Churchill ####
There is a moment in this eponymous film about one of Britain’s greatest modern legends when Brian Cox seemingly embodies the man. It’s towards the end of the film while he’s addressing the nation on BBC Radio with the words that captured the hearts of the people, and of his wife (played here to perfection by Miranda Richardson). It is damn near impossible not to be moved by his command of the words and his sheer desire to save a nation. It’s odd then that he has been viewed by some, if not many, in Parliament as a tad annoying, foppish and demanding. At one point, a general is told to basically tell Winston what he wants to hear…shut him up, so to speak. What we see instead is a barrage of a man who may have been heinous on the eye but who was a leader in the fight for liberty and democracy. He is today considered to be the greatest Briton who ever lived. Superb war movie!
Quo Vado? (Un italiano en Noruega) ##
With some statistics seems like a good place to begin here. This film has grossed about 70 million euros in Italy alone. It has gone on to make its star Checco Zalone the new Amy Schumer (read: the big comic star of the moment) in Italy. The problem is, the film itself is not of much merit. Admittedly, there are some funny, non-PC scenes that provoked an outright and rather loud-ass guffaw from within me. That being said, I cannot remember the last time I saw a film that egregiously pointed out the fallacies of why ‘mama’s boys’, who continue living with their parents well past the age of 25 or 30, are simply ‘The Worst’. There is a similar identity crisis in Spain, but in Italy nearly 75 percent of young people still live at home with mum and dad up to the age of 30. NO THANK YOU! While the film celebrates the joys of being a locked-in-for-life civil servant who is moved around from one annoyance to another while constantly stressing out his boss (played by Sonia Bergamasco, who looks a lot like Sandra Bernhard back in the day), the film never makes it past the ‘you REALLY have to be an Italian to get this’ phase. Plus, this man who is apparently anti-gay adoption in Italy is one of the gayest actors I’ve ever seen on the big screen, feigning a leading man status but being too incredibly daffy and effeminate to ever get that notion off the ground. The fact that he gets the sexy girl is completely lame and so closet-case it makes Caitlin Jenner seem like a prophetess.
Dancer ####
This documentary takes a look at the Ukrainian-born, world-class ballet dancer Sergei Polunin in his mid-twenties, when he chooses a different path and opens himself up to a new way of being. That is never easy, least of all in Russia. Ballet has its own mandate, rules and restrictions that must be followed, as one immediately learns as the film rolls. Polunin is no stranger to the party life and over the past decade has made a name for himself as not only the most skilled and sleek of his art, but also as a guy who doesn’t shy away from drugs and the like. The film gets down to the nitty-gritty when the history lessons from his youth begin. Using interviews, home videos and photographs, director Steven Cantor unfolds the fascinating tale of a young artist who has taken it upon himself to wage his own struggle while he grows. An absolutely riveting documentary.
Tanna ####
Tanna is a tiny island of Vanuatu, inhabited by the little-known Yakel people. Through the region's impeccable landscapes shown in this film, we, the audience, come away with a sense of grandeur and wonder. Australian documentarians Bentley Dean and Martin Butler provide a pure look at a most unpredictable interpretation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. What results is a fantastic, almost ancient, tribal story told through celluloid and reality. The film is compiled from images and goings-on in the tribe’s everyday life. It’s entirely in the Nauvhal language and is cast from non-actors who live a normal life on location. Dean and Butler focus on two timely stories. One story is told in the traditional sense, used to teach a young tomboy named Selin the meaning of respect using Mother Nature as the most vital reference point. At the same time, Selin’s older sister, the beautiful Wawa, falls in love with the chief’s orphaned grandson, Dain. But when a hostile attack occurs not long afterwards, a chain of events change the tribe’s spiritual rites and rules forever.
El jugador de ajedrez ###-1/2
Watching the two stars of this film interact during moments of crisis made for a jolting study on facial movements…sometimes the eyes say it all. Marc Clotet and Melina Matthews play two distinct variables that come together in a rather too-quick-to-buy manner, but their chemistry is believable immediately. Centering around Clotet’s character Diego Padilla, just after he wins the Spanish Chess Championship, what director Luis Oliveros brings us is a love story wrapped up in the end of Civil War-era drama that then leads to WWII-era hell. Matthews plays Marianne Latour, a French journalist who has been living in Spain to support her husband. When they do ye old switcheroo from Madrid to Paris, everything takes a turn for the different. When Diego is accused of being a spy, he is taken away and imprisoned in the local SS prison. It is there that he narrowly escapes certain death for a time because of his captor’s obsession with chess. The ending is bittersweet, but the film leaves you with a feeling of redemption through fire.
