Where'd You Go, Bernadette

“Take the Long Way Home”

(from the Supertramp song [starts at 0:19 on this video] 

of the same name on the 1979 album Breakfast in America)

          

Review by Ken Burke

            

I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they agree with me or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) if they choose to disagree.

                                   Where’d You Go, Bernadette 

                                (Richard Linklater)   rated PG-13

               

“Executive Summary” (no spoilers): Bernadette, a rising star in the architectural field (seemingly unusual, as presented here—at least a couple of decades ago—for a woman) hits a major snag in her career because of a dispute over her most-recent project, leading to her moving from L.A. to Seattle, largely becoming a housebound-recluse while her software-engineer husband pursues a time-consuming career at Microsoft.  During these years they have a daughter, Bee, now a teenager, who’s Mom’s only friend as her mother so easily gets into disputes with other mothers from her daughter’s school as well as her pushy, Type-A next-door neighbor, Audrey, who insists Bernadette cut back the massive blackberry bushes covering the hillside as they’re encroaching on Audrey’s property; Bernadette complies only to see the hill turn into a mudslide during a rainstorm, bringing condemnation from Audrey about her damaged home.  Further anxiety for Bernadette comes from Bee taking her parents up on a choose-your-prize-promise which the girl wants to cash in for a family trip to Antarctica, bringing up many issues for Mom, including agoraphobia (fear of feeling trapped, helpless), making it difficult for her to travel on such an ocean-liner-trip.  She’s got even worse problems, though, because the personal assistant (in India!) she communicates with via computer turns out to be Russian criminals set to wipe out her family’s entire financial holdings, so husband Elgin’s prepared to have his wife committed for psychiatric intervention, causing her to slip away with no notice of where she’s gone, setting the family on a desperate search for her.  While that might seem like a lot of plot to reveal in this no-spoiler zone there are further twists and turns here I’ll withhold for now unless you care to either seek this out for yourself (opened wide, easy to find) or just delve into my full-range-comments below (although this film’s adapted from a best-selling-novel so you may be aware of its outcome anyway).  You’ll find lots of negative critical commentary about … Bernadette, some of which I can understand, but you might be interested anyway just to see another superb performance from Cate Blanchett, as well as a solid directorial effort from Richard Linklater (Kristen Wiig as Audrey is commendable also).  If nothing else, this has unpredictable plot devices not much akin to anything you’d otherwise discover on screen this year. 

Here’s the trailer:  (Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge it; activate that same button on the full screen’s lower right or your “esc” keyboard key to return to normal size.)

If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but as this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film—or want to save some bucks—to help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters like this: 

⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.

What Happens: 20 years ago talented architect Bernadette Fox (Cate Blanchett) was a rising star (studying under Art Vandelay—a joke from NBC TV's Seinfeld; if you don’t get it just move on, amazed someone as old as me still knows how to type [with 8 fingers, not just 2 thumbs, ya young punks!]), a standout-female in a male-dominated-discipline; just as her stature was growing, though (winner of a MacArthur Genius grant), her career hit a snag when she built the 20 Mile House in southern California, using only materials from within a 20-mile-radius of the dwelling.  For some reason I didn’t catch, a rich neighbor detested the project, secretly bought the house then had it destroyed, which sent Bernadette into a self-imposed-spiral-of-assumed-failure, so when her computer-animation-programmer-husband Elgin Branch (Billy Crudup) got a lofty job at Microsoft she eagerly moved to Seattle, almost completely withdrew from society, suffering from insomnia, holed up in an old dilapidated mansion on a hill which seems to be in various states of renovation, with nothing much completed.  (One room features a Catholic Church confessional sunk into the wall; I assume this is Bernadette's doing, given that’s a rare adornment, especially for a house where religion’s never mentioned.  In one of many quirky scenes the family dog, Ice Cream, somehow gets stuck in there even though Bernadette can’t get the door open so she performs a rescue by climbing up a ladder to a high opening in some sort of shaft leading down into the confessional [hopefully, the dog’s sins have been absolved by then]).  After 4 miscarriages, Bernadette and Elgin have a daughter, Bee Branch (Emma Nelson), born with a weak heart requiring several surgeries to correct, who becomes her mother’s best (only?) friend over the next dozen years, with Bernadette a virtual recluse except driving Bee to and from her upscale-school where Mom easily finds fault with the other mothers, especially her next-door-neighbor, Audrey Griffin (Kristen Wiig), a rich social activist involved in many causes, including how Bernadette’s overgrowth of blackberry bushes on her hillside has invaded Audrey’s yard so she wants a landscaper to cut out much of this offending-foliage, which Bernadette haughtily agrees to mostly to limit her need for ongoing interactions with Audrey on the matter.  Bee creates a bigger problem for Mom, however, by reminding her parents they promised their child anything she wanted if she got perfect grades in middle school.  Naturally, she did, so her shocking choice is a family trip to Antarctica (just a bit of the coastside continent, though, safe for tourists; anywhere on toward the South Pole requires a lot more stamina and rigorous preparation, even for the heartiest scientist).  Bernadette’s privately terrified of this trip from a combination of her severe agoraphobia (fearing she'll get into difficult interactions), her precise culinary demands, her general intention to limit public exposure lest she be recognized, forced to relive what she perceives as her professional humiliation, her inability to revive her once-brilliant-career, which Bee only learns about through an Internet video-bio of Mom.

 With all this complex premise in place (bringing some good laughs at times to balance out the harsh distain Bernadette shows to everyone except Bee most of the time—including Elgin, who’s somewhat alienated both wife and daughter through his constant workaholic absence from home), the situation gets increasingly complex: (1) With the Fox-Branch hillside mostly cleared at Audrey’s insistence the now-barren-land turns into a mudslide during a heavy rain, flowing into Audrey’s home not only causing great property damage but also ruining a recital by some of the school’s youngest students; (2) Then an FBI agent shows up at Elgin’s office, telling him the interactions Bernadette’s been having with Manjula, her computer-based-personal-assistant in India (I got the initial sense this is a sophisticated A.I. program housed on the Asian subcontinent, but maybe it’s a person) to handle most of her affairs, has set up disaster because this site’s actually run by Russian criminals who now have the family’s account numbers, passwords, etc. and are on their way to the U.S. to wipe them out financially—Elgin’s also concerned about his wife’s cavalier use of various prescription drugs during this time; (3) Elgin’s new personal assistant, Soo-Lin Lee-Segal (Zoë Chao), has a son in Bee’s class so she knows about Bernadette’s quirks plus she’s also a close friend of Audrey’s, willing to drop hints with her boss undermining his wife (as well as getting emotionally closer to Elgin), leading him to bring in psychiatrist Dr. Kurtz (Judy Greer) who thinks Bernadette needs therapy/institutionalization for awhile; (4) Bernadette meets up with former colleague Paul Jellinek (Laurence Fishburne) who encourages her to break out of her shell, unleash her creatively, so when she cancels the “emergency” dental appointment she intended to be her excuse to avoid the Antarctica trip (allowing Elgin and Bee to go on without her), comes home ready to announce her willingness for the voyage she finds Elgin, Soo-Lin, Dr. Kurtz, and the FBI guy waiting to do an intervention so she makes a trip to the bathroom, exits through the ground-floor-window, disappears from their frantic attempts to find her by going where no one would think to look: Audrey’s house; Bernadette's sad, honest appraisal of her life’s failures convinces her now-sympathetic-neighbor to drive Bernadette to the airport where she flies away for Antarctica, alone.

