Rants and Ruminations

Two Brand New Aspects of Cinequest 2017

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Cinequest at San Jose's California Theatre
Cinequest at San Jose’s California Theatre

Cinequest veterans will notice two entirely new aspects to this year’s festival.

First, although Cinequest maintains its Downtown San Jose roots, much of the festival will expand to Redwood City. When the beloved Camera 12 Theater closed, that left a huge gap in Cinequest’s screening capacity that was filled by the addition of several screens at Redwood City’s Century 20 and a screen at CineArts in San Jose’s Santana Row.
This means that Cinequest attendees can no longer walk from to and from every screening – all within four blocks in downtown San Jose. There are actually more total Cinequest screenings now, but more planning is required by festival goers.

All of the major events – opening, closing, the one-screening-only Spotlight Films and the celebrity appearances will remain in Downtown San Jose. So will the Tito’s Vodka and cheese cubes in the VIP Lounge. And almost (I’ve found only one exception so far) all the feature films will screen at least once in San Jose.

So now we can say that Cinequest, literally (in the original sense), ranges from one end of Silicon Valley to the other.

The second major change is the new, additional focus on virtual reality, which has even been incorporated into the name “Cinequest Film & VR Festival”. Cinequest is presenting a whopping TEN programs of short virtual reality films. These short film programs will be presented in about a hundred different screenings in the Green Room at the California Theatre. In addition, Cinequest will present a series of VR-themed workshops, panels and forums. There’s also a VR Canteen with hospitality and VR gaming.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never sat with forty other goggle-adorned people and shared the same virtual reality cinema. I’m looking forward to sampling the program and mitigating my own ignorance about the media. There are so many screenings of the VR programs, there’s really no excuse not to.

Farewells: John Hurt, Mary Tyler Moore, Emmanuelle Riva

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John Hurt (center) in THE HIT
John Hurt (center) in THE HIT

In the past few days, we have lost the actors John Hurt, Mary Tyler Moore and Emmanuelle Riva.

John Hurt’s magnificent career started in the 1960s, but I first noticed him in 1976 when he leaped out of the screen as the lethally mad Caligula when PBS broadcast the BBC miniseries I, Claudius. Hurt is probably most recognized (by my generation) for his Oscar-nominated performance as the title character in 1980’s The Elephant Man or as the first victim of the alien in Alien. But Hurt was always able to stay current with performances in popular films like V for Vendetta and Hellboy and he played Ollivander in the Harry Potter movies. He also recently made Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011) and Snowpiercer (2013), and was the best thing (as The Priest) about the awful film Jackie (2016). My own favorite John Hurt performance was as the more disciplined hit man in the 1984 British neo-noir The Hit.

John Hurt (left) with Derek Jacobi in I, CLAUDIUS
John Hurt (left) with Derek Jacobi in I, CLAUDIUS
John Hurt with Natalie Portman in JACKIE
John Hurt with Natalie Portman in JACKIE

Mary Tyler Moore, of course, is a giant of television history because of The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and all the fine shows produced by her MTM Enterprises.  And her Mary Richards instantly became a societal icon.  If ever anyone doubts the genius of her comic timing, they can just watch the 4-minute Chuckles the Clown funeral from the Mary Tyler Moore Show (it’s on YouTube).

She made very few movies, but they are worth remembering.  She was Oscar-nominated for her still, emotionally distant parent in Ordinary People – a performance that she later said that she had modeled on her own father.  She was hilarious as Ben Stiller’s mom in Flirting With Disaster.  And she was also Elvis Presley’s last movie leading lady in the unintentionally funny Change of Habit, in which she played a social worker nun (!) who had to choose between her religious order and the ghetto doctor (Elvis!).

Mary Tyler Moore with Donald Sutherland in ORDINARY PEOPLE
Mary Tyler Moore with Donald Sutherland in ORDINARY PEOPLE

 

Emmanuelle Riva’s 89 screen credits are spread over the past SEVEN decades.  She was a fixture of the French New Wave, beginning with Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour in 1959.  We remember her Oscar-nominated performance in 2012’s heartbreaking Alzheimer’s drama Amour.

