Gorgon Reviews

Drowned Land was watched as part of the Seattle International Film Festival 2025! It had its showing on Friday, May 16th as part of the festival, and it was the Seattle Premiere of this film! You an see my interview with the director, Colleen Thurston, here!

A Civil Action. Dark Waters. Films about lawyers going after corporations who have poisoned the water in communities and refuse to take action to fix it. Films where the little guy has to stand up to Mr. Moneybags, and well, it doesn’t go well. Sure, there is some success, but when compared to the extreme damage done to these communities, it gives a strong Pyrrhic victory vibes behind it.

So, what is the problem can be stopped at its source?

In Drowned Land, we head to Kiamichi River, where many natives in Oklahoma live, after being moved during the Trail of Tears. Not just Native Americans either, plenty of other folk use the valley and the river. But we have, like in those movies, a company who wants to come up and turn it into a hydroelectric dam, flooding parts, affecting the wildlife, and the residents both up and downstream in different amounts.

And this documentary is about the local residents coming together to put a stop to this. They don’t want it to be touched. They want to save it, and so they go to the hearing, with personal narratives, facts, science on their side, to see if they can prevent future tragedy from befalling upon their community.

And its not just about protecting beautiful sights, but hey, its a bonus. You know the beginning of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, where Earth apparently didn’t make the hearing to save itself, so it went kabloom? Well, apparently those meetings are useful. Splice with scenes of community members talking about the river, and museum visits and more, we get to see snippets of the two day hearing, where community members brought their voices and expertise to say why the dam should not be built.

And of course, the most surprising part about this, is they were successful.

For now.

Because this was not the first time it was attempted, and won’t be the last time, unless they can get legislature protecting the area forever. Which is the next goal. But holy shit, they won? Even if just a small step towards staying free from this construction, that is such a massive uplifting feeling. I have seen a lot of protest documentaries about constructions on native lands, and trying to stop corporation take over. I feel like the corporation always wins, and we see why everything is corrupt.

If anything, this documentary should be shown just to see that it can be done, it just takes a village working together.

But besides that, I am sad to say, the parts between the hearing just failed to keep my interest as much. I am a political and legal junkie, I would have loved it if the whole thing was just that one aspect myself. The human interest stuff, I get it, but it felt a little bit more like padding than anything else.

2 out of 4.

Four Mothers was watched as part of the Seattle International Film Festival 2025! It was the opening night film of the festival, on Thursday, May 15, and it was the Seattle Premiere of this film!

How many mothers is the right number of mothers to have? An average number has to be somewhere around 1 I imagine, but people sometimes have fewer, sometime they have more. But rarely do they have four. And thankfully, our lead doesn’t actually have four here either.

Edvard (James McArdle) is a romance novelist for the YA crowd. He is a gay man, and his books feature gay romance, but he thinks his writing is a bit better and more important than simple romance. Right now his book is set to come out in America, and it is getting strong buzz before it comes out. So he wants to really capitulate on the buzz and maybe earn him the success he always felt he deserved.

Unfortunately for Edvard, he also lives with his mother, Alma (Fionnula Flanagan), who doesn’t speak anymore and uses a tablet to speak instead. She is old, she is closed to death, and he is her caretaker. It does mean he has no social life and he is thinking about of leaving her in a home, just to give him some time to find that life success. But he is also a coward and doesn’t think he can do it.

Regardless, he is about to set up a US tour for his book when his two best friends, also gay and also caretaking their moms, decide to ditch their mothers on his door step so they can go to a big pride festival for a few days. And his therapist, older, in the same scenario, drops his mom off too. Oh look. Four moms! So now he has to juggle four older women, with different schedules and temperaments, while he is trying to do something great in his life at the same time. Hooray!

The other mothers are played by Dearbhla Molloy, Stella McCusker, and Paddy Glynn.

They are probably not watching porn here. I think we need more Irish films for sure. Such a small country, with a small population, but they got stories to say too, even if things get a little bit US centric with the plot line. (Damn United States, always butting in other countries stories…).

