Faith & Film For the week of June 29, 2009: Under the Bombs.
Here are over 250 films from 35 countries that provoked me to think afresh about our human condition and what it means to believe, confess and live the Gospel in our modern world. My selection criterion was simple—these are films I liked. Note that if you click on the film title you will be taken to the Movie Review Query Engine and multiple reviews of each film. For example, if you click on the title The Last Temptation of Christ you will be taken directly to 51 reviews of that film. For Whale Rider you get 181 reviews, and so on. |
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13 Conversations About One Thing (2001)
Set in New York city, this film narrates the every day aspirations and heart aches of four people: a young, brash prosecutor, an aging middle manager at an insurance company, a physics professor at Columbia, and a young cleaning girl. Director Jill Sprecher walks a thin line and teases out the tension between two world views. On the one hand, these characters feel the apparent futility and despair that despite what choices they make, or wish they could make, they really have no control over their lives, and so life feels very random and fickle. Still, as the film has it, the lives of these four characters do in fact intersect, such that a bigger picture of purpose is intimated. Clearly, all the characters in this film long to embrace the notion that there is a larger, benign Purpose directing what appear to be little more than accidental events. In a final scene, even the mere gesture of waving to someone as the subway train pulls away suggests that there is meaning in all we do. Christians will enjoy this film as an excellent commentary on the notion of divine Providence in which a loving God superintends our lives. He is no magician or puppeteer, and all our human choices matter, but we are never beyond the pale of His care or the presence of mystery in all we experience.
21 (2008)
This film is "inspired by" a true story told in the book Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions (2003). In real life, the MIT Blackjack Team devised a complex scheme of card-counting, disguises, and hand signals to win four million dollars in Vegas before the heavy hand of casino security gave them the boot. This film follows that outline, but it's a pale imitation of a genuinely interesting tale of greed, intellect, and emotion. Kevin Spacey stars as the MIT professor Micky Rosa who bullies, badgers, and betrays his six students in venial Vegas. The dialogue is horrible and at points entirely predictable. There's no character development. The sub-plots about friendship and parents hold little interest. The plot does take some unexpected twists, but even this resolves in a cheesy ending. It's quite a feat to make a boring movie about the glitz and glamour of Vegas gambling. Skip the film, and read the book.
21 Grams (2003)
How much is a life worth? Modern folklore suggests that at the moment of death, when the soul leaves the body, the body loses 21 grams. Be sure to read a few reviews of this film: the complicated plot is told in a complex, non-linear fashion.
24 Hours on Craigslist (2005)
Need to find a support group for your diabetic cat? Searching for limited editions of Dr. Seuss prints? Want to join a "flash mob?" Looking for an apartment, a heavy metal chef, or some football tickets? For all this and much, much more, just go to craigslist.org. What carries this otherwise mediocre documentary film is its fascinating subject matter. The entire film is little more than interviews with people who wax eloquent about how and why they use craigslist. They are not alone. With three billion page views and fifteen million users per month, and fifty million user postings in 100 discussion forums, craigslist is much more than a place to buy and sell; it is a form of entertainment and means for social connections. Many of these people are normal, but many others are just weird, and some of them would appear strange to say the least. The film includes people that should have been omitted, and is needlessly coy about Craig. Nor do you learn much about the basic history of craigslist. For the record, Craig Newmark founded the organization in 1995 in San Francisco. Today craigslist services 450 cities in 50 countries. In 1999 craigslist incorporated as a for-profit (E-Bay owns 25%), but that statement could be very misleading. Their current CEO Jim Buckmaster has been called an anarchist and communist for his steadfast refusal to "monetize" the site. He runs the company with a staff of two dozen people, and their "business model," such that it is, charges $25 for job ads in seven cities, and $10 for brokered apartments in New York City. Otherwise, craigslist revels in its open-source software and philanthropic esprit. For a fascinating article see http://www.forbes.com/technology/2006/12/08/newspaper-classifield-online-tech_cx-lh_1211craigslist.html.
3:10 to Yuma (2007)
Star power shines in this remake of the 1957 film of the same title. The plot epitomizes simplicity, but it twists and turns for 90 minutes, and only in the last minute does it find resolution—of a sort. Dan Evans (Christian Bale) is a down-on-his-luck rancher who's not only losing his ranch and the respect of his two boys but even his own self-respect. He seeks to redeem himself, and earn a handsome $200, by joining a posse to take a truly bad outlaw, Ben Wade (Russell Crowe), to the 3:10 train in Contention that will take Wade to Yuma and deposit him in the federal slammer. Redemption for himself, justice for Wade, a man who has robbed 21 stagecoaches. It sounds simple enough, but there are Apache Indians before them, Wade's truly bad gang behind them, and the wily Wade with them. Spooky campfires, rampaging stagecoaches, harsh landscape, saloons with pretty women, whiskey-gulping, way too much gratuitous violence, and non-stop trash-talking make this a cowboy classic. Directed by James Mangold who made Girl, Interrupted and the Johnny Cash bio Walk the Line.
ABC Africa (2001, 2002 in USA)—Iranian, Ugandan
Written, directed, and edited by the Iranian film maker Abbas Kiarostami, this documentary portrays the plight of Uganda's 2 million children who have been orphaned by the ravages of civil war, life under the psychopathic despot Idi Amin, and AIDS. Kiarostami made the film at the request of the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development. If you have been to Africa the sights and sounds are very familiar—piles of smoldering garbage, orange clay landscape, rutted roads, rusted corrugated tin roofs, bicycles, the ubiquitous rubber flip-flop sandals, and a weary yet resilient, elegant, and remarkably joyful people. In the film's most powerful sequence, a nurse wraps a dead child in a dirty blanket, packs him in half of a cardboard box ripped open for the purpose, and then loads the corpse onto the back of a bicycle. In particular, Kiarostami highlights the work of UWESO—Ugandan Women's Efforts To Save Children, an all volunteer organization of women who give themselves to care for the orphans and to train women in small business skills. The film has almost no narrative, and would have been even more powerful if it had. But the images speak for themselves. The title refers to a t-shirt worn by a small child featured in the film who was adopted by a young Austrian couple.
The Agronomist (2003)—Haitian
"The truth," recalls Jean Dominique (1930–2000) quoting Shakespeare, "will always make the devil's face blush." For forty years Dominique was Haiti's most eloquent and outspoken political and human rights activist. Whether it was Papa Doc Duvalier, his son Baby Doc, Raoul Cedras, Jean Bertrand Aristide, Preval, the provisional puppet governments supported by America and run by the military, or the hated Macoutes thug-militia, Dominique spoke unvarnished truth and justice to power. He gave voice to the poorest of the poor in general and peasants in particular. When he was assassinated April 3, 2000 at the age of 70, he requested that his wife and the peasants together pour his ashes into the river. By training Dominique was an agronomist, but he became a national hero by force of his unflinching bravery, charming eloquence, and political passion. Late in the documentary he describes himself as always having had "an unquenchable faith as a militant for true change." With his journalist wife Michele Montas, he owned and operated Haiti's oldest and only free radio station, Radio Haiti, despite repeated episodes of harassment, torture, jail, and over six years of exile in Manhattan. Broadcasts were in native Creole rather than colonial French, connecting Dominique viscerally to the millions of powerless peasants. In addition, he produced Haiti's first film in Haiti by a Haitian, sensing that when you watch closely, you understand how a film becomes a political act. In 1965, Papa Doc's authorities permanently closed Haiti's first film club that he had started. Written and directed by Academy Award winner Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs), who interviewed Dominique over a period of ten years, this documentary demonstrates how some times human history is driven from "the bottom up" rather than the "top down." In English and Creole (with English subtitles).
Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer (1992)
Nick Broomfield's death row documentary interviews with the serial killer who admitted murdering seven men in Florida. Wuornos grew up in a horribly dysfunctional home, was adopted by a crazy born-again woman, represented by a sleazy attorney, and exploited by the police who were making movie deals during her trial. She was the oppressed victim who became the oppressor, but whom we cannot help but love.
Aileen: The Life and Death of a Serial Killer (2003)
Wuornos was a life long hooker from an early age, a drug abuser, had a gay lover (probably the only loving relationship in her life), and was mentally sick. Nick Broomfield befriended her, and these documentary interviews chronicle her days right before her execution in 2002.
Alexandra's Project (2003)—Australia
Steve's birthday started well enough. While still in bed his kids gave him hugs and high fives. At work his colleagues had a cake with candles and his boss gave him a promotion. And his wife Alexandra promised him a surprise in the evening. Some surprise. The film opens with a camera panning through the winding road of a sterile suburb, and soft, discordant music. The very first sentence of the film belongs to Alexandra as she is alone in the bathroom looking at herself in the mirror: "I'm so sorry, Steve." The she spits in the mirror: "NO! I'm not sorry! No one should ever be sorry to stand up for their own self!" The rest of the film then takes place in the living room as Steve watches the "surprise" birthday tape that Alexandra made before she left him. Her powerfully manipulative monologue to Steve takes him on a roller coaster of emotions straight to hell: humor, disbelief, regret, sadness, pity, anger, rage, and finally despair. "You didn't marry me, Steve," she tells him, "you married my body." And so she makes it clear just how a marriage devoid of affection, intimacy, and mutual respect had made her feel. This film is hard to watch because it is without nuance. Alexandra is one deeply angry and cruel woman, but if what she says about Steve is true you empathize with her anyway.
Amadeus (1984)
The basic plot revolving around Salieri's jealousy is overdone if not fictitious, but just to enter into Mozart's music and to imagine what it must have been like to know him in his own day and time is fascinating.
Amelie (2001)—French
Amelie Poulain, a waitress at a Paris cafe, grew up with "a neurotic mother (who committed suicide) and an iceberg father," so she withdrew into her imaginative and shy self. She finds her gift, which is to bestow joy and serendipity upon the least suspecting people through creatively contrived circumstances—her apartment concierge, a blind man, and even her father. At first whimsical, light hearted and winsome, the film takes a final, poignant turn when Amelie must learn to accept love and joy for herself. Amelie earned five Oscar nominations.
American Beauty (1999)
This film won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, but I thought it was weak. Every character in the film is pathologically dysfunctional, but the bad part is that they are superficial, predictable, and unbelievable stereotypes. Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey), age 42, is a loser, and he knows he is a loser. His wife and teenage daughter hate him, for good reasons. Not to worry, he rejuvenates himself by seducing Angela, his daughter's best friend, quitting his job, working out and drinking smoothies, listening to Pink Floyd and Bob Dylan, smoking dope, throwing dishes against the wall, getting a new job at Smiley's Hamburgers, and buying a 1970 Pontiac Firebird. Self destruction as personal makeover? Life is beautiful, as he proclaims at the end of the film? Yeah, right. His wife Carolyn is an obsessive phony who lives only for image and finds her own authenticity by bedding her chief real estate competitor. Daughter Jane runs off with the next door classmate, Ricky, a drug dealing voyeur who spent two years in a mental hospital because of his abusive Marine Colonel dad who wrongly thinks he is gay, even while, apparently, he himself is gay. The real, token gay couple lives a few houses down. Just your average suburban neighborhood. Mid life crises are not funny, and it is too bad that director Sam Mendes did not help Lester deal with his in an interesting or compelling way.
American Splendor (2003)
Based upon the real life story of Harvey Pekar. Pekar spent most of his life as a file clerk in a VA hospital in Cleveland, then became the most unlikely celebrity when he created the comic series American Splendor. Clearly, this quintessential misanthrope could write about what every day people experience. The film intersperses the drama with real interviews with Pekar, his wife and colleagues, along with animated comics.
Amores Perros (2000)—Mexican
In this his debut film, director Alejandro González Iñárritu crafts a complex story in a manner that he also uses in his two subsequent films, 21 Grams (2003) and Babel (2007). All three films are long, tell three separate stories that collide, unfold in a non-linear and no-chronological manner, and explore the darkest aspects of human nature. The international English title for Amores Perros is "Love's a Bitch," which is unfortunate in my opinion because this rather jocular curse obscures the tragedy that stalks every character in this film. The figurative expression also misses the central role of dogs, dog-fighting, and how and why dogs come off as better than humans in Iñárritu's narrative. Octavio loves his sister-in-law Susanna, hates his brother, and immerses himself in the seedy world of dog-fighting. Daniel leaves his wife Julieta for the super-model Valeria, but tragedy and surreal superficiality leave them both with only ruin and regret. El Chivo is a homeless wino who appears like a ghost as a background figure throughout the film, until we learn his story of broken family relationships that center around his daughter Maru. Tragic fate and bad choices bring these stories together. One way to view this film is through the closing caption provided by Iñárritu himself: "We are what we have lost." In Spanish with English subtitles. 153 minutes.
Anchorman; The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)
Will Ferrell plays Ron Burgundy, the lead news anchor for San Diego's Channel Four network news. Set in the 1970s, this biting satire does for the television news industry what Zoolander did for the fashion industry. Petty personalities, insipid news content about pregnant zoo animals, blow dried hair and toothy smiles, paltry humor, and blatant sexism remind us of the very thin border between film's fiction and whatever constitutes "real" news. Just last night on our "real" news the weatherman reported that San Jose had "four one hundredths of an inch of rain." And he was serious. Watched as parody and farce, this film works. Network news has come a long, long way from the comforting, paternalistic intonations of Walter Cronkite.
Andy Goldsworthy: Rivers and Tides, Working With Time (2001)—Scottish
"There is a world," remarks the environmental sculptor Andy Goldsworthy of Scotland (born 1956), "beyond which words cannot describe." With that he tosses a mud ball made of dark red crushed iron stone into a river for an explosion of color. What once was solid is now liquid, the immobile stone now part of the flowing river. Ice. Twigs. Thorns. Dandelions. Rocks. Sand. Sheep wool. Snaking ribbons of braided leaves. From the North Pole to Canada, Japan, Australia, and New York, all of his work, most of which is ephemeral because that same nature will destroy it, is made from the elements of nature, sculpted in nature, and is about nature. But words cannot begin to unpack the haunting beauty and evocative power of his creations. This is a remarkable documentary about an extraordinary artist doing brilliant work. Goldsworthy narrates the film and explains how and why he does what he does. Themes of Creation and Creator loom large here. If you cannot watch this wonderful film, simply "google" his name to see some of his hundreds of works.
Angela (2002)—Italian
I watched this film because the DVD case boasts that it won awards at five film festivals, but that only proves that the experts can be badly wrong. Set in 1984 Palermo, Angela is bored at her husband Saro's shoe store, so she takes a more active role in the real family business, which is running drugs by stuffing them into the shoes inside the boxes. Angela is something of a trophy wife for the older mafioso Saro, and you know it's a very bad idea when the younger Masino, a confidant of Saro, starts to hit on her. What was he thinking? In a mafia movie? In prison Saro dumps Angela and promises, "your prince charming is a walking corpse." We never see Masino again, nor does Angela. I tired at watching unshaven men with unbuttoned shirts and pinky rings talk tough in darkened rooms, and failed to find anything very interesting in this movie. In Italian with English subtitles.
Antares (2004)—Austria
Antares is one of the brightest stars in the night sky, but everyone in this film flames out into darkness. As I watched the lives of three dysfunctional couples deconstruct, my mind wandered to the wisdom of the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria: "Be kind to all, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle." All three couples are trapped in the same drab high rise apartments that serve as metaphors for their interior landscapes. The bored nurse Eva has an affair with an out of town doctor, but despite their torrid love affair she does not even remember the man's last name; nor do we ever learn her husband's name. The young and needy checkout clerk Sonja fakes a pregnancy to persuade her cheating boyfriend Marco to marry her. He's an immigrant laborer from Yugoslavia, injecting not only class-consciousness but ethnicity and immigration into the film. Despite her efforts to free herself, domestic violence traps Nicole with the jealous and abusive Alex, the third couple. In twists of fate that are more bizarre than important to the plot, the lives of these six people crash and collide, but only as ships passing in the night. Austrian angst buries everyone. In German with English subtitles.
Anvil! The Story of Anvil (2008)
The heavy metal band Anvil enjoyed fifteen minutes of fame back in the early 1980s. That was followed by a thirty-year slide into obscurity, despite recording a dozen albums. At age 14, Toronto singer/guitarist Steve "Lips" Kudlow and drummer Robb Reiner vowed to each other to spend their lives chasing the dream of rock stardom. This documentary finds the duo in their early fifties, still rockin' but also comparing their lofty dreams with harsh reality. They both work menial jobs (including an eight-hour stint in telemarketing) to support their families. An incompetent manager took them on a European tour where they played to a Romanian "crowd" of 174 people in a 10,000-seat venue, missed trains, weren't paid, etc. But their enthusiasm, earnestness, and commitment to their craft never waiver. At the end of the film they've borrowed money to cut their thirteenth album ("our best ever!"), which they sell out of the back of their van, and play a gig in Japan at the 9:45am slot. But they have lived their dream, and that's a whole lot more than many people can say.
The Apostle (1997)
Do you love or hate Sonny (Robert Duvall), the deeply flawed but truly good and human Pentecostal preacher from Texas?
Arranged (2007)
Rachel is a twenty-two year old Orthodox Jew. Nasira is a Syrian Muslim. It would appear that they have little in common. Not true. They both teach at a public school in Brooklyn, and they befriend each other as they both struggle with the tensions that arise between their conservative religious families and the larger, secular world in which they live and work. Their principal makes fun of their religious values, their students assume that all Jews and Muslims hate each other, and their families are visibly upset when they visit each other's home. These tensions come in to sharp relief when both Rachel and Nasira negotiate the prospects of marriages that are strictly arranged by their families. This is a great movie about individual choice and personal identity within the greater push and pull of family, culture, gender roles, ethnicity, and religion.
Art School Confidential (2006)
Jerome graduates from high school and enrolls in Strathmore Art School. Picasso is his hero, and he intends to become "the greatest artist of the twenty-first century." Lucky for him, Bardo, who has flunked out and started over three times, takes him under his wing and disabuses him of his innocence. He's pegged every pretension of every classmate, and thus the side-splitting parodies begin. Here is the beautiful beatnik, he tells Jerome, over there is the vegan holy man, then the angry lesbian, the boring blowhard, the brown noser, the fifty-ish mom trying to find herself. "Oh wow!" exclaims Bardo, "another ironic pop culture reference!" The professors with their inflated egos and deep insecurities are even funnier, as are the classroom dramas when students critique each other's work and pontificate about "good art." Unfortunately, into this satire the directors insert a real plot when Jerome falls in love with the nude model Audrey, is upstaged by the hulk Jonah who is at Strathmore for reasons other than art, and then concocts a plan to win her back. He concludes, "I'm a living cliche just like the others."
Atonement (2007)
This film opens in 1935 at a spectacular estate in the English countryside, takes us to the bloody beaches of Dunkirk, and then ends in a television studio sixty years later. The well-to-do Cecilia falls in love with Robbie, the son of the housekeeper. Thanks to Cecilia's father, Robbie attended Cambridge and has plans for medical school. Cecilia's younger sister, Briony, also had a crush on Robbie, so when she watches a scene at the estate fountain, reads a love note never meant for anyone's eyes, and interrupts an embrace in the library that would shock any thirteen-year-old, she reacts in fear. Briony tells a lie about a family tragedy, the consequences of which are catastrophic for everyone, especially for her own mind and soul. Briony spends her entire life seeking atonement, and at the end of the film we're not sure that she has convinced herself, much less the audience. Atonement earned seven Academy Award nominations.
Babel (2006)—Mexican
With Babel director Alejando Gonzalez Iñárritu completes his trilogy begun with Amores Perros and 21 Grams, and demonstrates just how powerful movie-making can be in the hands of an artistic genius. Iñárritu connects four deeply human stories by the tragic and unintended consequences of a random act. In the desert mountains of Morocco, two little boys shoot at a tour bus while playing with a rifle that their father bought to shoot jackals that threatened their goats. In San Diego, Susan and Richard travel to Morocco to heal their marriage but encounter tragedy on a tour bus. In Mexico, the nanny and illegal immigrant Amelia attends her son's wedding but runs afoul of the law when she tries to re-enter the United States. In Tokyo, the deaf and mute teenager Chieko searches for love in all the wrong ways to overcome the fallout of her mother's suicide and her father's emotional distance.
Babel (the title comes from Genesis 11 in the Bible) is a cinematic metaphor for our post-modern, global age, ambitious in scope and layered with multiple themes—family, the collision of cultures, poverty, helplessness before state power and petty bureaucrats, human estrangement, misinformation and miscommunication, international terrorism, and fate. Every component of this film—sound track (including an unforgettable scene in a Tokyo disco when the pounding music goes silent in order to simulate Chieko's deafness), scenery, narrative, and cinematography—combine for an overwhelming effect. Give your heart and mind to this film and its characters, and you will leave the theater on mental, spiritual, and emotional overload. In Moroccan Arabic, Spanish, Japanese, English, sign language, written notes, cell phone video and text-message, and English sub-titles (so that in many scenes the viewer knows more than the characters who do not or cannot understand what is happening).
Babette's Feast (1988)—Danish
The story is set in the late nineteenth century and takes place in a small fishing village on the dank and dreary Jutland coast of Denmark. A band of dour Christians learn the meaning of God's extravagant grace from a most unlikely source. If ever there was a film as parable, this is it.
The Band's Visit (2007) — Israel/Egypt
The case for this DVD advertises that this movie has earned over thirty-five international awards. In my mind it has earned every one of them. Pitched as a comedy, the film moves beyond mere laughs to that deeply human place in each one of us, no matter what your language or culture. Eight members of the "Alexandrian Police Ceremonial Orchestra" from Egypt, complete in their powder blue band uniforms, are on a visit to the Arab cultural center in Pet Hatikvah, Israel. A bad bus ride strands them in the isolated and desolate village of Bet Hatikva. In their broken English, members of the band and their Israeli hosts communicate across the boundaries of language, culture, gender roles, and, of course, millennia of mutual suspicions. But with the help of music and the vulnerabilities they experience because of their predicament, they open themselves up to each others' stories. One reviewer described this film as "lighthearted but not lightweight." In English, Hebrew, and Arabic, with English subtitles.
The Barbarian Invasions (2003)—French
The monastics encourage Christians to give some thought to your death every day, not in morbid introspection but in order to live fully today. This film, which won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, does just that. Remy Girard is dying, and now he must come to grips with how he has lived. In a number of significant ways he remains deeply alienated—he started cheating on his wife six months after they married; his chief accomplishment in life upon which he dwells and which forms a major theme of the film is his lifelong sexual escapades; he is estranged from his two children; he describes his work as a professor as total failure; he admits that he is scared of dying; and his son even has to pay some of his students to visit him in the hospital to assure him how sorely he will be missed. But his friends gather around him, they talk and celebrate, and he reconciles at some level with his two children. But is it believable that his son would really bypass bureaucrats and bribe union officials to get an entire unused floor of the hospital so Remy could have peace and quiet, that snorting heroin at his stage of the game is really such a great idea, and that his former wife would so graciously welcome his lovers at Remy's deathbed? Still, this is a powerful film about a date with destiny that, like Remy, we all have. He faced it head on and full throttle. In French with English subtitles.
Barrio Cuba (2005) — Cuba
This award-winning film from Havana follows the struggles of three multi-generational families. Sweltering heat, dilapidated buildings, a dysfunctional economy, and a spartan diet ("We're having beans and rice again because that's what the grocery had") are only the beginning of their deeply human struggles. Magalis bikes to her job as a nurse and attracts all the wrong sort of men — an aging carpenter who's hopelessly in love with her, a no-good cheater, and a rich Italian, but her real challenge is the fight between her dictatorial father and her gay brother. When Maria dies in childbirth her husband Santos flees, leaving the grandmother to raise the boy and to salvage the son's image of his absent father. In the third story, the engineer Chino and his pharmacist wife Vivian suffer a miscarriage, and with it the expectations of their parents for a grandchild, both of which are aggravated by a sibling who flees with his family from Cuba. The three stories are not connected in the film, except for a common theme — people who flee their problems then face the challenge to return for reconciliation. The problems are real, but their resolutions are contrived.
Battle Ground; 21 Days on the Empire's Edge (2003)
With the war now in its fifth year as I write (July 2007), it is fascinating to watch this documentary of the Iraq war that was filmed in October 2003, about six months after the fall of Baghdad. Guerilla News Network sent a crew of two brave souls into the Arab street to provide an alternative news version. "It will be a real bloody civil war," predicted one Iraqi four years ago. For the most part the film tries to allow all sides to tell their stories, including foreign journalists, local Iraqi families, American soldiers, a Baghdad blogger, and in one remarkable instance an anti-Saddamist American who returned to Iraq for the first time in 13 years. Overall this film impressed upon me the stupidity, the hubris, the futility and violence of the war. Consider Camp Anaconda, built for $44 million as what the military calls an "enduring presence" facility capable of housing 15,000 troops on a "long term residential basis." Or a tank graveyard where radiation levels are 300 times normal because of the presence of depleted uranium from American bombs (in October 2003 there were already about 120 tons of the DU in Iraq, and it has a half-life of 4.5 billion years). These pictures speak far more than any words.
Be With Me (2006)—Singapore
Director Eric Khoo mixes fact with three fictional relationships in this remarkable exploration of the human longing to love and be loved. An elderly shopkeeper tenderly cares for his wife in the hospital, then struggles with deep loneliness after she dies. Two teenage girls communicate by email and text-messaging, but their gay relationship ends in tragedy. A middle-age, lecherous security guard stalks a gorgeous woman at a distance and, pathetically, finally writes her a love letter. Parallel to all of this is the real-life story of the deaf and blind Theresa Chan, a 61-year-old teacher of disabled children. Throughout the film she types her life story with deep reflections about love and longing. Fate brings these four stories together in a powerful conclusion. Be with Me won awards at five film festivals. Mainly in English, but some Chinese with English subtitles.
A Beautiful Mind (2001)
John Nash won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1994 for work he had done as a Princeton grad student in the 1940s. In between, schizophrenia hounded him. His wife is the real hero. The film glosses over the seamier aspects of Nash's real life (see the biography by Sylvia Nasar), and gives the impression that lots of love will cure mental illness (wrong), but this is still a moving film that explores the borders between genius and madness.
The Beauty Academy of Kabul (2004)—Afghan
In 2003 six American hairdressers opened a beauty school in the bombed out ruins of post-Taliban Kabul. Director Liz Mermin follows this venture from the grand opening and selection of the first class to the graduation dinner three months later. Two of the volunteers, Sima and Shaima, had emigrated from Afghanistan to the United States more than twenty years earlier, and their cultural reconnection is emotionally powerful. "It's been twenty years since I was here," observes Sima, "but the country has regressed a hundred years." Two other volunteers are positively obnoxious; they cannot understand why these Afghan women would not wear makeup, drive, or anger their husbands. One of them begins classes with yoga meditation as the Afghan women giggle. Another gushes that their project is not just about hair and makeup but about "healing the country." The real heroes that make this film worth watching, though, are the Afghan women. "Our men have backwards mentalities," one of them laments. I found the symbolism of a beauty parlor run by culturally insensitive American do-gooders in a conservative Muslim country rich with paradox. Was this project one of genuine feminist liberation or self-congratulatory cultural imperialism? A little of both, I thought. In English and Afghan.
Being There (1979)
In this clever satire Peter Sellers plays Chauncey, a mindless gardener who finds himself a presidential advisor. But who's the real fool? Chauncey's last words in the film are ‘life is a state of mind.’
Big Fish (2003)
Edward Bloom is dying, and his son Will, whose wife is pregnant with their first child, dearly wants to know just who his enigmatic father really is. The problem is that Dad was a blowhard storyteller who talked about things he did not do and did not talk about things he did do ("we never talked about not talking"). He was a combination of the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus, very charming and very fake, and so Will laments, "I have no idea who you are." But maybe Will has misread his dad, and all the stories are true in some sense. The overall theme of Big Fish is thus entirely poignant, but the metaphors mix rather badly with humor, surreal scenes of giants, witches, crows in dreams who prophesy death, etc., and an extended love story about Mom and Dad. This good film could have been better if the visual medium had not overwhelmed the otherwise rich plot potential.
Billy Elliot (2000)—British
In this British film a hard-scrabble, coal-miner father comes to grips with his son's aspirations to be a ballet dancer. Bring the kleenex.
Blade Runner, The Director's Cut (1992)
Set in Los Angeles in November 2019, Harrison Ford stars as the "blade runner" Rick Deckard, a special police officer who must track down and "retire" four "replicants" who have returned to earth from "off-world" colonies. Their crime is that they want to be fully human; as it is, they are genetically manipulated humanoids, virtually indistinguishable from normal humans except that they are superior in strength and intellect, lack full emotions, and have a life span of four years. Deckard falls in love with Rachel, a fifth, experimental replicant who thinks she is truly human, and there are ambiguities that Deckard himself might be a replicant ("Did you ever take the test yourself?") and in the way the film ends. Blade Runner fared poorly when it was released in 1982, the same weekend as ET, but since then it has become a cult classic that regularly appears on lists of the best films ever. Much more than a sci-fi thriller, which it is, the film explores nothing less than what it means to be human in a very dark world. The year 2007 marks its twenty-fifth anniversary, and since its original release there have been seven versions of the film, including The Final Cut (2007)—notable because it's the only version over which the director Ridley Scott had total control. For a good artcile on Blade Runner see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner.
Blind Spot; Hitler's Secretary (2002)—German
When Traudl Junge was twenty-two she was chosen, she recalls, "by complete coincidence and chance" from a typing competition to become Hitler's secretary from 1942-1945. Later in life, she became deeply disturbed about how she could have participated in the Nazi horror at such close quarters and remained so apolitical. In a brutal catharsis of self-analysis, she describes her "blind spot" as remaining so oblivious to the obvious. Clearly wanting to unburden herself and to speak publically for the first time, she gave ten hours of interviews at the age of 81, just months before she died. This film has almost no cinematic style or technique. Junge sits in her modest Munich apartment, a camera is put on her, and she delivers a ninety-minute, somewhat rambling soliloquy on what it was like to be Hitler's secretary. There is little ethical or war time insight; the fascinating part, in fact, is how banal she describes Hitler —his dog, his diet, his kindly paternalism, daily lunches and dinners with him, etc. More than half of her remarks cover Hitler's last few days in his Berlin bunker, where he eventually committed suicide and his body was burned. This fascinating film could have been so much better if a savvy interviewer had plied her with questions. In German with English subtitles.
Filmed in IMAX by NASA astronauts 200 miles above planet earth, this 41-minute film introduces you to volcanoes and earthquakes, underwater lava chimneys and Amazon rain forests. The narration begins with an earth rise as viewed from the moon, and in a later shot we observe from space a thin blue line, above which is uninhabitable black space and below which is our cocoon-like layer of thin air that is our atmosphere. If there is a theme that integrates these remarkable images it is the delicate balance between earth, air, and water, and, especially poignant, the impact that humanity has had on our tiny blue planet. This film will seem outdated with the new Planet Earth series produced by the BBC in 2006 and shown on the Discovery Channel, but it's still well worth watching and would make for a great evening of family fun.
Bobby (2006)
It's a shame that director Emilio Estevez exploited one of the worst tragedies in American history and the memory of one of our best political leaders in order to make such a horrible movie. In fact, the film has nothing to do with the life, the assassination, or even the political context of Bobby Kennedy's life and times, save for the occasional archival footage that is spliced in at intervals. Instead, Bobby pearl strings a half dozen mini-soap opera vignettes about uninteresting people who happened to be staying at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles where Kennedy was assassinated on June 4, 1968 by Sirhan Sirhan. Estevez then markets the film with a deceptive title, populates his soap operas with big names (Anthony Hopkins, Demi Moore, Christian Slater, Martin Sheen, Helen Hunt, Emilio Estevez, Lindsay Lohan, Elijah Wood, William H. Macy, Heather Graham, Martin Sheen, Laurence Fishburne, Sharon Stone), then laughs all the way to the bank. This is film-making at its worst; it punishes the viewer.
