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Us in 48 Words
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Disclaimer: This film has many disturbing images. I mean, really horrifying.
Don’t sit back and relax, don’tmake yourself some popcorn, and don’t get ready to enjoy this movie. The Cove is an Academy-Award-winning documentary (best documentary) by Rick O’Barry that exposes a brutal dolphin slaughter in a small cove in the town of Taigi, Japan, where over 23,000 dolphins and porpoises are killed every year. It is an hour and a half that you will not enjoy, but it is one of the most moving and important films I have ever seen.
Rick O’Barry is the former capturer and trainer of the five bottlenose dolphins used in the TV show “Flipper”. Shortly after the show ended, one of them swam into him arms and stopped breathing. Since dolphins are “active breathers” it was clear to O’Barry that this dolphin had committed suicide. The next day he was arrested for freeing a captive dolphin and has been continuing that fight ever since.
The first hour of this film is more like an action-adventure-suspense movie than a documentary. Most of it is spent showing the lengths the crew had to go and the dangers they faced just to get the incriminating footage of the cove. The team of divers, activists, techies, and ex-military men face long imprisonment and even death when they cross the boundary to the cove to place their equipment.
In between action sequences, there is one eye-opening revelation about the dolphin industry after another, from the extremely toxic levels of mercury in the meat (which was put in Japanese school lunches) to the effect closed captivity has on dolphin sonar (like a human living in a house of mirrors) resulting in such extreme ulcers that they are fed a bottle of acid reducers every day. But all of this is just a mild preamble.
They do such an extensive job setting it up that I felt nervous when they finally got the footage of what happens in the cove. Sort of like when your friend tells you over and over how great the pizza is at a particular restaurant, but when you finally eat it, it’s only “OK”. Not the case here. Not even close. Nothing can prepare you for what you see next. Hundreds of dolphins every day, stabbed and then left to bleed to death. The cove in no way even resembles water; it is deep red with blood. It is difficult to watch, which is why it is so important.
I realize that this is less of a movie review and more of a call to action, but please give it a watch. It is available on iTunes, Amazon, and DVD. If you really don’t have the stomach, and I don’t blame you, you can still take action. Visit TheCoveMovie.com, text “dolphin” to 44144 to join a subscriber list and get involved, or just make a simple donation.
It’s a strange feeling to be glad you watched something that you enjoyed so little.
Wal-Mart destroys. That’s the message at the heart of the documentary Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price. It’s rather simple. Wal-Mart destroys. That’s what it’s designed to do, and boy, it does it well. Wal-Mart is our Golem. Wal-Mart is the Godzilla of our market-driven creation, eating Tokyo after Tokyo after Tokyo. Only Wal-Mart ain’t no myth, and it ain’t no movie.
But this flick about Wal-Mart makes a new and well-defended argument against the behemoth. What is this larger claim? Wal-Mart is a form of what could be described as, in the film’s words, contemporary “plantation capitalism.” How so? Wal-Mart is all about profit at the expense of all parts of every kind of individual—shoppers, employees, widget-makers alike. Profit at the expense of small, long-lasting, family businesses. Profit at the expense of safety from crime (trust me: it’s in the movie, and it’s peel-your-eyelids-back messed up). Profit at the expense of the environment. Profit at the expense of drinking water. Profit at the expense of public education. For crying out loud, profit at the expense of fire departments. Profit at the expense of health and healthcare. Profit at the expense of various cultures. Profit at the expense of workers’ rights. Profit at the expense of the world economy. Profit at the expense of public funds.
At this point the movie takes a turn, and it shows how the people of Inglewood, California, when told by Wal-Mart that they could go to hell said, “Wait. No. Yougo to hell.” And then a list of city after city scrolls over the screen, each one a place that told Wal-Mart to do the same and won.
This is a movie about activism. This is a movie with a ray of hope. Since many local governments kowtow to Wal-Mart, we can’t trust elected officials to fight for us. We have to do it ourselves. We have almost no other choice. But that choice? It is simple and it is ours: we can choose to shop at Wal-Mart or we can choose not to shop at Wal-Mart. If we can start hacking away at the only thing that Wal-Mart cares about, then we can win. Only then. But then.
We can choose to put a scary parable to rest. We can choose to click off the monster picture before it ends badly for all the characters. Please take a look and choose for yourself:
(Editor’s note: Sorry about the delay. I’ll blame it on the snow. Yeah, that’s it: it was the snow’s fault!)
