San Francisco International Film Festival: fest preview

SFFILM60_LOCKUP_Vertical

This year’s San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILMFestival) – the 60th edition – opens on April 5 and runs through April 19. As always, it’s a Can’t Miss for Bay Area movie fans.  This year’s program is especially loaded.  Here are some enticing festival highlights:

  • The indie smash Patti Cake$, which rocked Sundance and SXSW.
  • A screening of Citizen Kane with William “Will” Randolph Hearst III discussing his family.
  • James Ivory (Remains of the Day, Howards End) will receive an award and present a 30th anniversary screening of his Maurice. (Ivory isn’t British, he was born in Berkeley – who knew?)
  • Noted film historian David Thomson will discuss what really frightens him in that San Francisco treat, Hitchcock’s Vertigo.
  • Speaking of Hitchcock, there’s also the new documentary 78/52 on the 78 set ups and the 52 cuts in Psycho’s iconic shower scene.  Talk about a Deep Dive…
  • Ethan Hawke gets an award and presents his new film, Maudie.
  • Prolific writer John Ridley (12 Years a Slave and a multitude of TV show) introduces his new miniseries Guerilla.
  • Amir Bar-Lev (the Tillman Story) will present his documentary on the Grateful Dead Long Strange Trip (but, just like a Dead concert, it’s four hours long).
  • That roguish 72-year-old sex symbol Sam Elliott will attend a screening of his new movie, The Hero.
  • A critical favorite, director James Gray (The Lovers, The Immigrant, The Yards) will attend the screening of his newest film, The Lost City of Z.
  • The new film from the Dardennes brothers (The Son, The Kid with a Bike, Two Days One Night), The Unknown Woman.
  • The world premiere of the experimental film Discreet from Bay Area writer-director Travis Mathews. I’ve seen it, and it’s strangely compelling.
  • The latest from Oscar-winning documentarian Barbara Kopple (Harlan County USA, Miss Sharon Jones!) – This Is Everything: Gigi Gorgeous.
  • Sieranevada, the latest from Romanian director Cristi Puilu (The Death of Mr. Lazarescu).
PATTI CAKE$ photo courtesy of the San Francisco Film Society
PATTI CAKE$
photo courtesy of SFFILM

 

The calendar of this year’s festival includes a rich program of indies, documentaries and foreign films. Among the foreign choices, I liked the little Irish self-discovery movie A Date for Mad Mary.

And, I don’t know anything about this film, but my favorite movie title in the fest is Donkeyote.

The 60th San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILMFestival) opens this Wednesday.  Here’s SFFILMFestival’s information on the program, the calendar and tickets and passes.

Throughout SFFILMFestival, I’ll be linking more festival coverage to my SFFILMFestival 2017 page, including both features and movie recommendations. Follow me on Twitter for the very latest coverage.

DISCREET photo courtesy of the San Francisco Film Society
DISCREET
photo courtesy of SFFILM

DVD/Stream of the Week: CHEVALIER – male competitiveness, brilliantly skewered

CHEVALIER. Photo courtesy of Strand Releasing
CHEVALIER. Photo courtesy of Strand Releasing

The San Francisco International Film Festival opens tomorrow night, so this week’s video pick is my favorite film from the 2016 SFIFF. One of the best films of the year, Chevalier is a sly and pointed exploration of male competitiveness, with the moments of drollness and absurdity that we expect in the best of contemporary Greek cinema. Chevalier is also now the Most Overlooked Movie of 2016, and I’m hoping that its popularity explodes now that it’s available on video.

In Chevalier, six guys are taking a holiday week on a yacht in the Aegean Sea. Each has his own stateroom, and the crew includes a chef. They spend their days scuba diving, jet skiing and the like. After a post-dinner game of charades, one suggests that they play Chevalier, a game about “Who is best overall?”. Of course, men tend to be competitive, and their egos are now at stake. The six guys began appraising each other, and their criteria get more and more absurd. “How many fillings do you have?”

In one especially inspired set piece, the guys race each other to construct IKEA bookcases, which results in five phallic towers on the boat’s deck (and one drooping failure). Naturally, some of the guys are obsessed with their own erections, too.

