Surviving Progress (Mathieu Roy, 2011, Canada)

Apparently based on the book A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright, this documentary looks largely at the inherent dark side of progress. If you're a thinking person, you've probably thought about most of this stuff already, but I did learn one interesting concept from the film: the progress trap. Essentially, progress has a tendency to lead to a saturation point past which dire consequences occur.  A primitive example is native people driving herds of mammoths over cliffs and driving the extinction of their main food source. The film features people such as Margaret Atwood and Jane Goodall talking about primates and progress and the ecological dangers facing us today. It's interesting, but I often found it difficult to pay attention to because it's so distressing. I think I will probably endeavor to read the book, and I may watch the film again when I'm feeling more emotionally robust.
B

Now streaming on Netflix, btw.

Mission: Impossible (Brian DePalma, 1996, USA)

It's strange that I'd never seen this film before, or maybe not, since I've rarely ever liked Tom Cruise (possible exceptions being largely films he starred in from 1999-2002, and possibly Collateral). On the face of it, it seemed relatively promising. Brian DePalma, Kristin Scott Thomas, Emmanuelle Béart, Vanessa Redgrave. Add to that that I saw John Woo's M:I-2 in a second run theater because its coincided with the time I was assigned to write a paper on John Woo and auteur theory during my brief stint as an intended film studies major. I haven't seen M:I-2 in a dozen years, but I can only hope it's nowhere near as dated and unsatisfying as this one. It's funny, I think I've been wanting to see this movie since about 2001 when my French teacher, in one of those oddly random foreign language class moments, showed us part of the sequence on the train, to demonstrate, apparently, that the TGV (train de grande vitesse) was in fact de grande vitesse.
I kind of feel like the most remarkable thing about this movie are the talents it squanders. It's amazing that Brian DePalma produced such a dull film. As tedious as any lesser James Bond movie, it seems to follow the same blueprint, which naturally includes offing the most interesting woman in the first fifteen minutes. Kristin Scott Thomas is riveting in her scenes, but so are Emmanuelle Béart and Vanessa Redgrave. Weirdly, Emilio Estevez is also quite effective in his small part. Jon Voigt and Tom Cruise on the other hand are beyond tedious. Not that it would have mattered if that plot had made sense at all. It's this weird combination of setpieces connected only by the most strained bit of logic. Ving Rames and Jean Reno are brought on halfway through the movie to steal some data from CIA headquarters in a dull, drawn out "action" sequence notable only as a potential missing link between the 70s and the 21st century. Ving Rames is completely wasted in a flat characterization, but Jean Reno is relatively effective given the limitations of the script.
blah blah blah
There was a nice moment at the end where Mazzy Starr is playing at a cafe.
C-

Guys and Balls / Männer wie wir (Sherry Hormann, 2004, Germany)

I hope this movie is as dated in Germany as it is here. I lived in Germany ten years ago and I thought it was strange that although the culture is relatively tolerant and progressive, that people were more comfortable with homosexuality in the abstract. I don't know, really, I never figured out what the deal was with gay culture there.

Here we have a gay sports comedy. Ecki, the goalie of his local soccer team, inadvertently comes out of the closet when he is seen making an unwanted pass at his best friend. He leaves his podunk town in shame and his parents become laughingstocks as he seeks refuge with his sister in Dortmund. He's challenged his team to play his gay team that doesn't exist yet in four weeks' time. He scours the underbelly of Dortmund until he finds enough leather daddies and kebab queens to man his team and naturally they go back to bumblefuck and continue to act out all of the sports movie tropes you'd expect. What makes the film problematic, other than it being a movie about soccer, is that it's an endless stream of gay stereotypes, homophobic humor, and cheap sentiment. It's so funny to me that Germans are thought of as these cold robotic types by a lot of people, but they're really as cornball as anyone else.

I liked certain members of the cast though and I automatically tend to like movies more just because they're in German since I like to listen to German, in case you're wondering about the charitable rating. I guess I also have a soft spot for gay movies, and even though this one is painful to watch sometimes, it seems to mean well.
C-

catching up...

I've been too slow to pick this thing up since my little road trip and my move decreased the time I spent online or watching movies. I'll probably hurriedly try to catch up with some of what I've watched in the past few months, just so I can continue to have a record of all that.

Last night I watched Storm, a German movie about a war crimes trial that played last year at the Chicago International Film Festival. I skipped it then because the reviews seemed rather tepid but I ended up enjoying it. It's basically about the how and why that all these unstable places like Bosnia are getting packed into the EU and what some of the costs are. I thought it was acted and produced well and as to the reviews that damned it for looking like a German made-for-TV movie, I'd say that German made-for-TV movies are often a lot better than what gets put into theaters. B+

Prior to that I had watched a 2007 German comedy called Mein Führer. It's basically about how Goebbels gets this Jewish actor out of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp so he can work as Hitler's acting coach. It's not quite as distasteful as it sounds but it didn't quite win me over either. It was all right. B-

