COLLECTIVE

Directing: A
Writing: A
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A+

Collective is streaming currently on Hulu, and you need to watch it, like, right now. I have never seen any other documentary feature film more well crafted, or even legitimately dramatic, than this one—and that’s even with a focus on Bucharest journalists talking about their increasingly shocking discoveries about their nation’s corrupted health care system. My jaw kept dropping as I watched this movie, over and over, lower than the last time. It’s not just the examples themselves but the sheer scale of the corruption and lethal negligence in Romanian hospitals.

Most of us in the States don’t know a hell of a lot about Eastern European countries, although I’ve sure seen a lot of movies about them lately (the narrative film Quo Vadis, Aida?, about the Srebrenica Genocide in Bosnia; the other Romanian documentary Acasă, My Home, about a homeless family expelled from the Bucharest wildlife sanctuary they were living in). It’s easy to be ignorant and assume they are societies still lost in time from a bygone era, but the footage in Collective indicates the country has just as much capability for modernization as anywhere else. It’s the widespread corruption that sets it apart.

The title, Collective, is named after the 2015 tragedy in which a nightclub of that name caught fire, killing 62 and injuring 143 more. In the opening title cards of the film, we are informed the initial death toll was largely due to a lack of emergency exists because of no government oversight. Director Alexander Nanau appears to have gotten ahold of footage taken inside the venue during the fire. He only shows a few minutes of it: the metal band seeing that their pyrotechnics have ignited highly flammable materials above the stage, then noting to the crowd that the fire is not part of the show. Chaotic footage of screams and smoke and glimpses of fire. I keep wondering how much footage there must have been, all of which would have been seen by Nanau, and presumably others who worked on the film. This bit only lasts a couple of minutes and what little is shown will still haunt me for a long time to come.

And the thing is, that incident is just the beginning—the inciting incident that later brings light to shockingly horrible conditions at Romanian hospitals. Over a dozen of the fatalities from this event could have been prevented, but instead they died from bacterial infections at the hospitals they were sent to. The reporters of a publication called The Sports Gazette (Gazeta Sporturilor in Romanian) catch wind of this, and even though they are literally a sports publication, they start to investigate. And this stunning revelation is itself just the tip of the iceberg in this story: a company that supplies Romanian hospitals with disinfectant dilutes the product. The Sports Gazette soon runs the headline DISINFECTANT DILUTED TEN TIMES! As in, tests reveal the disinfectant is one tenth as concentrated as is labeled on the packaging. This leads to revelations of corruption and bribery at hospitals all over the country, at the expense of patients, to the degree that in at least one cast horrifying footage is leaked of maggots on the neck of one patient.

While Nanau keeps the focus on this ongoing scandal, there is at least one specific reference to how sad a state Romania is in broadly speaking: footage at one of many protests that break out features a crowd thanking these journalists for this work. “The best investigations are made by a sports daily,” shouts one man. “That is the state of our press!”

Well, these journalists would certainly appear to be heroes, and Collective is a testament to how vital journalism continues to be, around the world. Alexander Nanau has taken an incredible story, and told it with unparalelled precision. There’s a reason this is only the second documentary feature film to have been nominated for an Academy Award in both the Documentary Feature and International Feature categories (the previous one being the best film of 2019, Honeyland), both films working impressively on both a documentary and a straightforward narrative level. Collective also has the distinction of being both a double-nominee this year and the first Romanian film of any kind to be nominated for an Oscar.

I still say Time should win the Documentary award, as it is just as beautiful as it is gripping and heartbreaking—but, Collective comes damn close. Whether this or Quo Vadis, Aida? should win Best International Feature is a tough call—probably the latter, just because of the gravity of the subject matter. Neither film is “better,” though; they are both stunning achievements. Collective is unfortunately a minor victim of circumstance, in fields with incredibly strong competitors. It makes a huge difference that it got these nominations to begin with—indeed, they are the sole reason I even know about the film. And now you do too! Trust me, once you start it, you won’t be able to look away.

New Health Minister Vlad Voiculescu attempts to make things better, a daunting task.

Overall: A

SIFF Advance: IN THE SAME BREATH

Directing: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B

In the Same Breath begins with images of the celebrations when Wuhan rang in the year 2020, and with the benefit of hindsight, the images—thongs of unmasked people packed into public streets of a major city center—are indeed eerie. Conversely, In the Same Breath ends with images of the celebrations when Wuhan rang in the year 2021, and it’s a bizarre sight, from an American perspective, to see nearly exactly the same throngs. The only difference is that everyone there is wearing a mask. Here in the States, though, most places, while nowhere near as strictly locked down as they once were, are not yet at a point where allowing large public gatherings is advisable, masked or not.

Director Nanfu Wang, who previously directed One Child Nation in 2019 about China’s one-child policy, is in a unique position to tell the story of how both China and the U.S. compared in their initial responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. This is, indeed, the second documentary feature I have watched and reviewed about this pandemic and failed responses to it, the first being Totally Under Control from last fall, but that film focused entirely on U.S. failings. Wang is from China, but married to an American man, and went to visit her parents in China right around the dawn of the pandemic, in early 2020. Her husband and small child flew back home to the U.S. before she did, so she could stay behind and look after her mother.

