Godzilla v. Kong (3/5 Stars)

 

Godzilla v. Kong is the fourth film of the so-called Monster-verse that started with the 2014 Movie Godzilla. I reviewed that original movie, gave it two stars out of five, and did not see the next two movies: Kong: Skull Island (2017) and Godzilla: King of Monsters (2019).

My 2014 review is full of snark and outrage about the amount of casual death and destruction in a PG-13 movie. This movie is not all that different from the 2014 movie, but my general attitude I believe has changed and for several reasons I enjoyed the latest movie far more.

First, the pandemic. When I saw Godzilla in 2014, a blockbuster special effects bonanza was something that seemed to come out every single week. The prospect of giant things fighting each other in a city was not particularly unique. Fast-forward to April 2021 and I had not seen something so big and dumb in more than a year. Its amazing how fresh a Godzilla v. Kong movie can be after a year bereft of mind-numbing spectacle. I am so done with this whole pandemic thing. Godzilla v. Kong, reminded me of normal life. I enjoyed it just for the sake of nostalgia

Second, I watched the movie on HBOMax with a friend on a Zoom call and we were talking through the whole thing. We made jokes about how stupid all the people were. For instance, there is this character, played by Brian Tyree Henry, who is attempting to steal official secrets (about Godzilla) from a top-secret military base. He has a podcast about his efforts in which he talks about what he just did and what he plans to do next. We had a spirited discussion about whether the movie was stupider for having a character his broadcast efforts at industrial sabotage on a podcast, or to have this stupid character somehow succeed in his industrial sabotage (along with a couple of plucky teenage detectives) because no one at the top-secret military base figures out how to stop him.

Third, I had money on this movie. The marketing materials stated, nay promised, that “One Will Fall”. So clearly, this means that either Godzilla is going to kill Kong or vice versa. Of course, the last time such a promise was made in Batman v. Superman neither died because a bigger jerk showed up in the end that the titular characters had to unite to defeat. But everyone hated that, right? The powers that be would not pull that shit again, right? Right? I put $25 dollars on Godzilla. I figured he had armor, could swim, and had a ranged attack. No way Kong survives. Well, they got me good. Neither Godzilla nor Kong die because MechaGodzilla shows up and Godzilla and Kong have to unite in order to defeat MechaGodzilla. Total bullshit. I had a lot of fun complaining about broken promises. Oops, I forgot to include a spoiler warning.

It is to this movie’s credit that it understands the basic pull of the Godzilla and King Kong franchise, which is to have big monsters fight each other in close city centers. Although there are plenty of human characters, their character development is minimal, and really is limited to getting the movie from one battle location to another. This is fine because what I really want to see is Kong punching Godzilla in the face. I don’t need any human drama distract from Kong punching Godzilla in the face. Well, I got what I wanted. Three stars.

 

Sound of Metal (5/5 Stars)

 

It may seem like an odd comparison but watching “Sound of Metal” reminded me of watching the science fiction movie “The Martian” starring Matt Damon. When I reviewed that movie, I remarked that narrative stories usually derive conflict from characters: antagonists, love triangles, class warfare or crime, kiss kiss bang bang, but that movie had no conflict between characters. The problem was scientific (Matt Damon marooned on Mars) and all the characters were aligned in helping him solve this scientific problem (how to survive for a particular amount of time before rescue). The “Sound of Metal” is like that. It stars Riz Ahmed as Ruben and Olivia Cooke as Lou. Ruben and Lou are members of a heavy metal band. She plays guitar and sings. Ruben plays the drums. They are doing well, touring the country by day and playing at night, until one day, just like that, while perusing a record store, Ruben loses his hearing. It is stunning scene, made brilliantly real by the tour de force sound design of Nicolas Becker (give him all the Oscars) which (and I looked this up) mimics what losing your hearing actually sounds like (in Ruben’s case he loses the higher frequencies first, resulting in the ominous low thrumming sounds of the lower frequencies. But after this, and throughout the rest of the movie, there is not a single character that is not united in helping Ruben with his problem. Music was his life and the basis of his most important relationships. He has lost it and with that a host of other mental and emotional problems automatically crop up, not the least of which is his history as an addict.