Director Athina Rachel Tsangari is obviously a keen observer of male behavior. Both men and women will enjoy laughing at male behavior taken to extreme. I sure did. Chevalier is perhaps the funniest movie of 2016, and it’s on my list of Best Movies of 2016 – So Far.

I saw Chevalier at the 59th San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF), where I pegged it as the Must See of the fest. (In 2011, Tsangari brought her hilariously offbeat Attenberg to SFIFF.) Unfortunately, in the Bay Area, Chevalier only got a blink-and-you’ve-missed-it release in June. Chevalier is now available to rent on DVD from Netflix and to stream from Netflix Instant, Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Athina Rachel Tsangari, director of CHEVALIER . Photo courtesy of San Francisco Film Society
Athina Rachel Tsangari, director of CHEVALIER . Photo courtesy of San Francisco Film Society

Movies to See Right Now

Jim Broadbent in THE SENSE OF AN ENDING
Jim Broadbent in THE SENSE OF AN ENDING

I’m getting ready to cover the San Francisco International Film Festival, which opens this coming Wednesday, April 5 and running through April 19.  I expect to publish my festival preview on Sunday.  In the mean time:

    • The little British drama The Sense of an Ending, with Jim Broadbent, Harriet Walter and Charlotte Rampling, is my current top choice.
    • Bev Powley is very good in the agreeable comedy Carrie Pilby.
    • If you’re looking for an unchallenging comedy, then The Last Word, with the force of nature named Shirley MacLaine, is for you.
    • Kristen Stewart is excellent in Personal Shopper, a murky mess of a movie; don’t bother.
    • By all means, avoid the epically bad epic The Ottoman Lieutenant, so bad that it provokes unintended audience giggles and guffaws.

My DVD/Stream pick of the past two weeks has been the emotionally devastating Manchester by the Sea, which won Oscars for Casey Affleck (Best Actor) and by Kenneth Lonergan (Best Original Screenplay).  Manchester by the Sea is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

On April 2 on Turner Classic Movies:  The Blue Gardenia presents a 1953 view of date rape, with lecherous Raymond Burr getting Anne Baxter likkered up into a blackout drunk with Polynesian Pearl Divers. There’s a very nice twist on the whodunit: when she wakes up, she doesn’t remember killing him, but he sure is dead. There’s even a cameo performance by Nat King Cole.   Also on April 2, TCM brings us The 400 Blows, François Truffaut’s 1959 explosion into leadership of the French New Wave.  The main character is modeled after Truffaut’s own teenage years.  It’s a great film, and the final freeze-frame is iconic.

THE BLUE GARDENIA
THE BLUE GARDENIA

Stream of the Week: FRANK & LOLA – Bad Girl or Troubled Girl?

Imogen Poots with Michael Shannon in FRANK & LOLA. Photo courtesy of the San Francisco Film Society.
Michael Shannon and Imogen Poots in FRANK & LOLA. Photo courtesy of the San Francisco Film Society.

The absorbing neo-noir romance Frank & Lola opens with a couple lovemaking for the first time – and right away there’s a glimmer that he’s more invested than she is.  Soon we’re spirited from Vegas to Paris and back again in a deadly web of jealousy.

Lola (Imogen Poots) is young and beautiful, a lively and sparkly kind of girl.  Frank (the great Michael Shannon) is older but “cool” – a talented chef.  He is loyal and steadfast but given to possessiveness, and he says things like, “who’s the mook?”.

In a superb debut feature, writer director Matthew Ross has invented a Lola that we (and Frank) spend the entire movie trying to figure out.  Imogen Poots is brilliant in her most complex role so far.  She’s an unreliable girlfriend – but the roots of her unreliability are a mystery – is she Bad or Troubled?  A character describes her with “She can be very convincing”, and that’s NOT a complement.  Poots keeps us on edge throughout the film, right up to her stunning final monologue.

Shannon, of course, is superb, and the entire cast is exceptional.  There’s a memorable turn by Emmanuelle Devos, the off-beat French beauty with the cruel mouth.  Rosanna Arquette is wonderful, as is Michael Nyqvist from the Swedish Girl With the Dragon Tattoo movies.  I especially liked Justin Long as Keith Winkleman (is he a namedropping ass or something more?).

