The un-making of the president, 2004

Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
IFC and Lions Gate Films present a Michael Moore film, starring Moore. Written by Moore. 112 minutes. Rated R for language and violence (including a beheading).

3.5 stars

While Michael Moore has been accused of a great many things, he’s never obscured his dislike for the current political administration.

In these months preceding the national elections, Moore has again turned himself into America’s simultaneously most loved and hated P.T. Barnum in an effort to hawk a film that dismantles the Bush/Cheney regime currently in power.

Long gone is the anonymous resident of Flint, Mich. who set out to make a little film about the evil empire - General Motors - in 1989. Also gone too is the bastion of the middle-class who rallied against corporate “downsizing” and the loss of American jobs for 1997’s “The Big One.”

Those fellows have been replaced with an upgraded Moore - a version 2.0 if you will - that enjoys all the privileges of an upper class lifestyle but still dresses like a slob to show loyalty to his roots. He’s gone from running around Flint, or Rockford, or Dick Clark’s minivan - as he did in 2002’s “Bowling For Columbine” - to scoring points in sardonic narration in his latest “docu-dramedy,” which opened last Friday in 850 theaters.

This newer version of Moore is much more vengeful than the one in “Columbine,” and his attack seems at times as unfocused as shooting fish in a barrel. Although he considers himself a documentarian when it suits him and a comedian when he’s attacked on the veracity of his movies’ facts, he doesn’t purport to be “fair and balanced” about the Bush empire. Moore will tell you: He wants his film to catalyze Americans into voting for the other guy - whether that be Sen. John Kerry, Ralph Nader or any of the other presidential hopefuls that aren’t Bush.

So why is a movie like “Fahrenheit 9/11” - this lopsided, venomous attack on our president - something of considerable merit? The answer comes not in the pile of documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, but when Moore remembers why audiences salivated over his movie like Pavlovian dogs in the first place. With his sweatshirt-and-ballcap-wearing attitude, Moore has been able to look behind the curtain and unmask individuals.

When he captures stalwarts of the entertainment and business worlds - like Charlton Heston in “Columbine” and Phil Knight in “The Big One” - saying things they probably shouldn’t have on camera, we cheer his audacity. But we’re touched more when he comforts the principal at school where there’s been a school shooting, or a woman who was just “downsized” out of her longtime job.

His success in “Fahrenheit 9/11” rests primarily on the shoulders of Flint native Lila Lipscomb, whose 26-year-old son died in Iraq in early April. Lipscomb is a true patriot, one Moore suggests has been won over by the anti-Iraq propaganda campaign that the Bush administration created to justify war. But as word from her son becomes increasingly more negative about the reasons for his deployment, Lipscomb finds herself in a precarious position.

After news comes of his passing, Lipscomb cannot find an outlet to express her frustrations with the situation until a visit to Washington, D.C. Outside the White House, she finds a certain solace - and a direction to expel her anger over losing a son.
Moore’s cleverness is that he transitions from point to point almost seamlessly. When the film opens, he asks us to imagine the possibility of Al Gore winning the hotly contested 2000 election and shows us the horror of disenfranchised black representatives from Florida needing one senator’s signature to contest the election results. Except there’s one problem - the senators are all noticeably absent. In an ironic turn, Gore’s strict following of the rules and regulations as chairman blocks any effort to install him as president.

Just as the senators liked to vacation at inopportune moments, Moore says, so too does our president. Spliced in are clips of Bush out on the golf course, or hunting armadillos with his Scottish terrier, Barney. The documentarian theorizes that it was Bush’s willingness to vacation 42 percent of the time before Sept. 11 that left our fair nation woefully unprepared for the attacks.

If “Fahrenheit 9/11” has one lacking element when compared to “Columbine,” it’s that Moore isn’t asking his viewers for any input. He’s indoctrinating them, telling them that its the Bush family’s long relationship with both the Saudis and the Carlyle Group that allowed them to not only protect the family of known terrorist Osama bin Laden in the days following Sept. 11 but also to profit from not one, but two, wars.

