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The 38th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival is going strong; it entered its second week today, and we’ve got five more spotlights for you (you can find our first round of coverage here). Below we profile four more feature films and one documentary. Complete programming and ticket information can be found here; now get out there and see some films before the Festival ends on August 5th!
Over the years, the director Gus Van Sant has returned time and again to his favorite subject: our constant struggle with self-deception and our many, mostly failed attempts at self-discovery. Let’s start with some dreamy-eyed pharmacy thieves (Drugstore Cowboy), move to homeless hustlers (My Own Private Idaho), catch up to a hitchhiker with enormous thumbs (Even Cowgirls Get The Blues), watch an aspiring TV Newswoman (To Die For), and let’s not forget the genius mathematician janitor at M.I.T. with girl trouble and the world’s funniest psychologist (Good Will Hunting). Van Sant’s characters show what an illusion we can be to ourselves. Does he return to this ground in Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot? Absolutely. Is it worth it to follow him yet again on this journey? Mostly.
Continue reading “Film Review: Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot“
Regular readers of Spinning Platters may have noticed that I’m partial to coming of age films; The Way, Way Back is a personal favorite, and I had both The Edge of Seventeen and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl on my Top 10 lists for their respective years. But all three of those have now been pushed aside in favor of a new genre champion: writer/director Bo Burnham’s feature debut Eighth Grade sets a new standard for all future coming of age pictures. Filmmakers may as well concede now, because no other film will ever come close to measuring up to this exquisite masterpiece.
Berkeley High grads and old friends Daveed Diggs (of Broadway’s Hamilton fame) and local slam poet and artist Rafael Casal join Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station; Black Panther) and Boots Riley (Sorry to Bother You) in bringing Oakland to the big screen, in a timely and powerful picture that should be required viewing not only for all Bay Area residents, but also for those who want to understand the ever shifting cultural and economic landscape of a Bay Area in flux. Diggs and Casal both wrote and star in Blindspotting, under the direction of their TV and short film director friend Carlos López Estrada, who makes his extraordinary feature film debut here, and was rewarded with a Sundance Grand Jury Prize nomination for his efforts.
The 38th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, showcasing over 65 films from more than twenty countries, opens this Thursday, July 19th, and runs for two and a half weeks, concluding on Sunday, Aug. 5th. Films will be shown at venues in San Francisco, Palo Alto, Albany, Oakland, and San Rafael, so there is plenty of time and opportunity to see a lot of quality films. Below we spotlight five Festival movies that you may want to check out. Complete schedule, tickets, and more information are available here. And be sure and follow Spinning Platters for more coverage during the Festival!
A family road trip is at the center of the new comedy Boundaries, a movie that has become very therapeutic for its writer-director, Shana Feste. Her story of a pot-smuggling father (Christopher Plummer) forced to bond with his neurotic daughter (Vera Farmiga) after being kicked out of a nursing home mirrors her reality very closely. To hear Feste tell it, only a few small changes needed to be made to the story, and the rest wrote itself.
The film mostly plays out during a long car ride to transport the cranky free spirit to a new home but along the way we meet a few characters from his wild past. One of them is fellow pot-smoker Joey, played by Peter Fonda with the devilish charm of an ex-hippie. His scenes are few, but shock the film to life in unexpected ways. Feste and Fonda came to San Francisco to promote Boundaries, and we spoke about filmmaking, battle scars, and the challenge of adapting family stories to the big screen. The following is a transcription of that conversation. Continue reading “Interview: Actor Peter Fonda and Writer/Director Shana Feste”
In the new Zellner brothers film Damsel, misguided characters stumble through lush settings, and try to sell us on the idea that there is something worthwhile in dressing a western with modern ideas about obsession, feminism, and family. The brothers deserve credit for the attempt, but they fail to find a focus on a clear message or point of view.
Continue reading “Film Review: Damsel“
The makers of Sicario: Day of the Soldado probably couldn’t have predicted just how relevant their film would be today back when it was greenlit to follow its 2015 precursor Sicario. But those hoping for a searing dramatization of the inner workings of the U.S./Mexico border patrol and its operators will be sorely disappointed with this sequel, which offers plenty of gore and violence, but little in the way of prescient or urgent social commentary.
Families gather at a funeral home to say goodbye. Warm, soft waves of organ music bathe the viewing of an open casket that rests near a portrait of a smiling elderly woman. The reviewing line snakes away from the casket. Reverence, sorrow, and the beginnings of grief swirl around the gathered. A granddaughter named Charlie (Milly Shapiro) approaches the casket. Doubt and curiosity play on her face. She touches her grandmother’s body ever so slightly. No jumping, twitching, or ghostly images… nothing. As she begins to move away, however, she notices someone’s fingertips lightly spreading something on the lips of the deceased. She wonders if this is normal. She looks up, and catches the face of a man sitting behind the casket. A man with a strangely out of place smile on his lips. Her gaze lingers a beat too long on the man, then she moves off toward the rest of the ceremony. Continue reading “Film Review: Hereditary“
You don’t need to have seen the previous three Ocean’s movies (that would be 11, 12, and 13 for the uninitiated) to enjoy Ocean’s 8, the female-helmed companion film that opens today; it stands alone as a highly enjoyable, old-fashioned heist movie. But those who are loyal fans of the original series will be rewarded with a few nods to the previous films, as well as a couple of cameos that I won’t reveal here, but which will no doubt please the films’ devotees. Breezy and fun, writer/director Gary Ross’s entry into the Ocean’s universe retains the brisk confidence of the original pictures, while providing a welcome freshness by changing the stories’ traditional casting.