Miscellaneous Debris, October 2010 Edition

It’s the end of the month. This is what we do.

October wasn’t much of a month for movies, not counting The Social Network - known to millions of lazy people as “The Facebook Movie” or the kinda cool, “Grumpy Old Hitmen” vibe of Red. The month included quite a few box office disappointments, however, most of which look like under-cooked prestige pictures dumped before the holiday season: Life As We Know It, Secretariat, and especially Hereafter are all still playing, yet none of them are lighting up cash registers or critics’ polls.

With the winter movie season just around the corner – and more intriguing movies set to start arriving at a pretty brisk pace – here’s the news that caught our eye this month, presented in no particular order of importance.

We don't have a season two photo: Community

1. The television networks are at this moment braced for the onset of November sweeps, the crucial period in which the nets determine their ad rates for the coming new year. Virtually by tradition, shows pull out all the stops to garner viewers, with even the most established shows growing to great – often absurd lengths – to build their audiences. NBC in particular needs to pull a rabbit out of its hat, since virtually none of its new shows this year have become bona fide ratings hits.

If you’re not watching the peacock’s Community, the best comedy currently on network television, you’re only hurting yourself. Years from now, you’ll want to tell people you watched it when it was still on. Don’t make yourself a liar.

An answer: No Riddler in third Batman film

2. The third installments of trilogies are seldom the best – just ask fans of Star Wars, The Bourne Identity, The Terminator or (if any still exist) The Matrix. Yet if any franchise could break that glass ceiling, it’s likely Christopher Nolan’s Batman series. This week the director gave the L.A. Times’ Hero Complex blog some tantalizing bits about the third film: it will be titled The Dark Knight Rises and include many returning characters from the first two films. Further, it will not be shot in 3-D, and it will not include The Riddler as an antagonist.

The Riddler, a kind of road show Joker who teased Batman with elaborately cryptic crimes, was portrayed by two previous actors: Frank Gorshin had the part in the 1960s television series, and Jim Carey chewed up the scenery as mastermind E. Nigma in 1995′s Batman Forever. By the way, Nolan has already scotched rumors that bad guy Mr. Freeze will appear, either. Still, there are plenty of villains left from which to choose.

3. In more immediate comic book news, Entertainment Weekly unveils Chris Evans as Captain America in their latest issue, displaying the more military-cut uniform and gear the hero has taken to wearing in recent years. Evans, for his part, looks the part; we were skeptical of his ability to pull off a role we felt for years belonged to Mark Valley, but the physical transformation is unmistakable, and after seeing The Losers we’re willing to believe he can give the patriotic hero a human dimension.

The film opens next July, and whether it’s great or terrible it likely won’t be worse than several of the character’s previous transitions to film and television. Honestly, you wouldn’t believe how low the bar is currently set.

Brand new Bilbo: Freeman

4. After several years in which it seemed Guillermo Del Toro would helm the Lord of the Rings prequel The Hobbit, New Line announced two weeks ago that Peter Jackson, who produced and directed the trilogy, will now direct the tw0-part spinoff. Both films will be shot in 3-D, with production set to start next February. Martin Freeman (Hot Fuzz) will play the younger, feistier Bilbo Baggins (played in the trilogy by Ian Holm.)

Jackson was originally set to serve as executive producer on the films, but stepped in following Del Toro’s departure. We’re all for his taking over, even if his post-LOTR projects, including King Kong and The Lovely Bones, haven’t exactly proven impressive.

Now to explain The Hobbit‘s story with music, here’s Leonard Nimoy:

5. It’s strange to say this after thinking otherwise for most of our lives, but we wouldn’t trade places with Eric Stoltz right now. The 25th anniversary home video releases of the Back To the Future trilogy include featurettes explaining why the young Stoltz, originally cast as Marty McFly, was replaced after five weeks by Michael J. Fox – in short, because he wasn’t funny enough. As if that weren’t bad enough, Stoltz’s current project, the Syfy-produced Battlestar Galactica prequel series Caprica, was just pulled from the network’s schedule for lack of ratings.

The clip below includes footage from his work on Back to the Future:

Keep your chin up, Mr. Stoltz.

6. Another, less famous relic of the 80s also celebrated its silver anniversary as Rock & Rule arrived on Blu-Ray and DVD at the end of September. Set in a postapocalyptic society in which evolved household pets have replaced people, the story centers around a struggling rock band brought into the machinations of a satanic rock star (with the awesome, probably legally actionable name Mok Swagger) intent on raising a demon to Earth.

