Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 63 Shares159 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Blue Miracle’ Review: Fishing Lessons

      by

      Mexican orphans find hope through a fishing tournament in this cloying underdog Netflix drama.Gratingly sentimental and simplistic, Julio Quintana’s “Blue Miracle,” set in Cabo San Lucas in 2014, turns a potentially compelling underdog tale into a sermon. But if you’re in the mood to see Dennis Quaid learning and growing — and engaging in sappy conversations about fatherhood — then step right up.As the prizewinning fisherman Wade Malloy, Quaid evinces a manic desperation that, were it tended to, would be inconvenient to the script’s homily-strewn march toward uplift. Temperamentally grumpy and ethically malleable, Malloy learns he can only enter the latest fishing tournament if he has a local man on his team. Enter Papa Omar (Jimmy Gonzales), the saintly director of an imperiled orphanage. In debt to the bank for over $100,000, Omar needs the contest’s prize money to avoid eviction. That he doesn’t know one end of a fishing rod from the other is seemingly irrelevant.Based on a true story, “Blue Miracle” suffers mightily from slapdash plotting and superficial moralizing. (A scene where Omar is tempted by his criminal past needlessly emphasizes his reformed bona fides.) Realism is not a priority: When the orphanage is flooded by Hurricane Odile, the water appears to disappear of its own accord. Neither is it made clear why three orphans — broadly stamped as the smart one, the funny one and the tough kid with issues — are also included on the fishing crew, given their contribution to the task at hand can charitably be described as minimal.What is obvious, though, is that if the movie’s depiction of events is even close to accurate, its outcome is indeed a miracle.Blue MiracleNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      'American Traitor: The Trial of Axis Sally' Review

      by

      Meadow Williams plays Mildred Gillars in this plodding and ultimately infuriatingly noncommittal movie.Mildred Gillars was an American woman who propagandized for the Nazis on German state radio for much of World War II. While not as well known as her Pacific counterpart “Tokyo Rose,” she acquired enough of a cachet to be nicknamed “Axis Sally” by contemporary troops who weren’t buying what she was selling.Directed by Michael Polish from a script by Polish, Vance Owen and Daryl Hicks, “American Traitor: The Trial of Axis Sally,” a fictionalized version of her story, was executive produced by Meadow Williams, who plays Gillars. The movie begins with her arrest in Germany after the war. Gillars is extradited to Washington and indicted on many counts of treason and conspiracy. Her case is dumped in the lap of the gruff lawyer James Laughlin, played, well, gruffly by Al Pacino.As the case moves to trial, the movie intercuts flashbacks detailing Gillars’s distinctly nonbrilliant career in Germany, from meeting with a condescending Joseph Goebbels to bedroom strategizing with her lover, who’s also her radio producer. Williams plays Gillars as a not particularly clever or sympathetic tough cookie doing what she needs to do to “survive.” The argumentation conveyed through both the performance and the script is weak.This is a plodding and ultimately infuriatingly noncommittal movie. Its special pleadings are all over the map. And to make them, the filmmakers distort truth; for instance, mangling a famed Ernest Hemingway quote on the nature of war to make it specific to World War II. If Mildred Gillars has a story worth telling in a feature film, this isn’t it.American Traitor: The Trial of Axis SallyRated R for language, violence. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes. In select theaters and available to rent or buy on Google Play, FandangoNow and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Five Years North’ Review: Opposite Sides of Immigration

      by

      This frustratingly sentimental documentary looks at the parallel lives of an undocumented teenager and an ICE agent in New York.“Five Years North” follows two New Yorkers whose paths you hope will never cross. Luis is an undocumented 16-year-old from Guatemala, who at the film’s outset has just been released from detention and awaits a court date. Judy is a middle-age Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer overseeing Luis’s neighborhood. Zach Ingrasci and Chris Temple’s documentary isn’t a cat-and-mouse thriller, but watching Luis try to scrape together money to send home while Judy’s team prowls for immigrants — at one point arresting a man as he takes his daughter to school — is often an exercise in edge-of-the-seat anxiety.The filmmakers have known Luis’s family for a decade, which explains the remarkable access they acquire to his life. Mixing interviews and observational scenes, they trace the boy’s compressed coming-of-age. He precariously juggles school, an exhausting job delivering food and homesick FaceTime calls with his parents, who face crushing debts and poverty.Judy also lets the filmmakers into her office and home, revealing details that might surprise some. Her father is from Puerto Rico, and her mother, who is Cuban, used to resettle refugees. Judy concedes that immigration policy is flawed, though her main gripe is that it lumps together “criminals and non-criminals.” She’s simply — as goes the bureaucratic refrain — “doing her job.”There’s much to unpack here, from the preponderance of Latino agents in ICE to the mental health effects of immigration, evident in Luis’s panic attacks. But the film, frustratingly, stays on the surface, settling for easy emotional moments: crosscuts between Judy and Luis talking about family; the two of them gazing up at Fourth of July fireworks. Systemic injustices remain in the blurry background of these sentimental, humanist portraits.Five Years NorthNot rated. In English, Spanish and Kaqchikel, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. In New York at Film Forum. More

