The Painted Veil (2006)

The Painted Veil (John Curran, 2006) Maugham's tough. A restrained writer of underlying passions and the complications of class and personality, he has had little luck in adaptations for the screen, which when separated from the civility of his tone, tend to look all the more melodramatic.

Filmmakers have combated this in a number of ways when adapting works by Maugham. They either are as dry as dust, the juice sucked right out of them (The Razor's Edge, 1947), or played to hysterics, overcompensating for the former (The Razor's Edge, 1987...with a "jokey" Bill Murray performance), or just the basic idea used and the rest transmuted to some other end (Hitchcock's Secret Agent).

However, we're gradually catching up to him. With time, his themes have seen better, more fulfilling adaptations, but Maugham needs a director like Elia Kazan, who wasn't afraid to walk the fine line of good/bad taste. "The Painted Veil" has been lensed twice before--once with Garbo in 1937, and, as The Seventh Sin (more box-officey title) with Bill Travers and Elanor Parker in 1957. Both films emphasized the soap-ish, melodramatic aspects of the story, but this one is a huge improvement.*

It's obviously a labor of love, because it cost $17 million to produce and it looks like three times that much, at least. Filmed mostly in China, The Painted Veil tells the story of a spiteful marriage between a cold physician (Norton), and a spoiled society girl (Watts), who must adapt to a life of sacrifice and want in the Far East, and in the process both find their priorities shift and their expectations shattered.

It's one of Maugham's "too little, too late" stories, but I've rarely seen one better acted (the cast includes Naomi Watts, Edward Norton--sacrificing salaries as producers--Liev Schrieber, Toby Jones, and Dame Diana Rigg) or realized so well. This may be the best movie deal in years from a production and audience stand-point.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

The Ultimate Spectacular Amazing Spider-Man
or
"Aw, Did That Feel Like a Cartoon?"

Back in "the day", before the super-hero glut in multi-plexes, James Cameron was trying to untangle the web-like rights to the Spider-Man character to make the first Spider-Man movie. Rumors were that it was going to be prohibitively expensive as well, as Cameron's story involved multiple dimensions—that was a rumor, but in those pre-Titanic days, everything associated with Cameron was considered prohibitively expensive, despite the fact that he could squeeze every last drop of screen quality out of his budgets just by clever movie-making legerdemain. It also seemed like a big leap in concept for that first introductory "Spidey" movie—audiences needed to be able to "buy" into things like radioactive spiders, web-shooters, urban web-slinging, sticking to walls, and fooling your old "biddy" aunt that you were at the library when you came home bruised after fighting a giant lizard before we got into any story with any real dimension—or many of them. With great powers comes great amounts of time justifying them to an audience that still doesn't quite believe a man can fly.

But, if you're going to crank out comics monthly (or bi-weekly), you have to come up with something besides a story about a villain that dresses up like an aardvark for the hero to fight, so writers—being writers—came up with the "multiple earths" theory where you could have stories with a "what if?" hook. DC started it with their "Flash of Two Worlds" story in a 1961 issue of The Flash comic book, where that book's hero visited the alternate Earth of "The Flash" from the 1940's—although Wikipedia makes a case for it starting in a 1953 issue of "Wonder Woman." Marvel started their multiple Universes with 1984's "Captain Britain" series, but, recently, the various media in which superheroes appear have dabbled with "Alternate Earth" story-lines, the most recent (and I'd argue at first viewing) and among the best of any super-hero films is Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse with a story written by Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman and energetically directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and and Rothman.

Meet Miles Morales (voiced by Shameik Moore), a high school student living in New York. Dad (Bryan Tyree Henry) is with the NYPD, and his Mom (Luna Lauren Velez) is a nurse. He attends Brooklyn Visions Academy, a charter school, although he'd rather be at Brooklyn Middle with his pals. It's just Miles is brilliant—he can't even fail a test to get kicked out. Miles is more of an artist than academic, and despite the pressure from his folks, he'd rather be spending time with his Uncle Aaron (Mahershala Ali), although his father disapproves.

