The Movie Gourmet

DVD/Stream of the Week: WHIPLASH

March 17, 2015 by movie gourmet

J.K. Simmons deservedly won an Oscar for his performance in Whiplash , the drama about the line between motivation and abuse and the line between ambition and obsession. A young jazz drummer (Miles Teller of The Spectacular Now and Rabbit Hole) attends an elite music academy (think Julliard) and comes under the attention of a drill sergeant-type of instructor (J.K. Simmons). The teacher-tormentor pushes the kid toward perfection through tough love and, ultimately, abuse. To what extent is the teacher trying to get the kid to excel? And how much of the teacher’s behavior is just sadistic bullying? And how will the kid respond? (The movie’s title reflects both a jazz song and the teacher’s instructional technique.)

J.K. Simmons is a guy whose name you may not recognize, but whose face you will. He has 143 screen credits, most memorably as the of the ironic and supportive father in Juno and Vernon Schillinger, the Aryan Brotherhood leader in the prison series Oz. This is Simmons’ movie; it’s an exceptional performance, that will probably land Simmons an Oscar nomination.

How good a movie is Whiplash? It’s a very good one – taut, and intense. The fact that it’s extremely focused on the two characters and the fundamental questions about their characters is a strength, but also limits it from being a great movie. Still, Simmons, Teller and the unrelenting tension makes Whiplash definitely worth seeing. Whiplash is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and Flixster.

LEVIATHAN: the overwhelming crush of corruption

March 14, 2015 by movie gourmet

The extraordinary Russian drama Leviathan is a searing indictment of society in post-Soviet Russia – and it’s one of the best movies of the year. A Job-like Everyman struggles to protect his home from the clutches of the town’s corrupt mayor – and he has to battle the corruption that has permeated the political and justice systems. The very struggle takes its toll in his relationships, too, and the audience begins to wonder just how much he’s going to be left with at the end of the story.

Despite being deliberately paced and darkly themed, Leviathan is very watchable. The characters are superbly crafted and the story is filled with “what’s going to happen next?” moments. Writer-director Andrei Zvyagintsev and co-writer Oleg Negin are keen observers of human nature and season Leviathan with plenty of wry humor (e.g., the mayor runs his criminal Sopranos-like enterprise from a desk under a portrait of Putin). And there’s a surprise at the end.

Our Everyman is Kolya (Vladimir Vdovichenkov), who is hotheaded and drinks too much. He fixes cars out of his seafront home in a bleak village on the Barents Sea. His younger second wife Elena Lyadova is cipher. His teenage son (Sergey Pokhodaev) is a good kid, but troubled by the death of his mother. The performances are exceptional, along with that of Roman Madyanov as the corrupt-to-his-marrow mayor. The mayor wants to take Kolya’s property, and their battle plays out in the courts – and in extra-judicial arenas.

And then there’s the vodka abuse. The amount of vodka consumption by virtually every character is astounding. Expect (along with your fellow audience members) to gasp and giggle at the size of the pours.

The film’s only shortcoming is the heavy-handed symbolism employed to hammer home the hopelessness of the protagonist’s struggle, There’s a biblical quote (from Job, of course): “Can you draw out the Leviathan with a fishhook?”, and then shots of whales and of the skeleton of a long-dead beached whale. All this isn’t really necessary, especially with the courtroom scenes, which make the filmmakers’ point exceedingly well.

Andrei Zvyagintsev has solidified his place as one of the masters of world cinema. Leviathan is just his fourth feature, after Elena , which made my Top Ten list for 2012, and The Return, which made my Best Movies of 2004. Elena is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Vudu and Xbox Video. The Return is available on DVD from Netflix.

Leviathan was nominated for this year’s Best Foreign Language Picture Oscar, and has been critically acclaimed, currently scoring 92 on Metacritic.com. ,

Movies to See Right Now

March 13, 2015 by movie gourmet

There are two Must Sees in theaters now, and both were nominated for this year’s Best Foreign Language Picture Oscar:

The hilariously dark Argentine comedy Wild Tales, a series of individual stories about revenge fantasies becoming actualized.
The Job-like Russian drama Leviathan, a searing expose of post-Soviet Russian society.

