Kon-Tiki
Film Review by Kam Williams

At the beginning of the 20th Century, the conventional wisdom was that Polynesia had been settled by Asians arriving from the Far East. But it’s one thing for a pompous professor to simply sit in an ivory tower and speculate about who might have discovered the island group some 1,500 years ago, and quite another to go about proving a theory correct by attempting to replicate the putative pioneers’ perilous feat.

While doing research in the Marquesas on the Isle of Fatu Hiva in the mid-Thirties, a Norwegian anthropologist named Thor Heyerdahl (Pal Sverre Hagen) came up with a novel idea about the roots of the natives. After studying the local fauna and flora, watching the flow of the tides, and listening to aborigine folklore about their ancestors’ arduous trek towards the setting sun, he reasoned that the region must have been settled by tribes migrating there from South America.

Then, when his iconoclastic notion was roundly ridiculed by scholarly colleagues back in academia, Thor decided to prove his detractors wrong by mounting a 5,000-mile expedition from Peru to Polynesia. And although he knew nothing about sailing and couldn’t even swim, he did have the sense to assemble a team capable of assisting him in the dangerous endeavor.

The plan was to build a balsa wood raft identical to the type used by indigenous people in pre-Columbian times, painstakingly following their methods of construction down to the smallest detail. And since they would not be able to steer this vessel christened the Kon-Tiki, Thor estimated it would take about three months for the currents and winds to take them to their destination.

His intrepid crew was comprised of four fellow Norwegians and a Swede, including childhood friend, Erik Hesselberg (Odd Magnus Williamson), the navigator; radioman Knut Haugland (Tobias Santelmann), a decorated World War II veteran; Torstein Raaby (Jakob Oftebro), another radio expert; Herman Watzinger (Anders Baasmo Christiansen), an engineer; and Bengt Danielsson (Gustaf Skarsgard), the Swedish steward.

Co-directed by Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg, Kon-Tiki faithfully chronicles their historic, transoceanic voyage. Despite the fact that most of the picture’s dialogue is English, it somehow earned a well-deserved Oscar nomination in the Best Foreign Language Film category earlier this year.

The men set sail in the spring of 1947, encountering storms, shark attacks, ship rot, insubordination and a host of other challenges en route. The deliberately-paced production repeatedly harks back to a bygone era when much of the Earth’s surface was yet to be explored.

Replete with breathtaking Pacific panoramas shot on location, Kon-Tiki is worth watching for the captivating visuals alone. However, the storytelling is solid, too, with all adding up to a fitting tribute to the enviable exploits of the legendary Thor Heyerdahl.

Excellent (4 stars)

Rated PG-13 for violence

In English, Norwegian, Swedish and French with subtitles

Running time: 118 minutes

Distributor: The Weinstein Company

To see a trailer for Kon-Tiki, visit

Ken Burns
“The Central Park Five” Interview
with Kam Williams
 

Ken Burns has been making films for more than thirty years. Since the Academy Award-nominated Brooklyn Bridge in 1981, Ken has gone on to direct and to produce some of the most acclaimed historical documentaries ever made.

The late historian Stephen Ambrose said of his films, “More Americans get their history from Ken Burns than any other source.” A December 2002 poll conducted by Real Screen Magazine listed The Civil War as second only to Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North as “the most influential documentary of all time,” and named Ken Burns and Robert Flaherty as the “most influential documentary makers” of all time.

In March, 2009, David Zurawik of The Baltimore Sun said, “… Burns is not only the greatest documentarian of the day, but also the most influential filmmaker period. That includes feature filmmakers like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. I say that because Burns not only turned millions of persons onto history with his films, he showed us a new way of looking at our collective past and ourselves.”

Ken’s films have won ten Emmy Awards and two Oscar nominations, and in September of 2008, at the News & Documentary Emmy Awards, Ken was honored by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Here, he talks about his latest film, The Central Park Five, co-directed by his daughter, Sarah, and her husband, David McMahon, which premieres on PBS on April 16th.

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Scary Movie 5
Film Review by Kam Williams

What do Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan, Mike Tyson, Katt Williams and Snoop Dogg have in common? They’re all celebrities whose names have been splashed across the tabloids in connection with controversy. But in a macabre gesture ostensibly intended to exploit their notoriety, this motley collection of the craziest people currently in the public eye was tapped to make cameo appearances in Scary Movie 5.

The picture was directed by Malcolm Lee (Undercover Brother) who opted for an overhaul of the series with a fresh set of characters rather than a sequel. That shouldn’t be a problem for purists, since each of the earlier installments has basically been a string of disconnected skits spoofing the latest horror movies.

Among the fright flicks lampooned here are Paranormal Activity, The Black Swan, Evil Dead, Sinister and Mama. However, this equal opportunity offender also takes potshots at offerings from other genres like The Help, Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Witness Protection, Planet of the Apes and 127 Hours.

Unfortunately, the disappointing production is little more than a crummy appeal to the lowest common denominator employing generous helpings of scatological humor. Worse, none of the sketches elicited even a perfunctory pity laugh from the audience I watched the movie with.

The point of departure is a sex scene in which Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan are joined in bed by a colorful menagerie of oddballs, animals and objects. The kinky copulating is sped-up in corny fashion ala a typical Benny Hill episode, and the action’s even underscored by the familiar strains of that frenetic melody routinely employed on the classic British comedy show.

But Charlie fails to survive the session, leaving his three orphaned children to be raised by his brother (Simon Rex) and girlfriend (Ashley Tisdale), and their hairy-armed housekeeper (Lidia Porto). The bodily function fare that ensues around the premises includes sight gags involving farting, projectile vomiting, poop disguised as a banana, a monkey tossing feces at a mirror, a woman putting a urine-soaked cell phone to her face, a dog with a toothbrush stuck in its tush, a child playing with a vibrator, a dog licking his own gonads, and a gay man with the hots for a fifth grader.

