Two Distant Strangers

The Oscar-winning short feature Two Distant Strangers, directed by Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe, uses a familiar trapped-in-a-time-loop device to add another layer of reflective protest to the burgeoning body of BLM messaging art.

Joey Bada$$ and Andrew Howard star as the perpetual victim of police violence and the cop who pulls the trigger, respectively. Free -- a writer of topical content for The Daily Show, Wilmore and Full Frontal with Samantha Bee -- does not plow new ground with the movie's social justice polemics and the Groundhog Day device might strike some as an odd choice for such an urgent crisis, but the picture is handsome and contains some nice visual embellishments.

A bird's-eye view shot of a police car moving through an empty city street reveals the names of George Floyd and others who were killed by police chalked on the roof of a building, and a similar overhead shot of Carter's dead body reveals the blood pooling in the shape of the African continent.

Still, both Bada$$ and Howard deliver convincing performances in a picture that some might find too fanciful to be impactful.

Demon Slayer the Movie: Mugen Train

Readers of a certain age may remember the '60s anime series Astro Boy, Marine Boy and Speed Racer, which, though Japanese, featured characters with round eyes and dubbed voices that were decidedly not NIpponese. It's almost like they were created for importation to predominately Caucasian markets. (That the anime industry seems to revere European facial features is a source of continuing debate.) The popularity of those series in the U.S. and the U.K. testifies to the creators' strategy.

As a kid, I liked the fanciful stories and the characters' weirdly robotic motions, their

over-emoting and the garish comic panel action effects. They were a gas!

Fifty years later, anime technology has made these TV series and the films based on them some of the most visually arresting -- and expensive -- cinematic experiences around.

Demon Slayer the Movie: Mugen Train was released on April 21 and at this writing has grossed more than $400 million worldwide. For the uninitiated, the story of three young samurai-like warriors battling demons on a deadly passenger train pinballs between gamer weaponry and Zen axioms about fearlessness and dedication. The unfamiliar will likely never get firm footing in Demon Slayer's story space, but all of the color and light is pretty stunning.

Keep On Keepin' On (2014)

 

I often give up on a series or movies if I've not been encouraged by others to stick with it or if the content itself isn't promising. Quite frequently, I will stumble across a keeper by accident as I did with the 2014 documentary Keep On Keepin' On, the story of the friendship between the now-deceased legendary jazz trumpeter Clark Terry and then 25-year-old, blind, aspiring pianist Justin Kauflin, whom Terry mentored. Terry, who died the year after this film was released, had a reputation for being an inspiring teacher, counting among his proteges Miles Davis and Quincy Jones, who produced the film and Kauflin's first record. Aside from being a touching portrait of a man of great talent and generosity in the last year's of his life, Keep On Keepin' On is also a primer on jazz music, its modes and aesthetics. It's a wonderful, humane tribute.

The Unholy

 

Evan Spiliotopoulos's The Unholy is a middling demon possession flick that trades in the kind of iconoclasm that takes no prisoners -- much like the film's undead witchy woman causing trouble in the fictional town of Banfield, Massachusetts. A young woman, speechless from birth (Cricket Brown), wakes up from a vision talking up a storm, healing the lame and calling townsfolk to worship Mary. All of these events are witnessed by a disgraced, boozing tabloid writer (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) looking for a payday. He gets more than he bargained for.

The picture, Spiliotopoulos's directorial debut, delivers a couple of decent jolts but plays fast and loose with continuity and logic. Cary Elwes (Stranger Things, The Princess Bride) plays the shady Southie bishop of Boston (he should probably be an archbishop) and William Sadler plays the girl's uncle and pastor of the local church whose history includes the torture and burning of the previously mentioned witchy woman back in 1845.

Most of the movie is laughably bad at times and features an undercooked spirit demon that borrows from a half-dozen other undead movie projects and a moment of cringing figurative self-flagellation by the reporter that might send actual journalists running from the room in horror.

In the Earth

 

Ben Wheatley's In the Earth is a "heart of darkness" horror flick that doesn't wander far from the genre's well-trodden path. It's a grisly and creepy and gruesome and bloody tale of science being baffled by nature, with a bit of witchy hoodoo thrown in for spice. (Any comparisons to our current pandemic are purely intentional.) The supernatural aspects of the film are accompanied by mind-bending-visual and ear-numbing-sound effects that will probably qualify this flick for midnight showings, if and when those crank back up. (Those triggered by strobe lights should stay away.) Joel Fry and Ellora Torchia lead the zoned-out cast as two scientists on a mission to reconnect with an intrepid botanist (Hayley Squires) who has dropped off the grid in the heart of a mysterious forest, only to run into a crazed woodsman (Reece Shearsmith) on a mission of his own.