Queen and Country is director John Boorman’s (Deliverance) well-crafted and moderately entertaining look back at his year as a British Army conscript in the 50s.

We’ve just concluded the 2015 Cinequest film festival. Here’s all my Cinequest coverage – with several features and comments on over twenty five movies – conveniently linked on one page.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is Dear White People, a brilliant comedy about identity that’s on my list of Best Movies of 2014. It’s available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and Flixster.

On March 16, Turner Classic Movies is playing the French thriller Wages of Fear. It’s directed by that master of suspense Henri-Georges Clouzot (Diabolique), nicknamed the French Hitchcock. The Wages of Fear features one achingly scary scene where two truck drivers try to get a long truck around a cliff side hairpin curve – and the truck is filled with nitroglycerin.

DVD/Stream of the Week: DEAR WHITE PEOPLE

March 10, 2015 by movie gourmet

On its surface, the brilliant comedy Dear White People seems to be about racial identity, but – as writer-director Justin Simien points out – it’s really about personal identity (of which race is an important part). Set at a prestigious private college, Dear White People centers on a group of African-American students navigating the predominantly white college environment.

Each of the four primary characters has adopted a persona – choosing how they want others to view them. Middle class Sam is a fierce Black separatist (despite her White Dad and her eyes for that really nice White boy classmate). Coco, having made it to an elite college from the streets, is driven to succeed socially by ingratiating herself with the popular kids. Kyle, the Dean’s son, is the college BMOC, a traditional paragon, but with passions elsewhere. Lionel is floundering; despite being an African-American gay journalist, he doesn’t fit in with the Black kids, the LGBT community or the journalism clique. All four of their self-identities are challenged by campus events.

This very witty movie is flat-out hilarious. The title comes from Sam’s campus radio show, which features advice like “Dear White People, stop dancing!” and Dear White People, don’t touch our hair; what are we – a petting zoo?”. While the movie explores serious themes, it does so through raucous character-driven humor. It’s a real treat.

It’s the first feature for writer-director Justin Simien and it’s a stellar debut. Dear White People is on my list of Best Movies of 2014. I saw it at this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival and have been telling people about it for months. Dear White People is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and Flixster.

Cinequest 2015: festival recap

March 31, 2015March 8, 2015 by movie gourmet

A pronounced overall success, Cinequest 2015 delivered hearty audience-pleasers from a varied and satisfying menu that featured some real gems from the indie, documentary and world cinema categories.

The fest kicked off with two huge popular successes: the feel-good BATKID BEGINS and the hilariously dark WILD TALES, and kept up the pace throughout the first weekend with an assortment of successful premieres.

Cinequest’s Director of Programming Mike Rabehl presented a fest especially rich in first features, including:

THE CENTER: An absorbing and topical American indie drama about the seductiveness of a cult; and especially promising debut from filmmaker Charlie Griak.
ANTOINE ET MARIE: A brilliantly constructed French-Canadian drama with two unforgettable characters (actually a second feature).
IN THE COMPANY OF WOMEN: Unexpectedly sweet, this starts out with a Boys Behaving Badly set-up and then morphs into a tribute to enduring love. A festival surprise hit.
FOR SOME INEXPLICABLE REASON: A good-natured Belgian comedy containing some very innovative nuggets.

Cinequest’s international film scout Charlie Cockey came through once again with the fest’s best film, the transcendent Georgian drama CORN ISLAND, which won the Jury Award for Best Narrative Drama.

This 2015 fest was the strongest recent Cinequest for documentaries. The well-deserved Jury Award for best Documentary went to ASPIE SEEKS LOVE, the story of a surprisingly sympathetic subject. Other excellent docs included:

the sometimes jaw-dropping MEET THE HITLERS;
the pleasurable Nerd Olympics doc SWEDEN’S COOLEST NATIONAL TEAM; and
the powerful look at capital punishment, THERE WILL BE NO STAY.

Not every film was a home run. Director John Boorman’s personal appearance was a hit, but his QUEEN AND COUNTRY was only moderately entertaining. And the eagerly awaited CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA (Cesar-winning Kristen Stewart) and the Sundance award-winning SLOW WEST were clunkers.