I also watched this documentary called A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash. Unsurprisingly it was about the coming oil crash. Like most of these documentaries it suffers for being a sort of introduction for people who don't know anything. As such, I thought it did a pretty good job and I felt like I learned a few things as well. C

The Silent Star is an old East German science fiction movie about this international team of scientists who head out to Venus after a mysterious cylinder is found at what was believed to be a UFO crash site. The lady physicist is naturally responsible for making sure everyone eats and aside from looking at a microscope a few times mostly just chases people around with jars of liquid nutrition. The main point is that that Americans are like the Venusians who destroyed themselves while trying to take over the world. Hiroshima is invoked about a half dozen times. It was interesting as a Cold War artifact. C-

After years of trying, I finally made it through Godard's overrated film Breathless without falling asleep. I'm not sure I really get Godard. I'm never sure of how I feel about the morality of his films and I don't often find myself caring about his characters. C-

I'm not sure why I enjoyed Claude Chabrol's A Girl Cut in Two, since it seemed kind of empty. I like Ludivine Sagnier and she was good in this movie, though not particularly mesmerising. I watched it while I was starting to come down with something so I could have been a little scrambled in the brain but I feel like there is something there worth liking that rises above the lurid subject matter. And I'm sure there's something to the ending but I was too tired to piece it together. B

Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam is yet another Nick Broomfield documentary that manages to be fascinating even while it makes you uncomfortable because there's something incredibly slimy about Broomfield. Aside from the fact that he's kind of gross, I felt like the film lacked a certain scope. He's always leading you down the garden path and fixating on one thing and ignoring a few other things. Instead of focusing on Fleiss's personal life so much, I guess I'd have liked to know more about her prostitution ring and her trial. C

Mary and Max is sort like Muriel's Wedding crossed with 84 Charing Cross Road and blended with Wallace and Gromit. I really liked it, though the second half lost a little steam for me. It's another movie I skipped at the film festival last year because of negative reviews... B+

The first time I saw My Winnipeg I had accidentally gotten drunk at lunch and I ended up passing out during it. I was really sad. What I saw coincided really well with my drunken feverishness but my good friend Mark, with whom I saw it, said it was just all right or something. I finally got the chance to revisit it the other day when I noticed Netflix had added it to their instant viewing selection and I really loved it. I love that deranged blend of fantasy and fact. A

This isn't going so well. I think I have the flu or something.

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu, 2006, Romania)

Mr. Lazarescu hasn't been feeling so well today. In the evening he calls for an ambulance, which arrives after a relatively long time. He needs medical attention pretty badly but there's been a big bus accident and the hospitals are swamped. They're also full of unfeeling, unqualified people, it seems, though they also have great employees. He's escorted throughout the night by an EMT nurse, rough around the edges but well-intentioned. The title pretty much tells you what the whole movie is about but it's so much more entertaining and thrilling and beautiful than I had expected. I also expected it to be very much about the failings of the Romanian healthcare system but most of what you'll see here could be translated to any city in America. This is the kind of foreign movie that should be remade in America, given our own healthcare crises. The actress who plays the nurse is pretty amazing. There are so many interesting details in this story. It's not only about more than the Romanian hospital system, it felt like it touched on many other facets of life. It's time for my bedtime but I'm really glad I finally watched this. It's not as dour and punishing as it sounds. Highly entertaining and also very beautiful. I highly recommend this movie. A

The Puffy Chair (Jay Duplass, 2005)

I've always shied away from watching any of these mumblecore movies because I assumed they'd be about these sort of bland, bourgeois, generic rebels that seem to pop up as friends of friends all too often. I thought Humpday seemed decent enough so I gave this one a chance, if only for cultural literacy. I have to say that while this movie was more or less exactly what I expected from it it was a little more interesting. Almost like anthropology or something. I always wondered what those people were like when left to their own devices and I thought this movie was really informative about that. It crossed my mind several times that this movie would have been a lot stronger if it were shorter by about a third. That'd make it just under an hour and I think that's about as much as the story needed. The acting seemed hit or miss. The brother in particular seemed kind of weak. He's also an annoying character but, having unfortunately had occasion to meet these kinds of people, he struck me as pretty authentic. There were some things I liked about this movie but I'm so judgmental when it comes to this breed of people, for whatever reason, and that distaste is too fresh in my mind to achieve any critical distance. The girlfriend is likable enough in that "I feel really bad for not liking you because you seem so likable but I just can't do it" kind of way, whereas the protagonist is endearing in that "This is the kind of straight guy I'd like to spend one night with just so I'd know what it was like and then never see again" sort of way. I guess it has me craving an old Dogme movie or something. C-

Five Easy Pieces (Bob Rafelson, 1970)

Of course my main reason for watching this was the presence of Karen Black, who's typically fabulous here. I think I like most of the acting in the movie and I'm also a fan of the writing. I can't decide what makes these 70s movies seem so much more authentic. It's like, even the movies today that try to present real characters are so much more distorted, whether it be by irony, idealization, or stylization. I guess part of it is that the characters aren't just sympathetic or unsympathetic. They come across in a way that feels true.

