CineRik

Daniel Burmeister is the heart and soul of cinema.  Nursing his battered car from one small Argentinean village to another, he offers his services as a film maker in exchange for food and lodging, nothing more.  In return, he turns the locals into film stars, throwing their collective work up on a sheet in a village hall in under a month.  A documentary to warm the coldest soul.  My review marches down the red carpet here.

Tim Burton’s star continues to plummet with a film that is too weird for those who don’t like his style, and too boring for those who do.  Not even a grinning cat can save it…  I brandish my vorpal sword and slay the bloated beast here.

If the box office figures are anything to go by ($155 million on its opening weekend) you’ve probably already seen this film and so this review is somewhat moot! If you haven’t then honestly, what are you waiting for? Put your disappointment at the summer’s earlier blockbusters behind you and revel in The Dark Knight.

The film carries straight on from Christopher Nolan’s previous hit Batman Begins, with Batman (Christian Bale) cleaning up the remaining criminals still roaming after Arkham asylum was cracked open by The League of Shadows. Meanwhile, a gang wearing clown masks is raiding mob banks, led by Batman’s eternal nemesis, the Joker (Heath Ledger). As Batman, Lieutenant Gordon (Gary Oldman) and the new District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) put the screws on Gotham’s organized crime, the psychotic Joker offers the mob bosses his services in ridding themselves of the Batman.

This is a long film. Coming in at over two and a half hours it runs the risk of becoming bloated, but for me it never crossed that line. As the story twisted and turned I was glued to my seat. One of the ways in which Nolan managed this was by refusing to water down his vision of Gotham. This is a bad place. Bad things happen to nice people. He has given us an Empire Strikes Back of a film – darker, more brooding than the first and with a feeling that, at any turn, the good guys could really, really suffer. Wonderful!
Of course, it is impossible to discuss this film without turning my attention to the characters, and the actors that portrayed them. And it is impossible to discuss them without the attention being focused on the late Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the Joker. I’ll not beat around the bush – it is stunning. While the comic-book basis of the film gives Ledger the opportunity to really flex his acting muscles, he never goes so far as to render his character actually comic. His Joker is a bag of nervous twitches and tics, unpredictable and truly scary. Where Jack Nicholson gave us a Joker for the 80s – flamboyance, excess and greed – Ledger gives us a new millennium whirlwind of chaos. He is capricious, sowing seeds of fear in the hope that we will turn on ourselves, undoing our own civility in our panic. When we fall upon ourselves, terror has won. But rather than simply overshadowing our hero with his performance, as Nicholson threatened to do to Michael Keaton’s version of the character, Nolan and Ledger’s Joker exposes Batman and all his shortcomings. The Joker reveal’s his weaknesses, he brings the criminal world’s nightmare into the place where he is rendered impotent – into the light. Strip Batman of his ability to strike fear and he is just a man in an expensive cape. It is the question of whether he can survive this, of whether there is more to Bruce Wayne than a trust fund and a bag of tricks, which drives this film.

The other actors, although not able to revel in their roles as much as Ledger’s lunatic criminal, are also superb. Michael Cane dishes out his pearls of wisdom, but also gives Alfred a more human touch than was previously apparent. Oldman is restrained but effective and Maggie Gyllenhaal replaces the last film’s weak link, replacing Katie Holmes as Rachael Dawes. Bale, in his role of Batman and Bruce Wayne, is effective as well, making believable a man who fears that in hunting monsters he might become one, or perhaps that he might not be able to.

Whilst it is not the new Citizen Kane or Casablanca that some critics seem to be making this film out to be, it is the best of the summer crop so far. This is the one that you don’t want to miss.

Well, I’ve written about the best of the festival (in my opinion) and now I fear I must turn to the worst. This isn’t out of some perverse pleasure I might take from wielding my pen (which is far from being mightier than any sword) against a hapless victim, but as a warning to you. Avoid Frozen River as it, I’m sure, wings its way towards a Lifetime channel near you.

Ray (Melissa Leo) is a mother struggling to keep her sons fed and housed as Christmas races towards them as fast as her gambling addict husband races away with the deposit for their new trailer. When she finds her abandoned car has been claimed by Native American woman Lila (Misty Upham), the two form an unlikely relationship at opposite ends of a gun. From this unlikely and incongruous start, they bond as they smuggle illegal immigrants across the border from Canada into New York, using the Mohawk reservation as a cover from the State Troopers.