Richard von Busack, the highly respected local film critic, picked Tuesday night’s L’ATALANTE:, rarely seen on the big screen. It’s the 1934 masterpiece of French writer-director Jean Vigo, who died at age 29 soon after its completion. A packed house agreed that this was one of Cinequest 2015’s top experiences.

Other highlights included the Belgian romantic dramedy THREE HEARTS, the French comedy GEMMA BOVERY and the exceptionally well-directed Kosovan drama THREE WINDOWS AND A HANGING.

The most underrated movie at Cinequest? Somehow, the biting darkly hilarious Mexican social satire LOS HAMSTERS is flying under the radar. I think this tale of a dysfunctional family is both very smart and very funny.

BARCO Escape showcased developing three-screen technology to envelope the audience in the cinematic experience. I have reservations about the BARCO experience, but the short film WITHDRAWAL was a definite winner.

Here’s all my Cinequest coverage – with several features and comments on over twenty-five movies – conveniently linked on one page.

Cinequest: GEMMA BOVERY

May 25, 2015March 8, 2015 by movie gourmet

Fabrice Luchini and Gemma Arterton in GEMMA BOVERY

In the delightful dark comedy Gemma Bovery, Fabrice Luchini plays a guy who has left his Type A job in Paris to take over his father’s bakery in a sleepy village in Normandy. He gets new neighbors when a young British couple named Bovery moves in. The young British woman (played by the delectable Gemma Arterton) is named Gemma Bovery, and only the baker notices the similarity to Emma Bovary. But, like the protagonist of Madame Bovary, the young British woman is also married to a Charles, becomes bored and restless and develops a wandering eye. The baker rapidly becomes obsessed with the Flaubert novel being re-enacted before his eyes and soon jumps into the plot himself. Gemma Bovery, which I saw at Cinequest 2015, is a French movie that is mostly in English.

Fabrice Luchini is a treasure of world cinema. No screen actor can deliver a funnier reaction than Luchini, and he’s the master of squeezing laughs out of an awkward moment. For me, his signature role is in the 2004 French Intimate Strangers, in which he plays a tax lawyer with a practice in a Parisian professional office building. A beautiful woman (Sandrine Bonnaire), mistakes Luchini’s office for that of her new shrink, plops herself down and, before he can interrupt, starts unloading her sexual issues. It quickly becomes awkward for him to tell her of the error, and he’s completely entranced with her revelations, so he keeps impersonating her shrink. As they move from appointment to appointment, their relationship takes some unusual twists. It’s a very funny movie, and a great performance.

Gemma Bovery is directed and co-written by Anne Fontaine (The Girl from Monaco, Coco Before Chanel). Fontaine has a taste for offbeat takes on female sexuality, which she aired in the very trashy Adore (Naomi Watts and Robin Wright as Australian cougars who take on each other’s sons as lovers) and the much better Nathalie (wife pays prostitute to seduce her cheating hubby and report back on the details).

Gemma Bovery isn’t as Out There as Nathalie, but it’s just as good. The absurdity of the coincidences in Gemma Bovery makes for a funny situation, which Luchini elevates into a very funny movie.

Cinequest: THE HOUSE ON PINE STREET

March 31, 2015March 8, 2015 by movie gourmet

So here’s the thing with every movie ghost story – either the ghost is real or the protagonist is crazy enough to hallucinate one. The beauty of The House on Pine Street is that the story is right down the middle – ya just don’t know until the end when the story takes us definitively in one direction – and then suddenly lurches right back to the other extreme.

Jennifer (Emily Goss) is a very pregnant urbanist, who reluctantly moves from her dream life in Chicago back to her whitebread hometown in suburban Kansas. Unlike Jennifer, her husband hadn’t been thriving in Chicago and Jennifer’s intrusive and judgmental mother (Cathy Barnett – perfect in the role) has set up an opportunity for him in the hometown. They move to a house that is not her dream home AT ALL, “but it’s a really good deal”.

Jennifer is pretty disgruntled, and, generally for good reason – her mom’s every sentence is loaded with disapproval. But she’s a little too alarmed about some crumbling plaster. Her mom’s housewarming party would be a social nightmare for anyone – but it’s too literally nightmarish for her. One of the guests, an amateur psychic (an excellent Jim Korinke), observes, “the house has interesting energy”.

