BLOOD BROTHER

This is one of those real life stories that you come across now and again that re-affirm your faith in the goodness of (some) human beings. Rocky Braat's story is especially moving and relates how one very ordinary and regular young American man, who is exceptionally unselfish and wonderfully generous, made a real difference to the lives of many children that society would like to forget.

Rocky grew up in Pittsburgh with a drug addict mother who had a whole string of abusive boyfriends and as he struggled academically at school they put him in Special Ed classes.  He is however far from stupid and graduated from Design College, and got a good job on a Magazine.  After a while he got the travel bug and quit his job and went off to see the world and 'find himself'.

His chosen destination was India, and one day on a whim he went to see an Aids Orphanage in Chennai. He thought that the visit would be tough seeing the kids suffering,  and it was indeed and he found himself crying a lot, but he still felt compelled to stay there for one whole month. When he resumed his journey he couldn't get the kids out of his mind, because despite all their troubles, they found such joy in living, so he immediately turned around and went back.

He stayed the rest of the summer, and when it was time to go back to the US, he promised the kids he would return in one year, and he did.

This movie, shot by Steve Hoover, Rocky's childhood friend tells of the next few years of how this remarkable man with no real qualifications at all, and with no official paid position lives there in the Orphanage and became an amateur dentist, teacher, clown, carer, friend and father to all these abandoned children who absolutely adored him.   He lives in a rat infested hovel, exists on a daily diet of rice, and has to keep leaving the country because of visa problems.

It is a highly emotional story (there wasn't a dry eye in the house even with the cynical Sundance audience I watched it with) as we live through all the many traumas the kids and Rocky endure.  Kids get very sick and some die as they can only have access to the very basic of Aids drugs, and Rocky Anna (as the kids call him) is there every inch of the way.  What is so endearing that Rocky, unlike a professional Aids worker, is never ever detached from any of the happenings and gets totally distraught and frustrated at times and often cries.

The fact that he is there and chosen to remain with the kids is simply explained as that's what he wants to do.  There are no lofty claims that he is doing God's calling (or anyone else's for that matter) or for any religious conviction or any other profound reason.  This is where he wants to be, and he certainly is making an enormous difference to all these childrens lives.

I am totally in awe of the man, and it was interesting too that as Steve Hoover witnessed and filmed Rocky insitu over the years he grew to understand and appreciate why his friend is so committed to the kids and the country itself.  However, there is a lighter note to the story too, because just as Rocky 'finds himself', he also finds a beautiful Indian bride to marry.

P.S. I'm not sure where this film will surface next. They raised enough money to make it, so any monies from viewings or eventual DVD sales etc will go straight to help support LIGHT, a non-profit organisation established to directly help and support Rocky's work at the Orphanage. Details from www.givethemlight.org and if you want to track this stunning movie then go to www.bloodbrotherfilm.com

Available now at Amazon

★★★★★★★★★★

<

THIS IS MARTIN BONNER

Martin Bonner is at crossroads in his life, and so too is Travis Holloway. Total strangers who would appear to have little in common, and are thrown together by circumstances, and who become the most unlikely friends when they find out they are not that different after all.

Martin is in his mid 50s and has moved across the country to start a new job and a new life in Reno, Nevada. Once he got divorced, the Church who employed him as their Business Manager promptly fired him. Two years on, he is unemployed and broke and so took the only job he could get working as Volunteer Co-ordinator for a Charity that helps prisoners transition into life on the outside once their sentence is served.

Travis is being released from jail after serving 12 years for a fatal drunk driving incident.  Alone and scared but determined to go straight, he works hard at adjusting to his new liberty and trying to find a purpose to his life.  The mentor that the Charity have assigned to him, is holier than thou (even Mother Therese would find him too much) so Travis seeks out Martin, who had given him a ride the day of his release, to replace him.

Both men are depressed and lonely, and neither of them have a single friend Martin lives in a tiny bare condo and supplants his income by buying inexpensive antiques and reselling them on EBay. His adult son back in Maryland never returns his calls, but his married daughter does, and worries about her father being so alone that she signs him up for Online Dating which ends in disaster.   