 ⇒Soon after she escapes, though, the Russian crooks are caught at some other airport so the financial threat’s off our troubled family, allowing Elgin and Bee to figure out what’s happened, head south to try to find Bernadette again, then through some decent detective work (along with slow—followed by faster—reconciliation between father and daughter, as Bee’s long felt neglected by Dad, made plans to attend a boarding school back East to get away from her family’s constant tensions) they determine where they could rendezvous with Mom.  In the meantime, Bernadette’s met up with a South Pole-based-scientist, during what started out as a solo kayaking break from her cruise-ship-docking-schedule until this woman paddles over to start a conversation; she tells Bernadette of the need to build a new, complex work station at the Pole which motivates our erratic-architect to wrangle a trip to the site to see what her design would need to be for such a complex operation (although she must have her wisdom teeth removed by an available veterinarian because the crew out in this wilderness can’t afford any sort of medical/dental emergencies in such a land of bitter isolation) so she’s leaving a long phone message home when Elgin and Bee show up,  All is forgiven (Elgin’s even quit his Microsoft job to work independently, allowing more time to spend with his grateful family; Bee decides not to go away to boarding school), Bernadette’s quest is accepted (she’ll be on this project for about 6 months).  Drawings and photos during the credits show how her modular, moving design comes together well, likely restoring her stellar reputation.⇐

So What? You couldn’t ask for less encouragement from the OCCU regarding … Bernadette (based on a 2012 comedic-novel by Maria Semple), with Rotten Tomatoes registering only 46% positive reviews, Metacritic offering an unusually-higher-but-stil-low-51% average score, but I chose to see it anyway (more on that in the next review section below), resulting in 2 more tickets being sold to my ever-trusting-wife, Nina, and one of our regular viewing companions (just back from 7 weeks in London where he could avoid the daily diatribes from Trump but instead endured endless talk about potential disaster from the looming Brexit “leave” deadline of October 31, 2019).  Afterward, we agreed Where’d … was interesting, not necessarily something to recommend except for certain aspects (ice-laden land/seascapes, mostly [apparently shot in Greenland—before Trump buys it, then fills it with hotels and global-warmed-golf courses where glaciers used to be—and Antarctica] along with the usual premiere acting job from Blanchett), certainly not something to mull over too long prior to getting into Berkeley's Shattuck Cinema lounge for drinks, conversation, and ruminations on what made that source novel so popular.  (None of which should nullify your options of seeing this film if you find its premise interesting—especially with playing in 2,404 domestic [U.S.-Canada] venues, a surprisingly-wide-release given the content’s essentially-esoteric-nature; yes, I quickly admit, the general audience is more likely to venture into tales of emergingly-lustful-adolescents [Good Boys {Gene Stupnitsky}] or action heroes airborne in vehicles not intended for flight [Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw {David Leitch}]—note, however, the absence of Two Guys reviews of these latter choices for reasons I hope I don’t have to explain), but I can also offer you some speculation (in my next section as well) as to why this unlikely choice got the huge-theaters-commitment, even though I wouldn’t expect it play in such a fashion for long, so if anything about it is appealing I advise getting to your local multiplex soon, or maybe you’d prefer to just read the original book which won the 2013 Alex Award from the American Library Association to go along with its excellent sales record (1 year on the New York Times Bestseller List, 72 weeks on the NPR Paperback Fiction Best Seller List, 12 weeks on NPR’s Hardcover Fiction Bestseller List).  Based on a summary I’ve seen (You didn’t really expect me to read the book, did you?  Be reasonable; you know I have standing obligations to watch Oakland A’s baseball games and make sure U.S. whiskey distillers don’t go out of business during these trade wars.) the plot’s virtually the same, although it gets a little steamier as Soo-Lin has a drunken 1-night-stand with Elgin, resulting in her pregnancy, but I don't know what further becomes of this dreadful complication for their lives.

 I also don’t know how to properly decipher a few aspects of the film’s plot because with what I comprehended from watching it, I couldn’t fully explain to myself some details of what I’d seen (maybe I missed something while notetaking).  The simplest confusion I have is how quickly Elgin and Bee are able to resolve their differences once they get to Antarctica, especially because the daughter’s quite upset with her father when they first arrive in the land of icebergs (long may they survive, as climate change continues to savage our Earth), then warms to a state of acceptance as he’s honest about how disturbing Bernadette’s change of attitude became over the long years of their marriage (this father-daughter aspect could ideally use better development, yet I accept you can only pack so much plot into 110 min. of running time).  Speaking of Bernadette, I’m also a bit confused as to why she’s now so crowd-adverse yet she apparently navigated her way through a successful career for some years where she’d likely had to deal with a constant flow of people making demands on her time and talent, so maybe she’s developed this phobia during her decades of self-isolation, but it does seem a bit odd to me in terms of her personality.  Finally, I can understand we all have fragile egos at some level in our private self-understandings along with our presentations of self in public; however, I’m really not clear on why her sense of professional accountability, her willingness to push her creative visions into tangible monuments to human dwelling become so devastated, so crushed by what’s presented as the debacle of the 20 Mile House being razed by a self-absorbed-neighbor.  Given the praise for the unique domicile she constructed I still don’t see the shame for her due to the actions of a rich idiot, so for me a key—no, fundamental—aspect of this story remains unresolved.  What’s not unclear in the presentation of this narrative, though, is how angry Bernadette is at herself, along with almost everyone around her (except Bee) and the world in general, resulting in distancing, if not full rejection, from those who have the unfortunate fate of coming in contact with her (which she mitigates by confining her interactions as much as possible to her immediate family and her efficient, cybernetic assistant), all of which leads me back to “Take the Long Way Home,” due to lyrics which characterize Bernadette all too well: “[…] You’re the joke of the neighborhood […] You never see what you wanna see […] Does it feel that your life’s become a catastrophe […] So when the day comes to settle down Who’s to blame when you’re not around You took the long way home.”  Although, she's not truly home yet.

Bottom Line Final Comments: Again, as in recent weeks, other plans/needs limited me to just 1 new cinematic release last weekend (plus, via Turner Movie Classics TV channel, Nina and I also re-watched one of Ingmar Bergman’s later-career-masterpieces, Autumn Sonata [1978] with Ingrid Bergman [deservedly-Oscar-nominated as Best Actress for this role] and Liv Ullman [also deserving of an Oscar-nom—as she was for many of Bergman’s classics—but 2 from the same foreign-language-film would be asking a lot from our American-based-Academy; Ms. Bergman also had the advantage of speaking English some of the time], although you don’t need a review from me to verify this as a 5 stars-worthy-accomplishment, so I’ll just say see it if you never have, especially if you can relate to a smoldering, excellently-paced, years-in-the-making confrontation between a famous mother and her wounded daughter [with another daughter, dying of a horrid nerve disorder, thrown in for good measure]—unlike … Bernadette, there’s no humor here, just powerhouse performances from 2 master thespians), so I tried some inner-arguments to find the best choice, with Where’d You Go, Bernadette (a title I’d say is missing a needed question mark in both its book and film versions) winning out over Blinded by the Light (Gurinder Chadha).  As I’ve discussed in recent reviews, my local film-critic-guru, Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle, has had some influence—or at least cause for serious consideration—regarding my choices lately, with my puzzlement over why he was so high on The Farewell (Lulu Wang; review in our August 8, 2019 posting) in his initial review, then pulled back his praise in a subsequent article (noted, with appropriate links to his work, in my review just cited), followed by my (unaware to him, I’m sure; if I ever get a sense he even knows the existence of this blog—written right across the SF Bay from him—I’ll probably die of shock) thanks to him for encouraging me (against horrific numbers from RT, MC) to see The Kitchen (Andrea Berloff; review in our August 14, 2019 posting); in the case of my choice this week, LaSalle just reinforced my already-present-interest in anything involving Linklater and/or Blanchett with a somewhat-positive-review, especially praising Blanchett (“Which leads us to the wild possibility that maybe Blanchett’s showstopping performance is actually the movie’s problem. […] Maybe Blanchett is just a bull in a china shop. [… ¶ …] But I definitely liked the bull. Not crazy about what’s left of that china shop.”), while he took a completely-opposite-view of Blinded … (“It’s hard to describe how bad this movie is and why it’s so bad. […] You can watch 100 movies and never see such joyless joy as in ‘Blinded by the Light.’"), even though the CCAL were generally effusive about it—RT 90% positive reviews, MC 71% average score—so I gambled on LaSalle’s tastes this time not knowing now if I made the right investment nor will I until I get some additional time to see Blinded by the Light (not likely in the short term, given other commitments, even though it’s equally-convenient as ... Bernadette to locate, playing in 2,307 domestic theaters).*

*Blinded …’s also adapted from a book—non-fiction, though—Greetings from Bury Park: Race, Religion and Rock N’ Roll, a 2007 memoir written by journalist/broadcaster/documentarian Sarfraz Manzoor (riffing off Springsteen's 1973 debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ), based on his life as a Pakistani teenager transplanted to England where he became enamored in the late 1980s of Bruce Springsteen’s music, just as is Javed Khan (Viveik Kaira) in this movie, a kid caught between a father who doesn’t want him to assimilate too much and classmates who hassle him because he’s stuck in a situation of trying to fit in better.  In case this one disappears before I even get a chance to see it, I’ll at least indulge my own Springsteen fandom (only saw him live once, in Dallas in the early 1980s, fantastic show) by giving a link to my favorite song of his (at least of the early, more energetic ones), "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)" (7:00, from the 1973 album The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle), easily showing a sense of what resonated so well with Sarfraz/Javed, but in that neither author Manzoor (also co-screenwriter with Chadha, Paul Mayeda Berges) nor character Khan would likely have seen “The Boss” live in concert at that point I’ll also give you an extended version (13:21) of the song from a 1980 concert where you get a break for introductions to the band, followed by an explosive return to the song, all of which will be my best connection to this movie until opportunity avails itself for me to actually see it.  In the meantime, I recommend to you another—but totally fictional—tale of a South Asian-heritage-youth in England who also has a strong connection to a later 20^th-century-band, The Beatles, in Yesterday (Danny Boyle [another director to stay aware of]; review in our July 3, 2019 posting), for me a marvelous story even though the blasé OCCU was routinely dismissive of it (RT 61% positive, MC 55% score).

 Thus, even though I still found enough value in spending a couple of hours with Oscar-winner-Blanchett (Best Supporting Actress for The Aviator [Martin Scorsese, 2004], Best Actress for Blue Jasmine [Woody Allen, 2013; review in our August 16, 2013 posting]) and Oscar-nominee Linklater (Best Adapted Screenplay for Before Sunset [2004] and Before Midnight [2013]—both directed by him—then multiple noms for Boyhood [2014]—Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay [also nominated for Best Supporting Actor {Ethan Hawke}, Best Film Editing {Sandra Adair}, Best Supporting Actress {Patricia Arquette}—winning for the latter]), the box-office-results have not been impressive so far for … Bernadette, taking in a mere $3.5 million in its debut weekend (Blinded by the Light did just marginally-better with receipts of $4.3 million even though it’s also playing wide in domestic theaters, so here’s a case of solid critical support not leading to much box-office-impact, ironically the same result as the excessively-negative-responses to Where’d You Go … ).  Here’s an article supposedly explaining why … Bernadette drew such mixed reviews, yet except for the studio’s frequent change of release date there’s not much true explanation here, just a lot of citations from both negative and more positive explorations; this article provides a bit more solid explanation of why films you’d likely consider to be more art-house-fare, such as … Bernadette and Blinded …, were booked into so many theaters for their debuts, with the fundamental reason being their respective studios just wanted to grab what they could upon initial release before word of mouth quickly dried up the tap, especially with the former.  For now, I’ll just have to wait and see if Blinded … picks up any traction before more competition’s released next week (not too likely unless a curiosity-factor kicks in for those who want more than just a Springsteen soundtrack [it only features The Boss on 13 of its 26 tracks anyway] which they can easily exceed from their own CD/iTunes/Spotify collections or countless YouTube links) while I wouldn’t bet on Where’d You Go, Bernadette (even if they add the question mark) being around much longer, even with all the successful-cinematic-heritage (and built-in-audience from those book sales) it seems ready to offer.

