Review: ‘Mighty Ira,’ starring Ira Glasser

October 17, 2020

by Carla Hay

Ira Glasser in “Mighty Ira” (Photo courtesy of Foundation for Individual Rights in Education)

“Mighty Ira”

Directed by Nico Perrino, Aaron Reese and Chris Maltby

Culture Representation: The documentary “Mighty Ira” features a predominantly white group of people (with a few African Americans), who are attorneys and social justice activists, commenting on the life of former American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) executive director Ira Glasser, including Glasser himself.

Culture Clash: Glasser has been a longtime advocate for ACLU principles, such as fighting for people’s rights to freedom of speech, even if it’s controversial hate speech.

Culture Audience: “Mighty Ira” will appeal primarily to people interested in ACLU history and social justice issues.

Ira Glasser and Ben Stern in “Mighty Ira” (Photo courtesy of Foundation for Individual Rights in Education)

The documentary film “Mighty Ira,” about former ACLU executive director Ira Glasser, just happened to be released in the same year as “The Fight” documentary, which is about the ACLU’s battles against the Donald Trump presidential administration’s attempts to have more conservative laws for personal freedoms. While “The Fight” is more about the ACLU’s specific responses to Trump and his presidential administration, “Mighty Ira” is more about ACLU’s legacy and how Glasser helped shaped that legacy during his tenure as ACLU executive director from 1978 to 2001.

Born in 1938, Glasser participates in this documentary, which has a conventional approach in many ways but makes unconventional choices in other ways. As with most biographical documentaries, there are the expected interviews with work associates and family members of the person who’s the subject of the documentary. But “Mighty Ira” doesn’t take the typical route of presenting several ACLU cases as highlights of Glasser’s career. Instead, the documentary focuses on the ACLU’s involvement in the landmark 1977 U.S. Supreme Court case National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie, also known as the Skokie Affair, which had the ACLU defending a neo-Nazi group’s right to have a rally in the Chicago suburb of Skokie, Illinois.

The position of the ACLU has always been that freedom of speech in the U.S. Constitution applies to everyone in the U.S., no matter how offensive or controversial that speech might be. “Mighty Ira” (directed by Nico Perrino, Aaron Reese and Chris Maltby) weaves vivid descriptions of the Skokie Affair in between Glasser talking about his life. And then, the documentary ties both topics together at the end, to give an overview of the 2017 tragic and deadly “Unite the Right” civil unrest in Charlottesville, Virginia, and how there are similarities to the Skokie Affair and what happened in Charlottesville.

The movie begins with a personal touch, by showing Glasser’s longtime love for the team formerly known as the Brooklyn Dodgers. Glasser (who’s lived in New York City for most of his life) vividly remembers being a fan attending Brooklyn Dodgers games at Ebbets Field in 1947, when Jackie Robinson, as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers, made history as the first African American player in Major League Baseball.

In the documentary, Ira visits the site of what used to be Ebbets Field (which is where an apartment building now stands) and he has bittersweet memories of what Ebbets Field meant to him and how crushed he was when the Dodgers team moved to Los Angeles in 1957, and Ebbets Field was torn down in 1960. Glasser says of Ebbets Field: “It was like a religious shrine. It was like if you had a beautiful, treasured Gothic cathedral, and they had torn it down and built a department store.”

While he visits the former site of Ebbets Field, which has a mural of Robinson, the documentary shows Glasser telling two curious African American girls, who are about 8 or 9 years old and passing by on the street, about Robinson and how important Robinson was in American history. Afterward, Glasser somewhat laments that these children didn’t know anything about Robinson. Its in contrast to a senior citizen African American man who greets Glasser on the same street and knew about Robinson.

As Glasser says in the movie, these childhood memories of watching the Dodgers play at Ebbets Field are parallel to Glasser first becoming aware of racial injustice and wanting to do something about it. Growing up in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East Flatbush, Glasser says he spent many years of his childhood not thinking about the fact that everyone around him was pretty much like his family: white, working-class and Jewish. He describes New York City at that time as diverse overall, but the neighborhoods were racially and ethnically segregated.

It wasn’t until Glasser became a fan of Robinson that he started to understand that Robinson and other people of color were treated as second-class citizens for not being white. When the Dodgers would travel outside of New York to states with Jim Crow segregation laws, Robinson could not get lodging or eat at the same places as his white teammates. And this type of racism outraged Glasser when he was a child.

Glasser entered the work force just as the civil rights movement of the 1960s was starting to blossom. In the early 1960s, Glasser started his career by teaching math at Queens College and Sarah Lawrence College. From 1964 to 1967, he was an associate editor of Current magazine, a New York-based reprint monthly publication of public affairs. And then a fateful meeting with Robert F. Kennedy in 1967 changed Glasser’s life.

According to Glasser, he wrote a letter to Kennedy (who was then a U.S. Senator for New York), asking to meet with him, even though Glasser knew that it was a long shot that Kennedy would reply. Glasser greatly admired Kennedy, whom Glasser describes in the documentary as “the leading white politician who became genuinely engaged in the civil rights movement” at the time. Not only did Glasser get a reply from Kennedy, but Glasser also got to meet with Kennedy in person. During the meeting, Glasser says that he told Kennedy that Kennedy should run for president of the United States.

Kennedy told Glasser that it was too early to decide if he would launch a presidential campaign, but he encouraged Glasser to take a job that Glasser had turned down: associate director of the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU). The job had been offered to Glasser by Aryeh Neier, who was NYCLU’s executive director from 1965 to 1970. Glasser thought he wasn’t qualified for the job because he didn’t have a law degree or a background in law.

However, Glasser says that Kennedy told Glasser that he could do a lot for the civil rights movement because of the passion that Glasser had for it. And so, a month after meeting with Kennedy, Glasser took the NYCLU associate director position. In 1970, Glasser was promoted to NYCLU executive director. And in 1978, he became executive director of the ACLU, until he retired in 2001.

Why does “Mighty Ira” put so much emphasis on the Skokie Affair as a flagship case for the ACLU, even though the case was decided in the U.S. Supreme Court in 1977, the year before Glasser became the head of the ACLU? Glasser explains in the documentary: “In retrospect, the Skokie case was a defining, pivotal moment for the ACLU. The reason why it was a defining and pivotal is that the reaction to the Skokie case threatened our existence.” Glasser also says that he when he became the executive director of the ACLU, he thought racial justice would be his top priority, but “my top priority turned out to be organizational survival.”

The essence of the Skokie Affair is that the National Socialist Party of America (a neo-Nazi group that was led at the time by Frank Collin) demanded to hold a rally in Skokie, whose city officials resisted and denied a permit. Why did this racist and anti-Semitic group choose Skokie? Because neo-Nazi Collin (who lived in the area) hated that Skokie had a large Jewish population and a growing number of African Americans living there too, according to Philippa Strum, author of “When the Nazis Came to Skokie.”

The National Socialist Party of America (NSPA) sued Skokie over the permit denial, and the case (in various forms) went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the NSPA, on grounds of freedom of speech. David Goldberger, who was a lawyer for ACLU’s Illinois Division at the time, says in the documentary: “I became the lead attorney in the Skokie case, in part, because no one else would do it.”

It was a victory for the NSPA and the ACLU, but at what cost? Many people, especially those who are targets of neo-Nazis, vilified the ACLU for defending the neo-Nazis’ rights to freedom of speech. There is archival footage of several Jewish residents of Skokie saying that the NSPA rally would open up old wounds and remind people of Nazi Germany. Some of the Skokie residents said that they were ready to get in physical fights or shoot people to defend themselves if they had to do it.

One of the most outspoken anti-ACLU people during the Skokie Affair was Ben Stern, a Holocaust survivor and a Skokie resident at the time. Born in 1921, Stern was vehemently opposed to the NSPA rally taking place in Skokie, and he helped organized citizens’ groups that were on the side of Skokie officials who denied the permit. One of the best scenes in “Mighty Ira” is showing a reunion with Glasser and Stern, who put aside their differences years ago, but hadn’t seen each other in a long time until their reunion was filmed for this documentary.

After all the legal battles, the NSPA rally ended up not taking place in Skokie after all, but it happened in 1978 in Chicago’s Marquette Park, which is where the neo-Nazi group originally wanted to have the rally. The Skokie Affair controversy and the Marquette Park rally got so much publicity, the neo-Nazis ended up being far outnumbered and out-shouted by counter-protestors. The neo-Nazis slunk away in disgrace and defeat, having had their chance to hold this public-speech event, and it turned out to be a huge flop for them.

The documentary includes archival footage of Collin at the rally, repeatedly muttering to his followers how “pathetic” the rally was. Ironically, Collin’s father was Jewish, which is something that Collin tried to hide until the media found out. Collin later ended up being ousted by the NSPA and became a convicted child molester who spent time in prison for molesting boys.

“Mighty Ira” also includes a compelling segment on the unlikely friendship between Glasser and ultra-conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr., founder of the PBS show “Firing Line” and the right-wing magazine National Review. The two men were opposites in almost every way, and often squared off in televised debates. “Firing Line” was a frequent forum for these debates. Buckley died in 2008, at the age of 82.

Glasser says in the documentary that these TV appearances “sort of elevated my visibility and my persona in a way that it had not been before.” One of the most famous debates on “Firing Line” was titled “Resolved: The ACLU Is Full of Baloney.” Glasser adds of his friendship with Buckley: “Part of the attraction we had for each other in that relationship was how different we were.”

Glasser remembers one of the highlights of their friendship was when, in 1994, he convinced Buckley (who was the epitome of an elite country-club type who would take limos everywhere) to go on a subway with him to Shea Stadium to watch a game between the New York Mets and the Chicago Cubs. The documentary includes archival TV footage of that trip. It was Buckley’s first time at a baseball game and the first time that Buckley had taken a subway in over 30 years. Ira’s sister Cora Glasser says in the documentary: “For Ira to bring [Buckley] down to a working person’s level was a victory.”

And when Ira had a heart attack in 1998, Buckley called Ira’s wife Trude about a week later to ask how Ira was doing. It was a compassionate gesture that many people would not think someone like Buckley would ever do for an ultra-liberal person. Ira admits in the documentary about Buckley making that concerned phone call: “I often wondered if I would’ve done that if he had had the heart attack.” Trude says of Buckley in the documentary that Buckley was “charming and solicitous and the perfect gentleman.”

It might surprise some viewers of this documentary that out of all of the friends that Glasser has had in his life, Buckley is the only who gets mentioned with any significance in “Mighty Ira.” It’s pointed out in the movie that what Ira learned from getting to know Buckley on a personal level is that friendships and other relationships can transcend political views. And to a larger degree, the documentary shows that ACLU has a similar purpose when it comes to defending the rights of all, even people who are political enemies or have political opinions that are opposite to the ACLU attorneys who defend these opposing opinions.

Speaking of attorneys and civil rights activists, there are several who are interviewed in this documentary. They include the aforementioned Goldberger; Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative; fundraiser/author Roger Craver; Michael Meyers, executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition; Norman Siegel, NYCLU executive director from 1985 to 2000; Sheila Suess Kennedy, executive director of Indiana Civil Liberties Union from 1992 to 1998; Nadine Strossen, ACLU president from 1991 to 2008; former ACLU attorney Joel Gora; Carolyn Stern, who is Ben Stern’s daughter; and former ACLU board member Wendy Kaminer.

In the documentary, Ira Glasser explains his position on the ACLU’s responsibility for the 2017 Unite to Right rally in Charlottesville that included a white supremacist murdering counter-protestor Heather Heyer by running her over with his car. The ACLU provided legal representation for the group to hold the rally in Charlottesville, as part of freedom-of-speech rights. However, Ira Glasser and former ACLU attorney Gora say that it’s not the responsibility of the ACLU to provide the proper police protection at these types of free-speech events.

