The Charge
This is what love feels like.

Opening Statement
Listeners of the F This Movie podcast may have heard my DVD Verdict colleagues’ defense of the ambitious failure. Those movies try to do something different because they come from an artistic vision rather than a marketing committee, and sometimes the results aren’t successful. I admire movies that are different too, which is why Beginners inspires mixed feelings for me. There are many endearingly unique touches but here’s a case where the sum of the parts don’t add up to a satisfying viewing experience.

Facts of the Case
Oliver (Ewan McGregor, The Ghost Writer) is clearing out the personal effects of his late father, Hal (Christopher Plummer, The Last Station). Through a series of flashbacks, Oliver recalls his father’s last four years as a just-out-of-the-closet gay widower who lived it up until succumbing to cancer. In the present, depressed Oliver meets a French actress named Anna (Mélanie Laurent, Inglourious Basterds) at a costume party. Can she snap him out of his emotional stupor?

The Evidence
Writer-director Mike Mills (Thumbsucker) shows that he has a handle on maintaining mood. The look and the sound of the movie reflect Oliver’s emotional numbness in the aftermath of his father’s death. The streets seem a little emptier and the world is much quieter than it has been before. It’s a daring move to keep up this down beat atmosphere for the entirety of the movie, especially for a romance. However, after spending about 20 minutes in Oliver’s world, it loses its appeal. His sadness isn’t oppressive enough to be interesting and there aren’t enough glimmers of hope to suggest this mood will improve. There isn’t a strong narrative drive to bring Oliver back to the world of the living, the movie just wallows in his sadness.

The movie rests heavily on Oliver’s emotional state, which is manifest in his work and his words. A cartoonist, presumably, he is drawing a series that details the history of sadness. It’s a high-concept work that he wants to sell to a band called The Sads for their CD release. We also hear Oliver chronicle his own history (and that of his parents) through a series of sequences edited in a collage manner — seemingly random images that share a connection — and almost clinically narrated. “This is 2003. This is what the sun looks like. This is what the sun looked like in 1955. That was the year my parents got married,” Oliver states in a cold monotone. These moments, with some lovely musical assistance, suggest something powerful and profound will be revealed in their starkness. These scenes are among the most effective in the movie and they work well in short bursts. There is some rough poetry being conjured in these moments and the rest of the movie can’t quite match it.

The always-reliable Ewan McGregor gives an interesting, if oddly distracting, performance here. Speaking in an American accent that is so forcefully neutral it sounds unnatural, McGregor’s Oliver invites so much pity that you may want to look away. Even in situations where he’s supposed to pretend to be cheerful, he can’t look anything but sad. “Why are you at a party if you’re so sad?” Anna asks at their precious initial encounter. Yet, she sees enough in him to offer a pity relationship.

There is one scene where Oliver and Anna act like a happy couple. That occurs at a roller rink where an employee tells them they can’t bring a dog into the building. What can they do then? Leave the premises still wearing their rental roller skates, of course. This moment when the pair refuses to comply with society’s rules is the one time that I thought they were having fun together and maybe were in love. The rest of their time together shows no emotional connection and no chemistry. There is a moment, borrowed from many better quirky romances, when they ponder their future together and accept that they don’t know what is next for them. It’s supposed to be a hopeful statement but Oliver and Anna don’t earn it. There is nothing to suggest they should be together except for the urging of the script.

Hal’s coming out is secondary to Oliver’s sadness. Whatever has changed about their relationship is very subtle and Oliver appears to have next to no reaction to his father being gay. Hal comes off as a cute cartoon of a gay man, his fashion sense stalled in the 1960s and his awareness of gay culture some years behind the curve. His lover is an angry gay man who takes every opportunity to remind us he’s entitled to the same treatment as everyone else even though no one in the movie is disrespecting him. The flashback chronicle of Hal’s final years provides a temporal framework for the movie but to what end? We always see Oliver observing his father and hardly ever engaged in his life. When all is revealed, really nothing has changed. Oliver does not have a revelation by remembering his father. In the end, he’s the same sad sack as at the movie’s start and he may want to be with Anna or maybe not.

The most intriguing character of the entire movie is Oliver’s mother, Georgia (Mary Page Keller, Gigantic), seen in flashbacks with her preteen son. In just a few scenes, she conveys dignity, complexity, loneliness, and love. You can see her frustration in her marriage but she has a lovely bond with Oliver. It is the movie’s big missed opportunity that Georgia isn’t given more attention and screen time.

