Laughs at Cinequest

by
Peter S. Kim, Ally Maki and Hayden Szeto in DEALING WITH DAD. Courtesy of Cinequest.

Comedies abound at this year’s Cinequest. Here are four:

  • Dealing with Dad is a topical family comedy with an Asian-American cast. Three adult siblings – the super-achiever oldest sister, the passive middle brother and the infantilized youngest brother, a gaming slacker – meet at their parents’ home. The dad, whose harsh and never-bending expectations battered them as kids, has become paralyzed (and defanged) by severe depression. Their differences spawn lots of laughs, but Dealing with Dad addresses both depression and the issues that many second-generation Asian-Americans face because of their immigrant parents’ parenting styles. Cinequest audiences will appreciate that Dealing with Dad is set in MILPITAS.
  • 18 1/2 is a dark comedy that sends up the paranoid thriller genre. A low-level government clerical worker (an excellent Willa Fitzgerald) finds herself in possession of the infamous 18 1/2 minute gap in the Watergate Tapes. Of course, co-writers Daniel Moya and Dan Mirvish had to devise a way to get this MacGuffin in her hands; given the paranoia, deviousness and clumsiness of the Nixon White House, their solution is surprisingly plausible. Double crosses and red herrings escalate, as does the dark, dark humor. Richard Kind and Vondie Curtis-Hall sparkle in supporting roles.
  • Sweet Disaster, from Germany, is driven by the protagonist’s ever-unleashed impulsiveness and utter lack of boundaries. Frida (Friederike Kempter) encounters and falls for an airline pilot and audaciously charms him into a relationship; their affair lasts just long enough for her to become impregnated and for him to abandon her for his ex. Consumed by the urge to win him back, Frida throws propriety to the winds. Frida’s zany roller coaster is tempered by sweet relationships with her apartment neighbors, a precocious teenage neighbor and a Greek Chorus of card-playing older women.
  • Alpha Male, from Poland, is another dark comedy. A feckless young man has been dispatched by his girlfriend to a smoking cessation self-help group. Given the chaos of the community center, he ends up in the wrong room, among a men’s support group headed by a charismatic instructor. He hangs around anyway – and even returns – because this group has better food. The group focuses on their resentment of women, which seems silly and harmless at first, but descends into a paranoid fixation on an imagined organization of women seeking to emasculate them. Both the misogyny and their submissiveness to their bullying leader are taken to absurd levels.

Here’s the Cinequest program, the schedule and the passes and tickets. My CINEQUEST page links to all my coverage. 

Vondie Curtis-Hall, John Magaro, Willa Fitzgerald and Catharine Curtin in 18 1/2. Credit Elle Schneider (c)2021, Waterbug Eater Films, LLC.

OUT IN THE RING: macho and flamboyant, wrestling is also queer

by
Charlie Morgan in OUT IN THE RING. Courtesy of Ryan Bruce Levey.

Out in the Ring is Ryan Bruce Levey’s encyclopedic yet irresistible documentary history of LGBTQ professional wrestlers. There is no sports entertainment that is more macho than pro wrestling. Or more flamboyant. Or, as it turns out, more queer.

Out in the Ring takes us back to the 1940s, when the straight journeyman wrestler Gorgeous George became a star and transformed wrestling by affecting a gay pose as his gimmick. George was just the first to do so, and Out in the Ring traces the many straight wrestlers who have pretended to be gay.

At the same time, many of wrestling’s best performers were closeted, notably the great Pat Patterson. Out in the Ring focuses on Patterson’s career and personal life, and how he grew into an important executive in the business. Out in the Ring surveys a long list of LGBTQ wrestlers who were forced to stay in the closet, like Patterson and Susan Tex Green.

[Personal note: The Movie Gourmet is a Boomer who, as a child, was glued to the TV for KTVU’s Saturday pro wrestling broadcasts, announced by Walt Harris. (Harris also called also roller derby.) In that era, Pat Patterson was a dominant presence in Bay Area pro wrestling.]

