Review: ‘Spaceship Earth,’ starring John Allen, Marie Harding, Kathelin Gray, Mark Nelson, Linda Leigh, Tony Burgess and Sally Silverstone

May 8, 2020

by Carla Hay

Biosphere 2 dwellers in “Spaceship Earth.” Pictured from left to right: Jane Poynter, Linda Leigh, Mark Van Thillo, Taber MacCallum, Roy Walford (in front), Abigail Alling, Sally Silverstone and Bernd Zabel posing inside (Photo courtesy of Neon)

“Spaceship Earth”

Directed by Matt Wolf

Culture Representation: Taking place primarily in Arizona and California, the documentary “Spaceship Earth” has an all-white cast of people who are interviewed about their involvement in the environmental experiment Biosphere 2, where eight people lived in a giant sealed dome from 1991 to 1993.

Culture Clash: The Biosphere 2 principals and participants were accused of being cult members and frauds by several legitimate members of the scientific community.

Culture Audience: “Spaceship Earth” will appeal mostly to viewers who have an interest in documentaries about eccentric people or futuristic ideas about how to sustain Earth’s environment.

Biosphere 2 in “Spaceship Earth” (Photo courtesy of Neon)

The documentary “Spaceship Earth” isn’t actually about a ship in outer space. It’s about a well-publicized, non-scientific experiment where eight people volunteered to live in an elaborate, sealed bio-dome called Biosphere 2 covering 2.5 acres in Tucson, Arizona, from 1991 to 1993. The idea was that Biosphere 2 could be a prototype for humans to have colonies in outer space. This bio-dome was called Biosphere 2 because the group considered Earth to be Biosphere 1. Although this documentary (directed by Matt Wolf) is certainly fascinating, it raises some questions that aren’t really answered in the film.

The first half of this two-hour movie is an extensive history of the group of eccentrics (who were hippies in the 1960s) that launched Biosphere 2 with the help of Texas billionaire Ed Bass. The group’s leader is John Allen (also known as Johnny Dolphin), a former member of the U.S. Army and a graduate of Harvard Business School. Allen was much older than the mostly young people in their late teens to 20s whom he recruited to join an experimental performing arts group in the late 1960s and early 1970s in San Francisco. The group would call itself the Theater of All Possibilities and would perform around the world.

Allen and several of the group members are interviewed in the documentary, including Marie Harding, also known as Flash, who would become Allen’s wife and chief financial administrator; Kathelin Gray, also known as Salty; William Dempster, also known as Freddy; and Mark Nelson, also known as Horse Shit. They all “dropped out” of their conventional lives to live in a commune and follow the leadership of Allen. All of this sounds like a cult, but the group members deny that they are a cult.

Unfortunately, the “Spaceship Earth” documentary doesn’t interview anyone with a more objective perspective of what this group was about, since everyone interviewed in the movie has been in the group for years or benefited financially from the Biodome 2 spectacle when it launched in the early 1990s. The only real voice of skepticism in the documentary is archival 1990s TV footage of an interview given by whistleblower David Stumpf, a former Biosphere 2 scientist, who said that Biosphere 2 was a scientific fraud and that it was just “trendy ecological entertainment.”

By 1969, the group was fed up with the commercialism of the San Francisco hippie scene and moved to New Mexico to live at a place called Synergia Ranch. It was at this ranch, where the commune members grew their own food and had a self-contained sustainable lifestyle, that Allen started to delve more into the idea of building an enclosed biosphere environment where humans could live. They funded their lifestyle by starting different businesses and doing performances.

The Synergia Ranch group was inspired by several books, including Buckminster Fuller’s “Spaceship Earth,” the Whole Earth catalog and the works of William S. Burroughs. Even though the Theater of All Possibilities group lived a counterculture, hippie lifestyle, Gray says that the group “didn’t take drugs, which would kind of blow it.” It’s very hard to believe that statement, considering much of the group’s performances (shown in archival footage) look a lot like people whacked-out on psychedelics drugs.

