On March 17, Turner Classic Movies will air the 1984 film that was Oscar winner Frances McDormand’s first screen credit, Blood Simple. That was also the storied Coen Brothers’s first feature film (and sparked McDormands’ 34-year marriage to Joel Cohen). Since their debut, the Coens have gone on to win Oscars for Fargo and No Country for Old Men, and their True Grit and the very, very underrated A Serious Man are just as good. Along the way, they also gave us the unforgettable The Big Lebowski.
It all started with their highly original neo-noir Blood Simple. It’s dark, it’s funny and damned entertaining. The highlight is the singular performance by veteran character actor M. Emmet Walsh as a Stetson-topped gunsel. The suspenseful finale, when Walsh is methodically hunting down the 27-year-old McDormand, is brilliant.
M. Emmet Walsh in BLOOD SIMPLEFrances McDormand in BLOOD SIMPLEDan Hedaya and M. Emmet Walsh in BLOOD SIMPLE
Here’s an entirely fresh take on the revenge thriller. Blue Ruin, an audience favorite on the festival circuit in 2013, didn’t get a theatrical release, and I would have missed it entirely but for a suggestion from my friend Jose.
As the film opens, we are following a homeless man and observing his survival tactics; once we’re hooked, we learn that a traumatic incident led to his homelessness. Then we watch him methodically prepare for an entirely different mission. There is very little dialogue in the first 30 minutes. And then we have 60 minutes of lethal cat-and-mouse, with intense suspense about which of the characters will survive and how. As a thriller, this is first class.
What makes Blue Ruin so fresh is the lead character, who has been shattered by a tragedy in his life – and who isn’t at all confident about his ability to redress it. This ain’t a Charles Bronson or Liam Neeson type hunter-of-bad-guys. Instead, our hero is as scared and fragile as most of us would be if we were being hunted for our lives – and so we relate to him.
Macon Blair is superb as the protagonist. He’s entirely believable both as a damaged down-and-outer and as a man-on-a-mission. Man, I hope Blair gets cast in more movies – he’s just great here.
Devin Ratray, one of the execrable, buffoonish cousins in Nebraska, is very good in an entirely different role here – a slacker scarred by his war experiences who nevertheless remains very skilled.
Blue Ruin was written and directed by Jeremy Saulnier. He is responsible for the wholly original lead character and the intense pace of the film, along with the meticulously economical storytelling; the exposition never relies on even one extra word of dialogue.
Blue Ruin is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Netflix Instant, Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, Google Play, YouTube and Xbox Video.
Brothers in Arms is a documentary on the making of Platoon, directed by Paul Sanchez, who played Doc. Platoon, of course, won the Best Picture Oscar and launched the careers of many actors in its young cast. Except for Tom Berenger, this was the first movie job for most of them. including Charlie Sheen, Johnny Depp and Willem Dafoe.
Director Oliver Stone, a Vietnam vet himself, assembled the cast two weeks before filming and put them through basic military training in the Philippine jungle under real military trainers. The cast developed an usual bond during that process, as well as in coping with the mercurial Stone.
In Brothers in Arms, we get to hear from the actors (except for Dafoe, who was making a movie in South Africa) and the military advisers (but not from Oliver Stone). There plenty of entertaining anecdotes and some insights into the filmmaking.
In the intense German thriller Berlin Falling, Frank (Ken Duken) is a troubled vet hoping to reunite at Christmas with his estranged wife and kid. But he picks up the hitchhiker Andreas (Tom Wlaschiha of Game of Thrones), who turns out to be any contemporary European’s worst nightmare (exactly what kind of nightmare is revealed at the end). Andreas subdues Frank with a highly personalized threat and forces him him to engage in a horrific terrorist attack, complete with its own chilling Isis video. It looks like there is no way out for Frank, and Berlin Falling ticks on like a time bomb to its uncompromising and violent conclusion.
With its comments on terrorism, immigration and xenophobia, Berlin Falling covers much of the same ground as this year’s German Oscar submission, In the Fade, but with a huge plot twist. It’s the writing-directing feature debut for actor Ken Duken, who plays Frank. It all works as a nail-biter, but it’s a bit exhausting. I saw Berlin Falling at Cinequest.
Skull, an absolutely bizarre film, is intended to be Indonesia’s first sci-fi film. Opening with a beautiful drone shot, Skull lurches forward with bits of mystery, romance, chases and shootouts until its “science unleashes the end of the world” finish.
The discovery of a giant skull threatens the underpinnings of many scientific theories and results in an international secret research project and a coverup by the Indonesian government. Ani ( Eka Nusa Pertiwi), a young woman at the research project is about to become a victim of the coverup when her killer-to-be is whacked by Yos (played by writer-director Yusran Fuadi), and the two escape on a motorcycle roadtrip through the Indonesian hinterlands, ending up with Yos’ mentor in a watchtower high above the jungle.
The frenetic pacing screeches to an abrupt halt while the three banter in front of a static camera for maybe ten minutes – it’s not at all a bad scene, just jarringly different than the pace of the rest of the film. The mentor gets in a couple sniffs of Ani’s hand, then rest of the assassins arrive and there’s a shootout. Afterwards, there’s a visit to a philosopher who might have the key to the mystery.
Along the way, we have a SWAT team wearing skull masks, an exercise in mass voting by text (but is it hacked?) and a character exclaiming, “Dried Shit!”. This paranoid thriller finally concludes with a Pandora’s box ending with odd, but very effective special effects. Skull is also notable for its vivid colors and terrible translation in the English subtitles.
I saw Skull at a Cinequest screening with the cast and crew. Yusran Fuadi made the film in 128 days of shooting over more than three years on 40 different locations in Java. Each time he could save up $180 from his paycheck as a lecturer, he would gather the crew and shoot some more of the movie. He said his major direction to leading lady Eka Nusa Pertiwi was a plea not to get pregnant in the next three years.
WHAT THEY HAD Blythe Danner and Hilary Swank star as Ruth and Bridget Keller in WHAT THEY HAD, a Bleecker Street release. Photo courtesy of Bleecker Street
In the family drama What They Had, two siblings (Hilary Swank and Michael Shannon) face their mom (Blythe Danner) sinking into Alzheimer’s, and their father (Robert Forster) refusing to take action. To heighten the pressure, the out-of-town daughter wants to give the old folks more slack than does the local son. He’s been dealing with this situation up close, and he’s fed up. The dad is used to always being in charge, and he doesn’t cope well with needing help.
Despite the subject, What They Had is not a depressing movie, mostly because of the sunniness of Danner’s character. This is a character-driven story that benefits from this stellar cast. This is the first feature for writer/director Elizabeth Chomko, and she delivers an authentic and well-crafted story.
I saw What They Had at Cinequest. An October 18, 2018 release is planned. Here’s a clip.
In the gripping Slovene drama The Miner (Rudar), the experienced miner Alija (Leon Lucev) is tasked with checking out an abandoned mine before it is permanently sealed. No one wants anything found in the old shaft, let alone anything controversial. But Alijah is a man burdened by a great sense of duty. As a Bosnian immigrant, he has also been seared by the Bosnian genocide.
The movie starts out as a mystery and urns into a psychological thriller. Indeed, [MINOR SPOILER] the mine that has been closed since 1945 is revealed to contain a mass grave. Embued with the Bosnian resolve to “find them all”, Alijah is not about to cooperate in the coverup that his employer and the Slovenian government desire. Alijah is a man of few words, but he is eloquent when he relates the family story to his adult daughter. The Miner is based on a true story.
The writer-director is Hannah Antonina Wojcik Slak, and The Miner is her third feature.
I saw The Miner at Cinequest. Cinequest’s international film scout Charlie Cockey specializes in Eastern European cinema and brought this gem to the festival. Slak won Best Director and Lucev won Best Actor at the Slovene Film Festival, and The Miner was Slovenia’s submission to the Oscars.
The excellent Czech historical drama Barefoot is from director Jan Sverák, who won an Oscar for Kolya. It’s the coming of age story of a small boy named Eda and is set during World War II. The local puppets collaborating with the Nazis make it impossible for Eda’s father to stay in the city, so he moves his family to his rural home village.
