20130820: Documentary Review--Miss Gulag

Miss GULAG

1. Russian live action feature length documentary, 2007, 80 minutes (IMDB estimate; Hulu+ ran 62 minutes).
2. Filmed in Novosibirsk, Russia, northeast of Kazakhstan and west of Mongolia. The spoken word is in Russian with English subtitles.
3. IMDB: 7.3/10 with 34 users.
4. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet...' and 40% from 61 audience ratings.
5. The film follows 3 women, Yulia, Tatiana, and Natasha who are in a Siberian prison camp (UF 91-9) in Novosibirsk.
6. The setting is a beauty pageant within the prison context.  The pageant is meant to ease the transitions of the prisoners back into regular life.
7. Yulia Lusak got 4 years for drug trafficking, for selling 0.3 grams of heroin.  She started her term in 2002; the pageant was 2.5 years later.
8. Tatiana Dasaeva received a sentence of 8 years for armed robbery.  Her mother died of her alcoholism, and she and her brother grew up in state boarding schools, which she blames for getting started into bad paths.  Later, her brother had a part time job with a gas station, and Tatiana asked the manager to keep her brother out of trouble.  That did not happen, and she took the manager to task for it.
9. Natasha Patalakhova was sentenced to 14 years for armed assault, of which she served 7 years, 5 months.  Her brother died of drug overdose, and she blamed the dealer.  She paid some other people to help her get revenge.  The drug dealer survived.  Natasha returned to sing at the pageant, and to give a pep talk.
10. The 'encouraged' labor at this prison was making cold-weather uniforms.
11. According to the film, 70% of all the unemployed individuals in Russia are women.  So the transition back into society is not easy.  Natasha encountered a catch-22. If one has proof of satisfactory work, the government will process your citizenship papers.  However, to get work one needs the papers before starting.
12. There was a fair amount of discussion about how wonderful is was back in days of the Soviet Union.
13. In the Hulu+ version, the narrative gets to the pageant 31 minutes in.
14. The pageant has three phases: (a) imaginary uniforms (the ones they would like, but do not have) (b) Greek goddesses and (c) dressed as a flower of some sort. There were real flowers given, and banners.  It was quite festive.
15. The guards were part of it all, and spiffed up for the filming.
16. The pageant ends with 15 minutes to go, and the narrative continues concerning the aftermath.  Tatiana got a parole hearing partly because she participated in the pageant. Her plea was accepted, and she left the prison with her family.  Yulia was released soon thereafter and went to live with her mother.
17. Four stars of five.

Cinematography: 7/10  Soft focus.  Archival footage was even softer focus black and white.

Sound: 9/10 The main speakers were well-miked.  The incidental music was OK.

Acting: N/A The principals were telling their stories, not acting.

Screenplay: 8/10  Reasonably well-organized.  The film was engaging enough in terms of narrative and pacing.

20130819: Comedy Review--Lovelife

Name: Lovelife (1997) 
IMDb: link to Lovelife

Genres: Comedy, Romance, Drama.  Country of Origin: USA.

Cast: Saffron Burrows as Zoey, Bruce Davison as Bruce, Sherilyn Fenn as Molly, Carla Gugino as Amy, Peter Krause as Tim, Matt Letscher as Danny, Jon Tenney as Alan.

Written and directed by: Jon Harmon Feldman.

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
The film is set at some university in the Los Angeles area that has a graduate program in English. The 1997 set looks suitably dated.

In terms of the players,  Danny and Zoey are together, as are Alan and Molly; Amy is interested in Danny; Danny wants Amy to be interested in Tim, but she's not.

Delineation of conflicts:
The film continues to be slow after the introductory passages.

Amy tries to be with Danny, but he's not over Zoey yet. Zoey is with Alan, who breaks up with Molly in a bad way.

Molly is considering Bruce, while taking his TV writing class.  Tim and Amy meet by chance, have dinner together, and more.  Danny drops out of the grad program and takes a job at a video store.  Molly tries to direct Danny back to Amy, but it's a bit late (or early?) for that.

Resolution: do not miss the last three minutes of the film; all the final packaging is done in that interval.

One line summary: Poor as comedy, sludge as romance.

Statistics:

Cinematography:  9/10 Good on fundamentals.

Sound: 7/10 Well done, but not inspiring.  A bit too much like 'Love Boat' moved up to 1997.

Acting:  5/10 The actors follow the script, but few of them are engaging.  Jon Tenny was particularly wooden.  Matthew Letscher was worse; his attempts at wittiness just fail.  Carla Gugino was fine as always, but Sherilyn Fenn was disappointing and Saffron Burrows insufferable.  Bruce Davison gave one of his better performances.

Screenplay: 4/10 All too soon, I was asking myself, 'What will the next round of changes be?' but not really caring.  About 60 minutes in, I hit a wall that was hard to get over---was this thing even worth finishing?

Sure enough, the next 30 minutes were like slogging through mud with a heavy pack.  There were histrionics enough to term the film a whine-fest.  During the last 3 minutes, resolutions did occur, but it seemed a bit late.  Judging from the earlier material, I wondered whether the last match-ups had any chance of permanence.

Final Rating: 5/10 Proceed at your own risk.

20130818: Documentary Review--Barbershop Punk

Barbershop Punk

1. American live action feature film, 84 minutes, released in 2010, NR, documentary.
2. IMDB, 7.8/10.0 from 30 user reviews.
3. Rotten Tomatoes, 'No consensus yet...', 67% from user reviews; 83% of audience ratings.


4. The ignition point was ordinary enough.  Robb Topolski wanted to share some barbershop music on the web.  This seemed harder than expected.  He started testing how the flow of his uploads proceeded.  He found a lot of blocking by Comcast, 24/7.  He tested and re-tested, and wrote up his process.  He contacted some investigators in the Associated Press, which eventually reproduced his results, and went beyond them.


5. Common Carriage laws (surface mail, telephone, radio) are contrasted with Net Neutrality laws (Internet); that is, the change of transmission type has new laws.  What net neutrality means is still under debate.  The film spends a fair amount of effort on this.


6. Comcast and Verizon were shown to have blocked certain content that had no business being blocked.  Getting to this place was quite an effort.  Some of the legal decisions against these two companies were later overturned.


7. The number of ultimate service and content providers seems to be shrinking.  About seven such companies own most of content providers, radio/tv stations, ISPs and the like.  For instance, Comcast owns NBC, which controls SyFy, USA, and so on.  The CBS constellation is at least as big.  Large numbers of brands are controlled by a small number of upper level corporations.  So the problem that initiated the debate has the potential of getting much worse.


8. The film is well put together, and does a good job at getting to underlying issues as it goes.  The main two issues I saw toward the end of this film were: (a) the first amendment is about protecting the people from the government versus (b) we have a small number of providers who are stifling free speech, and we need the government to protect us from them.


9. The debate goes on.  The listing of large money contributions to active politicians were very depressing, as were the assertions by the large corporations that they should be able to block whatever they want to whenever they want to.


