Cosmopolis (David Cronenberg, 2012)

For the last decade, David Cronenberg has retreated from his body horror nightmares of modernity and moved into the traumas that inherently exist in life, well outside contemporary anxieties. The postwar kitchen sink drama cum shattered mental breakdown of Spider. The instinctual savagery of man displayed even in the title of A History of Violence. The histories made visible on bodies via gang tattoos in Eastern Promises. The formation, and potential inadequacies, of theories to explore the psychology of all of this in A Dangerous Method. The old monsters still remain, if they are not as visible. Where the mind tends to ooze out of suppurating wounds in prior Cronenberg films, the dynamic reverses in Spider to make the body horror internal as the body collapses into the mind. In A Dangerous Method, it is Keira Knightley herself, her jutting jaw and angular frame thrown into disarray as her illness complicates the work and professional relationship of its two psychiatrists.

Cosmopolis bridges the earlier, topical body horror with the abstract, unseen terrors of Cronenberg’s late period. Indeed, in this film, the monster may be the camera itself, an Arri Aflexa that renders a picture of undeniable ugliness. Black levels pool like ink, unreal colors bleed into each other, and attempts at old-school in-camera effects make some of Hitchcock’s laughable rear-projections look like location shoots in comparison. That this is all clearly deliberate does not, on the face of it, serve as a full defense of the garish unpleasantness of the frame, and those alienated from this alienating movie cannot be blamed much for pushing outside of it. Speaking for myself, though, Cosmopolis is just about the most enthralling film of the year, capable of sucking in a viewer into the same black hole that consumes the image and the strange (and even more strangely delivered) dialogue. Not explicitly an apocalypse movie nor a Death of Cinema picture, Cronenberg’s latest feels like both, as the sudden meaningless of money threatens to take the world (and film) with it.

Capsule Reviews: While the City Sleeps, Cracking Up, The Kid, Rock of Ages

While the City Sleeps (Fritz Lang, 1956)

Fritz Lang's underseen noir blends the yellowest of journalism with King Lear in a prescient, savage view of media feeding a public frenzy. A news empire is offered to three successors, with the new kingdom to be ruled by the one who can beat the cops to solving the identity of a serial killer infamous only from the organization's own salacious coverage. Lang's framing is more stripped down than some other efforts but no less immaculate: the newsroom of transparent but isolating glass and roaring presses speak to the capacity of journalism to reveal and obscure, and how a giant conglomerate can drown out the truth instead of exposing it. As much as the actual string of murders, the tension operates on simple office politics, in which the promise of a raise and a title change to move up the modern social ladder can bring out the basest, most primitive behavior. The characterization of the sexually confused killer is oh-so-standard, but Lang's ability to make high style out of even the most basic movements and mise-en-scène combines with the otherwise fantastic story for a great anti-journo noir. Grade: A-

Win Win (Thomas McCarthy, 2011)

With his gentile, if drably ironic, style and textured, nuanced characters, Thomas McCarthy's Win Win respects and subverts two formulaic, rigid genres: the sports film and the marketably "indie" movie. Set in New Providence, a borough in New Jersey's densely populated Union County, Win Win nevertheless feels isolated and lonely, populated by a scattered collection of reject teenagers both literal and metaphoric who wile away the time in a chilly, winter-barren suburb with nothing but a lot of broken or preemptively denied dreams to stir them. It's the sort of place made for an underdog story, but this is not a film of big victories; though he finds the expressive and emotional value of sports in some people's lives, McCarthy does not suggest that sports holds much relevance in a world beset with political and simple human issues. It is, at best, a salve to alleviate deep wounds that require stronger medicine.

Emphasizing the sense of faded glory and economically dessicated comfort from the start, McCarthy opens the film by tracking forward with Mike Flaherty (Paul Giamatti), a local attorney, jogging in a park as two younger runners in sleek, form-fitting black barrel past his stocky, yellow-sweatshirted frame. Mike jogs not to stay in shape but because his doctor recommended it to control panic attacks brought on by financial worries. Effectively, he ties nagging terror over his economic straits to his physical deterioration as an out-of-shape, middle-aged man, which seems a recipe for a worse outcome rather than an improvement. Faced with his failing practice collapsing, the otherwise good Mike makes a mercenary decision that soon meets with complications he could not have anticipated and cannot hope to control if some people learn the truth. Amazingly, this ticking time-bomb manages to get tied into high-school wrestling.

Duplicity

Tony Gilroy is a curious case. We tend to celebrate verbosity in screenplays, from the nonstop wit of Herman J. Mankiewicz to the madcap referencing of Tarantino's characters, but Gilroy goes in the other direction. Writing the lines for the stoic Jason Bourne gave his lines a curt, punchy feel that calls to mind some of the finest plotters of film noir. His taut dialogue keeps plots moving even as he deceptively fleshes out characters and makes them highly interesting. He's perhaps too much in love with puzzles, though; Michael Clayton, good as it was, bogs down in some of its jagged pieces, which came together to make a satisfying whole but don't hold up as well with multiple viewings. Still, I'd wager it was one of the finest American movies of '07, which overflowed with cinematic gifts, thus putting the pressure on for Gilroy's sophomore effort behind the camera, Duplicity.

