Blu-ray/DVDebut: Austin Stark's THE RUNNER showcases a low-key Nicolas Cage

BP's Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which has been the subject of a number of fine documen-taries (the best of which is here), now seems to be finding its way into narrative content, as well. HBO's The Newsroom used it in the opening segment and here it is again, as the would-be subject of THE RUNNER, written and directed by Austin Stark, shown below, who has produced a number of worthwhile movies but has now made the jump into writing and directing his first full-length film either a bit too soon or without nearly the talent to bring this kind of story to life.

Using the oil spill -- a dreadful event that continues to grow more so as time drags on and Gulf Coast fishing communities grow poorer -- as an excuse to build a movie around the political and romantic travails of its hero, Colin Pryce (played by perhaps the most ubiquitous leading-man currently on-screen, Nicolas Cage, below), seems somehow tacky and unimportant. And so throughout this generally lifeless film, they duke it out for our attention and concern: the poor, beleaguered people of the Gulf; the ever-present oil interests (personified by a suave and oily Bryan Batt); and a wad of tiresome, typical romantic and family problems. Unfortunately nobody wins, particularly the viewer.

"Romance" and "family" are handled by the likes of Connie Nielsen, Sarah Paulson and Peter Fonda, actors who are professional and alert but can do little with the by-the-numbers script they've been given. There is almost no depth of character here, just cliche's that pile up and block the narrative road. The lesson here is all about how politics works in America today, which should come as no surprise to anyone who has been around during these post-Millennium years, and whose response is likely to be, "Yes. And...?"

From its outset the movie seems heavily "set-up" to make its point, which it does: Nobody wins. Mr. Cage -- who starred in five films during 2011, three in 2013, four in 2014 and at least three so far this year, with four more planed for 2016 -- has got to be one of our hardest-working actors, even if many of his films end up as throwaways. He looks pretty terrible here (or maybe simply "real"), and his performance is unusually tamped-down and believable. But he, too, cannot surmount a script low on lifelike detail and coupled to only so-so direction.

The Runner (the title does triple duty for jogging, political campaigning, and, yes, running away from one's self) comes via Alchemy and lasts a thankfully short 90 minutes. It hits the streets this coming Tuesday, August 25, on Blu-ray (the transfer is quite good!) and DVD--for rental/purchase.

Netflix & Orlando von Einsiedel's VIRUNGA: the Congo and those endangered Mountain Gorillas

Laura Poitras' CitizenFour seems to be the front-runner for the best documentary Oscar, but if enough Academy members see VIRUNGA, the documentary about the attempt to save the Congo's endangered Mountain Gorilla population, I would not be surprised to see this unusual doc take away the prize. Not that the film about Edward Snowden is not hugely important and timely, particularly where whistleblowers and the power of an ever-encroaching govern-ment is concerned. But Virunga is just as timely in a worldwide/envi-ronmental manner, while also addressing concerns such as the ever-sleazy oil companies (this time it's SOCO), the plight of Africa, the shame of mercenaries and how to buy off the dirt-poor populace so that a crap corporation can do whatever it likes in a supposedly untouchable national park.

Written and directed by Orlando von Einsiedel (shown at right), the film makes up in tension and on-the-spot filming what it lacks in spit and polish. It introduces us to quite a cast of characters -- from the kindly and dedicated gorilla caretakers to a young French journalist, from that despicable oil company to the "rebels" called M23 who con-stantly threaten and sometimes kill the popu-lace, from the Belgian colonel in charge of the small contingent of soldiers that provide the only protection for Virunga, the titular park that houses the gorillas and other wildlife.

Because the film tries to cover so much in a relatively short time, it occasionally alternates between seeming all over the place and simply marking time. But stick with it, because von Einsiedel and his group finally do manage to pull you in and keep you on edge, angry and saddened by what good, caring people are forced to do and put up with in order to protect their part of the world and its environment. Between the marauding rebels, the wretched oil company the gorillas and their wonderful care-givers, and the pretty, enterprising young journalist who captures a couple of the oil employees on video admitting to their "wrongs," we get a pretty full picture. Though we never meet, see or hear the government people who evidently gave SOCO the right to despoil the national park, it seems clear that SOCO was negotiating with both the government and the rebels, so that it and its money will win out no matter who ends up running the Congo.

Virunga is a timely, honest piece of documentary filmmaking that doesn't appear to go in for staged re-creations. This gives it a good deal of genuine power, and the cumulative effect is like a kick in the stomach. You'll ache for those gorillas who can only hide and hope for the best at the intrusions of the murderous poachers -- who may, for all we know, be financed by SOCO: Get rid of the gorlllas and you effectively shut down the park. At movie's end the filmmaker gives SOCO its say, and it sounds, as usual with these despoiling corporations, like a crock of shit. At world's end, which may be coming up sooner than we think, it is the oil companies that will have the most to answer for.

