Lake of Fire - Tony Kaye - 2006

An even handed documentary about abortion from the director of American History X. There is a heavy focus on the bombing of abortion clinics and the murder or abortionists. Philosopher Peter Singer offers his expert opinion on the morality of abortion. He is one of the best people you could get to talk about this topic. Noam Chomsky is also among many valuable contributors. We see extremely graphic footage of abortions but we also see the implements used by desperate women when abortion is illegal and a graphic photo of a woman who died when a self-administered abortion went wrong. We see the crying woman after her successful abortion. Two and a half hours but it never feels overlong. Definitive.

5/5

Hell House - George Ratliff - 2001

Every Halloween the Trinity Church in Dallas puts on a show that depicts people sinning (Columbine style school shootings, drug taking etc) with Satan goading them on, their bloody deaths and their torment in hell as a warning to the audience. They get over 10,000 visitors every year. It's worth watching for over-the-top scenes of amateur actors playing homosexual AIDS patients or undergoing overly-bloody abortions. It doesn't justify a feature length running time (we see the auditions, the scripting, the rehearsals, the set painting). Jesus Camp is a far more enjoyable movie about a similar group of people.

3/5

This Film Is Not Yet Rated - Kirby Dick - 2005

In the United States the people responsible for rating movies (the MPAA) are kept totally anonymous. It would make sense to include psychologists capable of judging the potential psychological harm of a movie and film experts who are able to judge the artistic merit of the films they are rating. This does not seem to be the case in America. Finding out who these people are is the main focus of the film. Kirby has gone for the Michael Moore/Nick Broomfield style of film-making. It becomes a documentary about making a documentary rather than just about its ostensible subject. We get plenty of boring scenes of private investigators trying to find out who is on the MPAA ratings board.

Slightly more interesting is the discussion with film-makers, who mostly just complain that some of their films got R rated. It shows that sexual content is rated higher than violent content and that films with homosexual content are rated higher than those with only heterosexual sexual content.

One of the talking heads refers to film classification (not censorship, just ratings) as 'fascist' without a hint of hyperbole. Kirby Dick seems to agree. I enjoyed the directors earlier film Bob Flanagan Supermasochist and have an interest in censorship. However, this is a lousy and totally unbalanced movie.

1/5

The End of America - Naomi Wolf- 2008

Naomi Wolf has written some decent books and articles about feminism and pornography. This film, based on her book of the same name argues that America is turning into a fascist state. Emblematic of her thinking- She sees it as significant that there was once apparently an organisation in Nazi Germany called Schwarzwasser and now the US has Blackwater.
It is as ludicrous and paranoid as the wingnuts referring to Barack Obama as a communist.

The Case of Josh Wolf (no relation to Naomi) is brought up in the movie to show eroding press freedom. Josh Wolf had video footage that could have identified arsonists at a protest but chose not to give his footage after it was subpoenaed and therefor ended up in jail. This is most certainly not how this film recounts the story.

Readers of this blog are advised to watch Taxi to the Darkside, Standard Operating Procedure and Taking Liberties and to avoid The End of America at all costs.

0/5

We Live In Public- Ondi Timoner- 2009

I decided to watch this because it is by the director of Dig! and is certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. It is about a strange geeky man named Josh Harris. The main focus is on a project of his which was basically a pretentious arty version of Big Brother before Big Brother, populated by weirdos, depressives, drug addicts and psychologically damaged people instead of celebrity wannabes. When this project began, living your life on screen was a novel concept. Now with the glut of 'reality' TV the subject of this film is entirely uninteresting, although it is far more visceral than any MTV style show.

1/5

Why We Fight- Eugene Jarecki-2005

This film was a mainstream release with Jarecki being interviewed on Jon Steward and Charlie Rose. I am therefor surprised by its low quality. The nicest thing I can say is that it has some decent archive footage.

The talking heads consist of people we have already heard a lot from and whose opinions I do not rank Highly (John McCain, Gore Vidal, Richard Perle) as well as some nobodies. The film repeats what everybody already knows about the Iraq war with plenty of footage of dead and crying Iraqis, although no discussion or footage of Saddam era Iraq. There is some filler showing a young man signing up for the military and man-in-the-street opinions of 'why we fight' which are typically banal and pointless. We get told that precision weaponry is not that precise (correct but obvious).

What makes the film irredeemable is its clueless and paranoid discussion of think tanks. The film correctly points out that they are unaccountable to the voter. Journalists and writers of non-fiction books are also non-elected. All have the power to inform a politicians views. Think tanks span the entire political spectrum and have no power whatsoever unless a democratically elected politician decides to listen to them. Bizzarely this sinister talk of think tanks is partly expounded by a member of The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which is itself a think tank. The film sees something suspicious in Rumsfelds involvement with Project for a New American Century just because it consists of other neo-cons like him. The nadir of the film is surely the line 'What think tanks do is come up with rationalisations and new threats. Thats what they're paid to do.' The film then implies that Iran and North Korea are not legitimate threats.

You will not learn anything new about the military-industrial complex by watching this. The directors film of Christopher Hitchens book 'The Trials of Henry Kissinger' was far better. Unfortunately Hitchens, one of the more eloquent promoters of the Iraq war, is not featured in Why We Fight.

0/5