The documentary includes archival news footage of several eyewitnesses to the Heyer murder who say that there were no police officers at the scene of the crime until it was too late. Although there can certainly be comparisons to the Skokie Affair and what happened in Charlottesville, it seems like the “Mighty Ira” filmmakers wanted to put the Charlottesville tragedy in the documentary to make the film more current, rather than to have the documentary be about Glasser reminiscing about a job that he hasn’t had since 2001.

As such, the documentary breezes right through some of Ira Glasser’s career highlights of when he was executive director of the ACLU, with a quick montage of graphics illustrating these highlights. They include the 1986 launch of the national ACLU Lesbian and Rights Project; the 1989 Doe v. University of Michigan case, with the ACLU winning a fight against the University of Michigan’s ban of hate speech; the 1997 case Reno v. ACLU, which ruled that the federal Communications Decency Act (CDA) is an unconstitutional restriction on free speech; and the 1999 Chicago vs. Morales case, which found that a vaguely worded loitering law unfairly targeted African Americans and Latino for arrests.

In “Mighty Ira,” Ira Glasser comes across as affable, intelligent, genuine, and proud of his working-class roots. He’s someone who’s very steeped in nostalgia, but also still engaged in today’s issues, many of which are the same as when he first became involved in civil rights. Glasser is aware of his ACLU legacy, but he’s also humble about it: “I’d certainly had my shot at it, and I was happy to pass the baton on to others.”

And what inspired the documentary’s title? That question is answered at the end of the movie, when lifelong baseball fan Glasser reads a very entertaining original poem that he received called “Mighty Ira at the Bat,” as a retirement gift. The poem praises Glasser and lists some of his best qualities and how he rose to many challenges that he had at the ACLU. And the poem was written by someone (who’s not identified by name in the movie) who originally recommended another candidate for the ACLU job that Glasser ended up getting. As a testament to how Glasser won over the respect of the person who originally opposed him, the poem ends with a note that says, “Everyone can be wrong once in a while.”

Foundation for Individual Rights in Education released “Mighty Ira” via virtual cinema in New York City on October 9, 2020. The movie’s digital and VOD release date is October 23, 2020.

Review: ‘Love and Monsters,’ starring Dylan O’Brien

October 16, 2020

by Carla Hay

Dylan O’Brien in “Love and Monsters” (Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures)

“Love and Monsters”

Directed by Michael Matthews

Culture Representation: Taking place in California and other parts of the U.S., the sci-fi/horror/adventure film “Love and Monsters” has a predominantly white cast (with some Asians, Latinos and African Americans) portraying the middle-class.

Culture Clash: A 24-year-old man goes on a quest to reunite with his former high-school sweetheart during an apocalypse in which deadly mutant monsters have taken over the world.

Culture Audience: “Love and Monsters” will appeal to several generations of people who like sci-fi/horror movies that successfully blend other genres, such as comedy, action, romance and drama.

Jessica Henwick in “Love and Monsters” (Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures)

Even though “Love and Monsters” takes place in a post-apocalyptic world in which mutant monsters have killed off about 95% of the human population, the movie is not a grim and horrific slog that many people would expect it to be. In fact, “Love and Monsters” (directed by Michael Matthews) has a lot of charming comedy as well as heartfelt dramatic moments that can appeal to a wide variety of people. It’s the type of winning movie that people would want to see repeatedly and ask for a sequel. (And the end of the “Love and Monsters” definitely leaves open the possibility that there could be a continuation of the story.)

The central character of “Love and Monsters” is Joel Dawson (played by Dylan O’Brien), a 24-year-old “regular guy,” who lives in an underground bunker with several other young people who are under the age of 40. Apocalypse survivors who live together as a community call themselves a colony. According to Joel’s voiceover narration in the beginning of the movie, the apocalypse (which is called the Monsterpocalypse) happened when chemical compounds from bombs rained back down on Earth and caused animals to mutate into giant monsters.

The monsters killed most of the world’s human population within a year. The survivors fled underground, they live in colony bunkers, and go above ground in hunting parties to search for food. In addition to food that they find above ground, the members of Joel’s colony survive by growing their own food inside the bunker. They also have a cow for milk.

“Love and Monsters” takes place seven years after the Monsterpocalypse began. Joel is an orphan whose parents were killed right when the apocalypse started while the family was trying to escape the monsters that invaded their neighborhood. Joel (who is an only child) is originally from Fairfield, California, a city about 45 miles northeast of San Francisco. Like most apocalypse survivors, Joel doesn’t have any biological family members who are still alive.

Joel has found a new family with the colony of survivors who rescued him when the apocalypse began. However, Joel feels like somewhat of an outsider in the group. All of the other members of the colony have coupled up (and one couple has had a baby together), while Joel is the only one who doesn’t have a love partner. He also gets scared easily and freezes up when he sees monsters. Therefore, the colony doesn’t consider Joel to be useful for hunting trips and anything that would involve defending their colony from danger.

However, Joel is good at fixing things, he’s loves to draw, and he’s the colony’s main cook. One of the gadgets that Joel likes to tinker with is the bunker’s portable radio, which is the main way that colonies communicate with each other. (Television, phones and the Internet don’t exist in this world.)

Through a lot of investigating and persistence, Joel has found out that his first love, Aimee (played by Jessica Henwick), who was his girlfriend in high school, is living in a colony about 85 miles away in a place called Jenner Beach. He makes contact with Aimee, and she seems thrilled to hear from Joel. Over a period of time, they continue to talk to each other over the radio. And Joel finds himself falling in love with Aimee again.

When Joel and Aimee dated in high school (the movie has a few brief flashback scenes to this time period), their romance was interrupted because they were forced to flee separately with their respective families during the apocalypse. And then, Joel and Aimee lost touch with each other, until now. Because Joel feels like the “odd man out” in his colony, he’s starting to wonder if he really belongs there.

Joel’s colony has a close call when a monster invades the bunker and nearly kills Joel, who is rescued just in time by some other people in the colony who shoot the monster and kill it. This incident causes Joel’s self-esteem to take another hit because he believes that the other members of the colony think of him as a cowardly wimp. This near-death experience and his yearning to reunite with Aimee motivate Joel to say goodbye to his colony to go above ground and try to reunite with Aimee.

The members of Joel’s colony are disappointed to see him go and they’re very skeptical that Joel will be able to survive this trip on his own. But Joel is determined to go. All they can do is wish him well. One of the members of the colony gives him a map, while Joel takes some other items on the trip, including weapons and a portable radio that hasn’t worked in a long time.

Joel’s trip isn’t always dangerous, but it has a lot of close calls with a variety of giant mutant animals. One of the first that he encounters is a giant frog in someone’s abandoned backyard. Joel is rescued from the giant frog by an intelligent and expressive Australian Kelpie, which Joel calls Boy. This stray dog becomes Joel’s constant companion throughout most of the movie. And the scenes with Joel and Boy are among the best in “Love and Monsters.”

At another point in the movie, Joel accidentally falls into a pit that’s the nest of a creature called a sandgobbler. This time, he’s rescued by two humans: a middle-aged macho man named Clyde (played by Michael Rooker) and a sassy 8-year-old girl named Minnow (played by Ariana Greenblatt), who are not related to each other but are traveling together because their family members have died.

Minnow initially teases Joel over his tendency to get frightened easily, but Minnow eventually learns to respect Joel when he improves his target and defense skills. Clyde and Minnow are traveling north to a destination called Snow Mountain Wilderness, which has a colony of survivors who say the location is safer than other places because the cold and elevation keep the monsters away. The camaraderie between these three seemingly unlikely travel companions is also one of the highlights of “Love and Monsters.”

Clyde and Minnow invite Joel to go to Snow Mountain Wilderness with them. And when all three of the travelers reach the literal crossroads where Joel has to decide to go with Clyde and Minnow or continue west to reunite with Aimee, it’s easy to know what decision he will make. The rest of the movie takes a few twists and turns that refreshingly avoid a lot of predictable scenarios.

The visual effects for “Love and Monsters” are above-average, but they’re not going to win any major awards. The movie’s world building and how these creatures look are a commentary on the hazardous and deadly effects of humans who don’t take care of the environment. And the environment gets revenge on the humans in this apocalyptic way. The deadly mutant creatures include giant snails and what’s considered the most fearsome and worst mutant monster of them all: the Queen Sandgobbler, which looks like a giant mutant crab.

But not all of the monsters are deadly. Some of the giant creatures just want to be free to live without being hunted, and there’s a message in the movie about how monsters can be judged by looking at their eyes. It sounds a lot cornier than how it’s handled in the movie. One type of harmless creature is the sky jellyfish, which appear in one of the most touching and visually compelling scenes in the movie.

O’Brien, who was the star of “The Maze Runner” movie series, takes on a very different type of post-apocalyptic world in “Love and Monsters,” where humans are more likely to be helpful to each other, rather than have their lives revolve around the cutthroat and cruel competitions that are the basis of “The Maze Runner.” That doesn’t mean all is harmonious among people in the world of “Love and Monsters.” Someone can be expelled from a colony for stealing food, which is considered one of the worst crimes to commit in the “Love and Monsters” world.

The “Love and Monsters” screenplay was written by Brian Duffield and Matthew Robinson, who successfully mix various genres in the story. Most of the humor comes from Joel’s self-admitted awkwardness and insecurities, which many viewers will ultimately find endearing because he remains a humble person who’s a romantic at heart. Duffield also wrote and directed the critically acclaimed 2020 film “Spontaneous,” another Paramount Pictures movie about a young romance during a plague, although “Spontaneous” has a darker edge that’s geared to mature audiences. Thanks to assured direction, a genre-blending original story, and an appealing cast of characters, “Love and Monsters” is a crowd-pleaser that invites people into a world that’s very perilous to live in, but it’s a world that viewers will want to revisit and see what happens next.

Paramount Pictures released “Love and Monsters” in select U.S. cinemas, digital and VOD on October 16, 2020.

Review: ‘Alone’ (2020), starring Tyler Posey, Summer Spiro and Donald Sutherland

October 16, 2020

by Carla Hay

Tyler Posey in “Alone” (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate)

“Alone” (2020)

Directed by Johnny Martin

Culture Representation: Taking place in Los Angeles, the horror flick “Alone” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans) representing the middle-class.

Culture Clash: A bachelor who lives alone in an apartment fights to stay alive during a zombie apocalypse.

Culture Audience: “Alone” will appeal primarily to people who like zombie movies that are heavy on suspense but light on character development and a logical plot.

Summer Spiro in “Alone” (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate)

There have been so many movies that take place during a zombie apocalypse that any new movies that come along have to offer something truly unique to stand out from the pack. Despite many suspenseful moments and some fairly good acting, “Alone” (directed by Johnny Martin) falls very short of developing well-rounded characters and has too many implausible elements for it to be considered a superb zombie movie. It’s the type of horror movie where viewers still won’t know much about the main characters by the end of the movie, compared to when the characters were first introduced in the film.

This “Alone” movie should not be confused with director John Hyams’ stalker thriller “Alone,” another horror movie that was also released in 2020. Matt Naylor wrote the “Alone” zombie flick screenplay. And it’s the same screenplay that director Cho Il-hyung adapted into the South Korean movie “#Alive,” which was released in South Korean theaters on June 24, 2020, and debuted on Netflix on September 8, 2020. (Naylor and Cho are credited with writing the “#Alive” screenplay.) This is a case where the American movie version of the same screenplay is far inferior to the South Korean movie version that was released first.

The zombie flick “Alone” immediately starts with the zombie plague spreading throughout the world. The movie takes place in Los Angeles, where a tattooed bachelor in his late 20s named Aidan (played by Tyler Posey) wakes up in his bed next to a woman who’s about his age and who had a sexual encounter with him the night before. This woman is never identified by name, and it’s never explained how he met her or how long he’s known her. But later in the movie, Aidan essentially says that she was never his girlfriend, so viewers have to assume that she was just a fling.

As soon as she leaves, Aidan looks out from the back balcony of his high-rise apartment building and sees a girl on the street getting attacked by zombies. And then, he sees a helicopter crash into a building. From that moment on, all hell breaks loose. You’d think a zombie plague like this would spread a lot more gradually. But no. In this movie, the plague literally spreads everywhere within minutes, and the entire world is caught off-guard.

The next thing you know, zombies are everywhere outside and in the hallways of the apartment building. Aidan frantically turns on the news and sees the newscaster report that people should hide, preferably inside, and stay in that hiding place for as long as possible. Phone service is intermittent and it eventually becomes unavailable. And eventually, electricity, Internet service and running water/indoor plumbing become unavailable too.

Before the phone service no longer becomes an option for Aidan (he eventually gets an “all circuits are busy” message every time he tries to use his phone), he checks his voice mail and finds out that his parents have barricaded themselves in an office building, while Aidan’s younger sister has escaped to try and go to the family cabin. (In “#Alive,” the isolated protagonist is younger than the Aidan character, and he lives with his parents and his sister.)

One of the biggest plot holes in “Alone” is that the zombie plague spread so quickly, and yet there are no signs of the military or law enforcement trying to fight the zombies in an effort to save people’s lives. This lack of government defense in “Alone” is absolutely illogical, because when the military and police are nowhere to be found during a zombie apocalypse, it’s usually after a certain period of time when resources are depleted and the military and law enforcement have given up trying to fight off the zombies. With nowhere to go and no one to turn to for help, Aidan spends the majority of the movie by himself.

Early on when the zombie apocalypse hits, Aidan lets in an agitated neighbor named Brandon (played by Robert Ri’chard), who (not surprisingly) has been bitten by a zombie and quickly turns into a zombie while he’s in Aidan’s apartment. Aidan is able to get Brandon out of the apartment in time, but the hallways are filled with zombies that keep pounding on the door and trying to break into apartments. Aidan barricades his front door with his refrigerator.

These are not slow-walking zombies, like the ones in director George Romero’s 1968 classic “Night of the Living Dead.” The zombies in “Alone” run quickly, they’re all starving for human flesh, and they blurt out and repeat things like “Kill me,” as if they consciously know they’re doomed and want to be put out of their misery.

Another terrifying thing about these zombies is that they will only eat humans who are alive. Dead human flesh means nothing to them. They are also sensitive to sound and will run in the direction of any noise.

“Alone” does a pretty good job of making the zombies in the movie very gruesome-looking. They also have an extra-creepy factor because they can still talk, even after they’ve fully become zombies. In most zombie stories, the zombies lose their ability to talk. However, because so much of the movie is centered on Aidan being alone, it’s disappointing that so little effort is put into showing who Aidan really is as a person, except for being a scared guy who lives by himself.

The movie never mentions what Aidan does for a living, and the only hobby he’s shown to have is surfing, because he has a surfboard in his apartment. It’s implied that he’s plays rock music, because of the electric guitar he has in his apartment, but is it just a hobby or is he a professional musician? The movie never gives an answer to that question, nor does it reveal anything significant about Aidan’s past. There’s a scene where he looks at some family photos and a video of his mother on Hollywood Boulevard, but that’s it.

Early on in the movie, when Aidan knows that he’s going to have to spend a great deal of time by himself, he starts making video blogs, also known as vlogs. In one of the vlogs, he mentions that this is the first time in his life he’s been alone for an extended period of time. And yet, the movie never gives a sense of Aidan having any friends whatsoever.

The movie wants to give the impression that Aidan is an extrovert who’s used to being around people and has an active social life. And yet, you’d never know that he’s an extrovert, because Aidan is never seen mentioning anyone else in his life who’s important to him, besides his family. There are also no pictures of Aidan with anyone besides his parents and sister. It’s one of the many ways that this movie isn’t very well-thought-out and has too many inconsistencies that aren’t explained.

At another point in “Alone,” a female zombie ends up in Aidan’s apartment, and he hits her on the head with a baseball bat and presumably kills her. (Bashing a zombie’s head is the main way that zombies are killed.) Instead of removing the zombie from his apartment (he could’ve easily thrown the body off of the balcony if he didn’t want to open his front door where zombies are roaming the hallways), Aidan instead puts the zombie in a crawl space whose door opens from his bathroom ceiling. He then puts an upright surfboard underneath the crawl space door to keep it shut.

Later in the movie, Aidan becomes really desperate for food, but he doesn’t want to go outside in the building hallways, which have zombies everywhere. He also lives too far above ground to jump from his balcony. And so, he goes in that crawl space to see where it leads, with the hope that it will lead to a safe apartment that has food.

But the zombie corpse that Aidan put in the crawl space is nowhere to be seen. And the crawl space looks very unrealistic: It’s immaculate with stainless steel floors and walls. It doesn’t look like an apartment building’s crawl space, which realistically would be dusty and probably dirty. It looks like a slick, high-tech tunnel. In other words, the movie’s continuity and production design lack realism.

The first third of the movie drags with Aidan repeatedly bemoaning the fact that he’s by himself. If this movie’s screenplay had been written better, this period of isolation could have given viewers more insight into Aidan’s personality and the life he had before the zombie apocalypse. But all viewers get is Aidan rambling to himself about how he hates being alone while he makes another video entry in his vlog.

Aidan keeps track of how many days he’s been in isolation, which number at least 45 days, and in one video entry he says he’s three days away from running out of food. However, Aidan conveniently has plenty of water in bottles. It’s a stash that comes in handy not just for himself but for someone else he meets later in the story, when the movie picks up its pace and gets more interesting.

One of the movie’s major inconsistencies is that although Aidan eventually runs out of food after nearly two months of isolation, he never looks like he’s lost any weight. There’s a scene much later in the movie where Aidan is shirtless after he’s been malnourished for several weeks, and his chiseled, healthy-looking body looks exactly how it was when the zombie apocalypse started. Granted, “Alone” is not an Oscar-caliber film where the actors do Method acting and lose a scary amount of weight in real life, but the filmmakers didn’t put any effort into making Aidan look more gaunt, either through makeup or any visual effects.

Eventually, Aidan becomes so despondent that he hangs a rope on his ceiling and looks like he’s about to commit suicide. This suicide attempt is shown in the movie’s opening scene as a flash-forward of what’s to come, and then shown again when it actually happens. Just as Aidan tightens the noose around his neck, he looks outside his balcony window and sees a pretty blonde woman who’s about his age in the apartment building directly across from his building, and her apartment is slightly below eye level from his.

Aidan is so overjoyed at seeing another living human that he jumps (and nearly strangles himself in the process) and rushes over to communicate with the woman through a serious of hand-written messages and hand gestures. They don’t want to talk out loud to attract the attention of the zombies. Viewers will have to suspend disbelief that it took this long for Aidan to see this neighbor.

The woman in the other building is named Eva (played by Summer Spiro), and she is also single and by herself. In yet another unrealistic aspect of the movie, Eva looks very polished for someone who’s been in a zombie apocalypse for several weeks where there’s no running water or electricity. Except for her hair being slightly uncombed, she doesn’t look as distressed and disheveled as people realistically would be after several weeks of going through this type of ordeal.

Aidan and Eva talk about how much food and water they have left. Eva is almost out of water, so Aidan ties a makeshift rope and throws the other end to Eva so she can tie it to her balcony. He then slides some bottled water down the rope to her. This act of kindness begins a friendship and later a courtship between Aidan and Eva, but for most of the movie, it’s too dangerous for them to meet up and be in the same room.

Will Eva and Aidan get together in person? And if so, how will they get to each other when the area is infested with roaming zombies? Those questions are answered in the movie, which includes a fairly brief appearance by Donald Sutherland, who plays another human survivor named Edward.

As the main character Aidan, Posey does his best in conveying all the different emotions that Aidan goes through in this story. The problem is that it’s not enough when this entire movie lacks character development. Even though Aidan is in every scene of the movie, very little is revealed about him as a person. Viewers never find out what his hopes and dreams were before the zombie apocalypse, or what kind of friend, brother or son Aidan is, other than Aidan showing the expected concerned for his family. Almost nothing is revealed about Eva, except that she likes to draw and she was once engaged to be married.

The zombie chase scenes in the movie are handled in a generic way. “Alone” also has the same cliché as a lot of zombie stories, by having the hero miraculously able to avoid getting a zombie infection, even after being viciously attacked by zombies. The disappointing “Alone” will inevitably be compared to South Korea’s “#Alive,” but it’s a valid comparison because “#Alive” is a much better interpretation of the same story. It’s hard to like a zombie movie that won’t show human survivors as well-rounded people.

Lionsgate released “Alone” on digital and VOD on October 16, 2020. The movie’s release on Blu-ray and DVD is October 20, 2020. UPDATE: “Alone” was released in the United Kingdom on April 12, 2021, under the title “Final Days.”

Review: ‘Shithouse,’ starring Cooper Raiff and Dylan Gelula

October 16, 2020

by Carla Hay

Dylan Gelula and Cooper Raiff in “Shithouse” (Photo courtesy of IFC Films)

“Shithouse”

Directed by Cooper Raiff

Culture Representation: Taking place primarily in Los Angeles, the romantic comedy/drama “Shithouse” has a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans, Asians and Latinos) representing the middle-class.

Culture Clash: A lonely college student has an up-and-down relationship with his dorm’s resident assistant.

Culture Audience: “Shithouse” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in low-key, low-budget, talkative movies about young people who fall in love.

Dylan Gelula and Cooper Raiff in “Shithouse” (Photo courtesy of IFC Films)

The first thing that people should know about the drama “Shithouse” is that even though the title of the movie is about a party fraternity house on a college campus in this fictional story, this movie isn’t going to be like “Animal House.” In fact, “Shithouse” isn’t really about partying or decadent antics of college students. It’s an earnestly depicted story about a couple of students who have a romance that they don’t know quite what to do with when one person in the relationship wants more of a commitment than the other.

Cooper Raiff is the writer, director, editor and co-star of “Shithouse,” which takes place mostly at an unnamed college in Los Angeles, where Raiff’s Alex Malmquist character has moved from Texas and is enrolled as a freshman student. It’s the first time that Alex has ever lived away from home, and he’s had a hard time making friends at college. Alex is very close to his immediate family, which includes his widowed mother (played by Amy Landecker), who doesn’t have a name in the story, and Alex’s 15-year-old sister Jess (played by Olivia Welch).

It would be an understatement to say that Alex misses his family. He cries on the phone when he talks to them and seems to be experiencing separation anxiety. He’s so close to his mother that he could easily be described as a “mama’s boy.” Alex is beginning to wonder if he made the right decision to go to a college so far away from his hometown, but his mother encourages him to stick with his choice and try to make friends.

Alex has a stoner roommate named Sam (played by Logan Miller), who has a completely different social life from Alex. One day, while they’re both hanging out in their dorm room, Alex asks Sam if there are any parties going on that night. Sam replies that the only party he knows about is at Shithouse. Alex and Sam make plans to go to this party.

Meanwhile, the movie conveys that Alex is so lonely, he imagines that his stuffed toy dog, which he keeps on his bed, is talking to him. The dog’s “dialogue” with Alex is shown as subtitles on the screen. This stuffed dog is snarkier and more confident than Alex is in real life.

The conversations that Alex has in his head with the dog are obviously meant to show what the dog “says” is actually a projection of what Alex wishes he could say but he doesn’t have the courage to say it. Fortunately, the imaginary dialogue that Alex has with this stuffed toy is not in the movie for long, or else it would be a really insufferable gimmick.

The stuffed animal on the bed and the bouts of crying that Alex has when he talks to his mother indicate that he’s definitely a “man-child” who hasn’t fully matured. What makes “Shithouse” different from most other movies that are centered on college life is that the “man-child” protagonist isn’t all about sex, partying and causing mischief. It’s rare to see a movie depict a male college student have this type of homesickness and emotional vulnerability about being away from his family for the first time.

At best, Alex could be considered endearingly sensitive. At worst, he could be considered a privileged whiner who needs to grow up and understand that his problems are nothing compared to other people’s problems. The way that Raiff portrays Alex is as someone who is so sheltered that he isn’t even aware of a lot of serious issues in the world, not because he doesn’t care but because he just wasn’t raised that way.

Is Alex even mature enough to handle a relationship outside of his family? He’s about to find out when he accidentally locks himself out of his room when he takes a shower in the hallway bathroom, and he has to ask the dorm’s residential assistant, Maggie Hill (played by Dylan Gelula), to let him back into his room with her spare key. It’s a “meet cute” moment that practically screams, “The rest of the movie will be about this relationship!”

Maggie (who is an aspiring actress) is smart with a sarcastic sense of humor. She’s also a lot more self-assured than shy and hesitant Alex, who is immediately attracted to her. Alex and Maggie see each other again at the Shithouse party, where she just happens to be standing next to him in the coincidental way that telegraphs that they will eventually get together. Their first hookup is awkward because Alex has “performance issues,” but she invites him to stay overnight with her, and they spend the rest of the night talking and cuddling.

Alex is infatuated, but Maggie isn’t quite ready to jump into a serious relationship with anyone. Later in the movie, she opens up to Alex about how her parents’ divorce and her estranged relationship with her father has affected her outlook on love and romance. The rest of the movie is an emotional “push and pull” that Alex and Maggie have over their relationship.

Along the way, they join a casual team of softball players who like to play the game at night, there’s some minor drama over Maggie’s dead turtle, and the movie has very long stretches where Maggie and Alex talk a lot about random things, both deep and superficial. All of the supporting characters on this college campus really don’t do much but appear in and out of these conversations. There is no intrusive best friend, no demanding professor, no third person who causes a love triangle. “Shithouse” pretty much makes this movie all about Alex and Maggie.

The movie’s humor is very low-key and grounded in realism, which is refreshing when so many other movies with this subject matter would go for a lot of slapstick scenarios and/or a steady stream of jokes. And although there’s some “tit for tat” rapport between Alex and Maggie, the conversations sound authentic, not overly contrived. The dialogue is not on the same quality level as the 1995 talkative romance classic “Before Sunrise,” starring Ethan Hawke and July Delpy, because Alex is a lot more insecure and less sophisticated than Hawke’s “Before Sunrise” character.

However, Alex and Maggie’s relationship is more relatable than the one in “Before Sunrise.” That’s because people who’ve had college romances are more likely to have one that looks like Alex and Maggie’s relationship, compared to the relationship in “Before Sunrise,” which had the would-be couple first meeting while they’re traveling in Europe. Instead of having gorgeous backdrops during a train ride though Vienna, the relationship between Alex and Maggie plays out in cramped dorm rooms and during walks at night on a non-descript college campus.

“Shithouse” is by no means a groundbreaking movie. But it does present a gender role reversal of what’s usually in movies about romances between men and women. In “Shithouse,” the woman is the dominant person in the relationship who’s wary of commitment, while the man is the emotionally needy one who wants a commitment. Usually, romantic dramas are about the woman being clingy and wanting the relationship to go to the next level.

“Shithouse” is Raiff’s feature-film debut, and he admirably keeps a consistent tone throughout the film as a director, writer and editor. Raiff and Gelula give very good (but not outstanding) performances in portraying this seemingly mismatched couple who are at different emotional maturity levels. However, what’s interesting about “Shithouse” is that the movie doesn’t present in absolutes who might be “right” and who might be “wrong” in the relationship.

On the one hand, Alex is very unsophisticated about life, but he doesn’t play “hard to get” like Maggie tends to do. On the other hand, Maggie is a commitment-phobe, but she’s honest about why she’s got commitment issues. In some ways, Alex is more in touch with his feelings than Maggie is with hers. But in other ways, Maggie is more in touch with her feelings than Alex is with his. The question is if they can find enough common ground as a foundation to build their relationship, wherever it takes them.

“Shithouse” might not appeal to people who are expecting the usual hijinks that are in movies about college romances. This “slice of life” film realistically portrays that the college experience isn’t just one big party but it’s often when people start to find their identity and what they want out of life. The movie’s concept isn’t very original, but there’s enough authenticity in how this story is depicted that it can strike an emotional chord with people.

IFC Films released “Shithouse” in select U.S. cinemas and on VOD on October 16, 2020.

2020 DOC NYC: What to expect at this year’s event

October 15, 2020

Updated November 9, 2020

by Carla Hay

Celebrating its 11th edition in 2020, the annual DOC NYC, which is headquartered in New York City, is one of the world’s leading documentary festivals, with a slate of more than 200 films (of which more than 100 are feature-length films) from a diverse array of topics. In 2020, DOC NYC takes place from November 11 to November 19, and continues the festival’s tradition of offering an outstanding variety of feature films and short films, with several of the movies focusing on underrepresented people and marginalized communities. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, DOC NYC is a virtual event in 2020, with all of the festival’s movies available to view online to the general public from November 11 to November 19. Tickets are available on the official DOC NYC website.

DOC NYC, which was co-founded by Thom Powers and Raphaela Neihausen, is still offering special virtual events in addition to online screenings. According to a DOC NYC press release: “DOC NYC’s 2020 edition includes the five-day pre-festival Road Trip, October 26-30, a virtual tour on Facebook Live stopping in 10 filmmaking hubs across the United States to showcase local documentary makers and organizations, along with festival films from the area. During the festival itself, conversations with festival filmmakers will take place in daily DOC NYC Live events, and festival screenings will also include pre-recorded filmmaker Q&As after the films. Road Trip is co-presented by Netflix.”

Also according to a DOC NYC press release: “The festival’s noted filmmaker development program, DOC NYC PRO, also moved online in 2020, offering webinars to emerging and established documentary markers around that globe. DOC NYC PRO is co-presented by Apple Original Films. More news about additions to the program, DOC NYC’s Visionaries Tribute honorees, competition jury members, the features and shorts named to the festival’s Short List sections, and other festival updates will be announced in the coming weeks.”

The honorees for the 2020 DOC NYC Visionaries Tribute are film editor Sam Pollard and film editor/producer Jean Tsien, who will each receive the Lifetime Achievement Award; filmmaker Yvonne Welbon, recipient of the Leading Light Award; and filmmaker Alexander Nanau, who will get the Drew Award.

For the second year in a row, the festival is presenting DOC NYC’s Winner’s Circle collection, which spotlights movies that have won awards at other film festivals, but might be underrated or overlooked for Oscar nominations. Winner’s Circle documentaries this year are “Acasa, My Home,” “Beautiful Something Left Behind,” “Influence,” “Mayor,” “The Mole Agent,” “The Painter and the Thief,” “The Reason I Jump,” “Songs of Repression,” “Stray” and “The Walrus and the Whistleblower.”

DOC NYC’s annual Short List spotlights movies (features and shorts) that are considered top contenders to get Oscar nominations. This year’s Short List feature films are “76 Days,” “Boys State,” “Collective,” “Crip Camp,” “Dick Johnson Is Dead,” “The Fight,” “Gunda,” “I Am Greta,” “MLK/FBI,” “On the Record,” “The Social Dilemma,” “A Thousand Cuts,” “The Truffle Hunters” and “Welcome to Chechnya.” This year’s Short List short films are “Abortion Help Line, This Is Lisa,” “Ashes to Ashes,” “Call Center Blues,” “Do No Split,” “Flower Punk,” “Hunger Ward,” “A Life Too Short,” “A Love Song for Latasha,” “No Crying at the Dinner Table,” “Now Is the Time,” “Sing Me a Lullaby,” “Then Comes the Evening.”

Even though most of the movies at DOC NYC have had their world premieres elsewhere, DOC NYC has several world premieres of its own. Here are the feature films that will have their world premieres at DOC NYC. A complete program can be found here.

DOC NYC 2020 WORLD PREMIERE FEATURE FILMS

All descriptions are courtesy of DOC NYC.

UPDATE: “Wuhan Wuhan,” which chronicled what Wuhan, China, was like as the first epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, was announced as being a world premiere at DOC NYC in 2020, but the movie was pulled from the festival for “technical issues,” according to the movie’s publicist.

“A La Calle” 
Directed by Nelson G. Navarrete and Maxx Caicedo

Venezuela’s recent political upheavals are made vivid through this epic work exploring multiple perspectives in the national movement against the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro.

“Calendar Girl” 
Directed by Christian D. Bruun

Ruth Finley, the nonagenarian queen of the fashion industry through her pink Fashion Calendar, founded in 1945, faces the end of an era as her iconic publication changes ownership. Co-presented by The Cut.


“Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters”
Directed by Rosalynde LeBlanc and Tom Hurwitz

An engrossing examination of dance, love, and loss through the story of Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane’s signature performance piece on the devastation of AIDS. Co-presented by The WNET Group.

Chasing Childhood” 
Directed Eden Wurmfeld and Margaret Munzer Loeb 

Reformed “helicopter” parents and education professionals reveal the benefits of allowing kids to have freedom to play unencumbered by schedules and structure.


 
A Cops and Robbers Story
Directed by Ilinca Calugareanu

A decorated NYPD officer’s career is threatened when his political stances lead to revelations about his former life of crime.

“A Crime in the Bayou” 
Directed by Nancy Buirski

In 1966 Louisiana, a lasting bond is formed between an unjustly arrested Black man, Gary Duncan, and Richard Sobol, his young Jewish attorney.

“Crutch”
Directed by Sachi Cunningham and Vayabobo

Dance, art, performance, and disability politics converge in this entertaining and enlightening portrait of Bill “Crutch” Shannon.

“Duty Free” 
Directed by Sian-Pierre Regis

As his recently laid off mother struggles to find a new job at the age of 75, the filmmaker takes her on an adventure to help her reclaim her life.

“In My Own Time: A Portrait of Karen Dalton” 
Directed by Robert Yapkowitz and Richard Peete

The unconventional life of blues and folk singer Karen Dalton, a prominent figure in the 1960s New York music scene.

“In Silico” 
Directed by Noah Hutton

Director Noah Hutton embarks on a 10-year project following a visionary neuroscientist’s quest to build a computer simulation of a brain.

“La Madrina: The Savage Life of Lorine Padilla”  
Directed by Raquel Cepeda

The “first lady” of the Savage Skulls reflects on the pivotal role of women in the 1970s New York City gang and her later shift to community activism.

“The Meaning of Hitler” 
Directed by Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker

This provocative consideration of the lasting influence and draw of Hitler provides insight into the resurgence of white supremacy, antisemitism, and the weaponization of history.

“Moments Like This Never Last” 
Directed by Cheryl Dunn

In post 9/11 New York City, Dash Snow rejected a life of privilege to make his own way as an artist for a too brief but unforgettable time.

“Neither Confirm Nor Deny” 
Directed by Philip Carter

At the height of the Cold War, the CIA is tasked with an audacious covert mission: recovering a sunken Soviet nuclear submarine from the bottom of the ocean.

“The Oil War”
Directed by David Schisgall

Iconoclastic historian Andrew Bacevich delivers an anti-colonial critique of US foreign policy in the Middle East, which he sees as one long Oil War.

“On Pointe”
Directed by Larissa Bills

A sneak preview of the pilot episode of the upcoming Disney+ docuseries capturing a season in New York City at the School of American Ballet. Co-presented by the NYC Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment.

