Love hurts/stinks/uplifts: message clear as mud.

His name is Mud. And his name is pretty much mud. And the movie is MUD. Now isn’t that convenient?!

But MUD is not about Mud. He’s just a device to drive the story of young Ellis, who learns hard life lessons upon meeting him. Ellis is 16-year-old Tye Sheridan, and this movie belongs to him.

Matthew McConaughey is Mud, who opens the eyes of two young boys, Ellis and best friend Neckbone (Jacob Lofland), to lies, deceit and murder, when they meet him hiding out on an island in the Mississippi River. He tells them a tall tale about accidentally killing a man, about being hunted by vigilantes and the law, and about a promise to a lost love that he needs their help to keep.

Up till now, McConaughey’s down-home drawl has only ever been plausible for Klan grand poobahs and American presidents (I don’t know how he continued to get work without doctoring it), but for the first time, it fully fits his role as an Arkansas drifter. The role is gold for McConaughey.

Veteran McConaughey starkly treading outside his niche of blond-brained boyfriend might have been the focal point of this film if it weren’t for the inadvertent, unexpected sneak attack of Sheridan. With just one other acting credit (THE TREE OF LIFE, 2011), Sheridan brings a primal intensity born of Brando, Pacino or Hoffman in their youth.

Director-writer Jeff Nichols lets the young boys, Sheridan and Lofland, act like young boys, not like foul, precocious Hollywood creations; not too educated, not too redneck, curious yet naïve; these two talented, in-the-moment actors naturally call to mind River Phoenix and Wil Wheaton in STAND BY ME.

Reese Witherspoon, attired in High Trailer, is Mud’s shallow girlfriend, Juniper. Michael Shannon makes an eccentric appearance (in other words, just another Michael Shannon role) as Neckbone’s oyster-trawling dad. Sam Shepard is a houseboat neighbor, sharpshooter, acquaintance of Mud, who tells the boys to stay away from Mud, who would lead them astray. His warnings take on weight when Ellis steals a random motor for Mud’s escape boat – thinking it all a lark – until Ellis’s father (Ray McKinnon) chastises and humiliates him, making him aware of the ramification of theft: “You took that motor! It’s some man’s livelihood!” Ellis’s mother (Sarah Paulson) being a thief doesn’t help anyone’s argument for or against theft. “You’re just taking after your mother!”

And there’s Joe Don Baker! So slim! (AIDS? Cancer? Or the worst killer of all – old age?) A somber role as a patriarch who gathers a cadre of redneck dummies to kill Mud. In a dingy hotel room, he instructs them, “Let’s all take a knee; we’re gonna pray for the death of the man who killed my son.” Uh-oh: Jesus. That makes them really dangerous; not because Jesus is on their side, but because they think he is.

After hearing conflicting reports about Mud (“The man’s a born liar!” “From his point of view, being in the Marines as a sharpshooter makes me an assassin in his eyes”), Ellis still wants to believe that even if Mud is an unsavory man, his “love” for Juniper is something transcendent and untouchable. Ellis’s father instructs: “Love sets you up to be destroyed,” yet Ellis will not be swayed. When Juniper asks Ellis, “Why are you helping us?” he replies naively, “Because you love each other.”

His simplistic notion of love would be shattered when he spies Juniper flirting at a bar on the day that he arranged to spirit her back into Mud’s embrace.

The glutting reality of MUD is that Juniper and Mud are BOTH unreliable, itinerant, time-wasting sluts; you really don’t want to be around obsessive, deceitful personalities like these. She goes on sex jags, then goes running back to him; he seeks out the exes and beats them up, the last time, actually killing the guy, which is where we came in…

Movies extolling nuggets about love – whether they be romances, romantic comedies or dramas – always deliver both messages simultaneously: that love stinks and that love is grand! Many McConaughey movies do just this – GHOSTS OF GIRLFRIENDS PAST, FAILURE TO LAUNCH, or [insert any McConaughey romcom abomination] – with not the slightest hint of cognitive dissonance!

MUD seems too well constructed. Ellis is set up with a tentative love interest – who breaks his heart not five minutes after he discovers Mud’s girlfriend flirting. Ellis cusses out Mud for being deceitful and selfish, and one minute later falls into a pit of snakes, which precipitates Mud rushing him to hospital TRUE GRIT-style, proving his measure as an unselfish man. The beats just hit too conveniently, like a 2×4 payoff to the back of the skull. The movie’s sincere production, performances and stab at moral ambiguity elevate it above its many, almost insurmountable, plot conveniences.

