Victor Rivas (center) in CARVER. World premiere t Cinequest. Photo courtesy of Select Films.
In the neo-noirish Spanish thriller Carver, a guy named Ernesto takes on the alter ego of Carver in the wee hours. Carver strides through Ernesto’s gritty urban neighborhood in dressed in a ridiculous, homemade superhero costume. He has no super powers, but is driven to make things right, vigilante-style. A sexy, stoned woman of uncertain reliability engages his interest. Will she bring him down?
Ernesto (Victor Rivas) seems otherwise a normal, salt-of-the-earth guy . He lives a quotidian existence, monitoring a supermarket’s security cameras by day and presiding over his family’s evening meals. But when his wife and kids are ready for bed (and this is Spain, so it is LATE), he heads out on the streets, to his wife’s increasing displeasure.
Why? He’s not a wannabe hanging judge; he’s pretty merciful to the shoplifters that he catches at his day job. But he has this need to personally patrol the streets to keep kids and single women safe. It’s odd behavior, and he does so with an almost child-like naivete; we wonder what emotional trauma might have damaged him.
At first, as he fails to spot her manipultiveness Victor is no match for the femme fatale Alicia (Mar Del Corral) , who is channelling Brigid O’Shaughnessy. Then he begins to appreciate just how unhunged she may be.
This is the first feature for writer-director Evgeny Yablokov, and this character-driven thriller is an impressive calling card.
There are many film actors named Victor Rivas. The star of Carver is not one of the more famous one, but a mournful-faced stage actor in Madrid, who has played Kierkegaard.
Not everybody will be satisfied with the ending of Carver, but I thought it was perfect.
I screened Carver for its world premiere at Cinequest, and it made my Best of Cinequest 2021. You can stream it during the festival for only $3.99 at Cinequest’s online Cinejoy.
Lizzy Auna and Axel Arenas in AGUA ROSA. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.
The Mexican drama Agua Rosa begins with a young couple heading to stay a few days at an isolated property. We first see them mostly in long shot, often from the back, with very little dialogue, and we need to connect our own dots. Who are they? Why are they here? What are they to each other? That last question is what Agua Rosa is all about.
Mauricio (Axel Arenas) has inherited the place from his father and he’s settling the estate with his significant other Ana (Lizzy Auna). Mauricio is angry at his dad for abandoning his mom, so he’s unhappy and not fun to be around. His anger is leaking on Ana, and I kept hoping “don’t blow it with her by being such a jerk”. But maybe he’s also unhappy with something in their relationship…
Agua Rosa is co-written and co-directed by Miguel López Valdivia and Ca Silva (together credited as Antónimo). It’s their first feature film. They are able to make a languid pace work because Agua Rosa is only 71 minutes long.
The filmmakers use long shots and shots of long duration to emphasize the couple’s isolated setting and the potential isolation from each other. This makes the tight closeups at the climax all the more powerful.
I screened Agua Rosa for its world premiere at Cinequest; you can stream it during the festival for only $3.99 at Cinequest’s online Cinejoy.
Jessica Pare and Gabriel Byrne in DEATH OF A LADIES’ MAN, opening the 2921 Cinequest. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.
Make your plans now to attend the 2021 Cinequest, Silicon Valley’s own major film festival. This year’s fest will be online as Cinejoy, scheduled for April 20 through April 30. 75 of the features will be world or US premieres – be in the FIRST AUDIENCE to see these films. You can stream the vast majority of the premiering films for only $3.99 apiece.
Cinequest is a significant showcase for independent film, documentaries and world cinema. The 2021 program has features from from 50 countries, including Spain, Belgium, France, UK, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Iceland, Germany, Honduras, Israel, Taiwan, Iran, Korea, Kenya and South Africa.
IN THE SHADOWS from Turkey: North American premiere at Cinequest. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.
This year’s headline events include:
New movies with Dame Judy Dench, Viggo Mortensen, Sam Neil, Ed Helms, Julie Delpy, Eddie Izzard, Miranda Richardson, Gabriel Byrne,Jessica Pare and Brian Gleeson
New movies directed by Carlos Lopez Estrada (Blindspotting), Mortensen and Delpy.
See it here FIRST: Together Together and This Is Not a War Story are among the movies slated for widespread (and perhaps theatrical) release later this year.
