Everybody Knows (Todos lo saben)

— Much of this film seems more like a traditional mystery with clues everywhere and the audience tasked with figuring out where they lead than a typical Asghar Farhadi film. Laura arrives at small Spanish town with her spirited, teenage daughter, Irene, and son, Diego, to attend her younger sister’s wedding, leaving her husband, Alejandro, in Argentina because of work. Her family surrounds her, including her aging father who harbors some resentment toward Paco, Laura’s first lover, who bought land from Laura below market price but has worked it over the years into a valuable vineyard with his wife Bea beside him. The wedding festivities are artfully handled, offering that sense of family and colorful celebration and love and laughter that’s not easy to convey. As the celebration continues into the night, Irene drinks a little too much and heads to bed, but when Laura goes to check on her later, she finds the bed empty and she's nowhere to be found. A ransom text comes next, along with a warning not to alert the police. From here on out, it could have been a routine who-done-it but, after many twists and turns, much as we’d like Sherlock Holmes to set everyone down and bring order to the chaos, the world Farhadi creates doesn’t work that way. He’s spent as much time on the layers, hidden beneath each player’s surface, revealing divisions going back years, resentments, jealousies, loves, tensions, embarrassments, secrets. All these divisions surface as a result of the crisis, when there’s plenty of anger and despair and desperation to go around—the layers both unite and separate, becoming the push/pull that adds texture (and drama) to a family. It’s a good film with fine actors but not a great film like Farhadi’s “A Separation.”

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[2018. 133 min. Written and directed by Asghar Farhadi. Starring Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Richardo Darin, and Eduard Fernandez.]
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/everybody-knows-2019

American Factory

— The filmmakers are a charming duo from Dayton, Ohio, who unabashedly tout their Midwestern heritage as adding a layer to their filmmaking. They may be right. Dayton’s workforce suffered when GM closed their Moraine assembly plant in 2008, leaving 2,400 workers jobless. “American Factory” introduces a few of those workers and their lives following the closure. Then, in 2014, Chinese auto glass manufacturer Fuyao announced it was taking over the former GM plant, investing millions into the local economy and creating new jobs. By the end of 2016, Fuyao employed more than 2,000 workers at the Moraine plant. This would seem to be a win/win story, but the film details, sometimes humorously and sometimes incredulously, the difficulties that had to be overcome as two worker cultures collided. GM had been a Union plant and Fuyao was not. Chinese workers valued jobs and saw their employers as an integral part of their lives while American workers saw their employers as potential adversaries and their jobs as a means to a better personal life. As American workers traveled to China and Chinese workers came to the U.S., differences sometimes seemed insurmountable. The film walks a delicate balance, trying not to take sides, even as workers lobbied unsuccessfully to unionize in 2016. It’s a great look at cultural divides and can’t help but raise questions about assimilation, acculturation, and integration. (Shown at True/False Film Fest 2019.)

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[2019. 115 min. Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert.]
https://www.indiewire.com/2019/01/american-factory-review-sundance-1202038438/

The Edge of Democracy

— A careful look at Brazil after dictatorship, and at the rise and fall of democracy, leaving the country in Jair Bolsonaro’s authoritarian hands. Director Petra Costa creates an intimate look at the players as Brazil’s history unfolds and, for American viewers, it is disquieting to see parallels with our current political climate and the sharp divisions that occurred in Brazil, along with corruption, rage, prejudice, accusations, and fabricated news. The film peels off complex political layers, letting viewers see a country in disarray, and raising questions about what present-day democracy really looks like. I liked the film a lot. (Shown at True/False Film Fest 2019.)

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[2019. min. Directed by Petra Costa.]
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/edge-democracy-review-1179394

Apollo 11

— What an unexpected joy it was to watch this documentary. Instead of a grainy reminiscence in 4x3 aspect ratio, this is culled from long-lost NASA footage and more than 11,000 hours of audio recordings, is a visual thrill, and is tautly edited to give a good sense of the thrill of the Apollo 11 mission. From today’s perspective, the unified NASA workforce boggles the mind—we rarely have stories of such dedication and national pride anymore—as does the personal sacrifice made by many. It’s hard to know if the film will only interest those who remember the event in real time on their small, tube TVs, or if those who’ve grown up after NASA’s heyday will find it spellbinding as well. It is also difficult not to be reminded of “First Man” when seeing this, and if you missed that film, it’s a good, dramatic companion piece. (Shown at True/False Film Fest 2019 while premiering in Imax theaters.)

