Half-Assed Movie Reviews

May 20, 2009:  Taken

I hadn’t necessarily planned to see Taken, but I liked the trailers, and as it turned out I ended up sitting and watching it.  It’s bittersweet to see Liam Neeson hard at work on his craft here, not long before he lost his wife Nathasha Richardson to a skiing accident this past winter.

Liam Neeson plays Bryan Mills, a CIA man, divorced with a remarried wife and a 17-year-old daughter.  His daughter is kidnapped, apparently for a deliberate reason but he doesn’t know why.  He does, however, vow to find his daughter and kill the men who took her.  We eventually learn the reason for the kidnapping and some unfortunate details about ties to governments and the underworld of the immoral wealthy part of society.

Mills is surprisingly short-fused and violent, which I found to be far more believable than the usual sympathetic CIA characters we’ve seen portrayed before.  To choose and excel in the in-the-field spy lifestyle would, I would think, require some sociopathic tendencies.  Unfortunately this makes it less plausible that he would be so attached to his daughter, but it’s not overly far-fetched.

When watching movies alone, I don’t tend to notice or care about the rating, and the content which generates these ratings (sex, violence, smoking, drug use) tends to go unnoticed.  I am, however, aware of the conventions which have developed over the years (for example, you can say “fuck” exactly once in a PG-13 movie, if you say it twice or more then you get the “R” rating and might as well say it 100 times).  Since this is a movie with lots of shooting and other violence, I assumed it was R-rated, but then got to a scene in a brothel where someone was barging into rooms and the women with their clients were all more or less fully dressed, and that was an immediate trigger for me to check the rating, and it was indeed PG-13 (violence is OK but sex is a no-no, generally).  Well, let me tell you, I have never seen this many people shot directly in the face (half a dozen?) in a PG-13 movie before, and Neeson ends up killing around 40 people in all.  But there’s almost no blood seen, and that makes it all OK for the 13-year-olds.  Incidentally, the seven-on-one scenes did start to get on my nerves a bit.  Are thugs really that bad at fighting, and are steam pipes really always around when you need them, to rip off the wall (because they are of course installed with easy-break joints), blast a couple of guys in the face with the steam, slide your handcuffs from around the pipe, bash another couple of guys in the head with it, and then grab a gun (while still in handcuffs) and shoot the remaining three guys in the face?  All I’m saying is that it strained credibility.

I had read a summary of Taken, saying that it was a great, tense action film except for the first 20 minutes and the last 10.  I share a similar sentiment, although to be more precise I would cut the 5-minute action setup at the beginning, and the 1-minute coda at the end, which would make the film much more lean and focused.  I’m glad I watched this, but you have to know what you’re getting into.

Mostly good, could be far better.

May 9, 2009:  Cat Ladies

“They don’t call you ‘Crazy Cat Lady’ to give you a compliment”, says one of the women profiled in Cat Ladies, a documentary which attempts to address just what it is that makes some women (it is acknowledged that it happens to men but far more rarely) so passionate about cats, in extreme cases to the exclusion of most other social interaction.

Four women are profiled here, and we hop around among their stories throughout the film.  One has 3 cats, and longs for human companionship but fills that void with the love of her cats.  Another woman, a 35-year-old who has gradually crept up to her current count of 16 cats, knows that something is wrong but can’t quite put her finger on what it is.  A well-off retired woman who now has 124 cats also knows that something is wrong, but realizes that she is stuck, and will continue to struggle.  A fourth woman who rescues stray cats, sometimes mistaking free-roaming neighbourhood cats with strays, seems to be clearly a bit crazy and also has over 100 cats, and doesn’t see any problem with what she’s doing.

When I say a couple of times in the previous paragraph that something is wrong, I don’t mean that judgmentally.  The women admit that they don’t like a facet of their lives, but struggle to deal with it.  The lonely woman who saves all of her cats’ whiskers in a little jar strikes me as someone who is doing something I would never bother with, but it’s harmless and she can do what she wants.  The 35-year-old knows and admits that having 16 cats is probably contributing to her difficulty in finding a boyfriend, and knows that she’s the only one who can change the situation if that’s what she wants.  The wealthier older woman has $3000/month carrying costs for her 100+ cats, which is starting to put significant financial pressure on her, and she realizes this may be what it takes to make her change her approach.

The footage of the houses with 100+ cats is almost surreal.  There are multiple cats everywhere, on furniture and floors and on shelves and beds.  Just cleaning litter boxes is a job taking multiple hours per day, with one woman having a cleaning woman in nightly to help her with vacuuming and other tasks.

Despite the undertone of sadness, there is a good deal of laughter and tender behaviour in the film.  The cats bring joy to these women.  There were a number of uncomfortable laughs from the audience as well, which made me feel bad for the ladies who were just bonding with their cats and playing with them, but can be embarrassing to see such raw emotional interactions up close.  For the most point, nobody is harmed by any of this.  To be fair, the scenarios with over one hundred cats in a house do indeed affect others, as an interview with one neighbour illustrates.  He can never open the windows of his house at all because of the stench from next door.  However, apparently the municipal inspectors make sure that the environment is healthy and clean enough, so this poor neighbour finds himself helpless.  Sometimes I’m glad I live in a large city with seemingly restrictive and arcane by-laws which in reality keep things fairly civilized.

