Tag Archives: films

The Perfect Movie for Your Earth Day Date Night

Mother Jones

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While Hollywood has been on a roll with climate change films, most of them have concentrated on the planet’s impending doom. The team behind the new French documentary Tomorrow takes a different tactic. “I discovered that showing catastrophes—explaining what is going wrong in the world—is not enough,” co-director Cyril Dion tells Mother Jones. “We also need to have energy and enthusiasm to build another future.”

It was a challenge to convince others’ of this opinion, Dion says: “Nobody believed in a positive documentary about ecology, economy, and democracy.” Instead, the Caésar-award-winning film, originally released in France in 2015, was partly crowd-funded. As French actress Mélanie Laurent (Inglourious Basterds) implores in the film, “This movie is about thousands of people changing the world so we would like it to be financed by thousands of people willing to do the same.”

Over a backdrop of twee music, the upbeat Laurent and Dion serve as our tour guides into everyday communities that have taken creative steps to reduce their contribution to climate change: permaculture farming in France, urban farming in Detroit, a new democratic experiment to let Untouchables and high-caste live together in India, and a political revolution and rewritten constitution in Iceland. Despite Laurent and Dion’s earnestness to identify answers, however, viewers may find that the film does not fully address the magnitude and urgency of the situation—which small-scale, local solutions alone cannot fix.

Nonetheless, change is perhaps most powerful when it is community-driven. The most novel innovation proposed is the possibility of “local currencies” that never leave one geographic area, thus encouraging the type of localized production and consumption that the filmmakers believe to be essential to a sustainable future. The Swiss WIR, an alternative currency system that stays in Switzerland, has been a successful model for such a system since the 1930s. In the years following the 2008 recession, interest has risen in alternative currency systems insulated from the volatility of global markets. “Rather than money just pouring out of your local economy as though it were a leaky bucket, a local currency recognizes that getting money to stay in your local economy as long as it can, and be passed around as many times as possible, is of huge benefit,” Rob Hopkins, a British environmental activist featured in the film, tells Mother Jones.

By focusing on experiments already in the works, Tomorrow presents climate change as a challenge with clear remedies rather than an inevitable apocalypse.

The film opened in New York and Los Angeles on April 21.

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The Perfect Movie for Your Earth Day Date Night

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5 Great Environmental Documentaries

The Academy Awards shine a spotlight on the best movies made in any given year. Here’s a list of five of the best environmental documentaries made in 2015.

The Human Experiment
This documentary tells the stories of three families who believe their health has been seriously compromised by toxic chemicals circulating willy-nilly in our environment. Produced and narrated by Academy Award-winner Sean Penn, the filmexamines what we know (and dont know) about the connection betweenskyrocketing rates of cancer, autism, infertility, asthma, and other diseases and the chemicals we encounter in such common household items as plastic baby and water bottles, fragrances in perfumes and cosmetics, and chemicals in shampoos, deodorant and cleaning products.

Companies that produce and use toxic chemicals do not need to prove they dont pose a human health risk. That’s because the federal Toxic Substances Control Act, called TSCA, places the burden of proof on the consumer, not the company producing the product. The film makes a powerful argument for strengthening federal laws to get dangerous compounds off the market and away from the people they can hurt. You can read the full review on Care2 here.

Stink
Stink also examines the impact toxic chemicals can have on our lives, but from the point of view of a father who is shocked when the new pajamas he buys for his two daughters stink so badly from the flame retardants they’ve been doused in that the girls can’t wear them. The father, who is the filmmaker Jon Whelan, goes on a quest to figure out why so many toxic chemicals are allowed into our world. He also tries to figure out whether his wife’s death from breast cancer could somehow be connected to chemicals she was exposed to. The film is gripping, even devastating in parts, but also lights a fire under the viewer, as the filmmaker makes it clear that we citizens must support stronger legislation to reduce toxic exposures.

