CategoryFilm Festivals

Posted March 11, 20192 Comments Documentaries

SXSW: Nothing Fancy: Diana Kennedy

“She is a prophet for Mexican food.”
Nick Zuckin

Cookbook author and chef Diana Kennedy is the leading expert on traditional Mexican cooking. For over 60 years, Kennedy has immersed herself in Mexican culture and food, learning and respecting the traditions of one of the most celebrated cuisines. This feisty and unapologetic British woman may be an outsider looking in but because she has lived in rural Mexico, in Zitácuaro, Michoacán, for most of her life and sticks to the tried and true approaches to different dishes and recipes, she’s become what one of her friends calls an “adoptive daughter of Mexico.”

Director Elizabeth Carroll, in her debut documentary Nothing Fancy: Diana Kennedy explores the life and work of this outspoken advocate for preserving Mexico’s culinary history. Nothing Fancy is a reference to one of Kennedy’s cookbooks but also speaks to Kennedy’s approach to cooking and to life. There are no variations, twists or updates. She sticks to the old ways. Kennedy is a fascinating subject. She’s scrappy, resourceful, and is a champion for organic gardening and sustainable living. She’s always on the road exploring different parts of her adopted country. Kennedy isn’t afraid to tell you what she thinks in her abrupt and frank manner.

In the film we mostly hear from Kennedy herself but Mexican chefs, including one of my favorites Pati Jinich, and other experts also chime in on Kennedy’s legacy. My favorite scene shows present day Kennedy making guacamole with spliced in archival footage from decades earlier of her making the exact same recipe. Kennedy is a free spirit who does not change and is true to what she believes in.

Perhaps the only flaw of the film, which the director hinted at during a screening of this documentary at SXSW, is that the relationships Kennedy has with people in the film isn’t explained. In one case, she is very close to another chef and there is a lovely scene where they have their portrait taken together. But we really don’t find out much about who she is and how they bonded.

Nothing Fancy: Diana Kennedy is a charming documentary that allows its subject’s vibrant personality shine through. It also serves as one way we can ensure Kennedy’s contributions to preserving Mexican food culture is appreciated for decades to come.

Nothing Fancy: Diana Kennedy had its world premiere at the 2019 SXSW Film Festival as part of their Documentary Feature Competition.

Posted March 10, 2019 Female Filmmakers

SXSW: Days of the Whale

Cristina (Laura Tobón) and her boyfriend Simon (David Escallón) are two street artists living in Medellin, Colombia. They collaborate on their graffiti art, live in a commune with other artists and rescue a stray dog. Cristina is a free spirit and lacks any interest in University life spends most of her time wandering the streets, making art and hanging out with Simon. Her family life is tense and divided. She lives with her father (Christian Tappan) and his new bride and her mother (Margarita Restrepo) has fled Medellin in fear for her life. When a local gang spray paints the threatening message “snitches get stitches””/“los sapos mueren por la boca”, Cristina and Simon decide to paint over it with the image of the whale. Will this act of defiance put their lives at risk?

Days of the Whale/Los dias de la ballena was written, directed and produced by Colombian filmmaker Catalina Arroyave Restrepo. This is an auspicious start to what I hope is a long and fruitful career. Arroyave studied communication and film in Colombia, Argentina and Cuba and brings a new and fresh perspective to Latinoamérica cinema.

It’s important to step out of our own bubbles and explore the world around us. Days of the Whale offers viewers an insight into life in Medellin, Colombia through the perspectives of two young free-spirited artists. I love how Arroyave’s film drives home the symbolism of the whale. We see a whale trapped in a canal and as the film progresses the city kills the whale in stages. Cristina decides on a whale as the image to draw over the gang’s threatening message. Her reasoning is that they travel, take care of their young and its her mother’s favorite animal. The whale is symbolic of freedom, specifically creative freedom and being free from the fear that can stifle artistic expression. It can also symbolize being true to yourself and freedom to live your life, as Cristina and Simon do in spite of the oppression from local gang members.

Days of the Whale is a promising debut from a fresh new voice. It explores art as both expression and defiance and shines a spotlight on one of the lesser known urban communities of South America. It also features a fantastic soundtrack with a mix of Colombian hip hop and Cuban salsa.

Days of the Whale had its world premiere at the 2019 SXSW Film Festival as part of their Global series.

For Cine Suffragette, I interviewed Catalina Arroyave Restrepo. Check out the interview in Spanish here and English-language version here!

Update June 2020: Days of the Whale will have a virtual theatrical release on July 24th.

