Cry Macho: the old, the young, and the rooster.

UPDATE: I was mistakenly sent sent a list of screeners that included Skylark and Point Symmetry. Neither film is included in the Joyce Forum. Sorry for any confusion.

With the San Diego Jewish Film Festival still a few months in the offing, we turn our attention to one of its most anticipated offshoots, the Fourth Annual Joyce Forum Short Film Festival. Festival founder Joyce Axelrod and her merry band of volunteers have packed the program with a variety of 25 shorts, a scant five of which are reviewed below. The festival runs October 1-3. For the first time, screenings may be seen either from the comfort of your couch or in person at Lawrence Family JCC’s David and Dorothea Garfield Theatre. For a complete list of titles and where to view them, visit www.jfjsff2021.eventive.org.

The Hamburger

Before I came into the picture, my mother kept two sets of dishes. It didn’t take long for Larry to remind Babe that her definition of fine dining was a slab of baby backs from Sally’s Barbeque. Soon after, the two sets of serving plates merged into one big dinner service, but some of the basic dietary laws associated with keeping kosher were unshakeable. Mom never served milk to wash down a bacon and eggs breakfast, nor did hamburgers come topped with a melted American square. I’m still hooked on cheeseless burgers, and was tickled to see filmmaker Hillary Nussbaum take a shot at dramatizing the old adage, “You can lead a Jew to a cheeseburger, but you can’t make them eat.” In the kitchen, braiding the sabbath challah, three yiddishe meydlekh​​ debate the mortal sin associated with combining meat and dairy. Aliza (Danielle Strauss) votes nay, Shira (Leah Gottfried) is on the fence, and new roommate Rachel (Jenna Dioguardi) has already sinned in the eyes of G-d. The philosophical exchange raises the question: What’s the difference between premarital sex and a cheeseburger? Answer: sex isn’t inherently unkosher. Will Shira bite when she and Rachel show up for a celibacy-ending showdown at Shake Shack? It will cost a mere 5 minutes of your time to find out.

Only Angie Dickinson could come between Larry King and Herb Cohen.

Larry & Me

Playboy Magazine crowned Herb Cohen “The World’s Best Negotiator.” For 75 years, Larry King called “Herbie” his “best friend.” But the man who interviewed over 50,000 people from all walks of life didn’t sit down for an on-camera testimonial here; he died during production earlier this year at 87. Baseball played an integral part in their relationship. The Brooklyn-born Cohen remembers meeting his boyhood pal Larry Zeiger when the two were nine. Standing curbside, a rolled up newspaper in hand substituting for a microphone, Larry “called” the traffic as a broadcaster would a baseball game. They boys hung out on the corner with legendary southpaw Sandy Koufax and Fred Wilpon, future owner of the Mets. When their grade school teacher asked her students to name the three major religions, Larry raised his hand and blurted, “Jewish and Italian.” Cohen describes the hush that overtook a classroom awed by King’s ability to name two out of three. There was so much delicious anecdotal material packed into the 12-minute running time that one wished it had gone on for 10 times the length.

Sounds of the Sidewalk (A Journey of Goodbye)

Michelle Zousmer has devoted four years to documenting San Diego’s unsheltered. All that she asks now is for people to spend a half-hour rethinking the homeless crisis as seen through the magnanimous eye of her camera. It was at a Community Heroes event at SDSU that the humanitarian, fine art photographer, and documentarian met Steven Ried. He was performing with the Voices of Our City Choir. The group united the community, with weekly choir rehearsal on Market St. pushing it one step further, providing a communal experience as well as a dose of family. The choir act gained national fame; fans of America’s Got Talent will recall the Season 15 act making it to the semifinals. Too weak to accompany the troupe to Pasadena, Ried passed the night Terry Crews palmed the golden buzzer. It was one of the last things he heard. Diagnosed with liver cancer a year earlier, Ried asked Zousmer if she would document his dying days. Having lost her husband to cancer, Zousmer thought long and hard before she agreed to spend what would amount to the last 12 weeks of his life with him. I know how it sounds, but rather than a downer, you can experience this as a celebration of one man’s life.

Mudlarker

Meet 66-year-old Adele Daly, a retired school bus driver forced off the job due to a bum back. Don’t be afraid if a crazy lady shows up at your front door with more piercings in her ear than a vengeful Shaman’s voodoo doll and the wallet you lost two years ago held tightly in her hand. She is what’s known in Dead Horse Bay as a Mudlarker, a person who goes out metal detecting without the use of a metal detector. Her advice to potential job applicants: the best mudlarkers walk slowly back and forth, looking with the tips of their feet. Adele doesn’t return lost items looking for a reward, although she wouldn’t turn one down. She makes her living largely by selling copper to scrap metal yards. The Bay, a small body of water that runs through South Brooklyn, was once an open landfill that lined the shore. The National Park Service closed the beach due to the presence of potentially radioactive material, but that didn’t stop local treasure hunters from plundering its riches. Along the way, directors Miles G. Cohen and Seb Tuinder introduce us to several of Adele’s associates, most notably Merrill, an off-the-gridder with a wicked sense of humor.

Point Symmetry

Another fascinating subject for a documentary short that, with proper funding, could easily be expanded into a narrative feature. Director Anna Panova parallels the lives of two women who met at a Boston Social Club and whose fathers fought on opposing sides during World War II. The last stop for many of Lisa Rosowsky’s family members was Auschwitz. Her father Andre, a survivor, remembers life under Hitler’s spell, when his childhood friend told him the reason they could no longer play together was because he was a “dirty Jew.” Ute Gfrerer’s vater attended Hitler Juden High and was drafted at 17. Gfrerer loathed her father for fighting on the side of pure evil. When confronted with the realities of the Holocaust, he claimed ignorance. Oddly enough, both women’s paths took artistic turns. Gfrerer is an internationally acclaimed singer and actress. Her rendition of “Papa, Can You Hear Me?” — particularly when placed in this context — is chill-inducing. Rosowsky is a mixed-media artist whose work targets the Holocaust and family trauma. Darn me for finding laughter in the most terrifying places. Not since the glory days of the National Lampoon has a single image deposited me at the intersection of devastating satire and the last revulsive stop of humanity’s slag. In the time spent contemplating the freeze frame of Rosowsky’s “Family Reunion,” I could have watched Point Symmetry twice.

Video on Demand and New Release Roundup

Cry Macho — In a perfect world, Bronco Billy would hop in his Gran Torino, run the gauntlet to bring a million dollar chico across the border, and along the way encounter a kind of smoldering romance that bridges on Madison County. Long before drones became a cinematographer’s best friend, Clint Eastwood chose dispassionately distanced aerial shots to open the show. It’s how we met Mike Milo (Eastwood), another footsoldier in Eastwood’s army, an outsider with a dark past he’d rather forget as he charts the rocky road to redemption that lies ahead. Cry Macho? Why should Eastwood cry macho? No sooner did he reinvent macho than he went about deconstructing it. It’s 1979, and Mike accepts a job from Howard Polk (Dwight Yoakam), the same man who one year earlier relieved him of his duties with the rodeo. Mike broke his back when a horse fell on him, and the painkillers and booze that assisted in his recovery have since blunted his senses. Polk calls in a favor: he needs Mike to remove his 13-year-old son Rafo (Eduardo Minett) from the clutches of his unstable wife and bring him across the border. Mike obliges out of what he calls “old-fashioned loyalty.” At 91, Clint still fancies himself quite the ladies’ man. The border agent flirts with the three attractive girls in the convertible before Mike. When asked what his business is in Mexico, Mike replies, “I’m with them.” He resists the advances of Rafo’s mother Leta (Fernanda Urrejola), and we close with Mike in the arms of Marta (Natalia Traven), a sultry cantina proprietor instantly smitten by his charm. Who isn’t? If there is one thing in the film destined to win an audience over, it’s Clint’s allure. The same can’t be said of the characters he encounters, particularly Leta, who is less concerned with her son being kidnapped by a stranger than she is with Mike rebuking her sexual advances. She does point Mike in the direction of Rafo’s favorite hangout, a cockfighting ring. Following a threat to snap the neck of Macho, the boy’s prize cock, Rafo appears from out of the shadows. Mike produces a picture of the boy when he was five, and fills his head with talk of Polk owning a hundred horses and a rodeo to go with them. From here on in, it’s The Good, the Young, and the Rooster. The themes may be similar, but this doesn’t amount to a patch on Eastwood’s across-the-border travels in The Mule. Cry Macho moves at a leisurely pace, something that can’t be said of Eastwood. He’s taken on a Henry Fonda-esque elder statesman demeanor, and critics were taken aback by his ability to ride a horse and throw a punch. Eastwood pokes fun at the thought of aging gracefully. Mike earned a reputation as an animal whisperer and when the local Federale brings his pooch to be examined, Mike confides in Rafo, “I don’t know how to cure old.” He also whispers lies intended to convince Rafo that his rightful place is with his father. We begin to see through the regular reassurance that Polk can’t wait to be reunited with his boy. And Rafo’s still too young to realize that Mike didn’t drag his wizened carcass across the border without expectation of recompense. But what is with Eastwood’s casting of adolescents? I don’t mean to pick on young people, but Rafo makes the non-professionals in Gran Torino look like something out of Truffaut’s The 400 Blows. And when all is said and done, it’s Macho who scores the biggest laugh. The older one gets, the more naps they need. Mike takes a siesta in Marta’s place, only to have the feathered alarm clock’s “Cock-a-Doodle-Doo” awaken him an hour later. Eastwood’s reflections find the concept of macho vastly overrated. Loyalists learned that in The Gauntlet, where rather than spend eternity churning out Dirty Harry sequels, Eastwood began nudging his screen persona to the dark side where it’s remained pretty much ever since. In the end, it’s Macho who saves the day (in more ways than one) and in exchange for a beat-up Chevy, Mike rides into the sunset behind the wheel of a beat-up Mercedes. 2021. — S.M. ★★★