War/Dance

A friend of mine has an exciting job. Among other things, she's working with some filmmakers on a documentary. When she first told me about the project, she was really excited about one of the other films the filmmakers made. It had done well at Sundance last year; winning Best Directing for Documentary and nominated for the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary. Pretty impressive stuff. She was so excited about their previous film that she sent me a copy. It was so impulsive, that she sent it to an old address. She sent a second copy and I got a chance to finally watch it. The movie is War/Dance or War Dance. And it happens to have been nominated for an Academy Award earlier this week for Best Documentary. I absolutely love the movie and here is a short summary and three points that merit it's nomination.

Uganda is having it's National Music Festival and filmmakers Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine follow three members of a refugee camp school as they train for and compete in the competition. They are the only team coming out of the war zone to compete.

Beauty: The film is insanely beautiful. All aspects from the dance, the colors, the landscapes of Uganda and the sounds. The visuals, stories, and sounds help to create images that don't leave your consciousness very quickly.

Insight: Whether the team won anything or not, the subject was found in the bush of Uganda and pursued. It shows incredible insight into the heart of the story; these amazing kids who won't let the terrible hand they've been dealt in life to affect their attitudes and their outlook. The selfless adults that work with these children are also so amazing.

Unspoken Call to Action: Never in the film do they try to tell us something. The innocently show us a story unfold and let us react. There is no celebrity who tells you how you can help these children. There's no connection to an organization to donate money to. There is no call to action. The filmmakers leave it to you to draw your own conclusions. Many people will be able to watch this movie without letting themselves be changed by the story or the exposure to the world, many other people will hear the unspoken call to make a difference in their world.I can't comment on the next project from Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine, but I trust their vision, insight and ability to expose the world to us in the form of Documentary film. I'll be rooting for them come Oscar time. It will be released on DVD officially on April 15.

Shot in the Dark

I guess I missed the fact that Adrian Grenier's documentary "Shot in the Dark" was filmed in 1999. When I saw HBO promoting it, I figured it was a star from one of their shows (Entourage) using the resources of a big star to track down his biological father. By July of 1999, he was pretty far off of Hollywood's radar, but he made a pretty great documentary. With the success of Entourage and the mystique of his character on the show, I have no doubt we'll keep hearing from him.

Seis De Mayo

Apparently Cinco de Mayo means heavy movies. I watched two. Half Nelson and A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints. Some similar themes, but significantly different films. Both were well acted, well shot, and well written.
Ryan Gosling was amazing in Half Nelson. The young girl (Shareeka Epps) definitely has a future in the film business. The movie was gritty and raw, but within the raw imagery was a balance of a Dead Poets Society classroom and the drug realism of Traffic or Rush.
Chances are A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints didn't show up on your radar. I didn't know much about the story when I dropped it in my queue, just saw a favorable review from someone I trust. It stars Robert Downey, Jr. and Shia LeBeouf as Dito Montiel. The film simultaneously follows him coming of age in New York and a successful 30 something returning to care for his ailing father. It's powerful and entertaining, but definitely heavy. Robert Downey, Jr. is on the short list of actors who I can watch do anything.

The Long Con: The Prestige vs. The Illusionist

Two movies about magicians coming out at the same time takes me back to the summer of 1998 when Armageddon and Deep Impact both showed us how to avoid the Earth being destroyed by comets, meteors, and asteroids. In the same way that Armageddon and Deep Impact separated themselves despite similar plots and elements, both The Prestige and The Illusionist are both similar and unique. I'll preface this further by saying that I enjoyed both movies, though I would have done something different with each of them. Whereas The Prestige deals with the rivalry between two magicians and the lengths they are willing to go to in an effort to best the other, the rivalry in The Illusionist is between a magician from humble beginnings and the crown prince of Austria. Both movies are period pieces, both movies have a generation's most promising actors (Edward Norton and Christian Bale), both movies have one of the hottest young actresses in Hollywood (Scarlett Johansson and Jessica Beil), and both movies con their audiences in the same way that the characters con each other. I'd heard enough about both movies to know that more was happening than they were willing to give away, but I think both movies could have done better at protecting the reveal yet still keeping true to the con. To protect anyone who hasn't seen them, I won't go into too much detail other than to highlight a couple of performances. Michael Caine, who worked with Christian Bale and director Christopher Nolan on Batman Begins was great in The Prestige. I thought Paul Giamatti and Rufus Sewell did well supporting Norton's performance. I think I liked the Prestige better, but I don't feel as though to like one better is to not like the other.

