Movies

[Rusty]

716 - La Antena (2007) - 7.5/10 - The people of a city have had their voices taken away from them by Mr. TV, except for one woman known as The Voice (and her son, but they are keeping it secret). Now Mr. TV is plotting to take their words as well. This is an odd film with a sort of retro futuristic style, but I enjoyed it.


717 - Punch the Clock (2016) - 7/10 - The patent office in Brazil is filled with extremely lazy workers who rarely get any work done. When the office becomes the subject of ridicule in a magazine article, the boss decides to do something about it. In a case of fortuitous timing, he becomes aware of a working time machine prototype that was just filed with the bureau and hatches a plan to use it to force his employees to catch up on the backlog. It's not a great movie, but it was fun.

[Rusty]

718 - Anina (2013) - 7.5/10 - A young girl isn't sure whether she likes her name because she gets teased about it at school. All three of her names are palindromes. She gets into a bit of a fight with another girl on the playground and the girls are given a sealed envelope to hold on to for a week before learning their punishment. The animation takes a bit of getting used to, but I thought it was a very nice movie and I enjoyed it more as it went along.


719 - Landfill Harmonic (2015) - 7.5/10 - A music director decides to offer free music lessons to children of families who live near a giant landfill in Paraguay. This leads to one of the parents helping build violins and other instruments out of materials found in the landfill and the formation of a small orchestra. Eventually, the orchestra gets invited to play in various places around the world, but a number of things still make life difficult back home. This is a pretty nice documentary.

[Rusty]

720 - Wild Tales (2014) - 8/10 - Six stories are told here that generally center on revenge in this Argentinian black humor film. I liked most of the stories, though I don't think the one with the hit and run quite fit with the rest and I didn't really buy the ending of the tow truck story. Still, it is an entertaining film and moves at a pretty good pace.

[Rusty]

721 - Son of the Bride (2001) - 8.5/10 - Rafael spends a lot of his time running the restaurant he took over from his parents. This leads him to neglect a number of his family relationships at times. He has a company interested in purchasing the restaurant, but is hesitant to sell. Life events lead to him reconsidering his priorities. I enjoyed this one a lot.

[Rusty]

722 - O Quatrilho (1995) - 6.5/10 - Two newly married couples decide to pool their resources and purchase a farm in Brazil early in the 20th Century. They live in the same large house and build a mill. Angelo is practical and married to Teresa, who wants romance. Massimo seems cultured, but has a wandering eye and is married to Pierina who is practical. Their lives get upended when Teresa and Massimo fall for each other. It was a decent film, though perhaps a bit too plain and straightforward, sort of like Angelo and Pierina.

[Rusty]

723 - The Secret in Their Eyes (2009) - 7/10 - A retired legal counselor decides to try and write a book based on a rape/murder case from 25 years earlier. He meets up with his former boss, a woman that he was in love with, but was unable to act on his feelings. The film flashes back to the case for much of the film. I thought it was good, but not great.

[Rusty]

724 - King Richard (2021) - 8/10 - This is a pretty solid film about Richard Williams and the early tennis years of Venus and Serena Williams. Will Smith is very good in the title role, but Aunjanue Ellis is just as solid as Oracene Williams. Saniyya Sidney and Demi Singleton are also good as Venus and Serena with Sidney having a larger role as the older of the two sisters. In many ways it's a fairly standard sports biopic, but it manages to be pretty entertaining as well.

[Rusty]

725 - tick, tick... BOOM! (2021) - 7.5/10 - It's 1990 and Jonathan Larson is a struggling writer trying to get his rock musical produced and he's about to turn 30. This is years before Rent would become a huge hit. Andrew Garfield is excellent as Larson and the supporting cast is pretty good. I also liked many of the songs, but I did feel that the film dragged a bit from time to time. It's still a good film, though.

[Rusty]

726 - The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir (1975) - 7.5/10 - In 1973, Shirley MacLaine took a somewhat diverse group of women to China as part of a cultural exchange. They were accompanied by a film crew consisting of four women to document their journey. At first, the people in China were not sure what to make of these foreigners, but they soon became friends, The group got to interact with many people, see a lot of sights, and get to know the way many of the Chinese people lived. They also got to ask questions about a number of topics to see how life in China was different or the same as life in the U.S. It was interesting and I especially enjoyed seeing the various activities rather than the question and answer sessions.


