Wholphin No. 13

Edited by Brent Hoff

I've really fallen behind in watching these Wholphin's lately (I blame it on getting a PVR for my TV, and discovering some high quality late-night reruns and some wonderfully low quality bad reality shows).

Anyway, this thirteenth edition of Wholphin has the second dramatic turn of young actor Alejandro Polanco, in 'Mosquito'.  Polanco caught my eye in the wonderful movie Chop Shop, and it's very nice to see him again.  In Mosquito he plays a teen in New York in the 70s, who is stuck somewhere between playing with the little kids and avoiding the older ones.  He's awkward and fanciful, and really doesn't fit in, but has an inner strength.  Jeremy Engle's short is the best thing on this disc.

'Successful Alcoholics' is a very funny short film directed by Jordon Vogt-Roberts, and co-written by co-star TJ Miller.  As the title suggests, this is a comedy about two high functioning alcoholics, who drink to escape the tedium of their lives together.  It's fantastic.

The French and Hungarian co-production 'The History of Aviation' is spell-binding.  Director Balint Kenyeres sets up these long set-pieces in this period piece about a group of upper class people enjoying a picnic on some cliffs, until a little girl goes missing.  This looks like it was a very expensive short.

'Crossbow' is an Australian short by David Michod about a teenager who has horrid parents, and who one day decides to carry a crossbow outside when police are called to break up the parents' party, with predictable results.  The narration in this film is great.

'N Me for Myself', a Greek short, is very interesting.  It's about the challenges faced by a man with only one arm.  'Arsy-Versy' is an odd documentary about a Slovakian man who studies bats for a hobby, and is a true eccentric.

Dash Shaw provides an animated series of shorts called 'The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century AD', a surrealistic look at the future, and the future of art modeling.  The biggest laugh on this disc comes from 'Delmar Builds a Machine', but I can't discuss why without spoiling it.

In all, another very good outing from the fine people at Wholphin.

Wholphin No. 11

Edited by Brent Hoff

I kind of fell off on my plan to work my way through every issue of Wholphin, the DVD magazine put together by the fine people at McSweeney's (I blame it on my new obsession with Storage Wars and other so bad it's addictive scripted reality shows on A&E).

Anyway, this issue has one of the best short films I've ever seen on a Wholphin - Ramin Bahrani's 'Plastic Bag'.  Bahrani is the director of the incredible independent film Chop Shop, and he turns the same passionate and meditative eye that he used in that movie to a plastic bag (voiced by Werner Herzog, which is both perfect and funny to me).  The bag is trying to return to the woman that first brought it home from the store - the love of his life.  It ends up in a landfill for a very long amount of time, after which there are no more people around anywhere.  The bag eventually makes its way to the Pacific Gyre, the vortex of plastic larger than the state of Texas that is currently having a catastrophic effect on the ocean's ecosystem.  This is a very intelligent and caring short, and I was very impressed by its power.

Also of note here were two shorts focused on the baseball player Dock Ellis.  One is an animated piece, which shows one of his LSD trips while playing professionally.  The other is an interview with him, wherein he talks about some of the things that players used to get away with.  The two pieces work very well together.

'The Six Dollar Fifty Man', directed by Mark Albiston and Louis Sutherland is an interesting look at bullying in New Zealand, and features an incredibly disturbed looking child.  He creeped me out.  I was also creeped out by the women attending 'Bitch Academy' in Russia, where they are learning to get men.  Asshole men.

'Wagah' is an interesting documentary about the only border checkpoint between India and Pakistan, and the daily flag-lowering ceremony that attracts thousands of spectators.  There is a lot of ceremonial foot-stomping.

'Out of Our Minds' is a very disturbing and beautiful film.  It's directed by Tony Stone, from a concept that came from Melissa Auf Der Mer.  It connects three stories of death in the forest - one is a car wreck, another is about a Viking who is murdered, and the third has loggers cutting down trees which splatter blood everywhere.  This is a silent film, with pulsing music by Auf der Mer.  It's pretty fascinating, and gorgeous.

This DVD also shows us naked scientists running around Antarctica, shouting young lovers, and an actor hanging out with a bear.  Where other than Wholphin would you ever find such diversity?

Wholphin No. 10

Edited by Brent Hoff

This issue of Wholphinhas a number of excellent short films, with a bit more of a Hollywood presence than I'm used to.

First though, it opens with a condensation of the best documentary I've seen in ages, Audience Of One.  In it, the filmmaker travels with a church group who are working to produce a massive-budget Biblical science fiction epic that tells the story of Joseph, despite the fact that no one in their group has experience making movies, and they don't have the money they need.  Why are they doing this?  God told their pastor to.  Upon watching this shorter version, I immediately ordered the full-length film, and it is currently making the rounds of all of my friends.  It's brilliant.

