Movie Magazine International Blog

By Monica Sullivan In the 1980's AIDS hit San Francisco like a bomb.  You lost friends and relatives you thought would be part of your life forever.  In some ways I still think of them that way.  Some of the top writers in the city were lost to us forever.  We mostly focused on people in San Francisco in the war against AIDS, but there were other people fighting just as hard in the rest of the country.  One doctor, many miles away, was Anthony Fauci, whom I did not become really aware of until a tourist ship arrived in San Francisco in early 2020 with passengers who caught a new disease called Covid 19. Another epidemic had started in San Francisco.  Frantic people searched desperately for a vaccine and learned about the disease from Dr. Fauci, who was the voice of sanity in an insane time.  We got conflicting information from conflicting government agencies.  Yes, it was a terrible nightmare.  Many persisted in cooperating with Dr. Fauci's recommendations, but not everybody.

The Vikings spoke with the elves on arrival to Iceland according to the introduction to this documentary Seer and the Unseen by Sara Dosa . So does an Icelandic seer and Lorax – elf spokesperson - grandmother Ragnhildur “Ragga” Jónsdóttir. She has seen how they live, their homes and their restaurants and an Elf Church and there are other believers who have not seen but believe. While we don’t get to see the elves, some helped in the making of the film. We hear the testimony of Icelanders and breathtaking shots of the Icelandic peninsula. More than 50% of Icelandic citizens believe in the elves so the environmental movement is active and important in the preservation of lava rock, the homeland of the elves, and through seers they communicate about what parts of the land it is important to preserve. The film opens with footage of Icelandic volcanoes and it is the formation of lava rock that became the home of elves. The elves are part of Icelandic folklore and old Norse poems

When was the last time you experienced something truly strange ? Take a hero's story arc, delivered with amazing artwork, and throw in a touch of tarot card wisdom and you have the recipe for one of the most mind altering films of the year. Cryptozoo a film that opens Friday at Landmarks Embarcadero and Berkeley cinemas, unlocks some fresh wonderful weirdness that opens your inner heart like the mental triple bypass we all need. Cryptozoo is an adult tale of a hero trying to protect and rescue the magical beasts of the world. An open mind and some patience pays off with a wild and refreshingly different story that shakes up your senses.  And while I appreciate that we live in a time when full on animation armies deliver big budget entertainment at a fevered pace, it also feels good to set all that corporate polish aside and enjoy something that takes you out of the mainstream into bold new creative territories the bigger studios aren't ever likely to explore.  Cryptozoo is the

By Monica Sullivan What is it about James Garner that everyone loved so much?  He was good-looking, sure, but so are a lot of other actors who come and go without eliciting a fraction of the affection everyone felt for Garner.   Early in his career at Warner Brothers, executives would complain because Garner wasn’t in every single episode of “Maverick”.  The producers explained that Brett and Bart were brothers, so James Garner would turn up some weeks and Jack Kelly would appear in the other episodes.  The executives seemed to feel it was okay if Jack Kelly was around, but why couldn’t Brett be front and center all the time?  In every frame, even? I felt (and still feel) the same way.  Whenever I see a Bart only episode listing, I wince and watch something else.  But if James Garner is listed, there’s no way I’m switching the channel.  In “Support Your Local Sheriff” and “Support Your Local Gunfighter”, Garner plays a guy who’s on his way to some other place, Australia or something.

Swan Song directed by Todd Stephens debuted at the 45th Frameline Film Festival in San Francisco that ran from June 17-27. Stephens has made several films about gay relationships that have been presented at LGBTQ film festivals through the years, such as Gypsy 83 about two young Goths from Ohio that travel to an annual festival that honors Stevie Nicks. Swan Song is Stephens latest and stars German actor Udo Kier as Pat Pitzenbarger, a retired hairdresser now living in assisted living. As Gypsy 83 , Swan Song is set in Todd Stephens home state Ohio. His first Ohio tale directed by David Moreton and written by Moreton and Stephens is a coming out story of young closeted gay men - Edge of Seventeen made in 1998. Pat learns from the lawyer of his former client at his beauty salon, Rita Parker Sloan, that her final wish was to have him do her hair up after her death. For this role, Stephens brings to the screen veteran actor Linda Evans from the 1960’s Tv series smash hit Big Val

