Meek's Cutoff (3/5 Stars)

Day (???), Wagon Axel broke, LOST

Director Kelly Reichardt and star Michelle Williams, the team from “Wendy and Lucy,” are collaborating for the second time on the near perfect movie about a lost wagon train on the Oregon Trail in 1845 named “Meek’s Cutoff.” The star rating I gave and the words “near perfect” may confuse you. Let me explain. Star ratings aren’t really helpful in that it rates a movie good or not relative to all movies and not other in kind movies of a particular genre. For instance I gave “Sucker Punch,” a flawed movie, four stars mainly for its ambition. It tried for about 100 things and got fifty of them right. “Meek’s Cutoff,” a near perfect movie, gets three stars because it is small. It tried about 10 things and got nine of them right before ending on an ambiguous anti-climax that I didn’t really care for. Does that mean people should like “Sucker Punch” more than “Meek’s Cutoff” generally. No of course not. I just like a bigger movie, that’s all. What I’m trying to say I guess is that the reader is better off reading the review before deciding whether they want to see the movie or not. The mark of a superior reviewer is one that describes a movie well enough that someone interested in that type of movie will have their interest piqued whether or not the reviewer liked it himself (and vice versa). 

In describing Reichardt’s work one has to take out some pretty arty words. Words like “contemplative,” “aesthetic,” “serene,” “minimalist,” etc. Reichardt likes setting her places in Oregon. She likes lingering in long shots. She focuses in on minute details and treats conversations like she would the cinematography. Most of them are not entirely important and fit nicely into the background. I would be surprised if the budget for this movie went into seven figures. In a way, Reichardt works like the wagon train. She’s out there in the wilderness with very little crew or way of direction, trying out something original that almost nobody will see. Still the movie is very well made. The score gives the movie an unsettling tone. The acting is exceedingly natural. Over time, as the water runs out and tensions rise, suspense builds. The climax of the movie should be completely unexciting by any normal movie standard as it involves a situation that is often only the start of much larger action sequences. But here it still works because there is such a sense of reality that people pointing guns at each other feels very serious. It also helps that one is a woman who does so reluctantly. “Meek’s Cutoff” isn’t some sort of revisionist history. The Michelle Williams character, like the other women in the three wagon train, is of her time and place. She acts subordinate to her husband and men in general. But she also doesn’t want to die. And after wandering the desert being led by a braggart named Meek (played by Bruce Greenwood) who hasn’t the slightest idea of where he is going nor the slightest inclination to admit it, she becomes less and less enthusiastic about standing around waiting for the water to run out. Little by little she oversteps her bounds in the politest way possible until finally there is no more room for being polite.   

It was once said by William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) that the hardest thing about writing a Western was finding something interesting for the women to do while the men had fun shooting each other and what not. “Meek’s Cutoff” doesn’t necessarily give the women things to do that usually belong to the men, but it is told through the POV of the women. Normally this wouldn’t be so interesting as it involves them spending a good amount of screen time gathering brush, cleaning, and cooking. But here it serves the movie’s purpose in that it underscores the complete hopelessness of the journey. It’s one thing to have an argument over whether to go North or South in search of water, it’s another thing to have to silently stand around while the men argue over which way to go off in the distance. Things get more complicated when Meek captures a lone Indian. He has the bright idea to kill the heathen right then and there. Or perhaps they could ask the Indian to lead them to water. I guess you can say this is the Oregon Trail version of the modern cliché of a guy not wanting to ask for directions.

Bringing along paranoia and emotional wailing is another couple on the wagon train played by Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan. Every time I see Dano he is hanging out in an unforgiving desert (Little Miss Sunshine, There Will be Blood.) You would think at some point he would get a tan. Anyway he has been perfectly cast. Mr. Paleface does not belong here. He should not have come. Providing the movie with the necessary amount of historical racism is Shirley Henderson. She has a nice way of going about it, like for instance fearfully remarking that Indians are murderous non-beings and then subsequently backing up the statement with the words, “It’s a well documented fact.” On some level every truthful historical movie is going to have characters that are flawed in such a way. Almost everybody back then was what we would call racist and sexist today. Future generations will probably say similar things about us I’m sure, though for what I have no idea. 

