Cinequest

THE DOG: obsession and desperation in Mombasa

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Alexander Karim in THE DOG. Courtesy of Cinequest.

The electrifying thriller The Dog follows a classic neo-noir premise. MZ (Alexander Karim), a low level hood, is assigned to drive the call girl, Kadzo (Catherine Muthoni), and he falls for her – against the explicit instructions of their employer and advice from Kadzo herself. To stake a new start for them in a faraway land, he reaches for the big score. Desperation results. What’s unusual about The Dog is that it’s exceptionally exciting and that it’s set in Mombasa, Kenya.

In his quest to make a quick fortune, MZ tries to cash in on a tip about a drug deal. When that goes awry, he finds himself owing a huge debt to Saddam (Caroline Midimo), one of Mombasa’s crime matriarchs. He then tries working with Saddam’s rival Ainea (Veronica Mwaura). MZ takes more and more risks as he get more deeply entangled with the two godmothers. All the way, he’s just one double cross away from disappointing the last people he’ll ever disappoint.

There’s a wonderful low-speed tuk tuk chase (on three-wheel taxis) through Mombasa’s open air markets, street performers and herds of goats. And there’s another unforgettable scene that will be particularly uncomfortable for male audience members.

The Dog matches up well to Howard Hawks’ definition of a great movie – three great scenes and no bad ones“. My FOUR nominations for the three great scenes:

  • a big spender who owes MZ money brings him to his home;
  • Kadzo has MZ film her latest video ad, and he watches her at her sexiest through her cellphone camera.
  • Kadzo explains that she is not asking anyone to save her;
  • MZ faces his reckoning,

The Swedish-born Alexander Karim is superb as MZ. MZ works out to maintain a physicality that intimidates johns and debtors, but he knows his place in the crime hierarchy and grovels before the godmothers; when he screws up, he knows the consequences and moves directly into desperate terror. Alexander Karim has worked in lots of Scandanavian films (so he must be familiar with Nordic Noir) and appeared in Gladiator II.

Catherine Muthoni in THE DOG. Courtesy of Cinequest.

Catherine Muthoni is very good as Kadzo. This may be a neo-noir, but Kadzo isn’t a manipulative femme fatale – it’s only MZ who drives himself to his fate. Midimo and Mwaura are wonderful as the two crime bosses. Watch for how matter-of-factly Midimo dons Saddam’s eyeglasses in the most extreme scene.

The Dog is brilliantly directed, and edited. The director is Alexander’s Ugandan-born brother Baker Karim, who is also based in Sweden. That makes The Dog a Swedish movie, although it has every appearance of a Kenyan film.

I screened The Dog for my coverage of Cinequest.

THE COMPLEX FORMS: what did he bargain for?

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David Allen White in Fabio D’Orta’s THE COMPLEX FORMS. Courtesy of Slamdance.

The visually striking atmospheric The Complex Forms is set in a centuries-old Italian villa, where Christian (David Allen White) and other down-on-their-luck middle-aged men sell their bodies for a period of days to be “possessed”. Possessed how? By who or by what? As the dread builds, Christian resolves to pry the answers from the secretive masters of the villa.

Director Fabio D’Orta unspools the story with remarkably crisp black-and-white cinematography, a brooding soundtrack and impeccable editing. In his astonishingly impressive filmmaking debut, D’Orta wrote, directed, shot and edited The Complex Form.

David Allen White is excellent as Christian, who begins resigned to endure whatever process that he has committed to, but becomes increasingly uneasy as his probing questions are deflected. So are Michael Venni as Christian’s talkative roommate Luh and Cesare Bonomelli as the impassive roommate simply called The Giant.

Like his countrymen Fellini and Leona, D’Orta has a gift for using faces to heighten interest and tell the story. He makes especially effective use of Bonomelli’s Mt. Rushmore-like countenance.

I screened The Complex Forms for its United States premiere at Slamdance. The Complex Forms was my favorite Slamdance film and won the festival’s Honorable Mention for Narrative Feature.  The Complex Forms is playing Cinequest on March 12 and 13.

First look at Cinequest

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Photo caption: Naomi Watts and Bill Murray in THE FRIEND, the closing night film nd Cinequest. Courtesy of Bleecker Street.

