Movies

MATTER OF MIND: MY PARKINSON’S: real, uplifting, essential

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Photo caption. Isa and Veronica Garcia-Hayes in MATTER OF MIND: MY PARKINSON. Courtesy of PBS Independent Lens.

The surprisingly uplifting documentary Matter of Mind: My Parkinson’s shines a light on Parkinson’s disease, and what we need to know about it. An estimated one million Americans are living with Parkinson’s, and the key to Matter of Mind’s success is in introducing us to three of them – a Brooklyn optician, a San Francisco fitness trainer and an Alaskan cartoonist – and their families. On April 8, Matter of Mind: My Parkinson’s becomes available on PBS’ Independent Lens and the PBS App..

Parkinson’s is incurable and degenerative, and attacks motor abilities. Matter of Mind does not sugar coat the symptoms, ranging from from tremors, falling and speech impairment to dementia and depression. Nevertheless, there are now medicines and surgeries ((including deep brain stimulation)) that can impact the symptoms.

We watch the three subjects and their families, all engaging and relatable, explore the medical treatments, with their risks and tradeoffs, and adapt to getting the most out of their lives, even with Parkinson’s. Matter of Mind emphasizes the impacts on family members and the importance of family in supporting each sufferer’s response.

The 54-minute format of Independent Lens fits this subject matter exceptionally well – long enough to explain the science without becoming an eat-your-broccoli slog.

This is the second in a series of three documentaries on neurodegenerative diseases from co-writers and co-directors Anna Moot-Levin and Laura Green; all three films in the Matter of Mind trilogy, including My ALS and My Alzheimer’s will be available to stream between May 15 to June 3, 2025.I’m usually not keen on disease movies, but Matter of Mind: My Parkinson’s is so good, and Parkinson’s so prevalent and inadequately understood, that this is essential viewing.

JOHN SINGER SARGENT: FASHION AND SWAGGER: locking gazes

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Fortunately, the insightful documentary John Singer Sargent: Fashion and Swagger spends much of its running time staring at the subjects of the painter’s portraits, who gaze back at us is if they were alive.

The doc traces Sargent’s life, and talking heads try to explain how his brushwork results in such compelling art, but I didn’t find that stuff as compelling as when the camera zooms in and lingers on the face of a subject. Sargent really had a gift for making it seem as if the subject is alert to your walking into the room and then engaging with you. They seem in mid-conversation instead of mid-pose.

We get to spend so much time unhurriedly locking eyes with these folks, mostly rich women from 150 years ago, that it’s like being inside a John Sargent Singer coffee table book.

The title refers to “swagger portraits” (which I didn’t know was a thing) – vanity portraits commissioned by the rich and famous to depict their subjects as grand, important and fashionable. Sargent excelled at these.

John Singer Sargent: Fashion and Swagger is streaming free on kanopy.

THE COUNT OF MONTE-CRISTO: you think you’ve seen a revenge movie?

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Photo caption: Pierre Niney in THE COUNT OF MONTE-CRISTO. Courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films.

The French epic The Count of Monte Cristo is a relentlessly entertaining three hour plunge into betrayal, revenge and forgiveness – and some spectacular French real estate. Alexander Dumas published the original adventure novel 185 years ago, and it’s been made into over 100 movies and episodic series. This version, by writer-directors Alexandre de La Patelliere and Matthieu Delaporte, is pretty fun, and gorgeous to look at.

The sweeping story spans 24 years, beginning in 1815 when the protagonist, Edmond Dantes, (Pierre Niney) is nineteen years old and on the verge of a wonderful life. A seafaring prodigy, he has just earned the captaincy of his own ship, which will earn him affluence, and he’s about the marry the stunningly beautiful love of his life. But three other jealous and resentful men manufacture a false charge and railroad into a life sentence of solitary confinement in a remote island dungeon. Before he know what has hit him, Dantes has been suddenly and unjustly stripped of everything he had or could have had.

After languishing in hopeless squalor for six years, he makes contact with another prisoner who has a plan for an escape – but it will take them another eight years to implement. In The Count of Monte-Cristo‘s most thrilling scene, he manages a skin-of-the-teeth escape. He then tracks down an immense medieval fortune and returns to France with a new identity – the Count of Monte-Cristo – and the power and status of great wealth.

