Cynical Cinema

Everything is not cool. By everything, I of course mean the world. But we know that. We ALL know that. Sure there are the climate chage “deniers” out there, the poor misguided future architects of their own demise. The fact that climate change and global warming is even a political issue, or a controversy at all, is due in large part to the Bush administration in the U.S. and the media. I mean, seriously, if the U.S. and Bush and the rest of the Republican party elite took global warming seriously, and put policies into effect to reduce emissions and save civilization, do you really think the Conservative government in Canada would be resisting science as much as they do? That they would be ignoring the environment the way they are? I’m going to say no. If the Americans took it seriously, and had signed on to Kyoto or put strict regulations in place, we (and Harper’s Conservatives) would be right there one step behind them, doing the same things. I think we can safely say there is no doubt about this.

But these are the people who have the most power to effect change. Every administration in every government in every country in the world is concerned about their legacy. And think about the legacy of some of our recent leaders. At the moment, Jean Chretien is best remembered for the sponsorship scandal, but fifty years from now, what will be his legacy? I think it will be NOT sending Canadians to Iraq. Saying “no” to the Bush government. That is what he will be most remembered for fifty years down the road. And Bush? What will be his legacy? At the moment it looks like the complete screw-up that is Iraq will be the lasting memory of Bush. But, again, fifty years from now, when people look back on it, that may not be his legacy at all. The destruction of a country, it’s people, the creation of enormous amounts of terrorists all over the world, disastrous foreign policy and heavy-handed top-down control of the government, the downward spiral and possible future crash of the American economy, and the invasion of American freedom with the Patriot Act and other measures. Legacy? Maybe. But all of those things, fifty years from now, may pale in comparison to one thing. Inaction on the environment. If, fifty years from now, the United States are largely uninhabitable, the number one scapegoat will be Bush and his cronies.

“Everything’s Cool” takes a look at the “backlash” against global warming. It examines the American attitude toward the crisis, which largely has been “what crisis? Really?” Hundreds, maybe thousands, of scientists have presented reports to the American government saying global warming is happening. Now. It is helping to create all the crazy weather and bizarre climate happenings of the last few years. It is here, it is now, it is incontrovertable. There is no doubt. The government takes these reports and edits them. In editing them, they remove words like “is” and replace them with words like “may be”. Well, “the world IS in crisis” and “the world MAY BE in crisis” are two very different statements. What big oil and the Bush government want to create is controversy. They don’t want to win - they can’t possibly win, they are arguing against facts and science. So what they want to do is muddy the issue as much as possible. As long as people continue thinking there is a “controversy” about global warming, they have succeeded, and they can say things like “it needs more research”. Balls!

But what “Everything’s Cool” is saying is that the main reason the environmentallists have failed in persuading governments that we are running out of time is that they are going about it the wrong way. When you show people melting ice, and a lonely polar bear on an ice floe, and pictures of Hurricane Katrina, it is effective for some people. But not for most. Most people will say “oh, that’s too bad. Someone should do something.” But then they have more important concerns. They are out of a job because the economy is crumbling. They can’t afford to pay their property taxes, they need to find health care or a family doctor…these things are far more important to the average person than a polar bear on an ice floe. Therefore, no one is really seeing the big picture, mostly because they don’t want to. If people are given two options to believe, they will more often than not choose to believe the one that is more convenient for them. So…the solution the Bushies have is - give them two options! Even if one does not exist.

But global warming is not Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny or Sasquatch or UFOs. It is not something you can either “believe in” or not. They call it “theory” because that makes it easier to ignore. Well, evolution is called a “theory”. Why? Because then hardcore right-wing extremist religious fanatics can ignore it. After all, it’s just a theory. For them, it’s inconvenient for them to believe in evolution. If it were inconvenient for people to believe in the “theory” of gravity, there would be newspaper columns and millions of websites and right-wing radio host nutjobs doing their very best to “disprove” gravity. And “Everything’s Cool” offers (somewhat) a solution. Don’t tell people all this negative stuff, like “you’re about to die”. A person will understand that. People will tune it out. It’s too upsetting. So, here’s what you do. You prove to people what these same scientists have been saying for years. Ending our dependence on foreign oil, converting to clean alternative energy sources, and cutting emissions drastically can be good. Not just for the environment, but for the economy! For YOUR wallet! Environmentallists have not gone this route up until now, because they figured the polar bear on the ice floe would move people more. And yes, it certainly should. But it doesn’t. Giving them the positive news will actually spur people into action.

