SIFF 2025 Dispatch #8: Cat Town, USA Celebrates a Sanctuary for Cats in Florida

CAT TOWN, USA 

(Jonathan Napolitano, 2025, USA, 73 minutes) 

Terry and Bruce Jenkins, the couple at the center of Jonathan Napolitano's Cat Town, USA have lived a fairly charmed life. They spent their 30s sowing their wild oats, and when they were ready to settle down, they chose a spread in coastal Florida, where Bruce built a miniature western town, complete with water tower, for their kids to play in and around. 

The two started out as dog people, but they had all this land and all these buildings, so they began by adopting a senior cat who was two weeks away from euthanasia, inspiring them to open Cat's Cradle Foundation, a cat sanctuary (after that recollection, they never mention dogs again). Since then, the couple has adopted cats who were abandoned, who didn't get along with other pets, or who were left homeless after their owners died. 

All of their cats are seniors, meaning 11 and older. The oldest, Garfield, is 20. I had hoped my little grey cat, Lola, would live that long, and she came close, but this velvety orange tabby looks like she has plenty of life left.

A highlight is "bag and box day," one among many sanctuary events, when Terry and Bruce bring in cardboard boxes sprinkled with catnip. Napolitano films the cats in slow motion as dreamy music plays on the soundtrack. 

Beyond the cats, the Jenkins have chickens, fish, ferrets, and a miniature horse named Shortcake, who seems to get along just fine with the cats. They no longer have Porkchop, a pig, for reasons Terry explains in the film. 

These are people with good hearts, but there are limits, and they can't take in every senior Pasco County cat who needs a home, so Napolitano shares some of the letters they have received and introduces some of the cats they have taken in. Bruce says they receive one to two requests each day. 

Napolitano also speaks with their volunteer, in addition to others who have benefited from or helped to promote their service, though their kids don't put in any appearances. It would be interesting to hear what they think about the sanctuary, and its unfortunate that neither of them are involved, because it's clear that Terry and Bruce, much like their cats, are slowing down.

Bruce, who serves as the sanctuary's cheerleader, accountant, and IT guy, becomes emotional when he talks about the cats they have lost. By comparison, the pragmatic Terry is stoic, so much so that she's the one who takes cats to the vet to be euthanized when their time comes. Though I've seen Cat Town, USA described as a "feel good" proposition, that's a bit of a stretch. A senior couple who looks after senior cats represents a risk–a risk worth taking, but a risk nonetheless. Things can, and do, go wrong. 

The film ends on a happy note, though the insular nature isn't always to its advantage. 

 

What worked in Suburban Fury works less well here, because it isn't clear what Terry and Bruce did before they retired, and where their money comes from. I'd imagine Cat's Cradle is a non-profit, and that they welcome donations, but I couldn't say for sure. Retirement income may also be a factor. I just know that they do it for love, because it isn't profitable. 

I also don't know what they'll do when they're no longer able to continue. It would be nice to think the sanctuary will continue, but without a succession plan, that seems unlikely. Even if it doesn't, though, it's clear they've done a world of good for dozens, if not hundreds, of Florida cats, and that's no small thing. Not least if the film encourages others to do the same. 

 

After I posted this review, I did some digging. Find out more about Terry and Bruce Jenkins here. I'm happy to report that Garfield was still going at 23. 

 

The last weekend of the festival is packed with some of the most enticing films. My recommendations include Color Book, Familiar Touch, and Sorry, Baby. I wrote about the first two, both great, when I saw them at last year's Cucalorus. Writer/director/actor Eva Victor, who will be in town with Sorry, Baby, has also made a cat film of a kind. The narrative doesn't revolve around cats, but her character, in the wake of a traumatic experience, finds a kitten just when she could use a companion, since her best friend (Naomie Ackie) moved away. I wouldn't say that the kitten changes her life, but it definitely helps.

 

 

Cat Town, USA  plays SIFF Cinema Uptown today, May 24, at 3:30pm. Jonathan Napolitano and producer James Gannon will be in attendance.  

 

Color Book plays the Uptown May 24 at 5:30pm and May 25 at 2:30pm, Familiar Touch  plays Shoreline Community College on May 25, and Sorry, Baby, followed by the closing night party, plays SIFF Cinema Downtown May 24 at 6pm. Cat Town, USA and Color Book will be available to stream May 25 - June 1. Click here to view the SIFF 2019 short, All Cats Go to Heaven, from which Napolitano expanded his feature. All images from the film.

SIFF Dispatch #7: Robinson Devor Profiles Sara Jane Moore, the Would-Be Presidential Assassin Next Door, in Suburban Fury

SUBURBAN FURY 

(Robinson Devor, USA, 2025, 118 minutes) 

"Part of my having a good name on the streets was innocence and stupidity."--Sara Jane Moore on her time as an informant

I'm old enough to remember when Sara Jane Moore tried to assassinate President Gerald R. Ford. I suspect Robinson Devor is, too, but I was so young at the time I forgot all about it almost as soon as it happened. 

Moore didn't seem as colorful as Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, the former Manson Family member who tried the same thing. Both times, Ford emerged unscathed, but Devor's film, written with Bob Fink, Charles Mudede, and Jason Reid, argues that Moore was as colorful. Just not in the same way. 

On September 22, 1975 when she secured her place in history, Moore was a 45-year-old single mother living in San Francisco's Mission District after years in West Virginia and Southern California. Unlike Squeaky or Patricia Hearst, circa the Symbionese Liberation Army, she hadn't been involved in terrorist activities or creepy death cults. During her then-three marriages to men of power and influence, she hobnobbed with famous figures, like Patricia's father, Randolph Hearst. She was a member of the Establishment. 

