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All Is Lost (2013)
All Is Lost on the complaining viewers
All Is Lost on the complaining viewers who have probably never been in harms way — never found themselves facing alone an existential threat — who are seemingly unable to understand how easily an impetuous act, or just a little carelessness can cause calamity when one too casually, recklessly ventures off out of their unnatural nest into Nature... and unable to imagine why an old man might set out sea without every electronic gadget available.
The viewers who have criticized Our Man's "incompetence" clearly fail to appreciate how calmly and competently he responded to the cascading calamity his arrogant lack of preparation delivered him into... implying his possession of a strong, confidently responsible character developed through considerable life experience in having overcome many past adversities that didn't likely involve sailing.
All Is Lost's Our Man does have a back story. The film subtly reveals it with the opening narration of his letter of apology, and through his persistent ingenuity in overcoming his weaknesses. The film's subtlety does require a viewer to have both an active imagination, and some actual life experience to fully appreciate its story told without dependence upon an enormous display of virtual unreality.
It's so rare to find such subtlety in a movie that doesn't require English subtitles.
My Complaint: The Hand deserved a cast credit.
The Half Life of Timofey Berezin (2006)
finding a best use for nuclear waste
Based on a Ken Kalfus short story, Pu-239, published in 1999.
Pu-239 was writer/director, Scott Burns, 1st movie. It's a character driven little gem, produced on a small budget, but delivering a far better product than Hollywood's money driven movies can.
Shot in Romania and Russia, with a low cost pickup cast and crew, Pu-239 , with dark humor, very engagingly explores how uncontainable the hazard of nuclear waste can become in an amoral gangster governed, collapsing society... and, in its karmic justice ending, Pu-239 suggests how nuclear waste might be packaged for best use distribution.
Viewers should understand that when the Soviet Union collapsed, it began to earnestly emulate America, Inc.
A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash (2006)
If this doesn't awake them, they ain't awakeable!
Those whom the documentary "A Crude Awakening" fails to awaken now, to the fast approaching consequences of peaked oil depletion, at a time of unprecedented, and ever growing demand, just may not be awakeable, or won't likely wake up before it's too late.
Unlike that other much hyped Hollywood liberal misappropriation of the catastrophic global warming issue, to serve the personal needs of one disingenuous politician, "A Crude Awakening" is a Swiss production, that employs a broad range of viewpoints, from 27 scientists and energy experts, who's collective opinions all provide greater credibility to the message.
There's enough information concisely crammed into this one and half hour film for it to be the basis of a full semester's self-directed course of study... perhaps several semesters. In the special features, included on the DVD version, there is an extra chapter on the problems of petrostates, and four extended interviews with the following experts:
Colin Campbell: Oil geologist; consultant to numerous oil companies; and founder of ASPO www.peakoil.net
Matt Simmons: Energy investment analyst; author of "Twilight in the Desert"
Fadhil Chalabi: Former Acting Secretary-General of OPEC; and former Iraqi Oil Minister
David L. Goodstein: Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at the California Institute of Technology
While many viewing this documentary might perceive its realistic appraisal of the demise of cheap and abundant energy as pessimistic, I consider it to be objectively quite optimistic, considering that it did not linger long on the very inconvenient truth that there are over six billion people wanting to have a petroleum based high standard of living, that can't possibly be sustained for much longer, even if there were only two billion people wanting it. "Civilization" has only ever had one answer for that kind of problem. The thin thread that "A Crude Awakening" seems to hang its optimism on is the assumption that if enough people become fully aware of this totally unavoidable event sooner, rather than later, then human ingenuity, combined with a level of human cooperation the world has never before seen, might possibly attenuate the consequences for at least some of those who awaken.
An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
An Inescapable Truth
I saw "An Inconvenient Truth" on DVD the other night. In that documentary, Al Gore argues two cases. One well, and the other... not so much.
The talented film crew (see "The Making of..." in the DVD's extra features) provided a truly impressive communications capability to Gore, for him to sell something that shouldn't and wouldn't need that much salesmanship, if we had a society with a government capable of making reasoned based decisions. Not having such, this film is an important means of communicating what is most definitely a message of existential importance, which I will phrase a bit more forcefully than Gore: If we don't stop what we have been doing to kill the planet, the planet will kill us.
Gore's second argument appeared to be his primary motivation: His not so well done attempt to subliminally convince viewers that he is our hope, the lone ranger political Messiah, who will save the planet, and us with it. Both his action and in-action, when he was the "Environmental Vice-President" serve to negate his clumsy political self-advertisement attempt. He claims to have given his "Inconvenient Truth" lecture "a thousand times." He didn't give it on primetime TV, from the Naval Observatory (Vice-President's residence). He didn't give it in Kyoto. When he was empowered, he didn't serve the good.
Some have criticized the smallness of the little things artfully suggested in the documentary's closing credits, which individuals might do to make themselves a little less a part of the problem of Global Warming. However, the inescapable truth is that those in power -- whether red or blue -- will continue to destroy the planet, and the only serious counterbalance will be the little things we little people will do.
What Clinton-Gore proved beyond any reasonable doubt is that, in the very best light -- the most polite characterization -- the more "electable" of the two electoral non-choices provided by corporate entities, in their elections of deception, will do what should not be done, and will not do what should be done.
In November of 2008, I will not be pulling a top lever for a white man, a black man, or a white woman, of which none of whom will have any intent to do good with power. The sociopathic and malevolent non-human entities which own all of them would never allow anyone of them, that might have good intentions, to advance beyond a major party primary. I won't be voting red or blue, white or black. I will be voting Green. And if there is no Green candidate for POTUS, then my vote will be counted among one of the Board of Elections' euphemisms for votes cast for "None of the Above" (Blank, Scattered, Void).
The War Within (2005)
A "Battle of Algiers" for our time
"The War Within" (2005) is "The Battle of Algiers" (1965) for our time. Like that earlier masterwork of political film making, this movie is surely being viewed in the classrooms of our military's war colleges... for all the wrong reasons.
In this low budget movie, the neophyte film makers have presented a story that has no wasted moves. It is at once as exquisitely well crafted - and as accessible - as a Robert Frost poem.
Aside from those who harbor their own fundamentalist racist ideology - that might think the only good Muslim is a dead one - those who have criticized this movie generally fall into two categories: people who can't appreciate anything shorter in exposition than a 24 hour miniseries; and people without imagination, who require - or desire - lengthy, explicit depictions of torture, like that of "The Passion of Christ" (2004), in order for them to grasp how years of such abuse might affect a person's psyche.
Buy this movie! Show it to those you know, who are yet unable to understand that torture is immoral, and an unacceptable policy. Perhaps, in viewing this, they may at least come to a realization that the disappearing of people, and the torture of "suspects" is an ignorant, stupid and counterproductive policy - that is, assuming your government's intent is to reduce terrorism, rather than cultivate it.
Winterschläfer (1997)
A question of ultimate responsibility...an answer of Karma-like justice.
Winter Sleepers is exquisitely designed, for an intelligent adult audience. It requires patience, attention to detail, and some thought process; a movie that a group of people could actually engage in a discussion about. It has a Zen-like quality, with no wasted words, or moves. Through artful misdirection, the viewer is allowed to see all, while knowing little...leading to misperceptions. Characters and their relationships are revealed with poetic conciseness. I have been thinking much about this story, long after seeing it. Winter Sleepers prompts me to question many things.