Cinequest

Stream of the Week: AUGGIE – Who do you see when you put on the glasses?

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Eichard Kind in AUGGIE

In the superb indie Auggie, Felix (Richard Kind) is pushed into retirement before he wants.  He’s given a goodbye gift that he never would have thought to wish for, augmented reality glasses. Suddenly plunged into inactivity just as his wife Anne’s career is thriving, Felix finally gets around to putting on the glasses.  The glasses give him a virtual companion, Auggie, equipped with the artificial intelligence to give the wearer his craved-for experiences.  Most insidiously, Auggie even delivers individually customized emotional support. Everyone’s digital companion takes the form of what they desire, and Felix’s Auggie is a smoking hot and adorable young woman.

The more Felix wears the glasses, the more Auggie is able to fulfill his every need, even triggering more inner desires that he was aware of.  This isn’t quite a Doctor Faust who knowingly opts into his fantasy; Auggie’s artificial intelligence is able to see Felix’s fantasies even before he can imagine them.  All things in moderation, of course, but Auggie’s infinite availability becomes additive.  This is no longer healthy for Felix or his family.

When a character asks, “Who do you see when you put on the glasses?”, it’s a devastating moment.

Auggie is the first feature for director and co-writer Matt Kane.  Kane has avoided writing Felix as a stereotypical clumsy old grouch.   As written by Kane and co-writer Marc Underhill and played by Richard Kind, he’s very smart and perceptive.  He just isn’t ready for unimaginable temptation.

You’ll recognize Richard Kind, a reliable character actor and voice artist with 221 screen credits. My favorite Kind performance was the moving portrayal of a man seeking closure after the death of his wife in Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter.

Susan Blackwell is perfect at Felix’s wife Anne.  Blackwell has had small parts in some very fine films and hosts her own Broadway interview show on YouTube, Side By Side with Susan Blackwell.  Cristen Harper is suitably seductive as Auggie.

I saw Auggie at its world premiere at Cinequest. It can be streamed from Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.

Stream of the Week: HUNTING LANDS – in this thriller, we watch the watcher

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Marshall Cook in HUNTING LANDS

In the slow burn thriller Hunting Lands, Frank (Marshall Cook) is living a solitary life as a subsistence hunter in a forest cabin, a long pickup drive outside his northern Michigan hometown. Frank is a guy with serious wilderness skills, loading his own ammo and field dressing the large mammals that he fells with a single shot. He witnesses a serious crime in the woods and is immediately driven to make things right – but not in the way we expect.

Frank has nobody to talk to, and we see him silently triage the situation and begin a hunt for the perpetrator. Silent observation comes naturally to a hunter, and we see him wordlessly patrolling the small towns in his pickup, as he tracks down his human prey. We see what Frank sees, and one of the most pivotal characters is only seen in long shot until the last 15 minutes or so.

HUNTING LANDS

HUNTING LANDS

Hunting Lands is the first feature from writer-director Zack Wilcox, a story-teller who is thankfully willing to let the audience connect the dots. Because Hunting Lands is only 83 minutes long, Wilcox can take his time watching Frank watch others. Even as Frank is still and quiet, the audience is gripped by what he is going to do next.

An original character, Frank seems unusually self-aware for a hermit. When he finally gets in a conversation, he turns out to be an articulate guy who understands and can explain why he has become a recluse.

Wilcox follows Billie Wilder’s screenwriting advice – “don’t hang around”; the ending is not even one second too long. And Wilcox knows that a little ambiguity about what happens afterwards can pack a punch.

Cinequest hosted the word premiere of Hunting Lands. You can stream it now on Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

HUNTING LANDS

Stream of the Week: UNA – two twisted people

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UNA
UNA

The psychological suspense movie Una revolves around two twisted people, one of whom has been damaged by trauma. Here’s what the audience can be confident really happened: at age 14, Una (Rooney Mara) was seduced by a much older man, Ray (Ben Mendelsohn); she became infatuated with Ray and they carried on a sexual relationship for three months until he was caught and imprisoned for four years. Upon leaving prison, he changed his name and started a new life. It’s now fifteen years after the original crime and Una has tracked him down.

We can tell that Una is obsessed with Ray. What we don’t know is whether Una is seeking vengeance or whether she is in love with him – or both. She’s so messed up that even she may not know.

Lolita was a novel with a famously unreliable narrator. Una presents us with TWO unreliable narrators. Almost every statement made by Ray COULD be true, but probably isn’t. He was in love with her, he came back for her, she was his only underage lover, he’s not “one of them”, he’s told his wife about his past – we just can’t know for sure. Ben Mendelsohn delivers a performance that tries to conceal whatever Ray is thinking and feeling but allows his desperation to leak out.