727 - Sound and Fury (2000) - 8/10 - This documentary is about a family where one son (Peter) is deaf and his wife (Nita) and three kids are also deaf. His brother (Chris) is hearing, but has a wife (Mari) who is a child of deaf adult. Chris has infant twin boys where one of the twins is deaf. He and his wife look into getting a cochlear implant for their son, but Mari's parents are against it. Peter's oldest child (5 year old Heather) asks about getting a cochlear implant, but Peter and his wife are afraid that she will lose her deaf culture. Peter's mother pushes for the implant. There is a lot of debate and conflict here as the two families have to decide what to do. It was pretty well done. I also watched the short documentary that updates the situation six years later.


728 - Murnau’s 4 Devils: Traces of a Lost Film (2003) - 7/10 - This film uses stills, excerpts from the script, and storyboards along with narration to recreate this lost film about four orphans who become circus trapeze artists. There were some interesting bits of information as well. I hope that a print of the original version of the film turns up some day.


729 - A Queen is Crowned (1953) - 5/10 - Laurence Olivier narrates the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and the associated parades. There is a lot of colorful pageantry and it is somewhat interesting from a historical perspective, but the film itself is pretty boring.


730 - For All Mankind (1989) - 8/10 - This film is narrated by Apollo astronauts and uses actual footage from missions to the moon during the 1960s and 1970s. I thought it was pretty cool.


731 - Daughter from Danang (2002) - 8/10 - Heidi Bub was born in Vietnam in 1968 to a Vietnamese mother and an American father. She was part of Operation Babylift when she was six years old and ended up adopted by a single mother in Tennessee where she became fully Americanized. She sought more information about her birth mother 22 years after her adoption and was able to locate her. A film crew accompanied her on a visit to Vietnam to reunite with her mother, siblings, and other family. Things don't go totally as expected and this is a pretty good film.


732 - Crèvecoeur (1955) - 6/10 - A young French lieutenant arrives in Korea to serve in a French battalion of UN forces. He is initially assigned as a liaison officer to the Americans, but is later given his own command and has to lead his men in battle. It didn't really seem like a documentary, but was labeled as such. The film itself was only so-so.

[Rusty]

733 - March of the Penguins (2005) - 7.5/10 - Every year, emperor penguins walk a long distance from the sea to find a mate, breed, and care for their egg/chick if they are lucky. They go for a long period without food during the Antarctic winter. This film has really nice cinematography and is narrated by Morgan Freeman.


734 - Serengeti Shall Not Die (1959) - 8/10 - This nature documentary has a lot of really nice shots of animals and the land in the Serengeti. A plane and jeep painted like zebras are used to track the animal migration of the various herds and to battle poachers. It's a nice film, though unfortunately the cinematographer died in an accident on location.


735 - Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience (2007) - 7/10 - Veterans of Iraq, Afghanistan, and other wars relate their experiences and the stories that that they wrote about their time there. The stories are reenacted through live action and with drawings.


736 - Walls of Fire (1971) - 6/10 - Ricardo Montalban narrates this documentary about Mexican mural painting, focusing on the careers of three highly regarded artists - José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Siqueiros plays a more prominent role since he was the only one of the three alive when this was filmed and we get to see the construction of his March of Humanity exhibit. The artists are clearly talented, but the style of art really didn't appeal to me for the most part. I found the film a bit boring.


737 - Street Fight (2005) - 8/10 - The last 100 days before the 2002 Newark Mayoral election between longtime incumbent Sharpe James and relative newcomer Cory Booker Is documented here. James used police to intimidate those who favored Booker. He also denied access to the filmmaker. It was a good film.


