In light of later events, like the dog-walking woman and the Black birder on 25 May 2020, this is an important for documenting the character and intelligence of Christian Cooper, the Black birder. It's also one of the most sympathetic portrayals of the joys and value of watching birds that I have ever seen. The video recordings of individual species of birds going about their lives is very good. Photo and sound editing are top-notch. My one salient criticism of the film is that the different species should be more consistently identified. It was a pleasant way to spend an hour of pandemic isolation.
Reviews
6 Reviews
The Thin Yellow Line
(2015)
Men at work, Mexican style...
8 January 2016
The Thin Yellow Line just played the Palm Springs International FilmFest. Having lived and worked in Mexico many years ago, I was immediately struck by its ring of authenticity. Everything about it reflects workaday life in "blue collar" Mexico. The story centers around a down-on-his-luck working stiff, Toño (Damian Alcaraz), encountering an old acquaintance who hires him to ramrod a crew of misfits (four guys who might have been picked up at some Home Depot parking lot) to paint a centerline on a back-country road in northern Mexico--210 km. in 15 days. The five of them, a beater pickup, an antiquated walk-behind spray painter, a wheelbarrow, and a dog undertake their own little odyssey. The task is simple; new challenges appear daily. Over a couple of weeks, what starts as a band of bothers becomes, slightly twisted, a band of brothers. The language, the horse play, the problems they encounter and their solutions to them are totally, characteristically, the Mexico I once knew. Because work pivots the plot, Thin Yellow Line exalts the working man in a way that few films of this genre do. Billed as a comedy (and occasionally quite funny), it's a minor-key Homeric, authentic slice of life in working class Mexico. An enjoyable film to watch, its awards are well deserved.
Bergman/Python/Strindberg w/ a soupçon of Munch
7 August 2015
If Ingmar Bergman had directed the Monty Python crew through a script by August Strindberg and story boards by Edvard Munch, this is the film that might have resulted. Billed as a comedy, it produces the occasional chuckle, but humorous it isn't. A surreal Nordic allegory, as suggested by other reviewers, it might possibly be, but one would have to sit through it several times to extract that degree of narrative intent. I think I wouldn't have the patience. One can imagine that Swedes would find it much more meaningful, and funnier, than Americans for possessing the cultural context upon which the film clearly depends. There are a lot of subtleties of history, social mores, and such that get lost in translation.
One has to hope that the eponymous pigeon's existence is less dreary than the lives of the film's characters, or the writer's vision of the world. The DP and Art Director seem to have been a gleefully willing accomplices in the whole thing, however. The staging and photography are at times positively brilliant.
One has to hope that the eponymous pigeon's existence is less dreary than the lives of the film's characters, or the writer's vision of the world. The DP and Art Director seem to have been a gleefully willing accomplices in the whole thing, however. The staging and photography are at times positively brilliant.
Omar
(2013)
A film Shakespeare could have written
14 January 2014
If the saga of Omar were a wine, it would have to be described as "Shakespearian, with notes of Dante, Orwell, Golding, and Sartre." Omar is a basically decent, seemingly uncomplicated young bakery worker who is inexorably drawn into the violent political warfare of the West Bank through his love for a girl, his increasingly radicalized circle of friends from childhood, and Israeli injustice. Right up to its unexpected, yet expectable, ending Omar is more victim than protagonist.
Clearly anti-Israeli in tone, the film explores the many reasons why Palestinians maintain an abiding antagonism toward Israel and Israelis. A driving metaphor in the film is the 25 foot high wall that Omar scales regularly to visit Nadia, his intended. Although The Wall was ostensibly designed to separate the Jewish West Bank settlements from Palestinians, it even more effectively separates Palestinian towns, families, and friends from one another--and from their water supplies in many places. To visit a neighboring town along is course has often become virtually impossible for having to detour long distances around the wall's tortuous path and passing through multiple checkpoints. Similarly, the Israeli military and police strive to divide and isolate individuals and groups psychologically just as the wall does physically. It's a classic use of divide-and-conquer strategy, which is one of the film's principal plot threads. Whatever your views of the Israel-Palestine situation, this thoroughly absorbing film will challenge them.
Clearly anti-Israeli in tone, the film explores the many reasons why Palestinians maintain an abiding antagonism toward Israel and Israelis. A driving metaphor in the film is the 25 foot high wall that Omar scales regularly to visit Nadia, his intended. Although The Wall was ostensibly designed to separate the Jewish West Bank settlements from Palestinians, it even more effectively separates Palestinian towns, families, and friends from one another--and from their water supplies in many places. To visit a neighboring town along is course has often become virtually impossible for having to detour long distances around the wall's tortuous path and passing through multiple checkpoints. Similarly, the Israeli military and police strive to divide and isolate individuals and groups psychologically just as the wall does physically. It's a classic use of divide-and-conquer strategy, which is one of the film's principal plot threads. Whatever your views of the Israel-Palestine situation, this thoroughly absorbing film will challenge them.
Coast of Death
(2013)
Moving leisurely through Galicia
13 January 2014
Imagine five minutes of HD surveillance footage of matchstick pines being cut down in a fog- bound forest and you've established the languid pace for "Coast of Death." The film comprises many such protracted shots of not much going on. Some of the photography is artful; most is not. There is no narration to tell one what one is seeing but some scenes are accompanied by conversational dialog, seemingly recorded at a distance from the subjects in the scene, which says nothing of any substance. This visual montage of Galicia, the northwest corner of Spain, reminded me a bit of a narration-free Joseph Losey flick I saw years ago called "Figures in a Landscape," but that one at least had a Kafkaesque pot tying it together. Not to put too fine a point on it, "Coast..." has none.
Although it is obviously intended to be an homage to the Galician coast, even Gallego nationalists would probably find it tedious. There is some pretty interesting footage, if one only knew where it was and why it was included.
At its showing in the 2014 Palm Springs International Film Festival, probably 10% of the audience walked before it was even half over.
Although it is obviously intended to be an homage to the Galician coast, even Gallego nationalists would probably find it tedious. There is some pretty interesting footage, if one only knew where it was and why it was included.
At its showing in the 2014 Palm Springs International Film Festival, probably 10% of the audience walked before it was even half over.
My Sweet Pepper Land
(2013)
Spaghetti in Iraq
13 January 2014
What's the Kurdish word for 'spaghetti?' "My Sweet Pepper Land" is a classic Spaghetti Western set in a remote corner of Iraqi Kurdistan. Upright stalwart hero, distressed damsel, band of lawless ruffians to be dispatched, and, as an interesting twist, a group of well armed feminist freedom fighters who don't like anybody very much. It's a culturally interesting story, flawed by several gratuitous episodes of cruelty to animals being passed off as entertainment-- kind of wrecked the film for us. The high point was the female lead, Golshifteh Farhani (as Govend) playing a melodious Kurdish-6 pan drum. Along with the other music, that made for a much better than average soundtrack.
Although classed as a Comedy (it has its moments) at the 2014 Palm Springs International Film Festival, it isn't.
Although classed as a Comedy (it has its moments) at the 2014 Palm Springs International Film Festival, it isn't.
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