Hail, Caesar! (4/5 Stars)

The new Coen Brothers movie “Hail, Caesar!” is not so much a satire of the big studio soulless entertainment of film’s first half-century as much as it is a celebration of it. After all, the big all encompassing studio has long since been a ripe satirical target. However the type of entertainment it would produce, as if art were something that could be manufactured en masse in a factory, did have its admirable attributes, lots of which are on display in this movie. Here we have five “types” of movies that the producers churned out: a western with trick horse play, a Busby Berkeley dance number, a high society melodrama, sailors tap-dancing a la “On the Town” and finally a biblical epic starring the biggest movie star of them all, Baird Whitlock (played by George Clooney). The Coen Brothers put on fine displays of them all. It is entertaining though it hardly means anything. But if that is all you want in a movie, than this is a very good one. It delivers just that.

Ostensibly the movie is about Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), a producer. He is not the boss of the movie studio (that guy is in New York) but he is the highest-ranking person on the lot. His job is all sorts of things and takes day and night to do it. To over simplify things, he keeps the productions running and the stars (who are full-time employees of the studio) out of trouble. He solves problems. Take for instance the case of DeeAnna Morgan (Scarlett Johannsson) the mermaid in the synchronized swimming number. She is pregnant and unwed. Eddie, conscious of what it looks like to the moral movie-going public of family friendly pictures, helps her as only the representative of a huge corporation could. He plans to keep the pregnancy a secret, hire a professional person (Jonah Hill as Joseph Silverman) to adopt the newborn, and have this person give the child up for adoption back to DeeAnna a few days later. The professional person is just that. Whenever a star does something stupid, he is keen to be framed for the crime. It is let on that he spent six months in jail for a drunk driving incident.

On one of the last days of shooting the big biblical epic "Hail, Caesar" Baird Whitlock is kidnapped from the set. The kidnappers ask for $100,000. Eddie does some math and is content to pay it after realizing it will cost more to delay shooting a week (not to mention the bad press). The kidnappers happen to be a study group of communist screenwriters. They are not so rough on Baird. After slipping him a mickey and spiriting him to an isolated beach house, he is let in on the study group. They calmly and professorially explain Communism to him. He is receptive although that may be only his dim nature.

Mirroring this is the studios treatment of Jesus in “Hail, Caesar” which seems to look a lot like Ben Hur. The studio wants to give the people what they want (Jesus!) but do not want to offend anyone (an opinion on Jesus!). To that end, Eddie invites three priests from three Christian denominations and one rabbi to his office. He shows them the script and asks their opinion. There is nothing to object to as Jesus is seen only once in one scene with his back towards the camera (like “Ben Hur”). Nobody agrees on Jesus but nobody objects to the script because nothing is actually said about Jesus. Hollywood has pulled this fast one from time immemorial and for good reason too. Whenever an artist has something to say (take for instance Scorsese’s “Last Temptation of Christ,”) they are met with protests. Jesus remains hidden from big studio mass-market films to this day. 

Not that the Coens do the communists any favors. It turns out, through a lot of intellectual rigamarole and bandying about, the Communists want the ransom money because they are greedy. That claim it as payback for their services because they have been blackballed but are still working. The fact that they care about money does not bother them. An old venerable man explains that history is a science and that the Communist Revolution will come so it does not matter whether the study group acts selfishly. In fact to act selfishly will hasten the revolution so acting in their self-interest is in furtherance of their cause anyway. I dislike communists and though I have sympathy for anyone who is unfairly kept unemployed (what kind of good capitalist would I be if I were not) I love the fact that Hollywood Communists are being made fun in this movie for their stupid political beliefs. I have seen nothing but tragedies about them so far (thanks a lot McCarthy for turning them into noble sufferrors) so I consider this as a relief on the subject. The only thing worse than letting the Communists write screenplays was not letting them write screenplays. At least that way people could have a demonstration of how dumb is the philosophy.  