10. One line summary: Fine documentary about the issues surrounding Internet neutrality.

Statistics: 

Cinematography: 8/10 Usually fine.  Sometimes off-the-wall irrelevant.

Sound: 8/10 Occasionally soft and weak.

Acting: N/A This was mostly interviews, and very few people seemed to be acting.

Screenplay: 10/10 Well organized.

Final Rating: 9/10  I strongly recommend this documentary.

20130818: Documentary Review--Pagan Metal

Pagan Metal: a Documentary

1. Live action feature length film, 2009, streamed from Hulu+, 117 minutes, NR.
2. Amazon: Three stars of five from three reviews.  IMDB: not to be found.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet...' and 50% liked it from 15 audience ratings.


4. Starring the bands: Primordial (Irish), Korpiklaani (Finnish), Finntroll (Finnish, based in Helsinki), Ensiferum (Finnish, based in Helsinki), Leaves Eyes (German-Norwegian), Turisas (Finnish), and Týr (Finnish).


5. The bands not based in Helsinki seemed to think that the people and bands from Helsinki were a bit different than those from other parts of Finland.


6. The interviewer fostered a good-natured, friendly atmosphere, and there was fruitful exchange of information in the question and answer format.  Topics included: myths that Americans believe about Ireland; same for Europe; transitions from folk to pagan metal; preserving cultural identity in the face of the pressure to make Europe uniform; bands and drinking; costumes; personnel changes.  The spokesman from Primordial was particularly intelligent and well-spoken and learned.  All of the bands had interesting things to say; Korpiklaani was likely the second most verbally effective, but they all came across well.


7. The rather notorious Bill Zebub is the interviewer and director of the film.


8. One line summary: Great interviews with seven pagan metal bands from Northern Europe. 
9. Four stars of five; the information was top notch, but the delivery needed help. Still, I would recommend this film to anyone who is curious about the European music scene, or in pagan metal.

Cinematography: 5/10 Variable, but usually poor.  Looks like hand-held video, with too much zooming, jerkiness, light being too low for the camera used, soft or grainy focus.  A couple of the music videos were shot by someone else, and looked rather good.

Sound: 6/10 Also quite variable.  Most of the music clips were indecipherable in terms of vocals, which is what I've come to expect from metal.  On the other hand, one clip was so clear and beautiful that it has joined my top twenty list of all time favorites.

Acting: N/A; the film consists of interviews and musical performances.  The sincerity and humor levels were nice.

Screenplay: 10/10  The level of information exchanged in the interviews was very good.  The organization of the interviews was quite sound.

20130817: Action Review--Norwegian Ninja

Name: Norwegian Ninja (2010)  Original title, Kommandør Treholt & Ninjatroppen. 
IMDb: link to Norwegian Ninja

Genres: Historical fiction, Action, Comedy.     Country of origin: Norway.

Cast: Mads Ousdal as Kommander Arne Treholt, Jon Oigarden as Otto Meyer, Trond-Viggo Torgersen as Kong Olav V, Linn Stokke as Ragnhild Umbraco, Amund Maarud as Humle (Bumble Bee).

Written and directed by: Thomas Cappelen Malling.

In 'real' life, Arne Treholt was a Norwegian diplomat accused of treason in 1984, convicted, and served eight years in prison.  In 'reel' life, we have something entirely different.
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Interlude: white stars versus black holes: 

I usually give reviews, comments, and ratings based on one model of appraisal.  Let's call it the whitestar system: camera work is clear, focused, well-framed, well lit, reasonably filtered.  Sound is clear, actors are well-miked; music, if present, is supportive of the screenplay.  Acting is somewhere between competent and excellent.  The screenplay is intelligible, plot lines converge at least eventually, and one is glad to have seen the film.

So when I use the WS model, five stars of five means good things happen in all areas.  One star of five means there are serious deficits, usually in all areas mentioned above.

For this film, and a number of others, I'll post the rating in terms of a different model of appraisal: the blackhole system.  In BH, the cinematography may suck.  That is, poor framing, bad focus, little or no depth of field, jerky movements, stupid filter choices, not enough light, or way too much light.  The sound may be blaring, or too quiet to distinguish the words of the actors.  The music may be overbearing or obnoxious or too loud.  Acting might be done by amateurs or drunks or someone in some other kind of stupor.  The screenplay might make no sense at all.  The special effects might be done by the director's ten-year-old who has ten thumbs, or use models from someone's science project, or show suspension wires or just look beyond belief stupid.

When I use the BH system, five blackholes of five means that there were massive failures in all areas.  One might even need some liquid courage to finish the piece.  One blackhole of five just means that there were some failures that a competent director and film crew would have caught in the dailies and fixed before too much footage was shot.  (Before the underwriters caught wind, in other words.)

End interlude
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This particular film bifurcated early on from the reality principle, was filmed by some refugee from the seventies exploitation films, had special effects with obvious errors, and used models that the so-so camera work quickly showed to be insultingly bad.

This film's cumulative whitestar score might be zero, or negative one.  These are usually out-of-range values, so I'm using the blackhole system of appraisal. 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
It's 1983 in Norway.  The Cold War is still on, and Norway fields threats from both the USSR and the USA.  Arne Treholt and his ninja team are dedicated to stopping these.

Delineation of conflicts:
Elements of NATO are threatening Norway.  Russian submarines travel where they should not.  The team needs to counter these threats, whether under the sea, or in the air, or on land.  Humle needs to train in ninja ways to help the team achieve its goals.  Will he be ready in time?

Resolution: 
In its own inimitable way, the film came to a climactic conclusion.

One line summary:  Norwegian send up of Cold War 1983.

There is a website at ninjatroppen. 

Statistics (black hole system): 

Cinematography: 9/10 Poor focus throughout.  Use of yellow and orange filters for no apparent reason.  Frequent camera jerks.  CCTV footage with ultra-slow CRT refresh errors; very annoying. Frequent switches from main camera to CCTV was disconcerting.  Special effects that were made ten times worse because of the camera work.  On the other hand, I could often distinguish one actor from another, as in Arne was not Bumblebee.

Editing: 10/10 There were many continuity errors.  Bumblebee was bleeding to death from a neck wound; the half a minute later he has no blood on him.  A bit before this, he took maybe five sub-machine gun rounds.  He slowed for a moment, then went about his business without bleeding.

Sound:  8/10 Odd drum machine music as background.  The synthesizer music with the final credits was amazingly bad.  Arne's discussion on the street with the KGB officers was not well-miked, but I had the impression that the sub-titles were off.  When viewing a film where the spoken word is in a language I do not know, sub-titles can make or break the experience.

Acting: 8/10 Who needed to act?  The script takes a few shots at the Russians, and a few more shots at the Americans, and the actors delivered that.

Screenplay: 9/10 The movie has a signed and registered divorce from the reality principle.  The King of Norway participating in this farce?  I think not.  Vanishing in a puff of smoke?  Nope.  Motivations are often opaque. The special effects were strongly anti-convincing.  Arne carrying enough current through his body to shock Bumblebee's heart back into beating?  Perhaps not.