Mislead: America’s Secret Epidemic
Tamara Rubin founded the Lead Safe America Foundation when she realized her own children were lead poisoned. Then she decided to make a movie about the lead poisoning crisis that is making so many people, specifically children, sick. The resulting documentary, titled MisLEAD: America’s Secret Epidemic, makes a powerful case that lead poisoning is dangerous, pervasive and must be stopped.

Tamara and her crew highlight 17 different families, all of whom are trying to help children already lead poisoned while preventing the situation from getting worse. The documentary draws a direct line between the “sudden, alarming” rise in the number of American children suffering from ADD, ADHD, Autism Spectrum symptoms and similar neurological disorders and children’s exposure to lead. These disabilities cost society more than $50 billion annually, says Lead Safe America. Especially in light of the terrible crisis facing the families living in Flint, Michigan whose children have been poisoned by lead in drinking water, the film couldn’t be more timely.

National Parks Adventure 3D
For a completely different kind of film, don’t missMacGillivray Freeman’s National Parks Adventure in 3D. Narrated by Academy Award winner Robert Redford, the movie takes you on an IMAX adventure into what Redford calls the “most awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping places that belong to us all.”

Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Everglades, the Redwoods, the Grand Canyon, Arches and Canyonlands are among the nation’s crown jewels featured in this film, all perfectly suited to the giant-screen cinematographic adventure IMAX provides. If you liked some ofMacGillivray Freeman’s other Great Adventure Films including “Everest,” “Dolphins,” “Journey Into Amazing Caves” and “Grand Canyon Adventure” you’ll probably love this one, too.

Short of visiting a national park yourself, this may be one of the best ways to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the creation of the national park system, which occurs on August 25, 2016.

My Life as a Turkey
Writer and naturalist Joe Hutto quite unexpectedly found himself raising 13endangered wild turkeys in the flatlands of Florida from the moment they hatched. Hutton told the talefirst in his book “Illumination in the Flatwoods.” Now , he brings it to life in this poignant film, and it’s not one you want to miss.

“Day after day, for over a year, I saw no one – except my family,” he says as the movie opens, Joe walkingshrouded in mist and surrounded by his feathered youngsters. “It was a family like none you know. But I’m a mother, it seems, and these are my children.”

Hutto spent each day amblingdeep into the Everglades with these birds, roosting with them, taking them foraging and even learning to speak their “language.” In the process, he says, “they revealed their charming curiosity and surprising intellect.”

The day came for Hutto the way it comes for all parents, and he had to let his brood go off on their own. Keep some tissues handy when you watch this sweet, lovely film.

For more film options, check out the offerings at the D.C. Environmental Film Festivalor the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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5 Great Environmental Documentaries

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Film Review: "The Overnighters"

Mother Jones

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The Overnighters

MILE END FILMS

This engrossing film is set in Williston, North Dakota, where locals are freaking out about the hordes of desperate men in need of cash and a fresh start who pour into their tiny town in search of fracking jobs. A local pastor takes pity on them, converting his Concordia Lutheran Church into an ad hoc shelter. He’s resolute, even as his family reels from the criticism of angry neighbors and congregants who want him to be a little less Christian. But he risks losing everything when the local paper reports that sex offenders are among the visitors. Up through its devastating reveal, The Overnighters questions the motivations behind (and consequences of) our choices and convictions.

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Film Review: "The Overnighters"

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Film Review: "The Hand That Feeds"

Mother Jones

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The Hand That Feeds

JUBILEE FILMS

At the beginning of The Hand That Feeds, Mahoma López, an undocumented Mexican immigrant, counts out the $290 he’s just received for a 60-hour workweek in a deli on New York City’s ritzy Upper East Side. The film feels like a familiar tale of exploitation and wage theft, until López and his Hot & Crusty coworkers stand up and fight back. In this behind-the-scenes look at the ensuing labor dispute, directors Rachel Lears and Robin Blotnick lead us through the struggles and eventual triumph of López & Co. as they enlist the help of activists and, notably, a group of Occupy Wall Street-influenced twentysomethings. Despite the film’s narrow focus—which leaves out some much-needed context about the treatment of immigrants in the restaurant biz—it’s an inspiring tale.

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Film Review: "The Hand That Feeds"

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The Whimsical Fascists of Wes Anderson’s "The Grand Budapest Hotel"

Mother Jones

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Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel is very, very Wes Anderson—which is to say that the colors pop, the quirky humor abounds, and your emotions are sneakily toyed with. Few directors have the kind of total control over the way their actors talk, move, and express quite like Anderson does. Anderson’s singular style and eccentricities make virtually everything in his films (even harrowing elements such as suicide and war) oddly whimsical. And in The Grand Budapest Hotel, a Nazi analog is made into something of a goofy villain.

The comedy is set primarily in the 1930s in Zubrowka, a fictional central-European republic that has endured European totalitarianism and world war (the movie was shot on location in Germany, but the setting, sounds, and visuals were, in Anderson’s words, “a pastiche of the greatest hits of…Eastern Europe”). The core of the narrative (starring Ralph Fiennes, F. Murray Abraham, Tony Revolori, Saoirse Ronan, Harvey Keitel, and several Anderson regulars) is a murder mystery, but the backdrop routinely advances to the fore as the grip of a fascist party grows more and more clenched. “Part of why I feel the impulse to reimagine World War II rather than just do it is because it’s been done so many times before,” Anderson told NPR.

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The Whimsical Fascists of Wes Anderson’s "The Grand Budapest Hotel"

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Movies, Movies Everywhere, But Not a Drop to Watch

Mother Jones

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Netflix has developed an awesomely sophisticated stockpile of data about what kind of movies people want to watch. This sounds like a huge advantage for them—and it is—but Felix Salmon argues that it’s also a sign of weakness. Netflix has to mine this information because its streaming service has such a paltry collection of titles:

If you give Netflix a list of all the movies you want to watch, the proportion available for streaming is going to be so embarrassingly low that the company decided not to even give you that option any more….So Netflix has been forced to attempt a distant second-best: scouring its own limited library for the films it thinks you’ll like, rather than simply looking for the specific movies which it knows (because you told it) that you definitely want to watch. This, from a consumer perspective, is not an improvement.

I figure there are two basic kinds of customers here. The first has specific movies she wants to watch, and tries to find them. The second just wants to watch something decent, and will browse around looking for something that fits the bill. I gave up on Netflix streaming years ago because I’m the first kind of person, and I almost always came up blank when I searched for something specific. Netflix, as Salmon says, has pretty much gone all-in on the second type:

The original Netflix prediction algorithm — the one which guessed how much you’d like a movie based on your ratings of other movies — was an amazing piece of computer technology, precisely because it managed to find things you didn’t know that you’d love. More than once I would order a movie based on a high predicted rating, and despite the fact that I would never normally think to watch it — and every time it turned out to be great. The next generation of Netflix personalization, by contrast, ratchets the sophistication down a few dozen notches: at this point, it’s just saying “well, you watched one of these Period Pieces About Royalty Based on Real Life, here’s a bunch more”.

Netflix, then, no longer wants to show me the things I want to watch, and it doesn’t even particularly want to show me the stuff I didn’t know I’d love. Instead, it just wants to feed me more and more and more of the same, drawing mainly from a library of second-tier movies and TV shows.

Yep. What I wonder is what happens when Netflix eventually drops the disc-by-mail service that gave it its start. That’s inevitable, isn’t it? And when it happens, it will mean there’s really no place left to find a large selection of older movies to watch. The old brick-and-mortar stores will be gone, driven out of business by Netflix, and thanks to licensing wars, no streaming service will be available with a broad selection. People like me will actually be worse off than we were a decade ago.

Eventually that will change. I hope. But in the meantime, it’s slim pickings.

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Movies, Movies Everywhere, But Not a Drop to Watch

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