Movie Review: The Most Dangerous Man in America

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers *** ½
Directed By: Judith Ehrich & Rick Goldsmith.

Daniel Ellsberg believed that the Pentagon Papers would end the war in Vietnam. He saw thousands of Americans, and hundreds of thousands Vietnamese, dying in the war, and he could no longer look the other way. He had worked with the Pentagon for years, gathering the intelligence they needed to conduct their war in Vietnam. He had once been pro-war. But then as part of his job, he got access to this huge report that had been produced by the Pentagon, which detailed decades of lying on behalf of the Presidents – from Eisenhower to Kennedy to Johnson to Nixon – where it became clear that each and every one of them lied to the American people about the reasons, and necessity, for invading Vietnam. Ellsberg at first tried to convince some of the war’s most outspoken critics to review the documents, and while they did, none of them were prepared to go public with the information. So instead, Ellsberg took the papers to the New York Times, and the rest is history. All the government’s dirty little secrets came out, and while it did not have the impact Ellsberg expected to have, it remains an important moment in American history.

The new documentary, The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (the title comes from what Richard Nixon called Ellsberg in the White House tapes), tells Ellsberg’s story from the time when he was a pro-war guy who helped to draft the plans for the war in Vietnam in the first place, to his slow dawning of what the real story was – and his move to try and end the war by leaking the highly classified papers. It is a fascinating documentary about that time.

The story is probably already well known to the people who lived through the Vietnam war. After all, Ellsberg was front page news for a few years, first when the papers themselves leaked, and then when he finally came to trial (the case was dismissed, because the government had so badly handled it). But since then, this chapter in history had faded into the background. After all, the war did not end when the papers were leaked. In fact, a year after they were, Nixon won a landslide reelection. It is not the Pentagon papers scandal that doomed the Nixon administration, but rather Watergate – although according to John Dean, the roots of Nixon’s downfall began during the Pentagon papers scandal.

But the story is still relevant for a number of reasons. As one of the many talking heads says, the last legacy of Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers maybe the landmark Supreme Court case it inspired. The Nixon administration tried to stop the papers from being published altogether – they got an injunction against the New York Times, and when other papers took up the cause, they got injunctions against them as well. Eventually, the Supreme Court ruled that the government could not do that – and that is one of the key First Amendment cases in American history.

But the documentary is not just fascinating because of all the politics involved in it. Don’t get me wrong, it is fascinating because of them, but only so. The film is also a fascinating portrait of both Ellsberg, and his wife, and how the scandal almost destroyed their marriage, but ended up bringing them closer together.

The Most Dangerous Man in America is not a groundbreaking documentary in any sense. All the information in it could be found somewhere else – including the book it’s based on. But it is a fascinating documentary all the same. For those interested in that time period – and it is one of the periods in American history that most interests me – it is a must see.

Movie Review: Which Way Home

Which Way Home ***
Directed By: Rebecca Cammisa.

Every year, thousands of people try to illegally cross the border from Mexico into the United States, where they hope to find a better life for themselves and their families. It isn’t just Mexicans trying to cross, but people from all South American countries, who feel that there is no hope for them where they live, and want to start again. Among these thousands of people are many children – often who come alone with no adults to look out for them. They make the journey of thousands of miles on top of trains, and have to try and fight off corrupt police as well as smugglers, just in an attempt to get to border in the first place. When they get there, they have to try and dodge the border patrol as they make their way through the desert. Many of these people die out there in the middle of nowhere – all alone in the world.

Which Way Home is a fascinating documentary that follows some of these children as they make this long, perilous journey. They talk of home lives that are not good – stepfathers who hate them and beat them, dead parents, no jobs, no money, no hope. Yet, in many ways these are typical kids and teenagers. When the filmmakers track down they kids families back in their home countries, we can hardly believe what they say about their own kids. How they are lazy deadbeats, who do little but drag them down. These kids are 13 years old – of course they’re lazy! In North America, this is par for the course, but down there, these kids are essentially unwanted by a lot of their families. It makes you wonder why they didn’t use birth control. Parents hope that if their kids make to America, they will be adopted, and then be able to send them money. Who is out there adopting teenagers for South America?

And yet, somehow, these kids have not given up on themselves. They talk about going to America, getting back in school, becoming doctors, making money and sending it home to the very families that do not want them. They do not give up on themselves, but instead fight to make it for weeks at a time. There are some groups out there to help, but mainly the people they meet along the way only want to exploit them.

The filmmakers do not either hinder or help them on their journey. Instead, they just sit back and observe them, and what they go through. Are they just another group exploiting these kids? Not really. The kids would be doing this regardless of whether or not the filmmakers were there. And in America, where there is so much posturing and grandstanding about illegal immigrants (right Lou Dobbs), it is valuable to see the people try to get across not as criminals, but as real people with hopes and dreams of a better life.

The movie suffers a little bit because of Cary Fukunaga’s excellent fiction film, Sin Nombre, which came out earlier in 2009, which told a similar story. Sin Nombre had the advantage of being able to better tell the story, because the filmmakers could get the characters to do whatever they wanted. That film was more dramatic and powerful. But Which Way Home is more true to life – it’s messier, less predictable and just as heartbreaking. This is a good little documentary.

2009 Year in Review: The Best Documentaries of the Year

For the second year in a row, I have to say that I was disappointed by the documentary films that came out this year. That’s not to say that there were no good docs this year, but I do not think that there were any truly greats ones either. Of course, I missed some of the more acclaimed docs this year - most notably The Beaches of Agnes, but also several others. It’s too bad that docs don’t seem to get very wide releases, and even in Toronto, I often find that docs don’t get much play. The exception this year was Kenny Ortega’s Michael Jackson’s This is It, but was that even really a film? I did enjoy, at least slightly, Pete McCormack’s Facing Ali a fascinating doc about the legendary boxer through the eyes of his opponents. Under Our Skin was a surprisingly involving doc about Lyme disease, and how the medical establishment seems to be completely ignoring the massive effect the illness has on its victims. The recent Oscar nominated doc Which Way Home is a fascinating, real life Sin Nombre – yet the film is somewhat hurt my that comparison (look for a full length review of the film either today or tomorrow). I know that a lot of critics loved Terence Davies’ Of Time and the City, but although I think it was a great looking film, it was also dull. Valentino: The Last Emperor was an audience favorite as much as a doc can be anyway, but I didn’t find it very illuminating. I was also disappointed in Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love, which should have been fascinating, but was actually rather dull. The Michael Moore tactic of documentary filmmaking reached a new low with The Yes Men Fix the World a doc about two clueless idiots with none of Moore's talent or charm, who think they are doing something clever – spoiler alert, they’re not. Nevertheless, these 10 docs were actually worthy of a look.

10. In a Dream (Jeremiah Zagar)
One of the rare “family” documentaries that is actually insightful and enlightening. Zagar documents his father’s artistic work all over the city of Philadelphia, where he has create murals on the walls of his neighborhood that document his life and his family. The art is interesting, but it takes on a darker tone when it is revealed that the father is having an affair, and his mental demons are coming back to haunt him once again. Most films about a family made by one of their own are not very involving or interesting – this is the exception.

9. Every Little Step (Adam Del Deo & James D. Stern)
A Chorus Line is one of the biggest shows in Broadway history, and is beloved by the dancers, singers and actors who actually work on Broadway, because it tells their story of grueling auditions and personal pain and triumph. When they decided to do a revival of the show on Broadway a few years ago, they opened up the audition process to these documentarians, who I think have created a movie that is going to be as loved by Broadway actors as the original show was. You go along with these actors for the entire, grueling 8 month audition process, and feel their joy and most particularly their pain (I felt really bad for the one woman who was told in the final round of auditions to “do what you did last summer”, when last summer was 6 months ago, and she had no idea what the hell it was she did). One of those rare documentaries that could actually be called a crowd pleaser.

