The Conspirator: A Review for History Nerds

The Conspirator:  Finally, a more thorough follow-up.

Here was my original mini review for normal human beings and/or the average movie watcher:  2010 historical drama about the trial of Mary Surratt after the Lincoln assassination; directed by Robert Redford and starring James McAvoy, Rachel Wood, Robin Wright, and Kevin Kline.  It’s great.  It’s very well done, the acting is excellent for the most part, and the cinematography is beautiful.  See it if you like historical dramas or are as rabid a McAvoy fan as I am.

But I couldn’t quite leave the review at that.  What follows is a little bit more about the three main historical gaffes that bothered me.  In doing research for this post I came across this article, which goes into every tiny little historical imperfection of the movie.  If you really want to nerd out, read that as well.  I don’t have the patience to recount all the minor complaints I had.  Plus that guy already did it for me.

Issue #1:  Washington D.C. was too clean.  When Lincoln was assassinated in 1865 the Civil War had gone on for four years.  Troops had been stationed all around Washington, the city had many permanent and temporary hospitals that treated more than 20,000 men over the course of the war, and it had been the staging area for campaigns like Manassas.  It was kind of a mess, you guys.  There was a serious overpopulation issue between the residents, the soldiers, and the freed slaves pouring in from the South.  There were unpaved streets that turned into giant muddy canals after a hard rain, there was a weak sanitation system and the mosquitos reached near plague-like proportions.

Yet in Redford’s D.C. the streets sparkle and glisten, the uniforms of soldiers are rakish instead of ragged.  Even the Old Capitol Prison where Mary Surratt is held is merely shabby chic.  The piles of hay on the floor of her cell are clean and golden, with tiny wisps of dust and chaff glittering in the air, lit by the sun streaming in.  ARE YOU KIDDING ME.  Would it not have been better to use the talents of cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel (who also worked on Drive) to beautifully light the surroundings but keep them dingy?  As they should be?  It was a desperate time for our country, an uncertain time!  Why is everything so GD clean?  Metaphors!

Issue #2:  Who the heck is that dude playing John Wilkes Booth?  Booth was like the Brad Pitt of the 1860s – except, you know, totally bonkers.  He was charming, talented, smart, and very very very handsome.  SO handsome.  Like Swarthy Disney Prince handsome.  Because Booth is barely in the movie at all, for so short a time that the acting didn’t really have to be outstanding, then maybe Redford should have focused on finding an actor who actually looked like Booth.  And could deliver a single line competently.  Shouldn’t have been hard.

            Toby Kebbell is a handsome guy.  But in this getup he looks like Borat.  None of the fine yet strong features of Booth.  Maybe the chin.  I don’t know.  It’s really hard to tell from the pictures I was able to find but when I watched the movie I was immediately put off by how un-Booth Kebell was.  OK also, the crowd in the theater didn’t start screaming until AFTER Booth jumped to the stage and yelled Sic semper tyrannis.  Not immediately after Booth shot Lincoln.  Duh.

Issue #3:  The glorification of Frederick Aiken.  In the movie Aiken (played ably by James McAvoy) is a bright young thing on the rise in Washington.  He’s a Union veteran who was wholly devoted to The Cause, a man saddled with the unenviable task of defending one of the most hated persons in U. S. history.  He’s eager, honest, he grapples with being shunned by his friends and would-be girlfriend and worries that his career will be marred forever but dammit he just has to do it it’s his duty he’s a PATRIOT! 

Uh, yeah.  Except the real Frederick Aiken offered his services to Jefferson Davis at the start of the war, before joining the Union Army.  If he even joined voluntarily, it’s not clear if he was drafted or not.  He also supported the candidacy of Vice President John C. Breckinridge, who later became a general in the Confederate Army.

I’ll concede that the details of Aiken’s life are sketchy at best, especially before the trial.  But when all the other characters in the movie are so clearly Right and Wrong, wouldn’t it have made for a more interesting movie if Redford had played up some of those ambiguities?  Made the audience wonder at his motives?

But all in all I still maintain that it’s a decent movie, and worth giving a shot if you like historical dramas.

