Category Archives: Recommendations

THE LEGEND OF COCAINE ISLAND

Director:
Theo Love

Premiere:
Tribeca 2018

Select Festivals:
Tallgrass, Cucalorus, BendFilm, Sidewalk, Traverse City, American Film Festival Poland

About:
A far-fetched tale of hidden illicit treasure captures the attention of a hapless man desperate for money.

Rodney Hyden carved out a measure of success for his family as a small business owner in Florida, but then the Great Recession struck, and he lost everything. Seeking a way to get back on track, he hears a crazy story from a neighbor involving a bag of cocaine that was secreted away on the Puerto Rican island of Culebra, alleged to be worth $2 million. Despite the lack of any practical knowledge of the drug trade, or any real connections that could facilitate the sale of cocaine – nor, pointedly, any apparent concern about placing kilos of hard drugs onto the streets – Hyden concocts a hare-brained scheme to visit the Caribbean island and retrieve the buried treasure. The level of his ineptitude can be measured by noting that his first attempt fails because he forgot to bring a shovel, but his missteps don’t end there. Director Theo Love, noting a good story when he hears one, appropriately spins his own wild tale out of the proceedings, bringing style and humor to this recounting of his hapless protagonist’s misadventures. At the same time, missing in this lighter approach to this stranger than fiction episode is an acknowledgement of how Hyden’s privilege figures in to his ultimate reckoning, a stark contrast to how other individuals from different racial and class backgrounds caught up in similar illegal activities are typically treated. Leaving that systemic issue aside, Love’s film succeeds in demonstrating the seduction of storytelling, and in an entertaining manner.

Coming to theatres tomorrow, Friday, March 29:
SCREWBALL

Director:
Billy Corben

Premiere:
Toronto 2018

Select Festivals:
DOC NYC, Miami

About:
A true-crime comedy exposing a notorious Major League Baseball doping scandal.

The film screened as part of DOC NYC, for which our program notes read:
Director Billy Corben profiles the colorful South Florida characters who were responsible for supplying performance-enhancing drugs to the Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez and other players. The film plays like a crime comedy in the tradition of Elmore Leonard. The behavior is so childish that Corben reenacts scenes with actual children playing Rodriguez and others, like a cross between THE LITTLE RASCALS and THE THIN BLUE LINE.

New to DVD this week:
THE WORLD BEFORE YOUR FEET

Director:
Jeremy Workman

Premiere:
SXSW 2018

Select Festivals:
DOC NYC, Denver, IFF Boston, Nashville, RiverRun, Newport Beach, deadCENTER, Heartland, Bergen, Woodstock, Hot Springs Doc

About:
A man explores NYC by walking every single one of its streets.

I previously wrote about the film here.

Coming to PBS as part of its WOMEN, WAR & PEACE II series tonight, Tuesday, March 26:
A JOURNEY OF A THOUSAND MILES: PEACEKEEPERS

Directors:
Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy and Geeta Gandbhi

Premiere:
Toronto 2015

Select Festivals:
DOC NYC, Mumbai, RiverRun, Bentonville, Minneapolis-St Paul, Atlanta, NY African Diaspora

About:
A profile of UN peacekeepers in Haiti

I previously wrote about the doc here.

Coming to PBS as part of its WOMEN, WAR & PEACE II series tonight, Tuesday, March 26:
NAILA AND THE UPRISING

Director:
Julia Bacha

Premiere:
DOC NYC 2017

Select Festivals:
IDFA, Dubai, Human Rights Watch, Movies That Matter, Cleveland, It’s All True, Fajr, Seattle, Durban, SF Jewish, Global Peace, St Louis

About:
The untold story of the women behind the First Intifada.

The film screened as part of DOC NYC, for which our program notes read:
Award-winning filmmaker Julia Bacha chronicles the remarkable journey of Naila Ayesh, who played a key role in the nonviolent Palestinian uprising known as the First Intifada. When the uprising broke out in the late 1980s, Naila was living in Gaza. Faced with a choice between love, family, and freedom, she embraced all three, joining a clandestine network of Palestinian women who led a movement that put Palestinians on the map. The film inventively combines animation with archival images to explore this hidden history.

Coming to PBS as part of its WOMEN, WAR & PEACE II series tonight, Monday, March 25:
THE TRIALS OF SPRING

Director:
Gini Reticker

Premiere:
Human Rights Watch 2015

Select Festivals:
Traverse City, Athena, Sebastopol Doc

About:
An eye-opening look at the disturbing treatment of women during Egypt’s tumultuous revolution.

While the story of Egypt’s so-called Arab Spring – Tahrir Square, and what came after – has been the subject of numerous documentaries over the past eight years, few have given sufficient focus on the crucial role women played, nor on the incidents of sexual violence enacted upon female protestors and activists. Reticker profiles several women who recount their experiences, moving from the heady joy of standing up for their freedom, to disillusionment as democratic ideals fell by the wayside as factions emerged, to despair at the ill treatment they received from some male activists, including, in several horrific cases noted here, public molestation, humiliation, and physical violence. Compounding these abuses – sometimes officially sanctioned, such as so-called “virginity tests” – the women sometimes face legal charges, while their assailants manage to survive unscathed, making this provocative project a witness against such injustice.