True lies

The Yes Men Fix the World

Crit

My first thought when I discovered that these guys could continue to punk greedy corporations even after showing their faces a few years ago in The Yes Men was "Don't these corporate yahoos go to kneejerk liberal documentaries in the art houses?" Well, astonishing though it may seem, apparently they don't.

Dow, Halliburton, and HUD are the deserving punkees this time, and even the liberals' newsletter, aka the New York Times, gets a poke (motto atop fake front page: "All the news we hope to print"). Like the boys themselves (ostensibly real names Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno), I have little faith that they actually can fix even a little bit of the world, but I'm sure glad they're trying. And I'm glad that, like their stylistic godfather Michael Moore, they can make me laugh while doing it.

Bronson

Crit

Some men are born to violence, some men achieve violence, and some men have violence thrust upon them. Charlie Bronsen, né Mickey Peterson, is a bit of all three in Nicolas Winding Refn's beautifully loopy bash-o-pic of England's Most Famous/Violent Prisoner, who makes surreal art with bare knuckles. Owes a lot to A Clockwork Orange, but owes even more to the bravura performance by Tom Hardy, who appears in virtually every scene--about half of them smeared with blood and/or body paint--and does everything but cover Sid Vicious covering Paul Anka's "My Way."