Wanna get REALLY angry? Watch the new Aussie doc, KANGAROO: A LOVE-HATE STORY

It's from Australia -- where else? And if you've ever been there (TrustMovies has, a couple of times) and watched with delight all those kangaroos and wallabies in the wild, you've probably been left with an indelible impression and love for this remarkable species. And trust me: You won't get anything like the same result from visiting a zoo. The first time I journeyed down under -- this was back in the 70s -- I heard from some people about what horrible pests kangaroos really were. But then, when I asked around a bit, I was told by others that this was all bullshit, coming from the industries and government officials that wanted to "harvest them," and that, when dealt with properly, the kangaroo population posed little real problem at all.

That was over 40 years ago, and the situation has apparently only grown worse since then -- with kangaroo meat (eaten by both humans and our pets) becoming more popular and the industries that cater to this growing larger and more powerful. No film I've watched in a long while -- including anything, even, about America's current and unspeakably racist and venal sleazebag President -- has made me angrier and more disgusted than the new documentary by Kate McIntyre Clere (above, right) and Michael McIntyre (above, left), entitled quite properly KANGAROO: A LOVE-HATE STORY. I admit that you probably have to be an animal lover to get this worked up, but the filmmakers do a bang-up job of showing you what is going on (along with why), how awful it truly is, and what might be done to halt this -- if enough citizens finally speak up and hold their elected politicians' feet to the fire.

Those feet, by the way, belong mostly, as expected, to Australian politicians (and corporations), but they also include many others internationally, since Kangaroo meat and skin/hide is sold worldwide. What we learn here about how the industry and their lobbyists tried to subvert our own state of California to their needs will open many eyes and also show us, thankfully, that the USA still has some politicians willing to fight for what's right.

Kangaroo approaches its tale and goal using everything from history to statistics to a lot talking heads (here with their bodes shown as well, since we're so often in the wilds of Australia) who follow our kangaroos as they hop and play and are killed -- in the most awful of ways that allow them to die slowly and horribly by hunters who just don't give a damn. Their joey, too (the term for kangaroo young) are affected just as terribly. There is a scene here of one injured joey trying so hard to hop away that it will likely break your heart.

Sure, the film is biased. It wants to preserve a species, for Christ sake. But it allows the "other side" to have its say, and then pretty much pulls the rug out from under it, whether the speaker is a politician or a farmer who insists that the kangaroo cannot be stopped except by hunting them down. We see the ongoing results (over quite some time) of a public relations campaign to denounce these animals as "pests" and how, when done skillfully and long enough, this can turn a population against its own "national" animal.

Wildlife experts and preservationists have their say, too, and it is equally intelligent and anger-making, as we perceive yet another example of how the wealthy, corporate and "elected" are growing richer even as they destroy our planet and the life upon it. Kangaroo is a documentary you'll want to share with everyone you know, but you'll also have to warn them that it is not an easy watch. It is a salutary one, however. This is a movie that will put you on the alert and maybe drive you to action.

From Abramorama and running 99 minutes, Kangaroo: A Love-Hate Story opens this Friday, January 19 in New York City (at the Village East Cinema) and Los Angeles (at Laemmle's Music Hall 3) and will then, over the coming weeks, open in another 15 or more cities. Click here to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.

The doc of the year? Very probably. Theo Anthony's RAT FILM is this -- and much more.

As challenging, surprising and satisfying as movies get -- narrative or documentary -- this new one from writer/director Theo Anthony would be a shoo-in for an Oscar except that it will probably be "too much" for our prestigious Academy members: dark, uncompromising and not nearly feel-good enough to take home that coveted and, in this case, much deserved Best Documentary prize.

Its title is RAT FILM, and it's about, yes, the much beloved species we know as rats. However, because the movie deals equally and brilliantly with the subjects of race and redlining in Baltimore, Maryland, it could as easily have been titled Race Film. As for the manner in which it bring us Baltimore, the documentary makes a terrific companion piece to perhaps the best television series ever created, The Wire.

How Mr. Anthony (shown at right) manages to blend rats, race and Baltimore so thoroughly and felicitously seems to TrustMovies little short of miraculous. Using history, statistics, archival photos and newspaper clippings, coupled to a brilliant narration that does no special pleading but simply states some very interesting facts, while lining these up with other facts/statistics from the past and the near-present, he allows us to reach conclusions that should prove awfully hard to shake.

But how do rats fit into all this? They should and they do, but I'll let you discover the answers to that question yourself.

