Carl_Tait Reviews

Black Mirror: Metalhead (2017) Season 4, Episode 5

A failed post-apocalyptic version of Spielberg/Matheson's "Duel"

[4/10 · 13 January 2018]

"Metalhead" starts with a good idea. Like so many "Black Mirror" episodes, it takes a technology that has an analogue in today's world - robot guard dogs - and then imagines some horrible consequences of that technology. But here's the problem: instead of the interesting, provocative issues that might be discussed (think about the unforgettable "Hated in the Nation"), the whole story is just a prolonged chase scene. It's reminiscent of Spielberg's celebrated TV movie of Richard Matheson's "Duel." But while "Duel" generates real tension with its sympathetic protagonist, "Metalhead" is a boring failure. It's only 41 minutes but feels way too long.

That said, the episode is not a disaster. The black-and-white cinematography is effective, and there are a few moments of suspense and cleverness in the struggle. But it's one of the weakest episodes of the generally excellent "Black Mirror."

Closet Land (1991)

An Earnest but Heavy-Handed "Message" Movie

[4/10 · 19 May 2011]

"Hey! Let's make a movie about an oppressive government torturing one of its citizens for no real reason. That's pretty awful stuff, and we know it happens in the real world. The plot? Oh, who cares; it's the MESSAGE that counts. We must all fight for the freedom to think and write what we please!"

Those could have been the thoughts running through the mind of the filmmaker who created "Closet Land." The result is a desperately earnest but thin and tedious film. The hero's allegedly subversive children's story is of NO INTEREST WHATSOEVER, which makes the endless analysis and retelling insufferably dull. "But that's the point! She didn't write anything subversive, but those totalitarian monsters insisted on READING it that way!" Well, duh; who cares? Boring is boring.

It has been noted that "The Pillowman" by Martin McDonagh may have been inspired by the central notion of this film: an author being interrogated by a totalitarian officer for writing questionable stories. I almost hope it's true, as I can imagine McDonagh's irritation in slogging through this film: "What terrible, dreary handling of an interesting idea!" McDonagh's play fixes the two biggest defects of "Closet Land." First, his author writes *interesting* stories, and lots of them. They are genuinely subversive: creepy and twisted tales that inspire uncomfortable nervous laughter. Second, McDonagh handles the interrogator with black humor worthy of Kafka. The off-center levity heightens the surrealism and the tension.

So see "Closet Land" if you feel obligated to perform a chore in support of a worthy cause. See or read "The Pillowman" if you actually want to see something good.

Inception (2010)

Good idea lost in the noise

[5/10 · 25 July 2010]

The central idea of "Inception" is an interesting one: technology exists to enter other people's dreams in order to steal their most private secrets or to implant new ideas. With Christopher Nolan of "Memento" fame as writer and director, this should have been a smart, compelling movie. Unfortunately, "Inception" is a bloated failure.

The root problem is that Nolan replaces the fascinating surrealism of dream worlds with lengthy outtakes from James Bond movies. For example, early in the film, when Cobb and Ariadne are sitting at a café in a dream world, Cobb tells Ariadne to stay calm. What's going to happen? Is the waiter going to bring her a glass full of wriggling eyeballs? Is she going to turn around and see her best friend from high school having sex with Abraham Lincoln? No. THINGS START EXPLODING. And that's the whole movie in a nutshell: gaudy special effects and endless fight scenes as a poor substitute for imaginative ideas.

The matryoshka-doll plot of dreams within dreams isn't nearly as hard to follow as one might imagine. This is largely because nothing of consequence happens at higher levels once our heroes have moved on to deeper levels. The higher-level supporting actors just fight off bad guys -- and overblown special effects -- until it's time to bring back their colleagues from the depths.

Nolan should sit back, watch a few of the best movies by Luis Bunuel and David Lynch, and try again with one-tenth the budget and ten times the imagination. (Okay, that's never gonna happen, but it's *my* dream.)

Pufnstuf (1970)

Great surreal fun

[8/10 · 5 July 2010]

Sid and Marty Krofft's brand of children's programming has some affinity with Roald Dahl's Willy Wonka of the same era: weird, near-psychedelic fantasy with darker undertones. This is no "Barney the Dinosaur." I loved the Kroffts when I was little, and my three-year-old twin daughters are already hooked on "H.R. Pufnstuf." The movie is like an extended episode of the TV program, and will appeal to anyone who enjoyed the show. A highlight is "Mama" Cass Elliot's song at the Witches' Convention, which is both very well performed and a memorable tune.

