There were three films, far from the standard Hollywood fare, at RedBones the Blues Café on Saturday night, the audience showing appreciation for all.

Movie Nights at RedBones are held on the lawns of the Braemar Avenue, New Kingston, restaurant and nightspot, with movie buffs advised to carry blankets if they wish to sit on the grass instead of on the chairs provided.

There were no takers on Saturday when The Gleaner saw The Other Side of Green, the typical tale of misperceptions of prosperity but with a good twist in the tail of the 10-minute tale. A woman with a noisy baby, apparently lazy boyfriend, no money and ton loads of misery confronts the woman who took away her wealthy former boyfriend and, she thinks, the good life. She discovers that the supposed good life is miserable but returns to her existence with a new perspective, only to find her boyfriend gone with the baby.

The first longer film was Boy A, the highly engaging story of Jack Burridge (Andrew Garfield) who is convicted, along with another boy, of murder as a child and released as an adult with the protection of anonymity. The heinous crime is revealed gradually as short flashbacks interspersed in the narrative of a young man finding his footing in a strangely adult environment at work and in an intimate relationship with Michelle (Katie Lyons).

Ironically, Jack's eventual demise is a combination of his heroism in rescuing a child from an accident and the jealousy of his social worker contact Terry's (Peter Mullan) son, who 'outs' the hero as a murderer. Boy A involves the audience in the tale of the two boys' friendship while innocuously enough leading up to the grisly murder (in which Jack plays a secondary role to Chris), the tale within the tale climaxing almost simultaneously with the story of an adult Jack.

Revelation

What comes after the revelation and the press hounding Jack is sad, though not unexpected. He takes the train to the end of the line and Boy A, an excellent film in which striking camera angles supplement a great story, ends with Jack on a ladder just below the dock, poised to leap into deep water.

We do not see him jump.

A bit of lighter fare was on the cards and, although steroid use and the authenticity of athletic achievement is nothing to joke about, the documentary Bigger, Better, Stronger provided it. The Chris Bell film starts its exploration of steroid use from his family's perspectives (he is one of three brothers into endeavours that require lots of muscle), broadens it to look at athletics in general (Ben Johnson is interviewed and yes, Carl Lewis did fail a drugs test) and then goes further to look at the American psyche in general.

Baseball, track and field, wrestling (Chris Bell first questions the sport he believes in after a match between 'The Sheik' and Hulk Hogan), Arnold (yes, Mr Olympia took steroids), bodybuilding, powerlifting and golf are all a part of the Bigger, Better, Stronger mix.

He looks at steroids policy and shows how students are given drug enhancers to study better and musicians get drugs to keep calm, asking why these drugs are not banned as 'performance enhancing'.

Bigger, Better, Stronger closes with the Bell's observation that "there is a clash in America between doing the right thing and being the best. For me and my brothers, steroids are not the problem. They are just another side-effect of being American".

It was a good night of varied films under a night sky regularly streaked by shooting stars, packed with superb acting and meaningful stories, minus the bullets and the car chases - and none the less for that.