In the self-discovery drama Puzzle, Kelly MacDonald plays a wife and mom who has subordinated all of her own needs and desires to those of her husband and two sons. Utterly selfless, she prepares every meal, performs every task, organizes every event so her husband and two sons and their church community can hum along smoothly – and without appreciation. The phrase “taken for granted” applies to every breath she takes. She receives what seems to be the most random gift, a jigsaw puzzle, and learns that she is a jigsaw puzzle savant. Suddenly, she has found herself something that she does for herself – and she is stunningly good at it.
At this point, she happens into the hitherto unknown world of jigsaw competitions (who knew?) and becomes the teammate of an unhappy divorcee (Irrfan Khan) who appreciates her and opens up new possibilities. With another experience to compares to her domestic drudgery, she realizes that she has grown to be deeply unhappy.
The screenplay was co-written by Oren Moverman (The Messenger, Rampart, Love & Mercy, The Dinner) and Polly Mann, based on Natalia Smirnoff’s 2009 Argentine film Rompecabezas. It’s an intelligent script, filled with telling bits (she has to make her own birthday cake) and authentic interactions to portray the family dynamics. Her hubbie (David Denman) is not really mean; he’s just satisfied with the routine that they have slipped into.
There’s a wonderful scene when the mom is partway along on her road to self-realization. She suggests that the family take a major financial action. The husband says that he’ll think about it. A few days later, without circling back with her, he announces to the family that they will take this action. She is infuriated; he doesn’t understand why – after all, it was her idea. For those of you who haven’t lived this, I can assure you that this is a realistic scenario.
There’s an especially fine thread in which the mother perceives a son’s unhappiness and draws out his real aspirations.
Of course, the audience can see that the protagonist will have choices at the end. She can stay with the husband who has finally come to appreciate her. Or she can go off with the new guy who adores her. What happens at the end defies the conventions of a romantic drama – it’s smart, satisfying and affirms what it is to be your own person.
Puzzle takes its time. I suspect women will stay with its deliberate pace more willingly than will men. That being said, it’s original and cliche-free.
Subject Peter Malkin in a still from THE MOSSAD. Photo courtesy JFI
Anyone with an interest in historical cloak-and-dagger will appreciate the documentary The Mossad, about Israel’s legendary foreign intelligence service. We meet some current and recent Mossad officers, who are extremely tight-lipped. But decades of intervening history have freed their older colleagues to spin first-hand tales of the Mossad’s most legendary operations:
The kidnapping of Nazi death camp czar Adolph Eichmann (and we hear from the guy who physically grabbed Eichmann in Buenos Aires).
The cultivation of a longtime mole at the highest level of the Egyptian government. The mole is identified. We hear how the Israeli military reacted to the advance warning of Egypt’s 1973 invasion – you may be surprised.
The methodical hunting down of the Palestinian terrorists who kidnapped and murdered Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.
The Mossad is a natural bookend to the The Gatekeepers, about another Israeli intelligence agency. The Gatekeepers is centered around interviews with all six surviving former chiefs of Shin Bet, Israel’s super-secret internal security force. We get their inside take on the past thirty years of Israeli-Palestinian history. What is revelatory, however, is their assessment of Israel’s war on terror. These are hard ass guys who went to the office every morning to kill terrorists. But upon reflection, they conclude that winning tactics make for a losing strategy. The Gatekeepers is available to rent on DVD from Netflix and for streaming on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Flixster.
From L:R – Subjects Doug Rausch and Howard Burack in a still from THE TWINNING REACTION. Photo courtesy JFI.
The startling and moving documentary The Twinning Reaction tells the story of a Mad Men-era research project and its profound human impact. To perform a longitudinal study of nurture vs. nature, researchers INTENTIONALLY separated identical twins and placed them with families that the researchers kept in the dark. The placements occurred AFTER the twin babies had bonded together in the crib for many months. Legally and ethically sketchy at the time, this is monstrous by today’s standards, and, in fact, caused harm to the adoptees.
