Cinequest

Cinequest: MEET THE HITLERS

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MEET THE HITLERS
MEET THE HITLERS

In the documentary Meet the Hitlers, we are introduced to those few people who choose NOT to change their birth name of “Hitler”. And it’s a varied bunch. We meet a delightfully confident Missouri teen girl, a workaday Ecuadorian whose parents didn’t know who Hitler was and an affable Utah oldster who might be the most jovial fellow ever to brighten up a chain restaurant. And there’s an Austrian odd duck burdened with enough personal baggage that he surely didn’t need this name. Do they see the name as a curse, and how has it affected them? It’s a theoretical question to us in the audience, but it’s compelling to see the real world responses of the film’s subjects.

And then there’s a mystery about three Americans who HAVE changed the name – because they are the last living relatives of Adolph Hitler. We follow the journalist who has been tracking them down for over a decade. (Documentarian Matt Ogens makes a great editorial choice as to whether to reveal their current names.)

Finally, there’s the disturbing saga of a New Jersey neo-Nazi who is NOT named Adolph Hitler but WANTS to be. Of course, anybody can choose to adorn themselves with a Hitler mustache and swastika tattoos and spew hatespeech, but his choices are affecting not just himself, but his children.

Some of these threads are light-hearted and some are very dark. Meet the Hitlers works so well because Ogens weaves them together so seamlessly. It’s a very successful documentary.

You can see Meet the Hitlers at Cinequest on March 1, 2 and 7 at Camera 12.

Cinequest: FEVER

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FEVER
FEVER

In Fever, we meet two teen thrill killers (a la Rope and Compulsion). What makes Fever unique is the introduction of a third character – a woman who may have witnessed their getaway. She doesn’t immediately grasp the connection, but we then watch the story threads (hers and the boys’) get nearer and finally intersect.  In another twist from the Leopold and Loeb set-up, the two boys are classmates who come from very different socioeconomic backgrounds.

Even with two killers in the story, the most compelling character is the woman, played with immediacy by Julie-Marie Parmentier.  At first blush, she’s just a workaday optician who is gradually becoming less satisfied with her boyfriend.  But, watching Parmentier’s sharply observant eyes, we soon become aware that there’s much more going on inside her.

Fever is the first time feature from writer-director Raphael Neale, and it shows that Neale is capable of inventing an unusual take on a familiar story and effectively pacing the tension in a thriller.

Fever gets its title from the Little Willie John song popularized by Peggy Lee, and there some very cool renditions of it in the movie.  (And Fever is another of those French movies that make me so impressed with the intellectual content of some French public high schools.)

Cinequest will host Fever’s US premiere on February 26 at Camera 12, and it plays at Camera 12 again on February 28 and at the California Theatre on March 2.

Cinequest: HEART STRING MARIONETTE

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HEART STRING MARIONETTE
HEART STRING MARIONETTE

The animated Heart String Marionette allows us to see what would happen if the Wallace and Gromit filmmakers remade Metropolis as Noh theater.  Highly stylized, with the animated characters are often masked as in Noh, Heart String Marionette is an epic that addresses themes of independence and authority. Auteur M Dot Strange effectively uses color, with much of the film in cold blue hues that evoke a brooding menace; splashes of red bring up the action scenes. The music by Endika is essential to the film.

Watch the trailer and ask yourself if you would enjoy this for another 119 minutes. I didn’t, but I’m not the audience for this film.

Cinequest: DIRTY BEAUTIFUL

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DIRTY BEAUTIFUL
DIRTY BEAUTIFUL

OK – so down-on-his-luck guy meets a potty-mouthed vixen when she LITERALLY jumps into his car.  But Dirty Beautiful is NOT your run-of-the-mill mumblecore romantic comedy!

What elevates Dirty Beautiful is that writer-director Tim Bartell has invented two characters that we’re not used to seeing.  The guy and the gal each has a unique neediness that drives this offbeat battle of the sexes.

The guy is really a talented storyboard artist, but he THINKS that he is a screenwriter, which means that he spends his days not actually screenwriting, but shuffling and reshuffling his notecards.  He’s drawing just enough storyboards to afford food, an apartment next to the garbage, a couple of unwashed t-shirts and a car that can’t even “make it to the 405”.  And he’s oddly yearning to HAVE a girlfriend (but not prowling for sex with a woman who could turn into a girlfriend).  Instead he aches to have a girlfriend primarily for the status of having a girlfriend.

She has been homeless, would mainline tequila if she could, and is, well, a HANDFUL.  She’s been damaged by experiences in her past, and brings extreme volatility into his all too predictable lifestyle.  And she exposes the fantasy that is trapping him in professional and personal limbo.

All in all, Dirty Beautiful is a hoot.  Plus there’s the occasional memorable dialogue, like “Hey, girls that give hand jobs can be great moms. God!”

Cinequest is hosting Dirty Beautiful’s world premiere on Saturday night February 28 at 9:30 in Camera 12 with additional screenings on March 1 and March 3.

[MILD SPOILER: When the relationship becomes belligerent, each tries to hunker down and try to outlast the other.  That’s not just for the plot, it’s because there’s something about each character ’s neediness that makes them dig in.]

Cinequest: LOS HAMSTERS

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LOS HAMSTERS
LOS HAMSTERS

The Hamsters (Los Hamsters) is a delightfully dark social satire about a riotously dysfunctional Tijuana family. The dad, mom and two teenagers are going to such lengths to hide secrets from each other that they are completely oblivious to the drama in the others lives. In his first narrative feature, writer-director Gil Gonzalez has crafted a comedy that is completely character-driven, compressed into a very fun 71 minutes.

