More than a million homeless people in the United States lack basic needs, self-worth, medical care, and a sense of community. Each person has inherent dignity, because every person is created in God’s image. The government may have failed, but private citizens have rallied to answer the call. AMERICANS WITH NO ADDRESS: THE DOCUMENTARY stands apart because it lays out the need, while also highlighting some solutions. However, the movie has plenty of disturbing content about crime, poverty, substance abuse, and mental illness. Strong caution is advised for pre-teenage children.
Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:
Strong Christian, biblical worldview in documentary about the issue of homelessness, with dozens of interviews of experts, government officials, homeless people, doctors, and charity workers, including many Christians;
Foul Language:
No foul language;
Violence:
Some discussion about violent crime, plus a brief scene from an upcoming movie where a man holds a knife against an elderly homeless man;
Sex:
No sex;
Nudity:
No nudity;
Alcohol Use:
Discussion about alcohol abuse and alcoholism, and the need for rehab and recovery;
Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:
Discussion about drug abuse, overdoses and the drug epidemic and the need for better rehab and recovery programs; and,
Miscellaneous Immorality:
Some discussion about mental illness and its effect on homelessness.
AMERICANS WITH NO ADDRESS: THE DOCUMENTARY is a very well thought out, superbly executed, and inspirational documentary that explores the current homeless crisis in the United States. All political parties agree that the government has failed to solve the problem, and some argue that the government has made the problem much worse. This masterfully done documentary includes content with adult topics, such as drug use, violence, broken families, and crime. So, MOVIEGUIDE® advises extreme caution for children.
The movie explores the homelessness epidemic in 20 cities across 18 states in the United States. It interviews dozens of people about the subject, including experts, government officials, policemen, homeless people, doctors, and people working in nonprofit groups giving food and shelter to the homeless.
According to the United States government, homelessness rose 12% in 2023, to 653,104 people. Also, it’s been estimated that one third of the population knows a family member or a friend who became homeless in the last year. Homeless encampments that were once only associated with “Skid Row” in big cities are now seen everywhere. Yet, government spending on homelessness has tripled in the last 12 years.
The documentary says the homeless problem isn’t new. In fact, it’s been brewing since Congress passed the IMD Exclusion Act of 1965, which left the problem of homelessness to the states. This essentially means that the federal government will not offer assistance to any homeless persons between the ages of 21 and 65.
In 2013, the federal government began providing HUD housing to homeless persons without requiring treatment for substance addiction recovery and mental health illnesses. Experts agree this is a system set up to fail. To make matters worse, in the last several years, state governments have stepped in to provide clean needles, straws and other paraphernalia to assist homeless people in their substance abuse issues. Hospitals are only allowed to provide 15 beds to mental health patients, no matter the size of the hospital. Many people in need are turned away or end up in prison. The rate of incarceration has exploded in recent years. Moreover, the closure of most mental hospitals in the 1970s and 1980s only made the problem worse.
The system clearly is broken, the movie argues. In fact, the movie shows that many of the measures taken have been detrimental to those in need and is costing taxpayers even more money. For example, the city of San Francisco spends $257,000 per day to clean up homeless encampments. This doesn’t solve the problem, because the homeless population simply moves to another nearby location.
More than physical needs, scores of people are bereft of love, self-worth and a sense of community. Each person has inherent dignity as every person is created in the image and likeness of God.
The movie quotes Mother Teresa, a champion for the homeless, who once said, “We think that sometimes poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty.” Then, movie also quotes the co-founder of the Salvation Army in 1865, Catherine Booth, who said, “You are not here in the world for yourself. You have been sent here for others. The world is waiting for you.” Amy Grant personalizes it best in the movie when she ponders, “What if I were that person? Because life can turn on a dime.”
The government has failed us, but private citizens have rallied to answer this call to care for our brothers and sisters who are “outcasts, lost and forgotten.” Some of these organizations across the country include Step Up, Haven For Hope, Community First! Village, the Salvation Army, St. Vincent De Paul, Harbor of Light, Helping Hands, and The Helping Up Mission, a collaboration between Johns Hopkins University and The Helping Up Mission. These programs are spread out across the country. All of them are successful, to one extent or another, the movie notes.
In the end, the movie’s best, most enlightening parts are the stories of the people involved in this issue, whether it be the homeless people themselves or the Christians and charity workers helping them.
1 of 5 | Robbie Williams appears behind the scenes of his biopic “Better Man,” in theaters Dec. 25. Photo courtesy of Paramount
LOS ANGELES, Dec. 21 (UPI) — Robbie Williams is the latest subject of a musician biopic. Better Man, in theaters Dec. 25, takes such a wild approach that it easily stands apart from films like Walk the Line and Bohemian Rhapsody.
Williams got the performing bug at age 9 in a school performance of The Pirates of Penzance. As a teenager, he auditioned to be in a boy band and landed a spot in Take That.
Williams went solo after friction with the band but still struggled to write original lyrics. By Better Man‘s accounts, Williams had a similar cinematic trajectory as Johnny Cash or Freddie Mercury.
However, Better Man represents Williams as a talking monkey. Director Michael Gracey explains in a pre-film video that he took Williams literally when the singer called himself a performing monkey.
So this is a Planet of the Apes visual effect. It’s Williams’ voice but Jonno Davies performing the reference footage, along with a few other performers for elaborate dance scenes.
The film never gets used to having a monkey as the lead character, a real-life figure who is still alive at that. It never ceases to be off-putting, especially when Williams sings and dances elaborate choreography, and that is part of the film’s power.
Now, when Williams goes through the stereotypical spiral into drugs and alcohol, watching a monkey recreate those scenes is avant-garde art. The visual effect captures Williams’ charm and emotional turmoil, so it’s not a joke.
It only becomes more shocking the more famous Williams gets. Once he starts sporting revealing dance outfits, even more fur is on display.
It’s not even a movie star embodying Williams. There’s neither the real Williams nor an actor’s persona to attach to the film, removing yet another layer of artifice but replacing it with an even more jarring one.
As if one monkey isn’t daring enough, Williams’ inner demons are also visualized as monkeys. So many scenes boast monkey Williams staring at disapproving monkeys too.
Other biopic traditions include a scene where Williams sings a rough demo of his future hit “Something Beautiful” and confronting his absent father (Steve Pemberton) over abandoning him. The biopic tradition of showing photos of the real Williams during the credits actually breaks the spell when audiences can see he was not an actual monkey.
The monkey is the boldest leap Better Man takes but it is not the only one. A disco ball effect lights vast outdoor locations, and the film includes a climactic action scene.
Musical numbers are dynamic, including a romp through the streets of London in an unbroken take. A duet between Williams and lover Nicole Appleton (Raechelle Banno) evokes Astaire and Rogers.
The film embodies Williams’ irreverent spirit, as if a drama starring a monkey could ever be reverent. In his narration, Williams is self-deprecating, and some of the dance numbers blatantly injure pedestrians in their choreography.
The new arrangements of Williams’ songs add dimensions to his hits.
Better Man is bold cinema. The audacity alone is worth celebrating, but the fact that it works is a miracle.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
Ben Smallbone’s “Homestead” takes place in a world where foreigners detonate a nuclear bomb off the coast of Los Angeles, the protagonists are saved because they own a Tesla, Bitcoin is the only valuable currency, and the truth can only be told on Right Wing radio. For some people that’s a selling point. For many others, it’s a list of red flags.
It’s easy to think of films like “Homestead” as if they live on the fringe of mainstream media, but though this particular film isn’t a major studio release, they’re hardly uncommon. Hit movies like “Black Hawk Down” and “300” have shamelessly vilified non-white antagonists, portraying them as fodder for heroic, mostly white hunks to mow down with impunity, sometimes in dramatic slow-motion. “Forrest Gump” is the story of a man who does everything he’s told to do, like joining the Army and embracing capitalism and participating in anti-communist propaganda, and he becomes a great American success story. Meanwhile, the love of his life suffers decades of indignity by throwing in with anti-war protesters and Black Panthers, and for all her trouble she dies of AIDS.
The point is, this is not an unusual starting point for a film. “Homestead” is up front about it. It’s clear from the start who this movie is for and what this movie respects. What is surprising is that this production, based on the first of a series of novels by Jeff Kirkham and Jason Ross, also has real conversations about moral conflicts and ethical crossroads. By the end, it even declares that Christian charity is more important — and also more productive — than selfish nationalism. For a minute, right before the credits roll, even people who aren’t in the film’s target demographic might be forced to admit that “Homestead” is, for what it is, one of the better films of its ilk.
And then the movie whizzes all that good will down its leg at the last possible second, contradicting its own morals in a shameless attempt to bilk the audience.
We’ll get back to that. “Homestead” stars Neal McDonough (“Tulsa King”) and Dawn Olivieri (“Lioness”) as Ian and Jenna Ross, a fabulously wealthy couple whose gigantic estate, vast hoard of doomsday supplies and seemingly unlimited arsenal make them uniquely prepared to survive the country’s collapse. At least one major city has been nuked, the power has gone out across the nation and everyone who didn’t prepare for doomsday scenarios is looking pretty silly right now. They’re also looking directly at the Ross estate, Homestead, as their possible salvation.
As such, Ian enlists a team of ex-Navy SEALs to guard Homestead. They’re led by Jeff Eriksson (Bailey Chase, “Longmire”), who uses the opportunity to keep his own family safe. His teenage son, Abe (Tyler Lofton), is the same age as Ian’s daughter Claire (Olivia Sanabia), and nobody else is a teenager, so that romantic subplot is a foregone conclusion. Jeff also has a daughter named Georgie (Georgiana White) who has psychic visions of the future. You might think that would be important later, but leave the fortune-telling to Georgie because she knows (as far as this movie is concerned) that it won’t.
Tensions flare between Ian, who only wants to hold the fort until the American government gets its act together, and Jeff, who assumes civilization will quickly collapse like soufflé at a Gwar concert. Meanwhile, the hungry refugees, some of whom are Ian’s friends and associates, camp outside their gates, desperate to get to safety. Jenna wants to give them food and shelter, but Ian is doing the math and says their supplies won’t last: “What you give to them, you’re taking from us. It’s that simple.”
Gloom and doom fantasies like “Homestead” take place in the very contrived situations where everything you’ve always feared, and for which everyone mocked you for believing in, finally come to pass. ‘Oh no, the government is here to help,’ in the form of a sniveling bureaucrat who wants to inventory Homestead’s supplies and redistribute them to people in need — that monster. Thank God we bought the Tesla with the “Bioweapon Defense Mode,” that wasn’t paranoid at all.
Then again, in the midst of all this anti-refugee rhetoric and pro-billionaire propaganda, cracks in “Homestead’s” façade start to form. Ian’s pragmatism isn’t preventing Homestead from running out of supplies. Jeff’s paranoia seems to be costing more lives than it saves. There’s even a scene where the same woman whose life was saved by a Tesla bemoans how dangerous the vehicle was when her family got attacked by looters, and screams, “Why?! Why did we buy a Tesla?!”
By the end, “Homestead” has explored at least some nuanced perspectives on the real moral issues it raises. With a mostly game cast and efficient, professional direction by Smallbone (“Stoned Cold Country”), it’s not a badly made movie from a technical perspective. And the film’s final message, espousing the positive Christian value of charity, and both the importance and practicality of being generous to the needy, is hard to dispute.
Until, again, the movie’s actual ending. This part won’t require a “spoiler warning” because, A.) It doesn’t spoil the plot; and B.) It’s more like a warning label. This part of the film should have been clearly labeled on the package — like “Smoking causes cancer” or “This paint contains lead.”
It’s a bit of an annoyance to discover that “Homestead” is actually the pilot episode of an ongoing series, which you are expected to commit to now that you’ve bought into it with cold, hard cash. Not that there’s anything horribly wrong with that storytelling approach, but you probably went into this theater expecting a standalone movie and it’s hard not to feel a bit scammed, like you just bought a brand-new AAA game and found out most of its content is still locked behind an additional paywall. The TV series version of “Homestead” isn’t even mentioned on the film’s Wikipedia page, at least not by the time this review was written.
But more than that, “Homestead” ends with a cast member breaking character, speaking directly to the audience, and saying that with Christmas right around the corner, you should be thinking about charity. But they don’t suggest donating to the needy, like the actual film preaches. Instead, they tell you to give more money to the filmmakers. You are encouraged, with the help of an on-screen QR code that stays on-camera throughout the whole credits, to buy a stranger a ticket to “Homestead,” which they may or may not even use, thus artificially inflating the film’s box office numbers and the industry’s perception of its success. It would be one thing if they were straightforward about this: “Please give us money to make more stuff like this.” That’s not the worst thing in the world. But to couch this in terms of charity? It’s very difficult not to take issue with that.
Is this a bad business model? That depends on your values. If you value business, sure, that’s a way to make money. You show people a film designed to convince them that they should be charitable and then tell them to be charitable by giving you more money. Is it ethical? Is it a little hypocritical? Is it not just a little hypocritical, but in outright defiance of everything you just said you believed in?
I suppose your mileage may vary. I couldn’t help but feel like I was being scammed. Just when I was finally enjoying the film, I was given every reason not to. Any movie that espouses the Christian value of generosity and then tells its audience the best way to be charitable is to make the filmmakers richer is hard to recommend in good conscience, even if it is otherwise pretty well made.
“Homestead” is now playing in theaters.
Carry-On
One of the great debates around Christmas time is whether the classic Bruce Willis action-movie Die Hard should be considered a Christmas movie or not. Sure, it takes place at Christmastime, but is it really a Christmas movie the same way Home Alone or Miracle On 34th Street are Christmas movies?
The obvious answer is “Yes” though a more nuanced one would be “It’s up to you.” If you consider it a Christmas movie, it’s a Christmas movie. If you don’t, that’s cool by me. “To each their own” is an old saying that more people should study and practice.
Whether you consider Die Hard a Christmas movie or not will determine whether you consider Netflix’s new thriller, Carry-On a Christmas movie. Like Die Hard, it takes place near Christmas and like Die Hard 2 it takes place in an airport. Unlike Die Hard, it does not have the star power of Bruce Willis to elevate it into the halls of classic action movies. On the other hand, it’s much better than the later, lousier Die Hard films that released after Die Hard With A Vengeance, perhaps the greatest in the entire franchise.
Carry-On will never be considered a Christmas classic or an all-time great action-thriller, but it’s still a lot of fun and I’m happy we have another holiday action flick that doesn’t suck, because a lot of Christmas movies across genres are pretty terrible.
The movie stars Taron Egerton as Ethan Kopek, a TSA agent stuck in a job he hates with a remarkably patient and attractive girlfriend, Nora, played by Sofia Carson. They learn they’re having a baby, because having a pregnant girlfriend makes the stakes that much higher when things go bad. Nora also works at the airport, but not as a TSA agent. She tells Ethan that all she wants for Christmas is for him to follow his dreams of becoming a police officer.
Things take a turn for the worse when a mysterious criminal, only known as Traveler, shows up. Jason Bateman is terrific in the role. He’s casually, almost nonchalantly, villainous. Using Nora’s life as collateral, he forces Ethan to allow a suitcase through the baggage check. The contents of the luggage turn out to be worse than Ethan could ever imagine. What follows is a tense series of events as Ethan tries (and often fails) to outsmart the Traveler and prevent a terrible tragedy, all without getting his girlfriend and unborn baby killed.
Danielle Deadwyler plays Detective Elena Cole, a police officer investigating a murder which leads her down a trail of breadcrumbs right to the airport where she dives headfirst into the conflict playing out there. The Rossi plays the Traveler’s sniper and tech genius, Watcher. And Breaking Bad’s Dean Norris plays Ethan’s boss, Phil Sarkowski. It’s a good cast overall, though mostly the film focuses on Ethan and Traveler and their interactions.
The movie works because it does a great job at keeping the tension high and the pacing tight. It never outwears its welcome, moving along at a nice clip, with most of its best moments just a conversation between Ethan and Traveler. There’s action, but not Die Hard levels of action.
I did feel like the ending was a bit dangly, with some big plot points unresolved. I won’t spoil any of that because, well, you should watch for yourself. And while the writing is just fine throughout, it’s nothing special either. There are no classic yippee-ki-yay lines here. I doubt I’ll rewatch this over the years, not because there’s anything particularly wrong with the movie, but because there’s nothing particularly stellar about it, either. Carry-On is a fun, tense, popcorn movie with some holiday tinsel on top. Give it a watch.
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