TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.
In the comedy Twelve Days of Christmas, high school friends reunite when they’re home for their first college Christmas break. They all get down to some serious partying, but two of them must deal with a serious issue.
These characters act like they are refugees from some mythical colleges that are devoid of booze and drugs. The partying is so purposeful, it brought to my mind the Joe Ely song Everybody Got Hammered. The one blow-out party is very impressive, especially compared to my own first-college-break experience: Round Table pizza, cans of beers and a bottle of rum.
The core of the story is the angst of unrequited love; one character has obviously been in love with his best friend, who hasn’t noticed his yearning for her. And that’s the weakness of Twelve Days of Christmas. Although this guy is fun, witty, loyal and dependable, she knows that he is kinda weak-willed, so it’s evident that she could never see him has a partner.
Most of the cast is very good, although I never got away from being distracted by all the actors seeming at least 4-5 years older than the 19-year-old characters.
Director Michael Boyle and editor Carter Feuerhelm have enough faith in their audience and skill to drop in some split-second gags, all the more effective without lingering on them.
Cinequest hosted the world premiere of Twelve Days of Christmas.
Jake Robinson and Thomas Sadoski in THE MIMIC. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.
In the offbeat and cerebral comedy The Mimic, a widowed screenwriter (Thomas Sadoski) becomes obsessed with his own sociopathic character – and the a person JUST LIKE the character (Jake Robinson) materializes in his life. The two embark on a surreal battle of wits.
Is the new acquaintance a real person, or is he the character in the screenplay? Is the sociopathic character miming the writer? Or is the writer exploring his own sociopathy?
The Mimic is an intellectual exercise, with more knowing chuckles than knee-slappers. Ultimately, it is more clever than it is engaging or entertaining.
The Mimic is basically a two-hander, but it’s rich in cameos. There’s a priceless turn by Gina Gershon as a cougar bar fly. M. Emmet Walsh, Marilu Henner and Jessica Walter show up, too, along with the always-welcome Austin Pendleton (whom I’ve enjoyed since his Francis Larabee in What’s Up, Doc?).
THE LONGEST WAVE, tonight at Cinequest. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.
Of course, I’m deep into Cinequest as usual: The best of Cinequest 2020. If you’re going, look for these three world premieres: Before the Fire (Saturday at the Hammer), 3 Day Weekend (tonight in Redwood City, Monday at the Hammer) and Small Time (Saturday in Redwood City, Sunday at 3Below). I’ve linked ten feature stories and 21 movie recommendations on my CINEQUEST page.
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:
This week’s video pick, the Norwegian suspense thriller Revenge, comes from the 2017 Cinequest. Revenge can be streamed from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
ON TV
On March 10, Turner Classic Movies will air Monterey Pop (1968). This is one of the few DVDs that I still own, for the performances by Mamas and the Papas, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, Canned Heat, Simon and Garfunkle, Jefferson Airplane, Eric Burdon and the Animals, Country Joe and the Fish and The Who.
It’s okay with me if you fast forward over Ravi Shankar. Don’t miss the reaction of Mama Cass Elliot, sitting in the audience, to Janis Joplin. Pete Townsend and Jimi Hendrix had a guitar-destroying competition, which Hendrix, aided by lighter fluid, undeniably won. The Otis Redding set is epic.
To look at Cinequest’s 30-year legacy and to glimpse into its future, I sat down with CEO and Co-Founder Halfdan Hussey and Director of Programming and Associate Director Mike Rabehl.
The Movie Gourmet: It’s been 30 years. How is Cinequest facing a new world of streaming platforms, new Internet-based movie studios and the rest?
Halfdan Hussey: Maybe it’s Cinequest that has changed the world. How have we been able to be an influence? We’ve sought to democratize access for artists to create what they wanted to create. Technologies have been a tool for that.
HH: We were doing digital filmmaking when it was still scorned by the old club. QuickTime debuted at Cinequest, we had files delivered over the Internet, pioneered IP-delivered art. The technology empowers more people, people in more countries, people with less money, the “Maverick People”.
