Belfast

In Memory Yet Green (with Flecks of Orange)

or

"I'm Going Nowhere You Can't Find Me" ("All We Need to Survive is a Phone, a Pint, and the Sheet-Music to 'Danny Boy'")

 

Stevedores glow orange in an overcast dawn, looming over the port that shows no signs of life. They hover and oversee everything, reflected in warehouse windows and altering the horizon. They watch over the streets and houses—obvious signs of life as God never plans in straight lines. Then, we start to see walls with scrawls, graffiti decorating the barriers, making them their own or just making them a little less obtrusive, obstructive. 

 

Then the camera settles on a barricade with a collection of faces—dirty, bandaged, hatted—men-folk gathered, but whether they're coming home exhausted, or gathering with malice is a little hard to say. We move up the faces and over the wall, and it's like it's been protecting something. We see an alleyway filled with kids playing, kicking balls, playing knights, but they're in black-and-white. It's like the wall we flew over has scraped away the color, leaving the scene beyond in the bleached shades of a dream...or a memory.

Movies can have thesis statements embedded in them. The first image can be a summing up in some abstract way of what will come after. But, that opening sequence of Kenneth Branagh's Belfast (and, really, that's how it should be called) is as good a thesis as any I've seen. The city may be titular, but it's just bricks and mortar, water and fire, dirt and smoke, the frame. It's the people who make the memory—the city will always appear smaller than it did. But, the people will forever loom large.

August, 1969. Man has landed on the Moon. But, Earth is "the same old place." Buddy (Jude Hill) is a happy nine year old doing battle with a stick-sword and a garbage-lid shield, fighting dragons when he's called in for tea by his mother (Caitriona Balfe). He's having a good time, the street's busy with residents with their "halloo's" and banter so it's only natural that Buddy has a longer travel-time than what a bee-line home would normally take a human being. Just enough delay to get him in a fix. A gang of Protestants enter at the end of the mixed Protestant-Catholic street and start yelling for the Catholics to get out. First, they throw threats, then rocks, then molotov cocktails, then they roll a car with a burning rag in the gas intake.

And Buddy's in the midst of it. And like any nine year old not in charge he freezes, gaping at something new. What are they yelling at HIM for? He's Protestant! But, Ma sees him and, like a banshee, she grabs him, and the garbage can lid becomes a shield for reals as the rocks come flying and she takes her burden and herself back to the door they live behind and slam it and lock it and dive for the floor to avoid any flying glass. Play-time is over. A battle has come to Belfast and it's not an easy game of heroes and bad guys. It's too complicated for a child to understand. To say nothing of the adults.

Where's Da (Jamie Dornan)? He works in England during the week and comes home most often on weekends. So, the day-to-day is left to Ma—the bill-paying, the wondering where the money comes from, the avoiding the rent-man, the raising of Buddy and his older brother Will (Lewis McAskie)—and the making the peace when they've been "up to something" in the neighborhood, and when Da comes home there is the "adult talk" about things the kids don't understand or don't care about because they're so wrapped up in the "now."

Things like the newly-installed barbed wire (which becomes a foreground object through which Branagh shows life), the night patrols, the buzzing of helicopters, the increasing frailties of his parents (Ciaràn Hinds and Judi Dench, both photographed so you see ever seam earned in their faces) and that Da might have possibilities for a better paying, more steady job in England—but it would keep him away longer and he wants his family with him, if only the wife and kids didn't want to stay right where they are.

In the "now." Family is around them, there's a community—sure it's a "mixed" community, but the only ones making anything of it are the thugs and enforcers—there's school—with the cute girl in the class—and TV and movies...and home. The only home the kids have known and they're too young to know that "home" is as transmutable as the future. Or that "home" is changing right before their eyes. It's hard to see when one hasn't had much of a past.

Branagh's film is obviously made of love, living between nostalgia and fear, adult and child, and never completely resigning them into a fixed whole. One can forgive him for keening over into the precious—the "too-perfect" occasional shot, breaking the the use of color at movie images and stage productions (Branagh's dream-homes), and a confrontation scene that could have gone without its musical accompaniment (but we are talking about a child's eye view of it, so....myth?). But, forgive it, because despite its crisp photography, this is a film of filters and scrims of the mind, ultimately, not the HD precision of documentary. It's built of memory and bricks and stones and heart. And it relates to anybody oppressed, anybody in fear, and anybody who's been a child...or a parent. It's certainly the best film Branagh has made in years, and it's certainly among his personal best.

