Gaetana Caldwell-Smith movie reviews

Changes to Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service

2012-01-30T10:46:00.000-08:00

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"IN THE LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY"

2012-01-14T15:32:00.000-08:00

IN THE LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY, written and directed by Angelina Jolie, starring Zana Marjovich and Goran Kostic, in Bosnian and Serbian with English subtitles.

THE CIVIL WAR IN THE BALKANS

By Gaetana Caldwell-Smith

I liked this intense film, “In the Land of Blood and Honey." But I wasn’t sure if Angelina Jolie intended her directorial debut film to be story about love and betrayal or a depiction of the horrors wreaked against one’s own people. In a devastating three-and-a-half-year civil war, soldiers killed people they had been classmates with; it tore families apart and at least 100,000 were killed and two million displaced. In her interviews, Jolie, involved in humanitarian work around the world, has said that she felt driven to make a film about the Bosnian war because she knew so little about it at the time (she was 17) and felt guilty because no one seemed to want to do anything. It was the worst European conflict since World War II.

“Blood and Honey” was cut from over four hours to two which may explain some holes in the script. It opens in 1992 on a scene of people living ordinary lives. Muslim sisters Lejla (Vanessa Glodjic), a single mother of an infant, and Ajla (Zana Marjovich), a portrait artist share an apartment. They wear Western style clothes and no headscarves. Ajla is involved with Danijel (Goran Kostic), a wiry, blond, Daniel Craig type, Serbian army captain. At a club while drinking and dancing, it is hit by an explosion. The screen goes dark. The blast has reduced the building to twisted metal, concrete rubble, and bloody body parts. Danijel, unharmed, takes charge, relieved that Ajla had survived. You’re thinking that these days this could happen at any time in any city in the world- and has.

The film jumps ahead four months. Things turn violent. Bodies appear on the streets. Heavily armed Serbian soldiers patrol the neighborhoods, storm into buildings, ordering people out. They separate women from men. A woman questions a soldier who then brutally, anally rapes her. Ajla is shocked to see Danijel, who doesn’t notice her, among the milling soldiers. His father, General Nebojsa (Rade Serbedzija), orders him to “Cleanse the area, Danijel. Make me a proud father!” (“Cleanse” being the operative word for “kill everybody.”) Ajla and other women are herded on to buses and driven to an abandoned school where Serbian soldiers treat them as both sexual and domestic slaves; to them, they are sluts, whores, bitches; they laugh as they mouth lewd jokes. Women are randomly hauled away and raped; they feel doomed. Where are their men? In town, electricity is cut; the women, including Lejla, who are still in the apartment building, are terrified the soldiers will return; Leja worries about her baby and that her sister could be dead. There’s no escape, nowhere to go. She returns from a furtive run to a bombed out pharmacy for medicine and supplies, horrified to find that her baby has met a tragic end. In her absence, the military had returned to clear the building. A woman complains and is shot in the head. Lejla joins a resistance group holed up in a ruin.

Danijel protects Ajla. Their relationship is conflicted. He confesses that he hates the “war,” cautioning her that “People don’t appear to be who they truly are.” At times, he comes across as the voice of conscience. She makes an attempt to escape but is caught and beaten. What I found strange is that Ajla doesn’t seem concerned about her sister or the baby. In fact, Marjovitch plays Ajla as unemotional. Perhaps Jolie directed her to appear numbed by it all or had to cut explanatory scenes due to time constraints.

Random BBC news is broadcast on a portable radio: “The US says, ‘We don’t have a dog in this fight’. “ Filthy UN vans rumble through town. A Red Cross truck, outfitted with a bomb, blows up in the middle of the road, killing several civilians. Military transports drive past camps, where emaciated, ragged prisoners cling to wire fences; and block after block of bombed out, gutted, buildings and rubble filled streets; bodies sprawl in ditches.

Danijel arranges private quarters for Ajla, ostensibly for a quiet place to paint his portrait. They argue about his killing of her people, she shouts, “I don’t have to sleep with their murderer!” He asks if she believes her people are not murderers, too. “That you are clean?” His soldiers call her “the Captain’s whore.” When Danijel finds out that one of his men has raped her, he kills him. The weird thing is: this man was a huge presence in a lot of scenes. Were he to suddenly disappear, he would be missed. Yet no one asks, “Hey, haven’t seen the big guy around. What happened to him?” But since there are snipers on hilltops picking off soldiers and civilians, I guess Jolie feels we’ll figure that’s what happened; or it was another scene that she had to cut. In another scene, General Nebosja bursts in on Ajla; berating her about his mother working hard so Muslim women could wear fine clothes. She tells him she believes there’s no difference between Serbs, Croats, and Muslims; for this, he rapes her. Later, he orders Danijel to get rid of his “Muslim whore! We have got to kill them all!”

It’s now 1995. Listening with his men to news about NATO forces authorized to step in, the general launches into a tirade of grievances going back four hundred years. “We don’t need them,” he shouts. There’s a scene of women used as human shields; and of women-old and young- forced to strip naked and dance for partying soldiers. Jolie also includes scenes that made world news after the fact of mass graves holding thousands of slaughtered Bosnian men and boys; of snipers on bunkered, secure hillsides shooting people as they venture out of hiding for food or water; and lobbing rockets at buildings across the way.

One night, during a clandestine outing, Danijel tells Ajla to walk home by herself (he’s given his men a night off) because he’s suddenly been called to the front. They arrange a signal to let her know he’s alive; and later, she gets it; yet the next day, she is shocked to see him crawling out of the ruins of a bombed church where he had sequestered his men. What did she do and where did she go after he drove off last night, leaving her alone?

Fifteen years after the war, the people of Bosnia-Herzogovina, of course, still remember. Jolie has said that it was difficult asking Bosnian and Serbian actors to relive it; some were extremely emotional. Yet because of their experience, they made the film real. She admits that they helped her write and direct it. This is not exactly a blatant anti-war film nor does it get to the roots of the “Great Serbia” ideology, which trod upon the rights of other nationalities in the former Yugoslavia. Still, the film depicts the stupidity of war and how, through the centuries, especially as recently as 1914 early in the 20^th Century (said to be the bloodiest in history), rulers having learned nothing from the carnage of war. Instead, they constantly resort to whipping up national, religious, and misogynous prejudices–no matter how irrational they might be in order to attain their ends. War slogans like “The War to End All Wars”, “Never Again,” and others, are laughable. The US and NATO are now raising a hysterical cry against Iran, which is in their sights for the next bloodbath.

Note: This review had been adapted for the January 2012 issue of Socialist Action News. See www.socialistaction.org

"The Descendants"

2012-01-01T15:18:00.000-08:00

"The Descendants," a film directed by Alexander Payne ("Sideways"), is based on a memoir by Kaui Hart Hemmings (who plays the part of King's secretary, Noe). Set on the Hawaiian Islands, it features George Clooney as Matt King with Shailene Woodley and Amara Miller as his daughters, Alexandra and Scottie. The film is about a family's struggle to come to terms with the possibility of the death of the mother who lies in a coma in the hospital after suffering a boating accident. Matt is a successful attorney in Honolulu and the executor of acres of beachfront property on Kauai, once owned by his great-great grandmother who was a descendant of Queen Kamehameha. His great-great-grandfather, an Englishman, broke ranks and married her. Native Hawaiian blood runs thick in his and his daughters' veins. Matt's wife, Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie in a thankless role), lies comatose in all her scenes except at the beginning when we see her water skiing over choppy waters which led to the accident leaving her near brain-dead.

"Descendants" is a film about a family, but is not a "family" film per se. You could take your kids to it but unless they have some smarts and awareness, they'll be bored. There are no car chases or crashes; no zombies, guns, horrific explosions, no murders, or gross-out gory scenes, nor or there any gratuitous or graphic sex scenes. Clooney plays a mature man with a full head of salt and pepper hair, a father of two girls whose wife-their mother-will die when she is taken off life-support as Dr. Johnston (Milt Kogan) advises. (One flaw in this otherwise intelligent film is that Payne gives us a cliché of a doctor by having Kogan speak in a smarmy voice; he is not helped by his egregious comb-over so we are not sure if Matt is to take him seriously.) Matt struggles with how to break this news to his girls. However, that is wife will die is not his only problem: Another is that he's being pressured by his many cousins (Beau Bridges plays one) to sell the land to developers who want to turn it into a resort with a golf course and a multi-storey hotel. They could become millionaires overnight. Matt simply has to sign the papers before the developers withdraw their offer. On top of that is a secret that Alex divulges to a clueless Matt about her mother's affair. 1950s noir actor Robert Forster does a memorable job as Elizabeth's bigoted father, Scott Thorson and Barbara L. Southern as Alice "Tutu," Thorson, her Alzheimer stricken mother.

Shailine Woodley and Amara Millier as the daughters are spot on as are each character. They do not strike a false note throughout the film. We see true family issues involving kids being dealt with in mixed race households. Alex (Shailene) is seventeen, rebellious, bad-mouthed, and adventurous who insists that her dumb, but sympathetic lug of a boyfriend, Sid (Nick Krause) tag along. At first, I couldn't understand why this character had to be in the film, unless the author demanded it. Then later, I saw that he was Clooney's foil when dealing with the girls. Miller, as Scottie, is the most troubled about her mother's condition and acts out in school. Also, wants to emulate her older sister, but is kept in check by both Alex and Matt, as well as Sid who keeps her amused during some rough periods.

The photography of the paradisical Hawaii is gorgeous. Not to the film's detriment, it could be seen as a travelogue. However shots of its burgeoning commercial side in Honolulu and other big cities and freeways give it weight and reality. Lately, after seeing a film, I often think I wasted my money. I walked away from "The Descendants" feeling totally satisfied. Clooney has never won a Best Actor Oscar, but won for Supporting Actor in "Syriana." He should win a Best Actor award for this rôle.

"COWBOYS & ALIENS"

2011-08-01T13:01:00.000-07:00

"Bond" guy Daniel Craig channels Clint Eastwood as Jake Lonergan in Jon Favreau's "Cowboys & Aliens" a Sci-fi Western. Craig co-stars with Harrison Ford who plays crusty cattle rancher Woodrow Dolarhyde (great name).  Jake Lonergan is a wanted man who comes to, amnesic, his uncannily blue eyes red-rimmed and bleary, in the middle of a searing desert, wearing a mysterious metal bracelet which he examines, puzzled as to how he came by it, which is explained later.   Seems Jake had run off with some gold coins, betrayed his gang for a woman, engendering their wrath.

What makes this movie so much fun is that it's a spoof on all the Western flicks and includes every Western cliché ever employed. Plus, it boasts a stellar cast with Olivia Wilde ("House") as Ella, a myserious regenerative spirit; an excellent Paul Dano who's out-of control character of Percy Dolarhyde - - Dolarhyde's son - - reminds us of his preacher from "There Will Be Blood;" Sam Rockwell ("Moon") as Doc, a bar owner/ medic. He's almost unrecognizable in round, gold-rimmed glasses; his hair, parted in the middle, is slicked down with pomade so thick you can smell it.  Ana de la Reguera plays Maria, his doting wife. Distinctive-voiced Keith Carradine (who's not in enough films to suit me) as the Sheriff John Taggart.   Same could be said for Native-Canadian star Adam Beach ("Law & Order: SVU") who plays intrepid "Indian" scout, Nat Colorado.   Wide-eyed child actor Noah Ringer plays Emmet Taggart, the Sheriff's son who becomes a man in his own right for his heroic deeds; and Clancy Brown as Meachum, another lawman.

The beauty of the film is that it illustrates believably how mortal enemies - - Cowboys & Native Americans & rival gangs - - can bond to fight a common enemy. As long as you have a mediator like Jake Lonergan to accomplish this. The enemies in this case are monsters from another planet. As in "Super 8" the monsters, who look like they could have been borrowed from that film, abduct various townsfolk by means of gi-normous dragonfly-like spacecraft which zoom screeching overhead and drop lines from the sky, hooking these hapless folk like so much trout, reel them in, then hide them in an underground cave for what purpose it's not made exactly clear - - at least not to me.   The flick has a kinda "High Plains Drifter" ending, too.

So far this week, it's tied with the Smurfs' film for top box office. Don't let that bother you, see it anyway; it's fun, just remember to keep tongue in cheek.

"Tree of Life" and "Super 8"

2011-07-03T15:49:00.000-07:00

"TREE OF LIFE"

"Tree of Life," Terrence Malick's most recent film since 2006's "The New World," stars Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, and Jennifer Chastain, along with some very talented kids.  Malick is an extraordinary director with a vision no other director would dare pull off. His films are like slowly moving fine art paintings, with little dialogue. Once seeing "Tree" it's kind of hard to imagine him making "Badlands," which stars Sissey Spacek, Martin Sheen, and Warren Oates, about a couple of teenagers traveling however they can through the Montana Badlands killing people, including Spacek's character's parents, at random. Still, despite the violence, there are stillnesses, reflective moments featuring Big Sky Montana's expanse, and little action.

"Tree" is a meditative film about a '50s family in small town Waco, Texas (where Malick spent some time as a child). It begins with Penn as Pitt's grown son, Jack, who's a successful commercial architect, reflecting on his childhood while climbing around on one of his hi-rise buildings under construction. Then there's a flashback showing a young Jack, played beautifully by Hunter McCracken, and his life with a tyrannical dad (Pitt), Mr. O'Brien, and submissive mom, Mrs. O'Brien (Chastain) and his younger brothers, R. L. (Laramie Eppler, a dead ringer if you imagine Pitt as a child) and Steve (Tye Sheriden). The characters address each other as "Father," "Mother," and "Boy." Your heart aches for Jack for the demands his father makes on him; and for his poignant stirrings of sexual awakening. Pitt plays the stereotypical dad of that era, which I know well, having grown up in it myself. He is an ex-Navy man whose dreams of being a concert pianist are thwarted by having to support a family. He plays classical music on the piano, and Tchaikovsky on the console at dinner. He's relegated to a job as a parts salesman and experiences failure on a trip to Japan to sell a contract to a Japanese manufacturer. Chastain is the typical stay-at-home mom, protecting her boys both from harm and their Dad.   Most of the action occurs among the brothers and their friends as kids being kids, with Mother joining the fun while Father's away. The always excellent Fiona Shaw appears as the mediating Grandmother. Malick includes a scene that subtly illustrates the pre-civil rights prejudice against blacks.

The film hinges on the death of an unseen older brother, killed in a war (I'm guessing Korea), then explores life and death in all its ramifications, literally, from the beginning. Through phantasmagorical light shows, Malick give us his impression of the universe and creation forming on earth from a single cell to dinosaurs, to humans. Despite the slow-pacing, the actions of the CGI animals against a mystical, pre-historic background, is hypnotizing. It appears Malick may have used shots of the universe taken from the Hubble telescope. He sprinkles Biblical quotations throughout to inform subsequent actions or a character's inner thoughts; in fact, the film opens with a quote from Job. In voice overs, the characters often narrate their prayers and philosophical thoughts referring to or questioning God.

If you are looking for a story-line, a lot of dialogue, a plot that moves from here to there; a film with a beginning, a middle, and an end, this is not your film. Should you go out of curiosity, I suggest you simply relax, take a deep, breath, exhale, settle back in your seat and allow this truly awesome film to wash over you. I would refrain from munching popcorn, even eating anything while watching. Cinamatographer Emmanuel Lubeski gives us incredibly gorgeous nature shots, expansive scenes of moving water, and cloud-filled skies; or simply a light-show against a black background. Malick used Thomas Wilfred's "Opus 161, a little-known installation piece- - colored light in a box - - to illustrate "The Beginning." It is a small, hypnotic, pulsating flame of intense electric-blue, edged in orange, red, and yellow shown directly in the center of the vast blackness of the movie screen. The installation piece is from the collection of Eugene and Carol Epstein of Los Angeles, CA.

A stunning image occurs near the end of the film where random adults and children, including the O'Brien family, walk slowly through ankle deep water on a seashore, greeting each other lovingly. An emotional meeting takes place between the older Jack and his dad; and it appears that those who have died return.  A long shot shows the far distant horizon melding into a milky blue sky . . .

"SUPER 8"
Written and directed by J.J. Abrams; starring Kyle Chandler, Joel Courtney, Riley Griffith, and Elle Fanning.

