Movie Nation

Idris Elba (@idriselba) Tweeted:
This morning I tested positive for Covid 19. I feel ok, I have no symptoms so far but have been isolated since I found out about my possible exposure to the virus. Stay home people and be pragmatic. I will keep you updated on how I’m doing 👊🏾👊🏾 No panic. https://t.co/Lg7HVMZglZ https://twitter.com/idriselba/status/1239617034901524481?s=20

“Bad Lucky Goat” is funnier and sunnier than any movie that opens with a decapitated goat’s head floating in the Caribbean has any right to be.

It’s “Weekend at Bernie’s” with a billy goat — “Weekend at Billy’s” — set on a remote Caribbean island where the people are as musical as their English Creole patois. Throw in a little voodoo, DIY jug band and washboard bass band interludes, and this laugh-out-loud charmer becomes the next best thing to a trip to the islands.

The island in this case in Colombia’s Providencia, closer to Nicaragua but not exactly close to anywhere. The pace of life may be slow, but there’s a lot of living going on in those eight square miles in the middle of the gin-clear Caribbean.

Corn (Honlenny Huffington) is a teenager who loves music and has big ambitions — as big as the island allows, or as big as anybody whose instrument is a harmonica can dream.

We meet him as he and a pal are warning drivers of a speed trap on one of the island’s few roads. One holds up a sign of warning, the second collects tips just after the warned drivers have passed the speed-gun equipped cop.

Corn’s parents run the tiny, homey Hotel Denton, and mom Pauline (Arelis Fonseca) needs him to run out and fetch some benches. The problem with that? He’s got to do that with sister Rita (Kiara Howard). These two can’t stand each other.

They’re bickering in Dad’s truck on their way to get those benches when, unbeknownst to them, a goat tied to a “Blair Witch Project” altar of sacrifice (stick triangles, etc) on a mountaintop gets loose. If you’re yelling at your brother, you’re not watching the road.

Dead. Goat.

The rest of the movie is a picaresque odyssey in which the feuding siblings have to figure out what to do with the goat and how to get the family truck fixed. They venture from a butcher to a pawnbroker (he uses a one-minute hourglass to haggle), drop in on a mangrove pool jug band and a cockfight, bartering with meat and goatskin, bickering every step of the way.

They’re on foot or in a truck, on a motorbike or in a motorized skiff as they stumble through “bad luck” that includes a kidnapping, robbing from a church collection plate and some pretty serious superstition. No, the “Blair Witch” won’t get them. “The Ghoul” might.

Corn is counseled to “keep the spiritual vibe” (in Creole/English/Spanish/Caribbean with English subtitles) and “just be patient with” this quarrelsome sibling. Rita has to get over her “materialism” and maybe take her slacker-brother and his “music” more seriously.

And even when it’s not laugh-out-loud funny, it is amusing and utterly disarming.

First-time writer/director Samir Oliveros, working with untrained actors on a dazzling, unfilmed location, has delivered a lucky charm of a movie about a dead, “Bad Lucky Goat,” now on on Film Movement + (you can find it on Amazon, too).

MPAA Rating: unrated, with a dead goat and a cockfight scene, some profanity

Cast: Honlenny Huffington, Kiara Howard, Elkin Robinson, Jean Bush Howard, Arelis Fonseca and Eduardo Cantillo

Credits: Written and directed by Samir Oliveros. A Film Movement release.

Running time: 1:16

Here’s a little soapy escape from the calamities of the day, an Indian “Joy Luck Club” set in a “Downton Abbey” world.

“Draupadi Unleashed” is a multi-generational saga about the struggles of women in the Indian patriarchy, limiting most of its story, struggles and commentary to life under “The Raj,” Britain’s rule of India which ended in the late 1940s.

It’s based on a book by Nisha Sabharwal, who co-directed it and delivers its voice-over narration (it’s all in English). And it takes as its inspiration a character from Indian literature’s “Mahabharata.” Draupadi was a woman who was the subject of a five way tug of war, an apt description of our heroine here.

