San Francisco International Film Festival

From SFFILM: THE LOST CITY OF Z – the historical adventure epic revived

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Charlie Hunnam in THE LOST CITY OF Z photo courtesy of SFFILM

Because the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM) was supposed to be underway now (it’s been cancelled for the COVID-19 emergency), here’s a film from SFFILM’s 2017 program. In auteur James Gray’s sweeping turn of the 20th Century epic The Lost City of Z, a stiff-upper-lip type British military officer becomes the first European to probe into the deepest heart of unmapped Amazonia. Finding his way through the lush jungles, braving encounters with sometimes cannibalistic indigenous warriors, he becomes obsessed with finding the lost city of an ancient civilization. I know this sounds like Indiana Jones, but it’s based on the real life of Percy Fawcett as chronicled in the recent book Lost City of Z by David Grann.

The Lost City of Z begins with an Edwardian stag hunt through the verdant Irish countryside, complete with horses spilling riders. This scene is gorgeous, but its point is to introduce the young British military officer Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam) as a man of unusual resourcefulness, talent and, above all, drive. Despite his abilities, he has been chaffing at the unattractive assignments that have precluded his career advancement. In the snobby Edwardian military, he has been in disfavor because his dissolute father had stained the family name. One of Fawcett’s commanders says, “He’s been rather unfortunate in his choice of ancestors”.

That yearning to earn the recognition that he believes he merits – and to attain the accomplishments of a Great Man – is the core of this character-driven movie. Fawcett resists yet another assignment away from the career-making action, a mapping expedition designed to have a minor diplomatic payoff. But it takes him on a spectacular Amazon exploration that brings him celebrity – and backing for more high-profile expeditions. Fawcett was surfing the zeitgeist in the age of his contemporaries Roald Amundsen (South Pole), Robert Peary (North Pole) and Howard Carter (King Tut).

In that first expedition, Fawcett becomes convinced that he can find the magnificent city of a lost civilization deep in the Amazon, a city he calls Z (which is pronounced as the British “Zed”). The Lost City of Z takes us through two more Amazonian expeditions, sandwiched around Fawcett’s WW I service in the hellish Battle of the Somme. That final expedition ends mysteriously – and not well.

No one knows for sure what happened to Fawcett. In The Lost City of Z, Gray leads us toward the most likely conclusion, the one embraced by Grann’s book. If you’re interested in the decades of speculation about Fawcett’s fate, there’s a good outline on Percy Fawcett’s Wikipedia page.

Fawcett comes with his own Victorian upper class prejudices, but he has the capacity to set those aside for a post-Darwin open-mindedness. Gray made it a point that the indigenous peoples in the movie are independent of Fawcett; Gray shows them living their lives in a world that Fawcett has found, not just advancing the plot points in Fawcett’s quest. Four real tribes – and their cultures – are shown in the film.

As Percy Fawcett, with his oft-manic obsession and fame-seeking that color his scientific curiosity and his old-fashioned Dudley Do-Right values, Charlie Hunnam gives a tremendous, perhaps carer breakthrough, performance. He’s been a promising actor in Sons of Anarchy and the overlooked thriller Deadfall) (and such a good actor that I never dreamed that he’s really British). Hunnam will next star as the title character in the King Arthur movie franchise.

Robert Pattinson is unexpectedly perfect as Fawcett’s travel buddy Henry Costin. With his Twilight dreaminess hidden behind a Smith Brothers beard, Pattinson projects a lean manliness. It’s probably his best performance.

Sienna Miller shines as Fawcett’s proto-feminist wife Nina. I first noticed Miller (and Daniel Craig) in the underrated neo-noir thriller 2004 Layer Cake. Now Miller is still only 35 years old and has delivered other fine recent performances in Foxcatcher, American Sniper and (in an especially delicious role) High-Rise.

