Trainwreck

One disconcerting aspect of comedic movies nowadays is the strict separation of the sexes; men and women only seem to be funny around their same sex buddies. Movies like "The Hangover" and "Bridesmaids" typify this trend, creating worlds solely inhabited by either men or women. Comedy ensues based on gender stereotypes: Guys get drunk, get strippers, and engage in hijinx while the feminine version of that involves shopping for dresses, planning themed parties, or singing along to Wilson Phillips. Men and women only seem to be together in lame romantic comedies with predictable, bipolar tropes: women want marriage; guys just want to have fun.

In "Trainwreck" Amy Schumer cleverly turns the genre on it's head. She plays a character fittingly named "Amy," who is a paradoxical living embodiment of the male stereotype. She is just interested in casual sex and has no desire to cuddle, talk, or be romantic in any way. Likewise, all of the male characters in the film are comedically and stereotypically feminine; they are obsessively worried about where relationships are going. This trading up is not only funny, but it also makes you think of the movie stereotypes that we have been unwittingly tolerating.

Whether on her show or in "Trainwreck," Amy Schumer has a strong, almost jarring comedic voice. Her jokes work because they are so unexpected and so over the top, even borderline disgusting. A great example is a story she tells to a domesticated group of moms at a baby shower: she had sex with a guy and got a condom stuck----well, you know where. Schumer's greatest talent is her satirical eye for parodying the ridiculousness of "guy culture." In "Trainwreck," she works for a mens' magazine that publishes stories like "How to jerk off at work and where to do it." Schumer is great at being funny while breaking tradition and just being herself. 

Although "Trainwreck" is an entertaining movie, it is not without fault. There are several parts of the film that are surprisingly unfunny, such as Schumer's misguided parody of independent movies with "The Dogwalker" starring Daniel Radcliffe. The largest problem with the movie involves Judd Apatow, whose influence boxed in Schumer's original voice into his prototypical coming of age story. The first part of the film shows Amy Schumer unapologetically speaking her mind. Unfortunately, the second half reveals that Schumer is actually a "damaged" person in need of growing up and learning how to be in an adult relationship. This theme is in every Apatow movie (Knocked Up, The Forty Year Old Virgin, etc) and undercuts Schumer's character with a formulaic ending. Let Amy be the way she wants to be without judging her as immature or damaged! If she wants to get drunk, smoke pot, and have casual sex, so be it. After all, the whole point of Schumer's comedy is to expand gender and societal norms. While I like Apatow's other movies, I think his collaboration on "Trainwreck" did more harm than good to Schumer's vision. Despite its shortcomings, "Trainwreck" is well worth seeing, even if Apatow overshadowed the funnier voice of a more talented comedian than he.    

The Wolf of Wall Street

Most of the bankers and businessman who were responsible for the financial collapse of the American economy in 2008 were never brought to justice. They got away with proverbial murder, showing no remorse or fear that they would be deposed from their heights of wealth. But who were these people and why were they so reckless and out of touch? Martin Scorsese's brilliant film, "The Wolf of Wall Street" gives us a sliver of the Wall Street world, ridiculous excess and all. While watching this film, it is easy to evaluate the crazy, over the top behavior of bankers and think that it is massive hyperbole. Did they really throw midgets (little people) at dart boards for fun? Did they really take quaaludes and fly helicopters or drive cars high out of their minds? Did they really fill their offices with prostitutes? Finally, did they really not think they would get caught or there would be a reckoning for their irresponsible business dealings? While I'm sure many bankers engaged in all kinds of bizarre activities with their wealth, the one aspect that they all had in common was the last point: they were teeming with greed and devoid of social responsibility.

The brilliance of this movie really begins with the fact that it unfolds as a typical Martin Scorsese mafia movie like "Goodfellas" or "Casino." Scorsese portrays Wall Street bankers as gangsters engaging in a legal form of mafia like dealing with more innocuous terminology: "insider trading," instead of friends on the inside, "buying equity" instead of gambling, and  "under duress" instead of threats of assault and battery. For me, this film chronicles an era of American business in which no one should be proud. Not since Oliver Stone's "Wall Street" has a filmmaker called out the criminal activity of the banking industry.

