20130823: Documentary Review--Breaking the Taboo

Breaking the Taboo

1. American live action documentary, 53 minutes, 2012, NR, narrated by Morgan Freeman.
2. IMDB: 7.4/10.0 from 342 users.  Seen on Hulu+
3. The documentary starts with the beginning of the 'war' back in 1970 when Richard Nixon was president.
4. The war was not just in the USA; the US encouraged parallel repression in drug-producing countries such as Colombia.  The action continued during the Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama presidencies.
5. Interviewees included Fernando Cardoza, the president of Brazil 1995-2002, Cesar Galviria, the president of Colombia 1990-94, US presidents Carter and Clinton, Swiss president Ruth Dreifus (1999).
6. The film sets context: 40+ years long; ascending violence in Colombia, Mexico, the USA.  The size of the US drug habit creates a sucking vacuum for production of drugs (heroin, cocaine, marijuana, et cetera).  After the US invasion, Afghanistan has become a huge producer of heroin.  As in Colombia, the farmers get much more money for drug crops than non-drug crops.  Russia has suffered a large increase in drug use since 2001, in part because of the rise of heroin production in nearby Afghanistan.
7. The war on drugs in the US has not done well in decreasing drug use in the US.  Hence more arrests are made.  Also, the PSA (public service announcements) saying drug use is deadly, has produced a credibility gap since lots of people use drugs and enjoy it without dying.
8. Prisons: 1970, the US had 330,000 criminals in prison; in 2012, 2.3 million.  There are more prison guards in the US than US Marines.  This does not look like success.  Also, drug us is rampant in prisons, and many new addictions occur there.  Drug habits translate into money need, and that need is often met by ongoing criminal activity.
9. Violence: A high proportion of violent crime in the USA is directly related to drugs.  In Mexico, the local war on drugs has resulted in 40,000 drug related murders in less than one decade.
10. Spread of AIDS: Repression of drug consumption has promoted the use of dirty needles, which leads to increased disease transmission.
11. Comparison to alcohol prohibition (early 20th century USA): Prohibition produced a huge rise in alcoholism, in bootlegging, in the profits of racketeers, and the admiration by the young for criminals.  After Prohibition, US governments various levels made money by taxing alcohol.  Estimates about additional revenues obtained by legalizing drugs runs in the tens of billions.  Also, organized crime is strongly enriched by illegal drugs; legalization would likely lessen this greatly.
12. A quote from the film: Tony Papa: If you can't control drug use in a maximum security prison, how can you control drug use in a free society?
13. The current US president, Barack Obama, declared the war on drugs a failure while a candidate.  As president, he has done little to change this war.
14. The film notes that several countries that have suffered the most from the war on drugs are starting to change their policies independent of the USA.
15. Five stars of five.  It's a time-worn point of view, but this is a good presentation of it.

Cinematography: 8/10  Archival footage is of lesser quality, but the new footage is excellent.

Sound: 10/10

Acting: N/A

Screenplay: 10/10 The film makes a good case for the war on drugs (as it has been done) made things worse: more drug usage, more people in prison, higher production of drugs abroad to fulfill US drug habits.  Few politicians have the courage to oppose the war on drugs.  Ron Paul is one of the few to take it on, and it's probably the single biggest reason that Ron Paul makes little traction as a Presidential candidate.  Jimmy Carter advocated decriminalizing marijuana, with some success, but this contributed to his massive loss in the 1980 election.

