Jakki Jandrell and Phillip Andre Botello in FALLEN DRIVE. Courtesy of Cinequest.
The neo-noir thriller Fallen Drive begins with some 20-somethings congregating in a suburban Airbnb ranch house, having returned to their hometown for a high school reunion. It looks like the successful Liam is really more interested in reuniting with his mysteriously estranged younger brother Dustin. Tightly wound Charlie (Jakki Jandrell) and her boyfriend Reese (Phillip Andre Botello) arrive, and it’s apparent that they have an agenda that could be more grim than drinking with high school buddies.
Soon we are enmeshed in revenge noir, in a variation of the perfect crime film. Things get more intense – and more unpredictable – as the story evolves. There are Hitchcockian touches – he suspects us.
Fallen Drive is written and directed by Nick Cassidy (who also plays Liam) and David Rice; it’s the first feature for both. A very strong screenplay elevates Fallen Drive from the paint-by-numbers thriller we see so often. Here Cassidy and Rice have made the characters complicated and added some ambiguity to the back story. There are subtle hints about the relationships of Liam and Dustin and of Reese and Charlie, and the audience is asked to fill in the blanks. You’ll never guess the two characters driving off together at the end.
There’s also a minor character who still parties too much, who could have been written merely for comic relief; but Cassidy and Rice make it clear that his alcoholism has left him immature – that’s why he behaves like a jerk.
The performances are strong. Jandrell is superb as the coiled Charlie. Donald Clark Jr. is also excellent as Dustin, who the others have always found creepy. Cassidy makes for a sufficiently smirky Liam.
An uncommonly textured revenge thriller, Fallen Drive should be a crowd-pleaser. Cinequest is hosting the world premiere of Fallen Drive.
In the absorbing crime thriller The Whistlers, Cristi (Vlad Ivanov) is a shady Romanian cop who is lured into a dangerous plot by the rapturously sexy Gilda (Catrinel Marlon) and the promise of a fortune. A lethal Spanish mafia is planning a Perfect Crime to recover the loot stolen by Gilda and her Romanian partner, Zsolt. Only Zslot knows where the treasure is, and he’s been jailed by Cristi’s colleagues. To beat the omnipresent surveillance of Romanian state security, Cristi is sent to La Gomera, an island in the Spanish Canary Islands to learn a whistling language.
A whistling language? Indeed, residents of La Gomera can communicate by whistling in code. The language is called Silbo Gomera and it was already being used in ancient Roman times. The whistling can be heard for up to two miles, which allows the locals to communicate across the impassable ravines on the mountainous island.
The plan to spring Zsolt depends on Cristi learning Silbo Gomera and then implementing an intricate plan in which nothing can go wrong. Even if the plan goes right, Cristi and Gilda run the very real risk of being killed by the pitiless Spanish mafia or by the corrupt and unaccountable Romanian cops. Cristi and Gilda are walking a tightrope of treachery.
Vlad Ivanov in THE WHISTLERS
The Whistlers is written and directed by Corneliu Porumboiu, who is a master of the deadpan. Two of his earlier films became art house hits in the US, 12:08 East of Bucharest and Police, Adjective. Both of those films explored fundamental corruption in Romanian society as a legacy of the communist era..
Cristi is played by Romanian actor Vlad Ivanov. Ivanov is best known for the Romanian masterpiece 4 Days, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, in which he played one of cinema’s most repellent characters – Mr. Bebe, the sexual harassing abortionist. American audiences have also seen Ivanov’s performances in Police, Adjective and Snowpiercer.
Ivanov excels in playing Everyman piñatas, which serves him well in The Whistlers. Ivanov delivered a tour de force in the 2019 Cinequest film Hier, as a man more and more consumed by puzzles, and increasingly perplexed, dogged, battered and exhausted.
For The Whistlers to work, Catrinel Marlon must make Gilda quick-thinking and gutsy, and she pulls it off. She is very good, as is Rodica Lazar as Cristi’s coldly ruthless boss Magda.
This is a Romanian film with dialogue in Romanian, English, Spanish and, of course, whistling. The Whistlers, a top notch crime thriller, can be streamed from Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Michael Olavson in FOX HUNT DRIVE, premiering at Cinequest. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.
In the thriller Fox Hunt Drive, Alison (Lizzie Zerebko) is an architect whose career has been stymied by an unfair blackballing; she works as a rideshare driver at night to make the rent and subsidize her futile daytime job search. She picks up a ride (Michael Olavson) who may be a serial killer, and we’re all off on one wild ride.
