MamaGravity good back-story, and good acting

Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

Casey Duggan It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Nooshin Navidi I recommend this documentary because of its chilling story & message and not necessarily for its production value (though it was still engaging.) In the tradition of other films in the genre like Erin Brokovich, Silkwood, Norma Rae, etc., this is another disturbing account of innocent lives destroyed by corporate greed & corrupt motives. Only in this case, art, education and the First Amendment are on trial along with the victim. Respected science teacher & artist, Steve Kurtz, wakes up one morning to find his wife, (dramatization played by the great Tilda Swinton) dead next to him in bed, with the cause of death quickly determined to be heart failure. The paramedics who arrive on the scene notice the art-show-related chemicals & science-lab paraphernalia and alert the FBI which leads to Kurtz being arrested for "bio-terrorism". It's a surreal nightmare for Kurtz who never even gets a chance to properly grieve the sudden loss of his wife.But things don't end once the "terrorist" charge is cleared due to insufficient evidence. Since his art show was conceived as an exposé to educate/inform the public about genetically-modified food, the powers that be (industry/companies) must make it go away.Helped by an ambitious prosecutor in search of career advancement & fame, the charge is swiftly changed to something that would stick: Mail fraud. Absurd? Not when powerful industry is involved & would stop at nothing to protect their interests.Tilda Swinton is wonderful here in the few dramatization scenes she's in. This is a film that will be missed by many, but should be seen by all.~NN

marymorrissey if a subject is worthy of making a doc about I don't know what's with all the belles and whistles. it was clearly a matter of Ms. Swinson being available to come in for a day. there was some kind of a disclaimer "the Artist who was persecuted is too sensitive to portray himself so he's portrayed by an Actor" well the guy playing opposite her was no Actor so her little ball busting turns didn't play that well. was it really all that they could come up with to depict the defenseless dead Frau as this bitch who has one thing on her mind: complaining about the Art not being done in a timely manner in both of her scenes, like some producer? oh and she not exactly lovingly pushes this brown suit and ugly tie on the Artist contemptuously remarking that she got them on sale as if that mitigates her hopeless attempt in her comme des garcons or whatever and chic hairdo to do something about this tardy ass slob she married who is making a living hell of her self starting detail oriented efforts at office management. in fact the actual husband's brief talking head appearance directly following these scenes indicates that her 'editing' and "gift for pattern recognition" were essential to the team's work. it would have made much more sense for her to be upset that she was not going to be able to have a look at this "material" herself before it "went out" instead of just fretting about a deadline for this show that was already booked as though it would be canceled or something. Actually, Tilly's day playing reminded me a a little of that early comic bit of Meryl streep as the castrating lesbian in "manhattan"! and of course she looked as incongruous opposite the schlub portraying her husband as Ms streep did opposite Mr. allen.for the first 30 minutes or so, interspersed with talking head clips, which actually render them superfluous, we get a bonanza of these totally trite, not ready for prime-time reenactments in "Docudrama" form of 1) a couple of teacher/student scenes (I don't know how low the standards of SUNY Buffalo have gotten, but I would imagine most students at any college aside from maybe the University of Miami would be familiar with "the McCarthy era" from their high school US history class), 2) the obligatory cheesy "artistic integrity" scene ("the McCarthy era" prof who wears a different wild n crazy shirt in every scene a collaborator of the Artist who is far too serious about his Work darling to "go Hawaiian" or to wear a suit for that matter, has misgivings about an Idea, "Ok I get this cause I'm weird and I'm your friend but I don't know if it's such a great CAREER MOVE!" of course as any Artist worth his salt would, our hero has to get really real man, explaining the concept of Artistic Integrity both for us and for the professor. 3) the aforementioned BB. scenes between Tilda and the Artist, 4) the absolute pits: the scene in which the Artist discovers the corpse of his wife. which this performer was not at all up to (a note to the director: when an 'actor' is whimpering and screwing up his face pretending to cry but no tears come use eye drops!) in which they really might have done something to make it less obvious that Ms. Swinon was no longer in the building - all we see is a hand! and 5) the initial confrontations with the fuzz n the feds. After we've sat through all of this double iteration of the preceding information? We're treated to A RECAP of almost every bit of the same, this time in hipster graphic novel format! (the producers of the film apparently refer to this all encompassing style as "docurama" for what that's worth) The "docurama" format sucked in "American Splendor" too as far as I'm concerned but at least in that film they had real actors involved for the long haul not just one star coming in for a day, as in some cheesy B picture in which someone given top billing turns out only to turn up in 2 scenes. And they may have pointlessly, tastelessly and annoyingly switched formats but at least they didn't repeat scenes 3 times apiece!As far as I'm concerned they definitely ought to have just stuck with the talking heads, only for some reason it was deemed OK to "grab" some of the doc footage with really crappy sound and inadequate light and when the artist himself is actually introduced the camera even slips a bit: oops! I mean why not retake the shot or make some kind of cut or something. eliminate him saying, "I'm Steve Kurtz, the Artist" while the camera slips, since they put his damn name in a title on top of his little bit anyway, and didn't have anybody else introduce themselves in this fashion!?!?! I can't deal with this kind of carelessness and neither should you. As you might expect though, when Ms. S was working they actually bothered to use microphones and get proper sound and the lighting was more or less adequate. How much better it would have been to take some of the wasted time to interview some of the fuzz 'n' feds involved (not that it's likely though they would have been as cooperative as Tilly) than to indulge in all this inept playacting and decoration and duplication stretching the film to 70 min (I believe, for you see, I didn't even get to the part with peter coyote, by then I turned it off life is too short and it was better to read about what happened online, just as one other review here suggests might be a better alternative). I loathed this film and was forced to give it the lowest possible rating!

