<dl dt_class="field"> Rampart (2011) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1640548/">7/10</a> <div>Woody Harrelson oozes menace as a cop in the Rampart department in Los Angeles. This department is embroiled in, as department lawyer Sigourney Weaver calls it, <iq>a shitstorm</iq>. Harrison smokes where he's not supposed to (which is pretty much everywhere in LA), goes out drinking seemingly every weeknight and hooks up on a work night---but only after being turned down by both sisters he lives with, with whom he's had a kid each. To top it all off, he listens to/is steeped in right-wing talk radio day and night. There was decent writing, especially in the exchanges between Harrelson and Steve Buscemi (as the DA). For example, Harrelson at one point ripostes <iq>The law must occasionally accommodate the extraordinary vicissitudes of justice---Judge D.T. Eagleton, 1946</iq>. It's nicely delivered and very convincing but for two problems: (1) he's using it to defend his right as a cop to beat civilians nearly to death and (2) he'd already previously explained to a rookie that he liked to make up convincing-sounding court cases to make get his opponents on the back foot. In a meeting with lawyers, he explains that he wants to stay on the force <iq>[b]ecause I'm a dutiful hard-charging motherfucker and I want to explicate the LAPD's somewhat hyperbolized [sic] misdeeds with true panache regardless of my alleged transgressions.</iq> In a deposition, he says that his history is <iq>not germane to the issue</iq> and that he'd like his case to be examined <iq>ad-hoc [because] empirical knowledge often distorts the content of the act under scrutiny</iq>. This is an adorable double standard because history and prior behavior are often used by the police and justice in order to establish patterns. His only apparent redeeming quality is that he is, apparently, very good in bed. Oh, and as we see further on in the film, he's very devoted to his family, in his own way. By the time we learn that, though, he's spiraling out of control in a drug and insomnia-induced haze. Harrelson does a really good job, all red-faced and veiny and wiry and frenetic and utterly manic.</div> World War Z (2013) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816711/">7/10</a> <div>Brad Pitt stars in a zombie movie. It starts off showing him with his family, all of whom I found to be highly annoying, but I was looking forward to their demise. I'd just read an interview with Brad Pitt where he described his eight-person nuclear family as his be-all, end-all. But this can't be how his family behaves. The kids are basically spoiled basket cases, who are already having trouble dealing with a traffic jam, to say nothing of a zombie invasion. And these are the fast, head-slamming, face-eating kind of zombies, no slow shufflers these. Kind of like the sufferers of the rage virus in the 28 days/28 weeks later films. The Mom turns out to be halfway decent, actually, but why do they always write these roles so <i>selfishly</i>? Is that really how people would react? I know billions have died and the whole world is going to hell but, dammit, my kids are special. Your kids aren't special. They're basket cases. Evolution will eat them alive. Or zombies will. Anyway. The wall scene? Super-awesome. The sheer tenacity of the zombies is really well-depicted. They're quite fast, but still relatively well-filmed. And the waves of zombies pouring through the streets like water...simply amazing. Even the close-up work was really convincing. I have to say it was really well-done. Best zombie movie I've seen, I think. And the whole part about him getting out everywhere in the nick of time? Usually annoying, but here somehow believably well-done. Recommended.</div> Hesher (2010) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1403177/">9/10</a> <div>Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as the pure personification of the id called Hesher, a Metallica-loving, seemingly ageless and timeless hobo who moves in with a grandmother, her son and his son. The son, TJ, first sees Hesher at his school but I don't think he actually goes to school. Natalie Portman plays a poor, young cashier at the local grocery store, trying desperately to make ends meet in a hopeless life. Hesher is Chaos but is also the voice of reason. He tells extremely crude life stories that seem to be metaphors but which are not always intended as such. The family had just lost its mother in a tragic traffic accident and the father lies about listlessly the whole day. Hesher's chaos provokes them into action, into feeling something again and, after they've had their breakthrough, he's gone. His job is done. Highly recommended, surprisingly enough. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is extremely versatile. Everyone is actually quite good, including Portman's turn as a sad-sack. Very down-to-Earth depiction of lives of quiet desperation.</div> Sleep Dealer (2008) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0804529/">7/10</a> <div>A Spanish-language movie about a near-future where drones attack Mexico. And Mexicans? They become sleep-dealers, node-workers who are attached to the grid in virtual reality, working virtually for Americans without inflicting the nastiness of their actual physical presence on them. The movie follows the life of a young man named Memo whose father was killed by a drone piloted remotely by a Mexican-American soldier living in the States. Memo has to move from his village and becomes a node worker himself, working on high-rises in America as a yellow construction robot. He meets Luz, who sells memories on the TruNode network. The pilot who killed Memo's father finds the memories she sells of Memo and discovers that his life of killing terrorists is a lie. The same network that traps and controls them ends up bringing them together to strike a blow against tyranny. It's not a bad little flick, actually, but kinda hard to recommend.