Director James Gray (The Yard, Two Lovers, The Immigrant) is a favorite of cinephiles and of other filmmakers, but regular audiences don’t turn out for his movies. That may change with The Lost City of Z, a remarkably beautiful film that Gray shot, bucking the trend to digital, in 35 mm. The jungle scenes were filmed in a national park in Columbia. The cinemeatographer is the Oscar-nominated Darius Khondji. Khondji shot The Immigrant for Gray and has been the DP of choice for David Fincher (Se7en) Alan Parker (Evita), Michael Haneke (Amour), and Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris). Along with the stag hunt and the voyages up and down the jungle rivers, there is also a breathtakingly beautiful ballroom scene and a gaspingly surreal nighttime discovery of a rubber plantation’s opera house deep in the jungle.

There have been other Lost Expedition movies, most famously Werner Herzog’s Aquirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo. The Lost City of Z shares an obsession, a quest and a mysterious tragic end with those films, but it stands apart with its exploration of the motivation of a real life character and the authenticity of Gray’s depiction of the indigenous people.

Movie studios used to make an entire genre of very fun movies from Gunga Din and The Four Feathers through Lawrence of Arabia and Zulu that featured white Europeans getting their thrills in exotic third world playgrounds. We often cringe at the racist premises and the treatment of “the natives” those movies today. Since the 1960s, the best examples of the genre, like Raiders of the Lost Ark, have had an ironic tinge. With The Lost City of Z, James Gray loses both the racism and the irony, and brings us brings a straight-ahead exploration tale.

The Lost City of Z revives the genre of the historical adventure epic, with all the spectacle of a swashbuckler, while braiding in modern sensitivities and a psychological portrait. This is a beautiful and thoughtful film. The Lost City of Z is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Also see my notes from the director James Gray’s Q & A at the San Francisco International Film Festival. [And here are some completely random tidbits. There’s a cameo by Spaghetti Western star Franco Nero. And the closing credits recognize the “data wrangler”.]

From SFFILM: ROJO – bobbing in a sea of moral relativism

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Benjamin Naishtat’s ROJO. Courtesy of SFFILM.

The San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM) was set to open tomorrow before it was cancelled for the COVID-19 emergency, so in tribute, here’s a film from SFFILM’s 2019 program.

Rojo is Argentine writer-director Benjamín Naishtat’s slow burn drama.  Rojo is set just before the 1970s coup that some characters expect – but no one is anticipating how long and bloody the coup will be.  Several vignettes are woven together into a tapestry of pre-coup moral malaise.

A prominent provincial lawyer Claudio (Darío Grandinetti) is invited to participate in a scam. There’s a scary encounter of lethal restaurant rage. It looks like Claudio, bobbing on a sea of moral relativism, may well remained unscathed, but the arrival of crack detective becomes a grave threat.

As Claudio weaves through his life, his society shows signs of crumbling. There’s a failed teen seduction, an emotional breakdown at a formal reception and a natural metaphor – a solar eclipse.

It’s funny when the audience finally connects the dots and understands who the character nicknamed “the Hippie” is. And Naishtat and Grandinetti get the most out of the scene where Claudio finally dons a toupee.

We know something that the characters don’t know – or at least fully grasp – how bloody the coup will be. Watch for the several references to desaparecido, a foreboding of the coup. Argentina’s coup was known for the desaparecidos – the disappeared – thousands of the regime’s political opponents went missing without a trace, having been executed by death squads. In Rojo, a very inconvenient madman dies and his body is hidden, there’s a disappearing act in a magic show, and a would-be boyfriend vanishes.

This is a moody, atmospheric film that works as a slow-burn thriller. I saw Rojo earlier a year agoat the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM). Rojo made my list of 10 Overlooked Movies of 2019. Stream from Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.

