armies clash by night: some war films

12.no end in sight

build me a ladder of logic up to the sky, a string of carefully constructed proofs that creatively illumine the uncertain state of this world and that beyond. that's my charge to any issue-oriented documentary; do that and i'll happily climb the rungs of your rhetoric. i am so charmed by logic that if a filmmaker sugercoats truth or skillfully twists on-screen action away from one view or another, i'm likely to miss it, likely to fall into the rational trap of the film's narrative.

all that to say, although i can't be sure of the objectivity of no end in sight, the movie makes me angry, angry that the occupation of iraq was undertaken in a fog of idiocy. no end convincingly argues that our leaders had access to effective means of avoiding a full-scale insurgence but they chose to plug their ears, close their eyes, and clash by night.

still, i don't know where to go from there. i obediently followed no end's story arc, and just as the title might suggest, it left me without a conclusion, without some sense of what to do next. this frustration is complicated by the increasing optimism of the war in iraq. no end leaves us in 2007, when things were still going horribly wrong, but now in 2008 the latest AP reports suggest that there may in fact be an end in sight. and so, while no end may be a fine piece of cinematic rhetoric, i seriously question it's timelessness and application for the world today.

11.stop-loss

and here's another rhetorical success. this film (not a documentary) successfully demonstrates the injustice of "stop-loss," the US military's doctrine of reinstating soldiers after their tours of duty have already been completed, that is, sending them back to iraq against their will. i might gripe that some of the film's characters behaved incongruously to their personalities or life scenarios, and that the film may have went a little overboard in some places, but like no end in sight, stop-loss is a likely candidate to make you mad. oh, and get these guys some prazosin!

bad movies

04.be kind rewind - on NPR this morning i heard that the supreme court ordered the military to confiscate several copies of be kind rewind from guards at guatanomo. apparently the jokes in the film were so bad and the plot was so far-fetched and stupid that its use on prisoners violated the geneva conventions.

06.picnic at hanging rock - this is a film that makes me think that despite the popular knee-jerk criticism of twenty-first century hollywood productions, movie-making has progressed a great deal during the last few decades, and perhaps my officemate, who heartily recommended this 1975 film, hasn't. OK, james and i usually see eye-to-eye on films, but in this case the scenery, sound effects, storyline, and overall picture experience did nothing for me. there's a novel concept in the film, but it only works if you can overlook the aforementioned flaws and suspend your critical thinking skills.

movie ratings

13.tristram shandy: a cock and bull story - funny; inventive filmmaking

inside man - i don't remember
the break-up - i liked it more than others at the time

07.the lake house - the house that eponymizes the lake house is a fitting image for the film itself. the house balances precariously over the water on whisker thin stilts. these stilts are a great physical representation of the poorly-considered sci-fi premise that supports the lake house, and the coolest scene from the film is when the weight of bullock and reeves's unfortunate careers proves too much for the little stilts and the house tumbles and crashes into the big blue lake of failure. okay, that scene may not really happen but the meaning of my metaphor still strikes true. and the thing is, the lake house has no qualitative pretensions. the synopses and previews don't attempt to hide the ludicrous nature of the film (and you already know that it stars bullock and reeves!) thus, as the s.o. and i sat down to watch the lake house, i suspended any and all cinematic expectations for the evening. however, the s.o. was unable to restrain her brain; her logic wouldn't leave her alone to enjoy the film. consequently, the horrors of the lake house were turned comedic as she punctuated the scenes with her sighs and mockery. indeed, the lake house is a chick flick for illogical chicks.

left to rate (2006)
who killed the electric car?
the devil wears prada
a scanner darkly
half nelson
jesus camp
the science of sleep
little children
babel
a good year
deja vu
the pursuit of happyness
the painted veil
the good shepherd
children of men
pan's labyrinth

left to rate (2007)
freedom writers
dreamgirls
seraphim falls
breach
amazing grace
black snake moan
reign over me
hot fuzz
the invisible
next
once
pirates of the caribbean: world's end
knocked up
ocean's thirteen
sicko
live free or die hard
ratatouille
license to wed
transformers
harry potter and the order of the phoenix
the simpsons movie
the bourne ultimatum
stardust
michael clayton
american gangster
no country for old men
i am legend
charlie wilson's war

ratings and foreign films

generally speaking, my film ratings (see the left hand panel) have a standard deviation (SD) somewhere in the neighborhood of 1. that is, if we were to imagine the scale on a visual plane, each rating would occupy a small range of space rather than a precise point. for example, i rated syriana a 13, but it's really more of a 12 to 14. this may seem entirely too subjective, but an SD of 1 is actually rather small. indeed, i'm suggesting that if you gathered 17 andrews on a movie review panel, they would independently arrive at ratings within the same two-point range.

