Movie Review The Holdovers
Movie Review Cold Souls
Cold Souls (2009)
Directed by Sophie Barthes
Written by Sophie Barthes
Starring Paul Giamatti, Emily Watson, David Straithairn
Release Date August 7th, 2009
Published January 10th, 2010
As I watched the angsty existential flick Cold Souls, a movie about an actor for whom the weight of his soul is so heavy he agrees to have it removed and placed in storage, I could not keep my pop culture soaked brain from flashing to the brilliant episode of The Simpsons in which Bart sold his soul to Millhouse for 5 dollars and then suffered an existential crisis.
In a mere 22 minutes The Simpsons manages to do what Cold Souls fails in more than 100 minutes, be funny about something as complex and intellectual as the existence of the soul. Cold Souls knows how to refer to the complexity of other works on the weight of the soul but not so clever of its own accord.
Paul Giamatti plays an alternative universe version of actor Paul Giamatti in Cold Souls. This version of Paul lives in New York is married to Claire (Emily Watson) and is currently acting in a production of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya (note the namecheck of Chekhov). The role of Uncle Vanya has become a heavy burden for Paul, so heavy that it has soaked into his real life.
Weighed down by Vanya, Paul finds possible solace in an article in The New Yorker about a service that can remove your soul. Though some might assume this was a bit of literary whimsy, we quickly find that indeed this business does exist, on Roosevelt Island of all places, and that it's in the phonebook.
Paul investigates and after a brief, rather bizarre conversation with Dr. Flintstein (David Straithairn) Paul is being inserted into a machine and his surprisingly chickpea sized soul is extracted for storage. Returning to his life he finds he stinks as an actor with no soul likely would (hello Freddie Prinze Jr.) and is soon begging for his soul back.
What happens next I leave you to discover. Or not, I am not recommending Cold Souls. Where most critics have loved Cold Souls, 80% positive on Rottentomatoes.com, I was not blown away by the films Meta humor or simpleminded name checking of people and places associated with soul crushing pain.
Cold Souls is intellectualism for the poser intellect. If you are aware that Russia in winter is often associated with soul crushing oppression or that Chekhov is weighted with existential angst then you are just the right audience to find the posing of Cold Souls deep.
Not to critique my fellow critics but Cold Souls is just the kind of imitation of clever that we like to praise beyond it's worth. Cold Souls allows critics to show off that Philosophy Minor from college that we all wished was our major while keeping things on a level simple enough for those of a more average intelligence. It's the height of pretension without all of the hoity toity-ness of actually having to think.
The Simpsons episode was straightforward about being simple satire, the reference to Neruda being a brilliant shout out and not a statement of genius from the writers. Cold Souls wants to be considered brilliant by association. That feeling extends right down to the casting of Paul Giamatti who lends his preternaturally tortured mug along with his name to the proceedings.
Giamatti brings credible angst and intellect to Cold Souls but he is trapped in writer-director Sophie Barthes attempt at high minded populism, a sort of pop philosophy, easy to follow for those who didn't spend there time with the works of Emmanuel Kant or Thomas Hillman. Anyone with a minor in pop culture can follow Cold Souls and while that accessibility isn't necessarily a bad thing it is highly pretentious and more than a little irritating.
Cold Souls pretends toward existentialism while keeping things simple enough for the rabble to follow. Better works ask the audience to come up to their level. When The Simpsons referenced Pablo Neruda millions of Americans ran to their computers to check it out. Cold Souls sticks with the relatively well known marks of the weighted soul and fails to offer little more than the reference.
Movie Review: Duplicity
Duplicity (2009)
Directed by Tony Gilroy
Written by Tony Gilroy
Starring Julia Roberts, Clive Owen, Tom Wilkinson, Paul Giamatti
Release Date March 20th, 2009
Published March 20th, 2009
Say what you will about the choices Julia Roberts has made over the years, she is a welcoming screen presence. She has the radiance of a 30's and 40's heroine combined with a very modern sexuality and sensuality. Call her America's Sweetheart if you like and attach whatever wholesome qualities you want to that title, the fact is, no one really likes to ponder what draws a man to 'America's Sweetheart'. Here's a hint, it's the same thing that draws us to the girl next door.