Anyways, I will say I liked this concept for a story. A struggling author of a niche topic, looking to get big, dealing with underrepresented groups could lead to a lot of things. And this is a caretaker story at the same time, and caretakers, despite being a pretty large group, are often underrepresented in media as well. Or, if they are represented it is usually more of a tragedy drama, than a comedy or uplifting drama. This falls into the latter category. And, because of that, I don’t think it is able to reach the lofty goals it aspires to be.

The stronger emotional moments I feel go away too quickly. For example, the father who is clearly not in the picture, and his story, is brought up and leads to conflict, but only in smaller amounts despite holding a lot of weight. The idea of a temporary home while he invoked on a 2-3 week US tour made a lot of sense, and the drama behind it felt…extra. It was a shame. The film didn’t seen to hint enough to find out why certain decisions were derisive, and I just felt bad for the main character most of the film.

The ending itself is exactly where someone would probably assume this movie landed. You know, knowing it is a comedy/drama instead of a tragedy/drama. So I wasn’t surprised when we arrived at the ending. But unfortunately the journey wasn’t fully worth it either.

All of that to say, I liked most of the main characters, including our main guy. I think the side stories of his life had a lot of heart behind them, and the acting from everyone was still top notch. But pleasant films aren’t always going to be the most exciting films.

2 out of 4.

All God’s Children was watched as part of Cascadia International Women’s Film Festival 2025! It has its showing on Saturday, April 26th as part of the festival.

All God’s Children is an interesting phrase with a lot of weight behind it. From a single religion’s point of view, the religion that feels that they are the most correct religion, then they can say sure, everyone is really the children of their one god, the right god! And it becomes extremely dismissive of other religions in that sense, especially when they would disagree with that point.

Some people use the phrase to refer to the three Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Because hey sure, it is known that they worship the same godlike being, and they can then use the phrase to refer to anyone in these religions, whom just worship differently. Screw the people who are Hindu or any other other plenty of religions in that regard, but at least they have an umbrella.

Now, in the United States, when you hear that phrase, for the most part, it likely is used by a Christian, in regards to Christianity and everyone in the world needing to be Christian. But this documentary wants to examine a bigger scope in that regard. But not as big as I noted.

In this documentary, we are going to have two large religious groups come together, to work out how to coexist peacefully and prop each other up, against outside influences trying to tear them down. No, unfortunately, none of these groups are Muslim. Instead these New York groups are a mostly white based Jewish congregation, and a mostly black based Christian group.

Who gets to be the bigger person? Now, this documentary (probably) wasn’t set up to try a cure racism. But it does come up quite often given the subjects. When it first started, I thought back to that old viral Rhett and Link commercial about a furniture store for people of all races to enjoy. A silly video, but the ideas behind it have nobility. You see, because both Black churches and Jewish groups have been targeted by acts of violence over the last many several years, around the United States. Shootings, bomb threats, weird protests, you name it. [Note, so have Muslim mosques, but again, unfortunately they weren’t included in this. That isn’t a fault of the documentary filmmakers, because they didn’t make this coalition themselves, they are just filming what real groups were attempting].

And that is why these two groups wanted to come together. Not just because of the outside threats against them, but because these same outside threats seem to be wanting them to fight against each other instead. There are certainly elements to Christianity and Judaism that seem incompatible, but what if they can ignore those differences, and focus on the lessons of love and community and help prop each other up?

Would be great if it can happen!

And honestly, the best parts of this documentary show that it can be incredibly hard to get this going. It takes actual effort, but different sides, and consistent effort at that. And even then, nothing is perfect, and there are points where it seems like the whole project is a waste. But again, I reiterate, this is not a perfect process, and this is just a real situation of two large religious organizations trying to do SOMETHING to maybe make the world a better place. And for that, this documentary is a real good examination of real life and worth spreading the message.

3 out of 4.

Butterflies (Perhoset) was watched as part of Cascadia International Women’s Film Festival 2025! It has its showing on Sunday, April 27th as part of the festival.

Working women never have it easy. Just ask Siiri (Aska Korttila), a working woman, and she doesn’t have it easy!