The trailer hooked me into seeing this film. It hinted at a military coverup of an event that neither law officers nor the government were hip to. "Super 8" is set in the cocaine snorting and polyester-shirt wearing summer of 1979. Pre-teen admittedly dorky kids are budding film makers who are making what else? a zombie flick. Half the fun of "Super 8" is seeing that these kids, especially the chunky director, Charles (Riley Griffiths), and screenplay writer/leading man, Martin (Gabriel Basso, in owlish glasses), are dead serious about filmmaking and have the lingo down (Steven Spielberg, the executive producer, based this movie on his own childhood movie-making experience, shooting everything with a Super 8 camera). Joe does make-up, even carries a professional make-up case. We see rushes of Charles's earlier scenes with Cary (an enthusiastic Ryan Lee), the smallest in the group, as a very effective zombie.

As in "Tree of Life" this film also begins with a death. The wife of Deputy Sheriff Jackson Lamb (Kyle Chandler of "Friday Night Lights"), is killed in a factory accident. Her death hits his son Joe (Joel Courtney), a quiet, introspective tweener, hard. Again, as in "Tree" father and son have communication problems. Joe is friends with Charles, and Charles, being the demanding director, needs Joe's help on the film regardless of his mourning. They have script and casting problems. Charles feels the script calls for a love interest, but they need a girl, so Joe gets Alice (Elle Fanning, sister of Dakota and equally as talented), who also ends up being the driver. Alice lives with her embarrassing bummer of a dad, stringy, blond-haired, Louis Dainard, played with a perfect loser chops by Ron Eldard. Louis and Jackson have issues over the fact that Jackson's wife worked Louis's shift at the plant when the accident happened. Besides which Jackson is tired of bringing the scumbag in for DUIs. And he doesn't want Joe anywhere near Alice.

The young filmmakers sneak away in the dead of night to meet at an abandoned railway station. Alice purloins her dad's pristine yellow and black Chevy Camaro for the job while he's passed out. They are shooting the love scene between Martin and Alice when a freight train heads full-speed down the tracks. The kids watch, Charles is stoked because it makes for great footage. His camera is running. But wait! what's that white pickup doing? What follows is one of the best train-wrecks ever. Freight cars buckling, sailing into the night sky, explosions galore, heavy metal chunks flying over the kids' heads, crashing to the ground. Stuff is clanging, banging, and raining down everywhere. Kids being kids, when the dust settles - - so to speak - - they wanna see what happened. Who's in the pickup? OMG! their science teacher!   Weirdly, all over the place are these strange, silver, Rubik-cube thingies with protuberances sticking out on all sides. Beret-wearing Special Forces unit shows up, headed by Commander Nelec (a creepy Noah Emmerich). Joe surreptitiously pockets one of the silver cubes. The kids jump in the miraculously unscathed Chevy and race home. Charles returns to the site later to retrieve the camera.

From here on, "Super 8" becomes an amalgam of "E.T.", "District 9", and the latest version of "War of the Worlds." Seems there's a rapacious monster from outer space who lives underground beneath the cemetery; it just wants to rebuild his spaceship in which he had crashed to Earth (who knows when) and go home. After terrorizing the whole town.  One of the characters is Donny, a róle perfected by David Gallagher as a long-haired, stoner drug store clerk in a bold-print polyester shirt. Donny will do a rush job on getting Charles's film developed if he'll put in a good word for him to Charles's hard-bitten older sister. Charles demures until they need Donny's prized car to find Alice who went missing. Donny relents only if he drives. This is one of the best characters and best developed character exchanges in the film.

Finally, as in "Tree," "Super 8" ends with reconciliation; it is truly a fun film for all ages and genders.
Stay through the credits to see Charles's completed Super 8 film; his performance as an interviewed director and the shocking finale.

This film got me wondering why, in films these days, creatures from outer space - - from other planets like Mars or Venus - - have devolved from benign, human-like, wise, calm, robed figures (except maybe those in "Star Trek") who could teach us earthlings a thing or two about advanced technology, space travel, and peace into gigantically huge, ugly, multi-limbed, slimy, drooling creatures with insect-like faces and waving antennae. And, no, I didn't think E. T. was "cute."

"Pirates of the Caribbean" and "The Double Hour"

2011-06-05T17:34:00.000-07:00

I wanted an escape into the magical, to be taken away and not have to think of anything for a couple of hours and found it in "The Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides." The film is Johnny Depp's latest adventure as Captain Jack Sparrow in the "Pirates" series. Director Rob Marshall gives us a rather played-down version compared to the previous ones, which for me, made it the better film out of the four . . . Four? Yes, there've been that many.

Reprising his role as Barbarossa - - now with a peg leg - - Geoffrey Rush is again a perfect foil for Sparrow; their exchanges are witty, biting, clever and challenging. It pays to pay attention to the dialogue; often the best part of a scene, thanks to writers Ted Elliot, Terry Rossio, and at least seven others. Kevin McNally also appears in the film as the stalwart snitch Gibbs as he had in the earlier films. New to "POTC 4" is the terrific Ian McShane of "Deadwood" fame as the deadly pirate Blackbeard, his mesmerizing blue eyes rimmed with kohl (as are Depp's and Cruz's: wonder if they had a special budget for kohl?); and Penelope Cruz as his alleged daughter and Depp's love interest from the past, though they spend more time fighting than loving.

It is thought and is probably true that the public is tired of the Pirate, but I suggest you see this one. It could reignite your spark (I sense there will be yet another in that at the end Jack says something like, "But that's not all . . ." So . . .) For one thing, the look is lighter, more open, plus there's a lot more going on than Sparrow trying to save high-born ladies, playing one-up with a rival, and surviving close calls dealt him by both royalty and miscreants - - well, it wouldn't be "Pirates" without some of these. Neither Orlando Bloom nor Kiera Knightly are in this film, nor is there a voodoo priestess and other instances or people involved in the black arts; however there is a quartermaster (Ian Mercer) who has been "zombified;." nor are there slimy figures from the deep with wriggling, wormy beards. The Fountain of Youth is the quest theme for this film. Keith Richards shows up again as Captain Teague, Sparrow's dad for a bit at the start to give his son some tips as to the location of the fountain. He delivers a great line when Jack asks him if he's found it. Richards replies, "Does this face look like it's seen the Fountain of Youth?" as the camera closes in on Richards's ravaged visage. One would expect no less. Not only the Brits but the Spaniards also are in quest of the Fountain. The former for the right reason (who doesn't want to be young forever?) and the latter for the wrong. Good sport Judy Dench makes a surprise cameo appearance as a noble lady in a carriage on top of whom Sparrow lands for an instant while escaping a hanging.

The film is free of slapstick and sight gags which grew tiresome in the previous films; but lots of rip-roaring, swash-buckling action - - swinging from swag, chandeliers, and the like. The animals (an irritating monkey, for one) have been replaced by a bevy of beautiful seductive, but deadly mermaids who live in a bay beyond which lies the magic fountain that they protect; just when you think one wants a kiss, you lean over the boat and she'll bite your face off with her fangs while dragging you below to Davey Jones's Locker. The underwater camera work is stunning. A sweet, poignant, subplot is introduced involving Syrena, one of the mermaids (a lovely Astrid Berges-Frisbey) and Phillip (Sam Claflin), a handsome young, God-fearing believer. The film becomes even more engaging during magical scenes dealing with the discovery of the Fountain (breathtakingly shot in Hawaii by Dariusz Wolski heading an extensive film crew) when down becomes up and a whirlpool spins upward, sucking those caught in it heavenward into a setting so lovely it rivals like scenes from"The Lord of the Rings."

"The Double Hour" (La doppia ora) in an Italian film with English subtitles, directed by Guiseppi Capotondi, starring Kseniya Rappoport and Filippo Timi.

This Italian thriller is on a par with Alfred Hitchock's best films. It holds you in suspense from the very beginning. Sonia (Ksenyia Rappoport), a chambermaid in a high class hotel, scans obituary columns obsessively; studies Spanish using recordings; and is attentive to her duties, despite distractions. She pushes her cart room to room, cleaning. In one, she finds the French windows wide open, crosses to close them, looks down to see the room's occupant, a woman, lying in the street, her head oozing blood.
We learn that comely, blond Sonia is single and new to Turin so regularly frequents a speed dating scene at a restaurant where, after a number of obviously losers, she eventually meets Guido (dark, handsome Filippo Timi), an ex-cop turned private security guard. Their courtship is idyllic until one day, exploring a mansion Guido is supposed to be watching while the owners are away, they are attacked by balaclava-wearing burglars. Both are shot; Soniya survives, but believes Guido had died. Soniya hears his voice, thinks she sees him on the hotel's security camera; her mind is playing tricks. She is visited, stalked, and questioned by Dante (Michele Di Mauro), a cop Guido had worked with; a mysterious hotel patron, who always carries a large suitcase that Soniya and her work-mate Margherita (Antonia Truppo) suspect he carries his dead wife's body in, haunts her.

Things are not what they seem. There is one shocking scene where you'll find yourself jumping out of your chair. This mysterious, subtle, low-key suspense film about love, betrayal, and heartbreak has jaw-dropping twists. "The Double Hour" was made in Italy in 2009 where it won for Best Actor, Actress, and Film at the Venice Film Festival. It is showing in art house theatres, but not for long: In SF, at the Clay. Check local listings.

"INSIDE JOB"

2011-03-02T14:18:00.000-08:00

"Inside Job," a documentary film directed by Charles Ferguson, narrated by Matt Damon.

CRIME PAYS - - BIG TIME

By Gaetana Caldwell-Smith

"Inside Job" won the Oscar for the 2010 Best Documentary Film. Acceptin his award, director Charles Ferguson gave a short - - and the only - - political speech of the evening when he said that not one of the perpetrators of the greatest financial scam in the last fifty years was charged or is in prison for the crimes they committed against homebuyers and investors. If the documentary is not in theatres, please get hold of a copy and see it now. Democracy Now! is offering it as a gift in their pledge drive, too. Ferguson had made one of the best anti-war documentary films “No End in Sight” a couple of years back, which I reviewed [in Socialst Action News]. He has come up with another winner.

“Inside Job” tells chronologically how the biggest banks, mortgage companies, insurance companies and other behemoth financial institutions like Lehman Bros and Goldman Sachs screwed every day, ordinary working people like you and me - - taxpayers - - in a Ponzi scheme that makes Bernie Madoff’s rip-off look like kindergarten. It took white collar crooks, with the backing of the US government, thirty years to pull it off, starting when Reagan deregulated financial institutions. The head honchos raked in billions, leading, on September 18, 2008, to the biggest financial collapse since 1929.

Many books have been written on the subject, such as interviewee Charles Morris ’s “The Trillion Dollar Meltdown,” yet few are willing to pore through these seemingly dry tomes about finances and economics. So, here’s this movie where you can sit down in front of a giant screen with a bucket of popcorn and a mega cup of fizzy, to watch and listen as the story unfolds in a straightforward, lucid but scary manner, narrated by the measured tones of Matt Damon. Ferguson utilizes easy to grasp graphics not only to explain terms such as profit-making CDOs (collateralized debt obligations) and CDSs (credit-default swaps) but also to show how “money” moves around enabling these company heads to walk away with millions of their investors’ cash.

For interviews, director Ferguson was well-armed. He did his homework. He studied, read documents and the books we didn’t want to. Watching interviewees sweat, squirm, tap dance and backpedal is satisfying. Not as satisfying as seeing them in orange jumpsuits and handcuffs. He interviewed Lehman Brothers’ head, Dick Fuld, and others who did lose their jobs and/or companies, yet still made millions. Refusing his requests for interviews were former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and head of Goldman-Sachs; Alan Greenspan, and Ben Bernanke, as well as some of the investment-bank executives who made millions from CDOs.

Ferguson tracked the careers of Larry Summers, Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, Hank Paulson, and Alan Greenspan; he included clips showing them working in or with the US government and/or presidents in some capacity or other, since Ronald Reagan. Of Summers, Ferguson wrote in an article for the SF Chronicle, early October, “Rarely has one individual embodied so much of what is wrong with economics, with academe, and indeed with the American economy. In [my] film, "Inside Job," which takes a sweeping look at the financial crisis, I found Summers everywhere I turned.” Larry Summers will soon resign as director of the National Economic Council and return to Harvard early next year.

Ferguson also interviewed economic professors from noted universities, some who warned early on of the imminent collapse. As early as 2005, Raghuram Rajan, the chief economist of the IMF spoke of the danger to an audience which included honoree Alan Greenspan, retiring as chairman of the US Federal Reserve, and Larry Summers. Of course, he was ignored and criticized. Some academic economists were paid hundreds of thousands of dollar to write articles in financial rags declaring that shaky companies were actually solvent, while teaching students economic models that showed otherwise. Ferguson asked if they didn’t see a conflict of interest. No.

The collapse went global. Ten million Chinese workers lost their jobs, exports collapsed. “They fell off a cliff.” Ferguson includes film clips of shuttered factories and the desperation of the thousands of unemployed in many countries who now have no means with which to feed, clothe and house their families.

Remember those real estate company TV ads showing happy couples - - usually black and Latino - - expressing joy when signing papers that would make their American Dream of owning a home come true? Now, all those thousands of homes have been foreclosed, and for tens of thousands of men, women, and children that dream has become a nightmare. When the bubble, which grew from thirty billion to 600 billion in just ten years, burst in 2008, Alan Greenspan and good ol’ “W’” told the world it was because too many unqualified people signed mortgages for homes they couldn’t afford. They couldn’t pay their loans and mortgage companies couldn’t lend anymore money (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ran out.), so those first-time homebuyers were responsible. Ferguson shows a clip of a tent city in Florida for affluent-looking white people who lost their homes and their jobs, yet the head of bailed out insurance giant AIG receives one million a month in retirement pay. We taxpayers had to fork over 700 billion dollars so George Bush could bail out Lehman Brothers otherwise the world would come to an end.

Ferguson interviewed Eliot Spitzer, who, as attorney general of New York, investigated financial industry fraud in 2002. Ironically, his takedown for engaging the services of a prostitute doesn’t compare with the hooker, drugs, and expensive evenings that were part of the rewards from illegal Wall Street shenanigans. The filmmaker interviewed a heavily made-up, zoftig blonde who contracted prostitutes for these guys, and showed videos of them (faces obscured) entering luxury hotels with their “dates.” Their flunkies, Spitzer told Ferguson, said that they hid the costs in “phony expense chits.” Spitzer feels these underlings could possibly testify against their bosses - - one way to get them to “pay.” However, he demurred, he might not be the most appropriate person to suggest such a course.

According to Marx, capitalism will inevitably lead to ruin in accordance with certain laws of economic movement. These laws are "the Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall," "the Law of Increasing Poverty," and "the Law of Centralization of Capital." Small capitalists go bankrupt, and their production means are absorbed by large capitalists. During the process of bankruptcy and absorption, capital is gradually centralized by a few large capitalists, and the entire middle class declines. Thus, two major classes, a small minority of large capitalists, and a large proletarian majority are formed. [from Wikipedia.]

However, as the two so-called wars grind on, some predict they will end up costing some trillions of dollars. Unemployment numbers continue to rise; state and federal government cuts funding for public housing, services and education; businesses and factories close; more people are now or soon will be poor - - poor and homeless. The rich get richer on the backs of the poor. Now, even when there are no jobs, the rich still get rich - - and the poor get even poorer. It’s prison or the military - - or the streets. At least in the military, for those aged 18-40, you get shelter, clothes, and food; for everyone else- - prison for the same amenities. So far, no one has been prosecuted or arrested for the Wall Street crimes; the wrong people are in prison.

Though Obama promised in his inauguration speech to clean house, he retained all the criminals left over from the Bush administration, replaced Greenspan with Bernanke, and worst of all, brought in Larry Summers. As Matt Damon narrates: “the men who caused the crises are still in power.” Ferguson ends his film with a shot of the Statue of Liberty and Matt Damon’s voiceover assuring us that Americans are strong and full of hope; these crimes will not go unpunished - - or some such drivel. I felt like throwing my empty bucket at the screen.

An adaptation of this review appeared in Socialst Action News in November 2010. http://www.socialistaction.org/

"The Illusionist" "Hall Pass"

2011-02-26T16:22:00.000-08:00

"The Illusionist" An animated film by Sylvain Chomet, based on an a 1956 unproduced film-script by the late Jaques Tati.

The sweet, poignant film, “The Illusionist,” is still in theatres across the country because it’s been tapped for an Academy Award this Sunday, the 27th, for Best Animated Feature. Unless it wins, which I doubt it will, it’s gone. So see it now!