Stream of the Week: WE BELIEVE IN DINOSAURS – denying science on a monumental scale

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WE BELIEVE IN DINOSAURS

In the thought-provoking documentary We Believe in Dinosaurs, filmmakers Clayton Brown and Monica Long Ross introduce us to Ark Encounter, a Kentucky attraction with a full-size replica of Noah’s Ark.  Explicitly pro-creationism and anti-evolution, Ark Encounter is filled with interpretive exhibits that illustrate the Biblical story of Noah as historical fact, kind of a fundamentalist, evangelical Smithsonian.   Ark Encounter is 45 miles from its sister attraction, the Creation Museum.

There’s a lot to think about – and even marvel about – here.  First of all, the Ark Encounter is an impressive spectacle.  In Genesis, God directed Noah to build the ark to be 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high.  That means that this thing is a football field-and-a-half long and over four stories high.  We get to meet and observe the technicians and artists as they build the animatronic Noah family and the reproduced animals.

The bigger story here, though, is the massive investment in anti-science propaganda.  To justify their literal acceptance of Biblical content that is inconsistent with scientific fact, these folks behind the Ark Encounter believe that they need to discredit science itself.  And they’re not just defending the literal occurrence of every Bible story, but also the chronology of Bishop Ussher who, in the mid 1600s, calculated that the earth was created in 4004 B.C.  That means that the Ark Encounter aggressively explains that the Earth and the human race, despite fossil evidence, are each 6,000 years old – and that dinosaurs lived alongside humans (and voyaged on the Ark). It also means that they seek to discredit the Theory of Evolution and the scientific method itself (while enjoying its byproducts – vaccines, for example).

When you distill their beliefs, these neo-creationists are essentially turbanless Taliban.   Just for perspective, after suppressing Galileo’s 1615 discovery of the earth-centered solar system, the Catholic Church started backpedaling in 1718.  That means that 300 years ago, even the reactionary Church decided not to double down on denying scientific discoveries.

And what about the scientists? And people of faith who accept science?  We Believe in Dinosaurs brings us the perspectives of Ark Encounter opponents, most notably a geologist, and a former neo-creationist, both native Kentuckians.  There’s also a local Baptist minister, who thinks that people of faith can also accept science.

One of the stunning aspects of We Believe in Dinosaurs is the unexpected David-and-Goliath story.  We might expect the science-deniers to be outmatched.  But the folks with most primitive beliefs are the creative masters.  Anti creationists are the Goliath, supported by hordes of believers, massive private investment, capacity for technical wizardry and even state support.  On the other hand, scientists are not often skilled in or equipped with tools for political persuasion and mass communications.  The pro-science folks are, like John the Baptist, a lone voice in the wilderness, losing the optics battle.

Brown and Long Ross have a point of view (that science is good), but they don’t make the Ark Encounter people ridiculous.  We directly hear the Ark Encounter leadership’s public pronouncements, and we meet the earnest and often sympathetic folks who are using their considerable talents to build and fill the attraction.  Brown and Long Ross let us hear from both sides and let us connect our own dots.  Watch the closing credits to the very end to get the subjects’ unfiltered view of the filmmakers. And wait for the film’s super-creepy money shot – that of an animatronic figure reflecting on the fate of others.

I saw We Believe in Dinosaurs at its world premiere at the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM).  We Believe in Dinosaurs can be streamed from Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

MIDNIGHT FAMILY: an all-night race for pesos

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Luke Lorentzen’s MIDNIGHT FAMILY. Cuurtesy of SFFILM

In his gripping documentary Midnight Family, filmmaker Luke Lorentzen takes us on ridealongs with an all-night ambulance crew in Mexico City. It’s even wilder than you may expect.

Midnight Family is set in an absurd situation with life-and-death stakes. We learn right away that there are only 45 government-operated ambulances in Mexico City, a metropolis of 9 million. The rest of the ambulances are private and mostly independents.

Competition is cut throat. The private ambulances listen to police scanners and then TRY TO OUTRACE each other to the scene. One of these independent ambulances is the Ochoa family’s business.

