Argo

Argo is funny and gripping and altogether successful.

Ben Affleck directed and starred in the thriller, a (reasonably) true story about the spiriting of six American diplomats out of Iran in the wake of the 1979 revolution.  It seems like the man hasn't taken a misstep since Hollywoodland, and his is becoming a name I increasingly associate with quality filmmaking.  With Argo, he assembles a top-notch cast and production team, hands them a solid screenplay, and polishes their work with the collaboration of editor William Goldenberg.

But wait - how can a movie about getting six Americans out of Iran be funny?  It's all in the writing.  While Argo is a thriller first, Screenwriter Chris Terrio wrote snappy, sharp dialogue for its Hollywood-based characters.  A cast including Alan Arkin and John Goodman bring that dialogue to life, and Affleck and editor Goldenberg make it pop with perfectly arranged compositions, perfectly timed reaction shots, and a sense of momentum that allows levity while keeping the audience keyed in on the seriousness of the situation [Side note: Goldenberg won the 2013 Academy Award for editing for his work on Argo.  Learning stuff like that while conducting basic research is part of the fun of writing this blog.].

That editing is also what makes the movie gripping.  How do you make watching a phone ring interesting?  By cutting footage of a lonesome phone in an empty room with footage of the man making the call, of the men racing to answer to the call, and the people whose lives depend on the outcome of that call.  Argo is filled with this kind of stuff, taking the mundane aspects of the operation at hand and lending them urgency through top-notch editing.

In short, Argo is a testament to the value of craft, to polishing a script and casting the right people and getting the hair and makeup just so and editing the footage with a perfect blade.  The result?  Another winner for Ben Affleck.  May he bring us many more.

The Town

Brilliant writer and great guy Les Phillips has allowed me to run his review of The Town.  Enjoy.

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THE TOWN (2010, directed by Ben Affleck).  Ben Affleck has become a really excellent director of action.  I don't mean asteroids 'n' scary monsters; I mean his presentations of robberies, gunfights and car chases make them new, with special rhythms and angles.  They look and feel like nothing you've seen.  And Ben loves Boston (and Cambridge).  His footage of the city is special too; the camera lingers on the geometry of the downtown skyline, or it pauses for a second to revere the Bunker Hill Monument, or observe something as small and particular as the toll booth on the Tobin Bridge.  Affleck films a robbery and getaway in the North End, one of the oldest neighborhoods in America, and somehow he fits all the energy and violence into its tight old streets and alleys.  Those sequences are both engineering and filmmaking; it's impressive film art.  The director proved with his first film how well he understands poor white Boston; he "gets" the sociology of Charlestown perfectly.  And, of course, he's Ben Affleck, so they let him film at Fenway Park.

THE TOWN has some absolutely wonderful performances.  Rebecca Hall is superb.  She plays a bank manager, one of the random young professionals who've moved into Charlestown's gentrified sector, in the neighborhood but certainly not of it.  She falls in love with a bank robber -- that would be Doug MacRay, played by Ben Affleck. Why would she fall for a criminal from the 'hood?  Hall makes it more than plausible; we see a refined young woman who's also more than a bit lonely, carrying around some incompleteness that's waiting for somebody to come along.  Pete Postlewhaite is a florist who also happens to be the local crime lord, and he is the most menacing, purely evil florist in all of recorded history; he's a quiet, suggestive Irish serpent.  Jeremy Renner is an utterly convincing Boston boyo, vigorous and vulgar.  Blake Lively has the druggy-slutty girl role, and she makes the most out of her minutes on screen; she's brash, wounded and sorrowful.  I haven't even gotten around to Jon Hamm and Chris Cooper, who are just as fine.  This cast is a tremendous embarrassment of riches, and Affleck makes the most of them.