After an action scene that seems forced, movie concludes on Ellis, proving it is his story, as it seems intent on illustrating to the audience that he won’t end up as damaged as Mud. Earlier, he had waved to his “girlfriend” and she had ignored him, bweaking his widdle heart. Now, he sees a young girl arrive at his hotel – she smiles at him – he gives a Clint Eastwood nod back, a shiver of a smile – he’s going to be okay.

With acting chops like this, you bet your trailer trash houseboat the kid’s going to be okay!

END

When bromances go bad.

Four times the noxious.

FOUR CHRISTMASES would be nothing without Jon Favreau dry-humping Vince Vaughn‘s twisted arm. Best part of the movie. I laughed out loud. Then the movie kept going. Unfortunately.

In this uneven comedy, Brad (Vaughn) and Kate (Reese Witherspoon) are a boisterous, adventurous young couple who studiously avoid visiting their dysfunctional families every christmas, opting to take wild vacations – and lie to their families that they are instead doing volunteer work for underprivileged kids overseas. This year, they get busted, and must visit all four of their divorced parents (and extended families) in one day.

Now if this were a wonders-of-christmas movie, it would be bilious enough, but FOUR CHRISTMASES combines the nausea of a christmas movie with the gut-belching dementia of a marriage-is-awesome movie. Ultimately, christmas is just a device to drive the unmarried couple into the cloying proximity of family and married life. And to discover the wonders therein. Cue shining rainbows and angels singing.

At first, the couple resist the insidious madness. In Brad’s words, “You can’t spell families without lies.” We soon learn he picked up that axiom from his cantankerous dad (Robert Duvall – like Favreau, could carry the movie on his wild boar performance alone!). Brad and Kate have no desire to tie the knot and end up like their dissatisfied and divorced parents. But this movie doesn’t leave well enough alone and allow Brad and Kate their fun-loving life of taking impromptu dance lessons or role-playing picking each other up in bars. In the process of visiting their varied families, they come to realize truths about each other and – so the movie tells us – how dysfunctional THEY are for not wanting to end up married!

(Nuance: It may be missed by the Great Unwashed, but the message of the movie is not EXACTLY “to be married” but to “be together,” which is tantamount to marriage, in gutless modern pc parlance.)

I spit on this movie’s message! Written by – surprisingly – four guys (Matt Allen, Caleb Wilson, Jon Lucas and Scott Moore) and directed by Seth Gordon, all of whom we can be sure have been pussywhipped into marriage and are now suffering cognitive dissonance, as they promote “married bliss” even whilst showing us every parent in the movie unhappily divorced!

To top it all off: disrespectful, unruly kids! Every child in this movie is a brawling, loudmouth brat that deserves to be abandoned in a parking lot. Yet the cognitive dissonance in full swing: Kate gets all swoozy with the desire to have kids after being browbeaten and physically beaten by them. I spit again! Ptuh!

Like Mighty Mouse, Jon Favreau saves the day. Favreau is Denver, one of Brad’s thick-necked brothers, a tattooed, redneck wrestler who takes every opportunity to bodyslam Orlando (Brad’s given name, from the city where he was conceived). Favreau’s scenes, along with Duvall’s scenes as Brad’s father, are like the magic of christmas and kwanzaa and chanukah and martian-snow-day all rolled into one.

Other parenting roles feature Mary Steenburgen and Jon Voight as Kate’s separated parents. Then there’s Sissy Spacek as Brad’s mom, now sleeping with Brad’s best friend Darryl (Patrick Van Horn – Vaughn’s and Favreau’s pal from SWINGERS, 1996!).

FOUR CHRISTMASES does have its hilarious moments – installing a satellite dish on Duvall’s roof, Brad playing Joseph in a Nativity Scene that he saves with his latent Community Acting talent, Brad’s delectably uncomfortable meeting with his mom and her lover – his best friend/step-dad. And any scene that Jon Favreau is in. I love that man!

END

Monstrous Alienation.

MONSTERS VS ALIENS is a suitably giggly concept, well executed in 3D animation, well written, with funny characters and a straightforward storyline that kiddies will understand. Yet it fails for a fundamental reason – it advocates Guantánamo Bay!

Whoa! Poffy’s gone insane! Comparing a kid’s cartoon to President Bush-Cheney’s war crimes. But think carefully now:

As a human being with compassion towards other human beings (yes, I’m talking to you directly), what would be the first thing you would do if a woman suddenly grew to fifty feet tall? You would try to get her help, right? Not so if you are a misanthropic swine like Bush-Cheney – at the first sign of “difference” you would declare her an “enemy combatant,” persuade everyone she is a “threat,” then lock her away with no habeas corpus, no rights, no legal prerogatives, no resolution, in a cell with no windows.