8. Good Hair (Jeff Stilson)
Chris Rock is a funny guy, and his documentary Good Hair is without a doubt the funniest documentary of the year. Rock questions why black people, especially women, have such an obsession with their hair, and specifically making their hair look long, luxurious and straight – or more specifically like white women’s hair. Rock goes from place to place talking to people – celebrities to just regular people, and finds out their opinions, and then follows the money to see where it all goes. Black hair is worth millions upon millions every year. Yes, it takes a few missteps along the way, but overall, Good Hair is just downright fun to watch.

7. Capitalism: A Love Story (Michael Moore)
Michael Moore has become the biggest name in documentary films with his own brand of rabble rousing with his movies, which are more like filmed essays than an objective documentary. But really, who says documentaries need to be objective? In Capitalism: A Love Story, Moore takes direct aim at the economic system that let America down, and sent them spiraling into a recession in the first place. When Moore is playing his pranks and focusing on the real people who were hurt by this recession, and contrasting it to the banks which got bailed out, his film is strong. When he tries to look at capitalism itself, and prove its inherent flaws, he is on shakier ground. Capitalism: A Love Story is perhaps the weakest documentary of Moore’s career (it’s kind of a tie with The Big One), but it is still a fine film.

6. Anvil: The Story of Anvil! (Sacha Gervasi)
In the early-1980s, Toronto based heavy metal band Anvil was poised to breakout big time. Their album, Metal on Metal, had influence such bands as Metallica, and a tour of with Bon Jovi made them huge – at least they thought it would. Now 25 years later, the success never came, but the boys in the band are still struggling, still believing in their rock star dreams. Perhaps the most critically acclaimed doc of the year caused mixed feelings in me – yes the friendship between the two guys at the heart of the movie is sweet, and it is kind of inspiring to see two guys who will not give up on their dreams. But they also struck me as kind of pathetic – at what point are you supposed to give up on your dreams and face reality? Still, the movie is involving and entertaining from beginning to end. But I’m still not going to go out and buy an Anvil album.

5. Food Inc. (Robert Kenner)
Our food system likes to keep us fat. That is why food that is horrible for you is so cheap, while healthy food is so expensive. Well, that and the fact that farmers get huge subsidies for growing corn, so “agricultural” companies purchase large quantities of it and make high fructose corn syrup that is in pretty much everything we eat, despite the fact that it is terrible for you. Profit trumps everything else, and farmers who want to grow healthier food are singled out and picked on by the government, who receive massive contributions for the giant agricultural companies. There really is nothing new here – if you’ve done any reading on this subject, what the movie has to say will not shock you – yet it is still important to get the information out there, and director Robert Kenner does so in a fascinating and entertaining way.

4. Burma VJ (Anders Ostergaard)
Anders Ostergaard’s film is made up of real footage caught by on the ground video journalists during the protests in Burma in August and September 2007. Because foreign journalists are banned from the country, and the major networks in the country are just pawns for the government, the only way the Burmese people – and the rest of the world – got to see what was actually happening was through the cameras of these brave journalists who were risking their freedom and lives in order to capture it all. The film is gripping in its imagery, and the story it tells.

3. Tyson (James Toback)
Mike Tyson is one of the more controversial figures in America. From his huge success and fame in the boxing ring at a young age, to his conviction for rape, to his marriage to Robin Givens, to his eat biting episode and everything in between, it seems like everyone has an opinion on Mike Tyson – and very few of those opinions are positive. James Toback’s Tyson is a chance for Tyson to tell his side of the story in full. Toback is a trusted friend of Tyson’s, and he gets Iron Mike to open up about his childhood, his legal problems and everything else. No, this is not an objective view of Tyson – Toback and Tyson have the objective of trying to cleanse his image. Yet, this is perhaps the best movie we are going to see where Tyson tells his story the way he sees it. It may not all be true, and you could walk out of the film hating Iron Mike as much as you did going in, but it is a fascinating movie, and Mike Tyson is a fascinating person.

2. Collapse (Chris Smith)
Michael Ruppert is a former LAPD officer, who has made his modest living for the last three decades as an investigative journalist, uncovering conspiracies and stories that the “mainstream” media has left alone. Now, he is talking about the inevitable collapse that is going to hit the world when we run out of oil. He believes that there is no viable alternative to oil, and that we are on the down slope of what there is left in the world, and that soon we will all be living in some sort of Mad Max like world. I didn’t agree with everything that Ruppert had to say – hell, I didn’t agree with most of it – but he is a fascinating person to make a documentary about, and he a great speaker. Chris Smith, best known for his great comedic doc American Movie, steps into Errol Morris territory here, and makes a fascinating doc.

1. The Cove (Louis Pishoyoas)
Easily the best documentary in this weak year was Louis Pishoyoas devastating film The Cove. The movie is about an isolated cove in Japan where fishermen lure dolphins in by the hundreds to try and sell them to people from zoos the world over. They need a constant supply of dolphins, because in captivity and forced to perform, dolphins become depressed easily, and are miserable enough that they commit suicide. The even bigger tragedy however is that after the zoo people go home, the fishermen slaughter the dolphins, and then sell the meat to supermarkets, passing it off as a different kind of meat. The movie is a meticulously made film, with undercover cameras exposing the dirty little secret Japan denied was even happening at all. The movie is a powerful, devastating film that left me shaken.

Movie Review: The Yes Men Fix the World

The Yes Men Fix the World **
Directed By: Andy Bichlbaum & Michael Bonnaro.

Although it seems easy, no one else has ever really been able to pull off the liberal muck raking ways of Michael Moore. Moore is fearless is his confrontations with corporate America, and the government, accusing them of greed, criminal activity and over all just being poor citizens that are ruining his country. You may not agree with him, but he is excellent at what he does. And based on the evidence supplied in The Yes Men Fix the World, it isn’t easy. These two bozos don’t have a clue in what they’re doing.

What the Yes Men do is set up phony websites for big corporations they want to humiliate, and then wait to be invited somewhere to speak. When they do so, they say things that the corporation would not want them to say. For example, they pose as representatives for Dow Chemical, whose subsidiary Union Carbide, was responsible for the largest industrial accident in history. In 1985, their plant in Bhopal, India had a spill that killed 8,000 people, and has adversely affected the area ever since – causing deformities and birth defects that last to this day. So what do these guys do? They go on BBC and announce that Dow Chemical is going to pay $12 billion to fix Bhopal – to finally clean up the mess they made properly, and then provide medical care for the people affected. The result is that Down’s Stock drops in value by almost $2 billion almost immediately, but regains that value when Dow announces that it was a hoax. The only thing this stunt accomplished was to temporarily embarrass Dow Chemical and temporarily affect its stock price. No lasting impact was felt, no changes actually made. Nothing really accomplished.

Most of their other stunts don’t even accomplish that much. They like going to trade shows and posing as big companies to announce a new product or service. For instance, they go to one trade show and announce that they have created a new risk calculator – what it will do is calculate the risk that a corporations action will cause people’s deaths, and then compares it to how much money they are going to make off of the idea. Or, they pose as executives from Exxon and say they have found a new energy source – dead humans. Or, they pose as representatives from Halliburton to promote their new protective suit, that looks like one of those sumo wrestler costume, that are apparently built to withstand any natural or manmade disaster. Or they pose as representatives from HUD and announce at a press conference that they are reopening some of the public housing in New Orleans. Or, they put together some money to print off 100,000 copies of a fake issue of the New York Times, that tells people what the future could be like if they work at it (the headlines include “Iraq War Ends”, “Bush Charged with War Crimes” and “Maximum Wage Law Passed”.