He can no take revenge on the three men who betrayed him, but killing them is not enough for Dantes – this is not the kind of revenge movie that we’re used to. Dantes needs to break them completely – he needs to deprive them of their wealth, their status, their families and their own sense of self-worth. To do that, he creates and manipulates an elaborate web of traps.

The base assumptions and societal mores of early 19th century France, of course, are utterly anachronistic to our modern sensibilities , but de La Patelliere and Delaporte make Dantes’ situation relatable. The first two hours of the story is remarkably adherent to the source material. De La Patelliere and Delaporte reworked the some of the revenge devices at the end, but they were true to Dumas’ overall story arc. And, who, these days, has actually read the original? (I’ll admit that I have only read the Classics Illustrated comic book as a boy.)

De La Patelliere and Delaporte, along with cinematographer Nicolas Bolduc make this a visually splendid film, aided by impressive chateaus, period costumes and the attractive cast.

Niney is an able enough actor to carry the film, appearing in 90 percent of the scenes and aging 24 years. The rest of the cast is fine, too, with Patrick Mille sparkling as the ever-grinning, vile speculator Danglers, one of Dantes’ three main targets.

The Count of Monte-Cristo is available to watch for free on kanopy and to rent from Amazon,AppleTV, YouTube and Fandango. There are many similar titles, including a 2025 mini-series,so be sure to get the 2024 French movie with the hyphen in the title.

SUDDEN FEAR: twelve minutes of movie perfection

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Joan Crawford in SUDDEN FEAR.

The riveting final twelve minutes of the 1952 film noir Sudden Fear is movie perfection. Now, it’s a pretty good movie for the first hour and thirty-eight minutes, but its ending takes Sudden Fear up a couple of notches.

Here’s the set-up – a highly successful woman (Joan Crawford) marries a guy (Jack Palance) who really just wants her money; he plots with his longtime girlfriend (Gloria Grahame) to do in his wife for the inheritance. The wife discovers their scheme, and plans to get them before they can get her.

The wife has sneaked into an apartment when the husband unexpectedly returns, and she becomes trapped and defenseless in a closet, just hoping against hope that he won’t discover her. The tension mounts as he putters around the apartment, and there’s an ingenious use of a wind-up toy to build even more suspense. After several excruciating minutes, her cover is blown, and she manages to bolt. As she runs for her life through the hilly sidewalks and alleys of San Francisco, he careens after her in a large sedan.

Jack Palance in SUDDEN FEAR.

In this extended sequence, there’s almost no dialogue except for his yelling her name. The storytelling rises to the level of Hitchcock’s, and the storyboard could be taught in film school.

Director David Miller directed over forty features, many with big stars (Billy the Kid with Robert Taylor, Flying Tigers with John Wayne, Twist of Fate with Ginger Rogers, and The Story of Esther Costello with Crawford and Two decades later, he directed another thriller, the cheesy and tasteless conspiracy movie Executive Action with Burt Lancaster. But there’s nothing in his body of work that would indicate that Miller could create those twelve minutes of perfection in Sudden Fear.

Miller had a lot of help from cinematographer Charles Lang, who makes the best of the shadows and the natural Dutch angles of San Francisco’s sloped streets. Lang went on to shoot two of the most iconic film noirs, Ace in the Hole and The Big Heat. Lang had lots of ucess outside the noir genre, too: The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Some Like It Hot, The Magnificent Seven, One-Eyed Jacks, The Flim-Flam Man, Wait Until Dark. Lang was nominated for an Oscar for his work in Sudden Fear, as were Crawford, Palance and costume designer Sheila O’Brien.

Jack Palance in SUDDEN FEAR.

I’m not a big Joan Crawford fan, but even I recognize the power of her best two scenes here. In the first, she silently listens to a conversation between the two plotters, and her face registers the changing emotions as she connects the dots. In he climactic scene, she recognizes what she can and cannot do, and changes her course of of action, but then, initially frozen with terror, must rally herself to escape from her husband. The sequence concludes with a final close-up that is vintage Joan Crawford.

Gloria Grahame in SUDDEN FEAR.

Palance, oozing physicality and intensity, is perfectly cast. Grahame, whose performance is very understated next to Crawford’s and Palance’s, is excellent.

