Peter Jackson's World War One visual/verbal 3D amazement, THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD opens in South Florida -- and nationwide

I've never seen anything quite like new film this over my entire 77-year movie-going life. (TrustMovies saw his first film, or so he was told, before the age of one year; by the time he was 2-1/2, he had run away from home in order to go to the "picture show.") What filmmaker Peter Jackson has accomplished in THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD -- he dedicates his film to his New Zealand grandfather who fought in WWI -- is so truly surprising and unexpected (even if, oddly enough, you have already reads lots about the film itself) that it will leave you amazed and shaken. This is hands down the closest thing to being in war itself that the movie experience has given me.

Most filmgoers best know Jackson (shown, left) via his Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies, though early fans will remember his bizarre and oh-so-tasteful Bad Taste, Meet the Feebles and Dead Alive (my favorite of his -- besides this film -- still remains Heavenly Creatures).

Nothing he has done, however, could prepare you for this new documentary, in which archival photos and film shot during "The Great War" have been not simply restored but colorized, wide-screened and given the three-dimension effect, rendering them literally something heretofore unseen.

If this sounds like some mere stunt, the effect of actually viewing it on screen proves something else entirely. (We saw it in 3D, but it is also being shown in standard format.) This, combined with the film's narration -- which is nothing more or less than the actual recorded-during-interviews voices of the men who served in the war talking about the experience itself -- join forces to make what we see and hear seem like utter and unalloyed reality.

Very wisely and cleverly, Jackson begins with old, black-and-white small-screen footage, which continues for quite some time, as he first shows (and has the soldiers tell) of how the war began for England, along with all the rah-rah recruiting (often of boys as young as fourteen or fifteen), the training of the troops, and then the shipping of them all off to the war itself.

When, at last, one of those black-and-white photos suddenly changes to color, the effect is so startling, amazing and memorable that, for me, it outdoes any and every "special effect" I've had to sit through in our dismal array of current superhero schlock. Further, Jackson coordinates the visuals with the soldiers' narration extremely well.

Only once during the entire movie did I find the visuals amiss, due mostly to the overly repetitive use of one particular photo, of soldiers supposedly waiting for the battle to begin. Otherwise, the well-chosen combos of visual and narrative keeps us locked in, producing an immediacy that works like a charm. A deadly charm.

As amazing as the documentary is, They Shall Not Grow Old is not an easy watch. In fact, it is often grueling. But what else might we expect from a film that place us so squarely in the middle of wartime?  While the overt carnage is less than we often get from our usual slasher movie, the sense of fear, of odd isolation, of impending doom is so strong that (the acute and specific sounds effects are an enormous help here) that I found myself holding my breath and literally jumping slightly in my seat at numerous times throughout.

Particularly engulfing and horrendous was the trench warfare (and trench living) to which the soldiers were subjected. Their utter lack of cleanliness -- and their inability to do anything about this -- along with their decaying teeth and non-healing wounds will stagger you. At 99 minutes, the movie does not seem overlong, but by its end, as the war itself ceases, you will be more than ready to cry "enough!"

This is a fine and fitting way to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of the end of World War I. Though the press audience with whom I watched the screening were made up mostly of the elderly or near so, I would hope that a few intrepid young people will take a chance on this one-of-a-kind movie.

Though it seems that most of our youthful population can barely understand or be aware of our current and seemingly endless middle eastern war(s), let alone differentiate between our War for Independence, WWI, WWII, or our unnecessary and destructive wars in Korea and Vietnam, one can only hope that some few of these will want to learn something new, while having the kind of movie experience they will not have encountered anywhere else.

From Warner Brothers Pictures, They Shall Not Grow Old, after opening in special screenings last December, will now hit theaters nationwide this Friday, February 1. Click here to find those nearest you.

Berger/Daniels/Michelson's CHARLIE VICTOR ROMEO: Inside the cockpit, pre-crash -- in 3D!

I should think that pilots, co-pilots, navigators, flight attendants and others connected to the airline industry will rush out to see CHARLIE VICTOR ROMEO (or maybe not, given the mostly unhappy endings to these six drama-tized black-box-transcripts that show-and-tell us of what transpired just before the landing/crash. For the rest of us, the movie is one very odd experiment. Filmed in the kind of 3D that makes Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder look like a Michael Bay special-effects extravaganza, this film has perhaps the least reason for being shot in three dimensions than anything seen so far. It's a confined-space movie, for god's sake, in which we're trapped, over and over throughout six different scenarios, in a tiny cockpit, where traffic is restricted so nobody much moves, and the set, such as it is, changes little.

