DVD Review: Battle: Los Angeles

Aliens-take-L.A. shoot ‘em up arrives on DVD and Blu-Ray June 14.

One of the most common interpretations of science-fiction movies is that they represent, in a loosely allegorical way, the tensions and anxieties of their period. War movies, to invoke equally commonplace analysis, serve either to help soothe our anxieties about a conflict currently carrying on or to act as a catharsis for war’s aftermath and resonance. Don’t worry about such matters as subtext or meaning when watching Battle: Los Angeles, the science fiction war spectacle directed by Jonathan Liebesman (Darkness Falls.) The film is an exercise in spectacle, sp0t-welding the hoariest conventions and clichés from both genres into an uneasy alliance that only sometimes engages beyond the crash-boom level of passive interest.

Aaron Eckhart, who by now ought to be considered among Hollywood’s most versatile actors, plays Marine staff sergeant Michael Nantz, a decorated Iraq War veteran despite his waning physical prime and lurking suspicions among his fellow soldiers regarding his leadership skills. The very day he signs his retirement papers, a meteorite shower off the coast of nearby Los Angeles turns into a siege by a terrifying extraterrestrial force. The aliens move swiftly and decisively, devastating Santa Monica and heading inland towards downtown Los Angeles. Nantz, against his protestations, must lead a platoon to a forward operating base to assist in the city’s defense.

The Marines he leads fit vaguely defined and immediately recognizable character types: the officer’s training school family man on his first mission; the virgin yokel full of “aw, shucks” naiveté; the easygoing soldier planning his wedding and his smartass buddy. The group is assigned to answer a distress call emanating from a police station inside the city, but must complete the mission before an Air Force bomber squadron launches a full counter-attack against the ground-based alien hostiles.

Nantz and his met set off towards the police station, encountering several ambushes along their route. To the credit of the movie’s realism, the enemy soldiers are not unrealistically hard to kill or malevolent in their strategy. Like the Marines, their movements are orderly, disciplined, and goal-oriented. The Marines, largely outgunned (the aliens shoot giant tracer-fire projectiles) and outmaneuvered, fight on despite dwindling numbers and a growing sense of panic. A rendezvous with an Army group allows them to add an Air Force intelligence analyst (Michelle Rodriguez) who provides important expository details for the remainder of the plot.

Once at the police station they find the survivors: a kindly local resident (Michael Pena) and his son; a veterinarian (Bridget Moynahan) and her cherubic niece. The squad captures an alien soldier, finding its weak spot (“Aim to the right of where its heart should be!”) by stabbing it repeatedly. As the aliens storm the police station the squad and their evacuees escape by hot-wiring a city bus, leading to a firefight atop a freeway overpass that becomes the film’s most exciting set piece.

Borrowing from the traditions of both its genres, the film has a rigidly episodic structure, with characterization and character interaction acting as the paste that holds the different fight scenes together. Screenwriter Christopher Bertolini (The General’s Daughter) builds the action sequences one atop another, so that the tension builds for the characters even if our concern for them does not. Many of the Marines die, including several wounded during a helicopter crash that anyone who saw last year’s undervalued The Losers will see coming well in advance.

The film’s last third, maybe more than any other action movie of recent years, makes for a spectacular (if probably wholly inaccurate) recruitment pitch for the Marine Corps itself. Given the opportunity to withdraw to safety behind friendly lines, Nantz and his men resolve to find and destroy the alien command center buried deep within the city’s sewer system. It’s explained halfway through the story, via televised exposition, that the aliens feed themselves and fuel their war machine with water. Earth has the most liquid water in our solar system, making us a target. As movie logic goes that’s not bad, and good enough for the purposes here.

The climactic firefight, in which the Marines employ their hard-won tactical knowledge while calling in a missile strike against the base, makes for the most suspenseful part of the story; it’s also the part with the most convincing special effects. For whatever griping about clichés that are readily apparent elsewhere, that the script uses the missile strike scenario in favor of more hackneyed story devices – Nantz or one of the others taking a bag of explosives on a suicide run, someone makes a last-second, lucky shot with a rocket launcher, et cetera – helps elevate the entire film away from the mire of formula that seems always at the feet of each new plot development.