 All that's noted before now leaves me with just my usual wrap-up-tactic of a summary Musical Metaphor which … Bernadette easily helps me with, as this narrative uses Cindy Lauper’s “Time After Time” (from her 1983 She’s So Unusual album) first as a mid-film, car-ride sing-a-long in the rain between mother and daughter, varifying the message of the song about unquestioned support—then repeating it under the end credits—(“If you’re lost, you can look and you will find me Time after time If you fall, I will catch you, I’ll be waiting Time after time”), which does sum up how Bee wants to feel about her Mom’s love, although it’s challenged when Bernadette runs away from everyone, including Bee, refusing to deal with the personal/financial crises she’s created for the whole family (even as she's saving herself from a huge dose of intensive/confining therapy in the process of withdrawing from life once again), so I’m not as inclined to use it as Linklater was (if you want a listen, though, here you go [the official music video for this song, with a narrative twist where the woman in the romantic couple, played by Lauper, breaks away, maybe just for awhile, rather than remaining steadily-available—“You said, ‘Go slow.’ I fall behind The second hand unwinds”]).  Instead, I’ll opt for a tune used in the trailer from way back at the start of this review, The Zombies’ “She’s Not There” (from their 1965 album called Begin Here in the U.K., The Zombies [with some different tracks] in the U.S.) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2hXBf1DakE, a live 1965 performance from the pop-music-TV-series, Hullabaloo, because (even though this song’s originally about a failed love connection) metaphorically these lyrics speak to how long in her life and in this film Bernadette’s unavailable for herself or most anyone else around her: “But it’s too late to say you’re sorry How would I know why should I care? Please don’t bother trying to find her She’s not there! […] Her voice was soft and cool Her eyes were clear and bright But she’s not there.”  You may not be there, in the theater, either, given the unlikeable, unclear-why-she’s-so-hostile aspects of Bernadette’s persona, about as icy as the landscape we see her navigating in the beginning and ending scenes here, although Blanchett’s always a wonder to see on screen so you might wish to add this to your knowledge of her spectacular catalogue of eloquent cinematic roles.

 I may not be there—or, more specifically, here—next week either because of some other logistical situations vying for my time usually spent in movie theaters on weekends, including the annual ritual Nina and I celebrate of me finally preparing dinner for 3 nights (comfortably within my limited range: spaghetti, salad, Chianti) so we can eat (and drink) while watching Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather trilogy (1972, 1974, 1990).  With the various upcoming time frames involved, I may well not get anything written or posted about whatever we are able to squeeze in at some local moviehouse this coming weekend, so in case we don’t see each other again until September I’ll leave you with one more bit of music in celebration of the just-passed 50^th anniversary (August 15-18) of the original Woodstock Art and Music Festival (sadly, plans for an actual concert somewhere to mark the occasion fell through), held way back then on Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in Bethel, NY.  (Nina and I managed to at least visit the site during the summer of 2009—only 40 years too late—the day after attending the induction of Oakland Athletics’ great star, Rickey Henderson, into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY; whereas in 1969 the concert stage was at the bottom of a hill now there’s a concert arena at the top of that hill from where music continues to flow if you ever want to check out their schedule and visit some time [there’s also a fabulous museum of the 1960s up there, well worth a visit even if you don’t stick around into the evening for music].)  While you can find lots of worthy memories from that amazing 1969 "peace and love" event on YouTube by simply searching for “1969 Woodstock performances,” I’ll force myself to pick a favorite in Santana’s "Soul Sacrifice" (also on their 1969 debut album, Santana).  This footage is the same (as best I can tell) as what you’d find of their performance in the magnificent documentary, Woodstock (Michael Wadleigh, 1970), but without the stunning, active graphic arrangements of those images (including multi-image diptychs and triptychs), so I encourage you to watch this performance in that format also whenever the opportunity arises.  In the meantime, keep on rockin’ until next we meet and “Don’t go against the family.”  (But, more importantly, don't go against "The Family," capisce?)

          

Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:

           

We encourage you to visit the summary of Two Guys reviews for our past posts.*  Overall notations for this blog—including Internet formatting craziness beyond our control—may be found at our Two Guys in the Dark homepage.  If you’d like to Like us on Facebook please visit our Facebook page. We appreciate your support whenever and however you can offer it!

*A Google software glitch causes every Two Guys posting prior to August 26, 2016 to have an inaccurate (dead) link to this Summary page; from then forward, though, this link is accurate.

Here’s more information about Where’d You Go, Bernadette:

https://www.bernadette.film (mostly listings of where to find it in your area, but if you click on the little 3-bar-box in the upper left you’ll get access to a little more about the film, including a very simple “build a face for Bernadette” page)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Encdde8geLU (25:06 interview with director Richard Linklater and actors Cate Blanchett, Emma Nelson, Zoë Chao, Troian Bellisario, Billy Crudup [begins with the same trailer noted far above])

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/whered_you_go_bernadette/

https://www.metacritic.com/movie/whered-you-go-bernadette

Please note that to Post a Comment below about our reviews you need to have either a Google account (which you can easily get at https://accounts.google.com/NewAccount if you need to sign up) or other sign-in identification from the pull-down menu below before you preview or post.  You can also leave comments at our Facebook page, although you may have to somehow connect with us at that site in order to do it (most FB procedures are still a bit of a mystery to us old farts).

If you’d rather contact Ken directly rather than leaving a comment here please use my email address of kenburke409@gmail.com.  (But if you truly have too much time on your hands you might want to explore some even-longer-and-more-obtuse-than-my-film-reviews—if that even seems possible—academic articles about various cinematic topics at my website, 

https://kenburke.academia.edu, which could really give you something to talk to me about.)

If we did talk, though, you’d easily see how my early-70s-age informs my references, Musical Metaphors, etc. in these reviews because I’m clearly a guy of the later 20^th century, not so much the contemporary world.  I’ve come to accept my ongoing situation, though, realizing we all (if fate allows) keep getting older, we just have to embrace it, as Joni Mitchell did so well in "The Circle Game," offering sage advice even when she was quite young herself.

By the way, if you’re ever at The Hotel California knock on my door—but you know what the check out policy is so be prepared to stay for awhile. Ken

P.S.  Just to show that I haven’t fully flushed Texas out of my system here’s an alternative destination for you, Home in a Texas Bar, with Gary P. Nunn and Jerry Jeff Walker.  But wherever the rest of my body may be my heart’s always with my longtime-companion, lover, and wife, Nina Kindblad, so here’s our favorite shared song—Neil Young’s "Harvest Moon"

—from the performance we saw at the Desert Trip concerts in Indio, CA on October 15, 2016 (as a full moon was rising over the stadium) because “I’m still in love with you,” my dearest, a never-changing-reality even as the moon waxes and wanes over the months/years to come. 

             

OUR POSTINGS PROBABLY LOOK BEST ON THE MOST CURRENT VERSIONS OF MAC OS AND THE SAFARI WEB BROWSER (although Google Chrome usually is decent also); OTHERWISE, BE FOREWARNED THE LAYOUT MAY SEEM MESSY AT TIMES.

          

Finally, for the data-oriented among you, Google stats say over the past month (which they seem to measure from right now back 30 days) the total unique hits at this site were 15,739 (as always, we thank all of you for your support with our hopes you’ll continue to be regular readers; we’re also proud to note this most-recent-survey shows us in 5 of our hoped-for 6 continents [we never assume Antarctica unless Bernadette might pick up on this particular posting], with relatively-rare-traffic from Africa and Asia, only semi-regular Australia missing from our coverage); below is a snapshot of where and by what means those responses have come from within the previous week:

The Kitchen and Short Takes on The Great Hack

Unorthodox Tactics, Disruptive Results

Reviews by Ken Burke

I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they agree with me or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) if they choose to disagree.

