Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb. If the vast majority of the world’s scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced.
If that sounds like a recipe for serious gloom and doom — think again. From director Davis Guggenheim comes the Sundance Film Festival hit, AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, which offers a passionate and inspirational look at one man’s fervent crusade to halt global warming’s deadly progress in its tracks by exposing the myths and misconceptions that surround it. That man is former Vice President Al Gore, who, in the wake of defeat in the 2000 election, re-set the course of his life to focus on a last-ditch, all-out effort to help save the planet from irrevocable change. In this eye-opening and poignant portrait of Gore and his “traveling global warming show,” Gore also proves himself to be one of the most misunderstood characters in modern American public life. Here he is seen as never before in the media - funny, engaging, open and downright on fire about getting the surprisingly stirring truth about what he calls our “planetary emergency” out to ordinary citizens before it’s too late.
With 2005, the worst storm season ever experienced in America just behind us, it seems we may be reaching a tipping point - and Gore pulls no punches in explaining the dire situation. Interspersed with the bracing facts and future predictions is the story of Gore’s personal journey: from an idealistic college student who first saw a massive environmental crisis looming; to a young Senator facing a harrowing family tragedy that altered his perspective, to the man who almost became President but instead returned to the most important cause of his life - convinced that there is still time to make a difference.
With wit, smarts and hope, AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH ultimately brings home Gore’s persuasive argument that we can no longer afford to view global warming as a political issue - rather, it is the biggest moral challenges facing our global civilization.
Paramount Classics and Participant Productions present a film directed by Davis Guggenheim, AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH. Featuring Al Gore, the film is produced by Laurie David, Lawrence Bender and Scott Z. Burns. Jeff Skoll and Davis Guggenheim are the executive producers and the co-producer is Leslie Chilcott.
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If you don’t mind sub-titles, check out this story about courage. How children are thrust into situations they have no understanding of, besides what is right and what is wrong, and have the courage to act on that. With wonderful cinematography, excellent direction, and a lovable hero, this film reminds the viewer of innocence lost and speaks to the universality of the challenge facing children everywhere - growing up.
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Sonatine
Written, directed, edited and starring Kitano Takeshi, this isn’t your typical Yakuza film. Murakawa is tired of the life and entertaining the idea of retirement. When a suspicious routine mission turns sour, he and his team regroup at an unused vacation home. While there, idle minds transform disciplined gangsters into fun-loving children. But this is only a quiet interlude, for there is no reprieve from the life of a Yakuza, and in spite of the moments of laughter, the harsh reality of their vocation is inescapable. The music score is dreamy at times, wonderfully complimenting the lighter scenes of the film. And while there are details which have been blatantly overlooked (i.e., not one policeman in sight) the film is entertaining and wonderfully directed.
Stormy Weather
I can’t find the words… (smile)
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Five Fingers
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R-Point
This release is billed by Tartan as Korea’s highest-grossing horror flick of 2004. Stylishly spooky, the film is set in 1972 Vietnam. Radio technicians from the South Korean army pick up a distress signal from a patrol that went missing months before. A platoon is sent to investigate, and immediately gets a bad vibe about the mission. Whispering voices, ghost soldiers and an eerie temple are enough to drive anybody crazy with fear.
“R-Point” is a movie that brings to mind movies like “Platoon” only with a supernatural twist. Hyung-Jing Suk’s cinematography and the film’s sound design go hand in hand, successfully creating an uncomfortable mood.
The end of the movie seems a bit rushed and fumbles to tie up loose ends, but overall this was a welcome change to the formulaic horror movies which I’ve been accustomed to watching. A good one to put on the shelf next to “28 Days Later.”
- Rico Machiavelli
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Volver
The Darkest of Troubles in the Brightest of Colors
The action in “Volver” moves back and forth between a workaday neighborhood in Madrid and a windswept village in the Spanish
countryside. Really, though, the movie takes place in a familiar, enchanted land — Almodóvaria, you might call it, or maybe Pedrostan— where every room and street corner is saturated with bright color and vivid feeling and where discordant notes of violence, jealousy and fear ultimately resolve in the deeper harmonies of art.
Pedro Almodóvar, the benevolent deity of this world, has revealed it — or, rather, created it — piece by piece from one film to the next. His two previous movies, “Talk to Her” (2002) and “Bad Education” (2004), explored previously uncharted regions of masculine melodrama, while “Volver,” whose title can be translated as “to return,” revisits the woman-centered territory of “All About My Mother” (1999) and “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” (1988). Drawing on influences ranging from Latin American telenovelas to classic Hollywood weepies and on an iconography of female endurance that includes Anna Magnani and Joan Crawford, Mr. Almodóvar has made yet another picture that moves beyond camp into a realm of wise, luxuriant humanism.
