Sorry to Bother You (5/5 Stars)

Sorry to Bother You has lots to say and uses its time wisely. This is one of those movies that you can spend much time afterwards discussing what it had to say. On an originality scale from 1 to Being John Malkovich, it is around 8 or 9 Charlie Kaufmans. It starts off in a new place and then half-way through goes completely crazy.

Sorry to Bother You was written and directed by Boots Riley. Never heard of him, but the way this movie plays, it feels like he’s had half a decade worth of material backed up in his system wrestling for position at the floodgates of creative fulfillment. Sorry to Bother You is about many things: wealth and poverty, capital and labor, ambition and community, individuality and conformity, weird art, wrong-headed genetic experiments, and slavery.

Our hero Cassius Green (played by Lakeith Stanfield) starts with an existential crisis. He lives in his uncle’s garage and hasn’t a job. He is simply surviving. What will his life amount to future generations? (Even when the movie is small, it is big.) Cassius Green lands a soul-crushing seemingly impossible job at a telemarketing firm. They will hire anyone who walks in the door. He is not doing well. Then, a fellow colleague played by a wonderful Danny Glover (still alive!) gives him great advice. Use your white voice he counsels. “White Voice?” asks Cassius. Glover explains what he means. Its not just sounding nasal. It means sounding like you don’t have student loans, that you pay all your bills on time, that you don’t have a care in the world. You are who the other person on the phone wants to be like. Oh, that white voice. Cassius Green gives it a shot. (He sounds remarkably like the actor David Cross, best known as Tobias Funke the therapist turned actor in “Arrested Development”.) This apparently is what black people think white people sound like. Like the movie in general, it’s too funny to be truly offensive.

Pretty soon, Cassius’s telemarketing career takes off and two subplots run right along side his growing success. The first is that the telemarketing center tries to unionize. This is led by a guy named Squeeze, played by Steven Yuen, who stages a work stoppage during prime calling hours. As one character remarks, it is some very Norma Rae shit. Having seen that movie, I agree. The second is that after Cassius gains a promotion he starts selling a product called “Worry Free” labor. “Worry Free” is a company that contracts with regular people to provide guaranteed food and shelter in exchange for otherwise unpaid labor. Its not necessarily slavery but Sorry to Bother You wants to liken it to such. Obviously, Cassius, being black, has some qualms about selling slavery to anyone, even if the slaves are of all races. But he also doesn’t want to be poor loser anymore and what exactly is his responsibility to everyone else?

Then there are weird art show, at least one riot, and the horse people. But I’m not going to get too far into that. It would be impossible to explain here. Two more points. First, this is the second movie this year that puts Oakland, California on the map. The first was Ryan Coogler’s “Black Panther”. It is beginning to feel like that place is the next hot place to make great movies. If one more great movie from one great new filmmaker springs from there in the near future, it would be fair to say its a trend.

Second, is a philosophical qualm. Unlike Boots Riley, I don’t believe slavery is a particularly profitable or productive way to run a business. Here, “Worry Free” is making cash hand over fist by this type of business practice. History disagrees. As the Adam Smith would say, the problem with slavery (besides all the evil) is that, because there is no hope of bettering their situation, the workers are not incentivised to worker smarter and/or harder. Rationally, a slave will work just as hard as they can to avoid punishment. I’ve heard this weird argument flitting about that the wealth of America was produced through slavery. That is a bit like saying the economy of South Korea was built by North Koreans. If slavery produced wealth, the world would have been a whole lot richer a whole lot longer ago. This the truth of the matter. Having said that, Boots Riley made a great film and Lakeith Stanfield, well, his character reminded me of some great white characters like Peter Gibbons from Office Space and C.C. Baxter from The Apartment.

22 Jump Street (4/5 Stars)

The same exact thing but bigger.

According to Urban Dictionary the term ‘meta’ refers to something, generally art, that is characteristically self-referential. The most cliché example ever is the writer who has writer’s blcok that ends up writing a story about a writer who has writer’s block. I have seen this movie plenty of times and it has taken up residence in the shameful corner of my movie critic heart. The reason for this is that the idea seems clever but it is not. Cleverness contains an element of originality and creativity. If the idea has already been done before it cannot be original or creative. There is a caveat to this of course and ’22 Jump Street’ is a particularly good example of it working (at least the first time). ’22 Jump Street’ admits that its meta-ness, i.e. the fact that it is a sequel to a movie that itself was a remake of an old TV show from the 1980s, is not clever.

