BK’s Reviews and Reflections

Last weekend we hit the theaters Friday, Saturday and Sunday and came away with three winners.  Well I did.  Tuvia would probably not stick his thumb up as high for all three, but he did like them.

Friday: Opening Day for  Michael Moore’s latest lens focus on our  economy’s recent melt down.

Capitalism: A Love Story, taken from Woody Guthrie’s  protest song  as a call to action.

Michael Moore calls us to action!

Anyone who enters the movie theater, knows what they will get from Michael Moore.  He is a passionate activist proudly standing left of left.  I applaud  his activism and even though this one started slowly for me, by the middle, the core of the piece, it was humming and yes, by the end, bringing us back to the popularism of FDR and I was cheering with the rest of a very full audience.

Michael Moore knows how to use the camera as his own personal mouthpiece.  With his baseball cap and jeans jacket and bulging belly, he places himself right in the face of his real-life bad guys.  For this film it’s the banks,the CEO’s, the experts, the government. Chris Dodd can’t escape.

He is easy on Obama.  Even though Michael is a muckracker, he wants to believe “Yes, we can!”   He is willing to wait and see and give Obama the benefit of the doubt for now.

It’s a movie to see and to think about, to talk about.

On a very  dreary Saturday  we needed  a pick-me-up and Whip It! , DID IT!

I knew nothing about the roller derby craze and it took some getting used to, but it was nothing  like the violence of professional wrestling in the recent Wrestler.

It was easy to take a leap of faith with this one,  Ellen Page(Juno) took on the lead role and Drew Barrymore, acting and making her directing debut collaborated well with a great supporting cast of women and some cool men.  Jimmy Fallon plays the derby mc.

Perfect for a rainy day and then some.

Bliss(Ellen) is under the thumb of her very domineering mother, Marcia Gay Harden, who is reliving her own moments of glory as a beauty pageant winner.  Bliss is accepting, but not really living her own life, yet…

One night she sneaks away  from her small Texas town to the nearby city of Austin for a night at the roller derby and she falls in love and she transforms into BABE RUTHLESS!

Her team, the Hurl Scouts, embrace her with sisterly love. Drew does double duty, supporting Bliss on the team with her great brand of  zany comedy and her passion for the piece, for this coming of age  story through a girl power vehicle.

I loved the circle of women even with a bit of pushing and shoving on skates. That would never be my reality or fantasy.

And last one on Sunday- Amreeka

This is a story, that’s close to home. A Palestinian divorcee living on the West Bank, has a sister living in America.  She is raising a bright son who wants the education he can get in America.  She takes up the challenge and arrives  in March 2003, just as we began bombing Baghdad when it was not easy for any immigrant with any connection to the Arab world.

In this small Illinois town,  Muna Faour, is resilient in a very authentic way.  Everyone is faced with immigrant issues Muna leads a powerful cast.

Director-writer Cherien Dabis drew the story from life — she was a Palestinian, born in Nebraska, raised in Jordan and living in Ohio when the first Iraq War began and her story informs the story she shares on film.

The best film of this trio came last.