So there are great visual moments, many fine pieces of acting, many fine scenes.  What's missing from THE TOWN?  A screenplay good enough to weave all this humanity into a persuasive narrative, and deep enough to highlight the moral resonance that's only touched on.  There are several little speeches where characters tell their backstories -- how Doug MacRay lost his mother, how his sidekick has always searched for a family.  But all of these speeches are thin, cliche, sentimental.  THE TOWN announces itself as a story about a community where crime is the dominant art and craft, handed down through generations; about mere theft that escalates into a series of murderous rampages; but there's no moral urgency, no gravity.  When all is said and done, this is a story about some bank robbers.  Also missing:  the central performance that could anchor the film.  Doug McRay is Charlestown's representative man; he's got to embody all the pain and conflict of the cursed reluctant criminal, acting out his fate.  Affleck spends much of his screen time reacting, furrowing his brow, speaking the lines; he's not awful, but he never finds the character.  He's occupying space that needs a great performance.  Affleck can be a fine actor, but he doesn't deliver here.

Ah, but Affleck the director!  GONE, BABY, GONE was a pleasant surprise.  THE TOWN is much more than that; this is a director with real vision and imagination, first-rate talent with actors.  THE TOWN is not quite Affleck's breakthrough, but the next film might well be.

He's Just Not That Into You

Look , I get that HE’S JUST NOT INTO YOU was not made with me in mind. I didn’t expect to see any stuff get blown up real good, nor did I expect to see anyone kick anyone else in the face. But I sat down for it anyway: a friend recommended it, and I like to tell myself that I don’t believe in guy movies and chick movies, but only good movies and bad movies.

This movie begins with a “girl talk” voiceover about the nature of relationships that effectively announced that not only was it not made with me in mind, but it was made with a mind to specifically exclude members of my gender and orientation. This movie was just not that into me.

And that’s ok. I’ve been out with my wife and sat drinking my coffee while she talks with her female friends or relatives. I get that things don’t need to cater to my tastes to have value. But while HE’S JUST NOT INTO YOU is professionally written, photographed, and acted, it’s an intellectually dishonest film that spends 7/8 of its running time advocating for a world view that it abandons when it’s time to put smiles on faces before the closing credits.

I can forgive a film many flaws, but that kind of dishonesty is not among them. HE’S JUST NOT INTO YOU is a liar. Don’t get into it.

Smokin' Aces

Y'know what I liked best about the structure of SMOKIN' ACES? It finished act one during the opening credits, spent about ten minutes going through act two, then used the rest of the movie to give us one long third act. From the beginning of that third act, it's non-stop jokes, gunshots, and chain saws. What's not to like?

SMOKIN' ACES reminds me of SNATCH in that it isn't so much about story as execution. This movie tries to dazzle us with playful, snappy and memorable characters, and general quirkiness. Overall, it succeeds, though I agree that the film could have done without its twist and the ending is a bit of a letdown. Had I seen this one in a theater, I would have been disappointed. As a time-filler during a long overwater flight, it was just the thing.

Hollywoodland

Jim Beaver wrote this review of HOLLYWOODLAND for the IMDB. I liked it so much I asked his permission to reprint it here, and he graciously agreed.
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As someone who has spent a number of years preparing the definitive biography of actor George Reeves, I approached this film with great trepidation. I had previously turned down several offers for the film rights to my own book because I felt it unlikely that those projects would result in a film truthful to the essence of the man I had come to know so well. All I can say is that the makers of "Hollywoodland" came as close as is humanly possible in the real world of movie-making to achieving exactly what I would have hoped for -- an examination of George Reeves's life and death that is true to the times he lived in,
true to the kind of man I found him to be, and as true as possible to the most likely scenarios that have been projected to explain his death. While this is not a biography nor a documentary, and while adhering to each and every fact of Reeves's life would have resulted in a film exactly as long as his life, the artists here have done a powerful and affecting job of telling Reeves's story, and have framed it in a fictional setting that illuminates rather than obscures the truth. In any event, in any life, there is what happened and then there is the truth, and the two may not always equally serve our understanding of the event or life in question. It is true that "Hollywoodland" takes occasional liberties with specific facts, in no less way than Shakespeare took liberties with the real life facts of Hamlet or Julius Caesar. But as Alfred Hitchcock said, drama is life with the dull bits left out. What matters is not whether a costume is the right shade of blue or whether there's really a gas station at the intersection of Sunset and Benedict Canyon. What matters is whether the essence of a true story has been faithfully told. And "Hollywoodland" does a superb job of portraying that essence, who George Reeves was, what his world was like, and what impact he had on those who knew him and those who only knew of him. Allen Coulter, the director, has done a splendid job capturing the era and has paid enormous attention both to period detail and to the details of the lives of the real-life characters. Only Reeves's fans (and not even many of them) will notice the pinkie ring on Ben Affleck's finger or the widow's peak in his hairline or the exotic Alvis auto he owns, yet these are all completely authentic to the actual Reeves. More importantly, Coulter has done an exemplary job of making Reeves into a human being, one whose dreams we ache for almost as much as he does in the story.