“The Illusionist” is up against a total of fifteen animated films including: “Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore.” “Despicable Me,” “How to Train Your Dragon,” “Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole,” “Megamind,” “Shrek Forever After,” “Tangled,” and “Toy Story 3.”
The film, created by the same people (Sylvain Chomet) who made “The Triplets of Belleville” a few years back, was taken from a 1956 unproduced film-script by the late Jaques Tati, who died in 1982. Tati wrote, directed, and starred in such French classics as “Mon Oncle,” “Mr. Hulot’s Holiday” and others. “Playtime” and “Traffic” were his last films. There’s a clever scene in “The Illusionist,” where the magician goes into a movie theatre and a clip from Tati’s “Mon Oncle” is on the screen. Nice tribute.

“The Illusionist” is painterly and poetic; almost a silent film (as were Tati’s) - - little spurts of dialogue in several languages. It is the story of an elderly, fading French magician (the artist rendering and animation are perfect likenesses of Jaques Tati), traveling by train and cart from one small village in the British Isles to another for bookings in shabby theatres. He meets a young, petite, servant girl in an inn who latches on to him. She uses her wiles to soft-soap him into buying her the latest fashions. There’s no hanky-panky. They end up in Edinburg where he wastes his talents selling products in a store window.

Some of the delights in the film are the others who share one of his bills: A fey, self-indulgent rock group and a gothic, skeletal, chanteuse. These are crowd favorites and bring in the money. The others (including the magician) don’t fare so well and are let go. They include a troupe of acrobats who shout “Hup-hup!” with every action, even off-stage, and a sad, creepy ventriloquist who lets his equally, if-not-more-creepy, look-aike, dummy speak for him. They depict the shabby side of a dying art. The animators exaggerate the characters’ physicality to the extreme; accentuating the stereotype.

Eventually, the girl finds her own way; the magician leaves a sad note behind: “Magicians do not exist.”

Chomet uses muted tones, not the bright, primary, in-your-face, colors like in Pixar or Disney animation films; the land- and cityscapes have the appearance of dreamy watercolors. (Go to IMDB.com to see clips.)

If it doesn’t win an Oscar, I hope it sticks around awhile. Guess you can get it on DVD or order it on-line.

"Hall Pass" A Farrelly Bros. Film, starring Jason Sudeikis, Owen Wilson, Jenna Fischer, and Christina Applegate.

I pass.

"BLACK SWAN"

2011-01-17T17:30:00.000-08:00

Directed by Darren Aronofsky, written by Mark Heyman and Andres Heinz, starring Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, and Barbara Hershey

By the accolades and pending awards (Breaking news: Natalie Portman won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama for her role as prima ballerina in this film), I might be the only person who thinks Darren Aronofsky’s (“The Wrestler”) “Black Swan” is way, way over the top with some scenes played like the cheesiest melodrama. A reviewer from The New Yorker wrote that "Black Swan" is the funniest film he’s seen in ages, with bad dialogue which caused him to laugh out loud at one line in a scene not shot for comedy, so I'm not in bad company. (Rotten Tomatoes critics rate that 88% of viewers liked it.)

Though beautiful, “Black Swan”, set in New York City, is a cliché ridden oeuvre with no surprises. Messed up, alcoholic Beth (an unrecognizable - - because of makeup and hair - - Winona Ryder), had been Ballet Master Thomas Leroy’s prima ballerina. Leroy is played by French noir star, Vincent Cassel.* Leroy has just booted Beth from her tour de force role of the Swan in “Swan Lake,” and replaced her with Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) so we know she’ll suffer a tragedy and are not disappointed. Aronofsky shows Nina as tightly wound as the bun on the back of her head, which we see, along with her rigid, skeletal shoulders, in shot after shot as the camera follows her, ad nauseam, as she traipses down endless corridors to her dressing room, studio, or theatre.

Portman and a much worked-on Barbara Hershey, Nina’s hellish mother, Erica, play their characters to an extreme breaking point in every scene, leaving them no place to go but down, down, down. Erica babies Nina as evidenced by a bedroom decorated with sickly-sweet pinkie-rosy colors and dozens of plush toys and lacy pillows. Erica even switches on Nina’s Swan Lake music box and caresses her to sleep. Nina calls her “Mommy” with a voice edged in tears and desperation, even when giving her good news. We learn that Erica had quit her career so her daughter could have one. Near the end, when she reminds Nina of her sacrifice, Nina shoots back - - her only sign of inner strength: “What career?” The most relaxed but focused characters are Cassel’s Leroy, Nina’s rival, Lily (an excellent, confidant, sloe-eyed Mila Kunis), and Nina’s Swan partner, David ( Benjamin Millepied - - what better name for a choreographer/dancer; he, is Portman’s fiance and father of their unborn child.)

Audience expectations are telegraphed and met: Thomas’s seduction play to arouse Nina’s libido so she can access her evil side for the Black Swan; Beth’s accusations and alcoholic melt-down at the party announcing Nina’s role; Beth’s accusations that Nina is sleeping with Leroy, which Nina denies. In one scene, Beth tells Nina that Leroy will soon be calling her “Little Princess” as he did her at one time, then Nina will know it’s over. Oh, and let us not forget that, of course, the night before the performance, Lily convinces Nina to party with her, ingest unknown substances, drink, and make out with loser strangers they pick up in a club, causing Nina to be late for the opening, and, when she arrives, with whom has Leroy replaced her?

The film’s pluses are its gorgeous cinematography (Matthew Libatique); the music - - original score, Clint Mansell and, of course, Tchaikovsky; costumes (Amy Westcott); sets, black, white and red coloration, and lighting; the corps de ballet practice and rehearsal scenes in the studio and on stage, the pas de deux with Nina and David; and Sergio, the Black Prince (Sergio Torrado), and the bits of Leroy’s newly envisioned, ultra dramatic “Swan Lake.” Still, were I an aspiring prima ballerina, “Black Swan” would not be the film to see for inspiration, nor would “The Red Shoes,” for that matter. Yet, we know that the intense pressure Nina suffers stems from her overbearing, obsessive mother, driving her to psychosis. Nina imagines wrongs and slights wreaked on her by the girls in the company. Soon these imaginings become bizarre hallucinations of a lesbian sex sleepover with Lily, and evil, gory, surreal images as when she visits Beth in the hospital and “sees” her wounds as bloody, badly stitched gashes, and the tortuous metal brace on her leg (as one reviewer noted: - -“That would make David Cronenberg proud.” Also, she sees zombie-like figures looming in darkened corridors, and grotesque, bloody changes to her own body. Nina drives herself to such madness that she believes she has killed someone. Her hallucinations; witnessing the fate of Beth; her relationship with Leroy, her mother, and Lily, can lead only to one end. And she takes it.

*Vincent Cassel was last seen in the two French films: “Mesrine: Public Enemy No. One” and “Mesrine: Killer Instinct,” based on the true story of an assassin, the most dangerous man in France.

TWO FILMS ABOUT STRONG WOMEN: "WHITE MATERIAL" and "MADE IN DAGENHAM"

2011-01-03T17:38:00.000-08:00

“WHITE MATERIAL” (“all things owned by or being 'white' in a black culture”) is a French film with English subtitles directed by Claire Denis who co-wrote it with Marie N'Diaye and Lucie Borleteau. It is set in a non-specific time most likely in French West Africa. Black militants are in the process of driving the French from their land. The movie opens with a gruesome shot of bloody bodies of young Black men sprawled about in sheds and on the ground - - a scene that repeats at the end of the film. One of the drawbacks of “White Material” is that the time frame constantly shifts. Soon after the opening shot, it is one long flashback beginning with Maria Vial (a lithe, ageless, Isabelle Huppert) trying desperately to get a ride back to her coffee plantation.

Maria is the struggling daughter-in-law of Henri (Michel Subor) the bed-ridden owner of a coffee plantation in an area rife with unrest. Many white landowners are leaving or have already left. Maria's former husband André (Christopher Lambert) is as helpless as his father in the operation of the plantation but not because of illness - - André has given up. In fact, he wants to take his new family - - Lucie (Adèle Ado), who is Black, and their school-age son - - to France before they are driven out or killed. He tries to sell the land to a wealthy native businessman/politician Cherif, le maire (William Nadylam) behind Maria and Henri’s back. Maria and Andre's only child is a thirty-something Manuel (Nicolas Duvauchelle), a handsome (almost pretty) blond as useless as his father and grandfather. Manuel rarely gets out of bed in a room as dark as a cave. You feel his “otherness” and futureless life in such surroundings. So Maria does all the work and is in charge of the plantation’s field hands. Stubbornly, she ignores repeated government warnings to return to France. She will do anything to keep her land.

When all her workers disappear, she and her loyal, older, head man drive into town to recruit workers. (A flashback has her going into the pharmacy for Henri’s medication where she deals with the pleasant, Black pharmacists as though she were in a small town anywhere.) As she, her head man, and the new workers are processing the coffee beans after the harvest, she discovers a grisly dire warning in the hopper. The new recruits run off but meet a horrifying end on the road. Seeking protection, Maria drives back to town only to find it and its people destroyed; bodies everywhere including the pharmacists, drug store shelves stripped bare. In her absence, Black children run rampant on her property. They force Manuel into the brush with machetes and humiliate him profoundly, destroying his fragile hold on sanity.

The political uprising against the ruling corrupt government is headed by Boxer (Isaach De Bankolé) who employs child soldiers led by Jeep (Ali Barkai); they set out to destroy the “white material.” Government soldiers invade Maria’s plantation and slaughter the children who have passed out after ingesting the looted drugs, and others in hiding(the opening scene repeated). Her life is radically changed not only by the loss of her coffee plantation, but also by a despicable act that shows how far she has fallen. Maria tries unsuccessfully to protect Boxer from the government and fails to save herself, her son, or her father-in-law.

Another problem with the film besides the jumping time-frame is its vagueness as to time and place. Also, one is unsure of who is killing whom when Blacks are murdering each other. In addition, unless one goes in knowing a little of the history of French colonial occupation, “White Material” can give an audience the wrong impression about Africa: that it is a volatile country and the majority of Blacks are hostile to Whites,and Blacks will arbitrarily form anti-government rebel groups that will kidnap children, drug them and send them out to slaughter or be slaughtered. People may not want to go to Africa. This could deprive visitors as well as the well-intentioned - - Blacks or Whites - - who may want to settle there of positive experiences and a rich life.

“MADE IN DAGENHAM,” is one of the best labor-oriented films to open in commercial movie houses in recent years. It is a touching, warm, and often humorous portrayal of British working-class life in the 1960s. And the struggle it portrays will leave you cheering. The film, directed by Nigel Cole; screenplay, William Ivory, is a dramatization of the 1968 labor-relations dispute and three-week strike by the sewing machinists at the Ford plant in Dagenham, England. Their victory was key in the fight to abolish wage discrimination against women, and helped to launch the feminist movement in Britain. Their militant and uncompromising struggle holds many lessons for the labor and social movements today.

The film opens on a scene of women working in a sweatshop atmosphere at industrial size sewing machines and cutters, making upholstery for the interiors of Ford automobiles. Many women have stripped to their underwear because of the sweltering heat. And when it rains, they raise umbrellas to protect their machines from leaks from the holes in the roof. Most of the women are married to men who work on the plant’s automobile assembly lines. (A lot of the women acting in the film are workers in real life, who were recently laid off from a Hoover plant in Wales.) Sally Hawkins plays the petite but spunky seamstress, Rita O’Grady.

The filmmakers captured the look of the late sixties suburban working class with the women’s beehive and flip hairdos, makeup and dress styles. There are great scenes of them bicycling to work in the rain and passersby bringing them food and hot tea during the strike. There are subplots involving the WWII vet husband of one of the women who meets a tragic end, making Rita feel guilty for pushing her agenda; and Lisa Hopkins (Rosamund Pike) the mother of her son's friend who coincidentally happens to be married to a wealthy Ford official, Peter (Rupert Graves) in an upscale, split-level home; yet despite Lisa's Master’s in English, he treats her like a maid. Rita’s friendship with Lisa illustrates the differences between the working class and the rich.

Albert Passingham (Bob Hoskins) a sympathetic union rep, announces that the women are being reclassified into less-skilled Category B jobs, and that they will be paid 15% less than the full B rate received by men. This news infuriates them; appalled, they grumble about what they can do to right this injustice. Rita, the most vociferous, is chosen as the spokes-woman to bring their grievance to management. When their written and vocal complaints prove ineffectual, they decide to strike. Management, and Albert, tries to talk them out of it, threatening that a strike would bring production to a halt and no one will get any money; how will their husbands put food on the table? The union bureaucrats also try to browbeat the women into staying on the job. The head of the local union, who calls his cohorts “comrades” and spouts half-remembered quotes from Marx, argues that the women’s fight against pay discrimination is really not very important in the scheme of things. And even worse, he claims, their militancy could upset the union’s plans for friendly negotiations with corporations on the national level.

Frequent meetings alienate the women from their families. Husbands and children complain of late or non- existent meals. Wives travel to other towns to rally support, husbands are left to cook, clean, and get the kids off to school. Rita’s husband, Eddy (Daniel Mays), at the point of leaving her and angry at having to sell things to make ends meet, wakes up to the fact that Rita takes care of him, the kids and the house, yet works at the plant all day. He rallies to her side.

They vote to strike; production stops; men are laid-off and the plant is closed. (The strike took place on June 7, 1968, followed by a strike by the machinists at Ford's Halewood Body and Assembly plant.) Subsequently, Rita, Albert Passingham, and the women meet with Ford’s top management attended by the Ford honcho from the United States to work out a deal to end the three-week old strike. They pompously shoot down the strikers’ proposal with cliché- ridden responses. But this doesn’t stop Rita. At an important union conference, Rita gives a simple but impassioned speech, which convinces a large majority of the delegates to vote to sanction the Dagenham strike.

By this time, the Dagenham women have been receiving national publicity. Their militant action is a thorn in the side of Harold Wilson’s Labor Party government, which is under pressure by the corporations to put an end to the strike wave now overtaking Britain. Rita takes the matter up with Barbara Castle (excellent, spot-on performance by Miranda Richardson), the Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity in Harold Wilson's government. She had invited the women to meet with her. Castle intervenes and the strike ends.

Women got not equal-pay, but 92% of a man’s earning, but rising to the full category B rate the following year. Still, this ruling didn’t end as happily: a court of inquiry (under the Industrial Courts Act 1919) was set up to consider their re-grading, but it failed to rule in their favor and the women were only re-graded into Category C following another strike in 1984 lasting six weeks. In any case, the seamstresses’ actions in 1968 proved that perseverance and people have the power. Their actions led to the passing of the Equal Pay Act 1970 which came into force in 1975, and for the first time, prohibited inequality in terms of pay and conditions of employment between men and women in the UK. Yet in Britain today, women still receive an average of 17 percent less then men in similar job categories. Many companies routinely flout government regulations on pay equality—and get away with it.

And here, in the US, women still make 77 cents to a dollar despite the passage of the Equal Pay Act in 1963. One only has to read the details of conditions with which this act applies state-by-state to understand why the United States is still completely backward in its dealing with equal pay for women.

Michael Schreiber, editor of Socialist Action News, contributed to the "Made in "Dagenham" review.

"Life During Wartime"

2010-08-16T14:04:00.000-07:00

“Life During Wartime,” written and directed by Todd Solondz, starring Allison Janney, Ciaran Hinds, and Charlotte Rampling.

Writer/director Todd Solondz’s latest films "Happiness" and "Life During Wartime," make people uncomfortable because they have to do with the sensitive subject of male sexual perversity and pedophilia. We would rather not hear, read, or see anything dealing with this. Yet Solondz has found a way to bring these issues to light with humor, intelligence, and objectivity. His films are categorized as comedies but are more tragicomic. Solondz's first film, which he also wrote and directed, was “Welcome to the Dollhouse,”(1995); it made Heather Matarazzo a star. “Welcome” deals with the torture of nerds in Junior High School, concern over popularity, bullies, cliques, sexuality, sibling rivalry, and kidnapping. He also wrote and directed “Happiness,”(1998), starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Allen, a blobby, sexually impotent man given to dialing women at random and making obscene remarks; and Helen (Lara Flynn Boyle),a neighbor in his building who responds positively to his random call, freaking him out. She, Joy (Jane Adams), and Trish (Cynthia Stevenson) are sisters;, Cameron Manheim also gives a standout performance as Kristina, Hoffman's loser equal, who ends up doing a Jeffrey Dahlmer on their horny doorman.

