Boys of Summer

Directed by Keith Aumont

United States (2010)

 

When you think of Caribbean baseball, you think of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. But what about Curaçao?

With the Little League World Series (LLWS) of baseball about to start in just a few weeks, Boys of Summer is a great chance to catch the behind-the-scenes of a team representing Curaçao, a small Caribbean nation with a population under 200,000. There are many sports stories that make better non-fiction pieces than they do fictional ones, and this documentary falls under that category. Being a fan of ESPN's 30 for 30 series and baseball, this is a unique story of competition, not from today's biggest stars, but tomorrow's.

Boys of Summer follows the 2008 LLWS team on their journey become world champions. The film takes the audience through the players & manager's profiles and their training schedule, their journey through the Caribbean Games, and all the way to the LLWS. As you follow their journey, you learn about what it has taken to get Curaçao into 7 consecutive LLWS tournaments (at the time of this film) and the team who, at the end of the day, is just a group of smiling kids with major league dreams.

This Tribeca Film Festival entry is a great take on what it takes to be an athlete, even from the age of eight. I would have liked to have seen more of a profile of Curaçao and why the director Keith Aumont specifically chose Curaçao. But I imagine that it has something to do with the exceptional baseball interest this island has, and the fact that it has sent some of its players to the major league, including 10-time Golden Glove winner Andruw Jones, who showed exceptional skill in the outfield during his baseball career.

And if I haven't convinced you to watch this movie now because not only are there subtitles, but it is a film about baseball, I suggest watching it in 10 years to see which of these kids featured in the film actually are playing on the San Francisco Giants or the Atlanta Braves (just as long as none of them become Yankees).

[Not] For Your Consideration... Güeros

The goal of this blog is to point you in the right direction when it comes to watching foreign language films, so I was torn on reviewing this one. But I decided that in order to know what to watch, you also need to know what not to watch, and this 2014 independent Mexican film, Güeros, should be on that list for casual film fans, despite the fact it was nominated for 13 Ariel Awards (the Mexican equivalent to the Academy Awards) and won several other awards too. I was expecting a fun, attention-grabbing story showing life in Mexico City, but instead found a convoluted story that never tied up any of its loose ends.

Here's a quick recap of the plot: Güeros primarily follows the life of two Mexican college students and one of their younger brothers. The younger brother, Tomás, gets into trouble at home for some childhood antics and is sent off to live with his brother. The movie opens up to a great start, offering a glimpse of college life in Mexico City. Sombra, Tomás’ brother, and Santos live just like any two other typical college students; dirty dishes piled in the sink, beer bottles all over the place, eating as cheaply as they can, but also “borrowing” electricity from their neighbors downstairs and trying to get by as their university is shut down by protests. Growing up, Tomás & Sombra listened to a folk artist named Epigmenio Cruz and see that he is in the hospital, so they decide to try and find him to pay their respects. He is not there, but a nurse gives the boys his wallet, so they go on a quest to try and find Epigmenio.

This film is set up to be a great, comedic portrait of Mexico City, but falls flat. As the three guys drive around Mexico City, you forget what their purpose in doing so was in the first place. It’s not because they are doing anything extremely entertaining, but it seems the script just forgot about its own goal. The film is also self-indulgent at some points; there is one scene in particular where one of the director’s friends makes a cameo in the car. You can see the clapper board or slate (that is famously used before the director calls “action”), and the character reminds you that you are watching a movie by talking about the quality of the movie’s script. Writing the summary above was difficult because the movie isn’t really about anything. As a viewer, there is no character development, and there is no clarity to who the main characters are or what purposes they have, or how they grow through the process of the film. They are just kind of, well, there. A fourth character, Ana, comes and goes, and the film shifts its attention to her and Sombra’s relationship, but forgets about Tomás and even more so about Santos.   

After the film, director/writer Alonso Ruizpalacios said this film was 33 years in the making and the tale reflects the French New Wave, showing the influence of road films and 70s Mexican films. When asked, Ruizpalacios said the film was about friendship and the playfulness that is involved when making a film, evident by the fact that the cast and crew are close friends of his. He also mentioned the use of intentional anachronisms in the movie, not restricting the film to any one time period. However, most of these anachronisms only applied to people familiar with Mexican culture, and doesn’t translate so well for viewers unfamiliar with Mexican film and culture.

Ruizpalacios says, "I think some film makers want to secretly go d'arte someday." Well, he definitely did that in a way that makes this highly-acclaimed film not so entertainment friendly. If you want to see some great camera shots and the grittier side of Mexico City, feel free to check it out, but there are very many other films out there that do this much more effectively while clearly telling a story at the same time.

Wednesday 04:45

Directed by Alexis Alexiou

Greece, Germany, Israel (2015)

I got a chance to catch the film, Wednesday 04:45 at the 2015 TriBeCa Film Festival, the site of its world premiere, as well as a talk back session with director Alexis Alexiou and actor Stelios Mainas who plays the character, Stelios, in the movie. The film, a Eurimages-sponsored coproduction, was written in 2010 and inspired by the downhill movement due to the financial crisis in Greece & Europe. Alexiou says... "[The film] is sort of like an allegory to what happened. Everything went downhill... What happened in Greece really was a crash and you can see it in the film." Except the film doesn't take place in the banks or on a stock exchange, but rather in the Greek streets and suburbs where you borrow your money from the wrong people.