738 - Cutie and the Boxer (2013) - 7/10 - The film looks at a married Japanese-American couple who have been married for about 40 years and are both artists. Ushio turns 80 and creates some of his art by putting on boxing gloves, dipping them in paint, and punching a canvas. Noriko is about 20 years younger and she has created cartoon images with Cutie and a character named Bullie that represent her and her husband. Their marriage has been filled with struggle, poverty, and love. Noriko is asserting herself more as an artist now than when she was younger. I thought it was interesting seeing the old footage from the 1970s/early 1980s with the couple. It was a decent film.


739 - Which Way Home (2009) - 8.5/10 - A film crew follows a number of migrant children as they travel from Central America and southern Mexico to try and reach the United States. They ride on freight trains and encounter a number of dangers along the way and not all of them make it. I thought it was very well done.

[Rusty]

740 - Come and See (1985) - 9/10 - During WWII, a boy leaves his village to join the resistance and fight the invading German army in Byelorussia. He encounters many horrors that quickly terrorize and age him. It's an excellent anti-war film.


741 - Always a New Beginning (1974) - 7/10 - Glenn Doman and the Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential are shown here. Doman developed methods to work with young children who were unable to walk due to brain injuries and get them to progress to the point where they could walk. He found that it also helped in other areas so he began looking into brain development. The film shows visits to numerous countries and people as part of this research, including multiple places in Africa, South America, Asia, and elsewhere. It was interesting.


742 - Balseros (2002) - 8/10 - Back in 1994, many Cubans tried to reach the United States via homemade rafts. Some made it, some died, some had to turn back, and some got taken to Guantanamo. This film follows a number of these individuals and the families that they leave behind. They show how those that make it to the U.S. adjust to life there. They also check in with them again five years later. It's a pretty good film.


743 - Born Into Brothels: Calcutta’s Red Light Kids (2004) - 8/10 - Zana Briski is a British photographer who was in Calcutta photographing the prostitutes there when she befriended their children who also lived in the brothels. She started teaching them photography and tried to help them get into boarding schools so that they would have more opportunities for education and choices once they grew up. It's a good film and was a lot more upbeat than I thought it would be. The kids were interesting and really seemed interested in the photography.


744 - Genocide (1982) - 8/10 - Simon Wiesenthal introduces and Orson Welles narrates (along with Elizabeth Taylor at times) this film about the Holocaust and the events leading up to and after the genocide. I've seen a number of other films on the subject that are also good. This one has a nice score and does a few different things such as split screens and having multiple images.

[Rusty]

745 - The Salt of the Earth (2014) - 8.5/10 - This film chronicles the 40 year career of Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado. He's spent his career traveling all over the world, often working on self selected projects for years. This includes Rwanda, Kosovo, and Kuwait during conflicts there. He's published a number of large books and had his photographs published in numerous places. It was very interesting seeing the pictures and video from his various projects as he tells what was happening at the time, including his motivations. He became more interested in nature later in his career. It is a very nice film.


746 - Finding Vivian Maier (2013) - 8.5/10 - John Maloof purchased a trunk full of negatives at an auction and was surprised at the quality of the work. He tracked down items from her estate purchased by others and came up with more pictures. He started looking into who this woman was and discovered that she was a reclusive nanny who had taken photographs for about 60 years, but didn't share them with others. I thought it was a very interesting film as we discover more of who this lady was through interviews with people who knew her. The photographs are also very good.


747 - Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country (2008) - 7.5/10 - Underground reporters take video of conditions in Burma where the military dictatorship keeps strict control of the country. If caught, the reporters face jail, beatings, or worse. Protests by students, monks, and others are captured by the reporters as is the government crackdown in response. It's a decent film.


748 - Children of Fate: Life and Death in a Sicilian Family (1993) - 7/10 - In 1961, filmmakers visited a slum in Palermo called Cortile Cascino and documented the life and struggles there, focusing on one particular family. The documentary ended up not airing, but 30 years later the director's son and daughter-in-law visited Palermo again, found the family from the first film and caught up with how they were doing and what had changed in 30 years. Footage from the original film is interspersed with the new footage. The film wasn't bad and it was interesting comparing 'then and now'.


749 - Murderball (2005) - 7/10 - The rivalry between the U.S. and Canada in wheelchair rugby along with the lives of some of the players/coaches is shown here, culminating in the 2004 Paralympic Games. The actual rugby matches were probably the least interesting parts of the film. The parts exploring the lives of the people were much more interesting.


