Dennis Dugan the director of Problem Child, went off on the critics and their recent hatred for Adam Sandler in an interview for The Hollywood Reporter. Dugan directed Happy Gilmore, Big Daddy, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, Grown Ups, You Don’t Mess With Zohan, Jack and Jill, and Grown Ups 2.
“I don’t give a fuck what [critics] think. I give a fuck that almost every one of my movies opens up number one and makes a giant profit for the studio, and people buy them, rent them, quote them and have a good time seeing them. … How fucking dare anybody say that he’s a shitty [entertainer],” said Dugan.
The Co-writers and co-directors of National Lampoon’s Vacation John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, confirmed in a NPR interview that they will write the Spider-Man reboot.
“We can finally acknowledge that,” said Daley.
“We’ve been saying no comment for the last week,” said Goldstein.
“This is the first time that we can say that we are writing it (Spider-Man),” said Daley.
“We’re thrilled,” said Goldstein.
“He’s a sharp kid and witty and kind of deals with the fact that he’s an outcast and a geek through humor. It is sort of the safety net for geeks like us, so I think we can totally relate to where he’s coming from. As well as the superpowers, which we also have,” said Daley.
Jon Watts will direct and Tom Holland will star in Spider-Man due out on July 28, 2017.
Welcome to the third installment of the Summer 2015 Anime Roundup! While we don’t have a lot of slice of life to cover this season, we have comedy in spades. If it’s laughter you are looking for, here’s where to find out what suits your tastes.
My Love Story!!
This series airs on Crunchyroll and updates on Wednesdays at 3:00pm.
Director: Morio Asaka (Chihayafuru, Chobits, NANA) Animation Production: MADHOUSE (Chihayafuru, Hanayamata, NANA, and so much more) AKA:Ore Monogatari!! (My Story!!)
Gouda Takeo is a very tall, muscular, and perhaps not particularly attractive student. He’s got a great heart and has a lot of (male) friends. Unfortunately, whenever he falls in love with a girl, she ends up in love with his good-looking best friend Suna. Suna in turn always rejects these girls because they talk crap about Takeo. Therefore, after he falls in love with Rinko Yamato after saving her from a grouper, he assumes she is in love with Suna and vows that he will help them get together because he doesn’t want Suna to break her heart. As it turns out, Yamato is actually in love with Takeo!
This series is a carry-over from last season, and if you haven’t started watching it yet you should. The synopsis above is just the first three episodes. How often do you get a romantic comedy that doesn’t take a full series for the main characters to get together (if they even do at all)? Not often. That’s a fact. Plus it’s reversed from the “awkward girl becomes friends with a cute popular boy” trope, so that allows male viewers to enjoy the show as well.
After episode 3 the perfectly timed romance, drama, and comedy continues. We learn there is more to Yamato than being “pure and innocent”, that Takeo isn’t as unpopular with girls as he thinks he is, and that there might just be a girl out there that is worthy of Suna. It never suddenly gets too weird or serious. The situations could happen in real life, mostly, except for all the silly things Takeo is capable of. This romcom is worth your time. I promise.
Charlotte
This series airs on Crunchyroll and updates on Saturdays at 1:00pm.
Director: Yoshiyuki Asai (has only done episode directing until now) Animation Studio: P.A. Works (Angel Beats, CANAAN, Shirobako)
A high school student named Yuu Otosaka has the power to temporarily possess other people, which he uses to cheat on tests and become popular at school. However, he is discovered by the student council at Hoshinoumi Gakuen and learns that he is not alone in the world. Many teenagers awaken to powers that then disappear in adulthood, and using them causes such children to be discovered and experimented on. He is bribed into transferring to Hoshinoumi Gakuen and joining the student council to help (or stop) other teens with special powers.
I have heard many people say that Yuu acts a lot like Lelouch from Gode Geass. I haven’t seen much of that franchise, so it doesn’t bother me. What I like is that he gets put in his place early on in the show. It isn’t about Yuu acting like a jerk. Right now it’s about the student council going around and helping people. It’s not particularly unique, but I do like that the powers tend to be “incomplete” somehow, each coming with a restriction that can either cause some trouble for the student using it or can only be used in certain situations.
