Reviews of albums, films, concerts, and more from the Bay Area Music and Movie Nerds
This week marks the beginning of one of California’s favorite film festivals, San Jose’s Cinequest. Running from 2/27 – 3/11 in a series of South Bay venues, this year Cinequest will present 229 feature and short films, including 74 world premieres over its two-week span. And you know what else? Nic Cage is going to be there.
Continue reading “Film Feature: Spinning Platters Heads to the 2018 Cinequest Film Festival”
The 90th Academy Awards air this Sunday, March 4th on ABC at 5:00 pm PST (pre-show festivities start well before, if you want to weigh in on Oscar fashions). Spinning Platters film critics Carrie Kahn and Chris Piper share their predictions – and hopes – for the major categories, and discuss their reasoning for six of the biggest categories in the podcast below. Will there be another Moonlight/La La Land fiasco? Tune in on Sunday to find out – and to see how we – and you – do on the big night!
Continue reading “Film Feature: Carrie and Chris Pick the 2018 Oscars”
The writing/directing team of actor John Francis Daley (who played Sweets in the long-running and slightly addictive Bones) and Jonathan Goldstein made their directorial debut three years ago with the poorly received Vacation remake. They fared better with two pictures they wrote but didn’t direct: Horrible Bosses (2011) and Horrible Bosses 2 (2014); this reviewer isn’t at all embarrassed to admit that she laughed so hard during the first Horrible Bosses that she nearly hyperventilated. With Game Night, the team’s second feature directing project, Daley and Goldstein do the opposite, though, and only direct, leaving the script to screenwriter Mark Perez. That may explain why this film, which also similarly stars affable everyman Jason Bateman, doesn’t reach the comedic heights of those prior two films. But this new collaboration has resulted in a pleasant and highly amusing comedy with a sensational cast, and it yields enough genuine laughs to recommend it.
Continue reading “Film Review: Game Night“
The Sundance Film Festival ran from January 18th to 28th this year; over 120 films were shown in ten days. For the fourth year in a row, I was on the (often snowy) ground, knocking out almost 20 films in five days in order to bring you the Best of the Fest. I present here the ten best films I saw – five features, four documentaries, and one special screening. Keep your eyes out for these during the coming year, as they are well worth your time and money. And if you’d like to know all the films that took home awards this year, you can see the winners here.
TOP FIVE FEATURE FILMS
1.) Search
(USA 2017, 101 min. Directed by Aneesh Chaganty. Category: Next)
The word innovative doesn’t even come close to doing filmmaker Aneesh Chaganty’s first feature film justice. Using a narrative that unfolds completely on a computer screen (via video chats, texts, emails, Internet searches, and news videos), Chaganty immerses us in the story of recently widowed dad David (John Cho, excellent as always) and his desperate search for his missing teenage daughter Margot (Michelle La). Debra Messing, cast against type, is terrific as the San Jose police detective heading the investigation. Filled with red herrings and twists and turns you’ll never see coming, Chaganty and co-writer Sev Ohanian’s South Bay-set mystery is as imaginative as their method of telling it. Both a celebration and a critique of our increasing reliance on technology, the brilliantly executed Search is my hands-down favorite film of the Festival. Sony Pictures acquired the picture for five million dollars in one of the Festival’s biggest buys, so a wide release will be forthcoming. The film also deservedly won both an audience award and the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize. Don’t miss this one. Continue reading “Film Feature: The Best of the 2018 Sundance Film Festival”
The cast and crew from the classic movie Animal House assembled at the Castro Theatre for a panel discussion of the comedy classic in honor of its 40th anniversary. It is, as you may remember, vibrant with jokes that stand the test of time. The movie was groundbreakingly raunchy for its time, with sexual humor that seems tame now, but in 1978 challenged the ratings board, and caused the studio to resist its production until Donald Sutherland joined the cast. It was risque to show dildos on screen, and the gross out humor and blatant sexuality was new for the day. There were several scenes in which women, on a date, in a car, overlooking the city, were giving hand jobs in convertibles, expressing irritation and boredom at the laborious process of pleasuring their date, a scenario familiar to many adults. This was also one of the few jokes that seems to have been specifically penned for audience members who aren’t white men. “Is it supposed to be so soft?” asks the woman on their second encounter in the car. Continue reading “SF Sketchfest Review: Animal House 40th Anniversary with Cast and Crew Panel Discussion”
Eddie Muller is the founder and president of the Film Noir Foundation and the man known internationally as the “Czar of Noir.” SFFILM this month named Muller to its pantheon of “Essential SF” cinema figures. Earlier this year, Muller debuted as the host of the new Turner Classic Movies franchise Noir Alley, providing him with a national platform to introduce a fresh audience to film noir and to the work of the Film Noir Foundation.
NOIR CITY 16 takes audiences back in time with a program of 12 genuine “A” and “B” double bills, spanning the breadth of the original film noir era, 1941 to 1953.
The most popular film noir festival in the world returns to San Francisco’s majestic Castro Theatre for its 16th edition, January 26-February 4, 2018. “Film Noir from A to B” presents 24 classic noirs as they were experienced on their original release, pairing a top-tier studio “A” with a shorter, low-budget second feature, or “B” film. All but one of the films will be presented in glorious 35mm.
You can view the program here.
I’ve been going to Noir City for most of the past 15 years, and was delighted to have the chance to interview Eddie about this year’s festival, how film noir continues to be relevant, and why these old movies still resonate today. Continue reading “Spinning Platters Interview: Eddie Muller, founder of the upcoming Noir City Film Festival”
There are six words that gets the blood of every movie nerd pumping: Paul Thomas Anderson are three of them, and Daniel Day-Lewis are the other three. The other time these two worked together, they created the modern masterpiece There Will be Blood. Now they return, sans milkshakes, for what Sir Daniel Michael Blake Day-Lewis claims will be his last acting job. Whether this retirement sticks is anyone’s guess, but is it worth catching him on the screen one last time?
If you are suffering from post-holiday malaise and need a pick-me-up, you could do worse than seeing the new Liam Neeson action flick The Commuter. Unlike the usual forgettable fare that typically inhabits the January cinematic wasteland, Spanish director Jaume Collet-Serra’s new film offers the sort of hold-your-breath thrills that you would expect from the same director who pitted Blake Lively against a shark in 2016’s The Shallows and who collaborated with Neeson back in 2014 on Non-Stop.
Continue reading “Film Review: The Commuter“
Spinning Platters Film Editor Carrie Kahn shares her ten favorite films of 2017, presented in descending rank order. You can also check out her list from last year here.
Continue reading “Film Feature: Carrie’s Top 10 Films of 2017”
There’s no such thing as bad publicity, the saying goes, and so director Ridley Scott’s new film All the Money in the World had already captivated the public interest months before its release today. As most readers are probably aware, the bad publicity here was the revelation back in October that the film’s original lead, Kevin Spacey, had sexually harassed actor Anthony Rapp when he was 14. Spacey controversially apologized, but the damage was done; in early November, Scott and the film’s production team made the extraordinary decision to reshoot all Spacey’s scenes with a new actor, just three weeks before the film’s scheduled opening.
Continue reading “Film Review: All the Money in the World“