Author Archives: Ron

About Ron

I like to watch movies and share my thoughts on them. I have been writing reviews and distributing them since 2013.

Sukkwan Island

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Sukkwan Island 4 suns

In Sukkwan Island, 13-year-old Roy, is persuaded by his divorced father, Tom to join him on a year long adventure on a remote island in the Norwegian fjords that can only be reached by plane. Leaving their lives behind, they set off on this trip staying in an old cabin and seem to be well equipped. It is a chance for the two to reconnect and do some real father son bonding. But it soon turns into a challenge of survival as they face the harsh conditions of a cold winter and predators on the island. But the greatest challenge turns out to be the human conflict between the two as mistakes are made and tempers flare. The pair of actors work well together as they convey the rising tension level. It’s clear the characters have issues that they must work through. The location of the shoot was both beautiful and foreboding. They story is based on a book written by the boy portrayed in the movie. I warn you, there is injury and blood involved. But I highly recommendthe movie. I was disappointed there was no Q & A at this event.

Atropia

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Atropia 4 suns

As Atropia opens we see the streets of an Iraqi village with street vendors, animals and men with head scarves. Then we see some American Army vehicles come down the street with soldiers shouting at villagers. Insurgents appear, fighting starts. There is an explosion. Then everything stops and we find we are not in Iraq, but are on a US Army base in California called The Box in 2006 and this is a training exercise for soldiers about to deploy to Iraq. The villagers and insurgents are mainly Hollywood actors playing roles in this romantic comedy called Atropia. One of the actors is Fayruz (Alia Shawkat of Arrested Development and Search Party), who wants to get movie roles in Hollywood and schemes to find ways to get noticed. She learns of a famous Hollywood actor who is going to observe the exercises and believes this is her big chance. The head insurgent, Abu Dice (Callum Turner (The Boys in the Boat)) becomes suspicious leading to a confrontation and therefore the romance between the two. There is plenty of room for comedy in a movie about military training. (Remember Stripes and Private Benjamin?) Atropia delivers with bumbling officers and soldiers, misunderstandings when things go wrong and plenty of suggestive comments toward a female mock news reporter (Jane Levy of Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist). It is mainly the two leads that carry the movie, especially Shawkat who delivers one of her best performances yet. Her ethnicity is Iraqi so she fits right into the part. She should have more starring roles given her comedic talent. The director/screenwriter, Hailey Gates has done well, given that this is her first effort at directing a feature movie. The movie was developed from a short done several years ago by the team of Gates and Shawkat. At the end a screen graphic tells us that there are hundreds of training sites like the one portrayed. Only now the enemy combatants are Russians. The theater was packed for this one, but unfortunately none of the filmmakers were present for Q & A.

The Virgin of the Quarry Lake

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The Virgin of the Quarry Lake 3 suns

Set near Buenos Aires, Argentina, The Virgin of the Quarry Lake is a coming of age story about a teenage girl around 2001. Only there is something special about Natalia. The actress, Dolores Oliverio, who plays the lead role is easily the best part of the movie. She has an intensity in her eyes that tells you something major is about to happen. Natalia lives with her grandmother, her parents having abandoned her when she was small. She spends her time with her friends and sending messages at the internet cafe. This summer she has her eye on Diego, a handsome boy the group hangs out with. So Natalia is trying to grow up fast, and look more like a woman. The problem is there another older woman, Silvia who is close to Diego which displeases her. A confrontation is inevitable. The setting of the movie gives it a dark tone. A homeless man is beaten early in the film with his cart dripping blood for a long time. In fact, there is a lot done with blood in the movie, providing ominous signs. There are frequent power failures, water shortages and looting going on so you get the feeling things are falling apart. But there is a remote lake in an old quarry where the youngsters can get away from their problems and go swimming. But then there are those frightening stories about the place that could be a sign of what is to come. This is a dark movie that falls short of being a full blown horror movie, but being about teenage girls by itself could classify as horror enough. The story is slow to develop and could use more development of some of the characters. The movie was not one of the best of the festival, but was also not among the worst. The movie is based on short stories from Argentina. The director was present and talked of the time period and setting off the movie and the challenges that it created.

GEN_

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GEN_ 4 suns

This documentary from Italy deals with the medical challenges faced by two groups of people, both of which experience opposition in today’s charged political environment. We go inside the clinic of a special doctor, Dr. Maurizio Bini in Milan as he consults with his many patients. He overseers aspiring parents trying to conceive by in vitro fertilization and the treatment of individuals who are transitioning to the gender they identify with. He does this while also dealing with the constraints of a conservative government at a time when the demand for his services is high. The filmmakers filmed his sessions with his patients as he learns of their situations and recommends treatments. He has a personal approach with each individual and acts as a psychiatrist getting to their mental state as well. Health care is provided by the government in Italy so his services are free. This leads to a real variety of patients who come from all cultures and ethnicities. His practice requires him to be familiar not only with Italian law but also the laws of many foreign countries. And he speaks to his patients in several foreign languages. He even has one patient who is in prison seeking to change their gender. Some of his decisions are not consistent with government policies so he has to bend the rules on occasion. The movie shows us that these issues that may seem abstract are things that medical professionals with heavy scientific backgrounds deal with regularly. At the Q & A Dr. Bini appeared personally to the rather small audience and was delightful in answering questions about his work.

The Perfect Neighbor

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The Perfect Neighbor 3 suns

In the U.S. Documentary category comes a documentary dealing with a subject that plagues America; that is, the proliferation of guns and the violence inflicted on our neighborhoods. In particular, is the use of Stand Your Ground laws that excuses the use of guns to settle disputes. Everyone remembers the 2023 case in Marion County, Florida of a young black mother being shot to death by her neighbor, an older white woman. The neighbor shot her through her own locked door as the mother was responding to the way her children were being treated by the woman as they played in the open lot next door. The filmmakers tell the entire story using police bodycam footage of their many interactions with the woman and the neighbors over a period of many months. The woman made numerous calls to the police to report the noisy children and the police had many responses and meetings with her. We get to see how the situation went on and on until it finally escalated in the death of Ajike Owens, the young mother. The movie is painful to watch as the dangers go unrecognized and especially upon seeing the reactions of the family when they realize that Ajike is gone. At the end a graphic explains how the passage of Stand Your Ground laws has led to an increase in gun deaths in the states where they were enacted. While it is a compelling story, the use of the police footage almost exclusively does get to be repetitive. After the film, the filmmakers and friends and family of Ajike were present for Q & A. The director, Geeta Gandbhir is a renowned filmmaker who also happened to be friends with the affected family. She almost immediately sought to document the event after the tragedy happened. The presence of the friends and Ajike’s mother at the showing emphasized just how real these events are and how devastating it is to the family. Four small children are now left without a mother because of the thoughtless actions of one individual. The film ends showing that the shooter was sentenced to 25 years for her crime.

Prime Minister

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Prime Minister 5 suns

Prime Minister is an engaging documentary in the World Cinema Documentary category, from New Zealand covering the five years of the administration of the country’s first woman prime minister, Jacinda Ardern. She was filmed from just before she became leader of the Labour Party in 2017 up to her departure in 2023. The filmmakers had access to her personal life,  filming her and her partner at home as well as in her office.  The film begins and ends with connections to America as she makes visits to Harvard University inferring she has a message for Americans. Her service was quite revolutionary as she was not married to her partner and she was pregnant as she was about to take office. She expressed how she was actually more afraid of winning the office than losing.  We see how things can rapidly change for elected officials and the same is true for Ardern. She came in planning to deal with climate change and abortion rights.  But during her time in office, the mass shooting at a mosque happened, forcing the country to deal with automatic weapons and hate.  New Zealand responded with a ban on such weapons.  Then there was the eruption of a volcano killing many.  Finally,  came Covid in 2020 and the government response.  New Zealand had the distinction of enforcing a shutdown that successfully eradicated the virus from the country and Ardern played a large role in this effort.  We also see the right wing response from those who believed the conspiracy theories and objected to the Covid vaccine. These were the same beliefs of the vaccine causing the deaths that we saw in America. It was refreshing to see how she redefined leadership in a modern country while at the same time dealing with the pressures of being a mother.  America could learn a lot by paying attention to this model. Be sure to look for this movie.

The Ugly Stepsister

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The Ugly Stepsister 4 1/2 suns

The Ugly Stepsister (from Norway) takes the fairy tale Cinderella and turns it upside down and inside out making it a body horror movie about envy and body image.  In this take of the classic we see things from the point of view of Cinderella’s stepsister, Elvira who is on a mission to get the attention of the kingdom’s prince at the ball and marry him and save the family from poverty. The problem is that she is rather homely and fat. That won`t do so with her mother’s help, a doctor’s facial modifications, a finishing school and an internal parasite, she sets on a scheme to make herself beautiful. Oh, and there is also the little problem of that attractive annoying stepsister that must be dealt with.  I had never heard before that there was so much sex and baudy language in this classic story.  I guess I must have missed something.  The actress playing Elvira really goes through a range of emotions going from a naive yiung girl to a monster who will do whatever it takes to reach her goal.  The body mutilations become more and more extreme as she seeks to become attractive and meet the world’s expectations of female beauty. There were many exclamations from the audience during each cringeworthy step. It all culminates with the fitting of the slipper and the removal of the “parasite”. The theme is on par with last year’s “The Substance” though maybe not to that extreme.  It’s all about how society sees women as objects,  judging them by some impossible standard and how some women seek to meet them.  And for fans of horror genre it’s a lot of fun.

LUZ

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LUZ 5 suns

This international drama deals with estranged family and loss and efforts to heal, covering two different families who are a world apart. There is an element of technology in the form of virtual reality that links the two stories together. The first is set in the Chinese city of Chongqing about an older former gangster who has lost touch with his grown daughter who now makes a living streaming on the internet. In the second story a woman in Hong Kong travels to Paris to be with her stepmother whose health has started to fail. The stepmother is played by Isabelle Hubert who unfortunately couldn’t be at Sundance! The two stories are connected by a painting of a deer in the woods painted by the young woman’s deceased father and is now in a night club connected to the ex-gangster. Both individuals are drawn to a world in virtual reality called LUZ where the players interact and search for the mystical deer in the painting. There they meet and try to find answers to what they are searching for. The stories share themes of brokenness and healing between family members. At the Q & A writer/ director Flora Lau talked of the long process in making the movie and the iterations it went through. There were rewrites even after filming started where she made it less about the virtual world in favor of the family stories. I’d say it was a successful decision. The audience loved it. This movie is in both Chinese and French. Isabelle Hubert appeared in a recorded message greeting Sundance before the film. Wish she could have been there!

Nightbitch

Nightbitch           3 stars

Director Marielle Heller (Can You Ever Forgive Me?) and star Amy Adams (Hillbilly Elegy, American Hustle) bring us a different kind of horror movie in Nightbitch, a novel adaptation about the wonders of being a mother. But, of course, who are we kidding? Motherhood is anything but easy and can be downright maddening as Adams demonstrates in this movie. She has left her job at an art gallery to become a full-time mom to her two-year-old son. When she meets a former coworker who exclaims how wonderful it must be to spend so much time with her child, she responds with a long monologue of the confusion, disappointment and pain associated with this decision and then rewinds, saying yes, it’s wonderful! We see scenes of the endless monotony of cooking and cleaning she goes through taking care of the adorable toddler. Dad (Scoot McNairy of Argo and A Complete Unknown) is often away on business trips and is not all that much help when he is at home, sometimes being a clueless moron, oblivious to the strains that mom is facing and sometimes making it worse by complaining about the things she has not taken care of. (His cluelessness is undoubtedly a representation of what many fathers are really like.) As the pressures mount the movie suddenly switches to body horror, as mom starts to grow hair on her body and sprout what looks like a tail. When outside she attracts the attention of neighborhood dogs who follow her around and bring her gifts of animal carcasses. Mom accepts these changes, fully embracing them as she wolfs down food without hands and goes digging in the dirt, seemingly transforming into a canine and going for a run with other dogs. Whether this change is real or symbolic it is transforming for her character, enabling her to look at her situation differently and make the most of it. Amy Adams puts a full effort into this role making us believe she is the mom in this film, especially with how she relates to the little boy playing her son. The movie shows the full extent of how tough it must be being a mom, even though the story seems rather contrived. I can’t say how true it is to the book, but it could be viewed as a mild variation on the genre of werewolf movies without the violence.

The Brutalist

The Brutalist       5 stars

Brady Corbet’s (The Childhood of a Leader) The Brutalist is a three-and-a-half-hour epic tale about a Hungarian Jewish architect who escapes post-war Europe, makes his way to the US and pursues the American dream, but in the process is nearly consumed by forces around him. The movie is told on a grand scale over a period of decades using some astonishingly large set pieces. The story is so grand it has a feeling on par with The Godfather movies. Adrien Brody (The Pianist) is Lázsló Tóth, an accomplished architect who arrives in New York on a ship shortly after the end of the war. Nobody knows of his work there, so he gets a job with his cousin in Philadelphia working as a carpenter. The cousin (Alessandro Nivola), who is also Hungarian has assimilated to American society and is accepted by the locals. Fortunately, the business finds a wealthy client in the form of the son of a rich industrialist who hires the company to build a library in the mansion of the father as a surprise. But unfortunately, the man, Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce (Mary Queen of Scots, The King’s Speech)) is not at all pleased with what he believes to be a mess of the project, kicking them out without pay and leaving Tóth with nothing. It is only much later that Van Buren learns of Tóth’s accomplishments in Europe, tracks him down seeking to make amends. Lázsló has had to resort to shoveling coal by this time. Van Buren, who has fabulous wealth, has a dream to build a multipurpose community center for his town and wants to hire Tóth to design it and help to realize his dream. This job is an incredible opportunity, but it of course comes with a price; that is, being a virtual slave to Van Buren with few options. As the great project takes shape, we get to see what it is like to tackle such a huge construction job. Cost overruns happen forcing compromises in design that has a dramatic effect on poor Lázsló. We get a close-up view of the whole construction process and what it is like to be one of the workers on such a job. I don’t know what it took to build the sets for this movie, but it must have taken years. Lázsló is blessed though as having this job afforded him the chance to bring his wife, Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and young niece, Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy), who have been stuck in Hungary to America to join him. All of this so far is the set up to what the movie is all about. Tóth’s work is a great opportunity for him, but he comes to realize that his employer, Van Buren, has little respect for his foreign and Jewish background and only seeks to exploit him for what services he can provide. Van Buren is all too willing to cast him aside at the first sign of difficulty and the contempt extends to Tóth’s family as well. In the final scenes this rich man makes it all too clear what his thoughts are toward these foreigners. Being so long and expensive, this movie is about a lot of things. It feels like it is really several movies. Besides the plight of the working man, it concerns the place of Jewish people in America and of course the effect of the holocaust. The story is entirely fictional but is meant to reflect the immigrant experience of many in coming to America. The score is amazing, contributing to the feel of the film. A great deal of the credit in making this a great movie must go to Adrien Brody in his portrayal of the emotionally devastated Tóth (parallelling his performance in The Pianist). I feel like the Best Actor Academy Award is a near guarantee for this actor. This movie is best seen on the large screen, so take it in when you can. (There is a fifteen-minute intermission which you will need.)