               

                           The Kitchen (Andrea Berloff)   rated R

“Executive Summary” (no spoilers): It’s 1978 in the rough Manhattan neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen where 3 guys of the Irish gang that runs the place are caught in a robbery by the FBI and local police, sent to prison for 3 years, leaving their wives at the mercy of this local mob who don’t provide nearly enough of the promised financial support (collections are down from the local merchants who see no point in paying for protection not forthcoming) so these women (aided by the muscle of a couple of the mobsters) start taking the collections themselves, keeping enough of the cash to enhance their own lifestyles, standing up to local boss Little Jackie while further protecting themselves through a partnership with a fierce Brooklyn Italian mafia boss.  When Jackie attempts to rape Claire, one of the now-empowered wives, he’s killed by a newly-returning hitman who takes up with her, so everything seems to be successfully in place with the wives fully in charge of their gang until the women learn their husbands will be released in a few months, not serving their full sentences.  Anything further of these plot details gets us into forbidden spoiler territory so either read on below if you care to save a few bucks or first find a convenient local theater in which to see The Kitchen for yourself.  If you check my notations on the critical collective's (OCCU this time) responses to this movie you’ll see a lot of putridly-negative numbers, but I still found it to be quite entertaining (with the requisite bloodletting for a gangster movie, yet not even as violent as Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), encourage you to consider it, or at least read my “redacted” details below to see what goes on in this drama with excellent performances never veering into comedy even from stars Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish, Elisabeth Moss.  It’s a standard crime picture, but refreshing to see assertive women in stories of this kind for a change.

Here’s the trailer:  (Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge it; activate that same button on the full screen’s lower right or your “esc” keyboard key to return to normal size.)

If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but as this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film—or want to save some bucks—to help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters like this: 

⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.

What Happens: This story (entirely fictional for a change, not inspired by anything except an R-rated comic book [and actual crime]; what a change from a lot of the stuff I’ve been looking at lately) is set in 1978 Hell’s Kitchen (the area of Midtown Manhattan covering several blocks from Eighth Avenue west to the Hudson River) where an Irish mob runs things (more or less), with the real power being elderly Helen O’Carroll (Margo Martindale) although it’s her cocky son, Kevin (James Badge Dale), who’s ostensibly in charge; he’s married to Ruby (Tiffany Haddish), a Black woman not fully accepted by the members of this gang.  Other key hoods we meet early on are Jimmy Brennan (Brian d’Arcy James), a decent-enough-guy with 2 young kids and a subservient wife, Kathy (Melissa McCarthy [seemingly cast against type, but just be patient])—while it’s not her fault what her husband’s a part of, her father, Larry (Wayne Duvall), opposes his daughter’s involvement with these criminals, blaming it on her mother’s connections—and Rob Walsh (Jeremy Bobb), a jerk physically-abusive to beaten-up-wife Claire (Elisabeth Moss).  One night these 3 husbands are in the process of robbing a store when they’re confronted by FBI agents Gary Silvers (Common) and Gonzalo Martinez (E.J. Bonilla), who’ve been looking for ways to make inroads against this gang with this bust hopefully providing an opportunity, but in the confrontation 3 armed guys overpower 2 armed guys, brutally beating them until the called-for-NYPD-backup arrives, arresting the hoods who’re off to prison for 3 years each.  None of this sits well with the wives who’ve been promised to be taken care of by the gang but their first payments are way short of what they’d hoped for (Kathy tries to find work to no avail, being told employers aren’t interested in mothers; skill-less Claire volunteers at a church's homeless shelter, yet she’s attacked one night by one of her “clients” when she catches him trying to rob the place).  They attempt to negotiate with the new boss who’s cozied up to Helen, Little Jackie Quinn (Myk Watford), only to be rudely rebuffed (he says income’s down because the local merchants aren’t kicking in their regular protection money—which they aren’t because Little Jackie’s not affording them any protection) so the wives decide, with the help of a couple of the gang’s enforcers, Duffy (John Sharian) and Burns (Brian Tarantina), to bring in the cash themselves, keeping a good chunk of it for their own needs.  They get away with this for awhile with the combination of providing benefits for the now-cooperative merchants, then securing union construction jobs for men in the gang by putting pressure on a local Jewish rabbi/jeweler, whose fellow jewelers also go along with the intimidation when the only one who didn’t is found murdered.

(Sorry about the poor quality of this photo, but I wanted to get Helen O'Carroll in here; you can 
tell by the repetition of the others I've used I didn't have much choice in my illustrations here.)

 Despite their rapid success in improving the situation for the gang, these 3 “uppity women” first are threatened directly by Little Jackie (although no one comes for them on the actual night of his bluster, even as they all sleep with guns nearby; however, the next day as Claire attempts to take out her trash she’s almost raped by Jackie until he’s shot dead by Gabriel O’Malley [Domhnail Gleeson], a hitman for the gang, just back in town after laying low from the law for awhile; he always had an interest in Claire, decides to act on it while Rob’s out of the picture), then are called to Brooklyn to meet with more impressive, more dangerous Italian mafia boss Alfonso Coretti, upset he’s now losing income from Hell’s Kitchen as the women’s gang cuts into his business.  At this point, though, the power dynamic further shifts in the women’s favor because not only does Coretti agree to work with these gals (they’ll arrange for many of his guys to get construction jobs on another, even bigger, upcoming project in Manhattan)—he even grants them control of a larger Midtown territory, in a ploy to keep supporting them because their husbands are to be released in 4 months (after serving just 16 of their 36), knowing there’ll be problems when these guys return, especially from Kevin—but also these formerly-background-wives (a frequent trope in gangster movies, except for a few challenges to the norm I cite farther below) are now becoming individually stronger, more assertive, even taking to the violence of their milieu in Claire’s case who’s sick of being battered so she gets lessons from now-lover-Gabriel on how to kill the homeless man who attacked her, then dismember his body for a proper trip down the river to the ocean without it floating up to the surface.  To finalize their grip on the gang, Ruby shares dinner with nasty-talking-Helen whom Ruby then pushes down some stairs to her death; now, all’s ready for the return of the husbands.  When they do come home, inevitable confrontations occur: Kevin and Jimmy want the women out of their new roles, Rob’s furious Claire’s now living with Gabriel.  ⇒Rob’s the first one to learn what he’s now dealing with, though, when he confronts Claire at her new place, hits her, only to have her shoot him, dispose of his body.  Next, Coretti summons them to Brooklyn again, telling them their own gang’s put a $25,000 bounty on each of their heads; Ruby responds by offering $100,000 to Coretti’s guys to take out Kevin, Duffy, Burns, a young guy named Colin (who’s a pal of these hitmen) and Jimmy.  Kathy wants to protect Jimmy and Colin, so they’re spared for now but the others are killed; this leads Colin to attempt revenge on Claire, but when he sneaks into her place she shoots him.  He’s not dead, though, so he kills her, Gabriel kills him, Ruby and Gabriel pull away from Kathy blaming her for Claire’s death; Ruby later admits to Kathy she’s been using this gang as a means of building power to expand into Harlem, she’s been paying off FBI agent Silvers, they set up the original bust of the husbands as a means of Ruby grabbing local control.⇐

