No End in Sight
dir. Charles Ferguson
No End in Sight is the documentary tale of how the United
States government systematically dismantled (i.e., irretrievably
fucked) the nation of Iraq. It is not a story about why they
did it (though all signs point to “on purpose”). It is also not about
the Iraqi people, or the American people, or the troops on either
side.
The bulk of the film rests on interviews with players both major
(retired general Jay Garner, who led the immediate postwar
reconstruction effort in Iraq; former deputy secretary of state Richard
Armitage) and minor (journalists, analysts, diplomats). Interspersed is
news footage and plenty of press-conference comedy from Secretary of
Smirk Donald Rumsfeld (“I don’t do quagmires”). From the
initial invasion, to the months of looting (State Department official
Barbara Bodine describes “people coming in with industrial cranes” and
physically tearing the infrastructure apart), to the disastrous
disbanding of the Iraqi military, de-Baathification, and the current[ly
failing] troop surge, the film is a step-by-step guide to building an
insurgency from the ground up.
For the most part, No End in Sight avoids the kind of
loaded, bumper-sticker editorializing that sucks the marrow out of
fruitful discourse (though the point that Truman took two years to plan
the invasion of Germany, while Bush rushed into Iraq in 60 days, seems
a tad oversimplified). The film works best when it leaves the
conclusions up to its interview subjects (such as Colonel Paul Hughes,
his mind almost comically blown by willful incompetence), who are more
than happy to damn their former bosses all to hell.
I came home from this movie, weary and worried, and watched Bill
O’Reilly devote half an hour of outrage to whether or not you should
teach a baby to say “bitch” (he’s against it). The future is fucked.
LINDY WEST
Stardust
dir. Matthew Vaughn
An imitation The Princess Bride, Stardust isn’t sufficiently confident to become the next classic of wacky
fantasy. The dialogue is unquotable. The story is clichéd (when
it attempts comedy) and overly literal (when it fumbles for romance).
And who knows how long it’s going to take for people to decide that the
existence of a manly man with an affection for frilly underthings isn’t
in itself hilarious.
The masculine mincer is Captain Shakespeare (Robert De Niro), the
leader of a band of lightning-bolt-collecting pirates, and he has
almost nothing to do with the rest of the story, in which a young man
(Charlie Cox) in the town of Wall jumps a barrier to magical Stormhold,
hoping to secure a chunk of fallen star and his beloved’s heart. The
trouble is, the star has taken the form of a headstrong girl in a
silver nightgown (Claire Danes). It’s not so easy to get a piece of
her—or to keep her company while remaining devoted to the
demanding tease back home. Meanwhile, the star is pursued by a witch in
search of immortality and a set of warring princes, some of whom are
wisecracking ghosts.
Claire Danes seems like an awfully earthbound choice to play a
gaseous orb, but her endearing awkwardness is a godsend once her
character begins literally glowing in proportion to her amorous
feelings. (How embarrassing—for her character and the movie.) And
Michelle Pfeiffer is delectable in the straightforward role of the
wicked witch. But the guys don’t compare: Charlie Cox is so earnest
during his character’s abrupt transition between dork and hunk I didn’t
even crack a smile; the squabbling princes have shallow personalities
and even less wit; and cross-dressing pirates are always boring. Even
when they’re played by Robert De Niro. ANNIE WAGNER
Ghosts of Cité Soleil
dir. Asger Leth
In 2004, powerful pro-Aristide gangsters (known locally as
chimères, or roughly, “ghosts”) ruled over Haiti’s
largest slum with menacing guns and fistfuls of cash. Focusing on two
loosely allied brothers, one who says he’d like to be a legit
politician and one who calls himself 2pac, Ghosts of Cité
Soleil starts out as a fast-paced but nonspecific portrait of the
neighborhood, its people, and its leaders. A faint storyline eventually
materializes through the unlikely figure of Lele, a French aid worker
who—how to put this politely?—seems completely intoxicated
by the brothers’ power.
Thanks to swanky camera work that lavishes as much time on the
brothers’ glistening pecs as it does on the bewildering political
context, it’s not difficult to see where Lele is coming from. But her
transition from international do-gooder to fawning girl toy is still
startling. It tweaks so many sensitive areas: an American prude’s
disbelief at the sight of a virtuous woman being sexual, horror of
miscegenation—not to mention the somewhat less controversial
notion that you shouldn’t be banging virtual slumlords when you’re
trying to provide medical care to their tenants.
