SFJFF

FRITZ LANG: a filmmaker face to face with a real monster

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Heino Ferch as FRITZ LANG

If you’re making a dark crime movie, what better protagonist than Fritz Lang, the creator of the masterpiece M and a founding auteur of film noir?  Fritz Lang imagines Fritz Lang (Heino Ferch) gathering research for M by tracking and interviewing a real serial killer, all while under police suspicion for his own past.

Writer-director Gordian Maugg sets Fritz Lang at after he has triumphed with the sci-fi epic Metropolis.  Most directors are worried about transitioning from silent movies to talkies, but Lang is consumed pivoting from the grand epic to the personal – he aims to focus each film on the inner struggles of one individual.  He begins work on his next film (what will become M) and hides from his agent, producer and even from second wife and co-writer Thea von Harbou.

Lang travels to research a real serial killer.  We see him visualizing scenes for M (and actual snippets from M are inserted in Fritz Lang).  He is confronted by the detective chasing the serial killer, who still suspects Lang of murdering Lang’s first wife.

Indeed, in real life, police were summoned to find Lang’s first wife dead of a gunshot wound to her chest. Lang and von Harbou explained that the wife had discovered them in frangrante delicto, rushed to get Lang’s pistol and killed herself. Because there was no forensic evidence to contradict the two eyewitnesses, no one was charged. But who commits suicide by shooting herself IN THE CHEST?

Also in real life, von Harbou warmed to the Nazis.   Lang saw that the Nazis would eventually learn of his Jewish mother, and a troubling meeting with Joseph Goebbels caused Lang to leave von Harbou in Germany.  The real Fritz Lang went on to become one of the pioneering masters of American film noir, creating a classic body of work: Scarlet Street, House by the River, The Blue Gardenia, The Big Heat, Human Desire, While the City Sleeps and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt.

The fictional narrative Fritz Lang explores Lang’s creative process, particularly in the creation of M, still one of the most unsettling examples of cinema.   Heino Ferch (Albert Speer in Downfall, the crime boss Ronnie in Run Lola Run) is very good as an imperious but tortures Lang.

Fritz Lang will play the SFJFF at:

  • Castro (San Francisco), Thursday, July 27 9:30 PM
    Albany Twin (Albany), Thursday, August 3 8:30 PM.

The SFJFF runs from July 20 through August 6 at theaters in San Francisco, Palo Alto, Albany, San Rafael and Oakland. You can peruse the entire program and buy tickets and passes at San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.

SUBTE-POLSKA: memory, vitality and loves from the past

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SUBTE POLSKA

Subte-Polska is an Argentine gem about a nonagenarian chess master addressing his own memory, vitality and the need to find closure with his past.  A promising first feature for writer-director Alejandro Magnone, Subte Polska is the sleeper Must See at this year’s SFJFF.

Great movie. Off-putting title.

Tadeusz (Hector Bidonde) is a working class nonagenarian chess master. He’s still able to win several simultaneous chess matches, but his age is catching up to him and he has periods of confusion and memory loss. His doc has prescribed meds that counteract the memory loss, but he refuses to take them because they…wait for it…diminish his sexual performance.

His adult adopted son (Marcelo Xicarte) is understandably frustrated because he has to keep tracking down an unnecessarily (from his perspective) addled old man. And the son is in a touchy period in his own marriage.

Tadeusz is a Communist Jew who left Poland, his family and his girlfriend to fight fascism in the Spanish Civil War. He found another lover in Spain, but he left her,too, when they were defeated by Franco. Tadeusz’ family didn’t survive Hitler. That’s a lot of loss, and Tadeusz dealt with it by emigrating to Argentina and LITERALLY going underground. To avoid triggering painful memories, he gets a job constructing and then working in the Buenos Aires subway system. He sets up his son as a subway driver, and his best buddies also work in the subway, including the guy who runs the underground newsstand (Manuel Callau).

As Subte-Polska unfolds, Magnone explores our sense of memory, and how we consciously and subconsciously handle both the cherished memories and the devastating ones.  As he takes and abstains from taking his meds, Tadeusz’s short-term memory ebbs and flows.  This is a guy who has framed his entire life to suppress the memories of his youth, but he begins to remember his youth more and more vividly.  As he remembers, he feels a need to find closure.