Emmanuelle Riva in ARMOUR
Emmanuelle Riva in AMOUR

NOIR CITY 2017: a bang up final weekend

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Ethan Hawke and Philip Seymour Hoffman in BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD
Ethan Hawke and Philip Seymour Hoffman in BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD

I’ve been recommending  the Noir City film fest, underway in San Francisco and running through Sunday. Noir City is the annual festival of the Film Noir Foundation, spearheaded by its founder and president Eddie Muller. The Foundation preserves movies from the traditional noir period that would otherwise be lost. Noir City often plays newly restored films and movies not available on DVD. And we get to watch them in vintage movie palace (San Francisco’s Castro Theatre) with a thousand other film fans.

To see the this year’s Noir City program and buy tickets, go here.  Here are the highlights of Noir City’s bang up final weekend:

  • Charley Varrick: the shamefully underrated American neo-noir from the 1970s with Walter Mathau.  To survive, he’s got to outsmart the mob all by himself.
  • The Aura: A completely overlooked 2005 neo-noir from Argentina about an epileptic taxidermist.  He’s smart enough to plan the Perfect Crime, but does he have the sociopathic ruthlessness?
  • Before the Devil Know You’re Dead: A masterpiece from the then 84-year-old director Sidney Lumet, it features one of the best performances by Philip Seymour Hoffman. Then there’s Ethan Hawke, Marisa Tomei and Michael Shannon – but Albert Finney steals the movie at the end.
  • Victoria: A 2015 European thrill ride filmed in a single 138-minute shot.
Ricardo Darin in THE AURA at Noir City
Ricardo Darin in THE AURA at Noir City

IMOGEN POOTS: girl for all seasons

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Imogen Poots in GREEN ROOM
Imogen Poots in GREEN ROOM

Sometimes actors become a brand name in the sense that you can depend on a movie being good if they are in it. Actors like Robert Duvall, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Parker Posey, Alfre Woodard and Michael Shannon come to mind – they just don’t seem to ever be in a lousy movie.  Imogen Poots is proving that she belongs on the list.

Poots is only 26, but she’s been in EIGHT really good movies in the past eight years.  She can play anything except uninteresting.

Here’s her most recent work:

  • Me and Orson Welles – don’t blink or you miss her in a good indie coming of age film.
  • Solitary Man – after Michael Douglas beds a girlfriend’s daughter (Poots) while taking her to tour colleges, she gets the best of him.
  • Jane Eyre – haven’t seen it, but she got good notices.
  • Greetings from Tim Buckley – she’s the girl who takes the musician Jeff Buckley off track from his coming-to-terms-with-his-dad navel gazing.
  • A Late Quartet – has the best monologue in a movie filled with great actors; she blasts her mom (Catherine Keener) out of the water with a lasered-in rant.
  • The Look of Love – almost steals the movie as the daughter who inherits a porn empire.
  • A Country Called Home – In this underrated indie, she’s a low self esteem young woman who returns to the funeral of her estranged alcoholic father and finds self-discovery.
  • Green Room – In this bloody thriller, she goes from a numb basket case to a fierce force of nature bent on survival at all costs.
  • Frank & Lola – her most complex role so far as an unreliable girlfriend; but the roots of her unreliability are a mystery – is she Bad or Troubled?

That doesn’t count two not-so-great movies from great directors: Peter Bogdanovich’s She’s Funny That Way and Terence Malick’s Knight of Cups – those certainly weren’t  her fault.  And we’re not counting her debut as a 15-year-old in V for Vendetta.  Right now, she’s also starring in the Showtime series Roadies.

Poots is on an impressive streak, and she’s earned this much – if it’s an Imogen Poots movie, we should all go and check it out.

Imogen Poots with Michael Shannon in FRANK & LOLA. Photo courtesy of the San Francisco Film Society.
Imogen Poots with Michael Shannon in FRANK & LOLA. Photo courtesy of the San Francisco Film Society.

NOIR CITY: the great San Francisco festival of film noir

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Noir City 2017
I always look forward to the Noir City film fest, which gets underway in San Francisco this week. Noir City is the annual festival of the Film Noir Foundation, spearheaded by its founder and president Eddie Muller. The Foundation preserves movies from the traditional noir period that would otherwise be lost. Noir City often plays newly restored films and movies not available on DVD. And we get to watch them in a vintage movie palace (San Francisco’s Castro Theatre) with a thousand other film fans.

