Knock Down the House

— It would have been easy for this film to have been conceptualized as a look at four, grassroots, political candidates and their activist supporters as they challenge the status quo, but then to have morphed into a singular love fest, falling for a feisty attitude and the ability to charm with a media-savvy demeanor and a promise of better things ahead. Instead of abandoning three of the candidates and jumping on the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez bandwagon, the film draws the story into something more substantial than one candidate’s victory. Instead of hailing AOC as David slewing Goliath, it places her in the context of a shift in politics, as one of the group of new politicians coming into their own, angry over the current state of affairs, and heralding changes for the future. Watching the film reminds us that an outsider who’s passionate about beliefs that mirror our own is more valuable than a powerful insider whose power isn’t working for us. It’s a look at how we thought democracy worked when we were in grade school, making us wonder if the 2018 elections were less a fluke and more a harbinger of things to come. You may not agree with the film’s views, but it’s still a very good film and likely to generate discussion. (Shown at True/False Film Fest 2019.)

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[2019. 86 min. Directed by Rachel Lears. Featuring Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cori Bush, Joe Crowley, Paula Jean Swearingen, and Amy Vilela.]
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/jan/28/knock-down-the-house-review-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-doc-brings-down-the-house

Amazing Grace

— If you’re a fan of Aretha or of gospel, this documentary’s for you. If you’re in one of those groups, you probably already know the film documents the recording of Aretha Franklin’s 1972 live album at a Baptist church in Watts, and was meant to be released with the album of the same name—still the top-selling traditional gospel LP in history. Warner Brothers had hired Sydney Pollack to document the event, but Pollack didn’t use clapper boards at the beginning of each take, making it impossible to sync sound with the 20 hours of footage, so the album came out and the footage remained on a shelf. After Pollack’s death in 2008, Alan Elliott managed to digitally sync the footage and planned to release it in 2011 until Aretha herself filed a suit against its release. No one knows why Aretha objected, but she did and it’s only now that the footage of Aretha, at the top of her game, can be seen. It’s an unbelievable chance to see an iconic singer who deserved to be known as the “queen of soul.” (Shown at True/False Film Fest 2019.)

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[2018. 87 min. Directed by Alan Elliott and Sydney Pollack. With Aretha Franklin, Reverend James Cleveland, C.L. Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and the Southern California Community Choir.]
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/nov/13/amazing-grace-review-aretha-franklin-documentary

Cold War

— “Cold War,” with its black and white aesthetics, gorgeous photography, and director’s attention to every part begs comparison to “Roma” but the two, while both based on memories and associated emotions, tell their tales differently. For “Roma,” the recollections feed from a young boy’s perspective and are more personalized. With “Cold War,” there’s a sense of watching from a less involved viewpoint, but not with less emotion and still dependent on memory. “Cold War” may be a more disciplined film with the story pared down to its bare bones, and scenes, taken as a whole, provide the story, sort of a push and pull of love and life. Set in the Cold War, it looks at a love affair that seems destined to fail, at a time where ideologies and passions help bring a couple together and at the same time, keep them apart. The film’s set during a time when borders between East and West Europe move from porous to impermeable, when ideas of art and culture clash, when passions boil and then are lowered to a simmer. In the end, after all the politics and all the history, the sparks that linked the couple are still there but it’s hard not to wonder if the shifts from repression to freedom, and from fear to hope, weren’t necessary ingredients to keep the spark alive, to take the couple to a place where their relationship was what remained to hold on to. However you interpret the relationship, it’s told with such care that this is one of the best films of 2018.

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[2018. 89 min. Written and directed by Pawel Pawlikowski. Starring Joanna Kulig, Tomas Kot, Borys Szyc, and Agata Kulesza.]
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/cold-war-2018