The Hungarian drama Fever at Dawnis a little movie with an epic romance. Set just after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, Hungarian invalids who survived the camps have been sent to convalesce in hospital camps in Sweden. A young patient, Miklos, gets a dire diagnosis and determines to find love once more before he dies. A half century before internet dating, he concocts a scheme to get himself in front of every sick Hungarian woman in Sweden. When he meets his potential soulmate Lili, a moral question rises to the surface – should he share his diagnosis?
Some Holocaust survivors experienced ambivalence about the Jewish identity that led to yellow stars on their clothes and, essentially, targets on their backs. This ambivalence becomes a significant thread of Fever at Dawn and is addressed more explicitly than usual for a Holocaust (or post-Holocaust) movies.
Don’t read too much about this movie before seeing it. There’s an unexpected nugget at the end.
Fever at Dawn’s US Premiere will be on March 2 at Cinequest, with additional Cinequest screenings on March 3, 7 and 9.
Ever notice how people who watch a lot of Fox News or listen to talk radio become bitter angry and, most telling, fact-resistant? In the documentary The Brainwashing of My Dad, filmmaker Jan Senko as she explores how right-wing media impacts the mood and personality of its consumers as well as their political outlook. Senko uses her own father Frank as a case study.
We see Frank Senko become continually mad and, well, mean. And we hear testimony about many, many others with the identical experience. Experts explain the existence of a biological addiction to anger.
Senko traces the history of right-wing media from the mid-1960s, with the contributions of Lewis Powell, Richard Nixon, Rush Limbaugh, Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch. Senko even gets right-wing wordsmith Frank Luntz on camera to explain the power of buzz words. If you don’t know this story (Hillary was right about the “vast, right-wing conspiracy”) , Senko spins the tale very comprehensively. If you do know the material (and my day job is in politics), it is methodical.
This topic is usually Senko’s focus on mood and personality is original and The Brainwashing of My Dad contributes an important addition to the conversation. One last thing about the brainwashing of Senko’s dad – it may not be irreversible…
The U.S. Premiere of The Brainwashing of My Dad will be March 5 at Cinequest, with additional screening on March 6 and 9.
Contemporary Russian cinema has been pretty dark and cynical lately (Leviathan and Elena), for example), focusing on the profound and persistent corruption in that society. Having said that, the comedy Orleans is dark by even Russian standards.
We meet a rogue doctor in a small town, a guy who relishes a matter-of-fact everyday depravity. He and a local hairdresser are living in a world that is morally bleak enough, when magical realism intrudes in a very bad way – an invincible stranger with evil powers visits town. They all even go to the circus – it’s kind of Fellini meets Tracy Letts meets Rob Zombie. There’s even one of the most cringeworthy eye procedures since Un Chien Andalou.
Orleans is a trippy movie. Settle in, but don’t think that you’ll remain comfortable for long. North American Premiere at Cinequest on March 2, 3 and 4.
San Francisco billionaire Gordon Getty was born into great wealth, so he was never going to be a Regular Guy. And few aspire to become composers of classical music, as Getty has. He is profiled in the documentary Gordon Getty: There Will Be Music.
Getty sees himself as more 19th Century than 20th (tellingly, not even mentioning the 21st). It’s an apt description of someone who bases musical compositions on the works of Poe and Dickinson. Affable and genuine,Getty is easy to spend time with. We get a fun glimpse into the Getty family history – and learn that Gordon was already out of college when he read that his dad was the richest American. “I knew he was rich, but…”
Getty is conscious that his uberwealth brings major advantages to his vocation as well as detracting from his credibility. Naively, he thinks that they balance out. But one thing is or sure – Getty is no dilettante. He is a serious composer, who has devoted himself to his craft.
The most interesting aspects of Gordon Getty: There Will Be Music are Getty’s music and the insight into his process as a composer. Getty’s passion in pronounced, but it’s a quiet passion. The pace of the film reflects its subject and his music, which is not pulsating. Classical music fans will enjoy this film than those who are not.
The shamelessly low brow comedy A Beginners Guide to Snuff features a very dim pair of would-be actors who seek to win a horror movie contest by simulating a snuff film. What could possibly go wrong? To get the most realistic performance out of their leading lady, they decide to kidnap her and pretend that they’re going to torture her to death on film. Their choice of that leading lady (played by Bree Williamson) brings some very unexpected consequences.
Most of the humor in Beginners Guide comes from the dumb and dumber filmmakers and spoof on low-budget horror cinema. But Williamson’s electric performance, like a shot of adrenaline, animates and elevates the movie whenever she is on-screen. Her character is so many tiers above the two boobs that she remains in charge even when chained to a table. On top of that, she has some unanticipated skills and characteristics…
A Beginners Guide to Snuff ends with a particularly inspired trailer for the movie-within-the-movie. If you’re looking for broad and dark comedy with a sparkling performance by an actress, this is your movie. World Premiere at Cinequest on March 4, 6 and 11.
Margot is a vibrant and salty 27-year-old Canadian woman. She suffered a schizophrenic break when she was away at college. Now she’s medicated, and fighting to resume her life. Margot is the subject of the documentary Dan and Margot, and I’ll leave you to find out who Dan is or is not.
How do we think of schizophrenia? We often visualize the feral-looking guy ranting to himself outside the 7-11. But how about those who are just slipping into a schizophrenic break or those medicated – with the disorder under control? In this very personal look examination of one person’s illness, Margot and her friends and family share how the disorder can sneak up on not only the individual, but their support system, as well.
Filmmakers Chloe Sosa-Sims and Jake Chirico parachute themselves and their camera into Margot’s life and take advantage of the access without sensationalizing her life. Dan and Margot is a solid and thought-provoking movie.
