Tag: reviews

Review: ‘Every Body’ (2023), starring River Gallo, Sean Saifa Wall and Alicia Roth Weigel

July 1, 2023

by Carla Hay

Sean Saifa Wall, Alicia Roth Weigel and River Gallo in “Every Body” (Photo courtesy of Focus Features)

“Every Body” (2023)

Directed by Julie Cohen

Some language in Spanish

Culture Representation: Taking place in 2021 and 2022 in various parts of the United States and in Berlin, the documentary film “Every Body” features a predominantly white group of people (with some African Americans and Latinos) discussing what it’s like to be intersex, which is being born with male and female genital or reproductive physical characteristics.

Culture Clash: Intersex people often experience non-consensual surgeries as children, cruel discrimination and other traumas when other people assign genders to them that the intersex people might not feel are the correct genders for them.

Culture Audience: “Every Body” will appeal primarily to viewers who are interested in seeing an informative documentary about people in the LGBTQIA+ community who are often overlooked and misunderstood.

Maribel Gallo and River Gallo in “Every Body” (Photo courtesy of Focus Features)

“Every Body” is essential viewing to see how intersex people deserve the same human rights as anyone else. This notable documentary doesn’t overload on talking head interviews. Instead, it focuses on three intersex people who share their compelling stories. “Every Body” had its world premiere at the 2023 Tribeca Festival.

Directed with intelligence and sensitivity by Julie Cohen, “Every Body” doesn’t just include personal stories. It’s also a well-researched documentary that unpeels the layers of medical abuse and shame that go in tandem with the non-consensual surgeries that intersex people often experience as children. The movie is also a call to action to advocate for intersex people’s rights and to help put a stop to abuse of intersex people by having better laws and more resource support for intersex people.

Unlike transgender people, who usually want to be one gender, intersex people usually have a different journey because intersex people have genital or reproductive physical characteristics associated with being male and female. Parents of intersex people are often told by medical professionals which gender should be assigned in childhood, often before intersex people are old enough to tell people what their gender identities are. This gender assignment at childhood often leads to non-consensual surgeries on underage intersex people.

The beginning of “Every Body” shows how people take for granted that an unborn child will be either male or female. The opening of the movie is a montage of “gender reveal” videos, where expectant parents reveal the genders of their unborn children. But what about the children who are born with both male and female sex organ characteristics?

“Every Body” presents this statistic: “An estimated 1.7% of the [U.S.] population has some intersex traits. About .07% have intersex traits so significant they may be referred for surgery. That’s 230,000 Americans. If those numbers are higher than you thought, that’s because intersex people are often told to keep quiet about their bodies. But Safia, Alicia and River are not the quiet types.”

Here are the three intersex people who are the main focus in “Every Body”:

River Gallo, whose pronouns are they/them, is an actor, screenwriter and director. At the time this documentary was made, Gallo was 31. Gallo grew up in Bergen County, New Jersey, and currently lives in Los Angeles. Gallo, who was raised as male (the gender that Gallo was assigned at birth), was born with genital characteristics that were both male (a penis without testicles) and female. Gallo did not find out about being intersex until Gallo was 12 years old. Gallo used to lie to their male and female sex partners by saying Gallo’s lack of testicles was because of testicular cancer.

Sean Saifa Wall, whose pronouns are he/him, is a Ph.D. student. At the time this documentary was made, Wall was 43. Wall was raised in New York City’s Bronx borough and currently lives in Manchester, England. Wall was born with what is described in his medical records as “no uterus and a small phallus,” but he was assigned the female gender as a child by medical professionals at the hospital where he was born. Wall’s childhood name was Susanne. Wall says in the documentary that his sexual attraction is to women.

Alicia Roth Weigel, whose pronouns are she/her and they/them, is a political consultant and writer. At the time this documentary was made, Weigel was 31. Weigel was raised in Philadelphia and currently lives in Austin, Texas. Weigel was born with XY (male) chromosones, internal testes, no uterus and a vagina. Weigel was raised as female, the gender she was assigned at birth. In the documentary, she is shown looking for men on a dating app.

Gallo, Wall and Weigel are intersex activists and friends. All three pals describe themselves as being high academic achievers during their school years, as a way to have an identity outside of their gender situation. They also have university educations. Gallo’s alma mater is New York University. Wall graduated from Williams College. Weigel is a graduate of Cornell University.

All three describe the loneliness and isolation that intersex people often feel because of having both male and female sex organ characteristics. Wall says in the beginning of the documentary: “We live in a society that’s so binary. And so, for me, as an intersex person, where do I fit? Where do I belong?”

Weigel adds, “You have physical and anatomical traits that don’t fall neatly into that male/female box that birth certificates make you think how the world is. You feel so alone and isolated and like your body is a problem.” Gallo comments, “There’s this connotation that your body is ugly or is gross or is something that is monstrous.”

Gallo, Wall and Weigel all describe traumatic medical experiences that they experienced in their childhoods. For Gallo, it was being told at 12 years old about not having testicles and the medical recommendation to have surgery to add prosthetic testicles. Gallo’s parents are undocumented immigrants from El Salvador who did not speak English, which Gallo says had a lot to do with why these immigrant parents put so much trust in what the American doctors were recommending. Gallo says they felt betrayed by their parents for not telling them sooner, and it took a long time for Gallo to forgive their parents.

Weigel says that doctors told her to secretly make her vagina large enough to have penetrative sex and gave her dildos to use for this self-procedure. Weigel also claims that these doctors ordered her not to tell her parents. Weigel says, “I was 11 or 12, using the dildos, alone in the closet of my house.”

Wall, who says he always felt like a male, had gonadectomy (removal of his testes) when he was 13 years old. “I did not consent to the surgery,” Wall says. Wall’s parents are deceased, but he says that he understands why his mother decided to make him have the surgery. According to Wall, the doctor had told his mother that Wall’s testes were “cancerous” and needed to be removed. Wall did not have cancer, but the word “cancerous” was used as a stigma word to frighten his mother.

Wall is also shown going through his childhood medical records that prove he had male and female sex organ traits, and medical professionals were confused on what to do about it. His gender was initially checked in the “ambiguous” box on a medical document, but then crossed out and the “female” box was checked. His medical records also include extensive notes detailing the parts of his body that the medical professionals thought needed to be removed.

“A lot of parents [of intersex children] consent to these procedures, not really knowing the long-term effects,” says Wall. “A lot of parents do it because they’re really concerned about their kids. Wall adds, “There’s a culture of stigma and shame and silence that surrounds intersex people. It’s not just the surgeries themselves. It’s the voyeurism by doctors. It’s the medical photography. This person becomes a specimen.”

John Money, a Ph.D. sex researcher at Johns Hopkins University, is frequently mentioned and shown in archival footage in “Every Body” as being both a pioneer and a villain in intersex medical research. Although he is credited with bringing more awareness about intersex people to the general public, Dr. Money had studies advocating for intersex people to have non-consensual surgeries, assigning them to only one sex as early in their childhoods as possible. Dr. Money’s studies have since been debunked as being erroneous and harmful. Keith Sigmundson, Ph.D., a child psychiatrist who treated some of Dr. Money’s intersex patients confirms in the documentary that Dr. Money’s approach was the wrong one.

Katharine Dalke, M.D., of the Penn State College of Medicine’s National Institute Health’s Sexual and Gender Priority Research Group, identifies as intersex. Dr. Dalke says in the documentary, “The most inclusive definition of ‘intersex’ is any variation of a person’s sex traits with which they’re ether born or which they develop naturally during puberty.”

Dr. Dalke adds, “The existence of intersex traits show that not only does the middle space exist but that there’s a lot of variation within those categories of male and female. It is possible to be a biological female and have testes. It is possible to be a biological male and have a uterus”

Dr. Dalke also says, “In most cases, surgery isn’t necessary.” Dalke adds, “Unfortunately, the way that the medical community has responded to that complexity historically is to focus on managing someone’s genital appearance and their gender identity.”

As an example of the trauma that can happen when a child is assigned the wrong gender in infancy or another stage of childhood, “Every Body” brings up the case of David Reimer, a Canadian man who was raised as a girl after his penis was accidently burned off when he was an infant. Although Reimer (who had a twin brother) was not intersex, “Every Body” includes footage from Reimer’s 1999 interview with the NBC’s “Dateline” news program, with clips of the interview shown to Gallo, Wall and Weigel. Reimer describes being bullied as a child and experiencing mental-health issues over his gender identity, especially after he found out that he was lied to for years about his true gender.

Secrecy and shame are often part of the intersex experience. Many parents of intersex children don’t tell other family members that their children are intersex. Intersex children who know they are intersex are told not to reveal this information to other people. Although the intention of these parents might be to protect their intersex children, intersex activists say that the stigma needs to be removed from being intersex so that intersex people should not have to hide their identities in shame.

Gallo says that their relationship with their mother Maribel has now healed, but it took a lot of work. In the documentary, Gallo and their mother are shown looking at family photos with bittersweet memories. When asked about how she handled Gallo being intersex during childhood, Maribel says, “If I didn’t have the strength, who would?” But the trauma has lingering effects. Later in the documentary, Gallo says that the shame placed upon them for being intersex and what they went through as a child has a lot to do with why Gallo has had struggles with drug and alcohol abuse.

“Every Body” has significant screen time devoted to the support groups and activism for intersex people, their allies and loved ones. The Intersex Society of North America (ISNA) is named as the most prominent and earliest advocacy group for and by intersex people. The documentary includes footage of the group’s first meeting in 1996, when 10 people attended.

Wall, Weigel and Gallo are also shown at various intersex advocate rallies and testifying in government hearings for better resources for intersex people and better education for the public about intersex people. Weigel’s mother Char Weigel, who is a nurse, is a supportive activist too. In another segment, Weigel is shown meeting with Austin city council member Natasha Harper-Madison and Austin communications director Caleb Pritchard to talk about intersex rights.

Dr. Dix Phillip Poppas, a urologist at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, is mentioned multiple times in the documentary as someone who advocates for harmful and unnecessary surgery on intersex people. Weigel and Gallo are shown at a pro-intersex gathering outside of Dr. Poppas’ workplace to protest the intersex surgeries that he and other medical doctors pressure intersex people to have. Two of the activists who are interviewed at this gathering are Scout Silverstein and Casey Orozco-Poore.

When it comes to dating, all three of the featured intersex people in “Every Body” say that it’s best to be open and up front with potential partners about being intersex. In most cases, intersex people cannot have biological children, so any potential partner with family planning issues should also be informed as early as possible. Gallo says that anyone who will reject someone for being intersex is not right for that intersex person anyway.

Weigel says, “Dating can be tough. It’s markedly different than it was before I was out about being intersex.” Weigel says she lists her intersex pronouns on all her profiles for dating apps. “If I don’t divulge it,” Weigel says of her intersex identity, “then they’ll find out on their own because they’ll Google me. And if someone can’t handle me, it sucks for them.”