HH: Was it better in the 70s? You had to wait for someone in Hollywood to invite you in or you couldn’t make a movie.
Mike Rabehl: People are drawn to indie cinema right now. Look at the popularity of Jojo Rabbit and Booksmart. The opportunities are much richer.
TMG: So, 30 years ago, the first screeners probably arrived on VHS tapes?
HH: Yes, they did. Digital gives more people an opportunity – because that’s what matters. More access is better. Watching a movie on a phone doesn’t replace the experience of watching it on a big screen, but more people have access to the art. Why are people upset with Netflix winning awards? More access to the art is better.
MR: How many books are sold on Amazon? Print media is not dead. You may read it on a Kindle or a tablet and not on paper, but you’re still engaging in the content, just in another format.
HH: It was a confluence of artists and engineers that started this company. The love of the artist has always been in the organic fiber of the organization. We want an experience that is highly inclusive and innovative.
TMG: So, the social interaction is a Cinequest core value?
HH: We seek to help people create and to connect with people who will appreciate their work. Netflix and Amazon do both those things. Every time you can get someone to access your work – that is important. What Cinequest adds is, first, democratization of access and, next, the forging of community. We bring people together to share the experience.
TMG: And now television is part of Cinequest. Because you want Cinequest to taste the good artistic content that’s on TV?
HH: That started when HBO pushed quality.
Mike Rabehl: TV used to NOT be adventurous.
HH: Mike likes stories.
TMG: And what do you like?
HH: And I like art that can lift hearts and inspire, art with a Maverick or original aspect, art that exposes you to a world other than your own.
TMG: What is Cinequest’s next Maverick challenge?
HH: The next challenge is marketing – how do we get people to engage with the new ways artists can deliver their work? How do we build community?
MR: We have built community. I still hear from filmmakers who have met here and gone off and made films together.
HH – We’re just focused on connecting! VR, AR, IR – we don’t know what is going to happen. Let’s look at one of the traditional and most compelling art forms – imagine live theater and AR coming together!
MR: That’s why we are taking the Redwood City Cinequest events to a new level and adding soirees so artists and audiences can connect with each other.
HH: My favorite events involve a person – like what we’re doing with ruth weiss. [Note: Hussey is referring to Cinequest presenting famed beat poet ruth weiss with its Maverick Spirit Award AND screening the documentary ruth weiss, the beat goddess AND hosting readings by local poets, all in the same event.] That will be a very cool event.
I’ve already seen over twenty offerings from Cinequest 2020, and here are my initial recommendations. As usual, I focus on the world and US premieres. Follow the links for full reviews, images and trailers. I’ve also included some tips for making the most of the Cinequest experience under “Hacking Cinequest”.
[NOTE: This was a preview post written just before the festival opened. The best film in the 2020 Cinequest program was Driveways (which I actually saw after the festival because of COVID-19).]
Jenna Lyng Adams in BEFORE THE FIRE. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.
MUST SEE
Before the Fire: In this year’s Must See at Cinequest, the only escape from an apocalyptic flu pandemic is a woman’s long-estranged rural hometown – but the scary family who traumatized her childhood is there, too. Written by its female star Jenna Lyng Adams, and the first feature by its female director Charlie Buhler, this indie thriller rocks. World premiere.
3 DAY WEEKEND. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.
THRILLERS
Before the Fire, of course and
3 Day Weekend: In this inventively constructed thriller, the point of view keeps shifting, and so does the genre. The screenplay is a triumph of storytelling. World premiere.
Fox Hunt Drive: One gobsmacking plot twist. World premiere.
INEZ & DOUG & KIRA. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.
INDIES
Inez & Doug & Kira: A tangle of love, friendship and bipolar disorder – and obsession. Bay Area premiere.
Small Time: Rural America’s opioid crisis explored through its impact on one little girl; what is the shelf life of innocence? Shot over three years with insight and verisimilitude. World premiere.
OWNERS. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.
