First Cow (4/5 Stars)

I enjoyed being excited about “First Cow” this year, the newest filmmaker from Kelly Reichardt. It is a story about the first cow in Oregon in the 1920s and a odd couple of men, a cook named Cookie, played by John Magaro, and a Chinaman named King-Lu, played by Orion Lee, who conspire to steal its milk and use to it to sell pastries. As there are no other cows, they will have the best tasting pastries in the territory. A boon!

What a dumb idea for a movie and I enjoyed telling people I was anticipating “First Cow” because the plot seemed so enjoyably stupid. But that was only half of it. I enjoyed getting excited by “First Cow” because Kelly Reichardt had directed it and written it with her long-time collaborator Jonathan Raymond. There previous collaborations include: “Old Joy”, “Wendy and Lucy”, “Meek’s Cutoff”, and “Night Moves”. So even though it looked and sounded stupid, I knew it was going to be good. And “First Cow” is very good. One of Reichardt’s best. And I would know because I have now seen every movie she has made, even her obscure student film “River of Grass.”

When I last wrote a review for a movie of hers “Night Moves” in June 2014, I spent half the time trying to explain why I to liked Reichardt’s style. I will add to that here by saying that she is from a very specific place that filmmakers usually do not make films about. The location is Oregon. In addition, she sometimes makes films that are period pieces. And where else can you see a movie that takes place in Oregon in the 1820s.

That is when “First Cow” takes place, mainly in a trading village comprised of Native Americans, English trappers, but also the travelling Russians and Chinese. The only real house around belongs to the richest man in town, played by Toby Jones. He also brought with him to the territory the title cow.

Cookie is an unappreciated cook by his rougher compatriots. He saves the life of King-Lu one day in the woods when he hides him from vengeful Russians. They strike a tender and gentle friendship that is really nice to witness. John Magaro’s performance is especially nice. When King-Lu first invites him into his shack and asks him to take it easy before dinner, Cookie’s first instinct is to start sweeping the floor. Then he goes outside and picks flowers for the table. (I think this movie would make a hilarious double feature with “The Revenant”. They exist in the same time period (1820s) and general location (American West) but could not be more different in content and tone.)

King-Lu is ambitious. His last scheme left him flat broke, but he has not given up. King-Lu is excited by the possibilities of being the first people in a new territory. “History isn’t here yet. It’s coming, but maybe this time, we can take it on our own terms.” But how to start? Perhaps a crime, surmises King-Lu anticipating Balzac’s famous saying.

The crime is to sneak into the field of the rich man and surreptitiously milk his cow. Through this little tale, Reichardt seems to make lots of statements about history, capitalism, opportunity, and class, but true to form, she does not come close to hitting you over the head with it. One can simply watch “First Cow” in a state of zen, letting the music gently wash over you, and taking comfort in calm acting and simple storytelling. In jazz, they say it is the notes you don’t play that make all the difference. The same can be said about a Reichardt film.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (3/5 Stars)

There was always something about Harry Potter that I found disturbing. It was always just a little bit off. Here you had a story about an innocent unassuming boy blessed with magical powers and a supremely important mission. They were imposed on him through no actions of his own. He would assume through accident of birth a unique status greater than all in the land. At the same time the hero rejects his unwon fame. He miserates on his unlucky situation and all it means. I am just a normal run-of-the-mill boy he asserts. All I want is the simple things in life like all the good ordinary men and women. In fact, in these stories those who seek fame and fortune above the simple things are looked down upon. In many cases they are the villains. In this way the book has its cake and eats it too. It allows the reader to vicariously live in fame, fortune, and violent glory while assuring themselves that what they really want is simply good friends, family, and love. By reading a book that abdicates the responsibility for all the superficial qualities forced upon the hero the audience earns plausible deniability for their own consciences. A reader can identify with a hero that can handle the fast times but is not defined by them. Or one that can state with a straight face: I could be the greatest most famous most successful person ever but I choose to be one of the people because you know that’s what’s important in life. It works of course just as long as one ignores the insidious subtext: “Please Please Please don’t forget I could have fame, fortune, and glory if I wanted it!” Because, seriously, who would have read Harry Potter if he was just a guy who wanted friends and family. He also has to be something extra. He has to be a wizard and not just any wizard, the best one. (Full Disclosure: I don’t particularly care for Harry Potter).