This is certainly possible, and I think it’s high time we try. After all, the old methods are clearly not working. We need to start fixing this yesterday, and it’s already tomorrow, and we have page upon page upon volumes of reports, and a lot of gum flapping and talk in the very places where action needs to begin. For more information about this excellent movie and about global warming and about what you can do, go to:

I have long said that Roy Dupuis is the French Canadian version of Colm Feore. When you have a big Canadian icon that you want to immortalize on film or TV, you pick one or the other. Anglophone icon? Feore. (Pierre Trudeau, Glenn Gould.) A Francophone icon? Dupuis. (Maurice Richard, Romeo Dallaire.) And so there was no question in my mind when I heard that Shake Hands With The Devil was going to be made into a feature film as to who would play Dallaire. It was Dupuis, or the film would not have been made. By the way, in order to avoid those “do your research” and “get your facts straight” emails, I would like to state right now that I am indeed aware that Pierre Trudeau was a Francophone. But that movie was mostly English.

Dallaire’s book was a sensation in Canada when it came out. A tragic and devastating look at the genocide in Rwanda. It was later made into a documentary film, which helped make people aware of the horror a little more, and now this movie, which might help even a little more. The thing that made me saddest in watching this film was the fact that it came out so many years after the genocide was over. Same for the documentary and the book. Now, it’s not like Dallaire could have written his book while things were going on. But it’s sad to think that so many people pay attention now, and watch other films like Hotel Rwanda, and feel sad and mourn the tragedy and get enraged over things like “why didn’t somebody do something”. And yet, when we see those things on TV, on the news, in the papers, and we are aware it is taking place RIGHT NOW, we don’t do much. As Joaquin Phoenix says in Hotel Rwanda, we go back to our TV dinners and turn on the hockey game when the news is over.

Part of this, I feel, is because of the nature of the media. When genocide is taking place in Darfur, in Africa, way across the sea, it is treated as simply a news story. A two-minute piece on the horrors in Darfur gets as much importance as a two-minute piece on the possibility of the defeat of the budget in the House of Commons. Very often, it gets less. A school shooting is big news, front page on every paper, lead story in every newscast. That is a tragedy that hits close to home. But more people died in thirty seconds during the genocide in Rwanda than have died in all school shootings in North America combined. It doesn’t affect us. It is reported as “here’s what’s going on in a country that isn’t ours”, and is followed up with “a small town in France has outlawed public toilets!” and we forget all about it. Toilets! That’s hilarious! I think it’s safe to say that most of us know (myself included) know more about Columbine and Dawson College and Virginia Tech than we do about Darfur. Really, this isn’t exactly the fault of the media. This is really the way we want to be fed our news, and they are just complying with the wishes of the general population - you wouldn’t get many ratings if you showed machete massacres every night.

And so we get Shake Hands With the Devil, a movie that has been made only when it could be made, many years after the fact. And hopefully, it makes people aware that such things are still going on, or curious enough to find out. (Steven Spielberg has just pulled out of the Olympics in Beijing to protest China, feeling that they haven’t done enough to stop the genocide in Darfur.) And the movie is pretty good, as a movie. Dupuis is steely and tough as Dallaire, a man who carries himself with the utmost dignity and commands respect as a lifelong soldier. His supporting cast is for the most part excellent. Having just finished the book, I recognized most of the characters being protrayed just as I had imagined them. Especially James Gallanders as Major Brent Beardsley, who has a few tough scenes. This is a fascinating story, and that alone makes the movie worth watching.

But there is a little problem with the movie, looking at it solely in the context of a movie. It is a dramatization of real events, but somehow, it doesn’t feel dramatized enough. There are scenes taken directly from the book - a scene where Beardsley is confronted by a mob of machete-weilding Interahmwe, as he tries to get a wounded woman to safety, and he punches the man who stands in his way. In the book, the scene is tense, dramatic and poignant. In the film, it’s tough to tell what you’re seeing. Is that guy standing in his way…or not…or OK it’s over. Another scene where Dallaire and Beardsley are blockaded from a portion of the city and must get out of the car and walk through the barricade, as weapons are cocked and the bad guys say they will shoot. Again, in the book, this scene made me pretty nervous. In the movie, it is treated as a matter of course.

Doc hated Gone Baby Gone because he had read the book first, and he couldn’t reconcile what he saw on the screen with what he had imagined in his head when reading. I had the same problem with Shake Hands With the Devil, seeing scenes that were so familiar to me and yet not feeling their poignancy as much as I had while reading. But at the same time, I’m not sure anyone would understand this movie without having read the book first. There are so many factions and institutions - the RPF, the RGF, the Interahmwe, the president, prime minister, interim government, and countless others. Each with their own politics, their own attitudes, their own enemies and their own clandestine secrets. It is such a complicated picture that the movie can’t hope for a moment to make sense of it all in less than two hours. In the end, this film should be watched, and is certainly good, but if you had to make a choice, read the book.

