Home Cinema
by Leonard Heldreth

TV series leads to film, Pixel hits another home run
The films this month are extremely varied: a first-rate animation feature, a major documentary and a television series coupled with a feature film.

Sicko
Michael Moore’s new documentary, Sicko, has some of the same problems as his previous films (Roger and Me, Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine) and most of the same strengths. While he may not have answers for the questions he asks, he has a remarkable facility for asking the questions everyone should be asking. This time, the subject is American health care, and the topic is ripe for his criticism.
Other than mentioning a few cases, Moore does not deal with the fifty million Americans who are unable to get health insurance; rather he focuses on those who thought they had insurance and then, when they needed care, found out their companies didn’t cover their problems.
One woman, knocked unconscious in a car accident, was denied coverage for her ambulance trip to the hospital because it was not “preauthorized.” A little girl’s need for an ear operation was denied because surgery for one ear was approved, but surgery for both ears was “experimental.” It seems to be a favorite word for denying treatment, as a man with kidney cancer learned after finding a donor who would give him a bone marrow transplant, but the operation was deemed “experimental” and not approved; he died. We all know stories of ways medical and insurance bureaucracies manage to avoid payment, and Moore’s listing should surprise no one except perhaps in the extremity of the examples, e.g., the man who had to decide which of his two severed fingers to sew on because he couldn’t afford both.
Moore traces the history of health-care-for-profit to Richard Nixon, but, as big a weasel as Nixon was, he couldn’t have done it without help from his friends, and Moore names some. He spends a major part of the film interviewing doctors and patients in Canada and France, countries whose free health care produces people who live three years longer than their U.S. counterparts.
The most controversial part of the film was when some survivors of the September 11, 2001 attack were taken to Cuba to see if they could get the same free treatment at the U.S. base that the terrorists received who were being held prisoner there. When the people were turned away, Moore took them to a hospital in Cuba, where they received treatment. The Cuban government played this for all it was worth, but the people received the treatment they were denied in the United States, and this single episode does not invalidate the rest of what Moore argues.
Moore doesn’t provide space for critics to refute him, but then, why should he? Let them raise the money and compile the information to support their own positions. If only seventy-five percent of what he says is right, a lot of people in the health business ought to hide their heads in shame.
Another area where Moore took some heat is that in an addendum to the film, he acknowledges he anonymously donated $12,000 to help with the medical expenses of the wife of Jim Kenefick, the founder of one of the more virulent anti-Moore blogs. Critics claim he is grandstanding, but how many of them have contributed money, for whatever reason, to help people who oppose them? The DVD provides considerable bonus material, which further amplifies the discussion, although some of it veers away strictly from medical insurance and deserves to be in the supplements instead of the main film.
Will Moore’s film anger enough people to pass a health reform bill? Only time will tell. But, if nothing else, he has documented that there are angry people who may make their voices heard at election time. This film is one everyone needs to see, even if the result is only to push the health care issue to the political front burner. Top

Ratatouille
Brad Bird and his crew at Disney’s Pixar studios continue to prove that no one else in animation in the United States is in their league. After the highly regarded The Gentle Giant and the successful Finding Nemo, Bird raises the standard again with Ratatouille, a film that defines what can be done with animation artwork and narration.
Remy the rat (voice of Patton Oswalt) lives in the French countryside with his father Django (Brian Dennehy) and ratpack brothers and sisters. The family does what rats do—eat garbage. But Remy has refined taste buds that reject the garbage of his family; just by sniffing or tasting something, he can determine what the food is made of. Although the family ridicules his exaggerated sense of taste, they come to value it when he detects rat poison and saves their lives.
The family is forced to evacuate the farmhouse to sewers that lead them to Paris. Remy finds himself outside the restaurant of his idol, chef Auguste Gusteau (Brad Garrett). Gusteau, author of Anyone Can Cook, recently has expired in despair after a negative review by food critic Anton Ego (Peter O’Toole) caused his restaurant to lose one of its five stars.
Trying to scrounge some food, Remy becomes involved with a skinny, red-headed dishwasher named Linguini (Lou Romano) and helps him create a spectacular soup. The rest of the film focuses on the growing symbiotic relationship between Remy and Linguini, as the boy, with Remy’s guidance, works his way up the culinary pecking order to become rightful heir to the deceased Gusteau.
The film’s plot generally avoids the usual animation clichés and easy moral platitudes in favor of carefully detailed scenes and complex emotional situations. The title of Gusteau’s book is reinterpreted several times during the film, and while there are some well-done chase scenes, they do not dominate as they tend to in most animation films. The rats are not like the usual Disney mice; they are fat and hairy and no one would want them in a kitchen or anywhere else in the house. That Bird and his crew make Remy effective as a hero is no small accomplishment.
The quality of the animation itself is one of the joys of the film. Paris is lovely, the rats’ hair and other textures are carefully detailed, the restaurant kitchen dazzles, individual scratches can be seen on the pans and all of it glows with color and light.
The film also shows the intense, competitive world of French restaurants where subjective ratings can lead to success or failure. The sizzle of the seafood in pans, the stirring of sauces and soups, the arrangement of food on plates—when you finish this movie, you want to go out to a fine restaurant and, like the food critic, tell the chef to surprise you with the best. The title, by the way (beside the pun on “rat”), refers to a simple peasant dish that Remy turns into a culinary masterpiece.
The food critic concludes the film by commenting upon the role of the critic, saying it is easy for him to evaluate and ridicule, for he has not participated in the creation of anything, and, ultimately, critics are unimportant for they have not created much. He is, of course, right—critics could not exist without the people who create the food, clothes, books, movies and other artifacts of civilization they evaluate. Under the best conditions, a critic may encourage people to be adventurous, to try something not explored before, in the hope they will find something to make life more joyous or exquisite. Therefore, I recommend you start off the new year with Ratatouille, one of the more satisfying cinematic pleasures. Top