There is an incredible undercurrent of narcissim in my least favorite genres of storytelling Fantasy and Science Fiction. The Hunger Games a well written, competently acted, and brilliantly produced beauty of a movie is no exception. It stars Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen, the blank slate everygirl who is the best archer in the land and has two good-looking men she feels so very guilty for having to choose between. Katniss Everdeen loves her family. Particularly she is fond of her little sister the exquisitely named Primrose Everdeen. To save Primrose and not for fame and glory she volunteered for the annual Hunger Games in the first movie. The Hunger Games is a ‘Battle Royale’-esque gladiator tournament between the thirteen impoverished districts of a futuristic dystopian society that has the totalitarian Captitol city at the head of it. It is a winner-take-all competition, kill or be killed. So Katniss killed everyone (quite honorably I would say) in the first movie, gaining in the process fame and fortune, though she really did not want to because you know she is so ordinary in the ways that count.

So Hunger Games: Catching Fire starts off with the rising celebrity of Katniss Everdeen presenting a problem to the totalitarian government headed by President Snow, played by Donald Sutherland. He intends to discredit her by various means that only encourage the population to revere her in even more rebellious fashion. Because this takes place in the genre of Science Fiction/Fantasy the movie can ignore many many things. For instance, the entire oppressive government seems to be entirely comprised in only one person, President Snow. In the real world, you would need some sort of bureaucracy to oppress a people. This is generally overlooked. Secondly we can overlook the realistic notion that celebrities that gain fame through reality TV contests don’t have any political power. As far as I can tell power (if you choose to distill it down to its essential essence) comes from the ability to hire or fire people, i.e. control over jobs. Think about that definition and see where it can get you. But as this is the future, a TV celebrity can move the world. And please try to forget what the economy of the extravagant Captitol is comprised of given that it has no commercial class or trading partners. Or what it really takes to not only stoke a rebellion but also to competently carry it to realization, see Battle of Algiers. In the real world, inspiration is the least of all problems. In Hunger Games, it seems to be the only thing that’s missing. But because this takes place in some fantastical land (or a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, or on Middle Earth) we can set up a story whose plot functions can rely almost entirely on character whims for better or worse. If you wanted to do that in a realistic genre, you would have to confine all the characters to a house and make the story take place within a day. But you can have interpersonal opera on a grand scale with world changing consequences in fantasy/science fiction because once again, you can pretend that reality does not apply in this far distant land.

We can be very glad that Hunger Games: Catching Fire is not a preachy metaphor designed to make us think about the problems of everyday life. Some movies within this genre do just this and become horribly insufferable monstrosities. Instead Hunger Games is far more concerned with costumes, hair, and makeup. I suppose we will just have to get used to this as studios start paying due attention to the other half of the population. If Hunger Games is a portent of the future of blockbusters though we should be seeing much to appreciate. For instance take a look at these names: Katniss Everdeen, Primrose Everdeen, Effie Trinket, Ceasar Flickerman, Claudius Templesmith, Plutarch Heavensbee, Haymitch Abernathy. Don’t those just roll off the tongue in some perfect mosaic of sound and diction? Or take a look at the great flair in hair of the game show host Ceasar Flickerman (playbed by Stanley Tucci) and his sidekick Claudius Templesmith (Toby Jones). Or consider the Girl on Fire costumes of Katniss Everdeen and her counterpart Peeta Mellark that catch fire during a chariot parade to the delight of the crowd. Or the even more impressive bride/mockingjay costume that not only makes Jennifer Lawrence look great but is also imbued with important story revealing symbology. This is the first blockbuster I know of that gives the hero/heroine a stylist in a major role. Lenny Kravitz does the job here doling out wisdom the way Obi Wan Kenobi would tutor Luke Skywalker in swordplay. The most impressive creature in all of this superficial exuberance is the presence of Effie Trinket, a woman who changes elaborate costumes and hairdos in every single scene. She is played by Elizabeth Banks and in the most markedly superior aspect of this sequel compared to the first movie, we get some depth to the character peeking out of the ditzy cheerleader persona in a way that very surprisingly doesn’t undercut all we have previously seen from her. I haven’t seen anything else quite like her in movies. Effie Trinket is an original.  

Oh and look we have several notable new castmembers. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is the new gamemaster and a fairly competent and entertaining one as we see in the final third of the movie. And there is Jena Malone, who I have spoken good graces of before. She tends to pop her head up from indie stardom in character roles in bigger movies every now and again. She plays Johanna Mason, the warrior woman Katniss Everdeen would be if she wasn’t so like the rest of us. The movie’s third act in a new series of Hunger Games does not dissapoint and ends in a very satisfying way. I am a little interested in seeing the next one.

Here’s another curiousity. Michael Arndt co-wrote this screenplay with Simon Beaufoy (also very good). Michael once won an Oscar for writing one of my favorite movies, Little Miss Sunshine. That movie had an entirely opposite take on the world compared to these types of narcissistic tales. But since then, his career trajectory since then has been almost entirey focused on big budget sequels in the realm of fantasy science fiction (Toy Story 3, Hunger Games, Oblivion, Star Wars). Et tu, Arndt?