This is the eleventh year that I’ve covered Cinequest. I’ll miss the in-person schmoozing with filmmakers at the Continental Lounge, being greeted by Nathan Louie in his Chinese imperial garb, the bubbly film introductions by volunteer Chris Marcoida, and the silent film at the vintage movie palace, the California Theatre, accompanied by Dennis James on the movie palace’s Mighty Wurlitzer. And the unofficial Cinequest cocktail (a shot of Tito’s chased by a cheese cube).
As usual, I’ll be covering Cinequest rigorously with features and movie recommendations. I usually screen (and write about) about thirty Cinequest films from around the world. Bookmark my CINEQUEST page, with links to all my coverage (links on the individual movies will start to go live on Thursday, March 18). Follow me on Twitter for the latest.
CARVER: world premiere at Cinequest, Photo courtesy of Select Films.
In the gripping Chinese sci-fi thriller Last Sunrise, we’re in a super-hi tech future, powered almost totally by solar energy – which doesn’t look as blissful as it sounds. As befits a dystopian story, there’s a disaster, and this one is just about the worst one conceivable – the death of our Sun.
Wang Sun (Zhang Jue) is very serious astronomy nerd with no apparent non-scientific interests. He doesn’t really know Wu Chen (Zhang Yue), although she lives in a neighboring apartment, and it doesn’t appear that she’s ever thought about anything profound. When the catastrophe happens, the two are forced on the road together in a race for their lives.
Last Sunrise is real science fiction about a plausible (and inevitable) future occurrence, and it’s about real ideas. This isn’t just blowing stuff up in space, which too often passes for sci-fi today.
Losing the sun is pretty bad – it gets dark, the temperature is plunging and humans are running out of oxygen. There may be refuges, but there’s little remaining battery power to fuel people’s escapes. Of course, it doesn’t take long for social order to break down. Last Sunrise becomes a ticking bomb thriller as the couple tries to find a refuge in time.
Of course, with no sun lighting the earth and moon, it is very dark and many more stars are visible. The f/x of the starry skies in Last Sunrise are glorious.
The two leads are appealing, especially Zhang Yue, whose Wu Chen is revealed more and more as film goes on.
The life-and-death thriller is leavened by witty comments on the consumerist, hyper connected culture (pre-disaster). There are very funny ongoing references to instant noodles. And Wang Sun, who is a bit of a hermit, doesn’t appreciate how devoted he is to his digital assistant ILSA (not Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, just ILSA).
This is the first feature, an impressive debut, for director and co-writer Wen Ren. Cinequest hosted the North American premiere of Last Sunrise, the sci-fi highlight of the festival and is streaming Small Time in CINEJOY through October 14.
Steve Starr and Gay Walley in EROTIC FIRE OF THE UNATTAINABLE
Cinequest’s October virtual festival CINEJOY. runs through October 14. I’ve written about the best of Cinejoy, and here are five more Cinejoy films.
Erotic Fire of the Unattainable: My favorite discovery so far at Cinejoy, this is a captivating study of a free spirited woman of a certain age and her asymmetric relationships. It’s docufiction – “people playing themselves in stories that relate to their own real lives”. Here’s my full review.
The Last Days of Capitalism: Taking place entirely in a Vegas hotel luxury suite, a rich forty-something extends his encounter with a much younger hooker into several days of verbal probing and sparring. It’s kind of My Dinner With Andre with spa robes and sex. It turns out that he is hedonistic for a purpose, and she is more than she seems, too.
Far East Deep South: In this genealogy documentary, a Northern California Chinese-American family is stunned to discover that they have roots in Mississippi.
Watch Me Kill: Filipino actress Jean Garcia stars as a pitiless and prolific contract killer. Something from her past is haunting her, and there is a mind twisting thread. I was okay with the relentless violence, as would Quentin Tarantino, but not every viewer would be.
The Return of Richard III on the 9:14 am Train: This French comedy of manners centers on a crew of neurotic actors holed up in a vacation rental to rehearse a project. Although it’s got the best title in Cinejoy, it’s only mildly funny.
Audrey Grace Marshall in Niav Conty’s SMALL TIME, premiering at Cinequest. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.
Filmmaker Niav Cinty explores rural America’s opioid crisis through its impact on one little girl in Small Time. Emma (Audrey Grace Marshall) is growing up among damaged and ill-prepared adults who are modeling the worst possible lessons about drug use, parental responsibility, handling firearms, choice of language and taking things that belong to someone else. This is an opioid-ravaged world in which the one character who actually saves two lives is the local abusive drug dealer. Emma sees things that no child should see.