Movies by Month: May 2012, part 1

Meek’s Cutoff:  2010 western directed by Kelly Reichardt and starring Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Bruce Greenwood, Will Patton and Shirley Henderson.  A small group of settlers break away from the Oregon Trail on what they believe is a shortcut to The West, and they come to realize their guide probably has no idea where he’s going.  When they encounter and capture a Native American the group is divided as to whose directions they should listen to next:  the potentially clueless fur trapper guide or the potentially dangerous Indian hostage.

            You have died of dysentery.  And boredom.  I weep for this period of American history that has been ruined for my generation by a computer game.  But at least the computer game was entertaining.  The pace of the movie was plodding, nothing really happens, they just walk and walk and the ending is stupid and inconclusive.  It would have been way more interesting if any context had been given; I had no idea that this was based on a true story or about the background or conclusion of their journey until I started researching it for this entry.  Skip it.

War, Inc.:  2008 political satire directed by Joshua Seftel and starring John and Joan Cusack, Marisa Tomei, Hilary Duff and Dan Aykroyd.  A hit man is sent to a fictional Arabic country to assassinate an oil tycoon.  His cover is to pose as a trade show host, but his story starts to unravel upon meeting an enchanting American journalist. 

I was just going to let this one pass me by, but was led to believe it was sort of, kind of a sequel to Grosse Pointe Blank.  That was a lie.  But the Cusack’s!  And Aykroyd!  I was misled.  I see what they were going for, but the satire was a bit heavy-handed, way too obvious.  There were a few small moments I found funny, but not enough to keep my attention.

Mississippi Burning:  1988 crime drama directed by Alan Parker and starring Gene Hackman, Willem Dafoe, R. Lee Ermey (heart), Brad Dourif, Michael Rooker and Frances McDormand.  It’s loosely based on the murders of three civil rights workers in 1964.  Hackman and Dafoe are an FBI odd couple sent to investigate the crime and bring the killers to justice.  Should be totally easy in a hostile Southern small town during the Civil Rights era, right?  It’s a little over the top at times, a bit preachy at times, a bit North-good-South-bad at times, but I still found it very enjoyable.

These Amazing Shadows:  2011 documentary about the history of the National Film Registry, directed by Paul Mariano and featuring interviews with a bunch of awesome movie nerds.  A few years back I finished watching the AFI Top 100 movies list, and since then have been slowly (and far less methodically) trying to watch Ebert’s Great Films list and the National Film Registry list.  It’s daunting.  As of 2011 the NFR included 575 films deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.”  And about 25 new films are added each year.  It’s a Sisyphean task, but maybe by the time I retire . . .

            Anyway, it’s a great documentary if you love movies.

Brothers:  2009 drama directed by Jim Sheridan and starring Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman and Sam Shepard.  Sam (Maguire) is a stand-up guy:  a Marine about to embark on his fourth tour of duty, wonderful father to two little girls, married to his high school sweetheart, and has a haircut you could set your watch to.  Tommy (Gyllenhaal) is the black sheep of the family, just let out of prison as his brother is heading off to war.  When Sam is reported missing and presumed dead, Tommy steps up to help his sister-in-law keep her life together.  Tommy is found alive, but when he returns home he’s not the same man he used to be, and becomes obsessed with the idea that his brother may have been sleeping with his wife.  Good story in theory, right?  Yeah, I just didn’t think it was all that good – with the exception of the performances by Portman, Gyllenhaal and brilliant Bailee Madison as the older daughter.  The music is terrible, adds a significant cheese factor.  Maguire was tolerable right up until the climax, when he overshot it.  Maybe the original version is better.

The Warriors:  1979 cult action-thriller directed by Walter Hill and starring Michael Beck, James Remar, Deborah Van Valkenburgh and David Patrick Kelly.  When a powerful leader is killed at a NYC gang summit, word gets out that a crew called The Warriors is responsible.  They have to make it from the Bronx back to their home turf at Coney Island before one of the other gangs takes them out.  Um, it’s hilarious.  It’s campy and super ‘70s and I really liked it.  A gang that dresses as if KISS formed a baseball team?  But I think that watching it at a late night screening at my local independent movie theater surrounded by really enthusiastic people in costume probably helped.

J. Edgar:  2011 biographical drama directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Armie Hammer, Naomi Watts, Josh Lucas and Judi Dench.  If all you know about J. Edgar Hoover is that he was the head of the FBI and that he may have been gay or a cross-dresser, you are missing out.  The film gives him context; most people don’t remember the 1919 anarchist bombings that helped shape his character, or about his childhood stutter or his overbearing mother.  It’s a bit over the top at times, but I thought it did a fine job giving the broad-brushstrokes version of the FBI’s history, and it captured the good and the bad of Hoover.  He helped build the Library of Congress, standardized finger printing, centralized criminal records, and embraced scientific methods of detection and forensics long before anyone else did.  He also blackmailed civil rights leaders, illegally wiretapped like everyone in America, and was paranoid and power-hungry.  He’s a fascinating man, and I thought the movie was decent enough.

Movies by Month: April 2012, part 2

Black Hawk Down:  war drama directed by Ridley Scott and starring every male actor of minor to medium significance in 2001.  Seriously:  Josh Hartnett, Tom Sizemore, Eric Bana, Ewan McGregor, Sam Shepard, William Fichtner, Tom Hardy, Orlando Bloom, Hugh Dancy, Ron Eldard, Jeremy Piven, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (aka Jamie Lannister), I could seriously keep going.

The movie depicts the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia.  Famine and civil war led to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths in the area, and when the Somali militia declared war on UN Peacekeepers, the U.S. Army set up a joint operation with the Rangers, Delta Force, and the 160^th SOAR to kidnap the warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid.  RUN-ON SENTENCE!  AMERICA!  HOOAH!  No seriously, it’s really good though.  It’s very Action Movie (Ridley Scott/Jerry Bruckheimer, duh), but wasn’t as testosterone-soaked and vapid as I worried it might be.  It apparently received some criticism for not using actual Somalis to portray the fictional Somalis, and for glossing over some of the hard questions about why the U.S. was involved in this battle, and our global military strategy in general, etc.  But if you can set those things aside, it’s a very enjoyable action film.  If you want more of the cold hard facts and analysis, read the book as well.

Tom Sizemore rules.

A Perfect Getaway:  2009 psychological thriller directed by David Twohy and starring Milla Jovovich, Steve Zahn, Timothy Olyphant, and Kiele Sanchez.  A nice young couple on their honeymoon in Hawaii find themselves in a cat v. mouse situation when they learn that another couple they’re travelling with may be responsible for a series of brutal murders.  I have an inexplicable love for Multipass and Zahn, so I went into this pretty sure I would like it.  And I did.  I didn’t really buy the twist at the end, but still enjoyed it, if that makes sense.  The actors all did a really good job with the material, so I would say if you like any of these people then see it.  It’s decent.

The Hollywood Complex:  2011 documentary directed by Dylan Nelson and Dan Sturman.  It follows a group of kids and their families staying at The Oakwood, an apartment complex that caters to young actors trying to make it big in Hollywood.  Over the course of one pilot season, we see these kids attend various acting classes, navigate agents, managers and photographers, and attend auditions.  It was intriguing and entertaining, but in train wreck fashion.  The narration and music were excellent, and I thought they chose a fairly well-rounded selection of families to follow, including one really aggressive mother/grandmother duo who briefly took up Dianetics because they thought it might help them make connections for their young starlet.

It’s good, but prepare to be disturbed and maybe even a bit disgusted.  Like when an acting coach running a Crying on Cue workshop tells a little girl to imagine her dog being eaten by wolves.  Or a mother encouraging her seven year-old to study YouTube videos of sick children to prepare for a role on Grey’s Anatomy.

The Cabin in the Woods:  2012 horror film directed by Drew Goddard, produced and co-written by Joss Whedon, and starring Kristen Connolly, Chris Hemsworth, Fran Kranz, Bradley Whitford, Richard Jenkins, and Amy Acker.  Five college students decide to spend a weekend at a remote cabin in the woods.  And that’s all I’m saying.  Go see it immediately.  SERIOUSLY.  Just trust me on this one, ok?  If you like any of the Whedon oeuvre, or Bradley Whitford, or comedy or horror or breathing, then go see it.  Don’t read anything else about it; the less you know the better.

Battle Royale:  2000 Japanese thriller directed by Kinji Fukasaku and starring Tatsuya Fujiwara, Aki Maeda, Taro Yamamoto and Takeshi Kitano.  Think Hunger Games but much darker, funnier and with a higher body count.  The Japanese government has decided that the youth need to learn fear and respect, so once a year an unsuspecting class of high school students is taken to an island where they’re forced to fight to the death.

