Shattered Glass

Watching “Shattered Glass” makes me reconsider the importance I gave to all of my heated discussions in the newsroom. Here is a movie that treats human interest story telling with starry-eyed fascination and yet is so sympathetic and tepid without ever boiling down to the real story at stake.

The story of Stephen Glass (Hayden Christensen) is well known by me and any of my peers who have taken a journalistic ethics course in the last 10 years. Glass was a young reporter for The New Republic, a Washington D.C. based political mag with a distribution that included Air Force One, who in 1998 was found to have either partially or fully fabricated more than half of the 40 magazine features he wrote. He had for some time duped his editors by showing only his hand-written notes as evidence for fact checking. But when a small online tech magazine stumbled across a story he did on a hacker infiltrating a major software company, it was revealed that the company, the people, the locations and all the details had been complete fiction. To cover his tracks, he created phony business cards and websites and even had his brother pose as a source.

Glass’s story is more interesting than the movie is. Not only has “Shattered Glass” managed to horribly date itself in less than a decade, it goes about portraying Glass all wrong. Continue reading “Shattered Glass”

The Messenger

Death is never by the book. In “The Messenger,” two soldiers delivering the news to parents and wives that their relative has been killed in action overseas do all they can to lessen the blow, but no news of this nature ever goes according to plan.

This job then is as tough as anything in the field. It requires massive conviction and strength under pressure. But as one commander says, this job is a more important way of serving your country, because doing this is holy.

The two up for the job are Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) and Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson), Stone a veteran showing Montgomery the ropes. No hugging, no added sympathy, no lingering, no sunglasses and no doorbells. The Yankee Doodle jingle followed by a death telegram is not a great way to start one’s day, Stone explains.

But Director Oren Moverman does not envy or glorify their job for one moment. As they hit home after home and break the hard news, there’s an unexpected complication and reaction behind each door. One family learns what has happened to their son before the soldiers say a word. One father nearly beats his daughter when he learns she “married that dirtbag after all,” and then is instantly crushed to hear the bad news. Another man lashes out in anger at Montgomery and Stone, saying, “Why aren’t you dead?”

These sequences are so devastating and unpredictable that you could make a separate movie about each family as soon as Montgomery and Stone walk out the door. Their episodic nature feel as intense and isolated as the war sequences in “The Hurt Locker,” and the psychological ramifications have the emotional impact of the firings in “Up in the Air.” Continue reading “The Messenger”

The Royal Tenenbaums

Wes Anderson doesn’t make deliberately quirky indie comedies or inscrutable art house films. He makes fantasies. “The Royal Tenenbaums” is just the story of a dysfunctional family, not an epic voyage to the bottom of the sea or the tale of an adventurous talking fox, and yet it feels as wonderfully strange and exotic as any of those.

That’s because just about every Wes Anderson film ever made is the most wholly Wes Anderson-y movie you’ve ever seen. His style drips over every moment in his framing, his tone and his quirky imagination. “The Royal Tenenbaums” more than any of Anderson’s films perhaps is like visual poetry in the way the film’s offbeat dialogue punctuates his quick cuts.

His shots are exploding with wild imagery. None of it is natural or has a purpose; it is merely beautiful to look at. One room has two giant murals on the wall featuring tigers and hunters, and another room reveals the head of a giant stuffed badger to be mounted on the wall. Continue reading “The Royal Tenenbaums”

Rapid Response: Babe: Pig in the City

My relative Pat Graham’s capsule review in the Chicago Reader in 1998 for “Babe: Pig in the City” is elegant, bizarre and wonderfully written. He described it to me as a sort of faux-poetry, an alternative approach to reviewing a distinctly alternative film. You can read his whole review here.

And yet Pat said it best to me in person what George Miller’s movie is about. “You watch it, and the film says, Look at this! Look at this! Look at THIS,” he said pointing in every which direction.

I watched it, and sure enough I said, “What’s that? What’s that! What’s THAT?!”