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
As a famous television personality in Kazakhstan, Borat Sagdiyev (played by the Jewish Sacha Baron Cohen) goes to America to film a documentary about American culture. He lands in New York, falls in love with Pamela Anderson when he sees her on television, and so he and his producer Azamat make a road trip to meet her in California. This is the only plot of the film, and it is irrelevant to its purpose. Borat has benefited from the truth that there is no such thing as bad publicity. The controversial film will offend just about everyone with its anti-Semitic, racist, misogynist, homophobic, and anti-Christian humor. To me the problem with the film was not its vulgarity, which was plenty bad, but that the film simply wasn't funny, and that's a problem for a comedy. Some of Borat was staged, and other parts were real life ambushes of unsuspecting people; the directors will not say which parts are which. Those who defend Borat argue that it's a clever satire about bigotry; others argue that it aggravates it. Either way, save your time and money.
Born Into Brothels (2004)—Indian
In 1998 photojournalist Zana Briski moved to a red light district in Calcutta to document the lives of prostitutes. After three years she discovered that the children born into these brothels were fascinated by her camera. Knowing that these kids were destined to a life of sex slavery, drugs and violence, one day she brought the kids ten point-n-shoot cameras and formed a workshop to help them discover the beauty of their own lives through the liberating power of art. This film won the 2005 Academy Award for best documentary, and follows the "class" of nine kids she gathered. Through dogged perseverance Briski was able to get several of the kids into private boarding schools, and even one of them to a major American university. Later she started a foundation called Kids With Cameras that now works in Calcutta, Haiti, Cairo and Jerusalem. There is also a book of the children's photography called Born Into Brothels: Photographs By the Children of Calcutta. Much like the films City of God shot in the slums of Rio de Janeiro and Promises about Palestinian and Israeli kids, Born into Brothels reminds us how much adults have to learn from children.
Bowling for Columbine (2002)
Film maker Michael Moore is unapologetic about his extremely liberal politics. So what? The question is not whether he is liberal but whether his documentaries and ambush interviews about important social questions—corporate greed in Roger and Me, and truth telling in government in Fahrenheit 911—are true.
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
What did the Holocaust look like through the eyes of Jewish children consigned to the concentration camps? Or through the eyes of an entirely normal Nazi family whose father was "promoted" from Berlin to Commandant of a death camp in the countryside? Bruno is only eight years old, so he's naturally curious about the "farm" only a few hundred yards from his family mansion, where people wear striped pajamas with numbers on them. Where black smoke billows from chimneys, and where horrid smells fill the air. And if Pavel was a doctor, why is he now wearing those pajamas and peeling potatoes for his family? Bruno forms an unlikely friendship through the electric barbed wire with another eight-year-old, Shmuel. The innocence that they share puts into bold relief the horrendous consequences of the Holocaust — for the Jews, of course, but in unlikely and catastrophic ways for every member of this prim, proper, and patriotic family whose father was responsible for "making the world better." The film explores a horrible paradox of the Holocaust — that an evil of unimaginable magnitude was carried out by everyday people just like us.
The Boys of 2nd Street Park (2003)
Baby boomers like myself will enjoy this documentary, a sort of period piece, about a group of buddies who were close friends growing up in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn in the late 1950s. The epicenter of their childhood memories of stick ball and basketball was 2nd Street Park. Through interviews, original home movies, and still photos we follow their life stories through nostalgic recollections of childhood, teenage angst, and emergent adulthood with all of its attendant poignancy and pain—the volatile fifteen years between 1960-1975 when romantic descriptions of rampant drug use gave way to nightmarish reality, the Vietnam War, broken marriages, sick kids, professional challenges, and the like. All of this is utterly normal, and happens to very normal people, which is to say that it is a universal story that makes this a meaningful retrospective on life, love, loss, regret, and hope.
The Boys of Baraka (2005)
Every year the Baraka School selects twenty seventh-grade boys from the most violent ghettos of Baltimore, where 76% of male students do not graduate from high school, to spend two years at their all male boarding school in rural Kenya. This documentary movie won awards at six film festivals for its portrayal of one such class, with a special focus on four of them—Richard and his brother Romesh, Montrey, and the budding preacher Devon. The first twenty minutes of the film takes place in Baltimore, where we experience the horribly dysfunctional context in which the boys live, meet their families, learn of their selection to Baraka, and watch as their mothers bid them tearful good-byes at the airport. The next forty minutes documents their lives in Kenya, culminating their first school year by climbing Mount Kenya, then the last twenty minutes follows them back home to Baltimore for eight weeks of summer vacation. An unexpected plot turn at the end of the film ratchets the emotional quotient of this fantastic film even higher than you could have imagined. This is one of the finest films I have watched in a long while.
Bread and Tulips (2000)—Italian
Rosalba, a slightly overweight woman in her forties, is left behind on a family vacation. Rather than return to her family, she finds her way to Venice and a romantic encounter with a waiter named Fernando. Will she find the romance she longs for, or return to her family and the hum drum of whatever it is we call normal life?
Broken Flowers (2005)
Does Don Johnston (Bill Murray) really have a 19-year-old son from his philandering past? Does it matter? An anonymous letter he received insists that he does, and that his enterprising son is on a journey to find his father. Don's not so sure; perhaps it's a hoax. Next door neighbor Winston, a wannabe detective writer, cannot resist the intrigue, and sends Don packing to visit four girl friends from his past, all the while looking for important "clues" to discover who sent the letter and bore his son.
We know that Don will visit four former lovers, and that they will now live in extraordinarily different settings. "It sure is crazy how people change," exclaims the husband of a former lover. Laura (Sharon Stone) is a "closet organizer," Dora (Frances Conroy) was a former hippie who lives in a wealthy but sterile suburb and sells "high quality pre-fab homes," Carmen (Jessica Lange) is a former lawyer turned "pet communicator," and Penny (Tilda Swinton) lives in rural isolation among angry grease ball bikers. Winston identified a fifth candidate who died, so Don visits her grave too. But this simple road trip develops more subtleties than we might imagine.
The journey transforms Don. At first he professed wholesale disinterest, then he agreed to go, he eventually becomes interested in these former lovers and how their lives had intersected, and by the end he himself is haunted with finding his son. Also, violent dreams about any number of other women agitate him with unpleasant memories. A second letter from his most recent former girl friend Sherry on similar stationery bookends the end of the film. But to the last of the film you do not know if Don succeeds in his quest, and neither does he. Then you realize that this film is not about Don's girlfriends or his phantom son but about himself, an aging Don Juan who made money "in computers" but who awakens to move beyond his laconic, couch-potato existence. He is not trying to find former lovers, or even his son; he's trying to find himself.
Bubble (2005)
Barely forty years old and with films like Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Ocean's Eleven, Traffic, and Erin Brockovich to his credit, anything director Steven Soderbergh does is worth a look. In this innovative film he moves from directing mega-stars like George Clooney and Julia Roberts to using non-professional, local people as "actors," who participated in the script, to tell a simple, powerful story. The film was set in their homes and made for a measley $1.6 million. In real life Debbie Doebereiner worked at Kentucky Fried Chicken for twenty four years. In the film she stars as Martha, an overweight woman with orange hair whose life consists of working in a doll factory in Parkersburg, West Virginia, and taking care of her invalid father. Her younger co-worker Kyle does not own a car (he lives in a mobile home with his mother), so she taxis him every day, and generally mothers him. The two are joined in the doll factory by Rose (in real life Misty Dawn Wilkins, a hair dresser), a single mom who like Kyle did not finish high school and who works two jobs struggling to get ahead. The night that Martha babysits Rose's daughter so she and Kyle can go on a date ends in tragedy. These extremely ordinary people are trapped in the banalities of life as grey as the Ohio Valley landscape, living on the "bubble" that in their case bursts. Bubble also makes history as the first film released simultaneously in theaters, on pay-for-view cable television, and on DVD. I loved this deeply human film.
The Buena Vista Social Club (1999)—Cuban
A documentary by Wim Wenders in which Ry Cooder reassembles the Cuban jazz group Buena Vista Social Club. Fascinating scenes from Cuba with a stirring reunion-finale in Carnegie Hall.
Burn After Reading (2008)
When the CIA spy Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) got fired for alcoholism, he lost more than his job. He also lost a CD with sensitive information that fell into the hands of Chad (Brad Pitt), a gum-smacking, fist-pumping fitness trainer at Hardbodies, and his colleague Linda Litzke, who's a serial internet dater with dreams of extensive cosmetic surgery. This dimwitted duo concocts a plan to sell Osborne's CD to the Russians to pay for Linda's surgery. Cox is also losing his wife, Katie, who is having an affair with Harry (George Clooney), a federal marshal who's a sex addict. Unintended consequences are the result for everyone in this clever comedy from director-writers Ethan and Joel Coen (No Country for Old Men). It was refreshing to see Pitt and Clooney cast in roles far outside their types, and to watch the Coens satire politics, sex, body image, addictions, and the longing for love.
Calendar Girls (2003)—British
When Annie Clark's husband dies of leukemia, her best friend Chris Harper happens upon an idea to honor his memory after finding a pornography magazine belonging to her son. A group of women friends in their fifties from Yorkshire's normally staid Women's Institute pose in the nude ("not naked!" we are reminded in the film) to produce and market a pin-up calendar, the proceeds of which would benefit the hospital where John was treated and died. Starting with an initial print run of 500 calendars, the women meet international acclaim, including an appearance on the Jay Leno Show, and raise $1 million for the hospital. There is nothing erotic or even sensual in this lighthearted British comedy (rated PG-13). All the women's poses are strategically obscured by potted plants and the like. Instead, in addition to the mischief-making comedy, there are surprisingly powerful sub-themes of body image, aging, grief and loss, community, and memory. The film is based upon a true story from 1999. I was prepared to dismiss this film but instead enjoyed it for the lighthearted fun that it is.
Campfire (2004)—Israel
Set in 1981, Rachel Gerlik is a forty-two year old widow with two adolescent girls, struggling to move beyond grief. Feeling very much isolated, it is her "life dream," she says, to join the founders of a new settlement in the West Bank. The selection committee is dubious about including a single woman, and her two girls accuse her of "sucking up" to them in her neediness to be wanted. Esti, her older daughter, acts out with an Israeli soldier, while the younger Tami gets more attention than she bargained for at the settlement's youth group bonfire. Into this mix steps Yossi, an older bachelor-bus driver who also describes himself as a left-out, overlooked outsider. When Tami's reputation is publicly smeared, Rachel's stock sinks even lower with the settlement's leaders. In the end, she spurns the settlers in favor of her outsider status with Yossi and her two girls. Campfire is a personal rather than a political film, although some Israelis have criticized writer-director Joseph Cedar for smearing his Zionist family roots. The film won five Israeli Academy Awards and was Israel's entry for the 2004 Academy Award competition as Best Foreign-Language. In Hebrew with English subtitles.
Capote (2005)
Philip Seymour Hoffman stars as the (in)famous writer Truman Capote (1924–1984) in one of the best films of the year, despite the problems of viewer identification that it might provoke. In researching his "non-fiction novel" In Cold Blood Capote befriended a young man who was convicted and eventually executed for the brutal murder of a Kansas family of four. The portrait of Capote that emerges is of a flamboyant artistic genius whose deeply complex personality reveals itself in decidedly mixed motives. He attracts, repels and fascinates us, all at the same time. In the film Capote befriends the young prisoner Perry Smith for at least four conflicting reasons. Capote was egotistical, vain, narcissistic, condescending and ambitious. Several times he lied to Smith in order to exploit him for selfish, professional purposes in writing his book. When asked if he "esteemed" Smith, Capote replies, "he's a gold mine." Second, Capote's gay lover Jack jealously accused him of falling in love with Smith, which also seems to be true. Third, interviewing Smith evoked powerful memories of his own childhood that resulted in an obsessive act of self-identification and emotional attachment with him: "it's as if we grew up in the same house, but he went out the front door and I went out the back." These memories include exclusion as an outsider, family suicide, alcoholism, and parental abandonment. Finally, Capote genuinely empathized for the young death row inmate, and the film provokes themes of social justice revolving around our penal system and pity for a criminal with a horrible childhood. Smith is not a monster, he insists, and Capote intends his book to "return him to the realm of humanity." Still, Capote chose not to do all that he might have to save Smith; he even wanted Smith to die to supply an ending for his book. When the film ends we learn that In Cold Blood remained an unfinished novel, and that it was the last book that Capote ever wrote, even though he lived another eighteen years. Badly missing in this remarkable film—the slightest mention of the murdered victims and their families. Capote won five Academy Award nominations.
Carandiru (2003)—Brazilian
Built in 1928 to hold 4,000 prisoners, the Carandiru House of Detention in Sao Paulo housed 7,500 violent criminals and was the largest prison in Latin America. That was before it was closed and then demolished in late 2002, ten years after government troops stormed the prison in October 1992 and killed 111 inmates after a riot had broken out. Not a single police died, and as the film portrays it the prisoners had thrown their weapons out the barred windows and waved white flags. Based on these real life events, the film traces the violent prison subculture, the stories of several inmates (through extensive use of flashbacks), and especially the role played by the humanitarian prison doctor, Drauzio Varella, who volunteered his services for fourteen years after visiting the prison for AIDS research. He later wrote a memoir about his experiences, Carandiru Station, which forms the basis of the film. The film culminates in the riot, features the actual footage when it was demolished by dynamite in December 2002, and incorporates interviews with prisoners who survived the massacre. This film is not for weak stomachs; it is an unsettling commentary on the Darwinian subculture and institutionalized inhumanity inside our worst prisons. In Portuguese with subtitles.
Chocolat (2000)—French
I viewed this film as a sort of modern day parable of the Good Samaritan: the most unlikely and even pagan person, Vianne, opens a chocolate shop during Lent (!) on the square of an uptight, moralistically Catholic town in 1950s France. But she brings the town together after the Christians had split them apart.
Choking Man (2007)
Jorge is a young and morbidly shy immigrant from Ecuador. By day he washes dishes at the Olympic diner in Queens, New York. At midnight he returns to his grimy apartment and a weird roommate. Jorge pulls his hooded sweatshirt over his forehead so that we barely see his face; he knows a little English but almost never speaks. At work an obnoxious cook named Jerry bullies and hectors him. But there is one bright spot for Jorge — Amy, a bubbly waitress from China. She defends Jorge, but also enjoys flirting with Jerry. That's unfortunte, because Jorge had been enjoying her attention, shining his shoes, getting a haircut, and even buying her a gift. The isolation of Jorge's immigrant experience, and the dysfunction at his job, are exacerbated by his pathological introversion so that he is, in an emotional sense, choking. Even the church and Christian faith, which is repeatedly invoked, can't help him. The film ends with two surprise twists in the plot. Mainly in English; some Spanish with subtitles.
The Chorus (Les Choristes) (2004)—French
An unlikely teacher, the failed musician Clément Mathieu, radically transforms the lives of incorrigible delinquents who are imprisoned in the decrepit Fond de l'étang boarding school with peeling paint, rusted gates, and no coal for the furnace. Yes, a sadomasochist headmaster who beats and screams at the kids, Mr. Rachin, runs the school. The film opens with two old men, Pierre and Pepinot, who meet for the first time since they were both—surprise—classmates at Fond de l'étang. Pierre, now a world famous conductor, asks whatever happened to Mathieu, and as luck would have it Pepinot just happens to have the old man's diary. The film backtracks to their school days and the story of Mathieu's remarkable influence. The Chorus is formulaic, sentimental, improbable and predictable, but I liked it. Perhaps that is because I recently visited my ninth grade English teacher, Mrs. Tilley, now 90 years old, or because my wife teaches second graders. Still, this film is good if not great, and earned two Academy Award nominations, including Best Foreign Film. In French with English subtitles.
City of God (2002)—Brazilian
Rich people who travel to Rio de Janeiro think of it as paradise. Poor people who actually live there in its worst slum called the "City of God," built by the government to isolate them from the rich tourists in the city center, can tell you it is more like a precinct of hell. Shot on location in a nearby neighborhood (the actual slum was deemed too dangerous), and incorporating characters who actually live in the "City of God," this film chronicles daily life in one of the world's worst slums. It is a world of pitiless violence, grinding poverty, remorseless revenge, and a complex hierarchy of drug lords. The film is narrated by one of the few people to escape this vortex of anarchy, one "Rocket" who aspires to be a photographer, and is based upon Paulo Lins's novel of the same name (Ciudad De Dios). At 135 minutes, I found the film a little long, but I also hasten to add that I think it deserves the uniformly superlative reviews that it has received. In Portuguese with English subtitles.
The Class (2008)—France
In this movie adapted from his autobiographical novel, François Bégaudeau plays himself as a French teacher in a middle school in a rough blue-collar Paris suburb. Real students and teachers, not professional actors, play the roles in the film. Among other things, the film is a study of the ripple effects of immigration in France as seen through the lens of its public schools. The class has students from Morocco, the Caribbean, China and more. In addition to their raging hormones, slang vocabulary, personalized dress codes, identification with sports teams, and overall disinterest in school, the students struggle with race, class and religion. Then there are the poignant parent-teacher conferences and collegial faculty meetings. In a major part of the class drama, the sulk, sass and sarcasm of a student from Mali named Suleyman provokes a class crisis. The Class is not a documentary, but it's so authentic that it feels like one; it was the official French entry for best foreign film and won the Palme d'Or at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. In French with English subtitles.
Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)
Writer and director Jim Jarmusch gathers ostensibly random combinations of conversation partners in coffee shops for smoke, drink, and impromptu talk. There is no introduction or conclusion, no soundtrack except for the ambient, background noise of the various coffee shops, no narration or explanation, and filmed in black and white. But only two of the eleven vignettes worked for me; the others felt and sounded very much like playing for the camera. The effect was artificial rather than authentic human conversations about important matters.
Combat Diary; The Marines of Lima Company (2006)
This video diary is by soldiers and about soldiers, specifically, the 184 marines of Lima Company, a reserve unit from Columbus, Ohio, that was deployed to Iraq from February 28, 2005 to September 30, 2005. The film begins with their jaunty send-off and ends with their tearful reunions amongst a flag-waving crowd waiting for them in the rain. "No one told us we couldn't," remarked one marine about filming their war experiences on home video cameras, "so we did." Many of the reservists thought they might be sidelined to some insignificant duty where they wouldn't screw up the real war. That was not to be. Lima Company saw significant battle and lost 23 comrades during their seven month tour. You see first hand how and why. The film alternates between their home videos of the war and their commentaries about their experiences once they got home. We also hear several families relive how and when they heard that they had lost a son in Lima Company. This is no Hollywood production, and that, along with learning what life is like for a soldier in battle, are the film's greatest strengths.
Control Room (2004)—Iraqi
A fascinating documentary about how US networks and especially Al Jazeera, the satellite cable channel watched by 40 million people in the Middle East (it started only in 1996), have covered the current Iraq war. In the first few moments of the film Samir Khader, a producer for Al Jazeera, observes, "there is no war without propaganda." This film gives the lie to the common idea, constantly repeated by Rumsfeld, that Al Jazeera lies and distorts the truth whereas US media are fair and objective.
The Counterfeiters (2007) — German
Before World War II broke out, the Russian-born Jew Salomon Sorowitsch earned a well-deserved reputation as "the most charming scoundrel in Berlin." The Nazis arrested him as "the world's best counterfeiter" and sent him to Sachsenhausen where they forced him to forge identification cards, passports, documents, bank notes, and money. Lots of money, as in millions of pounds that the Nazis flooded into the British economy to destabilize its currency. The film focuses on Sorowitsch's role, but includes the many other Jews in the concentration camp whose skills as engravers, printers, and graphic artists landed them in a life of relative luxury that included clean beds, food, medicine, opera music and even a ping pong table. Avoiding extermination was one thing; betraying fellow Jews and, in effect, financing the Nazi war effort was another. All sorts of moral complexities plague these inmates, none more so than when one of their own sabotages their counterfeiting work on the American dollar. This film is based upon a memoir by Adolph Burger that describes his role in the operation. The Counterfeiters won an Academy Award in 2007 for Best Foreign Language Film. In German with English subtitles.
Crash (2004)
This tense urban drama set in Los Angeles opens with a car wreck that serves as a metaphor for the collisions between ordinary people because of the racist rage that underlies their particular English vernaculars, work, dress, music, marriage and family. A Persian shop keeper ("They think we're Arabs!"), a Hispanic locksmith, two black hoodlums, a wealthy black film director, redneck white trash, a despicable suburban white couple, a naive white rookie cop, and other ethnic typecasts are all trapped in stereotypes that they project on to others, paranoia (not all of which is unjustified), bigotry, and mutual misunderstanding. In this film good people are bad and bad people are good, and most everyone is a mixture of the two. A corrupt cop who molested a woman he apprehended later rescues her from a burning vehicle with professionalism, bravery and genuine compassion: "You think you know who you are," he tells a younger cop, "but just wait a few years." He rages at a black HMO clerk but at home tenderly cares for his dying father. Accidental encounters and random events "crash" these fallible human beings into one another in a world void of all political correctness. Director Paul Haggis does an excellent job of showing the corrosive power of racism not only between people but even among people who are otherwise from the same "group."
Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)
Judah Rosenthal boasts all the accomplishments of a successful ophthalmologist, but is wracked by the guilt and angst of having entangled himself in adultery, lies and murder. He realizes, as the film says toward the very end, that we "define ourselves by our moral choices." Meanwhile, Cliff Stern (Woody Allen) loses the love of his life, Halley (Mia Farrow), who falls for his wife's boorish brother, Lester (Alan Alda). Along the way, Allen's characters discourse on nearly all the important themes of life—love and sex, God and religion, marriage and family, work and calling. Some have hailed this as Woody Allen's best film.
Dandelion (2004)
The case of this DVD boasts five festival awards and the promise of "redemption" for its characters, but I was left wondering why on both counts. There are at least nine suicide scenes in this film, mainly imagined, but one of which is very real. Teenager Mason grows up in a horribly dysfunctional family where dinners are characterized by a raging father (Luke), a people-pleasing, pill-popping, and alcoholic mother (Leila), and a crazy uncle (Bobby) who thinks that World War II is raging and who dies in an asylum. A tragic accident strikes that feeds on their dysfunction. Enter a young girl (Danny) whose mom is a passive-aggressive, drifter single parent. Danny enjoys drugs, alcohol, and admits that she has "a thing for things that aren't good for me." But put Danny and Mason in a lush meadow with a brilliant blue sky, undulating grass, and an idyllic pond, and what do you get? Redemption? No. On an improbable fishing trip with his son Mason, father Luke described every character in this film: "You wake up one day and nothin's the way it's supposed to be. So you try to keep goin', takin' down the people you love the most right with ya. And for some reason you can't admit that until you've already lost them."
Despite global hand-wringing, accords, agreements, and peace-keeping forces, the Darfur genocide that began in July 2003 continues. Directors Aisha Bain and Jen Marlowe take the viewer on-site to Darfur, and through on-camera interviews with dozens of locals they let the people describe the tragedy in their own words. Their personal anecdotes are heart-breaking and appalling. The desert landscape, wind-swept and littered with bomb fragments, is stark. Despite its denials, the Sudanese government under president Omar al-Bashir has backed the Janjaweed militias to plunder, pillage, rape women of every age, and liquidate entire villages. According to the United Nations, 400,000 people have died, and over 2 million have been displaced (many refugees pouring into Chad). This documentary is only 55 minutes long, but it's a graphic, powerful and informative reminder of how much of the world can ignore the most unimaginable horrors when countries have no self-interest at stake.
Darfur Now (2007)
The Darfur region of Sudan is an area the size of France with about six million people from a hundred tribes. The Sudanese government of president Omar al-Bashir has backed the Janjaweed militias to plunder, pillage, rape women of every age, and liquidate entire villages. According to the United Nations, 400,000 people have died, and over 2 million have been displaced (many refugees pouring into Chad). This documentary takes you to Darfur and introduces you to people who experienced these atrocities; but the film is really about six very different people and what they are doing to stop the genocide — Argentinian Luis Moreno, prosecutor for the International Criminal Court in the Hague; American Adam Sterling, co-founder of the Sudan Divestment Task Force; Chief Sheikh Ahmed Mohammed Abakar of the Hamadea Displaced Persons Camp; actor Don Cheadle; World Food Program officer Pablo Recalde; and Hejewa Adam, a woman rebel of the Sudanese Liberation Movement. "Our problems have no limits," said one Darfurian.
The Dark Knight (2008)
Gotham's Lieutenant Jim Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dent need super-hero Batman (Christian Bale), just as the mob needs the anti-hero Joker (Heath Ledger). But if the good guy wears all black, dispenses vigilante justice outside the law, refuses to reveal his true identity, causes good people to die, and is plagued by doubts, then you have a morally ambiguous plot with a genuinely "dark knight." Gothamites wonder, is he more hero or menance? Both the Gotham cops and the crime mob get more than they bargain for when they employ their moral archtypes. The Joker is crazy bad with his stringy hair, purple suit, scarred face, and smeared makeup. He cares nothing for money, and only wants to watch Gotham burn. The technical effects reminded me of a James Bond movie, as did the love triangle involving Batman and Dent. Heath Ledger won a (posthumous) Golden Globe for his role, but I found it distracting to wonder just how much his real life descent into darkness and death was life imitating art.
Das Boot (1981)—German
What war is really like from the perspective of young German soldiers on a German submarine in World War II.
Das Fraulein (2007) — Switzerland
The Swiss director Andrea Staka (b. 1973) explores the power of place through the lives of three women living in Zurich in her film that has won several awards. The three women would seem to have very little in common except their motherland. Ruza is a Serbian who left Belgrade twenty-five years ago by choice. She had it good, but wanted better. She succeeded by opening a small cafeteria in Zurich, but inwardly she is more dour than the Swiss weather. Her employee Mila is a Croatian who wants to return to the motherland when she retires, but is deeply ambivalent because her children have settled in Switzerland. Into their boring cafeteria lives enters Ana, a twenty-two year old Bosnian from war-torn Sarajevo who epitomizes joie de vivre despite her own secrets that would make you guess otherwise. How these women relate to each other, and the choices they make about what used to be Yugoslavia, drive the plot of this film. In German, Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian, with English sub-titles.
David Blaine: Fearless (2002)
Pick a card, put it back in the deck, then splatter the deck of cards against a store window. The card you chose stuck to the inside of the window and now faces out toward you. Or the same trick but the card ends up inside the firefighter's shoe, or in the kid's back pocket. David Blaine (born 1973) has taken his act to the streets, whether to the locker room of the Dallas Cowboys, ghetto kids, vacationers, or to every day people in the Mojave Desert and even Haiti. His feats of physical endurance are weird, like placing his palm on the pavement then rotating his body 225 degrees, or standing upright in a block of ice for 62 hours in Times Square. His mind-reading tricks are even weirder, like asking you to think of an important person, then having that name appear as a tattoo on his chest underneath his shirt. These tricks are amazing, but at 110 minutes the film drags. Fearless collects Blaine's three ABC television specials called "Street Magic" (1996), "Magic Man" (1998), and "Frozen in Time" (2000). Everyone knows that these tricks have an explanation, but the reward in viewing them is all in the reactions of the spectator-participants, which in Blaine's up close and personal style is off the charts.
Day Break (2006) — Iran
Mansour murdered his boss, that much is clear, and for his crime he sits on death row in Tehran's Ghasr Prison awaiting execution. What's not clear is why the family of the victim has remained absent on three execution dates. Is this mere coincidence? A form of deliberate torture? An act of forgiveness? In Islamic law the family of the victim must attend the execution of the convicted, and in their hands rests both retribution and pardon. Mansour's father begs for mercy. His pregnant wife gives birth while he's in prison. His fellow prisoners are carted to their own executions while inmates make bets on the outcome. Mansour is haunted by memory, nightmares, and, most of all, the tedium of waiting for his fourth execution date. That's forty long days, the period of mourning the victim's family must observe for a death in their own family. This film was an official selection at the Tribeca and Toronto festivals. In Farsi with English subtitles.
Days and Clouds (2007) — Italy
Most of the days in this domestic drama are cloudy indeed. Elsa has just finished her art history degree as her mid-life project. Her husband Michele threw her a party, then afterwards broke the news that, in fact, he hadn't worked in two months because he was fired. All the feathers hit the fan. They must sell their house and boat, take jobs far beneath their station in life, battle emotions of fear and (for Michele) self-hatred, negotiate issues of friends and family, and decide whether to choose fight or flight. Days and Clouds won fifteen awards in the Italian equivalent of the Oscars, but I thought it dragged along rather predictably for too long (115 minutes) and then concluded rather blandly. Still, even though the story is cliched, it's certainly not a cliche for people who experience what they do, and in this sense the film delivers deep emotions. In Italian with English sub-titles.
Deep Water (2006)
In 1968 the Sunday Times of London sponsored a race to see who could circumnavigate the globe—solo and without stopping. Prizes were offered for the one who finished first and the one who finished fastest. Nine sailors entered the race, but this documentary film focuses on three contestants in particular—Robin Knox-Johnston, who finished first by averaging 92 miles a day for 312 days (28,704 miles) and who appears in the film; the Frenchman Bernard Moitessier, who turned around just before finishing, forsaking fame and fortune for the isolation of the sea, and sailed an additional 10,000 miles to Tahiti (his book The Long Way tells his story); and then the amateur sailor and eccentric Donald Crowhurst who never should have entered the race under any circumstances. His bizarre story forms the real narrative of this film. It's difficult to say more without spoiling this film, but you can be sure that it's more of an exploration of the deep waters of the human psyche than an adventure tale. Interviews with family members and friends; archival film footage; news reels; diaries, audio tapes, 16mm film and ship logs by the sailors; and still photos lend authenticity to the pathos of this deeply human story. Two of the film's producers were John Smithson and Paul Trijbits who made Touching the Void.
The Dialogue: An Interview with Screenwriter Paul Haggis (2006)
After starting as what he calls "a complete failure" who survived only because of his supportive parents, writer, director, and now producer Paul Haggis (b. 1953) enjoyed many successful years as a television screenwriter. The Canadian then moved to the big screen with two improbable hits — Million Dollar Baby (2005) and Crash (2006), both of which won Oscars for Best Picture. Not bad for a person with no formal training in film. Haggis is the first and only writer to accomplish that back-to-back feat. More recently he wrote the screenplay for Clint Eastwood's Flags of our Fathers (2006), then wrote and directed In the Valley of Elah (2007). In this interview-dialogue format Haggis talks about the trajectory of his life and work. Writers must write for themselves, from the gut, he says, and not for what they think directors or audiences want. They ought to address questions of the human heart, as opposed to easy answers. Haggis says that when he is anxious and nervous about his characters or script, then he knows he's in the right place. One of the most pleasant aspects of this interview is Haggis's authentic and self-effacing manner.
Dig! (2004)
A friend of mine once observed, partly from personal experience, that behind every great person there often lay a trail of human wreckage. In this energetic documentary about two 1960s-revivalist rock music groups—the Brian Jonestown Massacre led by Anton Newcombe, and the Dandy Warhols led by Courtney Taylor—that dictum proves true. Taken from over 2,000 hours of original footage, the resulting 107 minutes take you on the scene and behind the scenes of the bands, record executives, fans, roadies, drug binges, police arrests, and concerts across the United States, Europe and Japan. Newcombe in particular is a tragic mix of manic energy, musical genius, and abusive dysfunction. I could hardly believe it when the end of the film indicated he was still alive and had independently produced twelve CDs (no one would work with him). "Linkouts" on the main DVD allow you to view extended deleted scenes. This is a great film to view if you feel, like I sometimes do, that you are "out of it" when it comes to the contemporary rock music scene.
