A Taste of Cherry

It is very hard to care for a character when you know almost nothing about them. You don't know what their central conflict is, you don't know anything about their life, and they insist on using people like they have no feelings or right to express their opinion.

Mr. Badii is driving around his city looking for someone to help him, the job he has is simple and the pay is good. He wants some one to come to a hole that he has dug near a tree in the outskirts of town, yell his name twice, if he doesn't respond fill the whole with 20 spadefuls of dirt and leave. If he does answer, help him out of the grave. As he drives around and meets people he sees a cross section of the country he lives in. Immigrants, low income laborers, and a man who works at the natural history museum.

We spend almost the whole time in the car as he drives around, he is rude to people, short with them. If they express their opinion at all he tells them he doesn't want to hear it, he just wants them to do this job. He calls these people his friends, he manipulates them, and asks so much of them for a monetary compensation. To everyone he talks to the money is meaningless, they only want to help him. Badii is a selfish, and careless man. He gets frustrated when people wont do his bidding, people who would be more likely to kill themselves than him, they live sad and hard lives where he seems well off. We never know why he wants to kill himself though, so I cant say much about that.

It has a terrible non-ending, I'm sure you can guess from reading this where the story ends, so we get no closure on the story. There are some great moments in it, but because of the ending those moments are meaningless, if the whole story is about the last day of his life, or a day he nearly made a huge mistake we need to know that, this cant be left open.

They do some very interesting stuff with lighting and composition, but because the film is almost entirely in his car it becomes repetitive quickly. They also put in hints for things that never happen, what a waste. Example: Whenever he gets to the site where he dug the hole we can hear an injured or lost puppy somewhere nearby crying. To me it would seem like to end it he would save the dogs life, thus saving his own, but no. Its never referred to.

I cant really recommend this to anyone, it drags to often, and it not story enough to be a feature length, I think as a 45 minute short it would work very well, but at more than double that it simply flips about trying to run the clock out. 5/10 stars.

Director: Abbas Kiarostami

Actors: Homayoun Ershadi, Abdolrahman Bagheri, Afshin Khorshid Bakhtiari, Mir Hossein Noori

Trembling Before G-d

I was in the mood for a documentary last night, and one that felt familiar enough that I could passively watch and not get lost at all. So I picked this one, which in many ways felt similar to other docs. on the same subject, but with one glaring difference.

I've seen a lot of docs. about how Christians treat those who are homosexual, and this was the first one I saw about how Jews treat members of Judaism who are gay. Specifically it deals with how Hasids and Orthodox deal with this "problem." I was sad to see how those who are ultra religious can all act so similar, I've prided myself in the way homosexuality is viewed by the Jews, but was always looking at Reform, not Orthodox. Just like how Christian people are pushed out of their faith, so are religious Jews. A big difference though is that Jews keep to themselves, they don't try and force anything onto anyone, and thank G-d for that.

Its sad to see people pushed away like this, for something they cant help, and is just a part of them. It was important that they show this, Christians and Muslims shouldn't be the only ones bearing the brunt of the blame for being on edge with homosexuality. Listening to these people talk just reminded me of how far we've come, but also just how far we still need to go. Religion may never change, but at least on the government side we can fix the inequality.

It was straightforward in its message, it wasn't shot great, but docs. don't have to be, so long as the message is strong and well supported I can overlook the way something is shot. 7/10 stars.

Director: Sandi Simcha Dubowski

The Horseman

I was in the mood this morning for something that wouldn't require a lot of brain power to watch, just something with action and some fighting, so I popped in "The Horseman" It indeed had action, but was much more gruesome than I had expected.