This show is based on a Key visual novel and it is a lot like Angel Beats, from helping individuals to the baseball game episode. This also means we are given another more prominent male character so we aren’t just watching an unrealistic “guy surrounded by girls” series. Hopefully, given the source of the show, it will get into more deep and tragic backstory and have a bittersweet resolution. That is what I want from this show.
And Yuu. Stop being a nitwit and just tell your sister you don’t like pizza sauce. For goodness’ sake. That joke is getting old and it’s only been four episodes. Grow a pair and just end it.
If you want a more in-depth analysis of Charlotte, Our own Logan Peterson has been posting up episode reviews. Get started with episode 1!
Miss Monochrome-The Animation-2
This series airs on Crunchyroll and updates on Fridays at 11:30am.
Director: Yoshiaki Iwasaki (Hayate the Combat Butler, Love Hina) Animation Studio: LIDEN FILMS and SANZIGEN Animation Studio (Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches, The Heroic Legend of Arslan)
Miss Monochrome, self-proclaimed idol, is on a quest to become more popular and beloved so she can compete with the famous idol Kikuko. She slowly and ineptly builds up staff, merchandise, and band members to help her with her goals.
While last season focused a lot on Miss Monochrome’s backstory and new beginnings, this season has some fun new characters to help Miss Monochrome on her way to having a great career. It is a short show, only about 7 minutes or so, and it is amusing enough to watch Miss Monochrome fumble her way to victory. If you watched season 1, this is more of the same. In my opinion, this show would be best watched all at once when you have an hour or so to spare.
Seiyuu’s Life!
This series airs on Funimation and updates on Wednesdays at 1:00pm.
Director: Hiroshi Ikehata (Has mostly done episode directing only up until now) Animation Studio: Gonzo (Full Metal Panic!,Last Exile, Samurai 7, Bokurano, and more!) AKA:Sore ga Seiyuu!
This series follows Futaba, Ichigo, and Rin through their careers in the seiyuu (voice acting) industry. Futaba and Ichigo are fairly new seiyuu, and are adults with other jobs as they try to improve their careers as seiyuu. Rin is more of a veteran seiyuu, even though she is a high school student.
That’s really all there is to the show so far. It is not as fun as Shirobako, but is trying to be for the seiyuu industry what Shirobako was for the anime industry. Voice acting works very differently in Japan than it does here, and the show provides some good insight to the career. Also, it hasn’t gone into moe-trope-land yet. As long as they stay focused on girls’ careers and don’t start doing stuff like beach episodes, I’ll probably keep watching just for the information.
Shimoneta: a Boring World Where the Concept of Dirty Jokes Doesn’t Exist
This series airs on Funimation and updates on Tuesdays at 4:30pm.
Director: Youhei Suzuki (Hasn’t fully directed a show yet, but has done a lot of episode directing and storyboarding.) Animation Studio: J.C. Staff (Food Wars, Golden Time, Revolutionary Girl Utena, and more!) AKA:Shimoneta to Iu Gainen ga Sonzai Shinai Taikutsu na Sekai AKA:Shimoseka (Thank goodness!)
Japan has cracked down on the public and banned lewd acts and speech. Citizens must wear collars that monitor their every word. Pornography is burned. Tanukichi Okuma has worked hard to enter a school so pure and in-line with Japan’s public morals laws that the students there don’t know anything about biology and reproduction at all, let alone pornography. This is because his childhood friend Anna is the student council president there, and he wants to be pure like her. However, he ends up being blackmailed by student council vice-president Ayame into helping her terrorist organization, SOX, distribute lewd materials and educate the student body.
Because Tanukichi’s father was also a “pervert terrorist”, Tanukichi grew up with all the information that he feels he is not supposed to know. The rest of the students KNOW he knows, and he is reluctant to explain, part out of embarrassment and part because he thinks the knowledge makes him a bad person. But when he is helping Ayame it gives him a thrill, even if he denies it afterward
I avoided this show at first because it sounded dumb. Well, it IS pretty dumb, but it is also hilarious. With the problems Japan is having with its low birth rates, it doesn’t seem like this kind of society is that far off. People are already not having sex; what if people simply didn’t know how anymore? So with that kind of mindset, I can’t help but cheer on SOX and support their endeavors to educate their fellow students and commit “terrorist” dirty joke acts against the Japanese government. I like this show so much better than the dark and disturbing Prison School even though there’s just as much perversion in it. It’s just more fun.
Sky Wizards Academy
This series airs on Funimation and updates on Wednesdays at 1:00pm.