Meanwhile, the movie, after a very limited theatrical release last year, is available for streaming now on Netflix and perhaps elsewhere, too.

Update on the BP Gulf Oil Spill in Margaret Brown's new doc, THE GREAT INVISIBLE

The publicity material for the new documentary, THE GREAT INVISIBLE, directed by Margaret Brown and detailing the results of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, tells us that this is "the first film that goes beyond the media coverage to examine the crisis in depth through the eyes of those who experienced it first-hand and were left to pick up the pieces while the world moved on." Sorry, but this is definitely not the first film to do this. It is simply the most recent to cover people who live & work in the gulf.

Back in 2012 Bryan D. Hopkins' Dirty Energy did exactly this and managed the job in even better fashion. The lesser but still worthwhile doc, The Bix Fix from Joshua and Rebecca Harrell Tickell, alerted us to what BP was not doing to clean up its mess, and what our own government was doing to camouflage what was going on. And Jennifer Baichwal and Margaret Atwood explored the post-BP mess as part of their interesting but not entirely successful doc, Payback, based on Atwood's book. So this subject has indeed been covered by intelligent and passionate movie-makers, of which Ms Brown, shown at right, is certainly another. Each filmmaker seems to have found his or her own special charac-ters to highlight. Here, they are Doug Brown (shown below, and no relation to the filmmaker, so far as I know) and Stephen Stone, two men who actually worked aboard the Deep Horizon oil rig and managed to survive the explosion and fire, along with some entitled, self-satisfied oil executives, whose conversation Brown (and we) sit in on and grow angrier by the word and minute.

Ms Brown also pays attention, as have the other filmmakers, to the kind of compensation BP has promised local residents and that does not in many cases appear to be forthcoming. We bounce back and forth from compensation meetings to interviews with Brown, Stone (shown below) and a few others, and listen in on those oil execs (shown at bottom).

Overall, there is enough information, obfuscation, and sadness here to rile us up and even occasionally empty our tear ducts. Brown does not go into much about how BP pretended to "clean up" its mess, nor about government intrusions on the media's ability to report what was happening, nor give us much info about what is happening to local sea life. The other documentaries do a much more thorough job of all this. What Brown does do -- and this is a first -- is to talk to some of the men who worked on the rig itself (including the family of one of the men who died) to get their stories -- which lay the guilt directly on BP, the rig operator TransOcean and the contractor Halliburton (yes, that last name does sound familiar...)..

What Brown has accomplished is certainly worth hearing and seeing. The gulf remains a disaster area for those unfortunate enough to work and live there; compensation is barely evident; nothing has been done by our government to insure stricter safety regulations; and many more oil rigs and drilling are now in evidence throughout the gulf. The movie will anger you all over again, as have the earlier documentaries. Oil still rules (just listen to those executives!) and its money buys all our politicians lucky enough to live in the states where oil is found. It's disgusting. But that's America -- and Capitalism -- today.

The Great Invisible, from Radius-TWC and running 92 minutes, opens this Wednesday, October 29, in New York City at the Village East Cinema and in the Los Angeles area at the Sundance Sunset Cinemas. 

Update on BP's gulf oil spill: Joshua & Rebecca Harrell Tickell's investigative doc, THE BIG FIX

A kind of companion piece to Dirty Energy (a little-seen documentary we covered earlier this year), THE BIG FIX indicts oil giant BP for not simply causing the accidental 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill inflicted on the Gulf of Mexico, but for its actions -- as well as those of our own governments, local and national -- ever since. The Big Fix is a worthwhile entry into this growing collection of investigation about BP, big oil and government collusion, though it is not nearly as well done, moving or important as Dirty Energy. See them both, because they complement each other, even to the point of using some of the same people to interview. But whatever you do, don't miss Dirty Energy.

Unfortunately The Big Fix, clearly for purposes of marketing (and perhaps for raising money to complete the movie), inflicts on us a couple "name" actors -- Peter Fonda (above) and Amy Smart -- who happen to care, genuinely I'm sure, about the environment. Fonda says a few words and appears in a couple of scenes and then has to go; Ms Smart does even less. Both are a waste of time here and any moviegoers they might bring in will only be disappointed in how little they see of the two.

The product of husband/wife team -- Joshua Tickell (shown at right) who a few years back gave us an interesting but flawed documentary called Fuel, and Rebecca Harrell Tickell (shown below), who, during the course of this film, seems to become a victim of the very thing to which the Tickells are calling our attention -- the movie starts a little shakily. But hang on. As it continues, the film expands (rather like that initial spill), allowing us to see that the problem here goes much deeper and wider than the spill itself, until it involves big oil, state government, and national government -- all exceedingly dirty. Mr. Tickell has dropped some of the cute and energetic cheerleader pose he used in Fuel. He's older now and has grown up some, it seems.

