Movies

LAST SUNRISE: racing into darkness

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LAST SUNRISE

In the gripping Chinese sci-fi thriller Last Sunrise, we’re in a super-hi tech future, powered almost totally by solar energy – which doesn’t look as blissful as it sounds.  As befits a dystopian story, there’s a disaster, and this one is just about the worst one conceivable – the death of our Sun.

Wang Sun (Zhang Jue) is very serious astronomy nerd with no apparent non-scientific interests.   He doesn’t really know Wu Chen (Zhang Yue), although she lives in a neighboring apartment, and it doesn’t appear that she’s ever thought about anything profound.  When the catastrophe happens, the two are forced on the road together in a race for their lives.

Last Sunrise is real science fiction about a plausible (and inevitable) future occurrence, and it’s about real ideas.  This isn’t just blowing stuff up in space, which too often passes for sci-fi today.

Losing the sun is pretty bad – it gets dark, the temperature is plunging and humans are running out of oxygen.  There may be refuges, but there’s little remaining battery power to fuel people’s escapes.  Of course, it doesn’t take long for social order to break down.  Last Sunrise becomes a ticking bomb thriller as the couple tries to find a refuge in time.

Of course, with no sun lighting the earth and moon, it is very dark and many more stars are visible.  The f/x of the starry skies in Last Sunrise are glorious.

The two leads are appealing,  especially Zhang Yue, whose Wu Chen is revealed more and more as film goes on.

The life-and-death thriller is leavened by witty comments on the consumerist, hyper connected culture (pre-disaster).  There are very funny ongoing references to instant noodles.  And Wang Sun, who is a bit of a hermit, doesn’t appreciate how devoted he is to his digital assistant ILSA (not Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, just ILSA).

This is the first feature, an impressive debut, for director and co-writer Wen Ren.  Cinequest hosts the North American premiere of Last Sunrise, the sci-fi highlight of the festival.

HORIZON: the man who loved too much

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HORIZON

The sensitive Georgian drama Horizon (Horizonti) is about a man who loves too much. A talented Tbilisi designer, Giorgi is a deeply decent guy – he just can’t let go of his ex, Ana. The kids are living with her, and they have an amiable relationship, but Giorgi yearns to rekindle their romance.   She’s not into reunification, but she doesn’t freak out when Giorgi lets himself in her apartment unannounced or when he delivers an unwanted nuzzle on her neck. She’s open about her new boyfriend, but Giorgi isn’t internalizing the cues.

Giorgi moves to a lakeside cabin out in the boondocks. He is a city guy, and this is an environment where there isn’t anything to do except to hunt, fish and chase the chickens back into their pen.  Is he there to escape from the emotional pain? Or to keep his own behavior under control? He makes friends with two elderly residents, their housekeeper and a neighboring guy his age with whom he shares no interests.

Will Giorgi’s isolation cure his heartbreak?

Horizon is the second feature for female writer-director Tinatin Kajrishvili. The screenplay is devoid of the heavy-handedness that plagues many films on this subject. Ana is filled with ambivalence; she really cares for Giorgi – she is deeply fond of him, she just wants to be married to someone else. At one point, Giorgi behaves poorly, but it doesn’t define him as a stalker or a harasser; he is not motivated by the need to dominate and control, just the yearning to be with the partner he adores.

Near the end of the film, one character tells a blatant falsehood that is startling to the audience; this lie is a remarkably generous one because it relieves a grief-stricken character of what could have become life-paralyzing guilt.

Giorgi Bochorishvili is excellent as Giorgi, and Ia Sukhitashvili is even better in the supporting role of Ana.

Cinequest hosts the US premiere of Horizon.

HIER: riddle, mystery, enigma, brilliant

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Vlad Ivanov (left) in HIER

In the brilliant and original drama Hier, middle-aged Victor Ganz has built a successful global engineering enterprise.  He takes what he thinks is a quick trip to Morocco to quell an apparent hiccup in one of his construction projects.  But when he arrives, he finds that the problem with his project doesn’t exist after all, but a mysterious stranger appears and threatens him about something else altogether.  Decades before, Victor had worked in Morocco as an adventuresome young man; incomplete memories of that experience are revived and begin to obsess him.  He becomes a detective but doesn’t fully understand what he is looking for in his own past.

Soon Victor is immersed in puzzling déjà vu.  Is he going crazy?  Is he imagining something in his past or his present?  Who is the woman he is driven to find again?  And why does Victor keep getting beaten up like a human piñata?

Referring to Russian unpredictability, Winston Churchill said, ” It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”  He might have just watched Hier. as Victor’s confusion becomes ever more trippy.

Ganz is played by Romanian actor Vlad Ivanov in a tour de force.  As Ivanov ‘s Victor is more and more consumed by the puzzles,  he becomes increasingly perplexed, dogged, battered and exhausted.

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 sexually harrassing abortionist. American audiences have also seen Ivanov’s performances in Police, Adjective and Snowpiercer.