But I get carried away. The point of the movie is the studio fun. On great display is Alden Enrenreich (as Hobie Doyle) who is the cowboy of the film. He actually can do all sorts of tricks with a lasso. In fact, on a dinner date he takes a noodle of spaghetti, makes a lasso out of it, and hooks his dates thumb from across the table. Amazing! Now that’s entertainment. Also Channing Tatum does a great tap dancing number as a sailor who is not gay among a bunch of other sailors who are also not gay. The song is called “No Dames” and is about how when they are all at sea together there will be no dames. It is not gay. It is sad. Do not be tricked by the smiles and tap dancing.

Gravity (5/5 Stars)

Gravity is why I love movies. Wow Wow Wow!

“Gravity,” the much-anticipated next feature of Director Alfonso Cuaron (Children of Men, Prisoner of Azkaban, Y Tu Mama Tambien) meets expectations of goodness and powerfully surges past them into the realm of greatness. How great is this movie? I have no idea. And I don’t mean that facetiously. In many areas this movie is beyond the critique of lowly me. After all, how can I judge the technical aspects of a movie when I must admit that I have no idea how the majority of the movie was made? How did they do that? How??? Whatever the next step from Avatar was, this is it. See it in IMAX. See it in 3D. Please see it now while it is still in theaters.

The plot is very simple. Several astronauts are on a space shuttle mission to reservice the Hubble Telescope. On the space walk outside the shuttle are veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) and rookie astronaut Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock). Before anything even happens, the movie is a visual marvel. The view of Earth from space is fully realized. The laws of zero gravity and angular momentum are present in such a real way it makes a mockery of almost every other movie that takes place in space. (A great example is how in regular space movies, spaceships always seem to be stationary while in orbit. In “Gravity,” everything conforms to the reality that everything is moving at a blindingly fast rate around the earth.) It is made fully clear how close to death the astronauts are even before the real danger closes in. There is no air to breath around them. The temperature fluctuates from fatally hot to fatally cold. There is no sound. As we are told in a title before the movie, Life in Space is impossible.

Then disaster does strike. And how. As they are fixing the telescope, the astronauts are informed that a Russians have shot down one of their satellites in an exercise not meant to have any effect on the American mission. Unfortunately the debris from the first explosion hits a different satellite and causes a chain reaction that sends shrapnel towards the Americans. Much worse than that is the fact that the shrapnel is going much faster than the American shuttle or the International Space Station or Chinese Space Station. What this means since nothing in space ever slows down is that after hitting the astronauts a first time, the shrapnel will be back again in 90 minutes having gone all the way around the world and back.

The shrapnel hits the American space shuttle and the Hubble telescopic causing catastrophic damage. You may have seen all the science fiction movies ever made but you have never seen anything like this. Director Alfonso Cuaron continues his career long quest to take advantage of the suspense of real time. What that means is that he likes using long takes. Very long takes. Like the entire shrapnel attack is shown in one continuous shot. I haven’t the slightest idea how this was done. All I know is that someone somewhere was doing some serious physics work in a back room somewhere because everything happens with no movie magic cheating whatsoever. The result is absolutely terrifically horrific.

A long shot needs to be used correctly for the very reason that they are so impressive. Since they require much coordination they draw attention to themselves. Because of this, there needs to be a storytelling reason to use them lest the film literate believe its presence has more to do with the indulgent whims of an egotistical director going ‘look what I can do!’ Here, however, because they are used so frequently and in such a situation where obviously almost everything in the screen is not real (it looks very real but we must know they did not shoot this in space) any obviously indulgent exercises are impossible to find. I could not tell how they did these shots or even when they began or when they ended, so instead I focused on the story, which is what a long shot in the hands of a masterful director should do. In that way the directing truly complemented the movie in the best possible way. I would be absolutely gob-smacked if someone other than Alfonso Cuaron won the Oscar for Best Directing this year. And whatever category is responsible for everything else (Cinematography or Visual Effects or Production Design?) should be locks as well.

