Twenty-four years ago, an Iranian wife and mother was falsely accused by her husband of adultery, in order that he might marry a fourteen year-old girl without having to support two families or return a dowry. The local pederast Mullah collaborated in fabricating evidence and railroading a conviction. She was buried to the waist, then stoned to a bloody pulp by the village's men, including her sons and father.

The Stoning of Soraya M. is a movie about this brutal crime. It can be difficult to tell a story in which the ending is vividly telegraphed in the title, but the filmmakers nonetheless relentlessly draw the audience in. The setting is misogynistic and claustrophobic. The characters are desperate and sympathetic. The framing device (a journalist stumbling on the facts) perfectly heightens the drama.

But this is hardly entertainment. Most scenes are filmed in bright sunlight, but it is the camera that shines a blinding light on male prejudice, evil religion, and black motives. Muslim women, trapped between the misogyny of their religion's founder and the selfish privilege of sick cultures, have found a worthy advocate in this film.

Nearly as sad as the Soraya's fate, however, has been this film's obscurity. Its entire domestic gross equaled approximately fifteen minutes worth of Avatar's opening weekend. I am writing this review in the hopes that at least one person will watch this painful movie, and be moved by it.

Rated R for a realistic portray of stoning, which is a ridiculous commentary on the rating system, as this film is actually beneficial for teenagers, in contradistinction to the soul-destroying toxins in most PG-13 movies.


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Other Critic's Reviews:
Big Hollywood (Joe Bendel)
The Huffington Post (Chip Hanlon)





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Labels: guest review

Short Review: A long movie without one humorous scene. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t laugh-out-loud funny.



Avatar is a half a billion dollar toilet seat of a movie. Because Home Depot toilet seat movies like Dances with Wolves or Pocahontas aren’t good enough. No expense is ever too great to remind us of a central dogma of our age: that our culture is bad, bad, bad and “indigenous cultures” are oh so very good. Throw in a couple of corollary doctrines relating to new age spirituality and Gaia worship, and you have the perfect leftist didactic fairy tale disguised as a sci-fi adventure.

But a strange thing occurs to one as the expensive toilet seat comes crashing down on one’s head. How disconcerting it is, how un-humanizing it is to turn indigenous peoples into aliens. Cameron’s intention is to make we humans into the aliens, but because of the film’s central metaphor, that’s not how things work. Usually metaphor is employed to get someone to see something from a different angle. The central metaphor of this movie is that hominid Na'vi of the moon Pandora are just like the aboriginal inhabitants of North and South America and Australia. Except that their blue skin and tails are about the only thing different. Their rituals, weapons, religion, even war cries, are pretty much the same. So why did we have to go to Pandora to listen to this Rousseau-ian sermon? Beats me. The metaphor eventually becomes so thin and the parallels so heavy-handed that you may find yourself, as I did, laughing.

While the plot is a tedious checklist of the civilized-savage-meets-enlightened-primitive genre, the visuals help to redeem the effort, at least as purely aesthetic diversion. The word is beautiful and richly realized. The creatures are wonderful, with a subtle, unspoken evolutionary backstory*. The huge CGI budget can’t make this thing successful, however.

One final, disconnected note: this movie fails utterly as science fiction. The central science fictiony element (the telepathic link between human minds and Na'vi bodies) is never explained or explored. It functions only as a convenient plot device.



* A thoroughly inconsistent one, however. The animals we see close up have a six-legged body plan and four eyes. The Na'vi, however are humanoid. Where are their evolutionary cousins?

Labels: Avatar, film, guest review, James Cameron, movie review, Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Zoe Saldana

I want to thank my friend Ron Nordin for allowing me to publish his review of this recent release.

Labels: film, Frank Langella, guest review, movie review, Ron Howard

In his recent book Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter, Steven Johnson argues that today's movies and television shows are much more complicated than in days of yore and that this sophistication exercises our brains in beneficial ways. I'm not sure I agree with the thesis, but exhibit A in his defense might be The Prestige, an enjoyable and interesting film nearly spoiled by needless complication.

The movie takes place in the late 19th century and involves two aspiring stage magicians who start out as friends, but become bitter rivals. They are obsessed with discovering each other's tricks, while each plots to sabotage the other's act. The period setting and the focus on illusionists and their techniques together with the revenge and obsession angle make for a very agreeable combination. The films creators, however, tell the story in a way that makes the first half very difficult to follow. Make sure your soda is caffeinated, not in order to stay awake, but because you will need every bit of mental acuity to keep up.

The central problem is that the story is told in flashbacks from a main plot line. There are, however, two separate flashback threads, one that starts at the beginning of the protagonists careers (thread A), and one that begins much later (thread B). Thread A is further fractured by constant cuts between the separate activities of the two rivals. Matters are not helped by the fact that thread B and the main plot line both have the two men reading each other's notebooks. Now add three actresses who all look as if they could be sisters, and you can begin to understand the challenge. At times I felt like a pilot in a fancy new jet fighter, whose acrobatics were impressive, but the G forces drained the blood from my head. Fortunately, the theater was equipped with inflatable leg cuffs that kept me from passing out.

Despite the foregoing, the plot and characters were compelling enough to make me want to stick with it. The plot was coherent in spite of the way it unfolded. The ending involved the resolution of two interlocking mysteries. The film handled one half of this pair perfectly. The writers signaled the other half far too early and drained the finale of some surprise, but this is a minor criticism.

One of the more enjoyable aspects of the film is piecing together the many connections, foreshadowing, and allusions after you leave the theater. This is the kind of movie that could pay rewatching. Since I invariable watch a movie the first time for the plot, and subsequent times for outstanding dialog and characterization, I'll probably pass on that, as the script and acting are serviceable, but not stellar.

I recommend this film for its many pleasures, but it will make you work for them. Whether it will make you smarter is different question.


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Labels: Christian Bale, Christopher Nolan, film, guest review, Hugh Jackman, Michael Caine, movie review, Scarlett Johansson

Thanks to Jeff Burton of BURTONIA for this quick review.

Short Review: This story has more leaks than a 200 year old pipe.


City of Ember is a weak adaptation of Jean DuPrau's children's novel of the same title. Set in an underground city built to escape some unnamed apocalypse, two children attempt to escape Ember's inevitable collapse into darkness as the main generator begins to fail. The story is plagued with ridiculous contrivance and numerous loose ends. Its primary failing, however, is a missing connection between the villain and the main conflict. Bill Murray's performance as the machinating mayor is too laid back to menace, and too serious to amuse. The two lead performances are adequate, but I think the delightfully elfin Saoirse Ronan would be better cast as a genuine elf.

In spite of its shortcomings, this production succeeds spectacularly in the visual department. The set design perfectly convinces that Ember has seen two centuries of decay. There is enough detail and visual interest to make us want the camera to slowdown so we can take in more of it.

But then the silliness reasserts itself and we are treated to a tacked-on monster sub-plot, a father-son conflict that goes nowhere, and the final escape sequence, whose geometry much like an Escher drawing in its logic. In sum, it's a mediocrity unworthy of popular kid fiction.




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Labels: adaptation, Bill Murray, guest review, movie review, Tim Robbins

Not only is this far from the best music documentary ever made, it isn't even the best documentary about THE ROLLING STONES ever made. If you're looking for that, check out Gimme Shelter (1970)... a documentary about the difficulty and logistics of setting up a large
scale concert. Gimme Shelter also shows a guy getting stabbed at the concert (something, ironically, you'd expect from Scorsese's movie). To be fair, Shine A Light is also a "concert" film, but it isn't even the best Rolling Stones concert film ever made. For that, check out the concert DVD Four Flix or the IMAX version of the Steel Wheels tour in '89.

Why is it so terrible? First... camera perspective. The whole point of a concert film is to show the grandeur of the event with wide and medium shots. Scorsese chose lots of shots that were tight shots from below, giving you claustrophobia in New York's grand and historic Beacon Theater (a beautiful and spacious place). Additionally, for the first half of the film, you are inundated with bright flashing lights and quick camera POV changes. Combined with the tight screen shots of Mick Jagger's face, I wasn't sure if I was watching a concert film or a trailer for Hellboy 3. The jerky camera shots slow down halfway through, but I had reached the point of irritation long before then. Second is audio. Normally, a live show would have the audio from the "whole mix" of what everyone is playing for maximum sound enjoyment. Scorsese didn't do this. Maybe it was intentional along with the frequent up close shots to capture an on-stage perspective, but I don't want to hear Keith Richards playing rhythm when Ron Wood is playing lead (and these days I'm not sure I want to SEE either of them doing anything). Add in some guest appearances by county-fair caliber musicians, and you've got your masterpiece. If that weren't enough, I was forced to deal with the blatant distraction of Marty's crazy eyebrows and horn-rimmed glasses; I thought I was looking at a Groucho Marx novelty disguise.

Never has a greater discrepancy between a movie and the real thing been so prevalent. I've seen The Rolling Stones live.... and "Senator Scorsese, you're no Rolling Stones documenter."


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Labels: documentary, film, guest review, Keith Richards, Martin Scorsese, Mick Jagger, movie review, music

My friend Jeff from BURTONIA has seen The Dark Knight and has come away with the following reasons why you should go find something better to do with your time than spend over two hours with a guy in a rubber suit.

Labels: Batman, guest review, movie review, superhero