Posted March 10, 2019 Documentaries

SXSW: Tread

In 2004, Marv Heemeyer drove his bulldozer through Granby, Colorado destroying building after building. He carefully selected his targets. These were the townspeople whom he felt had been the cause of many injustices against his beloved muffler shop. Marv’s bulldozer was no ordinary machine. He’d modified it to function like a military tank and created an impenetrable seal armed with it cameras and semi-automatic rifles. He was on a suicide mission. Before that fateful day in June, Marv recorded his suicide note with incredible detail about his motivations behind. The rampage lasted for over 2 hours and no matter how many attempts by the local police force made to thwart his efforts the fact is that they couldn’t. A simple miscalculation was his undoing. Ultimately no one was killed in the incident, except for Marv, but it took years for his victims to recover from the loss. The event made national headlines before it was eclipsed by President Ronald Reagan’s death the next day.

Director Paul Solet’s Tread is a compelling and slick documentary about this little known event. It explores Marv’s motivations for the rampage and features many interviews with his targets and also his girlfriend at the time. His family refused to speak on record for the project. Solet also recreates many key scenes with actors. The rampage itself is a thrilling reenactment done with very little CGI. The filmmaking crew created their own version of the modified bulldozer for those scenes.

I have mixed feelings about the film. Visually its stunning but perhaps a bit too slick. I usually don’t care for reenactments but these were tastefully done. I thought the film overall was a bit too polished with some fancy drone shots and slow motion action sequences that felt unnecessary. I did however appreciate the archival footage as well as Marv’s audio recording which juxtaposed with all the interviews made it feel very balanced. With that said, I was rooting for Marv the whole time. I’m not sure if that speaks more to my own feelings or to how Marv was portrayed in the doc.

In the end, Tread was for me a thrilling revenge story that probably should have been something else entirely.

Tread had its world premiere at the 2019 SXSW Film Festival as part of their Documentary Spotlight series.

Posted March 10, 20191 Comment Film Festivals

SXSW: The Beach Bum

Moondog (Matthew McConaughey) goes with the flow. A free-spirited poet, Moondog spends his days drinking, getting high and gallivanting around Key West. His wife Minnie (Isla Fisher), a wealthy socialite drawn to Moondog’s nonconformity, calls Moondog back to Miami for their daughter’s wedding. When tragedy strikes, Moondog’s inheritance is at stake. He must buckle down and get his next poetry collection written and published. Will Moondog be able to stop partying enough to finally write his next masterpiece?

As we follow him on his journey, we meet the motley crew of characters who inhabit Moondog’s world. There’s Lingerie (Snoop Dogg) the tycoon who lives large and has an affair with Moondog’s wife Minnie. Moondog and Lingerie party with their buddy Jimmy Buffett. In rehab Moondog meets Flicker (Zac Efron), a hip partier with a penchant for vaping and beard shaved to look like tiger stripes. Out of rehab, Moondog gets a job with his friend Captain Wack (Martin Lawrence), who takes families out on dolphin tours and makes one rather unfortunate mistake. Moondog’s literary agent Lewis (Jonah Hill) seems to be just as happy to talk business as he is partying. The most sensible person in Moondog’s world is his daughter Heather (Stefania LaVie Owen) who is seemingly straight-laced but still embraces her parents’ eccentric personalities.

Director Harmony Korine’s The Beach Bum is one wild ride. Several film critics complained that the film meanders but in my opinion that’s one of the strengths. Korine allows the viewer to settle in for a while and live and breathe with the characters. The adventures of Moondog and his cohorts had me laughing and scratching my head. Korine’s brand of weird not be for everyone but I dug it. The story is a big “f*ck you” to conformity, culture and social norms. I live for Korine’s slow motion sequences and this film features a hilarious one starring Moondog and group of vagabonds (whom he literally just met hours earlier) breaking into his wife’s locked up mansion and causing utter chaos.

Moondog fits McConaughey like a well-worn glove. Jonah Hill seems to have modeled his performance after Truman Capote. I wish there was more time with Snoop Dogg, Martin Lawrence and Zac Efron’s characters. For you Parrotheads out there, Jimmy Buffett has a small role playing himself. I absolutely loved Isla Fisher’s character Minnie, perhaps my favorite in the film, but I wish her story line had taken a different turn than it did. Alas.

It’s important to note the representations of sexuality in this film. The women used as ornamental sex objects, specifically in a scene when McConaughey, Buffett and Snoop Dogg are partying on a boat, is outdated and sexist. This might have worked for a rap video ten years ago but doesn’t work today. I can’t tell if Korine is poking fun at this or if this is part of the hedonistic lifestyle. On the flip side, it was interesting to see a scene between Isla Fisher and McConaughey where the female protagonist is receiving oral pleasure. A rarity especially in American cinema.

As someone who works in book publishing, I found the story line of Moondog’s poetry career weak at best. It gives the film some semblance of a plot but you have to suspend your disbelief that Moondog is actually a genius who can win top literary awards for his work. I wasn’t buying it.

The Beach Bum is not as good as Korine’s Mister Lonely, which is still my favorite, or the more comparable Spring Breakers, but is enjoyable fare if you’re on board. And you have to be on board for this ride.