By Moira Sullivan Lamb by Icelandic director Valdimar Jóhannsson was in competition for the Camera d ‘Or a prize for a director’s first feature in the section Un certain regard headed by jury president and director Andrea Arnold. Arnold presented out of competition the documentary Cow on the birthing process of a dairy cow. Here’s too the inclusion of animals in films and Lamb is one of the best with a mythical story of walking "Ram Men" who impregnate domesticated sheep. Noomi Rapace plays Maria who is married to Ingvar, a sheep herder in Iceland (Hilmir Snær Guðnason). They have no children. One day a newborn sheep needs extra care and they take Ada home and raise him as their own. It’s amazing cinematography and an ambitious effort worthy of the special mention it received on awards night. Rapace gave an exceptional acting performance in the film. Memoria is a film of exceptional quality directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul from Thailand starring Tilda Swin

By Moira Jean Sullivan Quentin Dupieux’s Mandibiles (fr. Mandibules) premiered out of competition last year at the Venice Film Festival. It has taken nearly a year for Mandibles to come out in the US and it opens July 23 in San Francisco. The premise of the film is a large fly that is discovered in the trunk of an abandoned car that is being hotwired to deliver a suitcase for a client named Michel Michel (Philippe Dusseau). The fly is domesticated , almost like a pet dog or cat but very freaky and quite ugly, drab grey with a huge spikey head. Two characters, Manu and Jean Gab played by Grégoire Ludig and David Marsais bungle their way throughout the film in a series of absurd situations. Manu wants to train the fly to make money which in itself is super bizarre. They kidnap a man in his motor home and take over the kitchen. Jean Gab decides to cook and asks if Manu is allergic to anything. It is oil and the frying pan goes up in flames, the motor home catches on fire and is d

By Moira Jean Sullivan © 2021 - Moira Jean Sullivan For the first time ever in the history of the festival Spike Lee became the first black man to serve as president of the feature film jury. Also unprecedented was that a majority of womenwere on the jury Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jessica Hausne, Mati Diop, Mélanie Laurent , and singer songwriter Mylène Farmer. Léa Seydoux was in four films in the official competition at this year's festival but di not travel to Cannes to promote them following her positive Covid-19 test while working on a film. One was Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch with each frame magnificently executed and a cast of thousands, but the spectator is the polite sitting one, and as was the audience at Cannes. Léa Seydoux plays a prison guard who poses nude for an inmate considered a genius played by Benicio Del Toro. Seydoux also is in ldiko Enyedi’s A feleségem története (The Story Of My Wife), a film in seven acts based on a 1942 novel by the Hu

Moira Jean Sullivan At the opening ceremony of the 74th Festival de Cannes, Jodie Foster and wife, actress and photographer Alexandra Hedison, arrived on the Red Carpet along with President Spike Lee and members of the jury, and the ensemble for Leos Carax’ opening film Annette. They were greeted by Cannes festival director Thierry Frémaux and French Minister of Culture Roselyne Bachelot. After the screening Foster gave a concise and moving speech and thanked her wife and festival in the presence of invited guests at the beautiful Salle Lumière. Foster’s long career from a child star to two Academy Awards for Best Actress and a Golden Globe for Lifetime Achievement is followed by this special honor that has been awarded to filmmakers such as Agnès Varda. Foster was in great form and gave a seminar the following day in Salle Bunuel. 82 year old Paul Verhoeven’s latest film is Benedetta the true story of a 17th century nun that falls in love with Bartolomea. The nuns are pl