Frank & Lola has more than its share of food porn and, as befits a neo-noir, lots of depravity.  But, at its heart, it’s a romance.  Is Lola a Bad Girl or a Troubled Girl? If she’s bad, then love ain’t gonna prevail. But if she’s damaged, can love survive THAT either?  We’re lucky enough to go along for the ride.

I saw Frank & Lola in May at the San Francisco International Film Festival.  I liked it more than most and put it on my Best Movies of 2016. After a brief and tiny theatrical release in December which did not reach the Bay Area, Frank & Lola is now available to stream on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

 

2016 at the Movies: most fun at the movies

Simon Pegg and Lake Bell in MAN UP
Simon Pegg and Lake Bell in MAN UP

The most fun on this blog this year was the reader reaction to my recommendation of Man Up: I’ve never had so many people thank me for recommending a movie!  This British romantic comedy had a very brief US theatrical run last November that did not even reach the Bay Area.  Man Up is available to stream from Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Flixster.

This year I covered FIVE film festivals:

  • Cinequest:  My favorites were premieres of the debut films Lost Solace and Heaven’s Floor.
  • San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF):  My favorites were Chevalier, Weiner and Frank & Lola, and I especially enjoyed taking the wife to a screening of Our Kind of Traitor with director Susanna White.
  • International Film Festival of North Hollywood (IFFNOHO): especially Gazelle: The Love Issue.
  • San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF):  My favorite film was the upcoming television miniseries False Flag, but I most enjoyed accompanying The Wife to a screening of Robert Klein Still Can’t Stop His Leg with Robert Klein.
  • Mill Valley Film Festival:  Was lucky enough to see Toni Erdmann.
Andrew Jenkins in Chris Scheuerman's brilliant debut LOST SOLACE
Andrew Jenkins in Chris Scheuerman’s brilliant debut LOST SOLACE

I’m in my fourteenth year of the Camera Cinema Club, and this year’s highlight was Take Me to the River by San Jose filmmaker Matt Sobel – it made my year-end top ten!

And, of course, I always love Noir City, and the best night this year featured The Bitter Stems and Girl with Hyacinths.

Every year I watch a zillion movies on Turner Classic Movies, and this year I discovered a Buster Keaton masterpiece that I hadn’t seen: TCM Seven Chances.

Finally. I got the chance to take The Wife and our adult kids to see It’s a Wonderful Life on the big screen at the Stanford Theatre’s Christmas Eve screening.  Hard to top that.

I go to the movies to be thrilled, provoked and exhilarated, and I’m looking forward to what 2017 will bring.

Buster Keaton in SEVEN CHANCES
Buster Keaton in SEVEN CHANCES

Stream of the Week: FIVE NIGHTS IN MAINE – a grieving fish out of water

David Oyelowo and Dianne Wiest in Maris Curran's FIVE NIGHTS IN MAINE, playing at the 59th San Francisco International Film Festival, April 21st - May 5th, 2016.
David Oyelowo and Dianne Wiest in FIVE NIGHTS IN MAINE. Photo courtesy of San Francisco Film Society

An Atlanta man (David Oyeowlo) suddenly loses his wife to an auto accident and is completely shattered by the depth and the jarring abruptness of his loss. Pushed by his sister out of his paralysis, he drives up to Maine to visit his wife’s mother (Dianne Wiest). She is a person who is generally harsh, judgemental and irritating at all times, but is more so now that her own health is failing. His experience with her becomes the antithesis of the comfort and support that one would expect. As she probes and spars with him, the two are each driven to their own catharsis. The end of Five Nights in Maine also comes abruptly, leaving us to reflect on the lessons learned by the leading characters and how their grief is resolved.

Five Nights in Maine uses a handheld camera and LOTS of close-ups. This was a conscious choice by first-time writer-director Maris Curran, who sought a “closing in” effect because “grief is claustrophobic”.

Dianne Wiest’s performance is an awards-worthy tour de force. Flashing fiery looks and shooting piercing remarks from an invariably rigid posture, she commands our attention every moment that she is on-screen. As we would expect, Oyewolo is outstanding, especially in the early scenes where he collapses into shock. Rosie Perez, not as sassy, but every bit as appealing, as usual, is rock solid in the supporting role as the mother’s nurse. As the sister, Tenoyah Parris (Chi-Raq, Dear White People, Mad Men) gives yet another flawless performance.

