I’ve been feeling a lot of pressure to see Standard Operating Procedure, the new Errol Morris documentary about the goings-on at Abu Ghraib. I had already seen Taxi to the Dark Side, the Oscar-winning account of the detainee abuses at Guantanamo Bay and the Bagram prison in Afghanistan, as well as Rory Kennedy’s Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, so of course I needed to see S.O.P. in order to be a torture “completist.” I had read my good friend Bob Cashill’s review of S.O.P. here on Popdose a couple weeks back, and I can’t stand it when he knows something I don’t. Plus I had Jeff Giles (that sadistic bastard) hounding me to see it, claiming he wanted to hear my “take” on it. Frankly, I felt like multiple forces of man and nature were holding a filthy rag over my face and pouring Standard Operating Procedure down my throat.

So I went – dutifully, and with a sense of dread. And when it was over I felt suitably disturbed, disgusted with my government…unclean, even…and mostly I just wanted to see a normal movie. Perhaps one in which I could scarf my popcorn without worrying about getting a screenful of electrode-laden testicles. So I went to the multiplex, looking for a bit of frivolity, and the marquee read “Harold and Kumar.” Great! A light stoner comedy with the R-rated promise of a little T&A. So I go in, and it starts out nice and funny and a little dirty, and then these two ethnic guys head into an airplane toilet with a battery-powered bong, and…goddammit! There’s Gitmo again! WTF!?!

You know perfectly well I made that last part up. I apologize – but how else was I supposed to rationalize the fact that I’m probably the only person in America (apart from Ebert & Roeper, maybe) who saw both Standard Operating Procedure AND Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay this week?

Oh, the sacrifices I make for you, dear reader. Of course, there was a method to my madness, which was to figure out exactly where torture fits into the American zeitgeist as of mid-May 2008. It’s a fair question. We’ve had visions of “harsh interrogations” dancing in our heads at least since the Abu Ghraib photos emerged in spring 2004, if not since Kiefer Sutherland first went medieval on somebody’s ass on 24 shortly after 9/11. Just this week, a committee of the House of Representatives announced a subpoena for Dick Cheney’s Rasputin-like chief of staff, David Addington, to testify (alongside John Ashcroft and John Yoo) about the initial decision-making that led the “War on Terror” to so closely resemble the Spanish Inquisition. Heck, the presidential nominee of George Bush’s own party was a victim of torture himself, while the Democratic Party seems unable to escape the dungeon of that D.C. dominatrix, Mistress Hillary. (more…)

Like Hillary Clinton, Helen Hunt has always bugged me. I was never crazy about Mad About You, and while I don’t think she deserves the barbs thrown at her for As Good As It Gets (she’s been lambasted as one of the least deserving Best Actress winners) I’m not exactly quick to rise to her defense, either. Again, like HRC, I can’t quite put my finger on what it is exactly that annoys me about her. I think, on film, it may be the way she listens — the camera closes in tight on her exposure-hardened face (all that TV and movie work since she played Murray’s daughter on The Mary Tyler Moore show takes its toll) and she gets all sensitive and concerned on us. Now that in itself is no grounds for petulance, but there’s something awfully mannered about that look, which she has hung on her puss for decades now. It’s a kind of body armor, a wall against getting too close. Under the guise of empathy, of wanting to care and share, I see a big “Keep Away” sign hung around her neck. She gives you this look that suggests she feels your pain, but I know if you dared try to hug her she’d slap the crap out of you.

But, just as Clinton has impressed me by hanging tough in this campaign, going to the mattresses as surely as the characters in The Godfather after Don Corleone is hit, so, too, do I feel a new respect for Hunt with Then She Found Me,which ThinkFilm opens today. This is her debut as a feature film director (she is a co-producer and co-writer as well) and her multi-year struggle to bring Elinor Lipman’s novel to the screen accounts in part for some odd ellipses in her post-Oscar career. (I saw her on Broadway in a gorgeously designed Twelfth Night and the comedy-drama Life x 3, but her thoroughly adequate performances left little trace in my memory bank.) Going to see a Hunt-hyphenate picture, with her doing all those tasks and starring as well, was about as appealing to me as a stretch in Abu Ghraib (see below). Yet Then She Found Me has a kind of toughlove charm I responded to. (more…)