Cynical Cinema

“No war is holy.”

Constantine’s Sword is a documentary that really makes me want to buy the book.  Because while I found every minute of this fantastic film incredibly interesting, I wanted more.  Constantine’s Sword is based on James Carroll’s book of the same name, and it deals with Christianity and the evil that has been done in the name of that religion throughout history.  The movie focuses almost exclusively on the treatment of Jewish people at the hands of Catholics over the years, but I have a feeling that the book would delve deeper - into dark periods in history, like slavery, apartheid, and leading up to the treatment of gay people today.

As it stands, the movie just doesn’t have enough time to get into all of that stuff.  Some early mention is made of the crusades, and their brutal treatment of other cultures through Christianity.  The title of the movie refers to the Roman emperor Constantine, who won some improbable battles and credited the vision of a cross that had come to him before the battles.  This led to Christianity being adopted universally as the religion of the Roman Empire, and also to the adoption of the cross as the symbol of Christianity.  Before that, the symbols of Christian faith were happy, uplifting ones.  Now, the symbol was a cross, a depressing symbol of the crucifixion of Christ, and a catalyst for anti-Jewish sentiment.  Although there is little or no historical plausibility in the idea that the Jews were the ones who had Jesus killed, this concept has become, for many Christians, gospel fact.  Pun intended.

The film deals extensively with the creation of the Jewish ghetto in Rome under orders from the pope in 1555.  It then moves on to the tragic and evil Catholic platform of non-involvement during the rise of the Nazis in Germany and the holocaust.  Carroll is a former Catholic priest who still believes in the bible, but he believes that the one thing the Catholic church needs to do is acknowledge that it has not always been a force for good in the world, and at times has done some pretty damn evil things.  Carroll reminds me very much of Michael Moriarty, the actor who played the district attorney in the original Law And Order.  This made the movie somewhat uncomfortable for me, because I just watched Moriarty play a nazi official in the terrific mini-series Holocaust.  (Download Holocaust)

Also featured prominently is the Vietnam war, and Carroll’s personal involvement in protesting that terrible event in the 70s.  Then Constantine’s Sword moves on to something that affects us more directly today.  The rise of evangelical Mega-Churches, which are being created in the States at a rate of one every two days, right now.  Specifically, the film talks about Colorado Springs, where the Air Force Training Academy was recently under investigation for the behaviour of evangelical Christians in that institution.  Jewish students in the Air Force Academy were harassed, bullied, and attacked simply because they were not Christian.  Flyers for The Passion Of The Christ were everywhere in the building, and institutional pressure was exerted to get everyone there to watch the film, which understandably made the Jewish students extremely uncomfortable.

This movement to attempt to put an evangelical stamp on the armed forces came from Ted Haggard, the (then) leader of the National Association of Evangelicals.  Haggard appears often in TV interviews, and he is just about the creepiest man ever to appear in a documentary.  His views on Christianity so closely mirror those of the pope during the holocaust that it’s deeply saddening.  (Of course, we all know he got his deliciously ironic yet fitting comeuppance later that same year, when it was revealed that he had carried on a three-year, drug-fueled relationship with a male prostitute.  You suck, Ted Haggard.)

As the movie ends, we are reminded how, under the Bush administration, the church and the state are becoming closer than they have ever been, and the place where this is happening most of all is in the armed forces.  Frankly, it’s a very bleak ending, and offers little hope for a reversal of this disturbing trend.  But it’s definitely worth seeing, because it raises a ton of issues that will be relevant to the world for the next thousand years.  When you think about Constantine, and his glorification of Jesus on the cross 1,700 years ago, and how that moment still affects us today, you really realize how the decisions that are made today can affect the world in the future. 

Without being anti-religious, or even anti-Christian, Constantine’s Sword is an eye-opening, heart-breaking look at some of the most evil deeds perpetrated in human history under the guise of “belief”.  I really hope people decide to watch this one.

Paramount Home Entertainment is coming out with a movie called Chicago 10 on August 26th. It’s a very strange take on the famous Democratic National Convention held in Chicago in 1968, and the anti-war demonstrations at that convention that led to riots, arrests, and a really bizarre trial. Chicago 10 is basically a documentary about that trial, featuring archival footage of Abbie Hoffman, Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, Bobby Seale, and the rest of the people involved with the trial. Interviews with them at the time, footage of Hoffman and David Dellinger at speaking engagements, and of course footage of the demonstrations, the police response, and the riots that took place. What happened after the disturbance in 1968 was that eight people were put on trial for “crossing state lines for the purposes of inciting a riot”. The trial really was a farce, and film maker Brett Morgen wants to accentuate this by creating a cartoon representation of the trial itself.

