Screened at the 2018 San Francisco Film Festival

Opens in U.S. April 13, 2018

***

The Rider

This film almost looks like a documentary, but it is actually a hybrid as the movie focuses on life crisis of a rodeo competitor Brady Blackburn. We meet him as he is recovering from a life threatening head injury, which we realized happened during his brilliant but very daring and dangerous competitive riding, which occurred on top of wild untamed horses. We come to understand his love of horses and his uncanny connection to them. He knows he is supposed to stay away from the sport as his brain and body must heal. We are given insight into his character as we see his relationship with a very good friend, who is a like brother to him and is now in a hospital brain damaged after being thrown from a horse. We also see his caring tender relationship with his younger sister who appears to have a developmental disability as well as his interactions with his caring father who had been very rough on him. The movie is directed by Chloe Zhao who met the star of the movie on an Indian Reservation while filming a 2014 movie titled Songs My Brothers Taught Me. This director certainly achieved some very interesting footage particularly as the star interacts and trains his horses.

To many people rodeo competitive riding and the heroes who participate in it is as captivating as competitive football is to many other Americans. It occurred to one of us that the movie could have very well been highlighting the dilemma of those football stars who are faced with life threatening head injuries from the sport that they also love (2018).

Screened at 2018 San Francisco Film Festival

Opens April 20, 2018 in the United States

****

Kodachrome

When a movie tries to examine an estranged relationship between the parent and a grown child, it usually has the potential to be an emotionally laden interesting film. This movie was no exception.

A famous and now dying photographer (Ed Harris) and his loyal and beautiful nurse (Elizabeth Olsen) contact his son(Jason Sudeikis) who is a music businessman and has not spoken to his father in many years for good reasons . They ask him to go with them on a car trip to Kansas to develop some old roles of Kodachrome film. (The father can’t fly because health reasons.) The last existing processing company is going out of business and there is some urgency to this task. The details and reasons for the estrangement unfold as does the expected deep seated underlying feeling that each has for each other. Just about every key point in the plot was easily predicted but yet the movie, directed by Mark Raso, held our attention and we recommend it for a meaningful emotional ride (2018).

Screened at 2018 San Francisco Film Festival

Opens in United States on May 4, 2018

*****

Tully

We saw this film at the San Francisco Film Festival where there was a special tribute paid to Charlize Theron for her body of work. Subsequently, this movie was shown.

In the film, we meet Marlo (Charlize Theron) as she is in the late stages of her third pregnancy while dealing with the trials and tribulations of raising two children and allowing her husband to sleep through the night and get on with his job. Her rich brother (Mark Duplass) offers to get her a night nanny to help with the new born. This nanny, Tully, (Mackenzie Davis) symbolically happens to have her maiden name, Tully, that she had when she was young and free.

Screen writer Diablo Cody collaborated with writer-director Jason Reitman who helped to provide the symbolism and synergy to show the struggle that a young woman might have in moving from a young, free as a bird, woman to a nursing, dedicated, but overwhelmed and depressed mother. The movie reminds us of the need to “let go” sometimes in order to “move on” as well as a hint of some issues involved in post partum depression. Theron leads an outstanding supportive cast, which includes a great script and a very competent director (2018).

Screened at 2018 San Francisco Film Festival

Opens in United States June 1, 2018

*****

A Kid Like Jake

This film is not very much about Jake but is all about his parents, Alex (Claire Danes) and her husband Greg (Jim Parsons), as they begin to realize that their little boy may actually identify as being a little girl. This New York couple first came to this awareness as they were trying to make applications to a private school for their youngster. They met with the director of their son’s preschool (Octavia Spencer), who tried to suggest that their son showed “gender variant play.” Claire Danes is outstanding as she painfully resists the insight that her husband is more willing to discuss.

We saw this movie as the opening film at the San Francisco 2018 Film Festival. We met director Silas Howard who openly discussed how since he himself is transgender, it was important to him to try to show the impact on the parents since that will ultimately determine how such a child can adjust to his or her identity. The subtle implications to both parents are played out in their interactions with each other as well as with their friends, the grandmother (Alex’s mother), and the school director.

This movie did a masterful job in presenting a difficult and important subject. It has the potential to be a classic film in this area (2018).

Screened at 2018 San Francisco Film Festival

Open in the United States on June 8, 2018

*****

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

Film maker Morgan Neville did an extraordinary job in delving into television archival material to reconstruct the story of Mr. Rogers. If you were a child watching television in the 1960s and 70s or thereabouts or are a parent of such a child, then you must know who is Mr. Rogers is and have very warm feelings about him. He had a unique approach to children and spoke with them on their level. He was able to convey that each person has self-worth and should be treated that way. He practiced what he preached not only because he himself had graduated from a seminary but because he truly respected children of all ages.

The film was beautifully put together to give great insight into Fred Rogers. It showed how seriously he took striving for equality and mutual understanding and how that always came across.

Viewing this film was like meeting an old beloved friend from many years ago. It will be interesting to see if millennials will be able to relate to this movie when they met Mr. Rogers for the first time.(2018)

Screened at the 2018 San Francisco Film Festival

Unknown Opening date in USA

***

My Life With James Dean

This French movie with subtitles follows Geraud( Johnny Reese), a young film maker who is making the rounds of small coastal towns in France with his new film titled “My Life With James Dean.” A 15-year-old boy(Mikael Pelissler). who looks older than his stated age. is the projectionist who is smitten with Geraud who seems ambivalent about the attraction shown to him by the young man, although they end up in bed together. There also were a bunch of temporary pairings, which include a female hotel clerk with a driver and a lesbian film promoter with her girlfriend. After a while, the movie felt like a French farce or a slapstick comedy.

We met Dominique Choisy, the French film director of the movie and mentioned to him that in the United States, an adult having sex with a 15-year-old would usually be of great concern. He did not seem bothered by this and noted that in France the age of majority is 15 (2018).

 Screened at 2018 San Francisco Film Festival

Unknown opening date in USA

***

Scary Mother

This foreign film made in Estonia with subtitles of course, follows Manana(Nato Murvanidze), a married mother with three children who has just written a novel. The book, while purported to be fiction, examines her unflattering feelings about her husband(Dimitri Tatishvili) and children as well as her extreme sexual fantasies. She goes on to develop a dependent relationship with a local stationery store owner who essentially tries to be her book agent and major supporter of her writing. The story becomes more bizarre as we meet her father who has taken on the role of a translator for the book. The book she is writing and her own life become more complicated and entwined as does the film. First time director Anna Urushadze has taken on a very difficult and complicated story, which draws in the viewer but may be too much to digest (2018).

Screened at the 2018 San Francisco Film Festival

Unknown opening date in USA

***

I Hate Kids

This is a very fanciful comedy that verges on the ridiculous. Its premise made little sense to us. Mason (Julian Feder), a teenage boy raised by his foster mother, contacts a so called radio psychic (Tituss Burgess) who eventually is exposed to be a fraud. In response to the young man trying to find his biological mother, he is told by the psychic that he only knows that his biological father(Todd Everett Scott) is an author of a bestselling book I Hate Kids and he states that the author would know who is his biological mother. It becomes more convoluted as the boy is able to buy a sample of the author’s hair from a barber who saves celebrity hair. He then is able to compare it to his own via DNA identification. This confirms that the author is his father. The boy then confronts the author who agrees to try to find the boy’s mother by visiting his old girlfriends. This is all occurring a few days before the “kid hating” author is supposed to marry a woman (Rhea Selhorn) who equally does not like kids. This leads to a wild and crazy road trip visiting the author’s old girlfriends.

Director John Asher and screen writers Frank Dietz and Todd Trainer are responsible for what we thought was silly but occasionally funny interaction. Yet despite the implausible plot, there was a charm and upbeat quality that might make some of you feel that it was worth the ride (2018).

Screened at 2018 San Francisco Film Festival

Unknown opening date for USA

***

Tre Maison Dasan

Tre, Maison, and Dasan are three boys each of whom has a parent who is in prison. First time documentary filmmaker Denali Tiller has taken on this project to follow these three youngsters and show the often tender visitations that they have with their parent while in a Rhode Island prison. These take place in a large child friendly area where many children are having visits with a parent. She also follows these three youngsters at home with their families. Some of the footage is quite an accomplishment as she follows her subjects for almost three years and captures tender personal interactions between child and parent.

In a post film discussion, we become aware that one important goal of the filmmaker was to advocate for such visitation programs in a suitable environment in prisons throughout the country as well as education for parents on the importance of such interaction for children who have a parent in prison. Unfortunately, this message was not made clear in the film and we believe this was a lost opportunity (2018).

Screened at 2018 San Francisco Film Festival

Unknown opening date in USA

****

The Rescue List

This documentary film takes place in a rural area in Ghana where Lake Volta, the largest manmade lake in the world, is located. There is a terrible situation where young children are abducted or even bought from their parents in order to be used as slave labor working on fishing boats in this lake. Film makers Zachary Fink and Alysous Fedele made this heart wrenching but yet beautifully done documentary film. It followed a group led by a man by the name of Kwame who was once one of these children and now is a college educated leader of the group. Their mission is to rescue these children and provide education, rehabilitation, and in many cases return them to their families. The filmmakers obtain very good cinematic portraits of individual children and capture the story of what they have been through at the same time showing their childhood innocence. Hopefully before this film is released to the public, the filmmaker will put an “ask” and a place for viewers who will be moved to make donations to this very worthy group (2018).