I saw Five Nights in Maine at the 59th San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF), where Director Maris Curran, producer Carly Hugo and actor David Oyelowo appeared at the screening. Curran said she was motivated to write a story about loss as her own marriage was falling apart; when the ground was pulled out from under her, she created a protagonist in that situation.

Aiming for a sensual look for an emotional film, Curran was able to snare Tunisian cinematographer Sofian El Fani, fresh from his exquisite work in from Blue Is the Warmest Color, for his first American film. Budgeted for a 19-day shoot, the crew finished in only 18.

Oyewolo, happily married for 18 years, found exploring the territory of losing his wife to be very uncomfortable.  Five Nights in Maine was shot right after Selma, so his exhaustion from Selma helped him find this “hollowed-out” character. Oyewolo sees Five Nights in Maine as a fish out of water story – not just geographically but emotionally (a man not used to or prepared for grief). Oyewolo prefers women directors because he “wants to be part of stories that are emotionally challenging”.

Fortunately, Curran leavens this dark-themed story with bits of sharp humor. It’s an emotionally affecting and authentic movie. Five Nights in Maine is available to stream on Amazon Instant,  Vudu, Google Play, YouTube and DirecTV.

DVD/Stream of the Week: CHEVALIER – male competitiveness, brilliantly skewered

CHEVALIER. Photo courtesy of Strand Releasing
CHEVALIER. Photo courtesy of Strand Releasing

One of the best films of the year, Chevalier is a sly and pointed exploration of male competitiveness, with the moments of drollness and absurdity that we expect in the best of contemporary Greek cinema. Chevalier is also now the Most Overlooked Movie of 2016, and I’m hoping that its popularity explodes now that it’s available on video.

In Chevalier, six guys are taking a holiday week on a yacht in the Aegean Sea. Each has his own stateroom, and the crew includes a chef. They spend their days scuba diving, jet skiing and the like. After a post-dinner game of charades, one suggests that they play Chevalier, a game about “Who is best overall?”. Of course, men tend to be competitive, and their egos are now at stake. The six guys began appraising each other, and their criteria get more and more absurd. “How many fillings do you have?”

In one especially inspired set piece, the guys race each other to construct IKEA bookcases, which results in five phallic towers on the boat’s deck (and one drooping failure). Naturally, some of the guys are obsessed with their own erections, too.

Director Athina Rachel Tsangari is obviously a keen observer of male behavior. Both men and women will enjoy laughing at male behavior taken to extreme. I sure did. Chevalier is perhaps the funniest movie of 2016, and it’s on my list of Best Movies of 2016 – So Far.

I saw Chevalier at the 59th San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF), where I pegged it as the Must See of the fest. (In 2011, Tsangari brought her hilariously offbeat Attenberg to SFIFF.)  Unfortunately, in the Bay Area, Chevalier only got a blink-and-you’ve-missed-it release in June.  Chevalier is now available to rent on DVD from Netflix and to stream from Netflix Instant, Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Athina Rachel Tsangari, director of CHEVALIER . Photo courtesy of San Francisco Film Society
Athina Rachel Tsangari, director of CHEVALIER . Photo courtesy of San Francisco Film Society

THE BANDIT: a buddy movie about a buddy movie

Burt Reynolds and Hal Needham in THE BANDIT. Photo courtesy of the San Francisco Film Society.

Writer-director Jesse Moss describes The Bandit as “a buddy movie about a buddy movie”, and he’s right. The buddies are mega-star Burt Reynolds and his stuntman/friend/roommate Hal Needham, who directed the enormously successful Smokey and the Bandit franchise.

Needham, one of only two stuntmen with an Oscar, is arguably cinema’s greatest stunt performer and stunt coordinator. Reynolds did many of his own stunts, and we we see some hard, hard falls in The Bandit. But Burt did nothing to nothing to match Needham, whose FIRST career stunt was jumping off an airplane wing to tackle a rider off his horse. We see many instances where Needham became a LITERAL car crash test dummy.

One of The Bandit’s highlights is the Needham stunt that broke his back – jumping a car off a dock and onto a barge – and slamming into the barge a little short.