The soundtrack includes original songs by Iggy Pop, Deborah Harry, Lou Reed, and Earth, Wind, and Fire, with Paul LeMat and Catherine O’Hara also supplying vocal talent. Produced by Nelvana – the studio responsible for the Star Wars spinoffs Droids and Ewoks - the film nevertheless belongs in the same 80s adult cartoon subgenre that includes Heavy Metal and Watership Down.

An example (and a recent review here)

7. We’re fascinated by the Vault Collection on Turner Classic Movies’ website, which features DVD releases of lesser known films from Warner Brothers, Universal, and RKO studios available on a press-upon-request basis. The WB collection is especially impressive, with hundreds of movies and television shows available from throughout the studio’s history. Even the prices, by and large, remain reasonable, if sometimes perhaps unrealistic. Good stuff for the film buff looking for that maddeningly hard to find DVD, especially with the holidays coming.

8. Finally, we want to end by promising to update more often with more content. Our staff has been pulled in several different directions by various careers and other responsibilities, but it hurts to see the blog languish with a dearth of material (even as our audience grows thanks to some basic SEO techniques deployed in various locations.) Anyway, we’ll be back next week with both some fresh material and a reprise of our drubbing of The Girl Who Played With Fire. Thanks for reading.

- Michael Kabel

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Miscellaneous Debris, March 2010 Edition

This has become our most popular feature. Go figure.   

By the time you read this, March 2010 will likely have gone out like a lamb, with April and the full arrival of  spring coming just after it. Not an awful lot happened by way of movies and film in the last month, at least by way of new releases. A couple of films we expected to do better performed poorly at the box office, while others offered mild surprises. The coming months at least promise plenty of popcorn fare, including The Losers, the eagerly awaited Iron Man 2 and, this coming week, the less-eagerly awaited Clash of the Titans reboot.  

The following is just a roundup of news about television and film stuff we didn’t get around to giving the blogging attention the stories probably deserved. There in no particular order, and they’re just our opinions. They may differ from your opinions. That’s okay.   

1. March was noticeable for a couple of releases that we think fell short of  our vague, informal box office expectations. We thought Green Zone would have excited the public more, though Repo Men, which looked to address health care the same way that Soylent Green addressed overpopulation, got the box office cold shoulder we were afraid it might. Green Zone seems a victim of the American movie audience’s continuing aversion to films about Iraq, while Repo Men was simultaneously under- and mis-promoted. Green Zone may also have been perceived, to quote a friend of ours, as The Bourne Redundancy.  

We'd rather stay home.

2. For a while now we’ve had an idle theory that there exists an inverse proportion between the quality of a high-budget, high-concept movie and the degree of saturation which its marketing receives. If this theory is true, we already suspect Date Night may prove one of the worst movies of the year. The omnipresent, profoundly unfunny ads explaining the film’s premise were all over the dial this month, broadcast and cable alike, making us suspect that 20th Century Fox has little faith in its appeal spreading by word of mouth. For our part, we’re weary of stars Steve Carell’s and Tina Fey’s bland, self-congratulatory schticks, and can’t imagine paying to get what we can see, for free, every Thursday night.  

3. Which is not say NBC’s Thursday night lineup is completely without laughs. Over the course of its first season, Community has quickly bloomed into one of the smartest and most daring shows on network TV. Critics fault its humor for being too reliant on cultural references and its own quirkiness; we see those issues as growing pains in a show with the potential to become a classic ensemble comedy along the lines of New Radio or even Cheers. NBC finally renewed it for a second season, several weeks after re-upping the far drearier Parks and Recreation.  

4. FX’s new Justified has garnered rave reviews in just its first couple of episodes, praise with which we’re hard-pressed to disagree. Adapted from an Elmore Leonard short story, the almost flawless pilot established U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens’ (Timothy Olyphant, Deadwood) return to Harlan, Kentucky as punishment for an act that may or may not have been simple vengeance. Fans of Leonard’s complicated characters and wry black humor won’t want to miss the show; neither will fans of old-fashioned, uncomplicated TV-hero drama. It’s great fun, and like Community has the potential to only get better.  

5. In last month’s Miscellaneous Debris we talked about the land war in Asia that was the casting process for The First Avenger: Captain America. Late this month it was announced that familiar comic book movie presence Chris Evans (The Fantastic Four) had finally won the role. An informal sampling of friends and associates (we asked around our local comic book shop) revealed the general mood surrounding the announcement amounted to vague relief. Nothing against Mr. Evans, who’s dependable if not exactly thrilling as an actor, but such long-awaited news ought to elicit more from its target audience than a collective “well, it could’ve been worse.”  