This is what happens in MONSTERS VS ALIENS. Young bride-to-be Susan (voiced by Reese Witherspoon) is hit by a meteorite on her wedding day, which makes her suddenly grow to fifty feet tall – at which point the military shows up and takes her captive without one word of permission, compassion, approval or apology. She is told her subterranean prison is so secret, it is “an x-file, wrapped in a cover-up and deep-fried in a paranoid conspiracy.” In other words, it’s a rendition. (Coincidentally, Witherspoon played the wife of an Egyptian-American kidnapped and tortured by Americans in RENDITION.)

What does this teach the ignorant populace, let alone impressionable kids? I’m sure that wayward vagina, Liz Cheney (daughter of even bigger vagina, Dick) is forcing her kids to watch the opening scenes of MONSTERS VS ALIENS as if it’s a documentary.

So even though I want to laugh at the many funny moments in this movie, it is informed by plot lines like this. And I can’t see anything funny in General W.R. Monger (Kiefer Sutherland, sounding as unbalanced as R. Lee Ermey in FULL METAL JACKET) telling Susan as he locks her away, that “the government has changed your name to Ginormica.”

“Oh,” say Liz Cheney’s kids, “the government can DO that?” “Yes, children,” informs their spineless hawk swine of a mother (daughter of draft-dodger and spineless hawk swine of a mother, Dick), “the government can do anything it wants. Now go wash up for dinner and wipe your asses on our american constitution towels.”

I’m sure that Stephen Colbert (of THE COLBERT REPORT), who voices The President of the United States, would have noticed this misanthropy, but he’s being employed merely as an actor here, so had to let it slide without biting commentary.

In prison, Susan meets other detainees, kept just as unwillingly, but more humorously, since the less a lifeform resembles us, the more vicious we can be towards that lifeform without guilt: Dr. Cockroach Ph.D (Hugh Laurie), The Missing Link (Will Arnett), and B.O.B. (Seth Rogen, who brings his crazy little laugh and scattered personality to this blue blob, unlike his innocuous participation in other animated features, like HORTON HEARS A WHO or KUNG FU PANDA).

Together, they defeat the forces of Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson), an alien who lands on Earth, seeking the essence from the meteorite that hit Susan.

Some of the funniest scenes take place on Gallaxhar’s ship, which is an architectural wonder. In 2009, we take a lot of visuals for granted because of computer technology, so we have to step outside ourselves to admit that the destruction scenes of the interior of Gallaxhar’s ship actually look more “realistic” than the interior destruction of the Death Star in RETURN OF THE JEDI! Let’s face it – referring specifically to only those scenes (where a giant generator-type thing starts falling and splintering), both are “non-real” scenes, either matte paintings and/or computer animation, so we are comparing apples to apples, not live-action to a cartoon.

Everyone ends up Disney happy, obviously because it’s only a kid’s fantasy disconnected from reality.

Directors Rob Letterman and Conrad Vernon (who both also co-wrote with a host of others), predictably fill their movie with messages of self-realization and philanthropic acceptance. Ironic then that they depict their own government so callously as being the opposite – but again, this is because America as a nation has become so inured to the criminality of the Bush-Cheney War Crime ethos (being perpetuated and promoted even after their doomsday reign by the Cheney cabal) that it is now considered comedy. Not even black comedy, but mainstream, nay, KIDDIE comedy!

But Guantánamo (and other “black sites” like it) are no laughing matter; creations of pathologically insane sadists – the real monsters among us: Bush-Cheney.

END

Exotic Psychotic.

About a yuppie serial killer who finds he is slowly going insane, not from killing people, but from the boredom of doing so. This comedy is not just black – it’s black with sprinkles on top and a human head on a spike.

American Psycumber

From the hilariously disturbing Bret Easton Ellis novel of the same name (screenstoried by Mary Harron and Guinevere Turner, directed by Harron), AMERICAN PSYCHO defines a new angle on the internal world of serial killers.Our anti-hero is Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale, ripped like a suspension bridge cable), a vice president of his company, a 1980’s uber-executive, whom we never see do any actual office work, narrating his obsessive-compulsive behaviors; petulant, trivial, rich, ensconced in yuppie consumerism; in a loveless, close-to-tears-of-exasperation relationship with his empty-skulled girlfriend (Reese Witherspoon), who is oblivious to his ambivalence and neuroses. He’s also a serial killer.

Bateman’s life is an endless succession of vapidity – exec friends who speak and never listen, women who speak only as prelude to fucking, fake parties, fake emotions, plastic girlfriends, all status and wardrobe and petty gossip. Every time he needs to exit an unsavory social situation, his excuse “I have to return some videotapes” is taken without question because no one is listening; when he is loading a bodybag into the back of a taxi, a fellow exec catches him, only to marvel at the excellent “overnight bag”… It is no surprise that Bateman’s only grasp on “reality” is the solid hack of his axe on someone’s skull.