Out in the Ring showcases the panoply of today’s Out wrestling stars, led by Charlie Morgan and Mike Parrow. The variety is astounding: gay men, lesbians, bisexual women and men, transsexual men and transsexual women, asexual and nonbinary. There are those who make their queerness a signature of their act and those that don’t. They tell us about the homophobia that they have faced and their relief and joy from coming out.

Ry Levey has brought many films to Cinequest as a publicist, especially Canadian indies. The exquisitely sourced Out in the Ring is his first feature as a director.

I screened Out in the Ring for its US premiere at Cinequest. Both unflinching and uplifting, it’s a documentary as fun to watch as pro wrestling.

CHARM CIRCLE: you think YOUR family has issues?

by
Raya Burstein and Uri Burstein in CHARM CIRCLE. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.

In the superbly structured documentary Charm Circle, writer-director Nira Burstein exquisitely unspools the story of her own bizarre family. At first, we meet Burstein’s father, a sour character who inexplicably is about to lose his rented house, which has become unkempt, even filthy. He is mean to Burstein’s apparently sweet and extraordinarily passive mother, and the scene just seems unpleasant.

But then, Nira Burstein brings out twenty-year-old videos that show her dad as witty, talented and functional. We learn a key fact about the mom, and then about each of the director’s two sisters.

Some of the publicity about Charm Circle describes the family as eccentric, but only one daughter is a little odd – three family members are clinically diagnosable. Charm Circle is a cautionary story of untreated mental illness and the consequences of failing to reach out for help.

This is Nira Burstein’s first feature, and she has two things going for her: unlimited access to the subjects and a remarkable gift for storytelling. Charm Circle works so well because of how Burstein sequences the rollout of each family member’s story.

I attended a screening of Charm Circle, with a Nira Burstein Q&A at the Nashville Film Festival. In July and August, it will play both the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival and Cinequest.

Movies to See Right Now

by
Herbert Nordrum and Renate Reinsve in THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD. Courtesy of NEON.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – a reminder about the brilliant but overlooked The Worst Person in the World and an important music documentary, Heartworn Highways. And a new review of the impressionistic doc Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel.

REMEMBRANCE

Clu Gulager in THE LAST PICTURE SHOW

Prolific actor Clu Gulager has died at 93. The last of Gulager’s 165 IMDb credits came just three years ago in Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood. Best known for 105 episodes as the sheriff on The Virginian, Gulager made his living by guest appearances in a zillion TV shows from Wagon Train and Have Gun, Will Travel through Ironside, Cannon, CHiPs and Falcon Crest. One of his three characters on The Name of the Game was Rex Dakota. I have just learned that he starred in 72 episodes of a 1960-62 TV Western that, amazingly, I do not remember – The Tall Man, with Barry Sullivan and Pat Garrett and Gulager as Billy the Kid. He also peppered his career with cult movies like The Return of the Living Dead and I’m Gonna Get You Sucka. Gulager teamed with Lee Marvin in Don Siegel’s classic neo-noir The Killers.

Gulager’s best-ever screen performance was in The Last Picture Show as an oil rig foreman who is the illicit squeeze of his boss’ wife (Ellen Burstyn). This guy is trapped in a job he will never improve upon and in an affair he will never control; Gulager perfectly conveys his bitter dissatisfaction. The Director’s Cut also adds some sizzle to his pool hall sex scene with Jacy (Cybill Shepherd).

CURRENT MOVIES

WATCH AT HOME

The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:

ON TV

Michael York, Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain and Frank Finlay in THE THREE MUSKETEERS

To my delight, Turner Classic Movies often schedules Richard Lester’s boisterous The Three Musketeers, but, on August 16, is airing it with The Four Musketeers, which was filmed in the same shoot and released the next year (1974). Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain, Michael York and Frank Finlay swashbuckle away against Bad Guys Christopher Lee, Faye Dunaway and Charlton Heston. Geraldine Chaplin and Raquel Welch adorn the action. These movies are a hoot.

HEARTWORN HIGHWAYS: like desperados waitin’ for a train

by
Photo caption: Guy Clark in HEARTWORN HIGHWAYS. Courtesy of Kino Lorber.