It what is a one-man show for most of the movie is Sandra Bullock, who finds herself in the best role of already impressive career. As an incredibly human counterpoint to the absurdly calm-under-immense-pressure presence of George Clooney (an actually realistic portrayal of a veteran astronaut, the astrophysicist Neil Degrasse-Tyson assures us), she provides the audience with the much relatable panic of someone thrown out into the vastness of space all alone. To make matters worse, she is thrown out into space going head over heels in a spin and, of course, as this is space and this movie has done it’s homework, the whole spinning head over heels never stops. Holy Cow. The rest of the movie deals with Dr. Ryan Stone trying to get her shit together under the enormous pressure of imminent death. At the core of the movie is an incredibly human theme of what it means to not quit on life in the worst of circumstances. I’m not giving any more of the plot away suffice to say you may find yourself unconsciously gripping the chairs of the theater seats as if your life depended on it.

Really all that is missing from this movie is a scene at the end where Stone shows up at mission control and everyone applauds. That is the only thing I felt this movie needed by the end: Thunderous applause. 

The Descendants (3/5 Stars)

Good Grief.

 I fear that my recent cycle of poverty is hurting my ability to empathize with the problems of the super rich. And this is something that is brought up right away in director Alexander Payne's new movie "The Descendants." The main character, a man named Matt King, confides to us in voiceover that people think his life is paradise simply because he lives in Hawaii. But he says that he has the same screwed up family problems as anybody else and they hurt all the same. True, this is true, I guess. Matt King's wife has just been in a boating accident and now lies in a coma in the hospital. The doctor tells him that she is not going to make it. His daughters aren't taking it very well. His father-in-law blames him. He finds out that she was having an affair. Screwed up stuff. But Matt King, unlike regular people, is also the descendant of Hawaiian royalty and is the sole trustee of a some of the last pristine area of Hawaiian real estate. When it is sold, it will be sold for many millions. He has a successful law practice and has the ability to send his daughters to private schools. He looks like George Clooney. So the whole wife thing, that sucks, it does. But I figure this guy will do just fine.

There's a fine amount of drama here floating about in vague meandering directions. It turns out that the wife has not been the best of people. So we have several scenes here where people get mad at a lifeless body. In one example, Matt King storms about the hospital room saying rather hurtful things at her. It is a frustrating thing to watch of course because the main impetus for the scene can't respond or defend herself in any way. So we don't really get both sides and don't really know what is going on. It is obvious that it is important though because people are wailing and yelling. But without explanations this feels more weird than dramatic. Perhaps flashbacks would have helped. A good deal of the rest of the movie involves Matt King telling family and friends that his wife will not wake up. It may seem cold of me to say that there were too many of these scenes, but I don't know anything about this person. There is no connection here. Things need to be explained a little bit more. (I have seen a movie which had a scene that worked involving a guy getting mad at his dead wife who had been cheating on him. That was Marlon Brando in "Last Tango in Paris," and it was one of the best and saddest scenes I have ever seen. The parallels in these two scenes make George Clooney's outburst pale in comparison. Watch both of them and compare the acting styles. I prefer Brando's. It is more intimate. It starts off softer. It builds. There is a crescendo of anger with denouement of true sadness. It has a rhythm to it like great music. Clooney is dramatically correct but all over the place.)

The humor in the movie basically consists of Matt King's daughters acting out and him telling them to watch their mouths and not do weird things. Along for the ride is Sid (played by Nick Krause) who says dumb surfer things. I've seen Alexander Payne movies that were much funnier. Something like "Sideways" for instance much more brilliantly blended intelligent drama with true action and true hilarity. We have here a lot of dramatic grief but very little comic relief. Even Shakespeare knew to throw in some ribald jokes here and there. The movie has moments yes, and some rather good scenes where Matt and his daughters track down and confront the guy his wife was having an affair with, but overall the movie lacks that extra nerve or zest that makes a great movie. I will be disappointed if this gets a lot of Oscar Nominations and something like Bridesmaids blanks. A wife in a coma and people crying about it does not automatically a great movie make.

