Rebels on Pointe

First Hit: A delightful and insightful film to the wonderfully joyful Les Ballet Trockadero de Monte Carlo dance company.

This film dives into this all male ballet dance company in a way that brings laughter, joy, sorrow and a deep human connection to the audience.

The dancers are an eclectic group from all over the world and their stories are similar: They didn’t fit well in their personal social situations and they love to dance. And dance they can. These men are extremely skillful dancers and by doing both the female and male roles of the ballets they dance, they bring an athleticism to the parts that are both different and wonderful.

To add to the engagement for themselves and the audiences, they augment their dances with a whimsical sassy comedic bent that is both physically and choreographically challenging.

This company has been together for more than forty years and it performs all over the world. Being gay, the dancers have struggled through the AIDS epidemic as well as enjoyed marriages between the dancers. This juxtaposition of how society has learned to embrace them is also visible by the number of children that come to see their performances. In the early years, parents did not bring their children because the gay dancers were not accepted by society, today lots of children come see them.

The film follows a few dancers more closely than others although my impression is that these dancers represented the group quite well. The current director use to dance with the company and his partner, also a dancer with the company, died from AIDS related causes. Additionally, the film follows them on tour to a few of the cities they regularly perform in and not surprisingly, they are a huge hit in Japan.

Bobbie Jo Hart wrote and directed this film with a lot of heart. The intimacy that is shared with the camera shows how well he embraced this subject.

Overall:  One of the most delightful and heart based films I’ve seen all year.

Horn from the Heart: The Paul Butterfield Story

First Hit: Outstanding film of an enigmatic man who played the best mouth harp ever.

I recall seeing Paul Butterfield in 1969 at Fillmore West prior to my heading into the service. What an experience. It was like a cheetah making its final pounce into the meat that will keep him alive.

“Butter”, as the interviewed Elvin Bishop called him, attacked and coerced sounds and music out of the 6-inch instrument that sounded as if it came from another world. This film excellently captured the man and his path of becoming the best harp player ever.

The film tracks through his life as a musician. This wasn’t surprising, however, what was surprising was that by the film’s end, I realized I learned very little about the man himself. What drove him to be the best harp player ever.

Yes, the film briefly touches on his abrupt and short first marriage to Virginia McEwan and that they had a child named Gabriel. She offered to marry him to keep him from being drafted because the Vietnam war was ramping up.

We also meet the love of his life Kathy, with whom he had a son named Lee. Even though this film dedicates numerous minutes to interviews with Kathy, Lee, and his brother Peter what I learned is that he loved his wife and child, they loved him and he and his brother were once close, not much more. Paul was an enigma a stranger to those around him except when he blew.

His playing was concise, strong, clear, and very intense. It was if he was the sound he made, no more and certainly no less.

I loved how they tracked through his beginnings as the only white guy in a black blues club in the South Side of Chicago, getting asked to sit in by Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters. When he blew, everyone knew he was powerfully pure. He blew and sang from his entire body and soul. It wasn’t long before he became the featured performer in these small Hyde Park blues clubs.

Creating a band of his own, two of Howlin’ Wolf’s rhythm players bassist Jerome Arnold and drummer Sam Lay, joined him along with guitarist Nick Gravenits, and eventually guitarists Elvin Bishop, Michael Bloomfield, and keyboard player Mark Naftalin. The lineup of the band fluctuated as people came and left. One this is for sure, his sound brought the blues into the mainstream ears of young people everywhere.

A couple things to note, he was probably the first rock and roll blues band to be integrated and he told drummer, when they started touring, if they don’t accept you, we won’t be playing. He never understood racism or segregation.

This film uses a ton of archival footage of “Butter” playing his heart out. One thing I noticed as he played, that he played the harmonica backwards from the standard way. High notes were on his left and low notes on his right. He was left handed. The music choices in this film are excellent as they show off his versatility.

The interviews were well done and intermixed really well with the archival footage. I was so surprised and happy to see shots of the “Golden Bear” nightclub, where I grew up, in Huntington beach as this club was closed and destroyed in 1986 but Paul’s band played there.

Sandra Warren produced and John Anderson co-produced and directed this film. It was outstanding and the audience can see the care and love they put into this effort.

Overall: A wonderful experience in learning about an amazing musician.

Stronger

First Hit:  I was very surprised at how much I like this film, it had heart.

Jake Gyllenhaal is one of my favorite actors. I can tell he puts in a lot of work to each role to make it real for him and the audience. Here as Jeff Bauman, the young man who lost both legs in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, Jake does Jeff proud. He shows Jeff’s humanity and the cycle of up and downs that he had to go through after the event.

Jeff and his family are true blue collar Boston loving people. Jeff works at Costco (a shout out to them for their unending support of Jeff) and, as most Boston people do, loves his Red Sox. He spends a fair amount of his off time in bars with his buddies and family.

The one early scene when he tells his drunk mother, Patty (Miranda Richardson), to F#%& off in the bar is indicative of the family’s love and bickering with each other. His father Big Jeff (Clancy Brown) is a self-proclaimed know it all but doesn’t always know very much. His attempts to control situations was evident in the hospital waiting room.

The family dynamics are perfectly matched with Jeff’s inability to grow up. It is exemplified in his off and on relationship with his girlfriend, Erin Hurley (Tatianna Maslany), whom has just broken up with him again. He loves her and you can tell she loves him but she tires of his childish behavior and for not showing up to events with and for her. To convince her he needs another chance, he tells her he’s going to be at the finish line of the Boston Marathon with a sign he’s going to paint for her. And as we all know, that isn’t where you wanted to be that day.

This film then moves through Jeff’s struggle to deal with the event, losing his legs, and how is he going to be someone in the world. Erin commits to him, but Jeff does his usual flaking out and finally, after she tells him she’s pregnant with his child and he says he cannot be a part of this, she leaves for good.

Avoiding his internal bombing traumatic issues, he finally meets up with and talks with the man who saved him from death by putting tourniquets on above his knees to keep him from bleeding to death. After Carlos (Carlos Sanz) tells him his story, Jeff gets real and starts to take charge of his life.

It is a sweet, heartfelt story. The in-hospital scenes and staff were real. By using these hospital staff and a hospital, it felt solid and true to the story. The visuals of showing Gyllenhaal without legs was extremely well done. The film felt real through many of the scenes.

Gyllenhaal was amazing. When the doctor is taking off the bandages and dressings for the first time in the hospital, I felt his pain all the way to my seat in the theater. Excellent work. Maslany was amazing. Her ability to share so many feelings of love and doubts with her eyes and mouth were spot on. Great work. Richardson had me totally believing she was an alcoholic self-serving mess. She gave a very strong performance. Sanz was sublime. The way he told the story of his two sons to Jeff was ethereal. Brown was perfect as Jeff’s father. Proud, boisterous and overly confident of his ability to process and manage situations. John Pollono wrote a wonderfully expressive screenplay. David Gordon Green caught the magic of the story and brought it to life by guiding his great actors through the feeling vision.

Overall:  Far better film that I’d thought it would be. I love being surprised.

An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power

First Hit:  Powerful sequel about the environmental demise of our planet.

Ten years ago, Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” was a powerful statement about what is happening to our planet. This follow-up film states this truth more clearly, emphatically, and provides additional data that our planet is suffering from global warming.

It also shows what many are doing to fight this battle. From the Paris Accord, to what other countries and cities are doing on their own. The film also shows how our new President said, in so many words, he doesn’t care about the planet. One example is that he feeds his immediate ego by being a savior to the coal industry. The problem is saving this industry supports killing our planet sooner. It is sad that money becomes the common denominator by which things do or don’t change. What about changing because it's the right thing to do.

Al Gore makes this point many times over and by using his intelligence and negotiation skills, he shows how to balance economics and solving the global warming problem. Fixing the global warming problem can be economically good.

The evidence is clear. When I read about these overt and obvious changes in our environment in the daily newspaper, I am no longer shocked about the stories of flooding, fires, drought, and rising sea levels (take heed Miami). Our planet is in trouble and we don’t do something about it, my grandchildren may not be able to have children, because there won’t be a planet to raise them on.

Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk co-directed this powerful, poignant, and persuasive film. Al Gore was very engaging because he is fully engaged.

Overall:  This film is a strong warning to all of us.

City of Ghosts

First Hit:  A film that can teach the west about Raqqa, it's people and Syria’s fight against ISIS (Daesh).

What we hear about Daesh and their takeover of Raqqa, we learn from our press. Often it isn't quite right, but there is a group that is giving the world a view of what is really going on.

The citizens of Raqqa, an ancient city on the Euphrates River, took to Arab Spring, rallied against Syria’s oppressive President Bashar al-Assad and tore down his statue while declaring their freedom. However, this revolution left an opening for a strong leader to come in and create a new movement that promised a better life. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Aka: "ISIL", "ISIS" and "Daesh") under Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s leadership started controlling Raqqa’s citizens with an Islamic iron fist. The life he promised the citizens failed to manifest.

He controlled the citizens by beheadings, shootings, and starving the citizens Raqqa in mass. This control came swift and hard and took the citizens by surprise. In retaliation, a group was formed called Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently (http://www.raqqa-sl.com/en/). This group, a small handful of anonymous activists, came together to provide information about the cruelty of Daesh to the outside world by leveraging Facebook and other social media. Posting video, still pictures and commentary on the way Daesh is controlling the city via  their cruelty, this group is informing the world.

This film is about those anonymous activists. Although not so anonymous any longer we follow their escape from Syria to Turkey and Germany while their friends and family are being tortured and killed back home. This is a film of bravery and sadness. It is a film about love of country and the struggle for life.

Matthew Heineman superbly directed this story by putting together powerful pieces of video smuggled out of Syria and interviews. The long scenes of watching these activists staring at their screens waiting for the next piece of information to come from home were pointedly powerful. Revolution doesn’t always happen in a moment. but when a moment happens, they review it, edit it, and post it quickly.

Overall:  There are scenes in this film that are difficult and sad to watch, but it through these scenes we gain a needed understanding of this fight.