I'm Still Here (2024): A Review

 I'M STILL HERE

History is filled with great figures, but there is room enough for those small individuals who accomplished great things despite the obstacles against them. I'm Still Here is a deeply moving powerful film about courage.

Brazil, 1970. The nation is under a military dictatorship, but the wealthy Paiva lives with little to no concern for themselves. Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello), a former Congressman, is not worried despite his work for those opposing the current dictatorship. His wife, Eunice (Fernanda Torres) is oblivious to her husband's work, which Rubens works hard to keep hidden.

However, the Paiva family is rocked when Rubens is taken into custody. Eunice, already having the indignity of having armed men stay in her home against her wishes, is now astonished to be taken into custody herself along with her second-eldest daughter Eliana (Luisa Kovoski), her oldest daughter Veroca (Valentina Herszage) having gone to London for school and a de facto exile.

Twelve days of psychological torture for Eunice, who is stubbornly refused information about Rubens or Eliana. She is eventually released without any information on Rubens and finding Eliana alive and safe back home. Eunice continues to push for information about Rubens, all while attempting to keep her children as unaware as possible and keep body and soul together. She gets information that Rubens is dead, but nothing concrete. Eunice will not be deterred, though she has her struggles with trying to raise her children. Eventually, even with government spies openly observing her home, she decides to move to Sao Paola with them.

Twenty-five years later in 1996, Brazil is no longer under a dictatorship and Eunice now has a death certificate for Rubens. She continues her efforts for the indigenous community, having become an attorney at age 48. In 2014, the extended Paiva family gather together and even with Eunice (Fernanda Montenegro) now debilitated from Alzheimer's disease, a television report on those who disappeared, including Rubens, triggers a moment of recognition. 

I'm Still Here expertly balances the transition from frivolity to fear in the Paiva family and by extension in Brazil. We see this early on when Veroca and her friends are happily driving down Rio de Janeiro, filming themselves and singing along to a pop song. During the drive though, they and all the other drivers encounter a military checkpoint, where they are pulled out and mocked by the soldiers as hippies. The mix of fear and irritation at the military's action are just a taste of what the Paivas have to endure.

We spend a great deal of time early in I'm Still Here with the Paivas at play. We get to know them as they mingle with each other and their circle of friends. They are jolly, lively and loving. This allows us to recognize how this one act of Rubens Paiva's forced arrest begins a shattering process. That alone makes I'm Still Here a sometimes-hard watch. It is the arrest and torture of Eunice that is almost too shocking to bear.

Director Walter Salles builds up the tension by what is not shown. The film uses great sound effects to make Eunice's imprisonment all the more harrowing. We hear the screams and torture from other prisoners while not losing focus on Eunice herself. Here, we see this tense set of days where, apart from a somewhat sympathetic guard who tells her that he finds this not to his liking, the patterns of forced interrogations and demands to repeat her full name all the more gripping, terrifying and sad.

In the entire film, it is Fernanda Torres' performance that holds the viewer. It is an exceptional one, for we see Eunice as someone who puts her family first. Her efforts to keep the children as unaware as possible, her quiet efforts to find both her husband and/or his fate and manner to keep the family going reveal a woman of strong character. For the most part, Torres' Eunice does not rage or become hysterical. 

Torres remains a firm manner in I'm Still Here. She is not stiff or stoic or making efforts to show outward courage. Rather, her Eunice reveals her strength whenever she smiles or attempts to keep calm through very tense circumstances. You see in Torres' face that mix of worry and resoluteness, a woman attempting to keep things together while holding in her rage and fear. 

It is neither a quiet nor loud performance, though it is closer to the former. In the few times where Eunice has a stronger, more intense reaction, Torres resists any efforts to make it a big moment. Whether it is when she slaps her daughter for pushing her to tell more than she wants to or berating the government spies who watched the family dog get run down, Torres is in full command. We even get a nice touch when Torres' real-life mother, Fernanda Montenegro, makes a brief appearance as the older Eunice. Even if this brief moment, we see Montenegro's skills when she communicates by just her eyes.