 One more thing, the voiceover this movie employs. It is there for the first fifteen minutes of the movie and then it disappears for the last three fourths of it. Why? Is the narrator no longer speaking to us anymore? Have the rules of the storytelling changed a quarter of the way through the story? There are certain rules about voiceover that should be followed. For one, it should never be used to tell us what is going on. This is generally redundant and often lazy. Two, voiceovers should be consistent. Good examples of this are "Amadeus" which is voiceover via real time confession; "Forrest Gump" which is voiceover via real time storytelling. "Fight Club," which is voiceover via a brain thought process. A master of voiceover is Director Terrance Malick. See his movies "The Thin Red Line," "The New World," and "The Tree of Life." Voiceover there is used as poetry which floats over a scene in meditation. All of these examples have consistent voiceover. They are entwined into the very structure of the story. We know who is speaking and who they are speaking to if they are speaking to anybody. They don't simply cease happening or seem like they are switching from narration to private thoughts and back again. All of these rules are broken in "The Descendants," and then the voiceover disappears entirely. This is shoddy writing and again I hope it does not get nominated for Best Writing. There really is better stuff out there.

 

The Ides of March (3/5 Stars)

Coach Clooney benches his star athlete.

 I remember this coach from my youth. He taught our 8th grade basketball team. His son was the star of the team. The father seemed to go out of his way to limit the son’s playing time or to scold him for subpar performances. Nobody had a harder time on the team than the best player on it. It was almost if the father was going the extra distance to not play favorites and in the end probably hurt the team by shortchanging the best player on it. The director of the “Ides of March,” is none other than George Clooney and and Coach Clooney has cast himself in a very important role, the candidate in a presidential election. However, the movie is not so interested in the candidate. It is more interested in the Machiavellian machinations of the people behind the candidates: their chiefs of staff, played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti, and a young press secretary, played by Ryan Gosling. Now these other actors are very capable, but the story never sticks because the candidate is not put to good use. What did Machiavelli say? The Ends Justify the Means. Now, both campaigns in this story are playing dirty politics. The question should be for which candidate are the dirty tricks justified.  In other words, would Clooney the candidate make a better president than the other guy. Personally, I didn’t really care whether Clooney was elected or not. He exists in the background of the script giving stereotypical liberal platitudes and talking points. His opponent doesn't have more than a couple lines. They are both unformed characters and not up to the task of caring about. In effect, neither is worth what the other characters would do to help or harm them. Who cares what the means are if the ends aren’t justified? Coach Clooney should have given himself a bigger part.

 The story centers on the Ryan Gosling character, a young upcoming press specialist. Whether he is idealistic is not really established as he is very good at his job of saying things and at the same time not saying them. The movie is concerned not with Republicans or Democrats. It is limited only to the Democratic primary in Ohio. In this way, the movie sidesteps real political debate. Since everyone sort of agrees, the focus is on the dirty tricks that will have one candidate gain an advantage over the other. There is a senator who has about 300 pledged delegates in his pocket and is willing to sell them for a choice cabinet position. There is also shock jocks like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity who want to impose Operation Chaos upon Ohio. This is a stunt that urges Republicans to vote for the inferior Democratic candidate in hopes that it will help the democrats during the real presidential election. Finally there is the Paul Giamatti character, the chief of staff for the opposing campaign, who asks young Ryan Gosling for a drink in a bar. Ryan knows he shouldn’t go but does anyway. Giamatti asks Gosling to leave the one campaign and join his. This sets off the main storyline about loyalty and idealism and all those good things that will be shattered by the time the movie ends. Of course none of this should take anyone by surprise. Who looks at politics today or anytime before and doesn’t think of men in backroom smoking cigars and hatching schemes. Well, maybe today they don’t smoke cigars anymore.