Whether they used drugs or not, this group certainly had an unusual mindset that worshipped Allen. Nelson was a native of Brooklyn, New York, who had drifted from job to job before joining the group at the Synergia Ranch in 1969. Nelson says in the documentary that he was a taxi driver, a proofreader, a court reporter and a social worker before leaving New York for the alternative lifestyle offered by Allen and the group. “I really was looking for something different,” Nelson says.

Nelson, Gray and other members of the group talk about Allen being a brilliant visionary, with the word “genius” used quite a bit to describe him. Nelson says Allen is like “a father figure” to him and that Allen is “charismatic,” “tempestuous” and a “genius.” Gray gushes, “I met geniuses before, but no one like John Allen.” Gray hints that she was in love with Allen too, but is purposely vague in saying how intimate she got with him.

Allen’s wife Harding, who said she was never the marrying kind, explains why she agreed to marry him: “It wasn’t for the normal married life type of thing. We were married to make a project.” In other words, their relationship is more of a business arrangement than a traditional marriage.

By 1974, the group members relocated back to California, this time to Berkeley, with the ambition to build a giant Noah’s Ark-inspired ocean ship in nearby Oakland. They succeeded in that goal, and named the ship the Heraclitus. They sailed around the world in the ship and used their construction skills to get jobs by helping construct various buildings.

The group’s adventures in the Heraclitus planted the idea of building a sealed colony that could possibly be used in outer space. In the documentary, many of the group members talk about wanting to “make history” and being at the forefront of futuristic living. One of the key members of the group was Margaret Augustine (also known as Firefly), who started out in the group as a 19-year-old neophyte with no construction work experience and ended up as a chief architect of many of the group’s projects.

It was in the 1970s that the group found an enthusiastic supporter in billionaire Bass, who wanted the group to go to different areas and improve the land. Bass (who is not interviewed in the documentary) is described as someone who was a rebel from a conservative family and is obsessed as the group is about futuristic living. Gray comments about Bass, “He really liked the sense of exploration and adventure.”

Having a wealthy benefactor gave the group more clout, and they began hosting conferences with international intellectuals and “forward thinkers.” Allen is quick to take credit for these conferences being among the first to introduce to the public the concepts of global warming and climate change.

Phil Hawes, a sustainable architect who frequently spoke at these conferences, is credited by the group for coming up with the idea of an adobe spaceship that could be a colony for humans in outer space. Another big influence on the Biosphere project was the 1972 movie “Silent Running,” starring Bruce Dern as a scientist who makes a greenhouse in a space station after all plant life on Earth has been destroyed.

The documentary gets a lot more interesting in the second half, which details the construction, launch and controversy of Biosphere 2. For the massive undertaking of Biosphere 2, which was largely funded by Bass, several scientific consultants were used, including those from the University of Arizona, the Smithsonian Marine Systems Lab and the New York Botanical Garden.

Augustine was Biosphere 2’s chief executive officer, while Harding was the chief financial officer. Harding says that it took most of the 1980s to build Biosphere 2, and it cost $200 million back then. Tony Burgess, a desert ecologist, was recruited to design Biosphere 2’s desert. About 3,800 species of plant and animal life were brought into the dome. The idea was that Biosphere 2 would be completely sustainable on its own, with nothing from the outside to assist for the two years that the people would stay in the dome.

And then by 1990, there was the massive search to find volunteers who were willing to live in Biosphere 2 and not come out for two years. Allen said that he wanted to select “free thinkers,” not followers. There’s archival footage of the auditions, which basically look like Allen telling people to do weird performance antics and exercises. The dwellers could still communicate with the outside world by telephone and videoconferencing, but Allen would be the one to decide who could talk to the dwellers and vice versa. That kind of extreme control by one person doesn’t exactly sound like an atmosphere conducive to “free thinking.”

In the end, eight people were chosen to be the Biosphere 2 dwellers: Jane Poynter, Taber MacCallum, Abigail Alling, Bernd Zabe, Linda Leigh, Mark Van Thillo, Roy Walford and Sally Silverstone. MacCallum and Poynter were a couple, and so were Zabe and Alling. The documentary doesn’t mention if any of the Biosphere 2 dwellers had children.

