Parallel Maze

CINEQUEST 2014: festival recap

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IDA
IDA

A deep selection of comedies, international cinema and spotlight films combined for a very strong program at Cinequest 2014. My pick for the festival’s best film is the Polish drama Ida. Although not all of the films engaged me, the only bad movie this year was the incoherent Chinese thriller Parallel Maze.

COMEDIES

This year, Cinequest programmed 22 comedy features (which seems like an unusually high number), and that paid off with some of the festival’s most popular films. I thought the funniest was the dark, dark Hungarian comedy Heavenly Shift about a rogue ambulance crew. Probably two of the top four most popular movies at Cinequest (along with Ida and the Canadian weeper Down River) were the opening night’s The Grand Seduction and the Israeli caper comedy Hunting Elephants. The American indie satire Friended to Death (which had its world premiere at Cinequest) also broke through – and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it soon in theatrical release.

INTERNATIONAL CINEMA

As I said, my pick for best film at Cinequest was Ida, about a Polish novice nun in 1962 who, just before she takes her vows, learns that she is the child of Jewish Holocaust victims. Also remarkable for its authentic and textured characters was the Slovenian classroom drama Class Enemy. And, of course, Heavenly Shift from Hungary and Hunting Elephants from Israel were festival highlights.

Once again, it’s just impossible to give too much credit to Cinequest’s international programmer Charlie Cockey. Unfortunately, just before the fest, Charlie developed a cough that kept him home in Brno, Czech Republic, so we missed him here in San Jose. Before the fest, I profiled Charlie with Cinequest’s Charlie Cockey: The Man Who Goes to Film Festivals.

SPOTLIGHT FILMS

Cinequest’s program of spotlight films are the bigger movies that are screened just once, usually at the California Theatre. In the past these have included some celebrity-driven events that have been the weakest links in the fest (only Grand Piano fit this profile in 2014).  But, over all, in the 2014 Cinequest, the spotlight films sparkled, especially: The Grand Seduction, Mystery Road, Words and Pictures, Teenage, Unforgiven and Dom Hemingway.  Cinequest also gets a lot of cred for having LA Times critic Kenneth Turan introduce last year’s Bay Area masterpiece Fruitvale Station.  In 2014’s Cinequest, you could do well just by showing up to the California Theatre every night at 7 PM.

For my comments on over 20 of this year’s Cinequest movies, see my CINEQUEST 2014 page.

photo courtesy of The Wife
photo courtesy of The Wife

Cinequest: Parallel Maze

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Parallel MazeThe Chinese thriller Parallel Maze tries to be Psycho with parallel universes thrown in.  Unhappily, it is a shoddy and incoherent film.  Here’s how you could end up with Parallel Maze: show an eighth grader Upstream Color, hand him a digital camera along with 200 bucks and tell him, “Make THAT”.

Ed Wood is alive, and he is Chinese.  Parallel Maze employs – from time to time and for seemingly no reason – every conceivable film effect: shaky cam, jump cuts, split screen even animation.  It’s all just kinda thrown up there. And in the Psycho like shower scene, you can tell right away which character is the slasher, which fatally dilutes the impact.

It’s clear that the filmmakers are movie lovers – besides a movie-within-the-movie and the explicit homage to Psycho, there are references to movies from Love Story to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.  The parallel threads of the story’s structure and the movie references were a promising start, but the low production values and random filmmaking techniques are just too distracting.

I saw Parallel Maze at its world premiere at Cinequest.

Best Bets at Cinequest

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HEAVENLY SHIFT
HEAVENLY SHIFT

17 movies to watch for at Cinequest:

Most likely to be crowd pleasers:

  • The Grand Seduction: In Cinequest’s opening night film, Brendan Gleeson (In Bruges, The Guard, The General, Braveheart) and Gordon Pinsent (Away from Her) play isolated Canadians try to snooker a young doctor (Taylor Kitsch of Friday Night Lights) into settling in their podunk village.
  • Friended to Death: Bromantic comedy about a jerk who fakes his own death to see how many of his social media “friends” will attend his funeral.  Very funny.
  • Words and Pictures: Romantic comedy starring Clive Owen and the ever-radiant Juliette Binoche as sparring teachers.
  • Dom Hemingway: Jude Law and Richard E. Grant star as two cheesy British hoods in a reportedly funny and fast-paced crime caper. Opens widely in theaters in April.
  • Unforgiven: the Japanese remake of Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-winning Unforgiven  starring Ken Watanabe (Inception, The Last Samurai, Letters from Iwo Jima).   Since Clint’s career was boosted by a remake of Yojimbo (A Fistful of Dollars), it’s fitting that his Unforgiven is remade  as a samurai film.
  • Fruitvale Station: the masterpiece debut from Bay Area filmmaker Ryan Coogler, introduced by LA Times and NPR Morning Edition movie critic Kenneth Turan.

Most promising foreign entries:

  • Ida: This Polish story of a young nun who learns that she is the survivor of a Jewish family killed in the Holocaust won the International Critics’ Award at the Toronto International Film Festival.
  • The Verdict:  This Belgian drama won Best Director at the Montreal Film Festival.  I’ll be writing about The Verdict early this week.
  • The Illiterate:  Paulina Garcia, the star of the popular Gloria, stars in this metaphorical emotional Chilean drama.
  • Class Enemy: You’ll be rocked by this classroom drama, Slovenia’s entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar.  I’ll be writing about Class Enemy early this week.
  • Heavenly Shift: A hilariously dark (very dark) Hungarian comedy about a rogue ambulance crew with a financial incentive to deliver its patients dead on arrival.  I howled at Heavenly Shift, and I’ll be writing about it early this week.
  • Zoran: My Nephew the Idiot: OK, this Italian comedy has a great title, and it was a hit at the Venice Film Festival.  I’ll be writing about Zoran before its US Premiere.

Documentaries:

  • Teenage: Great subject material: chronicling that 20th century American phenomenon – the evolution of “the teenager”.
  • Sex(ed): The Movie: Sampling Sex Ed instructional films from 1910 through today.  Should be a howl.  May be thoughtful, too.  World Premiere at Cinequest.

Something you haven’t seen before:

  • Happenings on the Eighth Day: This is a pure art film, juxtaposing the attempts to create art against forces seeking to censor or obliterate it.  Filmed in the Bay Area by Iranian filmmakers. World Premiere at Cinequest.
  • The Circle Within: A Turkish fable that turns into a psychological drama.  Not a favorite of mine, but it provides a rare glimpse into the Kurdish religion of yezidism.

Here’s the Cinequest program and ticket information.