In some ways, Duplicity plays like a comedic version of Michael Clayton, with its corporate intrigue plot and the twisted mire of its narrative. Where Clayton profiled the crumbling of those who couldn't accept the status quo any longer, though, Duplicity gives us characters who can't stop playing the game at any time. The latest entry in that strange mash-up of romantic comedy and spy thriller, it brings out something we haven't quite seen in Gilroy's on-point, thrilling scripts: humor.

This heretofore unseen lightness in Gilroy's writing gives the turbulent romance between MI6 agent Ray (Clive Owen) and CIA agent Claire (Julia Roberts) the feel of a Thin Man or a Bogey/Bacall picture. They meet at a Fourth of July party, Ray tries to seduce her, seemingly succeeds, then wakes up to find that she stole classified documents from him. This is pretty much the last time in the film that anything ever makes sense, so you might as well buckle up now.

Five years later, Ray's working for a pharmaceutical company, Equikrom, run by Dick Garsik (Paul Giamatti). Garsik is matched in greed only by his chief rival, Howard Tully (Tom Wilkinson), CEO of Burkett & Randle. Ray is sent to meet with a contact working for Equikrom as a mole in Tully's corporation. Tully's been working on some new formula that he believes will result in previously unimaginable amounts of profit and Garsik, naturally, would like to prevent that from happening, preferably by stealing the cash cow mystery formula for himself. So, Ray goes to meet this mole, only to discover that the contact is, in fact, Claire. Ray savors the moment as he has finally found the woman who broke his heart. But is this the first time they've crossed paths since their first meeting?

Well, no, and that's the first twist in a film that quickly gets away from the writer. Michael Clayton was a bit too in love with its various turns, but Duplicity leaps overboard: as Ray and Claire fall in love, betray each other, reconnect, rinse and repeat, Gilroy pulls the rug out from under us so many times that eventually you stop standing on the damn rug. Nothing is as it seems, yet he's working in the lighter realms of comedy, so the incessant corkscrewing of the plot does not offer insights, only distractions.

Having said that, the dialogue is so good that I found myself playing along some time after I should have thrown my hands up and just rewatched Michael Clayton. The barbs Ray and Claire throw at each other in between their numerous make-up sessions are so acidic they could burn through steel. Clive Owen has that deadpan that must simply be a genetic trait in Britain, and he delivers every line with a pronounced laconic drawl sped up ever so slightly to keep pace with the speed of Gilroy's dialogue. But it's Julia Roberts who steals the show; since 2000's Erin Brokovich, Roberts has been on fire. She looks better than ever, and that girl-next-door innocence has slowly morphed into a fiery, scathing wit. The only glimmers of that doe-eyed sweetie of the past surface when Claire deliberately plays on that image to con someone.

The interaction between Owen and Roberts helps mask the glaring flaws in Gilroy's script. His story is convoluted yet simplistic, and the real narrative is about 20 minutes shorter than the film, and let's not even go into how tragically the director under-utilizes Giamatti and Wilkinson. If this review seems short, it's because I honestly tuned out of the narrative about halfway through and just stuck with Roberts and Owen, and there's too much juicy dialogue to spoil by writing it out without the benefit of their excellent delivery. Still, Gilroy's direction is much improved over his unsure work on Clayton, and he does a fine job behind the camera. It's nothing special, mind you, and it certainly can't salvage the plotting, but he keeps our attention focused almost exclusively on the strength of his two leads. Which is actually quite keen of him.

John Adams

Near the end of Kirk Ellis' gloriously researched miniseries concerning our second president, John Adams, now retired and visiting the White House to see his son John Quincy assume the presidency, is shown John Trumbull's painting Declaration of Independence and immediately launches into a rant. The entire Continental Congress was never present at any one time, he rages. A taken-aback Trumbull stammers, "Y-you would not deny the artist a certain... license?" Adams retorts that the Europeans say that nothing is as false as modern history, then bitterly adds, "I consider the true history of the American Revolution as lost forever."

That is what Ellis' script, based on David McCullough's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, seeks to rectify. Though it naturally takes artistic license of its own, even within the scene just described -- the only comment he was recorded making was an offhand, nostalgic remembrance of nominating Washington to lead the Continental Army -- it offers a side of the Revolution rarely seen and, in the process, sheds light on a tragically forgotten Founding Father.


And how anyone could overlook such a fascinating life for so long is baffling. Ellis wisely begins this biopic not with Adams' childhood but on the brink of the Revolution. Adams (Paul Giamatti), a respected but otherwise inconspicuous lawyer, suddenly finds himself thrust into the spotlight when he reluctantly agrees to represent the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre when no one else will plea their case. When his wife, Abigail (Laura Linney), protests, he stands by his principles that everyone deserves a fair trail. As the courtroom rages with incensed colonials, Adams attacks their passion with reason and forces them (chiefly the jury) to recognize that the colonials were as much to blame for the confusion and terror as the soldiers. He manages to get the men off and returns home, where he and his wife celebrate what they assume will be his final case before the public shuns him forever.