There are a few movies I have always meant to see, movies I know I should see, but somehow have yet to get there. I have recently narrowed the gap some, having watched E.T. for the first time, as well as Annie Hall, Manhattan, The Grapes of Wrath, The Best Years of Our Lives, 8 1/2, and Fritz The Cat. But I always, for whatever reason, left the Frank Capra movies aside. I had seen a few of his movies - Arsenic and Old Lace, Meet John Doe. And I liked them enough to pick up the Frank Capra box set that’s out there - or, at least, to ask for it for Christmas. But I had yet to open it until a week ago. I managed to catch It’s A Wonderful Life over Christmas, but it was an effort for me to sit down and actually force myself to watch it, since I had been avoiding it my whole life. I hate schmaltzy, Hollywood pap, and for some reason I associated this movie with the beginning of that painful sentimentality. Of course I was wrong, and It’s A Wonderful Life was certainly the brilliant movie everyone has always said it is.

So I moved on to such fare as Mr. Deeds Goes To Town, another triumph for Capra, and now to perhaps his greatest work, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. I can’t imagine another actor playing the role of Jefferson Smith in this movie, it was the part Jimmy Stewart was born to play. Sure, Gary Cooper in Mr. Deeds was a similar character, both small-town naive and at the same time smart enough to play with and see through the corruption in the big city. But I can’t see Cooper bringing the same kind of energy and force to that scene where Smith goes through the letters and telegrams on the floor of the senate, doctored letters that tell him it’s time to stop. In fact, the entire final scene, where Stewart refuses to cede the floor and talks for 24 straight hours, is one of the finest moments of true acting in movie history. In watching it, we feel both his passion and his fatigue, it’s like we’re right in there with him, rooting for him yet at the same time exhausted. It’s as though we too have been sitting on the Senate floor for 24 hours. And the scene with Jean Arthur when she tells him how to go about getting a bill passed in the senate, and he listens with rapt attention, is both hilarious and poignant. This is a man who is absolutely in love with the system and the country and the higher powers. So much so that learning his bill will likely take two years to be passed, if it is heard at all, still fills him with some kind of misdirected American pride.

Which all lends so much weight to his devastation and disillusionment when he discovers that the system is not perfect. That in fact, it is corrupt, indecent, and run by shadowy figures that no one really understands. That the justice and legal system at the top of the food chain in America is run more on bribes and threats and blackmail than it is on ideals and the notion of right and wrong. Which is why, sadly, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington remains timeless. This film, I warrant, will never feel dated, because the corruption at the highest levels of American government will never disappear. In fact, it is likely even more corrupt now than it was in Capra’s day, what with lobbyists and campaign donations and the desperate deisre to be re-elected. The only reason the movie could not be made today is that today, everyone is aware of the cesspool. You could not find a wide-eyed, idealistic rube from anywhere in America, who was not aware of the infernal dealings that go on at that level. In 1939, that character was wholly believable. Today, such a person does not exist.

(Note - it WAS possible to do a remake of All The King’s Men a year ago. Willie Stark did indeed start out as an idealist, but was aware of the corruption inherent in the system and fought against it. Then he too was corrupted by that system. He was no naive innocent rube, he was always a smart and calculating man.) Claude Rains is wonderful as always as Senator Joseph Paine, Jean Arthur is reliably terrific, and Edward Arnold plays the best role of his life as shadowy, influential media magnate James Taylor. An early model for the Rupert Murdochs of today. But the movie always, in every scene, belongs to Stewart. No actor in history was a better fit for the role he played (with the possible exception of George C. Scott in Patton) than Stewart was here. And this movie, sadly, will continue to be completely relevant and topical for the rest of our lifetimes.

Going into Rendition, I was a little worried. I have read many many reviews suggesting that this film was not a good one. On rottentomatoes.com, James Berardinelli writes: “We are ambushed by a simplistic storyline that’s more interested in sermonizing and demonizing than existing in the real world where things aren’t as clear-cut as the movie would like us to believe.” Richard Roeper says: “I don’t fault Rendition for its liberal politics. I fault it for hammering home those politics in such pounding, slanted fashion.” And Todd McCarthy says: “Even [Reese] Witherspoon, normally the most spirited of performers who can inject even limited characters and blah scripts with her own spark, can do little but mope around and search for different ways to look worried.” Well, they are wrong. All wrong. Yes, Rendition tends to be a little melodramatic. And yes, it has left-leaning politics, but who can be upset by that? Other than Jerry Falwell? Those politics are indeed heavy-handed, and they are indeed pounded home in a slanted fashion, but then the movie ends, and…are they really?

The critics appear to be divided along the same lines that divide people over Meher Arar. The people who believe he was indeed unjustly imprisoned, and those who think “oh, the government’s just doing their job”. Rendition is basically a story about a guy much like Arar, who is detained by the American government after a terrorist attack and then extradited to another country to be tortured into giving up information. But does he really know this information? Or is he an innocent man held without trial without any recourse and with no access to a lawyer or a phone to call his wife to say he is OK? And frankly, if this is what happened to Arar, the 10.5 million dollars he got from the government is not even close to enough. People complain, like he won the lottery just for being tortured, but those people are basing their opinions on media reports which are of course conflicting. Very few people would know the real story there. Like, Arar and three government officials. Everything else is conjecture, and having an opinion one way or the other is more than likely based on the opinion of someone who really doesn’t know the whole story.

