Vice (3/5 Stars)

Not that it is wise to suppose that Dick Cheney cares, but I bet he never suspected at the time when he was at the height of his power, that the little known writer currently working at Saturday Night Live producing Bear City skits would go on to make the definitive biopic of him. That is the problem with being an under-the-radar bearaucrat with little to no personality. Nobody talks about you, until one person does and that person becomes the only storyteller around.

The writer and director of Vice is Adam McKay, better known for his work directing Will Ferrel comedies such as Anchorman, Talldega Nights, and Step-Brothers. Will Ferrell is still doing that type of shtick. For the time being, Adam McKay seems to have moved on to more serious entertainment. His first venture into this genre, The Big Short, was one of the best movies of the year. Vice is in the same vein. It takes a complicated subject, the life and politics of hugely influential if not particularly known man, Richard Cheney, and tries its best to explain the significance of his policies and politics. The Big Short had an easier time at it. That movie's subject matter was complicated to, but the movie (and the book as well) adroitly got all the major points across by inserting them into the stories of several sympathetic well-rounded characters. Vice lacks a sympathetic well-rounded character. We learn alot about Dick Cheney but not so much about what makes him click. We learn much about what he did but not much about why he thought it was the right thing to do. Perhaps it would be hard for a writer-director such as Adam McKay to really understand someone so politically opposite. I have seen it done before though. I thought Oliver Stone did a particularly good job with Richard Nixon in Nixon. I mean, the movie makes a big deal about Dick Cheney's pursuit of power, but what is power without purpose. Did he actually want anything besides it? I'm not sure this movie found the answer to that question.

The most chilling thing about Cheney is that there might be less to him than you would think. I watched Errol Morris' documentary interview of Donald Rumsfeld and was absolutely taken aback by the utter lack of seriousness and self-introspection in Donald Rumsfeld. Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney go back a long way, Cheney basically learning the ropes of Washington from Rumsfeld. Was Dick Cheney like Donald Rumsfeld? Can he really be explained by a scene in the beginning of Vice in which a hungover and bruised Cheney is read the riot act by his wife and told that if he does not make something of himself she will leave him. To gain power to keep his wife, is that the sum total of this man's ambitions. What a scary thought.

Adam McKay does not seem to agree. I think McKay's politics are provoking him to seek some more nefarious answer to that question. So the movie makes much more sense in its first half when Cheney is an underdog more defined by a simple pursuit of power than in the second half when Cheney gains power and pursues many of his controversial policies like war and torture. McKay hasn't achieved insight into Cheney motivations, but he is assuming that something more is there. Maybe, maybe not.

The performance in Vice are damn near perfect. Christian Bale may seem a not obvious choice to play Dick Cheney until you see him onscreen for five seconds and you realize its the perfect casting choice. As a matter of course, he seems to have gained like fifty pounds to do this role. All in a days work for this man. This is a much better version of Dick Cheney than we briefly saw Richard Dreyfuss give in W.The most perfect choice of casting though belongs to Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld. That is some uncanny shit. I remember being unnerved while watching the real Donald Rumsfeld in The Unknown Known. I felt the same thing here and think it a stroke of genius to use Steve Carell, an actor who has played famously empty characters before like Brick the Weatherman, to portray Rummy.

Like any half-way decent movie that portrays well-known people, the viewer gets a kick out of who got cast to play whom. Tyler Perry plays Colin Powell. Sam Rockwell plays George W. Bush. Amy Adams plays Lynne Cheney. George W. Bush, bless his big dumb heart, doesn't seem to know what he is doing half the time and is under the unfortunate impression that Rumsfeld and Cheney do.

I like political movies with a point of view. Not only does Adam McKay have a point of view, he is brilliantly angry about it. This movie and The Big Short reminded me of the best movies of Oliver Stone. They take chances, they are vibrant, and they are passionate about the subject matter. Sometimes this really works like when Dick and Lynne Cheney speak Shakespeare. Other times not so. Vice has a narrator who is not really introduced and might not be a portrait of the actual person he is supposed to be. (Noticeably, he narrates this story in a wearied manner, not unlike the narrator in last years War Machine. Is this how Afghanistan and Iraq are to be remembered? As sad slogs.) We do not know who this man is until he gets run over by a car and Dick Cheney as organ donee, receives his heart. The movie argues that Dick Cheney slighted the dead man by referring to his donor heart as "his new heart." I get what the movie is getting at, but heart problems don't seem to be a fair thing for which to criticize someone.

I found Vice to be frequently funny. That does not mean the movie has jokes. This relates more to the skill of the writer/director who consistently finds ways to present information in a clever and efficient manner. I am a big fan of Adam McKay. I look forward to whatever he does next.

Arrival (4/5 Stars)

The screenplay for Arrival was written by Eric Heisserer adapted from the book “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang. Arrival is one of those movies where you get on IMDB and look up the name of the writer. Eric Heisserer past resume would not make him a likely suspect for “Arrival” one of the most intelligent movies in theaters today. He is a horror remake/sequel movie writer. His credits include “The Thing” (2011), “Final Destination 5” (2011), and “A Nightmare on Elm Street” (2010). I guess he had to do what he had to do to get his foot in the door.

