Movies

Cinequest: The Circle Within

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Circle Within

The Circle Within (Icimdeki Cember) is a Turkish fable that turns into a psychological drama. An old peddler trudges between isolated hamlets when a younger man knocks him senseless and draws a circle in the dirt around the fallen old man.  When he awakes, the old man refuses to leave the circle, which is not a surprise to the younger man.  Why is the younger man so cruel?  How the younger man know that the peddler won’t leave the circle?  Who is really trapped?  And why?

The power of the circle stems from the Kurdish religion of yezidism, a non-Islamic minority religion related to Zoroastrianism and Sufism.

Only 72 minutes long, The Circle Within is very slow, and I had trouble staying awake. The Circle Within is not a favorite of mine, but it provides a rare glimpse into yezidism, the Kurds and the Big Sky country of eastern Turkey. The Circle Within’s North American Premiere is March 5, and it plays at Cinequest on March 6, 7, and 10.

Cinequest: The Verdict

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VerdictThe Belgian drama The Verdict (Het Vonnis) won Best Director at the Montreal Film Festival.  A man’s family is destroyed by an especially senseless and brutal crime, and the monstrous perp is freed by an infuriatingly absurd legal technicality.  When he takes vigilante revenge, he is tried for the crime.  Any American jury would free this guy in about eleven seconds, but this is Belgium and the dead perp’s lawyer is passionate about the rule of law, and the cynical prosecutors need to convict the guy to cover up their own incompetence.  So we have a courtroom drama.  The Verdict advocates the political position that the Belgian justice system protects the rights of criminal defendants at the expense of victims – kind of like Dirty Harry (only in Dutch).

As well-crafted as is The Verdict, I think that it will be difficult for American audiences to relate to the political morality play; The Verdict is more accessible as a psychological drama – the portrait of a man who has nothing left to lose, but still grasps for a glimmer of justice.

Cinequest: Class Enemy

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Class EnemyIn the gripping drama Class Enemy (Razredni sovraznik), a high school class is a pretty typical collection of teenagers – some more rebellious than others, some a little more mature – but generally a potent package of hormones and bad judgement.  One boy has just lost his mother and has anger issues, one artistic girl is very sensitive and another boy is just a smug punk.  The class gets a new foreign language teacher, and he is demanding, humorless, abrasive and insensitive.  The kids are already wary of him when they are rocked by a tragedy – and they explode.

Here’s what is special about Class Enemy.  The kids’ reactions vary, but are true to their individual personalities.  The reactions of the kids and adults are completely plausible, and not the least bit contrived.  And the filmmakers avoid taking the side of any kid or any adult – no character is completely correct.  This story could have been turned into a really trite Hollywood movie about kids united against a mean adult authority figure, but the filmmakers trust the audience to accept the nuance and ambiguity that we experience in real life.

Class Enemy, Slovenia’s entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar, is an authentic and taut drama.

Omar: a heartbreaking love story inside a West Bank thriller

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omarThe gripping and thought-provoking Palestinian drama Omar, which opens tomorrow, is a fundamentally a love story that drives an action thriller.  It seems to be about a college-age Palestinian guy named Omar and his two buddies.  They live in a West Bank Arab community that is repressed by apparently omniscient and omnipotent Israeli security forces.  It’s an environment where one bad choice can spiral one’s life completely out of control – and one that is toxic with betrayals.

There are thrills aplenty when the Israeli security teams are chasing our hero.  We’ve never seen more riveting chase scenes through the alleys and rooftops of West Bank cities.  Shot in Nazareth and Nablus, Omar gives us a novel look at these Arab communities and the Israeli security wall.

But it is basically a love story, albeit a heartbreaking one, because most of the plot is motivated by Omar’s love for his sweetheart Nadia.  The first action by the three young guys stems from politics, testosterone and the foolhardiness of youth.  But everything that happens after is because of Omar’s yearning for Nadia.  We also see the chaste Palestinian courtship rituals; the kids are burning with passion for each other as they exchange letters and discreet glances.

Omar is not for everyone.  For one thing, it doesn’t try to be even-handed about the Israeli Occupation – everything is seen through the Palestinian lens.  It’s realistic – one Israeli character in particular is humanized and it’s easy for the audience to disapprove of the boneheaded behavior by the young Palestinians.  But if you aren’t open to that Palestinian perspective, you’re not going to like this movie.  And the ending is unusually jarring – my fellow audience members sat in shocked silence for a few seconds.

Omar won a jury prize at Cannes and is nominated for this year’s Best Foreign Language Oscar.

Stranger by the Lake: an effective thriller with LOTS of explicit gay sex

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Writer-director Alain Giraudie uses the milieu of gay cruising to set his thriller, Stranger by the Lake (L’inconnu du lac), launched with great notoriety at Cannes. A young man frequents a secluded beach to hook up with other gays. He spots a dreamy newcomer, but he just can’t seem to meet the new guy. After a few frustrating days, he witnesses a murder by drowning – and the murderer is the guy that he’s hot for. The next day, the murderer comes on to him and our hero can’t resist…until his new boy toy suggests that they go for a swim.

