Cinequest Movies Go On-line Today

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Photo caption: Tommi Korpela and Pihla Viitala in THERAPY. Courtesy of Cinequest.

Beginning today, and thru midnight March 31, select films from this year’s Cinequest are now available to watch at home through Cinequest’s online festival Cinejoy. The price is less than ten bucks per movie for all but two, and you can watch all of them with a $50 pass.

There’s a Spotlight section where, for $14..99, you can join others watching the film at the same time and participate in Q&A with the filmmakers. The Spotlight film I recommend is Adult Children.

Amber Gray in HEARTWORM. Courtesy of Cinequest.

The other films that I recommend are in the Cinejoy Showcase section, so you can watch them whenever convenient, for only $9.99. They include my choices for the very best of the festival:

  • Heartworm: Set in a near future where humans can connect to an AI-generated world indistinguishable from reality, a couple grapples with the heartbreaking death of their daughter. The mom is bravely working through her grief, trying to harness her resilience; the dad, equally shattered, has emotionally shut down. When we see the daughter, is it a flashback or a reappearance? The mom must figure out whether she has experienced a trauma-induced hallucination or a psychotic break – or whether the dad has stepped into an insidious AI pseudo-reality where their trauma didn’t happen? The distinguished Broadway actress Amber Gray, most recently Tony-nominated for Hadestown, soars as the mom, fighting fiercely for her sanity at the moment of her greatest vulnerability. This brilliantly constructed film is a striking debut feature for writer-directors Miriam Louise Arens and Mitchell Arens. World premiere.
  • Therapy: A husband and wife team of therapists have over-invested in a spacious seaside manor, where they are about to host a five-day couples retreat. Trouble is, the splendid but decaying estate has tapped out their finances, and their own marriage is on the rocks. What could possibly go wrong? This very funny Finnish dramedy sends up psychobabble while exploring the topics of grief, loyalty, betrayal, jealousy, disappointment and relationship fatigue. Therapy’s screenplay brims with insight, wit and humanity. Second narrative feature for writer-director Paavo Westerberg. US premiere.

These other films are good, too:

These are all worth your while, but be sure not to miss Heartworm and Therapy.

Ellie Moon in YOUNG FEMALE PLAYWRIGHT. Courtesy of Cinequest.

HEEL: don’t try this at home

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Photo caption: Andrea Riseborough, Kit Rakusen, Stephan Graham and Anson Boon in HEEL. Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

As the psychological thriller Heel opens, we see the feral teenage Tommy (Anson Boon) partying insatiably and behaving despicably. He is a bully, a vandal, and a hedonist who thinks of no one but himself. If he had any aspiration or cultural curiosity, he might see himself as the Malcom McDowell character in A Clockwork Orange. Addled by drugs and booze, he staggers off to pass out.

Tommy regains consciousness, and finds himself wearing a steel collar on his neck, chained to the wall of a dungeon-like basement. He doesn’t know where he is, but it’s in an isolated house in the remote English countryside. The home belongs to Chris (Stephen Graham) and Kathryn (Andrea Riseborough), who have KIDNAPPED Tommy with the intention of turning him into a good boy, a kid who is civil, respectful, considerate and responsible. Chris and Kathryn have a 10-year-old son Jonathan (Kit Rakusen), who is almost sickeningly obedient.

Yes, this is all bizarre. It is not okay to hold someone against their will, literally chained to the wall, even if Chris and Kathryn act like it’s the most normal and benevolent behavior. Even Tommy has enough awareness to label his situation a “Guantanamo”.

Chris and Kathryn hire a young, undocumented Macedonian woman, Rina (Monika Frajczyk), as a housekeeper. The family is so twisted, and Tommy is so vile, that Rina’s point of view validates the audience’ perspective.

Anson Boon in HEEL. Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

What Chris and Kathryn are doing is inhumane, illegal and very, very creepy. Corporal punishment does work to modify behavior in the short term, that’s not the reason that civilized society doesn’t use it anymore. Of course, this very extreme situation is used to explore just what children need from their parents. Kids do need stability, consistency, discipline, attention and unconditional love, and Chris and Kathryn get that much right.

