Phil attends the Cinequest Film & Creativity Festival: Day Seven - March 11, 2019

Hello again everybody and welcome to Day Seven of my trip to the 29th Annual Cinequest Film & Creativity Festival!! Now as some of you may have noticed, I missed three days of the festival, but there's a very good reason for that. My incredibly talented and beautiful girlfriend is one of the leads in the new show called EURYDICE, a Greek tragedy play that will be opening at the City Lights Theater on Saturday, March 14th and it will run till April 14th (click the link in the title to purchase your tickets today). Because of this, she is in rehearsals a lot, and this past weekend she had all-day rehearsals! That's 11 hour days my friends!! So I was watching our son while she was getting her theater groove on, but I did sneak in a screening of CAPTAIN MARVEL on Friday after work (which was awesome!), but that's where I've been. Like I've said before, being a parent is a lot of hard work and sacrifice, but I would not change it for the world! I got to spend some quality time with my son and I get to see my love back up in the stage acting again! So I would say that it's a win-win for yours truly!

I'm on vacation from work this week, and so I was able to see two movies today. After grabbing an early lunch over at the awesome La Victoria Taqueria (home of the delicious orange sauce) over on San Carlos and 4th Street, I made my over to the 3Below Theaters & Lounge to see the LGBTQ love drama BORDERLINE.

The film's about a young woman named Anna (Anna Alfieri), who is going through the aftermath of her breakup with Robyn (Agathe Ferre), the only girl she's ever loved. Told through a non-liner storyline, we see the love and heartache Anna has experienced, and the self-destructive path that she walks on after her relationship ended so damn painfully. Love is a four-letter word and we see first hand how Anna experiences this, how she lost it, and how does she find herself again.

This was such an outstanding film!! I absolutely loved it!! It proves, once again, that it doesn't matter if your gay or straight, we all feel the exact same way, and we feel the pain and suffering when we lose that special someone that we loved the most. I applaud filmmaker Anna Alfieri for her bravery to put all of this on the screen. Based on a true event that she herself went through, the film was her passion project; she wrote, produced, acted, and directed the film, took over two years to make, filmed in three different countries, and it was entirely improvised based on only a twelve page skeleton outlined script! The end result is a raw, unflinching, and uncompromising movie that discusses not only to have been love and lose said love, but of depression and the inner demons that most people cannot comprehend, nor understand the daily struggle of trying to figure out how to be happy in the modern world. As of this moment, this is my FAVORITE film of the festival, and it's gonna be damn hard to see if anything top this emotionally charged, beautifully haunting, and powerful examination of the human soul!! 5 out of 5 stars!! Highly recommended!!

BORDERLINE will have two more screenings: Tuesday, March 12th at 6:00pm and Friday, March 15th at 9:30pm at the Century 20 Redwood City.

For my second of the day, I went down the block to the Hammer Theatre Center to watch LAKE OVER FIRE, a Norwegian comedy that was also making its world premiere at the festival as well. The film takes place in a remote desert town (it's actually just a bunch of mobile trailers) where everybody is filthy rich, thanks in large part to a mine that's filled with these red circular things (almost Lego-like). Because of this, the whole town doesn't feel like working anymore (would you?). Then out of nowhere, a stranger rides into town (on a moped no less) and decides to stir things up by pitting the townsfolks against each other.

This was one of the most bonkers-ass movies I've seen at the festival for quite some time! The movie is filled with brightly colored mobile trailers, people with giant cowboy helmets with giant rotary phones on their hips, riding on mopeds, and garbage everywhere. There's barely a story, quirky characters, people killing each other, and it's just freaking weird ass movie! If Alejandro Jodorowsky teamed up with John Waters to make a film, this would be the end result! I didn't love it, not did I hate it. It was just there. And that's where I'll end this review. 3 out of 5 stars.

This was the last screening for the film at the festival.

And there you have it! Day Seven is now in the history books! And there's still plenty more films to watch! Remember the festival ends on Sunday, March 17th so make sure you come out here to Downtown San Jose! To view the festival's film schedule, purchase tickets and passes, visit their official website at www.cinequest.org.

Thanks for reading, and enjoy the show!