off the leash

Apocalypse in the Tropics

Petra Costa’s documentary is about a toxic blend of evangelical Christianity and right-wing politics. Nope, not the upcoming U.S. election. This is about Brazil, a country where, according to the pastors in the movie, 30 percent of the population is evangelical.

The documentary covers the rise and fall of Jair Bolsonaro, a right wing president heavily under the influence of a pastor named Malafaia. These guys offered campaign promises like putting a gun in every home and not one bit of land for indigenous peoples. I don’t think that even Project 2525 hit on that one.

This is really a magnificent documentary. Costa gets amazing access to players on both sides of Brazil’s polarized leadership. Her commentary is thoughtful but she doesn’t try to tell the story, letting instead the words and actions of the people she is filming do so.

As an American, you can’t help seeing Bolsonaro as Brazil’s Trump. So what happens when he loses the election to Lula? He refuses to concede, declares fraud and his supporters break into and ransack the Congressional building. Sounds familiar, right?

(Petra Costa was awarded a special jury prize for Apocalypse in the Tropics)

Micro Budget

A laugh out loud movie. And how often do you find a laugh out loud movie at a film festival?

A guy from Iowa heads west with his nine month pregnant wife to make a movie in Los Angeles, which he assumes will sell because, after all, streamers will buy anything. The title reflects the lack of funds he has to work with. So the caterer he hires to feed the staff shows up with mayonnaise sandwiches. And his visual effects guy’s only previous experience is working for off-brand bowling alleys. His lack of funds is matched only by his lack of ability.

There’s also a guy who’s filming the making of this movie. So it’s a movie within a movie, but really no movie at all.

Somehow our director manages to alienate everyone, most notably his pregnant wife. She’s in the movie but also is cleaning, cooking and taking out the garbage at the AirBNB where he’s filming and housing his cast.

The stupid statements, bad decisions and overall incompetence are a laugh a minute. On a side note, there are a number of cameos, most notably Seal. Can’t explain how he ended up in this movie.

La Cocina

La Cocina is in a large Times Square restaurant with an army of waitresses and back-of-house staff. The kitchen is crowded, noisy, messy, vulgar, abusive and violent.

There are a couple of plot lines in the movie. There is an $800+ shortfall in one pay station that leads to a host of accusations and incriminations. And there’s the affair between a cook and a waitress and the unwanted pregnancy that results. But for the most part, the setting is the story. The staff is made up of immigrants, mostly illegals. I’m literally watching this movie at the same time Trump is holding one of his rallies demonizatig immigrants. What I see on screen are people who came looking for a better life, working crappy, degrading jobs and getting bullied besides. One particularly strong scene was of a group of kitchen workers, from Mexico, Colombia, Morocco and Bensonhurst, sitting in an alley smoking on their break and talking of their dreams. They were anything but grandiose.

The movie is artfully filmed in black and white. That added to the dinginess of the setting and the dreariness of the workday.

The kitchen workers called each other chef, just like in The Bear, but compared to La Cocina, the behavior in The Bear’s kitchen is a model of decorum. There is no doubt in my mind that kitchens as toxic as this one are all too common. But I nonetheless felt the movie was a bit overdone, particularly when in comes to the violence and the scope of some accidents.

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MFF24 — Stories, Laughs and Truths Pt. 1