This film begins with much in its favor. It is female dominated movie, from a female writer/director in a world where that is unfortunately rare. It offers an uncommon opportunity for a Native American woman to take a lead role. It gives us a point to start a discussion of the plight of the poor in America, as well as those so desperate that they offer up years of servitude in order to be smuggled onto its no-longer-welcoming shores. But, for the purposes of this review, none of this matters to me. I couldn’t care less. All I am interested in is the final product, and with that there are problems.

In the Q&A after the screening that I attended, the audience congratulated the director on producing a film so lacking in sentimentality. Perhaps my callous nature has left me more sensitive to it than that very vocal part of the audience, but I saw nothing but sentimentality. The film exists in a world without consequences, or consequences so trivial as to be, for all intents and purposes, irrelevant. Ray’s children are forced to exist on a diet of popcorn and soda, but their health seems none the worse for it. Crimes are committed, but where punishment might be meted out, it borders on the ridiculous. No one really suffers – at least on screen, and that is something I’ll come to in a moment. In this world there is no need to hold your breath or flinch when a gun is drawn, nor worry as another group of immigrants is driven across the titular expanse of treacherous ice, because there is nothing to fear, and so you cease to care.

I spoke of unseen suffering and this is where the film really lets itself down. The plight of those who fund Ray and Lila’s little enterprise is given no more than a cursory mention, a throw away line quickly forgotten as we return to the task of getting the required presents under the Christmas tree. Whatever these two women do, we are told, is to be celebrated as it is for their children, their families. As they stuff two young Chinese women into the trunk of their car, we should not worry ourselves with the fate that awaits the immigrant women, for after all what is a few years of indentured labor or even forced prostitution when compared to getting that double-wide and the look on your son’s face when he sees that Santa has brought him his Hot-Wheels.

In the films defense, the Leo is stunning in the lead.  She is as rough and gritty as the arctic wasteland that her character inhabits and is not afraid to be shown at her very worst, deliberately burying her attractiveness and providing a very believable character.  If the rest of the film had been up to her high standard then my review would have been very, very different.  Sadly it does not come close.

When the BBC’s Mark Kermode reviewed Rambo, he admonished the creators for producing a film which was morally bankrupt. Here we have that, combined with dull, safe predictability and a sugar frosted world hidden only by the thinnest crust of darkness, which on closer inspection proves to be no more than chocolate sprinkles. Avoid.

Addendum – since I wrote this review I’ve noticed that this film will not only be released in theaters on August 1st, but was the recipient of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize. The world never ceases to amaze me.

I have found it! I have once again found a film that single-handedly made visiting a film festival worthwhile: a film that renews my love for cinema, but one which will most likely never be seen on the big screen outside of the festival circuit. For me, for the LA Film Festival, that film was You, The Living.

A disgruntled barber exacts revenge on a rude customer.

So why choose this as the film of the festival? What makes it special? Firstly, it is utterly charming, delighting me in the same way that The Band’s Visit did at the Santa Barbara Film Festival

The pub landlord calls time and his bar is immediately swamped by apathetic customers.

Secondly it is not only attractively shot, but also shot in a way that makes it stand out from the crowd, with visuals reinforce the message of the film, rather than adding a layer of artifice.

A tuba player’s downstairs neighbor pokes holes in the ceiling with his broom handle.

Finally, it is a film which takes the rules of cinema and doesn’t just abandon them but, in the words of Douglas Adams, loses them, finds them, subjects them to public inquiry, loses them again, and finally buries them in soft peat and recycles them as firelighters.

Trams and cars crawl along a foggy street, their drivers talking directly to the audience.

The film consists of fifty vignettes of varying length. They all feature the inhabitants of a small Swedish town, but there is no linking story.

An office worker is startled from his sleep on a tiny couch by a passing train which rattles the windows.

Instead they are linked by their focus on the troubles of the locals. Their trials and tribulations are there for all to see.

A man dreams of being sent to the electric chair for failing to pull a table cloth out from under an expensive dining set.

Many of the stories are based around an absence or failing in communication. People in the town are isolated, but dream of connections with those that surround them.

An aging, overweight punk cries for a motorcycle so that she can leave her worries behind, although she will probably be home for dinner.

Long takes of static environments, rendered with a muted, foggy palette are used. The camera rarely, if ever, moves; its motion is replaced by our hops across town and the shifts between fantasy and reality.

A thin, old man gripes to the audience about his pension dropping in value, while a Rubenesque woman, wearing nothing but a military helmet, moans in ecstasy as she writhes on top of him.