Duplicity is the rare Roberts vehicle to acknowledge, if not fully, take advantage of exactly the qualities I am trying to be vague about. The spy thriller/romantic comedy places Roberts at odds and in bed with the always smoldering Clive Owen and the chemistry is alchemic.
Roberts is Claire, maybe her real name, maybe not. When we meet her she is being scoped by Owen's Ray. They hit it off quickly and soon she is showered and heading for the door with something belonging to him and he is unconscious on the bed. Cut to a few years later, Ray, now fully awake, is in Rome and runs across Claire. He, and now we, know she is CIA. He is MI6, British intelligence. He's a bit ticked off about the obfuscation and the robbery but mostly he just wants to see her naked again.
The two spend three days in a Rome hotel making love and a plot is launched. The two spies will get out of the covert ops biz and go private, corporate snoops. Find an industry, discover the deepest secrets and sell the results to the highest bidder. They finally settle on two companies with somewhat complicated ideas about what they are. All we know about Equikrom and Burkett & Randle is that the CEO's, played brilliantly by Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson, loathe one another. They loathe one another to the point that each keeps a corporate spy team on the payroll to steal the other's R & D secrets. This is Claire and Ray's way in.
Duplicity however, is not really about the corporate types but rather about the unique and duplicitous relations between to well trained spies. Roberts and Owen are given by writer-director Tony Gilroy the opportunity to play a pair of screwball romantics who happen to be spies. There craft is deception and trying to figure when the one they love is deceiving them, for business or pleasure, is what they truly delight in.
Gilroy loves, LOVES writing witty repartee for these two characters. He loves it so much that by the end of the movie he seems to have run out and just stops. After exhausting his way through a timeshifting malaise of plotting, Gilroy comes to a certain point and simply ends the movie. It is as unsatisfying as it sounds. One character wins, the others lose and that's all folks.
What remains is a series of sexy, funny, playful scenes between Roberts and Owen that are nearly enough to make this whole mess work. Roberts matches Owen's constant smolder with the effect of tossing a gas can into a fire. These two actors truly enjoy each other's company and we enjoy them together. If only they weren't trapped in a time shifting maze of plot complications that we just don't care about.
Of course, a filmmaker likely couldn't make an entire movie about Julia Roberts and Clive Owen in bed together, but the idea is ten times moe entertaining as any two scenes in Duplicity. Roberts has always been sexy but we tried to forget that for some reason. She was caught with the label America's Sweetheart which had the effect of neutering her and rendering her more an icon of virtue than as a woman. Tony Gilroy and by extension Clive Owen certainly know Roberts is a woman and each is very interested in further examining her feminine qualities. Unfortunately, there is that whole spy thing that keeps getting in the way.
Movie Review Shoot'em Up
Movie Review: Fred Claus
Fred Claus (2007)
Directed by David Dobkin
Written by Dan Fogelman
Starring Vince Vaughn, Paul Giamatti, Rachel Weisz, Miranda Richardson, Elizabeth Banks
Release Date November 9th, 2007
Published November 9th, 2007
Holiday movies are low art to begin with. Hacky, cheap to produce garbage rendered as cash machines by hungry cable networks desperate for products to plaster on the screen throughout the month of December. The latest holiday film to chum the water is Fred Claus starring Vince Vaughn and Paul Giamatti. The story of Santa's bitter, misanthropic older brother, Fred Claus actually had some potential.
That potential was undone, as so often happens in Hollywood, by commercial concerns. A vain attempt to attract the family audience to what was an edgy Bad Santa-esque comedy, turned out a rather dull PG comedy that manages only minor laughs from its irrepressible star.
Sometime in the 1700's Fred Claus watched from the rafters as his little brother Nick was born. Though Fred vowed to be the best big brother ever things changed as they grew up. Nick's unending generosity and the constant adoration the little guy received turned Fred bitter and jealous. When Nick became the patron saint of gift giving, a divination that offered the whole family spouses included life without death, things became even more strained.
