8 stars

dir: Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini
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A film about unremarkable people living lives of quietly desperate quiet desperation. It seems almost pointless by definition, doesn’t it? Films are about heroes, winners, the triumphant, usually. They’re not supposed to be about us mediocre types, are they? If these stories were going to genuinely be about people like us then they wouldn’t need to hire people with bleached teeth to play characters in every film and have wealthy screenwriters tell us how much better our simple lives are compared to the lives lived by the people that make these films.

American Splendor is not really based on the comic book of the same name, in that it’s not like Harvey Pekar is a superhero like Batman or She Hulk or Man Thing. But then again, since the comics were all based on Pekar’s life anyway, it kind of is. And maybe Pekar is a superhero in his own way.

The concept of so-called “outsider art” worries me. In an episode of The Simpsons where Homer accidentally becomes an artist when constructing a barbecue that goes horribly wrong, an art scene hag voiced by Isabella Rossellini explains that his work is outsider art. It is art that could have been created by hillbillies, mental patients or chimpanzees.

(Les Invasions Barbares)
dir: Denys Arcand
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Death is the one universal human experience. I know people usually use
the combination phrase "death and taxes", but I know plenty of people
who have never paid a cent of tax in their entire lives. That includes
both social security slackers and the kind of wealthy fuckers that
could buy and sell your cheap arse. All the same, I can be sure that
they, like everyone else, one day will die. Unless they pay someone
else to do it for them. That fact is something we, depending on our
age and where we are in life, either try to desperately ignore or
embrace.

dir: Roman Polanski
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"Breathtaking!" "Stunning!" "A Masterpiece!" "Grunties!"

These words are used to describe everything from the most recent Jerry Bruckheimer film to the latest hemorrhoid creams on the market. Superlatives are such an integral part of the marketing hyperbole industry that the words have lost all meaning. Certainly their use, by anyone, especially film critics should be taken not with a grain of salt, but with a quantity of salt not exceeding that available in your average ocean.

That being said, when people you respect (for whatever reason, whether it be their professional credibility or the way they keep handing you lollies until you get into the car with them) start using words like that about a film, you prick up your ears. In this context, some of those words have been applied to The Pianist, and perhaps not without merit. The film has even been honoured at this year's Academy circlejerk, which, whilst not usually an indicator of anything more important than the fact that Hollywood is more insular and inbred than a hillbilly family from the Appalachian mountains (you know, Deliverance country), has for once potentially gotten it right.

dir: Niki Caro

2003

Whale Rider is certainly a touching, sweet film, but people shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that it’s a children’s movie. It is a story of far greater complexity and depth than what one comes to expect from films that seem to be aimed at the kiddie market.

It’s clear, at least to me that there is much more going on here. As well, dismissing it as a glib post-feminist treatise about how wonderful girl power is would be doing the film a disservice, and would denigrate the work all the people involved put into crafting this little gem of a film. It is not a masterpiece by any estimation. It is however a sweet film about a little girl finding her destiny and teaching an old man that the links between the past, present and future can be strongest in the places we are least able to see.

You have to like a film where an old dog learns new tricks. Too often are we saddled with naïve, self-serving stories about old people whose wisdom and experience exist as a beacon, a lighthouse sanctuary for the young above the treacherous shoals of modern life. From that vantage point they can dish out little slices of pious non sequiturs to the thirsty ears of stupid young people and make audiences go “Awww” as if Forrest Gump’s in the house again. Personally I think it’s bullshit. I’ve known plenty of old people, and for each one that has experienced and tasted life, and actually is wise and able to transfer that wisdom to others, you have hundreds of the aged whose most profound thought is figuring out when to get their colostomy bag emptied. Anyone that’s worked in a hospital or in an old folk’s home knows exactly what I’m talking about.

But the old dog in this film, Koro (played superbly by Rawiri Paratene) is a genuinely wise and venerable elder. That wisdom and experience doesn’t prevent him from acting the stubborn old fool, however, until it’s almost too late to come back. Though gruff and sometimes nasty, at least for myself he never stopped being a sympathetic character. The reason is that his actions are motivated from a sense of the profound importance of his people’s heritage, the all-encompassing nature of the legends of his people, and the dissolution of that validity through two factors: a) the abandonment of the old ways in modern life and b), the lack of an heir to the heritage of their creator, Paikea, from whom the tribal leaders (mythically) descend from. And from whom our main characters descend as well.