Special Effects: 10/10 Stupid model of the island where the ninjas hang out.   Bad looking flame effects on that model.  Perhaps the stupidest special effect for an incoming missile I've seen in ages.  Seventies style graphics for military engagement telemetry.  Laughable mountain hideout model.  The 'glow from within' when the ninjas made some sort of breakthrough in consciousness just looked hokey.  The explosion at the oil rig was really poor. Cigarettes leaping into Arne's mouth.  Appearing and disappearing with a puff of smoke.  I got some laughs out of the VTOL (vertical Take-Off and Landing) craft, and at the visible wires holding up the model of a prop plane.

Final Rating: 0/10 in the WS system; 9/10 in the BH system for its five black holes.

20130817: Anime Series--Occult Academy

Name: Occult Academy (2010)
IMDb: link to Occult Academy page

Genres: Animé, supernatural, action, mystery  Country of origin: Japan

Directed by: Tomohiko Ito.

The Three Acts: 

The initial tableaux:
For the backdrop and character sketches, see Occult Academy (Wikipedia).  For short descriptions of individual episodes, try List of Occult Academy episodes.

The series is set in the Japan of 1999.  An alien invasion is to occur on 21 July 1999 unless somehow prevented.  The results are almost complete devastation of human civilization. Survivors from the future (2012) make multiple attempts to thwart the invasion of Earth by sending agents back in time to find and use the 'Nostradamus Key,' whatever that is.  The first five agents die trying.  The male protagonist is the sixth to attempt finding the key.

The female protagonist, Maya, is the daughter of the founder of Waldstein's Academy, better known as the Occult Academy.  She returns to the Academy after her father's death, and takes over as the school's principal.  The male lead, known to most as Abe Minoru, takes the disguise of a history teacher at the Academy.  Maya and Abe get off to a rough start, but eventually learn to work together.

Delineation of conflicts:
Most of the storyline is consumed by tracking down leads on the Key, describing Maya's difficult childhood, and describing Abe's difficult childhood.  Also, everyone involved is discouraged by Abe's ineffectual nature.

The Academy is beset by occult attacks.  Maya and Abe do their best to stop the attacks and mitigate the damage.  Earth is to be invaded, if the signs are to be believed.  This is the bigger threat, and the leads are, at first, terrible at preparing for it.

Resolution:
Abe and Maya are working against a date for the invasion.  The occult attacks have taken their time and attention.  Will they be ready for the bigger threat?  That is, will they find the Key, figure out how to use it, and have enough time to act?

One one summary: Determined young woman and a nebbish work against a hard deadline to save Earth.  Shorter: Young couple fight to save Earth.

Statistics:

Art: 8/10 Most of the art is gorgeous.  Other parts are prosaic to ordinary to amateurish.  Mature women and young women in their late teens are depicted skillfully.  Children and adult men are not.  Buildings, forests, roads, cars, and other objects are drawn well.

Sound: 8/10 reasonably good.  The background music was not irritating.

Screenplay: 10/10 The series could have been wrapped up in 8 or 9 episodes. Four filler episodes were inserted for no particular value, or so it would seem.  The plot was not all that gripping, until the end, which justified the entire series approach. This was one of the five or so best 'coming of age' treatments I've ever seen.

Final Rating: 9/10

20130816: Comedy Review--Wilby Wonderful

Name: Wilby Wonderful (2004)
IMDb: link to Wilby Wonderful

Genres: Comedy.   Country of origin: Canada.

Cast: James Allodi as Dan Jarvis, Sandra Oh as the realtor Carol French, Paul Gross as Buddy French, Ellen Page as Emily Anderson, Rebecca Jenkins as Sandra Anderson, Maury Chaykin as Mayor Brent Fisher, Callum Keith Rennie as dyslexic handyman Duck MacDonald, Daniel MacIvor as Stan Lastman.

Written and directed by: Daniel MacIvor.

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
The film is set on the small island/town of Wilby in Nova Scotia, Canada.  Realtor Carol French is working hard at breaking up her relationship with Buddy, and she seems to drive everyone near her to the edge.  She certainly drove my acceptance of the film's premises down to zero.  Many of the people in Wilby are outwardly in much calmer places than Carol.

Delineation of conflicts:
Dan Jarvis makes a few attempts at suicide.  The reasons for this are brought to the surface through various investigations.

Buddy French is looking for female companionship, while single mother Sandra Anderson is looking for male companionship.  They do find each other, with consequences.  

On the one hand, the mayor is involved in some suspicious activity; on the other hand, the Sheriff would like to get a few crimes fully explained. Carol is trying to make money; if that rubs people the wrong way, that's just cost of doing business.

Resolution:
This is a feel bad comedy, so bear that in mind.

One sentence summary: I would not recommend this to anyone. 

Statistics:

Cinematography: 5/10 Looks like so-so straight-to-video quality.  Choppy at times.

Sound: 3/10 The background recorded music is irritating at best.  The speech is often about a quarter second out of synch with the visuals.

Acting: 1/10 Ellen Page is a deal breaker, and she's as bad as ever.  This is the worst performance I've ever seen from Sandra Oh.  Sandra Oh's skill at portraying OCD comes through, as does her mastery of irritating everyone around her.  The +1 of 10 is for Callum Keith Rennie. 

Screenplay:  2/10 The screenplay has lots of threads, in the style of Robert Altman.  In Altman's films, I tend to have interest in every single thread, and I rejoice as each of his films come to conclusion.  In this movie, every thread seemed pointless; the end of the film was a relief.  Development of motivation apparently was not on the menu.

The film is slow, awkward, and hampered by the wretched music.  The payoff for the slow development is next to nothing.  All the characters were irrelevant, start to finish.  The big secret is neither shocking nor interesting.  Many things look quite dated.

How quickly things change!  In this 2004 film, Sandra Oh nearly runs down Ellen Page because she's driving while on her cell phone.  These days there would be some sort of penalty for distracted driving.  The reason behind Jarvis' suicidal thoughts might have been compelling in 1990, but seem less compelling in 2013.  The strength of the anti-gay bigotry was a bit jarring compared to the rest of the environment of the film.

Final Rating: 2/10, with two black holes for acting and screenplay.

20130815: Comedy Review--Attenberg

Name: Attenberg (2010)
IMDb: link to Attenberg

Genres: Drama, Comedy, FeelBad    Country of origin: Greece


Cast: Ariana Labed as the protagonist Marina, Giorgos Lanthimos as the nameless Engineer,Vangelis Mourikis as Spyros, the ill architect father, and Evangelia Randou as the best friend Bella, who is warmer and more worldly than Marina.

Written and directed by: Athina Rachel Tsangari.

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux: 

Marina lives in a small company town in Greece.  Marina generally does not like people, and she thinks her industrial town is boring.

Spyros, Marina's architect father, is dying of cancer.  Marina takes him to treatments and waits with him.

Spyros and Marina like David Attenborough's nature documentaries, especially the ones about mammalian behaviour.  That is part of the context of many of their conversations.  This is sometimes also true of Marina's many conversations with her friend Bella.

