Cartel Land.

You will notice if you peruse the credits of Matthew Heineman’s latest hard hitting and gritty documentary a name you may recognise under the heading of ‘executive producer’. She was the first woman to win an Academy Award for Best Director, the woman is Kathryn Bigelow and the movie was Hurt Locker (2012), which you must admit is a recommendation in its self.

Heineman not only directed Cartel Land (2015) but also was involved with the films production, editing and its cinematography. For its audience this film is another cultural awakening involving one the worlds riches countries and it impoverished neighbour. For many Mexicans a life of crime is the only alternative to attempting an illegal border crossing to the USA.

 

The principled Nailer Foley. 

In the documentaries opening scene we are treated to a lesson in how to produce meth crystals and the importance of the American drug market. Their American counterparts have trained the cartel involved in this craft! The documentary will return to this open-air drug kitchen at the end of the film when we find out some very startling facts. 

But the main point of this excellent documentary is to focus on two men, each operating on different sides of the border and each one is convinced he is on the side of right and that he is fighting the ‘bad guys’.  Firstly we meet a rough but likable character who was originally driven to drink and hard drugs by his father’s physical, mental and verbal abuse.  Tim “Nailer” Foley is the leader of the Arizona Border Recon a voluntary group of uniformed and well armed men who petrol the border between the two countries with the aim of keeping the drug cartels out of America as well as handing over economic migrants to the US authorities.

 

Dr Jose Mireles.

The second of these two men is Dr Jose Mireles the charismatic Michoacán based physician who is also head of the Autodefensas, a community self defence group that fights the ruthless Knights Templar drug cartel for control of the local towns. This paramilitary group not only has to fight the cartel but is also mistrusted by the local military whose own interests are not always clear. We soon realise that all is not as straight forward as it seems with a great deal of corruption underlying Heineman’s splendidly shot film.

 

To take the law into your own hands.

Premiering at the 2015 Sundance Film festival it won Heineman the Best Director award and the Jury Award for Cinematography. When viewing this film you could easily be watching a feature film and not a documentary with great action scenes and an exhilarating delivery.  Another documentary that tells it like it is and one I would encourage you to see especially if you appreciated The Act of Killing of which Cartel Land could easily be a real time equivalent. 

      

A Most Violent Year.

Directed, produced and written by J C Chandor A Most Violent Year (2014) is a crime drama set in New York City during the winter of 1981 said to be one of the most violent in the city's history. Our story involves Abel Morales, a man with ambition who wants to expand his heating oil company by purchasing a dual oil terminal on the East River. This will allow him to get one over on his competitors by allowing him to directly import fuel oil from barges and to store more oil in the summer months when the price is low. Placing a down payment of 40% on the property with an agreement that the outstanding amount must be settled in 30 days otherwise he looses both the property and his deposit. But Morales has a problem in that his Standard Oil Company is being plagued by the hijacking of several of his trucks and their cargo of oil stolen, a problem that’s making it harder to raise the money for the outstanding 60%.

Morales business is not going to plan....

A grand cast makes this crime drama very easy to enjoy. Oscar Isaac, whose performance in the Coen Brothers film Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) won him many plaudits plays Morales 'a good man who deserves respect' with the very attractive Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty 2012) as his wife Anna a woman that would sooner dispense with arbitration replacing it with pure old fashioned violence. David Oyelowo seen recently in Selma (2014) where he played Martin Luther King Jnr is an Assistant District Attorney determined to expose price fixing, tax evasion and other illegalities involving the heating oil business in general and Morales in particular.

 

....he should let his wife sort it out!

The film has a cracking musical score composed by Alex Ebert, and has been deservedly nominated for whole clutch of film awards. As I said a film to enjoy and one that grows on you as the story unfolds. Commendably it down plays the violence normally associated with this type of film with Chandor attempting to put across the idea that violence is contagious but all the same it’s a good atmospheric thriller and one I can certainly recommend.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Different director and mainly different actor’s set the sequel to the first of the reboot of the original Planet of the Apes series, 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes apart from Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014). This latest in the series is set ten years after the end of the first movie and we find the remains of humanity struggling to cope with the aftermath of the plague and to stay alive. To hold civilisation together the humans need electric power and the defunct power plant is in the middle of ape territory!  The intelligent community of apes are still lead by Caesar (again played by Andy Serkis) who begins to loose control after giving permission for the humans to access the power plant, but not all members of the ape community are happy with Caesar’s decision.

 

If you go down to the woods today your sure of a big surprise!

As well as Serkis the film stars Jason Clarke, Gary Oldman, Keri Russell, Toby Kebbell and Kodi Smit-McPhee. Written by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver who were involved in the first of the rebooted series with the addition of Mark Bomback who is also the executive producer. Matt Reeves, who was responsible for directing Cloverfield (2008) and the English language version of Let The Right One In (2008) is a good replacement for Robert Wyatt and is also set to direct the third film in the franchise War for the Planet of the Apes.

 

A little sentimentality goes a long way.

Similar to Rise of the Planet of the Apes we get another example of some first class escapist entertainment but underlyingly the story highlights the way so called ‘superior classes’ treat people when they don’t always understand their way of life and their different beliefs - so look beyond the obvious narrative to get the best out of this movie.

There looking forward to the next film.

Eyes Without a Face (Les Yeux sans Visage).

French born Georges Franju’s directing style has been described as a ‘maker of stark documentaries and features, poetic and surrealist dreamscapes, literary adaptations, social commentary and sometimes with brutal content’[1] A man who admitted the his main reason for making films was to awaken an audience, and his second feature film, after a well received series of documentaries, can be said to do just that. 

 

The Mad Doctor. 

Now seen as a classic horror and certainly his best remembered film, Eyes Without a Face (1960) or to give it its French title Les Yeux sans Visage, is basically about a brilliant surgeon Doctor Genessier (Pierre Brasseur), aided by his assistant Louise (Alida Valli), who tries to repair his daughter Christiane’s (Edith Scob[2]) ruined face, following a car accident that he was responsible for, by grafting on to it the face of a beautiful woman.

 

The Daughter. 

Franju’s movie was one of three movies made at that time that was condemned and ridiculed, the very underrated Peeping Tom and the very overrated Psycho. Surprisingly only Hitchcock’s film came through unscathed at the time, but since then the other two turned out to be far better movies and both are now seen as two of the greatest horror films ever made.  

 

The surrogate mother and the doctors assistant.

Author Richard Humphries describes Eyes Without a Face as a subtle and highly sophisticated attack on Nazism and that Doctor Genessier’s experiments can be regarded with chilling hindsight in light of the monstrous experiments carried out by Nazi doctors. He goes on to opine that the entire film is a radical analysis of arrogance based essentially on the belief in the natural rights of one class in relation to another’s, kidnapping and murdering only young female students.

 

The victim about to loose face!

The film with its graphic scenes of gross horror including a glimpse of Christine’s missing face revealing the exposed muscle, watching or turning away as the mad surgeon removes the face of a dead female student and how the very dogs that he has used for his experiments turn on him with brutal repercussions. Again the movie raises the question of who is the monster Genessier or us for watching his grotesque work? The films legacy goes on. Pedro Almodover has admitted that his 2011 movie The Skin I Live In, which also featured a mad surgeon who performs skin grafts on an unwilling victim, was heavily influenced by Franju’s movie.   

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[1] Philip Kemp - 501 Movie Directors.

[2] Who played the chauffer in Leos Carax’s Holy Motors 2012

Greedy Lying Bastards.

“Melting sea ice, glacier loss and rising sea levels. Severe droughts, wildfires, increasingly severe tornadoes, hurricanes, and flooding, record heat waves. Climate change is no longer a prediction for the future, but a startling reality of today. Yet, as evidence of our changing climate mounts and the scientific consensus proves human causation, there continues to be little political action to thwart the warming of our planet. “Greedy Lying Bastards” investigates the reason behind stalled efforts to tackle climate change despite consensus in the scientific community that it is not only a reality but also a growing problem placing us on the brink of disaster. The film details the people and organizations casting doubt on climate science and claims that greenhouse gases are not affected by human behaviour. From the Koch Brothers to ExxonMobil, to oil industry front groups, to prominent politicians and Justices, this provocative exposé unravels the layers of deceit threatening democracy and the ability for future generations to survive on planet earth”[1].

In conjunction with the Dumfries branch of Friends of the Earth, the Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre was showing this important American documentary as part of their Film Club season. Introduced by Ian Gasse who was joined by Debbie Hamilton contact person for FOTE Dumfries for a discussion following the screening. Directed, written and narrated by Craig Rosebaugh who is an activist for political and social justice, and environmental and animal protection and who has written or contributed to various books on those subjects.

 

The Villains.

As you can tell from the films synopsis this feature length documentary explores the phenomenon of climate change denial. Made over a period of three years Rosebaugh describes this personnel project as an undertaking that would uncover the hidden agenda of the oil industry and to provide answers as to why the richest nation on earth fails to implement clean energy policies? The movie also questions why effective action has not been taken on one of the most important and serious matters affecting the 21^st century. Although to be fair the answers pretty obvious in the title of the film, greedy lying bastards, or as they are known in society ‘capitalist’. People who run the industries and the astroturf front groups that are financed by them to promote the lie don’t give a dam about people or their quality of life only greed and profit.  

 

The problem. 

How anybody can argue the case for climate change denial is beyond me? But they do and during the discussion that followed the film there was a consensus that people are genuinely worried about how the facts tend to be ignored and how information is given out so the public have the correct information to make up our own minds. It was agreed that low budget films like Greedy Lying Bastards are essential to form opinions through the medium of cinema. But unfortunately they are not normally shown on a wider release.  The only criticism of the documentary was that the UK was not highlighted more, allowing for a Dumfries audience to relate more to the problem.  Make no mistake that this is a very big problem because of our dependability on oil and the profit involved for the big corporations. Although there is a conference on climate change at the end of November 2015 in Paris I would not hold your breath on any substantial changes coming from it.

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[1] Film Synopsis from official website. http://www.greedylyingbastards.com/