But Moore’s points backfire when he takes his notorious pot shots at the presidency, such as showing a clip of entertainer Britney Spears telling an interviewer that Americans should blindly follow presidential directives because she trusts Bush. Moore has also included several shots of Bush looking confused, making inappropriate statements during otherwise serious events, and stumbling over his own words. But these clips will hardly gain Moore the voter base that he claims to be searching for by releasing this film. The voters who elected Bush in 2000 knew all about his propensity to foul up speeches and his off-the-cuff manner.

But that was a selling point for Bush. When Gore could pronounce the names of exiled Yugoslavian leaders in pre-election debates, some Americans resented the pretension of a candidate with a “holier than thou” attitude. Moore’s documentary serves to remind people of the Bush we’ve come to accept, even when he threatens to embarrass us all in a very public fashion.

“Fahrenheit 9/11” has been over-hyped by a media driven to stir any pot of controversy and a few token Republicans who acted like outraged Christians during “The Last Temptation of Christ” or Jewish leaders during “The Passion of the Christ” by condemning the movie before even seeing it.

As a pitch-man by trade, Moore has embraced the controversy all the way to the bank. The movie is manipulative, yes, but that doesn’t negate it’s importance. We have an important decision to make come November and Moore’s film is just one more piece in the puzzle of helping us all figure it out. He’s just hoping that after citizens flock to movie theaters for “Fahrenheit 9/11,” there’s more states that come up blue than red this Election Day.

Examining the gain of identity in a faceless airport

The Terminal (2004)
Dreamworks Pictures presents a Steven Spielberg film, starring Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Written by Andrew Niccol, Sacha Gervasi and Jeff Nathanson. 128m. Rated PG-13 for brief language and drug references.

4 stars

If you’ve ever been on a flight on a commercial airliner, you may have experienced the feeling of hopelessness associated with the “de-personalization” of the event.

To the carrier, you can’t help but feeling you’re just the amalgam of the documents you present. It’s reflected in the way the attendant doesn’t make eye contact with you before she feeds your boarding document into the processor. They look at your face, but only the one reflected into the time-preserved DMV shot on your license. Mostly, they’re looking for a strange sort of validity. Are you say who you are and if you’re not, who are you?

For Viktor Navorski (Tom Hanks), this feeling is intensified after he lands in John F. Kennedy International Airport, located in a quasi-undefined area between Queens, Brooklyn and Long Island. Navorski is on a sojourn from Krakozhia, an Eastern European enclave that has picked an unfortunate time to be subject to a military coup.

When Navorski lands, he is detained by the immigration detail led by Frank Dixon (Stanley Tucci). Through pantomime and Navorski’s narrow grasp of the English language, Dixon tells Navorski he has fallen through a bureaucratic crack. In Dixon’s words, Navorski has become “unacceptable” - neither able to return to war-torn Krakozhia nor allowed to enter United States soil without proper credentials.

The story is loosely based on the tale of Merhan Karimi Nasseri, an Iranian who has lived in France’s Charles De Gaulle airport since 1988. Nasseri fell into a legal quandary when his documentation was lost aboard a Paris train station. He entered the airport as a refugee, but his loss of credentials did not allow him to set foot on French ground. In 1999, he was granted a French residency permit. But Nasseri hasn’t left Terminal One yet.

Nasseri’s tale is one mixed with an appropriate measure of sadness, like the story of Brooks - a fictional character from “The Shawshank Redemption” who becomes so ingrained in the prison system that he cannot tolerate the outside world when he’s paroled.

In “The Terminal,” the screenwriters appropriate the story in a comedic fashion, extolling Navorski’s innate ability to be well liked accidentally, in the same manner of another classic Hanks character, Forrest Gump. In an English-speaking country, a lack of communication skills is a retard to progress.

Spielberg movies are often done in by some overt sentimentality, but in “The Terminal” it doesn’t spiral out of control. Navorski will find relating to United stewardess Amelia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) more difficult than imaginable in a lesser movie. Dixon seems more conflicted than the average “bad guy” - there’s a redeemable part within him, even if he sometimes acts like the world’s biggest apple-polisher or drill sergeant.

