BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO Review

Courtesy of IFC Midnight 

BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO

2013, 92 minutes

Not Rated

Review by Joshua Handler

Peter Strickland’s Berberian Sound Studio is a bizarre, aurally inventive, yet slightly underwhelming thriller about a British sound designer, Gildero (Toby Jones) who is hired by an Italian production company to create the sound design/effects for their latest giallo horror film.  However, the job slowly begins to drive Gilderoy insane.

This is a fascinating film because none of the film that Gilderoy is working on is shown.  Only the sound effects for the film are shown while being created and scenes are described.  These give more than enough information as to what is happening in the film and is a clever substitute for gore and violence.  Scenes like this and the general eerie sound design contribute to the mood of this atmospheric film.

Toby Jones is superb as Gilderoy.  Gildroy is a quiet, introverted man and Jones masterfully captures this.  Jones is one of the most underrated actors working today and it is great to see him in a leading role as perfectly fitted to him as this.  His performance is the strongest part of the film and is one of the reasons it stands out over other new thrillers.  New thrillers generally don’t rely on strong acting, but this one would have failed without it.  It would have turned into an exercise in overdramatic arthouse excess.

As well crafted as this film is, it is held back from greatness because of a lack of momentum.  The film has such an interesting premise but does not build up to as much as I would have hoped.  It is nearly devoid of any real chills and does not get as weird as it could.  The final 20 minutes plunge straight into Lynchian territory, but it is s straight plunge, not a slow build.  The surrealism is largely unearned and borders on incoherence. 

That being said, this is a film worth seeing for the pure originality of its craft and Toby Jones’ masterful performance.  It is rare to see a horror/thriller that attempts to be this original and clever.  Because I felt as if I did not fully grasp every layer of this multilayered piece, I will happily revisit it in the future.  In this day and age where horror films rely on massive amounts of torture and gore, it is refreshing to see one that is gore-less and lacking any violence.  While Berberian Sound Studio will not be for everyone, those that love something different and/or 1970s giallo horror films should seek this film out.  It is now available on VOD.

3/4

SALMA Review - Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2013

Salma in Salma
Courtesy of Women Make Movies

SALMA

2013, 90 minutes

Not Rated

Review by Joshua Handler

Salma is the new documentary from director Kim Longinotto about an Indian woman who becomes a famous poet while being locked in a house for 25 years after she hit puberty.  Salma, the film’s subject, is one of the most extraordinary women whose story is unfortunately not given the best film treatment.  While her story is indeed told and there is plenty to like about this documentary, it is not extraordinary like the woman it portrays.

Salma’s story is tragic and Longinotto does not sugarcoat anything.  What she does is simply lay down the facts and show Salma speaking about her past.  The much of the information presented is really disturbing and fascinating.  This documentary is a call for women’s rights in India at a time when they are being violated.  Longinotto does very little, though, beyond laying down the facts.  It does nothing unexpected with its presentation and is told so plainly that it is hard to stay completely engaged with this film.  The best documentaries, like Morgan Neville’s new Twenty Feet From Stardom or Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell, have large amounts of personality and power.  While Salma is certainly loaded with interesting interviews that made me think and made me infuriated with some attitudes shown, it lacks the personality and power of the aforementioned documentaries.  Longinotto does not put herself in her film and does not get enough of Salma’s personality in the film to make it anything more than a simple journalistic piece.  A story like Salma’s needs something more than what Longinotto can give it. 

That being said, the subject matter is very powerful and Salma is an interesting enough person to have kept me interested in the film.  The film does a good job at showing injustices done to women in India and was just enough to make me slightly more passionate about this topic than I was before. 

Overall, I wouldn’t recommend spending a large sum of money to buy a ticket to see Salma in theaters, but would certainly recommend renting this film because of the importance and timeliness of its subject.  It is a solid little film, but is nowhere near as strong as some of the documentaries that I have seen recently. 

Salma will be showing tomorrow at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center at 6:30 pm as part of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival.  

