ALB Reviews

A Cure for Wellness (2016)

Absurd but quite watchable

[7/10 · 2 February 2017]

(I saw a preview screening of this.)

Director Gore Verbinski is best known for the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, and also Rango, The Ring, and The Mexican, so "quietly understated" is not really his thing, If the Pirates movies are kind of a throwback to old Hollywood swashbucklers, this is a more lurid version of old Gothic suspense thrillers like "Rebecca" or "The Island of Doctor Moreau."

The main character is Lockhart (Dane DeHaan), who is the exact sort of morally bankrupt young financial hotshot you've seen in a bunch of other movies. His bosses are so cartoonishly evil that they may as well be counting wads of cash as they tell him he's being sent off to Europe to fetch a wayward executive whose signature is needed to allow a merger to go forth so as to allow them to rake in more millions. (Oddly, a similar plot undergirds the otherwise-completely different Will Smith vehicle "Collateral Beauty.")

Most of the rest of the movie takes place in a Swiss Alps sanitarium where practically everything looks like it's from some time in the first half of the last century. I half expected John Harvey Kellogg to show up, but instead we get Volmer (Jason Isaacs), the place's director. As with the patients and the staff, there's something not quite right about the overly affable man, and the impatient Lockhart has plenty of time to figure it out after an accident delays his trip back to New York.

Exactly what's going on, and why no one ever seems to leave the place, takes quite a while (almost 2.5 hours) to unspool, but Verbinski successfully distracts the viewer with visually arresting images of hallways, of peacefully exercising old people, of slithery fish, of living and maybe dead bodies in all shapes and sizes (but mostly white and old), and so on. A teen girl (aptly named Mia Goth), the only young person besides Lockhart, may hold some clues. Rather than a lush island, the sanitarium is high on a mountain, but the effect is the same, as if the viewer has been transported to a world apart.

Does this all sound good? Then you'll probably like this very dark fable. The deep mystery of why the place is so strange is possibly layered with too much complication. I think everything fits together pretty well, but I'm not positive. I am positive that this is definitely going to be a lot different than anything else in the multiplex whenever you might choose to see it.

Surviving Progress (2011)

A jeremiad that could use some specificity

[4/10 · 25 May 2012]

This liberal feel-good (or feel-bad) documentary, adapted from a book by Ronald Wright, makes the case that our society is a kind of bubble that may soon burst. Specifically, Wright argues that modern humans have fallen into a "progress trap." As with ancient hunters who became so adept at slaughtering mammoths that they killed off the source of their wealth, we have become so adept at exploiting natural resources that we are exceeding the capacity of Earth to regenerate them. He gives 1980 as the date when we began to do this on a global scale, although the film echoes people like Population Bomb author Paul Ehrlich, whose warnings of catastrophe began 40 years ago and proved, at least, premature. It's not quite clear why 1980 is the key date, but perhaps it's not coincidental that that's when Ronald Reagan was elected. That's also when the United States began to experience an increasing concentration of wealth that continues. The film implies, not entirely correctly, that this is a phenomenon everywhere. Economist Michael Hudson links wealth concentration to the fall of the Roman Empire and says "that's what's threatening to bring in the Dark Ages again."

Only the fiercest anti-environmentalists would deny that the explosive growth in output and wasteful use of resources in the last decades brings challenges with it. But to declare, as the film does, that a phenomenon that has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty in Asia since 1980s is a "failed experiment" is at best premature and overstated. Geneticist David Suzuki broadly criticize economics, which is "not a science," for ignoring pollution and other societal costs. "Economists call these externalities…that's nuts." However, plenty of economists, including Nobel Prize-winner Paul Krugman, have written about the problems of externalities. Suzuki seems to disparage the profession for having created the very term. Repeatedly, the documentary argues by such assertion, rather than proof, wielding very little empirical data. A detour to Brazil provides some detail about deforestation, but, generally, I longed for more specificity.

To be fair, proving such a bold thesis is well beyond the purview of a feature-length documentary. Wright's book, which I have not read, dwells more on past civilizations than our current one. Given that it's far easier to explain the past than predict the future, perhaps the directors, Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks, should have followed that path. Alternately, they might have deeply delved into some specific areas where the negative effects of human activity are undeniable. There's a lot of talent on hand here—the talking heads include Jane Goodall, Stephen and Hawking, and authors Robert Wright and Margaret Atwood—and building a film around any one of them might have been better than giving each a few sound bites. One participant, writer-engineer Colin Beavan, actually made his own film about his and his wife's experiment in non-consumption. Though based on a gimmick, Beavan's No Impact Man: The Documentary nonetheless seriously grapples with the idea of conservation in a more concrete (and entertaining) way.

The positives of the film include some nifty time-lapse simulations and the opening and closing segments, in which gorillas trying to solve a logic problem. (This sort of ties into the idea that our brains have not evolved too far beyond that of apes, so we're lousy at anticipating long-term consequences.) But the most worthwhile portion of the documentary is the one about solutions, which includes the expected warnings (by Beavan and others) about the need to conserve but also interviews with geneticists, notably Craig Ventner, about the possibility of generating artificial organisms to repair damage or even improve upon human physiology. Like everything else here, it's quite speculative, but since the turf is less familiar, also fascinating.

The Notebook (2004)

Unreal characters in an idealized, sappy romance

[4/10 · 3 August 2004]

The main thing you need to know about this romantic would-be tearjerker is that it's based on a novel by Nicholas Sparks, he of "Message in a Bottle" and "A Walk to Remember" fame. Like those films, this is more interested in portraying an idealized romance than real love. Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling are the two lovers, one rich, one not. It's supposed to be the 1940s, but you'll barely notice--even World War II barely intrudes. An ultra-thin plot device prevents them from living happily ever after well before the film reaches feature length. Meanwhile, in the present day, James Garner is an ever-faithful husband who can't let go of Gena Rowlands. She's got Alzheimer's and only rarely recognizes him. The end reveals the none-too-surprising connection between the two stories, though the events of the intervening 40-plus years are entirely missing. All of the fine actors play essentially fake characters, with no real characteristics other than a certain tenacity and, of course, an unwavering dedication to their partners. To those who thought "A Walk to Remember" was sappy, this will seem even more so. Those who found it touching will perhaps be able to stomach the corny ending here, which implies that love can literally transcend biological reality. Oh, that it were so. ** out of ****

Very Opposite Sexes (2002)

Four funny, revealing stories of dissolving relationships

[8/10 · 8 March 2003]

This romantic comedy is probably one of the very few to focus on the dissolution of relationships.

Using the format of interview segments spliced with flashbacks, several stories unfold: older woman seduces younger man; professor pursues student; extremely attractive woman pairs with insecure man, etc.

Showing the views of the two partners back to back reveals how the same events can look differently to the two participants. The juxtaposition is revealing, and quite funny in several instances. At a screening in Philadelphia, viewers were asked whether the film seemed optimistic or pessimistic. The nearly evenly divided response seems exactly what writer-director Eric Assous intended.

Jiyan (2002)

Weak story line mars portrayal of chemical-bombed Kurdish town

[4/10 · 16 April 2002]

Jiyan [Life in the Kurdish language] portrays a Kurdish town five years after an Iraqi chemical weapons attack has left 5000 dead and more maimed or scarred. Jiyan is also the name of one of the main characters, a girl who has terrible chemical burn scars on one side of her face. A hospital scene shows many more scarred victims.

Writer-director-producer-editor Jano Rosebiani does a good job showing the ways of life in a place unfamiliar to the outside world. His story is one of hope more than despair. Unfortunately, it's not much of a story either. The main character, a Kurdish-born American, comes to build a new orphanage. He meets the locals.

The orphanage gets built. There's no conflict, beyond a lone fundamentalist railing against a old man for making music, and not even much politics, beyond offering the view that Saddam Hussein is evil. As such, Life seems fairly dull.

Murder on a Sunday Morning (2001)

Solid courtroom drama/documentary

[8/10 · 31 March 2002]

I watched this on HBO because it won the Oscar a week earlier. It compares favorably with fictional courtroom dramas.

The story is of a 15-year-old black kid placed on trial for the Jacksonville, FL, murder of an elderly white woman based almost solely on the identification by the victim's husband and on a confession that the defense contends was coerced.

About half the footage is of the trial; it's supplemented with footage of the defense lawyers (two public defenders) explaining their case, interviewing witnesses, and visiting key locations. This is edited with a minimum of needless repetition, and placed in logical order. The camera work is pretty solid. And there's a mildly surprising epilogue.