One warning: The voices for Pufnstuf and Freddy the Flute are different from those used in the TV show. Why didn't the producers hire the same people since they were obviously trying to keep everything else the same?

Finally, a note on the case against McDonald's. It was McDonald's who ripped off the Kroffts, not the other way around. The Kroffts sued McD's for copyright infringement and won. See Sid & Marty Krofft Television v. McDonald's Corp., 562 F. 2d 1157: it was ruled that McDonald's had "captured the 'total concept and feel' of the Pufnstuf show." Reps from McD's advertising agency "actually visited the Kroffts' headquarters in Los Angeles to discuss the engineering and design work necessary to produce the McDonaldland commercials" -- then refused to pay the Kroffts a dime while shamelessly infringing their copyrights.

Rachel Getting Married (2008)

Excellent film sabotaged by execrable camera work

[7/10 · 19 October 2008]

Remember how your dad used to shoot Super 8 movies in the 1970s with an unsteady hand and too much zooming? Remember how they invented this thing called a "video camera" many years ago that has all but eliminated this atrocious style from even the most amateurish home videos? It remains one of the great mysteries of modern movie-making why anyone would think this faux-amateur, nauseating camera technique should be considered a "realistic" style of film-making. In fact, the technique is hopelessly self-conscious and a major distraction.

And this is a shame because "Rachel Getting Married" is generally an excellent film, aside from its enthusiastically awful camera work. It is a deeper, more focused version of Altman's "A Wedding" with more damaged and interesting characters. The acting is fine throughout, especially Anne Hathaway as the unstable sister who maintains a curious likability despite her destructive nature.

Oh, yes: the wedding scene desperately needed cutting. There was an endless, increasingly loud and annoying sequence of musical numbers featuring half of the known genres on Earth. Where was the band of Highland bagpipers?

Despite the flaws, this is a strong film. It could have been an outstanding one.

NBC Experiment in Television: The Cube (1969) Season 3, Episode 3

Jim Henson meets Thomas M. Disch

[7/10 · 19 February 2008]

In 1967, Thomas M. Disch published a short story called "The Squirrel Cage." The story concerns a man who is imprisoned in a big white cube. The man doesn't know why he's there and never finds out. He never gets out of the cube.

In 1969, Jim Henson wrote and directed a film called "The Cube." The film concerns a man who is imprisoned in a big white cube. The man doesn't know why he's there and never finds out. He never gets out of the cube.

The details, however, are entirely different. In Disch's grim tale, the Man in the Cube is deprived of all human contact. He is provided with the daily New York Times as his only link to the outside world. He writes about various peculiar characters and creatures with no certainty that anyone outside the Cube will read his words.

In Henson's version, the characters who visit the Cube are very much in the Henson mold: offbeat, wry, witty, and often just plain weird. This striking dichotomy between theme -- very dark -- and treatment -- very kooky -- makes a lot more sense if you're dealing with a Disch idea and a Henson treatment. This sort of story is Disch's bread and butter.

See the movie, read the story, and then read some more of Disch's claustrophobic, hellishly imaginative visions: "Descending" and "Casablanca."

Children of Men (2006)

A disastrous adaptation

[3/10 · 2 December 2007]

*** This review contains HUGE SPOILERS for the movie AND THE BOOK ***

Although I don't usually write reviews with spoilers, this total botch of a film requires me to discuss several essential plot points in order to explain just how poorly the movie has been made.

Films need not slavishly follow the books on which they are based. Movies often need to remove minor subplots and to rearrange certain details for dramatic effect. With that said, however, Alfonso Cuaron's dreadful screenplay manages to take a pretty good book by P. D. James and turn it into a preachy, incoherent mess driven largely by fight scenes, chase scenes, and heavy-handed political statements.

Let's start with the climax of the film: for the first time in over eighteen years, a child is born. Excuse me, but aside from the novelty value, why should anyone in that sad world care? No one knows what's causing the sterility, so there's no reason to believe that the birth is anything but a fluke. Even if the child herself turns out to be fertile, there are now two fertile women in the entire world. Big deal.

This illogical point is nowhere to be found in the book. The novel makes it clear that only men have become sterile, so finding even one fertile man would indeed be a basis for hope that the world might regenerate. The father of the child is clearly fertile, and the battle for his sperm is charged with both dramatic and political interest. The child also turns out to be a boy, providing additional hope. Unfortunately, Cuaron ditched this logical and interesting story in favor of a soft-headed Christian/feminist allegory that doesn't work at all. Worse yet, he allows the movie to plod onwards through a mind-numbing half hour of tedious fight scenes after the climactic birth.

The book raises some thought-provoking issues about how such a society might function. Much of the book's thoughtful balance is achieved through the back-and-forth between Theo and his friend Xan. Xan? Who the hell is that? Xan is the nominal leader of England and one of the book's central characters. Replacing him with some minor bureaucrat who has about two minutes of screen time was a fatal error. The moral ambiguities of Xan's edicts -- should even minor criminals be carted off to some hell-hole prison to preserve order in a crisis? -- have been replaced by ham-handed and endlessly repeated scenes of illegal immigrants being mistreated and deported.

Cuaron could have taken this interesting story, tightened it up a bit (the book is too drawn-out), and ended up with a fine film of psychological and moral complexity. Unfortunately, he took the opposite route, grossly oversimplifying the ethical issues and focusing on the tiresome chases and fights that represent the book's weakest moments. A major disappointment.

The Prestige (2006)

Disappointing

[6/10 · 8 July 2007]

Christopher Nolan's films are usually intelligently plotted and artistically well-made. "The Prestige," unfortunately, is quite a letdown. This is no "Memento"; it's not even a "Batman Begins."

What sinks the film are its two big secrets (don't worry, I'm not going to reveal them here). One of the secrets is so scientifically ludicrous as to inspire laughter rather than awe. The other is so hoary and shopworn that one can only groan. Yes, the hackneyed secret is threaded into the film with cleverness and skill, but as the old saying goes, you can't polish a turd.

The acting and direction are fine throughout, but the underlying plot weaknesses keep the film firmly anchored to mediocrity.

6/10. A big disappointment.

Lunacy (2005)

Svankmajer at his least interesting

[3/10 · 22 April 2007]

When Jan Svankmajer lets his imagination run wild, get ready. You're in for dark, harrowing films like "Alice" and "Little Otik," or short gems such as "Down to the Cellar" and "Jabberwocky." All of those are excellent films that represent disturbing, surrealistic film-making at its best.

On the other hand, when Svankmajer attempts to make a political statement of any kind, you're advised to leave the room in a hurry. Svankmajer's films in this vein tend to be both adolescent and preachy, presenting straw-man caricatures in repetitious fashion to express his pseudo-brilliant insights.

"Lunacy," unfortunately, is very much this latter type of movie. Cartoonish ideas and characters are stretched paper-thin for an appalling two hours. There are a few moments that briefly hold interest, but these few oases are separated by vast deserts of boredom.

If you found Svankmajer's dreadful, monotonous short film "Et Cetera" brilliant and hilarious, you'll probably love "Lunacy." If you've never seen a Svankmajer film before, please start elsewhere.

The Good German (2006)

Weak script and terrible faux-noir cinematography

[3/10 · 28 December 2006]

Classic film noir has a crisp, high-contrast look. "The Good German" has gauzy, soft-focus cinematography that would be more appropriate in a perfume commercial. The mushy images and consistently overexposed highlights make the film hard on the eyes and a chore to watch.

The poor cinematography might be tolerable if the script were worthwhile. Unfortunately, the script is even worse than the photography. The story plods from one uninteresting plot point to another with no sense of momentum. The acting is nothing special, either -- not that anyone could save such an ugly, badly written film.

The obvious comparison is to Jacques Tourneur's "Berlin Express," a 1948 noir set in post-war Berlin. Tourneur's film is one of his weaker efforts, but it's a minor masterpiece compared to Soderbergh's failed pseudo-noir.

Irreversible (2002)

Worthwhile but too often tedious

[7/10 · 9 September 2006]

Why did so many people have trouble following this movie? Once you realize that the scenes are in reverse order -- which should become apparent early in the film -- the narrative is quite simple. And this is actually one of the film's weaknesses.

In "Memento," for example, the labyrinthine reversed narrative continually forces the viewer to reinterpret everything seen earlier (later) in the movie. "5x2" provides increasing psychological depth and poignance as the story of the two lovers moves towards its conclusion (beginning). But with "Irreversible," it's just ... well, backwards. The relatively peaceful scenes following the rape are, for the most part, tedious and dull and overlong. The big "surprise" near the end is a wet firecracker compared to several of the powerful scenes in the first part of the film.

It is these earlier scenes from which "Irreversible" has surely gained its accolades, and much of this praise is well deserved. Both the rape and (especially) the attack with the fire extinguisher are truly horrifying -- and that's a good thing. Rarely has the repellence of brutal acts like these been caught so vividly on film.

The spinning, meandering camera-work and monotonous thudding soundtrack are less successful, however. The techniques themselves are interesting and effective at first, but the viewer's initial sense of disorientation and unease soon turns to simple irritation as the sight and sound gimmicks overstay their welcome.

"Irreversible" contains a number of powerful scenes and is well worth seeing for those who can stomach the violence. Just don't come in expecting a brilliant narrative, depth of characterization, or psychological complexity.

Requiem for a Dream (2000)

An intermittently interesting failure

[4/10 · 3 July 2006]

Yes, "Requiem for a Dream" is well made, as far as it goes. The insurmountable problem, however, is that three of the four major characters are monumentally uninteresting losers. It was almost impossible to care about the fate of anyone in the film except for the Ellen Burstyn character.

The other fundamental flaw was the one-note nature of the entire production: "Addiction! Addiction!! ADDICTION!!!" Okay, okay; I got it. I got it after the first 20 minutes. I still got it after the next 20 minutes. I didn't care anymore by the third 20 minutes.

The acting is very good, as far as the monotonous roles allow. The direction and editing are skillful and interesting. In fact, they are more interesting than anything else in this tedious film.

Primer (2004)

Good Puzzle, Bad Film

[3/10 · 5 April 2006]

Look, I *love* weird, confusing movies. I'll watch Lynch's "Lost Highway" or Bergman's "Persona" repeatedly and with delight. I also enjoy intricately plotted films like "Memento" and twisty movies by David Mamet.

"Primer," unfortunately, proves that an interesting and complex plot can nonetheless result in a poor film. The problem is that there's little to enjoy *other* than the puzzle. The acting ranges from mediocre to bad, with countless mumbled lines. Characterization is nonexistent. Direction is undistinguished and there are too many epileptic hand-held shots. ("But don't you get it? The shaky filming reflects the characters' disorientation!" Please. Spare me. Film School 101.)

3/10. Some interesting ideas, poorly executed.

Lady Vengeance (2005)

Unexpected poetry and bleak hilarity

[9/10 · 2 October 2005]

"Sympathy for Lady Vengeance" is a surprisingly poetic finale to Park's excellent Revenge Trilogy. The film fuses the relatively low-key style of "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance" with the jet-black humor of "Oldboy," while adding welcome moments of poignancy and sentiment. The film is nowhere near as violent as its predecessors, although a good deal of mayhem takes place offscreen.

Yeong-ae Lee is outstanding as the troubled protagonist Geum-ja, the ex-convict who is seeking redemption as much as revenge. Although the supporting actors -- including several from Park's earlier films -- are uniformly fine, Lee's performance is the heart of the film.

"Lady Vengeance" is difficult to describe without revealing major plot points, as the most memorable scenes come at revelatory moments in the story. Suffice it to say that the climax blends tragedy and hilarity with a degree of success that few directors could hope to match.

9/10. Bravo.

What? (1972)

Awful? Awful. AWFUL.

[2/10 · 9 August 2005]

A miserable sex "comedy." It's plot-less (the idiotic IMDb spell checker insists on the hyphen in "plot-less"), endless, and painfully dated -- though it's hard to believe it was remotely funny even in 1972. "What?" is a pathetic soft-porn version of "Alice in Wonderland" that fails as both parody and comedy. It's sad to see Marcello Mastroianni wallowing in this mess.

This is Polanski's worst film by a wide margin. It makes "Pirates" look like "Seven Samurai." (This is not intended as an endorsement of "Pirates," which is eminently mediocre by normal standards.)

2/10. Ghastly.

The Aristocrats (2005)

Intelligent, Warm-Hearted Obscenity

[9/10 · 1 August 2005]

For all its over-the-top vulgarity -- with large helpings of pornography, scatology, and incest -- "The Aristocrats" is fundamentally an intelligent and affectionate film. One gifted comedian after another dives into the time-honored muck of this joke, keen on retrieving the filthiest possible diamond from the sludge. The result is some of the most hilarious film-making of recent years.

It's difficult to select just a few favorites from this assemblage. Bob Saget is surely the most startling (and one of the funniest). George Carlin offers both great humor and insight into joke telling. Sarah Silverman's deadpan first-person account is unforgettable, and Gilbert Gottfried's post-9/11 version is a jewel. Billy the Mime has riotous sexual encounters with various invisible family members. Only a few comedians misfire: perhaps most notably, a guy who tries to pull off a "clean" Jerry Lewis sort of physical comedy routine.

And this is the paradox of the both the joke and the movie: clean versions just don't work. The hilarity comes from the clash between the pornography and the punchline, the comedic brilliance and the carefully crafted vulgarities.

90 minutes on one joke may seem like overkill, but the film skillfully avoids monotony. The broader subject matter is the art of comedy: the comedians' insights are fascinating and their enthusiasm is endearing.

Two minor complaints. First, it would have been helpful to identify each comedian *during* the film, not just during the (excellent) closing credits. Second -- and more seriously -- some of the camera-work was intrusive and distracting, with rapid MTV cutting that flipped back and forth between full-face and profile shots. This got so bad at one point that I had to look away from the screen until the segment was over.

9/10. A masterpiece of filthy good cheer.

Time of the Wolf (2003)

Dark and involving mood piece

[8/10 · 31 January 2005]

Haneke's nightmare vision of a post-apocalyptic world is darkly atmospheric and beautifully photographed. True, there isn't much of a plot and the pace is slow. The film is primarily a mood piece, but a very good one. Unlike the usual end-of-the-world thriller, the characters aren't facing any ghoulish monsters other than each other. This approach lends a striking realism to the movie.

Some of Haneke's films -- especially "Funny Games" -- are marred by heavy-handed social commentary. Happily, this is not a problem in "Time of the Wolf." One can always read politics into any allegory, but it is quite unnecessary in this film. I neither know nor care whether Haneke had a specific political situation in mind; what matters is that the resulting movie stands on its own as an artistic achievement.

8/10. Recommended for fans of grim, moody films.

Funny Games (1997)

Tedious Faux-Masterpiece

[3/10 · 24 January 2005]

Having seen and greatly admired Haneke's "The Piano Teacher," I was curious to see "Funny Games," which has garnered such diametrically opposed comments. I expected to be either horrified or mesmerized, or perhaps both.

What I didn't expect was boredom. But that's what I got.

Imagine "The Desperate Hours" starring Laurel and Hardy as the criminals. Add a lot of sadism and take out all the suspense, since it's pretty clear from the start how everything will turn out. And that's about it. Highly unpleasant, but a snore.

Oh wait, I forgot. "Haneke brilliantly lets the criminals make meta-comments to the audience. With sly winks and remarks about 'putting on a good show,' they implicate the film's viewers in the violence taking place on screen, radically shifting the traditional perspective and forcing the audience into an admission of its own voyeurism. Astute viewers are compelled to realize that they, too, have become involved in the grisly proceedings: they *choose* to watch, even though they could use their remote controls to do otherwise, just as one of the killers uses this device to reconstruct his reality in a nonlinear fashion, destabilizing the hegemony of conventional chronology in this masterpiece of blah blah blah."

Double snore. Meta-commentary has been around forever. Check out some of Buster Keaton's films from the 1920s, in which characters comment on how much the stunt men are being paid for their pratfalls. "Sherlock Jr." (1924) shatters more boundaries between film and audience than a boatload of Hanekes.

On the positive side, the direction, acting, and cinematography in "Funny Games" are quite good, but only as far as the script allows. And that isn't very far.

3/10. Self-conscious drivel.

Napoleon Dynamite (2004)

"Where's the Beef?"

[4/10 · 8 January 2005]

No, that's not a comment on the movie, though it could be. It's a comment on the *style* of the film, which resembles a 90-minute commercial by Joe Sedelmaier. Joe was responsible for the well-known Wendy's "Where's the Beef?" ad and a host of similar ones in which people stood around with droopy, frozen-face expressions while ostensibly uproarious things happened to them. And yeah, this approach can be pretty funny the first couple of times you see it. But the one-joke humor wears pretty thin after awhile, especially when extended beyond the limits of a 30-second commercial.

It seems paradoxical, but the self-conscious, calculated understatement of "Napoleon Dynamite" comes off as heavy handed *overstatement*. Okay, guys, we understand the blunted affect and terminal geekiness; next joke, please.

Yes, there are a few (very few) funny bits in the movie: the cow killing, the 1% milk scene, and Napoleon's masterful drawing of his date. If only the film hadn't tried so hard to be "so geeky it's cool," it would have been vastly improved.

For a truly understated -- and greatly superior -- comedy about the endearing interaction between offbeat misfits, see "The Station Agent."

