Crude

An oil company moves into your jungle home, sets up shop for 26 years, leaves, and your environment's polluted to hell. You dig beneath the ground and instead of soil you find toxic sludge. Your iridescent drinking water stinks like petrol and tastes rancid. Cancer rates in your village are through the roof and you can't afford medical treatment. Your culture and associated way of life has been drastically destabilized by industrial runoff and you've been seeking financial retribution from a dismissive multinational for a seemingly endless period of time. Joe Berlinger's well-rounded documentary Crude provides an intricate examination of the infamous Amazon Chernobyl case, wherein 30,000 Indigenous inhabitants of Ecuador have taken Chevron to court. Berlinger presents viewpoints from both sides, the Chevron reps claiming they cleaned up their mess (to the tune of 40 million) and that PetroEcuador (the company who took over production in the 90s) is to blame. The Indigenous plaintiffs recognize PetroEcuador's crimes and have a separate lawsuit on the back burner quietly steeping. But for now it's Chevron on the hook, sued for 27 billion, trying to justify their position by blaming the sharp increase in cancer rates on poor sewage treatment, claiming there are acceptable levels of hydrocarbons in the water, and boasting that their environmental record is spic and span. If you ask me, based upon Berlinger's filmic evidence as well as the testimony of Steve Donziger, Pablo Fajardo, and several local residents, Chevron must think we're drinking volcanic glasses of idiot juice if we're to believe their side of the story. They definitely cleaned up something, and drawing the line where Chevron's guilt ends and PetroEcuador's begins is complicated to say the least. But these people are suffering, they weren't suffering before Chevron (or Texaco) showed up, and they're living and breathing the effects of Chevron's environmental degradation day in and day out, period. Hopefully the international attention surrounding the case will help speed up the legal process so that these people can be justly compensated for the scurrilous and foul way they've been treated.

Avatar

James Cameron's Avatar is a science fiction treat for both environmentalists and epic film lovers alike. On the far off planet of Pandora, a greedy corporation is mining a precious mineral known as unobtainium, many deposits of which lie beneath sacred portions of the planet's lush forest. The indigenous Na'vi take none to kindly to the intrusion but have learned to live somewhat peacefully with their militaristic human neighbours. Until those neighbours decide it's time to destroy their revered Hometree, a scurrilous act which unites the Na'vi tribes for a final showdown around their venerated Tree of Souls. Leading them is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic marine who, thanks to a remarkable scientific development, is able to inhabit and navigate a Na'vi body while sleeping in a special tank. Is his leadership divine? Has he been chosen by Eywa, the Na'vi's most prominent deity, to restore balance to the planet? Will his relationship with Na'vi beauty Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) bear forbidden fruit? Or will Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi) and his bombastic military commando sidekick Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephan Lang) wipe out the Na'vi and have their way with Pandora's plunder?

The ending appealed to me although it's somewhat frustrating insofar as it's only a movie. It's a lot of fun and I probably would have rated it much higher if I was still fourteen. Nothing really that new presented and honestly, I preferred Avatar's prototype, Dune. Solid reimagining of Herbert's classic novel, nonetheless, which should find a massive, enthusiastic audience.

Australia

Baz Luhrmann's Australia is a sincerely grand spectacle shot in the Gone with the Wind epic style minus about an hour and one intermission. Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) moves from Britain to Australia's Northern Territory with the intent of selling her husband's ranch, known as Faraway Downs. But upon her arrival she discovers he's dead and that there's been some seriously underhanded wheeling and dealing taking place on their land. Hence, she decides to drove (move cattle across a distance) her husband's cattle to Darwin in order to prevent his rival King Carney (Bryan Brown) from monopolizing the business. To drove she must find a drover and a tough-as-nails-plays-by-his-own-rules-no-one-hires-me-no-one-fires-me Drover (Hugh Jackman) surfaces and reluctantly agrees to assist. To stop them, Carney requires a villain, and weaselly-dead-beat-dad-environmentally-abusive Neil Fletcher (David Wenham) agrees to arrest their stride. Tying together and narrating the different multilayered threads is an Aboriginal child named Nullah (Brandon Walters) who desperately wants to avoid being taken away from his home and sent to a mission. And in the second half Japan invades, disrupting their insatiable antagonisms and turning both old and new worlds upside down.

A lot of what takes place in Australia is sappy, predictable, and highly melodramatic: but it's the best damned melodrama I've seen in years and every time I knew what was going to happen I happily sat back and soaked up the sentiments. Lady Ashley is one brazen, solid, tenacious, heroine who lives by a strict and passionate code which occasionally yields unfortunate yet necessary results. The Drover droves dynamically and thanks to Lady Ashley's inspiration overcomes many of his social phobias eventually maintaining that certain things simply shouldn't be. And it's simply great to watch them ferociously fall in love even though snobby socialites turn up their noses and utter banal witticisms at their expense. An epic tale complete with heartfelt harmonies and progressive social symphonies, Australia may be a bit hard to take at times, but the overall product is downright resilient, all down the line.

Frozen River

Courtney Hunt's Frozen River chronicles the lives of two down-on-their-luck mothers trying to catch a break. It's a week before Christmas, and Ray Eddy's (Melissa Leo) deadbeat husband grabs the family savings (which they were going to use to pay for a new house) and heads to Atlantic City (they have two children). Ray tries to find him only to accidentally meet Lila (Misty Upham) who has stolen his car. Lila tricks Ray into helping her transport immigrants illegally across the Canadian/U.S border (both sides of the border are Mohawk territory), by car, over a frozen river. Initially, Ray reacts in a hostile manner, but after being refused full-time employment at the dollar store where she's been working for two years (by a smug teenaged manager), she warms up to the idea, and the border runs increase.

Hunt's screen-play hauntingly captures the impoverished domain of these frustrated anti-heros. The language is stormy and the characters weathered; they aren't noble disney-esque 'hope-things-will-work-out-some-day-caricatures,' they're ruff-and-tumble derelict survivalists. Leo's performance is strong as she evocatively portrays a beaten-down wife attempting to competently balance several different social roles, including responsible mother, dedicated employee, concerned citizen, and caring wife, all the while suffering a perennial nervous breakdown. Her wager parallels that of her husband's insofar as she takes serious risks to make a buck; Lila provides bulletproof reasons which suggest those whom they transport across the border are not criminals, but she still can't shake the possibility. So she walks the hard-line between personal success and legal destitution, doing what she can to get by, suffering, staggering, surviving. Her relationship with her son (T. J. played by Charlie McDermott) is enough to remind many 30 year-old males that they were once an asshole, and the strength she shows after being fucked around one too many times courageously demonstrates a desperate rationality.

Lila's tough too, and when presented with an opportunity to take back her one-year old son she takes it, moving on. Regarding opportunity, neither of these women have much, but they make ends meet by whatever-means-necessary, continually crossing their frozen cultural rivers.