Best of 2014

2014 was a such a great year for me in terms of movie watching. I started volunteering at an art house theatre again, so I've been able to see far more and better movies than I managed to in past years. I didn't see as many movies at the 2014 VIFF, since I had family visiting while it was on, but I still got in 30+.

Thinking on what I saw this year that impressed me most, I keep coming back to Le Sel de La Terre, (The Salt of the Earth), which is actually a documentary about the reknowned photographer, Sebastião Salgado. It's somewhat a false dichotomy to pit docs against fictional fare, but for sure documentaries are impressing me more than the nonfic films lately, and I don't think that's because I'm seeing bad movies either. Seems like more resources are spent to less effect making shitty movies, but that's a whole other subject. Primarily written and directed by Salgado's son, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, with Wim Wenders, Salt is a gorgeous, gorgeous film, that has devastating insight into the problems facing humanity. What's more important, it offers hope and solutions too, principally through showing the efforts of one man. Granted, most of us don't have as much personal wealth, social pull and power, to work with as he does, but it's definitely inspiring to see what he has done with his sway. The world and society aren't doomed, and that you can make a difference, is what I came away with. I missed the beginning, which I don't think matters much in my evaluation either.  I just missed out on more awesome examples of Salgado's premier photojournalism.  I can't wait until I get a chance to see it in it's entirety, I only wish it could be at the Performing Arts Centre's humungo screen again.

In terms of fictional films, I saw sooooo many good ones. Birdman, Dance of Reality, The Editor, Force Majeure, Foxcatcher, Grand Budapest Hotel, Locke, Mommy, Nightcrawler, Nymphomaniac, Snowpiercer, Under The Skin, and Whiplash, are some of the standouts released this year that I managed to see, and I saw a lot of older films that were awesome too. Finally got to see Touch of Evil! Not to forget the Cronenberg and Jodorowsky stuff I was missing, plus I got a few more Godard films under my belt as well.

I saw a ton of good docs too, volunteering at a documentary festival definitely helped my numbers there ;) 69: Love, Sex, Senior, 1971, 20,000 Days on Earth, Advanced Style, Art and Craft, A Brony Tale, The Case Against 8, Crazywater, A Fragile Trust, Freak Out!, Huicholes: The Last Peyote Guardians, Honour Your Word, The Internet's Own Boy, Jodorowsky's Dune, Life Itself, Mirage Men, The Overnighters, Plot for Peace, The Red Army, The Reunion, Whitey: The United States vs James J. Bulger, are the best that I can recall at the moment.

My top 2014 regular movie pick is Wild though, and I notice while it's not a documentary, it is a dramatization based on a true story - the memoir that Cheryl Strayed wrote about her epic 1800 km hike along the Pacific Coast Trail.  It's my top choice because it's one of the films that had the most emotional resonance for me, and also because it had a very humanist theme of acceptance.  Plus, visually it's practically 100% camping porn.  I think Reese Witherspoon has a good shot at taking home an Oscar for her performance.

Perhaps films based around real life experiences are simply bound to have more profound and relatable emotional payoffs.

I loved the soundtrack too.

Since I've been watching more and BETTER flicks, I've noticed I generally have less desire to articulate my opinions on them.  I don't know if that's because I have less time to so, what with seeing more altogether, and having time taken up by work too - probably both. In any case, I've decided I'll make time to at least keep track of every film I see and post a trailer or poster pic, even if I don't express any judgements about them.  This is my film nerdery rising up I guess, but there's something oh so satisfying about making lists, and documenting your actions.


I have yet to see these 2014 offerings: A Most Violent Year, A Most Wanted Man, Accused, American Sniper, Annie, Begin Again, Belle, Beyond The Lights, Big Hero 6, Black or White, The Book of Life, The Boxtrolls, Cake, Calvary, Camp Xray, Cheatin', CitizenFour, Corn Island,  Dear White People, The Drop,  Elsa & Fred, End of the Tour, The Equalizer, Exodus, The Fault in Our Stars, Fort Bliss, Fury, The Gambler, Get On Up,  Goodbye to Language, The Guide, The Homesman, How to Train Your Dragon 2, The Humbling, The Hundred Foot Journey,  The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, Inherent Vice, The Judge, Kill The Messenger,  Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter, Leviathan, Love is Strange, Low Down, Magic in the Moonlight, Mateo, Men Women and Children, Miss Julie, Mr. Turner, My Old Lady,  Obvious Child, Olvidados, The One I Love, Pride, The Railway Man, The Rover, Rio 2,  St Vincent, Selma, Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks, Song of the Sea, Still Alice, Two Days, One Night,  Tangerines, Timbuktu, To Kill a Man, Top Five, The Tribe, Unbroken, Wetlands, White Bird in a Blizzard, White God, and Winter Sleep, among others.

So good movies and the opportunity to opine on them abound in my queue still. :)

Awful Normal

directed by Celesta Davis (2004)

Another documentary about sexual abuse, but this one focuses on the survivors rather than the perpetrator.  It's made by Celesta Davis and documents the process she goes through in coming to terms with her personal experiences with childhood sexual abuse.  She and her sister were both molested by a family friend and when they told their parents, the parents decided to simply ignore the abuse, which apparently was a fairly common practise in the swinging 70's.  Perhaps it was the permissive attitude around the sexual revolution that contributed to that, but I think it's more that childhood sexual abuse was a taboo subject that people didn't deal with very well. Anyhow, the impetus for the documentary came when Celesta learns via a news announcement over the radio that the son of her abuser was arrested for some kind of sex crime. She then decides to confront her abuser and to film everything along the way.
 
I watched this one on Netflix, via my ipod, while lolling in bed.  Lounging that is - I wasn't inclined to laugh out loud much while watching this flick.  I haven't watched many movies on the ipod, though it's pretty convenient.  Anyhow, I have a personal stake in the subject of the film, since I'm also a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, but I don't particularly agree with the process the sisters utilise.  I have no interest in having anything to do with my abuser.  I don't think I'd get anything out of it except stress, but the sisters, especially Celeste are convinced of the validity of meeting up with their abuser.  For them it was a good idea, but I thought the idea was gross.

The sisters do eventually get to talk with the guy and it made my skin crawl.  Celesta feels much better after the confrontation, and that made me wonder.  Did she have to meet up with him to have that closure?  What is closure anyway?  Can't you find peace about how you've been hurt without having to engage with the person who hurt you?  Isn't it giving the abuser more power if you let them run a number on you about why they did what they did?  Who cares why?  What they did was wrong, and they suck.  Leave it at that.  I think engaging with someone is only important if you want to continue a relationship with them, and let's face it, who wants to continue a relationship with the person who violated them?

I can understand wanting to unload to your abuser, and explicitly state how much they hurt you.  I support restorative justice and victim offender reconciliation processes.  I think though, that it's important for survivors to realise that it might not be very satisfying to interact with the person that hurt you.  Perhaps they will justify their actions or deny your feelings and experiences.

The  hope is that it's a healing encounter; the survivor says their piece, giving them peace of mind,  and the offender is forced to hear out the impact of their actions, and come face to face with the repercussion of their actions and be held accountable.  In optimal circumstances, the abuser is moved to sincere contrition and apologises, and the survivor is able to forgive them and move on.  But who cares about them, is how I feel personally.  You dun what you dun, and I'm done with you.  Maybe this is harsh, but from the perspective of a victim, the drama of dealing with an abuser doesn't offer much incentive since there's so much rumination over the abuse.  I think it can be psychologically damaging to focus attention on how someone hurt you, but I expect it's part of a process to recontextualise that past experience.  I simply question the necessity of including the perpetrator in that process.  It could just be my knee jerk reaction though, because it's fairly easy for me to not have anything to do with my abuser.  Perhaps this means I'm locked in some kind of eternal victimhood, but I don't think so.  I survived a terrible experience that plagued me for a good many years.  It happened to me when I was a little girl and I can't change that.  But lots of bad things have happened to me.  Lots of good things too.  My perspective now, is to try not to focus on the bad things.

I understand that survivors and offenders still have to live in the same world and restorative justice acknowledges that and attempts to make that a less painful reality.  One positive element of is this kind of interaction, aside from the possibility of it bringing peace to both the survivors and offenders, is that it might preclude further victims.   I'm dubious about that being a realistic outcome, but hope springs eternal. 

Stevie

directed by Steve James (2002)

What happens to the people we leave behind?

Steve James signed on with the Big Brother program when he was in college in the 1990's.  He and Stevie, (Stephen Fielding), established a bond when the boy was 11.  James finished college and moved on, but he didn't forget about Stevie.  This documentary is about him reconnecting with his "Little Brother", 10 years later.

I was about ready to throw in the towel pretty early on because the documentary felt exploitive of the disparities between a well to do film maker versus his simple minded rural redneck "Little Brother".   Then bam! Stevie is accused of molesting an 8 year old relative while babysitting.  What!?  Did we just enter the sordid zone?  Damn sure became compelling viewing after that revelation.  I couldn't stop watching.

Especially riveting are the interviews with Stevie's aunt, the mother of the victim. Her righteous anger is contrasted with some compassionate statements later on, and that is precisely what makes the documentary interesting.  It presents a fairly dispassionate viewpoint by illustrating the dynamics behind his upbringing,  and showcasing Stevie as he is:  a victim and victimizer both. Stevie wasn't a monster born in a vacuum;  it took a whole lot of abuse and neglect to create a man lacking the empathy and morals that would make committing such a terrible crime impossible.  His mother and grandmother are shown behaving badly with regards to him and each other. You hear about how his mom never wanted him and how horribly she treated him. The neglect and abuse is heightened when compared to the daughter she did look after, though the mom is no candidate for mother of the year with her regards to her daughter either.

Another really good sequence is when Stevie and his girlfriend Tonya, visit Chicago. Tonya is a sweet girl, and both Stevie and her have disability related incomes but they are talking about getting married even though that would affect both of their SSI monies.  In the city, they stay with Tricia, one of Tonya's high school friends. Tricia has cerebral palsy, which makes it a bit hard to understand her, but she's straight to the point with Tonya, and asks if he did it - sexually abused his cousin.  Tonya equivocates, but admits, yeah, there's evidence.  Tricia then talks about what happened to her personally with sexual abuse or assault, I'm not sure what but, Tonya knows what she's gone through in terms of bringing her abuser to justice.  Tricia may have a hard time enunciating, but she is super articulate on her own devastating experience.  She's compassionate towards Stevie, but she's first and foremost, Tonya's friend, and she prods Tonya to think about what kind of man Stevie actually is before taking steps towards marrying him.

Then there's the bizarre sequence with members of the Aryan Nation that had me shaking my head.  It takes all kinds I guess.

Stevie's had a sad, circumscribed, life and the tragedy is that it appears to have been an entirely avoidable corruption of his potential.  If he had been raised by people who loved and nurtured him, who knows what kind of man he might have been.  There's a part where the director puts Stevie in touch with a foster parent couple who were caring, and who Stevie obviously felt loved by, but they also talk about how they stopped Stevie from getting raped a few times when he was in the group home where they worked.  The implication being that they weren't able to protect him all the time, and for sure weren't able to protect him once they stopped working in that group home.

I felt really sad after I watched this.  I don't know that I can make a convincing argument that Stevie was exploited by the director, but I feel like he was.  It was inherently voyeuristic and I felt a bit of shame that I was being entertained watching this real life Jerry Springer show.  The fact that I feel simultaneously revolted and sympathetic towards Stevie means the director did a good job, though I don't think he deserves any commendations for deciding to make the documentary in the first place.  What was the point?  To illustrate how a system that fails kids creates adults who end up in jail?  I think that fact is well established, and this particular documentary doesn't bring anything but anecdote to that discussion.  The best thing that can result from this film, as the director in the interviw below states, paraphrasing Stevie's sister, "There are other families like hers out there, and this film might be able to help them."  While this is true, knowing there are other people who have gone through the same problems does make it easier somehow to bear up under that burden,  the film still feels sleazy and that potential benefit to society comes at the expense of a man who seemingly lacks the intellect to understand what he was getting into with the whole film making process.

Stevie was abused and neglected from the time he was born, and what he had to endure growing up can be seen as a blueprint for him becoming a criminal and a sex offender.  Instead of being reared in a safe environment he was tossed around and tormented, instead of being cherished and loved he was told how worthless he was and abandoned.  This documentary is an indictment of both the biological caregivers who failed him, as well as the social services that are supposed to step in to protect children from abuse and neglect.  Stevie never really had a chance.   He's a prime example of "falling through the cracks" in the social safety net.  I'm not trying to make excuses for his appalling behaviour, but seeing how he was raised, well it's more like he was trained on how to be a bad person than a decent one.

Maybe I am reactionary when it comes to my dislike of this film, but I don't think so.  If you took out the sexual abuse angle and showed Stevie being a run of the mill underacheiver, guilty of less heinous crimes, it would maybe feel even more exploitive, because then you wouldn't have his being a sex offender helping you to overlook and justify the fact that his squalid circumstances and entirely all too common life story are being shown as much for people's amusement as for any overarcing societal benefit.  Perhaps I'm being too cynical, but I really feel that many people watching this will do it with a disdainful eye, looking down with a perspective of superiority and disgust, at hillbilly rurals they judge to be their lessers.  Compassion for folk in dissimilar circumstances can be hard to come by.

I'm trying to seperate my feelings about Stevie in particular, from my feelings about the film as a whole.  I think it's guilty of the American fallacy of focusing on the individual and not seeing the forest for the trees.  It doesn't extrapolate Stevie's circumstances to the innumerable children in the exact same shoes as him, leaving that step up to the viewers.  It's an obvious conclusion though, so I hope viewers will come away with a sense of outrage that prompts more than the kneejerk conservative reaction towards criminals - lock 'em all up and throw away the key.  My hope is that they'll be putting it all together and thinking about the reasons why little kids grow up to become criminals, and that will make them want to make the world a better place, especially for children at risk.

 IMO, universal social programs as well as programs that target vulnerable populations are among the most effective ways to make sure kids are helped before they are damaged.  Once they're messed up, it's much harder to repair them, but it's not impossible.  Attempts made to heal kids who've been victimized by violence and neglect would reap so many benefits for society as a whole, not to mention for the abused kids who grow up and presumably make the same mistakes parenting their children.  The cycle will continue indefinitely, if we don't target money so kids are supported in ways that preclude them growing up to be prisoners.   I believe that, generally speaking, spending money on prisons is a misallocation of resources that should have been spent earlier - on child devlopment and societal structural supports.  That's a much better value for our dollar and would create a much healthier society.

trailer

The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

directed by Morgan Spurlock (2011)

Sell sell sell!!! Buy buy buy!! Would you like brands with that?

Supersize Me Spurlock makes a documentary about branding and product placement, by explicating the process.  That's the whole enchilada.  He films everything, his research, interviews with ad men and agents, the pitch sessions to the various companies he lands time with,  and so on. 

It's a simple idea and effectively shows how compromised the end result naturally is, because companies won't give money to anything that challenges the image they are trying to create, nor to their bottom line.  They don't care about art at all.  What they want is to create desire for their product.  Whatever kind of media that takes on sponsors, or product placement, is completely beholden to the sponsors, and the companies are comfortable demanding changes that fit their ideas of  how their product should be showcased.  It becomes a case of the tail wagging the dog, because money talks and the companies make sure to spell every aspect of what they want in the contract before the filmmakers get paid.  And what's crazy is this is the norm, and it doesn't sound unreasonable until you see how MUCH of it is going on in every business everywhere, and it's even infiltrating the public sector. 

Advertising!!!!

It just might be teh devil.

My favourite part of the film is when he goes to São Paulo.  In 2007, advertising was banned.  It was amazing seeing a city without ads everywhere.  In interviews, business keepers explained that they've had to rely on word of mouth instead of ads to bring in business.  Commerce wasn't destroyed.  Advertising could be curtailed, but I don't think people are even aware of that possibility as something worth considering.

It's an interesting idea though.

 

Streetwise

directed by Martin Bell (1984)

I watched this after Robin Bougie shared a youtube link to on  Facebook, that unfortunately, no longer works.  I found another one, but the links below will no longer take you to the scene I was describing.

I'd heard of it before and had just recently come across again a few months back and thought hmmm...this will make me feel like shit if I watch it, and I passed.  I can't hardly stand these docs about throwaway kids.  Hits too close to home.  I had a cry right as it started and again a couple few times through.  Had to stop watching for a bit and eat summat.  Eggs and Halal bacon which is crap, so not bacon.  Tastes like those Carl Buddig paper thin luncheon meats fried up.  I think if you're gonna go that route, screw the halal faux bacon business and go straight for the NDN steak, fried bologna, and don't forget to slash your slice in to the centre so you get a disc done up looks like a pac man pieface.  wakawaka

Ok, the thing that gets to me the most is that these kids have nobody looking out for them but each other. The adults, society, have totally failed them.  Every scene with their parents is tragic.

The dad wants to do right by his kid, but he's in jail! Oh the irony of don't smoke too much as he lights up.

 Nobody should be having to live such a hardscrabble existence, and especially not kids.  The system is down.  They get no respect, even and especially from the people whose jobs are to help them. Like wtf is up with the social worker guy walking into the girl's apartment and hassling her and her boyfriend while they're naked wrapped in towels?  Who does that! Where's the common courtesy to deal with her on a basis of, I'll give you a moment to get dressed before we talk?

Whatever though, because that's fairly trivial, and just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to lack of respect.  Besides, it's not just him who's failing the kids. The system failed their parents too, and on to the next generation, and so on, rinse and repeat. When you see people who are living on the street, it's hard to make excuses for that situation existing.  We've obviously failed our obligations to each other and our future, and created an underclass who struggle against terrible odds.  The system is geared towards criminalising survival behaviour that only exists because the safety net that should be there has failed, and when the kids can't jump over the hurdles, and through the hoops, they think they are the failures, not that deck is hugely stacked against them.  We've created a society where way too many don't have even a reasonable expectation of thriving and I don't know that another homeless shelter or non-profit soup kitchen stop gap solution is gonna do much to reverse this situation.

Ugh.  My heart hurts.

What happened to them after? (Obvious spoilers)

More about Tiny  and clips from Erin, a 2004 followup doc on Tiny.

A Fathead American In A Better Parisian World

 Fat Head directed by Tom Naughton (2009)

In A Better World directed by Susanne Bier (2010)

I watched both of these on Netflix. Fat Head actually prompted me midway though, to drop watching and go get my free birthday burger at Red Robin, and I'm grateful for that, because if I hadn't seen the guy about to chow down on a massive Wendy's double cheeseburger, I wouldn't have tasted the Red Robin's beautiful Blue Ribbon burger. So good.

The documentary itself is a little harder to swallow. The guy is a pompous jerk. He was offended by the suspect methodology of Morgan Spurlock attacking McDonald's in his documentary Super Size Me, so what does he do? He uses a same kinda load the deck process so it will deal out the answers he wants - that you can lose weight eating fast food. Sure you can, so what? Yeah you showed that bastard Spurlock.

Petty and silly and dishonest. He did share some food wisdom, but most of it was garbage, and especially his libertarian stance was annoying.

A more thought out and better criticism on this blog here.

Then I watched A Better Tomorrow? No, In A Better World. Damn, it works much better and is more memorable in the original Danish title Haeven - which translates as Revenge.

This is what won the 2010 Best Foreign Language Oscar. I've finally seen all of them; Biutiful, Dogtooth, Incendies, and.... ooops I actually haven't seen them all - Outside The Law is the outlier. Still I totally wouldn't have picked this if I'd been on the jury and watched all 5. It's kinda trite and melodramatic. The acting is good. The fact that one family is Swedish, living in Denmark and were victims of xenophobic bigotry, was lost on me until it was literally happening on the screen. But the plot was meh.

I'm slamming on this after the fact, and disliking flaws in the plot, but that really was the weakest part. It resolved very cleanly and all happy like. Joe made a point of saying Denmark has such an equitable, cooperative and pleasant society that it's hard for them to make a movie with conflict. They had to go to Africa to create a real bad guy and he was over the top evil. I didn't like the symmetry of the Big Man sociopath in the unnamed African country and his brutal murderous violence contrasting with that of the schoolyard bully in Denmark. The one vigilante kid reminded me of a nascent Batman. I wonder if that was intentional, a little joke maybe, naming his character Christian because the vengeful boy looked like Christian Bale. Probably it was more to do with the judgemental, rigid, and punitive beliefs held by most Christians.

I guess even in the "better world" there is nasty inhumanity. I dunno. It was pretty good. I just think Biutiful or Incendies was better.

I started watching An American In Paris. I like musicals. But the plot kinda squicked me the way it has dancer man Gene Kelly, aggressively pursuing the girl. It's merely a sign of the times, and demonstrates how openly sexist things you used to be. I guess they still are. I'll hold back my judgement until I watch the whole thing.