You are here: Home / Archives for Reviews / Films

Atlas bombed: Right-wing think tanks betray ignorance on energy

By May 16, 2011
Atlas Shrugged movie still

I want to get this review out fast, because, by the time you read it, Atlas Shrugged: Part I, which came out in mid-April, may already have left the theaters. Critics have roundly panned the movie version of free-market goddess Ayn Rand's 1957 novel for weak acting by B-list actors and a script with dialogue so wooden it could only have been phoned in from the men's room at the Koch Industries corporate offices in Wichita, KS. And not one laugh in two whole hours. At a whopping 1368 pages, … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Films Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Peak oil angst and the lure of techno-utopia

By March 30, 2011
Zeitgeist: Moving Forward poster

In the sixties and seventies, Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes were a trendy symbol of a better society -- hipper, physically and culturally transparent and much, much more logical than the hodgepodge of architecture styles handed down to us by history. In America, where youth were aflame over Vietnam, the civil rights movement and the sexual revolution, the dome stood for a future where the rule of forward thinking would wipe out prejudice and make old-style politics obsolete. But then, … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Films Tagged With: , , ,

Even Obama’s beholden to them

By March 18, 2011
Post for "Inside Job" film

The more I learn how Wall Street influence over Washington has allowed the financial meltdown of 2008 to grow into a worldwide disaster, the harder it gets for me to continue to support President Obama. Though he campaigned as a champion of Main Street and promised financial market reform and re-regulation, Obama quickly showed that he was really about business as usual -- not merely by supporting George W. Bush's bank bailout and the TARP, but also bringing into his White House the same gang … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Economy, Films Tagged With: , , , , ,

Film review: How to boil a frog

By March 9, 2011
Dog Painitng

You know, when it comes right down to it, the impending collapse of the industrial economy, the rapid decrease of our energy supplies and the geopolitical tensions accompanying it, along with the escalating effects of global climate chaos are each, on their own, a drag. But put them together and it's downright depressing. So why not laugh about it? That's the response Vancouver filmmaker Jon Cooksey chose with his ambitious and insightfully practical film How to Boil a Frog. Not that he … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Films

Economy so old that it’s new

By March 4, 2011
The Economics of Happiness

Documentaries that cover peak oil or deal with resource depletion tend to be downers on the whole, offering few pleasures beyond the snarky joy of Schadenfreude. Even with a few cheery bits thrown in to make the apocalypse go down a little smoother, unless you really want to see your obnoxious brother-in-law the oncologist with his whole 6,000 square foot McMansion outside of Dallas go down in flames, a film like The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream or A … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Films, Reviews Tagged With: , , , , ,

“In this great time of crisis”

By February 11, 2011
Colin Firth.

More than an opportunity to drool over the stunning Colin Firth, the Academy Award winning film The King's Speech offers something else. I don't mean the obvious--the tale of a monarch struggling past a chronic stammer. But that story is amazing. For most of his life King George VI could barely speak competently to any group. Yet when push came to shove he was the one guy who had to break the news to the people of England via radio that they would enter World War II and face down the … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Films, Politics Tagged With: , , ,

Will natural gas money buy the Oscars?

By February 9, 2011
Hydrofracking graphic.

The oil and gas industry broke out the bigger-than-big guns this week in an attempt to discredit film maker Josh Fox's Oscar-nominated documentary Gasland. It's not simply the usual industry objections to the film, as we reported earlier, in our review of Gasland. Would that kind of industry money play so lackadaisical? Not if the past is any guide. Instead the industry, through front group Energy in Depth, has called on Hollywood to evaluate the film's qualifications for the Academy's … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Films Tagged With: , , , ,

Gas frackers attack fiery documentary

By February 4, 2011
GASLAND film poster

When Gasland was nominated for an Oscar for best documentary feature in January, the natural gas drillers were furious. "While it's unfortunate there isn't an Oscar category for propaganda, this nomination is fitting, as the Oscars are aimed at praising pure entertainment among Hollywood's elite," executive director Lee Fuller of industry group Energy In Depth said in a statement. "Without doubt, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nominated 'Gasland' for its work in the field … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Films Tagged With: , , , ,

An inconvenient actor: Pete Postlethwaite

By January 3, 2011
The Age of Stupid poster

Described by Stephen Spielberg as “probably the best actor in the world,” Academy Award nominee and British climate activist Pete Postlethwaite died of cancer yesterday at age 64. As the Financial Times put it: On the screen, in a prolific number of films, he was a character actor with star quality: a gaunt and grizzled face, a bony physique, a voice that carried the dour burr of his native Cheshire. Oscar-nominated in 1993 for In the Name of the Father, an Irish Troubles drama centering … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Climate, Films Tagged With: , , ,

Oh brother, not peak oil!

By December 29, 2010
Blind railroad man in O' Brother Where Art Thou?

Part one in a four-part series. In the 2000 Coen brothers' comedy adventure O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a bit of wisdom shared near the start of the movie applies to more aspects of life than we might like to admit. In particular, it has relevance for how we talk about the peak oil predicament in today's media landscape. Editor's Note: This is the first installment in a four-part series on the challenges of telling the peak oil story. The movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? will help tell the … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Arts, Films Tagged With: , , , ,