On the surface, a documentary about old men searching for subterranean fungi might not sound overly compelling. But as great docs often do, The Truffle Hunters introduces a world you may not be aware of, and the souls struggling to keep that world from slipping away.
To date, the highly-prized white Alba truffle has been resistant to cultivation. Documentarians Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw take us deep in the wilds of Piedmont, Italy, to meet a group of seventy to eighty-year-olds who rely on traditional methods and trusted dogs to find the elusive white Alba.
Dweck and Kershaw (The Last Race) employ a vérité style that’s instantly immersive and completely charming. These old time foragers cherish their proven methods and their canine partners in equal measure, taking care to protect both from the ravages of climate change and cutthroat profiteering as long as possible.
Often reminiscent of 2019’s Oscar-nominated Honeyland, the film transports you to a community that seems a nuisance to the modern world – even as gourmet palettes continue to cherish its fruits.
The 84 minutes in The Truffle Hunters is time well spent with old timers who are holding back the charge of progress in ways that are funny, defiant, sometimes curious but always joyful. Their days may be numbered, but their spirit endures, a spirit this film captures with beautifully subtle intimacy.
It takes a full two minutes to get a really good feeling about Together Together.
Writer/director Nikole Beckwith delivers witty, engaging dialogue from the jump, defining characters and setting the stakes in a beautifully organic manner. This is much more difficult than Beckwith and her two leads make it appear.
Matt (Ed Helms) is interviewing Anna (Patti Harrison) to be the surrogate mother who’ll deliver his child. Matt, a forty-something app developer, is single but wants to be a father. 26-year-old Anna needs the money and wouldn’t mind the healthy deposit in the bank of good karma.
So if you’re keeping score, the film boasts a fresh premise, crisp writing and likable personalities before you’ve sipped your beverage of choice. And as we follow Matt and Anna from first trimester to labor, Together Together is never less than warm, insightful and lovely.
With no romance and only a few laugh out loud moments (most of those delivered by Sufe Bradshaw’s sarcastic medical tech and Julio Torres as an over the top barista), you can’t really call this a rom-com. But even that seems to fit. Just like Matt and Anna, Beckwith (helming her second feature after 2015’s Stockholm, Pennsylvania) is proudly going her own way.
Helms adds important layers to his usual nerd persona, slowly revealing more detailed reasons why Matt is choosing to be a single father, and why Anna is challenging his perceptions on nearly everything.
Harrison, whose resume sports mainly TV and voice work, delivers a fantastically understated breakout performance. Anna is pleasantly frank and sarcastic, but guarded. She’s hiding some scars, and Harrison reveals them with ease and authenticity.
Beckwith fills nearly every frame with a tender empathy that has us pulling for this offbeat pair as a matter of course, making it that much easier for her to reach us. From surrogacy and masculinity to Woody Allen, Friends, and the proper use of tampons, the film drops its insight in ways that are consistently fresh.
There’s love and family and funny stuff here, and though none of it is quite the kind we’re used to seeing, all of it is wonderfully real. Together Together is a delivery that somehow feels comfortable and unique, both overdue and right on time.
For a while, less can be more in a monster movie (i.e. Jaws). Still, diving into a werewolf flick without the budget for showy CGI or well-crafted practicals is ambitious.
While Dog Soldiers proved you can make an impression without breaking the bank, so much of werewolf lore is about transformation – both the literal and the metaphorical – that as much as one layer falters, the other needs to stand that much stronger.
Unfortunately, Bloodthirsty is shaky on both grounds.
Pop singer Grey (Lauren Beatty) became a sensation with her first album, and now she’s feeling the pressure to produce a blockbuster follow-up. Grey is plagued by nightmarish hallucinations about turning into an animal, so her doctor (Michael Ironside in a distracting cameo) has upped her meds.
Plans for the second album look brighter when famed producer Vaughn Daniels (Greg Byrk) agrees to helm the project. He invites Grey and her girlfriend Charlie (Katherine King So) to stay at his lavish home/studio in the Canadian wilderness while they record, but Charlie is concerned about Vaughn’s unsavory past.
Grey isn’t, but things get weird as soon as Vaughn’s creepy housekeeper (Judith Buchan) shows the ladies to their room. Music isn’t the only reason Vaughn volunteered to work with Grey, and director Amelia Moses (Bleed With Me, which also starred Beatty) attempts a tone of Gothic seduction as the mystery unfolds.
But it’s not really much of a mystery. The script, from Wendy Hill-Tout and her daughter Lowell (who also contributes original songs) delivers pale imitations of the carnivorous temptations in Raw as their film builds to a reveal that is less than shocking.
