movie gourmet

Cinequest’s Mr. Documentary: Sandy Wolf (part 2)

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SANDY WOLF

Sandy Wolf’s service to Cinequest (Cinequest’s Mr. Documentary: Sandy Wolf: part 1) is only one of his contributions to film culture.

Sandy also publishes the weekly e-newsletter This Week on TCM, in which he reviews the most significant choices on Turner Classic Movies. He doesn’t write about every movie on TCM, but he touches on several each day. And this is not a quick scan of the weekly classic film menu – each email runs to up to 6,000 words.

Every Sunday morning, while The Wife pours over the New York Times, I’m scanning Sandy’s email to see if TCM is featuring a film I had overlooked or need to revisit. For example, I DVRed the 1937 They Won’t Forget, which I had never seen, only because of Sandy’s description of Lana Turner’s entrance. Worth it.

Earlier this year, I finally got around to the 1936 classic Dodsworth, only because Sandy recommended it. Dodsworth rewarded me with remarkable performances from Walter Huston, Mary Astor and Ruth Chatterton. (Familiarity with Dodsworth is also central to understanding the documentary Scandal: The Trial of Mary Astor, because Astor channeled her Dodsworth character during her testimony at the notorious child custody trial.)

Sandy’s regular readers always wait for the weekly use of the word “oeuvre ” and the mention of the “ubiquitous Michael Curtiz”. Sandy is the kind of film writer who can use the word “mendacity” about a movie (All About Eve) OTHER than Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. 

It’s difficult to decide which is the biggest value add in This Week on TCM – Sandy’s usually perfect movie taste or his capsulized commentary, enlivened with Grouchoesque quips. Here’s a taste:

  • Story of Seabiscuit: This does not remotely resemble the true story of Seabiscuit; in fact, it should be entitled Nothing Like the True Story of Seabiscuit.
  • Manchurian Candidate: A ludicrous premise: the Russians want to put a puppet in the White House, whom they can maneuver and control – hey, wait a minute.
  • Gaslight: Joseph Cotton is an old friend who senses something rotten in the state of Denmark (which means he has a strong sense of smell, since this takes place in Victorian era England). 
  • The Searchers: John Ford’s magnum opus and the apogee (or apotheosis if you prefer an even more pretentious “ap” word) of his Western genre films. 
  • Doctor Zhivago : My least favorite of Lean’s well known films, which I find ponderous and unwieldy (or if you prefer, slow and boring). I came to CA to get away from snow, so why spend over 3 hours looking at it. Then again, you can spend all that time looking at Julie Christie, which almost makes it worth it. This film was a huge hit and mine is a minority opinion, but is there anyone in America who isn’t sick of Lara’s Theme? 
  • Detour:   Talk about femme fatales – Ann Savage (no name better fit an actress) is the fataliest of all femmes. Ms. Savage more than makes up for the flimsy sets and if she doesn’t give you nightmares, nobody will (whenever I wake up screaming in the night soaked in sweat, and Harriet asks what’s wrong I just say “Ann Savage”).
  • Ingmar Bergman’s Passion of Anna: Moving and powerful, under no circumstances should you watch this film unless you are prepared to hit the emotional depths of human existence (I’m not sure what that means, but don’t have a bottle of pills nearby when you are watching). 
  • Buffalo Bill and the Indians or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson: (Paul) Newman and director Robert Altman were at the height of their respective powers when they teamed up to make this can’t miss film. But miss it did and by miles.
  • The Window: Young Bobby Driscoll goes out on the fire escape to sleep on a sweltering NYC summer night and through a neighbor’s window witnesses a murder. Bobby is proverbial boy who cried Sandy Wolf (I use that line every time this movie airs and can’t help myself).
  • Scarlet Pimpernel: Whenever I see this title, I think of pumpernickel bread, which you can’t get in Northern CA (at least I have never seen it). 
  • The Longest Day: BTW, an astute and erudite reader correctly informed me that the “D” in D-Day stands for “Day”. How stupid is that – what does Day Day mean?  I would call it T-Day for The Day or even I-Day for Invasion Day.
  • Henry V: All I know about Henry V is that he came after Henry  IV (not sure where O Henry came from – and I’m talking about the candy bar and not the author). 
  • Red Badge of Courage: This was deemed an utter failure upon its release and caused director John Huston grief (or as much grief he could sustain between cavorting and carousing) .
  • Lolita: Shelley Winters, as Lolita’s Mom, is as annoying as ever (which is as annoying as any human being can possibly be) but she is in fact somewhat empathetic and plays her role well (Shelley could do annoying in her sleep and I’m sure she was annoying even when she was asleep).