Travis's only family is a 22 year old daughter who he is estranged from, but he persuades her to make the long bus trip to come visit. He tricks Martin into joining them as he is so petrified that the re-union will end in tears .... as it nearly does ..... and in one of the best scenes in the movie, Martin steps in to help to turn it around and restore an uneasy peace.

When Martin shares about his crisis of losing his faith, Travis  opens up with the back story of how he came to end up in prison in the first place and you realize that their roles have changed.  It's no longer mentor and client as they now offer reciprocal support to each other so that they can both move forward.

This movie about two middle-aged men has a very mature feel about it which is such a welcome change from the usual showy melodramas that old cons usually feature in.  It's a sensitive and somewhat understated story, beautifully written, and made so enjoyable by the two central performances.  Veteran Australian actor Paul Eenhoorn plays Martin and gives him a quiet aura of confidence of a man who is more than content with his new life, and Richmond Arquette (yep another Arquette) is pitch perfect as the awkward Travis who really wants to turn his life around.

A really excellent second feature from writer/director Chad Hartigan .... it's a perfect example of how first-rate an indie narrative can be even when it was made on the minutest of budgets (not that you can tell)  .... and I hope it gets the audience it so deserves.

Available from Amazon

★★★★★★★★

PIT STOP

Two blue collared gay men living in a small town in Texas are both finishing chapters in their parallel lives. Gabe, a 35 year old closeted construction worker is trying to recover from being dumped by his lover who preferred to stay with his wife after all.  He can at least seek some consolation that he is still best friends with his ex-wife who he hangs out with on a daily as they are committed to bringing up their young daughter together.

Ernesto, also in his mid 30's, is a Latino fork truck operator in a lumber yard, and is splitting up from his younger boyfriend, whilst at the same time he is visiting his last big romance who is in a coma and on a life support system in hospital.

Both men are lonely and isolated but despite all the restrictions and sheer lack of opportunities they are both wedded to this one-horse town and have no desire to leave for bigger and possibly greener pastures.   In the later part of the story these two strangers hook up online, and share a tender and sensual night together. The closing shots of the movie are of them making their farewells the next morning, and then driving off separately both of them with big grins over their faces and more than a twinkle in their eyes.

Director Yen Tan (Ciao)has co-written with David Lowery a wee gem of a movie with their take on what it means to be gay ....i.e. an outsider .... in small-town America.  It's an acute observation of how these men tempered their lifestyles and blended into such a straight community as they struggled not only with their sexual identity but also with their entrenched beliefs that they would never find love and happiness. 

It is a refreshingly quiet and intelligent movie that starts slowly but insures that by the end you are as committed as the two men that they strike through and find the one thing that were in danger of losing: hope.  Mr Tan is helped greatly by the fact that he has avoided the pitfalls of so many low budget gay movies by making some excellent casting choices. Both Bill Heck as Gabe and Marcus DeAnde as Ernesto are pitch perfect.

All in all a delightful and accomplished movie that shows (once again) that you really don't need full frontal nudity or cliched stereotypes to make a gay themed story really work.  I do so hope that it finds the audience it so well deserves.

Available at Amazon 

 ★★★★★★★★★

THE LOOK OF LOVE

The surprising element of Michael Winterbottom's new bio-pic on the life of Paul Raymond the self styled 'King of Soho' in London in the swinging sixties, is that he has chosen to present him as a lovable rogue who deserves our sympathy as 'sex' made him very rich but extremely unhappy. After all Raymond was a self-made man who made his money from a soft-porn industry and ended up owning most of the property in the neighborhood, and being declared as the richest man in the UK in 1992 just a month after Debbie his daughter died of a drug overdose. 

The movie begins at the end of the story after Debbie's funeral and in a series of flashbacks tells how a young Mr Raymond started out working with his choreographer wife in presenting rather tame nude reviews in his first Club/Bar.  Soon after this the publicity hungry showman that he was, opened London's first Private Members club where he could bypass the UK's rather Dickensian laws and have the girls both naked and moving. Something considered very shocking at the time. It was a sensational success and led him next to buying theatres to produce 'legitimate' musical shows/plays to showcase more naked girls which the critics unanimously slated but the public could not get enough of.