Christian is a man on a mission, his teenage daughter had disappeared and when she turns up in the morgue with cocaine, and heroine in her blood, as well as several semen samples on her, he goes out to find her killers. He systematically makes his way through the people who had anything to do with his daughters death, and last few hours. He is sent a tape in the mail, it is a porno, with his daughter being the doped up star just hours before she was dead. He uses this as a frame to work off of to find all involved. Along the way he comes upon a girl (Alice) who needs a ride down the way he's going, and as they drive together they share little bits of their lives. You would think that this is a story of redemption, or at least eventually, but it never gets to that point.

They get stuck on the revenge aspect of the story, and all the different ways someone could torture another person before finally killing them. This was an extremely violent movie, I'm not often caught off guard, or will wince when something happens, but I many times in this had trouble keeping my eyes on the screen. There are buckets of blood in this, and I'll have trouble thinking about an air pump for athletic balls again without this movie coming to mind.

The acting is all around okay, nothing extraordinary, but nothing overly amateur about it, it is obviously an indie film, so they work with what they have. Peter Marshall who plays Christian does a great job as the father out to find the killers, and is scary in the role. He plays the homicidal maniac at times with yells and screams, his eyes intense and glowing, and at other times plays it with a quiet smoldering when he tortures and kills people you might think he was merely doing the dishes. In both of these ways he is very successful, but because of that it makes the character work for me a little less. There are anti-heroes of course, but this man is cold and calculated, so it makes it hard for me to like him, let alone be on board with what hes doing.

They shot digital, and it works for the film, they keep the contrast high, and are unafraid to let black take over the frame. The makeup as well did a great job, and in that same vein the FX crew did a great job, it must be fun to work everyday with that sort of blood and gore...and fire.

If you aren't in a good mood, this will not help, I don't actually know what mood you would have to be in to want to watch this. The story is okay, nothing great, and I hate to say it, but not in the least original, they don't even bring something new to the table, or add some twist, it is just like so many other movies Ive seen about a father out for justice.

There is only one way for this sort of story to end, so from the first few minutes you know exactly where its headed, not to say the ride isn't one that takes you places. Enjoyable as it could be, but wish there was more differences than other movies of the same story. 6/10 stars.

Director: Steven Kastrissios

Starring: Peter Marshall, Caroline Marohasy, Brad McMurry, Jack Henry

Batman: Under the Red Hood

I was a little sceptical going into this movie, I was excited to see it, don't get me wrong, but there were a lot of ways that this could have went wrong, and just happy to say that I didn't run into many.

Batman is continuing his effort to rid Gotham of the criminals who call it home, when trying to stop a few thugs from delivering "Amazo" to Black Mask (the current Gotham kingpin) he watches as they are assassinated at long range by a sniper. Following the sniper and chasing them down only enhances the mystery. He moves like someone that Batman has known in his past, he's been trained, and been trained by the best. As Batman discovers more about the identity of the Red Hood, the sniper who killed the thugs, he finds a new enemy. The Red Hood is setting himself up to be the new kingpin in town, but not for the reasons you might think.

The story here is a combination of two separate Batman stories, one an older and very well known one, the other newer, but still a nice addition to the animated Batman film library. The older story is that of the loss of the second Robin at the hands of the Joker. Batman was unable to get to Jason (Robin) in time. The Joker beats him to near death with a crow bar, and then blows the building up. The second story they bring into this movie is the reemergence of the Red Hood. Many criminals have taken up the mantle of the Red Hood to hide their real identities at times, even people like the man who would eventually be known as the Joker. A man calling himself the Red Hood is in Gotham, and he is taking no prisoners as he rises to the top. I wont go into detail on that much further lest give away key elements of the story.

As I said I was a little wary going in, trying to take these two stories, one of them being very iconic and putting it to celluloid is a difficult notion considering the fickle nature of fans like me. With this in mind I can say that they certainly satisfied my idea of what this story should look like. I was so glad they had Black Mask in this, he is often ignored because he is a new villain and not well know, but in the last several years has been a very important character in the nature of how Gotham and its underbelly functions. The Joker is beefier than I would have expected, and I was not a fan of his voice. The voice wasn't bad, it just wasn't the Jokers voice, I can understand they wanted to distance themselves, even if only slightly from "Batman: The Animated Series" but they should have kept Mark Hamil as the Joker, his voice is the perfect fit for it, and he has been doing it for the last twenty years, I'm sure they would have been happy with his performance.