</div> Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures (2001) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278736/">8/10</a> A wonderful documentary about the work of Stanley Kubrick. This is not a documentary about his life; it's about his work. His life is only tangentially covered, but his career is covered in detail, proceeding film by film until his death in 1999, shortly after <i>Eyes Wide Shut</i> was released. An absolute <i>must</i> for fans of Kubrick or his films. Highly recommended. You can watch it on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR-loS9MHww">YouTube</a>, but it's low quality. Looper (2012) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1276104/">7/10</a> Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis star in this movie about hit-men and time travel. Time travel is integrated in a relatively sensible way---it's only used by criminals in the future because it was made illegal as soon as it was discovered. Gordon-Levitt plays a hit-man who kills people in the past; Willis is his 30-years--older counterpart. Emily Blunt, Jeff Daniels and Paul dano all play their parts well. The cyclical time-loop and inevitability reminded me a bit of that other Bruce Willis film, <i>The Twelve Monkeys</i>. Gordon-Levitt's makeup is very subtle and makes him nearly unrecognizable. Strangely enough, the movie takes time travel so in stride that it ends up being about telekinetics instead. A bit slow at times, but it has an interesting plot with a lovely ending. Recommended. Checkpoint: Everyday Life in Palestine (2003) --- 7/10 <div>This is a documentary composed almost entirely of footage of interactions between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians that want to cross one of the myriad checkpoints that hem in and cut up their territories. It's mostly in Hebrew and partially in Arabic and English. The casual cruelty and disdain of the soldiers is to be expected, but still sobering. They empty entire schoolbuses; they try to force tiny, sick children to explain to them why they should be able to cross to see a doctor. They wield their power with utter disregard for the humanity of the Palestinians. People wait in the sun for hours, for days; they wait in the snow and the rain. Checkpoints are closed at a whim, people are told to turn back and "go home" when it is clear that their homes are on the other side of the checkpoint. It's ten years later and things have only gotten worse. So stop calling <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/dec/14/pink-floyd-frontman-fury-israel-nazis">Roger Waters an anti-semite for comparing the Israeli policies to those of the Nazis</a>; instead, watch this <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4cCYd56c6o">documentary</a> and see that he may be somewhat hyperbolic, but that the main thrust of Israeli policy is the slow eradication of people that they don't consider to be equally human (for <i>Lebensram</i>, naturally). There are instances where they let people through, but usually only after harassing them---armed and in full military uniform. I wonder whether the stop-and-frisk victims in New York City would recognize the feeling? You may think some of this reaction to be hyperbole, but consider how it would be to feel like this all the time, to constantly be subjected to questioning by armed soldiers, to stand in line, wasting your entire day at the whim of teenagers of the ruling class, while your children bawl and suffer. The slightly older children simply stare...and absorb a lesson of hate that will probably guide their lives. Watch at least until you see the little old man who has to beg to be able to cross to see his wife...because it's Christmas Eve.</div> Human Resources (2011) --- 8/10 <div>A documentary about the history of Behaviorism, Taylorism and social engineering in America and around the world. It examines the capitalist, class-based influences and driving forces behind its use in industry as well as the effects on labor relations and the workforce. This naturally leads to the employment of these techniques in the indoctrination of the up and coming generations---in schools and universities. With the application of these techniques from the earliest age, the troublemakers of the early 20th-century could largely be eradicated because the newest generations had all been trained to not even raise the question of how they would live. They accepted the tenets given to them. Capitalism as we know it is the unquestioned base on which any human society must be built. As you can imagine, Noam Chomsky makes an appearance at about this point. The next step is an examination of violence in modern, Western societies with an analysis of serial killers and state violence as well as militarism. The study of behaviorism continues with a history of the use of mind-altering chemicals in experiments on animals and then members of the military and then the underclass. Mixed in is the recruitment of the worst of the worst from Nazi Germany to allow them to continue their research, but for the US cause. This history leads uninterrupted to the modern day, where all forms of physical and psychological torture are accepted as standard practice. This is not an aberration driven by a uniquely intense fear of terrorism but an easily predicted next logical step in a progression almost a century long. You can watch the video yourself on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rnJEdDNDsI">YouTube</a>.</div> Oblivion (2013) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1483013/">8/10</a> <div>Tom Cruise stars in this science-fiction movie about an Earth that's been destroyed by a marauding alien race. The future finds humanity on orbital colonies with only a few people on the surface, taking care of the automated facilities and energy sources that are the only remnants of civilization on the surface. The effects are breathtaking, the interiors clean, almost antiseptic and architecturally beautiful. It's a lovely-looking film but it feel a bit tech-heavy at first, almost as if the situations are being constructed just to show off cool ideas for gadgets that they had. There's no explanation given as to why the video feeds are so terrible, nor is it explained how Cruise manages to find a drone buried underground simply by driving around...on the entire Earth. I'm 3/4 of the way through and I have no idea who's a hologram, who's an AI, whether there really are aliens, whether there are Scav bandits, whether the Earth is gone...it's quite an interesting set of ideas so far. Jack (Cruise) thinks he has had his memory wiped, but old thoughts and dreams bleed through. His partner, Victoria, seems very robotic, although much more real than "Sally" who communicates (supposedly) from orbit. Have his memories been wiped? If so, by whom? And for what purpose? Why are the drones killing humans? Is Jack playing for the right team? The lie of Titan reminds me a bit of <i>Moon</i> starring Sam Rockwell. I almost suspect an out-of-control AI (like H.A.L.) carrying out its duties long past the usefulness of its mission has expired. Spoiler alert: I bet there's more than one of him. That would explain why shooting him doesn't seem to cause much damage; he's a robot. And the "radiation zones" are there to keep him from ever meeting himself. It explains why they kept focusing on his number rather than his name. Still not sure how the Scavs and Julia fit into all this, though. I think she's part of a failed attempt to get to Titan and the Scavs are all that's left of humanity---because they lost to the alien race. What would be kind of cool is if the whole movie was just one possible simulation of how to finally beat the alien overlords that nearly destroyed the Earth (if it's even destroyed). That is, the simulation is run again and again until Jack finally succeeds in sending the nuke into orbit, back to "Tet". There are shades of the second and third Matrix movies here, I think (despite their never having been made). I'm starting to doubt that Julia is real, either. The effects are quite amazing, very convincing. The drones flying around in enclosed spaces reminds of that old video game Descent. And the encounter with Tet was reminiscent of several other films: Star Trek I, ID4. The little drones look like they came right out of Portal II. It's a mix of stuff we've seen before, but very nicely done. Recommended.</div> Gift -- Jane's Addiction (1993) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107011/">4/10</a> A film about Perry Farrell and Casey Niccoli, about their lives at the center of the heroin-fueled haze that was Jane's Addiction. There's musical footage and a storyline that involves Perry finding his wife at home, dead of an overdose. The scenes are interleaved non-chronologically (of course) and there's a long scene where they visit a doctor to get their scrips, which is comically long. Not recommended. Nothing like the Holidays (2008) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1151915/">6/10</a> Lots of good actors give a bit of life to this formulaic movie about coming home for Christmas. Alfred Molina, John Leguiziamo, Elizabeth Peña, Luis Guzmán and Debra Messing were the ones I recognized and they were decent as a hot-blooded Puerto Rican family from Chicago. Garden State (2004) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0333766/">7/10</a> Zach Braff's oeuvre about his homecoming to New Jersey. He spends the movie mourning the loss of his mother and getting reacquainted with his brother and some of his childhood friends. He also meets and woos---or is wooed by---Natalie Portman. It gets pretty good and strange when they follow his brother Mark on a quest to a dry-docked wooden boat by an abandoned quarry. It's a bit maudlin and millenial-twee but that's not surprising considering it was written by Braff. Still and all, the performances buoyed the more boring parts. Limitless (2011) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1219289/">7/10</a> Bradley Cooper stars as a down-on-his-luck writer who happens upon a stash of experimental pills that grant you clarity of thought, enhancing your perceptions and boosting your thinking speed and apprehension immensely. They're smart-pills. He's hooked, bangs out his book in a matter of days and moves on to bigger and better things. The story has to build artificial tension, though, so this ridiculously intelligent guy being ends up making some pretty rookie mistakes (at least for the first 90% of the movie). He doesn't try to lock down his supply or curb his addiction, he forgets to pay back a very dangerous loan shark and so on. Cooper is excellent, though, and De Niro isn't as bad as he has been in other recent stuff. A mostly fun ride with a strong, non-Hollywood ending (spoiler alert: he doesn't get his comeuppance for having messed with drugs or God's plan, which I liked). Recommended. Pacific Rim (2013) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1663662/">9/10</a> <div>A big summer action movie about a monster invasion from a multidimensional rift that opens at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The gigantic, nearly city-sized monsters---called Kaiju---attack coastal cities and, after defeating a few with conventional weaponry but with terrible losses, mankind bands together to build Kaiju--Jägers, gigantic robots that take out the monsters. The tech is lovingly rendered, mostly non-digital and highly visceral---the battles are wonderful. Still, I find myself wondering where they get all the metal for those robots, or for the gigantic wall---and where all the energy comes from. Once you get past the unbelievable opulence of the bases, you can just fall in love with a gigantic robot-launching base called "The Shatterdome". It's pretty sweet. The science guys are fantastic---the perfect role for Charlie Day. And his foil, the mysterious Kaiju parts-dealer is played by Ron Perlman, being, well, Ron Perlman. The other fighter-characters are more formulaic, but still decent. And they all seem to be doing their own fight scenes---and that without cables or obvious CGI. There's a natural feel/look/speed to it that's almost nostalgic. And the monsters, the Kaiju! So naturally, casually destructive, the way they stroll throw a city like a child kicking his way throw a pile of leaves. The visualization of gigantic robot versus gigantic monster is unbelievably good---unlike in the Transformers films, you can actually see what's going on, you can feel the sheer weight and inertia of them. I can't even imagine what this was like in the theater. I just noticed that it was directed by Guillermo del Toro, who also brought us Pan's Labyrinth and the Hellboy movies. No wonder it's so good. Highly recommended. </div> The Central Park Five (2013) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2380247/">8/10</a> <div>A PBS documentary directed by Ken Burns about the five young men and boys arrested, charged and sentenced for the brutal rape of a woman jogging in Central Park in 1989. They were innocent. Their confessions were coerced from them by a cynical and racist police force. They all served at least seven years in prison before being released on parole; the longest served over thirteen years. The takeaway: never talk to police. Not a word. The media is horrible and only looking out for their own story. They don't care about facts. The police don't care about facts. The DA doesn't care about facts. The jury doesn't care about facts either. Contradictory evidence can always be ignored. When the actual assailant eventually confesses, the charges are overturned by the prosecuting DA who now magically acknowledges the shocking inconsistencies in the case. The magic ingredient is that the DA just does what is best for his career at the time. The other attorneys and the press circled the wagons and continued to blame the young men. As one interviewee says, <iq>the coverage in 2002 was worse than in 1989.</iq> He went on to sum up the situation, <bq>Whatever you do in life, you make mistakes and you either face your mistakes or you don't. I don't think the press faced their mistakes. I don't think the police department faced the truth of what had happened. Because the truth of what had happened is almost unbearable: by prosecuting the wrong people in the Central Park Jogger case, Matteas Reyes [the actual assailant] continued to hurt, maim and kill. And they could have had him, but they got stuck with the mistake. And they're still invested in that mistake.</bq> To be clear: these boys were not angels. But they were not guilty of the crime with which they were accused. While they turned out to have been innocent of the rape, one of the pieces of evidence that was ignored was their alibis, which places them elsewhere in the park---beating up other people. It's a sobering documentary and well worth watching, if a bit slow---it is, after all, a Ken Burns film.</div> Ghost in the Shell (1995) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113568/">9/10</a> <div>A Japanese Anime film about what it means to be conscious in an increasingly virtualized world. The story follows a pair of cyborg cops who were originally purely human but have been enhanced considerably. They are hunting the Puppet Master, who controls people's "ghosts"---their virtual personae---to make them do his bidding. It's extremely well-written, directed and drawn and includes intriguing ideas about the self, memories, consciousness and culpability in a world that is a blend of what is so-called reality and virtuality. When our senses are so fallible and our recording machinery---memories---so sketchy, what does it mean to have fake memories? What does it mean to say that something is conscious and alive? It's classic science-fiction and philosophy rolled into an animated film about possibly living cyborgs, with long dialogue sequences to move the story along. The "ghost" in the title refers to consciousness and "shell" refers to physical bodies, like those produced in factories. And, when you're half-machine, who do you trust to poke around in your cyber-mind to make adjustments and do maintenance? And what does it mean to be conscious, to be alive? The highly-optimized inspector Kusanagi considers the following: <bq>Maybe all all full-replacement cyborgs like me start wondering like this. That perhaps the real me died a long time ago and I'm a replicant made with a cyborg body and computer brain. Or mayybe there never was a real "me" to begin with. [...] There's no person who's ever seen their own brain. I believe I exist based only on what my environment tells me. [...] And what if a computer brain could generate a ghost...and harbor a soul? On what basis then do I believe in myself?</bq> And the Puppet Master, who is purely a program, also soliloquizes: <bq>By that argument, I submit the DNA you carry is nothing more than a self-preserving program itself. Life is like a node which is born within the flow of information. As a species of life that carries DNA as its memory system, man gains his individuality from the memories he carries. While memories may as well be the same as fantasy, it is by these memories that mankind exists. When computers made it possible to externalize memory, you should have considered all the implications that held.</bq> The movies includes long sequences that lovingly depict this future world, accompanied only by a soundtrack. Stylistically, it's worlds away from what most would consider an animated film. This one looks and feels much more like <i>Blade Runner</i> and is every bit as beautiful and intriguing. CGI would have ruined it, I think. The level of detail and realism the artists achieved is breathtaking. Highly recommended. </div> The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0859163/">6/10</a> A promising cast does its best to breathe life into a somewhat rough script. Brendan Frasier is still a better Indiana Jones than Harrison Ford has been for at least two movies now, so that's good. Maria Bello is a good, if not preferable, replacement for Rachel Weisz. Michelle Yeoh has only a small part and Jet Li is a terra-cotta mummy with a lot of CGI makeup and no real moves, which is unfortunate. It's decent fun, but hard to recommend unless it just happens to be on (guess how I happened to watch it?). The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2013) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0790628/">7/10</a> Steve Carell plays against type as an arrogant ass of a magician who doesn't appreciate his partner of several decades, played by Steve Buscemi. Olivia Wilde plays the assistant who's worshiped them for a decade but is only just realizing that Anton is the brains and idea-man whereas Wonderstone is just a pompous ass. Jim Carrey is almost unrecognizable as street magician Steve Gray---clearly based on Chris Angel, at least in part. Olivia Wilde is actually quite endearing in this role and seems to be growing as an actress. Jim Carrey is quite good. Alan Arkin as Rance Holloway is even better. The explication of their final trick during the credits is also quite good. Elysium (2013) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1535108/">5/10</a> <div>The first thing that I don't understand is how "all the rich people" can just move to orbit without their literal <i>armies</i> of servants and staff that they need in order to maintain their lifestyles. Do they just use robots for everything? And if they have unlimited medical care, why do they have to suppress all the people? Why keep them in a state of agitation and near-revolt for no reason? Apparently, they do use robots for everything. The police are robots. The parole officers are robots. Matt Damon makes robots in the factory where he's told he's lucky to have a job. I think that there are a lot of people in America who would watch the opening scenes of this movie and wonder why they claim that it's happening 140 years in the future---because the life depicted is no different from the one that they have right now. But back to plot holes: why would you fire missiles from Earth, which have to pull out of the gravity well (further which they could not, given their size), when you have an entire ring-world already floating in orbit? And why would you house missiles capable of striking targets in orbit on a planet filled to the brim with enemies? On the other hand, Elysium is nicely rendered. With the palm trees and the people speaking French, it called to mind Vietnam when it was still a French colony (this was possibly not serendipitous). Watching Jodie Foster chewing her way through the scenery, pretending to be Jack Nicholson from <i>A Few Good Men</i> (or a member of the Bush or Obama administrations, for that matter), was utterly painful, though. No imagination whatsoever. Jodie Foster remains utterly awful for the whole movie. Seriously, they should take away her Oscar just for inflicting that performance on us. There was seriously no imagination in other parts as well. Apparently, 140 years from now, you still write assembler code to reprogram the operating system of the torus. How much would it have cost for a programmer consult on this film? And the code is scrambled when transferred, but somehow the idiot soldiers chasing Damon got an unencrypted stream? And Max has severe cancer, has been nearly gutted by a knife and hasn't eaten or had his medication and he's still just cruising