Heartworn Highways documents an early moment in the Outlaw Movement of country western music, with candid footage of Outlaw pioneers Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, David Allan Coe and Charlie Daniels, and also Clark’s very young mentees  Steve Earle and Rodney Crowell. (Earle was only 22 and Crowell was 25 – Heartworn Highways includes the first recordings of their songs.)

There are lesser-known artists, too, including Steve Young (who wrote Seven Bridges Road) and the storyteller Gamble Rogers. Larry Jon Wilson records one of his songs after a rough night (he was 35 and looked 55). Peggy Brooks contributes a risque barroom ditty.

Guy Clark, his painter/songwriter wife Susanna Clark, and Townes Van Zandt were the subjects of the fine 2021 documentary Without Getting Killed or Caught. The three held a salon in their Nashville home, and mentored the likes of Crowell and Earle. You can the flavor of the salon in Heartworn Highways.

Heartworn Highways begins with Clark’s anthem LA Freeway and ends with a group sing of O Holy Night.

Townes Van Zandt (right) with Sylvester Washington in HEARTWORN HIGHWAYS. Courtesy of Kino Lorber.

One unforgettable moment is Townes Van Zandt’s rendition of his Waitin’ Round to Die, which brings 79-year-old horse shoer “Uncle” Seymour Washington to tears. Van Zandt did not survive his alcoholism, and there is also a now poignant clip of him very drunk.

Written and directed by James Szalapski, Heartworn Highways was filmed 1975 and 1976 but it didn’t find its way into theaters until 1981. What appear to be outtakes from the filming can be found on YouTube.

Heartworn Highways is just an assortment of cinéma vérité clips, with the only relation to each other being this cadre of musicians and their art, but it works. It is available to stream from AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and Showtime.

THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD: funny, poignant, original and profoundly authentic

by
Photo caption: Renate Reinsve in THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD. Courtesy of NEON.

One of the very Best Movies of 2022 is finally available to watch at home. In writer-director Joachim Trier’s masterpiece The Worst Person in the World, Julie (Renate Reinsve) is roaring through her life like a locomotive in search of tracks. She’s a medical student until she isn’t, having decided that her passion is psychology instead. Then, she’s convinced her avocation is photography. Each career plunge is accompanied by a new hairstyle and a new boyfriend. She’s charming and talented – and completely restless and unreliable. Surely she can’t keep up this pace of self-reinvention forever, can she?

Julie falls in love with Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie) a graphic novelist in his forties, and settles into a dead end retail job in a bookstore and a role as the young companion of a literary figure. Rocking a black cocktail dress for an event celebrating Aksel, she sneaks out and crashes another party. There, she meets the barista Eivind (Herbert Nordrum), and they flirt, after deciding not to cheat on their partners.

Is Julie going to dump Aksel and break up Eivind’s relationship? Real life is more complicated than that, and so is The Worst Person in the World, which maintains a profound authenticity through its moments of silliness, sexiness and poignancy.

I’ve been a huge fan of Trier, since his first feature Reprise, which I named the 4th best movie of 2005. I didn’t care for his well-crafted follow-up Oslo, August 31. But I’ve been strongly recommending his under-appreciated Louder Than Bombs. Reprise is available to stream on Amazon, and you can find the other two on many streaming platforms.

Famed director Howard Hawks said that a great movie has “three great scenes and no bad scenes.” There are no bad scenes in The Worst Person in the World, and Trier hits Hawk’s mark with the moments when:

  • Julie, on her 30th birthday, reflects on what her mother, grandmother and other female ancestors were doing when they were 30.
  • Julie and Eivind meet and share nonsexual intimacies – which is smolderingly sexy.
  • Time stands still for the rest of Oslo when Julie has the impulse to find Eivind again.

The title of the film does not refer to Julie; it’s a self-deprecating joke by another character, who is a good person himself.

Renate Reinsve is relentlessly appealing as Julie; Reinsve won the best actress award at Cannes. Lie (who starred in Reprise and Oslo, August 31) and Nordrum are also superb.

