Zero Dark Thirty

2012 best picture nominee

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Based on the popular "Where's Waldo?" books, this concerns a ten-year-long manhunt for a guy who ends up being difficult to find because he wasn't actually, as suspected, wearing a striped shirt.

This is a movie about finding Osama Bin Laden whose name might actually have been Usama Bin Laden. Maybe that's why they had trouble finding the guy. They weren't even sure what his name was. It's that story, but it's also the story of one woman's struggle to have her voice heard. That's the most unfortunate thing about this movie because I didn't like the character and I didn't like the woman playing her. I realize Jessica Chastain was nominated for awards, but I just don't get it. She's really terrible, almost robotic in some scenes. She gets some Big Acting moments where she gets to cry or scream, but she was just crying and screaming, not really creating a character. I just didn't care about this woman, and that was unfortunate since she was at the center of the whole thing. Maybe it's the texting/chatting during one scene.

"He's here brb"
"Cool!"
"Wassup you talking yet?"

What the hell? I can't like a character who communicates like that. Of course, her biggest moment might be when she gets the great line "I'm the motherfucker that found this place, sir," a line delivered like she thinks she's in a teen comedy. Now, I don't know, maybe that's actually what was said by the real Maya in the real meeting, but it just seemed like it was completely out of place and inappropriate here. I wish the character could have thrown in a "Yippee Ki Yay" somewhere in there. I also didn't like the direction in Zero Dark Thirty. It's subject matter so easy that it seems kind of cheap. Bigelow starts with manipulation early--a black screen and 9/11 911 calls--before heading straight for the torture. At one point during an early torture scene, I almost called somebody to tell them everything I knew. The movie is poorly paced. Why, for example, are you showing me Zach Galifianakis feeding ice cream to a monkey? Here, clumsiness passes as grittiness and art. We get all these quick shots of car door handles, people buying fruit, trees, all filmed with the beloved shaky cam. It's a style that I was tired of before the movie started, and I definitely didn't acquire a taste for it as this overly long movie progressed. The final chunk of this movie shows the night Bin Laden was killed. Lots of darkness and shaky cam there, too, but very little actual suspense. And I'll tell you what. I'm your typical American with a real red-white-and-blue hatred for Osama Bin Laden, and if you make a movie about his death without it having an emotional impact at all, you've just failed. And no, I'm not talking about the lack of a dead-Osama money shot. I don't need to see that. I do need to feel something, however, and I was too distracted by clichéd action style techniques and bad acting from the lead for it to happen.

Question: Is the ending of this supposed to be ambiguous in any way? I mean, she identifies the body as Bin Laden's (How would she know, by the way?) and starts crying at the end, but can we really be sure they got the right person? The kid who was offered a glow stick didn't reveal anything. Did I miss something where there was undeniable proof that it was really the guy? Could Maya have lied when identifying the body because she would have looked like a complete fool otherwise?

Rocky IV

1985 propaganda piece

Rating: 10/20

Plot: A powerful Soviet boxer named Drago punches Rocky's friend Apollo Creed to death. Rocky travels to the Soviet Union, a place that once existed, to train and fight the monster.