Of course, “The Martian” was about engineers solving engineering problems. One of Ruben’s first steps, an incredibly wise one, is to call up his AA sponsor for advice. His sponsor finds him a deaf support group. This deaf support group is run by Joe, played by Paul Raci. As an introduction, he explains that what they do there is seek a solution to this (he points to his head) and not this (he points to his ears. “The Sound of Metal” does have doctors, and those helpful and competent doctors that Ruben sees do solve medical problems. But even more than this, the “Sound of Metal” has humans solving human problems, things that go beyond mere hearing loss and enter the realm of what can be pretentiously called the problems of living, or even more pretentiously, enlightenment. The “Sound of Metal” is a great movie and it has been so long since I’ve seen a great movie as a new release. I’ve missed the feeling.

            Movies are a collaborative effort and “Sound of Metal” is such a beautiful demonstration of that reality. Riz Ahmed’s performance is brilliant, but it is made more brilliant by the sound design which so perceptibly puts the audience into the experience of his hearing, which made even more brilliant by the choices of the writer/director Darius Marder as to when to tell the story through Ruben’s experience (in which we hear what he hears) and when to tell the story from a third-person vantage point (in which we hear what he should hear). These choices are flawless as far as I can tell. Some of them, and I am thinking of a particular party in which we hear a duet on piano transform from perfect clarity to the static discordance perceived by cochlear implants, have great emotional weight to them in the context of the story and of course the performances of the actors.

 

            Previously to “Sound of Metal”, the most prominent movie to deal with deafness would have been 1986’s “Children of a Lesser God” which was heralded as important to the deaf community and resulted in the first Oscar win for a deaf actor (Marleee Matlin). It is interesting to note the differences between the movies as a measure of society’s understanding of disability. “Children of a Lesser God” was about a teacher of deaf teenagers whose main goal was to persuade his reticent pupils to speak verbally, an important part of communicating with the outside world. He has a romantic affair with a colleague (Marlee Matlin) who refuses to speak. The movie’s climax occurs when she is finally bullied into speaking and we hear her decidedly ugly voice in a loud outburs. Roger Ebert had a particularly good criticism when he noted that in a scene which was supposed to give the audience the feeling of deafness (a swim in water) the sound of silence was completely overwhelmed by the musical score. The “Sound of Metal” has a completely different mission. The deaf support group would have Ruben learn how to be deaf, as this is what is most likely to bring him emotional peace and help him avoid a relapse into addiction. The deaf community is shown as its own culture, perfectly happy people who are fine with not being completely included in the outside world (although it should be noted, that the unsung hero of this group is the church whose donations make it possible). The climax of this movie is not an audible explosion, but a moment of silence.

            Riz Ahmed has been nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor. It feels like the Oscar this year will be granted to Chadwick Boseman, a beloved actor who should have been nominated before (I’m thinking “Get on Up”) but was not until this year and only after he shockingly died of cancer way before his time. I know it would be hard arguing against it, and a little classless too, but I would rather Riz Ahmed won. He put in the better performance and the Oscars, if they have any value, are as a guide for future cinephiles looking for recommendations for great movies to watch. “Sound of Metal” is a great movie. “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” is not (see “Get on Up” instead). The more awards that go to the former, the more people who will see it, and so much the better.

Nomadland (4/5 Stars)

 

Nomadland, a feature by relatively new writer/director Chloe Zhao, seems to be part fictional narrative and part documentary. It has the thinnest of plots, Fern (played by Frances McDormand), lived her life in a one-factory town in Nevada. Her husband died and then the factory died, so she packed up her life in a van and has been living out of it ever since. There are many people out there like her in the sparsely populated areas of the American West, and I as far as I can tell, the real people show up in this movie and talk about themselves while Frances McDormand sits there and listens. A woman in an Amazon fulfillment center lunchroom talks about her tattoos. A man gives an impromptu educational lecture on the practical dos and don’t for a life on the road to a crowd of passerbys. An elderly woman sells the little that she has and embarks on one last road trip to Alaska.