Solondz's most recent film, “Life During Wartime,” takes place some years after "Happiness" and is a more mature, measured film with an almost satisfying resolution. In interviews he has admitted that he felt "Happiness" needed more. Eleven years later, he succeeds with "Life." The film catches up with the sisters: Joy, Helen, and Trish, now played by different actors though their characters remain the same: Joy (Shirley Henderson) is the wanna-be do-gooder. Helen (Ally Sheedy)is the successful writer who suffers her fame, and Trish (Alison Janney) now divorced, aims to get her love life back on track. Her ex-husband, Bill, whom we saw in "Happiness," played by a Jimmy Stewart-like Dylan Baker, was being hauled off to prison for pedophilia. In "Life," an excellent Ciaran Hinds is Bill. He has just been paroled.

In “Happiness” and in “Life,” Solondz’s male characters are pedophiles, impotent obscene phone-callers, and ineffectual husbands and fathers; his women are self-doubting and out-of-touch. Prepubescent kids explore their own sexuality and try to solve the mysteries of sex from what they hear from peers, their parents, and others. Near the end of “Happiness” Bill a married, successful psychiatrist, is hauled off to a New Jersey prison for molesting his son's best friend (Solondz trusts the impact of his work; he feels confident sparing his audience gratuitous scenes of Bill in action). The final scene takes place in Miami: Trish, Helen, and Joy are dining with their mother, Mona (Louise Lasser) and father, Lenny (Ben Gazzara), who are on the verge of divorce, but deny it. Joy (Jane Adams) is between save-the-world jobs; Helen (Flynn Boyle) is dramatically overwhelmed by yet another book-signing; and Trish (Cynthia Stevenson) is trying to make it as a single mom of three and put behind her the onus of her husband's abberant crime (the reason for her move from New Jersey to Miami) and looking for love. Her obviously troubled son Billy, 11 (Rufus Read), watches a woman on a balcony in a bikini smearing herself with lotion; we see his face and know something has happened. Billy approaches the table and proudly imparts some very personal information about a successful physical act he’d just accomplished that he had once questioned his dad about.

“Life” (Solondz eschews the label “sequel”) begins with Joy (now played by pale, child-like Shirley Henderson), who has found her calling in working with the incarcerated, and her ex-con husband, Allen, (Michael K. Williams), at a restaurant (a scene that tracks to a similar opening scene in “Happiness”). Actually, when the scene opens, before the credits, the audience (unless it’s seen “Happiness”) has no clue who or where these characters are, or what they are doing. Solondz keeps the camera on them for a long time before one of them speaks. He requires patience and we are always rewarded for having to wait. Then, after the credits, it cuts to a shot of Trish’s ex, Bill (now played by Ciaran Hinds) leaving prison in a standard-issue black suit and white shirt. He stands alone on a sun-drenched, deserted street. Gazing at his stricken, unshaven face, we sense his wonder, “Who am I? What the fuck do I do, now.” Meanwhile, Trish (Allison Janney), in the kitchen of her suburban home, dreamily confesses to her youngest son, Timmy (an elfin, freckle-face Dylan Riley Snyder), that she has fallen in love with bearish Harvey (a believable Michael Lerner), who left her in a certain physical state. Timmy, of course, wants her to explain; which, of course, she can’t. A heartbreaking scene takes place between Jaqueline, an aged prostitute, and Bill in a mid-level hotel. Jacqueline is beautifully played by sloe-eyed, sultry Charlotte Rampling (a Lauren Bacall equal had her career not been derailed for a time by alcohol).

“Life” travels back and forth among the sisters, showing how each is dealing with what has happened to her. Joy’s obsessed boyfriend, Andy, in “Happiness,” (Jon Lovitz) and in “Life,” (a poignant performance by a once maligned Paul Reubens), meets a tragic end. He haunts her throughout the film (“I see dead people.”). Husband, Allen, does not fare well, either. Helen (Alley Sheedy), though a success, still agonizes that she’s an imposter, a fraud. Trish puts a happy face on everything. She basically just wants to protect her children. She succeeds too well in that it cost her her new love due to Timmy’s misunderstanding of her warning about child molesters. Solondz ends “Life” with a bittersweet resolution of sorts between Bill and his oldest son, Bill, Jr.(Chris Marquette), when he seeks him out at a college in Oregon.

In interviews, Solondz has confessed that throughout life he had undergone much of what his characters had experienced which gives him the unique ability to get deeply into them. He reveals their buried desires in believable dialogue and soliloquy. He shows respect for his male characters - - despite their unfortunate dark sides - -unlike most of the recent comedies skewed towards men that renders them as nothing more than schlubby, immature, ignoramuses. Also, he shows kids as having intelligence and honesty beyond that of their parents and adults in general. His female characters, though, come off as self-involved, clueless (as far as their kids are concerned), or ineffective do-gooders. Trish and Helen constantly give Joy, a vegan, advice: Eat meat, if only once a month! and snipe about her behind her back.

Solondz’s exterior scenes in “Life” are stark and harshly lit, unpopulated. They are shot long, resembling Edward Hopper paintings, and impart a feeling of loneliness such that we relate to the characters in the knowledge that we all are alone in our own beings. Interior shots are in high-color, more pastel than saturated (Cinematography by Edward Lachman). The soundtrack is spare. Music supervisor , Doug Bernheim, tastefully infuses the film with classical bits as the second movement from Vivaldi’s Concerto in D. The titles of all three films are woven into them as original songs, sung and played once by the characters. The title of the film refers to the ongoing "wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan. Trish aims to make Timmy understand that despite his frustrations and sadness over his dad (Trish had convinced him and Bill, Jr. that he was dead), that we all have to put aside our grievances because this is life during wartime.

Note: It’s not required that you see “Happiness” before “Life During Wartime,” but I recommend it.

WINTER'S BONE

2010-07-15T16:06:00.000-07:00

I highly recommend this wonderful independent film,"Winter's Bone." Try to see it before it leaves theatres. Writer/Director Debra Granik and writer Anne Rosselini have created a moody, intense film about a heroic seventeen year old girl, Ree Dolly (a superb Jennifer Lawrence) whose mother, Connie (Valerie Richards), is non compos mentis, the result of her husband's drug dealings; he has been missing for over a week. So Ree takes on the job of raising her younger siblings: a wise 12 year old boy, Sonny (Isaiah Stone) and Ashlee a sweet seven year old (Ashlee Thompson). You get an insight into Ree's thwarted longings when she takes them to school and her love for her father as she stands before his neatly arranged closet.

The problem is that besides being dirt poor, the family is about to lose their property which the father had put up for bond if he fails to show for a court date. They live in the Missouri out-back in a faux log cabin home little bigger than a double-wide trailer, in a community of meth-cooking druggies, where the law is suspect. This is Ozark country, a depressed area where nothing is thrown out - - well, thrown out the front or back door because there's no room for anymore stuff in the house. Every surface is piled with stuff. Broken down vehicles sit in front yards, some with tarps thrown over them; there's farm machinery, four-wheel tractors, saw horses, plastic tricycles and toys. The surrounding land, weed-grown. Still, there's evidence of solvency: some nice homes and out-buildings, well-fed livestock, a harvest ready for market. The men drive around in nifty four-wheel drives and pick-ups; there's money somewhere, but the men in Ree's extended family appear to do nothing but sit around and do drugs, an activity to which Ree is totally averse.

It's early winter, the trees are bare, everything is brown and gray. It looks cold, really cold (Cinematography by Michael McDonough). What warmth there is is in the loving relationship between Ree, her mute mom, and her siblings, whom she sees are warmly dressed and get to school; she rustles up meager meals. You get that she will do anything for them. The boy is playful, yet seems to grok what's going on; the little girl is happy to ride her stuffed pony around on a trampoline and play make-believe.

Ree sets out to find her dad but hits formidable roadblocks at every turn. No one will help her, not even her dad's brother, Teardrop (a standout, nuanced performance by John Hawkes) or other relatives. She is violently turned away, doors slammed in her face. The one person who it is said to know everything is a feared elderly patriarch, Thumb Milton (Ronnie Hall), who dresses like a biker without a bike. Though warned of the consequences by Merab (a perfectly cast Dale Dickey) if she keeps it up, Ree is determined. What will happen to them if they lose the house? You sense a conspiracy of silence and an undercurrent of absolute evil. Her neighbor Sonya (Shelley Waggener) grudgingly takes pity by sharing equipment and horse feed, food and what little money they can spare. Ree bravely confronts Milton and suffers greatly for it. Not by him, but at the hands of Merab and her tough, hard-bitten female accomplices. Ree is comforted and aided by her best friend, Gail (Lauren Sweetser).

Parts of the film are harrowing and nightmarish, as in the scene where Ree, with Merab, searches out her father in a swamp. In all, it is completely fulfilling, engaging the audience on every level with entirely believable characters without a note of falsity, pandering, or exploitation. One unforgettable scene is of a group of musicians, playing and singing traditional mountain folk tunes in someone's living room; an old, white-haired, comfortably plump woman (Marideth Sisco) sings in a clear, rich voice. Outstanding performances by Sherril Lee as April, Garret Dillahunt as Sheriff Baskin, Brandon Gray as Spider Milton, and Kevin Breznahan as Little Arthur. There's a non-intrusive film score of original music by Dickon Hinchcliff. The film was shot in and around Branson, Missouri.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

2010-06-22T14:28:00.000-07:00

I implore you to see this Swedish film, "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," directed by Niels Arden Oplev, based on the first novel in a trilogy by the recently deceased (2004) Stieg Larsson quickly before Hollywood releases their version. In fact, it's now in pre-production but hasn't been cast. Once you see the original, you won't believe that director David Fincher and producer Scott Rudin are considering for the leads Brad Pitt and Scarlett Johanssen (among others equally unsuited, except for Daniel Craig, whom I can see in the role of Mikael Blomkvist, the investigative journalist).

Mikael Blomkvist (strongly played by a rugged Michael Nyqvist) is a dedicated investigative journalist at an independent newspaper. He's about to go to prison in six months for an article he'd written about a corrupt politician/corporate honcho. Instead, he is the one found guilty for defamation of character - - or something, and is sentenced. Until he has to show up to serve time, he gets hired by the patriarch, Martin Vanger (Peter Haber), of the hugely wealthy Vanger family conglomerate. Vanger wants him to find a favorite niece who went missing some forty years ago when she was seventeen. Since she was never found, she is presumed dead, yet Martin believes she's alive. The extended Vanger family lives in separate estates on the island reachable by the only bridge to the mainland. Seems Mikael lived there as a child; his dad did some manual labor for the family. The missing girl once baby sat him, and Mikael, as many a six year old would, became besotted (there are flashbacks). Mikael meets and interviews the family - - people who change clothes several times a day and dress for dinner even though they've no guests. They've been through it all before and barely tolerate him. The family comes off as totally out of touch and their wealth isolates them from having to deal with, well, life, and all those "others."

The subplot involves brooding, dark Lisbeth Salander (a superb, perfectly cast Noomi Rapace). Salandar is an intriguing young woman who, with beaucoo piercings, tattoos, black leather, stompin' boots, and metal accessories, is straight out of a William Gibson novel. She hacks her way into government and corporate protected web sites. Lisbeth had bounced around foster homes and now, as a young woman, is a ward of the state and must report to a "guardian," periodically. Her current guardian, Nils Bjurman (creepily played by Peter Andersson) exerts the price of extreme sexual abuse on her when she requests extra funding for a new computer. Her lap-top was damaged during an attack by a pack of hooligans in a subway. Later, she avenges the terrible wrongs she endured by Bjurman; though harrowing, it feels justified.

Mikael, in his computer searches, realizes his sites are being hacked and this is how the two meet. She becomes his partner in solving the mystery of the missing girl, and his lover. This beautifully shot- - in wintry grey and blue tones (in Denmark and Sweden) - - suspenseful film is not only a detective story about a missing girl, it expands into the discovery of a serial killer of young women that had taken place over decades. Blomqvist and Salandar also unravel a deep family secret going back to the Third Reich. For all its flashbacks and plot twists, it moves along smoothly and reaches a fulfilling conclusion. (In Swedish with English subtitles.)

Hollywood is scheduled to film Larsson's final books of the trilogy: "The Girl Who Played with Fire" and "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest," known collectively as the Millennium Trilogy, "Millennium" being the name of Mikael Blomkvist's paper. All the more reason to see this film!

SPLICE

2010-06-12T15:03:00.000-07:00

Director Vincenzo Natali has created a science fiction/horror film starring Adrien Brody and Sara Polley as bio genetic engineers. They are not only partners at work, but also a couple. They live together in a cramped, but artfully decorated apartment. Brody is Clive Nicoli; Polley, Elsa Kast. The screenplay was written by Antoinette Terry Bryant. Thanks to Brody and Polley's talents, they were able to overcome some really bad dialogue. Critics, for the most part, gave this movie high marks. (EW gave it an A-) This is one film I had to agree with Mick La Salle of the San Francisco Chronicle on. He gave it a C+.

Right from the start, I found myself suppressing laughter. This is a serious film! With Clive and Elsa engaged in cutting edge experiments in gene splicing to devlop cells that the the medical profession can use to cure diseases.

Clive and Elsa successfully create a new life form - - male and female - - they cutely name Fred and Ginger - - which looks for all the world like a huge, fat, flaccid penis (both sexes) whom they display in their Lucite case. Fred and Ginger proceed to feel each other up using a feathery red "tongue" that emerges from the "head". These creatures can change sexes it is discovered later when they are displayed to an audience of investors who soon find themselves covered in bloody gore. Elsa and Clive's boss tells them that they will receive no more funding for other projects.

Not to be undone, Elsa secretly grows her own life form in an incubator-like container, in a locked lab on the premises. Clive finds out. He remonstrates. They argue. But he is intrigued (a scientist, after all). He will keep her secret. They monitor the thing's development, recording notes and all. The thing escapes and makes horrible screeching noises. It bounces around the lab like the plucked chicken it resembles, or like a balloon expelling air. It grows, and grows, and grows into a wide-eyed bald girl whose chicken wings soon become like human arms, but her legs, tsk tsk, remain birdlike, in fact they resemble ostrich legs, and boy, does she ever use them. She's all over the place. They discover it's female.

They name her Dren ("nerd" backwards, get it?), played by French actress Delphine Chaniac. She comes down with a fever. Elsa treats her like a real child which worries Clive. In fact, he is fearful they will be found out and you get that he does not have good feelings about the whole situation. Working with Elsa to cure her, he does something the intent of which was so blatantly obvious to us, but ends up instead accidentally saving her life. Elsa thinks he knew all along that his action would cure Dren. At this point, I no longer bothered to hold back my laughter; neither did others.

Clive's brother Gavin (Brandon McGibbon) works with the lab. He finds out about their experiment. How can he not? Dren is so noisy, knocking over lab equipment, shelves, and glass cabinets. They swear him to secrecy. Dren almost kills Gavin, so they move her to Elsa's rundown childhood farm (which Clive knew nothing about).

At the farm, it's revealed that Elsa had a really rotten childhood, hinting of abuse by her mom. Dren is a captive in the barn and has enough sense to try to escape. In one try, it's revealed she has retractable wings which conveniently emerge from open seams in her cute, little black mini-dress. Clive and Elsa exchange bad cop/good cop roles in caring for Dren. Clive teaches her to slow dance. Elsa gives her a doll. Tables turn when Dren gets the hots for Clive and Elsa is jealous, natch. The ending is something like a cross between "The Creature from the Black Lagoon," and swampy vampire films, plus a taste of "Rosemary's Baby."

Remember: Elsa's "creatures" can change sexes. Look for "Splice 2" in the near future.

"The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers"

2010-03-22T11:08:00.000-07:00

A BRAVE MAN ACTS ON HIS CONSCIENCE
By Gaetana Caldwell-Smith

Director Judith Ehrlich’s documentary film(co-written by Michael Chandler; also co-directed with and Rick Goldsmith),“The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers” belies the current opinion that you can’t equate Iraq and Afghanistan to the debacle that was the Vietnam War. Watching it, you can’t help thinking about the similarities: the secret planning, the lies, the war and its effect on soldiers and their families.

Ehrlich interviewed people closely associated with Daniel Ellsberg, Ellsberg himself, and used archival film footage in creating this stunning, thought-provoking work. The film, which runs more or less chronologically, takes us back to the Truman and Eisenhower eras, when Truman in 1950, authorized $15 million in military aid to the French colonialists in Vietnam; then Eisenhower sent American advisors along with military supplies there to help the French fight liberation forces. In the early 1960s, Kennedy lied about there being only “advisors” in Vietnam. He sent 400 Green Berets to help the Vietnamese soldiers fight the Viet Cong guerrillas. By the time of Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, there were 16,000 American military “advisors” in South Vietnam. By the end of the war, more than 2 million soldiers had served in Vietnam in various capacities during the US’s fifteen year involvement; 500,000 saw actual combat; 58,261 were killed.