The sense of "space" the movie provides us is very nearly the sense of "no space." Gravity, this ain't. (Although, once Ms Bullock is inside a space capsule, the two films begin, unfortunately, to resemble each other.) Further, the film is taken from a theater piece first staged here in NYC nearly fifteen years ago that has since traveled the country. The film's theatrical roots are never out of sight, right down to the casting -- for budget reasons, no doubt -- of the same six actors to play the 15 to 20 different roles required to fill the six episodes. You'll figure this out soon enough, and of course go with it, but the doubling and tripling of the cast members means that the film never begins to lose its on-the-cheap, off-off-Broadway quality.

As directed by the threesome of Robert Berger (above, left), Patrick Daniels (center) and Karlyn Michelson (at right), the acting, too, seemed to me to be a little off. You may notice, as did I, that no one, until I think the actual crash seems about to occur -- neither pilot, co-pilot nor anyone else -- ever bothers to look ahead directly out the window in front of him/her. Perhaps every incident taking place here happened at night, in pitch dark? As good as are these actors -- particularly Debbie Troche (who is not shown in any of the stills here) as a co-pilot with amazing ability and control -- we seldom get the sense that we're outside the theater in something approaching real life.

Along the way there are some suspenseful, grueling moments and even a little unintentional humor (watching, in a dire emergency, the co-pilot grab, open and begin to look through what appears to be a How to Fly This Plane manual, will not leave audiences feeling very assured about their next flight). And as everything here is taken verbatim from transcripts (except in a few cases when the black box-obtained dialog is condensed or changed for clarity's sake), we must conclude that this is "the way it was."

The press material for the film tells us that the movie "puts you in the cockpit." It does not. Rather, it puts us in the theater audience, first row center, as we watch these goings-on, which move from relatively "normal" to more intense to... a blackout, as each crash occurs. This is followed by an explanation of what happened and why (shown via title cards), the causes ranging from bird strikes to lousy -- no, make that deadly -- plane maintenance.  (The film's title, by the way, is evidently an acronym for "cockpit voice recorder.")

At 80 minutes, the movie still feels like a long haul. But it is something different -- that's for sure -- and something different is one of the hallmarks of NYC's Film Forum, where Charlie Victor Romeo (we might as well call this a documentary of sorts: maybe an "acted documentary") gets its U.S. theatrical premiere for a two-week run beginning this Wednesday, January 29. It will then play at the Downtown Independent theater in Los Angeles from January 31 through February 6.

Note: Meet the directors in person at Film Forum, 

as Robert Berger, Patrick Daniels & Karlyn Michelson 

 appear on Wednesday, January 29, at the 8pm show, and 

Berger & Michelson only appear on Friday, January 31 & 

 Saturday, February 1, also at the 8pm screenings.

NYFF50 offers a fine opener in Ang Lee's and David Magee's adaptation, LIFE OF PI

What an unusual film -- lovely, rich and nipping at the heel of profundity -- has been chosen to open the New York Film Festival at its half-century mark. LIFE OF PI, written by David Magee and directed by Ang Lee, from the internationally award-winning novel by Yann Martel, proves a genuine "family film": intelligent, thought-provoking, mysterious, emotionally resonant, and likely to leave both and adults and older children fulfilled on certain levels, even as they question and attempt to understand and appreciate it more fully on others. The movie's reach exceeds its grasp to perhaps just the extent necessary to make it miss greatness but achieve wonder. This is, as they say, no small potatoes.

Mr. Lee is working once again in a genre different from anything he's formerly tried -- a fantasy adventure pillared upon precepts both religious and rational -- and he is surprisingly successful at this, just as he has been at very nearly every genre he has attempted (though there is that Hulk problem). TrustMovies has not read the original Pi novel, but he suspects that Lee hews pretty closely to it in terms of both the letter and the spirit because this director has done so in all his other adaptations, as far as I can recall. He's a humanist intent on making us better understand and accept our humanity, and his films, one after another, achieve this in different ways, depending on the particular genre. If the film's characters don't always manage the necessary understanding and acceptance, we viewers thankfully can.