Polaris_DiB Strange Culture This documentary tells the story of Steve Kurtz, an artist and professor who, during 2004, was arrested as a suspected bioterrorist. Kurtz had called the police when his wife had died of heart failure, and the police arrived to find Petri dishes of bacteria Kurtz was getting ready to use for an art installation piece. The bacteria was harmless, but the invitation to the art opening he had had Arabic on it... hence, bring out the feds. Kurtz is still up for trial, and because he was disallowed from telling his story, this film features actor re-enactments.The documentary itself is only interesting because after each actor re-enacts his part, the cameras keep going and the actors put in their own two-bits... what it's like working on a project like this, what it was like meeting some of the key players "before the ending has come", and what it is to be more personally involved in the story that is going on as we speak. I like this approach because sans actor commentary, the re-enactments felt very misleading.I disagree with the choice of music on this feature, because it is mostly of an ominous and gloomy style. I think the only way to fight "a culture of fear" is to not allow it to make you afraid as well, and this documentary worked quite hard to make its subject very potent and important by using such audio cues to keep the audience's heart-rate going. For that matter, there's a lot I disagree with this film politically, in that it seems (like so many people these day do) to underestimate the simple power of entities refusing to admit their wrong. Such underestimation is a large reason why people don't know how to deal with Bush's decisions and instead decides it must be some form of conspiracy. Sure, there is some amount of multifaceted conglomeration involved in this tragic and disturbing discourse, but it's not like Kurtz was arrested for trying to show the world the truth about the food they were eating (the conclusion this movie hints at). It more shows how inefficient and ironically arbitrary our system of justice can be when people are met with things they don't understand.I suppose it's an interesting documentary, but it's intentions are clear: it is made to make a case for Kurtz before the final decision is spoken, so that people can rally to his cause. For that, I suppose, it's a genuine article, but it also makes it quickly dated and, for another matter, easier to decry bias. Without the full effect of the narrative, what's to say what it all eventually will come to mean? Of course that's an issue many contemporary documentaries constantly contend with, but on the other hand that's why I have such a distaste for them.--PolarisDiB

KELLY This is an important movie to watch, especially for young adults and/or patriotic Americans who may not have heard about a tragic period in US history referred to as McCarthyism: a period when the government led an aggressive campaign against its own citizens looking for communist sympathizers- there was even a "House of Un-American Activities Committee" formed. Thousands were threatened, blacklisted, and arrested - mainly teachers, artists, folks in the entertainment business and government employees - guilty of nothing other than free thought.Since 9/11, we and our government are acting hysterically. The events as captured in this film are evidence."Some of the basic principles of Americanism: The right to criticize; The right to hold unpopular beliefs; The right to protest; The right of independent thought." from Statement of Senator Margaret Chase Smith, June 1, 1950