But somehow what could have been a jumbled mess coalesces in director Roy Anderson’s capable hands, like a fractured mirror showing aspects of the whole. Quirky, without falling into the overused realm of ‘Wes Anderson quirky,’ You, The Living is a beautiful film, to which I am unable to do justice.

A girl imagines her perfect wedding day, her apartment drifting through town as all the people she sees every day, but does not know, congratulate the happy couple.

Leave your preconceptions behind and you’ll find an experience worth having.

The Poker House is Lori Petty’s first foray into feature film directing, although she is already well known for her acting roles in films such as A League of Their Own and Tank Girl. Based on her own traumatic childhood, Petty has produced a compelling product with The Poker House.

Agnes (Jennifer Lawrence) is Petty’s fourteen year old alter ego and has, if you’ll forgive the gambling reference, been dealt a pretty poor hand in life. Residing in the titular abode with her two younger sisters, she is the daughter of a prostitute (Selma Blair) whose days are a blur of beatings, coke and entertaining the men who use her front room as a gambling den. Surrounded by corruption and temptation, Agnes turns to her mother’s pimp to replace the absent maternal love and to poetry and the basketball court for emotional and physical release. She desperately seeks to protect her sisters whilst clinging onto the shreds of her own innocence which are always at the point of being torn from her.

The film lives or dies on its performers, and thus a heavy weight is placed upon the shoulders of its young leads, as well as the supporting cast. Thankfully they are up to the task. From the orange-soda fuelled hyperactivity of Cammie (Chloe Grace Moretz) and the desperately mature Bee lining up with the homeless to trade her collection of empty bottles for sherbet and candy, to Agnes herself, the sisters inhabit their roles effortlessly, with an on-screen chemistry which leaves you with a real sense of family. The rest of the cast is excellent as well, with Selma Blair almost unrecognizable with her ratty blonde hair and hollow eyes. Her callous interactions with her eldest daughter, belittling Agnes and attempting to push the girl into going on the game herself, are as hard to watch as they should be.

The film does have its flaws however. Cammie’s bar snack-consuming scenes seem to offer little bar moments of comic relief as she shouts at soap opera characters, bemoaning their lack of sense. I also found it hard to invest in Agnes’s basketball game at the end of the film, coming as close as it did on the tail of the film’s most horrific moments. It is highly likely that I’m simply not as strong a character as Agnes herself, but I found it hard to let go of what had come before. Equally, I wanted to know what happened next. Unlike a film such as 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, this film isn’t a journey towards a traumatic event; it is a reflection on a life into which one falls. As wonderfully presented as Agnes and her family’s life was, by the end of the film I found myself more interested in what happened next. How did the girls cope with what had happened to them? I wish the film had come to its turning point sooner, and then showed me the fallout.

Overall though, this film comes highly recommended and is easily one of the best films I have seen at the festival. If Petty can produce such vivid depictions of events outside of her realm of personal experiences, then her career as a writer and director will be one to which I will pay very keen attention.

When I was six years old my favorite t-shirt was emblazoned with Marvel’s not-so-jolly green giant and my favorite toy (taken lovingly to school on any day it was allowed) was a little truck with a cage on the back from which the Hulk could escape.  I tell you this for the purposes of full disclosure, to give you a chance to meter the praise (and criticism) with which I am about to lavish The Incredible Hulk.

Transporter director Louis Leterrier, together with screenwriter Zak Penn (thankfully lifting himself above the derisible scripts for previous hero flicks Electra, X-Men: The Last Stand and Fantastic Four in which he had a hand) and ever-eager contributor and star Edward Norton bring us an effective reboot to the Hulk franchise, opting for a story and atmosphere closer to the 70s TV show and some versions of the comic than to Ang Lee’s Hulk.  This ‘Batman Begins’ approach has paid dividends, even in the eyes of someone who enjoyed Lee’s more cerebral interpretation, giving Leterrier the freedom to ditch some of the baggage without having to spend too much screen time focusing on the origin story – the bane of many first installments.  Here we are immediately dropped into a world where Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) is on the run, hiding from the overzealous General Ross (William Hurt) who wants to capture the beast that lurks within Banner and exploit it for military purposes.  Banner, hiding within the chaos of a Brazilian favela, studies relaxation techniques and martial arts in an attempt to control his green-skinned rages, while communicating with a mysterious scientist named ‘Mr Blue’ in an attempt to discover a cure.  But Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth), one of the men under Ross’s command, is intoxicated by the power he witnesses in a failed mission to capture the Hulk (voiced by Lou Ferrigno, who embodied the goliath on TV and who represents one of many winks to the characters past incarnations) and undertakes an experimental procedure in an attempt to level the playing field.

