Film and TV Reviews and Podcasts
Recorded October 15, 2020: In this episode, Tiny and I review some of the stuff we watched at the 29th Annual Heartland Film Festival! We covered the documentaries 76 Days, In Case of Emergency, Belly of the Beast, and When My Time Comes. We also touch on The Comey Rule, All In: The Fight for Democracy, and more.
Although this brilliant Cold War time bomb thriller has lived in the shadow of Kubrick’s satirical masterpiece Dr. Strangelove for decades, it’s deserving of just as much high praise. The fear and tension at play in Fail Safe is just as palpable and relevant today as it was in 1964. The film provides us with horrific solutions to impossible problems delivered through the vessel of a relatable President who commands our respect immediately. As such, it will leave you with a lot to consider and debate long after you see it.
How does David Byrne follow-up Stop Making Sense, the concert documentary that birthed an entire genre, even if it’s had 36 years to marinate? As the saying goes, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Many of the elements that make Sense such a delight – the boundless joy and energy of everyone onstage, the production value, the musicality – are on display here, and it feels like Byrne hasn’t missed a step in the intervening years. And yet, it’s the moments between the music that sets American Utopia apart from its predecessor. Sense was simply a documentation of a band’s place in time, while Utopia has more on its mind, as Byrne tries to make sense of his place in the world. Sure, Talking Heads had larger ideas on display and made some grand statements with their lyrics, but Sense never aspired to be more than a concert documentary.
Rashida Jones turns in a great performance, but I kept wondering how exactly her character had grown by the end of the film. What does Laura learn about herself by going through these adventures? What does she learn about her father that she didn’t already know? The conclusion wraps up nicely, and it’s played effectively by both Jones and Wayans, but I found myself wondering where the couple goes from there.
Molto Bella takes a tried-and-true premise – a forlorn poet travels abroad where he meets the girl of his dreams, who’s also running from something – and doesn’t really do anything unique with it. The cinematography and the use of locations are great (but when you’re shooting in the Italian countryside, how can it not be?). The chemistry between Paul T.O. Petersen and Andrea von Kampen – as Hal the poet and Josie the folk singer, respectively – is palpable, even when their acting styles feel a little stiff.
It’s hard to imagine modern daily conversations without the ever-present emoji. What emerged after the technological takeover of smartphones as a way to express a wide variety of emotions in a simplistic manner quickly spread outside our phones and became inescapable. Socks, pillows, Happy Meal toys, and bumper stickers are only a sliver of the countless products available that have cashed in on the emoji craze in recent years, with no end in sight. Emojis have largely been viewed as a force for good in the world (we can now order pizza with one simple pizza emoji sent via text message). The “face with tears of joy” emoji was named as Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year in 2015. They’ve even withstood the release of The Emoji Movie in 2017.
Gibney and his team present a compelling and infuriating view of Donald Trump’s antagonistic relationship to science. Totally Under Control paints a vivid picture of how the anti-science views of the Trump administration has contributed to the deaths of over 214,000 Americans and climbing.
What 76 Days achieves through its fly on the wall documenting is to put human faces on the superheroic actions of healthcare workers. It does so with dignity and grace as we watch medical staff in a Wuhan hospital try to stem the flood of horror at their doorstep and the emotional toll it takes on them.
Set among the turbulence of armed conflict in late 1980s Peru, the film is harrowing in the way it compartmentalizes its drama into the character of Georgina and establishes the horrific journey she has ahead of her. Lonely journalist Pedro also has his own painful arc to contend with as he works to uncover what happened to Georgina’s child. The two characters’ arc intertwine and land a little differently, but the message and tragedy of Song Without a Name plays on.
The Outside Story takes a promising conceit – an introverted man must venture out of his comfort zone after locking himself out of his apartment – and stretches it just slightly past the point of wearing out its welcome.
All for My Mother, Małgorzata Imielska’s debut feature out of Poland, is largely comprised of hardships and trauma that befall the lead character Olka. Through her experience in a reformatory with other troubled teens who wish her harm, to a temporary stay with a couple who aren’t as warm and welcoming as they seem, Olka has one simple goal in mind: to reunite with her mother. That’s all she consciously desires, yet it’s not what she truly needs or yearns for beneath the surface. What Olka truly craves is acceptance and a sense of belonging. She is desperate for the stability of family and the journey she finds herself on makes for a heartbreaking and emotional ride. It’s a ride that includes frequent stops as the path she follows becomes more bleak and dour the further she goes.
The power of In Case of Emergency is in the way it documents its subjects in the relative normal era before COVID and then shows us the toll of the global pandemic on their resolve. It acts as a reminder that heroes are constantly working on the frontline of society’s harshest realities and that they deserve to be recognized even when we aren’t facing unprecedented times.
All too often today, we’re more willing to click a button and share a headline or a meme of something we already agree or disagree with in order to affirm our own stance, rather than doing the hard work of understanding the heart of the matter. Sharing memes or news stories that spread the outrage of Cuties without actually knowing the content of the film in question is akin to buying a Ford Pinto because your neighbor just bought one.
Recorded September 22, 2020: In the latest installment of our Ebert’s Great Movies Review Series, our newly promoted recurring co-host Ben Sears joins me to discuss the classic horror/German Expressionist film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (2020) and the Frederico Fellini film 8 ½ (1963) from Ebert’s “Great Movies” list. We also chat about the upcoming Heartland Film Festival,
It’s not often that a film can be simultaneously considered a documentary, a drama, and a comedy, but director Kirsten Johnson somehow manages to achieve that feat with Dick Johnson Is Dead. Movies can be used as a director’s way to put their own personal ideas and experiences out into the world: Truffaut channeled his early adolescence in The 400 Blows; Fellini expressed his struggles with the creative process with 8 ½; and Spike Lee used his experiences with racial injustice for Do the Right Thing. Johnson’s latest is not only a loving tribute to her father, but an examination of the grieving process, even when the aggrieved is still alive.
The Obsessive Viewer 