By Moira Jean Sullivan Midnight Swan took home the top prize from Japan the Golden Mulberry, at the Far East Film Festival (FEFF) now in its 23 year , that ended on July 2 a beautifully made, excellently crafted film written and directed by Eiji Uchida. Nagisa from Hiroshima (Tsuyoshi Kusanagi and former SMAP boyband musician) moves to Tokyo to work in the Shinjuku district as a nightclub entertainer with other MTF transgenders. When asked to take care of her niece Ichiko (14 year old ballet dancer Misaki Hattori) whose mother Saori (Asami Misukawa) has a substance abuse problem, she agrees to take her in and enrolls her in a Tokyo middle school. Through a classmate, Rin (Rinka Ueno), Ichiko tries out for lessons at a ballet studio. At first she is cautious of her "aunt" Nagisa but eventually their bond grows strong and Ichiko's ballet talents develop and deepen with meticulous skill. Rin and Ichiko secretly work for studio photographers to pay for Ichiko's

By Moira Sullivan The Far East Film Festival is now in its 23 year (Feb 11 - 19) and for 2021 offers a physical festival and online festival with European, Italian and World streaming titles. Last year the festival was fully online due to the pandemic and this year there are five screens accommodating 400 spectators. The Far East festival is brilliantly organized by the Center for Cinematographic Expression in Udine Italy headed by festival President Sabrina Baracetti with a crew of consultants located in Asian countries who recommend the best films for the current year. The festival features press conferences, daily meetings with directors and film experts in Asian cinema and panel discussions about new trends in Asian Cinema from Japan, Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao, Malaysia, Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, Myanmar and Thailand. The festival screens new popular films from Asia and directors attend or are available in video conferencing making Udine the next

By Moira Sullivan Undergods directed by Spanish helmer Chino Moya is a new film produced by Scott Free Productions, Ridley Scott's company and opens on VOD platforms and theatres May 10 . The film puts together an exceptional cast: Kate Dickie who we’ve seen in (The Witch, Game of Thrones), Ned Dennehy from (Mandy, Peaky Blinders), Geza Rohrig (Resistance, Son of Saul), Burn Gorman (Pacific Rim, Enola Holmes) and Tanya Reynolds (Emma, Sex Education). This film is set in a dystopian future and post-apocalyptic Europe. It opens with two men driving around in an old truck picking up corpses. There is nothing friendly or warm about the people that we meet in the film and their motivations for life are the opposite of moral justice. There is no hope either where what was once a functional and prosperous economy is now self-imploding. Couples cheat on their partners, neighbors steal from each other and kill each other. The edifices of what was once a monolithic culture remain

By Moira Jean Sullivan Enfant Terrible (Germany, 2020) is a biographical film artistically made about the German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Directed by Oskar ROEHLER, it was in the official competition at Cannes in 2020. Oliver MASUCCI plays Fassbinder who doesn’t really look like him but you get used to it. The film is in German and chronicles Fassbinder’s early films, his film crew and his actors that he tormented on the set and his rise to fame. He is shown at Cannes, and Berlin where he wins a Golden Bear. His films were statements against the postwar German state, and we hear the news in the background about the politically violent revolutionary group - Baader Meinhof. Fassbinder worked as a "revolutionary" in film – his working methods were bizarre and crude, and although he had an empathy with the downtrodden such as transgenders, he still treated them badly. He is so strung out on coke and hard liquor during most of the film it is hard to believe that

By Moira Jean Sullivan I have seen many Roy Andersson films through the years. His latest About Endlessness (2019) which won the best director award in Venice that year, is a good term to describe all of his previous films of the last years. Though they are different in themes, they are always the same, a still mise en scene - composition of the frame. There is no camera action but one long take and Andersson has been working this way since 2000. You are forced to concentrate on what is within the scene, and because of the stillness, the endlessness, you have the opportunity to focus on every detail. This is different from nearly all films, and there is probably only one filmmaker in the world that does this: Roy Andersson. He perfected this style by making commercials for years, which were usually one take scenes, and he took this style to feature film. The first one he made won the Palme d’Or in 2000 – Songs from the Second Floor. The colors in his films are drab, the dec