“Arrival” is several leagues away from these previous movies. The basic premise, an alien visitation (or is it an invasion?) has been done a thousand times but “Arrival” is something entirely different. It isn’t about humans battling angry alien instincts. At its core, “Arrival” is a movie about linguistics. It mainly concerns a linguist named Louise Banks (played by Amy Adams) and her efforts to communicate with the aliens (referred to as heptapods, and two specifically called “Abbot & Costello”). If there is a movie that “Arrival” is like, I suggest it would be Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar,” another smart movie that went out of its way to demonstrate scientific principles to the audience. To watch “Arrival” is to learn something about how your brain processes language. At the same time, there is much humor and a good deal of suspense. “Arrival” is one of the best written movies of the year.

What “Arrival” isn’t is a particularly good looking film. This is more noticeable than usual because Director Denis Villeneuve’s last two films (Prisoners and Sicario) were very beautiful movies. It just so happens that the cinematographer, the great Roger Deakins, worked on the last two but not on “Arrival.” So if you want a good idea of the value a great cinematographer brings to the screen, compare and contrast these movies. Looking at IMDB I am very glad to discover these two will be working together again for the new Blade Runner movie. That movie should be incredible, at least to look at.

The aliens land in strange ships on thirteen (give or take) parts of the globe. A major concern of the movie is the various ways that different countries respond to the aliens. (Get it, the lack of unified culture and language plays out importantly in this way too.) Because it is vogue in this particular decade (as opposed to say the Japanese in the 1980s), the Chinese have a big role in the unfolding of the plot. On the American side, the military led by Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) and Agent Halpern (Michael Stuhlberg) seek out two experts, one a mathematician named Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) and the linguist Louise Banks (again Amy Adams). It is unmistakable that Louise Banks being the only woman in a sea of military men in this movie is not mutually exclusive to her being also the main advocate for a peaceful response. Storywise it also helps for exposition purposes because she continually has to persuade all the dudes to give her more time to figure out the Alien language so she can figure out why the Aliens came. By doing so, she explains her procedure to us, and it is enlightening and entertaining. The mathematician is generally supportive. The military men are generally not supportive but, of course, they have a Columbus and the Native Americans situation on their minds.

The story of the aliens is interspersed with a subplot about the life and death of Amy Adams’ daughter. Why and how it is being shown in the movie is one of the more interesting devices the movie uses to explain how language affects the mind. I’m not about to give it away too much except to level a general appreciation of the song used: “The Swimmer” by Max Richter (This is the same violin Martin Scorsese used in that sad and gorgeous scene in “Shutter Island”) and again to note that like “Interstellar” the movie uses Time to provide a very optimistic dues ex machina.

p.s. The Sanskrit word for "War" and its translation is 'gavisti' and it means either 'a disagreement' or 'a desire for more cows.'

Her (4/5 Stars)

Nora Ephron once noted that most love stories can be divided into two categories: Christian and Jewish. A Christian Romance involves two people who would be happy but for some third person or outside conflict that keeps them apart. Think of the feuding families in “Romeo and Juliet,” the class barriers in “The Notebook,” or the sinking of the Titanic in “Titanic.” The Jewish Romance involves two people who would be happy if it weren't for the flawed personalities of the characters. Nora would say that Woody Allen is the great writer of this type of story, and movies such as “Annie Hall,” “Manhattan,” and “Hannah and Her Sisters,” are good examples. I think "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," would be the epitome of that type.

Now consider the movie “Her” from writer/director Spike Jonze. Ask yourself as you watch it, which category would it belong in? Are the conflicts born from the characters or from the society in which they live? And if it is a conflict born from the characters, what does that say about people especially given the society that is present in this movie. Is Spike Jonze saying outside conflict helps to provoke romance?

This might be the first movie I have ever seen that portrays the future as a Utopia and not a Dystopia. “Her” takes place in the near future of Los Angeles. The streets are calm and safe. Plentiful skyscrapers adorn the skyscape as beautiful landmarks not haunting towers. There is no smog and the public parks and beaches are clean. Everything is bathed in a warm comfortable glow. The story concerns Theodore Twombly (played by Joaquin Phoenix) an employee at BeautifulHandwrittenLetters.com. Theodore composes other people’s letters to their loved ones. It is a sensitive if otherworldy job and Theodore takes joy in it. He has nice coworkers. There is Amy, played by Amy Adams, who is kind and funny and sweet. His boss, played by Chris Pratt, is a funny goofy nice guy too. The job must pay well because Theodore’s apartment is plenty nice, clean, and spacious. He has all the latest technological gadgets in handheld devices and role-playing computer games. It is a nice safe life and Theodore is a nice safe guy.

So, given that, why is Theodore recently divorced from Catherine, played by Rooney Mara, and why has he not been actively social in awhile. Everything is perfect or is that the problem, that everything is perfect. And is that the reason why Theodore strikes up a relationship with the latest gadget around, a personalized OSS (operating system) named Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johannson). This new OSS has the ability to intuit and learn, so it is a kind of artificial intelligence with a real intellectual curiousity and love of life. She’s charming and smart (hooked up with an internet connection she immediately reads the entirety of Wikipedia) and her newness has the sort of endearing innocence absent in experienced humans. This is an impossible relationship of course, but is that what makes it exciting to Theodore? Are we prone to look for conflict and grow restless when it can’t be found? Do relationships work the best when the two people in it are united in fighting a third party? If there is no outside conflict do people automatically turn on each other? The meanest thing said in the movie comes from the ex-wife Rooney Mara. It is only two sentences but it makes clear that she knows Theodore well enough to only need two sentences to strike him where it hurts most.