Now wealthy and living rather grandly, Raymond's wife turned a blind eye to his nightly dalliances with a whole coterie of different women as long as he came home afterwards.  One night he failed to do even that having fallen for his latest leading lady who he eventually made his next wife and a star columnist in the 'Men Only 'magazine that he had just acquired. Soon one a night was no longer enough for Mr Raymond, and he and Fiona started having threesomes and even foursomes in their penthouse apartment.

At the same time Debbie his teenage daughter got expelled from her posh private school and declared that she wanted to be an actress/singer and so Raymond built a whole Show around her to make her a Star.  Sadly her ambition was larger than her talent and the show bombed, and when her father closed it, Debbie took refuge in drugs. Her marriage was doomed right from her wedding day, but it did produce two children who may have ended up with an indifferent mother, but they at least had a doting grandfather.  Raymond and his daughter had a complicated relationship : he seemed to indulge all her excesses to compensate for his absence when she was growing up.  One of the most revealing scenes is when Debbie is in hospital and about to give birth and demands that her father gives her a line of coke  .... and he actually does.

The ex wife popped up again briefly, and now in her mid 40's offered to pose naked for the magazine, not to try to win Raymond back, but to show his how other men still found her desirable.  And Raymond had two sons too.  Howard was something of a mummy's boy and loathed his father who he rarely saw.  Derry, his grown up illegitimate son, turned up on his doorstep one day and got short shift from his father ... a quick lunch and a hasty goodbye, and never to be seen again


When Debbie's habit killed her, she was just 36 years old. Raymond never recovered and became something of a recluse until he died in 2008.

The film was the idea of its star, Steve Coogan, and it  is a larger than life role that suits him to a tee.  He simply shines as Raymond and imbues him with a droll sense of humour that he uses for his constant self-promoting but also to cover his desperate loneliness and his bouts of self-pity. His leading ladies are all quite excellent too. Anna Friel as his wife,  Tamsin Egerton as Fiona Richmond and Imogen Poots as Debbie.

The script that Matt Greenhalgh ('Nowhere Boy' & 'Control') is written is no mean expose of the man who was often described as 'the sleaze king' and whilst there is excessive explicit nudity, its all rather clean and wholesome.  Even Raymond's many entanglements with the law ...... only a few of which are mentioned  .... come out with Raymond smelling sweet even when he has lost. Greenhalgh has written a wonderful period piece that does evoke Soho at its best in the swinging 60's without even a hint of the criminals that were inevitably involved in the 'sex scene' then (and always?).  

It's by no means Michael Winterbottom's finest movie, but it is a delightful romp and very entertaining. But then I am probably a tad biased as I am not only a Brit, but one who was growing up in London at that time.  Would the story have any relevance to a US audience?  Well, if you liked Mr Winterbottom's '24 Party People' , also starring Steve Coogan, then you'll love this.  If however your idea of a good Brit period piece is 'Downtown Abbey', then this is not for you!

Available on Amazon

★★★★★★★★

DREAMS OF A LIFE

Joyce Carol Vincent was an enigma.  A 38 year old British woman of Grenadian & Indian descent who was found dead in her messy bed-sit in a Housing Estate (Projects) located above North London's busiest Shopping Centre in 2003 by Bailiffs’ who had come to evict her for not paying her rent.  She had been dead for over three years and was lying on the sofa surrounded by Christmas gifts she has just wrapped, and with the Television Set still on. All that remained of her was her skeleton.  This incidentally is not a piece of fiction, it sadly is real life.

The Coroner could only identify her by comparing her teeth to a holiday snap where she is smiling, and recorded her death with an Open Verdict.  The local newspaper ran several stories on this somewhat bizarre story, and the Police mounted an investigation, as did the local MP, but all drew total blanks.  Not one single person came forward ….albeit a relative or a friend ….and the mystery remained as how a very attractive woman’s life could mean so little to anyone that she should have been completely abandoned in this way.

