The inventive Ruby Sparks is about romance and it’s very, very funny, but it transcends the genre of romantic comedy. A shy writer who has produced a great novel at an early age is now drifting, his writing is blocked and he has isolated himself into a lonely existence. He imagines his perfect love object, and he can suddenly write in torrents about her until…she becomes real. Yes, suddenly he has a real life girlfriend of his own design.
This is everyone’s fantasy of a perfect partner – but what are the limits of a partner that you have designed yourself? Because he can tweak her behavior by rewriting it, this brings up the adage “Be careful what you ask for”. When he is threatened by her independence, he changes her personality on the page and she becomes unattractively clinging and needy. Can his realized fantasy make him happy?
Paul Dano in RUBY SPARKS
Paul Dano is outstanding as the writer and screenwriter Zoe Kazan (granddaughter of Elia Kazan) dazzles as his creation. (Off screen, Kazan and Dano are a couple.) Chris Messina is dead on perfect as the writer’s brother, and the film benefits from an especially strong cast: Annette Bening, Antonio Banderas, Steve Coogan, Aasif Mandvi and Elliot Gould. Ruby Sparks is ably directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, the co-directors of another exceptional indie comedy, Little Miss Sunshine.
The biggest star in Ruby Sparks is Zoe Kazan’s ingenious screenplay. It’s funny without being silly, profound without being pretentious, bright without being precious. Every moment is authentic. It’s clear that Kazan is a major talent as a screenwriter.
Ruby Sparks is available to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Subject Gilda Radner in a still from LOVE, GILDA. Photo courtesy JFI.
It’s time to get ready for one of the Bay Area’s top cinema events: the 38th annual San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF38), which opens July 19, and runs through August 5 at five locations throughout the Bay Area. The SFJFF is the world’s oldest Jewish film festival, and, with a 2017 attendance figure of 40,000, still the largest.
Here’s an early peek at the fest highlights:
Opening night’s Bay Area premiere of the Gilda Radner biodoc Love, Gilda, featuring segments of Radner’s diaries. Director Lisa D’Apolito and original SNL cast member Laraine Newman will attend.
Closing night’s presentation of another showbiz biodoc, Sammy Davis Jr.: I’ve Gotta Me, with director Sam Pollard in attendance. I’ve seen it, and it’s top rate.
The especially strong slate of documentaries, always a rich trademark of the SFJFF. I’ll be recommending a slate of Must See docs.
A first-time partnership with the Film Noir Foundation, with the Hungarian neo-noir Budapest Noir presented by its director Éva Gárdos and the Czar of Noir himself, San Francisco’s Eddie Muller.
The 1924 silent film The City Without Jews, recently discovered in a Paris flea market and now digitally restored and presented with a commissioned live score. It’s a rare Silent Era look at the resurgence of antisemitism in Europe.
And the always popular program of short films, Jews in Shorts. The SFJFF is newly an Academy Award qualifying festival in the Short Documentary Subject category.
One of the most appealing features of the SFJFF is that, wherever you live in the Bay Area, the fest comes to you. SFJFF will present film events at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, the Landmark Albany Twin in Albany, the CinéArts Theatre in Palo Alto, the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael, and the Piedmont Theater in Oakland.
Lakeith Stanfield and Tessa Thompson in SORRY TO BOTHER YOU
The savagely funny social satire Sorry to Bother You rips both the excesses of 21st century capitalism and the popular response to those excesses – apathetic submissiveness. This may be the most original American film of the year.
Sorry to Bother You is set with specificity in Oakland, but the story is about the greater corporate-dominated culture. A sinister corporation named Worry Free flourishes by enlisting consumers to “lifetime contracts” for their employment and household needs; Worry Free clients/employees are provided for life with meals, housing (in barracks crammed with bunk beds) and clothing (hospital scrubs) in return for menial factory labor. The Worry Free system, of course, is slavery. Almost nobody cares about that – this is a vapid culture where the most popular TV game show is I Got the Shit Kicked Out of Me, where each week’s contestant is beaten and humiliated for mass entertainment. Only the insurgent group Left Eye resists, with graffiti and guerilla actions.