Stranger by the Lake is notorious because of lots of genitals-in-your-face male nudity and LOTS of explicit gay sex acts. At least some of the sex is actual (not just simulated) sex. I saw Stranger by the Lake in an audience that must have been 80% gay male, and there were lots of knowing chuckles at the cruising behaviors (along with gasps at an episode of decidedly unsafe sex).

Stranger by the Lake does work as a thriller, and a limited US release is underway; in the San Francisco Bay Area, it’s currently playing in just two theaters – the Clay and the Shattuck.  It is unrated, but would certainly qualify for a NC-17.

Gloria: resiliency, thy name is woman

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GLORIA
GLORIA

In the Chilean gem Gloria, we meet a 58-year-old woman who has been divorced for ten years.  This ain’t An Unmarried Woman where a woman must learn to adapt and become independent.  She supports herself with an office job, and she gets along with her adult kids, but they have their own lives.  She doesn’t stay cooped up in her apartment, she tries out yoga and laugh therapy and cruises a certain Santiago disco – a meat market for the over 50 set.  She already is plenty independent, and she knows what she wants – some adult companionship and a little nookie.

On one outing to the disco, she meets a distinguished and sweet-tempered gentleman who is a great dancer and who absolutely adores her.  Of course, he also has some flaws, to be discovered later.  Gloria eagerly embraces the good things that happen to her, and when there are bumps in her road, she refuses to wilt.

Gloria was a big hit at last year’s Berlin Film Festival.  Part of Gloria’s appeal to some audiences is, no doubt, an unusual amount of nudity and sex for a film about people in their late 50s and 60s.  But I think the best part about Gloria is the resiliency of the main character – she takes her lumps for sure but refuses to withdraw into victimhood.

Paulina Garcia is extraordinarily good as Gloria – her performance carries the movie.  She has the ability to suffer an indignity without becoming pathetic.  Sergio Hernandez is very, very good as Gloria’s new flame, as is Alejandro Goic as her ex.  Gloria is a crowd pleaser.

Dallas Buyers Club: worth it for Jared Leto

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Jared Leto and Matthew McConaughey in DALLAS BUYERS CLUB
Jared Leto and Matthew McConaughey in DALLAS BUYERS CLUB

Dallas Buyers Club is a well-paced us-against-bureaucracy drama.  It’s yet another fine acting performance by its star, Matthew McConaughey, who – in a superb second career phase – has turned in a remarkable spate of winning performances in the past three years (Killer Joe, The Paperboy, Mud, Magic Mike, The Wolf of Wall Street, True Detective).  Set in the early panicky days of the AIDS epidemic, it’s the based-on-fact story of a homophobic Texas cowboy who contracts AIDS and wages a guerrilla war against the FDA, Big Pharma and the medical establishment to distribute non-approved but effective medications.  Dallas Buyers Club has been nominated for the Best Picture Oscar but I found it too formulaic to be THAT good.

The best reason to see Dallas Buyers Club is the supporting performance by Jared Leto as a drag queen.  I am generally skeptical about performances that get a lot of buzz because the roles require the actor to take on a handicap or another gender, to age many years or some other flashy crap  – but Leto is the real deal here, and he deserves his Academy Award nomination – and I would be pleased if he won the Oscar. He goes beyond the wise cracking queen to plumb many layers of charisma, addiction, self-expression and family rejection. It’s a profoundly affecting and ultimately  heartbreaking performance.  (And, in a couple early scenes, he’s actually prettier than the female lead Jennifer Garner.)

Drinking Buddies: an unusually genuine romantic comedy

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Drinking Buddies

In Drinking Buddies, Olivia Wilde plays the only female employee of an urban craft brewery.  She and her co-worker best buddy (Jake Johnson) eat their lunches together every day, kid around on the job and join the crew for beers after work.  They really connect and share trust with each other, and the two have achieved an enviable level of interpersonal comfort.  If this were the typical idiot Hollywood romantic comedy, we could stop watching now, because we would know that they would dump their current significant others (Anna Kendrick and Ron Livingston) in the third act because THEY ARE MEANT FOR EACH OTHER.

But, instead, writer-director Joe Swanberg surprises us with an unusually genuine romantic comedy.  The characters act and react – not in the way we’ve come to expect rom com characters to act – but as unpredictably as would real people.  Real people can be complex.  Real people can make choices out of short-term self-gratification – or they can make sacrifices for the greater good – you don’t always know what’s coming.  Swanberg trusts that the audience isn’t demanding a tired formula – and it pays off for him and for us.