Some of these ideas are clever – others not so much. But they all have one thing in common – they accomplish nothing. They don’t even seem to be able to piss people off as much as Moore does, perhaps because everyone knows when their hoax ends, that no one will actually hear about what they did. What these guys are essentially doing is a corporate version of Punk’d and I have to wonder – what the hell is the point?

Movie Review: Under Our Skin

Under Our Skin ***
Directed By: Andy Abrahams Wilson.

I have to admit that I knew very little about lyme disease before I watched this movie. What I did know, I learned from that one episode of The Simpsons when Miss Hoover thinks she has it and the movie Lymelife from earlier in 2009, where Timothy Hutton plays a man with the disease whose life spirals downward. I knew that if left untreated, it could cause neurological side effects. What I didn’t know was the massive controversy that the disease has caused in the medical community. Under Our Skin is a documentary that looks at the effect of lyme disease on the people inflicted with the illness.

There is a lot of ignorance when it comes to lyme disease. Many doctors believe that most people who think they suffer with the disease are just after attention or are hypochrondriacs. This is worsen by the fact that the standard test for lyme disease only gives positive results for about 50% of the people who actually have the disease. Patients have to fight for years to get a doctor to finally admit that they even have the disease. And when they do, there are few treatment options available to them. A new treatment, which requires long term use of antibiotics have helped many people with the disease. The problem is that the treatment has not been medically verified by the experts, and insurance companies do not want to pay for the expensive treatment. They go as far as lodging complaints against the doctors who prescribe this treatment to try and get their licenses suspended or revoked.

The movie is one sided, of that there can be no doubt. I looked into this disease after watching the movie, and found out that there have been studies into the effectiveness of prolonged antibiotic use in the treatment of “chronic lyme disease”, a diagnosis that many doctors insist is not real, and that the results have been inconclusive. And apparently, not all of the advocates of the chronic lyme disease diagnosis are as peaceful as the movie makes them out to be.

And yet, you cannot argue with the results that you see in the movie. One sided though it maybe, you can see a change in some of the patients in the film that have undergone this treatment. What the movie makes clear is that the disease needs further study, and more effective treatments need to be recognized and delivered to the patients. Whatever the situation is now, it isn’t really working.

Movie Review: Burma VJ

Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country *** ½
Directed By: Anders Østergaard.

Myanmar, known as Burma to most of the rest of the outside world, has been ruled by a military government for most of its recent history. Protests in the late 1980s, led to calls for democracy, which were carried out in 1990 when the political party led by Aung San Suu Kyi roundly won the election in a landslide. Instead of being the dawning of a new age of democracy for the embattled Asian country, the military regime, known as SLORC (State Law and Order Restoration Council) cracked down even harder – placing Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest, and continuing on as if nothing had changed. And for a while nothing did. But in 2007, the protests started again.

Burma VJ (VJ stand for video journalists) documents those protests in the months of August and September 2007 through the eyes of the journalists who work for the illegal television station known as the Democratic Voice of Burma, who were on the ground for the whole things. The movie is essentially the footage they captured – grainy, sometimes blurry, always handheld and shaky images of the protests and the eventual crackdown that came from the government. In Burma, these reporters are risking their lives to take these images. The reason they are so shaky and handheld is because if the police find them shooting the images at all they will at the very least be arrested, if not shot (like what happened to one Japanese journalist during these protests). The government has issued a ban on all foreign journalists, and control what the media outlets in Burma can show on television. But in this age of technology, they cannot stop the images taken by the Democratic Voice of Burma reporters from reaching the outside world, and in fact the people of Burma themselves. These cameras can easily export these images via the internet to everyone who wants to see them. These protests got worldwide attention in 2007, and while nothing has really changed in the almost three years since, things are in motion. The government cannot suppress the truth forever.

The film is directed by Anders Ostergaard, a Danish filmmaker, and narrated by “Joshua”, who works for the Democratic Voice of Burma, but whose real name and identity are shielded from the camera for his own safety. During the protests, he reluctantly fled Burma for Thailand, but received all the images his reporters shot, and received constant updates by phone. Although he would have preferred to be on the ground shooting, he played a vital role – getting the images out to the world, and back inside Burma. The protests start out small, but word spreads. Soon the normally neutral Buddhist monks have taken the lead the protests. The government tries to crackdown on these protests, making it illegal for more than five people to gather in one place, and imposing a curfew on the people. But it doesn’t work. When they finally send out soldiers, the VJs capture the horrific footage of soldiers firing into crowds of their own people. As Joshua says, they need the soldiers to turn against their leaders if the revolution is actually going to work. So far, they haven’t.

Burma VJ is an important movie, as it shows what happened in Burma to the world – something that the government tried to stop at all costs. It is also a movie about the power of technology, and how difficult it is now to suppress the truth. Governments the world over, even in democracies, tries to suppress some footage from getting out to their own people in the hopes of “protecting them”. (Remember, that no footage is allowed of any soldiers casket coming home from Iraq to air on network television – unless of course it fits the government’s needs). While the protests failed to effect real change in Burma, they were a necessary first step. It’s up to the Burmese people now to take to the next level – and they are. Sooner or later, the regime will fall. And the reporters in Burma VJ will be one of the major reasons when they do.

DVD Views: Facing Ali

Facing Ali ***
Directed By: Pete McCormack.
Featuring: George Foreman, George Chuvalo, Leon Spinks, Larry Holmes, Sir Henry Cooper, Ernie Terrell, Ron Lyle, Joe Frazier, Ken Norton, Earnie Shavers.

Muhammad Ali has left an indelible mark on the world of boxing – and in fact on 20th Century History itself. He was a man who was unafraid to stand up for what he believed in, and was able to back up his tremendous boasts in the boxing ring, taking on all comers with style and speed. There have been so many movies made about Ali that is hardly seems like there is anything left to cover. But Pete McCormack’s Facing Ali does in fact break some new ground. It does so by concentrating on a side of Ali that few people ever saw up close and personal. The movie is essentially a collection of interviews with the boxers who took on Ali during his professional career – from close to the beginning when he fought British champ Henry Cooper to his final fights two decades later, when it was clear to everyone except maybe Ali that he was washed up. The result is an interesting portrait of an icon.

What is revealing about the movie is how almost no one in the film has anything bad to say about Ali. Joe Frazier doesn’t seem to like him very much – and seems to have been hurt by some of the things Ali said about him – but even he has a respect for Ali that transcends just the admiration of his boxing talent. Almost everyone else thinks that Ali really was the greatest – and that their careers were better for having faced him than they otherwise would have been.

For fans interested in boxing, than Facing Ali provides a lot of what you would want to see. The fighters analyze their own fights, as well as fights that didn’t involve them, against Ali in a way that you rarely get to hear about. But what made Facing Ali so enlightening, and fascinating, to me were the stories that these boxers told about their own lives.

Everyone knows that Ali is struggling with Parkinson’s disease, and that he is now a mere shadow of his former self. And he is not the only one it seems to have suffered permanent damage. George Foreman, Henry Cooper and Larry Holmes appear to be the healthiest, both in terms of physical and mental health, out of all the boxers. They seem to have suffered no ill effects from their days in the rings. Canadian George Chuvalo also appears unscarred by his time in the ring, but his emotional scars – from 3 of his four sons and his wife dying – are certainly still there. Leon Spinks has been ravaged by drug use. Ken Norton got into a horrific car accident. The rest seem to be a step slower mentally then the rest of us, but still recall with pride their days in the ring.

Facing Ali doesn’t break any new ground. But it is still a fascinating little movie, that gives us a fascinating portrait of Ali, along with many of the boxers who faced him. It doesn’t usurp When We Were Kings as the best documentary made about Ali, but it is worthy to be mentioned alongside it.

Movie Review: In a Dream

In a Dream ***
Directed By: Jeremiah Zagar.

There have been a lot of documentaries in the past few years that focus on one person’s family. A family member with a movie camera documents the trials and tribulations that his family is going through at the time, the movie gets into a few film festivals, a limited theatrical release and then straight to DVD where no one ever picks it up again. The whole thing reminds of that episode of The Simpsons when Lisa goes to Sundance. While In a Dream follows that same formula, it is more fascinating than most of those documentaries. For one, director Jeremiah Zagar seems to have a natural eye for moviemaking, but more importantly, his family is actually interesting enough to sustain a documentary that people other than his family would want to what.

Jeremiah’s father is Isaiah Zagar, who for the past four decades has been covers his Philadelphia neighborhood with his huge mosaic murals – over 50,000 square feet of mosaics have been done (apparently, the city of Philadelphia allows him to do this, although the movie never really explains it). He pours his life into his art – which is very personal – and centers around his family. He has had a history of mental problems, including a suicide attempt years ago, but doing his art seems to keep him grounded and sane. His wife, Julia, helps in this regard as well, as does his two sons – Zeke and Jeremiah.

The first act of the movie seems to find Isaiah and Julia in happy times. They have made it through more than 40 years together, they have two sons – one is married and has a song of his own and is making a success for himself in real estate, and the other went off to college and is now making this documentary.

But then things fall apart. Zeke, who they was happy married and successful, gets divorced and moves back in with his parents. Worse, he is “self medicating”, and will probably need help at some point to get over his addiction. Isaiah’s mosaics seem to start changing as well. Usually focusing on his family, and his wife who he adores, they seem to have turned inward and are becoming more and more about himself and his troubled psyche. When Zeke finally asks for help with his addiction, and wants to be driven to a rehab centre, Isaiah blurts out that he has been having an affair with his assistant. Things immediately get much worse.

When I watch documentaries like this, I often wonder if the process of making the film made things better or worse. Does having the camera there make people more honest than they otherwise would be, or do they feel like puppets being used by the documentarian – in this case a member of their own family. In this case, it seems to be the former. This family does not seem to hold back much, and you get the impression that without the camera there, perhaps they would not be talking about these things at all. At least with the camera, things are being said.

In a Dream is not a great documentary, but it is a good one. It finds interesting subjects to document, and the film is about more than just a family in crisis. It is about the line between art and reality, sanity and insanity, and how art can save or destroy you – as can a marriage. In short, In a Dream is better than most documentaries about a family, because it is about more than just the family. A lot more.

Movie Review: Collapse

Collapse *** ½
Directed By: Chris Smith.
Featuring: Michael Ruppert.

Michael Ruppert has been called everything from a “visionary” to “batshit insane”. The one thing you cannot deny no matter where you come down on Ruppert, and believe me if you see Collapse you will form an opinion of some sort, is that Ruppert is a fascinating man, with fascinating ideas. I do share his pessimism, but damn if for the running time of the movie he doesn’t sell it to the hilt. In a way, he reminded me of a less insane, more rational, and more left wing version of Glenn Beck, that nutcase on Fox News, who recently revealed his three G’s plan for when the country collapses. The three G’s are God, Guns and Gold (because when you’re starving apparently that’s all you need – who needs food?).

Ruppert was a LAPD officer in the 1970s, but was drummed out during the 1980s. He says it is because he discovered that the CIA was smuggling drugs into the country and selling on the streets of LA, and when he refused to go along with it, the CIA tried to kill him, and then ruined his career. Since then, he has made his modest living being a writer and investigative reporter. He distrusts the mainstream media, but knows how to read it. The big stories are never on the front page, and the real meaning is always hidden, but it’s there.

For Ruppert, he believes that the world is going to collapse soon. Fossil fuels are running out, and there is no alternative fuel source that could possibly take its place. He runs through all the alternatives, and tells you why they won’t work. He takes about reserves in the Middle East, the Alberta Tar Sands and in the Wildlife preserves, and explains why they won’t last very long. The population is booming out of control, and soon, the bubble will burst and millions, if not billions will die. It sounds like something out of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

Chris Smith’s documentary pretty much allows Ruppert to explain his views for nearly 90 minutes. The film reminded me of the work of Errol Morris, as it essentially just mixes together one interview with archival footage and a musical score. We hear Smith ask questions in the background occasionally – he doesn’t seem as convinced as Ruppert is at the inevitable onslaught, but Ruppert isn’t much interested in listening to him question his views. He knows what he knows, and dammit, he’s going to tell you about it.

Some of what Ruppert says makes a lot of sense. At times he just seems like a very passionate conversationalist espousing his theories to get people to be more in tune with the earth. At other times, he really does seem like a paranoid lunatic. But I find too often that people go to movies, particularly documentaries, to have their views celebrated and congratulated. Perhaps the reason why Michael Moore’s films have never had the true impact outside of his fan base that he wanted them to is because he is essentially preaching to the choir. No one else is listening. Ruppert has a much smaller choir than Moore does, but he preaches just the same. Whether you agree with him or not, and I did quite a lot of both in Collapse, you cannot deny that he is one fascinating person – and a great subject for a documentary.

DVD Views: Anvil: The Story of Anvil

Anvil: The Story of Anvil ***
Directed By: Sacha Gervasi.
Featuring: Steve “Lips” Kudlow, Robb Reiner.

I cannot decide if the two people at the heart of documentary Anvil: The Story of Anvil are inspiring or pathetic. In the early 1980s, Steve “Lips” Kudlow and Robb Reiner, two Jewish kids from Toronto, were on the verge of making it big in the music industry with their heavy metal band Anvil. Their album, Metal on Metal, inspired bands like Metallica, Megadeath, Pantera and a host of other heavy metal superstars. They even toured Japan with White Snake, Slayer and Bon Jovi. But somehow all those bands ended up hugely successful, and Anvil was left behind. Now 25 years later Kudlow and Reiner still dream of being rock stars, even though they are now in their 50s, and have to work other jobs to support themselves and their families.

Anvil tells their stories. After the music world passed them by in the 1980s, they never stopped, and from the sound of things, they never really changed their musical style either. Even Metallica has softened in the past 25 years, but Anvil rocks it out just like it was 1984. They have a small but devoted following, who show up to watch their gigs, and buy their albums (there have been 13 in all, most handled by a very small record label, who Kudlow and Reiner insist don’t know what they are doing).

The movie follows them on an ill fated European Tour, that they are convinced will be their ticket back to the big time. It doesn’t happen. Then they borrow money from their family to hire a good producer for their 13th album, which again they are convinced will be their big break. That doesn’t happen either. Finally, they travel to Japan to take part in a huge heavy metal show that again they think will be their break. As each of these things pass, and it becomes clear that it will not be their big break, they make excuses, and just keep on trucking. They are rock stars, even if they don’t really have any fans.

Part of me admires these two guys. They have been beaten down by life constantly throughout their careers, but they never say die. They just keep going, following their dreams, even if no one but them really believes that it is going to happen for them at this point.

But another part of me just wants to tell these two guys to grow up. There is nothing wrong with still being in a rock band at the age of 50. If they have fun performing for their small fan base, then go for it. And record your albums and sell them to those same fans. But stop thinking that you’re going to make it and become huge stars. The music industry has changed dramatically since 1984. With the exception of Metallica, all the other bands of that era that are still together mainly subsist on nostalgia of their fans. If fans don’t have those memories of you, you cannot expect to break through now. I am a heavy metal fan, and what I heard of Anvil during the course of this movie was okay, but did not inspire me to go and track down an album. At some point, everyone needs to grow up.

DVD Views: Valentino: The Last Emperor

Valentino: The Last Emperor ** ½
Directed By: Matt Tynauer.

Valentino is one of the biggest names in the fashion world. At the time of his retirement, he had been in the industry for 45 years, and was the last of the huge names in fashion that rose to prominence in the 1960s still designing clothing. He is a man who values beauty above everything else, and shut out anything that was not beautiful. Throughout all those years, he had Giancarlo Giametti, his business partner and companion, by his side. While Valentino focused on beauty, Giametti focued on the business end of things, and helped make Valentino who he is.

The movie, Valentino: The Last Emperor, follows the man at the close of his career. Right up until his retirement, he was designing beautiful gowns for women, and insisted that he make dresses that women would actually want to wear. The business end of things seems to be a mystery to him. His company went public, and had the majority of its shares bought by one congolerate, and then sold off to another. Valentino doesn’t much care. He wants to continue to make clothes.

The heart of the movie is the relationship between Valentino and Giametti who argue and bicker just like any other old married couple. They have been around each other for so long, that they have a shorthand with each other. Giametti understands Valentino’s flourishes and his insecurities, because he is really the only one that Valentino lets see them. He handles him remarkably well – he gives him a rock to lean on when he needs one.

The rest of the movie is far less interesting to me. I’m sorry, but fashion has never really been an interest of mine, and no documentary is really going to change that. Watching as they prepare for numerous runway shows, and Valentino’s grand exit from the fashion world, simply was not all that interesting to me. For someone who likes this world, I’m sure the movie would be fascinating. For me, not as much.

Valentino is a fascinating man, but one that keeps everyone at a distance. He seems unsatisfied all the time, overly pressured, overly managed. All he wants to do is dress beautiful women in beautiful clothing. He has done that for 45 years, and become a multi-millionaire with everything that he could possibly want. In a way, his life resembles something out of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita – surrounded by shallowness all the time, how could we possibly expect him to be anything but shallow?

And therein lies the problem for me with this movie. It is all surface, much like the dresses that Valentino designs. Yes, it is all very beautiful. But does it mean anything?

DVD Views: Every Little Step

Every Little Step ***
Directed By: Adam Del Deo & James D. Stern.

I have never seen A Chorus Line, either on stage on the movie version, so dispite strong reviews, I didn’t bother to see the documentary Every Little Step when it was released this summer, or when it came out on DVD. But considering that the film was one of the 15 shortlisted for the documentary Oscar this year, I decided to give it a chance over the weekend. What I found was a surprisingly entertaining, funny and ultimately moving documentary about the lives of actors. From what I gathered about A Chorus Line while watching the movie, in its own way, this documentary reflects the original vision of the Broadway show.

When A Chorus Line debuted in 1976, it became an instant success, won a bunch of Tonys and the Pulitizer Prize for Drama, and became one of the longest running shows in history. The brainchild of Michael Bennett, a dancer himself who gathered a group of his fellow dancers together and recorded the 12 hour session where they all opened up about their lives. He, and his writers, then turned these confessions into a Broadway show, where 19 actors get up to audition for a spot in the chorus line for an upcoming Broadway show.

30 Years later, Bennet dead for almost two decades, they decide to revive A Chorus Line for Broadway once again. The producers of the show hold open auditions, which thousands of people show up for. The movie follows the audition process for 8 grueling months and callback after callback, as actors show up and try their damnedest to earn a spot in the revival.

What emerges is both an homage to the original show – as we hear all the shows classic numbers (making me wonder how the hell I knew almost all of them despite the obvious disadvantage of never having seen the production), as well as a tribute to actors everywhere. Unless you are one of the lucky few celebrity actors, being a professional and making a living doing this is damn near impossible. Everyone wants to be a star, but there are not all that many spots open. During the course of the movie many dreams are made, but many more are shattered. It is not so much the people who make the show, but the ones who do not that stick out in my mind.

To a certain extent, Every Little Step is lightweight entertainment. You cannot help but think of reality shows like American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance while watching the movie (the later of which is particularly strong, since one of the choreographers from that show, Tyce Diorio is one of the auditionees for this show). But while those films celebrate amateurs, this movie is about professionals who long to work. True, they do this out of love, but also because they want to make money. There is much more sadness in this film that I expected there to be.
Every Little Step is a fine documentary of a certain type. I cannot really recall another documentary that looked with such an unblinking eye at the world of actors. The movie does justice to the musical on which is it based – at least I think it does.

Movie Review: Michael Jackson's This is It

Michael Jackson’s This is It ** ½
Directed By: Kenny Ortega.

No matter what you thought of Michael Jackson as a human being, it is impossible to deny that he was in fact a musical genius. Since in the last 10 years of his life he rarely released any music, and didn’t do any concerts, the only time he appeared on the news was in relation to new child molestation allegations or his weird, erratic behavior. It is equally impossible to deny, no matter what you thought of his music, that he was one strange human being, with sexual and identity issues that when combined with his immense fame, made it impossible for him to live a normal life. Michael Jackson lived a life of complete contradiction.

The new movie This is It then comes as a celebration of the man’s musical genius, and not of his bizarre personal life. Watching the movie is to remind yourself just how many amazing songs the man recorded in his life, and to remind yourself just what an amazing performer he was. During the course of the movie, we watch as he rehearses for his concerts in London that were supposed to happen this fall, and we get an inside view of the creative process that Jackson went through while preparing his shows. He is not some big star who just walks in and does his thing and leaves. He was a man who was involved in every step of planning and executing the show. We see him direct dancers, and talk to musicians about their performances of his song. He wants what he wants, and is very particular about it, but is never mean. He encourages his collaborators to do their best work, and will accept nothing less than perfection from them.

Watching the movie we get to see Jackson perform his greatest hits. “They Don’t Care About Us”, “You Are Not Alone”, “Smooth Criminal”, “Billie Jean”, “Thriller”, “Man in the Mirror”, “Black and White” among them. We are reminded just how great those songs really were. And we see Jackson perform. Right up until the end, that man could dance better than just about anyone else I can think of.

Ultimately however, we are left with a slightly disappointed feel after the movie is over. Because all we see are rehearsals and was never meant for mass consumption, there are stops and starts, camera work that is somewhat lackluster and of low quality visually. The film feels choppy, because of course, it was never meant to be a film in the first place. Full marks have to go to the editors and the director, Kenny Ortega, for shaping the footage into something at least resembling a movie. But ultimately, what we want to see is impossible. You get the feeling while watching the movie that had the London shows gone on, and they had made a concert documentary about them, that it could have been one of the greatest in movie history. What we are left with however is somewhat underwhelming. Yes, it is great to hear the music again, and to remind ourselves that Michael Jackson was more than just a punch line. But that doesn’t make This is It a satisfying movie going experience.