Most movies have conflict or plot. Nomadland is adamant about having neither. Banking on the fact that you are likely not familiar with the subject matter, it believes your natural curiously can hold your interest with just showing you a novel way of life with its capable inhabitants acting as tour guides. It is right. Nomadland is lovely little movie filled with the beauty of the open West and the good nature of the nomads that make it their home.

The negatives of this type of life are generally overlooked, lest it spoil the mood and cast shade on the very real people here. One I can think of would be a lack of security either from nature or other people or both. How do you guard your stuff from random people in the middle of nowhere? This is not explained. Fern experiences trouble with her van’s engine. She conveniently has a sister she can call and ask for a loan. We believe Fern when she is good for the money, but that is besides the point. The point is that she has someone to call. I am reminded of Kelly Reichardt’s movie Wendy and Lucy starring Michelle Williams. When Wendy has car trouble, she calls family but they have no interest in helping. Unlike Fern, she ends up selling her car for parts.

The difference between Fern and Wendy is that Fern still has some support. Not only from her sister, but also from the federal government. She looks to be old enough to be receiving social security and be covered by Medicare. She works part of the year in a federal park, which incidentally provides services to nomads like her. The life is not so bad a life and plenty good the movie wants to show. Fern has little wants, makes what she needs to provide them, and has access to community and infrastructure, albeit loose, to support her. The best line is when Fern is asked by a teenage girl if she is ‘homeless’. Fern replies that she is ‘houseless’ and that there is a difference. Fern is not poor, she is simply living on the cheap. There are nomads out there that are truly poor, but we don’t know enough about the people we meet here to know which of them are in that number.

Movies about truly poor people are kind of rare. This is not helped by the fact that writers’ need their characters to have some sort of money in order to be able to make choices and do things. Movies are generally about people who have the opportunity to do make choices and do things. I can think of two good modern examples of people being poor, not just living on the cheap like Fern, but poor like do not “have a sister who could loan money if in a tight spot” poor. Wendy and Lucy by Kelly Reichardt is one. The other would be the TV-series Atlanta. The character Earn (played by Donald Glover) is poor, like truly poor. I have never been truly poor, but I’ve lived on the cheap for a few years and certain scenes in that show really made me uncomfortable. There is one episode where Earn takes his girlfriend out to a place that he believes has a cheap burger special and a happy hour that goes until midnight but upon arrival finds out that management has turned the place into a seafood restaurant that specializes in tiki drinks. That, as they say, was real. Nomadland instead is a bit like its last piece of sage wisdom. “One of things I like most about this life is that there is no final goodbye. I’ve met hundreds of people out here and I’ll don’t ever say a final goodbye. You just say, I’ll see you down the road. And I do, I see them again. And I can be certain in my heart. That I’ll see you again.” Well that’s pretty, but not, as they say, real.

Minari (4/5 Stars)

It is a good business idea. Tens of thousands of Koreans immigrate to America every year. Would they not miss Korean food? Korea is too far away to ship vegetables that would be fresh on arrival. Why not grow the Korean vegetables here and sell same at Korean markets? It is this shrewd entrepreneurialism that brings a Korean family to 1980s rural Arkansas to start a farm. Their efforts and travails form the basis for writer/director Lee Isaac Chung’s movie Minari, the name being a native Korean plant that, it turns out, grows well in the heartland of America.

The visionary in this business quest is Jacob, played by Steven Yuen of Walking Dead fame. The antagonist to his vision is Monica, his wife (played by Yeri Han). You would think that Monica would be a little more supportive given that their previous situation in California involved working in a dead end job sexing chickens for an agricultural corporation. For those unfamiliar, sexing chickens means looking at the hindquarters of chicks to determine whether it is male or female and sorting them likewise. The female chicks grow into hens that produce eggs. The male chicks, the movie infers, are killed immediately. Jacob and Monica do this a thousand times a day everyday. I think, compared to that, living in a prefabricated house in flyover country would be preferable if it meant you had your own property and business. Jacob argues about this with Monica all the time.

I am being a little unfair to Monica. Their son, Paul, has a heart condition and Monica is convinced that if they are not near a hospital in case of an emergency then they are being unforgivably reckless with his health. Understandable, but those of us familiar with the childhood of Theodore Roosevelt are optimistic about the kids chances if he grows up in rural area and engages in farm work.