Samantha on the other hand is much easier to talk to. I expect this is because she does not give off the impression of being able to hurt Theodore. She if after all just a machine and the way Theodore talks to her resembles more of a conversation with one’s diary than a conversation with another person. These are quietly stunning, sensitive, and articulate discussions between two characters that have no reason to guard how they speak to each other. And so they don’t. In fact, I kept thinking of the last entry in ‘Anne Frank’s Diary,’ in which she explores how the presence of other people changes her character. She says that she is a different worse version of herself with other people than she is all by herself. If only there were no other people in the world, expresses Anne. Theodore could probably say the same thing, and here he can and does because he’s talking to a machine, not a woman. Spike Jonze has been nominated for a Best Original Screenplay and deserves it.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about this quiet sensitive movie is the production design, art direction, and costume design. The credit for this belongs to K.K. Barrett, Gene Sardena, Austin Gorg, and Casey Storm respectively who have convincingly created a world that is simultaneously familiar and strange enough to resemble the future. K.K. Barrett has worked on all of Spike Jonze previous movies (Where the Wild Things Are, Adaptation, Being John Malkovich) and interestingly many of Jonze’s ex-wife’s movies Sophia Coppola (Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette). Now that I think of it, Rooney Mara looks a lot like Sophia Coppola. I think that’s all I’m going to say about that.

Amy Adams is as charming as always and looks great with that strange curly hairstyle, you know like always.

Oh and Karen O is a lock for an Oscar for Best Original Song. “The Moon Song” she wrote is good which is almost always good enough to win in that strikingly shallow category. 

American Hustle (5/5 Stars)

The feel of this movie reminded me of a great Hall of Fame Rock and Roll concert. You know those concerts where they induct a great musician and all his friends get up on the stage and they play all the great songs songs and everything is great. ‘American Hustle,’ the new movie by David O. Russell feels like that. It has an incredible cast and a plot that allows every actor the opportunity to do some really throw down acting. In essence this movie is acting in that it is about people who are reinventing themselves in order to pull off scams and sting operations. The backdrop of the movie is the late 1970s ABSCAM scandal in which several members of Congress were convicted of taking bribes from an Arab sheik that in reality was an undercover FBI agent. It should be noted however that almost none of the movie is true. The names of the Congressmen are the same but all the FBI agents and con artists are fictional characters. As the movie’s opening subtitle states, “Some of this actually happened.” So expect fiction as a default not the other way around. In terms of storytelling this strategy is an unambiguous success in that it allows the actors to make very broad dramatic choices with their performances without the inherent worry that a movie inspired by real events usually has, i.e. that they are unfairly slighting real people.

The main quartet of actors involves the con artist team of Christian Bale and Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper as the FBI agent, and Jennifer Lawrence as the housewife of Christian Bale. In supporting roles are Jeremy Renner as the main target of the sting, Mayor Carmine Polito, Louis C.K. as Bradley Cooper’s long suffering supervisor, and Robert De Niro as the mobster who appears to get a cut of the deal when the original sting starts getting escalated way out of hand.

This is the third great movie of David O. Russell about redemption and reinvention. “The Fighter” was about a down and out boxer who came back as a champion. “Silver Linings Playbook” was about a manic-depressive fresh from a stint in a mental asylum trying to get his life back on track. “American Hustle” draws from both movies in terms of theme and cast. From “The Fighter” are Christian Bale and Amy Adams and from “Silver Linings Playbook” are Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, and Robert De Niro. Making their debut in a David O. Russel movie is Jeremey Renner and Louis C.K. It is no mistake that actors in the last two movies were nominated for Oscars (Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro, and Jacki Weaver were nominated. Christian Bale, Melissa Leo, and Jennifer Lawrence won) and this movie should be no different. The only question is who gets nominated and who wins because almost every performance is worthy of it.

Christian Bale plays Irving the main con artist. For this role, Christian Bale that most humble/masochistic of actors decided to gain sixty pounds and sport an elaborate comb-over. There are very few actors in movies that would gain an ungainly amount of weight (or lose it!) to portray a fictional character. Perhaps the best thing though about his performance is his willingness to support all his fellow actors. Irving is a soft-spoken kind of guy who spends his time trying to bring everybody else in the cast back from the brink of insane shenanigans. It also helps that he has all that weight because he moves slower than everybody else.

The opposite side of the coin is the manic cocaine-addled performance of Bradley Cooper as the over-ambitious FBI agent that snags the con artists and employs them to catch bigger game. This man is all sound and fury and not so much thinking. Louis C.K. plays his long suffering supervisor and the interactions between the two are some of the funniest in the movie what with Bradley yelling and screaming and Louis C.K. doing the definitive embarrassed put upon Louis C.K. performance. At the same time however, the Bradley Cooper character of Richie Tomaso is the most tragic. I won’t give away how everything turns out but the treatment of the FBI agent says a lot about how David O. Russel probably feels about the ABSCAM scandal in general. It was a bad thing wasn’t it because after all everybody in politics in beholden to money anyway (just not in an illegal way) and what exactly is the point of entrapping people who do not have a history of criminal behavior.

Amy Adams puts in several performances as a stripper from Alburquerque who moves to New York and somehow finagles her way into a job at Cosmopolitan magazine before falling in love with Irving and becoming a British financier with royal connections in their respective scams. After the FBI catches Amy and Christian she pretends to fall in love with Bradley (or does she pretend?) in order to have just one more trick in the bag if things go south. She is playing just about everyone. It is a very bold performance by Amy Adams and perhaps the most complex character she has ever created.

Rounding out the main cast is Jennifer Lawrence, the wildcard. She plays the housewife of Irving whose reckless impulsiveness is guided by the fact that she knows nothing of what is going on. The funniest scene in the movie involves Irving bringing home a new invention, a “science oven,” as a gift from the man he is conning. He tells J-Rentz to not put any metal in it but doesn’t say why. So she puts metal in it almost immediately and microwave bursts into flames all over the house. Here’s the exact quote: “Don’t put metal in the science oven. Don’t put metal in the science oven. He’s always treating me like a fucking child. I do what I want.” BOOM!

As much of a character as anything else are the little details that inhabit the movie: Christian’s combover, Amy Adams revealing dresses, Bradley Cooper’s curlers, J-Rentz furs, Jeremey Renner singing Tom Jones’ ‘Delilah,’ Duke Ellington’s role in two characters falling in love, the thump and grind of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Good Times, Bad Times,’ a trip to the disco with Bradley and Amy, Louis’ story about ice fishing, the Mexican-American Arab sheik, a pool party in the middle of the winter, and the purity and goodness of mayor Carmine Polito and his family. Everything about this movie is exceptional. But above all, “American Hustle” cares deeply about these exciting, fun, and charming people that care deeply about what they are doing and who they want to be. They fight, they laugh, they cry, they sing, they scream, they cheat and tell the truth, and they live and fall in love. It was a wonderful experience to spend a few short hours in their company.

If anything, this will be the Best Original Screenplay of the year. Hands down. It’s great. 

The Master (4/5 Stars)

Good luck trying to brainwash a crazy person.

Suppose you were a charlatan, somebody who falsely claims to have special skills or expertise. Now suppose you were a very ambitious charlatan, not just an ordinary con man peddling nonexistent charity or selling used cars as new, but someone who with the gall to claim access to the divine. Let’s go even further now and head into L. Ron Hubbard territory. Suppose you had the chutzpah to start your own religion and suppose you had the personality and intelligence to actually pull it off on a grand scale. We have gotten this far so we must assume that one of two things is true. One: you are correct about the secrets of the universe. Or two: You’ve got to be some sort of megalomaniacal psychotic sociopath.

This is an important thing to keep in mind as one watches “The Master,” mainly because the sociopath in question, Lancaster Dodd played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman in another brilliant characterization, is such a nice, friendly, and warm fellow. He likes singing. He likes dancing and he loves giving speeches. It is easy to forget that he spends the vast majority of his day lying, cheating, and stealing from those who follow him. Lancaster Dodd, modeled after the founder of Scientology L. Ron Hubbard, is an evil person. His entire demeanor is a well-rehearsed act played to disarm the senses, gain trust, and to ultimately control his followers. I believe the common term is brainwashing, although how Dodd works is more like hypnosis (don’t tell him that!). The to remember about someone under hypnosis is not that they do not know the truth. They just don’t care. They have intentionally submitted themselves to a fantasy.

In that view it does not actually matter what is the fantasy. A cursory study of the beliefs of Scientology reveal an absolutely ridiculous plethora of science fiction looniness. It boggles the rational mind. Given that Hubbard was not insane, why would he base a religion on something so unbelievable? Think about it this way: What if the ridiculousness of it all was simply a byproduct of an enormous ego. Perhaps the next step in self-glorification from creating a religion that men will follow blindly, is creating an absolutely absurd religion that men will follow blindly. The absurdity grotesquely emphasizes the personal magnetism of the leader. If the Pope can get priests and nuns to give up family and sex for a life of service to God, if Napoleon could get men to die for ribbons and medals and country, what does it say about Hubbard if he can get bank accounts for thetans and other like rubbish? Perhaps that is what makes him truly a Master of men.

The religion in this movie does not actually encompass any of the tenets of “Scientology.” It doesn’t need to; the actual belief system is arbitrary in front of the central conflict between the master's cult of personality and his would-be followers. In particular, one relationship between Dodd and ex-Navy man Freddie Quell, played in erratic fashion by real life crazy man Joaquin Phoenix, is the central driving force of the story.

Freddie Quell is an animal. Possibly suffering PTSD from his service in WWII or simply just crazy, he is an aimless drifter with no friends, family, or money. He starts fights with innocent bystanders, mixes death-defying cocktails with intoxicants such as rocket fuel and paint thinner, and thinks sex in an uninhibited fashion. The man is a walking id. Lancaster Dodd has many bullshit reasons of why he would seek the company of Freddie Quell as a protégé, plenty going under the guise of “helping him.” What this relationship really amounts to however is a vanity project. Lancaster Dodd has successfully brainwashed old rich ladies, several ex-wives, and a small legion of believers, and now he is aiming for bigger game. He wants to be able to control a man who is uncontrollable. Freddie Quell could be the Great White Whale for charlatans. Here is a man who will not join the following for all the usual reasons. He has no family or friends in the group. He does not seek influence over other people. He has no interest in making money (unlike for instance the oilman submitting to a baptism in order to build his pipeline in Paul Thomas Anderson’s last movie, “There Will Be Blood.”) And lastly, he is certainly not affected by peer pressure in any conventional sense. If Freddie Quell joins the following and stays put it will be because he truly believes and that in turn glorifies the controlling power of the Master. Quell may be deranged but he has no lying in him, (which is perhaps what makes him so deranged.)

Boy does Lancaster Dodd throw the book at Quell and gives the man everything he has got. Every scene they have together is a mind-battle between two heavyweights. Perhaps one of the best scenes involves a Dianetics inspired interrogation where Dodd peppers Quell with a multitude of intensely private questions. Notice how Dodd gains the upper hand. Mind control works like ju-jitsu. You can’t win by getting the other person to fight against himself.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s writing is on a level far above the average movie. A character like Lancaster Dodd is so hard to pull off. Take a scene that takes place in a high society party. Dodd is explaining how people have had past lives and are repeatedly incarnated. When they go through “processing” they can recall their past lives and gain insight into their present and future lives. “Processing” can even solve certain types of Leukemia. A man at the party intends to confront Dodd on this point. I think we can all agree that “processing” cannot cure Leukemia and that professing such a belief is absurd if not downright odious. Would it surprise you that Lancaster Dodd wins this argument and wins it handily, leaving the man speechless and embarrassed? It is not movie magic with unrealistic dialogue happening here. The time-travel man wins the debate against the skeptic because he is such an intelligent speaker that he is able to run logical circles around ordinary men on even the most absurd of topics.

Combine that with another strange musical score from Jonny Greenwood (who also did “There Will Be Blood”) and you have one of the most fiercely original movies of the year. Here is to hoping it does not take Paul Thomas Anderson another five years to make his next movie. 

The Fighter (4/5 Stars)

About Mickey who can't get a word in.

Director David O. Russell’s new boxing drama is about the real life Mickey Ward’s fall and comeback to the World Welterweight Championship. But to say it is about Mickey, played by Mark Wahlberg, is to assume something else. It is also about his family: his brother Dickie, his mother and his five sisters. Mickey may as well be synonymous with them as he can hardly ever get a word in whenever they are around. Mickey may be in the ring but he isn’t in charge. Several times he even says, “Dickie taught me everything I know,’ or “I won that fight because Dickie told me what to do.” The problem is that his family is telling him the wrong things to do, like say fight a guy twenty pounds heavier than he is with absolutely no preparation. And then there’s the fact that Dickie is a crackhead and that his sisters really don’t do anything but sit around the house, smoke cigarettes, and agree with their mother no matter how obviously wrong she is. Mickey’s future success depends on ditching his blood and finding other smarter people to tell him what to do. Is this movie anti-family or just the least pro-family movie you’ve seen in a long while? There’s a good topic for discussion after the film. A Gold Star to anyone who has balls enough to take their family to see this one.

The most impressive thing about this movie is that it is full of great performances. Leading the pack is Christian Bale as Dickie Ward, the motor-mouthed, crack-addicted, sparring partner and older brother of Mickey. The effect is almost immediate. The first frame shows Christian sitting on the couch talking very fast and his eyes nearly bugging out of his emaciated frame. I couldn’t believe it. Christian did it again. He completely transformed his body to play a role. For those who unaware, Christian has been putting on and taking off weight for the last ten years as if his body was made of Play-Doh. Take a look at his perfect body in “American Psycho,” which turned into thinnest man outside of a concentration camp in “The Machinist” which turned into the muscled action star in “Batman Begins” which turned into the starving prisoner of war in “Rescue Dawn” which once again turned into an action star in “The Dark Knight,” and is now the skinny shriveled figure of a crack addict in “The Fighter.” To think all he could have been looking like Patrick Bateman (“You can always be thinner, look better.”) all this time. The man has no ego at all. He is pure dedication and self-discipline. His poster and movies should be passed out as inspirational devices in all WeightWatchers. As far as his performance goes in this movie, it is perfect. Dickie looks and talks like he’s on crack and all his self-aggrandized tales of the past and deluded plans for the future pretty much steals every scene. He is being followed by a documentary crew, which he thinks is making a movie about his comeback. In reality they are documenting the perils of crack addiction. Dickie doesn’t get that until about halfway through watching the HBO special. In many ways, Christian is playing against type in this movie. He usually has the role of the boring straight character that holds together a movie like say Batman as opposed to the Joker, or the non-showy magician in “The Prestige,” or Patrick Bateman who isn’t even there. Here he proves that he can play the wild part and yet in perfect Bale style he still does a great job of helping everyone else give great performances as well.

Playing against Dickie for control over Mickey is the new girlfriend, played by Amy Adams, who is also playing against type in one of her best performances. You may remember her as the naive nurse in “Catch Me if You Can,” or the Disney Princess in “Enchanted,” or the timid nun in “Doubt.” Here, she is a hard and fierce barmaid who can hold her own against a very large and loud family. There is an unbelievable scene where the mom, played by Melissa Leo (who I didn’t even recognize until I saw the credits), and the five sisters pack into a four-door sedan and take a trip across town to confront Adams. Then they all yell at each other on the porch while poor Mickey stands around looking like he might have something to say if he could possibly get a word in.  

Every now and then you watch a movie with what is called, “Culture Shock.” This is when you are presented with something that seems real but is so foreign and weird you can hardly believe that real people would be doing it. That happened several times while I watched this movie, but one scene really stood out. One of the main problems with the girlfriend as far as the family is concerned is that she went to college. Now the girlfriend actually never finished college, but to the family that is still enough to condemn her into a snobbish elite that shouldn’t be taken seriously. Specifically they call her an “MTV skank.” Like I said, that sort of thing for me goes beyond merely insulting or absurd and into something like disbelief or confusion. It’s just so out there I don’t know what to think. I actually hesitated writing this review because so much of the movie took place in an alternate universe where people are like that. But hey, that is what watching movies is all about. Perhaps now if I were to be called something worse than an “MTV skank,” for actually finishing college, I wouldn’t be caught completely speechless. Maybe.

The movie takes place in the 1990s. Biopics are becoming pretty recent for someone my age. We also seem to be getting into the era where a movie in a theater is not the first, but the second or third time a story is told. In this movie Director Russell does a very good job of dodging all the other camera crews in the story, first the HBO documentary and then the highly televised boxing matches. The world is becoming such a documented place that we are now watching cameras watching cameras. Who knows where the road goes?

p.s. Now that I think about it, here is the retort. I’ll quote Jack Nicholson in “The Departed” after Leonardo Dicaprio has just finished saying that school is done, out. His exact words: “Maybe someday you’ll grow the fuck up.”

Julie and Julia (4/5 Stars) August 26, 2009

The story of an extraordinary cook who wrote an extraordinary book and the woman who read it, cooked it, and didn’t learn a thing! 


“Julie and Julia” is director Nora Ephron’s latest film, which is an adaptation of two memoirs. The first is “My Life in France,” by Julia Child, which chronicles her culinary education in France and the writing of her book “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” The second is “The Julie/Julia Project,” a blog by Julie Powell chronicling her self-appointed quest to cook all 525 recipes in Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” within a year. The two lives though separated by a good fifty years are interspersed with each other. The Julia Child story is far more enjoyable than the Julie Powell story but it is important that both stories are told (though it may have not been the maker’s intention) because it provides a contrast between different attitudes towards the art of cooking. The food in both stories looks fantastic and I’m sure tasted great. 

Meryl Streep plays Julia Child in one of those roles you can only see Meryl Streep inhabiting. Here she grows several inches and perfects Child’s buoyantly cheerful accent. Her husband played by Stanley Tucci is an ambassador in Paris in the early fifties. She has nothing to do. Noticing that what she really likes to do is eat, she signs up at a chef’s school and the rest as they say is history. Her scenes bristle with Child’s extraordinary passion for French cuisine. In one early scene she exclaims, “I just can’t get over it. How the French eat French food…everyday!” Child’s enthusiasm is contagious. In a letter her husband describes watching her cook like watching a conductor in an orchestra. Streep’s performance lives up to the description. (She will surely garner another Oscar nomination for this performance. According to IMDB that would make her total of nominations to a record setting sixteen times.) One problem Child comes upon rather early is that at that time there was not a single book about French Cooking in English. This becomes her mission in life, as she cannot imagine something that would be more important or fun to do. She corroborates with a French cook named Simone Beck in creating that book over a course of more than a decade. At one time a publisher rejects her work because it is too long. A first planned version of the book clocks in at the size of a seven-volume set. She abhors making it any smaller lest something be left out and the world bereft of the recipe. Finally after several revisions the book catches the eye of a publisher who takes it home and cooks up a recipe of Child’s Boeuf Bouguignon (Beef Stew in Red Wine, with Bacon, Onions, and Mushrooms.) Yum, how about a book deal? Halfway through this story we are treated with the arrival of Child’s even bigger and equally flamboyant sister, who is played by the fabulous improviser Jane Lynch. It’s a treat to watch the two of them go at it together in some of the best scenes in the movie.

Amy Adams plays Julie Powell in a role that could have been played by any number of actresses provided that the set had a competent makeup artist who was capable of drawing tear stained cheeks on every other day. A lowly cubicle worker, Julie Powell devised a way to use her talent for cooking into a scheme that would provide meaning to her life (i.e. get a book deal) and show up her relatively successful friends. Her plan to cook all 525 recipes in Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” is a Herculean task and the movie shows it. Amy Adams spends a majority of her screen time in a gloomy tired mood. She frets continually that nobody is reading her blog, has several meltdowns, feels her marriage strained, and worries that her great effort will not result in the attention she hoped to gain. Meanwhile she makes great food and praises the spirit of Julia Child quite a lot. 

She does accomplish her dream of getting a book deal, which is why we are watching a movie about her, but there is very interesting moment near the end of the film where Julie receives a phone call from a reporter in CA who had asked the real Julia Child of what she thought of Julie’s blog. In short the real Julia Child wasn’t too thrilled about it. We can only imagine why the now deceased Julia didn’t like Julie’s blog (the movie hints that she felt it was “disrespectful”) but perhaps we can guess at it. Could it possibly be that Julie kind of missed the point of the book completely? 

The point I gathered from the Child storyline is that cooking can be a passion akin to any other kind of art form. A person can take up cooking, much like drawing, dancing, or writing, and use it to expand one’s horizons, experiment, and have good fun. And like any other art form it can be used not only for personal fulfillment but also to bring friends and family closer together. (The portrayal of the Child marriage in this film is perhaps one of the happiest I have seen in any movie.) Cooking is perhaps especially adept at this because it provides real physical nourishment and regular intervals in the day to do so. We are especially beholden to Julia for giving us directions on how to use cooking in this way. 

Julie Powell did not use cooking in this way. What she did was perform a stunt in the attempt to intrigue complete strangers at the detriment of her life, her job performance, her marriage’s well being, and the enjoyment of the food itself. Powell was going to write a blog about something anyway. She chose cooking because it was the one thing that she was already good at. And then her purpose wasn’t to learn about French Cuisine or to have fun cooking French food; it was to get a book deal. At one point, it is articulated that the whole thing really is but an exercise in narcissism. I couldn’t agree more. 

Once Julie gets that book deal however everything is forgiven and she is treated as a triumphant hero by the movie. This is a mistake of the movie as much as it is a problem we may have as a society. If she succeeded a book deal then the way she went about it was okay, right? One of the more disturbing things in this movie is how Julie constantly talks of Julia as this incredible role model while having an attitude toward cooking that is at complete odds with her. Julie says things like, “Julia Child changed the world,” and “I was lost until I found the Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” When she is joined for dinner with Amanda Hesser, the food critic at the NY Times, she admits to having regular imaginary conversations with Julia Child in her kitchen. You know, just like they were best friends! As a cook would say she’s really “laying it on thick.” 

Frankly the two cooks couldn’t be more different. What Julia saw in food naturally excited her intellect and curiosity. Julie’s main like about cooking is its consistency. She is comforted by the fact that after a long day at work she can go home add eggs to milk and flour and know that it will thicken. Phew, no hard thinking necessary there. Watching this movie I became aware of something actually quite profound. What I was witnessing was the portrait of two talented people approaching the same subject in two very different ways. One was an artist, the other was a sell-out. Can you tell which is which?

Doubt (4/5 Stars) 12/12/08

Required viewing before you see this movie is the superb documentary 'Deliver Us From Evil.' It is about five years old and concerns itself with a Catholic priest named Father O'Grady who was one of the most notorious pedophiles in the church. He had maybe over a hundred victims. Whenever anybody complained, he was promoted. 

