Utne Reader Film Reviews: January-February 2009

Article Tools

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

Labor Movement
Orgasmic Birth
(Sunken Treasure; on DVD)

If you’ve never heard that having a baby can be a sensual or even sexual experience, Orgasmic Birth will clue you in to what midwives and other natural birth practitioners have long known: that certain women, under certain conditions, get as much pleasure as pain from giving birth. To be sure, it’s a small proportion, but in Debra Pascali-Bonaro’s documentary this counterintuitive fact is a launching point for all sorts of myth busting about C-sections, labor-induction drugs, and other family-unfriendly hospital birth practices. “Most people aren’t comfortable with a woman in labor,” one expert says. Orgasmic Birth will challenge your comfort level, and perhaps raise it. —K.G.

Graphic Carnage
Waltz with Bashir
(Sony Pictures Classics; in theaters)

Waltz with Bashir isn’t just a haunting portrait of war’s lingering effects; it’s also a bold and painterly piece of political art. Using hand-drawn graphic animation in a quasi-documentary mode, Israeli director Ari Folman explores his role—and his country’s—in the 1982 massacre of thousands of Palestinian refugees in West Beirut. As a veteran of the Lebanon War, Folman becomes plagued with a recurrent nightmare he fails to understand. The film unfolds like a psychedelic therapy session, as Folman talks to fellow soldiers, recreates their guilt-ridden memories—in often surreal detail—and comes to terms with their collective complicity. Like 2007’s Persepolis, Waltz with Bashir proves cartoons can confront real-life horrors every bit as bracingly as the news ever could. —Anthony Kaufman

Utne Reader Approved

The touching biopic Run for Your Life (Screen Media Films; on DVD) tells the story of the New York City Marathon and its founder: Fred Lebow, a part-huckster, part-visionary immigrant Jew from Transylvania. Using archival footage and interviews with famous New Yorkers, it’s also a keen portrait of today’s New York City. —Bennett Gordon

Wendy and Lucy (Oscilloscope Pictures; in theaters) is a poetic, political parable set in the Pacific Northwest. A young vagabond, Wendy (Michelle Williams), loses her beloved dog, Lucy, and the ensuing search is a moving tale about the unforgiving nature of the American economy. —A.K.

If the economy’s got you down, the breezy yet illuminating I.O.U.S.A. (Roadside Attractions; on DVD) may not cheer you up—but this documentary about the dangers of the ballooning national deficit will help you understand America’s unsustainable fiscal policies. —A.K.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print