THE BLING RING Review

Courtesy of A24 Films

THE BLING RING

2013, 90 minutes

Rated R for teen drug and alcohol use, and for language including some brief sexual references

Review by Joshua Handler

Sofia Coppola’s new film The Bling Ring is a fascinating piece of filmmaking that is distinctly “a Sofia Coppola film”.  Everything from the celebrity obsession theme to the fantastic pop song soundtrack let you know that you’re watching one of her films.  The Bling Ring follows a group of teenagers from Calabasas who go around Southern California robbing celebrities’ homes.  It is completely true and happened only four years ago.

With The Bling Ring, Coppola decides to step back from the action and not take a strong stance on the teens.  She doesn’t seem to condemn them or condone their actions.  What she does do is present them in an entirely unlikable and satirical fashion, indicating that she is poking fun at them.  The unlikability of the characters is what made this movie for me, but will be what turns many off of it.  I love unlikable characters.  Time and again, I have professed my love for Noah Baumbach’s films, notorious for containing characters that are so disturbed or mean that they don’t change by their respective film’s ends.  These fatally flawed humans are fascinating to me and my dislike toward them makes the movie more interesting.  What caused these people to be the way they are?  And, on a different note, why do we always have to like characters in movies?  It is far more realistic.  People in the world are not all likable and it is refreshing to see a movie that recognizes this.  These people are usually more complex and thus, more compelling to watch.  The characters in The Bling Ring are a bunch of teens that drink, abuse drugs, steal, and don’t have any second thoughts about it.  This is literally what they do the entire movie.  Coppola uses them to show how celebrity-obsessed, bored, and spoiled American teenagers are.  These characters are not three-dimensional.  They may be incapable of being three-dimensional because of their shallowness.  Coppola made me loathe them by the end of her film, making me very happy.

The characters would not be as unlikable as they are without the superb work of the enormously talented young cast of actors including Katie Chang, Emma Watson, Israel Broussard, Claire Julien, and Taissa Farmiga.  Each one of these actors captures their character’s corrupted personalities perfectly.  Katie Chang and Emma Watson were especially unlikable, and thus, effective.  They never demand any sympathy and are completely committed to making the audience despise them.  They exude the nastiness and selfishness.

While many may accuse Coppola of taking too straightforward an approach to the film, it is this straightforward approach that allows us to think about what is happening on screen.  Had she put a massive slant on the film or taken a strong stance on the story, the lasting, bitter taste that this movie leaves would have been lessened and we would have known exactly how to think and what to make of the events that took place on screen.  The straightforward storytelling allows us to take everything at face value and look the corruption of these teens straight in the face.  Coppola’s passion for this film is obvious, as she seems to be having fun directing her energetic actors, poking fun at the real burglers, and creating visually unique scenes. 

The Bling Ring is a perfectly insane story that could have been sensationalized for entertainment value, but Coppola is above that.  This is a minimalist, not sensationalist film.  The colors are washed-out and faded like her bored characters and there is no flashy editing, even in night club scenes.  The cinematography is stunning, but not showy, and the pop soundtrack only adds to the artificiality of the world shown here.  In this world, no one is honest and everyone is bored.  While the pop music is energetic, the simplicity of the images undercuts the energy provided by the music, creating an emotionally flat atmosphere that complements the characters perfectly and helps the audience get into their mindset.  The Bling Ring falls somewhere between journalistic account and stylized too-crazy-to-be-true story.

While nearly everything about The Bling Ring is excellent, the screenplay, while interesting and providing some really clever dialogue and situations for the characters, has some moments where the voice-over explicitly states the point that Coppola is trying to make, insulting the audience’s intelligence and lessening the impact of the story.  She is a good enough visual filmmaker to be able to show her point without telling it.  These moments are overkill, but are nowhere near enough to derail the movie.

Overall, The Bling Ring is a really solid piece of filmmaking from an incredibly talented director whose unique vision and sensibilities turn her movies into love-it-or-hate-it affairs that either way are good conversation-starters.  This is going to be a film that many will love and an equal number will hate.  I really liked The Bling Ring.  While not an incredible film like Coppola’s 2003 Oscar-winner Lost in Translation, it is certainly one worth seeking out if only to talk about it afterward.