When Bateman narrates an album review or describes pedantic rituals, his voice takes on the clinical detachment of an outside observer. And in that persona, his murders take place – observing himself as he is committing them. We feel the incongruous juxtaposition of personalities as he puts on a Whitney Houston CD and starts proselytizing on the philosophies of The Greatest Love of All as a prelude to killing two girls. And the black humor shines when he tells his secretary (Chloë Sevigny) during a date, “You’d better go or I might hurt you,” she thinking that he refers to the discomfort of office relationships, while he means it literally. (There is also an unintentionally funny moment when one of Bateman’s intended victims makes a homosexual advance; Bateman is so repulsed he immediately washes his GLOVED hands.)

Surprisingly, the two female film-makers retain verbatim Ellis’ misogynistic Truth about women with “good personalities,” voiced at a Boys Sitdown by Josh Lucas: “There are no girls with great personalities. A good personality consists of a chick with a little hardbody, who’ll satisfy all sexual demands without being too slutty about things and who will essentially keep her goddam mouth shut. The only girls with good personalities who are smart, or maybe funny, or halfway intelligent or talented – but God knows what the fuck that means – are ugly chicks. And this is because they have to make up for how fucking unattractive they are.  If they’ve got a good personality and not a good body, who the fuck fucking cares?”

With all the CSIs and LAW AND ORDERs abounding on our inculcating airwaves, one gets the impression that most murders are eventually solved. But AMERICAN PSYCHO leaves us with the reality that there must be thousands of unsolved murders perpetrated by people like Bateman – murders that we will never hear of because they are so graphic; that would never air on COPS for fear of making the steroid bull-stars of that show look as impotent as we know they are. Though a detective (Willem Dafoe) passively questions Bateman on suspected missing persons (that he has eighty-sixed), the reality is that if someone in Bateman’s VP position were a serial killer, the kid gloves would stay on; were he indicted, the charges would be harder to stick; were he convicted, his sentence would be commuted. This is how a money-based society treats its moneyed criminals. (Even the term “white-collar” connotes a more “acceptable” crime.)

We are made privy to the prosaic details of being a serial killer when Bateman kills Paul Allen (Jared Leto): putting newspapers down to sop up the carnage after the chopping spree, meticulously cleaning fingerprints, packing a suitcase for the victim to make it look like he has gone on a trip, changing the message on the victim’s answering machine; body bags, skulking skills, alibis, lying to the police convincingly… it’s quite a task, and we almost admire Bateman for the organization and creativity required in the serial killer job description. But then, maybe it’s that same skill set that all vice presidents possess. It’s a well known fact that in order to attain an executive corner office, you’ve got to be pretty morally bankrupt.

With its plastic, pastel-tie soundtrack (featuring Phil Collins, Huey Lewis, Robert Palmer, et al), AMERICAN PSYCHO captures the era when cellphones were the size of cereal boxes, also conveying the ultra-upper-class hedonism and juvenility of these spoiled-riche business-boys (Bateman is vexed when a colleague’s eggshell-colored business card is better than his; simply devastated when another colleague’s card has a watermark); and reminds us of the blasé sexism once accepted in the office (“Don’t wear that outfit again – and wear high heels”) – but the movie never quite captures the disturbing horror or unbridled carnage of the Ellis novel.

Two reasons: Firstly, the book is the most violent story you will ever puke your guts out over – I especially remember the scene where Bateman grinds a circle saw into a woman’s face and marvels at her teeth splattering outwards – and there’s only so much disturbing gore the gutless, hypocritical MPAA will allow onto the screen at one sitting; secondly, the movie has been screenstoried and directed by women. Yes, it’s a sexist comment – directly criticizing the fact that the female sex is trying to convey the male sex’s point of view. And that can’t be done – not by the most intelligent woman, not by transgenders, not even by Richard Simmons. Women cannot possibly fathom the sexual intent of even normal red-blooded men, so how would they provide any insight or “realism” into the perverse sexual depravity of a male serial killer?

The most perversity this movie can muster is showing a naked Bateman, covered in blood, chasing a hooker through his apartment complex with a roaring chainsaw… and we’ve all done that before…

END

Seeking a blond who likes long romantic walks in a police state.

Lessons in Amerikan Euphemism.

THE LIE: “America doesn’t torture.”

THE PLOT: CIA authorizes kidnapping and torture of a suspected terrorist in a misguided attempt to thwart further terrorism.

THE EUPHEMISM: “extraordinary rendition.”

THE TRUTH: America DOES torture.