The film is well-acted by the entire cast. It manages to move mostly well and fast despite its runtime of slightly over two hours. Perhaps the extended scenes of the happiness of the Paiva family could have been trimmed. However, that is a minor detail. 

I'm Still Here holds the audience's attention and never releases it. Eunice Paiva is a woman who had fear but who was not afraid. The acceptance of things as they are, as brutal as the truth is, is hard. I'm Still Here works to show that strength comes in many forms.

1929-2018

DECISION: A+

Love Hurts (2025): A Review (Review #1935)

 

LOVE HURTS

Are they proud of this? Did the people involved in Love Hurts, the first 2025 film that I reviewed, look at the final product and say, "this is something people will love"? Maybe the film's director Jonathan Eusebio and screenwriters Matthew Murray, Josh Stoddard and Luke Passmore thought that they had a potential franchise in Love Hurts. The film is bizarre but not in a good way. Confused, at times illogical and boring, Love Hurts manages to not justify its surprisingly short runtime.

Mild-mannered Milwaukee realtor Marvin Gable (Ke Huy Quan) loves his job, which is more than what his Frontier Realty assistant Ashley (Lio Tipton) can say. Things are looking up for everyone in the office as they get ready for an office Valentine's Day party until Marvin gets a curious Valentine card. 

He soon realizes that the card is from Rose (Ariana DeBose), a woman from his past life as a hitman. Marvin had been ordered to kill Rose by his brother Alvin also known as Knuckles (Daniel Wu). Knuckles had been skimming millions from the Russian mob, and Rose had taken the fall for the misappropriation of funds. However, Marvin let her go and urged her to leave, his unrequited love for Rose motivating him to leave his old life and embrace his new identity while keeping his old name.

Soon, it becomes a free-for-all as to who will get Rose and/or Marvin. Marvin is attacked by a hitman known as The Raven (Mustafa Shakir), who has a fondness for knives and poetry. Later, the bickering, bumbling duo of Otis (Andre Eriksen) and King (Marshawn "Beastmode" Lynch) are also after Marvin. Marvin himself is captured by Rose, who pushes him to return to his old master assassin days to help her expose the real thief who double crossed her. That would be Merlo (Cam Gigandet), Knuckles' right-hand man who himself has been skimming from Alvin. 

Marvin and Rose eventually are forced to join forces, as are Marvin and The Raven against Otis and King. Things get more complicated as after reading The Raven's downbeat poetry, Ashley has fallen in love with Raven and vice versa. Will the Regional Realtor of the Year winner Marvin be able to save Rose and defeat all the hitmen sent after him? Who will win in a Marvin and Alvin battle royale?

I want to believe that somewhere underneath Love Hurts, there is a genuine story of a man forced to deal with his criminal past after embracing a new worldview. Unfortunately, Love Hurts bungled the job big-time. I am absolutely astonished that Love Hurts is less than ninety minutes long because as it stands, it already feels rushed and stuffed with bizarre story threads that do not fit.

The entire Ashley-Raven romance is downright insane. First, we the audience would think Raven is dead given the fight between him and Marvin. I was pretty sure that Raven's neck got broken. Second, no one in the crowded office heard this massive battle going on outside of faint muffles. Third, when Ashley stumbles onto Raven's corpse due to hearing his cell phone, we get the idea that he is dead. Fourth, merely reading his death meditation poetry has her falling in love with him, made all the easier due to him suddenly popping up and being very much alive.

Ashley called Marvin to tell him that there is a dead man in his office. I think people watching Love Hurts would presume that Raven is dead. Now, not only is he still alive, but starting a passionate romance with Ashley merely because she "gets" his poetry?

Love Hurts confuses quirky characters with character development. You have the hitman poet. You have the bickering hitmen. You have Sean Astin roaming around as Marvin's mentor Cliff. You even have a brief appearance from Drew Scott, one of the Property Brothers who gets his head blown off. Scott's character is Jeff Zacks, a rival realtor whom Marvin initially suspects of drawing Hitler mustaches on Marvin's ads. 

