By http://www.eyesteelfilm.com/?page_id=60, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25325004
Last Train Home - (2009)
This is just a sad documentary in nearly every way possible. Many migrant workers in China only get the Chinese New Year's holiday off, and as such each year on that date, there's a tidal wave of over 100 million people all wanting to travel home at the same time.
Last Train Home follows a plight of one such family over many years and reunions. The Zhang family consists of mother and father - who work in another part of the country so they can only see their kids for a couple of days each year. They're desperately keen to see daughter Qin do well at school, but she resents them being away so often - and her quitting school to find a job and some excitement in her life leads to the horrible disintegration of the whole family. In the meantime - what this doc was meant to be giving us a glimpse of adds to the drama. The fight for tickets on trains and lengthy delays cause crushes, fights, and hospitalizations. Sheer madness. So sad. Both views - the close up of the one family and the bigger picture with a tidal wave of humanity on the move fit neatly and give the documentary the sheen of being one of the better 21st Century ones out there. It was really great, albeit bittersweet when you consider the Zhang family. I like how the film's poster gives 50% space to each general storyline.
8/10
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The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings - (1976)
This wasn't really as awful as I thought it might be - and was a box office success in it's day. I'm surprised I hadn't heard of it until now - this depression-era Negro baseball league story features the likes of Billy Dee Williams, James Earl Jones and Richard Pryor - all doing pretty good jobs as talented baseball players. They become sick of being treated poorly by their team owners and get together to form their own "Harlem Globetrotters"-type baseball team, travelling the U.S. and making money, only to be on the receiving end of dirty tactics from the dastardly Sallison Potter (Ted Ross) - owner of the "Ebony Aces" team. It all takes place at a time when baseball was segregated. This was directed by John Badham - no African American director or writers here - but all the same it manages to feel like the actors were allowed freedom to be and mould their characters. A baseball film I was never the slightest bit aware existed until now. Slow at first, but a real builder of momentum - one reviewer called it "The rise and fall of communism in a baseball movie" and that's a pretty accurate way to look at it. In any event - there's enough here to make this a film that shouldn't have faded away the way it seems to have.
6/10
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Space Truckers - (1996)
This was a great deal of fun every time villain Captain Macanudo (Charles Dance) was onscreen, and this also had the added benefit of having Vernon Wells in it's cast as a heavy. Those two factors alone will do a lot to win favour from me, but apart from that and the design of the cyborg warriors (some of the other production design here wasn't too bad either) there was a dearth of fun. When Stephen Dorff, Debi Mazar and a surprisingly mediocre Dennis Hopper are guiding the story, this lacks spark, with Mike (Dorff) and Cindy (Mazar) being bare outlines of characters without much to do - and they get the majority of the "heavy lifting" for this film's first half. Hopper feels miscast. This film needed much more Charles Dance and Vernon Wells in it - Stuart Gordon's silliness hit a peak with their scenes. A mixed bag.
5/10
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