And while Rendition is certainly a condemnation of the American practice of detaining people without trial and throwing due process out the window. But it makes sure that by the end of the movie, there is a certain ambiguity, where the people watching the film can make their own decision about what took place, a decision that more than likely will be based on their existing prejudices. I don’t want to reveal the ending here, but it is far more ambiguous than you would assume. Rendition is not terribly complicated, but it treads along much the same ground as the very-complicated Syriana. Think of Rendition as the poor man’s Syriana. Whereas George Clooney’s movie was intricate and almost inexplicable, (and was, in fact, better than this one) Rendition is far more straight-forward, far easier to understand. But Rendition is thought-provoking in a similar way to Syriana. Even if a man is guilty, is it worth torturing him to find out? If the torture of that one man will create ten more who become enemies of your country?

I agree with Dennis Schwartz, who says that this movie deserves to be commended just for being made. It does. And Reese Witherspoon, who is one of my least favourite actresses, is terrific. As the pregnant wife of the imprisoned man, she hits all the right notes. Yes, she spends a lot of the movie just looking concerned. She’s pregnant. It becomes clear throughout the film that she has only so much energy. She works endlessly, but most of the time she is doing this by fighting through intense fatigue, which leaves her with no option but to sit and look despondent. And during the melodramatic scenes, she is believable in that she can all of a sudden get a burst of energy to confront her husband’s captors, and her emotions carry her away and she dissolves into a shrieking blubbery mess. But you know, I still believe that. After all, she’s pregnant. Jake Gyllenhall could have been better in his role as the American assigned to the interrogation, and I wish Meryl Streep had more screen time as the icy woman in charge of the rendition. And yes, the final scene between Gyllenhall and the torture victim is a little far-fetched and melodramatic.

But these are small quibbles with an otherwise excellent film. I would guess that hard line right-wingers will hate this film, because they will see it as the terrorists winning, or they will see it as questioning something that ought to be beyond reproach. But thoughtful, regular people will just enjoy it for what it is - a thought-provoking, interesting, very good film. I definitely recommend watching Rendition. It comes out from Alliance Films on Tuesday, February 19th.

In The Valley of Elah did poorly at the box office. It turns out people just don’t want to be challenged these days. This is why movies like “Meet The Spartans” debut at #1. I was almost ready to write a review of Meet The Spartans, sight unseen, simply to convince people to avoid it. The same guys who made Epic Movie and Date Movie, which were two incredibly bad films, were clearly going to make one just as bad. And I felt that people going to see this film at all would just encourage them to make more. And so next year we will likely get Pirates Of The Beowulf or some such garbage. But even had I done so, it would not have mattered much. People would still have gone out to Meet The Spartans in droves, and the dumbest two percent of those people would have recommended it glowingly to their friends. “They have a pit! Like the one in 300. Like, EXACTLY the SAME. And they kick Britney Spears into it! I have never laughed so hard in my life! Except for the time I took that IQ test and got a result lower than ‘celery”". Meet The Spartans earned 18.7 million dollars in it’s first weekend at the box office, narrowly beating Rambo for top spot. In The Valley Of Elah made 1.5 million dollars on opening weekend, and left theatres having earned 6.7 million overall.

I don’t know why I’m mentioning Meet The Spartans and In The Valley Of Elah in the same sentence. I think it’s merely a method of illustrating the general idiocy and apathy of movie audiences today. Because people do not want to be challenged. They don’t want to think at the movies. And they certainly don’t want a movie that will make them think once they have left the theatre. That’s like bringing your work home with you! Imagine going to that movie with your wife, and then in the car on the way home, she wants to TALK about it! That certainly seems like more effort than it’s worth, doesn’t it? And, I’m sorry to say, for all you movie-watchers, that In The Valley Of Elah will spark discussion, and make you think, and might just lead to other topics of discussion as well. Topics like…Iraq. How this war is different. This war is not World War II. It is not even Vietnam. This is something that we haven’t seen before, and in this film we see that perfectly through the eyes of Tommy Lee Jones, who has deservedly earned a Best Actor nomination for this Sunday’s Oscars.

Jones plays the father of a missing boy. His son returned from the war in Iraq, and then disappeared completely. And Jones goes after him with the single-minded determination of a war veteran. A vet himself, Jones is that uber-American army guy who, after his many years of service, is still completely invested in the army. Not that he still works with them and does army-related things, but he is emotionally invested. He believes strongly in the bonds that connect soldiers, in the military code of discipline and in the army. Which means he believes the war in Iraq is important, that it is American and that it is just another proving ground for young men who love their country and are bringing democracy and peace to a backward nation. But his search for his son challenges those beliefs, and he will not be the same man when the search is over. In The Valley of Elah was in the top 200 movies at the box-office in 2007. It was in the top 100 R-rated movies. (Although I really don’t know why this was rated R. We don’t see that much of the blood and gore that is insinuated throughout the film.) And it had the 233rd biggest opening weekend of the year. But it is one of the 20 best movies made in 2007.