The rider is anything but the wild-eyed Charlie Manson type. He is polite, professional and contained, and he doesn’t show any sign of compulsivity. But Alison finds some disturbing evidence in his bag…
So, here we have a woman alone, driving around deserted streets at night with a killer in the back seat, and the audience is screaming “Get away! Get away!” But she doesn’t.
This sets up a massive plot twist. Setting up this turn of events so that it’s credible as well as gobsmacking requires some ingenuity, so kudos to screenwriters Adam Armstrong and Marcus Devivo and director Drew Walkup.
Cinequest will host the world premiere of Fox Hunt Drive.
Maja Stojan in 3 DAY WEEKEND. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.
The inventively constructed thriller 3 Day Weekend is a storytelling triumph for writer-director Wyatt McDill and a taut 80 minutes of gripping entertainment.
3 Day Weekend begins with a lovelorn Millennial doofus, Ben, on a solo camping trip. Despite a noticeable lack of outdoor skills, Ben pitches his tent in the woods near a remote lake; but other people arrive, and everything that Ben witnesses tells him that he has blundered into a kidnapping in progress, and, possibly, a murder. But all is not as it seems…
We follow what Ben sees for 29 minutes, and then the point of view shifts to that of a second character. The added vantage point provides the audience with more puzzle pieces, and we start understanding that the story is going in another direction. Then a third character, and, finally a fourth, add layers to complete the story.
McDill even takes us from one crime subgenre to another – is this a peril-and-rescue film, a heist movie, a tragic neo-noir or a perfect crime flick?
And McDill tells his story with hardly any dialogue – and essentially none in the first half of the movie, unless you count grunts. The actors – Maya Stojan, Morgan Krantz, Nathan Phillips and Scott MacDonald – ably tell the story without many lines.
This isn’t exactly like Rashomon, where each character’s perspective shapes the facts differently. In 3 Day Weekend, the facts are all the same; it’s just that some characters come to the story knowing things that others don’t, and some characters experience events that others miss.
There’s plenty of humor slyly embedded in this tale, chiefly in the foibles of the male characters. Plus there are two tattoos that the audience will not be expecting.
McDill also cleverly uses the time-stamped notifications and texts from smart phones to set and reset the timeline of the story threads.
This is an ingenuously-constructed story. Cinequest hosts the world premiere of 3 Day Weekend.
The 1969 French neo-noir The Sicilian Clan is an exemplar of noir’s Perfect Crime sub-genre – they’re going to get away with the elaborately planned big heist EXCEPT FOR ONE THING. In this case, the one thing is Sicilian macho pride.
There’s an inventive jail break, an exciting boudoir escape and an impossibly brilliant heist plan. There’s also a great scene with a kid and his toy gun. The suspense tightens even more when a minor character’s wife unexpectedly shows up and threatens to derail the heist again and again.
Most of all, director Henri Verneuil knew that he had three unbeatable cards to play, and he got the most from them:
Alain Delon – Impossibly handsome and dashing, no one ever removed their sunglasses with more of a flourish than Delon. Delon was in his early thirties, and at the peak of his string of crime movie vehicles, after Anybody Can Win and Le Samourai and before Le Cercle Rouge and The Gypsy.
Lino Ventura – One of the most watchable French stars, Ventura’s bloodhound face had been reshaped by his earlier career as a professional wrestler. Here, he’s the guy you’re drawn to whenever he’s on-screen.
Jean Gabin – Probably the greatest male French movie star ever, Gabin had dominated prewar French cinema with Pepe LeMoko, La Grande Illusion, Port of Shadows and Le Bete Humaine. After the war, he aged into noir (Touchez Pas aux Grisbi) and, in the 1960s, into neo-noir. Gabin oozed a seasoned cool (like Bogart) and imparted a stately gravitas to his noir and neo-noir characters.
In The Sicilian Clan, Delon plays the reckless hood in over his head. Gabin plays the crime boss who is exploiting him. And Ventura plays the cagey detective after them both.
Here’s a nice touch – the highly professional gang brings in an outsider who is a hopeless drunk. What is his specialty and why do they need him? When we find out during the final heist, it’s a stunner that no one could see coming.
The whistling and boings in the offbeat score tell us that it’s the work of Ennio Morricone in his Spaghetti Western period; I’m a Morricone fan, but this is not one of his best.
The Sicilian Clan is not a classic. The dialogue is grossly clichéd. There is not a single ordinary looking woman in the film. An obligatory tryst is tiresomely predictable and made worse by the score’s wacky, clanging music.