Although the film is a surprising three hours long, it doesn't feel like it at all. This comes partly from Scorsese's masterful fast pacing and the sheer enjoyment of watching Leonardo Dicaprio and Jonah Hill, both of whom nail their characters with skill. Dicaprio brings his signature energy and finesse while Hill comically disappears into his role as Donny, the eccentric businessman with huge bleached veneers who married his cousin because "he didn't want anyone else to fuck her." Greedy with hot family members and greedy with money go hand in hand, I suppose.

One of the key and most entertaining scenes in the movie is one in which Dicaprio takes a rare and potent quaalude called a Lemon, which causes him to go into a totally dysfunctional state. He crawls to his nearby Lamborghini and, by his own testimony, miraculously makes it home without injuring himself or his car. Later, we find out that the reality of the situation is that he crashed into several cars and put the lives of others as well as himself at risk. Again, this disconnect from subjective perception and reality mirrors the mindset of the pre-2008 bankers.

In the end, the most powerful part of the movie is its reinvention of a Scorsese gangster film. Dicaprio starts off as a middle class guy looking for success. By his own talent and boldness, he rises to great wealth and intense greed, which ultimately destroys him. When he goes into legitimate business, his past comes to haunt him and he is arrested and jailed. Finally, after he completes his jail time, he returns to the world that he helped to create and, like a virus, propagates the entry of others into the life------just like Henry Hill in "Goodfellas." "The Wolf of Wall Street" stands as a lone testament to the great financial injustice our time. It brings to life a world hidden from the 99%. In one seminal scene, Dicaprio turns to the camera and says, "who gives a shit how it all worked or whether it was illegal? The point is that we all made money." This film may be entertaining and hilarious, but it's also horrific in its truth.

There Will Be Blood

Once in a great while, a film comes along with such powerful artistic vision that it almost becomes a force of nature. It embosses itself on your consciousness and provides an unforgettable lens through which to view the world. Paul Thomas Anderson's "There Will Be Blood" is one of those films. It excels in all aspects of filmmaking, whether it be the directing, the writing, the sound production, or the cinematography. And it contains the best performance by an actor since Anthony Hopkins played Hannibal Lecter. There is no question that "There Will Be Blood" should be on your short list of films to see before you die.

The film is loosely based on the Upton Sinclair novel, "Oil!" I say "loosely based" because Paul Thomas Anderson takes many liberties with an ambitious oil man in the late nineteenth century. One of the most haunting parts of "There Will Be Blood" is how little has changed in what defines American business from the nineteenth century to the present time: the exploitation of the poor and natural resources in the name of progress and personal enrichment. The first twenty or so minutes of the film are a masterpiece, conveying the themes of blinding greed and the singular pursuit of wealth at the expense of others and even yourself in almost total silence.

Daniel Day Lewis is Daniel Plainview, a silver miner turned oilman who mercilessly ascends in the business world in the hopes of becoming a multimillionaire. Notice that I didn't say Lewis plays Daniel Plainview. That would be inaccurate. Daniel Day Lewis is one of those rare actors who doesn't act; he inhabits characters. His portrayal is seething, practically overflowing with raw emotion. Plainview is a man teeming with hatred, resentment, and impatience under high pressure.

While the film has a sequential plot in which Plainview, accompanied by his son, strikes a rich oil well in California and then tries to build a pipeline to the coast to avoid predatory shipping costs, the true story of the film involves the battles and truces between capitalism and religion as the unifying, motivating force in America. Just as the residents of Little Boston are promised salvation from their local minister, they are also promised roads, food, education, and shared wealth by Plainview and his arriving business venture. Each promise, of course, is untrue and unkept. Both the priest, played by Paul Dano, and the businessman are solely interested in their own power and wealth at the expense of those who trust them. Interestingly, both religion and capitalism use each other at certain times out of necessity to maintain their own sphere of influence. The church comforts the town when oil workers die of unsafe conditions while the opening of the huge drilling well provides a platform for the priest to pontificate. This perpetual melee persists until the end of the movie where there is decidedly a cinematic and historical victor.   

The most powerful aspect of "There Will Be Blood" is its relevance to the present day. The film was released a few months before the financial meltdown of 2008. Just as we see Plainview and the priest exploit a small town for money and power using empty rhetoric, we can see the bottomless greed of Wall Street destroy the lives of indigent people with immoral dealing designed to enrich only a few. You can imagine the following words, spoken by Plainview, recorded in a deposition incriminating Bernie Madoff or another of the financial elite that have separated themselves from humanity in the pursuit of money:

"I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people...

