Winter doldrums FILM JOURNAL Jan.-Feb. 2019

[Chris Knipp]

(This is more a New York Movie Journal now.)



US (Jordan Peele 2019).

Peele moves into pure horror with a doppelgangers-out-to-get-you-and-your-family story this time. A disappointment compared to his striking debut Get Out, but still with some strong staging and not to be missed for any horror movie fan. Watched at Village East 22 Mar. 2019. Metascore 81%.



CHRIST STOPPED AT EBOLI/CRISTO SI È FERMATO A EBOLI (Francesco Rosi 1979; US release of uncut version 2019)

Some of the pull quotes from this much-admired and awarded film, now seen in"uncut" form in four original 55-minute TV episodes from RAI (divided over two days), “Best viewed as a meditation and "the audience seemed hushed..." hint at its lovely somnolent quality. It is generally low-keyed as perhaps befits a story about an Italian intellectual in 1935 in "internal exile" from Turin by the fascists for leftist political activities to a remote nowhere town in Lucania (now more often called Basilicata). His life is becalmed, but he experiences uplift as he learns to practice medicine because it is direly needed. Good period flavor, and a classy international production of the time with two French stars, Alain Cuny, François Simon, and one Greek one, Irene Papas, something the Italians could do because of their custom of dubbing everything. (They don't do that so much anymore.) The distinguished-looking, preternaturally calm Gian Maria Volonté plays the autobiographical main character of the novel, medically-trained painter and writer Carlo Levi. Watched in two separate segments at Film Forum 25 and 26 Mar. 2019 at press screenings. The public run will be 3-18 April.

[Chris Knipp]

THE INVENTOR: OUT FOR BLOOD IN SILICON VALLEY (Alex Gibney 2019)

A typical fast-paced standard Alex Gibney doc about the rise and fall of Theranos, the firm that raised $400 million, then billions, to build a box that could do 200+ different blood tests on a tiny pin prick of blood. Lots of rich old famous white men bought into it, Walgreen's bought it, and it was ultimately a fraud. Is it okay to say I hate Elizabeth Holmes? She is compared to Steve Jobs, who I don't like either: but he at least had products that worked. The most accurate word used for Holmes is "zealot." But she was also an idiot, selling people on a medical technology product that was supposed to change the world when it was never scientifically or technologically possible. It's even questionable that as Holmes thought, it would be a good idea for everybody to have a machine to test their blood in their house. This is a very good story. It shows the recent growing prevalence of fraud in Silicon Valley and in the world of startups. Watched at Cinema Village 25 Mar. 2019.

[Chris Knipp]

DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER IN ASK DR. RUTH

RYAN WHITE: ASK DR. RUTH (2019)

Another press screener. Everybody knows about Dr. (Ed.D.) Ruth Westheimer, this tiny (4 feet six inches) popular media figure, I guess, but I knew little and was glad to be informed. This gives her whole story, her escape from the Holocaust via a Swiss orphanage, but loss of both loving parents. Her time in Israel on a kibbutz, studying psychology at the Sorbonne, emigrating to the US, working as a housekeeper, three husbands, two children, multiple grandchildren, Ed.D. from Teachers College, Columbia University. Her whirlwind media career began in 1980 on WYNY where they hid her away at midnight on Sundays. She was a pioneer in sex education, and her good humor, positivity, very idiomatic English but heavy German accent, her outspokenness made her irresistible. As I hate Elizabeth Holmes of Teranos, as I am ambivalent about Toni Morrison, I LOVE Dr. Ruth. She comes across to me as an adorable and good person. Amazingly, she is now 90, and the film ends with her birthday celebration. Debuted at Sundance, also (like Toni Morrison) Magnolia, to be released theatrically 3 May and on Hulu 1 June. Watched on a screener Mar 24-25, 2019.

[Chris Knipp]

THE CHAPERONE (Michael Engler 2018)

From the pen of Julian Fellowes, the writer of the popular gentrified British TV series Gosford Park (2001) and Downton Abbey (2010), this Masterpiece and PBS film revolves around Norma, a lady raised as an orphan (Elizabeth McGovern) who married a lawyer (Campbell Scott) when she was sixteen. She gets the job of chaperoning the 15-year-old future silent film diva Louise Brooks (Haley Lu Richardson) on a trip from Wichita to New York City for a summer of dance training with the Ruth St. Denis-Ted Shawn troupe. Norma's motive is to see the nuns who raised her in a New York orphanage and seek the identity of her birth mother. This leads also to liberation from her corset, romance with a German handyman (Géza Röhrig of Son of Saul) whom she meets at the orphanage, and some very genteel collateral excitement. We don't get to see all that much of Louise Brooks and the very promising Haley Lu Richardson is somewhat wasted, but this movie is definitely ideal material for the Masterpiece Theater set. This seems rooted in the small screen (where director Michael Engler has done all his copious previous work) in style and look, but nonetheless theatrical release in NYC is coming 29 Mar., and in the San Francisco Bay Area 12 Apr. 2019. Watched on a screener in NYC 27 Mar. 2019.

