FILMS from AFAR

Despite some uneven pacing and a few meant-to-be-funny clunkers, this comedy squeaks out the laughs thanks to a blend of quirky characters and surreal situations. Lil Rey Howery and John Cena make a surprisingly funny duo in Vacation Friends. Howery and Orji play straight couple to Cena's and Hagner's wacko shenanigans. The latter pair bring chaos, disaster and mind-altering antics wherever they go, including two drug trips that make for a couple of out-of-control and memorably entertaining sequences. Howery's perennially put-upon good guy is the most relatable of the bunch, but Cena's mysteriously "weird but impressive" skillset (detecting the precise moment when a bird will poop or communicating with Mayan shamans) also add up to an endearing character. His military connection with Marcus's father-in-law is also amusing ("Permission to s--t my pants, captain." "Permission granted."). The film won't be for everyone, and jokes about infertility, cancer, human trafficking, child abduction, and drug trafficking could rub some people wrong. But Vacation Friends has its moments and, maybe more surprisingly, its charm. Read the full review at Common Sense Media.

Bob Ross is having a moment, and this film both capitalizes on his continued popularity and critiques the multi-million-dollar business built up around him. Produced by Melissa McCarthy, her husband Ben Falcone, Steven Berger, and regular partner Divya D'Souza, Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal and Greed offers some revelations about the beloved celebrity, including details concerning his hair and a possible affair. But the main claim of those interviewed is that Ross's former business partners, Annette and Walt Kowalski, unethically undermined competitors in the TV painting business and made away with sole rights to Ross's name and image after his death. The fact that these are now owned and lucratively exploited by someone other than Ross's family, and in a way that would seem to contradict much of what Ross stood for and wanted himself, is an understandable source of heartache for his loved ones. It's also a juicy narrative hook for the film. But the man also deserves a film focused more on his who he was, what made him tick, what he accomplished during his life, and what he meant to people, which is a lot judging by the testimonials here. The documentary's interest for the global audience of Ross fans may actually be limited by its dogged focus on the Kowalskis and the missing pieces of this puzzle (more than a dozen interviews were declined, we're told, including the Kowalskis). His legion of fans should know about this saga, but the film could have struck a better balance. Read the full review at Common Sense Media.

This heartwarming tale is held together by a strong central performance from Hawaiian-born actress Cravalho. The film touches on the very real issue of teens being unhoused, but not in a didactic way. In fact, Cravalho (best known as the voice of Moana) infuses Amber with such energy as a well-adjusted, cheerful, and kind young woman, despite her hardships, that you can't help liking her. The film and Cravalho do a crafty job pulling you in so that you're invested when things take a turn for the worse, which they definitively do in this story based on the YA novel Sorta Like a Rock Star by Matthew Quick, who also wrote The Silver Linings Playbook. Some audiences will be drawn to All Together Now by the high-profile supporting actors, namely Carol Burnett and Fred Armisen. Neither has an especially standout role, and Armisen in particular feels under-used. The iconic city of Portland, Oregon, is also under-exploited as the setting. Two other recent releases come to mind as making more of their Pacific Northwest backgrounds: Netflix's drizzly Washington-set The Half of It and Disney's quirky Portland-set Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made. Lyrics on the soulful soundtrack notably echo the storyline. Read the full review at Common Sense Media.

This is a slick, suspenseful, big screen-style action film that seems primed for a franchise. The superpower storyline allows for a parade of visually explosive effects, and the tale's compelling characters with real-world problems add appeal. Embedded in these characters, in turn, are broader themes about the obstacles that Black people -- and especially young Black women -- face in America. Two young Black female characters ultimately save the day, and Project Power references Henrietta Lacks, the Black woman whose cells were involuntarily harvested and used in medical research for decades. Despite more than a few implausible sequences, Fishback is very credible as Robin, playing the teen as tough and brave, yet profoundly vulnerable and nearly defeated. She's the real discovery in this film, though Foxx is solid as the flawed hero and Gordon-Levitt adds humor, including a funny running joke of him practicing his "tough guy" lines, Clint Eastwood-style, in the mirror. The setting is another character: New Orleans is treated as a bit of an underdog that needs standing up for, its past devastating floods earning repeated mention. "You know what happened last time we were counting on guys in suits to look out for New Orleans," Frank quips at one point. He's not wrong. Read the full review at Common Sense Media.

This is a fascinating and entertaining tale that's more about Russian history than Russian hockey. If you're looking for the latter, try Red Army, the 2015 documentary by the same Russian American director, Gabe Polsky. Red Penguins' narrative arc neatly parallels both Boris Yeltsin's presidency and the emotional experience of the Americans involved in the Russian hockey team -- from the excitement of reinventing a beloved national franchise at the dawn of Russia's '90s-era democracy, to the thrill of puzzling out a new culture with wildly successful marketing campaigns, to the eventual realization that rampant corruption and criminal activity would cut the entire venture short. The story isn't told exclusively from the Americans' perspective, and the Russians interviewed -- including journalists, a reputed mafioso, former KGB agents and military officers, and people involved with the hockey team -- offer mixed recollections of the same experiences. Polsky does an impressive job exploring his sources' personalities, and perhaps even probing their authenticity, leaving the camera on them as they react to their own stories, often with evident emotion concerning the relationships, people, hopes, and dreams left behind. Read the full review at Common Sense Media.

Click for full reviews on Common Sense Media: Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions Shawn Mendes: In Wonder Ariana Grande: Excuse Me, I Love You Blackpink: Light Up the Sky

Makers of documentaries about people's unfolding lives can't always be sure of the story they'll be telling, so having the right ingredients -- as in this case -- is key. Homeroom is a film about a year in the lives of a diverse class of high school seniors in conflictive Oakland, California. The story took on unexpectedly heightened significance as Covid struck mid-school year and the Black Lives Matter movement arose in communities across the US. The students' fight with the local school board to remove police from their schools, police they said were more threatening than comforting to "Black and Brown" teens and also wasted much-needed district funds, got a boost from these events as well. Poignant footage shows empty classrooms after school is shut down due to Covid and a virtual graduation ceremony celebrated at home with individual families. Homeroom eschews first-person interviews in favor of capturing its subjects' interactions with each other and through social media. This can feel disorienting at first when viewers don't yet know who the film's "stars" are (or even their names), and it takes at least half of the documentary to really congeal. We also don't get the insight of perspectives on these students and events from teachers or family members. But ultimately this fly-on-the-wall style does offer a lot of context in portraying the students' lives, concerns, and relationships, as do the social media observations. We see them through their own Instagram stories, we witness how they receive and digest news on their social media feeds, and we discover details about their lives through their online college application process. The kids talk tough and struggle with undue hardships -- poverty and encroaching gentrification, instability at home, a lack of documentation, failing grades or low SAT scores, and violence all around them. Seeing them muster the courage to speak out publicly on issues that directly impact them, and especially witnessing the way they support each other mutually through good and hard times, is inspirational. Read the full review at Common Sense Media.

Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War was the big winner Saturday night at the 31st annual European Film Awards in Seville, Spain, walking away with five awards, including for best film, director, screenwriter, actress and a technical award announced earlier for editor. Pawlikowski dedicated his first award of the night to his parents, whose story inspired the black-and-white romantic period drama. Cold War star Joanna Kulig earned best actress honors. Expectations will now be high for Cold War to follow in the footsteps of Pawlikowski’s previous film, Ida, which went from nabbing five top prizes at the EFAs in 2014 to a foreign-language film Academy Award win two months later. Cold War, which will be released Dec. 21 in the U.S. through Amazon, is representing Poland in the same Oscar category this year. All of this year’s EFA best film nominees — including Matteo Garrone’s Dogman, Alice Rohrwacher’s Happy as Lazzaro, Lukas Dhont’s Girl and Ali Abbasi’s Border — premiered at Cannes, and all, except Happy as Lazzaro, were nominated to represent their countries in the foreign-language film Oscar category. Dogman beat out Rohrwacher's drama to represent Italy at the Academy Awards. Other favorites going into Saturday's gala did not walk away empty-handed. Italian actor Marcello Fonte was named best European actor for his turn in Matteo Garrone’s drama Dogman, a performance that also earned him a best actor prize at Cannes this year. The European Discovery Award — Prix FIPRESCI — went to Girl, whose director Dhont dedicated the prize to star Victor Polster and Nora Monsecour, the young trans girl on which the story is based. Of Polster, whose casting in the film elicited critiques among some in the transgender community because he is himself is not transgender and neither is Dhont, the helmer said, “I knew he was going to do that other person justice” in a performance he said showed that “the biggest power of any artist is empathy.” Dhont had earlier in the day addressed the critiques of his movie at an EFA-sponsored roundtable on gender equality in film: “I think there’s a very important nuance to be made. Yes, we need stories by women told by women ... and yes, we need trans stories told by trans people. But I see cinema as a bridge, I don’t see it as a wall. I think if we are going to limit ... ourselves to only talk about parts of our own identity, I think we are headed in the wrong direction.” Read the rest of the story and see a full list of winners here.