Among the short films on this disc, three stand out.  'I Love Sarah Jane' is a zombie short featuring some Australian teenagers who have lost their families.  What makes this work so well is the performances of the two leads - Brad Ashby and Mia Wasikowska (of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland fame).  Jimbo, the young boy, is so in love with Sarah Jane that the entire zombie thing doesn't even bother him.  It's a very good film.

'Teleglobal Dreamin'' is an interesting short about a man who has gone to the Philippines to train call centre employees.  One of the women who work at the place take him out on the town, and starts to spread the rumor that he is actually the American actor Brandon Fraser.  This leads to scenes of him getting mobbed for autographs, and even abducted.  It's a funny film, and very well acted.

The third of the Hollywood-connected films is Natalie Portman's authorial and screenwriting debut, 'Eve'.  This is an excellent study of aging, as a young woman spends the night at her grandmother's, and gets taken along on her date with a recently available widower.  It's funny, touching, and in the way it dances around the subject of the girl's mother, shows that there is much more going on under the surface than the viewer is aware of.

Also of note on this disc is Jonathan Demme's biography 'Joe and Linda Flooded Out of Holy Cross.'  Joe and Linda are older residents of New Orleans, and they have both reacted to the events of Hurricane Katrina very differently.  Linda just wants to clean up their house (clearly the two are hoarders to some degree), while Joe is not able to move on from the topic of the city, what happened during the storm, and how things are now (at the time of filming).  He's a broken, angry man, and watching him sound off on the topic for twenty minutes is heart-breaking.

Also included here is 'He Was Once', a film that equally disturbed and annoyed me.  If you hated the old Davey and Goliath Christian propaganda cartoons (and who doesn't), you may be interested in this, but I found it unwatchable.

The DVD menu films include 'Hunt and Gather', in which a man rides around on a bicycle modified to carry a ladder, which he uses to climb up to power wires festooned with tied sneakers.  He then shoots down the sneakers, and replaces them with the ones he is wearing.  It's funny the first couple of times, but it gets old.

Audience of One

Directed by Michael Jacobs

I think it would be wise to preface this review with the statement that I've never understood religion.  Having grown up without having one thrust at me, I never began to believe, and what's more, I've never been able to fully understand the people who do.  Sure, I like to tell myself that I respect all religions as beautiful things, but when you look at how many of the world's problems have been caused or exacerbated by blind faith, it's a lot easier to work under the assumption that religious people are kind of crazy.

Recently, while watching the tenth issue of Wholphin, I came across a thirty minute condensation (like a Readers' Digest version) of Michael Jacobs's documentary Audience Of One.  It blew me away, and I immediately ordered the full-length film.

This documentary follows Richard Gazowsky, a Pentecostal pastor who tends to a ministry in San Francisco.  Gazowsky received a message from God directing him to revive the film industry by making the greatest movie ever - a Biblical epic called Gravity: The Shadow of Joseph.  The film is most frequently described as a cross between 'Star Wars and The Ten Commandments', and was to have a budget in excess of $200 million dollars.  Gazowsky and his flock sink their life savings into this film, and begin to make elaborate costumes, sets, and props before flying to Italy for five days of filming.

Not unexpectedly, considering that most of the actors and crew who were not church members were found on Craigslist, things don't go well. Soon, the crew is back in California, chasing investors, ducking creditors, and spending a lot of time praying.  Much of this movie is hilarious, but is at the same time pretty sad.  Gazowsky has a cult-leader's influence over the people in the church, including his two (gorgeous) daughters and son.

Watching this, it's hard to believe that Gazowsky is not having his fun at everyone's expense, but when you see the emotion on his face during prayers where people speak in tongues and flop around on the floor, you come to realize that he really believes this stuff.  In that way, this film can be seen as a testament to the power of faith, but it's also a lot of fun watching it as a chronicle of some deeply weird people doing some crazy stuff, and that makes it more entertaining than any reality TV.

Wholphin No. 8

Edited by Brent Hoff

It's hard to know what to expect out of one of these.  The eighth edition of Wholphin starts out strong, but I kind of thought that this one had a few more skipable pieces compared to earlier entries in the series.

The first film, Destin Daniel Cretton's 'Short Term 12' is an incredible study of characters in a youth detention centre.  Denim, the man in charge, is a pretty conflicted guy.  It's clear that he loves everyone in the facility, from the angry and damaged teenagers in his care to his staff, particularly Natalia, who is carrying his baby.  The problem is that he's not so good at expressing himself with her.  What comes naturally with the kids is impossible for him where Natalia is concerned.  It's rare to find child actors as skilled as the ones that play explosive, goth-y Jaden, and quiet brooding Mark.  Great stuff here.

'Kids + Money' is a documentary I've seen before, but it remains very powerful in its depiction of kids with insane opinions of what they are owed by the world, who casually drop hundreds of dollars for items of clothing and expect weekly manicures.  I like how the filmmaker, Lauren Greenfield, doesn't let her own opinion enter into the film; the kids show how vacuous they are just by speaking.

