Movie Review: 2012

2012 (2009) 

Directed by Roland Emmerich 

Written by Roland Emmerich, Harald Kloser 

Starring John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Thandie Newton, Danny Glover, Woody Harrelson

Release Date November 13th, 2009

Published November 12th, 2009 

2012 hysteria has gotten so out of hand that NASA was compelled to put out a press release stating that the Mayan Calendar does not predict the end of the world. Indeed, the planets will align in 2012 but they will as they have numerous times before without massive worldwide destruction. Could there be a better endorsement for the new goofball disaster flick 2012? This latest project from world destruction expert Roland Emmerich goes off the rails of reality from jumpstreet but knows it, accepts it, and even has a little fun being all earnest and serious about stuff blowin' up real good.

John Cusack leads an ensemble cast in 2012 as Jackson Curtis. A failed writer, Jackson drives a limousine for a living and that is how he arrives to take his two kids camping for the weekend. Jackson is estranged from his wife Kate (Amanda Peet) who has remarried to a plastic surgeon, Gordon (Thomas McCarthy).

Jackson is taking the kids camping at a rather odd moment. All over California giant cracks are forming. There are a number of mini-earthquakes and other ominous signs of doom that Jackson and family choose to ignore. Meanwhile, across the country a government geologist, Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) has discovered that the end of the world is nigh.

The sun is firing off flares that become neutrinos that are heating the earth's core and blah, blah, blah, let's just say science is merely a touchstone for 2012 and leave it at that. The necessary info is that the world will soon end. What luck that there is a solution in place. Giant ships called Arcs will whisk the wealthy, privileged and connected of the world to safety on the high seas while the average folks die horribly.

Thanks to a wacked out, Art Bell wannabe, well played by Woody Harrelson doing a fabulous Dennis Hopper impression, ....Jackson.... finds out about the Arcs and aims to get his kids, ex-wife and even his romantic rival to ..Asia.. where the Arcs are being loaded up.

Basic set up, establish the stakes, establish our everyman hero and then rain down the CGI destruction. You have to give this to Roland Emmerich, the idea is efficient. If only the actual film were so cut to the quick. 2012, despite many guilty pleasures, lingers for nearly three hours blowing up monuments and killing dignitaries.

If you enjoy carnage and human sacrafice then you may marvel at watching priests crushed by the Sistine Chapel. The Pope gets crushed by the ....Vatican.... and the President of the ....United States....? He gets an aircraft carrier named for John F. Kennedy dropped on him.

Roland Emmerich really enjoys these scenes to much. Really, it's rather unseemly, the pleasure that Emmerich seems to take in staging these CGI deaths. It's comparable to the joys that a director like Eli Roth takes in torturing his average Jane characters, minus the misogyny but with a healthy dose of blasphemy.

It is that unseemly quality, along with the film's exorbitant length, that makes me resist liking 2012. And I really kinda want to. The CGI destruction is well crafted and even kind of exciting, especially watching a commuter plane fly between falling buildings.

John Cusack and Chiwetel Ejiofor are shockingly effective in building human surrogates from the rubble of expository dialogue, running and screaming that are the main components of their characters. Amand Peet, Danny Glover and Thandie Newton round out a main cast right at home in a disaster movie ensemble. 

I kind of want to recommend 2012 because there is some real good camp and some terrific CGI. Unfortunately, the film overstays its welcome and becomes a little to blood lusty for my taste. The seemingly random fates of well known heads of state, and a few filler characters, leave a bad taste that I just cannot shake. 

2012 is a movie for the forgiving fan of big, dumb loud, world ending blockbusters only.

Movie Review Love and Other Drugs

Love and Other Drugs (2010) 

Directed by Edward Zwick

Written by Charles Randolph, Marshall Herskovitz

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway, Oliver Platt, Hank Azaria, Josh Gad

Release Date November 24th, 2010

Published November 25th, 2010

I have long believed that the best movies reveal something not just about the characters on screen but the audience watching them. The new romance “Love and Other Drugs” starring Ann Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal and directed by Ed Zwick has moments that reached into my soul and revealed things to me that I have been trying to hide. The movie is far from perfect but for a few minutes, “Love and Other Drugs” is very touching and for that it's worth the ticket price.

Jake Gyllenhaal stars in “Love and Other Drugs” as Jamie Randall a good for nothing horn dog who gets fired from his job for having sex with his boss's wife while the boss is in the other room. Based solely on charm and good looks Jamie falls into an even better job with even more promise of sexual conquest, working as a drug rep for Pfizer.

Drug rep, as we are informed, is the only entry level position with a starting pay in the six figure range. The job plays to Jamie's strength as it involves no skill other than being charming, the only real skill he has. With the help of his new partner Bruce (Oliver Platt), Jamie has only to get sales up a little and he will move on from the lowly depths of the Ohio River Valley to the big time in Chicago.

Jamie is on the fast track when he meets Maggie (Ann Hathaway) , a beautiful 26 year old artist/waitress with early onset Parkinson’s disease. At first she is the perfect woman, her disease makes her only seek a sexual relationship with little emotional involvement, seemingly Jamie's dream relationship. It doesn't take a rocket scientist however to figure out that eventually the heartless hound dog will fall for Maggie and she will push him away.

Director Ed Zwick, with script assists from Marshall Herskovitz and Charles Randolph, uses the bones of the book "Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman" by Jamie Reidy to craft a love story about an emotionally stunted man who slowly evolves the soul he had buried so deeply within himself. It's a story that will be painfully familiar to a lot of men who have hidden behind charm in order to keep real feeling at bay.

Jake Gyllenhaal captures the emotionally stunted Jamie perfectly; hiding behind quick wit and a sheepish smile that hides a wolf's intentions. Jamie is constantly on the prowl until he meets Maggie who gives him exactly what he wants while telling him it's what he wants and with unintended consequence teaches him the well worn lesson 'be careful what you wish for.'

On the periphery of this love story is the story of the pharmaceutical business and its many disquieting practices. In this part of the story Director Zwick vacillates between wanting to damn and shame the industry and stay true to Jamie Reidy's book which is neither damning or shaming but merely observant and humorous.

Zwick includes scenes where Maggie takes a group of seniors to Canada in order to buy drugs. If this is meant as a stick in the eye to the industry it doesn't land because it doesn't seem to phase Jamie in the least as he ends up going on a trip with her that is only part of their love montage, that series of scenes set to a love theme that acts as shorthand for movie characters falling in love.

Was Zwick meaning to allude to the problems we all seem to have with Pharmaceutical companies these days or elude criticisms of those who would argue he did not damn and shame the industry enough? Whatever he was trying is the biggest failure of “Love and Other Drugs” as it merely seems a distraction from the film's more interesting elements, the lovely chemistry between stars Jake Gyllenhaal. 

These two wonderful actors bring out the best in each other. The scenes they shared, all too briefly, in “Brokeback Mountain” crackled with life and were sorrowful reminders of that film's tragic themes. In “Love and Other Drugs” Gyllenhaal and Hathaway lay each other bare literally and emotionally and let the audience in as if it were some sort of emotional three way. 

 Given Maggie's condition and her side gig taking seniors to Canada for drugs, one would assume the Pharmaceutical industry would be in for something of a beating in “Love and Other Drugs.” Instead, either Ed Zwick didn't really have the nerve for an indictment or didn't have the goods for a solid take down. Zwick force feeds the minor jabs at big pharma in “Love and Other Drugs,” they really weren’t part of Jamie Reidy’s book, as a way of satisfying those who would be upset about a love story in this setting that doesn’t address real concerns about drug companies and their supposedly unethical practices.

In the end, “Love and Other Drugs” is a good movie that gets in its own way trying to answer critics who may or may not exist. I'm sure someone might have attacked the film for ignoring the alleged abuses of the pharmaceutical industry but that should not have been a concern for Zwick and the creators of “Love and Other Drugs.” The point here is the love story and the good humor and watching a boy become a man under tough emotional circumstances.

The story of Jamie and Maggie on its own is worth the price of a ticket. The rest of “Love and Other Drugs” is unfortunately unfocused and greatly lacking. I recommend the film but with reservations.

Movie Review Married to the Mob

Married to the Mob (1988) 

Directed by Jonathan Demme

Written by Barry Stugatz, Mark Burns 

Starring Michelle Pfeiffer, Matthew Modine, Alec Baldwin, Dean Stockwell, Oliver Platt

Release Date August 19th, 1988

Published August 18th, 2018 

Married to the Mob stars Michelle Pfeiffer in one of the best performances in her incredible career. As Angela DeMarco, the increasingly uncomfortable mob wife of ‘Cucumber’ Frank DeMarco (Alec Baldwin), Pfeiffer is the only sympathetic character in a universe of cartoonish killer criminals and duplicitous, weirdo FBI guys. Pfeiffer is the only element of Married to the Mob that makes complete sense.

