My love affair with writing began with competitive spelling in grade school and evolved right in to middle school where I built my obsession with telling stories. I was always fond of the Scripps spelling bee and I always sought to maybe make it there someday. But you know… puberty happened. In either case, it‘s refreshing to see films in contemporary and modern that portray spelling bees as pure sport. There are more and more movies spotlighting the mental demand of spelling from 2002’s “Spellbound” to “Bee Season,” to “Spelling the Dream.”
Malcolm & Marie (2021)
Sam Levinson is very good about reframing narratives we’ve seen a thousand times to feel new and unique (I love “Euphoria”). While “Malcolm & Marie” doesn’t re-invent the wheel, it’s a stellar two person drama that pits two painfully self absorbed people against each other one night. While Malcolm and Marie may not make it as a couple, they make great adversaries, which might just tie them together for the rest of their lives. And that’s the primary draw of the film.
The Bootleg Files: The Baboons of Gombe
BOOTLEG FILES 756: “The Baboons of Gombe” (1974 documentary by Jane Goodall).
LAST SEEN: On YouTube.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: On a 1978 laserdisc release.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: Unavailable for many years.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: It is not likely.
I have a Facebook friend named John Rosa who posts New York-area TV Guide listings from the 1960s and 1970s, and today he shared the selection of programming that was available on February 1, 1974. Over on ABC at 8:00 p.m. was a one-shot special called “The Baboons of Gombe” that featured animal behaviorist Jane Goodall studying a troop of 40 baboons that lived along the shore of Lake Tanganyika.
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Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies (2020)
Danny Wolf’s newest documentary is notable mostly for being a movie that’s produced by Jim McBride. McBride is famous, of course, for being “Mr. Skin,” the founder of one of the biggest, and first, websites about nudity in film. Aptly titled “Skin,” the documentary about the history of nudity in Hollywood and filmmaking and how it shook the landscape of pop culture, wants to desperately be taken as a bold mix of educational and entertainment, but beyond fleeting insight and fascinating looks at pre-code film, it’s mostly just another nudie reel.
The Right One (2021)
A young writer seems unable to write her second novel after having a decent success with her first published work. One day, she meets an oddball who’s trying to survive something from his past by creating new personas for himself at all times. As she starts to really like him, he discovers that she has used him for writing inspiration and disappears.
Five More Great Minority Movie Heroes, Part IV
It’s Black History Month and we’re hoping to kick off a month of great articles and reviews celebrating Black culture in film, and pop culture. To help usher in the month, here is yet another installment of the “Minority Movie Heroes” series. As I’ve explained in the past, it’s hard to find actual heroes in film that are people of color whether African American, Latinx, Asian, et al. So, as with all the previous entries I scoured film as much as I could to feature five more minority movie heroes that deserve celebrating.
Rams (2020)
In the Australian countryside, farmers raise and compete for best ram in the local fair. After one ram shows signs of a deadly and highly contagious disease, the entire community is put at risk and must rally together to survive this massive hurdle. Two feuding brothers are the center of things and must find a way to make things work for their own survival.