To this day, we're not sure who killed Laura Palmer.

6.  Here’s something to make Gen-X’ers feel their age: Twin Peaks turns twenty years old next week.  As argued in this panegyric from the British Observer website, the 30-episode surreal crime drama subtly revolutionized television drama, moving it away from the superficial episodics of the 80s towards the meatier, more literate fare that’s become the modern bastion of cable television from The Sopranos on down. Some of us were fans back in the day, and some of us still appreciate the never-ending reruns on the Chiller cable network. Nevertheless, the occasional campiness of the plots and acting are starting to show their age, and the early episodes are markedly more cohesive than the show’s troubled second season.  

7. The industry isn’t promoting their release as well as they could, but several studios are quietly issuing some classic and near-classic fare to Blu-Ray at bargain basement rates. We’ve already found the 80s vampire cult favorite Near Dark and the Steve McQueen crime classic The Getaway for less than ten bucks each at the local big box retailers, with similar prices offered on several more films. Though the cumulative Blu-Ray library still has a long way to go before rivaling DVD in depth or quality, putting out such special-interest films at collector’s prices is a huge step in the right direction.  

Here’s the trailer for The Getaway, not so much a preview as a seemingly random assortment of moments from the film:  

  

If you’ve scored your own cheap Blu-Ray find, tell us about it in the comments section below.  

8. Finally, an open plea to our readers: longtime DVD collectors will likely remember the heady days of the early 00′s, when the format’s swift replacing of the VHS medium caused a deluge of titles to appear on retail shelves and in the catalogues of online boutiques alike. Now, many lesser known titles that were given releases back then are going out of print and/or commanding exorbitant prices on eBay and throughout Amazon.com’s gallery of affiliate merchants. If you know of a reputable, dependable e-commerce DVD retailer, please let us know. Particularly, right now we’re looking for Fat City and The Duellists; on a larger level, we’re trying to find a dependable e-commerce merchant with a broad, deep back catalogue. Thanks.  

We’ll be back next week with more reviews. Thanks for reading.  

- Michael Kabel

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DVD Review: The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard

Raunchy, overlooked used car comedy arrives on DVD tomorrow.

Dumped into theatres late last summer and doomed to a quick box office death, The Goods: Live hard, Sell Hard deserves a better fate on home video. Though calling it a classic or even expert filmmaking would overstate the case a bit,  first-time director Neal Brennan and a huge, overqualified cast  manage build a loose, rambling movie that expects nothing of you but your own low expectations. Because of that, and sometimes despite it, the film is often riotously funny.

Like Talladega Nights and seemingly dozens of other Will Ferrell movies (Ferrell and frequent collaborator Adam McKay co-produced), The Goods puts an alpha dog personality in a working-class situation for trashy comic effect, relying on a barrage of potty language, sexual innuendo and slapstick violence to crowd-surf the audience from one gag to the next. Thrown in for good measure: weird, sometimes lovable supporting characters; an improbably warm-hearted romantic interest; and a shaggy plot hinging on personal honor. In fact, the film doggedly follows that blueprint, moving its characters from one gag or situation to the next while barely slowing down to establish context or meaning to the jokes. You laugh a lot while it’s happening, even as you’re aware everyone could manage to do better.

The saving grace is that most of the jokes are funny – sometimes very funny, with at least three extended gags that detonate with explosive comic payoff. “Used car mercenary” Don Ready (Jeremy Piven) and his team of high-pressure sales experts are hired by failing Temecula, California car patriarch Ben Selleck (James Brolin) to get rid of 200 cars over the Fourth of July weekend. Because the process of inventory liquidation only has so much comic potential, the script comes fully loaded with character baggage: Ready is haunted by a previous failure that ended in the death of his best friend. His teammates are bizarrely distracted by various sex-charged problems: oversexed Babs (Kathryn Hahn) lusts after Selleck’s man-child son (Rob Riggle); sensitive Jibby (Ving Rhames) longs to “make love” to a woman (as opposed to just having sex); financial wizard Brent (David Koechner) finds himself the reluctant object of Selleck’s homosexual advances.

