Tag: The Invisible War

The Best (And Worst) Movies of 2012

Didn’t anyone get the memo that cinema is dead? 2012 came into greatness notoriously late in the year (if not trickling into next year), but the amount of quality that came out of big budget blockbusters, prestigious Oscar bait and critical darlings is too convincing to say that TV continued to dominate the cultural conversation this year. I can be cynical, but I’d rather just celebrate the movies with a generous round up of everything I hope you’re talking about and just waiting to discover.

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1. The Master

Paul Thomas Anderson has me in his control. “The Master” is elegant, ambiguous, malleable and powerful. With Scientology as only the setting, it’s a difficult, dream-like film open to interpretation, but its strongest themes are the power and reach of the human mind and the capabilities of man. Joaquin Phoenix and Phillip Seymour Hoffman in the two best performances of the year are titans at war, one filled with unpredictable rage, repressed sexuality and energy, the other a deafening force of eloquence and conviction. Mihai Malaimare Jr.’s 70mm photography ripples with color and fantasy. Jonny Greenwood’s score pulses with animalistic alacrity. Watching “The Master” and assigning it meaning is a testament to the richness and complexity of mankind.

2. Life of Pi

If “Life of Pi” cannot make you believe in God, it at the very least can provide the faith that there is beauty and excitement in the world. Ang Lee’s innovative use of 3-D places us on an infinite plain of existence, one that has stunning natural beauty, visceral thrills, comedic charms, emotional poignancy and none of the Disney-fied cuteness. Pi’s sea voyage is pure visual poetry that resonates with you on a deeply spiritual level.

3. Moonrise Kingdom

Perhaps no director today has a more distinct visual and tonal style than Wes Anderson, but “Moonrise Kingdom” is his most personal and close to the heart by far. Anderson funnels his love of classical music, the French New Wave and low rent spectacle into a magical film about kids living beyond their age. It finds the beauty of young love in a joyous, colorful and hilarious art house movie that anyone can relate to.

4. Beasts of the Southern Wild

“Benh Zeitlin’s “Beasts of the Southern Wild” is a wondrous, poetic, beautiful film about all the things humans can do when we stop acting like people afraid of nature and start living like brave beasts that become one with the world. It’s about color, light and discovery. It’s about being loved by the world, loving it back and understanding how to truly live. It’s about facing the other beasts of the world, and doing it head on.” (Excerpt from my review)

5. The Kid With a Bike

When a boy is abandoned by his father at an orphanage, he spends months blindly fighting to get back to him while rejecting the love and affection of others. The French film “The Kid With a Bike” is about the attachments we place on the things we love and the unexpected consequences that come of them. The Dardenne brothers’ simple and rugged film digs deep in its grainy and grizzled surface to find the sentimentality within.

6. Skyfall

At 50 years old, James Bond has never looked better. “Skyfall” marks the first time we’ve asked about Bond’s past and questioned his future, but we do so in by far the most exciting and stylish action movie of the year. Roger Deakins’s digital cinematography turns Bond’s fist fights into elegant shadow ballets, and Javier Bardem’s snake-like sexuality and compulsions make for some of the finest screen villainy this century.

7. The Invisible War

Nearly 20 percent of all women who have served in the armed forces are sexually assaulted during their line of duty. That’s the horrifying truth at the heart of “The Invisible War,” a documentary that for that statistic alone is essential viewing for anyone in the military. But more so, Kirby Dick’s film is moving in its unification of women (and men!) who once all considered themselves an army of one. What sacrifices are we really asking our soldiers to make for our country?

8. Lincoln

Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” is the stirring American vision we deserve. A remarkably authentic account of the effort to abolish slavery, the story of “Lincoln” is a war of words, not worlds, yet remains as intense and rousing as any action movie this year. Daniel Day-Lewis melts into the visage of our 16th President while making the role all his own, and the monumental performances of Tommy Lee Jones and Sally Field anchor the best screen ensemble of the year.

9. Looper

Destined to be an action sci-fi classic, “Looper” accomplishes the impossible by being cool and accessible while staying dark and emotional. Director Rian Johnson makes the time travel conceit something other than an exercise in futility, devoting more attention to the film’s cocky, narcissistic heroes (Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis, his best dramatic work since “The Sixth Sense”), who are really both the same person. “Looper” is even a powerful forewarning of our civilization’s decline into more and more crime and violence, a nuance that along with its lens flares, canted angles and impressive visual effects, make it refreshingly modern.

10. Rust and Bone

“Rust and Bone” is a powerful and aggressively emotional film about people who are incomplete. A French romance of imperfect characters who are mending physically but damaged emotionally, Marion Cotillard and Matthias Schoenaerts give tough, often unsentimental performances that are not without humor and heart. Director Jacques Audiard (“A Prophet”) finds a mix between moments and visuals that feel stark and lonely, such as a lengthy wide shot of Cotillard lying in a hospital bed, and those between Cotillard and a whale, that are elegant statements of forming a bond.

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Honorable Mention – The Turin Horse

Looking and feeling the way “The Turin Horse” does, one would believe it is a tortured, yet essential classic belonging to another time. But it came out in 2012 and may be the last film from the elderly Hungarian master Bela Tarr. It is bleak and draining beyond belief. In black and white and with only 30 shots, it is an excruciating sit. It is almost completely empty of activity, plot or dialogue. It will make you sick at the sight of baked potatoes. And by the end of it, you will feel as if the world is ending. Yet to call it anything other than spellbinding is a gross understatement.

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11th Place Continue reading “The Best (And Worst) Movies of 2012”

The Invisible War

“The Invisible War” has forever changed my perception about the American military. It will stay that way for me and the people profiled in this film until action is taken. Kirby Dick’s documentary is a horrifying exposé about sexual assault and rape in the armed services. The countless veterans here speaking out about their rape considered themselves valuable individuals in an army of one. Now even that privilege has been taken away with this repulsive act. These people speak of the soldiers they once called brothers as the “they” who turned them into victims.

According to U.S. Government Studies cited by “The Invisible War,” nearly 20 percent of all the women who have served in the American military have reported being sexually assaulted while in the line of duty. As is true of most rape cases, many more go unreported. But “The Invisible War” analyzes the systemic problems in the military legal system in addressing this issue, including why so few victims openly report abuse, why little to no action is taken and why this continues to happen.

Dick finds several dozen women, many of whom appear on camera for only a moment, who were raped while serving. They belong to the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard. Each had their own reason for enlisting, and each now has their own personal trauma, but Dick’s gift is in finding how their stories are strikingly similar.

They remember their heads hitting the wall, a friend or officer suddenly being on top of them, a gun being held to their head and finding out they were pregnant later. Some of them remember this happening numerous times.

These are strong women who have been through the same training as their attackers, although now Kori Cioca, whom the film follows most closely, carries both a cross and a Smith & Wesson knife. Jesus can only provide so much protection, she says.

As a result of being attacked, Kori is suffering from severe pain in her jaw, restricting her to a diet of soft foods. For months she has been calling the VA office to receive medical coverage, but she remains at the end of a long waiting list. The movie uses jump cuts of her listening to call-waiting music on speakerphone, emphasizing her perpetual wait. When she finally goes into the office, on Veteran’s Day no less, the doctors order X-Rays for her back and nothing for her jaw. We see Kori’s mind-boggling struggle and rigorous patience and think of the many other veterans also being denied medical coverage. How can we treat our own so poorly?

But Kori is not alone, nor are the rape numbers merely statistics. It is now abundantly clear to me that rape does not just affect your body. It impacts health, society, romance, careers and lives. Dick’s film finds a terrific balance between facts and drama. Take for instance that 40 percent of female veterans who are now homeless were once rape victims, women so haunted in their PTSD that they could not bring themselves back to society to find jobs. If the numbers are unconvincing, ask Kori what it’s like to be too scared show your husband affection or what it’s like to read your own suicide note aloud.

How could these numbers be so shocking? How could this system be so broken? How is it that every general and commanding officer can claim the military has a Zero Tolerance policy? How is it that even our best and brightest Marines are neither safe nor innocent?

The hard truth is that for all intensive purposes, these soldiers are not citizens when it comes to receiving justice and legal rights. In the army, punishment and justice is administered in a closed system, delivered solely by the commanding officer. In 15 percent of the cases, the CO himself is the rapist. In the others, witnesses and suspects can simply keep silent, and the person who has reported the rape is suddenly at risk of their own court martial, threatening their rank and placement.

It’s a boys’ club that celebrates strength and nobility, and some of these investigations that aim to sweep the rape cases under the rug are enraging. One woman named Elle was raped after her fellow soldiers forced her to drink. Her case was closed due to a lack of evidence, and she was later investigated for public intoxication. Another named Ariana was told she was welcoming an assault by wearing the regulation Marine skirt. A third woman, she an active duty Marine who remained anonymous, was raped by a married officer and was cited with having committed adultery.

You begin to ask, why aren’t there more screening procedures for enrolling? Why is the percentage of rapists in the military double that of sex offenders in America? Why do preventative campaigns focus on women, not on finding the guilty? “The Invisible War” makes it seem as if these questions and problems will never end, but it calls attention to them with urgency and poignancy. It addresses flimsy counter arguments with hard-hitting numbers and a wealth of moving testimony. It even extends the need for action into the real world through a convincing portrait of rapists as predators who will act again and again, even once they enter back into our communities.

At the end of the film, Kori visits a veteran’s memorial for women and sees a display of a Purple Heart medal. Maybe she deserves a medal too, she wonders. To her this was an ordeal equivalent to going into combat, and this was her own story of survival. Is this the sacrifice she was supposed to make for her country?

4 stars