Review: The House I Live In (2012) is an all-encompassing look at the national disgrace that is our 'War on Drugs'.

The House I Live In

2012
110 minutes
Not Rated
Available on various Video On Demand platforms January 15th, 2013

by Scott Mendelson

This won't take long.  Eugene Jarecki's newest documentary is a superb and comprehensive look at the last forty years of drug policy in America.  Oh it goes even further in time then that, but the focus is generally on the 1970s to the present, when the anti-narcotics crusade became the largest source of our current prison industrial complex.  There is little here that will be shocking or new to anyone who has been paying attention over the last few decades.  The value is this fine documentary is that it serves as a all-inclusive document of everything wrong that was and still is when it comes to our drug policies.  It can be argued whether or not a documentary of this nature, unlikely to be seen outside of the converted and perhaps a few not-yet converted during various special screenings, should be judged by its effectiveness in changing policy.  Whether or not it 'makes a difference', it is an important piece of non-fiction filmmaking, a shining light to one of the great shames of our country.

Harvey Weinstein is a hypocritical bully and a f***ing a**hole. Now that publicity has subsided, Weinstein to cut Bully down to a PG-13 after all.

When the manufactured outrage over the MPAA handing Bully an R-rating for its six F-bombs, I politely suggested that Weinstein should just do what Morgan Spurlock did with Super Size Me and cut and alternate, 'educational version' of the documentary so that it could be viewed in schools and other public places.  But over the last two months, Harvey Weinstein and his band of Karl Rove/Lee Atwater-ish bullies have ginned up the media, getting publicity-friendly movie stars and righteously indignant pundits to hem and howl at the MPAA because they had the gall not to give Weinstein's film preferential treatment.  After all, an R-rating was going to keep kids from seeing Bully in a theater!  LIE (any kid of any age can see an R-rated film with a parent/guardian over 18).  And NATO's statement to the Weinstein Company that releasing the film unrated would possibly cause theaters to treat it like an NC-17 film was EXACTLY like threatening to give the film an NC-17 as retaliation for raising a ruckus!  LIE.  If the MPAA didn't give in and give the film a PG-13, the film wouldn't reach the kids that it needed to reach!  LIE (DVDs, Blu-Ray, Video On Demand, Netflix... pick one!).  The film was so singularly awesome and important that it had the unimpeachable power to save kids' lives and that denying this film its rightful PG-13 was tantamount to murdering at-risk bullied youth.  Well, I haven't seen the film, but I'm guessing that's a LIE too.

Just bleep the f*^#ing profanity! Why getting a PG-13 for Bully is more important than fighting the MPAA on its lone ironclad rule.

You can't have more than one 'f-word' in your movie and still get a PG-13.  There have been a few exceptions over the years, but generally it's one 'f-word' in a non-sexual context.  Anymore than that, and its an automatic R-rating.  We can debate the morality/practicality of that specific rule.  Hell, I'd probably agree with you that it's a silly arbitrary requirement, especially considering the sort of violent content that, thanks to the FEC's war on R-rated movies in 2001 (HERE), ends up in PG-13 movies.  But at the end of the day, it's one of the MPAA's few ironclad rules.  Thus I have little sympathy when Weinstein's films keep trying to skirt that 'one rule' and still attempt to get that PG-13.  Their new documentary Bully may indeed be must-see viewing for teenagers.  It may shed light on a major problem, affect the national conversation, and save lives.  But if Harvey Weinstein and director Lee Hirsch want that PG-13, they should just bleep out the offending f-words. Period. We may not like the rules, but those are the rules as they stand at the moment.

Two films for the price of one! How DVDs ruined the theatrical documentary.

I hesitated before watching Knives Over Forks on Netflix Instant yesterday.  I had an interest in the picture, and the DVD was in my Blockbuster quque, so there was seemingly no reason for me not to just watch it right from my Netflix streaming system, right?  Well, first I had to go online and look up the reviews for the Blu Ray.  Specifically, I needed to check what kind of supplemental materials were on the disc.  To my relief, there was only about six minutes of PSA-type material to be found, so I watched the movie yesterday (quick review - the information is worthwhile, but it's a terribly amateurish documentary with few real insights beyond its broad thesis).  I have discussed before the problem of films coming out on DVD 3-5 months after theatrical with significantly altered or extended 'director's cuts' and how that negates the whole purpose of seeing a film in a theater.  Documentaries are a different story.  When you watch a documentary in theaters, you get the final film.  But when you rent a documentary on DVD, there is a good chance that you'll actually get two films for the price of one, with enough extra material in the form of deleted scenes and unedited interviews to constitute a second look at the same subject.

