runamokprods

Quietly powerful and intimate family documentary, as the film-maker tries to make sense of her uncle's too-short life twenty five years after his death from what was called cancer, but was actually AIDS.

Coming from a religious catholic family, with an extremely strict and conservative matriarch, young Miguel left his home in Puerto Rico and moved to New York to become an actor. He developed a deep. loving relationship with a gay ex-priest, which soon morphed from being lovers to the deepest of non-sexual friendships, so Miguel would prowl the night and take on sexual partners in the days before anyone really understood what a potential death sentence that had become.

With his illness he was pulled between his soul mate who wanted him to be himself, and his mother, who wanted him to repent his sinful life, so that he could get into heaven. Meanwhile, the rest of the family was to varying degrees at least more empathetic with Miguel's sexuality, but were afraid to anger his mother by questioning her.

In exploring this history many years later film-maker Cecilia Aldarondo discovers family secrets, torn up hearts and souls, and her own desire to make sense of her family's unresolved pain.

A film full of deep emotions, but not histrionics, it quietly looks at how we all try to be what those who love us want and often end up pulled impossibly in multiple directions because of it.

Created by and starring Donald Glover (who also directed 2 episodes) I wasn't quite as blown away as most of the critics were. (I think I was over-hyped by the time I watched) but I certainly liked it. For me, the 1st season was pretty uneven from episode to episode, but the stronger episodes are terrific.

It's got more of an old style sitcom approach in terms of structure (not at all tone!); the focus week to week isn't on a big serialized overall story. Each episode has it's own self contained tale within the larger basic set up. Personally, I generally like longer story arcs better even in dramady (e.g. Transparent, etc), but the show is so fresh, odd and creative in other ways that it helps balance out that drawback.

Often very funny and sometimes much larger than life, it also has moments of real emotion and subtlety. The acting is strong all around, and it's a world we haven't seen much before – struggling working class African-Americans friends in their mid/late 20s who are not the tough street kids and dealers from the hood we've seen so many times, but who certainly aren't safe and middle-class either. There are guns and drugs but also jobs and kids and record deals. There's real violence but a lot more threatened violence and posturing. And all the characters and relationships are complicated and multi-leveled.

Glover in particular creates a wonderful protagonist in Earnest. Super smart, open hearted, extremely witty, dead-pan, ambitious but also vulnerable, emotionally confused and a little lost. He's hard not to love and to occasionally be frustrated by (in a good way).

When the story of the week gives the show enough meat to build 30 minutes on, it can be great. When the story is thin, more of a one line joke, the episode tends to feel thin too, sometimes starting to feel padded and/or straining for humor.

But it's an impressive start, when it works it successfully combines social satire and comedy with real feelings and surreal story touches, and feels like one of those shows that has room to grow and deepen in future seasons.

An even stronger film than Afneevsky's excellent "Winter on Fire", he uses a similar strategy here. He films his own interviews and some footage of what is going on in the country. But the core of the documentary is first hand video footage from citizens' cell phones and other cameras - images from those living and dying on the front lines - bringing the tale a powerful immediacy.

The story is truly tragic, as a hopefully attempt for an Arab spring type peaceful uprising against the long standing violent and dictatorial leadership of Assad (the film includes footage of his torturers at work) devolved quickly into brutal civil war as the government uses any means necessary to subdue it's citizens -- including devastating chemical weapon's attacks (again, among the often very brutal footage in the film).

At the same time ISIS came to the country promising to ally with the people, but quickly revealed their own murderous ways as they attempt to take over large areas of the country and impose themselves as draconian strongmen despots, killing anyone who won't do their bidding or live by their rules. So now for the people of Syria, their cities and society are being decimated by two groups of monsters simultaneously. Meanwhile, the world does shockingly little to help the rebels. As Russian planes go on bombing raids to help bolster their puppet government, the US and US look on with horror, but don't seem to be trying to even get the rebels supplies, much less to fight for or with the, or even to send a meaningful peace keeping force.

What makes the film really stand out is how it works as an emotionally devastating account of human suffering, while still doing a better job than any documentary or news report I've seen to simply make clear exactly what is going on, and whom is fighting with whom in the Syrian nightmare.