 This is all done rather competently, but lately I have found that so many of the dramatic movies I see have been sort of ruined by watching HBO. The political scenes in “The Wire,” are far more detailed and involving than what is seen here. That is the difference between a story of a campaign briefly and competently told in two hours and one brilliantly and comprehensively told in twenty. The “Ides of March” Ohio primary is chump change when compared to the Baltimore politics of “The Wire.” 

Another not so great part of “The Ides of March” is perhaps the obligatory young intern who sleeps with people she shouldn’t be sleeping with. Or is it the other way around and she is a victim. It isn’t very clear the way Evan Rachel Wood, a 24-year-old, plays the teenage character. She looks and acts much more older than she is supposed to. In fact, her relationship with the Ryan Gosling character is mainly comprised of her seducing him not the other way around. When things happen, and something rather dramatic does happen to her at the end, it doesn’t seem like something that would really happen to the strong willed and confident character we've seen for most of the movie. Not that I’m an expert on women or anything.

 Overall the movie is good enough and certainly not crap. You’ve got nice familiar faces doing well jobs with decent material. Is the movie all that memorable? Well, no. You’ve probably seen it before and wouldn’t consider storyline all that shocking or new. Is it probably better than most of everything in theaters right now? Sure, but I think that speaks more to the weakness of this years movies. “Take Shelter” was good. You should see that movie, especially for Halloween.

 

Up in the Air (5/5 Stars) December 25, 2009

To say that ‘Up in the Air’ is a movie “or our times” is selling it short.

Ivan Reitman directs his third film and George Clooney stars as a habitual loner in “Up in the Air.” More than anything, this movie is about the breakup of human relationships. I mention the word ‘human’ because that is how deep this movie goes. It speaks not to a time period, ethnicity, or type of personality. It is about our species.

George Clooney (perhaps the perfect choice as in “real life” he has famously never married) plays a man devoid of most human relationships. His job is to fire other humans from their jobs because their employers are too chicken-shit. This takes him around the country for most of the year. He is on track to become the 7th person ever to achieve 10,000,000 frequent flier miles. On the side, he gives lectures about how ones connections in life are weights upon the soul like a backpack one has to carry around. Up until where this movie starts, I would assume he talked to very little people. The few he would speak to (i.e. the ones he fires) he never gets to see again.

But now! There is some restructuring in the very corporation he works for. His boss (played by Jason Bateman) is impressed by a girl fresh out of college (played by Anna Kendrick) who wants to take the technology of today and revolutionize the business. Instead of firing them face to face like old man Clooney, she wants to do it over the Internet. It will save the company 85% of its travel costs. 

Clooney is forced to take her on the road and show her the ropes. They both see and learn a lot. So do we. I personally love movies that teach me things. Here, I learn all about the perks of being a frequent flier. Clooney has all the high-flying elite cards those people that get around way too often. We get to see inside all the admiral clubs, we get to cut in front of all the lines, we hear all the Airworld terminology, we get to travel first class. 

And while we are at it, we see the faces of people who have just lost their jobs. Ivan Reitman apparently hired real people who lost their jobs in this Great Recession. They get to speak their minds about how they feel. Clooney and Kendrick attempt to give their preconceived condolences. Most of the time it doesn’t work. 

If the movie were only about seeing people getting fired, it would be “about our times.” But it isn’t about just that. It also contains some great stuff about the break up of human relations. Some really thought out scenarios, some profound conversations, and some incredible situations. There’s a girl who follows a boy to Nebraska after college. There’s a groom who gets cold feet before his marriage. And Clooney’s character for maybe a very rare time in his life falls for a woman (Vera Farmiga from The Departed). It ends just the way it should. It is very much the title of the movie.

George Clooney plays a role that perhaps only he can play. He should get a Nomination for his work. Also Anna Kendrick will probably get a nomination for her supporting work. It should be said though that the power of her performance comes mainly from the script. Great parts for women are unfortunately scarce and any very well written part is usually a lock for a nomination. This is one of those. Vera also strikes the perfect notes as well. This is one of those movies where you simply can’t think of anything that could have been done better. 