Monster. Seriously, was I supposed to be rooting against Drago in this movie, and more importantly, does the fact that I really wasn't put me on some kind of Joseph McCarthy list? As pro-America and pro-democracy as this movie is (and believe me, it's as proud to be an American as a guy wearing red, white, and blue boxers at a monster truck rally), there are some mixed messages throughout this. We start with exploding boxing gloves, not the traditional title crawl from the right, and automatically, this does not bode well. Then, you get to Paulie's birthday party where the birthday boy gets a robot. Only in America, right? This was actually the first "Rocky" movie I ever saw, and I remember being confused and bored by all this birthday and robot shit. I probably wondered, just like I did when I watched it this time, if Paulie and the robot were going to have an intimate sex scene. Apollo seemed to think so. The robot is probably a good symbol for what is wrong with America in this movie, but I'm too tired to get my thoughts together on that. I do know that America just seems so cocky and cheap and loud. You get all these flashy shots of a Camaro at the beginning of one of about five thousand montages. Then, you get flamboyant Apollo's entrance before his last tragic match, and you can just tell that James Brown confuses the heck out of Drago. So you get these clashing ideals in the ring--capitalism vs. communism, old (Apollo and his training techniques) vs. new (Drago and all those machines the commies got), a cocky guy who is all style vs. a guy who just wants to freakin' box, pomposity vs. stoicism. And by the way, I prefer Drago's entrance music more than anybody else's in any of these movies. I like movie music that I can play anyway, but that synthesizer/hissing breath thing is just cool. Drago trains really hard, just as hard as Rocky or Apollo, so I'm not sure what the message is supposed to be. And Rocky is chopping down trees for no good reason, so you know the environmentalists (probably, commies anyway) are going to be rooting against him. And then, look at the fight itself. First, you know who's going to win because these movies have gotten predictable. But look at how Rocky wins. He gets lucky during the fight, and he cheats by hitting after the bell, but they try to keep Drago as the bad guy by having him retaliate. I wonder if Rocky had something stuffed in his glove to cut Drago actually. I wouldn't put it past him! There's also a moment in round two where Rocky gets knocked down but doesn't get a count. What the heck? I just don't see how Drago is the villain in all this (aside from a half-second shot of him being injected with something which suggested he's not all-natural), but his hometown crowd does as they start rooting for Rocky at the end which has to be the dumbest thing about any of these Rocky movies. Poor Drago was probably shot like a wounded racehorse after the fight, and after all that hard work, I just felt sorry for the guy. I also feel sorry for anybody with an aversion to movie montages since Rocky IV has to break the record for most in one movie. There are at least seven, and counting the opening sequence which, just like the other sequels, is the end sequence of the previous movie, this has about forty minutes of footage that we've already seen before. It's like they filmed Rocky IV, realized they only had about fifty minutes of movie, and said, "Yeah, we can just pad the rest of this with some of the best moments from the other three movies." This movie, despite being an offensive chunk of propagandist cheese, gets a 10/20 only because you get a formidable foe with Drago (I like Dolph more than Mr. T. and the Hulkster combined actually) and because even though Mickey is dead (he shows up in those montages though), that ring announcer's mustache is alive and well. But overall, this movie should be as embarrassing to America as slavery and the treatment of the Native Americans.

As mentioned, I watched this Rocky before the others. More than likely, this one turned me against the series and kept me from giving the first movie a chance until I was in my late-20s.

One more thing--2,150 pounds per square inch, the most force of one of Drago's punches, I believe. Wouldn't that be enough to completely destroy Rocky's skull or literally tear his head from his neck? That would have been a nice end to the story actually--Adrian catching her husband's head in her lap and Rocky looking up at her and saying, "Yo, Adrian. I guess this is it for old Rocky, huh?" Or just "Adrian! Adrian!" with a cut to Paulie having his way with his robot or Rocky's son, who acts just as well as his dad, crying. That's an even better end to the Balboa story than the one I imagined for Rocky II where a truck hits the boxer and kills him in front of thousands of children.

Waiting for "Superman"

2010 propaganda film

Rating: 9/20 (Jen: 7/20)

Plot: A scathing, one-sided attack on public education. Documentarian Davis Guggenheim half-asses his way through detailing the problems with public education and how charter schools can magically fix everything.

Please keep in mind one thing as you read this: An incredibly "bad teacher" wrote it.

Two days ago (one day after I watched this movie), we brought a guy named Jasper Partygarden (Note: That is not his real name.) into our team meeting. Jasper shows up to school late most days if he bothers showing up at all and has problems staying focused in class. In a lot of ways, he's a mature kid. He's street wise, has a car that was wrecked when he let a fellow 8th grader (a girl he liked) take it for a spin, and is a good-looking, older-looking dude who could almost pass as a young college student if you threw him on a university campus. At the same time, he acts really immaturely. He grabs things off people's desks, falls asleep in class, and teases other students in ways you'd expect more from an elementary school student. He eventually revealed to us that he's getting jumped almost daily by "Mexicans" in his predominately Latino neighborhood. He also told us that he doesn't get to bed until around 2:00 a lot of nights because his mother is sick, his step-father isn't around much, and he's got to help take care of the seven other children in his apartment, three who are under the age of two. We teachers realized that a lot of Jasper's problems, and the reason for a lot of his immature behavior, is because he's got to be the man at home. There's no room for Jasper to be a child so he acts out at school.

I'm not bringing up Jasper to make excuses for public schools, but there are a lot of Jaspers in the middle school I work, Jaspers with a variety of problems, a lot of them that you probably wouldn't even guess existed. Waiting for "Superman" frequently mentions the "best teachers" at the "best schools," contrasting them with "bad teachers" at "failing schools," and I just wonder how these "best teachers" would handle a classroom of Jaspers. Where Davis Guggenheim and his researchers are dangerously misguided is that they think the problem with the Jaspers of the world and why they aren't getting a quality education can be blamed solely on the public education system. In reality, it's a much larger and scarier problem than education. Jasper is the result of bad parenting in a broken country filled with arrogant and complacent leaders and citizens.

Thing is, you don't even have to pay much attention to catch the solution to all the problems Davis Guggenheim points out--most kids need to be taken away from their parents. For whatever reason, that's not the conclusion that Guggenheim comes up with. Instead, he's got an agenda, and Waiting for "Superman," likely from its conception, was his attempt to find anything that helps support that agenda.

And I'd like to think that anybody with a little common sense would be able to see the holes in this thing, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Guggenheim's documentary is sloppy myth-making and a textbook example of propaganda. You've got the same tired data that's been passed around for years and never questioned or actually broken down (reading scores flatlining, standardized test scores, Finland has better schools statistically, blah blah blah). You've got the use of buzz words ("academic sinkholes," "drop-out facilities," etc.), cutesy animated sequences, and red herrings that manipulate and distract. You've got faulty cause and effect like when our narrator tells us that an achievement drop-off from the fifth to the seventh grade can ONLY mean one of two things--kids get stupid or there's something wrong with public education. And you've got the stories (climaxing in a seemingly endless scene where they're hoping to be randomly drawn to go to the charter schools) of some kids who really want to learn and who, perhaps coincidentally, also seem to have really supportive parents. This documentary suggests that charter schools are the answer while completely ignoring statistics that show they are just as unsuccessful as public schools. No, it's not difficult to find some charter schools that have an astounding amount of success, but that's just not the norm. One could just as easily find public schools that have an astounding amount of success; however, that doesn't fit in with Guggenheim's plan. I also love how this compares and contrasts American schools with the rest of the world without really comparing or contrasting. Finland's at the top of the pyramid. Wouldn't it have been interesting to know why? Most Americans, I would hope, understand that a lot of those schools ahead of America are there because they don't allow all of their students to even get an education if they aren't succeeding early in their education. But no, Guggenheim just wants us to know that if we replaced our lower six percent with average students, we could be right up there with Finland. Whatever that means. Another statistic that I didn't really understand, likely because I went to public schools--"Bad teachers" only teach about 50% of the curriculum while "good teachers" can teach 150% of the curriculum. What does that even mean? Nevermind. Don't even tell me.

You know, this is so horribly misguided and misses the point (or worse, it invents its own point and hits a bull's eye) that I've decided that An Inconvenient Truth is also probably a bad documentary. I'm going to adjust my rating and stop inviting Al Gore to my parties.

Religulous

2008 inquiry

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Funnyman Bill Maher travels the world to have some of his questions about religion answered. Or maybe he's traveling on the world because he's a superior human being who was sent to earth by something (Note: Not a deity) to tell us all what's what in a very smug way.

Points deducted because my research shows that this contains possible misinformation. More points deducted because of the amount of stereotyping and generalizing that Maher does. Not to say this wasn't entertaining because it was. I enjoy when people are made fun of because of their beliefs. I really do. But there was just something about Maher's approach here that rubbed me the wrong way. Part of the problem is that his stated goal with this is so far from what he's trying to do. He claims he's asking these questions because he really wants answers, preaching the "Gospel of I-Don't-Know." He doesn't. He's asking these questions because it gives him the opportunity to be funny and show how much smarter he is than the average person. His well-written diatribe at the end of this, a biased faux-summary of his discoveries, could easily have been written prior to production. As a documentary, this lacks cohesion. I laughed out loud a few times, and if that was his main goal (he is, after all, a comedian), then he succeeded. Somehow, I doubt Bill Maher's main goal was to make Shane laugh, however. If nothing else, this reinforces my belief that I need to visit the Creation Museum. They have animatronic dinosaurs there!

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

2008 documentary

Rating: 10/20

Plot: Did you know that academic types who even think the words "intelligent design" are being persecuted by the rest of the scientific community? They're losing their jobs, finding themselves blacklisted, and being made fun of at parties. Ben Stein found out and doesn't like it one bit. The result? He gets all bitchy and makes a documentary about it.

Whiny propaganda spotted with fairly obvious pop culture allusions and some distracting historical footage, this fails to either entertain or enlighten. So entirely one sided, Stein spends almost the entire movie pulling half-evolved rabbits out of his ass, stacking the deck with Fascists and Nazi cards before fanning them out and saying, "Pick a card, any card," in that nasally voice of his. I watched this in four installments, partly because it's not all that interesting but mostly because of it's pretty gross and insulting, regardless of your views on Darwinism, intelligent design, or Ferris Bueller. The Holocaust? C'mon, Stein! Who died and made Ben Stein Michael Moore anyway? I think I'd rather spend a couple hours watching a creationist and a monkey tickle-fight each other.

I Am Cuba

1964 Soviet/Cuban film

Rating: 18/20

Plot: Cuba, circa revolution. There are four stories here. The first shows Cuba's most destitute juxtaposed with the rich enjoying the festivities at an American night club and one bearded guy's night with a prostitute. The second deals with a sugar cane farmer who is about to lose his property. The third concerns the conflict between rebellious students and the authorities, and the final part is about a farmer being pressured to join rebel forces in the mountains.

Although there was very obviously an agenda here and although this could be used to teach about a variety of propaganda techniques, I really really enjoyed watching this beautiful film. It's a visual feast, and there were countless times when I thought, "Wait a second. Cameras just aren't supposed to do that." This 2 1/2 hour movie is just stuffed with the most elaborate and complex shots, long shots with hundreds of people, numerous props, and a variety of architectural or natural obstacles. One example is during a funeral scene. The camera follows a coffin ahead of a funeral procession through the streets. Then it stops and starts moving several stories upward along the side of a building. From there it moves vertically, across the street into another building where people are making cigars which, as I understand it, is all people in Cuba do. It then moves forward through the room until it reaches the window where it is supposed to stop. But it doesn't. It keeps going and going, hovering above the middle of the street for a while. It's ridiculously amazing, and there are lots of shots like this--cameras diving into water, meandering through swarms of folks at a night club, wandering slums dizzyingly with a character, swimming through the flames of a field, stumbling around a farm decimated by bombs. There's poetic realism to the proceedings, and one could almost mistake this for a documentary. It's such an intimate portrait of, well, at least what the filmmakers see as Cuba and its people. Absolutely amazing and highly recommended.

W.

2008 Oliver Stone joint

Rating: 13/20

Plot: The high points of George W. Bush's personal life and political career.

This has a tendency to linger and is guilty too often of going for the cheap and obvious (i.e. famous Bushisms). I also question the timing of something like this. However, it's a fascinating two-hour romp, filled with moments of genuine humor and absolute horror. The acting, or impersonations, is very good. Brolin brings a Bush character to life in a way that makes you appreciate him as a flawed human being while at the same time wanting to catch him on fire. Richard Dreyfuss is amazing as Cheney and probably deserved a nomination or at least an offer to do a couple sketches on Saturday Night Live. I also really liked James Cromwell as W.'s dad. The woman who plays Condoleeza Rice is terrible though. I also hated the music in this movie.

The Littlest Rebel

1935 confederacy propaganda film

Rating: 4/20

Plot: (Warning--Spoilers!) Sweet little Virgie lives with her mother and father on a southern plantation. Her existence is a perfect one--she hosts her own birthday party with her young friends, bosses around the family's slaves and chastises them when they do wrong, and lives it up in the luxuriant comfort of her father's mansion. But then war breaks out and her father must run off to help the southern cause. Virgie has to deal with her father's absence, the burning down of her house, her mother's death, and her father's eventual execution in the only way she knows how--tap dancing and singing!

I had promised somebody that I would watch a Shirley Temple movie by Christmas. I thought it was my first, but she's apparently in Fort Apache. But this is my first time seeing Shirley Temple in her prime, when she was six and tap dancing and dimpling her way into America's hearts. And I've got to say that it was a worse experience than I ever could have imagined. This is a movie seemingly made in a topsy-turvy America, one where the Southerners have the moral high ground; where Northerners are arrogant, cruel brutes; and where slaves are perfectly content with the hand they've been dealt. Maybe the best compliment I can give this movie is that it is Birth of a Nation-esque. Because of the way black and white relationships work in this movie, I don't think it's appropriate for children. There's the stock clown character (a slave, of course, portrayed in a fashion that looks like it's straight off a minstrel show stage) who falls in holes he's dug as traps, contemplates why shoes are called shoes, says the Union can make the weather change because whenever they's around he don't know if it winter or summer out cause he's a-sweatin' and a-shiverin' at the same time, and is told to shut up by multiple characters. And there's something almost shocking about watching Shirley Temple verbally abuse slaves although, admittedly, she seems to be friends with them throughout most of the movie. More offensive to anybody who likes good realistic movie fiction would be scenes in which the soldiers interact with each other, the range of emotions Shirley Temple displays when her mother dies, and the melodrama displayed when Shirley Temple's character shares an apple with Abraham Lincoln. The dated humor will make you cringe rather than laugh, and the dated story might make any intelligent viewer physically ill. But the cherry on top of the ice cream sundae? Five words for ya: Shirley Temple in black face. That's right. Check it:

Sergeant York

1941 American propaganda

Rating: 16/20 (Dylan: 11/20)

Plot: All Alvin York wants is a piece of bottom land and a piece of love interest Gracie's bottom. Living in Tennessee with his mother (they don't even have telephones or the Internet there!), he matures from an uneducated hillybilly troublemaker into an uneducated hillybilly pacifist. But the Great War has broken out, and it's the wrong time to be a conscientious objector. Torn between his duty to his country and his devotion to God, York trains and eventually heads off the France so that he can become Forrest Gump. God bless America!

This is a very attractive movie and Gary Cooper is great in it, but it does pour it on pretty thickly. Good script though.