Author: Jeff Mitchell

‘Hard Miles’: This inspirational cycling story is worth an easy trip to the movie theatre

Jeff Mitchell

“Hard Miles” (2024) – Rice, Atencio, Smink, and Woolbright. These four teens have walked hard miles.  Their long journeys of bad decisions and misfortune led them to reside at Colorado’s Ridge View Academy, a school for troubled teenagers.  It’s where arguments and fist fights break out more frequently than acne, as the young men posture for position to get through their days.  Still, Ridge View isn’t heartless.  Counselors like Greg (Matthew Modine) and Haddie (Cynthia Kaye McWilliams) march to the beat of a well-intentioned drum, but verbal altercations with the…

‘The Peasants’ doesn’t brim with riches, but it works as an eccentric curiosity

Jeff Mitchell

“The Peasants” (2023) – “Surrounded by strangers I thought were my friends.” – “Against the Wind” (1980) by Bob Seger For Jagna Paczesiowna (Kamila Urzedowska), she is surrounded by enemies.  Kamila, 29, who could be Margot Robbie’s long-lost cousin, plays Jagna, a beautiful 20-something farmhand living in Lipce, a modest Polish village, in the late 19th century.  She’s a peasant, and like so many Lipce residents, Jagna toils on the land but doesn’t own it.  Prospects for wealth, or even simple comfort, are out of reach. Conversely, a widower, Maciej…

‘Problemista’ is an inventive, eccentric comedy, but a couple of problems trip it up

Jeff Mitchell

“Problemista” (2024) – Alejandro (Julio Torres) has a problem.  The 20-something, wide-eyed New York City upstart – with a slight frame and a mop-top haircut with a sometimes-noticeable cow lick – just lost his job at FreezeCorp, a cryogenic stasis outfit that dresses its clients in a tube to sleep for – perhaps – hundreds of years.  Alejandro didn’t calculate differential equations to pinpoint the math behind these science-fiction devices in the here and now.  He handled the Sleeping Beauties’ personal belongings, or for one client, an artist named Bobby…