Sally Struthers's performance surprisingly left me wanting more. I think hers was one of my favorite performances in the film.

Some of my friends think I think too much about class and I certainly feel like there's a lot about class in this movie but I feel like what you think it says about class is probably tied to your own background. I guess there's a sort of antipathy here for the intellectuals and the elite classes but I also feel like the protagonist is an embodiment of the selfishness and entitlement that comes from a privileged background. I don't know what it is about Karen Black in this movie that makes me identify so much with her. I guess there must be something in her that looks like a reflection to me. I'm sort of curious as to how Nicholson's character is perceived by most viewers. I sort of feel like he's supposed to be heroic but that to me he's the real metaphor in the film. Like the film sort of holds up a mirror to Mr. America and says, "Baby, you are the rot." It's time for me to sleep. Fortunately it's barely springtime so the sun isn't out yet. This is my time of day. The couple hours before the sky lights up. I wish it were place I could steal away to from time to time. B/B+

The Yes Men Fix the World (Andy Bichlbaum & Mike Bonanno, 2009)

I saw the original Yes Men film several years ago but I was probably to intoxicated to remember it too well, since I don't really. Culture jammers The Yes Men are back to their old tricks, using the media against itself and satirizing corporate culture. I know there's a way to be cynical about this movie and I know it's easy to dismiss many of the things they do but I think it's always easiest to be cynical. I must confess to generally being sort of cynical about culture jamming activities, although if there's anything No Impact Man had to say it's that the most important thing is getting people involved, and keeping them involved, I guess. I guess what this movie does is it sets up a rather ugly picture of corporatist culture in the status quo and then shows how possible it should be to change that. It's certainly entertaining but it definitely had highs and lows for me. My favorite part was where they blanketed New York with the fantasy New York Times for a month in the future when all these things has changed. I guess it's natural for people in New York to be thrilled about those kind of changes but I'm sure that the majority of the people in this country would feel elated if just some of those things started happening. I also like the bits that refer to restoring public housing in New Orleans and to cleaning up after the Bhopal disaster, not because they're particularly entertaining to watch but rather because they made me think a little bit about all that. I guess the weakest parts for me were, ironically, the one pictured above where they suggest fuel made out of dead humans at a gas and oil expo and also the one where they present a fake Halliburton product for surviving catastrophes.
I was a little surprised that they never mentioned Naomi Klein since they seemed to give an introduction to her theory of the Shock Doctrine and since there was so much in there about her bête noire Milton Friedman. I suppose it's intentional to keep the thing rooted in common sense and the better sense of our better angels than to start muddying the waters with an overt politicism that could prove alienating to some viewers? I don't know.
Anyway, I enjoyed the film and I feel like it's on the side of out better natures, which kind of means justice and goodness to me. B/B+

No Impact Man (Laura Gabbert & Justin Schein, 2009)

No Impact Man is a documentary about a guy in Manhattan who decides he wants to write about book about him and his family spending a year trying to have zero impact on the environment. It was enjoyable but I'm glad I waited to see it on Netflix streaming instead of going to see it at the Music Box Theatre last year like I had planned to. The couple are quite likable. Their daughter is adorable. They're doing something admirable here but the movie isn't exactly bursting with surprises. I suppose it functions to show us that the way has been forged and it's all that much easier for us to be more responsible to the world. I think one of the most interesting things about it though is the way the media works in the movie. That's something that might make this movie worth watching again. There's also this old grizzled hippie who teaches the guy about farming and he has that annoying attitude where those 60s people think they had all the answers even though all they did was propel culture to its most self-absorbed extreme and hurtle the world toward destruction. Thanks, boomers! C

Rage (Sally Potter, 2009)

One day I was brainstorming about female auteurs and somebody suggested Sally Potter. I'd only seen two of her movies (Orlando and The Man Who Cried) and I liked them both, especially Orlando, which I sort of love. I added this movie to my instant queue over on Netflix because it was there and because I'd heard it mentioned on the radio...
The filmmakers reportedly referred to this movie, Rage, as the first of a new genre of filmmaking called naked cinema, which to the best of my understanding seems to refer to the stripped down production. It's also pretty well-known for being released via cell phone. Or something. The story is basically that a student of some sort, going by the name Michelangelo, has gotten permission to video tape interviews with several people involved in a fashion show with his camera phone. As a week goes by, people start dying. It's really kind of a ridiculous mess but the generally strong cast and intermittent fabulousness make it all watchable. It's essentially just people in front of mostly brightly colored monochromatic screens. Or actually it looks like they were filmed in front of a blue screen and later each character was given a different color. Judi Dench, Jude Law, Dianne Wiest, Lily Cole, Steve Buscemi, and intermittently Eddie Izzard give strong performances. John Lequizamo is all right but has been better. The guy who plays the designer is really bad. There's a Latina woman who seems to be one of their mothers but I wasn't sure what was going on at that point so I can't say how effective she was since I was mostly just confused. It was a total mess but I'd watch it again. C