While Nick went off to the North Pole, Fred moved to Chicago. While Nick gave gifts, Fred became a repo-man and began taking things. Christmas became the happiest time of the year because of Nick, and Fred came to hate the season. Despite his overall bitterness, Fred still had a girlfriend (Rachel Weisz) and in order to keep her he needs to finally come through on a get rich quick scheme. Needing money, Fred calls Nick and a trip to the north pole is arranged.
If you guessed that all sorts of wackiness ensues when Fred arrives in Santa's village then congratulations you have basic cognitive abilities. If wackiness did not ensue that would be surprising. Fred hates being in the north pole, especially having to work for the money his brother is loaning him and that leads to Fred disrupting toy production, upsetting his visiting parents, and even drawing Saint Nick into a fight, an actual fight.
Is any of this all that funny? No, not really. The situations are rote and predictable. There are a few laughs in these scenes because Vince Vaughn is far too talented not to trip over a laugh here and there. Most of his humor however comes from rye observation and not from anything relating the undercooked plot of Fred Claus.
The major failing of Fred Claus is the many changes in tone that were necessary to make this a PG rated family flick. Raging beneath the family safe dialogue and slapstick is a story and a group of characters desperate to be the kind of adults that made Bad Santa such a gem. The moments wear Vince Vaughn looks to break out of the family flick constraints are edited painfully to avoid the fun we know he and the movie wants to have.
As a fan of Wedding Crashers and the work of director David Dobkin in that classic comedy, I know that what is on the screen in Fred Claus is not the movie he intended to make. I sense an honest attempt to make a different kind of holiday film, one that could straddle the line between families and older teens with smart, edgy humor.
Sadly, they came too close to the edge and when the studio saw that the film might not play it safe enough for the limp family audience, the clippers came out and much of the good stuff, the truth to these characters' stuff was lost. Maybe I'm giving David Dobkin to much credit, but watching the movie you really sense those missing scenes and the many unfinished ideas that seem like they must have existed in another edit of this movie.
I'm not saying that Fred Claus is some kind of holiday movie version of Blade Runner. Rather, I strongly feel that this talented group of performers had a different and far better film in mind when they started this. Maybe that is just my glass half full side.
Why do I feel that Vince Vaughn, David Dobkin and Paul Giamatti, amongst other talented performers and craftsmen in and around Fred Claus have more integrity than so many others who have used the holiday picture to line their pockets with residuals? Because, I saw the movie and I truly sensed a more interesting idea that was lingering somewhere in the editing.
I can't point specifically to one place in the film that proves my theory but I know it's there. Of course, that is reviewing the film that Fred Claus is not. The film that is actually on the screen is a trite, predictable little movie that will haunt these performers and creators for years to come thanks to the holiday setting.
Movie Review Confidence
Confidence (2003)
Directed by James Foley
Written by Doug Jung
Starring Edward Burns, Rachel Weisz, Andy Garcia, Paul Giamatti, Donal Logue, Dustin Hoffman
Release Date April 25th, 2003
Published April 25th, 2003
It's all been done.
That is the problem with modern Hollywood filmmaking, the perception that there is nothing new that can be done. That every story is a familiar concoction of similar films. It's a product of Hollywood's adherence to genre and demographic marketing that certain elements are put into films where they don't belong in order to appeal to mass audiences. Take for example the con man movie Confidence starring Edward Burns, a familiar story of cons and con men that doesn't simply lack originality but feels so familiar that it becomes predictable.
Burns stars as Jake Vig, if that ain't the name of a movie con man, I've never heard one. Jake and his crew including Gordo (Paul Giamatti) and Miles (Brian Van Holt), specialize in petty scams involving thousands of dollars and moving quickly from place to place. However, the crew's latest con has found them sticking around longer than they are used to, and playing with larger sums of money than before. Not only is the con bigger than usual so is the man being conned, though they don't realize it at first.