Director: Takayuki Inagaki (Rosario + Vampire, Seiken Tsukai no World Break) Animation Studio: Diomedea (Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE!, Squid Girl, KanColle) AKA:Kuusen Madoushi Kouhosei no Kyoukan
The world has been invaded by magical armor insects, and mankind has retreated to floating cities and fights the bugs in mid-air battles. The show follows Kanata, who people call a traitor even though their reasons for it make him just seem lazy or cowardly instead of traitorous. He is assigned the three worst students in the academy – all female, of course. Misora has no talent in her chosen weapon and is oblivious when it comes to information gathering and tactics. Rico can walk the walk, and she’s also too full of herself to work properly in a team. Lecty has talent but doesn’t have the self-confidence to demonstrate it. They all think he is a pervert. He couldn’t give a crap.
I was originally going to file this with the action shows, but it turns out that there’s not really all that much action going on. This is much closer to a slice of life or romantic comedy. In fact, the girls in this show want this to be a harem. They keep trying to pull in harem tropes, and Kanata keeps refusing to react like a typical harem-hero. For example, when he accidentally touches breasts:
AHAHAHA! Kudos to Kanata. He’s the only reason I’m even still watching this show. So long as he continues to resist the evil that is a harem, I will continue to be amused. I really was hoping for more sky-magic-fighting but instead in episode three we watch people shop and work a waitressing job. Kanata explains why he had the girls do these things, but…just…bleh.
Next time on the Summer 2015 Anime Roundup
Aoharu x Machinegun Food Wars Kyoukai no Rinne Ushio to Tora
Last time on God Eater we left off with 1st squad heading out to save Alisa from her plane, that was being attacked by a ton of Aragami. Lenka is still on thin ice and Lindow is not about to let him forget it before the mission. After all Lindow wants him to succeed, so he’s going to make sure that Lenka can prove himself to the higher-ups.
Now this episode we get a good look inside Alisa’s personality and maybe a peak at her back story. While she’s almost stoic while in combat, she doesn’t act that way when interacting with people. I like this because it shows that she’s smart enough to differentiate situations. It gets old when characters are just stoic all the time for no reason. She also has a very, either caring or dutiful personality towards people around her. After all, she prioritizes everyone else’s safety on the plane, even when she could have gone away with 1st squad if she wanted to. She also takes this opportunity to comment on how certain people aren’t looked at with value by the military. These feelings could mean that her family was abandoned by military forces and left to fend for themselves. Which would explain her sense of compassion and duty.
She fights almost with a sense of recklessness and instinct. For example, when she hops off the plane and is jumping from Aragami to Aragami slashing them open. I mean she’s literally nowhere near the plane but manages to get back on board every time. Clearly she either has insane skill or is gifted like Lenka. Speaking of Lenka, after Lindow spills the beans of him being a New-Type she gives off a little hint of Jealousy on her face. She may have a superiority complex and feels special in the fact that she’s so strong that everyone can depend on her. Having Lenka around may seem threatening.
Lenka on the other hand really proves himself in this episode. As opposed to earlier he is able to control his transformations very fluidly. Almost too fluidly considering he’s had little to no practice at all. This might contribute to Alisa’s jealousy seeing him accel too quickly. And just like Alisa he cares about the people more than the mission. Even at the expense of failing the mission and getting in even in more trouble, he decides to help Alisa protect the plane and its passengers. I’m starting to see signs of kindred spirits here, but I’ll have to wait to see them interact together to be sure. If they don’t get along very well, that’ll be a sure sign.
Now I have earlier complained about how even though the animation looks incredible in this show, they don’t seem to use it to their advantage. Up until now all the action scenes seemed basic and bland. But throw that out the window because the animation fucking rocked this episode. Very fluid characters moving in insane movements, camera pans alongside the action that you want to see, and awesome perspective shots with movement going on in the background. Even if the story doesn’t go anywhere I think the characters and the animation may be a reason in itself to keep watching God Eater.
Speaking of the story it’s getting really annoying with these black and white flashbacks. They pop at random times to explain things that are going on in real-time and it just seems lazy. Half the time I don’t care what’s going on in these scenes because I’m being taken out of a breathtaking action shot. This show needs to learn when and where to drop exposition on its viewer and maybe deliver it better. In not against the flashbacks, but when they pop up so abruptly it sort of ruins it for me. Like there’s a point where an Aragami evolves and is able to beckon other Aragami to fall in on itself. Then we get a flashback explaining what we just saw. Why did we need that? The scene earlier already explained that.
I mean there are times where exposition happens in the story that feels natural. Like when Alisa has run out of ammo and her God Arm devours an Aragami to recharge. This explain’s and foreshadows so much about the God Arm’s but feels natural and congruent with whats going on with the show. The same can be said near the end of the episode when they see the enormous Aragami in the distance. Now we know something about Aragami as well as the state the world is in. Even though they may have triumphed now there still is something out there that if it made a move they wouldn’t stand a chance.
So I can confidently say this was the best episode of God Eater yet. Sure there are still a few things that need to be worked out but the fun is still there and it doesn’t seem to be letting down anytime soon. All I can hope for is that God Eater doesn’t end up devouring itself when it gets to the actual plot of the show. Because no matter how good the animation and characters are, if the plot gets so far up its own ass that I can’t see sunlight anymore I might have to give up on it.
George R.R. Martin, author of The Song of Ice and Fire novels that inspired the Game of Thrones series, recently wrote a blog post in which he states his problems with some Marvel superhero movies while praising Ant-Man.
As a self-proclaimed “Marvel fanboy”, he wishes they’d gone for the Hank Pym Ant-Man instead of Scott Lang, but commends the end result in his review.
I am relieved and delighted to report that they did it right.
He then went on to criticize the way some Marvel movies are developed in terms of plot and characters, pointing out that the excess of action can become overwhelming if it’s not well balanced.
A superhero movie needs a fair share of smashing and bashing and stuff blowing up, of course, but IMNSHO that stuff works best when it is happening to people we actually know and care about, and if you jam in too many characters and don’t take time to develop any of them properly, well…
He talks from experience, of course, with juggling so many characters.
In short, George R.R. Martin offers his Ant-Man review with a positive light, ranking it only second in what he considers the bulk of all Marvel movies. So from what he writes, his list might be something like this:
But I could be wrong. He didn’t mention any of the Captain America or Hulk movies in this “ranking”, but he did talk about the latter when complaining about the lack of originality when introducing villains. He laments the fact that the villains in most Marvel movies seem to have the same powers as the heroes (Abomination, Iron Monger, Venom), rejecting a chance to make a difference.
I want more films where the hero and the villain have wildly different powers. That makes the action much more interesting.
Okay, but what about Thanos—which we’ll be seeing more of—Loki…? Even Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch were villains at some point, and they are wildly different from the rest of the Avengers. What bothers me a bit is the fact that it seems like to George R.R. Martin it all becomes reduced to who is the hero and who is the villain. These movies are more than that! Again, not once does he mention Captain America in the blog. I think Cap has the most powerful, well-developed story, and even his “enemy” in The Winter Soldier is not a one-dimensional copy of him. In fact, Bucky and Loki are two baddies who Marvel keeps bringing back because they offer so much more than just an opposing character, they’re a big part of Steve’s and Thor’s life, they mean something to them.
And of course the assemble movies are going to be much more about the action, but also to show them as part of a team, because that’s what the solo movies are for; apart from leading up to Avengers movies, they carry on with the individual characters.
Yes, Marvel has a lot of work to do in terms of villains and character development (Black Widow solo movie, anyone?) but I still have some faith for future releases, starting with Civil War.
I’m only surprised George R.R. Martin didn’t alude to Marvel bringing characters back to life over and over again…
It appears that Jun Maeda has a thing, not only for tragic pasts, but for baseball too. No matter what show it is, he always seems to incorporate baseball into an episode. Now while baseball is a big importance in this weeks episode of Charlotte, there are some interesting things that occur in the earlier parts of the show. So before I get into the Baseball stuff, I’d like to cover that.
As promised from last episode, Yusa is introduced into their school. And naturally everyone in the class goes crazy over her, with some boys taking it a little too far with their reactions. This might be equated as to how energetic and happy Yusa seems to be. You always hear about people not being the same as they are on T.V. and such. But Yusa is pretty much the same, she even refers to herself as Yusarin to the class.