Baby rats don't open their eyes for two weeks, we learn early on the film, "but does a blind rat dream?" Anthony wonders. This is but one of many intriguing questions raised in the film. Another -- Do rats go to heaven? -- is asked by the rat exterminator (Harold Edmond, shown below) we meet and spend a good deal of time with. Edmond doesn't hate rats the way some of the other would-be exterminators (shown further below) do.

Why this awful hatred? The doc doesn't ask this question directly, but we cannot help but feel its presence all along the way. And the occasional introduction of rat lovers/rat keepers and their "pets" simply reinforces the question. There is one shot of a rat licking his owner's bald head (in a similar way to which my cat licks my increasingly balding dome) that should leave you charmed and delighted.

Along the way we learn the importance of the Norway Rat to lab tests and experimentation, via the work of of one, Curt P. Richter, even if we do begin to question some of the ideas of Richter and his disciples. Well before it is finished, in fact, the movie will have you viewing the rat as one of the great anti-heroes, having undergone such hatred and aggression over time that you'll find it difficult not to root for the (relatively) little guy.

So we get rats and the Welfare State, rats and NASCAR, rat-hunting for sport, rat history/statistics and lots more, and we even meet "the Mother of CSI," as one interviewee describes the odd woman who gave over her life to criminal investigation. And though, for an hour or more, we don't see any actual killing of rats (just the threat of this), when, in a sudden burst of violence, we do, via some very smart editing, the effect is both necessary and jolting.

The redlining of entire neighborhoods by Baltimore's banks back in the 1930s, and recent statistics about those same neighborhoods will set your mouth agape (such stunning progress has Baltimore made!), while the film's finale offers a scene of sheer, unadulterated irony, amusement and slow-growing horror.

The music (by Dan Deacon) is sensational, too -- so good, in fact that a soundtrack album is said to be coming soon, while the film's smooth, ever-so-slightly indignant narration is splendidly voiced by Maureen Jones. I came away from this doc feeling quite differently about rats than I did going in, and I suspect you might, too.

You'll get your chance to find out when Rat Film -- running 82 minutes and released by The Cinema Guild and Memory -- opens this Friday, September 15, in New York City at the Film Society of Lincoln Center; in Baltimore at the Parkway Theatre; in Vancouver at the Film Center and in Chicago at Facets Cinémathèque. The film has its Los Angeles premiere on Saturday, October 15 at the Downtown Independent theater, where it will have a two-week run. In the following weeks it will open elsewhere around the country. Click here and scroll down to view all upcoming playdates.

Netflix streaming tip: OKJA is yet another amazing blockbuster from Bong Joon-ho

Is there anyone else in the movie world making such intelligent, suprising and entertaining blockbusters as that South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho? I don't think so. He is indeed the new Spielberg but also something quite "more." After his Snowpiercer (from 2014), he has now gifted us with OKJA, the new sci-fi/fantasy/(sort-of)monster movie that features as its leading character a stalwart adolescent girl up against a corporate world that controls us all these days. Really: I can't think of another moviemaker (Mr. Bong is shown below) who could begin a film as though it were a child-and-her-adorable-giant-animal movie and then, by its end, give us one of the most memorable, moving, surprising and disturbing scenes to ever grace the screen (and I mean any kind of screen, not simply the "theatrical" variety).

That scene, by the way, may make the movie a more difficult experience for kids -- even though they'll love and appreciate most of the film.

And yet, because Bong is such a smart and gifted filmmaker (Mother, Memories of Murder, The Host), he is able to simultaneously give us the "happy ending" that those kids (and, come on, us adults, too) so want, while forcing his audience to view the larger picture -- in a manner so stunning and wrenching that it will seem like nothing you've encountered previously.

For thie alone, Okja deserves, and will undoubtedly receive, its placement on many of the year's "best" lists. (In fact, Variety has already picked it as one of the top movies of the year at our current halfway point.)

The film's story -- no spoilers here -- is all about a girl and her pet pig. That the pig is one of many genetically modified porkers and has grown to "monster" size has been no problem, since the girl, her grandfather and their pig live way the hell out in the countryside where they see (and are seen by) nobody else.

In the supporting cast are the likes of Paul Dano (above) and Jake Gyllenhaal (below), but the movie belongs to the Korean actress Ahn Seo-hyun, as the girl, Mija, and to the special effects department that created Okja and her giant breed. She and they are wonders indeed.

