Tag: Mark Ruffalo

Spotlight

Thomas McCarthy’s film retells how the Boston Globe uncovered the Catholic Church sexual molestation scandal.

Spotlight Poster“Spotlight” may be the only journalism movie actually about journalism. “All the President’s Men”, this film’s closest companion, is about seeing in the dark and finding the needle in the haystack. “Ace in the Hole” is about escaping a trap through sketchy ethics and deceit. “Sweet Smell of Success” is about power achieved through words, wit and gossip. “Citizen Kane”? Well, that’s about a lot of things.

Thomas McCarthy’s film is not a thriller, a caper, a neo-noir or a melodrama. It does not have an ominous villain, a series of disturbing threats as the conspiracy unravels, or any suspense set pieces. Like “All the President’s Men”, “Spotlight” is a movie of hunches, discovery, research and hard work. The film embodies the philosophy of slow journalism, and it endlessly piles and escalates its stakes until finally both the journalists and us have a real story. A good journalist knows there’s always a follow-up to be had, there’s always more questions to be asked, more digging, and “Spotlight” just keeps going.

McCarthy’s film is the story of how the Boston Globe uncovered a series of child molestation cases among Boston priests, a revelation that eventually stretched far beyond Boston and all the way to the Vatican. The Spotlight team that uncovered the scandal started under the prodding of their new editor-in-chief, the stoic and emotionless Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber). A priest was accused of molestation, and there’s a suggestion that Boston’s Cardinal Law may have known about it, leading the paper to sue the church and try and find the deeper story.

Michael Keaton plays Spotlight’s editor Walter “Robby” Robinson, and when we first meet him he’s giving a goodbye speech to a retiring editor just before Baron has arrived. “What the hell do you know,” he asks jokingly. These guys can smell a story, and as his team (played by Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams and Brian d’Arcy James) starts to ask questions, their obstacles are not only those who want to keep quiet, but their colleagues who are professionals, who have been around and know that many of these angles have already been done.

McCarthy’s screenplay along with Josh Singer (“The Fifth Estate”) is so perceptive to the journalism industry. These characters have persistence, they listen, and they constantly clarify. One of their sources even barks at them, “Why do you keep repeating everything I say?” And when they reveal their initial findings to senior editor Ben Bradlee Jr. (John Slattery), he reacts in the same straight-faced enthusiasm the audience is thinking: “90 fucking priests?”

And yet “Spotlight” is so sharp and tense because it avoids the bastions of many journalism films. “Truth”, starring Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford is currently in theaters, and “Spotlight” never even utters the word. It doesn’t try and position journalists as noble men and women exposing corruption and scandal; they’re just doing their job. Only occasionally do they allow moral high ground to take over and remind themselves that kids are being raped, but time and again they withhold reporting until the full story is told. When all is said and done, Baron congratulates them with the praise, “A story like this is why we do this, but we have to get back to work.”

McCarthy is more interested in the subtle ways this investigation gnaws away at these characters’ psychology. “Spotlight” is a film as much about losing faith in religion and belief as it is uncovering the truth. McAdams’s Sacha Pfieffer can’t look her church-going aunt in the eye the same way. James’s Matt Carroll has a priest living a block away. And Keaton’s Robinson ultimately takes the weight of the lives at stake onto his own shoulders.

Such complexity in characters is essential for an ensemble piece like this, and “Spotlight” has a stellar one. Mark Ruffalo is relentless and enthusiastic in the part, but he’s calm and likeable when doing his job, and we can feel the stress he’s exerting when he finally lets loose in a rage. Keaton is a mile away from the bigness of his “Birdman” work but feels right at home, modest and reserved but with a rumbling and subtle Boston accent that makes him feel like a local and a veteran. Schreiber is the biggest surprise, monotone to the point that he can’t be read. He withholds his words and hints that he’s harboring a vendetta against the church, but Schreiber’s work is too good for us to peer inside that vault.

“Spotlight” is all soft shades of blues and tight, carefully constructed static shots that give the film a docu-realistic, testimonial quality. Unlike the dark, even surreal flavor of “All the President’s Men”, “Spotlight” is neutral in both its themes and its aesthetics.