WORLD CINEMA
Owners: This dark Czech comedy takes a jaundiced view of human foibles – as if penned by a modern Czech Mark Twain. Recognized as the year’s best film from the Czech Republic. North American premiere.
Willow: This triptych by Oscar-nominated master Macedonian filmmaker Milcho Manchevski plumbs the heartaches and joys of having children; there’s a scene in the final vignette with a mother and son in a car that is one of the most amazing scenes I’ve ever seen. North American premiere.
I Am Frank: This excellent Slovenian drama is about the return of a charismatic misfit who just can’t leave well enough alone. US premiere.
BREAKING FAST. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.
FEEL GOOD
Breaking Fast: Just another gay Muslim romantic comedy…I predict that Breaking Fast will become the Feel Good hit of the 2020 Cinequest. World premiere.
THE QUICKSILVER CHRONICLES. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.
DOCUMENTARY
The Quicksilver Chronicles: Two bohemians live in a ghost town close (yet far) from Silicon Valley, and life happens. World premiere.
AND TWO I HAVEN’T SEEN YET
The Burnt Orange Heresy: See it here before its wide release. This neo-noir features Elizabeth Debicki, Claes Bang, Donald Sutherland and…Mick Jagger.
The Longest Wave: I am a sucker for a surfing documentary, and this one comes from filmmaker Joe Berlinger (Paradise Lost, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster).
CLASSIC MOVIE EXPERIENCE
The silent 1920 The Mark of Zorro with Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckling across the screen will be projected in a period movie palace, the California Theatre, accompanied by world-renowned Dennis James on the Mighty Wurlitzer organ. I hear that last year’s Buster Keaton triumph has encouraged Cinequest to open this year’s silent screening with a Keaton short.
BEFORE IT’S IN THEATERS – SEE IT HERE FIRST
Several Cinequest films already are planned for theatrical release later this year. I haven’t seen them yet, but you can see them first at Cinequest. Resistance, The Burnt Orange Heresy, Hope Gap, Roads Not Taken, The Longest Wave and Driveways are among the movies slated for theatrical release later this year.
HACKING CINEQUEST
Cinequest retains its Downtown San Jose vibe, with concurrent screenings at the 1122-seat California, the 550-seat Hammer and the 257-seat 3Below, all within 1600 feet of the VIP lounge at The Continental Bar. There will still be satellite viewing in Redwood City; if you’re going to and from Redwood City between 3 and 7 PM on a weekday – take Caltrain instead of driving.
At Cinequest, you can get a festival pass for as little as $165, and you can get individual tickets as well. The express pass for an additional tax-deductible $100 is a fantastic deal – you get to skip to the front of the lines!
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 page, with links to all my coverage. Follow me on Twitterfor the latest.
Klaes Bang and Elizabeth Debicki in THE BURNT ORANGE HERESY. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.
Cinequest opens tonight, so this week’s video pick comes from the 2017 fest. In the Norwegian suspense thriller Revenge, the slightly creepy Rebekka (Siren Jørgensen) appears at a hotel on a remote fjord under the false pretense that she is a travel writer. The hotel is otherwise empty because it is off-season (think The Shining). She ingratiates herself with the hotel’s owner Morten, the most economically and socially significant person in town, and his wife (Maria Bock). It turns out that twenty years before, Morten date-raped Rebekka’s little sister, leading to her suicide. Now Rebekka wants to exact vengeance.
Revenge becomes a tick-tock suspenser as Rebekka deliberately lays her trap. We’re able to see some, but not all, of the web that she spins, which will put in jeopardy Morten’s reputation, marriage, business and his very health and survival. Can she pull it off? And how lethal will her revenge be?
It’s the first feature for Kjersti Steinsbø, who adapted the screenplay and directed. She has created a real page-turner here. In one very effective touch, it turns out that one of the characters knows FAR more than we initially suspect.
Anders Baasmo Christian in REVENGE
Revenge is uniformly well-acted, but Anders Baasmo Christian, as Bimbo the bartender, is exceptionally good. Just keep your focus on Bimbo. There’s more there than initially meets the eye. And Bimbo’s relationships with both Rebekka and Morten are very conflicted and complicated.