Bloodthirsty is a werewolf film that never really feels like one, which has both up and down sides.
Ditching the focus on full moons for a lesbian artist at a creative crossroads has promise, but the characters lack the depth required for any effective metaphor to take root. Pair that with scant transformation scenes which impress more with sound than vision, and a horror fan’s thirst for blood will likely be left wanting.
With this episode we hit the big 200, so we wanted to celebrate in the most masochistic way possible. No! We wanted a really great topic (George’s choice) and a really great guest – filmmaker and co-founder/programmer of Nightmares Film Festival, Jason Tostevin.
Together we talk through the very best horror movies we could not watch a second time no matter what.
5. A Serbian Film (2010)
This is not a movie we would recommend to basically anyone. That’s not to say it’s a bad film – it’s pretty well directed, acted, and written. It’s just that the co-writer/director Srdjan Spasojevic is trying to articulate the soul-deadening effects of surviving the depravity of war. The film title is no coincidence – the film is meant to reflect the reality of a nation so recently involved in among the most depraved, horrific, unimaginable acts of war. It’s as if he’s saying, after all that, what could still shock us?
Like Pier Paolo Pasolini’s notorious 1975 effort Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom – also a depiction of the depravity left behind after war – A Serbian Film overwhelms you with horrifying imagery.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddwrbcMmzlc
4. An American Crime (2007)
In 1966, Gertrude Baniszewski, along with three of her children and two neighbor boys, was convicted of what’s commonly considered to be the most heinous crime ever committed in the state of Indiana. The senior investigator described the prolonged abuse and murder of 16-year-old Sylvia Likens as the most sadistic case he’d investigated in his 35 years on the force.
In 2007, two films were released depicting the horror. The Jack Ketchum-penned The Girl Next Door found a larger audience, but co-writer/director Tommy O’Haver’s An American Crime is the far superior film.
Elliot Page offers a full, layered performance, making Sylvia a realistic character – someone you might have known in high school. Of course, that makes it even harder to stomach what becomes of her. The entire cast—an impressive ensemble—does stunning work, but the dark magic here is Catherine Keener. Giving one of the best performances of her already stellar career, Keener guarantees that it will be a long time before you recover from this movie.
3. The Painted Bird (2019)
If you paint the wings of a sparrow (or stitch a star to his jacket) the rest of the flock will no longer recognize him. The other birds will swarm and peck him until he plummets back to the earth. This is just one of the horrific lessons a young boy learns as he desperately searches for anywhere or anyone safe in war-torn Eastern Europe.
What follows is a brutal parade of the worst humanity has to offer. Domestic abuse, graphic violence, multiple instances of animal abuse and death, rape, child abuse and rape, and more. Then the war crimes start around hour three.
The Painted Bird is a test of endurance. It’s also a beautifully shot, well-performed, and incredibly moving piece of cinema. You simply have to be willing to go where it wants to take you. And all of those places are dark and darker.
2. Irreversible (2002)
French filmmaker/provocateur Gaspar Noe does not play well with his audience. Every film, no matter how brilliantly put together or gloriously filmed, is a feat in masochism to watch. Later efforts, like Enter the Void, spread the misery out for its full running time, but for Irreversible, he gave it to us in two horrifying scenes. While the head-bashing is tough viewing, the film centers on a rape scene that is all but impossible to watch.
Noe’s general MO is to punish you through sheer duration. The scenes last so long you feel like you cannot endure another minute, and this scene certainly does that. Not shot even momentarily for titillation, and boasting a devastatingly excellent performance from Monica Bellucci, it justifies its own horrific presence. There are other films with necessary and difficult rape scenes – Straw Dogs, I Spit on Your Grave, The Last House on the Left, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer – but none is harder to stomach than this.
1. Nothing Bad Can Happen (2013)
This film is tough to watch, and the fact that it is based on a true story only makes the feat of endurance that much harder. But writer-director Katrin Gebbe mines this horrific tale for a peculiar point of view that suits it brilliantly and ensures that it is never simply a gratuitous wallowing in someone else’s suffering.
Tore (Julius Feldmeier) is an awkward teen in Germany. His best friend is Jesus. He means it. In fact, he’s so genuine and pure that when he lays his hands on stranded motorist Benno’s (Sascha Alexander Gersak) car, the engine starts.
Thus begins a relationship that devolves into a sociological exploration of button-pushing evil and submission to your own beliefs. Feldmeier is wondrous—so tender and vulnerable you will ache for him. Gersak is his equal in a role of burgeoning cruelty. The whole film has a, “you’re making me do this,” mentality that is hard to shake. It examines one particular nature of evil and does it so authentically as to leave you truly shaken.
