This weekend at Cinequest

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Don't miss IDA at noon on Saturday
Don’t miss IDA at noon on Saturday

My feature articles and comments on individual Cinequest movies and my feature articles are linked at CINEQUEST 2014.  Follow @themoviegourmet on twitter for real-time Cinequest coverage.  Here are my tips for Cinequest films this weekend:

TODAY

Heavenly Shift: I howled at this hilariously dark (very dark) Hungarian comedy about a rogue ambulance crew with a financial incentive to deliver its patients dead on arrival. North American premiere at 2:30 PM.

SATURDAY

A special screening of Fruitvale Station: the masterpiece debut from Bay Area filmmaker Ryan Coogler, introduced by LA Times and NPR Morning Edition movie critic Kenneth Turan.

Haven’t seen it, but the chatter in festival queues is universally positive for the Canadian weeper Down River.

Words and Pictures: I haven’t seen this romantic comedy starring Clive Owen and the ever-radiant Juliette Binoche as sparring teachers, but it figures to be a crowd pleaser.

SUNDAY

A noon screening is your last chance to see one of the very best films at Cinequest, the polish drama Ida, which won the International Critics’ Award at the Toronto International Film Festival.  Justifiably very popular at Cinequest.

Hunting Elephants: I haven’t seen this Israeli caper comedy starring Patrick Stewart, but it’s picked up positive buzz at the festival.

Here’s the 2014 Cinequest program and ticket information.

Cinequest: Heavenly Shift

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Heavenly Shift1The dark Hungarian comedy Heavenly Shift (Isteni mûszak) is deliriously funny.  A rogue ambulance crew gets kickbacks from a shady funeral director if the patient dies en route to the hospital.  Said undertaker also uses his coffin inventory for his human smuggling ring, and he makes his payoffs in a Chinese restaurant.  The ambulance driver is addicted to laughing gas and scolds everyone about the difference between samurai and ninja swords.  Then there’s the addict who lives in the subway and repeatedly slashes herself so she can jump the responding ambulance crew and steal their morphine.

The laughs are enhanced by spaghetti western music, complete with showdown-in-the-main-street power chords for dramatic confrontations.  The cast delivers wonderfully dead pan performances, especially Roland Rába (Question in Details in the 2011 Cinequest).  There’s an especially messy emergency tracheotomy in a produce market and a hysterically madcap runaway ambulance sequence near the end.

Now this is a DARK comedy – and if you don’t find the likes of Killer Joe, The Guard, Bernie and Headhunters really funny, then this may not be for you.  For cynics like me, the more noir the better, and I think Heavenly Shift is a freaking riot.

Heavenly Shift’s North American Premiere is March 7 at Cinequest, and it plays again on March 12 and 14.

Cinequest: Ida

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IdaThe Polish drama Ida is a gem – one of the best movies at this year’s Cinequest.  The title character is a novice nun who has been raised in a convent orphanage. Just before she is to take her vows in the early 1960s, she is told for the first time that she has an aunt.  She meets the aunt, and Ida learns that she is the survivor of a Jewish family killed in the Holocaust.  The aunt takes the novice on an odd couple road trip to trace the fate of their family.

The chain-smoking aunt (Agata Kulesza) is a judge and consumes vast quantities of vodka to self-medicate her own searing memories. But the most profound difference isn’t that the aunt is a hard ass and that the nun is prim and devout.  The most important contrast is between the worldly aunt (who has been around the block) and the utterly naive and inexperienced novice.  The young woman must make the choice between a future that follows her upbringing or one which her biological heritage opens to her.  As Ida unfolds, her family legacy makes her choice an informed one.

The novice Ida, played by newcomer Agata Trzebuchowska, is very quiet but anything but fragile.  Saying little, she takes in the world with a penetrating gaze and a just-under-the-surface magnetic strength.

