Category: REVIEWS

My Hindu Friend is the semi-autobiographical film about fictional film director Diego Fairman (Willem Dafoe), directed and written by Hector Babenco, taking heavy inspiration from his own experiences with being diagnosed with cancer. Whilst living in Brazil, Diego and his girlfriend, Livia (Maria Fernanda Cândido) are told the news that he only has three months to live.

That is unless he moves to America and has a bone marrow transplant. At first Diego is reluctant as he is determined that if he were to die then it would be at home, but given the chances of his survival and all the work he has yet to accomplish, Diego and his girlfriend set off for the United States.

However, first they get married and as the film plays out, it shows the effects that cancer has on Diego, his mental state and his marriage in a stark and honest manner. Diego also becomes friends with a little boy (Rio Adlakha) and together they play and their time together helps with Diego’s cancer treatment. Viewer be warned though, this is not the uplifting, heart-warming story of a man’s road to recovery.

Babenco’s script and direction takes the film to surprising, honest and quite often visually provocative levels which most audiences may not expect. Especially from a director whose story is so personal, audiences may find themselves confronted with a story that is not as conventional as it sets out to be at the start.

Diego is not exactly a nice man but neither is he a monster and thanks to the script and Dafoe’s fantastic performance, Diego is a fleshed out, three-dimensional character that not only pays respect to Babenco’s story, but to the man himself. One minute, Diego is making advances to an actress desperate to work with him, the next he is laying in bed having visions of death and bargaining for his life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzXWD1QVlLs

One minute, Diego is happily playing fantasy games with his Hindu friend, the next he is fighting with his wife over the loss of what made their marriage so special. Diego’s life and personality are complex and real, no doubt like Babenco’s own life and maybe even parts of his own personality are laid bare for the audience to see.

Above all though, My Hindu Friend is a celebration of life, love and art and everything that goes with it – the good and the bad. Throughout the audience will see everything that Diego encounters whether they are real or not, from the vapid lives of the elite in the entertainment industry to the things that Diego and maybe even Babenco held dear to his heart.

Hector Babenco died on July 16^th 2016, making My Hindu Friend his last film and a fitting swansong to leave to the world.

“No Fathers in Kashmir” tells the story of a 16-year-old girl Noor, a British national and a foreigner in Kashmir who arrived there via her mother and almost step-father. Noor’s tie to western society is apparent from the beginning of the film. Her love for selfies and her smartphone connects the film and lead character to modern plugged-in society, though her bloodline and ancestral roots lay in Kashmir.

Even myself, as the daughter of a first-generation immigrant who was raised in a small village in Greece, could relate to Noor and I imagined myself acting quite a bit like her if I were plucked from my comfortable American life and dropped into an entirely different culture as a teenager.

Although some may interpret her obsession with her smartphone as annoying and a direct commentary on the first world problems of the western world, the device becomes delicately interlaced into the story, connecting Noor to a very harsh reality, the conflict between India and Pakistan and the disappearance of her biological father who never returned home after he was “picked up” by the Indian army years prior to Noor’s arrival.

I couldn’t help but wonder, since the Kashmiri conflicts are very real, the profound emotional and psychological effects the disappearance of these men had on the women and children they left behind. The unresolved grief, survivor’s guilt, and turmoil associated with missing persons.

In the film, Noor meets and connects with Majid, a 16 year old boy, and the son of her father’s best friend. They instantly bond despite their obvious differences, and a teen love story becomes interestingly intertwined. Though the main topic of the film is heavy, it was sweet and heart-warming to watch an innocent and pure love develop between Noor and Majid.

I found this to be clever and very real, as people really do connect with one another in mysterious ways, and can sometimes experience love and heartbreak at the most inconvenient times.

Majid, smitten with Noor, eventually helps her seek out answers to the questions she had about her father’s disappearance at the dangerous Indo-Pak border in Kashmir, and Noor inexplicably uncovers more than she could have imagined whilst investigating. Eventually Noor and Majid are captured, but, due to Noor’s british nationality, she is immediately released, leaving Majid imprisoned and pleading with Noor not to leave him. It was difficult to watch Majid’s heartbreak as a frightened Noor left, I could see the helplessness in his eyes.

The rate at which Majid developed a foolish love for Noor was relatable. Watching how far, against his better judgement, he was willing to go to keep it, even if it meant risking his own life showed the characters’ selflessness and innocence. Seeing this rough conflict through the pure eyes of teenagers was really an interesting path to chart.

Not having been bogged and worn down yet by the harsh reality that is life, kids and teens sometimes show us best how to cling to hope like a fool, they see life more simply, that it has more than one meaning for all of us, and that we can always re-invent ourselves even under overwhelming and unfair circumstances.

The film’s landscape and cinematography, by DP Jean-Marc Selva, is equally visually pleasing and arresting, the direction is fluid, Ashvin Kumar, who directed, wrote, produced, edited and starred in a very pivotal role in the film as Arshid, is without a doubt multi-talented.

While the monotonous pacing of the film leaves something to be desired, the bright eyes and innocence of a perfectly cast Noor (Zara Webb) and Majid (Shivam Raina) helped keep me engaged. Some of the sub-plots, including the one surrounding Noor’s grandparents, just didn’t seem to propel the story forward. Although the actors were excellent, I think it would have behooved the film to stick mostly with the teen love story angle as to not confuse the plot with multiple points that came across disjointed.

I would have also preferred to see more of a historical backstory on the conflicts associated with the Kashmiri area in order to fully grasp the atrocities, and although I, personally, could have done with some more scenes on that, I think and understand that the director deliberately kept that out in order to show the story through the eyes of love. 

All in all, this film is worth a viewing and is an interesting take on other films that explore tragedy and war torn areas, we see Kashmir through the eyes of hope, forgiveness, and innocence rather than barbarianism, destroyed lives, and murder.

3.5/5

Dr. John Dolittle (Robert Downey Jr.) lives in solitude behind the high walls of his lush manor in 19th-century England. His only companionship comes from an array of exotic animals that he speaks to on a daily basis. But when young Queen Victoria (Jessie Buckley) becomes gravely ill, the eccentric doctor and his furry friends embark on an epic adventure to a mythical island to find the cure.

Stephen Gaghan’s Dolittle, a new 2020 film adaptation of the beloved tale of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting, is the first film in six years starring Robert Downey Jr. that is not a Marvel movie. He is of course best known as his role as Iron Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and, this decade, has played the iconic superhero in blockbusters such as Avengers: Endgame, Captain America: Civil War, and Iron Man 3 just to name a few. What is disappointing, however, is that he chose Dolittle as his next project outside of the MCU, because this is an extremely underwhelming and incredibly weak film.

Don’t get me wrong, Downey Jr. is actually pretty good in the role. He gives a lot to the character of Doctor Dolittle and it is apparent when watching this film that he genuinely had a ton of fun portraying such a beloved character. He is really the furthest thing from the problem. The problem is the film’s script written by Stephen Gaghan, Dan Gregor, and Doug Mand. This is one of the most unexciting and unfortunately flat scripts I have seen so far this year. Yes, there are a few charming moments akin to the source material, but they are so little and far between and the story was just a mess and was boring.

There is no sense of urgency to anything going on in the story. The entire thing feels like mindless adventures and pointless action scene one after another. We do get some time to breathe, it is just that the film is seemingly uninterested in fleshing out a large portion of its characters and doesn’t really have anything exciting to say. This kind of feels like what I like to call a “Saturday morning cartoon movie”. It’s a movie that will probably entertain extremely young children, and it may have some adventurous sequences throughout, but it is something that you will forget about in a day or two.

Something that a lot of people called out from the initial trailer that was released a couple of months ago was the computer-generated imagery. Just by watching the trailer it was too hard to judge it, and I was saving my thoughts until I had seen the full movie. Unfortunately, a lot of the visuals here look a bit dodgy. It is not awful looking by any means. It is just, rather, obvious at times that you are looking at something that was created artificially on a computer. Gratefully, though, it is one of those movies where you just kind of get used to how things look after a while and it doesn’t bother you as much after a while.

This is not the worst movie I have ever seen though, not even close. There are things to like about Dolittle such as its fun performances. As I mentioned earlier, Downey Jr. does a good job in an otherwise dull movie and he by far delivers the best performance among the cast. The others are mainly just the voices of celebrities, providing the voices for a large portion of the animal characters. Something that was quite fun to watch was people like Tom Holland voice a dog named Jip and Selena Gomez voice a giraffe named Betsy. All in all, the performances were quite a bit of fun to watch.

Danny Elfman’s musical score is also a treat to listen to. While it is nowhere near his best score, it is still a good and fun score. He is one of those composers where it seems like he is genuinely incapable of making a poor score, and this movie proves that.

Aside from the performances, a couple of fun scenes and a fun score, that’s all the praise I can give Dolittle. Everything else was massively disappointing, sadly. Its story and script are terribly boring and uninteresting as it almost never aims its sights on telling a compelling story with interesting characters. It does have some strange visual effects and, also, a lot of the humor is hit or miss. However, if you have a really young child, they may be somewhat entertained by this film.

Robert Downey Jr. gives a fun performance in Dolittle, an otherwise tragically boring and uninteresting mess that has shoddy visuals and mindless adventure sequences.

Richmond Virginia, like so many other cities and towns before and since, is home to a jail. The host of those awaiting trials and sentencing jails see a revolving door of inmates throughout a year. Sam Bathrick’s new documentary 16 Bars takes us inside Richmond city jail and explores the lives of four inmates.

The problem with many jails in the United States, including the one we visit in Richmond, is that the faces are becoming all too familiar and through investigating an unnerving reality 16 Bars uncovers why. 

With the help of Grammy award-winning artist Speech Thomas, we explore the stories and themes that have seen black men thrown into incarceration for severe drug abuse. Speech came to Richmond jail after hearing about a rehabilitation program implemented there that gives the inmates access to a recording studio. He begins recording and producing their lyrics into songs which sees the men express themselves in ways they would have been otherwise incapable of. Speech allows them an all too brief embrace with their inner turmoil. Then, it falls to the men themselves and how they turn from reuniting with the past to embracing the future. 

Some find it easy to live on the outside after being locked up. Others see no other way of living differently from how they lived before. When you face abuse as a child, or you can’t control yourself no matter how hard you try, the odds are already heavily against you, and that’s what the men we meet face. In leaving, they return right back to the circumstances that saw them become who they were when arrested, and they re-offend.

The program attempts to change that. It’s a process of strengthening their will and expression for them to transcend their past sins, and the men we follow genuinely believe in it for a time. 

There’s repeat offender Garland who is hanging on for one final chance to be with his girlfriend and turn his life around. Then there’s De’vonte, the youngest of the four who followed in the criminal footsteps of his mother and became a dealer. Anthony is another inmate, he saw his mother abused and then watched her lie to the police about how it happened, he faced abuse himself not long after, and he’s a violent man as a result; he relapses more than any of them. Finally, we come to Teddy, who when we meet him first has been out for four days.

He saw a man killed right in front of him in his youth while trying to buy drugs. At 15 he developed an addiction to crack and pain pills so that he could deal with the things he’d seen. Of these men, Garland may be the only real criminal, and he takes legitimate steps to reform. The other three didn’t choose crime; they had it thrust upon them by circumstances out of their control. 

16 Bars is an exceptional example of documentary filmmaking being the heart and soul of truth. I honestly believe the most worthwhile stories to tell via documentary are those that otherwise would never be told, and that’s precisely what this is, delivering a voice to the voiceless.

Yes, they have broken the law, and each of them alludes to the fact that they have endangered other people’s lives which is entirely unacceptable but to use the word of Speech “I do believe in redemption, with everybody, with anybody, no matter what they’ve done”. 

Through an unwavering lens, 16 Bars investigates the ways humanity traps itself in a cage through cycles of crime. Sam Bathrick has created something special with his efforts in telling a story the world needed to hear.

By Nick Boyd.

The family melodrama “Marriage Story,” a heartbreaking and bittersweet look at a marriage in disarray, stars Adam Driver (as Charlie) and Scarlett Johansson (as Nicole) at their most vulnerable.  The couple has an eight-year-old son named Henry who is caught in the middle of his divorcing parents who still care about each other. 

As the movie begins, a mediator has husband and wife describe the other’s strengths and what they find endearing about the other.  Charlie has no problem doing this, while Nicole thinks that it would be a waste of time and walks out.  

Charlie finds his passion as director of a local theater production company in New York, while Nicole acts in his productions.  When Nicole, though, is offered the starring role in a television pilot in Los Angeles, she decides to leave Charlie behind and take their son with her, temporarily staying at her mother’s house.  This decision catches Charlie off-guard and makes him realize that Nicole is serious about both a career and a marital change.  

The film really gets into the ins-and-outs of divorce proceedings and child custody battles and benefits from the insights that it provides into marital relations.  Laura Dern superbly plays Nora, Nicole’s divorce lawyer, exuding warmth and empathy towards Nicole.  She also has a relentless personality and is willing to expose any faults that Charlie may have.  The first lawyer that Charlie seeks out is Jay, played by Ray Liotta.  Jay is the kind of slick and ridiculously expensive lawyer, the pitbull type that Charlie initially finds off-putting. 

He sees a marked improvement in Bert, played with gentleness and humor by Alan Alda, who seems to actually show an interest in what Charlie is going through and his predicament.  Charlie says something to the effect of “I wish all lawyers were like this.”  Liotta and Alda both nail the contrasting personalities of their characters.

The film is ultimately carried by the work that Driver and Johansson do, a couple that even in the midst of all the turmoil still have feelings for each other and show it from time to time.  Both performances are moving and raw, letting us see into the hurt within each individual.  Rather than taking sides (one has an affair and one takes their child across the country away from the other), we find ourselves rooting for both of them to somehow survive the unraveling of their marriage.

One performance that did not work was that of Johansson’s mom Sandra, played by Julie Hagerty.  While it is clear that Driver shares a genuine closeness with his mother-in-law, her character came across as over the top and silly.  Also, a scene in which Driver’s character is to be served with divorce papers by Johansson’s sister was overdone.

While uncomfortable to watch at times, the acting and writing in “Marriage Story” make the narrative soar.