There’s rich source material here from Burt’s garage (Reynolds calls it “King Tut’s Tomb for documentarinans”), which stored tapes back to 1956.

For added color, Needham and Reynolds were epic partiers, who embraced and exemplified the Mad Men era. Needham was a vivid character and lived a helluva life. I strongly recommend Terry Gross’ Fresh Air interview with Needham.

Hal’s widow told Bay Area filmmaker Jesse Moss that Needham hated documentaries because they were boring, so Moss aimed to make a documentary that Hal would enjoy. Indeed, The Bandit opens with the sly Reynolds, in maroon leisure suit with flared pant legs, mocking his own image outrageously. And, it’s a hoot throughout.

(Moss’ first movie was at San Francisco’s Castro Theater in 1979, when his dad took him a double feature of Erroll Morris’ Gates of Heaven and Hardware Wars, a documentarian born!)

I saw The Bandit at its premiere at the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM). It played on TV channel CMT, and now can be streamed on Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

UNDER THE SUN: a wackadoodle regime subverts its own propaganda

A scene from Vitaly Mansky's UNDER THE SUN, playing at the 59th San Francisco International Film Festival, on April 21 - May 5, 2016.
UNDER THE SUN.  Photo courtesy of San Francisco Film Society.

The subversive documentary Under the Sun is a searing insight into totalitarian North Korean society, all from government-approved filming that tells a different story than the wackadoodle dictatorship intended.

The North Korean regime gave filmmaker Vitaly Mansky permission to film the story of a young girl who is training to take part in one of North Korea’s ritualized propaganda spectacles – when children “join” the Korean Children’s Union on the birthday of the current Supreme Leader’s father.  The script and the filming locations were all assigned by the North Korean regime and all film reviewed by their censors.  But Mansky was able to conceal and preserve the outtakes – and those moments are devastatingly revelatory about life on North Korea.

What we see is a grim society, virtually devoid of vibrancy and joy.  Families are posed briefly mechanically and unsmilingly for ritual family photos in front of flower-bedecked giant portraits of the Leaders.  The streets are drab and empty of vehicle traffic even at rush hour.  Mansky shows us surreptitious glimpses of his minders and even of boys raiding garbage cans.  There’s a lot of regimentation depicted in Under the Sun and lots of people drearily filing to and fro.  Sometimes it gets tiresome – but that’s the point.

Everyone is conscripted to perform and watch phony staged spectacles of the grandest scale.  The rapturous crowds shown on TV contrast with the stoic crowds forced to view the televised events.  North Korea must have the world’s most professional event planners per capita.

Most chillingly, we see a class where 6-year-olds are taught to hate Japanese and Americans.  This appears to be a scene that the North Koreans INTENTIONALLY included in the movie.

The beautiful irony of Under the Sun is that, in trying to tell a story about the best of their society, the North Koreans actually reveal their worst.  I saw Under the Sun earlier this year at the 59th San Francisco International Film Festival.  Under the Sun opens July 29 at the Lee 4-Star in San Francisco.

NUTS!: the rise and fall of a testicular empire

NUTS!
NUTS!

NUTS! is the persistently hilarious (and finally poignant) documentary about the rise and fall of a medical and radio empire – all built on goat testicle “implantation” surgery in gullible humans. Yes, a huckster named J.R. Brinkley really did surgically place goat testicles inside human scrota – and, more astonishingly, this actually became a craze in the 1920s. Now that’s enough of a forehead slapper, but there’s more, much more and that’s what makes NUTS! so fun.

Brinkley’s story is one that leads to celebrity mega wealth and a colossal miscalculation. Improbably, Brinkley’s wild ride touched Huey Long,William Jennings Bryan, Rudolph Valentino, Buster Keaton, June Carter Cash and Wolfman Jack. There’s a radio empire, a Gubernatorial election and a dramatic, climactic trial.

NUTS!
“Dr.” Brinkley at work in NUTS!

Director Penny Lane tells the story with animation (different animators for each chapter, but you can’t tell) seamlessly braided together with historical still photos, movies and a final heartbreaking recording. NUTS! tells a story that is too bizarre to be true – but really happened. It makes for a most entertaining movie.

I saw NUTS! earlier this year at the 59th San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF).  It opens in Bay Area theaters today.