Superbly photographed in black and white, each shot is exquisitely composed.  Watching shot after shot in Ida is like walking through a museum gazing at masterpiece paintings one after the other.  Ida was directed and co-written by Pawel Pawlikowski, who also recently directed the British coming of age story My Summer of Love (with Emily Blunt) and the French thriller The Woman in the Fifth (with Kristin Scott Thomas and Ethan Hawke).  He is an effective and economic story-teller, packing textured characters and a compelling story into an 80 minute film.

Ida is also successful in avoiding grimness. Pawlikowski has crafted a story which addresses the pain of the characters without being painful to watch.  There’s some pretty fun music from a touring pop/jazz combo and plenty of wicked sarcasm from the aunt.

Ida won the International Critics’ Award at the Toronto International Film Festival.  Ida plays just one more time at Cinequest (unless it makes the Encore Day program) – on this Sunday, March 9, at noon.

Cinequest: Finsterworld

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FinsterworldOK, here’s a movie like none you’ve seen before – not that this is always a good thing…The offbeat German film Finsterworld peels back the orderly veneer of German society to reveal odd subcultures (they have Furries and foot fetishists in Germany, too).   Finsterworld (the title presumably punned after its writer director Frauke Finsterwalder) begins and ends with Cat Stevens’ bubbly  The Wind and perks along like a quirky comedy, until it descends into a scathing and pessimistic assessment of German society.

The story follows a pedicurist, a documentation, a traffic cop, a forest hermit, some high school kids, a rich couple and a teacher who are revealed to be interconnected – and all deeply troubled under the surface.  Ranging from quirky to twisted to downright evil, the characters are cursed with collective guilt from You Know What (hint: 1933-1945).

I must point out that there is one unforgettable scene of (all things) cookie-baking – at once appalling, disgusting and very funny.

Finsterworld, which had its North American Premiere at Cinequest, has its moments and never drags.  But engaging with the film depends on whether you’re ready for a cynical and hopeless assessment of today’s Germans.

Cinequest: The Circle Within

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Circle Within

The Circle Within (Icimdeki Cember) is a Turkish fable that turns into a psychological drama. An old peddler trudges between isolated hamlets when a younger man knocks him senseless and draws a circle in the dirt around the fallen old man.  When he awakes, the old man refuses to leave the circle, which is not a surprise to the younger man.  Why is the younger man so cruel?  How the younger man know that the peddler won’t leave the circle?  Who is really trapped?  And why?

The power of the circle stems from the Kurdish religion of yezidism, a non-Islamic minority religion related to Zoroastrianism and Sufism.

Only 72 minutes long, The Circle Within is very slow, and I had trouble staying awake. The Circle Within is not a favorite of mine, but it provides a rare glimpse into yezidism, the Kurds and the Big Sky country of eastern Turkey. The Circle Within’s North American Premiere is March 5, and it plays at Cinequest on March 6, 7, and 10.

Cinequest: The Verdict

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VerdictThe Belgian drama The Verdict (Het Vonnis) won Best Director at the Montreal Film Festival.  A man’s family is destroyed by an especially senseless and brutal crime, and the monstrous perp is freed by an infuriatingly absurd legal technicality.  When he takes vigilante revenge, he is tried for the crime.  Any American jury would free this guy in about eleven seconds, but this is Belgium and the dead perp’s lawyer is passionate about the rule of law, and the cynical prosecutors need to convict the guy to cover up their own incompetence.  So we have a courtroom drama.  The Verdict advocates the political position that the Belgian justice system protects the rights of criminal defendants at the expense of victims – kind of like Dirty Harry (only in Dutch).

As well-crafted as is The Verdict, I think that it will be difficult for American audiences to relate to the political morality play; The Verdict is more accessible as a psychological drama – the portrait of a man who has nothing left to lose, but still grasps for a glimmer of justice.