The Hunger Games (3/5 Stars)

The Reality TV Paradox

Great documentaries are lucky documentaries. The greatness of such films like “Hoop Dreams,” or the “Seven Up” series rely greatly on the unlikely coincidences that somehow were recorded by a camera. Would anybody have cared about the Rolling Stones documentary “Gimme Shelter,” if it did not just happen to accidentally chronicle a murder at a rock concert? Would the mockumentary “Borat” be as hilarious if Sacha Baron Cohen had not coincidentally hitchhiked onto that particular RV filled with those particular outrageous frat boys?

Now at the same time imagine that you were a movie or television studio that is attempting to create a documentary that will be predictably successful. How can you produce a predictably successful product that relies on coincidence? If you don’t do anything you are at the whim of fate and the documentary will either be bad or good depending on what you so happen to record. But if you do things to make sure that dramatic coincidences do occur, you are essentially writing the documentary, which in essence makes it cease to be a documentary. In the end, like much reality TV, you get a product that lacks dramatic effect because unlike real documentaries it is untruthful and manipulative and at the same time lacks the production value and professionalism of a documentary that is sincerely untruthful and manipulative, or in other words, a fictional movie.

I bring this up because, “The Hunger Games,” is a fictional movie about a reality TV show, and as such piles on layers of almost absurd complexity on how the characters are perceived depending on whether it is by us the movie audience, or the TV audience in the movie. In other words, the underlying emotions of a scene are generally undermined by the realization that it is all an act. And how much can you care about a person (even if it was a life and death situation) if you knew they were mugging at a camera at the same time?

I have given this movie three stars because I enjoyed it okay. But I want it also to be known that I have never seen a movie quite like this one, and that affirmation of originality should be seen as a sort of moral victory at least. The story takes place in a future where the United States has split itself into 12 districts and hosts an annual game that pits two randomly selected teenagers from each district into a fight to the death gladiatorial tournament. From district 12, there comes the 18-year-old Katniss Everdeen (played here by the 25-year-old Jennifer Lawrence) who volunteers for the tournament to save her 12-year-old sister from being selected. Also selected from her district is Peeta Mellark (played by Josh Hutcherson). They are whisked away from their poor coal-mining district to the big city where they are mentored by Haymitch Abernathy (played by Woody Harrellson) to be likable, because that is the best way to win these particular games. In other words, the games are not real. They are fake reality TV. Apparently a good old fight-to-the-death would not be predictably exciting enough. There is a whole behind the scenes room of producers here who manipulate the games. This can be done by releasing forest fires or releasing lethal wild animals into the tournament space whenever they feel it will add some spice. The most blatant form of cheating is to get sponsored. If you are “likable” enough, the head sponsors will send you a parachute containing a survival kits that can give you an edge over the competition. In other words, the “Hunger games” are bullshit. And to play into the whole “getting people to like you” survival game, Katniss and Peeta pretend a romance. This is original in that it is the central love story of the movie, and admittedly, I have never seen a movie so willingly and transparently admit that its central love story is contrived bullshit.

I suppose we are now at a point of idiotic media saturation where the only way to seem truthful is to exert the highest amount of cynicism. Everything about “The Hunger Games” is fake. The games are fake. The capital city that the games take place is composed of fake 3D generated architecture. The hairstyles and fashion of the inhabitants are grotesque, garish, and nonsensically exaggerated. (Actually I would admit this is perhaps some of the best effects of the movie. Whoever designed the costume and makeup had a field day with this movie. It is done much better than the action and done so well, that at least three quarters of this movie could be deemed a chick flick.) Every other tribute in combat is a one-dimensional stereotype whether it is the evil Cato (Big Evil Guy) or the innocent Rue (Small Innocent Girl). In fact, the only distinguishable human being seems to be the main character, Katniss Everdeen, played by Jennifer Lawrence, who when you think about it, may be the fakest character of all.

Oh boy, what did I mean by that? Well, Katniss is the type of person that does not like to bend toward conformity or try to get people to like her. She just wants to be herself. Now, whom does that remind you of? If you said you and only you, you’re an idiot. That should remind you of everybody. That description describes everybody. In fact, I would argue that Jennifer Lawrence’s best acting asset is her ability to act blank slate and call it individualism. This character has no foibles or eccentricities. It is just Jennifer Lawrence in her plain/beautiful persona having strong feelings for her family and a survival instinct. You would be hard-pressed to find a human being with neither of those characteristics. Do you think it just may be the best marketing ploy ever to take this one-size-fits-all persona and throw it into a story with so much fakery that it seems real by comparison? It would appeal to every person who feels that they are the only real person in a world of phonies (which I would argue is a real cliché way to feel).