 ⇒Treachery continues to grow, first as Silvers kills his own partner, Gonzales, in order to prevent any serious federal action toward the growing-in-impact-Hell’s Kitchen mob, then when Jimmy grabs his kids and goes to Coretti in an attempt to make a direct deal with him, Kathy comes to Brooklyn to find her kids well-protected by Maria Coretti (Annabella Sciorra), Alfonso’s wife yet a woman tired of seeing how these men run their underground businesses, so often with little concern for how their actions impact the wives and children.  Furious at Jimmy, not so much for attempting to sell her out but more so because of the potential danger in bringing their kids into a mafia den, she allows Coretti’s goons to kill her husband.  At Jimmy’s funeral, Kathy’s dad changes his tune, tells her he’s proud of how she stood up for her kids (he knows the truth of why his son-in-law died), but Kathy’s even more harsh, saying she did it for herself.  Then Ruby calls Kathy to meet, but when she gets there it’s clear Ruby and Gabriel intend to take full control for themselves, yet they’re equally surprised because Kathy brings her own small army, at which point Gabriel just walks out on the whole confrontation (he was there only for Claire anyway), leaving Kathy and Ruby to call a truce, agreeing to share control of their gang with Kathy focusing on Midtown, Ruby expanding operations into Harlem (using secret protection from FBI agent Silvers, her now-revealed-lover).*⇐

*No matter what you might think of the pulpy aspects of The Kitchen, you should be impressed by how the production team so accurately recreated the look of the time, the locations, the little details only the truly observant might notice (or the truly old—like me—would even realize existed).

So What? The Kitchen’s based on the DC Vertigo graphic novel series (which I’ve read none of), adapted by Berloff (doubling as screenwriter), so the content may be a bit melodramatic for many viewers (it certainly seemed to be for critics; more on that very soon).  In concept, however, it would seem to be a welcome addition to the ongoing lack of Hollywood movies featuring minorities or women both before and behind the camera as surveyed in detail in the most recent UCLA diversity report (cited in my August 8, 2019 review of the all-Asian/Asian-American The Farewell [Lulu Wang]); in cinematic-reality, though—despite the proven-glowing-star-power of these 3 lead actors (and the commendable presence of another female director)—The Kitchen looks to be a box-office-flop (never a helpful argument in encouraging the powers that be [that is, mostly White males] in the cinema industry to keep pushing those diversity doors open wider), taking in only $5.5 million (vs. a roughly $38 million production budget) despite playing in 2,745 domestic (U.S.-Canada) theaters.  Admittedly, a PG/PG-13 rating would likely bring in more cash—as it decidedly did last weekend—in these waning weeks before school kicks into gear again, so that Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (David Leitch) continued at #1 with $25.3 million ($331.8 million worldwide after just 2 weeks [$108.4 million of that domestically]), Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (André Øvredal) with $20.9 million, Dora and the Lost City of Gold (James Bobin) with $17.4 million, and even The Art of Racing in the Rain (Simon Curtis) with $8.1 million all topped The Kitchen, but then so did another R-rated, crime-focused film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino; review in our August 1, 2019 posting) so conceptual-appeal must be a primary factor in the failure of The Kitchen to make more of an impact given its impressive, well-known cast.  Of course, negative reviews didn’t help the cause in any manner here (except for glimmers of solid support, like the San Francisco Chronicle’s Mick LaSalle—a helpful factor in getting me to the theater, despite the complaints I lodged against him in my review of The Farewell, showing I just hassle him [indirectly; I have no sense he’s ever even seen one of my critiques] when we disagree, but that’s less common that our frequently-shared-opinions), with Rotten Tomatoes very distant from positive territory as only 20% of their reviews were encouraging, even as Metacritic surprisingly went higher for a change but still with just a mere 36% average score.  Rebecca Rubin of Variety doesn’t offer any definitive reasons for the audience-indifference but implies the totally-serious-context of the story might have been uninteresting for viewers more attuned to McCarthy's and Haddish's comic chops.

Bottom Line Final Comments: There are also complaints this storyline depends too much on standard gangster movie clichés, which might be true, but, then again, genre movies are grounded in clichés, even as they need to balance expectations with innovations.  (Novelty vs. familiarity’s an underlying idea in the extensive article on movie genres by Edward Buscombe, “The Idea of Genre in the American Cinema” [in various editions of Barry Keith Grant’s Film Genre Reader, University of Texas Press; this link’s from the 2003 edition, pp. 12-26; if you access the link you’ll probably come into the list of this anthology’s authors so just scroll down until you get to Buscombe’s article, focused on westerns but notes a little on other genres, with clear implications about how to apply the principles he develops to gangster movies also].*)  While not an absolute seminal change to show women running a mob (or at least sharing the role)—a couple of such classics would be White Heat (Raoul Walsh, 1949) with Cody (James Cagney) and “Ma” Jarrett (Margaret Wycherly), Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967) with Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) and Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway), or even Ocean’s 8 (Gary Ross, 2018; review in our June 14, 2018 posting), despite the hate it got from some quarters of the misogynist wing of fanboy-trolls, with all of the principal thieves being female; for that matter, Helen’s the true power behind Little Jackie’s rule in this movie—The Kitchen’s rather unique in ultimately putting females in charge of their mid-Manhattan syndicate as well as sharing that power (with difficulty at times) among the 3 women, all of whom with their own motivations as to what’s driving them to take on roles neither this movie genre nor gangsters in our actual society have much encouraged.  Another aspect of gangster movies not much encouraged is having them directed by a woman, so here's Berloff's take on what attracted her to this project: “I thought it provided an incredible opportunity to really explore what would it be like if women could take over a world. I was starting to feel really frustrated with my career, not sure that there’d be any opportunities to grow beyond where I was. So The Kitchen is a fantasy: What if I could play in that pond? What if I could take over the world? I thought that would be really appealing to many women. How would women run a world? How do they operate differently than men?  Nobody’s going to give us the opportunity — we’re going to have to take it.”

*A more-academic-approach to this familiarity vs. novelty trait in the products of our cinema is found if you plow into Rick Altman’s “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre” (pp. 27-41 as you continue scrolling down in the link cited above).  This Altman article originally was in Cinema Journal 23, no. 3 (Spring 1984); Buscombe’s article was first in Screen 11, no. 2 (March-April 1970).

