Article: Movies

One specific difference between how I grew up and my experience in this film is the whole African-American… Wait, that word is weird to me because I’m African-German. Let’s say Black, the whole Black religious experience, here, is very impressive to me, because when I first arrived I realized that people carry their faith with so much pride. I’d never experienced that. At home, people don’t talk about their faith, or openly acknowledge or praise God at award shows or sports competitions. People don’t talk like that at home. There, it’s almost shameful to do so, which is sad.

I think that’s misrepresenting the film. This film is not at all a chick
flick. It has chicks in it, but it’s a universal story about family, and
siblings, and relationships. And it’s about our complications and our
dysfunctions in those relationships. Everybody comes from some place and has a family, and that deep relationship definitely guides you through your life
and influences your behavior. So, I think everyone can relate to that.

In Roll Bounce, homosexuals are called “Fruity,� Black children are “Niggers,� dark-skinned people are “Skidmarks,� the gainfully-employed are “Uncle Toms,� and kinky hair is “bad,� because, as one character explains, “Chicks only go for the good hair, not your naps.� And Africa is equated with the primitive, with lines like, “Put some clothes on. This ain’t Africa.� Black Americans are portrayed as borderline retarded by dialogue suggesting that they don’t understand what words like “indefinitely� mean.

For some reason, neither woman minds that Graham forgets who they are about an hour after each steamy session, rather they appreciate the fresh passion he exhibits repeatedly as he experiences each encounter as if the first time. After sowing his wild oats for most of the movie, he finds out he has a wife (Paz Vega) and a young son, and the question becomes whether he will clean up his act or continue with his hedonistic, sex without consequences lifestyle. Impressionistic, with plenty of nudity and simulated oral sex, but otherwise it fails to make much of a social statement.

So, instead of having its heroine trapped inside of her house, this flick features action entirely unfolding inside of the equally-claustrophobic confines of a commercial jet airliner cruising at 37,000 feet. Still, despite an abundance of such superficial similarities, Flightplan simply fails to measure up to Panic Room in terms of offering a worthwhile cinematic experience.

This fall, the AMC Network is debuting Movies That Shook the World, a weekly series which explores the cultural contributions of some of the most influential flicks of all time. Narrated by actor Jeff Goldblum, each half-hour installment will be devoted entirely to one picture. Among the seminal cinema classics to be spotlighted are Fatal Attraction, The Birth of a Nation, American Graffiti, The China Syndrome, The Exorcist, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Graduate, The Last Temptation of Christ, and Do the Right Thing

Just Like Heaven revisits most of these same elements, only flipping the script in terms of certain characters’ genders. Here, Reese Witherspoon stars as Dr. Elizabeth Masterson, a workaholic M.D. who ends up in a coma after a head on car crash. Mark Ruffalo co-stars as David Abbott, the lonely stranger who rents her San Francisco penthouse after it is put on the market three months later when it looks like she won’t make it. This go-round, it is Elizabeth’s ghost which haunts an apartment, for she needs help to prevent Dr. Rushton (Ben Shenkman), the colleague who covets her position, from pulling the plug on her prematurely, after he unilaterally declares her brain-dead.

Finally, 40 years later, thanks to Home of the Brave, the record has been set straight. This heartbreaking documentary was directed by Paola di Florio who, with the assistance of some of Liuzzo’s still-traumatized children, took advantage of the Freedom of Information Act to unearth evidence which establishes U.S. Government complicity not only in the woman’s defamation but in her death, itself. Relying on a file thicker than the one kept on the entire Klan, the film provides incontrovertible proof that Liuzzo had been specifically targeted by the Bureau.