Specifically she has a government job. No, not one she was voted in, like a politician. She works for one of them, Lena-Maj (Leea Klemola), as some high level of assistant. She has to help her get from place A to B, get her in contact with people, book their hotels, book their cars, handle her meeting notices and phone calls. It is a lot of work. There is even another assistant, who is much worse at the job, but he is cool so he gets away with it.

Regardless, Siiri is now in her home town where she doesn’t want to be, because that is the next stop in the tour. And thankfully, it is a quick one. But because her boss’s husband picks that time to let her know he wants a divorce, so Lena-Maj agrees to stay in the town for their little festival all weekend to try and have fun and avoid reality. And now, Siiri can’t escape her own!

Which means dealing with her father (Jani Volanen). She doesn’t like him. He is a screw up. And he knows it. But he just wants to help her, even if he cant help himself. And it turns out that the apple doesn’t fall that far from the tree.

Also starring Alex Anton.

The fields that grow her sorrows are bountiful.

The two leads in this film are uncomfortable people to watch. They rolled low on charisma and luck, and things don’t go their way. They are not the life of the party (despite the dad being a semi successful musician or something like that)? So if you are going to watch this movie, you are going to have to be willing to deal with that uncomfortableness.

I think the situations presented in this film were decent. I think they could have escalated a bit more, and often kept staying in rather…tame situations. It never made it to the next level. And worst of all, it didn’t feel like it was worth it at the end. It reminds me of a Blink-182 lyric, “Work sucks, I know”. But this is a movie where unfortunate things happen without a great level of payoff. “Life sucks, and then you die,” another song quote reference from The Fools.

A way to describe this could be a black comedy, but usually those movies go darker and potentially include death. So a black comedy without the extreme elements? With a bit of that “British” humor behind it.

It certainly achieves that result, but I wish it went to those greater levels.

2 out of 4.

Folktales was watched as part of Cascadia International Women’s Film Festival 2025! It has its showing on Saturday, April 26th as part of the festival.

Sometimes, people take a gap year after they finish high school and before college. (Sometimes it is forced because they didn’t get in anywhere, or forgot to apply). Some people never go to college at all and go straight into the workforce. Some people choose to study abroad, in some level. Some people switch from college to college. Some people even get to study abroad while in high school!

And some people choose to “study abroad” in a folk high school in Norway!

This is a school that exists within the Arctic circle, and is a full school year type program. On my own looking it up, people from all over can attend these schools. Most of the people must live in the country itself and the EU, but they accept a small amount of people (Around 10% it seems) from other countries as well.

And for this type of folk school, survival is the goal. You are meant to learn skills to live off the land. Building and maintaining fires. Dealing with cold weather and getting out of ice. And of course, dog sled travel! You will learn to bond with the animals, to take care of them, to direct them along the path and how to fix problems as they come up, like falling over.

Will the students at these schools decide to then go and live in the Arctic circle full time, living off on their own in the wilderness? Probably not. A lot of them likely won’t use the specific skills at all. But the learning experience, the confidence gained, I am sure is one of the bigger components for students after these things are over.

And you get to be surrounded by good boys. Far better than a normal school (with bad boys)!

As like many a documentary, this one focuses on the entire program, and specifically three students. We have two native Norway students, and one from the Netherlands, (a woman and two men) amongst their many classmates. We get to see them before they head to school, why they decided to go, and the many trials and tribulations throughout the year. Including when they don’t get to have sun for a long period of time. You think your school is bad? This one takes away the sun, so maybe you should just write your essay.

The students picked are a pretty good mix of archetypes, including one student who has the ultimate of lows with having to withdraw from the program. The decisions behind that, and the pressures can really get to people. Especially when they go on excursions and actually force the students to make their own fires, melt their own ice for water, and cook their food. There isa time for hand holding, and there is a time for showing yourself, and not everyone is willing to trust their own abilities to achieve that higher level.

Now I wonder if anyone has ever died during these school trips. I am most certain that things would never get that dire, and they would intervene at that point. But there is certainly a line!