Dinner with Friends (2001)
Two couples, best friends, explore the problems and possibilities of marriage and go their separate ways. Which couple chose the better path?
Dirty Pretty Things (2002)
A Nigerian doctor turned taxi driver and hotel clerk, a Turkish factory worker, a Chinese worker in a morgue, a Russian doorman, and a hooker paint a grim but all too realistic portrait of what life is like for the invisible, illegal and undocumented immigrants in modern London.
Distant (2002)—Turkish
Mahmut is a man in mid-life who has lost all joy and passion for life. He is a professional photographer who insists to his friends that "photography is dead." He watches television for endless hours in his dark apartment, frequents bars and restaurants alone, worries about his mother who is hospitalized, chain smokes, and badly misses his former wife Nazan who is emigrating to Canada with her new husband. Then his relative Yusuf shows up on his doorstep in Istanbul, unemployed and unemployable. Yusuf upsets all of Mahmut's petty habits and routines, leaving lights on, smoking in the wrong rooms, not flushing, littering beer cans, and the like. The film explores the palpable loneliness and lostness of these two men, and how they interact. Truly, they are "distant" from any meaningful friendship with each other, the world, or even their own selves. In Turkish with English subtitles.
Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood (2002)
Roger Ebert hated this movie, but I liked it as a story of the young woman Sidda (Sandra Bullock) who comes to grips with her strained relationship with her mother through the help of her mother's three lifelong friends.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) — French
Jean-Dominique Bauby had it made, or so he thought. At age 43 he was the editor of Elle magazine, cynical, and a stranger to failure. Then he had a massive stroke that left him in a coma for three weeks. When we awoke he suffered from a rare neurological disorder called "locked in syndrome." He could hear a little and his brain worked fine, but he was totally paralyzed and couldn't speak. But he could blink with his left eye. This remarkable film about his incredible story tells how Bauby eventually dictated the book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, letter by letter, to his amanuensis. A speech therapist devised a chart with the letters of the alphabet arranged by frequency of use, and as she spoke the letters Bauby would blink for the letter he wanted. Though locked in the heavy "diving bell" of his useless body, Bauby's imagination could still fly as playfully as a butterfly. For most of the film viewers have the perspective of Bauby — awkward camera angles, people only partially in his limited field of vision or too close, blurry images that fade in and out, and wanting to say what was precisely on his brain but could not utter. Only forty-five minutes into the film do we actually see Bauby himself. Family and critics have complained about inconsistencies between the film, the book, and Bauby's real life, but this is nevertheless a phenomenal film that earned four Academy Award nominations. Bauby died in 1997 just days after the publication of his book. In French with English subtitles.
Do the Right Thing (1989)
Spike Lee's study of urban racial tensions stirred controversy when it was first released. Did he intend to advocate violence or merely record it as so many have experienced it? At the end of this film powerful quotations from Martin Luther King and Malcolm X support either view. Set in the sultry summer of inner city Brooklyn, nearly every scene in this film crackles with tension. The black neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyevesant is patrolled by white cops, and commercialized by an Italian family pizzeria that has been a mainstay for twenty-five years, and an upstart Korean grocery store. The racial tensions simmer just as much within the black community; there is only derision for a plan to boycott the pizzeria, Da Mayor is part village idiot and part wise elder, and even Mookie (Spike Lee) is caught betweeen allegiance to his black community and his Italian employer. Doing the right thing is sometimes hard not only to do but even to know.
Dogville (2003)—Danish
In this much-maligned film, the Danish writer and director Lars von Trier paints a dark portrait of the human spirit in both its communal and individual dimensions. He suggests that lurking beneath our veneer of social respectability, and even our best of intentions, there is something wild and dangerous deep in the human heart. Grace (Nicole Kidman) is a fugitive on the run from gangsters who seeks refuge in Dogville, a tiny town of fifteen people set in the Colorado Rockies at the turn of the century. At first petty, suspicious, and insular, after a two-week trial the citizens loosen up and provide Grace the haven she seeks. But eventually the town turns on her, viciously, despite the many ways she has served them. Grace forgives them, the victim blaming herself, and then later undergoes her own moral transformation and exacts vicious retribution. The victim becomes the new oppressor. This film watches more like a movie of a play. The entire production takes place on one, large sound stage. The town streets, bushes, etc., are mere chalk lines. The houses are sparse frames without doors. John Hurt narrates the successive "chapters." At 177 minutes, the film is long. Critics tended either to love or hate this film, but either way, von Trier is far and away one of the most important film makers today, so it is always interesting to see his latest creation.
Dolls (2002)—Japanese
Matsumoto left his job on his wedding day to return to his true love Sawako, who in despair at his decision to marry another girl (the daughter of his boss) for parental approval tried to kill herself. She failed, and her attempt left her speechless, emotionally vacant, and prone to bizarre behavior like shoplifting. But he devotes himself fully to her, and throughout the film the two lovers reconnect not only literally but also metaphorically when, bound by a red cord around their waists, they wander together as "bound beggars" throughout the four seasons of the year. In a parallel love story, the old man Hiro reflects on how he left his girl for a job when he was as young (the opposite of Matsumoto's choice). He too reconnects since when he left decades earlier his lover promised to wait for him every Saturday with a box lunch. True to her word, Hiro finds her waiting, in the same dress and in the exact same place. In a third story, a famous pop icon Haruna is disfigured in a car accident, and agrees to meet an infatuated groupie, Nukui, who blinded himself out of devotion to her. Tragedy, tenderness, devotion, and brutal murders characterize all three stories. Dolls was an official selection at film festivals in Toronto, London, New York, and Cannes. The visuals in this film are stunning, but I am sure that the cultural subtleties and symbolism are lost on viewers like me who do not understand Japanese culture well enough. In Japanese with English subtitles.
Doubt (2008)
Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is the priest of St. Nicholas parish in the Bronx in 1964. He smokes, drinks, takes sugar with his tea, preaches relevant sermons, and even thinks that a secular song would be good for the Christmas play. "The church must change," he says. Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep), the principal of the school, is Flynn's polar opposite. She's loveless, joyless, authoritarian, and thinks the worst of everyone — especially of Father Flynn. So we're not surprised when she accuses him of an indiscretion with the school's first black student. When he strenuously objects, she responds, "I have no proof, I have my certainty." Just when you thought the film traded on clumsy stereotypes, further layers of genuine complexity, ambiguity and "doubt" emerge. We the viewers are left with genuine doubt about what to think. Except for the last thirty seconds of the film, which I thought betrayed its character, Doubt contrasts religion that reduces virtue to moralism and that prioritizes human compassion as its greatest good.
Down to the Bone (2004)
Vera Farmiga won a Sundance award for her portrayal of Irene, a blue collar checkout clerk, mom of two boys, and compulsive cokehead. Irene is a survivor of sorts who is easy to admire. She clearly loves her boys Ben and Jason, finds another job cleaning houses when the grocery store fires her ("I was fast because I was high, but when I came clean I slowed down."), and even checks herself into rehab. But she leaves rehab early, spends her kid's birthday check on crack, and leaves her dead beat husband for a recovering addict named Bob. Their emerging love devolves into relapse, co-dependence, and new spasms of self-destructive choices. Writer-director Debra Granik also won a Sundance Director's Award for this film. Befitting the despair and depth of Irene's problems, the entire film takes place in the dead of winter, and at the film's end the plot remains open and unresolved. Rated R for drug use and some nudity.
Downfall (2004)—German
Nominated for best foreign film in 2004, Downfall recreates Hitler's final days in his underground Berlin bunker. The film opens with a real life clip from Traudl Junge, age 81, whom Hitler hired as his secretary when she was only 22. Junge wrote a memoir about her experiences, and sat for a lengthy interview-turned-movie called Blindspot (2002), both of which served as material for Downfall. Struggling to forgive herself, Junge remarks, "I never thought that fate would take me somewhere I'd never really wanted to be." But contrary to Hitler's insistence that she and others flee Berlin as the Russians invaded, Junge stayed to the bitter end. Delusional, paranoid, and mercilessly disdainful of the German citizenry who suffered the carnage of his megalomania, it is chilling to watch Hitler and his volcanic rage as the end approaches. He screams about betrayal, and strategizes with battalions that no longer exist. At 155 minutes, this is a long film, but even though we know the outcome before we begin, the film maintains its dramatic tension. Strong portrayals of Eva Braun, who married Hitler in the bunker a few days before they both committed suicide, Himmler and Goebbels enrich the plot. Magda Goebbels murdered her six kids with cyanide pills rather than have them live in a world without Nazi Socialism. Downfall reminded me of the idiocy and horror of war, its catastrophic human toll, and the consequences of leaders who are blinded by ideology, surrounded by sycophants, and deaf to genuine criticism. In German with English subtitles.
The Dreams of Sparrows (2004)—Iraqi
A group of Iraqi filmmakers directed by Hayder Mousa Daffar document life in Iraq since the fall of Saddam and the entrenchment of the American occupation. I could not detect the slightest ideological slant in this film, the gist of which is captured in the words of one person who said that he had one sentence for Americans: "Baghdad is hell, really is hell." Based upon this film, you can be sure of two truths, that Iraqis hated Saddam and are glad he is gone, and that they detest the American occupation and will be glad when we are gone. After all, observes one man, "why would America be here if they did not expect to benefit?" International diplomacy is not rooted in altruism. In a tragic metaphor of the situation in Iraq now, associate producer Sa'ad Fakher was killed when he fled Iraqis who shot at his car, only to be massacred in a hail of bullets after he turned around and drove straight into an American ambush. His friends counted 122 bullet holes in his car. In Arabic with English subtitles.
Writer-director David Lynch has earned a well-deserved reputation for portraying a very dark and even surreal world with films like Blue Velvet (1986) and Mulholland Drive (2001). He moved on to television with the series Twin Peaks. His latest foray finds him experimenting with animated "film" on the internet. The first few seconds of Dumbland advises viewers that "Dumbland is a crude, stupid, violent and absurd series. If it is funny it is funny because we see the absurdity of it all. For mature audiences only." If anything, that is an understated warning about the vulgarity and violence that follows in the eight three to four minute "episodes." The darkness is not new for viewers familiar with Lynch, nor is the creativity or quality that great; a talented high-schooler could have made these shorts. Dumbland is important because it shows the experimental direction of a major film maker. Lynch sat down at his iMac by himself, and with a software program called Flash used his mouse to draw the simple black line drawings on a white background. He then added animation, voices and music. Go to www.davidlynch.com and, for a price, you can purchase his "film" made for the internet. It will be interesting to see how efforts like this will impact major film production and distribution, television, and even DVD rentals.
Emmanuel's Gift (2005)—Ghanaian
I watched this film because the DVD blurb by Oprah Winfrey (who narrates a good portion of the film) encourages "every parent to take their children to see this movie." And how many films have you watched that are set in Ghana?! Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah was born with a deformed leg and suffered all the disadvantages and humiliations you would expect in a third world country. His father deserted the family, then his mother died, but through perseverance of body, mind, and spirit, Emmanuel became a national hero as a champion of the disabled in Ghana. His initial feat was to ride a bike across Ghana on one leg to draw attention to the plight of the disabled; the rest of the documentary follows how this snowballed onto an international stage including visits with Kofi Annan (a Ghanaian), Robin Williams, and to even more remarkable athletic accomplishments. Emmanuel's "gift" involves a double entendre; he had his leg amputated and replaced by a prosthesis at Loma Linda Hospital in California, and of course his incredible story is a gift to all of us. Oprah was right; see this wonderful documentary about an incredible human being.
Encounters at the End of the World (2008)
Werner Herzog wrote, directed, and narrated this latest installment of his cinematic career that has had as its focus the exploration of extreme geographic places and the people who inhabit them. Nature is his stage, but human nature is his plot. When the National Science Foundation invited him to the South Pole, you knew he would not disappoint with another film about cute penguins. The trip begins with a 2,000-mile flight from New Zealand to McMurdo Station, where 1,000 people endure harsh weather, ice 9,000 feet thick, and five months of summer when there is no night. The scientific station looks and feels like a run down mining town. After emergency preparedness training, Herzog is off and running. We meet a banker turned bus driver, a forklift driver who was a philosopher, a glaciologist, biologists, and volcanologists atop 12,000-foot Mt. Arabis. They are all "professional dreamers" of one sort or another who live, literally and metaphorically, "off the margin of the map." As in many of his films, the collision between technological society, the natural environment, and the survivability of humanity looms large for Herzog.
The Endurance (2000)
In August 1914 Sir Ernest Shackleton and a crew of 27 men and 69 sled dogs sailed from South Georgia Island headed for the Antarctic continent; they intended to become the first to traverse its 1500 miles. They never got started. Six weeks later and only 100 miles from their starting point their ship ground to a halt in the endless pack ice. Eventually the ice crushed, splintered and sank The Endurance. Their saga over the next two years has proved to be one of the most remarkable and best documented stories of human survival, bravery, and leadership ever. After drifting clockwise for 10 months and 1300 miles on the massive, melting ice sheet towards open sea, the crew abandoned their doomed vessel, boarded their life boats, then took six months to find its way to Elephant Island. Shackleton and six of his crew then navigated a 22-foot lifeboat 800 miles in 17 days back to South Georgia Island. After several failed attempts, he finally returned to Elephant Island and rescued his stranded crew. Not one crew member was lost. Using ship logs, crew diaries, original photography (including stills and motion pictures by the ship photographer), interviews with descendants of the crew, and assorted historical archives, this film documents "the most successful failure" ever. There are many books on this drama; Alfred Lansing's The Endurance is one of our family's all-time favorite books, bar none. So is this incredible film.
Everest (1998)
At five and a half miles high (29,028 feet), mighty Mount Everest is the holy grail of climbers. Since Edmund Hillary first summited Everest in 1953, over 150 people have died trying to scale its heights (about a third of them by avalanche). This interesting if short (45 minutes) film documents a successful 1996 IMAX expedition by three climbers—Jamling Tenzin Norgay, whose father accompanied Hillary; Araceli Segarra, the first Spanish woman to ever reach the top; and Ed Viesturs, a professional climber who also happens to use this trip as his honeymoon. As fate would have it, their climb occured at the same time as the disaster documented in Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air when New Zealander Rob Hall and seven others were caught in a storm and killed. Spectacular scenery takes you to the crevasses and cols, the gale winds, snug tents, base camps, and minus-100 temperatures. But the successful climb that the film documents is overshadowed by our knowledge that the "real story" at that time was about Hall and his ill-fated companions. A powerfully emotional interview with Beck Weathers, a survivor of the Hall expedition who lost both hands and part of his face to frostbite, is a "special feature" of the DVD that makes watching this otherwise interesting film all the more worthwhile. At 35 minutes this special feature is almost as long as the film itself.
Every Little Step (2008)
About half way through this film I wondered to myself if the audience would clap when it was over. They did, and it was a spontaneous and well-deserved conclusion. I'm betting Every Little Step will earn awards for Best Documentary of the year. The film begins as a retrospective about the original Broadway musical A Chorus Line, which debuted in 1975 and after 6,137 performances became the longest-running musical ever. Archival material and interviews with members of the original production take you back thirty years to the show's simple premise, which centered on the deeply human stories of seventeen performers. The documentary then turns to the 2006 Broadway revival of the original musical, and takes you backstage to follow the stories of the dancers who auditioned for the fifteen or so spots. It begins with an open call that drew 3,000 artists, and proceeds through several call backs until the cast is finalized. Many are called but only a tiny few are chosen for the coveted opportunity.
The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2000)
Tammy Faye Bakker Messner would appear to be crazy. But millions of people love her, and you have to wonder why. Clearly, there is something deeply human and moving about this woman so many people love to trash. This documentary, directed by her openly gay friends Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey, shows why.
Fahrenheit 911
Michael Moore’s latest film won a standing ovation and top prize at the Cannes Film Festival (May 2004), then in its first week in American theaters became the highest grossing documentary of all time. It’s hard to tell who was more worried about this rabidly anti-Bush film—conservatives who fear Moore’s mudslinging will stick to the President, or liberals who fear that mainstream America will label his views as way out of bounds and associate them with Kerry. Time magazine rightly observed that Moore’s method incorporates equal parts comedy, tragedy, infiltration, confrontation, and speculation.
The Family Man (2000)
The workaholic Jack Campbell (Nicolas Cage) must decide whether his career is more important than his family. Not a serious movie, but one that reminds us of what counts in life.
Fast Food Nation (2006)
Warning: watching the last three minutes of this film can lead to vegetarianism. Based upon Eric Schlosser's devastating book about the fast food industry by the same title (2001), this fictional film never quite finds its focus. The ostensibly main character disappears half way through, never to reappear. It's not clear which of the many sub-plots is the main narrative. But I still recommend the movie. When corporate hack Don discovers that there are more than chemical additives to Mickeys "Big One" burger, namely fecal matter, he travels to the Uniglobe Meat Packing Company to find out what's wrong. Lots, it turns out. You'll find yourself back in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (1906), what with illegal immigrant labor on the cheap, animal cruelty, horrible sanitation, hazardous work conditions, employee abuse, pitiless corporate greed, and more, all to feed our fast food habits. You'll never think about a Big Mac in the same way, nor should you, thanks to this mediocre movie that nevertheless provides some serious social commentary.
Father and Son (2003)—Russian
I watched this Russian father-son film in conjunction with the dark, Russian film of a similar theme entitled The Return. Both explore the father-son relationship, the latter one through the lens of patricide, this one through the tender but painful bonds of a very deep love. The two live together in an apartment after the death of the mother, and the film tracks how they both grow into their separate identities while maintaining an intense bond. Should the father leave his son, move to another city for a job, and take a new wife? Should the son follow his father's career path in the military? Does not the son's girlfriend take him away from the father? On two separate occasions in this film we hear the ambiguous and distinctly Christian notion, “A father who loves his son crucifies him. A son who loves his father sacrifices himself for him.” This is the second film in a trilogy by director Alexander Sokurov that began with Mother and Son (1997). Sokurov attributed any homoerotic interpretations of this film to "sick European minds." In Russian with English subtitles.
The Five Obstructions (2004)—Danish
In 1967 the Danish director Jorgen Leth made a 12-minute film called The Perfect Human (be sure to get the DVD that includes this as an extra, and watch it first). In this documentary the controversial director Lars von Trier challenges his mentor to remake the film, which captivated him so much that he viewed it twenty times, but to do so following five different "obstructions" that he stipulates. First, he must film in Cuba with no set and no shot longer than 12 frames (about half a second). Next, he must go to wherever Leth feels is "the most miserable place on earth" and remake the film with himself playing the lead role, and so that it does not reveal the location. Third, Leth is given complete freedom to do as he pleases. Next, he must remake the film as an animated cartoon, since that is a medium both of them despise. Finally, in the most poignant part of the film, Leth must simply narrate a script written by von Trier, that is, the master must relinquish all control to his imperious student.
At one level this film is a fascinating look inside the aesthetic process, and how ostensible limitations can provoke rather than diminish creativity, for Leth does not, in fact, produce what von Trier predicts will be "a piece of crap" that "ruins a little gem." I was reminded, for example, of the strictures imposed by, say, eighteenth century musical style, which music is immediately recognizable because of that style, and yet on the other hand the limitless creativity that Mozart used to explore and expand the genre. At a second level, the film explores the ethics of the relationship between the subjective film maker and both his local context and the "objects" he films (often people, of course). Can Leth really make a film in the red light district of Bombay without being impacted by that context, or by ignoring it altogether? Would it be false to try such? Does he not have any personal qualms about filming a sumptuous dinner amidst starving masses? Third, we have here a contest between two different film styles, in which the iconoclastic von Trier tries to demolish the classical style of his teacher. Finally, von Trier admits that he is trying to "banalize" Leth, to force him to make a film that "marks" him or gets under his skin so that he cannot hide his true self behind the safety of the camera. He wants Leth to squirm like a turtle wriggling on its back. That is, he wants to prove that his mentor and idol is not "the perfect human." Leth intimates that von Trier fails, because he does in fact realize that he is merely an "abject, human human." Rather than reveal something about Leth, von Trier reveals that it is he who is the ultimate "obstruction" when he projects onto Leth something that is not there. In Danish with English subtitles.
Flags of Our Fathers (2006)
In this epic film about the Battle of Iwo Jima, director Clint Eastwood triangulates three different viewpoints about the war. First are the soldiers themselves, normal human beings who resist the notion of being labeled "heroes" and who, in contrast to war sloganeers, know what combat means. These men are bravery and loyalty personified. Then, there is the vantage point of real war in all its vulgarity, degradation, terror, violence, and dehumanization. 70,000 Americans stormed the island and some 6,800 died. 22,000 Japanese defended their land and 20,000 of them died. Finally, there is the government propaganda machine back home that must manipulate public opinion to send its sons into that meat grinder. Almost every American will recognize the iconic photograph of the six soldiers raising the flag on top of the tiny island of Iwo Jima (by Joe Rosenthal). But very few Americans know the reality behind the image. Eastwood shows how the government manipulated the image, distorted the historical facts, exploited the unwitting soldiers who raised the flag (forced fund raising tours back home), and turned a mundane moment of wartime into a propagandistic farce. The film is based upon the book by James Bradley and Ron Powers, which tells the real story about the flag-raising (Bradley's father was the last survivor of the six soldiers). Eastwood's sequel, Letters from Iwo Jima, tells the story of this battle from the viewpoint of the Japanese.
Flow (2008)
"Thousands have lived without love," wrote W.H. Auden, "not one without water." And so, every year about two million people (mainly children) die due to the lack of clean, reliable water, more than who die from AIDS or wars. This hard-hitting documentary looks at what might rightly be called the most basic of all human rights and the security issue of our day — water. The film starts in the United States but moves to Bolivia, South Africa, and India. By interviewing leading activists (most notably the physicist Vandana Shiva) it hammers away at the commodification and commercialization of water by the likes of the IMF, the World Bank, Coke, and Nestle. A steady flow of facts and figures accompanies the powerful images. Best of all, the film allows the poor from all over the world, people denied this basic right, to speak for themselves and to tell their own stories. The makers of the film have proposed that the UN Declaration of Human Rights ad to its charter the right to water.
The Fog of War (2003)
After Robert McNamara headed Ford Motor Company he became president of the World Bank. In between he was Secretary of Defense and the chief architect of the Vietnam war. Now in his eighties, he gave twenty hours of interviews to filmmaker Errol Morris, who condenses them into these 106 minutes.
For the Bible Tells Me So (2007)
Don't watch this documentary film if you expect anything like a balanced treatment of homosexuality and Christianity. It's aggressively polemical, it incorporates all the worst examples of Christian hate and extremism, it omits any treatment of gay extremists like you might see in San Francisco's Gay Pride Parade, and in several instances it presents "experts" without identifying them as aggressively pro-gay (eg, Peter Gomes of Harvard). But there's a good reason to watch this film, nevertheless, because it presents the personal stories of five families, without exception all of which are deeply Christian, and how they dealt with the news that their kids are gay. Two of the families are famous — Chrissy Gephardt is the daughter of two-time presidential candidate and Missouri congressman Dick Gephardt, and Gene Robinson became the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church. Jake comes from the suburbs of Minneapolis, Tonia is an African-American who grew up on a dirt road in North Carolina before going to Yale, and then Anna was from Arkansas. These families run the Christian gamut — United Church of Christ, African-American, Lutheran, Catholic, and fundamentalist, and they respond to their child's coming out in different ways. It's a shame that the film makers resorted to predictable polemic instead of trusting the power of these deeply moving stories.
For the Children (2002)—Chinese
After her husband and child died, the peasant Meili Zhang founded a school for the children in her isolated, parched village in northwest China. She was not a teacher, but she did her best and she loved her kids. She founded the school, she says, "so that the kids may have hope." Xia Yu, a gorgeous young woman from Beijing a thousand miles away, and a "real" teacher, comes to help at the school. She corrects their pronunciation, teaches them some English, and encourages Meili to obtain a computer. Of course, mutual culture shock sets in. Xia stares in disbelief as the same pail of water is used to wash clothes, rinse your face, make tea with orange rinds, and water the donkey. Meili can only respond to her guest's strange ways with "Teacher Xia, you city people are strange." What transpires is an unfolding friendship of two women from radically different socio-economic and cultural contexts. Two sub-plots revolve around the men in their lives—Meili's love for the local "film projectionist" Wang Shu, and Xia's estrangement from her husband because of her growing affection for Meili and her school. Late in the film turn about is fair play when Xia takes the entire class of peasant kids to Beijing. In Mandarin with English subtitles.
Forgiving Dr. Mengele (2007)
Could you forgive Dr. Mengele, the Nazi "angel of death?" That was not a theoretical question for Eva Kor. She and her twin sister Miriam spent 10 months in Auschwitz and, along with many other twins, were separated from their families and subjected to Mengele's horrific experiments. After liberation by the Soviets as a ten-year old, then ten years in Israel, she relocated to Terre Haute, Indiana in 1960, where she raised a family. She returned to Auschwitz for the first time in 1984, and then again for the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the camps in 1995. On that occasion she did the unthinkable: she read aloud her personal "official declaration of amnesty" to Mengele and the Nazis. To be liberated from the Nazis was not enough, she said; she needed to be released from the pain of the past. To extend forgiveness, she says, without any prerequisites required of the perpetrators, was an "act of self-healing." Others in the Jewish community were outraged that she dared to do this. Most interesting of all, Kor was clearly uncomfortable with extending forgiveness to or empathizing with the Palestinians when she traveled there. Still, this is a remarkable exploration what she calls "the feeling of complete freedom from pain" though the act of "forgiving your worst enemy."
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
In 2003 the US military budget exceeded the military spending of all other countries combined. For some this is a cause to glorify war, so a film that reminds us of the obscenity, vulgarity and human carnage of battle is a good bet. Writer and producer Stanley Kubrick follows a group of Marines from basic training on Paris Island to bombed out buildings with snipers in Vietnam (filmed on sets in England). The sadistic drill sergeant has an amazing gift for obscenity as he trains these his “ministers of death.”
Fun with Dick and Jane (2005)
If you like Jim Carrey's style of humor, then you will probably enjoy his antics with Téa Leoni (who starred as a similarly harried housewife with Nicholas Cage in Family Man). They play a suburban couple, Dick and Jane Harper, who fall from the penthouse to the outhouse. Dick is promoted to vice president for communications at Globodyne, a promotion so big that Jane quits her job. That same afternoon he realizes that he is merely a talking head for corporate sleaze bags. When Globodyne craters, they lose everything, as do all the employees. They resort to criminal capers to survive, and in the end exact recompense from the corrupt executives and restore the lost fortunes of the former Globodyne employees. In a delicious dig, when the credits roll you read a list of people honored for "Special Thanks," then realize that the names are real life corporate criminals—Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, Dennis Kozlowski, and so on. But there's the rub. It is somehow sad to see Carrey stuck in sophomoric slapstick, and real-life people who really lost their life savings at Enron or WorldComm probably won't find the movie very funny. This film got uniformly poor reviews, but it still might be worth an evening of light laughs; just don't expect too much.
Good Night, and Good Luck (2005)
George Clooney wrote, directed, and starred in this historical docudrama about the 1953 hostilities between television commentator Edward Murrow of CBS and "the junior senator from Wisconsin," Joseph McCarthy. The latter, of course, accused Murrow and many others of communism. Murrow, for his part, stood up to McCarthy's muckraking. More broadly, even at its dawn Murrow openly worried that television would become a medium that would "distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us," rather than teach, illuminate or inspire. He also decried the conflicts of interest between television's corporate advertisers, the government's efforts to spin propaganda, the military, journalistic independence, and the viewing public. We must never "confuse dissent with disloyalty," Murrow insisted. Can news ever be neutral? Should it even try to be? Does not most every perspective "censor" the news with its own commitments and predispositions? Given the radical polarizations of our contemporary political context, due in part to the role of media, this is a film that deserves viewing and discussion of the many questions it raises. At several junctures in the film Murrow insists that television viewers and the body politic get what they deserve: "our history will be what we make it." Good Night, and Good Luck was filmed in black and white, includes original footage of the McCarthy hearings, and won six Academy Award nominations.
Grizzly Man (2005)
About the nicest thing you can say about Timothy Treadwell is that he was a controversial person who along with his girl friend Amie Huguenard died a senseless, tragic death when they were mauled by grizzly bears in Alaska's Katmai National Park in October 2003. Even more gruesome, his camera recorded the audio but not the video of the mauling. You will be disappointed if you watch this documentary to learn something about grizzlies, but if you view it as a commentary about human nature, both your own and the film's subject, it's fascinating.
Timothy Dexter (he later changed his last name and cultivated an Australian accent) spoke about the "work" he did on his summer "expeditions" among grizzlies, but he was anything but a scientist, nor did he leave any papers or field diaries that advanced knowledge. He boasted about "protecting" the bears from humans, and styled himself an environmentalist or preservationist, but many argued that he harmed the grizzly population by habituating them to humans with his over familiarity with them. Treadwell spent thirteen summers from 1991–2003 with the grizzlies (nowhere do we learn what he did during the other nine months of the year), the last five of which he or Huguenard shot over 100 hours of amateur video. Some of the film's scenery, then, is spectacular. But 100 hours of video shot over roughly 500 days is not much, and at least 50% of this film comes from director Werner Herzog, not Treadwell. So Treadwell can hardly be thought of as a naturalist photographer despite his claim to that too. Still, he had his fifteen minutes of fame as an eccentric "grizzly man" on David Letterman's show.
In fact, Treadwell was a college drop out who moved from New York to California, where he failed as an actor. By his own description in the film he descended into alcohol and drugs, and then as a deeply troubled loner he found solace by living in the Alaskan wilderness all by himself, except for his beloved bears. Treadwell treated these wild animals as his best friends, and some have even speculated that he understood himself as more of a bear than a human being. He speaks tenderly to them, pets them, thanks them for being his friend, calls them each by names he gave to them, and in one scene he even lovingly fondles the fresh excrement of a bear and describes how wonderful it is that just a few minutes earlier it had been inside of "Wendy." In another scene he cries when he discovers a dead bumble bee.
To his credit Herzog does not romanticize Treadwell, and very early on we learn about his horrible death (he was decapitated, dismembered and digested by the bear, as the stomach contents that were retrieved a day later showed). Herzog interviews a number of people who knew Treadwell, including a former girl friend, park officials, and bush pilots who helped retrieve the remains. Grizzly Man evoked in me a sort of Freudian voyeurism about the worst sort of death imaginable, but in the end I was filled with sadness about a misfit who was so clearly alienated from all things human.
The Grocer's Son (2008) — France
Antoine is a 30-year-old slacker who lives in Paris and is "between jobs." He fancies that by leaving home ten years earlier he had escaped his parent's lives as country bumpkins. But when his father takes ill, and his brother is too busy with his hair salon, Antoine returns home with his friend Claire to help his mother with their tiny general store. Back in Paris, his friend Hassan had advised Antoine that he "lacked the human touch." The gist of this film is how he reconnects with his own self, with Claire, with his family, and even with the shut-ins and pensioners of the French countryside. One customer "pays" for his can of peas with eggs. Another advises him that his father was gruff but that he always took her to get her hair done. Others want to run a tab and pay when they can. Many are hard of hearing and can't do the arithmetic to pay. Eventually, Antoine comes to respect these aging customers who depend on him, and to enjoy the life of his father that he had previously spurned. In French with English subtitles.
Gunnin' for that #1 Spot (2008)
This isn't an important film by any stretch of the imagination, but sports nuts and especially basketball fans will find it a fun watch. In September 2006 the top 24 high school basketball players in the country gathered in Harlem to inaugurate the first annual "Elite 24" all-star competition. The game is held at the legendary outdoor playground court in Harlem's Holcombe Rucker Park, where for sixty years many of basketball's greats lit up the score board in front of a raucous urban crowd, hecklers, urban rap music, and trash-talking announcers. This is a venue where you would never presume to give yourself a nickname; your opponents do that after you prove your mettle. The documentary focuses on eight high schoolers in particular, interviewing their families, coaches, and scouts. An interesting sub-text is how the attendant media, shoe companies, professional rankers, recruiters, and sponsors all point toward one thing — money that results from basketball stardom. By the way, the final score was 141–139, but you'll have to watch the film to see which team won.
Hairspray (2007)
From its opening song to its closing moral, this musical period piece succeeds in every way. Set in urban Baltimore in 1962, Tracy Turnblad is an overweight but vivacious teenager who dances in front of her TV as she watches the Corny Collins Show. If only she could have such a life! When the show has an opening, she auditions, gets the part, and, to the chagrin of the cool crowd, causes the show's ratings to skyrocket. Tracy is irrepressible and impossible not to love. She also has an eye for fairness, like dumping the show's Negro Day. She ads a gentle but direct moral to the musical. Looking back to 1962, the film deconstructs any number of prejudices, including race, gender, class, media, family, friendship, and especially body image. When Tracy begs her obese Mom (played by John Travolta) to be her agent, she declines since she has hardly left the house in decades. Tracy insists: "Mom, it's changing out there, you'll like it. People who are different, their time is coming." Mom leaves the house and exclaims, "there's so much air our here!" Hairspray is fun, energetic, nostalgic, and, believe it or not, even meaningful. With a PG rating it makes for fun family viewing and good discussion.
Helvetica (2007)
American Airlines hasn't changed its corporate logo in forty years, and there's a good reason why: it's one word in a clean, simple, rational, and entirely unobjectionable font called Helvetica. Created by the Swiss in 1957, Helvetica is like the air or gravity, like painting your room white, or wearing khaki pants and a navy blazer. Helvetica does not need or want any exclamation points. For typeface designers and graphic artists Helvetica was like "a landslide waiting to happen." And it did happen, especially after Helvetica became the default font for Apple and then Microsoft Windows (Arial). Helvetica is one of the most ubiquitous cultural artifacts you could identify. Anywhere you look you will find Helvetica — a tax form, the numbers on the top of a bus, the font on the side of the Challenger space shuttle, the signs for the NYC subway, etc. In many ways it's the perfect metaphor for modernism, which is why post-modernists consider it dull, lifeless, conformist, corporate, and utterly lacking in any personality. Grunge typographers loath it still, and replace it with their contorted fonts placed every which way. Producer-director Gary Hustwit interviews over a dozen "typo-manics" of various persuasions who explain how and why Helvetica is the ultimate form and content of a globalized aesthetic. This is not only an interesting film in itself, but a fascinating piece of cultural analysis of our (post) modern visual world.
A Home at the End of the World (2004)
I was suckered into watching this horrible film because on the DVD cover Roger Ebert described it as "one of the best films of the year." I could not disagree more; after watching it I was still searching for "a plot at the end of the film." What plot there is I found entirely unbelievable. Bobby Powell grew up smoking pot, which he introduces to his high school friend Jonathan, and to Jonathan's mother Alice. He also shared sex with Jonathan and an erotic flirtation with Alice. When Jonathan and Bobby meet years later as adults, Bobby fathers a child with Clare, Jonathan's live-in friend with purple hair. Bobby claims, "I just want everyone to be happy." The "family" of four moves to Woodstock where they open a cafe. But did we not learn from that generation, if not from our HIV generation, that so-called free love, sex and drugs are very expensive? Only in a Hollywood movie could such a bizarre picture be portrayed as idyllic.
Hotel Rwanda (2004)
About half way through this film hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina (a Hutu) and his family are hiding on the roof of the hotel, and his wife Tatiana (a Tutsi) turns to him and says, "Paul, you are a good man." That, and not so much the genocide of nearly a million Rwandans, is the theme of this award-winning film—how one person's bravery, cunning, diplomacy, deceit, bribery and wits saved over a thousand people, many of them Tutsi refugees that the Hutu extremists sought to exterminate. For a longer look at the actual genocide read We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch. For provocation and inspiration based upon a true story, watch this film.
The Hours (2002)
Virginia Woolf's 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway becomes the common thread that knits together the stories of three women (Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep) from three different times and places, all of whom attempt suicide.
How to Draw a Bunny (2002)
Pop artist, prankster, and provocateur extraordinaire, Ray Johnson (1928–1995) had many acquaintances, but to a person no one claimed to know who he really was. His life, his death from suicide, and his prolific work were a single, seamless performance act. This documentary interviews curators, his agent, collectors, the police that investigated his death, his first cousin, fellow artists like Christo, and even, appropriately, his mail carrier (Johnson mailed thousands of pieces of his "mail art" to people around the world). The same semantic range of words emerges from them all — enigmatic, elusive, isolated, underground, and mysterious. In one "work" he dropped sixty foot long hot dogs from a helicopter. In another, we see him hopping around on one foot as he beats a cardboard box with a belt. "He kept so much of himself to himself," remarked one person. "No one ever seemed to know what he did, or what he thought he was doing," observed another. But upon his death a veritable treasure trove of Johnson's work surfaced—paintings, drawings and especially mixed media collages pasted on the cardboard inserts of laundried shirts (he once told a friend he did "chop art" and not "pop art"). The film, much of which is shot in black and white, begins and ends with consideration of his theatrical death on Friday, January 13th, 1995. His body was found floating under a bridge in Sag Harbor, New York, by buoy number 13. The night before Johnson had stayed in room #247 (= 13) of a motel. He was 67 (= 13). A few days later people discovered his house meticulously staged with transparent clues. Johnson was clearly an extraordinary and eccentric genius, once referred to in the The New York Times as the "most famous unknown artist." His works which spanned nearly 50 years are now exhibited in museums around the world.
Idiocracy (2006)
Fast forward to the year 2505. In this dumbed down world the president of America is a five time, trash-talking Smack Down champion who wields a massive automatic weapon. At Costco, where you can earn your law degree, an obese employee greets customers, "Welcome to Costco, I love you." Every person has a UPC bar code on their wrist. This is the world Joe Bowers woke up to after 500 years, due to a failed human hibernation project of the military. In his previous life he was a dullard, but in his new life he is genius personified. And he saves the world after several zany escapes when he advises America that their dust bowl problems would cease if they irrigated with water instead of Gatorade ("it has electrolytes!"). Some of the humor in this film is rather coarse, but for a fluff movie my wife and I had some good, light-hearted laughs. If you enjoy cultural satire you'll like Idiocracy.
I'm Not There (2007)
Just who is Robert Allen Zimmerman (b. 1941)? We know him as Bob Dylan, a name he assumed in 1962, and everyone knows his music when they hear it. But knowing the man has remained a quixotic quest. This unusual film combines clever artistic sophistication with musical nostalgia but fails badly to shed any light on the "real" Dylan. Perhaps that was not the film's purpose, or perhaps its purpose was to present Dylan's personality as badly fragmented. Six different actors play six different Dylans, including Cate Blanchett who was nominated for an Oscar for her role. But we're never told any of the characters is Bob Dylan, so if you don't know this in advance you'll be lost. The six characters have different names and different stories that aren't related but instead jump back and forth in a non-linear fashion. All six Dylans make him sound like a cult-like philosopher who only spoke in mysterious Zen-Like koans. Some of what they portray follows Dylan's real life, like his conversion to Christianity or his periods of obscurity, but other parts are entirely fictional (becoming a movie star). The tagline says that this film was "inspired by the music and many lives of Bob Dylan," but in the end I was not sure what that meant.
In America (2002)
Sarah and Johnny move with their two young girls from Ireland to tenement housing in New York City. A few floors below them Mateo of Nigeria has scrawled "Keep Away" on his door in bright orange letters, and screams in rage. Why he does so, and what happens when Johnny's family discovers why, form the crux of this film. In America is only partly a story about immigration, and more about grief, loss and friendship among these five people. This was a good but not great film, even though it earned three Academy Award nominations.
In the Bedroom (2001)
At first it seems this film is about a summer romance between Frank Fowler and an older woman Natalie, but in a plot twist we discover that the film is about the parents, Matt and Ruth Fowler, whose outer world and inner emotions are ripped apart by events beyond their control. They are stuck inside themselves, ‘in the bedroom’, and struggle to emerge.
In Bruges (2008)
Ray and Ken are two hit men from London whose boss, Harry, has ordered them to lay low in Bruges, Belgium. Bruges is the most well preserved medieval town in Belgium, and its church bells, cobblestone streets, canals, and religious art work their magic on Ken. Ken wonders about their vocation. Ray hates Bruges, but one day in a medieval church his conscience awakes and he asks Ken, "do you believe all that stuff about guilt, sin, and the last judgment?" That's a good question because the rest of this character study, full of black comedy and adsurdist-surreal elements (dwarfs, obese people, racism), has to do with both men seeking redemption. "I don't wanna be a dead man," Ray says. But there is a price to pay for deeds done, both personal and professional; untangling your conscience to make a new start is not so easy, especially when the boss Harry reappears late in the film to insist upon living "by principle" in a whole different way. Warning — this film is full of vulgar language and significant violence.
In the Shadow of the Moon (2007)
During his State of the Union address in 1961 President John F. Kennedy challenged the nation, "before this decade is out, to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to the Earth." Despite all the turbulence of the 1960s (Vietnam, three assassinations, the civil rights movement, etc.), on July 20, 1969 Neil Armstrong stepped off his lunar module ladder and onto the moon—240,000 miles away—with the unforgettable words, "that's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." This remarkable documentary covers much but not all of the Apollo program, which ran from 1961 to 1975 and in six missions landed twelve people on the moon (the last in 1972 with Apollo 17). It focuses especially on the first lunar landing with Apollo 11, and the catastrophe of Apollo 1 and near-catastrophe of Apollo 13. In addition to the sheer magnitude of the scientific and technical feat, the film captures the deeply human drama, the truly global celebration, and even the spiritual impact that the lunar landings had on the astronauts. The film draws heavily upon NASA archival film footage, much of which has never been seen before, and reflections by all of the surviving astronauts, save the reclusive Neil Armstrong. This might be the best documentary film of 2007.
In the Valley of Elah (2007)
Director Paul Haggis (Crash) starts with an interesting premise that might have moved his film beyond the many treatments of how war dehumanizes people—war considered from the vantage point of a soldier's parents. Hank Deerfield (Tommy Lee Jones) is a super-patriot and retired Vietnam veteran who learns that his son Mike has gone AWOL on his home leave from Iraq. He's already lost one son to a military accident, so he drives from his home in Tennessee to Fort Rudd in New Mexico to find Mike before it's too late. But it is too late, and when Mike's charred and dismembered body is found in a field near his military base Hank teams up with detective Emily Sanders (Charlize Theron) to solve the crime. But at this point the film reverts to a generic detective mystery and loses its way. There are jurisdictional squabbles, predictable incompetence corrected by Hank (a former military police), Army coverup, and sexist harassment against Theron. Worse, the last fifteen seconds of the film are a political cheap shot and tacked-on moral. Haggis makes excellent use of video recovered from Mike's cell phone to communicate the garbled and grotesque reality of the Iraq war which, unhappily, was also Mike's reality.
An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
First there was his book (Earth in the Balance, 1992), then his road show about the book, and now a documentary film about Al Gore's road show to push the crisis—and it is a crisis—of global warming to the forefront of American public discourse. Regardless of your opinion about Gore's political history, here he combines the consensus of mainstream science with admirable passion to explain in lay terms a crucial issue of our day. This film lacks almost any creativity in that it simply shows Gore giving his Power Point presentation to a live audience. But it is a Power Point well worth considering. Gore includes charts, graphs, statistics, personal anecdotes and before-and-after pictures of the effects of global warming. In conjunction with the film's release Gore has published a book version of An Inconvenient Truth (2006). This would be a fine film to watch with older kids.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
The formula by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg remains the same, so if you enjoyed their first three thrillers — Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Temple of Doom (1984), and The Last Crusade (1989), you'll like Crystal Skull. Otherwise, this film is lots more of the same. By day, Dr. Henry Walton "Indiana" Jones, Jr. is a bespectacled professor of archaeology who lectures about extinct languages and exotic cultures. But his real calling is as an adventure hero who dons his famous fedora and wields a wicked whip. He still hates snakes, decodes treasure maps and mystical runes, outsmarts a Soviet agent named Irina Spalko played by Cate Blanchett, survives multiple disasters, endures British betrayal, and captures the sacred skull with its mystical powers, which, of course, makes the gods very angry. He reunites with his lover Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) and takes her surprise announcement about her son Mutt Williams (played by Shia LaBeouf ) in stride. There are plenty of corny jokes for comic relief, lots of monkeys swinging from trees, and tens of thousands of vicious ants. You can only wish to look like Harrison Ford who is now sixty-five years old.
INLAND EMPIRE (2006)
Writer and director David Lynch has earned many film awards, but he asks a lot of his viewers. Five minutes into this film life-sized rabbits appear in a living room dressed in suits and ties. Prostitutes dance the 60's Locomotion. This film also lasts three hours, and has no linear plot. Time morphs back and forth between past, present and future. Place moves between Poland and Hollywood. Lynch is either coy or just brutally honest when the only description he will give of INLAND EMPIRE (he insists that the title be capitalized) is that it's about "a woman in trouble." Other than that, many viewers compare the film to human dreaming or the interior landscape of human consciousness—disjointed, disassociative, vivid, scary, and sometimes an unrelated stream of consciousness. Laura Dern's performance alone makes the film worth watching; she plays three roles. As a movie about a film and the actress who stars in it, there's the sense that reality is a social construction that depends upon the viewer, and not something objective with a fixed meaning. Lynch shot the film with an off-the-rack Sony digital camera, and as with his other films the soundtrack is alternately ominous, eery, and quirky. Lynch fans will rave at this film, while the average movie goer will just scratch her head.
Innocent Voices (2004) — El Salvador
"We here are all scared of turning twelve," explains Chava, "because that's when the army takes you. I have one year left." Innocent Voices takes place in El Salvador's civil war that raged from 1980–1992, but it could have been set in any of the dozens of countries around the world where governments and "liberation" armies recruit child soldiers. In El Salvador, the authoritarian government, with a billion dollars of aid and training from the United States ("They're training our soldiers to kill us."), forcibly conscripted young boys to fight its civil war against the FMLN. Since his father left for the US, eleven-year-old Chava is the "man of the house." The film revolves around the plight of his extended family. Chava follows his Uncle Beto and sides with the rebels, but his mother Kella observes that they, too, conscript their kids. Innocent Voices reinforces the truth that in all modern wars, the biggest losers by far are innocent civilians. Co-writer Oscar Orlando Torres based this award-winning film on his own memoirs. In Spanish, with English sub-titles.
Into Great Silence (2005)
In 1984 film-maker Philip Groning asked the remote and reclusive Monastery Grand Chartreuse if he could make a documentary of their monastic life. "It's too soon," they said, "maybe in 10 to 13 years." In 2001 they called him back and said they were ready. Groning spent six months by himself filming the everyday life of the Carthusian monks (founded in 1084) high in the French Alps. He begins in winter and ends in spring, which makes the stunning scenery reason enough to watch the film. There is no narration or any music in this film, and for the most part no sounds at all except for the echos of daily tasks like pouring a pitcher of water, birds outside the window, bells, cutting a piece of cloth with shears, etc. Even the short snippets of the monks chanting the liturgy are exceptions to the silence. This is a life full of paradox—austere yet rich, silent but resonate, simple in the extreme and yet complex, alone in a cell but together in community, useless by the world's standard but meaningful if ever there was meaning. The film is long at 162 minutes, and more of a meditation than a documentary on what monastic life was likely like 900 years ago.
Into the Wild (2007)
Writer and director Sean Penn recreates the story of Chris McCandless, a disaffected young man whose story was made famous in Jon Krakauer's book of the same title. After graduating from Emory University in Atlanta, McCandless gave away his savings of $24,000 to OXFAM, burned the last few bills in his wallet, left his wealthy family without a word, and then found his way to the Alaskan wilderness after bumming his way across the country and giving himself a new name, "Alexander Supertramp." His body was eventually found by some moose hunters in an abandoned bus in remote Alaska, along with some books and notes, where he either starved to death or poisoned himself by accidentally eating toxic plants. This film is long at 145 minutes, and at times Penn romanticizes McCandless as the hero who rejects the evils of society. He was also a confused young man acting out his anger against his dysfunctional parents. This is a good film about a fascinating story that has continued to garner controversy and attention since Krakauer made it famous. A single note that was found with McCandless's body provides a very fitting moral to his tragic end.
The Jane Austen Book Club (2007)
Jesus Camp (2006)
I was so disheartened at the end of this film that I just sat in my seat. A woman exiting down the aisle stopped at my chair and asked, "Was that a true story?" When I told her that it was a documentary she exclaimed, "that's unbelievable!" Jesus Camp features the Pentecostal children's minister Becky Fischer of Missouri, and the summer camp that she runs in North Dakota. But by including footage of Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, the film directors clearly intend to include the 30 million believers of the Christian right. I physically squirmed in my seat watching these anti-intellectual, self-righteous, judgmental, and bigoted people (re)define the Gospel in endless ways—young earth, intelligent design, abortion, global warming, Harry Potter, home schooling, and fidelity to George Bush. You might say that it's a cheap shot for the film makers to exploit such an easy target as Fischer; she is obese, emotional, and authoritarian. But at a minimum the film reminds us of how prevalent and extremist the Christian right is, and how, understandably, many unchurched people view Christianity because of them.
Journey from the Fall (Vuot Song) (2007)—Vietnam
When the credits run at the end of this film, director and writer Ham Tran (a graduate of UCLA 's film school) dedicates his wrenching drama to the millions of ordinary citizens who fled Vietnam on boats (the "boat people") or who, having stayed behind out of loyalty to their country, were subjected to horrific "re-education" camps because they dared to oppose the "revolution." The story begins with the fall of Vietnam to the communists on April 30, 1975, and ends in Orange County, California in 1981. Tran follows the harrowing fate and fortunes of one family (and in various sub-plots their friends). The father, Long, is imprisoned in successive re-education camps. He insists that his wife, mother, and son flee on the overcrowded, rickety boats. And so a deeply loving family is rent asunder. The communists in their brutality, observes the grandmother, "have lost their humanity." I won't spoil the film by revealing what happens to the family, only to say that the challenge of immigrating to the US is as arduous as surviving as a refugee. The film has won awards at sixteen film festivals. In Vietnamese with English subtitles.
Junebug (2005)
Almost every turn that this film takes deepens its plot and develops its characters, right up to the very enigmatic last sentence. The cosmopolitan Madeleine, who grew up in a diplomatic family traveling the world, travels to rural North Carolina in an attempt to sign an eccentric artist to her Chicago gallery. North Carolina is also the family home of her husband George. There are plenty of laughs as Madeleine meets George's family, but also plenty of poignancy as family dynamics, roles, eccentricities, and cultures clash. The film and its characters walk a thin line between suspicion of the outsider, elitist condescension at the local yokels, and a mutual, growing, and genuine admiration for each other. It is very easy to love every character in this film despite their many "issues." I grew up in North Carolina, have traveled in forty countries, and I will say this: this film is spot on.
Khadak (2006)
Producers and writers Peter Brosens and Jessica Hope Woodworth combine bleak realism and artistic surrealism in this film set on the frigid Mongolian steppe. The teenager Bagi and his family are nomadic herders who are forcibly relocated by the government under the ruse of a plague. They are resettled in a grimy mining town where monster machines gash coal from the earth, dilapidated high rises loom out of the barren landscape, and steamy smoke belches from every chimney. As a youngster on the Mongolian steppe, Bagi had seizures. A shamaness in the desert interpreted this as a spiritual gift; in the government hospital, doctors in white coats called it epilepsy. In Bagi's clairvoyance and premonitions, time, space and relations get rearranged in a collision of worldviews that is both literal and deeply figurative. Khadak has earned awards from Sundance, Venice, and Toronto film festivals. In Mongolian with English subtitles.
Khandahar (2001)—Iranian-Afghani
Gorgeous scenery in Afghanistan is the backdrop about the ugly plight of women in the grip of the misogynist Taliban rule. See this film in conjunction with Osama.
The Killing Fields (1984)—British
Sydney Schanberg received the Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his reporting as the NY Times correspondent in Cambodia (1972-1975). This story dramatizes his relationship with his Cambodian guide and interpreter Dith Pran. Schanberg left Pran when journalists fled the country during that genocide that killed about 1.7 million people when the Communist Khmer Rouge overtook the country after American forces left neighboring Vietnam.
King Corn (2007)
This documentary film is a sort of prequel to Fast Food Nation, and does for film what Michael Pollan has done in his two books, The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food. Best friends Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis relocate from the east coast to Greene, Iowa (population 1,015) to grow an acre of corn and then follow its fortunes after harvest. Planting an acre of 31,000 genetically modified kernels takes eighteen minutes. Fertilizers, sprays, water and time will yield about 200 bushels or 10,000 pounds of corn. That's why there are literal mountains of corn in Iowa. But none of it is edible, and was ever intended to be, until it is artificially processed. Over half of the crop goes to feed cattle, another third goes for ethanol and exports, and then a significant minority of it goes to make high fructose corn syrup and similar sweeteners that you'll find on virtually every label of processed food. In short, this is corn that is not really food. Cheney and Ellis netted a loss of $19.92 on their acre of corn, but that's before massive government subsidies put them in the black. Not even the farmers in this film were happy about agribusiness as usual, but that's the story of corn to date.
Kinky Boots (2005)—British
Like its off-beat predecessor Calendar Girls, this comedy will not appeal to everyone, but I thought it was one of those rare films that was both hilarious and poignant. When his father dies, much to his chagrin Charlie Price inherits the family's 100-year old shoe factory. Foreign imports and changing styles have pushed the Price factory to the brink of insolvency, until Charlie's chance encounter with the drag queen "Lola." Whereas over the previous hundred years they had made "a range of shoes for men," they switch to making "shoes for a range of men," more specifically, shoes "for women that are men." An unlikely friendship develops between Charlie and Lola, each of whom struggles with their own unique loneliness. With Lola consulting, the blue collar factory workers of Northampton learn about London fashion, and to their credit retool their factory with gusto to storm the Milan shoe show with their sturdy stilettos. The DVD blurb advises that the film is "inspired by a true story." Rated PG-13.
Kinsey (2004)
In 1938 Alfred Kinsey, a young Harvard-trained zoologist whose speciality was the gall wasp, took over a course on "marriage" at Indiana University and, based upon his relentless curiosity and unapologetically scientific treatment of the subject, turned the class into something akin to sexology. He subsequently published Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), based upon 18,000 sexual histories he and his staff collected. For the first time ever, sex was scientifically-situated. This biographical dramatization reminded me of Ray, in the sense of an overwhelming human force who grappled with a perennial subject and in the process shaped American culture. The main message of the film, if it has one, seems to be that repression and taboo melt in the light of frankness and tolerance of difference, no matter how quirky: "We are the recorders and reporters of facts—not the judges of the behaviors we describe," insisted Kinsey. But the film is careful to show in some deeply painful moments like pedophilia, sex encouraged among staff members, Kinsey's bi-sexual experimentation, and broken marriages that human sexuality is far more, and more complex, than the mere scientific documentation of its parts. Fidelity, intimacy, integrity and love define sexuality as much as our habits. Kinsey died in 1956 at the age of 62, although the Kinsey Institute continues today.
Kurosawa (2001)
Last Life in the Universe (2003)—Thai
Kenji is a quiet, reclusive librarian working in Bangkok who is an obsessive-compulsive, fastidious neat-freak. He is also suicidal. By my count he tries to commit suicide at least eight times in this film, although he is never successful because fate intervenes—the door bell rings, his alarm clock goes off, a coconut falls from a tree, and, most importantly and improbably, he meets the sister of a girl he fancies. Fate is a key theme in this film, as we learn from several intersecting subplots. Kenji is also unsuccessful in his suicide attempts because of friendship with the Thai extrovert call-girl Noi, who is in every sense his opposite. She lives in a rural Thai village in a house that is a pig sty of dirty dishes, trash, and stray dogs. Director Pen-ek Ratanaruang thus fashions their akward, endearing love into a study of the powerful influences of friendship and fortune. This film won awards at festivals in Sundance, Toronto, and Venice, although reviewers have been sharply divided. I liked it and recommend it. In Thai and Japanese, with English subtitles.
The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
Most Christians dismissed this film as heresy (which it was), but I liked it because it made Jesus very human to me and reminded me that “we do not have a high priest who cannot empathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).
Let the Church Say Amen (2004)
In this documentary director David Peterson takes us to World Mission for Christ International, a tiny black Pentecostal storefront church a few blocks from the nation's capitol. I think I counted four pews in the sanctuary. But the thirty or so parishioners have followed the advice of a sign on the wall: "keep the fire burning." They take up offerings for each other to fix a car, and pass out free food and clothing to the neighborhood. The film follows the stories of three people in particular. Darlene is a single mother raising eight kids and studying at night to become a nursing assistant. David works in the church's homeless shelter and wants to buy a house. Ceodtis, "Big C," is a street singer who wants to cut his first gospel CD with his ten-year old son, and who wants to find out who murdered his son. You'll have to watch the film to learn their fates. The dignity, resilience and joy of these urban saints reminded me of Hebrews 11:38, "people of whom the world is not worthy." Director Peterson never prompts his subjects, and there is no narrative voice over; he simply lets these people tell their own stories in their own words. It is a story worth seeing.
Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)
Life is Beautiful (1997)—Italian
The Italian director Roberto Benigni stars in his own film as Guido, a Jewish hotel waiter who with his son Joshua are loaded on to trains and taken to the death camps. It is all a humorous game, he insists to Joshua. Controversy swirled around this film with its use of humor to survive the Holocaust. Life is beautiful because the worse human evil cannot crush the human spirit.
Lightning in a Bottle (2004)
On February 7, 2003 about fifty famous blues musicians gave a benefit concert at Radio City Music Hall to celebrate 100 years of the blues. Starting with an African piece from Togo, and moving through slave and turn of the century black music, the concert functions as a sort of history of the movement. Except for a few back stage interviews, marvelous black and white archival material, and short interviews, this unadorned documentary lets the concert speak for itself. Listening to ninety minutes of the blues, I was struck by the powerful simplicity of the words, and how merely knowing the words and the music by no means adds up to the blues. Except for John Fogerty, Bonnie Raitt, Aerosmith and a couple others, all the musicians are black, which makes for a strange setting when you realize that most all the people in the audience are wealthy whites (similar to an NBA basketball game in this regard). Yes, BB King gave the final two songs. This film is a music lover's delight.
Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
"Life is nothing but a beauty pageant with everyone judging you all the time." So complains Dwayne, a sullen teenager who reads Nietzsche and scribbles notes to his dysfunctional family because he's taken a vow of silence. Not a bad move, either. His father Richard spouts cliches about his motivational series called "Refuse to Lose" that is an abysmal failure. Wife and mom Shery is the peace-maker-enabler. Her brother Frank is a Proust scholar who tried to commit suicide, and her foul-mouthed father who lives with the family kills himself snorting heroin. "Welcome to hell," Dwayne scribbles to Frank. Little Olive, the darling of the family, won a trip to the "Little Miss Sunshine" beauty pageant, so the entire family piles into their dilapidated VW van for the 800-mile trip from Albuquerque to Redondo Beach. They endure the calamities and indignities you would expect, then find redemption of sorts that bespeaks a larger and more serious lesson to us all when they deconstruct the pageant in unlikely ways. Thank God for the Harris family!
The Lives of Others (2006)—Germany
This debut film from the thirty-three year old German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarckf won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film for its portrayal of life under East Germany's stasi or secret police. At the beginning of the film you are convinced that Captain Gerd Wiesler has to be the most merciless and manipulative interrogator possible. You would not want to be alone in a room with this man. He even teaches classes of young recruits about his craft. By the end of the film, the lives of others have impacted his own lonely life, and Wiesler has become a compassionate human being who bucked the system. How his surveillance activities triggered this radical transformation is the subject of the film. All the supporting characters and plots are essential to the film's success and not just add-ons: the writer Georg Dreyman and his actress-girlfriend, Crista Maria Sieland, upon whom Wiesler spies; Wiesler's boss Grubitz, who embodies the socialist bureaucracy without equivocation; and an even higher up Minister of Culture, who wants Crista for himself. The paranoia, the careerism, the sense of hopelessness, and civic fear are all palpable in 1984 East Germany. In German with English subtitles.
Look Both Ways (2005)—Australian
"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player/ That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/ And then is heard no more: it is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/ Signifying nothing." So wrote Shakespeare in Macbeth. Whether he was right is the question that every character in this film struggles to answer. The plot revolves around a train wreck, and how the various people related to that wreck and to the newspaper that reported the story (the editor, a reporter, the wife, the train worker), interpret the event. Was it suicide? Negligence? Fate? Murder? The artist Meryl hallucinates about this and many other Freudian fears (cleverly represented by animation). She meets the photo-journalist Nick who has his own existential fears, not the least of which is his cancer diagnosis. In the end their love moves beyond the many limits that life and death impose upon our fragile existence.
Lords of Dogtown (2005)
This retrospective docu-drama ("inspired by a true story") was written by Stacy Peralta, one of the central characters in the film who also wrote the earlier genuine documentary called Dogtown and Z-Boys (2001). Set in Venice Beach in 1975, it follows the fortunes of three teenage surfers-turned-skateboarders who discovered the magic of attaching polyurethane wheels to the bottom of mini-surfboards: "They come from oil, and they grip. You can ride on walls." The film has very little plot or character development, a lot of drugs and alcohol, and the dialogue seldom moves beyond verbal towel-snapping, but there is enjoyable footage of these "wood-pushers" careening on car tops, weaving between traffic, carving empty swimming pools, hitching on the rear bumpers of buses, and competing in the first national skateboard competitions. This film hardly rises to the quality of what Riding Giants did for surfing, but it still provokes some interesting questions about how a small group of stoned beach bums who were greatly disenfranchised from mainstream society jump-started what is now a billion dollar industry complete with X-Games on ESPN.
Lost in Translation (2003)
Bob Harris (Bill Murray) is lost in Tokyo, lonely, and more emotionally distant than geographically distant from his wife back home. He meets Charlotte in the hotel where they both live, but it is a romance that can never work. Somehow we wish it would.
Luther (2003)
This film, directed by Eric Till, should not be confused with the 1973 film of the same title and starring Stacy Keach as Luther. Both are based upon the play by John Osborne. Like its predecessor, the 2003 film received modest reviews, but given Martin Luther’s (1483–1546) importance as the father of the Protestant Reformation, perhaps historical importance rather than cinematic success will earn this film some kudos at least among believers.
Mad Hot Ballroom (2005)
In 1994 ball room dance classes were introduced for fifth graders at two New York City schools. The pilot program was so successful that today 6,000 children in 60 NYC schools are required to take a ten-week class in ball room dancing, with teachers provided by the American Ballroom Theater. The documentary Mad Hot Ballroom gives you a front row seat and behind the scenes preview of what has now become an annual citywide competition. This is a wonderful film that would make for great family viewing and later discussion.
The film follows Public Schools 112 (Bensonhurst, an Italian neighborhood turned heavily Asian), 115 (a Dominican Republic neighborhood with a poverty rate of 97%), and 150 (Tribeca) as they practice for the competition. The kids learn merengue, foxtrot, swing, tango, and rumba with the dedicated instruction of their teachers who are likely some of the few positive adults in their lives. One teacher interviewed even bursts into tears thinking of her kids: "I see them turning into little ladies and gentlemen." Of course, many of these kids have so much going against them, and it is painful to listen to them talk so nonchalantly about poverty, domestic violence, absentee fathers, gangs, and drugs. In this respect the film reminded me of Born Into Brothels and how the art of photography captured the imaginations of small children and even transformed their lives. Others compare the film to Spellbound. The real success of this film is apparent when you consider that there is no narrator; the children speak for themselves, as only awkward fifth graders can, and they have a deeply human story to tell about growing up.
The Magdalene Sisters (2003)—Irish
Margaret was raped by her cousin, Bernadette flirted with boys during recess at her orphanage, while Rose had a baby out of wedlock. All three girls were forcibly removed to the Magdalene Laundry as "penitents" to save their souls. But this Irish convent is really a slave labor camp run by a sadomasochistic nun named Bridget. The film, set in the late 1960s, follows the stories of these three girls, and the institutionalized brutality they experienced. Physical torture, sexual exploitation, and psychological humiliation were their lot, and the lot, we learn from a film trailer, of some 30,000 women detained at similar laundries throughout Ireland from the 1880s until the closure of the last one in 1996. Some of these women spent a lifetime in these prisons. It goes without saying that this film is not representative of the church or its clergy; many people had wonderfully loving experiences growing up Catholic (or Protestant). Others have objected that the film trades in shallow stereotypes. But this is part of our Christian history; the film is based on survivor accounts, and some of the survivors have said reality was worse than the film's version. No amount of pious platitudes can cover it up. This is a powerful and deeply disturbing film about how some Christians have committed and then justified horrendous evil, all in the name of God.
Man of the Year (2003)—Brazil
At the beginning of this film Maiquel could never imagine killing a person; by the end of the film he could not not kill. The film consists largely of Maiquel's grotesque transformation. He first killed an acquaintance in a fit of rage after being taunted for dying his hair blond. Wracked with guilt and fear, he was shocked to find that the Rio locals thanked him for his vigilante justice and for "keeping trash off the street." A dentist then employs him to take revenge for raping his daughter. Before it's over Maiquel murders his own girl friend, has an album full of newspaper clippings about the people he killed, a thriving "protection" agency, a massive mansion, and more money than he could spend. Along the way he refuses every exit ramp that might have led him down a better path: marriage, the birth of his daughter, the prick of conscience, the Christian conversion of his second girl friend, and a close brush with the otherwise corrupt police. At one point he even vowed, "I want to change and become a normal person." But it was not to be. Clearly, violence begat more violence.
Man on Wire (2008)
This BBC documentary tells the story of how on August 4, 1974 Philippe Petit (b. 1949) danced, sat, knelt and lay down on a tight rope that was strung between the two towers of the World Trade Center. The stunt lasted 45 minutes, during which time he traversed the cable eight times. Since we know when the film begins where it will end and what it's about, the plot consists of retelling the secret logistics, dumb luck, and extraordinary skill of the team that Petit assembled. The directors incorporate archival footage, still photos, re-enactments, and lengthy interviews with the team members. As is fitting, Petit himself narrates most of his own story. Why did he do it? That, he says, is a quintessentially American question. Bravery and skill, yes, but also joy and beauty. And how did they secure the 450-pound cable 200 feet between the two towers? Watch this fascinating film, which is based on Petit's book To Reach the Clouds (2002).
The Man Who Knew Too Little (1997)
Wallace Richie (Bill Murray) works at Blockbuster in Des Moines, and to celebrate his birthday he visits his bigshot brother and banker in London. But brother James must host important German clients to seal a deal, so he enrolls Wallace in a reality television show called "The Theater of Life" where contestants play scripted roles. Wallace mistakenly answers a phone call from a real hit man, remains oblivious throughout the film of the mistaken identity, and the rest of the film is about reality mistaken as fiction and vice versa. This film got horrible reviews, but I thought it was hilarious.
March of the Penguins (2005)
In this National Geographic documentary the filmmakers take your through a year in the life of Antarctica's Emperor Penguins. The director Luc Jacquet pitches this as a romantic story of migration and mating in which thousands of penguins waddle and glide 70 miles across an icy wasteland to the same place year after year, often in single file, to bear their young. The foreboding geography is fascinating and the cinematography remarkable, as they only could be. The technical challenges of making a movie like this where temperatures plunge to -70 degrees boggles the imagination. But I thought the film had trouble finding its exact voice. The music track suggests certain viewpoints, and the narrator's script equivocated between the purely scientific and the crassly cute ("This is a love story."). We can easily imagine learning much more about these fascinating creatures who thrive in such a harsh environment. March of the Penguins will take its rightful place alongside other family-friendly animal-lover films like Winged Migration, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, and The Story of the Weeping Camel.
Maria Full of Grace (2004)
Maria Alvarez is a spunky seventeen-year-old trapped in a small village in Colombia. When her boss threatens her she quits her job de-thorning roses at a plantation (for shipment to Costco?!), even though this spells economic disaster for her family. She bags her boyfriend Juan who's a loser, even though he got her pregnant and wants to marry. Then a "friend" advises her that she can make unheard of money as a "mule" who swallows packets of heroin and delivers them by stomach to New York City. The allure of money and adventure is too much, so Maria, her best friend Blanca, and a seasoned mule named Lucy, learn how to swallow 50–60 packets without gagging and find themselves on the next flight to the Big Apple. We're not surprised when custom agents grill Maria upon landing, or that a packet bursts in Lucy's stomach, but these are only the beginnings of bad outcomes for all. The power of this film includes its understated tone and the realization that it's based upon way too many true stories. In Spanish with English subtitles.
Maxed Out (2006)
Here is a good film about a bad problem. It ought to be compulsory viewing before your kid leaves for college and signs a few credit card applications in the quad in exchange for a frisbee—and a future of credit card hell. One mother explained in tears that her kid had no job and 12 cards, each one maxed out with $1,000 of debt. Her friend recalls how she and her husband both worked thirty years ago but were denied cards. Adjustable rate mortgages, minimum monthly payments, zero down loans, no payments for a year, and interest free transfers help explain why the average American has $9,205 of credit card debt and will fork over $1300 a year on interest alone. The national debt is about $9 trillion and increasing by more than a billion dollars per day. Your family's share is about $100,000. To make its own minimum monthly payments the government has raided Social Security reserves, until those too vanished in 2005. Maxed Out interviews all the actors in this fiscal nightmare: Congressional inquiries, gurus like Suze Orman and Dave Ramsey, common debtors, ruthless collectors, pawn shop brokers, and corporate executives who keep a straight face when they explain why the incredibly profitable and easy money they offer us is such a good thing.
Maya Lin; A Strong Clear Vision (1994)
When Maya Lin was just a twenty-one year old architecture student at Yale, the committee for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial chose her proposal (a class assignment, it turns out) from a national competition of 1,441 submissions as the winning design. Then the battle began. Congress people and even Vietnam veterans opposed it, the latter caricaturing it as a "big, black scar in the earth." Others compared it to a boomerang. Lin was vilified as a communist. And a memorial designed by an Asian, woman, college student? In the end, after congressional hearings at which the young Lin testified, her design was built and then dedicated in 1982. I have taken my family to the memorial when we visited Washington and, along with virtually everyone who has visited, can attest to the incredibly evocative power of this public monument. The first half of this documentary covers the VVM; the last half reviews her other prominent works, namely, the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, the Museum of African Art, the Wexner Center at Ohio State University, a fountain commemorating the contributions of women at Yale, an open air Peace Chapel, and her work with the Presidio project in San Francisco. I am always inspired and encouraged to follow the story of a person whose sense of vocation is so strong and crystal clear. This film won an Academy Award as Best Documentary in 1994.
Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005)
I watched this film because it earned awards at five film festivals, including Cannes and Sundance, but save your time and money—it's horrible. The dialogue is dreadful, the plot unbelievable, the multiple sub-plots distracting, and the teenage sex ridiculous if not perverse. So, the experts are wrong, including Roger Ebert who gave this film 4 of 4 stars. Richard is separating from his wife Pam and works at a shoe store. He meets Christine, a starving artist who drives a taxi for the elderly, as if we should care. I guess the film revolves around the single line of a senior citizen to the effect, "Your whole life could be better, starting right now." Yes, especially if you avoid this film.
Middle of the World (2003)—Brazil
Which is more important, the journey or the destination? Romao is an illiterate and unemployed man with a wife and five kids, but he believes in destiny. "My true destiny is on the road," he tells anyone who would stop him from taking his family of seven on a six-month, two thousand mile bicycle journey across the heart of Brazil to Rio de Janeiro. There, he believes, he will find work so that he can feed his family. People think he's crazy, of course, including his family. They panhandle, do odd jobs, sing songs at restaurants, meet people both evil and good, and sleep in abandoned buildings and rusted out buses. But they love each other deeply and experience many life lessons, especially the adolescent Antonio who is turning into a young man. This film, "based upon a true story," won at least five festival awards, all of them deserved in my opinion. In Portuguese with English subtitles.
Millions (2004)—British
In this British Christmas family film two brothers face an ethical dilemma when a sack containing 229,000 British pounds falls off a train and into their lives. Their problem is urgent, too, because within a week the British pound will convert to Euros and their windfall will turn worthless. Of course, there are also dark characters with designs on the money. The older Anthony (age 9) prefers investing, or maybe currency speculation, while his younger brother Damian (age 7) believes that the money is a gift from God and so he wants to help the poor. Damian has memorized the dates and lives of many Christian saints, and even speaks with them, and as the film unfolds we begin to realize that he is a saint himself. But money is only one of their problems. Their lonely, widower father has moved the family to a sterile suburb and a new school, and Damian especially misses his deceased mother. Perhaps she too is a saint he can contact? Is she OK beyond the grave? Don't be fooled; this is a sophisticated film with special effects that you could view several times to understand and contemplate.
Milwaukee, Minnesota (2004)
Jane Fonda's son Troy Garity stars as Albert Burroughs, a poor imitation of Forrest Gump. He is developmentally disabled, and all the more so because of his overbearing mother who goes to excessive lengths to protect him from the real world. When she is killed in a suspicious hit-n-run accident, Albert is easy prey for two characters who try to con his considerable money which he won as an expert ice fisherman. His employer rounds out the cast as a good guy who has Albert's best interests in mind and tries to shield him from the con artists. This film was an "official selection" at festivals in Palm Springs, Slamdance, and Seattle, but you should skip it.
Mongolian Ping Pong (2004)—Mongolian
This film about three boys—Bilike, Dawa, and Erguotou—and family life on the endless, windswept Mongolian steppe might be the most feel-good, family-friendly, and culturally exotic movie you could watch this year. The stunning scenery alone makes the film worth watching, as does the window onto their fascinating family life. When Bilike finds a ping pong ball floating in a stream near his tent-home, it becomes both a mysterious talisman to protect and an exotic treasure to envy. No one can tell him what it is. His parents have no idea, nor do the Buddhist monks, while his grandmother says it's a "glowing pearl" from the river spirits. When their father finally gets a TV signal with his antenna of beer cans and metal saucers, they learn from watching ping pong on TV that the artifact is "the ball of our nation." What to do? The fate of the ping pong ball and the disruption it causes among the boys, their friends, and family, form the plot of this movie. It will remind some viewers of The Gods Must Be Crazy about a coke bottle thrown from a plane that is discovered by a bushman in the Kalahari desert, and The Story of the Weeping Camel which also takes place in the Gobi desert. In Mongolian with English subtitles.
Monsieur Ibrahim (2003)—French
Shot in 1960s Paris, Omar Sharif, now in his seventies, plays an elderly Muslim shopkeeper who befriends the teenage Jewish boy Momo who has been bereft of any meaningful relationship with his father.
Monsoon Wedding (2001)—Indian
An arranged wedding is the occasion for exploring the clash of generations and cultures. The bride and groom are both Indian, sure enough, but Hemant is a computer programmer from Houston and Aditi is from Delhi.
Monster (2003)
The dramatized version of the real life story of serial killer Aileen Wuornos, who was executed after about ten years on death row. Roger Ebert hailed Charlize Theron's performance as one of the best ever in the history of cinema.
Mother of Mine (2005) — Finland
When Russia bombed Finland in World War II, more than 70,000 Finnish children were sent to neutral Sweden by their parents to escape the horrors of war. This film personalizes that history by focusing on one family's story. The film begins when Eero Lahti makes an emotional return to Sweden as an adult for the funeral of the mother who welcomed him into their home, and with him confessing to his aged mother about his lifelong feelings of abandonment by her. The movie then reverts to 1943 when Eero was only nine years old. The Swedish host family, Hjalmar and Signe, had its own motives, both good and bad, for hosting a "war child" from Finland, and then its own ways of dealing with Eero once he was with them. Eero's biological mother, Kirsti, had her own deeply mixed emotions of guilt, regret, and love, along with horrible choices to make during the war. In between these two mothers is little Eero who as an adult still deals with the psychological complexities of two mothers who loved him in their deeply human but broken ways. In Finnish and Swedish with English sub-titles.
The Motorcycle Diaries (2004)—Argentinian-German
In 1952, twenty-three year old Ernesto Guevara de la Serna and his best friend Alberto Granado left school and their wealthy families on an 8,000 mile trek from Argentina to the northern tip of Peru. Their initial purpose was nothing more than fun and games, and to celebrate Alberto's thirtieth birthday. Along the way they encounter exploited miners, indigenous Indians, and disenfranchised lepers, and the geographical pilgrimmage turns into a political awakening. As Ernesto remarks at the end of the film, "I'm no longer me, at least the me I used to be." You can enjoy this film as a coming-of-age travel narrative with spectacular scenery of Incan ruins and the Andes mountains. As a political documentary of its main subject, the revolutionary Che Guevara, it is at best romantic and incomplete. The founder with Fidel Castro of the 1956 Cuban Revolution, with later exploits in Congo and Bolivia, Guevara was murdered in Bolivia in 1967 at the age of 39. Still, there is something deeply powerful about the "pedagogy of the poor" learned from real life experiences of injustice and oppression such as are recounted here, and which are the lot of a disproportionate number of people in our world. The film, in Spanish with English subtitles, is based upon Guevara's diaries of the trip. Granado, now in his eighties, still lives in Havana.
Mulholland Drive (2001)
Viewers have had strong opinions pro and con about writer-director David Lynch's film, but everyone agrees that it is futile to search for a linear, comprehensible narrative. To say that the perky Betty helps the amnesiac Rita find her true identity does not begin to communicate the complexity, or absurdity, of this film. Admirers argue that Lynch has given us a brilliant study in the surreal; detractors claim it is all incomprehensible style over meaningful substance and that he is only messing with our minds. Like a dream, this film is at once unreal and incoherent, but nevertheless very powerful. In what sense are your own, human dreams "real?" If you appreciate thinking about the complexity of that question you will like Mulholland Drive; if not, skip this movie.
My Architect: A Son's Journey (2003)
Talk about parallel universes. When Louis Kahn dropped dead of a heart attack in the men's room of New York City's Penn Station, he was one of the world's foremost and most famous architects. He was also one of the most secretive. His body lay in the city morgue for three days because he had scratched out his name on his passport, he was bankrupt, and he left behind not one but three families. The front-page obituary in the New York Times read that Kahn had one daughter, Sue Ann, by his legal wife Ester. Left unmentioned were a daughter Alexandra by Anne Tyng, and a son Nathaniel by Harriet Pattison. Nathaniel was only eleven years old when his father died, and twenty-five years later he sets out to try to find out just who his father was. This documentary follows him as he interviews architects, professors, taxi drivers, his two half-sisters, a rabbi, and even his own mother. The film is too long, and wavers between a consideration of Kahn himself, both his mysterious life and his architectural legacy, and also the emotional confusion and pain that Nathaniel tries to address. A genuine sadness hangs over this film that reminded me of something a Stanford professor and friend once said: behind every great man there is often a trail of human wreckage.
My Dinner with Andre (1981)
The plot of this movie, such that it is, would seem to be a recipe for disaster, but I am one of the many fans of this movie which in its entirety is about....a two-hour dinner conversation.
My Flesh and Blood (2003)
Susan Tom is a divorced, single mother in California who after having two biological children adopted eleven handicapped children. This emotionally intense documentary film is not about a smiley Brady Bunch, but about a raucous household of children with serious and severe problems—mental, physical, emotional and medical. Faith was horribly disfigured in a fire as an infant. Xenia was born with no legs. Teenager Joe is a deeply angry and explosive child who threatens to kill Xenia; he eventually dies from Cystic Fibrosis. Others are mentally retarded. Susan describes herself as "fat but interesting." Both adjectives understate the case. She does not work outside the home, but instead supports everyone, and her $600 a week grocery bill, from SSI income. Margaret, age 18, is unwillingly conscripted to help make it all work, and breaks down in screams to get her mother's attention. Perhaps the mark of a fine film is that in watching it you think far more about its subjects than about how they are portrayed. My Flesh and Blood won the Audience Documentary Award at the 2003 Sundance festival.
Nanking (2007)
In August of 1937 Japan bombed and then invaded China's capital city of Nanking. In the ensuing six weeks some 200,000 people, mainly citizens, were slaughtered; tens of thousands of others endured unspeakable atrocities that included mass executions, torture, widespread rape, burning and looting. This documentary film draws on archival film footage, interviews with Chinese survivors and Japanese soldiers who witnessed the atrocities, and then the letters and diaries of a small group of westerners who stayed behind to help the Chinese despite the orders of the American Embassy to evacuate. These westerners, mainly missionaries, saved some 250,000 Chinese by establishing a two square mile "Safety Zone" in Nanking. The film switches back and forth between the Japanese atrocities and the heroism of the three missionaries, George Fitch (whose secret 16mm movies documented the horrors), surgeon Bob Wilson, and Minnie Vautrin who headed the Ginling Women's College; and then their leader, the Nazi businessman John Rabe (whose 800-page diary became a key piece of evidence). To a person the Chinese still venerate these four people as their saviors. After the war a tribunal convicted twenty-five Japanese leaders of war crimes. Warning — parts of this film are very hard to watch.
Napoleon Dynamite (2004)
I watched this film twice and loved it even more the second time around. As a light-hearted comedy it follows the travails of the frustrated, gangly, unseemly, and misanthropic high schooler, Napoleon, along with his circle of similarly weirdo and disenfranchised characters that surround him—his brother Kip who specializes in chat rooms, Pedro the improbable class president, Uncle Rio a door-to-door salesman, and his heart throb Deb. Napoleon is hazed at school, envies Pedro's mustache, lies about having a gorgeous girl friend, and musters his best compliment to Deb at the dance: "I like your sleeves; they're big." These central characters are all decidedly uncool. But everyone needs a friend, and at times watching this film makes you squirm when you appreciate the very real social realities that it parodies. Best of all is the film's sugary ending.
Nine Lives (2005)
I was eager to like this experimental film written and directed by Rodrigo Garcia (son of the Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez), but in the end was disappointed. Garcia tells the stories of nine women, each one as a separate and independent 10–12 minute snap shot. Except for pain and dysfunctions of all sorts that relate directly to the men in their lives, the nine stories are unrelated. We encounter teenage and elderly women, blue collar and professionals, black, Hispanic and white. Diana is divorced from her husband but they should have stayed together. Sonia is badly married and should divorce. Holly confronts her abusive step-father and maybe commits suicide. Samantha referees between her distant parents. Ruth considers an affair, Camillie confronts breast cancer surgery, and as an inmate Sandra is separated from her daughter. The artistic signature of this film is that Garcia shoots each of the nine vignettes in a single, uninterrupted 10–12 minute shot with a hand-held camera, and that the crises these women face remain unresolved.
No Country for Old Men (2007)
Directors Ethan and Joel Coen won four Academy Awards for their disturbing study of the depths of human darkness. At the beginning of the film sheriff Ed Tom Bell (played by Tommy Lee Jones) reflects that he has been the county sheriff since he was twenty-five, and had followed in the footsteps of both his father and grandfather who were law men. But times had changed, and "the rise of crime you see now, it's hard to take its measure." The rest of the film demonstrates that point. The simple plot is almost a mere ploy for the Coens's study of human nature — Llewelyn Moss stumbles upon a pickup full of heroin, slaughtered bodies, and a stash of $2 million. Trying to keep the money was a bad mistake, as the remorseless psychopath and ultra creepy killer Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) wants it back. But does he kill by choice or by chance? People always object to him, "you don't have to do this." He likes to flip a quarter and force his victims to choose. Fate and human freedom loom large for the Coens. The west Texas scenery and the absence of any music add to the suspense. Nor does the film end in any neat and tidy way, only Tommy Lee Jones reflecting on the disturbing dreams he started having after he retired feeling like justice did not prevail.
No End in Sight (2007)
You probably won't learn anything new about the Iraq war from this understated documentary, nor should you expect any sort of neutrality. But the catastrophic consequences of the war for our country and the whole world make its chronological review of the basic facts worthwhile, while the cinematic power of pictures as compared to reading books about Iraq puts a very human face on the war. Director Charles Ferguson's film is a searing indictment of the recklessness, gross incompetence, and political cynicism of the Bush administration. He interviews soldiers, diplomats, Bush appointees, state department officials, and Iraqis, all of whom tell their personal stories about working hard at a noble cause only to discover that the emperor and his minions had no clothes and no conscience. Their sense of betrayal is heartbreaking. The film makes it clear that the administration's incompetence and hubris doomed their naive plan from the start, and that five years later there is still "no end in sight." Director Charles Ferguson is not your run-of-the mill film maker; he earned a PhD from MIT, founded and then sold his company Vermeer Technologies to Microsoft in 1996, was for three years a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, and has been a visiting professor at both MIT and Berkeley.
Nobody Knows (2004)—Japanese
Yagira Yuya won best actor at the 2004 Cannes festival for his role as Akira, a 12 year-old boy who cares for his three younger siblings when the four of them are abandoned by their mother. Paternity in this film simply does not exist, and in fact we might believe that the children had four different fathers. The few minutes we meet the mom, Keiko, early in the film would not discourage that idea. After Keiko moves her family into a new apartment she gives them several rules: only Akira can go outside, none of them will go to school, and no loud noises, lest they be evicted. Then she leaves, and but for Akira's savvy they are on their own. How could she possibly leave? Will she return? Where did she go? Nobody knows. Akira shops, cooks, banks at the ATM, tracks down his dad to beg for money, and cares for his siblings, as we watch the sad and inevitable meltdown of the four children. The film was inspired by a true story that was reported in Tokyo not too long ago. In Japanese with English subtitles.
Nói Albinó (2003)—Icelandic
Nói is a deeply estranged teenager who lives with his grandmother in an isolated and impoverished fishing village in remote Iceland. The icy landscape and winter darkness are foreboding, but beautifully mysterious in their own way. His father is an alcoholic taxi driver who rages at the piano with an ax. His grandmother wakes him in the morning by blasting a shotgun out the window. Nói is smart enough, perhaps too smart for such a community— he solves a Rubic's Cube during an interview with the school psychologist. When he sends a tape recorder to take his place in class because he can't be bothered with school, he is expelled. An albino misfit and outcast who shaves his head, Nói finds some solace in his basement crawlspace (although it is never clear just what he does there), with a View Master with slides of Hawaii, and with a soul mate Iris who works at the local gas station-cafe. In a surprise ending, tragedy destroys his only glimmer of hope and Nói finally imagines an alternative future. This is the debut film by writer and director Dagur Kari, and it won numerous awards at international film festivals. In Icelandic with English subtitles.
North Country (2005)
"Inspired by a true story," North Country tells the story of Josey Aimes (Charlize Theron) who works in the mines of the Mesabi Iron Range in northern Minnesota, and who initiated the first class action sexual harassment lawsuit in America. The first woman was hired in the mines in 1975, but this story begins in 1989 when men still outnumbered women 30 to 1. In the understatement of the film, a patronizing supervisor tells his new women employees, "the mines are a shit pit." The images we see make it hard to believe any human being would work there—filthy, deafening noise, dangerous, difficult and toxic, this is a Dickensian world, but a socio-economic world where people need their jobs. And for Josey, a single mom with two kids by two fathers who lives with her parents, the union job pays six times her job washing hair in a salon. It also brings vulgar sexual harassment of every sort, which she stands up to despite objections from every quarter— not only from the neanderthal men, but also from the isolated community, the union, her parents, and even her women colleagues. Despite the "nuts-n-sluts" accusations that she was either imagining things or brought them on herself, Josey challenges the system. Whereas in the film Monster where she played the repulsive murderer and psychopath Eileen Wuernos, in this film Theron is undoubtedly the best-looking bedraggled miner and single mom you'll likely see. A bit of a distraction in an otherwise powerful film about bravery in the face of injustice. Most disturbing of all, the lawsuit with the real-life Lois Jenson was only settled in 1991; the plaintiffs won a modest settlement, but more importantly a sexual harassment policy at the mines. Directed by Niki Caro, who also made Whale Rider.
The Notebook (2004)
If you can suspend almost all critical judgment and subscribe to a Hollywood tear jerk formula, then this film might work for you. About 80% of The Notebook is a flashback to the 1940s and the improbable summer romance between Allie Nelson and Noah Calhoun that led to their marriage. She is from fabulous wealth; he works at the lumberyard for pennies. Surprise—her mother objects! But they canoe in sunsets, splash in the rain, separate for years, coincidentally find each other many years later, leave the respective people they love, and all through the power of a house Noah restored. In the present day, an elderly Noah reads this story aloud to his now demented Allie from a notebook she had written. The mere reading cures her of Alzheimer's, at least long enough for them to die in each other's arms. Sorry, it does not work for me. Much more interesting would have been an exploration of an aging couple still in love, or about that long interlude between a summer fling and death's doorstep; how does a couple keep the flame alive? This film cheats both ends with sugary sentimentality and leaves the middle passage unexplored.
Nowhere in Africa (2003)—German/Kenyan
A German family flees the Holocaust by going to a farm in rural Kenya.
On the Outs (2004)
This sad and gritty film has earned a half dozen festival awards and nominations. It follows the tragic fates of three young women from Jersey City's ghetto—Suzette (a pregnant runaway teenager), Marisol (a crack addict and young mother), and Oz (a drug dealer), whose lives intersect after their separate paths to prison. Nearly every influence in their lives, whether personal or social, is harmful to them, including school, music, home, friends, drug and alcohol abuse, and, most of all, their trash-talking, gangsta boys. The girls live in a malevolent universe that is parallel to anything you would consider normal. Whether they got there by bad luck, bad choices, or by a heartless society that has victimized them is debatable. The director shows his hand, though, with several shots of the Statue of Liberty.
Once (2006)—Ireland
This low budget ($200,000) film has won uniformly rave reviews, not to mention the 2007 audience award at the Sundance Film Festival. The plot is about as simple as plot can get. An aspiring street musician whose girlfriend left him for London lives above his father's vacuum cleaner repair shop. A younger girl who has moved to Dublin from the Czech Republic after her husband left her hears him play and becomes his motivating inspiration. Their tender friendship is mediated by their mutual love for music, and many people have referred to this film as a musical, what with a dozen or so songs that move the story along. Best of all is a surprise and decidedly ambiguous ending. Actors Glen Hansard of the Dublin-based group The Frames and the Czech singer-songwriter Marketa Irglova (age 17) sing their own songs in this feel-good flick.
Osama (2003)—Afghan A grandmother, a mother, and a daughter live alone—that is to say, with no man in the house—in Taliban Afghanistan. See this film in conjunction with Khandahar
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The Other Side of the Mirror; Bob Dylan Live at the Newport Folk Festival 1963–1965 (2007)
Review by David Werther.
Murray Lerner's film of Bob Dylan's (then "Bobby" Dylan) performances at the 1963, '64, and '65 Newport Folk Festivals consists only of live footage (no talking heads' commentary) and depends for much of its effectiveness on juxtapositions. The film begins with a preview of the '65 festival in which the audience is told to "take him [Dylan], he's yours." When Dylan takes the main stage that year he sings "I ain't gonna work on Maggie's Farm [read 'folk music industry'] no more."
At the end of his '64 performance the audience is bereft and emcee Peter Yarrow explains that there just isn't any more time for another Dylan performance. Dylan, however, comes back on stage, bows to the audience, and tells his fans, "I love ya." Cut to '65. After a blistering "Maggie's Farm," followed by what was then the longest "single" ever played on the radio, "Like a Rolling Stone," Dylan unplugs his Stratocaster and walks off the stage. Peter Yarrow is emcee again, but in a role reversal. This time around he tells the audience that "Bobby" could come back and play another song if that's what the audience would like, and offers the encouraging words that Bobby is getting an acoustic guitar. Dylan ends his acoustic encore with "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," a not so subtle signal that he is no longer in love with the audience and folk music business as usual is over.
Lerner admirably underscores Dylan's dramatic changes from '63–'65. However, what is more remarkable, and sadly so, is how changeless the film is. Dylan's 1963 cultural critique is, if anything, more relevant now. Consider three songs from his '63 set: "With God on Our Side," "Who Killed Davey Moore?" and "Only a Pawn in Their Game." Each song focuses on moral accountability.
In "With God on Our Side" Dylan chronicles the U.S.'s winning track record in war (e.g. "The cavalries charged and the Indians fell; the cavalries charged and the Indians died; Oh the country was young with God on its side"). This God-blessed view of the United States' history presupposes that killing and conquering carry a divine seal of approval. And then Dylan turns the tables. If the killing-conquering-blessing view of history is correct, then maybe we need to rethink another killing ("In many a dark hour; I've been thinkin about this; That Jesus Christ; Was betrayed by a kiss; But I think for you; You'll have to decide; Whether Judas Iscariot; Had God on his side").
"Who Killed Davey Moore?" is all about the denial of responsibility. A boxer, Davey Moore, is killed in the ring. Dylan calls out "Who killed Davey Moore, Why an' what's the reason for?" And, then there is a role call, as the referee, crowd, manager, gambler, sport writers, and "the man whose fists laid him low in a cloud of mist" all plead their innocence. These days Davey Moore can stand in for victims of a war crime or a child forced into sexual slavery.
"Only A Pawn In Their Game" is about the killing of Medgar Evers. This time the twist is that the man who fires the fatal shot can't claim "credit" for the killing. He's just a "pawn," an individual whose thinking is done for him by those who value his life infinitely less than the death of one they perceive as threat. Hearing the song this week, I could only think of the assassination of Benazier Bhutto.
At the 1963 Newport Folk Festival "wisdom was crying out in the streets." Her voice echoes down to us nearly fifty years later.
Paper Clips (2005)
In 1998 principal Linda Hooper and two teachers at the middle school in Whitwell, Tennessee (a former mining town with a population of 1,600) cast about for a school project that would teach their eight graders about prejudices, stereotypes, diversity, and tolerance. Their little town, they knew, was entirely white, and the middle school enrolled no Jews, no Catholics, only five African Americans, and one Hispanic. They settled on the theme of the Holocaust. But how to teach it? They would collect one paper clip for each person killed by Hitler—six million in all, inspired by Norwegians who had worn a paper clip on their lapel during the war to protest the Holocaust. The project stalled after an initial burst of energy and enthusiasm, then a reporter for the Washington Post and the NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw ran pieces about the project. In the end they collected 27 million paper clips from around the world, 11 million of which they displayed in a rail car that had transported Jews to the death camps. Walls fall, and hearts open. The teachers tell how they stereotype northerners, and even their own students. The town meets Holocaust survivors who speak in the local Methodist church. This might not be a great documentary film. I thought it dragged a little, plus I think it is hard to say much new about the Holocaust. But the simple narration of how real people were genuinely transformed in an otherwise insignificant middle school was remarkable. I only wish I had watched Paper Clips with my ninth grade daughter. Don't miss this film.
Paradise Now (2005)—Palestinian
We first meet the childhood friends Said and Khaled as ordinary garage mechanics, but not too far into this movie their spiritual adviser Jamal informs them that they have been appointed for a suicide bombing mission in Tel Aviv. As young Palestinians doomed to a future of oppression and poverty, we sense their humiliation and hopelessness. We watch as they are promised glory as martyred heroes and transport to heaven by angels. If it is possible, we can almost "understand" how and why someone would volunteer for such a mission. Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad explores the religious, the socio-economic, the deeply personal, and the violently political in these two characters. But to his credit, Abu-Assad does not take this film in a linear direction. Said's girlfriend Suha, who was born in France and raised in Morocco, objects to their plan for reasons of both principle and prudence. Technical glitches complicate the mission, family matters enter, and at one point Said and Khaled get separated. Only in the last two minutes of this nail biter do you learn the outcome. In Arabic with English subtitles.
The Party's Over (2001)
A scruffy Philip Seymour Hoffman takes to the road with a camera crew in the six months before the 2000 presidential election to document the dysfunctions of our political system. There's nothing new, ambitious, or very challenging about that goal, and Hoffman does nothing to deepen or clarify the film's subject, which by its end is entirely predictable—more disgruntled citizens (mainly from the left), some of them famous, others obscure, like homeless activists and sloganeering protesters. The film also loses focus by a staccato presentation of endless hot button issues, including farm aid, the WTO, the Million Mom March, legalization of drugs, capital punishment, welfare, corporate influence, voter apathy, etc. Much of the film focuses on the Republican and Democratic presidential conventions. Just how much can you learn from thirty-second sound bites from Willie Nelson, Charlton Heston, Ralph Reed, Noam Chomsky, Susan Sarandon, Rosie O'Donnell, Bianca Jagger, Pat Robertson, Barney Frank, and Newt Gingerich? Of course, at this point the film is also badly dated.
Peace One Day (2004)
The British film maker Jeremy Gilley documents his personal campaign to establish a single day of global peace and non-violence. In fact, he discovered that Costa Rica had won approval for an original international day of peace back in 1981, so Gilley's quest was to reinvigorate the day with a new and fixed date, September 21 of every year at the United Nations. It took five years of meetings with school children, Nobel Peace laureates, heads of states, NGO bureaucrats, media moguls and even the Dalai Lama, but on September 7, 2001 the United Nations voted unanimously to approve a resolution to designate every September 21 as the new International Day of Peace. In the bitterest of ironies, Kofi Annan was scheduled to ring the peace bell and proclaim the change on September 11, the last day of peace before the new, fixed date on September 21 took effect the following year. Yes, the documentary includes Gilley's naysayers who derided his quest as a hapless and romantic gesture, but I for one join those who saluted him for doing anything and everything to encourage humanity to forsake violence and war.
Persepolis (2006)
Persian culture boasts a glorious history that stretches back three thousand years, but the last thirty years have not been kind. This award-winning animated film is partly a historical review of the political revolution that overthrew the secular-minded Shah in 1978–1979, the eight-year war with neighboring Iraq that followed about a year later and slaughtered a million people (1980–1988), and the religious extremism that filled the power vacuum along the way. In particular, the film follows the plight of a precocious and independent-minded little girl named Marjane and her extended family, and how all this upheaval impacted them. At this level Persepolis is a powerful story about personal identity, cultural consciousness, difficult choices, and historical fate. The film was written and directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, and based on the two best-selling graphic novels by Satrapi. In French with English subtitles.
Phantom of the Opera (2004)
Is there any cinematic icon more recognizable than the Phantom's mask? Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera opened in London on October 9,1986, and since then there have been more than twenty productions world-wide. In London there has never been a seat unsold. Over 50 million people have seen the show, and the box office gross world-wide stands at nearly $2 billion. So, why not a movie version to capture this wild success, even though a film can never compete with the live show? I love the story line, even though my wife and I differ in our responses to the Phantom, and I like the music. So, even though this film dragged along, and a friend of mine echoed the belief of many when he described the show as "cheesy," I still enjoyed it. With Roger Ebert, I recommend this film even though I really did not think it was a very good film.
The Pianist (2002)—French/German/Polish/British
Directed by Roman Polanski, this film recounts the true life story of the Polish Jew and classical pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman, and how through sheer luck and gritty determination he survived the Holocaust.
Planet Earth: As You've Never Seen It Before (2007, box set with five discs)
The sub-title of this BBC natural science documentary is not even slightly exaggerated. Think of the incredible still photos of National Geographic brought to life in video format, set to a remarkable musical soundtrack, and narrated by Sir David Attenborough. The BBC project took five years to make and enjoyed a $25 million budget. Using the latest photographic technology like high definition and ultra-high speed cameras, Planet Earth celebrates the majesty, mystery, and beauty of the natural world — frigid mountains and boiling deserts, jungles and caves, unimaginable migrations of various species, and elusive animals like the snow leopard that have never been filmed before in the wild. Each 50-minute episode comes with an additional 10-minute "featurette" diary of the behind-the-scenes wizardry that crafted the final product. This is family viewing for young and old at its very best; Planet Earth has received nearly 2100 customer views on Amazon, with over 90% of the reviews giving four or five stars.
Prairie Home Companion (2006)
The key to enjoying this film is to remember that it is not a documentary but a rendering of a fictional last performance of the radio program, but that's hard to remember when Garrison Keillor plays himself—singing, telling stories, and peddling make believe commercials with dead pan seriousness. The live radio variety show that many people enjoyed is one thing; this film loosely based upon it is another. Without that connection this film would never stand on its own. After thirty years the Soderbergs sold the building to wealthy Texans, and thus the show's final act. The two Johnson sisters, Yolanda and Rhonda (played by Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin), reminisce backstage while the show plays live in the background. Country cowboys Dusty and Lefty yuck it up. A woman who is really an angel, a death backstage during the broadcast, and a visit by one of the new investors disrupt the story line. But watching "GK," as he is called in this film, is always a treat.
The Prestige (2006)
Two magicians, Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale), started out as partners and friends, but then a tragic stage accident made them bitter enemies. Set in turn-of-the-century England, the film takes us behind the scenes, as it were, to learn the mechanics of magic, its craft, secrets, and showmanship. But this film is more about the men than their magic — it's about their obsessions, egos and envy. Angier and Borden do everything they can to destroy each other. They sabotage each other's performances, steal secrets, ping pong the beautiful assistant Olivia between them as a lover-spy, and contrive every and any advantage over the other. They intend to destroy one another, and one of them succeeds. The film gets its name from the third part of every magic trick. After the "pledge" to do something outrageous and the "turn" of events, the "prestige" is "the part with the twists and turns, where lives hang in the balance, and you see something shocking you've never seen before." That description fits not only the magicians but their very own lives.
The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio (2005)
Set in the post-war 1950s, director Jane Anderson portrays the life of Evelyn Ryan (Julianne Moore), a mother of ten who supported her family as a "contester" by winning an astounding number of prizes for her hundreds if not thousands of entries. Evelyn is an irrepressible mother, cheerful, dutiful, brilliant, and probably an enabler to her husband Kelly. Kelly (Woody Harrelson) is an insecure, self-loathing under-achiever whose alcoholism explodes into fits of rage and violence. But as was true for that era, he was the man of the house who called all the shots. When the cops arrive to quell their domestic violence, they chat with Kelly about baseball; when the priest comes over he advises Evelyn to be a better wife. If not for Evelyn's soothing, confident oil upon these troubled waters, the Ryan family and marriage would have both disintegrated. In an interesting technical twist Anderson has a double of Evelyn narrate parts of the film. Anderson based the film on the family memoir The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less by Terry Ryan (one of the ten children). As someone who was raised in a family of eight in the age of Father Knows Best, I loved this emotionally rich film about a mom who had no power but all the influence.
Promises (2001)—Israeli-Palestinian
If you have ever wondered how to gain at least some understanding of the convoluted, protracted and intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict, watch this documentary film. You will learn its basic history, but perhaps more importantly you will learn about the deeply human impulses that drive that history, human impulses as they are experienced and narrated by seven children interviewed for this film project—Israeli and Palestinian, extremist and conciliatory, passive observers and political militants, boys and girls. A child's perspective, it turns out, touches the viewer very deeply, for these kids have siblings who have been killed and parents jailed without formal charges. In an especially moving sequence, the children meet together in an exchange of food, games, friendship, opinions, tears, and feelings of both hope and futility. The final frames show an Arab mother and a Jewish father in a maternity ward standing next to each other, each embracing their newborn baby. The producers edited over 170 hours of original interviews down to 107 minutes for this incredible film. In Arabic, Hebrew, and English, with English subtitles.
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Most critics hailed this foreboding film a watershed, even "the first masterwork of the post modern pop culture generation" (Brian Laidman). Three separate and non linear plot lines intersect in an orgy of violence, racism, sadism, black humor, and stream of consciouness vulgarity. Old school movie released the same year: Forest Gump. New school enfant terrible: writer-director Quentin Tarantino.
Rachel Getting Married (2008)
Rachel is getting married, but the unfortunate center of attention is her sister Kym (Anne Hathaway). Kym has a weekend pass from her residential rehab program, and when she comes home she ignites the flames of family dysfunctions — sarcasm and sibling rivalry, manipulation and negotiation, control and co-dependence, shame and blame, fight and flight, and most everyone spinning their best: "Everything's going to be perfect," Rachel's mother Abby (Debra Winger) assures her. It's not, of course, far from it, but as the movie evolves we begin to realize that's okay. Two very long scenes add a deeply human touch to the film — the rehearsal dinner with corny jokes, heartfelt stories and well-wishing by a mix of families and friends that only a wedding can muster, and then the wedding itself on a rainy day that can't dampen the genuine celebration. Natural lighting, the absence of any music track, and hand held cameras give the film the feel of a wedding home movie that might easily be about our very own families.
Ratatouille (2007)
Ratatouille is a French dish of stewed vegetables that plays a delicious role in resolving the plot of this movie, thanks to a remarkable rat called Remy. Remy is a quintessential foodie. He raids shelves for saffron, picks fresh mushrooms, and watches his favorite chef on television, Auguste Gusteau, the deceased owner of the famous Parisian restaurant of the same name. But there's heat in that famous French kitchen after it's taken over by a new, very mean, owner after a bad review. Much to the horror of the new owner, Skinner, did Gusteau really leave the restaurant to his son and dish washer, Linguini? What will become of the romance between Linguini and the sous chef Collete? Will Remy ever reconcile with his family who can't understand why he's not satisfied to eat out of the garbage and serve them as their poison checker? Will the humans ever accept a rat in the kitchen? What will that imperious food critic, Anton Ego, think of Remy's dish of ratatouille? And just how will Remy, Collete and Linguini live happily ever after? Grab the family one Friday night, pop some popcorn, and tee up this great film to find out.
Ray (2004)
Critics have generally raved about this film, and why not? Jamie Foxx's portrayal of one of the world's greatest singers is marvelous (the soundtracks are Charles's originals). Born into grinding, rural poverty in Albany, Georgia, Charles's mother Aretha moved her family to Florida when he was an infant. By age 7 Charles was completely blind from glaucoma. This film tracks his life from then until 1966 or so when he finally beat a twenty-year heroin addiction. But I had several disappointments. By ending when Charles was only 36, this film neglects the entire last half of his life. His addiction to drugs and women (he fathered 12 children and was divorced twice), the powerful influence of his mother who taught him to avoid self-pity and to be his own person, and his guilt over his failure to save his little brother from a drowning accident when he was five, all figure more prominently than his musical genius. In his fifty-year career Charles performed 10,000 concerts, won 12 Grammys, and charted 85 singles. I wanted to learn more about how this genius fused Gospel, blues, country, jazz, and big band music into a raucous style all his own. Perhaps it is impossible for any film to capture a figure so much larger than life. Charles himself was involved in the making of this film, and at the end of the day, despite the feel of an unoriginal soap opera script (music, drugs, philandering, and racism), it is well worth seeing.
The Reader (2008)
Kate Winslet lends this film automatic star power, but the movie flounders because of two major flaws. First, there are at least four or five stories here, beginning with fifteen-year-old Michael Berg who has a summer love affair with Hanna Schmitz (Winslet) who is almost forty. Nearly an hour later, and without any warning, The Reader turns into a Holocaust film, with the attendant themes that you might expect. There are also deeply personal, moral, and legal twists that turn the film into a melodrama. What appears to be a minor subplot turns into an undeveloped major theme in the last minutes of the film. Finally, with the film flashing back and forth between Michael's obsession with his past, The Reader is a study of the power of memory to shape the present. The other major flaw is that these separate but related stories require a significant suspension of disbelief on the part of the viewer. The love affair is not the only twist that begs many complicated questions. The film is based upon the novel by Bernhard Schlink.
Stranded in a New Orleans hotel with a group of five adults and four children, film maker James Bills put his camera to good use in his native city. In this one-hour documentary, with no stock footage at all, he records the city before, during, and mainly after Hurricane Katrina hit on August 29, 2005. Even today, seeing his film, it is hard to comprehend the terrifying power, destructive force, and catastrophic flooding of the storm. Bills interviews a handful of citizens and with understated narration lets them tell their stories. The bald lies and gross incompetence of local, state, and especially the federal government loom large. "It has changed me forever," reminisced one woman. "I will never depend upon the government for anything. You're on your own." A recent article in the New York Times suggested that 18 months later, New Orleans's population has probably topped out at less than half of its pre-hurricane size.
Religulous (2008)
Every once in a while a truly bad movie comes along. This is one of them. Bill Maher interviews a couple dozen adherents of religion with the goal of making them look stupid. He employs tomahawk journalism and condescending sarcasm, edits the interviews to suit his purpose, and chooses easy targets, like an evangelist who claims to be Jesus, an actor who plays Jesus at a theme park, and a "Cannabis Ministry" in Amsterdam. Sure, there are a few funny moments, but Maher mainly succeeds in looking horribly smug. When he tries to be personal and explore his own religious views, as when he interviews his mother, we learn nothing interesting. When he tries to be serious, as when he interviews a Vatican astronomer or Francis Collins, head of the Genome Project and an outspoken Christian, Maher looks like a badly uninformed and unprepared eighth grader trying to impress his teacher. Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, at the end of the film Maher intones with utmost seriousness, "for mankind to survive, religion must end." Okay, thanks for that amazing insight. This is a mockumentary mashup.
Rescue Dawn (2007)
In 1997 Werner Herzog made a documentary of the story of Dieter Dengler (1938–2001) called Little Dieter Needs to Fly. This time around he dramatizes one of the greatest ever survivor's tales. Dengler was 18 when he left his home in Germany for the states with one mission in mind, to fly for the American military. On February 1, 1966 he took enemy fire and crash-landed his plane in Laos while on a secret mission. After surviving in the jungle on his own he was captured and tortured (hanging upside down with an ant nest around his neck, submerged in a well, dragged by an ox through a village), then taken to the Pathet Lao prison camp. There he met other POWS, then escaped after they overheard the guards say they planned to shoot them. The fellow POWS were separated after the escape, and Dengler and his buddy Duane Martin teamed up. Martin was eventually beheaded by villagers, but Dengler was rescued after improbably surviving the dense jungle. Dengler tells his tale in his own words in the book Escape from Laos (1979).
Riding Giants (2004)
This spectacular documentary tells the story of surfing, from its nascent beginnings in the 1950s as a counter cultural way of life, and even statement about life, to its current status as a multi-billion dollar industry complete with its own superstars with super contracts. It follows the surfing greats like Greg Noll, Laird Hamilton and other big wave riders who tempt fate by careening down 60-foot moving mountains of water. The personal stories, the spectacular photography, the soundtrack, and athleticism and obesssions of the world's best big wave surfers all combine to make a wonderful film. One warning: after viewing this film your life will feel very dull.
Roy Orbison and Friends: Black & White Night (1988)
Recorded live at the Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles's Ambassador Hotel (1987), this documentary celebrates the music of the inimitable Roy Orbison (1936–1988). Filmed in black and white, Orbison is joined by an all-star back up band (and admiring colleagues), including Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, T-Bone Burnett, k.d. lang, and others. Orbison had an amazing vocal range in addition to his signature falsetto, an understated and unadorned style that I find refreshing in our in-your-face age, and a knack for writing songs that other people made famous—"Pretty Woman," "Blue Bayou" (Linda Rondstadt's version sold 7-8 million copies), "Only the Lonely," and "Crying." I watched this wonderful performance two different times on public television, and highly recommend it for any baby boomer who ever piled a stack of 45s or 33s on your first record player.
Saint Ralph (2004)—Canadian
This film won several festival awards, and is fine as some Friday night fluff, but it did not work for me. Saint Ralph wavers between the inspirational, the cute, and some serious coming of age issues; trying to do all three fails. Ralph Walker is a likeable trouble maker in the ninth grade at an oppressive Catholic boarding school. He cheats, lies, smokes, curses, underachieves, and enjoys his raging hormones. His father died in the war (the film is set in 1953), his mother lies deathly sick in a coma (although you would never know it because she looks quite beautiful), and if he is expelled from the school he is orphaned. He learns in his religion class that performing a miracle requires faith, prayer, and purity, and so he sets out to run the Boston Marathon in order to effect a miracle for his dying mother. Sub plots with a girl friend and a teacher-priest who just happens to have been a marathoner as a young man add little. I did not find Saint Ralph even remotely believable, nor did I appreciate that Catholicism was presented in the worst possible light. The headmaster is a cardboard character who, yes, is a sick tyrant. Ralph has several visitations from God who appears to him in the form of Santa Claus. You can watch to see if Ralph gets the miracle of a marathon victory, and whether this redounds to his mother's healing; just don't set your expectations too high.
Saints and Soldiers (2003)
Is it my imagination or do most war films feature a character named "Sarge?" The characters always talk tough to one another, ask where their buddy is from, play cards, smoke precious cigarettes, and beat the odds. One hails from Brooklyn, another from the Louisiana bayou. One is a pacifist with moral qualms, another a hardened atheist. Despite the many awards this film won, I found it predictable and mediocre. Four American soldiers are trapped behind enemy lines, and when they are joined by a stranded British paratrooper they realize that they have vital information that they must smuggle back to the Americans. So they trudge through bitter snow and accomplish the task. No, that was never in doubt. Along the way they encounter a Belgian housewife in an abandoned farmhouse who feeds them. Nice. One of the soldiers, Deacon, a former missionary, speaks German so fluently and without an accent that he gets them past Nazi soldiers. Hmmm. The film does humanize the soldiers, though, including a sympathetic Nazi, so they are thus not only warriors but also saints.
The Savages (2007)
When the elderly Lenny has a "toileting incident," and his girl friend Doris dies, his baby boomer children from whom he has been long estranged travel from New York to Sun City, Arizona, to care for their dad. Jon (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Wendy (Laura Linney) relocate Lenny to Buffalo, New York, where they put him in a "nursing home." There are curled family photos to sort through, bingo twice a week, reams of forms to sign, and palpable angst about what they've done and how everyone will cope. "We're taking better care of him," says Jon, "than he did of us." Lenny suffers from dementia and "disinhibition." Jon is 42 and single, has high cholesterol, and just lost his Polish girlfriend. Wendy is 39 and single, has a boyfriend who's married, pops Xanax for her nerves, and hopes to jump start her freelance writing career with a grant. Writer and director Tamara Jenkins was nominated for an Oscar for combining mid-life humor and family heartache in a destiny that awaits us all — the role reversal when aging children must care for their aged parents.
Schultze Gets The Blues (2003)—German
This film begins in a mine shaft in Saxon Germany and ends in the honky tonks on the Louisiana bayou. How the protagonist Schultze got from one place to the other, barely speaking any lines at all in almost two hours, and just what his journey symbolizes beyond mere geography, constitute the plot of this film.
Schultze and two of his buddies retire from the local salt mine, but after puttering in the garden and pestering their families, life as pensioners settles into the predictable monotony that we might expect in an insular subculture characterized by traditional polka music. Later he even stops forlornly in front of the mine on his bike. One kid sneers at the three old codgers, "I'll never be like that." The bachelor Schultze lives alone, but we learn from family photos that his father was a noted accordion player. Schultze is too, and one night on his little radio he hears some zydeco music, an accordion-based genre from Louisiana. He turns off the radio after a minute, then turns it back on, then pulls our his battered accordion and reproduces the tune. He can't sleep but stares at the ceiling because he can't get the music out of his head. He's hooked. This new musical passion gives Schultze a new lease on life, but dare he play such newfangled music in the land of polka? His friends urge him on despite petty detractors, and even send him to their sister city in Texas for their annual German music festival. There Schultze experiences a new joie de vivre, a new style of music, a new geography, and new friends—all without knowing any English.
Some people found this film plodding, but I loved its minimalist, slow-moving style through which we watch the endearing Schultze discover himself. The DVD case advertises that Schultze Gets The Blues has won awards at ten international film festivals, a remarkable feat considering that it is the first film by writer-director Michael Schorr. In German with English subtitles.
The Sea Inside (2004)—Spanish
I don't think this film adds anything new to the debate about so-called "death with dignity" or the right to end your own life. But it is a tender and nuanced treatment of the subject that raises the major questions and includes the major stakeholders—the legal system, a religious priest who is caricatured as moralistic and uncaring, friends, and a three-generation family that lives with and cares for the quadriplegic Ramon, who after a diving accident 26 years ago wants to end his life since, he insists, it is a life with no dignity. Ramon's brother adamantly objects: "nobody kills anyone in my house." Others are not so sure. Four women in particular loom large in the film's plot. I will not spoil Ramon's final choice, which to the film's credit is not clear until the very end. The Sea Inside is based upon a true story in Spain, and was voted Best Foreign Film for 2004. In Spanish with English subtitles.
Searching for Wrong-Eyed Jesus (2003)
When director Andrew Douglas (The Amityville Horror) received a Christmas gift album from the country singer Jim White called The Mysterious Tale of How I Shouted Wrong-Eyed Jesus (1997), he called White to learn where such weird and haunting music originated. The result is this documentary film, narrated by White, who talks his way through the loneliest and most isolated parts of Florida, Virginia, Louisiana and Kentucky in a 1970 Chevy. This is the south of abandoned school buses, wash-board sandy roads, houses on stilts in swamps, and cars held together with "Alabama chrome" (duct tape). There's no condescension by director Douglas, just fascination and appreciation for the stories, the music, the people, their poetry, and especially their sensual religion. Nor is White some hayseed. He quotes Jonathan Swift and Flannery O'Connor, and has lived in Amsterdam, California and New York City, only to return to the south to understand its ways. In these quirky and desperately poor people Douglas and White find the struggle between good and evil that is every person's story. "I was thinkin' about these desperate people and their desperate, hellfire religion," says White. "So they invented a god who's gonna whup ass, basically." As for White himself, he admits that he's "looking for the gold tooth in God's crooked smile."
Shanghai Ghetto (2002)
This documentary recounts the history of some 20,000 Jews who fled 8,000 miles from Europe to Shanghai during World War II when most all other countries had closed their borders to them. At the time, much of China, including Shanghai, was occupied and controlled by Japan. Because of their own racist stereotypes, the Japanese feared the Jews, and so allowed the refugees to exist in the "Restricted Sector for Stateless Refugees" with the help of wealthy Baghdadi and poorer Russian Jews who had already settled there, along with western aid. A rich cultural life emerged that included schools, theater, newspapers, and music. As one of the poorest sections of Shanghai, life for the local Chinese who lived together with the Jews was often worse. After Pearl Harbor, American attacks on the Japanese in China made the horrible conditions in Shaghai even worse. The film draws upon archival footage, diaries, letters, historians, and, most powerfully of all, interviews with a half dozen survivors who were children of eight to ten years old at the time.
Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) is a banker who is wrongly accused of murdering his wife and is given a life sentence at the Shawshank Prison. Similarly, longtime inmate "Red" Redding (Morgan Freeman) has wrongly been denied parole two times, and no wonder, for everything about this prison is evil. Warden Norton is cast as a fundamentalist Christian who issues Bibles to every incoming prisoner, quotes Scripture, whistles "A Mighty Fortress is Our God," and who otherwise is a sadist. So, we root for the criminal inmates against the "good" government prison that tries, unsuccessfully, to dehumanize them. Three plot twists in the last half hour make this a fantastic film.
Sideways (2004)
Miles Raymond and his friend Jack are both losers in their own, very different ways. But they were roommates as college freshmen, and so Miles takes Jack on a tour of California's wine country a week before his wedding in a sort of two-person, weeklong bachelor party of wine-tasting and golf. Miles is a clinically depressed, misanthropic, divorced, alcoholic middle school teacher whose novel has been rejected. He oozes self-hatred and is utterly endearing. Jack is a back-slapping, good looking hunk of a bit-actor who wants to bed a few women before he settles down to marriage. The plot revolves around the two women they meet on their trip, Stephanie and Maya, and the consequences for all involved. Side-splitting humor and deeply human poignancy combine in this travel narrative. I loved Paul Giamatti (Miles) in American Splendor, and he is every bit as good in this film. His character is developed more than Jack's, but perhaps Jack has little character to develop? This movie has received uniformly great reviews (a notable exception being one in the New York Times).
The Simpsons Movie (2007)
After 18 years as one of television's most successful shows, devotees of Springfield's endearingly dysfunctional family will love ninety commercial-free minutes of biting social satire. Or as the DVD case explains the PG-13 rating, the "irreverent humor throughout." Indeed! And best of all, no one gets a free pass — not politics, religion, the media, environmentalists, entertainment, or even gays. There's even a plot. When Homer pollutes all of Springfield by dumping a silo of pig manure into the lake, his family escapes to start life over in Alaska. Later Homer returns to rescue the town from the ominous and incompetent feds. He's the anti-hero as hero. Along the way, he falls out of favor with Marge and his family, but back in love with them all. Others might wonder what's the fuss, and echo Homer's self parody in the beginning of the film: why would anyone pay to see a movie of something they could watch on TV for free?! I definitely count myself in the former group and was happy to pay to watch a favorite family do more of same.
Sir! No Sir! (2005)
Talk about brave soldiers. This documentary film tells the stories of the thousands of active duty GIs and retired veterans, both at home and in Vietnam, who agitated to end the war in Southeast Asia. Their means were many—a network of coffee houses, a full-page ad in the NY Times signed by 1400 active duty soldiers, 300 underground newspapers, sits-ins, public marches, pirate radio, petitions, refusal to go on patrols, and even "fragging" (killing their superior officers with fragment grenades). Many of these people of conscience spent considerable time in prison. The original film footage of the Vietnam war and personal interviews with veterans who explain why they did what they did are deeply moving. These firsthand witnesses knew the truth of war—the degradation, propaganda, government lies, cynicism, torture, and how war might turn some boys into men but it turns far more people into animals. I watched this film with a deep sense of gratitude. Popular history makes fun of Jane Fonda but consider this—in this film you'll see that her audiences included not just leftie hippies but 60,000 active duty soldiers who agreed with her. According to this film the Pentagon documented 503,926 "incidents of desertion." After watching this film read the book by Chris Hedges, War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.
Sketches of Frank Gehry (2005)
In this documentary by his friend Sydney Pollack we meet Frank Gehry (b. 1929), winner of the Pritzker Prize (1989) and controversial rebel rule-breaker in the world of architecture. We also meet colleagues in his firm who contribute to his deconstructionist designs, clients, business executives Mike Eisner and Barry Diller, artists, musicians, a dissenting critic from Princeton, and even Gehry's therapist of thirty years, all of whom comment on Gehry's life and work. I especially enjoyed the considerable time spent in Gehry's studio watching the artistic process unfold with paper models, computer simulations, pen sketches, and so forth. A beautiful sound track accompanies a cinematic tour of his notorious creations around the world, including his signature piece, the titanium-covered Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. Critics complain that his work is perverse, tortured, ugly, and dissonant, but most people acknowledge the remarkable genius of a man from a poor Jewish family who early in his life drove a truck for two years.
Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
Jamal Malik is only one correct answer away from winning 20 million rupees on India's version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" He's a waif and tea-server from India's slums, so the show's producers think that he's cheated. As they nearly beat Jamal to death, the movie repeatedly flashes back to his early childhood and the random events seared in his memory that enabled him to answer the show's arcane questions. But Slumdog is not about how he could answer the game show questions but why he became a contestant in the first place. He's clearly not interested in the money itself. This remarkable film is many things — action thriller, human drama, social commentary on contemporary India, a story of human destiny, and, most of all, a tender romance. Slumdog is far and away one of the best films of the year.
The Son (2002)—French/Belgian
The Belgian carpenter Olivier runs a vocational ed shop for teenagers. When he befriends yet another apprentice, Francais, he could never imagine the consequences of his decision.
The Song Remains the Same: Led Zeppelin in Concert (1976)
This is a mediocre movie, but Led Zeppelin was a great band if you liked their headbanger heavy metal sound. When I saw that this live concert at Madison Square Garden took place in 1973, the year I graduated from high school, I thought a blast from the past would be interesting. But concert movies are tricky. In a sense you get the worst of both worlds — you are not, in fact, present at a live concert, but watching it second hand, and the quality of the music doesn't compare to the studio recordings we're used to from CDs. There's no narration in this film, and really no narrative. By today's standards the technology is forty years old. We learn nothing from or about the band. But for those of that generation like me, it was still fun to watch a band that defined a generation (and sold 300 million albums) with songs like "Stairway to Heaven," "Whole Lotta Love," "Heartbreaker," and "Dazed and Confused" — Jimmy Page on what the film hails as "the electric guitar," Robert Plant (vocals), John Paul Jones (bass guitar, keyboards) and John Bonham (drums).
Spanglish (2004)
Adam Sandler in a serious role? Yes, after a fashion. As the most famous chef in America, husband, and father, he plays John Clasky, and is married to Deborah, a suburban housewife who raises the bar for what it means to be a type-A control freak. When we meet her mother Evelyn we understand why.This Los Angeles family is very wealthy and profoundly dysfunctional. Enter Flor, a Mexican housekeeper who has a teenage daughter Cristina who is the same age as the Clasky's daughter Bernice. Since her mom does not speak English, Cristina narrates the film for us. You can imagine the sub-plots of this "blended" family, but in the end Flor is a source of humanity, warmth, and normalcy for everyone.
Spellbound (2002)
A movie about a spelling bee?! Yes, and it is good if not great, which is why Spellbound was nominated for an Academy Award in 2002. Every year over 9 million kids compete in local spelling bees. I can remember mine forty years ago, can you? The winnowing process brings 249 regional winners to the National Spelling Bee finals for two days of competition at the Grand Hyatt in Washington, DC. that are televised live by ESPN. This documentary follows the family stories of eight children from drastically different backgrounds who made it to the 1999 finals. My favorite was Angela who came from a rural farm in Texas where her father is a laborer who entered the country as an illegal alien and who still does not speak English. Then there are the blue bloods with driven parents who hire private tutors for their kids in between horseback lessons, an introverted wunderkind Ted from Rolla, Missouri who does not study at all, and April whose father owned a run-down bar for forty-five years and whose mother is a ringer for Archie Bunker's wife Edith. Watch the film to see which one of these likable kids takes home the first prize of $10,000.
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring (2004)—Korean
A tiny Buddhist "monastery," big enough for an elder monk and his ten-year old disciple, floats moored in a remote, isolated lake, surrounded by spectacular forested mountains shrouded in mists and a whole lot of silence. The dialogue in this film is minimalist. We do not even learn the names of the monk and his disciple. But the themes that it engages, such as desire as the cause of suffering, possessiveness, anger, sin, redemption, loss of innocence, wisdom, and the like are universal experiences. The film passes through the four seasons of the year, an obvious metaphor for the developmental stages of the two characters. In each successive season the characters are about a decade older, so that in circular fashion the ten-year old apprentice at the beginning of the film is the new elder at the end, complete with his own young apprentice. In fact, this rather captivating, meditative and philosophic narrative takes several unexpected plot turns. The gorgeous scenery in this film would alone make it worth watching. In Korean with English subtitles.
The Squid and the Whale (2005)
The title of this film refers to the single positive memory that the teenager Walt could convey to his school psychologist, about a time when he and his mother visited New York's Natural History Museum. Walt's parents, Bernard and Joan, are both writer-snobs, a trait that does not serve their family well after they separate, especially because Joan's career is flourishing and Bernard's is tanking. After a family meeting when they tell Walt and his younger brother Frank that they are separating, the film tracks how everyone takes sides, plays favorites, blames, and manipulates. Fear and insecurity stalk everyone. Whose night is it to take the cat? Joint custody is hell. It's her obligation to pay the tennis instructor. Walt and Frank do poorly in school, drink too much, run away, and experiment sexually as ways to act out. Bernard, an insufferable and self-absorbed egotist, has a fling with one of his college students, while Joan sleeps with the tennis instructor. This film won numerous awards, but I thought it had an ambiguous and unsatisfying ending. . . like those of many families deconconstructed by failed marriages.
Standing in the Shadows of Motown (2002)
Everyone knows what Motown music is, but almost no one knows the Funk Brothers. They were the behind the scenes studio band of that powerful music movement, and played on more number one hits than the Beatles, Rolling Stones or Elvis Presley combined. This documentary tells their story and ends with a reunion concert of the aging veterans in Detroit.
Stop Loss (2008)
"You know that box inside your head where you put all that bad stuff you can't deal with? Well, my box is full and all that shit's comin' out," says Sgt. Brandon King, a decorated war hero. He should know. At the end of his Iraq tour he intended to quit the military but was handed a stop-loss and return ticket — the involuntary extension of his active duty service. Of the 750,000 Americans who have served in Iraq, over 80,000 have been stop-lossed. The film follows King and his buddies after they return to a hero's welcome in small town Texas and empty that "box inside your head." It's a box brimming with nightmares, binge drinking, domestic violence, rage, regret, and very deep ambivalence about the experience of war. King and his buddies each present a different facet and response to their return home. A day or two before I watched this film, the most comprehensive study done concluded that 300,000 American veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Some reviews have complained that this film is preachy and that the way King finally responds to the stop-loss is unconvincing, but in my mind the merits of reminding us of war's human toll exceed any flaws.
The Story of the Weeping Camel (2003)—Mongolian
Shot on location in the Gobi desert of Mongolia, this unlikely but fascinating film documents the lives of a four-generation family of herders who live together but all alone in tents. If we did not know this was planet earth, the landscape might lead us to believe it was the moon. Wind, sand, rocks, sun, and the distant horizon of mountains are about all the eye can see. Tragedy strikes when an albino camel is born and the mother refuses to have anything to do with it. She spits at her baby, kicks it, flees from it, and refuses to let it nurse. This is a heart-rending natural tragedy, but for the desert dwellers it is a looming economic disaster. After trying every trick of the trade to reconcile mother and baby, the great-grand-father advises that they must call for a musician to perform an ancient, traditional ritual to heal the camel. They do so by dispatching the two very young brothers Dude and Ugna, who ride their camels alone across the desert wastelands some 30 miles to the nearest town. There they encounter the distractions of television and computers in a sub-plot of culture clash. But they succeed in their mission, and the rest of the film records the result. Breath-taking scenery and provocative ethnographic questions make this a very special film. In Mongolian with English subtitles.
Stranger Than Fiction (2006)
Harold Crick's (Will Ferrell) compulsively ordered and very lonely life is ruled by numbers, which makes sense because he is an IRS auditor. He brushes his teeth the same number of strokes each day, and knows exactly how many steps that he walks to the bus stop. A narrator voice-over gives us a running commentary, and soon we realize that the narrator is in fact Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson), a novelist who is writing the story of Harold's life and struggling to end the novel, and Crick's life, in a fitting way. His real life is her novel's plot. Harold also starts to hear Eiffel's voices in his head, and so he discovers that his life is unfinished and awaits her literary decisions as well as his personal choices. As his life approaches death Harold also falls for a delightfully quirky woman named Ana, who is his opposite—she sports tattoos and dropped out of Harvard Law School because she wanted to open a bakery. This is a very clever comedy that also stars Dustin Hoffman as a literature professor who functions as Crick's "therapist" to figure out the narrative plot of his life and the likely choices that Eiffel might make, and Queen Latifah as the novelist's assistant. This is a great comedy, love story, and poignant consideration of the "story" that every person must live.
Sugar (2008)
Major League baseball might be America's past time, but this film reminds us that it takes a global talent search to make it work. The fictionalized story follows Miguel "Sugar" Santos from his dusty village in the Dominican Republic to an Iowa minor league team, and then to his final fortune in New York City as he chases his dream, and family hopes and expectations, to become a big leaguer. Early on, though, we realize that this is not a baseball film; it's a story about the costs, consequences, and emotional dislocation that immigration to America require. "It's only a game, right?" jokes Sugar's buddy. Well, yes and no, and watching this film we learn why. Sugar himself, played by a nonprofessional actor named Algenis Pérez Sotois, is the sweetest of characters. There isn't a single villain in this film, but Sugar's experience shines a brutally revealing light on the human factor behind the glitz and glamour of professional sports. Mainly in Spanish with English subtitles.
Super Size Me (2004)
Before I saw this film I had dismissed it as a piece of lightweight pop cinema. In a sense it is, but in another sense it is a serious documentary about a national epidemic whose name is obesity. Here in California, a recent newspaper article reported that only one quarter of 1.3 million school children tested could pass minimal physical fitness requirements. At the current rate, obesity will pass smoking as the leading cause of preventable death. Perhaps it is unfair that Super Size Me picks on McDonalds, but it is, nevertheless, far and away the largest purveyor and most powerful icon of junk food morbidity. What would happen, wondered Morgan Spurlock, if he ate three meals a day for 30 days at McDonalds? This film shows you. He followed three rules: everything he ate had to be on the Mickey D menu; he had to sample every offering at least once; and he would only order "super size" when prompted by the cashier. Spurlock consumed about 5,000 calories a day of sugar, fat and salt, added 25 pounds, jacked his blood pressure and cholesterol numbers into the stratosphere, experienced head aches and chest pains, and came pretty close to killing himself. McDonalds denies any cause-effect relation, but after this film it discontinued its "super size" option. The humor in this film makes it an excellent vehicle to communicate to kids, but also adults, the serious consequences of our junk food epidemic. In the end, Spurlock survives his experiment, and his vegan girl friend, who had complained that even their sex life suffered, restores him to culinary sanity.
Surfwise (2007)
Dr. Dorian "Doc" Paskowitz is eighty-five when we meet him in this documentary about his remarkable family. After medical training at Stanford, a respectable career as a physician, two failed marriages, and then a sexcapade around the world, "Doc" married his third wife Juliette. They decided on a carefree life of radical non-conformity centered around surfing. For the next twenty-five years they raised their nine kids (eight boys, one girl) in three different 24' RV campers. Daily surfing and strict diets were compulsory, formal schooling of any kind was prohibited, and money was scarce. Their whimsical lives as vagabonds sounds fun, but "Doc's" uncompromising idealism and tyrannical ways amounted to physical and emotional abuse according to interviews with his adult kids. After ten years of bitter acrimony as the adult kids tried to make their way in the real world with absolutely no preparation for it, the family meets for an emotional reunion in the last part of the film. Even a badly broken family is better than no family, weeps Juliette at the reunion, but this film makes you wonder. Jonathan Paskowitz helped to produce the film.
Synecdoche, New York (2008)
The question for this complex and weird film is whether writer-director Charlie Kaufman's artistic ambition will ultimately frustrate viewer patience. When I saw the film, a couple in front of me walked out halfway through. You will probably love or hate this film; reviews have been sharply divided.
Philip Seymour Hoffman stars as Caden Cotard, a theater director mired in all the midlife crises, real and imagined, of body, mind and spirit. The film begins conventionally enough, or so it seems, but there are telltale signs early-on that Kaufman is going to play with reality itself — a cartoon on the family TV features Caden as a character, and a realtor walks a client through a house that is permanently on fire. Those are two ominous metaphors.
The giveway is that the name "Cotard" bears a striking resemblance to that of the French postmodernist Jean-Francois Lyotard. We shouldn't be surprised when Caden quits his career doing theater among the "blue hairs" in suburban Schenectady, New York, where his latest production was "Death of a Salesman," and with the help of a MacArthur genius grant (a cruel irony given his circumstances) moves to a cavernous warehouse in New York City and recreates his confused life through what eventually becomes a cast of hundreds of characters. Yes, life is a stage and we're the actors.
In his book The Post-Modern Condition (1979), Lyotard made (in)famous the notion of "incredulity toward meta-narrrative," a fancy way of saying that there are no truly universal or absolute meanings or truths in life, and that all meaning is a personal or social construction. This is exactly what Caden tries to do — he creates meaning in his life through characters who portray his life. He keeps changing the name of the play, one of which is "Simulacrum" (= an insubstantial semblance of something). He keeps saying that he "finally" knows how he wants to direct the play. Indeed, the play is never finished but is instead a building project that piles floor upon floor of sets; it never ends. For Kaufman there's a very thin line between authenticity and absurdity, genuine reality and mere representation, fact and fiction, living life and playing roles, healthy self-awareness (however painful) and oppressive self-consciousness, and between true life and certain death.
Does Caden's effort to manufacture even the barest micro-meaning make any sense? The last line of the movie offers a glimmer of hope. Maybe.
Talk to Her (2002)—Spanish
This film begins in one place by provoking questions about whether life in a persistent vegetative state is truly life, and whether and how a loved one might relate, if at all, to a person in a coma. It ends in a far different place. Marco is a travel writer whose girlfriend Lydia is in a coma. When he asks the doctor whether there is any hope, the doctor responds, "Medically or scientifically, no, but if you choose to believe, go ahead." The male nurse Benigno does believe. He truly loves the dancer Alicia, who is a patient of his also in a coma. He talks to her, baths her, cuts her hair, and tenderly cares for her. He tells Marcos that the last four years caring for her have been the richest and most rewarding years of his life. The film would have been good enough with just this trajectory, but director Pedro Almodovar drives three of these four subjects toward entirely unexpected and ambiguous ends that leave you with many more questions than answers. In Spanish with English subtitles.
Tarnation (2003)
"We're all just one happy family," insists grandfather Adolph, "and we all love God." How and why that tragic falsehood got perpetuated in his horribly dysfunctional family is the subject of Jonathan Caouette's intense, emotionally raw, and deeply sad autobiographical documentary. His mother Renee—for all her madness, mental illness, 200 shock therapy treatments as a child, drug abuse, rape, and over a hundred psychiatric hospitalizations from 1965 to 1999, knows better: "Screwed up parents raise screwed up kids. I just wanted to break the cycle." She did not and could not, and her son Jonathan, writer and director, has paid a horrible psychic price: ''I don't want to be like my mom," he frets in a final scene. But he repeated the past and more, including growing up gay in Texas, and developing a "depersonalization disorder" in which one views one's life in a detached, third person manner as if in a dream.
Caouette incorporates numerous media into his cinematic catharsis — super 8 home movies that he started taking when he was 11, still photos, phone messages, movie clips, tape recordings, and even simple text. He fires these at the viewer in a non-linear fashion and at a staccato pace, often filling split screens with dozens of overlapping frames. The disorienting effect mimics his life, and even draws the viewer into his own state of mind. Caouette is a gifted film maker. As a human being he gets high marks for sheer bravery for confronting his horrific past, and for his deep tenderness toward his deranged mother who came to live with him in New York City. No person should bear even a fraction of the curse that he inherited. Tarnation makes at least two claims to fame. It has won a place as one of the "Top Ten Films of the Year" on over 50 such lists, and was reputedly made for $218 on a Macintosh and edited with the bundled iMovie software.
Taxi to the Dark Side (2007)
On December 5, 2002, an Afghan taxi driver named Diliwar was taken to America's prison at the Bagram Air Force Base. Five days later he was dead. At first the military said that he had died of "natural causes," but in a later inquiry the coroner testified that his lower body had been "pulpified." On his death certificate issued by the military the box marked "homicide" was checked. Taxi to the Dark Side won an Academy Award as best documentary for portraying detainee abuse and torture at Bagram, Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo. There are at least 83,000 detainees in US custody; over 108 of them have died, at least 37 by homicide. The film combines interviews the military police who interrogated Diliwar, genuine heroes in this sordid story like Alberto Mora (General Counsel to the Navy 2001–2006), grotesque still photos that shock the conscience, justifications of the abuse by John Yoo, and commentary by investigative reporters and attorneys. If you think that this film exaggerates, or if you still believe that American torture consisted of some isolated incidents by a "few bad apples," and was not official public policy engineered by our top officials, then read the books by Philippe Sands, Torture Team; Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values (New York: Palgrave, 2008), and Jane Mayer, The Dark Side; The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals (New York: Doubleday, 2008).
There Will Be Blood (2007)
This film is almost three hours long, and there's not a word of dialogue for the first fifteen minutes, but I could barely believe it when the credits rolled. Based upon the novel Oil! (1927) by Upton Sinclair, the film is set in the wild California frontier at the end of the 19th and beginning of the early twentieth-centuries. Daniel Day-Lewis stars as Daniel Plainview, a silver miner who discovers crude oil on his land, and Paul Dano, who plays a preacher named Eli Sunday who sells rights to the oil on his family's property in order to help his church. Playview and Sunday become moral rivals, and thirty years later, at the end of the film, both characters have been deeply corrupted. Plainview goes mad, whereas Eli admits that he's a fake and God doesn't exist. In an important sub-plot, Plainview's adopted son lives under his father's very dark shadow, and declares at the end of the film, "I thank God I have none of you in me." Plainview's own last words are a confessional understatement: "I'm finished." Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, the film won two Academy Awards — Best Actor for Day-Lewis and Best Cinematography for Robert Elswitt.
This Film is Not Yet Rated (2006)
The whole notion of rating films based upon their content is genuinely complex and controversial, especially in the internet age when anyone can view anything in the privacy of their homes. Should we "censor" films, let the public "censure" them by audience response, or just let the free market work its magic when people vote with their wallets? What are reasonable parameters for artistic expression in the public square? Director Kirby Dick gives a uniformly one-sided view in this documentary. According to Dick, the Motion Picture Association of America, made (in)famous by the high profile Jack Valenti (its head from 1966 to 2004), represents all that's wrong and unfair about Hollywood from an artist's perspective. The MPAA is secretive, arbitrary in its decisions, moralistic, defends corporate monopolies and the major studios to the detriment of independents, and is harsh on sex while giving graphic violence a free ride. There are grounds for all those complaints, but don't look to this film for a serious treatment of such an important topic.
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005)
In this his debut as a director, Tommy Lee Jones plays Pete Perkins, a grizzled cattle rancher on the Texas-Mexico border. Pete befriends and bonds with an illegal immigrant named Melquiades Estrada whom he hired as a ranch hand. He also promised to bury Melquiades back in his hometown if he happened to die north of the border. In a freak accident, a rookie border patrol agent named Mike Norton murders Melquiades, who had fired in his direction at a coyote. Pete knows that the redneck immigration authorities will do nothing, so in an act of vigilante justice he exhumes Melquiades, forces Norton to carry his body across the most lonesome, isolated, hostile territory you can imagine, and eventually gives him a proper burial. In the end, Norton asks forgiveness for killing Melquiades (disproving his wife Lou Anne's judgment that he's “a sonofabitch beyond redemption”), who otherwise remind us of all the many obscure, insignificant people whose fates are forgotten by the world—but not by someone as loyal as Tommy Lee Jones. Written by screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga (Amores Perros, 21 Grams).
Times and Winds (2007) — Turkey
Writer and director Reha Erdem situates his film in a mountainous Turkish village to explore the rhythms of nature and multi-generational family strife. He tells the story from the perspective of three adolescent classmates. Omer hates his imam father; he dreams, prays, and plans how he might die. His best friend Yakup is infatuated with the school teacher and enraged when he catches his own father leering at her through a window. Yildiz slaves away like all the women in this movie, cooking, cleaning, and caring for her baby brother. All the themes of adolescent coming of age emerge here — birth and death, sex and shame, guilt and longing, fear and confusion, oedipal love and male violence, nationalism and religion. The imperatives of nature surround everyone, with spectacular scenes of mountains and sea, wind and rain, a cloudy moon and a solar eclipse, animals mating, birthing, and being butchered. Erdem organizes the film around Islam's five calls to prayer, but in reverse order as if to accentuate the disorientation of adolescence: night, evening, afternoon, noon, and morning. In Turkish with English subtitles.
To Be and To Have (2002)—French
On the last day of school, teacher George Lopez dismisses his students for the final time with hugs and kisses. He is nearly in tears, and so are we the viewers. To Be and To Have, France's highest grossing documentary ever, follows Lopez and his class of a dozen elementary kids ages 3-11 in rural France for most of the academic year. The film is entirely without comment or narration, except for a two or three minute segment towards the end when Lopez explains how and why he spent 35 years as a teacher. The reason? Pure love and joy, which goes a long way toward explaining why he was a master teacher, and this otherwise slow-moving film is so powerful and even magic. We see the kids reading and writing, fighting and farming, baking, sledding and celebrating class birthdays. In my favorite scene, Lopez coaches little Jo Jo to discover that he can count to a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, and even a billion or more. You see his little mind reeling with the unfolding realization that numbers never stop! For the most part the kids are oblivious to the camera. The true story of a life well spent, the spontaneity of children, and spectacular scenery of rural France make this film a visual and emotional delight. In French with English subtitles.
Tom Dowd and the Language of Music (2003)
Pick up most any hit record beginning in the late 1940s, especially any recording done with Atlantic Records, and you will likely see that one Tom Dowd was the producer or recording engineer. In this loving tribute to Dowd, who died October 27, 2002 before the film was finished, those inside the guild honor the memory of one whom they universally acknowledge was a legendary genius and wonderful human being. In his younger years Dowd was a physics student at Columbia, and even worked on the atom bomb project (he was present at the Bikini Atoll tests), but his mother was an opera singer and perhaps he was destined for music. Dowd was a master technical innovator, musical aesthete, coach, father figure, and psychologist. He himself narrates most of the film, but we are also treated to original concert footage (Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, etc.) and retrospective interviews with a number of the stars whose sounds he perfected, including Ray Charles, Eric Clapton, and Greg Allman. The five minutes or so when Dowd sits at a console and walks us through the thirty-year-old master copy of "Layla," starting with only the guitars and then adding the various parts until they pulse with that incredibly evocative sound that defined an era, interspersed with poignant reflections by Clapton, are worth the entire film. One disappoint in this otherwise fascinating glimpse of the history of music recording since the late 1940s is that we learn nothing at all personal about Dowd, and nothing at all about any weaknesses, failures, misjudgments, and the like, that would have made this entirely likable person even more richly human.
Touch the Sound (2004)
In this documentary about her life and work, the percussionist Evelyn Glennie (a Grammy award-winner) does for sound what her fellow Scot and environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy did for sight in the film Rivers and Tides (2002). In fact, both films were directed by Thomas Riedelsheimer. "My whole life," says Glennie, "is about sound; it's what makes me tick as a human being." That's a remarkable statement when about thirty minutes into the film you learn that by the time she was a teenager she was profoundly deaf. From playing a snare drum in New York's Grand Central Station, improvising with Fred Frith in an abandoned warehouse in Germany, visiting her brother at their family farm in Aberdeenshire, or staging an impromptu session in Tokyo using chop sticks on restaurant paraphernalia, Glennie explores the aesthetics, psychology and physicality of sound. Splattering water, pneumatic hammers at construction sites, a tap dancer, and general urban din all provide material for her reflections. Most of the sounds in the film are experimental, eerie, and dissonant, but to her credit Glennie amazes us with the complex miracle of one of our five senses.
Touching the Void (2003)
This true story of two British mountain climbers, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, will hands down be one of the most gripping and inspirational films you will ever watch. After scaling the 21,000 foot Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes, their descent morphed into a nightmare disaster when Simpson fell and broke his leg. Yates tried to lower him down the mountain, but eventually cut the rope and sent his partner to his death. Or not. The remainder of the film shows how Simpson fell even further into an enormous crevasse and made it down alive by actually lowering himself deeper into that crevasse. The film makers re-enact the drama with actors, but continually switch back to interviews with both Simpson and Yates who describe exactly what happened, what they thought and how they felt. The only story of human bravery, courage and survival that compares to this is Shackleton's failed Antarctica trek in 1914–1916 (recounted in the Imax Endurance). After six surgeries, and an unflincing defense of Yates for cutting the rope, Simpson still climbs today.
La Tragedia de Macario (2006)—Mexico
Directed and written by Pablo Véliz, this film succeeds not because it is an excellent film, but because it does a sufficient job in humanizing an important political and ethical issue of our day—illegal immigration from Mexico to the United States. Macario is an illiterate laborer who loses his job when the farmer who employs him sells his land and fires all his workers. He's an eminently likable character, as is his lovely wife, and together they are tired of starvation wages. When by fate Macario comes into enough money, he and his friend Felipe decide to cross the border into San Antonio. They pay a "coyote" to take them across, but when they show up for the trip he herds a dozen of them into a locked and unventilated freight car. Tragedy awaits these passengers, the coyote, and even the Mexican farmer who sold his land. Based upon a true story. In Spanish with English subtitles.
Transamerica (2005)
In a remarkable performance that reminded me of Charlize Theron's transformation into Eileen Wuernos, Felicity Huffman plays a transsexual man named Bree who is a few days shy of having his male-to-female sexual reassignment surgery. When she discovers that she fathered a son long ago, her therapist will not sign off for the surgery until she confronts her past, so Bree travels to New York City and meets her son Toby. Toby is a street prostitute and drug abuser who aspires to make porn movies in Los Angeles. Bree poses as a missionary sort, and the two of them take a way-too-long and boring road trip from New York to California. This film did not work for me for many reasons. The relationship between Toby and Bree was not believable, nor was the film's ending. But Huffman's portrayal does an incredible job of capturing the pain, emotional isolation, and confusion of a person who lives in this nether world of unspoken taboos. She is intelligent, modest, deferential, homely, and has no interest in making any political statement. Why has this film been billed as a comedy? Anyone who has experienced these very real life issues would not find any of it laughable.
The Triplets of Belleville (2003)
Writer and director Sylvain Chomet has created what many have hailed as one of the most creative animated films ever. The film, which has no dialogue, is full of sounds (barking dog, trains, frogs, jazz) and populated with exaggerated characters that are at once grotesque (obese, pigeon-toed, etc.), hilarious, poignant, and deeply human. The satire follows the fortunes of an orphaned boy named Champion, who, after obsessive-compulsive training by his whistle-wielding grandmother Madame Souza, enters the Tour de France. He's kidnapped in the middle of the race by square-shouldered, cigarette-smoking French mafiosos in sunglasses. The bad guys take Champion and two other cyclists to Belleville, a surreal world where like horses in harnesses they ride stationary bikes in a betting parlor. But the grandmother and their faithful dog Bruno follow in hot pursuit, and with the help of the triplets of Belleville—three eccentric, spinster, burlesque buddies—they rescue Champion. This simple plot, though, does not even begin to suggest the surreal quality of this delightfully quirky film which deserves its uniformly rave reviews.
Tsotsi (2005)—South African
The Soweto gang leader Tsotsi (literally, "thug") appears to be a hoodlum without a conscience. The film begins with his gang's murder of a subway rider, a brutal beating of his colleague who dared to raise issues of morality, and then a car-jacking. Tsotsi crashes the new car and finds a newborn baby boy in the back seat. This film won an Oscar for best foreign film, but just at this early point in the film I believe the plot becomes entirely predictable. We know that the little baby will humanize Tsotsi (he does), and that the little guy will be returned safely to his parents (he is). So, the film really hinges on Tsotsi's character development and road to redemption. I also thought the film ended somewhat ambiguously, as perhaps it should have, with Tsotsi's arrest. Director Gavin Hood clearly intends not only to tell a personal story but also to comment on the horrendous socio-economic inequalities in the post-apartheid South African townships that contributed to Tsotsi's life as a criminal. In Zulu, Xhosa and Afrikaans with English subtitles.
The Tunnel (2001)—German
In the 1960s there were dozens of tunnels dug underneath the Berlin Wall that was erected in August of 1961. This docu-drama tells the story of one of the first and more famous tunnels. Hasso Herschel (renamed Harry Melchior in the film) was a famous swimmer in East Germany who walked across Checkpoint Charlie in disguise and with a fake passport on August 26, 1961, just two weeks after the wall was built and he had become a national sports hero. Having spent four years in prison already, he had had enough. That much is made clear in the first fifteen minutes of the film. The next two hours-plus recount how he and his companions dug a tunnel 15-20 feet deep and 500 feet long back into East Germany, and then helped more than a thousand people escape to freedom in the next twenty years. Each person has their own story of fear, compromise, accommodation, regret, and bravery, including the ominous Stasi agent Herr Kruger. At 167 minutes this film is way too long, but it's a grim reminder of political oppression and the human will for freedom and family that it provokes. In German with English subtitles.
Tupac; Resurrection (2003)
In this documentary Tupac Shakur—gangsta rapper, movie star, rape convict, and murder victim—narrates the story of his own life and work. And what a work, with 36 million albums sold (most of them since his death in 1996 at the age of 25), and 150 songs still unrecorded. As I watched this film I moved through successive waves of fascination, even admiration, empathy, and then anger and revulsion. Born to a crack-addicted mom who was in prison when she was pregnant with Tupac, with no father around, Tupac insisted that he spoke for the many hopeless people he grew up with who were trapped in chronic unemployment, police brutality, hunger, poverty and racism. Just as the news media shocked viewers into the horrors of Vietnam with their gruesome images, so, Tupac insisted, he was only chronicling the ghetto "war zone" most Americans would otherwise never see: "All my songs deal with the pain I experienced in childhood." But you know you have big problems when your own community censures you, including the likes of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Dionne Warwick. With his trash-talking vulgarity, misogynist lyrics, and rage, Tupac made himself an easy target. In his better moments he admitted he was "young and dumb." In the end, you can only lament the self-destructive life and tragic death of an immensely talented artist.
Turtles Can Fly (2004)—Kurdish
Kurdish director Bahman Ghobadi situates this poignant film in a Kurdish refugee camp on the Turkish-Iraq border just before the outbreak of the US-Iraq war. The film revolves around a 13-year old boy nicknamed "Satellite" for his enterprising ways. Satellite barters, buys and installs TV dishes so the village can get foreign news about rumors of war. He organizes the village children into an economic cartel. They clear fields of land mines, which they then resell, and stack discarded empty artillery casings. Parallel to this big picture of village life among displaced Kurds runs an important smaller story. Satellite has a crush on the orphaned girl Arin, who along with her armless brother Hengov takes care of the blind toddler Risa whom she bore when she was raped by Iraqi soldiers. Only in the last few minutes of the film does the war begin, and of course the Kurds were happy for liberation from Saddam by America. But when you learn what happens to Satellite, Arin, Hengov and little Risa, you understand why in the final scene Satellite turns his back on the American army vehicles as they roar through the muddy village in the rain, as his buddy exclaims, "I thought you always wanted to see the Americans." I think Ghobadi intends a deeply human commentary rather than a political statement, to the effect that seen through the surreal experiences of these children, war is hell on earth. It is difficult to know which is more real or more terrifying, the nightmares that Hengov has or the "reality" of their waking hours. In Kurdish with English subtitles.
U23D (2008)
Review by David Werther
C.S. Lewis once reflected on the difference between looking at a beam of light coming through the roof of a shed, and looking along that beam of light. Looking at the beam one sees dust motes; looking along the beam one sees the sky. "Looking at" is the 3rd-person perspective, the neurologist's point of view: neurons firing. "Looking along" is the 1st-person perspective, the patient's point of view: sorrow, love, pain, and joy. The 3rd-person vantage point is outside and impersonal; the 1st-person point of view is inside and personal.
Watching a concert film is often self-defeating. The visual images distract us from the music, sometimes forcing us to experience the show from the outside, when the whole point of live music is to enjoy it from the inside. The brilliant performances of U2 and the 3D technology in U23D change this; they push us into the show. At times I felt goose bumps; my eyes watered; and at the end of the concert I applauded, and was not the only one in the theatre clapping.
Much of the film was shot in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The 14-song set list includes: "Vertigo," "Miss Sarajevo," "Bullet the Blue Sky," "The Fly" and "Yahweh." And, there is a reading of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In my experience of the show, the first encore of "The Fly" and "With or Without You" was jarring and disturbing. Bono once described "The Fly" as a phone call from hell from a guy who is enjoying it there. At that point of the show I wished I were seeing hell from the outside instead of experiencing its noise and confusion on the inside. To be sure, the show ends with "Yahweh," a song of redemption, but I was too shell-shocked from "The Fly" to fully find healing in that song. And, the song played over the credits, which significantly undercut its impact.
In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis writes about a "sweet Desire" that "cuts across our ordinary distinctions between wanting and having. To have it is, by definition, a want, to want it, we find, is to have it." I experienced something of that wanting and having in the 6-song sequence: "Sunday Bloody Sunday," "Bullet the Blue Sky," "Miss Sarajevo,“ the reading of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, "Pride (In the Name of Love)," "Where the Streets Have no Name," and "One." However, it would not only be pointless but self-defeating to try to dissect the connection between that desire and U2's performances of these songs; the point is not to look at dust motes, but to see the sky.
Unchained Memories; Readings from the Slave Narratives (2003)
The end of the Civil War in 1865 freed about 4 million slaves in America, a significant number of whom lived into the 1940s. During the Depression, the Federal Writers Project hired people to interview and record first person narratives from these former slaves, the last first-hand resource that could document their experiences. Today the Library of Congress houses 2,000 such interviews, in their original "dialect" and broken English, in the simply-titled Slave Narratives. This film uses original still photographs, contemporary re-enactments, slave music, a running commentary by Whoopi Goldberg, and, most notably and thus the film's title, dramatic readings of those original slave narratives by contemporary African-American actors and actresses like Oprah Winfrey. In just over an hour you learn about the daily horrors of slave life from those who lived to tell of it—relentless work, horrendous housing and diet, the denial of education, sexual violence, and how the "masters" used Christianity to keep their slaves passive. This is a deeply moving film about our nation's very recent past. I recommend watching it in conjunction with the seven-part PBS documentary on the civil rights movement called Eyes on the Prize.
Narrated by Robin Williams, this 60-minute film tells the story of the Flemish priest Damien de Veuster, better known as Father Damien, who followed God's call to serve the leper colony on the Hawaiian island of Molokai. Beginning in 1866 the government segregated lepers to the barren island of Molokai where they were abandoned to hostile, isolated and horribly primitive conditions, with no housing or even potable water. In 1873, at the age of 33, Father Damien arrived to serve the 600 dispossessed people. Passionate, driven, and the object of baseless criticisms from Protestants, Father Damien provided for the material needs of the people (housing, food, medical care) as well as their spiritual needs. He even built their coffins and dug their graves. Sixteen years later, in 1889 he died there of leprosy. In 1995 Pope John Paul declared Father Damien "blessed" (beatified), which is the second of three stages to canonization as a saint.