Filmmaker Carol Morley however did succeed where all the others failed and by her painstaking research and some exemplary adroit sleuthing, she slowly pieced a picture together of who Joyce Vincent was. The key person she located was Martin a short stocky white man who had been her most significant boyfriend, even though the two seemed an unlikely couple.  He, like other of her beaus, related how Joyce simply shared his life and his friends completely as she seemed to have none of her own.

What evolved from her former work colleagues and ex-room-mates was a portrait of a beautiful, articulate and intelligent woman. She spoke with a soft refined voice that she had acquired from childhood elocution lessons her mother had insisted on, and thus it came somewhat as a shock to everybody to discover that she actually had very little education at all.  She was a something of a nomad, having shared apartments all over London through the years never really establishing any roots at all.

Ms Morley's choice of revealing all the information she culled to Joyce's ex colleagues as she interviewed then on camera was a great touch as they were all shocked to be faced with the reality that they knew such few real facts about her.  The realisation that she had three sisters living in London (who refused to co-operate with the documentary) was tough enough to take on board, but when Ms Morley stated that when Joyce was hospitalized with stomach problems months before she died, for next of kin she had just written her Bank Manager's name, which was heartbreaking.

That someone can fall off the radar like that is bad enough, but the realisation that no-one really cared enough to notice, speaks volumes about society today.  And if that is not enough, the final scene after the credits roll, will send a real shudder down your spine.

I finally watched this, after waiting some months, on the plane ride up to Sundance, and even though my head is swimming with all the new movies I am starting to see, this one still haunts me.   A terrible story beautifully told : get it on Netflix or Amazon

★★★★★★★★

ZERO DARK THIRTY

This is one of these stories in which we know the beginning and the end, but the decade that passes in between which sees 'history's greatest manhunt for the world's most dangerous man' is still a helluva shocker. The opening scene of the movie is a totally black screen with excepts of the last telephone conversations being played from some of the people made from the Twin Towers just after they had been hit, and it sets a sober harrowing tone for the drama that unfolds in the next 150 minutes.

The CIA are working on precious few leads to track down Osama Bin Laden and are relying on extracting information from captured Taliban who are being held in secret US military locations around the Globe.  The lead Agent Dan who skillfully uses sheer brute force and extreme mental cruelty is joined by Maya a fresh new Agent who thinks outside of the box and uses sheer logic, pain-staking research and her finely tuned instincts to get the most minutest of clues that may possibly give them a real lead.  The main struggle in the story in fact is not about fighting the enemy, but Maya up against the CIA male establishment who are entrenched in their practices and methods even though in this instance they are getting them absolutely nowhere.

Scriptwriter Mark Boal has linked in several incidents that we know that were in the public eye that they occurred .... such as the car ambush inside a US Army Camp in Afghanistan which results in several CIA Agents and military personnel being killed ..... with what I can only assume is some experienced guess work on what happened on a day to day basis.  I not only have faith in him and Director Kathyn Bigelow to believe their version is as near as dammit to the truth, but I have absolutely doubt that the controversial torture scenes were also based on fact too.  It's totally naive not to believe that ALL sides in this war have not resorted to such unacceptable inhumane treatment, and the more indignant the CIA and the politicians get about this, then the more I am convinced of the movie's accuracy on this score.

When Maya eventually persuades the people with the President's ear, that she is 95% certain that she has located the exact hideout of Bin Laden in Pakistan, and the covert mission to seek and kill him is green-lighted we are still perched on the edge of our seats quite terrified, even though we know they will definitely get their man.

I have to say that I am completely in awe of two things in particular about this excellent movie.  Firstly Miss Bigelow's rare and extraordinary talent ensuring that even her big action scenes such as the final raid  is so full of close up human elements of the story that you get so engaged with the men (and women) as much as the battle itself.  I'm also still reeling with total fascination with where on earth she built all her big military sets as they were so totally realistic I was convinced she must have somehow persuaded the Government to let her shoot in situ.

And the 2nd element that I give my complete admiration too, is Jessica Chastain's performance as Maya.  It is breathtakingly wonderful.  As I was thinking of how best to convey how magnificent she truly makes this whole movie her own, I read that she had been hailed as the next Meryl Streep.  Praise doesn't come higher than that.  And like Ms Streep, Ms Chastain has just won the Golden Globe, and trust me, the Best Actress Oscar this year is unquestionably hers.

