Present Tensed

Quick Reviews of Films (Oct 2009)

With sum­mer­time long gone, I’m watch­ing too many movies these days!

Here are some quick reviews of a few movies that I saw in Octo­ber… in the theater:

• Where the Wild Things Are (Spike Jonze / Dave Eggers) — It is a really good movie, but it’s NOT a kids’ movie.  It replaces the whim­si­cal with the real, which is jar­ring…  no mat­ter how fan­tas­tic the locale or inven­tive the characters.
• Cap­i­tal­ism A Love Story (Michael Moore) – I’m gen­er­ally sym­pa­thetic to Moore’s point of view, but think the movie was a bit too jaunty.  He would have been bet­ter off mak­ing either the “Cap­i­tal­ism is not Just” or the “Cap­i­tal­ism is not Demo­c­ra­tic” argu­ment, instead of try­ing to make both points simul­ta­ne­ously.  The his­tor­i­cal footage, and the inter­views with Priests, were very compelling.

and on DVD:

• And This is Free (Maxwell Street) – For the Chicagoans, some great his­tor­i­cal footage of the old (old old) Maxwell Street!
• Ulysses S. Grant War­rior / Pres­i­dent — A good 4 hours on Grant, both the pre-presidency and post-presidency sec­tions excelled.
• Liberia: America’s Step Child / Liberia: Uncivil War – 2 doc­u­men­taries on Liberia… America’s Step Child is bet­ter gen­er­ally, and gives great his­tor­i­cal info.  Uncivil War is focused very nar­rowly on the most recent civil war, and looks at com­bat­ants on both sides.
• Chicago 10 — Revis­it­ing Chicago 10, it’s the his­tor­i­cal footage that is more pow­er­ful than the new ani­mated footage.  Still, an impres­sive mash-up!
• Breaker Morant — The line “They Must have gone to the Water­berg!” made me under­stand the Afrikaan­ers in Vaal­wa­ter even more.  A top-flight mil­i­tary court­room drama in every sense.  The added fea­tures on the DVD are really won­der­ful his­tor­i­cal pieces on the devel­op­ment of Johan­nes­burg, the Afrikaan­ers, and the his­tor­i­cal foun­da­tions of Apartheid
• Vir­tual JFK – The con­clu­sion is that JFK would have resisted esca­lat­ing the con­flict in Viet­nam, since he’d sim­i­larly stood up to his mil­i­tary advis­ers who wanted to esca­late all the other con­flicts of the day.  It makes his assas­si­na­tion even more ter­ri­ble, when you think of how many lives could have been saved had he lived.
• Afro-Punk — More about the dif­fi­cul­ties of being black & being into punk than about the music or the par­tic­u­lar­i­ties of the afro-punk genre.  Iden­tity, iden­tity, identity.
• The Face of Another — Really good 60s Japan­ese film on iden­tity and the nature of per­sonal free­dom!  Exis­ten­tial, philosophic.

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