When it screened at SIFF this year, Ghosts of Cité
Soleil was intensely polarizing, but opinions didn’t seem to split
along the expected lines. Conservatives may despise the way the film
reproduces the glamour of violence, but liberal viewers can get equally
worked up at the notion that they’re slumming or objectifying black
bodies. But people on either side of the spectrum were transfixed at
the film’s searing examination of power backed by force. This daring,
even reckless doc presents a flash of glamour too terrible and too
politicized to burn very long. ANNIE WAGNER
Daddy Day Camp
dir. Fred Savage
This review, just like the movie it’s reviewing, is going to be bad.
Not poorly written (although I make no promises), but merciless,
unforgiving, and perhaps overbearingly negative. Why? Because there is
absolutely no reason why this vapid, Meatballs-wannabe,
ridiculously childish movie needed to be made and I will never forgive
Annie Wagner for making me go see it.
Daddy Day Camp isn’t the least bit entertaining, and if it
weren’t my job to sit through it in order to save you from making the
same mistake, I would’ve walked out two minutes in.
The acting is poor, even from star Cuba Gooding Jr., who looks tired
the whole time and is clearly so over this Daddy Day (fill in
the blank) bullshit—it’s no wonder Eddie Murphy didn’t sign on to
do the sequel. But it’s not like the actors had decent material to work
with in the first place. Most of the jokes are made at the expense of
the fat dude and the others involve puking, farting, and/or poop.
Clever! Bodily functions are hilarious!
The characters are insultingly shallow. There’s a redneck kid with a
mullet who asks to be called “Mullet”; there’s the scrawny geek who’s
allergic to everything and pukes all the time; there’s the “hot” girl
who’s constantly lusted after by the D&D-playing shy nerd; there’s
the hot girl’s sidekick who’s not as traditionally attractive, but a
lot more sassy; there’s the fat redhead who’s one part bully/one part
bed wetter; and then there are the two kids who belong to the movie’s
stars, Cuba Gooding Jr. and a low-rent John Goodman, and who are
remarkably normal. Motherfuckers.
Take your kids to see Ratatouille. Fuck, take ’em to see
Underdog! Just please, please, please do not take them to
Daddy Day Camp. MEGAN SELING
Live-In Maid
dir. Jorge Gaggero
Two women living together, with one doing the other’s dirty work, is
a powder keg of a setup. But in first-time filmmaker Jorge Gaggero’s
Live-in Maid, Beba (Norma Aleandro, a screen veteran) and Dora
(Norma Argentina, who actually cleaned houses for 20 years) stay
unsettlingly quiet as their lives play out against the backdrop of
Argentina’s 2001 financial crisis.
Beba is a rich woman who has lost her money. She’s peddling facial
creams door-to-door and putting off selling her gold earrings. She’s
also trying to hang on to Dora, her live-in maid of 35 years, who takes
the train at the end of every week back from Beba’s refined Buenos
Aires apartment to her own dirt-floored shantytown shack.
Gaggero keeps the lid tight on the epic tension that brews between
these women, which is why the film is gripping, even though not much
actually happens. Aleandro and Argentina do most of the (incredible)
acting without speaking. Meanwhile, everything around them seems vulgar
and loud, from Beba’s rich-lady friends to the crowds of women
screaming for anti-aging face creams at desperate cosmetics rallies to
the obliquely referenced threat of the banking crash.
