IMDB link
viewed 1/2/10 at Ritz Bourse
Showing posts with label animals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label animals. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Friday, June 19, 2009
Food Inc. (***3/4)
In the last 50 years, the way Americans eat has been quietly transformed, mostly for the worse, and this riveting documentary is part of a small-but-growing effort to change things. At this point, it’s common knowledge that what is often called the Western diet is not ideal from a health standpoint. Super Size Me (2004) became one of the highest-grossing documentaries by demonstrating the effects of too much fast food. Somewhat less well-known is how the family farm of the popular imagination has almost entirely given way to a system built on the model of big business. Director Robert Kenner shows how and why this has occurred, and the unique effects of this model as applied to food.
Kenner covers ground explored in the nonfiction of Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma), among others. These two are among the experts who appear (Schlosser is a co-producer), and for people familiar with their work, much here will be familiar, but the visuals and the testimonials from individuals are still valuable. For those new to the subject, the information here is likely to surprise and shock. Along with contributing to an epidemic of obesity and poor nutrition, the current system results in unnecessary animal abuse, food-borne illnesses, and industrial pollution. The film looks at all of these aspects with the organizing principle being the increasing control of production by a few large companies, often subsized by taxpayers.
Kenner condenses a lot of information into the space of a single feature, with a good mix of solid facts and individual testimonials. Anyone who eats should see this.
IMDB link
viewed (Philadelphia Film Festival) and reviewed 6/19/09
Kenner covers ground explored in the nonfiction of Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma), among others. These two are among the experts who appear (Schlosser is a co-producer), and for people familiar with their work, much here will be familiar, but the visuals and the testimonials from individuals are still valuable. For those new to the subject, the information here is likely to surprise and shock. Along with contributing to an epidemic of obesity and poor nutrition, the current system results in unnecessary animal abuse, food-borne illnesses, and industrial pollution. The film looks at all of these aspects with the organizing principle being the increasing control of production by a few large companies, often subsized by taxpayers.
Kenner condenses a lot of information into the space of a single feature, with a good mix of solid facts and individual testimonials. Anyone who eats should see this.
IMDB link
viewed (Philadelphia Film Festival) and reviewed 6/19/09
Friday, August 3, 2007
Arctic Tale (***1/2)
This is an interesting sort of hybrid movie, though it could be mistaken for a March of the Penguins-style documentary. Directors Adam Ravetch and Sarah Robertson set out to film the Arctic, but not to make a feature film. Over the course of 15 years, their footage began to suggest a storyline about a walrus and a polar bear, and they eventually got the backing of National Geographic. I had to watch the disclaimer at the end to be sure it wasn’t actually a documentary, but, according to Robertson, it wouldn’t have been feasible to follow the same individual animals year after year. However, that is what we appear to see, a story of what happens to one polar bear cub named Nanu and one walrus calf named Seela.
A friendly sounding Queen Latifah tells the tale. The narration written for her occasionally gets cute, as when it refers to a polar bear “boot camp” that Nanu’s mother puts her through, but for the most part is helpfully explanatory and easy to follow. Probably I could have done without Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family” playing over one sequence of mother and daughter, but that’s as close as the movie gets to Disney fare. We don’t hear voices come out of the animals’ mouths, and we see the realities of predation in a way that animated movies about animals tend to dance around. In fact, a scene where a couple of walruses fight for their lives is among the most awesome footage here.
And make no mistake. The footage is frequently stunning. The story makes it family friendly, but anyone with even a mild interest in the subject will be enthralled. The subtext of the film is the effect of climate change on the animals of the arctic. Although it wasn’t their original intent to make a movie about global warming, the filmmakers’ observations turned it into one. For walruses and polar bears alike, the less-intense winters mean longer trips across open seas with no solid ice on which to alight. (Incidentally, Al Gore’s daughter Kristen is one of the three credited writers.) You don’t need to watch Arctic Tale as an environmentalist. The natural beauty and its inherent drama are enough reason.
IMDB link
reviewed 8/5/07
A friendly sounding Queen Latifah tells the tale. The narration written for her occasionally gets cute, as when it refers to a polar bear “boot camp” that Nanu’s mother puts her through, but for the most part is helpfully explanatory and easy to follow. Probably I could have done without Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family” playing over one sequence of mother and daughter, but that’s as close as the movie gets to Disney fare. We don’t hear voices come out of the animals’ mouths, and we see the realities of predation in a way that animated movies about animals tend to dance around. In fact, a scene where a couple of walruses fight for their lives is among the most awesome footage here.
And make no mistake. The footage is frequently stunning. The story makes it family friendly, but anyone with even a mild interest in the subject will be enthralled. The subtext of the film is the effect of climate change on the animals of the arctic. Although it wasn’t their original intent to make a movie about global warming, the filmmakers’ observations turned it into one. For walruses and polar bears alike, the less-intense winters mean longer trips across open seas with no solid ice on which to alight. (Incidentally, Al Gore’s daughter Kristen is one of the three credited writers.) You don’t need to watch Arctic Tale as an environmentalist. The natural beauty and its inherent drama are enough reason.