Ready woos Selleck’s daughter Ivy (Jordana Spiro), despite her engagement to weaselly import car salesman/boy-band vocalist Paxton (Ed Helms). The film knows – and we know it knows – that the two are going to end up together, and their courtship has a going-through-the-motions quality despite Spiro’s luminous charm. Ready also finds a possible long-lost son in Selleck’s youngest employee Blake (Jonathan Sadowski), a junior salesman with all of his signature moves. While the potential in that setup teems with character and gag possibilities, the film never really gets the story thread moving. As with the other plotlines, it’s one more thing in the circus of the film’s action.

But despite all the characters and the bevy of jokes the film still sometimes manages to lose its momentum, especially during a plot twist late in the second act that feels forced to the point of snapping. Amplifying this problem is another issue, one of comic pitch: rather than lose additional time by going for depth, Brennan chooses instead to make the movie louder, ever louder. When Ready has his most sincere moment, it’s at the top of his lungs; characters incessantly shout at one another. Such zeal works in skit comedy, but repetitive scenes in a 90 minute film drag on the audience’s patience, raising the bar for the next gag to regain the comic momentum.

Piven charges Ready’s character with sleazy confidence, probably the only way to play such a outsized-by-design personality. Yet he sometimes stumbles giving Ready vulnerability or warmth. Hahn, Rhames and Koechner all make the most of their parts, each of which only comes down to a single character point anyway: the horny one, the sweet one, the smart one. Charles Napier, Tony Hale, and Ken Jeong (Community) are all endearing as Selleck’s beleaguered employees, while Craig T. Robinson makes a perfect ringer playing a defiant disc jockey in charge of music for the three-day sellathon. By contrast, Helms plays the smug Paxton as a variation of Andy Bernard, his character on The Office, while Riggle xeroxes Steve Carrell’s turn in Anchorman to play the childish Steve Selleck. Those Daily Show alumni do know how to play it safe.

Which is not to say this film called for anything too inventive, anyway. Its low ambitions are served well enough, and it’s entertaining while you watch it, containing at least a half-dozen quotes you’ll want to share with friends. In our review of the thearical release we had predicted an unrated-version coming to home video quickly. That’s not the case, though why the studio chose not to exploit Helms’ success with The Hangover in promoting this release is anyone’s guess. The Goods deserves better, if not much, than the reception it got from the public. Next stop for, we fear: endless, bowdlerized reruns on Comedy Central, basic cable’s version of a used car lot.

- Michael Kabel
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Miscellaneous Debris, October 2009 Edition

A big, unorganized roundup of news and items we didn’t feel deserved a full blog post.

Well, so much for October. Here comes November right on its heels as always, the month with bitter cold, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and the beginning of the Christmas season. October wasn’t much of a month for film, unless you’re a horror fan, in which case you got yet another part of the seemingly endless Saw franchise. You mabe even participated in the Paranormal Activity phenomenon/marketing blitz.

We spent a good part of the month not trekking through the chilly rain to see whatever else was in the theatres, but instead stayed home and watched film noirs and some classic 70s cinema. What follows below is stuff from the outside world that caught our diminished attention, assembled in no particular order of importance.

1. If you’re one of the thousands of visitors this month who got here looking for our picture of Grace Park, welcome and please enjoy the rest of our articles. We hope you stuck around and didn’t just right click and run, but read our whole piece about casting the long-in-Development-Hell Flash movie. We’ll have a comparable article for the far-more-definite Green Lantern project published right here later in November. You should also check out our mission statement, located on the task before just this entry.

2. A few idle thoughts about how Mad Men might end its third season. Last season Don Draper’s (John Hamm) nemesis Duck Phillips (Mark Moses) left the company in a snit after learning Draper had no contract at Sterling Cooper. This season Phillips has joined an aggressive rival agency apparently eager to expand its work force. With Sterling Cooper up for sale by its British parents, Draper could find himself working for Phillips once again if Phillips’ new agency buys his old one out. The difference is that this time Draper would find himself hemmed in by the contract boss Bert Cooper (Robert Morse) blackmailed him into signing. The walls are closing in on Don from all sides, and we can’t wait to see how this freight train of a season reaches its conclusion.

3. Warner Brothers used to release their Film Noir Classic Collection box sets once a year, giving fans of America’s most hallowed film genre a fresh crop of famous and not-so-famous crime and detective movies to pore over. They stopped that last year, though, with Chapter4 in the series containing relatively obscure gems like Act of Violence and Crime Wave, and the long-awaited cult favorite Decoy. But there are lots of other noir favorites to bring to the DVD format, including works by some of the era’s biggest directors and actors. Who do we beg, nag, or offer to bribe for a fifth volume in the series? And on that subject, is Fox no longer releasing titles under its “Fox Film Noir” imprint?

