Reviews

* This review contains 'spoilers' insofar as it discusses the meaning of the documentary *

I watched *Darwin's Nightmare* a few nights ago, an indie documentary that is allegedly about the Nile perch's obliteration of native species in Lake Victoria. With a title like that, I was settling in for a riveting tale of man's careless introduction of an alien species into the fragile Lake Victoria habitat, and a naturalist's take on the devastating effect of the introduced species, like the cane toad in Australia, or the mountain pine beetle in North American forests. Maybe it would be narrated by David Attenborough to boot.

Instead I got everything but that. The point of the documentary wasn't the perch at all. In interviews with European pilots who flew out 55 tons of fish in a single load, Tanzanian prostitutes who serviced them, Indo-Tanzanians who were the entrepreneurs of the companies thriving on the fish trade, and dirt poor black Tanzanians who barely subsisted on the shore, the message was this: the outsiders are just as voraciously and rapaciously consuming native Africans as the Nile perch consumed Lake Victoria's diverse bounty. The 'West' has homogenized and devoured the Africa that was there before. In an endless convoy, the massive planes arrive in Africa laden with ordinance, and return to Europe laden with fish. Fish that is too expensive for the fishermen who catch them to eat. As one Russian pilot observed after a December weapons run to Angola then return via South Africa to Europe, "For Christmas, African children get guns. European children get grapes."

I struggled through passages of this film. The sound was good, but the digital video was frequently shaky, and poorly composed and edited. Sometimes conversations were allowed to ramble without purpose. And at the end of it, I felt the weight of a lot of guilt.

While the film does depict some nightmarish scenes, I don't know how much Darwin or natural selection has to do with it. Director Hubert Sauper shows children collecting styrofoam fish packaging, melting it down, then inhaling the volatilized chemicals to get high. He shows women sifting through heaps of decomposing fish carcasses to lay them on racks in the sun so they can be dried, fried, and consumed. The maggots wriggling up through the ooze between their toes turned my stomach. The bitter irony of the World Bank and European Union's pride at what they have wrought in the fish industry was not lost on Sauper; he juxtaposes a self-congratulatory EU press conference with headlines of famine and millions of dollars of emergency food aid. In achieving the quality standards that make these fish fit for consumption abroad, the industry has priced itself beyond the reach of nearly all Africans.

Though not what I expected, Darwin's Nightmare was worth suffering through.

The set-up: a documentary about one dirty joke told by comedians to one another, "as a sort of secret handshake" as reviewer Ken Tucker puts it.

The middle section: incest, homicide, coprophagia, necrophilia, felching, bestiality, rape, and...what do you call humping an eye socket?

The payoff: comics tell the joke, talk comedy, and reveal their skill and failings in a dizzying eighty minutes of head-to-head one-upmanship.

The Aristocrats is first a documentary. I was asked by a friend afterward whether I "enjoyed" the movie. I guess so. I laughed often, but certainly not at everyone. I didn't "enjoy" The Corporation but thought it was an excellent documentary. Jillette and Provenza do a great job intercutting short segments from the hours of film they shot. Impossibly, after 81 minutes, the joke didn't get old.

As an expose of the craft and crass of comedy, The Aristocrats is a must see. There will be audience members who walk out. And it's best they do it early if the film's opening gambit, George Carlin's ode to gargling chunky diarrhea flowing out a geezer's polyped anus, gets them worked up. There's much worse to come.

I have a renewed respect for Drew Carey, Taylor Negron, and Gilbert Gottfried. And that ventriloquist, what's-his name. When he bailed on the Aristocrats and tried his "hand" at Seinfeldian observational humor, that was even funnier. And Cartman's version was so coo'.

Though Penn Jillette's telling of the joke didn't impress in this company, I admire and envy him for making this film. In an interview for See Magazine, Jillette riffs on the parallels between comedy and jazz:

"The rhythms of the movie are jazz, the feelings are jazz: the subject is comedy.