Daniel Ellsberg, born in 1931, graduated at the top of his class from the Marine Corps Basic School in Quantico, Virginia, and served as an officer for two years. He deployed to Vietnam as a company commander. Film footage and still photos show him puffed up and grinning in full military gear, weapon ready. He admits that his favorite movie characters were the macho-men played by John Wayne. At that time, as the film illustrates, Ellsberg was a staunch anti-communist. He believed we had to go to war in Vietnam to stop the Communists from taking over that country and other Southeast Asian democracies. After two years of leading troops into villages, shooting at, and being ambushed by, men wearing shorts and sandals, his eyes were opened to the fact that the war was unwinnable.

Once discharged, he became an analyst at the non-profit think tank RAND Corporation. He was given top security at the Pentagon. That he had access to all top secret documents allowed him to discover the lie of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, a trumped up event Johnson used as a valid reason for the US military to make a formal entry into Vietnam. An archival clip shows Ellsberg on a private plane flying back to the US with Robert McNamara, Johnson's Secretary of Defense, from a fact-finding mission in Vietnam. During the flight, Ellsberg thought he had convinced McNamara that no way could the US win this war. To Ellsberg, what the US was doing was “justified murder.” McNamara agreed, assuring him that he was going to tell Nixon to end it. They are shown after landing and being met by reporters and White House correspondents on the tarmac. Ellsberg watches as McNamara, in front of a bank of mics [microphones], lies through his teeth that in Vietnam “everything was going well.”

Nixon wanted to increase the war power and did, authorizing a secret bombing of Cambodia and moving in thousands more troops. Nixon comes off almost as comic relief. Thank the comic gods that he left his tape recorder on all the time so that we get to see and hear him swearing, using the foulest language, going ape-shit over Ellsberg, Watergate, Vietnam, and more, as he rails and spumes to Kissinger and other aides. Even knowing what the Pentagon documents contained, Ellsberg just went along - - for a while. Several film clips, his occasional narrative, as well as those of his friends and colleagues, illustrate just how conflicted he was about the Pentagon and the White House secret: There was no basis for the war in Vietnam. Soon Ellsberg became completely disillusioned.

One interesting fact the movie brings out is that Ellsberg, still a self-avowed hawk, working at the Pentagon, fell in love with a pacifist. Their first date was at an anti-war rally. He then joined the War Resisters League. He says he “felt ridiculous,” at rallies and hoped his bosses wouldn’t see him on camera. A clip shows him in a crowd listening to a speech by a draft resister say he was going to prison, proudly. Ellsberg narrates that he felt as though “an ax split[ting] not only his head in two, but his life.” He found himself in a men’s room, on his knees, sobbing, wondering how he could have done what he did (in Vietnam).” He knew he had to act. It was a life changing experience.

Many associate Ellsberg with the leaked Defense Department documents, which came to be known as The Pentagon Papers. The film recreates the process by which he obtained them. His security clearance allowed him to keep the files, detailing the facts of and plans for the Vietnam War, in his safe. He borrowed them a few at a time over several months, took them home in his bulging briefcase, and Xeroxed the 7000-page, multi-volume documents marked “Top Secret” with the help of his son and daughter, then returned the originals. He had a sworn, dedicated accomplice at RAND, Anthony Russo, who ended up being arrested and going to trial with Ellsberg in 1971 on espionage charges. (If convicted, they would have faced 115 years in prison.) Fortunately, because of Nixon’s admitted Watergate screw-up and subsequent break-in of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office, a mistrial was declared in 1973. Ellsberg and Russo were free. He and Russo, like the draft resister who had impressed him with his dedication, had been willing to put their lives on the line for the truth.

Ellsberg had approached several anti-war politicians, including Democrat anti-war presidential candidate George McGovern, to make the documents public. None would risk their careers. He went to The New York Times. Recognizing the importance of the documents, it began printing them until a court injunction ordered them to quit. The Washington Post took over the job, and it too was ordered to cease. The court was overturned and several major newspapers across the US began printing excerpts. However, enough material was already in the hands of the general public who were shocked by its content exposing the atrocities, the numbers of troops deployed and plans for more, those slaughtered, and the dispassionate, cold-hearted attitude of the administration in ordering the death sentences of millions. The Pentagon Papers revealed that the government had knowledge, early on, that the war was unwinnable and that continuing would lead to more casualties than was ever admitted publicly. Moreover, the papers showed the cynicism toward the public that Pentagon officials held, and its blatant disregard for the deaths and injuries suffered by soldiers and civilians. We, of course, watching the film couldn’t help thinking about the lies that got the US into Iraq.

Ellsberg also gave a 4,000+ page copy to Alaska Senator Mike Gravel who agreed to read them as a way of prolonging his filibuster in Congress. An in-house taping of Gravel reading the document, included in the film, shows Gravel literally breaking down and sobbing as he read.

Today, because of the economy and cultural changes, major newspapers like The Times struggle to stay afloat. Corporate-owned, mainstream broadcast news media producers are beholden to corporations and to their sponsors. If classified information were to reach any major news outlet today that exposed the truth about the US’s actions in and plans for the Middle East (or anywhere else), it would not be published. We have to thank the alternative press (this paper for one) and independent media outlets, the Internet, anti-war websites, and military veterans and defectors, for speaking out. Ignorance of reliable information keeps the general public from aligning with peace and anti-war organizations and staging demonstrations equaling those joined by the hundreds of thousands who had protested the Vietnam War - - people who had risked being shot at, killed, beaten, and/or arrested by National Guard troops, as shown in the footage of this documentary.

Ellsberg had been a consultant for the government at the Pentagon since 1958 through the presidencies of Eisenhower, Kennedy, and, in 1964, Johnson. He has since stated: “I had seen a lot of classified material by this time—I mean, tens of thousands of pages—and had been in a position to compare it with what was being said to the public. The public is lied to every day by the President, by his spokespeople, by his officers. If you can’t handle the thought that the President lies to the public for all kinds of reasons, you couldn’t stay in the government at that level, or you’re made aware of it . . . . The fact is Presidents rarely say the whole truth—essentially, never say the whole truth—of what they expect and what they’re doing and what they believe and why they’re doing it and rarely refrain from lying, actually, about these matters.”

Still active in the anti-war movement, Ellsberg was arrested, in November 2005 at age 74, for violating a county ordinance for trespassing while protesting against George W. Bush’s conduct of the Iraq War. Ellsberg spoke at the recent, March 20anti-war rally in San Francisco, which marked the Seventh Anniversary of the "war" in Iraq. Though not a hero in the John Wayne sense, he is a true hero nevertheless.

"On the Starting Line"

2010-01-30T15:28:00.000-08:00

“On the Starting Line,” a film written and directed by Wendy J. Menara, produced by Linda A. Vito, starring Samia Mooney , Tony Mathews, and Kevin Dougan.

You go to a parade; you see them. They march behind the band, twirling rifles (fake), then spinning them skyward, and catching them like batons; they twirl or wave large, colorful flags, but don’t ever let them catch you equating them with a “marching band,” or “baton twirlers.” They are a drum corps.

The introduction to the organization Drum Corps International states: “From modest beginnings more than three decades ago, Drum Corps International (DCI) has developed into a powerful, nonprofit, global youth activity with far-reaching artistic, educational and organizational influence. Through the annual DCI Tour and more than 35 World Championships in 17 North American cities, Drum Corps International provides entertainment to millions through live performances and nationally-televised events. Drum Corps International is Marching Music’s Major League™.” The organization stands behind its message of “excellence in performance and in life” to more than 7.2 million people, ages 13-22 involved in performing arts in the United States.

In her film,“On the Starting Line,” writer and director Wendy J. Menara tells the story of blond, pony-tailed, Wynn, a high school girl with a self-esteem problem brought lower by a friend’s comments and fear of one day becoming an alcoholic. Her mother had died of alcoholism. She is convincingly played by Samia Mooney. Wynn trains to be a drum corps member with a group of high-school friends. She is the daughter of single parent, Louie (Tony Mathews), with whom she has a good relationship. The film brings out that, as with others in the performing arts disciplines, body image take precedent over anything else for women training for the drum corps. Wynn confesses to a friend that she feels uncomfortable in her body. She sees herself as clumsy and fat. She is not anorexic-skeletal, but certainly not fat.

Menara believably brings out the high school meanness, put-downs, and sniping among girls who are supposed to be friends. Boys, as in ballet and other performing arts practices, also train for the drum corps. Louis Moreno plays Vik, Wynn’s lovable, high-energy pal. Their goal is to one day audition for the top drum corps group, Royal Phoenix, in Washington D.C. and be chosen to join. Training like dancers, they wear leotards and tights as Shirley, their coach, takes them through the drill. While the school’s senior drum corps goes through their routine to rousing marching band music on a grassy field, Wynn and the others practice on asphalt between two buildings on school grounds. When Royal Phoenix passes through town, Wynn’s group watches them enviously.

Being passionate about drum corps is considered dorky by other kids. Yet, Menara doesn’t bring this out in her film. She focuses more on the inner rivalry among the members, especially between Wynn, Darla (Danielle Aruta), and Maggie (Jennifer Spohr). Maggie is constantly refreshing her make up and seems not to be too serious about the training and Darla is more into getting a boyfriend. Wynn subtly flirts with Leland (an easy-going, likeable Kevin Dougan), the local gas station attendant/car mechanic,who doesn’t mind being called a grease monkey; his goal is to become a professional race car driver. Wynn's self-described, openly gay younger brother, Gavin, is supportive of her, without relinquishing his rôle as a typical snide, sarcastic young teen, a part that fit Stephen Sherwood like a second skin. These scenes at home are warm and natural without being smarmy. Carole Robinson plays Francis, Dad's caring girlfriend, with bone-deep honesty. She is an old friend of the family whose love for them is obvious.

One thing is certain: Once you see this film, you’ll know everything you ever wanted to know about those people marching behind the band. (A note on the DVD cover warns: “The performances in this film are by trained professionals. Do not attempt without proper training and supervision!”) Darla, who ends every sentence with a complaining, “whatever,” convinces Wynn’s dad to let her go on tour. He is naturally protective of her, and suspicious of Darla. Darla dumps Wynn for Elliot, her boyfriend; Rosie (a spritely, endearing Giovannie Espiritu) steps in. There are many scenes of Wynn practicing solo to the tune “Wynn’s Song” specially composed for the film by Key Poulan, and pep talks with coach Shirley during group training: “If you think you’ll drop it, you will.”

On tour, they practice in parking lots and sleep in school gyms. There are hints of financial problems, incidents of bulimic episodes; Francis admonishes Wynn after catching her vomiting in the bathroom. Wynn visits a psychic (Linda Vito), who tells her about her mom and positive futuristic events. A conflict develops between Wynn and her school counselor over college and the corps. Wynn auditions for Royal Phoenix with the rest of her group, but they’d partied the night before and auditioned hung over with dire results. A family crises ensues upon Wynn’s return, which is resolved. Wynn and her team get a call-back. She gets help with her dance routine finale from a friend, who builds up her confidence and esteem.

The Internet Home Page for DCI contends that “while an exclusive number of students participate on the field with a DCI drum corps, millions follow the corps of DCI by attending competitions, participating in DCI-sponsored educational programs and events, purchasing merchandise.” And goes on to state that fans follow the exploits of their favorite corps in ways reminiscent of the Grateful Dead’s Deadheads, or the Boston’s Red Sox Nation. Perhaps through Menara’s film, DCI will become as famous.

For information go to www.dci.org

"Up in the Air"

2010-01-30T11:42:00.000-08:00

“Up in the Air,” directed by Jason Reitman, screen play written by Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner, starring George Clooney, Jason Bateman, Vera Farmiga, and Anna Kendrick.

PIE IN THE SKY
Co-writer and Director Jason Reitman must have been prescient when he and Sheldon Turner wrote the screenplay for “Up in the Air,” a sad, poignant film that shows a complete disregard for the feelings of the majority of Americans who are currently jobless. The filmmakers used people’s uncertain status in the working world of today’s economy to tell a story about a seemingly emotionless, smooth-talking, handsome, Human Resources contract hit-man man, Ryan Bingham (George Clooney). They interviewed on camera real people, with a couple of exceptions, who had been fired, using the footage in segments throughout the film. In today’s economy, job loss and the unemployment figures are the worst since the Great Depression of the ‘30s and the economic downturn in the early ‘80s.

Bingham is the top guy at a large corporation specializing in the business of helping companies “downsize.“ His job is to convince you that losing your job is a good thing. He flies to all the major US cities, rents a car, and drives to identical “office parks” to companies that have hired him. Here is Clooney at his slickest in dress and manner. One is almost happy to be fired by such a one (On a personal note, I was fired by a hugely obese, heavily made-up woman. Whenever she lumbered past our cubicles, we would quake in our boots knowing heads would roll). Bingham’s lifestyle, when not spending almost the entire year up in the air or in high-end hotels, is spare. He has a small apartment with a kitchen nook, a bedroom accessed by pushing aside a tacky folding door, a closet with just so many look-alike suits and shirts, a dresser filled with carefully folded underwear, and socks. He lives out of his wheeled carry-on with its collapsible handle. And loves it.

We hear Clooney in the occasional narrative voice-over talking about the crazy things people do when they’re fired: The dreaded disgruntled employee syndrome that ends in a massacre at a former work-place or household. At the start of the film, Reitman shows people reacting as they listen to Bingham. They are middle-age employees for the most part seen full-screen sitting in front of a desk; Bingham is off camera. Their faces crumple as they speak about losing their homes, maybe having to sell their cars, and what will happen to their kids’ college fund? With a sympathetic yet encouraging smile, Bingham tells them that now, they can do whatever it is that they’ve always dreamed of before signing on to a job they were never passionate about. “You can be your own boss, start your own company, be an entrepreneur.” Before him are a stack of severance packets, detailing the terms of their being “let go.” “Never say ‘fired’ or ‘terminated’,“ he advises Natalie (Anna Kendrick), a new hire for his company. She is the epitome of the young professional woman who wants it all: career, marriage, kids. She’s crisp, pony-tailed, with an expressionless face that looks like a computer drawing.

He meets his match and more in no-nonsense Alex Goran (an excellent Vera Farmiga) in a swanky hotel bar. They start off by one-upping each other in displaying their plastic: credit cards, hotel keys, executive suite cards, and swapping travel stories. After a one-nighter, they gladly go their separate ways and later refer to their packed schedules for when they can meet again. They’re in it for the fun, companionship - - someone with whom to drink, dine, and bed. No strings, yet Bingham seems anxious at times. Things are great until his boss, Craig Gregory (Jason Bateman), tells him they’re going to save money by firing people via video-conferencing, a program proposed by Natalie. In effect, Bingham will be grounded.

Natalie is appalled by Ryan’s lifestyle, his detachment. She tells him that everyone needs the company of other people. Bingham takes her on the road. She gets her shot at a teleconference firing. A woman responds to her question, “What are your plans?” “I think I’ll jump off a bridge,” she says. A tragic result of one such impersonal firing sends Ryan back on the road.

The film is not all the cold, calculating business of firing people. Ryan takes Alex to his niece’s wedding back home. Despite the economy, she and her fiancé are getting married and will start a family. Ryan and Alex dance, laugh, carry on then go their separate ways. Ryan ponders Natalie’s observation. He seeks out Alex only to find she’s been playing him all along - - the film’s only twist. She’s basically fired him; now he knows how it feels. Still, being Ryan, he carries on. Reitman’s films, as in many mainstream films passing as “indie” or “art” films, carry the message that unless you’re married and/or have a huge, loving, yet quirky family that nevertheless ascribes to convention, you can’t possibly be happy. Once Ryan gets back on track, following a familiar routine, with all its perks, he certainly will be content if only to one day find love, and reconnect with his family. A last shot shows him entering yet another airport terminal. Home.
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"AVATAR" or the Blue Goodies

2010-01-10T13:10:00.000-08:00

“Avatar,” written and directed by James Cameron, starring Sam Worthington and Signoury Weaver, and Zoe Saldana.

“Titanic” director James Cameron threw elements from a few CGI animated sci-fi/ fantasy/action films into “Avatar,” his latest multi-million dollar vehicle. There’s “Jurassic Park,” “Transformer,” “Starship Troopers,” “Eragon,”, “Lord of the Rings,” and even a Disney/Pixar film or two where warring creatures of the forest/jungle amass to save the good guys. It’s obvious from the start that Cameron meant for “Avatar” to speak against US exploitation of indigenous peoples and their lands for their natural resources. His bias against the military is also evident throughout.

