Confessions of Robert McNamara

In theaters Friday: DOA: Dead or Alive, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Nancy Drew.

New on DVD: An Unreasonable Man, Blood and Chocolate, Breach, Ghost Rider.

Celebrity birthday: Ally Sheedy turns 45 today. Happy birthday, Ally. You starred in two of my favorite ‘80s movies, The Breakfast Club and Short Circuit, and in each you dropped some serious knowledge on a seven year old: “When you grow up, your heart dies,” you tell us as attention-seeking loner Allison in Breakfast Club. And when trying to reach the military-industrial complex lab about a misplaced robot in Short Circuit you say “Yes, I’d like to speak to one of your head warmongers, please.” Good stuff.

Last weekend I rented two documentaries: The Fog of War and One Punk Under God.

The Fog of War is a sublime and aggravating piece of work from filmmaker Errol Morris and is based on in-depth interviews with former Sec. of Defense Robert McNamara who served as a strategist in WWII and in the Kennedy and Johnson administration cabinets during the Vietnam War. As Morris displays a wondrous harvest of vintage war footage, destruction and presidential newsreel, McNamara lays out 11 things he has learned about war. The two that struck me the most were these: 1. “Rationality will not save us.” He cites John F. Kennedy, Fidel Castro and Nikita Krushchev as rational men, and yet even these came incredibly close to nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. And when dealing with the possibility of nuclear war, there is no room for error. So what happens then when an irrational man gets nuclear capability? And 2. “You can’t change human nature.” No foreign policy, economic sanction or, God forbid, war, can change human behavior, the human condition. In other words, and this seems to be one of the preeminent lessons from Vietnam that has not been heeded by those in power, but in international affairs, as in other aspects of life, there are often problems for which there are no immediate solutions. At times, McNamara says, we may have to live with an imperfect, untidy world.

What bothered me is McNamara’s evasiveness and unwillingness to accept any responsibility for his actions during Vietnam. Essentially, he admits to being a yes man, a brilliant yes man, but still, one under the orders of Lyndon Johnson who was unwilling to consider anything other than hiding the problems of Vietnam from the public and escalating the war to no end. If you’re a war buff, this film is essential.

One Punk Under God is Sundance Channel mini-series about the son of infamous televangelist Jim Bakker and his ex-wife and Tammy Fay. Thing is, there isn’t really anything that punk about Jay Bakker, at least not in the traditional sense of the word. Sure his arms are covered in colorful tattoos, a silver ring nests in the corner of his lip, and on a sunny day you can see clear through his earlobes, but the 32-year-old leader of Revolution church is as personable, contemplative and soft-spoken as pastors come. But he did rebel against his parents as a teen, getting heavily into drugs and dropping out of high school, and after his return to the faith his ministry has become far and away unrecognizable from his father’s televangelist empire. Perhaps the heavy cross of his parentage to bear, and his pursuit of his own kind of ministry is a punk act in and of itself.

Unfortunately, the series lacks depth when dealing with Jay Bakker’s actual faith and work—though an interlude shows him announcing his approval of gay marriage. The film focuses more on his relationship with his parents. His mother is suffering from cancer and he and his distant father have not seen each other in two years. This isn’t necessarily a bad cinematic decision, but anyone renting this series for an in-depth portrait of the history and mechanics of Jay’s radical Revolution church that meets in a bar and goes out of its way to welcome people from all walks of life will be a little disappointed.

While the Ocean’s 11 is classic, Ocean’s 13 proves to be probably the funniest of the trilogy and certainly returns to the freewheeling style of the original after 12 took a slight detour. If nothing else this film is gorgeous to look at. Director Steven Soderbergh’s cinematography is on full display. The guy has an incredible eye for awesome visuals. I could go into the intricacies of this revenge heist, but what fun would that be. Go see it if you want a good time in Vegas.

Before Ocean’s 13, they screened this trailer for Will Smith’s “last man on earth” thriller I Am Legend. Check it out!