By: Henry J. Fromage –
My randomized picks this week have yielded a bounty of foreign films again- my wife is just going to love this!
392. Songs My Brothers Taught Me
In honor of Chloe Zhao’s triumphant showing at the Oscars on Sunday, Mubi has her first, hard to track down film playing right now- maybe a reason to give that free trial a try. I can attest that this story of a young Lakota girl whose father dies, bringing an impressive number of half-brothers together for his funeral, is unmistakably Zhao from the beginning. There’s the swoon-worthy Western vista-filled cinematography, mix of non-professional and a peppering of professional actors, much of the same creative team that was nominated for a slew of Oscars, and that deeply humanistic touch. Zhao leans a bit more towards the fiction side of docu-fiction, a balance she would strike better with The Rider and of course Nomadland, but this makes it clear she pretty much emerged fully formed regardless. Two Beers.
393. Framing John DeLorean
Speaking of docu-fiction, this documentary about the inventor of the DeLorean who ended up in prison after not one, but two massive scandals takes a bit of a different tack. It combines your normal conventional, well-edited documentary with high production value reenactments starring Alec Baldwin and other recognizable actors nabbed from an unproduced film about DeLorean’s life. The point is that his story is a classic Hollywood rise and fall, and while that gets reductive at times, the overall combination works better than it should, and, well, it’s a hell of a story. Three Beers.
394. Stowaway
This recent Netflix release is another space survival drama, but one that is as or more interested in the moral quandaries it poses than the Gravity-style action that it also delivers on well considering its relative budget. A mission to Mars that will take two years is disrupted when they simultaneously find an unexpected stowaway and lose a carbon dioxide scrubber. This sets the crew on a desperate path to discover a solution or face the reality that resources for only two or three of the now four people onboard means something’s got to give. A cast including Anna Kendrick, Toni Colette, Daniel Dae Kim, and Shamier Anderson and writer/director Joe Penna play the stakes beautifully- this will hold your attention throughout. Two Beers.
395. One False Move
I’ve been on a bit of a 90s Black filmmaker kick, with this being my second Carl Franklin thriller in as many weeks. This one is a nastily straightforward crime & punishment piece that starts with a vicious crime that sends Billy Bob Thornton, Michael Beach, and Cynda Williams on the run and on a bloody collision course with two LA cops (Earl Billings & Jim Metzler) and a small town sheriff (Bill Paxton). Just lean, mean, and muscular acting and directing. Three Beers.
396. Nina Wu
Taiwanese director Midi Z and screenwriter and star Wu Ke-Xi create a withering and vicious thriller around the bones of an (original) A Star is Born small town girl becomes a famous actress arc. The titular Nina Wu trades a great many things in the pursuit of big screen stardom, up to and ultimately including her sanity. This would play spectacularly in direct conversation with Promising Young Woman, although it may be hard to imagine a more depressing two-fer (this being the far more depressing of the two, believe it or not). Two Beers.
397. Buck and the Preacher
Sidney Poitier’s directorial debut is a Western that has a whole hell of a lot going for it. Poitier himself plays the Buck of the title, a trail guide who helps ex-slaves traverse trails made even more dangerous by hostile or even openly pursuing white folk. It’s the oily, untrustworthy, and instantly lovable Harry Belafonte as the Preacher who really steals the film, though, inserting a thrilling unpredictability with his every brown-toothed smile that doesn’t match his eyes. Poitier has a fine eye and touch for Western filmmaking with a bit of 1970s blaxploitation flair, a mix that also works beautifully in Benny Carter’s theme. Two Beers.
398. Anus Magillicutty
I found this based on IMDB’s Bottom 100 several years back. It’s entirely possible that it’s so obscure it no longer factors there, but man does it deserve its position. Running roughly an hour, it tells the story of the titular Anus, an asshole with Goku hair who ends up in some criminal antics when he finds himself needing to hide a body. This is about 30 minutes of ugly video content, though, with the extra 30 minutes that doesn’t even bring it to feature length filled with an apparent random selection of softcore pornography. It’s easily one of the worst things I’ve ever seen that actually received a release. No, really. Six Pack.