The excellent actor Riz Ahmed (Four Lions, The Reluctant Terrorist) is very good as Ray’s work buddy, who must deal with one totally unforeseeable surprise after another.

Una really relies on Rooney Mara to portray a wholly unpredictable character in every scene, and she succeeds in carrying the movie. Mara’s face is particularly well-suited when she plays a haunting and/or haunted character, and it serves her well here.

I originally saw Una at Cinequest.  You can stream it from Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

 

THE CHAPERONE: deeper than it looks

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Elizabeth McGovern in THE CHAPERONE

The Chaperone is a pleasing period tale of self-discovery in 1921 America. Louise Brooks (Haley Lu Richardson) is not yet the silent movie sex symbol that she would become; she’s a 15-year-old from Wichita who has a wonderful opportunity – she can attend a cutting edge NYC dance school, if only she can get a chaperone. Local Wichita matron Norma (Elizabeth McGovern) volunteers to be that chaperone. Highly spirited and supremely confident, Louise is a Wild Child who can shock Norma’s sensibilities. But we learn that Norma has a secret reason for leaving Wichita and another secret reason to visit New York City…

This could have been a standard Odd Couple-type romp, but it’s surprisingly deeper. That’s because it centers on the adult character of Norma and benefits from McGovern’s performance. She has a sense of decorum, but she’s not a garden-variety prude. She doesn’t really appreciate her own inner strength and what that strength has helped her survive already. Now, for the first time, she reflects on what it would take to achieve happiness for herself.

Of course, adoptees longing to find out about their biological parents, child sexual abuse, closeted homosexuality and passionless marriages all existed in 1921, but American society was ill-equipped to deal with (or even acknowledge) them. Those are the pivot points in this screenplay written by Downton Abbey’s Julian Fellowes.

Richardson’s persona as Louise does not resemble the sensuous adult Brooks, but she captures the youthful exuberance and confidence of the role. This is only the second American film for Hungarian actor Géza Röhri (from the brilliant but impossibly grim Son of Saul). Röhri is able to project a fundamental decency that is very appealing.

The Chaperone is a satisfying and easy watch, which I would expect to end up on PBS after its theatrical run. The Chaperone played at Cinequest in March.

TEEN SPIRIT: a well-crafted genre film with a heart

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Elle Fanning in TEEN SPIRIT

In the appealing Teen Spirit, Elle Fanning plays a Polish working class girl on the Isle of Wight who competes in a fictional British version of American Idol.  Even though she is immensely talented, she is not one of the popular kids.   And, recognizable as a teenager – she is bored and she resents being bored.  Seemingly a hopeless underdog, she finds a mentor in the local barfly Vlad (Zlatko Buric), a former opera singer fallen on hard times.

Yes, Teen Spirit is firmly in the underdog competition genre – and we know that the story will climax in the Big Game, the Big Match or – as here – the Big Sing-off.  As with any genre, one of these movies can be an empty, cliche-ridden formula or a masterpiece (Rocky) or something in between.  Teen Spirit may not be a Rocky, but, thanks to writer-director Max Minghella, it is well-crafted and has a heart.

It should be noted that Elle Fanning actually does the singing in Teen Spirit – and sings very well.  Given that Rami Malek just won an Oscar for lip-syncing, we should bestow a Nobel upon Fanning.  She has an ethereal voice and has shown herself to be a fine actress who can carry a more challenging story than this.  Both she and Buric are excellent.

First time director Minghella paces the film very well and delivers some flashy movie making, with fast cuts and pounding soundtrack, sometimes giving the effect of being inside a disco ball.  All for the good.  To his credit, Minghella also follows Billy Wilder’s screenwriting advice – when your story is finished, don’t hang around.

I saw Teen Spirit at Cinequest, and Elle Fanning appeared for a post-screening interview.  Teen Spirit opens this weekend in the Bay Area.

THE HUMMINGBIRD PROJECT: it’s a movie about nanoseconds, but it slows to a muddle

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Salma Hayek and Jesse Eisenberg in THE HUMMINGBIRD PROJECT

In The Hummingbird Project, two brothers take on Wall Street power in a race to build a fiber-optic cable network from Kansas City to New York City. They plan to take advantage of getting financial data several nanoseconds before everyone else and to become zillionaires. Vincent (Jesse Eisenberg) is the wheeler-dealer and Anton (Alexander Skarsgård) is the technical whiz.  It’s a ridiculously audacious bet, and the movie is about whether they can pull it off.

Their ruthless Wall Street competition is personalized in the character played by Salma Hayek.  Hayek is okay, but she appears to be performing in a different (and better) movie than the other leads.

