Knight of Cups (2/5 Stars)

I don’t like movies that require reading to understand it. I suspect “Knight of Cups” is that type of movie. Specifically it may have been a good idea to read “Pilgrim’s Progress.” It is quoted directly several times. Is this an adaptation of that book? I don’t know, maybe?

“Knight of Cups” was directed by Terrance Malick and ostensibly written by him as well. I say ‘ostensibly’ because the actors seem to be walking in and out of scenes improvising without a script. Malick consistently uses a narrative device somewhat unique to him throughout the film. You have seen him do it before in a movie like “The Thin Red Line.” He employs poetic voiceover over the eye of a wandering camera. It provides a celestial quality to a scene especially those that are hectic and that have the original audio cut from it. This worked so well in “The Thin Red Line,” because the underlying action was very easy to understand. In was a WWII movie that involved an army trying to take a Pacific Island. The voiceover commented on the scene but never needed to explain what was happening. The story was very clear in that respect. “Knight of Cups,” however (and Malick’s last two films as well “The Tree of Life” and “To the Wonder”) employs this device without the simple plotline and the effect is quite different. It feels like it is being used to cover up bad directing in the editing room. There are plenty of “scenes” in which actors walk around improvising dramatic situations in desperate need of some direction. Since everything is cut up and entwined with vines of excess cinematography and voiceover it is hard to tell what they scenes are about, but that may just be hiding the fact that they might not actually be about anything. This movie perhaps means something to Malick but he sure didn’t feel the need to explain it to me.

It’s a beautiful movie of course. The cinematographer is Emmanuel Lubezki, winner of the Academy Award three years in a row. His target this time is Los Angeles and the areas that surround it. The camera follows a writer, played by Christian Bale. He doesn’t look or act successful but apparently he very much is. He is invited and attends many gorgeous parties in lots of mansions. He spends time with an assembly line of models. Among them are Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman, Frieda Pinto, Imogen Potts, Teresa Palmer, and Isabel Lucas. And I haven’t mentioned yet the naked nameless ones. He has a manager that says something about making him richer than he already is.

Christian Bale does not particulary care about any of this and kind of walks about in a daze. That may indeed be Malick’s point: that this Hollywood lifestyle of riches and easy sex with beautiful women is ultimately unfulfilling. However that brings to mind the biggest question every critic who has seen the movie has had to ask: That is, if Terrance Malick does not like all these beautiful things (architecture and women and everything between), why did he expend so much effort to catalog it in this movie. He very much has an eye for it. One telling example is the Las Vegas roadtrip scenes. Terrance Malick may feel that Las Vegas architecture is fake, unfulfilling, and whatever but he goes about that sentiment in a very confusing way. He makes it look flat out gorgeous and then has Christian Bale walk around it totally unimpressed. This happens several times in the same way until the movie ends without the characters or the world changing in any significant way. 

The fact that Christian Bale is rich and respected, sleeps with many beautiful women, and hangs out at all these great parties will probably inspire envy in the normal viewer not the knowing spiritual yearning of a world weary philospher that perhaps Malick is trying to get at. This is nobody’s fault but Malick’s. It is fair to say the movie is “out of touch.”

I like his earlier work better. It is amazing how many great artists this can apply to. It is cliché but that does not mean it should not be examined. Perhaps it should be examined because it is so cliché, i.e. so common. After all, some artists (say Martin Scorsese or Tom Waits) never stop being great no matter how old they are. So what is Terrance Malick’s problem?

I suspect it follows from being known as a genius and then subsequently surrounding oneself by ‘yes men.’ It helps to have that asshole producer that will direct one to take the audience’s expectations and comprehension abilities into consideration when making your art. When one is making one’s name in the world, one cannot but help having this influence. No studio in their right mind would give a young unproven director money without an experienced producer looking over the shoulder. But sometimes a director gains a reputation for being great and there comes this notion that they can do no wrong and at some point all of their bad tendencies and indulgences flow through. Who was there to tell Quentin Tarantino that he could have an hour and a half of just talking before any action occurred in “The Hateful Eight.” Why doesn’t anybody explain to Michael Bay that action movies should not have running times of over two and a half hours? What the fuck is David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive”? What is it???!?

“Knight of Cups” contains every beautiful technique that makes a Terrance Malick movie the unique special thing that a Terrance Malick movie is except the movie part. It’s an important part that movie part. I hope he remembers it next time.