By Moira Jean Sullivan Best Summer Ever is a spirited high school musical directed by Michael Parks Randa and Lauren Smitelli. It is filmed in Vermont and produced by Maggie Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Ted Danson, Mary Steenburgen, Amy Brenneman and Jamie Lee Curtis. Only Gyllenhaal and Sarsgaard have speaking roles in the film and play a TV producer and a cameraman. Also in the film is Benjamin Bratt as the father of one of the high school girls. Many of the actors are mentally or physically challenged and the way the film is edited and shot is that they are incorporated in the film with equal or correspondingly equal abilities with everyone. Everyone has amazing talent whether they are in wheel chairs, or have artificial limbs, or speech impediments or are able bodied. The story is about Sage (Shannon DeVido), a young woman in a wheelchair that falls in love at a summer camp with a dancer , Tony (Rickey Alexander Wilson Jr). The ambitious and scheming Madeline Rhodes (MuM

By Moira Jean Sullivan French Exit is an Irish/Canadian/US coproduction from 2020 playing at the Landmark Theaters. It is directed by Azazel Jacobs and based on a novel by Patrick deWitt. The fact that Michelle Pfieffer is in the film is the real pull and appeal of this independent production and she was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance as Frances Price, a Manhattan upper class widow whose husband has left her without any financial security. She has to discretely sell off the furniture and valuables in the apartment to survive and move with her 24-year-old son Malcolm (Lukas Hedges). Pieces do fall into place in her early 60’s and she is lent Joan’s empty apartment in Paris for a getaway. The assorted characters in the film that back up the story accompany the largess of Pfeiffer and are admirable co-players together with Hedges as her deadpan son Malcolm. After passage by ocean liner, Frances and Malcolm arrive and for a moment the relationship with a young

By Moira Sullivan Anthony Hopkins has been seen in just about every kind of role but now at 82 comes a part for him which has garnished him another well-deserved academy award nomination for best actor this year. Opposite him is Olivia Coleman as his loyal and devoted daughter also with many acting awards, who must ultimately decide on the quality of her life and his. The film is directed and written by French novelist and playwright Florian Zeller. The Father screened at Sundance , Telluride and Toronto last year and will be released on VOD on March 26. Many of us have experienced caretaking for elderly parents but probably some of the most difficult encounters is when one or both parents begin to lose their memory. The Father succeeds in showing what that looks like on film not as a linear narrative but a fragmented ensemble of merged occurrences just as memory is. Anthony Hopkins is Anthony who we first encounter living with his daughter Anne (Olivia Colman) in his

By Moira Sullivan Stray is a documentary made in Istanbul about three dogs who roam the streets and who eventually are taken care of by young Syrian refugee boys. The film is made by the award winning short film documentarian Elizabeth Lo from Hong Kong. She went to Tisch in NYC and received an MFA from Stanford This is her debut feature. Stray is a metaphor that not only fits the dogs but their caretakers as they all live in the streets scrimping for food and shelter. The areas where the dogs roam and the boys live are run down places such as abandoned apartment buildings, streets, beaches, open fields and shops. The film is made with a mobile camera and there are a lot of tracking shots of the dogs angled low to the ground for their heights, It is not a scripted film and there are non-actors so it seems, making it a compelling neorealist film. People in the streets are aware they are being filmed but don’t seem to mind or even to notice or care. The shots of Istanbul are not pret

By Moira Sullivan The French drama Deux or Two of Us in English features two exceptional and world class veteran actresses, Barbara Sukowa as Nina and Martine Chevallier as Madeleine in a story about a long term relationship that they keep hidden from friends and family. Directed and written by FILIPPO MENEGHETTI they are next door neighbors but they have been together for over 20 years. At Madeline’s birthday party, Nina is conspicuously absent but at that dinner Madeline is going to tell her daughter Anne LÉA DRUCKER , her son and grandson that she is going to sell her apartment and move to Italy with Nina. Madeline is a widower and her son is upset that she didn’t love him and moved on so quickly. But she was in love with another woman who was the love of her life. As she starts to speak at the birthday party she becomes inhibited for after two decades of silence it is hard to form words. She had promised Nina she would tell her family a