Angela DeMarco wants out of the life of a mob wife. The bloom is off the rose of being married to a man who furnished their home with items that ‘fell off a truck.’ Angela is tired of the politics that come with being a mob wife which means spending a lot of time with fellow mob wives, a group of shrill, crispy-haired, harridans led by the Boss’s wife, Connie (Mercedes Ruehl), who demands that all mob wives follow her lead.

While Angela is plotting her escape from the mob world, FBI Agent Mike Downey (Mathew Modine) is looking for his way in so he can take down the whole thing. Mike and his partner Benitez (Oliver Platt) have been after mob boss Tony ‘The Tiger’ Russo for a while now and when things break down between Tony and Frank and Angela becomes a target of Tony’s affection, Mike has his way to get after the boss, if he can keep from falling for Angela himself.

Married to the Mob is a strange movie. The title is comically overlong and humorously ill-suited to the actual content of the film. The mob clichés are comically over the top. The Italian accents, the greasy hair, the mob lingo are right out of a parody. The story however, features mob killings that would feel at home in an episode of The Sopranos. Despite the comic accents, Dean Stockwell and Alec Baldwin play their characters with a seriousness at odds with the supposed comic nature of the movie.

Then there is Michelle Pfeiffer who plays Angela completely straight, with none of the comically over-arching touches that Mercedes Ruehl and the rest of the female cast, bring to their characters. When she begins the romantic plot with Matthew Modine’s FBI Agent, posing as a plumber while using Angela as bait to catch Tony, the romance has a light touch but she doesn’t play any single beat with the comedy that director Jonathan Demme appears to be directing her toward.

Modine’s character as well is really strange. He appears to be a comic character early on as he and Oliver Platt dip into strange banter, they have a weird slow motion high-five that appears for no real good reason. Then there is the bizarre glimpse of his home life where he has a Pee-Wee Herman style set up to help him put on his suit. It kind of fits the bizarre comic tone of Married to the Mob but the joke only serves to make him seem like a weirdo and not a romantic hero.

Everyone in Married to the Mob appears to be doing their own bit of business. The accents, the hairstyles, the odd quirks, every character seems to take a moment to demonstrate an odd trait and none of it appears to fit either in the comedy that the movie kind of is and the mob drama that the movie also kind of is. All of that said, these touches give the film personality but where that personality fits in in terms of genre is a mystery that keeps the film from greatness.

There are great moments throughout Married to the Mob and Jonathan Demme is a fine director who brings personality to the film but he can’t seem to decide whether we are to take the film seriously or laugh at it. Characters like Mercedes Ruehl are playing straight comedy while Dean Stockwell, who was nominated for an Academy Award for this performance, and Michelle Pfeiffer are taking the film relatively seriously.

The film is a tonal mess. Comedy, violence, mob drama and mob comedy, Married to the Mob is filled with personality but it’s a Sybil-esque personality in which we never know which movie is on screen from scene to scene. I don’t have a huge dislike for Married to the Mob but I can’t fully embrace the movie, outside of Michelle Pfeiffer’s star-turn, because it is such a whiplash of weird shifts in tone.

Married to the Mob was released 30 years ago this weekend.

Movie Review Martian Child

Martian Child (2007) 

Directed by Menno Meyjes 

Written by Seth E. Bass, Jonathan Tolins

Starring John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Joan Cusack, Sophie Okenedo, Oliver Platt, Bobby Coleman 

Release Date Novemer 2nd, 2007

Published November 1st, 2007 

I will never understand why Hollywood film studios spend millions to make a movie and then abandon it. Take, for instance, the new dramatic comedy Martian Child starring John Cusack. The film was completed in 2005. It sat on the shelf for two years before trailers for the film began appearing in early 2007. It was supposed to come out back in the spring, then the summer, then in the fall, and now as we tilt toward winter the film is dropped into theaters with little fanfare.

Despite a popular star and a good marketing hook, Martian Child is not unlike its poor misguided protagonist, a child who believes he's from mars. Abandoned, dropped into the world, forgotten.

How sad.

David Gordon (John Cusack) was picked on a lot as a kid. It was traumatic but it fueled his imagination and it led him to become a successful science fiction writer. His past and his vocation are the main reasons why his friend Sophie (Sophie Okenedo), a social worker, thinks he would be the perfect guardian for Dennis (Bobby Coleman).