Her name is Anne Fedder. But Jakob’s Wife pretty much sums up the nearly invisible routine Anne (Barbara Crampton) is living.
Jakob Fedder (Larry Fessenden) is the well-known pastor of a small town church, and Anne is well known as his wife. Anne’s life seems to have only gotten smaller during her thirty-year marriage, and if pressed, she’d probably admit she wouldn’t mind a little shakeup.
A late-night meeting with old boyfriend Tom (Robert Rusler)? Intriguing, but his seduction skills got nuthin’ on The Master (Bonnie Aarrons, aka The Nun), who’s waiting on them both.
The next morning, Jakob gets the first clue that things will be changing.
“Did you make breakfast?” he asks.
Anne answers, “I’m not hungry.”
At least not for pancakes. After The Master’s touch, Anne is a brand new woman, sporting fresh hair and makeup, tight, low-cut dresses and provocative new appetites.
It’s no wonder this has been a passion project for Crampton (who’s also a producer), and she makes the extended feminist metaphor ring gloriously true.
Director/co-writer Travis Stevens (Girl on the Third Floor) wraps the bloodlusty tale in a fun retro vibe of ’80s low-budget practical, blood spurting gore, but it’s Crampton (and the chemistry with her fellow horror vet Fessenden) who truly elevates this beyond the standard vampire playbook.
To see a female character of this age experiencing a spiritual, philosophical and sexual awakening is alone refreshing, and Crampton (looking fantastic, by the way) makes Anne’s cautious embrace of her new ageless wonder an empowering – and even touching – journey.
Stevens revels in the B-movie underpinnings, stopping short of tackling any systemic issues inherent in a woman’s longtime restlessness. The focus stays intimate, and only on how Anne’s new freedom affects Jakob and their local community (which remains nameless, though filming was entirely in Mississippi).
But with Crampton and Fessenden so completely in their element, Jakob’s Wife is an irresistibly fun take on the bite of eternity. Here, it’s not about taking souls, it’s about empowering them. And once this lady is a vamp, we’re the lucky ones.
If all politics is local, then Our Towns is the most political film you’ll see this year.
Because authors James and Deborah Fallows had one rule as they traveled the country looking for towns with interesting stories. Never, ever talk about the national political climate.
The Fallowses, both longtime writers, reporters and academics, have lived and traveled all over the world. Their 2018 bestseller Our Towns: A 100,000 Mile Journey Into the Heart of America was based on their extensive reporting for The Atlantic on the civic and economic renewal of America’s towns.
Oscar-nominated directors Steven Ascher and Jeanne Jordan (Troublesome Creek: A Midwestern) put the gentle, reassuring authors front and center for an easygoing documentary from HBO that touts possibilities over partisanship.
From the influx of refugees in Sioux Falls, South Dakota to the twenty percent unemployment of Columbus, Mississippi; from the end of logging in Bend, Oregon to the climate change fears in Eastport, Maine, we see how these towns have adapted and thrived.
And, by the way, what we see is gorgeous, thanks to the drone footage from Bryan Harvey and the cinematography from him and Ascher.
The solutions – diversity, investment, innovation, local engagement – may not be revelations, but the surprise comes in seeing how some communities have actually been able to move these ideas from buzzwords to policy.
The film skirts specifics, as well as the deep ideological divisions that stand in the way of such progress, but even that seems true to the stated goal of locality. It never wavers, even in the face of celebrity. Because even though you clearly see actor Jeff Daniels playing guitar and singing with a band in Charleston, West Virginia, his national fame is completely ignored, as it should be.
It is not lost on The Fallowses that their book research coincided with a national recession and their film project debuts during a global pandemic. But even with such large-scale challenges, they say the building blocks for recovery are the same, and they start in our own neighborhoods.
For 97 minutes, Our Towns shows you that underneath all of our ugliness, there are success stories we can look to for examples of hope and possibility.
And now feels like a pretty good time to see them.
When I was a kid watching the Oscars, I remember always being perplexed by short film categories. How do people manage to see these shorts?
Good news, kids, it’s gotten much easier. In the last several years, all the nominated shorts have been packaged by category for theatrical showings. This year, of course, virtual screenings are available as well, making it more convenient than ever to find great films in smaller packages.
And if there was any doubt that movies are mirrors, check the pervasive theme that runs through this year’s live-action nominees. All are examples of the struggle to retain human dignity, to be seen simply as worthy. And in four of these five films, that struggle directly involves abuses by law enforcement officials.