The theme of this year’s festival is the Heist Movie, Noir City is presenting a wonderful array of heist movies from the classic American film noir period, foreign noirs and an especially healthy selection of neo-noirs. Being noir, you might not expect many of these heists to end well. And some are from noir’s Perfect Crime sub-genre – they’re going to get away with the elaborately planned big heist EXCEPT FOR ONE THING.

Noir City runs January 20-29. To see the this year’s Noir City program and buy tickets, go here.

On Noir City’s first weekend:

  • The Asphalt Jungle: As long as things go according to plan… John Huston directed a marvelous cast (Sterling Hayden, James Whitmore, Sam Jaffe, Jean Hagen, John McIntire). And even Louis Calhern knows that Marilyn Monroe isn’t going to stick around as his moll.
  • Violent Saturday: a completely overlooked film from one of my favorite directors that I hadn’t seen until Eddie Muller programmed it for this festival. Filmed in the bright Arizona desert with CinemaScope and De Luxe color, the story is plenty noir.
  • Four Ways Out: Saturday night, Noir City goes goes Italian with the last script written by screenwriter Federico Fellini before he started directing. Four guys pull a heist, and it goes bad four different ways.
  • Big Deal on Madonna Street, the funniest film in the festival, with an Italian gang that couldn’t shoot straight. Watch for a 34-year-old pre-Fellini Marcello Mastroianni.
  • Rififi: This French classic is the top heist film ever and pioneering in its use of real time. After the team is assembled and the job is plotted, the actual crime unfolds in real-time – over thirty minutes of nerve wracking silence.
  • The Big Risk: It’s a highlight because it’s a French noir starring the bloodhound-visaged Lino Ventura that I have NOT seen, so I’ll be going to Noir City myself on Sunday.

And midweek, at Noir City:

  • The rarely-seen Once a Thief (Alain Delon, trying to keep Ann-Margret while being hunted by Van Heflin) and The Sicilian Clan (with the neo-noir trifecta of Delon, Ventura and Jean Gabin), both on Wednesday evening, January 25.

I’ll be writing about Noir City’s tremendous final weekend. Stay tuned.

VIOLENT SATURDAY
VIOLENT SATURDAY

2016 at the Movies: farewells

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THE HIRED HAND
Vilmos Zsigmond photographed THE HIRED HAND

Vilmos Zsigmond: He was known as a champion of natural light in filmmaking, a major contribution that he and fellow Hungarian László Kovács brought to Hollywood in the late 1960s. Zsigmond shot The Deer Hunter, Deliverance and Close Encounters of the Third Kind,and was nominated for four Oscars, winning for Close Encounters.  Read my Vilmos Zsigmond remembrance for recommendations on one of his overlooked masterpieces and a film ABOUT his art, along with several of his striking film images and a link to an excellent essay by Sheila O’Malley.

 

George Kennedy (left) in COOL HAND LUKE
George Kennedy (left) in COOL HAND LUKE

George Kennedy:  Won his Oscar for Cool Hand Luke (remember the bet on eating boiled eggs?).   Kennedy’s performances were essential elements of The Dirty Dozen, The Eiger Sanction and one of my guilty pleasures, Bandolero!  He labored in episodic TV for years until the mid 1960s when he triumphed in those singular supporting roles in war movies, cop movies and Westerns.   His career peaked throughout the mid 1970s, when he was cast in all of the big disaster movies.

 

Alan Rickman in EYE IN THE SKY
Alan Rickman in EYE IN THE SKY

Alan Rickman, the reliable British actor most well-known for playing Snape in the Harry Pottter movies, left us a supremely textured performance in this year’s Eye in the Sky, layered with the character’s wry humor, contained frustration and quiet determination.

 

Gene Wilder (left) in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN
Gene Wilder (left) in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN

Gene Wilder:  Star of perhaps the funniest movie of all-time, The Producers.  And star and  CO-WRITER of another comedy classic, Young Frankenstein.