Lest I forget, I should also give full credit to the impressive cast of actors who made up the ranks of the CIA and military and their prisoners that included Jason Clarke, Mark Strong, Joel Edgerton, Kyle Chandler, Edgar Raminez, Stephen Dillane, John Barrowman and James Gandolfini.

It is an enthralling story, and an indisputably brilliant movie.   Its only January 15th, but I know that this will make my personal Best Movie of the Year List. The only crime (now) is why on earth the Academy didn't even nominate Miss Bigelow for her second Best Director Oscar. 

Totally totally unmissable.

Available on Amazon

★★★★★★★★★★

NOT FADE AWAY

The most wonderful element of David Chase's coming-of-age drama set in the 1960's is the glorious music.  This is the time when The Beatles started finding success and the world was also discovering the likes of The Rolling Stones.  

Douglas an American/Italian geeky high school kid in New Jersey gets invited by his best friend to start their own rock band which seems to be main purpose in life for most of their peers too. His blue-collar hard working father angrily objected to this distraction away from school work which he thinks will mean that Douglas wont make college, whilst his put-upon mother is as bitter with him as she is with the rest of her life.

The story covers the years of 1963 to 1968 when the world was coming to terms with such historical landmarks as the Kennedy and Luther King assassinations on the one hand, and the sexual revolution on the other.  It follows Douglas's trials too as he discovers that he has a voice and shouldn't be just lurking in the background playing drums, and that also he has a libido that girls find attractive.  One in particular, Grace, a girl from the posh side of the tracks hears the voice, but falls in love with the man that young Douglas is fast becoming.

The boys in the band squabble as they look for musical direction ... 'how come the English know all about the blues and we didn't, even though its been under our noses all the time' .... and Douglas and Grace as adolescents struggling with the new sexual freedom, also have their ups and downs.  The music they play is good, but it doesn't necessary mean they are going to make the big time, and the romance is not that special aside from the fact that this will be their very first one. Nevertheless it is rather an enchanting story.

Mr Chase, if you don't know already, was the creator of The Sopranos, so what he doesn't know about the authenticity of living in New Jersey can be written on a postage stamp. What he has painstakingly achieved here is a perfect period right down to the most minutest detail and without falling into the trap of making it at all kitsch.  He has also peppered the plot with some neat touches of humor that add some lightness to all this teenage angst.

There are some sterling performances by seasoned pros such as James Gandolfini as the grumpy dad, Molly Price as the mother who rarely has the curlers out of her hair. and Brad Garrett as the Agent who may be the key to the big time.  But it is the young cast, some making film acting debuts here, that really make this piece sing, especially an exceptionally talented John Magaro in his first leading role as Douglas.

And then there is the music!  Some inspired choices of the hits of the time, and more original numbers written for the film. Absolutely electric .... and not simply because that this is the music of my youth too.  But those hairstyles!  Wow.... did I/we all look as bad as that? Hmmmm.

And did true love win through?  Did the Band ever get the fame they wanted?  That would be telling.  It is however worth checking out for yourself.

Available at Amazon

★★★★★★★★

THE HOTTEST STATE

Most of us in life have to just simply pick ourselves up and get over it on our own when our hearts are broken for the first time. Ethan Hawke however went one better and wrote a semi-autobiographical novel about his own heartbreak and then adapted it into a movie that he also directed and acted in too. Maybe the fact that he was a tad too close to this story is why he rather lost his objectivity in the telling, which in turns makes you lose your interest in discovering if there is ever going to be a happy ending for either of the young lovers.

William and Sara meet in a bar and they take an instant like each other and find out they are both  'artists' (she sings, he acts) and they go home to play at being boyfriend and girlfriend. William gets a part in a movie being shot in Mexico, and he persuades Sara to accompany him for 6 days.  Once there they really seem to fall truly in love,  finally have sex, and act out just like they are on their honeymoon. At one point there is talk of an instant on-the-spot marriage, but that fleeting moment passes.  Four weeks  later and the movie wraps, and William hurries back to New York, but Sara has decided she doesn't want him, or anyone, as a lover. She offers no further explanation and shows William the door.

William starts acting deranged and takes to stalking Sara where he alternates between passionately wooing her or haranguing her with abuse.  Her abrupt coldness is hard for him to accept, and even more difficult for us to understand.

William's parents feature in the story too as they conceived him as teenagers in the back of their Barracuda car.  When William was 6 years old his parents were already divorced and fighting bitterly. and so his mother decided to leave their home state of Texas to come to New York for a better life.  She ended up in a dead-end clerical job in New Jersey and was still angry having to settle for far less than she thought she deserved.  On the occasion of William's 21st birthday when he is still dealing with recently being dumped by Sara, his mother tells him 'people aren’t going to love you back and you’re going to die anyway, so get over yourself.'  

His father is still in Texas and has remarried and still breeding but never kept in touch with William despite his promises.  Even so, at a loss to know what to do to win Sara back, William seeks his father out to see if he can actually step up to the plate and for once giving him some paternal advice.  

The trouble is that William and Sara have essentially failed to interest themselves in each other, but they also cannot manage to evoke our sympathy that they are even worth our effort in trying to engage with them too.  Particulary Sara who acts without any logical explanation and despite the fact she is played by the wonderful Catolina Sandini Moreno ('Maria Full of Grace') appears very one-dimensional.  Mr. Hawke has written young William as a much better role, and Mark Webber ('Scott Pilgrim Vs The World') makes a fine job of trying to make both Sara and us like him. His parents are played by Mr Hawke and Laura Linney.  Also one of William's ex girlfriend's Samantha (who is a lot less complicated!) is played by Michelle Williams.

At two hours long this tale of young unrequited love seems too painful, and I'm not sure if it's because maybe it reminds us all that we have been there and it wasn't fun, or maybe the reason is more straightforward and is just because we really never do care if this two make a bigger mess of it all than we did.

P.S. Great soundtrack 

P.P.S. From 2007 .... its part of my "catch up and see what i missed' list ... and is on DVD everywhere including Amazon
★★★★★★

IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON

I never ever dreamed of being an astronaut like other little boys, and now I have seen this rather enthralling 2007 documentary about the race to put a man on the moon, I know I would have failed on so many counts.  It turns out that these early space pioneers were expected to design their rockets, then help build them before having to don on those cumbersome suits and be crammed  into a tiny cockpit like sardines in a can to get the thing to actual take off.   And there was I thinking when Buzz Aldrin stepped out on to the moon's surface way back in 1969, how very glamorous and exciting it was all. After watching the David Singleton's movie I have so re-thought the glamour angle, but will readily admit that I am still in awe of what a thrilling achievement it all was.

Back in the midst of the Cold War in 1961 President Kennedy's famous speech to Congress declaring his goal of putting a man on the moon, was probably more about maintaining a superiority over the USSR than trumpeting advancing scientific achievements.   The reasons why the President ensured that NASA got the funding to get the Apollo Program up and flying is maybe a tad irrelevant now, and whatever his motives were, it was his political force that made it happen. It seems rather a sad reality that he was no longer around to see his dream realized.

The narrative in the movie  is threaded together with interviews with Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins ... the latter being the 'forgotten' crew member who went on that mission but never got to step on the moon's surface .....along with another 8 astronauts from the space program (6 out of 7 Apollo Missions landed on the moon). They are all articulate and extremely personable men who still seemed somewhat in shock at the magnitude of their achievement. One related that his father who was born the same year the Wright Brothers first flight had claimed that the planned moon venture was a preposterous idea, where his young son on the other hand was totally unfazed by all his father's spectacular achievement.

It's a rather wonderful look behind the scenes about one of mankind's greatest triumphs and the remarkable and rather pragmatic and resourceful brave souls who made it all possible. I have no idea how it ended up in Viewing List, but I am so very pleased it did.