Closing Statement
Beginners does a good job of portraying the state of sadness. The protagonist’s emotional withdrawal from the world and the conspicuously quiet nature of his world are well observed. However, the movie never moves past merely observing Oliver’s sadness. Consequently, I felt no connection to the character or any investment in his relationship with Anna. Director Mills puts in some nice offbeat touches like the collage-edited sequences I mentioned above. I didn’t care so much for the Jack Russell terrier that communicates through subtitles which seems like a deliberate effort to insert cuteness into a movie that’s already too self-conscious of its quirkiness. The movie falls short of delivering what’s promised by the poster’s tagline, “This is what love feels like,” and, after reading that, the little bit of throw-up in your mouth isn’t meant to be what love tastes like either.

The Verdict
5/10

I Love You, Phillip Morris

OPENING: 12/03/2010

STUDIO: Roadside Attractions

RUN TIME: 93 min.

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
Do some time with the one you love.

Opening Statement
Finally! After nearly two years of legal wrangling, I Love You, Phillip Morris has now been released in the United States. Despite glowing praise from the few critics who had seen it prior and an international release already making up for its 13 million dollar budget, we are now being treated to a limited release this holiday season. However, this shouldn’t deter you from seeing what may very well be the finest comedy of 2010.

Facts Of The Case
Not to be confused with the tobacco magnate, Phillip Morris is based on an incredible, yet completely true story of one Steven Jay Russell (Jim Carrey, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind), a clever con artist who would ultimately escape from prison four times. Russell will tell you it was all in the name of love…though not for his deeply religious wife Debbie (Leslie Mann, Knocked Up), whom he has a daughter with. Throughout the marriage, Steven has been secretly living a double life as a gay man; after coming out, he moves to Florida to be with his lover, but his addiction to the high life leads to credit card fraud.

Eventually Steven is busted and sent to prison, where he meets the love of his life: Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor, The Ghost Writer), a blue-eyed lad doing a stretch for grand theft auto. Romance blossoms between them, particularly after Steven manages to be transferred to Phillip’s cell. When Steven is released, he promises he will help Phillip get by pretending to be his lawyer. Somehow he succeeds, resulting in the couple settling in Texas. Steven wants to get everything for Phillip, so he finds himself continuing his charade as an attorney, winning a few cases and racking up some cash. Then Steven talks his way into a law firm, becoming the chief financial officer…and spots an opportunity to get rich again.

The Evidence
Sometimes a film can become a victim of poor distribution deals. While many believe Phillip Morris was held up because of worry over its content, there were at least four dates set for release but, for whatever reason, the distributer never delivered. As a result, the film was unfairly shelved while Europe was embracing it with open arms. Regardless, it still doesn’t erase the fact that this is a blazingly original, boisterous triumph of a comedy. Seriously, there are more laughs in this film than The Other Guys, Dinner For Schmucks and Date Night combined. How do you like them apples, honey?

I Love You, Phillip Morris is written and directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, who also wrote the gleefully raunchy Bad Santa with Billy Bob Thornton. While the aforementioned flick is an extreme black comedy, Phillip Morris is an oddball delight, a rich soufflé of spontaneity and surprise. It’s also strangely sincere, even touching at times. In general, we are not supposed to care about the characters in a comedy due to the heightened plot dynamics and sometimes excessive exaggerations in the margins. Phillip Morris is a unique exception to this rule; the characters harbor an unusual amount of depth, the performances are terrific and—most importantly—the story is much too outlandish to be labeled as fiction. (The real-life Steven Jay Russell, by the way, is currently serving a 144-year sentence in a Texas prison, confined to a small cell for 23 hours each day.)

Ficarra & Requa not only strike gold in the characterizations (no stereotypes to be found here, trust me), but also the raucously funny dialogue. These lines sound real, not manufactured, and they build naturally out of the situations. The first golf sequence, where Steven must fool his bosses into thinking he can actually play and be part of the all-exclusive men’s club (all the while attempting to hide his sexuality), is a perfect example. After finally getting his ball out of a sand trap—spouting multiple profanities in the process, including one involving a “flaming fist”—Steven apologizes by saying, “Pardon my French! My mother smoked during pregnancy!” Another hilarious moment is when, after embezzling his firm, Steven informs Phillip they got a healthy Christmas bonus…in the middle of July! As for Steven’s voice-over narration (always a difficult script device), it works here because it allows us to understand what makes him tick even while uncontrollably generating a whirlpool of lies, ultimately leading to his drowning. Audiences will indeed be shocked by the final fifteen minutes, taking a sharp left turn in tone, yet never leaving reality behind.