Emma is spirited, smart and has a child’s pureness of heart. Amidst the adult chaos, she’s baking cookies and thinking about the tooth fairy. But we have to ask, what is the shelf life of innocence? When will her environment take its toll?
Nobody is comfortable watching a child in bad situations, so why isn’t Small Time unwatchable? Writer-director Conty has mastered the tone by making Emma such a spirited, hopefully indomitable protagonist. And Conty embeds just enough humor in scenes with the local lunkheads playing the board game Risk and Emma turning the doctrinal tables on a priest, forcing him to resort to bluster.
The child actress Audrey Grace Marshall is very good. Conty shot Small Time over three years as Audrey ranged from seven to ten. Small Time was filmed on location in north central Pennsylvania.
Cinequest hosted the world premiere of Small Time at the March 2020 festival and is streaming Small Time in CINEJOY through October 14.
Jenna Lyng Adams in BEFORE THE FIRE. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.
Cinejoy is Cinequest’s October virtual fest and it opens today. Some of the very best from the March festival return, along with some new indie gems that you can’t see anywhere else. I’ve updated my CINEQUEST page with reviews of nine Cinejoy films. Browse the films and buy tickets at CINEJOY.
MUST SEE
Before the Fire: In this year’s Must See at Cinequest, the only escape from an apocalyptic flu pandemic is a woman’s long-estranged rural hometown – but the scary family who traumatized her childhood is there, too. Written by its female star Jenna Lyng Adams, and the first feature by its female director Charlie Buhler, this indie thriller rocks. World premiere at Cinequest.
INDIES
Small Time: Rural America’s opioid crisis explored through its impact on one little girl; what is the shelf life of innocence? Shot over three years with insight and verisimilitude. World premiere at Cinequest.
WORLD CINEMA
Willow: This triptych by Oscar-nominated master Macedonian filmmaker Milcho Manchevski plumbs the heartaches and joys of having children; there’s a scene in the final vignette with a mother and son in a car that is one of the most amazing scenes I’ve ever seen. North American premiere at Cinequest.
LAUGHS
Travel Ban: Making America Laugh Again: a serious film about misunderstanding and bigotry with some hilarious comedy by American Muslim stand-up comics.
DOCUMENTARY
The Quicksilver Chronicles: Two bohemians live in a ghost town close (yet far) from Silicon Valley, and life happens. World premiere.
AND TWO I HAVEN’T SEEN YET
but they’ve got GREAT TITLES: The Return of Richard III on the 9:24 am Train and Erotic Fire of the Unattainable.
THE QUICKSILVER CHRONICLES. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.
Brian Dennehy, Lucas Jaye and Hong Chau in DRIVEWAYS
I can’t think of a more authentic movie about intergenerational relationships than the charming, character-driven Driveways. It’s a modest little indie, and it’s one of the Best Movies of 2020 – So Far.
Kathy (Hong Chau) and her nine-year-old Cody (Lucas Jaye) arrive in a small town to clean out and flip the house of Kathy’s late sister. Kathy and her much older sister had lost touch,and Kathy is surprised and disheartened to discover that the sister had become a hoarder, making the clean-up job monumental. The octogenarian next-door neigbor Del (Brian Dennehy) watches from his porch.
All three are facing life challenges. Kathy is a single mom trying to navigate a career change; now she has an unwanted chore and some guilt from not reviving the relationship with her sister. Cody is a sensitive kid who isn’t comfortable in many situations and who has an embarrassing reaction to anxiety. Del is grieving the loss of his wife and facing the loss of his independence. Things do not go as the audience expects.
Hong Chau in DRIVEWAYS
Director Andrew Ahn, by dropping subtle clues, lets the audience connect the dots about the characters and their back stories. We learn about the mom-son relationship when she discards a cigarette on the ground and he wordlessly grinds it out with his shoe. We learn about Del’s fears about his independence when he glances at an increasingly forgetful buddy.
Driveways is a three-hander and all three actors, Hong Chau, Lucas Jaye and Brian Dennehy are superb. 91-year-old character actor Jerry Adler is brilliant in a few very brief scenes.
This was the final performance for Brian Dennehy (scroll down to bottom for my remembrance). His performance – so remarkably genuine and subtle – in Driveways is award-worthy. Dennehy’s facial expression, in one fleeting moment, conveys Del’s profound regret about a mistake that he made with his own daughter.