Cassius (Lakeith Stanfield), a young man without prospects, is living in his uncle’s Oakland garage with his avant-garde artist girlfriend Detroit (Tessa Thompson). Cassius is overjoyed to finally score a telemarketing job, even though his new boss explains that every applicant is hired. Cassius’ telemarketing career is futile until he acts on a tip from an older colleague (Danny Glover) to “use your white voice”. Suddenly, Cassius vaults to the top of the telemarketing world, and is promoted to make big money pitching Worry Free’s slave labor force to global manufacturers. This raises the question, when does “success” become “selling out”?
Complicating matters for Cassius, his former telemarketing buddies and Detroit take on The Man by organizing a union. Cassius becomes both the butt of a viral YouTube video and estranged from his support system just as Worry Free’s founder (Armie Hammer) offers Cassius an even bigger opportunity. Finding slavery not profitable enough, Worry Free is about to launch what is horrifically called “the future of labor” – a sci-fi solution to create a work force “more durable and compliant” than human slaves. If Cassius decides to expose the atrocities, how will the public react?
Sorry to Bother You is the first feature as writer-director for Bay Area artist and rapper Boots Riley, It’s an impressive film debut for Riley, who has proven himself to be a first-rate social observer and satirist.
Lakeith Stanfield is excellent as the stoic, hunched Cassius, and so is the rest of the cast (Thompson, Glover, Steven Yuen, Omari Harwick, Germaine Fowler). Armie Hammer’s performance as the unapologetically monstrous entrepreneur is delicious. Kate Berlani sparkles as the new telemarketing “team leader”, who, having drank the Kool-Aid, spouts corporate management babble.
Sorry to Bother You is a riot – in the comedic sense and also as sociopolitical disruption. Nary a joke goes awry, from Detroit’s self-crafted earrings to the security code in the corporate elevator. And Riley plays a final joke for us (and on us) in the closing credits.
In the superb drama The Teacher, it’s the mid-1980s and the Iron Curtain is still defining Czechoslovakia; (The Teacher is a Czech movie in the Slovak language). The title character’s position as a high school teacher makes her a gatekeeper to the children’s futures, and she’s unaccountable because she’s a minor Communist Party functionary. Wielding blatant academic favoritism and even overt blackmail, she uses the advantage of her political status for her own petty benefit – coercing shopping errands, car rides, pastries and other favors from the parents of her students. Finally, she causes so much harm to one student that some of the parents rebel and seek her ouster.
Will the other parents support them? What of the parents who benefit from the regime? And what of the majority of the parents who must decide whether to risk their own futures? The risk is real: the regime has already reassigned one parent, a scientist, to a menial job after his wife had defected.
The Teacher benefits from a brilliant, award-winning performance from Zuzana Mauréry in the title role. What makes this character especially loathsome is that she’s not just heavy-handed, but grossly manipulative. Mauréry is a master at delivering reasonable words with both sweet civility and the unmistakable menace of the unspoken “or else”.
The acting from the entire company is exceptional, especially from Csongor Kassai, Martin Havelka and the Slovak director Peter Bebjak as aggrieved parents. Writer Petr Jarchovský has created textured, authentic characters. Director Jan Hrebejk not only keeps the story alive but adds some clever filmmaking fluorishes as he moves the story between flashbacks and the present.
The Teacher was the best foreign film at the 2017 Cinequest. It can now be streamed on Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.
Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie and Ben Foster in a scene from Debra Granik’s LEAVE NO TRACE. Courtesy of SFFILM.
Here is the best movie of 2018 – so far – the unforgettable coming of age film Leave No Trace. Ben Foster and Thomasin McKenzie star as a dad-daughter team who challenge conventional thinking about homelessness and healthy parenting. Leave No Trace is writer-director Debra Granik’s first narrative feature since her Winter’s Bone (which I had rated as the best film of 2010).
When we meet Will (Foster) and his daughter Tom (McKenzie), they are engaging in extremely low impact camping in a fern-rich Oregon forest, to the point of solar cooking foraged mushrooms on a mylar sheet. Dad and daughter are both survivalist experts and work together as a highly trained team. They have the fond, respectful, communicative relationship that most families with teen children aspire to but can only fantasize about.
