State of Play

STATE OF PLAY is a political thriller, a journalism thriller. It begins with two deaths, which lead to more deaths, which lead to two reporters racing against time to uncover the byzantine twists of a story which isn’t what it seems even after they’ve realized that it isn’t what it seems. It’s a good story, well told, with sophistication and surprises; and it makes Washington as exciting as it seemed when I first moved here.

Russell Crowe, who Can Do No Wrong, and Rachel McAdams play reporters from the fictional Washington Globe. He’s an old school, ink-stained bastard of the highest order, and she, well, she writes the blog. Helen Mirren is their publisher, Jeff Daniels is the Minority Whip, and Ben Affleck and Robin Wright Penn are a straying congressman and the wife who stands beside him at the Press Conference of Shame. Why bother telling you this? Because these are high caliber performers, the kind who merit putting a film on the rental queue for their names alone. There are some weaker performances farther down the credits list, but don’t let them pull you out of the story.

For that matter, don’t let the story pull you out of the story. Early on, you may think it’s just another jeremiad against the political punching bag of the day. But give it time. Let a surprising Jason Bateman performance work on you, and see where things go. I think you’ll be pleased.

I understand that STATE OF PLAY is an adaptation of a BBC series with Bill Nighy and Kelly MacDonald, among others, so I’ll end with a question: have you seen it? Should I?

A Dirty Shame

A DIRTY SHAME is a comedy, I think. It isn’t funny, which kind of works against it, but it is outlandish. So if outlandish is your thing, there you are.

It’s a sex addiction farce that centers on sexual practices in which, to the best of my knowledge, no one engages. The sexual practices are supposed to be outlandishly funny, but they’re actually just ridiculous. There are some practices in the film in which people actually engage, but they’re handled with such wide-eyed wonder that it seems like the picture was made by people who’d only read about sex in books. This is the kind of sex comedy an early adolescent may find amusing because he or she doesn’t know any better.

Yes, there’s a heavyhanded lesson about tolerance and, yes, the film does have a sweet, sweet heart, but it failed to pass the first test of the comedy. It failed to bring so much as a smile to my lips.

Maybe next time, Mr. Waters.

The Aura

THE AURA is about a guy, a simple guy, kind of a sap, who gets in way over his head. There’s a girl, of course, and guns, and money. Lots of money.

In other words, it’s a noir picture. It’s also Argentine, which is pretty cool since that makes it the first Argentine noir picture I’ve ever seen. The sap is sufficiently sappish, the girl is sufficiently girlish, and so forth, and the whole thing really catches fire in the last 45 minutes. Problem is, it’s a two hour long picture. Act One takes forever and Act Two takes nearly as long. Act Three, that last 45 minutes, is solid, but even it could have been a bit shorter. Here’s a movie that has all the elements it needs but that could have benefitted from one more, supertight, edit.

It’s that edit that keeps this film from excellence and renders it, instead, to the vault of pretty-goodness. Still, if you like noir, and you’re interested in seeing an Argentine take on the genre, THE AURA ain’t bad.

Words and Music

"Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Rodgers and Hart Songbook" is the soundtrack of heaven. I discovered it in the CD collection of a girl I was dating in 1989. I married the girl and, twenty years later, we still have the CD. So when I heard that there was a Rodgers and Hart biopic and that it was pretty doggone good, into the queue it went. I wanted to learn about these guys and their music.

I learned that the music is good, but it’s really the performer who makes it live.

WORDS AND MUSIC follows the Rodgers and Hart career arc, but it's more a retrospective, with moments of story serving mostly to segue between performances by distinguished artists of the day. But here's the problem: in the hands of wrong people, R&H's music goes from smart and sly classics to dated pop. Lena Horne is great and all, but her rendition of “Lady is a Tramp” in the film just can’t stand up to Ella’s on disc. June Allyson’s “Thou Swell” is a wet noodle compared to Nat King Cole’s in “Live at the Sands.” And don’t even get me started on comparisons with Sinatra.

Don’t get me wrong: the movie’s ok, particularly if you’re interested in even a fictionalized biopic of Rodgers and Hart. It’s just that nearly every time someone sang, I found myself comparing the performance with that of a better artist. All things considered, I prefer to remember Rodgers and Hart with the help of Fitzgerald and Cole and Sinatra, not the folks behind this picture.