Desierto [2015]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB ()  RogerEbert.com (2 Stars)  AVClub (B-)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
FilmAffinity.com/es listing*
SensaCine listing*

CinePremiere.com.mx (J. Oliva) review*
El Pais (L.B. Beauregard) review*
Excelsior.com.mx (S. Franco) review*

aVoir-aLire.com (N. Euler) review*
Slant Magazine (C. Dillard) review
The Guardian (J. Hoffman) review
The Hollywood Reporter (T. McCarthy) review
Variety (J. Chang) review

CNS/USCCB () review
Los Angeles Times (K. Walsh) review
RogerEbert.com (P. Sobczynski) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review


Desierto [2015 [IMdb] [FA.es]*[SC]* (directed and screenplay cowritten by Jonás Cuarón [IMDb] [FA.es]*[SC]* along with Mateo Garcia [IMDb] [SC]* is a very simple / straight-forward thriller, but IMHO it certainly works:

Moises (played by Gael García Bernal) and Adela (played by Alondra Hidalgo) begin the film as random people, presumably mostly Mexicans, in the back of a random "delivery truck" -- in other days the truck could have been carrying fruit to market, this day it was carrying people North to a deserted spot along the U.S.:Mexican border.

Well the truck breaks down, still "some clicks" South of the border and then not necessarily at the most optimal spot.  One of the young (maybe in his late teens / early twenties) "coyotes" asks the Boss "Lobo" (meaning wolf): "Isn't this the spot where sometime back ...?"  No matter, there's "a schedule" to maintain.  Now "chinga..." the truck's broken down (and will have to be fixed ... or abandoned).  So Lobo has "other" more business / logistical "concerns" on his mind.  This will have to do ...

On the other side of the border is a swilling Jack Daniels straight out of the bottle (while driving ...)  "Minuteman" named "Sam" (played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan) in a beat-up pick-up truck, small Confederate flag flapping off of the antenna, trusted Dog and Rifle (with a BIG telescopic sight) at his side.  He's driven out to the Border to "shoot some rabbits" and, well, maybe a Mexican or two ...

When he runs into the 15 or so already quite exhausted / dehydrated and at least partly _lost_ Mexicans in Moises / Adela's group, well, it seems BOTH "like an invasion" ("My God, THEY just keep coming ..." he says to himself) AND ... "a turkey shoot" as he methodically picks them-off one-by-one on the open Desert plain with the precision (and less forethought) of American Sniper [2014].

12-13 of the Mexican "illegals" "drop" (die...) quite quickly.  So soon it's just Moises and Adela vs "Sam and his Dog."  The rest of the story / movie follows ...

Okay, A LOT OF (NORTH) AMERICANS will not like this movie, and a LOT OF OTHERS will be disturbed by it.

Is it _really_ THIS BAD?  Well ... I invite Readers here to google a stunning award-winning documentary called Cartel Land [2015], which is about vigilante groups on _both sides_ of the U.S. Mexican border (in Mexico they're called "auto-defensas" and these groups exist there to "take on the drug cartels").  On both sides of the border, these groups justify their existences by saying that they've only "taken up arms" to do what their respective governments have "thus far failed to do."

Yes, the current film here is (still) an exaggeration.  BUT Cartel Land [2015] suggests that we're FAR CLOSER to this reality than most of us would think.

A very disturbing story ...


* Reasonably good (sense) translations of non-English webpages can be found by viewing them through Google's Chrome browser. 

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Queen of Katwe [2016]

MPAA (PG)  CNS/USCCB (A-II)  RogerEbert.com (3 Stars)  AVClub (B)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (K. Jensen) review
Los Angeles Times (M. Phillips) review
RogerEbert.com (B. Tallerico) review
AVClub (K. Rife) review


Queen of Katwe [2016] (directed by Mira Nair, screenplay by William Wheeler, based on the ESPN Article and book [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] by Tim Crothers [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] [IMDb]) is a nice, uplifting, family friendly (Disney sponsored) movie about Phiona Mutesi [wikip] (played in the film by Madina Nalwanga) a young chess prodigy from the impoverished Katwe neighborhood of Kampala, Uganda.  Call it a "Rocky Story of the Mind" ;-)

Phiona, about 10-11 when the story began, was growing-up destined to remain illiterate, selling corn at the local vegetable market with her widowed mom Nakku Harriet (played by Lupita Nyong'o), an older sister named Layla (or Night) (played by Taryn Kyaze) and two brothers Brian (played by Martin Kabanza) about her age and Richard (played by Yvan Jacobo and later by Nicolas Nevesque) definitely younger.  