Dennis is a strange little boy who believes he is from mars. He is afraid of the sun and so he spends hours in a box. He doesn't believe in earth's gravitational pull so he wears a weight belt wherever he goes. David is terrified at first, and not just because Dennis thinks he's a Martian, but eventually he agrees to adopt Dennis and an unusual family is born.

You don't need a map to see where this plot is leading. Each character, especially the supporting characters, are obvious signposts that guide the plot to the next obvious moment. You know when you meet Richard Schiff's officious social worker that he will be something of a villain who may try to separate the new family.

When you meet Harlee, the sister of David's late wife, you know that Amanda Peet would not have been cast in this role if she weren't going to play an important role in the plot, likely as David's love interest. The only supporting character with some breathing room is Joan Cusack as David's sister. Never portrayed as a villain in the film, Joan gets both voice of reason and comic relief moments. This allows her to riff a little and the interaction between Joan and his real life older sister is one of the minor joys of this predictable little movie.

As predictable and stunningly simplistic as Martian Child is it is also good natured and well intentioned. John Cusack brings his trademark likability to the role of David Gordon and you believe every moment of his interaction with this strange boy. Yes, he does pour on the schmaltz a few times but there is just enough classic Cusack disaffection and self deprecation to offset some of the sap.

Unfortunately, director Menno Meyjes knows no other way to direct this material than by the book. If you've ever read the critical work of the great Roger Ebert you are aware of the hack movie concept of the false crisis/false dawn, real crisis/real dawn. It's the hackiest of plot contraptions and it plays to clockwork efficiency in Martian Child. Even the novice filmgoer can mark the moment when the false crisis and real crisis begin and end and easily predict how they will resolve.

Martian Child is not a horrible film. Any movie with John Cusack will struggle to be truly awful. It is far from being a good movie however. It just sort of exists as a forgettable throwaway movie that will pass from theaters and the memories of the few who see it without leaving much of an impression. I still don't understand why New Line Cinema treated this film so poorly though. It's not a good movie but it's not Kickin' It Old Skool either.

Movie Review: Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday (2002) 

Directed by Edward Burns

Written by Edward Burns 

Starring Edward Burns, Elijah Wood, Rosario Dawson, Oliver Platt 

Release Date October 11th, 2002 

Published December 16th, 2002 

One of the holiest of Catholic holidays, Ash Wednesday is celebrated as the beginning of Lent. The ashes anointed on the head of the believer is a reminder that we are born of dust and will one day return to dust. Essentially, it's a reminder of death. The perfect metaphor for Edward Burns’ new feature Ash Wednesday. A film that is a meditation on life and death and the choices people make that lead to death. Though the filmmaking is somewhat misguided, its heart is in the right place.

Ash Wednesday, written, directed by and starring Burns is Francis, a former Irish mob thug turned reformed citizen after the supposed death of his brother Sean (Elijah Wood). It was 1980 in a part of New York known as Hell's Kitchen. Sean Sullivan was tending bar when he overheard a group of men talking over the murder of Sean's brother. Sensing the men meant business, Sean does the only thing he can think of to save his brother and murders the group. 

Conspiring with his brother, their priest Father Mahoney (James Handy), and their father’s mob partner Whitey (Malachy McCourt), Sean is smuggled out of the state and his death is faked to satisfy the families of the men he killed. Unfortunately, Sean leaves behind a wife played by Rosario Dawson, and an unborn son he does not know of. Three years pass and Francis has been spending time with Sean's wife until Sean pops up unannounced to claim her and take her away with him. Sean is unaware of his brother's actions. The rumors of Sean's return from the grave spread quickly and the family of the men Sean killed lead by Oliver Platt (in what amounts to a cameo, though he's on the poster) immediately come looking for Francis and a fight.

Once the indie wunderkind who went from intern on Entertainment Tonight to writer-director with his first feature The Brothers McMullan, Ed Burns has been on a steady decline since his charming debut. His most recent film was the highly uneven Woody Allen homage Sidewalks Of New York. Before that the unnoticed No Looking Back. The quality of Burns' work has slipped with each outing and Ash Wednesday continues the decline.

Though the film has its moments of purity and intelligence, Burns' performance, along with that of his woefully miscast co-star Elijah Wood, undoes any interesting elements the film has. Burns is excessively laid back for the character he is portraying, a killer with a conscience. To convince anyone he was a conflicted killer Burns would have to show us he has a pulse, show us that he actually cares. However, even during the few scenes of gunplay Burns maintains a disaffected air that is off-putting to the audience and undermining of the character.

