By now, most of you with an interest in this topic will have read Fast Food Nation or seen its odd film adaptation, or enjoyed the gastronomic minefield of Supersize Me. Food, Inc. is less about the horrible contents of processed food and more about the unseen machinations in boardrooms and government buildings, as well as their unseen costs. Don’t worry, we are still privy to the horrors that the sources of our meat go through, but here it is more to illustrate the why. Efficiency fattens stockholder’s portfolios, and certainly leads to fattening our lower and middle classes as well. Behind the veil of the pastoral fantasy (that corporations sell us with their monopolistic food processing) lurks people with no intent to compromise in favor of ethics, health, the environment, animals, or even product heterogeneity. The bottom line is profits, and it’s killing all of us; not just Americans, but all of us.

Not only are the thousands of cows or chickens or pigs crammed into feed lots merely numbers to these invisible puppet masters, but so are we. Not unlike the tobacco industry, the food processing conglomerates are only interested in moving product, so they punch our evolutionarily-installed pleasure centers, squelch their smaller competitors or make them cost-prohibitive, frame our tastes and expectations, and then blame the consumer for not making responsible choices. I can tell you from my own experience that if I want to buy a loaf of bread from the grocery store that doesn’t have enriched wheat or high fructose corn syrup, I am going to have to read the labels of just about every loaf (and still may come up emptyhanded), or learn how to bake at home.

This film was made in 2008, shortly before America got punched in the gut with the object lesson “unchecked greed is bad.” Many of us knew greed and growth were unsustainable and unrealistic but now everyone is finally waking up to it. Food, Inc. reminds us that it’s not just bankers and traders and real estate investors that can crush humanity. This documentary gets great footage of feed lots and processing plants using both overt and hidden cameras. The interviews are well spoken, and despite the tone of my review, not at all preachy. The infographics are funny and sad and useful. Food, Inc. clips along with lots of information, but it’s well organized and flows into you like so much toxic runoff. But in a good way.

We learn that it’s actually more efficient, on a small scale, to raise a cow on grass — no growing, buying, trucking, storing feed corn, fields get fertilized by their grazers, e. Coli is prevented, antibiotics are unnecessary, mowing is naturally taken care of. But efficient is defined in the eye of the CEO. Fewer feed lots equals less variance in product, less deviation from dictum, fewer communities that hate you. Corn-fed beef breeds e. Coli; grass feeding an infected herd clears out the deadly bacteria. So what, a few people die, look at our sales numbers!

Integrity, compassion, humanity, quality, purity of food source is lost in the mass corporatization of food production. When low-income people can’t afford fresh meat or vegetables, they eat the processed crap, get diabetes and cardiovascular conditions, can’t afford health insurance, drain the system. Then they are blamed for the high medical costs. Deregulations removes protections, subsidization removes competition, and all this food machine creates is obesity, toxic waste, worker exploitation, excessive litigation, food-borne illnesses, and increasing costs across the board. SARS and the avian flu began in crushing animal storage areas as well. The giant companies are well protected behind walls of cash, and, until recently, the powerful influence of their former employees-turned-government-staffers. Food, Inc. decries the actions of the conglomerates, but every big business (except, interestingly, Wal-Mart) declined to respond to filmmaker Robert Kenner. Kenner shows us the man behind the curtain and wants us to know we’re not powerless.

As I encourage my readers to vote with your wallets at the box office, so does Kenner exhort you to vote at the grocery check out. His film shows us ugly, faceless corporate greed and its truly fatal consequences, but gives us tools to dismantle or at least throttle back the machine — and hopefully solve some of the world’s ills as well. This film is important to see and comes at just the right time to ride the wave of anger at the powerful despoiling the planet, the economy, and even our bodies to make a buck. We won’t be able to reverse the culture of consumerism, nor will we fully eliminate profit-centric public policy, but we can change how much we let ourselves be patsies for their enrichment. As Edmund Burke said, “No one could make a mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”

I think everyone should see this documentary and vote accordingly at the box office. But if your Full Price Feature dollar can be spent buying something from outside the Big Four food processor cartel, I think the filmmakers would prefer you take action that way, and talk up the movie to more people. Check it out.