 Similarly, these mob women take what they see as rightfully theirs, realizing they’re never going to become underbosses or hitwomen (not that they want the latter, except maybe Claire who gets increasingly comfortable taking out her oppressors) in this gang so if they’re ever going to get the material necessities they feel entitled to they need to thwart Jackie, which they do (admittedly, with necessary-male-muscle-support, from Duffy and Burns, then Gabriel).  I’m not claiming this as a memorable gangster story (by coincidence, my wife, Nina, and I are re-watching 5-stars-worthy-Casino [Martin Scorsese, 1995] from Netflix this week, so there’s a masterful example of this genre by a superb director working with great talent in Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Sharon Stone [another aspiring-no-nonsense-woman in a world dominated by tough men, although she often finds it difficult to out-maneuver De Niro’s controlling character], achieving a similar result as Francis Ford Coppola in his Godfather trilogy [1972, 1974, 1990] of elevating the entertainment foundations of this movie heritage into the realm of cinematic art), but it’s certainly much more enjoyable, satisfying in its revenge aspects (females in my audience agreed), supportive of women’s abilities to compete in unexpected arenas of our male-dominated-society than the caustic OCCU naysayers give it credit for.  There may be other choices to consider for your entertainment dollar (several dollars, actually, depending on how many tickets you’re buying), but if you’re intrigued by standard gangster stories (where we’re encouraged to side with characters—well, just some of them because we still need mob villains plus the anticipated-corrupt-cops, as with Silvers this time around—normally presented as antagonists to hard-working-lawmen), enjoy seeing assertive women kick some grotesquely-macho-butt, or just favor the chance to see these impressive female actors measuring the limits of their dangerous-but-lucrative-urban-challenge I think you’d appreciate The Kitchen (if not, you can always get your fill of musclemen in charge, absurd humor, even more absurd stunts in … Hobbs & Shaw, or if your tastes are more “refined” you can wait patiently for Downton Abbey [Michael Engler] on Sept. 20, 2019).  As usual, I’ll finish here with a Musical Metaphor, which I think should be The Eagles’ “New Kid in Town” (from their 1976 album Hotel California) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt0I4wADeZQ—even though it’s originally about a guy losing his love to an arriving-rival—dedicated to Little Jackie’s gang as they’re forced to accept “There’s talk on the street, it’s there to remind you Doesn’t really matter which side you’re on You’re walking away and they’re talking behind you They will never forget you ‘til somebody new comes along.”  OK, guys, time to move aside, even if you "don't want to hear it," but maybe just this once.

               

(a marginally-successful attempt at an actual) SHORT TAKES 

(please note that spoilers also appear here)

               

                           The Great Hack (Jehane Noujaim)   

                                   rated TV-MA (on Netflix)

A new documentary available at this point only on Netflix streaming about British data-gathering company Cambridge Analytica which provided extensive psychological profiles to agents of the 2016 Trump Presidential and Brexit “leave” campaigns leading to extensive Facebook ads which seemingly had great influence on “persuadable” voters, with victories for their clients in both cases.

Here’s the trailer:

 At this point I usually offer the following comment, "Before  reading any further, I’ll ask you to refer to the plot spoilers warning far above," but there aren't any true spoilers in this doc reviewed below (or, if there are elements of it still unknown they need to be revealed to everyone) so I'll encourage you to read it all as well as, hopefully, watch this investigative film.

 Normally, I don’t review films streamed on Netflix or any other downloading-platform because I want to keep promoting attendance in movie theaters, hoping we’ll always have the option to see cinematic art on a big screen in the presence of a sizable audience rather than watching whatever might be produced on small screens or with just a few others (if any) in home theater settings.  However, the content of The Great Hack is so relevant to the preservation of democratically-intended-political-systems, given the concern over Russian interferences into 2016 U.S. political elections (as well as likewise intrusions in 2020!), the 2016 Brexit “leave” decision in the U.K., plus who knows what else has happened in recent (and coming) years to destabilize citizen-based-elected-governments, especially in the U.S. and Western Europe to enhance the influence of Moscow, promoting its own agenda, at the expense of all of us who don’t care to be under the thumb of Putin, Trump, or other dictators (in principle if not officially declared as such)—especially when legislative bodies simply stay silent in support of autocratic, manipulative despots (yes, I’m looking very harshly at you, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell [recently branded, to his consternation, as “Moscow Mitch”])—I felt a need to see it, report to you.  There’s lot of crucial information to consider in … Hack, although unlike singularly paying for a ticket at a theater you have to sign up for at least a month of Netflix streaming to see this documentary; still, at $12.95 for that month (for what they call their premium option, although you’d have to add another 3 bucks for 4K quality—assuming your standard cable/Internet service is adequate to the task [mine for AT&T U-Verse isn’t] without coughing up more cable cash per month to properly receive the needed-top-grade-delivery-quality) you probably wouldn’t be paying much more than for a regular evening show at a theater, plus you get whatever else you might find of interest to stream for the rest of the month at no extra charge (no, Two Guys gets nothing if you choose Netflix streaming, AT&T cable, or anything else we might happen to mention—such as tasty drinks and food at Sons of Liberty in San Leandro, CA).  Unlike me and lack of freebees, though, Britain’s Cambridge Analytica was actively gathering useful, free information for their clients just a few years ago, collecting about 5,000 data points on every U.S. voter, with the resulting use of such material provided to the Trump campaign so that carefully-crafted-Facebook ads could be used to sew doubt, influence election decisions, likely contributing to the shift away from previous support for a Democratic candidate among the roughly 70,000 voters in a few Midwest states providing the crucial (some say archaic) Electoral College victory for Donald Trump, despite falling short by several million in the total nationwide tally.

 The focus of this film is on the general concern for all of us about Internet companies—especially Facebook under scrutiny here, but I’m sure you could extend this worry to Google (yes, I know where I’m posting this), Amazon, or any of the other tech-giants constantly mining your data (either by direct accumulation, as most of us so-casually-sign those compliance agreements just to be able to use these hyperspace-services which have become so mandatory in the modern world, or through tracking what we search for on the Net, what we choose to engage in), thereby compiling a psychological profile on each of us that can then be sold (without our realized-participation) to advertisers, political campaigns, ideological ranters, or whatever else may help one service make a direct profit while others hope to target us with whatever product/message they’re selling trying to move merchandise or produce political results through bombardment-persuasion rather than true critical thinking.  (I’d like to assume I don’t pay any attention to all those marginal—or larger—ads on my computer screen at most every site I visit, no matter how I’m being profiled by the data-gathers, but I admit when I initially put a film title into a web browser to see what pops up besides showtimes or [hopefully] a Wikipedia summary to enhance my own notes I do pay attention to suggested links [such as the ones I’ve cited at the end of this review], so I may be getting “played” along with so many others, in terms of content I’m encouraged to explore, with many of those links further passed along for your consideration).  More directly, this doc explores the involvement in recent years by British company Cambridge Analytica in gathering data from Internet users which was used to target “persuadables” in a population toward achieving a specific political goal, with the primary focus here on helping the Trump campaign win the U.S. Presidency (they eventually spent $1 million daily on those calculated Facebook ads) and delivering a “leave” (the European Union) vote in the Brexit debate, with a great deal of testimony about how flimsy-fact-ads were used in each case (plus brief citations about other countries) to sway the outcome in a specific direction, actively using Facebook as a means of delivering these bogus encouragements to people inclined to accept them, based on extensive data Cambridge Analytica previously assembled on such potential voters from info easily available about any of us on the ubiquitous, global Internet.  Fortunately, much of what happened in this destabilization procedure was revealed by the tireless reporting of valued non-fake-news-outlets, especially award-winning Carole Cadwalladr of Britain’s publication, The Observer, her work actively detailed in The Great Hack.  At the very least, some justice was served by … Analytica ceasing operations in 2018 (but surely that hasn’t prevented other sophisticated-data-gathers from continued-indulgence in cruel “weapons grade technology”).