along? This script is needlessly bad. Even when they do something cool like Spider letting Max plug himself in (instead of forcing him to do it), they obviate it with something stupid like "Earth population: ILLEGAL" showed on screen. Spider backspaces through ILLEGAL and writes in LEGAL. Problem solved. Not recommended. </div> Rollerball (1975) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073631/">6/10</a> <div>The original with James Caan was less overtly violent than I remember it being when I watched it as a kid. It stuck with me, especially Moonpie's coma. Weirdly, or perhaps humanly, I remembered only how the Japanese team had mercilessly pounded on his unhelmeted head, putting him in a coma. I hadn't remembered the two or three or four Japanese that he killed or severely injured before that. With its sweeping classical soundtrack, it seems to be paying homage to Kubrick, but it's not a particularly exciting plot. The movie follows the Houston team on its way to the championship. There is a background plot thread about the "Executives" and the "Corporate Wars" which led to them running everything without nation-states. In that way, it is echoed by Elysium. They show three matches and the action is quite well-filmed and cut, especially for a nearly 40-year--old movie. There's a scene right at the end, though, where it's clear that they're not really in NY as they claim to be. If they were, then someone would have screamed "do it, you f&*#ing pussy!". But there was only silence. Slapshot was way better.</div> The Animatrix (2003) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0328832/">9/10</a> A series of nine short animated films set in the world of the Matrix. They are lovingly hand-animated (or made to appear so with CGI)---except for the first one, which also looks nice but is clearly CGI. The stories, animation style and direction are all interesting and top-notch. Highly recommended. Old School (2003) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0302886/">8/10</a> The classic; watched on Christmas Eve with friends who knew it almost line for line. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120669/">9/10</a> Johnny Depp plays Hunter S. Thompson and Benicio del Toro plays his attorney as they make their way to and through Las Vegas, ingesting unbelievably copious quantities of drugs and wreaking ludicrous amounts of damage to hotel rooms (spoiler alert: there is lots of water). Obviously and lovingly directed by Terry Gilliam, it's a masterpiece of addled hallucination. Watched on Christmas Eve with friends and copious amounts of gin. EuroTrip (2004) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0356150/">8/10</a> Another classic, reviewed a few years before. It's definitely quite funny, especially when you just missed your last train on Christmas Eve and are looking for distraction until the morning. Idiocracy (2006) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/">8/10</a> We started the evening with Luke Wilson in <i>Old School</i> and end on him as well. Still a great, eminently quotable movie. Didn't catch the end because I had to catch the 05:30 morning train. 13 Assassins (2010) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1436045/">8/10</a> A Japanese movie about an out-of-control samurai who tears a swath through innocent families and servants. He's a true sociopath and must be stopped. His legendary tortures are described and detailed at the head of the film. The first hour is careful---and some might say tedious---setup for the second. The second half is an uninterrupted hour of meticulously choreographed swordplay as the 13 assassins take on over 200 opponents that they've trapped in a wooden village. They do start their ambush with arrows, but then mysteriously stop using them---probably because it's not honorable. It's quite well-done and touches on all of the familiar themes of honor, pride, duty of the Samurai way. I warmed to it considerably and was almost cheering at the end. Curiously, there were no morally gray characters---each was either good or evil, but not a little of both. Fuel (2008) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1294164/">4/10</a> A documentary about the oil industry that turns into a bio-fuel sales pitch. It's not bad, but there is some seriously misleading information in there. <iq>Fossil fuels are really inefficient: for every 1 unit of energy you put in, you only get .8 units out.</iq> Wait, what? Isn't that the best we've got so far? Only 20% loss during processing? There is no other energy source right now that's even close---excepting perhaps solar and that only more recently. The film peters out into a celebrity endorsements of alternative energy along with more non-scientific estimates. Not really recommended. Herb & Dorothy (2008) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1227929/">7/10</a> A documentary about Herb and Dorothy Vogel, modern-art collectors living in a tiny New York City apartment. I listened to it while working on a jigsaw puzzle. When you actually look at the artwork to which they utterly dedicated their lives, you kind of start to wonder why they did it. It's best to just follow along on the story of people who dedicated their lives to art, without a thought for personal gain. It's a nice little documentary about mostly nice people. Jason Becker -- Not Dead Yet (2012) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2120779/">7/10</a> A documentary about Jason Becker, a musical prodigy whose guitar-playing career was cut short at 20 by ALS. He has persevered and survives two decades later, still composing music with the help of his family, friends and eye-motion technology. It's an at the same time sad and uplifting story and a surprisingly well-done documentary. Superpower (2008) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1311717/">6/10</a> A thorough examination of the US role in world politics, with an emphasis on events since 9/11. It starts off stronger than it ends and this material is better covered elsewhere. Although it was refreshing to see Noam Chomsky, Bill Blum and Chalmers Johnson featured so heavily. The World's End (2013) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1213663/">7/10</a> Simon Pegg and Nick Frost complete their Cornetto Trilogy in style. It's a bit uneven at times, but we can attribute that to the attempt to emulate the authentic feeling of having had 12 pints in one evening. If you follow along and have enough to drink yourself, you'll like the movie more. Pegg and Frost are joined by Martin Freeman, Pierce Brosnan and Rosamund Pike to lend a bit of gravitas to what they know is an insane script. It was not unlike Hot Fuzz, actually. Still and all, it was a good time, which suits a film about a gang of guys and girls drinking waaaaay too much in one evening. Recommended. D.L. Hughley: The Endangered List (2012) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2461168/">5/10</a> A short satire by D.L. Hughley in which he tries to get the Black Man on the endangered species list. It has its moments, but I can't recommend it. Malcolm X (1972) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068903/">9/10</a> <div>A highly stylized documentary about Malcolm X, featuring a lot of his speeches and parts of his speeches put to music. Narrated by James Earl Jones. Malcolm X seems like quite a reasonable, rational guy. I don't even hear a tremendous difference between Martin Luther King's speeches and Malcolm X's. He has many, many nice lines and eminently quotable and pithy comments. I include some of my favorites below. On "the South": <bq>Black man is born in jail and the black man dies in jail, in the North as well as the South. In fact, stop talking about the South. There is no South. Anything south of the Canadian border is the South, as far as the black man is concerned.</bq> <bq>Don't blame a cracker in Georgia for your injustices; the government is responsible for those injustices.</bq> To the question of whether progress is being made in America, he said <bq>if you stick the knife nine inches into my back and pull it out six inches, that's not progress. Even if you pull it all the way out, it's not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made.</bq> On the subject of non-violence and appropriate response: <bq>I don't think that when a man is being criminally treated that that criminal has the right to tell the man what tactics he can use to get the criminal off his back.</bq> On inequality and the shining city on the hill: <bq>There's a worldwide revolution going on. It goes beyond Mississippi. It goes beyond Alabama. It goes beyond Harlem. What is it revolting against? The power structure. The American power structure? No. The French power structure? No. The English power structure? No. Then what power structure? An international Western power structure. Our next move is to take the entire civil-rights struggle into the United Nations and let the world see that Uncle Sam is guilty of violating the human rights of 22 million Afro-Americans and still has the audacity or the nerve to stand up and represent himself as the leader of the free world.</bq> His cadence of speech and voice reminds me eerily of Denzel Washington. I wonder if that's a coincidence? What comes through loud and clear is that Malcolm X was a wickedly intelligent and extensively educated man. His knowledge of history, public policy and precision of language and rhetoric was positively breathtaking.</div> Taxi to the Dark Side (2007) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0854678/">8/10</a> <div>A documentary about Bagram prison in Afghanistan and Ab Ghraib prison in Iraq. Includes lots of photo footage as well as interviews with soldiers involved. A large part of the movie focuses on the specific case of Diliwar, a taxi driver from Afghanistan, who was beaten---<iq>pulpified</iq>---to death. Some of the interviews are quite revealing in what the soldiers feel comfortable with saying. Like any guards or policemen, they cover up like crazy, building up the image of the prisoner into a nigh-uncontrollable monster when he was really a terrified, 120-pound kid with his hands and feet chained to a wall and ceiling. They beat him mercilessly and without reason. The movie continues to cover how the torture and deaths in these prisons were not aberrations but part of an overall policy of torture with its roots in CIA programs from decades in the past. Anthony Lagouranis sums it up best, at the end, <bq>Americans wanna believe that we're somehow more moral than the rest of the world, that we somehow have a strong desire to feel that way. And I think that's eroding. I don't really know what effect that's going to have on us. And I think a lot of people have just decided, 'well, you know, it's different now, after 9--11, you know, we can't be good anymore. We have to get tough,' and we'll have to see what that does to us. I think that's bullshit.</bq> Recommended.</div> </dl>