Month: April 2018

Film Review: SPACEMAN (USA 2016)

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Spaceman Poster
Story of former MLB pitcher Bill ‘Spaceman’ Lee following his release by the Montreal Expos.

Director:

Brett Rapkin

Writer:

Brett Rapkin

Stars:

Josh Duhamel, W. Earl Brown, Ernie Hudson

SPACEMAN is the biographical film on former Major League baseball pitcher, Bill Lee (Josh Duhamal from TRANSFORMERS) nicknamed SPACEMAN.  Lee is given the nickname for his drug use and hence constantly being ‘spaced out’. 

The film is written and directed by Brett Rapkin.  SPACEMAN is not the first film Rapkin has made of baseball celebrity eccentric Bill Lee.  He made the documentary on Lee SPACEMAN: A BASEBALL ODYSSEY in 2006, a film much better than this one.

This new Bill Lee film made in 2016 took 2 years for its release.  The question is the film’s target audience.  Who would likely be interested in watching Lee’s biography  He is not super famous or super talented though he can pitch very well on a good day.  Non-sports fans like myself have not interest in watching a film on Lee, and neither I guess of many baseball fans either.  Being executively produced by Ron Shelton who directed Kevin Costner in BILL DURHAM, one can assume the film financiers are counting on all baseball fans (and maybe the other peripheral sports fans) to be the target audience.  The trouble is that Bill Lee is not really a winning character.  Lee is more a troublemaker and a loser that no one waned to hire or to be on their team.

The film first shows Lee making pancakes for breakfast.  He sprinkles green stuff on them, so that they end up as marijuana pancakes.  The film follows the man as he also gets drunk, and high and often!  But he stands up for his baseball mates, to the point that he gets let go, in one rare but very hilarious scene with his manager/boss.  He is now out of the major league.  The man loves baseball and is willing to go into the minor league to keep playing.  Hoping to get hired by other clubs, or be selected by talent scouts, he never ever makes good again.  The film reveals one major truth about baseball – it is a business.  No businessman wants to hire a player who has a drug problem.  That is a bad business decision.  Lee ends up losing his family too.

With the above bad stuff going on for Lee, the same goes for the movie.  The movie does not have any upside, except for comedic moments.  The segment where the audiences is supposed to be on Lee’s side, when he convinces his team to just loosen up and get high, works against the film’s favour.  The audience is not on Lee’s side but sees the problem in his actions.

The only positive thing about the biography appears to be Josh Duhamel who is delivering a fine performance regardless of how the film turns out.  Duhamel is sufficiently spirited in the role and able to elicit sympathy from the audience for his character’s poor behaviour. 

SPACEMAN ends up a let down just as the Bill Lee character that it portrays.  That might have been the film’s aim, but it turns out not to be a very entertaining watch.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvRF_ezKoeI

 

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HOT DOCS 2018: THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS (USA 2018) ***

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Three Identical Strangers Poster
Trailer

New York, 1980: three complete strangers accidentally discover that they are identical triplets, separated at birth. The 19-year-olds’ joyous reunion catapults them to international fame, …See full summary »

Director:

Tim Wardle

Stars:

Silvi Alzetta-Reali, Eddy Galland, Ron Guttman

The doc, THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS opens in the year 1980 when 19-year-olds Robert Shafran and Edward Galland found each other at the same community college and realized they were twins separated at birth.  To each other’s surprise, they discover a third.  Triplets at birth finding each other is news. 

 The surprise triplets became fast friends and overnight media sensations.  Can the happiness last forever?  Every story eventually has a dark side.  The dark side involves the discovery at the adoption agency that the triplets (as are other twins) were part of an experiment conducted on human behaviour.  The film’s best part is the insight given by a few of the interviewees. 

 One, a lady who worked at the adoption research centre gives her opinion that it was not considered inappropriate in those days to do experiments of this kind.  Psychology was new and in, and it was a cool subject then, not like today.