The sting of the Catholic sexual molestation scandal has dissipated since the story first broke. “Spotlight” and its shocking credits stinger will surely reignite that attention. But “Spotlight” is a journalistic film about objectivity. There are still questions to be asked and work to be done.

4 stars

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Marvel’s latest blockbuster is a mess too beholden to plot threads of the MCU, and James Spader’s great Ultron can’t save it.

AvengersPosterMarvel has been branding their Cinematic Universe in such a way that each subsequent film teases the next, and all seem to be building to something. “Avengers: Age of Ultron” should be that moment, but it doesn’t feel like the culmination of all that’s come before. Worse, it doesn’t even feel like an “Avengers” movie.

With 2011’s “The Avengers”, director Joss Whedon did successfully juggle the many characters who showed up in Marvel’s “Phase One”, and he seemed to wink at the camera while doing so, allowing these big personalities to clash and poke fun in a way that returned the color, fun and originality to what had become an increasingly dense, plot driven series.

“Age of Ultron” doesn’t allow its characters to grapple with a major story as a team. It’s a super mess full of forced backstories and plot threads to past and future movies. Black Widow and Bruce Banner are given an unlikely and unexpected tortured romance while trying to battle their demons. Iron Man hints at fracturing from the team as he will in “Captain America: Civil War”, but feels half-baked and underdeveloped here. Thor disappears from the team to fulfill a nonsensical side plot in a Nordic cave. Hawkeye suddenly has family melodrama on a reclusive farm that slows the film to a halt. And new additions are given neither the screen time nor the emotional heft to truly make an impact.

If Marvel isn’t building to this and still hasn’t arrived at their best, what are we waiting for?

In the film’s opening shot, Whedon weaves through the forest of a fictional Russian-esque country as the Avengers stage an attack on a compound. It’s an unbroken take (achieved through digital trickery) that unnaturally circles the area in an effort to showcase each hero one by one as they deal with some baddies, all before catching them all lunging forward at once in a poster-ready screen grab. It’s emblematic of how “Age of Ultron” both looks and feels, in which Whedon is really just showing off. Some of these elaborate, but not stylish shots only remind how much is going on.

Like the camera, the plot also fails to stay fixated in one place. Upon reaching the compound, they retrieve Loki’s scepter. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) plan to research it in an attempt to create a brilliant form of artificial intelligence that can provide peace on Earth somehow. They inadvertently succeed but manage to create Ultron (voiced by James Spader), a highly intelligent program that in no time flat deduces that the only way to achieve peace is to eliminate The Avengers and evolve mankind through extinction.

Ultron brings to the film possibly Marvel’s first actual theme and message, and he proves to be arguably the best super villain Marvel has dreamed up. He repeatedly sings “I’ve Got No Strings” from “Pinocchio” to show he’s not one of Iron Man’s puppets, and his principled ideas about the evolution of intelligent life resound with the weight of countless sci-fi films before it. “Age of Ultron’s” ideas about AI and the folly of man may not be profound, but delivered with Spader’s quick, dry, ironic tone, it’s convincing.

But as for making a convincing narrative and objective for Ultron, Whedon is far less successful. As a villain, Ultron is convenient. He exists in the Internet! He’s unstoppable, and always one step ahead. So when his plan is revealed to make a tangible version of himself, it seems like a step in the wrong evolutionary direction. But even that plan fizzles out to make way for yet another new character, and the resulting final battle is The Avengers taking on thousands of disposable metal baddies. The action sequences feel like a rehash of not just the chaotic spectacle at the end of “The Avengers”, but of “Iron Man 3” for how many Stark-powered enemies they’re forced to bring down.

Whedon has more luck with a battle between Iron Man and a hypnotized Hulk in a crowded city. It isolates the action on two figures and smashes things up real good. Yet it too blends in with the chaos at the Russian compound, then in the African warehouse, then in the Russian city. Marvel seems unable to stage a compelling set piece that doesn’t involve a million moving parts in a busy area.