This is made explicit in the form of the police chief, played by Nick Offerman (the great anti-government crusader Ron Swanson from ‘Parks and Recreation’), who starts off each movie with an explanation as to why this lame excuse of a mission exists at all.  In the first movie with his trademark grouchy annoyance he explained that the 21 Jump Street mission existed because nobody in the police department had any new ideas so they just keep on rehashing old things in hopes that people won’t notice. In ’22 Jump Street’ he explains that nobody cared about 21 Jump Street when they redid it but they got lucky with success, so the department invested a whole lot more money into 22 Jump Street under the stupid impression that maybe if they spent a lot more money they could get that much more success. This influx of new money spent on arbitary shit that has no connection to the success of the mission becomes a running joke in the movie as the sets and gadgets become much more elaborate than they really need to be and characters start drinking espressos for no other reason than because they are more expensive than coffee.

But even this kind of admittance gets kind of exhausting after awhile. Or at least it should be. This is the type of movie that makes fools of movie critics with all their general theories as to what should be better than other things. It’s like a way overpriced tech price that refuses to fall to earth. For my money the reason is that it is genuinely funny and even though it uses a lot of self-referential jokes about sequels, there are plenty of new good one-liners, some great physical comedy, and actual twists in the story that are not predictable. The makers are especially adept at throwing reality to the wind in order to make the whole thing more bright and colorful. For no particular reason the bad guy, Peter Stormare, has a pink backpack. I thought that was funny and applaud such initiative. In other words, this movie like the first one is a much better movie that it should be, and all of these jokes that make fun of the fact that you are watching something that should not have been made seem less like that a writer with writer’s block and more like a cry of help from some seriously competent people that could be doing much better things with their talents.

And they have. The two buddy cops, Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum are very good actors. Jonah Hill has just wrapped up his second Oscar nomination. Channing Tatum has become a Steven Soderbergh favorite. Ice Cube, once a gangster, is now firmly typecast on the other side of the law. He has done well in both cases. The two directors, Phil Lord and Chris Miller, have so far made a career of taking cynical ploys of studio executives and making actual art out of them. Their last movie was ‘The Lego Movie’ something I did not see but was also praised by critics. ’22 Jump Street’ was too. These movies makes one wish they branched out into an original story just to see what it would look like. I am convinced that they could deliver it if they were allowed to and the epilogue of this movie, at least to me, comes off as a desperate plea to the audience and the studio to do just that, i.e. please please please no ’23 Jump Street.’

I haven’t spent a lot of time talking about the movie itself, but then again I don’t have to. It is the same movie. There is a drug dealer on a school campus and the two cops have to find out where the connection is coming from. You saw this movie already! Most of the jokes are based off of that, just far more expensive this time. 

p.s. Rob Riggle’s jokes went too far again. Everything else was generally funny. My favorite had to be the weightlifting part. 

p.s.s. I failed at college. Well I learned a lot of stuff, but cinematically speaking I muffed it. 

A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas (4/5 Stars)

The weird thing about the duo of Harold and Kumar is that the two actors playing them, John Cho and Kal Penn respectively, haven’t really found greater success outside of the “White Castle,” movies. If these trio of stoner road-trip movies prove anything it is that these two can carry a movie with just enough warmth and gravity to allow an audience to forgive an absolutely ridiculous plot and plenty of material that should be offensive but somehow comes off as normal good fun. That should put them in demand one would think. Perhaps it really has to do with their ethnicity (John Cho is Korean and Kal Penn is Indian) even though these movies are a sort of debunking of whatever theory that belongs too. It couldn’t be more plain that the pair are 100% American. They have no accents, enjoy fast food and getting high, and constantly find themselves in road-trip movies, that most American of movie genres. But great success in movies these two have not had (actually Kal Penn now works for the White House. Success? Yes. In movies? No) so I suppose it was inevitable that they answered the call for another “Harold & Kumar” movie, this time in 3D because well, why not.