The drama arrives when the corporate entity (personified by the gifted and funny Tilda Swinton) that owns the pig takes it away from the girl to become the mascot for a new line of "pork products." Will our heroine allow this to happen? Not on your strip of breakfast bacon. So our filmmaker orchestrates everything from top-notch chase scenes to a pig-in-the-china-shop spree in a Seoul mall, from a marketing parade in Manhattan to a scary scene in one of those experimental laboratories.

But Bong is simply smarter than almost all the other would-be-blockbuster moviemakers. He always sees both sides of the situation, and so continuallly surprises and unsettles us. He understands that the power of money and greed can work both ways, that corporations can make themselves rich while feeding the planet, and that animal activists who want to harm neither animals nor humans will occasionally do both. He also understands the impulse not to kill other life forms we come to care for, and this, finally, is what sets up the film's biggest conflict.

So, sure, children will find more on their plate than movies like this usually provide. But give them the chance to view and handle it, and I suspect they'll remember this film for a long, long time. Stick with it, and you will, too. Opening a only a few theaters (in New York City at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and in the Los Angeles area at Laemmle's Monica Film Center), the film will find its biggest international audience via Netflix streaming, where it is now playing.

Civil rights & animal wrongs: Chris Hegedus & D.A. Pennebaker's doc, UNLOCKING THE CAGE

I don't think you have to be an animal rights activist or a PETA person to appreciate the new documentary, UNLOCKING THE CAGE, but I suspect you do have to care enough about animals not to want to see them abused -- particularly those species who have been proven to be "cognitively complex," as have chimps, dolphins, whales and elephants. (This last one was news to TrustMovies, who grew up believing the old saw that an elephant never forgets. Evidently they do a hell of a lot more than merely that.)

As directed by the prolific and interested-in-just-about-everything husband/wife team of Chris Hegedus (at left) and D.A.  Pennebaker (below) -- who've given us a fine bunch of documentaries from Town Bloody Hall through The War Room, Moon Over Broadway, Elaine Stritch at Liberty and more recently the delightful Kings of Pastry -- this new one is among the most moving of all of their work. As usual, though, the pair never attempts to jerk tears:

H & P are content to simply show -- and let their subjects tell. In this case those subjects include not just the "animal rights" lawyer Steven Wise (below) and his legal team, known as the Nonhuman Rights Project, but also a few of the animals (especially certain chimpanzees) for whom Wise and team are trying to obtain "limited personhood rights." Does this mean we must concede that these animals are the same as people? Not quite. Wise is quick to acknowledge the differences, while maintaining the need for greater protection via increased "rights."

"We're trying to change the way humans view nonhuman animals," the lawyer, shown above, declares right up front. He also acknowledges the work of Peter Singer as one of his major inspirations. And now that our own Supreme Court has acknowledged corporations -- and even, as the doc points out, business partnerships -- as "people," why not chimps? Well, first off, Mr. Silly, because the rich and the corporate won't get richer and more powerful by giving personhood to chimps, as they did via the personhood-to-corporations route.

And so Wise and his team -- supported by the research of international primatologists, as well as by evidence of the living conditions of several of these chimps, shown below (along with one bonobo, above) -- take to America's court system to get the job done. Talk about a Quixotic enterprise!

And yet, damned if that enterprise doesn't begin to get somewhere, after all. The road is uphill and hugely difficult (along the way the chimps that the team plans to use as clients keep dying off), but -- as the documentary shows us, rather in the manner of a low-key-but-enthralling courtroom tale -- things do begin to change.

One of the great things that the filmmaking team allows us to see is the competing viewpoints -- both of which are presented quite intelligently -- from the side of the current establishment invested in seeing that things do not change and from that of Wise and his little group.  One of the film's best scenes shows us a mock trial in which what our "hero" has to say in called into question. Especially interesting is how the team uses the writ of habeas corpus in its plan to convince the court. (As Wise points out, after one particular setback, "We're trying to expand the writ of habeas corpus [to include animals], and the court has responded by trying to cut the writ back for humans!"

There is irony aplenty here, but there is also, as the French might say, Liberty, Equality and (hmmmm...) Fraternity, too. By the film's finale, it is pretty amazing how convincing, moving and even kind of thrilling Hegedus and Pennebaker have made the Nonhuman Rights Project's cause.

From First Run Features in association with HBO Documentary Films, Unlocking the Cage, opens this Wednesday, May 25, at New York City's Film Forum, and will then expand nationally in June. Click here to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.