Word: filming
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Like Bashir director Ari Folman, Maoz served in the 1982 Israeli-Lebanon war; his film is a survivor's haunted memory of that conflict. Except for the opening and closing shots of a field of sunflowers, the entire film takes place in an Israeli tank holding four very nervous soldiers. The only view to the streets outside is through the gunsight aimed at insurgents and civilians. Which ones to shoot at? Which ones to save? Imprisoning the audience with the soldiers may be a gimmick, but it's an inspired one: the viewer wants both to stay inside - shielding them...
...Ferrara's 1992 Bad Lieutenant, which starred Harvey Keitel as a nameless, coke-addled sadist who has visions of Jesus. Director Werner Herzog - who made great movies in the '70s, and whose oneiric documentaries landed him on this year's TIME 100 list - says he never saw the Ferrara film, and simply worked from a script by William Finkelstein, who's written more than 100 episodes of cop shows (Law & Order, NYPD Blue, Brooklyn South, Cop Rock). Anyway, McDonagh is a good lieutenant: during Hurricane Katrina, he dove into the floodwaters to save a drowning prisoner; and for his efforts...
...Lieutenant isn't a film to cherish, but for Cage fans it marks a welcome return to his early days, before he became a conventional leading man in Jerry Bruckheimer films. In his young prime Cage was a weird, tortured actor with highly eccentric impulses; you never knew if he'd punch a wall or eat the flowers. Here he trashes half of lower Louisiana and rips the breathing tube out of an old lady's nose. Both narcotized and energized by his drug regimen, he confronts everybody with the intense stare of a man trying desperately to stay awake...
...shows an impressive command of mood and pace. He doesn't push your face into the message of conspicuous consumerism; he lets the characters and actors breathe, allows viewers to detect the toxic undertaste in their own good time. In its amiable, ambling way, The Joneses is a zeitgeist film: it says as much as a Michael Moore screed about the American way of debt. It's also a feature-long joke about Hollywood's mania for product placement...
...that theater fights will help. "As promoters, we have largely ignored the Saturday night movie crowd," says Richard Schaefer, CEO of Golden Boy Promotions, which is staging the Mayweather-Marquez bout in Las Vegas. "You know, the guy with his wife or girlfriend. Instead of going to watch a film, why not take in the fight?" Plus, some theaters are in urban areas where boxing fans are less likely to have home access to pay-per-view, and more appreciative of the cost to watch the fight: between $12-15 in the theater versus $50 on pay-per-view...