Firefly and Serenity
Television series are normally not covered in this column, but the recently released Serenity is, in effect, the wrap-up of the cancelled television series Firefly, and therefore the series needs to be addressed. Specifically, Firefly was the name of the science fiction western created by Joss Whedon (who created Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off, Angel).
Thirteen episodes were aired, in the wrong order, on the Fox network, before the show was cancelled for unexplained reasons. The cast had filmed fifteen episodes, and these were issued with some supplementary material, in the correct order, as a boxed set of DVDs and sold extremely well, catching the eye of Universal Studios.
Whedon was offered the chance to make a feature film using the same cast and sets, a deal he accepted because it gave him a chance to wrap up several loose ends from the series and bring it to a reasonable closure. The film did not do well at the box office, possibly because of bad marketing and distribution, but apparently it is selling well as a DVD (Firefly fans equal Star Trek fans in their dedication).
I seldom watch television, but, as preparation for seeing Serenity, I rented and watched Firefly and found the episodes remarkably well-done, providing action and ongoing character development at a level above what Hollywood usually produces. The series is set 500 years in the future, after a war has split the civilized universe, and the losers have fled to outer planets, where they survive in rugged, lawless environments that often resemble the American West. They carry handguns and rifles, rob trains and dodge bounty hunters but travel in a spaceship more realistic than those in most sci-fi films (no engine noises or explosions can be heard in space). These are the people who make up the crew of Serenity, a Firefly class of transport ship that will move anything from here to there as long as there’s money to be made.
There are no “aliens,” only humans treating each other as badly as they have for thousands of years. The special effects are outstanding without ever getting in the way of the people moving through them, and they are more realistic than most of the scenes in the Star Wars prequels.
The combination of Wild West and rocket ships doesn’t sound as if it would work, but in some strange way, Whedon brings them together beautifully. The last shot of the credits for each episode shows a herd of horses galloping toward the camera as a rocket ship flies overhead. There’s even a catchy theme song.
Much of the strength of the series comes from the continuing cast of nine crew members, whom the audience learns about as the series goes along. Captain Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) is one of the few survivors of the Battle of Serenity in the previous war, and he named his spaceship so he would never forget. Still opposing the monolithic Alliance that now rules space, he hides, lies when necessary and works at being a minor irritation for the Alliance—think of him as a more cynical, seasoned Han Solo who would have shot Greedo first.
His second-in-command is Zoe (Gina Torres), a tough rebel officer in the past war who can fight, shoot or plot with the best of them as she demonstrates in nearly every episode. She is married to Wash, the pilot of Serenity (Alan Tudyk). The muscle of the series is embodied in Jayne (Adam Baldwin), who is deadly with weapons, but whose mental processes sometimes have to play catch-up. The other major crew member is Kaylee (Jewel Staite), who looks and acts like a naive country girl but who, as the ship’s mechanic, patches Serenity together and keeps it flying in a way that would have made Star Trek’s Scotty envious.
The remaining cast members are passengers who, for various reasons, are traveling on the ship for an extended period of time. There is the beautiful and powerful Inara (Morena Baccarin), a “companion” (i.e., professional prostitute) in a society where “companions,” perhaps in a parallel to geisha girls, are near the top of the social classes. Inara has attached her shuttle to Serenity and its journeys as a way of expanding her client base; they are glad to have her as an important passenger.
Little is revealed about Shepherd Book (Ron Glass), a religious figure who has just left a monastery but who is clearly more than a simple shepherd. The last passengers to come on board are Simon (Sean Maher), a handsome young doctor, and River (Summer Glau), his sister whom he has rescued from an Alliance laboratory where she has been subjected to physical and mental trauma whose effects only gradually become apparent. She starts off as a minor figure in the series, but moves front and center in the last episode and in the feature film. The Alliance wants these two back at any cost.
The crew members of Serenity encounter villains who are almost always interesting and often original, from the people who hire Mal for illicit purposes to those who, like Saffron, are more or less than they pretend to be. Two of the most intriguing are the bounty hunters who show up in the last episode of the series and in the feature film. In the background and often intruding into the action are the Reavers, insane cannibalistic humans.
The film Serenity picks up where the series stops and provides a slam-bang climax to the story. It is not necessary to watch the series before watching Serenity, which was created to stand on its own, but you will appreciate what happens to the characters more if you know more about them.
Watching the series and the film in sequence is like sinking into a good action novel; both are available locally on DVD—although you may have to call around. If you like science fiction at all or even relish good, character-driven action, watch the first two or three episodes on the first disk of Firefly. You may find yourself hooked, as I did. Have a cinematic New Year. Top
—Leonard G. Heldreth

Editor’s Note: All films reviewed are available on DVD or VHS from local stores. Reviews of earlier films cited can be found at www.mmnow.com

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