"What I love is that the movie goes directly to playing bebop, y'know? In the early evening, everybody is playing big band jazz for suits but after hours, when there's only three or four guys sitting around, they would play this kind of jazz that you had to know a little bit more about melody and harmonics and chord structures to really understand.

"In comedy, we sit backstage, and everybody knows that everyone else can structure a joke, and we know what we do, but now we do this other thing for one another."

Nice to be invited into the green room.

Not for everyone, but works for me.

Shyamalan is quite adept at packaging big, existential questions into thrillers. I know I'm in the minority, but I really enjoyed Signs. In a classic bait-and-switch, Shyamalan lures you into the theatre to watch a creature feature, but winds up exploring the nature of faith, and how a man wounded by love's loss, a man of the cloth, recaptures his faith in God. The creatures were a significant letdown, and could quite possibly have been avoided entirely, but that's another story.



Back to The Village. I enjoyed this film too. I kept searching for allegorical correlation with contemporary politics. I thought in the early part of the film that the villagers were meant to represent Americans. I thought that their illusory boundary with the forest, and the menace beyond it, was meant to represent the illusory secure perimeter of the nation, and the terrorist threat beyond. That the 'warnings'--small, shaved and gutted animals--corresponded to terrorist incursions on American soil. The allegory was holding up pretty well. But as the story continued to unfold, the symbols started to fall apart and the true themes began to emerge. The film is a meditation on courage and love. There's a line in the movie that goes something like, "We sometimes avoid doing that which we most wish to do so others may not know our desires." The line is spoken by Ivy (Bryce Dallas Howard) to Lucius (Joaquin Phoenix) and addresses Lucius' reserve and withdrawal from Ivy at the moment his love for her began to swell. The remark opens Lucius' eyes to the unspoken love between his widowed mother (Sigourney Weaver) and Ivy's wedded father (William Hurt). Lucius interposes himself between the invaders and Ivy, and is spurred to confess his love to Ivy and propose. Ultimately, Ivy is called upon to face the menace in the woods in a similar show of love.

The maddening thing about the story is the Elder Council, the aforementioned idiots. We learn the true nature of the threat to the community, and it comes from within. It is the elders' fear and disengagement--a sentiment paralleled in the relationship between Lucius' and Ivy's parents, members of the Council--that leads to the Village's vulnerability. And the really maddening thing is that the prevaricators prevail, turning tragedy to their ends.

A Hollywood movie without a happy ending. How refreshing.

I liked Shyamalan's clever insertion of himself into the movie, a la Hitchcock, via over the shoulder shots and a reflection in a glass cabinet door. The film production if beautiful. The dialog is sometimes stilted, especially when uttered almost robotically by William Hurt. The mediocre dialog and creature design are internally consistent deficiencies in the film. You'll know what I mean once you've seen it. Mostly, the film works. Eight of ten.

This infantile adaptation of Jonathan Swift's <Gulliver's Travels> shows that the creators were simply not up to the task. It depicts only one of Gulliver's four journeys, and fails to render even that accurately. The film communicates none of the themes of Swift's literary classic.

Instead, the creators fabricate a Capulet and Montague style feud that captures none of the absurdity of Lilliputian politics, the grotesquerie of Gulliver's size, or the misplaced pride of both Gulliver and the Lilliputians. In fact, in this version, Gulliver does not speak until 40 minutes into the 75-minute film.

Aside from the fact that Gulliver washes upon the shore of Lilliput where he is restrained by tiny people, the plot of the cartoon bears virtually no resemblance to Gulliver's voyage to Lilliput.

**** spoiler this paragraph ****

A series of Snow White inspired string-laden ballads separates scenes of insipid Lilliputian gags. The only clever turn is Prince David rescuing--rather than slaying--the Goliath-like Gulliver.

**** spoilers done ****

I'd steer clear of this, even for the kids, as there is plenty of better material out there for all of you to enjoy.