Feeling Through 18 Mins. Writer/director: Doug Roland
A troubled teen (Steven Prescod) needs a place to stay for the night, but his search is interrupted by a deaf and blind man (Robert Tarango) who needs help crossing the street.
The fact that Tarango is the first deaf and blind actor to be cast in a film is reason enough to seek this out, but Roland has crafted a truly touching ode to the healing power of caring.
Prescod and Tarango are wonderful together, and our short time with both of them is nothing but rewarding.
Two Distant Strangers 32 mins. Writer: Travon Free Directors: Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe
Really? Another Groundhog Day premise? Yes, but get ready, this gripping slice of activism will rock you.
Carter (Joey Bada$$) and Perri (Zaria) are still flirting the morning after their first hookup. Shortly after Carter heads home to check on his dog, an aggressive cop (Andrew Howard) incites a confrontation, and soon Carter is dead on the sidewalk…until he again wakes up in Perri’s bed.
The scenario plays over and over, with Carter trying to come up with some way to change his fate.
Free, a former Daily Show writer making his film debut, lulls you with a comfortable device before lowering the boom. It’s uncomfortable, as it should be, but you’ll want to thank Free for the experience…as soon as you catch your breath.
The Letter Room 33 mins. Writer/director: Elvira Lind
The first thing that catches your eye here is a familiar face. Yes, that is Oscar Isaac, starring as Richard, a corrections officer granted a transfer to the facility’s letter room.
Letters from Rosita (Alia Shawkat) to Death Row inmate Cris (Brain Petsos) captivate Richard’s interest, until he’s tempted to cross some questionable lines.
Lind (Isaac’s wife) mines her powerhouse cast for a beautifully subtle layer of humanity. Everyone here is flawed, in different ways and by varying degrees. But Lind lets us see just how far a little empathy can go – even in the darkest places.
The Present 24 mins. Writers: Farah Nabulsi Directors: Farah Nabulsi and Hind Shoufani
On the morning of his wedding anniversary, Palestinian Yusef (Saleh Bakri) and his young daughter (Mariam Kanj) head out to buy a gift for his wife (Mariam Basha).
But the road to celebration is littered with soldiers and segregation, cages and checkpoints. As Yusef endures humiliation in front of his daughter, rising tensions increase the chance of a deadly altercation.
It feels somewhat surprising to see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict funneled through a Palestine viewpoint. And though Nabulsi’s hand is never overly heavy, a universal power struggle emerges: authority flexes muscle against those trying to remain calm and grasp for options.
The Present offers hope that the children can one day find common ground.
White Eye 20 mins. Writer/director: Tomer Shushan
White Eye‘s search for humanity begins with a bicycle.
An Israeli man named Omer (Daniel Gad) spots his stolen bike locked up on the street. Immigrant Yunes (Dawit Tekelaeb) says he bought the bike fair and square, but Omer doesn’t want to hear it.
Once Omer alerts the police, the situation (you guessed it) escalates, and soon Yunes’s co-workers are in hiding and Omer is staring headfirst into consequences he may not have intended.
Gad carves out a 20-minute arc of awakening for Omer that feels achingly real. It’s a standout performance, and the driving force that makes White Eye linger with lasting resonance.
When I was a kid watching the Oscars, I remember always being perplexed by short film categories. How do people manage to see these shorts?
Good news, kids, it’s gotten much easier. In the last several years, all the nominated shorts have been packaged by category for theatrical showings. This year, of course, virtual screenings are available as well, making it more convenient than ever to find great films in smaller packages.
In these 5 nominated (and three bonus) treats, you’ll find charm, humor, fascination, and devastation – all a tribute to the different ways animation can touch our souls.
An excited bunny has big plans for a new home underground (maybe a disco?). But the more the bunny burrows, the more times she accidentally invades a neighbor’s place!
What to do?
Originally intended as the short subject intro to theatrical showings of Soul, Burrow is a completely charming reminder of the need for friends you can count on. And the beautiful 2D, hand-drawn animation gives it a picture book feel that’s refreshingly retro.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apx1aUP3MqA
Genius Loci 16 mins. Writer/director: Adrien Merigeau
From France, Genius Loci is a surrealistic trip through “urban chaos, ” as a young loner named Reine (voiced by Nadia Moussa) takes off on a dreamlike tour through the heartbeat of her city.
Unfolding like a watercolored stream of consciousness, Loci is wonderfully stylistic, bursting with contrasts and ambiguities about Reine’s headspace that keep it constantly intriguing.
If Anything Happens, I Love You 12 mins. Writers/directors: Michael Govier, Will McCormack
Oh my, this one is heartbreaking, tender and devastatingly lovely.