The beginning of “A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas in 3D,” begins the duo split up. Harold has become a well-to-do wall street worker newly married to Maria from the 1^st movie. Kumar still lives in the same apartment as before and gets just as high as before. His girlfriend just left him over two months ago and the place looks like he hasn’t bothered to clean it since. Impending maturity knocks on the door when his girlfriend comes over to tell him that she is pregnant. There is also a slight problem in that Harold is throwing a Christmas party and has not invited Kumar. It is to the movie’s credit that it takes these problems semi-seriously because it adds some realistic weight to another completely ridiculous plot involving guys now in their thirties.

The humor in this movie is all over the place and though not all of the jokes hit home, there are enough of them for the movie to be truly funny. In addition, the road trip plot is segmented in such a way that new characters and situations easily come in, have their moment, and exit. New to the series is Danny Trejo, perhaps a name you don’t recall but a face you have definitely seen somewhere, who plays Harold’s father-in-law. Here is a guy on the level of a Christopher Walken or a Sam Rockwell that makes me smile simply by showing up. He sets the plot in motion by letting Harold know that it is a crime against Christmas to decorate a faux tree instead of a real one and sharing how his mother was killed by a Korean street gang while walking home with Christmas tree decorations. Harold better have a real tree to decorate by the time everybody gets back from midnight mass, or else! For the record, we get to see all of Danny Trejo’s tattoos and they are still super bad-ass. Then, of course, stopping in for a musical number and to save the day is the actor Neil Patrick Harris as Neil Patrick Harris, the actor. This calls for an explanation because as you may recall NPH was shotgunned to death while escaping from a Texan whorehouse in the second movie. If he can be believed, he is back on Earth via some sort of divine cockblock. I’m not explaining that any further as it might spoil the outrageous of it all, but will mention that it is hilarious.

There is something rather special about NPH’s performances in these movies. The big joke is that he is playing “himself.” So when we see him snorting cocaine and employing hookers, he is basically winking at the camera and saying that he, NPH of Doogie Houser M.D. fame, does all of that in “real life.” It is his “reputation” that he is bravely throwing under the bus for our amusement, sort of. One of the more outrageous things about NPH is that he is simply pretending to be a homosexual in public in order to sexually harass women. He does this by inviting the actresses he works with into his dressing room to rehearse scenes, remarking how tense they look, offering a massage to loosen them up, and innocently remarking that he is just one of the “girls” when things start getting weird. According to him, most publicly “gay” guys do this and Clay Aiken is the worst. All of this is done with such a gleeful and brazen smugness that it somehow completely obliterates the line of what should probably be very offensive. The sexual harassment is funny not because sexual harassment is funny. It’s funny because the “real” NPH would never do that, and we “know” that he is only “pretending” to be a sex fiend even though up on the screen is NPH is playing NPH, “himself,” as a sex fiend. It is a brilliant piece of comic misdirection, which makes NPH’s entire performance feel like it is getting away with something (which he is!). It’s on the level with Robert Downey Jr. getting away with wearing blackface in “Tropic Thunder.” As Mel Brooks would say, “It rises below vulgarity.” It’s a great character and performance and NPH should get an Oscar Nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Other jokes that perhaps they only sort of get away with are all the ethnic stereotypes. I say sort of because the variety of stereotypes make them okay simply because everybody (White, Asian, Indian, Jewish, Russian, Black) is being targeted. However, there are still plenty of these jokes that fall flat because they are just old. A general rule of humor is that jokes should never be told twice. I have heard the “All Asians look alike,” joke about a thousand times. The one in this movie I saw coming miles away. Saying Asians all look the same is a lazy joke nowadays. It’s time we came up with a new way to make fun of Asian people.

Finally the 3D employed in the movie is probably how 3D should be used: and by that I mean, as a joke. 3D generally speaking is more distracting than engrossing and as such should be used to break the 4^th wall, not to simply supplement a story. There are plenty of 3D jokes in this movie. Some are better than others. On the whole though, it is not worth the extra money to see a 3D movie in a theater. You would have as much fun with this one if you saw it streaming on Netflix.

The Informant! (4/5 Stars) September 25, 2009

What was he thinking? 


That is the main question that Director Steven Soderberg and Actor Matt Damon try to tackle, as they take on the most bizarre case of corporate whistle blowing in American history. The Informant! is technically a biopic, but since the story is so very odd, it comes off as a comedy. Not because it is necessarily trying to be one but because the facts are so outlandish and the main character is so wacky that it leaves the viewer bewildered and baffled to the point where they simply have to laugh. 

