SHADOW IN THE CLOUD: 2 ½ STARS
A tribute to the pulpy adventure movies of the 1940s by way of “The Twilight Zone,” “Shadow in the Cloud,” now in select theaters and on VOD and digital, is a popcorn movie, for better and for worse.
Chloë Grace Moretz is strong-willed Women’s Auxiliary Air Force officer Maude Garrett. The only female presence on a massive B-17 Flying Fortress military plane, her mission is to protect, at all costs, a precious piece of cargo but the chauvinistic attitude of the male crew makes the job next to impossible.
Stuck in a turret in the belly of the plane, Garrett has an almost unobstructed, 360° view of their airspace. When she reports a “shadow in the clouds,” a possible enemy attack, she is ignored. When airborne gremlins (you read that right) attack, she is blamed. “Whatever is in that package,” the men say, “is what’s causing the failures on this plane.”
Cue the first of the movie’s outrageous twists.
The first half of “Shadow in the Cloud” is a showcase for Moretz. For much of the film’s running time it’s a one-person show, with the “Kick Ass” star strapped into a gunner’s turret, spewing hardboiled dialogue. She’s energetic, holding the screen with sheer force of personality. Garrett even finds room in the generic 1940s style cliched dialogue to convincingly poke through the veneer of chauvinism from her plane mates.
The second half is frenetic, with airborne action and Gremlins! Gremlins! Gremlins! The movie becomes less character-driven and more a vehicle for director Roseanne Liang’s prowess with a camera.
Each half has its strengths, but they are bound together by twists that would make even M. Night Shyamalan shake his head. There are logic holes big enough for a B-17 Flying Fortress to soar through, which would be OK if the twists didn’t feel tacked on for the sake of shaking things up.
At just 83-minutes, it offers up two movies and while there are moments of interest in the busy second half, the film is strongest when Moretz is on screen alone, before the film’s twists tie it into a Gordian knot.
SING ME A SONG: 3 ½ STARS
Documentaries don’t often get sequels but “Sing Me a Song,” now available at www.theimpactseries.net, is just that, a follow-up to a story begun in the 2014 film “Happiness.”
We last saw Peyangki as subject of “Happiness.” As an eight-year-old boy growing up in a monastery, his life was on the cusp of change when his remote Himalayan village became the last place in Bhutan to have access to internet connectivity.
Cut to ten years later. In many respects Peyangki’s life is the same. As an eighteen-year-old his devotional routine remains unchanged, but now there are distractions in the form of an ever-present cell phone, social media, Instagram filters and Ugyen, a woman he meets in a chatroom.
Director Thomas Balmès fills the screen with beautiful images that visually hammer home the juxtaposition of an ancient way of life colliding with technology. Old and new sit side by side, not always comfortably.
Young Peyangki welcomed technology to his village with a mix of trepidation and excitement. As a teenager he, like so many of us, reaches for the phone first thing every morning, reconnecting with the www, not the world view outside his window. But this isn’t simply a story about a teen who spends too much time on his phone. It’s a character study of a young man caught up in the technological revolution that is reshaping his life.
“Sing Me a Song” is by times melodramatic with just a hint of reality television style interactions between Peyangki and Ugyen, but ultimately this look at consumerism, spiritualism and romance, while specific in its place, has something to say about us all.
FIVE OF THE BEST MOVIES OF 2020 TO STREAM RIGHT NOW!
(ALL MOVIES ARE FOUR OUT OF FIVE STARS)
MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM (Netflix)
Set in the roaring 1920’s Chicago, Viola Davis plays the titular character, a real-life musical trailblazer known as "Mother of the Blues." On a sweltering day in a dank basement recording studio, the band, pianist Toledo (Glynn Turman), trombonist Cutler (Colman Domingo), and string bassist Slow Drag (Michael Potts) and Levee (Chadwick Boseman in a career high performance), rehearse as they wait for the fashionably late Ma to arrive.
The heat, claustrophobia, frayed egos and twitchy Levee’s insistence on changing tried-and-true musical arrangements, fuel a war of words and wills as they attempt to put Ma’s signature “Black Bottom” song to disc.
Although set in the 1920s and written in the 1980s, the ideas and the anger in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” feels of the moment and indispensable. The dialogue crackles and the context resonates because Wilson’s source material has not only stood the test of time, but transcends it.
BLOODY NOSE, EMPTY POCKETS (Amazon Prime)
Like a Cassavetes film, “Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets” is an experimental combination of documentary and fiction that favours characters and a sense of place over traditional story-telling. It’s rough and tumble, like the people it portrays.
The rough-hewn sound and the hand held camera work creates the feel of having been sitting at the bar from morning to night. Conversations overlap, the images blur as a growing sense of melancholy settles over the film in its closing minutes.
DAVID BYRNE'S AMERICAN UTOPIA (Crave)
Filmed during the show’s 2019 Broadway run at New York’s Hudson Theatre, the film captures the cerebral but exuberant concert that features Byrne, alongside eleven musicians, all dressed alike in skinny grey suits, and all unfettered from amplifiers and the like.
With wireless guitars, keyboards and all manner of other instruments on an empty stage with no other gear or risers, Byrne and Company fill the space with intricate choreography, eclectic songs, new and old, and an uplifting social message of fellowship and faith in humanity. Byrne’s enthusiasm is infectious and Spike Lee, using a combination of you-are-there camera angles, including a beautiful overhead shot, captures the jubilant postmodernist performance in glorious fashion.
Highlights, and there are many, include “Everybody’s Coming to My House,” Byrne’s ode to inclusivity and a potent cover of “Hell You Talmbout,” Janelle Monae’s protest song about police brutality. The latter song, a call and response featuring names the names of African Americans killed by police, is given extra clout by the addition of Spike Lee’s graphics that update the names mentioned in the song to include dozens of others. It is a powerful moment and an urgent call for change.
HIS HOUSE (Netflix)
Bol (Sope Dirisu) and Rial (Wunmi Mosaku) are refugees from war torn South Sudan. Their journey to freedom is fraught. They’re crammed into busses and pick-up trucks, then loaded on to a leaky boat in rough waters. At sea they lose their young daughter who drowns when the boat flips. They survive and land in an English detention centre. While they wait on their claim of asylum, they’re moved into a dilapidated community housing.
“You will be sent to a home of our choosing,” they are told. “You must reside at this address. You must not move from this address. This is your home now.”
The filthy fixer-upper (to put it mildly) has holes in the walls, garbage piled out front and an evil secret, possibly a spirit from their former country. What follows is a classic haunted house film with a deep subtext that breathes new life into the genre’s desiccated old lungs.
Set against a background of cultural displacement, survivors’ guilt, and the psychological wounds of a life spent in trauma, “His House” is no “Amityville Horror.” Sure, strange things happen in the home. Voices come from behind the drywall, a spirit appears and dreams manifest themselves in the most horrific of ways, but the context is different.
GREYHOUND (Amazon Prime Video)
Set during the onset of the United States’ involvement in the Second World War, Tom Hanks plays Commander Ernest Krause, a stoic sailor on his first command. His mission is to lead an international convoy of 37 Allied ships across the North Atlantic with a wolfpack of German U-boats in hot pursuit.
Running out of depth charges and fuel, the convoy needs air cover which is hours away. In a breathless ninety minutes director Aaron Schneider ratchets up tension, creating an old-fashioned action movie that mines a life and death situation for real cinematic thrills.
