Trailer Hitch
By Eric Hughes
April 22, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Food, Inc. – Opens June 12th
Here's your feel-good movie of the summer: Food, Inc. It's about everything that's wrong with the American food industry, and what we can do as consumers to change it. Jokes aside, the docu appears to be a smart, Michael Moore-like "attack" film that enters the ring with a solid agenda and just runs with it. Prominent food advocates are interviewed here, including Fast Food Nation scribe Eric Schlosser.
I'm impressed with what this movie attempts to get into, including the ridiculous regulation that bans the media from photographing what's going on behind slaughterhouse doors. Being a health conscious, organic-preferred grocery customer myself, I guess it doesn't do a whole lot to sway my vote anyway. Regardless, Food, Inc. looks like one for documentary buffs to check out.
Grade: A
Also expected to be released on this date: The Taking of Pelham 123, Imagine That, Moon, Sex Positive
More Than a Game – Opens October 2nd
I like the idea of a LeBron James documentary. He's a phenomenon and deserves a movie that explores his total domination in basketball. What I don't like is that this particular one, More Than a Game, culminates with he and his friends' national high school championship game. That's the main drama.
Call me crazy, but landing a starting spot on a professional sports team is usually considered the bigger deal.
The movie looks like it relies on a ton of home video footage too, which can be good or bad depending on your preference. It's that Blair Witch Project aesthetic. Though this time it's unintentional because crazy, happy mothers are manning the camera.
Grade: C-
Also expected to be released on this date: Shutter Island, Toy Story (rerelease), A Serious Man
Facing Ali – Opens TBA 2009
When Muhammad Ali fought his last professional fight in 1981, I still hadn't been born yet. So I can't say any of the archive bout footage featured here in Facing Ali will be any different than the stuff I've already watched on an ESPN Classic special. Even so, Facing Ali appears to be an exhilarating look at one of the world's greatest fighters, as told through the eyes of the men he fought. Shamefully, I don't think Ali makes a modern-day appearance in his own flashback docu.
Though I never got to see one of his fights live, this project still finds ways to excite something within me. Perhaps it's because his biggest rivals have so many positive things to say about the heavyweight champion. They're humble to have fought him, to know him personally and to talk about their grappling experiences. That's sportsmanship at its best.
Grade: B-
Highwater – Opens TBA 2009
One would expect a film about surfers and the world's biggest waves to be thrilling. One would expect that. Highwater, however, isn't such a film.
Seemingly half of it is wasted to explain – through positive critics' quotes – how its creators are utterly amazing gods of cinema and how their work has contributed to society's greater good. The rest is footage of surfers scaling (and falling off of) big waves, overlaid with other surfers talking about what they like so much about the sport. The documentary's story isn't exactly clear here – other than that surfers have loved riding waves up to this point, and likely will for some time to come. Ho hum.
Grade: D
Oceans – Opens April 22, 2010
Not sure what Disney's nature kick is all about... but I like it. (The new trailer to Oceans, due out on Earth Day 2010, chalks it up to Walt Disney's belief that nature itself tells the best stories, and yada yada). To tell you the truth, I couldn't care less what he had to say in the trailer's first half. Show me some freakin' dolphins!
Luckily, the latter part of Oceans' preview features tons of underwater creatures doing those remarkably cute things right in front of the camera. With docu Earth reaching theaters today, and Oceans next year... what's next? Sky?
Grade: B