3.5/4

THIS IS THE END Review

Courtesy of Columbia Pictures

THIS IS THE END

2013, 107 minutes

Rated R for crude and sexual content throughout, brief graphic nudity, pervasive language, drug use and some violence

Review by Joshua Handler

This is the End may be the most surprisingly good movie of 2013.  This is the End is insane, completely surreal, and honestly funny.  This is raunch done right.  Having seen so much garbage recently that thought it could fly by by saying a certain four-letter word and throwing in a sex term here and there, it is refreshing to see a comedy that knows how to use it right.  R-rated comedies nowadays try to be racy and raunchy, but hold back too much.  They never really let go, and this one does.  While this movie is nonstop raunch, though, it is delivered so well and is so unrestrained that it is hard not to laugh.

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg wrote and directed this comedy and it follows what happens when a group of comedians (playing alter-egos and using their real names) go to James Franco's house for a housewarming party and the apocalypse hits.  

This is the End reminded me a lot of Drew Goddard's brilliant 2012 horror-comedy The Cabin in the Woods because like Cabin, This is the End goes so far over the top gets so bizarre in the last 20 minutes that it is hard not to have fun.  That being said, there are many that are going to find these last 20 minutes that I loved completely off-putting.  Others will be turned off by its crude content, as this movie really earns its R rating.  Few have gone as far as this.  

All of the actors are completely game for anything and everything.  They perform scenes that would make most actors run, and it is this willingness to do anything and the energy with which they perform that make the movie as funny as it is.  Everyone looks as if they're having the time of their life.  The easy chemistry between the actors benefits the film greatly.  The abundance of unexpected cameos is also really amusing.

While not every joke works (many of them fall flat), there are quite a few that really work and so much energy is contained in the film that it is easy to overlook any bad jokes.  This is lowbrow comedy to be sure, but lowbrow comedy done right.

The visual effects for This is the End are surprisingly great.  They are not cheesy, as they could have been, and it actually looks like people put time into making them look fantastic.  There is a really interesting world of post-apocalyptic LA built by Rogen and Goldberg, and the visual effects help complete this world.

Finally, the reasoning for the apocalypse is extremely unexpected.  I obviously will not tell you what it is, but it is something substantially funnier and smarter than one might expect from a comedy like this.

Overall, This is the End is the funniest movie of the year thus far and is sure to be a massive hit.  It manages to mix lowbrow humor with smart filmmaking to make something completely unique

.  Seth Rogen continues to surprise with each project, proving that he has what it takes to not only act in a comedy, but to write and direct one.  Hats off to Rogen and Goldberg for making this movie something special.

3.5/4

THE FIRST MAN Review - Open Roads: New Italian CInema 2013

01 Distribution

THE FIRST MAN

2013, 103 minutes

Not Rated

Review by Joshua Handler

The First Man, adapted from Albert Camus' unfinished novel, is a film that has some sections of incredible power, but is ultimately less than the sum of its parts.  It follows the story of a man who wants to find out more about his long-dead father in 1950s Algeria.  This is only a part of the story, as it wanders off in all directions.

This film evokes its period and place beautifully.  I felt the sun, the sand, the dry heat, and the dust.  The cinematography is absolutely gorgeous, as is the score, which is the most powerful I've heard in ages.  Each shot is immaculately framed and is reminiscent of that of Fellini's Amarcord.  In many ways the two films are similar, as both take place in a small town during a period of revolution.  While the visuals in The First Man are certainly stunning, they frequently take the place of the story, and this is where the film runs into trouble.  The plot is so slim for The First Man that it is very hard to care about anything.  In addition, the film ends right where it could have gotten interesting.

In 1950s Algeria, there was serious tension, and the revolution was about to begin (for a great film about the revolution, watch Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers).  Very little of this tension is felt in this film.  There is too little focus on what is supposedly the main plot and too little focuse on the political climate of the period making for an empty and bland piece of filmmaking.

