The Founder

Posted on January 19, 2017 at 5:40 pm

McDonald’s began as a hamburger stand in San Bernardino, California, the idea of two brothers, Dick and Mac McDonald, who brought to food what Henry Ford brought to cars: ultra-efficient assembly-line production: consistent, reliable, and scalable. But McDonald’s, the worldwide “billions and billions served” fast food franchise phenomenon with the iconic golden arches was the creation of the man who put “founder” on his business cards, Ray Kroc.

Balzac famously said that behind every great fortune there is a crime, and this story of one of the great disruptive forces in 20th century business shows us the vision, the passion, the triumph and the heartbreak behind it. Michael Keaton is well cast as Kroc, a struggling salesman who listens to motivational tapes about the importance of persistence — a more significant factor, according to the lectures, than ability or resources.

Kroc is on the road trying to sell milkshake machines to restaurants. He calls his secretary for messages. A prospect says no. A bill collector wants to be paid. And some hamburger stand in California wants to buy six. Kroc is sure that is a mistake. No one has ever wanted more than one. He calls and speaks to one of the McDonald brothers. He can hear the activity in the background. And the order gets upped to eight. Kroc has to go see it for himself.

The McDonald brothers (John Carroll Lynch and Nick Offerman) welcome Kroc warmly, proud to tell their story and show off their innovations. In one of the movie’s highlights, they explain the trial and error and meticulous planning that led to their operational and conceptual innovation. They had three brilliant insights. First, they got rid of the inessentials: no wait staff, no plates to wash or break, and they limited the menu offerings to the items that were most often ordered. You want chicken — go somewhere else. They got rid of the cigarette machine and jukebox and thus got rid of the undesirable customers, teenagers and others who come to hang around instead of those who eat and leave. That left busy families, who appreciated the wholesome atmosphere and utter consistency and reliability. Second, they streamlined production, again reinforcing consistency and reliability and attracting families. One more difference to appeal to families: no waiting. Food was delivered almost instantly. Indeed, when on his first visit Kroc received his food neatly packed in a bag seconds after placing the order, he looked at it confused and asked, “What’s that?” The McDonald brothers realized they were not just providing customers with food; they were providing them with something even more precious: time.

The third brilliant insight created some conflict with their new partner after Kroc persuaded them to put him in charge of franchising. For the McDonald’s, money was not the top priority. They valued, well, values.

It is instructive that there are several points throughout the film where someone explains that McDonald’s is not about hamburgers. All of the other answers are right in their own way, along with many others. This is a rare film that looks at what it takes to create a globally dominant business, and what it costs as well.

Parents should know that this film includes one f-word, some predatory business behavior, illness, and marital strain and divorces.

Family discussion: How many things other than hamburgers did people say the business of McDonald’s really was? Why did Kroc call himself “founder?” Who was right, the brothers or Kroc, and why?

If you like this, try: “Tucker: The Man and his Dream” and “Joy”

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Live By Night

Posted on January 12, 2017 at 5:45 pm

Ben Affleck the director picked the wrong screenwriter and the wrong star for “Live By Night,” based, like his far better “Gone Baby Gone” on a book by Dennis Lehane.

Unfortunately, this time Ben Affleck the director picked Ben Affleck the screenwriter and Ben Affleck the actor for this crime drama set in post WWI, prohibition-era Boston and Florida. Affleck the director has a good eye for detail. He understands the pacing of individual scenes, selects a great cast (other than himself), cinematographer (Robert Richardson), and composer (Harry Gregson-Williams) and has a good sense for visual storytelling. But in this case he was let down by Affleck the screenwriter, who allows the storyline to become so episodic it loses energy. And Affleck the actor gives the weakest performance in the film. He wants to be strong and stoic but comes across as blank and unfocused. It is disappointing to see Warner Brothers, the studio behind gangster classics, produce a film that has nothing of their grit or vitality.

Affleck plays Joe Coughlin, son of an Irish-American cop (Brendan Gleeson) who returns from fighting in WWI determined not to answer to anyone again. He wants to make his own rules. So he becomes involved in crime. Even criminals have rules, and Joe breaks those, too, having a passionate affair with Emma (Sienna Miller), who is supposed to be the girlfriend of the boss of the Irish mob. She betrays him (revealed early in the film, unlike the book), and is reported killed in a chase that ends with her car going into the water. He is badly beaten and then sent to prison.

When he gets out, he goes to Tampa, where he and his friend Dion Bartolo (Chris Messina) muscle their way into the crime scene there. Joe becomes involved with Graciela (Zoe Saldana) and she encourages him to take over the rum distribution. Immediately after telling him she will not sleep with him, she sleeps with him, discomfiting even in a retro story. More thuggery. More killing.