In the countryside, Eda develops a gang of buddies and meets his mysterious uncle Wolf. In the city, Eda’s father had been courageous – even risking his life – to undermine the Nazis; but, in the village, the father is completely submissive to his own father and the rural extended family.
The war is in the background, occasionally protruding into the forefront. The Germans are on their heels and a Russian victory is inevitable, but the Germans are still in control and dangerous.
We follow the story through the boy’s lens, and there’s an effective balance of humor and drama. Whether in wartime or peacetime, a boy must grow and learn life lessons and form his character.
I saw Barefoot at Cinequest, where Director of Programming Mike Rabehl secured the rare black-and-white director’s cut. The black-and-white is splendid, and there’s a sleigh ride scene that is magical.
Barefoot, which is way better than the Oscar winner Kolya, is another gem from Cinequest’s international film scout Charlie Cockey. It doesn’t yet have distribution in the US, but I’ll let you know when it’s available to US audiences.
In the neo-noir Slovak thriller The Line (Ciara), Adam’s (Tomas Mastalir) life is about to be changed by history. The Schengen agreement, which opens the borders between the European nations, is about to be implemented. That’s a problem for Adam, who leads a crew of smugglers who sneak Ukrainian cigarettes through Slovakia to Austria and other European markets. First, there’s no longer going to be any market for smuggling anything out of Slovakia. Second, the border between Slovakia and the Ukraine is going to be hardened, so he’s no longer going to be able to source anything from the Ukraine. What was going to be his last big job goes awry, leaving him in hopeless hock to a ruthless Ukrainian gangster. So he’s going to have to take a chance on a very dangerous job.
We see Adam’s crew equipping vehicles with hidden compartments and making bribes at the border. One crew member sends off a load of bootleg cigarettes with “Cancer is headed to Austria”.
Adam is one tough mother, a guy who is exceptionally tough even by the standards of movie crime bosses. But he’s under increasing pressure, and that same pressure is incentivizing people he relies on to go sideways on him. At its heart, The Line is a film about betrayal.
It turns out that Adam runs a business started by his mother (Emília Vásáryová), who is herself the most formidable and lethal granny since Livia Soprano or Lillian Gish in The Night of the Hunter. There’s a great scene near the end where Adam and mom experience a shared memory of what happened to his father.
Adam’s wife (Zuzana Fialová) knows him very well. She also knows when to hold her cards and when to fold them.
The Line keeps getting darker – and then even darker – until a major veer at the end. It’s an effective character-driven thriller.
The Line was directed by Peter Bebjak, who acted in the best foreign film at the 2017 Cinequest, The Teacher. The Line was Slovenia’s submission to this year’s Oscars.
The Wind is usually named as Lillian Gish’s top silent film performance. Gish plays a young pioneer woman who is stranded in a vast sparsely populated Western desert. She marries one of her several suitors and takes up housekeeping in an isolated cabin, with only the perpetually howling wind for company. She has to “wash” her dishes in sand. Unsurprisingly, she can’t take it and is driven to desperate measures.
Fortunately, I got the chance to see The Wind at Cinequest on the big screen of a period movie palace, the California Theatre, accompanied by world-renowned Dennis James on the Mighty Wurlitzer organ.
Dennis James traveled with Lillian Gish as accompanist when she would present movies. For The Wind he added two colleagues on wind machines. Before the film, James read a florid movie mag account of a visit to the set of The Wind in the Mojave. I recommend Sal Pizarro’s excellent profile of Dennis James in the Mercury News.
James’ organ accompaniment and the large audience made all the difference. I had watched The Wind by myself on tv and started using the fast forward on the remote. But there’s lots of humor embedded in The Wind which is activated by the laughing of audience members.
It’s easy to appreciate how Gish rose to stardom. Her slight, delicate frame is offset by her spirited charisma. She’s great when three men propose to her on the same evening and she’s not feelin’ it. Gish, Dennis James’ Wurlitzer and the California Theatre made for a wonderful cinema experience.
