Movie Review Battle of the Sexes

Battle of the Sexes (2017) 

Directed by Valerie Faris, Jonathan Dayton

Written by Simon Beaufoy 

Starring Steve Carell, Emma Stone, Andrea Riseborough, Sarah Silverman, Bill Pullman, Alan Cumming

Release Date September 22nd, 2017 

I’ve spent a few days wrestling with why I don’t love the new, true life drama Battle of the Sexes from two of my favorite directors, Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton. The directors of the wonderful Little Miss Sunshine and the sublime Ruby Sparks have delivered a solid effort in Battle of the Sexes, but there is just something lacking. It’s not the performances either, as both Emma Stone and Steve Carell deliver standout takes on real life counterparts Billy Jean King and Bobby Riggs. So just what’s wrong with Battle of the Sexes?

Battle of the Sexes tells the story of the 1972 tennis match-up that pitted women’s liberation, in the form of female tennis champion Billy Jean King, versus the self-proclaimed champion of male chauvinism, Bobby Riggs, himself a former tennis champion from some years earlier. King had recently left the American Lawn Tennis Association to help launch the new Women’s Tennis Association after a fallout over equal pay with ALTA’s leadership, headed up by Howard Kramer (Bill Pullman).

It was a huge moment for women’s tennis as King and her manager, Gladys Heldman (Sarah Silverman) risked everything to take the world’s top female tennis stars out onto their own tour with the goal of proving they could earn just as much money as male tennis champions. It was an even bigger moment for King as the new tour also found her in a new relationship, as she began to find her sexuality for the first time by falling in love with a hairdresser named Marylin Barnett (Andrea Riseborough). All the while she’s married to her devoted husband Larry (Austin Stowall) and could lose everything if people found out about her affair.

Complicating Billy Jean’s life further is Riggs, who challenged King early in 1972, just after the launch of the WTA and after she ignored his pleas, challenged fellow women’s champion Margaret Court just as Court was coming off a recent upset win over Billy Jean. Court would go on to lose to Riggs and force Billy Jean to be the one to challenge Riggs in order to save face for women’s tennis and their potential earning power.

As you can tell from that description, there is a pretty terrific and dramatic story in Battle of the Sexes. So why doesn’t it work? Much of the problem comes from Academy Award-winning screenwriter Simon Beaufoy’s script, which fails to parse the parody-level male chauvinism with the actual sexism that Billy Jean King was up against. Beaufoy’s script renders Bobby Riggs as a lovable conman who used chauvinism as a way of marketing and not the cruel dismissal of women tennis players it actually was.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (2008) 

Directed by Bharat Nalluri 

Written by David Magee, Simon Beaufoy 

Starring Frances McDormand, Amy Adams, Lee Pace, Ciaran Hinds, Mark Strong 

Release Date March 7th, 2008 

Publoshed March 8th, 2008 

From the awkward title to the pre-world war two England setting there is nothing all that hip about Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day. However, with a cast that includes Oscar winner Frances McDormand and Oscar nominee Amy Adams there is more than just potential. A terrific trailer with the palette, now the movie is in theaters and this seemingly un-hip period piece proves to be a smart, funny, romantic and sexy romp. Directed by first-time feature helmer Bharat Nalluri, Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day offers surprises at every turn and top notch performances from two of the best actresses working today.

London in the late 1930's lived under the cloud of potential war. With Germany on the march on the continent, the British Isles were in a war stance that left many residents out in the cold. Jobs were as scarce as most resources and among the affected as our story begins is Miss Pettigrew (Frances McDormand). Having been fired from her third stint as a governess, Miss Pettigrew finds herself on the streets. When told by the employment agency that she is no longer desired as a child care worker, Miss Pettigrew takes a chance and steals a job off her ex-boss's desk.

She assumes the lead is for another governess position. However, when she arrives at the flat of Delyssia Lafosse (Amy Adams) she has a few unexpected moments. Miss Lafosse has no children. Her need is for someone to keep an eye on her. She is balancing romances with three different men who offer three very different but important choices for her. There is Tom (Phil Goldman) a playwright and producer who has the power to give Delyssia her big break in his next West End offering. Then there is Nick (Mark Strong) the owner of the nightclub where Delyssia performs and the man who bankrolls her flat and her lifestyle.