Charlize Theron co-stars as a police officer who aids Jones in his quest for his sone, and provides one of the few problems I have with the movie. We know who Charlize Theron is. We have seen her in dozens of movies where we are fully aware that she is one of the hottest women alive. And yet, in this movie as in others, she seems to be intentionally dialing down her looks. She is just not that hot here. And we have to think to ourselves - we know how gorgeous this woman is. Why wouldn’t she want to look good? Sure she’s a police officer, but would she, as a police officer, go out of her way to look as plain as possible? Well, maybe. Susan Sarandon shows up in what turns out to be a bit part as Jones’ wife and the boy’s mother. And a stellar cast make up the military unit with whom the boy was serving. In The Valley of Elah is a terrific achievement. It’s slow, it’s deliberate, and it’s very political. It will challenge your assumptions - even if you are already against the war in Iraq, there are still other questions posed by the movie that will make you think. This may be the most accurate representation of soldiers in Iraq yet put on film in a feature film. It should really be seen. By everyone. Let’s at the very least make it a success on DVD!

I used to work at a store in Ottawa that bought and sold used CDs and DVDs. There was an individual who used to come into the store and use it as basically a pawn shop. This person had three giant box sets that would get about 100 bucks from us, and then return six days later to buy them back for 400 bucks. This happened maybe seven times in a year. When debt hits you, you do silly things. That’s $2,100 you are losing, every year, just to hang on to your treasured possessions. And why are you losing that two grand? Because you are in debt. That’s right, the less money you have, the more you get charged for it. My bank has this interesting policy. If I can keep $1,000.00 in my account all month long, I don’t have to pay bank fees. However, if I dip under that $1,000, I then have to pay fees. 30 bucks worth or something. So…I get charged 30 bucks for not having enough money? For a long time, I thought, well, 30 bucks, whatever. Who cares about 30 bucks? But then a realization dawned on me - the biggest problem with charging me 30 bucks for not having money is that the bank is actively turning around and giving that 30 bucks to the guys who have lots of money.

So, it costs me 30 bucks more to be poor than it would to be reasonably well off. And further, it costs me sixty bucks more to be poor than it would to be rich. Because the rich guy is getting my 30 bucks. That means that “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer” is not just an expression. It’s an ideology. And although it is likely worse in the U.S. than it is here in Canada, the culture of debt by no means stops at the border. This is something as dangerous to Canadians as it is to Americans. Maxed Out is a ne documentary, on video store shelves right now, that examines the practices of credit card companies, their lobby groups, and their connection to the U.S. government. (For example MBNA, who is the largest contributor to George W. Bush’s campaign, and also the credit card company that was allowed to write the new bakruptcy legislation that was passed by the Bush government in 2005.) We all know the American economy is about to become absolutely disastrous, and a big part of that reason is that credit card companies have so much power. And because Bush passes legislation based on lobbyists, rather than common sense or compassion.

Maxed Out is a solid companion movie to last year’s excellent In Debt We Trust. There are problems with the movie - some of the economic and legal jargon passes too quickly, without enough explanation - but it’s still worth while. I know many people who have had credit card debt sneak up on them and overwhelm them, and this is really a story about those people. The credit card companies, of course, want people NOT to be able to pay. They charge 21 percent interest to rich people, 45 percent interest to poor people - poor people, they say, are a greater risk. Well, sure. So you charge them MORE? For being poor? Well, in point of fact, those poor people are the ones that make the credit card companies their massive profits. This is why you see so many credit card applications and booths on University and college campuses. Free T-Shirt just for filling out the form? Super. Credit card companies don’t go after people who come out of high school and go straight to work - those people can likely pay off their balance all at once. No, they go after the college and university students who are young, dumb, and who have no actual income. Maybe they work part time, but they don’t make enough money to pay off that $300.00 night at the bar in one chunk. And before long, they are making the minimum monthly payments, having maxed out their card, and VISA just watches the money roll in.

Or, they kill themselves. Maxed Out follows the stories of three families who lost a family member to suicide over credit card debts. It’s a scary world, and there are so many documentaries that point this out. I realized something here though. Has there been a documentary on any facet of anyone’s life over the last seven years that hasn’t mentioned George Bush? Negatively? Is there anything in his entire presidency he’s got right? I have compiled a list of recent documentaries on various subjects. Let’s see how they view Bush.

