Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Mully (2017)

This is topic Mully (2017) in forum Film Handlers' Movie Reviews at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

To visit this topic, use this URL:
https://ft-forum.com/ft/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=4;t=002308

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 10-18-2017, 12:54 AM:

This seems to be my week to play special shows of documentaries. First up was An Inconvenient Sequel and now it's Mully.

Mully seems to be a really limited distribution, so it might not be "playing at a theatre near you". But one of the churches here asked me to get it for them so I got it.

When I asked the distributor about it I was initially told that the only distribution format to theatres was blue ray. I said that I'm not set up to play a blue ray here (I'm not) and all I can play is a DCP so I can't play your movie. Thanks anyway, folks.

Two days later they phoned me back. "We've made a DCP for you."

*boggle*

Uh, okey dokey then. They couriered it to me from California and I got it yesterday. A shiny new CRU drive in a shiny new Pelican case.

Anyway....

Mully is the story of Charles Mully who started out as a street beggar in Kenya and rose to be a multi-millionaire businessman, then in the early 1990's he decided to shut all of his businesses down and start looking after orphans that he found on the streets of Nairobi. He started off just just picking them up off of the street and bringing them to his house; when he ran out of room he added to the house, and eventually moved the whole outfit to a bare and arid field where they built a compound and started what has ultimately turned into a large-scale farming, market garden, and fish farming operation. The whole thing almost went bust a couple of times, but today Mully Children's Family is the largest children's rescue, rehabilitation and development organization in Africa.

It's quite a story; Charles Mully certainly has a knack for getting things done. A lot of people think he was nuts and he hasn't done much to convince people otherwise but I suppose you can't argue with results and he certainly has that.

And he still patrols streets in the slums of Nairobi alone at night looking for orphaned children sleeping in the alleys.

As for language, parts of the movie are in Swahili, most of it is in English. However, English is obviously not the first language for most of the people in the movie so some of the accents are rather challenging. Subtitles are provided where needed but you have to read fast since some of them roll by rather quickly.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 10-18-2017, 01:54 AM:

Wow, maybe they won't even want it back. (Unless they put a shipping label in the case, of course).

Posted by Bill Brandenstein (Member # 7758) on 10-18-2017, 05:39 PM:

Frank, since it was a local church group that requested this, curious how the turnout was.

Sounds like a great story.

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 10-22-2017, 03:59 PM:

108 people. Which is about 100 more than I was really expecting to show up. [Smile]

That's pretty darn exceptional for my theatre. I sometimes don't get 108 people here over the course of a whole week, let alone for one single show.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 10-22-2017, 09:37 PM:

Never underestimate the power of a good preacher exhorting his flock to see (or not see) a movie!

One of our best special shows was one I did about 15 years ago for a local church group. They brought in a 16mm projector and we had to run a wire to the non-sync inputs on our sound system, but it worked...looked and sounded better than I thought it would, in fact. I think it was a Billy Graham movie, if memory serves. With no title on the marquee, no poster, no advertising of any kind we still got over 100 people on a Thursday night just from that pastor telling everybody to come and see it. I'm always very available to work with church groups.

Posted by Bill Brandenstein (Member # 7758) on 10-24-2017, 01:36 PM:

Imagine that, Frank and Mike. Good to hear.

My curiosity was borne mainly out of some good press for "Mully," but I've not had a chance to see it. Hopefully over the holidays, or whenever life slows down a little!

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 10-24-2017, 09:46 PM:

It's definitely worth seeing. In terms of the story, it's by far the best movie I've played this year.

I've had five or six people bemoaning the fact that they missed it over the past few days, as well.

Posted by Bill Brandenstein (Member # 7758) on 10-25-2017, 04:14 PM:

I haven't heard anyone say THAT! Wow! I mean, it's not the greatest year for movies, but that's quite a compliment. I wonder if the word will ever get out.

Definitely want to see this now.