The Movie Gourmet’s 2024 Oscar Dinner

And here us the 2024 edition of The Movie Gourmet’s annual Oscar Dinner (explained yesterday). Here is this year’s complete menu:

Whiskey

  • Killers of the Flower Moon: Whiskey just keeps showing up, from King (Robert De Niro) greeting Ernest (Leonardo DiCaprio) with a glass to Mollie (Lily Gladstone) bringing out the good stuff to entertain Ernest.
  • The Holdovers: In The Holdovers, Paul is a bourbonaholic, who usually drinks Jim Beam, and he buys a pint in the Boston liquor store. (I’m a fan of The Holdovers, but not Jim Beam).
  • Past Lives: The film is bookended a scene in a New York City bar with the three main characters; Arthut (John Maguro) is drinking an Old Fashioned.
  • Oppenheimer: The flask keeps showing up – and in the 1940s US, it’s gotta contain whiskey.

Pasta:

  • Anatomy of a Fall: Defense attorney Vincent fixes spaghetti when first visiting Sandra (Sandra Huller) after her husband falls to his death. It’s a simple, light colored pasta like cacio a pepe or alla Gricia, and that’s what I’ll be preparing.
  • Past Lives: Given the choice of any cuisine available in New York City, Hae Sung requests pasta, so Nora and Arthur take him to an Italian restaurant where there have pasta with a red sauce.
  • American Fiction: Monk (Jeffrey Wright) and Coraline (Erika Alexander) are preparing a pasta dinner at her place, when their relationship takes a turn.

To go salad in a deli clamshell from American Fiction: Monk is at a hotel conference center to serve on a panel judging books for a literary prize. At the lunch break, he grabs a clamshell salad instead of a wrapped sandwich, which just perfectly fits the character.

Toast and milk from Barbie: Barbie (Margot Robbie) holds a piece of toast and a cup of milk (but doesn’t actually CONSUME them because she’s made of plastic, after all).

Chinese takeout from Maestro: Lenny (Bradley Cooper) and Felicia (Carey Mulligan) enjoy this Manhattan staple in their Upper West Side apartment with their artsy, intellectual friends.

Pasteis de nata from Poor Things: Belle (Emma Stone) gets addicted to these delectable Portuguese egg custards as she matures into having really good taste. The best pasteis de nata in the Western Hemisphere are from Adega in San Jose, but we had to make our own poor substitute.

German pastry from Zone of Interest: This is from the scene when Hedwig (Sandra Huller) is impressing her mother with the lifestyle perks of Hedwig’s marriage to the big boss.

GIANT’S KETTLE: unadulterated art film

Kirsi Paananen and Henri Malkki in GIANT’S KETTLE. Courtesy of Cinequest.

If you’re looking for an unadulterated art film, the stark Finnish drama Giant’s Kettle is your pick. First-time directors Marku Hakala and Mari Kaki make one bold artistic choice after another – no human dialogue, a static camera, shots of very long duration with very little action. Giant’s Kettle is an exploration of alienation, loneliness and yearning in a world hostile to connection.

Where did Hakala and Maki find those stunning locations – those Escher-like stairs, that rock balanced on another rock, that monstrous waffle front building, the hellish playground and that ominous hole on the ground? 

There is no human dialogue in Giant’s Kettle (other than an anguished howl), and the filmmakers suggest that the sound be turned up.  That’s because it isn’t a silent film – the very intentional ambient noises in the soundtrack add to the effect.

Audience patience is required. Two minutes go by before a character begins to appear and two more minutes before anything hints at happening.  The static camera holds on shots of very long duration. We wat.ch a man and woman (and a yo-yo) on a bed…waiting. The filmmakers can get away with this pace because Giant’s Kettle is only 71 minutes long. Nevertheless, it’s not a movie for everyone.

Kirsi Paananen, in what is essentially a silent film performance, is heart-breaking, especially in long shot.

As we watch the man and woman, with her aching longing so apparent, edge together, it seems at times like we’re watching a Finnish motion picture version of Grant Woods’ American Gothic.

