Butler's Cinema Scene

“SETTLERS” My rating: B-

103 minutes | No MPAA rating

Mankind possesses the intelligence to travel to the stars. But we’ll never outrun the dark side of human nature.

That’s the unvarnished, uncomfortable message behind “Settlers,” the debut feature of writer/director Wyatt Rockefeller (and, yes, he’s a member of that Rockefeller clan).

With a title like this you expect a frontier drama with sodbusters, outlaws and a hostile environment. And in fact Rockefeller has given us what is essentially a Western,,,a Western set on Mars.

Nine-year-old Remmy (Brooklynn Prince, the knockout young star of “The Florida Project”) lives with her parents Reza (Johnny Lee Miller)and Ilsa (Sofia Boutella) on a Martian farmstead. It’s a hostile environment with limited resources (not even a breathable atmosphere…the secret behind their ability to survive will be revealed later); the family apparently raises just enough greenhouse veggies and food animals to stay alive.

No neighbors. No communication with the rest of the Mars, much less with faraway Earth.

Little Remmy is curious about her home planet, but Mom and Dad are parsimonious with details. She asks her father if he’s ever seen certain wild animals; he replies that he has not, and that before he left Earth about the only animals he saw were dogs.

Evidently humankind has so fouled up its birthplace that it is now all but uninhabitable. Moreover, Martian society — whatever it might once have been — has been reduced to outlawry and Darwinian self preservation.

So it’s a tough life for a curious little girl. Happily she discovers in a shed a boxy little robot she dubs Steve; Remmy trains him as if he were a pet.

Things get ugly when the three family members awaken one day to find that someone has scrawled “LEAVE” on their picture windows in what appears to be blood.

Enter Jerry (Ismael Cruz Cordova), who grew up on the farm and now wants to reclaim it after an absence of many years. Apparently Reza and Ilsa moved onto the property under somewhat less than legal circumstances.

Slow-bubbling sexual intimidation is a big part of “Settlers'” emotional palette. Despite an initial display of violence, Jerry seems a reasonably sane, even sympathetic sort. But as time passes primal urges do a number on him; initially they are directed at Ilsa and, after the passage of many years, at Remmy (played as a young adult by Nell Tiger Free).

“Settlers” feels less like a fully realized drama than as an outline for said drama. Rockefeller explains very little, leaving it up to the viewer to glean little nuggets of information with which to build a bigger picture of human life in the late 21st century.

Moreover he’s anti-melodramatic to a fault. No well-made tale here.

But when it comes to envisioning and creating a tangible world, “Setters” is terrifically seducive. Not a little of the film’s success lies with cinematographer Willie New and production designer Noam Piper, who create an utterly believable enclave of human effort in a hostile landscape (the production was shot mostly in a rocky desert area of South Africa).

| Robert W. Butler

“SUMMER OF SOUL”  My rating: A- (Hulu)

117 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Even if it were merely a film record of the musical acts that appeared at 1969’s Harlem Cultural Festival, “Summer of Soul” would be the most joyous two hours of the summer of 2021.

But first-time director Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson (yes, the drummer/leader of Jimmy Fallon’s house band The Roots) has taken that half-century-old, never-seen-before footage and fashioned it into a powerful, heart-rending and historically significant experience.  

This was more than a series of concerts in Mount Morris Park in Harlem (now it’s called Marcus Garvey Park)…it was a seminal moment in the development of modern black culture. And Questlove’s love-infused doc absolutely nails it.

The Harlem Cultural Fest was spread over several weekends, each with its own theme: jazz, soul, gospel, etc.  Nearly 50,000 persons attended each of these free concerts.  Many of the audience members who attended as kids now recall that up to that point they have never seen so many black people in one place. 

The music ranged from jazz man Max Roach to Stevie Wonder, the Edwin Hawkins Singers (“Oh Happy Day”) to B.B. King, Nina Simone to Gladys Knight and the Pips.

The whole thing was captured on film and audio tape with an eye to turning it immediately into a theatrical movie event…alas, the entertainment powers put all their money behind that summer’s Woodstock festival in upstate New York.  With no buyers the pristine, technically perfect Harlem footage and audio tapes sat on a shelf for 50 years.



Questlove’s handling of this vintage material is respectful, yes, but he uses it as just one element in a massive collage of African American experience.  He shows some of the performers (Gladys Knight, members of the Fifth Dimension) footage of their performances at the fest and captures the looks of overwhelming emotion that pass across their faces as they witness  their younger selves and relive what for many of them was a sublime personal experience.

He talks to men and women, now in their 60s and 70s, who attended as youngsters and share their impressions and memories.

And he and editor Joshua L. Pearson  masterfully interweave the performance footage with old newsreels, photos and other archival elements…basically they’re demonstrating how the music became the soundtrack to hundreds of thousands of black lives.

Picking favorite performances is a futile exercise — everybody seems to have been at the top of their games — but for sheer show-stopping giddiness you cannot beat Sly and the Family Stone blowing away the crowd with “Higher” and “Everyday People” (“different strokes for different folks”).

And if you’re not moved to tears by watching Mahalia Jackson and Mavis Staples share a mic on “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” (the favorite hymn of Martin Luther King, who was assassinated a year earlier)…well, I can only conclude that you lack both a heart and ears. 

| Robert W. Butler

“RITA MORENO: JUST A GIRL WHO DECIDED TO GO FOR IT”  My rating: B (In theaters)

90 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

As she approaches her 90th year actress Rita Moreno can look back on a life packed with triumph (she’s an EGOT — the winner of an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony), tragedy (a botched abortion, sexual assault) and a checkered career that has included both laughable ethnic stereotypes and her current status as a Latina icon.

The new doc “Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It” is a warts-and-all look at a woman who despite her advanced years exhibits more energy, exuberance and insight than someone half her age.  She’s a born raconteur…and, boy, does she have a story to tell.

Mariem Perez Riera’s film (Norman Lear and Lin-Manuel Miranda are among the producers) opens with Moreno bustling around her home, preparing for her birthday celebration.  Then it settles down to a conversation — punctuated with old photos and film clips —  of her life, career and loves.

She was born in Puerto Rico and as a child came to US with her mother (she never again saw her father or brother…a story that could use some explanation), became enamored of the movies at an early age, dropped out of school at 15  and when still a teen dressed up like Elizabeth Taylor for an appointment with Louie B. Mayer, walking away with a Hollywood contract.

For years she was plastered with “makeup the color of mud” to portray Native American princesses, Latina spitfires, island girls, even the slave/concubine Tuptim in “The King and I.”  Her roles, she says, were limited to “sex objects and arm candy.”  

But she lacked the clout to do anything but follow orders.  Moreover, Moreno says she grew up “feeling without value,” a psychological handicap that dogged her until well into her adult life.

She describes the hair-raising sexism she encountered in Hollywood, including being raped by her agent (she had such low self-esteem that she kept working with him even after the incident) and her intense years-long affair with a domineering and manipulative Marlon Brando, who forced her to get a back-ally abortion from which she nearly died. (Today Moreno remains a fierce advocate of female reproductive rights.)

She became so depressed by her relationship with Brando that she attempted suicide.

(There’s no mention here of her well-known affair with Elvis Presley…what’s up with that?)