Wall admits that he found dating very hard at first because he was deeply ashamed and afraid of any possible lover seeing him naked. Wall is now much more comfortable with dating and his body—so much so, he participated in an intersex art exhibition by posing fully naked for a series of photographs. Wall is shown traveling to Berlin to view this art exhibit, which was organized by Luan Pertl and Jomka Weib.

One of the subjects of the art exhibit is Mani Mitchell, one of the original ISNA members, who is shown in a nude photo portrait with the words, “I Am Not a Monster” written on Mitchell’s chest and torso. Wall gets emotionally moved by what he sees in the exhibit, which represents the gamut of experiences that intersex people have. During his tearful reaction, he says how important it is for intersex people to have understanding and support from their childhood onward to reduce the traumas that get inflicted on intersex people for biological things that are out of their control.

“Every Body” is the type of documentary that will stay with viewers long after watching it. It’s educational without being preachy. It’s inspirational without being corny. Most of all, it shows that although some bigots might want to discriminate against intersex people, it doesn’t erase the fact that equality human rights apply to intersex people too.

Focus Features released “Every Body” in select U.S. cinemas on June 30, 2023.

Review: ‘Anthem’ (2023), starring Kris Bowers and DJ Dahi

July 1, 2023

by Carla Hay

Pictured in front:  DJ Dahi and Kris Bowers in “Anthem” (Photo by Kevin Estrada/Hulu)

“Anthem” (2023)

Directed by Peter Nicks

Culture Representation: Taking place in 2020, in various parts of the United States, the documentary film “Anthem” features a racially diverse group of people (African American, white, Latino, Native American and a few Asians) who are connected in some way to the documentary’s mission to find a variety of American residents to create a new U.S. national anthem.

Culture Clash: People disagree on what “patriotic” music and lyrics are supposed to be for Americans.

Culture Audience: “Anthem” will appeal primarily to viewers who are fans of the documentary’s stars Kris Bowers and DJ Dahi, as well as fans of documentaries about racially diverse people joining together for a common cause, but this movie bites off more than it can chew on this weighty subject matter.

Kris Bowers and DJ Dahi in “Anthem” (Photo courtesy of Hulu)

Although “Anthem” might have had good intentions to do something groundbreaking in music and American culture, it really looks like a half-baked experiment and an excuse to take a road trip. This documentary is supposed to be about a diverse group of people creating a new U.S. national anthem, but people of Asian heritage are mostly excluded from this movie. It’s a travelogue and a long commercial for the song that’s performed at the end. And that song? After all the buildup and hype in this documentary, the song that the group comes up with—”We Are America”—is really just a bland and forgettable pop tune. There’s nothing iconic about this song at all.

Directed by Peter Nicks (who is seen briefly in the movie), “Anthem” (which had its premiere at the 2023 Tribeca Festival) looks like the type of movie that seems like a great idea on paper. But the complexities involved in doing this concept justice just seemed to be too much for this documentary’s filmmakers. There’s a lot of footage of film/TV composer Kris Bowers (“King Richard,” “Bridgerton”) and hip-hop artist DJ Dahi on a road trip to six metropolitan areas of the U.S., where they spend a lot of time sitting in on local band rehearsals and nodding along to whatever the people are saying in the interviews.

It’s explained in the movie, when Bowers and DJ Dahi meet in Los Angeles, that these two artists didn’t know each other before the road trip. Bowers and DJ Dahi (whose real name is Dacoury Dahi Natche) have amiable chemistry together, but this documentary would have been more interesting if the two taking the road trip were music artists who know each other very well. Bowers (who is one of the producers of “Anthem”) and DJ Dahi are also quite passive in their conversations with the local music artists. The questions they ask are often boring and needed more curiosity and charisma, if the intent was to recruit these singers and musicians to be in the group that’s writing and performing this “new national anthem.”

The documentary explains that this “new national anthem” is not intended to replace “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It is intended to be a more updated national anthem that is a better reflection of how much more diverse the United States is in the 2020s, compared to when Francis Scott Key wrote the lyrics to “The Star-Spangled Banner” in 1814. The inherent problem, of course, is that with so many more music genres that didn’t exist in 1814 but were invented in the 20th century (including rock, hip-hop and electronic dance music, to name a few), it’s impossibe to come up with a new song that everyone in America can agree is the best representation of America.

Various cultural experts such as Nikole Hannah-Jones, Shana L. Redmond and Mark Clague weigh on what it means to even think about creating a new national anthem. They all say the obvious: Some people will think it’s an inspired idea, while others will think it’s highly unpatriotic. For many people in America, “The Star-Spangled Banner” represents freedom. For other, people “The Star-Spangled Banner” represents oppression.

Redmond comments that any deviation or different version of the U.S. national anthem is “seen as an affront.” It’s also noted in the documentary that people of color who perform different musical arrangements of the national anthem tend to get the harshest criticism. Jimi Hendrix and José Feliciano are mentioned as examples of how their versions of “The Star-Spangled Banner” got a lot of backlash when Hendrix and Feliciano first performed these versions in the late 1960s.

Considering how vast the United States is, in terms of land space, Bowers and DJ Dahi realistically could not go to every major city if the documentary had time constraints. However, going to only six regions—Detroit; Clarksdale, Mississippi; Nashville; New Orleans; Oklahoma; and the San Francisco Bay Area—still seems a bit skimpy, considering that only one of these regions (the San Francisco Bay Area) is not in the South or Midwest. In each region, Bowers and DJ Dahi visit with local musicians to get their thoughts on music and possibly recruit some of these musicians to be a part of the making of this “new national anthem.”

For this documentary, Detroit was chosen to represent R&B music in America; Clarksdale was chosen to represent blues music in America; Nashville was chosen to represent country music in America; Oklahoma was chosen to represent Native American music; and the San Francisco Bay Area was chosen to represent Latin music in America. For unknown reasons, “Anthem” ignores cities and spotlights for rock and hip-hop, two of the most important American-made music genres. And it’s a baffling omission, considering that DJ Dahi is a hip-hop producer who has worked with hip-hop artists such as Kendrick Lamar, Travis Scott and Drake.

The interviews range from generic to fairly insightful. In Detroit, keyboardist Joseph “Amp” Fiddler comments: “We love this country. We love the people in our country. But does our country love us?” In Clarksdale, harmonica player Terry “Harmonica” Bean says about the blues: “The music that you hear from here, America gets the credit for it, but it comes from Africa … The blues will never die. We’re just passing it on, passing the torch.”

Discussions of “The Star-Spangled Banner” also extend to perceptions of the American flag and its offshoots. In Clarksdale, singer/keyboardist Eden Brent reflects on how she, as a white woman living the U.S. South, changed her mind about the Confederate flag over time when she learned how many people see the Confederate flag as a symbol of racism. She says that even though some people might defend the Confederate flag as being a symbol of “Southern pride,” people shouldn’t forget that the history of the Confederate flag was about fighting to keep slavery legal in the United States.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, self-described radical activist musician Cecilia Peña-Govea (whose stage name is La Doña) openly talks about how the U.S. flag has become a symbol of greed and destruction for her. In Nashville, singer Charity Bowden says the U.S. flag and “The Star-Spangled Banner” will always be a source of pride for her, especially since she comes from a military family. It’s at this point in the movie that you know the filmmakers are going to be like reality TV producers and have Peña-Govea and Bowden working in a room together, and the two women inevitably clash with each other. And sure enough, that happens. By contrast, one of the artist highlights of the documentary is seeing poet Joy Harjo show her entrancing talent in the recording studio.

With all this talk of diversity throughout “Anthem,” there is surprisingly very little representation of people with Asian heritage in the documentary’s selection of musicians and singers who get the spotlight. In New Orleans, trombonist Haruka Kakuchi is shown briefly with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Singer-songwriter Thao Nguyen is seen playing “We Are America” during the movie’s end credits. People of South Asian heritage are excluded in this movie, in terms of the prominently featured musicians and singers.

Other people featured in the documentary include lighting director Briana Nicole Henry and the following music artists: Larae Starr, Dennis Coffey, Paul Randolph, Anthony “Big A” Sherrod, Lee Williams, Ruby Amanfu, Jack Schneider, Zachariah Akil Witcher, Ellen Angelico, Megan Brittany Coleman, Preston James, Glen Finister Andrews, Charlie Gabriel, Wendell Brunious, Richard Moten, George Coser, Dana Tiger, Watko Long, Miguel Govea, Naomi Garcia Pasmanick, Sergio Duran and Esai Moreno Salas. The credited songwriters for “We Are America” are Amanfu, Bowden, Bowers, Peña-Govea, Harjo and DJ Dahi, under his real name.

Although the technical aspects of “Anthem” are well-done, the documentary doesn’t look like a fascinating history lesson that blends music and American history. Instead, the documentary looks like a hastily assembled hodgepodge of people brought together to write and record a “music by committee” song that, frankly, does not sound all that majestic and is very underwhelming for a so-called “national anthem.” Regardless of what your definiton is of “patriotism,” or what you think about the United States, “Anthem” is a documentary that falls very short of its intention to be a trailblazing project.

Hulu premiered “Anthem” on June 28, 2023.

Review: ‘Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken,’ starring the voices of Lana Condor, Annie Murphy, Toni Collette, Sam Richardson, Will Forte, Colman Domingo and Jane Fonda

June 29, 2023

by Carla Hay

Chelsea Van Der Zee (voiced by Annie Murphy) and Ruby Gillman (voiced by Lana Condor) in “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken” (Image courtesy of DreamWorks Animation)

“Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken”

Directed by Kirk DeMicco

Culture Representation: Taking place in the U.S. city of Oceanside, the animated film “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken” features a cast of characters depicting humans, krakens and mermaids.

Culture Clash: A female teenage Kraken, whose family has been hiding its kraken identity from humans, uncovers an ancient legacy when a rival new student enrolls in her school. 

Culture Audience: “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken” will appeal primarily to people who want to see reliably entertaining animated films with simple messages about self-confidence and being yourself.

Pictured from left to right: Trevin (voiced by Eduardo Franco), Margot (foreground, voiced by Liza Koshy), Bliss (voiced by Ramona Young), Ruby Gillman (voiced by Lana Condor) and Connor (voiced by Jaboukie Young-White) in “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken” (Image courtesy of DreamWorks Animation)

“Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken” does what it’s supposed to do as a family-oriented animated film. The story and visuals are appealing, but improvement was needed in world building and explaining various characters’ backstories much earlier in the movie. If you don’t know what a kraken is and have no interest in finding out, then skip this movie. Everyone else will at least be mildly entertained by this animated movie that is adequate but not a classic.

Directed by Kirk DeMicco, “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken” has an over-used story of a teenage girl trying to fit in at her school while having a crush on a boy whom she wants to date. However, the movie should be commended for at least taking a unique and darking approach of making a kraken family at the center of the story. It’s something that no animated film from a major Hollywood studio has ever done before. Pam Brady, Brian C. Brown and Elliott DiGuiseppi wrote the screenplay for “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken,” with additional screenplay material written by DeMicco, Meghan Malloy and Michael McCullers.

