VIMooZ

Thank goodness UNFINISHED SONG (titled “Song for Marion” overseas) was made by an English filmmaker. I say that because Hollywood would have completely destroyed this wonderful story by overfilling it with cheesy, contrived moments. Hollywood doesn’t have the guts to make this kind of film without a “star.” Instead of the wonderful performances from Terrence Stamp and Vanessa Redgrave we’d likely get Steve Martin in one of his less-than-great performances and Cher.

by Christopher McKittrick

I’M SO EXCITED! (Los amantes pasajeros) opens with a brief sequence on an airport runaway featuring Antonio Banderas and Penélope Cruz, both familiar faces in this film’s writer/director Pedro Almodóvar’s work.  However, their brief cameos only set up the main plot of the film, which is about the plane on the runaway that’s about to take off.  When the plane is in the air, it becomes clear to the pilot Alex (Antonio de la Torre), the co-pilot Benito (Hugo Silva), the head steward Joserra (Javier Cámara), and stewards Ulloa (Raúl Arévalo) and Fajas (Carlos Areces) – all of whom are either gay or bisexual and have a connecting sexual history – that there is something wrong with the landing gear.  Even if they can find a runway to attempt the landing (which proves difficult), there’s no guarantee that they will survive the impact.  When this news is revealed to the handful of passengers in first class (the passengers in coach have all been put to sleep via drugs), they began to cast away their inhibitions and reveal their deepest secrets.

by Chris McKittrick

Bartending is often seen as one of those “between” jobs – you know, the type of job you have as a stopover between one job and another.  While for most bartending consists of pulling tap handles and mixing happy hour well drinks, for others it is an art.  This is the premise of HEY BARTENDER, an engrossing documentary by director Douglas Tirola featuring some of the world’s best mixologists.

by Morgan Davies

The Moment, the sophomore feature from director Jane Weinstock, is a slippery film: we never quite know whether what we’re seeing is reality or filtered through protagonist Lee’s unstable mind. Lee, a war photographer played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, is first convinced that her ex-boyfriend John (Martin Henderson) is missing, then that she murdered him, but as her therapist reminds her, any of her particularly intense convictions could simply be fantasies. She is suffering from PTSD from her wartime experiences and injuries, and has moved from a rehab facility for the body (where she met John) to one for her mind.

by Kelsey Straight

The conflicting ideals of science and politics have created misconceptions regarding climate change, as revealed by Craig Scott Rosebraugh’s documentary, Greedy Lying Bastards. Rosebraugh presents a fundamental struggle between scientific fact and political fabrication: where fact requires evidence, fabrication allows anything to masquerade as reality. The presentation of climate change as “the greatest hoax ever” does not come from humanitarianism, unfortunately, but from the oil industry and those politicians with direct ties to the oil industry. Rosebraugh’s documentary presents a world of individuals who need the earth for different reasons, either as a money-making resource, or as a home for our families and an environment for cultures. If we do not take care of the land that allowed our societies to grow, than the land will not take care of who we are in return.

by Kelsey Straight

The quirky English humor and quintessential characters of Ben Wheatley’s The Sightseers both disturb us and make us laugh, often without establishing which was the appropriate response. The story follows Chris and Tina on their caravan holiday to a collection of eclectic sights, including the Crich Tramway Museum, the Ribblehead Viaduct, and the Keswick Pencil Museum. Having left her mother and their small English home, a stifling setting where Tina has lived until the age of thirty-four, Tina falls in love with a red-bearded serial killer, Chris. Their odyssey through the countryside is more geared towards personal identity than touristy locations, however. Tina exchanges her baggy 1980’s blue jeans for acid-wash thrift store leggings, and her codes of morality for codes of murder. All the while, Chris gathers material for the book he never begins writing, and Tina discovers that she is less his muse than he is hers. Their story unravels in the rainy countryside instead of on Chris’s blank pages, and every scene becomes a conflict they create for themselves.

by DeVon Hyman

“There is something kind of deeply uncomfortable with the idea of putting your life out there”
 -Sarah Polley, AMNY, May 2013

True to the fact. A certain level of inner peace would have to be the prerequisite to an initiative being undertaken in the manner in which acclaimed Filmmaker Sarah Polley has done with her much heralded “Stories We Tell” which hit theaters on Friday.  

Centered on a candid look at the reality which was Polley’s birth and actual parents whom were responsible for her existence. For much of her life Polley has been under the belief that her mothers husband was indeed her biological father, only to learn recently and come to terms with that not being the truth.  Her birth in actuality was the product of an affair which her late mom partook in.

by Joseph Williamson

Real, old fashioned adventurers are somewhat scarce in this day and age –  there may be scientific expeditions in Antarctica, but the romance of Henry Morton Stanley stomping through the Congo isn’t quite as attainable in 2013. Safaris and treks through the Amazon are all well and good, but truly uncharted and dangerous exploration is getting harder to manage in the decade of Google Maps. 

Not so in 1947. Enter Thor Heyerdahl, intrepid ethnographer – a man with a big idea, but no publisher willing to take him on. Desperately seeking conclusive proof of his theory – that Polynesia was first settled by ancient South Americans – he decides to take the four and a half thousand mile voyage across the Pacific Ocean himself. Furthermore, for this demonstration to have any validity at all, it must be done in the exact manner of the original settlers: a balsa wood raft, a large wooden oar as a rudder, and constructed with simple rope in lieu of stronger materials. The only concession to modernity is a two way radio. 

by Morgan Davies

Flex is Kings, a feature documentary by Deirdre Schoo and Michael Beach Nichols, is a charmer of a movie: slick, funny, compelling and awe-inspiring, it’s that rare documentary that manages to be interesting and thought-provoking without leaving its audience depressed.

by Christopher McKittrick

Though there are hundreds of terrible diseases, perhaps there is none as cruel as Alzheimer’s disease, which not only slowly robs the sufferer of their mind, but tremendously impacts the sufferer’s loved ones terribly as the sufferer gradually no longer recognizes them as they slip further and further into dementia.  German documentarian David Sieveking explores the impact that Alzheimer’s disease has not only on his mother, but his entire family in Vergiss mein nicht (Forget Me Not).

by Kelsey Straight

Laura Mahlberg’s illustration of an old man who starts walking towards California from his caravan entire countries away (in Russia!) is a new take on the classic road movie, except here our protagonist is fifty years past coming-of-age and still in pursuit of better prospects in the west. One could say that the film has come a few decades after its genre’s peak, and the main character coincides with that reality. Visually stunning cinematography offers an array of sensations to the film, and despite a slow-going pace and essentially meek protagonist, audiences will revel in the look and the stories in the eyes of this character, a man full from his years and still searching for more.

by Christopher McKittrick

During a routine, 47 year-old Silvia (Lina Wendel) is told by her husband that he is moving out. Silvia knew their passionless marriage was essentially over anyway, but it still comes as a shock.  With little to call her own and never being with anyone besides her husband, Silvia begins her search for love, because, as she tells someone else, “Actually, everyone wants someone to hold…someone who loves and comforts you. If that’s not happening… something inside withers away. You become a lone warrior.”