'Love You More' plays like a prequel to the British TV show Skins.  It's about two teenagers, a boy and a girl, who both like the Buzzcocks.  When a new single comes out, they knick it from the local record shop, and go back to the girl's place, where they make love while listening to it.  This is an excellent study in fumbling teenage desire set against working class London.

'Hidden' is a very powerful animated documentary.  That sounds odd, but it works here.  The subject is Giancarlo, a twelve year old boy who is living in hiding in Sweden, so he won't be deported.  He talks about growing up alone in Peru, where he worked as a shoeshine boy and ran from the police.  Now that he is in a 'safe' country, he still has to watch his steps around the authorities, and can't ever make friends at school in case they figure out what's going on.  The filmmakers interviewed the boy, and then animated his account, helping to protect his anonymity, and giving his story true visual power.

Another animated piece is 'From Burger It Came', a Terry Gilliam-esque story about the AIDS hysteria of the animator's childhood.  'Great Man and Cinema' is an attempt by an American to make a North Korean propaganda film, for reasons I don't really understand.  It fell flat.

From here, things get pretty bad.  'My Friends Told Me About You' is an experimental film that manages to be exceptionally boring while working very hard to be cool and profound.

Equally dull is the triptych of films that make up the DVD menus.  Dave Eggers hired three different actors to trash his brother's bedroom.  James Franco's sequence is ridiculous, both in his behaviour, and in the tediousness of it's length.  Marginally better are Creed Bratton and Maria Bamford's versions of the same general thing; luckily they are shorter.  I will say that the interview with Bamford about her character and her own rage is hilarious.

Wholphin No. 7

Edited by Brent Hoff

I find I do not tire of watching Wholphins.  Each one is so diverse, with the only discernible criteria for entry being excellence.

This seventh volume of the series, which collects short films, documentaries, and pieces of animation, contains some pretty impressive stuff, including what has probably been my favourite Wholphin selection to date.

'Glory At Sea' is an incredible twenty-five minute film by director Benjamin Zeitlin.  It's a surrealistic exploration of grief and longing in a post-Katrina-like landscape.  It opens with a young girl narrating.  She, alongside many of her neighbours, is floating at the bottom of the sea, feeling pity for people still living.  She realizes that one of the people around her is still alive just as he is thrown back to land.  Once there, he sets about building a boat which he can use to find the love of his life.  Other people in the community come to help him, bringing with them items they feel are imbued with luck.  Eventually, their ramshackle craft is ready, and they set out to find reunion with the people they've lost.  I found this film to be immensely moving and very beautiful.

Also on this disc, I enjoyed 'The Discipline of DE', a short directed by Gus Van Sant while still in school.  It's an adaptation of a William S. Burroughs piece, wherein the narrator proclaims the virtues of his philosophy of DE - Do Easy.  I imagine that this philosophy, which has you repeat actions until they are done correctly, could really catch on with people on the autism spectrum.

'Cold and Dry' is a cool short from Norway which examines the social ramifications of improved cryogenics technology, as people opt to preserve themselves in the picture of health, because of any number of personal issues they would rather avoid.

'Choque' is a cool Spanish film about what happens when pride, machismo, or a desire to save face prevent people from backing down from situations that they can not reasonably extricate themselves from, as a man learns when he gets into it at a basement amusement park with some younger guys.

In terms of documentaries, this Wholphin provides a few excellent ones.  'Refugee All-Stars' features the band from Sierra Leone of the same name.  There is plenty of their music to help punctuate their stories, as they begin to travel to other refugee camps to spread their example of refugees who find ways to maintain relevance in society.

'Nutkin's Last Stand' is an odd documentary about the fight against the gray squirrel in Northern England.  The grays are squeezing out the red squirrels that make that region their home, and people are mobilizing to put an end to this.  There are a few odd moments featuring your typical eccentric Brits - one woman has a squirrel tearing around the inside of her home, while another man, whose job is to dispatch the trapped grays, describes them as being 'only good for shooting'.  Later, the scene where a couple sample squirrel pancakes was perhaps a bit much for me.

'Notes From Dimension X' is a tantalizing short cartoon about a man who has been trapped on a desert planet for many years, waiting for a crystal to light up and transport him.  This is a perfect example of when a short is too short, as there was enough interesting material here, discussing memory and how it can fade, to satisfy in a much longer piece.

There's other stuff on here too - a description of an artist's love affair with an alien, an animated film about an autistic young man's return to a Six Flags park after three years, and the usual DVD menu shorts, but they didn't particularly stand out to me.

Wholphin No. 4

Edited by Brent Hoff

There are so many various pleasures contained in an issue of Wholphin.  One could paraphrase Forrest Gump, and compare it to a box of chocolates, but it's going to be a box that doesn't have one of those weird, unrecognizably flavoured, oddly shaped confections that you mean to avoid, but always end up eating first, and the taste lingers, tainted subsequent chocolates.

This fourth issue had some films I saw before, when I watched the 'Best Of' disc, but still found much to enjoy.

