December 12th, 2009 admin
An environmentalist wake-up call that plays more like a paranoid thriller, this uncompromising, exhilarating expose of the whaling industries dirty little secret, which many are tipping as the frontrunner for next year’s Oscar, is a head striking apple fallen from the “we’re all doomed” branch of documentary filmmaking. Heading up this team of activists and filmmakers is Rick O’Barry, a former dolphin trainer who has dedicated the latter half of his life to blowing the whistle on the barbaric, hushed-up activities of the tiny coastal town of Taiji, where some 23,000 dolphins are rounded up annually so a handful can be chosen by trainers for theme parks and the rest butchered for their meat.
It’s something of a cruel irony for O’Barry that he is perhaps the man most directly responsible for the very practice he is now so desperate to stop, and one he is all too painfully aware of. Formerly the head trainer on the Flipper television series O’Barry had an epiphany when the show’s primary dolphin, “Kathy,” voluntarily stopped breathing in his arms in what O’Barry saw as a desperate act of escape from a miserable existence. Prior to the success of Flipper there were two Dolphinariums in the world, today it’s a multi-billion dollar industry. As Barry painfully surmises with a lump in his throat: “I spent ten years building that industry up, and the last twenty-seven trying to tear it down.”
Click here to read the full review at JustPressPlay.net.
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September 9th, 2009 admin
2009
Starring: Anna Wintour, Grace Coddington, Andre Leon Talley, Thakoon Panichgul
Director: R. J. Cutler
Runtime: 90 Minutes
Distributor: A&E Indie Films
Rating: PG-13
Despite being synonymous in the fashion world with both excellence and vision, American Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour gained a new level of notoriety as the inspiration for the ice-queen at the center of Laura Weisberger’s caricature novel “The Devil Wears Prada.” Having spent eight months in 2007 stalking the hallowed halls of fashion’s premiere magazine, peering in on the exhaustive assembly of the eponymous lynchpin publication, R. J. Cutler reveals that while the reputation (she garnered herself the nickname “Nuclear Wintour”) as an impossible monster is somewhat exaggerated, the Devil will wear whatever Ms. Wintour damn well tells him to, and woe betide him if it’s black.
Finding a woman as inscrutable as she is unapologetic, Ms. Wintour gradually reveals herself as a remarkably self-assured woman, possessing great drive, and a calculated knowing of her position, her power, and how to wield them effectively. Of her many critics she decrees with acknowledgment that “Something about fashion makes people very nervous, as if they’re excluded somehow.” With the ability to construct and crush trends, delay entire runway events until her arrival, and make or break a designer’s career at a whim, Vogue is for sure Anna Wintour’s magazine, reflecting her point of view. “Would Anna like this?” a junior staffer ponders. “No, it’s black. I’ll get fired for that” is the conclusion.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
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May 6th, 2009 admin
Tyson
2009
Starring: Mike Tyson
Director: James Toback
Runtime: 88 Minutes
Distributor: Sony Picture Classics
Rating: R
In attempting to construct a detailed picture of one of Boxing’s most troubled, storied and controversial figures, director, and longtime friend of Tyson, James Toback’s first decision was to remove himself from the film entirely. Opting to play the role of a suggestive voice rather than an interviewer, Toback spent most of the week long shoot (which he would then spend a year sifting through and piecing together) floating around off camera, often behind Tyson, offering only subtle prompts which the complex and deeply conflicted Tyson would use as a jumping off point for an extended monologue of self-examination. The result is a fractured, almost stream-of-consciousness confessional which, while running along the lines of a conventional linear biography, is peppered with tangents of unfettered chaos oddly mirroring the man’s immensely fascinating and somewhat tragic story.
Electing to forgo the typical talking heads fare, believing quite rightly that no one could tell Tyson’s story better than he could, Toback simply allows Mike to interpret the events of his life to the camera and offer up a trance-like self-portrait. Opening with a voiceover as Tyson walks along a deserted beach at sunset, Toback moves to split screen with overlapping takes and looped sound bites of Tyson talking about the “chaos of the brain” showing him to be a thinker and a poet that belies his thuggish public persona, and a man whose entire character was constructed as a form of self-defense against his own demons.
