Rated: Not Rated | Running Time: 94 Minutes
From: MPI Media Group
Available on DVD and Digital Platforms: January 16, 2018
Get it via : Amazon
Paul Oremland is a film director. He is also a gay man. He has also slept with a lot of men.
Why is this important? Without all three attributes there wouldn’t be the wonderful documentary, “100 Men,” which, through Paul’s recollection of his lovers, shows the struggle and change that has affected the homosexual community for the past 40 years.
The basic story of the documentary is that Paul began to reflect on his past lovers. He decided to rank them from 100 down to his number one. As a film director is wont to do, why not try to track down these men, interview them, and use them to tell a story? So he did.
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Well, crap. I guess I should have paid more attention in my world history classes because I don’t remember anything about India getting independence from the United Kingdom. I guess it happened way back when, in 1947 to be exact, some 70 years ago. And double-crap, I also had no idea that the creation of Pakistan was part of the deal.
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If zombies are in a movie it is usually because it’s time for a zombie apocalypse. There are also, usually, two kinds of zombie apocalypse movies, the serious, “Let’s try to pretend this could be real” kind, and the campy, horror-ish, fun kind, complete with enough blood splatter to wonder how the human body can hold so much blood.
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Poor Molly. She can’t catch a break. There she is, trying to escape the zombie apocalypse with her boyfriend, Nick (Merwin Mondesir), and she needs to vomit. In the middle of the desert you would think they would be safe from the zombies, but wouldn’t you know it, now with their fancy car stuck in the sand, here he comes, a zombie, over the horizon, and we quickly learn how stupid Molly and Nick really are. Welcome to “It Stains the Sands Red.”
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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?”
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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?