Fernando Ochoa is the head of the family, and he collects the ambulance fee from hospitals and patients. His 17-year-old son Juan is the voluble front man and driver, who careens them through the Mexico City streets at alarming speed. The Ochoa’s colleague, the even-tempered medic Manuel, rides in the back. The youngest Ochoa son, pudgy, Ruffles-devouring 10-year-old Josue, rides along as a gopher. BTW there are no seat belts in the back.

The private ambulances operate in a shady world of semi-formal licensing, so they can always be shut down arbitrarily by the cops. Indeed, we even see the Ochoas arrested while trying to take a patient to the hospital. It’s common for the police to extract bribes from the vulnerable ambulance crews.

There is an incentive to steer patients to the private hospitals that will pay the ambulance crews, so their business is, by its nature, often a hustle; there are some instances of ethical ambiguity. Aiming to depict a “wide spectrum”, Lorentzen balances life-saving heroics with the more sketchy moments. Getting payment out of a grieving family when the loved one dies on the way to the hospital is, well, awkward.

Here is the Ochoa’s business model. Ideally, they get paid about $250 to deliver a patient to a private hospital. They deduct the cost of gasoline, medical supplies and police bribes, and then split what’s left four ways. If a patient can’t or won’t pay, if the vehicle breaks down, or if the cops shut them down – the Ochoas are out of luck.

Luke Lorentzen’s MIDNIGHT FAMILY. Cuurtesy of SFFILM

Fernando is silent but expressive. Carrying an alarming belly, he stoically juggles an assortment pills to treat his chronic illness. The loquacious Juan is a born front man, and basically provides play-by-play commentary throughout the film in real time. We see him downloading the previous night’s drama over the phone to his girlfrend Jessica and, by loud speaker, directing other Mexico City drivers out of his way.

Fernando and Juan sleep on the floor of a downscale apartment, and they never know if they’ll make enough money for tomorrow’s gasoline. It’s an incredibly stressful existence. How resilient can they be? Is there any limit to the stress they can absorb? As Lorentzen himself says, this is “a world where no one is getting what they need”.

I saw Midnight Family at the 2019 San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM), which included an in-person Q&A with Lorenzen. Lorentzen spent 80-90 nights with the crew. About 70% of the film comes from the last three nights that he rode with the Ochoas.

Midnight Family joins a mini-genre of rogue ambulance cinema. The very dark Argentine narrative Carancho stars the great Ricardo Darin as a LITERALLY ambulance-chasing lawyer. In the Hungarian dark comedy Heavenly Shift (I saw it at the 2014 Cinequest), an outlaw ambulance crew gets kickbacks from a shady funeral director if the patient dies en route to the hospital.

Midnight Family is just concluding a run at the Roxie in San Francisco. I’ll let you know when it’s streamable. Midnight Family is one of the nest documentaries of the year, and on my Best Movies of 2019.

Stream of the Week: LEAVE NO TRACE – his demons, not hers

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Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie and Ben Foster in a scene from Debra Granik’s LEAVE NO TRACE. Courtesy of SFFILM.

Here is the best movie of 2018 – the unforgettable coming of age film Leave No Trace. Ben Foster and Thomasin McKenzie star as a dad-daughter team who challenge conventional thinking about homelessness and healthy parenting.  Leave No Trace is writer-director Debra Granik’s first narrative feature since her Winter’s Bone (which I had rated as the best film of 2010).

When we meet Will (Foster) and his daughter Tom (McKenzie), they are engaging in extremely low impact camping in a fern-rich Oregon forest, to the point of solar cooking foraged mushrooms on a mylar sheet.  Dad and daughter are both survivalist experts and work together as a highly trained team.  They have the fond, respectful, communicative relationship that most families with teen children aspire to but can only fantasize about.