A documentary is often as good as its subject.  A far as Wardle’s documentary goes, what other film could have topped this with a more intriguing subject.  THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS will eventually be praised as a film despite its glaring flaws.   One wishes that more conclusion would have been presented regarding the experiments

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-OF0OaK3o0

 

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Film Review: MOBILE HOMES (France/Canada 2017)

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Mobile Homes Poster
A young mother drifts from one motel to the next with her intoxicating boyfriend and her 8-year-old son. The makeshift family scrapes by, living one hustle at a time, until the discovery of…See full summary »

Director:

Vladimir de Fontenay

Writers:

Vladimir de Fontenay, Danielle Lessovitz (Artistic Collaborator)

Stars:

Imogen Poots, Callum Turner, Callum Keith Rennie

 

MOBILE HOMES is a very intense film as evident in three of the film’s opening sequences.  The first shows a mother, Ali (British actress Imogen Poots), frustrated to the point of blowing up at her inability to set her son up for aid due to lack of documentation.  The next scene that follows is a highly charged erotic sex scene with the mother having it on with boyfriend, Evan (Callum Turner).  This soon follows one where the boy, Bone (Frank Oulton) has to make a dash out of a diner to escape payment.  Will he make it or get caught?

France born director Vladimir de Fontenay keeps up the intensity throughout the film though one soon has the feeling if all this is necessary or is he trying too hard.  MOBILE HOMES, is as the title implies set in the white trailer trash surroundings of losers and dishonest low-life who would cheat and lie to get ahead just for a few bucks.  Evan and Ali attempt one scheme after another, often with the help of 8-year old Bone who seems to have an affinity for his mother’s boyfriend who treats him ok, if not teaching him a bad thing or two on survival.  There is another nasty bit in the story involving cock fighting.  Bone has a rooster that he loves and carries around with him.   There is also the question of using an underaged kid to sell drugs or do dishonest deeds besides banned outings like cock fighting.

At one point in the film, Ali confesses her desire to own a place of her own, so she can f*** in her own bed.  This leads to a scheme of trying to own their own mobile home, though it may mean stealing from mobile homes owner, Robert (Callum Keith Rennie).  

One wonders at the director’s fascination of mobile homes.  His obsession can be observed right down to the film’s climax that include a high speed chase with Ali driving a vehicle with a stolen mobile home in tow.  It is an extremely exciting and well shot scene, credit to de Fontenay and one that is guaranteed to have audiences at the edge of their seats.

The film is shot in Ontario around the Niagara region, which is where cheap tourism exists – a perfect locale for the film’s setting.

The trouble with MOBILE HOMES is that besides being a really nasty film, director de Fontena offers few redeeming qualities for any of his characters with the result that the audience does not care what happens to them.  Why doesn’t Ali just start thinking seriously about getting a job to settle down?  The prospect of a job is at one point offered to her by Robert, which she misuses.

While Poots and Turner deliver exceptional performances despite the film’s flaws, it is the boy Frank Oulton who is a natural.  Whether getting lost, beaten or scolded, he is the only character that the audience feels for.  The result, however, is still a film the audience is detached from.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=py-MBw-8pM4

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Film Review: I FEEL PRETTY (USA 2018)

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I Feel Pretty Poster
Trailer

A woman struggling with insecurity wakes from a fall believing she is the most beautiful and capable woman on the planet. Her new confidence empowers her to live fearlessly, but what happens when she realizes her appearance never changed?

Directors:

Abby Kohn, Marc Silverstein

Writers:

Abby Kohn, Marc Silverstein

Stars:

Amy Schumer, Michelle Williams, Emily Ratajkowski

 

I FEEL PRETTY is an Amy Schumer vehicle which she produces and stars in.  The simple premise  revolves around Renee Barrett (Schumer), an ordinary woman who struggles with feelings of insecurity and inadequacy on a daily basis.  During a cycle fit spin class, she suffers a big fall and wakes up from it believing she is the most beautiful and capable woman in the world, despite looking the same she has always looked.  With this new found confidence she is empowered to live her life fearlessly and flawlessly.