These scenes are so unmemorable because they lack suspense. They’re hugely bloodless and without any of the dark edges of Christopher Nolan’s or Zack Snyder’s superhero attempts. Marvel also doesn’t see the need to make us care for these characters again, as they’ve already done so in previous films. But it’s easy to forget what makes Tony Stark heroic and likeable in the first place, not least of which because he’s been separated from the brilliant, charming chemistry he has with Pepper Potts (the movie makes a quick, cheap concession to explain why Gwyneth Paltrow and Natalie Portman are missing).

When the action does settle down, Whedon brings his trademark smarm to the party, particularly in a scene where all the Avengers try to lift Thor’s (Chris Hemsworth) hammer and find themselves unworthy. These characters have shades and nuance, but under Whedon’s dialogue they all seem like the same cocky adventurers with a quick act of wordplay here and a too-clever high-brow pop culture reference the next.

But Whedon has interesting things to work with, and you wish Marvel would withhold flashbacks of Black Widow’s (Scarlett Johansson) assassin up-bringing for her own movie and condense the two hour, 20 minute run time of this one. Johansson is arguably the standout of this franchise, and her interactions with Ruffalo are the closest Marvel has gotten to making Hulk’s werewolf curse understandable and believable.

“Age of Ultron” isn’t a movie though; it’s seven movies, and none of them stick. Marvel has to quit making teases for their next Big Thing and make that movie today.

2 ½ stars

Foxcatcher

Steve Carell’s chilling performance as John Du Pont anchor the great work of Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo.

The characters of “Foxcatcher” act as a somewhat grotesque portrait of America. Channing Tatum plays a hulking, brutish mass who is really just a lost puppy looking to please. Mark Ruffalo plays a compassionate, tender and measured leader for which things don’t go as planned. And Steve Carell, in a villainous, sinister turn, is transformed into a wealthy, privileged and cold man of delusion.

That director Bennett Miller (“Capote”, “Moneyball”) has packaged them all into a tense, skin crawling thriller and sports movie says something about how rooted American culture is in these institutions. Continue reading “Foxcatcher”

Begin Again

Keira Knightley and Mark Ruffalo feel real in this charming musical drama by director John Carney.

The mini-miracle of 2007’s hit musical “Once” was perhaps not so much of a surprise after all. Director John Carney took well-established Irish rock stars from the band The Frames (himself a former member) and made a simple movie without much of a plot and with much of Glen Hansard’s already classic music front and center.

But the fact that the movie had great music was really only half the battle. Everything about “Once” seemed cobbled together on the fly. Its look was a rough, documentary realism style and the dialogue was so bare bones it may as well have been improvised. And above all, the chemistry and romance between its two stars, Hansard and Marketa Irglova, felt genuine in both its journey and its outcome.

John Carney’s latest film “Begin Again” seems inspired by that makeshift attitude. It’s a story about working with what you’ve got and simply letting the magic happen. This time around, Carney is working with A-list actors, a pop-rock superstar and a budget that must dwarf what he had on “Once”. Yet when we see Keira Knightley singing into pantyhose with a wire inside or Maroon 5’s Adam Levine playing ping-pong, he’s found the magic again by making it feel real. Continue reading “Begin Again”

Margaret

Kenneth Lonergan’s “Margaret” has the same emotional resonance and poetic understanding of a post 9/11 New York City as Spike Lee’s “25th Hour.” Yet unlike Lee’s intensely literal depiction of race and omnipresent anxieties in the tragedy’s immediate aftermath, “Margaret’s” virtues are contained within deep, complex metaphors that engulf Lonergan’s stirring character drama.

Meant to be released over five years ago but delayed due to legal battles between Lonergan and distributor Fox Searchlight Pictures over the film’s final cut (the edit I watched is the shortened, 2 ½ hour version edited by Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker, but the extended Director’s Cut exists on the DVD), “Margaret” is a flawed masterpiece.

This version’s editing is a mishmash of vignettes, arguments and moments out of time all surrounding one teenage girl. The movie’s length, the web of subplots and the film’s rich cast and numerous characters for me paint a lush portrait of a whole city full of grief, regrets and anxieties. If it seems to never approach a rational ending, what could sum up this new mentality we’ve lived with for 11 years now?

“Margaret’s” central character is Lisa Cohen (Anna Paquin), a smugly confident high school student giving off an attitude that she knows just how phony she is. On the street one day, she distracts a bus driver (Mark Ruffalo), causing him to run a red light and hit a pedestrian named Monica (Allison Janney). Lisa cradles her in her last moments and feels devastated. But fearing the bus driver will be in trouble for something she caused, Lisa lies to the police and claims it was an accident free of negligence.

But this is just in the film’s first 15 minutes. For the next two-plus hours, Lisa will go through life trying to find closure and solace in battling her parents, losing her virginity, arguing with classmates and pursuing a lawsuit against the bus driver. Continue reading “Margaret”

The Avengers

“This intergalactic energy cube ain’t big enough for the six of us,” “The Avengers” says with a forceful tone as it struggles to conceal a smile.

Joss Whedon’s superhero movie equivalent to The Travelling Wilburys fully knows how impossible it is to squeeze all of these massive folklore figures into one film. So when the whole serious side starts to cave and just gets silly, Whedon is there with a zinger to run with the moment.

“The Avengers” is a fun and smart movie in doses, one that surprises and dazzles when it isn’t talking your head off. Continue reading “The Avengers”

The Kids Are All Right

How long has it been since I’ve seen a “real” movie? “The Kids Are All Right” is as real as they come, being warm, funny, charming and smart all without an air of cynicism. The film’s characters are well-developed individuals, not predictable character types, portrayed through brilliant performances. It may sound ridiculous but there’s really nothing like it.

Director and co-screenwriter Lisa Cholodenko has created a story with miraculously authentic and normal people. It’s depressing that such a word like “normal” or “average” can sound so foreign when compared against the crop of summer blockbusters, clichéd rom-coms and gritty thrillers.

I cringe to tell you anything more about the characters other than they each have problems, flaws, passions, motivations and interests, but it’s the profile of a unconventional family of Nic (Annette Bening), Jules (Julianne Moore) and their two teenage kids, Laser (Josh Hutcherson) and Joni (Mia Wasikowska). The parents are a lesbian couple that have each given birth through the same sperm donor, and the kids, one heading off to college and the other a few years behind, decide they would like to meet their biological father, Paul (Mark Ruffalo). He becomes a sort of special friend and confidant who will create a few bumps on the road in the parents’ mid-life crises, the daughter’s coming of age as a young adult and the son’s discovery of another male figure in his life.

I could get into more specifics, but to do so would only diminish the natural quality and authenticity of these characters. It’s like attempting to describe what makes one of your best friends funny, amiable or flawed using only your words. Any description shy of an essay would be too broad and too typecast to actually capture the full range of individuality your friend has. Cholodenko’s film manages to sketch out those individuals perfectly through nothing more than sheer observation and experience.

It’s a real gift, because to diminish these fully invested performances with a flat script or bland character development would be a sin. Mark Ruffalo’s Paul is probably the finest example of this. Paul is a laid back, organic food grower and restaurant owner who dropped out of school, is just a little full of himself and is an instant charmer. But watch Ruffalo smile and struggle his way through some charmingly awkward moments in the screenplay and just try and say he is merely one of those things. His character is so much more, and we can sense why he has a hard time describing himself to his kids, why Nic has a hard time explaining her reasons for not warming to him and why Jules is drawn to sleep with him against all odds of her sexuality.

That last conflict I described embodies the running theme of lesbian relationships throughout the film, but again, to label it as a “lesbian movie” would be inappropriate. “The Kids Are All Right” respects us as intelligent enough to know that these marital problems have nothing to do with sexuality in general, but nor does it forget that such a couple is somewhat unique. And the chemistry of Bening and Moore makes it impossible to forget such a crucial fact.

But even the kids are treated as adults. Surely after 18 years of living with two mothers, young Joni would stop feeling insecure about the lack of a conventional family. Seeing his best friend wrestling with his dad may inspire Laser’s call to Paul, but he too is above the concern that would likely be a theme in a more conservative Hollywood film.

“The Kids Are All Right” is such an easy movie to love. It has funny and clever dialogue that never feels phony, and that is even truer of the characters. Like Nic, Jules, Paul, Joni and Laser, Cholodenko’s film is the perfect indie that’s one of a kind.

4 stars