I always wonder how much footage a filmmaker had when they put together a documentary on such a broad subject. Wang clearly recorded a massive amount. In the Same Breath is so excellently edited, it brings to mind the fact that, with enough footage, you can skillfully edit anything to tell the story you want. Here, she effectively compares the early responses to the coronavirus between China and the United States, and we can disparage communism or socialism all we want, but there are pretty stunning similarities. It should also be noted that, in many cases, the footage simply speaks for itself. Dr. Anthony Fauci, long regarded as one of the most trusted medical authorities in the U.S.—and, to be clear, I trust him even now—is shown in early interviews insisting that Americans have little to worry about. He gets specific in a way that is shocking in hindsight, saying there is no need for us to walk around wearing face masks.

American nurses are later interviewed clarifying that CDC recommendations from the start were “not based on science, but based on supply.” I never quite heard it put that way before. The problem with that, as this film makes abundantly clear, is that it sets a precedent for the people to mistrust anything the government tells them later, especially after changing their tune. What the U.S. government should have done instead, says one nurse, is make it clear from the start that the guidelines were based on supply.

One of the more impressive aspects of In the Same Breath is Wang’s complete lack of judgment as a filmmaker—and her notably open empathy. She understands that the Americans protesting lockdown measures are way off base and likely costing lives, but she recognizes in them the very same sorts of assumptions she made while in the U.S. at the start of the pandemic. She can hardly believe it herself, how much she took for granted that the U.S. was “more advanced” and thus not as dangerous a place in a pandemic as China had been, in spite of literally having just been in China and seeing all the same warning signs again in the States.

The focus thus far in this review notwithstanding, In the Same Breath spends more time on the outbreaks in China than on those in the U.S. I’d say maybe two thirds of the film is focused on China, and about a third on the U.S. China is where the virus originated, after all. And she makes fascinating comparisons between public sentiment toward their government in the two countries. She makes multiple references to the Orwellian-sounding “Propaganda Department” in China, and their methods clearly work: multiple key interview subjects, after telling stories about loss of closed loved ones due to what clearly amounts to government negligence, express earnest gratitude toward the Communist Party. This, after we are told the “official” death toll in Wuhan is around 3,000 but funeral home workers estimate it to be in the tens of thousands. And Chinese local news anchors say things like “U.S. politicians’ handling of the coronavirus is a testament to the failure of democracy.”

Well, if In the Same Breath illustrates anything at all, it’s that neither Americans nor the Chinese have cause to point fingers. Perhaps it’s a darkly universal thing, the mere hubris of humanity. Both governments dismissed any ringing of alarm, until infection rates and deaths could no longer be ignored. Wang spotlights the trauma of health care workers in both countries, the footage of nurses in China predictably limited, but she does get some. Still, this is where she interviews a few select nurses in the greater New York City area (plus one funeral home worker), and splices together the moments when each of them inevitably breaks down crying. This is not sensationalism or exploitation; it’s an illustration of the cost of these disastrous circumstances. And, while the early expression of concern in Chinese hospitals resulted in legal recourse for “spreading rumors,” in the U.S. health care workers early on were threatened with termination if they insisted on wearing face masks.

An early scene, when Wang had several camera operators taking endless footage secretly inside Wuhan hospitals, features a young man being forced to decide between taking his grandmother back home, or leaving her at a hospital that has no available beds. We’ve heard these stories many times over in the U.S. as well, a reflection of all the desperate pleas for us to “help flatten the curve.” This begs a question Wang does not even try to answer: what kind of public panic might we have been facing if the entire truth were rolled out all at once, about both the severity of the virus and the severity of lockdown measures truly needed to contain it?

There is a curious effect when watching documentaries like this, which dramatize a global event that played out over the course of an entire year and packs it into a 100-minute run time. It creates a sense of widespread chaos that was not necessarily prevalent outside of hospitals and nursing homes, and it says nothing of the endless tedium also experienced by millions during extended stay-home orders. It could be argued that we would have suffered more actual chaos had too much truth been given too quickly. Then again, and this perhaps gets back to Wang’s evident point, the authorities could have issued things like mask-wearing guidelines much earlier and just said they were out of an abundance of caution, with no imminent danger—which would have been much closer to the truth if we’d all been wearing masks and social distancing from the start. Wang also doesn’t bother to note how little was known about COVID-19 and its specific dangers until enough time had passed for proper study.

This kind of back and forth could go on forever, really. The key takeaway from In the Same Breath is that China and the United States made very similar missteps in the early days of the pandemic, and having wildly different government structures seemed to make little difference in that matter.

A nation mourns regardless of the nation.

Overall: B+

SIFF Advance: VALENTINA

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

Movies about queer people overcoming adversity have kind of reached their quota, at least in the United States. Audiences here are much more eager to see far more nuanced stories about people who happen to be gay or trans, and have seen enough movies about LGBT people being treated horribly because of who they are.