“Volver,” full of surprises and reversals, unfolds with breathtaking ease and self-confidence. It is in some ways a smaller, simpler film than either “Talk to Her” or “Bad Education,” choosing to tell its story without flashbacks or intricate parallel plots, but it is no less the work of a master. And it’s a testament to the filmmaker’s generosity of spirit that he effectively hands the movie over to its ensemble of lively and resourceful actresses, and in particular to its star, Penélope Cruz.
Ms. Cruz plays Raimunda, a hard-working woman pulled in every direction by terrible events and by the needs of the women around her. At one point in the film she answers a knock on the door from her neighbor, Emilio (Carlos Blanco), one of the tiny, mostly superfluous handful of men who appear on screen. Emilio, who clearly has a crush on Raimunda, notices a streak of blood on her neck and asks if she’s all right. “Women’s troubles,” she says with a quick smile, which is both a startlingly risqué joke and the literal truth.
Such troubles! The blood belongs to her husband, Paco (Antonio de la Torre), who has recently expired in a bright crimson pool on the kitchen floor after taking a carving knife to the belly. His killing is not exactly to be shrugged off — and he does eventually receive a proper burial of sorts — but he is not exactly mourned either. Men, for Raimunda and her circle, tend to be malevolent, irrelevant or simply absent: straying husbands, predators, dead bodies. They cause a fair amount of trouble, but the point of “Volver” is that it’s not about them.
It is about what American feminists of an earlier era called sisterhood, and also about the complicated bonds of kinship and friendship that Mr. Almodóvar observed as a child growing up among women in traditional, patriarchal, gender-separated (and fascist) Spain. Raimunda’s troubles may be extreme, but she bustles through them with passionate determination, making room for every emotion except self-pity. There are too many other people who need her sympathy, above all her teenage daughter, Paula (Yohana Cobo), who was subject to Paco’s lecherous, unwelcome attention. Raimunda must also tend to Sole (the wonderful Lola Dueñas), her sister, whose face registers loneliness and disappointment even as she tries to radiate busyness and good cheer; to
their elderly Aunt Paula (Chus Lampreave); and to Agustina (Blanca Portillo), a neighbor whose sorrows could easily fill another movie.
There is also a restaurant to run (it’s Emilio’s, but Raimunda takes over in his absence) and, on the other side of the screen, an audience to tease, charm, provoke and wrap around one of her long, expressive fingers. With this role Ms. Cruz inscribes her name near the top of any credible list of present-day flesh-and-blood screen goddesses, in no small part because she manages to be earthy, unpretentious and a little vulgar without shedding an ounce of her natural glamour. What’s more, Mr. Almodóvar has had the sly inspiration to cast Carmen Maura, one of the stars of his early, madcap period, as Raimunda’s mother, who seems to
have returned from the dead to add a touch of the gothic (and the surreal) to the proceedings. Ms. Maura’s warm good humor is a crucial element in the film’s emotional design. It is a chronicle, mostly, of tragedy and horror, rendered in bright, happy colors.
To relate the details of the narrative — death, cancer, betrayal, parental abandonment, more death — would create an impression of dreariness and woe. But nothing could be further from the spirit of “Volver,” which is buoyant without being flip, and consoling without ever becoming maudlin. Mr. Almodóvar acknowledges misfortune — and takes it seriously — from a perspective that is essentially comic. Very few filmmakers have managed to smile so convincingly in the face of misery and fatality: Jean Renoir and Billy Wilder come immediately to mind, and Mr. Almodóvar, if he is not yet their equal, surely belongs in their company. “Volver” is often dazzling in its artifice — José Luis Alcaine’s ripe cinematography, Alberto Iglesias’s suave, heart-tugging score — but it is never false. It draws you in, invites you to linger and makes you eager to return. It offers something better than realism. The real world, after all, is where we all have to live; for some of us, though, Mr. Almodóvar’s world is home.
- A.O. SCOTT
More at Sony Pictures.
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Set against the futuristic landscape of totalitarian Britain, V For Vendetta tells the story of a mild-mannered young woman named Evey (NATALIE PORTMAN) who is rescued from a life-and-death situation by a masked man (HUGO WEAVING) known only as “V.” Incomparably charismatic and ferociously skilled in the art of combat and deception, V ignites a revolution when he urges his fellow citizens to rise up against tyranny and oppression. As Evey uncovers the truth about V’s mysterious background, she also discovers the truth about herself – and emerges as his unlikely ally in the culmination of his plan to bring freedom and justice back to a society fraught with cruelty and corruption.
Some see the mask of the devil, others – a dark angel. Whatever one’s visual perspective, facing us is a truth about our selves. This truth is menacing and attractive all at once, taking a hold of the darkness within us and dragging it out into the excruciating light. Our burning tears scream in the long ago but brilliant memory of our innocence. We see ourselves as children again, lost and angry, who have turned against ourselves out of fear and pain. We have done so much and been gone from ourselves so long that we still resign ourselves to the belief that it is too late for us – that the next generation must find a way out of this sickening madness of resignation. But what will our children know other than what we show them? How will a glorious future rise out of the ashes of our shame if we do not seek the rain?
