Brief thoughts on Uncivilized (2020) Brooklyn 2020

Director Michael Lees returns home to Dominica to live in the jungle and off the land for six months. He is looking for something but he isn't sure what. Not long after he goes into the jungle hurricane Maria, a Category 5 storm hits the island and devastated the country. He then uses what he has learned to help rebuild.

Odd mix of films crash together to form a film I'm not quite certain of. The film starts off as a navel gazing search to find one's self. It then veres off into an intriguing discussion about society when Lee talks to a man who has been living off the land for decades. The film then swerves into a pseudo-Discovery Channel  film like Naked And Afraid as we watch Lee learn to live off the land. Then the storm hits and the film becomes and interesting look at the aftermath.

I don't know what I think of the film. I certainly love pieces of it but I don't know if the films all over nature really works. I suspect that if the storm didn't happen the film probably would not have made it to Brooklyn since the before stuff is, largely, nothing we haven't seen before.  The post storm stuff at least takes us into largely unexpected directions, at least as far as the first half of the film is concerned.

There is enough here to make a viewing for the curious worth seeing but I'm not going to give a blanket recommendation.

Joe Bendel on Abe (2019) which hits DVD on Tuesday

If only they had more fusion cuisine at Taba, maybe then there would be peace in the Middle East. Or perhaps not. A thirteen-year-old aspiring chef in Brooklyn tries to bring his mixed Israeli-Palestinian family together with food, but their divisions might be too deep for his culinary efforts to heal, despite some help from Brazil in Fernando Grostein Andrade’s Abe, which hits VOD on Friday.

Abe prefers “Abe,” but his family calls him Abraham, Avraham, Avi, or Ibrahim, depending on which side is doing the talking. His mother and her parents are Jewish Israeli, his paternal grandparents are Palestinian Muslims, and his father is a “plague on both your houses” atheist. As you might guess, family gatherings are super awkward. Frankly, they bicker so much, they never enjoy Abe’s cooking.

For a thirteen-year-old, Abe is pretty good at the basics (or so he thinks), but he needs a bit of coaching when it comes to more ambitious creations. Chico Catuaba is the chef he has in mind to mentor him. The Bahia native once had his own restaurant, but now sells his unique brand of Brazilian-Jamaican fusion cuisine in his pop-up kitchens throughout Brooklyn. Initially, Catuaba is suspicious of Abe and the potential child labor legal problems he might bring, but the young teen’s sincerity wins him over. However, he will make sure Abe pays his dues first, before giving him real kitchen responsibilities.

Andrade’s film boasts a lithe and lively Brazilian soundtrack, featuring co-star Seu Jorge on two tracks (“Imigrantes” and Veloso’s “Meia Lua Inteira”), Tulipa Ruiz on “Sal E Amor,” and musical supervisor Jaques Morelenbaum’s solo cello arrangements of Jobim’s “Brigas Numcas Mais” and “Samba de Uma Noto So.” It sounds fantastic and the food looks delicious, so it is easy to forgive the formulaic aspects of Lameece Issaq & Jacob Kader’s screenplay. In fact, Andrade executes the culinary coming-of-age tale with a light touch, dialing down the obvious clichés and potentially fraught politics as much as possible. Instead, he focuses on the diverse, likable ensemble of characters.

Noah Schnapp from Stranger Things is appealingly energetic and earnest as Abe. However, the perfectly cast Seu Jorge frequently steals the show as Catuaba. Anyone who has seen him perform knows he has serious charisma and a voice that could take work away from James Earl Jones, but he also wields a kitchen knife with authority. As Abe’s parents, Dagmara Dominczyk and Arian Moayed also convincingly look and sound like a loving couple, whose relationship is under strain and stress. As a bonus, the great character actor Mark Margolis adds some crusty flair as Abe’s Jewish grandfather, Benjamin.

Abe is a very nice little movie with a terrific soundtrack. The notion of refracting the Middle Eastern conflict through the microcosm of a Brooklyn family might sound like a ham-fisted, finger-wagging cinematic lecture, but Andrade mostly makes it work, by not forcing it too hard. Recommended for fans of foodie movies and Seu Jorge, Abe hits home video Tuesday.

