The Stuff Behind The Stuff

Did you miss this past Saturday's edition of Facets Night School devoted to Larry Cohen's The Stuff?

Well, you're in luck.

MTV Movie Award-nominated filmmaker Maria Gigante's lecture, Advertising, Wonder Foods & Other Nasty Businesses: The Stuff Behind The Stuff, is now online! And thanks to USTREAM, you can enjoy ALL Night School lectures without venturing to the Cinematheque late night. Not that you'd want to do that. You haven't experienced Facets 'til you've spent the night with us.

Sorry. Did that sound weird?

Gooooaaaal!

Where films from around the world face off in brutal competition, brought to you by Facets Multi-Media, the leader in world cinema.

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Facets' Find

Director Shane Meadows (This Is England) and actor Paddy Considine sit down with the BBC's Jonathan Ross to discuss their mock-rockumentary, Le Donk & Scor-Zay-Zee, which is screening all this week at Facets Cinematheque!! Please head over and check it out. It's truly funny--shot in 5 days; improv-style; straight crazy!

And the Winner Is...

Many congratulations are in order to Gregory Hess for winning our "blog the Human Rights Watch Film Festival" contest with his review of Joe Berlinger's documentary, Crude. We were impressed by his beautiful writing, and most importantly, the strong analysis.

Gregory is joining Facets Features as a contributor, so keep your eyes peeled for his work!

Facets' Find

Fascinating footage of San Francisco's Market Street, before and after the great earthquake of 1905!

Write on Human Rights: Take Five

Chris Bartone's review of the doc, Crude, rounds-out our selections for our "blog the Human Rights Watch Film Festival" contest! Which of the past five pieces did we choose as the best, winning its author a Facets Features writing gig? Stay tuned for the big reveal!


For the media establishment, the pursuit of balance is a compulsion—the pursuit of truth, less so. This is why when you turn on television news, you see two polar opposites going at it about one thing or another. In this environment, the pursuit of truth (“What is the best way to curb the effects of climate change?”) is often supplanted by the desire for balance (“Does climate change exist or is it a hoax?”). The side effect of this mindset is that when all our senses, experience, and intellectual power tell us something is indeed wrong, somehow there still exists the tiniest sliver of doubt. Joe Berlinger’s documentary Crude has the courage to dispense with a contemporary audience’s propensity to doubt (even that which appears to be starkly truthful); a decision that is his film’s greatest strength and—of course, for the sake of balance—its greatest weakness?

Crude, a poignant—and now heart-breakingly relevant—documentary presented as part of the Eighth Annual Human Rights Watch Film Festival at Facets Cinemateque, tells the relatively unknown story of the indigenous people of Ecuador’s Sucumbrio region and their decades-long legal battle against a major U.S. oil company. The Ecuadorians argue that Chevron (formerly known as Texaco), upon abandoning its government sanctioned drilling operations in the mid-1990s, left the region a toxic, cancer-causing mess; permanently befouling an area of the Amazon that is critical to the health and survival of their people. Chevron’s counter-argument is—and I paraphrase—“No, we didn’t.” Company lawyers and representatives possess a multitude of other variations on that theme including (again paraphrased): “You can’t prove it was our fault so it isn’t,” “Another company drilled there too,” and, of course, “Oil-related toxins in your water didn’t cause your child’s cancer….poverty did.” The tribes are represented by a few attorneys desperately trying to attract media attention; Chevron is represented by tribes of
attorneys desperately trying to avoid media attention.