“Babe: Pig in the City” is about as surreal a children’s film as you will ever see. It’s absurd, madcap and overwhelming, and yet the film has an operatic, poetic quality about it that doesn’t fit in the slightest.

The resulting film is a beautiful disaster. It’s colorful, yet cold and disconcerting. It’s chaotic, but not a predictable, boring maelstrom of action. It’s teeming with animals all with dopey dubbed lips, and yet there are so damn many of them that you watch in awe of how much effort this must’ve taken. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Babe: Pig in the City”

Rapid Response: Notorious (1946)

“Notorious” is Alfred Hitchcock testing his limits as a story teller and evolving a new approach to suspense.

Notorious

I must sound like a broken record whenever I write about an Alfred Hitchcock movie and say it’s one of his best. “Notorious” took me two viewings to realize its greatness, and now I see it as a sharp-nosed film that combines romance and espionage on a razor thin blade. This isn’t like “To Catch a Thief,” where the only draw is the romance between Cary Grant and Grace Kelly and it happens to have a good suspense story and great cinematography worked in.

No, “Notorious” uses its romance as the driving force behind the spy thriller. Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman) is enlisted by the American government to infiltrate the home of the German smuggler Alexander Sebastian (Claude Rains). However, Alicia is in love with her American contact, known only as Devlin (Cary Grant). Because Alexander suspects their infatuation, Alexander forces her to prove her loyalty to him through marriage. Because all three characters are emotionally involved and complex, we care little about the ramifications of Alexander’s misdeeds but how the events of the plot will affect their tortured love triangle.

It’s a romantic and yet gripping and even surreal film. “Notorious” is Hitchcock testing his limits as a story teller, a director capable of cinematic bravado and an artist evolving a new approach to suspense. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Notorious (1946)”

The Up Documentaries

From left to right, Bruce, John, Peter, Andrew, Jackie, Lynn, Tony, Neil, Charles, Sue, Simon, Paul, Suzy and Nick at 21

If The Up Series of documentaries are the greatest documentaries ever made, it is because it is the finest document of life ever recorded on film.

Every seven years since 1963, Director Michael Apted has done little more than check in on a group of 14 people. He’s been at it since they were 7 years old, and now in 2012, they are 56 and the latest chapter of the series has just finished airing on ITV in England.

Apted has asked about their hopes, dreams, loves, marriages, children, politics, ideologies, jobs and families. He asks about life.

His questions are short and simple, always delivered calmly and with resolve, and yet they require some soul searching in these people every seven years. Their answers arouse memories and emotions. Through their responses in each film, we are given the opportunity to draw comparisons. We can see the child they were and the adult they have become.

No documentary has ever been this ambitious. It is likely no team of filmmakers ever will again, although there have been copycats of this series from around the globe.

But the real beauty is that these are ordinary individuals. They are as true to life as you and me. At the age of seven, they did not choose this spotlight, and some have abandoned it altogether. They were chosen because they were people, and life, above all, is something that deserves to be documented, viewed and cherished.

Below are the stories and developments behind all seven films, excluding the most recent, which has not yet been released in America.

Seven Up!

“Give me a child until the age of 7, and I will show you the man.” Continue reading “The Up Documentaries”

Rapid Response: Dazed and Confused

I have fond memories of the long evenings as a freshman driving or walking around with nothing to do, looking for a party and a cup of beer so we could continue to stand around at that party with nothing to do, that is until we left and continued looking to do nothing.

The cult high school stoner comedy “Dazed and Confused” is just that; it’s a film about feeling out of place, feeling drunk, feeling adventurous, feeling awkward, feeling anxious and yet feeling loved. Some would say that just about sums up the complete high school experience, and Richard Linklater does it in one night.

“I did the best I could while I was stuck in this place,” says one character near the end of the film, which is about all you can ask of a teenager, and possibly all you can ask of a teen comedy. It follows a group of incoming freshman students and incumbent seniors in the twilight hours after their last day of school. The year is 1976, the only shirt with writing on it says Adidas, the drive-in is playing Hitchcock’s “Family Plot,” every kid’s bedroom has a “Dark Side of the Moon” poster on the wall, and Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane” is playing in the night club. Those were the days. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Dazed and Confused”

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

When John Madden assembles the cast of “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” in a line as they wait at the airport, he’s only Helen Mirren away from having gathered all of British acting royalty. He’s smart then to not place them in a dopey, dreck filled romantic comedy about octogenarians living it up in India.