The ending is satisfying, and Morten’s ultimate fate is unexpected. Revenge was one of the world cinema high points of the 2017 Cinequest. Revenge can be streamed from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Audrey Grace Marshall in Niav Conty’s SMALL TIME, premiering at Cinequest. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.
Filmmaker Niav Cinty explores rural America’s opioid crisis through its impact on one little girl in Small Time. Emma (Audrey Grace Marshall) is growing up among damaged and ill-prepared adults who are modeling the worst possible lessons about drug use, parental responsiblity, handling firearms, choice of language and taking things that belong to someone else. This is an opioid-ravaged world in which the one character who actually saves two lives is the local abusive drug dealer. Emma sees things that no child should see.
Emma is spirited, smart and has a child’s pureness of heart. Amidst the adult chaos, she’s baking cookies and thinking about the tooth fairy. But we have to ask, what is the shelf life of innocence? When will her environment take its toll?
Nobody is comfortable watching a child in bad situations, so why isn’t Small Time unwatchable? Writer-director Conty has mastered the tone by making Emma such a spirited, hopefully indomitable protagonist. And Conty embeds just enough humor in scenes with the local lunkheads playing the board game Risk and Emma turning the doctrinal tables on a priest, forcing him to resort to bluster.
The child actress Audrey Grace Marshall is very good. Conty shot Small Time over three years as Audrey ranged from seven to ten. Small Time was filmed on location in north central Pennsylvania.
Willow is a triptych by Oscar-nominated master Macedonian filmmaker Milcho Manchevski that plumbs the heartaches and joys of having children. Willow contains the stories of three mothers and the heartache of childlessness, the heartbreak of losing a child and the emotional roller coaster of parenting. In Willow, a mother’s love can bring devastating grief and triumphant joy.
There’s a scene in the final vignette with a mother and son in a car that is one of the most amazing scenes I’ve ever seen.
There’s also a woman who is drawn to a man when she watches him act with profound decency – even though he doesn’t know anyone else is watching him. That launches a deeply beautiful love story.
Just about every parent has had a child vanish at the turn of one’s head, and plunges into panic, desperation and terror until the child is found. There is more than one of these scenes in Willow, and they are uncomfortable.
As a World Cinema bonus, we are introduced to the Macedonian phrase, “wash the bananas”.
Manchevski’s Before the Rain was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar in 1994. Most recently, he directed my choice as the best film of the 2017 Cinequest, Bikini Moon.
Cinequest hosts the North American premiere of Willow.
In the Finnish dark comedy Void, a noted author is struggling in his fifth year of a writer’s block. For better or worse, his wife’s career as a film actress is blooming. As he crumbles under deadline pressure and self-loathing despair, it’s less and less likely that he will hold on to his wife. To reset himself, he tries a sailing adventure and then a visit to a remote hunting cabin to visit a much less-talented author. There, a very unusual circumstance may relaunch his career…and it’s the very opposite of creativity.
Void is filled with the dryest Scandinavian humor. The artistic malaise in Void covers the territory of 8 1/2 and The Shining, but not as compellingly. Void does deliver an inventive lifesaver for the writer to grasp, along with an arch Finnish observation of Hollywood.
Void is mostly photographed in black-and-white. There are four cinematographers credited, and the black-and-white cinematography is stunning.
Cinequest hosts the North American Premiere of Void.
The documentaryTheremin Magicexplores that most weirdly unworldly of musical instruments, the Theremin. Documentarian Cressandra Thibodeaux took advantage of a global Theremin festival (who knew?) to film the world’s top five Theremin players.
The five are a diverse lot, and their mastery of the instrument is astonishing. Because the instrument is played by waving one’s fingers in the air next to it, the performances are visually somewhere between conducting an orchestra and dancing ballet. At the very end there’s a scene with an entire classroom full of Theremin players.
If you are interested in music and haven’t dived deeply into the Theremin, this is all interesting. Cinequest hosts the world premiere of Theremin Magic.