Although all the Biodome 2 dwellers worked together in communal duties to maintain the space while living there, most of them had a particular specialty. Poynter was in charge of the agriculture and animals. MacCallum did a lot testing of the atmosphere and soil. Alling was the resident marine biologist. Zabe was the repairman. Walford, the oldest member (he was in his early 60s at the time), was the physician. Silverstone was the main cook, and she says in the documentary that only natural ingredients were used in the Biosphere 2 food.

Leigh remembers what she thought of being part of this select group of Biosphere 2 dwellers: “This is a great, bright group of people that are really into what they’re doing … They’re wacky, and I fit right in.” Silverstone says, “I loved science-fiction movies where people were all living under glass domes.” In other words, Biosphere 2 was a dream come true for her. Silverstone later says in the documentary that after the two-year isolation period was over, she didn’t want to leave Biosphere 2 and that she would’ve lived there as long as she could if she were allowed to do it.

The day that the eight Biosphere 2 dwellers entered the dome was met with great fanfare and media attention from all over the world. The documentary has interviews with two of the people who were part of the publicity campaign: Kathy Dyhr, who was Biosphere 2’s public relations director, and public-relations strategist Larry Winokur, who was brought on board because, as Dyhr says in the documentary, she didn’t really know what she was doing and they needed someone with more professional PR experience.

The fact that all of the people chosen to live in Biosphere 2 were white and from Western countries (most from the United States, a few from European nations) probably wouldn’t be considered acceptable today in a more diverse-conscious society. When the Biosphere 2 project decided to raise money by opening up a visiting area, so visitors could look in the dome like people look at a fish bowl, some African Americans are shown in archival footage commenting on the lack of racial diversity of the people in the dome.

But that was just one criticism in a growing list of skeptical observations. Many scientists said it would be inaccurate for Biosphere 2 to be considered real scientific research, since it was an experiment that wasn’t going to be duplicated to double-check results, and there were too many unknown variables.

Things got even more controversial after Poynter accidentally got the tip of one of her fingers cut off in a grain threshing machine, and she had to go outside the dome to get medical attention. Having someone leave Biosphere 2 before the end of the two-year period automatically invalidated the highly touted main goal of the experience: that all eight dwellers would not leave Biosphere 2 for two years.

And then it was discovered by the media that when Poynter returned to Biosphere 2 after getting medical treatment, she broke another rule, by bringing in two duffel bags of outside supplies. And with another goal destroyed, tensions and conflicts grew inside and outside Biosphere 2.

The atmosphere in Biosphere 2 began to have dangerously high levels of carbon dioxide, so oxygen had to be pumped into the dome. It was another failure in the Biosphere 2 goal of not bringing in anything from the outside during the two-year period. According to Dyhr, as the media began to have more questions about the validity of the experiment, “Margaret [Harding] and John [Allen] became more secretive, and that reinforced the idea that they had something to hide.”

And criticism began to grow about the control that Allen (who’s not a scientist) had over the group, which further fueled accusations that the group is a cult. Desert ecologist Burgess tells a story about being threatened and terrified by Allen, after Burgess was accused of being disloyal for expressing his concerns to the media.

Burgess and Allen later put asides their differences. In the documentary, Burgess is quick to defend the group: “Frankly, I don’t know any organization that does an innovative start-up that doesn’t have cult-like aspects, especially in the corporate sector. We are hard-wired to create cults in the innovative phase of an organization.”

And then things really began to fall apart when more scientists quit the project and billionaire Bass, the group’s chief investor, got disillusioned. And then, Steve Bannon (yes, that Steve Bannon, the same one who later became famous for founding Breitbart News and being Donald Trump’s political adviser) got involved in the whole mess. Although the end results of Biosphere 2 have been widely reported and are in the documentary, that spoiler information won’t be included in this review.

After the controversy, this is what Allen has to say about Biosphere 2 all these years later: “We were people who recognized that climate change is a threat and tried to develop the means to counteract that threat.”

Because Allen and his group control so much of the narrative in this documentary, director Wolf fails to answer some basic questions. For starters, did any of the people in this commune group have children? There’s absolutely no mention of any of these people being parents, and how raising kids affected what they did for the group and for Biosphere 2. This is a documentary about a group of people obsessed with how future generations are going to live on Earth and possibly outer space, so it’s very strange for this documentary not to include information about if these people have any children.