Now I’m not really buying this whole personality from Yusa. She seems to have had way to many things happen, to be this happy and go lucky. It could be that she’s been playing as an idol for so long she forgot how to be herself or something. Or she just finds it easier to put on a front because that’s what people want to see. Either way I don’t think she’s being true to herself, almost in the same way Ayumi acts concerned about Yu almost like a mother would. I see similar characteristics in both these characters, so it’s not surprising that Ayumi is a huge Yusarin fan-girl. Both of them may put on a front not because they want to but because it’s for other people.
So with Yusa’s introduction we get a little more time in the classroom than we have had in previous episodes. And because of that we get some subtle hints about Nao and how the other classmates look at her. One noticeable thing is that she is very cold to Yusa when she is assigned a seat next to her. It’s clear that they planned out beforehand to pretend not to know each other already, but Nao’s greeting seems out-of-place and way too cold. The classroom comments on it as if it’s just the way Nao is. This happens again when they are about to get another users location. Yusa is in the middle of friendly classmates when Nao interrupts and pulls Yusa away. The classmates are all agitated at her but Nao on both these occasions doesn’t really seem to care. This is weird because she’s the complete opposite when they are out hunting for ability users. But something about being at school and in class puts Nao in a rather apathetic mood, and I hope we get to find out why. Maybe its just because she hates school.
With a strong hunch Nao deduces that the telekinesis user is a baseball pitcher at another school. They confront him and Nao is pretty straight with him, as she is with all the ability users she confronts. She goes on to explain that abilities only last while in adolescence, so its useless to think cheating will get him in the professional league. This comment here relates to the ending so I’ll talk more about it then. So even though it doesn’t make much sense Nao challenges his school to a baseball match. The catch being if Nao wins that he won’t use his telekinesis anymore. Also the student council members will be participating as well alongside their schools own baseball team. This is basically so they can even the playing field with people who can use abilities. A little underhanded, but if the opposing team is cheating, you might as well follow suit.
While the game isn’t all that interesting a few character things are revealed. One is that when Nao tells Yu to take control of the batter to make him mess up, Yu has a little reluctance towards it. With this being the same Yu who would cheat on every test, it seems that he’s steadily growing and not wanting to be like he used to. This sort of thing comes up again when he’s happy that they win the game. He’s slowly starting to enjoy being with people and having fun just being himself. He’s also slowly learning that everyone has flaws and its okay to reveal those. This is why its a great scene where he almost strikes out. By all means he should have struck out but by the combination of the rest of his team, they won. More people coming together to fix problems, which is probably why the baseball was incorporated in this episode. Sports are always a great way to represent the benefits of teamwork and the need for others. Both being things which Yu needs to work on.
The other thing is the ability user himself revealing that he was using his ability so that his friend the catcher would get noticed. He felt bad that his friend had to play for such a bad team so he thought if they got noticed as a team then the scouts would see how good a catcher his friend was. Of course Nao gives him some good advice to build on what she said when they first met. Basically saying that if someone works hard long enough in the dark, there will be people who find them there. So even if you think no ones watching, keep trying your best because someone eventually will take notice. This is another very adult thing to learn because of how easy cheating is. It may seem like an easy means to an end but it will eventually catch up to you and hurt you as a person. And if you stay there and keep supporting your friend instead, eventually things will turn out great for the both of you.
Of course this weeks episode of Charlotte may have felt a little weak but I think most of that is just because it was a transitional episode. While there still was quite a few things to take note of, this episode was basically about Yusa integrating into the student council and seeing the impact she has on the groups dynamic. Charlotte knows how important and delicate dramatic tension is. And it also knows when to use it. This episode was not the time or the place to use it. And in a show like this, we sometimes need a good time to cool off and just play ball.
The smallest super-hero at Marvel Ant-Man, just beat out Pixels, Minions, Trainwreck and Southpaw to take the number one spot at the box office for the second week in a row with $24,765,000 on 3,868 screens.
Ant-Man today has bought in a domestic gross of $106,075,000 to date, with an additional $120,400,000 from the foreign market. By the end of next week Ant-Man should over take The Incredible Hulk‘s $134,806,913 but it might be tough to reach Captain America: The First Avenger‘s $176,654,505. Marvel usually leaves its films in the theater for 12-16 weeks. With a slim slate of films in August, Ant-Man could reach Thor‘s $181,030,624.
