To look at the 13-year-old Appachey is to think the worst about him. He’s a sullen, pudgy kid with an attitude toward his mom and perhaps a vendetta toward life as he aimlessly breaks ice in an abandoned lot. Even his name, a misspelled pronunciation of a Native American tribe, just makes you wonder about this kid and his family. When we first meet him in the documentary “Rich Hill,” we see him light a cigarette in an oddly placed toaster in the middle of his house’s foyer. Then he explains how his father walked out on him when he was 6 and never came back.
“We’re not trash,” says Andrew, another boy from the small town of Rich Hill, Missouri. “We’re good people.” They’re good people, but they don’t have good lives, and it affects them in ways that can make it hard to find the good in them. In the documentary “Rich Hill” by Andrew Droz Palermo and Tracy Droz Tragos, the idyllic, romantic view of Real America is replaced by a tough community and lifestyle where the three kids at its center grow up quick. It’s a highly perceptive and observant, albeit dreary look at adolescence in the Midwest.
Rich Hill, MO is a rural town near the border of Kansas. A sign informs that the population is just 1,396. They have bake sales, 4th of July celebrations, and a high school football team, but there’s really nothing here for these kids. Continue reading “Rich Hill”
The salt of the Earth genius of David Mackenzie’s “Hell or High Water” is that it takes this Robin Hood story of justice for the working family over the bankers and the system and makes it purely Texas. Taylor Sheridan’s screenplay (“Sicario”) sees debt billboards mocking our heroes from every highway and has political, financial commentary carefully weaved in among heist dialogue, brotherly joshing and casually offensive and racist quips. It’s so steeped in Southern values and is one of the most richly American movies of the year.
In the press, Anthony Weiner’s real failing was not just being the butt of a sex scandal or an obviously smutty pun, but for a failure of trust. He had gotten caught sending sexually explicit photos to other women, resigned from Congress, apologized, and then got caught again. Lawrence O’Donnell asked him flat out on MSNBC, “What’s wrong with you?” He had shown repeated acts of poor judgment, and his combative presence in the media and with the public belied that of a man who could not control himself.
Ricky Baker is a bad egg. That’s the way his Child Services agent Paula describes him. He burns stuff, steals stuff, kicks stuff. And that little line says a lot about just how little the world actually thinks of him. He’s a big kid, round and pudgy with dark skin, yet wearing a big red hat underneath an even more oversized white hoodie covered in decals of diamonds and Illuminati pyramids. If all you think of Ricky is that he’s a bad egg, then you won’t see the quirky personality this outfit alone suggests; you’ll just see a punk kid and wannabe gangster destined for nothing.
“Don’t Think Twice” may be a little too real. It’s a movie about 30-somethings coming to grips with failing to meet their dreams and ambitions, which, for a 20-something still harboring those dreams, doesn’t exactly sit well. Comedian Mike Birbiglia’s sophomore film will ring true for any artist/creative type who has tried to cut it in New York or LA, even though the improv comedy troupe it depicts is a very specific personality.
If “Suicide Squad” is supposed to be fun, kill me now. It’s as much of a mess as “
The first Jason Bourne movie came out in 2002, with star Matt Damon still a fairly young man of his early ‘30s. 14 years and a James Bond revival later, it’d be easy to forget how strong that original franchise was. And if you figure that about just as much time has passed in the movie’s timeline since the end of “The Bourne Ultimatum,” you’d think the CIA might’ve all but forgotten about Bourne as well.
Kristen Stewart is only 26, but she feels as though she could’ve been in Woody Allen’s movies since the ‘70s. The camera loves her face, her hair, and the way she dresses. Stewart was one of the biggest movie stars on the planet following “Twilight,” and in “Café Society,” a movie that’s all about how culture and class changes and effects people, Allen sees her as authentic.
I raised an eyebrow when critics were declaring that with “Zootopia,” Disney had made a triumph of a film tackling racial biases. This is a movie about talking animals after all. But whereas “racial” may not be the right word, it addresses very clearly what it is to be prejudiced, to assume the worst about a person based on their upbringing, their skin or their biology.
Making friends and keeping them can be hard enough as it is. For Jake and Tony, two 13-year-olds living in Brooklyn, they have to contend with issues of class, of family feuds and of distance, all in one of their most volatile periods of growing up. Through understated performances by both of these boys, Ira Sachs’s “Little Men,” touchingly shows how with some love and maturity even the most strained of bonds can endure.