But Will and Tom are not on vacation. They do not consider themselves homeless, because the forest is their home.   However, their lifestyle just isn’t consistent with contemporary thinking about child welfare.  Furthermore, living in a public park is illegal,and when they are discovered, social service authorities are understandably and justifiably concerned.  Investigators find Tom to be medically and emotionally healthy, Will to be free of drug or alcohol abuse, and there has been no child abuse or neglect – other than having ones child living outdoors and not going to school.

Will is a veteran who has been scarred by his military service, and he is clearly anti-social.  But Will is not your stereotypical PTSD-addled movie vet.  He is a clear thinker.  His behavior, which can range to the bizarre, is not impulsive but deliberate.

Fortunately, the Oregon, social services authorities are remarkably open-minded, and they place Will and Tom in a remote rural setting in their own house at a rural Christmas Tree farm.  Will can work on the farm, Tom can go the school, and there’s a liberal non-denominational church filled with kind folks.  It’s a massive accommodation to Will and Tom’s lifestyle, only with the additions of living under a roof and public education.

Tom blossoms with social contact, and particularly enjoys the local 4-H and one kid’s pet rabbit named Chainsaw.  Tom begins to understand how much she needs human connection – and not just with her dad,

But Will can’t help but feel defeated.  When Tom suggests that they try to adapt to their new setting, he scowls, “We’re wearing their clothes, we’re living in their house, we’re eating their food, we’re doing their work. We’ve adapted”.  She argues, “Did you try?”, “Why are we doing this?”, and “Dad, this isn’t how it used to be”.

Ben is so damaged that his parenting can nurture Tom for only so long.  Leave No Trace is about how he has raised her to this point.  Has he imparted his demons to her?  Has he helped her become strong and grounded enough to grow without him?

Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie and Ben Foster in a scene from Debra Granik’s LEAVE NO TRACE. Courtesy of SFFILM.

Winter’s Bone launched the career of Jennifer Lawrence, and Leave No Trace might do the same for newcomer Thomasin McKenzie.  McKenzie is riveting as she authentically takes Tom from a parented child to an independent young woman.  At the San Francisco International Film Festival screening, producer and co-writer Anne Rosellini said “there’s an ‘otherness’ to McKenzie,” who had “tremendous insight into the character”.  Rosellini added that McKenzie and Ben Foster bonded before the shoot, as they rehearsed with a survivalist coach.

Foster is no stranger to troubled characters (The Messenger, Rampart, Hell or High Water).  Here, he delivers a remarkably intense and contained performance as a man who will not allow himself an outburst no matter what turbulence roils inside him.  Rosellini noted that “Will is elusive, a mysterious character to everybody”.  It’s a performance that will be in the conversation about Oscar nominations.  Actors Jeff Kober, Dale Dickey, Dana Millican and Isaiah Stone (the little brother in Winter’s Bone) are also excellent in smaller roles.

Leave No Trace is thoughtful and emotionally powerful.  Superbly well-crafted and impeccably acted, it’s a Must See. Leave No Trace is available for streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

THE SOUND OF SILENCE: novel and engrossing

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Peter Sarsgaard in Michael Tyburski’s THE SOUND OF SILENCE. Courtesy of SFFILM

In the engrossing character study The Sound of Silence, Peter Lucian (Peter Sarsgaard) is obsessed with the musical tonality of the built environment.   Having assigned each area of Manhattan its own distinct musical key, Lucian prowls the city, tuning forks in hand, to map its sounds.

Lucian pays the bills as a house tuner, bringing well-heeled apartment-owners a kind of auditory feng shui.  Lucian is sought after to isolate the hum of a problem refrigerator or toaster that can make a living space depression-inducing.  He’s even been profiled in The New Yorker.

But we sense that Peter Lucian is a little too confident in his expertise.  He is disdainful of the corporate suits trying to monetize his discoveries.  “This is about universal constance, not commerce.”  In a mistake of hubris,  Lucian takes on a research assistant (Tony Revolori – Zero the bell boy in The Grand Budapest Hotel).   Lucian is jarred by corporate espionage, and starts to unravel when a respected scientist views him as a crank.  Can he recover?