Adrien Brody, as the fictional detective whose story provides the audience a window into Reeves's life, is solid and manages to bring a little charisma to the comparative low-life he plays. Diane Lane is superb as Reeves's lover, the sexually hungry but aging Toni Mannix. And Ben Affleck does certainly his best dramatic work ever as George Reeves. In makeup, and with his own matching cleft chin, Affleck sometimes looks astonishing like the real Reeves. But more importantly, he captures the haunted quality of the actor on a treadmill to oblivion, as well as the immense charm for which the real Reeves is widely remembered in Hollywood. Although the script does not give any of the actors the kind of deeply meaty scenes that win Oscars, some of the hardest work to do is for an actor to excel in scenes that don't require fireworks. Affleck in particular does so in this film, and I think it does him credit. He is reported to have researched the role intensely, and it shows. The performances of Larry Cedar, Bob Hoskins, and Lois Smith also stand out especially distinctively.

The cinematography is stunning, with the frequent flashbacks clearly distinguishable from the "present day" scenes without the distinction being glaring or even obvious. And the musical score is elegant and very evocative of the time.

It is perhaps inevitable that die-hard Superman fans, for whom George Reeves is not so much a human being as he is a sort of superhero himself, will find things to carp and cavil about in this film. As a researcher with over thirty years of in-depth study of Reeves's life, I can split hairs over details pretty easily myself. And I suspect, too, that some of the complaints will be about the depiction of things that are actually true, but which don't show Reeves in a worshipful light. All I can say is that I have spent my adult life studying, admiring, and trying to understand the man whose story this film tells, and I think George Reeves would be touched and proud of the care these filmmakers have taken. I highly recommend "Hollywoodland."

Changing Lanes

Oh, how I hated CHANGING LANES.

CHANGING LANES is a morality tale about how small choices can add up to big choices and about the consequences of breaking the social compact. Consequently, it operated at a profound disadvantage: Morality tales are hard to do. The best morality tales handle their themes obliquely, trusting their audiences to divine their themes and understanding that "a-ha" moments reinforce those themes far better than any speech can, but CHANGING LANES doesn't have that kind of faith in itself or its viewers. The film has all the subtlety of a water skiing squirrel - what you see is precisely what you get.

Here's the setup: Ben Affleck is a successful lawyer. Samuel L. Jackson is a loser trying to get his life back together. They have a fender-bender, and Affleck writes Jackson a blank check and speeds off, leaving an important document behind. This makes Jackson late for a court appointment, and he exacts his revenge by later withholding the document. Affleck reacts, Jackson reacts, Affleck reacts some more, etc., and before we know it we're watching a double helix downward spiral.

Now, if you like watching downward spirals, you might enjoy this movie. If, however, watching one man have everything that matters stripped from him while the other kinda regrets his actions is your idea of a good time, knock yourself out. Personally, I found this movie so depressing, so painful to watch, that it left me wondering why anyone would create such a horrible experience, then actually put it out there for the world to see.

I only finished this movie because I was watching it with a valued friend who loves it. It's easily the most miserable time I've had this month.