This movie does not by accident include that which spirituality and philosophy attempt to articulate. To think, to live free, to face fear and overcome it, are all depicted in this film. The film fails on one level though, despite its revolutionary and inspirational offerings. The film does not embrace the complete truth, nor tap into that infinite power of love. It casts love and truth as abstracts to be believed in or not. Nevertheless the film cannot deny the actuality of truth and love and would not be worth watching if it did. Like so many other “brilliant” films, the script invariably suffers from that which it wishes to expose – a denial of responsibility of sort. The power it appeals to, which it never claims outright, is that power which comes from God.
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The Matrix is a film that astounds not only with action and special effects but also with ideas. These pages are dedicated to exploring some of the many philosophical ideas that arise in both the original film and the sequels. In the upcoming months we will be continually expanding this section, offering essays from some of the brightest minds in philosophy and cognitive science. News about updates to this section can be found right here. (Scroll down to read about the latest update, or just click here.)
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“In the rain we all stand, our heads tilted back as the drops cleanse our eyes, revealing the tree encircling our physicality, with energy coursing through our blood, a realization of community rises from our collective hope. We all live as strands of Life across the intertwined Universes of our minds. As such, nurtured by the Tree Of Life, we are here, Alive! Not taking of life, but giving towards unity in hopes of coming together under the swirling clouds as singular Energy. Looking not up, down, or in any direction, but into ourselves, to live the inspiration we have gone into and come from. Alive, in the forest of the Tree Of Life, amongst the animals, open minds are Catching Rain.”
I had a chance to check out one of the most thought provoking and beautifully written movies out today. The Fountain is filled with mental stimulation and poetic symbolism. This wonderful movie will force you to view it over and over again, and every time you’ll discover a different perspective. The Fountain is an odyssey about one man’s thousand year struggle to save the woman he loves. His journey begins in 16th century Spain, where conquistador Tomas Creo commences his search for the Tree of Life, the legendary entity believed to grant eternal life to those who drink of its sap. He desperately struggles to find a cure for the cancer that is killing his beloved wife Isabel. Traveling through deep space as a 26th century astronaut, Tom begins to grasp the mysteries of life that have consumed him for more than a century. The Tree of Life is an important symbol in nearly every culture. With its branches reaching into the sky, and roots deep in the earth, it dwells in three worlds a link between heaven, the earth, and the underworld, uniting above and below. The tree has other characteristics which lend easily to symbolism. Many trees take on the appearance of death in the winter losing their leaves, only to sprout new growth with the return of spring. This aspect makes the tree a symbol of resurrection, and a stylized tree is the symbol of many resurrected Gods, Jesus, Attis, and Osiris all have crosses as their symbols. Most of these Gods are believed to have been crucified on trees, as well. The modern Christmas tree hearkens back to trees decorated to honor Attis, the crucified God of the Greeks. This tree and its gifts of immortality are not easy to discover. It is historically difficult to find, and almost invariably guarded. The tree as the abode of the Gods is another feature common to many mythologies; in some, the tree itself is a God. Another form, the inverted Tree, represents spiritual growth, as well as the human nervous system. This tree, with its roots in heaven, and its branches growing downward, is most commonly found in Kabbalistic imagery.
(Genesis 2:9; Genesis 3:22) Wisdom is a source and supply of life to man. This wisdom is essentially of a moral quality, and this moral force brings the whole man into right relations with the source of life. Hence, a man truly lives by reason of this relationship (Proverbs 3:18). The allusion in this verse is doubtless to Genesis 2:9; Genesis 3:22.
An expression very similar is Proverbs 10:11, where the mouth of the righteous is declared to be a fountain of life. Good words are a power for good, and hence, produce good living. Proverbs 11:30 has a like thought: “The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life,” the good life is a source of good in its influence on others.
Proverbs 13:12 says: “Hope deferred maketh the heart sick; but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.” The meaning seems to be that the gratification of good and lawful desires produces those pleasures and activities which make up life and its blessings.
Proverbs 15:4 says: “A gentle tongue is a tree of life,” its beneficent influences help others to a better life. If The Fountain is playing in your area please go check it out. You won’t be disappointed.
- Daawee Jihaad
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A Very British Coup
And if I might sneak in a link for the BBC radio program: click here.
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Hero
An exquisite film! The cinematography is pure art. The story telling is seamlessly in harmony with the visual effects but the plot’s most poignant moment comes at the end of the movie challenging the viewer to contemplate the complexities of political responsibility and spiritual integrity. An exuberant thousand star rating on a four star scale! A must have for the personal library.
- Eric Nunnally
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Movies up for review: Outfoxed, The Unbeliever, Loose Change, Good Night and Good Luck, Five Fingers, and Sankofa.
Other movies I recommend:
R-Point
Appleseed
Freedom Writers
Bobby
Bowling for Columbine
SiCKO
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