One of my favorite books, “The Education of Henry Adams” had the following quote in it that caught my eye:

“The study of history is useful to the historian in teaching him of his ignorance of women; and the mass of this ignorance crushes one who is familiar enough with what are called historical sources to realize how few women have ever been known. The woman who is known only through a man is known wrong, and excepting one or two like Mme. de Sevigne, no woman has pictured herself.” (1905)

Growing up in school you have this notion that all of world history is accessible simply by opening a book, but this isn’t the case. History is limited by memory and preserved only by the efforts of real people who take the time to write it down. It is a profound truth that the people who did write things down were mainly concerned with men and were almost never women. According to what I’ve rated on Netflix, I have seen 1,511 movies. I can count on one hand how many of these were stories about historical women told by a woman (In this, I am subscribing to the auteur theory of filmmaking by crediting the role of author to not the writer but the director of a movie. In either case, still one hand) Specifically, I have only seen two movies. One was Sofia Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette,” and now this one. This isn’t simply me being not very broad in movie choices nor is it completely the fault of the Hollywood boy’s club (though admittedly they do a downright awful job of marketing their products to half the movie going public.) It represents a literal gap in our knowledge of the world. These stories are lost to history. “Meek’s Cutoff” is based on a true story. There was a guide on the Oregon Trail named Stephen Meek who led a wagon trail in 1845 off into an uninhabitable no-man’s land. He didn’t know where he was going. The train ran out of water. People died and the settlers mutinied. But there were thousands of wagons not just three. And the Michelle Williams character? She’s completely fictional. Certainly there were women there. Yes, they did all the work we see them do in this movie. But if they had any personalities at all, we have no way of knowing what they consisted of. Nobody bothered to record it.

Hanna (4/5 Stars)

Once upon a time there was a very special girl who lived in the woods.

Hanna is the name of a teenage girl, played by Saoirise Ronan, who apparently has spent all of her life in the arctic somewhere with no other human contact but her father, played by Eric Bana. He has been training to be the ultimate warrior. She can hunt deer with bow or gun, she knows several languages, she is an expert at mixed martial arts, etc. etc. What is he preparing her for and why her? Well, we don’t really know because he never tells her and this movie more or less doesn’t explain anything until Hanna discovers it for herself. Events unfold. Her father tests her ability one day and finds her ready. He hands Hanna a honing device that will give away the position of their house in the woods if switched on. Hanna switches it on. Her father gives her instructions on how to be captured, kill the CIA agent on her case in her holding cell, make her escape by evading a SWAT team in an underground labyrinth, and to meet him in Berlin. The rest of the movie is the unfolding of that plan in various chases and fights. No doubt, the sheer ambiguity of what is going on dampens the suspense and urgency of “Hanna,” and one can see how this movie could have been downright awful. But there is behind this movie a very good director named Joe Wright who has been able to assemble a terrific cast and construct some damn good action sequences. Because this is the type of story that is impossible to know if it is worth watching until the end scenes finally provide some motivation for what you’ve just seen, the only way it can work in the meanwhile is if there is plenty to admire that can stand alone. There is. You can appreciate the clean crisp look of “Hanna.” You can admire the acting ability of Saoirise Ronan, who has created a character that is believably both an innocent and a killer. You can admire Cate Blanchett’s stoic style and screen presence. You can admire Tom Hollander’s ability to look dangerous in short shorts. You can admire the chases and fights all of which are logically edited, competently shot and choreographed, and develop within the thin overlapping lines of creativity and possibility. Finally the ending does make sense of the beginning and things that happened are justified. This is actually one movie that I wouldn’t mind seeing a sequel to. Of course, I don’t mean another thriller like this. I’m thinking more along the lines of a comedy where Hanna tries to assimilate in the world and gets a job working at a carnival or something. I think that would be funny. Just throwing it out there.

