Film Reviews: Rails & Ties, Jimmy Carter Man From Plains

JIMMY CARTER MAN FROM PLAINS Jonathan Demme, who directed Tom Hanks to an Oscar as the AIDS-afflicted lawyer in Philadelphia, may be the most well-meaning filmmaker in Hollywood; Jimmy Carter, winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development,” is certainly the most well-meaning ex-president in recent American history. And so Demme’s documentary portrait has no lack of good intentions. At over two hours, they’re nearly suffocating. Basically a vérité-style infomercial that follows Carter during a late-2006 book tour to promote his critique of Israel’s West Bank occupation, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, Jimmy Carter Man From Plains provides perfunctory background on its subject’s piety and Georgia roots, then plunges along with him into the media maelstrom. Carter fences with Charlie Rose, educates Larry King and signs a vast quantity of books. He’s scarcely the first to characterize the separation that exists in Israel’s occupied territories as apartheid — the Israeli left has called it that for years. But waving the term like a red cape before the American public, Carter has been notably disingenuous in exploiting it. Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid actually gives the implied analogy between Israel and white-supremacist South Africa short shrift, as does the film. The conditions of the occupation go largely unexplored. (Sunset 5; The Landmark; Playhouse 7; Town Center 5) (J. Hoberman)

  KING CORN Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis can trace their roots back to a couple of patches of Iowa soil their respective great-grandpappies used to own, and one day both guys figured, hey, what better way to see where they’d come from than to retrace their relatives’ muddy footsteps in the cornfields. What Cheney and Ellis found wasn’t the family tree, but its cornstalk — which reaches into everything most Americans eat and drink, for better or worse (the worse part, usually). Directed by Aaron Wolf, this is a twofold journey: the story of how two college buddies learned about their agricultural heritage, and the tale of how kernels of corn have invidiously worked their way into America’s diet — through the cows who’re literally overdosing on the stuff (that is one nasty sequence) and the soft drinks sweetened with a syrup the men find impossible to manufacture in a kitchen without damned near blowing up the house. A worthy companion piece to Super Size Me and Fast Food Nation (more the book than the movie), King Corn will put you off corn for a long, long time; that Coke can’ll start looking like a hand grenade after a while; and, really, forget that burger for now. But this is as much a thoughtful meditation on the plight of the American farmer as it is a rant against our expanding waistlines; amazing how something so small as a kernel of corn wound up as dangerous as it is delicious. (Music Hall) (Robert Wilonsky)

  MR. UNTOUCHABLE Interspersed with quotes from Machiavelli, blaxploitation anthems, non sequitur B-roll footage of New York City in the ’70s, and the occasional black-and-white dramatization, Mr. Untouchable is a fascinating, first-person account of drug kingpin and ruthless gangster Nicky Barnes, whose outrageous story of rise, rule, rage and revenge requires no such stylistic filler. Called everything from the Al Capone of Harlem to the titular moniker — with which he was christened in a New York Times Magazine cover story that led, some argue, to his downfall — Barnes (who is portrayed by Cuba Gooding Jr. in the upcoming true-crime opus American Gangster) has been a member of the witness-protection program since 1998, after giving up every one of the henchmen (and henchwomen) in his multimillion-dollar heroin empire. Shown either in master-of-the-universe silhouette or from the (expensively cuff-linked) wrists down, Barnes tells his story alongside an impressive number of the players, from the former “council” members that he helped put in jail to the reporters, DEA informants, police officers and prosecutors who put him there first. Also on hand is Barnes’ defense attorney of yore, David “Mighty Whitey” Breitbart, whose attitude encapsulates the uneasy balance that this film strikes between telling the straight story and glorifying a stone-cold snake in the grass. (AMC Magic Johnson Crenshaw; Rolling Hills 20) (Michelle Orange)

MUSIC WITHIN There’s no disputing the sincerity with which Steve Sawalich tells the true-life tale of Richard Pimentel, the man more or less behind the Americans With Disabilities Act. His is, without question, a story worth telling: Cocky kid thinks he’ll make a great motivational speaker, professor tells him he’s “full of shit” and needs to go live a little, kid goes to Vietnam and nearly dies a lot, then returns home all but deaf — the whole world sounds like it’s underwater and populated by a billion whistles being blown at once. And Ron Livingston, deadpan batshit in Office Space and stoically heroic in Band of Brothers, is the perfect dude for the role; you want to believe in him. But a little earnestness goes a long way, and Music Within has a little too much of it, down to the casting of Michael Sheen as the wheelchair-bound savant with cerebral palsy who acts as Richard’s muse and conscience. Sheen, like the movie itself, is trying too hard to inspire when the story doesn’t need the help. (Mann Chinese 6; AMC Century City; Playhouse 7) (Robert Wilonsky)