His surprise matched my own when Thomas Jefferson then comes to town and offers him a position in the First Continental Congress. Jefferson, a life-long friend of the family, understands that Adams' principles and conviction are needed to inspire the bickering, selfish representatives. Jefferson had no idea what he was getting himself into. The miniseries kicks into high gear over the next three episodes, with Adams displaying all of his passion as well as his stubbornness and a frankness totally unsuited for the political world. He irritates the Congress so much that they ship him abroad to negotiate with France, which only makes matters as now he not only seems insolent and uncultivated but cannot even properly communicate with in their native tongues.

Throughout all of it, each set is so meticulously constructed and its characters so real that you forget you're watching a costume piece. The boisterous Congressional meetings reflect the representatives' constant fear that the British will blast down their door and kill them all at any minute, while Adams' ride across the Atlantic is fraught with peril from the British blockade. The French scenes in particular are superb, as the puritanical, faithful Adams steps off the boat into the death throes of European decadence. These diseased, flighty aristocrats blanket their faces in powder and every line they utter has a lascivious edge to it. They regard Adams and fellow ambassador Ben Franklin (Tom Wilkinson) as wondrous curiosities, so lost in their syphilitic spiral that they utterly fail to recognize just what ideals Adams and Franklin bring with them.


Wilkinson is the first of many casting coups that make John Adams such a rich experience. He revels in the depravity, and he's remarkably spry from a septuagenarian; when he gets Congress to axe Adams as French ambassador, you get the distinct impression that it's less to do with Adams' lack of diplomatic polish and more simply because this uptight firebrand is harshing his cool. Danny Huston appears in the first few chapters as Sam Adams, who makes his passionate cousin look meek in comparison. Stephen Dillane's Jefferson is wracked with grief but always showing resolve; the series never dips into his seedier side save for a shot of the slave Sally weeping on his deathbed, but we can understand what drove him to an affair when you see how his wife's death affected him.

But it's David Morse who steals the entire series as George Washington. Appearing only fleetingly throughout the first five episodes, he conveys Washington's quiet authority immediately with a rigid military posture and a deep voice that never rises above a stern whisper, forcing others to calm down and pay attention to hear him. If Hollywood ever does yet another project concerning Washington, I hope Morse is the first person they call.

For their part, Giamatti and Linney offer up powerhouse performances. Abigail Adams is every bit as interesting as her husband -- never formally educated, she could nevertheless hold reasonable discourse with the finest minds of the day, and Adams valued her counsel above all else -- and by all accounts the two were not simply man and wife but best friends. McCullough culled much of his research from the treasure trove of correspondence between the two, and John almost always addresses her as his friend rather than wife. Giamatti balances John's mocked and maligned public persona with this gentle personal side beautifully, and you will believe that Linney can do anything a man can do in a world that was still completely opposed to gender equality.


After Adams attains the presidency, the series winds down to a softer close; his term is fraught with slander as he remains neutral while the Congress splinters into two parties, who both turn on him, eventually moving him to pass the controversial Alien and Sedition Laws. He retires with quiet dignity and suffers the sorrows of the age when he loses children to alcoholism and cancer and even must bear the pain of losing his dearest friend. After reconciling with Jefferson, the two jovially correspond until they both famously die on the same day, the 50th anniversary of the nation's independence, no less. It may seem anticlimactic to end on such a quiet note, but that's the beauty of John Adams: where all other accounts of the Revolution and the establishment of our country take place on the battlefield, this depicts the real front lines: the town hall meetings and diplomatic missions, in which philosophy shaped a nation and people like Adams had to kowtow to European leaders for the capital to make it a reality.

This series does have one major flaw, however, and that is in the frantic direction of Tom Hooper. For a miniseries about a relatively plain man who accomplishes extraordinary things with words, not action, the camera moves at a breakneck pace, with handheld tracking shots even when people aren't moving. In the courtroom scene of the first episode, the camera darts around Adams and the jury, abruptly cutting at time to begin again, presumably because the first cameraman tripped and fell down. Mercifully, Hooper takes some downers when we get into the later episodes and puts the camera on a dolly and, saints preserve us, just sets it down and doesn't move it. His direction distracts from an otherwise perfect project.

Nevertheless, John Adams remains one of the greatest miniseries ever made, perhaps the best since Band of Brothers. While HBO's other big 2008 project, Generation Kill, is a better crafted work, it lacks the expansive yet intimate feel of this series. It turns an overlooked, maligned figure into perhaps the most interesting and vital of the Founding Fathers, fascinating in both his professional and private lives. It has a political relevance that is perhaps to transparent, but Adams' belief that war must always be the last resort when diplomacy fails obviously calls to mind the Iraq war, but Adams genuinely believed it. Its dodgy, incongruous direction aside, this seamless period recreation and slew of award-worthy performances is one of the few costume dramas compelling enough to make history truly come alive in ways beyond simply dressing people up for a few hours.