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.

Descendant

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Descendant        4 ½ suns

My personal favorite for the day was Descendant, a documentary about a community of Black people near Mobile, Alabama who are descendants of slaves that were brought to the area on the last slave ship to arrive in America. The shipment, on a vessel called the Clotilda, was illegal as it was done in 1860 long after the slave trade from Africa was outlawed. When the slaves were freed in 1865 this group of former Africans had been in captivity for only five years unlike the other former slaves born into slavery. They banded together and formed the town of Africatown and their descendants still live their surrounded by industrial areas in an environment dangerous to their health. An additional twist is that the industrial land is still owned by the family of the man who brought the slaves here, Timothy Meaher. The wreckage of the Clotilda has long been the subject of myth, but a search in conducted in the movie resulting in its discovery that promises to improve the lives of the town’s inhabitants. I was very impressed with the quality of the storytelling and the inclusion of the residents along with the background of some of the original founders of the town. I hope the film sees much wider release. I would even watch it again with my movie watching friends!

Marte Um

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Marte Um           3 ½ suns

Marte Un means Mars One. In this Brazilian drama that has a special meaning about hope for the future as we see the lives of a working class black family as they struggle to raise their children and survive. The mother, Tercia, has doubts that she may be cursed when things go wrong for them. Each of the four family members face problems when obstacles are put in their way, but eventually they realize they have much to be thankful for. The film was made in 2018 when President Bolsonaro, the extreme right wing candidate was elected. Although this connection was mentioned in the film’s promotional materials I didn’t see how it played into the story, so it wasn’t quite what I expected. But it is still worth seeing.

Klondike

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KLONDIKE           5 suns

My personal winner for the day was KLONDIKE. It’s a fictional story about a Ukrainian couple who live in an isolated farmhouse in Eastern Ukraine, but it is set in 2014 during the war of Russian incursion when a Malaysian airliner is brought down by a Russian missile. News footage from the actual events give us more background to the story. Tolik and Irka are expecting a child, but their world faces havoc when this war is brought to their doorstep. Tolik struggles to deal with the damage to their home, the soldiers who demand that their needs be met and a wife who refuses to leave her home. Things are further complicated when Irka’s brother shows up and we find that the family has sympathies on opposite sides of the conflict. The camera work is striking with the very long scenes that slowly reveal the horrors of war in the background while the characters are struggling just to survive. The film is highly relevant to today with its message about the futility of war. It deserves some special recognition.

Emergency

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Emergency         3 ½ suns

In the comedy Emergency, graduate student Kunle and his best friend, Sean are about to go on an epic journey, partying all night at the fraternity parties at their college campus. But the plans of the two young black men are interrupted when they discover an unconscious white girl on the floor of their house. The pair along with their Latino friend, Carlos realize the danger they are in if the police are alerted to their situation and must improvise to get the girl to safety without endangering their own lives. What follows is a comedy of errors as the men deal with one mishap after another. The film started as a short film from a few years ago that has now been expanded to the full length movie now showing. It is a good combination of silly comedy making a statement about the perceptions that young black men must face despite the levels of success they may reach.

Leonor Will Never Die

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Leonor Will Never Die    3 ½ suns

Leonor Will Never Die received the World Cinema Dramatic Innovative Spirit Special Jury Award. The movie fits in well with the name of the award as the premise was especially creative. Set in the Philippines, elderly Leonor Reyes was once a major screenwriter for Filipino action movies. But now she mainly stays at home and can’t pay all her bills to the frustration of her son. One day she takes renewed interest in one of her old movie scripts after reading that the studios are looking for new scripts, but then she ends up in the hospital in a coma after being struck in the head by a falling television. It is then that the film takes us into uncharted territory as Leonor goes about creating an action movie in her mind concerning an action hero names Ronwaldo. She appears in her own movie, manipulating events to her own liking, occasionally reworking scenes that didn’t work out right. The imagined movie then sometimes blends with real life to somewhat resemble ideas out of The Matrix. The film is something of an homage to seventies action movies from the Philippines which was quite an industry in those times. It is especially violent and heavy on heroic scenes for its action stars. I certainly did not know what to expect with this one.

892

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892                                         4 suns

892 was the winner of the U.S. Dramatic Ensemble Cast Special Jury Award. It is a fairly straightforward story concerning a desperate former U.S. marine who has decided to hold employees of a bank hostage so that he can receive what is owed to him by the VA. I thought it seemed a little slow moving for a hostage taking drama. There were few action scenes and most of the film dealt with the negotiations between the marine and the police negotiator. But by the end I realized that this was a representation of an actual event which explains a lot, especially why such a subject was chosen. The acting performances were especially superb including John Boyega of Star Wars as Brian, the marine and Michael Kenneth Williams as the negotiator in what would be his final film role. This film is very unlike one from last year called Prime Time, also about a hostage situation, but was more dramatic and tension filled. Of course that one was a fictional story. 892 serves as a reminder about how our obligations to those who serve often go unfilled.

Nanny

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Nanny                                   4 suns

The winner of the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize was Nanny, a film with supernatural elements that doesn’t quite rise the level of full-blown horror. We meet Aisha, an undocumented immigrant from Senegal, who gets a job as a nanny to a wealthy Manhattan couple taking care of their girl, Rose. Aisha is a mother herself, but has left her young son in the care of a cousin back in Senegal. Her hope is to be able to bring the son to the U.S. to join her one day. However, the situation is less than ideal as her employer’s problems begin to spill over to affect her own life, compounded by a supernatural presence that appears to invade her thoughts and dreams. Hope comes in the form of the grandmother of a man she meets played by Leslie Uggams, whom she can confide in. The film portrays the difficulties faced by immigrants who are parents in the U.S. as well as dealing with issues of mental illness among a population not equipped to handle them. Fortunately, the movie ends with a hopeful note.

All That Breathes

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All That Breathes             4 ½ suns

For my final documentary film I saw the winner of the World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize, All That Breathes. This story comes from New Delhi, India where two Muslim brothers, Saud and Nadeem have made it their life’s work to rescue and care for injured black kites. There is a Muslim belief that feeding meat to these predatory birds will help ward off troubles. They often cover the sky and are drawn to the city where they feed on the waste of the human population. But the pollution of the air caused by heavy industry takes its toll on the birds and they often fall from the sky where the brothers and their enlisted crew rescue them, bringing them to Saud’s basement where they can be nursed back to health. The film poetically connects the birds to the entire ecosystem, giving their efforts a higher purpose. We see their efforts to keep the enterprise going including their applying for grant money and Saud’s plan to get more animal rescue training in the United States. All this is going on at a time when anti-Muslim violence plagues the city amid increased religious conflict that the government does little to stop. The film is a lesson about how living things find ways to adapt to their changing environment.

The Substance

The Substance  4 ½ stars

For a searing indictment of the obsession with youthful looks and beauty double standard in today’s society combined with some of the grossest scenes Hollywood has produced lately, you can’t miss with The Substance currently in theaters. This science fiction horror film by French director Coralie Fargeat is sure to be remembered by all who see it. (She previously brought us the over-the-top and bloody as hell revenge movie aptly titled Revenge in 2017 that was a condemnation of rich white men who have little regard for women.) In The Substance we first meet Elizabeth Sparkle (a still stunning Demi Moore in one of her finest performances), who rose to stardom in the nineties and now stars on her morning workout show. But the sexist producer, Harvey (Dennis Quaid) wants to dump her and replace her with someone younger and hotter. Elizabeth learns of a black-market treatment called The Substance that claims to create a new, better version of yourself. Who wouldn’t want that? She quickly signs up for it and is directed by a mysterious voice on the phone of how to get it and implement the procedure. In a very long sequence with no dialogue, she carefully does as told, injecting the drug, leading to the resulting division of her body into two, one the new younger version (Margaret Qualley of Drive-Away Dolls) and the other, her original self. Part of the bargain is that Elizabeth must alternate between the two bodies every seven days, using the correct food and stabilizer that are provided. Both bodies are her and she must “respect the balance” as the mysterious voice says. Otherwise, things can get ugly. The young Elizabeth, who goes by Sue lands the part of the new star of the workout show with her youthful body being ogled by older men. Everything seems great, especially when she is offered the opportunity to host a New Year’s Eve show; that is, until Sue takes more than the designated amount of time creating a conflict between the two bodies. As one would predict this leads some very unfortunate consequences for the pair. What follows can best be described as a David Cronenberg horror movie on steroids as the amount of blood and gore reaches new and absurd heights. There is an abundance of closeup shots when things get messy as well as on Dennis Quaid’s face (and his sloppy eating habits) as well as loud sound effects to emphasize how gross it gets. The film certainly gets very self-indulgent, but it delivers on its message of condemning the impossible beauty standards of our society. It reminds us that trying to relive one’s past can only result in disappointment. If you like this movie for its action and blood you should be sure to find Fargeat’s Revenge. You won’t be disappointed.

Drive-Away Dolls

Drive-Away Dolls              3 stars

If you are going to see a Coen brothers movie you know you are going to get some violent scenes often with inept crooks, some dark humor and some rather odd characters. Just think of The Big Lebowski, Burn After Reading or Fargo. With this year’s Drive-Away Dolls we only have Ethan Coen directing, joined by Tricia Cooke’s writing, but we do get most of the usual elements. What we also get is a road buddy movie with a pair of lesbians on a mission to get laid, combined with plenty of dick gags. We start out in 1999 with a “Collector” (Pedro Pascal from The Last of Us and The Mandalorian) receiving a package in a briefcase but is quickly robbed and murdered by a pair of goons (Joey Slotnick and C. J. Wilson). We cut to our two heroes, Jamie (Margaret Qualley of The Nice Guys and Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood) and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan of Bad Education and Cat Person), who are both lesbians and best friends. Jamie is the adventurous one always looking for her next sexual exploit and Marian is the high strung, but intellectual one. They have a plan to do a drive away from New England to Tallahassee, Florida. This is a cheap way to travel by driving a car that the car’s owner needs delivered to another city. Hence, the title: Drive-Away Dolls. Only Jamie also plans to find all the lesbian hangouts along the way so that the repressed Marian can get laid. In Coen fashion the plan gets complicated when by accident the girls pick up a car that was intended for the pair of goons identified earlier and happens also to contain two special “packages” in the trunk. The boss of the criminal enterprise, (Colman Domingo) is none too pleased by the turn of events and tasks the goons to track the girls down and retrieve the packages. What follows then are the sexual adventures of the two women that happens to include an interlude with an all-lesbian soccer team, combined with the total ineptitude of our two goons trying to find them. (They get a little help from another lesbian friend of Jamie’s called Sukie (Beanie Feldstein of Booksmart) who also happens to be a cop. But this meeting doesn’t go well for the goons.) I must not neglect to mention that there is one additional character that appears briefly but is very pivotal to the story. And he is played by Matt Damon. (Also, this character’s penis figures prominently into the plot.) So, anyone who is a Matt Damon fan should not miss it. Overall, the movie has its moments, but it seems like a mixture of two films that don’t mesh very well. It’s good for a few laughs.