Sudden Fear can be streamed from Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango and is free on kanopy; it also occasionally plays on Turner Classic Movies.

Jack Palance and Joan Crawford in SUDDEN FEAR.

STARRING JERRY AS HIMSELF: more than an exposé

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In the documentary Starring Jerry as Himself, a Florida senior sees himself recruited as an operative by Chinese police. The story is told in a re-enactment with the subject playing himself. We later learn why the filmmakers chose re-enactment, and what could have been a conventional true crime exposé or a weeper, is illuminated by the subject family’s humanity.

Starring Jerry as Himself is the first feature for director Law Chen, who also edited, co-produced and shot some of the footage. Law Chen and his co-producer and subject Jonathan Hsu were responsible for the decision on how to structure the film. That decision turned what could have been a heartbreaking downer into an engaging and satisfying family story, albeit a cautionary one.

I highlighted Starring Jerry as Himself as a MUST SEE in my Slamdance: discovering new filmmakers, and it won Slamdance’s Documentary Feature Grand Jury Prize. It’s now available to stream at home from Amazon, AppleTV and YouTube.

EGGHEAD & TWINKIE: funny, sweet and genuine

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Photo caption: Sabrina Jie-A-Fa and Louis Tomeo in EGGHEAD & TWINKIE. Credit: Olivia Wilson, Courtesy of CanBeDone Films and Orange Cat Films.

In the funny, sweet and genuine coming of age film Egghead & Twinkie, Twinkie (Sabrina Jie-A-Fa) is finishing high school and trying to navigate her sexual awakening as aa lesbian – and it’s not easy. Her lifelong bestie is the neighbor boy Egghead (Louis Tomei), and he’s now sweet on her; (Egghead and Twinkie are their nicknames for each other), Twinkie impulsively commandeers her dad’s car and heads out on a cross country road trip to join her Internet object of desire (Tik Tok star Ayden Lee). Egghead is so loyal, smitten and cluelessly hopeful that he comes along.

Along the way, they have their share of zany road trip experiences. Twinkie meets the girl (Asahi Hirano) who REALLY is perfect for her, but Twinkie is first destined to learn a cruel lesson about being infatuated with a player. It’s a hoot, and there’s not one false note. For all their kooky antics, the kids’ feelings are remarkably authentic.

The entire cast is very good. Sabrina Jie-A-Fa is a charming force of nature as Twinkie. She’s in every scene, and she’s a real talent.

Asahi Hirano and Sabrina Jie-A-Fa in EGGHEAD & TWINKIE. Credit: Olivia Wilson, Courtesy of CanBeDone Films and Orange Cat Films.

Egghead & Twinkie is the first feature for writer-director Sarah Kambe Holland, and it’s an impressive calling card. Egghead & Twinkie is perfectly paced, and Kambe Holland sprinkles in just enough animation to help leaven the angst with the whimsical. Kambe Holland says,

“The kernel of an idea that turned into EGGHEAD & TWINKIE was
more of a question: Can I find humor in the coming out process? I
was nineteen years old at the time, and I had just come out to my
own parents a few months before. The stress of coming out was
fresh in my mind, but so was the hilarious awkwardness of it all. I
challenged myself to write a short film script about a teenage girl
who comes out to her parents, but I was adamant that it wouldn’t be
a drama. It would be a comedy, and the message would be one of
hope and friendship.“

Of course, given Kambe Holland’s inspiration for the story, Twinkie just doesn’t HAPPEN to be gay or HAPPEN to be Asian-American, but the themes are universal, and Egghead & Twinkie is one of the best coming-of-age films of the decade.

I screened Egghead & Twinkie for its premiere at Cinequest.. After  a strong festival run, Egghead & Twinkie is available on VOD, including Amazon, AppleTV and YouTube, beginning today.

THE TROUBLE WITH JESSICA: a diverting farce

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Photo caption: Shirley Henderson in THE TROUBLE WITH JESSICA. Courtesy of Music Box Films.

In the dark British farce The Trouble with Jessica, the most despicable, unwelcome guest at a dinner party dies by suicide in the back yard, and the other four diners must dispose of the inconvenient corpse to prevent financial ruin of the hosts. As one might expect, the foursome must run a gauntlet of nosy neighbors, earnest police and horny drunks.