The phenomenal success of “The Hunger Games,” should lead to some hilarious movie studio board meetings. I can just see it now: a bunch of middle aged rich guys brainstorming on how they can capitalize on a trend based on the utter distrust of manipulative media because it is ruled by a bunch of middle aged rich guys bent on manipulating people for profit. Vampires were easy. Now I suppose we will have a slew of movies made expressly for profit that aim to expose cliché and promote distrust in manipulative money-grubbing movies. It’s a shame that irony can’t kill. 

W. 10/19/08

"Who is in charge here?" yells Dubya to his senior staff. Months have passed in the Iraq war and no weapons of mass destruction have been found. "What I want to know is who here is in charge of finding those damn weapons?" pleads Dubya. Everyone looks around and starts blaming everyone else. That's when it struck me. What an ironic question for the leader of the free world to posit? The answer of course should be Dubya, but he isn't (even though he keeps on emphatically stating he is) and as this movie points out is that Dubya never was. He is a hollow man, headpiece filled with straw. Sort of like a post turtle. What's a post turtle? Well a post turtle is a turtle sitting on a post. You know it didn't get up there on it's own. It has no reason for being there. It doesn't know what to do while it's up there. And you just wonder what kind of idiot put it up there to begin with. 
Oliver takes us through the story of Bush before he became President of the United States. You probably didn't know much of this. He was an alcoholic struggling under the shadow of his father. He got legacied into Yale and Harvard business school. He went through several jobs, doing poorly in all of them. He knocked up a girl and was once sent to prison. His early story basically consists of his father getting him out of mess after mess. Never does Dubya appear grateful for his many second chances. He is a spoiled rich kid with an air of arrogance and extreme resentment toward others for his own limitations. 
But because of his lineage he is swept up by the likes of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney who see an opportunity to exchange their ideology for the face time and charisma of a Bush. The exchanges in this movie probe to the real depths of why Bush does what he does. He gets lectured, informed, and at times even told what to say and how to act by Rove and Cheney. He may do exactly as they ask, but he still takes credit for all the decisions he makes to do exactly what they say. What an incredible delusion. 
There is an especially telling scene at a press conference (This actually happened apparently) where Bush is asked what mistakes he's made and what he has learned from them. He's completely speechless and he should be. How can you learn from mistakes when your Daddy has been solving them for you all your life? How can you take responsibility when nothing you have done was your idea in the first place? If God called you to be president, how could you possibly do a bad job? 
Oliver Stone's portrayal of Bush is truly a sympathetic one. He brings us through the story with sincerity and respect toward the subject matter. (If the story of Bush is a bit of a tragedy and the man comes off as not too great that's because he wasn't. The last eight years can attest to that.) Unfortunately this story may be a little too sympathetic, at least for an Oliver Stone film. As a tremendous Oliver Stone fan I expect a little something more from his movies. I expect him to blow the top off his films, to see something truly passionate and stimulating in a degree completely lacking in lesser films. I'd hate to be one of those critics to demand that a director make films like he made them twenty years ago, but that is what I come to expect from him. Oliver Stone has changed. One noticeable area is the energy level of this film. This is most apparent in the soundtrack. When a director decides to play a dainty version of "The Yellow Rose of Texas" as the backdrop to thee 'Shock and Awe' bombing of Baghdad you know he's lost his hardcore edge. When he transitions his scenes with a slow fade to black and a slow fade to a different scene he has deliberately slowed the movie down. When Oliver Stone made earlier biopics he entered scenes into those movies that didn't take place in real life but helped the viewer understand the emotions behind the story. (A great example is the wheelchair fight in 'Born on the 4th of July.' I know that didn't happen, but it is the best part of the movie.) Here he seems to have bowed down to the fact that he was making a very controversial film. I was taken aback by the risks he didn't take than by the ones he did. I have never seen an Oliver Stone film till now that felt like the director got cold feet. He refrains from any direct political stance, any hard line point, or any pointed judgment. The tone was muted. It was a bit disappointing. I truly believe that George W. Bush deserved a movie by Oliver Stone. Now I would say he deserves a movie by Oliver Stone twenty years ago. 
The acting is superb although the script refrains from giving anyone a truly stand out performance. James Cromwell is great as the elder Bush. Toby Jones is a very good Karl Rove. Richard Dreyfuss plays a fine Dick Cheney. Josh Brolin does a very good job as President Bush. I liked him more as Bush than I liked Will Ferrel, Frank Caliendo, or Bush as Bush. The one weird performance was Thandie Newton playing Condoleeza Rice. Now I've never really heard her speak, but Thandie, in this movie, portrays her as a yes-man brown nose stuck with down syndrome. It's particularly weird. This movie, I'd say, is harder on Rice than anybody else. Colin Powell comes off looking like a genius by the way. He was the only person in the room who knew what he was talking about when it came to Iraq. Odd it is that he would be the first one fired.