Delineation of conflicts: 

As Spyros' health fades, he has earnest conversations with Marina about the future.  Some of these are chewy, since neither party has been perfect.

Marina is a 23 year old virgin.  Bella tries to help ease her into experience with men. Marina's thorny personality makes this more difficult.

Marina is assigned to driving the Engineer around.  She decides that he is the one to help her end her virginity.  How well will that work out?

Resolution: 

Some of Marina's delayed coming of age issues are resolved.  Is she at a substantially different place at the end of the film?

One line summary: Life in small Greek company town.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 4/10 I saw this streamed in HD, but it looked like fuzzy video.

Sound: 5/10 Merely OK.

Acting: 4/10 Dead. Bang. Boring. However, I think the wretched acting was just what the director/screenwriter wanted.

Screenplay: 2/10 At least a third of this debacle was committed in silence.  I am most strongly reminded of 'performance art,' which entails a great deal of silence and lack of motion.  IMDb called it part of  'new wave Greek cinema.'

For some reason, hulu classified it as Comedy.  After watching the film I see that it was a comedy, as the director/screenwriter was laughing at the audience with every single frame. 

Final Rating: 2/10  The two points are for the many shots of the Greek countryside.

20130814: Documentary Review--Journey to the Sea of Cortez

Journey to the Sea of Cortez (hulu+)

1. Live action documentary, 2011.
2. IMDB: no entries.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: only a stub.  Looks like I entered the first review.


4. John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts mounted a mini-expedition to the Sea of Cortez (called the Gulf of California in the USA these days) in 1940, before the USA entered World War II.  The film uses modern camera work to update and discuss the findings of Steinbeck and Ricketts.


5. Ricketts was a marine biologist and ecologist who passed away in 1948.  He and Steinbeck were good friends who were interested in the interactions among climate, ocean conditions, sea life, and human beings.  Some of the characters in Steinbeck's books were based on Ricketts.


6. The expedition culminated in a book (Sea of Cortez) published 05 dec 1940, two days before the USA joined World War II.  The book's impact was muted by the war.


7. The film drives home the point that at least a few people were aware of ecological issues even as early as 1940.  It points out some of the devastating effects of overfishing and the overuse of the water of the Colorado River.


8. Most of the film, though, is about the great beauty and wealth of wildlife that still exists in the Sea of Cortez.  It's a delight to the eye.


9. One line summary:  The great beauty and wealth of wildlife that still exists in the Sea of Cortez.
10. Five stars of five.

Cinematography: 10/10 Framing, focus, colour, depth of field, contrast, and sufficiency of light were all top notch.

Sound: 10/10

Acting: N/A; this is all narrated footage of sea life and ocean environment.

Screenplay: 10/10 Engaging and educating.

20130814: Documentary--UFOTV Presents Touched

UFOTV Presents Touched (hulu+)

1. Mockumentary, 65 minutes, live action, straight-to-video format, 2008.
2. Neither IMDB nor Rotten Tomatoes will touch this thing.
3. Stars: John E. Mack, Arnold Relman, Alan Dershowitz, Patrick Harpur.
4. Case studies of 'real' abductions plus discussion by a variety of researchers.
5. Karin.  Young woman from Florida from an impoverished dysfunctional conservative upbringing.  Strange dreams, OBE, channeling, feeling lost in her own life, as in, is this truth or delusion?  She asks the universe for some sort of physical sign that her experiences are real or not. One night she's beset with electricity and paralysis.  Then she sees something on the bed with her that looks like a big bug.
6. Peter and Jamy.  He's an ordinary well-grounded man.  He falls in love with Jamy, and life is even better after they eventually marry.  They run a comfortable business together in the Caribbean.  One night, months later at home, his sleep is disturbed, and he gets some night terror.  It does not repeat for a couple of weeks, but then it does.  He gets the sensation of electrical flow in parts of his body, and has some residual marks the next morning.  Elited time.  They move back to the States, to snow country, and he enrolls in acupuncture school. She enrolls in a program in psychology.
7. At the hospital where his training is done, Peter meets John E. Mack, MD, a clinical psychiatrist who works with people who think they have been abducted by aliens.  He held a tenured professorial position at Harvard until he died in 2004.  He won a Pulitzer prize for one of his many books.
8. One of his colleagues, Arnold Relman, MD (Harvard Medical School), was interviewed.  Relman led a committee in the mid 1990s to investigate Mack.  Relman asserted that Mack's reputation was somewhat tarnished by his efforts with the 'abductees.'  One of my favorite comments from Relman was that one should at least try to verify the experiences.  Does  anyone fact-check this nonsense?  No.  And why not?
9. For more on Mack versus Relman, see Harvard investigation.  To Mack's credit, he did not end up asserting the physical existence of aliens.  See the same Wikipedia page for a nice discussion.
10. The movie jumped the shark when Peter described how Mack asked him what had happened to him.  Peter came out of the session believing in alien abduction.  Before he had no such notion at all.  Later Peter does regression with Mack.  The film shows Peter making bubbles while a tape of one of Peter's session is played.  This was an odd choice at best.
11. Since Mack died four years before the film was released, the whole subject seems dated and moot.  Harvard did not openly censure Mack. Mack's best opinion on the subject was that the abduction scenario is just part of the grand human tradition of similarities in hallucinations.  This is centuries old, is quite well-known, and is about humans, not aliens.  The alien veneer is more about people sucking in narratives from popular culture, like The X-Files, and adding that to the shared hallucinations.
12. The film maker takes a field trip to Brazil to see whether their culture accepts the experience of beings from other realities.  The third case study shows up, Luppa, a man who had a normal, successful life, and did not need, in any sense, the bother of experiencing alien presences.  The local scientist claims that these experiences can make one crazy, but one does not experience such things because one is already crazy.
13. The regression sessions are pretty heavy-handed.  What Peter comes out with does not seem to come from him.  The added stuff from Mack seems like active interference in this supposed process of discovery, and helps reinforce the pattern of similarity of the faked experiences.
14. People do like their fifteen minutes of fame.  Also, they enjoy lying to be part of a larger group.  Put those two together, and the shared hallucinations are as natural as anything, especially if sharing gets you in a movie.  Also, the stories told by the abductees start out as rather different, but as time goes by, then get closer together.  More time to polish the party line, one assumes.
15. This is especially true in a world where X-Files has been seen by multiple millions, and there are several 'reality' shows on television simultaneously about finding ghosts wherever one looks.  The paranormal, the extraterrestrial, and transcendent beings are all culturally accepted.  Just watch 'Paranormal Witness', or 'Ghost Hunters, season 9,' or 'Ghost Mine.'  These are all current 2013 shows, and there are many more in production.  Ghosts and aliens are an industry in their own right, and have many cliches available for consumption.
16. Three stars of five, for making me look up the biographies of the Harvard experts.  Also, as outrageous faking goes, this was pretty amusing.

Cinematography: 2/10 Video style quality (soft focus, washed out, jerky movements, refusal to frame properly, poor depth of field, 4:3 aspect ratio), and not even good video style.

