Movies

THE DOG: obsession and desperation in Mombasa

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Alexander Karim in THE DOG. Courtesy of Cinequest.

The electrifying thriller The Dog follows a classic neo-noir premise. MZ (Alexander Karim), a low level hood, is assigned to drive the call girl, Kadzo (Catherine Muthoni), and he falls for her – against the explicit instructions of their employer and advice from Kadzo herself. To stake a new start for them in a faraway land, he reaches for the big score. Desperation results. What’s unusual about The Dog is that it’s exceptionally exciting and that it’s set in Mombasa, Kenya.

In his quest to make a quick fortune, MZ tries to cash in on a tip about a drug deal. When that goes awry, he finds himself owing a huge debt to Saddam (Caroline Midimo), one of Mombasa’s crime matriarchs. He then tries working with Saddam’s rival Ainea (Veronica Mwaura). MZ takes more and more risks as he get more deeply entangled with the two godmothers. All the way, he’s just one double cross away from disappointing the last people he’ll ever disappoint.

There’s a wonderful low-speed tuk tuk chase (on three-wheel taxis) through Mombasa’s open air markets, street performers and herds of goats. And there’s another unforgettable scene that will be particularly uncomfortable for male audience members.

The Dog matches up well to Howard Hawks’ definition of a great movie – three great scenes and no bad ones“. My FOUR nominations for the three great scenes:

  • a big spender who owes MZ money brings him to his home;
  • Kadzo has MZ film her latest video ad, and he watches her at her sexiest through her cellphone camera.
  • Kadzo explains that she is not asking anyone to save her;
  • MZ faces his reckoning,

The Swedish-born Alexander Karim is superb as MZ. MZ works out to maintain a physicality that intimidates johns and debtors, but he knows his place in the crime hierarchy and grovels before the godmothers; when he screws up, he knows the consequences and moves directly into desperate terror. Alexander Karim has worked in lots of Scandanavian films (so he must be familiar with Nordic Noir) and appeared in Gladiator II.

Catherine Muthoni in THE DOG. Courtesy of Cinequest.

Catherine Muthoni is very good as Kadzo. This may be a neo-noir, but Kadzo isn’t a manipulative femme fatale – it’s only MZ who drives himself to his fate. Midimo and Mwaura are wonderful as the two crime bosses. Watch for how matter-of-factly Midimo dons Saddam’s eyeglasses in the most extreme scene.

The Dog is brilliantly directed, and edited. The director is Alexander’s Ugandan-born brother Baker Karim, who is also based in Sweden. That makes The Dog a Swedish movie, although it has every appearance of a Kenyan film.

Until midnight on March 31, you can stream The Dog from Cinequest’s on-line festival Cinejoy for less than ten bucks: buy ticket to watch The Dog.

ART FOR EVERYBODY: a contradiction revealed

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Photo caption: Thomas Kinkade in ART FOR EVERYBODY. Courtesy of Tremolo Productions.

Art for Everybody, the absorbing and revelatory biodoc of painter-entrepreneur Thomas Kinkade, begins with an audio recording of a 16-year-old Kinkade, aspiring to become a famous painter when he grew up – but not a poor one. He succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, harvesting great wealth by creating demand where none had existed and filling it with what he, controversially, called art. After trading on his conservative Christianity, his business model became unsustainable, and Kinkade, living apart from his family, drank himself to death.

That’s a hell of a rise-and-fall story arc, but it gets better. After his death, his family finally saw the other 90% of Kinkade’s work, secreted away in a room they had called “the vault”. Those paintings, so shockingly different than his commercial ones, revealed a Kinkade that he had hidden from everyone. I like documentaries that are jaw-droppers, and this is one. In her first feature, director Miranda Yousef, who also edited, unspools Kinkade’s story flawlessly.

