Cinequest

Cinequest – Salt: the best spaghetti western this year

by

I love spaghetti westerns and so does the protagonist of Salt (Sal), a would-be screenwriter who must have the only cat in Spain named Clint.  He has written a movie set in Chile’s Atacama Desert, the driest place on earth, but nobody else thinks it’s any good.  When he decides to visit the Atacama to improve his script, he is mistaken by all the locals for someone else – the guy who had cuckolded the local crime boss.  That first night in Chile, he is plunged into a real life shoot em up and is soon experiencing a story that Sergio Leone himself would have loved to film.

Much of the fun is in the fact that our hero has never shot a gun or been shot at, and he doesn’t take easily to either – he’s no Clint, for sure.   Salt is filmed in the style of a modern-day spaghetti western and comes with its own spaghetti western score with jangly guitar and jarring harmonica.  If you love A Fistful of Dollars, this is the movie for you.  Even if you don’t love the spaghetti western, you’ll find this a satisfyingly funny movie.

I attended the North American premiere of Salt at Cinequest 22.

Cinequest – Faust: a strikingly original slog

by
Mephistopheles and Faust in FAUST

Faust is Russian director Aleksander Sokurov‘s take on the famous story of a man who bargains with the devil for knowledge of the profound, with a young hottie thrown in the deal for good measure.

I saw this film primarily because I had admired Sokurov‘s Russian Ark, a 19th century period drama in which an aristocrat wanders through St. Petersburg’s Hermitage and encounters figures from earlier in Russian history.  Sokurov filmed the entire 99-minute movie in a single shot.  That’s a gimmick, but even beyond the singular achievement of the one shot, Russian Ark is a complete and effective film.

The German language Faust is also strikingly original.  Filmed in the Czech Republic, Sokurov vividly creates a grimy and economically depressed German town of the early 1800s.  The alleys, doorways and staircases are all so narrow that people are constantly jammed together. Sokurov’s Faust is not an old man, but a 40-year-old beaten down by poverty and malaise.  Similarly, his Mephistopheles is not a slick charmer, but physically gross and repellent character who is a canny manipulator.

Unfortunately, the originality is for naught, because the film fails to engage the viewer.  You watch Faust with the indifference one feels while observing someone park a car awkwardly.

Faust’s Aspect Ratio is a TV-like 1.37 : 1 (but goes wider for the final scene),  which is odd for a literary epic.  And some of the scenes are filmed through a distorted lens for some reason.  The 140 minute length just contributes to the sense of self-indulgence by Sokurov.   It’s not a pleasant way to spend 140 minutes of your life.

Cinequest – The Ghastly Love of Johnny X: gum-chewing greasers bring fun from Outer Space

by

You gotta like a movie whose tag line is: “They sing! They dance! They’re juvenile delinquents from outer space!”  I saw The Ghastly Love of Johnny X at its world premiere at Cinequest 22, and writer-director Paul Bunnell said that he was primarily inspired by the teenage delinquent movies of the 50’s.  But it’s also clear that Bunnell has seen more than his share of sci-fi movies from the 50s (and maybe a Russ Meyer film or two).

Bunnell evoked the genre by shooting in a crisply beautiful black and white (on the last of Kodak’s 35mm black and white Plus X film stock).  Ghastly Love is about some space aliens in the form of T-bird driving hard guys.  Having been exiled to our planet,  they grease their hair and snap their gum, and occasionally break into a musical number.

Before I saw it, I was concerned that Ghastly Love might be trying too hard to be the next The Rocky Horror Picture Show cult classic, but, not to  worry, Ghastly Love definitely stands on its own.  The cast and crew evidently had fun making this picture, and the fun carries over to the audience.

This was the last film for the late Kevin McCarthy, who was enough of a good sport to don a Devo hat and play the Grand Inquisitor.  McCarthy, whose Oscar-nominated performance as Biff in Death of a Salesman was 61 years ago, brought some sci-fi cred from the 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Cinequest – Forgetting the Girl: ooooof! so this is a horrror movie…

by

Forgetting the Girl starts out like a romantic comedy about a quirky but appealing guy with some emotional issues, and then sucker punches the audience by revealing itself in the final 15 minutes to be a horror film.  The abrupt change of pace is both a strength and weakness of the film.

This is the first feature from director Nate Taylor, from a story by Peter Moore Smith.  I understand that the sudden, explosive violence is supposed to rock the viewer, but I think that I would have enjoyed the film more if the early tone had better prepared me for the darkness to follow.  Instead, the early part is too much Guy Meets Girl, etc.  Taylor then lingers too long on the episodes of horror at the end.  Taylor might benefit from screening Michael Powell’s disturbing horror classic Peeping Tom a few times more to improve the pacing.