His Dad also disapproves of Spider-Man (voiced by Chris Pine), who starts out the movie with a "Okay, let's do this again" narration that introduces you to who Spider-Man is—he will remind you a lot of previous "Spider-Men" in other Spider-Man movies, at least THIS Universe's Spider-Man movies—talking himself up and ending with "The only thing standing between this city and oblivion is the one and only Spider-Man."

A bit premature, that. After another spat with Dad about having to go to BVU, Miles goes to visit his Uncle Aaron, who encourages his graffiti-art and takes him to the subway, where Miles gets to practice painting the wall of a blocked-off section. It is here where Miles gets bitten by a radioactive spider, because, hey, it's happened before, and he finds that things get a bit sticky and has him climbing the walls...quite literally. That's something that doesn't happen with puberty, and it causes all sorts of mishaps that he can't explain and does not understand.

Standard stuff, right? At least standard for a Spider-Man movie. But, this is where things get good. Very good. Because with great powers come some great graphics and some very imaginative film-making. The directors go full-tilt comic book with narrative boxes, emoti-squiggles, dramatic freeze-frames, and some onomatopoetic effects that seamlessly interact with the action going on, and become a part of the landscape of its hero's experiences. At times, it is positively thrilling to watch Spider-Verse unfold, so creative are the choices to enhance it made, without sacrificing the momentum of the film or the story. Nobody's tried this since Ang Lee made his Hulk movie, but this is far more successful in every way.

At the same time, look at the picture of Miles looking at the spider that irradiated him. Click on it. Look at it large and look at the light. It's made of dots, not unlike how the old comic-books used to make graded colors out of the primaries. It's subtle, but noticeable and they do that throughout the movie, creating an image that isn't pure white light, but has an ethereal glow to it. It's done quite a bit in the movie, but never to the point where it's really distracting, but gives it "an edge" being in a movie, although it elicited a nostalgic sense of memory for this old comics reader.

One more technical thing which I loved (then I promise I'll get back to the movie): the three directors do a wonderful thing with focus and distance—they take it slightly off-focus, by merely shifting color gradients a bit, like an old-time comics printing error, while they keep the area of intended attention sharp. This was particularly effective in 3-D (which, for once, I recommend) where it looks a bit like the stereoscopic errors that plagued the close perspective images in the early versions of the latest generation of three dimension-pushing films. This is a great choice and one more cleverly innovative way the directors create their comic-book world. By comparison, look at the difference between the shot above, and their photo-realistic city-scape below.

End of technical geek-out—

While strolling up the side of a building, he's noticed by Spider-Man—the established Spider-Man—who takes Miles under his web to learn the...webs. Unfortunately, on that night, Wilson Fisk—the New York gangster called "The Kingpin" (voiced by Liev Schreiber) is testing a new device that creates a trans-dimensional bridge because...well, that's a spoiler that's revealed in a lovely sequence based on the art-style of Bill Senkiewicz...but Fish doesn't care that it causes city-wide earthquakes and a "glitching" transformation of pieces of New York. He's a big, bad dude, after all, and he proves it by killing Spider-Man when he tries to stop the destruction.

New York mourns Peter Parker, the twenty-something who was Spider-Man, except that...he's blond! The Peter Parker "we" know has dark hair and we have that verified when he shows up on Miles' Earth, having been sucked out of his world due to Fisk's foolhardy experiments. THIS Parker—Peter B. Parker (voiced by Jake Johnson)—is also 20-something, not in the best of shape (Miles calls him the "brink old-joke hobo Spider-Man") and is going through an emotional upheaval after the collapse of his marriage to Mary Jane Watson (Zoë Kravitz). Despite that, he's the only "one-and-only" Spider-Man in town, and Miles looks to him to help him become the Spider-Man he wants to be. As Peter B. wants to get back to his own world, he agrees, especially since Miles has a doo-hickey needed to shut off the Fisk-machine—except that...he broke it. So the two make a trip to Fisk Tech-Labs to try and find a replacement, because, as Peter B says, "the best way to learn is intense, life-threatening pressure."

They also get help from that Earth's Aunt May (voiced by Lily Tomlin, bless her) and other dimensional Spidey's who show up at her door-step—because they all have an Aunt May. There's Spider-Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld) from the dimension where Gwen Stacy becomes a Spider-person, Spider-Noir (Nicolas Cage) who comes from a gritty, black-and-white Universe, Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn), who, with her robot spider-kick is an anime hero, and, finally, Spider-Ham (voiced by John Mulaney), the Spidey from a cartoon universe. The six web-slingers form a team to try and get back to their own worlds...and teach Miles that "with great abilities come great accountability" (or something like that) because it takes a village of Spider-people.

Sound complicated? Not really, certainly not the way the film-makers tell it. Entertaining? That, it CERTAINLY is. Turns out it takes SIX Spider-Men to change a franchise...for the better. Given the whole package, story, direction and animation imagination, one is confident in saying Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is the best of this particular hero's films—even better than the live-action Spider-Man 2—and certainly, animation aside, the best directed of the Spider-Man films (which never really managed to convey good Spider-Man action no matter how much they tried) even given its many changes of perspectives and often vertigo-inducing sequences.

Speaking of which, while I was watching the film, some of the more (shall we say?) "flashy" effects seemed to be extreme and given the pace of the film, a might strobe-like. There was a time when I wanted to end the review by saying that the only way you could not like the film would be if you had no interest in animation, visual presentation or prone to epileptic seizures. When I went to another theater the next day, there was a warning placard at the concession stand warning of those prone to epilepsy of such effects as they were displayed. There is some internet chatter about making an online petition. Duly noted. Take note. Some dimensions you don't want to fall into.

Still, I enjoyed the flashing lights. My admiration for the film has only grown since the day I saw it, and my distance from it has not dimmed my enthusiasm or admiration for this, one of the best presentations of the superhero genre, ever.

Spotlight

Let Us Prey (How Do You Solve a Problem Like Pariah?)
or
The Feast of the Epiphany

Spotlight has been getting a lot of Oscar buzz (worthy, I'd say) for its depiction of the journalistic tracking of the systemic abuse of the Catholic Church in its shuffling of known sex-offender priests from one parish to another in order to avoid local scandal. The film is not prurient, not sensationalistic. If anything, it just concentrates on the story of getting the story in the tradition of most "press" movies—a genre usually sneered at by the press. Scrutinizers don't like to be scrutinized in the same way doctors don't like to go under the knife.

Or, as William F. Buckley chortled when asked why he supposed Senator Robert F. Kennedy refused to appear on his conservative discussion show "Firing Line": "Why does baloney reject the grinder?"

But, the reporters of the "Spotlight" feature of The Boston Globe praise Spotlight, even if it does not show them in the best of lights (other than being portrayed by film-stars) because ultimately, through fits and starts, sins of omission and hubris, they did get the story that had been buried under bureaucracy and doctrine and a "gentleman's agreement" between power brokers of government and clergy. They dared to shine a light on the dark corners of the church that had been sheltered in stained glass and "community good" while incidents of sexual misconduct had occurred against the very parishioners most vulnerable and in need of the church. Those victims were lambs to the slaughter, against wolves in shepherd's clothing.

It's enough to shake your faith...in everything.

Keaton, Shreiber, Ruffalo, Adams, Slattery and James...scrutinizing.

The only reason the scandal came to light was due to outside influence. Inside influence had been going on for so long it was routine. The film begins with one such incident where a priest is in lock-up, distraught mom and kids are talking to detectives, and a lawyer drives up and is escorted into the back-rooms. Then a priest rushes in. The cops out in front treat it like another day at the office. "And then this happens..." The priests and lawyer skulk back out into the night and drive off, leaving a witness, silently observing. We never learn who that is. It doesn't matter who sees. Nothing will be done about it.

At The Boston Globe, an editor is retiring, and we see his farewell party, the guy getting joshed good-naturedly by owner Ben Bradlee Jr. (John Slattery) and "Spotlight" editor Walter "Robbie" Robinson (Michael Keaton). The "Spotlight" staff hangs back, they're in the middle of doing a piece on crime stats in Boston, and it's not going well: Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) is on the phone with the Boston PD getting "no comments;" Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams—thoroughly making up for her role in "The Hunger Games" series) and Matt Carroll (Brian D'Arcy James) are at the party having cake and gossiping about the new editor coming in. That seems to be the topic of conversation—Bradlee and Robinson are having the same discussion as well, with Robinson doing the reporter thing—he's taking him out to lunch...to scrutinize. The new editor, Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) is not from "around here." So, the townies have to size him up, see who's going to be doing the most bending, them or him.

Baron has been around, and he sees how the newspaper market is changing—the internet is taking over classifieds, other media are faster even though less reliable—so he has it in his head that The Globe has to matter to the people of Boston (not unlike Charles Foster Kane wanting his newspaper "The Inquirer" being as "important" as the gas in a lamp). It has to provide a service that no other source can provide. If the Globe isn't "essential" it will not survive. The "Spotlight" team is one of the things that make the paper stand out, even though "Spotlight" has a reputation for taking things slow, slow, slow in order to do a thorough, grinding job of reporting. Baron spikes that crime report in favor of reviving the old "Geoghan case."

Geoghan had a history of sexual abuse of young boys and was the subject of 87 civil law suits, all public records of which had been suppressed by a court order asked for by the Boston Archdiocese. It is Rezendes' job to get those records, and Baron says he will ask for a court order to release the public records. To a person, the response to this action is: "You want to sue the Church?" No, that's not what he wants to do. But in the Boston bubble, it amounts to the same thing—The Church doesn't want the records released, so to petition to have them make the public records actually public, you have to "fight" The Church.

Rezendes also tries to get more background from prickly lawyer Mitchell Garabedian (Stanley Tucci, who is brilliant in this, as he usually is in everything), who has been representing sexual abuse victims for years, and is reluctant to give anything to the press, as they've been ignoring his entreaties for years. Plus, he has a reputation for being difficult. He's one of the lawyers accused of "turning child abuse into a cottage industry."

Pfeiffer goes another direction: she starts to interview victims of the attacks, provided to her by an organization (SNAP-The Survivor's Network of Those Abused by Priests) that has been cataloging and offering support to abuse victims—the head of the organization also has a reputation as flighty, unstable and a flake, but his distrust of the press is even greater than Garabedian's, as he's sent information to the Globe in the past, only to see nothing for his efforts. The kids, now adults, are reluctant to come out of the shadows, left with psychological issues, shame, self-loathing, and a sense of betrayal that makes them suspicious of everyone. Robinson oversees the project, throwing his weight around so that Pfeiffer can talk to the local prosecutor (Billy Crudup) who settled most of the cases in court and out of the public eye. He also meets with a friend, attorney Jim Sullivan (Jamey Sheridan), who has represented the Church in some cases, and who advises him Robinson that "off the record, I can't talk about it."

Meanwhile, a pattern starts to emerge: by checking the yearly publication of priests and parishes on record in The Globe's archives, the accused priests that have been shuffled off to other parishes, or taken to "treatment centers" are listed as either on "sick leave,""absent" or "unassigned"—official code words to avoid scrutiny or investigation. A telephone interview with a psychologist (an uncredited Richard Jenkins) studying the problem says that it's estimated that 6% of all priests are chronic abusers, a figure the Spotlighters don't believe, until they go through those records and find that, statistically, they add up—87 of Boston's priests have been coded, made to "lie low," then re-assigned to other parishes by the Archdiocese. It's a conspiracy done behind closed confessional doors, orchestrated by the Church, carried out by the courts in secret. As one character remarks "If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse them."

For the staffers, it is a growing nightmare that they are slow to accept—except for Baron, they're all Catholics, and being in the Boston social circles means they have frequent business with Church hierarchy, and the representatives from sectarian institutions and charities associated with it. Plus, the Archdiocese's Cardinal Law (Len Cariou) is a highly political man who makes sure he is well-connected in the Boston community, even requesting that Baron meet with him when he's first starting his editor job. All the better to influence and manipulate. Manipulation is a strong tool in the Catholic Church...or any church, for all that.

It is the staffers' crisis of faith that is the most interesting aspect to Spotlight. And it's not just faith in their Church that is troubling them (although that is articulated frequently by the Catholic staff, that sense of betrayal). It is also faith in themselves as reporters and "guardians" of the public trust. This is not articulated—by them, but is brought up by Garabedian, by the victims with a "Where were you?"—but is shown in stray looks at each other, by a wordless scene where Pfeiffer shows an old Globe clipping from the archives to Robinson, for whom that failure is very personal. While they're strutting around, thinking themselves noble arbiters of truth, at best they are only making up for lost time, reporting on a cold case, the damage being done long ago. That sense of guilty futility is done without words, eked out by a brilliant cast under the unpretentious direction of Tom McCarthy (he directed The Station Agent, Win Win, The Visitor, all superb films—he also wrote the story for Up with Bob Peterson and Pete Docter). This is a great film, and not in the "hoo-rah" easy kind of crowd-pleasing way. It is tough, in subject matter and on its subjects, and it is one of the best films of the year.

Bradlee, Rezendes, Carroll, Pfeiffer, Baron, and Robinson

Pawn Sacrifice

Toppling the Fischer-King
or
"No, He's Worried About What's Going to Happen if He Wins"

Chess is a game, but it is a tough one, not child's play. As one character (Peter Saarsgard's Father Bill Lombardy) describes it in Pawn Sacrifice, it's a "rabbit-hole." Get good enough to get out of the "potzer" stage and pretty soon you're studying it and that comprises zillions of moves and zillions of games, and, like most drama, "there's nothing new under the sun." It comes down to knowledge and making the right move and anticipating the next few moves of your opponent with history as your guide.

But that's if you're playing "by the book."

That's if you're playing to win—and there's no reason to play chess if the only thing you want to do is move pieces around a board for fun. You approach the game with one goal in mind and it is not to lose. Chess is a mano-a-mano cage-match to the death. It is not a game of enjoyment or social interaction. It ain't "Twister." To play chess is to want to win. Absolutely. It's binary. Win or lose. And the twisting scenarios are a guide and a complication to that one singular goal: win. Don't be a loser.

You have to have a tinge of the megalomaniac to play chess. And the fiefdom that you want to claim is 20 inches by 20 inches, barely enough to contain the smallest of egos. It is not a game for the indifferent. It is not a game for those who see it as merely a game. It demands a cold, calculating killer instinct that plays "all-in."

As such, the recreation informs the player, to the point where it becomes a question whether the participant is playing the game or the game is playing them. 

So...Bobby Fischer. The script of Pawn Sacrifice had been on the legendary "Black List" of unproduced scripts since 2009, and like most of those, they're really good scripts that are judged "unmarketable"—in other words, "no superheroes." How do you make a compelling movie...about chess?

You make it about when the entire world was gripped in the biggest chess-match on Earth between Fischer and Russia's Boris Spaasky in 1972. World leaders were watching this match, and everyday citizens, too. At the time, Fischer was on more magazine covers than in Kate Upton's dreams (including Sports Illustrated), and for an obsessive-compulsive with an out-sized ego and the aggressiveness of a pit-bull, all this attention caused a crack in that precise, disciplined mind. 

Which wasn't that disciplined in the first place. Chess is what focused a troubled kid with a family life in chaos. It became his refuge, became his weapon, the place he'd rather be than home with a Mom and a revolving door of "dad's," checkmating kings being the alternative to punching older men in the face—having control.

And control is relative. It's one thing to control a chessboard. You might even delude yourself into thinking you control the player on the other side. But, that's it. And for Bobby Fischer, it's a hard lesson of how much control his mastery of chess ultimately gave him. It got him money, fame, notoriety, maybe a legacy of sorts. But, never control.

After a brief look at Fischer's childhood (where he's played by Aiden Lovekamp and Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick), we see the eccentric adult Fischer (a dynamite performance by Tobey Maguire, who looks like he didn't sleep throughout the entire production), rising through the ranks. He is approached by an agent Paul Marshall (Mark Stuhlbarg), who is a chess fan and a self-described "hopeless" patriot, who wants to see an American loosen the stranglehold the Russians have on the World Chess Championship. He has investors who might be able to fund Fischer's attempt. The Russians, after all, support Spassky (played by Liev Schreiber), with bodyguards, drivers, official cars and nice hotel digs. Fischer's entourage is a "minder" and fellow chess advocate Father Lombardy (Saarsgard) (he'd played Fischer in 1965; "We were young. He'd destroy me now.") who, after some reluctance over Fischer's behavior in the past ("Bobby has problems" he warns Marshall. "So did Mozart" is the reply), agrees to oversee his progress through the Championship.

Fischer's behavior is flinty even in the best of times. But with the added pressure of the tournament, the increasing stakes, the growing attention paid to it, and the less-than-five-star accommodations the privately funded endeavor can afford (as compared to the Soviets'), he begins to crack under the competitive strain. His behavior turns petulant, paranoid (he's convinced that his phone is bugged—he's just not sure if it's by the Russians, the Americans, or the press) and he begins to act out, complaining about his pay, his rooms, the venue for the contest, the audience for the tournaments, even the noise coming from the air conditioner in the tournament hall. Anything that distracts him from the game becomes intolerable, and everything is distracting from the game—even the pressure of the game itself.

In one brilliant sequence (aided and abetted by sound designer Lon Bender), a tournament becomes torture, as every single noise in the room is amplified to the point of irritation—the scrape of a pencil taking notes a few tables down, the tick of a clock, the buzzing of the room's "exit" signs—his focus on the game is so acute that everything else becomes larger than life in significance. And as Lombardy duly notes "without chess, he doesn't exist."

Check and mate. 

Chess is all he knows. And although he may be king of his castle, the board that Bobby Fischer is playing on is neither uniform nor even—it is, in fact, very unstable—and if one has built a life around the tactics of chess and not much else, life can be daunting on that field, as it is full of shifts and turns, both seen and unseen (and sometimes only suspected) that may un-do oneself some many moves down the road. Why are you making THAT move? What's the reason you're moving THAT piece? Is that part of a plan to take me down? And just because I don't see it does not mean that it ultimately will not be my demise. Chess breeds paranoia if you take it too seriously.

Life is not like chess. It is, only if you assume every person you see is trying to beat you and take everything away from you. The funny thing about chess is, more often than not, it is not the other player's strategy that defeats you, it is the way you react to their moves, which can lead you into a trap that you ultimately can't get out. You defeat yourself. 

Check, mate. 

This sort of movie is where director Ed Zwick is at his best—a small movie where individuals interact in interesting ways (His TV movie "Special Bulletin" is a favorite of mine). He has been stuck in a rut doing movies that have an epic sweep since Glory (and Legends of the Fall, The Siege, The Last Sumarai, Defiance, and the like), which ultimately feel a bit empty, but he's at his best in more personal movies without much reach but a lot of room for depth. His cast in this is superb without a false note in the bunch—and Maguire's performances can be problematic in that regard, but not here, where despite not looking like Fischer, he manages to make a distinct portrait of almost sympathetic paranoia. Sarsgaard and Stuhlbarg are becoming ubiquitous in movies now, which is all to the good for movies in general—they are the very best of utility players, who, like Mark Ruffalo, are at the cusp of breaking out into full-blown stardom.

Not many people saw Pawn Sacrifice and more's the pity. It's an intelligent script (okay, there's a gaffe involving Jimi Hendrix) with a lot of very good actors doing extraordinary work. But, there's a reason the film was on The Blacklist—that's where really good scripts that aren't very marketable go to wait to be noticed. It's still waiting.