That’s the only thing, really, that makes Valentina a little tricky. The target audience of this Brazilian film is clearly Brazilian, but anything I have to say about it will be aimed at American audiences. I’d say it’s a story worth telling around the world, but its sociopolitical context must always be kept in mind. I don’t presume to know how many movies are made in Brazil about trans teenagers, but I’d be inclined to say it’s not very many.

To be fair, not a lot of American movies are made about trans teens specifically either. And what of parents with trans teen children? Should they watch this? I honestly have no idea. I suppose it depends on the stage of emotional development said teens happen to be in, and how triggered they might be by depictions of trauma that parallels their own experiences.

On the upside, Valentina has no violence in it—well, at least not physical violence. A case could certainly be made that it features emotional violence, especially in a key scene in which the title character is deeply humiliated. Valentina has moved to a rural town with her mother for her mother’s nursing job, and when the town catches wind of her being trans, they respond with swift bigotry. Valentina is essentially the story of how Valentina and her mother cope with that.

More and more, when I see a foreign film, I find myself wishing I had more of a cultural context, to get a sense of how the film fits into, or connects with, its country of origin. Valentina becomes best friends with a gay Black boy (Ronaldo Bonafro), and I found myself wondering how Brazil’s history of race relations compares to that of the U.S.—even though this film depicts no racism whatsoever. A couple of Google searches later, I learned that Brazil abolished slavery 23 years after the U.S., but they did it without the massive bloodshed of civil war. As with any colonized country, of course, they are also still reckoning with that history. How much of their cultural discourse today examines such things, though? Valentina focuses entirely on the issue of gender identity, and reveals when it comes to that, things are pretty bleak: 82% of trans kids drop out of school, and the average life expectancy of trans people there is 35. Reading that just before the end title credits is a bit of. gut punch. (Side note: it should be noted that statistic is widely reported and poorly sourced, originally referring to Latin America as a whole, and its truly original sourcing and meaning is complicated. This film—and many others—would have done well to cite the source.)

One thing about the film Valentina that certainly adds to its credibility, regardless of the audience, is that the person playing the title character, Thiessa Woinbackk, is actually a young trans woman. Not only that, but she’s apparently a fairly popular Brazilian YouTuber, who last year won the Best Performance Award at Outfest. I hesitate to say the film itself would have been worse had they used a cisgender woman actor for the role, but casting Woinbackk makes it easy to feel better about it. As it happens, she does a good job.

As does the woman who plays Valentina’s mother (Guta Stresser). That said, Valentina is generally quiet, without any score to speak of, seemingly without a lot asked of its supporting players. The kids playing Valentina’s high school friends have a natural screen presence, at least. Most of the rest of the cast seem just to be performing the task of getting their lines right, Stresser and Woinbackk being notable exceptions. The cinematography is all done with hand-held cameras, giving the film an almost deadpan documentary feel. On the one hand, this means there’s no emotional manipulation. On the other hand, it’s not as easy to connect on an emotional level.

That leaves us to focus on the issues at hand, specifically Valentina’s dashed hopes for integrating seamlessly into a new community, when her transness is discovered. A lot is made of her estranged parents being still technically married, which thus requires both their signatures so she can be registered at school under what they call her “social name.” But, the way one of her classmates finds out, a deeply uncomfortable scene involving excessive drinking and what amounts to sexual assault, renders the whole signature issue irrelevant. Valentina ends on a note of hopefulness that comes as a relief, but you do have to spend a lot of time scared for her before it reaches that point.

Valentina attempts to blend into her new community.

Overall: B

SIFF Advance: POTATO DREAMS OF AMERICA

Directing: B-
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B-
Editing: C+

Potato Dreams of America is a locally produced film with a small budget, and it shows. I don’t say that to shit on it, because I actually enjoyed a lot of it, but I think it’s also a bit of fair warning, to viewers for whom that might be a barrier to entry into the story. And this is tricky, criticizing a movie that is a clear passion project by a writer-director who is telling an acutely personal, largely autobiographical story. There is no doubt that this film means a great deal to the people who worked on it, and especially writer-director Wes Hurley.

It’s certainly a story worth telling. There are just some challenges in execution, particularly in the first half, which is set in Vladivostok, the Russian west-coast city where the title character (as well as Hurley) is from. The production is highly stylized, giving it a feel rather like watching a well-designed local play. Unfortunately, with one notable exception, these “play” scenes are filled with supporting actors who give distractingly wooden performances.

The exception would be Lea LeLaria, easily the most famous person in this cast, here cast wildly against type as Potato’s uptight and conservative grandmother. She loses herself in the role so effectively, it took me a while before I even realized it was her. Still, these scenes could have used some tightening up in editing. Some of these scenes feel like Hurley decided he didn’t need very many takes. (For all I know, he didn’t have time for a lot of takes.) In one memorable shot, DeLaria’s grandma casually twirls a shotgun with her index finger, and the shot that’s used doesn’t even show it twirling very well. As a result, the vibe of the production becomes somewhat amateurish.

