The Brink (2019)

The far right kingmaker ponders his next move.

(2019) Documentary (Magnolia) Steve Bannon, Nigel Farage, Daniel Fleuette, Joshua Green, Deb Haaland, Raheem Kassam, Kevin Sullivan, Sam Nunberg, John Thornton, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ari Melber, Roy Moore, Sean Bannon, David Frum, Christopher Hope, Paul Gosar, Paul Lewis, Anne Karni, Steve Cortes, Lena Epstein, Giorgia Meloni, Ilhan Omar, Sharice Davids. Directed by Alison Klayman

 

Steve Bannon has never, to my knowledge, been elected to any office, but he remains even now an important figure in the Republican party, although admittedly less so than he might have been in 2016 after steering Donald Trump’s unlikely Presidential win. He became a policy advisor to the 45^th President for the first year of his term, before being unceremoniously dumped from his post following the Charlottesville protest.

This documentary follows him during the year after his dismissal from the White House, accompanying him on a whirlwind speaking tour as he attempts to assemble a global unity of populist parties (some would say white nationalist) that he identifies as “The Movement,” meeting with far right party members in far-flung locations like the United Kingdom, Sweden, Belgium, and France.

Bannon can be charming and disarming, but one doesn’t have to listen all that closely to realize how monstrous his message is. Considering that he is currently under indictment for contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before the January 6^th committee regarding the events of that day, he is a mass of contradictions, espousing a return to law and order yet defying the law when it suits his interests.

Bannon clearly craves the spotlight, and the power that comes with it and it seems likely that he is deliberately steering the documentary towards keeping him in the limelight as much as possible, because that’s where his effectiveness is essentially made by uttering controversial statements, and by appearing to be a Red Bull-chugging, slovenly Sasquatch-in-a-suit. Is he a demagogue? Absolutely. Is he dangerous? Without a doubt. Is he a fitting documentary subject? As a cautionary tale, yes.

REASONS TO SEE: A terrifying look at the playbook of the far right.
REASONS TO AVOID: A very polarizing film, as some will see Bannon as a hero, others as a villain (the filmmaker’s position is clearly obvious).
FAMILY VALUES: There is some profanity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This is one of two documentaries shot concurrently about Bannon, the other being Errol Morris’ American Dharma.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, AppleTV, Flix Fling, Google Play, Hoopla, Hulu, Kanopy, Microsoft, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 2/5/2022: Rotten Tomatoes: 85% positive reviews; Metacritic: 71/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: American Dharma
FINAL RATING: 6.5/10
NEXT: The Electrical Life of Louis Wain

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The Glorias

Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug make plans.

(2020) Biographical Drama (Roadside Attractions) Alicia Vikander, Julianne Moore, Janelle Monáe, Bette Midler, Timothy Hutton, Lulu Wilson, Lorraine Toussaint, Mo Brings Plenty, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Kimberly Guerrero, Myles Evans, David Shaé, Victor Slezak, Enid Graham, Allie McCulloch, Tom Nowicki, Annika Pampel, Monica Sanchez, Gloria Steinem. Directed by Julie Taymor

 

Like many who have attempted to bring change to our culture, Gloria Steinem is a deeply polarizing figure. To some, she’s a heroine of the feminist movement, standing up to men and speaking truth to power regarding the patriarchy. To others, she was a conniving hypocrite who got attention because of her looks and had no compunction about using them to her advantage. Nobody can disagree that she made a definite impact on late 20^th century culture which continues to reverberate now.

]Filmmaker Julie Taymor (Across the Universe) has never shied away from using unconventional means of storytelling, regularly diving into scenes of fantasy to describe what’s going on in the head of a character. Here, she utilizes four different actresses to play Steinem at various points in her life – Armstrong as a young girl, Wilson as an adolescent, Vikander as a young woman, and Moore as a middle-aged feminist leader. Actually, you might say there are five actresses playing her; Steinem herself shows up re-creating her stirring speech at the 2017 Women’s March on Washington.

