MOVIE REVIEW
Four Lions (2010)
2010 Sundance Film Festival
"Four Lions" and its monumentally stupid suicide bombers will be beyond the pale for some; but as with all of Chris Morris's ferocious satires, its faith in man's ability to cock things up is all too plausible. It would be nice to think that groups of angry young men engaged in low-budget terrorism don't ponder strapping bombs onto crows or occasionally point the bazooka backwards. But whom are we kidding?
MOVIE REVIEW
Adoration (2009)
Sophie Giraud/Sony Pictures Classics
Atom Egoyan’s “Adoration” takes a powerful, simple subject and mucks up its exploration with elaborate stylistic complications and moments of pure over direction. At its core is the grief-stricken story tinged with guilt, of a teenager learning to cope with the accidental death of his parents years earlier. Mr. Egoyan transforms that narrative into a murky rendition of the seedier side of the Web, and hampers it through the high-concept development of a premise centered on a convoluted role-playing assignment taken on with gusto by the main character and a central figure in his life.
Continue reading “Caught in the Web, Where the Truth Lies” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Fifty Dead Men Walking (2009)
Whistler Film Festival
I’m an American who lived in Belfast for a year, and in that year met my husband. The whole of his family lives in Northern Ireland, and our circle of friends in London includes several from Northern Ireland. None of them are "political" – i.e., with direct involvement to paramilitary activity – although some do have family relationships or unwise connections from their youth, which they prefer not to discuss. Most of them recoil in horror at the thought of perpetuating the traditional nationalist-unionist struggle or indeed prejudice of any kind, although some are less enlightened. But regardless of their political outlook, religious belief, class, or personal experience of the Troubles, every last one of them I know from Northern Ireland adheres to the code: “Whatever you say, say nothing.” Everyone, but everyone, hates a grass.
MOVIE REVIEW
Bullet in the Head (2008)
FRESDEVAL
In FIPRESCI award-winning director Jaime Rosales's own words, his latest film is "really difficult for the audience." Citing inspiration from the silent era of cinema while making a metaphorical statement on the "noise, not words" of Spanish politics, Mr. Rosales pushes the boundaries of filmmaking with a study in audience patience by essentially delivering a silent film – just two words are uttered in the 84-minute running time – in which, as Mr. Rosales readily admits, "nothing happens."
MOVIE REVIEW
The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008)
Constantin Film
Bloody hell – that about sums up the life of a terrorist on the run, whether today or in post-war Germany. The Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang, orchestrated a reign of terror from the early 1970s to really not very long ago. Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibtrau, the boyfriend in "Run Lola Run") liked to smash things up, while Ulrike Meinhof (Martina Gedeck, the heroine in "The Lives of Others") was the respected lefty journalist who crossed over into terrorism under the thrall of Baader and his girlfriend, Gudrun Ensslin (Johanna Wokalek, the sensible friend in the under-appreciated "Aimee & Jaguar"), who provided the theoretical justification. These three very real people gave up their children and any semblance of a normal life so they could – and I find myself unable to sum up what they wanted to achieve in a polite little sentence. What they really wanted to do, under a whole heap of fancy justifications, was fuck shit up.
Continue reading “New German Film Picks at Yet Another Old National Scab” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Body of Lies (2008)
François Duhamel/Warner Bros. Pictures
There’s an interesting movie hidden deep beneath the location-hopping techno-thriller surface of “Body of Lies.” It features a CIA agent working in Jordan and his romance with a local nurse. The ramifications of such a cross-cultural relationship – the suspicions directed toward them by her families and friends and his co-workers – and the ways in which the post-9/11 milieu affects the film could make for interesting, provocative viewing.
MOVIE REVIEW
Hunger (2008)
IFC Films
Winner of "Camera d’or" at Cannes Film Festival, British film artist Steve McQueen’s feature debut, “Hunger,” is perhaps the best cinematic treatment yet of the Irish Troubles. Indeed, just as Terry George and Jim Sheridan’s “Some Mother’s Son,” Mr. McQueen’s film revolves around the 1981 hunger strike led by the late Irish Republican Army volunteer and British parliament member Bobby Sands. But it ultimately achieves radically different results. While Mr. George’s beat-you-over-the-head approach was instantly forgettable, Mr. McQueen’s abstract yet visceral take on the same events truly gets under the skin.
MOVIE REVIEW
Traitor (2008)
Rafy/Overture Films
Two very different movies compete for the soul of “Traitor,”
the new film from writer-director Jeffrey Nachmanoff based on a story idea of
Steve Martin’s. The first and least
interesting of the two follows the general, turgid outline of a thriller. It comes complete with slow intercutting
between a terrorist and his pursuers, repetitious pans over the skylines of
Washington D.C. and too many international locales and “action” scenes that
largely consist of star Don Cheadle walking into and out of various buildings.
Continue reading “Terror Suspect, F.B.I. Caught Up in Infernal Affairs” »