Cinequest, Silicon Valley’s own major film festival, returns March 11-24 to downtown San Jose, with screenings at the California Theatre, the Hammer Theater and 3Below. Selected films from the program then move to to Cinequest’s virtual platform, Cinejoy, March 23-30.

Highlights of the 2025 Cinequest include:

  • 110 world and US premieres and many directorial debuts.
  • Films from 45 countries, including from Italy, Russia, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, China, India, Vietnam, Iran, Serbia, Korea, Kenya, Switezerland and the United Kingdom.
  • New movies with Naomi Watt, Bill Murray, Glenn Close, Patricia Clarkson, David Straithern, Gillian Anderson, Walton Goggins, Paul Walter Hauser, Lou Diamond Phillips, Constance Wu, Ken Jeong, Carla Gugino and Jon Heder. 
  • A personal appearance by film star Gillian Anderson  (The X-Files, The Crown), who will receive an award and present her latest film, The Salt Path.
  • Directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel make very few films but they’re superb (The Deep End, Montana Story); they’re contributing their latest to Cinequest – The Friend, starring Bill Murray and Naomi Watts.
  • Two films of local historical interest: American Agitators (about famed organizer Fred Ross mentoring Cesar Chavez in San Jose) and A Little Fellow The Legacy of A.P. Gianni (about the founder of Bank of Italy/Bank of America – his first branch still stands in San Jose, three blocks from Cinequest).
  • Cinequest’s Silent Cinema Event will present F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (the seminal 1922 Dracula film, starring the scary Max Schenk) 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, the schedule and the passes and tickets

I’ll be rigorously covering Cinequest for the fourteenth straight year with features and movie recommendations. I usually screen (and write about) over twenty Cinequest films from around the world. Bookmark my CINEQUEST 2025 page, with links to all my coverage (links on the individual movies will start to go live on Sunday, March 9.

THE INVISIBLES: choosing to live again

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Tim Blake Nelson and Gretchen Mol in THE INVISIBLES. Courtesy of Cinequest.

In the engrossing dramatic parable The Invisibles, Charlie (Tim Blake Nelson) has become so disengaged from his job and his marriage that he becomes invisible – at first metaphorically and then literally – to those around him. Charlie is finding this disturbing enough, but then he happens on an entire community of invisible people like him in a parallel dimension. Can they return to the world of the visible? And do they want to?

The invisibles hang out together in a decrepit bowling alley, led by Carl the affable bartender (Bruce Greenwood). Charlie learns that the invisibles have each experienced a loss, a disappointment or a betrayal so devastating that they have each given up on life in some way. But there’s no more emotional pain in the invisible world, and the bowling alley is a hub of merrymaking.

Charlie and his wife Hannah (Gretchen Mol) have suffered a grievous loss; Hannah has been working hard to recover, but the grief has paralyzed Charlie into a toxic mire of denial, avoidance and apathy.

As Charlie finds himself torn between his love for his wife and the comfort of the invisible world, The Invisibles explores the how people react to the pain of loss and the painful process of getting beyond it. The ingenious metaphor of the parallel universes is the creation of writer-director Andrew Currie. He wrote and directed Fido, one of my Zombie Movies for People Who Don’t Like Zombie Movies.

Tim Blake Nelson is an acting treasure, and he’s at the top of his game here. Mol and Greenwood are excellent, too, as is Nathan Alexis as one of the invisibles.

Cinequest hosted the world premiere of The Invisibles today and will present a second screening tomorrow, March 11. The Invisibles is highlighted as one of two Must See films in my Best of Cinequest.

Tim Blake Nelson and Gretchen Mol in THE INVISIBLES. Courtesy of Cinequest.

THE ISLAND BETWEEN THE TIDES: what dimension is this?

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Paloma Kwiatkowski in THE ISLAND BETWEEN THE TIDES. Courtesy of Cinequest.

The Island Between the Tides: In this supernatural thriller, a young girl wanders away from her parents on the isolated British Columbia coastline and returns seemingly the same. As a young woman, she disappears again, and this time returns 20 years later, but at the same age as when she left. She’s trying to figure out what has happened, as is the family who has been grieving her loss for twenty years, not to mention her son, who is now older than she is. They and the audience are bouncing between the unsettling possible explanations of delusion and disassociation, ghosts or a dimension where beings move to and may be trapped in different times.