Peter Sarsgaard is a marvelous choice to play a cool obsessive who seems, at time,  both blissfully above validation and desperate for it.  In spite of his handsome, regular features, Sargaard’s gift for uncanny stillness helps him play creepy.   Sarsgaard’s Lucian has the unintended capacity of reassuring other characters, but making then even more uncomfortable.

Rashida Jones plays Ellen, a Lucian client who is not just garden-variety neurotic, but has been  so rocked by a tragedy that she remains profoundly unsettled.   Jones is so talented as a comic actress, a voice artist, a documentarian and the writer of that rarest of things, a smart romantic comedy (Celeste and Jesse Forever).  Here, she shows her dramatic chops with a character who starts the movie adrift, but grows able to offer emotional safe harbor.

There’s even a welcome appearance by Austin Pendleton as a Lucian mentor of uncertain reliability.  I’ve loved Pendleton since his turn in 1972’s What’s Up, Doc?. (Come to think of it, that movie had a musicologist obsessed with the inherent tonal qualities of igneous rocks.)

The Sound of Silence is the first feature for director and co-writer Michael Tyburski, and it’s a promising debut.  Despite using an understated color palette, Tyburski delivers some stirring cinema with his use of sound.  As Lucian looks over the city early in the morning, we hear a few musical notes, and then a full orchestra tuning up as the city awakens into its workday.  When Lucian takes Ellen for a drink, it is to the quietest possible venue – a club with a decibel level somewhere between a library and a morgue; afterwards, Lucian emerges into urban  cacophony.  When an academic treats him like a crackpot, we all hear ringing, not just Lucian.

As one would hope, the sound design of The Sound of Silence is remarkable, and the score works very well.  I saw it earlier this year at the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM) and it’s playing at San Francisco’s Presidio and San Jose’s 3Below; you can stream it on Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.

ROJO: bobbing in a sea of moral relativism

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ROJO. Courtesy of SFFILM.

Rojo is Argentine writer-director Benjamín Naishtat’s slow burn drama.  Rojo is set just before the 1970s coup that some characters expect – but no one is anticipating how long and bloody the coup will be.  Several vignettes are woven together into a tapestry of pre-coup moral malaise.

A prominent provincial lawyer Claudio (Darío Grandinetti) is invited to participate in a scam. There’s a scary encounter of lethal restaurant rage. It looks like Claudio, bobbing on a sea of moral relativism, may well remained unscathed, but the arrival of crack detective becomes a grave threat.

As Claudio weaves through his life, his society shows signs of crumbling. There’s a failed teen seduction, an emotional breakdown at a formal reception and a natural metaphor – a solar eclipse.

It’s funny when the audience finally connects the dots and understands who the character nicknamed “the Hippie” is. And Naishtat and Grandinetti get the most out of the scene where Claudio finally dons a toupee.

We know something that the characters don’t know – or at least fully grasp – how bloody the coup will be. Watch for the several references to desaparecido, a foreboding of the coup. Argentina’s coup was known for the desaparecidos – the disappeared – thousands of the regime’s political opponents went missing without a trace, having been executed by death squads. In Rojo, a very inconvenient madman dies and his body is hidden, there’s a disappearing act in a magic show, and a would-be boyfriend vanishes.

This is a moody, atmospheric film that works as a slow-burn thriller. I saw Rojo earlier this year at the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM) and it opens this weekend in Bay Area theaters.

MEETING GORBACHEV: uncritical but humanizing

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Mikhail Gorbachev in MEETING GORBACHEV

Meeting Gorbachev is Werner Herzog’s admiring biodoc of Mikhail Gorbachev, unquestionably one of the 20th century’s most pivotal figures. Herzog filmed three conversations with the then 87-year-old Gorbachev in 2018.

