Gateway Cinephiles

Review: Standard Operating Procedure

2008
Director: Errol Morris
Viewed: May 29, 2008
Format: Theatrical Print

Most Americans who follow current events have seen the pictures. We think we know what they represent. We think we have a handle on the story that they tell. During 2003, prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were sexually humiliated and molested, terrorized with dogs, brutalized, tortured, and murdered. By Americans. The abusers were military police, military intelligence, private contractors, and CIA interrogators. Errol Morris’ new film, Standard Operating Procedure, opens the photo album on Abu Ghraib and initiates an inquiry both indebted to and a world apart from the fleeting sensationalism of the mainstream media’s coverage. The film’s taste for the dramatic might provoke accusations that Morris is aiming for cheap agitprop. Nothing could be further from the truth. SOP is a spellbinding film about a grave and inflammatory topic, a vital rumination that upends one stone after another and then holds up a microphone to the emerging grubs. Morris’ refusal to utilize the Abu Ghraib scandal as a political cudgel might be noble or disgraceful, depending on your outlook, but with SOP, he has unquestionably crafted a haunting work that digs deep and cuts deeper.

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Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

2008
Director: Steven Spielberg
Viewed: May 26, 2008
Format: Theatrical Print

Let’s get the Bad News out of the way first: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is the weakest chapter to date in the now-grizzled archeologist’s adventures. To put that statement into context, consider that I have stubborn admiration and affection for the series’ previous low point, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Given the mark the original trilogy left on my young mind, and given that it’s been so long since Harrison Ford last took up the fedora and bullwhip, I’m finding it somewhat difficult to put the new film into the proper perspective. What I can’t deny is that there’s a sense of melancholic disappointment to Kingdom, a sharp slap of reality that fades to a lingering sting. It’s like running into a an old schoolmate after nearly twenty years apart, and finding that the former star athlete and class president is now a termite inspector living in a trailer with five kids. Kingdom is a fine adventure film, and it superbly accomplishes its tricky task of updating the series for a new age. Yet there’s something a little shocking and unwelcome about unearthing a new Indy film at long last, only to discover that, in many ways, it’s just another action-film-as-amusement-park-ride in a bloated summer season.

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Film Diary: Juno

2007
Director: Jason Reitman
Viewed: May 27, 2008
Format: DVD - 20th Century Fox (2008)

“I am a Kraken from the sea!” I defy the backlash, and I stand by my original review. I’ll be damned if Juno doesn’t actually improve on a second viewing. The first fifteen minutes are definitely the weakest, but I’m still amazed at how well the film’s bumper crop of seductive performances and Reitman’s unseen, under-appreciated hand hold up six months later. (Dare I invoke the recently late Sydney Pollack’s precise, poignant comedic direction in Tootsie? I dare.)

Film Diary: Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Crystal Skull

2008
Director: Steven Spielberg
Viewed:  May 23, 2008
Format:  Theatrical Print

Please Mr. Spielberg and Mr. Lucas, stop making movies.  The script was weak, directing was weak, acting was flat, special effects were cheesy, action sequences were way, way, way over the top, and the whole thing just felt canned and formulaic.  If Temple of Doom was the weak link up until now, Crystal Skull falls somewhere between it and The Scorpion King.  Maybe a little closer to Scorpion King.

Film Diary: Rock the Bells

2006
Directors: Denis Hennelly and Casey Suchan
Viewed: May 26, 2008
Format: DVD - Warner Brothers (2007)

Film Diary: Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea

2004
Directors: Chris Metzler and Jeff Springer
Viewed: May 25, 2008
Format: DVD - New Video Group (2007)

Review: Speed Racer

2008
Director: Andy and Larry Wachowski
Viewed: May 21, 2008
Format: IMAX Theatrical Print

[Full Disclosure: Although its trailers had intrigued me, the overall critical drubbing that Speed Racer has received (35% on Rotten Tomatoes, 37 on Metacritic) dissuaded me from seeing the film in its first week. However, a beautifully written and overwhelmingly positive review by Dennis Cozzalio re-piqued my interest, prompting me to catch Speed Racer at a late IMAX showing. In most cases, I avoid reading reviews for films I know I’m going to see, lest the reviewer’s impressions creep into my own. I violated this rule of thumb for Speed Racer, and I will acknowledge up front that Dennis’ work likely lent a positive bias to my review, in that he helped me see the virtues of this apparent flop.]

Right out of the gate, let me lay out some facts about Speed Racer: 1) It is absolutely batshit crazy. By this I mean that it refuses to play by the rules and exhibits abnormal, even alarming, behavior. 2) It is not, despite initial appearances, an empty vessel of day-glo gloss and digital mayhem. 3) It is an ideal family film for parents to share with older children and preteens. 4) It is a work of ambitious filmmaking, and in the final analysis, it succeeds more often that it stumbles. 5) Did I mention that it’s CRAZY?

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Review: Young@Heart

2007
Director: Stephen Walker
Viewed: May 19, 2008
Format: Theatrical Print

If someone had summarized the premise of Young@Heart to me a few weeks ago, it would have raised my condescension hackles to critical levels. “This is a documentary film about a community chorus that performs rock, pop, R&B, and soul songs. Oh, and all the performers are over 70 years old. Funny, huh?” Fortunately, Young@Heart is not the terrible documentary it should have been. In fact, I’ll go further than merely admitting and retracting my suspicions, however well-founded. Young@Heart is a damn good film. There’s nothing especially artful to it, and it probably would have worked just as well on cable television as on the big screen. Yet it pulls off a tricky storytelling feat: It treats a subject matter strewn with perils in exactly the right way, juggling an array of reflective themes about age, death, art, performance, pop culture, and human worth. It’s a triumph of the first principles of documentary filmmaking: take an interesting topic, construct a narrative, keep things moving, and make it sing.

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Film Diary: King Corn

2007
Director: Aaron Woolf
Viewed: May 20, 2008
Format: DVD - Docurama (2008)

Film Diary: Nanking

2007
Director: Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman
Viewed: May 19, 2008
Format: DVD - Velocity / Thinkfilm (2008)