Then some weird shit starts happening: knocks from unoccupied rooms, a crockpot lid that keeps going ajar. And we ask is the house haunted or is she hallucinating? Her sane and sensible and skeptical BFF comes from Chicago to visit as sounding board, and things do not go well.

Co-writers and co-directors Aaron and Austin Keeling keep us on the edges of our seats. Their excellent sound design borrows from The Conversation and The Shining – and that’s a good thing.

The Keelings also benefit from a fine lead – Emily Goss’ eyes are VERY alive. She carries the movie as we watch her shifting between resentfulness, terror and determination.

The total package is very successful. The House on Pine Street deserves a theatrical release.

Cinequest: SLOW WEST

March 31, 2015March 8, 2015 by movie gourmet

I love Westerns, but Slow West just didn’t work for me. It’s a film of some ambition, and it won an award at Sundance, but the movie kept sliding in and out of self-consciousness, and I could never settle in to the story.

Kodi Smitt-McGee plays a sixteen-year-old Scot completely unsuited for survival in the Old West. Nonetheless, he is devoted to a young woman and he launches a determined quest to track her down. He soon picks up a veteran Westerner (Michael Fassbender) who can guide and guard him. The two, of course, have a series of adventures along the way.

There’s some appealingly dark and droll humor in Slow West (quite a few good laughs, actually). The problem is that Slow West can’t figure out whether it should have the tone of a straight Western (Unforgiven, The Homesman) or wink at the audience (Little Big Man). Accordingly, some of the period details are so wrong that they distracted me from the story. For example, in an otherwise very funny scene with arrows and a clothesline, the Indians look like tiny, skinny Asians. Smitt-McGee employs a Scots accent in every fifth line. And Fassbender sounds like he just stepped out of a time machine from 2015.

Slow West was filmed in New Zealand, so there are grand vistas that kind of look like the American West, but then kinda don’t. This DID work for me, because it contributed an almost subconscious edge to heighten some scenes.

Bottom line: Slow West is a mess.

Cinequest: 40 DAYS OF SILENCE

March 8, 2015 by movie gourmet

In the Uzbek drama 40 Days of Silence, a teenage Tajik girl undertakes a ritual vow of silence for forty days. The mystery for a non-Tajik or -Uzbek audience is why she would do this? And, we wonder, what is going to happen?

These questions are not answered definitively in 40 Days of Silence, but we sense that the stakes are life and death. The girl’s progress is related dreamily, and it’s not always clear what is happening – or whether it is really happening.

The most outstanding aspect of 40 Days of Silence is its sound design, a collection of noises not EXACTLY music, but musical in effect.

40 Days of Silence is slow but mesmerizing. It works as an art film, but is not for audience members that are uncomfortable with ambiguity.

Cinequest: THERE WILL BE NO STAY

March 7, 2015 by movie gourmet

In a society with capital punishment, someone must perform the executions. There’s a paradox inherent in the act of killing to punish killing. In Patty Dillon’s powerful documentary There Will Be No Stay, we meet the people who live with that paradox most personally:

a Georgia warden who has given the order to commence executions;
a Texas chaplain assigned to keep the condemned placid on the gurney ;
and two South Carolina correctional officers who have plunged the vials for lethal injections and mashed the buttons for the electric chair.

The effect that capital punishment has had on these men – connected to neither the victims or perpetrators, is profound and thought-provoking.

Filmmaker Dillon (who also narrates) starts with an anti-death penalty point of view, but There Will Be No Stay is anything but a screed. Having the sense to keep the movie focused on these four personal stories makes it stronger stuff.

There Will Be No Stay is filled with chilling statements like “Our eyes would meet…my eyes would be the last he would see on this planet” and “73% of Texas is in favor of execution. I can tell you that 73% of people who have witnessed an execution are NOT in favor”. And there are lots of factoids about the workaday aspects of contemporary American executions. (Alarmingly, South Carolina offers no training in the operation of the electric chair – the guards just have to wing it.)

I saw the deeply affecting There Will Be No Stay at Cinequest 2015.