20130823: Horror Review--Hemlock Grove

Hemlock Grove

1. American television series, 2013, 13 episodes, each a bit less than an hour.  Horror, supernatural, rated R, at least, for language, nudity, sexual content, and violence.
2. IMDB: Nothing yet beyond the list of stars.  Viewed on Netflix.
3. Starring Famke Janssen as Olivia Godfrey, Dougray Scott as Norman Godfrey, Bill Skarsgard as Roman Godfrey, Landon Laboiron as Peter Romancek, Penelope Mitchell as Letha Godfrey, Freya Tingley as Christina Wendell, Joel de la Fuente as Dr Johann Pryce, Nicole Boivin as Shelley Godfrey, Lili Taylor as Lynda Rumancek, Aaron Douglas as sheriff Tom Sworn.
4. This is a more detailed update of the partial review I posted on 20130612.
5. This series is not for the faint of heart.  There is more than enough butchery of the human form, self-mutilation, alcohol abuse, generalized anger and mistrust, nightmares, and horrid corporate goals.
6. The town of Hemlock Grove, Pennsylvania, is beset by murders of young women.  Attempts are made to lay the blame on Peter Romancek, who is a gypsy suspected of being a werewolf, but who is also not guilty.  Peter and Roman Godfrey become unlikely friends who have the common purpose of finding the real killer.
7. The town is dominated by the enormous wealth of the Godfrey family, from its past when steel was king, to the present, where the Godfrey family owns controlling interest in the high tech and hugely lucrative biological research done there.  The abandoned buildings used for steel production serve as backdrops for some of the action.
8. Secrecy and intrigue surrounds Roman, his mother Olivia, his uncle Norman, and the leadership of the corporation allied with the family.  This takes its course during the series, and Roman ends the first season in control of the family fortunes.
9. Eventually (12th episode), the killer is found and dispatched.  Unfortunately, the wrong person is identified as the killer; this sets up further complications for season 2.  The sheriff's loss of his twin daughters sets up revenge motivations for season 2.
10. Another recurrent theme in the series is that of the births of bizarre individuals.  One case in point is Roman's sister Shelly; a second would be the child of Roman's cousin Letha.
11. The last episode reveals that Roman inherited more than just wealth from his family.
12. Four stars of five. 

Cinematography: 10/10 Excellent.

Sound: 10/10 Excellent.

Acting: 10/10 No complaints; just fine for this property.

Screenplay: 8/10 Long, convoluted, loaded with dark motivations and mistaken perceptions.  The rich versus those not rich, the supernatural versus regular people, the Roman Catholic Church versus its perceived enemies, hunters versus their prey.  The story was a bit too murky for me.  The entire Chasseur story line (the hunter hired by the Church) could have been dropped as far as I was concerned; it added little, and took too much focus away from the central characters.  Unfortunately, this thread will be continued in season 2.  The matter of just what the biotech corporation does is hinted at, but not fully explained.  This would be another to be continued piece.

20130822: Documentary Review--SoLa Louisiana Water Stories

SoLa Louisiana Water Stories

1. American live action feature film, NR, 61 minutes, Documentary, 2010.
2. IMDB: no statistics.  Needs five reviews.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet' and zero audience ratings.
4. Written by Jon Bowermaster and Chris Cavanagh, directed by Jon Bowermaster.
5. There were a number of major interviews.
6. Ivor Van Heerden was fired from Louisiana State University after putting the blame for New Orleans' problems caused by hurricane Katrina on the Army Corps of Engineers.
7. One researcher noted the (illegal) over-harvesting of cypress trees--10% of all the state's cypress harvested in 2000 to 2006.  Contrasted destructive harvesting in Brazil versus Louisiana.
8. Jeff Dauzat discussed oil spills on the Mississippi due to tanker crashes in the river.  Such occurrences spread quickly and can get into drinking water intakes.
9. Father Robert Ryan--Catholic priest; looks to the needs of local fishermen.  The money per pound that a fisher gets for crab, fish, shrimp and the like is down about 50% from a decade or so ago, but the cost of fuel and the like for harvesting the fish is way up.  Interviews with fishermen were pretty uniform: the yield is down from (40, 20, 10) years ago, but for many, it's all they know.
10. Wilma Subra is an investigator of the toxic 'dead zone' south of Louisiana.  She and her husband have been harassed over the content of her reports to Washington.  There are many (400+) dead zones around the world.  In Louisiana's case, the dead zone is from the nitrates and phosphates washed down from the Mississippi drainage system (just about all the Midwest), and dumped in the ocean waters outside the Mississippi Atchafalaya delta.  This fosters algae blooms, which lower oxygen content to the extent that fish numbers drop.
11. Mayrlee Orr investigates cancer risk from the petrochemical industry along the southern Mississippi.
12. Tracy Kuhns: representing interests of fishermen.  Chemical origins of diseases and birth defects.  She operates in both Texas and Louisiana.
13. Four stars of five.