But Will and Tom are not on vacation. They do not consider themselves homeless, because the forest is their home. However, their lifestyle just isn’t consistent with contemporary thinking about child welfare. Furthermore, living in a public park is illegal,and when they are discovered, social service authorities are understandably and justifiably concerned. Investigators find Tom to be medically and emotionally healthy, Will to be free of drug or alcohol abuse, and there has been no child abuse or neglect – other than having ones child living outdoors and not going to school.
Will is a veteran who has been scarred by his military service, and he is clearly anti-social. But Will is not your stereotypical PTSD-addled movie vet. He is a clear thinker. His behavior, which can range to the bizarre, is not impulsive but deliberate.
Fortunately, the Oregon, social services authorities are remarkably open-minded, and they place Will and Tom in a remote rural setting in their own house at a rural Christmas Tree farm. Will can work on the farm, Tom can go the school, and there’s a liberal non-denominational church filled with kind folks. It’s a massive accommodation to Will and Tom’s lifestyle, only with the additions of living under a roof and public education.
Tom blossoms with social contact, and particularly enjoys the local 4-H and one kid’s pet rabbit named Chainsaw. Tom begins to understand how much she needs human connection – and not just with her dad,
But Will can’t help but feel defeated. When Tom suggests that they try to adapt to their new setting, he scowls, “We’re wearing their clothes, we’re living in their house, we’re eating their food, we’re doing their work. We’ve adapted”. She argues, “Did you try?”, “Why are we doing this?”, and “Dad, this isn’t how it used to be”.
Ben is so damaged that his parenting can nurture Tom for only so long. Leave No Trace is about how he has raised her to this point. Has he imparted his demons to her? Has he helped her become strong and grounded enough to grow without him?
Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie and Ben Foster in a scene from Debra Granik’s LEAVE NO TRACE. Courtesy of SFFILM.
Winter’s Bone launched the career of Jennifer Lawrence, and Leave No Trace might do the same for newcomer Thomasin McKenzie. McKenzie is riveting as she authentically takes Tom from a parented child to an independent young woman. At the San Francisco International Film Festival screening, producer and co-writer Anne Rosellini said “there’s an ‘otherness’ to McKenzie,” who had “tremendous insight into the character”. Rosellini added that McKenzie and Ben Foster bonded before the shoot, as they rehearsed with a survivalist coach.
Foster is no stranger to troubled characters (The Messenger, Rampart, Hell or High Water). Here, he delivers a remarkably intense and contained performance as a man who will not allow himself an outburst no matter what turbulence roils inside him. Rosellini noted that “Will is elusive, a mysterious character to everybody”. It’s a performance that will be in the conversation about Oscar nominations. Actors Jeff Kober, Dale Dickey, Dana Millican and Isaiah Stone (the little brother in Winter’s Bone) are also excellent in smaller roles.
Leave No Trace is thoughtful and emotionally powerful. Superbly well-crafted and impeccably acted, it’s a Must See.
In the taut 76 minutes of Caesar Must Die, convicts in an Italian maximum security prison put on a performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Every year, there’s a drama laboratory at this prison. It turns out that Julius Caesar is a perfect choice.
Julius Caesar is, most of all, a play about high stakes. And high stakes, where a decision can result in life or death or power or failure or freedom or incarceration, is something these guys profoundly understand – and have had time to reflect upon. During rehearsal, one actor snaps at the director, “I’ve been in here for 20 tears, and you’re telling me not to waste time?”. When Cassius states that he has wagered his life on the outcome of one battle and lost, the line is more powerful because we know the actor playing Cassius is himself a lifer.
When the prisoners audition, we learn that their sentences range from 14 years to “life meaning life”. Most of them are naturalistic and very effective actors. The guy who plays Caesar is especially powerful in his acting and reacting.
The Julius Caesar story unfolds in black-and-white as the prisoners rehearse and then play the early scenes in the contemporary prison setting. Segments from the performance itself – about 15 minutes worth – are filmed in color.
It all works very well as a successful Shakespeare movie – and as a prison movie, too. Caesar Must Die is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.
The psychological thriller Prodigy begins with a psychologist (Richard Neil) being brought to a secret government “black site” to interview a dangerous prisoner. When he receives an orientation, he and we expect to see a superhuman sociopath like Hannibal Lector. But he enters the secure room to face a freckled-face nine-year-old girl (Savannah Liles). Her arms are pinned to her chair with restraints. We learn that there is an understandable reason for this.