Somehow, some of these twins learned the truth as adults and located their birth siblings. In The Twinning Reaction, we meet three sets of separated identical siblings. Because we meet the subjects of the study, the effects of separation are clearly apparent and highly personalized.
Writer-director Lori Shinseki has found an amazing story and source material to match. In a gripping 52 minutes, she weaves it into a coherent and compelling story.
THE TWINNING REACTION
The most astonishing set of sibs are triplets which are the subject of a film in current theatrical release, Three Identical Strangers. The Twinning Reaction focuses on the study; we meet several sets of twins, and the triplets are the jaw-dropping final act. Three Identical Strangers focuses on the triplets and then takes a more current dive into the study.
The Twinning Reaction’s world premiere was at Cinequest two years ago. The Twinning Reaction is not yet available to stream, so your only chance to see it will be at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival this July and August.
Fred Rogers with his Daniel Tiger in WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR?
Won’t You Be My Neighbor? is the surprisingly moving biodoc of Fred Rogers, the originator and host of the PBS children’s program The Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. I had missed this movie at the San Francisco International Film Festival where it submerged audiences in their hankies.
Of course, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? tells the story of the show. But, more than that, it relates Rogers’ fierce passion for the plight of small children, and his need to protect them and help their emotional development.
What is so surprising is that Rogers’ sometimes laughably gentle affect sprang from such internal ferocity. It turns that Rogers was a man who hated, hated, hated the moral emptiness and materialism of commercial children’s television.
His need to help children through difficult times drove him to explain the word “assassination” the day after RFK was killed. And to demystify, clarify and normalize divorce and a host of other potentially child-traumatizing topics. Utterly unafraid of (most) controversy in a timid medium, he was first and foremost the champion for small children, a cardigan-clad champion.
I am immune to Mr. Rogers nostalgia because I am too old to have watched the show as a kid, and it was no longer a first-run show when my own kid came of age. So I was surprised to find myself choked with emotion when Fred Rogers explained to a very skeptical Senator John Pastore the need to “make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable”. As Rogers recited the lyrics of his song about having feelings and staying in control, Pastore visibly melted (and so did I).
In Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, Rogers’ family and his TV crew reveal their insider views of Rogers and his show. The origins of the characters, the puppets, the songs and themes are explained. But the core of Won’t You Be My Neighbor? is that Fred Rogers resolutely believed that every small child is deserving of love and has value, a view which has sadly become controversial among some.
Lakeith Stanfield and Tessa Thompson in SORRY TO BOTHER YOU
The savagely funny social satire Sorry to Bother You rips both the excesses of 21st century capitalism and the popular response to those excesses – apathetic submissiveness. This may be the most original American film of the year.
Sorry to Bother You is set with specificity in Oakland, but the story is about the greater corporate-dominated culture. A sinister corporation named Worry Free flourishes by enlisting consumers to “lifetime contracts” for their employment and household needs; Worry Free clients/employees are provided for life with meals, housing (in barracks crammed with bunk beds) and clothing (hospital scrubs) in return for menial factory labor. The Worry Free system, of course, is slavery. Almost nobody cares about that – this is a vapid culture where the most popular TV game show is I Got the Shit Kicked Out of Me, where each week’s contestant is beaten and humiliated for mass entertainment. Only the insurgent group Left Eye resists, with graffiti and guerilla actions.
Cassius (Lakeith Stanfield), a young man without prospects, is living in his uncle’s Oakland garage with his avant-garde artist girlfriend Detroit (Tessa Thompson). Cassius is overjoyed to finally score a telemarketing job, even though his new boss explains that every applicant is hired. Cassius’ telemarketing career is futile until he acts on a tip from an older colleague (Danny Glover) to “use your white voice”. Suddenly, Cassius vaults to the top of the telemarketing world, and is promoted to make big money pitching Worry Free’s slave labor force to global manufacturers. This raises the question, when does “success” become “selling out”?
