A scene from Denali Tiller’s TRE MAISON DASAN, playing at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 4 – 17, 2018. Courtesy of SFFILM.
The unwavering and emotionally powerful documentary Tre Maison Dasan was my top pick from the World Premieres at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM) – and you can finally watch on TV this weekend. The title reflects the names of three Rhode Island boys with incarcerated parents. Unfettered by talking heads, Tre Maison Dasan invites us along with these kids as they interact with their families – both on the outside and the inside. It’s all about the kids, all of the time – an effective choice by writer-director Denali Tiller In her feature debut.
One of the parents is released from prison early in the film; the other two are going to stay there during critical developmental periods in their children’s lives. Tre, Maison and Dasan are each taking different paths. One kid is getting wonderful nurturing and guidance from a released parent, and lots of support from the community; we sense that he’s going to be OK. That’s not the case with all of the kids.
Tiller doesn’t get academic or partisan. By simply showing the impact on these children of having a parent incarcerated, she gets our attention and sympathy. Tre Maison Dasan may not be a call to action in itself, but it’s an essential predicate. PBS is airing Tre Maison Dasan on its Independent Lens series on April 1; you’ll also be able to stream it on PBS.
Masaharu Fukuyama and Kôji Yakusho in Hirokazu Koreeda’s THE THIRD MURDER. Photo courtesy of San Francisco Film Society (SFFILM).
The Third Murder opens with a killing, and the audience gets a clear full-face view of the killer. Then the mystery begins – not about who done it, but about why and who will be held accountable.
A high-powered defense lawyer (Masaharu Fukuyama) has been called in to take over a challenging case; it’s potentially a death penalty case, and the defendant (Kôji Yakusho) has confessed. Moreover, the defendant has previously served thirty years for an earlier murder, he’s an oddball and he keeps switching his story.
Nevertheless, the lawyer thinks he can avoid the death penalty with a technicality about the motivation for the crime. He gets some good news from forensic evidence and then discovers one startling secret about the victims’ family – and then another one even more shocking – one that might even exculpate his client.
The Third Murder is a slow burn, as the grind of legal homework is punctuated by reveal after reveal. Eventually, there’s a shocker at the trial, and this legal procedural eventually gives way to philosophical questions. Finally, there’s an edge-of-the-seat epilogue – a final lawyer-client face-to-face where the shell-shocked lawyer tries to confirm what really happened and why.
Masaharu Fukuyama in Hirokazu Koreeda’s THE THIRD MURDER. Photo courtesy of San Francisco Film Society (SFFILM).
Yakusho (Tampopo, Shall We Dance?, Babel, 13 Assassins) is quite excellent as the defendant, a man who seems to be an unreliable mental case, but who might have a sense of justice that trumps everyone else’s.
The Third Murder is the work of director Hirokazu Koreeda, who made the 1995 art house hit Maborosi and one of the best movies of 2008, Still Walking. Koreeda’s Shoplifters just won the Palm d’Or at Cannes, and will be released in the US by Magnolia Pictures on November 23. I saw The Third Murder at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM).
The startling documentary Three Identical Strangers begins with a young man’s first day on a college campus, being greeted by strangers who are convinced that they know him; that night, a fellow student connects him to his double, born on the same day. They turned out to be identical siblings separated at birth and adopted by different families. Even more stunning, the two brothers soon find their identical triplet.
The first third of Three Identical Strangers is a wonderful Feel Good story of family discovery. But then we find that the triplets’ separation had been orchestrated as part of a longitudinal study of nurture vs. nature. Researchers INTENTIONALLY separated identical twins and placed them with families that the researchers kept in the dark. The placements occurred AFTER the twin babies had bonded together in the crib for many months.
This study was not detached observation, it was human experimentation. As details reminiscent of Josef Mengele unfold, the fact that both the researcher and the adoption agency were Jewish becomes even more chilling.
A film that covers much of the same factual territory, Twinning Reaction, premiered two years ago at Cinequest. Twinning Reaction focuses on the study; we meet several sets of twins, and the triplets are the jaw-dropping final act. Three Identical Strangers focuses on the triplets and then takes a more current dive into the study. Twinning Reaction is not yet available to stream, but it will be playing at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival this July and August.
Three Identical Strangers won the Special Jury Prize for Storytelling at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. It also played at this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM). Well-spun, this is an amazing story.
Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie and Ben Foster in a scene from Debra Granik’s LEAVE NO TRACE. Courtesy of SFFILM.
Here is the best movie of 2018 – so far – the unforgettable coming of age film Leave No Trace. Ben Foster and Thomasin McKenzie star as a dad-daughter team who challenge conventional thinking about homelessness and healthy parenting. Leave No Trace is writer-director Debra Granik’s first narrative feature since her Winter’s Bone (which I had rated as the best film of 2010).