It won't matter how many times I'll see Taika Waititi's 'Two Cars, One Night'; I will be happy to watch this short film over and over, as it's brilliant.  Three Maori kids are hanging out outside a bar in New Zealand.  It's great.

There are two short films on this disc that manage to pack in all the emotion and content of an entire feature-length movie in their short spans.  'High Falls', directed by Andrew Zuckerman and starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard is a wonderful film about a couple that keeps secrets.  'La Chatte Andalouse', directed by Gérald Hustace-Mathieu, is about a young nun who fulfills the wishes of a dying artist by trying to finish her installation, which involves casting in plaster the penises of two men.  This film is incredible, and soars above the potential crassness of its plot.

'Schastlivy Vmeste (Happy Together)' is a Russian sitcom based on the American show Married... With Children.  The original show is kind of funny, more for the picture of life in Russia that we get.  The redubbed versions, done by comedians, were actually just annoying.

'Cheeta' is a cute short chronicling Jane Goodall's birthday message to the famous Hollywood chimp.  'site specific_Las Vegas 05' is a very cool series of aerial views of LV that make the town, the desert, and the Hoover Dam look like a model train set.  Very cool.

This issue of Wholphin addresses America's war on terror, and Western perceptions of the Middle East, in a number of different pieces.  'Tom's War on Terror' is a two minute short that shows how pervasive Islamophobia is in the US.  'Heavy Metal Drummer' is a very sweet, Napoleon Dynamite-esque short about a teenage boy in Morocco who wants to play drums like his metal heroes.

Then there are the documentaries.  'Strange Culture' is about an artist, Steve Kurtz, whose wife died suddenly one night of heart failure.  The authorities that responded to his call were alarmed by some lab equipment he had in his house for an art installation, and he was charged as a terrorist.  It seems that the largest piece of evidence against him was an invitation to a gallery opening that had Arabic script on it.

There is also a bonus disc that shows the third part of 'The Power of Nightmares', a BBC series that was serialized over the two previous Wholphins.  It's premise is that the American neoconservatives and Osama bin Laden basically socially constructed the War on Terror for their own purposes.  It doesn't go so far as to accuse them of collusion, merely that they both took advantage of events to create the problems that have crippled the world for the last ten years.  It's fascinating stuff, and I suppose only time will tell how much of it is baseless, and to what degree it is correct.

Good chocolates, all.

Wholphin No. 6

Edited by Brent Hoff

I've really come to enjoy watching a short film every day or so as I work my way through the Wholphin collection.  There's something for everyone on each of these, and I found that this issue was yet another excellent compilation, with a nice blend of documentary and fictional works.

Perhaps my favourite entry on this disc was the first film, a thirty-two minute excerpt from a longer documentary called 'Please Vote For Me'.  It follows three Chinese third-graders who are running in an election for class monitor.  While new to the concept of democracy, these kids waste no time in exploiting the others' weaknesses, muck-raking, and using intimidation tactics to secure votes, not to mention using wealth or influence to get what they want.  You would think they grew up watching Fox News.  Brilliant stuff.

There is also a good documentary about Bigfoot hunters and enthusiasts, which, despite it's short running length (sixteen minutes), provides a balanced and complete look at that world.

With this disc, it is the fictional films that are king however.  'Force 1 TD' is a funny and affecting film about a blind teenager in New York, who travels to New Jersey with his friends to buy the right colour Nikes for his seeing-eye miniature horse to wear to prom.  I loved this film, and found myself wishing it would be a full-length feature.

'New Boy' is based on a Roddy Doyle short story, and follows a young African boy to his first day at school in Ireland.  What I particularly like about this film is the evocative facial features of the young man who plays the newcomer - even though he barely speaks, we can understand how he feels as he is taunted and bullied by other kids, who ultimately become friends.

'On The Assassination of the President' is truly bizarre.  It purports to be an instructional video for authorities on who to arrest, and what footage to release to the media, were the President to be assassinated.  It gets a little too caught up in it's own enjoyment of technology, but still, it's a cool idea.

'Lucky' is a very exciting short that has a man regain consciousness to find himself tied up in the trunk of a car that is racing across the Australian Outback, it's steering wheel tied down and the gas pedal weighted with a brick.  It's just about the perfect thriller, with an unexpected ending, and the whole thing is only six minutes long.

We are treated to the dvd-extra style making of the movie 'Safari', which had a New York director collect a huge number of insects and lizards, and film them in a false environment set up in her studio.  While it was interesting, I think I would have preferred to see more of the original film.

'Silence is Golden' is a pretty funny British short about a boy who lives next door to a mentally ill man who likes to bang his head against the wall.  The film is mostly notable for the way in which the filmmakers reconstructed the visual aesthetic of mid-70s council estate decor.

'The Man in the Grey Suit' has some cool shark footage, but that's all it is.

'Darling Darling' annoyed me.  It's basically a movie about Michael Cera waiting for his date to get ready, while he is entertained by her horse-head wearing father, who plays the guitar and shoots arrows in the house.  There are two different versions, each of which feature different dialogue for the father, but in the final analysis, it's silly and irritating.

Still, that's the only thing I didn't enjoy out of ten, so this disc is a winner.

Wholphin No. 5

Edited by Brent Hoff

I've basically given up on movies, but Wholphin gives me so much hope for the genre of short films and documentaries.  Maybe I'm just losing all vestiges of an attention span for visual media, which makes sense since we're kind of heading that way as a culture, or maybe it's just that the selection process for these DVD magazines are just that good...

Anyway, issue five has some great stuff in it.  'Death to the Tinman' is a fantastic short about a man who keeps losing body parts, to get them replaced by a mad scientist friend.  This plays havoc on his relationship, especially when his soul- and mind-less body gets reattached as a meat puppet, and his girlfriend decides she prefers its company.

The highpoint of the disc is 'House Hunting' a short film based on a Michael Chabon short story, concerning a young couple who are shopping for their first home, and unstable real estate agent that is showing them around (played brilliantly by the guy who played McManus in Oz).

On the documentary side, there is 'One Day With the SLA', showing what life is like among the Sudan Liberation Army in Darfur.  'Drunk Bees' is about just what it sounds like, and 'Piece by Piece' profiles championship Rubik's Cube players.

'American Outrage' and 'Chonto' were on the Best Of disc I've already watched.  This disc also has two creepy videos - 'Madame Tutli-Putli', an animated short, and 'Echos Der Buchrucken', which is a very disturbing science fiction/surrealist short.

The DVD menu videos include a guy throwing a balsa-wood plane off a cliff, a film of a drum set getting shot to hell by two men with guns (I love the sound when you shoot a cymbal), and a video showing the ability of the man who invented the right-click mouse to hang on to the side of a tree using one arm and one leg.

Good stuff, all around.

The Best of Wholphin Vol. 1

Edited by Brent Hoff

Since I've been getting so much enjoyment out of McSweeney's lately, it only seemed right to give their DVD magazine a chance too.  I'd always wanted to try it, but I'd never gotten around to picking up an issue.  When McSweeney's had a recent fire sale (so far as I know, there was no actual fire) and sold a bunch of these DVDs off for only $1 an issue, I knew it was time to get caught up.

The whole purpose of Wholphin is to create a larger audience for short films, cartoons, and documentaries that otherwise do not reach very many people.  Because I like to be chronological in all things, I started with this collection of the 'best of' the first five issues.

There is a lot to like on this DVD.  The disc starts with 'Two Cars, One Night', a twelve-minute short set in New Zealand and featuring three Maori children who are left outside a bar in their parents' cars.  The one boy, Romeo, begins a flirtatious interchange with the girl in the other car.  It's sweet watching him prance and preen for her.

Two documentaries collected here really stood out.  The first is a half-hour excerpt from the film American Outrage, which shares the story of Carrie and Mary Dann, two elderly Shoshone women who have been the targets of the American government's efforts to steal valuable land in Nevada for the gold within it.  This is a powerful film, which documents the aggressive and unjustifiable actions of government agencies that have kidnapped and killed their livestock.  It's amazing that the UN has ruled on the side of the Dann's, yet nothing has been done.

The other powerful documentary is 'A Stranger In Her Own City', a profile of Najmia, a young girl living in Sanaa, Yemen, who refuses to wear the veil, and who spends her days playing soccer with boys or riding her bicycle.  She is a symbol of defiance in a deeply conservative part of the world, and her spirit and strength are infectious.

I also enjoyed the lighter side of this DVD, such as 'The Pity Card', a pilot for a comedy sitcom that makes light of a young woman's ignorance of the Holocaust, and 'The Delicious', a strange comedic short about an obsession that involves polyester pants suits, scissors, and dancing.  'Are You the Favorite Person of Anybody?' is a sweet short by Miranda July.

'Walleyball' is a three-minute chronicle of a volleyball game played over the wall that makes up the Mexican/US border.  'Chonto' is a slightly creepy animated film about a rock star's love for his monkey, and 'Heavy Metal Jr.' is a hilariously serious documentary about a Scottish heavy metal band made up of twelve year olds who sing about Satan at a county fair.  'More' is a very cool little cartoon about greed and technology that reminded me of Metropolis, even without the soundtrack by New Order.

I'm very happy that I have three more issues of this quarterly to plow through, as I really enjoyed the diversity of the films on offer here.

Of Gods and Men

directed by Xavier Beauvois

I went in to this film with few expectations, other than that it would probably be very slow moving, and while I was right there, I was still hugely impressed with both the craft and content of this movie.

Of Gods and Men focuses on a small group of French monks who live in a monastery in a small village in Algeria in the 1990s.  Their neighbours are Muslim, yet they share a symbiotic relationship with the Brothers, who provide health care in return for being welcomed into the community.  They do not preach or attempt to convert the locals, they simply live their simple lives as examples and exemplars of their faith.