Gorbachev is revered in Germany – particularly by Werner Herzog – for allowing the peaceful, and startlingly quick, reunification of Germany. This biodoc is, to a fault, uncritical. At one point, Herzog even tells Gorbachev, “I love you”.

As the leader of the USSR, Gorbachev’s concepts of Perestroika and Glasnost transformed the political, economic and foreign policy of the Cold War superpower. More than any other individual, Gorbachev can claim credit for ending the Cold War, abolishing and destroying mid-range and short-range nuclear weapons, and the unchallenged independence of the Iron Curtain countries.

Gorbachev is also a tragic figure of Shakespearean proportions. He was intending to reform the USSR, not to destroy it. A coup by fossilized communists knocked him out of power but couldn’t be sustained, spinning out of control and leading to a chaos taken advantage of by the strong man Putin,.

Herzog’s film is excellent in its well-researched and well-told story of the rise of Gorbachev from a modest agricultural backwater – a talented achiever on the rise. Herzog’s irreverent sense of humors, as always, peeks through in the state funerals of Gorbachev’s predecessors, each more absurdly funny than the last.

The greatest gift of Meeting Gorbachev is, as the title suggests, is the unfiltered Gorbachev himself – now a grandfatherly raconteur. We get to appreciate his intellectual curiosity and his clarity of thought and direction. His charm and charisma, even at 87, help us understand how he rose to world leadership.

Werner Herzog and Mikhail Gorbachev in MEETING GORBACHEV

Herzog was a charismatic and innovative leader of German New Cinema. Between 1972 and 1982, he created the art house hits Aguirre:The Wrath of God, Strozek Nosferatu the Vampyre, and Fitzcarraldo.

In 1997, Herzog switched gears with the underrated documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly and followed it with great docs like Grizzly Man and Encounters at the End of the World. Most remarkably, Herzog has also become one of the greatest narrators of English language documentaries; somehow, his German-accented narrations are hypnotic. (In 2007, Herzog slipped in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans with Nicholas Cage in the Klaus Kinski wild man role and cinema’s funniest iguana hallucination.)

Meeting Gorbachev played at the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM). I saw Meeting Gorbachev at Silicon Valley’s Cinema Club.

WE BELIEVE IN DINOSAURS: denying science on a monumental scale

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WE BELIEVE IN DINOSAURS

In the thought-provoking documentary We Believe in Dinosaurs, filmmakers Clayton Brown and Monica Long Ross introduce us to Ark Encounter, a Kentucky attraction with a full-size replica of Noah’s Ark.  Explicitly pro-creationism and anti-evolution, Ark Encounter is filled with interpretive exhibits that illustrate the Biblical story of Noah as historical fact, kind of a fundamentalist, evangelical Smithsonian.   Ark Encounter is 45 miles from its sister attraction, the Creation Museum.

There’s a lot to think about – and even marvel about – here.  First of all, the Ark Encounter is an impressive spectacle.  In Genesis, God directed Noah to build the ark to be 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high.  That means that this thing is a football field-and-a-half long and over four stories high.  We get to meet and observe the technicians and artists as they build the animatronic Noah family and the reproduced animals.

The bigger story here, though, is the massive investment in anti-science propaganda.  To justify their literal acceptance of Biblical content that is inconsistent with scientific fact, these folks behind the Ark Encounter believe that they need to discredit science itself.  And they’re not just defending the literal occurrence of every Bible story, but also the chronology of Bishop Ussher who, in the mid 1600s, calculated that the earth was created in 4004 B.C.  That means that the Ark Encounter aggressively explains that the Earth and the human race, despite fossil evidence, are each 6,000 years old – and that dinosaurs lived alongside humans (and voyaged on the Ark). It also means that they seek to discredit the Theory of Evolution and the scientific method itself (while enjoying its byproducts – vaccines, for example).

