Tl;dr – The Cove is “Bowling for Columbine” for dolphins.
Okay, here we go. Every couple of years, a documentary comes around that is touted as “important” – a word that in the film industry is code for “soul-crushing”. In 2009, that movie was The Cove. To no one’s surprise, it won the Oscar for Best Documentary and, like most “important” documentaries, large-toothed men in non-black suits and cowboy hats accused it of being fabricated propaganda. But all that is neither here nor there.
What is both here and there is that you should really probably watch this movie.
First, a little clarification: I wouldn’t call myself a “dolphin-lover”. I don’t own a sweet-ass dolphin necklace or a poster or a Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper. I’ve never even been to Sea World. In fact, when I think about dolphins, the first thing that comes to mind is this bizarre half-formed memory of being sick and shitting my pants while watching Flipper when I was little (it was last week). This is not to say that I’m dolphin-ignorant. I’ve seen Planet Earth. I’m fully aware that dolphins are one set of thumbs away from sending us back to the fuckin’ trees. I guess I’d describe my emotional relationship to dolphins as one of cautious respect.
That being said, The Cove straight fucked me up. Plus, now I’m totally gay for dolphins.
Here’s the skinny: In the 1960s a dude named Ric O’Barry captured and trained the dolphins that played Flipper (ugh…there’s that feeling again…gross). Basically, Flipper did for dolphins what the Taco Bell dog did for chihuahuas – people went batshit. So insatiable was the public’s appetite for frolicking, subservient dolphins that the marine entertainment industry exploded overnight.
Fast forward a few years. After some incredibly uncool shit goes down (which I won’t spoil for you), Ric O’Barry comes to the realization that this multi-billion dollar industry that he had a hand in creating is completely fucked up on every level imaginable so he does what anyone would do – he becomes a crazy-ass activist.
Director Louie Psihoyos and a group of guerrilla filmmakers team up with O’Barry and head to Taiji, Japan – the hub of the dolphin industry where every September, during their migration, dolphins are herded into a “secret cove” and captured by local fishermen. Some are sold to trainers and parks and some are sold for food. And according to O’Barry, shit gets pretty fucked.
In a shocking twist, O’Barry is not an insane person. Everything he said is true. After infiltrating the cove under the cover of darkness and setting up hidden cameras, the filmmakers capture events so flat-out abhorrent, they must be seen to be believed.
Ultimately, my list of reasons you should watch The Cove reads a lot like a list of reasons not to. I’m not going to lie to you – it’s a huge fucking bummer. But it’s an important bummer. You should really watch it.
I give it 5 out of 5 perfect spirals from Dan Marino. (Get it? He played for the Miami Dolphins. I’m trying to butch up after this teary sniffle-fest.)
Not since 
Did everyone have a happy equinox? I know I sure did…and if the 50 drained pig carcasses on my back yard altar are any indication, I’m gonna have one bountiful-ass harvest. (Much different from a bountiful ass-harvest. Hyphens are powerful things.)
- Stranger in a strange land
Looking at the movie poster for “Teeth” with its artful use of negative space and understated Sundance Special Jury Prize, you may get the impression that someone “finally got it right”. But don’t be fooled – “Teeth” is just another cookie-cutter, film-by-numbers, money-making juggernaut in the tired and worn “Girls With Teeth In Their Vaginas” genre that has dominated theaters for the last decade.
For years now, people have been trying to get me to watch this film. I honestly have no idea why I’ve been so hesitant – it may have something to do with the fact that a cube killed my family and that I’m allergic to movies, but I’m probably reading into it too much. The point is that last night I finally gave in and quite frankly, I wish I’d folded sooner. Had I seen Cube thirteen years ago when it was released, I’m pretty sure it would have blown my mind and changed my life forever and honestly, there’s no telling where I’d be now. Senior Advisor to the President of Space, perhaps? A debonair Private Eye? A jackass with a Cube poster on his wall? The possibilities are endless.
But Cube isn’t just one brutal death scene after another. That opening sequence just serves to show you what this place is capable of. The rest of the movie follows six other (slightly more cautious) unwilling participants as they wander about the Cube, looking for a way out whilst trying not to get dead in the process. No one remembers how they got there and each person seems to have been selected randomly, but as the “prisoners” get to talking (as prisoners do), they begin to discover that perhaps each other’s presence there isn’t so random after all. That’s when the paranoia and self-preservation kick in and the whole thing turns into “Survivor: Death Cube” (Dude I would watch the SHIT out of that for realsies).
While I can understand the paranoia and fear in a situation such as this, I have a hard time understanding the open hostility that everyone shows to one another. Now maybe I’ve just been lucky in that all my death cube experiences have been with the even-tempered and polite, or maybe these folks need to slow their goddamn rolls for a second or two. These constant strange over-reactions by a couple characters are the only moments that the film loses steam for me, and really, if that’s the worst thing you can say about a movie, it ain’t half bad – especially if it was made for only $365k…which it was. And that’s Canadian dollars, motherfucker. So that’s like six bucks U.S. which is super impressive.
There’s just no two ways about it – Death Warrant is fucking bizarre.
Listen, I know CineMEH can seem pretty dude-centric at times. What with all the talk of boobs and gore and boners and explosions and such, there must be a significant percentage of the fairer sex that feels not particularly catered to, nay, downright excluded…especially in the throes of JCVD Appreciation Week.
But JCVD doesn’t rely on this potential energy to carry his weight. The man does not rest on his laurels. No, he took shit into his own hands. In my head, his first day on set went like this:
