Cinequest: GORDON GETTY: THERE WILL BE MUSIC

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GORDON GETTY: THERE WILL BE MUSIC
GORDON GETTY: THERE WILL BE MUSIC

San Francisco billionaire Gordon Getty was born into great wealth, so he was never going to be a Regular Guy.  And few aspire to become composers of classical music, as Getty has.  He is profiled in the documentary Gordon Getty: There Will Be Music.

Getty sees himself as more 19th Century than 20th (tellingly, not even mentioning the 21st).  It’s an apt description of someone who bases musical compositions on the works of Poe and Dickinson.  Affable and genuine,Getty is easy to spend time with.  We get a fun glimpse into the Getty family history – and learn that Gordon was already out of college when he read that his dad was the richest American.   “I knew he was rich, but…”

Getty is conscious that his uberwealth brings major advantages to his vocation as well as detracting from his credibility.  Naively, he thinks that they balance out.  But one thing is or sure – Getty is no dilettante.  He is a serious composer, who has devoted himself to his craft.

The most interesting aspects of Gordon Getty: There Will Be Music are Getty’s music and the insight into his process as a composer.  Getty’s passion in pronounced, but it’s a quiet passion.  The pace of the film reflects its subject and his music, which is not pulsating.  Classical music fans will enjoy this film than those who are not.

Plays Cinequest on March 6, 11 and 12.

Cinequest: A BEGINNERS GUIDE TO SNUFF

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A BEGINNERS GUIDE TO SNUFF
A BEGINNERS GUIDE TO SNUFF

The shamelessly low brow comedy A Beginners Guide to Snuff features a very dim pair of would-be actors who seek to win a horror movie contest by simulating a snuff film.  What could possibly go wrong?  To get the most realistic performance out of their leading lady, they decide to kidnap her and pretend that they’re going to torture her to death on film.  Their choice of that leading lady (played by Bree Williamson) brings some very unexpected consequences.

Most of the humor in Beginners Guide comes from the dumb and dumber filmmakers and spoof on low-budget horror cinema.  But Williamson’s electric performance, like a shot of adrenaline, animates and elevates the movie whenever she is on-screen.  Her character is so many tiers above the two boobs that she remains in charge even when chained to a table.  On top of that, she has some unanticipated skills and characteristics…

A Beginners Guide to Snuff ends with a particularly inspired trailer for the movie-within-the-movie.  If you’re looking for broad and dark comedy with a sparkling performance by an actress, this is your movie.  World Premiere at Cinequest on March 4, 6 and 11.

 

DVD/Stream of the Week: THE HUNT

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THE HUNT

In honor of the opening of this year’s Cinequest, this week’s pick is the Danish drama The Hunt from the 2013 Cinequest.  Mads Mikkelsen plays a man whose life is ruined by a false claim of child sexual abuse. You’ll recognize Mikkelsen, a big star in Europe, from After the Wedding and the 2006 Casino Royale (he was the villain with the bleeding eye). He won the 2012 Cannes Best Actor award for this performance.

The story is terrifyingly plausible. The protagonist, Lucas, is getting his bearings after a job change and a divorce. He lives in a small Danish town where everyone knows everyone else, next door to his best friend. The best friend drinks too much and his wife is a little high-strung, but Lucas embraces them for who they are. He’s a regular guy who hunts and drinks with his buddies and is adored by the kids at the kindergarten where he works. He’s not a saint – his ex-wife can get him to fly off the handle with little effort.

A little girl hears a sexual reference at home that she does not understand (and no one in the story could ever find out how she heard it). When she innocently repeats it at school, the staff is alarmed and starts to investigate. Except for one mistake by the school principal, everyone in the story acts reasonably. One step in the process builds upon another until the town’s parents become so understandably upset that a public hysteria ensues.