Complicating matters for Cassius, his former telemarketing buddies and Detroit take on The Man by organizing a union. Cassius becomes both the butt of a viral YouTube video and estranged from his support system just as Worry Free’s founder (Armie Hammer) offers Cassius an even bigger opportunity. Finding slavery not profitable enough, Worry Free is about to launch what is horrifically called “the future of labor” – a sci-fi solution to create a work force “more durable and compliant” than human slaves. If Cassius decides to expose the atrocities, how will the public react?
Sorry to Bother You is the first feature as writer-director for Bay Area artist and rapper Boots Riley, It’s an impressive film debut for Riley, who has proven himself to be a first-rate social observer and satirist.
Lakeith Stanfield is excellent as the stoic, hunched Cassius, and so is the rest of the cast (Thompson, Glover, Steven Yuen, Omari Harwick, Germaine Fowler). Armie Hammer’s performance as the unapologetically monstrous entrepreneur is delicious. Kate Berlani sparkles as the new telemarketing “team leader”, who, having drank the Kool-Aid, spouts corporate management babble.
Sorry to Bother You is a riot – in the comedic sense and also as sociopolitical disruption. Nary a joke goes awry, from Detroit’s self-crafted earrings to the security code in the corporate elevator. And Riley plays a final joke for us (and on us) in the closing credits.
The startling documentary Three Identical Strangers begins with a young man’s first day on a college campus, being greeted by strangers who are convinced that they know him; that night, a fellow student connects him to his double, born on the same day. They turned out to be identical siblings separated at birth and adopted by different families. Even more stunning, the two brothers soon find their identical triplet.
The first third of Three Identical Strangers is a wonderful Feel Good story of family discovery. But then we find that the triplets’ separation had been orchestrated as part of a longitudinal study of nurture vs. nature. Researchers INTENTIONALLY separated identical twins and placed them with families that the researchers kept in the dark. The placements occurred AFTER the twin babies had bonded together in the crib for many months.
This study was not detached observation, it was human experimentation. As details reminiscent of Josef Mengele unfold, the fact that both the researcher and the adoption agency were Jewish becomes even more chilling.
A film that covers much of the same factual territory, Twinning Reaction, premiered two years ago at Cinequest. Twinning Reaction focuses on the study; we meet several sets of twins, and the triplets are the jaw-dropping final act. Three Identical Strangers focuses on the triplets and then takes a more current dive into the study. Twinning Reaction is not yet available to stream, but it will be playing at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival this July and August.
Three Identical Strangers won the Special Jury Prize for Storytelling at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. It also played at this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM). Well-spun, this is an amazing story.
Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie and Ben Foster in a scene from Debra Granik’s LEAVE NO TRACE. Courtesy of SFFILM.
Here is the best movie of 2018 – so far – the unforgettable coming of age film Leave No Trace. Ben Foster and Thomasin McKenzie star as a dad-daughter team who challenge conventional thinking about homelessness and healthy parenting. Leave No Trace is writer-director Debra Granik’s first narrative feature since her Winter’s Bone (which I had rated as the best film of 2010).
When we meet Will (Foster) and his daughter Tom (McKenzie), they are engaging in extremely low impact camping in a fern-rich Oregon forest, to the point of solar cooking foraged mushrooms on a mylar sheet. Dad and daughter are both survivalist experts and work together as a highly trained team. They have the fond, respectful, communicative relationship that most families with teen children aspire to but can only fantasize about.
But Will and Tom are not on vacation. They do not consider themselves homeless, because the forest is their home. However, their lifestyle just isn’t consistent with contemporary thinking about child welfare. Furthermore, living in a public park is illegal,and when they are discovered, social service authorities are understandably and justifiably concerned. Investigators find Tom to be medically and emotionally healthy, Will to be free of drug or alcohol abuse, and there has been no child abuse or neglect – other than having ones child living outdoors and not going to school.
Will is a veteran who has been scarred by his military service, and he is clearly anti-social. But Will is not your stereotypical PTSD-addled movie vet. He is a clear thinker. His behavior, which can range to the bizarre, is not impulsive but deliberate.
Fortunately, the Oregon, social services authorities are remarkably open-minded, and they place Will and Tom in a remote rural setting in their own house at a rural Christmas Tree farm. Will can work on the farm, Tom can go the school, and there’s a liberal non-denominational church filled with kind folks. It’s a massive accommodation to Will and Tom’s lifestyle, only with the additions of living under a roof and public education.
Tom blossoms with social contact, and particularly enjoys the local 4-H and one kid’s pet rabbit named Chainsaw. Tom begins to understand how much she needs human connection – and not just with her dad,
But Will can’t help but feel defeated. When Tom suggests that they try to adapt to their new setting, he scowls, “We’re wearing their clothes, we’re living in their house, we’re eating their food, we’re doing their work. We’ve adapted”. She argues, “Did you try?”, “Why are we doing this?”, and “Dad, this isn’t how it used to be”.
Ben is so damaged that his parenting can nurture Tom for only so long. Leave No Trace is about how he has raised her to this point. Has he imparted his demons to her? Has he helped her become strong and grounded enough to grow without him?
Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie and Ben Foster in a scene from Debra Granik’s LEAVE NO TRACE. Courtesy of SFFILM.
Winter’s Bone launched the career of Jennifer Lawrence, and Leave No Trace might do the same for newcomer Thomasin McKenzie. McKenzie is riveting as she authentically takes Tom from a parented child to an independent young woman. At the San Francisco International Film Festival screening, producer and co-writer Anne Rosellini said “there’s an ‘otherness’ to McKenzie,” who had “tremendous insight into the character”. Rosellini added that McKenzie and Ben Foster bonded before the shoot, as they rehearsed with a survivalist coach.
Foster is no stranger to troubled characters (The Messenger, Rampart, Hell or High Water). Here, he delivers a remarkably intense and contained performance as a man who will not allow himself an outburst no matter what turbulence roils inside him. Rosellini noted that “Will is elusive, a mysterious character to everybody”. It’s a performance that will be in the conversation about Oscar nominations. Actors Jeff Kober, Dale Dickey, Dana Millican and Isaiah Stone (the little brother in Winter’s Bone) are also excellent in smaller roles.
Leave No Trace is thoughtful and emotionally powerful. Superbly well-crafted and impeccably acted, it’s a Must See.
Jane Wyatt amd Lee J. Cobb in THE MAN WHO CHEATED HIMSELF
In The Man Who Cheated Himself, which I saw at the Noir City festival earlier this year, a cop falls for a dame who makes him go bad. But it’s not just any cop and not just any dame.
The cop is Ed, a seasoned and cynical pro who knows better. He is played by Lee J. Cobb, whom Czar of Noir Eddie Muller called “the most blustery actor this side of Rod Steiger”. Cobb is known for playing Juror 3, the primary antagonist to Henry Fonda, in 12 Angry Men and the ruthless mob boss Johnny Friendly in On the Waterfront. Ed seems impervious to human emotion and says things like, “You’re a big girl. Cut the tantrums”.
The dame is the much wealthier – and married – socialite Lois (Jane Wyatt). Lois is a puddle of capriciousness and carnality. She has the same fluttery appeal as Mary Astor’s Brigid O’ Shaunessy in The Maltese Falcon.
Wyatt rarely got a chance to play as mercurial a character as Lois. Of course, she’s best known as the mid-century suburban mom/wife in Father Knows Best, rock steady and super square. Before that Wyatt worked in film noir, but not as the femme fatale. She was in Pitfall as the good wife that Dick Powell gets bored with when Lizabeth Scott comes along. In Boomerang! she was the heroic DA’s wife. She played the wife of a murderer who falls for her brother-in-law in House by the River and the sister in a message picture, Gentleman’s Agreement.