Kinkade, an astonishingly fast and prolific painter, built his empire on sentimental and comforting landscapes with exaggerated light features, such as warm light glowing from the windows of a forest cabin at night. That signature became the Kinkade brand, and he even trademarked the self-given moniker, “Painter of Light”. Because they don’t evoke anything but passive contentedness, I wouldn’t even describe these paintings as art, but rather as decoration or collectibles.

Their themes are more fantasy than nostalgia. For example Art for Everybody shows a Kinkade street scene of busy San Francisco, filled only with all-white, heterosexual families; as a lifelong Northern Californian (like me), Kinkade would surely have known that this was a San Francisco that has never existed.

Kinkade’s open religiosity attracted customers and investors. He exploited the culture wars and even advocated the censorship of other artists like Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano.

Kinkade, busy opening galleries in shopping malls, was already the painter who had sold the most canvases and prints in history before many in the fine art world had ever heard of him. In 2001, when Susan Orlean profiled him in The New Yorker, pointing out that ten million people owned Kinkade products, the traditional art critics seemed to howl in unison, “how DARE he?“

Art for Everybody is impeccably sourced with testimony from Kinkade’s wife and kids, his siblings, the co-founder of his company, along with Orlean and a bevy of experts in the fine arts world. I can’t remember a documentary where the subject’s family was more clear-eyed about their deceased loved one. They clearly love the guy, but pull no punches about his quirks and flaws.

In one revelatory moment, Yousef shows us a home movie of Kinkade taking his family back to see the modest house where his single mom raised Thomas and his siblings. As a kid, Kinkade was deeply ashamed of this home, and vowed to live more comfortably as an adult. As Kinkade shows his wife and kids around, it’s clear that he saw it as hell hole. Placerville, however, is not a bougie place, and Kinkade doesn’t report that he was spurned or teased because of his home, nor do his siblings seemed to be scarred by it. Clearly, the shame he felt was internally driven. Kinkade’s brother spells out what appealed to Kinkade about painting cozy cottages.

This was a a very complicated man – fun-loving dad and workaholic, a talented fine artist who aimed for the lowest common denominator. Once we’ve seen him as a proudly philistine huckster, it’s breathtaking to discover what he painted for himself and hid away. Might Kinkade have destroyed himself by not working out his demons through his art?

After premiering at the 2023 SXSW and a strong festival run, Art for Everybody is rolling out in theaters.

IN A WINTRY SEASON: a fairy tale, interrupted

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IN A WINTRY SEASON. Courtesy of Cinequest.

The heartfelt and intoxicating documentary In a Wintry Season starts out looking like a fairy tale, and unpredictably turns decidedly not, as the real world and human behavior intervene. 

Writer-director Mary Posatko tells the increasingly unpredictable story of her parents. I generally resist filmmakers profiling their own parents, but In a Wintry Season won me over with its candor, authenticity and surprises.  It’s a relatable story of two people and their family and their times, but it brings us into a meditation on what is American  Catholicism today.  Very sweet ending.

I screened In a Wintry Season for its US premiere at Cinequest, where I predict it will be a crowd-pleaser.

GUNMAN: trying to outrun a frame

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Sergio Podeley in GUNMAN. Courtesy of Cinequest.

The hyper-kinetic Argentine neo-noir Gunman (Gatillero) kicks off when the small time gunsel Galgo (Sergio Podeley) returns from prison and learns that the neighborhood drug gangs find him expendable. He immediately finds himself framed for a gangland assassination and goes on the run in a 75-minute, real-time thrill ride.

This is a cops-and-robbers story with no cops. The police are corrupt and stay out of the gang territory, so Galgo is trapped between two gang factions and neighborhood vigilantes – all armed to the teeth and trigger-happy.

As the prey in a midnight man hunt, Galgo’s dash for survival is captured by a handheld camera in shots of very long duration. If you liked Run, Lola, Run or Victoria, you’ll love Gunman.