Director Thomas Vinterburg had previously created the underappreciated Celebration (Festen). The Hunt is gripping – we’re on the edges of our seats as the investigation snowballs and Lucas is put at risk of losing everything – his reputation, his job, his child, his friends, his liberty and even his life. Can Lucas be cleared, and, if he is, how scarred will he be? The Hunt is a superbly crafted film with a magnificent performance by Mikkelsen.

The Hunt is available to rent on DVD from Netflix and to stream from Netflix Instant, Amazon Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and PlayStation Video.

Cinequest: DAN AND MARGOT

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DAN AND MARGOT
DAN AND MARGOT

Margot is a vibrant and salty 27-year-old Canadian woman. She suffered a schizophrenic break when she was away at college. Now she’s medicated, and fighting to resume her life. Margot is the subject of the documentary Dan and Margot, and I’ll leave you to find out who Dan is or is not.

How do we think of schizophrenia?  We often visualize the feral-looking guy ranting to himself outside the 7-11. But how about those who are just slipping into a schizophrenic break or those medicated – with the disorder under control?  In this very personal look examination of one person’s illness, Margot and her friends and family share how the disorder can sneak up on not only the individual, but their support system, as  well.

Filmmakers Chloe Sosa-Sims and Jake Chirico parachute themselves and their camera into Margot’s life and take advantage of the access without sensationalizing her life. Dan and Margot is a solid and thought-provoking movie.

[Note: there is a little animation in Dan and Margot, but most is live action and almost all of that is Margot herself. The trailer is more representative of the film than is the still image above.]

Cinequest: PARABELLUM

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PARABELLUM
PARABELLUM

The Argentine drama Parabellum is a trippy movie unlike anything that you’ve seen.  Set in a pre-apocalyptic near future, cities are crumbling into disorder and meteors are plunging into the Earth with alarmingly increased frequency.  Clearly everyone should be panicking, but no one is.

Instead, the characters in Parabellum don blindfolds and are motored up a jungle river to a secret adventure resort where they learn survivalist skills – kind of Camp Heart of Darkness.  The most life-and-death exercises are addressed matter-of-factly, with an absurdly calm determination that makes Parabellum seem like something out of Buñuel.

Parabellum’s measured pace seems so at odds with the impending disaster (whatever it will be), that it’s part of the joke.  What the hell is going on and what are these people thinking?  Beautifully shot, engrossing and witty – Parabellum is a wacky treat.

Cinequest: DEMIMONDE

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DEMIMONDE
DEMIMONDE

Sex, intrigue and murder – the atmospheric Hungarian drama Demimonde has it all.  It’s just before World War I in Pest, and we meet a wealthy kept woman (Patricia Kovács), her longtime housekeeper (Dorka Gryllus) and the new maid (Laura Döbrösi). Indeed, the movie’s title describes the professional courtesan,  shamelessly successful as a professional mistress that she can dare to seek riskier and riskier gratification.  Mustering more poise, dignity and sexiness than anyone else,  she utterly flouts all the conventions of respectability.  I don’t need them to respect me, she says, I just need them to be fascinated.  Indeed, she fascinates so many of the characters, that the sexual entanglements pile up until there are grave consequences.

All of the characters are hungering for something – sex and status, lost love, new love, sustenance, amusement.  The three lead actresses and all the supporting cast are exceptionally good.  Director Attila Szász convincingly takes us to the period and keeps the surprises coming.

With all the misbehavior, someone is sure to be punished and, when that happens, Demimonde becomes operatic. It’s one of the most satisfyingly entertaining films at Cinequest, and it plays the festival on March 2, 3, 9 and 10.

Cinequest: CHUCK NORRIS VS. COMMUNISM

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CHUCK NORRIS VS. COMMUNISM
CHUCK NORRIS VS. COMMUNISM

During the Communist regime of the repugnant Nicolae Ceaușescu, Romanians could only experience two hours of television per day and all of that was boring Ceaușescu propaganda.  They were starving for culture, of any type and any quality, and a ring of smugglers responded to the demand with bootleg VHS tapes of American movies.  The rewarding documentary Chuck Norris Vs. Communism tells this story.

Now this isn’t about high cinema from America and the rest of the world inspiring the current crop of Romanian auteurs – although that did happen. This is about ordinary Romanians feasting on even the crappiest American movies, especially the never-ending cascade of action movies (Chuck Norris movies were among the favorites).

The authorities, usually obsessively repressive, turned a blind eye top the VHS smuggling because they totally missed the subversive impact the movies that were not overtly political.  But the ordinary Romanians saw abundantly stocked American supermarkets and measured that against their own deprivation.

One guy organized this VHS smuggling ring.  Amazingly, one woman narrated a Romanian voiceover for all these movies – hundreds of them.  It was a shady business for him and a moonlighting gig for her – but now they are cultural heroes in Romania.  We meet these two briefly in Chuck Norris Vs. Communism.  And we hear the testimony of Romanians touched by cinema – even trashy cinema.

What is banal in some cultures can have a significant impact on others.  Chuck Norris Vs. Communism makes that point engagingly, in a story you won’t see anywhere else.  Plays Cinequest on March 4, 6 and 12.

An Oscar Dinner after all, thanks to The Wife and Trader Joes

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oscar dinner

OK, so I just posted that we would skip our annual Oscar Dinner because we were returning from an away weekend, but The Wife insisted on meeting the challenge of catering it from Trader Joes. So here we are:

Water, rushing so extravagantly from Immortan Joe’s cliff-side fortress in Mad Max: Fury Road;

Pint of Ale from one of the Boston bars in Spotlight;

Bison Jerky from  The Revenant (no raw bison liver available at TJs);

Spaghetti, which Ellis mastered eating, after much practice, in Brooklyn;

Peas and carrots from the Donovan family dinner in Bridge of Spies (served in vintage Corning ware – also on the Donovans’ table);

Potatoes (but not cultivated in our own waste) from The Martian; and

Cake as an homage both to Jake’s birthday cake (sans candles) in Room and to the Las Vegas convention dessert that Mark Baum disgustedly consumes in The Big Short.

No Oscar dinner this year

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Oscar dinner from 2015
Oscar dinner from 2015

Every year, we have watched the Oscars while enjoying a meal inspired by the Best Picture nominees. We’ve had sushi for Lost in Translation, cowboy beans for Brokeback Mountain, Somali chicken suqaar for Captain Phillips, etc.  The photo above shows last year’s Oscar dinner, finished with the courtesan au chocolate, the elaborate filled pastry smuggled to Gustave (Ray Fiennes) in The Grand Budapest Hotel.

But this year, The Wife and I are spending an away weekend with our daughter and son-in-law, so we just can’t pull it off.

But, if we were going to stage our dinner, we would have considered:

  • spaghetti from Brooklyn;
  • potatoes (but not cultivated in our own waste) from The Martian;
  • pub pints from one of the Boston bars in Spotlight;
  • Steve Carell’s Las Vegas convention dessert in The Big Short;
  • and I like the idea of raw bison liver from The Revenant, but The Wife was never going to agree to that.

Below is our 2011 pièce de résistance, our Severed Hand Ice Sculpture for 127 Hours and Winter’s Bone.

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

help get a Cinequest star to the festival

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THE PROMISED BAND
THE PROMISED BAND

The thought-provoking documentary The Promised Band has its world premiere next week at Cinequest. It’s about a group of Israeli and Palestinian women seeking to fight through the cultural, legal, political, military and security barriers between them (by forming a girl band).   I’ve seen it, and it effectively brings the audience into the Israel-Palestine border situation and the isolating effects on both Israelis and Palestinians.  The Promised Band is one of the 129 woman-directed films at this year’s Cinequest.

The most compelling subject of the documentary is the main Palestinian character, the charismatic Lina. There’s now a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to bring Lina from Ramallah to San Jose for Cinequest: Let’s Get Lina to California . I’ve kicked in a little, and I’d appreciate it if you would consider helping out, too.