But in The Man Who Cheated Himself, Wyatt got to uncork more hysterical unreliability, sexual predation and neediness than in all of her other roles combined. You know when you see a woman and think, She’s trouble? Well, Lois is trouble.
For all of his world-weariness, Ed is really enjoying his affair with Lois. Despite knowing better, he is in deep. As he says, “She’s good for me. She’s no good, but that’s the way it is.”
Lois impulsively shoots her husband, and, in the moment, Ed makes the fateful decision to cover it up.
To complicate matters, Ed’s younger brother Andy (John Dall) has followed his brother on to the police force and just been promoted from walking a beat to detective. This murder is his very first case and he’s really eager to show his big brother proud. It turns out that Andy is smart and has the makings of a first class detective.
John Dall and Lee J. Cobb in THE MAN WHO CHEATED HIMSELF
Writers Seton I. Miller and Philip MacDonald cleverly plotted The Man Who Cheated Himself so Ed and Lois get not one, but two, lucky breaks that make it look like they are getting away with it. But then Andy’s young wife and a CHP officer help Andy link the pieces together. Miller and MacDonald have embedded lots of humor in double entendres and absurdly close escapes. One of the funniest bits is an eyewitness, the earnestly unhelpful Mr. Quimby (Charles Arnt).
Are Ed and Lois going to get away with it? Well, this is noir. They find themselves cornered at Fort Point, the windiest spot on the west coast of North America, The notorious wind (actually underplayed in the movie) helps build the suspense.
Lee J. Cobb and Jane Wyatt in THE MAN WHO CHEATED HIMSELF
And what an ending! In their final encounter, Lois is going one way – the way that those privileged by wealth and good looks always go. Ed is going in the other direction – the way every noir protagonist goes when he falls for a bad dame. He lights a cigarette and their eyes lock wordlessly; when she leaves, we see in his eyes whether it was all worth it.
The noir in The Man Who Cheated Himself comes from the falling-for-the-wrong-woman theme and the snappy, sarcastic dialogue. There’s no noir camerawork with looming shadows, venetian-blinds-across-the-face and cigarette smoke dancing to the ceiling here.
But there are plenty of glorious mid-century San Francisco locations – hills, mansions of the nobs, grittier streets and the waterfront (back when it was a sketchy working port). It’s the San Francisco that I remember as a child in the 1950s, with women wearing gloves during the day and human-tended toll booths at the Golden Gate Bridge (when the toll was collected northbound, too!).
And, odd for a San Francisco-set noir, it is definitely not fog-shrouded. The day I saw The Man Who Cheated Himself was one of those gorgeous sunny days that San Francisco gets in the winter – and that’s what the movie looks like.
The Man Who Cheated Himself’s director was the otherwise undistinguished journeyman Felix Feist. Feist made a handful of other noirs, including The Threat with Charles McGraw as a vengeful hood, Tomorrow is Another Day with an irresistible Ruth Roman and The Devil Thumbs a Ride with Lawrence Tierney. Then Feist left the movies to direct over seventy episodes of TV shows.
The raison d‘être of the Noir City film festivals is to raise money for the Film Noir Foundation’s restoration of classic film noir. The FNF just restored The Man Who Cheated Himself so it could be seen again in a theater for the first time in decades. It’s not yet available to stream, but Turner Classic Movies will air it on Muller’s Noir Alley series on June 23 and 24.
Lee J. Cobb and Jane Wyatt in THE MAN WHO CHEATED HIMSELF
The psychological thriller Prodigy begins with a psychologist (Richard Neil) being brought to a secret government “black site” to interview a dangerous prisoner. When he receives an orientation, he and we expect to see a superhuman sociopath like Hannibal Lector. But he enters the secure room to face a freckled-face nine-year-old girl (Savannah Liles). Her arms are pinned to her chair with restraints. We learn that there is an understandable reason for this.
She is abnormal in every way – in her super intelligence, in her telekinetic powers and in her capacity for performing monstrous and lethal acts. The two embark on a game of wits with very high stakes. There’s a deadline (literally) so the game is also a race against the clock.
It’s the first feature for writer-directors Alex Haughey and Brian Vidal. Haughey and Vidal have bet their movie, in large part, on the performance of a nine-year-old actor. Savannah Liles is exceptional as she ranges between a very smart little girl and a monstrous psychopath and between a vulnerable child and a person who has made herself invulnerable. It’s a very promising performance.
In the Cinequest program notes, Pia Chamberlain described Prodigy as “reminiscent of a cerebral episode of the Twilight Zone“, which is pretty apt. Just like the best of Rod Serling, Prodigy’s compact story-telling takes us to an environment that we can recognize, but which has different natural laws than the ones under which we operate.
Filmmakers have shocked us before with the juxtaposition of innocent looking children and their heinous deeds Sometimes those children have been created fundamentally evil (The Bad Seed, Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen) and sometimes possessed by evil (The Exorcist). Prodigy takes a different tack – exploring how a trauma can produce monstrous behavior and whether evil behavior is reversible.
Prodigy is a thinking person’s edge-of-the-seat thrill ride. I’m looking forward to the next work from Haughey and Vidal. Note that this trailer is in color, but the version of the movie that I screened at its world premiere at Cinequest was in black and white. You can now stream Prodigy on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
In the emotionally bleak psychological drama First Reformed, Ethan Hawke plays Toller, the clergyman in charge of a historic church with about ten parishioners. The church survives as the museum-and-gift-shop arm of a modern megachurch helmed by Reverend Jeffers (Cedric the Entertainer billed as Cedric Kyles). Toller is a very troubled guy, who is consumed by a journalling project, which he says brings him no peace, but only self-pity. Toller is content to perform a weekly service and guide the odd tourist through the church. That is all about to be disrupted by the church’s upcoming 250-year anniversary celebration, which Toller dreads.
Toller is asked by one of his tiny flock (Amanda Seyfried) to counsel her very depressed husband (Phillip Ettinger). Few understand depression as well as Toller, who, we learn, has joined the church because of a grievous family loss. He is also obsessively thinking and over-thinking a crisis, not so much of faith, but of purpose. And, it is revealed that Toller is in physical pain from a very menacing medical condition.
Toller tells the young husband that balancing hope and despair is life itself. Indeed, most of First Reformed focuses on the despair. As First Reformed gets darker and darker, it become more and more intense, all the way up to a ticking bomb of a thriller ending. The ending is such a squirm-in-your-seat nail-biter that it’s hard to watch, but the payoff is worth it.
Amanda Seyfried in FIRST REFORMED
Writer-director Paul Schrader, has created a serious work of art in First Reformed. It is a very still movie with a very spare soundtrack. The aspect of the frame is squarish and sometimes square. Everything about First Reformed is distilled down to its concentrated core. Schrader wrote Taxi Driver,Raging Bull and The Last Temptation of Christ, and directed Affliction and Auto Focus. So he is no stranger to plumbing the depths of human internal crises.
Ethan Hawke is excellent as Toller. Hawke’s performances are usually fidgety. Not here. Hawke is notable for his stillness as he plays a man who flings himself into reflection and away from social entanglements.
The supporting performances are superb: Amanda Seyfried, Cedric the Entertainer, Bill Hoag as Toller’s lay assistant and Victoria Hill as the woman who wants to rekindle a connection that Toller doesn’t have the emotional capacity for. All are suitably understated; this movie is so stripped-down to concentrate on the profound, there’s just no room for a Big Performance.
Phillip Ettinger is wonderful as the depressed young husband. This is a smart, committed and sensitive character who isn’t at all wrong – he’s just obsessing and going off the rails.
Who can be saved from despairing at the human condition? And what does it take? First Reformed provides an answer in its exceptionally powerful ending.
