African Cats

First Hit:  Unfortunately some great shots don’t make up for an unrealistic full life view of these great cats.

Where were the female lions on the northern side of the river? Are they gone? Is this why the 4 mail lions came to the South side of the river?

The humanizing dialogue by Samuel L. Jackson would lead us to believe that these four males just wanted to conquer the pride on the south side. Where was the male Cheetah who impregnated the female who had 5 young babies? What is the family structure of Cheetahs? The hunt for food was very sanitized. Where was the biting and holding of the neck which Cheetahs use to kill their prey?

The fight of the female lions against the four invading males where was it? If creating and protecting life was the point, then where was the propagation? Although the some of the slow motion shots of cheetahs running were fantastic along with other beautifully choreographed shots of the land and animals, this film lacked a realistic full life-cycle of these magnificent African Cats.

Samuel L. Jackson’s voice was soothing and wonderful; too bad he didn’t have much film to work with to create some real magic. Alastair Fothergill and Keith Scholey directed this film and given the end product they either were told to sanitize it or take the life out of it by Disney. Or maybe the directors just didn’t know how vanilla this film comes across.

Overall: A boring Sunday evening big screen video with some 6 year olds.

Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer

First Hit: Could have been good, but it dragged and meandered.

I had heard of Spitzer as he started cleaning up problems as Manhattan’s District Attorney. He brought down the Gambino Crime Family.

Then as New York State’s Attorney General he went after white collar crime. He was hard-nosed, arrogant and efficient at prosecuting criminals. However, he got caught up in his own stuff and was caught hiring high priced prostitutes for his own pleasure (he was referred to as “Client 9”) and ended up leaving office.

The idea of this film was to give some in-depth background to how all this happened. The film did this in many different ways but was shallow. I never really got the gist of who this guy is or was.

Although there is plenty of interview screen time, I felt Spitzer was guarded and defensive in all his responses with little transparency. We’d heard about his famous temper but only a couple of the other interviewees actually told their experience.

Alex Gibney wrote and directed this but he did not create an interesting or cohesive story.

Overall: Not really worth the time to watch this film. You can get a good view by reading Wikipedia.

Freakonomics

First Hit: Rarely interesting, mostly dull and not very engaging.

There are 6 different directors vying to deliver 4 different vignettes, the film's transition segments and the overall film which is based on the book Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner.

The first thing that takes away from the seriousness of the film is the demeanor of Levitt and Dubner. There is a casualness and cavalier way about them that actually takes away from any good research or science they might have wanted to share.

The most engaging piece having to do with the corruption of Sumo Wrestling that starts to lead down a trail interest and then fizzles out altogether.

Overall: Lacks the integrity of good science and film making and therefore ends up being something worth missing.

Howl

First Hit: Excellent way to present one of the most powerful modern day poems.

I tried reading Howl some 30 years ago and just couldn’t get into it. Outside of an e.e. cummings poem called “somewhere I have never traveled”; there are few poems I related to.

Walking into the theater I was hoping to gain a better understanding of a landmark poem, known for its obscenities, the ensuing obscenity trial, and as a marker for “the beat generation.”

This film is shot in a wide variety of ways with it moving from one style to another. There are the interview sections whereas James Franco plays Allen Ginsberg being interviewed. The interview feels intimate because it takes place in Ginsberg’s apartment and he play Ginsberg as relaxed and at home.

Then there are the intermittent sections where Ginsberg is premiering his poem at Six Gallery a small nightclub where the audience seems to hang on every word.

Another way the director expresses the poem’s meaning is through animation which at times is interesting and other times distracting. Then there are the court scenes. Here Lawrence Ferlinghetti (played by Andrew Rogers), is on trial for publishing obscene material (Howl).

Through these different types of scenes and venues, the director is piecing together the social significance of Howl as setting a landmark of the Beat Generation. However, the club scenes, although try to look like the 50’s, don’t really feel like them. The court scenes were adequately performed but felt constrained.

The animation was both helpful but created wide stylistic mood swings in the film. The interview was the most effective at learning who Ginsberg was and how he came to write Howl.

However, the overall feeling walking out of the theater and the next day was that I did see the power and intellectual beauty in the writing of this poem.

Franco was totally believable as Ginsberg. There was nothing false about his performance, whether it was the reading of Howl at its premier or during the interview as he uncovered his life and how he came to write Howl. Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman co-wrote and co-directed this film and it did feel like there was not a singular focus.

Overall: I was happy to learn to more about Howl and Ginsberg and in this realm the film did its job.

The Agony and Ecstasy of Phil Spector

First Hit: What I loved about this film was the sound track, it was the music of my teen years but understanding what Spector is really about is more complex.

Phil (Phillip) Spector is not beyond telling you, the audience, that he is great and belongs in a group of people that includes Da Vinci, Galileo, and Bach. He sees himself as providing more of an impact in music than Bob Dylan or Paul McCartney. He claims he doesn’t have an ego, and his words belie him.

This film is an interview of Spector during his trial for murdering Lana Clarkson who was an actress / model he picked up one night while clubbing in LA/Hollywood. He talks about how the judge is out to get him, that he isn’t respected by people and many people in the music business.

He says that Tony Bennett had this huge drug problem but because his lot in life is a good one, no one demeans him for it. While he gets demonized for his stands on issues and the idiosyncrasies of his behavior.

He states that he accepts his lot in life and there are moments in the film one can believe he means what he says, but then he’ll say something that points in another direction and you think he is full of hog wash. Spector, regardless of what one thinks, is an interesting person who lives his truth his way. Regardless of his behavior, one thing is true, he produced come amazing music and wrote a number of musical hits himself.

The license plate on his car tells you how Phil thinks of Phil; it says “I(heart)PHIL”.

During the interview, there are snippets of his trial for murder. As an audience member you don’t get to see or hear much of the ongoing trial but the look on his face is at times telling and at other times haunting – you just wonder what’s going on in his head.

Vikram Jayanti directed this filmed interview and frankly did a very credible job of it. I couldn’t help but think Spector paid for the film to be made to get his point out, about how great he really is, but I don’t know.

Overall: The music was wonderful and gave the audience a snippet of where Phil came from and how he got there.