Reel Affirmations 20 with Ronnie Kroell and others' best and worst films
Host: Ebone Bell Video: Aram Vartian
October 21, 2011
Ebone Bell hits up opening night at the 20th Reel Affirmations LGBT film festival to ask about favorite — and not so favorite — movies. Interviews include actor/model Ronnie Kroell (“Into the Lion’s Den”), Director Abe Sylvia (“Dirty Girls”), Larry Guillemette and Polly Stamatopoulos.
Two-time Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali trained for years to swing a sword onscreen as the MCU's new incarnation of vampire hunter Blade. Yet, as film fans know by now, the studio wasted that man's time, while certainly adding to his bank account, with no Blade feature ever coming to fruition. And it never will with Ali, he's declared, understandably ready to keep it moving.
Fortunately, from the ashes of the scuttled project -- and half a decade of Ali developing a Blade film alongside Mogul Mowgli writer-director Bassam Tariq -- a new hero has arisen in their gripping collaboration Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother.
Alejandro Iñárritu's rambling satire Digger is a woolly mess of a film, though admirable in its ambition. Few modern movies aiming to reheat Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove recipe of doomsday dread, political satire, and broad absurdist comedy come as close to the Kubrickian ideal as Digger does in fits and starts.
Digger likewise plants us beside the President of the United States (John Goodman) and members of his cabinet cartoonishly fighting in the war room over what to do to avert an imminent disaster. Here, the threat's not an atomic bomb, but rather an American-made climate catastrophe that could wipe out thousands, maybe millions of lives.
“Are you sure your parents aren’t home?” Nothing innocent ever started with that question, but almost no one is innocent in Primetime, a sardonic look at the making (and makers) of NBC’s notorious undercover sting series To Catch a Predator.
The query comes from “MarriedAndLookingForFun31313” (Tony Revolori), entering a suburban home through the back door, intent on meeting a 13-year-old for sex, and unaware he’s starring in an episode of the show. His hot hookup is really a trap, set for creeps cruising online for minors.
A few minutes later, he’s pleading, “Please don’t put this on TV!” But this is great TV. So before he knows it, MarriedAndLookingForFun31313, an Iraq War vet, finds himself the poster boy of primetime predators.
