This year, the Atlanta Film Festival took place virtually from 9/17-9/27. We’ll be providing our coverage of the event over the course of the next week, but you can definitely check out all of the highlights on the Atlanta Film Festival’s site here.
THE OUTSIDE STORY
Brian Tyree Henry plays Charles Young, a video editor who doesn’t get out much, and he’s more in a rut than usual since he’s going through a breakup. Though, when he accidentally locks himself out of his apartment – he has no choice but to start embracing instead of eluding the outside world he’s been looking at from his window. Writer-director Casimir Nozkowski’s story is built around Young’s interactions with a variety of characters, and the conversations he has hardly feel genuine. A few of them noticeably try too hard to be funny and wind up doing the exact opposite.
Amid Young finding a way to get back into his place are flashback scenes surrounding him and his ex-girlfriend’s (Sonequa Martin-Green) first meeting at a party. If this is Nozkowski’s way of adding another level of interest in their relationship, it doesn’t work. Henry has no shortage of charisma or emotion, but this stereotypical, stagey comedy is inept of using it to its own benefit.
SOME KIND OF HEAVEN
In director Lance Oppenheim’s terrific, tender, and tearful documentary, he dives in to The Villages – a retirement community in Florida that feels like the fountain of youth for individuals spending their twilight years there. On the outside, it looks to be the perfect place that has everything you could ever want or need, but looks can be deceiving. It’s not all fun and games as problems simply don’t stop at the gate for their residents.
Oppenheim follows a full-time working widow who is wanting to loosen up, a couple who has been married for over four decades that must deal with the husband’s mental breakdown, and a playboy bachelor who wants to marry a rich woman so he can stop sleeping in his van. Their lives seem so different, yet, at the heart of it, companionship is the common thread that sews them together. It’s something no matter how old we get, we always want.
This beautifully open portrait about aging is told through humor, fear, and honesty with a bit of dancing to boot. And it’s done with such care and thoughtfulness that you wish nothing but the best for everybody because life is too short.
More Atlanta Film Festival 2020 Coverage
Brandon Vick is a member of The Music City Film Critics’ Association, the resident film critic of the SoBros Network, and the star of The Vick’s Flicks Podcast. Follow him on Twitter @SirBrandonV and be sure to search #VicksFlicks for all of his latest movie reviews.
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