Are humans relational or not? Do people, partners, and family weigh us down? Or are we more at home flying up in the air? What does it mean to live life to the fullest? Does it involve keeping in motion or settling down? Questions, questions, questions. I will say at least this much, this movie is not realistic in at least one aspect: The truly alienated and completely free people (like Mr. Clooney in this movie is supposed to represent) never get to espouse their views upon other people. They do not give lectures to audiences about the greatness of being alone; instead they talk to themselves and murmur in their sleep. They speak to imaginary people in screenplays. In other words, nobody ever hears about the wonders of being alone. Nobody is there to listen. To wish to be alone is to wish to be forgotten. The ironic thing about this movie is that Clooney has so many people to talk to about being alone. But hey, you wouldn’t have a movie if that weren’t the case. 

I hope not to rant too much about the way our society has crumbled in the last half century. I can only point to statistics (See the book Bowling Alone). In that book it showed that the new baby boomers and subsequent generations were more interested in money and careers as opposed to families and community. This story is perhaps the end result of such priorities. If there is a silver lining to the Great Recession it is that maybe people will realize that corporations are not as worthwhile and welcoming as families and communities. Corporations (and the free market) will throw you out and fire your ass the second it becomes less profitable. Families stick with you through thick and thin. In hard times at least family ties are more valuable than corporate ties. 

This movie should also be nominated for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Director. I have written reviews for all of Ivan Reitman’s movies. He is the only director I can say that about. He has progressed substantially (see my reviews of Thank You for Smoking and Juno) as I hope I have. I look forward to his next one. 

Fantastic Mr. Fox (3/5 Stars) December 23, 2009

How quaint.

Wes Anderson directs this stop motion animated children’s tale based on Roald Dahl’s book Fantastic Mr. Fox. It had been my belief after watching Anderson’s first films like Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and The Royal Tenenbaums, that someday Anderson would make an American masterpiece. Three not so great movies later, this one being the best of them, I have become somewhat disheartened. Wes Anderson may have a unique vision as a director, he may be one of the best art directors out there, but all of his stories lack that certain amount of passion that sets great movies apart from ordinary ones. All of the characters, whether real-life or animated as in this film, walk and talk with great reserve and sophistication. This lends to the movies irony and dry bone wit but it also takes away from the urgency of the problems and the weight of the plot. Actors in his movies walk around like robots and talk in whispers. (The special exception is Jason Schwartzman who can deliver Anderson’s muted lines with such precise intensity that they can sound somewhat purpose-driven.) Making everyone a stop-motion puppet doesn’t really help. What does help is an adapted storyline that involves a lot of guns, bombs, and very bad men. But still, the overall movie is somewhat forgettable. 

It must not take much time and effort from Actors to do an animated film. That must be why so many big names can be attached to a single film. Here we have George Clooney as Mr. Fox, Meryl Streep as Mrs. Fox, and Jason Schwartman as Ash Mr. Fox’s son. Filling in roles that have but a few lines are Willem Defoe and Owen Wilson. Most of these actors lend little to the parts more than their names. For instance this is perhaps the first time in a long time that I saw Meryl Streep perform in a movie and thought, “wow, anyone could do this role just as well as Meryl Streep.”

The idea of stop-motion animation plays to Anderson’s strengths. He has a great knack for filling in the sides of the movie screen with a lot of little details. Here, he recreates an entire world full of mean farmers, fox-holes, and plenty of other locations. He uses the camera a lot of differently than other stop motion animators also (Basically just Tim Burton) He uses much more horizontal pans and other camera moves I don’t know the names of. It’s at least interesting to witness if you are ever aware of that sort of thing.