Try to stay with me here. There’s this guy named Mark Whitacre. He was orphaned at age 3 when he was in a car accident. A wealthy man in Ohio who ran amusement parks adopted him. He got a lucky break there. He met his wife in 8th grade marching band, they’ve been together ever since. He went to an Ivy League School and got a PHD in Biochemistry. He was hired by ADM, a processing conglomerate that manufactures corn into every single thing in the supermarket (check your labels: high fructose corn syrup, lycene, glucenate, etc.) He was promoted into the business end of things and made $350,000 a year as a vice president. It was at that point that he decided to become a whistleblower for the FBI. The FBI didn’t come to him. He went to the FBI. He admitted a price-fixing scheme that ADM was in on with their international competitors (“Just watch, in a couple months a can of soda (aka corn) will be 5 cents more”). He eagerly wore wires and planted cameras. In the end he would become the highest-ranking whistleblower in American History. At this point this story would seem like a drama like ‘The Insider.’ But the story is just getting started. 

Mark Whitacre while cooperating with the FBI that he invited into his company had been embezzling millions of dollars through various forgeries and shell companies. And that’s only a fraction of what he was lying about. The second half of the movie consists of Matt Damon lying to ADM, lying to the FBI, lying to his own lawyers, and probably most significantly lying to the press. Layer after unbelievable layer is pulled off and we are left wondering what kind of person would do this. How could somebody so smart be so stupid? In the end Mark Whitacre managed to get three times the jail sentence (9 years) then the other executives at ADM (3 years). The way he got there took a certain kind of brilliance, incredible courage, blinding naivete, and a strange kind of stubborn madness. 
The big question of course was: What was Mark Whitacre thinking? Did he really think that he would be promoted to run the company after he had just brought it down? Did he really think the people at the company would hide his embezzling after he had betrayed them? After he is caught red-handed his exasperated lawyer (played by Tony Hale) advises him to take the 3-5 year plea deal. Did Mark Whitacre really think he would win the ensuing trial? At plenty of points in the movie the FBI and Attorney General are left with their mouths agape when they find out what their star informant is doing behind their back. I mean is that even his real hair?

I’m not going to say anymore as much of the story’s pleasure is watching it unfold in front of you. I will just leave you with Mark Whitacre’s own words as he was awaiting the judgment at his trial. “Wow! What a Ride…I would just like to apologize to everybody…I am currently taking medication.”

Ratatouille 07/21/07

I personally don't care much for baseball. Never watch it, probably never will. But for hours, I could listen to Billy Crystal talk about it. It's not so much the baseball that's interesting, it's the excitement and intensity that it conjures up in fanatics such as Crystal. That I just love. This movie has that in spades. Though it's not baseball it's cooking.
The film is about a rat named Remy, voiced by somewhat known comedian Patton Oswalt, who loves food and dreams of being a chef. There is something so special about this charachter that its intoxicating. I just couldn't get enough of him. He not only loves food, he raves about it, he'll even risk death to get into the kitchen of a famous restaurant and cook something up himself. The way Remy delights in food fuels the entire picture. This is a smart, intelligent, funny, fantastic, beautiful and moving movie. and it works even if, like me, you know very little about cooking.
There's a fantastic scene when Remy is cooking a mushroom on a weathervane and is struck by lightning. He tastes the mushroom, finds it delicious and decides he would want to do it again. And then another great scene when he tries to get his family of rats to stop eating garbage, and taste real food. But not just scarf it down, savor the peculiarites of taste in different flavors. And another great speech at the end by a food critic that is downright poetic and spine-tingling. These are fantastic roles, and this movie is probably a lock for best animated feature. I feel comfortable saying that in the middle of July. 
The movie was written and directed by Brad Bird, same man who did The Incredibles. Although the Incredibles has more mass appeal, this is a superior film. Not just for animation, but film in general. Only problem it might have, is that I wouldn't say it's geared specifically toward kids. There's plenty of slapstick but still the movie's heart and soul has a refined mature palate. This is probably a film that parents drag their kids to see not vice versa. Other than that, Pixar has added another classic film to its already spectacular film canon. I don't care what the next film is about, I will be in line already. As Ego, the film critic, gleefully says with full confidence in the chef at the end, "Surprise me."