As unhinged as Chris and Kathryn are, they DO really care about Tommy, which drives a surprise ending.

I love Stephen Graham as an actor. His characters can be very menacing and brutish. Here, his Chris acts like he’s naturally a milquetoast, but one very determined to stay on mission; he doesn’t LIKE using an electric prod, but if he has to…

Andrea Riseborough, another actor who is always superb, is wonderful in Heel as a woman who seems at first to live in a stupor of grief, but whose agency is eventually revealed.

The folks responsible for this story, in all its bracing originality, are Polish director Jan Komasa and co-writers Barto Bartosik (his first screenplay) and Naqqash Khalid (his second). Let’s order up some more movies from these guys!

Heel was originally titled Good Boy (which would have been a much better title IMO), but it was changed to avoid confusion with another film (the horror picture with the dog’s POV).

Heel is wild, unsettling and very entertaining. Heel is streaming on Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube and Fandango.

Wrapping up Cinequest

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Alyssa Lemperis in DEAD OR DYING. Courtesy of Cinequest.

Cinequest is winding up its in-person program today, and transitioning to its virtual festival, which I will cover tomorrow. Here are the Cinequest 2026 films that I hadn’t written about yet. The first two would have made my Best of Cinequest had I been able to screen them earlier:

  • Dead or Dying: This acidly droll comedy satirizes modern self-absorption in a near future LA where, absurdly, there’s an epidemic of youngish people falling over dead. The film is a series of vignettes that are all pretty good, but the opener with a stunningly self-centered TV star (Alyssa Lemperis) is especially hilarious, as is one with two guys pitching a new app with a target market of bosses. First film for writer-directors John Purcell and Malin von Euler-Hogan. World premiere.
  • American Muscle: n this taut, 80-minute neo-noir, Ray (David Thompson) is the mechanic at an isolated auto shop in rural Kern County. Ray is in serious debt to a very serious man, but he has a scheme for raising the payoff. Trouble is, his lender’s two very scary enforcers arrive to collect the money now, and Ray doesn’t have it. Just then, Ray’s long-estranged sister Maggie (Liana Wright-Mark) shows up unexpectedly. Ray’s financial deadline is accelerated, and he is plunged into a desperate and apparently hopeless race against the clock. In his first feature, writer-director Joel Veach creates a vivid milieu and delivers a perfect ending. Veach understands a great truth that is also a tenet of film noir: if you’re a loser, you can always find a way to make yourself a bigger loser. The dry emptiness of American Muscle’s Kern County makes the Bakersfield of Honey Don’t look like Mumbai. The intellectual curiosity of the bantering enforcers is a very funny homage to the characters of Vincent and Jules in Pulp Fiction. Very entertaining and a first-class neo-noir. World premiere.
Liana Wright-Mark in AMERICAN MUSCLE. Courtesy of Cinequest.

Here are the others that I’m catching up writing about, in the order in which I liked them:

