Just got back from a screening of The Cove and I have to admit I didn’t have very high hopes for the film going in. The film was being marketed pretty heavily as a blatant message movie, and I worried that it would be far too much message and not enough movie, and I am happy to report the film struck a an excellent balance.

Showing that it is following in the footsteps of Man On Wire, The Cove immediately sets itself up as a heist film with an opening scene that sets up the crimes the team must commit to simply get some video footage of the small cove where dolphins are being slaughtered in the small fishing town of Taijii, Japan. But rather then focus solely on this element, The Cove rather deftly alternates between explaining the backstory of how the world dolphin trade originated, currents efforts to curb it, and the activists planning their secret mission.

Eschewing the standard talking head format, The Cove also manages to educate as well as entertain through a series of interviews, clips and bureaucratic International conference meetings that should be boring, yet are both infuriating and captivating. Spliced in-between these are the carefully designed and carried out plans to secretly video tape The Cove.

And while all the evidence, data and angry activism makes for a compelling case, none compares to the video evidence that is eventually gathered that shows the actual dolphin herd being slaughtered for consumption. That a group of people must go to such lengths to record these events is not surprising, as the slaughter is stunningly brutal as it bathes the ocean in a sea of blood. But even more saddening then the slaughter, is that the meat is filled with such high levels of mercury that it is toxic to eat. Making Japan’s push to have the meat available to school children perhaps even a more heinous act then the killing itself.

The Cove is not an easy film to watch, and even more difficult to not be swayed by its compelling message. But without a doubt it is one of the best documentaries of the year.

Tags: activists, documentaries, dolphin, dolphins, film, heist, japan, Man on Wire, movie, poster, review, screening, Taijii, The Cove

I bet you think running this site is all fun and games. Oh sure, I have an unhealthy addiction for Mahjong that I have been trying to pass off on Anna, but that is besides the point. I don’t get to just lay around all day, watching whatever I want whenever I want. I have, like, a system. A rigorous, temperamental system.

When I first started this column it was meant to be an excuse for me to finally watch certain films I had always wanted to watch when I was younger, but for whatever reason, had simply never gotten around to doing so. But while that selfishly worked well as an initial idea, that wasn’t going to be enough to fuel a column, let alone an entire site. So thus my initial idea inevitably began to expand.

Soon I began to look for films that would push me out of my comfort zone, as well as those that would have appealed to me when I was a youth. From there it was just a hop, skip and a jump to include reviews of true independent films and hard to find foreign films as well. Finally, I began to track down movies that were out of print or simply never released in the US. And as I added on each new group of films, the list of movies I planned to watch and review grew increasingly larger and more daunting.

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