Southland Tales
dir. Richard Kelly
To dismiss Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko follow-up,
Southland Tales, as a disaster is too simplistic. It is indeed
a muddled, overreaching, and astoundingly pretentious mess. But there’s
also a lot of talent on display, and few films are as likely to
provoke, and even enrage, viewers this year. Much like Mulholland
Drive (a film it desperately wants to be), Southland
Tales refuses to cough up easy answers; unlike Lynch’s film,
however, you can’t help but feel that the only journey Kelly is taking
you on is one deep inside his own bong.
Set during the election of 2008, three years after a nuclear strike
on a Texas suburb, the film trucks in extreme post-9/11 absurdity. The
government has cracked down Big Brother–style, and radical
liberals—dubbed “neo-Marxists”—are plotting a revolution in
the streets of Los Angeles. Meanwhile, a mysterious drug has hit the
streets from the frontlines of Iraq, a vacant porn starlet (Sarah
Michelle Gellar) looks to create an empire, a strange new energy source
known as “Fluid Karma” is about to be unveiled, and a major movie star
(Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) may or may not have gone missing. Sprinkled
among these boggling scenarios are moments of outright lunacy, some
inspired (a man whose reflection seems to be lagging) and some
agonizing (Justin Timberlake lip-syncing to the Killers while blond
bombshells dance Busby Berkeley–style on Skee-Ball machines
around him).
For a while all this nonsense is entertaining to watch. Kelly piles
mystery upon mystery, and as you wait for him to bring it all together
the sheer audacity on display threatens to win you over. But by the
time the chaotic third act arrives it becomes apparent that, as with
every great high, the comedown reveals little beyond foggy absurdity.
The idea of The Rock onboard a zeppelin attempting to explain quantum
physics may have seemed genius when it was conjured from the clouds,
but in action it’s simply ridiculous. Southland Tales, despite
all its creativity, makes you feel like the only sober one in the room.
BRADLEY STEINBACHER
King Corn
dir. Aaron Woolf
Directly inspired by Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s
Dilemma—which concerns, in part, the cheap, corn-based feed
and high-fructose corn syrup that find their way into each and every
component of a meal at McDonald’s—this documentary follows two
affable Yale grads named Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis as they set out to
grow a single acre of the yellow stuff. After signing up for the
obligatory $28 government subsidy, Ian and Curt buy some
herbicide-resistant seed and get to work. Only these days, it doesn’t
take much actual work to grow conventional commodity corn. There’s
plenty of time to explore the story of how corn (and its nutritionally
suspect products) became the primary staple of the American diet.
If you’ve already read The Omnivore’s Dilemma, King
Corn will be fascinating. If you haven’t read it, the facts will
come as a shock. Corn became ascendant not just because of improved
agricultural practices and increasingly sophisticated technologies, but
because the United States government made a 180-degree turn in its
agricultural policy. Before 1973, the main idea was to maintain
high corn prices to keep farmers across the Midwest in business. After
1973—thanks to the cheap-food policy of Richard Nixon and his
secretary of agriculture, Earl Butz—the goal shifted to producing
as much corn as possible. Instead of loaning farmers money in off years
and paying them to withhold unwanted corn from the market, the
government started giving guys like Ian and Curt a set amount of money
per acre planted. Commodity corn flooded the market, and
energy-intensive processing techniques—from recipes for ethanol
to the ubiquitous high-fructose corn syrup—took up the slack.
With an elegant argument presupplied by Michael Pollan and a cute
stunt to hold it together, it’s almost unbelievable how well King
Corn resists falling into the gotcha journalism of the average
agitdoc. Even the aged Earl Butz and a perky spokesperson at the
high-fructose corn syrup factory are allowed to have their say. It’s a
smart, funny, respectful movie about a subject that—in the wrong
hands—could’ve put wonks to sleep. ANNIE WAGNER
Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium
dir. Zach Helm
Before we tear this work to pieces, let’s have a look at what the
media has recently said about its director, Zach Helm: Variety magazine called him one of ten writers to watch; Esquire magazine called him one of the “Best & Brightest”; and Fade
In magazine designated him as a person who must be
known—meaning, not to know him is to be out of touch with the
trends and happenings in Hollywood. Helm is the man of the moment. The
Hollywood machine believes in him, and wants the public to believe in
his genius. He wrote the script for Stranger Than Fiction, and
if that ain’t a smart movie, what in the world is?
This is how Hollywood thinks. It looks for a man who will do
something new and yet not change the order of studio production; it
wants to work with inventive people but also with people who can work
within the system. Helm is such a man, and Mr. Magorium’s Wonder
Emporium is his directorial debut. Natalie Portman and Dustin
Hoffman are his stars. The stage is set. The financial sorcerers have
turned the turtle over and looked into the belly of the future: It’s
full of money. What can go wrong?
Everything is wrong with this film. In it, zero is new; dead tired
are its plot, imagery, themes, and acting. The movie wants to look and
feel fresh, but it instead presents us with a series of heavy corpses:
the corpse of the music, the corpse of the set design, the corpse of
the dialogue. Even the special effects are not special. The story is so
bad I refuse to recount it. I will, however, say this: If Natalie
Portman were not beautiful, there’s no way I could have
survived/endured/stomached the screening of this film. CHARLES
MUDEDE
