Martin Scorsese’s latest gangster opus finds him abandoning the familiar streets of his beloved New York for Boston, where the accentuated accents and smaller scale threaten to take him out of his element. Ambience is the least of The Departed’s problems, however: the film is superbly shot, and the rapid-fire editing and shaky camera fit the constant flux that the main characters find themselves in time and again. Then again, it would be a surprise to see anything less than technical excellence from Scorsese, who knows cinema and its intricacies as well as any American director working today. Where The Departed falters, however, is in its multiple plot holes, weakly developed supporting cast, and overstuffed running time, which doesn’t detract from its entertainment value (it’s plenty of fun) as much as it does from any emotional heft like Goodfellas and Casino possessed. It’s a fine enough movie and slickly done, but its extreme hype stems exclusively from the name value of its director.
59/100
Certainly a niche film, GamerZ is unlikely to appeal to anyone who hasn’t had some form of positive experiences with geeky pastimes such as Dungeons & Dragons—its entire premise and subsequent relationships are based upon the escapism and relief from troubled realities that gaming provides to the emotionally detached or troubled youth. Though mostly amateurish in its direction, GamerZ has a surprisingly mature viewpoint on the dangers of throwing all your energies into fantasy: Marlyn, a Goth teen, spends 99% of her life in character as an Elf in order to push aside the pain of a miserable childhood. And the pointy-nosed hero Ralph, who compulsively creates exceptionally detailed virtual worlds, bears a striking resemblance to Max in Rushmore—a precocious kid who could coast to A+ grades if he threw his energies and intellect into his schoolwork (in one scene, Ralph looks up from scribbling gaming notes in class to breezily answer a difficult question).
While Gamerz is nowhere near as rich or interesting picture as Rushmore, it has enough respect for its material to not simply portray its heroes as stereotypical, nerdy losers who cling to role playing because they have no real friends, and stands as a passable take on an oft-labeled industry. Visually, there’s not much to admire about GamerZ, though several sequences—including one of the cloaked gamers trekking up a hill—are direct homages to The Lord of the Rings, which the makers of GamerZ clearly admire greatly (orcs, goblins, and elves are all over the script). There’s a real tenderness at work here, and while there’s nowhere near enough talent involved to make GamerZ more than an average picture, it could easily find its way into enough RPG’ers’ hearts to become a mini-cult classic.
A sobering reminder that war is more than smartly-dressed politicians exchanging barbs about what’s best for America, Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience powerfully encapsulates the horrors and tribulations that our brave soldiers go through every day overseas, while refusing to focus on what we tend to concentrate our daily energies on; the question of whether we should be there at all. Rather, Operation Homecoming—centered on a series of writings by soldiers who have participated in the Iraq and Afghanistan war, as gathered by the National Endowment for the Arts—profoundly explores the human side of war and its numerous lingering effects on its active participants. Various poems and letters by current troops in Iraq (and Vietnam veterans) are accompanied by visual collages that emphasize the stories’ cores. From animated stills to archive footage, many of the sequences stretch traditional documentary format without resorting to hokum. The narratives are read by the writers themselves, who may not physically be on the battlefield anymore but whose minds fight torturous wars every day. Wracked with having made impossible decisions again and again (inevitably, many of them turned out to be the wrong ones), these men and women may never again sleep as soundly as they did before setting out to serve their country.
Operation Homecoming takes no sides, and certainly isn’t a film about politics: indeed, it offers a fresh perspective on the soldiers and their mindsets. All we, the everyday folk, really know about Iraq is what our newspapers tell us, what CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News report daily. Sound bites and quotes from platoon leaders, or battalions bellowing, “Hi Mom!” on Thanksgiving is the closest we get to their hearts and minds. Sentimental patriotism pervades documentaries and feature war pictures; even great films like The Bridge on the River Kwai all builds up one monumental, tide-turning event. Operation Homecoming dares to delve into the fear, torment—and surprisingly mundane day-to-day routines—that make up the lives of Sergeants, Captains, and Colonels alike. Certainly, every soldier has a different agenda for being there, but I suspect that Operation Homecoming captures a universal emotion extremely accurately: no matter why they’re fighting or what they think of the cause, they won’t let their fellow soldiers down by not giving it their all. The humanity and indescribable difficulties of these brave souls is beautifully depicted in their writing. Seeing the war through a different set of eyes, I found myself not caring about Republicans and Democrats for the first time in a long while. It’s ironic that it took so long to make their view the priority, rather than our own political preferences and views about the purposes of the war’s existence. I may never support George W. Bush and his various agendas, but I’m no less thankful that Operation Homecoming has provided me with a touching portal into a world that I, as a passive observer, can’t begin to comprehend.