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Review – Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm

slack-jawed horror

I did not see Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006). Fortunately, you do not have to have watched the first movie to understand Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm.

The man (Sacha Baron Cohen) is in serious, perhaps lethal, trouble with his home government and the population at large because he showed his country in a bad light with the first film. He has a chance, though, to redeem himself by offering a gift to a famous person.

That idea goes awry. Plan B involves his 15-year-old daughter Sandra (Maria Bakalova) and maybe Mike Pence. It is part of the “Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.”

Borat 2 shows the protagonist as a father who feeds his daughter a bunch of revolting lies about the nature of womanhood. To her credit, in time, she begins questioning them. And ultimately, the developing relationship between them is the most sustaining part of the film.

So THAT is what caused COVID!

But he seems to fit in well with Trump’s 2020 rallies, though even his new buddies question some of Borat’s most outlandish conspiracy theories. So it’s not what I’d call LOL funny stuff. Occasionally tasteless, yes. His anti-Semetic schtick, which he apparently did in the first movie, is gently brought up short here.

I think David Sims hits on the core of the film in his review in The Atlantic.
It is “Less a Satire Than an Exposé.” “Borat, arguably, starts actually doing his job as a journalist—shining a light on the darkest corners of society and revealing them for what they are. By this point in the film, if you’re laughing, it’s likely in slack-jawed horror.”

The ultimate “cause” of the coronavirus actually makes sense in the context of the film. If this movie doesn’t entirely work for me, maybe it’s because the country has become more of a parody than he is. Yet I don’t regret the hour and a half I spent watching it.

Movie review: Nomadland

Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century

How many movies can I watch on Hulu during the free trial? This is what my movie watching has come to.

Nomadland is about Fern (Frances McDormand), who lived in a Nevada company town. Then the company went bust, and so did the town. Fern, a self-sufficient widow, travels around the country. She’s attracted to the life of the nomadic existence, and the interesting people she meets and sometimes meets again.

The movie is based Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, a 2017 non-fiction book by American journalist Jessica Bruder. She wrote about “the phenomenon of older Americans who, following the Great Recession, adopted transient lifestyles traveling around the United States in search of seasonal work.”

The story was adapted by Chloé Zhao, who directed the film. The story blurs the line between fiction and reality, with the appearance of real nomads such as Linda May, Swankie, and Bob Wells, the video star of the movement. They serve as “Fern’s mentors and comrades in her exploration through the vast landscape of the American West.” Everyone, save for Frances, uses their real first names, even David Strathairn, as Dave.

No final goodbye

Nomadland is melancholy, but not particularly sad. The people she meets have gained a lot of wisdom. For instance, Bob uses this analogy. “The workhorse… is willing to work itself to death, and then be put out to pasture. And that’s what happens to so many of us. If society was throwing us away and sending us as the workhorse out to the pasture, we workhorses have to gather together and take care of each other.”

Many of the folks are uncomfortable with conventional capitalism, preferring to live in their vehicles, being reliant on themselves and their comrades. But the movie didn’t feel preachy about it.

Katie Walsh of the Tribune News Service notes that Nomadland “feels simultaneously like both a memory and a prophecy. Zhao has managed to marry these juxtaposing ideas in her film, which is the essence of bittersweet distilled into an arrow and shot straight through the heart.”

I suppose reviewer Ryan Syrek is also correct. The movie “has no plot or subplot, no character or narrative arc, no easily discernible thesis or moral. It just kind of ‘is.'” But that was not stated as a failure, though others felt the film was too slow, small, and/or simple.

I’ve neglected to mention the often gorgeous scenery that makes this rooted as a specifically American story. Nomadland is a meditation on the country. Think Christian has an interesting take on the film, both as a “critique of American ideologies and a celebration of God’s created order.”

Review: The Trial of the Chicago 7

Aaron Sorkin’s learning curve

I became totally caught up in the movie The Trial of the Chicago 7, which I saw on Netflix. The time period in which it took place corresponded with my political awakening, so I was certainly a “market” for the film.

For those who didn’t know, there was violence between the police and Vietnam war demonstrators during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August 1968. The Justice Department under President Lyndon Johnson declined to press federal charges against the protestors, although there were local charges. But after Richard Nixon was inaugurated, Justice, under John Mitchell decided to prosecute eight men.

They (and the people who played them in the film) included Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne) and Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp), from the Students for a Democratic Society. Also, Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen) and Jerry Rubin (Alex Sharp), founders of the Youth International Party, or Yippies. Plus the pacifist David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch), leader of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (MOBE); Lee Weiner (Noah Robbins), and John Froines (Daniel Flaherty).

Wait, that’s seven. Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) was the national chairman of the Black Panther Party. “Seale’s attorney, Charles Garry, cannot attend due to illness, leading Judge Julius Hoffman (Frank Langella), [no relation to Abbie] to insist that William Kunstler (Mark Rylance) represents all eight defendants. This insistence is rejected repeatedly by both Kunstler and Seale.” Eventually, Seale’s trial is severed from the others’.

A long path

I did not know this. “Aaron Sorkin stated… that he first found out about the planned film during a visit to Steven Spielberg’s home in 2006… Spielberg told him “he wanted to make a movie about the riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention and the trial that followed.” Aaron, who was born in 1961, had no idea what Steven was talking about.

Sorkin wrote the script in July 2007, but the making of the film was delayed numerous times. He noted, “Spielberg saw Molly’s Game and was sufficiently pleased [with Sorkin’s directing] to suggest I direct ‘Chicago 7’… At his rallies, (Donald) Trump started being nostalgic about the good old days beating up protestors and the movie became relevant again,” with the Black Lives Matter protests.

Praiseworthy

The Trial of the Chicago 7 was nominated for several awards, especially for Sorkin and Sacha Barron Cohen. On Rotten Tomatoes, “the film holds an approval rating of 90% based on 305 reviews, with an average rating of 7.8/10. The website’s critics’ consensus reads, ‘An actors’ showcase enlivened by its topical fact-based story, [it] plays squarely – and compellingly – to Aaron Sorkin’s strengths.”

I fully admit that I totally surrendered to the film, which showed the antiwar movement was not a monolith. It could be funny, shocking, and ultimately moving. This was a function of Sorkin’s use of language, as is his wont. Plus this was a fine ensemble, including Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Richard Schultz, assistant federal prosecutor, and the various actors who played the cops infiltrating the demonstrations. I’m a sucker for a good courtroom drama.

Yet I do understand the frustration some critics have, unhappy that Sorkin played fast and loose with the timeline and certain facts. I’ve even soured on certain movies – the climax of Bohemian Rhapsody, for instance – myself.

John DeFore of The Hollywood Reporter writes, “Sorkin has made a movie that’s gripping, illuminating and trenchant […] It’s as much about the constitutional American right to protest as it is about justice, which makes it incredibly relevant to where we are today.”

Documentary movie review: Rewind

home videos

Rewind Sasha Joseph Neulinger dug through a ‘vast collection” of home videos. He reconstructed the “unthinkable story” of a child “and exposed the vile abuse passed through generations.” What is remarkable is that the abused child was Sasha Joseph Neulinger.

Rewind is a difficult film to watch. Yet it was not as awful as it might have been. Piers Marchant of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette nails it. “The old footage of Sasha clearly cracking under the strain of his family’s betrayal contrasts poignantly with the strong, centered man he has become.” Making a movie as therapy, perhaps.

It is also a fascinating story about memory – what you remember, what you – possibly necessarily – forget. Indeed, there is a bit of the investigative reporter in Neulinger. He interviews his parents, psychiatrists, prosecutors, and the police to fill in the gaps in his memory. In doing so, he “builds a disturbingly precise picture, conveying both the cyclical nature of such secret horrors and the difficulty in prosecuting cases that involve children.”