Swanberg has also made the first Mumblecore movie that I’ve liked.    I was on the verge of writing off the entire cinematic genre because I don’t like to watch self-involved twits obsess over their own avoidable, First World problems.  Although Swanberg’s male characters have the Mumblecore bedhead, he makes this movie about a situation that could happen to any of us – discovering a potential soul mate outside our existing relationship.  And the characters don’t wring their hands and kvetch – they struggle through the untidy challenge and move on.

The cast is solid, and the glammed-down Olivia Wilde is especially very good here.

Drinking Buddies is available on DVD from Netlix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, GooglePlay and XBOX Live.

Gravity: woman against nature – an infinitely vast nature

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Having been nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, Gravity has been re-released in theaters in 3D.  Gripping and visually spectacular, Gravity is less a sci-fi film than it is a basic Man Against Nature (mostly Woman Against Nature) survival tale set in space. A catastrophe strikes a space station, and it’s in doubt whether the two survivors (Sandra Bullock and George Clooney) will be able to make it back to Earth or be forever lost in space.

The skeleton of the story may be simple, but Gravity is an exceptional experience because writer-director Alfonso Cuarón, in a triumph of special effects, captures both the messy nuts and bolts of space travel and the potential lethality of the space environment. I’ve seen my share of space movies, but I’ve never experienced a better sense of the terrifying dark and silent vastness of space. A human in space is suspended in an infinity in which, without a man-made propulsion device, he/she can only helplessly drift. Space is not so much hostile to humans as it is indifferent to our tiny existences.

The technical marvels of manned space missions have dulled us to the reality that space-walking astronauts are just one broken tether or one lost grip from floating away and becoming lifeless space lint. Cuarón brings his audience into that reality, and keeps our tension acute during Ms. Bullock’s Wild Ride.

The Mexico City-born Cuarón will certainly receive an Academy Award nomination for directing. Now Cuarón is an amazingly gifted filmmaker – he also wrote and directed Children of Men, my #2 movie of 2006 and Y Tu Mama Tambien, my #1 movie of 2002. Along the way, he also directed one of the best Harry Potter movies – Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azbakan (the one with the Dementors, Sirius Black and the werewolf).

There are essentially only two characters on the screen, and Cuarón benefits from two instantly sympathetic movie stars, Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. Clooney, of course, can do anything on the screen, and he nails the less complex role of a The Right Stuff style space jock. (In a wonderful nod to Apollo 13 and The Right Stuff, Ed Harris voices the earth-based NASA control chief.)

I’m generally not a huge fan of Bullock but acknowledge her ability to sometimes excel in comedy (The Heat) and to bring something extra to action (Speed). But I’ve gotta say that she’s never been better than she is in Gravity. Here she plays the Everyman role of a person with ordinary skills thrust into overwhelming peril – the kind of cinematic part that made icons out of James Stewart and Tom Hanks. There isn’t a false moment in Bullock’s performance, and she keeps us rooting for her on whole wild ride.

Gravity currently has an unbelievably high 96 Metacritic rating because critics are rightly acknowledging Cuarón’s achievements in directing and special effects. Gravity is without flaws, and it’s damn entertaining, but I’m not going to rate it as the year’s best; I think that some indies and foreign films are more emotionally compelling and have more textured stories. But Gravity is definitely the one of the best Hollywood films of the year and deserves its Oscar nod.

Her: boy meets operating system

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her1Her, the latest from writer-director Spike Jonze is about as inventive at his Being John Malkovitch – and that’s really saying something.  Joaquin Phoenix stars as a lonely guy fascinated by his breathtakingly intuitive new computer operating system (voiced by Scarlett Johannson).  This new operating system is SO intuitive that it molds itself to please him, constantly fine tuning itself into the image of his ideal companion – and he falls in love.

It’s set in a technologically not-so-distant future (but far enough in the future that everyone in LA lives and works in highrises and takes transit, even to the beach).  Along with the absurd premise, Jonze sprinkles in some brilliantly funny touches.  There’s a blind date with a knockout (Olivia Wilde) that spirals out of control with stunning suddenness.  There’s an inspired bit with a waitperson interrupting the diners with “How’s everything?” (one of my personal pet peeves) at precisely the most awkward moment possible.  A video game figure is cuddly looking but shockingly abusive.  Here’s one more sly touch – a future male fashion of awkwardly high-waisted pants.  Lots of smart laughs.

Her is one of the more thought-provoking films of the year – why did the main character’s most recent relationship fail?  Does he really know what he wants and needs? Can he give enough to make a reciprocal relationship work?

Joaquin Phoenix is very good, as are Wilde, Kirsten Wiig, Chris Pratt, Rooney Mara and Amy Adams.  Scarlett Johannson, however, is a revelation; equipped only with her husky voice, she dominates the film.  It’s an extraordinary performance.

All this being said, Her is not a perfect film – it drags in places.   But between Johannson’s performance and Jonze’s wacky but thought-provoking story, Her is a winner – and on my Best Movies of 2013.