IMDB link
reviewed 8/5/07
Friday, June 29, 2007
Ratatouille (***1/4)
The latest animated effort from Pixar Animation Studios and Incredibles writer-director Brad Bird is a tasty treat about a Paris gourmet restaurant that gets a boost when the garbage boy morphs into its innovative new chef. Unbeknownst to its clientele, the mastermind behind the scrumptious new dishes is a rat called Rémy (Patton Oswalt).
Rémy must contend on the one hand with his rodent brethren who are content to scarf up the filthy scraps left behind by the humans, and on the other by the humans whom he seeks to emulate, but who regard him as vermin. Rémy takes as his inspiration the cookbook by the late great chef Gusteau (Brad Garrett) and, through a happy accident, winds up in the former kitchen of the great man himself. The inspired sequence by which the rat becomes the cook is too clever to describe. The only thing that might have improved it is UB40’s reggae classic “Rat in Mi Kitchen.” The bits in which Gusteau leaps off the page to have imaginary conversations with Rémy are also delicious.
Gusteau’s motto is “anyone can cook,” while Rémy reminds us that “not everyone should.” In this way, the movie combines the French egalitarian ideal with the American meritocratic one. Perhaps this explains why the rats and the garbage boy speak with American accents while the other humans have French ones. In any case, Bird suffuses the movie with a love of fine food that will appeal to the adult Food Channel crowd as well as kids, who could actually learn a little about how a restaurant works. Among the supporting characters, feisty cook Colette (Janeane Garofalo) and fulminating food critic Ego (Peter O’Toole) stand out, but almost all of the ingredients blend well here.
IMDB link
reviewed 7/8/07
Rémy must contend on the one hand with his rodent brethren who are content to scarf up the filthy scraps left behind by the humans, and on the other by the humans whom he seeks to emulate, but who regard him as vermin. Rémy takes as his inspiration the cookbook by the late great chef Gusteau (Brad Garrett) and, through a happy accident, winds up in the former kitchen of the great man himself. The inspired sequence by which the rat becomes the cook is too clever to describe. The only thing that might have improved it is UB40’s reggae classic “Rat in Mi Kitchen.” The bits in which Gusteau leaps off the page to have imaginary conversations with Rémy are also delicious.
Gusteau’s motto is “anyone can cook,” while Rémy reminds us that “not everyone should.” In this way, the movie combines the French egalitarian ideal with the American meritocratic one. Perhaps this explains why the rats and the garbage boy speak with American accents while the other humans have French ones. In any case, Bird suffuses the movie with a love of fine food that will appeal to the adult Food Channel crowd as well as kids, who could actually learn a little about how a restaurant works. Among the supporting characters, feisty cook Colette (Janeane Garofalo) and fulminating food critic Ego (Peter O’Toole) stand out, but almost all of the ingredients blend well here.
IMDB link
reviewed 7/8/07
Friday, June 22, 2007
Evan Almighty (**)
About twenty years ago, there was a comedy called Ishtar that was famous for costing about $55 million and making much less. Nowadays, people have gotten use to enormous sums being spent making movies, and so word that this is supposedly the costliest comedy ever made, once something a studio might have tried to hush, becomes something like a selling point. But it remains true that a hundred million dollars worth of effects won’t save a $29.95 script. That’s not literally what we have here, of course. Actually, a bundle was spent on a script, and that script was junked and rewritten by Steve Oedekerk, who turned it into a sequel to a 2003 hit he’d helped to write. It may be because the original script wasn’t supposed to be a sequel that this doesn’t feel much like Bruce Almighty, the Jim Carrey comedy.
Notwithstanding the title, Evan Baxter (Steve Carrell) doesn’t get to play God as Bruce did. God, again played with a wry approachability by Morgan Freeman, forces Evan to play Noah. Whereas Bruce was somewhat driven by the on-edge personality of its star, Evan is a blander creation, a career-driven husband and father with too little time. In other words, he’s the same character as the fathers in three quarters of the Hollywood “family” movies in the last ten years, not unlike the Cheaper by the Dozen remake, whose screenwriters helped out Oedekerk this time around. The movie also reminded me in a way of Signs, where God apparently lets aliens kill millions of people just so Mel Gibson can regain his faith. Here, the suggestion is that a devastating flood is just the thing to give Evan the opportunity to become closer to his wife (Lauren Graham) and three sons. God hates seeing the breakup of the wealthy suburban family.
Right off the bat, things look dodgy as Evan, the anchorman seen briefly in Bruce Almighty, bids viewers and Buffalo farewell to begin his new job as a US congressman. Let me get this straight. He’s been allowed to do the news during and after his campaign? Okay, it’s a point that can be overlooked in a comedy, but the movie is full of them. Later, Evan wakes up one morning with a scraggly beard that instantly grows back when he shaves; his unusual appearance is one thing that compels him to admit to his wife that he’s spoken to God, but she’s skeptical. Now, if you were Evan, what would you do to prove there’s been some divine madness? Shave in front of her, right? But Evan doesn’t do this.
Evan even gets its theology wrong. Running away from his record like a presidential candidate, the Freeman version of the Deity tells Evan that, when He decided to “destroy all flesh,” as the trusty King James puts it, with the first great flood, He wasn’t angry. Whereas Bruce Almighty made a valiant stab at explaining why there was unhappiness on earth, Evan just raises new questions, like, why does God always choose to look like Morgan Freeman? Oedekerk and director Tom Shadyc seem to want to soften God’s rough edges for a family audience, for this is much the family movie compared to its sarcastic predecessor. Typically, this means there’s a lot of jokes centered around various animal expulsions. When not directed at Evan, these land on the closest thing to a Devil character, a congressman (John Goodman) who wants Evan to cosponsor a bill to open up federal lands for development. We don’t get to find out if God (or Evan) is a Republican or a Democrat, but he definitely doesn’t dig suburban sprawl.
Subtract the poop jokes and the hairiness jokes and the jokes about all the animals mysteriously following Evan around and there’s not much to recommend this as a comedy. Wanda Sykes gets the most laughs as Evan’s congressional aide. The lapses in logic ruin it as a fantasy movie, too. I’m not sure if all million-plus animal species are represented on Evan’s ark, but it doesn’t matter, as their major purpose would seem to be those poop jokes. In terms of the story, their presence turns out to be almost entirely superfluous.
As for all the money, it isn’t entirely wasted. The producers really built a biblical-scale ark, and it was admittedly a miraculous thing to watch it flow through the flooded mall in downtown Washington, DC. Thus, a not-funny cookie-cutter comedy with a heavy-handed environmental message and six really cool minutes. Be sure to look for those six minutes on cable. On the whole, though, I’d rather watch Ishtar.
IMDB link
Notwithstanding the title, Evan Baxter (Steve Carrell) doesn’t get to play God as Bruce did. God, again played with a wry approachability by Morgan Freeman, forces Evan to play Noah. Whereas Bruce was somewhat driven by the on-edge personality of its star, Evan is a blander creation, a career-driven husband and father with too little time. In other words, he’s the same character as the fathers in three quarters of the Hollywood “family” movies in the last ten years, not unlike the Cheaper by the Dozen remake, whose screenwriters helped out Oedekerk this time around. The movie also reminded me in a way of Signs, where God apparently lets aliens kill millions of people just so Mel Gibson can regain his faith. Here, the suggestion is that a devastating flood is just the thing to give Evan the opportunity to become closer to his wife (Lauren Graham) and three sons. God hates seeing the breakup of the wealthy suburban family.
Right off the bat, things look dodgy as Evan, the anchorman seen briefly in Bruce Almighty, bids viewers and Buffalo farewell to begin his new job as a US congressman. Let me get this straight. He’s been allowed to do the news during and after his campaign? Okay, it’s a point that can be overlooked in a comedy, but the movie is full of them. Later, Evan wakes up one morning with a scraggly beard that instantly grows back when he shaves; his unusual appearance is one thing that compels him to admit to his wife that he’s spoken to God, but she’s skeptical. Now, if you were Evan, what would you do to prove there’s been some divine madness? Shave in front of her, right? But Evan doesn’t do this.
Evan even gets its theology wrong. Running away from his record like a presidential candidate, the Freeman version of the Deity tells Evan that, when He decided to “destroy all flesh,” as the trusty King James puts it, with the first great flood, He wasn’t angry. Whereas Bruce Almighty made a valiant stab at explaining why there was unhappiness on earth, Evan just raises new questions, like, why does God always choose to look like Morgan Freeman? Oedekerk and director Tom Shadyc seem to want to soften God’s rough edges for a family audience, for this is much the family movie compared to its sarcastic predecessor. Typically, this means there’s a lot of jokes centered around various animal expulsions. When not directed at Evan, these land on the closest thing to a Devil character, a congressman (John Goodman) who wants Evan to cosponsor a bill to open up federal lands for development. We don’t get to find out if God (or Evan) is a Republican or a Democrat, but he definitely doesn’t dig suburban sprawl.
Subtract the poop jokes and the hairiness jokes and the jokes about all the animals mysteriously following Evan around and there’s not much to recommend this as a comedy. Wanda Sykes gets the most laughs as Evan’s congressional aide. The lapses in logic ruin it as a fantasy movie, too. I’m not sure if all million-plus animal species are represented on Evan’s ark, but it doesn’t matter, as their major purpose would seem to be those poop jokes. In terms of the story, their presence turns out to be almost entirely superfluous.
As for all the money, it isn’t entirely wasted. The producers really built a biblical-scale ark, and it was admittedly a miraculous thing to watch it flow through the flooded mall in downtown Washington, DC. Thus, a not-funny cookie-cutter comedy with a heavy-handed environmental message and six really cool minutes. Be sure to look for those six minutes on cable. On the whole, though, I’d rather watch Ishtar.
IMDB link
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