750 - If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front (2011) - 7/10 - Daniel McGowan and other members of his Earth Liberation Front cell committed a number of arsons back in 2000/2001. The FBI finally caught up with them 5 years later due to one of the members turning informant. They have to decide whether to take a plea deal or potentially face life in prison. The events and motivations are explored here through interviews of parties on both sides. It was decent.


751 - Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010) - 8/10 - Banksy directs this documentary about Thierry Guetta, a French-American who became enamored with street art and started hanging around and filming artists in a number of countries. Banksy eventually took an interest him and encouraged him to try and create his own art. This led to Guetta becoming Mr. Brainwash, a successful and wealthy artist. I don't know how much of this film is true and how much is a put on by Banksy, Shepard Fairey, and Thierry Guetta, but it was a funny and entertaining film.

[Rusty]

752 - The Line King: The Al Hirschfeld Story (1996) - 7/10 - The life story of artist Al Hirschfeld is told through interviews with HIrschfeld, his family, many celebrities, and others. We also get to see plenty of his distinctive art from over the years. The film is worth seeing just for the art.


753 - Searching for Sugar Man (2012) - 7.5/10 - Sixto Rodriguez is a Detroiter who recorded a couple of albums 50 years ago that did very poorly in the U.S., but later did very well in South Africa. Very little was known about Rodriguez, but he might have been more popular than Elvis in South Africa. There were a lot of rumors that he had killed himself on stage, but no concrete information was known. This film is about the search for information about Rodriguez back in the 1990s and the discovery that he was alive and living in Detroit. This led to a number of shows and a bit of a revival of his music career. I thought it was a nice film.


754 - Dirty Wars (2013) - 5/10 - A journalist looks into secret operations by the U.S. military in Afghanistan and Yemen. Important questions are raised, but I didn't like the music used in the film or the style employed by the journalist. At times, it seemed to be more about him.


755 - Twist of Faith (2004) - 6.5/10 - A Toledo firefighter confronts the sexual abuse he suffered as a teen at the hands of a Catholic priest. He meets with other victims of the same person and also attends a conference in St. Louis for survivors of abuse. His story is published in the local newspaper as well.


756 - Black Fox: The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler (1962) - 6/10 - Marlene Dietrich narrates this documentary that relates Hitler to the old tales of Reynard the Fox. I don't think this was completely successful. The film uses archival footage and photographs along with drawings to cover Hitler's life, though it becomes more about Germany as a whole than Hitler at times and many things are skipped over, including much of the war from 1941-1945. Overall, it was okay, but I've seen better on the subject. I liked Stoumen's film about photography a lot more than this one.


757 - When We Were Kings (1996) - 8/10 - This film looks back on the Rumble in the Jungle in 1974 between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. It focuses much more on Ali and uses archival footage plus contemporary interviews with people like Norman Mailer and George Plimpton. There was a music festival in Zaire along with the fight and we get to see a bit of that as well. I thought it was interesting and entertaining, though Ali usually is.


758 - 14-18 (1963) - 8/10 - This French documentary does a nice job covering WWI from the assassination of Franz Ferdinand through the Treaty of Versailles. It doesn't really go into a lot of detail, but it gives a good sense of the course of the war and includes multiple perspectives. There is also plenty of footage that I don't recall seeing before in other documentaries and they include parts such as soldiers being granted leave which is interesting. The narration is also well done.

[Rusty]

759 - Genghis Blues (1999) - 8/10 - Paul Pena was a blind blues guitarist and singer who learned of Tuvan throatsinging over the radio in the 1980s. He took it upon himself to learn how it was done and also to learn something of the Tuvan people and language. Over a decade later, he got the opportunity to travel to Tuva (a Russian Republic in central Asia) to participate in a throatsinging competition. He was accompanied by an amateur documentary crew and a couple of other people. The people there loved and appreciated his performances and he also got to travel across the country with his guide and friends. I enjoyed it quite a bit.


