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Under discussion:

Borat  (2006)

Religulous  (2008)

“I’m on the street corner peddling doubt.” That’s how Bill Maher categorizes his personal attitude towards and mission against religion in Religulous, and that’s sort of how I feel about Maher’s professional schtick: I am aggressively, even evangelically, skeptical. I’ll stick around and watch his HBO show when I catch it whilst flipping channels, mostly because impressed by his ability to make the quick change from sub-Leno, pun-dependent one-liners to actually asking hard-hitting, legitimately provocative questions of his panelists. On Real Time, Maher uses (mostly bad) jokes to soften up both his guests and his audience for the serious discourse that inevitably follows, and even though much of Maher’s humor is unbelievably hokey and old-fashioned, there’s something admirable about the marriage he’s arranged between his desire to entertain and his compulsion to interrogate and lay blame.

Hopeful that his feature-length collaboration with Larry Charles would offer a similar balance writ large, I went in to Religulous with an open mind –– which is more than can be said of Maher. The comedian-turned-political pundit/committed agnostic, and star and producer of this non-fiction film, explains early in the picture that he thinks organized religion of any kind is “detrimental to the progress of humanity.” Writing off the contents of the bible and all historical narratives of faith as “fairy tales,” he says he’s on a journey in search of an explanation as to how otherwise rational adults can buy into this kiddie stuff. “It’s too easy,” he complains.

Unfortunately, this last line turns out to be auto-critique: as Maher and Charles hop from backwoods America to international holy hot spots and back again. Maher continually flips the script, here using serious questioning not as an end, but a means to immature, unenlightening mockery. It quickly becomes apparent that Maher’s journey is not about finding out what makes religious people tick, but about using the tics of mostly fringe religious people to prop up the thesis Maher came in with. Which is––in a nutshell, but totally without irony––that everyday religious practice will soon result in global apocalypse.

It would be easier to take Maher’s stated project on its face if he, Charles and their editors didn’t insist on undermining the sincerity of the mission at regular intervals with rapid-fire cutaways, usually to either a bit of “ironic” found footage, or to Maher himself, ranting from the back of a moving SUV. Most of the interviews in Religulous, all conducted by Maher, start out almost startlingly strong, with the star’s uncanny knack for cutting directly to the heart of the matter on full display. But whether because his inquisitiveness is in short supply, or because he was never really in the room to learn from his subjects to begin with, Maher almost without fail finds ways to subject his subjects to ridicule. It’s one thing when he and a person of faith get into a debate; it’s frustrating that Maher refuses to give anyone the benefit of the doubt, but at least there’s an honesty to an unmitigated conversation between people who legitimately disagree. The real cruelty comes when Maher is polite (or, at least, not aggressively derisive) in person, but then uses cutaways and/or subtitles to make it clear that we’re supposed to share Maher’s conviction that Religious Person X is a drooling idiot. Maybe this is just part of the rules of the post-reality TV game, but such mean-spirited recontextualization, at least in this case, doesn’t feel like the right path towards a greater filmed truth. It doesn’t even produce footage controversial or incendiary enough to justify the methods by which it was obtained.

In Charles’ Borat, oblivious yokels were set up to believe that they were talking to a journalist, and in Religulous, interviewees are made to look like just as much of a stooge. Let’s say Borat’s biggest crime was offering a society lady a bag of his feces; it’s unspeakably offensive, and yet so gleefully absurd that you can’t really file it as cruelty. Like Borat, Maher approaches each subject as if in a sincere attempt to gather information, and then –– both in the room with his verbal mockery and attacks, and on a super-diegetic level with the cutaways and after-the-fact on-screen titles illuminating what Maher’s thinking in the moment –– turns the situation into an opportunity to gather comedy at the unwitting subject’s expense. While Sacha Baron Cohen’s fake reporter was armed with a faux naivete that essentially let him off the hook morally, even when he was been ejected from a building, Maher telegraphs an extremely hostile self-rightousness about what he’s doing. Either way, it’s still a film in which we’re supposed to cheer for the guy handing out sacks of shit.

Under discussion:

The Big Chill  (1983)

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels  (1998)

Snatch  (2000)

Swept Away  (2002)

Gigli  (2003)

Revolver  (2007)

RocknRolla  (2008)

Guy Ritchie has been getting a bad rap ever since the his impressive double header of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch turned into the double whammy of becoming Mr. Madonna in 2000 and directing Swept Away in 2002. Ritchie was quickly heading for the bargain bin after that romantic comedy became a universal joke, topped as a target of derision perhaps only by Gigli. He returned to gangster fare with Revolver in 2005, but even with star and Ritchie alumnus Jason Statham, the film wasn’t well-received. So here we are three years later with yet another gangster-studded film, RocknRolla, this time with posterboy Gerard Butler in a leading role.

Well, the good news is that this marks a return to the London underbelly that was laid down by Lock and Snatch: RocknRolla could rightfully be called the third film in a Ritchie trilogy. The bad news is that it’s a whole lot of flash and not much substance. Not that people go to Ritchie’s films expecting a dissertation on the human condition, but his movies do at least require you to follow along closely due to their labyrinthine plots. RocknRolla is no different, and although Butler seems to be the face of the film, he’s simply part of a large ensemble cast, and not the strongest player.

The basic plot of the film involves One-Two (Butler) and his partner Mumbles (Idris Elba) as two low-rent hoods who spot a good real estate investment. They partner with a mob boss (Tom Wilkinson) with deep pockets to get things rolling, but he turns around and double-crosses them, and they owe him some serious dough. Meanwhile, the same mob boss gets involved with a Russian billionaire in a similar real estate deal. The Russian’s accountant (Thandie Newton) steps in and double crosses the Russian, and so you’ve got your basic mafia triangle of X owes money to Y who owes money to Z.

As it turns out, the Russian loans his mystical good luck painting to the mob boss as a show of good faith, and this painting soon becomes the focus of the film once it is stolen by the mob boss’ stepson, Johnny Quid. The rest of the film turns into a search for the painting, which moves from character A to B to C with fluid ease, and there’s a violent conclusion that ties everything up, for the most part.

The main problem with the film is that you just don’t care for most of the main characters, which isn’t that surprising when you consider a cast this large. However, The Big Chill also has a large cast, and you certainly care for people in that movie. (Also, I’ve just realized that comparing a Guy Ritchie movie to The Big Chill is probably one of the signs of the impending apocalypse.)

The real stars of the film are Toby Kebbell, who plays the heroin-thin rockstar Johnny Quid in a loving homage to Sid Vicious (or to Gary Oldman in Sid & Nancy); Tom Wilkinson as the chrome-domed, Ray-Ban wearing crime boss Lenny Cole; and Mark Strong as Archie, Lenny’s right-hand enforcer. Honestly, you could have replaced Butler’s character with a dozen different actors, and these three actors would have shone just as brightly, despite being in an ensemble piece.

Not that Butler isn’t competent. His portrayal of the criminal who just can’t seem to get things right isn’t nearly as over the top as King Leonidas, and he’s at his best in this movie when not in an action heavy vignettes. There’s an amusing scene where Thandie Newton and Butler are dancing at a wannabe rave thrown by Newton’s posh (but gay) husband. Their dancing is about on par with Marcia Brady’s “thumb dance” from The Brady Bunch. You can’t hear them over the din of the party, so you’re treated with cartoonish subtitles throughout the scene.

Most of the humor in the movie comes from a pair of Russian hitmen who just won’t die, no matter what happens to them in one of the most amusing chase sequences I’ve ever seen, and from the awkward situation Butler’s character is put in after his best mate and fellow hood Handsome Bob confesses his love to him. Ritchie from the Lock, Stock days probably wouldn’t have approached a scene (and the ensuing scenes in which Butler may, or may not have helped his buddy out before a prison stint) seriously, but the 2008 version of the director decided it could be both amusing and touching.

Ritchie told us that this film is meant to have at least one sequel, and you can read all about that in our upcoming interview. If Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels still stands as Ritchie’s strongest film, with Snatch in second place, RockNRolla feels like a strong third in this trinity, and returns Ritchie to form. At the very least, it’s a fun leadup to Sherlock Holmes.