The reversal of power at the movie’s end comes a little too
easily—are we to believe, after all this buildup, that we simply
imagined the darker parts of this epic tension? But Gaggero almost
earns a happy ending by avoiding melodrama throughout. It’s a character
study he has made, not a social commentary. And together these
characters make an unusually sensitive and fascinating portrait of what
money and work mean to women of a certain age. JEN GRAVES
Molière
dir. Laurent Tirard
This movie is designed for those who are educated, urban, and middle
class. People in the country won’t watch it; the urban poor will stay
the hell away from it. Why? It’s a film about a writer—and a
French one at that. Also it has subtitles. As everyone in marketing
knows, the urban poor and country folk are tired of reading all of the
time. So, Molière is a movie for a person who is happy
to read subtitles and to see a story about a writer—and such a
person is usually educated, urban, and in the middle class. But what
this ideal person is really getting from this movie is nothing more
than an escape from the present into a picturesque past of horse-drawn
carriages, dirt roads, thick silver coins, fat candle sticks, glamorous
salons, dedicated servants, and large fireplaces in large palaces. What
else but an escape could you expect from a movie that speculates about
what might have happened in a brief and historically blank period of
time in Molière’s life? Because it’s a pure fantasy, the film
offers the viewer no education; because it’s not a work of art, it
offers the viewer’s soul no enrichment. Molière might
be about an artist, but it is certainly not made by one (the director
Laurent Tirard). CHARLES MUDEDE
Rocket Science
dir. Jeffrey Blitz
Where have you seen this film before? You saw it in
Thumbsucker, in American Beauty, in
Election, in Welcome to the Dollhouse, in
Napoleon Dynamite, in Me and You and Everyone We
Know, in Little Miss Sunshine, in Happiness, in
The Puffy Chair. Wherever you look on the landscape of
American indie filmmaking you will spot something that looks just like
or close to Rocket Science. And what is it that makes these
films so similar? Always, their locus is the suburbs; always, they
involve quirky teens. And usually the first institution that
psychologically traumatizes quirky American teens is the family (the
family is either totally nuts or is falling apart or just doesn’t
understand the quirky teen). The second institution that traumatizes
quirky American teens is high school (the high school is soulless or
mindless or rigid). Some films emphasize the first traumatic
experience—the family (American Beauty, Little Miss
Sunshine); others emphasize the second traumatic
experience—the high school (Election, Napoleon
Dynamite). Rocket Science has a bit of both. There is
some Election in it (the high-school devastation) and there is
some Little Miss Sunshine in it (the parents of the teen and
his crush are totally nuts). There is, however, more Election than Little Miss Sunshine in Rocket Science. In fact,
the girl, the crush that causes the devastation, Ginny (Anna Kendrick),
looks and acts a lot like Tracy (Reese Witherspoon) in
Election. Both take the meaning of “blond ambition” to its
terminal point. Both step on a series of men in the climb to their
goals. In the case of Rocket Science, one of the male steps is
Hal (Reece Thompson), a teen whose posture is bad, who stutters, who
falls in love just as his family falls apart. After his father leaves
the house, his mother starts dating a Korean-American judge. At night,
Hal hears the moans of their interracial beast with two backs. How will
he survive this fucking trauma at home? How will he survive the
heartless blond, Ginny, at high school? There’s also a whiff of yellow
peril in the suburban air—Hal’s crush, like his mother, is also
fucking an Asian. The director of this wholly unoriginal indie flick,
Jeffery Blitz, also made Spellbound. CHARLES MUDEDE
Rush Hour 3
dir. Brett Ratner
So much of Rush Hour 3 is lazy, lunky, and spectacularly
stupid that it has a certain amount of charm. In fact, in lesser hands
(lesser meaning backed by less Hollywood money and clout) its blatant
hackery would inspire a certain amount of detached cheerleading. But as
it stands—the third entry in an obscenely lucrative franchise
that never should’ve gotten past bungle one—it’s worthy of
nothing but mockery.
It also makes you truly despise Chris Tucker, since whatever talent
he once had has long since dissipated, like a bong hit, into the ether.
Watching his third spin as (worst ever) LAPD detective James Carter is
like watching a YouTube compilation of his greatest hits—only
with higher production values and a merciless 90-minute running time.
That lanky, mouthy kid who was so genius in Friday (and smart
enough to bail out on its sequels) has been replaced by an army of
tired gimmicks; from the Michael Jackson gyrations to the boastful
lechery, there is nothing new, inspired, or unexpected in his
performance.
Same goes for director Brett Ratner, who has filmed so much of the
flick in bland medium close-ups that whatever wonders Jackie Chan was
able to choreograph this time around are rendered choppy and dull. The
sight of Chan scrambling about the Eiffel Tower should have been a
showstopper; as it is, it’s all blue-screen effects and Tucker’s
intolerable shrieking—which, as it turns out, speaks to Ratner’s
comedic sensibility. How else can you explain the astonishingly awful
scene in which Tucker forces a lowly Parisian cab driver to sing our
national anthem at gunpoint? Even the previously rabid audience fell
into an appalled silence. If only that silence had reached the screen.
BRADLEY STEINBACHER