MPAA Rating PG

Release date 6/12/09 limited

Time in minutes 94

Director Robert Kenner

Studio Magnolia

I’m not giving anything away when I say that 2012 is about the day our world ends. No stakes could possibly be higher. It’s not just human civilization (though there’s some of that being lost certainly) but the whole freaking planet. By now you have seen some of the spectacular previews with crumbling freeways and mind-boggling floods. What you didn’t see is all the other amazing spectacle that 2012 has to offer. I was desperately in need of some wanton, effects driven fun that also doesn’t piss me off, and 2012 was just what the doctor ordered. Now, my enthusiasm for 2012 is not because I think it’s high art with an important social message. Screw that — this movie is about pure spectacle, and it pulls that off fabulously.

Director Roland Emmerich has wreaked big-scale havoc before, most successfully with Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow. This movie is both of those and more: Volcano/Dante’s Peak/Deep Impact/The Core/Airport/Earthquake/The Poseidon Adventure/Towering Inferno/Evan Almighty/Titanic/Independence Day/The Perfect Storm/Independence Day with a little splash of moral rectitude compliments of the Planet of the Apes. So basically, if you liked any of these, you will enjoy 2012, because it does them all one better. You know billions of people are getting killed, but it’s so spectacularly amazing, so realistic, you get distracted with just the incredible details.

Remember in Titanic, when the (spoiler alert!) ship is sinking, and the deck tips upwards so extras go crashing down its surfaces like so many CG mannequins? In this film, every casualty really looks like an actual person, like they took the time to shoot one extra getting thrown from a car off a bridge onto a crumbling chunk of freeway just to be crushed by another car. Every screaming person who is crushed or dropped or flung or washed away is fully detailed. Every structure scatters debris, every geologic feature collapses with regards to its internal structure and seeming permanence. The effects are phenomenal, and frankly it’s worth seeing just for that — which is of course the point. It was made just for that. Gone are hapless attempts to reverse the cause — no Powerbook can upload a virus to stop the earth from collapsing into itself. We’re just here to ride along with John Cusack and his family as they try and survive. The science is more sound (or appears to be based on something actually sound) but the world events are so unprecendented, most computer models would implode trying to run an accurate simulation anyway. Screw the science — look out for that aircraft carrier!

The score is exciting, the cinematography lovingly depicts entropy large and small, and the overall race against time is pretty fun and intense. We have some characters, they’re not super richly realized but there’s enough there for the good actors in their shoes to make something of them. Oliver Platt and Chiewetel Ejiofor need to be in another movie together where they aren’t upstaged by dissolving continents. They had a great complementary energy that buoyed their scenes above “No YOU listen to ME” panic and posturing. Cusack’s character has written an unsuccessful novel involving a grand doomsday scenario, and Emmerich hits us over the head a few times with Cusack’s “I told you so” attitude about human altruism in the face of immense disaster. You actually hardly notice because he beats us much harder and much more relentlessly with the That Was Lucky stick. One inch in almost any other direction and our heroes would be so much sidewalk jelly like the others, and this happens about once per script page. We know the dog will make it, we know which character will complete his destiny and who will get a giant scene, we know the insufferable bastard will get his just reward. That’s OK. We need that kind of reliable trope so we aren’t distracted from the freaking incredible technical wizardry that really pulls apart our entire planet (with daubs of irony here and there).

2012 has got it all — Man versus Man, Man versus Nature, and Man versus Himself, even Art versus Commerce. I haven’t been this impressed with CG work since Titanic, and that was 11 years ago. It’s the biggest summer movie of the year, and not a moment too soon. Go, have fun.

MPAA Rating PG-13

Release date 11/13/09

Time in minutes 158

Director Roland Emmerich

Studio Columbia Pictures

War movies — they’re everywhere. The terror of battle, the difficulty reintegrating after battle, man’s inhumanity to man, the heroism, it’s all been explored in film in different eras, different political climates, but we have never seen anything like the Messenger. The details are contemporary, but the heart of the story could be the same for any war.

Ben Foster is an Iraq war veteran discharged for injuries who has been assigned to a two-man casualty notification unit with Woody Harrelson. Harrelson is an old hand at this work; he inducts Foster into this sacred, difficult, awful work with a gruff but professional sensitivity and detachment. While Foster is a super creepy casting choice for the role of Sgt. Montgomery, Harrelson is perfect. His Captain Stone is a Desert Storm vet, relatively unmarred by his combat experience. Harrelson has got a beaten up, mean look about him, but the actor’s sweet and squishy center comes out in unexpected moments.

Meanwhile, Foster has a multitude of inner and outer scars that run deep from his tour. Foster can’t even weep for the fallen soldiers he is reporting, thanks to an eye injury. Foster becomes entangled with a young widow (Samantha Morton) and they have some wonderful scenes together that humanize Foster as well as demystify some of the abstraction of Fallen War Heroes.

It’s fascinating to watch them negotiate procedures for sensitivity — acting with feeling but also by the book. Of course Foster has difficulty maintaining the distance he needs, and Harrelson has problems keeping their association strictly professional. It’s procedurally possible but emotionally crippling to squash one’s feelings completely in the faces of the next of kin as they hear the news. The few responses we are privy to are painful and sobering, even knowing nothing about the dead or their families just minutes before. My stomach plummeted when I realized that these guys have a full time job doing these notifications just in their part of the city or state.

Scenes run in long, uninterrupted takes, with little camera movement, just full focus on the actors’ words. At first you might not notice, but then you realize we’ve just been watching one long intense monologue without breaking eye contact with the speaker for a good while. The score is practically invisible — all the feeling and tension is springing from these long, emotional takes. The story is a little aimless, somewhat unresolved, but a worthy subject for examination. This is the kind of film people might skip due to the preponderance of war movies out there, or forget in the wake of flashier end-of-the-year output, but The Messenger is one to watch for great performances.

MPAA R-language and some sexual content/nudity

Release date 11/13/09

Time in minutes 105

Director Oren Moverman

Studio Oscilloscope Pictures

It’s a tough sell, a film about the 1986 stoning of a woman.  And yes, I mean the barbaric execution sort of stoning, not anything with a bong.  It came and went in theatres like a flash; when I received my screener DVD, I eyed it with trepidation.  It is a difficult topic and an emotionally wrenching concept, and that’s even before you slide the disc in and read “based on a true story.”  It’s the sort of movie you might have chosen to avoid, but I think it is very important to squarely face this tale as best you can.  See it.  I confess that I (even inured little me) spent some time peeking through the cracks of my fingers, and I did need help divorcing my rational brain from my empathy.  Soraya’s story got out of Ayatollah-controlled Iran at great risk and at a terrible price — she deserves the comparatively mild commitment of us to watch the dramatic retelling of her story.  And the filmmakers and actors deserve it as well.

Soraya (Mozhan Marno) falls victim to her village’s calculating, dismissive men.  Her only friend and ally is her aunt, Zahra (Shoreh Aghdashloo), a fearless woman who wields some of the only feminine authority in that place.  Aghdashloo has always impressed in small roles and large, but here is a role of cunning, bravery, misery, steely resolve, and crumpled hope.  Marno’s role is in some ways easier — she has only to suffer, resign, mourn.  I don’t mean at all to belittle her performance: it was harrowing.   Her end can only elicit horror and despair, no matter how well she succeeds in making us love her.  Aghdashloo has a showy role, but one where she must dole out her showiness in careful measure.

Everyone gives a profoundly affecting performance.  I can’t imagine being asked to play any of these men; even the gentlest male soul has to bury his actorly humanity in service of the character by the end of the film.  I wonder too how close these actors (male and female) are culturally to the world they are depicting, and how it must also have affected them.  This is a very good film, but it is hard for me to chirp “check it out” because it will stick with you, twisting in your stomach and making your life’s petty annoyances feel less than trivial.

Based on the book by Freidoune Sahebjam (portrayed by Jim Caviezel), The Stoning plays out much as it must have been told to him.  It unspools like a fable, the terrible course of Soraya’s life before the story begins, and the plot to end it.  The reign of the Ayatollah Khomeni continued for three years after this story takes place, and, like the Taliban in Afghanistan, set the cultural attitudes back in that country by 2000 years almost overnight.  For such ugliness of humanity to rise so easily, for such unfairness and cruelty to bloom so virulently requires such a deficit of empathy, rationality, compassion it hurts to think about it.  I wonder if this film might inadvertently re-injure the peaceful followers of Islam who are still smarting from the backlashes of 9/11-motivated hate crimes.  My heart found it inconceivable to see any good in these men, even Hashem (Parviz Sayyad), a man unique among his peers for shedding tears over the death of his wife.  Still, to allow such atrocities to continue is impossible to endure.  My hope is that Soraya will serve as a symbol for so many others who in modern times have met the same fate, and help stop the practice of stoning.  This film is eye-opening and heart-draining and it is excellently produced.

MPAA Rating  R – disturbing sequence of cruel and brutal violence, and brief strong language.

Release date 6/26/09

Time in minutes 116

Director Cyrus Nowrasteh

Studio Roadside Attractions

After a truly fantastical opening credits sequence, I worried that Cirque du Freak might have exhausted its quality potential. Thankfully, it had not. Adapting the first three of Darren Shan’s books and having a whimsical and sardonic dark tone, this film will inevitably be compared to Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. That film also squished three wonderful books into one passable film and had an outstanding cast. To compare them is a disservice to both, however. I have not read Shan’s books, but The Vampire’s Assistant made me want to. A key difference between these works is the generally more sunny and big-picture tone of Cirque du Freak, compared to the cynical, intimate feel of Unfortunate Events. The filmgoing experience is very different but the superficial similarities might make you prejudge and miss this one, if the other one didn’t do it for you.

The real appeal of Cirque du Freak is the engaging cast of characters. Our sweet goody two-shoes titular hero (named Darren Shan!) gets himself into a pretty serious pickle, but has a fantastic network of freaks and outcasts by his side. Key among these is John C. Reilly, the vampire who makes it all happen. Reilly has always solidly marched the line between weird and sympathetic, and this role benefits from this and his wonderful, dry sense of humor. Fellow freak-show denizens have small yet titillating parts, sucking you in for future tales to tell and flitting away to let the central relationships in the story play out. We meet, briefly, Salma Hayek, Orlando Jones, Ken Watanabe, Patrick Fugit, Jane Krakowski, and Jessica Carlton. We want more of all of them. But for now, we must have exposition. A war is brewing between the Vampires and the Vampaneze, and you can probably guess that Universal really wants to have a sequel explore this plot element, which drops in at the end, Lord of the Rings style. Meanwhile, we have families to abandon, best friends to negotiate, and teachers to complain about (Galaxy Quest’s Patrick Breen, always a hoot).

The funny bits are amusing, the action entertaining, the themes simple, the promise of future tales tantalizing, and the overall feel of the movie is more charming than epic or scary. It has the simple feel of a Young Adult series but some of the same adult-friendly wit that Mr. Snicket engages in. I love these people and I want to see more of them. I also want to see more story involving Mr. Tiny (Michael Cerveris, in artificial layers of blubber), who was a delectably prissy and menacing creature. I want more! Some book adaptations feel like they left something out; this movie is dense but still just a sample size. The creepy small CG creatures aren’t particularly compelling but I suspect they will become important. Meanwhile, I’ll grab the book and see if it sates my need to wallow around in this fun and adventurous world. The only real deficit is that the stakes, whatever they are, never feel all that high, despite death and battle and soul sucking and so forth. So, maybe it’s a little frothy? It’s still fun.