  • Victoria: A young beautician faces an urgent decision – whether to elope with the boyfriend her parents have rejected for her. Pressure mounts as she must orchestrate her escape by the end of the work day, all while minding the beauty shop by herself. Absurdly, she is also babysitting a rooster destined for a religious festival at night. Excellent lead performance by Meenakshi Jayan and a very human, relatable story. First film for writer-director Siviranjini J. US Premiere.
  • The Vanishing of Dolores Wulff: The elements that distinguish this true crime doc are 1) a murder solved after over forty years; 2) the impact of decades-long unresolved loss upon the victim’s children; 3) the family discomfort of the primary suspect being the father of the victim’s children; and 4) an appallingly funny Greek Chorus of hot-tempered knuckleheads in the extended family. Exceptionally resourced – we meet the family, the idiot would-be vigilantes and law enforcement. First feature for Paul Sadowski. World premiere.
  • Lady D: A teen sister and brother find themselves homeless, on the unforgiving streets of Tirana, Albania. They fall into a seamy scene filled with dangers for them to escape or survive; their fortunes turn when they meet a mysterious, hard-ass woman who knows how to navigate the underworld. Writer-director Fatmir Koçi embues the film with verisimilitude, and nobody in Tirana is getting the Parent of the Year award. US premiere.
  • 98 lbs of Dynamite: A disability from birth has left a man very physically tiny, and confined to a wheelchair. Nevertheless, he is relentlessly upbeat and funny, and aggressively embracing life. We meet his mom and learn her impact on his attitude. Feel Good. First film for writer-director Loren Goldfarb. World premiere.
  • The Mechanics of Borders: A 19-year-old French Canadian guy, just out of foster care, has been establishing his own adult life, with an unpleasant first job and grubby first apartment; he has friends and a woman who wants to be his girlfriend. Suddenly, he gets a distress call from his long-estranged older sister who begs him to retrieve her from a bad situation in Arizona. Against his better judgment, he drives the two days to pick her up, and they embark on a road trip back to Quebec. Impulsive, volatile and unreliable, she is a hot mess. He is more functional, and she is more worldly, but both are emotionally scarred from their chaotic childhoods. On the road trip, they start to come to grips with the impact of their shared experience and to rebuild their relationship. Well-acted, with an especially powerful interlude while they wait for their van to be repaired, but the ending didn’t pay off for me. US Premiere.
  • The Mainland: In this enigmatic Russian tale, a woman brings her son to a remote island to await something that we will eventually discover. Superb lead performance by Anastasiya Kuimova as her character undergoes a wide palette of emotions: moodiness, determination, lust, fatigue, ennui and longing. The stark island landscape is visually stunning. But there’s also a mysterious whale on her side – some magical realism that didn’t work for me. US premiere.
  • Dancing on the Elephant: In this Canadian dramedy, an elderly woman (an excellent Sheila McCarthy) is moved from her home to an independent living facility. There she meets another female resident who is outrageously subversive. Not bad, but it mines the same material as much better geezer comedies like Cloudburst and Thelma. First narrative feature for directors Julia Neill and Jacob Z. Smith. US premiere.
  • Lonely Nights: In this Mexican coming of age drama, an almost-college-age kid flounders socially. His parents and friends are rich, but he is directionless and socially awkward. He hires a hooker and then becomes infatuated with her – which everyone but him knows cannot last. It’s a well-crafted and sweet film, but I’ve just lost all patience with the patient with angst of the very privileged. First feature for director and co-writer Julian Acosta Vera. World premiere.
  • Give It Up: A failing comic tries to restart his life by going on the road with yet another tour of one-night stands. Trouble is, this loser is too unlovable, so we just don’t care. World premiere.
  • After Love: A decades-long marriage between two aging Iranian immigrants has long ago sank into bitter co-existence. The husband finally snaps, launching a series of misadventures for the two. This is supposed to be a comedy, but the two are so unlikable and some moments so transgressive, that it’s not watchable. World premiere.

Tomorrow, I’ll be posting about which of these films, along with others I’ve already written about will become available to watch in Cinequest’s virtual festival, Cinejoy.

Meenakshi Jayan in VICTORIA. Courtesy of Cinequest.

AMERICAN MUSCLE: perfectly-seasoned mixture of humor, menace and cynicism

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Liana Wright-Mark in AMERICAN MUSCLE. Courtesy of Cinequest.

In the taut, 80-minute neo-noir American Muscle, Ray (David Thompson) is the mechanic at an isolated auto shop in rural Kern County. Ray is in serious debt to a very serious man, but he has a scheme for raising the payoff. Trouble is, his lender’s two very scary enforcers arrive to collect the money now, and Ray doesn’t have it. Just then, Ray’s long-estranged sister Maggie (Liana Wright-Mark) shows up unexpectedly. Ray’s financial deadline is accelerated, and he is plunged into a desperate and apparently hopeless race against the clock.

The out-of-town enforcers (Gbenga Akinnabe and Brendan Sexton III), with their chattiness and intellectual curiosity, are a welcome homage to the hit men Vincent and Jules in Pulp Fiction. (And I love that they wear bolo ties with their suits!)

