movie gourmet

The Newburgh Sting: war on terrorism…NOT

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The Newburgh Sting is a credible and politically important documentary from HBO. In 2009, the FBI arrested four American Muslims with what look like bombs outside a synagogue.  The Newburgh Sting examines the case by showing us the actual FBI surveillance videos and audios, along with talking heads of relatives and community members. And a different reality emerges.

As the story unfolds, the FBI enrolls an informant – a serial con man who needed FBI leverage to hang on to the ill-gotten gains of a previous scam. The informant heads to hardscrabble Newburgh, NY, and flashes cash and expensive cars; he pretends to be an international terrorist who will pay $250,000 for a “job”. The informant finds a local hustler who will say anything to scrounge some cash. The hustler rounds up three more unemployed guys who will also do anything for a little money, let alone $250,000. The informant describes and plans the job, organizes the job and provides all the materials (including fake bombs).

Whether or not this meets the legal definition of entrapment is one thing. But, as a matter of policy, it’s clear that – absent the FBI informant paying them to do so – these guys would never have been involved in such a scheme. It’s also easy for the audience to conclude that the FBI only stopped a “terrorist incident” that it manufactured, spending resources that could have been used against real terrorists with the actual means to carry out an attack.

The most distasteful part of the story is the cable news coverage of the arrests, trumpeting the FBI’s spin: the capture of a terrorist cell intent on mass murder of Americans. By the time we watch this, we have seen the video of the informant and the dumbass suspects actually plotting the “attack”, and we have a pretty clear picture of the personalities involved and what really happened. Because of the surveillance videos, it’s definitely worth a watch.

The Newburgh Sting is playing on HBO.

Snowpiercer: thinking and hacking one’s way to the front of the train

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Tilda Swinton in SNOWPIERCER
Tilda Swinton in SNOWPIERCER

Snowpiercer is that rare sci fi thriller that effectively explores some serious questions without becoming ponderous or pretentious.  Here’s the setup. In an attempt to fix global warming by chemically cooling the earth, mankind has moved the needle too far and has instead FROZEN the planet. The only survivors are a few thousand humans packed into a nuclear-powered, “self-sustainable” train that rattles around the earth on a circuitous track. The wealthy elite lives in comfort at the front of the train, while their cruel armed guards keep the wretched, unwashed poor in the back of the train. Naturally, the poor revolt and assault the front of the train.

So we have a conflict in a claustrophobic space, and the thrills come from how the poor think and fight their way up car-by-car. Because the train’s systems have been engineered to prevent this, it takes a lot of ingenuity. And it takes a lot of violence, too, and because the elite has almost run out of bullets repressing previous revolts, that violence is often of the medieval hacking-and-thumping sort.

The train in Snowpiercer, of course, is an allegory for a society with an extreme disparity of wealth – and it’s not far removed from similar societies in human history and even today.  In Snowpiercer’s most pointed moments, the mouthpiece for the elite continually tells the poor that they are undeserving and lucky to get the morsels that they are allowed. But the more challenging question – and one that Snowpiercer leaves the audience to ponder – is what are the limits of order; naturally, we’re all against repression, but how about when the very survival of the species is up for grabs?

The production design of Snowpiercer is exceptional. The snowy planet is cool, but the best part of Snowpiercer is experiencing each part of the train, including the greenhouse car, the aquarium car, and (my favorite) the disco car. The imagination that went into creating a mobile space that must sustain itself with making its own food, treating its own water, educating its own kids, etc., is remarkable (and Oscar-worthy).

As the stonefaced leader of the uprising, Chris Evans is okay but doesn’t get to do much. That’s too bad, because I know he can act from his quirky role in The Iceman as hitman Mr. Freezy, who works out of his ice cream truck. Because I don’t watch superhero movies, I was unaware that Evans has recently starred as Captain America in The Avengers and as Johnny Storm in the Fantastic Four movies.

The best performance comes from Kang-ho Song as Snowpiercer’s most interesting character, a high-tech locksmith addicted, along with his 17-year-old daughter, to a drug of the future. Tilda Swinton is gloriously outrageous as a loathsome middle manager for the evil elite. After a spate of emo dramas, Octavia Spencer gets to swing her axe through a herd of bad guys. And Ed Harris, John Hurt and Alison Pill are all reliably good too.