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[2019, 93 min. Directed by Todd Douglas Miller.]
https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-reviews/apollo-11-movie-review-795597/

The Hottest August

— “The Hottest August” is more a portrait of the times than a mere look at August in New York City. Brett Story presents a colorful and diverse cast of everyday characters, living their lives and expressing their hopes and fears. What emerges is a bustling city with gentrification, inequality, a vanishing middle-class, global warming, and plenty of daily challenges. Counterbalancing these negative aspects is a soul that’s still strong and filled with wry humor, neighborly love, and an uncertain hope that Americans adapt to difficulties, making adjustments for a better future. The filmmaker doesn’t really point the viewer in any direction, but just presents the images and comments, creating the portrait for the viewer to consider. (Shown at True/False Film Fest 2019.)

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[2019. 92 min. Directed by Brett Story.]
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/hottest-august-review-1189369

Mike Wallace Is Here

— In a world of “fake news,” innuendo, meanness disguised a memes, and selective reporting, it’s nice to look back on an early player in investigative reporting. This is a decent glimpse of Wallace’s career—even his successes as a game show host, actor, and advertising spokesperson—as well as how, in the 1950s and 1960s, his aggressive style of asking tough interview questions changed how news interviews were conducted. Times have changed and “news” sources have expanded to include social media, blogs, and ideologically focused web sites. Wallace’s confrontational style can still be seen in “real” news, but also in a new breed of journalists who blur the lines between news and commentary and entertainment. (Shown at True/False Film Fest 2019.)

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[2019. 86 min. Directed by Avi Belkin.]
https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/mike-wallace-is-here-review-1203119500/

Cold Case Hammarskjöld

— It’s hard to describe “Cold Case Hammarskjöld,” a quirky look at the 1961 crash of a plane carrying U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld to a ceasefire negotiation in the Congo, and the conspiracy theories that surround the event. A clever format adds humor to a documentary that moves from the investigation of a cold case to something much more sinister. Mads Brügger, the film’s investigator, acts as the ringmaster, juggling theories and lines of inquiry while the audience, though intrigued, suspects the theories are just that, unproven and unlikely conspiracy pap. When one of the theories appears to have a basis, suggesting the crash was, in fact, not an accident, Brügger lets the facts add up, making a believable case for an alarming plot to murder Hammarskjöld. It’s hard not to be sucked into the intrigue and to consider the veracity of the claims made, and to worry a little that, even if the conspiracy theory isn’t true, it is plausible. It’s an intriguing film, but I tend to favor documentaries that are under 2 hours, and this one could have been even better with a bit of judicious editing. (Shown at True/False Film Fest 2019.)

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[2019. 128 min. Written and directed by Mads Brügger. With Mads Brügger, Göran Björkdahl, Neddy Banda, and Jan Beuckels.]
https://www.indiewire.com/2019/01/cold-case-hammarskjold-review-sundance-1202039570/

Up the Mountain

— Ostensibly a look at life in a Chinese mountain village where master painter Shen Jianhua hosts a variety of followers including grandmothers engaged in brightly-hued, folk paintings of day-to-day life in the village. The result is a subtle, poetic film with amazing panoramas that are only rivaled by scenes of everyday life that are just as inspiring. In fact, the film has a rhythm and texture to it that emphasizes the beauty around us everywhere. Beautiful as the film is, it suffers from poor subtitles that are often have so little contrast as to be unreadable. A heavier hand at editing would have been welcome too, so the film might have been closer to 90 minutes instead of more than two hours. (Shown at True/False Film Fest 2019.)

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[2019. 126 min. Directed by Zhang Yang.]
https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/up-the-mountain-macao-review/5135158.article