The fighting amongst the parents comes to a head when the lights go out during a storm and they mistakenly believe they might be hit during a tornado (not a Korean thing I hear). The short term solution is to import Monica’s mother to live with the family (played by Yuh-jung Youn). This movie takes place in the 1980s so that would mean this woman would have lived through World War II and the Korean War and be a tough old lady. She does not disappoint. She likes to watch professional wrestling and curses while playing cards with the kids. Paul points out that she is not a real grandma because she doesn’t bake cookies. She is a good sport about it. A very good grandma, exactly the kind Paul with his condition needs.

There is something that feels very American about this film. It’s actually not to different in tone than those many movies where some city slicker ventures out West to do something different with his life, is awed by the natural wilderness, and interacts with the otherworldly natives. Except, here, instead of a white guy being introduced to Native Americans, it is a Korean family being introduced to evangelical Christians. The most otherworldly, played by Will Patton, seems to have his own church of one. Like all good immigrants, the Koreans politely keep their opinions to themselves and shrug off the natural misunderstandings that would occur between otherwise good people of different cultures. At one point, Jacob takes his family to church, not because he is any sort of convert, but because he wants his family to make friends in the local community. That is a great reason to go to church. Several minor things occur that certain people today might categorize as 'microaggressions' but what the makers of this movie seem to instead be offering up as "jokes", as if the people involved don't have to be natural enemies. I don’t know anything about Lee Isaac Chung and had not seen any of his other movies before watching this one. I'm not surprised to learn that his parents were immigrants who moved to Arkansas while he was a child to start a farm. This movie has a very personal feel to it. 

Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar (3/5 Stars)

 

I guess I should be happy that this movie exists at all. In 2011, the creative team of Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo made their spectacular debut with Bridesmaids. That movie was written by both Wiig and Mumolo, though only Wiig had a major acting role (Mumolo has a cameo on a plane). One would think that the critical and financial success of Bridesmaids would have resulted in a second movie in less than a decade’s time. It did not for reasons unknown to me, hopefully having to do with the team following different ambitions. They seem to have been plenty busy with other projects.

But here finally is Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, which really wants you to have a good old-fashioned time. It stars two cheery best friends as main characters that take a vacation to the bright sunny and colorful paradise which is Vista Del Mar, Florida. The main conflict in the story is provided by an albino super villain named Sharon Gordon Fisherman who stalks a secret lair and has plans to murder the entire town at the local Seafood Jam festival.

There are plenty of good-natured jokes here and several up-tempo musical numbers, but something is lacking that ought to give the movie much needed weight. For instance, I couldn’t tell if this was supposed to be a satire, and if so, of what. First, are Barb and Star supposed to be a caricature of a recognizable type of person. I mean, they are supposedly middle-aged woman from middle America, but do people there actually have the broad characteristics of these stereotypes. Because it kind of just feels like Wiig and Mumolo enjoy speaking in their funny voices. The jokes don’t seem to be really connected with the characters. Unless middle aged woman from Nebraska really do love cullotes and Tommy Bahama to an absurd degree. But do they?

Also Vista Del Mar? That’s a real place right? I looked it up, but it does not appear to be anything like the fancy hotel and resort paradise that is in this movie. So is this Vista Del Mar a satirized version of some other place like in Miami or Mexico. Or is it just a funny sounding name that rhymes with Barb and Star?

Then there is the supervillain plot. What this seems to resemble is a Dr. Evil from Austin Powers sort of situation which itself was a satire of 1960s James Bond movies. But Barb and Star aren’t spies with secret missions and the supervillain does not have any geopolitical aspirations. Barb and Star are just screwball middle-aged woman who are on vacation and the supervillain just wants to kill everyone. Really, if there was one thing I would change about the plot is that I would make the supervillain plot less extremely serious and fatal. I think it would have been better as something serious but less fatal, like a oil spill on the beach, or something just ridiculous, like letting loose a skunk spray on the crowd in the Seafood Jam. Ruining the party would have had the same dramatic weight as the murdering everyone plan in this scenario.