The Hummingbird Project doesn’t quite work.  Eisenberg is not a stranger to jittery, fast-talking roles.  But here, he accelerates into auctioneer-pacing, and he speaks so quickly that it’s hard to follow.  There’s too much film footage invested in the cable-laying procedural.   And why the hell does Vincent return a THIRD time to visit the Amish farmers in the rainstorm?

There are two good scenes in The Hummingbird Project, both involving Anton.  In one, he decides to physically run away from the FBI and, in the other, he exacts some hacking revenge on the Wall Street baddies.

I saw The Hummingbird Project at Cinequest, and it is now playing in Bay Area theaters.

RICH KIDS: topical, but…

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kids (but not the lead kids) in RICH KIDS

Rich Kids has topicality going for it, as it explores our society’s disparity of wealth.  Matias (Gerardo Velasquez), his brainy crush Vanessa (Michelle Magallon) and their pals are dirt poor teens.  There’s a nearby vacant luxury home, and the kids hop the fence  for a dip in the pool.  The pool party moves inside, and the kids get to experience what to them is fantasy opulence.    Drama ensues.

Unfortunately, Rich Kids wears its  social message on its sleeve.  The dialogue is too obvious and heavy-handed.  Rich Kids becomes a predictable screed.  Most of the actors playing the kids are too old to pass for high school students, and they just aren’t able to elevate the dialogue.

On the other hand, the opening scene pulses with verisimilitude, and the actors who play Matias’ parents  (who I believe are Ricky Catter and Amelia Rico) are really good.

Rich Kids played at Cinequest.

THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE: finally!

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Adam Driver and Jonathan Pryce in THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is director Terry Gilliam’s final conquest of the iconic Miguel Cervantes novel. Gilliam has been trying to make this movie for decades, and the 2002 documentary Lost in La Mancha, which chronicles one disastrous attempt, is a more entertaining movie than this one. Lost in La Mancha can be streamed on Amazon and iTunes.

Adam Driver plays Toby, a film director, in demand for his commercials, who had failed at a Don Quixote film as a young indie director. Now Toby returns to Spain, and tries again with more resources. He finds that the older local man (Jonathan Pryce) in the first film shoot has become deluded that he really is Don Quixote. He also finds that his earlier venture changed the life of a young girl from the village (Joana Ribeiro).

Terry Gilliam is nothing if not imaginative, as demonstrated by his earlier films Brazil, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, The Zero Theorem). Here he creates thread after thread of deluded quests and braids them together. He captures the combination of absurdity and futile earnestness in the source material.

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is witty and well-made, but neither Gilliam’s nor Cervantes’ stories make the film engrossing. I saw The Man Who Killed Don Quixote at the 2019 Cinequest, where it was the closing night film.

Stream of the Week: MAGALLANES – some wrongs cannot be righted

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Magallanes_Still

To honor Cinequest, my stream of the week is a remarkable drama from the 2016 Cinequest. The title character in the Peruvian psychological drama Magallanes is a loser, but is he a lovable loser? Played by Damián Alcázar, Magallanes bounces around from odd job to odd job. He can’t break even driving a borrowed outlaw taxi around the squalid streets of Lima, he lives in a basement hovel and he has one friend. Magallanes glimpses a person from his past, and it rocks him into a series of life-changing events.

Magallanes starts out as a caper movie. But we learn that his one friendship is from his military service in a death squad unit, dispatched to repress the indigenous population with the harshest methods. What this unit did years ago has scarred all the characters (except two snarky cops), and Magallanes is revealed to be a study of PTSD.

What is driving Magallanes’ behavior in this story? We find that he is trying to right a past wrong. But what? And by whom? The revelation in Magallanes is that some wrongs cannot be righted.

Magallanes is a showcase for Mexican actor Alcázar, whom U.S. art house audiences saw in John Sayles’ Men with Guns and as the lead in Herod’s Law. Alcázar makes Magallanes so sympathetic that the movie’s climax is jarring and emotionally powerful.

Magallanes can be streamed from iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.

ORIGINAL SIN: sending up the rich

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ORIGINAL SIN

The Paraguayan sex comedy Original Sin (Pecado Original) is primarily a social satire, sending up the stiffness of Paraguay’s upper class.  A young married couple is trapped by the roles expected of them, and the wife chafes at her life devoid of anything except daytime TV and day-drinking.  The husband is a prig, and has a particular repression that no male audience member will be able to relate to.  The wife MAY have purchased a painting at a charity auction, and the impossibly handsome artist show up to deliver the painting.  Raucous, and fairly predictable, humor ensues.  A duel-by-badminton is pretty funny.

Cinequest hosted the North American premiere of Original Sin.