What Movies Have You Watched Recently?

[eastcoaster]

[ QUOTE ]


Fast Food Nation

What an ambitious little mess of a film. The "story" is basically a bunch of side plots revolved around the fictional Mickey's fast food restaurant and their beef supplier. We have the marketing VP who's investigating too much fecal matter in the beef, the illegal immigrants crossing the border to come work at the slaughterhouse, the high school girl who works at a Mickey's and becomes more politically motivated against the big corporate machine, and others all worked in. Social commentary on eating habits, urban sprawl, illegal immigration, the corporatizing of America, and tons more all are thrown at you so fast that you can barely think about it before some other issue is in your face.

Linklater is kind of known for his lack of focus, but the problem here for me is that he seemed to focus TOO MUCH on the least interesting characters. Kinnear's VP of marketing is barely seen again after the halfway point (until the end credits). Kris Kristofferson's cattle rancher is awesome, but they only give him 5 minutes to spit out his diatribe before he's cast aside. Instead we get Fez from that 70's show sneaking across the border, getting a job spraying down rats, living in a hotel room with 20 other people, pondering on how to open a bank account, taking his wife out to dinner, dealing with rampant drug use all around him, and trying to live out the American dream. This is literally half the movie, and to me the least interesting "subplot". I get it, illegals get the shaft. Sometimes literally. I'd rather have more good metaphor scenes like a bunch of cows not being set free.

Anyway, it wasn't that bad, it just wasn't that good.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you read this book, you will get a whole different (better) take.