I’m a big fan of Korean writer/director Joon-ho Bong, who made the brilliant 2003 detectives-hunting-serial killer movie Memories of a Murder (also with Kang-ho Song) and the 2009 drama Mother, which made my yearly Best Of list.  Memories of a Murder is available on DVD from Netflix, and you can find Mother on DVD from Netflix and streaming on iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.  He also co-wrote the upcoming on-the-seas thriller Sea Fog (Haemoo) which plays at the Toronto International Film Fest this fall.

You can also stream Snowpiercer on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and DirecTV.

A Night in Old Mexico: geezer tears up cantina and finds una guapa

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A NIGHT IN OLD MEXICO
A NIGHT IN OLD MEXICO

In A Night in Old Mexico, 83-year-old Robert Duvall plays a bitter 83-year-old Texas curmudgeon who has lost his ranch and enlists his new found grandson on a geezer roadtrip adventure to a Mexican bordertown.  Duvall is one of our greatest actors, and, after his profound performances in The Apostle and Tender Mercies, it’s fun to let him seek debauchery and tear up cantinas.  That being said, there’s really nothing remarkable or original in A Night in Old Mexico – it’s a trifle.  Columbian actress Angie Cepeda is especially appealing as the hard luck gal who takes up with the guys.

A Night in Old Mexico is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.

Spider Baby: as Chaney’s horror career ended, Sid Haig’s was born

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Lon Chaney, Jr. in SPIDER BABY
Lon Chaney, Jr. in SPIDER BABY

There’s a cult classic coming up this Friday night (or very early Saturday morning) on Turner Classic Movies.  In the 1968 Spider Baby, a family of inbred ghouls is tended by a kind and rational caretaker (Lon Chaney, Jr.) until some greedy relatives and their shyster invade their spooky Victorian mansion and become cannibalized.  Spider Baby was reportedly made for only $65,000 – and it shows.  There’s the clunky and explicitly expositional beginning and ending narration and a TV sitcom look and feel.  But no 1960s TV show featured a daughter kissing her skeleton father goodnight, along with cretinous uncle and aunts in the basement and negligee-clad cannibals.

Spider Baby was filmed in 1964, but was caught up in bankruptcy proceedings and not released until 1968. This explains the offensive black character, which might have passed as regrettably mainstream in the early 60s, but must have seemed odd to the more racially conscious audiences in 1968.

Chaney has fun with playing a normal human among the monsters, and there’s a sly reference to The Wolfman at the dinner table.

As Chaney’s horror career ended, Sid Haig’s was just beginning.  Haig, in just his second feature, played a sex-craved Igor type.  He now has over 130 screen credits, including character roles in Emperor of the North and Jackie Brown and lots of TV work.  But Haig is most well-known for his horror, and it’s hard to top his portrayal of Captain Spaulding in Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses.  Yikes.

Spider Baby is also known as The Maddest Story Ever Told, The Liver Eaters, Cannibal Orgy and various combinations of those titles.  Spider Baby has played on Turner Classic Movies before and is available streaming from Amazon, Vudu and Xbox Video.

Sid Haig in SPIDER BABY
Sid Haig in SPIDER BABY

The Congress: I liked the first part

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Robin Wright in THE CONGRESS
Robin Wright in THE CONGRESS

The Congress is really two movies – a live action fable and an animated sci fi story.  In the opening part, Robin Wright plays an actress in her mid-forties named Robin Wright who followed a star-making performance in The Princess Bride with a series of disastrous career choices driven by her own bad instincts and her need to care for her special needs son.  That son is now 13, her daughter is 17 and they are living in a hangar at a Mojave Desert airfield.  Her agent (Harvey Keitel) approached with a deal from a smarmy studio exec (Danny Huston).  That deal is a Faustian one – she will get a one-time payment in return for having herself scanned so her the studio can use her image in 100% CGI movies; if she accepts the offer, she cannot ever act again – on-screen or in the flesh.