Gotham is just as dark as it should be, with a little more color than we saw in "Batman: Mask of the Phantasm" but not pushing the limits like they very easily could have. The architecture of the buildings was spot on, as was the design of the Batcave and the various other locations we see in the film. I didn't like the look of Ras al Ghul's lair, but that's a minor complaint. The voice cast did a fantastic job, other than the Joker they all perfectly fit as I thought they should. The is a violent movie, and at times very bloody, the Joker cuts a mans throat with a shattered glass, a mans head explodes when attacked by the Red Hood, a few people are brutally set on fire, in that way it pulled no punches, pun intended.

The story (thank God) is not a look at super villains, or how bad ass Batman is, (and he is) but delves deeper into the psychology of Batman and all the thought that has went into building these characters for the last several decades. What makes Batman who he is? What makes the Joker what he is? And how are these two connected? Is it a mistake that Batman doesn't kill? All questions that they play with in this story, this film is by no means a children's movie simply because its animated, I still think for the most part its okay for kids to watch this, but like Harry Potter it wasn't originally intended for children.

Batman's greatest failures are on display here, should he ever have let the second Robin be Robin in the first place, and what if there was no changing him to begin with? These are the kinds of stories that they should be putting in these smaller animated Batman movies, and they do, at least for this one. Because of the Animated Series, and Mask of the Phantasm this movie had a groundwork of other dark Batman animated shows and movies to help it along. Without the other animated works that have been made in the last 15 years this story wouldn't have surfaced, and if it did it wouldn't have been the story it is here.

This was a well made and well timed venture, and I'm really glad not only that I saw it, but that someone allowed them to make it. 8/10 stars.

Director: Brandon Vietti

Starring: Bruce Greenwood, Jensen Ackles, John Di Maggio, Neil Patrick Harris, Jason Isaacs, Wade Williams, Jim Piddock

Cropsey

Everyone has heard the urban legend of the killer who grabs kids from the streets and from their neighborhoods and takes them away. He chops them up and buries them, sometimes with a hook for a hand, sometimes a blunt and bloody ax. This is where that legend originated.

Two filmmakers, both of which grew up on Stanton Island, and who both grew up with this story come together and try and piece together the truth. We start out with a quick history of the island, and how it was a dumping ground for the rest of NYC. After hearing peoples interpretation of the story from those who live on the island we move on to the actual story of the missing children on Stanton Island. The disappearance and ultimate discovery of the body of a young girl with down syndrome is the spark that ignites the fire which illuminates the other disappearances that had been happening, but some how kept quiet for a decade.

The introduction of the center of the island brings a big piece of the puzzle together. In the center of the island is a large wooded area, the only one left on the island since it had been suburbanized. Two groups used this land, one was a hospital for those with deadly infectious diseases, mainly tuberculosis, and the other was a mental institution known as Willowbrook. Seeing footage of how the mental institution was run, and how its "patients" were treated we get a very good idea of the horrors that must have went on there. Children who were mentally and physically challenged left in their own filth, sometimes naked, or bound so they couldn't move, all of this exposed by Geraldo (believe it or not) Even after this terrifying expose, the hospital continued to run for another decade before it was finally shut down.

People started to live in the abandoned building, many ex-patients, which brings us to Andre Rand, the man arrested and convicted with the abductions and murders. At this point in the film it quickly became like many others I've seen, the story of a wrongfully accused man being incarcerated and how the train was rolled against them. They never push the idea hard that he's innocent, but they certainly hint at it a lot, (Odds are he's guilty) but there are and were so many problems with the prosecutions case, so many holes and strange occurrences that he should never have been found guilty. With there being so much inconclusive evidence and conflicting statements its a shame to see someone lynched out of social justice, even if he is guilty.

