Director: Clint Eastwood
Starring: Ryan Phillippe, Adam Beach, Jesse Bradford, Jamie Bell, Paul Walker, Barry Pepper, John Slattery
Scheduled Release: November 9

At some point during the process of adapting James Bradley's nonfiction book about the battle of Iwo Jima, Clint Eastwood decided he'd need two movies to adequately manage the material's scope. The first, Flags of Our Fathers, focuses solely on the American campaign. It uses Joe Rosenthal's celebrated photograph of the raising of the flag as a springboard for a successful war bonds fund-raiser, and debates with timely flair the use of political spin to salvage an unpopular war.

Eastwood's follow-up, Letters from Iwo Jima, arrives in theaters early next year and will recount the battle from Japan's perspective. The director hired first-time screenwriter Iris Yamashita to develop Letters from an idea that screenwriter Paul Haggis proposed. He will employ an all-Asian cast, and will not use any of the actors we meet in Flags. It is yet to be determined whether the two movies will offer legitimate parallels, or exist as separate entities.

That sense of the unknown makes it difficult to completely judge Flags, a very good movie that misses greatness by inches. Are the problems I have with Flags addressed in Letters, or will the second film raise another set of issues that beg for deeper conversation?

Considered on its own merits, Flags boasts impressive accomplishments. The historical recreation of the Pacific Campaign's latter stages is every bit as accurate as digital technology allows. Combat aficionados will appreciate Eastwood's full immersion into battlefield chaos, though the director leaves his soldiers (and us) in the fray longer than we'd prefer.

Flags cinematographer Tom Stern employs the familiar Saving Private Ryan visuals, producing bleak images stripped of color and drained of hope. There is one major difference. This isn't Tom Hanks and Tom Sizemore storming the beach. Eastwood intentionally stocks his platoon with fresh-faced unknowns and marginally recognizable supporting players. They are teenagers. Naïve kids. It's sobering every time Flags lets that reality sink in.

The battle scenes, thankfully, make up only half of Flags. The film finds its eventual purpose after Iwo Jima, when three of the six soldiers pictured in the famous flag-raising photo are shipped back to the States for a fund-raising tour. Public support for the war was at an all-time low, and the U.S. government was in debt trying to fund the conflict. Rosenthal's Iwo Jima photo provided a surge of hope, and the military financiers pounced.

Photos, of course, have different meanings to different people. Where parents, girlfriends, and politicians saw Rosenthal's shot as a turning point in the war, the veterans in the picture saw it as a constant reminder of the atrocities of combat. Adam Beach gives a sympathetic performance as Ira Hayes, a reluctant participant in the Iwo Jima photo who brings too many ghosts back to the mainland.

What Flags misses is the enemy's perspective. Even the most patriotic American war movies spend time with the German, Japanese, Vietnamese, or Iraqi forces our soldiers are strategizing against. Those elements have been removed from Flags and, we assume, saved for Letters. Gun barrels and dead Japanese soldiers are the only representation of the faceless force these men are fighting.

In lieu of a clear-cut enemy to loathe, representatives of our government end up holding the bag of our resentment. We're upset when mustachioed John Slattery, playing the public relations liaison for the war bonds fund-raiser, massages the truth about the men in the famous Iwo Jima photo, even though his intentions of raising money to support the military campaign are for the greater good. Flags doesn’t single out a true villain, leaving us in yet another gray area where Eastwood and Haggis prefer to linger.

Perhaps Letters, like Flags, will stand on its own with minimal flaws. We won't know until we finally see it. But something tells me that two good dramas could have been one amazing war masterpiece had Eastwood figured a way to streamline both stories into a single effort. Sean O'Connell

Words Chitra Panjabi

Israel and Palestine – can each preserve its own identity and still live with the other? The Hong Kong Jewish Film Festival provides some clues

Ancestry and heritage are important – especially to a community that has often had theirs wiped out. So it’s no surprise that this year’s theme for the Hong Kong Jewish Film Festival is ‘Roots’. A wide range of films documenting Jewish identity and legacy, past and present, is featured this year.

Surprisingly the year’s schedule has far more documentaries than feature films. Howard Elias, the festival’s director, says his audience doesn’t like documentaries. They like them even less when they have to pay for them, so why did he choose to include so many in this year’s festival?

“I think when you go to a film festival there has to be some education aspect to it – you have to be informed, educated, enlightened. I think there is a place for documentaries in a film festival.”

The festival is in its 7th year and Elias decided the time was right to broach more serious issues, given the bad press Israel, and even Jews, have had in recent months. Consequently, he has chosen a few films that are more political than in previous years.

“I want to have people see something they are not going to see on television – not on CNN or BBC. That’s why I wanted to show some documentaries that dealt with the Israeli situation. And have people look at them and make up their own minds about the situation.”

Some films explore Jewish heritage and identity through Israel’s turbulent relationship with Gaza and the West Bank. Two in particular, 10 Days in Gaza and From the River to the Sea, deal with recent events (the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and Hamas’ election victory, respectively) and are sure to elicit a range of strong responses from their audiences. Given that the two directors are from opposite sides of the political spectrum, a question and answer session with them after the screenings should be riveting.