Steve Donziger, the attorney representing the Ecuadorians, likes to remind people that this is a David and Goliath story. Donziger is a Manhattan lawyer who straddles that divide between cynicism and idealism. Donziger is spotted ducking away from the media cameras to council his clients, imploring them, for example, to repeat Chevron’s name over and over while discussing the tragedy that has befallen their villages. He is there to provide legal advice but, more importantly, he’s in charge of the cosmetics. He makes sure the press sees the giant oil pits, smells the petroleum in the water, and hears the cries of the mother of a cancer-stricken child. For Donziger, success is a spread in Vanity Fair, a visit to the region from Sting’s wife, and a benefit concern. Berlinger’s focus on Donziger is a crucial lesson in how these David and Goliath legal battles must be waged in the court of public opinion if they are to have any chance at success. Indeed, it is Donziger’s panache which leads to more media attention which leads, in turn, to more interest by the rich, famous, and well-connected. This is exactly what Chevron does not want. In the era of Chevron, BP, and Haliburton, the little guys need every edge they can get. Ultimately, Crude reveals how much glossy magazine covers and a benefit concert is just as much a part of the activist ecosystem as marching in the streets.

If Donziger is the film’s megaphone, Pablo Fajardo is its conscience. Fajardo, the soft-spoken, congenial Ecuadorian lawyer, exudes a kind of warmth that immediately humanizes the impact that drilling for oil can have on a community. Fajardo grew up in poverty, put himself through law school, and is now locked in a legal war with one of the world’s largest, richest corporations. Chevron’s spin is to make the Ecuadorians appear as the unwitting victims of greedy Manhattan trial attorneys looking for a payoff. Fajardo endures Chevron’s anemic explanations and endless stalling tactics with an unshakable patience. He moves forward with the case with a dogged, single-mindedness that can only come from knowing one is doing the right thing. While it is clear that Fajardo is a serious lawyer doing serious legal work, some of the film’s most telling (and humorous) moments come unexpectedly such as during a tour of Fajardo’s tiny apartment. Whether posing for magazine spreads, briefing reporters at a press conference with Sting, or meeting with the Ecuadorian president, Fajardo never appears distracted from his ultimate goal.

Chevron’s representatives get plenty of screen time with long stretches of actual deliberations between both sides during which Chevron claims both innocence and ignorance. I suppose for the sake of pesky objectivity, the film could have delved deeper into the actual results of independent field tests. Indeed, there are surprisingly few actual numbers given in terms of toxicity and cancer rates. However, it is difficult to imagine what Chevron could say to change the perception that it isn’t wholly responsible for poisoning a region of the Amazon that, prior to the company’s arrival, existed in virtually pristine isolation. Chevron’s goal is simple: keep the case going long enough that the other side will give up. Chevron’s latest tactic has been to subpoena 600 hours of footage Berlinger shot for this very film and the judge has complied in this request.

The subpoena is yet another diversionary tactic. It is also an attempt to exploit that nagging sense of doubt, that compulsion for objectivity, that bubbles up even in the face of a clear truth. And while an untold amount of oil flows unabated into the Gulf of Mexico at this very moment, the case between Chevron and the people of the Lago Agrio oil field goes on; and one is reminded that sometimes bad people do bad things and then try to say they didn’t.

Write on Human Rights: Take Four

Next up in Facets' "blog the Human Rights Watch Film Festival" contest: John K. Wilson's review of Joe Berlinger's Crude!


With Crude, the powerful documentary about the destruction to the Ecuadorian Amazon caused by Chevron-Texaco’s oil spills, director Joe Berlinger has made two movies. No, I'm not talking about some intricate storyline or the “he said-corporation said” technique of firm neutrality idolized by the mainstream media. Berlinger’s film has a clear point of view, and although Chevron gets heard in the movie (including a video of its self-serving defense), there's no doubt about where lies his sympathies—and the truth.

The two movies I'm referring to are the movies that appear in people's heads, the difference between Crude when Berlinger made it and Crude in the aftermath of the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. I've seen Crude both before and after the BP spill, and I think it has become a much more personal and powerful movie to Americans. What was a disaster to “them” is now a disaster to “us.”

As one of the environmentalists in the movie put it, “but the Exxon Valdez was in the United States so this doesn't matter.” Commercial fishing and American tourists are always regarded as more valuable than Ecuadorian peasants and natural treasures.