Movie Review: Good Hair

Good Hair ***
Directed By: Jeff Stilson.
Written By: Lance Crouther & Chris Rock & Chuck Sklar & Jeff Stilson & Paul Marchand.

Did you know that the chemicals that black women (and Al Sharpton) put in their hair can make a soda can clear in an hour, and completely eat through it in 4? These are cans designed to hold, which they say have so much acid in them, they make a good household cleaner. (I learned later that modern products now use a different chemical, that is less dangerous, but the point still holds – women used to use this chemical on their hair). Did you know that a weave, even a cheap one, costs more than $1,000 – and that’s BEFORE you’ve actually paid for the hair that they will be stitching into your head? If I realized anything while watching the documentary Good Hair, it’s that when my wife goes to the salon for her quarterly styling, and drops $200, I should be thankful that it cost so little!

Chris Rock is at the center of Good Hair, a film he says he wanted to make because his 4 year old daughter asked him why she didn’t have “good hair”. Rock sets out to find out why exactly it is that black women spend so much time and money making their hair do things that it was not meant to do, and what exactly good hair is. His film may start out about hair, but I was surprised by how many different areas it ends up covering.

Rock’s strength as an interviewer are twofold. First, he never really judges his subjects, just makes them feel comfortable and relaxed enough to share with him details that normally, they share with almost no one. Second, he is hilarious. Rock is quick witted, and never misses an opportunity to throw in a barbed one liner, but because he does so with a smile on his face, and perfect delivery, no one gets really offended. They simply laugh along with him.

Rock is certainly not saying that what all these women are doing to their hair is wrong. He simply wants to explore why they feel the need to do it all. Why do black women seem to go out of their way to make their hair do things that it was not naturally meant to do? Well, why does anyone? Trust me, I have a lot of female friends, and have often been the only guy in a roomful of women, and no matter what race they are, women can go on and on and on about their hairstyles, agonizing over the smallest changes they make to it. Men typically pick a haircut early in their life and stick with it until they die or go bald – whichever comes first. But women seem to like to change their hair constantly. Such is life.

Rock is at his best when he veers away from the celebrities and covers something like the Atlanta hair show, where its centre piece if a styling competition between four hair dressers, which is more theater than hair dressing. There is not a lot of hair being cut in this competition, but boy is it ever entertaining. But the single best scene in the movie may come when Rock goes into a barbershop and talks to a group of black men about black women’s hair. The revelations he uncovers there are the type of thing that is rarely discussed.

Of course, there are limits to what you should do with your hair. It is stupid to spend $1,000 on a weave when you don’t have money to spend on food. But then, it’s stupid to spend $1,000 on anything when you don’t have for food in your house – unless of course, it’s food. But the women he talks to in the film – all intelligent and well spoken whether they are actresses, writers, doctors, singers or video vixens – say they do it because it makes them feel better about themselves. This is true of the women who use relaxers, who have weaves or have their “natural” hair. And if you have the money to do, why not? As rapper Ice T says at the very end of the movie women need to do what makes them feel good about their hair because if not “they will make the lives of every fucker around them miserable”. Well said Ice T, well said.

Movie Review: Capitalism: A Love Story

Capitalism: A Love Story ***
Directed By: Michael Moore.
Written By: Michael Moore.

Michael Moore would have you believe that his new film, Capitalism: A Love Story, takes direct aim at Capitalism as an economic system, and finds it morally bankrupt and evil. But that’s not really what the film is about. It is another one of Moore’s films about corrupt greed and corruption, and how the inactivity of the government, or in some cases activity of the government, has allowed companies to get away with more and more money, and become more and more corrupt. The real villains in the movie is not the system of capitalism itself, but rather greedy companies and ineffectual lawmen. It is, in fact, more of the same from Moore who has essentially been making this movie since his breakthrough Roger and Me in 1989. It is only the villains who change.

Capitalism: A Love Story basically focuses on the bank bailout that Congress passed in late 2008, and the fallout that ensued. The banks essentially got themselves into trouble by giving away too much credit to too many people who could not afford to pay them back. They did great for a while, but soon, they had no money coming in, and their foreclosure rates went through the roof, and they couldn’t find anyone willing to buy the houses they foreclosed on. Congress rode in on their white horse and gave them $700 billion to save them from themselves. The problem, in Moore’s view anyway, is that while they saved the banks, and later the car companies and others, they did nothing to save the individuals whose lives had been destroyed by the crisis. People who lost their jobs, their houses, everything.

The problem stretches back to Reagan in Moore’s view. When Reagan got in, it started three decades of deregulation that all eventually led to the crash last year. Through the Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush II years, banks and corporations were essentially given more and more freedom to do what they wanted to do. They were happy to do it, as the increased profits drove up their stock prices. The stock market became more complex, and essentially a casino for the wealthy, where they always won, and the little guy always lost. When the big guys lost, they went whining to the government for help.

For the first time in his career perhaps, Moore is willing to attack across party lines. He places the blame for the bailout squarely at Bush’s feet, but also finds more than enough blame to put at the feet of the Democrats, who helped push it through as well. He certainly does take it easy on Clinton either, who helped along with the rest of them to deregulate the system, and put people in positions of power that had a vested interest in the system. His weakest point though, is that he starts to, then backs off, of directly attacking Barack Obama. He mentions that Obama seemed to come riding in as a hero to save the middle class, but then got a lot of campaign donations from the wealthy. But he never really follows through on it. In the 9 months now that Obama has been President, has he done ANYTHING to reverse the tide? Attacking the sins of the past is one thing, but putting pressure to change things in the future in something Moore needs to work on.

Capitalism: A Love Story is not really about how capitalism as system is inherently evil however, but rather how it has become twisted and perverse in the hands of the current power holders on Wall Street and in Washington. Does Moore really suggest that America become a socialist regime? I don’t think so. He does conveniently, however, overlook the fact that America is already part socialist anyway – much like the rest of the world. If it wasn’t, Americans would pay far less in taxes, but a whole hell of a lot more for a lot of different things. Schools for example. Yes, there has been an increase in privatization in the past decade – everything from Military personnel to jails has been privatized – but America at its core is still a mixture of the two systems. Here in Canada, we are as well, although because of health care and others, we do lean a little more to socialism than America does.

What I think Moore is really after in this film is to stir debate, and start conversations, and make people question what it is that is being done with their money. On that level, I think he succeeds. I think Capitalism: A Love Story is perhaps Moore’s most troublesome documentary, because it does not have the focus of his other films. He seems to lash out in all directions at times, making his argument scattershot. For every sound argument he makes in the movie, there is one where he is just as off base.

But there is a passion behind Moore’s film that is undeniable. He is a rabble rouser, so when he heads to Wall Street in an armored car with a big bag with a dollar sign on it, like it just came out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon, he doesn’t actually expect to get inside the buildings. Everyone knows who he is, and security guards seem to know he is coming. Some even have a little trouble to stop themselves from laughing at Moore’s antics. Somewhere inside, I suspect they know that Moore is at least partly right, and that they are being screwed over by their companies. But hey, they probably have a mortgage to pay, right?

DVD Views: Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired

Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired *** ½
Directed By: Marina Zenovich.

What Roman Polanski did to a 13 year old girl in 1977 was repulsive. I don’t care what anyone says about it perhaps being consensual, or questioning why the mother left him alone with his daughter or anything about cultural differences between America and Europe. The fact remains that Roman Polanski gave alcohol and Quaaludes to a 13 year old child and had sex with her. For that there is no excuse. However, like everyone else who is charged with a crime in America, Roman Polanski deserved a fair trial by a judge who wanted to see justice served, not his face in the newspapers. And that is what did not happen for Roman Polanski.

Polanski’s life is the stuff of Hollywood legend. Born in France to Polish parents who moved back to Poland when he was young, Polanski survived the Holocaust as a Jewish child in Poland. As a young man, he made a name for himself with his strange short films and his debut feature, the stunning Knife in the Water. He came to Hollywood shortly thereafter, and made some more great films, including Rosemary’s Baby. His beautiful wife, Sharon Tate, was one of the people killed by the Manson family, but Polanski had to endure months of rumors and innuendo that he had something to do with her death. The logic – anyone who could make a demonic film like Rosemary’s Baby was capable of doing anything.

Somehow Polanski soldiered on, and continued to make great films, none greater than 1974’s Chinatown, still one of the very best films ever made. He was one of the few directors who was also a celebrity. Everyone wanted to work with him, and everyone wanted to party with him.

Things change in 1977 when he was charged with a slew of crimes related to the having sex with a minor Samantha Gailey Geimer. Suddenly, this was the trial of the century in Los Angeles, which seemingly has a new trial of the century at least once a decade. The DA and the Defense Attorney met to hammer out a deal. This deal was agreed to by the lawyer for the victim, who didn’t want to see his client be put through any more than absolutely necessary. Everyone seemed happy with the deal, including the Probation Board, who recommended that Polanski be put on parole.

Everyone that is than Judge Laurence J. Rittenband. It would be one thing if the judge thought that Polanski’s crimes was too great to simply be put on probation. That would be understandable. But that’s not why Rittenband did what he did. As the senior judge in Santa Monica, Rittenband had first choice of the cases that he wanted to personally handle. Whenever one with a celebrity came up, he took it. He loved seeing his name in the paper, loved the publicity and attention it brought him. He liked being around celebrities, but was not star struck. He loved the limelight.

But what Rittenband did goes beyond that. He had the lawyers come into his chambers and work out deals, and then had them reenact these arguments in the public forum of his courtroom. He had decisions and sentences already written before any arguments were made. He made promises that if Polanski went to Chino state prison for a 90 day observation, and if they agreed that probation was best for him, that is what he would give, and then backpedaled when the media turned against him. Facing a 50 year prison sentence, Polanski fled the country. And even the DA and the victim say they understand why he did it.

All this, and much more, comes out in Marina Zenovich’s Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. The movie does not seek to excuse Polanski of his crimes, but simply to examine a justice system that didn’t work this time. Aside from Polanski and Rittenband, Zenovich gets interviews with all the key players, including the DA, the Defense lawyer and the victim herself. The interviews she does have with Polanski all come from the time period around the trial and his fleeing the country. They certainly do not really do him any favors, and he gives the impression that he doesn’t think he did anything wrong. In that Roman Polanski is wrong. But in much of the rest of the case, it was Rittenband who was wrong.

Movie Review: The Cove

The Cove *** ½
Directed By: Louie Psihoyos.

Written By: Mark Monroe.

Featuring: Joe Chisholm, Mandy-Rae Cruikshank, Charles Hambleton, Simon Hutchins, Kirk Krack, Isabel Lucas, Richard O'Barry, Hayden Panettiere, Roger Payne, John Potter, Louie Psihoyos, Dave Rastovich, Paul Watson.

Dolphins always look like they are smiling, but that’s just a mistake of evolution. The dolphins we see in captivity are not as happy as they appear to be. They are very sensitive to sound, so being putting in a tank where they are forced to perform in front of hundreds of cheering people is almost like torture to them. They get so stressed out that they are fed Maalox every day, to combat the ulcers they have. Because they need to think about every breath they take, unlike humans who are unconscious breathers, they sometimes get so depressed that they simply stop themselves from breathing.

The Cove is a documentary that is mainly about the slaughter of thousands of dolphins a year in Taiji Japan, in a hidden cove. But The Cove is angry about more than just the slaughter of dolphins, but about how humans treat dolphins in general. Dolphins are self aware mammals, among the most intelligent creatures on earth - some even believe that dolphins rival humans in terms of intelligence. The central figure in the film Richard O’Barry, who during the 1960s was the lead dolphin trainer on the Flipper TV show. He made a lot of money over the years, but after the show ended, and one of the dolphins used in the show committed “suicide” in his arms, he decided to become an activist against everything he had worked for in the past.

For the last few years, O’Barry has set his sights on shutting down the slaughter of the dolphins in Taiji. Every time he enters the city, he is followed by the police everywhere he goes. When he tries to get into the area where they kill the dolphins, he is run off and threaten with arrest. He has never been able to get footage of what goes on in that cove.

That is where the filmmakers come in. They are determined to get the footage that Japan does not want to get out. The department of fisheries, the representative to the Internal Whaling Committee (IWC) and everyone else denies what is going on. The filmmakers want to catch them red handed. They assemble of team made up of ex-military men, free divers, camera experts, and people who just really believe in the cause. They hide cameras in fake rocks made by Industrial Light and Magic, and sneak them into the cove to see what they can see and hear. The process in which they go in and set the cameras and sound equipment is thrilling in and of itself. They document what they do with infrared cameras. There are many tense, scary moments, but they succeed in doing what they set out to do.

The footage that ends the movie is shocking. Essentially what happens is that the Japanese set up a line of ships that create a wall of sound. What they do when a fleet of dolphins show up is stick giant metal poles into the water, and hit them with a hammer, causing sound to ripple through the water, terrifying the dolphins, who have no where else to go but into the cove to escape the sound. After they are in, they are sealed in. Then dolphin trainers from around the world show up and pick the best dolphins to be shipped to their theme parks around the world. They pay up to $150,000 per dolphin. The dolphins that do not get picked get slaughtered. Because they are trapped in a cove, surrounded on three sides by steep cliffs, and a net on the fourth side keeping them in, it is literally like shooting fish in a barrel for the fisherman. Instead of guns though, they use metal spears. Dolphins get stabbed several times, often try to swim away once wounded, before their bodies finally give out on them. By the end of the slaughter, the water in the cove is bright red. The fishermen laugh and joke about what they do. The dolphin meat is than sold, and often passed off as more expensive meat. No one wants to actually eat dolphin meat, because it is full of mercury much in excess of WHO recommended safe levels.

I walked out of The Cove more shaken then any other movie this year. The footage from The Cove was enough to bring me to tears. The Cove is the best of a recent wave of documentaries that confront an environmental issue head on - full of anger and rage at what is being done. Do the filmmakers play fair? Not really, although they do try and give the other side a chance to defend themselves, even if their real goal is to not give them a chance to speak, but to ambush them. The movie makes no attempt to try and play fair. The film has an agenda, and does not try and hide what they agenda are. I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with that. The film is full of passion on the part of the filmmakers, and the result is simply stunning. One of the best documentaries of the year.

DVD Views: Waltz with Bashir

Waltz with Bashir ****
Directed by: Ari Folman
Written By: Ari Folman.
Starring: Ron Ben-Yishai (Himself), Ronny Dayag (Himself), Ari Folman (Himself), Dror Harazi (Himself), Yehezkel Lazarov (Carmi Cna'an), Mickey Leon (Boaz Rein-Buskila), Ori Sivan (Himself), Zahava Solomon (Himself).

Waltz with Bashir is unlike any other animated film, or any other documentary, I have ever seen before. It is a film about the massacre of Palestinian refugees at the hands of Christian soldiers in retaliation fort the assassination of their President, Bashir. It is told from the point of view of the Israeli soldiers who sat back and watched the massacre happen and didn’t do anything. They even provided the light necessary for the massacre to happen by firing up flares.

