Rated: Unrated | Running Time: 98 Minutes
From: Virgil Films | Samaritan’s Purse
Available on DVD, and Digital: July 25, 2017
Get it via : Amazon
Remember Ebola back in the spring of 2014?
Of course you don’t. You think you do, but it wasn’t the spring. Back in the spring of 2014 the Ebola pandemic was news in mostly one place, Western Africa, with the rest of the world oblivious. For almost everyone else it was “Oh, there’s a crisis in Africa? What else is new? It’s not affecting me. What do I care, it’s not in my back yard?”
There were, however, people who cared. Many them were with the group Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian missionary group. Its members already in Africa helping anyone who needed it.
Remember Ebola back in the late summer of 2014?
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I hate to set the tone of my rating right at the beginning. I mean, why would you want to read the rest of the review if I let you know the movie was a let-down? The thing is that I was really enjoying “American Fable,” up until about the last fifteen minutes. The movie wasn’t really realistic, but then it does have “fable” in the title, it’s just that the ending took such dark turns, and didn’t really live up to the fableness in my book because, at the end of it all, I’m not sure what the moral actually was.
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So we have Max. Max is an artist, and a mess. Lately he hasn’t had any inspiration, and most of the time he can be found partying or sleeping, then waking up in his loft trying to get through another day. His life is lost. Meanwhile his friend and manager keeps trying to get him showings, but Max has nothing to show. The challenge is that Max does have a cult following of folks who love his art, and want more.
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At the end of the documentary “I Am Heath Ledger” I wasn’t sure if I should be unbelievably sad that Heath died nearly ten years ago, or unbelievably sad that I never got the chance to hang out with a force of nature bringing out the creativity in those around him. What I did know was that I forgot how varied his film roles were, how I forgot his level of talent, and didn’t know how his talents stretched to his own love of video and directing.
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There are times that movies based on a true story, or on the life of someone, are actually portrayed best by someone else. I’m not saying that Ray Charles couldn’t have done a fabulous job as Ray Charles had he been able to play himself in “Ray,” but damn, Jamie Foxx was fabulous. And what about Joaquin Phoenix in “Walk the Line” as Johnny Cash?
Gosh, it sucks when your house is haunted, especially when it’s your vacation home. All you want to do is relax and work on your painting, but you are creeped out, especially when the entities mess with your stuff. Who ya gonna call? Well you could call The Ghostbusters, but sadly they are just characters in a movie. In the real world you start with the hippie, ghost whisperer, Joey Lee (Dan Bakkedahl) who refuses to get rid of your ghosts because, well, “The ghosts are kind of cool.” What? Yup, he feels Dan (Steve Zissis) and his wife Mary (Jennifer Irwin) are lucky to have them.
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You’d like to release some pent-up anger sometimes, wouldn’t you? I mean, we go through our lives, day to day, holding back from completely blasting someone who annoys us because, well, we probably suck at fighting, don’t want to end up in jail, and in the end it isn’t a nice thing to do. But come on, there are times when in your head you want to completely beat the crap out of someone, and probably would, if it weren’t for the “ending up in jail” thing.
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Everything was coming up gold for me when watching “Silver Skies,” a movie about a bunch of seniors getting evicted from their apartment complex community, but then the movie took a dark turn that seemed better for shock value than to finish up the film. Suddenly we were down to bronze.
While watching “Is That a Gun in Your Pocket?…,” and living in Chicago-land, I couldn’t help but immediately think of the Spike Lee movie “Chi-raq.” Why? Because the basis for the story is the same, built off of the classic, Aristophanes comedy “Lysistrata”: Women withhold sex from their men until there is peace, or in this case, no guns. “Chi-raq” was met with controversy and critical acclaim, but the voting public of IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes didn’t seem to care for it. “Is That a Gun in Your Pocket?…” has most critics seeming to hate it, but the voting public liking it. Weird.