Movie Review: Sicko (2007)

Posted on June 24, 2015 by Brian Wright

Typical slicko Michael Moore fare still strikes nerve (7/10)
Written and Directed by Michael Moore

Michael Moore: So there was actually one place on American soil with free, universal healthcare.
[cut to aerial picture of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba]
Michael Moore: That’s all I needed to know.

To say that Sicko tugs at your heart strings is like saying an aircraft carrier leaves a wake. Moore is a master of both sob-story revelation and factual selectivity in the service of powerful messages, whether it’s corporate perfidy (Roger and Me), national politics (Fahrenheit 911)[1], gun policy (Bowling for Columbine), or health care issues (Sicko). Sometimes, as with the Charlton Heston footage in Columbine[2] the selectivity is outright fraudulent. But even when he crosses the line, Moore excels at generating sympathy for real people.

The primary technique for creating misimpressions that I’ve seen, however, in Moore’s movies and other mockumentaries from left or right, is to trick the emotional-perceptual mechanism. For example, the movie The Corporation I reviewed had a sequence describing a plant that was generating toxic waste… then during the narration we’re shown video images of white sludge coasting on dirty water. No attempt is made to connect this water to that specific plant, and most viewers see the vile image (perception) and have the immediate emotional reaction of righteous anger toward the owners of the plant… for which no actual evidence has demonstrated its culpability. It’s just pictures and feelings. Continue reading →

Movie Review: The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

Posted on June 17, 2015 by Brian Wright

Powerful humanitarian film in a challenging time

Ma Joad: You’re not aimin’ to kill nobody.
Tom Joad: No, Ma, not that. That ain’t it. It’s just, well as long as I’m an outlaw anyways… maybe I can do somethin’… maybe I can just find out somethin’, just scrounge around and maybe find out what it is that’s wrong and see if they ain’t somethin’ that can be done about it. I ain’t thought it out all clear, Ma. I can’t. I don’t know enough.
Ma Joad: How am I gonna know about ya, Tommy? Why they could kill ya and I’d never know.
Tom Joad: Well, maybe it’s like Casy says. A fellow ain’t got a soul of his own, just little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody, then…
Ma Joad: Then what, Tom?
Tom Joad: Then it don’t matter. I’ll be all around in the dark—I’ll be everywhere. Wherever you can look—wherever there’s a fight, so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad. I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready, and when the people are eatin’ the stuff they raise and livin’ in the houses they build—I’ll be there, too. Continue reading →

Movie Review: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (2008)

Posted on June 10, 2015 by Brian Wright

1936 novel set in London is strangely modern (8/10)

Delysia: [during an air-raid drill] Guinevere, I’m scared!
Guinevere Pettigrew: It’s just a drill, I’m sure it’s just a drill.
Delysia: But it won’t always be, will it? We’re going to war, aren’t we?
Guinevere Pettigrew: Yes we are. And that is why you must not waste a second of this precious life. Listen to me. Once I too had ambitions. Not your grand ones, simple ambitions. Marriage, children and a house of our own. He died, in the mud in France. A good, solid man. You would call him dull, no doubt, but he smiled whenever he saw me and we could’ve built a life on that. Your heart knows the truth, Delysia. Trust it.

What a phrase, “… but he smiled whenever he saw me and we could have built a life on that.” Uttered by Guinevere Pettigrew (Frances McDormand) to her strangely acquired mistress for a day, Delysia (Amy Adams), it comes toward the end of the movie in the context of an adoring piano player Michael (Lee Pace) proposing to Delysia that she accompany him to New York for song and marriage. Continue reading →

Movie Review: 1971 (2014)

Posted on June 3, 2015 by Brian Wright

PBS Documentary will have you on the edge of your national security state

The story of a notorious 1971 activist burglary of an FBI office that lead to exposing the Bureau’s numerous abuses against dissidents.

“In 1971, long before Edward Snowden’s revelations of NSA surveillance, a group of [young antiwar activist] citizens broke into a small FBI office in Pennsylvania, took every file, and shared them with the public. Their actions exposed the FBI’s illegal surveillance program of law-abiding Americans. Now for the first time, these anonymous Americans who risked everything share their story publicly.”

This movie is a white-knuckle ride through late 1960s and early 1970s America, when brutal national-security-state fascism was no longer a dream of the power elite… it was a stark reality. Thanks to the War in Vietnam and the militaristic regime of Richard Milhouse Nixon, millions of young Americans had to face the grim reality that, as John Lennon put it, the world was indeed “being run by insane men for insane purposes.” Continue reading →

Movie Review: Ed Wood (1994)

Posted on May 13, 2015 by Brian Wright

Romantic, idealistic schmaltz by any other name

Orson Welles [to Ed Wood]: “Visions are worth fighting for. Why spend your life making someone else’s dreams?”

Ed Wood, the movie, is an homage to two quirky, dedicated idealists of the silver screen, the director Ed Wood (Johnny Depp) and the actor Bela Lugosi (Martin Landau). It seems to set up as a comedy initially, as we watch producer-writer-director-actor Ed learning the ropes of Hollywood —he’s the epitome of the independent filmmaker, operating on a wing and a prayer—and struggling to make ends meet. Right off the bat we learn Wood has a fetish for wearing women’s clothing, which really isn’t supposed to be funny by itself, but it fits with the sort of lovable offbeat losers he seems to like to surround himself with as cast and crew. Continue reading →

Movie Review: Changeling (2008)

Posted on April 29, 2015 by Brian Wright

Eternal vigilance: price of liberty… and identity (9 of 10)

Christine Collins: He’s not my son.
Capt. J.J. Jones: Mrs. Collins…
Christine Collins: No, I don’t know why he’s saying that he is, but he’s not Walter and there’s been a mistake.
Capt. J.J. Jones: I thought we agreed to give him time to adjust.
Christine Collins: He’s three inches shorter; I measured him on the chart.
Capt. J.J. Jones: Well, maybe your measurements are off. Look, I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for all of this.
Christine Collins: He’s circumcised and Walter isn’t.
Capt. J.J. Jones: Mrs. Collins, your son was missing for five months, for at least part of that time in the company of an unidentified drifter. Who knows what such a disturbed individual might have done. He could have had him circumcised. He could have…
Christine Collins: …made him shorter? Continue reading →

Movie Review: The International (2009)

Posted on April 22, 2015 by Brian Wright

Like a Bourne movie only with too much “reality”

Umberto Calvini: [In explaining the “true” nature of banking in the world] The IBBC is a bank. Their objective isn’t to control the conflict, it’s to control the debt that the conflict produces. You see, the real value of a conflict, the true value, is in the debt that it creates. You control the debt, you control everything. You find this upsetting, yes? But this is the very essence of the banking industry, to make us all, whether we be nations or individuals, slaves to debt.