Sandy’s taste in exceptional, but not perfect. We differ on the fourth and fifth greatest Hitchcock films, and I’m about to set him straight on his under appreciation of Peckinpah’s The Getaway.

Sandy is also the father of filmmaker Matt Wolf, the accomplished documentarian behind:

  • Wild Combination, the critically praised biodoc of the influential musician Arthur Russell. (Included with Amazon Prime.)
  • Teenage, an especially insightful look at the emergence of teenage culture, surprisingly recent in American culture. Teenage aired on PBS. (Included with Amazon Prime.)
  • Bayard and Me, the undertold story of Bayard Russell’s key role in the Civil Rights movement as a gay man in the 50s and 60s.
  • Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, about a woman who recorded 30 years of TV, 24 hours per day, and left a 70,000 videotape tape-archive of American culture reflected by television. (Streamable on Amazon and iTunes.)
  • Spaceship Earth, the soon to be released 2020 Sundance hit about Biosphere 2, the 1991 scientic and social experiment where a team moved into a model replica of our planet’s ecosystem.

Matt Wolf was already an NYU film school grad when Sandy started his role at Cinequest, but Sandy takes some credit for some of Matt’s love of movies. Back in the VCR era, Sandy recorded classic films one at a time, and then played the collection at family movie nights.

On the red carpet of the Tribeca Film Festival for one of Matt’s premieres, Sandy Wolf heard a publicist summoning “Mr. Wolf, over here, please.” Sandy’s proudest moment came when he realized they were calling Matt.

Cinequest’s Mr. Documentary: Sandy Wolf (part 1)

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SANDY WOLF

How does Cinequest fill its slate of documentary features each year? For the past two decades, Sandy Wolf, a now-retired attorney, has been volunteering to find the documentaries that premiere at Cinequest.

Back in 2002, Wolf’s recommendation got Spellbound into the festival. The story of eight teenagers competing for the national spelling bee championship, Spellbound went on to become a national art house hit, and Wolf earned some major cred.

Each year, Wolf screens the 250 documentary features that have been submitted to Cinequest by filmmakers. Wolf then submits a top ten and a second twenty recommendations, along with his comments, to Cinequest Director of Programming and Associate Director Mike Rabehl. (Rabehl himself screens every Cinequest submission, including documentaries,) Rabehl has the final say, but he agrees with most of Wolf’s recommendations.

“You rarely see a bad documentary,” says Wolf. “Although there are a lot of mediocre ones.”

How does one actually watch 250 movies? From each July though November, Wolf watches movies in the morning, until he takes a break for lunch. After a visit to the neighborhood coffee joint, he resumes until dinnertime. But he reserves the evening for his own movie choices, not festival screeners.

“Mike Rabehl tells me not to make it a job”, but Wolf thinks its goes best with this regimen.

The slate of documentaries at Cinequest is usually quite rich. Here are some of my favorites from recent Cinequests, all of which are are now available to stream:

  • The Brainwashing of My Dad: When TV changes not just opinions, but mood and personality, too. Amazon, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play.
  • Meet the Hitlers: Wouldn’t you change YOUR name? Amazon, iTunes, Vudu.
  • There Will Be No Stay: In a society with capital punishment, someone must perform the executions. iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play.

