The Founder

It’s that time of the year again when Michael Keaton attempts to get his foot in the proverbial Oscar nominations door, and this time he’s taking on Ray Kroc - who was hugely influential in the rise of McDonalds - in The Founder.

Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton) is an unsuccessful travelling salesman who is desperately trying to sell milkshake makers. His wife Ethel (Laura Dern) tries her best to support him, but even she’s at the end of her tether. His unbridled ambition keeps him going, but Ray finds little interest out there. All of that changes however when a surprise order of six milkshake makers comes in from a small but popular diner in San Bernadino called McDonalds.

Intrigued by the size of their operation, Ray travels interstate to visit the restaurant and is instantly blown away. The visionary concept of fast and consistent service is the brain child of Dick McDonald (Nick Offerman) who helped develop the business with his supportive brother Mac (John Carroll Lynch). When Ray meets with them and hears their story, he instantly wants to get involved by helping them franchise, however it soon becomes clear to the brothers that Ray doesn’t just want to be a consultant on the sidelines.

The Founder has had several changes to its release date throughout the year, pushing closer and closer towards Oscars season. Hence if you’ve seen a film in the past six months there’s a good chance you’ve seen its trailer, and if you’ve seen the trailer then you know the story. So the only thing unclear when going into The Founder was what sort of approach director John Lee Hancock would take with it, and in particular what sort of corporate influence McDonald’s may have had in the creative process, if any at all. It’s difficult to tell about the latter since it seems to balance bias fairly well, however Hancock can be particularly heavy-handed at times and there’s a feeling throughout that the film may be just a bit too big for its boots.

Supposedly The Founder takes inspiration from There Will Be Blood and The Social Network, however in reality it cannot hope to hold up to the sophisticated stylistic concerns of either of these films, and its watery character development certainly can’t compete with those of the former. In many ways The Founder falls into the category of bland, formula-driven biopics that focus all their attention on getting noticed during awards season, which is a shame because for the first third of the movie, it’s quite capable of drawing you into the fast-paced, competitive world of food service.

During this opening act, the rhythm and timing of the film feels spot-on. Hancock makes efficient use of montages, particularly when the McDonald brothers are telling Ray their story. However at some point during the exponential, brutal rise of McDonalds at the hands of the gung-ho Kroc, the rhythm that drives the first third starts to back off and The Founder falls apart. One slightly-too-loud senior in my screening noted to his wife how tedious the film had become, and I can’t say that I completely disagreed. From around the time that Ray meets Joan, writer Robert Siegel opens up additional sub-plots that don’t have the time or space to play out and hence feel tacked-on for the sole purpose of covering all the bases.

Quite apart from timing issues, the film relies on some seriously weak characters. Ray starts out as a down-on-his-luck opportunist who sees everything as potential business and actually has a few conflicting perspectives that could be interesting to see played out. However, soon after the start of his involvement with McDonalds, Ray shifts closer to the cliched, selfish and mad-with-power business ideologue that we’ve seen done too many times to still be interesting, no matter what repertoire Keaton can bring to the role.

Laura Dern’s Ethel gets very little screen-time and spends all of it lying in bed looking concerned and/or mad with Ray. Patrick Wilson makes a brief but insignificant appearance, and B.J Novak brings his experience from The Office t the conniving Harry Sonneborn that does very little to spice up the story. By far the most interesting characters are the McDonald brothers who have an attractive attention-to-detail and brilliance about them that balances well with the light-comedy that Lynch and Offerman bring to the roles. However even they are limited by bad pacing and poor characterisation at the script level.

The Founder has a strong opening act that sets you up for a film of empty promises, and whilst the story is certainly interesting enough to keep you watching, its rhythm, pacing and characters can't follow suit.

Wild

Last year I reviewed the Aussie film Tracks, a film about a girl with a rough background walking across the desert. This week I watched Wild, a film about a girl with a rough background walking the Pacific Crest Trail, a hike that goes from Mexico to Canada. Like with Tracks, Jean-Marc Vallée's latest film didn't really inspire me the way these films are supposed to.