But, here’s a compelling concept: Hurley cast different actors for Potato’s family in Russia vs. his family in America, after he and his mother move to Seattle so his mother, Lena, can get married and in so doing escape post-Soviet Russia. Potato is much younger in the Vladivostok half of the film, and played by a boy named Hersh Powers; in the Seattle half, he’s played as an older teenager by a young man named Tyler Bocock. Bocock’s peformance is nuanced in a way unlike almost anyone else in the film, and he’s easily the best actor in it; I might even say he saves it. The woman who plays his unconditionally supportive mother, Lena, in Seattle (Marya Sea Kaminski), comes close.

Also, curiously, Lena and Potato speak with American accents in the Vladivostok half, and they speak with Russian accents in the Seattle half. This effectively highlights their “otherness” as a family unit in both contexts, although the delivery is more successful in the latter half.

“Potato,” incidentally, is just the nickname Lena has given him—one of the fictions added to an otherwise true story, according to Hurley just to help give himself some distance and see Potato as a character and not just as himself. There’s a bit of a shocking twist in the last act of the film regarding Potato’s American stepfather, which would be easy to dismiss as implausibly contrived, except apparently it’s actually part of his true story. There is a nice, organically multi-ethnic sense of intersectionality to Hurley’s story, with a bit of both lesbian and trans representation. Also, Potato’s circumstances are very specific, while the essence of his story, and its relatability, is universal. The semi-flamboyant imaginary-friend Jesus is a nice touch.

To be fair, some of the script, and particularly the dialogue, really is controvied—oversimplified representation of conservative talking points, particularly mirroring how they speak now rather than twenty or thirty years ago. (This is just my own pet peeve so I’ll forgive it, but a few shots of the Seattle skyline meant to be decades ago are clearly far too contemporary—but, we already established this is a small production. I’m sure there were no resources for making composite images of Seattle of the past.)

Potato Dreams of America isn’t quite as “quirky” as the title might suggest, although the film certainly does have its quirks. A lot of it, particularly in the first half, has some unrealized potential that bogs it down a little—but, by the end, it still spoke to me.

I’d like to see more of this potato.

Overall: B-

SIFF Advance: SUMMERTIME

Directing: B
Acting: C+
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A-

Summertime is effectively a musical—except, instead of breaking out into song, the characters break out into slam poetry. So, basically, if you’re in the minority population who really loves slam poetry, you’ll probably enjoy this film. If you find slam poetry annoying or grating or it just simply isn’t your bag, well, this movie won’t be your bag either. On a fundamental level, you really don’t need any more detail than that.

But I’m going to give you some anyway! I suppose there’s an even smaller minority out there, in which I would be included, who are relatively neutral on the concept of slam poetry, but compelled by the idea of experimental cinema that integrates the work of said poets, here specifically in the city of Los Angeles.

The director, Carlos López Estrada, previously offered us the phenomenal 2018 film Blindspotting. I keep wondering how much differently my interest in Summertime might have been characterized had I not known it had the same director. Seeing his name associated with the project is basically the reason I chose this as one of the films I would watch in the 2021 Seattle International Film Festival, after all.

And Summertime is a radically different film than Blindspotting, although the two films have one key element in common: a love for a particular city. Blindspotting had a reverence for Oakland, California, and lamented the loss of its character via the process of gentrification. Conversely, Summertime shifts the focus to Los Angeles, and does not seem interested in lamenting anything. Its characters have sad stories, sure, but one of my favorite things about Summertime is how it flips the script on a city that has gotten an unfairly bad rap for decades. More specifically, it’s a love letter to L.A. that, rather than loving it in spite of its reputation as a city of people who never connect with each other, features almost exclusively people who are finding ways to connect.

And they do it through intensely personal, raw, emotional poetry. There is no plot whatsoever. Summertime is instead a pastiche, the camera following one person to the next as they merely cross paths with each other, in so doing creating a portrait of one of the most diverse cities in the United States. And Estrada is having some fun here, a particularly delightful detail being a rap duo finding fame and fortune by rapping about how much they love their moms.

The performers here are fundamentally unprofessional, or at least unprofessional by Hollywood standards, and it’s a big part of how easy it is to have mixed feelings about Summertime. Not every line is delivered in slam poetry verse, and the final result might have been better if it were. Most of the regular lines are delivered in a way that sound amateurish, or unrehearsed, or both. This does not really detract from their clear talent as writers, however—or even as performers. They’re just a different kind of performer. But: this is still a movie, and they really aren’t actors.

And, I still found myself regularly moved by it. There is very little in the way of social justice or commentary on race relations here; the issues the characters struggle with are mostly romantic or within the framework of ambition. Estrada assembles an ensemble cast that is a microcosm of the broad diversity of Los Angeles, and lets that speak for itself. If this film has any particular agenda, it seems to be to showcase an underrepresented (and often maligned) art form.

