Movie Reaction: The Post

Formula: The Paper / All the President's Men

Steven Spielberg is many things. Subtle is not one of them. E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial is brazenly emotionally manipulative. Schindler'sList is one of the more obvious Oscar bait movies to ever be released. Jurassic Park is overt spectacle. Lincoln is transparently theatrical. Spielberg is a master because he lets the audience know exactly what he wants to do then delivers, like a magician who tells you the trick before doing it. I rarely feel cheated when something like War Horse leaves me a blubbering mess or Saving Private Ryan has me waxing nostalgic about "the greatest generation", because he doesn't hide the fact that he doing that. There's a reason why he's arguably the most copied director still working. He earns whatever he's doing with deceptive simplicity. In sports, it's the same as the difference between a running complex play and running a well-executed play. So, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise when I say that The Post is made with the least subtle hand imaginable.

Before I get into that, I should say what The Post is about. In the 1960's the U.S. government did a study on the Vietnam War that essentially determined it was a no-win situation. They didn't release this information to the American people. Eventually, someone copied that top secret report and sent the study to newspapers including The New York Times and Washington Post. When the papers began releasing information from what became known as the Pentagon Papers, the government threatened legal action against the papers which began a national security vs. First Amendment debate. The Post is the story of how the Washington Post got the papers and their decision to publish. The more specific story of The Post is that all this is going on as the reluctant owner of the paper, Kay Graham (Meryl Streep), is bringing the company public. Her executive editor, Ben Bradless (Tom Hanks), is desperately tracking down a copy of the papers after the New York Times first breaks the story. Once he gets the Pentagon Papers, Graham has to decide whether her responsibility is to keeping the American people informed and maintaining freedom of the press or to keeping her company afloat and maintaining friendships that would be hurt by releasing this information.

Everything about this movie is a political stand, from the debate of freedom of the press to the discussion of female empowerment. You can draw whatever parallels you want to today's politics, but I'd rather not. Freedom of the press is good. This is a movie about that being challenged. I was rooting for the press to win. Female empowerment is good. This is a movie about a woman, Kay Graham, in a man's world taking a stand. I was rooting for Graham to find her voice. In the film, none of this is handled with a soft touch, so I could see that bothering some people as a style choice. But, if you are worried that you'll disagree with the movie on some philosophical level, I think that will come down to how you want to read into things more than what the movie actually says.

There are a number of natural comparisons to The Post. Two in particular. All the President's Men is an irresistible comparison. Other than the fact that both films are both about The Washington Post and Nixon, they aren't all that similar. The Post has some "too cute by half" nods to Watergate that I could've done without, but they otherwise aren't that comparable. Spotlight is a very complementary film to The Post. In terms of the newspaper business, Spotlight is about the reporting and The Post is about the publishing. Both are excellent examples of what I call "people doing their damn job" movies. I love movies about process. The Post has all the phases in it. Reporters working sources. Researchers putting together information. Editors rapidly correcting a story. Lawyers figuring out the legality of a story. Those guys who physically insert the words into the press for printing. Any movie with a green button that someone has to press by midnight to make it in time for the early edition is one that has my approval. I like seeing how things get done and The Post is a thorough example of that.

This cast is stupid good. It's not an all-star cast of A-listers. The better comparison would be a sports team having the best starting lineup in the league and the best bench players in the league. Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks are incapable of being bad. This isn't career-best work from either of them, but that's an unfairly high bar. The supporting cast is a Murderers' Row of "TV All Stars": Sarah Paulson, Carrie Coon, Bob Odenkirk, David Cross, Tracy Letts, Bradley Whitford, Bruce Greenwood, Matthew Rhys, Alison Brie, Jesse Plemons, Zach Woods, Michael Stuhlberg. If at least three of those names aren't enough to make you giddy then I don't know what to say about your taste in television programming. With such a large cast, it's hard for anyone to stand out. Paulson gets a good, thematically on-the-nose speech. Odenkirk has some good moments. Plemons and Woods are fun as the exasperated lawyers. Mostly, it's a movie full of B+ work from exceptional talents. It's hard to be mad at that.

I'm not very studied in the mechanics of filmmaking despite how much I've seen. Normally with the more technical elements, if they are done well, I don't notice them. Well, I couldn't help but notice Spielberg's direction and Janusz Kaminski's photography. This movie couldn't sit still and loved attention-grabbing shots. There are a lot of slow zoom-ins while someone  is talking and shots of multiple people with one person in focus and another out of focus. It's like Spielberg was aping a 70's conspiracy thriller in a fun way without diminishing the seriousness of the movie. It was odd. I think it works though.

The Post is a little too blunt for my taste. It's pushes the "journalists as heroes" angle a little too strongly. I wish it would've trusted the audience to pick up on things a little more than it did. That said, it's hard to dislike a movie with a cast this good and a master like Spielberg fully-engaged.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

The Pitch: Is it possible to get people to enjoy a movie for the meta-narrative?

Alright, I'm on Bette and Joan full alert. At the beginning of the year, I recognized their names and that's about it. Since then, I've listened to the Joan Crawford series on You Must Remember This. It's watched FEUD. I've introduced myself to each actress through All About Eve and MildredPierce. I saw Mommie Dearest. Only then was I ready to see What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

OK. I didn't need that build up for it, but I sure as hell felt informed as I watched it. Especially after seeing FEUD, it was fun seeing the actual versions of scenes rather than the filming side of it. Seeing things in the order I did even made a few parts funnier than intended.

Similar to Mommie Dearest, I was surprised that this is actually a pretty decent movie. It's not my favorite thing by any means, but it was ok. Bette Davis and her commitment to the character ran away with the movie. Victor Buono was good too. I wasn't very impressed with Joan Crawford. It's not a story that I want to pick too closely at. It looked good though, for what it was trying to be.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Mommie Dearest

The Pitch: Joan Crawford lived such a boring life. Might as well make it a little more interesting.

This movie was almost destined to be a disappointment. It's one of the more infamous movies around. It's a camp classic with an unhinged actress playing and unhinged actress. It almost pulled off a full Razzie sweep.

You know what, though? I thought it was ok. Overall, it was a biopic that can't resist histrionics. While Faye Dunaway's performance is as big as it could be, it kind of feels like it's everyone else, especially Diana Scarwid, who doesn't understand what the movie is. In the quieter moments, when Dunaway has things at a low boil, it's a standard biopic or story about a strict mother. The wilder moments are what people remember. The movie is about Joan and Christina is only the POV character (like Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby). Later on, there are attempts to make me care about Christina's story independently, and that's the only time I found the movie tedious.

Don't misunderstanding me. This isn't a good movie. Anything I say has an implied "It's not very good, but" before it. All I'm saying is that it doesn't really deserve the legacy is has. It's a miscalculation, not The Room.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Bicycle Thief

The Pitch: Life's not great in post-WWII Italy.

I like to do things backwards, so I saw the episode of Master of None inspired by this first then decided to track the film down. In truth, I've probably seen parodies and homages to this all my life and never picked up on it.

This film is a great example of something that bothers me: What should you get out of a film? The answer is, of course, whatever you want. People watch and rate movies by all sorts of metrics. And even within people, there's different moods, contexts, and tastes to account for at a given time. I bring this up because my reaction to The Bicycle Thief was very negative while also recognizing that it's a very good film. It's praised as a masterpiece of Italian neorealism. Things like the Sight and Sound polls name it as among the best films ever made. I don't fight that. The ending is just so damn bleak. People like to talk about satisfying endings. That's a bad word to use. No one likes an unsatisfying ending. Unsatisfying implies that it's missing something you need in order to appreciate it. Perhaps you like a movie with an unresolved ending. But, if you like the unresolved ending, then that means you were satisfied by it. Me? I like at least a little hope or a definite end. Horror movie or Rogue One. Everyone dies. That's cool. At least I know that. It's definitive. Otherwise, I at least need a little something to know that things can get better.

The Bicycle Thief is a total tear down. Not only was the whole story a bust that has no resolution to his missing bike, he also becomes the very thing that ruined him, only he is caught and humiliated in front of his son instead of being sent to jail. I appreciate the realism, but it leaves a hole inside me. I assume the the same kind of hole some people get when they watch a movie that abandons the first 90 minutes of story to shoehorn in a crowd-pleasing ending. You know, the stuff I normally like better. This just comes down to taste.

I suppose my issue is that I feel tricked. But, I don't know if I should blame The Bicycle Thief for building a whole movie around a fruitless quest or more traditional story structures that tell me someone wouldn't spend so much time on a story without having it pay off. I guess what I'm saying is that this is a good movie that is important to film history that I don't plan on seeing again.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Schindler's List

The Pitch: Stephen Spielberg thinks about the holocaust.

Disclaimer: Technically, I have seen this before. It was in college a dozen years ago and my attention was split enough that I knew I didn't get the full impact at the time.

This is the most Oscar-baity movie I can think of. WWII drama, specifically, about the Holocaust. Made in black and white for artistic purposes. Director desperate for industry validation*. I'll often complain about movies that play as though they were reverse engineered to win Oscars. Hell, I still hold a grudge because I heard a rumor once that Crash delayed its release because it thought it had a better chance to win an Oscar in 2005 (also, it's a horrible movie, so it doesn't need any help to make me dislike it). I know now that that's common practice (although, when I think about it, when was the last time that the movie actually did well at the next year's Oscars?). Schindler's List is a case where none of this matters to me. Spielberg wanted to make a great movie and he did.

*Spielberg had been nominated for Best Director a few times before. He still hadn't won and hadn't been nominated since E.T. a decade before.

Yes, the film is bleak and long. It's a little pretentious and emotionally manipulative. It's not like any of that is an accident though. Between Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan, I don't know why any director even bothers with a WWII movie anymore. Spielberg legitimized the periods as much as possible in the 90s and everything else is doomed to fall short.

Liam Nesson is just terrific. I wish there was a way for Oscar voters that year to have known that Forrest Gump was coming the next year, because maybe in 1993 they would've opted to give Nesson the Oscar rather than give Tom Hanks his first of two consecutive (Philadelphia then Forrest Gump). Nesson's transformation from indifference to caring about the lives of his Jewish workers is terrific, especially as he has to pretend like he doesn't care. I've even seen the movie before, and I was still nervous for him in the scene with the hoses by the train carts filled with confined Jewish people. Ralph Fiennes is such  a raw nerve that he could've turned on Schindler in the moment if he interpreted it at all differently. Speaking of Fiennes, he and Ben Kingsley are great in this too.

This is one of those "Great movies" that I completely believe deserves that distinction. It's obvious in its intent but very worth seeing, even if you can only handle doing so once. Oh god, and that end. Is it just me, or is this room getting a little dusty?

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Molly's Game

Formula: American Made / Rounders

Aaron Sorkin has had a long and successful career as a screenwriter. He's won Emmys, Golden Globes, and an Oscar for his work on things like The West Wing, Moneyball, and The Social Network. You could argue that he's become about as powerful in Hollywood as a screenwriter can get. The question of him directing has always been a matter of when not if he would finally direct a project. My money would've been on him easing his was into it like most showrunners by directing an episode of one of his series where he's already accustomed to having all the control. Instead, he opts for the other way that established people end up directing: he couldn't find someone else to do it, so he did it himself.

Molly's Game is based on the true story of Molly Bloom: a one-time Olympic-class skier who ended up running exclusive high stakes poker games in Los Angeles and New York for eight years before becoming the target of an FBI investigation. Most of the film is Molly (Jessica Chastain) recounting her story to her lawyer (Idris Elba) in the film's present, from the injury that ended her skiing career to the chance job that got her the gig hosting a poker game with celebrities and other power-players, through rises and falls that eventually connect her to the Russian mob. She worked hard to stay mostly clean throughout. The FBI is mainly pressing her to name names that have limited value to them beyond the fact that they are scandalous. She refuses to break her honor code and faces trial and prison time because of it.

This movie is  driven by Sorkin's dialogue and Chastain and Elba's delivery of it. There's no attempt to sell anything but Molly's version of the story as true. I mostly believe her version, but it's easy to spot places where things are sanitized or diminished so it doesn't look as bad for her. Sorkin's direction isn't invisible, but it - no surprise - does seem to be working for the script more than anything. It's almost exhausting tracking the precision of what Molly says. The film begins with Chastain explaining her background in skiing by looking back to the day of her Olympic tryout, and I swear, she said it all in one breathe or close to it. I was exhausted just by that. Ultimately, that became my biggest problem with the movie. There's nothing to cut all that dialogue with. That wore me out, especially given a 2h20m run time. Idris Elba goes on a killer rant toward the end of the movie that I damn near stood up and cheered for when he finished, but my only thought at that point was, "OK, but how much longer is the movie".

A lot of this is tied to Molly as a character and Chastain's performance. Chastian is rapidly establishing herself as the actress who makes being uptight look easy. Molly is thorough and poised. When she's explaining something and says she'll get back to it, she will, even if it's 30 minutes later. Chastain imbues Molly with an assertiveness that makes every genius move of hers look natural. If anything, it's harder to believe that Molly ever messed up, not that she could build this successful company. So, Chastain is worth the cost of admission.

Idris Elba is the one other consistent actor throughout the movie. The best way I can describe his role is that if this movie was a RomCom, he'd be Chastain's best friend who keeps warning her that the boy she's dating isn't worth her time, then is the first to congratulate her when she marries that guy anyway after he proves that he's not so bad. Elba is an engaging sounding board that helps Molly get to the next beat of her story, and as I mentioned, he does get a nice, rousing speech eventually. Michael Cera plays an unnamed Hollywood celebrity who is a regular at Molly's L.A. game. He's pretty good, except I'll confess that I kept waiting him to hit punchlines that weren't there. It's slight typecasting that was my fault more than his. Kevin Costner appears mostly in flashbacks as the overbearing father that both built and broke Molly. Otherwise, it's just a lot of familiar faces showing up for a scene or two to fill the poker room. Sorkin resists the urge to stunt-cast too much, or maybe he wasn't able to call in as many favors as he'd like. Either way, I prefer the level of the casting in this. Bigger names would've obscured things.

Molly's Game is shockingly consistent with what I would've expected a movie directed by Aaron Sorkin to look like. It's faced paced, fast-talking with a lot of story to burn. Chastain sucks you in and doesn't let go until she's said everything she needs to say. It's packed with nice, tense moments and tension-breaking one-liners and character beats. The direction is no more flashy than the dialogue requires. I have no trouble imagining the 8-episode American Crime Story version of this. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing.

Verdict ?): Weakly Recommend

Movie Reaction: I, Tonya

Formula: Ice Princess * Foxcatcher

If anyone is in need of a character rehabilitation, it's Tonya Harding. If you think of all the notorious women from the 90's, what she actually did was pretty tame. I mean Amy Fischer shot someone. Lorena Bobbitt cut off her husbands penis. Monica Lewinsky technically did do something (although the anger at her was very displaced). Harding didn't actually do anything other than train for the Olympics. Even if you think Harding masterminded her situation, when you consider the people involved, it's easy to believe that she never expected it to work. If you ask the average person, about Harding, you'll probably get a glib punchline and little else, and that's not really fair to her. Granted, how many other Olympic non-medal figure skaters from 20 years ago would 5/10 people on the street know by name? I don't know what the exact point I'm trying to make is, but it's all a roundabout way of saying that I, Tonya was a long time coming.

I'm just going to include a link to the Wikipedia article about "theincident" if you aren't aware of it already, because this review, like the movie, is going to be pretty useless without some of that knowledge already.

...OK, are you done reading? Good.

I, Tonya is on Tonya Harding's side. That's the most important thing to know going in. It tells the story of Tonya Harding's life before, during, and after the incident that made her infamous. All the perspectives of the story - Harding's, her mother's, her ex-husband's, etc. - are from Harding's side. Nancy Kerrigan is present in the film as little as possible. I couldn't name the actress who plays her. She has maybe one line in the movie. The idea is that while she is an innocent victim, enough people have taken her side. And let's face it, the most interesting thing about Nancy Kerrigan's story is that she crossed paths with Tonya Harding.

Harding, on the other hand, has a story worth telling even before the incident. She's a self-proclaimed redneck, who went from an abusive upbringing to an abusive marriage, and overcame just about every obstacle to become a world-class figure skater. The movie covers all of this and more pretty terrifically.

The story is told through a number of present day interviews of Harding (Margot Robbie), Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan), her mother, LaVona Golden (Allison Janney), and a few others. The film is happy to break the fourth wall in the middle of scenes to remind you that everything the audience is seeing is a recreation of one of these interviews. At no point does the film shy away from the fact that this is a truth, not the truth. I think that's why I'm less bothered by it here than in something like The Big Short, which I found smug in its assertions that it was researched and accurate. At times, I, Tonya is more Rashomon than biography, directly confronting conflicting accounts. The one thing every version of the truth agrees on is that the public has the wrong idea about what happened and who Harding is. For what it's worth, I loved the narrative device. Any fan of Parks & Rec or The Office knows that well placed interviews/testimonials keep stories moving at a good pace, simplify the storytelling, and make it easy to inject some humor: all things that I, Tonya does well.

In 2013, my introduction to Margot Robbie was in About Time and The Wolf of Wall Street. She was cast to be a gorgeous woman. The Wolf of Wall Street let her show off a little more depth than "attractive blonde", allowing her to go impressively toe to toe with Leonardo DiCaprio, and I've been curious about her ever since. Frankly, she's never been bad. Z forZachariah was a stripped down performance. She got to show off her confidence in Focus, play for some laughs in WhiskeyTango Foxtrot, play against the damsel in distress cliche in The Legend of Tarzan, and valiantly attempt to make Harley Quinn about more than her short shorts in Suicide Squad*. I, Tonya is the showcase I've been waiting for though. She gets a massive range of actions and emotions to play. It's a cliche at this point for a beautiful actress to ugly-herself up for a role to get Oscar attention, but there is a logic behind it. I think Robbie has been uniformly great as long as I've been aware of her, but playing Harding takes away any confusion about what I'm appreciating about her performance. She's just damn good. There are a few moments toward the end (before her run at the 1994 Olympics and at her Olympic hearing) that just broke me. I know that Sally Hawkins and Saorrse Ronan are the assumed Oscar frontrunners this year, but if Robbie snuck in with a win, I'd have no complaints.

*Goodbye ChristopherRobin gave her a thankless role that she was fine in but could've been played by absolutely anyone.

The whole cast is really solid though. Allison Janney has the flashy performance as Harding's withholding mother. She gets to swear inventively and has a lot of close ups in which she only ever hints at a smile. It's great work. Perhaps a bit less effective in a year that has another grizzled Emmy-winning veteran doing the same thing in a more nuanced role (Laurie Metcalf in Lady Bird). Sebastian Stan as the ex-husband has a thankless and deceptively difficult role. You have to be able to buy Jeff Gillooly as the monster Tonya makes him out to be, the mild-mannered guy he paints himself as, and the man who is in between those extremes that's probably closer to the truth. Paul Walter Hauser is the scene-stealer, playing the most extreme version of Shawn Eckhardt possible. Julianne Nicholson is Harding's skating coach, who is plucked out of a more earnest inspirational sports movie about the coach who turns a poor kid into a world champion, and thrown into the middle of this madness instead. Bobby Cannavale is a Hard Copy producer who only exists in the movie to remind the audience what the mindset of most of the people covering Harding's story was.

I think my only issue with the movie is that it spells out the point it's trying to make a little too directly. And even this I'm undecided about. I wasn't confused about the message of the movie at any point. It's not subtle even when it's trying to be. So, adding an interview scene in which Harding literally states that we are all to blame and that she was never given a fair shot is a bit much. That's something out of a script that doesn't have any faith in its audience. This does strike me as something Harding would actually say in an interview though. That makes It unneeded, not inaccurate or inauthentic. This is only a small grip though.

Overall, I think I, Tonya is great. It's like a funny version of Foxcatcher: the other side of the American dream that you don't see at the Olympics. It's never short on jokes and never loses sight of what it's trying to say. That's a tricky balance. I like that this is what Robbie is choosing to do with her production company and I hope to see more projects like it in the future. 

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Paper Moon

The Pitch: Ryan and Tatum O'Neal play characters in the Depression era who are a less screwed up duo than they are in real life.

This is one of those movies that I'm not sure how it took me so long to see. Since I first heard about it on I Love the 70's back in...really? that long ago?...2003, I've been curious about it. It's jumped on and off my assorted movie queues and never seems to stay anywhere for long. Finally, I got my chance and wasn't disappointed.

I knew Tatum O'Neal won an Oscar for her work in this, becoming the youngest competitive Oscar winner in history, so I was prepared to say patronizing things like "pretty good for a nine-year old". She's actually great regardless of age. Her command of that character makes it hard to believe she was actually that young. Ryan O'Neal was good too. That father/daughter familiarity added so much to the movie. I don't know how close they actually were at the time, but they are good enough in the film that I'd think they were together all the time. That probably wasn't the case though.

The black and white cinematography really works. Sometimes when films do that it feels like a stunt (See: Nebraska). This didn't at all. It fit the Depression era and, frankly, made aspects much more palatable. I don't know why, but I feel like Tatum would come off as precocious if the film was in color..

I don't have a bad thing to say about the film. It's funny. The story zips along at a good pace. The ending is sweet, even if, when you think about it, things cannot end well for those two down the line.

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Lorenzo's Oil

The Pitch: Enough Mad Max. It's time for a medical drama.

I don't understand George Miller's career. He started with three Mad Max movies, directing a segment in the Twilight Zone movie in between. He followed that with The Witches of Eastwick, which I've heard had a very contentious set that soured him on making Hollywood films. That led him to Lorenzo's Oil. After that, he spends two decades making a TV documentary, the Babe sequel, and the Happy Feet movies. Finally, he returned to Mad Max, with perhaps his masterpiece, Fury Road. It's a unique road he's traveled.

I was very curious to get to Lorenzo's Oil to see if it was the missing puzzle piece to make sense of the steps in his filmography. It didn't turn out to do that, but it is interesting how easily I could recognize this as being from the Mad Max director. Everything from the sound to the camera work to the performances were familiar. I don't have the vocabulary to describe it. Miller just has a way of handling emotions. It's like when a camera goes quickly from out of focus to in focus, like the moment is sneaking up on the actor. The sound got me too. It's loud and uncomfortable. If it wasn't consistent throughout his movies, I'd question if the mixing was an accident. It's not though. In Lorenzo's Oil, Lorenzo's crying is uncomfortable, amplified, and doesn't really fit*. Miller's touches don't always fit in a lot of places. Susan Sarandon is able to steady her performance (probably why she got an Oscar nomination for it). Nick Nolte isn't able to. Some of it's hit accent, which just sounds silly coming from him, and other times it's that he can't pull off the bigger emotions. Like, what was up with the scene when he falls down the stairs and starts crying? I get what it was going for, but it just came off as the bad kind of melodramatic.

*OK, real-talk for a second. This film came out in 1992, the same year the Rugrats debuted on Nickelodeon. When you hear Lorenzo crying in pain, that is the voice of E.G. Daily, also known for voicing Tommy Pickles in Rugrats. When the film was being made, I don't think Miller and company were concerned about that voice-casting overlap. For me and I assume many of my generation, it is very distracting hearing Tommy Pickles while Lorenzo is writhing in pain.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend