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Copyright © 2001–2008
by Daniel
B. Clendenin.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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 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. The Apostle (1997) Do you love or hate Sonny (Robert Duvall), the deeply flawed but truly good and human Pentecostal preacher from Texas?
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."
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.’
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. Das Boot (1981)—German What war is really like from the perspective of young German soldiers on a German submarine in World War II.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 vo |
Posted the week of July 14, 2008: 