The setting is the “Little London” of Quetta,a city now Pakistani but once an island of affluence in British-occupied India. No British intrude on this world in the movie. There’s no sign of the social unrest Mahatma Gandhi and his followers, India’s underclasses, were involved in.

We’re introduced “to my fifteen year old mother” Sita (Indigo Sabharwal) as “she is about to meet her husband.” It’s 1915, and the young woman bristles at the arranged marriage, the “traditions” that are harped on, her instructions from her parents — “Don’t speak…Look down at his feet.”

It looks like a promising marriage, but she is the first to have a vision of a shirtless little boy who foretells “Soon, you shall find liberation.”

And so she does.  Her husband dies in his sleep. She goes off to live with her mother-in-law.

Years later, Sita (now played by Melanie Chandra) and that mother-in-law (Anna George) prep Sita’s daughter, our narrator Indira (Salena Qureshi) for her own “meet the man you might marry” moment. Indira is even less enthusiastic about the handsome sugar baron Amar (Dominic Rains) she is set up with.

Because she’s just met a younger and more handsome cousin (Taaha Shah Badusha). And they’re already “kissing cousins.”

“I would NEVER be fully Amar’s!” And when Amar sees her smooching on Cousin Guatum, he realizes that, too.

What IS a girl to do? Aside from have visions of the same comforting boy spirit her mother saw. And then there’s the mind-reading and wise Swami G (Cas Anvar), who regards her “as if he was unwrapping my sari!”

“You can see your future,” he counsels. “You destiny is set, Little One. Lord Krishna’s will be done!”

Arrangements can be made, nothing is permanent, we’re all very SOPHISTICATED about these things, and there’s lots of foreshadowing of earthquakes in between the rituals, references to The Raj and Rolls Royces.

The rituals are one thing you fall into with this soap opera — the tradition of a bride’s entry into her husband’s home,“Griha Pravesh,” her tipping over of a vase filled with rice and colored herbs to mark her footprint.

Another noteworthy trait of this American-made Indian film (again, in English) is the beautiful cast. There’s a Miss India mixed in here with the exceptionally striking women and men of various generations.

The sexuality here is more explicit than you’d ever seen in a Bollywood production, although tame by Hollywood standards.

What isn’t noteworthy, or even terribly sensible, is the plot. The message, repeated repeatedly between women, from the swami to Indira, is “You are not born slaves.”

But in 1930s India, that must’ve been hard to swallow, even among the elite and their “sophisticated” arrangements.

Qureshi, George and Savar are the stand-outs in the cast, doing what they can with thinly-drawn characters and predictably melodramatic situations. The lush settings and high living implied are just that — implied. The film doesn’t revel in its decadence or reach for heightened soap opera reactions to the over-the-top situations.

It’s all just as soapy and unreal as “Downton Abbey,” with little of the mother-daughter-“sacrifice” of poignancy of “The Joy Luck Club.”

They had an interesting world to work with, and an interesting era in that world. But “Draupadi Unleashed” is a romantic soap opera entirely too restrained for its own good.

MPAA Rating: unrated, a tad more sexually explicit than most Indian cinema

Cast: Salena Qureshi, Anna George, Dominic Rains, Cas Anvar, Azita Ghanizada, Taaha Shah Badusha

Credits: Written and directed by Tony Stopperan, Nisha Sabharwal, based on the novel by Nisha Sabharwal. Passion River release.

Running time: 1:50

That sort of social distancing should be easy as attendance plummets.

AMC CEO says “whichever is less” will be their guideline.

I was in two showings Thursday in which I was the sole customer.

The Hollywood Reporter adds that
“S&P Global Ratings said it would review AMC Theatres’ debt ratings for a potential downgrade amid the coronavirus pandemic.”

Details: https://t.co/V8OV5qlfY0 https://twitter.com/THR/status/1239563359202283520?s=20

All these replays of sports events of the past filling the network airwaves this last weekend brought this image to mind.

Charlton Heston, sitting alone in an LA movie house, remembering what “crowds” look like.

What was he watching? Michael Wadleigh’s “Woodstock,” an event that celebrated a major anniversary last year, a movie Martin Scorsese helped edit.

Chuck’s got there in style, too. Grabbed himself an American convertible fresh out of the abandoned showroom.

“The Omega Man” was sort of the “rugged American individualist gun nut’s guide to surviving the apocalypse” and shaped a lot of such End Times tales to come. Richard Matheson’s “I Am Legend” is the book it was based on, and Will Smith’s remake was slightly smarter, a tad more progressive and in step with the times.

Anyway, movie going’s gotten a lot like Chuck’s experience in that film. Not sure how long the cinemas will stay open. Cities like NYC and LA have already shuttered theirs. Governors may act because Washington won’t. And even without that, no multiplex can cover expenses with the few paying customers who are showing up.

AMC is facing a debt crisis as it struggles to stay open via a limit of 50 customers per theater.

Let’s hope there are still places to go see a movie when all this shakes out. For now, streaming it is.

Madeline Murray O’Hair, Anita Bryant and Phyllis Schlafly…a generation of”The Most Hated Women in America.”

Two of them have been the subject of feature films. As of April, anyway.

Hulu has Cate as Phyllis next month.

A steep falloff in business at theaters thanks to the Coronavirus and a reduction in new releases.

Theaters may be empty one way or the other next weekend.

“Onward” expected to pull in $15-16 million and change. It barely cleared $10 million.

That’s a 73% falloff from an opening weekend Disney tried to hide it’s disappointment over. ($39).

Blame Coronavirus for the steepnfall, but audiences know it’s a dog

“I Still Believe” had church presales that pointed to an opening in the $teens. It only managed $9.5. Reviews pointing out how bland it is didn’t help.

“Bloodshot” cleared $9.3 million, on the low end of expectations.

“The Hunt”bombed big time. $5 million in wide release.

Ben Affleck’s “The Way Back” fell off a cliff — a 70% drop, $2.4 million and change on its second weekend.

“Sonic” managed another $2.47.

“The Call of the Wild” pulled in another $2 million or so. It is over $100 million worldwide. A bomb because Fox spent $145 million making the dogs and wolves digital.

“Emma.” cleared another $1.3 or so.

“Bad Boys” added another million to its $200 million plus take

“Burden” did poorly in limited release.

Having electricity and internet connection and extra time on your hands, with no sports (Today’s “opiate of the masses.”) to while away any indoor hours you have for social isolating, maybe it’s time you caught up on classic cinema.No, I don’t mean watching “Die Hard” or “Billy Madison” again.Start with Open Culture, where they have titles like Bunuel’s “Robinson Crusoe” streaming for free, over 1100 films listed.There’s still free film content in the inner recesses of YouTube.Assorted museums and archives keep online libraries up for your streaming convenience. The Library of Congress and The British Film Institute are good places to start.Some for profit “free movie” sites jam you with commercials, or are pirate sites. You can tell the difference.Vudu is one of the sources for commercial cut feature films and TV series.You don’t have to pay for Netflix’s limited menu of films or have a Roku to go down a movie rabbit hole online.Got a favorite site you go to (No bloody pirates, please)? Help everybody else with a comment/tip, if you would.http://www.openculture.com/freemoviesonline

I wonder if theater chains will be facing bankruptcy over this, something this “Hollywood” centered Hollywood Reporter story omits.

Amid the #coronavirus outbreak, taking wide-release tentpoles off the schedule doesn’t come cheap — nor does shuttering production on hundreds of scripted and unscripted TV series — and what happens to the unemployed workers? https://t.co/OaasceJxbv https://twitter.com/THR/status/1238963153679060993?s=20