All my life I’ve regarded the word “rendition” to mean “the act of rendering.” So how the hell does it come to mean the unlawful impulsive capture and detaining of suspected enemies of Amerika? The Free Online Dictionary and Merriam-Webster define “rendition” not only as all those things we know it means, but also as “a surrender,” which is probably the closest thing to the criminally insane actions of the U.S. government.

An artist’s rendering

In the movie RENDITION (written by Kelley Sane, directed by Gavin Hood), we learn that the Clinton administration first coined the euphemism “extraordinary rendition” to describe Amerikan government-endorsed kidnapping which violates Constitutional law, Geneva Conventions and any and all host country laws regarding detaining suspects. “Host country” is itself a euphemism for the colluders who allow extra-legal disposition of their citizens without batting an eye; allowing Amerika to kidnap their countryfolk without question, in order to continue receiving billions in blood-soaked Amerikan aid. And “extra-legal” is a euphemism which simply means illegal.

The movie’s s premise is so much more significant than its entertainment value. Like a blunt shiv spreading Amerika’s ribcage, RENDITION enters above the left lung and twists… revealing the Bush-Cheney administration’s black heart and blacker soul. Make no mistake, if it were not for George W. and Richard B., their contempt for the American Constitution, their unconscionable vampire-grasping at executive power and their utter disregard for human rights, the premise of this movie could never have been fleshed out.To technically absolve itself of breaking international law, the U.S. government outsources its torture – like toys from China or customer service from India. Guantanamo Bay – torture facility to the stars of terrorism – has been classified “not on U.S. soil,” therefore the juvenile criminals in power cheerfully proclaim they’re not lying when they specify “America does not torture.” In RENDITION, South Africa waterboards America’s dirty laundry.

Egyptian-American chemical engineer, Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally), returning from a conference in South Africa, is kidnapped by the CIA in Cape Town, thrown in a dungeon and undergoes “enhanced interrogation” (euphemism for torture), simply because he received calls on his cell phone from a “known terrorist” (which is not even a euphemism – matter of fact, no one can specify exactly what “known terrorist” actually means, because if El-Ibrahimi is, in fact, innocent – after all the failed and forced intel points to his “guilt” – how can anyone be “known” to be anything?). El-Ibrahimi is an American citizen; you know, the land of the free, inalienable human rights… all that shit… but the Bush Klan have ensured that government power can now negate lawyers, rights, charges, evidence, guilt, and due process. Anyone – American citizen or otherwise – can be held indefinitely merely on the word of two lunatics: Bush and Cheney.

El-Ibrahimi’s pregnant American wife, Isabella (Reese Witherspoon), awaits his arrival in Chicago, stonewalled by authorities on his disappearance. She turns to a Senatorial aide, Alan Smith (Peter Sarsgaard), who initially tries to help locate her husband, but backs away when his Senator (Alan Arkin, in a departure from Mr. Nice Guy mode) warns him of the political suicide in pursuing the case.

Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a young CIA analyst, assigned to “observe” the torture master’s techniques on El-Ibrahimi, but – unlike the pariah dogs Bush and Cheney – finds his humanity getting in the way. In an impassioned phone call to his superior officer, Whitman (Meryl Streep), he almost apologizes for his humane-ness, “This is my first torture,” to which Whitman retorts with that now-infamous, disingenuous Amerikan lie (without skipping a beat over breakfast), “The United States does not torture,” adding the unproveable mantra as her rationale, “it saves lives.” (The mantra gives the torturers away. Why rationalize something that you maintain is not being done at all, or that is not being done by YOU? Same as saying, “No one’s being tortured – but torturing these people saves other people’s lives.”)

American Emergency Rooms: so popular people are dying to wait in line.

And the only “evidence” for “saving lives” is the government’s propaganda assessment of life-saving scenarios – such as the March 2002 torture of Abu Zubaydah (a low-rung travel agent for al Qaeda, breathlessly reported to the American public as “a top operative,” who, by the CIA’s own later admission, was never privy to secret Qaeda operational details), which yielded “confessions” that al Qaeda aimed to bomb shopping malls, banks and supermarkets; confessions through beating, waterboarding, sleep-deprivation and coercing false statements from him. Even leaving out the fact that the information is tainted, misleading and asinine (sure, “Allah came to him in his cell and told him to confess”), even if you had no moral compunctions about the methods, you must follow international law that you yourself ratified. Or incur the punitive consequences. No matter which way you look at it… the Bush Klan is exactly what they accuse “the terrorists” of being – pure evil.

El-Ibrahimi implores: “Tell me what to say and I’ll say it.” Freeman later quotes Shakespeare, in trying to influence a government official to release El-Ibrahimi: “I fear you speak upon the rack / Where men enforced do speak anything” (The Merchant of Venice), adding, “If you torture one, you create 10, 100, 1000 new enemies.” This is now self-evident – yet no one raises a hand to stop the Bush-Cheney Klan.

The movie has an implausible upbeat ending and a much more compelling downbeat one, in two intertwining storylines that do not become apparently linked until the last few minutes. Upbeat has Freeman surreptitiously freeing El-Ibrahimi. Downbeat involves two South African (yet vaguely Arab) teenagers who are affected fatally by the boy’s religious fanaticism.

Could a “suspected terrorist” be sneaked out as easily as El-Ibrahimi? Wouldn’t the release of someone who is supposedly “too dangerous to be allowed an attorney” be the most contradictory thing any government could possibly do after declaring him that dangerous? It would admit their fault; their defeat would be humiliating. So there is realistically no end to torturing a suspect. When will there ever be enough information gleaned from the victim to justify sending him home with a fruit basket? In the end, torture becomes so passé in the fabric of military process, that from the president to the lowest grunt, everyone convinces themselves they are being “moral” for “saving lives” by employing it.

I can’t wait for Amerikan troops to be captured by ANY enemy and interrogated in the EXACT SAME WAY the Bush Klan authorized “enhanced interrogations” on others. We wil hear the shrieks of outrage from the highest corridors of power to the emptiest vessels on the airwaves…

El-Ibrahimi was spirited out as covertly as he was kidnapped, by a person who was convinced of his innocence, so there was no contradiction in the movie – but in the real life case of Yaser Esam Hamdi (captured in Afghanistan in 2001), it was the government who declared this “illegal enemy combatant” “affiliated with a Taliban military unit” (on the paranoid word of a bureaucrat imbecile named Michael Mobbs – whose title is as stupid as it is meaningless: Special Advisor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy), and so dangerous as to be held for three years without charges or a lawyer; suddenly in 2004 glibly declaring him “not dangerous” after the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in and declared his confinement illegal. You see, Hamdi was embarrassingly discovered to be a U.S. citizen, and first taken out of Guantanamo, then after years of transferals to other prisons with no charges and no trial, was forced to be set free. As Slate reported, “…Hamdi will be on a government jet, flying home to Saudi Arabia with an invisible “whoops” note pinned to his lapel… Did Hamdi spontaneously stop being dangerous? Or was he never really a danger in the first place?”

El-Ibrahimi’s experience, one would think, should have turned him into a raging anti-government dervish – no more voting, no more taxes; no more patriotism; his second baby born without him present; his wife Isabella enduring the mental trauma of death certificates, FBI, CIA, bills, mortgage, medical, funeral costs – but none of that is addressed. Whereas his legal proceedings against the government should have begun in earnest, the movie instead leaves us after his homecoming group hug.

And what’s to stop the CIA from beating down his door and picking him up again from his American home? (With the added bonus of gunning down his family and making it look like a robbery.) He was squirreled out against orders, so if they leave him alone, that would be an admission they were wrong about his “threat” level. Unless the Supreme court steps in, the CIA are not programmed to relent in their “War on Terror” so they’re going after him, all right. Considering it logically, it’s not really an upbeat ending.

It was also far-fetched for Isabella to get so close to Whitman to actually complain in person. All Amerikan officials authorizing torture are insulated by countless layers of gonzo buffers. That’s how this war-criminal president stays so clean. Transparently mendacious, but clean. These torturing maniacs are SO GUTLESS that they WEAR MASKS to work. Why do you think the CIA destroyed those torture tapes, video showing them wearing MASKS to “interrogate” suspects? Because they KNOW it’s illegal. That’s why they wore masks in the first place. Why do you think Michael Mukasey – the Bush-appointee who should supposedly have a handle on “justice” – is too spineless to even mention the word torture, let alone define it? These people wear MASKS (metaphysical or literal) to their day jobs. What kind of subhumans are they? Just how “dishonest” has the inherently dishonest institution of government actually become? There is NOTHING they say that seems like a shred of truth any more. Whenever White House Press Secretary Dana Perino or White House Douchebag George W. Bush open their mouths, all that spews out is TRASH, BUNK, LIES…

Streep gives the bravest performance in her exceptional acting career – how else to describe a role that would automatically make audiences revile you as the slimiest lowlife scum to ever walk the Earth (besides W.)? Yet she is outdone in a stellar, nuanced performance by Yigal Naor (as the master torturer, Abasi), whose principles are simultaneously difficult to observe (on torture: “The work we do is sacred”), cheekily chauvinist (“Beat your woman every day. If you don’t know why – she does”) and sympathetic (his undying concern for his daughter).

It is Abasi’s tale that provides the tragic ending with “religious extremists,” to balance the American who is set free. Once again, provincialism dictates Amerikan storytelling: who really cares ‘bout dem olive-skinned fanatics, right?

