Okja

OKJA (Bong Joon Ho, 2017)

Under the leadership of CEO Lucy Mirando (Tilda Swinton), the Mirando Corporation has a grand design to disrupt worldwide meat production in OKJA; however, the discovery and breeding of a so-called superpig that leaves less of a carbon footprint while tasting good is not intended for a rapid product launch. Instead Lucy distributes twenty-six superpigs to farmers around the globe for a competition to name the best one in ten years.

Mija (An Seo Hyun) and her grandfather Heebong (Byun Heebong) are raising their superpig named Okja in the mountains of South Korea. Okja is essentially a floppy-eared hippo with a dog’s personality, so to Mija she is more like a beloved pet than livestock. Although Mija assumes her grandfather has purchased Okja from the company, she despairs upon learning that the Mirando Corporation has taken the superpig to its local headquarters before sending her to the surely dire fate that awaits in New York City.

Determined to get her best friend back, Mija embarks for Seoul, where her attempt to retrieve Okja crosses with a rescue mission led by Jay (Paul Dano) of the Animal Liberation Front. They want to expose Mirando’s practices and need Okja to gain access to their facilities. The public relations fallout surrounding the ALF’s heist and return of Okja lead the corporation to bring Mija to New York for a reunion of the girl and her superpig.

OKJA is akin to a hybrid of David Lowery’s 2016 remake of PETE’S DRAGON and FAST FOOD NATION, mixing the action-adventure of children’s fantasy with political satire. Such a genre medley makes for a striking, albeit inconsistent, fable. Rather than scratching out a screed against multinational conglomerates, writer-director Bong Joon Ho seeks to provide balance to a complicated issue, even if where the film’s sympathies reside are never in doubt. The activists practice laughable extremes to prove their commitment to ideals and struggle to pass their own purity tests. Although the corporation is undeniably driven by a profit motive, Lucy is well-meaning in bringing this product to the market. The inherent deception in her marketing plan is necessary because consumers tend to prefer not to know how their food gets to them.

OKJA doesn’t shy away from depicting the realities of factory farming and processing, but Bong isn’t arguing in favor of vegetarianism or veganism. The film’s aim seems to be less specific. Rather, it seeks to raise consciousness of the system and how consumer choices and attitudes are interconnected with corporate decisions. Bong is addressing big, complex questions about international demand and the supply chain. The points he makes can get muddled, which is the challenge of infusing so much thematic ambition into a simple story.

There’s a lot to like about OKJA even as Bong tries to do more than he can effectively manage. Jake Gyllenhaal’s Johnny Wilcox, a Jack Hanna-like TV host who is the face of the superpig competition, isn’t established sufficiently for the dark turns the character takes to have dramatic impact. Gyllenhaal’s broad performance comes off as a miscalculated attempt to match Swinton’s quirkiness. Bong mostly succeeds at shifting tones from sweet to satiric and humorous to horrifying, but easing into the film’s end, including a post-credits scene, indicates that he wasn’t certain how to wrap OKJA beyond one obvious matter.

Lest OKJA sound like an economics lesson, the adventure Mija finds herself caught up in might be better thought of as a globalism-questioning WILLY WONKA & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, although be advised this is decidedly not a film for little kids. Early scenes of Mija and Okja cavorting in the countryside have the charm of the children playing with E.T. An impresses with the determination and intelligence she conveys in Mija even as others try to exploit her for their interests. Bong shows off his flair for staging action with Mija’s thrilling chase after Okja through downtown Seoul. Although OKJA is ambivalent at best about whether changing the world is scalable, it rejoices in the fights and victories achieved on a micro level. That may not be altogether heartening, but the small wins are what fuel the pursuit of larger ones.