            I really liked it.  It had the humor, wit and hipness that Hunger Games lacked, but didn’t quite have that level of unrequited teenage yearning some people prefer in their Teen Thunderdome movies.  So perhaps it’s not for everyone.

All the King’s Men:  2006 adaptation of the Robert Penn Warren novel, directed by Steven Zaillian and starring Sean Penn, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Hopkins.  A southern politician in the 1940s fights against The System only to become corrupt himself.  It was just okay.  The acting was fine all around (except perhaps for James Gandolfini, who really can’t pull off a Louisiana accent).  I just couldn’t get into it.  I didn’t really care what happened to any of them, or even what would happen next.  Maybe the book is better.

Celine: Through the Eyes of the World:  2010 concert documentary about Celine Dion, directed by Stephane Laporte.  Just let me explain.  I love Behind the Music.  Even if I have no interest in that celebrity’s work, hearing their story, done in a certain melodramatic way, is awesome.  It is!  Have you seen the one about Leif Garrett?  Because I kind of think everyone should.  So I thought this might be like one big episode of that.

But I had no idea this shit would be THREE HOURS LONG.  The first 10 minutes were shots of her singing “I Drove All Night” in 30 different cities.  “Is that all right, Houston?”  “Is that all right, Dubai?”  “Is that all right, Minsk?”  The 10 minutes after that showed her trip to South Africa, standing in Nelson Mandella’s former cell with this painful look of fake humility.  She’s so weird, all that strange mugging and preening.  It’s an epic bit of saccharine-soaked PR, and after 20 minutes I was done.

Goodnight, We Love You:  2004 documentary about the last tour of Phyllis Diller, directed by Gregg Barson.  I preferred the Joan Rivers documentary A Piece of Work.  Diller’s comedic style hasn’t really kept up with the times, which I wouldn’t have minded if the behind-the-scenes look at her life had been more interesting.  I think it’s hilarious that she’s even more neurotic about packing suitcases than I am, but it just didn’t grab me.

Restrepo:  2010 documentary about the Afghanistan War, directed by Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger.  It covers their time embedded with an Army Company in the Korengal Valley, a remote area with significant Taliban activity where they come under fire every single day.  DAMN.  It’s really good, I thought it was very fair in letting the viewers draw their own conclusions, but it is rough.  And terrifying.  The clincher scene for me was during an Army officer’s shura with a group of town elders, when the shot goes back and forth between the young American trying to talk the men into not helping the Taliban, and an elderly Afghan man struggling to open a Capri Sun.  Hearts and minds.

Young Adult:  2011 dark comedy directed by Jason Reitman and starring Charlize Theron, Patton Oswalt, Patrick Wilson and Elizabeth Reaser.  Mavis is a 37 year-old divorcee living in “The Minneapple,” a ghost writer for a series of young adult novels.  When she receives a mass email announcing the birth of her high school ex-boyfriend’s baby, she decides that they were meant to be together and she returns to her small hometown to win him back.

I freaking loved this movie, but I know I’m definitely in the minority on this one.  A few of my friends who also saw it found it incredibly depressing.  This delusional, bratty woman goes back to the home she disdains to ruin the relationship of someone she hasn’t spoken to in nearly two decades.  But I can’t help it, I LOVE HER.  I love her because she’s like all the awful parts of my personality that I suppress, with good reason:  she listens to terrible pop music, she’s mean, she watches shit TV, she drinks too much, she’s disorganized and sloppy and vain, lies constantly, feels a misguided sense of superiority over those who “never left.”  There is a part of me, dying to be released, that wants to chug soda straight from the 2-liter.  There are also things she does that I would never do--like wear Uggs or connive to steal someone else’s husband.

But I still rooted for her to fail and learn her lesson.  And she does, kind of?  I think the most gut-punching part of the movie for me was when someone asks her why she’s so bent on landing her ex again, and she says, “He knew me when I was at my best.”  Which just sums it all up right there.  She’s emotionally stunted, guards herself against pain with alcohol and barbed quips, has basically kept herself a teenager because those were the glory days.  To think that anyone is at their “best” at 17 years-old is unbelievably sad.  Whatever, I loved it.  Certainly not for everyone.