Cinequest: Class Enemy

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Class EnemyIn the gripping drama Class Enemy (Razredni sovraznik), a high school class is a pretty typical collection of teenagers – some more rebellious than others, some a little more mature – but generally a potent package of hormones and bad judgement.  One boy has just lost his mother and has anger issues, one artistic girl is very sensitive and another boy is just a smug punk.  The class gets a new foreign language teacher, and he is demanding, humorless, abrasive and insensitive.  The kids are already wary of him when they are rocked by a tragedy – and they explode.

Here’s what is special about Class Enemy.  The kids’ reactions vary, but are true to their individual personalities.  The reactions of the kids and adults are completely plausible, and not the least bit contrived.  And the filmmakers avoid taking the side of any kid or any adult – no character is completely correct.  This story could have been turned into a really trite Hollywood movie about kids united against a mean adult authority figure, but the filmmakers trust the audience to accept the nuance and ambiguity that we experience in real life.

Class Enemy, Slovenia’s entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar, is an authentic and taut drama.

DVD/Stream of the Week: Fruitvale Station

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FRUITVALE STATION

Note:  You can see Fruitvale Station on the big screen this week at Cinequest.  It will be introduced by LA Times and NPR Morning Edition movie critic Kenneth Turan on Saturday, March 8 at the San Jose Rep.

Here’s number 8 on my Best Movies of 2013. The emotionally powerful Fruitvale Station explores the humanity behind the news. If, as I do, you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, you know what happened to Oscar Grant. Returning to the East Bay after 2008 New Year’s Eve revelries in San Francisco, the unarmed 22-year-old was handcuffed and lying on his stomach when he was mortally wounded by a transit cop’s gunshot. Oscar Grant was African-American. The transit cop was white. Multiple cell phone videos of the incident went viral on New Year’s Day. Fruitvale Station opens with one of those shaky videos.

But the beauty and strength of this impressive film is that Fruitvale Station is not about the incident and its political fallout – it’s about the people involved, in their workaday and familial roles to which all of us can relate. It follows the fictionalized life of Oscar Grant as he lives out what he doesn’t know is his last day.

Writer-director Ryan Coogler’s Oscar Grant is a complete and textured character. Oscar is a charming guy, a loving father and the fun dad/uncle who children love roughhousing with. He’s remarkably unreliable as a boyfriend, son and employee. He’s done a stretch in San Quentin, and he’s got a temper. He’s capable of random acts of kindness. He’s a complete package of decency, fecklessness, irresponsibility and possibilities. Would he have turned his life around if he hadn’t been at Fruitvale Station that night? We’ll never know. And that’s the tragedy laid bare by Fruitvale Station.

Although it’s a tragedy with some heartbreaking moments, Fruitvale Station isn’t a downer – it’s too full of humanity for that. Neither is it a political screed; Coogler lets the facts speak for themselves and the audience to draw its conclusions.

The acting is first-rate, especially Michael B. Jordan as Oscar, Melonie Diaz as his girlfriend and the great Octavia Spencer as his mom. Equally, important, the supporting cast is just as authentic.

It’s a stunning debut feature for 27-year-old filmmaker Ryan Coogler, from whom much is now expected. (Coogler is also an African-American from the East Bay who is roughly the same age as Oscar Grant.)

Fruitvale Station was justifiably honored at both the Sundance and Cannes film festivals. Fruitvale Station is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, Vudu, Google Play, YouTube and Xbox Video.

Best Bets at Cinequest

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HEAVENLY SHIFT
HEAVENLY SHIFT

17 movies to watch for at Cinequest:

Most likely to be crowd pleasers:

