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.

Something In The Dirt

Something In the Dirt                                                     2 suns

In this story about paranormal activity, Levi has just moved to a new apartment in the Hollywood Hills where he strikes up an acquaintance with long time resident John. Then the two witness the impossible in Levi’s apartment as objects seem to float in the air and light emanates into the room with no source. The dives into endless tangents involving numerology, the Pythagorean Brotherhood, alien fruit, a perfect ratio and long dead city planners as this weird pair of random dudes try to solve the mysteries of the universe. They come up with the idea of making a documentary about the experiences, but their own incompetence gets in the way. Flash forward scenes with interviews of others linked to the documentary lead us to believe that the plan went awry at some point. This low budget movie was made mainly by three close friends in the apartment owned by one of them. It’s a fairly long movie that just is forever following the rabbit hole. It is silly and in the Q&A we learn that at one point the movie was three and a half hours long. We also learn that Something in the Dirt is the fifth movie created by this group of friends. I will not be seeking out their earlier works.

A House Made of Splinters

A House Made of Splinters                                           4 suns

In the documentary department we travel to eastern Ukraine for a sad story of children in pain. Many children are forced into orphanages as the courts seek to protect them from broken homes brought on by the plague of widespread alcoholism. This problem has only gotten worse with the 2014 war with Russia and the loss of job opportunities created by it. In this documentary the filmmakers go inside one temporary shelter for these kids where they live and are cared for by the social workers while the courts decide whether they can return to their families or be placed in an orphanage. Despite the circumstances this shelter offers protection and some stability to these children who have been neglected at home. The filmmakers focus on four children, both boys and girls, in particular, following their stories as they try to reconcile matters at home. It is especially heartbreaking to see children whose parents do not even make the effort to call or see them.

The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future

The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future            4 suns

In this drama from Chile we first see a river that has had a fish kill with hundreds of dead fish on the bank. Then a young woman wearing a motorcycle helmet emerges from the river gasping for air. The shifts as we are introduced to a Chilean family including an older man, Enrique, the owner of a dairy farm who was just admitted to the hospital, his son, Bernardo, daughter, Cecilea and Cecelia’s two children. Details emerge about Enrique’s wife, Magdalena who apparently abandoned the family decades ago and the hurt caused by her absence. The when the young woman from the river arrives without speaking she is recognized as Magdalena returned from a mysterious existence meant to change the lives of her family. Though Magdalena is obviously decades younger than Enrique there is little surprise that she has returned. This movie is my personal winner for the day. The arrival of Magdalena brings the prospect of death and tragedy to this family, but then the promise of hope in the face of environmental catastrophe. And there is really a scene that involves a cow singing!

Saturday Night

Saturday Night  4 stars

Chevy Chase at the Weekend Update news desk. John Belushi in a bee costume. A profusely bleeding Julia Child. The infamous Land Shark. These are all very familiar images to the fans of Saturday Night Live in its first incarnation back in 1975. Saturday Night, directed and co-written by Jason Reitman (Whiplash, Juno) takes us back to the night in October, 1975, when in 90 minutes the first episode of a revolutionary new comedy show called Saturday Night is set to go live on NBC. The show went on to become a staple of late night television, but those who were there that night had no way of knowing that. Calling the scenes chaotic would be an understatement. In 90 minutes, we see fights breaking out between actors, a fire burning on stage, the sound system failing, one cast member refusing to sign his contract because of a bee costume, a few confrontations with the network censor who can’t quite grasp some of the script’s sexual references and a studio executive threatening to air a Johnny Carson rerun in place of the show. According to what I have read, much of what we are seeing is based on recollections from those who were there on October 11, 1975. It’s hard to imagine that the show was not better planned and had so many loose ends before airing, but this is what we are to believe. Much of the credit for the success of the movie must go to lead actor Gabriel Labelle, (of The Fabelmans) who portrays producer Lorne Michaels trying to keep his cool and deal with a myriad of mishaps. There are a few familiar faces in the cast that include J. K. Simmons as an arrogant Milton Berle, Willem Dafoe as NBC studio executive David Tebet, Matthew Rhys as the show’s host, George Carlin and Nicolas Braun as both a whiny Jim Henson and nervous comedian Andy Kaufman. Jon Batiste appears briefly as musical guest Billy Preston. The casting of the Not Ready for Primetime Players was spot on. The young cast is made up of practically all unknown actors that I did not recognize, but I had no difficulty picking out who it was they were portraying. The look of the comic actors was near perfect from the style of Chevy Chase, the moodiness of John Belushi to the wackiness of Gilda Radnor. The only cast actors that I did recognize were Lamorne Morris (New Girl) as Garrett Morris and Rachel Sennott (Bottoms) as Lorne Michael’s wife and show writer Rosie Shuster. (Rosie plays an important role in convincing John Belushi not to walk out on the show before it even starts.) We gain some insights about the show along the way including that some studio execs wanted the show to fail and were only using it as leverage against Johnny Carson. And we see how Chevy Chase and John Belushi hated each other. (And how head writer, Michael O’Donoghue hated everybody.) We even catch a glimpse of writing team Al Franken and Tom Davis. Those of you who were around for the beginning of Saturday Night Live should definitely see it to see what happened before Chevy Chase said “Live from New York, It’s Saturday Night!” for the first time. Afterward I went back and watched the first episode again. I must say the magic was still there.

Piggy

PIGGY                                                   3 suns

Once again we dive into the horror genre, this time to a rural village in Spain with an especially bloody story about a bullied teenager. Sara works in her parent’s butcher shop and happens to be very overweight making her the object of abuse from some of the other girls in the town. After another day of torment, she witnesses a stranger kidnap and beat three of the girls but is frozen in fear as he drives away with them in his van. Instead of saying anything to the police about what she knows she is intrigued by this stranger and tracks him down for reasons she is not sure of. The film is shocking and especially violent with plenty of bloody scenes. It is a cautionary tale of adolescent behavior and the desire to be accepted. This one is not for everybody.

Last Flight Home

Last Flight Home                              4 suns

Last Flight Home is a special documentary from a filmmaker known to Sundance, that wasn’t even supposed to be made for the public. When her 92 year old father, Eli, decides to end his life, Ondi Timoner is determined to preserve the last two weeks of his life, filming the time spent with the family and the legal process of allowing this voluntary termination according to California law. Eli Timoner was the founder and CEO of Florida Airlines, which he saw grow from a tiny operation in the seventies to a major player in the market in a few short years. Sadly, Eli suffered a stroke at age 53 and had three kids to raise with the help of his wife. The closeness of the family we see in the film is moving and joyful. We can be thankful that this daughter was so willing to share this experience of the passing of life with the world.

Three Minutes – A Lengthening

Three Minutes – A Lengthening 5 suns

This short documentary about a three minute section of color movie film is one of the most fascinating documentaries I have seen. A few years ago writer Glenn Kurtz found a home movie filmed by his grandfather, David Kurtz in 1938 for a vacation to Europe. Among the places he visited was Nasielsk, Poland, a predominantly Jewish village north of Warsaw that was David’s birthplace. The three minutes of film shows the faces of well over 100 people, all Jewish, who were in the street, many of them fascinated by the American who was using his new camera to film them. Of course the tragic thing is that only a year later the Nazis would come to the town and force all the Jewish residents onto the trains taking them to the concentration camps. Only about 100 people from the village would survive through the war. The filmmaker takes us through the extraordinary efforts to find the places and names of the people in this short section of home movie, leading in directions that would find some individuals still living. There are stories even about the fabrics worn by the women and the buttons of coats originating from a nearby factory. The writing has a poetic aspect to it as we realize we feel so close to these people through the pictures, but that the once thriving community was to be lost in such a short time.

Alice

Alice                                      4 suns

An imaginative film that I thoroughly enjoyed was Alice. Alice (Keke Palmer) is a house slave on a southern plantation where she is owned by a cruel white man who maintains discipline through pitiless beatings. One day Alice has had all she can take and makes a run for freedom, only to find herself in modern 1973 America where she meets a kind truck driver named Frank (Common). This blending of time periods is not a case of time travel but represents a southern plantation that kept its slavey practice in place for more than 100 years. In this story Alice quickly catches on to the changes made in America transforming herself in the style of Pam Greer of the blaxploitation films of the seventies. What a cultural statement! The film is an excellent portrayal of the struggle of Black Americans against oppression across eras of American history. During the Q&A, the filmmakers talked about how there have been actual cases of people kept in slavery up to the 1960’s but they did not go into details about how this happened. It would be interesting to learn more about it.

Speak No Evil

Speak No Evil                      3 suns

Sundance always has its share of imaginative horror films so today I took in Speak No Evil. Here a young European filmmaker has conceived a story that starts with a Danish family on vacation in Italy who meet a Dutch couple that they easily make friends with. When the Dutch couple invites them to their home in the Netherlands, they quickly accept bringing their young daughter with them. Then when the hosts start to behave in some odd and eccentric ways such as disrespecting the wife’s dietary restrictions, the visitors do their best to be accepting and maintain politeness. But then as is always the case in horror movies, certain things happen, choices are made and inevitable consequences result. Things do not turn out well for our visitors. If you liked the movie Midsommar from 2019, then Speak No Evil is for you.

Neptune Frost

Neptune Frost                   1 sun

Neptune Frost is a futuristic science fiction story set in Africa with an all African cast and filmed in Rwanda. It concerns a rebellion of miners against an authoritarian state that is led by an intersex runaway named Neptune who is able to affect events through the internet. There is much poetic language and imaginative music involved and much use of discarded computer parts to create the art in the film. Though creative, this film just did not connect with me. I think it shares some themes of William Gibson science fiction novels, but it took a while before I started to get the ideas behind it.