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Apocalypto: Epic in a real jungle

Gerardo Valero

I truly enjoy Mel Gibson’s work as a director. His films, whether he stars in them or not, always reflect a passion and heart like few others. His best work these days, more and more, seems to be coming from behind the camera. It seems to me he really makes the movies for himself first and second for everybody else, no test audience previews to influence the final product.

“Apocalypto” is a film about the demise of the Mayan civilization. It tells the story of Jaguar Paw, whose small village is attacked by a group of hunters from the nearby metropolis, their job literally being to pillage small defenseless groups while looking for “volunteers” for their “most dangerous game”: the sacrificing rituals that the city’s leaders use to keep the masses entertained.

Is Bill Maher a performer, a preacher, or a pimp?

Omer M. Mozaffar

On Netflix and Amazon Instant.

Considering that we normally think of documentaries as some sort of academic discourse at the fringes of popular cinema, this relatively new genre of Celebrity-driven docs is something peculiar. That we now watch documentaries starring Michael Moore, Morgan Spurlock, and Bill Maher is something inevitable, I suppose. We already have that tradition of following on-screen directors as characters in their features, including Kevin Smith, Spike Lee, and Woody Allen. But, the point here is that we watch some documentaries because of their host celebrities, more than the topic, even though the topics seem to be extensions of those same celebrities.

I suspect few people outside of his fan base will watch this movie: in Larry Charles’ documentary “Religulous,” (2008) popular Television talk show host Bill Maher is a playful microphone-toting cynic, roaming the landscapes of Christianity, with a few references to Judaism, Islam, and Scientology. The film is very strong and vastly entertaining in finding absurdities in absurd places, but fizzles when it attempts any serious commentary.

The death of a talk host

Anath White

Roger Ebert writes: Alan Berg was a Denver talk-radio host who was murdered on June 18, 1984. He was a goofy-looking bird, with a thin face and a bristly white beard that hid the ravages of teenage acne. He wore reading glasses perched far down on his nose, and he dressed in unlikely combinations of checks and stripes and garments that looked left over from the 1950s. When the members of a lunatic right-wing group gunned him down in the driveway of his home, they could not have mistaken him for anybody else.

I was on Berg’s radio show three or four times. I listened to him as I drove down from Boulder to Denver. He was chewing out some hapless housewife whose brain was a reservoir of prejudices against anyone who was the slightest bit different from her. Berg was telling her that no one in his right mind would want to be anything like her at all.

D D L J – Dee Dee Ell Jay

Omer M. Mozaffar

Streaming on Netflix Instant.

The movie starts out so beautifully. The great Indian actor Amrish Puri stands there with his dignity, dressed in a perfect mix of Western and native Indian attire, feeding a flock of pigeons in London’s monochrome rain-soaked concrete Trafalgar Square, thinking fondly about the sunny, colorful, musical world he left behind in the bright green and yellow fields of his home country. Twenty years of life in England, he runs a generic convenience store, with the goals of giving his daughters the life he never had. In his daydreams, however, he is longingly feeding pigeons not here, but in India.

That very short moment provided a profound insight into the lives of a whole population of first generation immigrants. But, I’d say that the movie takes a nose dive from there, and it does temporarily, because Puri seems to spend the rest of the film with a frozen glare that is frightening enough to make Indiana Jones pull out his own heart. And, similarly, I just wish that that punk Raj (Shah Rukh Khan) would stop his giggling. This is Aditya Chopra’s “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge” (1995) and it is easily one of the most popular of all Bollywood films, at least for a certain demographic of women between the ages 15 and 45, in a way that “Sholay” is the most popular of all Bollywood films for whatever male demographic I belong to.

Suicide by way of homicide

Omer M. Mozaffar

Rian Johnson’s hyperviolent “Looper” (2102) is the smartest movie I have seen in a long time. It has that fearless edge of an independent film, throwing out all the stops. Its masterful plot carefully hides its foreshadows as elements of its constructed universe. It is a science fiction movie with rudiments of mystery, thriller, horror, comedy and even eschatology. So many characters, young and old, were loaded with charisma, sometimes unexpectedly. My fellow critic Nick Allen was correct when he told me not to watch any trailers (too late) and not to let anyone tell me about this movie. Because of its hyperkinetic, volatile unpredictability, I cannot help but to call this movie “crazy.” After watching it, you might have to go look at snails for a few hours to calm down. More than that, this movie is clearly one of the best of the year.