When you distill their beliefs, these neo-creationists are essentially turbanless Taliban.   Just for perspective, after suppressing Galileo’s 1615 discovery of the earth-centered solar system, the Catholic Church started backpedaling in 1718.  That means that 300 years ago, even the reactionary Church decided not to double down on denying scientific discoveries.

And what about the scientists? And people of faith who accept science?  We Believe in Dinosaurs brings us the perspectives of Ark Encounter opponents, most notably a geologist, and a former neo-creationist, both native Kentuckians.  There’s also a local Baptist minister, who thinks that people of faith can also accept science.

One of the stunning aspects of We Believe in Dinosaurs is the unexpected David-and-Goliath story.  We might expect the science-deniers to be outmatched.  But the folks with most primitive beliefs are the creative masters.  Anti creationists are the Goliath, supported by hordes of believers, massive private investment, capacity for technical wizardry and even state support.  On the other hand, scientists are not often skilled in or equipped with tools for political persuasion and mass communications.  The pro-science folks are, like John the Baptist, a lone voice in the wilderness, losing the optics battle.

Brown and Long Ross have a point of view (that science is good), but they don’t make the Ark Encounter people ridiculous.  We directly hear the Ark Encounter leadership’s public pronouncements, and we meet the earnest and often sympathetic folks who are using their considerable talents to build and fill the attraction.  Brown and Long Ross let us hear from both sides and let us connect our own dots.  Watch the closing credits to the very end to get the subjects’ unfiltered view of the filmmakers. And wait for the film’s super-creepy money shot – that of an animatronic figure reflecting on the fate of others.

I saw We Believe in Dinosaurs at its world premiere at the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM).  While We Believe in Dinosaurs is just starting out on the festival circuit, this film is too compelling and audience-friendly to go very long without a distributor; I expect that you’ll be able to see it, too, this year.

Stream of the Week: FRANK & LOLA – Bad Girl or Troubled Girl?

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Imogen Poots with Michael Shannon in FRANK & LOLA. Photo courtesy of the San Francisco Film Society.
Michael Shannon and Imogen Poots in FRANK & LOLA.
Photo courtesy of SFFILM.

The San Francisco International Film Festival is underway, so this week’s video pick comes from the program of the 2016 festival. The absorbing neo-noir romance Frank & Lola opens with a couple lovemaking for the first time – and right away there’s a glimmer that he’s more invested than she is. Soon we’re spirited from Vegas to Paris and back again in a deadly web of jealousy.

Lola (Imogen Poots) is young and beautiful, a lively and sparkly kind of girl. Frank (the great Michael Shannon) is older but “cool” – a talented chef. He is loyal and steadfast but given to possessiveness, and he says things like, “who’s the mook?”.

In a superb debut feature, writer director Matthew Ross has invented a Lola that we (and Frank) spend the entire movie trying to figure out. Imogen Poots is brilliant in her most complex role so far. She’s an unreliable girlfriend – but the roots of her unreliability are a mystery – is she Bad or Troubled? A character describes her with “She can be very convincing”, and that’s NOT a complement. Poots keeps us on edge throughout the film, right up to her stunning final monologue.

Shannon, of course, is superb, and the entire cast is exceptional. There’s a memorable turn by Emmanuelle Devos, the off-beat French beauty with the cruel mouth. Rosanna Arquette is wonderful, as is Michael Nyqvist from the Swedish Girl With the Dragon Tattoo movies. I especially liked Justin Long as Keith Winkleman (is he a namedropping ass or something more?).

Frank & Lola has more than its share of food porn and, as befits a neo-noir, lots of depravity. But, at its heart, it’s a romance. Is Lola a Bad Girl or a Troubled Girl? If she’s bad, then love ain’t gonna prevail. But if she’s damaged, can love survive THAT either? We’re lucky enough to go along for the ride.

I saw Frank & Lola in 2016 at the San Francisco International Film Festival. I liked it more than most and put it on my Best Movies of 2016.  Frank & Lola is now available to stream on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

https://vimeo.com/188033673