Prisons are full of guys with bad impulse control, and Galgo is anything but strategic; he is, however, canny enough to recognize when he is being set up. He has some has gangster skills, which he needs as he careens through the hood, We’re certainly not thinking that he’s headed for redemption.

This is a genre film, but also is a real cinematic achievement. Gunman is an amazing first feature for director and co-writer, Cris Tapia Marchiori, and an unforgettable achievement for Marchiori and his veteran cinematographer Martin Sapia.

Based on a true story and shot in its actual setting, the drug-plagued Buenos Aires neighborhood of Isla Maciel, Gunman is brimming with verisimilitude.

As Galgo, Sergio Podeley is in almost every shot, and is believable as the impulsive and increasingly desprate Galgo. Susana Varela is compelling as Nilda, the community’s matriarch and moral center.

I screened Gunman for its US premiere at Cinequest.

BOB TREVINO LIKES IT: without dad’s encouragement, she’s stuck

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Photo caption: Barbie Ferreira and John Leguizamo, in BOB TREVINO LIKES IT. Courtesy of Roadside Attractions.

In Bob Trevino Likes It, one those adult coming of age stories that have become increasingly common increasingly common, twenty-something Lily (Barbie Ferreira) is stuck. She’s going nowhere in her career and her social life, and she just doesn’t envision herself as deserving the good things that anyone would want.

When we meet her father (French Stewart), we begin to understand why. Lily’s Dad is so self-absorbed that he only interacts with Lily when he sees her as a useful prop in his dating life. Hehasn’t romoted any sense of self-esteem in his daughter; his contribution is more like anti-self esteem. Still, she gets despondent when he overtly and cruelly rejects her.

When Lily searches for her dad’s name on Facebook, Robert Trevino, she finds lots of men with the same name, including a contractor who lives a couple hours away. Some online interactions grow into a cyber friendship, and then they meet in person. This Bob Trevino (John Leguizamo) is a really nice guy.

Lily is getting the interest, support and counsel from Bob that, ideally, one would get from one’s father. Lily wants to plunge headlong into a situation where Bob becomes her surrogate father. Bob is kind, but reticent about getting in too deep. The audience learns what Bob doesn’t reveal to Lily – Bob’s own grievous loss and the major stresses from his family and his job.

This is a heartfelt, if simplistic, story, and it’s a weeper.

It’s entirely believable that such a chosen family could result from an encounter on today’s social media, and, indeed, the film bears a title, “inspired by a true story“. Bob Trevino Likes It was written and directed by Tracie Laymon in her first feature.

John Leguizamo is very good in a role as a very decent man who is emotionally contained and suffers the burdens of other people’s issues. So is French Stewart as a less complicated character – Stewart does narcissism very well.

I screened Bob Trevino Likes It for the Nashville Film Festival, where it won the jury award for narrative features. It won both the jury award and the audience award at SXSW. That means that most people will like it more than I did. Again – it’s a weeper.

CHAOS: THE MANSON MURDERS: the facts still are incredible

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Photo caption: CHAOS: THE MANSON MURDERS. Courtesy of Netflix.

Master documentarian Erroll Morris revisits and updates the Manson Murders in Chaos: The Manson Murders. After over a half-century, it’s still a chilling, unforgettable story – human behavior so bizarre and transgressive that it’s almost incredible.

Morris introduces us to writer Tom O’Neill, who adds a conspiracy theory. .O’Neill accepts that the Manson Family perpetrated the murders at Charlie Manson’s direction,, but he also sees a connection between Manson and a CIA-funded experiment in mind control, although he doesn’t prove a link. It’s clear that Morris doesn’t buy the conspiracy.

What does Chaos: The Manson Murders add to to our understanding, besides the probably bogus conspiracy theory? The passage of time has added sources and perspective that Morris uses to retell the story more completely than in the past. One dispassionate and ultra-credible source is one of the prosecution team, Stephen Kay, an eyewitness to and participant in the trials. Morris has also found archival footage of interviews with members of the Manson Family and, yes, of Charlie himself.