Eckhart gives Nantz more dimension than the character as written probably deserves, shading him with determination, regret, and at times a self-destruct impulse that the script woefully punctuates with creaky dialogue like “that’s some real John Wayne shit, man!” Pena, playing an everyman who’s not as helpless as the Marines expect, overachieves in his stock part. As for the two women, Moynahan has seldom had much to do in her previous roles except look handsome; a capable character actress nevertheless, here she manages to be appealing and convincing even when covered in with an inch-thick layer of dust. Rodriguez, though still too quick to deploy the scowl that bogged down so much of Lost‘s second season, has a conviction here that was seldom seen in that series.

Finally, concept artist Paul Gerrard deserves notice for his work designing the alien military, giving their machines and weapons both a unified look but also an unusual complexity. The invaders have their own military organization and internal logic, with officers appearing different from foot soldiers and machinery bearing a distinct – if creepy – functionality. The aliens themselves are exotic looking without seeming overly elaborate or egregiously unsettling. Even their body parts show a kind of thoughtful design. If only the rest of the film, especially its characterization, demonstrated that much consideration.

- Michael Kabel

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Review: Battle: Los Angeles

Aaron Eckhart leads a platoon of stock characters into an epic clash of genre tropes.

One of the most common interpretations of science-fiction movies is that they represent, in a loosely allegorical way, the tensions and anxieties of their period. War movies, to invoke equally commonplace analysis, serve either to help soothe our anxieties about a conflict currently carrying on or to act as a catharsis for war’s aftermath and resonance. Don’t worry about such matters as subtext or meaning if you go see Battle: Los Angeles, the science fiction war spectacle directed by Jonathan Liebesman (Darkness Falls.) The film is an exercise in spectacle, sp0t-welding the hoariest conventions and clichés from both genres into an uneasy alliance that only sometimes engages beyond the crash-boom level of passive interest.

Aaron Eckhart, who by now ought to be considered among Hollywood’s most versatile actors, plays Marine staff sergeant Michael Nantz, a decorated Iraq War veteran despite his waning physical prime and lurking suspicions among his fellow soldiers regarding his leadership skills. The very day Nantz signs his retirement papers, a meteorite shower off the coast of nearby Los Angeles turns into a siege by a terrifying extraterrestrial force. The aliens move swiftly and decisively, devastating Santa Monica and heading inland towards downtown. Nantz, against his protestations, must lead a platoon to a forward operating base to assist in the city’s defense.

The Marines he leads fit vaguely defined and immediately recognizable character types: the officer’s training school family man on his first mission; the virgin yokel full of aw, shucks naiveté; the easygoing soldier planning his wedding and his smartass buddy. The group is assigned to answer a distress call emanating from a police station inside the city, but must complete the mission before an Air Force bomber squadron launches a full counter-attack against the ground-based alien hostiles.

Nantz and his met set off towards the police station, encountering several ambushes along their route. To the credit of the movie’s realism, the enemy soldiers are not unrealistically hard to kill or malevolent in their strategy. Like the Marines, their movements are orderly, disciplined, and goal-oriented. The Marines, largely outgunned (the aliens shoot giant tracer-fire projectiles) and outmaneuvered, fight on despite dwindling numbers and a growing sense of panic. A rendezvous with an Army group allows them to add an Air Force intelligence analyst (Michelle Rodriguez) who provides important expository details for the remainder of the plot.

Once at the police station they find the survivors: a kindly local resident (Michael Pena) and his son; a veterinarian (Bridget Moynahan) and her cherubic niece. The squad captures an alien soldier, finding its weak spot (“Aim to the right of where its heart should be!”) by stabbing it repeatedly. As the aliens storm the police station the squad and their evacuees escape by hot-wiring a city bus, leading to a firefight atop a freeway overpass that becomes the film’s most exciting set piece.

Borrowing from the traditions of both its genres, the film has a rigidly episodic structure, with characterization and character interaction acting as the paste that holds the different fight scenes together. Screenwriter Christopher Bertolini (The General’s Daughter) builds the action sequences one atop another, so that the tension builds for the characters even if our concern for them does not. Many of the Marines die, including several wounded during a helicopter crash that anyone who saw last year’s undervalued The Losers will see coming well in advance.

The film’s last third, maybe more than any other action movie of recent years, makes for a spectacular (if probably wholly inaccurate) recruitment pitch for the Marine Corps itself. Given the opportunity to withdraw to safety behind friendly lines, Nantz and his men resolve to find and destroy the alien command center buried deep within the city’s sewer system. It’s explained halfway through the story, via televised exposition, that the aliens feed themselves and fuel their war machine with water. Earth has the most liquid water in our solar system, making us a target. As movie logic goes, that’s not bad.