3 of 10

I have just watched <The Godfather: Part II> again. It is an ambitious story, spanning more than fifty years. It is a story of the first half of the twentieth century in America, as the country coped with waves of immigration, prohibition, war in Europe, the post-war boom, and rebellion in Cuba.

The first part of the Godfather trilogy offers only a foretaste of the heart of the Godfather story arc: the genesis of the Corleone family business with young Vito Corleone, played with easy confidence by Robert De Niro; and the hardening of Michael Corleone, played with mesmerizing intensity by Al Pacino.

* spoilers from here onward *

The movie is peppered with iconic and powerful images: a young Vito Corleone (Andolini) singing hymns while quarantined at Ellis Island, Vito executing his first hit with a towel-wrapped pistol, Michael bestowing a kiss of death on his brother Fredo, Michael gazing out his boathouse window as he awaits the fate of his brother, Hyman Roth's Lee-Harvey-Oswald-style assassination in a scrum of press and security.

The movie is shot artfully, though at times is lit a bit dimly. The location selection and set decoration are attentively and evocatively rendered as we follow Vito's rise. It is easy to forget that the segements showing Michael's fall are also period shots, set about twenty-five years prior to filming, as they are unforced and ring true.

The vengeful, unforgiving Sicilian code depicted in the film undoes all that is good in Vito and Michael. They are devoted family men, loyal to their sympathizers, supportive of their community, and admired for their wisdom. But they kill to win their independence from authority, to secure their power, to eliminate dissenters, and to settle decades-old vendettas. Michael's obsession with securing his power causes him to imprison then estrange his wife, order the death of his own brother, betray his old friends, and embrace his rivals. He is left with an empire and no one to share it with: his parents and brothers are dead, wife gone, children afraid, and so on. His only solace is the brow-beaten sister who returns to live with him in the family compound, and his similarly brow-beaten adoptive brother, Tim Hagen.

The supporting cast is excellent, particularly Diane Keaton and Robert Duvall, as well as Talia Shire, Lee Strasberg, and Bruno Kirby.

I had previously recorded my vote for this movie as an eight, but have now revised it to a nine of ten.

igm

*** spoiler alert ***

<love, actually> is an engaging, feel-good concatenation of nearly a dozen love stories that climax at Christmas. It's message, spoken over the title credits by Hugh Grant, is probably true: love is ubiquitous. The device of using the arrivals gate at Heathrow to drive home this fact is at once kitschy and poignant. There are so many odes to hate, violence, war, and conflict in movies that this clever, fun, and upbeat movie will find difficulty gaining footing in a desolate filmscape.

It is a challenge to review this movie because so many aspects of love are explored. Unrequited love. Love's first bloom. Love on the rocks. Love ended prematurely. Fraternal love. Love's sacrifice. Love bridging language. Love bridging class. Ugly duckling finds love. They don't all work, but most do. And in many there is a rich and economically communicated subtext about how these people succeed in love.

Things that work especially well: Laura Linney caring for her mentally ill brother. Bill Nighy's irreverent, unapologetic rock-and-roller. Emma Thompson and Allan Rickman's brinksmanship with adultery. The hurtfulness of the Martine McCutcheon chubby jokes.

Things that don't work: Rowan Atkinson (not here, not like this). Billy Bob's wooden, implausible American President. Denise Richards (waste). Hugh Grant's trite rebuff of the US. Rodrigo Santoro saying virtually nothing to stir love in anybody.

Love can be painful, limiting, paralyzing--and it is in this film--but every character in it doggedly pursues it anyway. It's the only thing worth caring about. It's a good thing it's so abundant. Discuss amongst yourselves.

[Note: small spoilers--no more than in the trailer]

It is impossible for a sequel to the Matrix to reproduce the most striking quality of the first film: an originality of vision. The philosophical ponderings were centuries old, but the context was strikingly modern, elegant, and electrifying. The Matrix Reloaded introduces more philosophical complexity, more characters, more weapons, more bullet-time, and more Agent Smith--a lot more Agent Smith. But does that make it better?