This vapid, vulgar insult to the intelligence couldn’t possibly have been tested on any focus groups. Can we all now agree that we’ve reached the cinematic saturation point with this rapidly-expiring franchise?

Poor (0 stars)

Rated PG-13 for profanity, sexuality, gore, drug use, nudity, ethnic slurs, cartoon violence and crude humor

Running time: 85 minutes

Distributor: Dimension Films

To see a trailer for Scary Movie 5, visit

Herman's House
Film Review by Kam Williams

72 year-old Herman Wallace has been imprisoned at Louisiana’s infamous Angola penitentiary since he was found guilty of committing bank robbery back in 1967. His sentence was later lengthened to life after he was convicted of stabbing a prison guard to death solely on the testimony of a fellow inmate.

Was he a political prisoner who’d been railroaded on account of his membership in the Black Panther Party, or had he actually committed the murder? Unfortunately, that question is not the focus of Herman’s House, an unlikely-couple documentary directed by Angad Singh Bhalia.

Mr. Singh instead devotes his attention to the friendship forged between Herman and a woman half his age. “Jailbirds and the naïve girls who love them” has served as the theme of many a TV talk show, but rarely have any gangsters’ molls had the pedigree, sophistication or undying dedication of Jackie Sumell.

Sumell, an activist who once presented anti-abortion President Bush a quilt woven from hundreds of pro-choice feminist’s pubic hair, was a grad student in the Art Department at Stanford when she took an interest in Herman. What really rankled her was the fact that he held the record for solitary confinement in the country, currently at 40+ years and counting.

Over that period, he’s been cooped up in a 6 x 9 foot cell, which Jackie felt was a violation of the 8th Amendment’s sanction against cruel and unusual punishment. So, she struck up a long-distance correspondence with Herman via a combination of letters and phone calls.

And that led to a decision to draw attention to his plight by mounting an art exhibition featuring a full-scale replica of his prison cell. But this is where it gets weird. She also asked Herman what his dream home would look like, prior to then moving down to New Orleans, buying some land, and consulting architects to draw up plans for a place the two would ostensibly share should he ever be paroled.

Listen, this biopic basically revolves around Jackie’s earnest effort to turn Herman into a cause célèbre, but it carefully tiptoes around the more compelling elephant in the tiny cell, namely, whether there’s a romantic aspect to their relationship? A fascinating flick as much about a possible miscarriage of justice as about a case of arrested development who looks like a little girl playing house with an imaginary mate.

Very Good (3 stars)

Unrated

Running time: 81 minutes

Distributor: First Run Features

To see a trailer for Herman's House, visit

Lucky Bastard
Film Review by Kam Williams

Dave (Jay Paulson) thought he’d died and gone to heaven when he learned that he’d won the monthly “Lucky Bastard” contest run by the adult entertainment website. He was informed by the site’s owner, Mike (Don McManus), that his name had been picked from all the entries to sleep with his favorite porn star, Ashley Saint (Betsy Rue).

However, the prize came with just one hitch, namely, that he’d have to sign a release so that the lusty liaison could be videotaped from every angle. After all, the promotion was designed to give the site’s subscribers a chance to see an Average Joe enjoying a roll in the hay with a gorgeous goddess who would never normally give him the time of day.

Bespectacled Dave definitely fit the bill in that regard, between his awkwardness and anxiety attempting to perform on cue on camera, even with the woman of his wet dreams. However, the skin flick’s director (Chris Wylde) obviously had a lot more to worry about than a limp nerd in need of Viagra.

For, something else would go horribly wrong after Dave’s arrival and by the time the police arrived, they would find the dead bodies of numerous males and females slain either by gunshot or blunt force trauma. The investigating officer (Lukas Kendall) was grateful to discover that the walls had been outfitted with 18 cameras which not only recorded Dave and Ashley’s fondling, foreplay and frustrated fornication, but the ensuing slaughter which subsequently turned the den of debauchery into a bloody crime scene.

So, cracking the case simply involved rewinding the tapes, and watching what transpired from start to finish. And that’s precisely the point-of-view shared with the audience in Lucky Bastard, a found-footage flick which puts a salacious spin on the “no surviving witnesses” cinematic device first effectively employed by The Blair Witch Project back in 1999.

The movie marks the impressive directorial debut of Robert Nathan, who also co-wrote the cleverly-constructed script with Lukas Kendall. Their novel storyline unfolds like your typical horror film, except instead of taking place inside a Gothic haunted house it unfolds on a sleazy set inside the bedroom of a nondescript suburban home rented for the day from a realtor (Deborah Zoe) out to make a quick buck.

Besides Dave and Ashley, the suspects include director Kris, cameraman Nico (Lanny Joon), Ashley’s regular co-star, Josh (Lee Kholafai), producer Mike and his considerably-younger girlfriend, Casey (Catherine Annette), an aspiring porn star. However, the perpetrator might not be a cast or crew member, since Mike also has issues with the alarmed real estate agent as well as with his estranged ex-wife.

It’s no surprise Lucky Bastard landed an NC-17 rating, given the fairly-explicit displays of carnality, though the production is as much a riveting murder mystery as it is a raunchy sex romp. A compelling, high body-count whodunit for folks willing to watch a lot of kinky cavorting while trying to unravel clues leading to the killer.

Very Good (3 stars)

NC-17 for violence, profanity, full frontal nudity and explicit sexuality.

Running time: 94 minutes

Distributor: Vineyard Haven Films

To see a trailer for Lucky Bastard, visit