Another glaring omission is that the documentary doesn’t have interviews with any scientists who weren’t on the Biosphere 2 payroll, in order to get more objective observations. Instead of spending a lot of time covering the history of this commune group, that screen time in the film should have been for putting into context what, if any, effects that Biosphere 2 had on today’s scientific plans or theories about environmental issues.

Although the documentary makes it clear that there were many scientist critics of Biosphere 2, the filmmakers never bothered to interview any of them for this documentary. It would have been a welcome balance to the obviously biased gushing about Biosphere 2 from Allen’s group members. It would’ve been more interesting to get further details over why so many scientists quit the project. Surely, some of them are still alive to interview, but the documentary doesn’t answer those questions.

It also would’ve been interesting to get Allen’s response to all the criticisms that he was a bully who ran a cult and why his group seems to be lacking in diversity, in terms of age and race. Allen’s group seems to be a bunch of old, white former hippies. If this group is so great at “forward thinking,” where is this group’s next generation of members? They’re certainly not in this documentary.

These are questions that “Spaceship Earth” fails to answer, much like a lot of the mythology around Biosphere 2. It seems as if Allen has control over not just his group of followers but he also exerted a lot of control, directly or indirectly, in how this documentary was made. “Spaceship Earth” leaves viewers with the impression that the filmmakers could’ve dug deeper for more information, but chose not to do it because they didn’t want to lose Allen and his flock to provide the documentary’s majority of interviews and archival footage.

Neon released “Spaceship Earth” in select U.S. drive-in theaters, pop-up city-scape projections, virtual cinemas, on digital and on Hulu on May 8, 2020.

Review: ‘The 420 Movie’ (2020), starring Daniel Baldwin, Kelley Jakle, Lindsey McKeon, Aries Spears, Keith David, Krista Allen and Verne Troyer

April 10, 2020

by Carla Hay

Daniel Baldwin in “The 420 Movie” (Photo courtesy of Sky Republic Productions)

“The 420 Movie” (2020)

Directed by Rob Johnson

Culture Representation: Taking place in the fictional Humbolt County (not the real-life Humboldt County) in California, the stoner comedy “The 420 Movie” has a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans) representing the middle-class who are all connected in some way to marijuana.

Culture Clash: A corrupt mayor and his two adult daughters come up with a “get rich quick scheme” to sell high-grade marijuana and electronic marijuana cigarettes to help pay off his debts.

Culture Audience: “The 420 Movie” will appeal primarily to people who want to watch a low-budget, lowbrow pothead comedy that’s also low on humorous content.

Lindsey McKeon and Kelley Jakle in “The 420 Movie” (Photo courtesy of Sky Republic Productions)

“The 420 Movie” starring Daniel Baldwin and directed by Rob Johnson—not to be confused with “The 420 Movie,” the 2009 stoner comedy written by, directed and starring James Blackburn—is as mindless and poorly made as you would expect it to be. But since it’s an obvious stoner comedy, people who are interested in seeing the movie should already what they’re getting into if they decided to end up watching. (“420” is slang for marijuana.) And since many people see stoner comedies in an “altered” state of mind, how much someone thinks this movie is funny might depend on someone’s level of sobriety when watching the film.

Just like a lot of stoner comedies, “The 420 Movie” features potheads trying to get out of a messy situation because of money and/or their drug activities. Baldwin is Edgar J. Hightower, a widowed, marijuana-loving mayor of the fictional Humbolt County, California (not to be confused with the real-life Humboldt County, California), which is a working-class suburban area that’s somewhat rural. How much does he love pot? One of his campaign promises was that he would make marijuana legal in the county if he got elected.

He kept his promise, and marijuana has become a booming business where the mayor lives. The movie shows that many people grow marijuana in their backyards and openly smoke weed in public. This is the kind of movie whose idea of a sight gag is showing an old lady smoking a joint while gardening.

