As the Covid-19 pandemic hits the eight-month mark, Fresno Filmworks screenings remain on pause. November 13-15 would have been the weekend for our annual Fresno Film Festival, which is on hiatus. We hope the festival returns in 2021.
While it’s not the same as gathering for the festival, here are a few of my personal movie picks you can look for this month, now playing in Virtual Cinemas and from various streaming services.
“Kajillionaire” (2020)
Filmmaker and performance artist Miranda July’s latest feature film is a black comedy about an oddball family of con artists whose hastily conceived heists are as wild, thrilling, and awkward. Starring an excellent ensemble cast of Debra Winger, Richard Jenkins, Evan Rachel Wood, and Gina Rodriguez.
$20 on Fandango Now, virtual cinema
“Memories of Murder” (2005)
This true-crime thriller from South Korean master filmmaker Joon-ho Bong (“Parasite”) gets an exciting new theatrical life, just a year after the film’s real-life culprit was identified.
$6 on Fandango Now, virtual cinema
“Nationtime” (1972)
Best known for his avant-garde works, the late Black filmmaker William Greaves was also a prolific documentarian. This new restoration of Greaves’ filming at the 1972 National Black Political Convention held in Gary, Indiana was deemed at the time as “too militant for television.” In the present, it’s thrilling time travel.
$8 at The Roxie (San Francisco), virtual cinema
“The Donut King” (2020)
The rags to riches story of Ted Ngoy, the Cambodian refugee who came to the U.S. in 1975 and built an unlikely multi-million dollar empire, illustrates the bittersweet American Dream.
$12 at The Roxie (San Francisco), virtual cinema
“Tommaso” (2019)
In the latest from auteur Abel Ferrara, Willem Dafoe stars as an older American expat living in Rome with his young wife and their daughter. It’s hard to discern throughout this surreal drama where fiction and autobiography meet and diverge between the star and the filmmaker, and both their real lives and screen lives.
On Kanopy, with Fresno County Public Library card
“Temblores” (2019)
This Guatemalan drama about faith, family, and sexuality is from one of my favorite Latin American directors, Jayro Bustamante (“Ixcanul”). It played at Fresno Reel Pride in 2019.
On Kanopy, with Fresno County Public Library card