399. We Broke Up
William Jackson Harper and Aya Cash star alongside a cast of comic ringers in a dramedy that leans harder drama than comedy despite the earnest efforts of its cast. Harper and Cash are a long-time couple who break up before her sister’s wedding, which he insists on going to since he’s ‘King of the Ushers’, after all. To its credit, the rise and fall and the characters’ reactions to it are well drawn- just don’t come in expecting a laugher on par with the comedy resumes in the cast. Three Beers.
400. Pebbles
Kicking off my New Directors/New Films 2021 film festival experience is this debut from Vinothraj P.S. in the Tamil language of the southernmost state of India, Tamil Nadu. It’s short and only features smatterings of dialogue, most of it around how the alcoholic who’s dragged his son along with him to find his wife who’s run to her family is going to kill everyone. Everywhere around this all-too-common drama is the arid wasteland shot in beautiful yet stark compositions and its inhabitants trying to scratch out an existence in it. Three Beers.
401. Darkman
I finally got around to Sam Raimi and Liam Neeson’s cult superhero film at Oberst’s insistence, and it’s a cheesy good time. It’s origins as Raimi’s homage to the early serial detective comics like Batman and The Shadow, neither of which he could get the rights to in the 80s, is clear, and Neeson is great as a grotesque and twisted avenger. A young Frances McDormand is both great and undeniably dream to boot. Three Beers.
402. Exploding Varmints
I got a chance to hang out with Oberst for the Oscars (many- too many- drinks were had, and my wife predicted Hopkins while Oberst and I didn’t), and we checked out a couple of the weirder Redlettermedia-reviewed videos on Youtube. This one is exactly what it sounds like- 30 minutes of exploding groundhogs and other assorted varmints- and it’s frankly disgusting despite the filmmakers’ assertions this is good for the environment, actually. We only got maybe 10 minutes in, and I don’t think we missed anything from the remainder. Six Pack.
403. S.O.S.
This bizarre cult video from the The Family International, a California cult that famously counted the Phoenix family among its members for a time, really ratchets up the crazy. It’s really a series of music videos strung together with the clear intent to proselytize, but it goes from 0 to 100 pretty damn fast. By the time they’re insisting barcodes are the mark of the beast and a harbinger of Armageddon, you know you’re in for a wild ride. Five Beers.
404. Buffalo Soldiers
This TNT TV movie surprisingly got the Criterion, or at least the Criterion (streaming) Channel treatment. It has that TNT movie feel, from their late 90s heyday, and as is the case with many of them it showcases a big star- Danny Glover. Glover plays a cavalry sergeant on the trail of a pair of Apache chiefs who appear to be on the verge of going on the warpath. Despite the innate racism of most of his superiors and the soldiers not in his all-Black unit, he clings to the ideals of the army, which puts him on a collision course with his conscience. A bit conventional in the end, but very strongly acted by an ace ensemble cast and, of course, Glover. Three Beers.
405. The Arbor
Andrea Dunbar led a troubled life that yielded an extraordinary career writing plays and screenplays based on growing up in (and not straying far from) the Bradford Housing Estates. Clio Barnard eulogizes her and in the process the family she may have passed down her trauma to with this innovative docudrama that mixes archival footage, interviews with Dunbar’s family members, reenactments of interviews with Dunbar’s family members, and scenes from Dunbar’s most famous work, The Arbor acted out on the streets of Bradford. It could easily have been a car crash, but Barnard exhibits impressive control in making it feel never less than a cohesive whole. Two Beers.
406. Rosewood
This 1997 film from the late, great John Singleton dramatizes the 1922 racial massacre at Rosewood, Florida instigated by a false rape report from a white woman and resulting in the complete destruction of the predominantly but not entirely black town. Events are pretty Hollywooded up overall and especially in the end, but Ving Rhames, Jon Voight, Don Cheadle, and Esther Rolle in particular get great roles and there’s no denying stories like this, of which there are far more than we would like to think, deserve commemoration. Never forget. Three Beers.