At Moore's request, Devor didn't interview anyone else for this documentary. Consequently, the director voices FBI Agent Bertram Worthington (a pseudonym), whose words come from Moore's recollections of their conversations. Notably, Patrick Warburton, star of Devor's fine Charles Willeford adaptation, The Woman Chaser, served as an executive producer. I'm not sure whether it was ever an option, but it seems like a missed opportunity not to use his authoritative voice. 

Worthington recruited Moore, because of her connections, which is how she ended up as part of the Hearst inner circle during Patricia's days with the SLA. I'm not certain what she hoped to gain as an informant. A sense of purpose, perhaps? She mentions turning down one particular offer of money, but it's hard to imagine she wasn't receiving regular payment of some kind.

Throughout the film, Moore appears key-lit in isolation, either in the back of a Plymouth Fury overlooking Bernal Heights, through the window of a modernist house, or in the St. Francis Hotel, where Ford was staying on that fateful day. At times, an unseen Devor asks her questions, which brings Errol Morris to mind, though Moore doesn't speak to the camera like the subjects in his films (Devor has cited Morris's Fog of War in interviews). 

He provides historical context through archival footage, presented in the boxy Academy ratio, of radical and conservative organizing in the 1970s. 

Moore was torn between the two sides. The longer she was involved with the FBI, the more disillusioned she became by their tactics. In talking about these tensions, she becomes tense herself, and repeatedly loses her cool with Devor. Is he talking over her, or is she being stroppy? Possibly a little of both, though it's clear she alternately loves and hates revisiting these times.

As the film goes on, Devor reveals more details about her past as a WAC and aspiring actress known as Sara Kahn, Sara Jane Manning, and other names. She contained multitudes, particularly in light of the rather unflattering statements her mother and first husband made about her. 

One of the criticisms leveled against Suburban Fury, since its debut at the New York Film Festival, is that Devor doesn't provide enough information about Moore's background, including her five marriages and four children, three of whom appear to have been taken in by her parents, but she repeatedly insisted to Devor that it wasn't relevant, and wouldn't go into it.

Another criticism is that Devor doesn't indicate whether Moore is lying or not, which is fair, but although it isn't mentioned in the film, he and Bob Fink found no evidence of dishonesty. 

Suburban Fury culminates with Moore's description of the day she tried to assassinate the President of the United States of America. It's probably something she's gone over in her head, and with police and reporters, countless times, and she doesn't get especially worked up about it, though I'm not certain what she hoped to accomplish, other than that she intended to succeed–"I was aiming for a head shot because he was probably wearing body armor"--and expected (and possibly wanted) to be killed on site. 

Even after watching this entire documentary, I remain mystified by Sara Jane Moore. She states that she was glad Ford didn't die, but doesn't seem regretful, in the film, that she tried to take his life, though she has expressed regret in other interviews, blaming her turn to radical politics.

As for Devor, it's hard to tell what he thinks about her, but that isn't the same as lacking a point of view. It's more about providing a voice for a woman who has felt misrepresented, though that's always a tricky proposition with such a contradictory figure. On the other hand, Devor doesn't try to reconcile those contradictions, and the result is probably as close as anyone can get to understanding what it's like to live inside her head. It's an interesting place to visit--but I wouldn't want to live there.

Gerald Ford would live another 31 years, dying at 93 in 2006. One year later, Moore was released from prison. In 1990, she was immortalized, alongside eight other killers and would-be killers--including Squeaky Fromme--in Stephen Sondheim's Assassins. Over the years, she has been played by everyone from Becky Ann Baker to Christine Baranski. Moore turned 95 this year, but in a manner of speaking, she will never die.  

Suburban Fury plays May 23 at the Uptown at 3:30pm. Robinson Devor, Jason Reid, Bob Fink, and co-producer Matt Levinthal will be in attendance. On May 26, SIFF awarded the film the Documentary Competition Grand Jury Prize. I'll update with more showtimes as they become available.

Images from The Hollywood Reporter (Sara Jane Moore in the Plymouth Fury), Film at Lincoln Center (Moore in her acting days), Getty Images / Fox News (Moore on Sept 22, 1975), and Variety (Moore from another angle).

SIFF 2025 Dispatch #6: An Irish Girl Grows Up Fast in Claire Frances Byrne's Ready or Not

READY OR NOT

(Claire Frances Byrne, 2024, Ireland, 84 minutes)

Claire Frances Byrne's directorial debut is a potent piece of work rooted in a specific place and time--with all the Irish slang you could hope for--and yet universal to the challenges teenage girls face, especially when it comes to teen boys. Even those who seem least threatening.

Katie (a very good Ruby Conway Dunne, looking for all the world like a tiny Andie MacDowell), a rebellious 13-year old, lives in a Dublin council estate. It's 1998. When her parents gift her with a pink bicycle, she spray paints it black, and never hesitates to talk back to the well meaning, if corny couple (Laurence Kinlan and Charleigh Bailey from Darren Thornton's A Date for Mad Mary, another fine film about a rebellious young Irish woman).

Summer has just begun, and Katie would rather hang out with the impetuous Danni (Molly Byrne), cynical Sarah (Alicia Weafer), and genial Stephen, aka Steo (Alex Grendon). She's known Steo the longest, and he shares her passion for football. He's been her best mate for years, but when his predatory cousin, Byrner (Lewis Brophy), encourages Steo to kiss her, and he does–with her consent–things quickly go further than she expected, leaving both her and Steo feeling confused and uncomfortable. 

