movie gourmet

THE “HIGH SIGN”: Buster on the verge

by
THE HIGH SIGN: Buster Keaton and the Blinking Buzzards flashing the gang sign

The High Sign is 20-minutes of Buster Keaton’s rapid-fire comedy from 1921. Buster plays a young man who cons his way into a job managing an amusement park shooting gallery and inadvertently becomes entangled with a murderous gang of thugs. The plot exists to set up two exquisite comic set pieces. In the first, Keaton sets up an elaborate Rube Goldberg device to trick the boss into believing that Keaton is a master marksman. And the second is a triumph of Keaton’s ingenuity, as the gang members chase him through a cutaway two-story house, complete with trap doors and secret passageways.

Of course the gang itself, the Blinking Buzzards, is ridiculous, especially when they flash their secret gang sign. There’s also humor in the contrast between the towering gang leader (6′ 3″ Joe Roberts) and the diminutive (5′ 5″) Keaton.

The High Sign is a two-reeler, a 20-minute short film.  The conventional wisdom among early movie studio heads was that a comedy could only be sustain audience interest for 20 minutes. Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd would soon dispel that myth.

In fact, The High Sign came just before Keaton unleashed his string of comic masterpiece features:  Sherlock, Jr. (1924), The Navigator (1924), Seven Chances (1925), The General (1926), Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) and The Cameraman (1928).  After The Cameraman, Keaton’s new studio took away his creative control, and his career (and personal life) crashed.

I saw The High Sign at Cinequest, accompanied by world-renowned Dennis James on the Mighty Wurlitzer organ, before Steamboat Bill Jr.  I recommend Sal Pizarro’s excellent profile of Dennis James in the Mercury News.

Also known as The “High Sign”, the film plays occasionally on Turner Classic Movies and possibly bootleg versions can be streamed on YouTube and Vimeo.

Buster Keaton in THE HIGH SIGN

BRING ME AN AVOCADO: under pressure, relationships evolve

by

BRING ME AN AVOCADO

In the indie drama Bring Me an Avocado, an Oakland mom goes into a coma, and her husband and two daughters must spend several months going on with their lives, not knowing whether the mom will wake up.  The mom’s sister and her BFF step up to support the family by helping out with cooking and childcare.  Of course, there’s a lot of pressure on this extended family, and the relationships between the three adults evolve and get complicated.

[MINOR SPOILER]  After months, the mom wakes up.  Things are not the same as before, and she decides, in an emotional catharsis, how the family will move forward.

Bring Me an Avocado is the first feature for writer-director Maria Mealla.  Anyone who writes a coma movie has to decide how the character gets in the coma without making it an obvious contrivance; Mealla’s solution rings authentic, an event that is horrific and absolutely plausible.

Sarah Burkhalter plays the mom, and her performance takes over the final ten minutes of the movie; her character pieces together what happened while she was comatose, processes it and acts on the future of her family.; Burkhalter makes the ending very powerful.  The child actors playing the daughters, California Poppy Sanchez and Michaela Robles, are superb.

I really wanted to like this Bay Area indie more than I did.  It runs 104 minutes, and would have been better film at 90 minutes – and without the musical interludes.    Not all of the cast is as strong as are Burkhalter and the kids.  And [MINOR SPOILER] , it’s distracting when the mom spends months in a coma without any wasting, waking up looking pretty hearty, with just a bandage on her back.

Cinequest hosted the world premiere of Bring Me an Avocado.

Movies to See Right Now

by

MINE 9

I’m deep into the 2019 Cinequest, running through March 17. Here’s my Cinequest preview; I’m recommending the world premieres of Mine 9 tonight and Saturday for Auggie. Throughout the festival, I link my festival coverage to my Cinequest page, including both features and movie recommendations. Follow me on Twitter for the very latest coverage.

