Tuesday, May 06, 2008
IFFB 2008: Triangle and Severed Ways
At some point in any festival, unless you're made of sterner stuff than I, you're probably going to hit the wall. There's just a point where the running between theaters (whether in the same building or in three neighboring cities), waiting in line, going through the rigamarole of getting a full house crammed into the room, and sitting through movies which demand a bit more than the usual matinee fare becomes tiring, and you maybe can't write an honest review because there's a very good chance that you napped through fifteen or twenty minutes.
For Triangle, I'm placing the blame solidly on my decision to go home, eat something marginally closer to a balanced meal than Cherry Coke and Twizzlers, and watch the Red Sox postgame show in the time between the Q&A for Turn the River in Somerville and the start of Triangle in Brookline. I must have fooled my body into thinking I was done for the day, when, no, there was still an hour and a half of Hong Kong action to go. For Severed Ways (where I don't think I missed much important), there's still being tired from not getting home until two-thirty-ish, rushing to Somerville, and winding up in a seat so far toward the front that you have to lean back to see the picture, way closer than digital projection was meant to be seen.
I spent the next couple hours really wishing I had waited a bit and gone to see the jump-rope movie instead. People need to be warned about this turd. (Note that the review for Severed Ways contains coarser language than usual - not my usual, but it's the best words for the job.)
Speaking of projection, I must confess that by the time Triangle showed, I was starting to get a little cranky about the first "F" in "IFFB" being kind of inaccurate; I think the opening night showing of Transsiberian was the only thing I saw on actual film rather than digital video up to that point. It kind of surprised me when Triangle wound up not being digital. Apparently the American movies with people in attendence couldn't get a print shipped, but the one from Hong Kong could. It just doesn't figure.
Tie Saam Gok (Triangle)
N/A (out of four)
Seen 26 April 2008 at the Coolidge Corner Theater #1 (Independent Film Festival of Boston After Dark)
I hope to get a chance to see Triangle again sometime soon, because the idea behind it is a lot of fun - getting three big-name action-adventure directors to make one film, handing the reins off to each other, allowing them to change styles to do what they do best... Well, that sounds like a lot of fun, and from the way the credits are arranged, it looks like each director had his own writers, too, and I know that's a lot of fun.
The story starts out as looking like a crime movie, as three down on their luck men are recruited for what initially looks like a robbery but either becomes a treasure hunt or was one all along (my subtitle comprehension does kind of go to heck after midnight). There's complications, of course, with one of the trio's wife having an affair with a corrupt cop who appears to be in on everything.
As it turns out, I think I missed the entire middle segment. I saw most of the set-up which led to the robbery, which is good, gritty crime; it could have been either Ringo Lam or Johnnie To. Then I missed the middle act, picking up for the end, which is much more a caper bit, as the getaway cars break down outside the city, the wife starts acting weird (she may just have one heck of a concussion), and there's a bunch of identical-looking bags, one containing rare coins, one smuggled guns, the other someone's dinner that keep getting mixed up. I'm pretty sure this leg is directed by Tsui Hark, if only because he's the one I most associate with being funny.
Taken on its own, that last act is a lot of goofy fun, but it might not play so well put together with two other acts that I assume are being played more or less straight. Hopefully I'll get a chance to find out soon; Magnolia's "Magnet" label seems to be putting it out sometime later this year.
Of course, they're also listed as distributor for...
Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America
* ¼ (out of four)
Seen 27 April 2008 at the Somerville Theater #5 (Independent Film Festival of Boston)
Believe it or not, Severed Ways was one of the movies I was initially fairly excited about when the IFFB announced their roster of films. How many Viking movies do you get at the typical independent film festival, after all, and the fact that it wasn't banished to the "After Dark" segment of the program held out hope that it might be pretty good. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a miserable enough experience that I would have happily traded Vikings for the documentary about competitive jump-roping next door if I could have.
The text at the beginning sounds enticing - it sets up the backstory from the Vinland Sagas, telling us of a group of Norsemen who by 1007 AD had made a settlement in what is now Canada sending a further expedition south, only to be beset by "Skraelings" (the Abenaki) and driven back home. Two scouts, Orn (Tony Stone) and Volnard (Fiore Tedesco) were left behind and must survive off the land while they try to make their way back north, with hundreds of miles of wilderness, natives, and Christian missionaries between them and their goal.