That allows Morris to unspool a chronological narrative that begins with Manson’s release from prison, his assembling his family of misfits in San Francisco and moving them all to LA so he could dabble in the music industry – just enough to develop a grudge. Morris tells the lesser-known stories of the prequel crimes, the murder of Gary Hinman and the attempted murder of Bernard Crowe, who Manson mistook for a Black Panther because of his Afro. And then finally, the horrors on Cielo Drive and Waverly Drive.

For 46 years, Erroll Morris has been one of the greatest documentarians, with a body of work that ranges from the hilarious (Gates of Heaven, Vernon Florida, Fast Cheap and Out of Control, Tabloid) to the unflinching (The Thin Blue Line, Mr. Death, The Fog of War, Standard Operating Procedure),

(BTW a friend of mine on a prison tour was actually introduced to Charlie Manson in the prison yard. He reported that, indeed, Manson creeped him out with a very scary vibe.)

Chaos: The Manson Murders, the ultimate true crime doc, is streaming on Netflix.

MICKEY 17: lovable loser in space

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Photo caption: Robert Pattinson in MICKEY 17. Courtesy of Warner Bros.

In Bong Joon Ho’s futuristic comic fable Mickey 17, Robert Pattinson plays Mickey, a dim bulb looking to escape a nasty loan shark. Mickey’s desperation is so high, and his self esteem is so low, that he takes a horrific assignment on a space colonization expedition. Mickey’s new job title is Expendable – his body and brain are scanned so that he can be replicated and reprogrammed with his own memories if he is killed; that allows the expedition to use him as a guinea pig and a scout, who can test pilot conditions that might be lethal. Indeed, Mickey has been killed so often that his seventeenth version – Mickey 17 – has just been 3-D printed.

The expedition is led by a buffoonish narcissist and media hog (Mark Ruffalo). He is an election loser who seeks to regain his Big Fish status on a frozen planet. Headstrong and intellectually lazy, he hasn’t bothered to research the destination planet, figuring that he can bull ahead and overwhelm any obstacles with resources, aggression and technology. Does this profile remind you of anyone? He is amoral and utterly ruthless, as is his wife (Toni Collette) . She is kind of a demented Lady Macbeth, obsessed with concocting something she calls “sauce”.

As the colonization attempt faces more challenges and the leader becomes more awful and more unhinged, the expedition’s survival depends on poor Mickey and his closest two colleagues (one of which is really, really, really close). Comic situations and sci fi action ensues.

Although Mickey 17 is a comedy, I only heard the occasional chuckle from the audience. I found the ending to be predictable.

Director and writer Bong Joo Ho adapted the screenplay from the Edward Ashton novel Mickey 7. Bong is a critic of unfettered capitalism, and, Mickey 17, like Snowpiercer, Okja and his Oscar-winner Parasite, takes on the issues of class and corporate greed.

Part of the problem is that Bong asked Ruffalo (with gleaming teeth and a rich guy haircut) and Collette to deliver over-the-top performances, and they obliged. The social satire would have packed more of a punch with more realistic characters, as in Parasite.

This may be, however, a career-topping performance by Robert Pattinson, who nails Mickey’s goofy resignation. His narration, in Mickey’s voice, is a hoot.

Besides Pattinson, the standout is British actress Naomi Ackie, who plays what is essentially the female lead. She’s wonderfully charismatic, and badass,

Bong Joo Ho makes movies so original that it’s been said that he is his own genre. His Memories of Murder is, for my money, the very best serial killer movie. Mickey 17 is always entertaining, but, on th whole, one of Bong’s lesser efforts.

AMERICAN AGITATORS: social justice doesn’t just happen

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Fred Ross (foreground left) and Cesar Chavez (foreground right) in AMERICAN AGITATORS. Courtesy of Cinequest.