Iraq War and War on Terror (anti-Bush)
Why We Fight
Iraq in Fragments
Fahrenheit 9/11
No End In Sight
Iraq For Sale - The War Profiteers
Uncovered
Unconstitutional - The War on Our Civil Liberties
The Fog of War
Rush To War
21 Days to Baghdad

These are just the one’s I’ve seen. There are probably many more.

Health Care (anti-Bush)
Sicko

Economy (anti-Bush)
In Debt We Trust
Maxed Out
The Corporation
Wal-Mart: The High Cost Of Low Price
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

Political Machinations and Electoral Fraud (anti-Bush)
Unprecendented
The Hunting of the President
Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism
Fox News: Fake and Biased
Noam Chomsky: Distorted Morality

The Environment (anti Bush)
An Inconvenient Truth
Everything’s Cool
This Is Nowhere
A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash
Who Killed The Electric Car?

Now, again, these are just the ones I’ve seen. There could be more. And not all of these movies focus on Bush as the biggest problem. Although many do. But they all make mention of how his policies, on everything, adversely affect America, and by extension, the world. There are probably more, I just can’t think of them now.

Brian DePalma seems to be slipping. His last movie before Redacted was The Black Dahlia, which starred Scarlett Johanssen and Hilary Swank, two of the greatest actresses ever, and it still blew. Redacted is different. There are no stars in this movie. I would go so far as to say that there are not even any great actors. There are a few decent ones, but the pictures tell this story far more than any actors would or could. And the pictures in Redacted are interesting, if not always good. It’s a pretty cool way to tell a story, as though there was no film at all, but rather a documentary pieced together from footage found all over the world. The main footage is taken by a soldier in Iraq, who is filming everything that happens for a documentary that he believes will be his ticket into film school when he returns to America. There is also online video blog footage, news camera footage, and webcam shots between husbands in Iraq and wives in America. Together, the bits and pieces add up to the story of the rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl by American soldiers in Iraq. Another device DePalma uses very effectively, both in the opening credits and the closing scenes, is little black lines obscuring faces, facts, and transcripts from the event. The real story is not so much the rape and murder as it is the cover-up of the incident by the government and the media and of course, more than anything, the military.

There are some good moments near the beginning, like the scene where one of the soldiers is reading from Somerset Maugham’s “Death Speaks”. Then the movie gets going, but it’s hard to care about it. It’s so heavy on the anti-Iraqi sentiment by the U.S. soldiers, two in particular, and you end up hating them. Which is fine, because they are the ones we are supposed to hate by the end of the movie, but it feels like the horrific events that are to come are being telegraphed. The movie seems to be saying that it isn’t war that turns these men into rapists and murderers, but rather that it is these type of men who want to go to the war. The movie moves extremely slowly, which makes some sense because Iraq must be, for the most part, extremely boring for the soldiers stationed there. And in that context the brutal scenes should seem that much more brutal. But somehow they don’t.

And there are some seriously heinous scenes in this movie. The rape scene is almost graphic, and is certainly brutal. The murders we don’t see, but we know they took place. And there is a beheading scene later on, like the ones that the insurgents have shown on their internet tapes, that is nothing short of sickening. The movie leaves a bad taste in your mouth. The cover-ups, the sadistic nature of the military culture, the sickening things people do to other people. And yet, it still doesn’t work. It’s such a high-minded film. It wants to shock and to assault people with the reality of Iraq, but it never makes it there. The closing sequence in the film is the most powerful, with actual, horrific pictures from the Iraq war, pictures that close with the shot of the girl that was really raped and killed by American soldiers, the true story upon which this film was based. Here is the main problem with these message-movies about Iraq. The only people that will watch a film like Redacted are those who are plugged into the world, and are already outraged at the actions of the United States. And so the movie maybe will make them feel more outrage, but so what? People who would actually be affected by this movie, who might have their opinions changed, would never watch it. 10/10 for concept. 2/10 for execution.

A Global Warning is about so much more than Global Warming. But of course, it comes down to that. No, this is more a film about the history of weather and the environment, about the great heating and cooling periods in the history of the Earth, and how that affected the life on the planet. Mass extinctions, the temperature of the world over the past 200 million years, and the causes and effects. This is fascinating from a historical perspective, and also in terms of how it affects us today. It’s a History Channel documentary, and interviews dozens of scientists and paleontologists and climatologists about the events of the past and the impending global catastrophe. There are certain things that are giving cause for alarm. For example, just a little bit of globalb warming raises the temperature of the oceans just a little, which could end up releasing massive amounts of methane into the atmosphere, which would then accelerate the heating process an amazing amount, and put us past the point of no return almost overnight. There are other ideas, but I’ll leave it to you to watch this film. I think enough has been said about climate change so far, and the facts are out there, and it is now up to each of us to decide whether we heed the warnings or give up. This film is merely a good place to start heeding the warnings.