There are times when I... I look at people and I see nothing worth liking. I want to earn enough money I can get away from everyone.

...I see the worst in people, Henry. I don't need to look past seeing them to get all I need. I've built up my hatreds over the years, little by little. Having you here gives me a second breath of life. I can't keep doing this on my own... with these, umm... people."

What is clever about the film is that it takes the ambitious entrepreneur of American folklore and shows the unipolar realities of economic growth and challenges our view of "prosperity," if you can even call it that. Plainview casts away everything and everyone in his life, including his son and brother, when they fail to be useful in building his empire. When his son rejects Plainview's ruthless business sense, he downgrades his progeny to "a bastard in a basket." In the end, it all comes back to Daniel Day Lewis's performance. For Daniel Plainview, like Jay Gatsby just a few years later, the price of the American Dream is his soul.  

Forrest Gump

One of the signature lines from "Forrest Gump" is "Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you're gonna get." Ironically, during my viewing of the film, I knew exactly what I was getting: a stale, hollow shell of a movie with nothing sweet in the middle.

"Forrest Gump" is the worst type of movie. Is it entertaining? Yes. Does Tom Hanks give a great performance? Yes. But both are at a terrible price. The most disturbing aspect of this film is that it propagates a false narrative of American history through an inaccurate lens of nostalgia. I would go so far as to argue that the movie blatantly disrespects important and harrowing aspects of our nation's history, particularly the Vietnam War, racial counterculture, desegregation, and the protest music of the 1960's. "Forrest Gump" is based on a sole premise: that baby boomers will lean over to their friends and/or relatives and say, "Oh gosh, do you remember that?"

The problem is that the aforementioned moviegoer does not really "remember that." The movie presents an America that did not really exist----ever. Let's visit some examples: the movie's sound track, which underscores the entire film, is filled with the great artists that have stood the test of time: Elvis, The Doors, Buffalo Springfield, Jefferson Airplane, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and so on. It seems as though EVERYONE in the sixties was against the establishment, the Vietnam war, and was listening to the above protest music.

Yet, the billboard charts tell a somewhat different story. In 1968, at the height of the Vietnam war protest movement, the number one song was "The Ballad of the Green Berets," a pro-military, ultra patriotic anthem if I ever heard one. "Forrest Gump" distorts the fact that much of rock and roll, particularly the art which dealt with political and social change, was a counterculture in the minority. What's truly amazing about this minority is that its music, beliefs, and rhetoric become the defining aspects of the sixties, though only in retrospect. To honor the bravery and accomplishments of those young people, their story has to be told in the proper context, and in the movie, it is not.

Then we come to the problem of the character named Jenny, who fittingly serves as Forrest's muse for the entire film. Jenny is a walking cliche. She could be a character in a toddler's pop-out book explaining the most general events of American history. Conveniently, Jenny seems to be in tune with every culture movement as they happen. She's a teenage runaway who quickly becomes a hippie in the sixties. She's a coked out, night club jezebel in the seventies. And, most offensively, she contracts AIDS in the eighties. Again, her character represents the gross oversimplification that pervades this film.

Finally, and most maliciously, "Forrest Gump" reduces some of the most important moments in our history to pure buffoonery. My favorite example is the scene depicting the desegregation of schools in Arkansas. Watching African Americans enter those schools after hundreds of years of oppression is a truly serious moment. But Forrest Gump ruins that moment by popping up inexplicably and adding some unnecessary comic relief about a woman dropping her book. Throughout the film, we find out that Forrest is not only present at other historical events, but he is also the catalyst of them. We have Forrest to thank for Elvis Presley, John Lennon's "Imagine," the smiley face, the "shit happens" bumper sticker and the success of Apple computers. Once again, the purpose of these little moments is for baby boomers to turn to each other and say in a dismissive yet giggling manner, "I remember that! He wasn't there!"

The scene that sums up "Forrest Gump" for me is when he is forced on stage at the famous Vietnam protest rally on the national mall in Washington DC. In an intended comedic moment, Forrest is pulled on the main stage and asked what he thought of Vietnam. A military officer then disconnects the microphone cords, rendering his speech completely inaudible. As the microphones are reconnected, we can only hear the words "And that's all I have to say about that." Exactly. "Forrest Gump," both the character and film, has only this to communicate to its audience: nothing.