Technically, The Worst Person in the World is a romantic comedy, but it’s so smart, so authentic and so original, I can’t bring myself to describe it as such. The Worst Person in the World is Oscar-nominated both for Trier’s screenplay and for best international feature film. After an extremely limited year-end Oscar qualifying run and a couple of weeks in theaters in February, The Worst Person in the World can now be streamed from Amazon, Apple, Vudu, YouTube and redbox.

DREAMING WALLS: INSIDE THE CHELSEA HOTEL: the artsy and the quirky

by
Photo caption: DREAMING WALLS: INSIDE THE CHELSEA HOTEL. Credit: Merle Lister. Courtesy of ©Clindoeilfilms.

The documentary Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel is set inside an institution with a remarkable cultural history. Residents of New York City’s Chelsea Hotel have included:

  • writers Mark Twain, Arthur C. Clarke, Jack Kerouac and William C. Burroughs,
  • playwrights Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams and Sam Shepherd,
  • poets Dylan Thomas and Allen Ginzberg,
  • painters Diego Rivera, Willem de Kooning and Jasper Johns,
  • singer-songwriters Bob Dylan, Patti Smith and Tom Waits,
  • musicians Edith Piaf, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Cher, Iggy Pop and Madonna,
  • film directors Milos Forman and Stanley Kubrick,
  • actors Dennis Hopper, Elaine Stritch and Jane Fonda.

But that history is not what Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel is about – at least not directly. And neither is the now bedraggled hotel’s transition into yet another upscale Manhattan retreat for the wealthy. Writer-directors Maya Duverdier and Amalie van Elmbt have focused on the current residents, who embody the last remnants of the Chelsea’s quirky, artistic flavor.

Those tenants are ten years into a nightmare of a renovation, essentially living in a construction zone in their hallways, outside their windows and, sometimes, inside their own apartments.  Some of the tenants are very old and some are very, very, very old. There’s a clip of an interview with the painter Alphaeus Philemon Cole, who was the world’s oldest verified person when he died at the Chelsea at age 112.

And they are artsy. It’s the kind of place where one can turn the corner and be met with “Hey, we have a dance performance is underway”.  Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel is a cinéma vérité observation of these folks.

Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel braids them into the hotel’s storied history by splicing in visual bits of the famed artists and art that are the Chelsea’s legacy. It’s impressionistic and ghostly, and the editing by Alain Dessauvage and Julie Naas elevates Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel from the standard cinéma vérité doc.

How much you enjoy Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel depends on how much you enjoy the company of artists and whether you find their eccentricities and self-absorption charming or annoying.

The film includes a passage of Dylan Thomas”: Do not go gentle into that good night. Indeed, the long artistic period of the Chelsea is going into the good night, but certainly not gently.

Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel is streaming on Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and redbox.

Movies to See Right Now

by
Photo caption: Oscar Martínez, Penélope Cruz and Antonio Banderas in OFFICIAL COMPETITION. Courtesy of IFC Films.

This week on The Movie Gourmet – reviews of high-brow cinema with The August Virgin and low-brow movie fun with Supercool.

I’m traveling and don’t have time to write a review, but I saw Nope and it is excellent – an unusually intelligent popcorn movie. I’m not a big horror/sci fi guy, and I loved it. One of the best movies of 2022.

CURRENT MOVIES

WATCH AT HOME

Itsaso Arana (right) in THE AUGUST VIRGIN. Photo courtesy of Outsider Pictures.