Click here to read the full review at JustPressPlay.net.
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April 23rd, 2009 admin
2009
Starring: Steve “Lips” Kudlow, Robb Reiner
Director: Sacha Gervasi
Runtime: 90 Minutes
Distributor: VH1
Rating: NR
It is widely regarded in the annals of movie lore that when legendary rock’n’roll guitarist Eddie Van Halen first saw This is Spinal Tap, Rob Reiner’s mother of all rock mockumentaries, he didn’t get it. Having gotten lost backstage himself numerous times and been witness to band meeting’s chaired by groupies, he wondered in all honesty just what the joke was. As Nigel Tufnel famously espoused: “It’s a fine line between clever and stupid.” Van Halen, having lived inside the insular bubble that is professional musicianship, knew that it was an even finer line between truth and fiction and that truth often times really is stranger.
First time director Sacha Gervasi (Anvil’s roadie for a time in the eighties) chronicles the legendary Canadian mettlers, led by long time best friends Steve “Lips” Kudlow and drummer Robb Reiner, during an ill-fated European tour in preparation for their thirteenth studio album. Given some decidedly Tap-ish antics (playing guitar with a dildo), a disastrous tour managed by a fan, and irony out the wazoo (the drummer’s name really is Robb Reiner – two b’s), comparisons to Tap’s calculated piss taking were inevitable. But having witnessed the band’s hilarious, heart-wrenching and utterly mesmorising tale of never-say-die persistence, we have to declare that dismissing these guys as merely over-the-hill crazies does them and their indomitable spirit a great disservice.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
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April 9th, 2009 admin
2005
Narrated By: Hugues De Montalembert
Director: Gary Tarn
Runtime: 70 Minutes
Distributor: Indiepix
Rating: NR
As director Gary Tarn floats the camera high above the rooftops of New York City’s bustling metropolis and people scurry far below like ants, it’s with a creeping sense of it-could-happen-to-anyone dread that we listen to narrator Hughes De Montalembert describe the brutal and senseless attack on his person that robbed him of his sight. One night, outside his home near Washington Square, two men forced him inside and demanded money. When Hughes informed them he didn’t have any the situation turned ugly and the men attacked him. While attempting to fight one of the men off with a poker from the fireplace, the other sprayed paint remover into his eyes, blinding him.
As an artist and filmmaker the sheer psychological devastation is almost beyond comprehension. But rather than give up and resign himself to the darkness, Hughes’ story is one of hope, triumph and a gentle hymn to the indomitable nature of the human spirit. With a quiet air of dignity, Hughes’s gentle, warbling narration combined with Tarn’s opaque cinematography act as a sort of lullaby to the senses as he at once captivates you with his soothing tones and regales you with his enlightening and empowering struggle. As Hughes describes the slow deterioration of his sight in the hours following the attack, Tarn fades us in and out with dark, grimy yellow filters and oblique tracking as slowly we too are plunged into darkness.
Click here to read the full review at JustPressPlay.net.
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December 5th, 2008 admin
2005
Director: Robert Greenwald
Runtime: 95 Minutes
Distributor: Brave New Films
Rating: Unrated
After giving both Rupert Murdoch’s singular approach to journalism and The Bush Administration’s case for the war in Iraq his own special attention, political activist and filmmaker Robert Greenwald takes aim at the world’s largest corporation. While the policies of Wal*Mart are no longer exactly news, they still make for fascinating and frightening examination. Greenwald takes us on a tour of grass routes American and shows the thundering impact the retail giant has at ground level for people in the community, the workers and those who manufacture and supply its goods.
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November 11th, 2008 admin
The debut feature from directorial trio Lucas Jansen, Adam Kurland, and Spencer Vreeman, This is not a Robbery chronicles the life, the times, and the multiple bank robberies commited by disgruntled, eighty-seven-year-old former millionaire J.L. “Red” Rountree.
Click here to read the full review at Suite101.
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