A man who lives between Here and There

Omer M. Mozaffar

Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Biutiful” was utter torture, and I loved it. Javier Bardem is Uxbal, a soft-spoken man living somewhere along the border between Here and There. He gently hides from life in some anonymous place in crowded, noisy Barcelona. He is a hustler, compassionately exploiting families of undocumented refugees from other lands, protecting them from deportation. He is a telepath, speaking to the newly deceased, helping free their crossing to the next world. He is a son who hardly knew his father, and a father seeking to nurture his own little daughter and son against the pull of an unpredictable ex-wife and an irresponsible brother. But, what does he seek?

A British boutique festival without an identity crisis

Scott Jordan Harris

Britain is overrun with film festivals. I wouldn’t be shocked to learn we have more per hundred miles per year than any nation on Earth. But there is room for more, provided they are carefully conceived, intelligently programmed and don’t overreach themselves in their early years. ID Fest, which ran this year between May 24 and 27, is a fine example.

Beginning in 2010, with a year off in 2011, ID Fest is “a boutique festival”, with each instalment programmed around a specific theme branching from the larger theme of identity – hence “ID” Fest. As such, it separates itself from Britain’s large international festivals; small, un-themed local festivals; and genre fests, of which there seem to be more each month. The first ID Fest investigated what it means to be English (as opposed to British) but the second had a far broader focus, befitting its ambitions to become a truly international festival. In 2012, its theme was heroism.

Hostages to honor

Jana Monji

The Kobayashi movie “Harakiri” is available on Hulu and Netflix. Miike’s “Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai” is available on Amazon.com.

In this remake of the 1962 Masaki Kobayashi movie known as “Harakiri” in America, but “Seppuku” in Japan, Takashi Miike considers the value of one life or “Ichimei.” (一命 Ichimei). In the U.S., the film is also re-named “Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai.”

Kids are as solid as rock

When I watched a film directed by François Truffaut for the first time during one Sunday afternoon in 2008, I had a little expectation about the movie, which was shown on TV as “Pocket Money.” Although I was already familiar with many of Truffaut’s famous works including “The 400 Blows” (1959) or “Day for Night” (1973), I had not heard about the title, and nor did I know that its alternative title in North America region was “Small Change.” Funny thing is, I remember that alternative title very well because Roger Ebert said in the introduction to one part of his book Awake in the Dark that he still could not explain how he came to choose “Small Change” as the best film of 1976 instead of “Taxi Driver” (1976), which he placed on No. 2 on his annual list.

Grace Wang of Toronto discusses “The Hurt Locker”

I am a dreamer, a traveler, a student, a teacher, a friend, a stranger, an Asian, a Canadian, a daughter, a woman, a photographer, a model, an immigrant, a citizen, a writer…but these are all just labels, and they wouldn’t begin to tell you why I have an infinite love for hole-in-the-wall bars and coffee shops and black & white everything, or why live music of any kind just captivates me, or how Chinese novels move me in a way so deep that I wish every person in the world could understand the language, or why I can never ever hold back a smile watching the sun rise on a different continent.

Traveling is a huge part of my life, as is writing. With a pen and a backpack, I’ve had some of the most memorable moments of my life at some of the most random corners around the world.

If traveling is how one experiences reality, then writing is how I weave my dreams. It has always been the most natural, intimate, and truest expression of myself. And we all just want to tell our own stories in this lifetime, don’t we?

It’s like breathing, and as clichéd as that sounds, how can you explain why you need to breathe?

The ultimate expression of humanity

Omer M. Mozaffar

This movie is 97 minutes of trying not to blink. Image after luxurious 70MM image. A perfect soundtrack. I watched it again, wearing headphones, sitting really close to an HD screen letting the film astound me with its Blu-Ray picture. And it did astound me, beyond my expectations. The details revealed textures and images I had not previously noticed. Every time I plan to watch Ron Fricke’s “Baraka” (1992), I watch far more than I plan. I intend to watch one scene, but realize quickly that I have to finish it.

Reactionary men who fear and hate strong women

What you are about to read may shock you. It’s all true, and it happened to me. It involves censorship and the movies and one man’s loathing of strong contemporary women.

I love motion pictures, and I love writing about them. I have been a movie critic in Buffalo, New York for a number of years. Reviewing films rose out of my passion for both journalism and cinema, the perfect combination.

In preparing this column, I thought about various headlines for it. Something like: The Perils Of Movie Reviewing. Or perhaps: What’s Happening To Freedom Of The Press? Or maybe this one: There Truly Are Reactionary Men Who Fear And Hate Strong Women.

Should “JFK” have even been made?

Gerardo Valero

It seems like every film inspired on real-life events becomes controversial for one reason or another. The greater the subject’s notoriety, the louder the outcry. The backlash to Oliver Stone’s “JFK” was extreme by any standard; it became one of the rare features widely attacked for existing in the first place. This wasn’t all that surprising; the movie took one of the most painful events in American history and came up with shocking, damaging conclusions. That Stone tackled the “whats” of the case (the pieces that didn’t fit) was already a touchy proposition; that he tried to uncover the “whys” is what took the reaction the next level. Should a film like this have been made?

Don’t know why there’s no sun up in the sky

The first thing you must realize about “Stormy Weather,” before anything else, is that it is not real. Of course it isn’t real in the sense that it is a narrative film and as such it is fiction, but it is unreal in another way. It is a romanticization of African American life offering one-dimensional characters without nuance– in “response” to the one dimensional un-nuanced characters in other films.

The movie opens as famous dancer Bill Williamson (Bill Robinson) receives a magazine in his honor “celebrating the magnificent contribution of the colored race to the entertainment of the world during the past twenty five years.” This prompts him to reminisce about his career and courtship of the beautiful singer Selina Rogers (Lena Horne). The plot however, is of little importance. The film is primarily a vehicle for famous black talent in music and dance. These are glamorous blacks in romantic and dramatic leads. Blacks with sex appeal. Blacks with their own storyline.

A sermon no one can sleep through

Gerardo Valero

Many of today’s films seem to be made solely for financial reasons, but the case of “The Exorcist” is more complex than most. It was a tremendous financial success, the all-time box office champ for a while, but only a psychic could have predicted that people would line up to see a movie of this nature.

Slapped by the Hand of Mother Nature

Omer M. Mozaffar

I’ve never been good with small talk. In those corporate conferences with high ceilings and manufactured friendships, I used to admire those high-speed networkers who spun small talk and smooth talk as they worked a room. I don’t play golf. I don’t drink booze. I’m a fair weather sports fan. If you were to stand alone in an elevator with me, you’d probably hear me breathe as I stared at the floor. Further, if you want to kill an otherwise lively conversation among a bunch of decreasingly sober corporate executives in ill-fitted khakis, sport coats, and crooked “Hi My Name is” name-tags, then make the mistake that I keep making: tell them that you’re an expert on religion. The crowd in front of you will split apart faster than the Red Sea. And, perhaps that is why I was never invited by my colleagues to go on those weekend warrior trips, like the characters in John Boorman’s forty year old “Deliverance” (1972). This is the story of four confident suburban businessmen looking to raft to the bottom of a river. Along the way, the experience pounds the hell out of them.

He wants to marry a hairdresser

“Film is the medium that gives room to our fantasies, most of the time harmless, since they are fantasies. The cinema is often more beautiful than life, if only because we write the screenplay.” – Leconte

The Hairdresser’s husband (1990) is a film so fantastical, so sensual, so romantic, that you can not help but sigh in ached longing…a longing that, deep down, you know is untouchable, but how good it is to be drenched so thoroughly in it in a French hairdressing salon, on sunny afternoons and stormy nights?

Dreamers. Lovers. However they came to be we do not know, and it does not matter. They are so content together, indeed so happy that they seem immune to the ravishing of life’s toil. Passion consumes their lives. The day begins with it, and ends with it.

Charlatan, Louisiana

Omer M. Mozaffar

On Netflix Instant

Robert Duvall’s “The Apostle” (1997) is the story of a preacher who believes he has unique permission to phone call the Divine. As is the case with such preachers, the rules of goodness and morality seem to apply to everyone else before they apply to him. Meaning, he is above the law until he gets frightened for breaking the law. So, his combination of impious exhilaration, impatient devotion, and self-righteous rage reveals a man in sunglasses, open palms, and fiery sermons, who plants trees while burning bridges. I love this movie as much as I despise its central character. This movie exists only because of its central character.

The Persistence of Memory

Olivia Collette

Memories don’t really have a beginning, a middle and an end. They’re more like vignetted sensations, impressions and paraphrases, where the most prominent detail might be sticky fingers from handling a bunch of wheat. If you could only live with one memory for all eternity, which would it be? That’s the question Hirokazu Koreeda’s “After Life” asks, while also showing us what makes something memorable.

Understanding the Dung Fly

Sang-hoon is a terrifying piece of work. He is someone you never want to mess up with. He is callous, narrow-minded, vulgar and, above all very volatile. Whenever his hair-trigger fury erupts, there’s more than hell to pay — and that happens often.

Even when his temper relatively abates, he is still difficult and hostile to communicate with, probably even with himself. In the opening sequence, we see a young woman being beaten by some guy in the night streets. Sang-hoon appears and he savagely beats that guy. And then, he spits at her, smacks her, and insults her.