Category: Reviews

‘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…

‘Frida’: Gutierrez’s documentary thoughtfully paints an intimate look at this influential icon

Jeff Mitchell

“Frida” (2024) – Director Carla Gutierrez’s documentary about one of the most memorable 20th-century artists – Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderon (a.k.a. Frida Kahlo), universally known for her self-portraits – should enlighten broad audiences, those who deeply know her work and Frida novices who may have seen “Self-Portrait with Monkey” once on a 2” by 2” magnet at a flea market. The film chronologically markets Ms. Kahlo’s life (1907 – 1954) from her days as a toddler in 1910 to her passing in 1954.  Gutierrez and her team’s conventional…