In possession of 100 grand after scamming some small time bag man, Jake and his crew find that the money is that of a sadistic mobster known as the King (Dustin Hoffman). Rather than being upset with Jake, the King is impressed with his skills. Nevertheless, he wants his money back. So Jake hatches a new con, a fleece on one of the King's rivals that will not only get the King's money back but net everyone around five million bucks.
Jake and his crew can't pull this con off alone so Jake recruits a skillful pickpocket named Lily (Rachel Weisz). Lilly’s part is to seduce a low level VP in a stock scandal that includes Swiss banks, the Cayman islands and various other familiar con movie locales. The mark is a mob lawyer and money launderer played by Robert Forster, and the dupe VP is well played by “Drew Carey” vet John Carroll Lynch.
The film is told in flashback in a noir tribute to the thirties con man movies. It begins with Burns on the ground and in voiceover explaining he is dead. The device is effective and set's the film in motion but the noir feel doesn't hold up long. After the opening moments the film takes on a more modern look and feel and abandons noir all together.
Edward Burns in recent interviews has stated that he was far more committed to acting in Confidence. He broke his old pattern of working on one film while writing another, which helped him to be more focused than he has been previously. The change is noticeable, this is the most lively Burns has been in any role since She's The One. Unfortunately, on his best day as an actor he's still reminds of Ben Affleck minus the charisma.
Director James Foley skillfully directs this con game and it's Mametesque script, which is no surprise. Foley was the man who successfully wrestled Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross to the screen. Confidence isn't as brilliant as that film but the script has it's moments especially those handled by Hoffman who once again shows what a true pro he is.
I neglected to mention that Andy Garcia turns up as an FBI agent on the trail of the con men. Watching Garcia makes you wish he and Burns could have switched roles. Shave the shaggy beard, blacken the hair and throw on a nice suit and Garcia could do the role with his eyes shut. Nothing against Ed Burns, he gets better as an actor each time out, but Confidence demands a pro and Garcia could have been that pro.
Movie Review Paycheck
Paycheck (2003)
Directed by John Woo
Written by Dean Georgaris
Starring Ben Affleck, Aaron Eckhardt, Uma Thurman, Paul Giamatti, Colm Feore, Joe Morton
Release Date December 25th, 2003
Published December 24th, 2003
In the just over 10 years that John Woo has been working in the Hollywood system of filmmaking, we have yet to see the potential that was promised in his earlier Hong Kong work. It's interesting then that he would work on a film based on a story by Philip K. Dick, the legendary science fiction writer whose work has also been difficult to capture in a Hollywood film. An element of both Woo’s best works and Dick’s best writing have been seen in flashes but neither are fully realized. Paycheck goes no further toward capturing the best of either Woo or Dick, and in fact may be a huge step back for both.
Paycheck stars Ben Affleck as Michael Jennings, a reverse engineer who copies a work of technology and changes it just enough to step around copyright laws and delivers a similar product to a different company. For liability purposes, Jennings' works alone, often secluded for months at a time cut off from the outside world. At the end of his work, his memories are wiped clean through a disturbing, dangerous process that literally cooks his brain, burning away the portions of his memory that relate to his work.
Jennings is well paid for his work, often with six-figure paycheck. His next job however is for more money than he could have imagined. Michael's friend Rethrick (Aaron Eckhart) offers him an eight-figure paycheck for a job that will take up to three years of his life. At that price, three years is worth it and Michael takes what should be his last job.
Three years later, Michael wakes up in Rethrick's office with his memory wiped clean. With no memory of the job or anything of the past three years, Michael's only concern is picking up his sizable check. However, when he arrives at the bank he is shocked to find that he has signed away his money, stocks and has only a bag of 19 personal items which he doesn't even think are his. Through a series of odd encounters, each of the 19 personal items comes in real handy in saving Michael's life as he pursues the reason why he refused his paycheck. There is also a minor romance with a biologist named Rachel played by Uma Thurman, which is merely functional and unnecessary to any description of the plot.
Where to begin with the disappointments of this film?
It's big dumb and loud. The film doesn't even have John Woo's usual stylistic virtuosity to fall back on, assuaging style in favor of a more bland action movie mode, save for Woo's trademark doves. There isn't even a scene where Affleck carries Woo's trademark double handguns, one gun in each hand. There is the usual standoff this time with two characters standing in a subway with a train coming. Sadly, it's not as cool as it sounds.
The most egregious problem, as I see it, is the shoving aside of Philip K. Dick's sci-fi story in favor of a generic Hollywood action movie. The story of Paycheck is a man who builds a machine that can see the future. He then forgets the future he saw, and only through a Sherlock Holmes set of clues can he reconstruct his memory to save the future. The implications of seeing the future, of seeing your own future and changing your fate, these are high minded ideas that are hinted at in the film but quickly shoved aside for gunfire and car chases.
Ben Affleck is my boy but Paycheck is a second consecutive misstep after the god-awful Gigli. There is still hope for Ben with Kevin Smith's Jersey Girl coming in March but he needs to begin choosing his material a little better.
Only Spielberg's excellent Minority Report has come close to showing the potential of Philip K. Dick's material on screen. More often than not, Dick's idea-driven stories are like Paycheck. A clothesline from which to hang huge special effects and stunt sequences that may or may not be technical marvels but are definitely less interesting than the ideas that are the core of the stories.
As for John Woo, it's becoming increasingly apparent that it was hype as much as talent that brought him worldwide attention. Woo has turned out a few exciting action pictures since coming to Hollywood but for the most part he has become a cog in the Hollywood money machine, pumping out easy to market, demo-driven, action trash. Special effects films that have posters before they have scripts that he brings a modicum of style but little else. What a shame.
Movie Review Storytelling
Storytelling (2002)
Directed by Todd Solondz
Written by Todd Solondz
Starring Selma Blair, Paul Giamatti, John Goodman, James Van Der Beek
Release Date January 25th, 2002
Published August 3rd, 2002
Todd Solondz is the brilliant auteur behind the blindingly funny Welcome To The Dollhouse and the endlessly disturbing Happiness. In his most recent film, Storytelling, Solondz attempts to combine the satirical and the disturbing and succeeds to a point.
Storytelling is two entirely different stories, one called Fiction and the other Non-Fiction. In Fiction, Selma Blair plays Vi, a disillusioned college girl who, after growing weary of insensitive freshman boys, begins a relationship with a freshman with cerebral palsy. She assumes he will be nicer than most because his options are far more limited.
After finding him to be much like everyone else, Vi heads to a bar and is picked up by her creative writing teacher, a bitter African-American Pulitzer Prize winner, who takes revenge on racism by having sadomasochistic sex with young white girls. The teacher, played by Robert Wisdom, has the intense creepiness of Anthony Perkins and is easily the most disturbing character in the film.
Fiction is by far the more compelling of the film’s two stories. Fiction is challenging and confrontational with some shocking laughs. Sadly, Fiction takes up only 20 minutes of screentime, just enough to introduce its interesting characters and raise its challenging issues and then walk away before leaving an impact.
Non-Fiction is a somewhat aimless take on the suburbia Solondz so deftly dissected in his first two features. Here however, he doesn't seem to know what it is he's attempting to say. The lead of the story is Paul Giamatti as a wannabe documentary filmmaker who wants to document the disaffected youth in the suburbs.
His subject will be Scooby Livingston, played by Mark Webber. Scooby is an aimless gen X'er whose goal is to become a talk show host. Also involved are Scooby's parents, the angry and intimidating Marty (John Goodman) and the meek and clueless Fern (Airplane’s Julie Hagerty). There is also a subplot involving Scooby's little brother Mikey and the family's maid Consuelo, played by Lupe Ontiveros.
Non-Fiction is as aimless as the subject of its movie within the movie. Scooby has no ambition and neither does the story. Admittedly there are a couple of good laughs and a strong cameo by Franke Potente, however, Non-Fiction is undercut badly by the unfocused story and the outlandish and ridiculous subplot. The culmination of the little brothers subplot involving hypnosis and revenge leaves one to wonder if the story was supposed to be satirical or serious.