Stelios has a failing marriage and kids to take care of, but he is focused on his jazz club more so than anything else. Stelios is in much debt to a Romanian gangster and is told to pay back the money by Wednesday (and I bet you can guess the time). Stelios tries to bargain with the Romanian because so many other people are in debt to him. But the Romanian says that Stelios can't pay off his debt with other people's debt. Stelios gets mixed up in a series of favors and watches his life pass and death appear before his eyes due to his actions, but with every glimpse, there is the smallest ounce of hope that everything will be okay.

"[Even] if we have done everything and we fail, at least something better might happen afterwards. Maybe not now but for generations to come," says Alexiou, reflecting upon the hope found in the film and reflecting on the Greek political-financial situation. With the financial situation and conversation of the Grexit happening right now, a potential Greek exit from the currency-based Euro zone, you can see how this film reflects the social conscious. Germany, also one of the main financial supporters of the film, is also one of the strongest economies in the Euro zone, showing the special relationship that this movie has compared to the greater European, and global, scale.

Besides the historical and political context, this movie is full of great cinematography and one of the scenes looks like it belongs in a less stylized version of a Quentin Tarantino movie. Instead of drawing out the timeline, this movie crunches it together, showing the evolution of Stelios' character and if he can gather his debts. For an insightful, independent movie filled with some criminal action and dealings, this is a great movie to check out.

For Your Consideration... Ida

Last month, the Polish co-production (also produced by Denmark, France, and the UK, with support from the Council of Europe film fund, Eurimages) Ida, directed by Paweł Pawlikowski, took home the 2015 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film at the 87^th Academy Awards. Ida beat out one of the favorites, Russia’s Levithian, as well as Mali’s first and only Oscar nominee to date, Timbuktu.

Ida is a very artistic film, reminiscent of the style of many European films from the 1960s (as the movie is set in the same time period). Instead of showing a scene in a straight-forward frame, this movie uses extremely daring camera angles…many scenes are crooked, characters are not centered and their faces and bodies are awkwardly cut off in many frames, and settings, such as staircases, take the camera’s focus away from what is actually happening. If you are looking for very artsy direction, this is probably the film for you. It’s also in black & white, adding an extra ounce of avant garde in case you needed more. However, I will say that the black & white helps set the mood for the
                                                             drab and depressing tone of post-WWII Poland.

 

Apart from the visual aspect, Ida tells the story of Ida, a young woman who is preparing to become a nun. Before she takes her final vows, she is told that she should learn about her roots first. Ida and her only surviving relative, her aunt, a communist judge, go on a journey to rediscover a haunting past and what unknowingly led Ida to become part of the Catholic Church in the first place.

One of the artistic liberties Ida takes with a staircase.

Ida touches on many post-war European values and experiences, most of the reason why I believe this film got so much acclaim. Living in the Polish People’s Republic, a satellite to the Soviet Union, not even twenty years after the end of World War II, Ida loses her past, as she never had the opportunity to learn about it, amidst all the violence and displacement. As a viewer, you can feel the sorrow that exists in these characters’ worlds and you get to experience what they are learning about themselves for the first time. Ida meets people from with complicated pasts and blurry futures as she is discovering her own past and trying to reconcile her future.

If You Like "The Crucible", You Will Love...

The Hunt – Denmark & Sweden (2012)

The Hunt represented Denmark at both the 2014 Academy Awards & 2014 Golden Globe in the Best Foreign Language Film category. Lucas, played by Mads Mikkelsen (seen in Casino Royale), is a kindergarten teacher in a small Danish town. While waiting to be picked up after school one day, one of the children says some very damning things about Lucas. In a small town, news travels fast, and before Lucas knows it, all those close to him shun him. Lucas is faced with day-to-day ridicule in a situation that he seems to be stuck in permanently.


Directed by Thomas Vinterberg, this film does an amazing job at exposing Lucas' inner turmoil on screen. As the Star Tribune puts it, "It’s a contemporary horror story about a respected man’s descent into a Kafkaesque nightmare of denunciations, dread and danger." The Hunt also features some great cinematography in the Danish film tradition and is something that shouldn't be missed. 

Joyeux Noël

Directed by Christian Carion

France, Germany, United Kingdom, Belgium & Romania (2005)

Premiering at the Cannes Film Festival, Joyeux Noël was nominated for rewards at several major film industry competitions, such as the Academy Awards & Golden Globes of the United States, the British BAFTA Awards, and the French César Awards. The film is a European co-production based upon the true story of the Christmas truce that took place during World War I. 

From 1914 to 1918, the Great War was raging on in Europe, which saw many casualties and a change in how war was fought. In the early 1900s, nations were eager to go to war with their new technologies and assumed that battles would be battles between machinery.  Being the first modern war to use technologies such as army tanks, trenches, and mustard gas, over 16 million people, both soldiers and civilians, lost their lives. As a result, many soldiers returned home with scaring experiences to a public who didn't fully understand how the way war was fought changed. 

Lewis, Brühl, and Boon
in their roles as Scottish,
German, and French leaders

On the Western front during December 1914, the three forces who were fighting against each other, France, Germany, & Great Britain, agreed upon a ceasefire to celebrate Christmas Eve. This ceasefire brought together the officers and soldiers of opposing armies and allowed them to celebrate with football games, singing of Christmas carols, and to exchange stories and food items from their homelands. The story of the Christmas truce illustrates the very human side of war and how these competing nations could put aside their differences for celebration. Joyeux Noël tells this story with the talents of Diane Kruger, Guillame Canet, Benno Fürmann, Dany Boon, Gary Lewis, and Daniel Brühl, who can all be seen in many other great films.

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