Cinematography: 10/10 Excellent aerial footage; ground footage has adequate light, good focus, and framing.

Sound: 10/10 No problems, well done.

Acting: N/A

Screenplay:  7/10 Loved it, but it needed to be about 3 to 5 hours instead of one.  The breadth of coverage is fine, but I could use more depth.

20130822: Review Documentary--Game Over

Game Over

1. Documentary, 51 minutes, NR, live action with clips from video games, 2013.
2. IMDB: nothing.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: nothing.
4. 50 million online players on any given day make online games a large presence in entertainment world.
5. The film is mostly about the virtual gold mining industry, which largely operates out of China, and secondarily about the social aspect of gaming communities.
6. In times past, virtual gold was obtained by people playing the games.  The profit margins were larger for robots (scripting programs) which play the games as automated avatars, so the shift was to automated mining.
7. The virtual gold is then sold in-game to players who don't want to do the activities usually required to obtain it themselves.
8. This is usually discouraged by game publishers, though with limited success.
9. Games profiled (lightly) include World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, and Final Fantasy.
10. Cosplay is discussed somewhat, as are FPS (first person shooters) and racing games.
11. Games for smartphones and tablets are profiled a bit, including the scramble to port PC and console games to the mobile platforms.
12. Two stars of five.

Cinematography: 8/10  Usually rather good; the exception would be when the gold farmers are interviewed.

Sound: 8/10  Gets a bit too soft for interviews.

Acting: N/A

Screenplay: 6/10 Too short, too light on content, nothing new at all.  The POV (point of view) of the film seems nebulous.

The time spent on the virtual gold farmers (well, thieves) was low tech, badly lit, and poorly miked.  And, yes, one should always kill known gold farmers to limit their income.  One should also report them, so their accounts can be cancelled.  These bastards are a good proportion of the hackers who steal accounts so they can seize virtual gold directly and sell items for more gold.  Why lionize these criminals?

Why are the European critics even present?  They don't add much, and their attitudes are repellant.  They keep repeating observations that have been around for decades, and act like they have gifted us with some sort of great insight.

20130822: Comedy Review--Cheesecake Casserole

Name: Cheesecake Casserole (2012)
IMDb: link to Cheesecake Casserole page

Genres: Feel bad comedy     Country of origin: USA

Cast: Torrey Devitto as Margo, Brit Morgan (True Blood) as Cal, Paige Howard as Jess, Rome Brooks as Avy, Ryan Merriman as Andy (Jess' boyfriend), Stephen Heath as Ronnie (hitchhiker), Louis Herthum as Howard (father of Cal), Rocco Nugent as Rudy (Avy's controlling Christian boyfriend).

Written and directed by: Renji Philip; original stage play by Meghan Gambling.

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
Four coeds get together for a last weekend before graduation, to party and to reminisce.  The conversations get interesting, and even more intense after some of the boyfriends join them.

Delineation of conflicts:
The men are depicted as unmitigated jerks.  Rudy is a strongly discordant character, that I wish they had bounced early on.  The real estate agent with his misspelled realty signs showed another reprehensible male activity: an older man who uses his experience to take advantage of a younger woman.  Andy was inarticulate and useless: he wanted Jess to give up a post-doc in France so she would be available to him.

The last opportunities for backbiting are taken.

Resolution:  As the film evolves, the women become more self-righteous and rejecting.

One line summary: Sad pre-graduation gathering.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 7/10 Most of the camera work was fine, but there was some overexposure to the point of significant loss of contrast.

Sound: 5/10 The spoken word was out of synch with the actors' mouth movements early on.  The incidental music was beyond irritating, especially when it blares out of control.  The first two minutes were almost enough to make me stop watching the film.

Acting: 2/10 Actors of a more appropriate age would have been better.  I expected better acting from the older cast to make up for the age incongruity.  That did not happen.

Screenplay: 5/10 The barrage of anti-male sentiments was next to unrelenting. The sense of resolution was low, the sense of loss definitely higher.

The film generated zero belly laughs, zero chuckles, zero wry smiles for me, so it fails strongly as a comedy.  Some of the dramatic elements were better, such as the tough interactions between characters; for example, between Cal and her father.  Avy and Rudy interact a lot, but not in any useful way.  That seemed to be pain that bore only poisoned fruit.

Final Rating: Five of ten.

20130821: Review Comedy--It's a Disaster

Name: It's a Disaster (2012)
IMDb: link to IMDB

Genres: Comedy, drama.     Country of Origin: USA.

Cast: Julia Stiles as Tracey Scott, America Ferrera as Hedy Galili,  David Cross as Glen Randolph, Kevin Brennan as Buck Kivel, Blaise Miller as Pete Mandrake, Errin Hayes as Emma Mandrake, Jeff Grace as Shane Owens, Rachel Boston as Lexi Kivel, Laura Adkin as Jenny Alexander, Rob McGillivray as Gordon Alexander.

Written and directed by: Todd Berger.

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
Tracey takes her new boyfriend Glen to a recurrent couples' brunch.  The other couples get to know Glen, and he them.

The phone, the local television, and then the electricity go out.  The neighbor next door comes by in his hazmat suit to ask for extra D batteries, and tells them the news about the dirty bombs and impending radiation clouds.

Delineation of conflicts: Should the group try to survive this? Of course they should.  However, this group has no experience working together to do such a thing. To make things interesting, Emma and Pete were set to get a divorce, so a number of exposed nerves come into play.

The search for a radio begins, and fails.  Sealing the house for air leaks begins.  Jenny and Gordon show up late, and have gotten some of the nerve gas.  The couples have some earnest discussions as the clock ticks away for them.

As they need to make more real decisions, the fights about 'who made you boss?' flare up.

Resolution: Toward the end, can they make a good group decision or two?

One line summary: Dark comedy about four couples facing certain death.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 10/10 Nicely done.

Sound: 10/10 No complaints.

Acting: 8/10 Mostly fine.  Cross, Ferrera, and Stiles were a joy.

Screenplay: 8/10 Moves along rather well.  I smiled a lot, and got one or two belly laughs.

Final Rating: 8/10

20130821: Review Comedy--The Kitchen

Name: The Kitchen (2012)
IMDb: link to The Kitchen

Genres: Comedy, Drama.   Country of origin: USA

Cast: Laura Prepon as Jennifer, Bryan Greenberg as Paul, Dreama Walker as Penny, Tate Ellington as Kenny.

Directed by: Ishai Sutton.    Written by: John Beggarly.

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
Jennifer is turning 30 years old.  Her friends are holding a party for her, though she's not all that much into celebrating.  The party, and all the film's shooting, is held in her large kitchen.  Still, the crowding is like an extra character in the story.

The delineation of conflicts:
Jennifer is not getting along with the boyfriend, Paul, because of his unfaithfulness.  More infidelities are exposed.  The host of the party, Stan, is in love with Jennifer, but this is not reciprocated.

Penny, Jennifer's sister, is getting an abortion, which is news to Jennifer.  The guests are a big box of obnoxious, as were the photographer and the uninvited attendees.

Vladimir, Jennifer's hope to be the star for her new gallery, decides to stay at his current gallery, instead of accepting her invitation.  The battle of the bands (the one paid to perform, and the one not hired) was an extra annoyance.

Resolution: As one might expect in a feel-bad movie, a few things get better, but most get worse.

One line summary: Feel-bad birthday party comedy.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 8/10 Well lit, good color saturation, reasonable framing and focus.  The camera is a bit jerky now and then.

Sound: 9/10 The sound is mostly from well-miked actors with some background music.

Acting: 4/10 The males seem not to be actors and none of them know how to shave, nor how to grow a beard.  The females at least know how to read lines.

Screenplay: 4/10 Boring.  No engaging characters, but several repellant ones.  The dialog does move along without contradicting itself.  The uptick at the end (three minutes or so) hardly balances the unrelenting depiction of all the characters as pigs.

Final Rating: Four of ten.

20130821: SFF Review--Alien Armageddon

Name: Alien Armageddon (2011)
IMDb: page for Alien Armageddon

Genres: SciFi.    Country of origin: USA.

Cast: Katherine Lee McEwan as Jodie Elliot, Don Scribner as Cowboy, Rochelle Vallese as Franci, Ben Cain as Markus.