Together the pair explore a bit of Louisiana history (where Mr. Tickell was raised) and the state's connection to the oil industry; then we learn of BP and its own checkered (putting it mildly) history where safety and reliability are concerned.

We hear about the spill itself, the unhealthy dispersants used to break up that oil so that it will appear to have been cleaned up rather than accumulating beneath the water (as is apparently happening), the effect all this has on sea life and the people living on the shores of the gulf, not to mention the dying fishing industry that has been so devastated by the spill and its even-worse after-effects.

We hear again from marine biologist Riki Ott (above, right) and other scientists, along with fishing families like Kevin and Margaret Curole, though no one comes across as strongly here as he or she does in Dirty Energy -- which was anecdotal, it's true, but thoroughly engaged us both intellectually and emotionally, while presenting its information in a way that seemed genuine and truthful. We also see what the spill has done to sea life/seafood (below), how the FDA has fudged their inspections, and why it might be smart to either give up seafood entirely or make certain you know from where what you're eating originates.

What The Big Fix does have, however, is a wider net. In its second half, it connects the dots that have long seen the oil industry in bed with local and national politicians via campaign contributions, lobbying, and finally even lawmaking. Our current administration is every bit as guilty as have been those of the past. This all comes down once again to money in politics. Until we stop political "contributions" and the purchase of our politicians, we're simply stuck with the sleaze that this money continues to elect. And, yes, I mean you, President Obama.

But that's another day, and another movie -- or 20 of 'em. For now, you can stream The Big Fix via Netflix, but you can only save Dirty Energy to your queue. Let's hope that NF sees the light and either orders DVDs or purchases the streaming rights....

The Jean-Jacques Annaud and Menno Meyjes DAY OF THE FALCON proves flight-worthy

The original title -- Black Gold -- of the film under consideration here has been used at least eight times already, even as recently as 2011. So, given the cliché factor and the addition of over-use, the change to something else was a smart move, even if the resulting DAY OF THE FALCON doesn't exactly set one's heart to racing. "Black gold," of course, refers to oil, as is the case in a half-dozen of these films, though in one of them it means coffee, while another creatively combines oil with a horse.

First seen in 2011, the film made its VOD debut in the USA this past February and had a slight theatrical release the following month. Now, here it is on Netflix streaming and worth seeing for a number of reasons, beginning with its director, Jean-Jacques Annaud (shown at right), a man who has given us over the past 37 years not that many but mostly good movies, and who knows his way around intelligent, exotic (to those of us in the west) spectacles like the Oscar-winning Black and White in Color, Quest for Fire, The Name of the Rose and Enemy at the Gates, to name but four of his dozen films.

This new one -- set in Arabia at the beginning of the 20th Century and adapted by Annaud and his oft-time collaborator Alain Godard (from the novel Arab by Hans Ruesch) with a decent screenplay in English by Menno Meyjes -- tells the tale of two Arab tribal heads who, rather than fighting over a large plot of desert land, agree to keep it between them as a kind of unused no-man's-land, with the additional obligation that the Sultan (played by Mark Strong, above) will turn over his two sons to the Emir (Antonio Banderas, below) to be raised along with the Emir's own son and daughter.

How this is exactly "fair" (what does the Emir give in return?) escaped me, but if you can accept this beginning, the rest of the film unfurls pretty seamlessly, with -- once oil is discovered (below) in this no man's land -- plenty of spectacle, battles, thrills, suspense, surprises (my favorite is how one finds fresh drinking water in the ocean!), along with enough intelligence to make the themes and events shown from a century ago quite timely and thought-provoking for today's world.

First off, who is the villain and who the hero? Both "kings" are shown to be bright but hypocritical in a number of ways. In the movie's depiction of Islam and tradition, we see conventional wisdom and forward thinking both come a-cropper at various times.

The most important plot thread is the growth and change of the Sultan's younger son (another fine performance by A Prophet's Tahar Rahim, at left), who goes from a bookish, eye-glassed librarian to a powerful warrior chief in such a way that you thoroughly believe the entire process. Along the way, he must marry the Emir's daughter (the lovely Freida Pinto, below), whom he indeed loves, and find a way to live with and show decency and honor to those who have betray-ed him and his family. How and why this hap-pens makes for a more intelligent spectacle that you might expect.