I admit, the school sounded cool, and depending on the price, it honestly sounds like an experience one would never forget, and give every life lesson possible that one might need to go into the world confident and ready to excel. I might have already looked up how my own kids could go.

The documentary itself has some incredible shots. Including shots of the drivers of the sled dog team, and aerial shots of the campers on a journey, and one particular beautiful shot of just laying up and watching the aurora borealis.

In conclusion, Folktales is a documentary that isn’t set out to push an agenda, but just inform of something rather neat out in the world that people likely didn’t know about. And that is how this documentary came across, as something rather neat!

3 out of 4.

American Dreamer was watched as a screener. It is now out on Digital!

When it comes to the American Dream, usually it involves money, family, a house, and fun. Probably even a green yard and space to frolic.

For Phil (Peter Dinklage), he is a college professor of Economics, so he has served his time well and went to school. He should be able to afford that American Dream everyone talks about? Hell no, he lives in a small apartment, with an old car, and dreams of owning a home, but the price of that has skyrocketed beyond ability. Everything is lost.

Thankfully, Phil does see an ad for a very large mansion like building, with a giant yard, and lake access. It has a hefty fee, out of his range, but there is a secondary, cheaper fee. He can buy it for half of the price listed, if the current owner can stay in it until her death, then he will own the whole thing. He just has to keep to his portion of the house and lawn until then.

Unfortunately for Phil, this dream opportunity can become a nightmare. He has to get rid of everything to afford his share, things keep going wrong, and the live-in woman, Astrid (Shirley MacLaine), might have actual children. This is going to create a will dispute and he might not even get any part of the house once she passes. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.

Also starring Danny Pudi, Matt Dillon, Michelle Mylett, Kimberly Quinn, and Danny Glover.

I too get that look when I find myself living with an old lady. It happens so often!

This movie had a bigger slapstick nature than I thought. Sure the poster shows him looking beat up, but I still didn’t expect to see my man Dinklage slip out of a shower and fall ass up onto the floor.

It was a highlight to see the cameos throughout the film. I enjoyed Glover praying a private eye who was incredibly good at his job, and offended at the same time. Pudi as some sort of HR/Dean/something at the college felt like a good fit for him.

The movie had an interesting plot line for a story, but the main issue is how little the main plot seemed to really get going. I felt no real chemistry between our main character and his housemate. I didn’t feel much between them and the antagonizing daughter. The plot with the grad student just sort of fizzled out into nothing. And I never really understood why Dinklage’s character just gave up so much over his dream, and so quickly.

Regardless, the movie has its interesting moments and decent enough twist to it. It is not a turd, or anything, it just could have use a lot more polish.

2 out of 4.

Hello readers of the site!

Normally, well before now, I would have had my posts for the top and bottom 15 films of the previous year. Unfortunately, the start of the year was very hard with me, losing a family member unexpectedly, and I have had a hard time really getting into that writing mood for something like this. I already had made my lists, and I don’t want to wait until late Spring to write it up and detailed. I need to just have a quick post about it, so the records have my notes, and then next year go back to the previous way of announcing.

In retrospect, I could have done this over a month ago, but, well, you never know how long things last.

So without commentary,

Worst Films of 2024

15) The Front Room
14) Mufasa: The Lion King
13) Madame Web
12) Harold and the Purple Crayon
11) God’s Note Dead: In God We Trust
10) The Garfield Movie
9) Unfrosted
8) Irish Wish
7) Despicable Me 4
6) Reagan
5) Borderlands
4) Uglies
3) Am I Racist?
2) Megamind vs. The Doom Syndicate
1) Dear Santa

——————–
Best Films of 2024

15) Heretic
14) The Last Stop in Yuma County
13) A Complete Unkown
12) Nosferatu
11) Sing Sing
10) Nickel Boys
9) Better Man
8) Wicked
7) Bob Trevino Likes It
6) Red Rooms
5) Saturday Night
4) Conclave
3) Daughters
2) Hundreds of Beavers
1) The Substance

Fist Bump was watched early while it was being shown at the Slamdance Film Festival.