A kraken is a giant mythical sea monster whose origins are off of the coast of Norway. In “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken,” 16-year-old Ruby Gillman (voiced by Lana Condor) and her family are living “under the radar” in the U.S. city of Oceanside, by having the appearance of humans and trying fit in as human beings. What’s kind of silly about the movie is that the members of this kraken family all have blue skin, which makes it obvious that they’re not human. It would look worse in a live-action film, but in an animated film, there’s more room for suspension of disbelief.

Ruby is intelligent and compassionate, but she insecure about her physical appearance, and she has a slightly goofy personality. Her overprotective mother Agatha Gillman (voiced by Toni Collette) is a successful real-estate agent who dominates the household and is the main parental disciplinarian. Ruby’s laid-back father Arthur Gillman (voiced by Colman Domingo) is much more lenient and understanding of Ruby’s curiosity. Also in the household is Ruby’s 7-year-old brother Sam Gillman (voiced by Blue Chapman), who has the “cute kid” role in the movie.

Agatha and Arthur know that their family is “different,” but they have instilled the attitude in their children that they must blend in with humans as much as possible. Agatha’s number-one rule for her children (especially Ruby) s that they must never go inside or near a large body of water. Needless to say, Agatha is horrified and disapproving when Ruby says she’s interested in studying marine biology for a possible career.

Ruby attends Oceanside High School, where she has a small circle of three friends who are all considered “misfits,” just like Ruby. Margot (voiced by Liza Koshy), who is queer or a lesbian, loves musical theater and is the most talkative and outspoken of the friends. Trevin (voiced by Eduardo Franco), the quietest of the group, is addicted to playing hand-held video games. Bliss (voiced by Ramona Young) is moody, sarcastic, and dresses like a nerdy Goth.

Ruby prides herself on being a “mathlete”—someone who excels at math and at being an athlete. She has a big crush on a fellow student whom she’s tutoring in math. His name is Connor (voiced by Jaboukie Young-White), who is a free-spirited skateboarder. The school’s prom is coming up. Ruby, Connor, and Ruby’s friends all think the concept of a prom is a “post-colonial patriarchal construct” that they think is very uncool.

However, Margot ends up changing her mind about boycotting the school’s prom when her girl crush asks Margo to be her prom date. Trevin and Bliss then want to go to the school’s prom too. Feeling left out, Ruby decides she wants to also attend the prom, with Connor as her date. Ruby tries to work up the courage to ask Connor, who’s attracted to her, but Ruby isn’t seeing the obvious signs of this attraction.

The added allure for Ruby to go to the prom is that it will be an act of rebellion against her mother. As soon as Agatha found out that the prom will take place in a building that’s near the ocean, she forbade Ruby from going. Margot, Trevin and Bliss convince Ruby that she shouldn’t be so afraid of getting her mother’s disapproval for something that should be a fun and positive experience for Ruby. These three pals tells Ruby that she should lie to Agatha about where she is going on the prom night and go to the prom instead.

Shortly before Ruby decides she’s going to ask Connor to be her prom date, he accidentally falls into the ocean and almost drowns. Ruby dives in to rescues him. And that’s when Ruby finds out that she can turn into a giant kraken. She’s horrified and now knows why her mother Agatha forbade her to go into any large body of water. Connor is unconscious and doesn’t see who rescued him. After a short stay in a hospital, he is released.

Meanwhile, there’s a new student at Oceanside High School: a confident, physically attractive redhead named Chelsea Van Der Zee (played by Annie Murphy), who witnessed this rescue and knows that Ruby wants to keep Ruby’s kraken identity a secret. And so, Chelsea takes credit for rescuing Connor. People believe Chelsea’s fabricated “hero” story, and she immediately becomes popular. As already shown in the “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken” trailers, Chelsea has a secret identity too: She’s really a mermaid.

There are more Gillman family secrets that are revealed to Ruby, including a longtime feud between mermaids and krakens. Agatha’s bold and confident mother, whose only name in the movie is Grandmamah (voiced by Jane Fonda), comes from a long line of kraken warrior queens. Grandmamah is estranged from Agatha, who refused to follow in her mother’s footsteps.

Ruby also finds out that 15 years earlier, there was a Battle of the Tridents, where mermaids were defeated and went into hiding. There’s an all-powerful trident that mermaids and krakens have been battling over for several generations. When Ruby decides she’s going to embrace her kraken heritage and asks Grandmamah to mentor her, you can easily guess what the movie’s big showdown will be.

Other featured characters in this movie includes a local tour guide Gordon Lighthouse (voiced by Will Forte), who has a boat and who believes that krakens are very dangerous for people. Brill voiced by Sam Richardson) is Agatha’s younger brother, who is earnest and dorky. He’s the type who wears Hawaiian shirts, shorts and sandals with socks. Brill ends up getting involved in some of Ruby’s adventures.

“Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken” has some explanations about kraken and mermaid lore in the middle of the movie, when those explanations should have been earlier in the film. The characters of Ruby, Agatha and Grandmamah have well-defined personalities, but some other characters (such as Sam and Bliss) don’t do much except take up space. Other characters (such as “cool love interest” Connor, “mean girl” Chelsea and “meddling neighbor” Gordon) are the types of characters that have been in many other types of scripted entertainment.

Some viewers might compare “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken” to the 2022 Oscar-nominated Pixar movie “Turning Red” because there are some striking similarities. “Turning Red” is a much better movie overall, but “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken” isn’t an intentional ripoff. “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken” was in development for years prior to it getting made, so any similarities to “Turning Red” are coincidental.

Everything in “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken” is just fine or average, but not so terrible that it feels like a complete waste of time to watch it. There’s a jumbled explanation of the Battle of the Tridents, but it’s not so confusing that viewers will feel lost. At the very least, anyone who watches “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken” will see a teenage heroine who is very different from the usual teenage heroines in other animated films.

Universal Pictures will release “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken” in U.S. cinemas on June 30, 2023.

Review: ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,’ starring Harrison Ford, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Antonio Banderas, Karen Allen, Toby Jones, Boyd Holbrook, Ethann Isidore and Mads Mikkelsen

June 29, 2023

by Carla Hay

Ethann Isidore, Harrison Ford and Phoebe Waller-Bridge in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” (Photo courtesy of Lucasfilm)

“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”

Directed by James Mangold

Some language in German and Greek with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in 1969 (with some flashbacks to the 1940s), in various parts of universe, the action film “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some people of African, Middle Eastern and Latino heritage) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: American hero Indiana Jones fights Nazis, as he tries to regain possession of a powerful time-travel artifact called the Archimedes Dial that has been stolen by his British con-artist goddaughter. 

Culture Audience: Besides appealing to the obvious target audience of “Indiana Jones” franchise fans and Harrison Ford fans, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching formulaic action movies that lack original ideas.

Mads Mikkelsen in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” (Photo courtesy of Lucasfilm

“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” should be renamed “Indiana Jones and the Long-Winded Cash Grab.” It’s an overstuffed pile-on of formulaic action, insipid dialogue and ripoff ideas. It’s an utter failure of originality. And with a total running time of 154 minutes, only the most die-hard Indiana Jones fans will feel like this repetitive film is worth the very long ride that over-relies on Indiana Jones nostalgia instead of doing something truly bold and creative with this franchise.

Directed by James Mangold, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” is the fifth movie in the “Indiana Jones” series, which began with 1981’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark”—still the best movie in the franchise—which was about an American hero battling against treasure-stealing Nazis. “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” is the first “Indiana Jones” movie that isn’t directed by Steven Spielberg. The screenplay for “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” was co-written by Mangold, Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth and David Koepp. The movie had its world premiere at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” begins somewhere in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II, with a very misguided action sequence that lasts for about 15 to 20 minutes. The sequence shows a middle-aged Indiana “Indy” Jones (played by Harrison Ford, with de-aging computer imagery in these scenes) fighting off Nazis with his longtime British friend Basil Shaw (played by Toby Jones, also de-aged in this sequence), who is an archaeologist and an Oxford University professor. In this sequence, Indiana does things such as fight Nazis on the roof of a moving train. Basil has been captured by the Nazis. But of course, Indiana is able to rescue Basil.

Indiana and Basil want to get a hold of the Archimedes Dial, an artifact that is believed to have the ability to open time portals. The Nazi contingent is led by Colonel Weber (played by Thomas Kretschmann), who is in charge of stealing valuable art and artifacts from Nazi-occupied countries and sending these treasures to Germany. One of the star subordinates of Colonel Weber is Dr. Jürgen Voller (played by Mads Mikkelsen, also de-aged in the 1940s scenes), who comes across Indiana Jones in the battle over the Archimedes Dial.

While still on top of the moving train, Indiana finds himself at the mercy of Jürgen, who has a gun and demands that Indiana Jones hand over the Archimedes Dial. Indiana abides by this request, and Jürgen escapes by sliding down a nearby pole. The conclusion of this fight immediately looks phony, because if this fight had happened in real life, a ruthless Nazi such as Jürgen would have immediately killed Indiana and Basil after getting the dial. But there would be no “Indiana Jones” sequels if that happened, so expect Indiana Jones to escape death again and again in unrealistic action scenes.

Another glaring reason why this sequence is very misguided is that it will make viewers wonder, “How long is this movie going to show a younger (fake-looking) Indiana Jones instead of the senior citizen that Ford is in real life?” It’s an example of how “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” relies too heavily on nostalgia. This high-energy action sequence will only just remind people of how the earlier “Indiana Jones” movies from the 20th century are better than the “Indiana Jones” movies released in the 21st century.

After this overly long trip down memory lane of how Indiana Jones used to look, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” fast-forwards to the year 1969, when Indiana Jones is a cranky, bitter old man. He’s an archaelogy professor at Hunter College in New York City. He’s on the verge of retiring after teaching at Hunter College for the past 10 years. And he lives alone, because he’s separated from his wife Marion (played by Karen Allen), who met him in the story depicted in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” explains later why Indiana and Marion have separated. (Hint: She left him.)

Someone who shows up unexpectedly in one of Indiana’s class sessions is Helena Shaw (played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge), who is Basil’s daughter. Helena is also Indiana’s goddaughter. She’s looking for the Archimedes Dial, which is believed to have been lost over the French Alps. As shown in the opening sequence, Jürgen thought he had the Archimedes Dial, but somehow Indiana fooled him by giving him only half of the dial. Indiana really kept the other half of the dial. Basil (who is deceased in 1969) lost the other half, so now Helena wants to find both halves.

The rest of “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” is about this quest, which includes a lot of bickering and backstabbing from the very annoying Helena, who is a con artist. Of course, we all know how this is going to go in the end, since Helena has the story arc of “Can this con artist be trusted? Can this con artist be redeemed?” Another question that comes to mind when watching Helena is: “Can this con artist get any more irritating?”

And once again, the Nazis (this time, neo-Nazis) are on the hunt for the Archimedes Dial too. Jürgen has another identity hiding his Nazi past. He’s now a physicist named Dr. Lehrer Schmidt, who works in the United States’ outer-space program. Jürgen/Lerer has a generic right-hand man named Klaber (played by Boyd Holbrook), who zips around cities on motorbikes as if he thinks he’s a Nazi version of James Dean. Jürgen/Lerer also has a henchman named Hauke (played by Olivier Richters), who also does a lot of the dirty work.