But the plot, while contrived, is well-contrived. And the combination of Delon, Ventura and Gabin will make almost anything work. You can watch The Sicilian Clan at the Castro Theatre during Noir City 2017, or stream it from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
[Note: In our post 9/11 world, audiences will feel uneasy when a hijacked airplane flies low over the Manhattan skyscrapers.]
For the second straight week, my DVD/Stream recommendation is the superb Hell or High Water.
Toby: “You’re talkin’ like you don’t think we’re going to get away with it.”
Tanner: “I never met anyone who got away with anything.”
The character-driven crime drama Hell or High Water is remarkably atmospheric and gripping, and I have it at the very top of my Best Movies of 2016 – So Far. As it begins, we think we’re watching a very well-made film about white trash losers on a crime spree, but eventually, as we understand how original the characters are and how intricate the plot is, we understand that we’re watching a triumph of the perfect crime genre – and with an embedded political point of view. Screenwriter Taylor Sheridan, an actor who wrote last year’s Sicario, has proven that he is an artist of uncommon depth.
Director David Mackenzie imbues Hell or High Water with an astonishing sense of time (the present) and place (rural West Texas). The story is set in the dusty flatlands between Lubbock and Wichita Falls (shot just over the border in eastern New Mexico). Mackenzie employs Giles Nuttgens’ cinematography and the music, some composed by Nick Cave, to evoke an environment that is rich in horizons but, except in the bursts of occasional oil booms, dirt poor in every way. He begins Hell or High Water with a 360 degree shot of a bank branch parking lot with a teller sneaking the last cigarette before her shift; the starkness and anonymity of the dying downtown immerses us right where Mackenzie wants us.
It’s a place where people know the difference between Dr. Pepper and Mr. Pibb – and it’s important. It’s also a place where many civilians are gun-totin’, which adds a whole new element to the average bank robbery.
Toby (Chris Pine) and Tanner (Ben Foster) are brothers. Toby is the more complex – both poorly educated and wise. While Toby takes personal responsibility for the bad choices of his youth that have ruined a marriage and left him unable to contribute to the future of his two sons, he appreciates that generational poverty and the economic system have stacked the odds against him. Toby cared for his dying mother and is now committed to making things right for his sons and ex-wife; he is highly moral but he’s not about to follow rules that he sees as unjust. He looks like another unemployed oilfield roughneck, but he’s surprisingly cagey and strategic.
Tanner is the classic lowlife psychopath, whose impulses have always led him into trouble with the law. Asked “How have you stayed out of jail for a year?”, Tanner replies, “It’s been difficult.” He’s also a little smarter and lot more charming than he looks, but it’s clear that he is destined for a bad end.
Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges), an aged Texas ranger who is three weeks from retirement, is on the brothers’ trail. Marcus is an astute and unsentimental student of human behavior. Marcus relishes a good whodunit, and the wheels in his mind are always turning. His partner Alberto (Gil Birmingham) offers that, for a happy retirement “you’ll need someone to outsmart”. Indeed, it’s from Marcus, not the brothers themselves, that we learn that the bank robbers are likely raising money for some cause, against some deadline
In Hell or High Water, the banks are the real robbers. Marcus spots a bank manager with “Now this looks like a man who could foreclose on a house”. In the world of Bonnie and Clyde, victims of the Depression lost farms to foreclosure, but many banks failed, too; that movie’s anti-heroes were misfits like Tanner. In the world of Hell or High Water, the game is fixed so that the banks can’t fail, and so banking is just legalized criminality.
Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham in HELL OR HIGH WATER
Hell or High Water is exceptionally well-acted. This is the best work so far by Chris Pine (Kirk in Star Trek). Ben Foster, unsurprisingly, nails the Born To Lose character of Tanner. Gil Birmingham (Billy Black in the Twilight movies) is stellar as Marcus’ reflective and long-suffering partner Alberto. Jeff Bridges has matured into a master actor who delivers absolute perfection and makes it look effortless.
And the high quality performances just keep coming throughout Hell or High Water. The film opens with nice turns by Dale Dickey (unforgettable in Winter’s Bone) and veteran Buck Taylor. Marin Ireland is excellent as Toby’s ex-wife, and Margaret Bowman sparks a diner scene as the world’s most authoritarian waitress. Katy Mixon is Oscar-worthy in a role as a waitress who may long for companionship, but really, really needs to keep her tip; I just hope enough people see this movie and experience Mixon’s eyes narrowing and gleaming with resolve.
While Jeff Bridges is reason enough to see Hell or High Water, all of its elements add up to a masterpiece. Not that Chris Pine needs a star-making breakthrough performance, but Hell or High Water certainly proves that he can carry a better movie than Hollywood franchises allow. I’m going to see Hell or High Water again; then I’m going to line up to see Taylor Sheridan’s next film, whatever and whenever that will be.