 

OUT NOW

  • In They Shall Not Grow Old, Lord of the Rings filmmaker Peter Jackson has, for the first time, layered humanity over our understanding of World War I. By slowing down the speed of the jerky WWI film footage and adding sound and color, Jackson has allowed us to relate to the real people in the Great War. This is a generational achievement and a Must See.
  • Roma is an exquisite portrait of two enduring women and the masterpiece of Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity, Children of Men and Y Tu Mama Tambien). It won multiple Oscars. It is streaming now Netflix.
  • Green Book: This is the Oscar winner for Best Picture.  Tony Lip is a marvelous character, and Viggo Mortensen’s performance is one of the great pleasures of this year in the movies.
  • Vice: in this bitingly funny biopic of Dick Cheney by writer-director Adam McKay (The Big Short), Cheney is played by a physically transformed and unrecognizable Christian Bale. A superb performance, pretty good history, biography from a sharp point of view and a damn entertaining movie.
  • Stan & Ollie: Steve Coogan as Stan Laurel and John C. Reilly as Oliver Hardy deliver remarkable portraits of a partnership facing the inevitability of showbiz decline.
  • Pawel Pawlikowski’s sweeping romantic tragedy Cold War is not as compelling as his masterpiece Ida.
  • The Favourite: Great performances by three great actresses, sex and political intrigue are not enough; this critically praised film didn’t work for me.

 

ON VIDEO

My Stream of the Week comes from the 2015 Cinequest. The ever-absorbing The Center explores how someone of sound mind and normal disposition can be completely enveloped by a cult. The Center can be streamed from Amazon (included with Prime), Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

 

ON TV

On March 14 on Turner Classic Movies: The Blue Gardenia presents a 1953 view of date rape, with lecherous Raymond Burr getting Anne Baxter likkered up into a blackout drunk with Polynesian Pearl Divers. There’s a very nice twist on the whodunit: when she wakes up, she doesn’t remember killing him, but he sure is dead. There’s even a cameo performance by Nat King Cole.

THE BLUE GARDENIA
THE BLUE GARDENIA

Stream of the Week: THE CENTER – sliding into a cult

by

THE CENTER
THE CENTER

I’m kicking off Cinequest week with a stream from the 2015 festival. The ever-absorbing The Center explores how someone of sound mind and normal disposition can be completely enveloped by a cult. The Center is writer-director Charlie Griak’s first feature, and it’s a very impressive debut.

We meet Ryan (Matt Cici), a talented guy with low self-esteem. He is highly functional and ultra-responsible, but it seems like nobody is in his corner. The first six minutes of this screenplay paint a detailed portrait of a guy who is crapped upon more than Job. No one encourages Ryan to do anything for himself, and he ends each night alone, with a beer and late-night TV. Then someone else shows personal interest in the hang-dog Matt, and he gradually slides into what at first seems the appreciation of his potential, but which is revealed to be a web of exploitation.

The audience recognizes some red flags before Ryan does, but every step in this story is credible – and there isn’t a cliché in sight. The keys to The Center’s success are the crafting of the Ryan character and the believability of the story. Ryan’s journey is compressed into a taut and compelling 72 minutes.

Matt Cici, who is in virtually every shot, is perfect as Ryan – a guy with plenty to offer, but whose lack of self-confidence sets him up for exploitation by everyone else. The acting is strong throughout The Center. Ramon Pabon is especially memorable as a twitchy loser who has been sucked into the cult. With piercing eyes, Judd Einan nails the role of the uberconfident, emotionally bullying cult founder. Annie Einan is excellent as Ryan’s world-weary sister, so burdened by their mother’s care that she can’t be there for Ryan until she spots the crisis in his life.

Just after The Center’s premiere at Cinequest, HBO released documentarian Alex Gibney’s (Taxi to the Dark Side, We Steal Secrets, Client 9, Casino Jack and the United States of Money) expose of Scientology – Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief. Going Clear will be a big deal, and will beg the question, “How can smart, able people fall into this stuff?”. The Center should become the perfect narrative fiction companion to Going Clear.

One more thing – The Center was shot in St. Paul, Minnesota, a city that I’m not used to seeing in a movie. The Center’s sense of place (a place fresh and unfamiliar to many of us, anyway) adds to its appeal.

With The Center, Charlie Griak has shown himself to be a very promising filmmaking talent and has left a serious professional calling card. I can’t wait to see what he does next.

The Center can be streamed from Amazon (included with Prime), Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

CINEQUEST 2019: festival preview

by

cq logo

I’ve already seen over twenty offerings from Cinequest 2019, 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”.