There is certain level of absurdity that the audience can take before things get a little too absurd and then the movie starts losing its sense of reality. That level is achieved within the first scene of Barb and Star when a seemingly innocuous and overweight Asian child with an affinity for 80s pop songs turns out to be an evil henchman named Yoyo to the above-mentioned nefarious plot. The scene is funny but it would have been funnier if it made any or would make any logical sense.

The pleasures of Barb & Star are shallow and do not last, but that is not to say that the pleasures do not exist. After all, it is pleasurable to be in the company of two cheery comedians with funny voices in a bright vibrant place. Children under five may love this movie for its overall feel. Wiig and Mumolo are also correct in their suspicion that it would be pleasurable, on the surface at least, to have a handsome man, Jamie Dornan here from 50 Shades of Grey fame, demean himself by singing musical numbers while half-naked and prancing in the sand. It reminded me of the same type of performance that Chris Hemsworth gave in the Ghostbusters reboot a few years back. I suspect women and gay men would get a bigger kick out of that than I do. I only wish the movies could make hot women do that in mainstream movies. They used to.

Finally, there is Darlie Bunkle, a man who repeatedly attempts to get the attention of Jamie Dornan. There is a repeated joke that he is trying to be surreptitious but keeps giving away his name, general identity, and place of residence, though I could never figure out what organization he was supposed to be representing or what he wanted to accomplish. Anyway, I mention him because so many variations of a theme are made on his joke that it becomes blaringly obvious the joke that is left on the fence untold. They missed the joke where Darlie Bunkle is trying to blend into the crowd but can’t because he’s the only black person on the beach/in the hotel/in the town/in the movie. Am I wrong?

Another Round (4/5 Stars)

 

“All things in moderation, including moderation.” – Oscar Wilde

The lake game involves teams of high schoolers racing around a lake lugging a case of beers and chugging them at various waypoints. There are rules that differentiate a kid puking on his own or as part of his team. This is a tradition that has gone on perhaps forever in this Danish town. The last time, the drunk kids got up to some shenanigans while taking public transportation home (a police officer was handcuffed to a railing). The teachers in the school discuss imposing a zero-tolerance policy concerning alcohol. The atmosphere in the room is not conducive to the idea. No one makes an argument for alcohol, but there is some disbelief that the policy could ever be successfully enforced. What is going on here? If something is indefensible, why does everyone keep doing it?

The movie goes about making this argument. Four of the male teachers meet for dinner. They are all in different stages in their life but something seems to be missing. More than the others, Martin (played by Mads Mikkelsen) seems to be in a rut with his teaching and his marriage. The psychology professor brings up a Norwegian philosopher that posited human beings have a deficit of body alcohol content of about 0.5, which would be about two glasses of wine. An idea is hatched to conduct an experiment, what would happen if each man kept his body alcohol content at 0.5 and stopped at 8pm to avoid the next day’s hangover. This is how Ernest Hemingway worked one observes.

Perhaps because the movie is from Denmark (directed by Thomas Vinterberg), it moves along at a slower pace than the normal American fare. One can get use to it though, and the alcohol that is being imbibed looks great. The actor Mads Mikkelsen does a great job with acting on the cusp of buzzed. It turns out that drinking during the day actually helps some of the teachers with their work. Mads becomes a more interesting history teacher. He has loosened up. The music teacher becomes more creative. It is all such a success so much that the men decide to drink even more. The consequences are obvious. They drink so much that they lose control and make fools of themselves. The wives are not happy and their children are embarrassed. How the movie ends however is worth the ticket price just for the one scene. The movie perfectly captures that moment where all the problems of drinking are forgotten and replaced with a sort of muddled consciousness akin to childhood. It will make you want to dance.

Plenty of movies about substance abuse follow a well-worn formula, which generally ends with people admitting that they have a problem and seeking help (or dying). “Another Round” is a bit different in that the movie’s intends to insist that drinking alcohol can be a good thing, perhaps better than not drinking at all. By the end of the movie, after all the inevitable bad things that can happen do happen, everyone is still drinking. In fact, the title of this movie may be one of those titles that are never spoken, just thought between the characters (like “You Can Count On Me” and “Goodbye Solo”). The three remaining friends are enjoying a post-funeral drink when one man rhetorically asks what their dead friend would do next. The question is not actually answered, but I’m pretty sure it would have been “Another Round”. 

News of the World (2/5 Stars)

 

News of the World was brought to us by writer/director Paul Greengrass. Greengrass is one of our better directors. He has made some excellent dramas like Bloody Sunday and Captain Phillips as well as the best installments of the Jason Bourne franchise. He has a knack for stripped down realism. Bloody Sunday is the story of a protest gone wrong in Northern Ireland. Captain Phillips, his first collaboration with Tom Hanks, recreated the hijacking of a container ship by Somali pirates off the horn of Africa. Dialogue in a Greengrass movie is utilitarian and his hand-held shooting style gives that documentary feeling of being there. More than anything, a Greengrass movie usually benefits the from the creator’s clear and distinct matter of the subject matter. News of the World would seem to be an exception to the above. This movie feels like an anachronistic jumble of modern sensibilities shoe-horned into the guise of a Western. The most obvious example is the casting of Tom Hanks who has never acted in a Western before and for what seems to be good reason. He looks and feels out of place and time. He doesn’t even try for an accent even though his character has lived all his life in Texas.

Tom Hanks plays “Captain Kidd”, a man who spends his time travelling from place to place in Texas reading big city newspapers. He is a travelling show, but with a bit more scholarly class. The movie takes place during Reconstruction after the Civil War. For some reason, there are federal union troops standing in the back fully armed. The people in the audience do not like the occupying troops or hearing any news about the federal government, which is weird because its not like the show is mandatory curriculum. They could just leave or not show up at all. And it is not like Captain Kidd must read that news. He is like a mother serving vegetables at dinner, but he’s not a mother and these people are not his kids, so…

Between one town and the next he comes across a hijacked wagon. The driver of the wagon, a black man, is hanging from a rope nearby. There is a paper on him that reads something like, “Not in Texas”. Captain Kidd finds nearby a traumatized white girl who speaks only Kiowa. For that reason, she can’t explain what happened to Captain Kidd. How convenient. I would give a shiny nickel to anyone who could explain to me what happened. Clearly some unknown white people lynched the unknown black guy, that much we know. But why did they do it? Did they dislike the fact that he was transporting a white girl? If so, why did they leave the white girl there? Did they perform the lynching just because he was black and on the road? Is the message supposed to be for other black people? But there are no other black people in this movie. And this is the middle of Texas in the 1870s. Why would he be here, and if he was here, why would he be by himself? Here’s the real stumper: What in the world is this black man doing with this particular white girl? We learn later in the film that she is a daughter of German settlers who had been massacred by the Kiowa Tribe. The tribe kidnapped her, adopted her, and taught her the language. She was with the tribe for years we learn. Okay, so what is with the black man? Did he rescue her a la John Wayne in The Searchers? That seems unlikely. Where was he taking her and for what purpose? Did Greengrass just want to show us a lynching regardless of whether it made any sense in the story? Questions, questions.

There are several scenes of unreality happening here and there. Not a single character is religious even though almost every character should be. There is the usual dearth of children even though back then they would have outnumbered adults (This is an anachronism found in almost all historical movies). Captain Kidd spares the rod to an absurd degree for a man in the 1870s. Then there is this one ridiculous scene. Captain Kidd and Joanna (the girl) are caught in a serious dust storm with no help of shelter, not even a tent. It is a situation that ought to be fatal given their circumstances. Instead, Joanna uses her magical Kiowa training and finds some magical Kiowa tribesman. They are just hanging out there in that dust storm. They give Joanna a horse, like one of their good ones, for free. Captain Kidd and Joanna ride that magic horse into town and survive. This isn’t supposed to be real, right? I mean this must be some kind of metaphor, right? Right?

The lack of judgment, nay the outright reverence, this movie has for this tribe is kind of crazy. I mean, they murdered the entire family of this girl. And Tom Hanks just stands there repeating in an impotent manner, “I know people are hurting.” I suppose it is hard being judgmental when the movie seems to take the modern view that the settling of the American West was a bad thing overall. This kind of viewpoint makes for a strange Western, made more so since there are no major Native American characters, and the supporting ones are magical creatures of the plains.

Okay, so we only have white people talking here. What are they saying? Captain Kidd says “I know people are hurting.” Okay, that’s unhelpful. The main bad guy is Mr. Farley. He is a western entrepreneur. His employees shoot buffalos and only take the hide. There are heaps of shorn carcasses laying around. A terrible environmentalist. He is also very ugly, which in a Hollywood movie is a dead giveaway to someone’s underlying decrepit moral character. Mr. Farley says the main problem is Indians, Mexicans, and Blacks. Really? He is out here in the Wild West (i.e. the middle of nowhere) and that is his problem?

The Western is a longstanding genre in American movies. It has produced many great movies and a vast trove of mediocre ones. The main problem in a Western is not racism, its lawlessness. When you think of racism in America, you think of slavery and segregation (or zoning?), both of which were enforced through a legal code. In the Wild West, there is no legal code. Whatever justice or injustice exists is meted out by individuals. (This by the way is the great storytelling strength of the Western. Because there is no society, the characters’ individual choices matter more than usual, which raises the dramatic stakes, makes good men better and bad men worse). Some of the best Westerns are those movies that are about the slow and painful transformation from the state of nature to civilized society, for example The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and the HBO series Deadwood.

Ever since the 1970s though, this theme has fallen into disfavor with a vast segment of the population. After all, to tell a story from the American West with the theme of a transition from a state of nature to a civilized society carries with it the implicit argument that civilized society did not exist in the American West before the Europeans showed up and imposed it. In response to this dig at Native Americans, there are many movies that portray Native Americans as some magical people imbued with all colors of the wind. To hear them say it, the Native Americans would have forever lived in peace and harmony had the white people not shown up. In Dances with Wolves, a disaffected veteran of the American Civil War seeks to live with the Indians to get away from the corruption and strife within American society. Actually, the Native Americans have wars too, but this white man does not see the shared humanity between races behind such negative outcomes. He witnesses a battle between Native American tribes and reflects that white people fight and kill over stupid things like religion and ideology while the Native Americans fight and kill over things that make sense like food and territory. Yeah, I don’t think a distinction between reasons for killing is persuasive. We are not so different. If Native Americans wore cowboy hats, some would be white and some would be black.

I say since the 1970s, but this kind of viewpoint of tribal peoples is much older. In fact, its French. It is the sort of thing that contrarian French aristocrats like Voltaire and Rousseau would throw around while lounging in salons. (The British were busy taking over the world). In Voltaire’s Candide, the main character travels to America and discovers a secret city named El Dorado, that lacks crime, is full of happy people, etc. Its superiority derives from the lack of modern influences. For example, diamonds line the streets because the inhabitants are uncorrupted by the modern economic forces that would make them valuable. (Wakanda from Black Panther is basically the same idea. It is ironic that the message of Black Panther is openness, given everything about Wakanda argues for the opposite. After all, if Wakanda, a morally superior and technologically advanced civilization, has a racial makeup that is 100% homogenous, wouldn’t that argue in favor of a closed society and a pure race. How exactly has the immigration policy of Wakanda changed since its king publicly lectured the world on the benefits of openness? I would love to see that debate on Wakanda CSPAN.) Rousseau was basically of the belief that men hit their peak of morality a thousand years before cities when everyone was a Noble Ape, a child of the forest. This point of view is not too different from Dances with Wolves.

The grass is always greener on the other side. It is hard to explain what ought to be obvious. That life is better for everybody now than it ever was for any single Native American back then. People live longer, they don’t starve to death, their children don’t die in droves in childbirth and disease, women aren't treated like chattel, there is far less violence in the world, we’re all much more educated and have much more free time. I could go on, how much time do you have? A good Western understands this. It does not ignore the trials and injustices of the past, but it understands that the story is one that starts at chaos and heads toward order, not the other way around. If it does not have this, and it isn’t explicitly in the French line of thinking, it is a search in the wilderness for meaning and purpose. It is Tom Hanks playing an ex-Confederate soldier without the characteristics of one, feeling vaguely guilty, but not being able to articulate why.

TENET (3/5 Stars)

 

Boy, do I miss movie theaters. If there ever was a type of movie that necessitated big screen viewing, it would be a Christopher Nolan movie (The Dark Knight, Inception, Dunkirk). He specializes in IMAX photography and elaborate action sequences. He has not made a small movie for over a decade, the last being The Prestige in 2006. When I set out to watch Tenet, an original spy thriller (as opposed to the 26^th installment of James Bond or the 8^th Mission Impossible which was itself a remake of a TV series), I tried to see it on the largest screen possible, a big TV at a friend’s house. Terrible choice. Phones rang, people talked throughout, a young child spent half the time screaming and running around. It was hard to concentrate. By the second half of the movie, I had no idea what was going on.

 

Recently, I tried to see it again, late at night and very few other people around. Unfortunately, I still cannot say I completely understand the movie. I guestimate I am about 2/3rds into understanding. It is complicated. The downside of originality of course is that you are showing something new.

 

Tenet involves objects with reversed entropy. They are inverted in time. Now, the way human’s experience entropy is the progression of time in the presence and always going forward. When an object is inverted, it appears to the human to be going backwards in time. A sort of helpful example is an inverted wall that holds many inverted bullets. A character known only as the Protagonist (“John David Washington”) aims a gun at the inverted wall and the inverted bullet is shot out of the walled and is caught by the gun in the Protagonist’s hand. That is as simple as the temporal acrobatics get. Other temporal acrobatics include: fistfights, car chases, a heist, a military operation known as a temporal pincer move. These are incredible sight, but underneath the surface there remains a nagging question: What on earth am I watching?

 

I think a large problem this movie has is not that it introduces this wacky idea about inverted entropy, it is that the rest of the story is highly obscure. For instance, we do not know the main character’s name or anything about him. We do no know who is sending these inverted objects back through time or why they are doing so. The movie globetrots around the planet from London, to India, to Monaco, to Russia. It is hard to get a solid footing at any one place. All the characters are new and they speak like spies, that is, in vaguely threatening tones. I like to think I am a perceptive viewer, and I take as evidence that my understanding of previous Christopher Nolan films with their myriad temporal and structural complexities. Figuring out the puzzle is something I usually enjoy. Tenet is just one level too much. There are times when I think about this movie, and I remember a scene that doesn’t quite make sense and I’m not sure if there is an explanation somewhere or is it just sloppy storytelling and there actually is no explanation, perhaps the opening scene which involved an inverted bullet. Am I too know where that inverted bullet comes from? How did it get there? Now, I have seen the movie twice, and I still am not certain of it. I think two viewings are enough to conclude a movie is indeed confusing and not merely complex.

 

A fun thing about Christopher Nolan movies is that they sometimes are windows into the toys of the very very rich. I recall seeing Inception and being impressed very expensive suits of everyone in the first class section of the international flight. Here, we are introduced to a “Freeport”, which is where rich people store paintings to avoid taxes. Robert Pattinson walks around it in a very expensive suit and looks more adult than I have ever seen him.

 

The bad guy leaves something to be desired. He is supposed to be a nefarious Russian oligarch but is played by Kenneth Branagh. Now, I know I’m supposed to be impressed by the reputation of Branagh, but I confess to not really liking him too much in anything besides Henry V, which was in the 1980s. His Shakespeare adaptations are poor and I refuse to see him embody Hercule Poirot. Here, he is kind just too soft and flabby to really have much of a nefarious screen presence. Of course, he is not helped by the confusing narrative. The Russian oligarch has a supermodel wife played by Elizabeth Dibecki. This woman is too tall. I’m not sure she is actually that tal. I think the movie may have added some inches. Either way, not my thing. As stated before, Robert Pattinson looks the part in this movie. John David Washington, as the protagonist, does a decent job. His character is a bit of a blank slate, so not much acting is required, but he does what is required in the action sequences, particularly the bit where he has a fist-fight with an inverted antagonist.

 

I can’t really recommend TENET other than to say, if you do see, try to see it in a theater. This is a movie that will be definitely worse seen at home.