By: Henry J. Fromage –
This week featured a smorgasbord of films I missed or couldn’t catch at some of the year’s biggest film festivals.
443. Command Z
Steven Soderbergh, as he does, released this roughly feature-length “series” on his own website, announcing it to various outlets including yours truly’s with an email impersonating an overworked publicist exasperated by her strange employer, one Steven Soderbergh. Anyway, Michael Cera plays a Mark Zuckerberg-type who has assembled a crew to travel back in time to “save the world”. Clever, funny, sometimes a bit obvious in its social commentary, and very unassuming, it’s worth a spin. Three Beers.
444. Showing Up
Okay, I have to admit now that I took a short nap in the middle of watching this in theaters, so I gave it another watch. And the second time around… Kelly Reichardt’s latest remained so low stakes and undramatic that it didn’t change my opinion a ton. Everything’s pleasant and amusing enough in this snapshot of a somewhat less than moderately successful Portland artist’s life, so I won’t discourage watching it- just don’t expect a ton. Three Beers.
445. Cairo Conspiracy
This political thriller set in Cairo’s foremost theological university debuted at Cannes, and offers a fascinating glimpse at a world most Westerners know little or nothing about. It’s a twisty tale in which a devout young man from a small seaside fishing town goes to the big city and gets drawn into a power struggle between religious and government forces when the university’s and sect’s leader passes away without a clear successor. Two Beers.
446. World’s Most Wanted
Yeah, once you start watching episodic true crime you might be too far gone. This isn’t bad as it goes, covering the cases of some of the globe’s most wanted fugitives, but more of a primer than anything incisive exactly. There’s some bad mofos out there at a scale that beggars belief, and here’s to all of them seeing the justice they deserve. Three Beers.
447. Somewhere in Queens
I miss Men of a Certain Age, but Ray Romano’s film work as of late is firmly in that vein, telling stories of normal, flawed men and their families, often from his Long Island or at least Italian-American roots. This one is about a father who sees an unexpected pathway for his son to get a college basketball scholarship and goes all in, despite what the rest of his family and maybe even his son thinks. Low-scale but well-rendered drama. Three Beers.
448. Cadejo Blanco
This crime film from Guatemala sees a young woman fearlessly search out her sister, who disappears one night after arguing with her boyfriend, who’s part of a notorious gang from the capital city. As she infiltrates it to find out what happened, she gets drawn deeper and deeper into their crimes and conflicts. Really superbly done, well earning it’s over two hour runtime. Two Beers.
449. Earth Mama
I have a New York City (well… Long Island) customer now for my actually makes money job, so you know I’ll be hitting up the arthouse theaters whenever a get a chance. I first caught this lauded release that I missed at Sundance, about a young mother of two with a third on the way who is struggling to get her life together so she can be reunited with her kids that were taken away due to previous substance abuse issues. Beautifully shot and boasting some interesting directorial choices, it’s easy to see why critics loved this, although the overall effect was a tad less than a sum of its parts for me. Three Beers.
450. War Pony
The other Indie I was able to catch in NYC, this one played Cannes originally (winning the Camera d’Or for best first feature), and at first caught my eye because actress Riley Keough co-directs with Gina Gammell, but the story is set in South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, which is a bit outside the normal frame of reference for two white girls from Santa Monica. Not that you’d know it- this is a film conceived by and with the inhabitants of the reservation, not shying away from the challenges of living there but also uniquely attuned to the unexpected joys. A well-told story inhabited by vibrant, three-dimensional characters. Two Beers.
451. Talk to Me
This also played Sundance, but was not available on its streaming platform because it had already been tabbed for theatrical big things. I hope it’s doing well, because it should be, following in the polished Indie horror footsteps of a Hereditary and fellow countryman’s Relic, if not quite reaching those heights. A possession horror told in a genuinely novel and genuinely freaky manner. Two Beers.
452. Brother
One undersung feature of TIFF is the slate of native Canadian films it debuts, which can’t always play with the big dogs, but sometimes very much can. These are the ones you hope to hear the buzz on early enough to get into a screening later in the week, because it’s pretty much impossible to anticipate which are the gems. Otherwise, you have to wait almost a year, like I did for this story of two brothers growing up in one of the toughest Toronto neighborhoods. A coming of age story that’s well-acted and insightful about the difficulties of rising above poverty and loss. Two Beers.
453. Strays
I watched this opening weekend on the strength of its redband trailer, which promised a funny and fucked up spin on Homeward Bound. Unfortunately, pretty much all of the jokes and surprises this feature had to offer were packed into that two or so minutes, with the other 88 or so largely padded out with cliché after cliché. I definitely chuckled, but not at a lot of A-material, and not enough to justify the feature-length runtime. Could have been a killer 10-15 minute Funny or Die video, though… Five Beers.
454. The Moon
This is more or less Korea’s Gravity, as three astronauts on South Korea’s second historical trip to the Moon (the first one didn’t go so great), quickly become just one- the youngest and the only one who doesn’t know how to fly. He and Ground Control need to find a way get him and his damaged aircraft home. It’s bordering on hilarious how much goes wrong for this guy, but all of the outer space action is every bit the equal to what Hollywood productions at at least 10 times the budget deliver. Three Beers.
455. Strange World
Disney’s big animated holiday release last year went out with more of a whimper than a bang. While there may have been a tiny cultural war element (they treat the gay character like he’s totally normal!), my theory is that it looked way more Dreamworks than Disney in its marketing. In any case, it’s stylistically a little bit Encanto, but set in an anachronistically technological world with latter half of Up aerial adventurer vibes. All to say, it’s pretty solid, actually, perhaps a bit over-reliant on loud swooping action sequences but with likeable and well-developed characters and cool retro aesthetics. Three Beers.
456. The Blackening
While a Tim Story comedy doesn’t always engender the most confidence, he strikes gold or at least nicely polished silver here in this TIFF-debuting horror comedy about a group of Black college friends who discovers their rental cabin is a being terrorized by a racist murderer playing a sadistic game, part of the premise of which is ‘if everyone’s black, who dies first?’ Clever, energetic, and more funny than scary, which is far from a bad thing. Two Beers.
457. Plane
Gerard Butler Gerard Butlers in this up-the-middle action film about a pilot who crash lands on a remote Filipino island controlled by a criminal enterprise who quickly kidnaps his surviving passengers for ransom. Luckily the prisoner being extradited who boards his plane right before takeoff is an ex-French Foreign Legionnaire with the dimensions and coolness of Mike Colter. It’s a bit silly and bloody and washed-out, but it’ll very much scratch that particular Gerard Butler itch that you were looking to when you hit play on a movie titled Plane starring Gerard Butler. Three Beers.
