We’ve completed a strong Cinequest 2016, and I’ve seen 36 feature films. All of my features on this year’s fest , along with recommendations on over twenty Cinequest 2016 films are on my CINEQUEST page. Here are the festival highlights (and lowlights).
PERSONAL FAVORITE: I loved writer-director Chris Scheuerman’s brilliant debut – the highly original psychological thriller Lost Solace.
BEST OF THE FEST: The Memory of Water: This Chilean drama explores grief, its process and its impact and was the most masterful filmmaking achievement at Cinequest 2016. Exquisite.
BIG MOVIES: The selection of this year’s Spotlight Films, the prime-time movies shown at the California Theatre, may have been Cinequest’s most successful ever. Cinequest programmers led off with a home run with the Opening Night rouser Eye in the Sky, the thriller-meets-thinker from Oscar-winning director Gavin Hood. The screening was preceded by Cinequest co-founder Halfdan Hussey’s interview of Hood, which was probably also the best ever on-stage interview in festival history.
The Cinequest audience also loved the next Spotlight Film, the Norwegian disaster movie The Wave. Arnaud Desplechin’s affecting coming of age film My Golden Days was also popular. I liked James Franco and loved Ed Harris in The Adderall Diaries. Cinequest’s Closing Night feature, the Australian drama The Daughter, packed a powerfully emotional punch.
BIGGEST SENSATION: The hard-hitting and often excruciating Love Is All You Need?, the exploration of homophobic bullying and hate crimes, will be the Cinequest film that gets the most national attention.
MOST IMPRESSIVE DEBUT: Along with Lost Solace, I was also impressed by Chris Brown’s The Other Kids and Lori Stoll’s Heaven’s Floor.
BEST FOREIGN FILM: Along with The Memory of Water, I most admired Magallanes, a Peruvian psychological drama about those wrongs that cannot be righted. Magallanes won the jury award for international cinema. I also enjoyed the sex, intrigue and murder in the operatic Hungarian period drama Demimonde.
COMEDY: There really wasn’t a Can’t Miss comedy this year, but fans of absurdist deadpan comedy had The Modern Project and Lost in Munich. My Guilty Pleasure was the deliciously low brow A Beginner’s Guide to Snuff.
BEST ROMANCE: We don’t always have an extremely strong romance at the festival, but the Hungarian Fever at Dawn was just that – an urgent period romance between Holocaust survivors, with an unexpected nugget at the end.
BEST DOCUMENTARY: If I had to pick just one, it would be Chuck Norris vs. Communism, but I also liked Dan and Margot, The Promised Band and The Brainwashing of My Dad.
WORST OF THE FEST: Thankfully, there were not many stinkers at this year’s fest, but Remember Me was a disappointing clunker and The Blackcoat’s Daughter was utterly wretched.
See you at Cinequest 2017.