Grade: B

Nocturnal Animals

NOCTURNAL ANIMALS (Tom Ford, 2016)

Art gallery owner Susan Morrow (Amy Adams) and novelist Edward Sheffield (Jake Gyllenhaal) were married while graduate students in New York City, but since things ended badly nearly twenty years ago, they have not been in touch. The intervening time has apparently provided Susan much of what she believed Edward could not give her, although in NOCTURNAL ANIMALS she shows no indications of living a more satisfying life. Susan enjoys professional success but appears to draw no fulfillment from it. Her marriage to Hutton (Armie Hammer) is chilled. While they keep up appearances, they are also in financial distress.

Susan has long had a problem with insomnia, a condition which becomes more pronounced as she reads the manuscript Edward sends to her out of the blue. In his violent novel she envisions her ex as the protagonist, Tony, a sensitive husband and father who becomes obsessed with revenge after three scuzzy men abduct, rape, and kill his wife and daughter. In the story within the film, Tony gets assistance from Bobby Andes (Michael Shannon), a police detective who wants to see justice done whether it’s achieved within the law or not.

With the structure of NOCTURNAL ANIMALS writer-director Tom Ford intends for Susan to experience the lingering anger Edward has felt since the dissolution of their relationship. Art is one way to feel empathy for others, and the novel functions as Edward’s passive-aggressive vehicle for breaking through the hard exterior Susan has accreted. Susan slices her finger opening the package before even reading a page, metaphorically foreshadowing the sharp-edged nature of the novel therein. From the story within the film to the framing device and flashbacks Ford uses match cuts and others edits to connect Susan to the fictionalized and past versions of a man intent on making her understand the rage she stirred within him.

In Edward’s book, also called NOCTURNAL ANIMALS, the inciting event results from his desire to defuse a situation in which he is essentially helpless. The men who drive Tony off the road and harass his family are not bound by the rules of civility. Knowing full well they intend to cross over and cause harm, the aggressors taunt him like playground bullies holding their fingers half an inch from their victims and feigning innocence by saying that they’re not touching them. In an extended and incredibly tense sequence the leader, Ray (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), and his cohorts menace Tony, his wife, and daughter by sinisterly going through the motions of politeness before advancing to more hands-on terrorizing. Through his character Edward lays bare the vulnerability and lack of a choice he suffered from at Susan’s hands.

Shannon adds hard-bitten humor as Edward’s opposite, the manifestation of the kind of tough, practical man who can facilitate revenge without damaging his conscience. Abel Korzeniowski’s darkly romantic score steeps NOCTURNAL ANIMALS in film noir. While Susan didn’t set out to make Edward her sap, she ultimately treated him like a sensitive fool. His long postponed response produces an indirect confrontation that is no less emotionally savage for his means of delivering it. Ford executes quite the trick in having this overdue and brutal conversation take place like a thriller in which the principals share only a mental space.

Grade: B

Nightcrawler

NIGHTCRAWLER (Dan Gilroy, 2014)

NIGHTCRAWLER shares its title with the name of an X-Men superhero, although its protagonist has more in common with the shape-shifting villain Mystique. Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) is desperate to make money, and he doesn’t much care how he earns it. What he’s selling isn’t as important as long as he’s selling. Scrap metal, bicycles, it doesn’t matter to the young man with an assassin’s deadliness in the art of negotiation. Louis also possesses a seemingly unlimited ability to adapt himself according to the situation. When he decides that the freelance newsgathering business is where he wants to focus his energies, he quickly soaks up knowledge about the industry.

Louis develops an exclusive relationship with Nina Romina (Rene Russo), a news director on the so-called “vampire shift” for Los Angeles’s lowest rated television station. Having noticed his good eye and lack of compunction, she pays him to get captivating video of crime and accident scenes. Louis is looking for someone as hungry as him but with less business savvy to help grow his news operation, so he hires Rick (Riz Ahmed) as a low-paid intern to listen to the police scanner, navigate, and watch the car while he captures the often horrific images. In no time Louis’s success leads to upgrading his gear and going from driving an old, battered Toyota Tercel to a new cherry red Chrysler SRT. Louis is never complacent, though, and he waits to come upon the story that will boost his power from the little he has as a stringer.