This is a Hungarian film, but it takes place in Morocco, Some of the dialogue is in English, most is in subtitled French, with some in unsubtitled Arabic (because the protagonist is not fluent in Arabic).

The film’s original Hungarian title is Tegnap, the word for “Yesterday”; the international title is the French word for “yesterday”, Hier (a marketing mistake IMO).  Of course, the protagonist’s obsession is an episode in the past – yesterday – that he remembers and understands only in fragments.

Hier is an impressive first feature for writer-director Bálint Kenyeres. Cinequest hosts the North American premiere of Hier, which is one of the world cinema highlights of the festival.

HAPPIER TIMES, GRUMP: personal connection skips a generation

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HAPPIER TIMES, GRUMP

In the Finnish family comedy Happier Times, Grump, a grouchy and emotionally-repressed Finnish farmer has been content to alienate everyone in his life, but then gets the chance to step up and support his teen granddaughter emotionally. The curmudgeon’s son, the girl’s father, is a Yuppie living in Belgium and he’s a piece of work himself; he has long resented the old man’s harshness and emotional detachment. The worlds of the simple old farmer and the hyper-connected urban teenager are centuries apart, but the odd couple must connect to handle a crisis in the girl’s life.

To enjoy Happier Times, Grump, the audience must 1) be amused by the politically incorrect and Luddite pronouncements of the old man and 2) relish an overtly sentimental ending.

GUEST ARTIST: Jeff Daniels as frustrated genius

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GUEST ARTIST

Jeff Daniels wrote and stars in Guest Artist, a comic two-hander about a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright drinking his way through an 18-year-old writer’s block. The playwright has sunk to accepting a guest residency from a Lima, Ohio, amateur theater company. He shows up drunk, bitter and entitled, and, of course, he hasn’t written the play that has been commissioned. His appointed Man Friday is a wannabe playwright (newcomer Thomas Macias) who desperately tries to handle the raging ego and the self-destructive behavior of his idol.

[MILD SPOILER HERE] It turns out that the writers’ block stems from a self-suppression of artistic expression. But there really isn’t any humor or insight into the artistic process that we haven’t seen before.

Jeff Daniels is very good as the frustrated genius. Daniels has been a cinema star for a long time, and for good reason. It’s been 34 years since he broke through with his star turn in Woody Allen’s Purple Rose of Cairo, and he’s beloved for roles ranging from those in the Dumb and Dumber movies and television’s The Newsroom. I most admire Daniels’ performance as professor-turned-battlefield-commander Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain in Gettysburg (1993).

Guest Artist is essentially a filmed play, and it looks like it. For some, a dose of Jeff Daniels will be enough.

THE EXTRAORDINARY JOURNEY OF CELESTE GARCIA: the tyranny of the minor functionary

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THE EXTRAORDINARY JOURNEY OF CELESTE GARCIA

In the Cuban sci-fi allegory The Extraordinary Journey of Celeste Garcia, the technologically advanced creatures of the Planet Gryok have been living among the Cuban people incognito; impressed by Cuba, they now invite a limited number of Cubans to emigrate to Gryok. Celeste Garcia, a middle-aged   docent at a planetarium, decides to make the trip.  

Celeste Garcia imagines how this would happen in Cuba and delivers a harsh appraisal of communist Cuba and its omnipresent bureaucracy and line-standing. It’s the tyranny of the minor functionary writ large.

A plot thread of later-life romance and self-discovery makes Celeste Garcia a very sweet film.

EVERY TIME I DIE: the dead return as the living

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EVERY TIME I DIE

What if murder victims didn’t return to haunt the living, but instead, INHABITED the living? That’s the premise of the supernatural thriller Every Time I Die.

Sam (Drew Fronteiro) is an EMT, emotionally damaged by a childhood tragedy. Sam is invited to tag along with two couples on a getaway weekend at a lakeside vacation home. Things get weird as we see that Sam is much more messed up than originally apparent. It also turns out that two of the five have a secret relationship. And…there’s a murder! And then things get even weirder.

Every Time I Die is the first narrative feature for director and co-writer Robi Michael and co-writer Gal Katzir. To their credit, Michael and Katzir refuse to spoon feed the audience, making us connect the dots.  Don’t expect to understand everything that’s going on through the first third of the film.  This is not a movie for those who need a linear, paint-by-the-numbers plot.  To add to the early murkiness, the two female leads are played by twin sisters; once we figure that out, we can try to keep them straight.

At the point where we figure out what happens when a character dies, Every Time I Die has us wondering who will be the next to die and who will be the next to be inhabited by the dead.  And, just when we think the movie is over, there’s an unexpected resolution.

Every Time I Die is essentially an ensemble piece, and the cast members – Fronteiro, Marc Menchaca (Ozark), Michelle Macedo, Melissa Macedo and Tyler Dash White – all of whom work often in television, are very good.