As for Wood, his wistful looks make him about the least believable killer since Julia Roberts shot that guy in The Mexican. I honestly expected him to drop the gun and start crying. I'm not commenting on Wood's masculinity, I'm speaking solely of his performance which is dewy eyed, whiny, and deeply unconvincing for what the character is called upon to do. 

There are good things about Ash Wednesday, specifically the performance of Rosario Dawson who in a very limited role manages to earn audience sympathies while saddled with subpar dialogue. Also good is the film’s score, a piano driven dirge that reinforces the gloom that rises from the crime ridden streets.

The truly disappointing part of Ash Wednesday is it's ending, which is meant to be emotional and cathartic, but is instead insultingly obvious.

Movie Review Please Give

Please Give (2010) 

Directed by Nicole Holofcener 

Written by Nicole Holofcener 

Starring Rebecca Hall, Catherine Keener, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt 

Release Date April 30th, 2010 

Published August 12th, 2010 

Writer-Director Nicole Holofcener “Please Give” is one of the best movies of 2010. This wonderfully warm, human drama/comedy about people struggling to better themselves and connect with others, striving and failing and striving again is so relatable and revealing of not just its characters but its audience it should be taught in humanities classes.

Katherine Keener, star of all of Me. Holofcener's movies, stars in “Please Give” as Cathy, the proprietor of a furniture store that specializes in buying the furniture of dead people from grieving families who don't realize the value of what they are selling. Naturally, there is a little bit of guilt attached to this ghoulish profession, guilt that is compounded by another ghoulish enterprise in her life.

Cathy and her husband Alex have purchased the apartment next door to their own, an apartment that is currently inhabited by Andra (Ann Guilbert) a 90 something year old woman in not so great health. Cathy and Alex are essentially waiting for the old woman to kick off so they can knock down a wall and expand their space. Cathy feels horrible about this and her guilt is again compounded by Andra's doting granddaughter Rebecca (Rebecca Hall) who in her standoffishness tacitly calls out Cathy's ghoulishness.

Cathy attempts to alleviate her guilt by becoming a volunteer. She tries helping out at a retirement home and is overcome by the sadness of people waiting to die. She tries helping out kids with autism and again she is overwhelmed. In a powerful scene that defies description of its emotional power Keener breaks your heart, hiding in a bathroom stall. It's one of a number of small moments that make Please Give so remarkable.

Parallel to Cathy's story is Rebecca's story. Lonely and sad, Rebecca waits on her unappreciative granny and watches the world go by. Rebecca's sister Mary (Amanda Peet) is far less circumspect in relation to grandma, dismissing the old woman and callously waits for the old woman to croak so that she can be done with the whole thing.

Peet has a masterfully awkward scene when she, Rebecca and grandma are invited over to Cathy and Alex's apartment for dinner. Peet's indelicate questions about just what renovations will happen in the apartment once grandma is gone, right in front of grandma, make for dark humor and set Peet up for scenes later in the film that will resonate deeper. You can assume that she will be humiliated and redeemed but you must see these scenes to truly get the impact.

Much of “Please Give” defies a basic description. The acting is so wonderfully subtle and un-dramatic. The shifts in tone come in glances and nods and not in emotional breakdowns and obvious speeches. There is nothing wrong with a good monologue, mind you, but the material in “Please Give” doesn't call for it, even when you might be expecting it. Nicole Holofcener's amazing talent in “Please Give” is recognizing exactly what each scene needs on a basic dramatic level and allowing the actors space to give the perfunctory something beyond the words. With a cast this brilliant it makes Holofcener's gift seem minimal but it's more that it just doesn't play as obvious.

Catherine Keener and Rebecca Hall deliver Oscar quality performances in “Please Give.” In her longing to be a better person, her faults and her failures, Keener finds a place she's never been before on screen. Rebecca Hall stuns in “Please Give” with her remarkable vulnerability. The notes that Hall plays in “Please Give” are delicate and graceful and far more intricate than I can describe. So much of “Please Give” is subtle and minimalist and should be left to you as a viewer to discover. I will merely say again that “Please Give” is one of the best movies of 2010 and urge you to seek it out.