Hell or High Water is now available to rent on DVD from Netflix and to stream from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Toby: “You’re talkin’ like you don’t think we’re going to get away with it.”
Tanner: “I never met anyone who got away with anything.”
The character-driven crime drama Hell or High Water is remarkably atmospheric and gripping, and I have it at the very top of my Best Movies of 2016 – So Far. As it begins, we think we’re watching a very well-made film about white trash losers on a crime spree, but eventually, as we understand how original the characters are and how intricate the plot is, we understand that we’re watching a triumph of the perfect crime genre – and with an embedded political point of view. Screenwriter Taylor Sheridan, an actor who wrote last year’s Sicario, has proven that he is an artist of uncommon depth.
Director David Mackenzie imbues Hell or High Water with an astonishing sense of time (the present) and place (rural West Texas). The story is set in the dusty flatlands between Lubbock and Wichita Falls (shot just over the border in eastern New Mexico). Mackenzie employs Giles Nuttgens’ cinematography and the music, some composed by Nick Cave, to evoke an environment that is rich in horizons but, except in the bursts of occasional oil booms, dirt poor in every way. He begins Hell or High Water with a 360 degree shot of a bank branch parking lot with a teller sneaking the last cigarette before her shift; the starkness and anonymity of the dying downtown immerses us right where Mackenzie wants us.
It’s a place where people know the difference between Dr. Pepper and Mr. Pibb – and it’s important. It’s also a place where many civilians are gun-totin’, which adds a whole new element to the average bank robbery.
Toby (Chris Pine) and Tanner (Ben Foster) are brothers. Toby is the more complex – both poorly educated and wise. While Toby takes personal responsibility for the bad choices of his youth that have ruined a marriage and left him unable to contribute to the future of his two sons, he appreciates that generational poverty and the economic system have stacked the odds against him. Toby cared for his dying mother and is now committed to making things right for his sons and ex-wife; he is highly moral but he’s not about to follow rules that he sees as unjust. He looks like another unemployed oilfield roughneck, but he’s surprisingly cagey and strategic.
Tanner is the classic lowlife psychopath, whose impulses have always led him into trouble with the law. Asked “How have you stayed out of jail for a year?”, Tanner replies, “It’s been difficult.” He’s also a little smarter and lot more charming than he looks, but it’s clear that he is destined for a bad end.
Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges), an aged Texas ranger who is three weeks from retirement, is on the brothers’ trail. Marcus is an astute and unsentimental student of human behavior. Marcus relishes a good whodunit, and the wheels in his mind are always turning. His partner Alberto (Gil Birmingham) offers that, for a happy retirement “you’ll need someone to outsmart”. Indeed, it’s from Marcus, not the brothers themselves, that we learn that the bank robbers are likely raising money for some cause, against some deadline
In Hell or High Water, the banks are the real robbers. Marcus spots a bank manager with “Now this looks like a man who could foreclose on a house”. In the world of Bonnie and Clyde, victims of the Depression lost farms to foreclosure, but many banks failed, too; that movie’s anti-heroes were misfits like Tanner. In the world of Hell or High Water, the game is fixed so that the banks can’t fail, and so banking is just legalized criminality.
Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham in HELL OR HIGH WATER
Hell or High Water is exceptionally well-acted. This is the best work so far by Chris Pine (Kirk in Star Trek). Ben Foster, unsurprisingly, nails the Born To Lose character of Tanner. Gil Birmingham (Billy Black in the Twilight movies) is stellar as Marcus’ reflective and long-suffering partner Alberto. Jeff Bridges has matured into a master actor who delivers absolute perfection and makes it look effortless.
And the high quality performances just keep coming throughout Hell or High Water. The film opens with nice turns by Dale Dickey (unforgettable in Winter’s Bone) and veteran Buck Taylor. Marin Ireland is excellent as Toby’s ex-wife, and Margaret Bowman sparks a diner scene as the world’s most authoritarian waitress. Katy Mixon is Oscar-worthy in a role as a waitress who may long for companionship, but really, really needs to keep her tip; I just hope enough people see this movie and experience Mixon’s eyes narrowing and gleaming with resolve.
While Jeff Bridges is reason enough to see Hell or High Water, all of its elements add up to a masterpiece. Not that Chris Pine needs a star-making breakthrough performance, but Hell or High Water certainly proves that he can carry a better movie than Hollywood franchises allow. I’m going to see Hell or High Water again; then I’m going to line up to see Taylor Sheridan’s next film, whatever and whenever that will be.