To be fair, that’s just what Summertime is: a piece of art, and an earnest one at that. Playful at times, too—sometimes even funny. Always emotional, to one degree or another. More than anything, I found it to be sweet. A multigenerational staff of a Korean restaurant dancing to the young one’s iPod music. A couple of young women bonding over heartbreak. An impromptu dance number in the street next to a Mexican woman resisting a request to grant her 18-year-old daughter permission to go to a party. These are all vignettes, which bleed one into the other and otherwise go nowhere, except to serve as a tour through a city’s families and friends. It actually made me miss Los Angeles, something that once upon a time I would have never thought possible.

If you want to slam Los Angeles these guys will show you how to slam in it.

Overall: B

A SHAUN THE SHEEP MOVIE: FARMAGEDDON

Directing: B+
Acting: B-
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A-
Animation: A-

It’s been long enough since the first Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015), I kind of forgot I had seen it. Turns out, I quite enjoyed it then, and this sequel, Farmageddon, is just as enjoyable. I can’t necessarily say any adults need to rush onto Netflix (where it is currently streaming) to watch it on their own, but, if you have younger children, they will enjoy it, and you will enjoy watching it with them.

Not that any of the children in the target demographic will pay any attention to such a nitpicky detail, but it seems odd that its official title is so unduly long: A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon. And yet, when watching the movie, when the title appears in the opening credits, all it says is Farmageddon. The word gets seen a lot in the movie, too, because of The Farmer coming up with the get-rich scheme of turning his farm into a “Farmageddon Theme Park,” constructing it with the help of Bitzer the dog, and a flock of sheep in hard hats.

Farmageddon takes a decidedly science fiction turn, with the arrival of an adorable child-alien, which looks rather like a purple Dr. Seuss tree come to life, with a rotund head at its peak and bunny-like floppy ears. It also has four arms. There is a specific visual aesthetic to the design of Shaun the Sheep, and the rendering of this little alien fits right into it—truly unlike any other alien you’ve ever seen, but fitting perfectly into this universe.

Shaun, for his part, takes it upon himself to help the alien get back to its little space ship and find its way back home. As with all other Shaun the Sheep titles (a TV show, one previous feature film), there is no discernible dialogue at all. You could have closed captioning turned on (as I tend to), and there is no text to read: absolutely everything about the storytelling is done visually. This actually makes a film like this more impressive, given its 86-minute run time and the pacing really never lags. This film is jam packed with visual humor and sight gags. Some of it is slyly included for the parents watching, as with the tones emitted when some buttons are pushed, which mimic the famous tones from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

The lack of dialogue does mean there’s not much to say about the vocal performances, even though it does have them: around ten voice actors are credited for the major characters. They just make jumbled and mumbled vocal sounds. In some cases, the alien perfectly copies both the voices of other characters and, in some cases, the sounds of machines or a horn or whatever. And whatever this movie lacks in voice talent, it more than makes up for everywhere else—particularly in its wonderful animation and its editing, which is outstanding considering the stop-motion animation being put together.

The plot also features a villainous woman intent on capturing the alien, though of course the resolution of her story arc at the end turns out to be something sweet. Such is the sensibility of this entire film, which is so cute and so sweet you’ll have cavities by the time it’s over. I say that as a compliment.

Farmageddon is one of five films nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, and I remain convinced that Pixar’s Soul deserves the award. I’ll say this much: Farmageddon is better than Pixar’s other offering, also nominated in the same category, Onward, which was . . . fine. The previous Shaun the Sheep movie was also nominated, at the 2016 Academy Awards, when it lost to . . . Pixar’s Inside Out—the best movie of that year. Aardman Animations has other Oscars, though, so they’re doing fine. This will just have to be one of those years when it’s an honor to be nominated.

Look on in wonder—or at least giggle—at this delightful kids’ movie.

Overall: B+

BARB AND STAR GO TO VISTA DEL MAR

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B
Editing: B

Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar is the kind of movie you’ll either love or you’ll hate. Or, to be more precise, you’ll either find it so dumb it’s easily dismissed, or you’ll easily give yourself into its uniquely silly sensibility and have a good time. I might be in a minority middle-road category, in that I’ll fully concede it’s dumb, yet I gave into it and had fun anyway.

I do wonder what the hell the elevator pitch for this movie might have been. Sure, many silly comedy movies exist, but I can think of no other that’s quite like this one. It’s a little like an unusually clever Saturday Night Live sketch, the kind whose point seems to be that there is no point and yet it’s somehow amusing anyway. Now, take all that, and add a pinch of tripping on acid.

I hesitate even to offer much in the way of specifics. The “premise,” such as it is, involves best friends Barb and Star (Annie Mumolo and Kristin Wiig), taking a vacation together. Can you guess where? In the movie, it’s a town called Vista Del Mar, in Florida, though no such town actually exists—many resorts by that name do, though none are affiliated with the film. But, whatever: much of the movie was actually filmed in Mexico. It hardly matters, considering how much of the movie feels like a middle-aged divorcée pastel fever dream.