It’s 2154 and the Earth has been destroyed due to excess, climate change, and disease. The US discovers a mineral, Unobtainium, not available on Earth, on the moon Pandora, that will heal it. A space station hovers over Pandora, replete with scientists conducting experiments, headed by cigarette-smoking Grace, played by Signoury Weaver, and Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi), a geeky, fanatic, project manager. The mining and exploration of Pandora is backed by the military - - in this case ex-Marines and paramilitary units - - with all their air- and gun-ships. Steven Lang is the top military operations commander, Colonel Miles Quaritch, who refers to his men as “meat.” Michelle Rodriguez has an instrumental role as pilot Trudy Chacon. We see shots of huge mining operations, with workers wearing oxygen masks, on a scale seen in coal and iron ore mining here in the US, taking place on Pandora. Monstrous dump trucks with wheels the size of ten story buildings rumble down sliced-off mountaintops, on barren terraced areas.

There’s no oxygen on Pandora, so in order to explore, scope out the situation, and befriend the beautiful, ten-foot tall, dreadlock, bead, and braid-wearing Na’vi natives, human scouts must become Na’vi avatars. Transforming into an avatar is accomplished by climbing into a cyro tank which is hooked up to lots of wires and tubes to another tank containing a Na’vi body, once your human DNA is mixed with Na’vi, you then control it with your thoughts, while you remain in the tank. Your avatar is then transported to Pandora. If things start to go wrong, a scientist can just push a red “kill” button to wake you up. Sam Worthington plays Jake Sully, a Marine who’d lost his legs in the latest war. His brother had been killed in action and he wants to do right by him, so signs up to go to the space station to become an avatar. Someone jokes, as he rolls in on his wheelchair, “Oh, boy, meals on wheels.” He is told that they are on Pandora to “win [the natives’] hearts and minds” and convince them that we mean them no harm, words that could have come directly from the mouth of General Petreus, McChrystal and those before them.

Once on Pandora, Grace, and her assistant, Norm (Joel Moore), as avatars themselves, guide avatar Jake through a colorful jungle wonderland of strange plants and animals. Jake, making full use of his new legs and body, takes off on his own and disappears. Night is falling. Concerned, Grace and Norm decide to leave him there. Here’s where I sensed a plot loophole - - Couldn’t they have told someone on the space station to push the red button? But no, if Jake is worth his salt, he’ll be fine and Cameron’s story will move forward. In a dramatic scene, Jake meets a female Na’vi (who looks like a blue Angelina Jolie), Neyriti (Zoe Saldana). She brings him home to tribal leaders, Mom and Dad (Wes Studi: immediately recognizable voice). Their ways are identical to those of Native Americans and other indigenous peoples who’ve lived off the land for centuries and feel a deep spiritual connection with their land and all living beings. Jake soon comes to think that the Na’vi world is the true world and his world is built on lies. He begins questioning Selfridge’s and Quaritch’s motives; he is derided for “going native” because he got a “piece of Na’vi tail.” Quaritch is determined to get rid of “the fly-bitten savages.” Still, Jake is a Marine and must do what he was trained to do - - until . . .

An ancestral, spiritual, tree of life is threatened as it sits on the largest deposit of the mineral. Jake has failed to convince the Na’vi to move to another site, so Quaritch barks his orders. The Na’vi and all the mythical beasts and birds of the jungle retaliate, including dragons piloted by Na’vi. When Chacon in her airship sees she is killing innocent people, she echoes what many American soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan have said, openly, “This is not what I signed up for.”

This is a film with strong pro-environment, anti-war, anti-imperialism messages that I trust will not be lost on audiences who went to see it for its gorgeous animation; imaginative, sci-fi story; its inventiveness, and its out-of-this-world (no pun intended) 3D effects.

This review has been published in an abriged form in the January issue of "Socialist Action News" www.socialistaction.org

"IT'S COMPLICATED"

2010-01-09T16:32:00.000-08:00

Written and directed by Nancy Meyers, starring Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin, John Krasinski, and Lake Bell.

"It's Complicated' is a "high-end" flick, by which I mean that everyone in it is rich, very upper-middle class white. The only people who appear in the film with a darker skin color are Jake's (Alec Baldwin) new wife, Agnes (Lake Bell) and son, Pedro (Emjay Anthony),and some of the help in Streep's huge, successful, bakery/café, musicians at a party, Harley (John Krasinski of "The Office"), who comes off as swarthy, next to the others, and, also Baldwin, with his dark hair and rugged Irish looks. This is not a BAD thing, per se. It's just that audiences in big cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York are going to have a hard time relating to these characters, the situation, and the location. Jane, played by Meryl Streep, has been divorced from Jake for about a decade. Her home appears to be upstate New York, on an estate miles from even so much as a village, like the one where Jane has her bakery. There are rolling, grassy hills, abundant trees, white fences bordering lush pastureland, but no livestock.

I have tried to like Meryl Streep, really I have. I do like her when she plays driven, focused, tyrannical women as in "The Devil Wears Prada," "Rendition," and others. Yet, in the past couple of decades, most of her characters are similar - - discombobulated, embarrassed, giggly females. And, in this film, Meyers has Streep gasping for air and fanning herself with her hand at her throat like a 19th Century Southern Belle, about to call for the fainting chair. At one point, after hearing Streep laugh at - - really nothing, I said to myself, "Oh, stop. Why are your laughing?" Streep's very next line was just that: "Why am I laughing?" In "Complicated," she's all this and much, much, more: She's Martha Stewart and Julia Childs. Her "Martha Stewart" is a woman who has it all: a successful business, three gorgeous successful 20-something children - - a son, Luke (Hunter Parrish), who just graduated college, two daughters, one who's engaged to Harley and is planning her wedding (a wedding planner scene is de riguer), the other just moved out to be on her own. Jane lives in a lovely, rambling, one-story home, with a perfect vegetable garden (one assumes she grows all her produce for her fabulous dinners and café/bakery). Her red cabbages are all of a certain size in perfect rows, in fact, everything in her garden is in well-ordered rows. Her tomatoes - - plump and red. She reprises her Julia Childs role at home and in her bakery. She takes us and Adam (Steve Martin) through the steps for making perfect chocolate croissants. She cooks elaborate meals for her visiting children who've all descended on her to go to their brother's graduation.

What doesn't make sense is that, okay, she's divorced, her children have moved out. She's an empty-nester sans hubby. Yet SHE'S EXPANDING HER HOME!to get the kitchen she's always wanted! plus an upstairs bedroom for the view. Martin, in one of his best roles, plays a successful architect who owns a large, thriving firm which employs at least a dozen people. In one scene, Jane and Adam climb ladders on the roped-off layout of her expansion so he can show her the scene she'll have from her new bedroom. "Look," he says, and the camera pans over what? Tile rooftops and some trees overhung by a smoggy sky? Wow!

The crux of the film has to do the fact that her husband, Jake, divorced her for a much, much younger woman, Agnes (Lake Bell), who has an ornery eight-year old son, Pedro. Jake and Jane travel in the same circles so run into each other at garden parties and family events. Their children still love their father despite what he's done to their mother and want them to get back together. Jake goes to Luke's graduation alone (Pedro came down with stomach flu). She, the kids, and Jake chance to stay at the Biltmore. The kids go off to their own celebration and Ma's not invited, of course. She ends up in the hotel bar and orders a safe pinot noir. Then what the hell, give me a martini straight up. Who should sidle up on the next stool? Jake. After several drinks and dance, they end up sleeping together and thus begins an affair which brings color to Jane's cheeks, and life in her step. There's the requisite gab fest with Jane's gal pals, complete with three kinds of her freshly baked pies, served with the proper desert wines, where she divulges her affair, to the shock and delight of her friends. Jane realizes the irony that she is the other woman in her husband's marriage. In every scene with Agnes, Agnes comes off as a shrew. She wants to have kids; Alec can't produce. They go to a fertility clinic. Pedro is a real pain in Jake's ass. Yet to show Jake is a very loving Dad, Meyers includes a tender scene of him gently putting his sleeping step-son to bed. Still, Jake misses Jane and all he's lost.

Meanwhile, Jane is succumbing to the charms of Adam. Jake sees them together at yet another party for Luke, yukking it up and dancing after having toked on a joint Jake had left for Jane. He is not happy. He and Jane dance. Agnes looks on and sees that he is still in love with his ex-wife. You see her sadness in her eyes and for the first time, she comes off as a character with dimension.

I liked the film. I laughed, but in the end, I just didn't care about these people who have it all and more and yet still want more. I did think that seeing older actors, showing their age, playing characters falling in love, making out, talking about what aging does to one's body; basically having mature, engaging conversations, and having fun was a wonderful antithesis to all the dorky Seth Rogen coming of age movies and the like that have surfaced over the past decade.

"DISTRICT 9"

2009-11-13T16:31:00.000-08:00

"District 9" Director Neill Blomkamp,starring Sharlto Copley.

NO CLOSE ENCOUNTER

By Gaetana Caldwell-Smith

It is unfortunate that the excellent, low-budget, allegorical, sci-fi film, “District 9,” is no longer in theatres especially now that ugly anti-immigrant sentiment is on the rise here and in Europe - - the Netherlands, particularly. Director Neill Blomkamp, a native of South Africa, had witnessed apartheid first hand. His film transcends the big-budget sci-fi blockbusters in many ways, most important in its message.

The set up is that a monstrous impenetrable, mysterious space ship is hovering over Johannesburg. For two decades, its thousands of human sized, crustacean-like beings from another planet have been quarantined by the South African government in a township-like compound called District 9. Guarded by the military, they live on bare land in shacks of corrugated iron, wood, and scrap. Unlike South African blacks during apartheid, the beings, called prawns by the Joburgians, have not been given passes or ID cards so can never leave. They can’t get jobs, so scavenge; the government allows them crates of canned cat food to which they not only have become addicted, but use it to barter. Now their population has outgrown the district; they are to be evicted and moved to a larger compound.

The film is shot partly documentary style as cameras follow Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley), an inept, naïve low-level government bureaucrat who works for MNU (Multi-National United), who has been put in charge of the relocation (think Steve Carrell of “The Office”). Accompanied by a translator and military back-up, they enter the compound smashing in doors, and forcing unwilling tenants to sign a form authorizing their move. The aliens, with shrimp like faces, speak in a clicking gibberish (subtitled) with an Arnold Schwarzenegger cadence. It’s evident not only by the fact of the space ship but also by powerful weapons that they have built and only they can operate that the aliens have a superior intellect. Of course, the government and the military want to tap into it. Aliens begin “disappearing” and end up in on slabs in labs for study. De Merwe enters the alien Christopher’s shack while he and his "mini-me" son are away; he finds a pile of old computers and other sophisticated electronic equipment along with a canister of some strange black liquid which he inadvertently squirts in his face, resulting in his gradual transformation, thus making him more valuable to his employers.

Blomkamp gives us an inside look at life in such a place where rebel Nigerians exploit the aliens, and prostitution is rampant. The issue of such alien and Nigerian unions (and there are hints of this), like mix race kids in the US since forever, face discrimination. (Recently, in some Southern state, a pastor refused to marry a black man and a white women basing concerns for the hardships their kids would face. Then someone gave an example: Barack Obama.)

“District 9” was written and directed in such as way as to have audiences sympathize with the aliens. The white South African bureaucrats are lying, small-minded, compassionless and cruel; the military, faceless thugs. You feel compassion for Wikus by the film’s end and develop an affinity towards Christopher and his small son, whom he treats like any protecting dad, warning him away from danger. Still, at a crucial moment, his son demonstrates the technical skill to run a space ship.
As of this writing, the film is not on DVD. Until it is, go to the official website at www.district9.com for trailers and more information, and push for a re-issue.

"IN THE LOOP"

2009-09-07T14:22:00.000-07:00

“In the Loop” Directed by Armando Ianucci, starring James Gandolfini, Tom Hollander, Peter Capaldi and Gina McKee.

THE REAL DECIDERS
By Gaetana Caldwell-Smith

British TV Director Armando Ianucci‘s first full length film “In the Loop” is a fast-paced romp through the inner workings of the US and UK governments, a satirical farce on how these countries ended up invading Iraq. The dialogue is sophisticated, witty, and the repartee zips around like bullets so that you feel subtitles would’ve been useful, if they could keep up.

The film begins with a talk-show interview with the Assistant Prime Minister, Simon Foster (Tom Hollander), who misspeaks when asked about a possible war in the Middle East. The result is a manic flurry of activity that has self-important government underlings flying back and forth from London to hurriedly scheduled meetings in the White House and the UN. We never see the prime minister or the US president. The characters embody the same back-biting, dog-eat-dog office politics as careerists face in the corporate world. Still, it appears they have no interest in how what they do affects the population much less the world.

There’s a meeting of the mysterious War Committee - - whose acronym sounds like a breakfast cereal or a software program. Foster thinks he’s invited only to learn that he is just “meat” in the room. James Gandolfini, a towering presence, plays an imposing but pacifistic General Miller, who runs into an old flame, Karen Clark (Mimi Kennedy), at an exclusive Washington bash at a private home. Clark’s position is akin to an assistant to the assistant secretary of state. She will be remembered for two priceless scenes: one in which her teeth bleed and another sitting beside the General in a child’s bedroom, hunkered down over a toy Mattel-like calculator to come up with the number of troops who will live or die in the war.

Scots-born, thin, wiry, eagle-faced Peter Capaldi plays Malcolm Tucker the prime minister’s communications director, an antic spin-doctor whose favorite expletive is the F word or a derivative. He is brash and insulting, especially to Judy, his assistant (Gina Mckee), besides appearing to be everywhere at once. Floating around is a report for not going to war, written by Clark’s aide, Liza (Anna Chlumsky), for which Clark takes credit. Malcolm gets hold of it, cuts and pastes it on his laptop, kneeling at a low table in a UN hallway. He passes it off as a pro war authorization. An example of underlings running the White House is illustrated by a scene of a meeting set up for Tucker with the secretary of defense in the White House. He is pushed off to a small table in a alcove where he’s greeted by an assistant to the assistant secretary of defense, a lad who looks barely old enough to shave; his aide is a black guy who brings coffee. Then there’s the State Department’s assistant secretary for policy, Linton Barwick (David Rasche), who brushes Miller off like a piece of lint. He is an unctuous, mealy-mouth with a swept back coif, who, unlike Tucker, rather than swear, says, “S-star-star-t.”

Ianucci’s brilliant, hilarious film warrants a second viewing. There is a lot going on - - intrigues, liaisons, hook-ups among aides, toady groveling (a guy named Chad, who, in the end-credits - - which you must stay for- - has Clark ask him, “Are you hanging, Chad?”). This complex movie is difficult to follow and it appears that no one knows what’s going on, but blunders on as though they do. Which seems to be the whole point. Does anyone really know who orchestrated the run-up to the war or the actual reason for attacking Iraq?

"MOON"

2009-09-07T14:11:00.000-07:00

IN A GALAXY NOT FAR, FAR AWAY
By Gaetana Caldwell-Smith
“Moon,” a film directed by Duncan Jones, written by Jones from an original story, co-written by Nathan Parker, starring Sam Rockwell and Kevin Spacey.

I wanted to see the film “Moon” when it first came out, here in San Francisco, but within a couple of weeks it was nowhere to be found. In our local daily paper, “The SF Chronicle,” Mick LaSalle, the movie critic, didn’t exactly give it a BAD review, but said it was “boring” with a lot of shots of Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell in his space lab based on the Moon, talking to himself, his plants, or to GERTY, Sam’s robot. I had delayed seeing the film initially because of LaSalle’s review. But people kept telling me how great it was/ So today, after wavering between “Ponyo.” “Moon,” and “Inglourious Basterda,” I saw that “Moon” was playing at The Lumiere, an art house theatre that specializes in the strange and obscure, edgy film. So I ran out of my apartment and made it to the theatre just in time. Mick LaSalle was way off on this one.

“Moon” is a quiet, intelligent, thought-provoking, futuristic science fiction movie that doesn’t rely on over-the-top CGI animation complete with an overpowering John Williams score. And its premise is entirely believable. It is common knowledge that the so-called developed world, especially the US, wants to mine the Moon for its resources, soon, before it runs out of them here on Planet Earth. In the film, a corporation called Lunar Industries is mining an energy source on the Moon to replace the Earth’s rapidly depleting supply. “Moon” ’s conceit is that we need personnel to monitor the computerized operation, so all one has to do is sit in an air-locked outpost and oversee everything remotely. If something goes wrong, you don a space suit and helmet, climb in your monster, six-wheeled, giant Humvee, drive to the site and fix whatever’s wrong. We see long shots of the vehicle bumping along across moon rocks and dust, swerving around craters, as though the camera were hovering in space, with the blue planet Earth in the background.

