Author Update

This whole reviewing thing is an absolutely new process to me so I'm trying to find the right balance between reviewing the subject matter and not revealing to much about the movie but making it concise and to the point. Sorry if my first two are kind of shaky.

Also, this blog will be updated on an every other day basis.

Movie: Food Inc.

Directed by Robert Kenner
June 12, 2009

The movie Food Inc. if you couldn't have already guessed from the title is about the food industry as a whole, and what it does to the health of humans and the health of the environment. I've always been particularly weary of watching documentaries because most of the time it's a one-sided argument pushing an agenda or an opinion and often times they don't give you enough contradictory material to refute their premise. Or the movie wouldn't have sold in the first place right?

​”Food Inc.: But no wait seriously this isn't true at all.”

But this isn't a Micheal Moore documentary so I guess I can drop my guard. I'm certain there won't be any crazy antics or outlandish fact connections through top-notch absurd editing.

Before I give my verdict, I'd like to explain what the movie is all about and as always:

{SPOILERS AHEAD}

The movie starts off with a stab right at the marketing division of every major meat organization in America. Most marketing teams showcase their product as wholesome and agrarian and All-American, but on the contrary they are massive industrial farming plants full of disease, crowded with sickly animals, and heavy with the assembly line efficiency mentality to create a cheaper product quicker all under our noses. Thanks Henry Ford.

The chicken companies such as Perdue and Tyson bully farmers into a never ending debt cycle to create large swaths of “farmer owned” chicken houses, where the contract with the corporation is akin to the word of god. The chicken houses are dark, dusty, full of feces, steroid infused crippled chickens on top of crippled chickens, with the daily dead discarded in a pile outside. Then it cuts to a video of the brutal wrangling of the chickens for the factory by cheaply paid migrant workers.

I'm not a PETA member, nor do I endorse PETA, in fact I pretty much hate everything about PETA but there are only so many times you can see a crippled chicken get kicked in the face with boots before you wonder...what the fuck?

The movie then moves on to the use of corn. How corn is the basis of everything, even ADM (if you remember from my last post about the Informant!) is name dropped.

But I'm not trying to give away most of the movie, but if you see where the chicken houses started you can only imagine that the rest of the movie is a joyride through corporate greed, government corruption, and finally the good guys of the movie, the original farmer refusing to give up or sell out. The original farmers, such as Joel Salatin of Shenandoah Valley, VA (close to where I used to live), seem to like they are reliving the old punk DIY ethics of fuck authority, fuck conformity, and fuck selling-out to “the man”. Joel Salatin was quite the star of the movie in my opinion, he seemed intelligent and well-versed in the issues surrounding his industry.

The movie also touches on somethings that are pretty close to home, Smithfield, while not in Tar Heel, NC is pretty big around Smithfield, VA, right down the road, I practically grew up later in life around this company promising myself I would never go “to the plant”. Hearing the horror stories, witnessing the poor work conditions and the poor wages, and smelling the awful odor belching from the building, no thanks. And how Smithfield uses immigrants to work for them, and when they need to cut wages and lay off staff they call the INS on them, which is beyond screwed up. It gives a face to the evil corporation that I lived around.

But I digress, the movie had great visuals which is key for me in a documentary, I liked that I had it presented in HD which helped with the gore factor of the entire thing, it was well shot, and the segues where normal. Yet, the movie throughout all of this never presents a solution to the problem, other than simply using our consumer power to vote, but then goes on to contradict itself by stating that people on a budget can afford the mass produced food as compared to “organic” or “farm fresh” foods. It's all about comfort, affordability, and ease of access that has the companies controlling the consumer mind. It does nothing more to restate the same things we've been hearing for years and years now, read the labels, buy organic, fast food is bad, blah blah blah. It's not working. Nobody seems to be listening. Try something else.

Watch if:

You want to see a great documentary and nothing more, this documentary is not going to offer a solution, it's going to tear at your heart strings, it's going to scare you, it's going to gross you out, and it's going to open your mind the fierce reality that is out there but as one of my friends who watched the movie stated, “It's really not going to change the way I eat because what I eat is affordable.”

This movie will make you think and will make it difficult for you to formulate an opposing opinion while not requiring the cutting room floor to cover up all its flaws and doesn't make any wild connections that aren't readily available at your fingertips on the internet, which in my opinion is the sign of a great documentary.

10/10

Movie: The Informant!

