Quick takes on Transformers One and other films

Across the River and Into the Trees is one of those lowkey, subtle movies that I would guess a lot of people would have a hard time getting into, myself included on most days, but it must have caught me on a good day because I loved it. Liev Schreiber gets to show a more quiet side that he is often tasked with, as Richard, a US army colonel in Venice after World War II. He says he’s there to go duck hunting, but really he is visiting the site where his son was killed by Nazis during the war. He is also haunted by a battle where his entire company of young men (boys, really) were killed. Though he was only following orders, the event has stayed with him and is always near the forefront of his thoughts, more so now than ever, as Richard has been diagnosed with a terminal disease. In Venice to make peace with himself and say his goodbyes, he unexpectedly meets Renata. Renata is from a long-storied family in the area, with a name that goes back 600 years, but at this point the family only has its name left. Her mother has arranged for Renata to be married to a wealthy man to get some cash flow into the family once again. Based on a later-life book by Ernest Hemingway (I’ve read some of his, but not this one), I may have to look it up and put it on my reading list. My estimation of the film went up as it went along, so definitely stick with it to the end. Schreiber gets to show that he has a range much wider than he usually gets to show. ★★★★

Man, I did not get Family Portrait at all. Thank goodness it is only about 70 minutes long because any longer and I would have been mad for sticking through to the end. It begins in a park, where a large extended family is gathering for the day. They get together yearly to take a family photo for Christmas. As they gather, there’s this ominous drone sound muting out the vocals, so we can’t hear what they are saying as they meet up, and it creates this sort of foreboding feeling. Great setting, so I thought I was in for something good. Nope, that’s the highlight of the movie. It meanders along from there, as the central character gets upset with her family because she wants to get the photo taken so she can move on with her day with her boyfriend, but no one seems to be in a rush to do it. Later, the family learns that a cousin died of a mysterious virus (the film takes place in the early days of COVID) and the mom in the family goes missing, much to the angst of the young woman trying to get this photo taken and done. There’s a weird scene where she jumps in the lake for no reason that I could tell, and the missing mom is never resolved anyway. Not sure what I watched, seemed like it was a reality show where cameras were set up to record mundane conversations. If I wanted to hear people talk about how to make proper coffee, I wouldn’t watch a movie about it, I’d just attend my own only family reunion. ★

Rob Peace is based on a book (The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, by Jeff Hobbs) which is a biography about the eponymous man. The film follows his life from a young boy, where Rob (as an adult, played by Jay Will) is being raised in a rougher neighborhood by his separated parents. His dad (unnamed in the film, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, who also wrote and directed) seems like a good guy but he has a past in dealing drugs, and Rob’s mom (Mary J Blige) wants nothing but for her son to escape his trappings. Rob is very bright, next level kind of smarts, and his mom knows this is his ticket out. His future is put at risk when his dad is arrested and convicted of murdering two women in his apartment building, something the man vehemently denies. He is sentenced to life in prison, and implores Rob not to give up on him, to find a way to get him out of prison. It’s a lot of pressure to put on Rob from a young age, who, as he gets older, works 2-3 jobs along with his mother, to enable to send him to a private high school and then on to Yale when good scholarships come his way. In college, it doesn’t get any easier for Rob, and he resorts to selling marijuana in order to fund lawyers for his dad and, later, expensive cancer treatments when his dad gets brain cancer. Rob overcomes, at first, by graduating, but being found out by his advisor shortly before graduation prevents him from getting a letter of recommendation to grad school, so he returns to his high school to teach and inspire. Hoping to turn his neighborhood around, Rob and friends start buying up vacant buildings to restore and flip, but then the housing crisis of 2008 hits, and they are left with nothing. Rob once again turns to dealing, not to enrich himself, but to help his neighbors from losing their homes and investments. It does not end well. Really strong performances all around, and while you’d think a movie like this would be a bit too on-the-nose, it manages to flip the script on the viewer a couple times and keeps you engaged. It made me angry, seeing a man like Robert who could have changed the world, resorted to doing the only thing society allowed him to do. ★★★½

I love a good apocalyptic movie, and it’s right there in the title of Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End, a Spanish language film. But even my love of the genre couldn’t save this one for my tastes. It starts out well enough, with rumors of a new virus causing people to get sick. So soon after COVID, the residents don’t really bat an eye when talk of quarantines starts up, but when the virus mutates and a new variant makes the incubation period change from days to minutes, the situation gets serious fast. Manel is the main character, a single man mourning the death of his wife a year ago in a car accident. When things start to look bad, the government rounds up residents to transport them to evacuation centers. Manel hides, rightfully fearing being around a crowd like that, and stays in his apartment after everyone leaves. He finds a friend in an old lady across the street, who was too weak to make it to the buses, and the two look after each other while Manel goes out daily, breaking into houses in the empty streets looking for food. When a radio signal tells them survivors are gathering in the Canary Islands, Manel wants to go for it. His new partner, fearing she’ll hold him back, commits suicide, freeing Manel to make the dangerous trip. It was good until about this point, which had some light zombie action and some decent thrills, but the movie really started to drag in the second half. Even as a zombie film/show lover, you’ve got to bring something new to the table to keep my interest, and this movie offers little. The final half is same old/same old and even sets up for a sequel, which I will definitely pass on. ★½

Transformers One is a computer animated origin story for those wonderful old transforming robots. Long before Optimus Prime and Megatron were rivals on Earth, they were Orion Pax and D-16, best buddies on Cybertron. The two are miners, digging deep into the planet for the life sustaining mineral Energon. Miners are those robots born without transformation cogs, thus they are not able to transform, making them the lowest tier in the societal rungs on the planet. Orion Pax has been digging through archives for information on the old Primes, the former rulers of the planet before its current ruler, Sentinel Prime, in hopes of finding some way to help their plight and end the long war with the invading Quintessons. In searching for answers, Orion Pax and D-16, along with fellow friends B-127 (future Bumblebee) and Elita-1 discover that Sentinel has been working for the Quintessons this whole time. He gives the mined Energon to them, and it was he who double-crossed the Primes and later devised the plan to remove the cogs from some robots, setting up miners to do his bidding. They all want to put an end to Sentinel’s tyrannical rule, but Orion Pax and D-16 have very differing views about how that should happen, leading to what ultimately lays the groundwork for the future wars between Optimus Prime and Megatron, and those that follow each of them in their pursuits. It’s a very fine movie, with lots of humor and an engaging plot for kids and adult fans alike. If you grew up on the Transformers cartoons of the 80s like myself, you’ll find plenty to like. ★★★½

• TV series recently watched: Bad Monkey (season 1), Cobra Kai (season 5.2)
• Book currently reading: Breaking the Dark by Lisa Jewell