When the film opens, Rockwell, as Sam Bell, has only two weeks remaining of his three year commitment. He receives live video messages from Lunar Industries, his wife (in anachronistic black and white), but he can no longer send messages as he discovers trying to contact his wife, and Lunar on details of his departure. We find out why later in the film. Sam’s digs boast an entertainment center, GERTY to prepare meals, provide company, even dry his hair. GERTY is represented as Smiley-face emoticons in various stylized expressions, in a small window in the apparatus. On his way to fix a problem, Sam’s truck is bombarded by a hail of rocks, which is most likely a hallucination, since there’s no gravity on the Moon. Startled, Sam crashes into a ditch. The screen goes black. Next, Sam is in the infirmary with GERTY ministering to him. Seems he’s been unconscious for a few days. All GERTY says is that he had an accident. The question of how he got to the infirmary is left dangling. After all, he’s the only human up there. It is answered when we meet Sam’s clone. Yes, clone. Lunar Industries needs men. Men, in industry as in wars, are expendable. Besides, they know things. Best to erase memory, or kill them, replace them with clones. Seems there’s a ready supply of Sam clones at hand.

The film is haunting, with beautiful moonscapes shot in a monochromatic palette by Gary Shaw. Director Jones and Cinematographer Shaw convey the ambiance of what it must be like out there in space. Clint Mansell’s original score, reminiscent of Brian Eno’s work, enhances this feeling.
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THE HURT LOCKER

2009-07-30T17:35:00.000-07:00

“The Hurt Locker,” a film directed by Karen Bigelow, written by Karen Bigelow and Mark Boal, starring Guy Pearce, Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, and Brian Geraghty, with cameos by Ralph Fiennes and David Morse.

THE RULES OF DISENGAGEMENT
By Gaetana Caldwell-Smith

San Francisco filmmaker Karen Bigelow’s latest film, “The Hurt Locker,” takes place in 2004 in Baghdad. Her film sometimes has a cinema verité look; the hand-held camera is the viewpoint of a very scared and anxious soldier whose eyes flit from one object to another. The film opens on the last 39 days of a US Army’s bomb squad unit’s tour, made up of three guys whose job it is to defuse IEDs. Guy Pearce plays Sgt. Matt Thompson, Anthony Mackie, JT Sanborn; and Brian Geraghty is Owen Eldridge.

The squad works on scorching hot terrain and uses robots to analyze anything that could hide a bomb. When the ‘bots malfunction, the team head, with the help of others members, dons a heavily padded outfit and a helmet (the outfit makes him look like a deep-sea diver from a 1930’s giant octopus horror film. His breathing is amplified like that of Darth Vader’s). US soldiers backing up the squad point their guns and yell in English at Iraqi citizens to leave the area. A flock of sheep may meander past. Some men and boys go up to rooftops to watch; others peer from darkened windows. Are they just watching - - or getting ready to detonate the bomb with a cell phone?

There are many tense standoffs between the soldiers and Iraqis. In each, soldiers are at a loss as to what to do. Aiming their weapons at hapless citizens, they ask their superiors for clarification on the Rules of Engagement, yet no one seems to know exactly what they are. A fully camo-outfitted general (David Morse), brandishing his automatic rifle, jumps out of truck only long enough to commend the bomb squad for their work. Sanborn wants to kill Iraqis if they don’t obey orders. It is only when the Iraqis finally get the message - - communicated by shouts in English, simple Arabic commands, and lots of gun waving and pointing - - that disaster is averted.

Bigelow’s story is told entirely from the soldiers’ viewpoint. Every Iraqi is a threat, even friendly boys who only want to play soccer. No Iraqi is played sympathetically. The covered women are old and fat; they scream and rail in Arabic, flail their arms. Sneaky, suspicious-looking men lurk in doorways, hide in corners and spy from windows and rooftops, and one aims a video camera at Eldridge.

A robot breaks down; Thompson has to find and defuse the bomb manually. He fails. A somber scene follows depicting a large, white room containing rows and rows of white boxes sitting on tables, each representing a dead American soldier. A soldier opens the lid of one and tosses in Thompson’s personal effects. Thompson's replacement is hot-shot Sgt. William James (Jeremy Renner), who pisses off his comrades with his gung ho, go-it-alone, so-what-if-I-get- killed attitude. Going in to find a bomb and defuse it, he either sets off a smoke screen or removes his head-piece so his team not only can’t see him, but can’t communicate with him either. James prides himself on his bomb-defusing knowledge. No frustrating decisions whether to cut the yellow, red, or green wire. Still, we wince when he snips one. He is so sure of himself that at one site, he sheds his padded protective gear and helmet, saying, “If I’m gonna die, I wanna be comfortable.” We get a sense of James’s humanity when he befriends a teenage Iraqi boy. That insurgents allegedly plant bombs in corpses is brought home near the end of the film when the bomb team cases an abandoned building and James discovers the boy’s body.

Eldridge is certain that James is going to get him killed. Sanborn sees Iraqis the way the military programs its soldiers - - they are all Hajis. He hates Iraq, the Hajis, evident in how Mackie delivers Sanborn’s lines. Eldridge is the story’s weakling, the scared-y cat. He takes his troubles to Colonel John Cambridge (Christian Camargo), the company shrink. Owen challenges his ability as a fellow soldier, so Cambridge takes him up on it. You can see the outcome a mile away.
At one point, the three come up on members of Blackwater (headed by Ralph Fiennes in a cameo role) when its truck has a flat. The scene takes place in the middle of nowhere. An ambush ensues. Director Bigelow takes her time, here. The scene moves slowly. We wait with the team as they try to spot snipers through telescopes. We see what the men see: underwater images created by heat waves of parched land and a small, squat concrete bunker, until a red sun goes down. The scene is heart-stopping. In it, Eldridge earns his machismo.

Screen writer Mark Boal (who also wrote “The Valley of Elah,”) had gone to Iraq on a writing assignment, so claims he knows how to portray the life. Still, some of the character of James’s action didn’t ring true, such as sneaking off with Sanborn and Eldridge deeper into the Green Zone, after a massive truck bomb had exploded, lighting up and silhouetting the soldiers with roaring flames. Sanborn reminds James that a unit is right behind them to investigate the blast’s origins. Later, James abducts an Iraqi shopkeeper to take him through a village to find an Iraqi boy’s home. How the military warps minds is illustrated when Sanborn considers killing a mutually despised teammate. “Detonators go off accidentally all the time,” he says.

Bigelow has included the obligatory scene of soldiers getting drunk and beating each other up to celebrate completing a task. The verbal racial tension that is established earlier erupts in this scene into violence when white guy James pins Sanborn. who is black, beneath him and calls him “my bitch”. Also, war movies must have a scene where soldiers talk about their girls back home. James has an estranged wife (played by Evangeline Lilly in a couple of brief scenes) and an infant son.

The tour ends; the team is on their way home. Seeing hot-shot James later pushing a shopping cart down an eerily empty supermarket aisle, to a sappy supermarket soundtrack, in front of an endless row of countless boxes of cereal, you can feel his humiliation. He seems to be saying: “I almost lost my life a million times for this?” Putting his infant son to bed, he talks to him about what he loves most. The last scene shows just what this is, as the wording on the screen reads: “365 days left of this unit’s tour.”

Major critics liked this film, saying that, finally, after earlier films about the Iraq war (Gulf War included) were ignored despite good reviews, “The Hurt Locker” will be the one to make it big at the box office. I suppose because it is tightly focused on three American soldiers and avoids taking a political stance. Yet seeing the conditions under which soldiers are expected to fight: faulty equipment, inadequate supplies, scarce ammunition, no real direction, and confusion, and when we see the results of the military’s breaking down of the human soul, “The Hurt Locker” could be viewed as an anti-war film.

Watching it, it is easy to forget that if it weren’t for the US rush to war, US soldiers or those from our so-called Coalition Forces, never had to be there, risking their lives so that citizens of the "Free World" can stroll down an aisle with the tough decision of what else to toss into an already overloaded shopping cart. And the 5,000 plus American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians didn’t have to die. Many civilians and soldiers are still dying every day.

"Slumdog" : The Little Movie That Could.

2009-03-23T11:01:00.000-07:00

“Slumdog Millionaire.” A film directed by Danny Boyle, co-directed by Loveleen Tandan, screenplay written by Simon Beaufoy and Vikas Swarup from his novel, “Q & A.” Starring Dev Patel, Frieda Pinto, Madhur Mittal, and Anil Kapoor.

FROM SLUMDOG TO TOPDOG
By Gaetana Caldwell-Smith
British Director Danny Boyle (“Trainspotting,” “28 Days Later”) thought his fifteen million dollar film would go direct to DVD because he couldn’t find a distributor. Once he did, “Slumdog Millionaire” opened in January in a handful of art-houses in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. In November 2008, alleged Islamic radicals attacked Mumbai’s Taj Mahal Hotel, the Oberoi Trident Hotel, the Jewish-run Nariman House, and other sites. They shot and killed hundreds in the Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus train station where, during its closing credits, the film’s amazing, joyous Bollywood dance was performed by the “Slumdog” cast and crew. Boyle had said in an interview on BBC World Service that he was devastated by the attacks on the city, and the people, he had come to love. He regretted that the resulting notoriety brought “Slumdog” to a larger audience. The film opened nationwide and gained a significant following, with attendance jumping to over 200 per cent in the first week after its initial limited release. The film has won major international awards, including Academy Awards for Best Picture, Director, Original Song, and Film Score, among others.

The film, shot in brilliant, saturated color, takes place in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) and is in Hindi and English, with subtitles. “Slumdog” is a love story, an epic fairy tale. It tracks the lives of three characters through whom you will experience that city’s egregious disparity between social classes; religious oppression, game show popularity, chance, petty and serious crime, prostitution, Indian pop culture, family, child kidnapping and abuse, the tourist trade, and rival crime lords.

The film opens with Jamal on the game show, “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire!” He is ready for the final question that will make him rich beyond anyone’s dream. The fact that horrific and dire circumstances in his life up to this point have burned memories in his brain, which have given him all the answers so far, leads the host to suspect Jamal of cheating and has him secretly arrested. The show is suspended, pending the results of the investigation. The entire city of Mumbai - - from the slums, to the rich hotels, upscale markets, to the condos - - is on tenterhooks. The police sergeant and a bad cop literally torture him. Director Boyle doesn’t hold back on showing these scenes, making for some gut-wrenching reactions. Interspersed with the interrogations and scenes of Jamal answering the previous questions are flashbacks, depicting his life from orphaned child to a yearning, love-struck young man who risks his life to find Latika. True to a fairy-tale or fable, the hero must outwit the bad guys before he can win the maiden (although, Latika, now a lovely, young woman, is no longer a “maiden,” in the Puritanical sense of the word, due to the oppressive life she has had to endure with rival mob bosses).

The film follows the lives Jamal and his brother, Salim, who are orphaned when their mother is brutally slain by Hindu police as they and a mob they incite storm their Mumbai Muslim shanty town. Thus begins their saga and that of Latika, played as adolescents by local children. When they are shown in their early twenties, Jamal, the innocent, is played by Dev Patel; streetwise, crafty Salim, by Madhur Mittal, and Latika, by the beautiful Frieda Pinto. They survive by their wits and are taken in by a Fagin-like charmer who comes off as an altruistic NGO relief worker. The boys witness atrocities wreaked on other kids so they’ll bring in more money while begging (a nod to “Three Penny Opera” here, as well). They escape. Latika is left behind. Jamal searches for her. The boys age; Salim gets the girl. He has the money and a gun. Jamal ends up as a chai-walla (tea server) for a large tech information center. By chance, when Jamal subs for a tekkie on a break, he inadvertently gets selected to be a contestant on “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire!” [Note: This tiny but crucial bit of information on how he was selected appeared in the limited January release, but had been cut from the new print, distributed for wide release.] The TV game show is hosted by a pompadoured, Prem Kumar (played by a remarkable Anil Kapoor, whose wonderful performance was overlooked by the entire circuit of awards venues.)

Once the film became a hit, detractors cried out. Their issues had to do with the depiction of Mumbai’s slums as “tourist attractions,” where wealthy travelers could go slumming in the “slum dogs’,” (i. e. the children of the slums’) neighborhoods. Some described the film as “poverty porn” and opined that the people of India were exploited in the making of the film. Early on, critics said that the British filmmakers hired only a white crew. One look at the extensive credits tells a different story. One has only to Google the film’s title to discover the truth about how Boyle made his remarkable film, which is based on a novel called “Q & A.” by Indian writer Vikas Swarup. These myopic critics - - the majority being Indians still licking wounds suffered under British colonialism over sixty years ago - - saw an entirely different film than I did. A January 2009 Los Angeles Times article by Mark Magnier, was titled: “Indians don’t feel good about ‘Slumdog Millionaire.’.” He wrote that some critics accused the film of “exploiting western perceptions of India, with its depictions of impoverished slums ruled by gangsters, as well as other unwholesome characters.” Magnier went on to state that many critics argue that although the film features many Indian actors, it is “anything but Indian.” He claims that the reason for its success is due to its themes and timing “which touch a cord with Western audiences.”

The Times also quoted from interviews with a variety of cultural commentators, including Shyamal Sengupta, a Mumbai film professor of Whistling Woods Institute, who stated, “It’s a white man’s imagined India. It’s not quite snake charmers, but it’s close. It’s a poverty tour.” “The struggles with poverty and the camera’s eye in ‘Slumdog,’ ” Sengupta went on, “certainly doesn’t shy away from this fact.” According to Indian film expert Rochona Majumdar, “A lot of people felt it was bashing India, but,” she says, “I disagree. We’re too quick to celebrate ‘Incredible India.’ But there is an underbelly. To say we don’t have problems is absurd.”

Despite these critiques, many are upbeat on the film’s financial prospects in India, with film director Shekhar Kapur saying that “what’s most important is that ‘Slumdog’ is the most successful Indian film ever.” Even Sengupta believes that Indians will attend the film to see how they are viewed by Westerners. “There is still a fascination with seeing how we are perceived by white Westerners. It’s a kind of voyeurism.” If Indian critics want realism, make a documentary. Some took issue with French filmmaker, Louis Malle’s 1969, inspirational, documentary film, “Phantom India,” an eye-opening, incredibly gorgeous tribute to that country.

“Slumdog Millionaire” has garnered even more controversy since it won an Oscar for Best Picture, beating out the timely (Proposiiton 8) political film, “Milk.” “Poverty Porn” was the topic on a recent NPR Talk of the Nation program. The interviewees were two female, Indian educators: one from Ireland, Priya Rajsekar, freelance writer born in India. She wrote the article “Slumdog Sacrifices Indian Pride” for The Irish Times. On the air, she stated that the film pandered to the rich elite in its “feel good” scenes of poverty. She went on to say that it “gives an incomplete view of the slums of India.” And that it wallows in tired clichés of abysmal poverty and mindless villainy. In her article, she wrote, “but for the little Indian ‘slumdogs’ who have given the movie its soul, this is a fleeting moment. For when the clock strikes midnight, these people who have helped createt many millionaires around the world will return to their tarpaulin-roof homes, to take their usual place beside their colleagues, too proud and too dignified to ‘ask for more.’ ”

Chitra Divakaruni, is a poet and professor at the University of Houston. Her article, "The Slumdog Fight," appeared in the Los Angeles Times. On NPR, she responded to Priya Rajsekar, saying that the film is not “poverty porn.” She cited Charles Dickens as an artist who, through his work, changed child labor laws in England, and that Danny Boyle follows in that tradition. Rajsekar shot back that Boyle “did not have to cover poor people in human waste to get his message across.” [On BBC, Boyle explained that the “human waste” was a mixture of milk chocolate and peanut butter.] She complained that the film didn’t show whole lives. In her article and on NPR, she comes off harsh and gives the impression that she would rather the film be a documentary. Divakaruni, however, replied that slum tours may embarrass native governments into stepping up to inject funds into poor areas. Danny Boyle, himself, offered to buy flats for the kids’ families. But government officials stepped in and said, “No, give us the money and we’ll buy them the flats.” However, in an interview on BBC’s World TV, about “Slumdog,” Boyle implied that he had discovered that previous funding from the Indian government had somehow disappeared. In this same interview, he told his host that in addition to paying them, he felt it most important that the kids go to school so that they would have an education when they grew up. So he is setting up an educational fund, as well as money for housing.