There was a great deal of potential for Storytelling. That potential goes unrealized, but the attempt is respectable.
Movie Review Sideways
Movie Review: Cinderella Man
Cinderella Man (2005)
Directed by Ron Howard
Written by Cliff Hollingsworth, Akiva Goldsman
Starring Russell Crowe, Renee Zellweger, Paul Giamatti, Craig Bierko, Bruce McGill
Release Date June 3rd, 2005
Published June 2nd, 2005
Legendary depression era writer Damon Runyon dubbed James J. Braddock 'The Cinderella Man'. Runyon, best known for his unique patois and shady underworld characters, found some things he liked about the Braddock story. There was the the underdog unlikeliness of the story and the sports setting, however, the square Mr. Braddock was not really Damon Runyon's favorite kind of character. Runyon may not have been taken much with Ron Howard's equally square biography of Mr. Braddock which takes its name from his writing. Cinderella Man, starring Russell Crowe, features some awesome boxing but the earnest sentimental drama out of the ring crosses quickly over to out and out schmaltz.
Russell Crowe stars as James J. "Bulldog" Braddock who in 1929 was a top ranked Light Heavyweight contender. Braddock was flush with success, cash, a beautiful wife named Mae (Renee Zellweger) and three gorgeous kids. Sadly however in a Jobian succession of ills, Braddock lost nearly everything in the stock market crash of 1929 and a subsequent hand injury that would eventually sidetrack his promising career.
In 1933 Braddock was forced from the ring by his injury and a series of bad fights, mostly ugly brutal losses, though to his credit Braddock was never knocked out. With bills piling up, winter coming and his family living in a dirt floor apartment, Braddock attempts to find work on the docks of New Jersey but there are more men than shifts and he and many others are often excluded.
Forced to beg his former boxing promoters for money, Braddock finds sympathy from his former manager and trainer Joe Gould (Paul Giamatti) who pulls strings to get Braddock his boxing license back and lands him an important fight at Madison Square Garden, playing punching bag to a new top contender. Braddock shockingly knocks the kid out and in so doing, he earns the admiration of fans for his gutty style and his obvious underdog status.
One fight leads to another and eventually Braddock has a showdown with the champion of the world, Max Baer (Craig Bierko). The champ is reputed to have killed two men in the ring, is much bigger than Braddock, and given Braddock's time away from the ring, there is much speculation that Baer might just make it three in ring kills. Braddock's wife Mae is certainly concerned, a bit of drama the film mines for dramatic tension near the end of the film.
Going in to Cinderella Man with no knowledge of whether James J. Braddock won or lost the championship fight lended a great deal of compelling drama to the film's boxing scenes which on top of the suspense, are extraordinarily shot by Director Ron Howard and Cinematographer Salvatore Totino. The boxing is by far the best part of Cinderella Man. The audience I watched with cheered and clapped at the end of each fight as if they were inside that smoky rundown gymnasium.
If the rest of Cinderella Man were as good as the boxing we would be talking about one of the best movies of the year. However the film's script by Cliff Hollingsworth and script doctor Akiva Goldsman is so achingly sentimental you have to fight your eyes to keep them from rolling. The non-boxing scenes overflow with the fairy tale goodness of James Braddock the family man. Braddock is treated with such a soft touch you can hardly believe he would have the will to punch someone, let alone become a boxing champion.
The only thing that keeps Cinderella Man from becoming a complete loss, aside from the boxing, are the performances of Russell Crowe, Renee Zellweger and Paul Giamatti. This awesome cast of real pro actors handle even the most squeamish of squishy dialogue with just the right amount of earnestness and distance. This is a fairy tale underdog story that happened to come true so earnestness and sentimentality are to be expected, but without these great actors this may have well become a Hallmark Hall of Fame TV weepie.
I cannot say enough great things about the boxing scenes in Cinderella Man. Russell Crowe nails the pose, the athleticism, and the raw power of a real boxer while Howard directs around whatever deficiencies Crowe may have had. The boxing scenes are extraordinary and very compelling and really the most memorable thing about Cinderella Man.