Thompson and Wright-Mark are excellent as siblings who have survived a grim upbringing that will either make one strong and resilient or break one into weakness. American Muscle reveals that childhood’s impact on both Ray and Maggie.

David Thompson in AMERICAN MUSCLE. Courtesy of Cinequest.

In his first feature, writer-director Joel Veach creates a vivid milieu and delivers a perfect ending. Veach understands a great truth that is also a tenet of film noir: if you’re a loser, you can always find a way to make yourself a bigger loser.

The dry emptiness of American Muscle’s Kern County (it was actually shot in Santa Clarita) makes the Bakersfield of Honey Don’t look like Mumbai.

I screened American Muscle for its world premiere at the 2026 Cinequest. A perfectly-seasoned mixture of humor, menace and cynicism, it’s ever entertaining and a first class neo-noir.

David Thompson and Liana Wright-Mark in AMERICAN MUSCLE. Courtesy of Cinequest.

Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: Milos Forman’s THE FIREMEN’S BALL, airing this week on TCM.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – a new review of Fackham Hall. ICYMI here are my Thoughts on the Oscars.

I’m still covering the ongoing Cinequest film festival, with all my coverage linked on my Cinequest 2026 page. Watch for my festival wrap-up on Monday and, on Tuesday, my recommendations for Cinequest movies you can stream at home.

CURRENT MOVIES

  • The Bride!: a funnier Bonnie and Clyde, with monsters. In theaters.
  • Fackham Hall: silly, low-brow, and that’s okay. HBO Max (free), Amazon, AppleTV.
  • A Private Life: a shrink and her own issues. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.

ON TV

THE FIREMEN’S BALL

On March 22, Turner Classic Movies presents Miloš Forman‘s 1967 Czech comedy The Firemen’s Ball.  In his youth, Forman lived through the Nazis, who he described as evil, and the Communists, who he described as absurd. The Firemen’s Ball is a comedy of errors set during the annual ball of a small town fire brigade. It’s an obligatory occasion, and everyone is just going through the motions. No one is willing or able to do what they are supposed to be doing, whether it is protecting the raffle prizes or even putting out fires. The film eviscerated the moral bankruptcy of the Communist society.

The bumbling old farts on the ball committee try to put on a beauty contest; they shanghai a bunch of young women in attendance and parade them around the committee room to prep them for the pageant. The Wife was offended by the sexism of the scene, but she didn’t stick around to see the committee get their comeuppance when the contestants themselves blow up the Big Announcement and turn the committee members into objects of ridicule. Stick with it – the whole movie is only 73 minutes long.

WARDRIVER: techno-noir

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Dane DeHaan in WARDRIVER. Courtesy of Cinequest.

In the pulsating and highly original thriller Wardriver, Cole (Dane DeHaan) is a hacker, who drives around Salt Lake City logging on to other people’s wireless networks, locating their business payrolls and draining them into his own secret accounts. He conveniently claims to only steal from banks, not people. Cole may be a professional criminal, but he is a geeky as your company’s IT guy. If you’re not already paranoid about the security of your home router, you will be.

Alarmingly, Cole finds himself entangled with a sequence of extremely dangerous bad guys, each scarier than the last. When he meets a beautiful woman who may or may not be who she says she is, his compulsion to save her puts him at even more risk. You will recognize all the elements of neo-noir here, but with a refreshingly techie flavor.

Dane DeHaan’s performance carries this well-acted film. DeHaan is always good (Kill Your Darlings, LIFE, Oppenheimer), and here his Cole struggles, relying on his wits alone, to keep things in his control. Fittingly for a noir protagonist, Cole recognizes that he is an underdog, but doesn’t grasp just how over-matched he is.

Sasha Calle in WARDRIVER. Courtesy of The Avenue.

Sasha Calle delivers just the right mix of vulnerability, sexiness and well-masked toughness as the object of Cole’s infatuation. Calle was excellent in In the Summers, an overlooked indie that made my list of Best Movies of 2024.

Mamadou Athie and William Belleau (Killers of the Flower Moon) stand out in supporting roles.