Written and directed by: Neil Johnson.  As well as directing film, Johnson is a metal rocker and a director of music videos.  Street scenes filmed in Paris, France and Los Angeles, USA; studio work done in London, UK.

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
The aliens invade, and take over or destroy most places on the Earth.

Jodie looks for her daughter in Los Angeles, which is mostly controlled by the aliens. There's talk of taking the war to the aliens.

The delineation of conflicts:
The overarching conflict would be the aliens versus the remnants of humanity.

In the first minutes of the film, all the military of all the nations of the world, with millions of trained fighters, with trillions in gear, including nuclear weapons and sophisticated communications, failed at defeating these aliens.

After the initial onslaught, we have a few women banding together to fight the aliens.  Opposing them are the aliens.  Also opposing them are the facts that they are uneducated, highly ignorant, have no military equipment, and no military experience.  Indeed the protagonist fails in this approach.

The invaders (described as nephilim) can only eat their own flesh, so they infect humans with DNA-altering virus, which renders the flesh edible.  Nice.  Then there are other transformations that allow the upper class invaders to inhabit human bodies and rule.  So, things look impossible for the human race.

However, the nephilim have their own traitors who have conducted biological experiments on imprisoned humans. The traitors hope to use the results to undermine their opponents.

Resolution: The renegade nephilim hope to defeat their opponents across the entire planet.  Will they succeed?

One line summary: An absurd fight of alien vs alien.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 2/10 Terrible in the prison interviews with Cowboy.  Incredibly bad film editing.  Jumpy hand-held cameras. I've seen some beautiful content streamed as HD on Netflix, and this is not it.  It always looks fuzzy or distorted or loaded with third rate special effects.  In the second half of the film, the camera works smooths down a bit.

Sound: 6/10 Usually good enough.  There was plenty of flatulence, barfing, and flesh being rendered; those came through clearly in the sound track.

Acting: 1/10 Never good.  Hiring some actors might have been of value.  Jodie from Los Angeles and the Cowboy from Wyoming speak in UK/Cockney.  Oi.

Screenplay: 1/10 Stupid sentences, lack of motivation, invisible plot.  Tiresome irrelevant PC pandering: human beings are worthless past being food for some parasitic invader; only females, whether human or invader, can cause change, even if that change comes about by being eaten.

Special Effects: 1/10 This might have looked good in 1957; then again, perhaps not.  Cheesiest mushroom clouds ever.  Shows a person looking at a nuclear explosion and then squinting (nonsense; he'd be blind).  The aliens are supposedly the nephilim from the Old Testament.  Aliens are clearly humans in rubber suits, and not gigantic humanoid beings with angelic powers.  In this version, the overlords are slugs, and the biggest special effect is that of slugs wiggling through blood.

Final Rating: 1/10; four blackholes for cinematography, acting, screenplay, SFX.

20130821: Horror review--In Search of Lovecraft

Name: In Search of Lovecraft (2008)
IMDb: link to page In Search of Lovecraft

Genres: Horror     Country of Origin: USA

Cast: Renee Sweet (Rebecca Marsh, TV reporter), Tytus Bergstrom (Mike, the cameraman, who has seen too much), Denise Amrikhas (Amber Martin, the high school intern), Saqib Mousoof as Dr. D'Sousa, Rachael Robbins as the white witch, Keja.

Written, edited, and directed by: David J. Hohl

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
Reporter Rebecca Marsh starts with Halloween interviews, and for some reason asks crowd members questions about H. P. Lovecraft.

One new contact leads to another.  Mike, her cameraman, and Amber, her intern, follow her as the story unfolds.

The delineation of conflicts: 
As is often the case in Lovecraft films, the main confrontation is the searcher versus general lack of information. The searchers here start with reality based reporter tools.

The pursuit is all rather ordinary until a Professor Sutton, who was to be interviewed, is found dead instead from a magic attack.  They get a set of directions on Sutton's voice mail, and locate a mysterious movie from 1933.

The reporting team keeps following leads, but someone/something keeps doing in their contacts.  Along the way, they pick up more Lovecraft lore, and more leads to more murky information.  For instance, an aborted attempt for one of the gods to find purchase in the real world is detailed, and an assertion that another 75 years must pass before the next gate opens.  That would be in 2008.