This is Director Joe Wright’s first true action movie. It suits his style very well. In the past he has done dramas like “Pride and Prejudice” and “Atonement” but they have always felt and moved fast. Wright loves to move his camera around his characters in long shots. In “Hanna” there is an especially impressive fight scene with Eric Bana and five special agents in a Subway station. The camera tracks ahead of Bana as he enters station with an agent following him. As he walks forward the camera circles around Bana revealing adversaries on all sides. A fist-fight starts (hand to hand combat because the head bad guy wants Bana alive)  as the camera keeps on circling. This goes on until all the bad guys are incapacitated, at which point Bana picks up a dead bad guy’s phone, calls the last number and acquires some useful information as he is walking out of the station. The entire scene was done in a single unbroken camera shot. It must of required a hell of a lot of choreography, planning, and practice. This is something directors rarely do especially in fight scenes as it is much more work for something the audience might not notice anyway. (The point of long shots is to add realism to a scene. There isn't any movie cheating in a long shot because nothing is being edited.) But the fact that the director can pull it off at all is a testament to his coordination, skill, and ambition. That doesn't mean the technique can't be overused though. Wright's seemingly favorite thing to do in this movie is focus in on Ronan’s face as she is hurriedly going somewhere. Since the camera is moving quite a lot, the background of a shot is always changing and noticeably out of focus. It can get dizzying. But then again, it is a very watchable face to look at. It always looks like its viewing the world with heightened awareness. Go ahead and Google Saoirise Ronan before going to see this movie. If you find it objectionable in any way then “Hanna” is not the movie to see. You will be staring at her in close-ups for a substantial period of time. (Psst, I think Wright might be in love with Ronan...or at least her face)  

Playing the role of bad guy is Cate Blanchett, a CIA agent intent on capturing Hanna. She is exceedingly impeccable in this movie. There isn't a single blemish or a hair out of place. She looks like she's been carved out of alabaster marble and fitted with a fiery red wig. Cate the Great gives off a natural fierceness but unfortunately never goes over the top. I’m still waiting for a performance from her that matches that one line about being a hurricane in “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” but goes on for an entire movie. I can definitely see her in the type of role that a Jack Nicholson would play. One of her hired henchmen is Tom Hollander, playing against type as an unstable mercenary with a strange sense of fashion. He does good work as well. This is his third movie working with Wright who has only made four movies. They make a good team. There is also a family on vacation that Hanna meets on the road and travels with for part of the journey. The mom is Olivia Williams who you may remember as the teacher in “Rushmore.” The daughter is about Hanna's age. She quotes pop culture references as if they're important. I think it's a toss-up over who sounds more like a freak. Anyway the family provides a welcome human and comic element in between all of the chase scenes. In one side scene Hanna goes on a double date with the daughter and a couple of soccer players they meet at a campground. They listen to music, which Hanna has never heard before and then there is almost a kissing scene. Almost. I’m telling you this character would be great in a comedy. She reminds me of the aliens from “3^rd Rock from the Sun.”

All the Grimm Fairy tale stuff in the production design are a nice touch. It makes perfect sense for a child-in-danger movie. If you've ever read a un-Disneyfied version of any of the tales you will know what I mean. The Grimm's had literally no qualms about putting children in mortal danger.

p.s. Coming Soon! Hanna 2 - Death in Montana!

Source Code (5/5 Stars)

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me introduce you to the first great movie of 2011. “Source Code” is a top-notch science fiction thriller about a secret government program that allows a person to relive the last eight minutes of another person’s life. This is possible because each person has an eight-minute track of short-term memory that theoretically can be preserved after death. The government sends a soldier back into the memory of a teacher named Sean Fennersten. Once he is in the Source Code, he inhabits Fennersten’s body for eight minutes before a bomb explodes onboard the train he is riding in, killing Fennersten and all the other passengers. The soldier has free will and can control Fennersten’s body, even going so far as to change events within the memory, but he won’t be able to save anybody because the bomb already went off in the past. The soldier’s mission is to identify the bomber in order to prevent another impending terrorist attack. This theoretical technology is completely absurd. I was expecting to see a flux capacitor somewhere but instead the scientist in charge merely invoked quantum mechanics and parabolic calculus. Obviously, he’s counting on my ignorance of the subject so I won't know exactly why his explanation is ridiculous. Well played, sir. But still the story works extremely well because the director, Duncan Jones, and the writer, Ben Ripley, instinctively know that the power in any science fiction story is not how the technology works but how it enables the characters to fulfill some universal need or desire that normally would be impossible to achieve. Why would anyone want to relive the past? Is it because if you knew then what you know now, you wouldn’t have said what you said or done what you did? Let’s be honest. Time travel, at least to the recent past, is about regret. The soldier, Captain Colter Stevens, being the first test subject of this technology doesn’t really know what he is doing. And so he consistently fails in one way or another before the eight minutes runs out and he dies a fiery death, again. Unlike the rest of us, he can reset the clock and start all over. Perhaps, if given enough tries, he can find a way to use his time wisely.

This conceit should be most familiar to anyone who has seen the great movies “Groundhog Day” and “Run Lola Run.” Stevens, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, starts each Source Code at the same place right before the woman across from him, his girlfriend, played by Michelle Monaghan, thanks him for his advice. Nobody else in the train remembers the last train ride. This means two things: One, Stevens can act as impulsively and rashly as he wants and not fear any reprisal because the world ends in eight minutes. And Two: Since nobody remembers, nobody can really help him. It’s a good that Stevens spends much more time acting rashly than trying to convince anybody of the situation. He’s not wasting any time, and besides, they’re all dead anyway. Give credit to the Ben Ripley because Stevens’ actions have a persistent logical thread to them. He never repeats himself and no other passenger ever changes his or her personality. (Monaghan, in particular, does a pretty good job of being somebody one could logically fall for in eight minutes). This is a movie you can pay close attention to and get a kick out of how they don’t cheat. Everything is considered and taken into account. I especially liked how the writer put a professional comedian, played by Russell Peters, just two rows behind Stevens as this gives the movie several excuses for witty quips once Stevens’ behavior starts getting more and more irregular. I also got a kick out of when Stevens automatically resorts to racial profiling during one of his first runs because, let’s be honest, if you knew there was a ticking time bomb and nothing else, wouldn’t you suspect the only middle-eastern guy on the train. This movie isn’t afraid to admit that undesirable tendency. Stevens follows him off the train at the next stop, confronts him, and assaults him. And as he is beating him up, to the horror and shock of his girlfriend and everybody else at the station, somebody else activates the bomb and the train in the distance blows up anyway. Back to the drawing board, buddy. No, it’s not going to be that easy.

I won’t go too much more into the plot because following where it twists and turns is a natural pleasure of the movie. Except for one more thing: Why doesn’t Captain Colter Stevens remember training for this mission? The last thing he remembers is being in Afghanistan with his unit. Then one day he wakes up to find himself as Fennersten. At the end of each eight minutes he finds himself in a type of isolated chamber speaking over a video intercom to a soldier named Goodwin, played by Vera Farmiga, and a scientist, played by Jeffrey Wright. Where is he? I won’t tell you but if you ever saw Duncan Jones’ first movie, Moon, the discovery that Colter Stevens eventually makes is not unlike astronaut Sam Rockwell’s discovery that he is living in a cloned body that has a contractual expiration date. Duncan Jones has only two movies under his belt but he is already developing a personal style and motif. His movies are low budget but look like they cost quite a bit. They are sleek, clean, and tightly wound. He is especially interested in science, technology, and bureaucracy’s disregard of the sanctity of human consciousness. If Jones ever wanted to make a period piece, Frankenstein would be the perfect story to adapt. He has a keen understanding of the topic.