Fahrenhype 9/11 (2004 Video)

Disappointing

[6/10 · 15 October 2004]

Michael Moore is a sleazy con artist whose unethical "documentaries" make the National Enquirer look like Pulitzer Prize material. "FahrenHYPE 9/11" convincingly exposes a number of Moore's dishonest and misleading techniques, and the film is quite successful when it sticks to debunking. The Dave Kopel segments are noteworthy.

Unfortunately, about half of the film is little more than pro-Bush, pro-war cheerleading. The defense of the atrocious Patriot Act is especially poor, focusing exclusively on the information-sharing provisions while ignoring the constitutional issues. Ironically, this sort of deceptive tap-dancing is exactly what one would expect from Michael Moore.

6/10. Good material damaged by blatantly partisan presentation.

(For comparison, I rate Moore's appalling "Fahrenheit 9/11" as 3/10)

("Hijacking Catastrophe" is by far the best of the lot: 9/10)

Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism (2004)

Worthwhile but flawed

[7/10 · 17 September 2004]

A mixed bag. Many of the points were excellent and convincingly demonstrated Fox's conservative bent: the pseudo-festivities for Reagan's birthday, a Bush campaigner's husband "objectively" interviewing Bush, right-slanted daily memos from the execs, and the intensely obnoxious Bill O'Reilly. However, the film was weakened by the inclusion of some trivial points and at least one ludicrous one: the fantasy that Fox was a key factor in getting the other networks to call Florida for Bush on Election Night 2000. (It goes unmentioned that Fox was actually the last network to retract Florida for Gore.)

In addition, it was clear that much of the footage was from discussion shows and was not intended as news at all, even by Fox standards. And why in the world didn't the filmmaker include even one interview with a *current* Fox News employee? Most annoying of all, the last ten minutes of the movie were a preachy incitement for the viewer to become an activist.

7/10. Worth seeing but should have been better.

The Sweet Hereafter (1997)

One of the great ones, but not for all tastes

[10/10 · 16 September 2004]

"The Sweet Hereafter" was arguably the best film of the 1990s and is one of my twenty favorite movies of all time. Everything comes together perfectly: fine characterization and acting (especially by Ian Holm), beautiful photography, and a hypnotic musical score featuring Armenian folk instruments. The mood is deeply elegiac but never maudlin or weepy. There's not a false note in the movie.

But don't worry; I'm not going to start screaming, "If you don't like this movie, you just don't understand it! Go back to your Hollywood pablum, you cretinous moron!" That's a stupid argument in any case, and especially so here. There are going to be some people -- including a few art-house fans -- who will find this movie slow and tedious. For me and many others, however, the film is a masterpiece.

10/10

Satanas (1919)

Fragment found

[15 September 2004]

An update to Arne Andersen's excellent comments (see below): a brief fragment of "Satanas" has been found. It lasts only a couple of minutes and appears to be a scene from the Amenhotep/Nouri segment. It's a closeup of the two lovers lying on a couch, with Nouri's head on Amenhotep's chest. They talk (there are no intertitles), and Nouri keeps playing with something hanging around Amenhotep's neck.

That's all there is, but IMDb requires that reviews be ten lines long.

When is someone going to find a fragment of "4 Devils"?

Or, better yet, the whole film?

Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire (2004)

The Thinking Person's "Fahrenheit 9/11"

[9/10 · 12 September 2004]

For those of us who agree with many of Michael Moore's views but despise his irresponsible tactics, "Fahrenheit 9/11" was a horrifying movie for all the wrong reasons. Happily, Moore's brand of intellectual con artistry is entirely absent from Earp and Jhally's "Hijacking Catastrophe," which is quietly matter-of-fact and all the more compelling as a result. No fraudulent newspaper clippings, deceptive editing, histrionic bombast, or grossly misleading innuendos are to be found here; just a bunch of intelligent, articulate people making some devastating points. The film is tightly edited and fascinating throughout.

9/10. Highly recommended.

Red Lights (2004)

Warmed-over Clouzot

[7/10 · 7 September 2004]

A decent but ultimately disappointing thriller. It feels like slow-moving imitation Clouzot, with elements from Les Diaboliques ("What really happened?"), The Wages of Fear (high tension on a long drive), and Quai des Orfevres (a similar plot point I don't want to reveal here).

With tighter editing, "Feux rouges" could have been a much stronger movie. It does contain a number of memorable scenes, especially those involving the protagonist and his second passenger. Not a bad film at all, but it doesn't deserve the rave reviews it has drawn from several major critics.

7/10