Mark Jenkins

'More Than Honey' Sees A World Without Bees

Mark Jenkins — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 21:04:00 +0000

An amiably shaggy combination of science lesson, whimsical musing and alarm bell, More Than Honey isn't as urgent as its eco-catastrophic subject — the possible destruction of the world's critically important honeybee populations — might seem to require. But the documentary's most memorable vignette is suitably unnerving: a visit to northern China, where the threatened disappearance of bees has already come to pass, leaving workers to pollinate fruit trees ... by hand.

Even in a country whose economy is predicated on cheap labor, the scene is chilling.

Resnais' Lively, Metatheatrical Look At Death

Mark Jenkins — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 21:01:00 +0000

As a relatively young man, French director Alain Resnais made films about loss, remembrance and the ghosts of a recent history that included the Holocaust, Hiroshima and the brutal Franco-Algerian war. He was 89 when he directed his latest film, You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet, which also considers the presence of the past. But the director's concern with real-life horrors has been replaced here by an outlook that's both playful and explicitly theatrical.

This isn't a new development.

Teenage 'Kings Of Summer' Rule A Predictable Sitcom World

Mark Jenkins — Thu, 30 May 2013 21:02:00 +0000

Like the recent Mud, The Kings of Summer is a tale of feral adolescent pals in search of freedom and adventure. The movies even share essentially the same awkwardly contrived climax.

Will, Jaden Smith In Space, Without Fun

Mark Jenkins — Thu, 30 May 2013 19:00:00 +0000

A disastrous father-son endeavor about a calamitous father-son expedition, After Earth doesn't play to the strengths of any of its major participants.

Will Smith portrays a stern outer space hero devoid of the bantering wit and easygoing demeanor of his trademark roles. Director M. Night Shyamalan, auteur of twisty The Sixth Sense, struggles with a surprise-free plot and a trial-by-fire moral so earnest it suggests a circa-1944 World War II flick. And Jaden Smith, in the movie's tissue-thin principal role, is called on to act.

'We Steal Secrets': A Sidelong Look At WikiLeaks

Mark Jenkins — Thu, 23 May 2013 21:48:00 +0000

Current-events buffs probably think they know the tale of WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange. Prolific filmmaker Alex Gibney may have thought the same when he began researching his film We Steal Secrets. But this engrossing documentary soon diverges from the expected.

Even the movie's title, or rather the source of it, is a surprise. Not to spoil the fun, but it's neither Assange nor one of his allies who nonchalantly acknowledges that "we steal secrets."

Assange himself, currently in self-imposed exile at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, didn't speak to Gibney.

'Bidder 70,' Still Raising His Hand To Be Heard

Mark Jenkins — Thu, 16 May 2013 21:03:00 +0000

In its final months, the George W. Bush administration hastily organized a mineral-rights auction for federal land in Utah, much of it near national parks. Environmentalist and economics student Tim DeChristopher attended the sale and — impulsively, he says — bid on and won 22,000 acres he had no intention of exploiting.

The feds came down on him like a ton of oil derricks.

'Augustine' And Her Diagnosis Get Another Look

Mark Jenkins — Thu, 16 May 2013 21:03:00 +0000

Onstage, in front of an audience, the young woman seemingly goes into a trance, overcome by a power that shakes and contorts her. The commotion appears profoundly sexual; she grabs at her crotch as she writhes. When the woman reaches some kind of release, the spell is broken, and she becomes calm. She leaves the stage to enthusiastic applause.

This isn't one of those New Vaudeville acts; it's what passed for medicine in 1870s France.

'In The Air,' A Sense Of Stakes For A '70s Youth

Mark Jenkins — Thu, 02 May 2013 21:03:00 +0000

In the opening minutes of Something in the Air, the protagonist carves an "A" (for anarchy) into his school desk, and participates in a street demonstration that ends in a punishing flurry of police billy clubs.

Building A Home For A Client Who Can't Live In It

Mark Jenkins — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 21:03:00 +0000

The off-screen protagonist of Herman's House, Herman Wallace, already has a dwelling for his body: a 6-foot-by-8-foot cell at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, aka Angola. But the documentary's on-screen protagonist, Jackie Sumell, wants him also to have a place for his soul: a dream house for a man who desperately needs dreams.

Sumell's project, like the movie that recounts it, mingles art and politics. The Brooklyn-based conceptual artist first contacted Wallace in 2001, after hearing a talk by Robert King, Wallace's friend and colleague.

A Hazy Ode 'To The Wonder' Of Hidden Worlds

Mark Jenkins — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 21:03:00 +0000

Pretty but inert, To the Wonder is a vaporous mystery wrapped in a gauzy enigma — a cinematic riddle that'll appeal principally to those eager for another piece, however tiny, of the puzzle that is Terrence Malick.

To the Wonder continues in the lyrical-to-a-fault mode of the writer-director's The Tree of Life; in fact, this film includes some footage originally shot for that one.