Photo caption: Steve Zahn and Ethan Hawke in SHE DANCES, Bay Area premiere at Cinequest. Courtesy of Cinequest.
Cinequest, Silicon Valley’s own major film festival, returns March 10-23 to the California Theatre and the Hammer Theater in downtown San Jose and the Alamo Drafthouse in Mountain View. Selected films from the program will move to to Cinequest’s virtual platform, Cinejoy, March 24-31.
Highlights of the 2026 Cinequest include:
123 world and US premieres and many directorial debuts.
Films from 44 countries, including from Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Canada, Albania, Norway, Hungary, China, Finland, India, and the UK.
New movies produced by James Ivory, directed by Steven Soderbergh, Rebecca Morris (Electrik Children) and Ben Wheatley (High-Rise); and starring Bob Odenkirk , Steve Zahn, Ethan Hawke, Vivica A. Fox, Tamara Weaving, Henry Winkler, Sonequa Martin-Green, Thomas Sadowski, Mimi Rogers, Betsy Brandt, Rosemary DeWitt and Tony-nominee Amber Gray.
Personal appearances by Steve Zahn and Viveca A. Fox to receive Cinequest awards and to present their upcoming films.
Cinequest’s Silent Cinema Event will present a major spectacle, the 1926 Ben-Hur, accompanied by master organist Dennis James on the historic California Theatre’s Mighty Wurlitzer.
And, at Cinequest, it’s easy to meet the filmmakers.
At Cinequest, you can get a festival pass for as little as $199 (a ten-pack for $110), and you can get individual tickets as well. The prices have not been raised SINCE 2019!) Take a look at the entire program, theschedule and the passes and tickets
I’ll be rigorously covering Cinequest for the fifteenth straight year, with features and movie recommendations. I usually screen (and write about) over twenty Cinequest films from around the world. Bookmark my CINEQUEST 2026 page, with links to all my coverage (links on the individual movies will start to go live on Sunday, March 8).
Cinequest at the California Theatre. Photo credit: The Movie Gourmet.
Photo caption: Jessie Buckley in HAMNET. Courtesy of Focus Features.
This week on The Movie Gourmet – reviews of two overlooked films, Dennis Hopper’s searing drama Out of the Blue and the deliciously subversive Argentine comedy Human Resources. Slamdance is under way, and here’s my coverage:
Note: Two highly recommended movies – both Oscar-nominated – The Secret Agent and Mr. Nobody Against Putin are now available to stream at home. And all of the big Oscar movies are now available to watch at home.
CURRENT MOVIES
The Secret Agent: we’re all back in 1977, and he’s running for his life. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
No Other Choice: keeping up with the Parks. Amazon, Fandango.
A Private Life: a shrink and her own issues. In theaters.
Hamnet: a grieving couple finally aligned. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
It Was Just an Accident: trauma, justice and complications. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
On March 4, Turner Classic Movies plays Pedro Almodovar’s Volver. Almodovar’s signature is a female-forward movie that is a subversively hilarious exploration of dark subjects – and that fits Volver to a tee. There is murder and parentage secrets , along with a body conveniently stashed in a freezer, plus a ghost who isn’t. The mostly female cast is headed by Penelope Cruz (Oscar nomination) and Carmen Maura. Cruz, of course, is a global A-lister, and Maura, like Victoria Abril, Marisa Paredes and Roddy De Palma, we know best from her collaborations with Almodovar (Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom, Matador and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.).
Pedro De Tavira (center) in HUMAN RESOURCES. Courtesy of Cinequest.
In the dark, dark Argentinian comedy Human Resources, Gabriel Lynch (Pedro De Tavira) is an alienated office worker, in an absurdly alienating workplace. Gabriel is a low-level supervisor on an anonymous lower floor of a corporate hive with too many layers of management and an oppressive, top-down culture. It’s also oversexed, with a carousel of Inappropriate office liaisons. And, we’ll soon see, is shockingly tolerant of what we would see as the most horrifying workplace violence.
Gabriel, an Iago with a sick sense of humor, begins a ruthless, unhinged campaign against those who offend him. Alienation leaks out in how her treats everyone. Mischievous, mean-spirited and completely unashamed, he’s very fun to watch. And, as venal as Gabriel is, he is matched, step-for-step, by Veronica from Finance (Juana Viale).
Around the 41-minute mark, Gabriel makes his grievance explicit (followed by a great drone shot)
“I’ve lived like the secret son of a king for a long time, waiting for a courtier to rescue me. Of course, nobody rescued me. Nobody rescues anybody.”
Human Resources is the creation of writer-director Jesús Magaña Vázquez. I’ve rarely seen a more cynical comedy.
Last year’s Cinequest hosted the US premiere of Human Resources, which I highlighted in my Best of Cinequest.Human Resources is now streaming on Hulu. There are many recent movies with a similar title; make sure you’re watching the 2023 Recursos Humanos directed by Magana and starring Pedro De Tavira.
I love the Spanish language trailer, even without English subtitles:
Photo caption: Linda Manz in OUT OF THE BLUE. Courtesy of Discovery Productions, Inc..
Newly restored for re-release, Dennis Hopper’s 1980 Out of the Blue is an anti-redemptive parable of alienation. It features both an unforgettable performance and an unforgettable ending.
The spirited teenager Cebe (Linda Manz) has the worst parents in her British Columbia town, maybe in the entire province. Her dad (Dennis Hopper), is a drunk, deservedly in prison for an act of irreparable harm. (Cebe bears a facial scar from this incident – and lots of emotional damage as well).
Her chirpy mom (Sharon Farrell) can’t keep a needle out of her arm or guys out of her pants. Ever impulsive, she ruefully observes that there are two kinds of men – the sexy, adventuresome types and the good providers; it’s evident that she hasn’t bet her life on the good providers.
After five years in prison, the dad is released and gets a job operating heavy machinery at a garbage dump overrun by sea gulls. But he’s still sucking on his ever-present pint bottle, and the town won’t forget why he was incarcerated.
Cebe is full of life and has a gum-chewing swagger. She’s comfortable leading her teen peers in some rowdiness, but she also has a rich imagination and she spends a lot of time in her room alone, acting out her interests in Elvis and punk music.
But Cebe doesn’t know in what direction to channel her exuberance; she can’t tell her sympathetic, court-appointed psychologist (Raymond Burr) what she wants.
The one thing that Cebe doesn’t want is what’s best for her – to be separated from her parents. As is common with neglected and abused children, she clings to the bad situation that she is familiar with.
Cebe acts out in mildly rebellious mischief at school, and she runs away for a night of adventure in Vancouver, somehow emerging unscathed from risky situations.
Back home, she hides from her parent’s arguing in her room. Suddenly, the audience is shocked by something the father says (what??!!), and it is revealed that the parents’ dysfunction is MUCH darker, more twisted than previously apparent.
Cebe erupts, and Out of the Blue ends with a stunning, utterly unpredictable climax. Hopper follows Billie Wilder’s screenwriting advice – “don’t hang around”; the ending is not even one second too long.
Dennis Hopper wrote and directed Out of the Blue, pacing the film well and delivering verisimilitude from the Vancouver-area setting. The camera swirls around the actors at times, and Hopper makes good use of the thousands of seagulls populating a garbage dump.
Out of the Blue is really all about Linda Manz’s singular performance as Cebe. Often improvised, her performance is naturalistic and unpredictable. When she is in her room or walking through a Vancouver night, she acts like no one is watching her, and it’s riveting.
By the time she was 19 in 1980, Linda Manz had acted in and narrated a masterpiece (Terence Malick’s Days of Heaven) and appeared in two cult films (Philip Kaufman’s The Wanderers and Dennis Hopper’s Out of the Blue). Then she retired to raise a family. Manz died at 59 in 2020.
Don Gordon (left) and Dennis Hopper (center) in OUT OF THE BLUE. Courtesy of Discovery Productions, Inc.
As the dad, Hopper is able to demonstrate the charm that attracted the mom and the playfulness that endears him to Cebe. In a scene where the dad dramatically gets himself fired, Hopper shows a man so enjoying his ballsy action, and then, his visage changes as the consequences of his impulsivity sink in, reflecting on his helplessness when he is once again done in by his own impulses.
As the mom, prolific television actress Sharon Farrell excels in a rare movie role.
Don Gordon plays Charlie, the dad’s marginally more functional pal. Gordon had key supporting roles in Bullitt and Papillon and over a hundred appearances in the episodic TV of the 60s and 70s.In Out of the Blue, Gordon displays his gift for playing drunk convincingly. Gordon really understood the essence of drunk thinking and behavior, and has an even more compelling drunk scene in Hopper’s The Last Movie).
Out of the Blue premiered at Cannes and enjoyed praise from Roger Ebert (“Bitter, unforgettable. An unsung treasure.“) and other critics. But the ending is so shocking and emotionally desolate, that it wasn’t released in the US; no distributor wanted to bet on its acceptance by a US audience. John Alan Simon acquired the distribution rights for a 17-week art house tour in 1982 with Hopper. Now Simon and Elizabeth Karr have digitally restored Out of the Blue from the only two 35mm prints in existence.
Out of the Blue has only recently become available to stream; (I own the DVD.) In late 2021, the 4K restoration opened at a New York City screening presented by Chloë Sevigny and Natasha Lyonne. Now you can find Out of the Blue on the Criterion Channel, AppleTV, YouTube and Fandango.
Here’s my farewell to Robert Duvall, one of the essential figures in cinema in my lifetime.
Director Frederick Wiseman was one of the most influential documentarians; he didn’t invent cinéma vérité, but he was one of its most famous practitioners, beginning with his first film, the disturbing psychiatric prison exposé Titicut Follies in 1967. Some of his best work came when Wiseman was in his 80s: Boxing Gym, In Jackson Heights and Monrovia, Indiana.
CURRENT MOVIES
The Secret Agent: we’re all back in 1977, and he’s running for his life. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
Ingrid Thulin and Victor Sjostrom in WILD STRAWBERRIES
On February 21, Turner Classic Movies presents the one non-depressing Ingmar Bergman film, Wild Strawberries. There’s no denying that Bergman is a film genius, and he’s influenced the likes of Scorsese, Coppola, Altman, Kieślowski and basically much of the last two generations of filmmakers. But I don’t recommend that casual movie fans watch Bergman’s gloomiest movies just because they “are good for you” – I want you to have a good time at the movies.
Wild Strawberries is the story of an accomplished but cranky geezer. His indifferent daughter-in-law is taking him to be honored at his college. On their road trip, they pick up some young hitch-hikers and then a stranded couple. Each encounter reminds the old doctor of an episode in his youth. As he reminisces, he can finally emotionally process the experiences that had troubled him, helping him finally achieve an inner peace. It’s a wonderful film.
Sylka, Bruno Clairefond and Alain Guillot in THE KEY at Slamdance Film Festival. Courtesy of HTTH Productions.
The 32nd Slamdance Film Festival opens tomorrow in LA, unveiling the work of new filmmakers. Christopher Nolan, Bong Joon-ho and Sean Baker are among the filmmakers whose early work was showcased at Slamdance; will another cinema icon emerge from this year’s program?
Here’s my Slamdance festival preview. I’ve had a chance to sample some of this year’s program and here are my recommendations.
MUST SEE
The Key: This offbeat French fable brings us unexpected characters and takes them into an even more unexpected world. Bruno and Alain, strangers to each other, are each, despite living in the middle of Paris, completely devoid of connection to other humans. Both the disagreeable, prickly Bruno and the more passive Alain remain essentially invisible to others – and anchored to a profound loneliness. The two are suddenly waylaid by a third man, Z, who invites them back to his place, which turns out to be one of those gloriously posh Parisian apartments, with high ceilings and a grand piano. The three new friends are getting to know each other when Z surprises them with a revelation that I won’t spoil. Fascinated, Alain and Bruno embrace Z’s highly unconventional lifestyle, but will it fulfill their lives? In his first narrative feature, writer-director Paul G. Sportiello explores what he calls “hidden people”. What makes a “nobody”? Is it a bad thing to be a nobody? Is it better to be comfortable in one’s own skin? Every aspect of this highly original storytelling serves to introduce Sportiello as an especially promising auteur. North American premiere at Slamdance.
OTHER SLAMDANCE HIGHLIGHTS
Manolya Maya in DUMP OF UNTITLED PIECES. Courtesy of Melik Kuru and Hafif Film.
Dump of Untitled Pieces: In this Turkish dark comedy, photography student Asli (Manolya Maya), a law school dropout, and her oddball roomie face eviction from their bohemian flat unless they can raise the rent money ASAP. They embark on a campaign to sell her portfolio to art dealers, careening through the the non-touristy neighborhoods of Istanbul and confronting the unwelcome realities of commerce (foreign buyers want tragedy). Their escapades are funny, but the humor in this first feature by writer-director Melik Kuru is primarily character-driven. Is the stubborn Asli an uncompromising artist or a slacker posing as an artist to avoid getting a real job? Kuru’s clever, surprise ending give us a clue. Beautifully shot in black-and-white in a cinéma vérité style by cinematographer Baris Aygen. North American premiere at Slamdance.
The Lemieurs: This cinéma vérité doc chronicles over a year in the lives of a Minnesota family as they meet the inevitabilities of life. Five middle-aged brothers must face the increasing frailty of their aged mother, while three cousins from the younger generation run the family’s funeral home. The stories of the family members are fittingly bookend by two funerals and anchored by the spirited matriarch. At once intimate and unsparingly clear-eyed, The Lemieurs is absorbing and brimming with humanity. First feature for director Sammy LeMieur. World premiere at Slamdance.
Slamdance festival passes are SOLD OUT, but you will be able to sample at least some of these films on the Slamdance Channel from February 24 thru March 6.
Sylka, Bruno Clairefond and Alain Guillot in THE KEY at Slamdance Film Festival. Courtesy of HTTH Productions.
It’s time for the 32nd Slamdance Film Festival, which is all about discovering new filmmakers and unveiling their work. Originating with 30 years in Utah, this is the second Slamdance in Los Angeles. It’s a hybrid festival with live events (February 10-25) and online via the Slamdance Channel (February 24-March 6). Three LA venues will host the screenings – DGA, Landmark Sunset, and 2220 Arts with the closing night ceremony held at the Egyptian Theater.
Slamdance was founded in 1995 by filmmakers reacting to the gatekeeper role and growing marketplace focus of a nearby Utah film festival with a similar name. Whenever I cover a film festival, I’m on the lookout for first films and world premieres – and here’s a festival essentially entirely made up of first films and world premieres.
Slamdance alumni include: Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer, Memento,Dunkirk), Bong Joon-ho (Parasite), Benh Zeitlin (Beasts of the Southern Wild), Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin, Green Room), Lynn Shelton (Outside In,Sword of Truth), Sean Baker (The Florida Project, Tangerine), Rian Johnson (Knives Out, Brick), Benny & Josh Safdie (Uncut Gems) and the Russo Brothers (Avengers: Infinity War).
All Slamdance feature films selected in the competition categories are directorial debuts without U.S. distribution, with budgets of less than $1 million. The 141 films in this year’s program, featuring 50 world premieres, hail from 50 countries and were selected from 10,000 submissions.
Slamdance opens with the world premiere of Alexandre Rockwell’s The Projectionist, a love letter to cinema starring Vondie Curtis-Hall and co-produced by Quentin Tarantino.
This year, Utopia will offer theatrical distribution for at least one Slamdance Grand Prize Winner. Way cool.
I’ll start rolling out full reviews of some Slamdance films on February 24th. Remember, even if you don’t get to the fest in LA, you can sample these films on the Slamdance Channel from February 24 thru March 6.
Mr Corleone is a man who insists on hearing bad news at once.
Lorie darlin’, life in San Francisco, you see, is still just life. If you want any one thing too badly, it’s likely to turn out to be a disappointment. The only healthy way to live life is to learn to like all the little everyday things, like a sip of good whiskey in the evening, a soft bed, a glass of buttermilk, or a feisty gentleman like myself.
We just can’t imagine any actor other than Robert Duvall delivering these lines. I can’t imagine Apocalypse Now!, The Godfather or Lonesome Dove without Duvall.
Duvall had the gift of finding the essence of each character. He had an unerring instinct to turn his roles into indelible characters. His supporting performances are as memorable as his starring turns.
Duvall was nominated for an Oscar seven times, including for The Great Santini, where his Colonel Bull Meecham organized his family with “Moving day. Let’s go, Hogs! Breaking camp. Everybody at the car in 5 minutes. Move it!” Duvall won the Best Actor Oscar for Tender Mercies.
Duvall started out as a New York stage actor, rooming with fellow struggling actor Dustin Hoffman, and then Gene Hackman. Working mostly on television, he amassed 50 screen credits before The Godfather. He did get to play Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird.
Eventually, in 1968 he began to get roles in high profile movies: Bulitt!, M*A*S*H*, the John Wayne True Grit, Francis Ford Coppola’s early film The Rain People and he starred in George Lucas’ debut film, THX 1138
Robert Duvall in APOCALYPSE NOW!
Then came The Godfather in 1972, launching an amazming 12-year run that included The Godfather, Part II, Network,The Great Santini, Tender Mercies and The Natural. His most beloved performance came in 1989, as Gus McCrae in Lonesome Dove.
Between Godfather movies, he starred in a grievously overlooked neo-noir The Outfit, which I recommend streaming on Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube or Fandango.
Duvall himself had a sly sense of humore. He appeared uncredited as the plastic-covered corpse in The Conversation and the silent priest on a swing in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Photo caption: Wagner Moura in THE SECRET AGENT. Courtesy of NEON.
This week on The Movie Gourmet – new reviews of The Secret Agent: ,one of the very best films of the year, now available on VOD, and Jodie Foster in A Private Life.
REMEMBRANCE
Bud Cort never matched his iconic performance in Hal Ashby’s subversive Harold and Maude.
CURRENT MOVIES
The Secret Agent: we’re all back in 1977, and he’s running for his life. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
On February 17, Turner Class Movies airs Them!, one of the earliest movies with the premise that nuclear bomb tests can mutate animals into giant monsters. Here, the nightmarish threat is ants the size of trucks. It’s bad enough to have them wandering the New Mexico desert, but then they show up in the storm drain system underneath Los Angeles. Yikes! Despite the state of non-CGI special effects in 1954, the ants are suitably terrifying. The reliable James Whitmore stars. Look for future television superstars James Arness and Fess Parker.
Photo caption: Jodie Foster in A PRIVATE LIFE. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
In the dark comedy A Private Life, Jodie Foster plays Lilian Steiner, a prickly, disagreeable Paris psychiatrist, so self-absorbed that she often fails to listen to her own patients. One of her patients dies, and Lilian is stung to be blamed by the family for their loved one’s suicide. More out of personal pique than any sense of justice, Lilian sets out to prove that the woman was murdered.
It’s very funny as Lilian blusters off, imagining potential suspects and projecting motive and opportunity. When Lilian reports a real crime, a burglary of her apartment, she’s so high strunf that the cops suspect that she’s a crank.
What’s even funnier is that Lilian presents the same compulsive behavior, lack of boundaries, and attachment issues that she is paid to treat in her patients. After all, what woman declines an opportunity to hold her first baby grandchild? Indeed, the whodunit is merely the vehicle for Lilian’s journey to personal connection.
Jodie Foster is very good as the ever-aggrieved Lilian, a role that must have been fun for her to play. Liliane is an American who has lived for decades in Paris, mirroring Foster’s own lifelong embrace of French language and culture. The movie’s biggest laugh comes when Lilian is stymied by what Americans see as the French over-vacationing.
Daniel Auteil, who has been nominated 14 times for a Best Actor César, is wonderful as Lilian’s adorable ex-husband. The rest of the cast is filled with French A-listers in minor roles (Mathieu Amalric, Virginie Efira, Irene Jacob). Vincent Lacoste is quite good as the son who expects his mom tp behave badly, but still can be surprised by a new outrage. The great 95-year-old documentarian Fredrick Wiseman sparkles in a cameo playing Lilian’s stern mentor, who calls her on her shit.
A Private Life was written and directed by Rebecca Zlotowski (Grand Central). It’s a well-made diversion that you can wait to stream at home.