It's not that the rest of the film, from the home life drama to the social drama of the depression era setting or the romance between Crowe and Zellweger, never works but that it's all a bit too safe. Despite the gritty ghetto setting and the dingy dive boxing arena, there is very little grit or dirt in Cinderella Man. Braddock was well known for his decency and honor, wonderful qualities but no one is perfect. Director Ron Howard portrays James Braddock as if he were positioning him for sainthood.
This earnest portrayal grows weary after a while and you long for some little bit of dysfunction, some flaw, anything that could shed some light on how this eminently decent gentlemen became a brutal warrior in a boxing ring. Certainly his desperate situation, the fact that he was fighting to feed his family, played a large role in his determination but what aspect of his personality drove him to be a championship contender in the first place? That element is missing from Crowe's performance and the film as a whole.
Director Ron Howard has never been known for his gritty storytelling. You expect Howard to indulge his crowd pleasing nature. He indulges a little too often in Cinderella Man but with the extraordinary boxing scenes and the power of his cast, Howard manages to keep Cinderella Man, at the very least, entertaining all the way to the final bell. It could have been a real contender but as it is, Cinderella Man is a bit of fluffy feel good entertainment.
Movie Review Win Win
Win Win (2011)
Directed by Tom McCarthy
Written by Tom McCarthy
Starring Paul Giamatti, Burt Young, Amy Ryan, Bobby Cannavale
Release Date March 18th, 2011
Published March 17th, 2011
Mike Flaherty (Paul Giamatti) is struggling. His law practice is not making any money and the stress has begun to manifest itself in breathless panic attacks that mirror heart attack symptoms. Mike needs money and when he stumbles across an opportunity to make some money through an ethical loophole with one of his clients (Burt Young) he takes it.
Since "Win Win" is a movie we know that Mike's decision will have very particular consequences or it wouldn't be in the story. What writer-director Thomas McCarthy creates in order to arrive at those consequences and the wealth of emotions involved in when and how Mike's ethical lapse is revealed is the hook of "Win Win," a small human story about a good man whose flaws cannot mask his true nature.
Paul Giamatti is spectacularly well cast as Mike Flaherty. His unique face communicates worry and sadness while his clipped line delivery makes him sound desperate and close to out of breath even when he's in a relaxed moment. Giamatti's nervous energy has been his calling card since his breakthrough performance in Howard Stern's "Private Parts" through his rise to stardom in "Sideways."
Alex Shaffer plays Kyle in "Win Win." Kyle is the main complication to Mike's money making scheme. Having run away from home and being only 16 years old, Mike and his wife Jackie (Amy Ryan) are forced to take Kyle in while they sort out the situation with his mother and his Alzheimer's afflicted grandfather. The connections between these characters are something I want you to discover by seeing the movie.
The movie poster shows Kyle in wrestling gear sitting next to Mike. Wrestling appears in Win Win as both literal, Mike coaches a High School wrestling team and as a clever undercurrent to the main story as Mike wrestles with his conscience over his scheme, and, more importantly, about how not to get caught while Kyle wrestles with his past including his recovering drug addict mother (Melanie Lynskey) who also has a connection to Mike's scheme.
Writer-director Thomas McCarthy has an eye for small human stories. He was the writer and director of "The Station Agent," a small highly observant and smart picture about unique characters who form an odd family. McCarthy then directed "The Visitor," another film about unlikely family ties, this time an older white college professor and a young, immigrant African man and wife.
McCarthy approaches these stories with compassion and a thoughtful curiosity about how his characters live from day to day and how they interact with changing circumstances that are mundane by movie standards but are things real people are experiencing everyday. "Win Win," like "The Station Agent" and "The Visitor," is a warm, kind and modestly funny movie that compels you with great characters who reflect lives you can relate to, sympathize with and still be entertained by.
Movie Review The Last Station
Movie Review: The Ides of March
Movie Review The Illusionist
Documentary Review Fallen
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