Movies by Month: April 2012, part 1

Shadows and Fog:  1991 Woody Allen film starring Mia Farrow, Woody, John Malkovich, and John Cusack.  Allen plays Kleinman, a nervous (of course), meek (duh) bookkeeper who is used as bait by a local vigilante mob to lure and capture a serial killer.  There’s also a circus in town, it’s very German Expressionist.  It was good, fine.  On the overall Allen scale I’d put it at about a 5.

Heavenly Creatures:  1994 drama directed by Peter Jackson and starring Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey, about the Parker-Hulme murder.  Two bratty teenage girls bond over their former childhood illnesses, mutual obnoxiousness, and love of Mario Lanza.  They create a complex fantasy world based on Truth and Beauty and Art and Violence and Lesbianism, then decide that their parents are standing between them and said craziness.  So they commit murder to be together.  It was odd.  I didn’t sympathize with any of the characters, it drags a bit, and despite the decent acting all around I just couldn’t get invested.  Also the weird hallucinogenic qualities of their fantasy realm started to wear a bit.  I’d skip it.  Or maybe watch this episode of The Simpsons instead.

A Dangerous Method:  2011 biographical drama directed by David Cronenberg and starring Michael Fassbender, Viggo Mortensen, Keira Knightley, and Vincent Cassel.  It traces the history of psychotherapy, which it turns out I find totally uninteresting.  Not even a shirtless Fassbender wielding a riding crop could garner much enthusiasm from me.  It’s basically two hours of dirty old men justifying their dithering, lobbing nonsense back and forth.  I have no idea how accurate it is, but if the story is true then Freud was an egotistical asshole and Jung should have confided in his very astute wife instead of his unstable patient.  And yes, I realize that I just used several terms they coined to describe what jerks they were.  I had very high hopes for this one, but it just didn’t grab me.

Journey to the Center of the Earth:  1959 fantasy adventure based on the Jules Verne novel, directed by Henry Levin and starring James Mason and Pat Boone.  Some scientists travel to Iceland in a race to be the first humans to explore the center of the Earth.  In musical form!  Seriously the worst Scottish accents I’ve ever heard.  Aside from a mildly amusing duck named Gertrude it’s not worth it.

Inside the U.S. Secret Service:  2004 National Geographic documentary.  OK, current controversies aside, it’s fascinating.  I’ll admit the camera work is a bit crappy, and it occasionally has that Cold Case Files with Bill Kurtis feel to it, but I still liked it a lot.  I mean, come on!  They interview Clint Hill (the agent who crawled onto the back of JFK’s limo after he was shot), Jerry Parr (the agent who made the call to take Reagan to the hospital after he was shot, which probably saved Reagan’s life) and Floyd Boring (the agent on duty at the time of the Truman assassination attempt), among others. 

                The viewer is given a look at some general procedures in what it takes to protect the President on a daily basis, but the best part for me was hearing about the history of the agency and the near-misses and close calls.  Like, seriously?  There is actually a guy whose whole job is to put his body in front of the protectee and TAKE A BULLET.  Bananas.

The Hunger Games:  2012 sci-fi film based on the wildly popular young adult book series, directed by Gary Ross and starring Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Woody Harrelson, and Donald Sutherland.  Did you read the book?  If not, then I’m afraid some things may be lost on you and it will probably seem way too long.  If yes, then I can say it’s fairly faithful to the book.  It’s fluffy and full of action.  I wouldn’t say it’s fun, what with the teenagers being locked in an epic struggle for survival and all.  But it was definitely entertaining.  The shaky camera shit got annoying and I thought they spent too much time with the Gamemakers; except for the bit at the end it felt unnecessary.  But I liked it, and I’ll probably see the sequels.

Moneyball:  2011 biographical sports drama directed by Bennett Miller and starring Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, and Philip Seymour Hoffman.   “It’s hard not to be romantic about baseball.”  That’s pretty much the whole movie.  Billy Beane (Pitt) is the Oakland A’s general manager.  He has a losing team, his best players have just been poached, and he doesn’t have enough money to replace them.  Enter sabermetrics.  As baseball movies go, it’s pretty standard:  underdogs, heartbreak, training montages.  Jonah Hill did a really good job.  It was fine.  But I set the bar at Bull Durham, so maybe I ask too much.