Visually, this film is a treat.  The cinematography in the favela is particularly beautiful, pulling the viewer right into the claustrophobic environment, without turning the slums into the pit of despair that they could have easily become.  And then there is The Hulk himself.  Gone is the neon green ‘Mr Stay Puft’ from Lee’s film and in his place we have a creature with real weight, more a Greek God (if in an odd hue) than a nauseous, overgrown toddler throwing a tantrum.  He seems much more connected to the world than his previous incarnation did, which is important when you have a character who interacts with the world as much as, and as violently as, the Hulk.

The story moves along at a pretty brisk lick, offering moments of respite between the smashing which don’t throw the pace of the film off kilter, whilst allowing the audience to catch their breath and gird their loins for the next onslaught.  Unlike Iron Man it doesn’t seem to be too schizophrenic, keeping a pretty even tone all the way through.  I will be interested to see what effect the promised additional seventy (yes, seventy) minutes of footage in the home release has on the film.  More background to the characters would be nice, but this is an action film and care will need to be taken not to turn it into ‘Sense and Sensibility: New York Rampage”.

The acting is generally pretty good, but with one glaring weak spot.  Norton gives us our tortured hero without descending into Hamlet styled hand wringing and Roth is convincing as a soldier desperate to recapture the vitality of his glory days.  Hurt is occasionally unconvincing as a man driven so hard that he is willing to perform genetic experiments on his own men but, on the whole, he plays a convincing ‘Thunderbolt’ Ross.  Liv Tyler, playing love interest Betty Ross, sadly falls short of the mark.  She seems unable to snap out of the role of Elven Princess.  Simpering in a film where she is surrounded by gladiatorial monsters, she seems out of place and unworthy of Banner’s, and the Hulk’s, infatuation.

Marvel no longer license their characters to film studios and can now place their characters within the same world.  Here we have Stark Industries (from the recent Iron Man film) producing military hardware and oblique references to Captain America.  The best Marvel Stories, such as the recent Civil War, have always involved multiple characters interacting, so these references not only provide for a more believable world (where the fantastic is accepted because it is, well, less fantastic) but also give the promise of greater things to come. To that end, there is a brief scene which sets  up the forthcoming Avengers film, although unlike Iron Man you won’t have to sit through the credits to see it.

If, like me, you are a fan of the Hulk then this film will not disappoint.  You’ll get that line from the TV series, good CGI, plenty of action and a story which rips along.  If you have no more interest in this green giant than you have in the one who sells corn, then there should still be enough action and fun to keep you interested.  For me this is the first summer blockbuster that has delivered on its promises.  A smashing (Damn! I almost made it without a bad pun!) good time

Taxi to the Dark Side, directed by Alex Gibney (executive producer of previous Iraq War documentary, No End In Sight) tries to piece together the events and individuals involved in the abuse of prisoners by US troops during the ‘War on Terror’, from Bagram in Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Whilst it deals with a variety of cases, from the infamous Abu Ghraib photographs to the allegations made by British citizen Moazzam Begg, it focuses on the case of Dilawar, a young Afghan taxi driver who died five days after entering Bagram prison. It is a sobering, but well executed, tale.

Dilawar’s death certificate, written in English and delivered to a family who spoke not a word of the language, indicated that his death was considered a homicide. This comes as no great surprise when it is revealed by a doctor that he had been beaten about the legs so badly that, had he survived, they would have had to have been amputated. This tiny man (a little over 120 pounds in weight) was hung from the ceiling, deprived of sleep, beaten about the legs and then left, still hanging, where he died. The people who did this must have been monsters. They must have been slathering bigots, sadists and psychopaths. If we saw them on the street, we would know them immediately. They would be the people your mother warned you about. I mean, they would have to be, wouldn’t they?