Cheryl Strayed (Reese Witherspoon) is a wreck after the death of her mother Bobbi (Laura Dern) and divorces her husband Paul (Thomas Sadoski) after he finds that she's cheated on him. To get her life back on track, Cheryl decides to walk the Pacific Crest Trail. Along the way she meets a fair few people who she relates to, as well as some unsavoury characters who just want to use her.

While I appreciate the film's overall message (despite it not doing anything to me), I feel like Vallée's filmmaking is all over the place here. The structure and editing don't do much help make sense of the story. Non-linear films can be fun to watch and sometimes they can give backstory to characters, as is the intention with this film. However, the flashbacks that we do see are very fragmented and brief, giving only a cursory insight to Cheryl's motivations and thus not making her a very endearing character.

The film suffers from an overabundance of narration. Scenes where we should read into Witherspoon's performance are interrupted by obvious narration of what's going on in her mind. The film's epilogue is also rushed along with a solid minute monologue at the end of the film, felt like something a teenager would write at the end of a story to let the reader know that everything would be okay. This could have been cut out entirely and given time for the audience to breathe and come to their own conclusions on whether Cheryl achieved her redemption.

Thematically the film is very much on the nose, holding hands with the audience the entire time. Such is the nature of a poorly done CGI fox who represents the soul of her mother and you know this from the moment you see it. Also, whilst I am not one of those hideous men's rights people and I fully support feminist films (and this is a great example of one, up there perhaps with Jackie Brown), every man, bar her brother and ex-husband, comes across like they wish to take advantage of Cheryl and I truly was scared for her at times. I don't feel like this needed to happen every time to remind the audience that there is that fear that Cheryl carries with her.

With this being a film with a lone main character, I had expected to see Witherspoon for the entire film. She gives a superb performance, something I haven't seen her do since Pleasantville. The fact that there are too little supporting roles, or if there are, they aren't in it for long, that irked me a little. Laura Dern comes back time and time again in the flashbacks, but I didn't feel a strong connection to her. Thomas Sadoski and Gaby Hoffman, who plays Cheryl's friend, both get a pitiful amount of screen time and I would have loved to see a lot more of W. Earl Brown.

Jean-Marc Vallée is capable of making better movies as we saw with Dallas Buyers Club and I know that all the actors can do better than this and despite this movie having some Oscar nominations based on it's strong female characters, it isn't a too exciting movie.

The Fault in Our Stars

I had no idea how popular this movie was until I saw two high school girls taking photos of themselves with their tickets in front of the theatre that was showing the film. Of course I had heard of the fans throwing themselves at the stars and author John Green at the premiere, but I dismissed that as just teenage obsession a la Twilight.

I can see how this story could be so popular too. Two relatively normal seeming teenagers with 'normal' problems fall in love. Except with the added baggage of both having terminal cancer. Can there be a bigger recipe for a tearfest of a movie.

Well, you know how I said these two teens had normal problems, I was sort of lying. We see glimpses of Hazel and Augustus (both played spectacularly by Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort) beginning to deal with things like having sex for the first time, dealing with rejection and other angsty teen stuff. And that's what I thought what this film was going to be; a frank, yet emotional, portrayal of being a teenager whilst having cancer.

Instead, the first half of the movie doesn't take the opportunity to build up this relationship. Instead we get an obsession with an abruptly ending book that Hazel and Augustus can't handle and their journey to track down the author for answers. By the time the film gets to the relationship part, I was not invested in their romance. Sure I knew it was coming, I'm not an idiot, but the it should have happened earlier instead of painfully prolonging it.

Also this film is supposed to make you cry, right? Not once did I shed a tear during the two-hour run time. There were moments when I felt emotional, or as close as I could get, but never all out bawling.

If you're like me and you're unable to cry at kids with cancer, don't despair, the performances are pretty decent. Major props to Ansel Elgort who is amazing as he tries to put on a brave face in light of his situation. Laura Dern and Sam Trammell are also fantastic and I'm sure if I had of seen more of Trammell's sad face I probably would have cried. The same goes for Elgort.

Verdict: Cancer kids don't make Jack cry.