I figure Scott had a fun time being in a movie. I did not recognize Drew Scott in Jeff Zacks' ads as I have the vaguest idea of what the Property Brothers franchise is. I have never cared to know of or about the Scott twins or their home hijinks. His appearance here is thoroughly pointless, unless the point was to inflate Drew Scott's ego.

Similarly, Sean Astin is there for no real reason whatsoever save perhaps for an informal Goonies reunion. The film spends much time attempting to give the audience action pieces but never bothers to build that bond between Cliff and Marvin. As such, both the idea that Cliff and Marvin consider each other brothers and Cliff's rather gruesome, almost sadistic, death do not hit the way Love Hurts thinks that it would.

While Cliff's killing is awful, as is Jeff's, the true sadist is Rose, our presumed vixen and love interest. She cuts off the finger of Kippy (Rhys Darby), one of Merlo's partners, and later pulls some of his teeth, albeit accidentally when she takes the duct tape off. I want to say Quan tried to make Love Hurts work, attempting to balance the cheerful Marvin with the master assassin.

It did not work. The jumbled action sequences did not help, with them either attempting to slip into downright goofiness or in overhead shots that took you out of the film.

While my sense is that Quan made an effort to elevate Love Hurts, there was no such efforts from his fellow Oscar winner DeBose. Her efforts to play Rose in any way: funny, sexy, femme fatale or shrewd operator, all failed. I do not know if she even tried or tried too hard. It just came across as bad.

Gigandet has always been bad at acting, so Love Hurts is no different. It is odd that the best performance came from someone who billed himself in part as "Beastmode". Lynch, while not a serious actor, at least made Love Hurts tolerable to watch as he attempted to make King a comic villain. 

I do not know what 2025 will hold in terms of film. I do not know if we will have films that dwarf Love Hurts for awfulness. I think that despite it coming out in February, more than one person will have Love Hurts among their worst films of the year.

DECISION: F

Tom & Viv: A Review

TOM & VIV

I know that many people find poetry boring. I know that many people find T.S. Eliot incomprehensible. I now think that if any of those people end up watching Tom & Viv, they may find themselves justified in their opinions. Unbearably slow, unbearably boring, Tom & Viv plays to all the worst tropes of Oscar-bait biopics and maybe throws in a few new tropes just for fun.

American expatriate Thomas Eliot (Willem Dafoe) is an aspiring poet. This restrained young man is in love with outrageous free-spirit Vivienne Haigh-Wood (Miranda Richardson). Our English rose is also interested in this Yank, and to coin a phrase, they got married in a fever as they elope. Vivienne's family is displeased by this, but not strictly because the idea of elopement is tawdry to them. In truth, her brother Maurice (Tim Dutton) and her mother Rose (Rosemary Harris) are concerned for Vivienne's mental health.

As well they should be, for Viv is pretty much bonkers. She, based on the film, would have today been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but at the time was thought to have some physical ailment that has her act irrationally. Viv is very mercurial in her manner with Tom. Sometimes she is his fiercest champion, almost screaming at everyone including him that he is the greatest poet in all human history. Sometimes she is vicious towards him, such as pouring melted chocolate into his office's mailbox when his office won't let her in. Occasionally running to her sole friend Louise (Clare Holman) for comfort, Viv also attacks other friends like Virginia Woolf (Joanna McCallum). These are literal attacks, with Viv pulling a knife on Woolf and others in the street, insisting to them that she is not Mrs. Eliot.

Even after his conversion to Roman Catholicism, Tom finds life with Viv nearly impossible. Eventually, the family, albeit reluctantly, decides it is best to institutionalize Viv in an asylum. There, she lives out the rest of her life as T.S. Eliot's first wife, never divorcing but never seeing each other again.

Right from the get-go, one senses that Tom & Viv thought more highly of itself than the final product turned out to be. Debbie Wiseman's lush, grand score suggests a great tragic romance. Once we get past the elegant music and Martin Fuhrer's pretty cinematography, the audience is in for almost two hours of a snoozefest, a slow, boring and overacted film that tells us nothing about T.S. or Vivienne Eliot.

The fault for this disaster is shared between director Brian Gilbert and cowriter Michael Hastings, who adapted his own play and had Adrian Hodges cowrite the screenplay. Hastings and Hodges fail to translate what I presume worked on the stage (not having seen Tom & Viv live myself). So much seems confused and illogical. T.S. Eliot was American, so why does Willem Dafoe spout some vaguely British accent? Why are we not introduced to their mutual friend, Bertrand Russell (Nikolas Grace)? 

Worse, in the opening scene of Tom, Viv, Bertie and Maurice on a riverbank excursion, we get little idea as to whom these people are. It is a guess to figure out why Maurice, whom I do not remember mentioned that he is Vivienne's brother, is telling Russell that he is a virgin and wonders whether Tom and Viv are virgins themselves. In what is meant to be a horrifying scene near the end of the film, Viv pulls out her trusty knife and attacks Rose. Whatever jolt the audience may have at this moment is immediately undercut when it is realized that the knife was a rubber toy knife.

If Tom & Viv was suggesting that somehow Vivienne was aware that these were all pranks, it didn't work. Moreover, even if it a toy knife, lunging these things at people does not make things better. 

There is so much ACTING with a capital A in Tom & Viv that it soon becomes laughable. Both Miranda Richardson and Rosemary Harris received Oscar nominations in Lead and Supporting Actress respectively for Tom & Viv. Harris' nomination is somewhat defensible. She has a great moment near the end of the film, where she contemplates to Tom the difficulty of being a respected and respectable family forced to commit one of their own to a looney bin. OK, she would never have used the term "looney bin" as Rose is far too posh and British for such terminology. You get my point.

There is, however, no justification whatsoever for Miranda Richardson's nomination. Richardson DEVOURS the scenery with crazed, unhinged abandon. Her eyerolling and manic manner in Viv's manic phases made her look as if she were literally possessed by the ghost of Betty Boop. I think Betty Boop would have been more nuanced and restrained than Miranda Richardson was. As she attacked Woolf and her companion, one was not sure if Richardson was playing things straight or playing them for laughs. It was meant, I presume, to be shocking and dramatic. It ended up looking like spoof, as if Vivienne herself was playing a joke that only she was aware of. 

Frankly, I was embarrassed for Miranda Richardson while watching Tom & Viv. There have been bad Best Actress Oscar winners before, let alone bad Best Actress nominations. I think though that Miranda Richardson's failed Oscar bid should rank among the Ten Worst Best Actress Oscar Nominations of All Time.

Willem Dafoe did not get an acting nomination for Tom & Viv. All the better, for he was stilted, boring and lifeless in the role. To be fair, the screenplay did not help him. We do not know, for example, what motivated him to embrace Catholicism. We also do not know why Vivienne attempted to storm into Tom's baptism, how she knew about it, or why there was a priest at the locked door, ready to keep her out of the ceremony. Apart from Harris, everyone's efforts to ACT in Tom & Viv had the opposite result. In that opening scene, I genuinely wondered whether Dafoe, Richardson, Grace or Dutton even knew HOW to act.

Tom & Viv reveals nothing about the tortured romance of the literary giant and the woman who loved and exasperated him. Boring and slow, whether with a bang or a whimper, Tom & Viv is a film to avoid.

T.S. Eliot
1888-1965

Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot:
1888-1947

DECISION: F

The Age of Innocence (1993): A Review

THE AGE OF INNOCENCE (1993)

Sumptuous is the best way to describe the look of The Age of Innocence. However, there is more than just lavish sets and costuming within the confines of Martin Scorsese's film. The Age of Innocence is a character study of the Gilded Age, where formal manners can be as brutal as a gunshot.

Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) is a respected and respectable lawyer, engaged to the pretty, proper and equally respectable May Welland (Winona Ryder). In all ways these two very proper upper-class New Yorkers are ideal and ideally suited. 

The only hint of scandal comes from May's cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer). The countess is a shamed woman, having left her philandering Polish husband but not divorcing him. Countess Olenska is beautiful and bright and kind, but her shady past puts old money New York society at arm's length, outraging Newland's sense of right and wrong. 

He becomes Olenska's champion, much to May's delight, who is fond of her relative. Soon, however, the countess and the lawyer become drawn to each other. Though little suggests that there is anything other than a friendship between them, there are more than a few eyebrows raised. Their passion is denied by both, with Newland and May marrying. Yet, Newland and Ellen continue carrying a torch for the other, but will they ever be together?

The Age of Innocence is a tragedy of love. Underneath the Oscar-winning costumes and grand settings, The Age of Innocence delves deep into how society's mores can cause misery for individuals. Ellen, for example, is held to a different standard than either her husband or Julius Beaufort (Stuart Wilson). Beaufort is a serial womanizer, but his liaisons are tolerated in part because he and his wife Regina (Mary Beth Hurt) do not separate. In this world, divorce is a greater sin than adultery. We know that Ellen sparks more than Newland's loins. 

She is the opposite of the proper, quiet and very respectable May. That is not to say that Ellen is a wanton woman, going from man to man and, to use modern terms, having a high body count. She instead is her own woman, aware of her worth independent of a man. Why should she endure personal unhappiness to please strangers?

I found that the acting was a bit stylized. However, I found that in this case, the more mannered acting worked to capture this very formal world of elegance and propriety. There are many soft voices in The Age of Innocence, but again, that fits within the strictness of this society. 

I am not big on Daniel Day-Lewis, finding him at times to be yes, hammy. Here, I think the restraint that director and cowriter Martin Scorsese (adapting the Edith Wharton novel with Jay Cocks) got Day-Lewis to make lends the actor to give a better performance. Newland Archer would be more repressed even when expressing moral outrage at Ellen's treatment. Day-Lewis is matched by Pfieffer as the countess. She is as fiery and forceful as society allows her, maybe a bit more. 

It was Ryder who received an Oscar nomination for The Age of Innocence, and I think she played the part perfectly. May is outwardly demure, unaware, almost sweet. However, in her final scene where she tells Newland that she is pregnant and had told Ellen before she told him, we sense that perhaps she was aware of their emotional affair without saying so. Was she the naive girl both took her for? Was she instead a quietly vengeful one? The ambiguity is there for people to question.

While some roles were smaller, established actors like Geraldine Chaplin, Sian Philips, Richard E. Grant, Jonathan Pryce, Michael Gough, Norman Lloyd and Alexis Smith in her final film role made strong impressions. Out of the smaller roles, my standout was Miriam Margolyes as May and Ellen's grandmother, the cheerful grande dame Mrs. Mingott. This was also an early role for Sean Leonard Thomas, who plays the adult son of Newland and May. While I am not big on voiceovers, I thought the narration worked. It helps when you have a respected actress like Joanne Woodward be the voice guiding us through this world.

The Age of Innocence is very sumptuous in its production. Alongside its Oscar win for the costumes, the film also has a lush Elmer Bernstein score and grand production design, which were also Oscar-nominated. The film also has grand cinematography and excellent editing, particularly in the opening opera scene as the characters spy on others through their opera glasses.

Lush, grand, but with a deep heart within it, The Age of Innocence is a showcase for everyone involved in front and behind the camera.  

DECISION: A+

Anora: A Review (Review #1932)

 

ANORA

I have found that there is a vast difference between love and sex. People oftentimes have sex with people that they are not in love with, as lovemaking requires putting the other's pleasure ahead of their own. Anora has plenty of sex but no love within it. I find the love for Anora rather puzzling as I did not laugh at the comedy nor feel touched by the drama. 

Anora, who prefers going by Ani (Mickey Madison) is a brash New York sex worker. Owing to her comprehension of, if not fluency in Russian, she is tasked in entertaining Ivan "Vanya" Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn), scion of a wealthy Russian oligarch. Vanya, who loves booze and broads, enjoys the many sexual encounters he has win Ani. Ani, in return, enjoys seeing how the other half lives. Soon, both are whisked into worlds of fantasy: Ani with the luxurious life, Vanya with his good-time girl. 

Agreeing to stay a week for $15,000, there is more sex and then more partying in Las Vegas. Here, Ivan, to obtain a way to avoid going back to Mother Russia, asks Anora to marry him in a quickie wedding. Ani may or may not believe that Ivan is truly in love with her, but she agrees anyway. 

The news of Ivan and Anora's marriage is met with shock, horror and anger once news reaches his parents. They tell Ivan's minder and henchman Toros (Karren Karagulian) to get Ivan and annul the marriage by the time they fly in from Russia. In total panic, Toros gets two other henchmen: Igor (Yura Borisov) and Garnick (Vashe Tovmasyan) to get Ivan and the new Mrs. Zakharov to agree to an annulment. Easier said than done, for Ivan manages to run away while Anora manages to beat Garnick and Igor up until she is finally subdued. 

Toros begs Anora to accept the $10,000 she is offered to have the annulment, but she refuses. However, she agrees to roam the streets of New York in order to find Ivan. Eventually, he is located, completely sloshed out of his mind and being the wastrel that he always was. Once fierce mother Galina Stepanova (Darya Ekamasova) and more placid but irritated father Nikolai (Aleksey Serebryakov) arrive, they find more complications on the road to annulling this marriage. Will Ivan prove himself a man or a man-child? Will Anora get anything close to a happy ending to her fairy tale?

I know many people who absolutely love Anora, the movie not the hooker. Anora herself would argue that she is not a prostitute, and in a way, she is correct in that she is not a streetwalker. She does agree to exchange sex for money, so I would argue that she is a prostitute, but I digress. I watched Anora stone-faced, not laughing at what I understand is a comedy, not moved by any drama, and thoroughly puzzled on why it has such passionate fans.

I think it is because, for all the originality that writer/director Sean Baker has been lauded for here, I did not think this Eurotrash reworking of Pretty Woman was original or moving. I suppose that when Garnick and Igor are forced to hold Anora down, the entire scene was meant to be funny as this tiny woman manages to beat up these Russian goons. For me though, I thought Garnick and Igor were too gentle with her. I would have tied up Anora pretty quickly as she was totally out of control. If not for the fact that Anora is a Best Picture nominee, I would have probably walked out of the film when Ivan ran off and Anora is held prisoner, having lost all interest and horrified that I still had well over an hour if not more to go in this two hour and fifteen-minute film. 

To my mind, the comedy in Anora felt forced. I suppose that the rampage at Ivan's crib was meant to be funny, but I didn't laugh. Similarly, I never thought these two were anywhere near in love with each other. Anora may have been, or she may have been in love with the wealthy, decadent world that Ivan lived in. Ivan, for his part, is someone that I figured would be a poor match for anyone, even someone like Anora, no sweetheart herself.

Not once did I believe that Anora was anywhere near in genuine love with Ivan. Not once did I believe that Ivan would stand up to his parents. Not once did I believe any of this. Worse, I did not like any of these people save for Igor, who is remarkably calm, quiet and polite throughout. 

One of the issues that I had with Anora is its length. So much time is spent early on in showing Ivan's debauched world and the seemingly endless and graphic sex that I wondered if we could not have gotten to the Vegas wedding faster. I do not think that we needed that long New Year's Eve party or that long lost Vegas weekend. Come to think of it, I think the long search for Ivan in the New York underbelly could have been shorter too. Even after Anora finally agrees to the annulment, I wondered when will this movie end. 

I cannot fault the performances, which were, I concede, good. Mickey Madison in her breakout role gets that Brooklyn accent well. Her Anora is vulgar, trashy and pretty strong to face off against even such bullies as Galina. Anora is a tough cookie, making her final scene work, in retrospect, better than perhaps I initially thought. Eydelshtein also did well as Ivan, the wastrel and immature man-child to whom video games and sexual encounters are basically interchangeable.

Though his role was smaller, Borisov lets Igor's generally quiet manner speak more than the hysterics of others. He has a wonderful bit of monologue where he talks to Anora on her last night at the Zakharov mansion, mentioning that he would not have hurt her. He also, again in a quiet manner, suggests quietly but firmly in front of everyone that Ivan apologize to Anora for all the trouble that he caused her. Never forceful, Borisov makes Igor a surprisingly complex henchman.

Again, I thought well of the performances after having some time to think on the film. However, I never found Anora funny, insightful or interesting. I thought it was longer than it should have been. Anora is not without its merits in terms of acting, but Anora is just not the girl for me.

DECISION: D+

Basmati Blues: A Review (Review#1931)

BASMATI BLUES

I know, for good or ill, many people dislike Brie Larson. They do not see a competent, even Oscar winning actress. They see a smug scold or insincere elitist. I cannot muster any hatred towards Larson, however, even in something as fluffy and inconsequential as Basmati Blues. One thinks that its heart is in the right place. Its execution, however, leaves much to be desired. 

American scientist Linda Watt (Brie Larson), along with her father Eric (Scott Bakula) has created Rice Nine, a genetically modified rice that is resistant to pests and drought. The Mogil Corporation needs a representative to sell Rice Nine to the Indian market. The Mogil mogul Mr. Gurgon (Donald Sutherland) decides that perky, naive Linda is the perfect saleslady.

It is off to India, where Linda finds herself in conflict with struggling and poor student Rajit (Utkarsh Ambudkar) who is also well versed in rice production. She does have help from William (Saahil Sehgal), a young Agricultural Ministry official who wants to also get Rice Nine into the Indian market. Linda does her best to blend with the Indian community, but she still stumbles through things. An unofficial competition between Linda and Rajit to win the hearts, minds and contracts of their competing rice and stink weed to see which is better.

Linda now has to fight her attractions to both William and Rajit. The former is wealthy and lured by Gurgon and his aide Evelyn (Tyne Daly) to push for Rice Nine even if the contracts would tie farmers to buy the rice every year and hand their land over to Mogil. Will Linda, who eventually learns of the deception, rise to save the day? Whom will she choose as her love interest?

I figure that the second question is easy to answer since this is a movie where the expression "opposites attract" seems to describe its romance. I found a bit of a shame given that I thought William was a better fit for Linda than Rajit. Put aside how I think Sehgal is better-looking than Ambudkar. William was from an equivalent socioeconomic background, did have a change of heart at the end where he helped thwart Mogil's evil schemes and was more apt to listen to Linda than Rajit, who starts out with contempt for her.

I found Basmati Blues had its heart in the right place. It just did not have good execution. I was surprised to learn that Basmati Blues was an attempt at a Bollywood type musical. Having seen Bollywood and Tollywood musicals, Basmati Blues was nowhere near as big and enthusiastic as the Indian films that I have come across. It is more like a standard Western musical, where characters attempt to express emotions through song.

Not that the songs were particularly good or memorable. The opening song, All Signs Point to Yes, almost startles the viewer because there is nothing to indicate that Basmati Blues is a musical. If one does remember the musical numbers, it is for the wrong reasons. Linda, Rajit and William have an odd love trio in Love Don't Knock at My Door where each of them sings about their conflicting emotions. I found it a bit strange.

Perhaps the oddest moment is when Donald Sutherland himself breaks out into a song-and-dance with The Greater Good, where he and Daly seduce William into seeing things their way. I do not think that even Donald Sutherland thought he was ever going to be King of Broadway Showtunes. He mostly talks on pitch, which makes his number with experienced singer Tyne Daly all the odder. To be fair, The Greater Good is deliberately over-the-top and cartoonish, so we can cut it some slack.

If the songs in this musical are not awful but not great, what about the acting? Well, it is serviceable. Larson is pleasant enough as the mostly cheerful and focused Linda. Ambudkar is appropriately flustered and irritated as Rajit, who knows that he is right but cannot prove it. Sehgal is equally appropriate at William, who is supposed to be a bad guy but is actually quite pleasant. 

As a side note, exactly why this Indian man has this very English name Basmati Blues never bothers to ask. 

Both Daly and Bakula are on screen so briefly that they seem almost wasted. Daly acts as if she is fully aware that Basmati Blues is meant to be silly, so she does not bother to try to be anything other than a broad villain. How can one sum up seeing Tyne Daly and Donald Sutherland break out into their own reworked version of This Train (is Bound for Glory) as they attempt to ride off with their massive sacks of Rice Nine? 

Basmati Blues does try to be amusing, if not clever or original. I cannot find it in my heart to truly hate on it. The film is not the worst thing that I have seen. I found it well-meaning but not good. 

DECISION: D+

Nickel Boys: A Review (Review #1930)

 

NICKEL BOYS

Nickel Boys has a fascinating subject that uses a unique and rarely used cinematic method to tell its story. In a curious twist, the concept that most people praise Nickel Boys for left me cold and removed from the characters rather than inviting me in.

In segregated Florida, young Elwood Curtis is becoming active in the growing Civil Rights movement. He also has a supportive Nana Hattie (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) who is part of a group that encourages him to go to the Melvin Griggs Technical School where he could advance. On his way to the technical school, he accepts a ride from someone who stole the car. Elwood is arrested as an accessory.

He is sent to the Nickel Academy, a reformatory school where he will ride out his sentence. Nickel is segregated, where the white pupils get nicer accommodations and a chance to play football while the black pupils are de facto slaves in this orange plantation.

Here, Elwood (Ethan Herisse) bonds with Turner (Brandon Wilson), a fellow Nickel detainee whoEvewants to finish out his time and move on. As Elwood and Turner continue serving their time, they see how the Nickel administration favors the white students, down to telling a fellow black inmate to throw a boxing match in favor of the white boxer. Elwood wants to expose the abuses at Nickel to inspectors, but it is Turner who manages to get the info to the inspectors. That only causes the Nickel Academy to target Elwood. That requires an escape, where not everyone will survive. 

Now the mantel will have to be taken up by someone else to eventually, decades later, reveal the mass graves and abuses at Nickel Academy. It will be time for a reckoning.

The twist that Nickel Boys has is that director RaMell Ross (who cowrote the screenplay with Joslyn Barnes from the Colson Whitehead novel) uses a first-person point of view where we see the events from sometimes Elwood's perspective and sometimes from Turner's perspective. The notion behind this cinematic venture is to put you in the character's shoes. 

I can think, off the top of my head, only one other film that did this first-person POV: the Robert Montgomery film Lady in the Lake. As I have not seen Lady in the Lake, I cannot say how well or poor the effort work. Here, the first-person POV had the opposite effect that I think Nickel Boys intended. For myself, rather than place me in either Elwood or Turner's world, I found myself more removed and separated from them than had Nickel Boys adopted a more traditional manner.

I think it is because somewhere in the middle of the film, we shift from Elwood's POV to Turner's. That shift is indicated by how the film repeats the scene from Turner's perspective after we saw it from Elwood's. Once we got that switch, Nickel Boys goes between them, rarely allowing us to see from both of them simultaneously. I get that this was the intention. For me, it ended up looking like a cold, aloof gimmick.

I could not connect with either Elwood or Turner. I found Nickel Boys to have a certain coldness, distance even. This comes from how in what would be the present or non-Nickel Academy scenes are shot. We do not get in these scenes a direct POV from Elwood/Turner but with the back of the character's head visible. Try as the film might, I just felt so removed from them that I was never invested in the story.

This aloofness extended to almost all the performances. I think that because we had the actors look directly at the camera when speaking to us or to other characters, it felt again like a gimmick. Even in moments that would call for more gripping drama, such as when Elwood finds himself in a hot car, everyone seems to be surprisingly slow and calm, almost catatonic. The stateliness made the film feel longer than its already long two-hour-twenty-minute runtime.

Another issue that I found was how the film would sometimes jump to what would be the future. We get bits of Elwood's future as a moving company president. We meet a fellow former inmate at somewhere in what I think was the 1970s, but I don't think anyone knew who he was. The impact is lost because we are so cocooned with just Elwood and Turner. There is a minor character whom we are told is half-Mexican, so the poor kid gets shifted between the black and white sections, with Nickel Academy leaders unsure where to place him. I was more curious about his story than on Elwood and Turner. 

It is a shame that Nickel Boys, despite its best intentions, failed to take me into this world. The abuses that the Nickel Academy detainees, down to the mass graves, is like the film itself to me: at arm's distance, unwelcoming. I never felt part of or invested in these Nickel Boys. For me, that was a wasted opportunity.  

DECISION: D+