Sound: 6/10 OK for video sound.

Acting: 7/10 Fairly good.  I usually did not catch the feeling that the interviews with the abductees were scripted.  The Harvard experts seemed to be giving their opinions as answers to questions.

Screenplay: 6/10 I guess I was entertained, though I was still appalled that this kind of hoaxing is still considered fashionable.

Special Effects: 0/10 The movie's director attempts to illustrate what the actors are describing with dancing lights or working with a bubble maker. Yikes.

20130813: Documentary Review--Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart: The Cost of Low Prices

1. American Live action feature length film, 2005, documentary.
2. IMDB: 6.8/10.0 from 3,606 audience ratings.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 93% on the meter, but 'no consensus yet'.  From audience input, 64% favorable.  There are many mini-reviews posted on RT.  Have a look.
4. Disclaimer: I am not neutral on this issue.


5. Case Study: Middlefield Ohio, the Hunter family's hardware store, and the impact of Wal-Mart's presence.  Despite providing superior service, knowledge of inventory, and personal connections to customers, the well-established local businesses are hurt by Wal-Mart's ability to provide lower prices.  Ohio was not the only case study.  There were a good dozen across the USA, and more in China, southern Asia, Central America.


6. One of the themes of the documentary is that a few Americans are making a huge amount of money because of Wal-Mart, but orders of magnitude more people have their lives degraded by it.  For instance, many long time successful businesses go under.  Property values almost always go down in the neighborhood of a new Wal-Mart.  That is,Wal-Mart presence devalues everything near it.  A memorable quote was that small towns destroyed by Wal-Mart tend to look like they had been 'hit by a neutron bomb.'  That is, the buildings are still there, but no one is in them.  Businesses are closed, people lose their houses.


7. A second theme is that Wal-Mart is a front for Chinese economic warfare against the United States.  One of the statistics used was 'Wal-Mart reduces total wages by three billion USD per year.'  The interviewed Wal-Mart executives brag about forcing as many employees as possible from full-time work to part time.  They also encourage the employees to give the company free overtime.  As internal policy, Wal-Mart stores are understaffed.  An open secret is that many Wal-Mart employees are on public assistance.  That is, taxpayers pay bills that Wal-Mart should pay.  Wal-Mart provided health insurance is expensive, but still has high deductibles.  This pressures workers to get on public assistance.----All of these policies support the second theme; Wal-Mart is hurting the USA by making it less and less viable.


8. A third theme is more of a question: if the US government could rein in Standard Oil, why does it not even try to control Wal-Mart?


9. The interviews were excellent.  The candor of some of the blood-sucking managers at Wal-Mart was amazing in terms of admissions.  Discrimination against women, cheating employees out of overtime already done, browbeating employees to do overtime with no expectation of remuneration, blatant union-busting, and the like.  The interviews with people whose lives were affected by Wal-Mart were very direct and informative.  The pain was clear, but many facts were always delivered in parallel.


10. Wal-Mart gets subsidized up front (before moving in) by local governments and state governments directly, not just in the resulting drag on public assistance.  Many local communities have to scale back on public services such as fired teachers, cut back police departments, reduce library offerings, and so on.


11. One of the tricks I found amazingly bad was negotiating a big subsidy package, building the Wal-Mart store, then building another Wal-Mart store outside the municipality.  The first building is left empty, and the municipality gets zero tax benefit.


12. The section on environmental violations committed by Wal-Mart in the US was impressively bad.  The monetary judgments against WM were almost as impressive.


13. The Chinese segment was scary as well.  One would think WM would treat its Chinese employees better, but they do not.  The maintain sweatshops and teach their employees to lie to inspectors.


14. Given the atmosphere of lying, law breaking, wiping out competition, and maintaining sweat shops, it's not all that unexpected that Wal-Mart parking lots have a long and bad record for being crime scenes.  Rape, murder, kidnapping, armed robbery, auto vandalism, and auto theft are the more usual crimes.  Wal-Mart spends next to nothing on parking lot security for customers.


15. One line summary: The content was great, the visuals were bad.
16. Four stars of five.

Cinematography: 2/10 Poor.  It's video quality, and not the high end of video.  Soft focus, sometimes grainy, jerky camera movement, all of which detract from the content.

Sound: 7/10 Passable for video.

Acting: 8/10 The interviews were quite good, conveying facts and lots of check-able details as well as describing loss and unfairness.

Screenplay: 7/10 The flow of the work was good.

20130813: Mystery review--Exit

Name: Exit (2011)
IMDb: link to Exit

Genres: Psychological Drama.    Country of origin: Australia.

Cast: Kylie Trounson as Alice, Michael Finney as Simon, Hannah Moore as Grace, Drew Tingwell as David, David Whitely as Tom, 

Directed by: Marek Polgar.      Written by: Martyn Pedlar.

The Three Acts

The initial tableau: 
The film is set entirely in a nameless Australian city.  Graffiti and broken and degenerating building materials are used to illustrate urban decay.  These images are paired against huge, great, new, seemingly perfect sky scrapers.  

People are distinguished in similar fashion.  Some are poor, and many of these have a shared delusion that the city has only one exit, and that exit is somehow hidden by powerful forces.  In contrast, other groups are wealthy with deep resource bases.

Delineation of conflicts:

The lost battle their own delusions by questing after the unique illusory exit.  Some spend hundreds of hours keeping track of their 'progress' in searching for the exit: some use 3D models, others paper accounting, others maps and notations.  

Still others give up and flee into addiction to substances that temporarily stop thinking.  These folk are sometimes the victims of criminals.

Some appeal to the rich for assistance; this appeal often fails.

A precious few try to achieve mental health by shucking off their delusions.

Resolution:
What are the usual exits for the lost? Some die from substance abuse, or from failing to pay the criminals from their limited resources.  Some of the deluded stay deluded.  Do any of them break through their imaginary problems?

One line summary: Psychological drama: nothing new, not well executed.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 4/10 Hulu+ claimed to be streaming in HD, but there were jumps in the video, indicating missing frames.  Some of the video is stunningly good, some is annoyingly bad.  Do I care to see acres of graffiti?  I see it in real life, and despise it there.  I have no reason to like the same sort of crap in a movie.  It is just as ugly, and does not advance the plot.  The same sort of criticism applies to the study of the decay of metal, brick, wood, and other building materials.  I don't want to waste my time viewing thousands of frames glorifying ugliness with attendant rotten background music.

Shot in colour, but feels like black and white, for the dreariness, depression, and lack of optimism evoked by the impoverished pallette. Filmed in Melbourne and Victoria.

Sound: 4/10 The incidental music might appeal more to the Australian sensibility than to mine.  The actors seem to be miked OK so that I could hear what they are saying.

Acting: 2/10 Poor.  I do not believe any of these characters feel any obsession.  They are hitting their marks, reading their lines, and not getting paid much beyond receiving billing on a low budget film.