A middle-aged couple is living in a fog of despair, completely unable to comfort each other or find any joy in life. A charcoal-type animation style reveals shadows depicting a former life of happiness, then leading eventually to the tragic event that broke them.
Keep the tissues handy for a soft-spoken gut punch that reframes the stakes we know only too well.
Opera 9 mins. Director: Erick Oh
9 minutes? I could watch this for 9 hours.
Billed as a “massive 8K size animation installation project which portrays our society and history,” Opera is a single frame in constant, intoxicating motion.
The eye level creeps in, then out, up and down and around a pyramid filled with scores of small figures co-existing in a constantly evolving community. Even as you fixate on one fascinating section, you’re drawn to others that are equally rewarding.
Oh has created a true animated marvel, and one that should be hard to beat in this category.
Welcome to a tenement building in Iceland, where we follow some 3D Wallace and Grommet-looking Icelanders going about their daily trials and snowy tribulations.
Most of the dialog is a well-placed exclamation of “Yow!” which adds to the goofiness and overall fun factor. With glimpses into work, school and mundane chores around the house, Yes-People becomes a light and breezy take on the small moments that make our lives.
The 2021 animated shorts program will also feature three “highly commended” animated short films
When I was a kid watching the Oscars, I remember always being perplexed by short film categories. How do people manage to see these shorts?
Good news, kids, it’s gotten much easier. In the last several years, all the nominated shorts have been packaged by category for theatrical showings. This year, of course, virtual screenings are available as well, making it more convenient than ever to find great films in smaller packages.
As usual, these nominated documentary shorts are often heart-wrenching, but able to speak necessary truths to power and our collective human experience.
A Concerto Is a Conversation 13 mins. Directors: Kris Bowers and Ben Proudfoot
Pianist and film composer Kris Bowers explains to his 91 year-old grandfather Horace (and to us) that a concerto is a conversation between a soloist and an ensemble.
But the conversation between the Bowers men is a moving work of art itself, as Horace recalls his life’s journey from a poor kid in the Jim Crow south to a successful business owner in Los Angeles.
And as Kris prepares for the premiere of his first concerto, the film becomes a beautiful expression of heritage, love, talent and courage.
Colette 25 mins. Writer/director: Anthony Giacchino
75 years after her stint as a member of the French Resistance, 90 year-old Colette Catherine is preparing to make her first journey to the concentration camp in Germany where her brother Jean-Pierre died.
She’s accompanied by the young Lucie, a history student and docent at France’s WWII museum, who regards Colette as a “national hero.”
As sobering and horrific as the subject matter suggests, Collette – the film and the hero – finds a redemptive power through defiantly shining a spotlight on an evil that still searches for dark places to take root.
Do Not Split 36 mins. Director: Andreas Hammer
Taking us to the front lines of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests of 2019, Do Not Split becomes a tense, indelible account of resistance against civil rights abuses that will look pretty familiar to U.S. audiences.
Hammer is blessed with a host of intimate footage, often featuring first person commentary from protesters while they are actively pushing back against tear gas and police escalation.
It’s gripping stuff. Without becoming overbearing, the film never lets you forget you are watching important and heroic history unfold.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuO71RwQp_k
Hunger Ward 40 mins. Director: Skye Fitzgerald
Part 3 of Fitzgerald’s Refugee Trilogy (along with 50 Feet From Syria and the Oscar-nominated Lifeboat), Hunger Ward‘s focus is the children – specifically those affected by the ongoing civil war in Yemen.
The images of wounded and starving children carry an understandably tragic weight, while real time footage inside a Yemeni memorial service being actively shelled is unforgettable.
And still, those committed to helping the children exhibit an unwavering and miraculous resolve.
The U.N. has labeled Yemen as home to the world’s “greatest humanitarian crisis,” and Fitzgerald’s unflinching call for action and empathy will leave your heart in your throat.
A Love Song For Latasha 19 mins. Director: Sophia Nahli Allison
A touching tribute to one victim of senseless gun violence, A Love Song…turns the focus away from the aftermath and toward the positive effect Latasha Harlins had on those around her.
In 1992, 15-year-old Latasha was killed by a store clerk in South Central Los Angeles. Framed by Allison (and Executive Producer Ava DuVernay) as a VHS tape memoir with sequences of animation, the film lets the narration from Latasha’s best friend Ty and cousin Shinise craft a warmly intimate profile.
A Love Song For Latasha wants us to know that these victims of racial injustice aren’t just statistics to be glossed over. In a short time, Latasha Harlins made a big impact. So it seems only fitting that a short film makes you glad to meet her.