Under the Bombs (2008) — France/Lebanon/UK
In the summer of 2006 Israel bombed southern Lebanon for 33 straight days, after which a cease fire was declared. 1189 people died and perhaps a million were made refugees. This film was shot on location after the cease-fire, and uses only two professional actors. Tony is a Christian taxi driver who takes Zeina, a Shiite who had been residing in Dubai, to find her son and sister. They search refugee centers, schools and convents, and end their improbable journey in a monastery where only the inanities of war could explain the bizarre conclusion. The film effectively takes you to the center of the war zone — bull dozers excavating mass graves, thumping helicopters deploying UN troops, bombed out roads and bridges, and the rubble and ruin of people's lives. "Yes, the hatred keeps growing," says one young Lebanese mother, as she stands in front of a shell of a building that used to be her apartment. In Arabic with English subtitles.
The U.S. Versus John Lennon (2006)
Today the Dixie Chicks and Bono speak their political minds, but this period piece on John Lennon makes them look tepid by comparison. Everyone remembers Lennon as a musical genius, but beyond music-making he crafted a savvy and principled political persona that found its reason for being in protesting the Vietnam war (in which two million Vietnamese died). The soundtrack will bring goose bumps to baby boomers, as will the archival footage of the war in Southeast Asia and protests at home, the cast of characters, including Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, Angela Davis and Bobbie Seale, and Yoko Ono's retrospective reflections. Only the last third of this documentary deals with the film's title, the five year effort of the Nixon administration and the Immigration and Naturalization Service to deport Lennon, along with the harassment and intimidation of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. In the end Lennon won permanent residency after Nixon's landslide victory in 1972. When a reporter asked if he bore any grudges, Lennon replied, "No, I believe time wounds all heels." This film wanders in ways both good and bad, and is better at documenting the pervasive cultural turmoil than the specific legal case against Lennon, but it makes you wonder where serious political protest has gone.
Vertigo (1958)
With fifty feature-length films to his credit, Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) churned out nearly a film a year for the better part of his adult life. 2008 marks the 50th anniversary of Vertigo, a film of dark dreams, obsession of a type that is more like possession, madness, fear, love and guilt. And no small amount of mystery and intrigue until the final minutes. Set in San Francisco, Jimmy Stewart stars as Scotty, a detective who had to retire from the police force because of a traumatic experience with heights. We know what his vertigo begot in the first minutes of the film, but not in the very last scene. Scotty does his college friend Gavin a favor, which is to tail his wife Madeleine who has been "possessed" by the long-dead Carlotta Valdes. That kindness turns out to be a distinctly bad idea. The scenery, the ominous musical score, the now quaint roles of gender and justice, and Hitchcock's genius for mining the depths of the human psyche all make Vertigo well worth watching fifty years on.
The Violin (2007) — Mexico
Don Plutarco Hidalgo is an aging and illiterate peasant farmer, but he still plays the violin with his one good hand. His son plays the guitar and his grandson collects the spare change as they play in restaurants and bars, then sleep on the streets at night. But their real passion is the guerilla movement of other peasants who are resisting the oppressive government. When the army raids, loots and torches their little village, the guerilla movement is stranded in the dense mountain jungles without their cache of weapons. Plutarco borrows a mule and returns to their village, telling the occupying soldiers that he wants to check his crops. At his age, he's able to convince the soldiers, and the commander takes a shine to Plutarco's violin playing. I won't spoil just where that violin takes this powerful film about oppression and liberation, only to say that as the film itself demonstrates, it's the stuff of multi-generational songs sung at peasant campfires. Filmed in black and white, in Spanish with English sub-titles.
The Visitor (2007)
In the first scene of this movie, a fifty-something widower named Walter quits his fifth piano teacher and sells his piano. His buttoned-up and boring life as an economics professor in Connecticut has flat-lined emotionally. In the final scene, Walter's grooving on an African drum in the underground of the New York City subway. Formulaic, far-fetched, even predictable? You'll have to decide, but many critics have loved this film. When Walter is forced to present a paper in NYC, he returns to an apartment he owns there, only to discover two squatters from Senegal and Syria. But they are more than mere squatters for several important reasons, and how their stories intersect form the plot of this movie and the reason why Walter found authenticity in his life after admitting that for so very long he had "only been pretending."
Volver (2006)—Spain
In this complicated, absurdist and comedic saga by the Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, five women from three generations negotiate the slings and arrows of life. Raimunda's (Penélope Cruz) husband Paco assaults her teenage daughter Paula, who in turn murders him with a kitchen knife. They stuff his body in a freezer. Raimunda's sister Sole lost her husband, and together they lost their parents in a fire, or so they wrongly believe. But then their mother Irene "reappears" from her deceased sister's house (volver, "to return") as what the villagers think is a spirit, but turns out to be the real flesh and blood person who wants to settle life's business with her two girls and their friend Agustina—whose mother had an affair with Irene's husband. Thus, one reviewer compared Volver to high brow soap opera. My wife and I loved it, but agreed that the many plot trajectories require a second viewing to understand and appreciate it all. In Spanish with English subtitles.
Walk the Line (2005)
As with the movie Ray, I would think that it would be difficult to make a dull film about such a larger than life figure as Johnny Cash. Beginning with the trama-inducing death of his brother Jack in rural Arkansas, his overbearing father who blamed him for his brother's death, a tour in Germany with the Air Force where he wrote his first song, and his self-destructive addictions, the film takes us to Cash's eventual marriage proposal to June Carter on stage in Canada. Carter and her parents, for all practical purposes, saved Cash's life and career. Both Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon (who won an Oscar for best actress for her performance) sing Cash's songs; no voice-over lip syncs here. My only disappointment with this film, like the film Ray, is that it ends while Cash is still a young man. He only got better with age. Others have complained that the film makes almost no mention of Cash's rather outspoken Christian faith. But these are minor quibbles about a good film about a great man and musician.
Wall (2004)—Israeli-Palestinian
In 2002 Israel began constructing a 400-mile "fence" along the Green Line that separates Israel and the West Bank. This "wall" consists of 25' concrete panels, trenches, endless razor wire, guard towers, sensors, alarms, cameras, radars and check points. It is only 50 yards wide, but in fact it symbolizes an immense geo-political gulf. Director Simone Bitton was born in Morocco, educated in Paris, and resides in Jerusalem. Fluent in Hebrew, Arabic, French and English, she uses the crude architecture of this "wall" as a rich metaphor of the political debacle in the region. Yes, in some sense the wall "protects" Israelis from terrorists, but of course it also imprisons them, exacerbates the strife, and partitions normal citizens on both sides, almost all of whom who were interviewed in this documentary hate the wall. "Without peace," remarked a foreman on the job, "this fence is worthless." In Hebrew and Aramaic with English subtitles.
Wallace and Gromit; The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)
If you have ever spent a frustrated Friday evening wondering what film to watch with your entire family, rent Wallace and Gromit. Clever word-play, whimsy, remarkable animation, oddball humor, and side-splitting laughter make for wholesome fun. Roger Ebert has described Wallace, an eccentric cheese-loving inventor, and his silent companion canine Gromit who cares for him, as "the two most delightful characters in the history of animation"—yes, better than Bugs Bunny, Nemo and Goofy, and "in a category of their own." In this film the duo must track down villainous bunnies who pilfer veggies at Lady Tottington's 517th annual Giant Vegetable Fete. This is the first full feature film for Wallace and Gromit, after three short films, by the British animator Nick Park. If you like quirky English humor you'll love this film.
Waltz with Bashir (2008) — Israel
An animated bio-documentary? Yes. Writer, director, and producer Ari Folman was disturbed one night when his friend Boaz recounted a recurring nightmare in which he's hounded by a snarling pack of twenty-six dogs. The nightmare is clearly connected to his service in the Israeli army during the Lebanese war of 1982. For his part, Ari remembers very little about his life as a soldier. In this animated film, he interviews nine friends who were comrades at the same time in order to find out exactly where he was and what he did. On the personal level, the film explores moral guilt, uncontrollable fear, abandonment, the reliability of remembered history, the traumas of war, the boundary lines between the real and the surreal, and suppressed memories. On the political level, the film recalls a particular historical atrocity — the massacre of about 3,000 Palestinians, mainly civilians, by Christian Phalangist fighters at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, in order to avenge the assassination of Lebanon's newly elected president, Bashir Gemayel. An investigation by the Israeli government later established its complicity in the atrocity. Can film not serve as a sort of therapy, asks one of Folman's friends. In Hebrew with English subtitles.
The War; A Ken Burns Film, Disc 1 (2007)
By the time the war ended in 1945, 50–60 million people had perished, most of them civilians. Here in America 16 million women and men donned the uniform, and some 405,000 of them died. Thus, says Burns, the war was necessary, but it wasn't necessarily a "good" war as we have been taught to say. Disc #1 of his seven part documentary contains Episode 1, "A Necessary War." It covers the period from Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941) until the end of 1942 when America won its first victories against the Japanese in the Pacific islands. Burns views the war through the lens of four American towns, showing how their citizens and soldiers experienced the war — Luverne, Minnesota; Sacramento, California (which then had a population of 7,000 citizens of Japanese ancestry); Waterbury, Connecticut; and Mobile, Alabama. The archival film footage of actual battle, along with the personal stories of the soldiers and families who are interviewed, combine to show how, in Burns's view, the war "brought out the best and the worst of people, and then blurred the two."
War Dance (2008) — Uganda
"It's difficult for people to believe our story," says fourteen-year-old Dominic, "but if we don't tell you, you won't know." And so in this powerful documentary some of the 200,000 orphans tell their stories about how the rebel activities of the Lord's Resistance Army in northern Uganda killed thousands, displaced two million people from their ancestral homes into refugee camps, and subjected families to unspeakable atrocities. The film focuses on one "War Zone Displacement Camp" in particular and several of its children from the Patongo primary school who practice to compete in Uganda's annual national music competition in Kampala's National Theater. Of course, when they get to Kampala they know that other children view them not only as poor country bumpkins but as children soldiers. The film deftly switches back and forth between three stories — graphic descriptions by the children of what they experienced at the hands of the ruthless LRA, their practice for and eventual competition in Kampala, and then daily life in the badly overcrowded displacement camp. "In everything we do, if there's music, life becomes good." Which is a very powerful testimony given the evil these children experienced. In English and Acholi with English subtitles.
War Photographer (2001)
By many accounts James Nachtwey is the premier war photographer of our time. This powerful documentary of his life and work runs along three tracks. First, we learn from Nachtwey and his friends who are interviewed about his personal story, how and why he became a war photo-journalist, and what he is trying to accomplish in his work. We learn, for example, that this most famous of artists who makes a living by taking the "express elevator to hell" is, in fact, an introverted, retiring and even mysterious man. He reflects on to what extent he has benefitted from other people's misfortune. Second, the film makes a powerful statement on the horrific atrocities that he records in Kosovo, Rwanda, Jakarta, and the West Bank, whether war, urban poverty, or famine. One cannot watch this film without lamenting the stupefying dehumanization and depravity that takes place in so much of the world. Third, one is forced to consider the extraordinary, evocative power of images to capture and define reality in ways that text never can. In much of the film we see exactly what Nachtwey sees when he does his work, since he has a mini-camera attached to his own camera. It is not pleasant. For Nachtwey, twenty-five years in photojournalism has provided an extraordinary moral-aesthetic vocation. I count this as one of the best films I have ever watched.
The War Tapes (2006)
John Burns, the Baghdad bureau chief for the New York Times, calls this film "the single best document (book, film, or article) you could see on the war in Iraq." Director Deborah Scranton taught three soldiers from New Hampshire's National Guard—Steve Pink, Mike Moriarty, and the Lebanese-American Zack Bazzi who is fluent in Arabic—how to use a camera, then edited their 800 hours of war footage down to 97 minutes. The result is a first person visual narrative of the war in Iraq. It's probably about as close as you can get to experiencing war vicariously—the chaos, bravado, feelings of helplessness, fear, vulgarity, boredom, and cynicism. Endless rows of charred vehicles in an equipment cemetery. Security escorts protecting convoys of Halliburton trucks carrying septic waste ("follow that shit truck!") or cheese cake. Children everywhere. And yes, IEDs and daily mortar attacks lobbed into Camp Anaconda. The film documents the stories of the three soldiers from their deployment to their return to their families and post war symptoms, including several takes with their wives back home interspersed throughout the film. Parts of this film are very hard to watch.
The War Within (2005)
How does a normal Pakistani engineering student who graduated from the University of Maryland, then studied in Paris, become a suicide bomber with a plan to bomb Grand Central Station? The War Within tries to imagine one scenario through its main character Hassan, who is kidnapped off the streets of Paris by Western agents, tortured in prison, and ends up in New York City as a radicalized Muslim. His friends there, Pakistanis enjoying all the forbidden pleasures of secularized America, barely recognize the new Hassan. "Man," asks his childhood friend Sayeed, "what has happened to you?" After their first, grandiose terrorist plot fails, Hassan must decide whether and how he will still carry out a smaller, deeply personal mission. This is complicated but not ultimately compromised by a love for Sayeed's sister Duri that Hassan refuses to embrace or enjoy. Thus his ultimate jihad, the personal war within his psyche and how it will externalize itself in his actions. This is a good film, but not as good as the Palestinian version on the same theme called Paradise Now.
Water (2005)—Indian
Set in 1938 India and Ghandi's rise to power, Water opens when Chuyia's father awakens her and asks, "My child, do you remember getting married?" She says no, and her father responds, "Your husband is dead; you are a widow now." Chuyia is eight years old, and as one of India's 34 million widows her head is shaved and she is banished for life to a home where Hindu widows live in penitence. They are a source of ritual impurity for anyone who touches them or is even darkened by their shadow. But this does not stop the authoritarian and obese Didi who runs the home from pimping. Director-writer Deepha Mehta (who received death threats for her work and had to move filming to Sri Lanka) uses Chuyia's plight as a window onto the larger degradation of widows by crafting a major sub-plot when another widow, improbably gorgeous Kalyani, falls in love with the liberal-minded Brahmin and follower of Ghandi Narayan. To divulge the twists and turns that their relationship take would spoil unexpected suspense. The marginalization of widows in Hindu society, remarks Narayan, is all about "one less mouth to feed, four less saris, and a free corner in the house. It's disguised as religion, but it's all about money." In Hindi with English subtitles.
We Were Soldiers (2002)
I watched this film after a friend who was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam recommended it as the best film on that war. Starring Mel Gibson as Lt. Col. Hal Moore, the film tells the true story of the first major encounter between American troops and North Vietnam. There, in the la Drang Valley ("the Valley of Death"), 450 Americans were dropped by helicopters into a clearing and subsequently ambushed and surrounded by 2,000 Viet Cong from October 23 to November 6, 1965. In addition to capturing the bravery, patriotism, heroism, horror, and idiocy of war, this film is special for at least two reasons. First, it portrays the battles that the families who were left at home also had to fight while their loved ones were 12,000 miles away. The entire first third of the film focuses on the families at home, and the rest of the film repeatedly cuts back to them. Second, the film humanizes the enemy. The enemy must be fought, but they are not "evil." In fact, we learn that they are just like us. There are five prayers in this film, one of which is by a Viet Cong and which, verbatim, could have been uttered by any human being. Similarly, right after watching a young American widow grieve, the film cuts to a young Vietnamese widow crying as she clutches a diary returned from her dead husband (the diary contains her own picture that her husband had carried). The end of this film names the Americans who died at la Drang; it also pays tribute to "the members of the People's Army of North Vietnam who died in that place." There are no winners or losers in this film, or any political statements, for in the last few minutes we learn that these soldiers "fought not for country or for flag but for each other." We Were Soldiers is based upon the book We Were Soldiers Once, and Young (1992) by Lt. Col. Hal Moore and Joseph Galloway, a photo journalist who was embedded with the American soldiers for the duration of the battle.
The Weather Underground (2002)
Terrorist bombs in America? Yes, most people have forgotten them, but a small group of far left radicals of the the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) bombed a number of buildings to protest the Vietnam War. We don't need more social violence like this, but where are our student protesters today? This documentary takes you back to the tumultuous sixties and early seventies.
Wendy and Lucy (2008)
Independent film maker Kelly Reichardt takes a tough but tender look at the people in America who are one sickness or accident away from personal catastrophe. Wendy and her dog Lucy are stranded in a depressing mill town in Oregon after leaving Indiana for a better life in Alaska. She's frugal and resourceful, recording her expenditures in a spiral notebook. She sleeps in her car, collects cans and bottles for spare change, and freshens up in gas station bathrooms. She observes to a security guard who's befriended her that you can't get a job without an address or phone, to which he replies: "Heck, you can't get an address without an address, or a job without a job. It's all rigged." Minor infractions with rule-keeping bureaucrats reap major consequences. When Wendy's twenty-year old car needs a $2,000 repair, we find her in the last scene hopping a train. But for where? She's a person like many people in America who have no past and no future, and who are going nowhere, both literally and figuratively. Even Lucy's fate is not what we expected.
Whale Rider (2002)—New Zealand/German
Pai, a 12-year old Maori girl in remote New Zealand, is raised by her deeply angry grandfather who wants to pass on the traditions of his tribal culture and history, but must face the realities of a modernizing world. But the tables are turned when Pai teaches him and becomes the new leader. Exquisite scenery and a powerful story, I took my teenage daughter and girlfriends after seeing it with my wife.
What The Bleep Do We Know!? (2004)
Science and spirituality merge in this film to explore some of the most important questions that a person can ask. What can we truly know about ultimate reality, and how do we know it? Is there an independent reality "out there" beyond the subjective knower, or do we merely project and so create reality? The film combines interviews with a half dozen scientists in medicine, quantum mechanics, physics, and neuroscience, along with a theologian and a channeler-spiritualist, to attempt answers. The film also utilizes animations and all sorts of technical effects to simulate time travel, memory, brain function, and so forth. This is not a great film, but it might well provoke some great conversations and more in depth analysis of the issues raised.
Join Reverend Billy and his Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir as they exorcise the spiritual powers of compulsive consumption. Bill Talen left San Francisco where he was a talented actor and found his true calling when he landed in New York City's Time Square. There he began his warnings about the "shopocalypse" that pedals endless credit and lands us in eternal debt. Reverend Billy dons a white tux and a faux clerical collar for his street theater — preaching in Starbucks or prophesying against billion dollar corporate profits built on the backs of Bangladeshi children who sew our clothes for seven cents an hour. Most of this documentary follows the Reverend and his choir as they tour America in two junker buses the month before Christmas 2005. You can imagine the sacred shrines they visit on this anti-pilgrimage, including the Mall of America, the headquarters of Wal-Mart, the Las Vegas strip, and the ultimate virtual reality on Christmas Day — Disneyland, home of the antichrist, Mickey Mouse. The film interviews shopoholics and cultural critics alike (Jim Wallis, Bill McKibben, Andrew Young). Produced by Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me), this creative social satire would be great for family viewing.
Wheel of Time (2003)
I like to watch most anything by the documentarian Werner Herzog, and Wheel of Time was no exception. This film finds him in Bodh Gaya, India, where tradition has it that the Buddha first found enlightenment 2,500 years ago under the bo tree. Every few years a half million Buddhist pilgrims travel to Bodh Gaya for a sacred rite convened by the Dalai Lama called the Kalachakra ("Wheel of Time"). The pilgrims come from near and far, many by foot, making prostrations the length of the body the entire trip. One monk from Tibet took three years to travel the 3,000 miles, genuflecting the entire way. Others will make 100,000 of these prostrations once they arrive, a rite that takes six weeks. Central to the series of religious activities is a "mandala" or sculpture made of colored sands that the monks craft from a large stencil. The intricate work of art is destroyed after the rites, the sand returned to the earth, a symbol that all is transitory. In one scene the pilgrims circumambulate the 25 mile base of Mount Kailash (22,000 feet). Wheel of Time has less narration than other Herzog documentaries, leaving you to wonder what some of the throngs of worshippers are doing. Herzog is also much more circumspect with his typical critique. But the combination of color, scenery, history, religion, culture, and language make this a very good if not great film.
The White Diamond (2004)
A documentary by director Werner Herzog (cf. Grizzly Man) is never as simple as its plot and subject first suggest. In 2004 Herzog joined the quixotic British aeronautical engineer Graham Dorrington who traveled to remote Guyana in South America to fly his two-seater contraption over the rain forests, ostensibly for scientific research. But filming that quest is really a side show to Herzog's broader interests. He pokes and prods at the eccentric Dorrington, especially the guilt he tries to assuage over a fatal accident that killed his friend Dieter Plage in Sumatra in 1993. He trains his camera on the spectacular scenery, especially the thousands of swifts who nest there. In one phenomenal close-up of a single tiny rain drop he captures the reflection of the thundering Kaieteur Falls in the distance. Like an anthropologist he explores the lives of the bare foot Guyanan locals who slop through the mud to help Dorrington, like Mark Anthony who loves his pet rooster and epitomizes Rastafarian harmony. In other scenes we see the appalling environmental degradation of the diamond mines, a teenage boy beside the Falls moon-walking to the reggae from his boom box, and Dorrington's tear-dropped dirigible meandering over the river and forests. Herzog demonstrates how even the simplest plot lends itself to rich explorations.
Who Killed The Electric Car? (2006)
Fast, sleek, quiet, affordable, and environmentally friendly, the EV1 seemed liked a dream car come of age. Right? Wrong. For about ten years (1996–2006) General Motors and other car companies invested in, built and then leased (but never sold) the EV1 to the public. At one point GM CEO Roger Smith even bragged about the car. GM then pulled the plug, claiming there was too little consumer demand and no profit to be made. This documentary argues that is patently false. Rather, the film makers contend that GM, the Bush administration, the California Air Resources Board, and the oil companies combined to kill the project. In fact, when customer leases expired, GM repossessed every single EV1, refused to allow customers to keep or buy them, then crushed and shredded them in secrecy. I especially appreciated the distinctly optimistic note this film ended on, with its belief that technological innovation and customer common sense cannot be thwarted forever, despite the greed and propaganda of oil and car companies.
Who The #$&% is Jackson Pollock? (2006)
When 73 year-old Teri Horton retired as a truck driver she supplemented her social security income by digging through dumpsters and scouring thrift shops. One day she bought a painting at Dot's Spot Thrift in San Bernadino to cheer up a friend who was depressed. The painting was too big for her friend's trailer, so they displayed it at a garage sale where a local art teacher suggested that it might be a Jackson Pollock original. This is not a great movie but it sure is a great story, and I will only say that the documentary does a nice job of pitting four factions against each other—the anal and insular world of self-important art snobs, forensic scientists who analyze finger prints and paint samples, the several folks who try to help Horton prove her case, and the recalcitrant Horton, who after paying $8 for the painting rejected a $9 million offer. Horton has appeared on Letterman, Leno, Montel Williams, and Sixty Minutes. She swears she will burn the painting before selling it for less than the $50 million an authentic Pollock would bring. Somehow you get the impression that this trash-talking trucker might not be kidding.
Who's Camus Anyway? (2005)—Japanese
For their class project a group of students makes a film with the title "The Bored Murderer." When the male lead falls ill, that role falls to the very weird Takeda. At first this meets with enthusiastic approval, but when he plays his role a little too intensely they begin to wonder if he is sane or not. Before too long we realize that this film is not only about the student film and all its problems of story, budget, cast, sites, etc., but about their own lives and how their film roles and real lives merge. Goofing around with their hand held videos and camera phones they film each other making the film. Problems abound in their personal lives even more than with their film project. The girlfriend of the director Naoki is badly co-dependent and tried to commit suicide. Naoki sleeps around. Nakajo, a famous film professor, has quit working, is lonely for his deceased wife, and is obsessed with a gorgeous student. The assistant director Kiyoko breaks down in tears. In this film about film-making, life imitates art. Who's Camus Anyway? won the Best Film award at the 2005 Tokyo International Film Festival. In Japanese with English subtitles.
Why We Fight (2005)
In his farewell address to the nation on January 17, 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower warned the country about the "disastrous rise of misplaced power" and the "grave implications" of the military-industrial complex. Today our country has 700 military bases in 60 countries, and in any given year will conduct "operations" of some sort in 170 countries. This documentary purports to show the breadth and depth of American militarism, that, for example, it is by no means limited to one president or administration. Instead, it's a thinly veiled and very effective attack on Bush and the Iraq war, which is important in its own right (not to mention an easy target). But the film could have accomplished so much more if it had fulfilled its promise to cast a broader net, as Andrew Bacevich does in The New American Militarism and Stephen Kinzer does in Overthrow. George Washington and James Madison both issued strident warnings about standing armies. Watching Halliburton's war-profiteering and the interview with the director of the Baghdad morgue in this film filled me with anger and sadness at how little our governments have heeded their words, whether in the Iraq disaster or all the way back to Eisenhower who as a general experienced the real human toll of war.
The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill (2003)
Two times in this film Mark Bittner insists that he is not "eccentric." But he describes himself as a failed musician who lived on the streets of San Francisco, who bounced around from one odd job to another, and who has not paid rent in 25 years. His pony tail, which he promised not to cut until he had a girlfriend, reaches almost to his waist. As for his tender care for a flock of 45 wild parrots (cherryhead conures from South America) on Telegraph Hill just below Coit Tower, well, "it wasn't a plan, it just happened." Bittner knows them all by name and by their individual personalities—Connor and Mingus, Picasso and Sophie, Scrapper and Scraperella, and so on. By the end of this endearing film, you are pretty sure that he is likely the most articulate street person and self-taught ornithologist ever. You are not surprised that the city council honored his work, that scientists envy his daily field logs, that his still photography of his feathered friends is breathtaking, or that he has a memoir entitled The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill: A Love Story With Wings. The only surprise is the incredible last two minutes of this outstanding documentary of an eminently likable human being.
The Wooden Camera (2003)—South African
In the first few minutes of this South African film two young teenage friends discover a dead body with a huge pistol and a video camera. The shy introvert Madiba chooses the camera, while cocky Sipho takes the gun. The film explores the consequences of those choices. Madiba hides the VCR in a home-made wooden camera, enabling him to shoot everyone and anything on the sly. He experiments with the aesthetic, technical and voyeuristic aspects of film-making. Refracting light with different lenses, candles, floating plastic bags, and even the bubbles of a drink awaken his artistic bent. His cinematic creations form a significant portion of the film. "Some day," he hopes, "my pictures will hang in houses." Sipho's gun awakens in him foolish bravado, and we watch him descend to petty crime, drugs, gangs and finally horrible tragedy. Between them both is an improbable, budding romance between Madiba and a rebellious white girl, Estelle, from a wealthy family with racist secrets of their own. This film is good, not great, but well worth watching for its themes of adolescence, choices, fate, friendship, and racism in a post-apartheid township of Cape Town.
The Woodsman (2004)
Not until the final sentence or two of this film does The Woodsman reach anything like dramatic resolution, and even then it is a resolution of the sort befitting the deep complexity and ambiguity of its subject matter. The film begins when Walter is released from serving 12 years in prison for his conviction as a sex offender, and he tries to make a new life for himself. He takes an apartment across the street from an elementary school (yes, a bad choice), and rides the bus to his job at a lumber yard. Except for his therapist, all those outside of and around Walter ostracize him as a monster and a freak. His sister refuses to talk to him or allow him to see his niece, a detective monitors his every move, and when his work colleagues discover his past they "out" him in a most bizarre way. Within himself another war rages. Neither Walter nor the viewer really knows to what extent he has moved beyond his past and is, therefore, safe. Involuntary hallucinations plague him, and poor choices born of habit implicate him. Three important sub-plots, all revolving around child molestation, contribute to Walter's unfolding narrative. Watching this film I was reminded of Faulkner's unnerving observation that "the past isn't gone; it isn't even past." Still, and not to reveal too much, this incredibly tense and powerful film ends on a hopeful note that is nevertheless sobering for all of us who seek redemption this side of eternity.
Word Wars (2004)
Unlike its linguistic cousins about the national spelling bee (Spellbound) and crossword puzzles (Word Play), this documentary film never rises to the level of the mighty social phenomenon that it describes—Scrabble. My mother played Scrabble every day during her lunch hour; her battered board game was the one momento from her estate that I wanted. The film tries to build anticipation by tracking the nine months leading up to the 2002 US National championship in San Diego where 700 scrabblers compete for a first prize of $25,000. The narrative follows four word warriors who are not only uninteresting but unlikable: Matt Graham (ranked #7 in the country), Joel Sherman (#13), Marlon Hill (#29), and Joe Edey (#1). Except for Edey, none of these guys has anything like a normal life or job; they play Scrabble all day and are penniless. Hill sports dread locks and a foul mouth. Sherman is a college drop out obsessed by his acid reflux. Graham uses brain boosters. The film could have done more with average players like the neighbors who play outside in NYC's Washington Square, the Scrabble club at an elementary school, or people like my mom. Unfortunately, this is a mediocre film about a great game.
Wordplay (2006)
"The excitement is palpable!" gushed NPR's Neal Conan. He was right; I would not let my wife interrupt while I watched. It was the championship round of the 28th Crossword Puzzle Tournament at the Marriott in Stamford, Connecticut. Wow! This whimsical documentary introduces you to the world of word nerds who are addicted to the NY Times crossword puzzle, people like Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, the Indigo Girls and pitcher Mike Mussina of the New York Yankees. But the best takes are those about ordinary people—there are 50 million puzzleheads out there—who compete every year in Stamford, and also the "crossword constructors" who create the puzzles with their dastardly clues (the Times uses about 110 puzzle constructors in a year). Will Shortz, the crossword puzzle editor for the NYT, looms large throughout the film; thirty years ago at Indiana University where you could create your own major he specialized in "enigmatology." If you want to compete at Stamford, sharpen your pencil; it takes only 3-4 minutes for the champion puzzlers to solve that bugger in your morning paper.
The Wrestler (2008)
In his real life Hollywood comeback, Mickey Rourke's art imitates his life. Rourke stars as Randy "The Ram" (Ram Jam!) Robinson, a professional wrestler twenty years over the hill. When he can't pay the rent for his sleazy trailer, he sleeps in his rusted van. Duct tape holds his coat together, steroids have bloated his body, chemicals make his hair blond, and a hearing aid dangles from his ear. Hard living, bad luck and stupid choices have landed him where you might expect, including estrangement from his daughter Stefanie. But he soldiers on, and so we love him and resonate with him. When the movie ends ambiguously, we wonder about his fate and hope he will be okay. In a near mirror image, a stripper, Pam, is Randy's only friend, and their mutual commiseration is touching. Who would have thought that a stripper and a wrestler would win our hearts? But such is the skill of director Darren Aronofsky. In one scene Pam quotes a long passage from Isaiah to and about Randy, likening him, in a clever play on words, to "the sacrificial ram." And, in fact, Randy embodies all the woes of humanity and discovers that even when broken things cannot be fixed, it's still okay.
About 40% of all people infected with HIV live in a handful of southern and eastern countries in Africa. This first Zulu film with an international release (and original music) puts a human face on this nightmare. It also shines a light on the complex web of forces that conspire against Africans with HIV/AIDS, especially women. There is only one man in this film, John, and he's absent. John works in a mine in Johannesburg, passed the AIDS virus to his wife, Yesterday, and beats her when she tells him the bad news about her "falling down sickness." Yesterday was so named by her father who said that "things were better yesterday than today." And so they were. Yesterday struggles to raise her daughter, Beauty, but the forces against her are many: economic exploitation, superstitions in her remote village, cultural myths, gender discrimination, environmental degradation, a paucity of medical care that's a two-hour walk, etc. But like so many brave women, Yesterday vows, "Until my child goes to school, I'll not die of this disease." Yesterday has earned several nominations and awards at international film festivals, and was the nominee for best foreign language film by the South African Academy Award. In Zulu with English subtitles.
Zoolander (2001)
This movie got some seriously bad reviews, but I liked it as a biting and farcical satire of the idiocies of the modern fashion industry.