When we meet Will (Foster) and his daughter Tom (McKenzie), they are engaging in extremely low impact camping in a fern-rich Oregon forest, to the point of solar cooking foraged mushrooms on a mylar sheet. Dad and daughter are both survivalist experts and work together as a highly trained team. They have the fond, respectful, communicative relationship that most families with teen children aspire to but can only fantasize about.
But Will and Tom are not on vacation. They do not consider themselves homeless, because the forest is their home. However, their lifestyle just isn’t consistent with contemporary thinking about child welfare. Furthermore, living in a public park is illegal,and when they are discovered, social service authorities are understandably and justifiably concerned. Investigators find Tom to be medically and emotionally healthy, Will to be free of drug or alcohol abuse, and there has been no child abuse or neglect – other than having ones child living outdoors and not going to school.
Will is a veteran who has been scarred by his military service, and he is clearly anti-social. But Will is not your stereotypical PTSD-addled movie vet. He is a clear thinker. His behavior, which can range to the bizarre, is not impulsive but deliberate.
Fortunately, the Oregon, social services authorities are remarkably open-minded, and they place Will and Tom in a remote rural setting in their own house at a rural Christmas Tree farm. Will can work on the farm, Tom can go the school, and there’s a liberal non-denominational church filled with kind folks. It’s a massive accommodation to Will and Tom’s lifestyle, only with the additions of living under a roof and public education.
Tom blossoms with social contact, and particularly enjoys the local 4-H and one kid’s pet rabbit named Chainsaw. Tom begins to understand how much she needs human connection – and not just with her dad,
But Will can’t help but feel defeated. When Tom suggests that they try to adapt to their new setting, he scowls, “We’re wearing their clothes, we’re living in their house, we’re eating their food, we’re doing their work. We’ve adapted”. She argues, “Did you try?”, “Why are we doing this?”, and “Dad, this isn’t how it used to be”.
Ben is so damaged that his parenting can nurture Tom for only so long. Leave No Trace is about how he has raised her to this point. Has he imparted his demons to her? Has he helped her become strong and grounded enough to grow without him?
Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie and Ben Foster in a scene from Debra Granik’s LEAVE NO TRACE. Courtesy of SFFILM.
Winter’s Bone launched the career of Jennifer Lawrence, and Leave No Trace might do the same for newcomer Thomasin McKenzie. McKenzie is riveting as she authentically takes Tom from a parented child to an independent young woman. At the San Francisco International Film Festival screening, producer and co-writer Anne Rosellini said “there’s an ‘otherness’ to McKenzie,” who had “tremendous insight into the character”. Rosellini added that McKenzie and Ben Foster bonded before the shoot, as they rehearsed with a survivalist coach.
Foster is no stranger to troubled characters (The Messenger, Rampart, Hell or High Water). Here, he delivers a remarkably intense and contained performance as a man who will not allow himself an outburst no matter what turbulence roils inside him. Rosellini noted that “Will is elusive, a mysterious character to everybody”. It’s a performance that will be in the conversation about Oscar nominations. Actors Jeff Kober, Dale Dickey, Dana Millican and Isaiah Stone (the little brother in Winter’s Bone) are also excellent in smaller roles.
Leave No Trace is thoughtful and emotionally powerful. Superbly well-crafted and impeccably acted, it’s a Must See.
In Bart Layton’s clever documentary/re-enactment mashup American Animals, four college kids plan a major art heist. The film opens with the title words THIS IS NOT BASED ON A TRUE STORY morphing into THIS IS A TRUE STORY. Indeed, in 2003, four college kids really did target $12 million in rare Audubon and Darwin books at the Transylvania University library in Lexington, Kentucky.
The story follows the classic arc of a heist movie -the intricate planning, the assembling of a team and, finally, the Big Day. Because the heist is so preposterous (and because these guys are smoking a lot of weed while planning it), the whole thing is pretty funny.
Layton has his cake and eats it, too. He has actors re-enact the real events. And he has the real participants commenting as talking heads. (With the retrospect of fifteen years, none of the participants now thinks that the heist was a good idea.)
I was especially eager to see American Animals because director Bart Layton also made The Imposter, one of the most jaw-dropping documentaries I have seen. American Animals is not as good as the unforgettable The Imposter, but funnier and more inventive – and damn entertaining.
I saw American Animals at the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM). It opens in the Bay Area this weekend.
Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie and Ben Foster in a scene from Debra Granik’s LEAVE NO TRACE< playing
I’ve posted my Best Movies of 2018 – So Far. Every year, I keep a running list of the best movies I’ve seen this year, adding to it as the year goes on. By the end of the year, I usually end up with a Top Ten and another 5-15 mentions. Here’s last year’s list.