But the mayor has a gambling problem, which has caused him to lose his fortune, and he’s now living in a trailer with his two daughters, who are in their early 20s. Sarcastic brunette Mary (played by Lindsey McKeon) recently left college in New York to come back to Humbolt County and work in her father’s marijuana dispensary shop. Bratty blonde Jane (played by Kelley Jakle), Mary’s young sister, opted not to go to college and instead decided to work in the shop. Their father Edgar has been trying to increase business for the shop and his Hightower Marijuana Farms, by filming a TV ad campaign, which is shown in the beginning of the movie.

To make matters worse for his financial problems, Edgar has embezzled the county’s budget money to fund his addiction to gambling and prostitutes. And he’s also racked up major debts by paying $2 million for a Mexican army to help protect his marijuana business, since he’s not about to limit himself to just selling marijuana legally when there’s more money to be made by selling it illegally. Krista Allen has a supporting role as Edgar’s assistant Ruth, who looks and acts more like a “Real Housewives” trophy wife than someone who’s supposed to work in an office.

The two Hightower sisters have an ongoing sibling rivalry. Jane insists that she’s the “genius of the family,” while Mary disagrees. They often bicker, but they’re able to put teamwork to good use to come up with a possible solution to their father’s money problems. Mary has concocted a liquid THC formula that can be made into different flavors, while Jane has invented an electronic marijuana cigarette. They figure that the combination is bound to make them a lot of money.

The dispensary shop has two young employees who are enlisted to help Mary and Jane test their new product—Boogie (played by John Bain) and Roofie Amy (played by Stacy Danger), who got her nickname for her high physical tolerance for drugs, including not even being fazed by ingesting roofies, also known as “date rape drugs.”

Boogie is leading a double life. He still lives with his parents, who apparently don’t know what he really does for a living. When he leaves home to go to work, he’s dressed in a conservative suit and tie and carries a briefcase as he says goodbye to his parents. But as soon as he’s out of their sight, he changes into hip-hop street gear. And his car has a bumper sticker on it that says “White Republican and Proud,” but he covers it with a bumper sticker that says “Obama” on it when he goes to work. This is what is supposed to be the movie’s idea of “funny.”

Meanwhile, Edgar is feeling the heat from people he owes money to all over the place. One of the people he’s in debt to is Chief Ironweed (played by Keith David), an African American with a tiny percentage of Native American heritage who, by taking Edgar’s corrupt advice, was able to get control of the local Native American casino by playing up his very dubious connection to the Native American community. Edgar has racked up $270,000 in debts to Chief Ironweed’s casino.

Someone else who’s putting pressure on Edgar to pay up is a local gang leader called Tito the Terrible (played by Verne Troyer), who’s always accompanied by two unnamed henchmen. One of the cronies is a wannabe rapper (played by Aaron “Shwayze” Smith) who repeats almost everything Tito says (much to Tito’s annoyance), and the other henchman (played by Lee Larson) is a tattoo-covered goon who is the “strong and silent” type.

Tito and his thugs go to Edgar’s office to demand a cut of not only Edgar’s next 420 crop but also a cut of the marijuana crops of everyone in Humbolt County. The total haul for Tito will be enough to cover the $5 million that Tito wants from Edgar. (Troyer died in 2018, which tells you how long ago this movie was made.)

Mary and Jane eventually find out about their father’s massive debts, and they come up with the idea to rush the marijuana e-cigarette to market. But first, they need to test how strong it is. The movie culminates at a house party where Mary, Jane, Boogie and Roofie Amy go to do the testing, by charging $25 per hit. Also at the party is Mary’s ex-boyfriend Curt (played by Cody Kasch), whom she dumped because he cheated on her with his stepsister. And novelty rapper Riff Raff (playing himself) is at the party too.

“The 420 Movie” was written by Michael Anthony Snowden, who’s best known for working with the Wayans Brothers on 2001’s “Scary Movie 2” and 2004’s “White Chicks.” Just like those other films, “The 420 Movie” isn’t really about having a clever plot, but instead it’s about having a series of gags that are strung together in the hopes that it will resemble a plot. “The 420 Movie” doesn’t take itself too seriously, but the funny jokes (even the “so dumb it’s funny” jokes) are very few and far in between.

