FILM REVIEW: TRUE STORY By: Faiz No comments

Michael Finkel (Jonah Hill) and Christian Longo (James Franco) in True Story.

 

Trope-a-dope

 

By John Esther

 

Micheal Finkel (Jonah Hill) is in a bad way. He has just embellished and contrived a story for the New York Times and NYT has found out. Now a journalistic pariah (whose lack of integrity nowhere reaches the lows of Bill O'Reilly), Finkel has retreated to Montana with his girlfriend, Jill Barker (Felicity Jones), where he suffers rejection after rejection to write another piece.

 

If things were not bad enough for Finkel -- at his own fingers, mind you -- an accused killer out an Oregon has been using his name as an alias. Who needs publicity like that? Well, Finkel might.

 

So Finkel heads out to Oregon to meet Christian Longo (James Franco), who is in prison now awaiting trial. Longo is accused of killing his wife (Maria Dizzia) and their three young children (Connor Kikot, Charlotte Driscoll, and Stella Rae Payne).

 

On a basic level the two connect and strike up a deal, which could be mutually beneficial. Then again, and again, and again, people are known to lie.

 

Based on the titular book by Finkel and co-written by David Kajganich and director Rupert Goold, True Story is not a comedic endeavor from two of Hollywood's leading, busiest funny men. It is actually tragic when you consider the basic lesson of this true story is "never trust anyone."

 

While most of the film is fairly interesting and entertaining, there are a few scenes in True Story which ring a bit embellished and contrived as well. For example, Baker confronts Delongo in prison, giving him her two cents on what she thinks of him. Essentially, she is playing the mouthpiece of the indignant audience member(s). Then there is the scene where Finkel slugs out a men's bathroom stall in a court house. Nobody hears that...in a courthouse? Maybe that did happen but, in the spirit of True Story, this testimony on behalf of the filmmakers -- perhaps based on Finkel's account -- requires a little corroboration.

 

Nonetheless, in an era of rampant journalistic lies (hiding behind the faux-facade of "entertainment"), True Story reminds us to take anything we view with a grain a salt and a sneer of incredulous while truly appreciating those who do not lie for their own selfishness (or propagandistic endeavors).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FILM REVIEW: HANNAH ARENDT By: Faiz No comments

Hannah Arendt (Barbara Sukowa) in Hannah Arendt.

Paying for the privilege of owning herself

By Don Simpson

Hannah Arendt begins as Adolf Eichmann is captured during a covert action by the Israeli police. Eichmann is whisked away to Jerusalem to be tried and punished for the war crimes committed against Jewish people by the Nazi government during World War II. Hannah Arendt (Barbara Sukowa) immediately submits a pitch to the New Yorker to travel to Israel to cover the trial. The New Yorker editor William Shawn (Nicolas Woodeson) jumps at the opportunity to have the highly regarded New School political theory professor -- and author of The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) and The Human Condition (1958) -- covering such a landmark story for them.

A German Jew, Arendt was interned during WWII in a concentration camp in France but escaped, eventually emigrating to the United States with her husband, Heinrich Blücher (Axel Milberg). Despite her firsthand experience with the Nazis, Arendt's approach to the Eichmann trial is nothing short of humanist. Arendt sees Eichmann as a government employee who took an oath in which he promised to blindly abide by the Nazi agenda. Even as a high-ranking SS officer, Eichmann merely played a small-yet-integral part of a much larger bureaucratic machine. Eichmann coordinated the transportation of Jews during WWII to various concentration camps, but it could not be proven that he ever participated firsthand in the gruesome mass murders. He was just a paper-pusher, rendered unable to think for himself by the Nazi system. Eichmann's thoughtlessness is precisely what attracted Arendt to his case.

Witnessing Eichmann's trial led Arendt to conclude that evil grew from the thoughtlessness of ordinary people who obeyed orders without consideration of the consequences of their actions. The problem was that a hyper-intellectualized lecture about "the banality of evil" was not exactly the type of coverage of Eichmann's trial that people -- especially Jews -- wanted to read in the New Yorker. They wanted journalistic reporting on the trial, not a philosophy lesson on the nature of evil. Arendt was also quite critical of the actions of some Jewish leaders during the Holocaust, thus igniting tremendous controversy and animosity toward her. Arendt was considered to be snobbish, cold and unsympathetic towards Jews. But, in her own defense, Arendt explained that anyone who writes about the Nazis and the Holocaust should attempt to understand what turns seemingly ordinary people such as Eichmann into tools of totalitarianism.

Writer-director Margarethe von Trotta's approach to Arendt is as calculated and pragmatic as the philosophies of the subject it so minutely contemplates. Rather than functioning as a frothy bio-pic, Hannah Arendt focuses on the shaping of Arendt's concept of the "the banality of evil." Practically every line of dialogue serves as a building block for Arendt's ideologies and philosophies. By way of the fiery debates that Arendt enjoys with her colleagues and friends, we witness as Arendt forms her hypotheses; and as we observe Arendt slowly digesting the transcripts from Eichmann's trial, we practically see the proverbial wheels turning inside her brain. 

LAFF 2012: REPORTERO By: Faiz No comments



Sergio Haro in Reportero.

News to US

By Ed Rampell

In a day and age of print newspapers besieged by factors such as the emergence of the World Wide Web one weekly print newspaper is currently expanding its circulation. What is the secret to the success of Tijuana-based and U.S.-printed Zeta? According to Bernardo Ruiz, director of a new documentary focusing on this publishing phenomenon, Mexico’s high literacy rate and low Internet connectivity rate are important explanations for the success of this Tijuana weekly paper. But the most significant reason for its increase in readership is Zeta’s uncompromising content.

This success, alas, comes at a steep cost: While print papers may not be an endangered species in Mexico, honest reporters who boldly go where angels fear to tread, telling the facts about Mexico’s narco-war, gangs, corrupt policemen and politicians, are on that beleaguered nation’s endangered species list. The high price of this publishing triumph is the assassination of fearless journalists who put truth above survival, as Zeta’s hard hitting investigative reporting exposes the narco-traffickers currently corrupting and at war with Mexican society. There a byline can be tantamount to signing one’s own death warrant --even if the paper has resorted to using collective bylines “signed” by the entire editorial staff, instead of by an individual journo. (Although it’s more expensive, the paper is published at a plant in California then transshipped back across the border in order to maintain the paper’s editorial integrity.)

Reportero focuses on reporter/photojournalist Sergio Haro and the harrowing drug war he and Zeta’s other dedicated staffers set out to expose. While its subject matter is compelling, Reportero’s conventional nonfiction storytelling and slow pace somehow manages to render part of this 71-minute documentary dull. The contents could make for a great feature film; Oliver Stone’s upcoming Savages is set against the dramatic backdrop of Mexico’s amazingly violent drug wars. Nevertheless, for filmgoers interested in both narco-trafficking and freedom of the press, Reportero is required viewing.

And here’s three cheers for the brave Zeta-tistas in their courageous crusade to expose Mexico’s drug gangs and bought off police and politicos. Bravo, companeros! 


Reportero screens at the Los Angeles Film Festival: tonight, 7:50 p.m., Regal Cinemas.

  

 

  

  

 



LAFF 2012: WORDS OF WITNESS By: Faiz No comments

Heba Afify and others in Words of Witness.

Happy is she who can give herself up

By Miranda Inganni

During 2011’s “Arab Spring,” filmmaker Mai Iskandar (Garbage Dreams) travelled to Egypt to witness firsthand what the country was experiencing. Upon meeting Heba Afify, a young journalist for Almasry Alyoum, the English version of Egypt’s leading independent publication, Iskandar found a voice to tell the story of the country’s remarkable upheaval. And so the documentary, Words of Witness, came to fruition.

Afify, as her mother frequently reminds her, is from a good family and a young woman. Having wanted to be a writer from a young age, 22-year-old Afify must endure her mother’s remarks that while she recognizes that her daughter is a journalist, she is first and foremost “still a girl.” Despite her mother’s overly-maternal concern, Afify’s intent is to tell the news and educate her fellow Egyptians of the changes as they happen. With the contemporary trappings available to most young adults, Afify texts, emails, posts and tweets the story of an uprising.

Using Afify’s cell phone footage along with the footage shot by Iskandar, Words of Witness is raw without being naïve. With a country in flux, on the edge of the unknown, Afify gives off a sense of hope and integrity. While she is indeed young, Afify takes risks to get to the point of the matter, while being mindful of her mother’s concern. (Interestingly, her father supports his daughter's actions and encourages her to break her mother’s rules.) She is not simply some dumb kid daring to face opposing government, civilian and military forces for the sake of adrenalin or fame, but rather an observer of adversity and revolution who awakens hope.


Words of Witness screens at the Los Angeles Film Festival: June 17, 2:40 p.m., Regal Cinemas; June 20, 7:40 p.m., Regal Cinemas.

NEWPORT BEACH 2012: THE WAR AROUND US By: Faiz No comments

Sherine Tadros in The War Around Us.

There will be no shelter here

By Ed Rampell

One of the hardest hitting documentaries I’ve seen in years, Abdallah Omeish’s The War Around Us deserves not only distribution so audiences can see it, but also an Oscar nomination.

The War Around Us is the true story of the only two international journalists reporting from the war zone, as Israel bombarded and invaded Gaza in late 2008. Al Jazeera’s Cairo-born, Arab-American Ayman Mohyeldin and Arab-British Sherine Tadros were on the ground in Gaza City during the Israeli military operation that resulted, according to this gripping documentary, in the highest number of Palestinians killed in a single day since 1948.

The dynamic duo of Mohyeldin and Tadros does yeoman work reporting on the war’s consequences on a largely civilian population for the Arab network, and provide a window on the conflict to the outside world. The doc alleges that the Israeli Defense Forces committed war crimes against noncombatants, including unarmed women, children and elders, including the use of white phosphorus, which an Israeli spokesman denies, although eyewitnesses, including human rights activists, confirm it. During the conflagration, as hospitals are filled beyond the bursting point and basics such as electricity, water and even cheeseburgers, are cut off, a U.N. compound is bombarded by the IDF.

The War Around Us is a gripping reminder that war is hell, and of a specific conflict most of us have forgotten about. Of course, the poor Palestinians remember it, but this doc would have benefitted from providing more context as to why the Israelis did what they did, and the roles that the change in U.S. administrations (from the Bush to the Obama regime) and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s alleged corruption played in this devastation -- so heroically chronicled by Mohyeldin and Tadros.