Phiona's and Brian's lives change when Robert Katende (played by David Oyelowo) a local (though, one surmises, still "minor league") former soccer star enters their lives.  His soccer playing days largely over, and though with a engineering degree, nevertheless still unable to find a job in that field (and with a wife and family of his own to take care of) he took a job as a leader in a local Christian "sports outreach" ministry.  Interestingly enough, he was _not_ peddling soccer so much as ... chess, which the Ministry had identified as perhaps providing "better skills for life" than simply physical sport.  It was Brian, of course, who was initially both more recruited and more interested in Robert Katende's program, BUT ... it was Phiona who really took to chess like a fish in water ...

She becomes VERY, VERY GOOD ... and Readers here please understand that SHE BECAME A COMPETITIVE even CHAMPION CHESS PLAYER _even before_ she could Read.  Of course, as she got better, learning to Read, getting schooling became progressively more essential ... and the reason WHY she and her siblings could not read beforehand was because her mother simply could not afford to send them to school.  So Katende hed to help their mother find a way ...

This all becomes a LOVELY story and one that I suspect that MOST OF US / OUR FAMILIES could relate to. 

My own grandmother ended her schooling at 6th grade, when her (Czech) parents pulled her out of school to take care of her then sick mother (who nevertheless managed to live for some 35 years afterwards).  Then after a few years after my grandmother got married to her husband, my grandfather, he came down with tuberculosis (this during the Great Depression).  So she took care of my dad and my aunt (with help of her mother-in-law) running a small corner convenience store on a random street in Prague, getting up every day at 4 AM ... TO GO TO THE VEGETABLE MARKET to get fresh produce to sell then at her store afterwards.  Yes her 6th grade education limited the horizons of a good part of her life.  But she was more than this.  With a 6th grade education, she knew ALL THE WORDS to ALL OF THE ARIAS to all the Operas (in Czech of course ;-) that she'd hear on the radio each day ;-).   And she could sing some of them quite well ;-).  And my dad (and his cousin) became the first in my dad's family to make it to college as did then EVERY ONE OF HER GRANDCHILDREN.  And among her GRAND CHILDREN we could probably staff a small University department somewhere WITH ALL THE PhD's THAT WE NOW HAVE AMONG US ;-)

But ALL OF US STILL REMEMBER / LOVE our GRANDMOTHER (and her generation) whose work / sacrifices made _our lives_ what they are today.  And I do believe that almost EVERY FAMILY COULD HAVE A SIMILAR STORY TO SHARE.

So Phiona could have grown-up in an impoverished section of Kampala, but her story is easily relatable to children and families across the globe.

WHAT A WONDERFUL and VERY UPLIFTING STORY ;-)


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The Age of Shadows (orig. Mil-jeong) [2016]

MPAA (UR would be R)  RogerEbert.com (3 Stars)  AVClub (B+) Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars) 

IMDb listing
Naver.com listing*
AsianWiki listing

Chosun Llbo review*
Dong A Llbo review*

Variety (J. Weissberg) review 
The Hollywood Reporter (D. Young) review
RogerEbert.com (B. Tallerico) review 
AV Club (I. Vishnevetsky) review

The Age of Shadows (orig. Mil Jeong [2016] [IMDb] [AW] [Nvkr]*(written and directed by Jee-woon Kim [IMDb] [AW] [Nvkr]* is a movie that should be(come) required viewing for a fair number of World War II history buffs.  Why?  Because it certainly offers a fascinating (and indigenous Korean) view into the War (actually into the set-up of the War, even pre-Manchuria) in the Pacific.  The film reminds us that future War in the Pacific actually began arguably BEFORE the beginning of even World War I with the 1910 Japanese Occupation of Korea.