Hell or High Water is now available to rent on DVD from Netflix and to stream from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Toby: “You’re talkin’ like you don’t think we’re going to get away with it.”
Tanner: “I never met anyone who got away with anything.”
The character-driven crime drama Hell or High Water is remarkably atmospheric and gripping, and I’ll be putting it at the very top of my Best Movies of 2016 – So Far. As it begins, we think we’re watching a very well-made film about white trash losers on a crime spree, but eventually, as we understand how original the characters are and how intricate the plot is, we understand that we’re watching a triumph of the perfect crime genre – and with an embedded political point of view. Screenwriter Taylor Sheridan, an actor who wrote last year’s Sicario, has proven that he is an artist of uncommon depth.
Director David Mackenzie imbues Hell or High Water with an astonishing sense of time (the present) and place (rural West Texas). The story is set in the dusty flatlands between Lubbock and Wichita Falls (shot just over the border in eastern New Mexico). Mackenzie employs Giles Nuttgens’ cinematography and the music, some composed by Nick Cave, to evoke an environment that is rich in horizons but, except in the bursts of occasional oil booms, dirt poor in every way. He begins Hell or High Water with a 360 degree shot of a bank branch parking lot with a teller sneaking the last cigarette before her shift; the starkness and anonymity of the dying downtown immerses us right where Mackenzie wants us.
It’s a place where people know the difference between Dr. Pepper and Mr. Pibb – and it’s important. It’s also a place where many civilians are gun-totin’, which adds a whole new element to the average bank robbery.
Toby (Chris Pine) and Tanner (Ben Foster) are brothers. Toby is the more complex – both poorly educated and wise. While Toby takes personal responsibility for the bad choices of his youth that have ruined a marriage and left him unable to contribute to the future of his two sons, he appreciates that generational poverty and the economic system have stacked the odds against him. Toby cared for his dying mother and is now committed to making things right for his sons and ex-wife; he is highly moral but he’s not about to follow rules that he sees as unjust. He looks like another unemployed oilfield roughneck, but he’s surprisingly cagey and strategic.
Tanner is the classic lowlife psychopath, whose impulses have always led him into trouble with the law. Asked “How have you stayed out of jail for a year?”, Tanner replies, “It’s been difficult.” He’s also a little smarter and lot more charming than he looks, but it’s clear that he is destined for a bad end.
Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges), an aged Texas ranger who is three weeks from retirement, is on the brothers’ trail. Marcus is an astute and unsentimental student of human behavior. Marcus relishes a good whodunit, and the wheels in his mind are always turning. His partner Alberto (Gil Birmingham) offers that, for a happy retirement “you’ll need someone to outsmart”. Indeed, it’s from Marcus, not the brothers themselves, that we learn that the bank robbers are likely raising money for some cause, against some deadline
In Hell or High Water, the banks are the real robbers. Marcus spots a bank manager with “Now this looks like a man who could foreclose on a house”. In the world of Bonnie and Clyde, victims of the Depression lost farms to foreclosure, but many banks failed, too; that movie’s anti-heroes were misfits like Tanner. In the world of Hell or High Water, the game is fixed so that the banks can’t fail, and so banking is just legalized criminality.
Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham in HELL OR HIGH WATER
Hell or High Water is exceptionally well-acted. This is the best work so far by Chris Pine (Kirk in Star Trek). Ben Foster, unsurprisingly, nails the Born To Lose character of Tanner. Gil Birmingham (Billy Black in the Twilight movies) is stellar as Marcus’ reflective and long-suffering partner Alberto. Jeff Bridges has matured into a master actor who delivers absolute perfection and makes it look effortless.
And the high quality performances just keep coming throughout Hell or High Water. The film opens with nice turns by Dale Dickey (unforgettable in Winter’s Bone) and veteran Buck Taylor. Marin Ireland is excellent as Toby’s ex-wife, and Margaret Bowman sparks a diner scene as the world’s most authoritarian waitress. Katy Mixon is Oscar-worthy in a role as a waitress who may long for companionship, but really, really needs to keep her tip; I just hope enough people see this movie and experience Mixon’s eyes narrowing and gleaming with resolve.
While Jeff Bridges is reason enough to see Hell or High Water, all of its elements add up to a masterpiece. Not that Chris Pine needs a star-making breakthrough performance, but Hell or High Water certainly proves that he can carry a better movie than Hollywood franchises allow. I’m going to see Hell or High Water again; then I’m going to line up to see Taylor Sheridan’s next film, whatever and whenever that will be.