Five very able veteran actors (Shirley Henderson, Alan Tudyk, Olivia Williams, Rupert Sewell and Indira Varma) keep the laughs coming. Henderson, so good in Intermission and the Harry Potter franchise, brilliantly pivots her character from hand-wringing to ruthlessness. Varma does well with the most delicious role, an attractive, talented and successful person who is personally despicable in every way.

Indira Varma in THE TROUBLE WITH JESSICA. Courtesy of Music Box Films.

The story in The Trouble with Jessica follows a familiar premise, and the arc is predictable. But the acting is so vivid that it works as a light diversion.

The Trouble with Jessica was directed by Matt Winn, who co-wrote the screenplay with James Handel.

The Trouble with Jessica is opening this weekend, including at the Laemmle Royal in LA. I screened The Trouble With Jessica for the 2024 Cinequest.

SFFILM Festival: three international gems

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Photo caption: Marina Fois in MAGMA. Courtesy of SFFILM.

This year’s San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM) opens on Thursday and runs through April 27. There are plenty of big events, including the opening night Rebuilding starring Josh O’Connor (Challengers, La Chimera, The Crown) and Andre Holland appearing to receive an award and present his latest film Love, Brooklyn. However, don’t overlook the international cinema at SFFILM – here are three gems.

  • Magma: Marina Fois plays the leader of the scientific team that monitors the active volcano on Guadeloupe. She is seasoned, confident and not prone to panic. The government relies on her to counsel whether and when an upcoming eruption will force evacuation of island residents – and the politicians are not comfortable interpreting her probabilities. While no one wants to endanger lives, everyone remembers an evacuation that went horribly wrong in 1976. So, the stakes are high, and she is the public face of the decision to evacuate or not. When the government overreacts, her job gets much tougher. The clock ticks and the pressure builds in this taut 82-minute thrill ride, as director Cypriot Vial, who co-wrote, unspools the action. The performances by Fois and Theo Christine as her grad student assistant are fantastic. Magma won the SFFILM award for depicting science in a narrative film.
  • Triumph: Looking for a new role after the fall of communism, Bulgarian army leaders follow a psychic’s advice to burrow into the earth in search of a portal to a space alien’s mothership. If this seems farfetched, look up the historical event called “The Tsarichina Hole” (illustrated in the closing credits). Following the East European filmmaking tradition of exposing the absurdities in communist bureaucracy, directors and co-writers Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov pile on layers of droll hilarity. The psychic gets everyone to adopt pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo like “deactimation“. The army commander in charge brings his disturbed teen daughter (Maria Bakalova of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm), who has her own awakenings and begins to out-psychic the psychic.
  • Rains Over Babel: In her stunning debut feature, writer-director Gala del Sol takes us into an imagined world of Cali, Columbia, bars connected to the Underworld (not the just criminal underworld), ruled by a sexy loan shark who is the Grim Reaper. Among the denizens are a sleek and smarmy bartender, a prudish preacher, a gangland enforcer who’s been dead for twenty years, a talking salamander and more drag queens than you can shake a stick at. The story, fraught with desperation and Faustian bargains, flies by. Del Sol says she marries magic realism with gritty realism, and Rains Over Babel is visually orgiastic. The intricate production designs of the interiors could be by a demented Wes Anderson. The sound design is jarring and totally original. As an auteur, Gala del Sol is thinking so far outside of the box that you can’t tell that there’s a box.
Maria Bakalova in TRIUMPH. Courtesy of SFFILM and Bankside Films.

.The menu at SFFILM Festival includes 150 films from more than 50 countries. Peruse the program and buy tickets at SFFILM. Here’s the teaser for Rains Over Babel.

MAN ON THE TRAIN: an unlikely bonding

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Photo caption: Jean Rochefort and Johnny Hallyday in MAN ON THE TRAIN.

The engrossing 2002 French drama Man on the Train centers on portraits of two very different men, and, ultimately, an unexpected male bonding. There’s a thriller ending because each man has been moving to his separate pivotal, life-or-death moment.