  • The Grand Seduction: In Cinequest’s opening night film, Brendan Gleeson (In Bruges, The Guard, The General, Braveheart) and Gordon Pinsent (Away from Her) play isolated Canadians try to snooker a young doctor (Taylor Kitsch of Friday Night Lights) into settling in their podunk village.
  • Friended to Death: Bromantic comedy about a jerk who fakes his own death to see how many of his social media “friends” will attend his funeral.  Very funny.
  • Words and Pictures: Romantic comedy starring Clive Owen and the ever-radiant Juliette Binoche as sparring teachers.
  • Dom Hemingway: Jude Law and Richard E. Grant star as two cheesy British hoods in a reportedly funny and fast-paced crime caper. Opens widely in theaters in April.
  • Unforgiven: the Japanese remake of Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-winning Unforgiven  starring Ken Watanabe (Inception, The Last Samurai, Letters from Iwo Jima).   Since Clint’s career was boosted by a remake of Yojimbo (A Fistful of Dollars), it’s fitting that his Unforgiven is remade  as a samurai film.
  • Fruitvale Station: the masterpiece debut from Bay Area filmmaker Ryan Coogler, introduced by LA Times and NPR Morning Edition movie critic Kenneth Turan.

Most promising foreign entries:

  • Ida: This Polish story of a young nun who learns that she is the survivor of a Jewish family killed in the Holocaust won the International Critics’ Award at the Toronto International Film Festival.
  • The Verdict:  This Belgian drama won Best Director at the Montreal Film Festival.  I’ll be writing about The Verdict early this week.
  • The Illiterate:  Paulina Garcia, the star of the popular Gloria, stars in this metaphorical emotional Chilean drama.
  • Class Enemy: You’ll be rocked by this classroom drama, Slovenia’s entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar.  I’ll be writing about Class Enemy early this week.
  • Heavenly Shift: A hilariously dark (very dark) Hungarian comedy about a rogue ambulance crew with a financial incentive to deliver its patients dead on arrival.  I howled at Heavenly Shift, and I’ll be writing about it early this week.
  • Zoran: My Nephew the Idiot: OK, this Italian comedy has a great title, and it was a hit at the Venice Film Festival.  I’ll be writing about Zoran before its US Premiere.

Documentaries:

  • Teenage: Great subject material: chronicling that 20th century American phenomenon – the evolution of “the teenager”.
  • Sex(ed): The Movie: Sampling Sex Ed instructional films from 1910 through today.  Should be a howl.  May be thoughtful, too.  World Premiere at Cinequest.

Something you haven’t seen before:

  • Happenings on the Eighth Day: This is a pure art film, juxtaposing the attempts to create art against forces seeking to censor or obliterate it.  Filmed in the Bay Area by Iranian filmmakers. World Premiere at Cinequest.
  • The Circle Within: A Turkish fable that turns into a psychological drama.  Not a favorite of mine, but it provides a rare glimpse into the Kurdish religion of yezidism.

Here’s the Cinequest program and ticket information.

Weighing in on the Oscars

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Jared Leto and Matthew McConaughey in DALLAS BUYERS CLUB
Jared Leto and Matthew McConaughey in DALLAS BUYERS CLUB

Yeesh, what a bore – and I used to LIVE for the annual Oscar show.

There were heartfelt and classy moments from Jared Leto, Lupita Nyong’o and Bill Murray.  Jamie Foxx added some unscripted foolery and Best Song winners Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez delivered a clever rhyming acceptance.  That was it – five worthwhile moments in a three-hour drudge through self-congratulation and scary cosmetic surgery.

How does one celebrate our most vivid, immediate and accessible art form and make our eyes glaze over?  Apparently, the most effective means is to devote a fifth of the telecast to live musical performances, mostly from the worthless Best Song category.  This show is supposed to be about cinema, not the mediocre songs that dot a few of the films.  Wasting yet more screen time with Twitter jokes didn’t help.  They’ve also sucked the pathos out of the In Memoriam montage, which has generally been my favorite part of the show.

As to the winners themselves? They all seemed deserving to me.  I would have preferred The Act of Killing to win Best Documentary and Before Midnight to win Best Original Screenplay, but there weren’t any forehead-slapping boners this year.  12 Years a Slave is undeniably a fine film, but I don’t know many folks who will actually ENJOY the two-and-a-half hours of unremitting brutality before Brad Pitt shows up in an Amish beard.

Bottom line: good year for the awards and bad year for the award show.