'Doubt' takes place in 1964 about a year after the Kennedy Assassination and during the great 'freshening up' of the Catholic Church. It is important to note though that it was adapted from a 2005 Pulitzer prize winning play. So although it takes place in the sixties, it is very much of today's time. Everything you have heard about priests in the last decade bears down on the edges of this story. But far be it from this movie to only have one Big Issue. It throws in a couple more like the alleged child victim being the first black kid to be desegregated into the school, a conflict between the old Catholic Church and the new one, and an unflattering view of church hierarchy and sexism. The mere fact that this movie can get through two hours without dodging any of the issues and without directly offending everybody is probably the reason it got the Pulitzer. I think it deserved it. (Sort of, I mean if the Pulitzers wanted to be respectable they would start giving out awards to the most substantial art-form in the world right now. Need I say the word 'movies.' If they did that I could give out a list of more deserving titles. But I have no doubt that this would make one hell of a play.) 
Like a play there more talk than walk, but I don't think it will bore anyone without Attention Deficit Disorder. There is a trio of very good performances. Leading the pack is Meryl Streep who always seems to get the best roles. She will definitely get an Oscar Nomination. If she hadn't already won so many they would probably throw the Oscar at her for this one. Her character is one of her best. A very stern, strong, and disciplined nun. The type little kids would fear as they walked to the principals office. But this is no caricature. Streep infuses into the character much to admire. For instance she takes on the parish priest she suspects with very little evidence and absolutely no authority. Love her or hate her, this woman has a lot of guts. If the priest were guilty, and he might be, Sister Aloysious is the type of person you would want around. 
The priest is played righteously by Phillip Seymour Hoffman. I don't care if this guy is innocent, he's still an asshole. He might be really nice to the black kid, but he's a complete jerk to the nuns. He sits in Meryl Streep's chair, he uses his sermons to get back at Amy Adams, he seems to completely disregard the sacrifice the sisters make every day. I've got a problem with the Catholic Church in general and how it treats its woman, and I think this movie makes it quite clear what is wrong. The nuns get up at five am to pray. They eat in silence. The men eat with music playing and laughter in the air. The nuns teach history and discipline the students. The priest teaches gym. The women wear the most constrictive and ugly black cassocks. The men dress in flowing gowns and get the fame of preaching sermons. What makes Meryl Streep's performance so great is that it captures that torn conviction of a true believer who knows that her superiors are not as saintly as she is. She is like many of us, forced into dead end jobs and seeing younger less experienced people rise through the ranks to be the boss. No wonder she is such a bitch. 
Rounding out the trio of great performances is Amy Adams who does a terrible job at not being beautiful. She is the shy type of nun. (Nuns come in two types: shy and mean. Over time the shy become mean.) There is some talk of giving an Oscar Nomination to the mother of the black kid who only has one scene in this movie. I do not understand this sort of thing. Every year the Academy will pull a stunt like this, give a nomination to an old veteran that does a big boo-hoo with a tiny unsubstantial role that nobody will ever remember (Ruby Dee, anyone?). It would be a real travesty if they gave it to this woman because a much better, much more important performance is staring them right in the face. And that is the one by Amy Adams. Her character is important because it is the middle ground between the two fighters. We see most of the story through her eyes. Both Meryl and Philip try to win her to her side. and it is Amy's reaction to them that sways our point of view back and forth between them. 
In the end we are not very sure if it happened or didn't happen. This doesn't make the movie any less suspenseful. In addition to gripping my coat the entire length of the movie I was looking fervently into the corners of the screen to glimpse any extra evidence of what actually went on. Both sides are plausible, both sides are realistic, both can't be right. This movie is not big enough to get serious Oscar treatment, but it should be enough for an acting nomination for Meryl Streep and an Adapted Screenplay Nomination for John Patrick Shanley. The cinematographer is the great Roger Deakins who is perhaps the most unduly snubbed cameraman Hollywood has ever produced. Like all of his movies, this one has a very original, crisp and beautiful look to it. The way it is shot makes us feel the cold winter breezes. I don't know enough about cinematography to justify a prediction but I would say its about time that the Academy started throwing Oscars at Deakins. He's the only cinematographer I know by name and for good reason. (For examples of his work look at No Country for Old Men, Jarhead, A Beautiful Mind, O Brother Where Art Thou, Fargo, and The Shawshank Redemption.)

Charlie Wilson's War 01/19/08

This year we have had a slew of movies about the current situation in the middle east. I have only seen one of them, 'In the Valley of Elah." but there was also 'Redacted, 'Lions for Lambs,' 'Rendition,' and 'The Kite Runner.' All of these movie garnered minor praise and little box office. The Kite Runner being the exception, getting good praise but still no box office. Based on my viewing of 'In The Valley of Elah' I don't think it was because people just didn't want see movies about the war. These movies, made in the midst of the war just weren't that good. They talked in circles and lacked focus. We should keep in mind that the best war movies (Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Saving Private Ryan) were made many years after the war. Those years are required, I think, to give the story much needed clarity. There is something called the fog of war. If we are to produce a great movie about the Iraq war, I believe it won't be coming to theaters any time soon. For that reason 'Charlie Wilson's War' which takes place in the late 1980's is probably the most informative movie about the current war than all the otherwise mentioned movies in this review. It provides a clear background to how the situation got so screwed up in the first place. 

Charlie Wilson's War is about the American response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and by American I mean Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks), a really rich reactionary Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts), and about four guys from the CIA (Headed by Phillip Seymour Hoffman). This small group of people managed to get 1 billion dollars in military aid to the Afghanis via Pakistan, Egypt, and Israel. How they did it constitutes this very detailed and specific movie.

It can be offputting sometimes to recognize that the people portrayed on the movie screen are more intelligent, powerful, richer, and better looking than yourself. Sometimes as I watched this movie I felt out of touch and stupid. Everyone in this movie is at least five to ten times more experienced in everything than I am, they go places I haven't been and they have the balls to do shit I wouldn't imagine. That isn't the movie being egotistical, it's just the story being true to itself. Only extraordinary people could pull this off, and in real life it was pulled off by extraordinary people. Aaron Sorkin, a very gifted screenwriter, does a splendid job of writing a very intelligent and funny script.

Hanks and Roberts are very good as always but Phillip Seymour Hoffman gives the best performance I think. I have seen this guy in numerous films. Each time he's a completely different person. Looking at this movie I am left wondering how many people he has left in him. When you take this role as a gruff CIA officer and compare it with the likes of Capote, or the gay dude in Boogie Nights, or even Brad in The Big Lebowski, it is apparent that Hoffman has extraordinary range. Probably the most out of any actor alive today. 

The last thing I want to commend is the ending of this film that still resonates with me as I write this review. It amazes me that the US would fund a 1 billion dollar war but then wouldn't spare 1 million to rebuild the school system of war ravaged Afghanistan. This oversight of course would lead to the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden and could be said as the direct cause that we are in that country today. Unlike the other war movies this year, Charlie Wilson's War excels because it knows the ending of the tale. Therefore it can give us a moral to the story direct from Charlie himself: "What was done were glorious achievements...and then we fucked up the end game." Another lesson to be learned: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound in cure.