The Curse of the Bambino:  2004 HBO documentary about the Red Sox’s epic losing streak, narrated by Ben Affleck and featuring interviews with hardcore Sox fans and journalists.  It covers the history of the Red Sox, focusing on the myths and facts surrounding why they didn’t win a World Series from 1919-2004.  It’s really, really good.  I’d recommend it even if you’re not a baseball fan.  It’s funny, it’s heart-wrenching, and if you watch it now you know it all works out in the end.  These long-suffering fans finally got their moment of glory in 2004.  And then again in 2007.  Show offs.



Did you just say "1986" to me?

Limelight:  2011 biographical documentary directed by Billy Corben, about the life of questionable nightclub owner Peter Gatien.  So this Canadian wunderkind comes to the States, starts raking it in during the disco hey day, and then meets the Club Kids.  Downfall ensues.  It’s not that interesting.  Watch Party Monster instead.

Strange Culture:  2007 documentary directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson.  Steve Kurtz and his wife were members of the Critical Art Ensemble, a group that attempted to expose the public to and educate them about genetically modified food and other controversial science-related issues.  When Kurtz’s wife died of heart failure, he was arrested on suspicion of bioterrorism because he had some petri dishes in his home.  For his art show.  Seriously.  The subject matter of the film is fascinating, but because Kurtz was only allowed to participate to a certain extent in the filming (the trial was ongoing when it was being made) it’s told through dramatic reenactments.  But the actors who play Kurtz and his friends in the reenactments also comment on his story and trial as themselves, so it gets a little messy.  It was okay.  I enjoyed reading about it afterwards more than watching the movie.

Killer Clowns From Outer Space:  1988 comedy/horror movie by the Chiodo Brothers, starring Grant Cramer and Suzanne Snyder.  Clown-aliens come to Earth and start killing off the population of a small town by, like, wrapping them in cotton candy.  It’s ludicrous, funny, the acting is campy and over the top.  I would recommend it for a laugh around Halloween.

River’s Edge:  1986 drama directed by Tim Hunter and starring Keanu Reeves, Crispin Glover, Ione Skye, Dennis Hopper, Daniel Roebuck, and Joshua John Miller (the obnoxious kid brother in Teen Witch).  A troubled teen named Samson kills his girlfriend, then matter-of-factly informs his friends of the crime, who have to decide whether to turn him in.  I guess that’s what the movie is about?  It also deals with teenage psychopathy, groupthink, paranoia, overinflated senses of adventure, and misanthropy.  I didn’t think I liked it at first, but by the end it had me.  I like Keanu Reeves a little more all the time.  But has anyone else noticed that Crispin Glover is a terrible actor?  Like, really really terrible.  In Back to the Future it was semi-tolerable and kind of understanding that he chewed the scenery; he was playing an earnest nerd in the 1950s.  His performance in this movie, however, was so bad it was almost distracting.

Movies By Month: March 2012, part 2

Nightmares in Red, White & Blue:  2009 documentary by Andrew Monument about the history of the American horror film.  It’s a good general refresher about the genre, nice to hear from Romero and Carpenter, but nothing to write home about.  A good place to start if you’d like to hit the horror highlights.

Monsters:  2010 British sci-fi movie written, shot and directed by Gareth Edwards, and starring Whitney Able and Scoot McNairy.  Yes.  Scoot.  Areas of northern Mexico have been quarantined by the U.S. military because aliens crash-landed there, you know the drill.   A slightly unkempt, slightly dashing photojournalist has been tasked with getting his boss’s daughter through the area and home to marry her boring fiancé.  Think Jurassic Park redux, kind of.  I must say, this + The African Queen + Apocalypse Now = no riverboat travel for me, thanks all the same.  It’s matter-of-fact, good pacing, the music is nice and low key, and the ending is unexpected and kind of perfect.  It’s a feel-good monster movie without being too touchy-feely-feel-good.  Very “real.”   Definitely see it.

Catching Hell:  OK, technically this is a 2011 episode of the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary series, but I’m counting it as a movie.   On October 14, 2003, Game 6 of the National League Championship Series, a Cubs fan named Steve Bartman attempted to catch a pop foul and, depending on which version you believe, RUINED EVERYTHING FOREVER.  This poor guy.  A single flubbed play does not make or break the ball game.  Just ask Bill Buckner (who, p.s., was given way too much screen time in this movie).  Other fans at the game tried to start fights with Bartman, threw beer on him, the poor SOB had to be disguised and driven home by Wrigley Field security.  Rod “Totally In Jail Now” Blagojevich was quoted as saying, “If he commits a crime, he won’t get a pardon from this governor.”  Now Bartman is the “JD Salinger of Cubs fans,” he’s gone underground.  It’s a pretty solid sports documentary that highlights one of the many reasons people hate Cubs fans – we’re like Yankees fans without all the winning.

