Into the Wild
Dir: Sean Penn
2007
**
I really like Sean Penn as a director, so I was hugely disappointed when I saw his 2007 film Into the Wild. The scenery is beautiful and Penn's composition is great but the film is riddled with slow-mo/speedup/overexposure cuts and more camera cliques than you can shake a stick at. At one point our protagonist stands on top of a mountain with his arms out in a spinning camera shot to show he has space and freedom. It's a bit cheap and basic. There was another scene whereby he eats an apple then looks directly at the camera and smiles, showing us that he has enjoyed his apple, I can't list all of these little things that bugged me about this film otherwise I'll get angry. That's what the film made me feel, angry! Christopher Candless is an unlikable character, so maybe Emile Hirsch was a good choice to play him as he is an unlikable actor (he has since grown on me slightly) but that's the problem with the story (or at least the film), I couldn't give a damn about this little brat. There are plenty of films where I've not liked the main character but I have liked the film, this is a huge oversight by Penn, no matter how successful the book was. The supporting cast are also on bad form, the acting is at best, lazy, apart from the truly great performance from Hal Holbrook who was overlooked at the Oscars. It's been a while since I've seen a film so far up its own bottom that I've got so wound up. One star for the scenery and 1 star for Holbrook who is the only thing worth watching this for. Two and a half hours of quite the boring biopic of a selfish, self-centered, immature and quite irritating person, in the wild.

11'09"1 September 11
Dir: Samira Makhmalbaf, Claude Lelouch, Youssef Chahine, Danis Tanovic, Idrissa Ouedraogo, Ken Loach, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Amos Gitai, Mira Nair, Sean Penn, Shohei Imamura
2002
****
11'09''01 is a collection of short films by 11 selected directors from around the world. Each one was given complete freedom to react to the events that happened in New York that day and the results were varied. The collection is of a high standard generally, with some standing out over others, as a collection it is of extreme historical value, is importance seems even more relevant today over a decade later. 

Samira Makhmazbaf - Samira Makhmalbaf highlights the innocents of the children who are most likely to be effected by the results of 9/11 as the village concentrate on building bomb shelters made of bricks, a teacher struggles to educate her class. Poignant, especially as we now know the fate of those children. 

Claude Lelouch - Lelouch uses deafness as a metaphor to show the vulnerability of many that day and also of the unheard voices of that day. He also shows the unexpectedness of the events and the regret we have. 

Youssef Chahine - A misguided and confusing short, if I was in charge it wouldn't have made the cut. I couldn't tell you what the underline meaning was but then I bet Chahine wouldn't be able to give a coherent answer either. A weak submission. 

Danis Tanovic - Tanovic's short shows a group of women, who although shocked and disgusted like the rest of the world, decide to continue with there ongoing protest to the death of their loved ones in war torn Bosnia. 

Idrissa Ouedraogo - This is a more light-hearted short, with a group of kids who think they have found Bin-Laden and try to capture him for reward money. This could be seen as an attack on those who capitalised on the events of 9/11 but in this case, the boys want to spend the money on good, to pay for the medical treatment for one of the boy's mother. 

Ken Loach - Loach takes a different approach to the other directors by taking a real person, 
Vladimir Vega, a Chilean whom took part in protests during the fateful murder of Allende in the 70's, who compares the similarities between the two events and empathises with the people involved through writing a letter to them. 

Alejandro González Iñárritu - Alejandro González Iñárritu's short film is mainly just audio recorded in New York on 9/11. Here and there we see flash imagery of the towers burning and the people falling. This adds nothing to the collection, is completely uncreative and is completely pointless not to mention distasteful. The weakest submission by far. Moore did it much better in Fahrenheit 9/11 and in a much more dignified fashion. 

Amos Gitai - Gitai takes us back to 9/11 but to Israel, where on that morning a car bomb exploded killing several people. It was a suicide bomber. The film doesn't take anything away from New York's pain, it just reminds that this is a daily occurrence in some places around the world, also begs the question, where is the rest of the world on this war on terror? 

Mira Nair - This is probably the most touching and important short of the collection. Nair tells the true story of a Muslim family living in America whose son is killed in the attack. At first the young man is branded as one of the terrorists and the family is scrutinised and mistrusted. In the end, it is realised that the man had actually gone there to help but was killed in the process, highlighting peoples ignorance, misconceptions and the fact that the government has done very little to ease race hatred. 

Sean Penn - I seem to be one of the few that like Penn's short. It is a fairly irrelevant story but a touching one all the same. I'm a big Ernest Borgnine fan and he's brilliant in this as a sad old man, not quite getting to grips with the loss of his wife and living in the shadow of the towers. When they fall, he has a moment of joy as his apartment is filled with light for the first time in years but then it only seems to highlight that his wife isn't there. I personally think Penn took his brief and really ran with it, maybe more so than most of the other directors. 

Shohei Imamura - Certainly the strangest of the collection. This was to be his last film, and declaring that 'There is no such thing as a Holy War' through the spoken work of a snake is a hell of a way to go out.

The Indian Runner
Dir: Sean Penn
1991
****
Sean Penn based his screen play on Bruce Springsteen's song "Highway Patrolman". I don't really see it myself. What is obvious though is that at the relatively young age of 31, Penn understood film and had learned a lot from his heroes, most notably Cassavetes to whom he dedicates this film to along with Hal Ashby. Like a Cassavetes movie, this is an actors film. The pace is slow but the performances are strong, for a directional debut it's pretty amazing. It bombed quite unfairly on release and still hasn't claimed the love its due. Rectify this people!