This film’s greatest strength is the series of interviews with just those people. The men who delivered the knee strikes that ushered Dilawar out of this world are given a chance to tell their side of the story. Their accounts point not to a group of ‘bad apples’ spoiling a good, old fashioned, wholesome, ‘made-in-America-with-mom’s-apple-pie’ war, but a to corruption which began at the very top of the chain of command and seeped its way down to the rank-and-file, for whom disobeying orders goes against all that they have been taught. We hear an assistant to the Attorney General tell of loopholes that he teased out to provide space for torture and a side-stepping of the Geneva Conventions. We are told of the pathetically brief training periods that the men and women on the ground received before being let loose on prisoners. We hear military personnel tell how life for the uncharged in Guantanamo is made quite pleasant by the weekly Pepsi and pizza night and a half basketball court! And we hear, from the mouths of those who were directly responsible for the death of Dilwar, how orders that they were given were never backed up by writing which would have illustrated the route they took through the chain of command, and how requests for guidelines and training were never acknowledged. We hear of their regrets and how they were cut off and hung out to dry. Did they make mistakes? Terrible, awful mistakes? Absolutely. Should the buck have stopped with them? This film suggests otherwise. Are they humans and not monsters? Yes, they are tragically, undeniably human.

The film loses some of its credibility when it turns to Moazzam Begg. The director does nothing to present his testimony in the light of information known about Begg. None of the previous allegations about him are raised, nor his own admissions about visiting militant training camps. Although Begg is an eloquent speaker (he now tours, supporting his book on his time in Guantanamo) his presence in the film delivers little that other speakers do not and the ignorance of his past threatens to undermine its credibility.

With that one caveat, this film is highly, highly recommended. The episodic structure and continuous stream of allegations and evidence keep the film moving at a breakneck pace. Watch, learn, and make your own mind up as to whether the fourth branch, the journalistic branch, of the US government is the only one working at all.

Where do I begin with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull?  Am I really expected to believe that this was the best that the combined might of Spielberg and Lucas could produce?  These two are capable of delivering some of the finest popcorn-cinema ever to grace the silver screen, and yet they have given us this?  You need read no further, just heed my warning and avoid this film.

The plot, for what it is worth, revolves around a lost crystal skull (but you’d already guessed that!).  Recovery of the skull will be, so the legends say, rewarded with ultimate power (see Ark of the Covenant, Sankara stones and the Holy Grail for points of reference).  Kidnapped by Communists (who have replaced the 30s Nazis as the enemy de jour) Dr Jones is forced to help find the skull and the temple to which it must be returned.  But the journey is interrupted by communist accusations against Indiana himself, as well as the arrival of a young man named Mutt…
One of the things that the previous Indiana Jones films had in their favor was the fact that, as long as you could buy the mystical elements, there were few things which forced you to suspend disbelief too dramatically.  Sure, the cart jump from Temple of Doom was a little farfetched, and we weren’t entirely sure how (or why!) Wille wasn’t turned into charcoal, but on the whole it was easy to suspend disbelief and go along for the ride.  Not so in the case The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull.  And here is why.

Indiana Jones and the Insulters of Audience Intelligence

This film thinks you are stupid.  Really, really, stupid.  Our introduction to Indy takes place at Area 51, inside a very familiar warehouse.  If you’ve ever seen the first Indy film you know exactly what lies within.  However Spielberg has decided that you might somehow have become confused and insists on showing you the Ark of the Covenant poking out of a broken crate.  If you’ve seen Raiders this is unnecessary.  If you’ve never seen it then you must surely be wondering what the big golden box is.  Whilst this is not the worst thing that the film does, it exemplifies the film’s lack of faith in the audience.  We all know that the 50s were the era of ever present nuclear threat, so do we really need to see our geriatric hero survive an atomic bomb detonation, particularly when his survival rests on his ability to withstand being flung half way across Nevada in a fridge?  I know the writers wanted us to get the message that the world had changed since Indy’s heyday, but was this really the best they could do?  The film goes on to shower the audience with long winded sequences of exposition, relaying what is, or should be, obvious and it just gets tedious.

Indiana Jones and the Terrible CGI

The earlier films relied on clever editing, cinematography and actual sets to get you into the thick of the action.  The sheer physicality of Jones’s surroundings gave them weight and an air of excitement.  I’ve never looked at the opening of Raiders and thought ‘If only that boulder had been computer generated, this could have been so much more thrilling’!  Yet for some reason (and, I fear, the reason was probably the CGI evangelist in the producer’s chair) this fourth installment is full of CGI.  And it is terrible.  I mean really, truly, utterly awful.  From the comedy gophers in the opening sequence, to Shia LaBeouf’s elastic legs during the jungle chase, the CGI ruins sequence after sequence.  It may allow you to do every more fantastical things, but bigger is not better Mr. Spielberg, better is better.

Indiana Jones and the Bizarre Plot Elements

One of the prerequisite elements of any Indy story is a diabolical villain and, in The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, that role is filled by Cate Blanchett as Col. Dr. Irina Spalko.  Spalko is apparently a psychic.  I say apparently because apart from frowning once at Indy and declaring him ‘hard to read’ she does absolutely nothing else with this wondrous ability.  Nothing, zip, zilch, nada.  For all we know she is just bonkers!  It is as though one person wrote the first sequence and then passed it on to another screen writer, sealed in an envelope, for them to carry on.  Then there is the moment in which Indy is, in the presence of Mutt, inexplicably stricken with a conscience over removing a knife from a mummified body.  For crying out loud he is INDIANA JONES!  He is the original tomb raider.  This is what he does!  James Bond kills enemy spies, Spiderman swings from buildings and Indiana Jones loots tombs.  Don’t mess with the basics.

I could go on to protest the lack of suspense, the fact that Indy doesn’t really do anything other than get dragged around by the bad guys or the genocide that no one seems to care about, but it would really be flogging a dead horse.  I did smile when we got the brief moments where the characters got to have fun away from a green screen and I did enjoy being in the company of Dr. Jones one more time, but only for brief moments.  Has Spielberg ruined my childhood as other reviewers have protested?  No, he hasn’t gone that far.  Discovering that my Dad tortured kittens or my Mom voted for Margret Thatcher would ruin it and a bad Indy film just doesn’t have that power.  Has it ruined by trust in Spielberg’s abilities as the best popcorn film director (George, you already lost your crown – you know what you did!)?  Let’s just say that whatever he comes up with next had better be damn good.  It’s going to take some real whip-cracking fun to bury the memory of this unconvincing rubber snake of a flick.

Hot House, from director Shimon Dotan, offers its audience a glimpse inside the Israeli prisons which house captured members of Palestinian organizations such as Hamas and Fatah. We get interviews with men and women, prison officials, convicted killers and people running for office. Unfortunately the director wraps these compelling images within a directionless structure that left me bored.

The film focuses on the politicization of the ten thousand held in places such as Be’er Shiva Prison, offering a mix of hope and horror. Some prisoners talk of engaging the Israeli’s in dialogue when they finally emerge from their incarceration whilst others speak proudly of the horrors that they have visited on others and those that they would commit upon their release. The prisoners, now with time on their hands, talk of the opportunities that they have been presented with since their arrest, studying for degrees in areas such as political science. Where they thought only of violence towards their occupiers before, they speak of finding accord and offer the hope of peace in the future.

Yet for every moment of hope that the film maker offers us, there is a moment of stomach churning disgust. A young man, who will hopefully be cured of his twisted views by maturity, speaks of the pride he would have in raising children. He could think of nothing finer, he reveals to his interviewer with glee, than being able to personally strap explosives to the fruit of his loins and sending them off as tiny suicide bombers. More repugnant still (if only because this man’s words might be dismissed as pathetic, immature posturing) is the ex-television presenter who speaks with pride of being able to help a man who detonated himself within a crowded restaurant to achieve his dream of becoming a martyr for his beliefs. She has no regret, she says, that three children were killed in the blast. She smiles her made-for-TV smile as she reveals this; only the subtlest of cracks in her mask forming when she is told of the much higher number of infants that she actually condemned to death. No matter what their cause, no matter how they and their people have suffered, these are monsters and they condemn themselves with their own words.

The film also reveals the tight bonding and the organization by the incarcerated men and women, allowing them to plan and strategize in ways that were impossible outside of the prison walls. In a way, locking these men and women up has allowed their political organizations to flourish and their status as martyrs grants them influence within their organizations and the Palestinian population at large. When political candidates are arrested just before the recent election in which Hamas took control of the Palestinian government, the film asks whether these actions, along with pressure from the Israeli and US governments, actually handed Hamas the election by creating an atmosphere in which people felt compelled to vote for the people they were told not to vote for. Did America once again create the monster that plagues it?

Unfortunately film has no structure. It charts the year before the election with no sense of build up, nor does it seem to reveal much new after it has revealed the effectiveness of the structures within the prisons. The tidbits that it drops regarding the arrests of the activists come few and far between, surrounded by laughing men discussing the available TV channels and women painting murals on the walls outside of their cells. The pacing is completely flat and leaves the film feeling far, far longer than its 89 minute running time. The film squanders its moments and I cannot recommend it.

Many thanks to the organizers of the 3rd Santa Barbara Human Rights Film Festival for providing passes to their event.