However, the acting is all superb, and some scenes are truly extraordinary.  In one moving scene, a father waits outside a hut for his child to be born, his anxiety and underlying giddy excitement apparent. Upon entering the hut, he sees his son for the first time.  His eyes light up and a new spark of youth shines in him.  There are unforgettable scenes like this scattered throughout the film, but ultimately it fails due to a lack of cohesiveness and content.

Overall, The First Man is a noble failure.  It is not a bad film by any stretch and just misses greatness.  However, its flaws are too large.  Had it contained more of a cohesive story and more scenes of immense power, it might have been a masterpiece.  But alas, it didn't and isn't.

2/4

TWENTY FEET FROM STARDOM Review

TWENTY FEET FROM STARDOM

2013, 89 minutes

Rated PG-13 for some strong language and sexual material

Review by Joshua Handler

Darlene Love performing "Lean on Me" at the Open Road Rooftop
Photo credit: Joshua Handler

Morgan Neville's Twenty Feet From Stardom is pure bliss.  It is a documentary that will have you laughing and tapping your toes while giving you goosebumps from its pure power.  The film is about African-American background singers who are the unsung voices on the most famous songs of all time.  These women share stories about their successes and their regrets in a film that will make you believe in movie magic once again.

You don't have to have a large interest in music to enjoy this film.  It does not require a large musical background to understand what is going on (if you know who The Rolling Stones are, you're fine).  This is a film that shows how humans can be brought together by the ability to sing, and the women featured in the film frequently discuss their love of being in a group of singers harmonizing with one another.  This infectious group energy transfers to the audience when a particularly lively song plays (many in the audience were tapping their feet) or a powerful note is belted out.  When we hear a powerful note like Merry Clayton, a background singer and one of the film's subjects, belting out "Rape!  Murder!" for The Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter", we are naturally electrified.  In the film, those words are soloed out, and on their own, they hold a rare power.

The interviews are among the best I've seen, as they really show the emotional range of the interviewees.  The women interviewed are lively and extremely entertaining to watch, yet are very open and not afraid to speak about what held them back from stardom and the regrets that they have had to deal with in the past.  For every bright moment in an interview or music clip, there is a tragic undertone.  It is sad to see so many incredibly talented women behind the famous lead singers of bands waiting to be recognizedTwenty Feet From Stardom highlights this.
.  It is so evident that they have the voice, but for whatever reason, they were held back.  This film shows how many of the women have never made it "big" because of fate.  Fate plays so much of a part into whether people "make it" in the music industry, and

Director Morgan Neville made the smart decision to let silence speak.  In one memorable sequence, a song is playing over images of Mick Jagger and Merry Clayton.  They don't say anything, but their facial expressions tell all.  By hearing this music, so many great memories are brought back to these two legends and their smiles say more than words ever could.

Finally, the pure sense of joy of watching Twenty Feet From Stardom is a rarity.  Hardly ever do films have me smiling or tapping my feet from beginning to end, but Twenty Feet From Stardom managed that.  It is an exhilarating experience to watch.

Overall, Twenty Feet From Stardom is a documentary that should be seen by all and should not be missed.  People old and young will love it, as the old will remember the music referenced and the young will learn about the great classics.  This movie, above all, is uplifting and the perfect antidote to a bad day.  Few movies released each year pack as large a punch and as much joy as Twenty Feet From Stardom.

This film was shown as part of the Rooftop Film Series, which features early screenings of hot new independent films straight from the early year festival circuit.  This screening was held on the Open Road Rooftop at the New Design High School.  Tickets for the upcoming films can be purchased here.  It was a truly unique event that makes for a great, and cheap at $13, night out in NYC.  There was an after-party with free drinks served that I did not attend.