From censorship to reductions in government support for the film sector, insiders prepare for upheaval in Latin America’s biggest entertainment market: ‘It will be uncertain times for people that produce culture in Brazil’ ​Within a week after far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro won the presidential election in Brazil on Oct. 28, concerns about the future of the country’s entertainment sector became a major talking point at the Rio De Janeiro International Film Festival, which ran Nov. 1-11. Top among those concerns: the potential rolling back of government incentives and mechanisms that have helped grow the industry and, more broadly, of basic rights and freedoms in this diverse country. The festival’s co-executive director, Ilda Santiago, says she didn't attend a single presentation of the 80 short and feature films playing at the fest where Bolsonaro’s election wasn’t a topic of discussion. “The festival is playing a major role in allowing producers, directors, all the different professionals to say we want to guarantee that from here on we go forward, not back,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. Bolsonaro won with just over 55 percent of the vote. His appeal was attributed to disillusion with unemployment, crime and economic instability in the country, as well as cases of corruption under the ruling Workers’ Party. Supporters said they hoped Bolsonaro would “fix things.” “I’m pretty optimistic,” says Brazil’s outgoing Minister of Culture Sergio Sa Leitao. “Brazil is already recovering from the huge economic crisis that we had here in 2015 and 2016. I think the new government, at least in the economic field, has the right agenda, which means doing the structural reforms that Brazil really needs in order to be a competitive player in the global arena.” ​But as a candidate and before, Bolsonaro expressed extreme views on everything from the uses of torture to the merits of dictatorships, and he has made patently offensive remarks about women, minorities and members of the LGBTQ community. “A dark cloud of intimidation and repression is looming over Brazilian civil society,” warns Andrew Fishman, Rio-based managing editor of investigative news outlet The Intercept Brasil. “Jair Bolsonaro is not ‘the Brazilian Trump.’ All signs suggest that he is far more extreme, far more violent and far less restrained by institutions.” At the recent Sao Paulo International Film Festival, which ran Oct. 18-31 and overlapped with the election, director Brunna Laboissiere, who premiered the doc Fabiana, about a trans woman truck driver, says, "The general climate [at the fest] was critical of the setbacks that the country is going through, fear and uncertainty about what is going to happen, but at the same time a feeling of unity to resist against future attacks." Read full story in The Hollywood Reporter here. Photo credit: De Alan Santos/Presidência da República. - Foto oficial do presidente da república, Jair Bolsonaro. CC BY 3.0 br, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=75769915

​The European film industry should have an easier time pursuing gender equality than Hollywood, panelists suggested at a roundtable on the subject as part of the 31st annual European Film Awards weekend in Seville, Spain.​ ​ “It’s much easier when you have a public funder because you can really demand equality since there are as many women paying taxes as men,” said Anna Serner, CEO of the Swedish Film Institute, a pioneer in seeking gender parity in film. Serner was joined on the panel, "Gender Equality is THE Way Forward," by Sixteen Films producer Rebecca O’Brien, Girl director Lukas Dhont and Spain-based producer Valerie Delpierre.​​ The U.K.’s O’Brien, a member of the EFA board, pointed to the British Film Institute’s diversity standards for on- and offscreen representation, ​​creative leadership, industry access and training opportunities, and distribution and exhibition strategies. The standards are now a requirement ​​for the majority of public funding for film in the U.K., have been adopted by Film4 and BBC Films, and also are an eligibility requirement for ​​several top BAFTA categories.​​ ​​​​Many studio films wouldn’t meet the BFI standards, O’Brien suggested. Yet, according to Serner, if a company like Warner Bros. simply said, "Listen folks, we want to have 50 percent female directors or you can’t do your ideas," it "would find 50 very competent women, I’m totally sure. So, it’s just up to top management to make a decision: Do we want to change or not?" Read the full article here.