Along the way, Indiana Jones encounters a CIA operative named Agent Mason (played by Shaunette Renée Wilson), who is undercover as a Black Power militant. It’s just a sorry excuse for the movie to have Agent Mason say the word “cracker” as a racist term used to describe a white person. It takes entirely too long for Agent Mason to figure out that Klaber is a Nazi who is working undercover as U.S. law enforcement. This isn’t spoiler information, since the trailer for “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” clearly shows that Klaber is one of the villains.

A former excavator named Sallah (played by John Rhys-Davies), an old friend from Indiana Jones’ past, used to live in Cairo but is now a taxi driver in New York City. (And you know what that means when the movie has inevitable chase/action scenes in New York City.) Sallah shows up in the movie to check off more nostalgia boxes for “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” Antonio Banderas has a cameo as Renaldo, a sailor/fisherman who gives advice to Indiana on how to find an expert diver in Greece. It’s a role that really just celebrity stunt casting.

“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” recycles the formula of giving Indiana Jones an adolescent male sidekick, who is a smart alecky motormouth. Qe Huy Quan had that role in 1984’s “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” the second movie in the series. Shia LaBeouf had that role in 2008’s “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” the fourth movie in the series. And in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” Ethann Isidore has that role, as Teddy, a bratty teenager who doesn’t trust Indiana at first because he’s a friend of Helena’s. No one seems to question how creepy it is for Helena to be hanging out with a kid this young when he’s not related to her.

The acting performances in the movie are nothing special. Everyone seems to be playing their roles as if they’re video game characters. Expect to see the usual “race against time” action sequences, people yelling at each other, and narrow escapes from death that don’t look realistic at all. One of the more ridiculous action sequences is Indiana riding a horse in a New York City subway station as if he’s in the Kentucky Derby.

Sure, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” is supposed to be an escapism adventure movie. And sure, people can enjoy seeing Ford returning to a character who is way past his prime. And sure, the globetrotting scenes are eye-catching. (The movie was filmed in Morocco, Sicily and the United Kingdom.) But “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” is an example of how computer technology cannot replace a good story. Compare “Raiders of the Lost Ark” to “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” to understand why “better filmmaking technology” doesn’t always equal “better filmmaking.”

Walt Disney Pictures will release “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” in U.S. cinemas on June 30, 2023.

Review: ‘God Is a Bullet,’ starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Maika Monroe and Jamie Foxx

June 27, 2023

by Carla Hay

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Maika Monroe in “God Is a Bullet” (Photo courtesy of Wayward Entertainment)

“God Is a Bullet”

Directed by Nick Cassavetes

Culture Representation: Taking place in 2020, in New Mexico, the action film “God Is a Bullet” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and Latinos) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A police officer becomes a rogue vigilante while investigating the deadly cult that kidnapped his 14-year-old daughter and murdered his ex-wife and her lover. 

Culture Audience: “God Is a Bullet” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching ultra-violent and mindless action flicks.

Karl Glusman and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau in “God Is a Bullet” (Photo courtesy of Wayward Entertainment)

Trashy and moronic, “God Is a Bullet” is a pathetic excuse to show brutal and violent misogyny. The dialogue is as cringeworthy as the scummy characters. Jamie Foxx is a co-headliner, but he’s in this bloated 155-minute movie for less than 15 minutes.

Written and directed by Nick Cassavetes, “God Is a Bullet” is based on Boston Teran’s 1999 novel of the same name. Even though the movie is adapted from a work of fiction, there’s a caption shown in the introduction of the movie that says, “Based on a true story.” At the end of the film, another caption states that although the movie is based on a true story, parts of the story were fictionalized for the movie. Whatever the filmmakers want to call the movie version of “God Is A Bullet,” it’s still time-wasting garbage.

The beginning of “God Is Bullet” (which was filmed on location in New Mexico) is an indication of some of the nauseating scenes that pollute the movie: A woman is seen vomiting multiple times. That woman is Case Hardin (played by Maika Monroe), a 23-year-old, tattooed vagabond, who has escaped from a small but ruthless cult that has about seven to nine members. The cult kidnapped Case when she was 11 years old. Case lived with the cult for the next 12 years, until recently, when she decided to leave the cult for good.

The mostly male cult is led by a disgusting sadist named Cyrus (played by Karl Glusman), who is shown committing almost every type of heinous violent crime you can imagine throughout the movie. The opening scene of “God Is a Bullet” shows Case, who is a needle-using drug addict, vomiting in a toilet in a jail cell. Some viewers will feel like retching when they see some of the gruesome torture and murder scenes in this vile movie. Case is in jail for heroin possession and assault with a knife.

It’s late December 2020, and people are in the midst of the end-of-year holiday season. An early scene in the movie shows the heavily tattooed members of Case’s former cult hanging out at a parking lot near a strip of retail stores. Now that Case is no longer in the cult, the only woman who’s left in the cult is Lena (played by Gina Cassavetes), who looks like a reject from a Marilyn Manson video.

A little girl, who’s about 9 or 10 years old, is playing with a balloon in the parking lot while her mother is shopping inside a nearby store. And you know what happens next: The cult members kidnap her. It’s later shown in the movie that this cult is involved in child prostitution and other sex trafficking of children. When Case was kidnapped as a child by this cult, she was forced to endure the same sexual abuse. Flashbacks of a pre-teen Case (played by Elise Guzowski) show some of this forced prostitution.

After this kidnapping in the parking lot, the cult isn’t done with its crime rampage. On December 24, 2020, the cult members do a nighttime home invasion of mansion, where they savagely murder two of the mansion’s residents: divorcée Sarah Hightower (played by Lindsay Hanzl) and her boyfriend Sam (played by Kola Olasiji). A third resident of the home is Sarah’s 14-year-old daughter Gabi Hightower (played by Chloe Guy), who is kidnapped by the cult.

The next morning, on Christmas Day, two people arrive at the house for a planned visit: Sarah’s ex-husband Bob Hightower (played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and Sarah’s businessman father Arthur Naci (played by David Thornton), who are shocked and devastated when they go inside the house and see the bloody crime scene. They also quickly determine that Gabi has been kidnapped.

Bob is a police detective, but he’s not very well-respected in his police department, because he’s assigned to mainly doing paperwork. Predictably, Bob wants to be the lead investigator of this kidnapping/murder case, but he’s blocked by colleagues, who think he won’t be objective, and because Bob doesn’t have enough experience doing police work outside of the office. One co-worker comes right out and calls Bob a “desk jockey” and a “seat warmer.”

Undeterred, Bob thinks that the cult is responsible and goes on a mission to find this nomadic and elusive cult. And it just so happens that Bob finds out that a woman who’s currently in a nearby jail cell is a former member of this cult. Bob visits Case and asks her for information in tracking down the cult members. Bob, who is very religious, is immediately judgmental of Case. When they first meet, Bob treats Case like she’s a degenerate.

Bob is somewhat remorseful when he finds out that Case was kidnapped as a child and forced to be in the cult. She says to Bob about the cult members: “We all came from family-oriented communities—even me.” Case later explains why, as an adult, she has not been in contact with her single mother, who still thinks that Case is missing: Because of all the crimes she committed while in the cult, Case has a lot of shame and is afraid that her mother will reject her.

Case gives Bob this advice on finding his kidnapped daughter Gabi: “If you want her back, you have to get her yourself.” She adds, “You think you can do this alone. No offense, but you don’t send sheep to hunt wolves.” It should come as no surprise that Bob arranges for Case to be let out on bail so that she can help him track down her former cult colleagues.

One of the first things that Bob and Case do is go to a remote desert-like area where the cult members have been known to congregate at a compound. A cult member named the Ferryman (played by Foxx) is still hanging out at one of the houses in this compound. The Ferryman’s skin looks like he has vitiligo. He also has a prosthetic left arm.

Bob thinks the best way to find the cult is to “infiltrate” the cult, even though he looks like he would never fit in with this scuzzy-looking group. It leads to a ridculous scene of the Ferryman giving Bob tattoos on parts of Bob’s body, while Case gives Bob a face tattoo. After getting these tattoos, Bob doesn’t look like a menacing cult member. He looks like a man going through a sad mid-life crisis.

Meanwhile, viewers are taken into the home of a couple with a very dysfunctional and miserable marriage: Maureen Bacon (played by January Jones), who acts like she’s some kind of femme fatale, is shown taunting the masculinity of her police sergeant husband John Lee Bacon (played by Paul Johansson), because apparently she’s fed up with their lack of a sex life. When she starts to ridicule him for liking gay male porn, he brutally assaults her. Maureen’s reaction is to laugh and tell John Lee: “You’re such a wimp!”

John Lee just happens to be a colleague of Bob, who has now gone rogue and decided to become a vigilante, with Case as his sidekick. The hunt for the cult members gets dragged out in mind-numbing ways that include showing more tortures and murders committed by the cult members, with Cyrus the one giving the orders and participating. The other cult members have names like Gutter (played by Ethan Suplee), Snatch (played by Rooter Wareing) and Shitstain (played by Zac Laroc), and they have no distinguishable personalities beyond the mayhem that they commit.

There’s also a sniveling drug dealer named Errol Grey (played by Jonathan Tucker), who gets caught in this maelstrom of destruction. Case knows Errol because he used to be her drug dealer. Case tells Bob that she’s “clean and sober,” but she still pretends to be a needle-using drug addict during their “undercover” investigation when she encounters Errol again.

Several flashbacks show that when Case would try to leave the cult, Cyrus would viciously beat her up. If Lena tried to come to Case’s defense, then Cyrus would attack Lena too. It’s later shown that Case and Lena had some kind of sexual relationship when they were in the cult together. Lena apparently had stronger feelings for Case than Case did for Lena, who gets very jealous when she sees Case with Bob. The purpose of the Lena character is to literally be a token female in a group of men who all seem to hate her.

As if this cesspool movie weren’t icky enough, a subplot develops where Bob and Case start to become romantically attracted to each other. It’s not their age gap that’s the problem. It’s the fact that this rotten movie wants to push a narrative that even while he’s searching for his kidnapped daughter and seeking justice, this broken man is still “hot enough” to possibly get some sexual action from someone who’s in no emotional shape to be in a relationship either. Case sometimes calls Bob her “boy toy,” which is a weird thing to say about someone who’s old enough to be her father.

Needless to say, with a terrible screenplay and soulless direction, the acting performances in “God Is a Bullet” range from empty to bottom-of-the-barrel awful. Coster-Waldau looks like he’s sleepwalking through a lot of his scenes. Monroe overacts in many scenes, where she’s trying to come across as part damaged waif, part redneck seductress. Glusman is basically doing a not-very-good caricature of a twisted villain. (On a side note, Monroe and Glusman previously co-starred as spouses in the 2022 horror movie “Watcher,” which is a superior film to “God Is a Bullet” in every way.)

