Author: Josh Hornbeck

Josh is the founder of Cinema Cocktail, and he is a writer and director, podcaster and critic, and communications and marketing professional living and working in the greater Seattle area.

Chez Jolie Coiffure (2018) | May 28, 6:45 pm

Sabine attaches a hair weave and gets to work. Her hands move quickly and precisely, as she tightly braids the hair in front of the sign in her salon promising African, European, and American-style coiffure. Sabine is a larger than-life personality crammed into a tiny, glassed-in shop in the largely immigrant Brussels district of Matonge. Here, she and her employees fit extensions and glue on lashes while watching soaps, dishing romantic advice, sharing rumors about government programs to legalize migrants, and talking about people back home in West Africa. – OVID

Director: Rosine Mftego Mbakam

Cast: Rosine Mbakam

Country: Belgium

Distributor: Icarus Films

Rating: Not Rated

Runtime: 1 hour, 10 minutes

Platform: OVID

Special Programming: Documentary Cinema

Special Events: Filmmaker Retrospectives

WATCH ON OVID

The Two Faces of a Bamiléké Woman (2016) | May 28, 5:30 pm

Rosine Mbakam left Cameroon at 27 to live in Belgium. Seven years later—having studied film and married a European—she returns to make what she calls a journey into darkness—to the village of her birth, and later to the capital city of Yaoundé, where her mother now lives most of the year. – OVID

Director: Rosine Mftego Mbakam

Cast: Rosine Mfetgo Mbakam, Tchana Cecile

Country: Belgium, Cameroon

Distributor: Icarus Films

Rating: Not Rated

Runtime: 1 hour, 16 minutes

Platform: OVID

Special Programming: Documentary Cinema

Special Events: Filmmaker Retrospectives

WATCH ON OVID

My Happy Family (2017) | May 28, 3:15 pm

In a patriarchal society, an ordinary Georgian family lives with three generations under one roof. All are shocked when 52-year-old Manana decides to move out from her parents’ home. Without her family and her husband, Manana embarks on a kind of journey that she has never experienced before: a journey on her own. – Telescope Film

Director: Nana Ekvtimishvili , Simon Groß

Cast: Ia Shugliashvili, Merab Ninidze, Berta Khapava, Tsisia Qumsashvili

Country: Georgia, Germany, France

Distributor: Netflix

Rating: TV-14

Runtime: 1 hour, 59 minutes

Platform: Netflix

WATCH ON NETFLIX

The Stopover (2016) | May 28, 12:45 pm

On their way home from Afghanistan, a band of French soldiers stop in Cyprus for decompression: three days at a sun-splashed resort, where they will undergo intense psychological debriefing. There, amidst the crystal-blue waters and hordes of vacationing tourists, Marine (Soko) and Aurore (Ariane Labed) – two of only three women in their male-dominated unit – confront rage, trauma, and army sexism as they struggle to readjust to “normal” life. – OVID

Director: Delphine Coulin

Cast: Soko, Ariane Labed, Ginger Romàn, Karim Leklou

Country: France, Greece

Distributor: First Run Features

Rating: Not Rated

Runtime: 1 hour, 42 minutes

Platform: OVID

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Diamonds of the Night (1964) | May 28, 11:00 am

Adapted from a novel by Arnošt Lustig, Diamonds of the Night closely tracks two boys who escape from a concentration-camp transport and flee into the surrounding woods, hostile terrain where the brute realities of survival coexist with dreams, memories, and fragments of visual poetry. – The Criterion Channel

Director: Jan Němec

Cast: Ladislav Janský, Antonín Kumbera

Country: Czechoslovakia

Distributor: Janus Films

Rating: Not Rated

Runtime: 1 hour, 8 minutes

Platform: The Criterion Channel

Special Programming: Classic Cinema

WATCH ON THE CRITERION CHANNEL
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Blood Quantum (2019) | May 28, 1:00 am

The dead are coming back to life outside. But in the isolated Mi’gmaq reserve of Red Crow, the indigenous inhabitants are immune to the zombie plague. Traylor, the tribal sheriff, must protect his son’s pregnant girlfriend, apocalyptic refugees and reserve riffraff from the hordes of walking white corpses. – Shudder

Director: Jeff Barnaby

Cast: Michael Greyeyes, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, Forrest Goodluck, Kiowa Gordon

Country: Canada

Distributor: Shudder

Rating: Not Rated

Runtime: 1 hour, 36 minutes

Platform: Shudder

Special Programming: Midnight Movies

Special Events: Filmmaker Conversations

WATCH ON SHUDDER

Filmmaker Conversations

Greener Grass (2019) | May 27, 10:45 pm

Suburbia has never been so hilariously absurd as it is in Greener Grass – where one eccentric housewife is driven mad by her eagerness to please. – Hulu

Director: Dawn Luebbe, Jocelyn DeBoer

Cast: Jocelyn DeBoer, Dawn Luebbe, Beck Bennett, Neil Casey, Mary Holland

Country: United States

Distributor: IFC Midnight

Rating: Not Rated

Runtime: 1 hour, 36 minutes

Platform: Hulu

Special Programming: Midnight Movies

WATCH ON HULU
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Pin Cushion (2017) | Directed by Deborah Haywood

3/5
There’s a lot to like in Deborah Haywood’s Pin Cushion – the moments of fantasy throughout are particularly striking and I especially like the ways in which the film explores the slow escalation of feminine teenage cruelty. I also like that, even with the fairy tale quality to everything, there are no simple solutions to the persistent bullying that we see directed to both mother and daughter. But even with strong performances across the board, the film’s narrative transitions are too abrupt, making several essential character beats feel less organic and natural, more forced and predetermined. Add in a final twist with conclusions that feel naïvely dangerous at best, and you end up with a film that had so much potential but comes up short.
WHERE TO WATCH

In This Corner of the World (2016) | Directed by Sunao Katabuchi

4/5
Sunao Katabuchi’s In This Corner of the World is a lovely, heartfelt family drama set against the backdrop of World War II in a naval community near Hiroshima. Tracing the life of a young woman as she is married off and sent to live with her new in-laws – strangers in a strange new village – the film manages to eschew most of the typical beats you’d get in a family drama of this variety. There are no overly melodramatic elements, no abusive husband, no domineering in-laws – just a tender story of a young woman coming into her own during difficult times, learning resilience and the powerful bonds of this new family she’s married into. There are lovely flourishes to the animation that serve as a nice counterpoint to the brutal reminders of the grim realities of war, and the final coda is a lovely note of hope, a reminder that acts of humanity and compassion are what get us through these truly horrific moments in history.

Where to Watch

Tito and the Birds (2018) | Directed by Gabriel Bitar, André Catoto, and Gustavo Steinberg

4/5
Gabriel Bitar, André Catoto, and Gustavo Steinberg’s Tito and the Birds is a breathtakingly gorgeous work of Brazilian animation about the ways fear is used by those in power to exploit and divide us. Using the outbreak of a disease across the globe as its central metaphor for ways fear, hatred, and division spread from person to person, the film’s young hero and his friends must find a way to communicate with the birds to find a cure for this fear before it’s too late. Watching this in the midst of an actual pandemic requires a certain amount of distancing, reminding yourself that the outbreak is a metaphor for other concerns. And even though the final act relies a little to heavily on the children’s action movie formula, it’s still such a beautiful and emotionally moving film with absolutely dazzling animation.
WHERE TO WATCH