Movie/TV Reviews

Sharkwater

Susan Granger’s review of “Sharkwater” (Sharkwater Productions)

There’s more to sharks than “Jaws.” In fact, according to Toronto marine biologist and underwater photographer Rob Stewart, sharks aren’t at all the vicious man-killers we’ve been led to believe.
But they are predators – at the top of the marine food chain – and they’re facing extinction which may have dire consequences on the ecosystem.
In the past 30 years, the shark population has been depleted by 90%, primarily due to Asian consumers’ demand for shark-fin soup. For this $300-a-pound delicacy, fisherman utilize a long-line, stretching over miles of open ocean, to hook the sharks, then hack off their fins and heave them back in the water to die. While this gruesome poaching practice, known as ‘finning,’ is illegal in many countries, the laws are rarely enforced.
When Stewart boarded a trawler belonging to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a Greenpeace-like group led by activist Paul Watson, he experienced first-hand the frustration of dealing with illegal shark harvesting off Costa Rica’s coastline, uncovering a collaboration between that country’s government and Chinese crime syndicates..
But most memorable are Stewart’s vivid aquatic exploits, particularly awe-inspiring glimpses of hammerheads and tiger sharks congregating in the tepid waters off the Galapagos Islands. Stewart, literally, swims with sharks, even caressing them, and emerging unscathed. To him, they’re timid, curious creatures who’ve gotten a bad rep. He asserts that sharks bite, on average, five people a year, whereas elephants kill close to 100 and automobiles claim thousands of lives.
Unfortunately, this cautionary environmental documentary goes flaccid when Stewart is hospitalized with a blood infection and his self-centered, monotone narrative grows repetitious. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Sharkwater” is a stunning 7. During the time it takes to watch it, Stewart says, 15,000 sharks will be killed.

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Honeydripper

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Honeydripper” (Emerging Pictures Release)

Independent writer/director John Sayles is one of our most cinematic storytellers – with “Eight Men Out,” “Return of the Secaucus Seven,” “Matewan,” “The Secret of Roan Inish,” “Lone Star” and “Sunshine State,” among others.
This observant tale is set in 1950, just outside rural Harmony, Alabama, where two mythical nightclubs sit at the crossroads. Former piano-man Tyrone “Pinetop” Purvis (Danny Glover) runs the Honeydripper, featuring aging blues singers like Bertha Mae (Mable John). But he can’t seem to attract customers – unlike his rival, Old Man Toussaint (James Crittenden), who packs ‘em in next-door with a well-stocked jukebox.
Purvis will lose his dilapidated roadhouse unless he can come up with mortgage money quickly, so he arranges to import New Orleans’ sensation Guitar Sam for a one-night-only show. But everything seems to go wrong. Not only is his wife and chief cook, Delilah (Lisa Gay Hamilton), falling more and more under the influence of charismatic Pentecostal preacher Cutlip (Albert Hall), who condemns drinking and dancing, but his 17 year-old step-daughter, China Doll (Yaya DaCosta), is smitten by a drifter (Gary Clark Jr.) with an electric guitar. And there’s the question of whether Guitar Sam will show up. Hovering ominously is Sheriff Pugh (Stacy Keach) who’s taken a fancy to Delilah’s drumsticks, among other things.
Sayles’ talk-heavy plot serves as structure for atmosphere-drenched, folkloric vignettes that delineate racism in that time in that place. There’s Delilah’s condescending employer, Miss Amanda (Mary Steenburgen); the hefty seamstress Nadine (Davenia McFadden), who’s attracted to Purvis’ easygoing pal Maceo (Charles S. Dutton); bickering cotton-pickers (Eric L. Abrams, Sean Patrick Thomas); and the blind bluesman (Keb’ Mo’) who serves as Purvis’s guilty conscience.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Honeydripper” is an evocative 8 – with a rockin’ soundtrack.