JFK

"JFK" is not only one of the most interesting movies that I have ever seen, it is also a paragon of technique and filmmaking. The movie also proves that when Oliver Stone makes a movie about the 1960's, he is almost infallible (see "The Doors," "Platoon," or "Born on the Fourth of July.") In its time (1992), "JFK" was very controversial. Several famous journalists called it a wacky conspiracy theory that had more speculations than truth. However, to view "JFK" like a History Channel special is to miss the point entirely. Oliver Stone is not very adept at fact (see "Alexander," his blunderbuss of a movie). Instead, like many talented directors, he is skilled in emotion and complexity. "JFK" is not asking its audience to believe 100% of its assertions. It is asking us to recall the emotions felt by America on November 22, 1963. More importantly, it is demanding that we always challenge authority in the pursuit of truth. "JFK" is not a source of truth, but it is an exercise in the complexity of cause. In my opinion, this movie stands at the apex of using film to explain complicated historical inquiries (notice I wrote inquiries and not fact).

From the moment that John Williams' beautiful score begins to play its military drums, you will be hooked. Stone brilliantly portrays Kennedy's assassination as a military execution. We are shown pictures of Kennedy riding in his limousine to his eventual demise. Additionally, Stone gives us a brief history lesson, which acts as an overview of the events that will come into play later on. He presents us with introductory snippets that will make more sense at the end of the movie. Cinematically, the audience will be taken from 1963, where everything was a bundle of confusion, to 1968 where a lone district attorney has begun to make sense of all the small tidbits and the nearly impossible complexity. This tactic, which is only five or so minutes into the movie, is inspired and engaging.

The main outline of the story goes like this: Kennedy is shot in Dallas, Texas. A district attorney named Jim Garrison in New Orleans is left with an uneasy feeling after the government submitted the Warren Report, which asserted that a lone assassin named Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy from the Texas Book Depository on Dealey Plaza. Garrison begins to investigate and comes upon an intricate web of interesting facts. Eventually, Garrison forms his own theory which asserts that Cuban exiles, angry military leaders, and the mafia all conspired together to murder a President who shook up conservative government policy, especially in regards to Cuba.

At this point of the review, it is necessary to take a step back and reflect on how difficult it is for a filmmaker to portray the above story. Stone has two contradictory objectives. First, he must show the confusion, dead ends, unanswered questions, and slow progression with which Garrison comes upon his theories. Second, he must also present the vast amount of information in a coherent form for the audience to understand by the end of the movie. Furthermore, the information to be included sometimes only fits together by small strands of logical thinking or speculation. In a way, just as Garrison must prove his case in front of the jury by the end of the film, so must Stone make his case by using primary evidence.

In a movie that has many great attributes, it is the landmark editing that stands as the best aspect. Through small flashbacks and recreations of intricate events (such as the day of the shooting) intertwined with present events (such as Garrison's investigation and the trial of Clay Shaw at the end), the audience is able to understand the growing body of information that explains Kennedy's assassination. Moreover, the chaotic nature of the splices makes the audience understand the just anger with which Oliver Stone made the film. We realize how the government took advantage of pandemonium and fear in order to nonsensically assert that one gunman killed Kennedy. To give an example: in a segment discussing Lee Harvey Oswald's past and how the men who killed Kennedy set him up as a scapegoat, Stone splices in shots of an unknown person fabricating the famous Time Magazine photo of Oswald holding a shotgun and a Communist newspaper. In effect, as Garrison explains the set up, the audience is shown a metaphorical yet real comparison. My favorite part of the film is the final trial of Clay Shaw. November 22, 1963 is reconstructed in the courtroom and in a long live action sequence. The audience is shown what probably happened, what could have happened, and what the government asserted happened.

Jim garrison is an odd yet fitting person to have as the hero of the movie. On one hand, he a rogue district attorney from Louisiana who investigates a crime out of his jurisdiction using resources of his home state and commences a questionable prosecution against a man suspected (at best) of being a CIA contractor. In short, because of his location and choice to prosecute someone without smoking gun evidence, Garrison is not a very good lawyer in the case. On the other hand, given the movie's anger against the government, Garrison represents every man who searches for truth. He speaks for all of us when he asks what happened to our President in 1963 and why the government was not forthcoming about it. Despite a competent but not stellar performance by Kevin Costner, Stone does a fantastic job of making us respect and even empathize with Garrison, even if he is acting beyond his jurisdiction.