The interviews in it aren't great in terms of ascetics, in content they were great. There was little lighting, the camera was either to close, or two far, and made people look not as nice as they might otherwise have looked. The backgrounds were distracting and to busy. The story twists and turns at the beginning, and I was glad to see that, in the second half when it turned into the "mind of a killer" thing, mixed with the "Trial gone crazy" I started to tire of it a little.

Its a very interesting story, and they did a great job with it, there weren't to many points that I felt they went off topic, or took unnecessary tangents to explain anything. The whole idea of urban legends is that they arise questions instead of answer, and this movie is like that, at the end I have more questions than when I went it. Having just finished reading "Devil in the White City" which has a very unique Chicago serial killer, it was interesting to see this uniquely NY serial killer, and even more specific Stanton Island killer. I give it 8/10 stars.

Directors: Barbara Brancaccio, Joshua Zeman

Creation

For as long as Darwin has been controversial I'm surprised it took so long to make a film about him, other than documentaries.

Charles Darwin has hit a wall while writing, "Origin of the Species" He is being pushed onward by friends and supporters, and as they push on him, his marriage continues to fall apart as does his fragile psyche. As he tries to write he is haunted by the memories of his daughter who had recently died.

Its hard to explain all that happens in the story because it is simply his descent into a form of madness. He is distraught over the death of his daughter Annie who out of his children is the most like him, and understands the natural world much like he had come to. As he remembers how things went wrong with his daughter his grasp of reality is slipping though his fingers. There are several scenes where he is hallucinating, as well as some very interesting dream sequences.

What I was really impressed by is when Darwin starts to focus on something and it shows how things really work, example: He watches a rat running through a field, it goes into some long grass where there is what is left of a cows skull, we go inside it in a very David Fincher style and see the maggots growing, as time goes by quickly they eat and then are eaten by a bird. The bird accidentally knocks its chick out of the nest and it dies on the ground, alone. It is then eaten.

The classic view of the natural order is the Biblical one where a lion is lying down with a lamb, not only a representation of the natural order but also the religious implications that arise in the New Testament. Jesus is referred to as both a lion and a lamb in the Bible and in other scriptures. As well as he is God, but yet the son of God, etc. So how could he be both the lion and the lamb? This misguided view of nature is deeply ingrained through religion, and is wrong. The world is brutal and unforgiving, and everything is a struggle merely to survive the next day and pass on the genes.

In this we find the conflict going on in Darwin's brain. He wants to believe in God, but he is also a man of science. As he sees truths and facts and reports on them he is essentially refuting the accepted way that things came to be that is described in the Bible. He cant ignore them, they are facts, but he also cant openly believe in them because it goes against so much of what he wants to believe in.

If his daughter died, and there is no God, then where did she go? His wife Emma takes comfort that she will see Annie again, while Darwin is struggling to believe that and has to see her in his waking dreams. Much of his troubles arise from the fact that he married his first cousin, there were things that were wrong with some of his kids that might have been genetic, caused by breeding to close in the family. So it is ironic that he is coming up with the idea that shows how mistaken he was by marrying his cousin, in essence he is removing his genes from the pool by having kids that wont survive. Hes committing his own natural selection.

The cinematography was carefully planned and it showed. Bettany and real life wife as well as movie wife Connelly were terrific in their roles. I wish that Connelly had a bigger part and that we got to know her better. So much of it seemed like they were at odds simply because she wouldn't listen to him, and it was more complex than that. I wish we could have gotten a better handle on her like we do in the end of the film so we could appreciate her more.

I'm disappointed that this wasn't shown in the states, it is British made and went all over but didn't show here. Simply because ignorant people worked hard to get them to not release it here because of the implications of Darwin's ideas. The thing is though is that it is about a mans redemption and acceptance of the way life is, it is in no way at odds with religion. Considering all the stuff that they make here this should have been able to play.