Manda Bala is about corruption and kidnapping and gangs in Brazil.  It’s almost an hour and a half of twenty minutes worth of story.  In point of fact, there is more than enough information out there for a full movie, but not enough people to talk about it.  It begins on a frog farm in Brazil, which is kinf of odd.  There is a lot of talk about frogs, and the farming of said frogs.  Then it moves on to the meat of the movie.  Apparently, there was some scandal involving a frog farm.  We learn about it later.  Apparently, a very high-ranking politician, named Jader Barbalho, installed himself as the overseer of something called “Sudam”, which was a project funded by the government using taxpayer money that was designed to create business and boost the economic situation of the poor parts of Northern Brazil.  Instead of creating business and enterprise, however, Barbalho created fake businesses, over 400 of them, and stole the money.  Over two billion dollars.  And one of the fronts he used to launder the money was a frog farm.  So, there is the loose tie-in to frog farming.

The movie then moves on to kidnapping, which is the major criminal enterprise in Sao Paolo.  At least one person is kidnapped every day in Sao Paolo, because it is easier and more lucrative than robbing banks.  We meet a woman who was kidnapped and had her ear cut off, to be sent along with the ransom note.  This is the persuasion method of choice for kidnappers in Brazil.  We also meet a plastic surgeon, whose business is almost exclusively re-attaching or re-creating ears for kidnapping victims.  And we see a kidnapper cutting off an ear on a tape that he sends along with the ransom.  At least Reservoir Dogs cut away for that scene.  It really is awfully tough to watch, even though it’s grainy and of poor quality.

But what’s really tough to watch is the movie itself.  You have to turn on the subtitles, because a large portion of the film is in Spanish.  But then there are interpreters at various points in the film, which means you get the subtitles, and then you get the English translation which is the same, and the movie drags on for twice as long as is necessary.  The main problem with the film, however, is that no one wants to talk about this stuff.  Understandably, they’re scared, but what it means is that the only people with anything constructive to add are a kidnapper with a hood on his face, a couple of members of the Sao Paolo SWAT team, a kidnap victim and a frog farmer.  So there is very little information actually disseminated in the movie.

What we do learn is that kidnapping and killing are very easy for the people who live in the slums and who would never be able to live with a real job, because their neighbourhoods are so poor.  And corruption is very easy for the people in charge of the government.  This Barbalho was charged with embezzeling two billion dollars, and ended up walking.  And then getting re-elected to congress.  But that’s about all we learn, and it takes way too long.  There are certainly some impressive scenes - the scene where the leader of the SWAT team shows his bullet wounds and scars, a scene where people who have purchased bulletproof cars take a course in defensive driving - how to get away when another car is shooting at you, and a scene where a microchip inventor describes his newest invention - microchips that can be implanted under peoples’ skin so if they are kidnapped their family will know immediately. 

But in the end, this is three different stories, which are tied together clumsily, and have a sort of connection at the end of the film, when the point is made that it is just as easy to steal with a pen as it is with a gun.  And all we really get is a picture of Brazil as a really messed up place to live.  And with interview subjects who refuse to say much, or won’t be identified, there isn’t much story beyond that.  Brazil is certainly not perfect.  Neither is this documentary.

Jonathan Demme will always be known for one thing above all others.  He is the man who directed Silence of the Lambs.  Which, in the world of film, is much like being the guy who wrote The DaVinci Code.  It doesn’t really matter what else you’ve done, or if it’s any good, you’re still that guy.  And Demme has done some other excellent work, like Adaptation and the remake of The Manchurian Candidate.  He has also done some great documentaries, mostly music ones, like Stop Making Sense, about the Talking Heads, and Heart of Gold, the recent excellent film about Neil Young.  And now, he comes out with this terrific documentary about former president Jimmy Carter, Man From Plains.  The movie often makes reference to the fact that Carter is the 39th president.  Why are Americans so crazy about the numbers of their presidents?  We don’t do that here - it took me a long time to figure out what number Prime Minister Stephen Harper was…then I forgot before I came back to writing this review.  All that counting for nothing.

Carter was on The Daily Show last night, promoting his new book about his mom Lillian, “A Remarkable Mother”.  And I was so taken with Carter that I immediately watched Man From Plains the next morning.  And the first person to appear - is Carter’s mom!  On the Johnny Carson show in the late 70s, while her son was president.  Her appearance is awesome - such a funny, engaging elderly woman, and it sets the tone for the entire movie.  Because Carter is a lot like his mom.  He can be funny, he can be entertaining in an elderly, my-grandpa-makes-jokes kind of way, and he is always interesting and very well-informed.  The movie moves on right away to a barbecue near his birthplace where he blesses the meal.  This is one of the few Christian speakers who actually gets his voice heard while not being a total wing-nut.  His blessing is so very American, but good-American.  He prays for the soldiers overseas, and prays for the environment, calling the American people “custodians of the land”, and expressing the hope that they all remember this and work together to save it.