Set largely in Japanese-occupied Seoul of the 1920s, the film portrays a city of Casablanca [1942]-esque intrigue where, yes, under pressure (often by torture) Resistance leaders (as captured) could sometimes be broken and at other times be bought, but where the Japanese occupiers found even the loyalties of even their Collaborators could never be really trusted.  Taking a phrase from The Big Lebowski [1998] among the occupied Koreans "Everybody was in bed with everybody else," that is to say that the loyalties / connections between them were so "complex" / "opaque" to outsiders that the occupying Japanese could _never really know_ what was really going on "below them."   

And so it was, the film begins with a Korean resistance fighter cornered by Korean collaborating police official named Lee Jung-Chool (played by Kang-ho Song [IMDb] [AW] [Nvkr]*) and "supported" by a force of  several hundred Japanese soldiers.  The orders were to take him peacefully.  BUT ... neither the Korean resistance fighter, nor the several hundred Japanese soldiers seem to want to go down that path.  The Korean resistance fighter was willing to die a martyr's death, and the several hundred Japanese soldiers dozens jumping, in formation, from roof top to roof top as they chased him, were more than willing to oblige him.  ONLY the Korean collaborating police official seemed to want to keep him alive.  THE QUESTION BECOMES ... WHY?  Right from the start, it does not seem that his reason was simply "to bring him in" (so that he could be tortured by the Japanese to betray the rest of his group).  Neither did it seem realistic that Lee Jung-Chool was a disguised Korean patriot who had infiltrated of the Japanese security system.  Instead, probably the best explanation for his _choice_ to try to "follow orders" here WAS TO KEEP THAT KOREAN RESISTANCE FIGHTER ALIVE ... that is to say, NOT WANTING TO SEE _ANOTHER_ GOOD KOREAN SOUL "DIE FOR HIS COUNTRY."

That's a good part of the insight / complexity of the film: even the "Collaborators" were were not (all) necessarily Evil.  To some extent, perhaps even a good extent, they were "patriots of a different sort" ... seeing that confronting Japan _openly_ was "a lost cause."  Instead, there were folks like this both objectively and nominally collaborating police official, trying keep the few brave(r) Koreans _alive_ to, in effect, _outlast_ the Japanese occupation.

MY FAMILY CAME FROM A "SMALL (often occupied) COUNTRY" AS WELL -- the Czech part of Czechoslovakia.  I totally get this reasoning ... [1] [2] [3] [4]

But, of course, there _wasn't_ just a "huddling mass" of Koreans in Seoul at the time, just trying to "outlast the occupation" (which _no one_ at the time could have known would ever end, much less, in their lifetimes).  There were  _the brave ones_ who did try to more openly resist.  And the film is about this Korean collaborating police official being tasked by his Japanese overlords, and more specifically by his Japanese Superior named Hashimoto (played by Tae-Goo Um [IMDb] [AW] [Nvkr]*), to penetrate a cell of this Resistance.  Okay, he's tasked to do this.  But after penetrating this group of young, idealistic Korean patriots, could he really turn them in?   But then that was his job and if he did so, he himself stood _to pay_ for his regained moral stance.  How then to navigate this labyrinth of awful options?

Dear Readers, you should be getting the picture ...

It all makes for an excellent if perhaps, at times, slow moving _ASIAN_ film about "life under World War II-era occupation."


* Foreign language webpages are most easily translated using Google's Chrome Browser. 

** To load Websites from South and East Asia in a timely fashion, installation of ad-blocking software is often required.
 
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Mirzya [2016]

MPAA (UR would be PG-13)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
FilmiBeat.com listing

Access Bollywood (K. Gibson) review

Hindustan Times (R. Vats) review
The Indian Express (S. Gupta) review 
Times of India (M. Iyer) review


Mirzya [2016] [IMDb] [FiBt] (directed by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra [IMDb] [FiBt] screenplay by Gulzar [IMDb]) is a visually (and audibly) spectacular Indian Epic that combines pre-Colonial / Silk-Road Era India, sixteenth century Shakespeare and contemporary Bollywood.  Along with last year's Bajirao Mastani [2015] which I honestly thought was one of the best technically and consequential thematically films, anywhere, of last year I would recommend current film to any Westerner seeking to see what Indian cinema is capable of these days.