Stranger Than Fiction

I've had Stranger Than Fiction sitting here from Netflix all week, but with the live music schedule, I haven't had a chance to watch it. I got around to watching it last night and let me tell you...this is a great movie. The performances were fantastic. Will Ferrell puts his acting chops on display whereas the performances by Emma Thompson, Maggie Gyllenhaal and the brilliant Dustin Hoffman complimented both Ferrell and the movie. Having taken several creative writing classes and having a affinity for fiction writing also made this movie intriguing for me. Zach Helm's writing is genius and director Marc Forster did a great job putting it all together on film. I'm surprised actually after seeing it, that it wasn't included in any Oscar nominations. Will Ferrell was nominated for best actor in a comedy (though, I wouldn't label Stranger Than Fiction a comedy), but lost to Sacha Baron Cohen. I recommend you rent it or drop it into your Netflix queue for a pleasant surprise.

Netflix Dump

A couple of movies that have passed through the USPS lately...

The Science of Sleep
What a great movie! There's so much about it that I don't understand, but the way the film mixed dreams, reality, lucid dreams and the film's own reality was pretty brilliant. It comes from Michel Gondry who directed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Where Charlie Kaufman's writing helped Eternal Sunshine have a little rhyme and reason to it, Gondry wrote The Science of Sleep and brilliantly keeps you confused the whole time whether what you're seeing is real or dream or just the reality in which the film lives. It's highly recommended.

The Departed
I like gangster shows and films and I like clandestine stories too. This latest film from Martin Scorsese does the gangster genre, the cop genre and adds the thriller suspense plot twists to it to make an excellent film. It was originally a Hong Kong film called Infernal Affairs (Wu Jian Dao). Jack Nicholson is great in the film. Leonardo DiCaprio is pretty amazing as usual. Mark Wahlberg does a great job (he's nominated for Best Supporting Actor for the role) but I think Matt Damon's performance is overlooked. He may never have a Will Hunting performance again, but I think this was one of his best roles.

Never Cry Wolf
I saw this movie several times as a kid, but only had vague memories of it. It's the story of Farley Mowat and his adventures in remote Canada. Farley Mowat was sent by the government to study wolves to see if they are the cause of caribou shortages. It's fascinating and beautifully told and filmed.

Game 6
This movie didn't come in the mail, but rather was my testing of the new feature of Netflix to stream movies on your computer. The service worked flawlessly (though it requires using Internet Explorer and isn't compatible with Firefox. The movie surrounds Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, the game made famous by the Red Sox collapse culminating with Bill Buckner letting the routine grounder slip by him giving up the winning run. It stars Michael Keaton and Robert Downey Jr. Though the movie only briefly touched on the idea, I was thinking that it was going to explore the impact of that game by showing an alternate reality in which Buckner got the ball and put Mookie out at first base. Somethings would be significantly different, but much would be the same. This isn't a baseball movie, so put that idea that the players on the team are actors like a Costner movie. The events of the movie surround the game. It's a good story and I liked the characters a lot. I can recommend the movie and I can recommend the service of watching the movies on your computer.

Little Miss Sunshine

I've had Little Miss Sunshine at the top of my Netflix queue for weeks and I finally had a chance to watch it. I had pretty high expectations because it seemed like the type of movie I would enjoy. While I did enjoy it, I was also disappointed. I know the disappointment stems from the high expectations and not from it being a bad movie. It's a good movie. The story is unique and the characters are even more unique. Though each of the other characters try to put themselves in the center of the story, Olive, the seven year old pageant hopeful is the center of not only the plot but the emotional center of the group of misfits. I was surprised at how easily I was able to accept Steve Carell as a suicidal, homosexual former professor. In some reviews I'd read, the reviewers couldn't get past Michael Scott, Andy Stitzer, and Brick Tamland when watching him be sad. Alan Arkin was phenomenal and deserves his Oscar nomination, the scene in the hotel room with Olive is worth the win, especially if he did his own stunts under the sheet. I guess there were only two things that I felt were a let down and thus led me to be disappointed; I was let down by a real lack of development of Toni Collette's character as a wife, sister, and mother and by the scene at the pageant. I'm purposely being vague, as I know many of you might not have seen it yet. I do recommend you see it, because it's a rather beautiful story about how like I said before the youngest member of the family causes change in the rest of the characters. The music by DeVotchka is perfect and helps pace the action as well as set the tone. I'm glad to see Abigail Breslin was nominated for her performance as Olive because I'm sure there was a lot of her in that role.