There is a small piece of this tale I do vaguely recall because it involved a somewhat prominent person. Not incidentally, we discover yet again that the criminal justice mechanism is not always a level playing field.

Young Sasha was clearly pained in the home videos, but it was unclear to his mother why. What makes this tolerable to watch is the adult Sasha, who takes an almost arm’s length investigatory role. Despite the subject matter, Rewind isn’t salacious or grubby.

And – not really a spoiler – adult Sasha is OK, even thriving, and apparently not bitter. He has a new name and a mission to try to help others who were in the position he was in.

The 44 reviewers from Rotten Tomatoes all gave this documentary a thumbs up. I would thoroughly agree.

Actor Kurt Russell turns 70

Portland Mavericks

When I told my wife I was probably going to write about Kurt Russell turning 70, she went “Oh!” “What does THAT mean?” “Kurt Russell was my first crush.”

Not that I’m jealous, mind you.

I was utterly fascinated by Kurt Russell as a kid. He wasn’t much older than I was. I know I watched The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (1963), a western, though I don’t specifically remember the storyline. “Twelve-year-old Jamie McPheeters, along with his ne’er-do-well father and a ragtag group of pioneers, travel westward from Paducah, Kentucky to the California gold fields in 1849.” Nope, still don’t recall it.

And there were a series of movies, some with Disney, which I almost certainly watched.

The New Land (1974) featured “the trials of a settler family of Swedish immigrants to America.” Watched that, too. If you don’t remember it, it’s probably because lasted only six episodes.

He didn’t become one of those child stars who ended up troubled. Instead, he developed into a successful adult actor, primarily in movies. And most of them I never viewed! In fact, looking at his IMDB roster of films, there are only three I’m positive I saw: Silwood (1983), Swing Shift (1984), and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017). Oh, I did see the Elvis TV movie in 1979.

Baseball

There’s a film I just read about that I want to see. The Battered Bastards of Baseball (2014) is a “documentary film about the Portland [OR] Mavericks, a defunct minor league baseball team… They played five seasons in the Class A-Short Season Northwest League, from 1973 through 1977. Owned by actor Bing Russell [Kurt’s dad], the Mavericks were an independent team, without the affiliation of a parent team in the major leagues.”

The things I discover. “Kurt Russell was a switch-hitting second baseman for the California Angels minor league affiliates, the Bend Rainbows (1971) and Walla Walla Islanders (1972) in the short-season Class A-Short Season Northwest League, then moved up to Class AA in 1973 with the El Paso Sun Kings of the Texas League.

“While in the field turning the pivot of a double play early in the season, the incoming runner at second base collided with him and tore the rotator cuff in Russell’s right (throwing) shoulder.

“He did not return to El Paso but was a designated hitter for the… Mavericks… late in their short season… He had been doing promotional work for them in the interim. The injury forced his retirement from baseball in 1973 and led to his return to acting.”

Goldie

Russell appeared in five films with performer Goldie Hawn, possibly still best known for Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. The first was way back in 1968, The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band. Goldie made her big-screen debut in a bit part. She was 21, but he was only 16.

During the making of Swing Shift (1984), they became romantic partners. They were also in Overboard (1987), and the two Christmas Chronicles films (2018, 2020).

They’ve been together since 1983. Her kids (Kate and Oliver Hudson) are his kids. His kid Boston Russell is her kid. They have a son together, Wyatt. And they are happily unmarried.

Goldie said, and Kurt would agree: “We have done just perfectly without marrying. I already feel devoted and isn’t that what marriage is supposed to do? So as long as my emotional state is in a state of devotion, honesty, caring, and loving, then we’re fine.

“We have raised our children brilliantly; they are beautiful people. We did a great job there and we didn’t have to get married to do that. I like waking up every day and seeing that he is there and knowing that I have a choice. There is really no reason to marry.”

Kurt Russell turns 70 on St. Patrick’s Day.