jürgen fauth’s muckworld

Little “film bites” review for About.com is in the works. Can’t be arsed right now though.

Terse drama from South Africa. Nameless boy (”tsotsi” means thug) engages in some Grand Theft Auto, only to find a screaming baby on the back seat. The lead actor is good, the movie’s not a minute too long, and it’s tightly written. City of God without all the slick tricks–but the soundtrack still kicks ass. Oscar nomination is well deserved.

There are better concert movies, and there are better comedy movies, but Chappelle’s blend of both is genuinely likeable and fun throughout. Armed with a bullhorn, he invites people from his Ohio hometown and anybody from the Brooklyn nabe to his block party: a free show with Kanye West, The Roots, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, Mos Def, Talib Kweli. I don’t know if MGM didn’t crank it enough for the critics or if the sound is geniunely bad, but I just got out of a rock concert, and this just didn’t sound good enough. Dave Chappelle is a very funny man.

“Do you know where these beads come from?” filmmaker David Redmon asks drunken Bourbon Street revellers in his documentary. Somehow, they’re all too wasted to give him the obvious answer: they’re made in China, by young women who get paid pennies for the colorful trinkets. Is there really anybody who couldn’t have guessed that? Redmon is clearly fascinated by this particular paradox of globilization: sweatshop labor on one hand, over-the-top partying and “Girls Gone Wild” madness on the other. The inflated value the beads assume on the streets of New Orleans during Mardi Gras adds another spin: for a few days, the cheap plastic beads are important enough for women to bare their breasts and men to drop their pants over–and come Ash Wednesday, it’s all trash.

There’s a good 10 minute TV news report hiding in this 72-minute film, but Redmon doesn’t have much to say other than pointing out the systemic unfairness over and over again. For a profoundly mindblowing documentary about the vexing topic of globalization, see Darwin’s Nightmare instead.

Badass.

Oh god quick, Jack Lemmon has taken over the malfunctioning nuclear power plant! Somebody get that muckraker Michael Douglas with his woolly beard, and tell him to bring sexy Jane Fonda! Dated but pretty freakin fun entertainment. I suspect for people our age, there’s something reassuring in watching 70s movies–like it’s some golden time before everything went to hell (even though this is all about disaster narrowly averted.)

Wim Wender’s first collaboration with Sam Shepard since Paris, Texas is just what you’d expect, and better: sons searching for their fathers, fathers looking for meaning, Jessica Lange acting up a storm, all before a Marlboro-commercial Western backdrop. It’s a better version of Broken Flowers, really–who knew Shepard could be funnier than Bill Murray?

I rented this when it came out but this was in the middle of Saving Private Ryan and that whole Greatest Generation bullcrap, so I didn’t give it half a chance. Well, I stand corrected: The Thin Red Line is powerful stuff, and rarely has the absurdity of war struck me quite as viscerally. I mean, why don’t these guys just take off their uniforms and chill instead of butchering each other? Nature is certainly lush enough, and the upside-down fruit bats are watching you. Some of the death scenes are absolutely wrenching; at one point last night I had to take a break to cheer myself up. I’ll also say this: the distilled goodness of this three-hour movie is contained in the battle scene from The New World. The new film subsumes and surpasses this one. Now I’ll work my way backwards through Malick and see exactly how he got to Pocahontas.