Tadeusz is a strong-willed person, and Subte-Polska is pretty funny as he causes consternation in his son, doctor and friends – in everybody except his well-serviced girlfriend and his ball-busting old friend from their first days underground.  Marcelo Xicarte and Manuel Callau both prove to be excellent comic actors.

Speaking of acting, Hector Bidonde delivers a magnificent lead performance.  Bidonde plays someone who has always been determined to do what he wants, stubborn to his core, still confident in his beliefs, mental acuity and sexual prowess, but occasionally shaken by moments of confusion.

You have three chances to catch Subte-Polska at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival:

  • Cinearts (Palo Alto), Sunday, July 23 4:25 PM
  • Castro (San Francisco), Wednesday, July 26 4:05 PM
  • Albany Twin (Twin), Tuesday, August 1 6:30 PM.

The SFJFF runs from July 20 through August 6 at theaters in San Francisco, Palo Alto, Albany, San Rafael and Oakland. You can peruse the entire program and buy tickets and passes at San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.

Subte-Polska is funny, insightful and moving. I’m still mulling it over.  This film deserves a US distributor – and a US distributor who changes the title. After all, it’s a subtitled movie about a 90-year-old; ya gotta help the audience want to see this.  It’s the under-the-radar Must See at this year’s SFJFF.

San Francisco Jewish Film Festival: Al Gore in person, plus Hedy Lamarr!

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sfjff

It’s time to get ready for one of the Bay Area’s top cinema events: the 37th annual San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF37), which opens July 20, and runs through August 6 at five locations throughout the Bay Area. The SFJFF is the world’s oldest Jewish film festival, and, with a 2016 attendance figure of 40,000, still the largest.

Al Gore in AN INCONVENIENT SEQUEL: TRUTH TO POWER

Here’s an early peek at the fest highlights:

  • A pre-release screening of the environmental documentary An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power with an appearance by former Vice-President Al Gore (the screening is currently at rush).
  • Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, the riveting biopic of a glamorous movie star who invented and patented the precursor to wireless technology; that’s amazing enough, but Bombshell delves deeply into how Lamarr’s stunning face, her Jewish heritage, and mid-century gender roles shaped her career, marriages and parenting. Top notch.
  • The especially strong slate of documentaries, always a rich trademark of the SFJFF.
  • Scores of feature films from around the world (I’ll be recommending movies from the US, Israel, Germany and Argentina).
  • And the always popular program of short films, Jews in Shorts.

One of the most appealing features of the SFJFF is that, wherever you live in the Bay Area, the fest comes to you. SFJFF will present film events at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, the Landmark Albany Twin in Albany, the CinéArts Theatre in Palo Alto, the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael, and the New Parkway Theater in Oakland.

You can peruse the entire program and buy tickets and passes at San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.  This weekend I’ll be posting my top picks for the fest.

BOMBSHELL: THE HEDY LAMARR STORY

Movies to See Right Now

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OUR LITTLE SISTER
OUR LITTLE SISTER

In theaters right now:

  • The Japanese domestic drama Our Little Sister is remarkably uplifting. I would seek it out because it’s unlikely to remain in theaters for more than two or three weeks.
  • Zero Days is a documentary on a jaw-dropping hacker mystery – who and how was able to get Iranian military computers to destroy the hardware for their own nuclear weapons program.
  • Really liked the New Zealand teen-geezer adventure dramedy Hunt for the Wilderpeople.
  • 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.
  • Woody Allen’s love triangle comedy Cafe Society is a well-made and entertaining diversion, but hardly a Must See.
  • Finding Dory doesn’t have the breakthrough animation or the depth of story that we expect from Pixar, but it won’t be painful to watch a zillion times with your kids.
  • I’m not writing about Ghostbusters, but I’ve seen it, and it’s not terrible. Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy are brilliant talents, and they produce some laughs in Ghostbusters.

Tomorrow, I’ll be writing about The Bandit, coming up on on CMT tomorrow night.

There’s still time to catch two of my top picks at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF36), which is wrapping up this weekend. False Flag and Wrestling Jerusalem will be screening at the Rafael in San Rafael.

My DVD/Stream of the week is the hilariously dark Argentine comedy Wild Tales. Writer-director Damián Szifron presents a series of individual stories about revenge. It’s still high my list of Best Movies of 2015 – So Far. It’s now available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.

Movies to See Right Now

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OUR LITTLE SISTER
OUR LITTLE SISTER
THE LAST LAUGH at the 36th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival
THE LAST LAUGH at the 36th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival

Here are my top picks at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF36), underway right now throughout the Bay Area. The romance Fever at Dawn plays in Palo Alto tonight. This weekend, the festival hosts the West Coast premiere of the documentary The Last Laugh, which explores (gasp) humor and the Holocaust.

In theaters right now:

  • The Japanese domestic drama Our Little Sister is remarkably uplifting. I would seek it out because it’s unlikely to remain in theaters for more than two or three weeks.
  • Zero Days is a documentary on a jaw-dropping hacker mystery – who and how was able to get Iranian military computers to destroy the hardware for their own nuclear weapons program.
  • Opening today in San Francisco, 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.
  • Finding Dory doesn’t have the breakthrough animation or the depth of story that we expect from Pixar, but it won’t be painful to watch a zillion times with your kids.
  • I’m not writing about Ghostbusters, but I’ve seen it, and it’s not terrible. Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy are brilliant talents, and they produce some laughs in Ghostbusters.

My DVD/Stream of the week is the harrowing thriller ’71, about a nail-biting 24 hours in Northern Ireland’s Troubles. ’71 is now available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

Tomorrow night, Turner Classic Movies presents one of my favorite film noirs, The Lineup (1958), with its dazzling San Francisco locations.

THE LINEUP
THE LINEUP

Movies to See Right Now

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ZERO DAYS
ZERO DAYS

My running list of Best Movies of 2016 – So Far is out. For movies in theaters right now:

  • Our Kind of Traitor is a robust espionage thriller with a funny yet powerful performance by Stellan Skarsgård.
  • Free State of Jones effectively combines the elements of political drama, romance and war movies into an absorbing Civil War drama, one which connects the dots between the 19th Century and the 20th and beyond. With a sizzling Matthew McConaughey.
  • Zero Days is a documentary on a jaw-dropping hacker mystery – who and how was able to get Iranian military computers to destroy the hardware for their own nuclear weapons program.
  • All the Way is a thrilling political docudrama with a stellar performance. It’s the story of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, warts and all, ending official racial segregation in America with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Bryan Cranston brings LBJ alive as no actor has before. All the Way is still playing on HBO.
  • Finding Dory doesn’t have the breakthrough animation or the depth of story that we expect from Pixar, but it won’t be painful to watch a zillion times with your kids.
  • I’m not writing about Ghostbusters, but I’ve seen it, and it’s not terrible.  Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy are brilliant talents, and they produce some laughs in Ghostbusters.

Here are my top picks at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF36), underway right now throughout the Bay Area.

My DVD/Stream for the next two weeks is one of my Best Movies of 2016 – So Far. San Jose native Matt Sobel’s impressive directorial debut Take Me To the River is entirely fresh. Not one thing happens in Take Me to the River that you can predict, and it keeps the audience off-balance and completely engaged. You can stream Take Me to the River on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play or rent the DVD from Netflix.

On July 26, Turner Classic Movies presents the still-powerful 1943 The Ox-Bow Incident, a parable about mobs acting rashly on the basis of fear and prejudice (which certainly resonates in today’s political environment).  Henry Fonda and Harry Morgan lead an excellent period cast with Dana Andrews, Anthony Quinn and Jane Darwell, along with  Frank Conroy and Harry Davenport, whose performances are perfect little gems.  Which character most resembles Donald Trump?

On July 27, TCM airs Heaven’s Gate, a movie that I reviled when I saw it in a theater in 1980 and again in 2013 when it garnered some wholly undeserved revisionist praise.   The second time around, I still found Heaven’s Gate to be a brutal, if occasionally unintentionally humorous, viewing experience.  Its director, Michael Cimino, died last week, and it’s a good time to honor him by watching his masterpiece The Deer Hunter.

Henry Fonda and Harry Morgan in THE OX-BOW INCIDENT
Henry Fonda and Harry Morgan in THE OX-BOW INCIDENT
THE OX-BOW INCIDENT
THE OX-BOW INCIDENT

San Francisco Jewish Film Festival – the top picks

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sfjff36 bannerHere’s a preview of the 36th annual San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF36), which opens tomorrow, July 21, and runs through August 7 at five locations throughout the Bay Area. The festival offers a broad range of film experiences:

  • 51 features (33 Documentaries, 18 Narratives) from 13 countries (but mostly from the US and Israel).
  • 2 programs of short films (Jews in Shorts), a web series and first two episodes of the miniseries False Flag.
  • 14 world, North American or US premieres.
  • celebrity appearances by Norman Lear, Robert Klein, Adam (s0n of Leonard) Nimoy and a passel of filmmakers.

Here are my four top recommendations:

  • The documentary The Last Laugh explores humor and the Holocaust. Is there anything funny about Nazis or about the Holocaust itself? When is humor acceptable, therapeutic, transgressive or even taboo? How has the passage of time affected what is funny? And does it matter who tells the joke?  We hear from Mel Brooks, Sarah Silverman, Rob and Carl Reiner, Joan Rivers, concentration camp survivor and Hogan’s Heroes star Robert Clary and, most unforgettably, Holocaust survivor Renee Firestone.
  • An addictive taste of the Israeli miniseries False Flag, a character-driven thriller with elements of the whodunit, the paranoid thriller, the perfect crime movie and the espionage procedural.
  • The world premiere of Wrestling Jerusalem, an imaginative examination of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the perspectives of seventeen distinct characters, both Jew and Arab, in a one-man play.
  • Fever at Dawn – an epic romance with both an exploration of identity and a moral choice.

One of the most appealing features of the SFJFF is that, wherever you live in the Bay Area,  the fest comes to you.  SFJFF will present 27-51 films at each of the main venues – the Castro in San Francisco,  CineArts in Palo Alto and the Roda Theater at the Berkeley Rep.   The festival will also screen at least 14 movies at both the Rafael in San Rafael and the Piedmont in Oakland.

Of my top picks, False Flag and Wrestling Jerusalem will screen in San Francisco, Berkeley, Palo Alto and San Rafael.  The Last Laugh will be playing at the Castro and the Roda.  Fever at Dawn will screen in San Francisco, Berkeley and Palo Alto.

You can peruse the entire program and buy tickets and passes at San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. The fest also offers a handy iPhone app available from the App Store: sjff36. You can follow the Festival on Twitter at @SFJewish Film; and, of course, you can follow my coverage at @themoviegourmet.

WRESTLING JERUSALEM: it’s complicated

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WRESTLING JERUSALEM
WRESTLING JERUSALEM

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has inspired both documentary and narrative movies, but none is more imaginative than Wrestling Jerusalem. This year’s San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SJFF36) will host Wrestling Jerusalem’s world premiere.

Wrestling Jerusalem is a one-man play written and performed by Aaron Davidman, who creates seventeen different characters, both Jews and Arabs, who each relate their own experiences of the conflict. Davidman portrays his characters without benefit of costume; he varies the accents, but mostly we can tell the characters apart from the content of their stories. Davidman’s performance is vivid and startlingly personal.

Davidman launches Wrestling Jerusalem with a montage of his characters explaining “It’s complicated” – a defining truth that most would accept. Then the characters continue by disagreeing about the conflict’s start (1946, 1947, 1967, 1973, the Hebron massacre – both of the massacres) and who is to blame for its continuation (Abbas, the settlers, the Orthodox, the terror attacks, Bibi, etc.). Then each character unspools his or her own perspective. Over a crisp 90 minutes, it’s absorbing stuff.

Thankfully, with one just guy on-screen for the entire film, the filmmakers keep Wrestling Jerusalem from being too stagey.  They place Davidman in two locations, a solitary theatrical stage and in the desert (looks like Israel/Palestine, but it’s the California Mojave).  It’s an impressive job by director Dylan Kussman, editor Erik C. Andersen and cinematographer Nicole Hirsch Whitaker.

Davidman has a point of view, but was careful not to make Wrestling Jerusalem into a screed. Instead, he’s careful to let his audience connect the dots in our own minds. Near the end, one of his characters says, “You are Israel, for you have struggled with God and with men” from Genesis 32:28, but does not does not finish the quote with “and have prevailed”.

You can experience Wrestling Jerusalem at its world premiere at this year’s San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SJFF36), where you can see it at San Francisco’s Castro on July 27, at the Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theater on July 30, at CineArts in Palo Alto on July 28 and at the Rafael in San Rafael on August 7

FALSE FLAG: holy moley, what a page-turner!

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FALSE FLAG
FALSE FLAG

False Flag is an absolutely riveting Israeli miniseries that we’ll get to see in the US at some point.  The miniseries has 8 episodes (each a taut 45 minutes).  The first two episodes are playing together as one ninety-minute program at this year’s San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SJFF36).

As False Flag opens,  Israeli television news reports that five Israeli citizens were responsible for the kidnapping of an Iranian diplomat out of his Moscow hotel.  We see four of the five – each appearing totally shocked by the revelation and denying any involvement to their families and friends.  They don’t seem to know each other, and  the only connection seems to be that they each have dual citizenship and a second passport.  We first question whether this was a covert operation by Israeli intelligence forces for which they were framed? But we soon learn that the Mossad wasn’t involved either, and Israeli security forces are soon hunting down the five to find out what really happened.

But then we start to learn that some of the five may be connected.  Their alibis have holes.  And some of the five are not what they seem.  Are they involved?  Who commissioned the kidnapping?  Who is going to find out and how?  And what is going to happen to each of the five?  False Flag evolves into a superb thriller that spans, at once, the genres of the whodunit, the paranoid thriller, the perfect crime movie and the espionage procedural.

The five protagonists have very different personalities, which makes False Flag a successful character-driven thriller.  The three women are a tough cookie, a party girl and a low-self esteemed shoulder-slumper.  The two men are a bewildered regular guy and an international man of mystery.  The acting from  Ishai Golan, Magi Azarzar, Orna Salinger, Ania Bukstein, and Angel Bonnani is first-rate.

False Flag (titled Kfulim in Hebrew) was broadcast last fall in Israel, and was the first non-English language series to be acquired by Fox International Channels.  It’s expected sometime in the next year on American TV.  The release of the first two episodes at SFJFF36 will help build buzz for the US release.

The Joke was on The Movie Gourmet.  When I was going through my screeners for the SFJFF36, I neglected to read anything about False Flag except for “thriller”, so I was expecting that the entire story was contained in the 90 minutes. When what is really Episode 2 ended, I was on the edge of my seat braying, “Oh no! What happens next?”.

You can get your own addicting taste of False Flag at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, where you can see it at CineArts in Palo Alto on July 23, at San Francisco’s Castro on July 30, at the Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theater on July 31, and the Rafael in San Rafael on August 6.

I, DALIO: the Jewish star of two French masterpieces

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I, DALIO, OR THE RULES OF THE GAME
I, DALIO – OR THE RULES OF THE GAME

There are two programs of short films (Jews in Shorts) at this year’s San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, and one of them features the documentary short I, Dalio – Or the Rules of the Game.  Covering the career of French Jewish actor Marcel Dalio, I, Dalio reflects on how Dalio’s Jewishness informed his life and film career.  It’s a documentary of special interest to cinephiles because of Dalio’s roles in three of the all-time greatest films.   One of those films is Casablanca, and Dalio  gets one of that film classic’s biggest laughs when his croupier says “Your winnings, sir” to Claude Raines’ Captain Renault.

Born in Paris as Israel Moshe Blauschild and adopting the stage name of Marcel Dalio, he became a prolific character actor in French cinema, specializing in weaselly, conniving and otherwise malevolent roles, often playing the foil to his real-life friend Jean Gabin. I, Dalio notes that the only two Dalio roles that were explicitly Jewish were his starring turns in the Jean Renoir masterpieces La Grande Illusion and The Rules of the Game.

Then, within a year of The Rules of the Game’s Paris premiere, the Nazis invaded Paris, and Dalio took his talent to Hollywood.  After the war, Dalio continued to work, producing over a hundred more screen credits in international cinema and television.

I, Dalio – Or the Rules of the Game will appeal to audiences interested in both cinema history and Jewish identity.  Running for 33 minutes, I Dalio anchors one of the two programs of short films (Jews in Shorts) at this years San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SJFF36), where you can see it at San Francisco’s Castro on July 27 and at the Piedmont in Oakland on August 6.