Cinequest will host the world premiere of Every Time I Die.

CLOWNVETS: unexpectedly powerful

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CLOWNVETS

The winning documentary Clownvets pairs two groups of sufferers to bring relief to one and healing to the other.  First, we meet US military veterans in rural Michigan and learn about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from their personal perspectives, and from their families and their health providers.  Then, unexpectedly, the famed hospital clown Patch Adams enters.  (Adams was portrayed by Robin Williams in a much reviled movie, but this is the real Patch Adams ).  Adams has the idea of teaching the vets how to clown and bringing them to entertain the most severely disabled in the Third World.

The result is remarkable.  Somehow Adams is able to introduce clowning to these macho guys, and then he brings them to facilities that warehouse the disabled in Guatemala.  The kindest description of these places might be “hell hole”. The plight of the patients/victims is heartbreaking.  The vets throw themselves wholeheartedly into brightening these deprived lives with clowning and with hands-on human compassion.

Why does clowning – of all things – seem to treat the veterans’ PTSD?  Perhaps it is the fully committed silliness and the absurd costumes – the vulnerability from intentionally looking ridiculous and acting ridiculous.  Somehow it seems to  refract/distract/heal the effects of PTSD.

I am generally not a fan of warmhearted movies, but Clownvets moved even me.  In a running time of little less than an hour, it’s able to pack an emotional punch.  I expect Clownvets to be the Feel Good hit of this year’s Cinequest.

Cinequest hosts the world premiere of Clownvets, and Patch Adams himself is expected to attend.

BLOOD PARADISE: fun with horror

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BLOOD PARADISE

In the horror comedy Blood Paradise, the author (Andrea Winter) of lurid best sellers is wallowing in malaise after her latest book bombs.  For a change of pace, she gets away to the Swedish version of an agriturismo, a remote and spartan farm.  The farm has every earmark of Gothic horror, and Blood Paradise has great fun with every creaky door and ominous scarecrow.  The farmer explains his wife’s grave out back, “she loved the garden but now it’s only a garden of death”.  The farmer’s creepy middle-aged sister is obsessed with dolls.  His menacingly silent, paunchy son is mostly shirtless and fondling a shotgun.  And the author’s driver is her biggest fan – and seriously unhinged.  Just when the blood starts splattering, the author’s hunky, dim and besotted boyfriend Teddy shows up for a surprise visit in a white suit.

Part of the fun is that the author has adventuresome sexual fantasies and makes a living envisioning gruesome scenarios; her especially rich imagination makes every ominous cue seem even more alarming.

Blood Paradise is written by its star Andrea Winter and directed by Patrick von Barkenberg (who also plays Teddy); it is the first narrative feature for both.  Winter is a good sport about her own nudity, and has fun playing the author as a brat.  She also has fun with Teddy’s allergies, which erupt at the most importune times.  And there’s a very amusing homage to Psycho.

This is a Swedish movie set in Sweden, but almost all the dialogue is in English.  Blood Paradise plays at the 2019 Cinequest.

AUGGIE: Who do you see when you put on the glasses?

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Richard Kind in AUGGIE

In the superb indie Auggie, Felix (Richard Kind) is pushed into retirement before he wants.  He’s given a goodbye gift that he never would have thought to wish for, augmented reality glasses. Suddenly plunged into inactivity just as his wife Anne’s career is thriving, Felix finally gets around to putting on the glasses.  The glasses give him a virtual companion, Auggie, equipped with the artificial intelligence to give the wearer his craved-for experiences.  Most insidiously, Auggie even delivers individually customized emotional support. Everyone’s digital companion takes the form of what they desire, and Felix’s Auggie is a smoking hot and adorable young woman.

The more Felix wears the glasses, the more Auggie is able to fulfill his every need, even triggering more inner desires that he was aware of.  This isn’t quite a Doctor Faust who knowingly opts into his fantasy; Auggie’s artificial intelligence is able to see Felix’s fantasies even before he can imagine them.  All things in moderation, of course, but Auggie’s infinite availability becomes additive.  This is no longer healthy for Felix or his family.

When a character asks, “Who do you see when you put on the glasses?”, it’s a devastating moment.

Auggie is the first feature for director and co-writer Matt Kane.  Kane has avoided writing Felix as a stereotypical clumsy old grouch.   As written by Kane and co-writer Marc Underhill and played by Richard Kind, he’s very smart and perceptive.  He just isn’t ready for unimaginable temptation.

You’ll recognize Richard Kind, a reliable character actor and voice artist with 221 screen credits. My favorite Kind performance was the moving portrayal of a man seeking closure after the death of his wife in Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter.

Susan Blackwell is perfect at Felix’s wife Anne.  Blackwell has had small parts in some very fine films and hosts her own Broadway interview show on YouTube, Side By Side with Susan Blackwell.  Cristen Harper is suitably seductive as Auggie.

Cinequest hosts the world premiere of Auggie.