 

Katie tells Danni about the encounter and pledges her to secrecy, but their school mates soon finds out, and she's mortified. Katie assumes Steo spilled the beans, and gives him the cold shoulder. Unless I missed it, Lynn Ruane's screenplay never names the culprit, but when Katie describes her estate as a "fishbowl" at the end of the film, she isn't kidding--whether child or adult, everyone is up in everyone else's business. At least Katie has no siblings to complicate matters further.

If she isn't a model citizen, Katie knows she isn't ready for sex or alcohol, even if other kids, like Danni, try to convince her otherwise. One minute, the resident mean girls accuse her of being "fridget," Irish slang for someone scared or uninterested in sex, the next they accuse her of being a slut.

Worse yet, consent means nothing to Byrner, who represents a threat to any woman in his vicinity, but when David (Dane Whyte O'Hara), Byrner's better behaved mate, takes an interest in her, Katie doesn't resist. It's possible she feels she owes him after he gets her and Danni out of a jam, and it doesn't hurt that he looks like Chris Evans, but she isn't ready for what comes next. 

If I wasn't thrilled that the director chose such a generic title, one shared by a popular horror comedy series--starring Andie MacDowell, no less--I can't say Ready or Not isn't fitting, since it sums up the theme of the film. 

 

Katie is hardly an "idjit," as they like to say in Ireland, but nor is she as brave or as worldly as she pretends, and one good looking, smooth talker is all it takes to break down her defenses. (It's no wonder Joyce Chopra titled her devastating 1985 younger woman-older man film Smooth Talk.)

 

So, Katie makes mistakes, suffers the embarrassing (though hardly tragic) consequences, and she'll probably make more, but the film ends with the impression that she and her friends have learned some valuable lessons.

Though I don't usually gravitate towards coming-of-age stories, I wrote about the other two Irish films at the festival, so it only made sense to check out the third, and I'm glad I took a chance on this one, though I regret that it won't be shown with closed captions. You might think Dublin kids would be easy to understand, but I missed a few words. It was also helpful to look up the unfamiliar idioms.

I can't say I wouldn't have expected a narrative feature about a 13-year-old girl in 1998 to remind me of Blue Road, Sinéad O'Shea's profile of Edna O'Brien, except Katie recalls the writer, as a youth, in the ways she looks askance at alcohol, finds herself both attracted to and repelled by men, and longs to be seen as a multi-dimensional human being, rather than strictly as an angel or a whore, as if those were an Irish woman's only two choices.

If things were this bad for Irish girls in the 1990s, I shudder to think what they were like in the 1950s--and can only hope they're better now. 

Ready or Not plays SIFF Cinema Uptown on May 21 at 9:30pm and May 22 at 4pm. Director Claire Frances Byrne is scheduled to attend. Images from the IMDb (Molly Byrne, Alicia Weafer, and Ruby Conway Dunne), Letterboxd (Dunne and Alex Grendon), and United Agents (Dane Whyte O'Hara).

SIFF 2025 Dispatch #5: Josh O’Connor Narrates a Dreamy Portrait of Jean Cocteau

JEAN COCTEAU 

(Lisa Immordino Vreeland, USA, 2024, 94 minutes) 

"I am unquestionably the most obscure and the most celebrated of poets."--Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)

British actor Josh O'Connor, who has an especially appealing voice–slightly husky with a certain underlying vulnerability–narrates Lisa Immordino Vreeland's portrait of Jean Cocteau. (At this year's SIFF, O'Connor also stars in Max Walker-Silverman's Rebuilding.)

By reading from his writings, including the letters--believed to be between 900 and 1,000--he wrote to his widowed mother, Eugénie, O'Connor essentially becomes the French artist, poet, playwright, and filmmaker, so it's odd that the Paris-born Vreeland didn't hire a French narrator, but she lives and works in the States, and it's consistent with her profiles of other art/design-oriented subjects, including Cecil Beaton, Peggy Guggenheim, and Vogue editor Diana Vreeland (to whom she's related by marriage).

That said, Vreeland's impressionistic profile, which drifts from project to project, includes archival interviews in French, wordless excerpts from productions of Cocteau's plays and ballets, and present-day images of the places he lived, like an especially enchanting villa in the South of France--fittingly shot by DP Shane Sigler with a Bolex. Cocteau had a lyrical style as an illustrator, and the walls are covered with his distinctive imagery. 

 

Throughout, the director details Cocteau's relationships with Coco Chanel, Sergei Diaghilev (pictured to the right), Édith Piaf, Pablo Picasso, Erik Satie, Igor Stravinsky, and other famous figures. He got along with most quite well, with the exception of writer and surrealist leader André Breton, who comes across as a bully. 

 

Beyond Cocteau's considerable talents, the ease with which he befriended so many extraordinary artists certainly elevated his own work. Chanel, for instance, designed costumes for his stage productions and even produced a revival of his 1917 ballet Parade. I'm not certain why Breton targeted him, but his sexual orientation appears to have been a factor. Vreeland also details the controversies that swirled around his sexually fluid and politically ambiguous work at times when the right wing was ascendant in France. 

Because Cocteau didn't initially have ambitions to direct, I find it remarkable that he made such a smooth transition to filmmaking, and I'm especially fond of 1946's La Belle et La Bête, aka Beauty and the Beast, starring his lover and muse Jean Marais, who would appear in four other films. It's the only version of the fairy tale I'll ever need with all its fantastical flights of fancy–all done in camera–unlike the more recent animated, musical, and CGI-saturated versions. (I'm not certain why Vreeland called on O'Connor as narrator, but it may be because he has often played queer characters.) 