Brian Dennehy and Lucas Jaye in DRIVEWAYS
Driveways played at Cinequest 2020 with an in-person appearance by Hong Chau, which I skipped because I sized it up as too sappy. I was wrong.
You know how children are drawn to some kids and not to others? Driveways perfectly captures the joy of making friends when a kid discovers another kid with common interests.
That authenticity is exactly what keeps Driveways from being corny. There’s not a hint of manipulation from Ahn. That’s why Driveways is that rarity, a recommendation from The Movie Gourmet that can be described as”heartfelt”.
Cody is as much the lead character as are the mom and the old guy. The Wife thinks that the movie is too slow for kids. But I’d give it a try and challenge the kids. It’s only 83 minutes, and I think kids will be drawn to the portrayal of a kid that is so real-world and unlike the stock characters spoon fed them by the likes of the Disney Channel.
Driveways is available to stream on all the major platforms.
Sandy also publishes the weekly e-newsletter This Week on TCM, in which he reviews the most significant choices on Turner Classic Movies. He doesn’t write about every movie on TCM, but he touches on several each day. And this is not a quick scan of the weekly classic film menu – each email runs to up to 6,000 words.
Every Sunday morning, while The Wife pours over the New York Times, I’m scanning Sandy’s email to see if TCM is featuring a film I had overlooked or need to revisit. For example, I DVRed the 1937 They Won’t Forget, which I had never seen, only because of Sandy’s description of Lana Turner’s entrance. Worth it.
Earlier this year, I finally got around to the 1936 classic Dodsworth, only because Sandy recommended it. Dodsworth rewarded me with remarkable performances from Walter Huston, Mary Astor and Ruth Chatterton. (Familiarity with Dodsworth is also central to understanding the documentary Scandal: The Trial of Mary Astor, because Astor channeled her Dodsworth character during her testimony at the notorious child custody trial.)
Sandy’s regular readers always wait for the weekly use of the word “oeuvre ” and the mention of the “ubiquitous Michael Curtiz”. Sandy is the kind of film writer who can use the word “mendacity” about a movie (All About Eve) OTHER than Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
It’s difficult to decide which is the biggest value add in This Week on TCM – Sandy’s usually perfect movie taste or his capsulized commentary, enlivened with Grouchoesque quips. Here’s a taste:
Story of Seabiscuit: This does not remotely resemble the true story of Seabiscuit; in fact, it should be entitled Nothing Like the True Story of Seabiscuit.
Manchurian Candidate: A ludicrous premise: the Russians want to put a puppet in the White House, whom they can maneuver and control – hey, wait a minute.
Gaslight: Joseph Cotton is an old friend who senses something rotten in the state of Denmark (which means he has a strong sense of smell, since this takes place in Victorian era England).
The Searchers: John Ford’s magnum opus and the apogee (or apotheosis if you prefer an even more pretentious “ap” word) of his Western genre films.
Doctor Zhivago : My least favorite of Lean’s well known films, which I find ponderous and unwieldy (or if you prefer, slow and boring). I came to CA to get away from snow, so why spend over 3 hours looking at it. Then again, you can spend all that time looking at Julie Christie, which almost makes it worth it. This film was a huge hit and mine is a minority opinion, but is there anyone in America who isn’t sick of Lara’s Theme?
Detour: Talk about femme fatales – Ann Savage (no name better fit an actress) is the fataliest of all femmes. Ms. Savage more than makes up for the flimsy sets and if she doesn’t give you nightmares, nobody will (whenever I wake up screaming in the night soaked in sweat, and Harriet asks what’s wrong I just say “Ann Savage”).
Ingmar Bergman’s Passion of Anna: Moving and powerful, under no circumstances should you watch this film unless you are prepared to hit the emotional depths of human existence (I’m not sure what that means, but don’t have a bottle of pills nearby when you are watching).
Buffalo Bill and the Indians or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson: (Paul) Newman and director Robert Altman were at the height of their respective powers when they teamed up to make this can’t miss film. But miss it did and by miles.
The Window: Young Bobby Driscoll goes out on the fire escape to sleep on a sweltering NYC summer night and through a neighbor’s window witnesses a murder. Bobby is proverbial boy who cried Sandy Wolf (I use that line every time this movie airs and can’t help myself).