The film is written and directed by Ari Folman, who was one of those Israeli soldiers who watched the massacre happen. Over the 25 years since though, he has blocked out the entire incident from his mind. He goes on a journey to talk to the other soldiers who were there - who seem to have the opposite problem - they can never forget. Their dreams are haunted by what they have seen. One soldier dreams of the 26 dogs he was ordered to shoot when entering a small town so that the dogs wouldn’t warn the residents. Now, they return in his dreams and chase him down every night.

It may seem strange to make a film about Israeli pain stemming from this massacre, instead of the Palestinian pain. But although Folman concentrates on what he and his fellow soldiers went through, he doesn’t shy away from the consequences of his actions. The lone live action sequence in the movie shows images from the massacre - ones that will likely haunt the viewer, much like they haunted the soldiers.

The animation in the film is oddly appropriate for the film. It warps things a little bit. It also allows for reenactments of dreams and memories, which don’t appear quite real, and yet have the emotional resonance that would be impossible any other way. Some will complain that the animation, and the reenactments mean that Waltz with Bashir isn’t a real documentary, and yet I beg to differ. The animation allows the movie to be more real than film the movie straight would have done. It also allows for some of the most haunting images of any movie this year. In particular there is a sequence that Folman returns to again and again - as he and two other soldiers come out of the water, naked at night as the flares starting coming out, and the gunfire starts.

The film is about the elusive nature of memory and how people cope, or not cope as the case maybe, with what they have seen and done. Sometimes it is better to forget what you have done, because it makes it easier to live with yourself. And yet, in this case, it is important for the men, and Israel in general, to remember their own crimes. Waltz with Bashir shines a light on a moment in history that Israel would rather forget, but which they never should.

The Films of Martin Scorsese Part XXXI: The Blues: Feels Like Going Home

The Blues: Feel Like Going Home (2003) ***
Directed By: Martin Scorsese.

Martin Scorsese loves music. You can tell that by watching any one of his films which contain almost wall to wall music. He has made several documentaries – The Last Waltz, No Direction Home and Shine a Light – about rock music. In 2003, he produced a documentary series about The Blues, and recruited some of the best directors in the world – Clint Eastwood, Wim Wenders, Charles Burnett, Mike Figgis etc – to direct segments of it. But Scorsese chose to direct the first part of the documentary himself. The result was The Blues: Feels Like Going Home, an interesting little documentary.

Feels Life Going Home seems to want to be an all encompassing look at the origins of blues music. Throughout the film, Scorsese looks at the earliest recordings of the blues made in the American south by Alan Lomax, and the artists who recorded them. He also looks at modern blues musicians who were inspired by the music, as well as any surviving old masters that are still around. Eventually, Scorsese will travel to Africa to see where the origins of the music all began.

The Blues: Feels Like Going Home is an interesting, if not altogether involving documentary. I cannot say that I was bored by the movie, because I wasn’t. The music in the film is great and inspiring (not just to me but also to Scorsese, as we hear where he got that music he used throughout Gangs of New York played live in this movie). The musicians themselves are an interesting cast of characters, and their stories are never less than fascinating. Some of these old timers are people whose grandparents were slaves, where playing music like this would get them into trouble, yet somehow the music survived all the trials and tribulations and generations to make it all the way to the present day.

And yet, I was never really involved in the movie either. Perhaps it’s because I am not a big fan of the Blues. In Scorsese’s other documentaries about music, I was either a fan of the artists in question, or became a fan of them through the movie. Because of the rather episodic nature of this documentary however, that never really happened. I enjoyed the music, without ever really being swept in it. I was not a fan of the blues before this documentary, and I’m not one after it either. While I enjoyed the movie, it does not exactly make me want to go out and rent the rest of this long series. It’s a fine documentary, and for people who love the blues, they will probably love it. For me though, it was an interesting distraction.

The Films of Martin Scorsese Part XXIV: The Neighborhood and My Life, My Card: Robert DeNiro

The Neighborhood (2001) ***
Directed By: Martin Scorsese.

My Life My Card: Robert DeNiro (2004) ***
Directed By: Martin Scorsese.

These two short films, one a segment for the Concert for New York, and one an ad for American Express run seven minutes in total, and yet express Scorsese’s deep love for the City of New York beautifully. They act as a reminder that sometimes, the short form can be powerful, and even TV commercials can have a deeper meaning.

The Neighborhood is a six minute piece that Scorsese did for the Concert for New York in 2001 after the attacks of 9/11. In it, Scorsese returns to Elizabeth Street in Lower Manhattan, the street he grew up on, and in a very brief amount of time traces the progression of the neighborhood – both what came before him, during his time there, and afterwards. His neighborhood has changed – what was once almost all Italian families are now almost all Chinese families. But the progression is natural. Before the Italians moved in, it was an Irish neighborhood.

While who lives there may have changed, there are some things that never do. When Scorsese was a kid, he wondered why the Cathedral in the neighborhood was named after St. Patrick, since it was an Italian neighborhood, not realizing the Irish were there before them. Now, some kids ask a local Italian cheese merchant, why he set up shop in a Chinese neighborhood, not realizing the store has been there for 75 years. Kids are never able to see the area they grow up as a changing environment.

Scorsese walks the streets of the old neighborhood, and still finds some people he knew growing up. They are all hugs and smiles – they adore his young daughter who he has brought with them, and it’s like he never left. One of the most quietly profound statements Scorsese says in the film is about how people’s perceptions of themselves change through the generations. His grandparents, who were born and raised is Sicily, considered themselves Italian, even though they spent many more years in America than in Italy. His parents considered themselves Italian-American. He considers himself American-Italian (switching the emphasis to the more important, dominant identity), and he suspects his kids will simply consider themselves American.

To Scorsese, New York represents all that is great about America. The America who flung their doors open to immigrants, who came here and built a better life for themselves, and for their children. New York is America, and America is New York.

In a strange way, Scorsese’s ad for American Express, featuring Robert DeNiro both in the commercial and narrating, does exactly what The Neighborhood does, but almost entirely through images and in only a minute. Juxtaposing images of New York’s past and present, together with DeNiro’s simple narration; the film is a hauntingly beautiful little piece that also expresses love for New York. In a minute, it becomes clear that the city means everything to Robert DeNiro – everything he cares about and loves is right here in this city. Although this is an ad, like so many other of American Express ads, it is one whose emphasis is not on the product, but on the city. It’s one of the best TV spots you will probably ever see.

Note: I’m doing these two short “films” together, even though it means breaking chronology slightly, because neither are really short films unto themselves. The Neighborhood was a segment that Scorsese did for The Concert for New York in 2001, and My Life, My Card was an American Express ad Scorsese did in 2004 for his friend Robert DeNiro, who was putting on the Tribecca Film Festival, in part to try and revive the city after 9/11. They are connected in that way, so I put them together. Also, neither is really worth a post by themselves. I did not include the several ads Scorsese has done for American Express since then, because I am not sure he actually directed them. But the one where he picks up his photos at the drugstore, and rants and raves about the framing is hilarious, as are his spots with Tina Fey, where she thinks he is going to offer her a role, but he wants to sell her a timeshare. There is also a great ad with Scorsese by the way, for a phone company where a little boy is saying goodnight to his father over the phone because he’s away on a business trip, and Scorsese barges in because he doesn’t believe the boys performance. All of them are great, but I left them out of this series for obvious reasons.