Which means that between the archival footage and the documentary pieces, we get a re-enactment of the Chicago trial by cartoon characters. They look like the people they represent, they talk like the people they represent, and Morgen has recruited some big names to help voice these characters. Jeffrey Wright, Amy Adams, Hank Azaria, Nick Nolte, Mark Ruffalo, Liev Schrieber and many others participated in this film. Which is impressive, and really adds punch to the courtroom scenes, which are taken directly from the transcripts of the trial itself. A trial which saw the judge order Bobby Seale, the national leader of the Black Panther Party, to be bound and gagged right in the courtroom because of his frequent outbursts. This was an absolutely crazy time in North American history, and this trial really encapsulates what was craziest about it. And this movie provides a really interesting look into that trial.

Interesting, but not as interesting as it should be. This trial and these events in Chicago in the late sixties fascinate me, and I wanted to learn everything I could. And in watching this movie, I learned an awful lot. But the style of the movie and the “artsy” nature of the animated segments don’t really help. It’s better than one of those cheesy “courtroom re-enactment” scenes from other, worse documentaries, and I frankly don’t know what I would have preferred to see in it’s place. But the style of the movie becomes overpowering, and I found myself getting distracted from the actual story by the animation. It isn’t a major fault, because this movie is still impressive and thorough, but it prevents the film from being a great one.

The Scream trilogy comes out in yet another form, August 26th from Alliance Films. And while the new edition of this trilogy is nothing special in terms of special features or extras or packaging, the series bears revisiting. It has been eight years since the final installment in the Scream trilogy, and there is a chance that the series has become somewhat forgotten, especially among the new generation of horror movie buffs. And this, I feel, is a shame. Because I truly believe that Scream is the best series in the history of horror movies. (Alien is a close second, and had they not gone ahead with Alien Resurrection I think it would be in first place. Alien vs. Predator and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem don’t count.)

Scream (10/10):  The first Scream film is an absolute classic. A magnificent work by Wes Craven that managed to take a very standard genre - the slasher movie - and turn it into something brand new and tremendously exciting. The standard things one expects from a slasher film were kept intact. The hot young cast (with Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox and Rose McGowan this cast was hotter than most). The concealment of the killer’s identity until the very end. The creepy phone call that leads to a murder. And the other standard cliches - don’t go upstairs, or you’re dead. Don’t have sex, or you’re dead. Don’t do drugs, or…you’re dead. What made Scream fantastic and new was that it didn’t merely go through the motions with the cliches, it absolutely embraced them. In fact, the film is constantly calling attention to it’s own formulaic nature. It’s not formulaic out of laziness or lack of imagination, it’s formulaic by design. It becomes more than just a well done, genuinely scary horror movie. It also becomes a satire of pop culture, a jab at the debate over violence in movies, and an incredible moment for cultural reference. Scream contains many references to the past - other slasher films like Hallowe’en and Friday the 13th. But it also managed to become a part of that same culture in the future, giving rise to not only two sequels of it’s own, but a whole new genre of slasher film beginning with I Know What You Did Last Summer, and spoof movies beginning with Scary Movie. Very few single movies can boast an influence like that.

Scream 2 (10/10):  But Scream is not just the one movie, it is a trilogy. And the series did something unthinkable in horror movie history with their second installment. It got better. (Another nod to the Alien series here - #2 was better than #1.) The first movie was a genuine, scary, thrilling slasher movie while simultaneously being a parody of those same movies. An unbelievable achievement, but Scream 2 goes one better. It is a genuine, scary, thrilling and smart slasher movie. And it is also a parody of the slasher movies of the past. But in an amazingly successful and deft bit of directing by Wes Craven, it is a parody of the first film in the series as well, and becomes a parody of itself on a level the first movie couldn’t hope to attain. Famous satirists in history have attempted this incredibly difficult feat - satirizing one’s own subject matter while still maintaining a smart dialogue and interesting action. Perhaps only Jonathan Swift ever managed to perfect this art, with Gulliver’s Travels in 1726. Since then, maybe only Wes Craven has come close to matching that work. And it’s with Scream 2.

Scream 3 (6/10):  The third Scream movie sucked. Well, it sucked like The Godfather III, more because it couldn’t come close to living up to the previous two. Or, perhaps, like Alien 3. At the very least, however, Scream 3 was still scary and involved Jenny McCarthy and Piper Perabo, and brought back Courtney Cox and Neve Campbell, making it the hottest of the Scream movies. Oh, and it also had a cameo by Jay and Silent Bob. Cool points!

Thrilling, smart, funny, perceptive, contemporary and really truly scary, the Scream trilogy is a must-own for horror fans. If you already own it, don’t bother with this new Alliance Films release. There is nothing extra there. But for those of you who have never seen Scream or it’s two hugely successful sequels, this is a must-have addition to your DVD collection.