This has been a good year for Ewan McGregor, initially scoring as the title character in Roman Polanski’s delicious thriller The Ghost Writer. As Phillip Morris, the Scottish actor hits all the right notes, while also sporting a deep Southern drawl, imbuing his character with a genuine sense of warmth and boyish charm. As for the always-likable Leslie Mann, aka Mrs. Judd Apatow, her character (unfortunately) exits a bit too early; nonetheless, she exhibits her recognizable flair in every single one of her scenes. Still, it’s Jim Carrey who shines, and he’s as bright as he’s ever been. His rubber-faced, butt-talking days may be gone for good, but he’s an absolute joy to watch here, possibly his best turn to date. Vibrancy, not silliness, is Carrey’s comic fuel here, and he makes Steven winningly three-dimensional without sliding into creepiness or becoming a caricature. Sure, Carrey always knows how to tell a joke (good or bad), but his flamboyant nature—sprinkled with just the right amount of pathos—results in a knockout performance.

Closing Statement
Hilarious, razor-sharp, and even heartwarming, I Love You Phillip Morris is highly recommended. Carrey and McGregor are at the top of their games, and the dynamic duo of Glenn Ficarra & John Requa deliver another comedy worthy of all the accolades it can get, despite the inane delay in its release.

The Verdict
9/10

The Ghost Writer

OPENING: 02/19/2010

STUDIO: Summit Entertainment

RUN TIME: 128 min

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
Reading between the lines can prove deadly.

Opening Statement
Straight from prison comes director Roman Polanski’s first thriller in more than a decade. Dramatically tense, atmospherically bleak, and knee deep in political intrigue; it’s obvious this much beleaguered filmmaker has not lost his ability to turn the screws on an audience.

Facts of the Case
Following a much needed changing of the guard at Downing Street, the pressure is on former British Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan, Tomorrow Never Dies) to publish his highly charged memoirs. The only problem is the manuscript is 600 pages of boring and its author has turned up dead. Under deadline to deliver the book, Rheinhart Publishing calls in a ghost writer (Ewan McGregor, Angels & Demons) to work his magic on the project… in less than four weeks. To further complicate matters, former British Foreign Secretary Richard Rycart (Robert Pugh, Master and Commander) unleashes a litany of allegations implicating Lang in authorizing unethical and immoral treatment of terrorist suspects under the direction of the CIA. Forced out of the UK and into seclusion on Martha’s Vineyard, Lang and his team embed this “Ghost” (as he calls himself) in their stronghold, to finish the book, spin the war crimes allegations, and hope the storm blows over. Wishful thinking. The deeper our Ghost gets into his interviews and rewrites, the darker the subject matter becomes; unraveling a tangled web of adultery, conspiracy, and murder.

The Evidence
Not being a Polanski scholar, I approached The Ghost Writer as I would any political thriller, with keen interest and an open mind. What I found was a Hitchockian game of cat and mouse. Much like North by Northwest and The Man Who Knew Too Much, our Ghost (who is never given a first or last name) is a unwitting pawn drawn into a situation not of his making or choosing. Whereas with Cary Grant it was a case of mistaken identity and with Jimmy Stewart a case of bearing witness to something he shouldn’t have, McGregor’s character takes a paycheck to lie down in the bear trap hoping to do his job and walk away before it snaps him in two. After all, in the publishing world, the ghost writer is a non-entity, neither heralded nor crucified for his/her work. Unfortunately, curiosity gets the better of him and a dangerous onset of investigative journalism pieces together a puzzle only his predecessor was aware of… and it cost that man his life.

There will be many an allusion to Tony Blair and his ties to the Bush Administration, but this is not a message picture. The Ghost Writer is art drawing inspiration from life and a period of time where the lines between duty and ethics blur with far too much frequency. Pierce Brosnan plays Lang as a waning world figure unable to escape his own unwanted legacy. Here was a man without a political bone is his body, a lothario actor who fell hard for a beautiful political activist and ultimately became one of the most powerful men on the planet. Olivia Williams (Dollhouse) plays Lang’s wife Ruth as she might portray Hillary Clinton, a highly intelligent and capable woman who stood behind her husband offering counsel and advice, even as his sexual appetite was satiated elsewhere. Together, Brosnan and Williams provide the film’s emotional core around which everyone else orbits.

