Everyone's Gone to the Movies.

There are a lot of movies out right now that I'd like to see -- No Country for Old Men and American Gangster, to name just two -- plus the upcoming trip into Bob Dylan's secret life, I'm Not There. Last night, though, I saw Jerry Seinfeld's Bee Movie. Why? Because I have kids, lots and lots of kids, and my wife would be pissed if I took them to an R-rated blood-fest, or the story of womanizing, drug abusing rock star. She's old-fashioned that way.

So, we saw the animated Bee Movie. I have a lot of residual affection for Seinfeld, based on the glory days of his tv show, and the movie isn't bad, exactly, but it's forgettable. I'm virtually certain I laughed once or twice, but as I sit here today, I couldn't tell you much about the plot, and I couldn't come up with any lines worth quoting. That's what's really a shame about the movie: the guy who was Seinfeld doesn't say one thing worth remembering in a 90-minute film.

I love movies, and always have. These days, I see so few that when I watch something mediocre like this that could have been so much better, I'm really disappointed. I read reviews and keep a list of films I want to see, but I just can't get to them like I used to. Maybe my New Year's resolution will be to see more movies in 2008. I realize that's not exactly up there with "give more time to my favorite charity" or "put aside old resentments," but -- oh, just stop judging me, damn it.

There was a time when I'd say I wanted to be a film critic. Needless to say, I never actually pursued it, but I realize now that if I had, I would have found that criticism is a lot more difficult than I'd imagined. In my mind, I saw myself watching two or three movies during the day, then heading home to dash of my insightful, witty and often withering reviews before a martini or two with other critics who were secretly jealous of me. See, I'd managed to become popular and wealthy without compromising my aesthetic principles. They hated me for that -- hated me, even as they wanted to be me or sleep with me or both.

The reality is that I don't have the kind of mind that can come up with any true insight about a movie. I probably would have ended up as a small town, local news, "this movie has too much sex!" plot-recapper who doubled as the weekend non-meteorologist weather guy who dresses in a hot dog costume for church cookoffs. And they still would have wanted to sleep with me.

I still try my hand at the occasional review, though. If I ever get out to a movie again, I'll write another. In the meantime, here's one I wrote a while back.

Grizzly Man

I finally saw Grizzly Man, the fascinating, harrowing story of Timothy Treadwell, a true headcase who marched off into the Alaskan wilderness every summer, to live among the grizzly bears. This went on for thirteen years, until one of his ursine friends got too hungry to resist the temptation of Treadwell and his girlfriend.

Werner Herzog directed the film, using beautiful footage shot by Treadwell himself. It begins with a great scene, a couple of bears just walking through an open field in the vast landscape of Alaska. I began to tense up almost immediately after that, when Treadwell comes into the frame, starts talking to and about the bears, and when one gets close, sticks his hand out and touches its snout.

Dude! Don’t you see the teeth on that thing?

Treadwell was a self-styled “protector” of grizzlies, although the “protecting” seems largely to have been a figment of his imagination. Herzog, narrating, notes that the bears live in a huge national park and so are already well protected. In fact, if Treadwell knew much about the animals, there’s not a lot of evidence of that in the footage Herzog used. At one point, Treadwell says, (paraphrased) “Until I came up here, no one knew about these bears. No one knew they could decapitate! No one knew they could bite!”

I’m no naturalist, but I’m pretty sure people knew grizzly bears could bite. (As I was walking my dog the other night, another guy made a huge arc to my right as he passed us. When he said he was afraid of dogs, I told him mine wouldn’t hurt anybody. “Hey,” he said, “if has teeth, it can bite.”) So the film begins with that glimpse of Treadwell’s state of mind, and documents his growing self-delusion. For whatever reason, I was particularly unnerved when, after one of his favorite bears relieves herself on a rock and moves on, he walks to the pile she left behind and lovingly places his hand on it.

“You might think it’s weird that I’m doing this,” he says (paraphrasing), “touching her poop like this. But it was in her, it was part of her, and she’s so beautiful.” Yikes.

It’s really a sad story. In Treadwell’s mind, he was doing good things for the animals, but from outside his head it’s hard to believe someone so clueless and self-absorbed managed to make it through thirteen summers up there. He admits to alcohol problems in his past, and friends and family report drug abuse and unmedicated manic depression. I guess I pity him and dislike him at the same time.

Grizzly Man reminded me of a book by Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild, the true story of a promising recent college graduate, a star student and athlete, who abandoned his possessions, changed his name to “Alexander Supertramp” and walked off into the Alaskan wilderness, where he ultimately died after getting lost, injuring himself and eating poisoned berries. He was reckless, he was a fool, and just the pseudonym he chose for himself was enough for me to dislike him. Yet there was something likeable about him.

Treadwell’s delusions of grandeur got two people killed. Periodically throughout the movie, a coroner describes the remains he examined and, more disturbingly, the audio recording of Treadwell and his girlfriend being attacked by the bear. He talks about how the recording helped him determine exactly how the pair died; it’s beyond brutal. His girlfriend, who was afraid of bears, must have been there strictly out of loyalty to Treadwell. She didn’t have to die.

Why don’t I completely hate him?

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Special Hidden Bonus Track

For my brief review of Brokeback Mountain, click here.