Margot at the Wedding is a film written and directed by, go figure, writer/director Noah Baumbach, and this is his follow-up after his Oscar-nominated flick The Squid and the Whale. Like the aforementioned flick “about” a cephalopod and a cetacean, this movie centers around families gone just a wee-bit haywire, marriages on the rocks, affairs, kids caught in the middle, and the forces driving people together and apart.
The film stars Nicole Kidman (equal parts biting, subtle, and heart-breaking) as Margot Zeller, a fiction writer, who takes her son in tow by train, boat, and car to her sister’s pad (Pauline, played by the beguiling Jennifer Jason Leigh) for a weekend. Pauline is set to marry Malcolm (Jack Black), an unemployed artist/writer/rocker, and the Zeller clan is getting together for the first time in a long time for the event. Secrets get shared and hidden, Black pulls off some laugh-out-loud hilarity in the midst of a relatively serious flick, and the tenderness that can be shared between those who love one another gets shot all to hell.
While I didn’t go all “Rah! Rah!” for The Squid and the Whale, I dug this flick because there’s hope hidden beneath the surface callousness of the players. Baumbach creates more believable characters by way of a looser script, which allows the actors to move organically through scenes. In much of his previous work (particularly the Wes Anderson directed flick, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou), the characters are so affected you feel like you’ve been left out of a story told by old Ivy-League roommates. Here, though, I buy the conflicts, I buy the back-stories, I buy the surprises, I buy the love that nearly gets expressed. (And maybe that’s the up-shot of the flick: love, at best and at worst, can only be nearly expressed).
But you don’t need to buy it. Just rent this sucker.
It’s not that I kowtow to David Fincher, but I do tend to dig his flicks: Fight Club, Panic Room and The Game, which includes my favorite not-safe-for-work piece of dialog ever (just click here… it’s the third section of quotations down). Zodiac is Fincher’s latest piece of cinematic brilliance, and this one stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., and Chloë Sevigny. The film loosely tells the story of the Zodiac killer, a serial murderer who terrified San Francisco residents during the late ’60s and early ’70s, and who mystified the authorities, intensionally and successfully.
But the movie isn’t really about the brutality of the murders (and they are brutal) or the murders themselves. And the film’s not really about who actually committed the murders (though we’re led to believe who it likely is/was). This film is really about Robert Graysmith (played with an unaffected texture by Jake Gyllenhaal), a cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle when the Zodiac killer began sending cryptic letters to the area’s newspapers. These hand-written letters include admissions to certain killings, matter-of-fact explanations of why he enjoyed killing people, demands that newspapers print some of his letters (which they do), and coded messages, most of which were never cracked.
But here’s a sampling of one of the few ciphers figured out: “I like killing people because it is so much fun. It is more fun than killing wild game in the forest, because man is the most dangerous animal of all … I will not give you my name because you will try to slow down or stop my collecting of slaves.” You get the rated-R idea.
After several years of letters received, unsolved murders, and unsuccessful leads, the police and reporters essentially give up trying to crack the case. But Graysmith can’t let go. He obsesses, quits his job, and starts tracking down leads let go years and years ago, crossing over several different police jurisdictions, interviewing cops, neighbors, surviving victims, and reporters. In the end, he writes two true-crime books, Zodiac and Zodiac Unmasked: the Identity of America’s Most Elusive Serial Killer. But this all comes with heavy prices.
And so this is a film about secrets kept and secrets we reveal, about safe and unsafe obsessions, about deaths and the ways we lead our little lives. Zodiac is a piece of gripping film-making that leaves your mouth agape and your mind wanting more.
There Will Be Blood: This is film about greed incarnate, betrayal in all its ugly forms, and violence as a corrupting and corrupted force. The flick also includes the best acting performance I’ve ever seen (Daniel Day-Lewis), and the greatest insult ever given in a movie. Ever. I won’t share it for fear of ruining it, but trust me when I say that you’ll know it when you hear it. This might be the best movie I’ve ever seen.
Into the Wild: Into the Wild is based on the book by the same name written by John Krakaur, and it’s my favorite nonfiction work ever written. The story is basically this: Christopher McCandless graduates from Emory University, and then essentially disappears without telling his family of his plans. He wander the country discovering what it means to be a human being before ultimately dying in Alaska. He has epiphanies, however, that few of us are lucky enough to have.
Michael Clayton: This flick about a lawyer/fixer (starring George Clooney in the title role) is as engaging as a legal thriller can get. The ending is a cinematic revelation.
Charlie Wilson’s War: Another work on celluloid based on true events, Charlie Wilson’s War tells the story of, go figure, Charlie Wilson, a member of Congress from Texas, who, along with the CIA, helps fund Afghanistan in it’s war again the Soviets. The closing includes a sobering reminder of the ways our failings led to the rise of the Taliban.
Zodiac: As I previously reviewed, Zodiac, yet another film based on true events, tells the story of the Zodiac killer, a serial murderer who terrified San Francisco residents during the late ’60s and early ’70s, and who mystified the authorities, intentionally and successfully. But the movie isn't really about the brutality of the murders (and they are brutal) or the murders themselves. And the film's not really about who actually committed the murders (though we're led to believe who it likely is/was). This film is really about Robert Graysmith, a cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle, who becomes obsessed with the identity of the killer.
Eastern Promises: This movie is a must-see if only for the five-minute fight scene in a steam room. I honestly don’t know how they pulled it off.
Gone Baby Gone: Ben Affleck’s directorial debut is surprisingly moving, exciting, and tight as a pair of ’80s jeans. Amy Ryan shines as a mother whose child is kidnapped, and Casey Afflect is a gumshoe who tries to unravel the mystery of the kid’s disappearance.
No Country for Old Men: The latest from the Coen brothers is like a love poem to nihilism and the pervasiveness of violence in a cultural gone horribly out of control. As such, this isn’t exactly the feel-good film of the year, but at the same time, it is masterfully crafted (there’s no soundtrack) and acted (Tommy Lee Jones and Javier Bardem excell).
Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead: This film about a jewelry heist gone horribly wrong is really a tale about family, lust, love, and trust (or rather, the destruction of those four things).
Across the Universe: This Julie Tamor experiment succeeds in taking the catalog of Beattles tunes and turning into a well-wrought film. Bono and Eddie Izzard make incredibly forgettable appearances, but the direction is intoxicating and the remainder of the cast shines with their vocal skills and their sincerity.
Some of these films are on DVD and some are still in the theaters. Take if from me: all are essential viewing for film fans, particularly if you’re obsessed with the Oscars like me.
I had every intention of writing a review for this Friday, and believe you me: I watch a lot of movies. Too many movies. I watched five (count ‘em, five) movies this week, and I saw none worthy of 700 good words. So, let me have it. What should I rent? Leave a comment, yo. Opine away.
Instead of a review, I’ll give you this homemade (not my home) music video for the gorgeous folk/rock number “Strangers” by the ever-fantastical Kinks. (The clips come from the movie Rushmore, one of the best flicks ever slapped on celluloid.)
As I mentioned this past Monday, I adore the film Into the Wild, the inspired-by-a-true-story flick Sean Penn directed and scribed based on the book by the same name. It’s a must-read, a book written with a deft hand and kind heart by Jon Krakauer. More importantly, as far as this Friday is concerned, Into the Wild is must-see. For the first time in Progressive Wednesday history (yes, we’re history makers here), I’m reviewing a piece of cinema still in the cinemas. Why? Because this is a beautiful work of art, a combination of powerful acting, an original soundtrack written and performed by Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam fame, and visuals that will leave your mouth agape.
So, Matt, what’s the story? Oh, the story. The story is about Christopher McCandless. In 1992, after graduating with honors from Emory University, Chris dropped off the face of the earth to those who knew him. He donated his savings to Oxfam, burned his cash on-hand, cut up his driver’s license, and abandoned his car. He hoofed, hiked, kayaked, and hopped trains all over the country for two solid years. He worked when he needed some money for equipment or meager amounts of food and drink, but he led a tramping life, one of solitude and revelation ending in Alaska. I’m going to give something away: Chris dies. The end isn’t what matters: the why and how of the way he viewed life matter.
This is a story about new friendships, enthusiasm for solitude, male identity, and a consumer culture gone haywire. This is about a world that drives some to drink, others to hit the open road. This is a film about the only two things meaningful: how we live and how we die. This movie makes you want to get off your ass and do something, anything, before the final period is typed and our stories come to close.
So do something for me: watch this film. And then? And then do something you’ve always wanted to do: if only for a few moments, be free.
Wal-Mart destroys. That’s the message at the heart of the documentary 
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