Director Dan Krauss’ The Kill Team is an absolutely enthralling tour-de-force documentary that stares unblinkingly down the ugly, dirty face of war, offering a sobering look at its specters. There are no heroes to be found here, only the very banality of extreme violence. As Specialist Adam Winfield says, “There are no good men left here.” The Kill Team is the story of a platoon that made headlines in 2010 after it was discovered that 5 soldiers in the group had essentially murdered 3 innocent Afghani civilians “for sport.” The film focuses on Specialist Adam Winfield who had attempted to alert authorities to the “kills” taking place, only to himself be charged by the Army and face a lengthy prison sentence. The absurd dichotomy of someone being labeled a whistle blower and a murderer in the same breath lies at the crux of The Kill Team’s main argument: the military can be a ruthless machine that often victimizes its own, not just the enemy. The terrible face of the “war on terror” is made poignantly human here: “The constant pressure to having to kill and being shot at is overwhelming. It is impossible not to surrender to the insanity of it all.”
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AFI Documentaries Preview
112 Weddings
Filmmmaker Doug Block spent two decades working as a wedding videographer. In 112 Weddings, he revisits some of the couples he saw walk down the aisle, looking to find answers about the nature of marriage and whether the proverbial wedded bliss materialized for them. The premise seems rather interesting; unfortunately, the stories of the couples are not particularly compelling. One theme that emerges is that almost all of them had kids and that, boy, having children is really hard (serious newsflash here) and has the potential to really rock a relationship. Aside from that, it becomes pretty obvious that it is hard to encapsulate married life into sound bites culled together from brief interviews.
Some of the couples featured are a pair of Burner-types, who post a “partnership ceremony” and 13 years together decide to go traditional and marry; a comically uptight American married to a Korean violinist; some Brooklyn hipster-types; and David Bromberg, screenwriter of the indie flick Dedication, whose love of prescription drugs and general manic-ness make for some tragic scenes. And of course, we have the requisite “my husband is cheating on me,” couple as well. Overall, the couples featured, lesbian couple notwithstanding, are fairly homogeneous. Longitudinal study this is not. And for the fun subject that this is, this movie is surprisingly not terribly fun. On the flip side, it is also not gloomy enough to make one get serious cold feet-itis about marriage or to denounce “the institution,” for that matter either. It’s fairly light fare, but it does leave the viewer longing for a little less fluff.
BYT Spring/Summer 2014 Film Guide
The dynamic Georgetown alum duo of Mike Cahill and Brit Marling is back with the follow up to their brilliant Another Earth, I Origins. Expect more of a thinking man’s sci-fi, where science actually helps us learn more about being human. In I Origins, a molecular biologist (Michael Pitt of The Dreamers fame) and his lab partner are experimenting with giving non-functioning-eyed organisms sight. The eyes/Is have it.
Sexy Beast–in one word, unnerving. Director Jonathan Glazer is back after 10 years with similarly unsettling matter with Under The Skin, “a horror with a heart,” starring Scarlett Johansson as an impossibly mesmerizing and prepossessing alien with a British accent. “You don’t really want to wake up, do you?” I am sure most audience members would agree.
Director Sydney Freeland filmed Drunktown’s Finest near the Navajo Reservation she was raised in. It’s a film about young Native Americans, with some of the themes you would anticipate–alcoholism, poverty, search for an identity, finding one’s place. Yet, there is a certain levity that links the stories of Sick Boy, who has enlisted in the Army to support his family but is at risk of getting booted before basic training, Nizhoni, who was adopted by white parents and spent most of her adolescence in faraway private schools, and Felixia, a pre-op transsexual who secretly turns tricks while living with her tradition-minded grandparents on the reservation.