The film hits most of the highlights of Steinem’s 80 plus years of life, from her relationship with her travelling salesman father (Hutton) who instilled in her a love of travel (being on the road is a theme utilized throughout the film), her mother’s gradual descent into depression and mental illness; her attempts to break through the boy’s club of New York City journalism (and succeeding by going undercover as a Playboy bunny), her early years as one of the most visible faces of the feminist movement, the founding of Ms. Magazine, and her relationships with various activists and political figures of the era, including Bella Abzug (Midler), Dorothy Pitman Hughes (Monae), the outrageous and over-the-top Flo Kennedy (a memorable Lorraine Toussaint), UFW activist Dolores Huerta (Sanchez) and Wilma Mankiller (Guerrero), the first woman to be voted prime elder of the Cherokee tribe.

The film is extraordinarily well-acted, with kudos going particularly to Vikander, who reminds us once again that she is one of the best young actresses working today. There are some emotionally charged scenes – one in which Steinem says goodbye to a dying Mankiller, or the inspiring National Women’s Congress of 1977 which moved to get the Equal Rights Amendment, an effort that ultimately didn’t succeed after conservatives banded together to denounce the ERA as a weapon for the left to destroy the family unit. Sound familiar?

The movie jumps around from time period to time period, and while it isn’t too difficult to follow, the framing device of Steinem riding a Greyhound bus – often with other versions of Steinem on the same bus, sometimes interacting together – is inventive but overused, ultimately distracting the viewer from the flow of Steinem’s story.

I suppose it’s fitting for her biopic to be unconventional, because in life Gloria Steinem has been anything but conventional. It is also fitting that the movie comes out as the nation mourns the recent death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg whose legal career made brought women’s equality closer to realization and whose passing may threaten the gains made in that regard.

The fantasy sequences may or may not be your cup of tea – I thought that Taymor should have been more judicious in their use, but you may disagree. In some ways, they are illuminating but in others they feel kind of more about the director than about the movie she’s making. I won’t attempt to place a stamp of yea or nay on those feelings; I leave that up to you, gentle reader because in the final tally it is really your call. I can only say that I found them to be overused; my wife, Da Queen, disagrees. So do other critics. That’s the kind of thing I love about movies like this – there is no right answer. Love it or hate it, you absolutely won’t forget it.

The film is curently playing in limited release around the country. It will be availble to stream on Amazon Prime beginning Wednesday, September 30th.

REASONS TO SEE: Vikander gives a whale of a performance. The NWC segment is inspiring.
REASONS TO AVOID: The fantasy sequences are overused and distracting.
FAMILY VALUES: There is profanity and some sexual references.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Moore, Hutton and Vikander have all won Oscars; Midler was nominated for one.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon
CRITICAL MASS: As of 9/27/20: Rotten Tomatoes: 78% positive reviews: Metacritic: 69/100
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Malcolm X
FINAL RATING: 7.5/10
NEXT: LX 2048

Big Sonia

Big hearts can come in small packages.

(2017) Documentary (Argot) Sonia Warshawski, Regina Kort, Caroline Kennedy, Morrie Warshawski, SuEllen Fried, Debbie Warshawski, Marcie Sillman (voice), Chris Morris, Ehsan Javed, Rachel Black, Kollin Schechinger, Grace Lamar, Isabella Mangan, Leah Warshawski. Directed by Todd Soliday and Leah Warshawski

 

After the events in Charlottesville and as we watch the rise of white nationalism and an emergence of racism in the wake of last year’s Presidential election, one has to wonder what Holocaust survivors must think, particularly those who came to the United States to heal, raise families and move forward with their lives. I can’t imagine how awful it must be for them to hear our president characterize those low-life scumbags as “fine people.”

Sonia Warshawski is one of the dwindling number of concentration camp survivors living in the United States, in her case in the Kansas City area. 90 years old at the time of filming (she turned 92 this month), she continues to run her late husband’s (also a Holocaust survivor) tailor shop, the last remaining storefront in an otherwise deserted mall. It is her lifeblood, where she is able to interact with long-time customers, sew and help people dress with somewhat more panache. She’s the kind of gal who is fond of leopard prints and is unembarrassed by it – “(they) never go out of style” she crows at one point in this documentary. Still beautiful even in her 90s, she has a style and glamour all her own.

A somewhat recent development in her life has been her willingness to speak out about her experiences in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. She had rarely spoken to her own children about the war, although they were aware that both their parents were haunted by their experiences (daughter Regina Kort speaks about John screaming in his sleep at night which is why she never hosted sleepovers at her own home). However when she heard about Holocaust deniers and American Nazis, she felt it was her duty to those who didn’t survive to speak about her experiences and share them with high school kids while she still could.

Even more recently Regina has been accompanying her mother on these speaking engagements, usually presenting a sobering preamble before her mother speaks. Displaying a family photograph of about 20 people, she points out an 11-year-old Sonia and her sister as the only two who survived. Sonia’s entire family was wiped out almost overnight. At 15, she witnessed her mother being herded into the gas chamber; she recalls vividly that the last act she saw her mother perform was to comfort a fellow prisoner headed for certain death. Afterwards, she would discover that the fertilizer she was spreading in the fields was the ashes of the victims that had come straight from the crematorium.

Speaking at a prison, hardened convicts describe her as “WAY tougher than (we are)” and reduced some of them to tears. One high school student, Caroline Kennedy (not JFK’s daughter) was so moved by her encounter with Sonia that after graduation she formed an organization to help inspire other students called Empower. Sonia has that effect on people.

Like many Holocaust survivors, family is of the utmost importance to Sonia and she has instilled that value in her children, her grandchildren (one of whom is co-director of the film) and even her great-grandchildren. Sonia makes homemade gefilte fish for Passover and Rosh Hashanah and seems to be surrounded by members of her family nearly all the time.

Her life isn’t without challenges though; the property owners of the mall are dithering whether to demolish the property and build condos or rebuild it. Either way, Sonia’s beloved tailor shop is in a state of flux in many ways. She’s survived so much worse however and it is clear that regardless of what happens she will survive this too.

This is absolutely a labor of love; yes, her granddaughter is one of the directors but it goes beyond that. Much of the film revolves around an NPR interview Sonia gave a few years ago with Marcie Sillman, but that’s only a framework. The centerpiece of the movie is Sonia herself.

Nearly everyone who encounters Sonia in the film becomes an admirer but the filmmakers manage to give the film a sense of balance. Sonia is no saint, but she’s pretty dang close. Some of the interviews with her children are heartbreaking, recalling how guilty they’d feel for giving their parents hell when they’d both lived through hell. Morrie, Sonia’s writer son, breaks down while reading a poem he wrote about his mother during a passage where he describes her whistling a tune her brother used to hum to her while they were hiding from the Nazis, an uncle who he would never meet. There are quite a few scenes of similar emotional power.

Buoyed by almost incongruously light animated sequences that show visually some of the most horrible moments from Sonia’s time in the camps, the movie isn’t a downer although it could well have been. Rather, this is uplifting that makes you want to cry and laugh and sing. You will want to take this woman in your arms and give her a hug and it might even give you a renewed determination to see the forces of racism and tolerance be made to slink back under the rocks they’ve crawled up from under. Those who shouted “We will not be replaced by Jews” should only be so lucky.

In any case, this is a movie that can change your life and I don’t say that lightly. It played the Central Florida Jewish Film Festival here in Orlando recently and has begun a brief theatrical run in New York, Los Angeles and Kansas City and hopefully other cities will show the film as well. This is certainly one of the year’s very best and I can’t recommend it enough.

REASONS TO GO: Sonia is a major inspiration. This is most definitely a labor of love. The pain she and her family feel isn’t kept hidden. A movie that makes you appreciate the things you have.
REASONS TO STAY: There is some repetition that goes on with Sonia’s presentations.
FAMILY VALUES: There are some very adult themes regarding the Holocaust.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The diminutive Sonia stands at 4’8” tall.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 11/20/17: Rotten Tomatoes: 86% positive reviews. Metacritic: 68/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Shoah
FINAL RATING: 9.5/10
NEXT: Despicable Me 3

The Yes Men Fix the World

Just say Yes Men.