MPAA Rating PG 13

Release date 10/23/09

Time in minutes 109

Director Paul Weitz

Studio Universal Pictures

Based on Lynn Barber’s memoir, An Education plays out rather like a diary read. When you write of exciting moments in your life, you don’t need to elaborate on certain things, like best friends’ names or schoolwork, and this film doesn’t bother to either. Jenny (Carey Mulligan) is a schoolgirl, almost but not quite of age, who falls into a relationship with David, an older man (Peter Sarsgaard). It’s more than that, of course. Her education at school suffers at the hands of the education in life she receives from David — but also she learns about the importance of both for women in 1961, when it was “a waste” for a marriageable woman to go to university — what would she use her education for? Jenny is a model student being pushed by her reclusive, narrow father (terrifically portrayed by Alfred Molina) to get into Oxford. Her book education is vast — she can speak of paintings she has never seen, speak the languages of countries she has never visited, and read novels about lives neither she nor her parents ever live. Molina is a puckered, tight-fisted near-agoraphobe and has trapped Jenny’s mother (Cara Seymour) in his web of fear and rigidity. It’s a wonder Jenny didn’t rebel sooner.

Enter, oh so casually, Peter Sarsgaard, a man genetically engineered for the role of David. Sarsgaard is both non-threatening and feral — he’s got a boyish face with impish laugh-lines well set into his charming face. He’s too sweet, too smooth, such that the wise old woman sitting in my seat didn’t trust him for a millisecond. He seduces her parents into a foggy state of permissiveness that could only take root in a home so sheltered from life. David continually comes up with new sides to his character, shady and sunny. He’s never predatory, always generous, but one still has to wonder, why a girl so young? Mulligan would tempt any man to be sure — she’s beautiful and sparkly, and can hold forth on all her book-learning better than the more uncultured adults in David’s life (particularly Rosamund Pike). It was hard to watch Jenny fall so easily to chaotic neutral David, but it was deliriously romantic as well. He wears down our resistance and we fall for him too.

Balancing Jenny’s tumultuous emotional education are the pillars of her academic one, teacher Olivia Williams and headmistress Emma Thompson. What Jenny sees when she looks at these women, contrasted with her world with Sarsgaard and Pike and Dominic Cooper, is pointless drudgery. Screenwriter Nick Hornby is an old hand at writing stories about men finding their sea legs in life and taking off the blinders that keep them single-minded precluding all else (Fever Pitch, About A Boy, High Fidelity). It’s lovely to see that he can translate his narrative skills and insight to a female’s perspective. The diary feel is all the more a triumph for having been translated through a man.

The production is gorgeous, from the lush elegance of the grown-up world to the chalky stultification of the classroom. The soundtrack is pretty, the costumes are dashing (even before Mad Men this has always been my favorite sartorial period). An Education is deliciously shot by John De Norman (check out his filmography to be impressed). Jenny grows wiser — and wisdom comes from life, not books. She receives an education, and through Barber’s memoir, seeks to educate us — not on the follies of her youth, but the importance of life teaching and knowing why we learn what we learn. It’s great, check it out.

MPAA Rating PG-13

Release date 10/9/09

Time in minutes 100

Director Lone Scherfig

Studio Sony Pictures Classics

Not unlike its inevitable comparison film, The Blair Witch Project, one of the most exciting things about Paranormal Activity is how while you are watching it, it feels real enough that you feel unsure whether it’s a movie or a found-footage presentation.  I dissected various actions and moments in the film, searching for the cinematic mechanical justification behind an action (for example, handling sound recording throughout an entire house) in the beginning, while this movie worked up its head of steam.  It played very naturalistically and felt justified and normal, and I was able to abandon myself to the fun.  (Or is it a snuff film?)  The whole film is 98% two people, Micah and Katie, shot entirely within their San Diego home (a very fancy one for persons of their apparent income level), shot completely with a fancy-but-still-consumer-grade digital movie camera.  It feels very much like what it purports to be — Micah wanting to capture on film weird things that have started happening to them in their home.

The performances are unselfconscious when appropriate and very natural, which is the most convincing aspect of the movie all around.  From their dialogue to their at-home wardrobe to their blood-curdling screams, it feels and sounds very real.  Also, the cinematography is consistent with that which would be managed by an online trader who just got a fancy camera, so if you had queasy problems with Blair Witch or Cloverfield’s shaky-cam, you might want to skip this one.  Realism and grounding everything else besides the actual scary thing in reality is what makes this film work.  If you can manage the shakycam it’s a very nicely crafted, slow burn of a scary movie.  It’s organic style means no hackneyed tension release mechanisms that sustain the audiences of most narrative horror films.  Ahhh!  It was only the cat.

