Rated: Not Rated | Running Time: 94 Minutes
From: Virgil Films
Available on DVD and Digital HD: May 23, 2017
Get it via : Amazon
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.
Skipping most of the tabloid news, “I Am Heath Ledger” gives a look at the life of Heath that most people didn’t know about while also highlighting his film career trajectory.
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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.
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Three women working at NASA as an engineer, a mathematician, and a computer scientist, in the early 1960’s would be story enough. Have them be three, strong-willed, African-American women, women with the desire to live the life they believe they were destined to live, in a United States that was a lot less close to acceptance of African-Americans than it is today, and you have history. It’s a history many people don’t realize occurred, nor the influence these three, African-American women had on that history, but damn, it’s a great story, and a great movie.
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So close, yet so far. The movie is “Assassin’s Creed,” and after I got past the fact the Assassins were protecting an Apple I was enjoying the film.
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Wow, that was a rough movie to watch. Great, but rough.