Kim Cattrall escapes her Sex and the City persona to deliver an efficient Chief of Staff with several skeletons of her own. Timothy Hutton (Leverage) and Jim Belushi (According to Jim) appear in what amounts to cameo roles, with little or no impact on the story. However, even with limited screen time, both Tom Wilkinson (Michael Clayton) and 93 year old Eli Wallach (The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly) take command of the screen offering our ghost critical pieces to his investigation.

Ultimately, it’s the collaboration between Polanski and author Robert Harris that makes the film work. Thrillers are never sure things on film. Far too many collapse under the weight of their own complexity or fall flat on their face by spoon feeding an audience perceived as too stupid to make the connections themselves. With The Ghost Writer, Harris researched real life elements and locations to craft an effective page turner, which Polanski brings to life with a flair all his own. Set in the bleakness of a harsh New England winter (played effectively by the country of Germany), he isolates his protagonists in a cold and sterile home far from what many would call civilization, set upon by war protesters and a vulturous media looking to play judge, jury, and executioner for a high profile political figure exiled on foreign soil. Throw in a healthy dose of tension-breaking humor and a Bernard Hermann-esque score from composer Alexandre Desplat and you have the makings of a great potboiler. Unfortunately, the pacing drags at times during the second and third acts and a climax heading for what we expect to be a fever pitch ends up being more of a slow burn. Neither flaw ruins the experience, though comparisons to Marty Scorsese’s Shutter Island (sharing a surprising number of similarities) will show Polanksi falling short of the “exceptionally satisfying” mark.

Closing Statement
Audiences exhausted by the epileptic seizure-inducing world of Bourne-like political thrillers will find this throwback a welcome change of pace. Despite all of his off-camera problems, Polanksi the filmmaker can still charm and alarm audiences. Let’s hope The Ghost Writer isn’t his swan song.

The Verdict
8/10

Attention loyal readers: did you miss our review of The Men Who Stare At Goats from our Toronto International Film Festival coverage in September? No problem, we understand. It was a busy month, after all. Kids going back to school, the leaves changing colors. It happens!

This zany comedy is now in theaters, so be sure and familiarize yourself with our review before you throw down the box office dollars!

The Men Who Stare At Goats

OPENING: 11/06/2009

STUDIO: Overture Films

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
More of this is true than you would believe.

Opening Statement
A surrealist and psychotropic exploration into the more unconventional nooks and crannies of American defense budget allocation, The Men Who Stare at Goats is a charming film without a purpose. Adapted from a nonfiction account into the more eccentric areas of military defense spending, hilarious performances from its top-tier assure an easy victory for audiences.

Facts of the Case
Reporter Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) is in a funk. A stagnating career, a fiancé who leaves him for his editor, his life lacks purpose. To attempt to find deeper meaning (and impress his ex) he volunteers in 2003 to cover the Iraqi war, but ends up on the sidelines in Kuwait. While waiting for something, anything to happen, he meets Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), a surreptitious businessman who quickly reveals himself to be a complicated individual. Cassady was a member of the First Earth Battalion, a government funded project during the Cold War attempting to develop an army of “Jedi warriors” who could pacify enemies non-violently, walk through walls, perform remote viewings and combat the Ruskies with the power of thought.

Cassady tells the story of the program founder, Bill Django (Jeff Bridges) and how his experiences in Vietnam led him to explore an alternate way to fight a war—through compassion and respect for mankind. Taking advantage of a demoralized and cash-laden Cold War military budget, the First Earth Battalion was formed. Applying New Age philosophy to combat training often lead to dubious results, but Cassady was the star pupil.

Wilton writes his new associate off as a madman, but lacking any other purpose, agrees to follow Cassady into Iraq. The now-retired mind warrior, it seems, has been “re-activated” for a new mission… except that he doesn’t really know what it is yet.

Did I mention this movie is based on true events? Because it is.

The Evidence
Adapted from the nonfiction journalistic exploration of Jon Ronson (a delightful book now surging back in popularity and print via “now a major motion picture” editions) The Men Who Stare at Goats is in many ways an ambitious cinematic project. The work on which it is based—a series of essays and interviews with eccentric cooks and cult leaders—does not lend easily to a cinematic adaptation. When the project was announced, I was skeptical as to how a film version could be executed. The solution is a deforesting of the source material, axing away most of Ronson’s narrative and interviews and replacing it with a original story encircling the same fundamental premise: the United States government funding of research and training into creating “psychic warriors” that could battle the Russians (who rumor had were already researching their own paranormal troops). If 10% of the original source material in the book remains, it would be generous.

Still, what remains is good, good stuff. A healthy combination of ass-kicking in Vietnam combined with excessive military budget spending in the Cold War gave the government license to fund practically any oddball experiment it wanted, provided it had national defense at its core, and the idea that American soldiers could incapacitate enemy forces with the power of their mind didn’t seem too crazy. After all, Star Wars was a hit, so maybe Jedi powers were worth exploring. When the notion of the First Earth Battalion was suggested, it was never implemented—at least not officially—but many of the ideas resonated throughout various levels of the intelligence community. The US tried its hand at remote viewing, teleportation, retrocognition, psychokinesis, and of course, staring at goats, with varying degrees of success. The Men Who Stare at Goats captures all this in glorious, surreal detail by way of its hapless protagonist, Bob Wilton, a reporter (like Ronson) who inadvertently stumbled upon a story nobody else was talking about. He meets Lyn Cassady, an ex-First Earth Battalion Jedi Warrior (who now owns a dance studio) in Kuwait, and the whole story unfolds.

From this point on, the story is in artistic license mode, sending Wilton and Cassady into Iraq on a series of bumbling misadventures interjected with flashbacks covering various key historic events from the novel. The film relies heavily on narration and voiceover work, a negative element to most feature films, but in The Men Who Stare at Goats, there is little choice. The film would make no sense without the backdrop of the absurdities of the stories contained in Ronson’s book, so the narrative is essentially cut into two strips—one following Wilton and Cassady in Iraq, the other following the early proponents of the First Earth Battalion (an increasingly typecast Jeff Bridges) and a young Cassady.

A lot of detail gets left on the editing room floor, but the film moves easily and carefree; a string of zany comedic dialogue, physical comedy and svelte camera framing swings the suffering Wilton between complete disbelief and hope in putting faith in “the mission”. In terms of humor, The Men Who Stare at Goats will be a crowd-pleasing film, full of lighthearted sight gags and excessively zany performances by its cast. Directed by Grant Heslov, actor and longtime Clooney collaborator, the film has style and aplomb, and rests on the performances of its all-star cast do the comedic heavy lifting. Ewan McGregor’s American accent is a bit weak, but he makes a great straight man, and the constant references to him having “Jedi potential” are deliciously ironic. Clooney gives the same performance as in Syriana, if he was a raving LSD-tripping lunatic with psychic powers, and gets more laughs than anyone else. Jeff Bridges plays The Dude from The Big Lebowski in a military uniform, a role in which he seems to find himself in more and more these days, and Kevin Spacey tries (but fails) to be the movie’s chief villain. The problem of course is that there really is no villain, no catharsis, and no real plot to speak of. This is just a sequence of misadventures both hilarious and unbelievable, and the lack of a cohesive plot ultimately hinders the film from greatness.

The two storylines, past and present day eventually correlate in the third act, and The Men Who Stare at Goats derails here. In the eleventh hour, it occurs to the screenplay author that a finale is required full of spectacle and pathos, but it comes out of nowhere and doesn’t really many any sense. This is the consequence to adapting a subject that belies convention. After all, it is hard to write a sensible screenplay about such an inherently nonsensical subject matter. The crux of the film rests on the lamentation that the First Earth Battalion ideas failed to find traction, that the inherent goodness of the project—however drug-addled and hippie-oriented its origins may have been—failed to find resonance. There were good intentions at work, and the ending tries to spin this all back into focus for audiences, illustrating the absurdities of the modern army by way of grizzled and burned-out psychic Jedi warriors running amuck in an army base. The ending is weak, and here is where we see the nonfiction wheat separate from the cinematic chaff, but the journey is sufficiently entertaining that most audience members won’t mind one bit. All the good bits are loaded into the first two acts anyway. The film has heart and passion for its subject, and it’s hard not to be enthused.

Closing Statement
Lighthearted and zany, The Men Who Stare at Goats is an easy victory, provided you don’t expect much from the plot. A star-studded cast of unhinged performances and a subject matter so crazy it has to be true, make this one an easy recommend.

The Verdict
8/10