FILMS WORHT WATCHING by Robert Alstead

Michael Apted's Amazing Grace.

ALast month marked Britain’s 200th anniversary of the abolishment of the slave trade. In spite of growing awareness of the cruelty of slavery, there was huge resistance to the new law at the time; it had taken evangelical firebrand William Wilberforce and his band of reformers – nicknamed “angels” – years to overcome the resistance of the ruling classes to reach that momentous watershed. That episode in history is the inspiration for Amazing Grace, an optimistic account of how a few people can make a difference for the common good, through the courage of their convictions.
Directed by veteran Michael Apted, who made the excellent Seven Up documentary series and the Oscar-winning Coal Miner’s Daughter, the parliamentary drama depicts Wilberforce’s challenges – uncertainty about his vocation, being ravished by a painful physical condition and hit by severe setbacks – before he emerges ultimately victorious.
Critics have noted that while character development in Amazing Grace is two-dimensional, with characters falling into either the “goodie” or “baddie” camps, the film boasts a top-notch British cast. Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd plays the zealous lead, whom on the urgings of his close friend Pitt the Younger – he became the youngest prime minister in Britain at 24 years old – chooses a life in politics over one of the cloth. The always remarkable Albert Finney plays reformed slaver John Newton, who, haunted by 20,000 souls, took religious vows and wrote hymns, among them the soulful Amazing Grace. Michael Gambon plays Whig leader Charles James Fox, Rufus Sewell is one of the key reformers and Senagalese singer Youssou N’Dour plays Oloudah Equiano, an ex-slave who wrote a widely-read autobiography detailing the horrors of the “Middle Passage” between Africa and the West Indies.
Gandhi, Jung and Beethoven crop up in the Kootenays in The Naked Queen (April 12 at The Ridge), a pro-Cannabis documentary that looks at a smorgasbord of issues around this much-maligned plant. At times rambling and kooky with its historical imaginings and a recurring, naked goddess in the bush, it snaps back from ethereal contemplations on mystical and ancient Cannabis cultures and philosophical digressions on the condition of the US, to hear how some people, such as MS sufferers, benefit from the medicinal effects of Cannabis and how others find inspiration and solace from the weed.
It also points out why extraditing Canadian Cannabis campaigner Marc Emery would set a poor precedent for sovereignty in Canada. Emery comes across as a passionate and thoughtful individual; nothing like the sinister drug kingpin that the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) would have us believe he is. It’s an overly-ambitious project, but I found the low-budget zaniness rather endearing. Emery, Michelle Rainey and Greg Williams (“the BC3”) are due to appear before the BC Supreme Court for a five-day hearing on May 28.
Having recently watched the bawdy Brit “zomcom” Shaun of the Dead, I found the more family-friendly, flesh-eating comedy Fido, which recently opened, a little flat and unoriginal. Fortunately for fans of Shaun, the same team is back this month with Hot Fuzz.
Just out, the South Korean creature-feature hit The Host starts off as an ecological, cautionary tale about the perils of pouring poison into your water supply, before moving firmly into monster B-movie territory as we follow a dysfunctional family chasing a mutant, man-killing amphibious monster into its lair in the sewers of Seoul. The laughs are plentiful, although it would have been nice if the monster had met a less obvious fate.
Finally, Sharkwater epitomizes pro-wildlife cameraman Rob Stewart’s personal and passionate campaign to, as he notes, “help the sharks.” Stewart shows that sharks are desperately misunderstood, shy even, and not the man killers that mainstream mythology purports them to be. There are five human fatalities a year from shark attacks, while humans kill millions of sharks a year. They are hooked on long, baited lines, their dorsal and tail fins hacked off, before being thrown, bleeding and still alive, back into the water to sink to the ocean floor and die.
When Stewart joins eco-warrior Paul Watson on the Sea Shepherd, ramming shark poachers and fleeing from Costa Rican coast guards, you almost want to get out of your seat and cheer. Hopefully, Stewart’s beautifully shot and disturbing film will help wake up the powers that be to do more to prevent the wanton plundering of the world’s oceans.

Robert Alstead recently completed You Never Bike Alone, a documentary about Vancouver’s Critical Masses. Get the DVD from www.youneverbikealone.com.