At its heart, the film is a truly TIMELESS love story between two doomed "star crossed lovers" that plays out in both Mogul / Silk Road times and in the current day.   The ancient story is portrayed on murals in a dusty-midsized town somewhere reasonably near to the current India-Pakistan border.  The current one, plays out in the same town of today, 'cept, of course, none of the people involved are aware of this until its end.  At the end of the film, the two more current lovers (played by Harshvardhan Kapoor [IMDb] [FiBt] and Saiyami Kher [IMDb] [FiBt]) are immortalized in a new mural where though dressed in recognizably traditional Indian garb, motorcycles replace horses.

Indian reviewers (above), have lamented -- "Okay, the film's visually spectacular, but ... that's just it, it's _just_ eye candy."  And yes, they kinda have a point, but HOW BEAUTIFUL IT IS.  And when one's talking about A TIMELESS (LOVE) STORY ... the imagery is probably more important than the words.  Honestly, a visually / audibly spectacular film that _could_ make a lot of American viewers rethink their general aversions to subtitles.  Here, honestly, "the words don't really matter." 

Great film!


** To load Websites from South and East Asia in a timely fashion, installation of ad-blocking software is often required.

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The Girl on the Train [2016]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (O)  RogerEbert.com (1 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (C+)  Fr. Dennis (2 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Los Angeles Times (J. Chang) review
RogerEbert.com (C. Lemire) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review


The Girl on the Train [2016] (directed by Tate Taylor, screenplay by Erin Cressida Wilson based on the novel [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] by Paula Hawkins [wikip] [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] [IMDb]) is a well acted and _fun_ (it must have been a blast for the actors/actresses to get-into / play their roles) if DARK suburban melodrama -- call it "Real (or REALLY, REALLY DRUNK / FLAWED) Housewives of New York's Westchester County" where honestly _no character_ comes out a hero / heroine. 

Rachel (played marvelously by Emily Blunt) a late 30s-40ish former Westchester Co. wife begins the film honestly not knowing what had hit her (and 10-15 minutes into the film, she _literally_ gets hit in the head by someone or something).  She had been married, okay not particularly happily -- she had thought the main problem had been that she and her husband Tom (played by Justin Theroux) had had trouble having kids (and oh, yes, and she had an obvious/awful drinking problem).  But now, a year plus after her divorce, she was reduced to spending her days (and her alimony payments) riding the commuter train, back and forth -- all day, everyday -- between the lovely suburban suburban town where she _once lived_ and the City, her/Tom's former house visible from the train.  HE still lived there with HIS new wife, Anna (played again wonderfully, somewhat cluelessly / jealously by Rebecca Furguson), and his/Anna's baby. 

Who would do that??  Ride by one's old house / old life, all day, everyday, drinking the whole time vodka from a slurpee cup with a straw?  Well, someone who honestly "didn't know what hit her" in life. 

Well, as Rachel's ridden the train by her (former) house, each day, everyday, in her alcohol blurred haze, she spotted and "comes to know" from a necessarily rather creepy, distance ... a couple that had moved into a house two doors down from her old house.  THEY seemed so happy.  THEY seemed to have the loving affectionate marriage (his arm ever gently around her) that SHE, Rachel, never really had, and now -- divorced, from the man, Tom, who SHE, Rachel, had loved but who somehow never loved her, or (she feared) perhaps she had disappointed (first by not being able to have kids, and then by her drinking -- SHE, Rachel, feared she would _never have_.

Well, ONE DAY as Rachel's passing the her former house, in her usual alcohol blurred haze, and looking toward the house of her neighbors with their perfect marriage, she spots the wife (played by Haley Bennett) on the porch with a man's arm affectionately around her, 'cept ... HE'S NOT THAT WOMAN'S HUSBAND. 

Stunned, when Rachel arrives on the commuter train in the city, she gets off, goes to a bar, and after _a few more drinks_ DECIDES that SHE'S going to straighten that woman out!  So ... by now barely able to stand / walk drunk, Rachel takes the train one more time to her old suburban home town, gets off the train at the station, walks toward the street where she used to live, to head toward the house of that woman and STRAIGHTEN HER OUT.  She spots said woman, in a jogging suit, passing under the underpass that she needs to pass through to get to her former / that woman's homes.  Rachel calls out ... "HEY!"  Angry and drunk, Rachel even calls her a rather strong name! ...

THE LAST THAT Rachel remembers ... is walking up on the side of said underpass that she would have taken to get to her former and that other woman's house.  AND THEN ... nothing.  When she wakes up,  she's clearly hit her head and had been bleeding.  Worse, the woman that she wanted to talk to / straighten-out had gone missing since, And ... a few days later, the police come looking to "talk to Rachel" ...

The rest of the movie ensues ;-)

Okay, the story runs like an even darker (R-appropriate) version of something that one would expect on the Lifetime Channel, but IMHO, it honestly worked ;-)  And again, I would imagine that _everybody involved_ really enjoyed playing their "quite messed up" roles. 

NOBODY is a hero / heroine in this film, but honestly, almost everybody will probably feel sorry for this woman Rachel, who, yes, "had her issues," but deserved so much better than this.  A great / and even "fun" if often quite sad / anguished film ;-).


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The Birth of a Nation [2016]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  Every Movie Has A Lesson (4 Stars) RogerEbert.com (2 Stars)  AVClub (B)  Fr. Dennis (1 Star)

IMDb listing

Variety - Essay by the surviving sister of a woman who accused the film's makers Parker and Celestin of raping her while unconscious while they were all in college 17 years ago.

BET.com (E. Diaz) article on the controversy

Ebony.com - op-ed piece by the film's costar Aunjanue Ellis

CNS/USCCB (M. Mulderig) review 
RogerEbert.com (M. Zoller Seitz) review
AV Club (A.A. Dowd) review
Every Movie Has A Lesson (D. Shanahan) review


The Birth of a Nation [2016] (directed and screenplay by Nate Parker, story by Nate Parker and Jean McGianni Celestin) is one multi-leveled tragedy: 

The film is about the 1831 Nat Turner Revolt arguably the African American equivalent of the Jewish 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising hence a story that DEFINITELY DESERVES TO BE TOLD and RETOLD.

The film is ALSO a LONG OVERDUE AFRICAN-AMERICAN MADE RESPONSE to the shockingly LIBELOUS / RACIST yet somehow still considered "classic" film The Birth of a Nation [1915] (by D.W. Griffith) that casts the Ku Klux Klan as the defenders of "all that is decent" and "white womanhood" against _crazed lecherous black-men_ who "otherwise" would have "taken over the South" if not for the Klan "righteously" (and VIOLENTLY / BRUTALLY ...) "stepping in." 

Yet, what a tragedy then that Parker and Celestin (accused though ultimately acquitted of raping a drunk / unconscious woman while all three were in college) decided to put it upon themselves to first make THIS FILM to begin with (could not, honestly, any number of other African American film-makers have made it instead?) and THEN _basing_ NAT TURNER'S MOTIVATION for organizing this famous Slave Rebellion ON _THE FICTIONALIZED_ RAPE OF HIS WIFE?   While _certainly_ African American women were _routinely raped_ (NO DOUBT, NONE AT ALL) during the Period of Slavery in this country, there _is_ no _historical record_ suggesting that Nat Turner's wife had indeed been raped in this way.