The movie’s strength is in slowly revealing Navorski as more than just an unlucky fellow stuck in an airport, waiting for his turn. The finer moments are in the hours after the airport closes, when the Russian demonstrates his inherent prowess in woodworking, design, painting, and oh yes, jazz.

His friends are fellow forgotten folk - a baggage handler (Chi McBride), a janitor (Kumar Pallana) and the lad that restocks the airlines pre-packaged meals (Diego Luna). Their affinity for each other is in their commonality of “anonymousness”: Passengers don’t have time to chat with those in the minimum-wage professions, let alone read signs that don’t help them get their to gate in most efficient way possible. Just as a person departing from JFK don’t seem to notice Navorski, they also similarly ignore the dozens of people it takes for them to arrive at their destination on time with their baggage and their single-serving meal.

By the end, Navorski has become a rallying cry for every airport employee disenfranchised with the inhumanity of the immigration system. His struggle - which fulfills a dream of his deceased father - is embraced by all in a sort of sentimentality usually reserved for more naive films of the 1940s.

“The Terminal” becomes a story not about whether or not one man is within his legal right to see the states, but of the making of a man. In the International Lounge of the JFK International Airport, Viktor Navorski - with his innocent sense of humor, his simple altruism and his kindly offer of friendship - became the most cherished individual in a sea of anonymous faces.

Taking pot-shots at organized religions

Saved! (2004)
MGM/United Artists presents a Brian Dannelly film, starring Mandy Moore and Jena Malone. Written by Dannelly and Michael Urban. 92m. Rated PG-13 for strong thematic issues involving teens - sexual content, pregnancy, smoking and language.

1.5 stars

When it comes to examining religion within the context of a movie, there’s always at least one party pooper.

In “Saved!” the new film about the inhumanity of teenage girls at a fundamentalist Christian high school, writer/director Brian Dannelly plays the role of spoil-sport. His distaste for those who take their religion seriously is neatly confined within the 92 minutes of this relative junk.

“Saved!” plays out like a poorly researched high-school term paper, where the teacher has red-lined almost every paragraph and written at the top in big bold letters, “And what about the other side?” In the film, everyone who isn’t a Bible-thumper is redeemable, but those who praise Jesus more than take his name in vain will be ultimately be exposed as hypocrites by the self-serving agenda of the writer.

Perhaps one of the few things that Dannelly and I might agree on is that acceptance into a Christian school doesn’t make you a better Christian. That can certainly be said for Mary (Jena Malone), the stock “troubled teen” who believes Jesus has called her to lose her virginity to her Christian boyfriend Dean (Chad Faust) to save him from the “perils” of homosexuality.

Mary hides her premarital transgression from friend Hilary Faye (Mandy Moore), who espouses Christian doctrine at every turn. Even a cursory reading of the Bible will tell you that few ever lived on Earth without sin, so it’s not surprising Hilary Faye has her own skeletons in the closet.

Perhaps the irony of “Saved!” is that Mary rejects her Christianity at moments when she may need it most. Now pregnant and alone, Mary finds herself more comfortable in the “out crowd,” buoyed by Jewish rebel Cassandra (Eva Amurri) and paraplegic Roland (Macaulay Culkin). The outsiders fly in a veritable “no spin zone” where Christian hypocrisy is met with contemptuous attitudes.

Those who try to bring Mary back into the flock are painted in the most unflattering strokes imaginable. Pastor Skip (Martin Donovan) lives with the “shame” of a pending divorce while he carries on a sexual liaison with Mary’s mother Lillian (Mary-Louise Parker). Hilary Faye will do anything to keep her wealth, her beauty and her popularity in the forefront of everyone’s minds. She ends up as a character most of us remember from our own high school experiences: the person that tries too hard to be liked.

So what do we take from the senior class of American Eagle Christian High School? There’s a message of tolerance, delivered by Dean at the film’s outset. But Dannelly is trying to reverse 2,000 years of firmly held doctrine in an hour and half film. Those who have made the biggest steps in gay rights haven’t done so by attacking and overwhelming the religious factions; rather, they’ve concentrated on our secular entities, which actually form the laws that govern us.

An attack on the most passionate of any religion is too easy of a target. Perhaps if Christian-centric films dominated the marketplace, these lampoons would be more justifiable. And while there are films that have been cited by Christians for having commendable themes (such as Moore’s first star role, “A Walk to Remember”), there aren’t any overtly Christian message films that are making big splashes at the weekend box office.

Sure, fundamentalists of any religion are troubling characters. But like the essay example, Dannelly has missed the other side of the argument. What if Hilary Faye did not have Christ’s message in her heart? What if Pastor Skip didn’t try as hard at the pro-Jesus rally? Teen-agers who are extremely passionate about religion are oftentimes looking for a stabilizing force that puts meaning to their own tangled existence. Would Dannelly rather these children get their fix from television, drugs, or sexual promiscuity? If we’re going to examine extremes, let’s make sure we comprehend both ends of the spectrum.

Potter secret: Films are just as vacuous as the books

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
Warner Bros. presents an Alfonso Cuarón film, starring Daniel Radcliffe, Gary Oldman and Emma Thompson. Written by Steve Kloves, from a book by J.K. Rowling. 142m. Rated PG for frightening moments, creature violence and mild language.

2.5 stars

I’m all caught up with Harry, but his films haven’t caught up with me.

After watching the second installment of the Harry Potter book-turned-film series, “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” during its theatrical run and becoming thoroughly confused, I borrowed the first movie, “Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone” as well as the popular children’s book series.

The Potter books - written by Englishwoman J.K. Rowling - are literary ear candy. They are unsurprisingly quick reads which hold no nutritional value, no matter how many pages each subsequent edition holds. Admittedly, the books are page-turners because Rowling historically usurps two-thirds of her prose for exposition, and the final third for the payoff. I often found myself trying to conjure the willpower to read past 300-plus pages of drivel in an effort to be satiated when page 500-something delivered on a long-offered promise.

As the books go, so too do the films. While subplots from the book are trimmed for time, key elements remain untouched. Therefore, my tedium with the book carried over to the two-hour-plus film - which only pays off in the final 20 minutes. Even then, its settlement is apropos to receiving tickets for meaningless junk when all you wanted was the cash.
“The Prisoner of Azkaban” is relegated to the usual trauma that accompanies a “middle” chapter in a continuing series; nothing is truly ventured and therefore, nothing is truly gained.

It’s the third year for magical protagonists Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) and Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) at Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Again, Potter is thrown into a position of saving the school from another form of doom and gloom. In this chapter, alleged murderer Sirius Black (Gary Oldman) has become the first escapee from Azkaban, a wizard prison.

Long-held rumor has it that Black ratted Potter’s parents out to the archenemy Lord Voldemort. Therefore, his escape inspires a higher level of security at Hogwart’s, as public contention is that Black will be targeting the young magician next. The security authorized by the Ministry of Magic comes in the form of dementors, who are similar in size and “scariness factor” to the Stan Winston-designed apparition of “Darkness Falls.”'

Headmaster Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon, who replaced the late Richard Harris) has also appointed Professor Lupin (David Thewlis) as the school’s third Defense against the Dark Arts teacher in as many years. Black and Lupin were classmates of existing Professor Severus Snape, and the three will figure into the quasi-climax together. Small children who aren’t phased by the tense and dark tone to this third feature may want to bring their dictionary to look up “animagus” to understand the movie’s slightly convoluted plot.

Of course, Potter has his usual chance to shine, although he seems more in the background than in previous efforts. As our triumvirate, Radcliffe, Watson and Grint are racing against their rapidly changing bodies to preserve continuity amongst the films. Grint looks ready to start shaving and Watson is developing curves that will have muggles and wizards doing a double-take by the next installment, “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.”

