The Agnieszka Holland film, In Darkness (2012), from Poland, relates the true story of a Polish sewer worker and the few Jews he hides from the Nazis in the city sewers.  Coarse and initially unprincipled, the sewer worker later turns compassionate and solicitous.  Of course the bulk of the film’s sympathy goes to the Jews, but they too are pronouncedly flawed.  They can be selfish, disloyal and ungrateful.  Meanwhile the Polish collaborators with the Germans—as well as the Germans themselves—are stunningly vile.

Familiar in certain ways, gratifyingly fresh in others, this perfectly made movie is a masterwork of period realism.

(In Polish, etc., with English subtitles)

Agnieszka Holland. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition (2001):

It was in the early modern age—1914—that Sir Ernest Shackleton sailed from London with his 28-member crew with the goal of trekking across Antarctica.  They were not the first group of men never to have made it there.  An earlier group were said to have lost their sanity; like Shackleton’s men, they were long stuck—or, rather, their ship was long stuck—in a monstrous icepack in the middle of the ocean.  Shackleton and Co. were there for ten months before shifting ice devastated their seacraft and forced them to abandon ship, after which they started drifting on the icepack.  The name of the destroyed ship was Endurance; George Butler’s dandy documentary makes it clear that the men could have been called the Endurance Team.   Except “endurance” is too mild a word for what these guys exhibited during their faraway nightmarish hardships.  Shackleton’s only goal now was to return all of his men to civilization alive.  Could he do it?

An offbeat item:  Shackleton and four other gents, after sailing in a lifeboat to South Georgia Island, learn they must travel on foot through the uncharted island to get to a whaling station.  Along the way they sense there is an extra person, or presence, with them, and an interviewed relative opines that this must have been “the Man Upstairs.”

The look of Butler’s film is marvelous. . . Vintage movie footage and photographs by one of the crew’s members, Frank Hurley, are instructively memorable.  Interviews with descendants and a polar historian contribute neither too much nor too little.  They hold us—and Liam Neeson’s narration is good.  Hail to the makers of The Endurance, one of the most riveting docs I’ve seen, and a family film to boot.

English: Sir Ernest Shackleton taken during the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (Endurance expedition) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The men and women in Prisoners (2013) are mostly either lunatics or idiots—in the case of Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman), a thoroughgoing idiot.  Dover is a blue-collar fellow who, after his young daughter is abducted, just KNOWS that the culprit is Paul Dano’s simpleminded, nearly mute Alex Jones and so he takes him to an abandoned house and, to get him to talk, starts torturing him.  To be sure, Alex is a suspect but Dover abuses him ad infinitum, and the whole thing is simply stupid.

A police detective acted by Jake Gyllenhaal finds another suspect—one who runs from the detective when he doesn’t have to—and now it’s time for the movie’s lunatics to show their true crazy colors.  Man!

That abandoned house, by the way, used to belong to Dover’s parents and Dover inherited it.  Why has he allowed it to become an unspeakable wreck?

Directed by Denis Villeneuve, Prisoners is a dismal thriller—suspenseful, yes, but still dismal—and an intellectual disgrace.

JakeGyllenhaalcropped (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Wow!  Judy Garland in 3D IMAX!

Only in a 3D Meet Me in St. Louis would she look lovelier and, because older, more distinguished.  But IMAX screens in 2013 are presenting the redheaded, freckled girl who never should have grown up (to be middle-aged, anyway) in Victor Fleming’s outstanding The Wizard of Oz (1939) and the result is enthralling.

The Kansas twister in this new version is terrifying, the Munchkins pour in (oh, the numbers!) and are emphatically conspicuous, the makeup and costumes become even easier to appreciate.  So does Harold Rossen’s cinematography.  All the same, critic Alan Scherstuhl is right that Fleming’s film is “performance-driven.”  Certain cast members, Judy included, are real grabbers with no shortage of conviction.  After a while, it’s true, a lack of logic arises in the narrative, but—well—as everyone knows, the fantasy here is merely a dream.  In 3D it seems even more dreamlike.

Cover of Judy Garland

Wayne Watson has written numerous good songs, some of them having a melody as terrific as that in “For Such a Time as This”, a rousing, inspirational Christian song sung by Watson in his usual earnest style.  The voice of Canadian folkie Bruce Cockburn is not as pleasant as Watson’s, but his “Lord of the Starfields” has a very nice spare sound and a savory lyric (“Oh love that fires the sun / Keep me burning”).

For a faster tempo there is the great rock tune, “Flood,” by the talented Jars of Clay.  Driven by a fierce guitar, it features classical strings in its bridge and a wide range of moods.  It’s every bit as enjoyably urgent as, say, Foreigner’s “Seventeen.”

Debby Boone provides a decent vocal for “The Name Above All Names,” a big ballad from the ’80s with a splendid chorus—indeed, a splendid melody—and the sunniest Christian certitude in its finish.  Equally fine is the Michelle Tumes song, “Hold On” (not “Hold On to Jesus,” another Tumes track).  Granted, the words aren’t very impressive but the catchy, breezy music and the utterly beautiful bridge are.  As for Tumes’s singing, it’s nicely feminine and Enya-like.

Fun and reverent, these.

Cover of Debby Boone