(Shadow Distribution) Mike Bonanno, Andy Bichlbaum, Reggie Watts. Directed by Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum

There is no doubt that the world faces many problems, from economic and political injustice to catastrophic climate changes, many of which can be laid at the feet of the greed of men and their institutions. Not all of these problems exist in the light of day; some require inventive thinking to receive any attention at all.

The Yes Men are what I call guerilla performance activists; in their ten years of existence, they create fake websites for major corporations, trade organizations and government entities, and impersonate representatives of the same at speaking engagements. In these guises they make outrageous claims calling attention to the injustices and corruption that they perceive are taking place.

They first came to public attention via a 2003 documentary, The Yes Men. When they created a fake website for the World Trade Organization, they were startled when it was perceived to be real, and offers for speaking engagements were sent. Being rash, somewhat fearless and possessed of an enormous amount of chutzpah, they went on to make outrageous claims purporting to be on behalf of the WTO. This caught the attention of the media who eventually discovered it was a hoax.

Their latest venture is the first to be self-directed, and follows the two of them as they carry out a series of clever pranks. They begin with Bichlbaum posing as Jude Finisterra, a representative of Dow Chemical. On the 20^th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster, in which due to the negligence of Union Carbide (which Dow now owns) toxic gasses escaped, killing thousands in Bhopal, India and condemning hundreds of thousands to live with illnesses and birth defects as a direct result of the contamination, the BBC conducts an interview with the Dow “representative” (the BBC had evidently booked him as a result of using one of the Yes Men’s fake websites for Dow).

During the interview, the nervy Yes Man announces that for the first time, Dow was intending to take responsibility for the role in the disaster and would be liquidating the assets of Union Carbide in order to create a $12 billion fund to take care of the affected people of Bhopal.

The news was a sensation. Nearly all of the major media news sources picked it up and Dow’s stock plummeted, a net loss for the corporation of nearly $2 billion in value until the interview was finally revealed to be a hoax. Self-righteous BBC interviewers, perhaps stung that they had allowed the interview to take place, upbraid the Yes Men for cruelly providing false hope to the victims at Bhopal. Bichlbaum responds by pointing out that the pain they may have inflicted on the people of Bhopal was far less than what Union Carbide did to them and what Dow Chemical continues to do; to this day not a penny in reparations have been paid by Dow or Union Carbide to the victims.

While this is the largest and most visible of their pranks, there are several other portrayed here, including appearing as spokesmen for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, proclaiming to post-Katrina New Orleans that undamaged public housing that was slated to be torn down would be in fact left standing to provide affordable housing in a city that increasingly has less and less of it.

They show up at a convention of oil men with a gag that recalls Jonathan Swift; that when conventional petrochemical sources run out, that they were developing a means of refining oil from human remains. They also show up at a seminar of insurance people under the guise of being Halliburton executives touting the “Survivaball,” a ludicrous survival suit that will allow the wearer to survive any global climate catastrophe.

While it must be said that some of the pranks might have caused some discomfort, the truth is that these are situations that need to be covered. In a world where corporate greed is at its apex and that corporate arrogance and disregard for human lives has reached an all-time high, it takes a crusader to point out the consequences of these actions. They may not be wearing suits of armor (cheap suits are more like the uniforms they wear), but they tilt at windmills nonetheless, providing voices of sanity (ironically) amidst the white noise of corporate and political claptrap.

WHY RENT THIS: The movie succeeds in calling attention to issues not necessarily given coverage by mass media.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Some of the pranks have a cruel streak in them – not intentionally, but there nonetheless.

FAMILY VALUES: There is a little bit of blue language but otherwise suitable for all audiences to a point – some of the issues and humor may be a little bit more than younger kids can handle.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The names of the Yes Men are aliases. The real people portraying them are a teacher and a writer, and both have histories of activism prior to the formation of the Yes Men.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: Additional pranks and a “how-to” featurette explaining how to pull off a Yes Men prank are included.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

TOMORROW: Moon