American Agitators is the important story of legendary organizer Fred Ross, the mentor of Cesar Chavez, and essentially a saint of the social justice movement. American Agitators shows Ross being formed by the Great Depression and the left-wing politics, the union movement and the New Deal. As a fully formed organizer, Ross met Chavez; Ross’ organizing resonated with Chavez applied his own imagination to Ross’ tactics and launched his own historically essential movements for farmworker unionization and Chicano Rights.

Director Raymond Telles has sourced the film impeccably. The third act rolls out Ross’ legacy today, not just Chavez the icon and the Farmworkers movement, but the influence of Fred Ross, Jr. and then a more loosely configured compendium of recent and current labor campaigns..

Fred Ross and Dolores Huerta in AMERICAN AGITATORS. Courtesy of Cinequest.

LOCAL SAN JOSE INTEREST: Fred Ross met Chavez at Cesar’s home at 53 Sharff Avenue in San Jose, hired Cesar as his deputy and organized out of McDonnell Hall at Our Lady of Guadalupe on East Antonio Street.  Cesar’s son Paul (of San Jose) appears in the film as does Luis Valdes of Teatro Campesino, who has also had a significant presence in San Jose.

I screened American Agitators for its world premiere at Cinequest.

BURT: irrepressible generosity

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Burton Berger in BURT. Courtesy of Cinequest.

The title character in the affecting dramedy Burt is a an elderly street musician with Parkinson’s Disease. Burt rents a room in the home of his landlord Steve, an ever-suspicious and oppositional guy who is Burt’s age. Nevertheless, Burt is relentlessly upbeat. A young man, Sammy, arrives with a letter from one of Burt’s youthful flames, explaining that Sammy is Burt’s son. Burt jumps into belated fatherhood with both feet, and then discovers that all is not as it seems.

Burt (Burton Berger) may face disappointment and hurt, but he does so with an irrepressible generosity of spirit. This is not a Disease of the Week movie. It’s not about Burt’s Parkinson’s. It’s about Burt, a vital guy who is open about his living with Parkinson’s, but who focuses on what he can still experience.

Oliver Cooper and Burton Berger in BURT. Courtesy of Cinequest.

Oliver Cooper (David Berkowitz in Mindhunter, Levon in Californication) captures the contradictions within Sammy, who’s been incarcerated until recently.  Sammy shares a lot of traits with the average criminal – not smart, not strategic, irresponsible and easily led astray.  I’m guessing that his impulse control and anger management aren’t great, either.  But, somehow, Sammy has a reservoir of empathy that may impede his criminality. Cooper also co-wrote.

A remarkably endearing movie, Burt is just the second feature for director and co-writer Joe Burke. Burke shot Burt in seven days for $7,000 with a three person crew.  He succeeded in getting fine performances from the non-professional actors playing Burt (Berger) and Steve (Stephen Levy)..

Burt was executive produced by indie stalwart David Gordon Green (George Washington, All the Real Girls, Undertow). I screened Burt for its world premiere at Cinequest.

THE UNFIXING: an art film inside a memoir

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Nicole Betancourt in THE UNFIXING. Courtesy of Cinequest.

The mesmerizing The Unfixing is a self-therapeutic memoir, chronicling the filmmaker’s personal journey through her parents’ divorcee, her own sudden disability from chronic fatigue syndrome, and then shockingly, her daughter’s affliction with the same symptoms via Lyme Disease; mom and daughter experiment with a new therapy that purports to rewire their brains.  How will this family story end?

The clever structure (in yearly segments tied to climate change) and repeated motifs (of photography, the beach and grief) make this an art film inside a memoir.  The Unfixing is the first feature for director, writer and subject Nicole Betancourt.

THE UNFIXING. Courtesy of Cinequest.

This unique film may not be for everyone, but it’s that wholly original cinema that people hope to see at a film festival. I screened The Unfixing for its US premiere at Cinequest.