    • 100 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      A Congo War Movie, 'Mercy of the Jungle'

      by

      In this immersive portrait of ethnic conflict by the Rwandan filmmaker Joel Karekezi, two men also take on the jungle and the savage elements.Set in Kivu, at the eastern edge of the Democratic Republic of Congo, “The Mercy of the Jungle” wrings existential dread from its immersive conceit, following a pair of Rwandan soldiers swept up in the haze of multinational and regional conflicts that broke out in the late 1990s.Dispatched with the vengeful objective of hunting down ethnic Hutu rebels, the men brave the elements and reckon with their own complicity in the perpetuation of violence.The filmmaker and co-writer Joel Karekezi, a survivor of the Rwandan genocide which was a contributing factor to the military upheaval depicted in the film, skirts the big-picture history lesson here, choosing instead subjective, boots-on-the-ground testimony.Accidentally separated from their unit, Xavier (Marc Zinga), a hardened veteran, and Faustin (Stéphane Bak) a new recruit, plunge deep into the dangerous jungle to avoid the enemy on the main road. Journeying through the wilderness comes with the expected challenges, such as severely volatile weather conditions and feverish hallucinations. At the same time, the film’s palpably-rendered environment, with stiflingly dense foliage and vivid natural soundscapes, heightens the dizzying nature of the war without resorting to titillation or idealized images that might glorify pain and suffering.The film also calls attention to the ways in which one person’s struggle to survive can have a devastating ripple effect. In one particularly poignant aside, a village mourns a soldier found dead after an encounter with the two men. Later they pose as Congolese soldiers themselves to benefit from local hospitality.Contrary to expectations, this morally dubious turn of events is not employed for its thrilling potential. The ease with which Xavier and Faustin are integrated into this “foreign” community reveals the arbitrary nature of territorial boundaries and friend-or-foe distinctions — such is the meaninglessness of modern warfare.The Mercy of the JungleNot rated. In French and Swahili, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. Watch on Film Movement Plus. More

    • 125 Shares139 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Ahead of the Curve’ Review: The Business of Lesbian Identity

      by

      A 30-year-old lesbian magazine faces an existential crisis in this documentary.In the curiously commercial documentary “Ahead of the Curve,” the lesbian magazine formerly known as Deneuve receives a second shot at the cultural spotlight.Known now by the publication name Curve, the magazine was founded by a lesbian named Franco Stevens in 1990, in the midst of the culture wars. The magazine grew alongside public acknowledgment of lesbian life, and its covers featured newly out stars like the singer Melissa Etheridge or the comedian Margaret Cho. The documentary begins in the present day, as both the glossy and its founder are facing existential crisis.In vérité footage, Stevens is told by Curve’s new owner that the publication might not last another year. The film’s director, Jen Rainin, who is also married to Stevens, uses archival footage of her wife in the ’90s to reflect on Stevens’s history with the magazine and what Curve meant to its larger lesbian readership. In the movie’s contemporary footage, Stevens embarks on a tour of conference halls and community centers, asking young people what lesbian visibility has meant to their lives.There is a tension in the film between the lesbian experience and lesbianism as a consumer product. Stevens connects with young advocates and business leaders over the hopes, fears and traumas that resonate across generations. From a perspective of a business in the process of rebranding, Stevens’s foray into this world of lesbian and queer-centered spaces has focus-tested value. But it is hindered as a documentary by the spotlight on marketing, which boxes conversations about lesbian identity into sterile conference rooms where participants in name tags and lanyards share heartfelt stories for the purpose of a product. The film’s subjects are overwhelmingly earnest, but the movie suffers for its substitution of enterprise over entertainment.Ahead of the CurveNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Dog Gone Trouble’ Review: New Dog, Same Tricks