It's hard not to be moved by crying mothers whose children have cancer, and are unable to pay for treatment, or animals dying of contaminated water. But we've seen suffering in other countries, in other movies, and grown accustomed to it. The BP spill helps shake that feeling of distance.

One thing is consistent across both viewings of Crude: my annoyance at the appearance of Sting's wife Trudie Styler for a celebrity sympathy spot. Yet I can't blame Styler and Sting for being concerned about a terrible injustice and lending their voices to helping it. I can't blame the environmentalists, who probably did more for the Ecuadorian cause with that concert appearance than all of the journalists who ever covered the story. And I can't blame Berlinger for including a big-name celebrity in the documentary. It's compelling to watch, and he's very effective at showing the lawyers coaching Styler at one point in the jungle: “try to use the word Texaco as much as possible.” I suppose I have to be annoyed at the media and all of us who have a caring switch that can't be turned on without the help of a celebrity parachuting in to witness the horror.

The celebrities are already caring about the BP spill, and soon there will be documentaries like Crude to tell the tale of the Gulf disaster. We will probably see the same shareholder meetings with executives denying any wrongdoing or blaming it on others, the lawyers delaying trials for decades on end with the hope that BP has the deepest pockets. The Aguinda v. Texaco case in Ecuador, already 17 years old, could take another decade before it is resolved.

The Ecuadorian legal system might not be more fair than its American counterpart (Chevron won a motion in an American court after nine years of battles to send it to Ecuador), but it's certainly much more entertaining, as when the human rights lawyer yells “this is a corrupt Texaco lawyer” in front of the judge (and the television cameras). It's fun to watch a field inspection with lawyers in hats giving their speeches around a muddy polluted field.

Chevron's lawyers complain that the other side only wants “two checks,” for the Amazon Defense Fund and the lawyers. Berlinger's editing is clever and, yes, manipulative, such as when Chevron's lawyer condemns the class action lawsuit and tries to smear the other side's lawyers by declaring, “this is a business. It is sponsored in order to get a profit!” After seeing the destruction caused by the blind pursuit of oil company profits, it's hard not to laugh at such chutzpah.

There is also another story about Crude--the story of the legal fight over the documentary. Berlinger has been sued by Chevron, seeking 600 hours of the raw footage recorded for the movie, hoping to find something incriminating to use in the lawsuit. Berlinger has raised over $24,000 on the Kickstarter.com site, and spent his own money to defend his film against this legal action. If Berlinger loses, then any journalist could be sued for recordings of any discussions made by any litigant or lawyer against a major corporation.

In May 2010, a federal judge ordered Berlinger to turn over his video, although Berlinger was granted a temporary stay while he appeals the ruling. If Berlinger loses, then documentary filmmaker and journalism of all kinds will suffer from the loss of the reporter's privilege.

The fact that Chevron/Texaco is despoiling the First Amendment with the same fervor it used for the land in Ecuador may seem like minor damage compared to the harm done to human lives and the environment. But journalists like Berlinger are the reason why we remember and understand the harm corporations do when they are unregulated by the government and ignored by the media. Crude is a movie about a legal battle over the harm caused by unchecked corporate power, and the legal battle over the movie is one more example of why we can't let corporations control our lives.

Write on Human Rights: Take Three

Paul Christian Fermin's excellent review of Fabrizio Lazzaretti and Paolo Santolini's Back Home Tomorrow is the next featured entry in Facets' "blog the Human Rights Watch Film Festival" contest!


There’s a scene in Back Home Tomorrow where a mother tries negotiating with doctors preparing to amputate her son’s hand, or at least what’s left of it, after being exposed to a residual land mine. Her request? To cut only three of her child’s fingers, as opposed to severing from the wrist as recommended by the surgeon. Her plea comes not from a place of medical expertise or even passing knowledge, but from somewhere familiar to parents willing to sacrifice nearly anything for their children, if only to salvage a charred (and by now useless) hand—a Pyrrhic victory by anyone’s standards.

Yet it would be inaccurate to assume that this sort of “unrelenting brutality” is what comprises the rest of the documentary (and by extension my fault for giving that impression). On the contrary, Back Home Tomorrow achieves an astonishing poetry in its, at times, frenetic intercutting between the stories of two young lives: seven-year-old Murtaza, another Kabul victim of land mines, many of which are leftovers from the Afghan-Soviet War; and sixteen-year-old Yagoub, whose family fled from Darfur to a Mayo refugee camp in Khartoum, hoping to find medical attention for his mitral regurgitation (a heart disorder requiring treatment their entire village combined was unable to afford). The beacon of hope for them is Emergency, an Italian NGO that provides free medical and surgical treatment for civilian war victims, one out of three of whom happens to be a child.

The narrative follows these two boys from admittance to discharge, maintaining a dialectical pattern of chaos and then calm, misery and then some joy—however momentary—before the pattern repeats itself again. So, we’re treated to an impromptu wheelchair race involving Murtaza and his friends at the Afghan hospital—before cutting to a close-up of a severed hand—or to the operating table with Yagoub’s chest split wide open, cross-cut with images of his family members waiting patiently, outside, under the cool of the shade. It’s a dialectic established as early as the opening credits sequence, and one not always pursued in documentaries. My Neighbor, My Killer, for example—another selection from the Human Rights Watch Film Festival—chronicles the painful and complicated Gacaca proceedings in Rwanda, seemingly unperturbed by any need to “balance” its bleakness with glimpses of hope or joy, and perhaps justifiably so.

That said, Back Home Tomorrow’s calculated juxtapositions can be a bit strained at times—say, when we’re presented with one of the Afghan boys playing quietly in the hospital garden, before cutting directly to wild animals scavenging through a dung heap in Sudan—but for the most part the editing achieves a remarkable lyricism, no doubt helped by its refusal of extended commentaries and directorial voice-overs (techniques more fitting for something like The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court, which also screened at Facets Cinémathèque for the Festival).

Back Home Tomorrow is, after all, a filmic meditation on the effects of war, not its causes. Directors Fabrizio Lazzaretti and Paolo Santolini felt no need to include abstract discourse about “war” and “poverty,” and rightly so—a single take of Murtaza slipping in-and-out of consciousness after surgery, startled by the bandaged stump that exists where his hand should be, immediately establishes their existential reality in a way words could never. And so the unanswered question of why these two children become the focus of this documentary—as opposed to any of the other numerous patients—mirrors, in a strange way, if not the arbitrariness of war itself, then at least its blind intrusions on even the young. “How was I supposed to know it was a mine?” asks one of the Afghan boys near the end.

A final thought: At one point Murtaza wanders into an adjacent hospital ward filled with some of the adult patients. The wordless sequence that follows is, alone, worth the price of admission. The scene invites us to consider that perhaps it’s only in the movies—though, to a certain extent in photography also—where we’re free to gaze into the face of a stranger (even a manifestly foreign one), wide-eyed, searchingly, and unashamed. Much like the children in another Italian film, Rome Open City, the injustices we witness here are to be gathered up and stored in our memories, if only to spur us into future action.

Write on Human Rights: Take Two

Next up in our "blog on the Human Rights Watch Film Festival" contest--Gregory Hess' look at the particularly timely doc, Crude!


From the opening image of Crude, of an old woman with a long wooden piercing stuck through her nose, a red flower adorning it at one end, the path of Joe Belinger's documentary would seem mostly cut and dried. The woman, a member of one of the myriad Amazon Indian tribes in the Ecuadorian rainforest, tells calmly of the hardships her people have endured at the hands of a decades-old botched oil drilling campaign, which displaced thousands of natives and left a trail of ecological havoc in its path. There is evidence of the oil to be found everywhere in her daily life, spilling out into the rivers and laying stagnant in decaying runoff pools, shoddily hidden and left behind by the oil companies. Animals no longer thrive in the region, and diagnoses of cancers and devastating skin ailments abound. Heroes and villains would appear set from the get-go, but Crude commendably dismantles our preconceptions, revealing instead a thirty-year morass of poor decisions, mismanagement and legal jockeying as mucky and dirty as the crude which flows up from the wells.