“Origin of the Species” 
Directed by Abigail Child

Abigail Child offers an eerie and exciting look into the present and future of artificial intelligence through the perspectives of robotics scientists, entrepreneurs, and a Black lesbian robot named BINA48.

“Red Heaven” 
Directed by Lauren DeFilippo and Katherine Gorringe

In this prescient exploration of self-imposed quarantine, six volunteers embark on a one-year mission in a Mars simulation to further research for space exploration.

“Restaurant Hustle” 
Directed by Frank Matson

Executive produced by Guy Fieri, this is an intimate chronicle of the impact of the pandemic on the restaurants of four celebrity chefs: Antonia Lofaso, Marcus Samuelsson, Maneet Chauhan, and Christian Petroni. Co-presented by Grub Street.

“Television Event” 
Directed by Jeff Daniels

On November 20, 1983, ABC-TV broadcast “The Day After,” a chilling fictional account of the aftermath of a nuclear war on a small Kansas town. With impressive access to the principals involved with the project and a trove of archival footage, Jeff Daniels revisits the improbable story of this anti-nuclear major television event and the impact it left on the Reagan era and beyond.

“Wojnarowicz”
Directed by Chris McKim

A powerful elegy to the late New York artist, writer, and filmmaker David Wojnarowicz, who embraced a defiant queer identity and fought against indifference to the AIDS crisis.

“Youth V. Gov” 
Directed by Christi Cooper

Young activists from across the nation file a groundbreaking lawsuit against the United States for endangering their constitutional rights by creating the climate crisis.

November 9, 2020 UPDATE

The following information is from a DOC NYC press release:

DOC NYC LIVE

As it moves online for the first time, the festival is launching a daily block of free programming, DOC NYC Live, available to audiences throughout the US and around the world on Facebook Live. Each afternoon during the festival, the programming team will host live conversations throwing a spotlight on individual films. Speakers expected to participate include Werner Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer, along with festival filmmakers and special guests, including Representative Barbara Lee (Truth to Power: Barbara Lee Speaks for Me), Alex Winter (Zappa), philosopher and activist Angela Davis (Since I Been Down), author David Mitchell (The Reason I Jump), fashion designer Nicole Miller(Calendar Girl), violinist Joshua Bell (Los Hermanos/The Brothers), celebrity restaurateurs Guy Fieri, Marcus Samuelsson, Antonia Lofaso, Maneet Chauhan, and Christian Petroni (Restaurant Hustle 2020: All on the Line), author Francine Prose (The Meaning of Hitler), chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov (The Dissident), and philosopher Cornel West (The Big Scary “S” Word), with additional participants to be announced. The schedule and updates are available at www.DOCNYC.net/DOCNYCLive2020
 
“Since March, we’ve been adapting to our new online reality and trying to find fresh ways to reach audiences,” said DOC NYC Executive Director Raphaela Neihausen. “DOC NYC Live is our latest effort to help filmmakers connect with audiences all over the world.”
 
Audiences can tune in and contribute questions or comments at facebook.com/docnycfest. This live program builds on the success of the festival’s earlier DOC NYC Road Trip, a week of virtual visits with filmmakers and documentary advocates in 10 cities across the country that attracted thousands of viewers. 
 
DOC NYC Live on Wed. Nov. 11 and Thurs. Nov. 12 is co-presented by XTR.  DOC NYC Live on Fri. Nov. 13 is co-presented by Hulu. 

Review: ‘The Doorman’ (2020), starring Ruby Rose and Jean Reno

October 15, 2020

by Carla Hay

Ruby Rose in “The Doorman” (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate)

“The Doorman” (2020)

Directed by Ryuhei Kitamura

Culture Representation: Taking place primarily in New York City, the action flick “The Doorman” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few Asians) representing the middle-class and criminal underground.

Culture Clash: A former Marine takes a job as a doorman at an upscale apartment building and finds herself battling with art thieves who take her and some of her family members hostage.

Culture Audience: “The Doorman” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching formulaic and forgettable action movies.

Jean Reno in “The Doorman” (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate)

“The Doorman” is one of those “taken hostage and trapped in a building” movies that’s nothing more than a predictable and uncreative variation of the classic 1988 Bruce Willis film “Die Hard.” Directed by Ryuhei Kitamura, “The Doorman” makes almost no attempt to do anything new with the formula that’s been endlessly copied since “Die Hard” became an influential blockbuster. The only fairly unusual aspect of the film is that the action hero in this movie is a woman. And the movie is a reminder that being a front-lobby attendant is such a male-dominated job that it’s still referred to as being a doorman.

Three people are credited with writing “The Doorman” screenplay: Lior Chefetz, Joe Swanson and Devon Rose. And apparently none of them could think of a plausible reason for why a cell phone couldn’t be used to get help in this emergency situation when the hero of the story temporarily breaks free from the hostages but is still in the apartment building where the home invasion takes place. Viewers are expected to accept the flimsy explanation that cell-phone service isn’t working in that particular building because the building is undergoing renovations.

Before the hostage situation happens, the movie gives a brief introduction to the protagonist of “The Doorman” and the life she had before she began working in the upscale New York City apartment building that’s taken hostage. Her name is Ali Gorsky (played by Ruby Rose), a serious-minded and stoic type who was a sergeant in the Marines. She was part of an elite U.S. military team stationed in an unnamed country. One of her duties was being a bodyguard for an unnamed female U.S. ambassador (played by Andreea Vasile) and the ambassador’s daughter Nira (played by Andreea Androne), who’s about 7 or 8 years old.

While traveling to a speaking engagement, the ambassador is in a convoy of cars in front of and behind her car as protection as they drive through a secluded wooded area. Ali and Nira are along for the ride too. Suddenly, numerous gunmen emerge from the woods and ambush the fleet of cars. The assassins have war weapons, including a rocket launcher, while the military defenders, who just have regular guns, are quickly killed off, one by one.

All of the assassins’ victims die except for Ali, who tries in vain to save the ambassador and her daughter, who become easy targets in the back seat of a car when a rocket launcher is aimed right at them. The explosion propels Ali into the woods in some very cheesy and not-very-believable visual effects, which morph into Ali in New York City waking up from a nightmare where she remembered what happened on that terrible day.

Needless to say, by the time Ali is seen in New York City, she has already left the military in disgrace and she needs another job. She meets with her uncle Pat (played by Philip Whitchurch) at a local bar, where she’s reluctant to talk about her traumatic experience. Pat works as a contractor for building repairs and renovations, and he tells Ali about a job opening for a doorman in the high-rise apartment building where he’s doing renovations. She reluctantly agrees to interview for the job.

The building is called The Carrington, and it’s in an upscale area on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. It’s the type of building that was built before World War II and used to be a hotel. Most of the residents have temporarily moved out because of the renovations. However, some of the residents who are still living there have reasons for why they’ve been allowed to stay in the building.

This poorly written movie doesn’t really show Ali interviewing for the job, which she gets shortly before Easter. She just shows up and meets someone named Borz Blasevic (played by Aksel Hennie), who presents himself as the chief doorman/superintendent, and he immediately tells her to get dressed in the work uniform in the unisex locker room. Borz knows that Ali was referred to by Pat, but Pat tells Ali that he doesn’t want Borz to know that Ali is related to Pat.

And it just so happens that Ali has other relatives in the building, and they are among the few residents who are still living there during the renovations: Her brother-in-law Jon Stanton (played by Rupert Evans), a professor who’s originally from England; Jon’s son Max (played by Julian Feder), who’s about 15 or 16 years old; and Jon’s daughter Lily (played by Kila Lord Cassidy), who’s about 11 or 12 years old.

Jon is a widower who used to be married to Ali’s late sister, whose cause of death is not mentioned in the movie. It’s also not mentioned how long Ali’s sister has been dead, but it’s implied that it’s been less than two years. Jon is a written as a generic father with not much of a personality. Max, who is often sullen, has antisocial tendencies because he apparently spends a lot of time alone smoking marijuana and playing video games. Lily is a typical “adorable and precocious” kid that movies like this tend to have whenever children are taken hostage.

Jon and his children have been allowed to remain in the building because they aren’t going to stay for much longer: After Easter vacation, they plan to move back to England, where Jon works. After her sister’s death, Ali has been avoiding being around Jon and the kids because of a secret that is very easy to predict from the moment that Jon and Ali first see each other when he finds out that she’s now working in the building.

On her first day on the job, Ali meets two of the other remaining residents in the building: an elderly couple named Bernard Hersh (played by Petre Moraru) and his wife (played by (Delianne Forget), who doesn’t have a first name in the movie. Bernard had a stroke seven years before, he almost never talks, and he’s wheelchair-bound. His wife, who is his caretaker, explains to Ali that building management allowed them to continue living at The Carrington during renovations because moving to another building would upset Bernard too much.

It isn’t long before danger comes to The Carrington, when a French thief named Victor Dubois (played by Jean Reno) and his small gang of henchmen arrive for a home invasion in the Hershes’ apartment. Of course, these thugs had some help from a building insider, and it’s very easy to figure out who that person is in this relatively small cast of characters. This “inside job” criminal barricades the front door from the inside with chains and a padlock, so the hostages can’t escape. (The movie never shows if any back doors or side doors are also barricaded.)

Victor is there to steal some valuable art paintings that are in the building, and Bernard knows where they are. But things go awry because Victor doesn’t know until he gets there that Bernard is nearly mute and can’t really tell the information that Victor wants. This leads to a torture scene and Victor finding out that the Hershes used to live in the apartment where the Stantons currently live.

And guess who’s taken hostage next while they’re having Easter dinner? Ali is off-duty at the Stantons’ apartment, having what she thought would be just an awkward family reunion dinner at Easter. And because she’s off-duty, she happens to be wearing high heels, which are supposed to make her look like a “feminine badass” when she has the inevitable fights with the home invaders.

The rest of “The Doorman” is about Ali trying to save her relatives through a series of often-preposterous scenarios. The Carrington happens to be a building with hidden rooms and hidden dumbwaiter shafts. And there’s an underground tunnel that was supposed to be a subway tunnel but construction on the tunnel was halted decades ago, and the tunnel was sealed up behind a wall.

As the main character in this stereotypical action flick, Rose doesn’t have much to do except act tough and go through the choreographed motions for the fight sequences. Ali shows some glimmers of being humanly vulnerable in moments with Jon and the children. But for the most part, Ali has a very wooden personality, and Rose doesn’t have much acting range to bring more charisma to this formulaic character.

French actor Reno has been playing villains in B-movies for quite some time, so there’s nothing new or exciting that he does in “The Doorman.” He usually portrays the “brains” of a criminal operation who gets other people to do most of the dirty work. In “The Doorman,” the Victor character is no different, except this mastermind criminal makes a lot of stupid and arrogant decisions that just drag the movie out longer, in order to create a false sense of suspense.

“The Doorman” is the type of bad movie that isn’t so bad that it’s laughable. It’s the type of bad movie that will induce boredom because it’s so tiresome in how unimaginative it is. The fight scenes are unremarkable, and the acting is mediocre at best. The characters you expect to get killed are the ones who get killed. The characters you expect to survive are the ones who survive. There are video games that are better than this cliché-ridden, soulless movie.

Lionsgate released “The Doorman” on digital and VOD on October 9, 2020, and on Blu-ray and DVD on October 13, 2020.

2020 Billboard Music Awards: Post Malone is the top winner

October 14, 2020

Post Malone at the 2020 Billboard Music Awards at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles (Photo by Todd Williamson/NBC)

The following is a press release from Dick Clark Productions and NBC:

Post Malone swept the “2020 Billboard Music Awards” (BBMAs), winning a total of nine awards, including Top Artist and Top Male Artist – the most of the evening – bringing his total number of BBMA wins to 10. Echoing the theme of “Music Unites All’ throughout the night Malone said “music can bring everyone together, it’s absolutely incredible.” Airing tonight from the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, the BBMAs opened with an unforgettable performance by three-time host Kelly Clarkson, who brought down the house with Whitney Houston’s version of “Higher Love,” joined by two-time BBMA nominees Pentatonix and queen of percussion Sheila E. 

Khalid followed Post Malone for the most wins of the night with five, including Top R&B Artist, Top R&B Album, and Top R&B Song. Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus tied for the third most wins, with both artists recognized for their hit “Old Town Road” in the Top Hot 100 Song, Top Streaming Song, Top Selling Song, and Top Rap Song categories. Billie Eilish took home three awards including Top New Artist and Top Female Artist. Winners in the fan-voted categories were: BTS (Top Social Artist), Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello’s “Señorita” (Top Collaboration) and Harry Styles (Billboard Chart Achievement Award).

Rapper and social activist Killer Mike was honored with the inaugural Billboard Change Maker Award from the historic APEX (African American Panoramic Experience) Museum in Atlanta, GA. The award, which honors an artist or group that speaks truth to power through music, celebrity, and community and is active in their community and charitable with time, money, or influence to improve the lives of others, was presented by Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. NBC and MRC teamed up to deposit $1M to Killer Mike’s recently established digital bank, Greenwood.  

Cher made an appearance on the star-studded night to present Garth Brooks with the elite ICON Award, followed by his incredible performance of multiple chart-topping hits that was nothing short of iconic.

The night was full of spectacular performances: 

  • All the way from South Korea, K-Pop supergroup BTS gave an electrifying performance of “Dynamite,” their first No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100
  • Demi Lovato gave a chills inducing world premiere performance of her timely and powerful new song “Commander in Chief” 
  • Post Malone delivered a soaring performance of his hits “Circles” and “Tommy Lee” featuring Tyla Yahweh, showing everyone why he took home nine awards
  • Alicia Keys made a long-awaited return to the BBMA stage for a dazzling perform of her latest single “Love Looks Better” 
  • Brandy made her BBMA performance debut and treated fans to her hit “Borderline” along with her new single “No Tomorrow” featuring Ty Dolla $ign, and “Almost Doesn’t Count” 
  • Bad Bunny was joined by surprise guests Nesi and Ivy Queen for “Yo Perreo Sola” for his dynamic and exciting BBMA performance debut
  • In her first BBMA performance, Doja Cat set the stage aflame with a dramatic medley of “Juicy,” “Say So,” and “Like That” 
  • EGOT-winner and multi-platinum singer-songwriter John Legend gave an emotional performance of “Never Break” 
  • Kane Brown, Khalid and Swae Lee tore up the stage with an energetic performance of their hit “Be Like That” 
  • In a rare appearance, Sia delivered a powerful moment with her song “Courage to Change” 
  • On the heels of one of his three wins, Luke Combs gave a moving performance of “Better Together” 
  • Breakout artist SAINt JHN, in his television debut, performed his global smash hit “Roses” 
  • And in this year’s Billboard throwback, iconic group En Vogue closed the evening with an empowering performance of their huge hit “Free Your Mind,” which first stormed the charts 30 years ago

In a tribute to legendary guitarist, musician, and songwriter Eddie Van Halen, the show featured a clip from the 2015 BBMAs when his son Wolfgang took the stage with him for a rare live tv performance. Presenters throughout the evening included Addison Rae, Cher, Garcelle Beauvais, Jane Lynch, Jay Ellis, Jharrel Jerome, Julia Michaels, Lilly Singh, Nicole Richie, Spencer X, Taraji P. Henson, TwinsthenewTrend (Fred & Tim Williams), and tWitch.

“Billboard Music Awards” nominees and winners are based on key fan interactions with music, including album and digital song sales, streaming, radio airplay, touring and social engagement, tracked by Billboard and its data partners, including MRC Data/Nielsen Music. The awards are based on the chart period of March 23, 2019, through March 14, 2020. Since 1940, the Billboard charts have been the go-to guide for ranking the popularity of artists, songs and albums, and are the ultimate measure of success in music.

The “2020 Billboard Music Awards” are sponsored by TikTok and Xfinity. The “2020 Billboard Music Awards” are produced by dick clark productions. Amy Thurlow, Mark Bracco, Barry Adelman, Linda Gierahn, Kelly Clarkson, and Robert Deaton are executive producers.

For the latest news on the Billboard Music Awards (BBMAs) visit billboardmusicawards.com and  www.billboard.com/bbma. For exclusive content and more, be sure to follow the BBMAs on social media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube) and join the conversation by using the official hashtag for the show, #BBMAs.

About Dick Clark Productions:
Dick Clark Productions (DCP) is the world’s largest producer and proprietor of televised live event entertainment programming with the “Academy of Country Music Awards,” “American Music Awards,” “Billboard Music Awards,” “Golden Globe Awards,” “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest,” and the “Streamy Awards.” Weekly television programming includes “So You Think You Can Dance” from 19 Entertainment and DCP. DCP also owns one of the world’s most extensive and unique entertainment archive libraries with more than 60 years of award-winning shows, historic programs, specials, performances, and legendary programming. DCP is part of MRC Live & Alternative, a division of diversified global entertainment company MRC. For additional information, visit www.mrcentertainment.com


Here is the complete list of nominations and winners:

*=winner

ARTIST AWARDS

Top Artist:
Billie Eilish
Jonas Brothers
Khalid
Post Malone*
Taylor Swift

Top New Artist:
DaBaby
Billie Eilish*
Lil Nas X
Lizzo
Roddy Ricch

Billboard Chart Achievement Award (Fan Voted):
Mariah Carey
Luke Combs
Lil Nas X
Harry Styles*
Taylor Swift

Top Male Artist:
DaBaby
Khalid
Lil Nas X
Post Malone*
Ed Sheeran

Top Female Artist:
Billie Eilish*
Ariana Grande
Halsey
Lizzo
Taylor Swift

Top Duo/Group:
BTS
Dan + Shay
Jonas Brothers*
Maroon 5
Panic! At The Disco

Top Billboard 200 Artist:
Drake
Billie Eilish
Khalid
Post Malone*
Taylor Swift

Top Hot 100 Artist:
DaBaby
Billie Eilish
Khalid
Lil Nas X
Post Malone*

Top Streaming Songs Artist:
DaBaby
Billie Eilish
Lil Nas X
Post Malone*
Travis Scott

Top Song Sales Artist:
Billie Eilish
Lil Nas X
Lizzo*
Post Malone
Taylor Swift

Top Radio Songs Artist:
Jonas Brothers*
Khalid
Lizzo
Shawn Mendes
Post Malone

Top Social Artist (Fan Voted):
BTS*
Billie Eilish
EXO
GOT7
Ariana Grande

Top Touring Artist:
Elton John
Metallica
P!nk*
The Rolling Stones
Ed Sheeran

Top R&B Artist:
Chris Brown
Khalid*
Lizzo
Summer Walker
The Weeknd

Top R&B Male Artist:
Chris Brown
Khalid*
The Weeknd

Top R&B Female Artist:
Beyoncé
Lizzo
Summer Walker*

Top R&B Tour:
B2K
Janet Jackson
Khalid*

Top Rap Artist:
DaBaby
Juice WRLD
Lil Nas X
Post Malone*
Roddy Ricch

Top Rap Male Artist:
DaBaby
Lil Nas X
Post Malone*

Top Rap Female Artist:
Cardi B*
City Girls
Megan Thee Stallion

Top Rap Tour:
Drake
Post Malone*
Travis Scott

Top Country Artist:
Kane Brown
Luke Combs*
Dan + Shay
Maren Morris
Thomas Rhett

Top Country Male Artist:
Kane Brown
Luke Combs*
Thomas Rhett

Top Country Female Artist:
Maren Morris*
Kacey Musgraves
Carrie Underwood

Top Country Duo/Group:
Dan + Shay*
Florida Georgia Line
Old Dominion

Top Country Tour:
Eric Church
Florida Georgia Line
George Strait*

Top Rock Artist:
Imagine Dragons
Panic! At The Disco*
Tame Impala
Tool
twenty one pilots

Top Rock Tour:
Elton John*
Metallica
The Rolling Stones

Top Latin Artist:
Anuel AA
Bad Bunny*
J Balvin
Ozuna
Romeo Santos

Top Dance/Electronic Artist:
Avicii
The Chainsmokers*
DJ Snake
Illenium
Marshmello

Top Christian Artist:
Lauren Daigle*
Elevation Worship
for KING & COUNTRY
Hillsong UNITED
Kanye West

Top Gospel Artist:
Kirk Franklin
Koryn Hawthorne
Tasha Cobbs Leonard
Sunday Service Choir
Kanye West*

ALBUM AWARDS

Top Billboard 200 Album:
Billie Eilish “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?”*
Ariana Grande “thank u, next”
Khalid “Free Spirit”
Post Malone “Hollywood’s Bleeding”
Taylor Swift “Lover”

Top Soundtrack:
“Aladdin”
“Descendants 3”
“Frozen II”*
“K-12” by Melanie Martinez 
“The Dirt” by Mötley Crüe

Top R&B Album:
Beyoncé “Homecoming: The Live Album”
Justin Bieber “Changes”
Chris Brown “Indigo”
Khalid “Free Spirit”*
Summer Walker “Over It”

Top Rap Album:
DaBaby “KIRK”
Juice WRLD “Death Race For Love”
Post Malone “Hollywood’s Bleeding”*
Roddy Ricch “Please Excuse Me for Being Antisocial”
Young Thug “So Much Fun”

Top Country Album:
Kane Brown “Experiment”
Luke Combs “What You See Is What You Get”*
Maren Morris “GIRL”
Thomas Rhett “Center Point Road”
Morgan Wallen “If I Know Me”

Top Rock Album:
The Lumineers “III”
Slipknot “We Are Not Your Kind”
Tame Impala “The Slow Rush”
Tool “Fear Inoculum”*
Vampire Weekend “Father of the Bride”

Top Latin Album:
J Balvin & Bad Bunny “Oasis”*
Farruko “Gangalee”
Maluma “11:11”
Romeo Santos “Utopía”
Sech “Sueños”

Top Dance/Electronic Album:
Avicii “TIM”
The Chainsmokers “World War Joy”
Illenium “Ascend”
Marshmello “Marshmello: Fortnite Extended Set”*
Alan Walker “Different World”

Top Christian Album:
Bethel Music “Victory: Recorded Live”
Casting Crowns “Only Jesus”
Hillsong UNITED “People”
Skillet “Victorious”
Kanye West “Jesus is King”*

Top Gospel AlbumL
Kirk Franklin “Long Live Love”
Donald Lawrence & The Tri-City Singers “Goshen”
William McDowell “The Cry: A Live Worship Experience”
Sunday Service Choir “Jesus Is Born”
Kanye West “Jesus is King”*

SONG AWARDS

Top Hot 100 Song:
Lewis Capaldi “Someone You Loved”
Billie Eilish “bad guy”
Lil Nas X ft. Billy Ray Cyrus “Old Town Road”*
Lizzo “Truth Hurts”
Shawn Mendes & Camila Cabello “Señorita”

Top Streaming Song:
Chris Brown ft. Drake “No Guidance”
Billie Eilish “bad guy”
Lil Nas X ft. Billy Ray Cyrus “Old Town Road”*
Lil Tecca “Ran$om”
Post Malone & Swae Lee “Sunflower (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse)”

Top Selling Song:
Lewis Capaldi “Someone You Loved”
Billie Eilish “bad guy”
Lil Nas X ft. Billy Ray Cyrus “Old Town Road”*
Lizzo “Truth Hurts”
Blake Shelton “God’s Country”

Top Radio Song:
Lewis Capaldi “Someone You Loved”
Jonas Brothers “Sucker”*
Khalid “Talk”
Lizzo “Truth Hurts”
Ed Sheeran & Justin Bieber “I Don’t Care”

Top Collaboration (Fan Voted):
Chris Brown ft. Drake “No Guidance”
Lil Nas X ft. Billy Ray Cyrus “Old Town Road”
Shawn Mendes & Camila Cabello “Señorita”*
Post Malone & Swae Lee “Sunflower (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse)”
Ed Sheeran & Justin Bieber “I Don’t Care”

Top R&B Song:
Chris Brown ft. Drake “No Guidance”
Doja Cat & Tyga “Juicy”
Khalid “Talk”*
Lizzo “Good As Hell”
The Weeknd “Heartless”

Top Rap Song:
Lil Nas X ft. Billy Ray Cyrus “Old Town Road”*
Lil Tecca “Ran$om”
Lizzo “Truth Hurts”
Post Malone & Swae Lee “Sunflower (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse)”
Post Malone “Wow.”

Top Country Song:
Dan + Shay with Justin Bieber “10,000 Hours”*
Maren Morris “The Bones”
Old Dominion “One Man Band”
Blake Shelton “God’s Country”
Morgan Wallen “Whiskey Glasses”

Top Rock Song:
Imagine Dragons “Bad Liar”
Machine Gun Kelly x YUNGBLUD x Travis Barker “I Think I’m Okay”
Panic! At The Disco “Hey Look Ma, I Made It”*
twenty one pilots “Chlorine”
twenty one pilots “The Hype”

Top Latin Song:
Anuel AA, Daddy Yankee, Karol G, Ozuna & J Balvin “China”
Bad Bunny & Tainy “Callaita”
Daddy Yankee ft. Snow “Con Calma”*
Jhay Cortez, J Balvin, & Bad Bunny “No Me Conoce”
Sech ft. Darell, Nicky Jam, Ozuna, Anuel AA “Otro Trago”

Top Dance/Electronic Song:
Black Eyed Peas x J Balvin “Ritmo (Bad Boys For Life)”
Ellie Goulding x Diplo ft. Swae Lee “Close To Me”*
Illenium & Jon Bellion “Good Things Fall Apart”
Kygo x Whitney Houston “Higher Love”
Marshmello ft. CHVRCHES “Here With Me”

Top Christian Song:
Bethel Music, Jonathan David Helser & Melissa Helser “Raise A Hallelujah”
Casting Crowns ft. Matthew West “Nobody”
Lauren Daigle “Rescue”
for KING & COUNTRY “God Only Knows”*
Kanye West “Follow God”

Top Gospel Song:
Kirk Franklin “Love Theory”
Kanye West “Closed on Sunday”
Kanye West “Follow God”*
Kanye West “On God”
Kanye West “Selah”

Review: ‘Time’ (2020), starring Fox Rich

October 14, 2020

by Carla Hay

Fox Rich and Rob Rich in “Time” (Photo courtesy of Amazon Studios)

“Time” (2020)

Directed by Garrett Bradley

Culture Representation: Taking place from the 1990s to the 2010s, the documentary “Time” features a predominantly African American group of working-class and middle-class people discussing Louisiana woman Fox Rich’s quest to get her husband Rob released from prison and reunited with his family.

Culture Clash: Rob Rich was sentenced to 60 years in prison without the possibility of parole for a botched armed robbery, which is a sentence that Fox Rich and others in the documentary say is a punishment that is too harsh for the crime and rooted in racism.

Culture Audience: “Time” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in documentaries about people who battle against systemic racism in the U.S. criminal justice system.

Fox Rich in the 1990s (above) and Fox Rich in the 2010s (below) in “Time” (Photo courtesy of Amazon Studios)

The gripping and emotionally moving documentary “Time” doesn’t follow the usual formula in a movie about someone on an against-all-odds quest to get someone else released from prison. The convict in this case isn’t someone who proclaims to be innocent of the crime. Nor is there a crusading lawyer who is the hero of the story. Instead, this movie takes a raw and intimate look at the journey of a convict’s wife named Fox Rich, who fights to get her husband Rob G. Rich freed from prison while he’s serving a 60-year sentence without the possibility of parole. It’s a story that’s a true example of extraordinary persistence, love and hope.

“Time,” directed by Garrett Bradley, consists of a great deal of video footage that Fox Rich filmed herself during the family’s ordeal that began in the late 1990s and continued through 2018. In the movie, she also has the names Sibil Verdette Fox (which is her birth name) and Sibil Richardson. Fox (who was born in 1971) does most of the voiceover narration in “Time,” but most of the six sons she had with Rob also narrate the film.

There are no “talking head” legal experts, journalists or other pundits who are interviewed in this documentary. “Time” is essentially a family video album that chronicles the ups and downs of Fox’s determination to emancipate her husband over the course of 21 years. Although the original footage from the early years was filmed in color, everything in “Time” is entirely in black and white. There’s also some footage of the family in happier times before Rob was incarcerated.

The movie is not shown in chronological order, and the year that footage was taken is not shown on screen, although the year is sometimes mentioned by the people in the footage. Viewers can also tell the periods of time that the footage was filmed by how Fox looks and the ages of the children. In the 1990s and early 2000s footage, Fox’s is wavy-haired and more idealistic. In the later footage, her hair is straight and she’s more realistic but still hopeful. She’s also become a businesswoman at a car dealership, as well as a passionate public speaker about reforms in the criminal justice system. In her public speaking, Fox shares her personal stories about how Rob’s incarceration has affected the family.

What happened to cause this prison sentence to devastate the family? In 1997, Fox and Rob were a married couple in their mid-20s who met when they were in high school. They were on their way to living the American Dream, with three sons, their first purchased home and a plan to open the first hip-hop clothing store in Shreveport, Louisiana.

But, as Fox tells it in the documentary, they ran into financial problems in trying to launch the business. And they got desperate. On September 16, 1997, their lives changed forever when they committed this crime: Rob, Fox and Rob’s nephew robbed the Grambling Credit Union in Grambling, Louisiana. Fox says she remembers that her motivation for committing the crime was she didn’t want the business to fail and she was going to do what it took to get the money that they wanted.

Fox was the getaway driver, while Rob and his nephew committed the botched armed robbery in the bank. They ended up with about $5,000 from the robbery, but they were quickly apprehended and pleaded guilty. While Fox pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years in prison (she was released from prison after serving three-and-a-half years of that sentence), Rob lost out on a plea bargain where he would be sentenced to 12 years in prison if he pleaded guilty. Instead, through some bad luck and bad legal advice that are not detailed in the movie, he ended up facing trial and was sentenced to 60 years in prison. By any standard, it’s a very harsh sentence, considering that there are many people who get lesser sentences for murder or rape.

Just like many other people who think the U.S. criminal justice system is corrupt and flawed, Fox believes that the system is very racist, because people of color are more likely to get worse punishments than white people who commit the same crimes. She comments in the documentary: “Our prison system is nothing more than slavery. And I see myself as an abolitionist.”

Fox’s mother, a retired educator who’s not identified by her name in the movie, also says that prisons are another form of slavery. She doesn’t excuse the crime that Rob and Fox committed that landed the spouses in prison, but she believes that Rob’s punishment should have fit the crime. She says, “I’ve always been a firm believer: Right don’t come to you doing wrong.”

Fox’s mother also adds that she always thought her daughter would marry “a doctor or a lawyer or an Indian chief.” She comments, “I’ve got nothing against Rob. I just don’t know him.” Viewers also don’t really get to know Rob either, since Fox doesn’t really describe what her husband’s personality is like, and the movie only shows brief snippets of her talking to him on the phone while he’s in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola.

However, “Life” does have a lot of footage over the years of Fox with her and Rob’s six children, who are all sons: Mahlik, Remington (also known as Remi), Laurence, Justus, Freedom and Rob II. Justus and Freedom (who are identical twins) and Rob II were born while Rob Sr. was in prison. The most heartbreaking parts of the movie have to do with the children not being able to grow up with their father in the home.

But the movie also has plenty of inspirational moments. Defying the negative stereotype that children of prison inmates are doomed to become uneducated criminals, Mahlik, Remi and Laurence (the three oldest sons) are all college-educated and thriving. Remi is shown graduating from dental school. Laurence graduated from high school two years earlier than his classmates and is shown to be an aspiring law student who wants to become a public advocate for criminal justice reform.

Remi comments in the documentary: “My family has a strong image, but hiding behind it is a lot of pain … Time is influenced by a lot of our emotions. It’s influenced by our actions.”

And Fox is the most inspirational of all, with her steely determination to never give up on her goal to get Rob out of prison and reunited with his family. There are moments of despair, hope, defeat and triumph. “Time” shows how Fox evolved into a charismatic public speaker, whether she gives speeches at places like Tulane University or stands up in front of a church audience and asks for forgiveness for the crime she committed.

In one of these speeches, Fox also mentions that she made amends with some of the bank robbery victims when she met with them personally to ask for their forgiveness. In private, she gives pep talks to Rob, their kids and to herself. And she’s often seen on the phone doing what she has to do to get Rob back home with the family.

One thing that might surprise people who watch this movie is that there is very little footage of any lawyers. There’s a brief scene of Fox in a meeting with attorneys in an office, but that’s about it. There are hints that Fox has become disillusioned with lawyers and the legal system in general, because she does as much as she can on her own. Fox says at one point in the movie that she paid a previous lawyer (whose name is not mentioned) about $15,000 in cash for his services, and he ended up telling the family that there was nothing he could do for Rob.

Besides being entirely in black and white, “Time” isn’t a conventional documentary about the U.S. criminal justice system because of director Bradley’s musical choices for the movie. There is no cliché musical score with rousing orchestral music, no traditional gospel songs that chime in at emotionally charged moments, no stereotypical hip-hop music with angry anthems. Instead, the jazzy score by Edwin Montgomery and Jamieson Shaw (taken mainly from 1960s piano compositions by Ethiopian nun Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou) is a lot like the frequently meandering tone of this film: “Time” flows along with no distinct “acts” or “chapters” because of the non-chronological order of the film.

However, there is a “crescendo” to the film that is an absolute must-see. People who know the Rich family’s story might already know how this film ends, but that doesn’t lessen the impact of seeing certain defining moments captured in this film. As Fox says at one point in the movie, “I came from a people who had a strong desire to have something, to make something of ourselves.” Her unshakeable loyalty to her husband and family in the face of overwhelming obstacles can be an unforgettable inspiration to people who believe in the power of love and the human spirit.

Amazon Studios released “Time” in select U.S. cinemas on October 9, 2020. Prime Video will premiere the movie on October 16, 2020.

2020 Billboard Music Awards: performers and presenters announced

October 14, 2020

 
Kelly Clarkson (Photo by Sam Wasson/Getty Images for iHeartMedia)

The following is a press release from Dick Clark Productions and NBC:

WHO:
Host and opening performer Kelly Clarkson will be joined by Pentatonix and Sheila E. Additional performers include Alicia Keys, Bad Bunny, Brandy featuring Ty Dolla $ign, BTS, Kane Brown featuring Swae Lee and Khalid, Luke Combs, Doja Cat, En Vogue, John Legend, Demi Lovato, Sia, Post Malone featuring Tyla Yahweh, and SAINt JHN. Garth Brooks will receive the elite ICON Award. Mayor of Atlanta Keisha Lance Bottoms will present rapper and social activist Killer Mike with the inaugural Billboard Change Maker Award. Presenters include Addison Rae, Cher, Garcelle Beauvais, Jane Lynch, Jay Ellis, Jharrel Jerome, Julia Michaels, Lilly Singh, Nicole Richie, Spencer X, Taraji P. Henson, TwinsthenewTrend and tWitch.

WHAT:
The “2020 Billboard Music Awards” is hosted by three-time Billboard Music Award host Kelly Clarkson and airs live on NBC on Wednesday, Oct. 14 at 8 p.m. ET/PT from the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles.

The three-hour live telecast will showcase this year’s hottest musical acts, unexpected collaborations and buzzworthy moments. “Billboard Music Awards” nominees and winners are based on key fan interactions with music, including album and digital song sales, streaming, radio airplay, touring and social engagement, tracked by Billboard and its data partners, including MRC Data/Nielsen Music. The awards are based on the chart period of March 23, 2019 through March 14, 2020. Since 1940, the Billboard charts have been the go-to guide for ranking the popularity of artists, songs and albums, and are the ultimate measure of success in music.

The “2020 Billboard Music Awards” are sponsored by TikTok and Xfinity. The “2020 Billboard Music Awards” is produced by Dick Clark Productions. Amy Thurlow, Mark Bracco, Barry Adelman, Linda Gierahn, Kelly Clarkson and Robert Deaton are executive producers.

WHEN:         
The “2020 Billboard Music Awards” airs Wednesday, October 14 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on NBC.

MORE:
About Dick Clark Productions:
Dick Clark Productions (DCP) is the world’s largest producer and proprietor of televised live event entertainment programming with the “Academy of Country Music Awards,” “American Music Awards,” “Billboard Music Awards,” “Golden Globe Awards,” “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest” and the “Streamy Awards.” Weekly television programming includes “So You Think You Can Dance” from 19 Entertainment and DCP. DCP also owns one of the world’s most extensive and unique entertainment archive libraries with more than 60 years of award-winning shows, historic programs, specials, performances and legendary programming. DCP is part of MRC Live & Alternative, a division of diversified global entertainment company MRC. For additional information, visit www.mrcentertainment.com

Review: ‘Evil Eye’ (2020), starring Sarita Choudhury, Sunita Mani, Omar Maskati and Bernard White

October 13, 2020

by Carla Hay

Omar Maskati and Sunita Mani in “Evil Eye” (Photo by Alfonso Bresciani/Amazon Studios)

“Evil Eye” (2020)

Directed by Elan Dassani and Rajeev Dassani

Culture Representation: Taking place in New Orleans and Delhi, India, the horror film “Evil Eye” features a predominantly Indian cast (with a few white people) representing the middle-class.

Culture Clash: A married, middle-aged mother, who experienced domestic abuse from an ex-boyfriend when she was younger, fears that her abuser has been reincarnated in the man whom her daughter is currently dating.

Culture Audience: “Evil Eye” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in horror movies that have characters and storylines focused on Indian culture and family generational issues.

Bernard White and Sarita Choudhury in “Evil Eye” (Photo by Alfonso Bresciani/Amazon Studios)

For better or worse, it’s become a cliché that a great deal of movies with predominantly Indian casts are about families preoccupied with the wedding or marriage of the young adults in the family. Most Indians who follow tradition have arranged marriages where members of the family play matchmaker. The horror film “Evil Eye” adds a cultural blend to this formula by having the story set in two places (the Indian city of Delhi and the American city of New Orleans) that represent the push-and-pull conflict of wanting to follow family tradition and wanting to lead a more modern, independent life. “Evil Eye” might disappoint people who are expecting more action scenes, but the movie is commendable as a sobering reflection on domestic abuse and parents’ fears that their children might be doomed to repeat the same mistakes that the parents made.

“Evil Eye” is part of Blumhouse Television’s “Welcome to the Blumhouse” series partnership with Prime Video to showcase horror/thriller movies directed by women and people of color. Directed by identical twins Elan Dassani and Rajeev Dassani, “Evil Eye” is based on the Audible Original production of the same name by Madhuri Shekar, who wrote the “Evil Eye” screenplay. The audible version of “Evil Eye” centered on a series of phone conversations between an Indian mother and her daughter over the mother’s worries about the daughter’s love life and when she’s going to get married.

The movie version of “Evil Eye” obviously goes beyond those phone conversations to actually show the two different worlds and outlooks on life that the mother and daughter have in the story. In the “Evil Eye” movie, Usha (played by Sarita Choudhury) is a happily married mother who is constantly pressuring her daughter Pallavi (played by Sunita Mani) to find a nice man to marry, preferably someone who is also of Indian heritage. Years ago, Usha and her laid-back and pragmatic husband Krishnan (played by Bernard White) immigrated from India to New Orleans, where they raised Pallavi, but the couple moved back to India some years ago because Krishnan (who’s a science professor) was offered a great job at a university.

Despite living so far apart, Usha and Pallavi communicate with each other on a regular basis. Lately though, their relationship has become strained because Pallavi thinks that Usha is putting too much pressure on her to get married. Pallavi is not opposed to the idea of getting married, but she’s not in a rush to find a husband and she would rather do it on her own terms.

Usha is heavily into astrology and the spirit world, which is a belief that Pallavi does not share. Krishnan is very scientific-minded, but he tolerates Usha’s superstitions with mild amusement. (For example, when Usha prays, she will say something like, “Protect my child from the Evil Eye so that she may be married.”) Krishnan also doesn’t interfere in the squabbles that Usha and Pallavi might have over Pallavi’s marital status. He tells his daughter that he’s proud of her no matter what.

Out of respect for her mother, Pallavi allows Usha to arrange for Pallavi to meet eligible Indian bachelors who are in the New Orleans area. One such bachelor (played by Satya Nikhil Polisetti) has recently moved from Houston to New Orleans. Pallavi agrees to meet him for a casual blind date at a café.

When Pallavi arrives at the café, she sees a handsome stranger in his late 20s or early 30s who’s seated at a nearby table. They make eye contact in the way that people do in movies where you know they’re going to end up being together. Pallavi’s date is more than an hour late, so Pallavi decides she’s not going to wait any longer and she gets up to leave.

The handsome stranger sees that Pallavi has been stood up for her date, and he goes over to her table and asks her if he can join her at her table. He introduces himself as Sandeep Patel, who works in the technology industry. The attraction between Pallavi and Sandeep (played by Omar Maskati) is immediate, and they end up staying at the café while they talk about their lives.

Sandeep tells her that his family also lives in India. He mentions that he used to run with a partier crowd in New York City. And he used to be engaged to a beauty contestant who was a runner-up for Miss India. Sandeep says that the relationship ended badly, and she attempted suicide after their breakup. “She wasn’t who I thought she was,” Sundeep comments morosely.

Pallavi and Sandeep inevitably begin dating each other. He’s romantic, attentive and seems like the perfect catch. He also has enough money where he buys sapphire earrings for Pallavi just one month after they begin dating each other. Pallavi politely declines the gift because she thinks it’s too much, too soon. She jokingly comments that Sandeep can give her the earrings when they get engaged.

Sandeep seems to have all of the qualities that Usha wants for Pallavi’s future husband. Pallavi thinks that Usha will be happy when she tells Usha the happy news that she’s been dating someone special and describes Sandeep in detail to her mother. However, Usha has reservations because she thinks Sandeep is too good to be true. And when Usha hears about the sapphire earrings, she feels even more alarmed.

It’s eventually revealed that when Usha was in college, she dated a fellow student, who ended up being very controlling and abusive to Usha, so she broke up with him. He took the breakup hard and began viciously stalking Usha until something happened to him to take him out of Usha’s life: He died by falling off of a bridge, not long before Pallavi was born. (The relationship is shown in flashbacks, with Nupur Charyalu as the young Usha and Asad Durrani as the ex-boyfriend, who does not have a name in the movie.)

And guess which gift this boyfriend gave Usha when they were together? Is it a coincidence that Sandeep wanted to give Pallavi sapphire earrings too? The more that Pallavi tells Usha about Sandeep, the more alarmed Usha becomes because Sandeep’s personality and the way that he courts Pallavi are strikingly similar to how Usha’s abusive ex-boyfriend was in the beginning of their relationship.

Meanwhile, the romance between Sandeep and Pallavi gets more serious when he asks her to move in with him and quit her boring office job so that she can pursue her dream of becoming a writer. Sandeep offers to pay all the expenses while she lives with him. Pallavi considers herself to be very independent, so she’s reluctant at first to accept this offer.

But the more Pallavi falls in love with Sandeep, the more she thinks it’s likely that she and Sandeep will get married, so she ends up moving into his large, upscale apartment. She also quits her job to work on a writing project that she’s always wanted to do. Usha isn’t pleased when she hears this news because she fears that Pallavi might be losing her identity and that Sandeep might be too controlling.

And now, it’s Pallavi’s turn to be upset because she thought that her mother would be happy that Pallavi is on track to get married to the man of Pallavi’s dreams. She argues with her mother and accuses Usha of being someone who will never be satisfied with the choices that Pallavi makes in her love life. But what Usha is really concerned about is her growing suspicion that Sandeep might be the reincarnation of Usha’s abusive ex-boyfriend.

Usha confides in her husband Krishnan about her fears, but he scoffs at her and thinks she’s being ridiculous. Usha is reluctant to tell Pallavi because doesn’t want to alienate her and she doesn’t want Pallavi to think that she’s crazy. But Usha’s inner turmoil and concerns about Sandeep become too much for her to bear, and eventually something is done about it in a dramatic way.

“Evil Eye” is not the type of horror movie where bad things happen to people every 15 minutes. Instead, it’s a no-frills thriller that mostly succeeds in presenting various dichotomies within a cohesive story that’s not cluttered with too many characters. There are the aforementioned dichotomies of Indian culture versus American culture; traditional marriage arrangements versus modern dating choices; and superstition versus science.

But there’s an underlying dichotomy that’s less obvious: how society viewed domestic abuse before the #MeToo movement versus how society has viewed domestic abuse since the #MeToo movement. Since the #MeToo movement, certain laws have been passed in many areas that give abuse survivors more chances to get justice. Abuse survivors are also getting more encouragement to share their stories as part of the healing process, whereas before the #MeToo movement, survivors were more likely to be shamed into silence.

This shaming is what Usha experiences—not just from society’s discomfort in dealing with abuse allegations, but also the shame she puts on herself. Usha mistakenly thinks she was somehow at fault for the abuse that was inflicted on her. And she still finds it difficult to talk about her abuse trauma to her own family members. It’s this unspoken communication barrier that affects Usha’s relationship with her daughter Pallavi, whom she fears might experience the same abuse that Usha went through when Usha was young.

As Usha, Choudhury gives a very nuanced portrayal of this inner conflict in how much of her past she wants to reveal to Pallavi. Mani is also very good in her role, although at times her Pallavi character seems a little bit underwritten. It would’ve helped if Pallavi had more of a backstory for her past relationships, so viewers would know if she’s the type to easily fall for smooth-talking charmers.

As for Maskati, his Sandeep character really does give off “too good to be true” vibes from the moment he appears on screen, so there really isn’t much to do with this character but play the “perfect guy who might have a dark secret.” Sandeep’s over-eagerness with the sapphire earrings gift is a big red flag that something is “off” with him. Therefore, people with enough experience in life and in watching horror movies know that it’s going to be a matter of time before Sandeep’s true nature is exposed.

However, “Evil Eye” directors Elan Dassani and Rajeev Dassani admirably keep the movie focused on the mother/daughter relationship instead of going down the predictable “it’s all about the boogeyman” route that so many other horror films take. The movie’s climactic scene is a little melodramatic and hokey, but “Evil Eye” capably and authentically depicts the cultural and familial conflicts that American children of Indian parents experience when they have to choose one way of life over another. At the heart of Usha’s and Pallavi’s conflicts with each other is their fear that one of them might lose respect for the other. And for many people, not having the respect of your family or a ruined relationship with a beloved family member is a lot scarier than any spirit that might come back from the dead.

Prime Video premiered “Evil Eye” on October 13, 2020.

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