Reviews

*** This comment may contain spoilers *** Unbelievable what I read about this movie. I don't have one single positive comment to make as I wondered during the whole movie whether to leave or see it through. What a bore. What a lack of suspense. What a poor plot. It leads nowhere. The story fails to unravel, it is poorly acted, especially by Owen who puts in an abysmal performance and Michael Caine who is just an add on to attract some viewers but clearly fails to impress. The Human Project is mentioned during the whole movie and comes up as a boat named Tomorrow? Please! Give us a break! Gratuitous shots of violence abound. Dialogues are below the level of an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie (and that is to say a lot). We were a group of 6 friends and none of us had anything good to say about this movie -instead all of us were intent on finding the culprit that recommended such rubbish. Comments from other viewers coming out of the theater were all unanimous: a waste of time and money. You have been warned! Sometimes one really wonders if the critics are not being paid for what they write.

Al Gore should be forgiven for what could be perceived as weakening his message with shots of his childhood and political life. The message on global warming is loud and clear and this documentary rightly focuses on stimulating a reaction from the public, on saying something can be done rather that seeking to blame or find the culprit. We know we all are. The key answer to this apathy on the part of worldwide audiences is obviously politics. When issues are so big they make us individuals feel we can not single handedly solve them, that is when politics have to step in. Regardless of where you stand it is hard to deny that the current US administration is environmentally very weak and has repeatedly played the cards of the oil and military lobbies. All this documentary is saying is that given this huge problem and given the US's very weak record in tackling it the only way this can get any better is if there is a change in administration. It is happening already at the State level, it will follow at the federal level in 2 years time. Politics are a renewable resource and the US will eventually move from being a laggard to being a leader as it has done throughout its history, this time to the benefit of the whole planet.

Expectations run high when I headed for the premiere of this movie. I had enjoyed Chocolat and was looking forward to the latest Gere performance. The Howard Hugues story seemed to be a good enough setting. The picture was a great disappointment. The suspense never really took hold and the plot seemed to get lost far too often in irrelevant detail. The acting of most characters was also very average with a weak Gere who almost felt like a tired actor using all his charm to make up for it. The only great performance came from Alfred Molina who deserves to be nominated for Best Supporting Actor and confirms his great talent displayed as the Mayor in Chocolat. The only fascinating thing about this movie is that it tells a true story - hard to believe it ever happened considering how unconvincing most characters were.

This is a very good documentary about one of our outstanding living jazz pianists. Herbie Hancock, best know for his "Cantaloupe Island" and "Watermelon Man" nowadays ubiquitous classics, reveals in this film how versatile and adaptable a musician he is. We witness Hancock creating music pieces with the great like Sting, Annie Lennox, Santana and Angélique Kidjo but his most interesting experiments are pulled off with young, lesser known talents from Ireland and Santa Monica. Raul Midón had us rush to check him out after the performance. While the documentary focuses on the interaction of Hancock with living musicians, Miles Davis could not have been left out given his great influence on Hancock in the "second great quintet" years. After showing the portrait of a talented music experimentalist the documentary attempts, with less success, to show us the man delving in his own soul. It would have been better to show this side of Hancock throughout the film rather than treating the issue somehow separately towards the end.

Much has been written about how well the subject has been treated and the impartiality of Spielberg's approach - a given these days if he doesn't want to end up like Salman Rushdie. Much has also been said also about the sheer quality of the production. But I am puzzled to say the least about why a director with the financial means of Steven Spielberg would make us believe that Budapest is Rome and Malta is Athens. From the flawless recreation of European capitals in the early seventies to the impeccable costume design to the beautiful cinematography – 'Munich' is a visually fascinating movie. Except no scene was actually shot in Rome nor Athens. We were clearly in Hungary and Malta. And it showed. For those who know these cities this begs the question: was Spielberg on a shoestring budget?

While I was in awe watching this truly superb documentary I felt there was really something missing: there was no explanation of the migration, no real educational content which would have left the viewer enriched. All we saw was a glimpse at the number of kilometers flown and the name of the birds. The film did not attempt to explain the extraordinary journeys these birds undertook and left me with a sense of missed opportunity, almost a real big waste: they had me captivated and transfixed for an hour, why not nourish my intellect as well as my eyes? At the very least the DVD box could have contained a booklet filling these knowledge gaps - and if someone knows of any such publication that would shed light on this movie I'd love to hear about it!

To most of us Brazilian music is "The girl from Ipanema" and some carnival samba. This wonderful documentary manages to take us through some of its unsung origins, tracing it back to the Indian and African roots so predominant in the country's Northeast. Music is the soul of Brazil, its unifying element and the only true element that connects the country's melting pot of races. Mika Kaurismäki decides to take us through the origin of the music in Brasil and deliberately chooses to leave out the more famous Bossa Nova, born in the late fifties among the country's intellectuals. "Moro no Brasil" takes us through Forrò, Frevo, Samba through the eyes of the real Brazilian people that play the music and live with it their daily lives. We enter the favelas and dance with them. The filming is so sensitive and the camera shots so good one cannot help but feel the strong emotion the Brazilians themselves feel for their music. The social aspect of the music is also analyzed and shown to play a very important role in Brazilian less favoured society. This is a great masterpiece of a documentary. Lets hope Mika Kaurismäki will follow it up with a second part on Bossa Nova.