From the River to the Sea hinges on the contentious issue of the right of return for Palestinian families living in Gaza, the West Bank and refugee camps, including those in Lebanon. Pierre Rehov, the director, originally intended to document the Palestinian refugee issue after finishing a film on Jewish refugees expelled from Arab countries in 1948. However his interviews and documentaries led him elsewhere.

“I wanted to get into the Palestinian refugee problem. I visited some refugee camps and tried to understand what was going on there – what was their mentality and what were their real goals? Towards the end of the completion of the film, Hamas was elected. The film which was going to be mainly about the refugees, their relationship with the UN, their mythology, also became ‘Why did the refugees vote for Hamas and how were they voted in, in a democratic way?’”

The subject is controversial mainly because many countries strongly support the Palestinians in their fight to return to their homes in the original Palestine. Pierre says this is a problem for Israelis and Jews: “For many Palestinians living in refugee camps and in Gaza and the West Bank, the right of return would mean the destruction of the state of Israel. If you have 4 million Palestinians move to where only 5 million Jews live, it will of course be the explosion of the country [Israel].”

The possibility of the dissolution of the state of Israel has become all too real, especially in recent months with renewed efforts by Hezbollah and Iranian President Ahmadinejad to create a climate of hate.

10 Days in Gaza addresses this issue indirectly as it deals with the withdrawal process from Gaza. Many Israelis and Jews in the diaspora strongly felt that the withdrawal would lead to more secure borders for Israel and further legitimise its existence as a state.

The film is essentially an assortment of live news footage taken during the Gaza withdrawal. Director Dov Gil-Har wanted people to remember this monumental event in the conflict’s history.

“Once it [the withdrawal] was all over, suddenly no one was interested any more in the event. It was as if we were preparing it, debating it, and for two years beforehand fighting over it – like a post-traumatic effect, a day after it happened we wanted to deny it all happened. I thought that the disengagement is too important an event to be forgotten. So I went to my friends at Channel 2 News, dug through hundreds of tapes that were shot during those 10 days, and edited the film.”

Responses to the film will undoubtedly be emotional. Many images evoke history: children wearing yellow stars leaving their homes and people being taken from synagogues. But the images also record for posterity the Jewish people’s varied responses to a significant chapter in their history.

While Pierre and Dov may be at political variance, they do agree on one thing: the need to document that part of the conflict often neglected by news reports and political debates – the human aspect.

Pierre sums the concurrence up neatly. “I try to make films that are very human, that try to show the reality of people’s lives,” he says.

The Hong Kong Jewish Film Festival runs from Saturday 11-19th November at Palace IFC Cinema. Tickets are $75, $55 for concessions. Opening Night tickets: $220, $180 for concessions which admits you to the opening night screening and the post-film kosher dessert party at Pacific Coffee in IFC. Call 6771 8070 for enquiries. Also see our listings page for film details.

Starring: Junior Singo, Owen Sejake
Director: David Hickson
Scheduled Release: Now Showing

“Wear this until it comes off by itself,” says Thandi, sliding a grass bracelet onto her cousin Musa’s wrist. “Something good will happen.”
In this sensitive, sensuous story, young orphaned Musa is leaving his HIV-ridden Zulu village in a search of his uncle and enough money for a new cow. Venturing to the city means adapting his world of folklore and ancient tradition to Johannesburg city life, which has its own set of codes. The simple bangle guides him, and us, with the belief that good will be rewarded.
He arrives via a kind-hearted truck driver to find the same plague ripping its way through the grey chaotic streets, its people facing destruction with the same ignorance and fears as those back home. These include the trucker’s boss, a ranting white businessman forced to re-evaluate life when his son falls prey, and a new friend, street-urchin T, whose mother’s death has left her homeless.
When the Tom Hanks vehicle Philadelphia hit screens in 1993, it trail-blazed a media push on AIDS, encouraged by every ribbon-wearing celebrity hungry for a cause. Beat the Drum could appear a decade too late – red ribbons are passé, AIDS precautions, dangers and consequences are well documented, and even Bono struggles for headlines. But banners on Heart for Africa’s homepage proclaim 2.5 million Africans die from AIDS each year – the entire population of Chicago. AIDS is still on the rampage, even if much of the world has let it slip from consciousness. This film, made in 2003, is frustratingly still right on.
No big movie stars are behind producer Rick Shaw’s dinky feature – its budget is estimated at a paltry US$1,500,000 – but Shaw has made every dollar count. Junior Singo as Musa is magnificent, and well aided by Owen Sejake playing the burly truck driver Nobe, though characters on the story’s periphery could have been stronger and more complete. Shot between Musa’s dilapidated village and a grim rundown Jo’berg, the film ably portrays a country held hostage by AIDS – a mystifying, confusing illness of shame and embarrassment. Throughout the film the similarities between city dwellers and country tribes, rather than the differences, remain in focus – families feel the same grief and T also wears a bracelet, hoping its power can tide her over to a brighter future.
But it’s Musa, brimming warmth, courage and light, that shines, and his story that allows us a film more often heartening than bleak. Ultimately, Beat the Drum is a well-crafted, provocative tale of hope against huge loss. EK

Starring: Kristen Bell, Ian Somerhalder, Rick Gonzalez, Samm Levine, Christina Milian, Jonathan Tucker
Director: Jim Sonzero
Scheduled Release: November 9

Earlier in 2006, a killer videogame stalked teenagers in Stay Alive; Pulse ups the ante with ghostly wireless signals stalking college students. The latest J-horror remake never pitches itself over the top, refusing to pile on the jump-scares, fake-jump-scares, and the accompanying soundtrack blasts; instead, it takes a low-key approach… along the way becoming completely unconvincing and almost prodigiously unscary. Boring is the new ridiculous.
It's a shame, too, because computer-centric horror is usually a good bet for ridiculousness. Here, the computer stuff isn't detailed enough to really bug the geeks; they'll be too busy pointing out how the movie's screenplay could be improved, and how Kristen Bell takes one of the most disappointing baths in horror history.
When part-time hacker Josh (Jonathan Tucker; apparently he must die) commits suicide, his ex-girlfriend Mattie (Kristen Bell) is unnerved and desperate to find out why. Because this is a J-horror remake, it inevitably has something to do with black-and-white spirits who advance in slow, herky-jerk movements (apparently, a generation of horror filmmakers have been traumatized by the dullness of old-timey home movies). The one somewhat fresh aspect of Pulse is that it's not a case of a single screechy ghost killing anyone unlucky enough to walk into certain rooms. Once the haunting is "let in," as the vague explanation is inevitably whispered, mankind – so dependent on computers and cell phones and, um, washing machines – is kinda screwed.
This attempted scope – the break from the bloodless-slasher pattern of other PG-13 horror movies – is admirable in theory, and it's good for a few eerie empty-street moments. But mostly the movie portrays the end of the world as a listless affair, and not in a Beckett sort of way. The amount of time it takes for Josh's friends to investigate his strange behavior, their other friends' disappearances, and the coming apocalypse is excruciating even by genre standards.
The casting of those friends could've made for a good time. It's never encouraging when a movie collects a gaggle of TV actors and somehow fails to make even one of them as interesting as their small-screen characters. Expecting Kristen Bell to create a horror-movie character as shaded and winning as TV's Veronica Mars would be futile for almost any movie, but Pulse gives her as little to do as possible, which in this case means a lot of walking, looking, and calling out names. There are a handful of eye-catching sights in Pulse, as when Somerhalder walks through a server room that shimmers and, yes, pulsates around him with otherworldly menace, but there's so little context provided that you want to fill in the blanks yourself, trying to think of reasons this might be considered creepy. It's DIY horror: a good concept, a likable cast, desolate images. To make scary, just add something else. Anything. Please.
Jesse Hassenger

Starring: Channing Tatum, Jenna Dewan, Rachel Griffiths, Mario, Heavy D, Drew Sidora
Director: Anne Fletcher
Scheduled Release: November 9

Advertising materials tell us all we need to know about Step Up. She's a little bit Fame, and he's a little bit West Side Story. She's an ice queen, while he's a Vanilla Ice clone. We get it. Yet choreographer-turned-director Anne Fletcher does everything short of laying down railroad track and positioning her leads on opposite sides to hammer home the from-different-worlds hook that carries her fleet-footed tween fairy tale.
Channing Tatum fills the baggy jeans of street-tough foster kid Tyler – all the truly edgy names must have been taken. Using a baseball cap and blank stare as method tools, the actor aims for the fiery rebellion of James Dean or early Richard Gere but achieves a flatness reserved for James Franco.
This watered-down Eminem walks his own 8 Mile until the cops bust him for vandalizing property at the Maryland School of the Arts. Tasked with serving 200 hours of community service, Tyler mouths off to authority (Rachel Griffiths, longing for her Six Feet Under days), romances self-centered
dancer Nora (Jenna Dewan), and discovers a career path that might one day lead him out of the ghetto.
Fletcher's resume is littered with professional choreography jobs on films like Bring it On and Ice Princess. She pours her creative juice into this film's numerous dance routines, and it's during those moments that Step Up shows flashes of potential. Tatum and Dewan have limited ability as dramatic actors, but each can move to the beat with the best of them.
Fletcher desperately needs someone in her cast to – pardon the pun – step up and elevate the film past the stacks of storytelling clichés cranked out by screenwriters Duane Adler and Melissa Rosenberg. Their script half tries, with unfinished results. Days after Tyler arrives on campus, Nora's dance partner conveniently drops out of her senior routine with a temporary injury. Nora's mother frowns on her unyielding dedication to dance, yet pays for her daughter to attend
a private arts program. When Step Up reaches beyond the dance floor, exploring a gang grudge that leads to the death of someone close to Tyler, the movie fatally stumbles and never regains its footing.