 

Fair play to him.

 

Ford vs. Ferarri (LeMans '66)

A Spanner in the Works
or
"Am I On Fire?"

Not a "car-guy." Never have been. Give me an engine and four wheels and I'm happy. I don't associate myself with horse power, don't give a damn about "cubes," and don't equate my manhood with the make and model of what gets me around.

And I'm enough of a cynic that, although I have a model of James Bond's Aston Martin DB5 sitting on my window sill, I resist the urge to see if it's leaking oil on its base as per its reputation (it's not that accurate!). For me, if it goes, it's good.

So, racing movies leave me cold. Whether The Crowd Roars or Speedway or Grand Prix or Le Mans or Herbie: Fully Loaded, they're empty movies with a lot of hardware beauty shots and cardboard characters who can't really explain the pull of the mystique of racing, when it boils down to making a lot of left turns at high speed.

Ron Howard's Rush came closest to a good racing film because, although it had its own fair share of carburetor-porn, it was about two racers with a love/hate relationship that lasted over years and tracks, and how the two bickered and supported each other owing to their personalities and how it extended over the years because, and in spite of, the competition. They saw each other's value beyond who was first and who was second.

So, at the end, racing movies have had a checkered past.

But, director James Mangold's Ford v Ferrari is the first one I've seen that is entertaining, has its requisite gross weight of Ford/Ferrari fetishism, and even turns the corner on attempting to communicate the need for speed and the intellectual pursuit of putting as much potential energy into a motor engine.

The story, which is based—for the most part—on fact, tells of how the Ford Motor Company, under the leadership of Henry Ford II (in the film, Tracy Letts), and at the urging of Lee Iacocca (played in the film by Jon Bernthal), sought to change the image of Ford, which had suffered set-backs in the family-vehicle field, especially with their Edsel model. Iacocca saw Ford as staid and wanted to make it hip and jazzy to appeal to the Baby-Boomers who were just entering their market share. For Iacocca, it was a matter of style over substance and he wanted to push the planned "Mustang" model as pure "sports-car" material by pushing it into racing. This was to attempt to bite into the Italian car-market, especially Ferrari, whose cars had been dominating the 24 hours of LeMans.

After Iacocca fails to come to terms with Enzo Ferrari over the acquisition of his car company, it turns into a grudge match—Ford II becomes determined to beat Ferrari at LeMans—and Iacocca turns to former LeMans winner Carol Shelby (Matt Damon) to modify a Mustang GT to compete at the French race, and gives him 6 weeks to do it.

It is a daunting task, and to drive, Shelby turns to Ken Miles (Christian Bale) a professional driver and mechanic who is brilliant at what he does, but is self-described as "not a people-person" (which, if I recall, was not a phrase used in the early 1960's). Uncompromising, a perfectionist at engineering and on the race course, Miles thinks making a Ford car race-worthy is an impossible task ("unless you got two, three hundred years"), especially given the corporate group-think entrenched at Ford.* 

But, an IRS lien of Miles' garage makes him think twice, and he takes on the job, rubbing—as he does—the Ford execs the wrong way. Those middle-men—especially Leo Beebe (played by Josh Lucas) tolerate Miles' tinkering with the T, which he feels has potential when working with Ford engineers and the Shelby team to shave the design of the model, while also fine-tuning the engine to achieve maximum RPM's. But, when it comes to Miles actually driving the car in the race, that's where they drop the yellow flag. Miles is not a "Ford man," he's not a team player. So when the first race-prepping for LeMans occurs, Shelby is strong-armed to replace him with a more "acceptable" driver...to the Ford execs.

The result is not a "win" putting the entire racing project into question—especially when Ford II's ego is on the line—and Shelby has to use tough-talk and a challenging personal relationship with the CEO to not compromise in his efforts, especially in response to the interference of Ford middle-men.

It's an interesting dynamic. Innovation against corporate interests, all engaged in their own war with different concepts of what constitutes "winning," and pushed to the point where the very goal of winning is in jeopardy as compromise compromises the intended goal. For all the "we're all on the same team here" happy-speak, it is impossible if the goals are different. Sometimes, getting your way gets in the way.

Getting in the way is only a defensive measure on the race-track. And how Ford v. Ferrari characterizes Miles makes him the perfect-combination of driver-engineer, able to perceive not just the performance of his vehicle, but its potential to outlast and out-perform his competition, giving him an advantage in moments of opportunity. The race sequences are thrilling and kinetic, and, combined with its emphasis on character and stakes makes it far more involving than most films of the type coming down the pike.

And Ford v. Ferrari is unique in that it manages to convey that adrenaline kick that fuels drivers and their love of the competition. It does that so well, it should also should have a warning suggesting a designated driver for the ride home. 

Damon and Bale, Miles and Shelby

* Yeah, yeah (I hear you say) how are the performances. Terrific. Damon calls forth his inner Matthew McConaughey for the twangy, charismatic Shelby and Bale (rail thin again) is a wonderfully mocking Ken Miles—the person you come away remembering the most.

Money Monster

Fostering the Status Quo
or
Crumbs and Clowns, Not Bread and Circuses

Oh, their hearts are in the right place, those makers of Money Monster. Liberals all, they want to decry how the big-money-guys are destroying the little guy by sucking the shekles out of their retirement accounts (if they have them), pension funds (if they have them), life-savings (if they have them) or any amount of disposable cash by relying on the very greed that made them who they are to obtain the "other people's money" they depend on to get rich themselves. 

It's a shell-game for the selfish. The statistics show that we have such a lop-sided social strata that the top 20% of the people have 85.1% of the assets (the largest section, the bottom 40% of the population own 0.2%). You'd think that something that top-heavy would collapse under its own weight, but it resists crashing (or even trickling down) because that's gravity and gravity is Nature, and money has nothing to do with reality, especially these days. It works only because we agree on it for the purposes of barter, but these days—as the movie points out—money isn't even cash anymore, it's only pixels in theory in denominations of 1's and 0's. A bi-polar demarcation, like the "have's" and the "have-not's."

The barker for this circus is Lee Gates (George Clooney, who might be doing another of his "Idiot" roles for the Coen Brothers), a pompous ass of a guy who goes off-script, off-time, and off-color to shuck and jive his audience by proffering investment advice (think a nightmare blend of Jim Cramer, Glenn Beck, and a sports clown) for the good of the masses when actually his celebrity and clout are mostly used to prop up cronies and folks he can use to prop up the show. If somebody in the audience makes money, hey, it can only help ratings. 

Besides "caveat emptor." He's not saying you should actually buy the stuff. it's your decision and if something goes south, tough luck, there's fine print in the terms and conditions that you should have read if you read the prospectus carefully (if anybody had encouraged you to). The responsibility is all yours.

The show thrives on machismo and surface glamour and bling. Plus, there's the implied threat that you're a wimp if you don't take chances. You don't make the green if you're fifty shades of yellow. That sort of thing. And it's glitzed up like a game show with fast talk, goofy graphics, and bright shiny objects that defy analysis because it's all in fun.

But, Gates is a pain in the wallet. He's been doing this for years and the formula works and why change? He basically goes off-script every time the red light goes on and it drives his producer-director Patty Fenn (Julia Roberts) nuts. But, she's good, so she can ride the Gates tsunami every night. She's tired of it, though. She's leaving the gig to go direct somewhere else, so that she can...direct, rather than watch helplessly in the control room while Gates wings it.

If she thought she had lost control before, it's nothing like the day the movie portrays. In mid-broadcast, while Gates is clowning around, a million-dollar grin on his face, the control room sees a guy hiding behind the backdrops and video-screens. He waits just long enough for Gates to see him and think he's part of some "surprise bit." That is, until Kyle Budwell (Jack O'Connell) pulls out a gun and threatens Gates (on live television, one might add) with a bullet in the head unless he "gets some answers."

Budwell had invested his inheritance on one of Gates' recommendations, IBIS corporation—all of it, $60,000, to make a "big score" for himself and his pregnant girlfriend—and when the investment went south, he lost everything. Now, he wants answers as to what happened in the transaction, and he instructs Gates to put on a suicide vest (which Budwell holds the trigger to in a "chicken switch" configuration) to get the officers of IBIS on-camera to admit their failures.

The head of the company, Walt Canby (Dominic West), a favorite name Gates likes to drop on the program, cannot be found—he's out of the country. The company's mouth-piece, Diane Lester (Caitriona Balfe) burbles homilies, platitudes and corporate lines and boiler-plate, but that only causes Budwell to shoot out the video screen she's appearing on. Normally, the talking-head would remove their ear-piece and go have a congratulatory lunch for themselves, but in this fantasy, Lester starts a one woman crusade at IBIS to find answers to what's going on. She doesn't get fired for this, which might make the genre this one is classified under as "science fiction." She makes calls to the original programmers to determine what went wrong with the algorithms of the investment plan. They say there's nothing wrong with the algorithms (proving that they are, indeed, programmers—it's always somebody else's fault) and that something else caused the fund collapse. Lester investigates further, insuring that her pension gets taken away (and forget about a good recommendation).

Meanwhile, locked in the control room, Fenn coordinates with the police, evacuates the studio, negotiates with Budwell, and also has the time to do her own investigating into the IBIS corporate structure and its dealings. I'll bet her salary is a fraction of Gates'.

Gates, for his part, sweats. And, while wearing "the vest of doom" grows something that resembles a conscience, at least under the glare of television lights. He starts back-pedaling and comes up with a plan to take Budwell out of the studio and confront Canby about the apparent fraud.

He should have looked at his own monitor. Money Monster is, itself, a fraud, no "apparent" about it. The movie tries to gin up sympathy by channeling resentment against Wall Street by personifying it with a disgruntled investor who's gone off his rocker and decided to ultimately commit suicide by cop. That's like feeling bad for the Van Heflin character in Airport because he decided to blow a plane up for the insurance (as opposed to the Maureen Stapleton character, who's left behind to pick up the pieces). Thank you, I'd rather have somebody a bit more competent through whom to channel my righteous indignation. But, then, Budwell is always a schmuck throughout this movie, it's only O'Connell's earnestness that makes you take him at all seriously. It's what the movie-makers think of all the consumers of their bright shiny objects and their bread and circuses.

They give lip-service to Budwell's plight, but the sympathies seem to be with the one percenter's among the characters, because, after all, the bad guys still get away with their schemes and Gates gets to continue his job shucking and jiving. How like the economic crisis that the film-makers are wringing their hands about. Unfortunately, wringing your hands is visually indistinguishable from the silent movies' miming for "miserly greed." Frank Capra might have done something with it, making sure that phoniness is pilloried for its cravenness, and the true villains, if not completely thrown to the mob, are, at least, exposed to them. In the end, the movie really has nothing to say other than people are getting screwed, so maybe we ought to pay attention before torch and pitchfork futures go up. In the meantime, that Budwell guy's dead, but, hey, the show must go on. Oh, and Fenn decides to keep her crappy job that she is way too qualified for. Happy ending. All smiles. Cue the "Applause" sign.

The writers might not know better than this crap. But Foster does. Clooney might. Why was this Money Monster of a movie allowed to be released with so little thought attached to it?

Money Monster is a bad investment all the way around, certainly not of somebody's time.

Post-script: it's probably a good idea I had trouble writing this review, because the shooting in Orlando imbues Money Monster with a different perspective, one the writers were insensitive to and should have brought into the mix, if they wanted to make the thing more complex (but one suspects that was never the intention, or else the ending wouldn't be so superficially upbeat. 

Because whatever motivation behind his terrorist attack, Kyle Budwell is a terrorist. What did he think he could accomplish by his actions except suicide? Did he think because his motivations are so transparent, that the actions of the other villain of the piece, Walt Camby, would be equally as transparent? Camby is, after all, in the business of making money from other people's money, and so his motivation is always to keep his machinations in secret, only to reveal the results in an annual report of earnings, the way most businesses do. How they do so, whether it be Volkswagen by rigging emissions tests or Turing Pharmaceuticals (and its reprehensible little wanted poster-creep, Martin Shkreli) raising the price of Daraprim by 5,000% or the private contractors, like Halliburton, bilking the government and the tax-payers by charging $99 to wash a sack of laundry in Iraq, is their business, shady as it is. They do villainous, often obscene, things in order to look like heroes to their stock-holders. They're crooks, one and all, but just because he is victimized by the villains does not make Budwell a hero. He's a villain, too, and a pathetic one.

It's just one more facet to what makes Money Monster a cheat, an empty suit, and a badly thought-out entertainment.