760 - The Times of Harvey Milk (1984) - 8/10 - Harvey Milk was the first openly gay supervisor in San Francisco. He was assassinated in 1978 along with the mayor by a disgruntled former fellow supervisor. This film does a nice job chronicling Milk's election to the Board of Supervisors and what he accomplished there along with the aftermath of the assassination.


761 - Hell and Back Again (2011) - 6/10 - This film follows soldiers in Afghanistan as they interact with locals and fight Taliban. Interspersed with it is one survivor who has returned home with his leg a mess as he tries to readjust to life back in the states and go through rehab. It was okay, but seemed somewhat disorganized in terms of how it was put together,


762 - The Eleanor Roosevelt Story (1965) - 6/10 - Eleanor Roosevelt was a very interesting person. Unfortunately, the first half of this biography is pretty dull, much of that due to the uninspired narration. It gets better after that, though.


763 - The Farm: Angola, USA (1998) - 7/10 - A look at life inside Angola Prison, focusing on a few of the inmates. One of them is on death row and will likely be executed soon and another is old and sick and has mostly stopped eating. Some still hold out hope for a pardon or an appeal, but many will be spending decades or even life in prison. It was a good documentary.


764 - Off the Edge (1976) - 7/10 - Two guys decide to ski and hang glide in the mountains of New Zealand. We get over an hour of them skiing on various mountain slopes, spending their nights in a hut anchored at the top of one ridge, and then hang gliding from one mountain across a variety of terrain to a lake. The narration, scenery, and music were all pretty good.

[Rusty]

765 - Life, Animated (2016) - 7/10 - Owen Suskind's autism caused him to retreat into himself and stop talking at age three. His love for Disney animated movies helped bring him out of this a few years later along with a lot of help from his family. The film shows Owen in his 20s, finally moving into his own apartment, though still somewhat dependent on family. It also uses video and drawings to look back on his struggles as a child. It was interesting and a decent film, though I did start to lose interest a bit toward the end.


766 - Minding the Gap (2018) - 8/10 - Three young men grew up in Rockford, Illinois and became friends through skateboarding. One is white, one is black, and one is Chinese, but they all love skateboarding and dealt with abuse while growing up. The film shows them over a 10 year period by Bing, the director of the film and one of the three subjects. They each have their own struggles as adults and grow apart a bit. The film dives into a number of their issues and is very well done.


767 - Man on Wire (2008) - 8/10 - A look back at Philippe Petit and his friends who strung a cable between the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 1974 to set up a 45 minute wire walking performance by Petit. The interviews and pictures/video were pretty cool. It was like a heist film in some ways with what they did to get everything set up. We also get to see a bit of Petit's earlier performances at Notre Dame in Paris and in Sydney plus practice before the event. I certainly wouldn't want to be out on a cable 1300+ feet in the air like that.


768 - Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (2016) - 8/10 - Abacus is a relatively small bank that mainly serves the Chinese community. They were the only bank brought up on fraud charges in relation to the mortgage crisis, even though their mortgage loans have performed well and the charges were based on things that the bank self reported when they were discovered. It was definitely favorable to the bank's case and perhaps there is more to the story, but what was presented here looks really bad for the D.A.'s office.


769 - My Country, My Country (2006) - 7.5/10 - The lead up to the national elections in Iraq in 2005 is covered here while there is still plenty of violence going on in the country. Dr. Riyadh is a Sunni physician who decides to run for the Baghdad council, but his party may decide to sit out the elections due to the continuing violence and distrust of the process. Much of the film focuses on Dr. Riyadh, his practice, and his family. It was an interesting watch.


770 - The Weather Underground (2002) - 6.5/10 - The Weather Underground was a radical left organization in the late 1960s and 1970s that was involved in a bombings and helping break Timothy Leary out of prison. This film features interviews with former members plus archival footage and photographs. It wasn't bad, but it didn't seem as cohesive as it could have been.


771 - The Hellstrom Chronicle (1971) - 7.5/10 - Are insects the true chosen ones who will inherit the Earth. The subject is explored here with some pretty good camerawork and narration looking at how a variety of insects survive, reproduce, act, etc. There are also a few bits from science fiction and horror films mixed in. There are elements of satire here, but the facts presented seem solid.