For my money, this movie is about two minutes two long. There’s a nice moment near the end with a still frame pause. They should have just held that for a few more seconds and then went straight to the credits. But hey, that’s just me.

Sucker Punch (4/5 Stars)

Zach Snyder, director of “300” and “Watchmen,” tries out his writing chops for the first time with “Sucker Punch,” a story about a wrongly committed girl who attempts an insane asylum escape. Well actually there is five of them and they’re prostitutes in a bordello and um…The whole escape thing involves fighting World War I, giant mechanical samurais, a dragon…and it all takes place at or in uh…imagination land…you know what? I’ll get back to that. “Sucker Punch” lives up to its title. It is a totally unpredictable unapologetic excess of heightened emotion, ultra violence, and stylistic overindulgence. You can arguably say that “Sucker Punch” is a bad movie but that's sort of like remarking that Opera isn’t realistic enough. I will say this though about Snyder. I’ve always had the feeling while watching his movies that I was witnessing something unmistakably new. If “Sucker Punch” is folly, it is at least my favorite kind. An ambitious one.

The movie starts with your average worst-case scenario. A woman dies. She leaves her entire estate to her two daughters. The evil stepfather gets enraged and with largely incestuous overtones attacks his kids. The older daughter, a girl named Baby Doll, played by Emily Browning, runs to get a gun but returns to late. Her sister has been murdered. The evil stepfather frames Baby Doll and gets her committed to an insane asylum. He then bribes the sadistic operator, played by Oscar Isaac, to have Baby Doll lobotomized within the week.

At this point, the movie becomes a completely different parallel movie, whereupon it seems that Baby Doll imagines herself to be a prostitute in a bordello, who is to be sold to a character called the High Roller within the week. She enlists the help of four other fellow prostitutes, Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), Rocket (Jena Malone), Amber (Jamie Chung), and Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens) to plan an escape. They will need a map, a cigarette lighter, a knife, and a key. The plan is for Baby Doll to put on a highly entertaining burlesque act that will distract all the men in order for the others to steal the items.

I left something out. In the asylum story, there is a psychiatrist (Carla Gugino) who has the inmates perform their sad stories on a theater stage as a sort of therapy. In the bordello, she is a madame who runs the burlesque show. When Baby Doll starts dancing (or supposedly acting out therapy in the first storyline) the movie switches over into battle scenes, which include the five girls donning salacious battle-rattle and fighting various armies for the items. They have to kill Zombie Germans stationed in World War I trenches for the map, a fire-breathing dragon for the fire, and so on. Throughout most of this you can sort of tell what is actually happening in the other story-lines although you may have some very good questions. Like for instance, why is this woman imagining herself in a so very male fantasy world. Or who is the Scott Glenn character, a wise entity that shows up only in the battle fantasies to intone enjoyably ridiculous advice, supposed to be in reality, whatever that is.

The best answer I think is that the several story-worlds have less to do with plot or logic and much more to do with giving Snyder an excuse to zealously indulge into what could perhaps be called an “artistic vision.” I’m guessing he worked backward with a thought process like this: How can I get a team of scantily clad women to battle World War I zombies, medieval dragons, and science fiction robots, all in the same movie? Well, it can totally be in the imagination of a stripper on a mission. That would provide the excuse for putting them in full makeup and revealing outfits the entire time. But wait, what type of stripper would be crazy enough to imagine all that? Well, perhaps if the stripper was but the schizophrenic alter ego of a truly insane woman. But wait, what would make someone be that bat shit crazy? Aha! I’ll have her father kill her sister and frame her for it! Break out the champagne! I’m going to start up the drawings for the gigantic samurai robots!