Overall I really enjoyed it, it is not a controversial film by any stretch, and if Ray Charles can get a bio-pic then why not Charles Darwin who was a million times more important than Ray Charles ever will be, no offense Ray, but so is life. It was very well made, and had some really inventive moments. 7/10 stars.

Starring: Paul Bettany, Jennifer Connelly, Martha West, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jeremy Northam

Director: Jon Amiel

A Serious Man

I have to give it to the Coen brothers, they always bring something new to the table, while still keeping it familiar.

Larry Gopnik has problems, a lot of them. His wife wants a divorce, his job is on the line, he's got South Korean people wanting to sue, or bribe him...and on and on it goes. As he tries to look for answers he keeps coming up empty handed without anyone able to give him a straight or acceptable answer. When it comes to the plot there isn't to much more I can say, it really is just a series of bad things happening to Larry over and over again, with seemingly no end in sight.

In that way this is a very Jewish film, there are many references to that within the film, besides it having almost all its characters as Jews there is also the obvious correlation between Larry and Job of the Bible. Larry is essentially a good man, so why is he punished so? The same goes for Job, he does nothing to anger God, he just happened to be favored, and when Lucifer called that to God's attention, that perhaps he wouldn't be so loving of God if he took it all away. The difference comes about towards the end, Job breaks down and curses God, Larry on the other hand never actually turns to God, I don't think he even believes in God.

Larry is a professor at a near by University, and he teaches math, the kind of stuff that goes right over my head, he thinks the world can all be explained with math. So when these things happen to him with no answer to "why?" he is dumbstruck. When counseled by the Rabbis at his temple he gets the Jewish answer from years of wisdom, "there is no answer to your questions, you just have to go with it" This film asks the questions that Jews must ask themselves always and have been since they were first persecuted which was, well pretty much right away, and has been non stop through today.

The Rabbis are willing to accept that there is a way of life of the Jew, and that part of that involves being tormented and torn down, its something that makes us what we are. Even when given a sign by presumably God, there might not be a reason for it that we can ever understand.

Roger Deakins shot this, like he has done with the Coen brothers for many of their films and it reads as such. There is a certain simplicity to the way he shoots things, and by that I mean he makes it look simple and easy, but it is anything but. He is one of the current masters and shows it in his work always. Something I loved about this film was the parallels they make aside from the Biblical ones. Such as when two characters are driving their cars, at the same time, across town and we continue to cut between the two, one we see gets into an accident, but everyone is fine, while the other car seems to get to its destination without a problem, we only find out later that they didn't get there, they were also in a crash and died. Funny way to show things happening and to essentially trick the audience over and over again.

There are also several dreams that take place in the film that trick you for a moment. All I could do after finding out it was a dream was smile and laugh a little, that's what the Coen's do best, make me chuckle uncomfortably a little while deep down I'm laughing hard. Lots of people wont see this as a comedy, much like "Fargo" is a comedy, even if that evades most people.

The way this ends was one of the best I've seen in a while, or should I say non-ending. You can basically figure out the rest for yourself, even if you'd prefer the filmmakers to finish it for you. The film like the story of it leaves you with no answers just like it began, merely questions. They purposely don't give you answers because like the question of "Why?" for the Jews, there is no answer that will ever suffice. Why does this have to happen to us? It just does, the story never ends, it just keeps going, there is no happy ending. Dark, yes, a comedy...yes, and a funny one at that. Its hard for me to recommend it though, its not for most people, it will feel like you wasted an hour and forty minutes if you are the kind of person who doesn't like the Coen brothers.

For someone who gets them and likes them this is a good addition to their film repertoire. 7/10 stars. It could have gotten more stars if I had been given an answer, sorry, but I wanted one.

Starring: Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed, Sari Lennick, Aaron Wolff

Directors: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen