She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry, a documentary by Mary Dore

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While it’s enjoyable and illuminating to hear the women of the second-wave feminist movement talk about their lives and times, Dore usually misses the forest for the trees with much of the conversation and never makes her subjects dig a little deeper, probe a little longer to see what comes up.

The first major problem with Dore’s documentary is the cursory treatment given to the schism between the civil rights movement and the black women’s rights movements.

The seminal work on the subject, “Ain’t I A Woman” by Bell Hooks is entirely ignored, as is her entire message. (Black meant black men, white meant white men and woman meant white women).

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Robot & Frank & Fascism: A look at the near-future we don’t want to live in

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This is not a review of Robot & Frank, an enjoyable film. This is about the future Robot & Frank imagines.

One critic does write specifically about the future imagined.

Joshua Topolsky at The Verge summed up his opinion in the last paragraph of his review:

“It’s also one of the few movies I’ve seen where the future is not a dystopic nightmare, 3D-generated phantasmagoria, or otherwise unbelievable peek into a not-too-distant hellworld. It’s future that seems real, palpable, and just around the corner — one where we have to figure out not just what our technology will do to us, but what it will mean to us.”

But Topolsky is wrong. Let’s be clear: I’m bias. My job as a criminal justice reporter for a weekly newspaper in a small community means I’m more aware of what police may be able to do, and what they may not be able to do and when they’re violating somebody’s rights.

Very few, if any, of the critics I read picked up on the fascist state director Jake Schreier and writers Christopher D. and Christopher Paul Ford conjured up. It is, I imagine, the result of a creeping fascist state.

The main character, Frank (played by Frank Langella) is a retired cat burglar with varying degrees of dementia. His son gets him a robot to take care of him and the robot’s main directive appears to be Frank’s health, even if that means helping and allowing him to commit burglary, something that engages him intellectually.
(Far more than the robot’s love, gardening.)

 

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Reno’s got film: This is Martin Bonner

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I may begrudge Santa Fe a lot of things: the lack of a Costco (marinated artichoke hearts by the three quarts), the over-all expensiveness, the lack of decent things offered on Craigslist and the subsequent over-pricing of thrift stores and ridiculous costs of things offered. Everyone seems to think torn-up couches are worth hundreds of dollars. Thrift stores, especially Good Will, think that coffee makers that cost $8 new at Walmart are worth $12-15 used.

That and the old white people. Going through Trader Joe’s is always some kind of terrible gauntlet, yet, I love Trader Joe’s, the wine, the tahini sauce, the pita bread. The gin.

All those gripes aside, Santa Fe has a pretty incredible movie scene, especially for a town so small. Hell, even for a large town. One movie theater is situated inside the university, another is a “United Artists” inside of a mall, yet a third was revamped and now owned by George R. R. Martin, although the screen is smaller than many in-home projections. And there’s another, one I have yet to go to, is the Center for Contemporary Arts.

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