Bonhoeffer, dir. Martin Doblemeier.   I was interested in seeing this documentary because Bonhoeffer’s story is famous—a famous theologian, he tried to resist the Nazis, and he was hanged by them just before WWII ended.  I am a devout Christian, and I am impressed by this level of resistance against evil.  But this documentary failed to provide me with any significant revelations about the inner workings of this man’s heart and mind.  Lots of people were interviewed, archival footage was utilized extensively, and certainly a version of this man’s story was revealed in the course of the documentary.  But something was missing to me.  Why did he participate in a plot to kill Hitler if he was a man of God?  What lay behind his emotions, his passions, his yearnings, his failures, his charisma?  I walked away from the documentary simply feeling that this man’s life had been summarized only—not in any way captured and made whole.

Carnages, dir. Delphine Glauze (France, et al.).  Early in this film I was ready to sit back and enjoy this as at least a four-star film.  In an early scene a lovely doe-eyed French girl, who we saw earlier in a school scene suffer a seizure in front of the other kids, is sitting at home and watching a bullfight on television.  The parallel editing in this scene brought together the points of view of the young bullfighter Victor (who was shown in a pensive moment in the first scene) and the little girl (watching the television).  Occasionally, we see the image on the television set as well—a great three-cornered editing strategy.  The scene becomes increasingly tense, especially when a huge black dog jumps on the couch next to the girl and settles down.  Hmm.  A huge black bull and a monstrous black dog.  The tension mounted until it became excruciating.  What will happen next?  Eventually, the matador is gored—but survives—and the little girl goes into another room, where her Mom and Dad are now washing Fred the monster dog, and she announces that she a man transfished.  (She confuses the double meaning of the word pike­—fish vs. spear).  Now by this time four other stories have been introduced, and the next thing that happens is that two more characters are introduced, and soon the director settles down to the exercise of cutting back and forth between the various stories.  This strategy worked for a while, and then a simple emotion occurred to me.  I wanted some closure—some payback for watching patiently this flower unfold.  What I got instead was a collection of boring characters.  Only the bullfighter and the little girl interested me.  And the first was in a coma through most of the film—awaiting a liver donor.  Ah, yes—which of these characters will die and then donate his/her liver?  By the time I found out, I didn’t care anymore.  I cared nothing for the cheating husband, his very pregnant wife, the ineffectual actress, the silly man who calls random phone numbers, Winnie’s mother and father, or the half-baked taxidermist and his half-dotty mother.  Now there were some beautiful shots in this film—naked men and women working on their primal selves in a swimming pool—under the tutelage of a massive woman with short blonde hair and big black eyebrows; or shots of the dead bull being transported from the bullring and then processed for meat; or an old woman carrying the bull’s horns as she walks down a set of railroad tracks; or the ending shots of Winnie—sitting in the audience with her parents and wearing glowing el toro horns.  After a while the words ponderous and self-indulgent occurred to me.  Late in the film one of the characters announces a theme—people are so lonely.  Well—now that’s a novel idea.  And then he asks another character for her secrets.  Yes, people have secrets—but acting as if one has discovered ideas of loneliness and secretiveness does not impress me.  I wanted to get out of this film, rewind the tape, and watch the scene I summarized above again.  Poor little Winnie; poor bullfighter.  They should have been in their own film.  The rest of this was nothing but sound and fury, signifying nothing.

A Decade Under the Influence, dir. Ted Demme & Richard LaGravenese.  This film is required viewing for anyone who has studied cinema in depth for vocation or avocation.  My first impression: what a strange feeling to watch directors in their 60s talking about cinema in the 70s, when they were in the fullness of their youths.  Most of the documentary is talking heads combined with scenes from selected films.  The film was more descriptive than analytical, I thought.  I enjoyed seeing some of the great film clips.  Much of the film was about influences, from the French New Wave, Roger Corman's American International Pictures (a treat was seeing Corman talking about his influence), and the changing sexual mores of the 1960s and the impact on 1970s cinema.  A key theme in the film was the assertion that the major studios learned from the independents and eventually wrested control of the art form from the small guys.  I got the impression that film of the 1970s were a director's medium.  Coppola, Scorsese, and Friedkin discovered something in those years.  Compare their work in the 1970s to their work in the 1990s—how things have changed. We hear from Julie Christie and from Polly Platt (production designer and producer).  Films like The French Connection, The Last Picture Show, The Godfather, Mean Streets, M*A*S*H, Deliverance, and Chinatown are featured.  Inevitably the structure of the documentary becomes episodic.  The directors describe the role of women in the films of the 1970s; some of the directors reveal a secret or two regarding how the film was made or how an actor's performance was inspired. The directors suggest that the flurry of originality of the 1970s was actually confined to the first half of the decade.  By the time Jaws came along in 1975 the studios had figured out how to subdue the streak of directorial independence.  The era of the blockbuster began.  For example, after Star Wars came out 20^th Century Fox stock doubled in two weeks.  The element of risk was rooted out.  By the end of the 1970s studios knew what they wanted and knew how to go about getting it.  So the film is like a travelogue of sorts.  We revisit the 1970s and remember how much creativity was let loose in the span of a few years.                                                                        

Holes, dir. Andrew Davis. I lost interest in this film before long because it held itself to a one-note level of mediocrity.  I never believed the prison-farm in the middle of a desert (former lake bed).  I never believed in the kids in the camp.  We have a Rainbow Coalition of kids, but the leading character (Stanley) is Caucasian.  All the kids have the 21^st century plague of cynicism. A tough black kid is the leader of the pack.  A wide-eyed white kid is a background character.  A fat black kid with thick glasses is another sidekick character.  A short black kid is a mysterious mute.  The tough black kid takes the lead of the pecking order of abuse that is handed down from one kid to the next.  But there never is a challenge to that pecking order.  Boys will be boys, right?  But I was not amused by the nastiness and the conventionality of the characterizations. Why is Stanley the only articulate, educated, compassionate young person in the film?  Why can't some of the secondary characters step forward and show stimulating qualities of character?  Nothing in the film hints at real human suffering.  None of the kids ever gets heat stroke from digging all day in the sun.  Lizards are everywhere, but only one kid gets bitten (and that's at the beginning of the film—so that Stanley can be his replacement). None of the children is beaten.  None of the children dies.  The music is usually upbeat, fast-paced, hip-hop, syrupy, loud, and constantly reinforces the "happy ending" that will prevail. The requisite CD tracks for the film are played in one montage sequence after another.  Consumers, beware!  Great actors like Sigourney Weaver, Tim Blake Nelson, and Jon Voight are absolutely wasted in the film.  I do give credit to Voight for finding the right pitch of accent and inflection and movement to make his sniveling character come alive.  The film was a cross between Son of Flubber (1963)—with a crazy inventor-father—and any animated Disney film of the last five years about treasure hunting in some exotic locale.  Yes, it was a Disney Film.  Yes, it will make lots of money.  Yes, it had some high-end production values.  No, it was not a good film.  No, the subplot about a beautiful schoolteacher who kisses a young black—the source of the background story of how this God-forsaken place came to be—does not work.  In 19^th century America a white schoolteacher would in no way be in a position to fall in love with a black man, no matter the impeccable quality of that character.  To plant this subplot as the source of evil in the film (because it leads to racial violence!) is even more cynical than the forced cynicism of all the kids in the camp.  Now if John Leonard were writing this review, he would make one of his lists: the wild onions, the ancient curse of Madame Zeroni, the Kissing Bandit, canned peaches with a long shelf life, a hidden treasure.  Too many twists are packed into this plot. But I return to Jon Voight, bless his heart.  At one point he tells a fairy tale: "Once upon a time there was a magical place where it never rained.  The end."  That line got the biggest laugh in the film. I would revise that fairy tale slightly.  "Once upon a time there was a Walt Disney film that actually provided insights into the minds and values of young people.  The end."  But then, that would be a real fairy tale, wouldn't it?