KMUW's Fletcher Powell marks the 25th anniversary of a movie that kicked off a pair of enormous careers.

KMUW's Fletcher Powell says a new movie is smart about how it tells its story.

Everybody knows that when you make a mixtape, you gotta kick it off with a killer track, to grab attention. The organizers of last winter’s Sundance Film Festival realized this too, and opened their festival with a banger: Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised). The documentary is about the mostly forgotten (or, maybe more accurately, mostly erased) 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, a series of concerts that that drew hundreds of thousands of people and brought in some of the biggest names in all of music, including Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, Sly Stone, Max Roach, B.B. King, and The Staple Singers, just to name a very few. Tons of footage of the festival was shot, and then lay in a basement for 50 years, only now being seen for the very first time. Which seems insane, although the reasons are depressingly believable, and here we are.

Every story and review of Zola seems to understandably lead with the movie’s genesis, and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, so here I will do the same:

Someone I’ve always wished I’d seen more from is Victor Nunez. He’s made just a handful of films, but two of them were among the very best of the 1990s. He has a style that’s as gentle and patient as I think I’ve ever seen, with a generosity that’s remarkable and rare.

Today’s moviegoers are savvy enough that filmmakers have to know they’re going to pick up on similarities between new movies and what’s come out in years past. It’s certainly fine to tread familiar ground, this is mostly unavoidable, but a writer or director at least needs to be aware that people are going to recognize when you’re using or playing off an old idea.

Over the years, I’ve come to place less importance on subtlety in art. There was a time when I saw it almost as a virtue unto itself-- I felt like if you were entirely explicit about your message, that was somehow less good than if you found an elegant way to get your idea across without making it totally obvious.

How’s this for a pitch—three guys sort of like the conspiracy-minded, tech-savvy trio from The X-Files known as the “Lone Gunmen” team up with a guy sort of like Liam Neeson in the Taken franchise, and they all set out to take revenge on a biker gang they hold responsible for the death of the wife of the Neeson-type character. Can’t miss, right?

The New York Times had an article recently about how because American movie release dates keep getting pushed further and further back, there’s been a mini-Renaissance in Australia regarding Aussie-made movies, which apparently don’t typically do well in their home country. Leading that charge is a dandy contemporary noir called The Dry, which is already one of the all-time top Australian-made movies at the Australian box office.

Just by coincidence, I’ve found myself watching a surprising number of movies from 1971 lately, way more than I’d expect without doing it on purpose. Also, coincidentally, that’s exactly 50 years ago. So, with that in mind, here are some highlights from my recent unintentional 50th anniversary film festival.