A caller to the NPR broadcast, Eric Weiner, author of “The Geography of Bliss,” had lived in New Delhi, India for two years. He wrote "Slum Visits: Tourism or Voyeurism" for The New York Times. He said that he’d seen people who’d traveled to the slums express surprise seeing the joy they found there, but went on to say that that’s no excuse for oppression or exploitation of the poor, especially children and families who literally lived on the street and employed their craft in that environment. “Slumdog Millionaire” illustrates this with a scene of a barber shaving a man as people strolled past and kids ran around him.

Director Boyle takes criticism of his film in stride. He has stated that the movie seeks to depict the “breathtaking resilience” of Mumbai and the “joy of people despite their circumstances, that lust for life.” Though the film, coming as it did on the heels of the Mumbai attacks, has turned the world’s focus on that city’s internal affairs, it in no way diminishes the impact of that tragic event. As Boyle and others have stated: the positive, optimistic attitude of the people will pull them through anything, just as it did prior to, during, and after two-hundred plus years of British rule. This is evident in the uplifting, rollicking Bollywood dance, featuring a cast of hundreds that closes “Slumdog Millionaire.”

"Waltz With Bashir"

2009-02-01T17:37:00.000-08:00

A BEAUTIFUL FILM ILLUSTRATES THE UGLINESS OF WAR

“Waltz With Bashir” has won several awards and an Ophir, Israel’s equivalent of an Oscar, was awareded a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film, and has been nominated for this year’s Academy Award also for Best Foreign Language Film.

Though the events illustrated in Israeli director and filmmaker Ari Folman’s extraordinary, animated documentary film, “Waltz With Bashir,” occurred in 1982, in Lebanon, they are timely, considering Israel’s recent unleashing of its US backed war machine on Palestinians in Gaza, today. Folman made his film in collaboration with art director David Polansky, and director of animation, Yori Goodman. Polansky and Goodman animate Folman’s narrative mostly in subdued tones, but also in saturated, surreal colors, and with the oblique, disorienting angles of a German expressionist film.
Some scenes could’ve been taken directly from recent debacles that made it to television screens or in documentary films on Iraq and Afghanistan. If anything, “Waltz With Bashir,” illustrates the truism of the futility of war, that war never changes anything. War destroys property, kills millions of people, and wounds as many if not more, both physically and mentally.
The film opens with a frightening, almost 3-D scene of the animated character of Folman being chased by exactly twenty-six, slathering, yellow-eyed, Doberman Pinchers. This is a recurring nightmare he has suffered for decades. Folman had been a soldier in the Israeli Army in 1982 when, under General Ariel Sharon, the Israeli army, IDF, attacked the Palestinians in Lebanon. He claims he doesn’t remember being in Beirut during the massacres of civilians in the Palestinian refugee camps of Shabra and Shatila, carried out by a Lebanese Christian Phalangist militia to avenge the assassination of their Lebanese president, Bashir Gemayel. He decides to talk to former soldiers, who either knew about the slaughter or remembered being there with him. He also consults with psychiatrists about retrieving twenty-year-old repressed memories.
The former soldiers Ari interviews (shown in animation) are middle-age, and live comfortable lives as wine-makers, educators, doctors, or journalists. In the making of the film, all but two spoke in their own voices. With their help, Folman begins to remembers firing flares that illuminated the night sky, providing the Phalangists enough light to execute their night-long slaughter. His memories reveal the horrors of war and the weight of his guilt. He and the other soldiers are bothered by the stupidity of all that evil. Ari wonders how he could’ve allowed himself to be a part of it. Some of his memories come to him as breathtakingly beautiful hallucinations: Under palm trees on a beach, playing volleyball, listening to rock music, drinking, smoking weed - - scenes reminiscent of film clips of American soldiers partying in Saddam Hussein’s Baghdad palace. One of Ari’s hallucination shows him lying prone on the stomach of a nude giantess backstroking through a calm sea, as flames from bombed ships light up the sky. Another is of a tropical paradise with helicopters roaring overhead that could’ve been an animation of the surfing scene in Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now.” I kept waiting for Duvall’s famous napalm line.

Some scenes are like a swift kick in the gut. The raw recruits have been ordered to “shoot anything that moves.” They land on a beach, Normandy-style, and flop down in the sand, automatic rifles ready. These are baby-face boys, not much older than nineteen; eyes wide with the fear of the unexpected. .A broken down Mercedes sedan rattles up to the beach. They’ve been told that Palestinian terrorists deliver bombs in cars. Panicked, the boys start shooting. The car jumps and bounces with each strike, as the driver tries to pull away. The car tattles, groans and settles like a dying beast. Then all is quiet. The soldiers approach gingerly, and see unrecognizable bloody ribbons of flesh that were once human beings. As has been shown in film clips of US soldiers in Iraq, “Waltz” also includes scenes of Israeli soldiers walking down the streets of Beirut randomly shooting at everything, pock-marking buildings, reducing vehicles to bullet ridden hulks, as civilians scatter in all directions, and bodies are left on the street.
There was a question at the time as to whether Ariel Sharon knew of the massacre. Sharon had spent months planning the war. He had met secretly with Lebanese Christian Phalangist allies whom he planned to help install as Lebanon's government once the PLO was out of Beirut. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) asked Phalangist militiamen to enter refugee camps, Shabra and Shatila. The militia subsequently massacred civilians inside. It was argued that the Israelis should have known that this could occur, considering Gemayel’s assassination only two days before, and taking into account the on-going animosity between the Palestinians and the Phalangists. Ariel Sharon’s culpability is illustrated in the film in a scene showing an Israeli military officer calling “Arik” (Sharon’s nickname) at his ranch, to ask him if he knew of the massacre. He answers, laconically, in the positive.

After the war, the Israeli government had set up the Kahan Commission to investigate. It subsequently found Israel responsible, but only indirectly. The Commission stated that Israeli commanders should have been aware of the possibility of a revenge attack. They also found Sharon personally responsible for not only "ignoring the danger of bloodshed and revenge," but also for "not taking appropriate measures to prevent bloodshed." It recommended his resignation as head of the Defense Ministry. After first resisting, Sharon finally stepped down.

Comments on the film from some Arab blogs are positive. However, one blogger wondered why Arabs couldn’t make something similar. Another felt that Folman's film gives no answers In an interview, Folman told the JTA (The Global News Service of the Jewish People) he always intended to make “Waltz with Bashir” as an animated film.
“When you look at everything that there is in this film -- lost memory, memories of war, which are probably the most surreal things on earth, dreams, subconscious, drugs, hallucination - - it was the only way to combine one fluid storyline,” he said. “If it was a classic documentary, it would have shown middle-aged men telling their war experiences and it would have to be covered with footage that you could never find and wouldn’t come close to resembling what they went through. It would be a boring film. And if you made a big action movie with the budget of an Israeli movie, that would just be sad.” Which may explain why US films on Iraq have failed at the box office.

In another view, Natalie Rothschild wrote on the Website JEWCY, in December 2008, that Folman’s film, though beautifully rendered and artfully scripted, is a big narcissistic mea culpa, a “spectre that haunts post-Zionist Israeli society.” She calls the film, “Post-Zionist Stress Disorder.” She stated that though Folman believes his film is apolitical, it “conveys a disturbingly skewed account” of the war. Folman, she says, feels the IDF soldiers were ”victims of circumstance,” and that the film “is not only incredibly self-obsessed, it is also a striking evasion of responsibility.” She also quotes Folman on the atrocity as believing that the Christian Phalangist militiamen were fully responsible and that the Israeli soldiers had nothing to do with it. Rothschild says that yes, as a 19 year old conscript, he could say he was following orders, but now, as an adult, he “could recognize that several parties hold responsibility for what happened

The final scene of “Waltz”” shows Folman standing before the shrieking, grief-stricken Palestinian women, leaving the camps, and we see that he finally recognizes his part in the massacre. The horror is made real when the film segues from animation to archival footage of the devastated survivors of the camps. As the camera moves over the rubble, one is sickened by the corpses of brutally slaughtered men, women, and children. Perhaps Folman’s film attests to his and the perpetrators guilt, however, it may offer atonement, as well.”

This review will appear also in an adaptated form in the February issue of Socialist Action News.

"FROST/NIXON"

2009-02-01T17:14:00.000-08:00

“Froat/Nixon,” directed by Ron Howard; starring Michael Sheen, Frank Langella, and Kevin Bacon.
A DISHONEST FILM ABOUT A DISHONEST MAN
By Gaetana Caldwell-Smith
"Frost/Nixon" is one of several films up for the 2008 Academy Award for Best Film. Its rivals include, "Milk," "Slumdog Millionaire," and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." Frank Langella has been nominated for Best Actor.

“Tricky Dick” is too mild an epithet to describe ex president, Richard Millhouse Nixon. In director Ron Howard’s film, “Frost/Nixon,” he and screenwriter Peter Morgan present a dishonest recreation of the 1977 series of taped interviews with ex-President Nixon, a demoralized former political heavyweight. The interviews were conducted by David Frost, who was a lightweight British television talk and variety show host. Michael Sheen (Tony Blair in “The Queen), and Frank Langella reprise their legit theatre roles in the film, which Morgan adapted from his eponymous play. At this time in his political career, Nixon was reduced to lecturing at trade conventions for a few thousand a pop. The real-life historic interviews were subsequently televised in three segments.
Howard’s film (and Morgan’s play) takes place during one of the most dynamic eras in American history where a constitutional crisis was explained away as simply a president and his chief advisors’ illegal moves. So where’s the beef? The question is: How far can a film or play go to dramatize a tumultuous historical period? In other words, based on a raft of accessible evidence, the film is a lie. Poetic license in this case was taken too far. Where the film focuses on the Watergate cover up, Nixon’s egregious crimes against America were many. Besides trying to get the goods on the Democratic Party by breaking in to its headquarters, Nixon not only severely undermined the constitution, but also executed the break in of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, Dr. Lewis Fielding’s, office. Ellsberg had leaked the Pentagon Papers containing detailed plotting for not only the Vietnam war’s escalation, but the true number of US troops sent there. Nixon was more concerned about this discovery than that of Watergate. The power of Howard’s film, however, makes what appears boring and dull on the actual tapes (now on disc) dramatic. In the film, during the final taping, a close up of Nixon’s face reveals him as a haggard, beaten down man. Langella, though not resembling Nixon, does a superb rendering of the essence of the man, as does Sheen with his characterization of Frost.
In his final term, facing impeachment over the Watergate cover-up, Nixon became the first president in history forced to resign from office, in 1974. He announced his resignation on television with the media present, and chief aide Jack Brennan (played by Kevin Bacon) in full uniform at his side. Director Howard recreates this event, with a shot of Sheen as Frost, who had been hosting his popular TV shows in both Australia and London, watching the event on television. You can practically see the light go off in his brain.
Shortly after he resigned, Nixon suffered an attack of phlebitis and had to be rushed to the hospital where, during his recovery, he received a full pardon for any “wrongdoings” from then President Gerald Ford. Nixon retired to his Casa Pacifica (ironic name) home in San Clemente.
Frost and his producer, John Birt (Matthew MacFedyan) arrange a deal with Hollywood agent Swifty Lazar (Toby Jones, [Karl Rove in “W”]). Frost offers Nixon a half million dollars. Nixon wants more, and gets it. Nixon, a brooding, defeated man, three years after his resignation, sees the series as a way to restore his reputation and get back into the limelight. Another omission in the film is the fact that Nixon would receive twenty percent. of the profits when networks buy the tapes. Basically, the opponents saw the dollar signs of a profitable business deal. Records show that Nixon's efforts to redeem himself and pay his legal bills was a carefully planned endeavor called "The Wizard."
As for the format of the tapings, all, including Jack Brennan, agree to a “no holds barred” grilling. Frost says, “It’ll be done in four parts: Watergate, domestic policy, Vietnam, and Nixon the Man.” “As opposed to what?” Nixon snaps back, “Nixon the Horse?” The film shows Nixon as sarcastic and funny, when in real life he was a humorless, bigoted monster.
Besides saving his reputation, Nixon appears to care about the money angle. Still, Frost is stymied as no big corporate network wants his show. He goes independent and has to raise funds. He hires a team of investigative journalists like the liberal columnist Jim Reston, Jr. (Sam Rockwell). Reston thinks Frost won’t be hard enough on Nixon. He wants Nixon convicted for his authorization of the Watergate break-ins. Along with questions on wiretapping, Reston tells Frost to ask him: “How do you feel as a Quaker in annihilating an entire people?’ Of course, this never happens.
Ron Howard seamlessly intercuts archival video and film clips into his movie, including shots of the horrific, devastating “secret” bombings of Cambodia, the dead and desiccated bodies of civilians, burned and severely wounded children, and vast areas of forest, homes and buildings aflame. The tendency is to turn away. Some clips hadn’t been televised, although many of similar content were, such as shots of wounded, dead, and dying American soldiers. The latter shocked Americans into stepping up to launch hundreds of country-wide protests, involving hundreds of thousands of people, to end the protracted war.
During the initial interviews, Nixon appears relaxed. He is sly, bantering with Frost. The first three meetings do not go well for Frost. He opens with, “Why didn’t you burn the tapes? [Where he plans the break in with his cronies]” Nixon blithely runs on with an evasive convoluted answer; he is cheered by the omnipresent media when he leaves the Smith House where the interviews take place. Frost has funding problems and begins to understand that he is up against a major operator. He is into his backers for several thousand dollars. His London agent calls to tell him he’s losing his shows in Australia and London. Frost is worried that the tapes will never “see the light of day,” and realizes that he took a huge gamble. Before the final interview starts taping, Nixon throws him a curve by asking Frost if he did any “fornicating” last night. Frost reacts slightly, then when taping starts, he lays into Nixon about Vietnam and Cambodia, and shows Nixon film clips of the bombings. Nixon looks uncomfortable. Sweat breaks out on his upper lip, which up to now, he had controlled with the subtle use of a handkerchief. Later, at a Hugh Hefner party, Nixon plays the piano. Frost is talking to Pat Nixon, played by Patty McCormack as a tranquilized, well-appointed zombie, a put-upon spouse. About the interviews, she says, ’I’m glad it’s all going as planned.” The camera moves to a very depressed looking Nixon.
For his play, Morgan had invented a scene, included in the film, where, the night before the last taping, Nixon, with a drink in his hand, makes a very late night phone call to Frost. He launches into a long psychologically revealing rant, and challenges Frost to bring him down. He makes a confession that has Frost later sending Reston to research. Frost then spends the rest of the night listening to all of the Nixon tapes and making notes. Yet, as the opponents chat before the last taping, Nixon claims to have no memory of making the call
During the interview, Frost pins Nixon about his (Nixon’s) role in the obstruction of justice on the Watergate trials, accusing Nixon of colluding with Charles Colson, a Nixon crony. Frost reads from the transcript of his and Colson’s talk. Although, in reality, the tape was unknown, therefore unimportant, because a prosecutor had stated in an interview that they had more incriminating evidence against Nixon. Nixon’s famous rejoinder was, “When the President does it, it’s not illegal.” Frost then needles him to admit that he was involved in the cover-up. Nixon appears undone. Jack Brennan breaks into the room and demands the taping stopped. Everyone’s in a turmoil (Records show that Frost had it stopped because of a misread cue.) After a while, the interview is resumed and Nixon admits he let down the American people. “I made mistakes not worthy of a President.”
Howard’s film conflates the truth of what actually happened during the last interview. Frost appears to have “nailed” Nixon into confessing. He says, he “was involved in a ‘cover--up,’ as you call it.” However, evidence proves that what he really said was: “You’re wanting me to say that I participated in an illegal cover-up. No!” Screenwriter Morgan has him say, “I let them down. I let down the country. I let down the government.” As he leaves the Smith House, he appears to have aged. What felled him, Nixon says, was part media, part politics. Frost’s interviews get picked up. They are a sensation due to the power of the TV close up.
The final scene is of Frost visiting Nixon at Casa Pacifica. Nixon still does not recall the phone conversation: “What did we talk about?”he asks. “Cheeseburgers,” Frost replies..
Ron Howard and Peter Morgan obviously wanted to create a major film about an important time in American politics - - not a documentary - - that was both entertaining and would guarantee a substantial profit. So they took liberties with the truth to give us a distorted, dishonest film about a dangerous, paranoid, deluded President, who admitted only to “mistakes.” What is shameful is that roughly seventy percent of the population is too young to know about the Nixon presidency and his egregious, blatant disregard for human lives and the country.