To get on my year-end list, a movie has to be one that thrills me while I’m watching it and one that I’m still thinking about a couple of days later.
This year, as usual, I took advantage of Cinequest in March and the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM) in April to preview some films that will be released later in the year.
My top pick so far this year is Leave No Trace. Leave No Trace is Debra Granik’s first narrative feature since her 2010 Winter’s Bone (which I had rated as the best film of that year). Leave No Trace is a brilliant coming of age film that stars Ben Foster and Thomasin McKenzie as a dad-daughter team who challenge conventional thinking about homelessness and healthy parenting. Winter’s Bone launched the career of Jennifer Lawrence, and Leave No Trace might do the same for newcomer McKenzie. I saw Leave No Trace at the San Francisco International Film Festival. My full review will appear after the film’s release in the Bay Area at the end of June.
You can see other top picks The Rider and The Death of Stalin in theaters right now and Quality Problems and Outside In are now streaming.
Charlize Theron stars in Jason Reitman’s TULLY. Courtesy of SFFILM.
The compelling dark comedy Tully stars Charlize Theron, is written by Diablo Cody and directed by Jason Reitman. Those three combined on the underrated game-changing comedy Young Adult, and Tully is another very singular film.
Theron plays Marlo, a mom who has just given birth to her third child. Her oldest kid has intense special needs and a newborn brings another level of obligation. Marlo develops a serious case of depression. To ease the burden, she gets a night nurse named Tully; Tully has an otherworldly quality which brings relief and respite to Marlo. And then there’s a major plot twist…
Theron is a fearless actress – not afraid to glam down, She gained fifty pounds for this role (not as big a glam down as for Monster). In Young Adult, she was game to play a thoroughly dislikable character. Here she plays a real Mom, not a Perfect Mom. In real life, caregiving can take its toll, and that’s what we see here.
Mackenzie Davis brings a magical quality to the character of Tully. Ron Livingston is very good as a loving but clueless husband; ill-equipped to recognize, let alone deal with Marlo’s depression.
Tully was featured at the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM) (although I missed it because I was at the Leave No Trace screening); Theron and Reitman attended the SFFILM screening, and, from all reports, Theron wowed the crowd.
Tully is an excellent and insightful film. It’s a dark comedy and NOT A LIGHT MOVIE – after all, with all its laughs, it’s about postpartum depression.
Min-hee Kim in a scene from Hong Sang-soo’s CLAIRE’S CAMERA, playing at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 4 – 17, 2018. Courtesy of SFFILM.
Claire’s Camerais the latest nugget from writer-director Hong Sang-soo, that great observer of awkward situations and hard-drinking. Jeon (Min-hee Kim of The Handmaiden) is a film company assistant who ia traveled to the Cannes Film Festival for the premiere of a Korean film. It turns out that the film company executive has had a long-term relationship with the movie’s director, and she immediately fires Jeon when she learns of Jeon’s fling with the director. With several days sill to go before her return flight, Jeon wanders around Cannes. Jeon meets the French schoolteacher and amateur photographer Claire (Isabelle Huppert) and they hang out. Coincidentally, Claire also meets the director. Most of the dialogue is in English, the common language of the French and Korean characters – and the earnestly imperfect English-speaking supplies some of the film’s humor.
Not only does Claire have a camera, she IS the camera through which we observe the foibles of the other characters. Jeon is breathtakingly clueless (or in denial) about the reason for her dismissal. The director, as many Hong Sang-soo characters, has an enthusiastic relationship with alcohol. It’s all dryly funny, although the director and the executive redefine their relationship in a powerfully realistic scene.
This is an especially fine performance by Min-hee Kim. She pulled off some deadpan humor in The Handmaiden, a film more thought of for its eroticism and mystery. Here, she’s often just wandering around in reflection and making small talk. But Kim is just so watchable, she keeps the audience’s interest keen.
Claire’s Camera is not as surreal as last year’s Hong Sang-soo entry, Yourself and Yours, but just as observational and droll. I saw Claire’s Camera at the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM), where Hong Sang-soo has a cult following and always appreciative audiences. It’s now playing at the 4 Star in San Francisco.
Min-hee Kim and Isabelle Huppert in a scene from Hong Sang-soo’s CLAIRE’S CAMERA, playing at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 4 – 17, 2018. Courtesy of SFFILM.
Louis Garrel in A scene from Michel Hazanavicious’s GODARD, MON AMOUR, playing at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 4 – 17, 2018. Courtesy of SFFILM.