Wolf saved me from a big mistake at the 2019 Cinequest. I had decided to pass on screening Clownvets because it looked too sappy for my notoriously jaded taste. But I watched it on Wolf’s recommendation, and I’m very glad that I did. Clownvets turned out to be well-constructed and surprisingly powerful.

This year Wolf tipped me off to The Quicksilver Chronicles, which is also my own favorite of the 2020 Cinequest documentaries.

But the Cinequest slate of documentaries isn’t Wolf’s only contribute to cinema culture, as we’ll learn in Cinequest’s Mr. Documentary: Sandy Wolf (part 2).

A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD: Mr. Rogers pries open a soul

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Matthew Rhys and Tom Hanks in A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD

The Wife and I finally got around to streaming the pleasantly entertaining A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, with Tom Hanks as Mr. Rogers. I had already seen the recent documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, which I’ll touch on a few paragraphs later.

In A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, the investigative journalist Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys) is a notch-on-his-belt guy, who revels in bringing down the famous. When the subjects of his profiles read his articles about them, it’s the worst day of their lives. Despite his professional success, a smart and sexy wife (Susan Kelechi Watson) and a new baby, he’s profoundly unhappy. We learn that much of this stems from unresolved anger at his father (Chris Cooper).

To his disgust, Vogel is assigned to write a brief puff piece on that icon of niceness, Mr. Rogers. The movie is about Mr. Rogers trying to disarm Vogel’s cynicism by excavating Vogel’s daddy issues.

As written, Vogel’s emotional journey is a little too predictable for A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood to be a great movie, but it’s emotionally satisfying.

Of course, Tom Hanks is a perfect Mr. Rogers. Rhys is okay.

If you want to appreciate a great actor’s work, watch the very first time we see Chris Cooper. He signals that he is intoxicated with a slightly unsteady step backwards, and goes on to a perfectly realistic drunk performance, without ever lapsing into a Foster Brooks broadness,

Susan Kelechi Watson is very winning as Vogel’s wife, not a particularly complex part, but her charisma makes me want to see more of her.

This is the best work so far from director Marielle Heller (Diary of a Teenage Girl, Can You Ever Forgive Me?). She adds just the perfect dashes of magical realism (dropping Vogel into the sets and among the characters of the TV show), which is a difficult thing to get right.

We get to meet the real Fred Rogers in the recent biodoc Won’t You Be My Neighbor? What is so surprising is that Rogers’ sometimes laughably gentle affect sprang from such internal ferocity. It turns that Rogers was a man who hated, hated, hated the moral emptiness and materialism of commercial children’s television.

In theaters, Won’t You Be My Neighbor submerged audiences in their hankies. I did choke up three times during A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, but Won’t You Be My Neighbor? was pretty much one long ugly cry for me.

Streaming Won’t You Be My Neighbor? is included with subscriptions to HBO and DirecTV, and the stream can be purchased for $14.99 from all major streaming platforms. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is available to stream from all the usual outlets; I paid Amazon $2.99.

Movies to See Right Now

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Jeanne Moreau in ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, no one should be going to movie theaters right now. The San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM) made the right decision and cancelled, as did the famed Cannes Festival. So, there will be no “OUT NOW” recommendations from me for a while, but I’ll try to double up on movies to WATCH AT HOME.

ON VIDEO

My video pick this week – for St. Paddy’s Week – is the warmly funny The Commitments (1991), the affectionate tale of an unlikely aspiration and an unnecessary fiasco. The Commitments can be streamed from Amazon, iTunes, YouTube and Google Play, usually for less than the cost of a pint of Guinness.

Here are my comments on the Best Movies of 2019, all of which are now available to stream.