The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:

  • The August Virgin: in search of reinvention. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
  • Supercool: familar, until it isn’t. Amazon, Vudu, YouTube, redbox.
  • Jockey: he finally grapples with himself. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
  • The Visitor: self-isolation no longer. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
  • The Bra: Just your average silent Azerbaijani comedy. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
  • The East: how do we punish corporate crime? HBO, Amazon, AppleTV, redbox.
  • Project Nim: a chimp learns the foibles of humans. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.
  • Bombshell: The Hedy Lamar Story: the world’s most beautiful woman and her secrets. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, KINO Now.
  • The Gatekeepers: winning tactics make for a losing strategy. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
  • Colma: The Musical: a refreshing hoot. Amazon, Vudu, YouTube.
  • Auggie: Who do you see when you put on the glasses? Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
  • Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead: for Philip Seymour Hoffman. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
Molly Parker and Clifton Collins Jr. in JOCKEY. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

SUPERCOOL: a teen comedy familiar, until it isn’t

by
A scene from Teppo Airaksinen’s film SUPERCOOL, which played at SFFILM. Photo courtesy of SFFILM.

Supercool has the familiar arc of a teen comedy – until it doesn’t. We get the high school cafeteria lunch period, the adolescent social awkwardness, the bullies and the parents-away teen house party. And then there are some unexpected sparkles.

Our protagonists, Neil (Jake Short) and Gilbert (Miles J. Harvey) have a commonplace obsession for teen boys: they aspire to get SOME sexual experience with another person. And Neil worships a girl whom he is afraid to even talk to,

There’s a funny scene (glimpsed in the trailer below) where the guys fantasize a situation where girls would be attracted to them, unaware that Neil’s parents are hearing every word.

The guys also have two misadventures that put them in hilariously uncomfortable sexual situations.

Neil has a helluva imagination and creates graphic novels that picture how he hopes to eventually woo his beloved. Fortunately, he is sweet on a girl who turns out to have an awesome sense of humor.

I must note that Supercool does contain the best-ever movie use of the (only?) Haddaway song What Is Love.

I screened Supercool for its world premiere at SFFILM in April 2021. Supercool can now be streamed from Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and redbox.

THE AUGUST VIRGIN: in search of reinvention

by
Photo caption: Itsaso Arana in THE AUGUST VIRGIN. Photo courtesy of Outsider Pictures.

In the lovely and genuine The August Virgin, 33 year-old Eva (Itsaso Arana) is between relationships, not defined by any career success, and her biological clock is ticking. She knows it’s time for a reset. In August, Eva borrows an acquaintance’s apartment in another Madrid neighborhood and sets off on a series of strolls, in search of possibilities as yet unknown.

Many madrileños escape the city’s oppressive heat for the month of August. But Madrid is still filled with street festivals and tourists. Eva meanders around town, encountering old friends and making new ones. As Eva notes, in Madrid’s August, expectations are relaxed.

Eva is purposeful about shaking things up, but she has no plan other than to be open to the possibilities. That openness, with its fluidity and randomness, leads her to her moment of reinvention.

Eva is played by the film’s co-writer, Itsaso Arana. What’s so singular about Arana’s performance is that her Eva, as dissatisfied as she is with her current situation, is always comfortable in her own skin. She’s never desperate or needy (except when trying to negotiate a reluctant door lock) and always confident enough to engage with a stranger. At one point, the Spanish pop star Soleá sings, “I’ve still got time. I’m still here.”

THE AUGUST VIRGIN. Photo courtesy of Outsider Pictures.

The August Virgin’s other co-writer is director Jonás Trueba, and this is his sixth feature. I recently watched his next most recent film The Reconquest (La Reconquista) on Netflix, and it’s another intensely personal and genuine story, about two 30-year-olds reconnecting 15 years after a teen crush. Jonás Trueba is the son of Oscar-winning director Fernando Trueba (Belle Epoque, Chico & Rita).

Several critics have seen Trueba’s work as an homage to French New Wave filmmaker Éric Rohmer, but I found that The August Virgin, with Eva’s serial conversations (real, probing conversations), reminded me of the more accessible work of Richard Linklater.

Madrid itself is on display here, with its searing daytime sun, and the liveliness of the streets, tapas bars and after-hours clubs when the sun goes down.

Trueba and Arana allow Eva her process, and she samples one experience after another, seemingly with the faith that one of them will lead her to where she wants to be. This is not a film for the impatient, but I found its two hours enchanting.

The August Virgin is on my list of Best Movies of 2020and is now available to stream on Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube.