In the lighthearted Italian Wax: We Are the X, a notoriously shady producer sends two guy filmmakers to Monaco to scout locations for a commercial and meet a gal French casting director. They are all hired because they work cheap. What follows is a little whodunit, a little relationship drama, a little comedy and, as one might expect, a ménage à troisillustrating the open-mindedness of French women (in the movies, anyway).
The best five minutes of the movie is right at the beginning, when the producer demonstrates his mastery of getting someone else to pick up a tab.
There is a superfluous but welcome cameo by 70-year-old Rutger Hauer (it’s been over thirty years since Nighthawks and Blade Runner!). And there’s a Gen X hook, an attempt to make Wax: We Are themore than it is, which is basically an entertaining piece of Euro-fluff.
If you can make it to Cinequest, there are some great movie choices, including Sunday night’s Clouds of Sils Maria with Kristin Stewart (who won the Supporting Actress Cesar – the French Oscar) and Juliette Binoche. Here is my extensive Cinequest coverage.
The Oscars have come and gone, leaving these choices in theaters and elsewhere:
Clint Eastwood’s thoughtful and compelling American Sniper, with harrowing action and a career-best performance from Bradley Cooper.
The inspiring Selma, well-crafted and gripping throughout (but with an unfortunate historical depiction of LBJ).
The cinematically important and very funny (and, of course. Oscar-winning) Birdman.
Julianne Moore’s superb performance is the only reason to see Still Alice;
The Imitation Game – the riveting true story about the guy who invented the computer and defeated the Nazis and was then hounded for his homosexuality.
And the movie that is better than all of these: Boyhood. It’s available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.
Here are some great choices for movies coming up on TV this week – all on Turner Classic Movies:
The Narrow Margin (February 28): This overlooked film noir masterpiece is a taut 71 minutes of tension. Growly cop Charles McGraw plays hide-and-seek with a team of hit men on a claustrophobic train. Marie Windsor is unforgettable as the assassins’ target.
Charles McGraw and Marie Windsor in THE NARROW MARGIN
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg(March 3): This romantic French musical is notable for three things: 1) the actors sing all of the dialogue; 2) the breakout performance by then 20-year-old Catherine Deneuve; and 3) an epilogue scene at a gas station – one of the great weepers in cinema history.
Spider Baby (March 4): This campy horror flick ain’t good, but it’s entertaining. Lon Chaney, Jr., passes the horror torch to Sid Haig. Also on March 4, TCM is bringing us one of the silliest of mutant monster movies, Night of the Lepus (thundering herds of giant killer rabbits) along with Bucket of Blood, a serial killer movie that is a time capsule of beatnik culture.
In the bawdy Norwegian comedy Chasing Berlusconi, a beleaguered harness racing driver gets into trouble with menacing (and very, very funny) Finnish loan sharks, which precipitates a farce involving two shady dim bulbs and a pair of even dumber cops. Oh, and then there’s the driver’s nyphomaniacal wife. Did I mention the racetrack owner with a piercing, sudden cackle and a predilection for toupees and cowboy hats? (The movie’s title comes from a racehorse named for the Italian scoundrel/politician.)
This all makes for very good lowbrow comedy. And lowbrow it is, featuring jokes based on impotence, penis length, horse poop and the like. Chasing Berlusconi also features very clever references to Columbo, The Wire and Fifty Shades of Grey. The characters of the racetrack owner and the lead loan shark are especially funny.
I loved filmmaker Ole Endresen’s hilarious King Curling at the 2012 Cinequest. That story had a very original hook – to win a curling tournament, the protagonist needs to stop taking his meds, and then tries not to slip into psychosis. Chasing Berlusconi isn’t the comic masterpiece of King Curling, but it’s worth some guffaws.
Chasing Berlusconi plays again at Cinequest March 1 at the California Theatre and March 3 at Camera 12.
Not many filmmakers could say that they LITERALLY saved someone’s life, but Bruce Sinofsky could. Sinofsky has died at age 58 from complications of diabetes.
Sinofsky and Joe Berlinger co-directed the three Paradise Lostdocumentaries, which chronicled the eighteen-year ordeal of the West Memphis Three, who were wrongly convicted of child murders in Arkansas. The three were released from prison in 2011 – one of them from death row. This wouldn’t have happened without the first two Paradise Lost documentaries that Sinofsky and Berlinger made for HBO. The 1996 film is available steaming on Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video; the 2000 and 2011 films are available from those providers plus Amazon Instant Video.
Sinofsky and Joe Berlinger also co-directed the wonderful Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, which was among on my top ten movies for 2004. It’s available on DVD from Netflix.
Another struggling Hollywood artist is the heart of Booze Boys and Brownies, and this, time, she bursts into song. She’s an actress unlucky in both love and career, and she navigates through both with her BFF and her once and future boyfriends. Not one of the songs is a show-stopper. None of the characters is especially winning. Pass.
Cinequest Director of Programming/Associate Director Mike Rabehl
I asked Cinequest’s Director of Programming/Associate Director Mike Rabehl to compare the 2015 Cinequest with the programs of previous festivals. After all, he’s put his imprimatur on twenty Cinequests. “The first time feature filmmakers are the strongest in many years,” Rabehl noted, specifically calling out the overall quality of this year’s writing.
What are your predictions for the biggest audience pleasers? Something like The Sapphires from 2013 or The Grand Seduction from 2014?
Rabehl: Probably Batkid Begins, Wild Tales and Slow West.”
What might be the festival’s biggest surprise hit?
Rabehl: “Possibly Milwaukee, The Centerand/or Marry Me.”
Is there anything that we haven’t seen before in a movie? Something wholly original like Polski Film or The Dead Man and Being Happy from the 2013 Cinequest?
Rabehl: “Beast of Cardo is a film that is more about her relationship to the town than it is about the supernatural. Corn Island is completely unique, with very little dialogue, and the filmmakers built their own island to film it. ”
Is there any remarkable new filmmaking talent (a la the 2013 German gem Oh Boy, which later secured a US theatrical release as A Coffee In Berlin)?
Rabehl: “The Center, Antoine et Marie (a second feature), Dermaphoria(a first narrative feature), Feverand Happiest Place on Earth. Plus For An Inexplicable Reason, Factory Boss, Malady and In the Company of Women.”
How does this year’s international cinema shape up?
Rabehl: “Belgium (especially the Flemish side) and Norway are really strong this year.”
Belgian entries include the Flemish films Halfway, In the Heart, Marry Me and Plan Bart, plus the French/Belgian Three Hearts. Cinequest’s Norwegian films are Amnesia, Beatles and Chasing Berlusconi.
It’s time to dive into the 2015 version of the San Jose film festival Cinequest running from tomorrow through March 8. This year’s program looks GREAT. You can find my festival coverage, including both features and movie recommendations, on my Cinequest page (which you may wish to bookmark). Follow me on Twitter for the very latest.
Here are my 18 best bets at Cinequest 2015:
WILD TALES: the darkly comic Argentine collection of revenge stories. Wild Tales has been a festival hit (Cannes, Telluride, Toronto and Sundance) around the world and was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar. One of its vignettes features one of my favorite screen actors, Ricardo Darin (the Argentine Joe Mantegna). See it at Cinequest before it gets to Bay Area art houses on March 6. Ann Thompson (Thompson on Film) will be receiving a Media Legacy Award at the screening.
CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA: The ever-radiant Juliette Binoche plays an actress now relegated to the older role in her breakthrough play, with her younger role going to Kristen Stewart (All About Eve, anyone?). And Stewart just became the first American actress to win a César (the French Oscar) for this performance.
’71: Everybody says that this thriller about a British soldier trapped overnight in a hostile Northern Ireland neighborhood during the Troubles is pedal-to-the-metal intensity.
SLOW WEST: This offbeat Western with Michael Fassbender won a prize at Sundance.
QUEEN AND COUNTRY: Director John Boorman’s Korean War-Era quasi-sequel to his Hope and Glory. Boorman (Deliverance) will appear at the screening. Silicon Valley release on March 6.
L’ATALANTE: The 1934 masterpiece of French writer-director Jean Vigo, who died at age 29 soon after its completion. Richard von Busack, the highly respected film critic for Metro, will receive a Media Legacy Award at the screening.
Here are my pre-festival picks from among the films that I’ve seen:
DRAMA:
ANTOINE ET MARIE: A brilliantly constructed French-Canadian drama with two unforgettable characters.
THE CENTER: An absorbing and topical American indie drama about the seductiveness of a cult.
COMEDY:
LOS HAMSTERS: A biting darkly hilarious Mexican social satire.
DIRTY BEAUTIFUL: An American indie comedy that is decidedly NOT a by-the-numbers battle of the sexes.
DOCUMENTARY:
ASPIE SEEKS LOVE: A surprisingly sympathetic portrait of a guy looking for love like anyone else, but whose social skills are handicapped by Asberger’s.
MEET THE HITLERS: Tracking down real people burdened with the Fuhrer’s name, this successful doc weaves together both light-hearted and very dark story threads.
I’ve also gotten tips from insiders about some other very promising films (that I haven’t seen yet):
CORN ISLAND: Reportedly transcendent Georgian drama.
FOR SOME INEXPLICABLE REASON: Hungarian comedy.
GUARD DOG: dark and violent Peruvian thriller. US premiere.
MILWAUKEE: US indie sex and relationship comedy. World premiere.
THREE WINDOWS AND A HANGING: Searing Kosovan drama.
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.
Cinequest Director of Programming/Associate Director Mike Rabehl
“Everybody always thinks that you watch a bunch of films and you pick what you would like – but it’s not like that.”
Michael Rabehl is Cinequest’s Director of Programming/Associate Director. He’s held the position of Director of Programming since 1996, which makes Cinequest 2015 the twentieth festival program that bears his mark.
So how does he select the 190 (short and feature) films in the festival? He’s looking primarily for quality, production values, strong writing and strong acting. “I like it when people think about the movie.” It’s “not all for me”, but “what an audience may like”. Rabehl is looking for movies of interest to Silicon Valley’s population, so he sifts especially carefully through the Asian, Spanish language and tech-oriented films. If a film will be released theatrically, the release must be after Cinequest’s run in late winter. (Last year, about ten Cinequest selections ultimately got a theatrical release).
About 80% of the films programmed at Cinequest are submitted by the filmmakers. Rabehl recruits the other 20%, after discovering them in other film festivals himself or with the help of his European and New York movie scouts.
Each year Cinequest receives about 2400 submissions. Rabehl leads screening teams (one team for narrative features, one for docs, one for shorts, etc.) who watch and evaluate every film. They winnow the total down by 92% – down to the 190 movies that actually make the festival program. One of those submissions, Miss India America, will receive its world premiere at the California Theater as a spotlight film.
There are more than enough submissions to fill the festival program. Rabehl says that this year there were “at least 71 titles that would have been great for us, but there’s just not enough space”. Keeping the filmmaker in mind, he says “We don’t want to be somebody’s world premiere at 9 AM”.
Rabehl laughed when I told him that people think that I see an unusually high number of movies (150-200) each year. He annually sees about 800, with 650 of them entered in his festival spreadsheet. Rabehl has personally seen all but two of the movies in this year’s Cinequest (all except for two high buzz choices that would be no-brainers for any film fest).
Each year Rabehl goes on scouting trips to identify possible Cinequest entries at other festivals – always to the Toronto International Film Festival and the Montreal World Film Festival and then to a different third fest each year. How does Rabehl navigate a film festival himself? He looks for films that “will work at Cinequest” and is always on the hunt for potential spotlight films.
At the industry-oriented Toronto fest in mid-September, he has the discipline to eschew the big Oscar-bait movies that will open soon as prestige Holiday movies (too early for Cinequest). Toronto has a professional audience, he notes, and Montreal (late August-early September) has more normal film fest audience.
Rabehl is able to be more of a “film fan” at Montreal. He values his enduring relationship with the strong national film programs of Norway and Belgium, which results in some wonderful nuggets for Cinequest. (Think of the hilarious King Curling in 2012.) At Montreal in 2013, he latched on to Ida, the jewel of the 2014 Cinequest – and since universally acclaimed, the winner of the 2015 Best Foreign Language Picture Oscar and #2 on my list of the Best Movies of 2014.
Throughout the year, Rabehl’s ascerbic observations make @cqMike the funniest guy on Twitter. But, in person, he is engaging, not particularly edgy; and deeply passionate about cinema.
Rabehl started helping Cinequest in 1994, and became its Director of Programming in 1996: “I kind of fell into it.” Rabehl had been making short films himself, and his producer had been programming Cinequest as a volunteer and was ready to move on. Rabehl met with Cinequest co-founder and CEO Halfdan Hussey over Thai food, discovered their common vision and the rest, as they say, is Silicon Valley cinema history. Rabehl “wasn’t thinking long-term, but it became long-term.” “I don’t like isolated work”, preferring the collaboration with others that putting together a film fest brings.
In Rabehl’s first Cinequest, the fest expanded to seven days (it’s now thirteen days) and attracted appearances by Kevin Spacey and Jackie Chan. That gave everyone a future glimpse into what Silicon Valley’s film festival has become today.
“When I see audience members excited about being here and talking to each other about the movies, that’s why I do this.”
TOMORROW: Mike Rabehl looks at the 2015 Cinequest.
The winning Nerd Olympics documentary Sweden’s Coolest National Teambrings us into a world that I didn’t know existed – international competition in memory sport. That subject is the first factor that elevates Sweden’s Coolest National Team above the familiar arc of the sports movie. We see people who can remember the exact order of a shuffled deck of cards, seemingly endless strings of binary numbers, even entire dictionaries. (The current world record for memorizing the order of a shuffled deck of cards is 21.19 seconds.) It is a jaw-dropping exhibition.
We meet the sport’s founder and several world champs, and we do end up at the World Memory Championship. Along the way, we see the universal aspects of competition – the pressure to perform, the rookie’s overconfidence, comeuppance for both the brash rookie and the complacent old champ. One competitor’s sister phones their parents to report “he got crushed”.
But what makes Sweden’s Coolest National Team so engaging is that its subjects are so fascinating. As one might expect, the competitors don’t seem particularly athletic and many are downright geeky. Several of the past world and Swedish champions are remarkably devoted to the sport and amazingly generous in helping younger memory sportsmen. Then there is the smug yuppie who dresses like he is giving a TED Talk and seeks to mold the sport into something that he can monetize.
And it has plenty of slyly funny moments – just as our yuppie complains about a former champ making the sport look like it’s just for oddballs, the old geek wanders through a competition with an alarming case of Plumber’s Butt.
The film’s epilogue notes that one of the subjects won the World Championship in 2013. He repeated his win in 2014.
Sweden’s Coolest National Team, which flies past the audience in a just-right 58 minutes, will have its North American premiere at Cinequest on February 25 and play again on February 27 and March 1, all at Camera 12.
The ever-absorbing The Center explores how someone of sound mind and normal disposition can be completely enveloped by a cult. The Center is writer-director Charlie Griak’s first feature, and it’s a very impressive debut.
We meet Ryan (Matt Cici), a talented guy with low self-esteem. He is highly functional and ultra-responsible, but it seems like nobody is in his corner. The first six minutes of this screenplay paint a detailed portrait of a guy who is crapped upon more than Job. No one encourages Ryan to do anything for himself, and he ends each night alone, with a beer and late-night TV. Then someone else shows personal interest in the hang-dog Matt, and he gradually slides into what at first seems the appreciation of his potential, but which is revealed to be a web of exploitation.
The audience recognizes some red flags before Ryan does, but every step in this story is credible – and there isn’t a cliché in sight. The keys to The Center’s success are the crafting of the Ryan character and the believability of the story. Ryan’s journey is compressed into a taut and compelling 72 minutes.
Matt Cici, who is in virtually every shot, is perfect as Ryan – a guy with plenty to offer, but whose lack of self-confidence sets him up for exploitation by everyone else. The acting is strong throughout The Center. Ramon Pabon is especially memorable as a twitchy loser who has been sucked into the cult. With piercing eyes, Judd Einan nails the role of the uberconfident, emotionally bullying cult founder. Annie Einan is excellent as Ryan’s world-weary sister, so burdened by their mother’s care that she can’t be there for Ryan until she spots the crisis in his life.
This spring, HBO will premiere documentarian Alex Gibney’s (Taxi to the Dark Side, We Steal Secrets, Client 9, Casino Jack and the United States of Money) expose of Scientology – Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief. Going Clear will be a big deal, and will beg the question, “How can smart, able people fall into this stuff?”. The Center should become the perfect narrative fiction companion to Going Clear.
One more thing – The Center was shot in St. Paul, Minnesota, a city that I’m not used to seeing in a movie. The Center’s sense of place (a place fresh and unfamiliar to many of us, anyway) adds to its appeal.
With The Center, Charlie Griak has shown himself to be a very promising filmmaking talent and has left a serious professional calling card. I can’t wait to see what he does next.
Cinequest will host the world premiere of The Center on February 27, and it will play again on March 1 and March 3, all in Camera 12.
