Let me say with no small dose of humility, I am about the last reviewer to chime on Garrett Bradley’s extraordinary documentary called “Time.” It was bought at Sundance by Amazon Prime and has been on their system since October 16th, I think. I’m kicking myself now that I didn’t see it earlier, but here we are. “Time” will be an Oscar nominee and very likely the winner of the Academy Award next year for documentary.

“Time” is only 88 minutes but it covers 20 years in the life of the Rich family of New Orleans. The central figure is Sibil Fox, who married Rob Richardson when she was 16 and started having babies. Their lives looked promising until they were in a bind, and Rob was convinced to help rob a bank. Sibil drove the getaway car. She spent three and half  years in jail. Rob was sentenced to 60 years behind bars in the Louisiana State Penitentiary for armed robbery.

That’s the set up but you can tell from Bradley’s editing and handling of time, something else happened. Released from prison, Sibil, aka Fox Rich, becomes a prisoner advocate. She wages a war to get her husband out of jail. When Bradley met Rich in 2016, she meant to make a short film. But Rich turned over 100 hours of home movies to Bradley, and this feature was born.

As Sibil tells her story and Bradley weaves in the home movies, we get to see the mother raising her six sons into charming over achievers. Fox (aka Sibil) had an epiphany in prison, it’s almost like lightning struck her. Maybe I’ve missed her on television but I can’t believe “60 Minutes,” “Ellen,” and so on haven’t done features on her. She’s the most inspiring person I’ve encountered on film this year or in years. Her journey is mesmerizing.

Somehow through some act of magic and determination, Fox Rich simply decided to keep her family in one piece while trying to get Rob released. I’m still not sure how she did it, although it’s clear she steeped herself in prison reform and the concept of institutional racism. I feel that the movie is almost too short. I’d like to know what she and Rob, who is eventually released, have to say about Black Lives Matter and where this experience is going to take them. Even with two decades of activism behind, they are a work in progress.

Bradley has made a very economical film. She needs either a sequel or some kind of epilogue on DVD. There are things about Rob’s case that aren’t clear or explained, simply that he was convicted, that he was guilty, but that the concept of life in prison occurred to Sibil to be a form of slavery. And this turned Rob’s whole story over.

“Time” is available for Amazon Prime customers. What a shame it wasn’t in theaters. It would have sold out show after show.

by Brett Ratner, director of “Rush Hour,” “Tower Heist,” “The Family Man,” “X Men: The Last Stand”

EDITORS NOTE: This movie Brett writes about it IS NOT the same movie “Billions” creator Brian Koppelman tweeted about this week.

It was 2004, and one of my dreams came true when I got the opportunity to direct a movie with Jews and Nazi’s, but where the Jews win.

Connery was playing the Jew. It was a stretch, but I loved Sir Laurence Olivier in “The Boys From Brazil” where he played a Jew because he was the greatest Nazi ever in “Marathon Man”! I thought if Olivier could do it, so could Connery. All I had to do was convince Mr. Connery to trust me to be the director.

I was 34 at the time and some major directors were circling the film and meeting with Connery as well. I was lucky that I had just finished shooting “X-Men: The Last Stand” and the studio loved the film…so they helped me convince Connery I was his guy. Connery was only 74 years old at the time but was considering retiring after five decades of acting in close to 100 films. He had just come off “The League of Extraordinary Gentleman,” which was to be his last film and a box office disaster.

Our script was brilliant, written by Jeff King, called “Josiah’s Cannon.” Connery was set to earn $17.5 million to star which was unprecedented especially for an actor his age! Connery would play an aging thief and Holocaust survivor who gathers up a notorious band of crooks to rob a supposedly impregnable Swiss bank of valuables looted from the Jews before World War II. A great revenge heist film!

I don’t remember why but we had to push production a few months which would be filming in Prague. I got the writer Phil Alden Robinson to do a quick polish to work in a back story that after the war Connery’s character moved to Scotland. (Studio note: He is in fact Scottish.) Connery would have me come to his apartment in New York and spend hours reading lines from the script and rehearsing with him. What a dream…

My dreams were crushed, however, when Sean called me a few weeks later to tell me he was pulling out of the film to retire and write his memoir. I couldn’t believe he wasn’t leaving our film to make another. Now he has passed at 90 years old without making another film! I cherish the time we spent together working on the script, especially when he and I would spend hours reading the script together. He would do a slight Jewish accent for me to see what I thought.  What a legend and my only regret is not going on my hands and knees to beg him to reconsider! So much more between the lines but that will be left for my memoir! #RIP

Sean Connery, the original and greatest James Bond of all, has died at age 90 in the Bahamas, where he and his wife have lived for decades. He was 90 years old.

Connery, the most famous Scottish movie actor, was known all over the world for playing Bond in six memorable films starting with “Dr. No” in 1962, and including “From Russia with Love,” “Thunderball,” “Goldfinger,” “You Only Live Twice,” and “Diamonds Are Forever.” That run ended in 1971, but Connery returned in 1983 in the ill fated “Never Say Never Again” after producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli had replaced him as Bond in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” and then “Octopussy.” Connery was so furious with Broccoli that he never spoke him again and refused to participate in the franchise’s 50th anniversary a few years ago.

Connery’s whole career was identified the Bond character but at least he won an Oscar, and not for that role. He won in 1983 for “The Untouchables.” The following year he won a whole new audience and more acclaim as Indiana Jones’ father in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.” His career had a major revival through the 1990s right up through “Finding Forrester” in 2000. But he was so upset that he wasn’t nominated for an Oscar that he fired his publicist. He made one more movie, “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” in 2003.

But what a life and what a career. Swashbuckling, the envy of all, Sean Connery was a Hollywood man’s man. He was so macho in his way that Darrell Hammond created a hilarious parody of him on “Saturday Night Live.”

The real Sean Connery, however, was married twice, first to Diane Cilento, with whom he had a son. He’s survived by his wife of 45 years, Micheline Roquebrune. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 2000.