Reviews
After Innocence (2005)
500,000 innocent Americans in jail?
This movie introduces you to a handful of men who have been freed from long prison terms after being exonerated. As shocking and heartbreaking as this movie is, it gives no hint of the scale of the problem. While it is a powerful experience to get to know these men, I found myself urgently wondering what percentage of the prisoners who get DNA tests turn out to be innocent. A little web surfing led me to this quote from William Sessions (former director of the FBI):
"In early 1988, the FBI Laboratory Division created a DNA testing lab; by year's end, testing was completed in 100 active cases. I was fully expecting the results to confirm the careful investigative and evaluative work that had gone into the decisions to prosecute these suspects. Instead, I was stunned by the results. In about 30 percent of the cases, the DNA gathered in the investigation did not match the DNA of the suspect. Fifteen years later, this rate remains virtually the same. Approximately 25 percent of DNA tests do not produce a match."
Now, it would certainly be reasonable to suppose that this rate of failure of our justice system's "careful investigative and evaluative work" is a similar 25% to 30% in the rest of the cases where it hasn't been scientifically checked by DNA testing. With two million Americans in the prison system, if 25% of them are innocent, then we have 500,000 innocent Americans in jail.
After Innocence is a very good film but I think its impact could be much greater if it gave some context to these seven individuals by talking, even briefly, about how many other wrongfully incarcerated Americans may be moldering away in prison. The only hint of this in the film is a shot of a bank of filing cabinets at the Innocence Project that contains thousands of requests for help all unopened.
Sophie Scholl - Die letzten Tage (2005)
It's German history, but American current events.
Most of the initial comments here have been from Germans. I just saw this movie in the Portland International Film Festival and I do feel compelled to say that it has an extra resonance for me as an American at this particular historical movement. (The film is about to be rolled out now in the US, starting with NY and LA.)
"Sophie Scholl" is about a group of university students who stand up and clearly declare that their government is killing people for nothing by continuing to fight a war that cannot be won. Julia Jentsch, who plays Sophie, does a powerful job of delivering Sophie's actual words as she asserts with total conviction that this cannot be passively accepted - that you must follow your conscience, even if that puts you on the wrong side of the law and therefore in personal peril. She objects to her government's criminalization of free speech (they charge her with treason and demoralizing the troops) and she and the rest of the White Rose insist on speaking out against the war.
Heartbreakingly, the US is also slogging through an unwinnable war of aggression right now in Iraq. Through virtually no one in Congress will stand up and say so, we do have an American "White Rose" grassroots resistance calling for the end of the war and, increasingly, the impeachment of the president. Our government responds by charging them with treason and demoralizing the troops but, luckily for Cindy Sheehan, not with guillotines. With polls indicating that half of the American electorate is recognizing the futility of this war, Sophie Scholl's example could not be more relevant as more and more Americans must decide how much to speak out.
20 centímetros (2005)
a fabulous Bollywood version of Transamerica and Nights of Cabiria
This is a completely fabulous movie. Imagine a Bollywood version of Transamerica directed by Pedro Almodovar from a script by Dennis Potter. Imagine taking LSD and going to a showing of Breakfast On Pluto which has had its IRA scenes replaced by scenes from Nights of Cabiria. This is perhaps not a date movie for the faint of heart but if genre-bending and gender-bending don't scare you, this movie is relentlessly, joyfully entertaining. There's Something About Mary all right, and it's eight inches long! The dance sequences are great; they had so much delicious stuff to look at all over the frame that I had decided that I didn't have a moment to spare for looking at the subtitles during them and was relieved when our heroine starting singing in English. Given the difficulties of foreign film distribution in this country, you may have to root around for this movie but once you find it it's a handful and a half!
Ame agaru (1999)
A perfect, great film
This is a simple film that is carved out of solid wisdom and heart. It is a perfect, great film. At present, it has no American distributor, but if you have any chance to see it bring everyone you know with you. Kurosawa's ghost gets my vote for director of the year.
Oriundi (1999)
Anthony Quinn is great in this soulful and moving film.
Anthony Quinn is great in this soulful and moving film. He's inexplicably riveting as a 93-year-old patriarch who doesn't do anything and may or may not have any idea what's going on around him in his family. It seems to me that there were some other characters in the story too.