i suppose this is something of an intuitive (or imaginary) science, and unfortunately, the SD of 1 isn't entirely uniform. sometimes i am charitable in my ratings and can't imagine a particular film moving in any direction but down (e.g., elf and snakes on a plane); sometimes i nail a rating and can't imagine the film moving at all (e.g., flight plan and v for vendetta); and sometimes i peg a film at the lower point of its range where it seems possible only to rise (e.g., searching for bobby fischer and the three burials of mequiades estrada).

if you're thinking that this two-paragraph digression is overkill, you may be right. however, i'm preparing to rate four foreign films, and i'm finding it difficult to fit them snugly in the scale. i'm finding that they may belong to that latter category of films which are assigned a rating that is at the lower end of their possible scope of ratings. here are the four films:

tsotsi (thug)
a 9 on the 17 point scale
#9 on christianity today's 2006 critic's choice awards
2005 academy award for best foreign language film

tsotsi has received a great deal of acclaim. it's certainly a redemptive film, but i felt that there were some significant gaps in character development and that the director telegraphed a few too many of his passes. moreover, like many foreign films, perhaps there was something lost in the translation--i strongly preferred the director's short film the storekeeper, which managed to tell a 20-minute story without a single subtitle (that is, there were no words).

le fils (the son)
an 11 on the 17 point scale
#7 on christianity today's 2003 top ten list
2002 cannes film festival best actor

l'enfant (the child)
a 12 on the 17 point scale
#2 on christianity today's 2006 critic's choice awards
2005 cannes film festival golden palm award

these films were directed by jean-pierre and luc dardenne, a pair of belgian brothers. when i watched the films, i didn't realize they were shot by the same directors, so i walked away from the films thinking, "gosh, these french [sic] films have a surprisingly similar style. apparently the french [sic] are the modern masters of cinematographic silence."

indeed, both films limit their dialogue to the bare essentials. instead, the camera is trained on on the actors as they awkwardly go about the business of life. much of the plot is spent watching the actors think, and this works rather effectively. it's a refreshing change of pace to see films that reject the fast-pace and visual effects of hollywood. however, the films also seem to take this measured pacing to an absurd end. it can be slow going, especially when the camera has us craning our necks to watch a driver from the back seat or when we must watch the most ridiculous moped chase in the history of cinema (although, i suppose that there aren't many big-screen moped chases).

sophie scholl: the final days
a 12 on the 17 point scale
#6 on christianity today's 2006 critic's choice awards
2005 academy award nominee for best foreign language film

this is an enlightening look at the german resistance to hitler's nazi empire. it's an interesting true story that features one of the most inspirational protagonists of the 21st century. the film is anchored by a tense intellectual debate between sophie scholl, the aforementioned heroine, and her nazi captor. i highly recommend the film to those interested in history and questions of right and wrong, however the film's cinematography style seemed rather juvenile. as i watched the film, it sometimes felt like a channel 9 special.


andrew david. "movies" greenwood, wa.

film links, 300 review, and some anti-war spittle

i don't know that anyone ever follows my movie links (see the left panel), but if you do, you may occasionally wonder at my link selection. generally speaking, i choose my film links by googling the film title and a series of impressions or quirky thoughts that i had about the film. for example, if i were choosing a link for 300 i might type "300 stylized speedos infanticide." of course, i also thought that 300 was bloody and violent, but a search using these terms would return nearly every review of the film--i'm looking for something a little more interesting. i also like to see what jeffrey overstreet and his friends at christianitytoday say because they tend to present a thoughtfully christian perspective on films. then, as a last resort, i may link to imbd or wikipedia.

300
rating: 10 out of 17

in this case, i'm linking to overstreet's blog, but not because of anything he has to say--he didn't even see the movie. no, this is an instance where i'm more interested in the comments and heated debate that surround a film than the film itself. is 300 merely a violent blood bath that glorifies killing or is there some greater merit to snyder's epic battle film?

well, to the filmmaker's credit, the movie was beautifully shot. i'm not familiar with the cinematic terms for its style, but there was a certain artistry to the entire picture. and while bloody, the violence seemed more reminiscent of kill bill than the shocking realism of films like departed. there may also be some value in resurrecting ancient stories of honor and courage. indeed, as we were walking out of the majestic bay theater, our conversation jumped from 480 bc to 1942. it's odd, but that march 9th was a better personal commemoration of our soldiers' sacrifice than most memorial and veteran's days; i spent at least a minute considering the heroics of those WWII freedom-fighters.

however, i doubt that most movie-goers experienced this same sense of history.

moreover, as i reflect on 300 i wonder two things: (1) am i supposed to view this film as good versus evil? is it black and white or did snyder craft some ambiguity into the film? and (2) if there is room for grey, how evident is that to the average popcorn-munching onlooker? it may seem like the spartans are the good guys, but during the course of the film we see the "good guys" commit infanticide, raise their children in a spirit of blood-lust, and shuttle their good-looking girls into the sexual service of nasty old men. the main protagonist, otherwise portrayed as a noble and honorable king, barely hesitates before murdering an unarmed ambassador. in the context of the film, i'm not sure how (or if!) we're to interpret these moral slips; snyder plays the scenes straight, offering no prescriptive symbols to direct our interpretation. i suspect that the majority of viewers ignored the moral indiscretions of the spartans, but i also suspect that the rolling tape subconsciously aligned viewers with one of the following two camps: either (1) the spartans are clearly the good guys, and thus their way of life (including infanticide, murder, sexual enslavement) is somehow excused, or (2) the film is an indictment of sparta. in any case, i think i'd rather live in seattle.

300 is probably nothing more than stylized violence and slow-motion death blows, but perhap a more nuanced viewing can give us pause to consider the real-life grit of war. (errrrrrr....to clue in those of you who haven't seen the film, i've just rambled my way off the deep end; i'm now passing from that dangerous ground that literature snobs call reader-response criticism into something a bit more like personal essay.) it's not all guts and glory: war is ugly. the enemy straps bombs to children, and soldiers in iraq are forced to shoot little kids or risk being killed themselves.

like augustine, i believe in just war, but even just wars have a way of tarnishing men. take WWII for example. during a recent posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) lecture, i learned that when allied forces liberated dachau, the soldiers took justice into their own hands and lined up and executed all of the german soldiers. and on their way to dachau, as soldiers advanced into nazi-occupied france they often heard scuttling noises in road-side buildings, and because they couldn't take the chance that the sounds might be germans, the GIs tossed grenades into the homes, often killing innocent french families.

my officemate, a PTSD researcher, tells me that in a government-sponsored survey of US vietnam combat veterans, 28% of respondents admitted to killing civilians. i'd prefer that number to be zero. and so i suppose that if we sense that there's something awry with those spartans, perhaps there's some goodness to 300. but if not, well, perhaps that's okay too.

2006 film list

joel hartse has a book review in the latest issue of paste. i hardly ever read paste, but i (am under the impression that i) respect their eclectic, thoughtful arts perspective--that and the free cds that they include with each issue. anyway, i wandered from joel's blog to the paste website, but i couldn't find his book review. instead i found paste's top 40 films of 2006:

1. Half Nelson
2. Little Miss Sunshine
3. Iraq In Fragments
4. L'Enfant
5. The Departed
6. Volver
7. Three Times
8. The Queen
9. The Last King of Scotland
10. Borat
11. Old Joy
12. When the Levees Broke
13. Pan's Labyrinth
14. A Scanner Darkly
15. A Prairie Home Companion
16. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
17. The Science of Sleep
18. An Inconvenient Truth
19. Mutual Appreciation
20. Thank You For Smoking
21. Babel
22. Brick
23. The War Tapes
24. Wordplay
25. Stranger Than Fiction
26. Requiem
27. Factotum
28. The Proposition
29. United 93
30. For Your Consideration
31. Clean
32. Manderlay
33. Fast Food Nation
34. Dave Chappelle's Block Party
35. Marie Antoinette
36. Casino Royale
37. Tristram Shandy
38. Be With Me
39. Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple
40. The Secret Life of Words

blue = movies that i've already seen
red = movies that i already planned to see before i discovered this list

what do you think of their list? i'd remove #15 and consider removing #22 and #25. i'd also consider adding the three burials of melquiades estrada, blood diamond, and apocalypto to the bottom of the list.

andrew david "the cliffs from which we did not jump" somewhere near banff, canada.

blood diamond (addendum)

errrrr...yesterday's post didn't quite return to my roommate's skepticism of blood diamond. obviously, the film is a hollywood creation. as nora the newly employed (congratulations, nora!) observed, despite the film's frank depiction of harsh violence, there are certain fairy tale components to the plot. however, i stand by philosophical veracity of blood diamond--there must be some concise term for lowercase truth in cinema, but what is it?--that is, the setting, ideas, and characters struck me as real.

more particularly, i was convinced that leonardo dicaprio was really from zimbabwe. his speech (and looks) reminded me of a zimbabwean teacher that i met last year. in fact, as i watched, i thought, "wow, i thought rob was a teacher. he never told us about his time in the south african defense force...."

blood diamond

rating: 11 of 17

my roommate didn't bother to see this movie. he said that one diamond can never be that valuable. he then told me about diamond cutting and a fiery natural gas leak somewhere in the deserts of africa. after speaking with my roommate, i headed to the cinema and found that in addition to being fictitious, the diamond that propels the plot in blood diamond is pink but not sparkley. it looked like something you might find in my mom's rock collection. nonetheless, this stupid stone (and lesser pebble-like diamonds) sent characters careening across the screen with shovels, machetes, and machine guns. blood diamond reinforces this growing sense that despite my tendency to read big books or react to the world in a spirit of open-mindedness, i'm still an ignorant helpless american. i'm not a cnn-junkie or an activist--i had no idea that diamonds fueled death raids in sierra leone during the '90s. i hardly know how to spell sierra leone.

in the midst of it's ceaseless cruelty, blood diamond attempts to communicate hope and empowerment, but i walked away from the film in a psychiatric state of paralysis. films like blood diamond, hotel rwanda, and schindler's list make me feel helpless. i'm over here and they (substitute the victims of nearly any bloody current event) are over there. and there are too many over theres. perhaps i can deal with here--if that fictitious pink rock were my mother's and portland, a blood bath, yes, then i'd cry, take a side, demand justice--but how is a clueless english major to save the world?

really, it'd be much better if the world were on fire because of a natural gas leak. then i might have a chance. my roommate tells me that copper tools and explosives work best.

you can see other reviews on the left column of the blog. the 17 point scale reviews are marked by an exclamation mark (!). here's a link to a real review (christianity today):
11.blood diamond - brutal, bloody
and an addendum to this post:
http://the17pointscale.blogspot.com/2007/01/blood-diamond-addendum.html


andrew david. "smiling cause we're happy" somewhere in canada.

in case you haven't noticed...

warning: this post is the kind of thing you might see on myspace.

i have a friend (we'll call him john brawner) who occasionally sends bulletins to his 93 myspace buddies. the topics of john's bulletins range from silly surveys to updates on the state of his myspace page. i find it humorous that he keeps us up to date on the background of his myspace page, but now i'm following suit. i've upgraded to the new beta blogger; this means that some of the links on the left should be easier to navigate, that there's a new label feature at the bottom of each post, and that i'm still unable to post pictures. on the bottom left you will find a list of EVERY label that's been used in the 17 point scale, so if you were interested in finding out more about john brawner, you could simply ctrl-f "john brawner," click on the link, and then see every post where brawner is considered a topic of interest. (if i've used your search term as a label,) this actually works a lot better than the default blog search mechanism at the top of the page.

the other more significant addition to the 17 point scale is a linked list of every book and film that i've experienced since mid-july, 2006. in some ways, this list represents the first fulfillment of the 17 point scale's original design: it uses the infamous 1-17 scale to provide a qualitative rating for each of these works.

no more free movies

i'm sad to report that my trial period of blockbuster online expires on july 10th. that means no more free movies. but perhaps 'free' isn't the way to go with rentals. that is, i've watched a string of rather disappointing films (listed in order of preference with commentary and approximate 17 point scale rating in parentheses):

1. munich (10 - long; i feel like the film tried to do too much)
2. searching for the wrong-eyed jesus (11 - quirky; this rating is a bit like a blind dart toss toward a bull's eye--i don't exist in a context where the film makes any sense. the film is a documentary of the south that lacks a formal narrative. while it may be particularly fitting that the characters wander in and out of the story, i had difficulty finding the cohesive themes that make the moments relevant. i expect that my rating would improve with a second viewing or after reading some more flannery o'connor)
3. brokeback mountain (10 - i think the movie had some some poignant moments that rescue it from mediocrity, but i really felt the movie was waaaaaaaay tooooooo lonnnnnnng. however realistic it may be to have your lead actors drawl slowly back at one another, it makes for some boring cinema. i'm also surprised that the director couldn't capture the scenery in a more moving fashion. beth and i recently traveled through brokeback territory, and i kinda' feel that any amateur photographer could get the same shots as brokeback's director: it just was never stunning like films 2, 4, and 5 from this list. the renowned film critic sean meichle has argued, to the director's credit, that this may have been a deliberate mirroring of the depressing tale which brokeback mtn encapsulates. still, if you're not going to entertain me with a moving plot, give me something to look at! alas, i find myself thinking that brokeback may be an important film that is unfortunately mostly hype. i could say more, but this was supposed to be brief...)
4. dandelion (9 - strange characters, disjointed plot, pretty flowers. the film is a big blubbery ball of awkwardness. i know i'm falling into the "intentional fallacy," but if the film's awkwardness was unintentional, i feel that it deserves a 5. if it was intentional, an 11 may be more fitting)
5. new world (5 - beautiful scenery, cliche in its attempt to be uncliche, long, boring; beth and i gave up half way through)

if you don't care much about plot, i heartily recommend the last four films. despite my disparaging comments about brokeback, each of these films takes a national geographic-like approach to cinematography. there are beautiful scenes from the backwaters and byways of the south, the rocky mountains, the rolling hills of idaho, and coastal virginia. the problem is just that i wasn't planning on watching the travel channel.

speaking of beautiful scenery, here are some pictures of my puerto vallarta travel companions:


andrew david "girls" puerto vallarta, mexico.

united 93

beth and i saw united 93 tonight. one might think that a post-9/11 film might be a great date movie, but i'm here to say that despite the nearly empty theater, the atmosphere was a bit too somber for making out. and obviously date movies are only worthwhile if there is kissing. still, i would have liked to see a couple more couples turn out to see this film. after all, it's only been a week since opening day – i'm a little surprised that beth and i got two rows to ourselves for such an important movie.

in any case, you can read good reviews elsewhere. in short, i don't see how someone could have made a better film about this tragedy. united 93 was poignant without being preachy; it was touching without being (overly) dramatic. perhaps the greatest testament to the emotional punch of this film is that our audience of 20 left the theater silently. indeed, the hush reminded me of a maundy thursday service or compline at st. mark's. it was a holy quiet.


andrew david 'five pictures' yelapa, mexico. (yes, i know. it's a little odd to include pictures of a mexican cemetery in a post about a US historical film. still, they seemed somehow appropriate. also, aesthetically i didn't feel they were worth a post of their own. by the way, i doubt you find many pictures of the yelapa cemetery elsewhere; it's a little off the beaten path.)

some three-year-old musings on MDD and the movie Magnolia

Thursday, August 08, 2002 – 1:25 AM

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking over the past month and a half but not a lot of writing. In fact, no writing at all, so I figure its about time to get started again. After all, I have to wrack my brain for a travel essay topic and eventually compose twelve artful pages that say something about something. And this is a bad sign. The swirling minutia of irrelevant thoughts that managed to keep me up past midnight suddenly backtracked into nothingness the moment I decided to end my writing fast. Oh, well. Maybe my thoughts will return eventually. In the interim, as I listen to jars of clay and Switchfoot, here’s a movie review of sorts; after all, in the old days, when I actually managed to keep a diary, I included everything from movie reviews to silly lists of what I consumed that day (trix, cinnabon, chocolate-chip-oatmeal cookies, three fruit snacks, a piece of pizza, a third of a donut, and a piece of gum).

Magnolia: A bizarre movie that intermittently follows the lives of twelve very different people, pulling their lives from pure randomness to an intricate web of interconnectedness. At its heart this movie seems to be searching for something to explain the strange coincidences that commingle to form our lives. Falling frogs and ironic deaths also accentuate the movie’s strange taste in storytelling. While I could easily add some plot summary or interesting observations, there’s a reason this movie, which I watched about three weeks ago, popped into my head, and at the moment—and what a brief moment it shall be, because while david gray may be able to bob his head tirelessly to babylon, its putting me to sleep—I want to talk about me. So, as I turned my massive (yet insignificant) to do list over in my mind, pending emails shot to the forefront. One such email will be addressed to Pam; among other things, this email will have to explain why I sometimes feel ‘sick of myself.’ As I was considering this, I stumbled upon the issue of me being or not being depressed (and likewise, this spawned parallel thoughts concerning Sarah and Marianne, but I have only so much space and even less time). Wow, this is gonna’ take forever. So here’s the connection to magnolia. At one point in the movie william h macy (the reason I checked the movie out from the library in the first place) says something like “I’m not depressed, I’m melancholy. There’s a difference.” And he’s right. Lately, however, I haven’t really been feeling either. That’s good news. Thanks Jesus. Goodnight.

1/31/06 post-script:
i still think fondly of that disturbing magnolia movie. i have several friends that live in magnolia. i don't know if they're depressed, but i feel fine. well, mostly fine; the wind keeps waking the motion-sensored light outside my bedroom window, so i've been posting messages to the ESL chat rooms (as, you guessed it, the17pointscale), hoping that talk of em dashes might put me to sleep. in any case, i like the idea of listing my meals for the day--it was ahead of its time. oatmeal, ritz crackers, vanilla wafers, bacon and egg scramble, milk...