Most of the laughs in “The 420 Movie” don’t come from the main characters, but from Aries Spears, who has a supporting role as Patrolman Watkins, an African American cop who practices “reverse racism” by harassing innocent people if they are white. The Patrolman Watkins character is so over-the-top with his foul-mouthed and outrageous actions that Spears essentially steals every scene, even though he’s only in the movie for about 20 minutes.

The Watkins character (who smokes a joint when he pulls over motorists in traffic stops) is such a buffoon that he can’t be taken seriously. The character is obviously a way to poke fun at bigots who use race as a reason to take out their personal frustrations on others. It’s too bad that “The 420 Movie” didn’t feature the Watkins character more because it would’ve resulted in a much funnier film.

Overall, most of the other actors in the movie do a passable but forgettable job in their roles. “The 420 Movie” has some outside meta references in the film that are brief and aren’t very inventive. There’s a scene when Edgar is on the phone, with Mary and Jane in the room, and he says, “I’ve got Uncle Billy, Uncle Alec and Uncle Stephen on hold.” (It’s an obvious reference to Daniel Baldwin’s famous brothers.) And in a scene with Troyer, who’s best known for his Mini Me character in two “Austin Powers” movies, Tito holds up his pinky finger in a crook like the “Austin Powers” character Dr. Evil.

The obviously low budget for “The 420 Movie” was put to good use in casting, hair and makeup, but not put to much good use in cinematography and sound mixing, which are uneven and very amateurish. There’s a scene with Mary and Jane at a swimming pool, and the cutaway editing in the scene has very bad mismatched lighting. There are some noticeable audio problems throughout the movie, and the soundtrack choices (mostly hip-hop) are extremely predictable. As it stands, “The 420 Movie” is not the worst stoner comedy ever made, but if you’re looking for a movie in this genre that’s really worthwhile, there are so many better options, such as “Dazed and Confused” or the first “Friday” movie.

Sky Republic Productions released “The 420 Movie” on digital and VOD on April 7, 2020.

Review: ‘I Still Believe,’ starring KJ Apa, Britt Robertson, Shania Twain and Gary Sinise

March 13, 2020

by Carla Hay

KJ Apa and Britt Robertson in "I Still Believe"
KJ Apa and Britt Robertson in “I Still Believe” (Photo by Jason LaVeris)

“I Still Believe”

Directed by Jon Erwin and Andrew Erwin (The Erwin Brothers)

Culture Representation: Taking place mostly in California and partially in Indiana, the faith-based drama “I Still Believe” has almost an exclusively white cast representing the middle-class (with a few African and Latinos in minor speaking roles) and has a story based on the real-life contemporary Christian singer Jeremy Camp at the beginning of his career.

Culture Clash: During his first year in college, Jeremy gets involved in a love triangle with a young woman who finds out that she has cancer.

Culture Audience: This movie will appeal mostly to fans of Jeremy Camp and anyone who likes predictable, tear-jerking, faith-based movies.

KJ Apa and Britt Robertson in “I Still Believe” (Photo by Michael Kubeisy)

Bring on the Christian melodrama. “I Still Believe,” which tells the story of how real-life contemporary Christian singer Jeremy Camp met and fell in love with his first wife Melissa, has enough weepy and sentimental moments to make a Hallmark Channel movie look downright cheerful in comparison. Because this dramatic film is based on true events that fans of Camp already know about (he’s written songs about it and done numerous interviews over the years about this period of time in his life), there really isn’t anything new that will be revealed here for his die-hard fans.

However, for everyone else, there are many indications of how this movie will go, from the cutesy lovebird moments to the emotionally distraught hospital scenes. “I Still Believe” is based on Camp’s 2011 memoir of the same name. Brother directors Jon Erwin and Andrew Erwin directed the movie (they also directed the 2018 biopic “I Can Only Imagine” about MercyMe singer Bart Millard), while Jon Erwin co-wrote the “I Still Believe” screenplay with Jon Gunn.

