Movie Magazine International Blog

   By Moira Sullivan There were several excellent documentaries at the  Frameline44  film festival that ended in September that are about LGBT culture. The importance of this festival for profiling new films that concern the lives of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders was certainly felt this year with these excellent films.   Cured (see clip above) is a new film directed by Patrick Sammon and Bennet Singer about    the American Psychiatric Association's 1973 decision to remove homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses. There was so much involved in this decision and the filmmakers take us on a journey to the beginnings of this important recall. The film is brilliantly edited to make this historical period come to life. Ahead of the Curve This documentary concerns the history of  Curve magazine, a thriving, first glossy magazine about lesbians. The    film chronicles founder Franco Stevens and how her persistence kep...

By Monica Sullivan Ask Dr. Ruth is a strange hybrid of a movie, rather like Dr. Ruth herself.  It has an intriguing introduction: an animated sequence that suggested what young Ruth’s life was like as a child and an adolescent.  There is also footage of the town where she grew up before the Nazis took over and decimated her family.  Ruth was among a group of children who escaped the fate of their families.  The rest of the movie shows how Ruth eventually found true love, plus fame and fortune and all the rest of that stuff as a sex therapist.  Dr. Ruth fans will love it, others will be indifferent to it.  Anne Frank fans will dig in for their umpteenth reading of “The Diary of a Young Girl”.  One of the members of Movie Magazine met Dr. Ruth and thought she was weird.  That comes through in this documentary.  You can see it in the reactions of talk show hosts and their guests. © 2016 - Monica Sullivan - Air Date: 05/01/19 Movie Magazine ...

By Moira Sullivan The 44th Frameline Film Festival in San Francisco went virtual this year from September 17–27, 2020. It was a record breaking event with 75 films screened online. During the pandemic I am interested in seeing high quality features that are thought provoking and visionary. Two films were exceptional at this year’s Frameline: The Goddess of Fortune from Italy directed by Ferzan Özpetek and Forgotten Roads from Chile directed by Nicol Ruiz Benavides. The Goddess of Fortune is a multi character well crafted film with a wonderful ensemble of vocalists for the soundtrack. Two gay men Arturo, (Stefano Accorsi) and Alesandro (Edoardo Leo) on the verge of a breakup, receive a visit from a mutual friend. She is going to the hospital for tests and wants to leave her two children with them. It turns out the relationship is complicated since they all three were sexually involved in the past and one of her children may have been fathered byAlesandro. The film set design an...

By Monica Sullivan “Mike Wallace is Here” tells the story of the “60 minutes” star who spent most of his career commenting on and analyzing the news.  News was his life, as it would be for his son Chris, 71.  Mike Wallace began his television career in 1949 with the police drama “Stand By For Crime” as Lieutenant Anthony Kidd.  That same year he was master of ceremonies on “Majority Rules” a quiz show which lasted two years.  In 1951 he was a moderator on “Guess Again” another quiz show and that same year he was a co host on “All About the Town” which lasted until 1952.  He was also a panelist in “What’s in a Word” in 1952.  Then he became the emcee on “Who’s the Boss” as well as being the emcee on “The Big Surprise.”  “The Mike Wallace” interviews followed in 1957 and 1958, then he moved on to “Who Pays” in 1959, “Biography from 1961-1964 and then many years of “60 Minutes”.   My problem with the career of Mike Wallace is that most of these ...

By Moira Sullivan The 44th Frameline Film Festival in San Francisco went virtual this year from September 17–27, 2020. It was a record breaking event with 75 films screened online. During thpandemic I am interested in seeing high quality features that are thought provoking and visionary. e Two films were exceptional at this year’s Frameline: The Goddess of Fortune from Italy directed by Ferzan Özpetek and Forgotten Roads from Chile directed by Nicol Ruiz Benavides. The Goddess of Fortune is a multi character well crafted film with a wonderful ensemble of vocalists for the soundtrack. Two gay men Arturo, (Stefano Accorsi) and Alesandro Edoardo Leo aon the verge of a breakup, receive a visit from a mutual friend. She is going to the hospital for tests and wants to leave her two children with them. It turns out the relationship is complicated since they all three were sexually involved in the past and one of her children may have been fathered byAlesandro. The film set design and ...

