Streaming the best of Cinequest

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Brooke Purdy in QUALITY PROBLEMS

These 2012-2018 Cinequest favorites are available to stream now:

FEEL GOODS AND COMEDIES

  • Quality Problems: A screwball comedy for the sandwich generation. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play.
  • Venus: Meeting your kid for the first time while transitioning. Amazon, iTunes.
  • The Sapphires: Here’s a crowd pleaser – Motown meets Aborigines. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, Google Play.
  • Threesomething: Original and cheeky. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play.
  • The Grand Seduction: An entire tiny hamlet is enlisted in an absurdly elaborate and risky ruse in this Canadian knee-slapper.  Amazon (included with Prime), Vudu, YouTube, Google Play.
  • Hunting Elephants: Apparently, Israelis see just as little generosity, fair-mindedness and decency in their bankers as we do in ours. iTunes.
Andrew Jenkins in Chris Scheuerman’s brilliant debut LOST SOLACE

INDIE DRAMAS

  • The Center: Sliding into a cult. Amazon (included with Prime), Vudu, YouTube, Google Play.
  • Lost Solace: a psychopath afflicted by empathy. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play.
  • Dose of Reality: You won’t predict this ending. For SURE. Amazon.
  • The House on Pine Street: Does she see a ghost? Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play.
  • Prodigy: She doesn’t LOOK like a monster. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play.

 

THERE WILL BE NO STAY

DOCS

  • The Brainwashing of My Dad: When TV changes not just opinions, but mood and personality, too. Amazon, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play.
  • Meet the Hitlers: Wouldn’t you change YOUR name? Amazon, iTunes, Vudu.
  • There Will Be No Stay: In a society with capital punishment, someone must perform the executions. iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play.

 

Mads Mikkelson in THE HUNT

WORLD CINEMA

  • Ida (Oscar winner): Identity rocked at a pivotal time. Amazon, Netflix, YouTube, Google Play.
  • The Hunt (Oscar-nominated): Terrifyingly plausible. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play (and Netflix DVD).
  • Wild Tales (Oscar-nominated): Hilariously dark tales of revenge. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu (and Netflix DVD).
  • The Teacher: A peek into Communist dread. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu.
  • Revenge: The web is spun. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play.
  • Fever at Dawn: Romance, identity and a moral choice. Hoopla.
  • The Wave: Everything you want in a disaster movie. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play.
  • Magallanes: Some wrongs cannot be righted. iTunes, YouTube, Google Play.
  • The Memory of Water: Grief, exquisitely explored. Netflix.
  • Los Hamsters: Riotously dysfunctional. Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, Google Play.

Movies to See Right Now

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Paula Beer and Franz Rogowski in TRANSIT, playing at Cinequest next Wednesday. Courtesy of Music Box Films

The Oscars are finally over, And I was pretty much OK with the whole shebang – I loved Roma, and I really love Green Book, too. I was and am still grumpy about Rami Malek winning an ACTING Oscar for a performance in which he was often LIP SYNCHING; this was several rungs below Jamie Foxx’ Ray Charles and Joaquin Phoenix’ Johnny Cash; and Bradley Cooper acted as a singer, sang the song himself and even WROTE the song!

Anyway, The Wife and I did enjoy our annual Oscar Dinner, although we had to sub out a Bohemian Rhapsody pub ale because we couldn’t source the novelty teeth in time.

The Movie Gourmet’s Oscar Dinner 2019

Starting this weekend, my coverage of Cinequest will explode on to the Internet. Stay tuned.

OUT NOW

  • In They Shall Not Grow Old, Lord of the Rings filmmaker Peter Jackson has, for the first time, layered humanity over our understanding of World War I. By slowing down the speed of the jerky WWI film footage and adding sound and color, Jackson has allowed us to relate to the real people in the Great War. This is a generational achievement and a Must See.
  • Roma is an exquisite portrait of two enduring women and the masterpiece of Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity, Children of Men and Y Tu Mama Tambien). Won multiple Oscars. It is streaming now on Netflix.
  • Green Book: The Best Picture Oscar winner. Tony Lip is a marvelous character, and Viggo Mortensen’s performance is one of the great pleasures of this year in the movies.
  • Vice: in this bitingly funny biopic of Dick Cheney by writer-director Adam McKay (The Big Short), Cheney is played by a physically transformed and unrecognizable Christian Bale. A superb performance, .pretty good history, biography from a sharp point of view and a damn entertaining movie.
  • Stan & Ollie: Steve Coogan as Stan Laurel and John C. Reilly as Oliver Hardy deliver remarkable portraits of a partnership facing the inevitability of showbiz decline.
  • Pawel Pawlikowski’s sweeping romantic tragedy Cold War is not as compelling as his masterpiece Ida.
  • The Favourite: Great performances by three great actresses, sex and political intrigue are not enough; this critically praised film didn’t work for me.

ON VIDEO

The Hollywood movie Gloria Bell, starring Julianne Moore, is coming to theaters on March 8. Gloria Bell is a remake of the the Chilean gem Gloria. Fortunately, Sebastián Lelio, the original writer-director of Gloria (and A Fantastic Woman) is also directing Gloria Bell. Here’s your chance to see the original.

ON TV

Great movies abound on TV as Turner Classic Movies concludes its 31 Days of Oscar, but here’s a curiosity that I don’t remember ever seeing. On March 2, TCM plays the 1968 astronaut-lost-in-space drama Marooned with Gregory Peck, Richard Crenna and David Jannsen. A 1970 Mexican audience is shown watching Marooned n ALfonso Cuaron’s Roma; it’s a hint that Marooned may have been an influence on Cuaron’s Oscar-winning Gravity.

On March 4, TCM presents John Huston’s under-appreciated Fat City (1972). Stacy Keach plays a boxer on the slide, his skills unraveled by his alcoholism. He inspires a kid (a very young Jeff Bridges), who becomes a boxer on the rise. Keach and Susan Tyrrell give dead-on performances as pathetic, sad sack barflies. Tyrrell was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

Susan Tyrrell in FAT CITY
Stacy Keach and Jeff Bridges in FAT CITY

Stream of the Week: GLORIA -resiliency, thy name is woman

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GLORIA
GLORIA

The Hollywood movie Gloria Bell, starring Julianne Moore, is coming to theaters on March 8. Gloria Bell is a remake of the the Chilean gem Gloria. Fortunately, Sebastián Lelio, the original writer-director of Gloria (and A Fantastic Woman) is also directing Gloria Bell. Here’s your chance to see the original.

In 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 friendship with benefits.

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.

Movies to See Right Now

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Yalitza Aparicio in ROMA

It’s Oscar weekend, and here’s The Movie Gourmet’s annual Oscar Dinner (with its snarky reference to Bohemian Rhapsody). I also published my curtain raiser for the 2019 Cinequest and my recommendation for Sammy Davis Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me on the PBS American Masters series

OUT NOW

  • In They Shall Not Grow Old, Lord of the Rings filmmaker Peter Jackson has, for the first time, layered humanity over our understanding of World War I. By slowing down the speed of the jerky WWI film footage and adding sound and color, Jackson has allowed us to relate to the real people in the Great War. This is a generational achievement and a Must See.
  • Roma is an exquisite portrait of two enduring women and the masterpiece of Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity, Children of Men and Y Tu Mama Tambien). Will win multiple Oscars. It is streaming now Netflix.
  • Green Book: Tony Lip is a marvelous character, and Viggo Mortensen’s performance is one of the great pleasures of this year in the movies.
  • Vice: in this bitingly funny biopic of Dick Cheney by writer-director Adam McKay (The Big Short), Cheney is played by a physically transformed and unrecognizable Christian Bale. A superb performance, .pretty good history, biography from a sharp point of view and a damn entertaining movie.
  • Stan & Ollie: Steve Coogan as Stan Laurel and John C. Reilly as Oliver Hardy deliver remarkable portraits of a partnership facing the inevitability of showbiz decline.
  • Pawel Pawlikowski’s sweeping romantic tragedy Cold War is not as compelling as his masterpiece Ida.
  • The Favourite: Great performances by three great actresses, sex and political intrigue are not enough; this critically praised film didn’t work for me.

ON VIDEO

The great character actor Richard Jenkins was nominated for an Oscar for his supporting role in last year’s Best Picture The Shape of Water, and we should remember that he also got an Oscar nod for his starring turn in the indie drama The Visitor.  The Visitor is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

ON TV

Turner Classic Movies, in its glorious 31 Days of Oscar series, airs John Huston’s 1949 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre on February 23. It’s still a gripping yarn – three down-and-outers improbably (and literally) strike gold. But can they trust each other enough to realize their gains once envy and greed appear? The Treasure of the Sierra Madre features one of Humphrey Bogart’s most colorful and compelling performances, which is reason enough to watch this classic.

But I also love watching director Huston’s real life father Walter Huston, who is cast as another of the trio. Most of us know Walter Huston, with his Gabby Hayes visage, from this movie, but Walter Huston was a major movie star as cinema moved to the talkies. Just between 1929 and 1939, he starred in thirty films. I love Huston’s work in this era, and I think that, with his very modern sensibility, he would be successful if he were working in today’s cinema. This is a good introduction to his work. (Walter Huston also appeared very briefly in John Huston’s directorial debut The Maltese Falcon – as Captain Jacoby, the guy who staggers into Sam Spade’s office with the titular black bird and expires.)

Walter Huston, Tim Holt and Humphrey Bogart in THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE

The Movie Gourmet’s 2019 Oscar Dinner

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ROMA

Every year, we watch the Oscars while enjoying a meal inspired by the Best Picture nominees. For example, we had sushi for Lost in Translation, cowboy campfire beans for Brokeback Mountain and Grandma Ethel’s Brisket for A Serious Man – you get the idea. The high point has been the Severed Hands Ice Sculpture in 2011 for 127 Hours and Winter’s Bone (photo below). Here’s last year’s menu, centered on Reynolds Woodcock’s (Daniel Day-Lewis) comically elaborate breakfast order from Phantom Thread.

This year’s dinner will be built around Mexican cuisine as a tribute to Roma, the Oscar-nominated movie that we most admire.  We’ll have some shrimp (the family dines at the beach resort restaurant with the giant octopus sculpture outside) and The Movie Gourmet’s famous elote (street corn). The table will be adorned with references to the other Best Picture nominees.

So here is this year’s menu:

Gambas al ajillo, elote, frijoles y arroz from Roma.

Jack Daniels from A Star Is Born. A fifth of JD Black, just like the one drained by Jack (Bradley Cooper) in his limo.

Fried chicken from Green Book: Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen) lights up with Kentucky Fried Chicken! In Kentucky! When’s that ever gonna happen!.

Cake with blue icing from The Favourite: In one of the least appetizing food scenes in recent cinema, Queen Anne (Olivia Colman), gout and all, battles this cake.

Almond croissant from Vice:  Offered some food at a meeting, Dick Cheney (Christian Bale) mumbles, “Nah, I’m eating healthy” – and then scarfs something from the pastry tray.

Coors from BlacKkKlansman: Something for all those Colorado Springs white supremacists.

Purple potion from Black Panther: Not having any real superhero potion, The Wife and I faked it with a sports drink.

Novelty false teeth for Bohemian Rhapsody. As a table decoration, we chose novelty false teeth to represent the horrible prosthetic teeth that Rami Malek had to wear as Freddie Mercury. The real Freddie was a very handsome guy with prominent teeth; the movie Freddie is downright horse-faced – and it’s a terrible distraction from Malek’s fine performance.  Speaking of which, on YouTube, you can find a side-by-side of the actual Queen performance at LiveAid and the Bohemian Rhapsody version – great stuff.  Still, why is this movie nominated for Best Picture?

My thanks to The Wife, who has been the real driving force behind this meal in the past few years.

The Movie Gourmet’s culinary tribute to 127 HOURS and WINTER’S BONE

CINEQUEST 2019 is just around the corner

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Make your plans now to attend the 29th edition of Cinequest, Silicon Valley’s own major film festival. By some metrics the largest film festival in North America, Cinequest was recently voted the nation’s best by USA Today readers. The 2019 Cinequest is scheduled for March 5 through March 17 and will present almost 100 feature films and dozens of short films and virtual reality experiences from the US and over fifty other countries. And, at Cinequest, it’s easy to meet the filmmakers.