Then the film moves on to the meat of the story.  Carter’s new book (at the time) was called “Palestine:  Peace not Apartheid”.  It was a reference to Israel’s policies in Palestine, which are, in many cases, the same as apartheid, and in some cases worse.  (Apartheid, by the way, has been defined by the UN in the wake of the human rights battle in South Africa, and Palestine certainly qualifies, but people hate using the word to describe anything other than South Africa itself.  It’s would be kind of like people getting angry about the genocide in Rwanda being called a “holocaust”.  No, there was only ONE holocaust, and I’m offended!)  And the controversy over the title and content of the book is the main theme in the documentary.  Carter suggests, early on, that there is absolutely NO degree of objectivity left in the American news media, and watching the film, it seems like a pretty accurate statement.

The basic premise of the book is that in order to broker peace in Israel and Palestine and the Gaza Strip, Israel has to withdraw.  They are keeping the Palestinians behind a wall and enacting very apartheid-sounding laws to keep them opressed.  So his solution seems, on the surface, to be very simple.  Back off.  Let the Palestinians have their land.  Everyone wins.  The controversy arises when the Israelis and their supporters start pointing out the Palestinian acts of terrorism against Israel.  If the people in Gaza are walled in, the Hamas supporters can’t walk into Israel and detonate a suicide bomb.  So, we keep them in their cage so that innocent Israelis are not killed.  Which is an argument that also makes sense.  And while Carter decries the terrorism and suicide bombings in his book, he also says that they are not going to stop as long as their people are being, for all intents and purposes, kept in a cage.  The attacks on Carter become more and more venomous, accusing him of everything to plagiarism to outright lying, to actual anti-semitism.

Carter makes appearances on lots of shows, being interviewed by Jay Leno, Al Franken, Larry King, and the always-irritating Wolf Blitzer.  Callers ask him questions on radio programs, questions that boggle my mind - why were you such a sissy over the Iran hostage affair?  Why didn’t you bomb the s*** out of Iran then?  Wouldn’t we have a better relationship with Iran today if you had done that?  And Carter’s response is remarkably controlled, given the question.  Who still thinks this way?  Does this caller really think that thirty years from now, the U.S. will have an excellent relationship with Iraq?  Because they have destroyed it now?  Bonkers.  And what’s more bonkers is that you get the sense from peoples’ reactions, that had he come out totally one-sided on the Israel-Palestine issue, and it had been against Palestine, there would have been almost no controversy at all.  The U.S. has chosen a side already.  It is Israel.  And nothing more can be said on the subject.  Except, of course, when you are Jimmy Carter.

 Jimmy Carter is a wonderful man, a man who may well be doing more for America and the world after his presidency than he did while he was still commander-in-chief.  He’s 84 years old, he just celebrated his sixtieth wedding anniversary, and he is still making the rounds of talk shows, doing countless interviews, and working harder than maybe anyone else in the world toward peace in the middle east.  And I am going to assume that everyone knows what he has done to help Africa with disease prevention, and what he has done with Habitat For Humanity, building houses for people all over the world.  (Although my mom volunteers at Habitat For Humanity, and I’m not sure she knows the exact involvement of Jimmy Carter.)  Does anyone remember what Reagan did after he left office?  George Bush the first?  Gerald Ford?  They kind of disappear, rest on their laurels, and barely lift a finger again.  Bill Clinton has been working his tail off since he left office, doing dozens of speaking engagements at half a million bucks a pop.  Jimmy Carter doesn’t charge for his speaking engagements, and offers to give lectures at universities and hundreds of places across the U.S.  And, after this book came out, sometimes he was actually turned down.

In Carter’s administration, he aimed for less dependance on foreign oil.  From the time he took office until the time he left, U.S. imports went from 9 million barrels a year to 5 million barrels.  The States is now back up to 13 million barrels a year.  He suggests in this movie that the Bush government’s policy - which is not to speak to anyone in the world who doesn’t agree completely with the Bush government, is insane.  How can you ever see both sides of an issue when you won’t listen to anyone but yourself?  And Carter has the credentials to talk.  He is the one who did what many thought couldn’t be done in the 70s - brokered actual peace between Israel and Egypt.  A peace that lasts to this day.  Those peace talks are shown in this film, and Carter’s wife reminisces about that time in some pretty amazing scenes.  And the movie closes with Carter, as president, being both right and incredibly forward-thinking about global warming.

The one complaint I have about the movie is the soundtrack.  I like it - the songs are good, and interesting, like Djamel Ben Yelles, Alejandro Escovedo, and Neil Young.  They certainly fit the tone of the film, but the editing of the soundtrack is intrusive.  Rap songs, like one by Brother Ali, play while Carter is on the phone, so it becomes difficult to listen to both at the same time.  But it’s a small quibble.  Man From Plains is a wonderful film about a wonderful man.