This family is in the upper middle class and the dad is desperately trying to stay there, the mom is denying any signs to the contrary and the kids are too spoiled and self-absorbed to notice any odd behavior by the parents. The acting is strong, especially by Angel Norzagaray, who plays the weary but driven, hangdog dad.

And here’s a bonus – Los Hamsters was filmed in Tijuana, and it’s great for a US audience to see this city as it is seen by its residents, not by its visitors.

Los Hamsters will have its North American premiere on February 27 at the California Theatre and plays again on March 5 and 7 at Camera 12.

Cinequest: ANTOINE ET MARIE

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ANTOINE ET MARIE
ANTOINE ET MARIE

In the French-Canadian drama Antoine et Marie, a woman’s life is changed by an event. What happens to her is something that Marie herself must figure out, as must the audience. When we meet her, Marie is a forty-two-year-old clerk at an auto-repair business with a lust for life. She’s living with a guy who adores her, and she enjoys socializing with her with her work buddies. But something makes her unsettled and gradually sucks the spark out of her life. Will she find out the cause and decide what to do about it?

Antoine et Marie is extremely topical, but revealing that topic would be a significant spoiler, so you’re just gonna have to take my word for it.

Martine Francke delivers a superbly modulated performance as Marie. Sebastien Ricard is equally compelling as a repressed and dissatisfied blue collar husband and father.

This is writer-director Jimmy Larouche’s second feature film, and he has delivered a brilliantly constructed story with two unforgettable characters – and performances to match. Antoine et Marie is an unqualified success, tense and riveting all the way through.

Antoine et Marie’s US premiere will be February 28 at Cinequest, and it plays again on March 2 and 4, all at Camera 12.

Get ready for CINEQUEST 2015

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CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA
CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA

It’s time to get ready for the 2015 version of the San Jose film festival Cinequest, coming up on February 28 through March 8.  At the media launch, Cinequest CEO and co-founder Halfdan Hussey pronounced himself “totally stoked”.  We all should be stoked because Cinequest 2015 will host artists from 50 countries and present 91 world, North American or US premieres.

This is the 25th anniversary of the festival, but Hussey described Cinequest 2015 as “about today and tomorrow”, referencing both cutting edge cinema and the film technology of the future.

One of the surefire festival hits will be Clouds of Sils Maria, where the ever-radiant Juliette Binoche plays an actress now relegated to the older role in her breakthrough play, with the younger role going to Kristen Stewart (All About Eve, anyone?).  The Twilight series has obscured what a good actress Stewart can be (Into the Wild, Adventureland, The Runaways), and her performance in The Clouds of Sils Maria has been getting raves.

Ann Thompson (Thompson on Film) will be receiving a Media Legacy Award and screening the Argentine revenge drama Wild Tales, which has been a festival hit at Cannes, Telluride, Toronto and Sundance.

Other highlights:

  • Rosario Dawson will appear to receive a Maverick Spirit Award.
  • That award will also go to Deliverance director John Boorman, who will be screening his newest work Queen and Country.
  • Richard von Busack, the highly respected film critic for Metro, will receive a Media Legacy Award and screen L’Atalante, the 1934 masterpiece of French writer-director Jean Vigo, who died at age 29 soon after its completion.

But the real treasure at Cinequest 2015 is likely to be found among the hitherto less well-known films – like last year’s Cinequest jewel Ida, which is high on my list of Best Movies of 2014.

Take a look at the program and the passes and tickets. (If you want to support Silicon Valley’s most important cinema event while skipping the lines, the $100 donation for Express Line Access is an awesome deal.) You can download the Festival Guide from this page.

As usual, I’ll be covering Cinequest rigorously with features and movie recommendations. Follow me on Twitter for the latest.

WILD TALES
WILD TALES

DVD/Stream of the Week: A COFFEE IN BERLIN – slacker minus coffee equals plenty of laughs

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A COFFEE IN BERLIN (OH BOY)
A COFFEE IN BERLIN (OH BOY)

Ranging from wry to hilarious, the German dark comedy A Coffee in Berlin hits every note perfectly. It’s the debut feature for writer-director Jan Ole Gerster, a talented filmmaker we’ll be hearing from again.

Jan Ole Gerster
Jan Ole Gerster

We see a slacker moving from encounter to encounter in a series of vignettes. Gerster has created a warm-hearted but lost character who needs to connect with others – but sabotages his every opportunity. He has no apparent long term goals, and even his short term goal of getting some coffee is frustrated.

As the main character (Tom Schilling) wanders through contemporary Berlin, A Coffee in Berlin demonstrates an outstanding sense of place, especially in a dawn montage near the end of the film. The soundtrack is also excellent – the understated music complements each scene remarkably well.

I saw A Coffee in Berlin (then titled Oh Boy) at Cinequest 2013 and singled it out as one of the three most wholly original films in the festival and as one of my favorite movie-going experiences of the year. A Coffee in Berlin was snagged for the festival by Cinequest’s film scout extraordinaire Charlie Cockey. A Coffee in Berlin is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

DVD/Stream of the Week: IDA

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IdaThe Polish drama Ida, which I first saw at this year’s Cinequest, is now available on video.  I currently rate it as (next to Boyhood) the best movie I’ve seen this year.

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 who 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 their comparative worldliness – the aunt has been around the block and the novice is utterly naive and inexperienced (both literally and figuratively virginal). 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 hardly 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 was my pick as the best film at Cinequest, where it won the Jury Prize for Best Narrative Feature.

Ida is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.