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      ‘Groomed’ Review: Confronting Patterns of Abuse

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      In this distressing documentary, a filmmaker confronts her own lingering trauma as she explores how perpetrators prime victims for abuse.Gwen van de Pas was a preteen swimmer in Holland when she met the man who would become her assistant swim team instructor, her caring confidante and soon after, her sexual abuser. Now a filmmaker living in San Francisco, van de Pas explores the traumatic experience in the documentary “Groomed.”The film (streaming on Discovery+), which van de Pas directed, has a strong pedagogic drive, laying out the steps perpetrators often take to “groom” victims — target, befriend and prime them — for sexual abuse. Van de Pas calls on experts, psychologists and a convicted sex offender for interviews, but the most illuminating examples come from her own story. In one harrowing sequence, she returns to her childhood bedroom to find the fawning letters her abuser wrote to her, and rereads them with an adult’s eye.As the film lays bare the intricacies of grooming, van de Pas chronicles her personal journey toward closure. In interviews, she recalls how she blocked out troubling memories for years, until the encounters began appearing in her dreams. She meditates on the meaning of justice and explores her hesitancy to report the abuse. Cathartic conversations with family members and other survivors lend comfort and clarity.Much of “Groomed” was filmed with a crew, and the subjects often appear in soft focus and cool hues. But the most affecting scenes clearly arose too suddenly for a production team. Early one morning, van de Pas calls her partner on Skype to relay upsetting news. She weeps in bed as her partner, on his way to work, sits down, stunned. The documentary is deliberate in ending on an uplifting note, but it is such intimate moments of pain that linger on.GroomedNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 22 minutes. Watch on Discovery+. More

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      Marvel Boss Echoes Chris Evans' Reaction to His Possible Return as Captain America

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      Walt Disney Pictures

      Kevin Feige has responded to the comments made by the Steve Rogers depicter regarding the Captain America rumors following the conclusion of Phase Three of Marvel Cinematic Universe.

      Mar 19, 2021

      AceShowbiz –
      Kevin Feige has shot down rumours that Chris Evans will be returning as Captain America.

      It was reported earlier this year that Chris was on the brink of reprising his role as Steve Rogers/Captain America in at least one more Marvel project. Evans took to social media at the time to cool the speculation and Kevin has also seemingly dismissed the reports.

      The Marvel Studios boss told Entertainment Weekly, “I rarely answer no to anything anymore because things are always surprising me with what happens, but that rumour, I think, was dispelled rather quickly by the man himself.”

      Anthony Mackie, whose character Sam Wilson/Falcon was handpicked by Evans’ alter ego to wield Captain America’s shield, says he has “no idea” what’s going on with a possible Marvel return for the “Knives Out” star.

        See also…

      In an interview to promote the upcoming Disney+ series “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier”, the 42-year-old actor said, “I was actually fishing (when the report came out).”

      “When I came back in to get some shrimp, the dude at the dock was like, ‘Hey, man! Did you see this s**t?’

      “I’ve been going to the same guy to get my bait for like 20 years and all of a sudden now he’s a fan. He had no idea who I was. Now he’s a fan.”

      Anthony continued, “Marvel’s so secretive, and it’s so ridiculous about what we know and what we don’t know.”

      “I have no idea. The dude at the dock selling me shrimp knows more about what’s going on with Marvel than I do.”

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      ‘After the Murder of Albert Lima’ Review: Justice His Own Way

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      In this true crime documentary, a man ventures with two bounty hunters into Honduras to avenge the killing of his father. But the film struggles to fit the crime.How far would you go for justice? For the Florida native Paul Lima, the answer is to Honduras and back.In February 2000, Lima’s father, the lawyer and businessman Albert Lima, traveled to the tiny Honduran island Roatán to settle a debt. He never returned. A decade prior, Albert had given a loan of $84,000 to Martin Coleman, the father of his friend, for the family’s bakery. But when Coleman’s father died and his brothers began managing the bakery, regular loan payments stopped being made. When Albert went to the island to take control of the business, two of Martin’s brothers — Byron and Oral — savagely beat, then shot him. In the subsequent years, one of Albert’s killers has remained free, prompting his son to action.Paul decides to travel to Roatán with two bounty hunters: Art Torres and Zora Korhonen — to apprehend Oral. But their mission is far from easy. Directed by Aengus James and streaming on Crackle, “After the Murder of Albert Lima” is a darkly comedic true-crime documentary where the most exciting elements wane under it’s main subject’s overzealousness for drama.Paul’s plan to apprehend Oral is hilariously inept. Paul wants the bounty hunters to drug and kidnap Oral while armed guards surround the bar he frequents. They arrive for the mission without weapons, handcuffs, or even duct tape. For five days they use inconspicuous camera pens while James employs guerrilla filmmaking to not only gather evidence but also capture the action. But Paul’s compulsive desire often pushes him to put himself and his bounty hunters at risk.When the director matches Adam Sanborne’s propulsive score to the trio’s peril, he attaches an artificiality to their real efforts. It makes Paul’s arduous journey for closure not nearly as fulfilling as the film’s cathartic ending. And in its quest for entertainment value, this documentary loses sight of the actual grief and hurt a devastated son would feel.After the Murder of Albert LimaNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. Watch on Crackle. More

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      ‘Wojnarowicz’ Review: A Revolutionary Provocateur

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      A documentary on the artist David Wojnarowicz shows the ways that the rebel was a prophet, and honors him appropriately.The artist David Wojnarowicz escaped one American hellscape to find himself smack-dab in the middle of another. In a 1985 short film he made with Richard Kern, “You Killed Me First,” Wojnarowicz, then in his early 30s, portrays a version of his own alcoholic, abusive father. The grindhouse-style underground movie depicts a real event — that father feeding his children’s pet rabbit to them for dinner.Directed by Chris McKim, this exemplary documentary on the artist (which is also a mini-chronicle of the East Village art scene of 1970s and ’80s New York) takes advantage of Wojnarowicz’s penchant for self-documentation, drawing on the cassette journals he began keeping even before he was a fully formed creator. The documents Wojnarowicz maintained in this period, during which his art became inextricable from his activism, guide the viewer into the second American hellscape Wojnarowicz experienced: the AIDS epidemic.Wojnarowicz’s insistence that the Reagan administration was practically gleeful in ignoring the disease while simultaneously stigmatizing its victims provoked a number of controversies, over arts funding and more. The work he produced, often in collaboration with or under the influence of the photographer Peter Hujar, his mentor, is still bracing and fiercely clear-eyed on political and moral issues that persist to this day. Wojnarowicz died of AIDS in 1992, at age 37.The movie eschews contemporary talking-head interviews, instead showing speakers such as Fran Lebowitz, a close friend of Wojnarowicz and Hujar, as they were in the late ’70s and early ’80s. This is a strategic move, designed to make the movie’s final scene — in which several survivors of the artist and the era, now much older (a couple more frail than others), are shown attending a 2018 Whitney retrospective of Wojnarowicz’s oeuvre — more powerful. It works. Shatteringly.WojnarowiczNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes. Watch on Kino Marquee. More

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      ‘Before the Dying of the Light’ Review: Moroccan Cinema’s Attempted Revolution

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      This Ali Essafi documentary presents an inspiring view of the roiling visual-arts scene in 1970s Morocco.In 1968, the first substantive film festival was hosted in Tangier, Morocco, an event not mentioned in this impressionistic documentary directed by Ali Essafi. For the most part, “Before the Dying of the Light” is an immersive creation — its on-screen texts mostly philosophical rather than explanatory.The date of that festival is significant, though, because it can be seen as an indicator of emergent Moroccan cinema, which in the 1970s aligned itself with other visual arts and briefly, under the oppressive regime of King Hassan II, tried to forge an authentic politically pertinent body of work.
      Essafi assembles and presents staggering images. He juxtaposes on-the-street archival interviews; multiple covers of literary magazines, both in Arabic and French (France claimed the country as a “protectorate” from the 1910s until the mid-1950s); newsreel clips; scenes from European films shot in Morocco; and Morocco-produced mainstream films (including 1973’s “A Thousand and One Hands,” directed by Souheil Ben-Barka and starring the American actress Mimsy Farmer).These are interspersed with behind-the-scenes footage from the making of the 1974 film “About Some Meaningless Events.” Its filmmakers, led by the director Mostafa Derkaoui, are very self-interrogating, as was the custom in leftist aesthetics around the world at the time. Contemplating how to best use working-class people in the picture, a team member says, “We could write a script”; another immediately counters, “No.” Their obsessing about how to best capture the spirit of their times resulted in a picture that was suppressed soon after it was completed.Even for viewers with little grounding in Moroccan history, Essafi’s film offers an inspiring view of a roiling period of artistic exploration.Before the Dying of the LightNot rated. In Arabic and French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 8 minutes. Watch through MoMA’s Virtual Cinema. More

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      ‘Luz’ Review: Love In and Out of Lockup