The Ferryman character didn’t even need to be in the movie because he’s barely in the film and has no real bearing on the plot, unless you waited your whole life to see Foxx in a movie where he plays a tattoo-making character who has a prosthetic arm. Foxx’s presence in “God Is a Bullet” is just a manipulative “bait and switch” way for the filmmakers to attract viewers by using Foxx’s celebrity name as a headliner, even though his role in the movie is really an extended cameo.

The movie’s scenes where women and girls get assaulted, exploited or murdered are filmed with a particular glee that is simply atrocious. The film has a “plot twist” that is not surprising at all. There are violent movies that can have meaning if the story is compelling and has something interesting to say. “God Is a Bullet” is just an onslaught of asinine trash that is as putrid as the movie’s nasty characters.

Wayward Entertainment released “God Is a Bullet” in select U.S. cinemas on June 23, 2023. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on July 11, 2023.

Review: ‘The Graduates’ (2023), starring Mina Sundwall, Alex Hibbert, Yasmeen Fletcher, Ewan Manley, John Cho, Maria Dizzia, Kelly O’Sullivan

June 26, 2023

by Carla Hay

Mina Sundwall in “The Graduates”

“The Graduates” (2023)

Directed by Hannah Peterson

Culture Representation: Taking place in 2019, in an unnamed city in Utah, the dramatic film “The Graduates” features a predominantly cast of characters (with some Asians and African Americans) representing the working-class and the middle-class.

Culture Clash: A teenager, who is on the verge of graduating from high school, struggles with grief after a school shooting left her boyfriend and other people dead.

Culture Audience: “The Graduates” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in well-acted dramas about the effects of mass shootings, but viewers should be prepared to go through an emotionally taxing experience when watching this movie.

Moody and atmospheric, “The Graduates” will bore some viewers looking for a more typical drama about people in a community dealing with the aftermath of a school shooting. The cast’s good acting is the main reason to watch when the plot starts to wear thin. “The Graduates” had its world premiere at the 2023 Tribeca Festival, where the movie won the prize for Best Cinematography in a U.S. Narrative Feature.

Written, directed and edited by Hannah Peterson, “The Graduates” is Peterson’s first feature film. The movie’s cinematography (by Caroline Costa) skillfully evokes the intended feeling of people getting by in life by powering through or struggling in a haze of grief. It’s the type of movie where the performers’ body language and facial expressions are of utmost importance, because their characters aren’t necessarily going to be the types of people who say what they’re thinking out loud.

“The Graduates” was filmed on location in an unnamed city in Utah. In the movie, the Class of 2019 is getting ready to graduate from Lewis High School. Their graduation is overshadowed by the lingering trauma of a mass shooting that took place at the school about a year ago. The story in “The Graduates” is told mostly through the perspective of a graduating student named Genevieve, nicknamed Gen (played by Mina Sundwall), who’s trying to pretend to the world that she’s coping well with the aftermath of the shooting.

The movie’s opening scene shows Gen looking at a memorial of flowers and photos in the school hallway. She’s later shown in a meeting with a school guidance counselor named Vicki (played by Kelly O’Sullivan), who encourages Gen to apply to colleges, even though Gen plans to take a gap year after graduating from high school. Although Gen doesn’t seem all that concerned about applying for colleges, she’s more concerned than she wants people to believe she is, because she later gets upset when she finds out that her SAT score was 1010 out of a possible 1600.

There are indications that Gen is slacking off in her school work—and it’s not just because she has “senioritis,” the term used for graduating seniors who stop caring about their schoolwork and grades because they already have post-graduation plans where their last grades before graduating won’t matter. Gen’s social studies teacher (played by Bradley Fehr) has given Gen an extension on assignments where she missed the deadlines. At home, Gen seems emotionally disconnected. And it’s starting to become very noticeable to Gen’s single mother Maggie (played by Maria Dizzia), who wants to go to therapy with Gen to help Gen cope with her grief.

Maggie tells Gen: “I just want you to have an easier life than I did.” Gen replies in a hostile tone: “Are you disappointed? Well join the fucking club!” Maggie gently tries to find out if Gen has been able to confide in her friends about how she’s coping with the school shooting. Gen brushes off Maggie’s concerns and tells her that Gen her friends don’t talk about the shooting.

Gen has one friend in particular who affects her more than her small group of female friends who are students at Lewis High School. Ben (played by Alex Hibbert) used to go to Lewis High School, but he transferred to nearby Jefferson High School after the mass shooting at Lewis High School. Because of this school transfer, Ben and his former classmates at Lewis High School didn’t really keep in touch with each other.

But one day, Ben shows up outside Lewis High School and catches up with some of the people he knew, including Gen. Ben eventually confesses that he dropped out of school and now works as a dishwasher. It doesn’t take long to see that Ben has reached out to his former classmates because he’s still trying to process his grief and is trying to connect with people who know what it was like to survive the shooting that took place at Lewis High School in 2018.

Another person who’s prominently featured in the story is Lewis High School basketball coach John Kim (played by John Cho), who leads the boys’ basketball team and who is dealing with his own type of grief: John’s son Tyler Kim (played by Daniel Christopher Kim, also known as Daniel Kim, seen in flashbacks and photos) was one of the students who was murdered during the school shooting. If Tyler had lived, he would have been in the graduating class of 2019. One of the basketball team players is named Becker (played by Ewan Manley), whom Tyler treats almost like a surrogate son.

Eventually (this isn’t spoiler information), it’s revealed about midway through the story what the connection is between Gen, Ben and John: Tyler was Gen’s boyfriend and Ben’s best friend. John and Gen have a semi-close but somewhat awkward relationship, where they find it difficult to talk with each other about Tyler. With Ben hanging around again, it seems to trigger something in Gen, who has been avoiding expressing a lot of feelings that she’s kept bottled up inside of her.

“The Graduates” doesn’t have a lot of action or constant melodrama. Instead, it’s a “slice of life” film that shows how grief seeps into everyday routines and mundane activities. When Ben is alone and using his phone, he still calls Tyler’s voice mail to leave messages. Ben also seems to be drifting in life, with the implication that it’s because of his unprocessed grief.

When Gen is hanging out with her friends, including her closest female pal Romie (played by Yasmeen Fletcher), they goof off and act like typical teenagers. But then, they also show signs of being unsettled by Ben hanging out with them again. At one point, Romie verbally lashes out at Ben for avoiding her for several months.

At home, John speaks to his wife Eliza (played by Bekah Jung) in a videoconference call. She seems to be temporarily staying somewhere else with their daughter, who’s about 3 or 4 years old. It’s revealed that Eliza is actually in Houston because the family had planned to move there after Tyler’s death. John just hasn’t been able to bring himself to move out of the Kim family’s Utah home.

“The Graduates” doesn’t have a lot of snappy dialogue. Many of the conversations are in measured tones, as if people are choosing their words carefully, so as not to reveal their true feelings. And some of the scenes are actually quite dull, as they occasionally drag, with not much happening. However, there are certain scenes that are very poignant and realistic in showing survivor’s guilt and the difficulty that some people have in admitting how deeply hurt they are by the trauma of experiencing a loved one die in a mass shooting.

Sundwall’s and Hibbert’s best scenes in the movie are the scenes that they have together. Gen and Ben have a connection to Tyler that brings them both comfort and pain. And that connection leads to some emotional bonding between them that Gen and Ben don’t expect. Some of their scenes together require Sundwall and Hibbert to express some very raw emotions that are handled with a lot of authenticity. Cho gives an admirable but low-key performance as Tyler’s grieving father John.

Perhaps the biggest flaw of “The Graduates” is that all of the characters except for Gen, Ben and John are very underdeveloped. There could have been more in the movie to show how other students were emotionally affected by the shooting, instead of having occasional glimpses. The scenes with John coaching the basketball team are probably the closest to revealing the lingering effects that this traumatic event had on the surviving students. The movie barely has any exploration of how the school’s teachers and other faculty members (except for John) were affected.

Mostly, what “The Graduates” succeeds in doing is showing that there is no one way for people to grieve. And not everyone’s will have a path to healing that moves forward in a straight line. There can be lots of zigzags and regressions along the way. If there’s any big takeaway that viewers should get from this morose but hopeful movie, it’s that no matter what path someone goes on because of grief, it’s more important for the grieving person to have some kind of emotional support to help in this often-difficult journey.

Review: ‘Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music,’ starring Taylor Mac

June 25, 2023

by Carla Hay

Taylor Mac in “Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music” (Photo courtesy of HBO)

“Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music”

Directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman

Culture Representation: Taking place mostly in 2016 in New York City, the documentary film “Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music” features a predominantly white group of people (with some African Americans) who are connected in some way to drag performer Taylor Mac and his one-time-only, 24-hour performance of pop hits.

Culture Clash: During his performance, Mac discusses some of the racism and homophobia behind some of history’s most popular songs.

Culture Audience: “Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music” will appeal primarily to viewers who are fans of drag performers and music documentaries that focus on unconventional artists and unusual performances.

Taylor Mac in “Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music” (Photo courtesy of HBO)

Vivacious and engaging, this concert documentary starring drag performer Taylor Mac offers a bittersweet presentation of iconic pop songs, without glossing over some of these songs’ problematic histories. It’s an extremely unique 24-hour performance. The 2016 show took place as a one-time-only event, at St. Ann’s Warehouse in New York City’s Brooklyn borough. During this 24-hour continuous performance, Mac performed popular songs from 24 decades (each decade got its own hour), from 1776 to 2016. Attendees had the option to sleep at the venue in a separate room.

Directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, “Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music” had its world premiere at the 2023 Tribeca Festival. The majority of the documentary’s footage is of highlights from this epic concert. The rest of the documentary consists of behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with principal members of the events team.

Mac explains in the beginning of the film that he conceived this event as a tribute to those who lost their lives in the AIDS crisis. The show starts with 24 musicians on stage, but after each hour, one less musician goes on stage, until the last hour, when Mac is be the sole performer on stage. The decreasing numbers of band musicians on stage are supposed to be symbolic of how communities and families lost people to the AIDS crisis.

Mac also says in the documentary, “The show is about our history of Americans. That history is in our souls.” He also says that “a queer body can become a metaphor for America.” He later adds, “I learned my politics from radical lesbians.”

Mac gives a brief personal background about himself, by saying that he grew up in Stockton, California, which he describes as a very homophobic city that’s overrun with a lot of “ugly tract houses.” After he graduated from acting school, Mac says that he had difficulty getting auditions. However, he found work at New York City drag nightclubs. And the rest is history.

Some of the key people on the event team also give their perspectives of the show. Niegel Smith, the show’s co-director, calls it a “radical realness ritual” that “asks us to move closer to our queerness.” During one of the audience interaction parts of the show, Mac tells audience members to slow dance with people who are of the same gender. The song selection for this same-sex slow dance is “Snakeskin Cowboys,” a song made famous by Ted Nugent, who is a political conservative. It’s obviously Mac’s way of reclaiming the song and putting it in a progressive queer context.

