THE ARTIST’S WIFE: she finds her gifts

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Lena Olin and Bruce Dern in THE ARTIST’S WIFE

In The Artist’s Wife, sixty-something Claire (Lena Olin) is married to a famous, much older, painter Richard (Bruce Dern). You get the idea that Richard has always been a handful, but he is undergoing some disturbing changes. He is increasingly confused and mean, even abusive. Claire is the last to recognize and accept that Richard is sinking into Alzheimer’s.

We see glimpses of Richard as a good catch – affectionate and witty – and he is a superstar of the art world. Now, however, Richard is creatively blocked and drinking more. And the dementia is showing itself in more and more inappropriate behavior, from cruelty to his students to the impulse purchase of a $94,000 clock.

Claire was a painter herself, having sidelined her own career to support Richard’s. Now, seeking relief from Richard’s decline, she rents a studio and starts working herself. More than anything, Clare is generous, and she finds ways to give other great gifts.

The Artist’s Wife is Lena Olin’s movie, and her performance is the best thing about the movie, as her Clare ranges from clueless to desperate to persistent to tipsy to seductive to hurt and, finally, triumphant.

Let’s remember that, in 1988’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Olin played the girlfriend even more beautiful than Juliette Binoche. She can still rock bikini underwear.

Speaking of beauties from the 70s, Stephanie Powers (Hart to Hart) appears (and briefly in full frontal nudity).

Ultimately a Feel Good movie, The Artist’s Wife is streaming on Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

SHE IS THE OCEAN: women celebrating the oceans in science and sport

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Ocean Ramsey in SHE IS THE OCEAN

Inna Blokhina’s visually stunning documentary She Is the Ocean explores passion and possibilities. The passion is for celebrating the world’s oceans through science and sport. The possibilities are the great achievements that women can and have achieved in its pursuit.

She Is the Ocean introduces us to a stable of women with astonishing accomplishments, including:

  • Keala Kennelly, the woman’s pro surfing champ who now competes in men’s pro surfing events.
  • Andre Moller, who surfs the monster wave Jaws and paddle boards on the open ocean between Hawaiian Islands.
  • Anna Bader, a championship cliff diver whose highest dive has been from almost eight stories and who trains while pregnant.
  • Marine biologist Ocean Ramsey, known as the Shark Whisperer.
  • Teen surf prodigy Coco Ho, who by age twenty has been voted the world’s second most popular female surfer.
  • Oceanographer Sylvia Earle, still at it 65 years after her first dive, who led the first team of female aquanauts in 1970 and set the record for a single 1000-meter dive.

These women are tied together by their passion. Ramsay says, “I feel more comfortable and more graceful under water. I spend more time with the sharks than my family.“

This Spring, well after She Is the Ocean was completed, Brazilian pro surfer Maya Gabeira conquered a record wave in Portugal, so a woman now holds the Guinness record for surfing the biggest wave ever.

Cinta Hansel in SHE IS THE OCEAN

But the core of She Is the Ocean – and its passion and possibilities – is Balinese Cinta Hansel, the ten-year-old middle daughter of surfer and board shaper Bruce Hansel. Since she was eight, Cinta has aspired to be a world class surfer. Her dad has helped her, and she has become a prodigy. She is absolutely determined, and the joy she feels in the surf is infectious.

Inna Blokhina and her team of cinematographers and editors have created a visual masterpiece in glorious 4K. The underwater and surf shots are stunning. One “money shot” is of Ocean Ramsey getting a tow from a Great White. Another is Andrea Moller standing on her paddle board a few feet from the giant tail of a whale.

You can watch She Is Ocean on October 16 in a virtual screening from the Balboa, the Vogue and the Rafael in the Bay Area.

Movies to See Right Now (at home)

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Gay Walley in EROTIC FIRE OF THE UNATTAINABLE streaming from Cinejoy. Courtesy of Vitale Productions.

This week is all about TWO film festivals underway with new movies to watch at home. We have one more week to stream movies from Cinejoy, Cinequest’s October virtual fest. Here is my best of Cinejoy plus five more Cinejoy films.

The Mill Valley Film Festival is always the best opportunity for Bay Area film goers to catch an early look at the Big Movies – the prestige films that will be released during Award Season. This year is the same – except we don’t even have to visit Marin County in person. Watch at home. Here is my MVFF preview.

Regina King’s ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI opening at the Mill Valley Film Festival. Photo courtesy of Amazon.

ON VIDEO

The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:

ON TV

On October 15, Turner Classic Movies will air the 1943 masterpiece The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, a remarkably textured portrait of a man over four decades and his struggles to evolve into new eras. Written and directed by the great British filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, this is a movie with a sharp message to 1940s audiences about modernity, as well as a subtle exploration of privilege that will resonate today. Set your DVRs now; I’ll be publishing about this film next Wednesday.