CLOWNVETS

FEEL GOOD

  • Clownvets: In this documentary, famed hospital clown Patch Adams heals the PTSD of US combat veterans by ministering to neglected souls in the third world. I am generally not a fan of warmhearted movies, but Clownvets moved even me. I expect Clownvets to be the Feel Good hit of this year’s Cinequest and to win the Audience Award. World premiere and Patch Adams himself is expected to attend.

 

Richard Kind in AUGGIE

INDIE

    • Auggie :  In this brilliant indie, augmented reality produces addictive temptation.  Great performance by Richard Kind.  World premiere.

:

MINE 9

THRILLER

  • Mine 9: This is Cinequest’s best thriller, a gripping, smart  and remarkably authentic mine rescue cliffhanger.  World premiere.

 

 

HIER

WORLD CINEMA

  • Hier:  In this brilliantly original and trippy thriller, an executive takes what he thinks will be a quick trip to Morocco, but becomes entangled in a series of mysteries.  He becomes a detective but doesn’t fully understand what he is looking for in his own past.  North American premiere.
  • A Shelter Among the Clouds: In this beautiful and unhurried Albanian drama, a simple man regards human behavior.  North American premiere.
  • Little Histories: The premise of this inventive Venezuelan anthology is that sometimes the great events of history affect – and even change – our lives. And sometimes those events are merely the backdrop to our own personal dramas. World premiere.

 

LAST SUNRISE

SCIENCE FICTION

  • Last Sunrise: In this edge-of-your-seat Chinese sci-fi thriller, we’re in a super-hi tech future, powered almost totally by solar energy –  until our Sun dies.  North American premiere.

 

Kelsea Bauman-Murphy and appendage in VANILLA

COMEDY

  • Vanilla: There’s an odd couple and a road trip, but the portrait of two characters who have trapped themselves in poses elevates this very smart comedy.  World premiere.

 

Franz Rogowski in TRANSIT. Courtesy of Music Box Films

TWO I HAVEN’T SEEN YET

  • Transit:  The latest from director Christian Petzold, the master filmmaker of Barbara and Phoenix. This time, Petzold brings us an escape story that takes place in WW II, but the movie is shot in modern Europe.
  • The Man Who Killed Don Quixote: The festival’s closing night film is Terry Gilliam’s finally successful attempt to put Don Quixote on film and stars Adam Driver and Jonathan Pryce.  Gilliam was the American member of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, the one behind the surreal animation.  The trippiness of Brazil, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Twelve Monkeys and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus all sprang from Gilliam’s imagination.  The Movie Gourmet usually doesn’t assign homework, but I recommend the 2002 documentary Lost in La Mancha, about Gilliam’s apparently cursed 2002 attempt to film Don Quixote, available to stream on Amazon and iTunes.

 

TELEVISION

  • Taboo: Many will cringe at the promise of this Belgian reality show: a humorist spends time with four dying people and then hosts an entire audience full of terminally ill people for his stand-up comedy show – about their situation. It’s surprisingly empathetic and touching.

 

DOCUMENTARY

  • Travel Ban: Make America Laugh Again: Besides, Clownvets, I recommend this serious documentary with some hilarious comedy.  Comedians confront the misunderstanding, bigotry and hatred faced by Americans who are Muslim and by Americans whose families come from the Middle East.  World premiere.

 

CLASSIC MOVIE EXPERIENCE

  • The silent Steamboat Bill, Jr. with Buster Keaton will be projected in a period movie palace, the California Theatre, accompanied by world-renowned Dennis James on the Mighty Wurlitzer organ.

 

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:   Sometimes Always Never, Freaks, Hotel Mumbai, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, The Hummingbird Project, Peterloo, The Public, Teen Spirit, The Third Wife, Transit, The Chaperone, The Wedding Guest and Woman at War.

 

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.

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!

Take a look at the entire program, the schedule and the passes and tickets. (If you want to support Silicon Valley’s most important cinema event while skipping the lines, the tax-deductible $100 donation for Express Line Access is an awesome deal.)

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 2019 page, with links to all my coverage.  Follow me on Twitter for the latest.

TABOO: the uncomfortable line between empathy and derision

by

TABOO

Many will cringe at the promise of this episode of the Belgian reality show Taboo: humorist Philippe Geubels spends time with four dying people and then hosts an entire audience full of terminally ill people for his stand-up comedy show – about their situation. It’s surprisingly empathetic and touching.

OK, so if ever there was a Rorschach test of a television show, it’s Taboo. Each week, Geubels meets a series of folks with conditions and disabilities that put them outside the mainstream – amputees, the obese, little people, ethnic minorities, etc. Then he invites them to constitute the live audience of a comedy show in which he tells jokes about them. They love it.

Geubels is clearly running right through the taboo of making fun of the disabled and minorities. But is he laughing with them or at them? Is he showing them more empathy than those who are too uncomfortable to ever acknowledge their conditions? Is Geubels almost alone in making us look at these folks for who they are? Does it matter that Geubels’ humor is delivered face-to-face to his subjects?

Uneasy about how to discuss the disabled in this day and age?  Consult the National Center on Disability and Journalism’s Disability Language Style Guide.

I’m sure that some, perhaps many, audience members will be offended by Taboo. The politically correct will be offended without even watching the show. Others will embrace Geubels for his wit and intended empathy. For sure, there will be plenty of LOLs at the screening.

This Belgian TV show is mostly in the English language.  Cinequest hosts the North American premiere of Taboo in the television section of the fest.

WBCN AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION: inventing a medium

by

WBCN AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

There was a time before FM radio was a big deal, and a time when someone had to imagine it. A fairly conventional-appearing lawyer named Ray Rieman did just that in Boston, and started by assembling a team of colorful misfits.  Mirroring the counter-culture, these guys invented just about every aspect of the album-oriented FM radio that became ubiquitous in American cities within just a few years.The documentary WBCN and the American Revolution tells this story.

Rieman was an iconoclastic genius who faced new challenges daily.  For example, what happens if you run a radio station and your news director learns from the new wire that he has just been indicted for terrorism?

One of the less remembered aspects to hippie culture was that it was pretty sexist. That’s how WBCN started out, but these guys were very open to change, especially after local women listeners delivered a pointed gift of live baby chicks to the station.

We see WBCN’s impressive set of firsts – the first alternative radio news show, the first female rock DJs, the first gay radio show, and the first time that Bruce Springsteen was live on the radio, along with Patti Smith’s obscenity-laced poetry.

Of course, WBCN and the American Revolution is a time capsule, rekindling vivid memories for Baby Boomer and serving as an excellent cultural history for those younger,

Cinequest is hosting the world premiere of WBCN and the American Revolution.

THE WAY YOU LOOK TONIGHT: an amiable parable

by

THE WAY YOU LOOK TONIGHT

In the amiable comedy The Way You Look Tonight, Peter meets a woman through a dating app, but can’t find her again despite their connection and a torrid one-nighter.  Still yearning for his mystery flame, he dates a series of women, but remains unfulfilled.  Now, it’s hard to write about this movie without spoiling the hook, but let’s just say that he discovers that a group of people exist with a startling fictional condition.

Indeed, the two funniest sequences are when Peter finds out that he is the last human to find out about this condition and when he attends the support group for the afflicted (of COURSE they have one).

Nick Fink is appealing as Peter and the rest of the cast is uniformly excellent, especially the horde of actresses who play his dates.

Can someone get past appearance –  age, race, body type – to connect with a soul mate?  The Way You Look Tonight is actually a parable cloaked in a romantic comedy.  This is the first feature for writer-director John Cerrito.

Cinequest hosts the world premiere of The Way You Look Tonight

VANILLA: rich in character-driven humor

by

Kelsea Bauman-Murphy and appendage in VANILLA

In the winning comedy Vanilla, Elliot (Will Dennis) is stuck in a regimented life of coding software, emerging from his apartment only for gym workouts and food.  Kimmie (Kelsea Bauman-Murphy) is a kookie free spirit, but she’s stuck, too, unable to fulfill her aspiration to become a stand-up comic.  Events conspire to lead the two into a three-day road trip from New York to New Orleans.  Kimmie pitches it to Elliot as a date.  But Elliot really sees the chance to reconnect in New Orleans with his ex-girlfriend Samantha, for whom he still pining. What could go wrong?