In telling this story of a young Indian lad and his family from Pondicherry, the zoo they manage, and what happens when they and their menagerie set sail for North America, Lee and Magee (and Martel) dissect storytelling itself as their tale unfolds in present time and past, with a narrator who is both his younger self and the wiser, more mature man he becomes. Along the way, we're treated to some spectacular visuals that somehow stay grounded in reality, even as they soar into fantasy. (The night scene above, complete with jellyfish, recalls Bright Future times 10,000.)

I am guessing that Lee was influenced somewhat by Michael Powell's The Thief of Bagdad. His leading man, at least -- played quite nicely by newcomer Suraj Sharma (above and on poster, top) -- though taller and longer-limbed, will put some of us in mind of Sabu.

The film has been shot in as glorious an example of 3D as we've yet seen, outdoing I think, even Hugo and Pina. (The photography, not in the least "too dark," as are so many of this latest batch of 3D, is by Chilean cinematographer Claudio Miranda.) The use of this process for depth in the ocean and the vast seascapes seems near-miraculous, while the occasional in-your-face effects -- a school of flying fish and, of course, that tiger -- are exciting and fun. And the relationship of the animal kingdom vis a vis humanity is brought home with wonderful courage and understanding. If only Grizzly Man had had our hero's father to educate him! And how understandable and moving is the scene in which the young man must kill for the first time.

I'll have more to say when Life of Pi, from 20th Century Fox and which played but twice last night at the NYFF, opens for its theatrical run on November 21.

Wim Wenders' PINA proves (1) a must for dance lovers and (2) that 3D is here to stay

If you love dance -- particularly modern dance, and even more so the work of the dancer/
choreographer Pina Bausch -- I don't see how you can miss Wim Wenders' new film PINA. If you know her work, I suspect you won't mind seeing it fragmented (in the way that Wenders necessarily must in order to make a film like this) because you'll get the bonus of experiencing her troupe, their thoughts and the extreme love they clearly feel for their late leader. If, like me, you are not that familiar with Bausch's oeuvre (that's she in red, below) and have only seen it in snippets (in films such as Talk to Her), this movie will be an eye/mind/heart-opening experience.

As a very young man TrustMovies came to New York City to go to drama school. There, part of the curriculum was dance training under the tutelage of the Martha Graham dancers (Ms Graham herself made an appearance or two at the school during those years). While TM was not much of a dancer, he did love seeing those people do their thing. And that training -- those moves! -- has evidently stuck with him, for seeing Pina and its many excellent dancers brought his long buried love of modern dance to the fore once again.

What Herr Wenders, pictured at right, has accomplished with this film is at least twofold. In addtiion to allowing us to see, in parts, the work of this marvelous choreographer and her troupe, the director has given us a 3D movie in which the depth is so integral to the whole that after viewing this film, you really can't imagine not having that extra depth as part of your experience. (Do try to see this one in the 3D, rather than in the 2D format.) Space -- whether occupied or empty and by whom and how -- is a vital part of dance. The three dimension process allows you to experience space in a way that no other dance film before has managed. Very soon, as you watch this movie, any sense of trick effect falls away and you simply become part of the space itself, and more fully than you could, even at a live dance concert, because the camera, after all, can and does go places that the audience would never be allowed.

The Bausch troupe, too -- full of talent and beauty -- is something to behold. The various dances, the moves, the individual members of such varying age and type bring each dance to life in memorable ways.

The film is by turns emotional and primal (the opening dance, shown in the photo below the poster at top), aggressive, funny (below), thoughtful, surprising, and always beautiful, due to the movement, faces and bodies on display.

The use of the natural elements, particularly earth and water, are dynamic, too, and Wenders' decision to offer site-specific performances, wonderfully varied and on-target, makes the movie all the more visually interesting. (Some of his dissolves are wonders in their own right.)

What are these dances saying? Each viewer is likely to take away his/her own message, but certain of the scenes may make make you a tad uncomfortable.  One of these, in which a group of men literally paw at one fragile woman, is utterly squirm-inducing.

The beauty of the film lies in how it shows us what dance can finally be: giving us ourselves and the world in ways we've never seen. That's what all good art does, and Pina Bausch's dance would appear to be among the best of it.

Pina (from Sundance Selects, 103 minutes) -- which is Germany's submission for this year's Best Foreign Language Film (even though most of its "language" is dance, it is certainly one of the best films of the year) opens Friday, December 23, in New York City at the IFC Center, the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center and in Brooklyn at the BAM Rose Cinema. A nationwide, limited roll-out is planned, beginning in January.