She is abnormal in every way – in her super intelligence, in her telekinetic powers and in her capacity for performing monstrous and lethal acts. The two embark on a game of wits with very high stakes. There’s a deadline (literally) so the game is also a race against the clock.
It’s the first feature for writer-directors Alex Haughey and Brian Vidal. Haughey and Vidal have bet their movie, in large part, on the performance of a nine-year-old actor. Savannah Liles is exceptional as she ranges between a very smart little girl and a monstrous psychopath and between a vulnerable child and a person who has made herself invulnerable. It’s a very promising performance.
In the Cinequest program notes, Pia Chamberlain described Prodigy as “reminiscent of a cerebral episode of the Twilight Zone“, which is pretty apt. Just like the best of Rod Serling, Prodigy’s compact story-telling takes us to an environment that we can recognize, but which has different natural laws than the ones under which we operate.
Filmmakers have shocked us before with the juxtaposition of innocent looking children and their heinous deeds Sometimes those children have been created fundamentally evil (The Bad Seed, Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen) and sometimes possessed by evil (The Exorcist). Prodigy takes a different tack – exploring how a trauma can produce monstrous behavior and whether evil behavior is reversible.
Prodigy is a thinking person’s edge-of-the-seat thrill ride. I’m looking forward to the next work from Haughey and Vidal. Note that this trailer is in color, but the version of the movie that I screened at its world premiere at Cinequest was in black and white. You can now stream Prodigy on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Burt Reynolds and Ariel Winter in THE LAST MOVIE STAR
In The Last Movie Star, an aged action movie star (Burt Reynolds playing someone very similar to Burt Reynolds) examines his life choices. It’s very funny and sentimental (in a good way).
Burt plays a thinly disguised version of himself – a retired movie star named Vic Edwards, who had played halfback at Tennessee instead of Burt’s Florida State. The movie opens with opens with a clip of the 70s Burt from the Smokey and the Bandit era. But then there’s a stark cut to Burt today, looking every one of his eighty-two years. Vic is in a depressing veterinary waiting room, about to get bad news about his pet. We see that Vic lives a lonely existence, padding about his Beverly Hills home devoid of human recognition or contact.
Vic finds himself invited to be honored at a Nashville film festival. Flattered and excited, he flies off to find that, instead of a ego-boosting tribute, the festival unleashes one indignity after another. Humiliated and enraged, he goes on a rogue road trip to his hometown of Knoxville, where he gets the chance to reflect on his life and make an important amend.
His road trip partner is his film festival driver, a nightmare of Millennial self-absorption, drama and bad attitude played by Ariel Winter (Alex Dunphy in Modern Family). Winters’ character adds an Odd Couple thread to the comedy, and Winter brings down the house with a monologue on her history with psychotropic medication.
Director Adam Rifkin cleverly inserts the 82-year-old Burt into his own movies to interact with the 36-year-old Burt. We see Burt as one of the greatest guests ever on Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. And we see him in Deliverance, brandishing a bow-and-arrow and clad in a sleeveless neoprene vest – there has never been a more studly image in the history of cinema.
The key to Burt Reynolds’ appeal is that unique combination of virility, and charm, his stunning physicality leavened by his not taking himself too seriously. I’m ridiculously handsome, and isn’t that just ridiculous?
If you’re going to be sentimental, then be unashamedly sentimental. Rifkin takes this to heart, which makes The Last Movie Star so emotionally satisfying as well as so damn funny.
I saw The Last Movie Star at Cinequest, where it was warmly received by the festival audience. The Last Movie Star was released theatrically for about a minute-and-a-half (and on only ONE screen in the Bay Area). Fortunately, now you can stream it on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
A community of women in a traditional culture revolt in the delightfully smart and funny Israeli comedy The Women’s Balcony. The balcony in a small Jerusalem synagogue collapses, and the building is condemned. The old rabbi’s wife is seriously injured, and he suffers a trauma-induced psychotic breakdown. Just when it looks like the leaderless congregation will die, a young and charismatic rabbi (Avraham Aviv Alush) appears, enlivens the congregation and repairs the building. But he rebuilds the synagogue WITHOUT the women’s section. Profoundly disrespected, the synagogue’s women strike in protest.