With a script co-witten also by Mumolo and Wiig, the humor is next-level silly. It’s kind of ironic that a movie about middle-aged women should have such “dad joke” energy, but somehow, it works. Most stupid humor, particularly in movie comedies, is just not funny. Here, I laughed with surprising consistency. This would be a testament to the skill of these two performers—not to mention their pull, given the number of people who show up in cameos and smaller supporting parts.

Maybe the biggest surprise is Fifty Shades of Grey’s Jamie Dornan, shedding his “smoldering sexpot” persona to play a lovable doofus. A close second would be Kristen Wiig again, playing dual parts as both Star and the movie’s uniquely ridiculous supervillain. How Sharon Gordon Fisherman fits into the plot is rather convoluted, as is Dornan’s character’s emotional struggle between her and Star. Damon Wayans Jr. as a clueless spy is a little more on-brand.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar is hilarious, and its 107-minute run time could have easily been trimmed down to about ninety, which would have intensified its comic impact. On the other hand, its somewhat leisurely pace is part of the point. What I liked about it was its left-field gags, from Dornan’s musical number singing to seagulls, to a brief scene in which, out of nowhere, a crab just starts talking. These were the kinds of things that cracked me up.

Whatever the case, you really just have to watch this movie to get it. There’s no way to talk about it in a way that conveys what it’s really like, although perhaps watching the trailer comes closest. That said, the trailer elicited more of an “I don’t get it” response. The extent of its sun-lit pastel silliness can only reveal itself when watching the movie in full. It’s actually been available on VOD since February 12, but until this week, the cost was $19.99. I enjoyed this movie, but in no universe is it worth that much money. Now that it’s $5.99, it’s totally worth it. And if you’re looking for absurdist escapism with a genuinely middle-aged-woman sensibility, this is the movie for you. That probably means the audience demographic is indeed middle-aged women, and gay men. But maybe a few others too. Give it a chance!

Morgan Freeman

Overall: B

GODZILLA VS. KONG

Directing: C+
Acting: C+
Writing: C-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B
Special Effects: B-

To my genuine surprise, it could be said that Godzilla vs. Kong is the best of both worlds. Granted, that’s not saying much. Anyway, let’s review:

Godzilla (2014) was pointlessly dull for half the movie until things finally got exciting—and San Francisco got destroyed. Kong: Skull Island (2017) is the best of all these movies from recent years, but still unexceptional, an exercise in remembering similar, far better movies from the past. Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), by far the worst of all these films, is just a visually indecipherable, chaotic mess, in which Boston—of all places—gets destroyed. Now in 2021—though originally scheduled for a November 2020 release—Godzilla vs. Kong combines the two franchises, not quite stacking up to one and significantly improving on the other. This time, Hong Kong gets destroyed.

In other words, Godzilla vs. Kong, being the third in a recent trilogy of American-made Godzilla movies, is about as good as Godzilla get more evenly paced; it’s a significant improvement over the dreadful Godzilla: King of the Monsters; and isn’t quite as good as Kong: Skull Island, which itself was merely adequate. A ringing endorsement!

It should be noted, perhaps, that much of my enjoyment of Godzilla vs. Kong is the result of genuine relief that it was nowhere near as bad as King of the Monsters. I spent much of my review of that film contemplating why the hell I bothered going to see it at all—and indeed, had the pandemic never happened and all movies were still being initially released exclusively in theaters, you would not be reading this review right now, as I would not have bothered going to see it. But, the world is different now: this movie is indeed playing in theaters, but is also available streaming on HBO Max, which I already subscribe to so I could watch this at no extra cost at all. I reviewed all the other films in both these franchise’s recent released, so I just figured what the hell, why not?

I won’t like, I kind of enjoyed myself, in spite of how numbingly ridiculous everything about this movie is. The script is the worst, as literally every single line of dialogue in this film is dumb. And that is not an exaggeration of hyperbole; it’s the truth, without exception. But who the hell watches a movie like this for its linguistic brilliance?

And I suppose I should be fair: when it comes to the young people who make up the target demographic of movies like this, they are likely to have a blast, with no complaints. Even from that perspective, it bears repeating how visually dark and difficult to follow King of the Monsters was. It was a relentless slog of relentless action with no navigable visual language, and by that particular measure, Godzilla vs. Kong is a vast improvement. At least the action sequences are all brightly lit this time. You can actually see what the hell is going on. And, for the most part, they are actually exciting to watch. There’s actually some nicely memorable imagery, such as a deaf child (Kaylee Hottle, who really is deaf) extending her hand toward Kong, who reaches out to her with his own giant fingertip. If I were, say, 15 years old, I would probably love this movie.