WE ARE ONE FIlm Fest starts today

The huge world wide WE ARE ONE FILM FESTIVAL hits YouTube  today. They are running a ton of films and director talks all dropping at various points between today and June 7th. They are completely free you just have to go to  either the YouTube page or the festival page. My understanding is the videos will be up until the end of the festival once they go live. All they are asking for is a small donation.

I have been told by the festival that they are not giving the ress early access to the films and that we can just tune in like everyone else. That is not a knock, purely a statement of explanation as to why coverage is going to be in real time and not ahad of the curve. (I am perfectly fine with that because I am working on Hot Docs, Brooklyn and Human Rights Watch as this fest hits)

That said because this is a best of the fests sort of thing we have covered a bunch of the films already. You can click on the links below to see the reviews:

BIRD KARMA
CIRCUS PERSON
CRU-RAW
EGG
EPIC OF EVEREST
THE LIGHT SIDE
MOTORCYCLE DRIVE BY
MY FATHER'S TOOLS
NO MORE WINGS
SHIRAZ: A ROMANCE OF INDIA
TOTO
THROAT SINGING IN KANGIRSUK
WHEN I WRITE IT
WRATH OF SILENCE

I also have banked reviews from the New Directors New Films that didn't happen this spring so I will be posting reviews for MONSTER GOD before June 2 and NASIR before June 6.

Based on my scanning of the slate this looks to be a great fest.

If you want to tune in---

THE SCHEDULE OF POSTING TIMES  AND LIST OF FILMS IS HERE

THE YOUTUBE CHANNEL IS HERE.

And feel free to recommend anything you see because there is a ton of stuff and I may miss it.

Brief thoughts on KINGDOM OF ARCHERS (2020) Brooklyn 2020

Wonderful portrait of the love of archery in the Kingdom of Bhutan. While archery was always part of the culture, the mad love for the sport exploded when after joining the UN in 1971, it was listed as the national sport and everyone took it to heart.

While the film can be a slightly travelogueish PR shill at times,this is largely a great exploration of one countries love of a sort and how that love has changed over the years. The result is a marvelously satisfying portrait of a country, its people and its culture.

You will forgive me if I don't say a great deal about this film because there really isn't a great deal to say. This is 90 minutes with good people. It is a trip to somewhere we have never been and the result is a marvelous viewing experience that will not only entertain but inform.

Highly recommended.

All That I Am (2020) Hot Docs 2020

Emilie's other reaches out to her asking if she wants to move back home. She feels it's time that they begin to heal the damage of the past. Emilie agrees and we watch as she tries to reconnect with her family and move forward away from the darkness that devoured here.

Okay warning up front, this is the story of sexual abuse.. Emilie was abused by her stepfather from when she was six until she was was 12 and her father was sent away.  If you don't want to go into that place then stay away.  I mention this at the fore front because the press material dances around the subject in the short synopsis and knowing how upsetting the subject is I don't want anyone to walk into this film unprepared.

If you want an excellent look at the damage done by sexual abuse look no farther. This look at one woman's battle to come out of the darkness and get her life back is as good as they come. At times painful and uncomfortable the film is ultimately hopeful in that we watch as over time Emilie fights the demons with the help of caring people around her. The fact that we dip into the darkness makes what Emilie achieves all the more happy. Of course the damage is still there. The wounds will never heal, but she is getting to the point where she can have a life outside of the inside of an apartment or house.

I was moved. I'm not going to say I liked the film since this really isn't a film about a subject one likes. What I love is that director Tone Grøttjord-Glenne smartly remains focused on Emilie. We never leave her we never look away. We simply stay with her an observe her as she leaves her foster family, returns to her mother and siblings, deals with her step-dad's release and starts a new chapter in her life. We are there for the ups and downs. We come to like her as well as respect and understand her.

This is an excellent film and highly recommended for anyone who can go into the dark place of sexual abuse.

ALL THAT I AM is screening at Hot Docs Virtual Festival. For information on this film and the festival go here.

Nate Hood's Quarantine Qapsule # 53 Min and Bill [1930] ★★½

Marie Dressler had the kind of face that’s all but vanished from today’s Hollywood, one with lumps and bumps, ridges and wrinkles in all the wrong places. Not that there aren’t unconventionally attractive actors nowadays like Adam Driver or ones who’ll happily ugly themselves up for awards season. But there’s a certain lack of performers who look like they could’ve been plucked from the drunk tank in a police station or yanked from a factory line in a nowhere town. Steve Buscemi was probably the last one before America’s cinematic ugly well dried up, and it’s all the lesser for it.

 Consider Dressler’s performance in George W. Hill’s Min and Bill (1930) for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She plays Min Divot, the wizened proprietor of a dockside inn near a port. A crass, surly, churlish woman, she looks nothing less than a gargoyle as she sneers and glowers at the people around her. When she’s particularly suspicious, she lets her bottom jaw hang open, bearing her bottom teeth like a bulldog readying for an attack. It’s ugliness personified, and it’s all in the service of throwing audiences off-guard. For deep down Min is deeply loving and compassionate.

Min and Bill is a melodramatic weepy in the sacrificial mother mold, similar to Olive Higgins Prouty’s frequently adapted novel Stella Dallas. (Perhaps not coincidentally, both Min and Bill and the first cinematic version of Stella Dallas were penned by Frances Marion, one of Hollywood’s best, most prolific, and most feted early screenwriters.) The film charts her relationship with her adopted daughter Nancy Smith (Dorothy Jordan) who was dropped into her lap at six months old by her self-destructive prostitute mother Bella (Marjorie Rambeau). Min would do anything for that kid, even force her to leave her to attend a nice school so she can make something of herself. Of course Min can’t show that kind of affection openly, so she hides it in angry outbursts when she catches Nancy canoodling with no-good bozos on the docks. It’s a powerful, heart-breaking performance that belongs in a better film.

At only sixty-six minutes, it feels like there’s an entire third of the story missing. How spotty is the pacing? Well, an early boat chase largely predicting the future of action-oriented cinematic grammar feels completely out-of-place despite easily being the film’s highlight.

Erotic Fire of the Unattainable (2020) Brooklyn 2020

Written by actress Gay Walley- though the discussions were improvised - this is the story of a woman in her mid sixties as she navigates her relationships with three men and working on a 3 part novel about love that mirrors her relationships

Full of lots of literary talk both about books but also between the characters this film is very literary and high brow. We are watching very erudite people talk about their lives, thoughts and the things they find interesting. It feels like a romantic riff on My Dinner With Andre.

While there most definitely is a heart beating in the film's chest there is some distance between us and the characters. The problem is the dialog feels like it was worked on and not thought of on the moment, despite according to a final note to the film, that the disalog was improvised. Seeing that flummoxed me because the words are a little too perfect and it kept me distance. At the same time part of me wants to find the circles where people actually converse like this.

Despite not giving myself over to the film completely I am looking forward to seeing the film again, if only to memorize some of the dialog.

Stay At Home Bonus Film: 18 Scary True Scary Storys

Almost two hours of scary "true" stories to keep you up all night

Lewiston (2019) Brooklyn Film Festival 2020

This is the brief review I ran when Lewiston played the Camden International FIlm Festival last year.

Crying out for a feature film version, LEWISTON is a look at Lewiston Maine where a large influx of people from Somalia have relocated to the point that one in six people in the city is now Somali. This is a very good look at the literal black and white existence of the a small town. Highlighting all sorts of issues the film made me want to see more.

For info on the screening go here

INTO THE STORM [EN LA TORMENTA] (2020) Brooklyn 2020

One of the great tragedies of the Brooklyn Film Festival being virtual is that people won't see INTO THE STORM on a big screen. This portrait of  Jhonny, a young man from Peru finding a way out of poverty through surfing has some stunning images. It is also a hell of a film.

If you've been reading Unseen Films for any amount of times you are aware that I have a passion for great surfing films. Going all the way back to the first weeks of the site Unseen has highlighted somes great (nd not so great) surfing films. If one is playing a fest I will review it. When I saw INTO THE STORM was playing Brooklyn I jumped at the chance to see it.

Walking the line between a  portrait of a surfer and a look at the society into which he was born, the film wonderfully manages to be firing on several levels. The film never lets one thread overwhelm the other with the result we are always fully aware of the forces acting on Jhonny, especially in the middle section that concerns a drive by shooting. This isn't your typical surfer dude touring around tale but something much more complex. There are literal life and death stakes.  As a result the film moves us on a much deeper level than most other surfing films because it is more than just pretty pictures but the portrait of a young man trying to just stay alive.

Speaking of pretty pictures INTO THE STORM has some of the best images of surfing I've run across. I have no idea how they got some of the but I was blown away. I don't know of any other surfing films that look this good.  The cinematography is so incredible that you don't notice or care about the frequent use of drones.

INTO THE STORM is a great film. Easily one of the best films at the Brooklyn Film Festival it will make you think and feel and want to see it again.

There are more episodes of "This is Not a Story About..." 📻 Forgotten stories of film history by Ted Geoghegan

Film director, producer, raconteur, and international man of mystery Ted Geoghegan has turned out more episodes of his podcast THIS IS NOT A STORY ABOUT. After not talking about Disney and Bruce Lee he is back with episodes not on Bela Lugosi, MGM and  Friday The 13th

As I said in my original piece this is exactly like sitting in a room and listening to Ted hold the floor and spin out tales. And since I have been there and watched Ted talk I swear to you this is the way it is, except if you were in the room with him you could ask him questions which will have him go off on a tangent, and then give you dirty looks for messing him up.

Yea this is as good as socially responsible movie podcasting gets short of putting Ted in an hazmat suit and having him over for dinner.

You can find all the episodes at the following places

iTunes/Apple Podcasts
BUZZSPROUT
SOUNDCLOUD
SPOTIFY

Making Waves: New Romanian Cinema U.S. Tour Now Available to Stream Online

New York, May 26, 2020 — Making Waves: New Romanian Cinema is proud to present a 15- film selection from the expansive retrospective, The Romanians: 30 Years of Cinema Revolution, now available to stream nationally in the U.S.. The retrospective launched to great acclaim in November at New York’s Film Forum, and is the largest series dedicated to Romanian film presented in the U.S. to date. A selection of the program was scheduled to tour in more than seven U.S. cities, beginning at the University of California at Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), but was put on hold due to theater closures from the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, in response to the unprecedented public health crisis, Making Waves is working with cultural partners across the U.S. to make the films available online to a national audience.

The streaming edition of the retrospective encompasses 15 cinematic works including seminal, award-winning films such as Luxury Hotel by Dan Pița, winner of Venice Film Festival Silver Lion; The Death of Mr Lăzărescu by Cristi Puiu, winner of Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival; Videograms of a Revolution by Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujică; Cannes Film Festival Un Certain Regard: Best Actress-winner The Way I Spent the End of the World by Cătălin Mitulescu; CPH:DOX Amnesty Award-winner Crulic: The Path to Beyond by Anca Damian; Cannes Film Festival Golden Camera-winner Stuff and Dough by Cristi Puiu and more.

This cinematic event marks the first time many of these titles are available online, allowing these groundbreaking films to be seen by a wider audience. Select titles will also screen in Virtual Cinema format in collaboration with leading arthouse cinemas including New York’s Film Forum and the Lightbox Film Center in Philadelphia.

Spanning the 30 years since the revolution of 1989 and the fall of communism, this comprehensive series presents titles from the recent history of Romanian cinema. Naturally, history is the running theme in most films. In the 1990s, directors who found themselves freed from the tyranny of censorship rushed out in the open to tell stories from the recent past. In the following two decades, younger directors went back in time on their own terms and came up with a fresh perspective on the communist era. Even when they chronicled the present with incisive slices of contemporary life, the dark shadows of the past still permeated their stories like familiar ghosts. Then there is the enigma of the revolution itself, which continues to beg for closure. And, despite its apparent diversity, this vast retrospective works best as a history lesson served in the most entertaining form: movies.

Below is the full list of titles available to stream throughout 2020:

Aferim!, Radu Jude, 2015
Crulic: The Path to Beyond, Anca Damian, 2011
Dogs, Bogdan Mirică, 2016, available in the U.S. June 12
Domestic, Adrian Sitaru, 2012
Do Not Lean Out the Window, Nae Caranfil, 1993, available in the U.S. May 29
Luxury Hotel, Dan Pița, 1992, available in the U.S. June 26
Niki and Flo, Lucian Pintilie, 2003
Of Snails and Men, Tudor Giurgiu, 2012
Pororoca, Constantin Popescu, 2017
Stuff and Dough, Cristi Puiu, 2001, available in the U.S. June 5
The Death of Mr Lăzărescu, Cristi Puiu, 2005
The Great Communist Bank Robbery, Alexandru Solomon, 2004
The State of Things, Stere Gulea, 1995, available in the U.S. June 19
The Way I Spent the End of the World, Cătălin Mitulescu, 2006
Videograms of a Revolution, Harun Farocki & Andrei Ujică, 1992, available in the U.S. May 29

For access to streaming and program details visit
https://makingwaves.filmetc.org/category/now_streaming/

Corina Suteu, festival president and co-curator of Making Waves states, “We believe that now more than ever, audiences deserve access to all forms of art and cinema to put our world into perspective and to reflect on the beauty and fragility of the human condition. These Romanian films culled from the thirty year period since the fall of communism mark a cycle of creative freedom in Romanian cinema. This series is truly unique, offering a most comprehensive and compelling survey of the brilliance and intensity of talent of various generations.This retrospective ensures that their creative voices will be heard in the wider world.”

Kate MacKay, Associate Film Curator at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, states, “Thirty years after the revolution in Romania these films remain as meaningful as ever as the shadows of totalitarianism and corruption are increasingly evident everywhere and protesters take to the streets around the globe.”

The Romanians: 30 Years of Cinema Revolution is organized by the Making Waves Film Festival and Cinema Projects. Produced by Corina Șuteu and Oana Radu, and curated by Mihai Chirilov, David Schwartz (Cinema Projects) and Corina Șuteu. Produced and presented with the support of the Trust for Mutual Understanding, Dacin Sara, Romanian Filmmakers Union, the Romanian National Film Center, Blue Heron Foundation, Galeria Plan B, Mobius Gallery, Gentica Foundation, and numerous individual donors.

About the Films

The gloriously off kilter Mr Sam (209) plays the Brooklyn Film Festival

MR SAM is a weird fucking film. That is a badge of honor in away. It’s also a warning to those who don’t like strange to stay away,

The plot has eccentric Mr Sam falling in love with a dead man, and then is discovered by his best friend who reveals a secret to him. That leads to unexpected consequences.

Wonderfully off kilter Mr Sam is a film I love for its strangeness and beautiful construction and acting but I am not certain about the rest. Don’t get me wrong I like the film and it’s go for broke boldness to be what it is, but at the same time it feels the wrong sort of off. The offness comes from the film’s running time of 30 minutes, which is right in between two sweet spots. Either the film could be trimmed to be a tighter (in which case it might lose some of its charm) or it could be expanded to a feature where it could allow some of the threads and ideas to be fully explored. I’d opt for a feature version.

Until then we have a wonderfully twisted confection that should be a must for anyone who likes cinema that makes you wonder what in the holy hell have gotten myself into.

For more information on how to see this film go here

Nate Hood's Quarantine Qapsule #52 The Shooting [1966] ★★★½

For his 1966 film The Shooting, director Monte Hellman adopted a sparse aesthetic that emphasized, above all, distance. This distancing was literal in the film’s use of only a handful of characters placed within vast, empty environments of sun-baked deserts and dusty canyons. The setting might be the Old West, but it may as well be another planet completely devoid of other humans. Cinematically, Hellman accentuates this sense of distance with a rigid visual style that borders on mannered. Largely eschewing traditional Hollywood visual grammar, most of the film takes place in long and medium shots with dialogue usually occurring in two- or three-shots between characters occupying the same space. There’s relatively little shot-reverse-shot dialogue, and Hellman will sometimes disassociate said dialogue from the speakers by turning his camera on characters not involved in the conversation. This has a strange effect of straining the spatial link between the humans, the story, and the world they inhabit—in short, more distance.

Despite featuring Hollywood stars like Warren Oates and Jack Nicholson, The Shooting is defiant in its rejection of what audiences usually expect from Westerns. For one, it looks unlike most Westerns of its era: financed by Roger Corman, the film was shot for pocket change in less than three weeks with only natural lighting. In a way, its visual ruggedness predicted the washed out, rustic look of much of New Hollywood.

But most importantly, The Shooting is unique for its bizarre narrative. It focuses on two bounty hunters, the stoic Willet Gashade (Oates) and his paranoid friend Coley (Will Hutchins), who find themselves escorting a mysterious unnamed woman (Millie Perkins) across a nondescript wilderness after their mutual partner was murdered by an unseen assailant. They’re eventually joined by an unstable gunslinger named Billy Spear (Nicholson) that the woman insists on hiring as protection despite—or possibly because of—his obvious insanity.

In many ways it feels like a Western by way of Alain Resnais (and no, I didn’t cop that comparison from Jonathan Rosenbaum thankyouverymuch), particularly in how it features characters pushed and pulled in strange environments by forces beyond their comprehension. It’s easy to sense echoes here of the dreamlike, fragmented reality of Last Year at Marienbad (1961). But also like that film, it’s easy to dismiss the deliberately obfuscated characters and inexplicable plot as arthouse pretentiousness. One’s mileage depends on one’s patience for postmodernism.

The Black Emperor Of Broadway (2020) Brooklyn 2020

The story of African American actor Charles Gilpin who was chosen by Eugene O'Neill to play the lead in his play the Emperor Jones. The film highlights Gilpin's life, his battle with O'Neill about the language of the play and how he played the role for years after the triumphant Broadway run.

A low key and not flashy film, THE BLACK EMPEROR OF BROADWAY is a small gem of a film. It is a film which highlights not only the writing of a classic of the American stage, but more importantly it throws light on the man who made it possible by unleashing all the power within the words Charles Gilpin. Hile I had read of Gilpin's legendary performances, I had never really been told anything about him beyond that. This film gives us a sense of the man himself.

That the film works as well as it does is due entirely to Shaun Parkes as Gilpin.  Parkes gives an amazing performance from the opening scene where his soul is being crushed doing a minstrel show and being told he'll never get beyond that; onward through small quiet moments with his wife and on to the moments where he takes the legitimate stage and speaks with an intensity that makes you "oh my god..." It's a good enough performance that if this were a bigger film with money behind it Parkes might have a shot at an Oscar nomination. If that doesn't happen let us hope that the film gets him noticed and he can start taking leads in big budget films where he can rock the house or the pillars of heaven/

If there is any problem with the film it is that you can feel the origins as a stage play. While director Arthur Egeli and writer Ian Bowater do a good job of opening up Adrienne Earle Pender's play some of the scenes have seem to be a bit too static as if they were moved directly over from the play.

Quibbles aside, THE BLACK EMPEROR OF BROADWAY is  solid on so many levels that it is recommended when it plays the Brooklyn Film Festival.

Two scary short docs are the Stay At Home Bonus films for today

Macabre (2020) Brooklyn 2020

After a tragic shooting, Teo, a member of a special squad of cops is sent to his home in the Brazilian jungle in order to track down a pair of men who are raping and killing women and children. He swore he would never return but if he doesn't go the locals would never cooperate. Forced to face his present as well as his past Teo struggles to solve the case.

Based on the case of the "Necrophil Brothers", MACABRE is a solid thriller. Part police procedural, part horror film and part psychological drama the film juggles a lot of balls and manages to keep them all airbourne with the result that we are on the edge of out seats until the very end.

I really liked this film a great deal. I had no idea about the case on which it it is based so I had no idea how it was going to go. The result was a nailbiter. This is also the reason I am not going to go into a great big discussion of the film because I think this will play better the less you know.

One of my favorite films at the Brooklyn Film Fest. MACABRE is highly recomended.

First We Eat (2020) Hot Docs 2020

Filmmaker Suzanne Crocker makes the decision that for one year her family will only eat food that is gown,hunted or sourced locally in and around her home in Dawson City in the Yukon.

I am not going to attempt to know if this film will work for you or not since watching it I was very aware that this is going to be a film that works for some people and not for others. How you react will depend upon how interested you are in the subject, how you connect to Crocker and how you react to the low tech means of shooting.

The film follows Crocker over the course of a little more than a year from when she springs her grand idea on the family, through their first efforts to only eat locally sourced (some of the food is not enjoyed at first), on through her making connections with her neighbors who teach her about what they can eat and how to prepare it. If you ever wanted to know how to live off the land or were interested in shows like Mountain Men on cable but found them a bit too showy, this film is for you. We are there as Crocker learns about all the things around her she can eat and how to prepare it.

Personally my interest in the film came and went. That is not an indicator or the quality of the film more that certain parts of the film were more interesting to me than others. It didn't help that  I never really clicked with Crocker as a person. And while I shouldn't say this I also had a difficult time with the DIY way the film was shot.  While I understand the hows and whys of some shots (Crocker was carrying the camera to an event or had set it up in a field to film herself gathering food) the images tended to overwhelm me with somethings being too low and too close and the lens of the Go Pros or whatever she used to shoot, making images that looked wrong to me.

As I said above, I am not going to guess how you will react to the film. Watching the film at home I had some of my siblings wander by while it was on and they stopped to watch it for a bit. They found the piece they watched involving how the meat was carved up fascinating.

FIRST WE EAT is going to play Hot Docs Virtual Film Festival at the end of the week. For details and more information on how to watch go here.

Alive plays the Brooklyn Film Fest and it's must see

Victoria has brain damage and is stuck in a wheelchair. She is a wonderful person limited by her body. She would like nothing more than to have a relationship like her caregiver Ida has with her hunky boyfriend. After talking to Ida the pair sets up a Tinder profile....

A sweet reminder that those with disabilities are human and want what we all want, namely human contact beyond the disability. It is beautifully acted and touchingly told...

...and I am not going to lie, for a good chunk of the film I thought this was simply going to hit all the expected points and then be done. I was going to be perfectly willing not to review the film as it seemed to be something that was good but not good enough or bad enough that I really had something to say. But then something happened, the film came to close, a final line was spoken and I roared with joy and I said- "okay what happens next?" With one line director Jimmy Olsson made a good film a great one and made me wonder if he could spin it out into a feature. (This is why you must try to stay to the end of all films for glorious moments like this)

I know shorts spun into features don't always work but in that final moment everything that went before sprung into such life I wanted to see where this was going next.

ALIVE is playing the Brooklyn Film Festival starting Friday. For more information on ho to see it go here.

Nate Hood's Quarantine Qapsule #51 The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid [1972] ★★★

When Jesse James isn’t depicted in movies as the Old West’s answer to Robin Hood or as a generic, larger-than-life do-gooder (like that time he was played by Roy Rogers—don’t ask), the infamous outlaw is usually considered within two contexts. The first is within larger hagiographies that frame the West as the source of American legends. In these we get the romantic retellings of the Jesse James myth charting his rise and fall as a misunderstood bandit whose circumstances trapped him on the wrong side of the law. The second are revisionist reconsiderations depicting him as a cunning, sociopathic career criminal, usually focusing on his murder at the hands of Robert Ford.

But Philip Kaufman’s The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid fits into neither of these categories, choosing instead to focus on one specific incident in Jesse James’ life: the James-Younger Gang’s disastrous attempted robbery of the First National Bank of Northfield, Minnesota in 1876. This marked the end of James’ gang with only himself and his brother Frank escaping while the rest of their posse were killed or arrested. Kaufman treats the event as the end of the Old West era, a watershed moment where the age of cowboys and Indians gave way to civilization. Kaufman personifies these twin historical trends with his competing leads, the first being Jesse (Robert Duvall) and Frank (John Pearce), depicted as cutthroats tied to old ways and manners, eager to feed their legend as magnanimous thieves so long as it provides them with safe houses among impoverished settlers and homesteaders. On the other side is Cole Younger (Cliff Robertson), no less astute a criminal than Jesse but more attuned to the changing trends of progress around him, taking the time to scout out Northfield and marvel at its new technology like steam engines.

But the film is far from elegiac. In fact, Kaufman presents his material with a comedic breeziness at considerable odds with its grim, grimy visual aesthetic. At times it feels like Kaufman is trying to channel George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)—indeed, an extended slapstick sequence at a baseball game feels like a direct response to that film’s scene where Paul Newman does bicycle tricks to the sound of “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head.” But Kaufman never manages to fully reconcile the comedy with the seriousness of the historical material.