At the Movies...

If you have ever read my blog then you know that I am an unabashed lover of film.  I especially love writing film reviews and encouraging everyone, especially Christians, to engage the movies they watch with a critical mind and to interact with movies as art.  Art speaks and we must converse with it.  I was excited to see that my brothers and sisters at Mars Hill Church Seattle are doing a similar thing.  Check it out here.

Tangent: I would love to see folks redeem the dinner & a movie date.  Not as a first date, mind you, but how cool would it be to catch a flick (maybe a matinee, even) and then discuss it over dinner after?  Anyone, anyone?  C'mon!

"Torture vs. Torture Porn": A Spoiler-Free (TM) Review of "Inglourious Basterds" (2009, dir. by Quentin Tarentino)

"If you had a chance right now, to go back in time and stop Hitler, wouldn't you do it?  I mean, I personally wouldn't stop him because I think he was awesome, but wouldn't you do it? - Cartman, South Park ("Make Love Not Warcraft," season 10)

I'm afraid that I'm somewhat ill equipped to tackle the topic of Quentin Tarantino as I've not seen Pulp Fiction or Kill Bill.  I've pondered my way through two other of his seminal works, though: Reservoir Dogs and True Romance.  I liked True Romance considerably more, which is telling because Tarantino did not direct the film - he wrote it.  Tony Scott, who's directed everything from Top Gun to Man on Fire, sat in the canvas chair for that one.  Notably, he drastically changed the ending, telling Tarantino that the film did not earn the right to have a depressing, anti-Hollywood ending as planned.  Those lines from the True Romance audio commentary have lingered with me and colored my viewing of Tarantino as an artist.

But look! Nazis!  Man don't you hate Nazis?  I know I do!  Murder & mutilate them! Capture them and torture them!  Bludgeon them to death! Scalp them!  This was the premise of Inglourious Basterds as presented to me by the trailer, two hours of savaging Nazis.  "Behind enemy lines, there are no crimes," the trailer screamed.  While there is blood shed a' plenty, Saving Private Ryan has 400% more carnage than this film, albeit, with 400% less scalpings.  The film depicts torture, yes, but despite the presence of Hostel director Eli Roth as Sgt. Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz (who spends his time introducing baseball to Europe), the movie is not torture-porn.  Torture-porn is that ironic genre that claims to criticize the excess and indulgence of society, even while indulging dark human hearts in every perversion imaginable, see, Hostel, for instance.  Actually, no, don't see it. 

We learn from the trailer that the premise of the film revolves around All-American Brad Pitt (as Tennessee born-and-bred Jewish American, Lt. Aldo "the Apache" Raine) leading a squad of Jewish American grunts behind enemy lines to conduct a guerrilla war of terror.  But this is a Tarantino film, mind you, and the story isn't entirely linear.  While we meet arch-villain SS Col. Hans Linda (Austrian actor Christoph Waltz, in an Oscar-worthy turn. Seriously, Ebert thinks so too) in the first chapter, the ebb and flow of the Basterd's campaign takes place over five denoted chapters.  Only Quentin Tarantino would even think of making a WWII movie in which a film-within-the-film receives so much attention.  Only Tarantino would make this work, as he does.  I'd tell you why and how it does, but didn't I promise this is a "Spoiler-Free" review? Inglourious Basterds is a fantastic movie, lushly shot and strongly acted.  Beyond it's visual beauty, it is well edited and has an appropriately quirky soundtrack.  I give this film an 87 out of 100, but can't depart without offering some social commentary to boot.

I left the theater wondering how many of the people who smiled and cheered (a few times audibly) the torture of prisoners at the hands of the Basterds would approve of the Bush administration's openness to torture, like water boarding, etc.  I remember the way my stomach flinched when I watched Saving Private Ryan for the first time, especially when the GIs gun down to surrendering Germans at Normandy.  (Let's not fool ourselves in thinking that our efforts in WWII, however necessary, were done with clean hands and a pure heart.  J.R.R. Tolkien said WWII turned "elves into orcs" and that the Allied strategy was akin to using the One Ring against Sauron.)  Just war theory/practice is the subject for another day but the historical reflection of Basterds gives us a view on the present.  Do ends justify means?  What if stopping Hitler could only be accomplished by slaughtering men and women who were not actively part of his evil?  What about the image of God?  What about prohibitions against murder?  Is "collateral damage" okay according to Scripture?  Cartman asks a good question.  Go see the movie, and reflect on your answer.

"Lifeline": A review of "Slumdog Millionaire," (2008, dir. by Danny Boyle, co-dir. by Loveleen Tandan)

"Who wants to be a millionaire?" I was a (poor) kid living in not-too-small-town South Carolina when I first heard that question asked. Like the rest of America, my family and I enthusiastically watched night after night as ordinary Joes like ourselves sat down in the hot seat, answering questions we could answer, winning money we would never have. I don't remember being envious, though. I remember the excitement of the next question, hanging on every pause, holding my breath when Regis asked "Is that your final answer?"

Jamal Malik is in the hot seat in Mumbai (nee Bombay). An orphan from the slums of Mumbai, Jamal , now sits one question away from 20 million rupees. The show runs out of time for the night, but rather than being spirited off to a studio hotel room, Jamal is thrown to the police for "interrogation." How could a former "slumdog" who now serves chai to telemarketers at those infamous Indian phone banks - how can he know the answers? "What is the God Rama usually pictured holding in his hand?" "Who invented the revolver?" "What American statesman's face is on the front of the American 100 bill?" Truth is, Jamal has been in the hot seat his whole life, and he knows the answers because of the horrors he's lived. He slowly tells his story to the police, and we quickly get sucked into the heights and depths of his life.

I could say more of course. I could tell you about his brother Salim or about the girl Jamal has loved from his youth, but why say more? This movie amazed me in a way I have difficulty describing. Maybe it's the dazzling camera work that Danny Boyle (Millions, Trainspotting) and his co-director for the India shots, Loveleen Tandan (Monsoon Wedding, Vanity Fair), cook up so effortlessly, sweeping us from the bottom of a sewage dump to the tippy-top of the Taj Mahal. Maybe it's the way that Boyle and Tandan show us the real Mumbai, a city where glory and gore live side by side, (as pointed out by Roger Ebert.) The Indian dance soundtrack (accented by the Sri Lankan border-crosser M.I.A.) is also worth noting/purchasing from iTunes.

As the film raced for its conclusion, I found myself asking the question, "Is the movie going to have a Bollywood or a Hollywood ending?" By Hollywood, I specifically refer to the nouveau Hollywood ending, that one where nothing works out. It's a question that you will have to answer for yourself as you watch. Slumdog Millionaire is a lifeline. Watch this film.

My ranking: 93 out of 100.

For further praise: NBR names "Slumdog" film of the year.

Quick Takes: No Country for Old Men

No Country for Old Men is something special. It's hard to describe a film that waxes philosophical in between gruesome gun violence, amidst the sound of silence. (Only when Llewelyn Moss is awakened by a mariachi band south of the border does melody interrupt the squeaks of floor boards and blasts of shot.) Javier Bardem is chilling as a heartless and proficient killer named Anton Chigurh, and Tommy Lee Jones has never looked more tired as Sheriff Ed Tom Bell. I went into the theater half-expecting some Tarentino-esque showdowns but left with something so much more - an invitation to reflect and ponder about life and how we live it, about darkness and how it must be lit. No Country for Old Men is easily the best film I've seen this year, and I would encourage all my readers to see it.