And finally there is Michael (Lee Pace) , a piano player fresh from a prison stint. He has been her loyal piano man for a long time as well as her best friend and likely her true love. Michael wants Delyssia to run away to America with him and she with him but it would mean giving up her comforts and her shot at fame and fortune. Each of these relationships comes to a head in one day with the arrival of Miss Pettigrew who accepts the job of social secretary, her real job is more well described as boyfriend wrangler. As Delyssia romances one man, Miss Pettigrew distracts and disposes of the others.

My description makes Delyssia sound like a bad person but as played by the high energy, super-cute Amy Adams she is a fresh and spirited young woman doing anything she can to survive in hardscrabble times. Adams and McDormand are perfect foils as Adams is high spirited and sexy, McDormand is level headed with a quick, observant wit. Both women bring dignity and strong willed self respect to these two desperate characters but it is their spirit in front increasingly desperate moments that is truly winning. There is nothing like watching talented actresses in roles that are their equal. It is so rare and such a treat.

The supporting cast of boyfriends and even a love interest for Miss Pettigrew, is top notch lead by the especially winning Lee Pace. Fans of the show Pushing Daisies know that Pace can play deadpan as well as loving puppy dogs. He plays both exceptionally well in Miss Pettigrew, providing the rooting interest among Delyssia's many suitors. Ciaran Hinds gets a rare good guy role as a rich, lingerie designer who decides to give up his life of models and socialites for a woman who is his equal in every way including age.

Bharat Nalluri's last effort was the massive TV movie Tsunami: Aftermath a true life tale of the survivors of the devastating wave that ravaged the coast of Thailand in 2005. That film showed he could handle large scale effects and grand emotional arcs as well as smaller human moments. Here Nalluri shows an unexpected talent for old school farce with a touch of the British Upstairs/Downstairs comedy. It's a deft, quick witted effort that also manages to be romantic and even sexy. Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day is a terrific little movie and one of the few must sees of early 2008.

Movie Review: 127 Hours

127 Hours (2010) 

Directed by Danny Boyle 

Written by Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy 

Starring James Franco 

Release Date November 5th, 2010 

Published November 4th, 2010

While I have no doubt that The Social Network will be the movie that defines 2010 with its intimate commentary on the dividing time of net life and real life, 127 Hours is, for me, the movie that affected me the deepest. The unbelievably true story of adventurer Aron Ralston's fateful trip into Utah's Blue John Canyon is brought to life by director Danny Boyle and actor James Franco in ways that even Aron Ralston likely never imagined.

Aron Ralston was not one to pause for reflection, or really pause for anything. Always looking for the next adrenalin rush, Aron rushed off on the morning of April 26th 2003 without telling anyone where he was going. His plan was a day long canyoneering adventure that would have him home just after nightfall.

Along the way Aron met a couple of girls, Kristi (Kate Mara) and Megan (Amber Tamblyn) and after a brief, flirty sojourn into an underground lake, Aron is back on track and off again on his own but with plans to possibly see the girls again. That plan would have to wait as not long after leaving them behind, Aron grabs hold of the wrong rock over the wrong canyon and ends up falling with the rock right behind him.

The rock lands on Aron's arm pinning it against the canyon wall and leaving Aron stranded miles from where any other adventurer is likely to go. For the next 4 days Aron Ralston will subsist on a pair of uncooked burritos, a modest amount of water and urine and a strong will to live. During this time he will narrate some of his time on his video camera in between bouts of trying to move the rock.

127 Hours would seem an impossible prospect for a movie. The focus is on one character in one very specific place for a very long time. There are flashbacks and fever dreams but surprisingly few of them. For the most part, director Danny Boyle trains his camera on James Franco and relies on Franco's face and vocal rhythms to carry the day and carry it he does.

127 Hours is a truly remarkable film, a nightmarishly visceral, painfully realistic rendering of Aron Ralston's remarkable written account aptly titled "Between A Rock and A Hard Place." With the aid of cinematographers Oscar Winner Anthony Dod Mantle and Enrique Chediak, director Danny Boyle exploits angles, colors other visual flourishes to give a strange action to a film that is mostly stationary.