      by

      A pampered dog finds himself on the streets in this routine animated comedy.Home is at the center of “Dog Gone Trouble,” about a lost pooch whose owner has just died. But this Netflix animated family feature is nothing to write home about.It begins with Trouble (voiced by Big Sean) living lavishly in a mansion, a far cry from the street-dog lifestyle. After his rich companion, Mrs. Sarah Vanderwhoozie (the always-delightful Betty White, who is criminally wasted here), passes on, her greedy niece (Marissa Jaret Winokur) and nephew (Joel McHale) swoop in to get their hands on Mrs. Vanderwhoozie’s belongings. The catch? If they want her riches, they must take care of her diva dog, too.The setup of Kevin Johnson’s film has promise: a charming montage of Trouble and Mrs. Vanderwhoozie. The crazy, money-hungry relatives you’ll wish had more screen time. Then, a moving scene with Trouble pawing at extravagant paintings of Mrs. Vanderwhoozie and wondering, tearfully, why she’s gone.Once Trouble ends up in what he calls the “jungle” — for the other dogs, including the soul-crushed loner Rousey (Pamela Adlon), this is the street — “Dog Gone Trouble” settles into overdone mutt-movie territory. We essentially get a story about the true meaning of home, explored with more emotional sophistication in other canine-centric animated films (“Bolt,” from 2008, comes to mind). But another one of its themes — a no-label civilization, briefly touched upon when Rousey snaps at Trouble after he calls her an “outside dog” — is far more engaging and culturally contemporary.Instead, the film keeps it basic, right down to a central girl character named Zoe (Lucy Hale) who shares a common outsider bond with Trouble. She’s a stock-millennial, wannabe-musician bore, and her Memoji look does her — and the other humans, animated similarly — no favors.A bunch of dancing squirrels making highly suggestive nut jokes is about as funny as it gets. Elsewhere, Snoop Dogg voices a Doberman named Snoop, who raps a rundown of the plot when the credits roll. That the movie can be summed up in a silly, simple dog rap indicates there wasn’t much of a story here to begin with.Dog Gone TroubleNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

    • 50 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      Colman Domingo’s Crooked Summer

      by

      Colman Domingo — actor, playwright, dramaturge, producer, professor and the fella who showed up to this year’s Oscars in a hot pink sequined Versace suit — is likely best known for his character of Victor on television’s “Fear the Walking Dead.” He’s also brought a sensitive soulfulness to the array of characters he’s portrayed in some of the past decade’s most prominent Black films: “The Butler,” “Selma,” “42,” “The Birth of a Nation,” “If Beale Street Could Talk” and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Baggio: The Divine Ponytail’ Review: Dribbling Through a Career

      by

      This biopic of the Italian soccer player Roberto Baggio is a botched effort.“Baggio: The Divine Ponytail,” a Netflix biopic billed as “freely inspired” by the life of the Italian soccer player Roberto Baggio, concludes with a group of the athlete’s fans greeting and applauding him. In real-life clips during the credits, an announcer calls him “probably the most beloved player in Italian football.” It’s a measure of how muddled the movie is that it never conveys how or why he became beloved.Even the soccer is perfunctory. Instead of lingering on the pitch, the director, Letizia Lamartire, cuts to Baggio’s friends and family watching on TV. Chronologically malapportioned, the film races through key developments, such as Baggio’s recovery from an injury or commitment to Buddhist meditation, and more than once abruptly flashes forward several years.Clichés become a kind of shorthand. At dinner in 1985, Baggio (Andrea Arcangeli) informs his parents and siblings that he’s signed a valuable contract. “Well, you can pay me back for the windows you broke,” scoffs his father (Andrea Pennacchi), who later adds, “Even if you earn more, you’re no better than your brother, who’s busting his ass at the factory.”By half an hour in, when the film reaches the 1994 World Cup, where Baggio plans to fulfill an apparent childhood promise to his dad, the coach likens him to the celebrated player Diego Maradona. Nothing the film has shown from the sulky Baggio, whose hair gives him his nickname, has primed viewers for the comparison.It’s possible that “Baggio: The Divine Ponytail” will resonate with soccer fans. But the protagonist’s reputed greatness has not made it to the screen.Baggio: The Divine PonytailNot rated. In Italian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More