This film is set during a time of trouble in the region, as Islamists have started a conflict with the government, and are roaming the countryside, terrorizing locals and executing foreigners.  This, obviously, makes the monks nervous, and they hold many lengthy discussions about what they should do.  When a group of men arrive one evening to take medical supplies, Brother Christian, the leader of the Brothers, firmly resists them and earns their respect.  The message is clear though, that the men (the youngest looks to be in his late thirties or early forties) are in a very precarious position.

What makes this film work so well is the quiet dignity of the actors who play the different monks (there are nine in total, but for most of the movie, there are only eight).  These are some very old men, and they convey much through their declining physicality.  It becomes easy to love these men, with their quiet resistance to both rebels and government alike, and their devotion to both their god and their neighbours, who have always lived in the shadow of the monastery.  Perhaps the most moving scene, for me, was when a couple of the Brothers were explaining to some of the locals that they are like birds, who never know when they will leave a branch, and a woman responded that they were wrong; that the monks are the branch which provides a firm footing for the villagers.

Exit Through The Gift Shop

Directed by Banksy

There has been a lot of controversy over just how authentic this documentary is, but questioning its verisimilitude takes nothing away from enjoying this frequently funny and deeply bizarre film.

This project started out, apparently, as a documentary about street art and street artists, that was to be filmed by Thierry Guetta, a French ex-pat who obsessively filmed everything that happened to him and around him.  At some point, Theirry started filming his cousin, Space Invader, an early European street artist who glued up small mosaics showing Space Invaders, Q-Bert, and other 80s video game iconic images around cities.  Thierry started going out at night, filming his work, and this led him into the circle of other street artists, such as Shepard Fairey.

Thierry had wanted to meet the ultimate street artist, Banksy, and finally got his chance, being given unprecedented access to the ultra-secretive and notorious artist.  The idea was that Thierry was shooting all this footage for a documentary, but he did not have the first clue how to go about doing it.  When he finally put together a 90-minute rough cut, it was unwatchable.  Somehow, through a conversation with Banksy, Thierry got it into his head to become a street artist himself, named Mister Brainwash, who then mortgaged his home and business to construct one of the largest art shows ever.

According to the film, the show was a huge success, despite the fact that Thierry's 'art', which was almost entirely produced by assistants, is totally derivative and not terribly interesting.  And this is where we start to wonder how much of this is just a big Banksy-style put-on. The early scenes, with Thierry filming over a number of years, can not be faked (both Thierry and Shepard Fairey get visibly older), but I feel like somewhere along the way, the scheme to create this film as a big hoax was born.  Thierry has nothing to say in or about his art, yet there are thousands of people lining up to see his show.  I feel like the comment is being made that street art's moment ended the minute Banksy and others brought it into a gallery.

Regardless, this movie is a lot of fun to watch.  Thierry, if he is acting, is a gifted actor.  If he's not, then he's a mad genius.  I loved watching him stumble over descriptions of the bigger events in his life, and his clownish demeanor, with his giant sideburns and slightly goofy hats, make him an endearing figure.  This is well worth watching.

Scott Prilgrim Vs. The World

Directed by Edgar Wright

I went in to this movie with very high expectations - I felt like the bar was going to be high for this project from the start, and hearing lots of positive reviews and good word of mouth for the last week only heightened my anticipation, and I'm very happy to say that I was not disappointed.

This is exactly what a comics adaption should be.  The story remained faithful to the comics, while effectively condensing Bryan Lee O'Malley's sprawling plot, and preserving the unique aesthetic he crafted for the books.  The plot is familiar - Scott dates Knives; Scott meets Ramona; Scott dumps Knives; Scott has to fight Ramona's Seven Evil Exes, but there is enough difference to the film that it never becomes too predictable or boring for someone who has already read the story.

The cute visual tricks help make the movie stand out.  Sound effects appear on the screen, and the video game homages work better in the film than they did on paper.  There are some very cool CGI tricks, but they never overwhelm the story the way they do in most blockbuster movies.

The movie is cast perfectly.  Michael Cera does a great Scott, but I found that Mary Elizabeth Winstead was perfect as Ramona Flowers.  She managed the aloofness and indescribable cool of Ramona wonderfully.  The other supporting characters were chosen well, especially Alison Pill as Kim Pine, Johnny Simmons as Young Neil, and Ellen Wong as Knives Chau, the source of many of the best laughs in the movie.

One aspect of the film that I particularly loved was the way in which it portrayed Toronto as a magical, beautiful city.  The scenes in places like the steps to Casa Loma, or along the streets where everyone seemed to live (the Annex?) looked fantastic, and it's always cool to see places you've been hanging out all your life up on the screen.

Out of necessity, the movie does cut a number of scenes from the book, and so things felt a lot more rushed than I would have expected.  The quick succession of battles with evil exes didn't give Scott and Ramona much time to really bond, and so I missed seeing many of my favourite moments from the comics in the movies.  I also felt that Envy Adam's character arc was cut short, but I understand why that had to be the case.