At some point, fist bumping became all of the rage. It was cooler than hand shakes or waves. It gave a physical bit of touch, and some people did fun extra stuff after the fact, like explosions. It was already big before Big Hero 6 came out, but I do think that movie knocked it up another level.

In this aptly named documentary, we get to meet Marcus Knight, who was born early after just 22 weeks. This lead to a hard start for Marcus, who also was diagnosed with both cerebral palsy, and autism. Now, despite any setbacks from this, Marcus has lived his life to the fullest. In high school, he had friends, went to prom, played sports, and was well liked. The model, happy student. He even received a full scholarship to Saddleback Community College, which was close to his home. Going and getting a college degree was certainly one of his dreams.

And you know what? It started out okay.

But within a week of going to classes, the college let him know of complaints reported about him. About making an unsafe or creepy environment. Some people were uncomfortable with him. The complaint seemed to come about him asking someone for a fist bump.

You see, Marcus loves giving fist bumps, but he is never harasses people about it. He offers them to lots of people, and if they say no, he doesn’t push it. That is annoying of course for this to happen to him, because they then require him to bring an aide with him at the school, which he has not needed.

Unfortunately, later, again he gets a complaint, about harassing, even sexually harassing, a fellow classmate. Because another thing he enjoys doing is taking selfies. And when he took one with another classmate, someone else in the room had a problem with it and submitted a complaint. This lead to bigger issues than before.

Honestly, I prefer their other name, Respect Knuckles.Now see, at the time of the next incident, there were other witnesses, including his aide, who would all say nothing went wrong. But the college took it seriously, and was issuing a real complaint against Marcus, and threatening to kick him out of the school. The woman in the picture originally signed on, due to some convincing to of the complaint, but had dropped it by the time the hearing came up over the incident. And due to no witnesses to testify against Marcus, they decided to drop the complaint.

No, not completely, they dropped it to a Title IX complaint against him on his record, that would stay with him wherever he went, despite no one on record to file a complaint at the point. He got to stay in the school, but it seemed like a school who did not want him.

This documentary is telling his story, and how the school system tried to punish a kid with disabilities, because he didn’t fit in with the standard way other students fit in at the university. And it includes the legal fights after the fact, in the courts, to remove this mark from his record.

Now I will admit, I was a bit worried going into the documentary, because I saw it was about someone defending themself from sexual harassment, and it would be from his point of view only. Very suspicious, especially post Me Too. I was worried about this thing being biased and one sided. Like of course his mom and friends would say he would never do something like this. But thankfully, it also comes with facts, and knowledge, with there being no one to officially even have a complaint about the incident. Unless she was coerced after the fact and threatened to drop it (which, wouldn’t really happen in real life with these people I imagine). That sort of evidence is enough to believe his story, and well, puts the school in a really bad light.

These stories are very important. It is not the first time a college would try to wipe its hands of a student/incident, and act like nothing could be done. And these organizations can be real shit heads. The more people hear about this, the better we can get about stopping these incidents. And the fact that it appears this college was trying to bully a student with disabilities, while also patting itself on the back for inviting him to their campus is really deplorable.

3 out of 4.

Flow was watched early from a screener. It is being released in Seattle on December 6th, 2024.

Who doesn’t love a good animal adventure? This one is about a cat (none of these animals have an actual name in the movie, but, my own kid referred to the cat as Felix, so now you have to know that as well). This cat likes to chill by itself, and eat fish that some dogs have fished up, quite rudely. The area has no humans at all, but there is a house of a woodcarver, who really loved cats. Maybe it was this one? So there are several cat statues around, some quite large.

And…then a flood happens! A large flood, with the water keep growing, and growing, and growing.

Well, the cat doesn’t like water, and is a bad swimmer, but thankfully…a small sailboat appears nearby and saves it! And it has a Capybara in it? What the hell is a capybara doing steering a boat? Will it eat the cat? Better to be in the boat, than in the water. Soon, other animals join the boat, a whole misfit crew situation, as they try to navigate this flooded world, with food scarcity, not much land, and shiny baubles.