In a complete departure from her brilliant debut film Electrick Children, this time, director Rebecca Thomas works in a conventional genre and keeps the pace sizzling. The highly original techno noir screenplay was written by Daniel Casey.

I screened Wardriver for its world premiere at Cinequest, where it made my Best of Cinequest.

FACKHAM HALL: silly, low-brow, and that’s okay

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Photo caption: Thomasin McKenzie, Katherin Waterston, Damian Lewis and Emma Laird in FACKHAM HALL. Courtesy of Bleecker Street.

Fackham Hall is a parody of the beloved Downton Abbey franchise, which has many aspects which can be mocked. The humor is generally low-brow, as you can see from the photo below. At its silliest, it’s still mostly funny, and the jokes are rapid-fire. Look away from the screen for even a a second, and you risk missing a sight gag in the background. Think Airplane!.

Ben Radcliffe (with erection) and Thomasin McKenzie in FACKHAM HALL. Courtesy of Bleecker Street.

Fackham Hall does a good job of mocking Downton Abbey’s fundamental premises, that the owners are preoccupied with keeping the estate in the family, even with the tangles of 800-year-old inheritance law, and with an obsolete business model – and, of course, the ridiculous privilege bestowed upon rich twits by meritless birthright.

Damian Lewis, Katharine Waterston and Thomasin McKenzie are very good as the aristocratic owners and Ben Radcliffe is very good as the new Downstairs hall boy.

I usually don’t write about a movie’s publicity campaign, but it included a blurb from Fackham Hall’s own screenwriter Jimmy Carr, “The funniest film I have written”, and the declaration, “From the producers who watched the first two seasons of Downton Abbey“.

After seeing the trailer, I decided that I could wait to stream Fackham Hall at home. But, now that I have, I think it’s actually a BETTER movie than Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale. Fackham Hall is free on HBO Max and rentable from other VOD platforms.

Thoughts on the Oscars

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Photo caption: Pavel Talankan in MR. NOBODY AGAINST PUTIN. Courtesy of the SLO Film Fest.

The 2026 Oscars pretty much followed my ruminations on the Oscars, which I published on January 25, just after the nominations were announced. Not a bad thing. As I had predicted, it was a big night for One Battle After Another and Sinners. I was delighted that Frankenstein won for costume design, hair and makeup and production design.

Although I saw 144 2026 movies, Weapons was not among them, so I was stunned by Amy Madigan’s Best Supporting Actress win. I never considered the possibility that Teyana Taylor wouldn’t win.

The one thing that got me out of my seat with indignation was when Sentimental Value won for Best International Picture. It’s a very fine movie, but there’s NO WAY it’s better than either The Secret Agent or It Was Just an Accident. The Secret Agent immersed us in the world of 1977 Recife, Brazil, with stunning, unsurpassed verisimilitude. It Was Just an Accident was filmed secretly, in plain sight of the repressive Iranian government. Sentimental Value, which is about an emotionally remote father, just seemed First World Whiny compared to the other, which are about people being hunted down and murdered by their own governments. I calmed down when the director Joachim Trier, one of my personal favorites, accepted his Oscar so graciously.

Some other highlights:

  • Mr. Nobody Against Putin won for Best Documentary and director David Borenstein and his subject Pavel Talankan, a bona fide hero who risked his life for the footage, delivered calls for truth in public discourse, free speech and an end to wars of aggression.
  • Autumn Durald Arkapaw won for best cinematography and recognized the significance of being the first woman to win (she was even the first to be nominated) with extraordinary dignity. (And I also think Jame Wong Howe was the only other person of color to win the cinematography Oscar.)
  • Jessie Buckley’s wonderfully sincere, gracious and deeply felt acceptance speech.
  • The broadcast did an excellent job presenting the Casting Oscar, the new category that I still haven’t gotten a handle on.
  • A winner in a Short category thanked the La Habra Moose Lodge, which has to a first, if less historic than Arkapaw’s.

And the funniest moment – in his opening, Conan O’Brien savagely mocked Donald Trump’s untethered narcissism without ever mentioning his name. I wonder if someone had to explain it to Trump.