Roger Livesey in THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP

CINEJOY 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 hosted the North American premiere of Last Sunrise, the sci-fi highlight of the festival and is streaming Small Time in CINEJOY through October 14.

five more movie choices from CINEJOY

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Steve Starr and Gay Walley in EROTIC FIRE OF THE UNATTAINABLE

Cinequest’s October virtual festival CINEJOY. runs through October 14. I’ve written about the best of Cinejoy, and here are five more Cinejoy films.

  • Erotic Fire of the Unattainable: My favorite discovery so far at Cinejoy, this is a captivating study of a free spirited woman of a certain age and her asymmetric relationships. It’s docufiction – “people playing themselves in stories that relate to their own real lives”. Here’s my full review.
  • The Last Days of Capitalism: Taking place entirely in a Vegas hotel luxury suite, a rich forty-something extends his encounter with a much younger hooker into several days of verbal probing and sparring. It’s kind of My Dinner With Andre with spa robes and sex. It turns out that he is hedonistic for a purpose, and she is more than she seems, too.
  • Far East Deep South: In this genealogy documentary, a Northern California Chinese-American family is stunned to discover that they have roots in Mississippi.
  • Watch Me Kill: Filipino actress Jean Garcia stars as a pitiless and prolific contract killer. Something from her past is haunting her, and there is a mind twisting thread. I was okay with the relentless violence, as would Quentin Tarantino, but not every viewer would be.
  • The Return of Richard III on the 9:14 am Train: This French comedy of manners centers on a crew of neurotic actors holed up in a vacation rental to rehearse a project. Although it’s got the best title in Cinejoy, it’s only mildly funny.

You can see these films and those on my best of Cinejoy at CINEJOY.

EROTIC FIRE OF THE UNATTAINABLE: captivating docufiction

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Gay Walley in EROTIC FIRE OF THE UNATTAINABLE. Courtesy of Vital Productions.

My favorite discovery so far at Cinejoy, Erotic Fire of the Unattainable is the captivating study of a free spirited woman of a certain age and her relationships. Gay (Gay Walley) is a NYC author in her 60s who has a boyfriend, but there are other men available to sample; she’s had a history of struggles in trying to find a guy who is the best fit.

Her relationships are all asymmetric – either she loves the man more than he loves her, or he loves her more.

We don’t see many movies about the romantic lives of women of a certain age, but assessing the relative appeal of lovers is a universal quandary. Unless you have lucked into the Ideal Partner (like I have with The Wife), there are trade offs.

As the actress Gay Walley says about the character Gay, “She is a free spirit. All the men come with strings. She clearly wants to be with someone but she can’t take the strings.”

Steve Starr and Gay Walley in EROTIC FIRE OF THE UNATTAINABLE. Courtesy of Vital Productions

Director Frank Vitale works in his own form of cinema, docufiction – “people playing themselves in stories that relate to their own real lives”. He casts non-actors and their friends, who act out stories that spring from their own real life experiences. His star, Gay Smalley, gets the screenwriting credit. Smalley, who in real life has published a novel entitled Erotic Fire of the Unattainable, plays the author Gay, who has penned a book of the same name.

He may use non-actors, but there’s nothing amateurish about Vitale’s filmmaking – Erotic Fire of the Unattainable looks great. The cinematographer is Niav Conty, who directed another Cinequest/Cinejoy gem, Small Time.

You can stream Erotic Fire of the Unattainable through October 14 at CINEJOY. After the film, there’s an insightful interview with Vitale and Walley.

SMALL TIME: innocence among the addicted

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Audrey Grace Marshall in Niav Conty’s SMALL TIME, premiering at Cinequest. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.

Filmmaker Niav Cinty explores rural America’s opioid crisis through its impact on one little girl in Small Time. Emma (Audrey Grace Marshall) is growing up among damaged and ill-prepared adults who are modeling the worst possible lessons about drug use, parental responsibility, handling firearms, choice of language and taking things that belong to someone else. This is an opioid-ravaged world in which the one character who actually saves two lives is the local abusive drug dealer. Emma sees things that no child should see.

Emma is spirited, smart and has a child’s pureness of heart.  Amidst the adult chaos, she’s baking cookies and thinking about the tooth fairy. But we have to ask, what is the shelf life of innocence? When will her environment take its toll?

Nobody is comfortable watching a child in bad situations, so why isn’t Small Time unwatchable? Writer-director Conty has mastered the tone by making Emma such a spirited, hopefully indomitable protagonist. And Conty embeds just enough humor in scenes with the local lunkheads playing the board game Risk and Emma turning the doctrinal tables on a priest, forcing him to resort to bluster.

The child actress Audrey Grace Marshall is very good. Conty shot Small Time over three years as Audrey ranged from seven to ten. Small Time was filmed on location in north central Pennsylvania.

Cinequest hosted the world premiere of Small Time at the March 2020 festival and is streaming Small Time in CINEJOY through October 14.