We also get interesting views of Islam as a thing that both holds humanity back and offers it a code for living. "God hates what we do to each other in his name," a character notes along the way. And there's a particular death scene mid-movie that uses the religion's tenants in a manner that nearly brought tears to the eyes of this particular atheist.

Above all this, even, what I found most interesting in the movie is its use of oil as the agent for change, and how it affects all concerned. There's a lot of truth here, and most of it is unfortunate. Notes the Sultan, toward the close of events, "When the foreigners (yes, you can read America in this) finally leave, we will not recognize ourselves."

In the supporting cast are good turns from the talented Riz Ahmed and a gorgeous, charismatic actress named Liya Kebede. All in all, the movie proves that there is still a good deal of life, not to mention intelligence, left in some of those Arabian desert spectacles. Regarding that oil, you may leave the movie, wishing as I did, If only... 

A co-production of France, Italy, Qatar and Tunisia, Day of the Falcon is available now via Netflix streaming, on DVD, and elsewhere, as well.

Andrew Berends' Nigeria doc DELTA BOYS gets a Netflix, Hulu and SnagFilms debut

Is there any place in the world drilled by Big Oil that doesn't damage the surrounding environment, together with the human and animal life that dwell there? To documentaries such as Fuel, Crude and others that indict the oil companies for their efforts in various parts of the world, we can now add DELTA BOYS, an anti-ode to the oil drawn from Nigeria -- the lode of which constitutes a large portion of what we here in the USA consume. It would be one thing if the citi-zens of these countries from which oil is taken were living some sort of decent life. Instead they are poor, with little access to health, education, and welfare facilities, while the environment in which they must live grows ever more polluted. Oh, yes: and the oil companies, and the governments of these countries that collude with those oil companies, grow ever richer.

While making Delta Boys in Nigeria, filmmaker Andrew Berends was arrested, detained for ten days, and expelled from the country by the Nigerian government in a bid to suppress media coverage of the Niger Delta conflict. Up to this time, it would seem, that suppression was evidently handled pretty well, as this was yet another area of the world that Big Oil despoils and manages to keep under wraps. Well, not anymore. Mr Berends deserves a lot of credit for going to Nigeria and and getting up close and personal with at least two different anti-oil/anti-government insurgent groups -- one that seems to have the country's good as its goal, the other, maybe not.

At just under one hour's running time, Berends' film seems a bit like an opening salvo. I would have rather seen a further fleshed-out version that offered more history of the region and the "work" of the oil companies, with specifics on how, why, when and where these firms have polluted, along with the results. The movie could easily, I think, have been expanded to a full-length running time, but most likely, since Berends has been expelled from the county, he's not going to easily get back in to continue his filming. Which, by the way, is quite good (the fellow quadruples as producer, director, cinematographer and co-editor of Delta Boys). The filmmaker spends most of his time in the camp of the "human rights activist" (as I believe he calls himself) Tom Ateke. (I might use the term "insur-gent," while the Nigerian government no doubt prefers "terrorist.")

As he enters the camp, the filmmaker is given a kind of verbal "test" (which he evidently passes with flying colors), along with the direc-tive to "Say only what you see. Don't add or subtract." Berends pretty much does just that, so what we see ranges from the lovely to the odd, fascinating and beautiful (one shot of birds and their nests is extraordinary). He concentrates most on some of the young men who have joined the camp -- fellows like Chima (on poster, top, and in photo at bottom), formerly in prison who has not seen his family for several years.

Other militant camps -- the Okoloma Ikpangi, for one -- may be concerned less with helping the poor, as some villagers tells us, than with feeding their own stomachs. Religion plays a big part of daily life here, and at one point when government troops come in to raid the camps, a priest prays to god to "make peace in Jesus' name." (It seemed to me that some of the men we see are Muslim, but I guess Christianity has also made inroads here.)

Certain questions go unanswered: If it was easy enough for Berends to find the insurgents' camps, why is the government so slow in this? Eventually, a meeting takes place between representatives of several militant groups and the government, and the outcome is... pretty much expected, I think. The result may help the leaders all around the table -- and the oil companies, of course -- while leaving the people as bereft as usual.

There appears to be a kind of eyes-wide-shut, or maybe a don't ask/don't tell policy throughout Nigeria -- in the government, the camps, the families, everywhere in fact, except probably the oil companies -- as to what is going on. (Does Chima's family, for instance, really not have a clue as to where he has been of late?)  If the film needs fleshing out and sorting out, it still proves quite worth seeing for anyone interested in the story of yet another oil-rich land being exploited while its people remain in poverty.

In addition to its debut this coming Tuesday, January 15, via Netflix (streaming only), Hulu and SnagFilms, Delta Boys is currently available for digital download to rent or own at the Sundance site, on iTunes, Vudu and Amazon.