The Amazonian tribes live like many other non-westernized groups do, with a smattering of modern ways grafted onto their ancient beliefs. Though they may sport eyeglasses and factory-hemmed clothing, their painted faces and rare dialects tell of a deeply rooted lifestyle, which was violently upended when the Ecuadorian government chose to allow Texaco to begin drilling for oil in their midst in the 1960's. Texaco would go on to relinquish the wells to PetrolEcuador, the state-run oil company in 1992, but both operated the pumping stations with equal disregard for the inhabitants of the region.

These native Indians share a quiet grief, a powerful mourning for the loss of their homeland (in a moving scene, a man who has lost both of his two sons recalls his pain with a matter-of-fact calm). Only with the help of a well-funded American legal team and one unlikely Ecuadorian rookie lawyer, Pablo Fajardo, were the effected inhabitants able to summon their collective anger into action, mounting a massive $27 billion class-action suit against Chevron, who merged with Texaco in 2001. But that was in 1993, and the plaintiffs have since been up against not only the limitless pockets of Chevron’s legal team, but also a crooked Ecuadorian government where judges commonly accept bribes and practice law as a distinct afterthought. Thus, for more than a decade the fate of the lawsuit has been on perpetually shaky ground. Fajardo is the film’s most intriguing character, a native Ecuadorian who had not left the country until 4 days before he was brought to New York City to meet with his American legal partners. His rage is palpable and, in a film filled with impassioned shouting, the only rage we can truly trust. He too has lost a brother in this fight, and though he begins the film fresh and not yet disillusioned by the ways of the Ecuadorian (and American) legal systems, his experience in this fight is long.

Texaco maintains that they cannot be held legally responsible for the repercussions of these wells, as they were not in control of them for their entire lifespan. It's classic damage control spin; you've heard it all before, and with BP's not-dissimilar nightmare unfolding right now in the Gulf of Mexico, you will soon hear it again. Though Belinger's film occasionally falls victim to a few PBS-friendly documentary trappings (use of vintage Texaco PR films is effective but old hat), on balance the director maintains a remarkably even hand. Neither side is expressly indicted by the film, and rightly so, as everyone on both ends has a clear agenda. Steve Donziger, the foulmouthed American lawyer for the plaintiffs, says all the right things and offers some cutthroat legal coaching to the Indians who are brought to America, but he is still collecting a healthy paycheck. Indeed, the whole endeavor is being funded by a private law firm hoping to cash in on the positive press if a verdict in the case is ever won. Texaco has no desire to play the villain, and, much as we may desire to paint them as such (I've never heard more squirming in a theater than when Texaco spokesmen were on-screen) we should be careful not to assign blame too carelessly.

It is unclear what (if any) economic gains Ecuador might have reaped from its foolhardy decision to allow Texaco to drill in the region, but the environmental and social impacts 30 years later are could not be more clear. No amount of money could undo the heartache of those who have lost their loved ones, let alone the loss of use of ancestral lands which these tribes have depended on for generations. But, armed with a boisterous American lawyer and an ever-growing stockpile of international attention, they are going after Chevron anyway. Berlinger’s film endeavors to show that the human cost is paramount. True victory would be in assigning fault to this fiasco, which is undoubtedly what Texaco fears the most, and ultimately the hardest thing to pin down. So, the two sides clash on, each one hoping to clear that highest hurdle and end this war at last with as the clear victor. But the course stretches out into the distance, and with so much at stake, there are many miles still to go. Some predict that a verdict in the case will take yet another decade of legal corralling and case-building.

If it takes a village to raise a child, what does it take to raise up a village? For starters, as Berlinger’s film illuminates, it takes a lot of American money, a glossy magazine spread or two, and some British rock stars. When Ecuador elects a new President who understands the gravity of the situation and pledges to help, the team goes ballistic, sensing a new opportunity in their decade-long struggle. The vibrant pasillo music reminded me vaguely of a zither, which took my thoughts to Orson Welles famous speech on the Vienna Ferris wheel in The Third Man. Looking down at the people below, he asks, “what if one of those tiny dots were to suddenly… stop moving?” Would anyone notice? The fact that footage of the film’s interviews has been successfully subpoenaed by Chevron as part of the still-pending lawsuit should speak loud enough for the gravity of the film’s content. In Chevron’s case, those tiny dots could be an entire village, a language, a way of life. And they’re determined to keep you from looking down to notice.

Write on Human Rights: Take One

The reviews are in! Reviews? What reviews?

Some background...

Two week ago, Facets challenged its Facebook fans to review films screening at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, which ran last week at the Cinematheque. The best reviews would be published here at Facets Features, and the writer of the best piece would join us as a Facets Features scribe for 6 months (or maybe more).

Our awesome little contest drew many entries, and after insano review and debate, we're ready to present the best. First up is Joe Alderman's take on Look Into My Eyes.



Naftaly Gliksberg's Look Into My Eyes provokes, questions, reveals, and astonishes. Gliksberg, a Jew living in Israel but hailing from Poland, is a former rabbi turned cinematographer/documentarian. His techniques are at times amusing but also blunt and brutally effective.

Setting out to define—or to find out if it still exists, and in what capacity—modern anti-Semitism, Gliksberg travels from Poland, Israel, France, and Germany to the United States in search of relevant subjects to endure his probing.

Beginning with a sobering scene of Polish-Catholic, Christian rite, Gliksberg shows us an annual celebration/reenactment of the Passion in the woods of rural Poland. He asks the attendees about their family histories with this event, what it means, and how they feel about Jews. This seems innocent enough—even when he asks one man what he thinks about Jews being responsible for the death of Christ (he admits that nowhere in Christianity is this claimed as fact). He asks another person how they would feel if he told them he himself was Jewish; no one seems bothered. Then, curiously, the stereotypes begin and a man tells Gliksberg that Jews always wash their hands after doing business—that that is just “how they are.”

When Gliksberg travels to Germany, he meets a young family whose past with neo-Nazi, right-wing politics still seems to haunt them. He even asks them if he can have their once-prized swastika emblazoned flag, but they deny him, saying it is too monetarily valuable even if they don't find meaning in it. More astonishing, however, are two characters he encounters in Germany, and then America—both heads of major right-wing organizations that preach hatred toward Jews and white purity, among other things. The German man denies the Holocaust ever happened, saying that hundreds of thousands of personal accounts were all lies, part of a “massive global conspiracy.”

Having freshly seen the wonderful reprisal of Fritz Lang's classic Metropolis, the subject matter of Gliksberg's film aroused my interest about ideas of German identity and its relationship with Jewish culture and people: what ideas are encapsulated within German identity? Is there one specific ideal? Have these attitudes been affected by World War II, or have they changed since then? It seems that well before the war, Germany had plenty of woes about class, social order, and work. Exactly how Jews were involved with this and scapegoated remains somewhat of a mystery and grave human tragedy.

Overall, the film is interesting and provocative, but falls short on several levels. It seems obvious that forms of discrimination and hate are present in the modern world, and something about this documentary never quite makes it over this hurdle. That is to question what the filmmakers' thesis really is. Or is there one? Some scenes and interviews seem completely shocking in their subjects' ignorance and ethical shortcomings, but are they? Don't we already know that groups and people like this exist?

In the end, the montage of several extraordinarily effective sequences do not amount to any serious epiphanies or conclusions about the history of Jewish oppression, or what modern anti-Semitism amounts to—just that it exists. If this is Gliksberg's goal, he has succeeded, but his staunch (maybe even timid) objectivity ultimately disappoints.

Facets' Find

Jean-Luc Godard's masterpiece, A Bout de Souffle (Breathless), is rolling out in theatres across the country once again in celebration of its 50th anniversary. 50 years! Unbelievable. Viewed today, it's as vibrant and modern as many contemporary films. And a helluva a lot better, too!

Philip French from the Guardian has some interesting thoughts on Breathless at 50 here. I also highly recommend Geoffrey O’Brien's Breathless reminiscence in the new issue of Film Comment.

Facets' Find

It's World Cup time! In between matches, Facets Features is staying pumped with soccer movies! First up, the high-energy action of Stephen Chow's spectacular Shaolin Soccer (2001)!

Who Wants to Play Spider?

Did you miss the Facets Night School Guest Host edition kick-off event this past Saturday night?

Fear not!

Film writer Jason Coffman's lecture, Pam Grier, Switchblade Sisters & Spider Babies: An Intro to Jack Hill is now online! And thanks to USTREAM, you can enjoy ALL Night School lectures without venturing to the Cinematheque in the wee hours of the night.

You really should, though. You don't know what you're missing!

The Ecstasy of Holy Rollers

Shalom! Want to make some extra money? Okay, it’s simple: you’ll be transporting medicine for rich people. Take this suitcase, and don’t open it for anybody. If you’re asked questions, give simple answers. Relax. And above all, act Jewish.

Between 1998 and 1999, over 1 million Ecstasy pills were trafficked into New York by a small group of Hasidic Jews. Holy Rollers uses this true premise as the basis of a morality play, with an unlikely drug courier at its center.

Sam Gold (Jesse Eisenberg, whose nervous stutter is never more effective) is both at home and lost in his tight-knit community. His family’s lack of money is affecting his prospects for a wife, and he is unsure whether to continue working for his critical fabric-pushing father or study to become a rabbi. When Sam’s neighbor Yousef (Justin Bartha) takes him to Europe and gives him a suitcase to carry, Sam plays along. He’s shocked to find out the contents are drugs, but he’s given an envelope of cash. More importantly, Sam’s told he did a good job.

We’ve seen it all before: well-meaning hero is thrust into a world of corruption and excess—and evolves into the best game player of all. What sets Holy Rollers apart is what its main character has at stake. On the one hand, Sam has more money than he ever dreamed of, and the approval he doesn’t find in his own family. On the other hand, the community talks. His family won’t even accept the new oven they need so badly. As he falls asleep in shul, his faith—which has always sustained him—slowly slips away.

Holy Rollers glimpses into a culture where tradition, family and God are meant to anchor but can inspire rebellion. Even at the height of criminal behavior, a drug kingpin calls his mother on Shabbas and a stranger’s innocent offer of prayer literally brings an estranged Hasid to his knees. Sure, the fall from grace is a tale as old as time. But when done just right, even the best-known plot twist becomes a bumpy, fascinating ride.


-Lauren Whalen

*For more of Lauren’s film reviews, check out her blog, The Unprofessional Critic.

Facets' Find

Sometimes you stumble across something on Youtube that changes your life.

This clip from the Dogville Comedy short, The Big Dog House (Zion Myers/Jules White, 1930), qualifies.

Absolutely. Wow.

Facets' Find

Summer's here! Well, technically it doesn't kick-in until June 21st, but the heat and crazy drive to be outside has Facets Features in the summer state of mind. That can only mean one thing...

Frankie and Annette!

If you don't want to drop everything and hit the surf and sand after watching Beach Blanket Bingo (William Asher, 1965), then you have no soul.

Facets' Find

Right back at ya, Marilyn. Facets Features remembers the woman who epitomizes Hollywood sexiness on what would have been her 84th birthday.