Watch this show.

4. Are you one of the hundreds of Americans watching NBC this season? The troubled network sees the ratings of its much-trumpeted The Jay Leno Show continue to erode, while once-mighty ratings earners Heroes and Law & Order circle the drain. Actually, the ratings attrition of Heroes has been going on for years, but it seems now the network may be ready to wrap things up with a finale to air next spring. Meanwhile the promising hour-long drama Trauma, which would’ve stood a fair chance in one of the 10 PM berths currently monopolized by the Leno show, won’t get its full season order.

5. While we’re on the subject, the network’s freshman comedy Community continues to get better and better as it finds its comic momentum, turning out one inspired episode after another even while its ratings remain wanting. The pilot was a bit stiff, admittedly hurting its first impressions, but subsequent episodes have focused on what works (the comic chemistry between stars Joel McHale and Chevy Chase; Yvette Nicole Brown’s irresistable charm) and downplayed what doesn’t. It’s TV you can’t wait to quote to your friends the next day, espcially just about anything that comes out of Spanish instructor Senor Chang’s (Ken Jeong) mouth.

6. Why is Hollywood only now making sequels to films that Gen X’ers loved in college? Both Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans have releases just around the corner, even though expectations for either one haven’t exactly set the world afire. Actually, director Warner Herzog swears his Bad Lieutenant isn’t a remake or sequel to Abel Ferrara’s notorious 1992 neo-noir, but the comparisons are inevitable and probably at least a little bit deserved. We want to get excited about the new Bad Lieutanant, though we’re skeptical about Nicolas Cage tackling the fine subtleties of New Orleans life and culture. (Remember his last attempt at filmmaking in the Crescent City? Most people don’t.)

7. Also something presumably for Generation X members, the first official cast photo from the upcoming A-Team movie was released earlier this week. That’s Bradley Cooper (The Hangover) as Face, UFC star Rampage Jackson as B.A. Baracus, Sharlto Copley (District 9) as Howling Mad Murdock, and the great Liam Neeson as Hannibal Smith. Jessica Biel and Omari Hardwick (Deep Blue) also star.

We’d be less enthused about this, yet another 80s show getting the movie treatment, if not for Joe Carnahan’s place in the director’s seat. The original series was impossible to take completely seriously, much like Carnahan’s own bullet fest Smokin’ Aces. So much like its inspiration, we can likely enjoy the A-Team movie best if we don’t expect too much from it.

8. Ridley Scott says he says he wants to make a prequel to Alien, setting its story a full thirty years before the events of the classic 1979 original, which he also directed. That’s fine and all, but we can’t help but think it’s going to push back his adaptation of Joe Haldeman’s brilliant science fiction novel The Forever War, which he announced about a year ago.

We’d bet anything that there’s more story potential in Haldeman’s tale of soldiers fighting the same space war over millenia than there is in going to the Alien well a seventh time. The novel is a long time coming to film – Scott himself said he waited 25 years to get the rights – and its many, many admirers deserve to see a director of Scott’s caliber handle the project. So here’s hoping.

9. Finally, the trailer below previews the new comedy Pirate Radio, based on the true story of the outlaw radio station that broadcast off the coast of England in the 1960s. Retitled from its earlier international release name The Boat That Rocked, the film’s had a troubled production history, including many edits to trim it down from an original three-hour runtime. Just the same, we remain optimistic if only for the presence of Bill Nighy, an actor so versatile and charming he could probably sell sand in the desert.

Pirate Radio opens nationwisde November 13.

- Michael Kabel

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Review: The Informant!

Matt Damon’s bravura performance lifts a muddled script and direction.

Director Steven Soderbergh has spent a good chunk of his career unabashedly paying homage to the films of the 1960s and 70s, whether remaking them outright (Solaris) or channeling their peculiar, very specific rhythms and textures (The Limey, Out of Sight). With The Informant!, he’s supplied with true-life source material that fits approximately alongside such period semi-classics as Serpico and, though it didn’t arrive until 1983, Silkwood. While this latest film is mercifully free of the self-importance and dogging pace that plagues typical whistle-blower dramas, it doesn’t quite come together as well as it should, thanks to an erratic tone and frequent lack of clarity in explaining its myriad details. But it has Matt Damon, taking another step towards succeeding Tom Hanks as the Great American Movie Star by giving his strongest and most surprising performance in years.