We have an odd couple on the road, so funny stuff happens – and this is a funny movie.  Naturally, the audience is waiting for the two to jump into bed together.  But Vanilla is fundamentally a portrait of these two people, both comfortable in their ruts.  Elliot is posing as an entrepreneur, and Kimmie is posing as a comedian-in-the-making; something is going to have to shake up these two so each can grow.  Kimmie seems utterly intrepid, but we learn that she can be paralyzed by self-consciousness, just like Elliot.

Vanilla is written and directed by its star, Will Dennis, in his first feature film.  It’s an impressive debut, rich in character-driven humor.

Dennis understands not to linger on a gag; (Yorgos Lanthimos should pay close attention to this).  Dennis has Elliot try to eat a beignet in a bayou tour boat; it only works because it’s the briefest of gags.    There’s a montage of bad would-be comics at an open mic night that is brilliant in its understanding of why they think they’re funny and why they’re not.  Dennis also works in a random encounter with America’s most earnest fish store guy (Lowell Landes).  And “Anyone ever tell you that you have a Natalie Portman thing going on?” becomes a very funny come-on line.

Dennis is very good as Elliot, subtly capturing his unease, judginess and pathetic obsession with Samantha.  Bauman-Murphy makes Kimmie’s kookiness, which could easily be annoying, lovable.

Jo Firestone is perfect as Elliot’s ex Samantha.   Firestone shows us a glimpse of why Elliot would fall for her, and then a massive dose of why she’s bad for him.  Let’s just say that I recognized Samantha (as a friend’s ex-girlfriend, not mine).

The satisfying ending of Vanilla is authentic, true to the characters and NOT what would be expected from a run-of-the-mill rom com.

Cinequest hosts the world premiere of Vanilla, where Silicon Valley audiences will appreciate Elliot’s delusion that his clunky app will go viral – if only users would spend enough time learning it.

TRAVEL BAN: MAKING AMERICA LAUGH AGAIN: using comedy to explore the uncomfortable

by

Comic Aron Kader in TRAVEL BAN: MAKE AMERICA LAUGH AGAIN

Since medieval court jesters tweaked royal courts, we’ve used comedy to explore difficult conversations.  In the documentary Travel Ban: Making America Laugh Again, comedians confront the misunderstanding, bigotry and hatred faced by Americans who are Muslim and by Americans whose families come from the Middle East.

One unfortunate aspect of our culture is the impatience with and resistance to accepting nuance and complication.  Many Americans are content to accept a world in which “the Middle East” is a nation – one entity that is ever-hostile to the United States and ever evil-intentioned to all Americans.

Muslims and Middle Easterners have always endured negative stereotypes, made worse by 9/11.  But, this has worsened in the Trump Era because Trump empowers and licenses the open spewing of hate speech into our national discourse.

In response, Comics Aron Kader, Raz Jobrani and Ahmed Ahmed, who performed on the Arabian Knights and Axis of Evil comedy tours, mobilized even more stand-up comics for the Travel Ban tour.

Travel Ban includes the on-stage and off-stage banter of over a dozen American comics of Middle Eastern heritage or Muslim religion.  As one would expect, some are far funnier than others. My favorite is Feraz Ozel, who also has the movie’s funniest line in response to “Why don’t the good Muslims get together and fight the bad Muslims?”  (You’ll have to watch the movie for to get the devastating punchline.

Travel Ban is NOT purely a concert film; we do see performances, but the comics also discuss their experiences off-stage.  For context, there are some bracing videos of actual hate crimes and hateful rants by ignorant “real Americans”.  And Travel Ban brings in some key factual tidbits; for example, zero Americans have been killed by anyone from any of the countries targeted by Trump’s travel ban.

This is a serious film with some hilarious comedy.   As one of the comics says off-stage, “a good comedian makes people laugh, a great comedian makes them think”.

Cinequest hosts the world premiere of Travel Ban: Making America Laugh Again.

https://vimeo.com/292645468