The titular character (Johnny Hallyday), whose name we come to learn is Milan, arrives in a small provincial town, and his accommodations fall through. The local literature teacher Manesquier (Jean Rochefort) insists on putting him up for the night. Milan, a very private man of fewer than few words, accepts the favor only reluctantly. He’s a solitary guy anyway, and he’s keeping a low profile because his local business matter is illegal. Manesquier, who lives a lonely bachelor existence, has a lot to say and no one to say it to. He is delighted to have someone to share company, and he is even more fascinated when he discovers that Milan is a career criminal.

Driven by Manesquier’s curiosity, and against Milan’s initial wishes, the two get to know each other. We know that the clock is ticking for one man, but we don’t appreciate that it my be ticking for both.

Man on the Train works so well because of the casting and the performances.

Jean Rochefort was a chameleonic fixture in French cinema. Man on the Train was Rochefort’s 130th movie at age 72, and he would go on to make 36 more. I recently wrote of Rochefort’s performance forty years before as a particularly amoral character with a reptilian smugness in Symphony for a Massacre.

Johnny Hallyday, in contrast, was not most well-known as a screen actor, but as a pop singer, the French Elvis. Ironically, Hallyday’s first film was as a child in the suspense classic Diabolique, which also was his best film; like Elvis Presley, Hallyday dabbled in an indifferent movie career. Halliday made 78 music videos with Johnny Hallyday in the title. He was known as a hard-living tabloid celebrity. When he made Man on the Train, Hallyday was 59 and had some serious mileage on him. Yet, his magnetism is compelling in Man on the Train.

Man on the Train was directed by Patrice Leconte (Monsieur Hire, The Widow of St. Pierre, The Suicide Shop).

Man on a Train can be streamed from Amazon, AppleTV, Fandango and YouTube.

THE WHISTLERS: walking a tightrope of treachery

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Photo caption: Catrinel Marlon and Vlad Ivanov in THE WHISTLER. Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

In the absorbing crime thriller The Whistlers, Cristi (Vlad Ivanov) is a shady Romanian cop who is lured into a dangerous plot by the rapturously sexy Gilda (Catrinel Marlon) and the promise of a fortune. A lethal Spanish mafia is planning a Perfect Crime to recover the loot stolen by Gilda and her Romanian partner, Zsolt. Only Zslot knows where the treasure is, and he’s been jailed by Cristi’s colleagues. To beat the omnipresent surveillance of Romanian state security, Cristi is sent to La Gomera, an island in the Spanish Canary Islands to learn a whistling language.

A whistling language? Indeed, residents of La Gomera can communicate by whistling in code. The language is called Silbo Gomera and it was already being used in ancient Roman times. The whistling can be heard for up to two miles, which allows the locals to communicate across the impassable ravines on the mountainous island.

The plan to spring Zsolt depends on Cristi learning Silbo Gomera and then implementing an intricate plan in which nothing can go wrong. Even if the plan goes right, Cristi and Gilda run the very real risk of being killed by the pitiless Spanish mafia or by the corrupt and unaccountable Romanian cops. Cristi and Gilda are walking a tightrope of treachery.

Vlad Ivanov in THE WHISTLERS. Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

The Whistlers is written and directed by Corneliu Porumboiu, who is a master of the deadpan. Two of his earlier films became art house hits in the US, 12:08 East of Bucharest and Police, Adjective. Both of those films explored fundamental corruption in Romanian society as a legacy of the communist era..

Cristi is played by Romanian actor Vlad Ivanov. Ivanov is best known for the Romanian masterpiece 4 Days, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, in which he played one of cinema’s most repellent characters – Mr. Bebe, the sexual harassing abortionist. American audiences have also seen Ivanov’s performances in Police, Adjective and Snowpiercer.

Ivanov excels in playing Everyman piñatas, which serves him well in The Whistlers. Ivanov delivered a tour de force in the 2019 Cinequest film Hier, as a man more and more consumed by puzzles, and increasingly perplexed, dogged, battered and exhausted.

For The Whistlers to work, Catrinel Marlon must make Gilda quick-thinking and gutsy, and she pulls it off. She is very good, as is Rodica Lazar as Cristi’s coldly ruthless boss Magda.

This is a Romanian film with dialogue in Romanian, English, Spanish and, of course, whistling. The Whistlers, a top notch crime thriller, can be streamed from Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube and Fandango – and it’s currently included with Max.