Movie Magazine International The Venice film festival was the first festival to be held with a public. The extraordinary measures taken to ensure the safety of the festival go-ers made it a success with no cases of covid during the 10 day even that ran from Sept 2-12. Here are some of the films that stood out for me towards the end of the festival. “Selva Tragica” or Tragic Jungle by the Mexican director Yulene Olaizola is set in the borders of Mexico Belize in the 1920s. The director explains that the setting is magical: "The jungle is a living being, harassed by those men trying to steal its treasures; but it takes revenge in different ways, with poisonous plants, swarms of mosquitoes, fierce animals, and with the enchantment of mysterious creatures". Here is the revenge. A woman entices these “thieves” to their demise in a role as archaic as the “catwoman” in Jacques Torneur's and Paul Shrader's Cat People . There was so much potential for this film an...

The Golden Lion at Venice 12 September wen to “Nomadland” directed by Chloé Zhao who shot, edited and directed the film starring Frances McDormand. The stunning storytelling in this film chronicles the people who live on the road, on motorcycles or in trailers, many of them baby boomers who do not have enough social security to live on, and have to rely on odd jobs such as working in Amazon mailing centers in remote areas. The travelers are not homeless, they are 'houseless' as Fern (McDormand) said at the press conference broadcast widescreen via Zoom in Venice on September 11. McDormand considers both herself and Zhao as 'docents' on this journey through the US, museum guides, which was a designation given to them by one of the nomads they met. It took a pandemic to change the face of this festival for women. Chloé along with Mira Nair are the only women of color of five women that have won the Golden Lion since 1949 after 77 editions of the Venice Film Festival:...

The 77th Venice Film Festival is in full swing since Sept 2 and runs through Sept 12. Venice went ahead and held the first physical as opposed to virtual film festival this year. The spring film festivals have been postponed because of covid but Venice took the Lion by the tail with celebrities walking the red carpet and being asked by photographers to wear their masks in their photos. If you were not planning on visiting Venice anytime soon, a sober documentary screened on the first day is a testimony not only to the changes in this city since 25 February but how tourism in general keeps the city afloat and has been nearly emptied. Directed by Andrea Segre Molecole (Venetian Molecules) is also a tribute to his late father Elderico who died of a heart murmur, an avid super 8 filmmaker who shot Venice during his teens in the 1960's. He studied free radicals and his son shows this city held up by poles that has been subjected to the invisible world of molecules. We see the Venice ...

By Moira Sullivan Golden Mulberry and Audience Award Derek Tsang's Better Days The 22nd Far East Film Festival ended July 4 after 9 days and it was a huge online success with over 3000 card holders and 25,000 visits to the website where films were screened for accredited patrons. The festival works with the public because the organizers are so thoroughly prepared for this event directed by Sabrina Baracetti and Thomas Bertacche. It is a festival that specializes in popular film in East Asia with experts that provide detailed information about the films, and about the state of the film business in Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. The contacts with directors, distributors and producers is world class and many legendary directors visit the festival such as Takeshi Miike, Johnny To and Derek Tsang. Dongyu Zhou in Better Days Derek Tsang’s Better Days was awarded the Golden Mulberry this year and it also took home...

By Monica Sullivan In the 1960’s, Life Magazine used to run articles about what was happening down South and for a Catholic school kid in California, the articles were a horrifying shock.  One of the articles featured John Lewis, who was nearly killed when a policeman tried to break up a peaceful march by cracking his skull open.  I couldn’t imagine him surviving such a blow, but survive he did and he outlived many of his contemporaries, many of whom were much bigger and stronger than him: Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcom X, and yet he endured.  He spoke at the March On Washington, and after watching many other documentaries and not finding any footage of John Lewis, I was surprised to find one of his speeches in Dawn Porter’s new film, “John Lewis: Good Trouble”. I was also unfamiliar with the ins and outs of his troubled relationship with the late Julian Bond when John Lewis was campaigning against him for the Congressional seat he now holds.  Bond’s histor...

Victim(s) Layla JI (Malaysia 2020) ©FEFF By Moira Jean Sullivan The 22nd Far East Film Festiva l (FEFF) located in UDINE ITALY is held o nline this year using the same platform as the Cannes Film Market   (Marché du Film) at the end of June . 46 films  are to be screened June 26 - July 4, 2020   (4 world premieres) through memberships to the festival. There have been many excellent films so far, and these are some of my favorites: Changfeng Town (China 2019). CHANGFENG TOWN  (The City of Changfeng) directed by the young independent director WANG Jing  ( China 2019 ) is the story of a small rural village in Southern China. Complete with the village dentist, an ice cream machine and a corner cinema, It’s not hard to notice the stiff old movie chairs, mostly high back benches where classic Chinese films as well as foreign films are screened in the village square. Films such as Fellini’s La Strada and Truffaut’s 400 Blows are screened every ...