[table caption=”Marvel Films” colwidth=”20|200|50|50|50″ colalign=”left|left|right|right|right”]
Rank,Film,Year,Opening Weekend,Gross
1,The Avengers,2012,$207.4M,$623.4M
2,Avengers: Age of Ultron, 2015, $191.2M,$456.6M
3,Iron Man 3, 2013, $174.1M, $409M
4,Iron Man 2, 2010, $128.1M, $312.4M
5,Iron Man, 2008, $98.6M, $318.4M
6,Captain America: Winter Soldier, 2014, $95M, $259.7M
7,Guardians of the Galaxy,2014,$94.3M,$318.4M
8,Thor: Dark World, 2013,$85.7M,$206.3M
9,Thor, 2011,$65.7M,$181M
10, Captain America: First Avenger, 2011,$65M,$176.6M
11,The Incredible Hulk, 2008,$55.4M, $134.5M
12,Ant-Man, 2015,$58M,$106M
[/table]
About Ant-Man:
Scott Lang must leave his criminal past behind if he hopes to take down Darren Cross (Corey Stoll) and the unbridled power of the Yellowjacket suit! With the help of Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), and the Ant-Man suit, Lang must embrace his inner hero to pull off a heist that could save the world.
Today I have the pleasure of breaking down a movie that virtually no one has even heard one thing about and try and convince you that it’s worth your time. Mark Ruffalo and Zoe Saldana star in Infinitely Polar Bear. I can already hear my father in-law saying “You know Dewey, Mark Ruffalo always brings the goods.” If you think about he would be 100% correct. In the last two years he’s been in – Begin Again, Avengers, Avengers 2, Now You See Me, and Foxcatcher and he’s been terrific in all of them. It’s getting to a point now with Ruffalo that he has to be considered to be one the great American actors on screen today.
Infinitely Polar Bear is the story of family fractured by mental illness. The movie begins with Cam (Mark Ruffalo) in the grips of a manic episode, marching around in his underwear and frightening the girls. The family is shattered and seems to be going in different directions. Cam makes somewhat of a recovery from his manic break. Maggie (Zoe Saldana) decides to take a leap of faith and leave the kids with him while she goes off to business school.
Infinitely Polar Bear is a very hard movie to watch at times. Cam is often just going off on people, and his girls have no trouble letting him know how they feel often in a very loud voice. You do get the feeling that you have a front row seat to a family that is fraying at the seams. It’s a very compelling seat to be in but it doesn’t make it any less easy to witness.
Mark Ruffalo gives a gritty, gutty, and soulful performance as the over the top, foul mouthed Cam Stuart. Mark Ruffalo makes the character of Cam Stuart very human and very real to anyone watching this unfold on the screen. He immerses himself in a role based on director Maya Forbes’s father and his performance is nothing short of triumphant. One has to wonder if this a performance that could finally put him over the top in a lot of award voters’ minds?
I’m not going to sit here and tell you that this movie is going to be easy to find because it won’t be. However, is everything worth seeing always easy to find? I can name you a bunch of movies right now that you can easily locate at your local theater and they are terrible. The reason to see this movie is without question Mark Ruffalo’s performance.Remember, Mark Ruffalo always brings the goods.
Cartel Land is a revealing and troubling film, and not just for its “big picture” content. Yes, it will certainly be revelatory to anyone who hasn’t given much thought or attention to the war being waged in Mexico and in U.S. border states between the Mexican drug cartels and civilian militia/vigilante groups, who insist that their respective governments are either not doing enough or not doing anything at all about their enemy and the savagery they commit in the course of conducting their business.
But it also should prove fascinating and disturbing as a character study, examining the individual motivations of the leaders of two very different paramilitary groups fighting the same enemy, how they each choose to wage that war, the methods they employ, and the challenges they face. The amount of screen time allotted to each of these disparate stories within the film is unbalanced — one gets a whole lot more time and development than the other — and that does somewhat blunt the overall impact of the film. But for most of its 98 minutes, Cartel Land‘s glimpse into this war and at the lives of the people trying to do what they feel is right as they fight that war is harrowing, gripping material.