The music in the film is also fine. I don’t know whatever happened to Mark Mothersbaugh, the great composer for Anderson’s first three films, but wherever he is, he is being missed. Anderson has such a reserved vision that he very much needs composers that are bold, actors (like Schwartzman) who are passionate, and storylines that have a lot of action in them. Here all he has is the adapted screenplay from Dahl. Schwartzman can hardly be used to his potential because he a stop-motion doll, and the composer though okay, has a boy’s choir sing the bad guy’s theme song. Someday Anderson may get all of his ducks in a row, but this isn’t the movie and I am starting to doubt it will be his next either.

Burn After Reading 09/15/08

The problem with this comedy is that it doesn't know where its priorities are. Out of the great ensemble within, there is only one purely comic character. His name is Chad and he's a absentminded gym employee played by Brad Pitt. Unfortunately he is the last character introduced and the first one to leave, prematurely at that. As far as I'm concerned, they should have made that guy the main character. He's profoundly more interesting to watch than anybody else. 
There's a bare bones feel to the entire movie. The plot may be original, and yes I haven't seen anything like it, I'll also concede that it has its moments, but it still isn't anything really special. Clocking in at a long hour and a half and ending arbitrarily (some may say lazily) it lacks any real bite or a fever pitch that usually accompanies your average Coen brothers movie. What this movie is, if anything is a weird footnote in the career's of its very accomplished cast. The Coen's have just won the Oscar for best picture, Swinton has just won an Oscar, Clooney has just been nominated, Brad Pitt is a huge star, and Malkovich and McDormand have always been well respected. Put that together with a supporting cast including the likes of J.K. Simmons and Richard Jenkins plus the great cinematographer Roger Deakins and it's a wonder how this movie could be so forgettable.
There are basically two plots that interweave. One features the misplaced memoirs of Osbourne Cox, an ex-CIA man, that falls into the hands of gym employees (McDormand and Pitt) who try to blackmail him. The other plot line has to do with several extra-marital affairs involving Swinton, Clooney, and McDormand. The first plot is consistently funny. The second is completely vacant of laughter and hangs around taking up space, draining away the life of the movie, and wasting time in general. Swinton may be a good dramatic actress but she is completely lost here, not that the script gives her much help. The largest laugh along this story line comes when Clooney is impressed by the white pine floor of McDormand's apartment. It's a random throwaway line that is funny simply because it has no connection with the scene. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. It often doesn't in this movie. There's a complete lack of jokes in some scenes. The cutesy dialogue may garner a giggle, Clooney may mug and gain a snigger but there simply isn't enough material here. And I don't care who's telling a penis joke, the Coen brothers or Rob Schneider, there needs to be some sort of context to it before it becomes funny. Come on Coen brothers, you're better than that. 

Leatherheads 04/08/08

For about a half hour into this film, the movie was in serious trouble. It looked good, the acting was good, it had cool music. There was nothing technically wrong except for the fact that it wasn't funny. They had some potential humorous characters but a lack of any real jokes. The movie's humor was surviving on a shallow reservoir of Clooney's weird facial expressions. There was alot of talk about screwball football with no rules, but very little of any trick plays or cheating was actually shown. This movie, as a comedy, is incredibly lightweight. It seemed to be written by astute British snobs who like to drink tea while discussing monacles. There's one paticular scene that demonstrates this I think. Clooney is discussing a new teammate who apparently is in high school. Except he looks thirty years old and is approximately 300 pounds heavy. Clooney is asking him questions and gets weird answers. He goes back to think, almost says something, than stops and doesn't say anything. What was he going to say? In a better script, probably something funny. But in this one the writers apparently couldn't think of anything. 
What saves this movie is Renee Zellweger, who is currently number 2 on my favorite actress list. (It has been a war between her and Cate Blanchett for awhile. Renee has slipped simply because Cate is on a fantastic roll of late) Zellweger and Clooney are incredible in their scenes together. The sharp snappy dialogue really pops off the screen. Their romance isn't really interesting, I would rather watch the passive-aggressive fighting. Forming the third wheel is John Krasinki, from the Office, in his first big movie role. He's very good too although his character never receives a fair shake from the script I feel. 
This production is soaking in talent through and through, but its one of those productions that have huge talent working on substandard material. As my broadcast professor would say, "Their polishing a turd." This movies speaks to the truth that the script is the most important thing in a movie production. It needed a rewrite or two and then some new energy infused into or something. This is a mild recommendation.

