Category: Movie Reviews

Cowboys & Aliens – A Review

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Americans have a hard time knowing how to respond to the sins of our colonial past. Except for a few extremists, most people know on a gut level that the extermination of the Native Americans was a bad thing. Not that most would ever verbalize it, or offer reparations, or ask for forgiveness, or admit to current neocolonial actions, or give up stereotyped assumptions – they just know it was wrong and don’t know how to respond. The Western American way doesn’t allow the past to be mourned, or apologies to be made. Instead we make alien invasion movies.

It’s no secret that alien invasion films are a way our culture attempts to deal with the sins of our past. Just like we colonized, pillaged, and exterminated indigenous peoples around the world with our advanced technologies of deadlier weapons, we now explore how that might have felt by imagining aliens doing the same to us. But of course, in our never-ending hubris those films always end with the hero kicking the aliens’ butt. Identification with the other can only go so far.

It is into this postcolonial genre that Cowboys & Aliens attempts to fit in, except with the twist that it’s actually set during the period of Western “Manifest Destiny” expansionism. In trying to make such an odd marriage work, the film very self-awarely makes use of all the stereotypes of those genres. You have the old West mining town populated with stock characters like the bespectacled Doc, the crusty old preacher, the lawful sheriff, the prostitute with the heart of gold, the grumpy old Civil War vet turned cowboy (Harrison Ford), and the rugged outlaw (Daniel Craig). The aliens too are the expected insect-like slimy vicious being with no hint of compassion. Added to that is the Hollywood version of a band of Apaches, including the favorite colonial narrative story of the young Native American boy who had been adopted by the racist cowboy (Ford) after his parents died in raids who now serves him as a field hand, looks to him as a father, and willingly sacrifices his life for him later on. Of course, in this alternate world the cowboys and Indians quickly see that they must overcome their differences and work together to fight the aliens (or at least the white men condescend to fight alongside the Natives after the Natives accept that the white men’s attack plan is superior.) Perhaps more ironic self-awareness would have made the stereotypes actually work instead of just descend into the uncomfortable, but as it was they made it difficult for the rest of the films’ theme to play out fully.

As for that, the narrative attempted to follow the colonial trope almost too well. One of the opening lines of the film states that “we are near to Absolution” which is soon followed by Daniel Craig’s wounded character being asked if he is a criminal or a victim to which he replies “I don’t know.” From there the story becomes the journey to seek absolution – in the personal characters’ story arcs and awkwardly in the cultural story of White/Native American relations. While the Preacher is an entertaining character, it quickly becomes apparent that religion will be of no help on this particular journey. In their pursuit of aliens who have abducted their family members, the group of main characters come across a wrecked upside down-steamboat in the middle of the New Mexico desert. Five hundred miles from the nearest river large enough for it, the boat (named the “Amazing Grace”) doesn’t belong. It also is where the Preacher gets attacked and killed. Finding absolution becomes not a religious quest, but a way for boys to become real men as they learn to fight to preserve their way of life.

They soon discover that the attacking aliens (which they call demons) came to earth on a scouting mission to plunder us of gold. Yes, gold. Not some odd resource needed for advanced technology, but the exact same resource that sent pox-infected Conquistadors and Cowboys alike off on quests to plunder the lands of indigenous American peoples. The aliens also round-up humans and keep them sedated in holding pens until they can experiment on them to discover weaknesses. So a combined cowboy, Indian, and outlaw force launches an assault on the alien ship making use of six-shooters, dynamite, arrows, and spears. They, of course, rescue their enslaved family members and (with the help of an angelic-like being) use the alien’s technology against them to destroy the scout ship. The oppressive colonizers are vanquished, the American narrative remains intact.

The happily-ever-after ending has the characters not questioning how gold led to evil and oppression, but prospering off the alien’s discovery of nearby goldmines. Cinematic absolution has been reached, relationships healed, and the threat of colonization seems to have vanished for good. Hollywood delivered some decent action sequences, a hint of a love story, and stock character arcs that make for good entertainment (not to mention the requisite shots of Daniel Craig with his shirt off). Summer blockbuster status achieved.

And yet I wanted more. There was too much historical commentary for Cowboys & Aliens to simply be entertaining escapism, but not enough for it to have anything meaningful to say. Good commentary on our colonial past forces us to examine current assumptions by allowing us to see things from the perspective of the other. But in this film the cowboy still won. The cowboy is both the criminal and the victim, demonstrating superiority in both roles. Just as the Native Americans in the film had to concede to the superiority of Harrison Ford’s ideas, the message is that even when faced with stronger beings and more advanced technology the cowboys (with God’s angels on their side) will by their very nature always come out on top. The other is still other. True absolution, true reconciliation, remains elusive as the hierarchical status quo remains.

In a blundering attempt to deconstruct the colonial narrative, Cowboys & Aliens simply reasserts the myth of the rugged individualist who has no need to ever apologize for current or past sins. But sadly most viewers will be more disappointed with the film’s lack of explosions and sex scenes than its neocolonial message. But I guess that’s the prerogative of cowboys trying to retell their own story.

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Back to Narnia

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Aside from the Bible, The Chronicles
of Narnia have been the most formative books in my life. My parents hung a
Narnia map in my nursery, and my dad started reading the books to me at age
three. Soon I was reading the books a couple of times a year.

Wheaton College houses C.S. Lewis’s papers (and has the wardrobe),
and we students lovingly referred to him as St. Jack. My husband and I got to
know each other at the Wheaton Children’s Literary Interpretation Society,
where we’d read children’s books out loud during study breaks. The first
semester we read The Lion, the Witch and the
Wardrobe. My husband was Aslan; I was the White Witch.

So regardless of the reviews, I am excited to go see the movie
version of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The story
is an integral part of my faith journey and I love it. But it’s strange to
encounter Lewis apart from the evangelical lens I’ve always seen him
interpreted through in the past.

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Movie Review: Whip It

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This is what a girl power movie should be. I went to see Whip It because it looked fun and was a totally Austin film (there’s something fun about sitting in the Alamo Drafthouse watching a movie where the characters go to the Drafthouse…). I discovered though the most genuine and life-affirming coming of age story that I have seen in a long time. The story is that of small-town Texas girl, Bliss (Ellen Page), who escapes her mother’s beauty pageant dreams for her life by entering a roller derby league. Sounds like the standard cliched formulaic “girl discovers herself” plotline. But Whip It acknowledges the cliche and gives the predictable a twist.

This is a film about a girl being empowered to find herself. But it does so while admitting that life is messy. You have the standard plotline of restricted kid being held back by irrational parents, but it is also more than that. Bliss’ mother isn’t just a controlling mom shoving 1950’s stereotypes of pageant queens down her daughter’s thoughts. She loves her kids and wants them to have more opportunities than she ever had. Bliss’ doesn’t pursue roller derby to rebel, she does it because she has discovered a part of herself she never knew existed. Sure, there is conflict with her family, but the take-home message is that the individual always has to exist in community as a vital part of a family. Bliss realizes that she needs her family and her friends even as she comes into her own.

What she realizes she doesn’t need is the boy. Like any in girl grows up movie, Bliss meets the guy, falls in love, and gets hurt. And doesn’t get back together. She realizes that she doesn’t want to be “that girl” who allows herself to be hurt by guys and who has to change who she is for them. She regrets giving everything to her boyfriend, but comes through the pain more aware of who she is and knowing that she doesn’t need a boyfriend in order to be a whole person. This isn’t a “men – who needs them” message, but it’s a strong reminder that a woman’s worth and identity is not defined by the man she’s attached to.

I also loved that her experience in roller-derby wasn’t based on success but on being empowered by the experience. Unlike the typical guy sports film where the team ends up winning the state championship (and hence proving that hard work pays off blah, blah, blah…), when Bliss’s team comes in second place they don’t despair or choose to learn from their defeat or work harder next time – they break into a joyous team chant of “We’re number 2! We’re number2!” happy in their accomplishment of playing the game. They were a team and they proved to themselves as women that they could do this thing. That, not winning, was what mattered. I loved it.

Whip It was all about this healthy empowerment. It was the story of a girl discovering her own strength in community. She can be fierce and powerful and good, really good, at what she does. She doesn’t need to define herself by the warped standards of this world. She can be herself. This is the sort of story that we need to hear more often. Instead of the standard plotlines of “princess in need of rescue” or “someday my prince will come” found in most girl coming of age movies, Whip It provides a realistic role model I wouldn’t mind my daughter looking up to. Instead of telling women that we are defined by our bodies, our relationship with a man, our ability to compete and win, or our ability to be nice and compliant – we can hear that it’s okay to be ourselves in all of our glory and messiness.

But lest you think that Whip It is just a sappy after school special, remember that this is a movie about roller derby. It has action, fantastic skating scenes, and tough self-assured women all over the place. In short, it’s a fun movie that (thankfully) isn’t just drivel and fluff.

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Movie Review: Food, Inc.

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food-inc“The industry doesn’t want you to know the truth about what you are eating, because if you knew you might not want to eat it ” – Food, Inc.

I recently headed out to a sold-out showing of the documentary Food, Inc. at Austin’s own Alamo Drafthouse. Generally, getting dinner and drinks along with my movie is my favorite “night out” activity, but in watching a film which critically examines our industrial food system, it was a bit strange. Granted, all around me I heard orders for veggie burgers and the local organic veggie platter and there wasn’t a high fructose corn syrup soda to be seen, but I was glad to have finished my (veggie) burger by the time the previews ended. Although I have sought to inform myself about the injustices in our modern food system, Food, Inc., presents the most comprehensive and disturbing summary of that system I have seen yet. It is a necessary film for basically anyone who eats food.

A film which took three years to make with a large part of its budget going to pay the legal fees defending itself against lawsuits from the industrial food companies, Food, Inc. takes a hard look at how corporations now control the production of our food, resulting in generally unhealthy, environmentally hazardous, and completely unsustainable food that in truth threatens the very well-being of our country. From the animals that are confined in inhumane cages, left to stand in their own mire, fed unnatural diets and cocktails of drugs and hormones to the impoverished workers who are treated with the same disrespect this system has sacrificed the respect and well-being of living creatures and people for the sake of profit. But Food Inc. doesn’t just stop with detailing those atrocities, it delves into the problems with government subsidies and the ways the fearmongering enforcement of genetically modified food copyrights are destroying the small farmer. People are being hurt by this industrial food system that dumps chemicals into our environment with reckless abandon and produces unnatural and unhealthy food for our consumption.

I appreciated though how Food, Inc. didn’t simply present the issues with industrial food as a clear cut, good vs. evil scenario. It acknowledged that poor workers have no choice but to take jobs on the factory farms, and that farmers have no choice but to give into the pressure to work with the huge industries. Those industries have so altered our nation’s laws and have so many lawyers working for them, that any farmer who resists joining their ranks finds themselves out of work at best, and sued penniless for simply encouraging people to not buy the big company’s products. The farmers and workers are desperate for a better system where real freedom and healthy standards exist, but for now they have to work with what they’ve got.

Food, Inc. also explores why for the average working class family in America, buying healthy food isn’t an option. It is far cheaper to buy the cheeseburger from the drive-thru dollar menu than it is to buy fruit or vegetables. That is because everything in that cheeseburger comes from corn which our government subsidizes so much that farmers can sell it below the cost of production. So the poor American eats the extremely unhealthy food because it is cheaper. But the rising epidemic of type 2 diabetes shows the hidden cost of that value meal. The poor in our country – those with no health or job insurance – are getting sick at alarming rates due to the unhealthy cheap food they eat. This is injustice of the highest extreme – but it’s all part of our industrial food system. It’s a complicated system that gives us unhealthy, unsustainable food that disrespects the earth, animals, and people all in the name of making the greatest profit for a handful of corporations. This is the story of the food we eat every day.

But in truth, I have a lot of friends who don’t want to know anything about their food. They shelter their kids from knowing the whole “circle of life” stuff, but also tell me point blank that they don’t want to know the story behind their food. In their mind, what they don’t know won’t hurt them. Unfortunately, as Food Inc. shows, that isn’t always the case. I wasn’t expecting this film to be a tear-jerker, but hearing a mom talk about how her toddler son ate a hamburger and was dead in 12 days had me weeping. This mom, was the typical middle-American Republican mom on vacation, but the hamburger they bought their son on the way home was tainted with e. coli 0157:H7, a deadly antibiotic resistant bacteria common in factory farmed cows. These cows, fed unnatural diets of corn develop diseases (like e.coli) and are treated regularly with antibiotics, which leads to drug-resistant strains like this one. This mom has become the unlikely activist for food safety. The meat company who sent out the tainted meat knew it was tainted and didn’t issue a recall until two weeks after her son was dead. As she puts it, all she wants is an apology from the company and a guarantee that they are doing everything possible to prevent it from ever happening again. Instead she finds the companies fighting for more lax food safety laws and herself under threat of a lawsuit under the “veggie libel” laws for discouraging people to buy meat products. Yeah, look up these laws – express fears about the safety of your food and you could be sued for causing these companies loss of revenue. So much for free speech, much less safe food. It’s hard to know the truth if you are not allowed to talk about it.

But for all the doom and gloom that Food, Inc. rightly covers, I was grateful that it didn’t end the story there. Instead of throwing up it’s arms and admitting defeat or even insisting that we all go join some intentional community/ hippie commune immediately, Food, Inc. details the practical ways we can start changing the system from within. It profiles the organic dairy farmers who although they had boycotted Wal-Mart all their lives, were now selling their product to the them. Some may call them sell outs, and they are under no illusion that Wal-Mart jumped on the organic bandwagon out of the goodness of their hearts, but to get a store with a distribution as huge as Wal-Marts means significant amounts of pesticides, fertilizers, and antibiotics are kept from polluting our ecosystem. That’s a really big deal, and one of the main reason to buy organic to anyway. Working within the system, even if it is with Wal-Mart, makes progress happen faster and on a much larger scale. Similarly, the movie concludes with the reminder that we can each make a difference every time we go to the store. The point isn’t to abandon the food system, or stop buying food, but to simply demand healthier, sustainable food. We can choose to vote with our pocketbooks for the type of food we want to support. Do we want to support the food that oppresses animals, workers, and the environment or the food that does its best to care for all those things? We have that choice, we just have to be willing to make it.

Food, Inc. opens across the US during Summer 2009. Check the Food, Inc. website to see if it is playing near you.

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Looking Ahead to 2009

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Perhaps it isn’t such a great idea to be looking ahead to 2009 right after going to see the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still.  Bad acting, plot holes and the end of the world aside, I can’t get the idea of tipping points out of my head.  The film of course proposes (with an implied hat tip to Al Gore) that the earth has reached a tipping point – either our wanton environmental destruction will completely destroy the planet or it must come to an end.  The alien visitors believe that humans are incapable of change and therefore must be exterminated to save the planet, while the humans argue that when faced with a large enough crisis they can actually change (imminent destruction by aliens being that crisis).  I don’t want to spoil the ending, so I’ll leave you hanging on the whole “do humans survive or not” question.

But ignoring the sci-fi melodrama, the film’s message bothered me.  I understand why crises can prompt people to alter habits, but does it always have to be that way?  I don’t want to believe that the only reason people choose to do good is to avoid negative consequences.  Granted this is a common equation in our culture.  We exercise and eat right to avoid heart disease.  We study for a test so we won’t fail the class.  We even accept Jesus so we can avoid the flames of hell.  Sometimes it seems like life is just one big crisis aversion scheme.  We avoid expending energy and doing anything until it becomes apparent that not doing anything personally hurts us more than actually doing something.  So we act to save our own butts.

Depressing, isn’t it?  It’s what I see all the time, but I’d like to believe it isn’t true.  The idealist in me wishes that sometimes people did the right thing because it is the right thing.  You know, like taking care of the planet because we genuinely want to care for God’s creation and not because aliens are threatening us with extermination.  To reach that tipping point and base our decision on whatever is loving, right, and just instead of that which is self-serving.  To actually do that whole “each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others” thing we Christians like to quote so much.

So while I am not anticipating any alien invasions in 2009, I do believe our world is at a tipping point.  In addition to environmental destruction, injustice and oppression abound.  Too often our response is to do nothing.  We make excuses about how seeking justice and loving others takes too much time, energy, or money.  We are encouraged, for example, to only buy organic foods when not to do so presents us with a personal health risk.  So we buy organic apples to avoid the personal pesticide exposure, but don’t bother with bananas because their pesticide usage only affects the farmworkers and the environment.  Other times it benefits us more to allow injustices to continue – so we can spend less we buy the sweatshop jeans or the slave-grown chocolate.  We look to our own interests and not the interests of others.  And so the balance keeps tipping away from whatever is true, noble, and right.

But the outcome isn’t inevitable.  Selfishness doesn’t have to win.  Perhaps change can occur without impending doom.  Maybe we can all do good simply for the same of doing good.  We forget that it is within our power to make that choice.  It is my hope that 2009 will be a year when we decide to declare ourselves in that regard.  A year when the tipping point must be dealt with.  A year when we stop doing nothing and take a stand for good regardless of whether it benefits us or not.

And I really don’t care if that sounds about as melodramatic as a cheezy sci-fi flick; it’s what needs to happen.

So I look forward in hope to a year of action.  To a year of doing something.  To tipping the balance towards justice in 2009.

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Movie Review – Fuel

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A few weeks ago at the Austin Farmer’s Market I saw a flier for the documentary Fuel – a film about (you guessed it) alternative fuel sources. It seemed like the sort of film I would like so I decided to catch it during its limited engagement here in Austin. My first attempt didn’t go so well. I pulled up to the theater and saw that it was surrounded by news crews. At first I thought they were doing coverage of the film. Yeah right. Apparently the theater had been robbed by a gunman earlier in the day and was shut down. I had to wonder what sort of idiot would rob the independent arts theater, but needless to say I didn’t see the movie that night. My second attempt proved more fruitful.

Fuel is the outcome of activist and writer Josh Tickell’s quest to stand up to our country’s addiction to oil and propose alternative solutions. It recently won Best Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival and is in many ways unlike any other documentary I’ve seen recently. Most documentaries that speak to fuel usage and the global crises it causes are fairly doom and gloom oriented. They paint a hopeless scenario, are pretty heavy-handed with the guilt, and speak vaguely to the need for change. Fuel though is different. While it unequivocally points out the problems with petrochemical corporations and our political dalliance with oil, it does so from a very personal perspective. Tickell tells his own story – from his mother’s heath struggles common to those living near the Louisiana refineries to his experiments with veggiemobiles. His candid approach is a constant reminder that the fuel crisis is not just an abstract phenomenon, but a very personal issue.

But what really sets this film apart is its hopeful outlook for the future. There are alternatives out there – solutions are available, we just need to jump on board. Tickell spends a good portion of the movie describing the early biodiesel/ethanol movement. I appreciated that he dealt head on with the worldwide economic and pollution issues involved in some of the production of those fuels. But he then moves on to describe better biodiesel options (like algae based fuel grown from wastewater) and the potential behind other alternative energy sources like solar and wind energy. These aren’t vague options he suggests either, but he outlines plans for exactly how these technologies can work, help create jobs, and benefit the economy. Everything from multistory greenhouse gardens that can feed entire cities to Sweden’s plan to be petroleum free by 2020 are presented in this hopeful view of the future. I liked this tangible and practical vision and left the theater wanted to invest or something in algae fuels and windmill technology.

Unfortunately as positive and practical as the film was, to make a real impact it needs to be reaching the masses. But I have a feeling that the few people seeing the film are already on board and fairly informed about these issues. Case in point – out of the six of us in the theater watching the film, I saw that two of those couples drove a Prius and a Smart Car (can I just say I was glad I was in my compact car and not the family SUV…). They are already there, I’m trying to get there – but real change will take a major movement. It will take the US government doing what many European governments have done and subsidize the eco-friendly options (instead of our oil addiction). It has to be practical, easy, cheap, and widespread for it to happen.

So I encourage you to go see the film if it is playing in your area. Get educated about these solutions. We don’t have to be addicted to oil, there are viable alternatives. And this movie is a great reminder that there is hope.

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Fireproof Marriages?

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I’d heard the buzz within Christians circles about the “number one inspirational film in America.”  Everything from “this movie shows what true faith really is” to “this movie will save your marriage.”  Always wary of such claims and not really a fan of firefighter flicks, curiosity got the better of me and I headed out to a weekend matinee of Fireproof (www.fireproofthemovie.com).

I settled in to watch the story of a firefighter try to save his failing marriage through something called “the Love Dare”.  Unfortunately once the movie began, it was immediately evident that Fireproof followed the pattern of most explicitly Christian movies: the acting was flat, the dialogue awkward, and the scenarios unbelievable.  Full of sitcom-esque comic relief moments, and the requisite tear-jerker scenes, it also had more far-fetched set-up lines for evangelistic opportunities than a youth group apologetics manual.  But I did my best to look past all that and focus on the main theme of the movie – how to save a troubled marriage. (Spoiler alert: Jesus is the answer.)

What I couldn’t get past, however, was the movie’s conception of marriage itself.  Marriage is presented as a distinct entity that must be preserved for its own sake.  Thus, as the movie unfolds and Caleb (Kirk Cameron) embarks on a journey to save his marriage to Catherine (Erin Bethea), one doesn’t see a story of two people working together to have a better relationship, but of one person striving to keep a formal structure intact.  Of course, once both characters find Jesus, they have an epiphany moment, renew their vows, and live happily ever after (as shown by them getting into their car bibles in hand on their way to church).

What we don’t see is the actual reality of a husband and wife working together to build a stronger bond.  Yes, the husband realizes that he needs to do things around the house, stop lusting after a boat and porn, and get over being a selfish jerk; but we hear very little from the wife.  In fact we hear very little from women in the movie in general.  The prominent women in the movie, Caleb’s wife, his mother, and his mother-in-law, are essentially silenced.  He is constantly trying to avoid his nagging mother and asks her to leave or get off the phone repeatedly.  His mother-in-law is physically unable to talk due to a stroke.  And except for a comic scene displaying every stereotyped difference between men and women where his wife tells her friends how she feels, we hear very little of her side of the story.  The women in this movie play the silent victims as the heroic firefighter rushes in to save the day – or in this case, the marriage.

The message conveyed is that women need a strong man to guide their lives.  Women who step out on their own (like Catherine getting a job after seven years of marriage – without kids – because her husband won’t help her financially care for her ill parents) are outside that realm of protection (thus in danger of forming inappropriate bonds with their male coworkers).  The husband is implored not just to love his wife, but to take control of both his and her lives.  In the name of safeguarding the marriage, the sacrifice of the personality and identity of the wife is assumed.

I admit to seeing the appeal of the movie.  Anything to get husbands to send flowers and do the dishes is to be commended, but scratch the candy-coating and one sees the imbalanced core.  Living up to the hype, Fireproof is very much about saving marriages – as long as they are hierarchical institutions and not mutual relationships based on two whole persons becoming one.  Sorry, but as a married woman I’m not willing to sacrifice who I am for the sake of a few clean dishes.

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