[Note: there is a little animation in Dan and Margot, but most is live action and almost all of that is Margot herself. The trailer is more representative of the film than is the still image above.]
The Argentine drama Parabellumis a trippy movie unlike anything that you’ve seen. Set in a pre-apocalyptic near future, cities are crumbling into disorder and meteors are plunging into the Earth with alarmingly increased frequency. Clearly everyone should be panicking, but no one is.
Instead, the characters in Parabellum don blindfolds and are motored up a jungle river to a secret adventure resort where they learn survivalist skills – kind of Camp Heart of Darkness. The most life-and-death exercises are addressed matter-of-factly, with an absurdly calm determination that makes Parabellum seem like something out of Buñuel.
Parabellum’s measured pace seems so at odds with the impending disaster (whatever it will be), that it’s part of the joke. What the hell is going on and what are these people thinking? Beautifully shot, engrossing and witty – Parabellum is a wacky treat.
Sex, intrigue and murder – the atmospheric Hungarian drama Demimonde has it all. It’s just before World War I in Pest, and we meet a wealthy kept woman (Patricia Kovács), her longtime housekeeper (Dorka Gryllus) and the new maid (Laura Döbrösi). Indeed, the movie’s title describes the professional courtesan, shamelessly successful as a professional mistress that she can dare to seek riskier and riskier gratification. Mustering more poise, dignity and sexiness than anyone else, she utterly flouts all the conventions of respectability. I don’t need them to respect me, she says, I just need them to be fascinated. Indeed, she fascinates so many of the characters, that the sexual entanglements pile up until there are grave consequences.
All of the characters are hungering for something – sex and status, lost love, new love, sustenance, amusement. The three lead actresses and all the supporting cast are exceptionally good. Director Attila Szász convincingly takes us to the period and keeps the surprises coming.
With all the misbehavior, someone is sure to be punished and, when that happens, Demimonde becomes operatic. It’s one of the most satisfyingly entertaining films at Cinequest, and it plays the festival on March 2, 3, 9 and 10.
During the Communist regime of the repugnant Nicolae Ceaușescu, Romanians could only experience two hours of television per day and all of that was boring Ceaușescu propaganda. They were starving for culture, of any type and any quality, and a ring of smugglers responded to the demand with bootleg VHS tapes of American movies. The rewarding documentary Chuck Norris Vs. Communism tells this story.
Now this isn’t about high cinema from America and the rest of the world inspiring the current crop of Romanian auteurs – although that did happen. This is about ordinary Romanians feasting on even the crappiest American movies, especially the never-ending cascade of action movies (Chuck Norris movies were among the favorites).
The authorities, usually obsessively repressive, turned a blind eye top the VHS smuggling because they totally missed the subversive impact the movies that were not overtly political. But the ordinary Romanians saw abundantly stocked American supermarkets and measured that against their own deprivation.
One guy organized this VHS smuggling ring. Amazingly, one woman narrated a Romanian voiceover for all these movies – hundreds of them. It was a shady business for him and a moonlighting gig for her – but now they are cultural heroes in Romania. We meet these two briefly in Chuck Norris Vs. Communism. And we hear the testimony of Romanians touched by cinema – even trashy cinema.
What is banal in some cultures can have a significant impact on others. Chuck Norris Vs. Communism makes that point engagingly, in a story you won’t see anywhere else. Plays Cinequest on March 4, 6 and 12.
Here’s the problem with the Coen Brothers’ disappointingly empty comedy Hail, Caesar – there is no real story at its core. The plot ostensibly centers on commies kidnapping a movie star and a studio exec mulling over a job outside the movie industry. But these are contrived as an excuse to parody Old Hollywood and the movie conventions of the studio Golden Age. And that’s not enough by itself to make up a really good movie. At the end of Hail, Caesar, the guy sitting behind me said, “That’s it?”.
The parodies are well-executed, and the more you know about movies, the richer the laughs. The characters are making a ponderously devout sword-and-sandal epic called Hail, Caesar, which is closely modeled on the 1959 Ben-Hur, right down to the subtitle of the source novel, “A Tale of the Christ”. The epic stars a charismatic but shallow leading man, played well by George Clooney. This part is funny.
So is a spectacularly executed Busby Berkeley number with Scarlett Johansson as an Esther Williams type aquatic movie star. And Channing Tatum shines in a Gene Kelly-like song-and-dance set piece. Later in the film, famed cinematographer Roger Eakins brilliantly lights Tatum as an icon of Soviet-era Socialist Realism.
By far the best part of Hail, Caesar is Alden Ehrenreich as a singing cowboy. Where did they find this guy? Ehrenreich is convincing and hilarious as he performs tricks with his pistol, horse and lariat in a formula Western and then is forced to fit into a period costume for a drawing-room romantic drama. It’s an exuberantly singular performance, and something we haven’t seen on-screen since Gene Autrey and Roy Rogers.
All of the actors are good here, including Josh Brolin as the lead, and Clooney, Johansson, Tatum, Ralph Fiennes and Tila Swinton. Frances McDormand is wasted in a very brief physical comedy bit. That old scene-stealer Clancy Brown, here growling as the actor playing Gracchus in the Hail, Caesar-in-the-movie-Hail, Caesar shows why he’s one of my favorite character actors
There are always expectations of a Coen Brothers film, because of their masterpieces: Fargo, True Grit, Blood Simple and their seriously underrrated A Serious Man. Plus there’s the critical favorite No Country for Old Men and the cult fave The Big Lebowski. But they’ve also made some more forgettable fare (Inside Llewyn Davis, Burn After Reading) and Hail, Caesar is one of them.
Bottom line: if you want to enjoy a string of first class movie parodies, see Hail, Caesar. If you’re looking for something more, skip it.