Damon stars as Mark Whitacre, a PhD biochemist recruited into the management division of agricultural giant Archer Daniels Midland. The company produces all kinds of foods as well as the chemical and natural ingredients that go into making them, including the amino additive lysine. Whitacre, a self-described “technical guy,” has a hard time fitting into the company’s help-yourself management culture, so he’s taken aback upon discovering ADM conspires with its global competitors in an ongoing price-fixing conspiracy. “The average American is a victim of corporate crime by the time he’s finished breakfast,” he complains.

Whitacre contacts the FBI under the pretense of an extortion attempt launched by one of their Japanese collaborators. Awkwardly befriending FBI agent Brian Shepard (Scott Bakula) as he investigates the phony scheme, Whitacre reveals the true skullduggery within the company. Eventually, he wears a wire for more than two years as Shepard and his colleague Bob Herndon (Joel McHale) collect evidence against ADM and the other corporations.

But Whitacre is jumpy under the best of circumstances, prone to weird delusions of grandeur as well as struggles with paranoia. He buys too many cars and obsesses about his frequent flier miles, and plans elaborate or fantastic get-rich-quick schemes. Part of his angst, the script by Scott Z. Burns (The Bourne Ultimatum) explains, comes from the strain of maintaining his duplicity, a toll with which even trained federal operatives have trouble coping. But more problems surface as the investigation turns into a sting against ADM, and years of details come to light in the slugfest between prosecutors and ADM attorneys. Chief among them: Whitacre embezzled millions from the company, a fact that jeopardizes Shepard and Herndon’s hard work. Later, a diagnosis of bipolar disorder meant to bolster Whitacre’s legal defense spins their relationship into malicious new territory.

Leave it to Soderbergh to make the federal government seem sensitive, even needy. Bakula and McHale play their lawman characters not as crusaders but as middle-management types not far removed from Whitacre’s employees, right down to the off-the-rack suits and low-maintenance hairstyles. The case could make the agents’ careers, and they know it, and that thought infuses every decision they make and sets the tone for every meeting with their superiors. As Whitacre comes unglued in the film’s third act, Shepard emerges as the most visible victim of his machinations and also, strangely, possibly the one with the most to lose.

Understanding exactly what happens following the government’s sting against ADM requires the closest attention possible, as the narrative thread becomes submerged in a long and repetitive series of scenes displaying meetings, conferences, and confrontations between the characters. There’s a sense of consequence, in that the actors are all believable and modern audiences are anyway bitterly aware of what a federal investigation entails. But the many scenes blur together, with little sense of meaning or connection with one another, until the total result feels less than the sum of its parts. Besides jail sentences, you’re not sure what’s at stake.

In a way, complete comprehension of every detail isn’t crucial. Most audiences have seen enough of these kinds of films (not least of which Soderbergh’s own Erin Brokovich) to understand the meetings scenes are just way stations on the trip to the big courtroom resolution finale, followed by the inevitable post-scripts. Still, there ought to be more sense of context, and importance given to the scenes for as much as Soderbergh obviously spends a great amount of time correctly representing their details. Talented performers like Tony Hale, Patton Oswalt and Clancy Brown appear on camera but find no use for their considerable presences except than to fill positions extras could probably handle just as well. Casting 60s-era satirists Tom and Dick Smothers as, respectively, ADM’s patriarch and a federal judge is an interesting, if possibly gratuitous, decision.

Through it all Damon manages to give his character an innate likeability that rests partly on pity: Whitacre simply cannot get out of his own way long enough to give a straight answer, no matter how important the question. Even at the end, as he sits in prison begging on camera for a presidential pardon (for helping to police big business - and from George W. Bush, no less) you can’t help but feel sorry for him despite his many mistakes and egregious arrogance. Had Soderbergh and/or Burns framed the story (based on Kurt Eichenwald’s book) as a character piece, the muddied details might seem less important to understanding. But in attempting to make a film that’s half-character study, half-social crusade, both narratives feel slighted.

A coupe of parting gripes: it’s also puzzling that Soderbergh composes the film full of dreary earth tones and heavy fabrics and brass, suggesting the aesthetic of the early 1980s. Yet the film is set firmly in the 1990s and the current decade, when most such designs had long since gone out of style, even in relatively rural places like the film’s Illinois setting. The Sixties-groovy title graphics also serve no purpose either, though they do distract.

- Michael Kabel

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