A local cop named Figgis (Chris Cooper) explains that he associates with crooks but is not one himself. His compartmentalization is geographic as well as moral, and he outlines for Joe with a map where he can operate. Later, when Joe needs leverage, he shows Figgis photos of his adored daughter Loretta (willowy Elle Fanning), hooked on drugs and prostituting herself. Joe will tell Figgis where she is in exchange for redrawing those moral boundaries. We later see Figgis punishing her by whipping her bare behind. And she becomes an Aimee Semple McPherson-style evangelist, showing the needle scars on her arms to the crowd as proof of her redemption, and calling on her followers to stay away from the demon rum that Joe is selling.

Joe’s run-ins with cruder thugs, including the KKK, are intended to show that he, too compartmentalizes and perhaps to raise the question of how each of us draws lines, and then redraws them, as we make choices about how far we will go. The excellence in production design and cinematography only show by contrast the superficiality of the story which like the other recent period film from an actor-turned-director, Warren Beatty’s “Rules Don’t Apply,” puts form above substance, or, worse, thinks they are the same thing.

Parents should know that this is a gangster film with extensive violence, including many graphic and disturbing images and characters who are injured and killed. The film also has strong language including racist epithets and sexual references and situations.

Family discussion: Why did Joe want to talk to Emma? How was Joe different from some of the other gangsters? How did his experience in the army influence him?

If you like this, try: “The Godfather,” parts 1 and 2

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Based on a book Crime Drama

Patriots Day

Posted on January 12, 2017 at 5:28 pm

Writer/director Peter Berg and actor/producer Mark Wahlberg have now made their third film in a row on the same theme: real life stories of everyday people showing exceptional courage and dedication in the direst and most tragic circumstances. “Lone Survivor” was the story of a disastrous Navy SEAL operation. “Deepwater Horizon” was the story of the BP oil rig explosion. Now “Patriots Day” is the story of law enforcement from the terrorist attack at the Boston Marathon to the killing and capture of the brothers responsible.

In all three films, Berg takes a story we know — or think we do — and creates a gripping, tense drama centered on a man who exemplifies American values of decency and integrity and shows exceptional ability to rise to the occasion. Wahlberg is a perfect choice to play those roles, and here he gives grace and dignity to the role of Tommy Saunders, a composite character based on the Boston cops who were on the ground when the bombs exploded, oversaw triage to manage the crowd and oversee emergency services and then tracked down the people responsible in just 19 hours.

And as in the earlier films, Berg’s focus is not on the people making the big policy decisions but on the people who are dealing with the consequences. He begins a brief but vivid chance to get invested in some of the key players just before Boston’s annual Patriots Day race, including some of the participants who will later be injured and Saunders, unhappy about being assigned to the race and struggling with a bad knee. Everything is the usual benign chaos until suddenly it becomes terrifying and catastrophic as the bombs explode near the finish line and no one knows what happened, who caused it, or whether more attacks are coming, with an anxious score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, as Saunders and the other cops have to try to figure out what is going on, surrounded by severely injured people and panicked crowds — and, probably, somewhere, the bombers.

The minute-by-minute procedural section is engrossing, with territorial squabbles and conflicting priorities involving the police force and the FBI. The injured people may have crucial information the cops need right away but they also have injuries that need treatment right away, treatment that could make it difficult or impossible for them to talk or remember. The press insists on releasing photos of possible suspects despite law enforcement’s concerns that it could impair the investigation. And what do you do when a key witness insists on a lawyer, or decides to leave the police station? One of the most powerful scenes in the film is the interrogation by a hijab-wearing FBI agent of the wife of one of the suspects, an incendiary performance by “Supergirls” Melissa Benoist. The film does not take a position on the abandonment of Constitutional rights in an emergency with perhaps hundreds of life at stake; it just presents it as the immensely complex problem with no right answer that it is.

And then, with ultimate respect, it concludes with footage of some of the real heroes. That’s the crying part, as it should be.

Parents should know that the theme of the film is a real-life terrorist attack with many characters injured and killed and some graphic and disturbing images of bodies and wounds; also very strong language, some bigotry, and some drug use.

Family discussion; How did social media affect the way this attack was investigated? What does this movie have in common with the two other fact-based stories from the same director and star?

If you like this, try: “Lone Survivor” and “Deepwater Horizon”

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Based on a true story Drama

Paterson

Posted on January 5, 2017 at 6:52 pm

Paterson (Adam Driver of “Girls” and “The Force Awakens”) lives in Paterson, the New Jersey home of Paterson Falls, and of poets William Carlos Williams and Allen Ginsburg. In writer/director Jim Jarmusch’s sweetest film to date, we see a week in the life of Paterson, a bus driver who writes poetry, mostly love poetry to his adorable wife Laura (a delicious performance from the beautiful Golshifteh Farahani), and in the life of his namesake home town.

Each morning begins with Paterson and Laura asleep in bed, cuddling tenderly. He wakes up to what Laura calls his “silent alarm clock,” puts on his watch, nuzzles her gently, and gets ready for work. As we become used to his routine, walking to the bus depot with his lunchbox, lovingly packed by Laura, hearing the daily complaints from the dispatcher, listening to the conversations of the passengers, Laura’s imaginative dinners and wild experiments with design, walking Marvin the bulldog and stopping by the neighborhood bar for a beer, the smallest details become significant, whether reinforcing our understanding of his quotidian life or surprising us with its minor variations. Be sure to watch Marvin the dog for one of the film’s most delightful surprises.

Driver is better known for anguished and intense performances, in “Girls,” as Kylo Ren in “The Force Awakens” and, 50 pounds lighter, as one of the priests in Martin Scorsese’s current release, “Silence.” It is a pleasure to see him here, thoughtful, sensitive, with a hint of a more traumatic past — note the photo on a bedside table, of Driver himself in his days as a Marine), but amused and pleasantly bemused by the world around him and unabashedly adoring his beautiful, devoted wife. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him laugh before, certainly not with such evident pleasure, and it made me want to see much more of this side of him.

While Paterson is contemplative and focused, considering words carefully as he walks, Laura is impulsive and enthusiastic, with new creative projects and inspirations all the time. Each day, Paterson comes home to find that Laura has covered the rug or the shower curtain or her dress or cupcakes with op art-like geometric designs in black and white. When they go out to an old movie together, she winningly says she likes it because it is in black and white. Their support for each others’ creative projects is endearing, and their pleasure in each other and in each other’s pleasure is exquisite.

Not much happens. There’s a mechanical problem on the bus, which Paterson handles responsibly, despite not having a cell phone. An unhappy customer at the bar creates a fuss, and Paterson intervenes quickly and capably, almost through sheer muscle memory from his military training, though it shakes him a little. He happens upon three other poets, a spoken artist practicing in a laundromat (Method Man), a nine year old waiting for her mother and sister, and a Japanese tourist carrying a volume by William Carlos Williams. He compliments the young poet on her internal rhymes. It turns out the sister she is waiting for is her twin. The film itself is full of doubles and twins, including the matched names, a series of internal rhymes that match the lyricism and cadence of Paterson’s poems, written by Ron Padgett and his life, modest, diligent, precise, aware. We come away from the film filled with the alertness and engagement Paterson and Laura bring to their days.

Parents should know that there is a brief scene with a gun, threatening murder and suicide, and some strong language and sexual references.

Family discussion: Who is your favorite poet? How did Paterson incorporate what went on around him into his work? Why didn’t he want to make a copy of his notebook?

If you like this, try: “Only Lovers Left Alive” and the poetry of William Carlos Williams

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Drama Independent

A Monster Calls

Posted on January 5, 2017 at 5:50 pm

It turns out that there is something even more painful than the most devastating loss imaginable. That is the lesson of “A Monster Calls,” based on the Carnegie Medal and the Greenaway Medal award winning book by Patrick Ness, illustrated by Jim Kay, from an idea by the late human rights activist Siobhan Dowd.

It takes place in the Irish countryside. “We begin,” the movie tells us, “like so many stories, with a boy too old to be a kid and too young to be a man and a nightmare.” The boy is Conor (Lewis MacDougall), whose adored single mother (Felicity Jones) is struggling with cancer and the ravages of its treatment. While other boys are gently awakened by their parents and sent off to school with a good breakfast and a lovingly packed lunch, it is Conor who makes breakfast for his mother (there are rows of medicine bottles in the kitchen cupboard). He also does the laundry before he goes to school, where a bully threatens him. He has a frosty grandmother (Sigourney Weaver) and an affectionate but useless father (Toby Kebbell). So, he is alone with his grief, his fear, his anger, and his paints, which he must learn to use to express them all.

Let’s think for a moment about the title: “A Monster Calls.” Is that “calls” as in “pays a call,” or comes to visit? Is it “calls” as in “calls out to?” Is it “calls” as in “calls out from?”

A teacher says sympathetically, “If you ever want to talk…” Conor’s dad arrives from America, where he lives with his new wife and new baby, and he takes Conor to an amusement park. But Conor does not want to talk and he is not amused. A glimpse of the old “King Kong,” Fear and Fury bookends, and a shiver-inducing creaking noise give us a hint that a terrifying, destructive monster may be coming.

And then, yes, Conor is visited by a monster, an enormous walking yew tree with the rumbling voice of Liam Neeson. Conor may think the monster is there to protect him, but that is not exactly true. He says he is there to tell Conor three stories, and then, he says, Conor must tell him one and it must be true. The monster’s stories have a yew tree connection, as does a possible new treatment for Conor’s mother. They begin like traditional fairy tales but do not pretend that the resolutions are fair or straightforward. The fury within the stories seems to take over Conor and he finds himself becoming violent before telling his story forces him to admit what terrifies him even more than the prospect of losing his mother.

This is a complex, richly imagined film with a deep understanding, clear-eyed but compassionate. The stories it contains help us to be honest about our own.

Parents should know that this film is about a boy whose mother is dying of cancer. There are some other disturbing images and situations, including a bully and a monster.

Family discussion: Which story surprised you the most and why? Why was it important for Conor to tell his story? What monsters live inside us?

If you like this, try: the book by Patrick Ness and “Secondhand Lions”