The two men at the heart of Cartel Land — Tim “Nailer” Foley of the Arizona Border Recon group in the U.S. and Dr. Jose Manuel Mireles Valverde, or “el Doctor” as he came to be known, the initial leader and spokesperson for the “Autodefenzas” social movement in Michoacán, Mexico, could not be more different in terms of their approaches to the war on the drug trade and those profiting from it. Foley, a former drifter from a broken home who initially went out to the border to see what he could do about stemming the tide of illegals coming over and taking American jobs, upon getting a better sense of the “Wild West” situation in the area quickly shifted the focus of his efforts to stopping the flow of human trafficking and meth by rooting out scouts for the drug mules and cartel trade routes. He and those who work with him for the most part work in isolation, going about their task out in the vast stretches of southwest Arizona where the closest police and Federal authorities are hours away in Tuscon, intent on making nearby towns and neighborhoods safe at night by keeping the criminal element out. Equipped with military-grade weapons and survival gear, they go about their task quietly, not seeking the attention of the public or the media but welcoming help if it comes from those believe in the importance of border security with or without the help of the U.S. government.
“El Doctor”, on the other hand, maintains his “regular” life and work as a medical doctor and surgeon while at the same time organizing and setting out the mission statement of the “Grupos de Autodefenzas” after a number of his own family members are killed while working on a farm whose owner dared to defy one of the principal controlling cartels in the area, the “Knights Templar.” Mireles’s approach to the problem is very public — he makes public appearances, telling the people in the towns his group enters that they’re there to clean out the Templars, and their priority is the safety and security of the town, while also decrying the federal government for doing nothing about the problem because they are profiting from it. Initially, the Autodefenzas and the white shirts that become symbolic of their movement are welcomed with open arms wherever they go, gaining followers with each stop and pushing back the Templars’ control of different municipalities in Michoacán until more than half the state has been “reclaimed” for the people and is declared clear of Templar influence. But as the movement continues to grow, Mireles faces many unexpected setbacks, including corruption and abuses of power within his own movement, and what began as an effort to end the cycle of violence takes a turn that’s all too familiar to the people who have lived with this war and seen this cycle perpetuate for decades.
What’s perhaps most striking about Heineman’s work in Cartel Land, which won the 2015 Best Director and Best Cinematography Awards in the U.S. Documentary competition at the Sundance Film Festival, is the level of access he and his film crews are granted by both movements and even, in scenes that bookend the film, cartel members cooking the meth that’s one of the sources of the current problem. Cameras follow Foley and his group as they sneak up on and take into custody people they believe to be cartel scouts or mules, but also into their homes and living rooms, focusing on their faces and conversations as they react to local and national news putting spins both welcome and unwelcome on their work. Similarly, the cameras following Dr. Mireles follow him as he and the Autodefenzas roll into town in their pick-up trucks, armed to the teeth and sporting bulletproof vests as they surround homes and businesses where townspeople reported seeing Templars or their associates, but also into his office where he sees patients every day, and into his home, with his wife and family who wholeheartedly support his work while worrying for his safety. Especially in the case of Mireles and the Autodefenzas, that level of access allows for audiences to witness firsthand just when and how both Mireles and his movement, which started out with such promise and brought such hope and relief to people at first, both eventually lose their way.
In comparison, the footage focused on Foley and his group, while taut with tension, immediacy, and authenticity, doesn’t have as strong a narrative focus or direction. If there’s a criticism to be made in terms of how Heineman constructs Cartel Land as a film, it’s that by the film’s conclusion the inclusion of that footage serves little purpose aside from serving as a contrast to the way things unfold in the Autodefenzas story. There is, however, a clear effort by Foley in his moments on camera to present a clear picture of what Arizona Border Recon stands for and hopes to accomplish, and to help dispel the conception that they’re simply racist survivalist gun nuts taking the law into their own hands like Old West gunfighters of old. Whether that aim is accomplished will depend entirely on the viewpoint of whoever’s watching, but considering the circumstances he describes and the environment in which his group operates, his claims about the necessity of what they do are difficult to dismiss out of hand.
But without a doubt, the more compelling story in Cartel Land, the one that’s most developed and is almost surreal in terms of the turns it takes and what audiences have the opportunity to witness, is the story that takes place south of the border, in the streets and towns of Michoacán. It’s a sad, sad story that unfortunately is all too familiar to the people who have suffered through it for years, but for those living far from this conflict who might have formed their opinions about it solely based on what gets fed to them via news outlets and the internet, it should prove to be disturbing, conversation-provoking, and ultimately very, very memorable.
Cartel Land
Directed by Matthew Heineman.
Running Time: 98 minutes
Rated R for violent disturbing images, language, drug content and brief sexual material.
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