VIDEODRONE
Letters from Iwo Jima
Usually we get real choked when we lose Canadian talent to Hollywood, but not in Paul Haggis’ case. He isn’t even talented. His sense of social melo-drama does nothing for us ( Crash can suck it) and it was the obvious emotional punctuation in Flags of Our Father that ruined that film (Haggis wrote the screenplay). Contributing only to the story this time, Haggis’ hand of doom is much less visible in Clint’s Japanese language companion piece about the futile battle for a hunk of rock in the South Pacific at the end of the war. Instead of having stereotypes meeting stereotypes we have simple people struggling with complicated cultural expectations in a fight to the death that was destined to go nowhere. All the standard criticisms of war still exist and the point is easily made that people are people no matter which side they fight on. Unless, of course, they are Nazis… Or Paul Haggis.
Apocalypto
The weird thing about Apocalypto is deciding whether or not you want to separate the film from the man who made the film. That’s not very hard in regular movies. Like when we saw Spider-Man 3, no one kept going “Sam Raimi must be such a holocaust denier!” But in this film, where there are no stars (awesome) or English words (crawesome), and the director got arrested for trying to kill a five year old named Yehoshua a few days before it came out, separating the proverbial yolk from the proverbial egg is a real challenge. Because there are some pretty good parts of this movie. Particularly the last, well, hour or so, when there is a foot chase through the jungle which is totally better than any car chase that’s been out lately. That part is super fun, but then there will be some really ridiculously gory part where part of some guy’s head gets shaved off and blood sprays out of his brain in a thick mist, and you just know that’s what Mel wishes would happen to the Jews so he could drink their blood as if it were gushing from a Jew-blood water-fountain.
The Good German
You’ve got to hand it to Soderbergh. It must have been a tough sell getting Warner Brothers to green light a movie that had absolutely no chance whatsoever of winning an Oscar or even being moderately successful at the box office. Like he walked in and said “I know how successful The Matrix was but I really want to make a black and white movie just like you guys made in the 40’s. Like Casablanca but it won’t be successful. It will, however, be classy. Clooneys on board. Wadda ya say? I’ll do another Ocean’s!”
Venus
We didn’t even know that Peter O’Toole was still alive, that he was nominated for this movie, or that this movie even existed until the night of the Oscars. Apparently it’s just a British version of Lost in Translation with O’Toole as an older, pervier Murray. That sealed the “no watch” deal for us. Fuck perverts. But don’t brag about it.