Alone With Her Dreams is a very touching film out of Italy about a girl, Lucia, who spends a year with her Grandmother Maria in the 1960s (though you’d never guess the year by the look and feel of the rural community). Lucia’s parents have been struggling to find work in the tiny village, and so have emigrated to France for jobs. Low on finances, they’ve arranged for Lucia to stay with her Grandmother while they get their footing. It is a year that will change Lucia’s life. Maria is very old-school and strict, and there’s a family spat that has been going on for a generation with her sister Pina. Maria will not explain the rift with Lucia, only telling her that she needs to stay away from that side of the family. Over the course of the year, Maria will make her first real friend, be exposed to love, and face a terrible tragedy that only her grandmother can really understand. The film is full of emotion and runs the gamut, you’ll feel it all throughout the short 90 minute run. Very heartfelt film about the power of family and love. ★★★★½
Miss Juneteenth is about a mother preparing her 15-year-old daughter for the local pageant, from which the winner wins a full ride college scholarship. Turquoise is a single mother, and she won the pageant herself many years ago, but had to drop out of college when she became pregnant, and has been working at a bar to make ends meet. Like most parents, she wants her daughter Kai to have a better life than her, and is pinning her hopes on this golden ticket to college. Unfortunately, Kai really isn’t into it, and would rather go into dance, which is her passion. Plenty of hurdles exist for Turquoise in getting her daughter through the show: her alcoholic mother who is a holy roller one day and a drunk the next; her baby daddy who’s in and out of jail, and always following a get-rich-quick scheme; and just the limited opportunities for people of color anyway. The film features strong performances by Nicole Beharie and Alexis Chikaeze in the two leads, but the rest of the cast is on the weaker side. It relies on its story, which honestly isn’t too different from many other down-on-your-luck kind of tales. I thought it was decent, but I also thought that if the single mom was white, this movie would’t have gotten nearly the acclaim. Yes, I understand that’s the whole point, but I just think on its merits alone, the movie is just a bit better than “ok.” ★★★
I went into Another Round expecting a comedy of sorts, and while there are plenty of funny moments, it gets dark and uncomfortable, which made it for me, who is generally not a comedic film lover, much more enjoyable. It follows a quartet of friends, all teachers at the same school, entering their middle age years. Their jobs and private lives have taken on a routine that borders on boring, and you can tell it in their lackluster efforts with their students. Over dinner on a guys’ night out, they begin discussing a psychiatrist who has theorized that the human being is at optimal performance, both professionally and privately, when they are carrying themselves at a .05% blood alcohol content. The friends decide to test that hypothesis. They begin carrying around alcohol in their water jugs and cups, drinking on the job at school during the day, and keeping themselves honest with handheld breathalyzers. And at first, things go really well. More relaxed, they morph into exciting teachers again, engaging their students and families in ways they haven’t in a long time. But it doesn’t last. They start to stretch upwards, from .05%, to .08%, and higher. Viewers, knowing what is going on, can see the reckless behavior they begin to exhibit, and the fact that they are around children is even more disconcerting. However, as much as I dug the first hour plus, it ran off its rails in the final 30 minutes. The quartet hits a bumpy road, but not all of its due to their drinking, and in fact, being a bit drunk at tough moments is encouraged, even for the underage. It’s a great cast led by Mads Mikkelsen, who I’ve really enjoyed in movies like The Hunt and Arctic, among his many other supporting roles of the last 15 or so years, but the finale killed some of the excitement for me. ★★½
Saw a movie from the Boden and Fleck team lately that got me looking up other stuff they did, and picked this first film of theirs to follow up on. Half Nelson stars Ryan Gosling as Dan, a history teacher and girl’s basketball coach in an inner city school. He’s a good and popular teacher in class, using unconventional methods to reach his students, but his personal life is a wreck. He’s a drug addict, and has unsuccessfully tried rehab before. After a basketball game one evening, a student, Drey (Shareeka Epps), walks in on him doing drugs in the girl’s bathroom. Drey is one of Dan’s better students, and she keeps his secret. She has her own problems at home. Her single mom works long hours, and her older brother is already in jail for dealing drugs. She’s become the prey of a drug dealer, Frank (Anthony Mackie), who was friends with her brother, and wants to get her to start dealing for him now. Dan immediately recognizes Frank’s bad influence, and tries to warn him away, but Drey doesn’t listen. It’s a solid first film from this writer and director team, though the content is better than the delivery. Unfortunately the movie suffers from “young indy filmmaker shaky cam syndrome,” which is a very real thing. But if you can get past the camerawork, it’s a very good picture about two people fighting inner demons and depression, and showing that while people can come from different backgrounds, they can have much the same problems. ★★★
Mortal Kombat is proof, once again, that if you know what you are getting when you go in, even an average movie can be very enjoyable. A reboot of the film series, based on the highly popular video games right out of my childhood (I spent too many hours on the original Mortal Kombat and its first sequel as a teen), the newest film follows MMA fighter Cole Young, who learns about the eponymous tournament, in which he is destined to fight. He joins up with classic characters from the game, including Jax, Sonya Blade, Kano, Liu Kang, and Kung Lao, all under the tutelage of Earth protector Raiden, to train for the upcoming battle. They’ll be facing off against classic enemies Sub Zero, Mileena, Reiko, Nitara, and Kabal, under their own leader Shang Tsung. Anyone who played these games as a kid like me will recognize these names. And yes, Sub Zero’s longtime foe Scorpion will make an appearance. The acting is uneven (the actor playing Sonya Blade is particularly rough), the dialogue is pure cheese, but I bought in from the opening scenes. Being a big fan of those early games helped a ton, and I’m fairly certain that if you never played the games, phrases like “Come over here!”, “Finish him!”, and “Flawless victory!” wouldn’t excite you you at all. But they did for me, and the gratuitous gore and fatalities amped up the fun. Brought be back to my Sega Genesis days (assuming you knew the codes to unlock the blood — remember those days?!). ★★★★
- TV series currently watching: Star Wars The Clone Wars (season 4)
- Book currently reading: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Jons Movie Takes 