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.

A Thousand and One

A Thousand and One   4 stars 

A. V. Rockwell tells a story of a young Black mother raising a son against the backdrop of a gentrifying New York City that tends to deny opportunity from the poorer minorities.  Inez (Teyana Taylor) is living in shelters in the 1990’s and as an act of redemption decides to kidnap 6 year old Terry, from foster care where he has been placed.  But there is a secret kept hidden that can shatter their lives if discovered.  We follow this small family for the next twelve years as they struggle to build something together with her friend and eventual husband,  Lucky (William Catlett). Both Inez and Lucky have criminal backgrounds making things a challenge,  but are committed to keeping Terry in school on a path to success.  It is a moving,  well acted and well written story that keeps you rooting for this loving and unlikely family. The cast was present for Q&A including the little boy who played the young Terry and was really charming. The movie was very well received by the packed in audience. It was an excellent movie that I almost missed. 

Sometimes I Think About Dying

Sometimes I Think About Dying  4 stars

Despite the title this movie has a very positive message.  It is a close look at the life and private thoughts of its main character, Fran, a young woman working in a small seaside town in Oregon.  Daisy Ridley stars as the woman who seems to have a rather dull life working in a small office,  only interacting with her coworkers when needed.  The movie starts by showing her normal work and home routine using long stretches of silence,  but blended in are private scenes that convey her thoughts about death or ways to die. One day a new worker, a man in his forties joins the team and he and Fran make a connection and arrange to see each other from time to time.  They find that there are more things that they don’t have in common than things they do,  which leads to some awkward moments in their conversations. Both of the characters are driven to express honest thoughts that can be hurtful.  The film conveys a message of acceptance of others despite the differences we have.  I should also emphasize that Fran’s thoughts on death do not represent any suicidal tendencies.  They are a way of showing the private thoughts we have that are hidden from the outside world. For Ridley this is a real departure from her work on the Star Wars movies. It is one to check out if you find it. 

Radical

Radical  5 stars

There are so many good imaginative movies at Sundance which makes it hard to identify the very best.  But I believe we have one in Radical.  It is a true story about a Mexican teacher starting a new job at one of the poorest and badly performing elementary schools in Mexico. The school is in a border town that is full of violence and corruption where the students come from extreme poverty.   Mexican funny man Eugenio Derbez stars as Sergio Juarez who is taking over the sixth grade class for the new school year.  Derbez is known for the comedy How to Be a Latin Lover and for his role in CODA. His role here is much more of a dramatic one, but he is great in it.  Sergio has a very different approach to teaching where he really gets the students enthused about learning,  but has to deal with disapproval from the Director and from parents who don’t like their children getting their hopes up too high.  The idea of a hero teacher bringing out the potential of underprivileged children has been done a few times but Radical really does an outstanding job at it. Derbez and two of the child actors were present for the Q&A. Many of the scenes shown in the movie happened in real life including the corruption that deprives the school of computers.  At the Q&A it was revealed that after ten years the school still does not have computers and it would be pointless to get them because they would only be stolen for the parts.  The two girls answered that they hope to continue with acting careers. I did not have this one on my initial list but looked for it once I heard some of the word of mouth,  (plus it has Eugenio Derbez, one of the funniest actors I have seen.)

Polite Society

Polite Society. 4 stars 

Polite Society appears in the Sundance Midnight section which usually means there will be horror and pain.  This is where you will find some of the bloodiest movies you can imagine at Sundance.   Not so with this one as it is a comedy with martial arts action and British humor featuring young girls.  It took some imagination to create this story set in a London girls school with a mostly Pakistani cast.  Schoolgirl Ria has been studying martial arts and her dream is to become a stuntwoman.  Her sister Lena has dropped out of art school and Ria is horrified to learn that she is being set up for marriage to a wealthy young Pakistani doctor and then moved to Singapore for a nefarious reason.  So Ria makes it her mission to stop this marriage enlisting the help of some of her classmates.  This fast moving comedy uses many of the same techniques seen in modern Asian action movies only with high school age girls.  It’s an interesting blend of genres that we seldom see.  It is directed by Nida Manzoor and stars Priya Kansara of Bridgerton as Ria. The cast and crew were present for the Q&A following the world premiere. 

Against the Tide

Against the Tide  4 1/2 stars!

The second movie was a documentary from India called Against the Tide. This was some superior filmmaking by an Indian woman director.  Her subjects were two close friends from Bombay,  India who belong to the Koli community.  They both struggle to make a living by fishing according to their traditions,  but face the challenges of a dwindling stock of fish in the ocean and increased competition.  The director wanted to convey just how hard it is for them to make a profit and feed their families and she definitely succeeds.  The two have very different approaches to running their businesses.  One tries to use modern fishing practices with a large boat and crew, fishing in deep water fast from shore,  while the other uses a small boat with only a few hands and stays in shallow water. The conclusion is that either way the fishermen barely can stay afloat while trying to support a wife and their small children.  I found it amazing that the subjects put so much trust in the filmmaker when it exposes the internal disagreements in their families.  It is informative to see the conditions of poverty that these businessmen are fighting against.  We also get exposure to the illegal practice of fishing with lights at night in order to increase the size of the catch. I had seen stories about this before. So far Against the Tide gets my vote for the best documentary. 

Sorcery

Sorcery  4 stars

From Chile comes a story of witchcraft set in the historical setting of the 1880’s on the Chilean island of Chiloe. The actual events feature a crackdown on the indigenous Huilliche natives by the ruling Chilean authorities and the German settlers.  The fictional story features a young Huilliche girl, Rosa, whose father is murdered by one of the German settlers. She is sheltered by a lone indigenous man,  Mateo and learns about the ways of witchcraft practiced by her people going back centuries and vows to seek justice for her dead father.  It is a very dark and sad story that is aided by a threatening score.  It is yet another example of the unresolvable clash in cultures between native people and the white settlers who came to seek a new life. The story includes acts of the supernatural and the use of trained animals. I found it an effective and haunting way to tell the story. 

King Richard

King Richard       4 stars

If you want to see another inspirational sports movie then go see King Richard, directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green and written by Zach Baylin. But the movie is more than that as it is also about the unwavering belief and determination of Richard Williams, father of future tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams. Will Smith portrays Richard, the girls’ father who has a written plan for his two daughter’s success and will not accept defeat even in the face of the odds against them, coming from the streets of Compton in the early 1990’s. Even though we know what the eventual outcome is, stardom in the all-white tennis world for two young black women, the obstacles facing them appear all too real. Richard works with the young girls on run-down neighborhood tennis courts while having to fight off the young men of the streets threatening them and forces his way into meetings with the white coaches who are needed for the girls’ success. Richard tells a lot of stories of his growing up in a world of racial prejudice with a father who would not look out for him. (The movie does not even include the worst of it.) He is determined not to have this experience repeated on his daughters. Fortunately, there is also a mother, Brandy (Aunjanue Ellis) who looks out for their interests and calls out Richard when he tries to go too far without consulting her. The white coaches are perplexed at Richard’s insistence that the girls be pulled from the junior tournament circuit when he sees how the parents of the other girls are treating their daughters and the resulting behavior as spoiled brats. Of course the movie would not be the success it is without Will Smith’s convincing acting performance as the father who won’t take No for an answer. He is deserving of the acting Oscar he received (despite all the ceremony controversy). This sports movie delivers with the expected climactic competitive scene as is the tradition, but the focus shifts from the father to daughter Venus when she faces the best in the world. The movie is available on HBOMax.

She Said

She Said               4 ½ stars

She Said takes on the subject of sexual abuse and misconduct in Hollywood from a journalistic approach and from an entirely female perspective. This is the true story of the New York Times investigation and take down of one Hollywood’s most powerful producers, Harvey Weinstein. We have all heard the story before, of the decades of assaults and intimidation and coverup payouts that centered around Weinstein and in the end how it led to the Metoo movement throughout the corporate world. In the film we see the efforts of the two Times investigative reporters, Megan Twohy (Carey Mulligan of An Education and Promising Young Woman) and Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan of The Big Sick and The Plot Against America) as they follow leads, knock on doors and are rebuffed at nearly every turn. Through a series of interviews and flashbacks we get the stories of not only repeated abuse of Hollywood actresses (including Rose McGowan and Ashley Judd) and Mirimax employees, but of the multitude of enablers in the industry that allow the abuse to continue. The formula of the movie is one we have seen before, in All the President’s Men, Spotlight and The Post, only this time the reporting is down exclusively by women who in addition to their jobs have to deal with raising children and fending off creeps in bars. Even though we know the eventual outcome we feel the frustration of the reporters as they hear the stories but can’t persuade the victims to go public out of fear of their families learning what happened and retaliation from Weinstein. It is only after being informed of the payouts by the lawyers and accountants that they learn the true scope of the crimes. For the documentary treatment of the subject, see the 2019 movie Untouchable. It gives a firsthand account from some of the women victims and the exposing of Weinstein’s crimes.

Bones and All

Bones and All                     4 stars

From director Luca Guadagnino comes a story of two young lovers on a road trip travelling across the country in the 1980’s in a search for purpose. Timothee Chalamet is Lee, reuniting with the Call Me by Your Name director, and Taylor Russell is a teenage girl, Maren in this teenage romance horror as a young pair learning to deal with the secret that they both share. I won’t reveal what that secret is but let’s just say that it involves a lot of blood and they are not vampires. Bones and All is actually based on a young adult novel by the same name where the heat between the two young travelers gradually intensifies as they drive from one rundown  Midwestern town to another. The story is actually reminiscent of Badlands or Natural Born Killers as they commit certain crimes against the unsuspecting victims. We must understand that this is not a matter of choice. It’s just that this is who they are. Maren is on this journey to try to find her birth mother accompanied by a cassette recording from her father and her own birth certificate that reveals her mother’s hometown. She encounters Lee by scent, revealing that they share something in common. Oh, and there is an old man she meets along the way (Mark Rylance of Bridge of Spies) who teaches her some things about their kind. (This has to be the creepiest role of Rylance’s career to date! He plays it perfectly.) He will show up at the most unexpected of times. The well paced movie alternates between slow cinematic scenes of the country and loving interaction to scenes of utter bloody horror. There are also a few single scene roles for some well known actors including Michael Stuhlbarg, Chloe Sevigny, David Gordon Green and Jessica Harper. Despite their acting skills the movie mainly belongs to Taylor Russell who is very believable as the young Maren. Besides 2017’s Call Me by Your Name, Guadagnino is also known for his films Suspiria (also a horror film), and I am Love. This one is probably best meant to be viewed by the strictly horror movie fans. I look forward to his next project, Challengers, starring Zendaya coming in 2023.

Avatar: The Way of Water

Avatar: The Way of Water            4 ½ stars

The most anticipated release of the holiday season has finally arrived with James Cameron’s return to Pandora in Avatar: The Way of Water. Following the success of the original Avatar in 2009, this sequel can’t help but have some high expectations to aspire to. In the first movie we had the conflict between the technologically advanced humans from Earth and the primitive tribespeople of the planet Pandora called the Na’vi. In that battle one human, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), an avatar in the form of a Na’vi man switched sides and aided the Na’vi leading to the expelling of the humans with the help of the sentient natural world. Now after many years of peaceful living, the humans or “sky people” have returned to Pandora where Jake has made a new life for himself with his Na’vi family. Everything about the humans is violent as their very landing on the planet destroys the environment in a firestorm. Leading a commando unit of humans converted into blue Na’vi bodies is Quaritch (Steven Lang) whose mission in life is the capture of Sully the traitor in order to help subjugate the indigenous population and conquer the planet for human habitation. That’s the background but there is much more to the movie and more than I can adequately describe. The scenes of the natural world of Pandora with the otherworldly creatures of the air and the sea are amazing to watch. The color and movement we see on the screen are beautiful and something we never grow tired of. The story itself is rather basic with the focus on the struggle between the invaders and the primitive but determined defenders represented by Jake’s Na’vi family. They are forced to flee their home in the forest and learn the ways of the island people who survive with the help of some incredible sea creatures. There are a variety of subplots that involve the four Na’vi children, the island people and the giant whale-like creatures called tulkun that may be as intelligent as people. Part of the wonder of the movie is the way that it was filmed. Most of the movie is animated but the animated characters are superimposed over the human actors. So this means that the scenes taking place underwater were actually filmed that way with the actors having to act out their scenes underwater, requiring them to learn to hold their breath for several minutes at a time for the filming. Then the creation of the world of Pandora is done with an army of animators. Part of the attraction is the amount of detail that went into making the facial expressions of the Na’vi characters. This goes a long way toward making them seem real. As far as the story itself goes, the conflict involving Jake seems small when you consider that an entire planet is being invaded. But since this movie is actually the second of an expected five movies in the franchise, I can forgive that. The situation is similar to that of The War of the Worlds where Earth was facing a technologically superior race, which itself was said to represent the plight of the American Indian. The ending is definitely set up for a sequel that is to come in 2024. Look for a multitude of awards for Avatar, The Way of Water and repeated viewings from the fans. But be prepared for a long sitting for a runtime that exceeds three hours!