In an age when a Kardashian can “break the Internet” with nude photos, discovering understatement in art is like a Thanksgiving feast for the spirit. I recently came across two films available for home viewing that lingered on in my mind long after the end credits rolled. In both movies, directed by women and set in the Middle East, myriad obstacles require romantic tales be rendered with subtlety and delicate restraint. Even so, both films are quietly explosive. Take that, Kim.​​ “Cairo Time”​​ In Canadian-born director Ruba Nadda’s Cairo-set story of impossible love, Romeo and Juliet are replaced by Tareq and Juliette. An American magazine editor (played by Patricia Clarkson) travels to Cairo to meet her husband on break from his job for the U.N., but when work detains him in Gaza he sends an old colleague, Tareq (Alexander Siddiq), to keep her busy.​​ The two develop a bond as they stroll city streets, lounge in cafes, idle through bazaars, and talk. Nadda makes Cairo time feel slowed down, in a heat-induced daze, a sensation echoed in the film’s dreamy soundtrack featuring Egyptian legend Umm Kulthum. ​​The pair’s mutual admiration and desire grow steadily until they embark on a trip together to Alexandria. On the train ride home, the intense weight of their longing is registered entirely through the actors’ silent gazes. Voted Best Canadian Feature Film at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2009, “Cairo Time” is a love letter to Egypt in all its contradictions. “They say once you’ve drunk the water of the Nile you will always come back,” Tareq assures Juliette. He seems to embody the contrasts himself: elegance combined with decadence, desires constrained by customs, a leisurely lifestyle contrasted against perpetual social problems, and the great gender inequalities of the region. Juliette offers the Westerner’s gaze as Nadda shows us Egypt through her eyes. When Juliette drags her armchair to the hotel balcony and cinematographer Luc Montpellier gives us a sweeping view of the Seine-like Nile River that cuts through Cairo, we discover the city ourselves. When Juliette gets herself into unnecessary danger — followed by a pack of men on the street, forcibly removed from a bus to Gaza — we share her alarm and embarrassment. Juliette wants to do something about the problems she sees — street children, unschooled girls put to work to earn money for their weddings — but Tareq accuses her and her U.N. husband of trying to “save” the Middle East.​ She has promised not to visit the pyramids on the outskirts of Cairo until her husband returns, but Nadda shows their peaks jutting out over the skyline at seemingly every turn, a perfect symbol for the unexpected attachment that’s arisen between these two adults. It’s fitting that the pyramids take on a central role in the film’s closing sequence. “Cairo Time” can be streamed on Netflix and Hulu Plus. “Caramel” “Caramel” (“Sukkar Banat”), co-written, directed by and starring Lebanese newcomer Nadine Labaki, turns on a group of women navigating social taboos in modern-day Beirut. It’s like a Lebanese “Steel Magnolias” as Layale (Labaki) and her lifelong friends juggle clients, gossip and romance in a local beauty salon. The film’s title alludes to the sugary concoction the women use for removing hair, pausing occasionally to voluptuously lick pieces of the sticky mass from their fingertips. These are modern women, judging by their style, their concerns and their playful blending of Arabic, English and French. But theirs is a world where a woman has to prove she’s married to rent a hotel room and undergo surgery to “restore” her virginity before marriage. The Beirut of “Caramel” is a city of crumbling edifices and omnipresent police where young and old lovers alike have to sneak around. And it’s a world where exchanged glances and brushed shoulders are thick with meaning, where shampooing a customer’s lustrous black hair or pruning a potential lover’s mustache are sensual acts. Layale pines after her lover, a married man who constantly disappoints, but she seems oblivious to the nice guy next door, a local policeman clearly besotted with her. Each of her friends has her own relationship troubles. Labaki takes her time developing the five lead characters, and as can happen in films with multiple tales interwoven, some subplots get short shrift. But the film, which premiered in 2007 at the Cannes Film Festival, holds the viewer’s interest throughout with affectionate portrayals of every character. When Layale packs to leave her parents’ home on the eve of her wedding, her mother tearfully passes on life advice. It’s a touching tribute to the endurance of tradition, and underscores the dichotomous realities generations of women inhabit. These reviews originally ran in The Daily Record.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is expected to announce the nine semi-finalists for the foreign language Oscar this week out of submissions from a record 83 countries. The list will be narrowed to a final five nominees in January. Foreign language may not be a category of particular interest to many Americans. But for filmmakers around the world, capturing even a nomination carries prestige and market value, and can mean the difference between securing distribution outside the home territory and financing on a future project — or not. For a film to make the initial list of entries, it has to jump through several hoops. Some countries host more than one round of voting, and the process regularly generates local controversies and claims of favoritism. Winning filmmakers are celebrated with banner headlines and treated like national heroes. When Italian director Paolo Sorrentino took home the foreign language Oscar last year for "The Great Beauty" ("La Grande Bellezza"), he was made an honorary citizen of Rome, where his film is memorably set, and received public congratulations from everyone up to the country's prime minister. The award was widely touted as a turning point for Italian cinema as a whole, coming a full 15 years after its last win for Roberto Benigni's "Life Is Beautiful" ("La Vita E Bella"). Italy still holds the record for the most foreign language Oscars of any country, and legendary filmmaker Federico Fellini, whose "La Strada" won the first official foreign language Oscar in 1956, is the most-awarded director in the category. So it was almost fate when "The Great Beauty," considered a tribute to Fellini and his classic 1960 tour de force "La Dolce Vita," scooped last year's honor. "The Great Beauty" Sorrentino's nod to Fellini is narrative as well as stylistic, from the aging-artist protagonist's existential crisis at the heart of the story to the film's ecstatic portrayal of the debauchery of the Roman creative class and its visual obsession with the wildly eccentric. We meet the chain-smoking, cheshire cat-grinning star of the film, Jep Gambardella (played by Toni Servillo), at his riotous 65th birthday party, then follow him for the nearly 2 1/2 hour movie as he meanders through Rome's outlandish night life. A respected one-time novelist turned journalist, the self-confessed "king of the high life" finds himself muddled by his own age-inspired questioning of the last four decades of his life. Nostalgic about the passage of time and depressed by the squandered potential all around him, Jep still has one tasseled loafer firmly planted in a decadent lifestyle that rarely gets him to bed before sunrise. Servillo is no Marcello Mastroianni, Fellini's handsome leading man, but he's attractive in his own Joe Biden way, exuding a sardonic charm in dapper suits and slicked back gray hair. It's a testament to his authentic performance that we feel any sympathy for this playboy, who never got around to writing a second book and sleeps off his hangovers in a hammock on the terrace of a luxury apartment overlooking the Colosseum. The historical landmark makes it easy to draw parallels between Jep's decay and Italy's own. Sorrentino spoke with the New York Times last year about his inspiration in Italy's “culture of excess,” which reached a fever pitch during former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's scandal-ridden era, and a general sense that "the nerve centers of the country had fallen asleep on their couches." And there is excess to spare in this film’s many seemingly whimsical sequences and manipulated dreamscapes, strewn together to convey deeper meaning: a 104-year-old "saint" subsisting on roots, omnipresent nuns attending underground botox parties, a wise dwarf doubling as editor and mother figure, and a giraffe that magically disappears, like life and art and presumably this very movie itself. "The Great Beauty" can be exasperating, and it's probably not for everyone. But Sorrentino's script clearly pokes fun of the world it (re)creates, mocking artistic artifice and the vacuity of an appearances-driven modern culture. It's this self-awareness that compels you to keep watching, drawn in by Servillo's charismatic presence, the captured beauty of the Roman setting and the script's many riddles. A voiceover in the final scenes offers some closure, bringing Jep full circle in his musings on life and death, on the world's "inconstant flashes of beauty" and its "wretched squalor and miserable humanity. All buried under the cover of the embarrassment of being in the world." It's the film and Jep's/Italy's dilemma and the human condition all in one. "The Great Beauty" is available to stream on Hulu Plus. This review originally ran in The Daily Record.