Bridesmaids

Written at the time of the film's release...

"The Miss of Sisyphus"

or

"Wiiging Out"

First off, Kristen Wiig is scary. She's scary funny. And scary smart. It's an almost sure thing that she'll be the best thing in whatever she appears in (certainly that was true of MacGruber). She has no Dolby and no squelch in her comedy, the filters are off, and she's not afraid to look like a doofus. In fact, I don't think she's afraid of anything.

And because she co-wrote this and is primarily the focus for the vast majority of Bridesmaids, it is a pretty funny, raunchy comedy of the "incredible mess" variety. And who doesn't want to see a wedding fail (especially if its not yours)? That's the premise behind this film (for better and for worse), and I've been to and/or been involved in enough weddings to know that this could easily have been a documentary.* The various rituals and ceremonies that precede, pre-function and prevaricate the actual hitching of one individual to another, are enough to wreck any marriage before it begins, and I'll frequently pontificate that if you survive the wedding, the marriage just might make it.**
And I've been to one wedding where in the course of the pre-functions, the Maid of Honor was replaced in the Bride's affections by another friend, as happens here. It happens.

Said Maid of Honor, who by herself is an "Incredible Mess," is Annie (Wiig), who has zero self-esteem, is dating a self-absorbed creep (naturally, as he's a man, played by an un-credited Jon Hamm—who, bless him, seems to be having fun)—except it's not really dating so much as an empty sexual convenience, she's lost her specialty bakery business, and is working at a jewelry store, where her tirades about the impermanence of all relationships has a tendency to drive the customers away. Her mother (Jill Clayburgh—her last role before she died of cancer) wants her to move in with her "before she hits rock-bottom," because her room-mates are British and creepy. At least she has her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph), who is always good for a meltdown de-briefing.

That is, until Lillian announces her engagement and asks Annie to be the M of H.  Then, like a black hole, the downward spiral that is Annie's life starts to suck in the wedding arrangements, as well. She gets together the other bridesmaids: Rita (Wendi McLendon-Covey), a bitter wife with two problematic kids; Becca (Ellie Kemper) a chirpy newlywed; Megan (Melissa McCarthy—hilarious and fearless), the groom's sister; and Helen (Rose Byrne), a trophy-wife, who is needy, tries too hard, and is aggressively perfect. This eclectic gaggle of women are tough to corral and all approach life and their duties to the bride-to-be differently, leaving the slightly scattered Annie dishonored and in their wake of agendas. In her desperate attempt to get them all on the same page (or even in the same dress-style), she only makes things worse, especially for herself.

The only non-crumbling structure in the whole disaster area that is her life is a state patrol trooper (Chris O'Dowd—think the looks of Tim Allen, the charm of Judge Reinhold, and the accent of Craig Ferguson) but that gets doused as well. Pretty soon, rock-bottom seems like a pretty stable place to be, as she loses everything, even an invitation to the wedding.

This would be intolerably sad, if the cast and writers didn't make it so hellaciously funny, in a surprising, raunchy manner that rains humiliation down on everyone, the highlight (possibly) being the visit to a posh, expensive bridal shop after a dysentery-inducing exotic pre-function. It's cruel...like watching a train-wreck, where all the passengers were caught in the bathroom, but it is funny—humor, one must caution, being subjective.

I'd be heartily recommending this movie*** if it didn't go all-"Oprah" in the last section, with a tone-scrambling heart-felt ending that one is just not prepared for, and it also coasts on my most hated of rom-com tropes—"all she needs is a good man. Really? I'd've said a good psychotherapist.

But, until that time, Bridesmaids is the most snortingly funny disaster movie I've seen in a long time.

* I just had a two-hour conversation with someone who participated in a recent June wedding, where everything went flawlessly, but the backstage story was an on-going apocalyptic disaster from start to finish.

** That's an incredibly sunny view, considering I've been married twice.  On the other hand, there was one wedding I went to where the bride and groom were already arguing...at the altar.  The reception was dominated by placing wagers on how long it would last.

*** And have, to two gals who wanted a movie-night and were, understandably, less-than-thrilled with the current movie selection.  They couldn't be two more different people.  Both loved it.

Top Gun: Maverick

Almost There. Al-most Theeere....

or 

"What Were You THINKING?" "But, You TOLD Me Not To Think!!" 

Controversial yet factual opinion: Anthony Edwards is hotter than Tom Cruise in Top Gun. First of all, the mustache? WORKS. Second of all, he's fun! Third of all, Maverick is such a desperate, narcissistic, posturing, alienating, twerpy little prince that I find myself disorientingly at odds with a former self who long ago considered Tom Cruise to be attractive. Who was she? That woman who could look at a picture of young Tom and not flash immediately to this jittery rat terrier with a barely contained rage problem, a monomaniacal fixation on personal glory at the expense of the safety of everyone around him, and an approach to women that can charitably be described as Biff-esque? I don't know her.* Fourth of all, Maverick's hair is bad! It needs to be EITHER SHORTER OR LONGER.

Maverick is the villain of Top Gun.

 

* Paradoxically, I do think that Tom Cruise is an excellent movie star, and I also enjoy his movies!

Lindy West

"I'd Prefer a Highway Away from the Danger Zone, but Okay"

"Shit, Actually"

copyright 2020 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

I can see why there would be a sequel to Top Gun thirty six years after the first film, beyond economic gains. The original was a recruitment poster for the military, and right now there is a shortage of airline pilots creating disruptions of flights. What is interesting about that shortage is that it is due to a changing military. Airline pilots usually came from a military flying background. But, there are less of those pilots being trained now because we're training more drone pilots than military pilots.

 

Plus, Tom Cruise needs a hit. His two big franchises that bring in money are Mission: Impossible and Top Gun—probably his biggest hit. Nobody went to see The Mummy (killing Universal's proposed "Monsterverse" series) and American Made. Jack Reacher is now a streaming TV series. Tom needs a hit.

But, as Lindy West pointed out in her idiosyncratic review of the first film, Tom Cruise's Pete Mitchell was, if anything, the villain of Top Gun. Narcissistic, cocky, heedless, and anti-authoritarian, Mitchell was the military's nightmare—the hot-head not broken by basic training. His actions killed his wing-man, "Goose" and 

I've thought—not very often—that if Mitchell wasn't killed in subsequent flying, he would have become the protagonist of American Made, a pilot for nefarious purposes. I mean, rules are made to be broken, right?

So, this is the guy the Navy wants to train fighter pilots?

Apparently so. Well, not precisely. The Navy doesn't want him. An Admiral in the Navy wants him, that Admiral being Tom "Iceman" Kazansky (Val Kilmer), from the first film. It's easy to get movie-sentimental about that, but it made me think that it was because of an Old Boys Network that got this flame-out back in the cock-pit with any kind of authority. This is wrong thinking. In fact, Top Gun: Maverick doesn't want me to think...at all.

That got me into trouble immediately with this sequel that repeats the first movie's opening minutes with Harold Faltermeyer's theme starting over the same opening text from the first film, then transitions into Kenny Loggin's "Danger Zone" over a "thumbs-up and launch" montage, which reminds people that there are aircraft carriers and take-offs from the flight-deck and that the Navy—for their cooperation in helping make the movie—needed some footage that involved them and not Tom Cruise.

Cruise's Pete Mitchell has been shopping himself out as a test-pilot to an aerospace firm—a very small one, it seems—that has a contract with the navy to supply a hyper-sonic fighter and today is the test to push it to Mach 9. The thing is the Navy brass (in the form of Ed Harris) want the thing to perform at Mach 10. So, what does Maverick do? First, he takes the thing out early—even before Harris' Admiral (who also showed up earlier than scheduled)—and buzzes the guy before taking it to Mach 9. But, no, that's not good enough: Maverick takes it to Mach 10. Okay. Then, he takes it Mach 10.3 before the plane breaks up from the stress and disintegrates.

At this point, I believe, Top Gun: Maverick continues as a dream sequence because...no. No way does Mitchell walk away from this. But, he does in the movie. It's a bit of a mis-step because the flying sequences are CGI (the plane prototype does not exist) and it kind of undercuts the impressive in-camera work done by the flyers and actors in the later F/A-18 sequences. But, it also shows the Maverick hasn't changed that much, pushing everything to the limit until he breaks something, leaving his employers with going back to the drawing board. He's admonished by Harris' Admiral, but then informed that he's been picked to train a class in the Top Gun school for a seemingly impossible mission.

That mission is to take four F/A-18 Super Hornets into forbidden air-space—in a safely-unidentified country, but it probably ends with an "A-N"—flying under any sort of radar detection that would launch SAM attacks, fly up a steep escarpment, take out a uranium enrichment plant nestled in the valley then climb an even steeper escarpment (with heavy G-force consequences) where they may be met by "fifth generation" fighters, if they haven't already been neutralized by the two F/A-18's trailing them to destroy a nearby air-base. 

So, it's basically, the Star Wars "Death Star" trench run (which, admittedly, is a crowd-pleaser) but Star Wars wasn't a two hour film about training for it. Here, the complications are: one of the pilots-in-training is "Rooster" (Miles Teller) Bradshaw, son of "Goose" (from the earlier film), which places Maverick in a position of responsibility and guilt, a re-kindled romance with an Admiral's daughter (Jennifer Connelly) "from the old days"—it's like nothing happened between the first film and this one (No attachments? No kids? Is there some psychological "thing" about this guy?), and the mystery of why Kazansky picked Maverick—of all people—to do this job.

That scene—with Kilmer unable to talk due to his battle with throat cancer—is (apart from the the admittedly well-executed flight scenes) the highlight of the film. Kilmer doesn't have to do much to eke out any audience sympathy, but there's an old sageness to his performance (done with just knowing looks) that's hard to resist, and Cruise pulls off one of those moments where he stops being a movie star and crumples into acting. Nice to see, and that, more than anything, made me want to salute.

The acting is all good. From the by-the-book sourness of Harris, Jon Hamm and Charles Parnell to Connelly's "sure-it's-a-'Girlfriend'-role-but I'm-still-gonna-'Girlfriend'-this-guy-right-off-the-screen" spunkiness. But, ultimately it comes down to that mission—top secret because it isn't sanctioned and probably illegal under international law—where two "miracles" have to happen to pull it off (I counted six) and where the best advice Maverick can offer is "don't think...DO." It is this mantra that saturates and permeates the entire movie, further embedding it in Star Wars mythos, right down to evoking a spirit for guidance at a critical time. At least they had the grace to make a joke about the inanity of that advice and its genuinely funny and well-played.

But, oh boy, it sure apples to this movie. Yeah, it's a good time, and 'gung-ho' and propels itself along at a good clip and the shots in the cock-pits are so amazing, it doesn't matter that the actors are in the back-seats. It delivers the payload and gets away clean without having to answer for anything just like the mission parameters.

 

As long as you don't think about it.

The Daze After The Day the Earth Stood Still

The Day The Earth Stood Still (Robert Wise, 1951) Iconic sci-fi pic that managed to be just strange enough to be spiritual without having to explain itself. Edmund H. North's script (adapted from the 1940 Harry Bates story "Farewell to the Master") just assumed that any advanced civilization's technology would seem like magic to us (ala Clarke's Third Law). It's anti-nuke theme was somewhat off-set by it's Christ allegory under-pinnings: a human-appearing being from above comes to Earth with a "message," is killed and resurrected to give mankind a lesson in humility. That the alien--Klaatu (Michael Rennie)--walks among us under the guise of a "Mr. Carpenter" just nails the significance home.

Right from the get-go, The Day The Earth Stood Still announces its intention with a "spooky" theremin-laced score (by the brilliant Bernard Herrmann), quite at odds with its message of peace. Wise shows a global humanity surrounded by its current technology (radio, television, radar) spreading the news of an invader from space, which lands in the Mall area of a tourist-clogged Washington D.C. in Spring. 

Phalanxed by a wall of tanks and military might (with a larger crowd of tourists behind it) the alien presence reveals itself and is shot by a panicky soldier for its trouble. Before you can say "Kent State," the alien is taken to Walter Reed to be treated, observed and questioned, and the formal Klaatu--patient, curious, but with a hint of passive condescension--does his own analysis, escaping from the hospital and blending with the populace as "Mr. Carpenter"--taking a room at a boarding house, becoming involved with a widowed secretary (Patricia Neal)--it IS the '50's, after all--and her son, with the intent of seeing humanity first-hand.

Meanwhile, his Enforcer, Gort, a lumbering, laser-cyclopsed, soft-metal robot stands guard over the saucer, turning his evil eye on any hint of aggression, without any regard to how much of the GNP was flushed to make those tanks. If Gort could laugh when he turned on his eye-light, he'd probably do it with glee.

There are so many small details that delight: Patricia Neal's uncommonly common working Mom, with a wary eye towards Mr. Carpenter--there's not even the hint of romance there; Sam Jaffe's cameo as Einstein stand-in Dr. Barnhardt, looking at his business-suited stranger visitor from another planet with eyes of dazzled wonder; the whole design of the thing that has so permeated our culture with sleek silver surfaces that fold in and out of each other seamlessly; "Gort, Klaatu Barada Nikto!" which, indicative of the race's parsimoniousness, roughly translates to: "Robot, take Klaatu's body back to the space-ship and repair whatever damage has been done to it, bring him back to life, and oh! while you're at it, don't turn me into a smoking pile of ash, thank you very much*"--talk about "Three Little Words!"; Robert Wise's unerring sense of staging and for putting the camera in the exact, most effective place without making you aware that it's the most effective place. Wise is always given short-shrift as a director, implying a yeomanlike sensibility rather than an artistic one, but the Man Who Edited Citizen Kane also conceived beautiful, eerie, creepy shots like this:

Thanks to Glenn Kenny of "Some Came Running," who reminded me **

The Day the Earth Stood Still is a classic film—a time-capsule, of a kind—from a different time and place and space that reminds, yes, with great power comes great responsibility--but there's always someone more powerful, who might take yours away, and make you stop and smell the fall-out.

—————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Written at the time of the film's release...

"Everything New (Testament) is Old Again"
or
"Yeah. I'm Thinkin' I'm Back!"

So why remake it? Well, it's a question that Klaatu's United Planets couldn't negotiate--and Gort's Galactic Police Force would probably give you the eye. But the agent of Keanu Reeves saw a poster of the original and dollar signs swam into his head and here, we have it. And Scott Derrickson (who put a different head-spin on The Exorcism of Emily Rose) thought he could turn it into a warning about global warming, and Reeves thought that, though the original Klaatu preached peace, he did so threatening force, which he found "fascist."

Sigh.

That sounds noble in thought (if a tad simplistic). On-screen, it's a different matter entirely.

Because it's a "re-imagining" (rather than "a remake"), there is no "flying saucer," but a cloudy, spacy "orb" (all the better to remind you of the planet, but I kept wondering what kept it in place), and rather than the military, scientists are in the front line (with Princeton astro-biologist Helen Benson, played by Jennifer Connelly, as the point-person). The military is back-up.***

The scenario starts the same: Land-Bang-End up in Hospital. And there things start to change. The original Klaatu had no special powers. Gort was the "muscle" (and here, the robot is 20 feet tall, gun-metal gray in color, and a completely CG construct--it's actually simplified from the original's design--and, as with the first Gort, its unreadability makes it a genuinely creepy sight). Keanu Reeves' Klaatu has a nasty way with bio-feedback that does damage. So much for pacifism. But, this Klaatu isn't Christ-in-a-business-suit. This one goes back a few chapters, back to the Old Testament. Particularly those parts dealing with Noah and Moses. The threat is environmental, rather than nuclear, and to sustain one of "the handful of planets that can support life," Keanu-Klaatu's United Planets are thinking of a little Silent Spring Cleaning of the life-form doing the most damage. Good thing he doesn't carry around a cook-book!

The following section is SPOILER material, so if you want to be surprised how it ends—if you care—don't highlight the next paragraph which, like the Earth, gets blacked out:

That scouring consists of billions of nanite-sized metal locusts (why they have to specifically look like insects, I have no idea, but I'd guess it has something to do with why Klaatu's named "Mr. Carpenter" in the first one). So, this "plague" starts doing its damage, devouring metal of all kinds, sports-arenas and such, and one can only hope that it can distinguish "green" technology, like solar panels and wind-generators, from the other kinds, but I suspect not--that might involve thinking! Keatu, or Klaanu, or whatever you want to call him, decides at the last minute that because humans have the capacity for change, they maybe, just maybe, could save their environment, so he sacrifices himself sabotaging the plague, leaving humans with no electricity, no technology, and presumably the resolve to stop the global warming crisis with, as a much wiser alien once inventoried, "stone knives and bear-skins." Thanks, Kleatu or Kono, or whatever your name is, thanks a lot. Who's gonna pick up these continents of dead nanites corrupting the soil, Mr. "Ecology?" And they thought the first one gave off mixed signals?

Keanu Reeves has the most limited range of any actor who hasn't suffered a stroke, but he does have two specialties at which he excels: endearingly stupid, or robotic. The latter serves him well, as in Speed, the portions of The Matrix when he was portrayed by pixels, and this film. His strange visitor from another planet is a nice piece of craft, slightly more human than Jeff Bridges' Starman, and extremely efficient in his movements--when he turns his head to look you right in the eye, you'd better take him seriously. He's quite effective in the role. Jennifer Connelly delivers the techno-babble expertly (as she did in Hulk), but she really doesn't have much more to do than Patricia Neal did, as the role is basically reduced to "concerned mother." As the child she's concerned about, Jaden Smith at least doesn't fall into the "predictable child" category. He finds different ways of doing things than the "stock-child" role. Kathy Bates is too good for her role of Secretary of Defense, Jon Hamm, of "Mad Men," doesn't really separate himself from the pack, but Robert Knepper does a fine job as a Colonel in charge of trying to stop a tidal wave with a tea-cup. It's always great to see cameo's by James Hong, and John Cleese, who plays Prof. Barnhardt in this version.****

But, ultimately, there wasn't much point in doing this, other than to give people jobs, and give some Hollywood-types more "green" cred. The production was carbon-neutral (wouldn't that have been ironic?), which means they presumably paid carbon credits used to destroy old-growth forests for eucalyptus plantations.

"The Universe wastes nothing," Keatu says at one point.

He's never been to Hollywood.

* I hope there's a "please" in there, somewhere!

** Kenny has a wonderful illustrated tribute to director Robert Mulligan. It's far better than anything I could contribute.

*** There is one amusing bit--when Benson is shanghaied to participate in the landing investigation by the military, it's set-up and photographed exactly as it was done in The Andromeda Strain...directed by original TDTESS director Robert Wise. Coincidence? Nothing's a coincidence in a "re-imagining."

**** I hate playing the "If only..." game—it smacks of frustrated screenwriters—but, as they had an Albert Einstein-clone in the original, it would have been interesting to have a Stephen Hawking in this one—brilliant, but crippled, talking through a voice-box. If Klaatu wanted inspiration from the human race, who better? Then, imagine this scenario: the group leaves, but Klaatu hangs back, turning to look at the wheelchair-bound pysicist. "I could cure you..." Pause. The voice-box rasps: "Save...the...world."

But, they didn't.

Sucker Punch (2011)

Written at the film's escape. Further thoughts after the repeat, with some video point/counter-point.

"Girls Acting Badly (Acting Badly)"
or
"Showgirls—The Sequel"

Look. I'm a healthy, red-blooded American male and I can certainly appreciate gorgeous, pouty young women in provocatively scanty attire. But Zack Snyder's semi-new Sucker Punch just made me angry. And not just because the thing is so derivative as to be wholly unoriginal—that's usually not a deal-breaker with me, as my enthusiasm for Star Wars or Rango will attest.

But don't tell me you're making a movie about empowering women while objectifying them to the Nth degree in the manner of a "women-in-prison" film. A women-in-prison film with a red-curtain veneer of strip-club in it. Don't make an action film where giant things toss the femi-ninjas through walls and across rooms without their make-up getting messed up (violence without consequences), and don't make the message of your film "Fight" and contrarily show 4/5 of those fighters being taken down (through their own actions) and the only one survivor being the one who isn't sure of the struggle. 

The messages are so mixed as to be incoherent.

But one shouldn't expect nutrition from eye-candy.

It's all about the illusion in this one, the presentation, and the surface. It's "Alice in Green-Screen-Bump-and-Grinder-land: the Video-Game." All paste-up and no depth, just a good job of dry-wall, in the de-saturated style of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.* Looks great. But rotten to the core.

And it is too bad. We need more women-heroes. We need more women-hero movies. We just need someone with more enlightenment to create them so that they don't simultaneously make them strong and tear down the message by tarting them up (like William Moulton Marston, the shrink who created "Wonder Woman" and liked to put her in bondage situations). I'm not saying all women-characters should be pedestal-toppers. Let's just not kick the dignity out from underneath them.

And any writer worth his word processor shouldn't be undercutting his message, anyway.

If you're going to lower the bar so far you have to dig a trench six feet deep to do so, you might as well complete the job, dig the grave and toss the whole enterprise into it.

Young "Baby Doll" (Emily Browning) is having a bad time of it. Her mother dies, and she and her sister are left in the care of her evil step-father (Gerard Plunkett) with nothing but abuse on his mind. "Baby Doll" (that's her only name) tries to shoot him when he attempts to rape her sister, but ends up killing her with the bullet, instead. As if this scenario weren't dire enough, Snyder films it all over-cranked to give it a lethargic, dreamy "bad portent" feel.  It's the type of overkill you can expect throughout the entire movie. No lock goes bolted or unbolted except in clanking close-up. Nothing is relevant unless it's in your face (AND it's in IMAX).

ES-F has "Baby Doll" committed to the Lennox House for the Mentally Insane, where he bribes an orderly (Oscar Isaac, no scenery goes un-chewed) to lobotomize "Baby Doll" to shut her up so he can inherit his wife's fortune uncontested and in the five days before the doctor (Jon Hamm, who's actually subtle in this movie) arrives for the procedure, the girl fantasizes a scenario in which she's not in an asylum, but a strip-club/bordello and she recruits four other girls—"Blondie" (Vanessa Hudgens), "Amber" (Jamie Chung) and the sisters, "Rocket" (Jena Malone) and "Sweet Pea" (Abbie Cornish)* to plan an escape, an escape concocted in a "delusion within a delusion" (Hello, Inception!) when she rehearses her dance number for the john (whose the lobotomist in the slow-mo reality) to whom her virginity will be sold in five days. This dance number is apparently so erotic that it paralyzes all, male and female, who watch it, so that the other girls can acquire those articles needed to escape.

We don't see the dance. We see the resulting fantasies "Baby Doll" imagines in order TO dance, and these make up the action scenarios in the film: the first, a snowy martial arts fight with three giant statues; the second, a WWI fight in the trenches with steam-punk Nazis; the third, a Peter Jackson-ish Middle-Earth with dragons and Orcs; the fourth, a SCI-FI battle on a bullet-train that's part super-hero and part Matrix—it becomes readily apparent that most of the thought and work of this film went into these second-level fantasy sequences, all played out over Moulin Rouge!-styled song mash-ups.

It is also apparent that the entire movie is a pre-lobotomized fantasy (only I think they got the timing wrong!).

So many good ideas are borrowed from other movies. But, just because the ingredients are good doesn't mean the dish they create doesn't taste like dog-food. I used to be a fan of Zack Snyder. I thought 300 was dumb, but had flashes of clever presentation. I genuinely admired his adaptation of Alan Moore's Watchmen, and still do. But now with the 1-2 sucker-punch of Legend of the Guardians: the Owls of Ga'hoole*** and...Sucker Punch, I'm going to have to do a gut-check before dropping all pretense that I can be objective before going to see another of his films. 

Which will be the new "Superman" film. I don't even think The Blue Boy Scout can pull a rescue of that one. We shall see...

After-thoughts: First off, "I am shocked, shocked" that there is objectification going on in this movie. It IS Zack Snyder, after all, who made 300 and who is equally adept at showing both male and female pulchritude—actually, with all the super-hero movies out there, maybe that's WHY we go to movies anymore. Also, the film has a lot of Japanese manga sensibility to it, so, the women will be big-eyed, and under-dressed. Blame pop-culture, where a lot of this film resides.

I still think the narrative is confused, and it depends on whether you think it is "Baby Doll's" story (which I think it is, as the long preamble would indicate) or whether it is "Sweet Pea's" story (and "Baby Doll" is merely the "body-image/avatar" in her mind used to escape). That's an interesting interpretation, but I don't think I believe it, but it just goes to show how porous the scenario is that you can pour that defense into it and it seems to stick.

Also, the "violence without consequence" comment? It's fantasy sequences, and so "Looney-Tune" rules apply. And "derivative" might have been part of the point, given the pop-culture "call-backs" for the fantasy sequences, which are all "quest" narratives. 

Snyder has a habit of throwing so much information into his movies—sometimes to the point of obfuscation—that narratives can become muddled (which is very problematic when he has to do a course correction, as he had to do with his DCEU movies, where his films are left with dangling plot threads that never get resolved...even with his "extended cuts"), but there is a real problem when it's a point of debate of who the protagonist is and what has been accomplished on all planes of the endeavor.

There are some interesting points about "empowerment" and how, in the war between men and women, that empowerment may be merely exploiting the weaknesses of your opponent (starting with their own feelings of superiority), without having to "own" the means of exploitation. It made me wonder how much of a woman's time is spent "in disguise" for survival. We all do, to a certain extent, but what a different world might come of dropping pretense and just "being." I must, at least, thank Sucker Punch for putting that thought in my head.

Below, two videos on the film: one, with a condescending chip on its shoulder, but a surprising number of good points; and the other from the long-running (and entertaining) "Cinemasins" series that still takes things to task while acknowledging the meta-narrative.

* We'll be talking about this tomorrow (digital fingers crossed) and Rango when we delve into a couple of "shelter-in-place" weeks of Westerns.

** Throughout, I kept imagining the nasty Twitter message Jane Campion would be sending her Bright Star lead after seeing this movie. 

*** Now, the question is: do I re-publish the reviews for these films or just do a "Now I've Seen Everything Dept." career overview of Zack Snyder? The latter would probably have better insight than the "first-blush" reactions.

Richard Jewell

Acts of Domestic Terrorism
or
Getting the Story Wrong

"No Good Deed Goes Unpunished"

Unattributed, although ascribed to many

Clint Eastwood's new film, Richard Jewell, should be fairly cut and dried, seeing how it is "based on a true story" and a well-documented story at that, enough that the tag-line has been altered to "Based on the True Story of the Atlanta Bombing," as if anybody actually remembered it. But, no, it's isn't cut-and-dried, it's controversial, when it shouldn't be. 

Oh, the facts are there—the bombing of Atlanta's Centennial Park during the 1996 Summer Olympic Games; the sudden elevation of a low level security guard Richard Jewell as a hero for finding the bomb and preventing more destruction than the two deaths that were were recorded—one direct and one indirect and 111 injuries; his just-as-sudden FBI suspicion of being the one responsible for the bomb (despite a 9-1-1 call from a distant pay-phone ten minutes before the explosion when he was trying to convince police and security that there might be an actual threat); the media frenzy over the Jewell investigation leaked by the FBI, when it was based on rather hazy, and misapplied, profiling and, when that didn't work, conspiracy theories.   

Meanwhile, Jewell was put through a head-spinning change of fortunes, partially based on his own behavior characteristics and his unquestioning respect for authority. Jewell wanted to be in law enforcement, but he was physically unfit for the job and seemed to have a chip on his shoulder that others didn't hold the same respect for the law that he did. Jewell was "by the book" and held people to their word, making him contradictorily diligent and detail-oriented and yet incredibly naive. Those qualities made him the perfect guy to find the bomb—there was a LOT of security there that night that did not—over-react, and, while doing the right thing, getting people's noses out of joint.

Better than having nails explode in your face, though.

And better than the the trial-by-gauntlet Jewell faced being part of a headline story being covered 24/7 by an already entrenched media firing squad. It was the Olympics and the whole world was watching. One would think, with such attention, the idea would be to get the story right than to get the story out. But, as has been seen time and again with "Breaking News" there's a lot of mis-information that comes out initially. And there is no subsequent rush—when "news breaks"—to fix it. 

Jewell, initially hailed as a hero for his actions—in a crowded park, full of police, security and FBI (all fussing over who has jurisdiction). Jewell is trotted before the intense "up close and personal" Olympic coverage on television. Then, the investigation begins under the same glare of spotlights and confusion. Given the scrutiny from all sides, the pressure results on being first, with egos and reputations on the line.

Without any hard evidence, despite an FBI sweep of his apartment shared with his mother, and some rather dodgy techniques to trick Jewell into some form of entrapment, he is made the initial focus of the investigation and this gets leaked to the news media, particularly The Atlantic Journal-Constitution, which runs it as a headline in an Extra edition and at that point, everything escalates, with speculation, mobs of reporters outside the Jewell residence. The only thing the movie doesn't get into is the pressure from FBI headquarters to nail down the search, quickly. 

All fairly laid out as it transpired—and the best source of information is Marie Brenner's "Vanity Fair" article "American Nightmare: The Ballad of Richard Jewell," which goes into a bit more detail about the then FBI director Louis Freeh's heavy hand in it, as well as the FBI agents who have been morphed into the character of "Tom Shaw" (played by Jon Hamm), who, under pressure for results—he is even placed at the scene of the bombing, giving him a sense of guilty responsibility.

Eastwood's film is, first of all, well-acted. It's Sam Rockwell's first film with Eastwood and his role as Jewell friend and legal adviser Watson Bryant is another of his extraordinary performances that feels lived in and natural, while spicing it up with just a notch of theatricality. He's the backbone of the picture, the guy with the attitude and the perspective, he's the text of the film's view. Kathy Bates plays Jewell's mother and she's the heart of it, showing the destruction of one's psyche when everything trusted is turned against her. 

Both of these actors provide the emotional fireworks,* the outrage and sorrow not prevalent in the character of Jewell (played by the relatively unknown Paul Walter Hauser, but whose quirky turn in I, Tonya made him someone interesting to watch). Hauser makes Jewell aggravating but still sympathetic, at times prideful and pathetic, perpetually having his balloon popped—intelligent, certainly, but not above having it overwhelmed by an inferiority complex.  Hauser is amazing, but then, he always has been, infusing his roles with a dash of unglamorized normalcy. He's not theatrical, but he's quickly elastic with no irony applied. It's a naked, raw performance that makes you wonder if Eastwood just snatched up the real guy again (he didn't, of course—Jewell died in 2007).

They're the "good guys." The elephant in the internet is Eastwood's "bad guys." The one that's getting the headlines is Olivia Wilde's AC reporter Kathy Scruggs. There have been charges of sexism against an ambitious female reporter...because she's an ambitious female reporter (I've been trying to think of a female reporter in any movie that isn't) and that Scruggs is treated unfairly and inaccurately. It is harsh, but one should reiterate that it is her name on the byline of the story. It is alleged in the film that Scruggs traded sex for information from an FBI informant—more on him in a bit—but there is no evidence for that and may be the screenwriter reading more into Marie Brenner's characterizing Scruggs as "a police groupie" than there is (although most of the "police groupies" I know are male). Scruggs, in the movie, is given a redeeming character arc that implies conscience and a kind of redemption that has never been displayed by the paper in its long legal battles against Jewell's civil suits, and it is the only news organization that did not settle in its civil lawsuit, saying that their story was "factually true at the time." 

No one, however, is complaining about Hamm's FBI agent who is, even at the end of the film and despite evidence to the contrary, completely sure of Jewell's guilt. There is no ax to grind here, apparently—Eastwood, after all, made the controversial J. Edgar with one of the Richard Jewell's exec's, Leonardo DeCaprio—no need to blow up the interwebs over that. Nor, has anyone made mention of the fact that Jewell, Scruggs and the compendium "Shaw" can all be tarred with the same brush that brought Jewell under suspicion in the first place—being over-zealous. Irony doesn't play well in social media, evidently.

One shouldn't be surprised that the very entities with with reputations to tarnish should be the ones to squawk the loudest when they are put in a defensive position by something that might exert a change in the power dynamic they enjoy. But, then, an unfair power dynamic lies at the heart of the film, and has been at the heart of so many of Eastwood's films. It is amazing that in a time when film-makers are reaching down for the common denominator, that Eastwood's films still stir people up, allowing people to see what they want to see, a sort of litmus test for those who dare to take it.

Jewell's nightmare that would solve all problems—covering the bomb with his body.

The real Jewell—holding the evidence.

* Oh. Did I mention that there's an explosion in the movie? Damn, it made me and the rest of the theater patrons jump. Cover your popcorn, people!