I liked this first part, which is a smart exploration of the issues of art vs. commerce, the ethical limits of using CGI in filmmaking and the rights of individuals over use of their images.  The set-up is very well done, the desert airfield is cool and Wright, Keitel, Huston and the kid actors deliver fine performances.

Then the story takes the Robin Wright character – twenty years later – into an alternative universe for animated characters who have had their humanity scanned away.  She embarks on a desperate search to find out what has happened to her son and whether her daughter is now leading a revolt.  This animated half of The Congress is visually arresting and shows off the talent of writer-director Ari Folman, who made the superb animated film Waltz with Bashir (about Folman’s fellow Israeli army veterans in the invasion of Lebanon).  At this time, I lost interest in the tale.  Now  I’m not a big sci fi fan, though, and someone who DOES appreciate the genre might well enjoy it.  The visuals do sparkle.

The Congress is available streaming on iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

A Brony Tale: odd and odder

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I’m not sure I was comfortable learning about the “Bronies”, subjects of the documentary A Brony Tale.  My Little Pony is an animated television series that is made for an audience of little girls and which features flying pastel cartoon ponies. Bronies are fans of My Little Pony who are predominantly male and between the ages of 14 and 30. As one of the My Little Pony voice actresses notes, “my pervert alarm went off”.

I was settled in for a cringefest of a freak show, but surprised to met a biker Brony, an Iraq combat vet Brony, married Bronies and just a lot of seemingly manly and normal-looking Bronies. A Brony Tale raised some serious questions of gender expectations – why can we be so repelled by someone’s surprising taste in a harmless TV show? But then we visit BronyCon – the convention for Bronies – and see a lot of them expressing themselves with very strange costuming (and FanimeCon is held close to my house, so I have a high bar for strange costuming).

A Brony Tale is only 79 minutes long – and could have shaved 4-5 minutes off the voice actress’ journey to the BronyCon.  A Brony Tale is available streaming on iTunes.  Still mulling this over. Hmmmm…

James Garner’s overlooked masterpiece

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James Garner (right) with James Coburn in THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY

Actor James Garner has died at 86, known primarily for a brilliant television career highlighted by Maverick and The Rockford Files.  Yet Garner was also a fine movie actor, and starred in an oft overlooked masterpiece, the 1964 The Americanization of Emily. Set in England just before the D-Day invasion, The Americanization of Emily is a biting satire and one of the great anti-war movies. James Garner plays an admiral’s staff officer charged with procuring luxury goods and willing English women for the brass. Julie Andrews plays an English driver who has lost her husband and other male family members in the War. She resists emotional entanglements with other servicemen whose lives may be put at risk, but falls for Garner’s “practicing coward”, a man who is under no illusions about the glory of war and is determined to stay as far from combat as possible.

Unfortunately, Garner’s boss (Melvyn Douglas) has fits of derangement and becomes obsessed with the hope that the first American killed on the beach at D-Day be from the Navy. Accordingly, he orders Garner to lead a suicide mission to land ahead of the D-Day landing, ostensibly to film it. Fellow officer James Coburn must guarantee Garner’s martyrdom.

It’s a brilliant screenplay from Paddy Chayefsky, who won screenwriting Oscars for Marty, The Hospital and Network. Today, Americanization holds up as least as well as its contemporary Dr. Strangelove and much better than Failsafe.

Almost twenty years later, Garner reteamed with Julie Andrews in one of the all time great comedies, Victor/Victoria.  However, both Andrews and Garner have tagged The Americanization of Emily as their favorite film.

The Americanization of Emily is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.  It also plays several times each year on Turner Classic Movies and is next scheduled for September 24.

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Julie Andrews and James garner in THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY

Movies to See Right Now

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Richard Linklater's BOYHOOD - opening widely next week
Richard Linklater’s BOYHOOD – opening widely next week

Pickins are slim in theaters this week, but we’ve got a great week coming up. Opening here in Silicon Valley next Friday are:

  • Richard Linklater’s family drama Boyhood – potentially the best movie of the year.
  • Philip Seymour Hoffman’s final performance in the John LeCarre espionage thriller A Most Wanted Man.
  • The quirky indie comedy Land Ho!.
  • Lucy – a Scarlet Johansson action vehicle that looks like it rocks.