Taylor does an excellent job with a red herring in the plot, and shows real promise at producing creepiness and tension.

I saw Forgetting the Girl at its world premiere at Cinequest 22, with the audience packed with friends and family of the filmmakers.  This audience responded more enthusiastically than I think most will.

Cinequest – Dorfman: nothing to see here, move along

by

Dorfman is a well-intentioned indie about a woman who has been sacrificing her own life to support the self-absorbed men in her life.  Moving from the San Fernando Valley to the newly vibrant downtown LA (colorful and trendy, yet edgy) helps bring her a renaissance of spirit.

Unfortunately,the promising premise is betrayed by a cliche ridden screenplay, and poor direction and editing.  The star, Sara Rue, doesn’t bring much to the party, either.  The film only works as a travelogue for downtown LA.

The wily veteran Elliott Gould and Haaz Sleiman (The Visitor, Nurse Jackie) are both good, but they’ll both see much better material than this.

Cinequest – Happy New Year Grandma!: when Grandma is evil

by
Monserrat Carulla in HAPPY NEW YEAR, GRANDMA!

The high stress care of a difficult 88-year-old grandmother is tearing a Basque family apart. They think that she’s addled, until one family member after another come to realize that she actually is lucid and diabolical.  She’s so evil that it becomes either her or them.

Monserrat Carulla makes the most of the delicious role as the conniving grannie.  You may have seen her in the excellent Spanish horror film The Orphanage.  The rest of the cast is excellent, too.

It’s a dark comedy and much, much darker than American audiences are used to.  She does some very bad things to sympathetic human characters and to innocent animals.

This Spanish movie is in the Basque language and is also titled Urte Berri On, Amona!.

Cinequest – Come As You Are: two wheelchairs, a white cane and some condoms

by

The road trip comedy Come As You Are is about three disabled young Belgian men who yearn to discard their virginity.  Two are in wheelchairs and one is blind.  After hearing about a brothel that caters to guys with special needs, they plot a road trip to Spain’s Costa del Sol.  They need their parents to send them with a male nurse, but not to come along or know the true destination.  All goes well, until the parents withdraw their permission and our heroes sneak off under the care of a necessary evil, a no-nonsense female nurse.  Their getaway is expedited by a very funny 11 year-old kid sister.

Along the way, their individual personalities are exposed (for better and for worse) and they experience real unsheltered freedom for the first time (with its pluses and minuses).  It’s a little movie with some poignant moments among the laughs.

The film, titled Hasta La Vista in Europe, is mostly in Flemish, with some French and English.

Cinequest – Children of the Green Dragon: competing for a warehouse and the pizza girl

by
CHILDREN OF THE GREEN DRAGON

In Children of the Green Dragon, a hangdog Hungarian real estate agent must avoid getting fired by selling a rundown warehouse that is currently rented to a shady Chinese import company.  The Chinese watchman is tasked, for his part, to prevent the sale of the warehouse – or face an additional year of involuntary servitude.  Surprisingly, they bond.

This movie is about the  culture clash between the two guys.  Their relationship blossoms despite that and despite their competing job interests.  Then both become fascinated by an edgy pizza delivery woman.  It’s a funny and sweet little film.

The film is titled A Zold Sarkany Gyermekei in Hungarian.

Cinequest – King Curling: surprising hilarity from the Norse ice

by

This Norwegian comedy, set in a sport that even the Norwegians find to be odd and boring, is HILARIOUS.  The star of a curling team suffers a psychotic breakdown and, after years of treatment, is released from an asylum heavily medicated.  To win money for a friend’s lifesaving operation, the curling team must win a tournament and the star needs to go off his meds to regain his game skills.

It’s a broad comedy, but the key is that the actors aren’t trying to be funny, a la Jack Black or Will Ferrell.  Instead, they play it absolutely straight, relying on the characters, situations and dialogue to generate the laughs.  And laughs, they are aplenty.

The curling star tries to maintain despite his recurring hallucinations of floating pink lint.  One of the Norwegian curlers, a womanizer with unusually low standards,  keeps lapsing into American gangsta street talk.  Another has a long-lost father who turns up as, of course, a Rod Stewart impersonator who doesn’t sound remotely like Rod Stewart.  And then there’s the kissing dog.  You gotta see this movie – it’s a top drawer broad comedy.

It’s playing again at Cinequest tonight (March 2) and tomorrow (March 3).

Movie shot on a cell phone

by

This one-minute movie, Discovery of the Woodsprites by Jadrien Steele, was shot on a cell phone.  Sandisk was a sponsor of Cinequest 2010, and four films shot on cell phones – all less than a minute and six seconds – were shown before most features at the festival.  You can watch all four movies at 4 Movies Shot on a Cell Phone

Here is Discovery of the Woodsprites.