Movie Review: Year One

Year One (2009) 

Directed by Harold Ramis

Written by Gene Stupnitsky, Harold Ramis, Lee Eisenberg

Starring Jack Black, Michael Cera, Hank Azaria, Oliver Platt, David Cross

Release Date June 19th, 2009 

Published June 18th, 2009  

It's a nice idea. Get a bunch of funny people together; throw on some funny costumes, make some references to the bible and wait for one the talented performers to say something funny. That is the basic idea of Year One. Throw Jack Black and Michael Cera together with a large group of funny people like Bill Hader, Hank Azaria, David Cross and Paul Rudd and assume something funny will happen. Occasionally something funny does happen. More often however, a premise for a satiric scene is set and everyone stumbles about searching desperately for a punchline.

Jack Black stars in Year One as Zed a wannabe hunter. He stinks at it and the other hunters hate him. Unfortunately for Zed, he stinks at being a gatherer as well and those are really the only jobs in the caveman world. Zed's best friend is Oh played by Michael Cera. Oh is an expert gatherer but pines for a girl who only dates hunters. When he tries to go all caveman on her and drag her back to his hut, she beats him down, his latest in a long series of humiliations to come.

When Zed burns much of the village down he is banished and Oh decides to leave with him. Together they wander into biblical times where they witness the murder of Abel (Paul Rudd) by his brother Cain (David Cross). They move on and witness Abraham (Hank Azaria) offering his son Isaac (Christopher Mintz Plasse) as a sacrafice to God. Finally, Zed and Oh wind up in Sodom where the high priest (Oliver Platt) is a mincing queen and the princess (Olivia Wilde) thinks she can steal the crown with Zed's help.

The bible stuff is odd because Year One is not necessarily a biblical satire. It may have wanted to be but all the movie ever does is introduce biblical characters in their famous context and then waits for the actors to find something funny to do. These are very talented actors, some of whom with years of improv and sketch comedy training but without a solid script to work from even the best of the improv crowd simply flails about searching for something funny to do.

Stuck with an idea and not a character, Jack Black falls back on his well known antics and shows why audiences are growing tired of his schtick. Michael Cera to is in fallback mode as he transports his much loved persona as a gawky, shy, loser who always seems the subject of humiliation into the role of Oh. The same nervous energy that people found charming in Superbad gets old fast out of context in Year One.

Director Harold Ramis must have thought that all he needed were funny people and a lot of goofy costumes and somehow they would find something funny. Instead, we have a lot of funny talented people lurching about searching for punchlines that should have been provided for them by an actual script.

Not only does what there is of a script stink but Ramis's direction is stunningly lax and inept. Scenes arrive and sputter to a finish or, in the case of an early scene where Cera is attacked by a snake and then a cougar, the scene doesn't really end so much as the scene suddenly is abandoned without resolution. This is a stunning level of apathy from such a veteran director.

Year One is one of the biggest disappointments of the summer.

Movie Review Frost/Nixon

Frost/Nixon (2008) 

Directed by Ron Howard 

Written by Peter Morgan 

Starring Michael Sheen, Frank Langella, Oliver Platt, Sam Rockwell, Rebecca Hall 

Release Date December 5th, 2008 

Published December 4th, 2008 

Need and desperation defines Frost/Nixon, a battle of wits between two men of completely different wit. David Frost (Michael Sheen) was a television host whose stardom was on the wane. Having lost his American talk show, Frost was working in Australia with the occasional English special. Frost longed to get back the spotlight and especially get back the celebrity he'd enjoyed in the United States. His longshot bet to get it back was an interview no one thought he could get. 3 years after having been impeached and pardoned, Richard Nixon was living in exile in California and longing for a comeback of his own.

Though his memoirs meant alot to him, he was getting nearly a million dollars for his story, a near record at the time, the writing process was lonely and he longed for a national spotlight. Nixon had standing offers from all of the network big wigs but people like Mike Wallace had too much power and would not accept limitations on the kinds of pointed questions they could ask. David Frost on the other hand had no power. He had no stature to make demands and his reputation for softball celebrity interviews gave no indication that he would make a difficult interview for the cagey former President. Frost also offered something else the networks refused, he was willing to pay for the interview.

Feeling he could interest a network or syndicator later, Frost willingly put every penny he had into paying for the interview from several hundred thousand for the President to the very production and recording of the interview. Even without the assurance that he would have a venue to air the interview. Frost may not have been in much of a position to intimidate the former President but he was crafty. With the help of his longtime producer John Birt (Matthew Macfaydyen), Frost found a pair of top flight investigators to help write the questions and prep the interviews.