Anthony Lane, writing in the New Yorker, suggested that the movie might be as 'vaporous' as the word 'love' that Knives exhales in Scott's direction, but I don't agree.  I expect that this movie will find a solid life for itself on DVD and Blu-Ray, as it is the type of movie that may have a small audience, but I imagine they will be a dedicated one.

Nurse Fighter Boy

Directed by Charles Officer

I haven't really been watching many movies lately - when I go to my local Blockbuster, it takes me forever to find something that I think might interest me, and I'm usually disappointed. I usually find that I don't have enough time to make it Queen Video, or one of the other decent stores in the city, since none of them are near to me.

I was pleased, therefore, when I came across a copy of Nurse Fighter Boy for rental in my neighbourhood. I remember seeing a positive review of it in the paper when the movie was released, and I have like Clark Johnson since back in the day, when I watched him on Homicide Life on the Streets.

The film is a perfect example of a local indie film, meaning it has lengthy quiet moments where my attention wandered, or I found myself fixating on small items on set, or studying the actor's faces. This can be a problem for some viewers, but I find that kind of thing heightens my enjoyment of a movie.

The film is about three people. Jude (Karen LeBlanc) is a nurse and single mother (although not so much in that order) who is battling a disease. She is working the night shift, which causes her to leave her twelve year old son Ciel (Daniel J. Gordon) alone through the evening. While working one night, Jude meets Silence (Johnson), an aging fighter who has taken to competing in illegal pit events as his only means of supporting himself. When Silence's old friend Horace (Walter Borden) dies, he takes over his boxing gym, and sets about improving his life.

The story is a small, quiet one. These three people begin, slowly and hesitantly to interact with one another. The centre of the film is the relationship between Jude and Ciel. He has grown up without a father, and with the knowledge of his mother's disease, both maturing him quickly and leaving him grasping for a mystical means of protecting her.

The performances in the film are powerful. Johnson's character lives up to his name, a vast difference from the more loquacious Meldrick Lewis I still picture Johnson as (even after his role on The Wire). LeBlanc shows equal measures of strength and fear, and Gordon delivers an incredible performance for a young actor. He displays a number of complicated emotions, and a magical spark beneath his mop of hair.

The best thing about the movie though, is the music. Ciel plays his mother a mixture of traditional Jamaican songs, reggae, and hip-hop from the likes of K'naan and Tumi and the Volume. I would love to get ahold of the soundtrack for this film (any link I found on-line appears to have died).

It's nice to see Toronto represented so well on screen. Great stuff.

District 9

Directed by Neill Blomkamp

I enjoyed this movie quite a bit. The premise is simple (and reminds me a lot of the old Alien Nation TV show): an alien ship parked itself above Johannesburg, and the South African government found itself responsible for some 1-2 million alien refugees, referred to as Prawns. The MNU, the non-Governmental contractor responsible for overseeing the ghetto the Prawns live in have a plan to relocate them away from the city, but things go bad when the man in charge of the relocation, Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley) becomes somehow infected by a canister of fuel, and begins to take on alien characteristics.

What follows is an adventure movie in which Wikus, with the help of a Prawn, has to avoid Nigerian gun runners, break into MNU headquarters to retrieve the canister of fuel, and help the Prawn to fly up to his mothership.

The film moves very quickly, aided by the handheld cameras. This leads to one of the problems I have with the film; it begins with a documentary set-up, and Wikus interacts with the camera man, but later on, the film dispenses with that conceit, yet the filming remains handheld and jerky, as if a camera man is running around with Wikus at all times.

Copley's Wikus is incredible. He plays the man as a fool, who is wrapped up in events he can barely comprehend. He reacts with shock when he sees what is being done to the Prawns, and what his company (headed by his father-in-law, of course) plans to do to him as he develops tentacles, but what works best is the way he reacts to a phone call from his wife, with such unbridled enthusiasm.

The film's CGI looks fantastic, and I love the shots of the gigantic ship just hovering over a slum. I do have to wonder though, how the world's governments would have left the ship intact for twenty years, without cannibalising it for parts or attempting to learn everything about how it works. There are a number of inconsistencies like this that cause the film to crumble under scrutiny, but as a summer action film, it's smarter and more engaging that most of what's out there.

Last Stop 174

Directed by Bruno Barreto

This is a pretty effective movie from Bráulio Mantovani, who wrote "City of God", and seemingly kicked off the Brazilian favela genre, at least so far as international audiences are concerned.

This film tells the interconnected stories of three people: Marisa (Chris Vianna), a young mother whose infant is taken from her as a drug debt; Alessandro (Marcello Melo Junior), her child who grows up to be a drug dealer and thief, and Sandro (Michel Gomes and Vitor Carvalho), another boy who is orphaned and grows up on the streets.

The two Ales meet in jail, and Marisa, who has found God, is convinced that the wrong Ale is her son. Eventually, Sandro snaps, and takes a city bus hostage.

The film portrays the random violence and cruelty of Rio, but also shows in a good light the people that are working to improve conditions. It's nice to see a film set in the slums that is not all about drug dealers - the drug industry is present throughout, but remains on the periphery.

Chronicle of an Escape

Directed by Adrián Caetano

This is one of the more suspenseful and gripping movies that I've seen in a very long time. Claudio (Rodrigo de la Serna) is a soccer player who is picked up one day by some men in Pinochet's Argentina. He is taken to a large house, where he is question, beaten, and confined for more than 100 days. Eventually, he and three other prisoners, some of whom actually were involved in anti-government activities, are able to escape. The events in the film are true.

The film does an excellent job of portraying the psychological effects of this confinement on the men, as some develop Stockholm Syndromed and others do little more than lie around and cringe.

The scene of the escape is taut and exciting, and utterly filled with dread. That two of the escapees later testify against the government is established at the very beginning of the film, but that knowledge worked to make me fear for the other two, as I expected disaster at any moment.

This is not an easy film to watch, but it is a rewarding one.

Elite Squad

Directed by Jose Padilha

This movie is basically the flip side of the far superior "City of God". Where that movie was mostly concerned with the residents of one of Rio de Janeiro's notorious favelas, this movie turns the lens on BOPE, the elite police force, run like a military operation, that wages war on the favela's drug dealers.

Captain Nascimento (Wagner Moura) runs one of the BOPE units, but, as his child's birth draws closer, and his panic attacks more frequent, needs to get out. In order to leave BOPE, one must find and train his successor. Nascimento has two young police in mind, and much of the movie shows them proving that they are incorruptable.

Corruption is the main topic of this film. It shows how, from the guys who give out parking tickets to the people at the top of the force, bribes and extortion are the real work of the police in Rio. When one officer is believed to have been involved in stealing from the Commander, he is taken into the favela to be executed. When bodies are found in one Commander's district, the order goes out to move them to another precinct's jurisdiction. It doesn't take much of a stretch of the imagination to understand why Brazil's cities are so unsafe.

This is an interesting, engaging movie, which, when viewed alongside 'City of God', does much to explain Latin America to a northern audience. I imagine it sparked a lot of conversation and debate when it was released.

Vinyan

Directed by Fabrice du Welz

This is a seriously creepy movie. Jeanne (Emmanuelle Beart) and Paul Belmer (Rufus Sewell) are expatriates (from, we assume, different countries) living in post-Tsunami Thailand. They lost their young son to the waves, and for the last six months have been struggling to come to grips with their loss.

While at a fundraiser for orphanages in flood-damaged Burma, Jeanne believes that she sees Joshua, their son, on a snippet of video. Obsessed, she finds her way into the Thai underground, in the hopes that a snakehead by the name of Thaksin Gao (Petch Osathanugrah) can take them to the correct village and help them find their son.

From there, the movie becomes a bit of a re-make of Apocalypse Now, as the couple journeys on a decrepit river boat into deserted and desolate villages, and where locals attempt to sell them a talcum-powdered "white boy". They come across a group of feral children, and the movie slowly descends into a horror film, with a very disturbing conclusion.

The filmmakers do a fantastic job of switching genres slowly, leading the viewer from an expectation of a happy ending to a realization of terror. The jungle setting, with its ruined church, drips with creepiness even before we see the muddy and silent children.

The acting in this film is excellent. Beard's descent into madness is very realistic, as is Sewell's quiet fury. There are a few things about the film that don't make sense - I doubt very much that remote Thailand receives cell-phone coverage, making the argument that phones don't work in Burma a little ridiculous; and I don't believe that someone as well-controlled as Paul would leave on such a journey without first informing at least one friend in civilization.

These are minor points though, as the film captivates.

Chop Shop

Directed by Ramin Bahrani

This is a powerful film about a boy named Alejandro (Alejandro Polanco), who lives in an auto body shop with his older sister Isamar (Isamar Gonzales) in the 'Iron Triangle' area of Queens. Ale doesn't go to school, but instead spends his days working in the shop, and hustling chocolate bars and DVDs on the subway and the streets. Isamar works in a food truck, and occassionally does some 'hustling' of her own. Their parents are not on the scene, and are never discussed. The kids' dream is to buy a food truck of their own, but this dream doesn't seem to be realizable.

This entire movie is carried by Polanco, who is an incredible actor. He shows an vast range of emotion, as he walks the streets a tough, unflappable young man, but can also let down his guard with his sister and be the little kid that he is. As the movie progresses, his face shows the anger and stress that his character is feeling. The rest of the cast are non-actors, and many of the scenes have an improvisational feel, while staying true to reality.

The film is a series of long takes, beautifully orchestrated around the post-urban wasteland of junkyards and car shops. The streets are awash in mud and detritus, and we are given only an occassional glance at the Manhattan skyline. Bahrani is an amazing director, and wise in the way he lets his actors make the story their own.