 

Frank Finlay in THE THREE MUSKETEERS
Frank Finlay in THE THREE MUSKETEERS

Frank Finlay:  The British character actor had 137 screen credits, but was talented enough to earn an Oscar nod for  playing Iago to Laurence Olivier’s Othello.  As recently as 2002, he played the father in The Pianist.  But I am a huge fan of Richard Lester’s immensely entertaining The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974), and Finlay’s Porthos was a major ingredient in the fun.

Abe Vigoda: We remember him for one of The Godfather’s most unforgettable lines, “Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes”.

Jacques Rivette: The prolific French director with one great masterpiece, La Belle Noiseuse (1991); that movie is almost four hours long, yet transfixing.

Robert Vaughn: The icy actor left a body of work with 226 screen credits, mostly on television. He was nominated for a Supporting Actor Oscar for The Young Philadelphians, but I think his most enduring feature film role was as one of The Magnificent Seven.  Of course, for us Baby Boomers, Vaughn will always be remembered as Napoleon Solo in the Bond spy spoof The Man from U.N.C.L.E., which absolutely dominated television briefly in the mid-1960s.

Leon Russell: The band leader in the groundbreaking concert movies Mad Dogs and Englishmen and The Concert for Bangladesh.   (The Concert for Bangladesh, organized by George Harrison, was the first big benefit concert with a collection of mega-stars.)  You can enjoy lots of unfiltered 1972-74 Leon, both on- and off-stage in the documentary A Poem is a Naked Person.

Jacques Rivette's LA BELLE NOISEUSE
Jacques Rivette’s LA BELLE NOISEUSE

Happy Anniversary to The Wife!

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Myrna Loy in THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES – the second best wife ever

Happy Anniversary to The Wife, also known as Lisa The Love of My Life!

Once again, she tolerated my spending huge chunks of time at Cinequest, the San Francisco International Film Festival, Noir City, the SF Jewish Film Festival and the Mill Valley Film Festival.

We shared some of my favorite movie experiences this year.

  • She accompanied me to see Eye in the Sky at Cinequest, Our Kind of Traitor at SFIFF and Robert Klein Still Can’t Stop His Leg at SFJFF.
  • Together, we power-binged through The Bridge, The Night Manager, Luther and The Crown.
  • Because she picks the Friday night movies, I get to tease her about the dogs like The Girl on the Train without giving her credit for the good ones like The Hollars.  And when she insisted – disregarding my opinion that this was not the movie for her  – on watching Mad Max: Fury Road,  I didn’t respond to her question, “Why am I watching this?”.
  • I’m always hoping, hoping, hoping that she’ll enjoy MY choice for her to watch, so I was completely gratified by her LOLs during Man Up.

And, of course, she teases me for “the Romanian abortion movie”, “the Icelandic penis movie” and “the Ukrainian deaf movie”.

She’s the biggest fan and supporter of this blog, and I appreciate her and love her. Happy Anniversary, Honey!

2016 at the Movies: most overlooked

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CHEVALIER. Photo courtesy of Strand Releasing
CHEVALIER. Photo courtesy of Strand Releasing

This blog exists because I’m an evangelist for outstanding films that may be overlooked by people who will appreciate them.  You don’t need ME to tell you that Loving and La La Land are good movies.  What’s important to me is that you don’t miss the less well-known gems:

  • The character-driven crime drama Hell or High Water has topped my list of Best Movies of 2016 – So Far since I saw it on Labor Day Weekend. It’s now available to rent on DVD from Netflix and to stream from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • Chevalier is a sly and pointed exploration of male competitiveness. Director Athina Rachel Tsangari is obviously a keen observer of male behavior. Both men and women will enjoy laughing at male behavior taken to extreme. I sure did. Chevalier is perhaps the funniest movie of 2016, and it’s on my list of Best Movies of 2016 – So Far. I’m hoping that its popularity explodes now that it’s available to rent on DVD from Netflix and to stream from Netflix Instant, Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • The Hollars is an unabashed crowd pleaser with a great cast, especially the irreplaceable Margot Martindale.
  • San Jose native Matt Sobel’s impressive directorial debut Take Me To the River is entirely fresh. Not one thing happens in Take Me to the River that you can predict, and it keeps the audience off-balance and completely engaged. You can stream Take Me to the River on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play or rent the DVD from Netflix.
  • NUTS! is the persistently hilarious (and finally poignant) documentary about the rise and fall of a medical and radio empire – all built on goat testicle “implantation” surgery in gullible humans.
  • The highly original documentary Tower retells the story of a famous mass shooting without dwelling on the shooter.
  • All the Way is a thrilling political docudrama with a stellar performance. It’s the story of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, warts and all, ending official racial segregation in America with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Bryan Cranston brings LBJ alive as no actor has before.

These three Cinequest films haven’t gotten an US release, either in theaters or on video. But they are excellent enough to make my list of the year’s best. Here’s hoping that you will be able to see them soon, too. Stay tuned, and I’ll let you know.

  • The Memory of Water: This Chilean drama explores grief, its process and its impact, and was the most masterful filmmaking achievement at Cinequest 2016. Exquisite.
  • Magallanes: Another Cinequest film, this Peruvian psychological drama is about those wrongs that cannot be righted.
  • Lost Solace: Writer-director Chris Scheuerman’s brilliant debut is a highly original psychological thriller. Premiered at Cinequest.
Andrew Jenkins in Chris Scheuerman's brilliant debut LOST SOLACE
Andrew Jenkins in Chris Scheuerman’s brilliant debut LOST SOLACE

2016 at the Movies: most fun at the movies

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Simon Pegg and Lake Bell in MAN UP
Simon Pegg and Lake Bell in MAN UP

The most fun on this blog this year was the reader reaction to my recommendation of Man Up: I’ve never had so many people thank me for recommending a movie!  This British romantic comedy had a very brief US theatrical run last November that did not even reach the Bay Area.  Man Up is available to stream from Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Flixster.

This year I covered FIVE film festivals:

  • Cinequest:  My favorites were premieres of the debut films Lost Solace and Heaven’s Floor.
  • San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF):  My favorites were Chevalier, Weiner and Frank & Lola, and I especially enjoyed taking the wife to a screening of Our Kind of Traitor with director Susanna White.
  • International Film Festival of North Hollywood (IFFNOHO): especially Gazelle: The Love Issue.
  • San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF):  My favorite film was the upcoming television miniseries False Flag, but I most enjoyed accompanying The Wife to a screening of Robert Klein Still Can’t Stop His Leg with Robert Klein.
  • Mill Valley Film Festival:  Was lucky enough to see Toni Erdmann.
Andrew Jenkins in Chris Scheuerman's brilliant debut LOST SOLACE
Andrew Jenkins in Chris Scheuerman’s brilliant debut LOST SOLACE

I’m in my fourteenth year of the Camera Cinema Club, and this year’s highlight was Take Me to the River by San Jose filmmaker Matt Sobel – it made my year-end top ten!

And, of course, I always love Noir City, and the best night this year featured The Bitter Stems and Girl with Hyacinths.

Every year I watch a zillion movies on Turner Classic Movies, and this year I discovered a Buster Keaton masterpiece that I hadn’t seen: TCM Seven Chances.

Finally. I got the chance to take The Wife and our adult kids to see It’s a Wonderful Life on the big screen at the Stanford Theatre’s Christmas Eve screening.  Hard to top that.

I go to the movies to be thrilled, provoked and exhilarated, and I’m looking forward to what 2017 will bring.

Buster Keaton in SEVEN CHANCES
Buster Keaton in SEVEN CHANCES

2016 at the Movies: I hadn’t seen this before

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Isabelle Huppert in ELLE
Isabelle Huppert in ELLE

Here are some things that I hadn’t seen before in the movies:

  • Lead characters in Toni Erdmann and Elle that were completely sui generis.
  • A movie exposé, Under the Sun, built out of outtakes shot under the noses of the North Korean government handlers.
  • Tower, a documentary about a mass shooting that barely mentioned the shooter – and with a startlingly effective look.
  • The Greasy Strangler, a movie actually constructed as a cult movie for the midnight shows
  • The Korean period con artist movie The Handmaiden delivered some unforeseeable plot twists – and was gorgeous and erotic, too.
TOWER
TOWER