I wonder if I might have enjoyed this movie a little more had it appeared at the Underground Film Festival rather than the Independent Film Festival. It would seem to fit there better; Severed Ways is very much a backyard film, which Tony Stone shot in Vermont and at Viking ruins in Newfoundland. Stone does practically everything, writing, directing, producing, and editing as well as starring in the picture. Costumes and props do look like they were made in his basement - probably more true to life than something from an elaborate Hollywood production, but still feeling like stuff they cobbled together out of what was lying around. It also feels a little underpopulated, as homemade movies tend to be.
Still, seeing it in a context where I'm more inclined to be generous would not have made it a good movie. Even discounting the question of what those Catholic missionaries are doing in the New World something like five hundred years too early, Stone makes a lot of decisions that maybe seemed to make sense at the time but don't quite work. The heavy metal soundtrack is a good idea, but actually showing Orn headbanging is weird. The actors speak in Greenlandic, apparently the closest thing going to ancient Norse, but it sounds stilted, and the subtitles are in idiomatic twenty-first century English ("we're toast if we stay here!"), further breaking the spell. The overblown chapter titles don't help, either - the small act of mayhem that follows the proclamation of "Conquest" is laughable.
A lot of that can be overcome, but Stone loses his audience pretty decisively early on. There are certain on-screen images you have to earn, and actual shit coming out of your ass is one of them. There was a palpable wave of revulsion that went through the audience at that, and smaller ones when Orn/Stone killed and dressed chickens and fish on-screen, and as much as you can try to defend that by saying it has documentary value, it just feels gratuitous, and no matter how much merit the rest of the film might have, there's no getting over that the audience just doesn't want any part of it any more.
That sort of thing throws the rest of the movie's faults into greater relief. Severed Ways runs nearly two hours but it's generally a slow, introspective 110 minutes, and the audience feels trapped by a performer who mistakenly thinks that every minute detail of his character's actions is just that fascinating. Stone isn't a good enough actor to pull it off, though, and the way he cavorts on screen makes the film seem like a sustained act of egotism. Which is too bad, because there is material for an interesting film here - the idea of being lost that far from home is powerful, as is Volnard's spiritual growth from encountering the Christian monks.
Maybe Stone is a guy to watch, even if his ambition greatly outstrips his resources and skill right now. Someday after working with and learning from the right people, he could become a decent filmmaker. In the meantime, though, I can't think of any good reason for someone to actually watch this movie.
Also on EFC.
(0) comments
For Triangle, I'm placing the blame solidly on my decision to go home, eat something marginally closer to a balanced meal than Cherry Coke and Twizzlers, and watch the Red Sox postgame show in the time between the Q&A for Turn the River in Somerville and the start of Triangle in Brookline. I must have fooled my body into thinking I was done for the day, when, no, there was still an hour and a half of Hong Kong action to go. For Severed Ways (where I don't think I missed much important), there's still being tired from not getting home until two-thirty-ish, rushing to Somerville, and winding up in a seat so far toward the front that you have to lean back to see the picture, way closer than digital projection was meant to be seen.
I spent the next couple hours really wishing I had waited a bit and gone to see the jump-rope movie instead. People need to be warned about this turd. (Note that the review for Severed Ways contains coarser language than usual - not my usual, but it's the best words for the job.)
Speaking of projection, I must confess that by the time Triangle showed, I was starting to get a little cranky about the first "F" in "IFFB" being kind of inaccurate; I think the opening night showing of Transsiberian was the only thing I saw on actual film rather than digital video up to that point. It kind of surprised me when Triangle wound up not being digital. Apparently the American movies with people in attendence couldn't get a print shipped, but the one from Hong Kong could. It just doesn't figure.
Tie Saam Gok (Triangle)
N/A (out of four)
Seen 26 April 2008 at the Coolidge Corner Theater #1 (Independent Film Festival of Boston After Dark)
I hope to get a chance to see Triangle again sometime soon, because the idea behind it is a lot of fun - getting three big-name action-adventure directors to make one film, handing the reins off to each other, allowing them to change styles to do what they do best... Well, that sounds like a lot of fun, and from the way the credits are arranged, it looks like each director had his own writers, too, and I know that's a lot of fun.
The story starts out as looking like a crime movie, as three down on their luck men are recruited for what initially looks like a robbery but either becomes a treasure hunt or was one all along (my subtitle comprehension does kind of go to heck after midnight). There's complications, of course, with one of the trio's wife having an affair with a corrupt cop who appears to be in on everything.
As it turns out, I think I missed the entire middle segment. I saw most of the set-up which led to the robbery, which is good, gritty crime; it could have been either Ringo Lam or Johnnie To. Then I missed the middle act, picking up for the end, which is much more a caper bit, as the getaway cars break down outside the city, the wife starts acting weird (she may just have one heck of a concussion), and there's a bunch of identical-looking bags, one containing rare coins, one smuggled guns, the other someone's dinner that keep getting mixed up. I'm pretty sure this leg is directed by Tsui Hark, if only because he's the one I most associate with being funny.
Taken on its own, that last act is a lot of goofy fun, but it might not play so well put together with two other acts that I assume are being played more or less straight. Hopefully I'll get a chance to find out soon; Magnolia's "Magnet" label seems to be putting it out sometime later this year.
Of course, they're also listed as distributor for...
Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America
* ¼ (out of four)
Seen 27 April 2008 at the Somerville Theater #5 (Independent Film Festival of Boston)
Believe it or not, Severed Ways was one of the movies I was initially fairly excited about when the IFFB announced their roster of films. How many Viking movies do you get at the typical independent film festival, after all, and the fact that it wasn't banished to the "After Dark" segment of the program held out hope that it might be pretty good. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a miserable enough experience that I would have happily traded Vikings for the documentary about competitive jump-roping next door if I could have.
The text at the beginning sounds enticing - it sets up the backstory from the Vinland Sagas, telling us of a group of Norsemen who by 1007 AD had made a settlement in what is now Canada sending a further expedition south, only to be beset by "Skraelings" (the Abenaki) and driven back home. Two scouts, Orn (Tony Stone) and Volnard (Fiore Tedesco) were left behind and must survive off the land while they try to make their way back north, with hundreds of miles of wilderness, natives, and Christian missionaries between them and their goal.
I wonder if I might have enjoyed this movie a little more had it appeared at the Underground Film Festival rather than the Independent Film Festival. It would seem to fit there better; Severed Ways is very much a backyard film, which Tony Stone shot in Vermont and at Viking ruins in Newfoundland. Stone does practically everything, writing, directing, producing, and editing as well as starring in the picture. Costumes and props do look like they were made in his basement - probably more true to life than something from an elaborate Hollywood production, but still feeling like stuff they cobbled together out of what was lying around. It also feels a little underpopulated, as homemade movies tend to be.
Still, seeing it in a context where I'm more inclined to be generous would not have made it a good movie. Even discounting the question of what those Catholic missionaries are doing in the New World something like five hundred years too early, Stone makes a lot of decisions that maybe seemed to make sense at the time but don't quite work. The heavy metal soundtrack is a good idea, but actually showing Orn headbanging is weird. The actors speak in Greenlandic, apparently the closest thing going to ancient Norse, but it sounds stilted, and the subtitles are in idiomatic twenty-first century English ("we're toast if we stay here!"), further breaking the spell. The overblown chapter titles don't help, either - the small act of mayhem that follows the proclamation of "Conquest" is laughable.
A lot of that can be overcome, but Stone loses his audience pretty decisively early on. There are certain on-screen images you have to earn, and actual shit coming out of your ass is one of them. There was a palpable wave of revulsion that went through the audience at that, and smaller ones when Orn/Stone killed and dressed chickens and fish on-screen, and as much as you can try to defend that by saying it has documentary value, it just feels gratuitous, and no matter how much merit the rest of the film might have, there's no getting over that the audience just doesn't want any part of it any more.
That sort of thing throws the rest of the movie's faults into greater relief. Severed Ways runs nearly two hours but it's generally a slow, introspective 110 minutes, and the audience feels trapped by a performer who mistakenly thinks that every minute detail of his character's actions is just that fascinating. Stone isn't a good enough actor to pull it off, though, and the way he cavorts on screen makes the film seem like a sustained act of egotism. Which is too bad, because there is material for an interesting film here - the idea of being lost that far from home is powerful, as is Volnard's spiritual growth from encountering the Christian monks.
Maybe Stone is a guy to watch, even if his ambition greatly outstrips his resources and skill right now. Someday after working with and learning from the right people, he could become a decent filmmaker. In the meantime, though, I can't think of any good reason for someone to actually watch this movie.
Also on EFC.
Labels: action, crap, drama, history, Hong Kong, IFFB, independent, Independent Film Festival of Boston, indiefilmcafe, USA
(0) comments
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
There Will Be Blood
I stay for the credits of a movie. It annoys people sometimes - the people I've come with, the people who just want to clean the theater before letting people in for the next show, the people trying to get out who have to climb over me. Heck, it annoys me, when I'm held prisoner by this force of habit but know it could be the difference between getting home and waiting twenty minutes in the cold, rain, and/or snow for the next bus.
It's useful, though. $8.50 for a matinee seems a little less unreasonable when you see the sheer mass of people required to make even a small, bad movie. And it gives you a couple minutes more where you're not necessarily in the movie's world, but at least in its orbit. You don't yet have to take your mind off of the story and characters and focus it on parking or the MBTA or what you're doing next.
You can just process what you've just seen, which is especially helpful with a movie like There Will Be Blood, whose ending is both abrupt and perfect. Leave right as the credits start to roll, and you might be thinking "well, that was pretty good, until it went off the rails at the end." Take a couple minutes, and you might decide it needed to go off the rails.
Oh, and pick up your garbage afterwards. It's not like it takes that much effort.
There Will Be Blood
* * * * (out of four)
Seen 5 January 2008 at Cooldge Corner Theater #1 (first-run)
It's the music in There Will Be Blood that gets me first, even before Daniel Day-Lewis's fantastic performance. Jonny Greenwood's score is something of a blunt instrument, using practically subsonic bass to underscore the ever-present darkness in the main character's soul and frequent crashes to suggest the labor used to feed the man's greed. Not subtle, but effective.
As the movie starts, the music is carrying a lot of the load, as Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) is prospecting alone and not one to waste words when there's no-one there to hear them. He could perhaps use a partner, as the process leaves him injured and near dead by the time he strikes oil. He builds up a small company, but allows no-one close to him until a worker dies, leaving behind a baby that Daniel takes as his own. He calls the boy H.W., and ten years later is introducing H.W. as his partner and son. H.W. (Dillon Freasier) is there when Paul Sunday (Paul Dano) sells them the location of a field with oil seeping right through the surface. The owner of that field, Paul's father Abel (David Willis), has another son, Eli (Dano again), a preacher who wants more than money from Daniel. The Plainviews do strike oil, but it comes at a terrible price. Word of Daniel's success also attracts a ne'er-do-well brother (Kevin J. O'Connor) who he hasn't had contact with in years.
Daniel Day-Lewis doesn't show his face on a movie set for anything less than a fantastic, award-worthy part these days, and Plainview is a corker. He's a beast, of course, displaying a cold ruthlessness in his business dealings and a practiced formality in his dealings with others until the time comes for his rage to break through. He's self-aware without winking at the audience, and Day-Lewis not only delivers lines about how Plainview hates most people instinctively in a way that's matter-of-fact but not confessional; he's not ashamed of it, just canny enough to realize that it's detrimental to let most people know this. Day-Lewis takes this confession to heart, and it's part of almost every scene he plays - he's either holding back his disdain or loosening the reigns on his anger.
And yet, despite all that, Day-Lewis and filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson give us a character who is captivating beyond being a monster. I suspect even people far more religious than I will find themselves surreptitiously cheering Plainview as he deals with the hypocrisy and greed of his bible-thumping neighbor: There's a sequence where Eli impresses upon Plainview how the community might appreciate it if Eli delivered a dedication when the town's first rig was opened, and Plainview finds a way to deliver him a lesson in humility. He enjoys it too much, and it likely makes him an enemy for life, but it's hard not to share some of his satisfaction. His relationship with H.W. is also fascinating; there's ample suggestion that the boy is just a way to humanize Daniel to prospective partners, and it's clear that Daniel doesn't really know how to love H.W. as a father should, but there is still his own flawed way.
Naturally, being Daniel Plainview's son will make a kid a bit odd, and Dillon Freasier does a pretty fantastic job of capturing that without making H.W. into something not recognizable as a human child like many other child actors might. There's unconditional love there, but he's also unconsciously absorbed the father's habit of not wearing one's heart on one's sleeve. The other noteworthy performance is Paul Dano, who makes Eli something of a cipher of his own - is he a devout man who is corrupted by pride and envy, or someone who sees the church as the only thing that can build him up to Daniel's level in the community? He makes a fantastic antagonist for Daniel, unctuous piousness contrasted with honest greed and hate.
Anderson uses every tool at his disposal to bring us into this dark place. The sky is never anything but overcast; the whole world of the film is a muddy brown. He contrasts the great wooden derricks Plainview builds (more impressive than the later steel variety, because they combine inhuman sclae with comprehensible technique) with the almost ostentatious modesty of having him sleep on the floor. As much as this is very much a character piece, it's also grand. The length of the film and the wideness of the screen allows Plainview to isolate himself. The music, which I've mentioned, is relentlessly foreboding. Even after we've seen some of the nastiest expressions of human nature, it holds out the promise of worse, right up to the last sequence.
And that end... It's masterful, but not right away. Quite frankly, it initially seems like Anderson has lost his marbles, nastily throwing out many of the shades of gray he'd so carefully built, and in a way that makes it seem like he's treating the whole thing as a joke. After a bit, though, it becomes a thing of beauty: This is a movie about drilling for oil, after all, and what is that but building and digging in hopes that a gusher of the blackest material imaginable will come spewing out? It's been held in a long time, but now it's going to explode faster than we're ready for.
That's a kind of greatness - after two and a half hours, I thought I'd seen it all, but there was still something I wasn't prepared for.
Also at eFilmCritic, along with six other reviews
(0) comments
It's useful, though. $8.50 for a matinee seems a little less unreasonable when you see the sheer mass of people required to make even a small, bad movie. And it gives you a couple minutes more where you're not necessarily in the movie's world, but at least in its orbit. You don't yet have to take your mind off of the story and characters and focus it on parking or the MBTA or what you're doing next.
You can just process what you've just seen, which is especially helpful with a movie like There Will Be Blood, whose ending is both abrupt and perfect. Leave right as the credits start to roll, and you might be thinking "well, that was pretty good, until it went off the rails at the end." Take a couple minutes, and you might decide it needed to go off the rails.
Oh, and pick up your garbage afterwards. It's not like it takes that much effort.
There Will Be Blood
* * * * (out of four)
Seen 5 January 2008 at Cooldge Corner Theater #1 (first-run)
It's the music in There Will Be Blood that gets me first, even before Daniel Day-Lewis's fantastic performance. Jonny Greenwood's score is something of a blunt instrument, using practically subsonic bass to underscore the ever-present darkness in the main character's soul and frequent crashes to suggest the labor used to feed the man's greed. Not subtle, but effective.
As the movie starts, the music is carrying a lot of the load, as Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) is prospecting alone and not one to waste words when there's no-one there to hear them. He could perhaps use a partner, as the process leaves him injured and near dead by the time he strikes oil. He builds up a small company, but allows no-one close to him until a worker dies, leaving behind a baby that Daniel takes as his own. He calls the boy H.W., and ten years later is introducing H.W. as his partner and son. H.W. (Dillon Freasier) is there when Paul Sunday (Paul Dano) sells them the location of a field with oil seeping right through the surface. The owner of that field, Paul's father Abel (David Willis), has another son, Eli (Dano again), a preacher who wants more than money from Daniel. The Plainviews do strike oil, but it comes at a terrible price. Word of Daniel's success also attracts a ne'er-do-well brother (Kevin J. O'Connor) who he hasn't had contact with in years.
Daniel Day-Lewis doesn't show his face on a movie set for anything less than a fantastic, award-worthy part these days, and Plainview is a corker. He's a beast, of course, displaying a cold ruthlessness in his business dealings and a practiced formality in his dealings with others until the time comes for his rage to break through. He's self-aware without winking at the audience, and Day-Lewis not only delivers lines about how Plainview hates most people instinctively in a way that's matter-of-fact but not confessional; he's not ashamed of it, just canny enough to realize that it's detrimental to let most people know this. Day-Lewis takes this confession to heart, and it's part of almost every scene he plays - he's either holding back his disdain or loosening the reigns on his anger.
And yet, despite all that, Day-Lewis and filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson give us a character who is captivating beyond being a monster. I suspect even people far more religious than I will find themselves surreptitiously cheering Plainview as he deals with the hypocrisy and greed of his bible-thumping neighbor: There's a sequence where Eli impresses upon Plainview how the community might appreciate it if Eli delivered a dedication when the town's first rig was opened, and Plainview finds a way to deliver him a lesson in humility. He enjoys it too much, and it likely makes him an enemy for life, but it's hard not to share some of his satisfaction. His relationship with H.W. is also fascinating; there's ample suggestion that the boy is just a way to humanize Daniel to prospective partners, and it's clear that Daniel doesn't really know how to love H.W. as a father should, but there is still his own flawed way.
Naturally, being Daniel Plainview's son will make a kid a bit odd, and Dillon Freasier does a pretty fantastic job of capturing that without making H.W. into something not recognizable as a human child like many other child actors might. There's unconditional love there, but he's also unconsciously absorbed the father's habit of not wearing one's heart on one's sleeve. The other noteworthy performance is Paul Dano, who makes Eli something of a cipher of his own - is he a devout man who is corrupted by pride and envy, or someone who sees the church as the only thing that can build him up to Daniel's level in the community? He makes a fantastic antagonist for Daniel, unctuous piousness contrasted with honest greed and hate.
Anderson uses every tool at his disposal to bring us into this dark place. The sky is never anything but overcast; the whole world of the film is a muddy brown. He contrasts the great wooden derricks Plainview builds (more impressive than the later steel variety, because they combine inhuman sclae with comprehensible technique) with the almost ostentatious modesty of having him sleep on the floor. As much as this is very much a character piece, it's also grand. The length of the film and the wideness of the screen allows Plainview to isolate himself. The music, which I've mentioned, is relentlessly foreboding. Even after we've seen some of the nastiest expressions of human nature, it holds out the promise of worse, right up to the last sequence.
And that end... It's masterful, but not right away. Quite frankly, it initially seems like Anderson has lost his marbles, nastily throwing out many of the shades of gray he'd so carefully built, and in a way that makes it seem like he's treating the whole thing as a joke. After a bit, though, it becomes a thing of beauty: This is a movie about drilling for oil, after all, and what is that but building and digging in hopes that a gusher of the blackest material imaginable will come spewing out? It's been held in a long time, but now it's going to explode faster than we're ready for.
That's a kind of greatness - after two and a half hours, I thought I'd seen it all, but there was still something I wasn't prepared for.
Also at eFilmCritic, along with six other reviews
(0) comments
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Charlie Wilson's War
Movie-blogging resolution #1 for the new year: Don't go a month between postings. Aside from having at least a couple friends looking at it occasionally, I like to spout off about the subject and a bunch of things - holiday stuff, mainly - have kept me from having the time to sit down and knock out a full review in a day or two. That's slowed down and now I can get back to this.
Movie-blogging resolution #2 for the new year: Write the review, then do the star rating. It seems obvious, but I've tended to start by scribbling the basic information down on a pad or in a spreadsheet on my phone - name, theater, rating, how many reviews it has on HBS/EFC and the average rating - the idea being to prioritize films that have not yet been reviewed or where my opinion is sharply different from the ones there.
It's a bit of a trap, though - at a certain point I find myself writing to match the single number I decided on before getting a chance to flesh out my thoughts. So now I'm just keeping the last few weeks' worth of movie tickets in my wallet, writing about the ones that interest me the most when I've got an hour on the bus.
Charlie Wilson's War
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 29 December 2007 at Regal Fenway #13 (first-run)
Writer Aaron Sorkin hasn't had a film credit since 1995's An American President, but he has been busy, with writing credits for nearly every episode of SportsNight, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and the first four years of The West Wing. From those series (and the trouble with cocaine that saw him removed from The West Wing), it's hardly surprising that he'd be drawn to Rep. Charles Wilson, D-Texas: He probably sees more than a little of himself in this man whose appetites are only exceeded by his love for his work.
As the film opens in 1980, Wilson (Tom Hanks) is deciding to make his work the liberation of Afghanistan from its Soviet invaders. He's in a good position to do it; he serves on the House Intelligence committee and because his wealthy district asks little more of him than defending the Second Amendment, more people owe him favors that vice versa. His sexual peccadilloes and constant drinking also disguise a mind that graduated from Annapolis and sees the importance of Afghanistan when few others do. Those others include Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts), a wealthy former beauty queen who can be even brasher than Charlie, and Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman), an insubordinate CIA analyst.
History can be a dry subject when reduced to lists of names, numbers, and events - there's a section of the film that does just that, and even the visuals of planes, helicopters, and tanks blowing up can only do so much to keep screenfuls of statistic on how many planes, helicopters, and tanks were blown up during a given month interesting. What Sorkin, director Mike Nichols, and the cast tap into is the larger-than-life personalities of the people who are able to make history. Charlie, Joanne, and Gust are all arrogant and difficult to deal with in their own ways, but not so much so that they're unpleasant to watch. They're entertaining, characters who would be fun to watch in a fictional, lighter story. The first time Gust visits Charlie's office plays like a bedroom farce, as Charlie regularly shoos him from the room to check with his staff about his potential implication in an ethics scandal. But as much as the filmmakers work to make the story entertaining, they don't allow the form of a feature to overpower the feel of history. There's no standard-issue romantic subplot shoehorned in, no matter what the poster implies; various plot threads don't complement each other in a neatly parallel fashion. This is interesting material which Nichols and Sorkin trust to be interesting.
The cast does their part, mostly giving performances that seem effortless because they know how to take advantage of their movie-star status. Even Amy Adams, who arguably isn't a movie star - yet - has enough of a history of playing underappreciated girls-next-door that we get who and what Charlie's put-upon assistant Bonnie Bach is at first sight. Charlie Wilson is a scoundrel from the first time we see him, but in the back of our mind we know that someone played by Tom Hanks can't be all or even mostly bad. That just covers making sure the first impression isn't too far in one direction or the other, though; Hanks gives a stealthily fine performance the rest of the way, convincing the audience of Charlie's intelligence and passion while only showing occasional cracks in his easygoing exterior. Julia Roberts gives a character with relatively little screen time more stature than she might otherwise have while making her more likable than an heiress dabbling in international politics probably should be. Philip Seymour Hoffman gives Gust a dry wit to offset his pushiness.
The movie is all about gently showing us how things that run counter to our intuitive sense of how they should can wind up working out. It is, after all, about a secret war funded by the CIA and a Congressman who is gleefully amoral in his personal life - whose end result was arguably the brutal Taliban regime gaining power - stuff that would be the plot of a villainous conspiracy in many films. Here, Nichols and Sorkin present it as a valuable and necessary opportunity taken, and Charlie Wilson's excesses as basically harmless. There's a certain innocence to the film's corruption, in part because we don't see our main characters acting to benefit themselves and in part because we're given just enough look at the effects of not doing anything to convince us that something had to be done without feeling like we're being preached at too much. The film also has a nice way of showing us the nuts and bolts of how politics works and how secret deals are made without becoming too procedural.
Charlie Wilson's War is so slick that one can actually ignore just how slick it is - even the bits that pointedly don't seem Hollywood-perfect are flawless in how they avoid perfection. The film is a highly entertaining bit of history, which can be a bit jarring if you don't expect history to be entertaining.
Also at eFilmCritic (along with four other guys' opinions)
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Movie-blogging resolution #2 for the new year: Write the review, then do the star rating. It seems obvious, but I've tended to start by scribbling the basic information down on a pad or in a spreadsheet on my phone - name, theater, rating, how many reviews it has on HBS/EFC and the average rating - the idea being to prioritize films that have not yet been reviewed or where my opinion is sharply different from the ones there.
It's a bit of a trap, though - at a certain point I find myself writing to match the single number I decided on before getting a chance to flesh out my thoughts. So now I'm just keeping the last few weeks' worth of movie tickets in my wallet, writing about the ones that interest me the most when I've got an hour on the bus.
Charlie Wilson's War
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 29 December 2007 at Regal Fenway #13 (first-run)
Writer Aaron Sorkin hasn't had a film credit since 1995's An American President, but he has been busy, with writing credits for nearly every episode of SportsNight, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and the first four years of The West Wing. From those series (and the trouble with cocaine that saw him removed from The West Wing), it's hardly surprising that he'd be drawn to Rep. Charles Wilson, D-Texas: He probably sees more than a little of himself in this man whose appetites are only exceeded by his love for his work.
As the film opens in 1980, Wilson (Tom Hanks) is deciding to make his work the liberation of Afghanistan from its Soviet invaders. He's in a good position to do it; he serves on the House Intelligence committee and because his wealthy district asks little more of him than defending the Second Amendment, more people owe him favors that vice versa. His sexual peccadilloes and constant drinking also disguise a mind that graduated from Annapolis and sees the importance of Afghanistan when few others do. Those others include Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts), a wealthy former beauty queen who can be even brasher than Charlie, and Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman), an insubordinate CIA analyst.
History can be a dry subject when reduced to lists of names, numbers, and events - there's a section of the film that does just that, and even the visuals of planes, helicopters, and tanks blowing up can only do so much to keep screenfuls of statistic on how many planes, helicopters, and tanks were blown up during a given month interesting. What Sorkin, director Mike Nichols, and the cast tap into is the larger-than-life personalities of the people who are able to make history. Charlie, Joanne, and Gust are all arrogant and difficult to deal with in their own ways, but not so much so that they're unpleasant to watch. They're entertaining, characters who would be fun to watch in a fictional, lighter story. The first time Gust visits Charlie's office plays like a bedroom farce, as Charlie regularly shoos him from the room to check with his staff about his potential implication in an ethics scandal. But as much as the filmmakers work to make the story entertaining, they don't allow the form of a feature to overpower the feel of history. There's no standard-issue romantic subplot shoehorned in, no matter what the poster implies; various plot threads don't complement each other in a neatly parallel fashion. This is interesting material which Nichols and Sorkin trust to be interesting.
The cast does their part, mostly giving performances that seem effortless because they know how to take advantage of their movie-star status. Even Amy Adams, who arguably isn't a movie star - yet - has enough of a history of playing underappreciated girls-next-door that we get who and what Charlie's put-upon assistant Bonnie Bach is at first sight. Charlie Wilson is a scoundrel from the first time we see him, but in the back of our mind we know that someone played by Tom Hanks can't be all or even mostly bad. That just covers making sure the first impression isn't too far in one direction or the other, though; Hanks gives a stealthily fine performance the rest of the way, convincing the audience of Charlie's intelligence and passion while only showing occasional cracks in his easygoing exterior. Julia Roberts gives a character with relatively little screen time more stature than she might otherwise have while making her more likable than an heiress dabbling in international politics probably should be. Philip Seymour Hoffman gives Gust a dry wit to offset his pushiness.
The movie is all about gently showing us how things that run counter to our intuitive sense of how they should can wind up working out. It is, after all, about a secret war funded by the CIA and a Congressman who is gleefully amoral in his personal life - whose end result was arguably the brutal Taliban regime gaining power - stuff that would be the plot of a villainous conspiracy in many films. Here, Nichols and Sorkin present it as a valuable and necessary opportunity taken, and Charlie Wilson's excesses as basically harmless. There's a certain innocence to the film's corruption, in part because we don't see our main characters acting to benefit themselves and in part because we're given just enough look at the effects of not doing anything to convince us that something had to be done without feeling like we're being preached at too much. The film also has a nice way of showing us the nuts and bolts of how politics works and how secret deals are made without becoming too procedural.
Charlie Wilson's War is so slick that one can actually ignore just how slick it is - even the bits that pointedly don't seem Hollywood-perfect are flawless in how they avoid perfection. The film is a highly entertaining bit of history, which can be a bit jarring if you don't expect history to be entertaining.
Also at eFilmCritic (along with four other guys' opinions)
Labels: biography, comedy, drama, history, USA
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