By: Henry J. Fromage –
This week was another one for catching up on several recent high profile releases I’d missed and, yes, documentaries.
707. June Zero
Jake Paltrow tries something very different in this period piece about the trial and execution of Adolf Eichmann in Israel in 1962, after being kidnapped from his Argentine hiding place, knowing the end his crimes against humanity have earned him. Instead of even showing the man full-on, though, the film shows folks on his periphery, from his extremely paranoid Moroccan-Jewish prison guard to the company tasked with building the oven to cremate his remains so they cannot be buried and idolized. A young Arab Jew finds himself helping out with this unique and strange task. An odd sort of coming of age story that sheds light on those early, unsettled days of the Israeli republic. Two Beers.
708. Falling Stars
This unique horror film is set in a world very nearly like our own, except that Witches definitely exist and they snatch people up to eat them during a time called The Harvest. A group of young men go out to the desert to dig up the corpse of one out of curiosity (if you see one, it’s usually already too late), but an accidental desecration means their lives may now all be forfeit. Not perfect, but a good example of something idiosyncratic and effective on next to no budget. Three Beers.
709. Robot Dreams
Every year there’s one Oscar film, and only freaking one, that I just cannot for the life of me watch prior to the ceremony. Last year it was this Animated Feature nominee, and so obviously I hated and rooted against it. Of course, when I finally got around to watching, I found it to be an utterly charming dialogue-less tale of anthropomorphic animals in pre-9/11 NYC, one of whom is a lonely dog who buys and builds a robot best friend. Clever and sweet in equal measure, the only thing to not like about it was its distribution strategy. Two Beers.
710. Late Bloomers
This winning dramedy stars Karen Gillan as a, well, late blooming New York transplant who dreams of a musical career but mostly just bums around pining after her ex-boyfriend. When she breaks a hip in an ill-advised attempt to pay his apartment a visit, she finds herself convalescing next to a much older demographic, particularly a sour Polish woman who doesn’t speak a lick of English. Circumstances conspire to get her a gig watching after the old bag. Life lessons, etc will be learned and all that, but this a fine example of its form that will have you rooting for all involved. Two Beers.
711. Mandrake
This Shudder horror film from Ireland goes hard in on the folk horror signifiers as a public service worker agrees to take the case of a creepy lady just released from prison that all the locals think is a witch. She sure does some witchy things, and there’s some creepy signifiers that span from the usual suspects all the way to Pan’s Labyrinth references. It doesn’t come together quite as well as its obvious influences, but it does build well to its climax. Three Beers.
712. Biggest Heist Ever
This Netflix docuseries tells the story of the “Bitcoin Bonnie and Clyde”, who stole Bitcoin valued in the present day at $10.8 billion, but whose ridiculous always online lifestyle helped bring them down (you leave a lot of clues when you film your life all day every day). This is a gonzo doc about a particular kind of tech striver criminal that is very polished and never boring, even if it is a bit too finger waggy about modern life online (this couple is definitely dumb, but they wish they were as outrageous as they and this doc make them out to be). Two Beers.
713. Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenet Ramsey?
More of the standard type of crime fare that Netflix puts out these days, this is still a well-produced and well-rounded deep dive into the particulars of the still controversial JonBenet Ramsey case, one with its likely leads, but still no clear-cut resolution decades later. One thing that has become clear in the years since is how badly JonBenet’s family was treated by a ravenous media ecosystem at the time, one that at least the mainstream media has hopefully learned some lessons from (online will always be a snakepit). Three Beers.
714. Rez Ball
This Netflix film is on one hand a pretty standard sports drama, like something Disney would put in theaters every year a few decades back, probably starring Dennis Quaid as the obligatory white guy. In some ways it is, as the basketball team here feels pretty much foreordained to win despite the inevitable setbacks, but in others it refreshing isn’t (no Quaid-equivalent at all, for example). This is a Native American story told by Native Americans, as only they can. There are still too few of these (but it’s changing!). Two Beers.
715. Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point
I wasn’t sure what to expect from this decidedly lo-fi Christmas story about a Long Island Italian family spending Christmas Eve together in all their small but significant to them dramas. It’s certainly a contemporary comedy, but also feels like an absolute time capsule to anywhere from the late 70s to the early 90s. It’s hard to characterize, but to some weird but awesome family it’s going to be a Christmas classic. Two Beers.
716. Armand
This strange and abrasive Norwegian film is another spectacular showcase for Renate Reinsve, here playing the mother of a young boy accused of doing something heinous to his friend (and cousin?) What starts as a chamber drama becomes something more expressive and confrontational as it goes along, in surprising but always emotionally coherent ways. Quality arthouse cinema. Two Beers.
717. Juror #2
It’s kind of insane Clint Eastwood is still making movies, so it’s no surprise that actors are jumping at the chance to work with him while they can, even in bit parts, like members of the jury that is deciding the seemingly open-and-shut case of an abusive boyfriend murdering his girlfriend after a fight. One juror starts to suspect a different truth (was what he hit with his car actually a deer?). A morality tale that isn’t quite as clever as it’d like to be, but the cast is having a great time and, well, how many more Eastwood joints are we going to get? Three Beers.
718. Greedy People
This Coens Bros-esque tale of dastardly deeds set in a small town (here on a North Carolina island) is clearly not meant to be taken as realistic drama. There are two contract killers, one named The Colombian and one named The Irishman, who split all the contract killing as town of a few thousand of course supports, after all. No, this is meant to be a bit of a fable, and a bit of a mean-spirited one, but money and murder is a bit of a mean-spirited business, isn’t it? Three Beers.
719. The Piano Lesson
We knew that John David Washington could act, but it’s brother Malcolm in the director’s chair that gets his breakout in yet another August Wilson adaptation courtesy of Denzel and his clan. This story in the Pittsburgh Cycle is a bit more supernatural than what we’ve seen adapted from him before, as a brother tries to convince his sister (Danielle Deadwyler, hopefully finally getting that Oscar nom) to sell a carved family piano that is both charm and curse to any it comes in contact with. An actor’s showcase, brought to life with style. Two Beers.
720. Young Woman and the Sea
I don’t what it is about this movie that got me, but man, it three-kleenex got me. There’s something about a tale of human grit and perseverance in the face of prejudice packaged just right that still hits different, and this Daisy Ridley-starrer about the first woman to swim the English Channel certainly does. A Toast.