The women live in a culture where males have all the power and religious authority trumps all. The women all have their individually distinct gifts, personalities and rivalries. But they all appreciate the injustice of the situation, and they are really pissed off. They are very creative in finding way to leverage the power that they do have, and the result is very, very funny.
This could have been a very broad comedy (and a Lysistrata knock-off). Instead, it’s richly textured, with an examination of ethical behavior and loving relationships. It’s also dotted with comments on the relations between Israeli Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox and on the importance of food in this culture. It’s the first – and very promising – feature for both director Emil Ben-Shimon and writer Shlomit Nehana.
THE WOMEN’S BALCONY
There are plenty LOL moments, including a scene where one of the congregants masquerades as the demented old rabbi to secure the needed psychotropic meds.
We soon understand that the young rabbi has a very unattractive side – grossly sexist and power-hungry. But he has seduced the men and then cows them by manipulating his religious authority. He’s tearing apart a closely bound community braided together by decades of deep friendship and inter-reliance. The movie turns on whether the men can recognize when his supposed righteousness veers into what is really unethical and, in one pivotal scene with the old rabbi, indecent.
Two of the male characters, deeply in love with their women, step up and do the right thing. This overt comedy has a very a romantic core.
Most of all, The Women’s Balcony is about mature relationships. Most of these couples have been married for decades, especially the couple at the core of the story, Ettie (Evein Hagoel) and Zion (Igal Naor). Ben-Shimon and Nehana prove themselves to be keen and insightful observers of long-lasting relationships.
A righteous man must keep his woman happy. This may not be written in the Holy Scriptures, but it’s damn useful advice. (It also helps, we learn, if he can make a mean fruit salad.) The longer you’ve been married, the funnier you’ll find The Women’s Balcony. The Women’s Balcony is available to stream from Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Friday, May 18, you can see Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story on PBS’ American Masters. This is the riveting biopic of a glamorous movie star who invented and patented the precursor to wireless technology; that’s amazing enough, but Bombshell delves deeply into how Lamarr’s stunning face, her Jewish heritage, and mid-century gender roles shaped her career, marriages and parenting. Top notch.
In the last few years, one totally unexpected aspect of Lamarr’s life has become more well-known. She was a tinkerer/inventor who co-invented a radio guidance system for submarine torpedos, which she donated to the US military. The US Navy used this technology in WW II. Modern blue tooth technology stems directly from her innovation. Today her patent would be worth billions.
Bombshell adds layer upon layer to this tale of beauty and brains, as it traces Lamarr’s remarkable life. Hedy Lamarr had no control over being born a woman, being born to Jewish parents and being born to be a beauty. These three accidents of birth set the parameters of her journey – granting her access to some professional opportunities and stunting others, even threatening her life.
She burst into celebrity – and notoriety – at age 19, as the star of the film Ecstasy. Not only was Hedy the first actress filmed in full frontal nudity, she was the first screen actress to portray female orgasms. She was soon the young trophy wife of an Austrian industrialist, a formidable and fearsome supplier of munitions to Hitler. Hedy’s life seemed headed along the Bimbo Track, but she realized that her husband was powerful enough to keep her trapped in the marriage, but not powerful enough to protect her from the Nazis. At this point, she orchestrated an international escape that is the stuff of thrillers.
At age 24, often nominated as the most beautiful woman in the world, she launched a Hollywood career. Professional ups and downs, marriages and affairs and children followed, along with her work in technology.
Her beauty was often a blessing and sometimes a curse, but always affected her trajectory. Someone that beautiful is just different – the rest of us can’t help our reactions to her. But how many times can you be a trophy wife?
She was a person who survived troubling times, which left scars on her. How Hedy handled her Jewishness, how she raised her kids and how she was treated by the military are unsettling. Documentarian Alexandra Dean, Bombshell’s writer-director brings us witnesses, including Hedy’s children, to deliver an inside peek at a real life that would not be believable as a work of fiction.
I saw Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story last summer at the 2017 San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SJFF). It’s playing tomorrow night on PBS’ American Masters series.
