In The Loop

Films as satirically savage and unrelentingly funny as In The Loop come around on few and far between occasions. In The Loop continues the adventures of political spinmeister Malcolm Tucker first seen in a BBC series from 2005 called The Thick of It. I've never seen TToI but I intend to find and watch all nine episodes because if it's only half as funny as In The Loop it must be funnier than everything else out there now.
Peter Capaldi plays Tucker with venom and condescension hissing constantly from his mouth. His tour de force performance is matched by the large ensemble cast (of at least ten others), all brimming with secrets and barbed wit. The film marks the feature debut of Armando Iannucci (also one of five writers) who's instantly on my to-watch list. The script has so many plot nuances, so many zingers, and characters are so illuminatingly etched with the fewest lines that it begs to be seen multiple times.
Following the storyline requires some knowledge of English accents and politics. Places like 10 Downing Street are used as establishing shots with the same casualness as the same defining angle of say the White House or the United Nations. The action shifts from Northhamptonshire to Washington D.C. to New York City with the flick on an eye. The less I concentrate on the actual plot the better the film will be for viewers tantalized by the prospect of seeing a political spoof on par with the best films of that genre. Suffice it to say the main point deals with the behind the scenes struggle of political operatives to provide information that will lead to a vote of yeah for war at the UN.
Some of the actors you'll recognize includes David Rasche's Machiavellian Secretary of Defense and James Gandolfini's seemingly peaceful but politically bloodthirsty three-star Pentagon general. More savvy film fans will cheer British thesps like Gina McKee and Tom Hollander. Another character I was sure I knew but had to wait for the credit roll for her name was a departmental aide whose political paper on the pros and cons of war provide a lot of In The Loop's skullduggery. Hello it's Anna Chlumsky of My Girl all grown up and kicking up a dust in the corridors of power. Steve Coogan gets a brief moment to steal as a common man who just kind of wanders into the morass of political opportunism.
All throughout In The Loop the characters seek to undermine and outthink everyone else around them. In the end some have achieved their goal while others have had their comeuppance. The camerawork offers that immediate in-your-face style also seen for instance in the British version of The Office. The ease of conviction with which these sanctimonious wankers play with the reality of war means anything can happen. There's also a hilarious sling of the arrow to I Heart Huckabees that shows Iannucci's heart is in the right place.

Julie & Julia

Julie & Julia works as a relationship comedy more than as a food movie. If you're thinking this biopic of Julia Child (a hammy if not outright randy Meryl Streep) and an unrequited protege Julie Powell (Amy Adams in cute mode) is any kind of Big Night the closest you'll get is Stanley Tucci (playing Child's salty husband).
The two females never actually meet but their film time is intercut back and forth as we watch Child learn to be a cook at prestigious cooking schools in France (where hubby works as a diplomat) while modern day (2002) Julie works in Gotham handling 9/11 insurance claims by day and in her spare time blogging about cooking every single recipe is Childs pivotal cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The movie also uses Child's autobiography My Life in France and Powell's subsequent book Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, which also aptly describes the Adams stretches of the movie.
The key ingredients that makes this film work are contrasts of the women's lifestyles (apartment furnishings, circle of friends) and their partner's loving support rather than ridicule that suggests writer/director Nora Ephron is at least trying to play beyond the meet cute romcom plots that otherwise hold back similar films from fruition. Using "Psycho Killer" during the lobster sequence actually works. Also clever is the way Streep has been framed and shot to indicate Child's 6'2" height. Streep towers over Tucci in many scenes and when her sister (Jane Lynch) arrives for a visit she too is a tall tree surrounded by a small forest of less interesting people.

The Cove

Humans breathe unconsciously, for instance we breathe in our sleep. Dolphins are mammals that breathe on purpose. With every breath they take they make a conscious decision to inhale air.
The Cove is a provocative hard-hitting documentary about dolphin killing. The film provides momentum from footage that was obtained by stealth. An Ocean’s 11 style team, including a couple of paramilitary ringers and a Hollywood special effects company, are brought together to expose the illegal practices that exist in Taiji, Wakayama, Japan. Because of its remote geography and small population (a few thousand) certain city officials and local fisheries are able to get away with slaughtering dolphins by herding them into a narrow cove with boats, sonic noise and nets. The few dolphins that are captured are sold upwards of $150,000 to theme parks worldwide. While dolphin drive hunting goes on everywhere around the globe the practice is especially egregious in Taiji
Director Louis Psihoyos emphasizes the H. P. Lovecraft nature of the secluded area. Minus the supernatural element of course, the cove and its inhabitants exist apart from general humanity. Psihoyos and Richard O’Barry, a major player in the film, are recognizable by sight to the locals, and thus are hounded, stalked and arrested whenever they show their face. One bizarre character calling himself Private Space follows them with a camcorder, occasionally yelling at them (all in Japanese). But a few townspeople (among them city council members) are on their side, dishonored at the town’s participation in the cover-up.
O’Barry’s story will cement your choice of siding with the good guys. His story of how he became a cetacean activist will sink the listener who fondly remembers the 60s television show Flipper. O’Barry was the dolphin trainer and Cathy was one of five dolphins who played Flipper on the show. O’Barry relates how Cathy, after the show’s over, commits suicide in his arms. “She gave me a look that said she’d given up and just stopped breathing,” he gravely recalls to the camera. Since that time O’Barry gets arrested with frequency for freeing dolphins that are confined in tourist or research enclosures.
Flash forward to the present time and O’Barry’s in his senior years but more than athletic enough to head a covert team to Taiji recruited by himself and Psihoyos that includes seasoned swimmers, night vision photography, and digital cameras hidden in rocks designed by ILM as well as underwater sound equipment.
The effect is overwhelming in its snuff film intensity; the forceful death twitch of a tail, the screeching sounds of mayhem, and the aftermath shot of all the sea water in the cove so blood red it looks like a cranberry and tomato juice cocktail.
The story unfolds in a linear style. At the mid-point when the members of the team arrive and secretly rendezvous for their mission to hide the cameras in the middle of the night the action becomes oddly riveting. While not quite on the top shelf with last year’s caper genre docu Man on Wire, The Cove provides plenty of food for thought not the least of which is the high-in-mercury-level dolphin meat being sold around the world. Dolphins are hardly on an extinction list yet their physical state mirrors our own pollution of their watery atmosphere. Some areas I thought the documentary would go but that are not approached include John C. Lilly’s contribution to dolphin research. Lilly was the model for the George C. Scott role in Day of the Dolphin (1973) and O’Barry must surely have crossed his path at some point. Also the use of dolphins by the Navy or military sonic sound experiments killing sea mammals. Although these are all subjects worthy of their own documentaries. Stick around past the closing credit roll for an extended sequence that shows how The Cove team got one camera past a police blockade because it was hidden inside a giant floating whale balloon.