Movie marathon

I had the opportunity to go into New York City this weekend, and saw two terrific movies there.

The first was A Jihad for Love, which is the Muslim version of the Jewish film Trembling Before G-d. But interviewing Muslim gays is a bit more harrowing than orthodox Jewish gays. The latter have faced terrible isolation, but the Muslims have faced death. Orthodox Jewish attitude toward homosexuality is rejecting, but the Muslim faith is much harsher. It was sad to watch, but several of the characters have made their peace with their nature and their faith, and that's ultimately uplifting. I tried to paste the movie poster into this post, but wasn't able to (this picture is a scene from the film), but you can see the poster here: http://www.ajihadforlove.com/poster.html

The other film I saw was the Errol Morris documentary, Standard Operating Procedure. The Feel Good movie of year it is not, but it's very powerful, almost too much. I really felt like they could have, maybe even should have, edited about 10 minutes out of the second half. Not the end, which was great, but there was a point when I felt like I was ready to move on to the denouement and not see any more of the abuse. Morris has a sort of trippy style, but it really works for this subject matter. It's a very well made movie. I left the theater feeling sorry for the soldiers, who were definitely scapegoated, but I was also angry at them for their lack of remorse. I didn't hear a single person in the film say "I'm ashamed of what I did" or "What I did was morally wrong." It was gross.

As a side note, I wanted to get a quick bite between films and even though there is a sushi place on every block, I had a craving for Mexican, which is much harder to find. I ended up getting tacos in a Chinese restaurant - I swear. They were about as good as you'd expect Mexican food in a Chinese restaurant to be, but now I can say I've had that particular experience. New York is so weird.

I also watched the Australian movie, Jindabyne, on video, based on a Raymond Carver short story (which I MUST read), So Much Water, So Close to Home. It was good, with a terrific cast (including Gabriel Byne and the incomparable Laura Linney), but not as good as director Ray Lawrence's 2001 film, Lantana, which I totally adored.