Hollywoodland

HOLLYWOODLAND redeems Ben Affleck's career.

Here's a guy who started out strong, then went downhill fast. From the unwatchable ARMAGEDDON to the criminally bad DAREDEVIL, Affleck's career had gotten so far away from the promise of GOOD WILL HUNTING that, frankly, his name on a marquee had become a reason to avoid a movie. And so I planned to avoid HOLLYWOODLAND, regardless of the involvement of such luminaries as Diane Lane and Bob Hoskins. At least, I planned to avoid it until I read the critical reaction to the movie.

HOLLYWOODLAND is two movies: one excellent, one mediocre. The mediocre one, a noirish detective picture featuring Adrien Brody investigating the apparent suicide of one George Reeves, serves to inform and access the excellent film, the one about Reeves himself. Affleck portrays Reeve with a combination of bravado, resignation, and desperation that's touching, sad, and altogether sympathetic. I felt for this guy, rooted for this guy, bled for this guy. I never thought an Affleck performance could make me feel that way.

Here's the deal: George Reeves got lucky early with a respectable supporting role in GONE WITH THE WIND. He couldn't build on that role and get his career rolling, and the movie introduces him at a lousy table in a first-class nightclub, trying to get noticed by the directors and studio heads who could give him a break. He does get noticed, but by a one Mrs. Mannix, played by Diane Lane. He and Mrs. Mannix fall for each other, which might even help the earnest George: Mr. Mannix (Bob Hoskins) is a studio head, which means Mrs. Mannix might be able to land George a job.

She does, but it's about the most loathsome job the ambitious young actor could hope for: a career-defining (and killing) role as Superman in a wildly popular children's television show. Reeves gamely tries to play the hero, but he knows that he's a long way from GWTW, and he can't get over the disappointment.

And that's not even the heartbreaking part. Because when that gig ends and he's been thoroughly typecast, where does he have to go? The answer, and the black-and-white reel in which we see him give it his best shot, just plain broke my heart.

So, there it is. I forgive you for DAREDEVIL, Ben. Now get back out there and show us what you can really do.

Clerks 2

CLERKS 2 felt like Kevin Smith just gave up and said, "Screw it. I'll give the people what they want." It's only differences from the original are that it's filmed in color and it isn't quite as funny.

You know the setup: the titular clerks are now fast-food workers who, you know, have antics. The get in trouble. They crack wise. They have a touching moment of heartfelt conversation and clarity.

The movie's funny, periodically, but there's something stale about it. It's like watching a catskills comedian who simply doesn't get that the world has moved on - you may laugh from time to time, but you mostly feel sorry for it.

What a bummer.

Jersey Girl

I liked JERSEY GIRL.

I shouldn't have. In fact, I should have hated it on principle. As near as I can tell, movies are made by some of the most ambitious, industrious, focused people on earth. In a business as cutthroat as the film industry, it takes extraordinary dedication to rise to the top. That's why it irks me when films say, "Hey, settle for second best - it's ok. The important thing is spending time with your family." Much as I may agree with the message, the fact that the messengers are a bunch of 14-hr-day espresso junkies strikes me as hypocritical, at best.

Ok, rant over. Back to the movie. Kevin Smith writes movies that are huge with the college demographic. He's big on drug and sex jokes, and he has a flair for the ridiculous. With 'Jersey Girl', he turns his back on that demographic, writing a story that comes from where he is today: a young father trying to juggle the competing demands of work and family. JERSEY GIRL is a more mature piece (well, it has fewer dick and fart jokes), and it's generally successful. Sure, it has some glaring flaws, such as George Carlin's entire performance, an extended rehash of the old "diapers are nasty" comedy formula, and a soundtrack that interferes with the film, rather than reinforce it. Nevertheless, it has a certain sweetness to it, Smith's dialogue is always a pleasure to hear, and it manages to erase the bad taste Liv Tyler has left in my mouth ever since ONE NIGHT AT MCCOOL'S. JERSEY GIRL may not have worked with the college demographic, but it worked for me.