Sexytime in the Irish Hills?

I can identify with the characters in the film Nothing Personal. They are self-sufficient and solitary. One lives on a lonely island in Ireland, the other wanders around Europe like Forrest Gump. I can see pulling stunts like that. Personally, I plan on going Kerouac on everyone’s a-- for a couple of years someday.

Anne (Lotte Verbeek) is the wandering vagabond, scaring families by eating from garbage cans and truck drivers by faking insanity. She is almost feral. The film doesn’t fully explain her background, but she has abandoned her previous life. Anne finds Martin’s (Stephen Rea) house and begins to study him while camping out on his land.

At one point she breaks into his house and starts doing odd, child-like things to leave her scent on his possessions. When he shows interest in knowing her, she acts like a brat and wants to leave. Something tells her to stay. They make a food-for-work deal with a strict no intimacy clause.

The two eventually break through each other’s defenses. They spend days working side by side tending to the garden and moving dirt around, and arranging cute little fruit, bread and milk meals for each other. Maybe the film is trying to tell me something about the human experience?

I like how the film was shot, romanticizing the Irish hills and country, and the beautiful features and skin of Verbeek. The scenes are arranged into artsy close-ups, hands massaging sea weed into dirt or creeping closer and closer to each other, medium shots where both actors shine with nuanced expressions and body language, and overall shots of cold and lonely landscapes.

The story is character-based and not plot-based. There is a beginning, middle, and end, but I think writer/director Urszula Antoniak is encouraging viewers not to think too linearly, as flashes of text separate the film into chapters, but don’t exactly appear in familiar order.

The oddness of the characters and the small twists in the story make it a mostly enjoyable film. I don’t see mass market appeal for the story, though. It is too subtle and moves too slow. The central idea is that people need people, even though they may try to deny it by running or hiding themselves away.

I give Nothing Personal a C+. For me, the moral comes through a little too easy and clean in the story. I can appreciate the beautiful cinematography in the composition of shots, and the artful performances by the actors, but there seemed to be a spark missing from the film. I am going to be a harsh critic and blame it on tiny imperfections in the script.

Beast Mode

My dome just about exploded from watching Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance. I thought I was immune to the anime bug from my experience last week watching the first film in the four film series. That film was less bold. I think this film is a more accurate representation of what anime fans love about the genre.

Like the first movie, this one revolves around the young pilots of massive government built super-robots, and their defense of the planet from supernatural beings called angels.

The animation is very slick here. The opening sequence establishes what is to come with the brilliant rendering of a new pilot and a new machine, or Eva. The technology that is imagined in the cockpit is similar to that imagined in movies like Avatar where pilots are hooked up to move naturally and feel the pain in the bodies they drive. It is rendered colorful, mystical, and very cool.

The skyline in the cities of the future is not static, but moving as whole buildings rise up and down from underground depending on the threat level. The ocean is not blue and full of life, but red and dead. There is a funny scene when the young Eva pilots visit an Aquarium that houses a tiny fraction of what used to be earth’s marine life. The gag involves the brutal decontamination procedure for all the attraction’s visitors.

The battle sequences are strong again in this film. I complained about the first film’s vision of angels as abstract geometric patterns, and here again, a big bad villain angel is revealed to take the form of a rainbow flower with petals that unfold and leave paths of destruction. Somehow, I am starting to understand the weirdness and prefer it. Who am I to question what planet devouring super-beings are supposed to look like?

After the flower angel is defeated, and after some decent attempts at crafting rounded characters with realistic flaws and desires, comes the big draw of the movie, the climactic final battle. I would describe it as a colorful videogame battle acid trip.

If you have ever gone berserk in competition or from passion, you know about beast mode. In the movie, there is a girl who pilots her robot into crazy town for the sake of a fight, and the government handlers called it transcending the limits of humanity. I call it going into beast mode. Come see me on the basketball court man, I’ll show you beast mode, haha.

Anyway, once beast mode doesn’t work for the girl and people start getting eaten up by monster angels, the hero of the film, ten year old Shinji, transforms into God Mode, or for NBA fans, Kobe vs Toronto 2006.

In God Mode, Shinji and his true love are the center of an apocalyptic tornado of pink and purple energy. Goofy Japanese pop music plays in the background (which I started to appreciate after a while.) Shinji is transcending the limits of physics with stuff floating around all menacingly, and everybody thinks the world is about to end.

At the center of the tornado are two little kids in love. This is how the film ends. The world is about to end and little Shinji is defiant and happy for it as long as he has his girl. I give Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance an A-. I was geeked out over it, but I have to leave some room for the next movie to improve.

After leaving the theater with my jaw all wide, I found out that there is a secret scene after the credits roll. I suggest staying for it if you can. It sounds pretty awesome.

Every Day I'm Hustling

Everyone has their hustle, man. Some people pick trash. Some people make jeans. I think I’m the best writer alive (or at least at my school.) The thing that unites us in our respective hustles, is the fact that all of us will get old. One day we’ll all have to give up our game.

The protagonist in The Illusionist is an aging French magician. He literally pulls rabbits out of hats traveling and performing around Europe. It is 1959 and people are starting to scream for rock stars and watch TV. As tired as he looks with deep bags under his eyes, the magician’s act is in worse shape. He gets booed off stage.

In Scotland he gets a warm reception in a crowded bar and meets a peasant girl who believes he can do real magic. His confidence is high so he fuels her belief by finding a coin behind her ear. Later, he finds new shoes for her in a store with the money he earns from his performances, but he delivers them to her through a magic trick.

Obviously, the girl jumps aboard the train he leaves in and expects him to pull tickets and a new life for her out of his sleeve.

The ending is brilliant. Words are used effectively here to make a very important statement. Whether you believe the words or not is up to you. I would question the credibility of the writer. Wink. Wink.

The film is a parable about fatherhood and is very reminiscent of the opening scene in Pixar’s Up in that it depicts life without much dialogue and features old people and animation. When the images are this rich and the scenes put together this good, dialogue is not missed at all. Anyways the characters aren’t able to speak to each other because one speaks French and one speaks English.

Shout out to FAU’s French Language Department, specifically, Professor Joseph, Professor Jurawan and Professor Reese. I didn’t become fluent last year but at least I have a decent foundation. Elles sont les meilleures.

The animation is pretty throughout the film and has a very soft and unique feel to it. The landscape shots are rendered especially well, with the results looking more like moving impressionist paintings than cartoons. I love the dreary London changing of the guard scene. It was in the background of the movie, but added mood to the story. For some reason it was really beautiful to watch.

There are a lot of memorable scenes. The magician's rabbit appears in every act and steals the show.

Growing old is something I am very scared of facing. One day my act will get old, and my tricks will become transparent to the snot noses coming up. This film is a reminder of that cold, lonely fact. The other thing I took from The Illusionist is that magic exists and mostly it exists when human beings are kind to each other.

I give this film an A+. The musical score is charming and the story is simple and sweet. I didn’t see Toy Story 3 so I am pulling for this to win best animated feature at the 83rd Academy Awards.

Children With Destinies Built Into Them

I am not a fan of anime. I’m not going to hate on anyone who is, I’m just saying. Honestly though, I can’t even tell you what makes anime different from other styles of animation. They make it in Japan I know that. I also know my girlfriend Elissa hates everything having to do with Japan. Yup, my girl is a racist.

Nah, she isn’t a racist, but she wouldn’t go with me to watch Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone either. Sadly, I don’t think this is the first time a girl has turned down an invitation to watch anime. So I’m not going to front, this movie is dorky. It’s ultra-mega-super dorky.

On the other hand, though, it isn’t terribly boring either.

The plot follows ten year old Shinji, who is picked up by a government agency and told he is humanity’s last hope, the pilot of a massive robot, called an Eva. He must defend earth from equally massive and powerful beings called Angels. This is trippy sh-- for real. I had just finished toking on some nice Blue Dream though, so maybe that explains why I was keeping up with all that angel apocalypse talk.

The highlights are definitely the battle sequences. The robots resemble aliens more than machines, and brutally pound on each other as well as the cities that act as their backdrops. Explosions get larger and more epic as the film progresses (something I suspect will continue as the sequels are produced.) Blood/oil rains down on the remnants of cities in ridiculous quantities.

The animation was interesting for the most part, until an angel terrorizing a city was revealed to take the form of a large blue diamond. Did the producers run out of animation money here? I am not kidding a big bad monster in this movie takes the form of a large blue diamond. Weird.

Other weird moments include a penguin named Pen Pen who reads the newspaper and smokes cigars, and a female sex-kitten character showing off her goods in a bath tub scene. The anime tradition of heavily sexualized female characters is definitely weird. I can’t remember when the last time I saw a cartoon breast was before this.

The movie is based on the classic Japanese TV series of the same name, and is the first of four feature-lengths. It is basically a shot-for-shot remake of the original six episodes of the series, according to my anime expert (and brother-in-law,) John.

This is something I had a hard time with. If you are going to remake a movie or TV series, why make a shot-for-shot remake? Wouldn’t it be better to go all Christopher Nolan over everyone’s faces and re-imagine the series into darker, heavier territory?

I’m not even going to comment on how much of a baby Shinji is as a character, worrying about bullies and his father not loving him, meanwhile half the earth’s population was killed by angels. Here is where they should have cast a baller little kid like Will Smith's son to get in the robot. Remember Independance Day?

Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone was a decent dip in the anime pond for me. I can appreciate the distinctive style of the animation, and the epic imagery and mythology in the storytelling. The characters are drawn too one-dimensional for me, and this throws the balance of the movie off. I give it a C+.

All I Want for Christmas is for Santa Not to Eat Me

South Florida has a decent population of Finnish people. Those kids are always good for a laugh. Finland just sounds like a fun country to me with its arctic winters when the sun doesn’t rise and hot summers when the sun doesn’t set. Finland also tops Newsweek’s list of the best countries on earth.

I used to have a Finnish boss named Seppo. He was jittery and he talked funny but he always seemed to put a smile on my face. I had co-workers who had amazing Seppo impersonations. He was a weird dude but he also held several college degrees and spoke several languages. I’m telling you man don’t sleep on them Finns.

Apparently them kids are even capable of producing Hollywood-quality movies. Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale is the story of a little Finnish boy named Pietari and his encounter with Santa Claus. The Finnish version of Santa, however, is more monster than saint (huge devil horns give it away.) This is definitely not a movie for kids.

The story is completely ridiculous, involving things like slimy English-speaking businessmen with shady drilling operations and zombie-like old men armed with pick axes, but delivered serious in the style of magical realism (there are scenes that remind me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s brilliant short story “An Old Man with Very Enormous Wings.”) But really, I wouldn’t put it past Finland to have a supernatural Santa Claus buried under an ancient mountain. The Finnish language sounds like friggin Lord of the Rings elf-language, so you know those guys have some magic in them.

A creative writing teacher once explained to me that readers will accept the most ridiculous plot elements as long as the main character in the story is realistic and he/she experiences change throughout the course of the narrative. Good thing writer/director Jalmari Helander understands this foundation of character development so well. Little Pietari is hilarious running around scared in his brief underwear and with a rifle strapped to his back.

Pietari transforms from a timid weakling seeking his father’s approval to a daring warrior riding the outside of a helicopter as if it were a bucking bronco. The computer-generated special effects are a bit cheesy in that scene, but this almost adds to the charm of the movie. You have to appreciate a little cheese to appreciate this dark comedy.

Bottom-line, Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale is funny, suspenseful and original. Actor Onni Tommila shines as little gangsta Pietari. My Finnish brothers know what they are doing. I give this movie an A-.

There is one thing that bothers me. Out of the dozen or so Finnish kids I’ve met in my life, they have all been dudes. I have never ever seen a Finnish woman. There was not a single woman in the whole movie either. Where the ladies at Finland? Is it a shortage of females that makes you guys so quirky?

The Banality of Evil

There are serious ghosts in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge regime killed an estimated 1.7 million people there from 1975 to 1979, according to Yale University. This was 21 percent of the country’s population. The leader of the communist regime was a clown named Pol Pot aka “Brother Number 1.” He died in 1998 without standing trial for his crimes against humanity.

In Enemies of the People, investigative journalist Thet Sambath tracks down and befriends “Brother Number 2,” Nuon Chea. Sambeth compiled the footage for this documentary over three years, at his own expense and on weekends away from his wife and children. His own parents were killed by the Khmer Rouge.

Sambeth journeys from city to countryside, squatting by the side of the road with former Khmer Rouge killers. They are wild-eyed old men now, but in the Khmer Rouge they were soldiers. They are shot decapitating chickens in one scene and in the next they explain how they performed similar acts on humans.

They explain how they drank wine to prepare before executions and how they drank from harvested human gall bladders.

The orders for the hundreds of thousands of deaths in Cambodia originated from the central leadership. If he didn’t contribute to Pol Pot’s madness, Nuon Chea was at least close enough to witness it. It is hard to believe that the frail grandfather on screen has been touched by that evil.

The little that Nuon Chea reveals is thrilling to watch. He seems to be aware of his shameful place in history, yet in several scenes he betrays his defiance. He quotes Buddha at one point, arguing that where there is no intention there is no sin.

This is obviously an important film. It represents a primary source to the Khmer Rouge regime’s crime of genocide. Nuon Chea is caught on film admitting to the execution of innocent people in the killing fields of Cambodia.

I do think the documentary could have been cut considerably. There are about 20 minutes of compelling interviews in the whole film. The rest includes a brief history of Cambodia, Thambet explaining his motivation and difficulties in the project, and before the credits roll, chilling archival footage of mass graves, work camps and ovens.

As a journalism student, it was interesting to watch Thambet work through an ethical dilemma brought up by his relationship with Nuon Chea. His diligence in working his source for three years only partially paid off. While Nuon Chea’s testimony was the big draw, I would have liked Thambet to interview more than the two or three former killers documented in the film. I left the movie feeling like I had more questions than I did when I walked in.

I give Enemies of the People a B+, mostly for its importance to history as a primary source. The tragedy in Cambodia should be remembered as a cautionary tale.

Vik Muniz is a dope artist

Art is hard. It can be pretty and sometimes it can be important. Vik Muniz is an artist, and according to television shows in his native Brazil, one of the greatest alive. Constantly exploring different mediums, Muniz makes art out of everyday objects. He is appreciated in the art world and famous enough to take on whatever project he wants.

What he wanted to do in the documentary Waste Land, was hang out and make art at the world’s largest landfill in Rio de Janeiro, Jardim Gramacho. Muniz would make portraits of the pickers who live and work in the garbage. He would give all the proceeds from the sale of the work back to them. Genius.

Director Lucy Walker allows Muniz to explain his story and motivation for the landfill project through talking head interviews and discussions. Muniz seems honest and eager in his intention to combine art with social projects. His eye for composition and beauty is evident in his choice of subjects.

The pickers that Muniz hires as models and assistants become the heart of the film. Tiao is the young president and founder of the pickers association in Jardim Gramacho. He has been picking since he was eleven. He is eloquent and proud because he understands his vital role in the health of the city. He is quick to explain the difference between garbage and recyclable materials. A small army of his fellow pickers is responsible for extending the life of the landfill and for powering the recyclables economy. They work day and night.

Tiao is posed in the style of The Death of Marat, and shot in a bathtub with the landfill in the background. Muniz takes aerial photographs and becomes convinced that the art in the landfill is to be found in the human element.

He interviews and shoots other pickers and visits them at their homes. Suelem is 18 and lives in a disgusting $8 a week wood panel hut. She complains that rats bother her sleep as they scurry across her tin roof. She is shot in the style of a Madonna with her two young children at her side.

From the landfill to a rented studio the pickers collaborate with Muniz by strategically placing garbage around a projection of each portrait on the floor. Dirt becomes ink and found objects become paint. Bottle caps become freckles. Garbage becomes art.

There is a brilliant sequence where Muniz, his wife and his partner Fabio Ghivelder discuss the art project’s effects on the lives of the pickers. The pickers are happy as artists and don’t want to return to the landfill. Muniz handles the responsibility and the discussion beautifully.

My favorite scene was in London after Tiao’s portrait sells for $50,000 at auction. Muniz asks Tiao to explain how he became a work of art. Crying, Tiao says, “It was because years ago me and my partner started a pickers organization. Nobody believed in me. Nobody believed in me.”

That was the best. I love watching real people on their hustle doing real good honest things. Tiao is a guy who picks garbage but he does it with pride and he does it with heart. The garbage pickers in Waste Land are beautiful works of art. Vik Muniz is a dope artist for recognizing and immortalizing that beauty. I give this film an A+.