Casino Jack & The United States of Money:  2010 documentary by Alex Gibney.  Man, people suck.  Jack Abramoff, Grover Norquist, Tom DeLay and Ralph Reed in particular, totally suck.  It’s a fascinating documentary about the modern conservative movement, how lobbying works, and how corrupt the system of political influence is.  It’s also fairly depressing when you realize that the scandals never cease.  See it, just be prepared to feel jaded and cynical by the end.

Hanna:  2011 thriller directed by Joe Wright and starring Eric Bana, Saoirse Ronan, and Cate Blanchett.  Since she was a baby, Hanna and her former-CIA-operative father have been hiding out in the hinterlands, preparing.  Blanchett is the operative’s former handler who wants him dead.  Once Hanna is prepared, she sets off on her mysterious mission and just starts ruling the shit out of the entire intelligence community.  I thought some of the flashy camera shots were unnecessary, but that’s really my only quibble with it.  Ronan and Blanchett are fantastic, and excellent adversaries.

The Rules of Attraction:  2002 dark satirical comedy based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis, directed by Roger Avary and starring Shannyn Sossamon, James van der Beek, and Ian Somerhalder.   A bunch of apathetic college students all have unrequited crushes on each other and are assholes.  I tried to watch this soon after it came out but never got through it.  Now I remember why.  Not only is everyone annoying, they also keep retelling scenes from a different character’s perspective by, like, rewinding and starting the scene all over again.  It’s intolerable.

The Interrupters:  2011 documentary by Steve James, about a branch of the Chicago community organization CeaseFire that sends former gang enforcers out into the neighborhoods to prevent violence.  HOLY FUCKING SHIT.  See this movie.  Go watch it right now.   Right now!  Is my enthusiastic endorsement not enough for you?  Then watch the trailer.

Beyond Hatred:  2005 French documentary directed by Olivier Meyrou, about the trial of young skinheads accused of killing a gay man.  It’s heart wrenching, and hella confusing.  His family is interviewed throughout the trial, and these scenes are powerful and moving.  But then there’s the writing of the family’s public statement, and the squabbling over the exact wording to use, and talk of liberte, egalite, fraternite, and the trial that made no sense to me because I don’t understand French law.  How many people were on trial?  What exactly were they being accused of?  Is that a lawyer for the defense or the prosecution?  Can you really still smoke like everywhere in France?

So, unless you feel comfortable spending a lot of time researching the French legal system, I would maybe skip it.

Resident Evil Afterlife:  2010 sci-fi action movie directed by Paul W.S. Anderson and starring Milla Jovovich and Ali Larter.  Sigh.  I understand that my love of the first Resident Evil movie is baffling, and that none of the movies that followed were worth watching.  And yet, I keep coming back.  It’s terrible.  Not as terrible as the second, not as “good” as the third, but no.  Do not.

Chronicle:  2012 found footage sci-fi movie directed by Josh Trank, starring Dane DeHaan, Michael B. Jordan, and Alex Russel.  Andrew Detmer’s life is pretty much in the shitter:  his mom is dying, his dad is an abusive alcoholic, and he’s invisible to his classmates except for when they’re beating him up.  Then he starts hanging out with his cousin and one of the popular guys, then they find some weird giant crystal thing, then they notice that they’ve developed telekinetic powers.  It all starts out great, they’re having a good time, pulling harmless pranks by using their minds to move things. . . but what do you think happens when you give a depressed, misanthropic teenage boy unlimited psychic ability?  Can you say Carrie?  It was decent, not amazing.

Beautiful Boy vs. We Need To Talk About Kevin

I recently ended up watching two movies about the aftermath of a school shooting through the eyes of the shooter’s parents.  Uh, grim.  And since the subject matter was roughly similar and I had strong feelings about both movies, I decided to do a slightly longer write-up of each, back to back.

Danger, Will Robinson!  Spoilers abound in these lengthier reviews.  So if you want just the yes/no, here you have it:  Definitely skip Beautiful Boy.  We Need to Talk About Kevin is really good but also soul-reaping, kinda like a Cormac McCarthy novel.  If you’re going to watch it, do so early on a sunny day when you can go outside afterwards and play with kittens and think about rainbows and magic instead of the futility of the human endeavor.

Beautiful Boy:  2010 drama directed by Shawn Ku and starring Michael Sheen and Maria Bello.  Bill (Sheen) and Kate (Bello) are a nice suburban couple on the verge of divorce.  They are planning a last-ditch-effort family vacation when their son Sam (Kyle Gallner) goes on a shooting spree at his university, killing 17 people and himself.  So the movie is ostensibly about how they deal with the aftermath of the tragedy.  

                  Everything was so predictable.  Their actions and reactions are so utterly, just, DUH.  First Bill is going to approach the situation like a Problem To Be Fixed, now Kate will call him on it, now Kate will hover over her nephew like he’s a weird son-substitute, now Kate’s sister-in-law will overreact about Kate hovering, now a total stranger will make a flippant comment not knowing that Bill is the shooter’s dad, now Bill and Kate will drink and have make-up sex, now some new information will cause them to fight and forget their brief reconciliation, now Bill will finally come to terms and Kate will rescue him.

                  There were so many opportunities to dig deeper.  The one area they really could have expanded on was the reactions of other people.  Honestly?  Everyone is super understanding?  They’re never personally confronted by the other parents or the media in a real way.  That, too, would have been expected, but also might have had the potential to be interesting.  

Example:  Kate befriends a young writer who you immediately know is a skeezball.  It would have been so much better for the story if he had turned out to be an agenda-less, platonic friend who actually cared about her, rather than a pseudo romantic interest pumping her for information so he can exploit her grief for fodder for his shitty novel.  But the second he just happens to run into her at the grocery store, you know exactly what’s coming.   There are no surprises, ever, from any character.

I give it credit for trying, but it’s one of the most rote, formulaic, emotionally stupid movies I have ever seen.  I am a devoted Michael Sheen fan.  I very much appreciate an actor who is willing to do a movie like Underworld: Rise of the Lycans directly on the heels of Frost/Nixon.  So he gets a pass.  But after this BS, I’m putting Maria Bello in the Shitty Movie Litmus Test category with Charlotte Gainsbourg and Malcolm McDowell.  Is one of them in it?  Then it’s probably terrible.

We Need To Talk About Kevin:  2011 drama directed by Lynne Ramsay and starring Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, and Ezra Miller.  It’s based on a book of the same name by Lionel Shriver, which I haven’t read.  And don’t plan to.  ‘Cause damn. 

The story flips back and forth between the current life of Eva (Swinton) and flashbacks of the events leading up to the school shooting committed by her son, Kevin.  Present Eva is an ostracized, nervous loner who is shakily attempting to rebuild her life.  As she slowly makes progress in finding a job and fixing up her small new house, she is occasionally accosted by a rude stranger or supposedly friendly coworker and the wounds rip open freshly.

Interspersed with all the present pain are the flashbacks in chronological order, beginning when she first gets pregnant.  She and her husband, Franklin (Reilly), share a quiet evening, roaming the streets, carefree.  Then she’s a hesitant mother-to-be.  Then she’s an anxious mother of a toddler who doesn’t respond to her, and then of a churlish young boy who seems to inexplicably, spitefully act against her.  And you can see the wheels turning behind her eyes as the years advance:  is he autistic, or just developing slowly?  Why does he respond to my husband and not to me?  Does he hate me?  How could he hate me?  Am I a bad mother?  Am I a bad mother?  Is my son a monster?  Am I a bad mother?

I found this far more realistic than Beautiful Boy, even given the nearly garish, rich color schemes in her flashbacks and the almost comically over-the-top manner in which he kills his classmates.  It has a dreamy, Gregory Crewdson feel to it, but that somehow made more sense to me.  It captures the surrealistic qualities of grief that I think few movies do. 

I didn’t really understand the ending.  Is it a penance?  A strange act of contrition to please her son?  Because if she had just gone along with him, had not been his antagonist, maybe he wouldn’t have done this?  Perhaps the point is for the viewer to wonder.  I don’t believe there is such a thing as closure after death.  So maybe it’s just an example of how she’s coping, a bizarre attempt to exert some control over her life.

It’s a beautiful, crushing movie that I kind of recommend you see.