As a result, one can not but sympathize with the sister of the woman who had accused the film's makers, Parker and Celistin, of raping her, when she wrote recently in a piece on the matter in Variety:

"As her sister, the thing that pains me most of all is that in retelling the story of the Nat Turner slave revolt, they invented a rape scene. The rape of Turner’s wife is used as a reason to justify Turner’s rebellion. This is fiction. I find it creepy and perverse that Parker and Celestin would put a fictional rape at the center of their film, and that Parker would portray himself as a hero avenging that rape.  Given what happened to my sister, and how no one was held accountable for it, I find this invention self-serving and sinister, and I take it as a cruel insult to my sister’s memory.  I think it’s important for people to know Nat Turner’s story. But people should know that Turner did not need rape to justify what he did. Parker and Celestin did not need to add that to Turner’s story to make him more sympathetic... I will wait for a true version of this story to be told — one that respects history and does not re-exploit my sister. When she was 18 years old and incapacitated, Nate Parker and Jean Celestin had power over her. They abused that power, and they continue to wield that power to this day."

Sigh ... 1 Star.


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Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life [2016]

MPAA (PG)  CNS/USCCB ()  RogerEbert.com (2 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (C-)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB () review
Los Angeles Times (K. Walsh) review
RogerEbert.com (S. Wloszczyna) review
AVClub (J. Hassenber) review


Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life [2016] (directed by Steve Carr, screenplay by Chris Bowman, Hubbel Palmer and Kara Holden based on the book [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] by James Patterson [wikip] [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] [IMDb], Chris Tebbetts [wikip] [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] [IMDb] and Laura Park [GR] [Amzn]) is a fun if slanted (naturally against "the Man") Ferris Bueller [1986]-like diversion about a contemporary American suburban Junior High / Middle School (from Hell) where the chief "devil", Principal Dwight (played by Andrew Daly), clearly found the current test-score-driven "state of affairs" in the American school system to his liking. 

Indeed, some 10 years back he published a school hand-book with at least 86 rules (or was it over 130 ...) that he enforced without exception to produce a school full of autonomons, who unsurprisingly tested _really, really well_ ;-).  The motivational slogans in the hallways included: "Assimilate," "Listen to your Teachers," "Authority is Good."  (Well kids, please do listen to your teachers, but teachers / principal please be well rounded / empathetic _enough_ to be worthy of being listened to ;-). 

Of course, in this film Principal Dwight (no doubt named after Eisenhower, though _he_ actually was _very liked by his troops_ ... it was MacArthur who was more of the "prima dona" ...)

Anyway, into this little "suburban North Korea"  falls a seventh grader named Rafe (played wonderfully by Griffen Gluck ;-).  (Seriously folks AS A COMPANION PIECE, if you'd like to see a remarkable documentary about _an actual otherwise cute-as-a button_ little North Korean girl who _really_ was going to a true "school from Hell" (in North Korea) find / rent Under the Sun [2015] available for streaming on vudu.com. It's WELL WORTH THE VIEW).

Well ... Rafe had some issues.  His little "Irish twin brother" (15 months apart) died of cancer a couple of years back, and his parents (mom, played in this film again quite excellently by Lauren Graham) broke-up over the death.  As such, Rafe had retreated into his own world for a couple of years, doodling quite creatively into a special notebook of his, and ... as such found himself _not performing well in school_ enough so that at story's start, he had been expelled already from two schools and this "Academy" again "from Hell" seemed to be "his last stop."

So ... soon it's "game on" ... Principal Dwight vs this  quite sensitive / creative 12 year old, half-orphan named Rafe.  Who's gonna win?  Well ... guess ;-) ...

Folks, this is a cute if more-or-less obviously slanted film.  And I do have to say that BOTH of the Principals that I worked with in my years at Annunciata Parish on Chicago's South East Side WERE VERY NICE PEOPLE and while _yes_ there were some rules, WE ALSO HAD A REMARKABLE ART PROGRAM and OUR SCHOOL'S KIDS ALWAYS DID REALLY WELL both at Annunciata and IMHO even more remarkably AFTER THEY LEFT.  There were years when _our entire graduating class_ went on to make the Honor Rolls of EVERY SINGLE HIGH SCHOOL that our kids went-on to attend.  Honestly, this was quite a remarkable achievement ... and honestly most of our kids left our school with good memories / smiling ;-)

That said, this was a fun / cute film and does ask (ADULTS above all) the question: Where do we want to put our priorities? in simply rules or in training our kids for life?

All in all, a quite good / excellent children's / family film.


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