This year’s headline events include:

  • New movies with Elle Fanning, Rebecca Hall, Adam Driver, Emile Hirsch, Bruce Dern, Dev Patel, Jesse Eisenberg, Alexander Skarsgård, Stellan Skarsgård, Jeff Daniels, Salma Hayek, Martin Sheen,  Jonathan Pryce, Emilio Estevez, Christian Slater, Alec Baldwin, Jena Malone, Jeffrey Wright, Stephen Yeun, Katie Holmes, Elizabeth McGovern Blythe Danner, Levar Burton, Emily Mortimer, M. Emmet Walsh and Richard Kind.
  • New movies by directors Mike Leigh, Terry Gilliam, Christian Petzold, Michael Winterbottom and Kim Nguyen.
  • See it here FIRST:  Sometimes Always Never, Freaks, Hotel Mumbai, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, The Hummingbird Project, Peterloo, The Public, Teen Spirit, The Third Wife, Transit, The Wedding Guest and Woman at War are all slated for theatrical release later this year.
  • For the first time at Cinequest – 5 U.S. premieres of Television series.
  • The 1928 Buster Keaton silent Steamboat Bill, Jr. projected in a period movie palace, the California Theatre, accompanied by world-renowned Dennis James on the Mighty Wurlitzer organ.

Indeed, the real treasure at Cinequest 2019 is likely to be found among the hitherto less well-known films. In the past four years, the Cinequest gems Eye in the Sky, Wild Tales, Ida, The Hunt, ’71, Corn Island, The Memory of Water, Magallanes, Quality Problems, The Sense of an Ending, For Grace, Lost Solace, Class Enemy, Heavenly Shift and Oh Boy/A Coffee in Berlin all made my Best of the Year lists.

Cinequest revels in its Downtown San Jose vibe, with concurrent screenings at the 1122-seat California, the 550-seat Hammer and the 257-seat 3Below, all within 1600 feet of the VIP lounge at The Continental Bar. There will still be satellite viewing in Redwood City.

At Cinequest, you can get a festival pass for as little as $165, and you can get individual tickets as well. The express pass for an additional tax-deductible $100 is a fantastic deal – you get to skip to the front of the lines!  Take a look at the entire program, the schedule and the passes and tickets.

As usual, I’ll be covering Cinequest rigorously with features and movie recommendations. I usually screen (and write about) over thirty films from around the world. Bookmark my Cinequest 2019 page, with links to all my coverage (links on the individual movies will start to go live on Sunday, March 3). Follow me on Twitter for the latest.

tonight on TV: SAMMY DAVIS, JR.: I’VE GOTTA BE ME: a needy talent through complicated times

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Still from SAMMY DAVIS JR.: I’VE GOTTA BE ME. Photo courtesy JFI.

Tonight, PBS airs Sammy Davis Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me on its American Masters series.  As a Baby Boomer who had dismissed Sammy Davis Jr. from the moment he publicly hugged Richard Nixon, I found this to be the most surprising doc (and my favorite) at last year’s San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. I learned that Sammy’s 61-year career as a professional entertainer began at age three (with his first movie credit at age 7), a working childhood that  left emotional needs  It turns out that Sammy was a very, very talented but needy artist,, an uncomplicated man navigating several very complicated times.

Sammy’s life of entertainment began at 3.  We get to see a clip of him in the 1933 Rufus Jones for President.  All that professional work took away his childhood and engraved upon him a need to please.  That and his generation produced the 50s showbiz style that seemed so insincere to us Baby Boomers.  And, of course that embrace of Nixon seemed to be the ultimate sell-out moment.

Sammy Davis Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me also poses whether he was demeaned by Rat Pack humor? Were Frank and Dino laughing at Sammy, or with him?

But this was  an immensely talented man, a masterful dancer with a remarkable crooner’s voice and a gift for mimicry.  He was the first American entertainer of color to do impersonations of white celebrities.   BTW there is some unbelievable dancing in Sammy Davis Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me.  We get to see Sammy’s 60th anniversary in showbiz celebrated among a host of celebrities – he still had his dancing chops.

Sammy Davis Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me is the story of a man whose success condemned him to a career that spanned generations – none of which fit him comfortably.  It’s a fine and insightful film.

[Random note: This film title may contain the most different punctuation marks of any movie: a comma, a period, a colon and an apostrophe.]

DVD/Stream of the Week: THE VISITOR – self-isolation no longer

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THE VISITOR
Richard Jenkins in THE VISITOR

The great character actor Richard Jenkins was nominated for an Oscar for his supporting role in last year’s Best Picture The Shape of Water, and we should remember that he also got an Oscar nod for his starring turn in the indie drama The Visitor. Touching on the themes of immigration to the US and the “otherness” of people from the Middle East, it’s especially topical today. Jenkins has the role of his career in The Visitor – a man who deals with loss by isolating himself. He becomes intrigued with an illegal Middle Eastern immigrant, then develops a bond and then reclaims passion into his life.

