5 Razors

A Moral Issue

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: An Inconvenient Truth
  • IMDB: link

An Inconvenient Truth is the single most important film of the 2006.  Global Warming is real and it’s happening right in front of us – despite what the nice man who sold you your Hummer lead you to believe.  In fact the signs are becoming so evident that the younger generation is looking to the older with increasing skepticism and questions on how they could let such a thing happen (and are still allowing it to continue).  This is the first of two important documentaries that looks at the problems of our culture and solutions that are both being ignored by those with deep pockets who want to squeeze every last red cent out of the Oil Industry and the planet before even contemplating change (the second Who Killed the Electric Car? will be out by the end of the month).

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Thank You for Smoking

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Thank You for Smoking
  • IMDB: link

“Death is easy; comedy is hard.”

“Satire is fascinating stuff…it’s the only thing that makes any sense.”

Big Tobacco is constantly under attack from all sides.  That’s where Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart) comes in.  He’s their chief spokesman who can spin any situation to his advantage making both himself and the Tobacco Lobby look good in the process.  How does he do it?  It’s a gift.

At the same time Nick is trying to help raise his impressionable 12 year-old son Joey (Cameron Bright), giving an interview to an attractive young reporter (Katie Holmes), fighting a Senate Investigating Committee headed by anti-tobacco Senator Ortolan K. Finistirre (William H. Macy) and trying to pay-off the Malboro Man (Sam Elliott) who is dying of cancer and ready to speak against Big Tobacco to the press.

Aaron Eckhart is the heart and soul of this film as everything rests on his performance, and he delivers an Oscar caliber performance.  Not only does he make Nick Naylor compassionate but he actually starts to persuade you with his arguments as well.  With a warmth and charm he actually makes you believe Big Tobacco isn’t really that bad.  Is it?

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Nowhere Man

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Nowhere Man – The Complete Series
  • tv.com: link

“My name is Thomas Veil, or at least it was.  I’m a photographer, I had it all: a wife – Alyson, friends, a career.  And in one moment it was all taken away, all because of a single photograph.  I have it.  They want it.  And they will do anything to get the negative.  I’m keeping this diary as proof that these events are real.  I know they are… They have to be.”

nowhere-man-dvd

In the fall of 1995 those words were first spoken as a legion of small but vocal supporters tuned into what was to be one of the best television shows ever made.  Nowhere Man follows photographer Thomas Veil who loses his entire life all in the blink of an eye for reasons he can’t even begin to understand.

In much the same way The Prisoner (check out that review here) dealt with the individual versus society Nowhere Man became a show about a man alone in the world unable to trust anyone or anything even perhaps his own sanity.  A man who clings to his identity and individuality, something that belongs to him and no one else, and refuses to give in and turn over the negatives losing that last true part of himself and admitting defeat to “them”.

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A History of Violence

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: A History of Violence
  • IMDb: link

a-history-of-violence

A History of Violence is only 96 minutes long and everything you need to know about the film can be found in that amount of time.  It’s a streamlined and stripped down story that doesn’t waste a single frame or a single performance.  And for its short running time it is amazingly effective, disturbing, distressing, and haunting.

Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) and his wife Edie (Mario Bello) own a diner in a sleepy little town of Millbrook, Indiana.  They are raising a son (Ashton Holmes) who is tortured by bullies but has been taught to turn the other cheek, and a young daughter (Heidi Hayes).  Their life seems idyllic until a pair of thugs attempt to rob the diner and kill the witnesses.  Tom kills both men with brutal efficiency that is unusual in a diner owner of a sleepy town.

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Spielberg’s Best Film in 12 Years

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Munich
  • IMDB: link

munich-posterStephen Spielberg‘s Munich is a personal story that is deeply moving and emotionally challenging to the viewer.  Hard questions are asked about the nature of revenge, assassination, and the right of a people to protect themselves through any means necessary.  Not since Schindler’s List has Spielberg taken on such a momentous undertaking that produced such extraordinary results.  This is his best film in over a decade and, it can be argued, the best film of his entire career.  In Munich Spielberg becomes the storyteller of a very personal story of pain, loss, vengeance, betrayal, murder, and death.  Munich is tremendous filmmaking and one of the best movies of the year.

The film begins with the abduction and murder of eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich.  Munich tells the story of the fallout of this tragedy as Avner (Eric Bana), a Mossad officer and son of a hero, is chosen by the Israeli Prime Minister (Lynn Cohen) to lead a team and hunt down and kill all 11 of the terrorists responsible.  Avner accept the assignment and leaves his pregnant wife; he travels to Europe with his team to track down and assassinate the members of Black September.

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