Cinequest hosts the US premiere of Giant’s Kettle.

More, much more overlooked neo-noir

Photo caption: Kang-Ho Song and Kim Sang-kyung in MEMORIES OF MURDER, Courtesy of NEON.

I’ve just completed a major reworking of my list of Overlooked neo-noir, and added twelve movies.

The best of these is probably Memories of Murder, a true crime story from Joon-ho Bong, Oscar-winning director of Parasite and Broker. It just might be the best serial killer movie ever, and the haunting ending is unforgettable. A bonus: there was a breakthrough in the real-life case 16 years after the movie, but don’t read about it until you’ve screened the film.

Another Oscar-winning director (and a great raconteur), William Friedkin, had huge hits with The French Connection and The Exorcist, but his To Live and Die in L.A. bombed. Today, it’s become a neo-noir cult favorite. It stars William Petersen without any of the gruff lovability he became known for years later in CSI. And it was the first showcase for the creepy charisma of Willem Dafoe.

Some of these unexpectedly stretch our notion of neo-noir: All Night Long is a Shakespearean play set in the London jazz world of the early 60’s, A Colt Is My Passport is a Japanese yakuza movie that is essentially a spaghetti western and A Dark, Dark Man is a 2019 film from Kazakhstan.

Here are the new additions:

William L. Petersen in TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. Courtesy of Kino Lorber.

Cinequest returns LIVE on August 15

Photo caption: Harris Dickinson and Lola Campbell in Charlotte Regan’s SCRAPPER at Cinequest. Courtesy of Kino Lorber.

CinequestSilicon Valley’s own major film festival, returns live and in-person August 15, back in downtown San Jose, with screenings August 15-24 at the California, Theatre and the Hammer Theater. For August 24-30, the program moves to the ShowPlace ICON Theatre in Mountain View. That means TWO opening nights (San Jose and Mountain View).

Highlights of the 2023 Cinequest include:

  • Films from Korea, Poland, China, Iran, Bulgaria, India, Australia, and Mexico, and I’ve already screened Cinequest features from North Macedonia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Romania, Germany, and the UK, too.
  • New movies with Timothy Spall, Jennifer Esposito, Anabella Sciorra, Dermot Mulroney, Bradley Whitford, Alice Braga, Harris Dickinson, Abigail Breslin, Ryan Philippe, Mena Suvari and Steve Zahn.
  • See it here FIRST: Scrapper is among the movies slated for theatrical release later this year.

And, at Cinequest, it’s easy to meet the filmmakers.

As usual, I’ll be covering Cinequest rigorously with features and movie recommendations. This year, of my top seven films, five are world premieres; six are the first or second films by their director, and the seventh is by an Oscar-nominated, veteran filmmaker.

I usually screen (and write about) over thirty Cinequest films from around the world. Bookmark my CINEQUEST 2023 page, with links to all my coverage (links on the individual movies will start to go live on Sunday, August 13).

Cinequest at San Jose’s California Theatre

Get ready for this year’s Frameline

A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN. Courtesy of Frameline.

Frameline —the world’s largest LGBTQ film festival—is taking place Thursday, June 16 through Sunday, June 26, 2022. Screenings will take place at the Castro Theatre, Roxie Theater, SFMOMA, Proxy and AMC Kabuki in San Francisco and the New Parkway Theater in Oakland. Many films in the program will also be available to stream from June 24 through June 30.

The program will feature over 130 films from more than 30 countries. There will be 18 world premieres, eight North American premieres, five U.S. premieres, 28 West Coast premieres and 44 San Francisco Bay Area premieres. See it here first.

Highlights include:

  • A League of Their Own: the first two episodes of the new Amazon Prime series based on the beloved 1992 movie.
  • Mars One: the Brazilian indie hit at Sundance that will be coming to art house theaters later this year.

I haven’t seen either of those two, but I’ve been screening festival films and will post my recommendations on June 16. Stay tuned. Peruse the program and buy tickets at Frameline.

MARS ONE. Courtesy of Frameline.