Dark passages and foul dreams come before the climactic encounters. As with many Lovecraft films, the protagonists only get a full information set (under the floorboards in an abandoned flat) about an hour before civilisation-ending disaster is about to strike.

Resolution: In the abstract, all Lovecraft films end the same way.  In the particular, one needs to watch the film carefully.

One line summary: Lovecraft mythos pursued by reporters.

For a much better Lovecraft film, see: The Dunwich Horror with Dean Stockwell.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 2/10 The film is in 1.33 to 1.00 aspect ratio.  I suppose that is meant to make it more 'true' to Lovecraftian lore, but it looks like shit.

Some of it is well lit, in focus, and decently framed.  Other pieces are dark, very low in contrast, and in grey and grey (not good enough to be called black and white).  Some sections are rife with jumpy camera work and careless zooming.  Of course, some of it is washed out by too much light.  Some of the 'old' footage is much, much worse than the rest of the film.  Of course, the crappiness of archival footage is beloved by some fans.

Sound: 4/10 Many of the actors were not well miked, and the sound suffers for it.  It sounds hollow more often than not.  If not for the subtitles, I would have been lost in some passages.

Acting: 2/10 Sad.  Saqib Mousoof and Rachael Robbins were probably the best, and have much better accomplishments after this film.  Denise Amrikhas was beyond bad, as were the leads, Renee Sweet and Tytus Bergstrom.

Screenplay: 1/10  Associating Halloween with Lovecraft?  Hm.  The case for the pantheon in Lovecraft's writings being 'real' was 0% convincing.  Unfortunately, most of the film goes with that premise.  Motivation?  Apparently that was not considered necessary.  The fans of this type of film are pre-sold on the mythology.

Special Effects: 1/10 Between unconvincing and laughable.

Final Rating: One of ten.  Three black holes for cinematography, screenplay, SFX.

20130820: Review Comedy--Losing Control

Name: Losing Control (2012)

IMDb: link to Losing Control

Genres: Comedy.    Country of origin: USA.

Cast: John Billingsley as Professor Straub, Ben Weber as Dr. Rudy Mann, Miranda Kent as Samantha, Reid Scott as Ben, Jamison Yang as Dr Chen Wa Chow, Lin Shaye as Dolores, Kathleen Robertson as Leslie.

Written and directed by: Valerie Weiss.

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux: Samantha is pursuing her PhD at Harvard.  Her experimental results fail to support the central hypothesis of her thesis. Her major professor enables her experimentation to continue, but lets her know that it should be converging, not going sideways.

Delineation of conflicts:
Early in her research, Samantha made a perfect sample of 'Y-kill' but since then, she cannot reproduce the result.  Ouch.  Straub encourages her to continue, but with larger volume.  So a bigger amount changes quality of results?

Her fellow in the research environment, Dr. Chen Wa Chow, gets arrested on suspicion of stealing research and giving it to China. Sam's surroundings are under surveillance, and something is going wrong.  Will she be the next target?

Sam is engaged to Ben, but she decides to test whether he is her best match.  She's in conflict with herself, clearly.

The stint in the mental hospital was the second or third 'jump the shark' moment.  On the other hand, perhaps that was the correct place for the lead character.

Resolution: It did end like a romantic comedy, but not in a convincing manner.

One line summary: Clueless Harvard PhD student.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 9/10 A bit dark, but adequately framed and focused.

Sound: 9/10 Adequate, but occasionally dips too low.

Acting: 2/10 The acting was not a plus.  I liked John Billingsley somewhat.

Screenplay: 0/10 The writer seems not to like Harvard professors, PhD students, and post-doctoral fellows, or, for that matter, performance art and artists.  At least they are the ones made to appear the most stupid, ignorant, indecisive, disloyal, thoughtless, disgusting, or downright traitorous.  I had zero belly laughs, zero chuckles, zero wry smiles.  Why did it take Samantha so long to figure out that her major professor was betraying her?  That was clear in the first 10 or 15 minutes.  Then there is the hardcore bigotry of the piece: anti-male, anti-Jew, anti-Chinese, anti-science.

Final Rating: 2/10 Two black holes for acting and screenplay.

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
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.