Like its main character NIGHTCRAWLER masks its primary motivation. The ostensible media satire directs NETWORK-like jabs at the sensationalistic aspects of TV news. While writer-director Dan Gilroy makes his points about as subtly as repeated pokes in the ribs, the black humor comes in the recognition that even with wider awareness of this cynical approach to informing the public, viewers continue to reward it. NIGHTCRAWLER’s final shot of broadcast towers on a hill jutting across a full moon in blackest night recalls the spires of a castle in a horror film. As much fear as they might strike in hearts, they are nevertheless alluring.

The fresh criticism aimed at the media has less to do with the content and more with the conditions in which it’s generated. Ratings-chasing news programs are just collateral damage in NIGHTCRAWLER’s mission to fire a scathing yet bleakly comedic critique of the job market and corporate practices. Gilroy unloads on an economic climate that breeds insecurity and instability in the labor force because there’s always someone else out there willing to work harder, faster, and, most importantly, cheaper. An internship system favoring the providers to a lopsided degree takes well-deserved hits . Watching Louis persuade Rick that getting a pittance for his time and efforts is in his best interest stands as one of the film’s timeliest and most wicked jokes.

Gyllenhaal electrifies with a performance that uses politeness to hide a sociopath’s mentality. He’s intimidating because he sounds so assured regurgitating business aphorisms and self-improvement language and doesn’t deviate from following what he has accepted as the one true path. While Louis has designs on being a conqueror leaving destruction in his wake, Gyllenhaal looks more like a scavenging animal as his anti-hero skulks around the wounded and killed to obtain what he needs to further himself. Wearing a haunted look, Gyllenhaal embodies the sick soul of a capitalist doomed never to sleep because there’s always a buck to be made. The scary thing is he’s destined to win.

Grade: B+

Love & Other Drugs

LOVE & OTHER DRUGS (Edward Zwick, 2010)

LOVE & OTHER DRUGS opens in 1996 with charismatic electronics salesman Jamie Randall (Jake Gyllenhaal) out of a job due to his influential way with women, especially one he shouldn’t be charming. He transitions into a job as a pharmaceutical salesman for Pfizer and is assigned to sell Zoloft in the Ohio Valley.

While posing as an intern and trying to persuade a doctor to switch from prescribing Prozac to the pill he’s pushing, Jamie meets Maggie Murdock (Anne Hathaway). Initially she is angered that Jamie violates her privacy in the doctor’s examination room, but his persuasiveness and mutual desire for a commitment-free relationship win her over while she also keeps him at arm’s length. Maggie has early onset of Parkinson’s and doesn’t wish to be obligated to anyone or anything long term.

Among the medications involved in LOVE & OTHER DRUGS is a certain little blue pill that Jamie sells like gangbusters when it reaches the marketplace. Strange how for a movie about a Viagra salesman, we don’t see the growth of the characters. Several featured scenes in the bedroom leave Jamie and Maggie’s physical chemistry undisputed, but evidence of their emotional attachment and development is far less obvious. Jamie begins to change because the screenplay demands it. Maggie opposes any deviations in their arrangement because the script insists so.

The film’s central relationship wouldn’t feel so prescribed if LOVE & OTHER DRUGS weren’t pitched at a sitcom level. Rather than allowing two non-conformists to find their own way, director and co-writer Edward Zwick makes sure they are altered to fit the formula. Gyllenhaal looks and feels too young for the role and seems too eager to please for the incorrigible type he’s supposed to be.

Whereas Gyllenhaal is all surface level, Hathaway suggests a flesh and blood being dealing with a multitude of issues spoken and unspoken. Performance-wise she fares better, perhaps because Maggie functions as the redeemer than the redeemed. The role is more complicated than the usual dreamgirl. Unfortunately the film is more interested in her slick, straightforward other half. LOVE & OTHER DRUGS is a cutesy love story tempered by an illness and a smidgen of commentary about pharmaceutical sales in the United States.

Grade: C-