As the story begins, it’s September 1999 in Lafayette, Indiana (Camp’s hometown), and Jeremy (played winningly by a charismatic KJ Apa) is packing up his car to leave behind his supportive and loving parents and two younger brothers, as he heads off to California to attend college for the first time. (The college isn’t named in the movie, but in real life, Camp attended and graduated from Calvary Chapel Bible College in Murrieta, California.)

Before Jeremy leaves, his parents Tom Camp (played by Gary Sinise) and Teri Camp (played by Shania Twain) give him a brand-new guitar as a gift. They know he’s a talented singer and musician, so they’re encouraging him to use that talent in the best way that he can. (It should be noted that Sinise and Twain are in the movie for only about 20 minutes, since most of the story takes place when Jeremy was a college student in California.)

One of the first things that happens when Jeremy arrives on campus is he meets a personal hero: Jean-Luc (played by Nathan Dean), a French Canadian contemporary Christian singer who graduated from the school years earlier and has returned to do a concert on campus. Because Jean-Luc has “made it” as a successful artist, Jeremy approaches him backstage before the show to tell Jean-Luc how much he admires him and to ask for his career advice.

Jean-Luc tells him the best advice he could give is that being an artist isn’t about “making it” but what an artist’s songs give to people. Jean-Luc also tells Jeremy that songwriting is about authenticity. He confides in Jeremy that he’s been writing love songs lately with a special girl in mind.

To Jeremy’s surprise and delight, Jean-Luc then asks Jeremy to tune his guitar. The next thing you know, Jeremy is an instant guitar tech who gets to go on stage and hand Jean-Luc the guitar when it’s time for Jean-Luc to switch instruments. While giving Jean-Luc the guitar, Jeremy sees a pretty young student in the crowd who seems enraptured as she sings along to the music. And then she and Jeremy lock eyes with each other. It’s a “love at first sight” moment for Jeremy that is as sweetly sentimental as you would imagine it to be.

Jeremy is so smitten that when he sees her hanging out in the theater after the show, he goes up and introduces himself to her. They have a cautiously flirtatious conversation. Her name is Melissa Henning (played by Britt Robertson, in an emotionally believable performance), and she invites Jeremy to hang out with her and some friends at the beach after the show.

It turns out that Melissa is a close friend of Jean-Luc, who’s also there at the beach, to Jeremy’s surprise. Melissa is so close to Jean-Luc that she says that she and Jean-Luc are “best friends.” As Jeremy lets this information sink in (and it becomes obvious that this is the “special girl” that Jean-Luc is writing love songs about), he still tries to figure out a way to date Melissa.

At the beach, Jeremy has brought his guitar, so that’s how Melissa first finds out that he can sing and play. And since she seems to have a thing for musicians, Jeremy’s talent probably makes him even more attractive to her. She plays it cool, but her reaction to him singing and playing shows how much Jeremy has piqued her interest. (Apa does his own singing in the movie. And he’s pretty good.)

When Jeremy is alone with Melissa, he asks her point-blank if she and Jean-Luc are dating. She says no, but she admits that Jean-Luc might have romantic feelings for her that aren’t mutual. Jeremy doesn’t waste time in expressing that he’s available and interested in dating Melissa, but she tells him that she promised God and her protective older sister Heather that this semester that she wouldn’t have any distractions from her studies and that Jeremy is definitely a distraction.

Undeterred, Jeremy persists in asking Melissa out on a date every time he runs into her on campus, until finally she says yes to one date. She agrees on the condition that she and Jeremy see each other in secret because she doesn’t want to hurt Jean-Luc’s feelings.

On their first date, Melissa and Jeremy go to a planetarium. While in the Hubble Space Telescope room, Melissa turns out to be very knowledgeable about astronomy trivia. After she rattles off some facts about outer space, Melissa says, “I’m just one star in an infinite galaxy.” And Jeremy replies as he looks at her meaningfully, “Well, some stars shine brighter than others.” Yes, it’s that kind of movie.

One date turns into two and then into more dates. And soon, it’s obvious that Jeremy and Melissa have fallen in love, but Melissa still wants to keep their relationship a secret because she’s afraid that it will ruin her friendship with Jean-Luc. This deception bothers Jeremy, but he goes along with it because he doesn’t want to lose Melissa.

Meanwhile, Jean-Luc has been acting as a mentor to Jeremy and has even offered to help Jeremy make a demo recording that could lead to a record-label contract. Jean-Luc has also offered to pass along the demo to the right people to help speed up the process. In other words, this love-triangle situation has turned into something even more complicated than when it started.

According to the movie’s production notes, there was no real-life love triangle between Jeremy, Melissa and Jean-Luc, who is based on real-life French Canadian musician Jean-Luc La Joie, the lead singer of the Christian rock band The Kry. In real life, Jean-Luc and Melissa were just friends, and Jean-Luc really did help Jeremy, early on in Jeremy’s career. But the filmmakers decided to make the Jean-Luc character in the movie as a combination of the real person and the numerous guys who were also pursuing Melissa during the time that she and Jeremy began dating.

Whether or not Jean-Luc finds out about the secret love affair turns out to be the least of Jeremy and Melissa’s problems. Just as Jeremy’s career is taking off, Melissa finds out that she has cancer. The rest of the movie shows how this devastating diagnosis affects their relationship. (And if you know what happened in real life, then you already know how this movie is going to end.)

All of the actors do a fine job with their performances. As the central characters in the film, Apa and Robertson (who also played a young couple in love in 2017’s “A Dog’s Purpose”) have natural chemistry together that makes them convincing as two people who’ve fallen hard and fast for each other. But there are moments in the movie that are so melodramatic and cliché-ridden that they’re downright cringeworthy. And there might be some non-religious people who could be offended at the idea that prayer can cause medical miracles. But this isn’t a movie for atheists or people who don’t like Christian movies. “I Still Believe” will definitely be a crowd-pleaser for the film’s intended audience. For everyone else, proceed with caution or avoid the movie altogether.

Lionsgate released “I Still Believe” in U.S. cinemas on March 13, 2020.

UPDATE: Because of the widespread coronavirus-related closures of movie theaters worldwide, Lionsgate Home Entertainment has moved up the digital and VOD release of “I Still Believe” to March 27, 2020.

1440 Multiversity, a wellness facility in Northern California, opens registration

January 10, 2017

1440 Multiversity
(Photo courtesy of 1440 Multiversity)

 1440 Multiversity, a wellness learning destination opening in May 2017, is now open for registration. Weekend and five-day immersion programs are offered at the 75-acre campus, nestled in the redwoods of Scotts Valley, California, between Santa Cruz and San Jose.  Named for the number of minutes in a day, 1440 Multiversity champions the proposition that each moment is an opportunity to live fully.

Topics at the facility include “The Neuroscience of Personal Transformation,” “Wired for Relationships,” “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain,” “The Art and Science of Meditation,” “Authentic Leadership.”

According to 1440 Multiversity, accommodations on campus include all-natural farm-to-table cuisine, daily offerings in meditation, yoga, fitness, and other classes and events before and after course sessions, as well as four miles of forest hiking trails.  The campus will also feature a new healing arts center with bodywork modalities designed for relaxation and whole-body integration, steam rooms, and an outdoor infinity edge whirlpool with an expansive view of the redwoods.

Among the notable faculty in its inaugural year are:

  • Elizabeth Gilbert (Author, “Eat Pray Love”) and Cheryl Strayed (Author, “Wild”)
  • Sharon Salzberg (Vipassana meditation teacher and author)
  • Richard Davidson, Ph.D. (Neuroscience pioneer and author of “The Emotional Life of Your Brain”)
  • Gabor Maté (Addiction and stress expert)
  • Seane Corn (Yoga teacher and activist)
  • Bruce Lipton, Ph.D. (Epigenetics expert)
  • Daniel Siegel, M.D. (Renowned psychiatrist) and Caroline S. Welch (Law, mediation, and mindfulness expert)
  • Harville Hendrix, Ph.D., and Helen LaKelly Hunt, Ph.D. (Cocreators, Imago Relationship Therapy)
  • Peter Senge (Founder, Society for Organizational Living)
  • Elaine Aron, Ph.D. (Author, “The Highly Sensitive Person”)
  • Tara Brach, Ph.D. (Author, “Radical Acceptance and True Refuge”)
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