Michael Clayton 10/14/07

Clooney is broke. Wilkinson is crazy, and Tilda Swinton is so sick she can barely look at herself in the mirror. She stares and attempts to perfect a speech she is about to begin. It's rare to see a woman look so ugly in a movie. Everyone in this movie is on the edge and at least one (Wilkinson) has gone over in a flaming rocket.
Conscience strikes is what happens. A lawyer, that for six years has been defending the incredibly guilty corporation U North because of a poison product, has finally broke down and become reborn. In his best performance to date, Tom Wilkinson plays the manic depressive who has stopped taking his medication and experiences a moment of clarity. He runs down the street naked chasing after a plaintiff he has fallen in love with. But that's just the start, now he's switching sides in a 3 billion dollar lawsuit and all hell is breaking loose with Clooney's Michael Clayton in the middle.
This is one of the best movies I have seen this year. The dialogue is smart and incredibly acted and the story has a certain urgency in it. and more than that, the story has choices. The charachters are presented with choices that are not clear cut and to the viewer look like they could go either way. Sydney Pollack also has a good part here and listen as he talks Michael out of having a change of heart. Great stuff. Also Wilkinson providing advice to Clooney on his mental condition. Fantastic. Or Tilda Swinton feeling the affects of her choices, (This is not a villain who can do horrible things and not flinch). Like I said one of the best movies I've seen this year. Wilkinson should get a nomination at least.

Syriana 12/11/05

This movie was confusing and half the time I didn't know what was going on. Only at about halfway or whatever through the movie did I get some inkling of something. I wish I had gotten more, I wish this because the subject is so interesting. Wouldn't we all want to know something more about the oil business. But this movie never stops to explain. It shows lots of places, lots of people, lots of situations. There's a story about a corporation merger, a dynastic struggle in an Arab nation, the training of a muslim jihadist, a betrayed CIA agent. I wish for once, they would pause the constant setting switches and have two people sit down and have a long talk about what's going on. But again, this never happens. Instead the characters make small talk, nods, and whispers. And that's the reasons why the movie fails. A movie may have all the materials for success, but if the audience doesn't understand what's going and why, they won't become emotionally involved. At some points in the story, I'm sure what was happening was important, but I didn't know why. I was shut out of the story, and if that's what the writer/director has in mind, then I'm not too impressed. (A shame really, it looked like a good movie)

Good Night and Good Luck 11/05/05

Edward R. Murrow was a newsman for CBS during the early fifties when a senator named Josephy McCarthy was trying suspected communists for being communists and convicting them with false testimony and hear say evidence. When most reporters ignored the McCarthy hearings for fear of being suspected, Murrow after a while stood up. He was the first, and that is why this first rate movie was made about him. I found the movie to be in a version like the 1975 film "All the President's Men," mostly because it skirted melodrama, and was about men in smoke-filled rooms working and talking seriously for a change. There is a tension in the air, but that is because of the seriousness of the situation. Nothing is exploited for gratuitous value, even McCarthy himself is shown as himself, pasted from Newsreels shown at the time. A movie like this is rare, because most studios today don't think that the American attention span is long enough to focus on something seriously for more than an hour and a half. If this movie becomes popular it will be of much help to us all. It will prove that Americans are willing to pay to hear a serious discussion, and if producers can catch that idea than maybe instead of the shouting debates that we now have on the 24-hour news networks, we may get lengthy and educating debates that actually look into the issues instead of just glancing at them. In a paraphrase of Murrow, this may be wrong, but what harm can it do. In the opinion of this critic, I hope we get more enlightening movies like these made. We as a people can help this by making them profitable to make. That's all. Good Night, and Good Luck.