ON TV

On March 21 and 22, Turner Classic Movies will present one of my Overlooked Noir, Elevator to the Gallows – such a groundbreaking film that you can argue that it’s the first of the neo-noir.  It’s the debut of director Louis Malle, shot when he was only 24 years old.  It’s more difficult now to appreciate the originality of Elevator the Gallows; but in 1958, no one had seen a film with a Miles Davis soundtrack or one where the two romantic leads were never on-screen together. The Czar of Noir, Eddie Muller, will provide his famous intro and outro,

Marcel Ronet in ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS

St. Paddy’s Day – THE COMMITMENTS

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THE COMMITMENTS

There’s a rich assortment of movies about Ireland that you can watch on St. Patrick’s Day: Waking Ned Devine, Brooklyn, Finian’s Rainbow, Once, Ryan’s Daughter, Widow’s Peak and The Guard. (Or you can go dark and pick from my Best Films About the Troubles.)

But my choice is the warmly funny The Commitments (1991), the affectionate tale of an unlikely aspiration and an unnecessary fiasco. Not content to wallow in generational poverty, a young lad, Jimmy Rabbitte (Robert Arkins) decides to gather a motley crew of his fellow North Dublin young folks and to form them into a soul band.

Now, North Dublin may be the most melanin-deprived place on the planet. So, why soul music? Jimmy, a natural leader, says:

“Do you not get it, lads? The Irish are the blacks of Europe. And Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland. And the Northside Dubliners are the blacks of Dublin. So say it once, say it loud: I’m black and I’m proud. ”

With the guidance of an older musician who has worked in the US, they improve, and even start to catch on. Unfortunately, these folks have never experienced success and are totally ill-equipped to handle it. Soon, the band is hanging together by a thread. If only Wilson Pickett, touring across town, can show up and help them with publicity…

The Commitments is adapted from a Roddy Doyle novel steeped in working class Irish verisimilitude. Director Alan Parker looked to local Dublin musicians and came up with a cast of first-time actors. Ironically, the one experienced actor and non-musician in the cast was Johnny Murphy as Joey “The Lips” Fagan.

The cast performed a 20-year reunion show. What have they been doing since they made this movie?

  • Andrew Strong, who played the immensely gifted but thuggish lead singer Deco Cuffe, has spent decades as a rock singer within Europe, mostly with his band the Bone Yard Boys.
  • Angeline Ball, who played the big-haired tart, Imelda Quirke, swept the Irish equivalent of Oscar/Emmy for best actress in a film and best actress in a TV drama in the same year, 2003.
  • Maria Doyle Kennedy, another backup singer, went on to a significant musical career in Ireland where she is a renowned singer-songwriter. She also played Catherine of Aragon in The Tudors and Vera Bates in Downton Abbey.
  • Glen Hansard, who played the busking guitarist, had some recording success as a solo artist and with his band The Frames. He also starred in an even better movie than The Commitments – the singer-songwriter romance Once.
  • Colm Meany, who played the Elvis-worshiping dad, went on to a career in major films ranging from The Last of the Mohicans to Star Trek: The Next Generation. Meany also starred in two more movies stories based on Roddy Doyle stories The Snapper and The Van; neither film was bad, but neither was as magical as The Commitments.

Alan Parker also directed the musicals Fame and Pink Floyd: The Wall. He was nominated for the best directing Oscar for Midnight Express and Mississippi Burning. (The Academy overlooked his lurid and trashy Angel Heart.)

The Commitments can be streamed from Amazon, iTunes, YouTube and Google Play, usually for less than the cost of a pint of Guinness.

Movies to See Right Now

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Max Von Sydow as THE EXORCIST

This would have been the ending weekend of CINEQUEST which will resume in mid-August when, hopefully the COVID-19 pandemic will have peaked. Until then, we’ll all be watching our movies at home.

REMEMBRANCE

Max Von Sydow in THE SEVENTH SEAL

Sixty-three years after the chess game with Death himself in The Seventh Seal, actor Max Von Sydow has finally succumbed.  Von Sydow is justifiably most well known among cinephiles for his many roles in a cascade of Ingmar Bergman’s grimness, including The Seventh Seal, The Magician, The Virgin Spring, Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, Shame and The Passion of Anna.  And in The Magician, he had to don the most off-putting of facial hair. His biggest hit, of course was as the title character in The Exorcist. Contrary to his image, he had the capacity for hilarity, which he demonstrated in Hannah and Her Sisters as a ridiculously pretentious and selfish artist.  Along with that role, my favorite Von Sydow performances were in Jan Troell’s The Emigrants and The New Land, as a Swedish settler in frontier America.

OUT NOW

  • What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael is the remarkably thorough and insightful biodoc of the iconic film critic Pauline Kael and her drive for relevance.
  • Of the new films I haven’t yet seen, Seberg, with Kristin Stewart, looks the most promising.

And here’s what I’ve written about the best Oscar-nominated movies. They’re all available to stream:

ON VIDEO

This week’s video pick is the superb 2013 drama Short Term 12, with a cast of then-emerging actors – Brie Larson, Kaitlyn Dever, LaKeith Stanfield, Rami Malek and John Gallagher Jr. – all before they became stars. You can find it on most streaming platforms.

ON TV

On both March 14 and 15, Turner Classic Movies is presenting one of the earliest films noir, I Wake Up Screaming. I Wake Up Screaming has proto-noir style, the matter-of-fact sexiness of Carole Landis, the easy-to-root-for pair of Betty Grable and Victor Mature, and the amazing performance of Laird Cregar as the most menacing and creepy of stalkers.  Plus there’s the most incongruous use of the song Somewhere Over the Rainbow. It’s one of my Overlooked Noir, and Czar of Noir Eddie Muller will add some tidbits before and after.

Betty Grable and Laird Cregar in I WAKE UP SCREAMING

Stream of the week: SHORT TERM 12 – what a cast!

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John Gallagher Jr.,, Brie Larson and Rami Malek in SHORT TERM 12

My video pick this week is Short Term 12 because of its cast of then-emerging actors – Brie Larson, Kaitlyn Dever, LaKeith Stanfield, Rami Malek and John Gallagher Jr. – all before they became stars.

Here’s my original review of Short Term 12, which was high on my Best Movies of 2013.

Brie Larson

The Sacramento-born Brie Larson had a substantial career as a child actor – 19 screen credits before she turned 18, including 22 episodes of TV’s Raising Dad. As a young adult, she led up to Short Term 12 with superb supporting performances in The United States of Tara, Rampart and The Spectacular Now. Short Term 12 was the showcase for her capacity to carry a movie as an adult.

Still only 31, Larson has a Best Actress Oscar for Room and is printing herself money as Captain America. Larson has also made The Glass Castle and Just Mercy for Short Term 12 director Destin Daniel Cretton.

John Gallagher, Jr.

John Gallagher Jr., had delivered an achingly vulnerable performance in Margaret in 2005, but had the misfortune the film not being released until 2011 (and then barely at all) becuse of turmoil between writer-director Kenneth Lonergan and the studio. Gallagher is best know for the relatable Jim Harper in The Newsroom.

Kaitlyn Dever

Kaitlyn Dever just starred in Booksmart and was Golden Globe-nominated for Unbelievable. We got to see her grow up from age 15 to 19 as Loretta McCready in Justified. She had a great run of indies in 2013/2014 (The Spectacular Now, Short Term 12, Laggies), She’s still only 23.

LaKeith Stanfield

Short Term 12 was LaKeith Stanfield’s first feature. That got him in Selma. Stanfield was in two of the best recent films, Sorry to Bother You and Uncut Gems.

Rami Malek

Rami Malek, of course, won last year’s Best Actor Oscar for Bohemian Rhapsody.

Short Term 12 is available to be streamed from all the usual platforms.

COVID-19 and the movies in 2020

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BEFORE THE FIRE: a flu pandemic movie premiering at Cinequest. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.

In the current health environment, it is not a good idea to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with an auditorium full of strangers for two hours. (And it’s not a good idea to stand in line with folks before the movie, either.) The Movie Gourmet sees about 250 movies each year, including about 100 in theaters, and I recommend that you help suppress the community transmission of COVID-19 by staying away from movie theaters for a while.

Cinequest has been suspended, with its second week to resume in mid-August. (Ironically, the best American film in this year’s fCinequest is Before the Fire, in which the plot is triggered by a flu pandemic).

This month’s SXSW has already been cancelled, and I expect April’s San Francisco International Film Festival to cancel or postpone.

On Thursday night I did see a film at Cinequest, but I knew that it was going to draw a crowd of no more than 300 in an 1100 seat theater. Instead of waiting in line, I waited until everyone else was seated and then slipped into a section of unoccupied seats so no other patron was within 15 feet of me. There are a couple of promising films coming out soon that I’ve been waiting months to see (The Whistlers and The Wild Goose Lake). I’m probably going to use the same strategy and see them at a sparsely-attended weekday matinee.

But I’m generally going to be STAYING AWAY from movie theaters for a couple months – but not staying way from movies themselves. Fortunately, there are plenty of good movies to watch on video at home. I think that The Movie Gourmet will be emphasizing video choices until this pandemic peaks. Safety first.

THE BURNT ORANGE HERESY: old dogs Jagger and Sutherland light up a talky neo-noir

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Klaes Bang and Elizabeth Debicki in THE BURNT ORANGE HERESY. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.

In the neo-noir The Burnt Orange Heresy, a shady art critic (Klaes Bang) picks up an adventuresome hottie (Elizabeth Debicki) and is enlisted by a menacing zillionaire (Mick Jagger) to scheme out a painting from a reclusive painter (Donald Sutherland). This being a neo-noir, things don’t go as the critic has planned and it takes him too long to realize that he is the sap in the story.

Klaes Bang (The Square) is just made to play that handsome charmer who is just Up To No Good, the kind of role that would have gone to Zachary Scott in the 1940s. But in The Burnt Orange Heresy, Debicki, Sutherland and Jagger are each so compelling, and their characters are so rich, that they completely overshadow Bang’s critic.

This is also a very talky movie, too much so. All the yakking and Bang’s unrelatability drag down The Burnt Orange Heresy and keep it from engaging the audience. relatibility

Sutherland has such a sparkle as the mischievous painter, and it may be easier to spot it now in the aged actor than forty years ago in MASH or Animal House.

Mick Jagger in THE BURNT ORANGE HERESY

The real surprise here is Mick Jagger. This character, a rich and utterly masterful string-puller, is well within Jagger’s acting range and he nails it. After all, as an actor in fictional narratives, he is best known for two of the very worst movies of 1970: Ned Kelly and Performance. But here, Jagger employs his unmatched worldliness to inform this performance (and he makes great use of his trademark sneer and predatory smile, too). Jagger and Sutherland are probably the two best reasons to see this movie.

I saw The Burnt Orange Heresy at Cinequest. I expect it to be released theatrically in the Bay Area in the next few weeks.

THUNDERBIRD: unoriginal and, finally, insipid

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This is a two-second shot in THUNDERBIRD which has nothing much to do with the plot. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.

In the unremarkable Canadian mystery Thunderbird, a city detective visits a backwoods hamlet to unspool a mystery involving damaged young adults from a local tragic family. Thunderbird has the feel of a typical TV whodunit procedural with a trippy supernatural angle slapped on.

If you’ve ever watched a TV or movie drama, you will have already heard every line of dialogue in Thunderbird.  

There’s also an insufferable dose of noble indigenous spiritualism.

I thought I was watching an especially insipid ending, but then was surprised with the real ending, even more insipid.

Cinequest hosted the US premiere of Thunderbird.