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      In this romantic drama from Jon Garcia, two men find love in prison, then try to make it work on the outside.The lovers in the romantic drama “Luz” don’t meet under ideal circumstances. Ruben (Ernesto Reyes) is a new inmate at a minimum-security prison, and he is assigned to bunk with Carlos (Jesse Tayeh), who promptly threatens him over the use of their shared sink. When Ruben fights back, it’s the first sign that the duo might be evenly matched.Carlos begins to warm to Ruben, and he becomes a mentor as Ruben adjusts to prison life. As roommates, they eat together, and they spar together. They share stories from their pasts and dreams for their futures. They are intimate before they ever have sex.The film follows their relationship from its humble beginnings to their lives outside of prison, after the couple weathers a separation caused by differing sentence lengths. When Ruben finds Carlos after his release, Carlos invites his former lover back into his life.Together, the pair has to decide if the connection they made in confinement is worth carrying into their free lives — if each wants the other to meet and merge with family. The affair between Ruben and Carlos alternates between passionate sex and whispered intimacies.The film’s writer and director, Jon Garcia, treats the physicality of their romance in a frank way, staging realistic love scenes that show the attraction between the characters. But Garcia is less adept at finding passion in between scenes of sex. There is a seriousness to Ruben and Carlos’s relationship that becomes enervating. The first time strings resound in the film’s score, they produce is a plaintive, engrossing feeling. When the same theme plays for the 15th time, the romance feels monotonous.LUZNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 58 minutes. In theaters and on Laemmle’s Virtual Cinema. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More

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      ‘Happily’ Review: Does Long-Lived Love Mean You Need Treatment?

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      In this keeps-you-guessing comedy, Joel McHale and Kelly Bishé play a couple married for 14 years whose mutual passion is undimmed, to the annoyance of their friends.After 14 years of marriage, what kind of couple has sex at least once a day? Probably, in the real world, a jobless one, but never mind that. In “Happily,” Tom (Joel McHale) writes at home and Janet (Kelly Bishé) works at an office, but yes, they (vigorously!) enjoy intimate relations with unusual frequency in this feature debut by the writer-director BenDavid Grabinski. When a bathroom is occupied for an unusual amount of time during a party, the hosts know exactly who’s hogging the private space and why. Consequently, Tom and Janet’s friends, and especially those party hosts (played by Paul Scheer and Natalie Zea), hate them.Two events rattle Tom and Janet’s bliss. First, a home visit from a mysterious stranger played by Stephen Root. Acting as a kind of cosmic overseer, he informs the couple that they’re biological/metaphysical anomalies and demands they submit to his cure. This visit ends badly for him. Then the pair bounces from being disinvited and reinvited to a weekend getaway hosted by another couple of hater friends, and attended by distinctly discontented duos.For a while it’s fun to be kept off-balance, wondering whether the movie is some kind of allegory or, as seems more likely, that the cosmic overseer visit was a prank engineered by one of those friends. Either way, since the visit, Tom and Janet are troubled — by guilt, by dreams, by temptations never experienced before.Grabinski has both wit and energy, and these qualities, along with a game cast, help keep “Happily” afloat for far longer than most made-in-L.A. dark domestic comedies. But the movie wants to do too many things, and grows diffuse. This is a not uncommon glitch with first features; one hopes and expects Grabinski will deliver something more focused next time.HappilyRated R for themes, language, excessive marital bliss. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Vudu, FandangoNow and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More

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      ‘Rose Plays Julie’ Review: An Eerie Thriller With Mirrored Traumas

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      Sexual violence and adoption bracket the life of a young woman seeking a family connection and finding a #MeToo legacy instead.As far as #MeToo thrillers go, “Rose Plays Julie” stands out for its unpredictability.A quiet veterinary student in Dublin, Rose (Ann Skelly), has recently discovered that she was adopted and that her original name was Julie. She goes to London to find her birth mother, Ellen (Orla Brady), a television actress who wants no reminders of the circumstances surrounding Julie’s birth and no connection with her daughter. Ellen’s baby was born of rape, and she had asked that there be no further contact with Julie after the adoption.“Rose Plays Julie,” written and directed by Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor, frames its sexual trauma as an intergenerational one. It contemplates the double lives of women through the ideas of outer success and inner anguish, as well as the trope of the naïve girl versus the seductive avenger.Just as Ellen plays a character for her day job, Rose “plays” Julie — costumed with a bobbed wig — when she eventually tracks down her biological father, Peter (Aidan Gillen), a famed archaeologist who repeats his pattern of sexual abuse with Rose. Her disguise is not necessary, since Peter does not know her name or that she even exists. The “Julie” identity provides both a shield against her mother’s trauma and a vessel to contain it. Her actions present a thought-provoking interplay of pain and self-preservation.But this device can sometimes work against the story, too. Amid the lush greenery of the setting, the atmosphere is perpetually bone-chilling — complete with an ominously high-pitched score — making the film seem distant and difficult to fully embrace. Even with its unusual approach to exacting delayed revenge, “Rose Plays Julie” remains just a little too cold and calculating.Rose Plays JulieNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. On virtual cinemas and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More