The Movie Gourmet’s 2026 would-be Oscar Dinner

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

Every year, The Wife and I 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. Here’s the 2023 Oscar Dinner, complete with the everything bagel from Everything Everywhere All at Once, the Fruit Loops from Top Gun: Maverick and the Nutella from Triangle of Sadness. Here’s the whiskey and pasta-centric 2024 Oscar dinner. And our pivot in 2025, when the screenplays were food deserts.

The high point has been the Severed Hands Ice Sculpture in 2011 for 127 Hours and Winter’s Bone (photo above). The Wife built on that earlier work with another ice sculpture in 2023 – the severed fingers from The Banshees of Inisherin.

This year, alas, there will be no The Movie Gourmet Oscar Dinner because The Wife is above the Arctic Circle in Norway, taking a bucket list trip to experience the Northern Lights. I will be at an Oscar watch party.

But here are some ideas that we might have pursued this year:

  • One Battle After Another: The Chicken Licken Frozen Food Farm was a significant element, as were Latino immigrants. And then there’s the dopey stoner food Bob Fergyson fixed in the cabin.
  • Sinners: To start with, there’s all the illegal booze that Smoke and Stack were purveying. And then there’s the soul food at their speakeasy roadhouse.
  • Frankenstein: I would go with the berries being gathered by the Creature in the woods and the bread that the old man gives him.
  • It Was Just an Accident: Gotta go with Persian food here. I make s pretty good saffron rice, and I might add an eggplant dish and/or koofteh.
  • Hamnet: Agnes’ family meals just looked like some Elizabethan meat stew. 
  • Marty Supreme: There is SO much to run with here. We could go with Jewish or Japanese food, hotel food (restaurant or room service) Jewish, orange-colored food or even a Wheaties box. We could even go with honey – from Marty’s story of Alojzy “Alex” Ehrlich at Auschwitz – true, but not appropriate for the dinner table.
  • Train Dreams: You could go with salmon for the Pacific Northwest setting or the sandwiches or beans that Robert Grainier eats on the work crews. But I think the best choice is venison, because his pal visits him with an entire deer on his shoulders.
  • The Secret Agent: Brazilian food would be obvious, but I would pick movie popcorn for the scenes in the theater.

Wait til next year.

Movie to See Right Now

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Photo caption: Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale in THE BRIDE!. Courtesy of Warner Bros.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – we’re in the first weekend of Cinequest, which I’m covering for the fifteenth year, and all my Cinequest coverage is linked on my CINEQUEST 2026 page.

I’m not done with Cinequest coverage, but I just published a new review of The Bride!

The Oscars are coming up Sunday evening, and I’m generally rooting for One Battle After Another and It Was Just an Accident, and specifically for Jessie Buckley, Teyana Taylor, Jacob Elordi, Mr. Nobody Against Putin and for Frankenstein to sweep the awards for production design, costumes, score and, of course, makeup.

Note: The wonderful A Little Prayer: which made both my lists of Best Movies and Most Overlooked Movies of 2025, is now included (free) with Amazon Prime.

CURRENT MOVIES

ON TV

William Powell and Carole Lombard in MY MAN GODFREY

We’re living in a time when we could use some wit, silliness and decency, so we’re fortunate that, on March 14, Turner Classic Movies is airing the timeless and fantastic comedy, My Man Godfrey (1936). An assembly of eccentric, oblivious, venal and utterly spoiled characters make up a rich Park Avenue family and their hangers-on during the Depression. The kooky daughter (Carole Lombard) brings home a homeless guy (William Powell) to serve as their butler. The contrast between the dignified butler and his wacky employers results in a brilliant screwball comedy that masks searing social criticism that is still sharply relevant today. The wonderful character actor Eugene Pallette (who looked and sounded like a bullfrog in a tuxedo) plays the family’s patriarch, and he’s keenly aware that his wife and kids are completely nuts.

I feel strongly about this 90-year-old movie, which I first saw when it was only 36-years-old. We talk about screwball comedy, but this is the gold standard. And we need to remember the comic genius of Carole Lombard, who died supporting the war against fascism when she was only 33.