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4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” (IFC Films)

Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, this is a bleak, low-key, intimate glimpse into the emotional wretchedness of a woman’s life in 1987 during the final days of the communist Ceausescu regime in Romania when abortions were illegal.
College roommates Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) and Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) face a major dilemma. Gabita’s pregnant and Otilia’s agreed to accompany her to have an abortion. But irresponsible Gabita’s jangled nerves require pragmatic Otilia to make most of the arrangements, including buying soap, bartering money and bargaining on the black market for cigarettes. Problem is: Gabita’s not entirely honest about how far along her pregnancy is – and what will be required to convince the bullying black market abortionist, Mr. Bebe (Vlad Ivanov), to do the job.
Suspense heightens with Mr. Bebe’s blunt retribution after discovering that Gabita has not followed his precise instructions and Otilia’s reluctant departure to attend her boy-friend’s mother’s birthday party. In that tedious dinner party scene, mindless chatter ironically camouflages Otilia’s simmering inner drama.
Devoted to realism as part of the Romanian New Wave, filmmaker Christian Mungiu shoots each scene in one take with Oleg Mutu’s camera capturing characters as they pass in and out of the frame, along with details like a bus that runs on bomb-like gas cylinders.
What’s most remarkable is the splendid ensemble. Devoid of histrionics, the actors explore their characters softly, yet with chilling authenticity, particularly Anamaria Marinca (“Youth Without Youth”), whose silences speak volumes.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” is a grim, harrowing 8. After the fall of communism in 1989, one of the first measures taken in Romania was to legalize abortion again.

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The Year My Parents Went on Vacation

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “The Year My Parents Went on Vacation” (City Lights)

Brazil’s official entry for the 2008 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film was a droll coming-of-age story set in the turbulent year of 1970.
12 year-old soccer-obsessed Mauro (Michel Joelsas) is only interested in the upcoming World Cup matches when his parents – left-wing militants, opposed to the repressive military regime that controls the country – are forced into hiding, ostensibly “on vacation,” hastily dropping off bewildered Mauro at his elderly grandfather’s apartment in Sao Paulo’s Bom Retiro district, home to a mixed-ethnic community of Jewish, Italian, Greek and Arab immigrants.
Problem is: Mauro’s grandfather has just died – and his next-door neighbor, Schlomo (Germano Haiut), a solitary, Yiddish-speaking Jew who works in the local synagogue, winds up looking after him after the rabbi tells him that, like Moses, Mauro has been left on his doorstep by God.
Torn between staying near the phone – waiting for his parents’ call – and exploring his new environs, Mauro encounters an array of colorful characters. His first and closest friend is tomboyish, street-smart Hanna (Daniela Pipeszyk), who cleverly peddles peeks at women trying on clothes in the dressing room of her mother’s store. But Mauro’s adolescent heart is smitten by Irene (Liliana Castro), a waitress in the local bar where everyone gathers to watch Pele, Carlos Alberto and Tostao fight for victory in the World Cup Championship which, tragically, coincides with a political upheaval.
Screenwriter/director/producer Cao Hamburger, creator of the award-winning children’s series “Castelo Ra-Tim-Bum” and the HBO series “Filhos do Carnaval,” astutely captures the resilience of the human spirit. “I came here alone,” Mauro reflects, “and managed to survive.”
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Year My Parents Went on Vacation” is an eloquent 9. It’s a gem!

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The Band’s Visit

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “The Band’s Visit” (Sony Pictures Classics)

The best news out of the Middle East so far this year is this fresh, funny, engaging take on cross-cultural miscommunication.
The Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra has been invited to play at the Arab Cultural Center in Israel. It’s an important assignment since budget cuts and internal reorganization have threatened the Egyptian musicians’ very existence.
Dressed in crisp, powder-blue uniforms and observing full military police protocol, they arrive at the Tel Aviv airport with no one to greet them. Unable to contact their Israeli hosts or the Egyptian consulate for help, they board a bus that’s, ostensibly, bound for their destination but, instead, wind up on the barren outskirts of a tiny desert town.
Faced with seven hungry, bewildered men, the stoic orchestra leader, Tewfiq (Sasson Gabai) seeks help from Dina (Ronit Elkabetz), the proprietor of a small cafe. Realizing their plight and the fact that the next bus won’t come until the following day, she not only feeds them but arranges for Tewfiq and his men to stay overnight with her and some of her less-than-hospitable friends. Inevitably, the evening leads to some curious confusion, a bit of chaos and a large measure of compassion – on both sides.
Israeli writer/director Eran Kolirin’s shrewdly imagined characters, full of resonant human feeling, propel the subtle, wryly comedic story. Sultry Ronit Elkabetz, sizzling with sexuality, and Sasson Gabai, poignant as the uptight widower, make an unlikely duo, but the best scene involves ladies’ man Haled’s (Saleh Bakri) gently picaresque encounter in a roller-skating rink.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Band’s Visit” is a droll, charming 9. It’s a shame that a technicality – there is English, as well as Hebrew and Arabic – disqualified it from Oscar contention.

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Michael Clayton

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Michael Clayton” (Warner Bros.)

Faced with moral corruption within the corporate culture, a lawyer gets sucked into a dangerous cover-up when a colleague threatens to expose the conspiracy behind the settlement of multimillion-dollar class-action suit against one of his firm’s major clients.
While Michael Clayton (George Clooney) has always yearned to be made partner, he’s spent 17 years as a “fixer” for New York’s prestigious Kenner, Bach & Ledeen. When there’s a sticky or embarrassing situation, Clayton has the contacts to minimize the mess or make it disappear. But, at 45, and a divorced father with a young son, he’s broke and in debt – the result of gambling and a failed family business venture. So when the lead litigator (Tom Wilkinson), previously diagnosed as a manic-depressive, has a crisis of conscience while defending U-North, a multinational agrichemical conglomerate, the senior exec (Sydney Pollack), who is negotiating a crucial merger, puts Clayton in charge of the case. But U-North’s ambitious, duplicitous chief counsel (Tilda Swinton) knows there’s been corporate malfeasance and her job rests on protecting their interests – at any cost.
Most of the plot is revealed in flashback, after Clayton’s car explodes in flames on a deserted country road. Despite its scrambled structure and trenchant dialogue, long-time screenwriter (“The Bourne Identity” and its sequels) and first-time director Tony Gilroy makes this character-driven, multi-layered legal thriller compelling. Also credit Robert Elswit’s (“Syriana,” “Good Night and Good Luck”) cinematography and James Newton Howard’s subtle musical score.
Along with power-player George Clooney – terrific in challenging confrontational scenes – it’s packed with top-notch supporting performances from Tom Wilkinson, Tilda Swinton and actor/director Sydney Pollack. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Michael Clayton” is an arresting, engrossing 8. It would be a crime not to see it

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The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” (Warner Bros.)

When a film’s running time is 2 hours and 40 minutes, it’s often because the writer is also directing – so there’s no one to tell him to cut out 40 minutes, or else!
Back in the 1870s, Jesse James (Brad Pitt) was the country’s most notorious outlaw. Celebrated in dime novels, his exploits were legendary. As years pass, most of the original gang members die and Jesse’s brother (Sam Shepard) retires. Hanging on the coattails of his older brother Charley (Sam Rockwell) and longing for acceptance is fawning, hero-worshipping 19 year-old Robert Ford (slyly played by Casey Affleck, Ben’s real-life younger brother). History records Ford as “the coward” who shot 34 year-old Jesse in the back, but the plot delves into the psyches of both gunslingers and what may – or may not – have precipitated that infamous murder.
Jesse James is said to have been charismatic and complex, but you’d never know it from Brad Pitt’s stolid, stoic performance, most remarkable for its pensive stillness – a trait which served Gary Cooper well in many Westerns.
Based on Ron Hansen’s novel, it’s self-indulgently adapted and languidly, pretentiously directed by Andrew Dominik, whose previous experience includes TV commercials, music videos and “Chopper” about the notorious Australian criminal Chopper Read. Perhaps it’s also not the best judgment to have the star (Brad Pitt) also serve as producer.
Since it’s so tedious to watch, the cameo by Washington pundit James Carville as the Governor of Missouri is a welcome diversion. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” is a turgid 4, making one wonder why it takes such a long, long time to kill Jesse James.

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Into the Wild

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Into the Wild” (Paramount Vantage)

Sean Penn has adapted Jon Krakauer’s book about a rebellious, 22 year-old Emory college graduate, Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch), who gave away or destroyed his money, cut off all ties to his family, tramped around the country and wound up alone in the Yukon wilderness, where he died in August, 1992.
Among the first people McCandless rejects are his troubled but caring parents (William Hurt, Marcia Gay Harden) and devoted sister (Jena Malone). He’s then befriended by a South Dakota wheat farmer (Vince Vaughn), an aging hippie (Catherine Keener) and an elderly widower (Hal Holbook) – who act as surrogate family, trying to dissuade him from taking off for Alaska to live off the land.
When McCandless finally arrives in the wilderness – stubbornly ignorant about survival skills – he stumbles across an old, abandoned Fairbanks school bus that’s conveniently been converted into a shelter. By whom we’re never told. He settles in, lopes around the landscape, reads Leo Tolstoy, Jack London, Henry David Thoreau – and slowly starves to death.
What’s bizarre is the way writer/director Penn idealizes and never questions this self-destructive, totally egocentric adventurer, as though there were something admirable about his foolish, reckless, anti-social behavior. McCandless’s romanticized character is saved from being insufferable by the open-faced geniality and kind intelligence radiated by actor Emile Hirsch, who became emaciated during the course of the filming.
Visually arresting, it’s nevertheless photographed by Eric Gautier as if it were a car commercial – one of those scenic wonders where the newest model is perched atop a mountain peak, as if that had any relevance to the consumer’s driving experience.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Into the Wild” is a bleak, pretentious 5 – with the pathos stretching a tedious 140 minutes.

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Golda’s Balcony

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Golda’s Balcony”

Not only is this poignant portrait of Israel’s former Prime Minister Golda Meir riveting and powerful, it also reminds and enlightens us about the origins of the current Middle East conflict.
A tenacious and resilient woman, Golda Mabovitch was born in Kiev, Russia; raised in Milwaukee; emigrated to Palestine with her husband, Morris Myerson; and spent many years in a kibbutz, where – while making matzoh balls in the kitchen – she plotted and planned the creation of Israel.
Tony Award-winning playwright William Gibson’s incisive story begins as the ailing Meir recalls facing her most terrifying moral dilemma at the height of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Israel is in crisis and defeat would mean the obliteration of the Jewish State. While she had an inkling that trouble was brewing, Moshe Dayan, her defense minister opposed launching a pre-emptive strike, fearing worldwide condemnation. That leaves Meir begging U.S. President Richard Nixon – through intermediaries – for the phantom fighters that he’d promised.
The great revelation – which I never knew – is that strong-willed Meir had secretly supervised the creation of an immense underground nuclear weapons arsenal called Dimona, which was labeled as a desalinazation plant. Faced with possible extinction, Meir held up the nuclear trump card to Nixon, which hastened the delivery of the fighter jets.
Valerie Harper’s uncanny portrayal is often amusing and remarkably authentic; in addition, she impersonates cohorts like David Ben-Gurion and Henry Kissinger. It’s a versatile, tour-de-force performance. Director Jeremy Kagan’s visual montages of photographs and newsreel footage add to the veracity as he amplifies what is, essentially, a one-woman show. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Golda’s Balcony” is a timely, amazing 8, illustrating the ironic absurdity of going to war to achieve peace through the redemption of the human race.

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Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married?

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married?” (Lionsgate)

Tyler Perry is a cultural phenomenon as creator of a hugely successful series of formulaic, Christian-themed, sin-and-redemption movies, specifically targeted at an affluent African-American audience. And ever since his movie debut, “Diary of a Mad Black Woman,” his films have not been screened for critics – hence, the delayed review.
In this latest, set at an annual retreat in a Rocky Mountain resort, four married couples, and friends since college days, delve into the strengths and weaknesses of each other’s marriages. There’s a well-meaning romance psychologist/author (singer Janet Jackson), married to an award-winning architect (Malik Yoba of TVs “New York Undercover”); a sassy, hard-drinking beauty tycoon (Tasha Smith) with her confrontational, VD-infected husband (Michael Jai White); and a workaholic, BlackBerry-obsessed lawyer (Sharon Leal of “Dreamgirls”) who’s ambivalent about motherhood and her pediatrician husband (played by Perry). But the central couple is a despicable philanderer (Richard T. Jones) and his self-effacing, obese wife (singer Jill Scott), whose girth gets her booted from her airplane in the film’s opening sequence – because they bring along a “friend” (Denise Boutte).
Blending comedy with melodrama, Tyler Perry achieves a tad more subtlety than in his preachy, stereotypical “Madea” films, even “Daddy’s Little Girls,” aided in great part by the effective acting ensemble and Toyomichi Kurita’s cinematography. But his strong, sexy female characters are still too shrill and obvious in their evangelical instincts and the men are, inevitably, wayward.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married?” is a compassionate, therapeutic 5. In Perry’s clichŽ-filled scenarios, nearly all white characters are depicted as conscious or unconscious bigots, which is a shame – in this day and age – since relationship issues are not delineated along racial lines.

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