It is expected that a film based on one joke would quickly run out of steam.  This is obvious when the film has to resort to a nose picking joke at the film’s climax.  There are few surprises in this lazy comedy which runs like a predictable Harlequin romance from start to end.  

Renee has to learn that being pretty means pretty on the inside and not on the outside.  This means that the audience has to be drummed with this obvious message.  The message comes unashamedly at the end when Renee delivers a full blown speech on how the most important thing in life is oneself and not the outward beauty.  Awkward enough, for a film that is supposed to have an anti-pretty message, it is very noticeable that most of the cast are good-looking.  The most ridiculous is the one scene where it can be observed that all the extras walking down the street in NYC are drop-dead gorgeous.

The cast includes Lauren Hutton who has been absent from the screen for quite a while, playing the matriarch of the LeClaire cosmetics company.  Also in the cast is model Naomi Campbell who has earned the horrid reputation of being a terrible human being to work with on set.  It would be interesting to hear what trouble this one has caused on the set.

Schumer is  perfect in the role of Renee, being pretty, yet not pretty enough.  Schumer is brave enough to show off her not-so-perfect body, especially in the bar bikini contest segment, one of the film’s few spirited moments.  Michelle Williams is just plain awful here but Tom Hooper is a good sight for sore eyes.

The film runs similar along the lines as the last comedy release BLOCKERS.  Mildly funny at best, both films run out of jokes and surprises very fast.  I FEEL PRETTY has the joke on Renee’s fall happen 30 minutes into the movie.  The first 30 minutes shows Renee in her everyday life, which is as plain and unfunny as the person.  Example: the long stretched joke about the wide shoe size is a used joke that is ‘stretched’ too long for its own good.  Like the entire film.

The film might appeal as a feel-good movie for audiences that need to feel better about their appearances.  Still, if the film contains enough hilarious comedic set-ups, this film might have been worth a visit.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmU6b09s6VE

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Film Review: SUPER TROOPERS 2 (USA 2018) ***

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Super Troopers 2 Poster
Trailer

When a border dispute arises between the U.S. and Canada, the Super Troopers are tasked with establishing a Highway Patrol station in the disputed area.

Director:

Jay Chandrasekhar

Writers:

Jay Chandrasekhar (as Broken Lizard), Kevin Heffernan (as Broken Lizard) |3 more credits »

Stars:

Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme

 

The first SUPER TROOPERS movie released in 2001 was a dumb ass but funny enough movie that earned Broken Lizard, the comedy troupe involved with the movie a sufficient following.

SUPER TROOPERS 2 is the long awaited sequel that took a very long time to reach the big screen because of production approval and funding problems.  The film finally got funding from the fans, a big $2 million or so worth.  What do audiences get?  Another low-life dumb comedy.  Do NOT have high expectations going to see this one.  I did not.  But I laughed my head off at the dumbness.  And I had a super trooper good time.

Director Chandrasekhar wanted to make a prequel set in the 70’s with the cast portraying the fathers of the original characters.  It sounds like a terrible idea.  Probably is!  Thankfully, Broken Lizard did not follow that idea but did a sequel that started where the original left off.   Foster (Paul Soter), Farva (Kevin Heffenan), Rabbit (Erik Stohlhanske), Mac (Steve Lemme) and Throny (director Chandrasekhar), the original five are in it, together with their captain, a stern faced O’Hagan (British Brian Cox).  Surprisingly, straight faced Cox gets the film’s most laughs in every scene he is in.

The lame plot involves part of Canada actually being the United States so the Super Troopers are recruited (after losing their jobs in the last film) to patrol the border.  They encounter a smuggling scheme of drugs that they eventually solve (well, sort of) with the help of the Canadian mounties.  But the story leaves plenty of opportunity for dumb jokes.  These dumb jokes are hilarious, the funniest ones of which involve comedic timing.

The film opens with cameos by Seann William Scott and Damon Wayans Jr. as two troopers who bust a trailer for speeding and dope.  The sequence involves a well-filmed car chase.  All the shenanigans are not that funny but it is rewarding to watch Wayans and Scott do their thing.  One can tell that if one joke does not work, there are lots more around the corner, and some of these will work.  The real super troopers of the film are slowly introduced with the story brought in.

As expected, the film contains a lot of Canadian vs. American banter, about which country is the better one or which one is the worst one.  If the jokes are nasty to the Americans, there will be an equally nasty aimed at the Canadian.s  It is an almost equal tit-for-tat.

Three other 80’s stars (as the film caters towards 80’s humour) who lend their hand are Lynda Carter as Governor Jessman), Rob Lowe playing a small-town Canadian major, Guy LeFranc, the bad guy and Fred Savage playing himself.  The 80’s period atmosphere is not really convincingly created but the 80’s hippie humour (including a noticeable hippie song) is definitely emphasized.

Hate it or love it, Super Troopers is dumb fun which succeeds in that respect.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=eEed-o8fVpM

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2017 SCI-FI/FANTASY Short Films (36)

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fantasyscififestival's avatarFantasy/Sci-Fi FILM & WRITING FESTIVAL

A FilmFreeway preferred festival:


festival posterARKHAM?S JOURNAL, 7min, Canada, Fan Fiction/Mystery
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festival posterINTO THE DARK, 14min, USA, Sci-Fi/Fantasy
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festival posterIM PERFEKT, 7min, Hungray, Sci-Fi/Fantasy
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festival posterMARIA FERNANDA IN TIME, 9min, Spain, Sci-Fi/Comedy
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festival posterREVENGANT, 7min. Germany, Fan Fiction/Sci-Fi
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festival poster2BR02B: TO BE OR NAUGHT TO BE, 18min, Canada, Sci-Fi/Fan Fiction
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festival posterMARAUDER, 13min, Canada, Action/Fantasy
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festival posterTRUE COPY, 11min, Russia, Thriller/Sci-Fi
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festival posterSEEDS, 12min, UK, Thriller/Sci-Fi
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK		festival posterEAT ME!, 20min, Bulgaria, Drama/Musical
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festival posterDEVIL WEARS A SUIT, 20min, Australia, LGBT, Sci-Fi
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK		festival posterCRADLE, 11min, USA, Sci-Fi/Thriller
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festival poster1950 DA, 7min, France, Sci-Fi/Fantasy
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK		festival posterON SUNDAY, 6min, UK, Sci-Fi/Drama
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK
festival posterTHE EARTH SURVIVAL CODE, 10min, China, Sci-Fi/Fantasy
WATCH Audience FEEDBACK		festival posterMISIEK AND EVE FROM OUTER SPACE, 2min, Poland, Animation/Comedy
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festival posterI &…

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Director BIO: Michele Haines (SAM THE HAM)

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Director Biography – Michele Haines

5facc55d25 headshot

Michèle Haines is a Los Angeles based Voice Actor who found the voice of Sam the Ham through improvising some animal character ideas for a toy company. Michèle then accidentally discovered her animator while searching her brother’s name on the internet. The visual work of David Haines (they think no relation) brought Sam to life. Sam has more adventures to get into, and Michèle and David Haines will continue their animation collaborations while trying to determine if they share a family tree.

Director Statement

Sam, the little pig character, was born out of improvising ideas for a toy company. Years later, the idea to animated him into a cartoon came as way for me to distract and pull myself out of a depression after my father died. Sam’s dad is styled as a tribute to my father, an Army Airborne Ranger who was happiest playing…

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Director BIO: Brian Giovanni (WHEN COMES THE RAIN)

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Director Biography – Brian Giovanni

Brian Giovanni is an independent animator based in Los Angeles. His work has been showcased internationally through the LoopDeLoop animation community, and he was named LA Winner in 2016 at one of their showcases. He has also trained under indie-animation legend Bill Plympton, and studies regularly at the Animation Guild in Burbank, CA. He also holds a film degree from Denison University’s School of Cinema. He is a proud member of ASIFA-Hollywood, and an advocate for the Arts Action Fund.

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