So, yes, once again we get a Godzilla movie filled with great actors whose talents are completely wasted: Alexander Skarsgård, Rebecca Hall, Kyle Chandler, Demián Bichir. Does it even matter what characters they play? It really doesn’t: a washed-up scientist with a “theory” no one takes seriously here, a tech wizard villain there. This movie throws in a couple of young teenagers clearly just to provide someone relatable to the movie’s audience: Stranger Things’s Millie Bobby Brown (also in Godzilla: King of the Monsters), and Hunt for the Wilderpeople’s Julian Dennison. There’s really no reason for them to be principal supporting characters otherwise, and oddly, they spend most of their time with a conspiracy podcast host named Bernie (Brian Tyree Henry).

Also, the “twist” regarding what becomes of Godzilla and Kong in the end is something easily seen coming a mile away. Unpredictability is not this movie’s strong suit, but then, what is? Well: spectacle. It actually does that pretty well, and the blithe disregard for massive collateral damage notwithstanding, there’s something novel and fun about seeing these two giant creatures (and yes, they still get referenced as "MUTOs,” “Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms”) battle amongst the neon-lit skyscrapers of Hong Kong. This is the one action sequence that takes place at night in the dark, and they are still well lit.

Okay, the story also takes the action literally to the center of the earth, at which point you might as well just throw your hands up to this entire universe’s utter fantasy. I mean, why bother complaining when you’re already watching a movie about a giant radioactive lizard and a giant gorilla? There’s no way I would call Godzilla vs. Kong a good movie, but it passed the time on a Wednesday evening when I had nothing better to do.

You have to give it this much: it gives you what you came for.

Overall: C+

TINA

Directing: A-
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B
Editing: A

There is perhaps no other person more emblematic of resilience than Tina Turner. You don’t have to be the biggest fan of her music to find her story incredibly compelling—her comeback story after escaping a long and abusive relationship with Ike Turner has long been the stuff of legend. But there is so much more to her story, as evidenced by the HBO documentary Tina, which splits her life story into five chapters, only two of which give Ike very direct attention.

And even after it seems Tina Turner’s story has been told over and over, this film provides some new insights, particularly into hardships having nothing to do with her late ex-husband. Born into a family of cotton pickers in rural Tennessee, where she was abandoned by both of her parents. Her experience of trauma and loss has stretched from then clear until very recent years: the closing credits dedicate Tina in part to Craig Turner, her son who died in 2018. No one discusses this in the film’s interviews, and I had to Google it to learn that, at the age of 59, he committed suicide.

It’s easy to forget how old Tina Turner was when she broke into superstardom in the eighties. Tina details how, in the years after her divorce from Ike, she scraped by barely making a living in Las Vegas cabaret shows, capitalizing on the stage name that was literally the only thing she kept in the divorce settlement. When her album Private Dancer became a global smash after its release in 1984—eventually selling five million copies in the U.S. and double that worldwide—she was 44 years old.

In Tina, she talks about how people commonly refer to this mid-eighties success as a “comeback,” but she regards it more as an arrival: she’d had a fairly lengthy music career prior to this, sure, but the success of it was moderate at best; she also released four solo albums in the seventies, the highest-charting single among them reaching #80 on the Billboard chart. In fact, those first four solo albums are apparently so insignificant, Tina doesn’t even bother to mention them, opting instead to discuss only the music she made with Ike. That music was still, after all, comparatively more successful.

But nothing compared to her 1984 breakthrough, in her mid-forties, and her two follow-up albums through the rest of the eighties, while less successful, were enough to help her realize her dream of becoming the first Black woman rock star to sell out stadium venues on tour. By the time she released the hit single “The Best,” she was just shy of 50. And that was in 1989.

That’s right: Tina Turner, as of 2020, is 81 years old. She sits down for an extensive interview for this film, which is later referred to, in combination with the 2019 Broadway show Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, as her “quietly stepping away.” She’s more than earned it. Over time she became understandably tired of fielding questions about Ike, that fact itself becoming part of the story of this film. Here was see Turner come to terms with that experience inevitably being a permanent part of her legacy: “I accept it,” she says. She wrote about it in a best-selling autobiography (co-written by Kurt Loder) published in 1986, somewhat naively thinking it would make people stop asking her about it. The story became even more mainstream in the 1993 film What’s Love Got to Do with It starring Angela Bassett.

One of the more fun things about Tina the documentary film is that the other people who were key in the retelling of these stories are also interview subjects: Kurt Loder, Angela Bassett, even The Tina Turner Musical writer Katori Hall. Others include friend Oprah Winfrey (who accompanied her to the Broadway premiere), her manager Roger Davies, and her younger husband Erwin Bach, the German music executive she began dating in 1986 (when she was 46 and he was 30) and finally married in 2013.

The bulk of Tina’s story in this film, of course, spans the years between when she met Ike Turner in the late fifties and her huge solo success through the late eighties. What few pieces of footage there is between the mid-nineties and the mid-2010s consists mostly of old clips of people, including some of the Turner children and in a few cases Ike himself, commenting on the past already examined. It’s a little jarring to realize a clip from 2000 qualifies as “archival footage.” Ike died in 2007, and we see present-day Tina discussing how she came to be at peace with her past with him.

In any event, I had never paid that close attention to Tina Turner’s music, and didn’t even really catch wind of her abusive past until the 1993 film was released. That doesn’t make her story any less compelling, or her any less extraordinary a person. An observation is made in this film about how diverse in age the audiences were at her arena concerts, from teenagers to people in their sixties, That sort of thing is commonplace among the audiences of many bands and singers now, but at the time it was unheard of. Cher, also in her forties in the eighties, is perhaps an exception, but there was still a clear difference: the ebbs and flows of her career notwithstanding, Cher had long been an established mainstream star. And if anyone’s success story proves the truth that “it’s never too late,” it’s Tina Turner. Who knows how much longer she’ll be with us, but it won’t ever be too late to watch this movie.

An amazing woman with an extraordinary story.

Overall: A-

ACÁSĂ, MY HOME

Directing: A-
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A

Văcărești Nature Park now sits in the middle of urban Bucharest, 470 acres of wildlife preserve in a spot once earmarked for urban development as a reservoir, filled by the Argeș River via Mihăilești Lake. The fall of communism resulted in development plans being abandoned, and the area was overtaken by nature, becoming the wetland it is today between 1989 and 2016. It was then that after four years of environmental activism, the Romanian government granted it protected area status: the area is a uniquely thriving ecosystem containing nearly a hundred species of birds. Surrounded by concrete embankments from the area’s earliest days, the park—one of the largest urban nature parks in Europe—butts up against a particularly straight stretch the Dâmbovița River. This creates quite the delineation between natural and urban landscapes, a hard border line between wetlands and the bustling city.

This unique local history provides the fascinating backdrop of the superb documentary Acasă, My Home—that title being arguably redundant, as Acasă already translates in Romanian to home. And in this case, “home” is Văcărești Nature Park itself, or rather, what it was before officially being converted into a nature preserve. Google information on the park now, and most pages get into the communist history but don’t say anything about the multiple families living in that area. Acasă, My Home focuses exclusively on one such family: a middle-aged couple and their nine children, all of whom have been raised off the grid there, over the course of eighteen years.

Once the wetlands, also regarded as the Bucharest Nutural Delta, was designated a nature park, much more attention was paid to this family and their effect on the natural environment. Curiously, you’ll find multiple pages online—IMDb, Wikipedia—in which the synopsis states that this family “lived in perfect harmony with nature,” a claim that seems dubious at best. They lived on an island in the wetlands, their makeshift house made of branches surrounded by clutter, pigeons, a pig, and more. They burn their garbage, in one scene causing concern with local authorities about the risk of causing brush fires. I wondered if people writing for those web pages had simply copied it from official promotional materials, but at the very least the film’s official web page does not use that “perfect harmony” language.

To be fair, this family did live on this land for two decades without incident, minding their own business, avoiding what the father is shown in this film referring to “wicked civilization.” It’s an indelible image, seeing these many kinds of varying ages so comfortable in this natural environment, still close enough to live in the shadow of nearby high-rises. Indeed, the first third of the film consists of footage taken before the authorities essentially evict the family from the area. So, we see the kids trained and conditioned in their own closed system, taking boats out into the marshes and catching fish with their hands. In one shot, an older kid is seen swimming through the water with a fish held in his mouth.

Ultimately, though, Acasă, My Home is a portrait of a family struggling to acclimate to the radical change of city living. They are placed in socialized housing, where they have no real concept of house cleaning or hygiene. The kids are placed in school, the older ones learning to read for the first time, breeding some later resentment. I would have liked some more detail about how the kids’ parents came to the decision to live out in the wilderness two decades before; the father states at one point that he was educated, and had a normal job. What deterred him from all that to begin with, in such a severe manner? Lacking those details, I struggled to empathize with him or his wife, and found myself resenting them just as their eldest son did.

The parents made this choice, after all—none of the children did. And if the parents really believed they could keep up this life indefinitely, they were naive indeed. Granted, after nearly two decades, of course they would have grown to assume they could just live like this forever. But, an abrupt end was inevitable, especially living that close to the city—they partly scraped up a living with it. In one of the early scenes, the camera follows one of the older boys walking through the city, knocking on the doors of presumably regular customers and asking if they want to buy their caught fish.

This was all the kids ever knew, and at the very least, young children are very adaptable. The older children, not quite as much. They swim in public fountains not designed for them; they are victims of excessive force by local police when they are caught “poaching” fish from the river in the city. Romanian director Radu Ciorniciuc includes just a few instances of local city residents and authorities alike who treat this family poorly and unfairly, but that is far from the focus of this film. Rather, it’s simply about their struggle to adapt to the gigantic transition from living off the grid to living in the city. The kids go around the city still doing the kinds of things that are just what they have always known.

They are in a largely impossible position, bridging two completely different worlds, neither of which have a comfortable place for them. This would be a great film to shoot a follow-up for, five or ten years down the road. As it stands, Acasă, My Home ends without any resolution to speak of. This is just where they are now, and it sucks. But, it’s also a skillfully presented portrait of their predicament, and absolutely worth seeing.

They have no idea what awaits them.

Overall: A-