Matt Ray, the show’s musical director, comes from a jazz background. He says the biggest problem in America is “lack of community.” This 24-hour performance, says Ray, is Mac’s way of trying to bring back community to live events. Machine Dazzle, the show’s costume designer, is seen in costume fittings with Mac, who says that he gave no creative restrictions on how Dazzle could make the costumes. Also seen in the documentary is makeup artist Anastasia Durasova.

It’s no coincidence that the performance starts with the year 1776, since it’s the year of the Declaration of Independence of the United States. Freedom, liberation and fighting against oppression are constant themes throughout the show. During his performances of popular songs from each decade, Mac gives historical context of what was going on in the United States at the time when the song was popular and why some of the songs have a much more disturbing meaning than they seem to have.

“Yankee Doodle Dandy,” performed in the hour covering the years 1776 to 1786, sounds like an upbeat and patriotic song. But Mac also reminds people that during this time, the United States was also built on the enslavement of black people and the destruction of Native Americans. The 1820s song “”Coal Black Rose” has racist origins, since it was originally performed by white people wearing blackface makeup, and the song’s lyrics are about raping an enslaved black woman. For the 1830s song “Rove Riley Rove,” Mac says he’s performing the song to evoke a mother or nanny during the Trail of Tears era, when the Native Americans were forced to go on dangerous and deadly routes when they were forced off their ancestral lands.

Not all of the songs performed have depressing and bigoted histories. When Mac gets to the 1970s decades, he performs songs such as Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” and David Bowie’s “Heroes.” For “Heroes,” which is performed in the context of the Cold War between Russia and the United States, two giant inflatable penises—one with a U.S. flag decoration, one with a Russian flag decoration—float around on stage. Mac straddles at least one of these inflatable sex organs.

Other songs performed in the show include Laura Branigan’s 1982 hit “Gloria” (which Mac interprets in the performance as a sexual liberation song); the Rolling Stones’ 1969 classic “Gimme Shelter”; and “Soliloquy” from the 1945 musical “Carousel,” which Mac was his father’s favorite song. Mac also says that his father died when Mac was 4 years old.

Audience members are encouraged to sing along and participate. And sometimes, Mac invites audiences members on stage during the performance, such as when he selects the oldest person in the room (a man in his 80s) and youngest person in the room (a 20-year-old woman) to dance on stage together. In another part of the show, audience members throw ping pong balls at each other.

Mac doesn’t do all of the lead vocals during the show. There are also guest singers, including Heather Christian, Steffanie Christian, Thornetta Davis, and Anaïs Mitchell. However, there’s no doubt that Mac is the star. He has a charismatic command of the stage, even though he’s not a great singer. He has a wry sense of comedy and keeps the energy level fairly high, even though performing this 24-hour show would be exhausting by any standard.

“Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music” has a simple concept with an extravagant and very flamboyant presentation. If drag performances and some bawdiness meant for adults have no appeal to you, then watching this documentary might be overwhelming or a little hard to take. The performance in “Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music” will never be duplicated by Mac, but this memorable documentary is the next best thing to being there.

HBO and Max will premiere “Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music” on June 27, 2023.

Review: ‘Our Son,’ starring Luke Evans, Billy Porter, Christopher Woodley, Andrew Rannells, Robin Weigert, Kate Burton and Phylicia Rashad

June 24, 2023

by Carla Hay

Billy Porter, Christopher Woodley and Luke Evans in “Our Son” (Photo by Amy Mayes)

“Our Son”

Directed by Bill Oliver

Culture Representation: Taking place in New York City, the dramatic film “Our Son” features a racially diverse cast of characters (African American, white and some Latinos) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: Two divorcing husbands fight for primary custody of their 8-year-old son.

Culture Audience: “Our Son” will appeal primarily to viewers who are fans of the movie’s headliners and who are interested in watching divorce dramas from a gay male perspective.

Billy Porter and Luke Evans in “Our Son” (Photo by Amy Mayes)

“Our Son” might get some comparisons to the 1979 Oscar-winning drama “Kramer vs. Kramer” because of the many similarities, but “Our Son” is more like a made-for-TV movie instead of an Oscar-worthy film. The convincing performances elevate this formulaic divorce drama when the pacing drags. “Our Son” had its world premiere at the 2023 Tribeca Festival.

Directed by Bill Oliver (who co-wrote the “Our Son” screenplay with Peter Nickowitz), “Our Son” has so many characteristics that are just like “Kramer vs. Kramer,” people who’ve seen “Kramer vs. Kramer” will know exactly how “Our Son” is going to end within 15 minutes of the movie starting. The main difference between the two movies is that the divorcing couple fighting over child custody is a heterosexual couple (played by Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep) in “Kramer vs. Kramer,” while the divorcing couple fighting over child custody in “Our Son” is a gay male couple, played by Luke Evans and Billy Porter. But even if viewers don’t know anything about “Kramer vs. Kramer,” it’s still very easy to predict the outcome of “Our Son” as soon as the divorce starts to happen.

Both movies take place in New York City. Both movies have an adorable son under the age of 10 who’s the only child of the divorcing couple fighting over custody of him. Both movies show that one person in the marriage is the more nurturing parent, while the other person in the marriage is the more emotionally distant parent. Both movies have the lower income of one parent used as a reason in the divorce battle as “evidence” that this lower-income parent should not have primary custody.

In the very beginning of “Our Son,” the marriage of Nicky (played by Evans) and Gabriel (played by Porter) seems to be solid but stuck in a rut. It’s not mentioned how long Gabriel and Nicky have been married, but they’ve been a couple for 13 years. Nicky and Gabriel have an 8-year-old son named Owen (played by Christopher Woodley), who is a high-energy and curious child.

Nicky is a workaholic who is consumed with his work as a book publisher. Gabriel is a former actor who gave up acting to become a homemaker after Owen was born. Gabriel is the parent who spends more time with Owen and has a closer emotional bond with Owen. Gabriel also gets help from an amiable babysitter named Isabella (played by Nuala Cleary), who visits the family home multiple times a week.

Owen was born in Philadelphia to a surrogate named Penny, who is not involved in Owen’s life and is not seen in the movie. Owen was conceived through artificial insemination using Nicky’s sperm. The egg donor is Adele (played by Cassandra Freeman), Nicky’s longtime friend from college. Adele, who currently lives in London, has no say in how Owen is being raised. She considers her egg donation to be a gift to Nicky and Gabriel. Adele is seen as a family friend, but she is not in regular contact with Owen.

From the movie’s opening scene, the cracks begin to show in the marriage of Nicky and Gabriel. After Nicky and Gabriel go home from watching Owen dance at a school talent show, Nicky and Gabriel immediately disagree on how they react to Owen’s dance performance. Gabriel gives Owen a small token gift to show his admiration for Owen, while Nicky says the gift is unnecessary. Nicky’s reasoning is that he doesn’t want Owen to be spoiled, while Gabriel sees nothing wrong with giving Owen this gift.

Later, in their bedroom, Nicky and Gabriel argue in private about their different parenting styles. Gabriel expresses frustration that Nicky isn’t more available for parenting responsibilities. Nicky’s response to Gabriel is: “Sometimes, I feel like you don’t appreciate my work.” Gabriel vehemently denies this accusation.

Nicky and Gabriel also disagree about Owen sleeping in their bed with them whenever Owen wants. Nicky thinks Owen is too old for it, while Gabriel thinks that Owen can still sleep in their bed. Gabriel and Nicky call a truce on this argument, give each other a light kiss, and then go to sleep. But there’s more trouble brewing ahead.

Gabriel and Nicky’s social circle consists almost entirely of other LGBTQ people. Two of their closest friends are a lesbian couple named Claire (played by Liza J. Bennett) and Judith (played by Gabby Beans), who happily announce at a dinner party that they are expecting their first child together. Gabriel and Nicky are at this dinner party and express sincere congratulations. But seeing Claire and Judith so happy about becoming parents seems to trigger something in Gabriel.

When Gabriel and Nicky go home from the dinner party, Gabriel makes a confession to Nicky: “I met somebody. Somebody I have feelings for.” Nicky is shocked, because he and Gabriel had agreed to be monogamous, after experimenting with being in an open marriage. (The “open marriage” part of the relationship is never seen in the movie.)

Nicky demands to know who Gabriel’s lover is. “It’s nobody you know,” says Gabriel, who tells Nicky his lover is someone he met at a nightclub about six weeks ago. Gabriel also tells Nicky that he’s sorry for the affair but he’s undecided about what to do. Nicky is hurt and upset, but he still wants to save the marriage.

Meanwhile, viewers see that Gabriel’s lover is a younger man named Will (played by William Demeritt), who meets up with Gabriel for a sexual tryst after Gabriel has confessed the affair to Nicky. During this hookup encounter, Will isn’t exactly thrilled when Gabriel suggests that Will, Gabriel and Nicky should all meet for a drink together to talk things over. Will isn’t just annoyed; he’s completely turned off by the idea. He coldly tells Gabriel, “I can’t go to an emotional place with you because you’re married.” And that’s the end of the relationship between Gabriel and Will.

Gabriel tells Nicky that his relationship with Will is over. A relieved Nicky thinks the end of this extramarital affair will mean that Gabriel will want to work on their marriage. However, Gabriel mournfully tells Nicky that he hasn’t been happy in their marriage for a very long time. Gabriel doesn’t think going back to couples therapy will work either. Gabriel then leaves the home while he figures out what to do next.

Gabriel can’t stay away from Owen for long, and he eventually comes back to the family home. Although Gabriel was the one who cheated, Nicky takes some responsibility for their failing marriage too. Nicky tells Gabriel: “I know I’ve gotten lazy in our marriage. I know I could do better. I could be better.” Gabriel says, “I love you too, baby. I don’t think it’s enough anymore … I’ve spoken to a divorce attorney.”

And so begins the divorce battle between Gabriel and Nicky. Gabriel eventually tells Nicky that he doesn’t love Nicky anymore. Nicky doesn’t want the divorce and goes through all the five stages of grief over the end of the marriage. Because Gabriel had essentially been raising Owen like a single parent before the divorce, Gabriel incorrectly assumes that Nicky will automatically agree to let Gabriel have primary custody of Owen.

Nicky gets angrier the more that he starts to hear about how much alimony and child support he would have to pay to Gabriel if Gabriel had primary custody of Owen. Nicky also feels very hurt by Gabriel rejecting Nicky and refusing to get back together. These negative feelings from Nicky escalate until he decides he’s going to fight for primary custody of Owen. Nicky’s main argument in this custody battle is that he’s the more stable parent because he earns a lot more money than Gabriel.

Gabriel’s financial situation is shaky but not alarming. After filing for divorce, Gabriel gets his own place (a small apartment) and a low-paying job helping homeless youth at a non-profit center. The person who got him the job is a talkative friend named Matthew (played by Andrew Rannells), who has been working at this non-profit for the past 10 years. Matthew is one of the friends who was at the dinner party where Claire and Judith announced that they are going to become parents.

Nicky and Matthew briefly dated each other when they were “23, newly out, single, and living in the city,” according to Matthew. Their romantic relationship didn’t work out, but Nicky and Matthew decided to remain friends. Naturally, Matthew feels caught in the middle of Nicky and Gabriel in this divorce/custody battle. Matthew tries to stay neutral, but it’s awkward. “Our Son” realistically shows how divorces and similar couple breakups also have an effect on friendships.

Nicky hires a tough-minded and ambitious attorney named Pam (played by Robin Weigert), who happens to be a lesbian. Gabriel’s attorney is the more easygoing Lorenzo (played Alfred Narciso), who is no pushover either. The expected arguments ensue between Nicky and Gabriel. The divorce also takes a toll on Owen, who has a hard time accepting that his parents are not getting back together.

“Our Son” also shows how Nicky reluctantly gets back into the dating scene during his divorce. He meets an attractive younger man named Solo (played Isaac Powell) at a nightclub. And everything that you think will happen does happen after Nicky and Solo flirt with each other. The sex scenes in “Our Son” are not completely explicit, but they’re definitely meant for adult viewers.

“Our Son” capably explains some of the legal issues involved in this type of custody battle. For example, Pam tells Nicky almost from the start that just because Nicky is Owen’s biological father, that doesn’t mean Nicky has more parental rights than Gabriel, because Nicky and Gabriel legally adopted Owen together. Why can’t Nicky and Gabriel agree to joint custody of Owen? Gabriel believes that Nicky’s job is too demanding for Nicky to have the time for joint custody.

Porter and Evans give admirable performances that show the nuances of why couples who thought they would be together for the rest of their lives end up splitting up due to incompatibility. (Stay for the end credits to hear Porter and Evans duet on the song “Always Be My Man.”) It would have been very easy to portray Nicky as the “villain,” but there are no real “villains” in this story—only people who get hurt by the pain of divorce.

Owen’s arrival in the relationship did not cause the breakup of Gabriel and Nicky, because their incompatibility issues were already there. Nicky and Gabriel both have their share of flaws and responsibilities in why their marriage failed. But who’s the more deserving parent to have primary custody of Owen? You’d have to be asleep for most of the movie to not see the answer that you know is coming.

“Our Son” goes deep with some raw emotions, but this type of divorce/custody battle has been done on screen so many times before (especially in TV shows), it all seems overly familiar. The movie’s supporting characters are mostly underdeveloped. Kate Burton has a small role as Maggie, also known as Miggie, who is Nicky’s mother. Likewise, Phylicia Rashad makes a brief appearance as Maya, who is Gabriel’s mother.

Even with the movie’s clichés and flaws, “Our Son” does a very good job of showing how there’s not much difference in divorces between gay couples and heterosexual couples. In the production notes for “Our Son,” filmmaker Oliver says when co-writing the screenplay, he drew from a lot of his own experiences of being a gay parent. That authenticity comes through in a lot of the movie’s dialogue and scenarios, although “Our Son” somewhat glosses over many of the racial issues that would come up in an interracial marriage and custody battle for an interracial child. A talented cast and interesting main characters are ultimately what save “Our Son” from sinking into a mediocre mush of melodrama.

UPDATE: Vertical will release “Our Son” in select U.S. cinemas on December 8, 2023. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on December 15, 2023.

Review: ‘Between the Rains,’ starring Kole Achucka and Patrick Achucka

June 23, 2023

by Carla Hay

Patrick Achucka and Kole Achucka in “Between the Rains” (Photo by Andrew H. Brown)

“Between the Rains”

Directed by Andrew H. Brown and Moses Thuranira

Swahili and Turkana with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in northern Kenya, the documentary film “Between the Rains” features an all-African group of people in rural villages.

Culture Clash: The Turkana-Ngaremara community and the Samburu community have conflicts with each other over thefts and dwindling resources during a drought, while the younger of two brothers is constantly challenged to prove his masculinity.

Culture Audience: “Between the Rains” will appeal primarily to viewers who are interested in watching documentaries about how people are affected by climate change.

Kole Achucka in “Between the Rains” (Photo by Andrew H. Brown)

The documentary “Between the Rains” tells a compelling parallel story of rivalries between communities and rivalries between two brothers during a tension-filled drought period in Kenya. One of the highlights of the movie is its impressive cinematography. “Between the Rains” had its world premiere at the 2023 Tribeca Festival, where it won the prizes for Best Documentary Feature and Best Cinematography in a Documentary Feature.

Directed by Andrew H. Brown and Moses Thuranira, “Between the Rains” was filmed over four years in northern Kenya. (The specific years are not mentioned in the documentary, but the mobile phones shown in the movie indicate that filming started in the late 2010s.) Brown is also the documentary’s cinematographer. Thuranira is a native of Kenya.

The cinéma vérité-styled “Between the Rains” is told from the perspective of a teenager named Kole Achucka, who was 13 years old when the movie began filming. Kole (pronounced “koh-lay”) and his older brother Patrick Achucka (who was about 20 years old when the movie began filming) live in the pastoral community of Turkana-Ngaremara, also known as Turkana for short. Kole and Patrick have a brotherly relationship that goes through ups and downs during the course of the film.

Kole is the intermittent narrator of “Between the Rains,” which begins with this voiceover introduction from Kole: “Long before we became locked out on this cursed land, the Turkana lived in harmony with nature. We followed the rains, never settling long enough to burden the land. The colonizers and the other tribes of Kenya have tried to erase us, but our enemies’ fear of us has always crippled their efforts. Nature is the only power that can destroy us. It is a vindictive beast and the only thing worthy of our fear.”

During the course of “Between the Rains” (which is a brutally honest look at the effects of climate change), nature is not kind to the people in the documentary, due to a drought that has been plaguing the area. There are dwindling resources that have left many people in the area dead from diseases or starvation, or moving away in search of a better life. The mother and the grandmother of Kole and Patrick are dead. These two women were beloved members of the family. Kole (the more sensitive brother) still openly grieves for them. The father of Kole and Patrick is away, looking for work in the Kenyan countryside.

The brothers’ other family members who are in the documentary are their friendly aunt Veronica (who is the sister of their late mother) and Patrick’s adorable son, whose name is not mentioned in the movie. Patrick’s son is about 3 to 5 years old in the documentary footage. The mother of this child is not seen or mentioned in the documentary. Veronica says that the mother of Patrick and Kole was filled with goodness and taught them respect for nature.

Throughout the documentary, Patrick tries to teach Kole how to be a better hunter and warrior, but Patrick often grows frustrated because he doesn’t think Kole has what it takes to live up to Patrick’s ultra-macho standards. Patrick is considered an “alpha male” of the Turkana community. Patrick is both feared and respected. A recurring theme in “Between the Rains” is that Kole has to “prove” his manhood by going through some harsh rituals that will be very uncomfortable for many “Between the Rains” viewers to watch.

Kole says in the documentary: “I’m known as the boy that was born amongst the goats. I’m told that shepherding is the only path I’ll ever know.” He adds, “I wish my path led to a different life, but my brother says it’s not good to have childish dreams.”

Depending on your perspective, Patrick is a pessimist or a realist. There are multiple times in the movie where Patrick describes the land they live on as “cursed.” Patrick feels stifled by but also loyal to staying on this land. He tells Kole that they shouldn’t expect rain anytime soon. Patrick also repeatedly lectures Kole and tells him in various ways to “grow up,” such as when he tells Kole: “Put the innocence of childhood behind you.”

Because resources are scarce during this drought, nearby communities have gotten into fierce rivalries with each other that result in thefts of livestock and crops. A woman named Josephine is described as the “peacekeeper” of Turkana. She is often seen talking on her phone as she fields information about who has stolen what and where the stolen goods are. Josephine tries to act as a negotiator when she can.

Near the beginning of “Between the Rains,” several goats have been stolen from the Turkana community. Josephine is seen saying to an unidentified person on the phone: “The thieves will try to sell them [the goats] quickly in the market. If we don’t recover the stolen livestock, there will be violence. Our informants say that they’ve already sold some [goats], so it’s best if we intervene and outsmart the livestock thieves.

Patrick and a group of other Turkana men swiftly react when they find out that the thieves are members of the nearby Samburu community. Patrick and his cronies show up unannounced, retrieve the stolen goats, and proceed to rough up the men they suspect of stealing the goats. Some of the men quickly confess and beg for mercy. The suspected thieves are forced to get into a truck. The documentary doesn’t show or tell what happened to these suspected thieves, who are never seen in the movie again.

Kole says that he places a high value on spirituality and nature. He explains, “Our god is called Akuj—the spirit of nature. Our god is the blessing of rain and water. When nature is happy, we live in peace, without fear. But between the rains, the river dries, and neighbors become enemies. I’m not afraid of our enemies. I only fear nature.”

Sensitive viewers should be warned that there are multiple scenes in the documentary that show animals being killed for various reasons. One of the reasons is for doing a ritual where a goat is killed so that a local shaman can “read” the goat’s intestines to determine what nature’s prophecy is. In scientific terms, it’s like doing an amateur autopsy to see the qualities of what the goat ingested. Another animal-killing ritual, which is described as “the most important” ritual, is the asapan: when a warrior becomes a respected elder. This asapan ritual involves drinking animal blood.

“Beyond the Rains” also shows that although there is some modern technology in the Turkana community, the gender roles are still steeped in ancient traditions. The men are the physical protectors and hunters, while the women are in charge of food preparation and child rearing. There are some exceptions, of course. Patrick appears to be a single parent, and he is loving and nurturing in raising his son. Kole is also a doting uncle to this child. But given Patrick’s staunch machismo, it’s hard not to speculate if Patrick would be as attentive to this child if the child were a girl.

There is a lot of cruelty in the rituals that the Turkana men go through to “prove” their manhood. In one hazing ritual, Kole is forced to kill his favorite pet sheep. In another ritual, Kole is held down while some men in the group remove one of his teeth. They order him not to cry, or else they’ll make things worse. Kole’s attackers wanted to remove more teeth, but Kole puts a stop to it. He is then jeered at and insulted for being a “wimp.”

In this community, male crying is considered an act of weakness that could make a man or a boy a social outcast in this community. When Kole cries, he does so silently and as far away from other people as possible. Kole also visits his grandmother’s grave on his own. These are things that observant viewers of the documentary will notice without any intrusive talking head “experts” weighing in with their comments.

It’s pretty obvious that Patrick is not the type of person who talks about his feelings of grief, so he and Kole do not have a close brotherly bond where they can open up to each other about their deepest emotions. Luckily, Kole has his aunt Veronica, who seems to be emotionally available to him if Kole ever needs to talk about his feelings. But in this community, Kole has to be careful about how he is perceived when it comes to his masculinity, or the men in the community could make his life miserable.

There’s also a hint that drug abuse could be a problem. A scene in the movie shows Patrick ordering Kole to snort an unidentified white powder when they’re alone together in a hut. This drug use is shown once in the documentary and never discussed again. It’s hard to know how often Patrick and Kole ingest whatever substance they snorted because a lot of the footage that was filmed over four years was no doubt edited out of the documentary.

“Between the Rains” has striking nature shots that show the dichotomy of the beauty of this natural land but also the ravaged devastation of a drought. It’s also a poignant coming-of-age-film about a boy who has to forge his identity as a man under some very tough conditions. Many people around the world live in a bubble of modern technology conveniences and think climate change is far removed from their lives. “Beyond the Rains” is a jarring look at the environmental damage for the people who live on the front lines of climate change and can’t afford to escape from where they live. They are part of our ecosystem warning that rural people in underdeveloped countries aren’t the only ones who are going to suffer from climate disasters.

Review: ‘Breaking the News’ (2024), starring Emily Ramshaw, Amanda Zamora, Errin Haines, Kate Sosin, Andrea Valdez, Chabeli Carrazana and Abby Johnston

June 22, 2023

by Carla Hay

Errin Haines in “Breaking the News” (Photo by Heather Courtney/PBS)

“Breaking the News” (2024)

Directed by Heather Courtney, Princess A. Hairston and Chelsea Hernandez

Culture Representation: Taking place from 2020 to 2022, in various parts of the United States, the documentary “Breaking the News” features a predominantly white group of people (with some African Americans, Latinos and Asians) who are connected in some way to The 19th* news media outlet.

Culture Clash: The 19th* experiences ups and downs during the COVID-19 pandemic, including a reckoning about needing more diversity on its staff. 

Culture Audience: “Breaking the News” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching a documentary about start-up media groups and news media coverage from a female perspective.

Kate Sosin and Arin McKona in “Breaking the News” (Photo by Heather Courtney/PBS)

“Breaking the News” is a smart and incisive look at the origins and growing pains of The 19th* as a groundbreaking female-centric news media outlet. This documentary is honest about showing that some women have more privilege than others in battling sexism. “Breaking the News” isn’t just about reporters getting news scoops. The movie also offers a realistic look at keeping a start-up company afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Breaking the News” had its world premiere at the 2023 Tribeca Festival.

Directed by Heather Courtney, Princess A. Hairston and Chelsea Hernandez, “Breaking the News” (which was filmed from 2020 to 2022) begins in March 2020, the first month of COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns around the world. The 19th* (which is headquartered in Austin, Texas) was co-founded as a non-profit group by Emily Ramshaw and Amanda Zamora in 2017, as a reaction to Donald Trump being elected president of the United States. The concept was to have a female-oriented news website staffed by women and reporting news that is considered important to women.

The 19th* is named after the U.S. Constitution’s 19th Amendment, which gives women U.S. citizens the right to vote. It’s explained in the documentary that the asterisk in The 19th* signifies that there’s more work to be done for women’s rights in the United States and around the world. When The 19th* began, the staff and freelancers consisted entirely of women. Now, there are a few men and gender non-conforming people who are among The 19th* employees.

Although the leaders of The 19th* say in interviews that this news media outlet is non-partisan, the reality is that the political views expressed by the majority of the staff are undoubtedly liberal—either progressive or moderate. And it seems as if the core audience for The 19th* also has a left-leaning perspective, based on a segment in the documentary showing that The 19th* receives numerous complaints from readers every time The 19th* interviews a politically conservative person. The 19th* publishes original content on its own platforms and syndicates its content to various other media outlets, including The Washington Post.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, The 19th* was in the process of raising another round of funding. Ramshaw (a former reporter with the Dallas Morning News and Texas Tribune) is shown in the beginning of the documentary having a Zoom conference call with Whurley, a well-known investor. He bluntly tells her, “I think journalism is dead.” But he makes this optimistic remark: “All the great startups started under terrible circumstances.”

Ramshaw has the title of CEO of The 19th*, while Zamora has the title of publisher. Both women say in the documentary that they knew at an early age that they wanted to become journalists. Although Ramshaw is shown doing some fundraising responsibilities, her main preoccupation shown in the documentary is managing the growing staff of The 19th* and making executive decisions about the editorial direction of the company. Andrea Valdez, who is also based in Austin, works closely with Ramshaw as The 19th* editor-in-chief until she is replaced by Julie Chen, whose appointment is shown toward the end of the documentary.

As the publisher, Zamora is shown worrying about being able to pay the salaries of The 19th* employees during a time when media outlets are downsizing or having hiring freezes during the pandemic. As a non-profit startup, The 19th* faced its share of challenges that were made more difficult in the middle of an economic downturn. However, 2020 turned out to be a pivotal and breakout year for The 19th*, due to the U.S. presidential election and the worldwide racial reckoning over police killings of unarmed African Americans.

Several editorial employees for The 19th* are shown in “Breaking the News,” but the documentary gives a particular focus on four of these employees: Errin Haines, a Philadelpha-based former Associated Press reporter, is an editor-at-large with a specialty in covering racial issues. Kate Sosin, a former employee of Viacom and NBC, is a transgender reporter covering LGBTQ+ issues. Sosin’s pronouns are they/them. Chabeli Carrazana (based in Orlando, Florida) has an editorial beat covering the economy. Abby Johnston is The 19th*s deputy editor.

One of the biggest criticisms of many feminist groups is that they tend to give the most power and importance to middle-class and wealthy cisgender, heterosexual white women. Ramshaw fits that description. Zamora (formerly of the Texas Tribune) is Latina, but in the documentary, Zamora acknowledges that she has privilege because she appears to look white. There are some scenes in the movie where Ramshaw shows that she’s living in a bubble and can’t really see the perspective of other women who are not in her own demographic.

For example, in May 2020, a video went viral of a racist confrontation in New York City’s Central Park, where an African American bird watcher named Christian Cooper asked a white woman nearby named Amy Cooper (no relation to Christian Cooper) to put a leash on her dog, because it’s the law in New York City to have dogs on leashes when the dogs are in public. In response, an angry Amy Cooper called 911 and falsely claimed that Christian Cooper was physically attacking her. She made a of point of repeating that an African American man was assaulting her.

Haines felt this story was important enough to report to show how some white women can use white supremacist racism as a way to put people of other races, particularly African Americans, in harm’s way with false accusations. In a completely tone-deaf moment with racial overtones, Ramshaw is shown questioning Haines on whether or not The 19th* needed to cover the case in the first place. Without knowing all the facts, Ramshaw wonders out loud if Christian Cooper did anything to provoke Amy Cooper. (When police arrived at the scene, Christian Cooper and Amy Cooper both were not there, but the situation could have escalated.)

Haines (who is one of the smartest and most well-connected people on The 19th* team) patiently explains to Ramshaw that America has a long history of African American people being killed because of false accusations from white women. The story is eventually assigned to Haines, with Ramshaw still being skeptical that it was important for The 19th* to report. Of course, the story ended up becoming huge international news. Later, Ramshaw makes an apology to her staff for her error in judgment and for being so ignorant.

It took this Christian Cooper/Amy Cooper story for Ramshaw to understand the ugly truth that these types of false accusations rooted in racism aren’t just stories about past lynchings but can still happen various ways today. If there had not been a video showing that Amy Cooper was lying, and if the police had shown up during this incident, it’s very likely that Christian Cooper would have been arrested based on a false accusation. “Breaking the News” shows that when an editor in charge of assignments lacks this intelligence or empathy about racial issues, it can negatively affect the type of coverage that the editor chooses to assign.

On a side note, after this Central Park video went viral, Amy Cooper was fired from her job at an investment firm. She was charged with the misdemeanor of filing a false police report. The charge was ultimately dismissed because Christian Cooper decided not to press charges against her, and she agreed to enroll in a racial bias therapy program. Amy Cooper’s wrongful termination lawsuit and appeal have been dismissed by the court system.

Under Ramshaw’s leadership, The 19th* is shown as being not very open to having a diverse representation of LGBTQ staffers. During most of the time that this documentary takes place, Sosin is the only openly LGBTQ employee on staff. Sosin repeatedly asks Ramshaw and other supervisors of The 19th* to hire more LGBTQ staffers, so that Sosin isn’t the only one. Ramshaw is shown making excuses for delaying this inclusive hiring. There’s really no good excuse for it, considering all the cisgender heterosexual women that The 19th* made the effort to recruit.

One of the more poignant scenes in the documentary is when Sosin confesses that when employees of The 19th* were celebrating the website’s launch day, Sosin spent the day at home crying because Sosin felt left out and sidelined for being a transgender person. Sosin is intelligent and a tremendous asset to The 19th* team. It’s really unconscionable that a so-called inclusive media group would take so long to hire more than one LGTBQ+ person to cover LGTBQ+ issues. It eventually happened, but only after Sosin and other staffers had to push for it. Ramshaw made an apology to The 19th* employees about that diversity problem too.

But for every misstep that Ramshaw might have taken, The 19th* had some triumphs. Haines was the first reporter to get an exclusive interview with family members of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old African American nursing student who was shot to death in March 2020, by white police officers while sleeping in her home in Louisville, Kentucky. The officers claimed it was a case of a mistaken identity because they went to the wrong house during a warrant raid. The 19th* was also the first media outlet to interview Kamala Harris after it was officially announced that she would be Joe Biden’s vice presidential running mate. Haines got that scoop too.

Sosin was at the forefront of reporting many LGBTQ+ issues, especially in the trans community where health care and crime have disproportionately more devastating effects than for cisgender people. For example, many states have been slashing public health funding for gender affirmation surgeries. And crimes against transgender people are often underreported or often don’t get adequate investigations, compared to crimes against cisgender people.

Sosin’s story for The 19th* about how the pandemic was affecting transgender surgeries ends up being one of the biggest viral stories for The 19th* in that period of time. Sosin is shown interviewing people such at Transhealth in Northampton, Massachusetts, including CEO Dallas Ducar, charge nurse Arin McLona and pediatrician Dr. Drew Cronyn. They all express concerns about how certain U.S. states are starting to make their work more restricted or illegal.

Carrazana tells her personal story about being a Cuban American. She says that coming from an immigrant, working-class family gives her more empathy and understanding in covering underrepresented communities for economic news stories. Almost all of The 19th* employees featured are shown working from home during the pandemic lockdowns.

The movie also briefly shows the personal lives of featured employees of The 19th*, as a way of demonstrating that these are well-rounded people. Ramshaw, Zamora, Sosin and Carrazana are seen with their spouses or partners. Haines is shown having a close relationship with her mother, whom she calls on a regular basis. And most of these employees have adorable dogs, who sometimes amusingly get in the way while the employees try to work from home.

“Breaking the News” includes footage of how The 19th* covered historical moments, such as the 2020 U.S. presidential election; the U.S. Capitol riots that occurred on January 6, 2021; and the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade that gave federal protection for abortion. The documentary does not over-simplify or gloss over the real problems that The 19th* has or the mistakes that were made by the company’s leadership. The measure of any group’s future is how it can learn from its mistakes and make improvements.

It remains to be seen how long The 19th* will last. However, “Breaking the News” is an insightful look at the early years of this resourceful news media outlet. It’s not only an inspiring documentary but also a stark reminder that with all the progress made in women’s rights, a female-dominated news media outlet is still a rarity today.

UPDATE: The PBS series “Independent Lens” will premiere “Breaking the News” on February 19, 2024.

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