Godard, Mon Amouris a bitingly funny portrait of flawed genius. Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist) pays tribute to the genius of filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard’s early career while satirizing Godard’s personal excesses.
Godard, Mon Amour traces the three pivotal years after Godard married Anne Wiazemsky, the 19-year-old star of his La Chinoise. Godard (Louis Garrel) is age 37. In the preceding seven years he has helped revolutionize cinema as a leader of the French New Wave. He has made three masterpieces: Breathless, Contempt and Band of Outsiders. This is the Godard of “All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun.”
But now Godard has become a doctrinaire Maoist and rejects his past work. He sees himself as a thought leader of revolutionary politics – but that is a delusion. He’s just a political amateur, a poseur, a tourist.
Stacy Martin (center) in a scene from Michel Hazanavicious’s GODARD, MON AMOUR, playing at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 4 – 17, 2018. Courtesy of SFFILM.
“Godard is dead”, Godard declaims. But young Anne (Stacy Martin) has hitched her star to the old Godard, the master of cinematic innovation and rock star, not this new dogmatic Godard.
This is also a snapshot of 1967, when many on the French Left believed that revolution in France was around the corner. By 1969, it was apparent to virtually everyone that this had been a mirage, that revolution was not going to happen. To everyone but Godard, who stubbornly stuck with his dogma.
Louis Garrel, his dreamboat looks glammed down with Godard’s bald spot, is often very funny as he deadpans his way through Godard’s pretensions. In Godard, Mon Amour, Godard’s thinking has become so devoid of humor, nuance, texture and ambiguity that his art has become one-dimensional and boring. Indeed, I have found all of the Godard films since 1967’s Weekend to range from disappointing to completely unwatchable. Godard is alive at age 87 and still making movies today – and they all suck.
In his very biting send-up of Godard’s personal failings, Michel Hazanavicius pays tribute to Godard’s groundbreaking cinematic techniques. We see jump cuts, breaking the fourth wall, shifting between color and negative imagery,
subtitling the characters’ interior thoughts over their spoken dialogue and references to earlier movies. It’s all very witty.
There’s even a motif of repeatedly broken spectacles as an jomage to Woody Allen’s Take the Money and Run. In one of the more obvious jokes, Godard and Anne debate whether either would choose to appear nude in a movie while they walk around their room in complete, full-frontal nudity.
The more of Godard’s films you have seen, the more enjoyable you will find Godard, Mon Amour. If you don’t get the allusions to Godard’s filmmaking, you may find the protagonist of Godard, Mon Amour to be miserably tedious. I saw Godard, Mon Amour at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM). It opens this Friday in the Bay Area.
Another dark comedy, this one about two teen girl sociopaths, Thoroughbreds.
Outside In: Now on Netflix, this fine Lynn Shelton drama about a man returning to his community after 20 years in prison is an acting showcase for Kaitlin Dever (Justified), Jay Duplass (Transparent) and, especially, Edie Falco. Falco’s performance is stunning.
I liked Al Pacino’s portrayal of Penn State football coach Joe Paterno as his storied career was killed by scandal in HBO’s Paterno.
ON VIDEO
This week’s video pick salutes the San Francisco International Film Festival, now underway. From last year’s SFFILMFestival, the topical French drama The Stopover explores the after-effects of combat in contemporary warfare. We also get a female lens on the acceptance of women in combat roles and on sexual assault in the military from the co-writer and co-directors, the sisters Delphine and Muriel Coulin. The Stopover is available to stream on iTunes.
ON TV
This week, Turner Classic Movies brings us a couple of curiosities. First, on April 14, is arguable the first on-screen CSI in Mystery Street (1950). In an era where police detective work seemed to be mostly sweating out confessions under bright lights, the investigator in Mystery Street uses the methods of forensic science. And he’s played by Ricardo Montalban, no less. The Czar of Noir, Eddie Muller will supply the intro and outro on this week’s Noir Alley.
And on April 15, TCM will air the sci-fi classic Solaris (1972), the masterpiece of Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky. A psychologist, with that common Russian name of Kris Kelvin, is sent to check out a space mission orbiting the oceanic planet Solaris. He finds things ominously awry, with a suicide and suspiciously furtive behavior by the surviving crew. Then he is face-to-face with his own dead wife from Earth; and after he dispatches her into space, she reappears on the spacecraft. Things are seriously messed up.
Much of Solaris’ two hours and 47 minutes – watching this movie is a commitment – is trippy shots of the ocean planet, with waves breaking across its colored surface. Solaris is not so much an enjoyable art movie as it is a fascinating one. It won the Grand Prix at Cannes and is firmly placed in the sci-fi canon. Solaris is a must see for sci-fi fans [Note: This is NOT the inferior 2002 Steven Soderbergh remake.]
