 minutes when 49 people were randomly chosen to be shot by a gunman in the landmark tower 240 feet above the campus. That gunman is barely mentioned (and may not even be named) in the movie. What makes Tower distinctive and powerful it’s the survivors who tell their stories, reenacted by actors who are animated by a rotoscope-like technique (think Richard Linklater’s Waking Life). Telling this story through animation, dotted with some historical stills and footage, is captivating. October 7 and 9.
Death by Design is an important environmental exposé on the toxic impact of personal electronics. Most of us have heard that some very dangerous materials and some horrific working conditions are used in the manufacturing of our favorite devices. Death by Design is the first film to successfully tie it all together, with historical perspective, global sweep and a possible way out. October 7 and 11.
Ella Brennan: Commanding the Table tells the story of the New Orleans powerhouse restaurateur – and it’s compelling. This is a woman who started running restaurants in the 1950s before she was thirty, the mentor of celebrity chefs Paul Prudhomme, Emeril Lagasse and Jamie Shannon and responsible for Bananas Foster, the Jazz Brunch and a host of food trends. October 15 only.
Ella Brennan leads the MVFF’s Focus: Culinary Cinema program, along with documentaries on chefs Massimo Botturo (Theater of Life) and Jeremiah Tower (Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent) and a road trip narrative, Paris Can Wait, starring Alec Baldwin and Diane Lane.
Of course, the big family hit of the Holiday season may turn out to be, of all things a documentary about a Mongolian girl – The Eagle Huntress; reportedly it’s both a crowd pleaser and spectacular eye candy.
This year’s MVFF runs from October 6-16, mostly at the Sequoia in Mill Valley and the Rafael in San Rafael, but also at three other Marin venues. Check out the program and tickets for the MVFF. I’ll be adding more festival coverage, including both features and movie recommendations. Follow me on Twitter for the very latest coverage.
The Mill Valley Film Festival is the best opportunity for Bay Area film goers to catch an early look at the prestige films that are scheduled for release during Award Season.. My choices for the most promising entries among the Big Movies:
Arrival stars Amy Adams as a linguist dispatched to communicate with alien lifeforms Directed by Denis Villeneuve (Incendies – my top movie of 2011, Prisoners, Sicario).
La La Landis a big studio musical a la Singing in the Rain with Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling.
Lovingtells the story of the Virginia couple whose 1967 US Supreme Court case overturned state laws banning inter-racial marriage. Stars Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga. Directed by Jeff Nichols (Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter, Mud, all three of which made my Best of the Year lists).
Buzz is trending for Lion, with Dev Patel starring as an Australian adoptee returning to India to search for his biological parents.
And the big family hit of the Holiday season may turn out to be, of all things a documentary about a Mongolian girl – The Eagle Huntress; reportedly it’s both a crowd pleaser and spectacular eye candy.
One MUST SEE at the fest is Toni Erdmann, from writer-director Maren Ade. You might not expect an almost three-hour German comedy to break through, but I’ve seen it, and I think that it’s a lock to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Picture. Ade gives us a woman’s perspective of a father-daughter relationship, creating a totally original and unforgettable father character that takes prankstering into performance art. This is a movie with the funniest nude brunch you’ll ever witness that still will leave you choked up at the end.Toni Erdmann leads a roster rich with future art house hits from some of the world’s leading filmmakers:
The Handmaiden from Chan-wook Park of Oldboy.
Julieta, Pedro Almodovar’s latest),
Aquarius, starring Sonia Braga, still luminous 40 years after Donna Flor and Her Two Husbands.
The Salesman from Asghar Farhadi of A Separation.
Certain Women from Kelly Reichardt of Wendy and Lucy, starring Michelle Williams, Kristen Stewart and Laura Dern.
Paterson from Jim Jarmusch with Adam Driver; Jarmusch’s Iggy Pop doc Gimme Shelter also screens at MVFF.
Frantz from François Ozon (Swimming Pool, Potiche).
Elle from Paul Verhoeven with Isabelle Huppert in, what else?, a psychological thriller with disturbing sex.
Jeff Nichols, Kelly Reichardt and Asghar Farhadi will be presenting their films in person.
The 2016 MVFF also features a solid lineup of documentaries, including Tower, a highly original look at a mass shooting, and Death by Design, an important environmental exposé on the toxic impact of our favorite electronic devices.
This year’s MVFF runs from October 6-16, mostly at the Sequoia in Mill Valley and the Rafael in San Rafael, but also at three other Marin venues. Check out the program and tickets. I’ll be adding more festival coverage, including both features and movie recommendations. Follow me on Twitter for the very latest coverage.
This year’s Mill Valley Film Festival features Death by Design, an important environmental exposé on the toxic impact of personal electronics. Most of us have heard that some very dangerous materials and some horrific working conditions are used in the manufacturing of our favorite devices. Death by Design is the first film to successfully tie it all together, with historical perspective, global sweep and a possible way out.
Death by Design begins with the dark side of Silicon Valley’s history, related by the sonorous voice of environmental pioneer Ted Smith, founder of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. Smith takes us through the discovery that the supposedly clean semiconductor manufacturing industry had been polluting the drinking water in some Silicon Valley neighborhoods. Groundbreaking occupational lawyer Amanda Hawes shows us the heartbreak caused when humans ingested those toxics.
Pioneering environmental heroes, Smith and Hawes saw this coming before anyone else. Although Smith bemoans the centuries-long impact of toxic pollution and Hawes shows us the very personal cost of occupational exposure, the two played a pivotal role in Silicon Valley history – they saved the geographic Silicon Valley from becoming much more widely and permanently despoiled. Thanks to their efforts, Silicon Valley, ironically, is more attractive than ever for the workers and investors fueling the current tech boom.
However, economic globalization has allowed the electronics industry to simply export the environmental impact from California to developing nations, and Death by Design tours us through a tech chamber of horrors in China.
We learn that 20% of China’s arable land and 60% of its groundwater are already contaminated (not ALL the fault of high-tech). We visit the “recycling” of e-waste in Guiyu – an unimaginable industrial catastrophe. We throw stuff away, and Death by Design asks us to consider the question, “Where is away?”.
But not all of the environmental costs have been have been moved away from us. In Death by Design, we also meet scientists who fly through the sky, sampling the chemical composition of clouds and collecting aerosols; they can detect pollution in North America and trace it back to Asia.
Death by Design’s Chinese segments – in factories, homes and bodies of water – is especially impressive. What must be shrewdly obtained footage helps us understand the plight of workers employed by the suppliers to international tech companies, including the major Apple supplier Foxconn, whose workers can suffer through 12-hour days and 7-day weeks. Death by Design pins the labor cost at 1 percent of an iPhone’s price; the movie leaves the math for the viewers: if you triple a 1% labor cost, a $400 phone would sell for $408.
As fitting for a techie movie, Death by Design also brings us some geeks to show us that Apple designs the iPhone for an 18-month life; you can’t extend the life by replacing the battery or other parts because Apple locks the case with proprietary screws so we can’t open it up.
If there’s a particular Bad Guy in this story, it’s Apple. I became ever more conscious that I was watching Death by Design on an iPad with Apple ear buds.
One hopeful glimmer is the introduction to the Chinese environmental entrepreneur Ma Jun, who has compiled a database of environmental impacts as a tool to press for change from within China. Another is an Irish startup that has developed fair trade computers that are updatable and reusable; their cases are built from an unexpected raw material.
Director Sue Williams maintains the topical urgency without creating a screed. She also covers a lot of ground in a crisp 73 minutes. And, most impressively, Williams delivers the Chinese footage necessary to complete the story. Death by Design is one of the most important environmental documentaries – and one of the most watchable. It plays the Mill Valley Film Festival on October 7 and 11.
The Mill Valley Film Festival always showcases many of the most promising prestige films that are scheduled for release during Award Season. It’s the best opportunity for Bay Area film goers to catch an early look at the Big Movies.
This year’s fest opens on October 6 with BOTH Arrival and La La Land and closes on October 16 with Loving – three of the biggest prestige movies and early favorites for Best Picture at the 2017 Academy Awards.
Arrival stars Amy Adams as a linguist dispatched to communicate with alien lifeforms Directed by Denis Villaneuve (Incendies – my top movie of 2011, Prisoners, Sicario).
La La Land is a big studio musical a la Singing in the Rain with Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling.
Loving tells the story of the Virginia couple whose 1967 US Supreme Court case overturned state laws banning inter-racial marriage. Stars Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga. Directed by Jeff Nichols (Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter, Mud, all three of which made my Best of the Year lists).
Besides Arrival,La La Land and Loving, buzz is trending for another MVFF offering – Lion – with Dev Patel starring as an Australian adoptee returning to India to search for his biological parents.
And the big family hit of the Holiday season may turn out to be, of all things a documentary about a Mongolian girl – The Eagle Huntress; reportedly it’s both a crowd pleaser and spectacular eye candy.
ARRIVAL
One MUST SEE at the fest is Toni Erdmann, from writer-director Maren Ade. You might not expect an almost three-hour German comedy to break through, but I’ve seen it, and I think that it’s a lock to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Picture. Ade gives us a woman’s perspective of a father-daughter relationship, creating a totally original and unforgettable father character that takes prankstering into performance art. This is a movie with the funniest nude brunch you’ll ever witness, and it will still leave you choked up at the end. Toni Erdmann leads a roster rich with future art house hits from some of the world’s leading filmmakers:
The Handmaiden from Chan-wook Park of Oldboy.
Julieta, Pedro Almodovar’s latest.
Aquarius, starring Sonia Braga, still luminous 40 years after Donna Flor and Her Two Husbands.
The Salesman from Asghar Farhadi of A Separation.
Certain Women from Kelly Reichardt of Wendy and Lucy, starring Michelle Williams, Kristen Stewart and Laura Dern.
Paterson from Jim Jarmusch with Adam Driver; Jarmusch’s Iggy Pop doc Gimme Shelter also screens at MVFF.
Frantz from François Ozon (Swimming Pool, Potiche).
Elle from Paul Verhoeven with Isabelle Huppert in, what else?, a psychological thriller with disturbing sex.
Celebrity appearances, for those of you who like that sort of thing, will include Nicole Kidman, Amy Adams, Ewan McGregor, Emma Stone, Gael García Bernal, Edward James Olmos, Joel Edgerton, Annette Bening and Aaron Eckhardt. For those of you seeking a chance to hear great filmmakers discuss their work in the flesh, you’ll get your chance with Jeff Nichols, Kelly Reichardt and Asghar Farhadi.
This year’s MVFF runs from October 6-16, mostly at the Sequoia in Mill Valley and the Rafael in San Rafael, but also at three other Marin venues. Check out the program and tickets for the MVFF. I’ll be adding more festival coverage, including both features and movie recommendations. Follow me on Twitter for the very latest coverage.
So let’s get one thing straight right up front – Mia Madre is NOT a dramedy. It’s an Italian drama that is leavened with bits of comedy. Writer-director Nanni Moretti has constructed a deeply personal portrait of a person in mid-career and mid-life who is losing her aged parent. There’s never a convenient moment to go through this experience, and Moretti’s protagonist, a movie director (Margherita Buy), is juggling her job and her relationships with her teen daughter, her ex-husband and her brother (played by Moretti). It’s all very complicated – just like it is in real life, and Moretti brings authenticity to the story.
All of this is pretty somber, but our heroine is making a movie, and she has cast an astonishingly pompous American star (John Turturro) who claims to speak more Italian that he really does and who can’t remember his lines. Every scene with Turturro is hilarious as he bumbles through the filmmaking with shameless bravado.
Nanni Moretti is a gifted filmmaker who has been successful in varied genres. I really enjoyed his comedy We Have a Pope, about a newly elected pope who suffers a panic attack and flees the Vatican. This is more serious stuff. The Wife, who liked it less than I did, refers to it as the “depressing Italian dying mother movie”. I found it very affecting, especially the emotionally satisfying ending.
I saw Mia Madre at the Mill Valley Film Festival in October 2015, but its theatrical release in the bay Area was delayed until this weekend..
So let’s get one thing straight right up front – My Mother is NOT a dramedy. It’s an Italian drama that is leavened with bits of comedy. Writer-director Nanni Moretti has constructed a deeply personal portrait of a person in mid-career and mid-life who is losing her aged parent. There’s never a convenient moment to go through this experience, and Moretti’s protagonist, a movie director (Margherita Buy), is juggling her job and her relationships with her teen daughter, her ex-husband and her brother (played by Moretti). It’s all very complicated – just like it is in real life, and Moretti brings authenticity to the story.
All of this is pretty somber, but our heroine is making a movie, and she has cast an astonishingly pompous American star (John Turturro) who claims to speak more Italian that he really does and who can’t remember his lines. Every scene with Turturro is hilarious as he bumbles through the filmmaking with shameless bravado.
Nanni Moretti is a gifted filmmaker who has been successful in varied genres. I really enjoyed his comedy We Have a Pope, about a newly elected pope who suffers a panic attack and flees the Vatican. This is more serious stuff. The Wife, who liked it less than I did, refers to it as the “depressing Italian dying mother movie”. I found it very affecting, especially the emotionally satisfying ending.
I saw My Mother at the Mill Valley Film Festival in October 2015, but its theatrical release is now expected in March 2016.
The Mill Valley Film Festivalalways showcases many of the most promising prestige films that are scheduled for release during Award Season. It’s the best opportunity for Bay Area film goers to catch an early look at the Big Movies. Last year’s fest featured an array of Oscar winners and Oscar-nominated films: The Imitation Game, Whiplash, Wild, Foxcatcher, Mr. Turner and Two Days, One Night, along with Force Majeure, which made it on my Best Movies of 2014 list.
Again this year, the film fest is especially rich with Oscar bait:
Bridge of Spies – Steven Spielberg’s espionage thriller with Tom Hanks;
Carol – fest favorite about lesbian awakening with Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett;
Dheepan – the French immigration thriller that won the Palm d’Or at Cannes;
The Danish Girl – Eddie Redmayne portrays one of the recipients of gender reassignment surgery;
Son of Saul – the Hungarian movie about Auschwitz that stunned critics, both for its intense brilliance and for the discomfort in watching it;
Suffragette – Carey Mulligan wins women the vote; and
The Assassin– an especially epic Chinese costume epic.
I’m especially looking forward to My Mother from Italy, about a film director who is simultaneously dealing with her dying mother, challenging teenager and hilariously pompous leading man (John Turturro). I’m also eager to see I Smile Back – Sarah Silverman has been getting buzz for a reportedly searing performance as an alcoholic.
Those are the Big Movies, but there’s also a promising assortment of the indies, foreign flicks and documentaries that I usually cover. Here’s the schedule.
The fest runs October 8-18 in Mill Valley, San Rafael and Corte Madera. Tickets are now available to members and will go on sale to the public on September 19.
PEEPING TOM, coming up on Turner Classic Movies and better than PSYCHO
Opening today, the startling documentary Art and Craftis about an art fraud. Of prolific scale. Apparently not illegal. By a diagnosed schizophrenic.
Also in theaters:
The exceptionally well-acted dramedy The Skeleton Twinscontains several inspired moments.
The smart and hilarious The Trip to Italy showcases the improvisational wit of Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, along with some serious tourism/foodie porn.
Feedback from my readers is almost unanimous – Richard Linklater’s family dramaBoyhood is a special movie experience – and possibly the best film of the decade.
I really liked The One I Love– a relationship romance, a dark comedy and a modern day episode of The Twilight Zone rolled into one successful movie. Although it’s leaving theaters this weekend, it remains available streaming from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.
Terry Gilliam’s sci-fi fable The Zero Theorem is visually arresting, but the story becomes tedious. Poor writing and directing sabotage the delightful performances of Alfred Molina and John Lithgow in the romantic drama Love Is Strange. I was also disappointed by the tiresome Frank Miller’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.
This week’s DVD/Stream of the Week is this year’s outstanding coming of age movie Very Good Girls starring the fine young actresses Dakota Fanning and Elizabeth Olsen. Very Good Girls is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.
On October 4, Turner Classic Movies brings us what may be the best-ever psycho serial killer movie, Peeping Tom from 1960, the same year as Psycho. The British film critics didn’t know what to make of a thriller where the protagonist was so disturbing, and they trashed Peeping Tom so badly that its great director Michael Powell (The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Stairway to Heaven, Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes) wasn’t able to work again in the UK. But I think Peeping Tom is an overlooked masterpiece and even better than its iconic counterpart.
And on October 5, TCM broadcasts Cool Hand Luke, with Paul Newman as an iconic 1960s anti-hero, a charismatic supporting performance by George Kennedy, the unforgettable boiled egg-eating contest and the great movie line” What we have here is a failure to communicate”.
The exceptionally well-acted dramedy The Skeleton Twinscontains several inspired moments.
Also in theaters:
The smart and hilarious The Trip to Italy showcases the improvisational wit of Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, along with some serious tourism/foodie porn.
Feedback from my readers is almost unanimous – Richard Linklater’s family dramaBoyhood is a special movie experience – and possibly the best film of the decade.
I really liked The One I Love– a relationship romance, a dark comedy and a modern day episode of The Twilight Zone rolled into one successful movie. Although it’s leaving theaters this weekend, it remains available streaming from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.
Terry Gilliam’s sci-fi fable The Zero Theorem is visually arresting, but the story becomes tedious. Poor writing and directing sabotage the delightful performances of Alfred Molina and John Lithgow in the romantic drama Love Is Strange. I was also disappointed by the tiresome Frank Miller’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.
My DVD/Stream of the Week is an underrated 2014 romance that most of us didn’t get to see in theaters, The Face of Love with Annette Bening and Ed Harris. The Face of Love is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.