Also changing its appearance is the accepted chiaroscuro of the first two features. New director Alfonso Cuarón - who gave a glossy sheen to the art-house pornography of “Y tu mamá también” - saturates his Hogwart’s in a super shades of black, brown, purple and blue. The darker tone of a madman trying to murder Potter combined with heavy shadows and a series of night scenes makes this the scariest output of the series to date.

“Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” has my recommendation, but it comes with a caveat. Read the books - or, at the very least, watch the first two Christopher Columbus-directed films. The Potter movies have dropped all pretension of a recap of events, so casual followers will be pulling their hair out by the end of the movie trying to understand what actually unfolded. Those who bring all their a posteriori knowledge will enjoy this tween-appropriate feature more than those who have long avoided the artificially-frenzied phenomenon that is Harry Potter.

Political motivation only thing running convincingly amuck in disaster epic

The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
20th Century Fox presents a Roland Emmerich film, starring Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaal. Written by Emmerich and Jeffrey Nachmanoff.

2 stars

In election years, critics of all cultural expressions have their antennae up for any marinating of political philosophy into otherwise benign efforts.

“The Day After Tomorrow” probably doesn’t strike the casual viewer as an opportunity to denounce the current administration like a documentary such as “Fahrenheit 9/11.” But Roland Emmerich isn’t above tossing in a few pointed jabs at the states’ dogged refusal to be an environmentally-friendly nation in his newest $125 million eco-flick.

Perhaps the film’s greatest sin is one often caused by these big-budget disaster films - of which Emmerich is responsible for “Godzilla” and “Independence Day.” Filmmakers once again presume audiences aren’t interested in a layered plot and dynamic characters; instead they throw millions of dollars worth of special effects at their patrons, hoping we won’t notice the flim-flam execution of the storyline.

They’re also adept at throwing mounds of scientific jargon at us, in hopes we won’t actually stop to consider if it all makes sense. Enter paleo-climatologist Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) who informs a room full of United Nations delegates that the “polar ice caps melting might disrupt the mid-Atlantic current” causing great shifts in climate. Later, he informs a group of oceanographers that major bodies of water have gained “too much freshwater” because of the aforementioned polar ice caps, leading to a - wait for it, wait for it - “critical desalinization point.”

Meanwhile, a vice president with a striking resemblance to Dick Cheney rebukes Hall’s insights, first denouncing the entire Kyoto Accord and then regurgitating the Bushian viewpoint that the economy is more important than the environment. The payment for his capitalistic sins? Hall grimly predicts everyone below West Virginia will encounter temperatures near negative 150 degrees Fahrenheit.

Despite warnings from Mother Nature in the form of head-splitting hail in Tokyo and multiple, simultaneous tornados in Los Angeles, the Bush, ahem, fictional administration refuses to believe Hall’s weather forecasting models.

Meanwhile, Jack has ignored his own good advice to stay indoors and plans a trek out to reunite with his son, Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal), who was on a school expedition in Manhattan and is now burning the contents of the New York Public Library to stay alive. All heat not generated by the works of Friedrich Nietzsche comes from tacked-on love interest Laura Chapman (Emmy Rossum). A third subplot - involving Dr. Lucy Hall, mother of Sam and wife of Jack - is added merely to break up scenes of helicopter pilots freezing in mid-step after their planes are downed by the negative triple-digit weather.

In fact, Emmerich has a whole slate of minor characters he dashes into the disaster stew, all in an effort to humanize a completely CGI-laden experience. The effects are not unlike ones we’ve witnessed dozens of times before, in movies like “Twister,” “Dante’s Peak,” “Deep Impact” and “Armageddon.” Absent of any real plot, this film is only really for those interested in a screenwriter’s interpretation of our environmental woes and Al Gore, who has reportedly given the movie the thumbs up.

Not surprising. After all the mocking done of the current people of power, it’s a wonder why the movie just didn’t cut their losses and have Quaid come to the foreground to deliver one more important speech.

“Vote Kerry or we’ll all going to die.”