[Chris Knipp]

WORKING WOMAN (Michal Aviad 2018).

This Israeli drama about sexual harassment on the job by a high end real estate developer on his very competent female assistant climaxes in Paris and she disintegrates afterward but she pulls out of it neatly enough. The characters are cool and neutral, there is no background music: the director has mainly done docs. Though well done this felt to me as if it lacked something; like an unusually well made instructional film. But in this time of global @MeToo awareness, that could be a plus. Metascore 81%. Showing at IFC Center, but I also had a screener. Watched 2 Apr. 2019 in NYC. (I can't say this was altogether a doldrums-banisher - now that the Rendez-Vous and New Directors for me are pretty much over - but it is the height of relevance to a hot topic.)

[Chris Knipp]

TONI MORRISON: THE PIECES I AM (Timothy Greenfield-Sanders 2019)

An "American Masters" film about her life and work mainly narrated directly into the camera by Morrison herself with lots of amazing photographs and film clips to illustrate and with talking heads including Hilton Als, Oprah Winfrey, Fran Lebowitz and various others. She is a formidable and engaging person, an insinuating, gentle, but utterly confident speaker. Amazingly, she is 88. Why does she laugh so much in recounting her life? A sense of fun perhaps. I can't really comment or evaluate because I have not read any of her work. I've always feared it would be too melodramatic, or just not for me. For somebody who has won so many awards, including the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, this is probably blind of me. But this film didn't really change my opinion. Magnolia theatrical release coming Jun. 21. It debuted at Sundance. Watched on a screener Mar. 22-23-24, 2019.

[Chris Knipp]

Recent festival-watching.


MAY 2018 CANNES PHOTO CALL FOR "DIE STROPERS" (THE HARVESTERS)

Maybe "winter doldrums" are gone now that the weather seems springlike, and after being in New York (not so spring-like then) for Rendez-Vous with French Cinema and New Directors/New Films. Anyway I'm into the San Francisco Film Festival now. I learn (though it happened a couple years ago, but nobody told me) that the SF Film Society has been "rebranded" with five or six color-coded divisions, and we're supposed to use "SFFILM" a lot and avoid the old "SFIFF" so I'm doing that. No problem, the "International" seemed unnecessary anyway; most festivals are international anyway.

Look at the list of SFFILM reviews I've put up so far - but some, ASAKO I & II, DR. RUTH, A FAITHFUL MAN, HONEYLAND and THE LOAD, I watched earlier and reviewed in connection with the NYFF or New Directors. I don't guess BELMONTE is Veroij's best, but it's stylish and moody.

THE CHAMBERMAID is a terribly grim slog but also hypnotically immersive. I was asked not to write a full review of it, anyway, as is the case with several others, including the terrific THE HARVESTERS, an intense moody depiction of a gay young man in a horrifically unfriendly environment of machismo and ultrareligionsity in the vanishing world of white Afrikaners.

CLOSE ENEMIES is a thing I love, a French "polar noir," a cop thriller, and it's an excellent if not groundbreaking one. I love A FAITHFUL MAN but I'm not watching it now (maybe I will see it again soon). It was in the NYFF Main Slate last fall. I have to admit I haven't (yet) made it through FIRST NIGHT NERVES. It seems very gay and very campy, a theatrical Hong Kong drama about prima donna actresses, and ridiculously complicated and over-plotted. Fun for some.

HONEYLAND is a great observational documentary I reviewed for New Directors. IN MY ROOM is wholly new to me. It's a Berlin School film by Ulrich Köhler, the husband of Maren Ade (of TONI ERDMANN) and I get what he's doing this time: it's the end of the world and a shlub becomes a self-sufficient macho guy, a mansch. This is a very interesting film. THE LOAD isn't for everyone, a moody, stylish, minimalistic (too minimalistic maybe) study of the periphery of a Kosovo 1999 massacre.

I'm waiting to get a screener of LORO. There are supposed to be two parts, LORI I AND LORO II, and I don't know which this will be. This may not be Toni Servillo and Paolo Sorrentino at their best, but being their take on Silvio Berlusconi, it has to be interesting.

SFFILM 2019 reviews posted so far:
Asako I & II/寝ても覚めても (Ryusuke Hamaguchi 2018) NYFF
Ask Dr. Ruth (Ryan White 2019)
Beast in the Jungle, The (Clara van Gool 2018)
Belmonte (Federico Veiroj 2018)
Chambermaid, The /La camarista (Lila Avilés 2018)
Close Enemies/Frères ennemis (David Oelhoffen 2018)
Faithful Man, A/L'homme fidèle (Louis Garrel 2018) NYFF
First Night Nerves/八個女人一台戲 (Stanley Kwan 2018)
The Harvesters (Etienne Kallos 2018)
Honeyland (Tamara Kotevska, Ljubomir Stefanov 2018) ND/NF
In My Room (Ulrich Köhler 2018)
Load, The/Teret (Ognjen Glavonić 2018) ND/NF
Coming soon:
Loro (Paolo Sorrentino 2018)