MIRAMAX FILMS
Some of Deep's fantastic creatures.
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Deep Blue
Opens Fri., July 1, at Metro
The downside to cable is the expansion of trash programming like Howard Stern, and the upside is Animal Planet, where Deep Blue properly belongs. It's scenic and interesting enough to hold your attention, but there's nothing remotely novel about the oceanic travelogue and whiskey-honeyed narration by Pierce Brosnan. (Nor are Dubya or climate change mentioned.) Once you've seen one seal plucked from the beach in Namibia by a killer whale, you've seen 'em all. (Although I confess to a certain awe—enjoyment?—when one orca, while toying with its wounded prey, swatted the thing about 100 feet in the air with its tail.) The other visual wonders feel familiar, too: Reefs swarm with creatures out of Fantasia; jellyfish trail tendrils like living smoke; sea rays skim overhead like the Federation spaceship in the first shot of Star Wars; in the deepest ocean, bioluminescent creatures seem to have been designed by H.R. Giger. Amazing stuff, but it's not served by 007's comments like, "It is the mysteries of the ocean that continue to elude us." Isn't that why we should make documentaries— precisely so that mysteries don't elude us?
Kids won't complain too much (though the orcas munching the seals and a blue whale calf may cause shock and distress). At their age, I loved Jacques Cousteau movies, too, which finally made me realize what's missing from Deep Blue. Instead of Bond, we need Steve Zissou's drolleries. (Bill Murray did Garfield, so he'd stoop to this.) I know there's a jaguar shark in here someplace. (G) BRIAN MILLER
March of the Penguins
Opens Fri., July 1, at Egyptian
You damn penguins get offa my lawn! Maybe global warming will one day bring these Antarctic birds to Green Lake, where they'll compete with the mallards for bread crusts. For now, however, such enviro-political questions are off the table in this French documentary about the incredible breeding cycle of the Emperor variety of the fowl. (See interview with director Luc Jacquet, p. 80.) March was originally narrated by the birds—that is, French actors speaking their parts in the first person—until it secured U.S. distribution, which has resulted in an insipid new wildlife narration script read by Morgan Freeman. If you got tired of hearing his droning voice in Million Dollar Baby, the penguins are just cute enough to keep you from snoozing off. (And if you do, the resulting confusion about female penguin boxers will probably make the movie seem more interesting in retrospect than it is.)
Fortunately, regardless of what's being said, the casting here is impeccable: These birds are stars unfazed by the camera (they've never been hunted and aren't afraid of film crews). Marching single file across an icy plane, swaying with each step or tobogganing when tired, dwarfed by huge ice formations like Monument Valley, their 70-mile procession to their annual breeding ground takes on the grandeur of Lawrence of Arabia or a John Ford Western. It's bird against the environment, even if you can't tell one bird from another. Male and female are indistinguishable, and for some kids to think they're CGI multiples makes sense—in the harshest possible climate of natural selection, only one model of penguin works, and that's the one that's been copied and reproduced. So perfectly streamlined are they for underwater fishing, you could sketch their outline with three strokes of black ink—but for that daub of orange on their cheeks, like the color World War II fighter pilots used to add to their engine cowls. Unlike Deep Blue, this is a documentary that knows to stick with one animal, and one animal exhaustively.
After such immersion in penguin culture, watching the males sit on their eggs for four months without food in subzero temps, no human father could ever again complain about changing a diaper. And here are offspring remarkably grateful and unfussy about mealtimes—they can't get enough of regurgitated seafood, one day after the next. (I'd really like to know what the chicks were saying in the French-language original, or how their parents were emoting when doing the icy deed.) Still, the Antarctic terrain is so awe-inspiring, and the Emperor parents so determined, that you might want to bring your iPod instead of listening to Freeman's "This is a story about love" penguin platitudes. After the show, you may even feel like going out to dinner for regurgitated fish. (G) BRIAN MILLER
Me and You and Everyone We Know
Opens Fri., July 1, at Uptown
"No one's going to live your life for you," says a nursing-home resident being taxied by Christine, a struggling young artist on her day job. Like she doesn't know that already. Played by the formidably talented performance artist Miranda July, making her feature debut as writer, director, and leading actress, Christine declares in one of her audio collages, "I'm gonna be free and I'm gonna be brave." It's an unironic, utterly uncool declaration, one that American indie film desperately needs to hear. I think it's fair to say that the cycle launched by sex, lies and videotape has reached its decadent late period of detachment, snark, and self-consciousness. Already an award winner at Sundance, Cannes, and SIFF, Me and You genuinely feels like something new and important, while remaining light on its feet. It's a film that's been carefully constructed from its first frame to the last without reference to other movies, without being meta, without its ensemble cast— essentially all unknowns—relying on the familiar indie typologies of slacker, seducer, scoundrel, or chronic mope case. (The soundtrack is even free of alternative rock for once; July is rightfully suspicious of music that will one day be used to sell us cars.)
