Review: "Spotlight"

Director: Tom McCarthy
Runtime: 128 minutes


A meticulous dramatization of real events, Tom McCarthy's Spotlight makes a compelling case in favor of journalism done right. Though the Catholic Church sex abuse scandals have been in the global limelight for nearly two decades, this trip back to the explosive 2002 Boston Globe story remains queasily relevant. Without giving into either lurid spectacle or a traditional white knight narrative, McCarthy's new film exhibits the very journalistic qualities that it celebrates. In Spotlight, American cinema has produced a work of cinematic journalism that deserves to sit on the same lofty shelf as All the President's Men. 

Like President's Men or Zodiac, what Spotlight does so well is fully throw itself into the tedium of the story's details without becoming tedious itself. Montages can be a cheap shortcut to cut through large amounts of time or activity, but McCarthy and editor Tom McArdle incorporate them without ever making a false move. Spotlight runs just over two hours, and every scene is carefully orchestrated to build to the next. This can make the initial set up seem a bit dry (seeing as we know that yes, the Globe's Spotlight team will eventually take on the case). But the eventual payoff is, like a great work of news writing, compelling because it keeps a level head, and lets the facts speak for themselves.

That last bit is especially important when we consider the horrific crimes at the center of the story. The rather academic tone gives enough emotional heft to the story without amping up the material to make it "juicier." The Spotlight team (played by Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, and Brian D'Arcy James), as well as the audience, hear the disturbing details, but McCarthy and Josh Singer's script leaves enough to the imagination to avoid exploiting the situation. There are plenty of famous faces in Spotlight, but none of them are conveyed as being of equal importance to the greater impact of the story. 

But even though the film doesn't stand out as a performance showcase, McCarthy's actors bring respectable gravitas to the material. As a unit, the Spotlight team is basically different shades of a single character, and that ends up working in the film's favor. These men and women have outside lives, but those outside lives only intrude upon the central narrative when absolutely necessary. Every look we get inside the lives of these reporters adds fuel to the physical and emotional trajectory of the story. 

Beyond the performances, most of the below-the-line contributions do little to steal focus as well, which is for the best. Masanobu Takayanagi's camera frequently moves, but in a way that further draws one into the immensity of the investigation. In one of the simplest, and most expressive shots, the camera merely drifts backwards as the Spotlight team listens to a source over a speakerphone. As we learn what the characters learn, the frame widens, visually complementing the sudden expansion of the abuse scandal's scope. Spotlight may rely heavily on talking, but it still finds room for subtle (even invisible) moments of thoughtful visual composition. 

Other tech contributions, including Howard Shore's simple score, are appropriately invisible. Beyond the screenplay and direction, McArdle's deft cutting deserves the most praise for stitching together so much information all while allowing it to develop so smoothly. As it is in journalism, so it is in filmmaking: having a sharp eye in the editor's chair is crucial into shaping a well-intentioned vision into a legitimate work of impactful art. 


Grade: A-

Review: "Southpaw"

Director: Antoine Fuqua
Runtime: 125 minutes

Coming just one week after Trainwreck, Antoine Fuqua's Southpaw serves as a grim reminder of what happens a formulaic plot meets formulaic execution. Whereas the Apatow-Schumer collaboration created a typical rom-com executed with with humor and heart, Fuqua's work with Sons of Anarchy creator/writer Kurt Sutter is emotionally stunted. You've seen this story of an athlete seeking redemption, and you've seen it done so much better that this latest iteration isn't worth your time.

Not even Jake Gyllenhaal, coming off of a winning streak that peaked with Nightcrawler, can do much to elevate the material. From a physical standpoint, the role is every bit as transformative as the one the actor played in Dan Gilroy's thriller, albeit on the opposite end of the spectrum. Gyllenhaal gain between 20 and 30 pounds of muscle to play boxer Billy Hope. Yet the external transformation is the most impressive aspect of Gyllenhaal's work. Of all of his recent projects, Southpaw gives Gyllenhaal the most traditionally Leading Man role, and the actor sells every minute.

But underneath the muscles and the screaming and cursing, Southpaw's protagonist rings hollow. The blame shouldn't be laid at Gyllenhaal's feet, but rather at Sutter and Fuqua, who have hardly fleshed out the character beyond the most obvious and blunt surface details. With such a textbook protagonist, it's even more difficult to care about the mechanical storytelling. A man is on top of his respective profession, then tragedy sends him into free fall. What is he to do in his hour of woe? Why, revisit his roots, get help from an elderly black mentor (Forest Whitaker), and work his way toward a boxing match that could serve as his redemption. Southpaw is Raging Bull filtered through the aesthetic of 8 Mile, but without the raw intensity of either.

Fuqua has never been a particularly nuanced director, and Mr. Sutter doesn't do much to help. As the architect behind one of TV's most suffocatingly MACHO prestige dramas, Mr. Sutter is an ideal fit on paper. But vapid bluntness multiplied by faux-gritty vapid bluntness only leads to...well, you get the idea. It's not enough to offer audiences a Damaged Male Protagonist and expect a connection, and it hasn't been that way for a while (and as for the way the film uses its female characters...yikes). 

All of this reinforces the notion that Southpaw is, from a pop culture standpoint, a bit of an unintentional relic. Even from a technical standpoint, it's a surprisingly flat piece of work. Fuqua's images are a mix of the glossy and the grimy, and both sides are equally artless. The fight scenes effectively communicate the brute force of taking a punch to the face, but they never heighten the story's drama. Every story beat is so obvious that's no room to be engaged in the moment. A story of blood, sweat, and tears shouldn't feel so rote, yet here we are.  

Grade: C-

Review: "A Most Wanted Man"

Director: Anton Corbijn
Runtime: 121 minutes

Tomas Alfredson's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) was, against the odds, an exemplary adaptation of the work of John Le Carre. That film took a dense novel that was better suited to a mini-series (as it was first adapted), and oriented the central drama away from the whodunnit question, and onto the inner lives of the characters. The film didn't provide much in the way of red herrings or chances to guess who the mole was. Ultimately, that answer was just the destination that capped off a slow-burning journey of secrecy and damaged masculinity. 

Somewhere on a different part of the spectrum (though thankfully not on the opposite end), is Anton Corbijn's (Control, The American) A Most Wanted Man, adapted from the Le Carre novel of the same name. All of the trademarks of Le Carre's espionage stories are present in Most Wanted, yet them come to life with less engrossing results this time around, largely due to some bloated pacing and an anemic screenplay. Alfredson's Tinker masterfully compressed something dense, whereas Corbijn and company wound up stretching something thin close to its breaking point. The sad irony is that Corbijn's barely decent film contains the last performance from Philip Seymour Hoffman. It's an unfitting send off for someone of his stature. 

Most Wanted certainly has its strong points, but the most interesting thing about it is comparing the visualization of a Le Carre story set in the past, and one set relatively in the present. In Tinker, the conversations mostly took place in claustrophobic rooms and corridors. Some of that film's most visually striking sequences were set in a windowless, sound-proofed room. Espionage was allowed to truly take place in secret. 

Jump forward to the 21st century, especially the post 9/11 western world, and you have a much different scenario. Important meetings happen in conference rooms with massive windows looking out over cubicles and desks, and some of the most sensitive topics come up out in the open, in places as mundane as cafes or tacky bars. This is the the age of espionage that can hack and track everyone, yet is also under pressure to be uncomfortably open about its most uncomfortable facets. 

Distinguishing between historical context is certainly more compelling that the drawn out plot. It all begins when a young Chechen Muslim named Issa (Grigoriy Dobrygin) illegally immigrates to Hamburg. Though he seems to have no plans to carry out any terrorist activity, it doesn't take long before Issa's struggle to seek asylum in Germany gets tangled in with an investigation regarding a prominent Muslim figure already in the country. For Gunther (Hoffman) and his small team of co-workers (their group doesn't exist on German intelligence records), Issa's struggle is a chance to, slowly but surely, set a trap for the Muslim figurehead, and possibly expose a money laundering scheme being used to fund Al Qaeda. 

While, Le Carre's novels don't tend to move quickly, but here Corbijn has indulged the author's sense of pacing to a fault. There are more than a few transitional scenes that are utterly pointless, and seem to have been left in under the delusion that these extra moments will add to the overall atmosphere. In The American, Corbijn was able to use gradual pacing to his advantage, despite having a considerably slimmer plot to work with. Unfortunately, he hasn't been able to carry that talent over to this dense material. The layers of the plot don't exceed his grasp. Instead, there just seems to be too little thought given as to how those layers should intersect with each other. 

The performances are, at least, convincing, though no one has all that much to work with. The idea of damaged masculinity that was so beautifully inhabited by Gary Oldman in Tinker is also present in Hoffman's role, and the latter does a solid job. He simply doesn't have enough to work with, and so he's left to mostly mutter with a German accent. The conclusion, which sees Gunther pushed to his breaking point, should be a powerful finish to a tale of complicated ethics and ideas. Instead, the impact is minimized but the competently photographed (Corbijn remains a strong visual story teller) lump of story that led up to it. Thankfully, Robin Wright pops up for a few scenes as an icy American diplomat, and her scenes with Hoffman are among the film's best. Meanwhile, wonderful German talents like Nina Hoss and Daniel Bruhl are mostly wasted.

A Most Wanted Man opens on a shot of sloshing brown water, which is only appropriate given the moral and political murkiness on display. It's too bad that the film as a whole never becomes any clearer on any level. A Most Wanted man looks the part as far as modern day Le Carre stories go. What it's missing is the richness of its present day setting, one that exists entirely in shades of grey with increasingly blurred barriers.

Grade: C+/C

Review: "To the Wonder"

Director: Terrence Malick
Runtime: 112 minutes

One of the most surprising things about To the Wonder, the sixth film from secretive director Terrence Malick, is that it opens with grainy digital footage from a camera phone. Anyone with even cursory knowledge of the man's work knows that, even to detractors, his films are regarded as some of the most beautiful ever made. Yet the times they are a changin', as the opening seconds quietly let us know. Not only is To the Wonder Malick's first film shot with digital cameras, it is also his first film to take place in the present. It seems like a logical progression, as Malick becomes less and less concerned with concrete narratives. Yet if 2011's The Tree of Life was the director's most ambitious abstract feature, To the Wonder is easily his most intimate. As such, it's likely to baffle and delight, bore and exhilarate depending on how well you connect with Malick's stylistic progression over the years. 

Allegedly semi-autobiographical, Wonder's plot can be thought of as Malick's take on Blue Valentine, as it chronicles the various ups and downs of a relationship. We're first introduced to Neil (Ben Affleck) and Marina (Olga Kurylenko), in the early stages of a whirlwind romance that culminates with a trip to Mont St. Michel. It's an elegant and symbolically rich method of showing the (perhaps naive) innocence of their relationship. Marina, the more free-spirited of the two, dances through the incoming tide as Neil watches. Moments later, they embrace in one of the medieval stone courtyards of the famed castle. Their love is at its simplest, unencumbered by the distractions of the modern world. When they touch, it occurs with complete receptiveness. 

Marina and her young daughter move with Neil to Oklahoma. Though surrounded by trappings of the middle class, Marina is able to flourish in America, dancing in the wheat fields that are as vast as the blue sky above them. But, as sometimes happens, the harmony of Neil and Marina's relationship is ruptured by forces that are only barely hinted at. It's here that To the Wonder will most likely start to frustrate certain audience members. One never goes into a Malick movie expecting to be spoon-fed exposition. However, the motivations for the emotional developments (more so in the first half) can, at times, feel too distant and vague. As such, the earlier portions of romantic discord can feel more frustrating than engaging. In part, this stems from the fact that the problem seems to originate with Neil, yet the film is - despite a side venture featuring Rachel McAdams - more oriented around Marina. 

In the film's second half, Marina's voice over tells us that the weak-willed never have the courage to finish things. It's a valuable statement, one that taps into the seemingly out of the blue dissolutions between Neil and Marina, and then Neil and McAdams' Jane. Yet it comes so late that it's hard not to feel as though Malick has missed an opportunity to inject this insight earlier, and give Neil's actions a clearer through-line. Malick's characters rarely pop-out of the frame; they're simply woven into the greater tapestry of the film around them. But in To the Wonder, one can't help but feel the need for just a little more to work with when it comes to figuring these people out. The vision and scope here are so much smaller, despite the constant swooping shots of the sky and the horizon, but there are times when the film feels divided as to whether it wants to be intimate or epic. 

The strain to become an epic is felt most in the scenes involving local priest Fr. Quintana (Javier Bardem). Though he interacts with both Neil and Marina on different occasions,  Malick also strives to give this man of God his own emotional and spiritual journey. Neil and Marina struggle with the emotional repercussions of their faltering romantic love, an area in which Fr. Quintana's spiritual advice can only go so far. Instead, his greater struggle is reconciling his uncertainty with his position, and his struggle to feel God's love, the love that reaches out without judgement or jealousy at all times. It's a journey that certainly has its moments, yet the balance between the two can't help but feel off-kilter. Whenever Quintana appears on screen, it's difficult not to wish that the momentum of the Neil and Marina story arc had been left undisturbed. Malick's goals with this side of the film are noble, yet they cry out to be explored as part of another film (either as the center or as a subplot). The thematic links make sense on paper, but in execution, they aren't quite as convincing.

Thankfully, To the Wonder is anchored in Neil and Marina's story, especially Marina's. In the film's second half, Marina comes further into the foreground, and the various aspects of the film's look at love - platonic, romantic, and spiritual - suddenly coalesce. Kurylenko is a true surprise here, and delivers a performance that ranks among the best in Malick's filmography. There are remnants of Jessica Chastain's gentle mother from The Tree of Life, yet Marina is very much her own modern woman. After so many disposable roles following her breakout turn in Quantum of Solace, it's refreshing to see her bring such sensitivity to the role. Marina is free-spirited  and at times childlike in her innocence and connection with nature, yet she is never distractingly childish. She's torn between her Catholic upbringing, and the almost primal sense of connection she feels to nature and its laws. It's a performance that is both subdued and radiant, effortlessly portrayed and captured. For a film that allegedly contained no true script during shooting, Marina feels like one of Malick's most structured characters. 

That same structure carries over into the film's later stretches, and helps To the Wonder stay true to its convictions. The film's last act has the potential to feel dragged-out and repetitive, yet instead it builds on everything that came before. To the Wonder may not touch The Tree of Life for overall quality, but its final half hour is certainly much more stirring at first glance. Despite the character-based issues earlier in the film, the conclusion here actually delivers on the ideas and themes that have been running underneath the beautiful images the entire time. Malick may take too long to let those ideas surface, but once he does, his film's intimacy finally starts to fit together. The voice over work feels most meaningful, as do the (typically strong) classical pieces that Malick has picked out for the soundtrack. Credit should also go to cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki for capturing the whole thing with such naturalistic beauty. There's a rawness to the imagery that, despite its kinship with Lubezki's work on The Tree of Life, has echoes of Malick's Badlands (another film with a romance set against the midwest). Like any of Malick's films, it deserves to be experienced on the big screen, if only to fully appreciate the sheer beauty of it all. 

Ultimately, that beauty will only go so far with many. The gap between The Tree of Life and To the Wonder is the shortest between any two Malick films, and some will likely argue that this acceleration has produced the director's weakest film. Yet for all of its flaws, there's so much to admire here that I find it hard to turn this film away. In the transition from The Tree of Life to To the Wonder, Malick had to descend from truly cosmic heights in order to take a stab at material so deeply rooted in emotional intimacy. And while the director may have stumbled on his way down, he has, to his credit, managed to land with grace. 

Grade: B

Review: "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows"

When I reviewed Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes (2009), I made a remark that his set-up of the character followed a path eerily similar to that of Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins (2005). Both films took a classic character and reinvented them, while squaring them off with a relatively mundane antagonist. Both films also concluded with a set-up for a sequel that would introduce the hero's most famous villain. For Batman, it was the Joker, as embodied by Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight (2008); for Holmes, it's Prof. Moriarty. Both characters represent the ultimate challenges for their respective protagonists. They are, essentially, their doubles; the corrupted versions of the heroes had they fallen into a path of darkness. The big difference, at least on screen, is that where Mr. Nolan's sequel was a grander, richer, darker film, Mr. Ritchie's follow-up gives us more of the Holmes that audiences loved two years ago, only with diminished results.

Opening some vague amount of time after the '09 film, A Game of Shadows quickly plunges us into a world uncomfortably close to war. A series of assassinations and bombings have put mainland Europe on edge. For Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.), however, it can all be traced to Prof. Moriarty (Mad Men's Jared Harris), even though he doesn't have the concrete evidence to prove it. At the same time, Holmes must deal with the potential loss of his closest ally, Dr. Watson (Jude Law), who is about to get married. Things change, however, when Holmes and Moriarty start to clash, and the pair must find a way to prevent the Professor from setting the entire continent ablaze with war.

Yet whatever fun there was in Ritchie's take on the classic Conan Doyle character in the first go-round suddenly seems depleted here. The opening sequences, which reintroduce Rachel McAdams' Irene Adler, fail to stick, even though they directly involve Moriarty himself. Rather than advance the world he established last time, Ritchie appears to have become lazy here, and the flow of scenes often feels like it's missing a certain extra oomph. Even the fight scenes, which start off with Holmes playing through possible scenarios in his head before progressing to the real action, don't inspire the same level of fun they did just two years ago. While the portions that take place in Holmes' mind remain effective (and they lead to a fun twist on the concept at the conclusion), the actual fights feel sloppily staged and edited. When showing the nuts and bolts of how things work in drastic close-ups and slow motion, whether it's a fight scene or the firing of a machine gun, A Game of Shadows has some spark to it. But when it gets around to the more mundane parts of its action, the staging and choreography seem to vanish and become replaced with rapid-fire cuts.

This would be a smaller complaint were there not so many other unfortunate issues. The biggest problem the film has, a crucial flaw for an adventure of its nature, is the characters. At the outset, Holmes almost doesn't feel like himself; it's as if Downey Jr. decided to dispense with his previous interpretation and try his hand at a less wacky/drunk Jack Sparrow. The odd choice vanishes after the first 20 minutes or so, but it's puzzling nonetheless. Once it's gone, though, Downey Jr. becomes the Holmes that was so popular (and earned him a surprise victory at the Golden Globes) last time. Law's Watson remains the same, making a nice bro-mantic foil for Downey Jr., though never feeling quite as integral to the plot as he should. Noomi Rapace (the original Lisbeth Salander) is also here, but not given nearly enough to do, despite her connection to the story. Jared Harris, on the other hand, has enough to do, and makes for an effective Moriarty. The problem with the character, however, lies in the script. He and Holmes meet face-to-face as enemies quite early on. It's a technique that could have resulted in a devilishly clever battle of wits, but the film sidelines Harris too often. Worse, Moriarty's big scheme, evil though it may be, isn't executed on screen in a manner that makes it feel worthy of the character's reputation.

That's not to say that this is a completely joyless exercise, however. Though the humor doesn't work nearly as well as it did in the previous film, Downey Jr. and Law's chemistry remains firmly intact. And as over-stylized as some of the action sequences may be in their use of slow-motion, their slick assembly is a fun distraction from the otherwise middle of the road execution. A Game of Shadows does have a saving grace though, and it comes in where it counts: the ending. The film's entire last act, set in a Swiss castle perched on a waterfall, is an absolute blast, resulting in a face-off both physical and mental that is allowed to run its course, rather than be cut short for the sake of finding an ending. It's really a shame that everything that came before couldn't have been more effective, because by the time the film rolled around to its conclusion, I was ready to forgive it for its missteps. Unfortunately, as fun as the final act is, it can't undo the flaws that came before it, even though I'll bet that Mr. Ritchie really wishes that it could.

Grade: C+