Really, your enjoyment of this movie is not going to come from the plot or character development. It will come from your willingness to enjoy stand-alone set pieces of ridiculously outfitted women battling equally ridiculous things. In that aspect, the movie truly delivers. The action scenes are outrageous and innovative. Helpfully, Snyder also has the habit of using slow motion. This allows the viewer to admire the artistic still frame, which in turn stops the action from becoming a Bayesian mish mash of mindless confusion. Outside the battle scenes, there is also plenty to admire in style if not in substance. I especially like the camera angles and the exaggerated details in objects and characters. (The Mayor and Cook were my favorite grotesquely comical caricatures). Plenty of attention is placed on composition, color palette, and atmosphere. Snyder’s use of green screen in every shot allows him the requisite control to stylize every single shot. The voiceovers and serious talk could have been more poetic and Snyder's choice of music isn't very good, but still there is a truly great movie waiting somewhere in Snyder’s style. I hope to someday see it. 

The character development in this movie leaves something to be desired. I don’t think it was a very good idea to name the characters Sweet Pea, Amber, or Baby Doll. Blondie is okay I guess. But really, given what the women are made to do, the only name that makes any sense is Rocket. She’s played by Jena Malone and is appropriately the only actor here that gives off any lasting impression. (Emily Browning on the other hand seems to have been cast solely on her ability to look sad). Jena you may remember from “Donnie Darko” and “Into the Wild” and probably don’t remember from one of my favorite hidden movies, “Cheaters.” She deserves to be on the short list of underrated and perpetually underused actresses. Her presence here lends the team its admittedly limited amount of credibility. 

Two more things. The makers will have you believe that this contains themes of female empowerment. Plenty of critics, including two I highly respect A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips, say it is decisively misogynistic. I disagree with both. It’s neither. It’s a comic book movie and as such it contains a certain style that equally applies to both men and women. The good guys are exaggerated into the maker’s idea of ideal beauty and the bad guys are exaggerated into the maker’s idea of ideal ugliness. I don’t recall anybody saying that the one-dimensional Spartans in “300” with their ridiculously perfect perpetually uncovered abdominals were somehow demeaning to men. They simply commented on how nice the abs looked. That attitude should be applied to the heroines of this movie. It's true, Snyder deals in the objectification of people. But then again so do all comic books, and for that matter anything dealing with fashion, or why not the entire branch of art called Humanism going all the way back to when Michelangelo added all those muscles in the Sistine Chapel for no other reason than he thought the human body was an admirable thing and that there was no harm in making it look its best. Of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder and people may logically be turned off by the presentation of these women (or like me have a preference for one amongst the others), but I don’t think anyone can argue that Snyder, or for that matter his wife/executive producer Deborah Snyder, wasn’t trying to make the team look as gorgeous as he thought possible. There's nothing wrong with that. 

As far as the plenty of "women in danger" material in this movie, I can’t see how you can have an action movie without it. If there isn’t any danger, there isn’t any conflict. The movie might as well have taken place at a shooting range with the bad guys being cardboard cutouts. The test I would think is whether the makers intend the audience to empathize primarily with the women: Do they mean for us to feel scared when they are in danger and to be relieved when they are triumphant? I think the answer to that is obvious in this movie. If the test worked any other way than every movie with a female action star would be automatically exploitative. That would include Ripley, Clarice Starling, and Lisbeth Salandar. Truly we would be missing out by keeping all those fictional women in the movie universe up on their pedestals totally safe all the time.

Having said that, the PG-13 rating is completely absurd, a perfect example of how hypocritical the MPAA can be. Future moviemakers take note. You can kill all you want just as long as there isn’t any blood. You can present sexual violence just as long as there isn’t any nudity. And you can have characters yell "motherfucker" just as long as you cut out the audio for the second half of the word. Of course, the most ridiculous thing is what the MPAA apparently thought was too objectionable to keep in. The credits and trailer show what sort of look to be like the actual burlesque shows that we never get to see in the movie. So apparently murder and near-rape is fine, but a song and dance number that the women seem to be actually enjoying isn’t. Hmm…now is that misogynistic?