The Visitor is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Movies to See Right Now

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THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD

There aren’t many MUST SEES out right now, but don’t miss They Shall Not Grow Old. The Wife and I have been catching up on the Oscar nominees and recently saw Black Panther, which is excellent for the super hero genre (faint praise from me). We also caught Bohemian Rhapsody, a perfectly fine movie that has no business being nominated for Best Picture.  I’m looking forward to seeing Green Book again this weekend, this time with The Wife – she’ll love it.

Somehow, more of my family and friends have, despite my advice, seen The Favourite.  One of my friends, a professional filmmaker and opinion leader among cinéastes, liked it; everyone else hated, hated, HATED it.  Really hated it.

OUT NOW

  • In They Shall Not Grow Old, Lord of the Rings filmmaker Peter Jackson has, for the first time, layered humanity over our understanding of World War I. By slowing down the speed of the jerky WWI film footage and adding sound and color, Jackson has allowed us to relate to the real people in the Great War. This is a generational achievement and a Must See.
  • Roma is an exquisite portrait of two enduring women and the masterpiece of Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity, Children of Men and Y Tu Mama Tambien). Will win multiple Oscars. It is streaming now Netflix.
  • Green Book: Tony Lip is a marvelous character, and Viggo Mortensen’s performance is one of the great pleasures of this year in the movies.
  • Vice: in this bitingly funny biopic of Dick Cheney by writer-director Adam McKay (The Big Short), Cheney is played by a physically transformed and unrecognizable Christian Bale. A superb performance, .pretty good history, biography from a sharp point of view and a damn entertaining movie.
  • Stan & Ollie: Steve Coogan as Stan Laurel and John C. Reilly as Oliver Hardy deliver remarkable portraits of a partnership facing the inevitability of showbiz decline.
  • Pawel Pawlikowski’s sweeping romantic tragedy Cold War is not as compelling as his masterpiece Ida.
  • The Favourite: Great performances by three great actresses, sex and political intrigue are not enough; this critically praised film didn’t work for me.

 

ON VIDEO

This week’s Stream of the Week is my pick for 2010’s best film, the Oscar-nominated, searing drama Incendies:  a young man and woman journey from Quebec to the Middle East to uncover family secrets from the Lebanese civil war. You can stream it from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

 

ON TV

This month, Turner Classic Movies  features all Oscar-nominated movies its 31 Days of Oscars, and I recommend Blow-up on February 19. Set in the Mod London of the mid-60s, a fashion photographer (David Hemmings) is living a fun, but shallow, life filled with sports cars, discos and scoring with supermodels (think Jane Birkin, Sarah Miles and Verushka). Then he discovers that his random photograph of a landscape may contain a clue in a murder and meets a mystery woman (Vanessa Redgrave). After taking us into a vivid depiction of the Mod world, director Michelangelo Antonioni brilliantly turns the story into a suspenseful story of spiraling obsession. His L’Avventura, La Notte and L’Eclisse made Antonioni an icon of cinema, but Blow-up is his most accessible and enjoyable masterwork. There’s also a cameo performance by the Jeff Beck/Jimmy Page version of the Yardbirds and a quick sighting of Michael Palin in a nightclub.

BLOW-UP

Stream of the Week: INCENDIES – lives created by violence

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Lubna Azabal in INCENDIES

This searing drama was my pick for 2010’s best film. Upon their mother’s death, a young man and woman learn for the first time of their father and their brother; they journey from Quebec to the Middle East to uncover family secrets. As they bumble around Lebanon, we see the mother’s experience in flashbacks. We learn before they do that their lives were created – literally – by the violence of the Lebanese civil war.

Because the film is anything but stagey, you can’t tell that Canadian director Denis Villaneuve adapted the screenplay from a play. Lubna Azabal, a Belgian actress of Moroccan and Spanish heritage, is brilliant as the mother.

It’s a tough film to watch, with graphic violence against women and children. But the violence is neither gratuitous nor exploitative – it is a civil war, after all, and the theme of the film is the cycle of retribution.

Incendies was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar, but lost out to a much inferior film on the same subject of violence, In a Better Life. You can stream it from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.