The only aspect of the movie that has come under fire after its release is its validity. Legitimate journalists panned Stone for engaging in a crazy conspiracy theory with little or no evidence. Perhaps the best example of Stone reaching to prove his points is the part of the movie involving Mr. X, an ex-military general who provides evidence that high ranking military leaders (which may or may not include Lyndon Johnson) had Kennedy killed to commence a coup de etat of conservative foreign and domestic policy in America. Admittedly, I also question the movie's validity on this point. However, I am not sure that Stone is providing a documentary on JFK in this movie. Stone's purpose is to provide all of the information whether valid or not in order to demonstrate what the public did not know and what we should have questioned after Kennedy's death. Thus, Mr. X is not fact; he is an indication that we should investigate all leads in a crime, even if they produce a dead end.

After "JFK" premiered in the early 1990's, the House of Representaives released a number of documents that actually proved many (but not all) of the assertions in the movie. Oswald was more than a lone gunman; he was a military trained communist defector. The CIA had many covert operations with unquestioned and unlimited funding. An angry group of Cuban exiles funded by the CIA could have planned the assassination. The government covered up many parts of the investigation because of its unknown support of this CIA terror cell. In the end, Oliver Stone has not proven who killed John F. Kennedy on that balmy day in November. But what he has done is capture a nation's anger and frustration. He has encouraged viewers to leap out of the dark and search for answers. Stone used "JFK" to get the ball rolling. In the process, he has created one of the best made and most memorable movies in American cinema.

Jurassic World

Remember when that old, eccentric man thought it would be a good idea to resurrect dinosaurs and then arrogantly thought he could contain them in an amusement park? Well, "Jurassic World" is back to punish that hubris yet again. Despite the fact that the first park was a complete and deadly failure, and despite the fact that a follow-up dinosaur zoo in America led to a rampaging T-Rex in downtown San Diego, Ingen (the bumbling corporation responsible for the series of debacles) now thinks that super-sizing is a way to finally solve the problems that plagued them in the past. Jurassic World, complete with blatantly dangerous dino petting zoos, a flimsy gyrosphere safari ride, and a new diabolical hybrid dinosaur, is really a "fuck you" to murphy's law. There is no doubt that Ingen employs some of the dumbest people on the planet. Without revealing spoilers, let's just say that when the dinosaurs beset the island and wreak havoc, one stupid plan follows another until a crescendo of ridiculousness reaches its apex.

But the true addition to the franchise is the hybrid dinosaur, known as Indominus Rex. Ingen's logic is clear: we couldn't handle a T. Rex and velociraptor separately, so why don't we take all of the most dangerous attributes from both and combine them into one dinosaur. Makes perfect sense to me. Ingen should receive the lifetime achievement medal at the Darwin Awards.

The acting is largely unsubstantial and serves as innocuous filler between the carnage. The new director managed to inject some of Spielberg's favorite themes, including the hapless, self centered parental figure who comes into their own just in time to save their children from certain annihilation (see "War of the Worlds" and "Lincoln" for further examples of men finally becoming daddies).

Chris Pratt is, well, Christ Pratt: the likable but not so bright hero with a dash of machismo. He delivers his often corny lines with a twinkle in his eye, reminding us that he is fully aware of his role as stereotypical heroic beefcake. Bryce Dallas Howard delivers a respectable performance, capturing the "overly ambitious female businesswoman who forgets what's truly important in life" trope well.

But we are not in the seats to watch Pratt or Howard wax philosophical. We are there to watch a dinosaur royal rumble of epic proportions. The movie certainly delivers the action you expect and then some. The ending delightfully culminates in a dino showdown, a veritable who's who of the Jurassic period. In the end, only one dinosaur can rule them all. Can you guess who proves himself king (wink, wink)?

One of the best attributes of the movie is its teeming nostalgia for the first "Jurassic Park." Audiences will delight in little easter eggs scattered throughout the film: returning characters, an abandoned visitor center, and that amazing score from John Williams. "Jurassic Park" is my favorite childhood movie and the current installment rekindled my sense of awe. "Jurassic World" is a worthy addition to the series and is second only to the original. A summer must see!