The bursts of activity (paranormal) are varied and unpredictable and hit your various reptilian brain centers in different ways.  If you normally find X scary, but chortle your way through Y, you’ll get a dose of both.  The sound design also contributes a great deal to the proceedings.  A nearly-sub-aural rumbling announces that something is coming, and your body learns to tense up when it hears it.  (This was no fun at all driving home.)   It’s all very low-tech — some sounds could literally be a group of grips lifting and dropping a couch — and this makes it feel even more convincing.  Unearthly screeches or banshee music or gooey tentacles would kill the mood.  Nothing is scarier than what we can imagine for ourselves.  A creak of a stair caused by nothing we can see — heebie jeebies!

Katie and Micah are a believable, likable couple, knocking around their gorgeous, immaculate house, and they sell the smallest moments for full price, especially Katie.  Don’t bother holding out for a stinger at the end of the credits — that menacing rumble will only end with the MPAA rating.  Paranormal Activity is edited almost clinically, like an evidence tape, and with none of the framing or vanity-screen time Blair Witch sometimes betrayed.  I’ll tell you one thing, it’s not the scariest movie I have ever seen, but it’s probably the most efficient and insidious.  The noises in my house never seemed so loud or inexplicable as they do after seeing this.  It’s a great scary treat and the filmmakers should be rewarded with your business.

MPAA Rating  R-language

Release date 9/25/09 limited

Time in minutes 99

Director Oren Peli

Studio Paramount Pictures

Like any proper spoof (not like Date/Scary/Epic/Dance Movies, actual
spoof), Zombieland serves also as an example of the genre it’s
spoofing. Unlike the inevitable comparison with the British Shaun of
the Dead, this movie feels less like a spoof and more like a
straightforward zombie movie with just some comedy thrown in. Zombie
movies already have some comedy in them, so the line between the
“serious ones” and this one is fine indeed. It’s funny, but it’s not
outrageous or satirical or genre-skewering or anything like that.
It’s more acerbic and snappy.

Told mainly from the perspective of Jesse Eisenberg’s character
“Columbus” (as in the destination in Ohio), we learn how a skinny,
neurotic drink of water like him has managed to be one of the few
survivors left after a truly cataclysmic spread of undeaditude. In
fact, our young lead’s reliance on the hard and true rules of
surviving a zombiepocalypse are pretty much what anyone his age or a
bit older (like, Woody Harrelson’s age) would already take as read as
how one would survive. Like Jamie Kennedy in Scream, Eisenberg sticks
to the basic principles and they work. His survival is thorough and
long-standing, more routine than terrifying at the point we join his
story. Throughout the movie, Eisenberg explains the various rules he
adheres to, which are then amusingly graphically presented and used as
visual punctuation whenever employed.

Naturally, others have survived by less meticulous but no less
effective means. He runs into the wonderfully over the top Woody
Harrelson, gleefully massacring his way across the country to find a
Twinkie. (It is funny to see Mr. Hemp and Compost firing a huge gun
out of a Hummer.) They later meet Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin,
jaded streetwise urchins all. They make their way through distrust
and moaning hordes to a huge set-piece finale, a hyperbolic spree
seemingly created as the central point of Zombieland. In fact, the
movie’s title and its focus on this climax makes me believe that the
whole movie was created just to bring us to the carnival of carnage.
Spoiler alert: zombies get blowed up real good.

Eisenberg’s character from Adventureland is now in Zombieland, with
only the wisdom of his numerous near-brushes with death. I almost
didn’t recognize Stone; she was a sexy teen vixen in Superbad, a
hopelessly tremulous nerd in House Bunny, and now she’s a cavalier
cool chick here. It’s funny/sad that her resume, if viewed by someone
who had seen none of these movies, makes her look like a B-Movie
bimbo. Stone’s chameleonic comedic capacity, her hot-yet-accessible
appearance, and the fact that all three of those movies were surprise
critical and audience hits — all this tells me that she’s in for the
long haul.

