~~Talladega Nights~~ Finally, Sasha Cohen comes to American cinema. Famous in England for the characters of Ali G (a white gangster wanna-be) and Borat (the socially inept) from Kazakhstan, Cohen in this film is a gay French Formula One driver coming over to NASCAR to whip up on redneck Ricky Bobby. This film is funny in part because Will Ferrell is the ultimate man-child; kind of cute, stupid and hilarious. This is a rare case of the previews not usurping all of the good jokes. If you haven’t experienced the Sasha Cohen phenomenon, start with Da Ali G Show.
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~~Snakes on a Plane~~ That’s right, I saw it and I don’t need to justify it either. This was a damn fun action movie. The pre-hype didn’t show anything but the basic story; it’s the execution that makes this flick worth a second look. I know, I usually like to think that I’m cooler than the masses and hype and whatnot, but this is a good case of the hype being pretty accurate. It’s would be a great one to see at the discount theater, because it’s worthy of the big screen. (R, 2006)
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Tsotsi


Synopsis
Teenage gangster thug, Tsotsi, living in the slums of South Africa carjacks a woman without realizing there was a baby in the backseat. Personal revelations and redemption ensue. Winner of Best Foreign Language film at last year’s Academy Awards. (R, 2006)


Observations
I have always had problems believing films that center around traditional ideas of redemption and Tsotsi is no different. Here’s a kid forced into shooting, stabbing and stealing his way through his young life. The he finds a baby. I wondered if there were perhaps some subtle notes of the biblical manger story in this film – a man with a child, nowhere to stay safely, no one wants to help. That makes Tsotsi the gangster a foil for the Virgin Mary and the abducted child Christ.

But ultimately I just couldn’t buy the idea that this kid would even try to keep this baby. He could have left the child anywhere, killed it, sold it, who knows? But the scenes of Tsotsi with the baby in a shopping bag seemed silly. Why would this gangster cart around a baby? It just doesn’t make sense.

The cinematography and soundtrack were excellent. This is not a film for the faint of heart as there are heaping amounts of senseless violence. Perhaps this was the best that the world had to offer last year in foreign films. One of my favorite, atypical redemption stories is American Movie. It’s a documentary about a normal guy trying to make something spectacular happen against the odds. Try it, you might like it.

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Amazon's entry for Tsotsi

Keep the River on Your Right


Synopsis
This documentary details the adventures of Fulbright scholar, artist, and explorer Tobias Schneebaum, including forty-five years ago when he made his home with a cannibalistic tribe in the Amazon basin. (R, 2002)


Observations
If you are looking for a film that will educate you on the people with whom Schneebaum stayed, the Harakambut, this is not the documentary for you. This is a film about Schneebaum, for Schneebaum. Don’t get me wrong, this old guy had an amazing life and this documentary attempts to depict that. The filmmakers take Schneebaum back to the area where he had stayed with the tribe back in the forties. I guess this is supposed to be revelatory for Schneebaum or for the natives he had encountered. It really ends up being neither. The natives no longer dress in loin cloths -- now they wear Pepsi t-shirts. So much has changed.

Homosexual relations were not taboo in the culture that Schneebaum visited, and neither was cannibalism. Schneebaum participated in both. He speaks with some sadness about the cannibal episode, but in talk show clips from the 1950’s and 1960’s Schneebaum seems more interested in titillating the masses than educating. Schneebaum’s much younger lover points out that Schneebaum has erotic fantasies about the big, strong, black men with which he spent time. Not exactly the impartial observer.

In Schneebaum’s defense, he was not an anthropologist or social scientist. He was just a dude on scholarship that decided to explore. That he infused himself among the Harakambut and was so eager to fit in with them could be a statement about the way that homosexuals at that time were being treated in the United States. It must have been amazing to meet a culture where homosexuality was not only not taboo, but expected as a natural part of adult sexuality. And those feelings of personal freedom perhaps drove Schneebaum to participate in the cannibalism of the tribe because he wanted to be part of them – a strapping black native – not a fragile white gay New Yorker. What would happen if we all found the Shangri-la where all our personal taboos are accepted without question?

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Amazon's entry for Keep the River on Your Right