I was struggling on Saturday night. Struggling to watch the Sens-Leafs in HD, while my girlfriend had her friend over. While Jen is usually pretty good about hockey, especially Senators games. But Ashley was extremely insistent upon watching whatever was on MTV. MTV! I decided that the best thing to do was to compromise in some way, and that was to find a movie that was not the hockey game, but that HAD to be better than whatever was on MTV. The girls seem to like documentaries - the last time Ashley was over I made sure she never shopped at Wal-Mart again by showing her Wal-Mart: The High Cost Of Low Price. This time, I thought I would put on the new documentary “Everything’s Cool”, an insightful look at Global Warming. But there were previews. And the girls decided, on the fourth preview, that the movie being previewed looked far better than the documentary I had suggested. The movie was called The Ten, a humourous look at the ten commandments. So, grudgingly, I switched the DVDs. And put on The Ten. As that movie started, the girls saw another preview that caught their attention, and asked if I had THAT movie, maybe we should watch that one. (THAT movie? It was “Everything’s Cool”!)

I put my foot down. I am not putting the DVD I just took off back on because you saw a preview for the one movie on the other disc, because then I would be switching discs all night and perhaps end up creating some kind of sci-fi situation where I am stuck there, in my living room, going from one DVD menu to another for the rest of eternity. So I skipped the rest of the previews and just pressed play. And we watched The Ten. Which is OK. But not fantastic. Just a little bonkers and kinda funny. Some of the hottest women alive are in this movie - Jessica Alba, who I really don’t think is that hot (kind of cabbagepatch kiddy, as far as I’m concerned) but who seems to be the #1 Hottest Chick Alive according to the rest of the world. And also my personal favourite, Famke Janssen, who I really think is the hottest woman on Earth. In a cougar-ific kinda way. (Check out Deep Rising. Horrible film, hottest wet-T-shirt Famke Janssen scene ever.)

The movie is basically ten short vignettes about each of the ten commandments. Paul Rudd (who was fantastic in Knocked Up) oversees the vignettes, introduces them and runs his own little bizarre drama as we move from one to another. Famke Janssen is his wife, and he is cheating on her with Jessica Alba. Some really cool actors show up in the film as well - Liev Schreiber, Adam Brody, Rob Corddry, Janeane Garofolo, and Winona Ryder in some inspired casting. (She appears in the Thou-Shalt-Not-Steal vignette. Get it?) Each vignette gets more and more bonkers, as they connect to each other in a bizarre sort of way. There are three really excellent ones. The Thou-Shalt-Not-Steal one is great, as Winona Ryder falls in love with a ventriloquist’s dummy, and steals it…it’s insane. So too is the Schreiber bit where two neighbours keep trying to one-up each other by buying more and more catscan machines. Totally demented. But very little is as demented as the animated “Lying Rhino” sequence, narrated by a bunch of junkies, done in full, almost-X-rated, Felick The Cat style animation.

There are a couple of duds as well, but overall each segment is pretty watchable if not excellent. This film is not for the squeamish, as my girlfriend squirmed uncomfortably for the entire duration of the “Covet thy Neighbour’s Wife” segment, where Rob Corddry and Ken Marino converse very seriously and intensely about rape in prison, and how if you are one man’s prison wife, there is an assumption that you will not let yourself be raped by others…it’s definitely an over-the-top scene, but it made me laugh. Most of this film did, and it is definitely worth renting. (In the end, if you have to make a choice, as I did, between this one and Everything’s Cool, choose the latter. But if you can watch both, do it.)

Love In The Time Of Cholera is two and a half hours long. The tag line on the DVD box is “how long would you wait for love?” My answer is “not this long”. The movie is based on a novel of the same name by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and it takes place in South America. I have always wondered this about period pieces. If the characters are in a time and a place where they would logically be speaking Spanish, why then do they speak English with Spanish accents? It makes more sense that the movie would be in Spanish with English subtitles, or in regular English. Why try to do half-and-half? At least in The Hunt For Red October and movies like that, the movie begins in another language with subtitles, and moves seamlessly into English so that we can watch the movie in that language. Either way, in any language, this movie blows.

Javier Bardem plays a man who is denied his true love (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) as a young boy, and waits 51 years for the woman’s husband to die so he can go after his dream girl once again. In the meantime, he becomes the ultimate ladies man and romantic, and sleeps with six hundred and twenty-two women. On the plus side, we get to see many of their boobs. On the downside, this is two and a half hours of…not much. Benjamin Bratt plays the husband, and somehow his Spanish accent is kind of laughable. Also, because the movie takes place over 55 years, the stars have to get made up to look older and older as the movie goes on. Which sometimes works seamlessly, as it does with Bardem, and at other times looks like…well, makeup and fake moustaches, like with Bratt.

Predictable, and occasionally silly, Love In The Time Of Cholera is occasionally fun, sometimes painful, but mostly boring and slow. Javier Bardem is great, but why watch this movie when No Country For Old Men is out there? Stay away from this one, and rent No Country For Old Men again.