Harrelson is playing to his go-to tough redneck type, but with a comic
edge and a truly creatively brutal side. If the mayhem weren’t
against voracious undead cannibals, it would be disturbing. As it is,
it’s pretty much videogame level appreciation of the novelties of
application and the unapologetic hyperbole. And finally (well, not
finally, but we’ll leave that last survivor as a delicious marshmallow
surprise) we have precocious angel Abigail Breslin. Always acting
beyond her age, she’s one of the few 12 year-olds who can possibly
pull off her character’s deeply-ingrained cynicism and instincts. I
got flashes of her in Signs and Little Miss Sunshine while she rolled
her eyes at a poorly executed kill. Adorable.

Zombieland is a road movie, a little meta-commentary on zombie movie
mayhem, and an extremely violent and pretty funny comedy. Come on,
zombies, what more do you need?

MPAA Rating  R – zombie horror violence/gore and language.

Release date 10/2/09

Time in minutes 82

Director Ruben Fleischer

Studio Columbia TriStar

Ricky Gervais was himself reason enough to see the Invention of Lying, but I was also interested by the premise.  Without having given it much thought before entering the theatre, while watching, I was perpetually reminded of the fruitful nature of what seems so simple: In a world where no one is capable of uttering anything that isn’t true, one man (co-writer/co-director/star Gervais) suddenly develops the capacity to lie.  Mayhem ensues, right?  The preview implies that he rushes out to take advantage of everyone else, which wouldn’t actually be funny enough to sustain a movie.  Gervais is not that kind of guy.  He writes screenplays for movies — but in a world without untruth, there is no fiction, no fables, no tall tales, no myths, no icons, no legends.

Not one of us (eg lie-enabled) could be brought up in a universe of pure truths without sustaining some serious psychological damage.  The undistilled credulity of his fellow man is too much to take.  Not only can no one utter an untruth, it seems that they are also incapable of keeping their thoughts to themselves.  It’s a carnival of blunt remorselessness — why be remorseful, it is just the truth?   If someone finds you repellant they will go ahead and volunteer that information and you know it is the truth. What must self-esteem be like as a person in that world?  Anyone who finds you stupid or ugly or threatening or intimidating will tell you so.  It’s all so simplistic and straightforward — no one need delve below the surface of a person since no one can prevaricate or self-aggrandize or even have an unspoken agenda.  His new power, discovered by accident at a happily fortuitous moment, is mighty indeed.  Perhaps he took his ultimate plan a step too far by the end, but imagine the impossible position he finds himself in.

The pre-lie part of the movie at first seems to go on for too long — we know what’s coming, and are greedily awaiting the plundering of these innocently rude and heartless, non-introspective people.  Really, they are like three year olds — what they see is what exists and they believe everything you tell them and blurt out things not realizing the consequences.  However, it’s very important to establish how profound this truth-telling is and establish Gervais’ innate altruism before he’s tempted by the knowledge of truth and untruth.

From here, the movie becomes dizzyingly hilarious, mixed with genuine sympathy, while an amusing and subversive element grows slowly, beginning as fascinating and then stumbling into inevitability.  Where there can be only truth is also a basic assumption of best intentions — Gervais has a lovely scene with his mother that sets the ball rolling — but in this superficial universe, where the words are so often painful but endured, you tend to protect yourself by choosing to only hear what you want to hear.  This matters.  Oh just for the ability just to hold one’s tongue!  These people are toddler-like also in that they are barely able to lead their own lives once their responsibility is taken away from them by Gervais’ web of storytelling.  Their implicit reliance on the infallibility of everyone is crippling. [Message!]  Invention ends up being very sweet, very funny, and definitely winking about what is required in order to live in a world such as that to which we are accustomed.   I’ll let you discover this particular conundrum for yourself.  This movie is definitely not Ghost Town — it’s philosophically titillating.

The entire cast from top to bottom is stuffed with great comic actors and comedians — but it is not a wacky woo hoo zany fest.  The comic performer’s sense of timing and absurdity, no matter how large or small the part, is vital.  Gervais’ particular popular acerbic persona is restrained, but still retains that wonderful sense of impatient impotence — he’s lovable and treads that fine line to keep himself sympathetic even when he may be bending our moral code somewhat.  The Invention of Lying is very enjoyable, do go see it.  Discuss it with friends of different backgrounds than yourself for a fun evening.

MPAA Rating PG-13
Release date 10/2/09
Time in minutes 100
Director Ricky Gervais / Matthew Robinson
Studio  Warner Brothers

The fashion universe in America centers around — maybe even depends upon — exposure in Vogue magazine. It’s the flagship of Condé Nast’s publishing empire, and for twenty-one years, it’s been under the cold, watchful eye of editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. Even if you don’t follow the caprices of the fashion industry, you have probably heard of Wintour. The book (and its film adaptation) The Devil Wears Prada was based on the singular, stressful experience of working for such a woman. Wintour’s closed, expressionless eyes drift decisively over thousands of garments and images daily, and what she says is fashionable goes. Her taste, her mood, and her mind shape what runway, couture, and later discount designers create and we wear. It sounds hyperbolic, but in many ways it’s true — she has this huge yet superficial power. She surveys her kingdom with inflexible demands and everyone struggles to keep up and to anticipate her whims. The September issue of Vogue is the big year kick-off, the definitive volume. I’m not sure why — the film takes it as a given. The movie concerns itself with the process behind creating this issue (September 2007) and also in trying to unlock the legend of Anna Wintour.

When speaking with the camera, Wintour peers smiling out from under her signature London swinging ’60′s bob, her eyes polite but her demeanor alternatively rushed or reflective. For her, this world is serious, it’s vital, it’s curing cancer. You know that time the copier exploded right before that big meeting, how it was the most important thing in the world for you? Well, her whole life is run at that adrenaline level all the time. For others, even including her siblings and daughter, and certainly myself, it’s much ado about frippery, a huge misuse of intensity and perfectionism and creative energy and money. If Wintour applied her perfectionist micromanaging no-compromise attitude in a lab, she probably could cure cancer. It has got to be an interesting experience being deified by your industry but trivialized because it’s about Fashion. Lots of people don’t get Anna Wintour, and part of me thinks she cultivates that inscrutability to increase her power and prestige.

As a fashion editor, she is no fashion plate. She wears a lot of the same pieces, in a narrow but busy color scheme, and with a small selection of accessories, yet she oversees photo spreads of some truly unflattering, trendy, weird, horrifying, and expensive clothes. She approves a dumpy, bright colored neck brace and then crosses her arms over her sensibly clad (though loud) self, and moves on to the next ordeal of the day.

The access granted the film crew is impressive, and as the publish date for the magazine draws near, they are included more and more in the story. They are unwitting confessors, conspirators, and mitigators of conflict, employed as such on purpose, and even find a role in the magazine itself. At Vogue, everything is a resource, a tool, a feature. It’s interesting to see the process behind magazine layout, location shoot wrangling, cover design, and so much more.

What I loved best about The September Issue was not the insight into the iconic boss from hell, but her creative director Grace Coddington. Grace and Anna have been cohorts for years, with Grace cast firmly as the underling. Where Anna tolerates only perfectionism, Grace wears her frizzy red hair wild over a clumpy black outfit and no makeup. She also happens to be absolutely genius at designing photoshoots. She creates these gorgeous photo essays that succeed on their own as art, even making the outrageous clothes seem more like artistic choices than fashion trends. Anna never lets anyone forget she’s boss, and she grinds Grace down to retain control of the situation. By the end of the film, we come to realize that their passive-aggressive dance has gone on for decades and will go as long as either of them let it. Anna might dictate the direction of clothing trends, but Grace creates the signature style that keeps Vogue the leader on the shelves. Even if the subject of the magazine doesn’t interest you, the mechanics of making it happen will add much to the story of these two women for whom fashion is the world, not just a job.

MPAA Rating PG-13

Release date 9/11/09

Time in minutes 90

Director RJ Cutler

Studio A&E Entertainment