Movies to See Right Now (at home)

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Olivia Colman and Anthony Hopkins in THE FATHER, coming up at the Mill Valley Film Festival

This week: Not one, but TWO Watch At Home film festivals.

The Mill Valley Film Festival is always the best opportunity for Bay Area film goers to catch an early look at the Big Movies – the prestige films that will be released during Award Season. This year is the same – except we don’t even have to visit Marin County in person. Watch at home.

Cinejoy is Cinequest’s October virtual fest. More watch at home choices, especially focused on indie gems that you can’t see anywhere else.

ON VIDEO

Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story: “Actresses play characters, but stuntwoman play actresses playing characters, while driving fast and kicking ass.” Streaming on iTunes and Google Play.

The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:

ON TV

On October 4, Turner Classic Movies presents an afternoon and evening of Buster Keaton that is one of the best programs that TCM has ever curated. First, there’s Peter Bogdanovich’s fine 2018 biodoc of Keaton, The Great Buster: A Celebration. I had thought that I had a good handle on Keaton’s body of work, but The Great Buster is essential to understanding it.

TCM follows with four movies from Keaton’s masterpiece period: Sherlock, Jr. (1924), The General (1926), Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) and Seven Chances (1925). After 1928, Keaton’s new studio took away his creative control, and his career (and personal life) crashed.

This is a chance to appreciate Keaton’s greatest work. I just wrote about Steamboat Bill, Jr. for last year’s Cinequest. I’ve also recommended Seven Chances for its phenomenal chase scene, one that still (ninety-five years later!) rates with the very best in cinema history.

Buster Keaton in SEVEN CHANCES

the best of CINEJOY

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Jenna Lyng Adams in BEFORE THE FIRE. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.

Cinejoy is Cinequest’s October virtual fest and it opens today. Some of the very best from the March festival return, along with some new indie gems that you can’t see anywhere else. I’ve updated my CINEQUEST page with reviews of nine Cinejoy films. Browse the films and buy tickets at CINEJOY.

MUST SEE

  • Before the Fire: In this year’s Must See at Cinequest, the only escape from an apocalyptic flu pandemic is a woman’s long-estranged rural hometown – but the scary family who traumatized her childhood is there, too. Written by its female star Jenna Lyng Adams, and the first feature by its female director Charlie Buhler, this indie thriller rocks. World premiere at Cinequest.

INDIES

  • Small Time: Rural America’s opioid crisis explored through its impact on one little girl; what is the shelf life of innocence? Shot over three years with insight and verisimilitude. World premiere at Cinequest.

WORLD CINEMA

  • Willow: This triptych by Oscar-nominated master Macedonian filmmaker Milcho Manchevski plumbs the heartaches and joys of having children; there’s a scene in the final vignette with a mother and son in a car that is one of the most amazing scenes I’ve ever seen. North American premiere at Cinequest.

LAUGHS

DOCUMENTARY

  • The Quicksilver Chronicles: Two bohemians live in a ghost town close (yet far) from Silicon Valley, and life happens. World premiere.

AND TWO I HAVEN’T SEEN YET

  • but they’ve got GREAT TITLES: The Return of Richard III on the 9:24 am Train and Erotic Fire of the Unattainable.
THE QUICKSILVER CHRONICLES. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.

STUNTWOMEN: THE UNTOLD HOLLYWOOD STORY – don’t wig a guy

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Michelle Rodriguez and Debbie Evans in StUNTWOMEN: THE UNTOLD HOLLYWOOD STORY. Photo Credit Shout! Factory

“Actresses play characters, but stuntwoman play actresses playing characters, while driving fast and kicking ass.”

That’s one of the professional movie stuntwomen summing up the business in the documentary Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story. Stunt performing and stunt coordinating are underappreciated by most of us – and certainly kept in the background by the industry (and the Oscars). It’s hard and dangerous enough to perform movie stunts, but females have also had to battle against persistent gender bias.

Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story takes us back to the first decade of silent films, when actresses did their own extreme stunts, until they became too valuable in box office terms to be expendable. At that point, women were frozen out of the stunt business for half a century. Michelle Rodriguez, who is currently our most kickass/badass actress, helps introduce us to today’s world of women who specialize in fighting, crashing cars, falling off great heights and getting set on fire.

We meet Jeannie Epper, who doubled Lynda Carter in Wonder Woman and Jadie David, who doubled Pam Grier in all those Blaxploitation action movies. (Epper fell backwards out of tall buildings, and then the film was reversed to create the effect of Wonder Woman zooming upwards.)

We also learn the meaning of “wigging a guy”. And we are reminded that stuntwomen often double actresses who are wearing high heels, and that skimpy outfits don’t allow for much protective padding.

This is solid women’s history and a great inside glimpse at the movie biz. Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story can be streamed from iTunes and Google Play.