For Your Netflix Queue: Blasts From the Past

Netflix is a great product. I think I've made my opinion about them clear in previous posts, but it demands repeating. I've been using my Netflix queue for two main purposes, the first being to catch up on all the recent movies I haven't seen and the second is to re-watch or watch old movies from some of my favorite directors/actors. I figure it's a worthy weekly feature for MKinMotion.com, so I will start to review two movies each week that I've recently experienced via Netflix. Full disclosure, I was a customer before I added them as an incentive link in the sidebar, but I did add them as a "sponsor" because I use their product and enjoy it and have no hesitation telling you that if you don't already have a Netflix account, you're missing out and you can get one through MKinMotion.com. OK, enough disclosure...

This week I've chosen to feature two movies that I hadn't seen until just the last week or two. Their both from directors that I have a lot of respect for and anything that they've released tends to be worthy of a rental. I took 3 quarters of Film classes in college and taking those classes really gave me an appreciation of the art form and also reinforced the idea that some movies are there just to entertain you without making you think at all...and that's okay. They're all art and creative regardless of whether there are explosions, CGI, or brilliant acting. When I was taking these classes at the end of each term there was a project that allowed you to watch 3 movies from one director and do some compare/contrast from different films. While a lot of people went after Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction had just blown up), Steven Spielberg, and the popular film class safe bets of Scorsese, Woody Allen, Coppola, Kubrick, Wells and Hitchcock, I spent the three terms looking at the films of Robert Altman, Wim Wenders, and The Coen Brothers. For Robert Altman I watched MASH (the movie, not the TV show), The Player, and Nashville (and I'd seen Short Cuts and Popeye also). For Wim Wenders, it was Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire), Bis ans Ende der Welt (Until the End of the World), and Im Lauf der Zeit (Kings of the Road). For the Coen Brothers, I watched Raising Arizona, Barton Fink and Miller's Crossing. I could go into some observations of each, but me even listing the three films for each director is already probably tiresome.

This week's features come from Robert Altman and The Coen Brothers. First from Robert Altman comes a movie that I couldn't believe I hadn't seen when I finished it. The Long Goodbye was released in 1974 and teamed Altman with his star of MASH, Elliot Gould (who this generation knows more for Ross and Monica's Dad than his previous leading man work) as Philip Marlowe a private detective, based on the Raymond Chandler novel of the same title. Gould is brilliant and Altman's directorial style shines in this movie. One of the shining moments of the film for me was the opening sequence of Marlowe feeding his cat, I've never seen a cat that well trained and the humor was priceless. The movie came out in 1973 and is set in Los Angeles in 1973. Arnold Schwarzenegger has a brief and silent role in the movie (his second role of his career). It's a mystery and has some good twists, but nothing or no one can outsmart the eccentric Philip Marlowe. I was surprised to see that Elliot Gould wasn't nominated for any awards for his performance as it was dynamic and performed flawlessly. It reinforces my appreciation for Altman's other movies and the loss that the artform experienced in November when he passed away.

The first movie that the Coen Brothers directed was Blood Simple which featured a very young Frances McDormand in her debut (Frances would go on to be in Fargo, Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing and The Man Who Wasn't There with her husband Joel Coen) and a pretty solid performance by Dan Hedaya. John Getz shared the lead spotlight with Frances, but his career hasn't been nearly as illustrious as McDormand's. The movie centers around several relationships and focuses on how badly things can go when relationships and communication break down. Dishonesty begets dishonesty, violence begets violence. It's shot well and the acting is very solid.

So, if you're a Netflix customer add them to your queue and if you're not, click the link in the sidebar and check out their pricing plans.