 

All told, Vreeland covers most every aspect of Cocteau's life and work, including the Roberto Rossellini and Pedro Almodóvar adaptations of his 1930 play La Voix Humaine. Unless I missed it, though, she overlooks his script work, like his adaptation of his 1929 novel, Les Enfants Terribles, for Jean-Pierre Melville's fine 1950 film. 

 

Vreeland also covers the friends and lovers Cocteau lost to illness and war, though he didn't fear death, which may be why his passing, in the context of her film, doesn't feel especially tragic, not least because he abhorred aging.

A mutual has described this profile as too ordinary to suit the director's extraordinary subject. I take her point, but found it quite lovely, and less conventional than that description suggests. Anyone looking for a chronological account may find its drifting quality frustrating, but that felt right to me. Vreeland covers La Belle et la Bête, for instance, before 1932's The Blood of a Poet, since she prioritizes themes or moods over years. 

If Cocteau remains a little enigmatic, I think it's what he would've wanted. 

I would also recommend Constance Tsang's Blue Sun Palace, particularly for admirers of Taiwanese master Tsai Ming-liang. As with Jean Cocteau, it has a certain drifting quality as Tsang focuses first on one Taiwanese migrant in Queens before shifting to two associates, one played by magnetic actor/director Lee Kang-sheng, who has appeared in all 11 of Tsai's features. 

Jean Cocteau plays SIFF Cinema Uptown on May 20 at 3pm. Producer/editor/co-writer John Northrup scheduled to attend. Available online May 26 - June 1. Blue Sun Palace plays Pacific Place on May 24 at 11am, and Rebuilding plays the Uptown on May 24 at 8:30pm and May 25 at 6:30pm. 

 

Images from Gagosian Quarterly (Jean Cocteau, 1929 / Photo © Estate Germaine Krull, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany), DailyArt Magazine (Photograph of Jean Cocteau and Sergei Diaghilev / Operaplus), and The Cinessential (Jean Marais and Josette Day in La Belle et La Bête).

SIFF 2025 Dispatch #4: Horror, Comedy, and Sisterhood Come Together in The Balconettes

THE BALCONETTES / Les Femmes au Balcon 

(Noémie Merlant, 2024, France, 104 minutes) 

"This isn't cinema verité; this doesn't have the same realism as my previous film. Instead it's a fairytale, a fable. A punk fable, to be sure."--Noémie Merlant to Variety

Céline Sciamma's 2019 Daphne du Maurier-inspired gothic romantic drama Portrait of a Lady on Fire–with the same-sex subtext of du Maurier's 1938 novel Rebecca made text–gave French actress Noémie Merlant her breakout role, leading to other notable projects, like Todd Field's 2022 Tár with Cate Blanchett, in which she plays the imperious composer's assistant. 

With her second directorial effort The Balconettes, Merlant collaborates with her mentor as co-writer, surely the wisest move she could make in light of Sciamma's efforts in that arena, both for her own films and those of others, like André Téchiné's Being 17 and Jacques Audiard's Paris, 13th District, in which Merlant appears (Animal Kingdom cowriter Pauline Munier also contributed to the screenplay). Merlant is, in other words, in good company. 

The Balconettes opens on a Marseilles apartment complex on a sweltering summer day. DP Evgenia Alexandrova showcases one colorful balcony after another as retro pop plays on the soundtrack, before introducing a grim scene in which Denise (Nadège Beausson-Diagne), a put-upon Black woman, takes her revenge on her abusive white husband. When he refuses to die, she turns to some rather comic methods to finish the job. Clearly, a film of wide tonal shifts. 

Merlant then turns to the young women at the center of the story. Two are roommates, while the third lives in Paris. Nicole (Sanda Codreanu), who is friendly with Denise, is a self-proclaimed ordinary-looking girl working on a novel about the hot guy across the way, extroverted Ruby (Souheila Yacoub from Dune: Part Two) works as a camgirl, and Merlant's Élise is an actress on a break from her demanding husband, Paul (Christophe Montenez). 

They're distinct types, but the chemistry between the ladies combined with the heightened tone prevents them from feeling too much like stereotypes. 

After a minor automobile mishap involving Élise and the hot guy, photographer Magnani (Emily in Paris hearththrob Lucas Bravo), a group flirtation ensues, kind of like the voyeuristic scenarios in Rear Window and Monsieur Hire, even if the initial tone is screwball. It's mostly fun and games, though Nicole worries Magnani will end up with Ruby or Élise, since they're both more sexually expressive, even if one isn't actually single.  

After a night of partying, one of the three ladies winds up soaked in blood. It isn't clear what happened, though Merlant and Sciamma drop clues that one of them was either victim or attacker, possibly both if self-defense was involved. 

Things soon turn even grislier as the ladies join together, much like the female duo in Henri-Georges Clouzot's influential 1955 thriller Les Diaboliques, to cover up a crime in which they may or may not have been involved, but for which at least one of them would surely be implicated. 

From that point forward, The Balconettes plunges into horror territory, complete with the ghosts of men who've done the trio wrong. I didn't mind the swerves from comedy to darker modes, but the second-time director (2021's Mi Iubita Mon Amour) lets the acting get away from her at times. The scenario, enhanced by moody lighting and Uèle Lamore's mournful score, is already dramatic enough without all the yelling and screaming. 

There's also a lot of extraneous nudity. It fits Ruby's character, but Élise's clothes often slide off her body just for the hell of it--all it takes is a slight breeze--and I'm not sure we needed to see exactly what her gynecologist sees during an exam...though it makes even Paul Verhoeven seem timid.

I like the way the film began, and it held my attention, but lost my sympathies midway through. I'm all for sisterhood, but the men in the film are painted with the broadest of strokes, something I didn't expect from Sciamma, though women battling oppression is a consistent theme for her, one more successfully expressed in 2014's banlieue-set Girlhood. 

I found the The Balconettes diverting, and I look forward to seeing all of these actors again, even Lucas Bravo, who plays the eyeliner-wearing villain of the piece, but it didn't quite work for me, not least when the middle-aged Black woman from the prologue pays for the same kind of crime for which the young white women go free. That might not be completely unrealistic, but the ladies forget all about Denise en route to their empowering ending.

The Balconettes plays SIFF Cinema Uptown on May 18 at 9pm and SIFF Cinema Downtown on May 19 at 3:15pm. Souheila Yacoub, an actress of Tunisian and Swiss descent, next appears in Evil Dead Burn. Images from The Guardian (Yacoub, Sanda Codreanu, and Noémie Merlant / Photograph: Nord-Ouest Films – France 2 Cine’ma), ilylucasbravo (Yacoub, Codreanu, and Lucas Bravo), and mk2 Films (Yacoub, Codreanu, and Merlant).

SIFF 2025 Dispatch #3: "Bad, Beautiful, and Bold as Sin!" in Jack Arnold's The Glass Web

THE GLASS WEB 
(Jack Arnold, USA, 1953, 81 minutes) 

"Blonde, Beautiful...and Born to Be Murdered!"--one of the lurid 1953 taglines

I wouldn't say that Jack Arnold's Universal noir, The Glass Web, an adaptation of TV writer Max Simon Ehrlich's novel Spin the Glass Web, is a lost classic, but any chance to see a film from the director behind 1954's Creature from the Black Lagoon and 1957's The Incredible Shrinking Man--a big favorite of the late Seattle Times critic John Hartl--on one of the biggest screens in town is a chance worth taking. 

I'm not certain The Glass Web would score high marks from Czar of Noir Eddie Muller of TCM and Noir City fame, but it's a solid B-picture about ambitious actress Paula (Kathleen Hughes, who appeared in Arnold's It Came from Outer Space the same year), who has a cute orange tabby, so you know she isn't all bad, but her good qualities end there, since she's been using middle-aged bachelor Henry (Edward G. Robinson) for clout and married father Don (John Forsythe) for cash--the cat's propensity to nibble on electrical cords plays into the plot. Not to worry, the cat emerges unscathed, but things do not end well for two of these conniving characters. 

If the basic setup is sufficiently compelling, Arnold's depiction of the live television era is sure to prove eye-opening to today's audiences. It doesn't get talked about much anymore, but it's how some of the finest filmmakers of the New Hollywood, like Arthur Penn and Robert Altman, got their start.

I don't know if co-writers Robert Blees and Leonard Lee took inspiration from an actual show, but it seems likely, and the unimaginatively-titled Crime of the Week predicts Law & Order, among other crime shows and podcasts, by dramatizing a ripped-from-the-headlines case each week--including one involving a cast member. 

Forsythe, a dependable, if unspectacular actor who would find greater fame on TV in the 1970s and '80s, most notably on Charlie's Angels (as the voice of Charlie) and Dynasty, plays the guy who writes the episodes, while Robinson plays the researcher with an eye for detail--at least until Paula knocks him off his feet, and he loses all sense of reason. Like his paramour, Henry believes he's destined for better things, whereas Don is already living the American Dream, complete with Marcia Henderson's supportive spouse.

The actors are all quite good, including Richard Denning as the producer. Robinson would do even better work in more emotionally involving crime films, like John Farrow's Night Has a Thousand Eyes, but he always delivers, at least in my experience. As for Ms. Hughes, Bosley Crowther, in his original New York Times review, describes her character as a "dainty dish of poison." I'm not sure about that "dainty" part, but Paula is pretty poisonous indeed.  

Like the show itself, the Continental Cigarette commercials, which feature an announcer puffing away like a chimney, are live (back in the 1980s, when I served as an intern at CBS News, there was plenty of smoking going on behind the scenes even as it had disappeared from screens by the 1970s).

It's the way things were done at the time, though it isn't simply about depicting a specific milieu, since both crime and solution tie into the production of the show, from the writing to the sound stages to the competition for better roles, both in front of and behind the camera, to the drive to keep a sponsor happy at all costs. No sponsor: no show. 

Though I caught a 2D version of the film, SIFF attendees will get to enjoy the full effect of the objects that hurtle towards the camera during a mid-picture sequence. Granted, we're talking four brief moments squeezed into one to two minutes. Like the 3D version of Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 Dial M for Murder, which I caught at New York's Film Forum in 2004, it adds a little something extra to the picture, even if it has little to do with its themes.

Arnold would again turn to three dimensions for It Came from Outer Space and Creature from the Black Lagoon, the latter so popular that it spawned two sequels and inspired Guillermo Del Toro's 2017 Oscar-winning fantasy romance The Shape of Water. The 3D version of those films, however, reached more viewers than this one, making the screening of the restored 3D version of The Glass Web at SIFF Cinema Downtown a rare treat indeed. 

The Glass Web plays SIFF Cinema Downtown on May 18 at 4:15pm. It's also available on Blu-ray with 3D glasses through Kino Lorber. Images from Deranged LA Crimes (vintage poster), DVD Beaver (Kathleen Hughes), and the IMDb (John Forsythe, Edward G. Robinson, and Richard Denning).

SIFF 2025 Dispatch #2: Sinéad O'Shea Offers a Vibrant Profile of Edna O'Brien in Blue Road

BLUE ROAD: THE EDNA O'BRIEN STORY 

(Sinéad O'Shea, 2024, Ireland, 100 minutes) 

Documentarian Sinéad O'Shea (Pray for Our Sinners) presents Edna O'Brien as woman, mother, writer, and rebel. And not necessarily in that order. 

 

Since O'Shea spoke with O'Brien several times in the months before her 2024 passing at 93, her narration combines the author's voice with diary readings from Irish actress Jessie Buckley, who first came to my attention by way of Tom Harper's Wild Rose (SIFF 2019). The effect is quite seamless. 

O'Brien recalls that she grew up in a small town where she felt stifled. Her parents were not worldly or cultured people, and when she got the chance to move to Dublin, she took it, hoping to follow in the footsteps of James Joyce of whom she was a great admirer. It wasn't quite the done thing in the 1950s if you were a woman, but it didn't take her long to land a weekly column in a railway magazine (under a pseudonym)--and to take up with an older man, writer Ernest Gébler, thus scandalizing her conservative family. 

Though many writers struggle with their first novel, O'Brien found the writing of 1960's The Country Girls to be "a pure joy." It would jump-start a literary trilogy with The Lonely Girl and Girls in Their Married Bliss, and lead to a 1964 motion picture with Rita Tushingham as the younger woman and a 1983 tele-film with Sam Neil as the older man--both directed by Desmond Davis--but her frankness about sex, drink, religion, and patriarchy would shock a staid country and lead to several book bans, and even, reportedly, a book burning. God forbid that an Irish woman might have sex–and enjoy it. 

 

If the Irish public and pundit class found her work shocking, writers in the UK and the US embraced it. 

 

Her success, however, made her husband insanely jealous, even though he benefited financially, and led to the end of their marriage. His comments about O'Brien during this time are truly horrific. What a sad, small-minded man, the kind who would--and did--abandon their children without a second thought. 

As a single woman living in London with a bit of money and a lot of fame, O'Brien hobnobbed with the likes of Robert Mitchum and Marlon Brando, but she wasn't really a party girl or loose woman, as much as the press chose to portray her that way. She was, after all, always writing. O'Shea also includes excerpts from her vivacious talk show appearances. I got the impression that it was more about the media seeking her out than vice versa. 

I also realized that the perfect person to play her in a biopic, in terms of both biography and appearance, would be actor/director/novelist Miranda July who has similarly striking light eyes, though blue rather than green. 

 

Other speakers in the film beyond O'Brien include her sons Sasha and Carlo, Gabriel Byrne, Andrew O'Hagan, Anne Enright, Clair Wills, Louise Kennedy, and Devil in a Blue Dress author Walter Mosley, a former student at City College of New York, who describes her work as "revolutionary" and credits her for encouraging him to become a novelist. 

O'Shea also covers several of O'Brien's works beyond the initial trilogy, including the Joyce-inspired 1972 novel Night and her final novel, 2019's Girl, a fictionalized first-person account told by a Nigerian schoolgirl, one among 276 kidnapped by the militant group Boko Haram in 2014.

In her film, O'Shea doesn't cover everything O'Brien ever did or said. She doesn't provide much information, for instance, about her plays, biographies, and acting work, but the director has done her subject justice. 

Though an American could have made this documentary, and it wouldn't have been the worst thing in the world, only an Irish woman could really get her as thoroughly, and I felt the same about Kathryn Ferguson's 2022 Sinéad O’Connor documentary, Nothing Compares, which also avoids melodrama and hero worship in favor of an empathetic, yet evenhanded approach. 

Neither film suggests that these uniquely talented women were without flaw, and their native country certainly did them dirty at times, but it made them who they were in all their fiery passion, poetic fury, and feminist glory.  

Though SIFF has requested that critics save detailed coverage for the official film openings, this week I also watched Dea Kulumbegashvili's April, a searing film about a one-woman family planning clinic in rural Georgia, and Alexandre O. Phillippe's doumentary Chain Reactions, a multi-faceted exploration of Tobe Hooper's immortal Texas Chain Saw Massacre. I would recommend both, not least since Philippe, maker of essay films on Alien (SIFF 2019) and The Exorcist, will be in attendance on May 16.  

Blue Road plays Pacific Place on May 16 at 4pm and the Uptown on May 20 at 6pm. I would also recommend Sheila O'Malley's insightful interview with the director. April plays the Uptown on May 16 at 1:30pm and SIFF Film Center on May 17 at 8pm, and Chain Reactions plays the Uptown on May 16 at 9pm and Pacific Place on May 17 at 1:30pm. Images from Broadway Cinema (Edna O'Brien in early years), the IMDb (Girl with the Green Eyes poster), Royal Literary Fund (O'Brien in later years), and Byrneholics Online.

SIFF 2025 Dispatch #1: Four Mothers with James McArdle and Fionnula Flanagan

Much like the Seattle International Film Festival's 50th anniversary edition, which opened with Josh Margolin's Thelma, SIFF's 51st edition opens on May 15 with another crowd-pleasing, cross-generational comedy, though this one has less of an action-adventure element. This time the setting is Dublin, the younger man is gay, and the indomitable Fionnula Flanagan is in the mix.

FOUR MOTHERS 

(Darren Thornton, Ireland, 2024, 89 minutes)

Just because I don't have kids doesn't mean my life has no value."

--Edward (James McArdle) to his mother

Darren Thornton's followup to his directorial debut, 2016's pleasingly prickly A Date for Mad Mary--also cowritten with his brother Colin--revolves around mild-mannered Edward (Mare of Easttown's James McArdle, a Scottish actor with a credible Irish accent), a put-upon YA novelist who doubles as a caretaker for Fionnula Flanagan's Alma, his 81-year-old widowed mother. 

Alma, who is recovering from a stroke, can't walk or talk, but her mind is sharp, and she communicates by way of a robot-voiced speech tablet. Edward's best friends–even his longtime therapist–are all in similar straits. They may love their mothers, but care-taking can get pretty exhausting. 

 

Worse yet, Edward has a book to promote, but he can't leave Alma alone, and when he suggests alternatives, she resists. If he can afford a cute  physiotherapist, his ex-boyfriend Raf (Gaetan Garcia), he can't afford round-the-clock home care, and I get it. When my mom was receiving that kind of care, the cost was $11,000 per month before she moved to assisted living. 

Then, the two friends and the therapist, all of whom are gay, dump their mothers (nicely played by Stella McCusker, Dearbhla Molloy, and Paddy Glynn) on Edward to attend a pride fest weekend in Spain, and his problems quadruple. I'd say he needs new friends, but that's a matter for another day. The friends are thoughtless, the ladies are demanding, and he's a doormat. 

If you've seen Gianni Di Gregorio's 2008 film, Mid-August Lunch, which served as inspiration, the basic outline may seem familiar, though most of the details have been changed, like the fact that Edward is both younger and gayer than Di Gregorio's unemployed, debt-ridden, wine-sozzled bachelor.

 

Left: Flanagan in Four Brothers

 

Four Mothers has its comic moments, but it's more melancholic than Thelma, in which June Squibb and Richard Roundtree hopped on motorized scooters to expose a con artist targeting seniors, but it's certainly more upbeat than John Singleton's 2005 western-inspired crime thriller Four Brothers in which Flanagan plays the adoptive mother of sons played by Mark Wahlberg, Tyrese Gibson, André Benjamin, and Garrett Hedlund. When their beloved Irish-American matriarch meets her maker, they band together to avenge her death. Let it not be said that Ms. Flanagan lacks range. 

Though I missed hearing her speak in Thornton's film, she makes her presence known, much as Alan Arkin did in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and Tilda Swinton in A Bigger Splash, other films in which gifted actors brought complex characters to life with every tool at their disposal–except their voice. Nonetheless, the real star of the show is James McArdle, an experienced supporting actor of stage and screen, proving here he can easily command the screen--and your sympathies--as the leading man. 

After the Four Mothers screening with writer Colin Thornton in attendance, the opening night party begins on 9th and Pine at 9:30pm with drink tickets, food trucks, and music from KEXP DJ Darek Mazzone. Since this year's theme is Escape to the Reel World, vacation-oriented attire is suggested.

For more information about the opening night festivities, click here. Four Mothers is one of three Irish films playing at this year's SIFF. In the next dispatch, I cover Blue Road, a profile of Edna O'Brien. The third, Ready or Not, plays next week. Images: MSP Film Society (Gaetan Garcia, Fionnula Flanagan, Stella McCusker, Dearbhla Molloy, Paddy Glynn) and Plymouth Arts Cinema (James McArdle and Flanagan), and the IMDb (Flanagan). 

Lost and Found Film Reviews: Haute Cuisine, Meek's Cutoff, The Past, and Romeo & Juliet

Between 2000 and 2014, I wrote a number of reviews for Amazon that have disappeared from the internet, so I have reproduced a few here. Slightly revised from the original text.

HAUTE CUISINE / Les Saveurs du Palais

(Christian Vincent, France, 2012, 95 minutes)

César Award-winning filmmaker Christian Vincent's 14th feature, Haute Cuisine, offers a glimpse into the life of François Mitterand's personal cook, presenting her as protective of her privacy and serious about her work. 

In the 1980s, the president's personal secretary offers Hortense Laborie (Catherine Frot, The Page Turner), a provincial chef, the prestigious position due to her facility with "simple cooking" and locally-sourced ingredients--though foie gras and truffles may strike some as anything but simple. 

If the kitchen staff at the Élysée Palace doesn't welcome her with open arms, Hortense forms a genial bond with her sous-chef, Nicolas (Arthur Dupont), but there's no mention of any friends or family (in reality, Danièle Mazet-Delpeuch, a divorcée, also spent a few years in America). Though Mitterand (author-turned-actor Jean d’Ormesson), values her services, Hortense leaves when she can no longer give free reign to her creativity. 

As a framing device, Vincent, who co-wrote the script with Étiene Comar (Of Gods and Men), uses her subsequent post as cook at an Antarctic research station, a potentially dramatic scenario that proves surprisingly uneventful, since the only real tension comes from Hortense's attempts to avoid a particularly persistent Australian documentarian (Arly Jover) with a pronounced Spanish accent (Vincent filmed these sequences in Iceland). 

Though acted and directed with care, these flaws apply to the film as a whole. In attempting to avoid anything too political (Mitterand's policymaking) or personal (Hortense's background), Haute Cuisine comes across as blander than its overly-respectful makers may have intended. 

MEEK'S CUTOFF

(Kelly Reichardt, USA, 2010, 104 minutes)

Meek's Cutoff, Kelly Reichardt's fourth feature and third set in the Pacific Northwest, arrives in the guise of a western. 

On the Oregon Trail in 1845, three couples travel in covered wagons with slippery guide Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood, hirsute and unrecognizable), but days pass, and water remains elusive. 

Emily (a never-better Michelle Williams, who anchored Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy) laments that "he's gotten in over his head." Meek insists that relief lies around the next corner, but that's never the case, until an alkaline lake appears. Unfortunately, it's unsuitable for drinking, so they push on.

About Meek, Emily's husband (Will Patton, also from Wendy and Lucy) wonders, "Is he ignorant or is he just plain evil?" (The fine cast also includes Zoe Kazan, Paul Dano, Shirley Henderson, Neal Huff, and Tommy Nelson.) 

The group's bond frays further when a Cayuse Indian (Ron Rondeaux of the Crow and Cheyenne tribes) locks them in his sights. Meek tries to squeeze information out of him, but he doesn't understand English. On the assumption that he's equally lost and scared, Emily tries to gain his trust by sharing food and mending a moccasin, but he keeps his distance from the settlers, leading to a showdown that produces an unexpected outcome. 

Always attuned to the rhythms of nature, Kelly Reichardt's meditative take on the genre, written by Jon Raymond, feels more enigmatic than most--with the possible exception of Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man--even if the period details look right. With her focus on faded calico dresses and vast aquamarine skies, Meek's Cutoff offers a beautiful vision of harsh times. 

THE PAST / Le Passé

(Asghar Farhadi, France/Italy/Iran, 2013, 130 minutes)

Asghar Farhadi’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning film, The Separation, takes a procedural approach to two interlocking relationships. 

When Ahmad (Iranian actor/director Ali Mosaffa, who learned French for the role) travels from Tehran to Paris, he expects to finalize his divorce from Marie (The Artist's Bérénice Bejo), so that she can marry Samir (The Prophet's Tahar Rahim), but he finds a chaotic domestic scenario: Samir's wife, Céline (Aleksandra Klebanska), is in a coma after a failed suicide attempt; their young son, Fouad (Elyes Aguis), has become difficult; and Marie's teenage daughter, Lucie (Pauline Burlet), won't speak to her. 

Marie assumes Lucie can't stand Samir, but she's actually keeping a secret that's eating her up inside. With Samir's help, Marie has also been repainting the walls of her dilapidated house, which represent the havoc within. 

Like a cross between a counselor and a detective, Ahmad starts putting the pieces together by trying to get Lucie to open up. He may not be her birth father, but she feels more comfortable talking to him than anyone else. 

As Ahmad discovers, most everyone has been withholding information about the day Céline attempted to take her life. 

By the conclusion, an undocumented worker and a restaurant owner get caught up in this absorbing, unpredictable drama, but if Mosaffa and Burlet are particularly good, Bejo and Tahar play more exasperating characters--Marie is high-strung and Samir is moody--though it's to Farhadi's credit that he would prefer to create characters who are more intriguing than loveable. 

ROMEO & JULIET

(Carlo Carlei, UK/Italy/Switzerland, USA, 2013, 118 minutes)

Of the many ways to adapt Shakespeare for the silver screen, filmmakers often choose between the Bard's original era and their own (Richard Loncraine’s 1930s-set Richard III represented an exception to the rule).

Unlike Baz Luhrmann's 1996 designer-clad American edition, Carlo Carlei's Italian-made Romeo & Juliet aims for authenticity in its tale of the Montagues, the Capulets, and the star-cross'd young couple caught up in their feud. 

Though Juliet (True Grit’s Hailee Steinfeld) is only a teenager, her parents (Natascha McElone and Homeland's Damien Lewis with a very unfortunate haircut) have arranged for her to marry the drippy Count Paris (300's Tom Wisdom). Romeo (model-handsome Douglas Booth from the BBC's 2011 Great Expectations) has also been making wedding plans until he spots Juliet at a masked ball, and all thoughts of Rosaline (Colombian actress Nathalie Rapti Gomez) disappear. 

While Mercutio (Christian Cooke) and Tybalt (Ed Westwick) try to keep the two apart, Benvolio (The Road's Kodi Smit-McPhee), Friar Lawrence (Paul Giamatti in an impish turn), and Juliet's nurse (the very capable Leslie Manville, prior to her breakout role in Phantom Thread) try to bring them together, but the hostility between the two camps ensures that all does not end well, and that's what the Bard intended, though Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes unnecessarily simplifies and condenses the text. 

Further, despite their superior work elsewhere, Steinfeld and Booth make for a tepid match, unlike the lovers, played by Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting, at the heart of Franco Zeffirelli's definitive 1968 version. 

On the plus side, Gossip Girl bad boy Westwick attacks his role with such gusto that the film springs to life whenever he enters the scene--and deflates again whenever he departs. 

Images from The New York Times (Catherine Frot / Anouchka de Willencourt / Weinstein Co.), Laura's Miscellaneous Musings (Frot and Arthur Dupont), the IMDb (Michelle Williams), Rotten Tomatoes (Williams, Shirley Henderson, and Zoe Kazan and Berenice Bejo with Ali Mosaffa), The Hollywood Reporter (Bejo and Tahar Rahim), Refinery 29 (Hailee Steinfeld and Douglas Booth), and Movie Mom (Steinfeld, Booth, and Leslie Manville).