While we’re waiting for THOSE movies:

  • Jersey Boys is mostly fun – and features another jaunty performance by Christopher Walken.
  • The Wife enjoyed Code Black – the documentary about emergency rooms in urban public hospitals.
  • I loved the rockin’ Spanish Witching and Bitching – a witty comment on misogyny inside a madcap horror spoof, which you can stream on Amazon instant, iTunes and Xbox Video.
  • Life Itself, the affectionate but not worshipful documentary on movie critic Ebert’s groundbreaking career, courageous battle against disease and uncommonly graceful death Life Itself is streaming on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.
  • The art vs. technology documentary Tim’s Vermeer is a yawner.

My summertime DVD/Stream of the Week recommendations are the superb surfing documentaries Step Into Liquid and Riding Giants.  Step Into Liquid is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, Hulu and Xbox Video.  Riding Giants is available streaming on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, Google Play and Xbox Video.

DVD/Stream of the Week: hang ten this summer!

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Let’s go surfin’ now

Everybody’s learning how

Come on and safari with me

It’s a great time for the two most awesome and gnarly surfing movies, the documentaries Step Into Liquid and Riding Giants.

Step Into Liquid (2003): We see the world’s best pro surfers in the most extreme locations. We also see devoted amateurs in the tiny ripples of Lake Michigan and surfing evangelists teaching Irish school children. The cinematography is remarkable – critic Elvis Mitchell called the film “insanely gorgeous”. The filmmaker is Dana Brown, son of Bruce Brown, who made The Endless Summer (1966) and The Endless Summer II (1994).

 

Riding Giants (2004): This film focuses on the obsessive search for the best wave by some of the greatest surfers in history. We see “the biggest wave ever ridden” and then a monster that could be bigger. The movie traces the discovery of the Half Moon Bay surf spot Mavericks. And more and more, all wonderfully shot.

The filmmaker is Stacy Peralta, a surfer and one the pioneers of modern skateboarding (and a founder of the Powell Peralta skateboard product company). Peralta also made Dogtown and Z-boys (2001), the great documentary about the roots of skateboarding, and wrote the 2005 Lords of Dogtown.

Tim’s Vermeer: 5 minutes of wow and 75 minutes of boring

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The documentary Tim’s Vermeer tells the story of Tim, an accomplished technologist with plenty of money and time on his hands, who comes across the theory that the 17th century Dutch master Johannes Vermeer used optical devices to paint.  He embarks upon an experiment to prove this theory plausible. He invents an optical device, grinds his own paints, recreates Vermeer’s studio and spends four months trying to copy Vermeer’s The Music Lesson.  Tim, it turns out, is a buddy of the magicians Penn and Teller, so the whole thing has become a film (produced and narrated by Penn and directed – inartfully – by Teller).

There’s one captivating moment in Tim’s Vermeer, when Tim – who is NOT a painter – tries out his Rube Goldberg mirrors with his first ever oil painting.  Tim takes a photo of his father-in-law as a young man and completes an astonishingly perfect copy in oils.

Apart from this moment, Tim’s Vermeer is a yawner.   Although only 80 minutes long, the four months of painting seems like four years.  The film’s content could have been stretched into a 30-minute cable show.  Several critics have been unable to resist pointing out that watching Tim’s Vermeer is, in parts, LITERALLY watching paint dry.

The movie makes one intriguing point:  the idea that art and technology are separate is a modern one.  Now people go to school to learn art OR tech – which wasn’t the case in Vermeer’s time and may not need be today.   It’s interesting to me that, in Tim’s Vermeer, artists were comfortable with the idea that the old masters used technology, but art historians were not.  It didn’t occur to the artists that the use of technology would diminish Vermeer’s artistic genius, but the art historians felt the need to be defensive of Vermeer.  Hmmm.

Tim’s Vermeer is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

SPOILER ALERT:  Tim does paint a reasonable facsimile of The Music Lesson, but it has a paint-by-the-numbers feel and doesn’t have the mesmerizing quality of a real Vermeer.