Screenplay: 2/10 Breaks the fourth wall.  Automatic deduction of marks.  I don't care for characters talking directly to me when the work is one of fiction.  After all the spaghetti plot, the end comes when one character brightens up and realises, 'my obsession really was nonsense.'  As with many psychological dramas, the problems and pain are in the heads of the characters, not in the common view of reality.  Resolution comes when one character gets out of the trap of their own making.  The biggest problem with this film is that I found none of the characters engaging, for which I fault the writing.

Alternates: Try Marnie (1964) with Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery, Moby Dick (1956) with Gregory Peck, Vertigo (1958) with James Stewart.  These are all psychological dramas and are all good movies.  The difference is that these films had good screenplays, good directors, and good actors.  More recent better psychological drama movies include Memento (2000),  Mulholland Drive (2001), and the monarch of them all, The Sixth Sense (1999), with Bruce Willis.


Final Rating: 2/10, two blackholes for acting and screenplay.

20130812: Action Review--Avalon

(hulu+) Avalon

1. This is a substantial update to the mini-review from 20130629.
2. The movie is largely live action.  For the game sequences, live action with effects.  It is 106 minutes in length, released in 2001, from Mamoru Oshii, who directed the animated series Ghost in the Shell and Patlabor 2.
3. IMDB:  6.5/10 from 9,486 users.
4. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No score yet...' and 70% approval from 8,598 audience members.
5. Shot in Poland with Polish actors and Polish sets: streetcars, flats, bistros, large church, abandoned buildings and world war 2 weapons for the game sequences, and so on.
6. 'Avalon' is a VRMMORPG (virtual reality, massively multi-player, online role-playing game) gone wrong.  This sounds like a number of other films.  On the anime side, the .hack//sign and its many sequels, as well as GITS.  On the live action side, Tron and the Matrix series come to mind.
7. In retrospect, GITS seems positively open, clear, and transparent compared to this work.
8. Dissipation, pointlessness, inaction, game-induced permanent illnesses, lack of direction, out-of-focus closeups of low-tech food preparation, such as potatoe-cabbage-rice stew.  People with eastern European accents checking out old books written in Japanese.  Who could ask for more?  I could.  Was there a point to all of this?
9. The female protagonist, Ash, is one of the top players in this somewhat illegal game.  She attempts to find out why the game is having bad consequences for real-life players.  She follows this through with dogged determination and finds a conclusion of sorts in real life.
10. The ending was just absurd.  At 80 minutes in, we switched from the sepia-river-of-mud visual style to full light, good focus, and beautiful scenery.  Around 90 minutes in, Ash is at a large church where a lavish musical production is going on.  The final, climactic confrontation occurs on these grounds.  Ash debates what reality is with the ultimate nemesis.  The dialog is as stupid as the rest of the film.  The welcome, and long overdue, visual beauty does not improve that.
11. One star of five.  20130927: two blackholes for cinematography and screenplay.
12. As a side note, one of the thoughtful audience reviews I read claimed that the Miramax version (in English) was a disaster in terms of meaning.  The semantic content of the English version was clearly at odds (and much smaller) than the Polish version.  That would explain the lack of sense of the version I saw.

Art/cinematography: 2/10 Poor depth of field, many features obscured by shadows, dismal, murky, out of focus, lots of sepia shots and visual flattening.  Hulu+ claimed it was streaming in HD, but I saw no evidence of that in the visual quality.  This was ugly beyond belief.  The last twenty five or so minutes were nice to look at, but hardly made up for the first 80.

Sound: 4/10 The music was a bit too florid and symphonic for my tastes, but OK in terms of quality.  The dubbing into English was uneven but often badly done: the sound was hollow and lower in volume than the music.  In contrast, the many sounds of terribly sloppy eating were crisp and higher in volume than the spoken word.  For that matter, much of the foley (typewriters, footsteps, game sounds) is louder than speech.

Acting: 4/10 Light on motivation.  Let's blame the screenplay for that.

Screenplay:  1/10 The film was not engaging, mostly because the twists and turns of the plot always seemed one step closer to nothing.  I came away thinking I knew less about the movie after watching it than I did before I started watching.

20130811: SF Review--Apocalypse Earth

Name: AE: Apocalypse Earth (2013)
IMDb: link to AE: Apocalypse Earth

Genres: Action, SciFi   Country of Origin: USA

Cast: Adrian Paul as Lt. Frank Baum, Richard Grieco as Capt. Sam Crowe, Bali Rodriguez as Lea, Gray Hawks as TIM (Trans-human Interactive Machine; shades of Data on Star Trek, the Next Generation), Jayson McCardell as Sergeant Peebles, Michelle Jones as Hannah.

Written and directed by: Thunder Levin.

The Three Acts: 

The initial tableaux:
There is a massive failure at establishing context at the beginning of the film.  Just what is the initial situation?  War?  Disaster?  I'm guessing war, but with whom?  How can a ship (Ark) big enough to transport a sufficient set of survivors across interstellar space take off at a moment's notice from the middle of a city?

After cryo-sleep, the passengers on the Albert Einstein (the Ark seen initially) awake to find they are about to crash on a planet.  There is a lot of confusion, then stragglers coalesce to form the group to be followed by the viewer and the indigenous hunters.

Delineation of conflicts: 
Most of the locals ('Chameleons') are hostile.  For instance, they imprisoned the surviving crew of another Ark, the Isaac Newton.  The Einstein crashed into the prison where the Newton survivors were being held, and some of the Newton survivors are in the group.

The group adds Lea, a non-Chameleon local who is a loner and who becomes their ally.   There is more than a bit of mutual distrust at the beginning: when forming a new heterogeneous group, there is usually the triad: form, storm, norm.  Fortunately, the storm period is not too long.

After the new group is a bit more cohesive, what will they do?  They are outgunned and severely out numbered.  Do they reach for local power, in the form of new allies, or do they try to return to Earth?

Resolution:
After so many losses of personnel and resources, just what did the ark program accomplish?

One line summary: Escape from apocalypse fails.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 4/10 Usually plenty of light, but framing is iffy, and depth of field was poor.  Jumpiness is common; it has the look of recurrent missing frames.  All too often, nothing was in focus, and the level of graininess was high.

Sound: 8/10 There were a few problems with sound effects, but the actors' voices picked up OK.  Some of the background music was rather good.

Acting: 2/10 Looks unrehearsed, at least early on.  Gray Hawks' performance was terrible, as if he were doing an imitation of Brent Spiner as Data.

Screenplay: 1/10 The first 15 minutes were awful.  Just two minutes of establishing material at the beginning would have made the first half of the film easier to take without giving the story away.  I nearly bailed.  The second half of the film was a bit better, with most loose ends tied up. Filmed in Costa Rica; on IMDB, I saw two estimates for the budget, 1 million USD and 350k USD.  More money on screenplay would have helped, as would more budget on cinematography.

SFX:  2/10 Special effects were unimpressive to just plain bad.

Final Rating: 2/10

20130810: Documentary Review--Flight from Death

Flight from Death: the Quest for Immortality

1. American live action documentary movie prepared for television; 90 minutes; 2003.
2. IMDB: 6.9/10.0 from 230 user ratings.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'no score yet', and 69% of ticket buying people liked it (717 ratings).
4. Stars: Gabriel Byrne (narrator), sheldon solomon (academic expert; skidmore college), Sam Keen (expert), Robert Jay Lifton (expert), merlyn mowrey (academic expert), irvin yalom (expert).
5. From Rotten Tomatoes: 'the research of late cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker is explored to reveal his theory of death as the primary motivator of human behavior -- especially in regards to aggression and violence' -- That is what the film is about, which is neither 'Flight from Death' nor the 'quest for immortality.'
6. The film makes its position quite clear early on: there is no immortality.  We all die.  There are no exceptions.  There is no flight from death.  The quest for immortality is an illusion.
7. So, theories of immortality are illusions.
8. Three things are repeated again and again. (a) People are willing to hurt others who have different theories of immortality (say the theory of Islam versus the theory of Christianity). (b) many are willing to die in order for their theory of immortality come out dominant (the usual justification for modern terrorism). (c) When forcibly confronted with their own mortality, people are more harsh toward anyone else.
9. ---------------
10. Anyone over the age of 20 has already figured all these things out.  That's been true for centuries.  Read Mark Twain carefully, for instance.  If one lives in a repressive culture, one usually never says these things out loud.  These days a few sorts of repression are a little lighter.  As a result, a 'learned' work like this comes out.
11. It's nothing new folks, and I've wasted 90 minutes.  Please don't make the same mistake.
12. One sentence summary:  I would not recommend this to any one for any reason.
13. One star of five.  20130927: two blackholes for acting and screenplay.

Cinematography: 4/10 It's in TV format, with weak resolution, and generally soft focus.

Sound: 8/10 OK, but not great.

Acting: 2/10 I am quite glad that such things are being said aloud and written in journals by academics.  But it is a tremendous performance (as in performance art) for them to act as if they have discovered something new.  I'm glad they all got publications for it.  Someone should, I suppose.

Screenplay: 2/10 The authors of this work had about six axes to grind.  I think they did well at that, although in a very heavy handed way.  It's just nothing new.

20130810: Documentary Review--Love the Beast

Love the Beast

1. Australian live action 'vanity' documentary movie, 92 minutes, released 2009, rated R for language.
2. Hulu says: Eric Bana's directorial debut explores the importance of his 25-year-long love affair with his first car - a Ford XB Falcon Coupe, "The Beast."
3. IMDB: 7.1/10.0 from 1,344 user reviews.
4. Rotten Tomatoes: 59% and 'no consensus yet.'  Well, yes.  The dozen or so mini-reviews I read on Rotten Tomatoes were polarized.  Among ticket-buying movie-goers, 76% liked it.
5. Starring: Eric Bana, Jay Leno (The Tonight Show), Jeremy Clarkson (Top Gear), Phil McGraw (Dr. Phil).
6. Eric Bana narrates his involvement with the 1974 Falcon Coupe, from early racing seen live in his youth, to Mel Gibson driving one in Mad Max, to having one of his own.
7. His discussions with other 'car people' are really fine, and add a lot of texture to the piece.  I had not expected Dr. Phil to be a car person, but his discussion of what it's like to race was very incisive, as was his distinguishing between operating at peak performance and delusions of immortality.  Jay Leno was also good at adding more information about car people, who are not all racers.
8. The multiple rebuilds of the Beast were interesting.  The final product probably had little or no original metal left from the original.
9. Eric's first race was in Tasmania, and after his 'last' rebuild of the Beast, he returned to run again in that original track.  This was an endurance race, the '5-day Targa Tasmania Rally.'
10. I am not a 'car person', but I like cars and driving.  So the interviews and the racing footage did not put me off.  I could see how a number of non 'car people' might feel disenfranchised early on in the film.  So, proceed with caution.
11. I liked Bana's straightforward enthusiasm and devotion over time.
12. Five stars of five.  I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys automobiles.

Cinematography: 6/10 Much of the archival footage sucked: small images, grainy in every spot, poor depth of field.  The more current footage looks good on the whole, but was sometimes bleached out in the bright Australian sun.

Sound: 9/10 Seldom disappoints.

Acting: 8/10 Lots of interviews: Eric's parents, his early friends, other enthusiasts he met in life.  There was plenty of sincerity and humor.

Screenplay: 9/10 The organization was reasonable.

20130810: Documentary Review--80 Waves

Around the World in 80 Waves

1. American live action theatrical movie, released in 2010, 60 minutes, 
2. IMDB listed the film at 5.9/10.0 from 12 users' ratings.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'no score yet' from reviewers, and 71% from 337 ticket buying reviewers.
4. There is a lot of travel involved.
5. Pipeline, Hawaii: wonderful water shots.
6. Hydrofoil: shots of surfers using a hydrofoil attached to the underside of the back of their boards.  It almost looks like they are surfing above the water.
7. Waimea Bay, Hawaii: large, heavy, turbulent waves.  Many surfers, many cameras, lots of traffic congestion (not shown).
8. Tavarua, Fiji: small island with lots of waves.  A lot of the perimeter of the island is controlled by a resort, though, and the movie makers could not film as well as they might since they are not all paying customers.  So 'Cloudbreak', one of the main attractions was not available.
9. Tahiti: impressive waves.  Lovely colors on the ocean water.
10. Bali: some fine shots of atmosphere, colors of the ocean, dancers, and the like.  Plus surfers and waves.
11. G-land, Indonesia: island of Java.  Waves were fast and turbulent.  G-land is a surf camp franchise system.  Lots of energetic waves.
12. Regulations for surfing on Hawaii.  The interviewee likened surfing to flying a plane...one needs to know the legal rules, and be trained at least to some degree.  How etiquette might be useful, but seems to be ignored since surfing is a 'selfish sport.'  He makes a good case verbally, and a few shots of beautiful waves almost covered in boats, helicopters, and surfers brings this home.
13. If you like beautiful images, this is a good 60 minutes to catch.
14. Five stars of five.

Cinematography: 10/10 Watch this on the best monitor you can find.  Definitely HD.  Most shots were exteriors.  The framing was excellent, focus crisp, with amazing lighting conditions.

Sound:  10/10 No complaints.

Acting: Not really applicable, but the talking heads do fine during the minutes they are onscreen.  Adam d'Esposito was the most frequently seen in the interviews, and he's photogenic and well-spoken.

Screenplay: 10/10 This is more about organizing clips camera work than pacing discussions and interactions among actors.  There were a lot of beautiful photography here.  The interspersing shots of people talking are short, to the point, and well-miked.  There was quite a bit more time spent on a great white shark spotted near Hawaii.  Other than that, it was wall-to-wall waves and surfing.

20130810: Comedy Review--The Treatment

Name: The Treatment (2006)
IMDb: link to The Treatment

Genres: Comedy, Romance, Drama.   Country of origin: USA.

Cast: Christopher Eigeman as Jake, Famke Janssen as Allegra Marshall, Jake's lover in an affair that eventually bogs down; Ian Holm as Dr. Ernesto Morales; Stephanie March as Julia, Jake's ex; Harris Yulin as Dr. Singer; Blair Brown as Miss Callucci; Roger Rees as Leighton Proctor, Jake's boss at school; Stephen Lang as the basketball coach, Jake's boss in that arena.

Directed by: Oren Rudavsky. Written by: Daniel Saul Housman, Daniel Menaker (novel), Oren Rudavsky.

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
Jake is a recently divorced Manhattan high school teacher who is in psychotherapy.  Jake's two bosses enjoy putting him in his place.  Despite the patterns of failure, Jake has his scattered aspirations.

Delineation of conflicts:
Jake wants to be a leader, especially in his own life, but cannot do what it takes to become one. He attempts to resolve his inner conflicts with the aggressive Dr Morales, but the two seldom connect.

He attempts wooing his boss' ex-wife Allegra Marshall, but that also seems doomed.  He has all sorts of ideas about how the basketball team should be managed, but cannot make his voice heard with the coach, who tells him to stick to keeping statistics.  Leighton Proctor tells him to keep his opinions to himself, and to support whatever Leighton Proctor said.

It came as no surprise that Jake has issues with Dr. Singer, his ailing father.

Resolution: The doors continue to slam shut.  Does Jake break through any of them?

One line summary: No laughs in this #FeelBad comedy.

Statistics:

Cinematography:  5/10 The introductory sequence, which included most of the credits, was ugly and out of focus.  The camera work improved immediately after that, but still suffered from soft focus and short depth of field.  With a budget that IMDB estimated at 900,000 USD, I suppose this is not unexpected.

Sound: 7/10 Very nice in the introductory sequence, OK through the rest.

Acting: 4/10 The first encounter of Julia and Jake was irritating.  Stephanie March's performances are always wooden, so I expected nothing there.   Eigeman's acting plus the writing, though, rendered the scene repulsive rather than bland.  Why would Julia (gorgeous and well-connected) marry this nebbish, who can turn any opportunity into rancid failure?

This one small stint told me the entire film would be worse than having a horse step on my foot.  All the subsequent minutes of the film did not change that assessment.  This was a dreary movie, mostly because of Eigeman's acting.  Dragging the viewer through the protagonist's failures is a bit much.  A different lead might have used the situations better; there might have been laughs.

On the other hand, I enjoyed the performances of Ian Holm, Stephen Lang, Famke Janssen, Harris Yulin, and Roger Rees.  That's why it's 4/10, not zero.

Screenplay:  4/10 With another lead, slightly better screenplay, and the same supporting actors, I think I might have had three or four belly laughs, plus a dozen chuckles.  With this lead, I did not laugh once.  This does not recommend a film labelled comedy.  The 'happy ending' seemed like an abrupt change given the bulk of the film.

Final Rating: 4/10

20130810: Documentary Review--The Big Buy

The Big Buy: Tom DeLay's Stolen Congress

1. American live action theatrical film, 2006, documentary, 75 minutes, 
2. IMDB rated the film 7.2/10.0 from 88 user reviews.
3. Tom DeLay rose from a 'piece of furniture' in the Texas Legislature to a money making dynamo who took effective control of the Texas legislature, then the US House of Representatives, where he became Majority Leader in the 2003.
4. Also profiled is Ronnie Earle, the relevant prosecutor in Travis County, where Austin is located.  A fair amount of screen time concerns Earle's motives in his prosecution of DeLay.
5. Democratic Texas legislators who were defeated in elections via floods of corporate funds are interviewed.
6. Several members of the press were interviewed, as were relevant lawyers, and other Texas leaders from the period.
7. Three stars of five.

One line summary:  The rise and fall of Tom DeLay in the Texas Legislature and the US House.

Cinematography: 5/10 Many of the archival clips are badly out of focus; sometimes the camera wobbles. Depth of field is consistently poor.

Sound: 9/10 Good, but not flawless.

Acting: not relevant.

Screenplay: 7/10 This is a sketch of the rise of Tom DeLay, and a more detailed accounting of his fall.  The fall included his indictment for felony money laundering charges related to using corporate money for political uses in violation of Texas law.  The indictment resulted in DeLay's resignation as  House Majority Leader in January, 2006, and his leaving the House in April, 2006.  (He was convicted in 2011, well after the film was released.)  The film does fairly well in representing differing points of view on the proceedings.

20130810: Indie Comedy--A Girl Walks into a Bar

Name: A Girl Walks into a Bar (2011)
IMDb: link to Girl Walks into a Bar

Genres: Comedy, Indie    Country of Origin: USA

Cast: Gil Bellows (Emmit Driver, cop), Xander Berkeley (Moe, cop), Alexis Bledel (Kim, drunk and high), Emmanuelle Chriqui (Teresa, one of the strippers), Rosario Dawson (June, hat check at the naked ping pong club), Danny DeVito (Aldo, gangster), Robert Forster (Dodge, ex con), Carla Gugino (Francine Driver, ex cop working with Sam), Josh Hartnett (Det. Sam Salazar), Zachary Quinto (Nick, the dentist), Michelle Ryan (Loretta), Lauren Lee Smith (Karen, dancer), Aaron Tveit (Henry, the pickpocket photographer), Amber Valletta (Camilla, bartender), Kevin Zegers (Billy), and even more actors.

Written and Directed by: Sebastian Gutierrez.

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
Set in Los Angeles, California, mostly at night, almost entirely in 10 bars populated by cops, gangsters, strippers, bartenders, ex cons, dancers, singers, hat check girls, and naked ping pong players.  The characters interact with each other in intertwining stories.

The action begins when Francine gets Nick to ask her to kill his wife, and records it on the sly.  That sets the rest of the stories in motion, split across locations and small groups of characters.

Delineation of conflicts:
This is a film with an ensemble cast and intertwining stories.  Each transaction between characters sets in motion other transactions.

Francine wants 20k USD now, so Nick goes to Aldo to get back some money he's 'invested.' Aldo can't get it the same night unless Nick does something for Aldo, namely rob the ping pong club. Nick meets his wife at the ping pong club, and they confess (her infidelity, his murder plans) and make up.  While waiting for Nick, Francine visits various bars to track down a pickpocket who can get a picture back from Emmitt, her ex.  Sam officially covers the action at the ping pong club, updates Francine when it's over, and ends up getting close to the hat check lady June.

Resolution:
Add in about 20 more interactions, and you have the film.  The story threads finally converge with side effects.

One line summary: This was a pleasant indie ensemble 'feel good' movie.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 8/10 Almost all interiors, well framed, sufficient light for the cameras.  The focus was a bit too soft for me in several passages.

Sound: 10/10 Just fine.

Acting:  8/10 The veteran actors were good (Carla Gugino, Danny DeVito, Xander Berkeley, Robert Forster, for instance), and most of the actors I was unfamiliar with were competent.  Zachary Quinto was disappointing again, as expected.  He has almost reached the level of deal breaker for me.

Screenplay: 8/10 The storylines came together fine, and I did have that 'feel good' at the end.  I could have used a few more laughs during the main body of the film.

Final Rating: 8/10