Euphemisms come so thick pertaining to U.S. government policy that we can hardly keep track of the lies – which is exactly how the Amerikan government confuses its country, in bombarding its people with so much euphemism that the people throw their hands up and just roll with the newspeak instead of trying to decipher the mountain of steaming bulldung. The press secretaries have even commandeered a euphemism for “trying to decipher their bulldung” – parsing.

A word that the public don’t even regard as a euphemism is one of the most dangerous deflections of the last 60 years: “Intelligence” – as in Central Intelligence Agency (established 1947). “Intelligence” gathering is now merely an Amerikan euphemism for paranoia and disinformation. It’s never really about “intelligence,” is it? Not when all they’re doing is covertly assassinating world leaders, fabricating scenarios to fit political engineering, or reporting disinformation which the administration spins to its advantage or ignores arbitrarily… In late 2007, the CIA reveals to the press that they informed Bush in 2003 that Iran was not a nuclear threat  – after six months of Bush weedily claiming on national TV that the CIA told him Iran was a nuclear threat.

Gee thanks, idiots!

Isn’t it time to choke off funding to this useless black hole of STUPIDITY and funnel it instead to forums that really create “intelligence” – schools, teachers and science? Ron Paul is absolutely right in calling for the CIA’s abolishment.

It is surprising that critics would rail against this movie as simple and cliché; though in no way a classic, or a quintessential coverage of its topic, it brutally brings to light the very real paranoia and pain-mongering of the American government, against anyone who looks sideways at their insanities.

In 2002, a Libyan trainer for al Qaeda was captured, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. His interrogators (euphemism for torturers) believed he had knowledge of Qaeda involvement with Saddam, so tortured him until he simply told them what they wanted to hear, at which point the “intelligence” was relayed to Washington and became the basis of the duplicitous Bush-Cheney claim that Saddam sought to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Stupidity like this is REALLY happening in the world of “intelligent humans.”

In May 2002, U.S. citizen Jose Padilla was arrested at Chicago airport and held for years without a lawyer and tortured until then-Attorney General, the unscrupulous devil John Ashcroft, announced that Padilla had supplied information to thwart a “dirty bomb” detonation. The only thing “thwarted” was actual justice.

(All these cases are detailed in the book Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency by Charlie Savage, 2007.)

I am overjoyed that this movie stomps out loud what so much media has been tiptoeing around – that the United States openly advocates torture of not just “suspected terrorists” but its own citizens. On its own soil. Though Bush signed the John McCain Torture Ban in 2005 (which disallowed U.S. military to engage in torture), he then negated it with one of his infamous pushing-the-boundaries-of-legal Signing Statements, saying that he didn’t have to adhere to it because of his inherent executive powers!

The American people – and world powers associated with America’s insane foreign policies – should be scared to death that RENDITION exists. Anyone claiming to be a “proud American” (which may now be a euphemism for sadistic redneck ‘tard) should be scared to death that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney exist, and on whose word alone “enemy combatants” are identified, kidnapped and tortured. For no reason.

This Could Be You.

But hang on, White House assholes!! If the government is monitoring all calls from the Middle East – what about those vermin within the Bush administration who daily deal with the Middle East on a business basis? What about Bush’s communiqués with Bandar Bush? Or Cheney’s with King Saud? Are those calls monitored? For it is THOSE VERY CALLS that are the root of the terrorism against Amerika, when disagreements fester over the politics of oil; the calls going into THE WHITE HOUSE ITSELF should be monitored most closely because the political wrangling on those phone conversations is what trickles down to democracy-hugging grunts and allah-stroking “fanatics” fighting each other on the word of their stupid leaders who can’t come to any reasonable agreement on anything…

THE LIE: “They” attacked us.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL STROKE: Amerika retaliates “for democracy.”

THE TRUTH: “Amerikan Government” has itself become a euphemism for terrorists, and the end of 2008 will bring about the most-needed “extraordinary rendition” – the ousting of George W. Bush.

END

Blues for The Man In Black.

The Cucumber in Black

I was introduced to Johnny Cash by my older cousin, via A Boy Named Sue and Cash’s take on being led to the gallows, 25 Minutes To Go. This was before I discovered a boy named Alice (Cooper) and Led Zeppelin’s Gallows Pole, subsequently leading to deserting the previous generation’s outlaws (like Cash and The Beatles) and going all long-haired, ripped-jeaned and anti-socialite. (To scallywags under 30: yes, respected and seemingly harmless icons were once regarded as threatening and subversive.)

WALK THE LINE, though lauded as a Johnny Cash biography – is not. As a movie, formulaic; as a biography, a sordid Behind The Music episode at best.

Focusing on only a short period of Cash’s life (from boyhood until 1968), and then only on Cash’s infatuation with vocalist June Carter, WALK THE LINE paints the prolific and determined young man as a neurotic stalker – of a woman who is seemingly as mixed up as he is (if June’s two failed marriages and intermittent dalliances with Cash are any indication). Who would’ve guessed this Grand Olde Pioneer’s goals and destructive actions all revolved around The Getting Of Panty from Carter? Noticeably missing was the scene where he holds up a boombox playing In Your Eyes outside her bedroom window.

Joaquin Phoenix is J.R. Cash (as Johnny liked to be called) and, though not a physical chameleon akin to the Day-Lewises or Oldmans, is a chameleon in essence, metamorphosing into every character he bequeaths his moviegoing audience. An acting marvel, who should have been accruing awards since being “terribly vexed” by Russell Crowe, this role, whilst not his best, is at least on par with the Academy’s provincial (and hypocritical) leanings towards “serious” thespianism.

In singing all Cash’s songs himself on the soundtrack, though he lacks the trademark weather-worn baritone, Phoenix nonetheless causes us to double-take on a few magic moments, superimposing the soul of Cash over his onstage persona. His vocal sync is near perfect (nailing that Cash sideways-mouthing), and with most of the songs adhering to simple I-IV-V progressions, the git-tar wrangling should not have caused many brain tumors with the actors-playing-musicians (though Phoenix likes holding that C chord a lot…).

Folsom Prison Blues is played upon considerably, especially that infamous line, “I shot a man in Reno / Just to watch him die.” Powerful words indeed, for a 23-year-old kid from Arkansas in 1955, cultivating the outlaw image which would render the eventual Man In Black…

I once kicked a man in the Chattahoochee, but I don’t think that counts.

Jutting-jawed Reese Witherspoon, suitably perky and delicious enough to moon over (brunette really suits you, darlin’!), is June Carter, Cash’s regular touring buddy and raison d’être, who pulls him from the depths of drug addiction and marries him after a final onstage plea from Cash – in a climax that debases everything Cash created. In making this love affair the movie’s engine, it implies Cash would have been relegated to “Would you like fries with that?” without June, but he was already a success on his own terms before she was his “inspiration.” After all the “biographical” misdirection, this is nothing more than a chick movie clothed in black and blues. Thankfully, the film neglects to show us that June turned Cash to Christianity – being born once is enough to make some people annoying, but being born twice makes them unquestionably intolerable.

Robert Patrick is Cash’s unsympathetic father, Ray, who relentlessly badgers Cash even into adulthood – for the first time in cinema history, a lifelike rendition of parenthood! In their eyes, you never do Grow Up. When Johnny is released after a night in prison for smuggling amphetamines from Mexico, his father comments, “Now you won’t have to pretend like you’ve been to jail,” and when Cash purchases a big house by the lake and seeks his father’s approbation, Ray only offers, “Not as big as Jack Benny’s place.” Ray’s hurtful digs play a large part in Cash’s drive and despondency in this movie, yet a passive (and unrealistic) reconciliation at movie’s end demeans this subtext, with Ray begrudgingly giving Cash his due, “You’re the one with all the stories.” Almost a backhanded compliment, the only reason this silly smoothing of hostilities was placed at movie’s end was to wrap it neatly – like a movie – once again departing from any semblance of “biographical” intent.

Cash’s use of amphetamines propped him up during grueling tour schedules, yet we never hear exactly how scheduled he is. At times, Cash’s real life itinerary grew to 200 cities in as many days – quite an astonishing tidbit – yet the movie is content to have him away from home just long enough to rouse the ire of his Bitching Movie Wife.

There’s an easier way to watch a man die than shooting him in Reno – marry him off to a small town girl. If there is one inherent message – one thread in all these musician biographies – it is that the first girl you marry is going to be the Whining Byatch of the bunch.

The death of Jack Cash, Johnny’s older brother, was so telegraphed, you could see his table-saw mishap coming while watching the movie RAY (2004).

Speaking of Taylor Hackford’s and Jamie Foxx’s RAY, comparisons are inevitable – cos WALK THE LINE is the same story rewritten with a white guy. Already the trend solidifies in delivering pop star biopics: as long as there are enough drugs and dames and deaths in the family, it will assure an economically viable film – all things being equal, RAY is a more fully-developed character study, thin as it is. WALK THE LINE is anorexic.

Fans will love the full versions of Cash songs (performed by Phoenix), but are gonna Cry, Cry, Cry at how the film’s creators did not Walk The Line with the finer details and, like the Boy Named Sue, may want to search the honky-tonks and bars for the men responsible and give them 25 Minutes To Go…

END