The story is based on the play Mary Rose by Peter Pan author J.M. Barrie, which I’ve read that Hitchcock wanted to adapt, but couldn’t overcome studio suits finding it “too troubling”. Impressive feature debut for writer-directors Austin Andrews and Andrew Holmes. 

Paloma Kwiatkowski is good as the protagonist, and she is ably supported by Donal Logue, Camille Sullivan and David Mazouz. I always enjoy Adam Beach, and here he gets to play a sunny, non-brooding role,

Cinequest hosts the world premiere as Cinequest’s opening night film. The Island Between the Tides is one of my Best of Cinequest.

Laughs at Cinequest

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Photo caption: Megan Seely in PUSDDYSTICKS. Courtesy of Cinequest.

The 2024 Cinequest offers a rich menu of comedies: Here are five good ones:

  • Human Resources: In this dark, dark Argentinian comedy, 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. Gabriel, an Iago with a sick sense of humor, begins a ruthless, unhinged campaign against those who offend him. I’ve rarely seen a more cynical comedy. US premiere.
  • Puddysticks: In this good-hearted and original comedy, Liz (Megan Seely) is a puddle of anxiety. She is a workaholic game developer for an enterprise whose company culture, despite its mission statement, could not be more anti-fun. Liz stumbles on a self-help group, led by the ever blissed-out Sylvester (Dan Bakkedahl of Veep, Sword of Trust), where each participant must reveal their innermost secret. It’s cultlike and filled with psychobabble, but it seems to work for Megan and the others. And then Megan learns someone else’s secret… Puddysticks is a scathing satire of tech workplace culture and the self-help movement, somehow without a hint of meanness. Puddysticks is written and directed by Megan Seely (who also stars) in her first feature.  World premiere.
  • Bosnian Pot: A supremely unambitious Bosnian living in Austria, the affable and harmless Faruk (Senad Bašic), when he’s not sponging off others, gets by with a part-time radio show. Faruk sees himself as a writer because he published a volume of poems decades ago and has been thinking about writing a play. But, with the Yugoslavian wars in the past, Austrian authorities are now requiring real artistic accomplishment by Faruk to qualify for continued residence. Faruk’s only hope is to write his play and convince an Austrian theater troupe to premiere it before the immigration deadline. What could possibly go wrong? After decades of slacking, can Faruk find the needed perseverance? The character of Faruk is a delightful scallywag. US premiere.
  • Hailey Rose: In this good-hearted Canadian comedy, the decidedly urban Hailey (Em Haine) is lured home in the sticks under almost completely false premises. She finds herself right back into the dysfunctional family she has escaped, with her wackadoodle sister Rose (Caitlynne Medrek) and her unashamedly selfish mother (Kari Matchett). Hailey had valid reasons to get the family craziness behind her and go to where she could come out more comfortably; but she learns that her sudden exit has impacted others, especially in a heartstring-pulling conversation with her gentle ex-boyfriend Cole (Josh Cruddas). Things wrap up neatly into a Feel Good ending. Matchett’s performance as the insanely crass mom is brilliant; she’s a howl whenever she’s onscreen. Second feature for writer-director Sandi Somers, who set the story in her native Nova Scotia. US premiere.
  • The Trouble with Jessica: In this dark British farce, the most despicable, unwelcome guest at a dinner party dies by suicide in the back yard, and the other four diners must dispose of the inconvenient corpse to prevent financial ruin of the hosts. As one might expect, the foursome must run a gauntlet of nosy neighbors, earnest police and horny drunks. Five very able veteran actors (Shirley Henderson, Alan Tudyk, Olivia Williams, Rupert Sewell and Indira Varma) keep the laughs coming in this light diversion.

As usual, I’ll be covering Cinequest rigorously with features and movie recommendations. I usually screen (and write about) over thirty films from around the world. Bookmark my CINEQUEST 2024 page, with links to all my coverage.  Here’s my Best of Cinequest.

Em Haine (top) and Caitlynne Medrek in HAILEY ROSE. Courtesy of Cinequest.

