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Hillbilly Elegy
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CHRIS MIKSANEK - THE MED CITY
MOVIE GUY
Reaction to director Ron Howard’s latest,
Hillbilly Elegy, based on J. D. Vance’s
best-seller, is pretty much split along partisan
lines with prigs panning it for daring to depict,
sympathetically, a huge swath of forgotten America –
working-class Appalachia – and those, like yours
truly, who think it’s one of the best films in the
last several years.
Vance’s tale
oscillates between his 1997 childhood in Southern
Ohio/Kentucky and his time at Yale Law School 14
years later but focuses on mother Amy
Adams’ trainwreck of a life
notwithstanding her high school potential.
Glenn Close is his Mamaw, Adams’
mother and the closest thing to stability in the
boy’s life.
High hillbilly drama,
to be sure, but a genuine story about real people,
family obligation, and culture clashes. It’s a peek
into the minds and hearts of our fellow countryfolk,
those whom media elitists are evidently oblivious. In
the film this is best manifested when Vance sits
among a table of potential employers unimpressed with
his credentials until he mentions his grandfather’s
ancestor who instigated the infamous feud between the
Hatfields and the McCoys at which point their
curiosity is piqued.
Like
Gran Torino, this one’s sure to be
overlooked come awards season but will find an
adoring audience nonetheless. |
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Free Lunch Express
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CHRIS MIKSANEK - THE MED CITY
MOVIE GUY
One of the things I say a lot in the review biz is
that I like to discover off-the-radar movies to
share. I mean, no one needs me to chime-in on the
latest Avengers
blockbuster, right?
Of another
Right-leaning political comedy, 2008’s
An
American Carol, I said: Some have dismissed the
movie as agitprop, focusing on its attack of the
Left’s naivety and misguided efforts. But what
An
American Carol really spoofs is our guarded sense
of humor, a funny-bone numbed by a generation of
political correctness.
Read my complete review
here.
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Writer/director
Lenny Britton’s Free Lunch Express,
a Bernie Sanders mocumentary, is one of them. It had
me with their promo quote: “From the creators who
watched Airplane! too many
times.”
Irreverent, and impudent,
for sure. It mercilessly spoofs Sanders’ ridiculously
out of the mainstream far-leftist leanings which it
traces to a blood oath he made to Stalin as a child
after being
fed-up with rich kids stealing his lunch money. It goes on to follow Sanders’ progression from a time in
a Vermont commune where he’s kicked-out for laziness
(“other people are better suited for manual labor,”
he says laying on a sofa), then through a friendship with
Ben & Jerry to present-day presidential aspirations...
Brittan, who also plays “middle Sanders,”
perfects Sanders’ patois (“20 million dead under
Socialism? I find that number a tad high”) and
Chicago-born Cynthia Kania’s Hillary needs only to
flex her trademark annoying cackle to get a laugh.
But handily the most amazing casting is Malcolm
McDowell (yes, that Malcom McDowell) as the
narrator.
A bold thumb to the
nose to one of the Left’s most cherished icons which
in and of itself seems dangerous in this climate of
woke-intimidation; it’s forbidden comedy, which, of
course, is comedy’s raison d’être. So,
there’s that.
In other words,
catch it before the scolds demand corporate streaming
services take it down.
Available
via iTunes, Amazon, Google and Vudu |
 
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Unhinged
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CHRIS MIKSANEK - THE MED CITY
MOVIE GUY
Russell Crowe totally menaces in a minivan.
Crowe’s Unhinged — the
road rage consequence of the convergence of two
drivers’ bad days — is enough to woo moviegoers from
their Covid-19 bunkers. No small feat.
Triggered by a rude woman’s long horn (“Did you
mean to just give me a courtesy tap?”), Crowe sets
out to let the unapologetic driver and her son (Caren
Pistorius and Gabriel Bateman) know what it’s like to
have a bad day.
An interesting
amalgam of people necessarily taking matters in their
own hands and, well, let’s face it ... lots of people
out there are smoking tinder boxes just a car horn
away from coming unglued. That said,
Unhinged is not just consistent
excitement, it may be a sad commentary of our times.
Perhaps best of all, the Crowe
here is one you’ve never seen: a believable baddie,
or rather, a decent chap driven to the edge by his
environment, not unlike Michael Douglas’
1993 Falling Down, though
here with a No Country For Old Men
“this is what the world’s come to” vibe.
Better and more relevant than expected. |
 
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Helter Skelter: An American Myth
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CHRIS MIKSANEK - THE MED CITY
MOVIE GUY
On Disney’s Recess, they’re
the Ashleys, a clique of popular girls, but every
school has them. Cute, wry, holding court at the cool
table. Years ago, one such coterie of middle class
pre-teens was standing before a baffled principal who
asked them why they had just beaten-up the popular
guy in their grade. One meekly admitted, “Because
Charlie told us to.”
So goes
EPIX’s six-part documentary Helter
Skelter: An American Myth, the most
comprehensive look at the man and savagery that
punctuated the 1960’s whose legacy until that time
was to be the decade of peace and love
(notwithstanding the Vietnam War).
If you believe that the ugly and uncomfortable
incidents of our history should be confronted,
discussed, and understood to avoid repetition the
timing of this documentary makes it essential
viewing. If on the other hand the sight of things
offensive need to be removed from your purview I'll
offer this
alternative read.
Margo Robbie as Sharon Tate in Quentin
Tarantino’s 2019 masterpiece, Once
Upon a Time... in Hollywood. |
If you’re still with
me you’ll find interesting parallels to Manson’s era
and ours. The 60s were a time of optimism that by
sticking it to the establishment, the young people
repulsed by it could construct their own harmonious
communities; as has been the case, the
rudderless rally behind one or more of the
dynamic voices of their time who project a caring and
understanding voice. This was Manson’s milieu.
Hippies of his time looked down on conventions not
because they didn’t make sense but because rules were
imposed by those whom the
counter-culture despised. So for a lot of them, their
chosen
life was not all bucolic flowers and peace. Manson
exploited them — as he had been in his youth — both mentally and physically. But to what end is not
evident.
He called it Helter Skelter, his version of
a more perfect union. A race war between the “blacks
and whites” which would leave both sides decimated,
after which he and his family would come down from
their desert hideaway and rein over a societal
rebirth. To initiate this, Manson orchestrated the
“witchy” sadistic, brutal, savage murders of
innocents whom the family believe represented what
they hated; most famous among the seven known victims
was actress Sharon Tate, the wife of
then controversial Rosemary’s Baby
director Roman Polanski. Indeed, if terror was his
goal he succeeded. Los Angeles had never been more on
edge.
In time, and in Manson’s own words during his
and his followers’ trial, it would be revealed that
he was a common nut with hate, a messianic complex
and a lethal dose of influence over weak minds.
So why does Helter Skelter: An American
Myth matter? Well, unlike past
treatments that glossed-over Manson’s upbringing and
followers’ thoughts, this one takes the time to
examine the genesis of the cult.
Why now? For me this
one’s necessity comes on the heels of Quentin
Tarantino’s amazing Once Upon A Time...In
Hollywood whose suspense draws from the
coincidence of Leonardo DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton living
next door to the Tate/Polanski property. During some
of the promotional events I was amazed at how few
people under 30 knew of Manson’s terror well
documented in prosecutor (and Hibbing Minnesota
native) Vincent Bugliosi’s best seller Helter
Skelter.
There and here, every knife plunge and
the hate that drives the blades through innocent
flesh are uncomfortably recounted. (Warning:
Extremely uncomfortably recounted.)
Revolution is not pretty. It’s bloody, and it’s often
just a rationalization of a primal urge to assert
power over others.
Lunacy and
manipulation shouldn’t be lost to indifference. In
Manson were traces of nearly every other cult that
would follow so he’s worthy of study especially
because historical events cannot be erased by simply ignoring them.
Engaging and
continuing to learn from our past is the way forward. |
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Ford v Ferrari
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CHRIS MIKSANEK - THE MED CITY
MOVIE GUY
Carol Shelby was already a bit of a
mustang when he was brought in to bring street
cred to the then flailing Ford Motor Company to
coincide with the launch of its sporty compact by VP
Lee Iacocca.
The Med City Movie Guy’s 1976 Ford Mustang II Cobra
302 w/4-speed, a nod to the original “Shelby Cobra,” was the cat’s pajamas back in the day. |
A health problem
sidelined Shelby (Matt Damon), who had just won the
24 Hours of Le Mans, from racing but not
from designing high-performance cars and Ford figured
if Shelby could build them an American car to beat
Enzo Ferrari’s team, Ford might again be seen as a
preeminent automaker.
The car,
though, would be only part of what Ford needed. They
also needed an adept driver and Shelby’s choice was a
loose cannon named Ken Miles (Christian Bale) who
rubbed “the suits” the wrong way.
Director James Mangold does a fair job balancing the
thrilling race action reminiscent of Ron Howard’s
2013 film Rush with the
corporate and human drama; and, both Damon and Bale
turn-in award-worthy performances, as well. But at
just over 2 ½ hours, Ford v Ferrari
is long (though it doesn’t feel long) and while I
loved it, it remains to be seen if audiences
irrespective of racing fans, embrace it.
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Ford v
Ferrari has earned the Critics
Choice Seal of Distinction. |
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American Factory
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CHRIS MIKSANEK - THE MED CITY
MOVIE GUY
Equal pay for equal work?
In my younger days, I worked in a union factory
in Chicago. Thanks to the efforts of our local, we
made exactly 15 cents more per hour than the
prevailing minimum wage. Meanwhile, those in Detroit
factories doing the same assembly or custodial work,
earned more than four times that wage. With youthful
insolence I recall complaining to our steward, “It’s
not fair that they make so much more than we do,
after all, we’re just as unskilled as they are.”
We didn’t know it, but we were on the cusp of
foreign competition and it wouldn’t be long before
factory owners across the world began asking the same
question and relocating where the labor pool was
larger and consequently, wages lower.
While I don’t know anyone who likes this (then
again, I don’t know any factory owners), it’s hard
not to notice the popularity of the Dollar Stores
which are made possible only by cheap efficient
manufacturing.
Thus
American Factory, probably the best
documentary of the year, speaks to me. It follows the
efforts of a Chinese billionaire reopening a
shuttered Dayton, Ohio glass plant and hiring
furloughed GM workers at a fraction of their former
salary — though in-line with the global wage.
The revelatory tale of how a large part of the
world to which we’re oblivious works and how they
perceive American laborers (expensive, coddled, and
inefficient) is enough to make you xenophobic and
nostalgic for protectionism.
My
old employer, Turtle Wax, has long-since
off-shored production as have many other
manufacturers driven by both consumers’ appetite for
inexpensive products and the need to profit which is
precisely Cao Dewang’s objective for his American
Factory.
What’s especially
unsettling here is the absence of any hope for the
future of wages: the film closes in relative silence
as we watch legions of robotic arms perform the same
glass windshield examination that only an hour
earlier we saw low-paid workers carry out.
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Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool
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CHRIS MIKSANEK - THE MED CITY
MOVIE GUY
Jazz is one of the few genres that never
really resonated with me. Oh, I’ll
skee-boppidy-bop-bop along with some of the more
upbeat tracks in the elevator but it always struck me
as a style more fun to play than to listen too. Which
means, consequently, many of the field’s virtuosos
fall outside the periphery of my radar.
So it is the mark of a great documentarian like
director Stanley Nelson (American
Experience) whose Miles
Davis: Birth of the Cool,
makes interesting and demonstrably relevant Davis’
life and impressionistic music to rubes like moi.
Read More
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Bennett’s War
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CHRIS MIKSANEK - THE MED CITY
MOVIE GUY
Let’s face it, there aren’t a lot of
major releases set against a motocross backdrop so
when one comes by you’re kind of compelled to check
it out, right? That’s what put me in the seat of
Bennett’s War, anyway.
That and because I am a sucker for schmaltzy
inspirational stories after which you walk back to
your car (or Lime scooter) thinking, “OK, maybe life
isn’t so bad. Maybe we can overcome challenges and
have a positive impact on those around us without
dropping a ton of F-bombs, megatons of real bombs, or
going 120 MPH while defying the laws of physics.
Read More |
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Angel Has Fallen
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CHRIS MIKSANEK - THE MED CITY
MOVIE GUY
Sequels typically recycle what works, so
let me do the same with this review. Back in 2013, I
channeled Dr. Evil saying, “Olympus
Has Fallen is an action film of the
highest caliber. By caliber of course, I refer to
both the size of their gun barrels and the high
quality of their characters. Two meanings. Caliber.
It’s a homonym.”
Here in
Angel Has Fallen, the third
installment of Agent Mike Banning’s tenure with the
Secret Service, the action is just as intense.
Read More |
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Where’d You Go, Bernadette
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CHRIS MIKSANEK - THE MED CITY
MOVIE GUY
How well you enjoy Where’d
You Go, Bernadette, depends on whether
or not you’re familiar with Maria Semple’s popular
2012 novel of the same name. Those better read than I
have panned Boyhood
director Richard Linklater’s adaptation for betraying
the revered source material by switching its voice
from a teen trying to piece together and understand
her mother’s disappearance though the discovery of
nuggets of her past to a dour linear telling of the
already descended titular character from just before
her flight through to her deliverance.
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The Kitchen
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CHRIS MIKSANEK - THE MED CITY
MOVIE GUY
Hell’s Kitchen hath no fury like a woman
owed protection money. And with their loser husbands
locked-up, Irish mob wives Melissa McCarthy,
Elisabeth Moss (The Handmaid's Tale),
and Tiffany Haddish are left with little choice but
to step up and wrest control of the legendary NYC
neighborhood from a fractured organization that’s
gotten sloppy.
Read More |
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