“Marigold Hotel” is the best kind of coming-of-age, fish-out-of-water story: one that doesn’t create a bunch of embarrassing, sitcom-y stunts and one that doesn’t turn the whole movie into a travelogue. Continue reading “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”

Rapid Response: Heaven Can Wait (1943)

As Henry van Cleve reaches the end of his life in “Heaven Can Wait,” his dream of swimming through a sea of whiskey and soda with a blonde bombshell leaves a smile on your face and yet a tear in your eye as he shares this bittersweet moment with us.

Andrew Sarris wrote that this quality was true of all Ernst Lubitsch’s films, saying, “A poignant sadness infiltrates the director’s gayest moments, and it is this counterpoint. between sadness and gaiety that represents the Lubitsch touch.” Continue reading “Rapid Response: Heaven Can Wait (1943)”

Rapid Response: Boogie Nights

Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Boogie Nights” is a hilarious movie about sexuality while also being an interesting take on a genre picture.

When Hollywood struggles because YouTube thrives, so does the porn industry suffer as anyone can film themselves having sex. Not every porn star can be Sasha Grey and find work with Steven Soderbergh.

Strangely enough then, Paul Thomas Anderson’s breakout film “Boogie Nights” has renewed significance. It’s the story of the rise and fall of Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg) as the veteran porn stars struggle to stay hard and horny as video tapes take movies out of the XXX theaters.

“Boogie Nights” isn’t really about porn, it’s just more open about its sexuality. (“Jack says you have a great big cock. Can I see it?”) The one-off joke is that this coming-of-age story of stardom and struggle is just the same even with a grindhouse quality filter. Anderson’s whole goal is not to make a genre picture but to make an art house movie that looks and feels like a genre picture. He did much the same thing with romantic comedies in “Punch-Drunk Love.” And it’s the reason why in “Boogie Nights’s” second half, the whole story seems to go off the rails when it becomes so drenched in painful and melodramatic self parody. The end belongs to another movie, and PTA finally acknowledges that shift with a 13-inch nod to “Raging Bull.”

Anderson wonderfully mixes style and kitsch here. The film has a vitality in its disco score that permeates the campy, referential ’70s vibe and carries through to the more depressing moments all bathed in jaded melodrama and cynicism.

His camera moves in ways that don’t intrinsically make sense, but they draw your eyes and your mind. Watch the camera crop out Burt Reynolds’s character to show Julianne Moore staring admiringly at the young, nervous Dirk. He doesn’t return the glance even though the camera does the same for him, and this is not necessarily a clue to her motherly infatuation with Dirk. But we’re captivated by the moment. The camera itself is alluring and sexy.

The early moments of the film are also plain funny as hell. Wahlberg was overshadowed by Burt Reynolds’s Oscar nominated performance (he turns into a sort of George Lucas of porn, and he’s capable of conveying a vision of porn that is simultaneously idealistic and perverse), but it’s refreshing to see Wahlberg when he was still the young Marky Mark posing for Calvin Klein. He’s been typecast in so many tough guy roles lately that it’s impossible to imagine him playing anyone like Dirk anymore.

John C. Reiley and Philip Seymour Hoffman are also riots. Hoffman especially is playing off type as an overweight, closeted gay man with an attraction to Dirk. As for Reiley, the camera stays put and lets him work. His best moment is when he asks Dirk how much he can squat, only to up Dirk’s ante by an absurd 150 pounds.

In the way you could argue we don’t have movie stars like Cary Grant and John Wayne anymore, we don’t really have porn stars like Dirk Diggler anymore. And for that matter, we don’t have other directors in America making movies the way Paul Thomas Anderson does anymore.