September 18, 2009

{SPOILERS AHEAD}

I had wanted to see this movie for a while, having had it sitting in my DVD queue for over a year or so sitting at the very bottom. I had heard several negative reviews from a couple of friends I asked about it but I went at it with unbiased opinion and decided to fast track it to the top to get it over with.

I'm a fan of a lot of Matt Damon's work, and him playing a quirky rising bio-engineer genius for the firm ADM was kind of a weird step. He's the wholesome, All-American driving fancy foreign cars, white collar dork. Loving wife. Two adopted children. Large house. Upper class educated wealth in the quaint Midwest.

All throughout the movie Matt Damon's character Mark Whitacre is constantly having a inner monologue that brings you closer to the character. I'm a fan of inner monologues, full of babbling about anything, off the cuff comments, it's refreshing, it reflects how I personally think and connects me with characters that seem so different but very similar.

Anyways.

It's the mid 1990s, ADM is the target of foreign espionage from other lysine (corn) competitors the Japanese. But all is awry at the very beginning. And ADM contacts the FBI to get involved to investigate the threats against ADM. Mark is the number one person of interest and openly allows the FBI tap his business line at home in case the Japanese call him again. Mark being the good ol' wholesome American later gives in that all is not really what it seems with ADM and the other lysine corn firms worldwide. Price-fixing on a international scale. And in the first part of the movie, where you guessed it, Mark Whitacre becomes an informant for the FBI the movie shines. Matt Damon is goofy, impressionable, and slowly digging himself into a hole trying to dig up dirt on his co-workers, then trying to cover it up and remove himself from the FBI's operation, the finally being forced back in going all out with the latest high tech recording gadgetry. Leading a double life, paranoid and awkward. The rising star of ADM and the center of a case against them for the FBI.

Yet, somehow towards the end of the first half of the movie, it all starts to fall apart, scenes become interjected in weird parts, everything seems off kilter, new people appear, background is limited, the story goes out the window and it is one hurry up session all the way to the end where Mark Whitacre is apparently some embezzlement mastermind and he faked the sabotage plan. Has mental breakdown. Becomes Bipolar. The executives he sold out, his friends, turn on him. He ends up going to court, slowly revealing how much money he had actually taken 5, 7, 9, 11 million in a....

Wait.

Where am I?

And that was exactly the problem I had with the movie. Much like the John Dillinger movie staring Johnny Depp this movie expects you to know what exactly is going on without revealing much to help you along. It's as if the director expected that you have researched that the ADM price-fixing scandal and Mark Whitacre, and which is actually something that happened in the early 90s and you should know all about it, there is no need to explain anything. So much like the Dillinger movie, the scenes burst forward into the future with barely a trace of continuity, fragmented, to new locations, with new people, and new situations, with no explanation of why, who, and what. Moving faster and faster to the anti-climatic ending of a balding Mark Whitacre in jail, explaining his actions to an interviewer.

And if you are not incredibly determined and observant you'll never notice that Mark Whitacre is experiencing a mental breakdown towards the end. You're suppose to know that his erratic driving and his lies (including one about being kidnapped for a joyride) are all part of his elaborately convenient bipolar disorder which is revealed by his therapist. And being a compulsive liar also something that it subtly hidden in, it all seems justified but then it gets out of control. Not like a rolling snowball into a snow boulder but rather many small snowballs sitting on a flat plain that eventually somehow grows the momentum off scene into a giant snowball. For no reason at all. No explained reason at least.

What happened to the Mark Whitacre at the beginning? Now we have some power hungry, greedy, conniving, All-American white collar criminal asshole.

When I watch a movie I like to at least think I know my character or know what my character is going to be capable of. Mark Whitacre although he did all of these things in reality, the way he was portrayed in this movie made him look like a naïve nerd with only good intentions. And that's it. And maybe the director pulled a fast one on me, but not without confusing me first and then socking me right in the mouth. It's not even worth noting the cast of the rest of the movie which even so is full of cameos from comedians, maybe the only redeeming feature is seeing Patton Oswalt.

Watch if:

You're a fan of Matt Damon, and you know at least a little bit about the ADM price-fixing scandal, you've read the book written on it (by journalist Kurt Eichenwald ), and you want to experience whether or not the director was true to the book because you already know everything.

Otherwise if you feel like wasting some time, you feel like just taking a blind ride and doing some research on it later to finally understand what went on. Give it a shot. There were a couple notable funny scenes. But the movie on a whole is rather forgettable and I more than likely will refuse to see in the future to see if I can grasp the things I could before. It just wasn't that interesting and the fragmented second half turned me off.

6/10