4/4

PIAZZA FONTANA: THE ITALIAN CONSPIRACY Review - Open Roads: New Italian Cinema 2013

PIAZZA FONTANA: THE ITALIAN CONSPIRACY 

2013, 129 minutes

Not Rated

Review by Joshua Handler

Photo courtesy of Cattleya

An interpretation of a horrifying bombing in 1969 Italy, Piazza Fontana: The Italian Conspiracy is an unevenly paced, yet still interesting film about a piece of history not widely known in the United States.    I am not going into more plot detail than that, as it is far too complicated.  And that is part of the problem.  The way the film is edited contributed to how hard Piazza Fontana was to follow.  At the beginning, the background information stays onscreen for far too little time before launching into a beginning that throws out so many characters that is hard to keep track of all of them.  Then, the film slows, quickens, and goes on like that for the rest of the movie.  Because the beginning throws out so much information, the foundation isn't set for the rest of the film, making it frustrating to watch and follow.  The beginning also did not hook me like I would have wanted it to, making my desire to make the effort to really remember everyone wain.  

In addition, there is very little character development.  So many characters appear throughout the film that it would be impossible to flesh out every one.  However, the lead few should have been developed, as there is a lot of room for complexity and moral conflict.  This is a movie that should have been driven by character.  The main character shows hints of complexity and could have been psychologically interesting, but instead, the filmmakers decided to focus on too many characters, weakening the other characters in the process, and thus weakening my emotional connection to the film.

That being said, there is much to like about the film.  I had no complaints acting-wise, as all turned in solid performances.  The story is, while convoluted, very interesting, as it is a historical event that I knew nothing about.  Learning about little-known (at least in America) historical events fascinatesPiazza Fontana are really compelling.  Had the entire movie played the way these sections did, it would have been excellent.  

me and I relish the opportunity to learn.

Overall, Piazza Fontana was a good, yet far from great drama about a really fascinating period in history.  To reiterate, it was an interpretation of the event, but it was very interesting.  I would love to learn more about this period in Italian history and would like to see a better movie about the Piazza Fontana bombing.

3/4

DORMANT BEAUTY Review - Open Roads: New Italian Cinema 2013

Marco Bellocchio (left) at the Walter Reade Theater
Photo credit: Joshua Handler

DORMANT BEAUTY

2013, 115 minutes

Not Rated

Review by Joshua Handler

This film was shown as part of the Open Roads: New Italian Cinema 2013 festival being held through the Film Society of Lincoln Center.  The festival will be held through June 12 and tickets can be purchased here.

Dormant Beauty is the new film from famed Italian director Marco Bellocchio (Vincere).  It takes place in 2009 when the right-to-die case of Eluana Englaro was being debated in Italy.  The film follows three stories revolving around people in comas, but squanders many opportunities.

The most glaring fault of the film is the extremely uneven pace.  At the beginning of the film, there is constant cutting between the story lines, making it hard to follow, but never boring.  It is very graceful, almost like a ballet.  Then, as the film nears the middle portion, it slows down, exploring the three stories.  However, no story is explored as deeply as I would have liked because there are two others to focus on.  Each story is interesting in its own right and they very well could have sustained three separate, better films.  In addition, for the last 2/3 of the movie, there are some sections that focus heavily on one story, then cut to a shorter portion of another story, then back to a long portion of another story, making the pacing uneven and weakening the other stories.

With this film, there are some interesting and certainly provocative questions asked, but the pace of the film is so languid and the passion so seemingly lacking that it is difficult to get into the film.  It is also distracting trying to follow so many characters in the stories making it hard to think about what is being presented onscreen.  This is such a shame because this film has so much potential and I would have loved to think more about it than I did.  The frequently

melodramatic music never helps either.  It cheapens the drama onscreen and attempts to give it the spark that it lacks.

On the good side, the cinematography by Daniele Ciprì is magnificent and so are the performances.  Each and every performance is really strong.  The famed French actress Isabelle Huppert (The Piano Teacher, Amour) appears in the film and is powerful as always.  She is underutilized in her segment which is too bad because she is one of the most expressive and talented actresses working today.  

Overall, Dormant Beauty is a missed opportunity.  It has a great base, a talented cast and director, but never reaches its full potential.  I would have loved everything to be more fleshed out and to be a little more evenly paced.  The slow segments are way too slow, and the fast segments are way too fast.  There is no happy median.

2/4  

THE DIRTIES Review

THE DIRTIES

2013, 80 minutes

Not Rated

Review by Joshua Handler

PARTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2013 Slamdance Film Festival, The Dirties is the smartest, most original American debut film since last year's masterpiece Beasts of the Southern Wild.  It tells the story of two high school students who decide to make a movie about getting revenge on the school bullies by killing them.  However, one of them begins to take the idea too far.  This film was shown as part of the Rooftop Film Series last week and according to the crew who attended a post-screening Q&A, the film only cost $9000 to make and and extra $40000 went to buying music and other rights.  This is a movie that values story and ideas over anything else.  

This is a film that is so smart because it was shot using what looks like a camcorder and while technically a "found footage" film, it doesn't emphasize it.  It really needed this homemade feel to make it feel more realistic.  This movie does not feel like a traditional movie.  It just feels real.  Much of this is due to the fact that the filmmakers shot the film in real high schools and sometimes during real classes.  They (with the school's permission) went into high schools to film and pretended to be students to achieve an extreme sense of realism.

The Dirties is a fascinating comment on modern day bullying and what compels kids to commit heinous crimes.  The finale of The Dirties is a school shooting.  One of the characters actually goes around trying to kill the bullies that tormented him.  This is an unnerving and disturbing scene that is not graphic, but the implied violence is far worse than seeing everything.  While the killer is committing a horrible crime, he is oddly sympathetic.  The bullying that he endures throughout the film is relentless and brutal and he is such a relatable character that one cannot help but feel bad for him.  And this is where the movie gets scary.  The certain character who becomes a killer is a seemingly ordinary student.  This film shows that without help, any bullied kid, if pushed too far, can conduct a school shooting.  The Dirties gets into the psychology of a school shooter better than any other film that I have seen (even Elephant and We Need to Talk About Kevin which are both amazing films in their own right), and for this reason, it needs to be shown at high schools around America.  This film does not demonize the killer.  It humanizes him; a truly brilliant idea.

The film also explores the line between fiction and reality, as the killer becomes so engrossed in making his movie that he loses touch of what is real and what is not.  Everything to him is an act, something that isn't real, but seems to be.  This lack of distinction between his movie and reality highlights a big problem in America today: many kids think that what happens in movies/games/TV shows applies to real life and the line is blurred.  The Dirties' exploration of that is daring and original.

The acting by Owen Williams and co-writer/director/co-editor/co-producer Matthew Johnson is unbelievably realistic and the story is tightly plotted.  There is never a wasted scene and at 80 minutes, this movie goes by really fast.  In addition, because the two main characters are film buffs, there are references to numerous films including Being John Malkovich, Pulp Fiction, The Royal Tenenbaums, Malcolm X, Irreversible, The Dark Knight and The Usual Suspects, making the movie very fun for film buffs.  

The Dirties, while deeply disturbing near the end, is a very funny film.  The humor is abundant, yet the filmmakers didn't set out to make a comedy.  They just tried to make each other laugh a lot in the film to show their characters' way of coping with their life's troubles, making the film very enjoyable until a sharp tonal shift 2/3 of the way through the film.  Another admirable quality of the film is that the filmmakers wanted to make a film in which the parents are portrayed as normal and not the cause of the teen's psychotic break.  There is a single scene near the end of the film where one of the characters goes to speak to his mom (it was a real conversation with the actor's real mother, though she was unaware that she was being filmed).  She is shown as sweet, loving, and normal, not the typical insane mother of a disturbed kid.

Overall, The Dirties is a groundbreaking film about bullying in America.  It is the most honest portrayal of it that I have seen (the real student extras' reaction to the staged bullying scenes were real because they were unaware that the bullying was staged) and it demands to be seen by the American public.  It will open in theaters in the fall.

4/4

WE STEAL SECRETS: THE STORY OF WIKILEAKS Review

Alex Gibney at Film Society of Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater
Photo credit: Joshua Handler

WE STEAL SECRETS: THE STORY OF WIKILEAKS

2013, 130 minutes

Rated R for some disturbing violent images, language and sexual material

Review by Joshua Handler

This is a review of both the film, We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks and the Q&A with director Alex Gibney which was held at Film Society of Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater.

Oscar-winner Alex Gibney's (Taxi to the Dark Side, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) new documentary, We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks is a compelling and provocative documentary that is lacking the passion and power that some recent documentaries have had (the Tribeca award-winner Let the Fire Burn is a prime example).  Nonetheless, this is a story that needs to be told and Gibney is a great filmmaker to make this film because he is not afraid to put his own view on WikiLeaks into the film.

The story starts with Bradley Manning, a gender confused, disillusioned young soldier who discovers that he has access to hundreds of thousands of classified government files and leaks them to Adrian Lamo, a hacker.  Eventually, after a long series of events, they find their way to WikiLeaks, a group that leaks secret government information by  allowing people to submit secret documents and information anonymously.  WikiLeaks is run by Australian hacker Julian Assange.

With this as the launching point, Gibney explores Manning, Lamo, and Assange and their involvement with the WikiLeaks scandal.  Gibney makes this movie interesting for the entire 130-minute running time.  Never once was I bored, yet somehow something felt missing.  All of the information was there, Gibney covers everything, conducts smart interviews, and pieces everything together beautifully.  Yet this movie left me thinking, but not passionate about the issues it addressed.  The best documentaries about scandals or modern-day issues leave me feeling passionate about a new cause, or in the very least, interested in researching more on the topic.  We Steal Secrets takes a far too straightforward approach to the material.  All of the information is interesting, but it doesn't have the energy that other documentaries have to get people passionate.

That being said, We Steal Secrets asks some thought-provoking questions such as: what are we, as US citizens, entitled to know?  What is the government entitled to keep from us and should they keep anything from us?  These questions are addressed in the film, but never answered, which is smart.  This lack of answers allows us to come to our own conclusions with the material.

Alex Gibney came to a post-screening Q&A and gave some fascinating insight into the process of making We Steal Secrets.  Originally he said that he wanted the film to be about Assange.  However, Assange refused to be interviewed.  Gibney said that he was happy about that because he could focus more on Lamo and Manning, two key figures in this story.  Gibney described Manning, Lamo, and Assange as "three anonymous characters exchanging information."  The three didn't know each other, yet built an information chain that proved to be powerful.  This remark is a comment on the Information Age that we live in today.  Today, everyone is online, taking the human touch out of communication, allowing people to write things/send things that they would never say/send to someone in person.  THis is exactly what Manning, Lamo, and Assange did.  Had the Internet never have existed, much would be different in the WikiLeaks scandal, but one thing is certain: Manning would likely have never leaked the documents that he did if he were to have had to do it in person.  In this age, people may never meet each other, but they can create something powerful, as shown by this film.

Gibney later talked about Assange and how he thinks of him as a case of "noble cause corruption".  As a preface, the film is sympathetic to WikiLeaks and also Assange, until Assange becomes corrupted by his overnight fame.  This "noble cause corruption" is what happens when someone feels as if they are on a holy mission and, as a result, do something bad.  When Assange becomes (in)famous, he becomes far less sympathetic.  The film, though stays more or less sympathetic to WikiLeaks throughout, though.

Finally, Gibney was asked about whether Assange reacted to We Steal Secrets.  Immediately, Gibney laughed and simply answered, "Yes."  Assange has never seen the film, but he renounced Gibney and the film.  Assange was so mad that he leaked an annotated transcript of the film.  Gibney mentioned that he conducts interviews by asking dumb questions, which allows interviewees to feel more relaxed and open up to him.  The question lingers: how open would Assange be if interviewed by Gibney?  We will likely never know.

Overall, We Steal Secrets is a very solid and entertaining documentary that misses greatness due to its inability to incite passion.  It is certainly worth going to see, though, as it gives a lot to think about and just tells a really relevant and terrifying story.

3/4