There is not enough pro-Capybara media out there. There is not enough anti-Capybara media out there, either. Where is all of the Capybara media??

Flow feels like a cutscene of a PlayStation 2 video game, and a short turned feature length film, all in the best ways. It is Cel-shaded, but also, something else? It reminded me about the short Paper-man, sort of. A highly stylized art style that was unique, and maybe still a little old and retro, while clearly being better than the technology 25 years ago.

What the animation did was allow the film to be looked at with curiosity and pleasure. The other aspect that should be highly touted (And again, reminiscent of an animated short), was that it had no dialogue. These weren’t talking cartoon animals, they are just regular cartoon animals, trying to live their animal lives in a world that seemingly was abandoned by humans. I love me a no dialogue film, if it works for the plot and story, which this one absolutely does. The story we can tell through their interactions. The story of what happened to the humans can only be guessed and theorized, which is itself fun. And the story of how these animals learn to co-exist and try to survive in their new environment is one worth seeing.

I think Flow is an animated film that takes risks, and in a year where there are some big budget releases that realize they can put out lesser products, and still make bags full of money, it is great when these smaller films show that the genre (animated) is one still worthy of your time.

3 out of 4.

Greedy People was sent to me early as a screener.

Money money money, makes the world go round, and can make people act very differently. Will (Himesh Patel) is on his first day on the job in a new area. He just moved here recently with his wife (Lily James) who is pregnant. Oh, and this job is of course being a cop. Oh man.

His partner, Terry (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is an old hat at this job and really tells him on what he needs to know about the area. Truth is, its a very low crime city, so they aren’t going to have to do much at all. And make sure he doesn’t kill anyone! Well. Unfortunately due to events, and Terry not being that great of a person, Will accidentally kills someone! And while deciding what to do about it with Terry, they also…find a shit ton of cash!

Time to cover this up and make it look like a break in. The two agree to hide the cash in a storage unit, until things die down, and then start living life a little bit better. But of course, that is NOT what is going to happen. You see, the victim’s husband (Tim Blake Nelson) was actually already planning on ordering a hit on her that same day, so things just start to escalate from there, as more and more people get involved. That’s right. We are going to get a body count, because damn it, piles of money are just so exciting.

Also starring Jim Gaffigan, Joey Lauren Adams, José María Yazpik, Nina Arianda, Simon Rex, Traci Lords, and Uzo Aduba.

Just think of how much cash you could fit in JG-L’s mouth right there. Honestly, as a movie watcher and movie writer, and dare I say, movie critic, I get asked a lot about my favorite movies and least favorite movies. I also get asked about my favorite genre of movie. I think I finally have an answer for that, as I have hemmed and hawed in the past of various umbrella terms. I think I finally have a very specific answer. “Dark Comedies where things spiral out of control for regular people and a lot of people die.” Yeah, that might be my favorite drama.

From things like Fargo or Heathers or more recent bizarre ones like Arizona and The Death of Stalin. I almost always have a great and silly time. So, that is all to say, the same was true for Greedy People. A lot of people involved, mostly normal individuals, living their life, finding themselves a victim or a perpetuator of violence for one reason or another.

Patel is the lead of this film, but he ends up playing a mostly straight guy role throughout the proceedings. The remaining cast of characters is what really drives this movie forward. James, a pregnant and worried wife, amazing. Gorgon-Levitt, who has to play a lot of timid characters, was really let off of his leashes for this role. His character starts off as a normal shitty cop, sleazy, but becomes a scary force later on, with a just strong growling voice at times. Nelson, getting up in age, still can kick it like a Coen Bros film and give us a weird side character with special motives. Heck, Gaffigan played a literal hitman. I won’t say it is a role that is definitely suitable for him, but I will say it was notably different role for him, so its good to see him branch out and try something.

If you want main characters dying. This is the movie for you. If you like spiraling in a slightly comedic and deadly way. This is the movie for you. I had a lot of fun with this.

4 out of 4.