★★★★★★★★

<

PROMISED LAND

It seems a tad ingenious to say it but this earnest movie that tries to take the moral high ground on the contentious issue of fracking is frankly boring. Never quite too sure to be a poignant lesson on an important environmental issue or just an entertaining story, it ends up taking the middle ground and leading you as high and dry as the poor homeowners in the town in the movie.

Its all about Steve who never seems to stop repeating to everyone 'I'm not a bad guy' , and even though he has come to this small town just to buy up drilling for natural gas rights from all the landowners for bottom dollar, he's not.  He hailed from a farm himself and when the local Caterpillar Factory closed down, his small town died too.  His message now is without the Gas Companies's largesse, there will be no future in this deprived farming community too.

Sue his sidekick is a single mother who needs the income to put her son through school so she takes a more pragmatic approach to the job.  When Frank an elderly local school teacher asks some awkward questions about the whole nature of the side effects caused by fracking, its Sue who remains calm and is prepared to deal with this upset.  When Dustin an environmental activist shows up in town ready to fight the Gas Companies plans head on, Sue is ready to fight back whilst Steve's convictions start to wan.

It's a dirty fight for the hearts and minds of the locals as Dustin distributes flyers of dead cows and wrecked abandoned farms in other towns who allowed fracking. He and Steve are also competing for the affections of the same girl, Alice, a local schoolteacher (who they evidently think worth fighting over even though it seems rather odd that such a hot 'catch' has not already been snapped up).

The best part of the movie is the twist to the end of the  story just as it is stuck in a quagmire, but even though it paints the Gas Company as an evil behemoth that is only concerned with its bottom line, it confusingly says that fracking is bad just sometimes, and then leaves us hanging there.

This Gus Van Sant directed movie was co-written by it's two stars Matt Damon and John Krasinski.  Even though Mr Damon has a Screenwriting Oscar on his shelf at home  ('Good Will Hunting', also directed by Mr Van Sant), he is a much better actor than writer and is suitably convincing as the  small town boy who should have never left and gone to the  big city.  Frances McDormand is always a sheer joy to watch, and here as Sue she injects some much need humor into the story even though she is far too sound and sensible to be swayed by the gentle flirtations of the local store keeper (wonderfully played by Titus Welliver).  The acting is in fact the saving grace of the movie and is rounded off with Hal Holbrook as Frank, and Rosemarie Dewitt as everybody's sweetheart Alice.

Promised Land was full of promises that it failed to deliver.  Well-intentioned, and often sentimental, but it wont tell you any facts about fracking that you didnt know already.

Available on Amazon 

★★★★★★

MY FAVORITE INDIE MOVIES OF 2012

I reviewed some 26O movies in 2012 ... and as I am reasonably careful(!) about what I choose to watch, there were very few humdingers.   There were in fact some really stunning cinematic treats that made my year so much richer, and that I was really excited to share with you.

This however is not my List of the Best Movies of the Year, but more about the crop of Indie Cinema that really pushed all MY buttons.  And they are in alphabetical order:-

ABOUT FACE
A SEPARATION
AI WEI WEI: NEVER SORRY
AMOUR
BEYOND THE WALLS (LES MURS)
BUDRUS
DIANE VREELAND : THE EYE MUST TRAVEL
ELENA
5 BROKEN CAMERAS
HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE
JIRO DREAMS OF SUSHI
KEEP THE LIGHTS ON
LAURENCE ALWAYS
MONSIEUR LAHZAR
ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA
OSLO : AUGUST 31ST
PINA
SEARCHING FOR SUGARMAN
THE IMPOSTER
THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES

And runners up:

A BETTER LIFE
BALLROOM RULES
FOUND MEMORIES
GAYBY
JIG
LAS ACASIAS
MARINA ABRAMOVIC : THE ARTIST IS PRESENT
MY DOG TULIP
PRIVATE ROMEO
TEDDY BEAR
THE INTOUCHABLES
THE MASTER
THE TIME THAT REMAINS
THE WELL DIGGERS DAUGHTER
VIOLETTA WENT TO HEAVEN
WHERE DO WE GO NOW

and my Favorite Movie STILL waiting to be released:

WRONG

P.S. The reviews of  all of  the movies can be found on my Blog.