Scarlet Pimpernel: Whenever I see this title, I think of pumpernickel bread, which you can’t get in Northern CA (at least I have never seen it).
The Longest Day: BTW, an astute and erudite reader correctly informed me that the “D” in D-Day stands for “Day”. How stupid is that – what does Day Day mean? I would call it T-Day for The Day or even I-Day for Invasion Day.
Henry V: All I know about Henry V is that he came after Henry IV (not sure where O Henry came from – and I’m talking about the candy bar and not the author).
Red Badge of Courage: This was deemed an utter failure upon its release and caused director John Huston grief (or as much grief he could sustain between cavorting and carousing) .
Lolita: Shelley Winters, as Lolita’s Mom, is as annoying as ever (which is as annoying as any human being can possibly be) but she is in fact somewhat empathetic and plays her role well (Shelley could do annoying in her sleep and I’m sure she was annoying even when she was asleep).
Sandy’s taste in exceptional, but not perfect. We differ on the fourth and fifth greatest Hitchcock films, and I’m about to set him straight on his under appreciation of Peckinpah’s The Getaway.
Sandy is also the father of filmmaker Matt Wolf, the accomplished documentarian behind:
Wild Combination, the critically praised biodoc of the influential musician Arthur Russell. (Included with Amazon Prime.)
Teenage, an especially insightful look at the emergence of teenage culture, surprisingly recent in American culture. Teenage aired on PBS. (Included with Amazon Prime.)
Bayard and Me, the undertold story of Bayard Russell’s key role in the Civil Rights movement as a gay man in the 50s and 60s.
Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, about a woman who recorded 30 years of TV, 24 hours per day, and left a 70,000 videotape tape-archive of American culture reflected by television. (Streamable on Amazon and iTunes.)
Spaceship Earth, the soon to be released 2020 Sundance hit about Biosphere 2, the 1991 scientic and social experiment where a team moved into a model replica of our planet’s ecosystem.
Matt Wolf was already an NYU film school grad when Sandy started his role at Cinequest, but Sandy takes some credit for some of Matt’s love of movies. Back in the VCR era, Sandy recorded classic films one at a time, and then played the collection at family movie nights.
On the red carpet of the Tribeca Film Festival for one of Matt’s premieres, Sandy Wolf heard a publicist summoning “Mr. Wolf, over here, please.” Sandy’s proudest moment came when he realized they were calling Matt.
How does Cinequest fill its slate of documentary features each year? For the past two decades, Sandy Wolf, a now-retired attorney, has been volunteering to find the documentaries that premiere at Cinequest.
Back in 2002, Wolf’s recommendation gotSpellbound into the festival. The story of eight teenagers competing for the national spelling bee championship, Spellbound went on to become a national art house hit, and Wolf earned some major cred.
Each year, Wolf screens the 250 documentary features that have been submitted to Cinequest by filmmakers. Wolf then submits a top ten and a second twenty recommendations, along with his comments, to Cinequest Director of Programming and Associate Director Mike Rabehl. (Rabehl himself screens every Cinequest submission, including documentaries,) Rabehl has the final say, but he agrees with most of Wolf’s recommendations.
“You rarely see a bad documentary,” says Wolf. “Although there are a lot of mediocre ones.”
How does one actually watch 250 movies? From each July though November, Wolf watches movies in the morning, until he takes a break for lunch. After a visit to the neighborhood coffee joint, he resumes until dinnertime. But he reserves the evening for his own movie choices, not festival screeners.
“Mike Rabehl tells me not to make it a job”, but Wolf thinks its goes best with this regimen.
The slate of documentaries at Cinequest is usually quite rich. Here are some of my favorites from recent Cinequests, all of which are are now available to stream:
The Brainwashing of My Dad: When TV changes not just opinions, but mood and personality, too. Amazon, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play.
Meet the Hitlers: Wouldn’t you change YOUR name? Amazon, iTunes, Vudu.
There Will Be No Stay: In a society with capital punishment, someone must perform the executions. iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play.
Wolf saved me from a big mistake at the 2019 Cinequest. I had decided to pass on screening Clownvets because it looked too sappy for my notoriously jaded taste. But I watched it on Wolf’s recommendation, and I’m very glad that I did. Clownvets turned out to be well-constructed and surprisingly powerful.
This year Wolf tipped me off to The Quicksilver Chronicles, which is also my own favorite of the 2020 Cinequest documentaries.