PAIN AND PEACE: forgiving the unforgivable

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Rais Bhuiyan in PAIN AND PEACE. Courtesy of Cinequest.

The extraordinary and emotionally powerful documentary Pain and Peace begins with the story of Rais Bhuiyan. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, an attacker who was looking to kill Muslims, any Muslims, shot two convenience store clerks to death and then entered the workplace of Bangladeshi immigrant Bhuiyan and shot him in the face with a shotgun; Bhuiyan somehow survived and then, perhaps even more remarkably, began a campaign of forgiveness for his perpetrator. What follows is an exploration of forgiveness as a necessary prerequisite to reconciliation and ending the cycle of demonizing other people.

Bhuiyan interviews other survivors of hate crimes, many of the highest profile, like the Georgia church shooting, the Buffalo supermarket shooting, the Orlando nightclub shooting, and more. It’s riveting when they retell their experiences and talk about forgiving their attackers.

Bhuiyan, as a hate crime survivor himself, brings major credibility as an interviewer and is superb as the narrator/guide of the film.

Pain and Peace also introduces us to some perpetrators of hate crimes, and that brings some surprises, too.

Pain and Peace is the first feature for director Mark Feijó.

I screened Pain and Peace for its world premiere at Cinequest. I highlighted it as one of two Must See films in my Best of Cinequest. It’s not very often that I see a movie as potentially life-changing, but this one is.

SAME OLD WEST: where men are men but aren’t great shots

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A scene from Erico Rassi’s SAME OLD WEST. Courtesy of Cinequest.

The contemporary Brazilian western Same Old West begins with two men slugging it out over a woman, before they start hiring gunmen to take out the other. She is the only woman in the film, only on screen for about 45 seconds, and, as one who knows her well observes, she has had bad luck with husbands.

Same Old West takes us into a Brazil that is neither Rio de Janeiro nor the Amazon rainforest. This is a flat and arid land that looks like it could be in Spain, Mexico or the American Southwest.  It’s a remote and backward place where hired killers are still call gunmen instead of hit men. The gunmen don’t own a .44 magnum or a Glock or an AK-47 among them – they use their hunting rifles. This is a place where making an escape on horseback is still absolutely normal.

Literally, the plot of Same Old West sounds male-oriented – a bunch of guys hunting each other with gun violence on their minds. But, it’s really about men who have been rejected by women, and their inability to understand it or to move on. They’re aspiring to toxic masculinity, but they’re too laughably pathetic to achieve it. Female audiences will appreciate the sharp critique of maleness at its most dunderheaded.

Same Old West is being characterized as a drama, which isn’t really wrong because it’s about murderous manhunts. But I see it as a dark comedy that skewers male cluelessness. The very sparse and overly formal dialogue, delivered deadpan, is remarkably droll. If you like your humor as dry as the landscape, Same Old West is downright hilarious. 

Same Old West is the second feature for writer-director Erico Rassi. It’s a visually striking and richly atmospheric film, with hints of Sergio Leone.

Cinequest hosts the world premiere of Same Old West, which I’ve highlighted in my Best of Cinequest.

A scene from Erico Rassi’s SAME OLD WEST. Courtesy of Cinequest.

HUMAN RESOURCES: Iago with a sick sense of humor

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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.

Cinequest hosts the US premiere of Human Resources, which I highlighted in my Best of Cinequest.

I love the Spanish language trailer, even without English subtitles:

PUDDYSTICKS: scathing satire on the way to self-discovery

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Megan Seely in PUDDYSTICKS. Courtesy of Cinequest.

In the good-hearted and original comedy Puddysticks, Liz (Megan Seely) is a puddle of anxiety. She is a workaholic game developer for an enterprise whose company culture, despite its mission statement, could not be more anti-fun.

Liz stumbles on a self-help group, led by the ever blissed-out Sylvester (Dan Bakkedahl of Veep, Sword of Trust), where each participant must reveal their innermost secret. It’s cultlike and filled with psychobabble, but it seems to work for Megan and the others. And then Megan learns someone else’s secret…

Puddysticks is a scathing satire of tech workplace culture and the self-help movement, somehow without a hint of meanness.

Puddysticks is written and directed by Megan Seely (who also stars) in her first feature.  Cinequest hosts the world premiere of Puddysticks.