The climactic firefight, in which the Marines employ their hard-won tactical knowledge while calling in a missile strike against the base, makes for the most suspenseful part of the story; it’s also the part with the most convincing special effects. For whatever griping about clichés that are readily apparent elsewhere, that the script uses the missile strike scenario in favor of more hackneyed story devices – Nantz or one of the others taking a bag of explosives on a suicide run, someone makes a last-second, lucky shot with a rocket launcher, et cetera -  helps elevate the entire film away from the mire of formula that seems always at the feet of each new plot development. 

As for the performances, Eckhart gives Nantz more dimension than the character as written probably deserves, shading him with determination, regret, and at times a self-destruct impulse that fuels one of the better action pieces. (Until it’s punctuated with creaky dialogue like “that’s some real John Wayne shit, man!”) Pena, playing an everyman who’s not as helpless as the Marines expect, overachieves in his stock part. As for the two women, Moynahan has seldom had much to do in her previous roles except look handsome; a capable character actress nevertheless, here she manages to be appealing and convincing even when covered in with an inch-thick layer of dust. Rodriguez, though still too quick to deploy the scowl that bogged down so much of Lost‘s second season, has a conviction here that was seldom seen in that series.

Finally, concept artist Paul Gerrard deserves notice for his work designing the alien military, giving their machines and weapons both a unified look but also an unusual complexity. The invaders have their own military organization and internal logic, with officers appearing different from foot soldiers and machinery bearing a distinct – if creepy – functionality. The aliens themselves are exotic looking without seeming overly elaborate or egregiously unsettling. Even their body parts show a kind of thoughtful design. If only the rest of the film, especially its characterization, demonstrated that much consideration.

- Michael Kabel

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DVD Review: The Men Who Stare At Goats

Underrated, melancholy psychic spy comedy arrives on DVD and Blu-Ray this week.

From the perspective of our post-ironic, cynical-for-hipness’ sake zeitgeist, the countercultural movements of the 1960s and 70s, which embraced New Age mysticism and vague iterations of Eastern philosophy, seem a little naive and self-indulgent. That’s neither a completely unfair nor inaccurate assessment. Still, before shopping malls sold ankh medallions and Tao t-shirts, millions of Americans spent years looking for something vaster and more powerful inside themselves and the universe around them, sometimes taking strange paths to get there.

To hear the smart, well thought-out The Men Who Stare At Goats tell it, even the U.S. Army got in on the act, devoting years of research and funding towards building a “New Earth Army” of psychic spies and supersoldiers that could accomplish any number of mystical feats. Based on British journalist Jon Ronson’s 2004 account of the First Earth Battalion’s long and flawed history and directed by Grant Heslov, the film cruises with a zany comic momentum interspersed with flashbacks explaining the Battalion’s sad, doomed history. It’s chiefly a road movie in the desert, starring America’s leading man George Clooney as a Battalion veteran and Ewan McGregor as the hapless, cuckolded reporter following him in hopes of a story as well as other things he seems at a loss to pinpoint.

Clooney plays Lyn Cassady, once the star pupil of Battalion founder Bill Django (Jeff Bridges), a Vietnam veteran who went to investigate the counterculture on behalf of the Army and came back a convert to all its trippy teachings. Cassady was a “Jedi Warrior,” he tells reporter Bob Wilton (McGregor), one of a vanguard of soldiers who would conduct war by embracing peace. The two meet in Kuwait, as Cassady prepares to embark on a “secret” mission into the Iraqi desert. Wilton follows, becoming both straight man, witness, and eventual disciple of Cassady’s eccentric behavior.

The road they follow is tough: the two are kidnapped, blown up, rescued by a trigger-happy American security company, and eventually brought to the base camp for the Army’s current version of psychological warfare. This modern program involves subliminal messages put into music for our own soldiers and torturing detainees with the theme song to Barney the Dinosaur. The camp is directed, it turns out, by fellow New Earth Army veteran Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey), who years before had selfishly put the whole project on the path to ruin. Django is also present, albeit a drunken and weary version of his former self. As Cassady endures a crisis of faith in his life’s work, Wilton and Django set about “liberating” the camp using huge amounts of LSD.

The film works best when its manic comic momentum carries it forward, effortlessly moving between Cassady’s desert roamings to the Battalion’s salad days and back again. There’s a third-act twist into some potentially dark territory that thankfully never quite materializes, while the final resolution comes across a bit pat and a little too easy. Everything that happens therein is funny enough, as far as drug humor goes, especially involving Spacey’s climactic act of confrontation. As a running gag, telling McGregor – who possibly wishes we’d all forget his participation in the Star Wars prequels – about Jedi warriors is funny in a meta kind of way the first ten times the script does it. After that the laugh factor starts to wane.

But anyone expecting a point to the movie, or a theme, shouldn’t look to the plot but instead to the performances, Clooney’s and Bridges’ in particular. McGregor is a capable straight man to them both, but the two actors inject a feeling both of loss and regret into their roles, playing men who devoted their life to something that may actually have been hogwash all along. Cassady carries a bad secret around with him, and Django has let his faith collapse into despair. It’s tempting, but maybe a little simplistic, to see the present-day Django as Bridges’ beloved Dude Lebowski after eight years of war and terror: nervous, tired, aching for a vanished serenity. He’s not abiding so well after all.

Likewise, Clooney gives his best performance since Syriana in a film that bookends his 1999 Desert Storm adventure Three Kings. Apparently borrowing Dennis Farina’s moustache and stripped down physically to not much more than leathery skin and sad eyes, Cassady is a dying shell of a man whose true motivations for going into the desert are less enlightened than he wants Wilton to believe. What’s left of Cassady, like Django, is a relic of a more optimistic time, and Clooney expresses this with half-completed sentences, almost adolescent self-righteousness, and a patience with Wilton that borders on condescension. Faced with death and despair, his leap of faith towards Django and their lost, futile ambitions becomes a defiance to a world that’s left them both behind.

At least, that’s one interpretation. The obvious symbolism here is of a holy man wandering the desert looking for his teacher, the desert in this case being a combat zone filled with shoot-first countrymen and Iraqi criminals bent on kidnapping. Yet the film’s biggest weakness lies in not bringing those ideas to the surface or fleshing them out as much as they deserve. Heslov moves the script along, possibly too fast to explore the issues raised by those central performances, with a result that’s not everything it could be. That’s a shame. A film that took a closer look at such ideas in a modern American setting would really be something to stare at.

- Michael Kabel

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Note: A previous version of this review originally appeared for the film’s theatrical release.

Preview: The Men Who Stare At Goats

George Clooney and Ewan McGregor star in a story too strange to be anything but true.

Maybe we’re getting jaded in our old age, but the idea that the U.S. Army might try and utilize psychic powers, including telepathy and clairvoyance, makes a certain shabby kind of sense. Compared to the crazy-ass science fiction weapons already in use or development – robot planes, guns in space, smart missiles – the idea that government money gets spent researching psychic weapons doesn’t seem that far-fetched, especially in the anything-goes years of the Cold War but also in its sequel, the War on Terror. Why shouldn’t the military extend its reach into the unnatural, and what would happen if it did?

November’s The Men Who Stare At Goats deals with just those true-life subjects, adapting British journalist Jon Ronson’s 2005 book of the same name. Directed by Grant Heslov (Good Night and Good Luck), the film brings to the screen the three-decade history of the First Earth Battalion, the group of New Age mystics, adepts, and eccentrics charged with using their ostensible extraordinary gifts to help the Army in a variety of intelligence gathering and offensive goals. The title refers to a project based in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in which Battalion recruits attempted to kill goats through mind control, simply by staring at them. Other objectives included walking through walls, reading minds, and telepathic communication.

The film centers on story-starved Iraq War correspondent Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor), who accidentally makes contact with Battalion veteran Lyn Cassady (George Clooney). Cassady claims to be a master mentalist – a “Jedi warrior” – and ex-battalion operative. He’s been reactivated in the aftermath of 9/11, he says, and his current mission is to find missing unit founder and leader Bill Django (Jeff Bridges). Wilton accompanies his new contact through Iraq in exchange for the lowdown on the government’s extra-normal agenda; along the way they run into Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey), a former unit member now running a prison camp, who may himself be involved in Django’s disappearance.

Also apprearing are Stephen Root, Stephen Lang, J.K. Simmons, Robert Patrick, and Terry Serpico in various roles. We’ll use our psychic powers of second-guessing to propose that Root and Lang play Battalion members while Simmons, Patrick, and Serpico appear as the straightforward military types. The trailer below shows the actors, especially Bridges, comfortably brandishing familiar personas for which audiences have loved them before.

It’s tempting to think of the film, as other sites have suggested, as a Coen Brothers project minus the brothers themselves: the weird subject matter, the cast full of ringers, the bleak humor. Yet as the Coens’ cinematic vision grows ever darker and nastier, a void opens for others to attempt the kinds of comedic free-for-alls they used to make (Raising Arizona, The Big Lebowski), and using the Iraq War as the setting for such a black comedy feels right and appropriate. The creative team is relatively untested, but ambitious: Peter Straughan (How To Lose Friends & Alienate People) wrote the adapted screenplay, while Heslov has previously directed only one feature-length project, 2002′s indie dramatic comedy Par 6.  Finally, the film represents the second major release from Smoke House Pictures, the production company Heslov and Clooney founded in 2006. Their debut offering, last year’s Leatherheads, was often uneven but nevertheless unfairly ignored by the public. 

The Men Who Stare At Goats opens nationwide November 6.

- Michael Kabel

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DVD Review: W.

Oliver Stone’s flawed biopic of the deeply flawed president debuts on DVD next week.

A maddeningly skittish and ultimately failed film biography, W. finds its development continually undermined by shifting tones and an oft-sagging pace. Worse, in trying to determine which events of the president’s life to depict, director Oliver Stone settles on what feels like a sampling of parts that never quite gel into a coherently articulated point. The end result is a film that’s more mix disc than album, more memory album than narrative.

W. begins, in what is probably intended as a symbolic prelude, with the young George’s (Josh Brolin) hazing into a Yale fraternity. Despite immersion in freezing water and severe intoxication, he’s able to remember an astounding number of his would-be frat brothers’ names. It’s a perfunctory scene, though it manages to establish Bush’s talent for winning over dubious audiences with great alacrity and charm.  When shortly thereafter his then-Congressman father (James Cromwell) is compelled to bail “Junior” out of a New Jersey prison, it sets in motion the film’s key narrative struggle between Bush’s freewheeling character and his barely-understood ache for his father’s approval. Stone uses that tug of war as a touchstone to show the passing of time, matching W’s misadventures in business and public office with the elder Bush’s political rise and fall.

The bulk of the rest of the film, also told in flashback and flash-forward structure, details the events leading up to the American invasion of Iraq. Bush works with but seems often content to take at face value the advice and research of Defense Scretary Donald Rumsfeld (Scott Glenn) and his Deputy Paul Wolfowitz (Dennis Boutsikaris), Vice President Dick Cheney (Richard Dreyfus), successive Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice (Jeffrey Wright and Thandie Newtwon), and CIA chief John Tenet (Bruce McGill). Bush plays the role of manager to their appraisals and ends each meeting with a coach-like “good meeting” followed by a moment of prayer. Always in the background, like a true-life Grima Wormtongue, lurks adviser Karl Rove (Toby Jones), dispensing advice with false humility and fawning praise.

In the film (though no doubt the actual circumstances were more complicated) Bush finds religion following a cardiac arrest while jogging. He gives up his heavy drinking in favor of a purpose driven life under the guidance of Reverend Earle Hudd (Stacey Keach), a pastor Stone portrays in cherubic backlighting and affectionate soft-focus. Faith thereafter guides the cinematic Bush’s decisions, most notably his 1999 “call” to run for President; but darker drives compel him even more, especially the need for his father’s approval but also to compensate for the elder Bush’s 1991 decision to pull out of Iraq without deposing Saddam Hussein. Stone never offers a solution or theory explaining what effect two such diverse compulsions might have on the leader of the free world. In time – and at 131 minutes, the time is somehow long though not long enough – that lack of tension hollows out what might serve as the film’s center.  

If its performances weren’t so good, the film itself would be much less. Brolin inhabits Bush admirably, finding sympathy in his privileged life. Dreyfus’ Cheney is both arrogant and reptilian, while Cromwell brings perhaps undeserved stature to George H.W. Bush. Wright gives Powell a surprising vulnerability, whom Stanley Weiser’s script uses as the sole and diminishing voice of reason in the buildup to the Iraqi invasion. Unfortunately Thandie Newton’s turn as Rice is more impersonation than performance, and Jones (Notorious) seems to have not yet rinsed all the Truman Capote out of his acting technique. Elizabeth Banks isn’t given enough to do as First Lady Laura Bush, though she makes the most of her time in giving Laura the gravitas and affection that anchor her often-impulsive husband to Earth.

“The absence of evidence,” Rumsfeld exclaims in a crucial scene, “is not evidence of absence.” Such wisdom ironically thumbnails the film’s fatal flaw. Stone leaves out much of what’s made Bush’s presidency now officially the least popular in seventy years, including among other self-destructing moments the Hurricane Katrina debacle and the infamous My Pet Goat photo op the morning of September 11. Why the film avoids such moments is left unclear. Would their inclusion impair the tightrope objectivity Stone seems determined to put forward? Obviously detailing all the events and calamities of Bush’s monumentally controversial administration would require a series of films. But the omission of 9/11 and Katrina comes across as careening around cornerstone events. By way of comparison, would a biography of Franklin Roosevelt omit Pearl Harbor, or the Great Depression? Could a biography of Lincoln ignore the Emancipation Proclamation?

Stone rose to the top tier of American directors in the 1980s following a trio of very good films (Salvador, Platoon, Wall Street) that were ferocious in their attempts to spur public discourse of historically significant events. His track record since has been spotty, though no less ambitious. Platoon, his best film, benefited from historical perspective, and maybe that distance is what’s missing here. Or maybe not. Though missing the heavy-handed pathos of 1995′s Nixon, W. stills fails to make a compelling case either for sympathy or damnation. Better films than this will likely be made of America’s least popular president. It’s probably just going to take a while for them to arrive.

-Michael Kabel
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(Note: this review originally appeared for the film’s theatrical release.)

Miscellaneous Debris, January Edition

Our irregular discussion of matters of passing interest.

So how’s your 2009 going so far? Over the holidays we got to see two of the big holiday releases, and both were letdowns. Of the two, Benjamin Button was the bigger disappointment, if only because the stakes there were much higher; Valkyrie was so close to being good we were cheering for the film to tighten itself up halfway through. We’re going next week to see Revolutionary Road, a use of time we’re pretty sure will count as an act of penance.

January is the traditional dumping ground for films whose studios have very little confidence in their success. Time was, Thanksgiving was the season for such likely bombs, a practice that led to films expected to fail getting the nickname “turkeys.” This week, theatregoers are subjected to Bride Wars and The Unborn, two rigidly formulaic genre flicks perhaps distinguished most clearly by their appearance in a theatre at all instead of heading down the direct-to-DVD chute.  January is also if nothing else a time to catch up on the December prestige releases trickling into wider release – Gran Turino and The Reader both open  nationwide tomorrow.

The following is stuff we thought worth mentioning but not worth blogging about for a whole entry. All opinons and snark are our own.

1. Next week’s big release: Paul Blart: Mall Cop, a “comedy” starring the fat guy from The King of Queens. Did Larry the Cable Guy pass on this project? Previews boast that it’s from Happy Madison, which means it’s for sure a script even Adam Sandler passed on (probably Rob Schneider wanted it though.) If God forbid there’s a sequel, we bet anything it’s set in the Mall of America.

2. The Dark Knight is finally getting some recognition from the various awards-givers. The Director’s Guild of America is nominating Christopher Nolan, along with more celebrated directors David Fincher, Ron Howard, Gus Van Sant and Danny Boyle. The film, and Nolan, undeniably deserve the recognition. Besides raising the bar for a genre that’s become one of the most prevalant and profitable of the decade, Nolan’s masterpiece includes Heath Ledger’s already-legendary turn as the Joker as well as the best work of Christian Bale and Aaron Eckhart’s considerable careers. It’s not the kind of film that usually garners awards, but given the apathy greeting Oscar-bait flicks like Benjamin Button and Changeling maybe it’s time to open the awards to other kinds of films.

3. Speaking of superhero movies, rumors are circulating that Sam Rockwell and this year’s comeback kid Mickey Rourke are in talks to play the heavies in Iron Man 2. According to Reuters News Service, if talks go as planned Rourke would play the superpowered villain Whiplash, though Variety says he’ll appear as The Crimson Dynamo, who in the books was the Soviet Union’s answer to Iron Man. Rockwell would appear as Stark Industries rival billionaire Justin Hammer. As reported earlier, Don Cheadle will replace Terrence Howard as Jim Rhodes, though Robert Downey, Jr. is confirmed and Gwyneth Paltrow reported to return to their roles as Tony Stark and Pepper Pots, respectively.

4.  From the Snowball’s Chance In Hell Department: Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt and chief Girls Gone Wild cretin Joe Francis plan to petition Congress for a $5 billion bailout. That’s right, the porn industry wants the government to give them money, saying that it’s only fair given the assistance already sent to banks and to the Big 3 automakers. Whatever, we imagine the hearings will go something like this: CONGRESS: We’re not sure why we should give you any money. PORN INDUSTRY: There must be something we can do to persuade you. We’d do anything. (takes off shirt) Anything. CUE MUSIC: Wonk, chicka chicka wonk wonk… Actually, we think Flynt deserves some kind of recognition for producing Who’s Nailin’ Palin?

5. Is it just us, or has The Office turned into a mean-spirited, slow-moving snore this season? Jim and Pam are treading water following their slapdash engagement, Dwight is an unmitigated asshole (instead of a mitigated asshole, like before) and supporting characters like Creed and Stanley are all but absent from the storylines. This year’s Christmas episode, in which Michael tried in vain to get Meredith into a detox center while Angela provoked Phyllis into revealing her adulterous affair to the whole staff, was about as funny as smog. And while it’s possible writer Paul Leiberstein enjoys bashing his own sad-sack character Toby, the joke itself is getting pretty old.

6. Marley & Me, a film in which two fading celebrities are bullied by their asshole dog, has grossed $106 million in just two weeks. What the hell, America? What the hell.

7. The Christian Science Monitor ran an intriguing article a couple of weeks ago about the resurgent popularity of film noir, and how even the genre’s fans are hard-pressed to define its forms and criteria. The cause for its rediscovery by modern audiences isn’t that difficult to theorize: film noir enjoyed its Golden Age in the late 1940s, a time when America was both tired of war and deeply skeptical about its place in the future of the world. In other words, a time exactly like right now. As a reminder to Hollywood, two of Jame Ellroy’s L.A. Quartet novels have yet to get adapted to film, and no one would mind if The Black Dahlia got a do-over.

8. ABC brings its adaptation of the cult British sci-fi series Life On Mars back to the schedule on January 28, giving it the berth after the network’s “That’s not over yet?” former hit Lost. During its six-episode stretch last year, Life On Mars got better by leaps and bounds with each episode, so if you’re looking to get in on the ground floor of something here’s your chance. Oz and Homicide: Life On The Street fans take note: Lee Tergesen and Dean Winters both carry important recurring roles on the series.

9. An era in 00′s television ends next week with William Petersen’s departure from CBS ratings behemoth CSI:  From his earliest work in gritty 80s neo-noirs like Manhunter and To Live And Die In L.A., Petersen has always been a superb craftsman actor who’s inhabited dozens of characters with perfect modulation and poise without showing off for the camera. You’ve probably never seen him in films such as Kiss The Sky, Gunshy, or The Rat Pack, so with his exit from weekly television this is a good time to look up those worthwhile efforts. (His Jack Kennedy in The Rat Pack is so authentic you’ll get chills.)

10. Not that this should do anything for you – we hope it doesn’t, but do your own thing – last year’s clunkers Righteous Kill, Bangkok Dangerous, Pineapple Express, and Babylon A.D. all arrived on DVD this week. Combined with two weeks of reruns, January is the scrap heap even in home entertainment.

We’ll be back next week with some honest-to-Jeebus film reviews. Have a good weekend.
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Review: W.

Oliver Stone’s biopic can’t manage to stay a course.

In our preview of Oliver Stone’s W. last week I talked a lot about how the director’s well-known political leanings might get in the way of establishing a keen satire of the George W. Bush administration. It’s with mixed emotions that I can say I misoverestimated. W. succeeds as a film only narrowly, its development continually hampered by shifting tones and an oft-sagging pace. Worse, in trying to determine which events of the president’s life to depict, Stone settles on what feels like a sampling of parts that never quite gel into a coherently articulated point, so that the film winds up more mix disc than album, more memory album than narrative.

W. begins, in what is probably intended as a symbolic prelude, with the young George’s (Josh Brolin) hazing into a Yale fraternity. Despite immersion in freezing water and severe intoxication, he’s able to remember an astounding number of his would-be frat brothers’ names. It’s a perfunctory scene, though it manages to establish Bush’s talent for winning over dubious audiences with great alacrity and charm.  When shortly thereafter his then-Congressman father (James Cromwell) is compelled to bail “Junior” out of a New Jersey prison, it sets in motion the film’s key narrative struggle between Bush’s freewheeling character and his barely-understood ache for his father’s approval. Stone uses that tug of war as a touchstone to show the passing of time, matching W’s misadventures in business and public office with the elder Bush’s political rise and fall.

Corridors of power: Bush (Brolin) leads his staff

The bulk of the rest of the film, also told in flashback and flash-forward structure, details the events leading up to the American invasion of Iraq. Bush works with but seems often content to take at face value the advice and research of Defense Scretary Donald Rumsfeld (Scott Glenn) and his Deputy Paul Wolfowitz (Dennis Boutsikaris), Vice President Dick Cheney (Richard Dreyfus), successive Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice (Jeffrey Wright and Thandie Newtwon), and CIA chief John Tenet (Bruce McGill). Bush plays the role of manager to their appraisals and ends each meeting with a coach-like “good meeting” followed by a moment of prayer. Always in the background, like a true-life Grima Wormtongue, lurks adviser Karl Rove (Toby Jones), dispensing advice with false humility and fawning praise.

Meet the parents: Burstyn, Cromwell

In the film (though no doubt the actual circumstances were more complicated) Bush finds religion following a cardiac arrest while jogging. He gives up his heavy drinking in favor of a purpose driven life under the guidance of Reverend Earle Hudd (Stacey Keach), a pastor Stone portrays in cherubic backlighting and affectionate soft-focus. Faith thereafter guides the cinematic Bush’s decisions, most notably his 1999 “call” to run for President; but darker drives compel him even more, especially the need for his father’s approval but also to compensate for the elder Bush’s 1991 decision to pull out of Iraq without deposing Saddam Hussein. Stone never offers a solution or theory explaining what effect two such diverse compulsions might have on the leader of the free world. In time – and at 131 minutes, the time is somehow long though not long enough – that lack of tension hollows out what might serve as the film’s center.  

"You're the girl for me": Brolin, Banks

If its performances weren’t so good, the film itself would be much less. Brolin inhabits Bush admirably, finding sympathy in his privileged life. Dreyfus’ Cheney is both arrogant and reptilian, while Cromwell brings perhaps undeserved stature to George H.W. Bush. Wright gives Powell a surprising vulnerability , whom Stanley Weiser’s script uses as the sole and diminishing voice of reason in the buildup to the Iraqi invasion. Unfortunately Thandie Newton’s turn as Rice is more impersonation than performance, and Jones (Notorious) seems to have not yet rinsed all the Truman Capote out of his acting technique. Elizabeth Banks isn’t given enough to do as First Lady Laura Bush, though she makes the most of her time in giving Laura the gravitas and affection that anchor her often-impulsive husband to Earth.

Water bored: Bush (Brolin) at Yale

“The absence of evidence,” Rumsfeld exclaims in a crucial scene, “is not evidence of absence.” Such wisdom ironically thumbnails the film’s fatal flaw. Stone leaves out much of what’s made Bush’s presidency now officially the least popular in seventy years, including among other self-destructing moments the Hurricane Katrina debacle and the infamous My Pet Goat photo op the morning of September 11. Why the film avoids such moments is left unclear. Would their inclusion impair the tightrope objectivity Stone seems determined to put forward? Obviously detailing all the events and calamities of Bush’s monumentally controversial administration would require a series of films. But the omission of 9/11 and Katrina comes across as careening around cornerstone events. By way of comparison, would a biography of Franklin Roosevelt omit Pearl Harbor, or the Great Depression? Could a biography of Lincoln ignore the Emancipation Proclamation?

Stone rose to the top tier of American directors in the 1980s following a trio of very good films (Salvador, Platoon, Wall Street) that were ferocious in their attempts to spur public discourse of historically significant events. His track record since has been spotty, though no less ambitious. Platoon, his best film, benefited from historical perspective, and maybe that distance is what’s missing here. Or maybe not. Though missing the heavy-handed pathos of 1995′s Nixon, W. stills fails to make a compelling case either for sympathy or damnation. Better films than this will likely be made of America’s least popular president. It’s probably just going to take a while for them to arrive.

-Michael Kabel
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