The Matrix Reloaded reminds me of bloatware--software that in successive versions continues to expand in size and complexity as hardware capabilities improve, but you still wind up using only about twenty of the 300 or so available functions. What I responded to in the Matrix is what I responded to in Matrix 2.0: musings about free will, fate, God, and technology; a throbbing techno soundtrack; clean, simple, beautiful action sequences; haute couture costume design and set decoration.

While a man's reach should exceed his grasp, the same cannot be said of a visual effects coordinator. John Gaeta had some difficulty realizing a few scenes, such as the cartoonish multi-Smith scene, the Superman thing, and some freeway collisions. But I'm nitpicking. Many tech-heavy sequences are flawless and spectacular. I can't get Trinity's fall out of my mind. The freeway chase may be the best chase in film, though the movie Ronin delivered a similar against-traffic-flow sequence.

New cast members are refreshingly unfamiliar. There are no distracting Hollywood heavyweights in cameos, though the opportunities abound. Monica Belluci and her cleavage appear as Persephone. Helmut Bakaitis is the enigmatic Architect. The Buckwheat-esque Link is played by Harold Perrineau. Harry Lennix plays Commander Lock. Lambert Wilson shines as the Merovingian. Who the hell are these people? I've seen them in, like, one or two movies, tops.

The most glaring shortcoming of v2.0 is Zion. Especially that rave / sex scene. I can see why Cypher wanted back into the Matrix after I got a glimpse of humanity's last bastion.

On a final note, the frustration with the 'To Be Continued' (actually reads 'To Be Concluded') ending voiced by some commentators is totally misplaced. We only have to wait six months for the next one, and knew all along that there is more to come.

Matrix v1.0 - 9/10

Matrix v2.0 - 8/10

I saw this movie to see Paul Bettany once again. I enjoyed his performances in <A Beautiful Mind> and <A Knight's Tale>, and wanted to see him in something heavier. Gangster No 1 seemed like the ideal role to see how he'd fare.

He looks great decked out in Saville Row's finery, and has an unnerving composure which suits the role. The crude language seems more natural coming from him than from McDowell's older Gangster, or Thewlin's Mays. But the scenes in which he is supposed to be shooting daggers with his gaze at Karen, his rival for Mays' affection, seem comical and remind me of all the menace my five-year-old can muster in his stares.

There is much lifted from other films, but McGuigan chooses his source material well. The <Reservoir Dogs> inspired the bubbly soundtrack to Lenny Taylor's goring, while <American Psycho> inspired the methodical disrobing and laying out of goring implements in that scene. <Get Shorty>'s Travolta gets the "Look into my eyes" thing right: it's cool apathy we're supposed to see, not Bettany's hammed-up intensity. <Good Fellas> inspires the "Business was never better" sequence, though McGuigan's lacks any significant depth, catching up on three decades in three minutes.

Some original stuff too: While a gangster falls for the 'Bird' in this film, as in <Bugsy> or <Billy Bathgate>, it is not Mays' undoing, it is what saves him. The first person perspective on Taylor's goring works well, especially with fades in and out of consciousness. The jarring flash-forwards to Gangster's fierce attacks also work well. And I have never seen the c***-word used more liberally.

What McGuigan, Bettany and McDowell do especially well is to reveal the emptiness of Gangster's relentlessly evil lifestyle. His disloyalty, jealousy, cruelty, vanity, and his hunger for power leave him paranoid, unloved, and suicidal. His touchstones of power and invulnerability---Superman and King Kong---are not human, perhaps showing how dehumanizing such physical invulnerability can be. But he remains vulnerable emotionally, and relies on bullying an old mate in Mays' crew, Mays' girlfriend, and Mays himself to stoke his fragile ego.

A movie with some substance and style, but no virtuosos in this one.

6 of 10