There are fascinating and nearly horrifying stories here, and I think Cat Ladies captures the lives of these women, even if it unfortunately doesn’t do much to explain them.

A sensitive examination of different lifestyles.

May 9, 2009:  Love at the Twilight Motel

Love at the Twilight Motel is a documentary I saw at the Hot Docs film festival in Toronto.  It is a look at what goes on in the cheap by-the-hour motels in the Little Havana area of Miami, with a particular motel being profiled (but renamed for the title of the film).  Lengthy interviews are conducted with regular patrons, including a working prostitute, a regular john who is also a heroin user, a man who gives “massages” to women and feels he’s God’s gift to them, and a woman who is taking the first tentative steps towards sex outside her marriage.

Shot in digital HD, and with the bright Miami colours, this movie looks good, although of course being on video it looks more like the documentary it is than like a regular feature film, which is fine.  The interviews are cut together to cover different themes as we move through the film, as is typical for this approach.  Director Alison Rose was available for a Q&A afterwards and clearly knew what she was after, and what would work and what wouldn’t.  The balance of interviews was a particularly important point for the director, with some people left out entirely, and the entire production gelling once the interview was secured with the woman experimenting with an open relationship, so that a reasonable balance of gender, race and wealth is achieved.

The subject matter may disturb more sensitive viewers.  Sex (including prostitution), drug use, infidelity, dishonesty, and deep regret are laid bare, and even though these things happen all the time, and we all have these types of elements in our lives, it can be heartbreaking to face it head-on.  These personal stories, with real substance, aren’t always what I seek in a documentary but it works very well here.

Harrowing look at the dark side.

May 3, 2009:  Black Wave: The Legacy of the Exxon Valdez

Black Wave: The Legacy of the Exxon Valdez is a documentary which examines the aftermath of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.  It follows the lives of a few specific families, and a scientist/activist, as the communities in Prince William Sound have dealt with the economic ups and downs in the decades since the spill, and the epic court battle for proper compensation from Exxon.  One family spent their savings to get a fishing permit and went into business just before the spill, and by 1992-93 the fish were gone, and haven’t returned.  Legal proceedings and multiple appeals have been going on for nearly two decades since the incident and only recently concluded with Exxon paying just a fraction of the damages it had earlier been ordered to pay.

It’s an appalling event, the selfish and dishonest behaviour of the company ever since has been even more appalling, and it doesn’t sound like anyone is any better prepared for such a spill now than they were when caught off guard back in 1989.  It’s a compelling and madding story.  The scientist was present at a Q&A after the film, and while I hate to admit it, her passionate anger does detract from the cause a bit, because the solutions suggested are more idyllic than realistic.  Things aren’t going to significantly change unless changes are spread over a long period of time, and I’m far more inclined to realize that and work within that limitation, rather than shoot for the stars.  Anyway, Black Wave is a solid examination of the Exxon Valdez spill and the often-forgotten aftermath, with a good mix of personal stories as well as hard facts and statistics, to appeal to a wide range of documentary viewers.

Tells what we need to know.

May 2, 2009:  Invisible City

I saw Invisible City (preceded by the short film Code of Silence) as part of the Hot Docs documentary film festival.  It chronicles 3 years in the lives of two boys in the Regent Park public housing development near downtown Toronto.  Both are being raised by their single mothers, struggling to get ahead in a world which purports to provide opportunity for everyone, but finding those opportunities lacking.  The constant struggle leads to repeated disappointments and destructive behaviour, continuing the vicious cycle of defeat.

It’s clear that the boys are no angels, turning to drug-related crime as a way of escaping their struggles in school and to make a bit of money to get ahead.  However, it’s obvious that these boys have an appetite for a normal and successful life, and that circumstances are largely responsible for their delinquency.  Role models and structure are important in the lives of children, regardless of race or income, and when those are missing, trouble follows.  One teacher tries to take the kids under his wing, providing the important role model of someone who grew up in the neighbourhood and made something of himself, but he struggles against the barrage of other influences and isn’t ultimately able to bring the boys out of their troubles.

The community aspect of public housing is often ignored, among municipal discussions of the cost of maintaining or rebuilding public housing as if this were merely a faceless public service.  There are lots of people living in relatively close quarters, and who you associate with has a lot to do with how you turn out.  In the Q&A session after the film, the mothers of the two boys had the most poignant and powerful things to say, women who have lived difficult lives and are wise beyond their years and understand what their boys need, even if they can’t deliver it singlehandedly.

Invisible City is a discomforting look into a part of city life that is all too easy to ignore most of the time.  Unfortunately I didn’t find it to be as engaging as I had hoped, maybe partly because of the focus on two particular examples rather than the community in general, and partly because of how easily the boys seemed to slide back into criminal behaviour despite the best efforts of their mothers and their communities.  I felt like they didn’t really want what they professed to want, and weren’t prepared to work for their results.  Surely I’m missing the greater picture of how difficult it is to rise above such hardship, but all I can do is tell it how I see it.

Solid potential but didn’t move me.