Welcome to Me (3/5 Stars)

Well, what is a borderline personality disorder? I concede that it is a thing because it sounds vaguely familiar to me, but I would not trust myself to describe it accurately. And I just watched an entire movie in which the main character a woman by the name of Alice Klieg (Kristin Wiig) explores all of its facets in a very public way. The very public way she does socially awkward things I suspect is part of her disorder. But in another sense she does a lot of things that utterly stupid though completely sane people are capable of as well. The distinction is important especially in a comedy because stupid people are funny but mentally ill people are not. So which of Alice Klieg’s actions fall into what camp? A better definition of what ails her would help the audience out quite a bit. As it is, the prevailing feeling in the theater is, “should we be laughing at this?”

Alice Klieg lives alone and with the TV on nonstop. She especially likes talk shows like Oprah. One day she wins the lottery, a seventy million dollar jackpot. She has a conversation with her psychotherapist (Tim Robbins) in which she explains that she will stop taking her medication and move into a casino hotel room. She also has big plans for an Oprah like talk show. She pitches the idea to a local access production channel. “I want it to be about me,” she explains, “and I want to come in on a Swan boat.” The head of the channel (James Marsden) asks for 150K per show for 100 shows. She immediately takes out her checkbook. After the meeting the other members of his production company, his brother (Wes Bentley) and two producers (Jennifer Jason Leigh and Joan Cusack), balk at the idea. But Marsden explains that they are almost broke. They either take the money or start laying people off.  So “Welcome to Me,” a show written, directed, and hosted by a crazy person is born on the local access channel in the 10am two hour time slot.

This is a very interesting premise with lots of potential as a movie but the pitfalls should be rather obvious. The main one is that making fun of a person with mental illness is not a nice thing to do. And if you don’t make fun of them, than where is the comedy going to come into play. The best example of a movie making that leap is David O. Russell’s ‘Silver Linings Playbook’ that has several characters with some sort of madness in them. But at the same time they aren’t completely defined by their madness. That is to say they are people with personalities that have disorders not just clinical manifestations of the disorder itself. This allows their behavior to be guided by choices. Choices maybe influenced by the illness sure, but choices nevertheless. The clear demarcation of where illness ends and personality begins is how the viewer knows whether to laugh at Bradley Cooper wearing a garbage bag while he is running. There is reason behind it. He wants to lose weight and the bag helps him sweat. And yes he knows he looks ridiculous but he doesn’t care because he is very excited and focused on what he is doing. The “excited” and “focused” is part of his disorder but Cooper puts on the bag ultimately for sane reasons: he wants to lose weight. His disorder doesn’t compel him to wear garbage bags while jogging for no reason. If it did, it would not be funny. It would be sad.

When Alice Klieg is shown sleeping on a bed in a sleeping bag as opposed to under the covers it is not explained why she wants to do this or even whether a borderline personality disorder would influence a person’s choice to do this. (I assumed germophobic reasons but then again I’m not sure what that has to do with bordline personality disorder). Or take the several instances in which she states that winning the lottery was not luck but due to believing in herself, an idea she got from watching Oprah. Now for all I know that could be part of the disorder. But it could also be the case that she is just a stupid person. I wish I knew because its mean to make fun of retarded people for being retarded and I’m not sure if that is what is going on here. Here is an example of an opportunity wasted: Very early on in the story we are told that Alice is off her medication. Well, okay. But what was she like when she was on medication? That would be a good clue as to what is happening with her. This is not explored by the movie.

To be clear the movie does not impinge upon the viewer any guilt from watching the proceedings. (If they were funnier perhaps they would. I am reminded a little bit of the remake of a French movie in which a group of elites host a competition to bring the biggest idiot they can find to dinner party.) The main reason is that Alice Klieg’s friends, family, and ultimately her cash-strapped employees act in good faith around her. Nobody tries to ouright steal her winnings. Sure having a TV show is an incredible waste of money but lottery money is fit to be wasted and to the production company’s credit, they try to do a competent job of realizing her vision. The TV show itself is the most interesting thing going on in this movie. Here Alice recreates dramatic scenes from her life, fake fights with her mom (an off-screen Joan Cusack) who always wins, makes and eats her favorite recipes, and even uses her past veterinary skills to neuter and spay any dogs the audience wants to bring into the studio. Something is going on in that studio and it may or may not be special but it is at least original. The reactions of the people working there are mixed. For instance Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character quits but it is not entirely clear whether she does so because she thinks the company is taking advantage of Alice or because she thinks the work is below her. Maybe both. Wes Bentley takes Alice out on a couple of dates because she asks him to. She is very intent on sleeping with him right away. Again it might be nice to know if that is the disorder working or plain horniness.

Is it possible to be cured of borderline personality disorder? The movie ends with Alice doing several things differently than she usually does in her normal routine like for instance sleeping under the covers instead of in a sleeping bag. I’m not sure what that means. As for Kristin Wiig’s performance, since I did not really understand the character, I’m not sure how to gauge its excellence. She is always interesting to watch and it speaks of good casting to put her into the main role here but her comic potential is limited by all the above. Comedy writers take note for your future endeavors: It is not enough that a person enters a room in a swan boat. That situation is not inherently funny. You have to know why they are doing it.

Interstellar (4/5 Stars)

Whatever can happen, will happen.

Young Murphy Cooper (Mackenzie Foy) asks her father (Matthew McConaughey) why she was named after something bad. Her father replies that Murphy’s Law is not necessarily pessimistic. All it means is that (given enough time) anything that can happen will happen. The pessimistic side of this looks at chaotic unforgiving nature and all the ways it can and will disrupt the best plans of mice and men. But look at it in another light. For instance, if you believed that humans could adapt to anything, well then, given enough time our species should be able to solve any problem that the universe throws at it. Of course, the supposition that must be true is that human beings actually could someday evolve to be capable of anything, even going so far as to say master space and time. That is a wildly optimistic notion and it is surprising to come from writer Jonathan Nolan and director Christopher Nolan particularly since their non-Batman movies have been great explorations of self-delusion (memory in Memento, magic in The Prestige, dreams in Inception). But here it is, and it is a good thing the Nolan’s are in charge of this project because I’m not sure anybody else could have made it. It is perhaps the most expensive and epic intellectual exercise since Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and only the Nolan’s have the box office clout to finance a movie like this. Try to see it in the theater because it is not going make any sense on a small screen.

The movie starts with humans on Earth confronted with the extinction of their species. It takes place about fifty years from now. Old Man Cooper (played by John Lithgow) talks of how when he was a kid it seemed like everyday something new would be invented. Imagine that, six billion people all wanting it all at the same time. But something happened in nature. There is this dust storm blight that kills vegetation. The only crop that can grow now is corn. The blight feeds on all the Nitrogen in the atmosphere and every year it creates more Nitrogen, which only makes the blight even stronger. Population has dropped. Technology has stuttered. Pretty soon humanity won’t even be able to grow corn and then everyone will die.

The last ditch effort of humanity is a secret NASA mission led by Professor Brand (Michael Caine) to send a spaceship through a wormhole that has just been discovered near Saturn to a distant galaxy where hopefully there is another planet that can sustain human life. Matthew McConaughey, a retired pilot, is chosen for the job. So is Professor Brand’s daughter, Dr. Brand (Anne Hathaway), two other guys, and a couple of sentient robots named TARS and KASE. TARS has a humor setting in his A.I. and provides comic relief.

It is a very long journey and one of the most interesting conceits of this story is its portrayal of Einstein’s theory of relativity. One facet of this theory is that as one approaches the speed of light, the slower time goes for the mover. Another is that proximity to a black hole also slows down time for the mover. At one point in the movie a trip to a planet near a black hole that takes merely hours takes many years on Earth. And suddenly Murph Cooper is no longer played by the ten-year-old Mackenzie Foy but by the thirty-something Jessica Chastain. (It should be noted how remarkably similar Mackenzie and Jessica look like each other). I saw a great meme with a picture of Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar that harked back to his first movie, Dazed and Confused, where he uttered the memorable line, “You know what I like about high school girls. Each year I get older but they stay the same age.” Of course this meme changed it a little bit. Now it reads, “You know what I like about my children. Each year they get older, but I stay the same age.”

Then there is a cameo by a well-known actor that I hesitate the mention because none of the advertisment material apparently wanted me to know about before he shows up quite unexpectedly. It is a great turn by that unnamed person. Matthew McConaughey continues his bewildering streak of very good movies. The same can be said for Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain. And of course, it looks very impressive, the Black Hole and Wormhole especially. 

I don’t think I can say anymore without ruining some of the surprises. It is worth seeing, that is all. 

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.