Bob Zelnick (Oliver Platt) was a former ABC News producer and James Reston Jr (Sam Rockwell) was a Watergate scholar having already written several books in just the three years since the President's downfall. It was Reston, the zealot, who saw the interview as the opportunity to give Nixon the trial he never had. Frost/Nixon began life as a two man stage play written by playwright Peter Morgan. He dramatized the conversations between Frost and Nixon on camera and off and in so doing gave audiences unique insight into these two extraordinarily different personalities.

It is also Peter Morgan who turned his two man play into a multi-character screenplay and his care and craftsmanship is why so little of the drama and tension has been lost by the addition of characters and scenes away from the actual interviews. Ron Howard proves to be the perfect director for this material. A mainstream auteur, Howard knows how to please an audience and do so without making things insultingly easy to follow. His knack for real life drama shown in two Best Picture nominees, Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind, is very much on display in Frost/Nixon.

When Nixon says to Frost "When the President does it, it isn't a crime" even the most ardent Republican could not miss the obvious allusion to things that Dick Cheney has come oh so close to saying himself in numerous interviews about the Iraq war and other scandalous events of the Bush administration. President Bush also, to a lesser extent, when it comes to issues of rendition and torture, has walked the line of nearly saying the same thing about Presidential power.

The key to Howard's direction of that scene, that approach to Nixon’s abuse of power and its historic context, and of the subtext as a whole, is not to overplay or underline the point. The moment in the movie is breathtaking both for the subtext provided in recent American history and for how it plays between Nixon and Frost. As Frost pauses not knowing how to react to such an extraordinary answer, the moment hangs in the air like a sword over both of their heads. Can Frost follow up? Does he need to? Can Nixon recover? This is one of three breathtaking moments in this movie, the other two I will leave you to discover.

Frank Langella's Nixon is a wounded soul who you almost come to sympathize with. Almost. I am among those who could never forgive such horrendous corruption. But, seeing Frost/Nixon, you get an impression of a man with great conviction. A man who, if he were not so paranoid and power mad, could have been a great President. Michael Sheen meanwhile, is very effective as David Frost, capturing both the blow dried pretty boy and the feisty, crafty scoundrel who may have been just the right man for the job. In the end it was Frost who cemented Nixon's image in our minds. Some revisionists may claim that Nixon came away better for the interview but those Watergate moments are the ones that people will always take away.

Frost/Nixon is one of the best films of 2008.

Movie Review The Ice Harvest

The Ice Harvest (2005) 

Directed by Harold Ramis 

Written by Richard Russo, Robert Benton 

Starring John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, Connie Nielsen, Randy Quaid, Oliver Platt 

Release Date November 23rd, 2005 

Published November 22nd, 2005 

Director Harold Ramis is best known for lighthearted comedy with an edgy intellect. His best work, 1993's Groundhog's Day, is such a true gem of a film that its polish has only shined brighter in the years subsequent to its release. Most credit for that film goes to Bill Murray's complex curmudgeonly existential performance. But, behind that performance was Ramis' sly, sneaky direction that played games with the audience that many did not discover until years later.

Even in lesser efforts like Analyze This and Analyze That, Ramis has at least delivered moments of pithy intellect and sly commentary. Ramis' latest effort Ice Harvest is nothing like anything he's directed before. A black hearted comic noir so thick with dark irony and detached violence one wonders if a late night cocktail of Pulp Fiction and Fargo somehow festered in Harold Ramis' dreams.

John Cusack stars in Ice Harvest as Charlie Arglist, a low level midwestern mob lawyer whose job seems to be holding down bar stools in mob controlled strip clubs. Charlie had never shown an ounce of ambition until a mobster named Vic (Billy Bob Thornton) convinced him to lift two million dollars in mob money from a local bank.

Getting the money was easy, now Charlie simply has to get out of Wichita. Unfortunately that will have to wait until morning as the entire town is nearly shut down due to an ice storm. Vic also has a few loose ends to tie up before they can go, including his soon to be ex-wife and a mobster, Roy (Mike Starr), who has discovered Vic and Charlie's scam.

Charlie is not simply waiting out the storm either. He is hiding from Roy while being seduced by Renata (Connie Neilsen), the manager of one the many strip clubs Charlie frequents, who is well aware of the money Vic and Charlie stole and has an eye on joining them in their getaway. Before Charlie can close that deal however, there is the matter of his best friend, Pete (Oliver Platt), who has chosen this night to get record-breakingly drunk and only Charlie can help him get home.

Pete happens to be married to Charlie's ex-wife which leads to an awkwardly humorous scene where Pete confronts his wife's growing dissatisfaction with their marriage in the midst of Christmas dinner at her parents house as Charlie stands by saying goodbye to his young daughter and unhappy son who he never sees. Platt is very funny in the scene but his plot really has little or any relation to the rest of the movie.

The rest of the film is full of double and triple crosses, bodies pile up high and all the while director Harold Ramis and writers Richard Russo and Robert Benton can't decide if they are making a dark comedy or a modern noir. Cusack's performance is, for the most part, dark comedy. Charlie assesses every plot development with a cowardly paranoia and suspicion that makes him the butt of every joke and the comic victim of every other character in the film.

In fact most of the cast is playing dark comedy. Thornton plays it cool for the most part but then there is the scene, featured prominently in the films trailer, where he has stuffed Roy in a trunk and comically beats it with a golf club which is straight slapstick. This is followed by a funny exchange in the car on the way to dump the body as Roy, in the box, attempts to save his life by convincing Charlie that Vic is going to kill him too and run off with all the money. The scene is funny but nothing after it is and much of what comes before it is unamusing as well.

As Cusack, Thornton, Platt and Starr are all playing dark comic riffs, Ramis is directing a bleak, mean spirited and violent Coen brothers' style anti-thriller with Neilsen's femme fatale and Randy Quaid's mob boss clearly not in on the rest of the cast's joke. The film shifts uncomfortably from ugly violence to black comedy, never able to incorporate the two in a way that makes both work.

Ice Harvest is shot as confusingly as it is plotted. Certain scenes have the bleak grays and blacks and dark colors of a noir mystery right down the rascotro lighting. Other scenes feature the bright colors and slick styling of any major mainstream comedy. A scene of Charlie standing in the empty frozen tundra of a Kansas highway is straight noir but the scenes between Cusack and Oliver Platt are from a dysfunctional holiday comedy filled with brightly decorated Christmas items. The shooting further muddies the line between the film's noir and dark comic intentions.

John Cusack does find a way to make his hapless loser Charlie work in terms of winning the audience to his side. Even as Charlie engages in some of the bad behavior in the film he retains an air of detached observation. With every dark development Charlie rarely gets riled up, he merely rubs his eyes in frustration and gets down to the distasteful business of surviving this one extraordinarily difficult night.

Oliver Platt's performance is equally as winning as Cusack's. The two actors spark a terrific chemistry in the few scenes they have together. Despite his oafish and even rude actions, Platt's sad sack Pete is very sympathetic in his sad drunken way. Had the film been able to straighten out the problems with its tone Platt and Cusack's performances alone could have made Ice Harvest a worthy effort.

It's not that dark comedy and modern noir are mutually exclusive genres.  It's just a difficult balancing act to make the two elements work together. Fargo, for example, works on both levels because of its exceptional cast and the assured direction of the Coen brothers. Ice Harvest director Harold Ramis is unable to find the balance between the comic performances of his cast and the dark action script.

Ramis wants to escape his reputation as a director of light comedy and indulge his dark side but his comic instincts are uncontrollable and express themselves in the direction of his actors. Ramis clearly wants to indulge his dark side in Ice Harvest but he cannot quiet his crowd pleasing instincts. After years of light, entertaining comedies, Ramis is very in tune to giving the audience the simple pleasures that most seek. Ice Harvest is not a film as a whole that can or should give audiences what they want.

The film's happy ending underscores my point. Watching Charlie escape with the money, and with his pal Pete, I could feel the gears turning as Ramis attempted to please the audience with a pseudo-happy ending. But what did Charlie do to deserve a happy ending? Granted that both Cusack and Platt are very good together and earn our sympathy, their plot is from an entirely different movie. Charlie still did a lot of unforgivable things and punishing him in a darkly ironic way would have been a more appropriate ending.

With a cast this talented Ice Harvest should be far more entertaining than it is. The failure lies with Ramis who, whether unwilling or unable, cannot find a way to mix his comic instincts with this black-hearted script. The result is a mixed bag of darkly humorous moments and awkward modern noir violence. John Cusack delivers a dead-on performance but the film lets him down and more importantly it lets the audience down.