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In anticipation of getting my hands on a copy of Jesus Camp, I watched two loosely similarly themed documentaries last week. Here is a little bit on each of them.

Devil’s Playground (2002, directed by Lucy Walker) is about a period in every Amish teen’s life called Rumspringa (”running around”). During Rumspringa, adolescents are given the freedom to experience “English” ways of life, with the expectation that they will find a spouse and make the decision to be a part of the Amish religion, permanently. Walker introduces us to a handful of such youths, and we observe both mild and extreme examples of this new freedom.

I found this doc to be fairly objective, although some more input from Amish adults would have been insightful. There are a few interviews and comments from the adult Amish community, but I wanted to see more of how the subjects’ families were reacting to this period that I’m sure is pretty stressful to deal with. It was interesting to see how some of the teens had no questions at all as to what they would decide, and how others really struggled with the implications of either choice. Somewhere in the final third of the film it morphed from a documentary about this Amish period into a film more about the characters (Faran especially), which brought it down to a more personal level.

There’s some great footage and the tone is gentle while sometimes painfully revealing. Walker seems to really care about her subjects and I’m sure that this is how she was allowed to be present in so many of the situations we witness.

Hell House (2001, directed by George Ratliff) is about a suburban Dallas Christian church that puts on a haunted house each Hallowe’en, which thousands of people go through each year. The film was the church’s tenth annual Hell House, so if it’s still happening, they would have just had their fifteenth. This isn’t an ordinary haunted house, though: it’s very “real life” and depicts graphic dramas of situations where young people are seen either choosing God or not. The situations are pretty extreme, and range from suicide, homosexuality/AIDS, pregnancy/abortion, raves, rape, drugs to other pleasantries.

The people in charge of this event are very intense. Vigorous and competitive auditions are held for each of the parts. It’s a bit creepy hearing girls say that they want to be the rape victim or a guy saying that he wants to be the one that blows his brain out. They take extreme examples and present them as if the cause undoubtedly equals the effect. For example, one girl goes to a rave, takes drugs from a strange boy and ends up getting gang raped. Then she goes home and is taunted by a demon about how she is such a bad person. Obviously, then, rave = drugs = gang rape = feeling bad… just for example.

Ratcliff gives a little bit of insight and background into the leaders behind Hell House as well as some of the “actors”, but I felt that it was just to feel sympathy for them, and then maybe not so angry. There is no doubt as to to the passion that they feel for their project, but except for a couple of scenes, I don’t think we get enough specific responses to it. All-in-all, this is a so-so film that could have been much deeper, especially given the controversial subject matter.

Last week Ryan and I rented Rififi (1955) (written by Jules Dassin, René Wheeler and Auguste Le Breton, based upon a the novel by Auguste Le Breton; directed by Jules Dassin). It’s a really cool film noir about a jewelery store heist. In the middle of the film there is an incredible 32-minutes+ sequence with zero dialogue or music, as we watch the men perform the heist. It’s very intense and a brilliant piece of filmmaking. This was a great film with some cool insights as to how the “human element” can make any flawless plan fail.

Noteworthy is how this is the first film that Dassin started and completed after being blacklisted by Hollywood.

This past weekend I watched two films currently in theatres, but in the comfort of my living room. Here are some comments on each of them:

Children of Men (2006, written by Alfonso Cuarón and Timonthy J. Sexton with David Arata, Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, based on the novel by P.D. James; directed by Alfonso Cuarón) was a grand film, and by grand, I mean BIG. The live sets, huge number of extras and extensive setpieces made it a pleasure to watch, especially combined with Emmanuel Lubezki’s striking cinematography. Unfortunately, films cannot be based upon extras and camera work alone; this film had little heart and generally unconvincing performances (a few scenes by Clive Owen aside).

I tend to enjoy post-Apocalyptic (or whatever they’re called) films so I was in no way tempted to press the stop button on my DivX player. Children Of Men had an interesting premise, some great jump! moments and even great war action (the really long single-shot going up the stairs in the apartment building was especially fun), but those things alone do not make up for a lack of believable characters, a satisfying ending or a deeper understanding of why you should care.

The Good Shepherd (2006, written by Eric Roth; directed by Robert DeNiro) was equally underwhelming. There were some good moments from Matt Damon, but the 168 minutes had you jumping back and forth between times, sometimes with flashbacks-within-flashbacks, and all the while Damon looked EXACTLY THE SAME. The topic (the birth of the CIA) was interesting, as was the WWII stuff, but it wasn’t covert, exciting or coherent enough for me to really get into it. Angelina Jolie’s performance isn’t even worth mentioning.

There were some really cool visual transitions, though. It looks like they used real post-WWII (and other) black & white footage of bombed out cities and then spliced in scenes with the film’s characters in them, while turning from black & white to colour. My favourite one was the sweeping overhead shot of Berlin’s Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, but only because I was there a couple of months ago!

Here are my ten favourite films released in 2006. I am not good at lists so I’ve put them in alphabetical order:

An Inconvenient Truth
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
The Departed
The Fountain
Half Nelson
Indigènes
Little Miss Sunshine
Pan’s Labyrinth
The Queen
Red Road

I know that I have been negligent with my reviews, and I hope to get back on track!