 While there’s a good bit to be gleaned from the larger context of this film about challenges to proper governance, the emphasis here is on attempts to force both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica to come clean about how all this social manipulation happened in recent years (with legitimate concerns about preventing such further transgressions), through the combination of a lawsuit filed in Great Britain by Prof. David Carroll to see what his psychological-file contained along with damning-whistleblowing-testimony from Brittany Kaiser, a former activist in social causes/ Facebook manager for the 2008 Barack Obama Presidential campaign, who apparently wasn’t paid for her previous work (a crucial point, not explained further) so in financial desperation found herself involved with Cambridge Analytica (and parent company SCL Group) on behalf of Trump and Brexit.  Apparently, she granted these filmmakers’ access to private filming of her traumatic situations leading up to public testimony, much of which is shown here, along with footage of Facebook honcho Mark Zukerberg’s seemingly-contrite-appearance before Congress admitting his company’s failures.  I easily found The Great Hack to be usefully-informative, profoundly-disturbing, unrelenting in its approach (as well as using some stunning visuals a few times) in exploring how Cambridge Analytica compiled profiles on a huge cohort of 87 million Facebook members, although Micah L. Sifry of The Nation disputes the film’s premise regarding the actual impact of these attempts at targeted-persuasion (I can’ say I agree) while Janus Rose of Vice.com says even more emphasis needs to be on “[…] the entire business model of Silicon Valley, which has incentivized the use of personal data to manipulate human behavior on a massive scale [… what Rose calls] Surveillance Capitalism” (yet, there’s plenty of that in this doc), once again demonstrating you can’t please all the people all of the time.  With those complaints in mind (along with my reaffirmation of this film, its detailed content, its stark warnings for the stability of democratic governments) I’ll close with the Musical Metaphor of R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” (from their 1991 Out of Time album) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JAjC7BSqAA because, in league with the complaints lodged here, this film’s messages (for some) either come across as “Oh no, I’ve said too much [or] I haven’t said enough.”  For me, though, the whole concept of “losing my religion” (reaching a point of utter confusion/frustration/instability) is where we’re collectively at, especially with Internet manipulations used to skew how persuadable people can be led blindly into emotionally-based-actions with no sense of the empty-trickery they’re choosing.  You may not find The Great Hack as convincing as I do (this time the CCAL mostly agrees, as RT offers 86% positive reviews although MC musters a restrained 67% average score), but I’d say it gives useful incentive for Internet-scrutiny so that “Every whisper of every waking hour I’m choosing my confessions Trying to keep an eye on you [… so that this active concept of participatory democracy doesn’t become] just a dream, just a dream.”

               

Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:

            

We encourage you to visit the summary of Two Guys reviews for our past posts.*  Overall notations for this blog—including Internet formatting craziness beyond our control—may be found at our Two Guys in the Dark homepage.  If you’d like to Like us on Facebook please visit our Facebook page. We appreciate your support whenever and however you can offer it!

*A Google software glitch causes every Two Guys posting prior to August 26, 2016 to have an inaccurate (dead) link to this Summary page; from then forward, though, this link is accurate.

Here’s more information about The Kitchen:

https://www.warnerbros.com/movies/kitchen/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fTEC8SMF3s (3:40 interview with director Andrea Berloff) and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMLlc50iV_0 (4:18 interview with actors Tiffany Haddish, Melissa McCarthy, Elisabeth Moss [a “great revelation” here is that McCarthy can’t hold a purse on her shoulder because her body shape there is too rounded to keep anything in place, a situation I can relate to because my shoulders tend to be rounded in that manner as well allowing any strap of a camera or carry-bag to just slide right off, so I can appreciate her “first-world-problem” although I realize that’s not the most crucial challenge either of us currently has to deal with])

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_kitchen

https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-kitchen-2019

Here’s more information about The Great Hack:

https://www.netflix.com/title/80117542

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZOXRN_qaFY (16:46 MSNBC news story on Cambridge Analytica and The Great Hack documentary, giving a clear understanding of what this film is 

about with input from director Jehane Noujaim, co-director/producer Karim Amer)

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_great_hack

https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-great-hack

Please note that to Post a Comment below about our reviews you need to have either a Google account (which you can easily get at https://accounts.google.com/NewAccount if you need to sign up) or other sign-in identification from the pull-down menu below before you preview or post.  You can also leave comments at our Facebook page, although you may have to somehow connect with us at that site in order to do it (most FB procedures are still a bit of a mystery to us old farts).

If you’d rather contact Ken directly rather than leaving a comment here please use my email address of kenburke409@gmail.com.  (But if you truly have too much time on your hands you might want to explore some even-longer-and-more-obtuse-than-my-film-reviews—if that even seems possible—academic articles about various cinematic topics at my website, 

https://kenburke.academia.edu, which could really give you something to talk to me about.)

If we did talk, though, you’d easily see how my early-70s-age informs my references, Musical Metaphors, etc. in these reviews because I’m clearly a guy of the later 20^th century, not so much the contemporary world.  I’ve come to accept my ongoing situation, though, realizing we all (if fate allows) keep getting older, we just have to embrace it, as Joni Mitchell did so well in "The Circle Game," offering sage advice even when she was quite young herself.

By the way, if you’re ever at The Hotel California knock on my door—but you know what the check out policy is so be prepared to stay for awhile. Ken

P.S.  Just to show that I haven’t fully flushed Texas out of my system here’s an alternative destination for you, Home in a Texas Bar, with Gary P. Nunn and Jerry Jeff Walker.  But wherever the rest of my body may be my heart’s always with my longtime-companion, lover, and wife, Nina Kindblad, so here’s our favorite shared song—Neil Young’s "Harvest Moon"

—from the performance we saw at the Desert Trip concerts in Indio, CA on October 15, 2016 (as a full moon was rising over the stadium) because “I’m still in love with you,” my dearest, a never-changing-reality even as the moon waxes and wanes over the months/years to come.

          

OUR POSTINGS PROBABLY LOOK BEST ON THE MOST CURRENT VERSIONS OF MAC OS AND THE SAFARI WEB BROWSER (although Google Chrome usually is decent also); OTHERWISE, BE FOREWARNED THE LAYOUT MAY SEEM MESSY AT TIMES.

            

Finally, for the data-oriented among you, Google stats say over the past month (which they seem to measure from right now back 30 days) the total unique hits at this site were 9,823 (as always, we thank all of you for your support with our hopes you’ll continue to be regular readers); below is a snapshot of where and by what means those responses have come from within the previous week: