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).

***

Face of Love– rm- This movie stands out because of it’s very unique storyline. Niki’s  (Annette Bening) deeply loved husband (Ed Harris) drowns while they are celebrating their 30^th wedding anniversary in a lovely resort in Mexico.  5 years later the long grieving wife sees a man, Tom (also Ed Harris of course) who looks exactly like her husband and manages to meet him and develop a relationship. To her, it is reuniting with her deceased husband but to him it is an opportunity to fall in love which he has not felt since his wife left him 10 years before. The mood of this film written by Matthew McDuffie and Director Arie Posin  hovers between a spooky supernatural tale and a story of crazed woman holding on to her fantasy. Bening does a magnificent job of the conflicted wife torn apart by her struggle with reality. The potential of art and painting to convey emotion and the symbolic nature of water as being deadly but also eternal are the backdrops of the plot. Will the widowed neighbor (Robin Williams) who has a crush on the widow next door recognize the appearance of her new boyfriend ? What will happen when the daughter returns from college and confronts the spitting image of her deceased father? A haunting musical score by Marcelo Zarvos carries the film and has the potential to bring out those primitive emotions in the audience as we try to imagine the resolution of the story. (2014)

***

Salvation Boulevard-sp   If you are not part of it – what could be a better subject for satire than a big Texas like Evangelical Church? Director and co-writer George Ratliff did just this thing and interestingly enough he told us that the previews are doing well in the midst of the bible belt. In addition to a well-written story with some good comedy and many surprise twists, this film project pulled together a great cast who created the zany characters who are up on the screen for 95 minutes. Dan Day (Pierce Brosnan) the church leader who is on the verge of building his Christian City on the Hill with a medical school, a law school and everything else when something happens that make him respond in not the most holy manner. Carl Vandermeer (Greg Kinnear), a former Deadhead (follower of the Grateful Dead) has settled into a clean life as a family man and a regular church goer  when he gets tested and then can’t believe he had been a follower of the good Dan Day. His journey is the heart of the film and the center of most of the comedic moments. Then there is his wife Gwen (Jennifer Connelly) who is hilarious as the dyed in the wool follower of Dan Day and his movement as well as being a weird artist. Honey Foster (Marisa Tomei) is a security guard with a heart of gold and she herself is former Deadhead who still likes to smoke her pipe. Ed Harris gets into the character of Dr. Paul Blaylock who in many people’s opinion ( but not the Evangelical crowd ) would be the voice of reason, but he gets a bullet in his head which does slow him down. Most people in the theatre seemed to have had a good time. There were a lot of laughs and the satire was as expected but the story was not predictable. So a good time was had, but it probably won’t be very memorable.  (2011)

***

The Way Back- sp– This movie has all the ingredients for an epic movie. The story is that a handful of prisoners escape from a Russian gulag in 1940  and trek across Siberia  to the Himalayas and ultimately into India more that 4000 miles. There are freezing cold temperatures, snow storms, sand storms, blistering hot desserts, gigantic mountains, starvation, lack of water. The actors include Ed Harris, Jim Sturgess and Colin Farell all who do a terrific job as does the the supporting cast, especially Saoirse Ronan a spirited 15 year old actress, under the direction of Peter Weir who had a 29 million dollar budget. The scenes are quite realistic as you can almost feel their numbness in the frigid temperatures, the pain from the blisters on their feet and their parched throats or deliciousness of an occasional oasis of water.  The story is based on popular memoir written  by Slavomit Racuwicz in the 1950s which sold 500,00 copies worldwide. It was ultimately determined that the author, while he was prisoner in the gulag for awhile, did not make this trek himself but based it on stories that he had heard about. Peter Weir and his team or writers and producers extensively researched the subject and ultimately this adventure is also based on the experiences that some real  people actually went through. Certainly it is tribute to the human spirit, the will and ability of man to survive the horrors of mankind and the harshness of nature. The problem that we had with this two hour and 13 minute movie is that the individual stories of each of the characters were not developed in a manner, which engaged us. Yes, we ultimately learned about some of them, usually through a brief conversation. We did not find that their stories came together nor did it made us care about them as individuals as much as we may have cared for them for who they symbolized. As survivors who were seeking freedom through an almost impossible (and very long) path, we rooted for them. But in the end, we don’t think we shall remember them. (2010)