And then there are the actual things that happened to Ralston during the time he was trapped. Boyle and Franco take a pair of Ralston's experiences and make them into major set pieces. The first is a frightening flash flood and the second is Aron's video, a moment that begins darkly humorous and turns deeply poignant.

Of course, the major set piece of 127 Hours is Aron finally making the move to cut off his arm between the wrist and the elbow. It begins just after the one hour mark with a single thrust of his dull multi-tool jabbed right to the bone. The visual of the tip of the blade resting against the bone, inside Aron's arm is striking not just in it's surreality but in the sheer force it carries, the way Aron's real pain becomes psychic pain for the audience.

Once the actual cutting begins, the bones broken, the tendons torn, 127 Hours screams with life towards a cathartic, emotional finish that even knowing the outcome cannot diminish. Danny Boyle's direction is so expert and James Franco's performance so winning and Aron's story is so life affirming that nothing can stop 127 Hours from getting under your skin.

127 Hours is the best movie of 2010, a richly emotional masterpiece. When I talk about why I love movies I will talk about the final moments of 127 Hours and the deep, convulsive gulps as I tried and failed to hold back tears of joy and the lurch of honest to goodness, physical exhaustion that is accompanied by A.R Rahman’s joyous, pulsing score. What a marvelous film.

Movie Review Slumdog Millionaire

Slumdog Millionaire (2009) 

Directed by Danny Boyle 

Written by Simon Beaufoy

Starring Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Irrfan Khan

Release Date December 25th, 2008 

Published December 24th, 2008 

Danny Boyle has never appealed to me as a director. His Trainspotting and 28 Days Later are such bleak and ugly examinations of humanity that each made me want to vomit. To date, Boyle's work has been little more than flashy, overwrought ugliness set to electronica and punk soundtracks intended to pound you into submission.

Then there was Millions, one of the oddest and most delightful little movies of the last decade. A sweet, sorrowful, hopeful little movie where director Boyle abandoned most of his worst habits in favor of telling a loving compelling story populated by wonderful characters. That film should have gotten the attention that is now being heaped upon Boyle's latest effort Slumdog Millionaire. In essence, Slumdog is the marriage of the sad, ugly kinetic-ism of Boyle's early work and the sweet, smart, thoughtful Millions. The combination yields mixed results.

Slumdog Millionaire tells the story of Jamal who is being assaulted by the police when we meet him. Jamal is accused of cheating on the TV show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire where he is one question away from winning 20 million rupees. His status as a so-called Slumdog, a boy from the slums of Mumbai, has the host of the show and the police wondering if he is cheating.

He isn't. What is happening for Jamal is that the questions somehow all seem to relate back to memories from his life growing up. Whether it's stumbling on a Hindu god after watching his mother brutally murdered or knowing the inventor of the revolver because his brother began carrying one for their protection, each question leads Jamal on a journey through his past, a journey he takes his interrogators on in order to convince them he is legit.

Jamal's motivation for going on the show, surviving the cops, and winning the money, is a girl named Latika (Freida Pinto). He and his older brother Samir took Latika in when they were young orphans. They were separated several times but Jamal would always find her. He found her again just before going on the show and hopes she will be watching and finally come find him.

That is the story of Slumdog Millionaire and it is compelling and romantic. Unfortunately, director Danny Boyle's over-caffeinated, highly stylized handheld camera and propulsive score distract and keep the story at an untenable emotional distance. The images whir by at such a frenetic pace that you are at once bedazzled and bewildered.

It's a neat trick to make a movie with such an astonishing pace. Sadly, the sacrifice is the emotional connection between the audience and these characters. While I was dazzled and propelled and moved to the edge of my seat by the intensity of Slumdog Millionaire, I couldn't find the time to really connect with the characters emotionally.

The style and even the flashback heavy structure of Slumdog Millionaire prevent the characters from standing out amongst the flurry. Things happen so fast that scenes fail to have the impact that I am certain they were intended to have. When the film does slow down for a moment at the end; I was too exhausted to be invested in the moment.

Slumdog Millionaire is a furiously paced, artfully crafted movie that well displays the talents of director Danny Boyle behind the camera. Sadly, those gifts give short shrift to what should be an emotional as well as visceral connection. That means that Slumdog Millionaire is a good movie that should've been, could've been a great movie.