She's a politician, not a movie star. Why the box office failure of Sarah Palin's The Undefeated doesn't mean a gosh-darn thing.

However immature it may be, it can be fun to crow when your enemy fails.  Thus we've had two weeks of various liberal bloggers jumping for joy at the financial under-performance of the Sarah Palin halo-agraphy The Undefeated.  The film opened with $65,132 on ten screens for a mediocre $6,532 per-screen average.  It expanded to 14 locations this past weekend but dropped 62%, earning just $24,662 for a $1,762 per-screen average.  The film barely has $100,000 after ten days and has announced premature (?) plans to debut on Video on Demand and DVD release.  This is frankly an out-and-out tank, a genuine bomb even when compared to other political documentaries that aren't directed by Michael Moore (comparing all political documentaries to Moore's work would be like expecting Punisher: War Zone to out-gross Spider-Man 3).  Ben Stein's Intelligent Design documentary, Expelled, ended up grossing $7.7 million in 2008.  Even something as relatively low-key as The US vs. John Lennon opened with $11,523 per-screen on six screens and eventually grossed $1.1 million back in 2006.  What does this mean for the political fortunes of Sarah Palin and/or those who endorse her ideologies?  Absolutely nothing.

Review: Conan O'Brien Can't Stop a revealing, sometimes awkward backstage peek.

Conan O'Brien Can't Stop
2011
89 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

Any number of great rock n' rollers, from Elton John to Bob Seger, have written classic ditties about the less glamorous parts of being a touring musician.  Heck, anyone who wonders why Steve Perry will probably never ever reunite with Journey need only listen to "Faithfully".  No matter how much you enjoy the stage or how much you are driven to entertain the masses, the daily grind of actually going from one city to another, being away from loved ones for months at a time, is something that not everyone can endure.  So one can only imagine the stress that it puts on someone who has spent the prior twenty years entertaining as a day job, commuting from home to a single office building and putting on a show on the same stage night after night.

Review: African Cats

African Cats
2011
85 minutes
rated G

by Scott Mendelson

There's not really much to say about the newest in the Disneynature series of documentary pictures. It looks absolutely gorgeous, with a nice mix of the intimate and the epic. Like March of the Penguins and the other nature documentaries that have followed in its wake, African Cats is basically non-fiction footage with a narrative attached via narration and judicious editing. Samuel L. Jackson narrates the proceedings, and its a suitably hammy and exciting delivery. The issue of course is that, like many nature documentaries aimed at mainstream audiences, there is an all-too obvious attempt at anthropomorphizing the pride of lions and the single-mother cheetah and her cubs at the center of the story. Behavior that may be cold animal instinct is constantly attributed to maternal affection and recognizable human emotional motivations. The story itself, a turf battle between two male lions and the cheetah family caught in the middle, may in fact be what happened as the cameras rolled over a two-year period. But, when even the makers of the seemingly silently-observant Winged Migration admits to staging, I cannot help wondering how much of the 'story' was wholeheartedly manufactured for the sake of heart-tugging.

Weekend box office (10/17/10): Jackass 3-D sets October, documentary records, while Red opens strong.

Jackass 3-D grossed a whopping $50.3 million in its debut weekend, setting several records and setting punditry tongues wagging in the process. First of all, the film bested the $48.1 million opening weekend for Scary Movie 3 in 2003, taking the October opening weekend record. Second of all, the opening figure is far and away the best opening weekend for any kind of non-fiction/documentary film in history. If you count this series as a documentary franchise (which I do), then the third entry is now the fifth-highest grossing documentary in history in just three days. It stands behind Jackass: The Movie ($64 million), Jackass Number Two ($72 million), March of the Penguins ($77 million), and Fahrenheit 9/11 ($119 million). While the franchise has mediocre legs (part one had a 2.9x weekend-to-total multiplier in 2002 and part two had a 2.4x multiplier in 2006), thus making $100 million+ not quite a sure thing yet, there is little doubt that the film will end its domestic run as the second-highest grossing documentary/non-fiction film of all time. Still, 3-D films seem to have better legs than average (witness the useless My Soul to Take dropping just 54% in weekend two, as well as the inexplicably strong holds of Legends of the Guardians, now at $46 million), partially because they keep the bigger auditoriums for longer periods of time. If it can manage a mere 2.4x multiplier, it will in fact surpass the Michael Moore anti-Bush epic.