Movie Review: Kill Your Darlings

Friday, October 18, 2013

Movie Review: Kill Your Darlings

Kill Your Darlings
Directed by: John Krokidas.
Written by: Austin Bunn & John Krokidas.
Starring: Daniel Radcliffe (Allen Ginsberg), Dane DeHaan (Lucien Carr), Ben Foster (William Burroughs), Jack Huston (Jack Kerouac), Michael C. Hall (David Kammerer), Elizabeth Olsen (Edie Parker), Kyra Sedgwick (Marian Carr), Jennifer Jason Leigh (Naomi Ginsberg), David Cross (Louis Ginsberg), David Rasche (Dean), John Cullum (Professor Steeves).

The ongoing fascination with the Beat movement in American literature is understandable. The writers associated with the movement – from Allen Ginsberg to Jack Kerouac to William Burroughs – represented the rejection of the established rules of the previous generations. There is romance in their rebellion, which is why teenagers still read On the Road, and fall in love with the idea of hitting the open road. Kill Your Darlings is about the Beat movement before there was any actual work to go along with their ideas – when the writers were just young, confused (sexually and otherwise) kids who didn’t quite know what they wanted to do – but definitely knew what they didn’t want to do. Ginsberg, Kerouac and Burroughs are all characters in the movie – but the character you will leave the theater remembering is a less famous person – Lucien Carr. It isn’t giving anything away to say that the movie concentrates on the murder of David Kammerer by Carr (it happens in the opening scene, before cycling back to tell what led to it). This murder showed the dark side of the movement – spurned its central figures to go to deeper and darker places.

The main character in the film is Ginsberg, played in an excellent performance by Daniel Radcliffe, leaving Harry Potter behind him. When the movie opens, he has just gotten into Columbia University, but isn’t sure if he should attend, because it would mean leaving his deeply mentally disturbed mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) behind. But he goes anyway, and quickly learns that the poetry he’ll learn in school has too many rules for him. His challenging of the Professor in front of the whole class draws the attention of Carr – and soon the two become inseparable. Ginsberg is drawn to Carr for his ideas, his intellect, and his sexuality that simply oozes out of him. If Ginsberg wasn’t sure he was gay before, he knows after meeting Carr – whose sexuality seems to be fluid. It’s through Carr that Ginsberg will meet Burroughs (Ben Foster), Kammerer (Michael C. Hall) and eventually Kerouac (Jack Huston). Kammerer used to be a Professor, but he has quit his job to follow Carr from school to school like a lost puppy dog. He is completely infatuated with Carr – like Ginsberg is – and immediately senses a threat to their relationship – which the movie hints at, but keeps ambiguous.

Kill Your Darlings is not exactly an original film. Like many films, what starts out as seemingly a non-stop party, and endless good times, gradually reveals itself to be something much darker. Yet, while the film won\t win points for originality, it is still an effective movie for many reasons. Debut director John Krokidas gets the period details right, and nails the feeling of how freeing it can be to be a young person rebelling against the established order. In Radcliffe, he found a fine actor to play Ginsberg at this moment in his life – immensely talented, but confused and unsure of himself. In many ways, he needs someone like Carr – both because he encourages him, and because eventually the cruelty in Carr will inspire heartbreak, which will fuel his work. As Carr, Dane DeHaan is even better – sexy, dangerous, charming, yet seemingly hell bent of self-destruction, and capable of cruelty, towards those around him. Michael C. Hall is also very good as Kammerer, a pathetic shell of a man who knows that his “Lulu” will eventually destroy him, but cannot help himself anyway.

The other performances aren’t quite as good. Perhaps because Foster is tired of everyone saying he’s goes too far over the top, his Burroughs is a curiously sedate character – one who drifts into the background too often. True, you shouldn’t play Burroughs as over the top – Viggo Mortenson’s performance of the man in On the Road last year nailed it. And I never bought Huston as Kerouac – he plays him almost as an immature frat boy. Talented actors like Elizabeth Olsen, David Cross, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Kyra Sedgwick are pretty much wasted in nothing, small roles.

But when Kill Your Darling concentrates on its central relationship between Ginsberg and Carr, it works very well. Yes, I would have preferred a more daring film – a film that broke as many rules as the Beat writers themselves – but that doesn’t mean this more conventional approach doesn’t result in a fine movie.

The Best Movies I Have Never Seen Before: Historie(s) du Cinema (1988-1998)

The Best Movies I Have Never Seen Before: Historie(s) du Cinema (1988-1998)

Histoire(s) due Cinema (1988-1998)
Directed by: Jean-Luc Godard.
Written by: Jean-Luc Godard.

Jean-Luc Godard has been bitter and angry for a long time about what he sees as the “failures” of cinema. The famed French director, who perhaps was the biggest name in cinema during the 1960s, has long since turned his back on narrative filmmaking, and become an avant-garde filmmaker. To be fair, had he never made those films in the early to mid-1960s – really most of his films from Breathless (1960) to Weekend (1967) – he would still be an important filmmaker in avant-garde circles. Yet, if it wasn’t for those early films, Godard would not command the respect he now does. Whenever he opens his mouth to insult a filmmaker – a favorite target of his has been Spielberg (although, most of what Godard has said about Spielberg is so outlandish and ridiculous that it masks any legitimate criticisms he may have), everyone listens. When he makes a film like Film Socialism (2010), it becomes the most talked about film at the Cannes Film Festival – where normally a film that like wouldn’t even play there (you can argue that’s either a good or bad thing). There seems to be two camps on Godard – those who think he has done very little of value since Weekend, and those who think that Godard is still a genius, still far ahead of the curve, waiting for people to catch up to him.

For the most part, I consider myself to be in the former camp. Breathless (1960), Vivre Sa Vie (1962), Contempt (1963), Band of Outsiders (1964), Pierrot Le Fou (1965) and Weekend (1967) are all legitimately great movies, and even if I didn’t think Made in U.S.A. (1966) or 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967) were great (or even that good in the case of 2 or 3 Things), they was interesting and intelligent films. This period was so prolific for Godard that I still need to see some fairly major works from it –A Woman is a Woman (1961), Alphaville (1965), Masculin-Feminine (1966) – chief among them. Given how much I hated Film Socialisme (sorry, perhaps I should say I just don’t get it, but in all honesty, when I read the reviews of people who claim it to be a masterpiece, I wonder if I perhaps walked into the wrong theater, because what I saw was an incoherent mess, not some profound statement on anything) and some of his other “late period” films, I cannot imagine wanting to see them above the films he was making in the period where he made several legitimate masterpieces.

All this is a very long introduction into this piece which is about Godard’s magnum opus – Histoire(s) due Cinema, an eight part (or four part, with each part having an (a) and (b) if you want to get technical), four and a half hour epic, which he made and released slowly between 1988 and 1998. Normally, I would have rather watched one of those 1960s Godard films I still haven’t seen rather than this opus – but the film ranked in the top 50 films of all time on the 2012 Sight and Sound Critics Poll, so I bite the bullet and settled in for what I assumed would be a VERY long night.

But I was pleasantly surprised by Histoire(s) du Cinema. I’m certainly not saying that the film is for everyone – it clearly isn’t, and is more of an avant-garde art piece than anything else – but I was fascinated by the film. The film is technical marvel – a masterpiece of montage – as it brings together clips from cinema’s past, and makes startling connections, and wholly new images out of them. Yes, the film is still a long sit, and yet it was never less than fascinating – even when it enraging, which it often was as Godard’s contentions and opinions about cinema are often at complete odds with my own, or self-aggrandizing, which it is nearly constantly for parts of the movie. In Godard’s view, of course, only someone in the New Wave could tell the story of cinema history – meaning only he can – and that the French New Wave was the greatest thing that ever happened to cinema – again, meaning he was – and since then it has been a long, slow death march. He pretty much argues that cinema is already dead – but of course, only Godard is smart enough to see it.

But I can disagree with a movie, and still find it interesting – and Histoire(s) du Cinema is certainly interesting. It’s not that I didn’t know that Godard was an egomaniac when I sat down to watch Histoire(s) du Cinema, or that he wasn’t going to argue that cinema has failed – he has been arguing that for years. And Histoire(s) du Cinema is the type of film that only someone who at one point completely loved cinema could make. Godard’s movie knowledge is unquestionable, and his disappointment in cinema’s “failings” is genuine, even if I think more than a little of that disappointment stems from the fact that so few people followed him when he broke away from the mainstream.

It should be noted that this isn’t a standard issue cinema history documentary – for that, watch Martin Scorsese’s A Personal Journey Through American Film and My Voyage to Italy, both of which are excellent, both for film buffs and newcomers. No, to truly understand Godard’s film, you have to know a lot about cinema before you sit down and watch it – there were times when I was completely overwhelmed by what was being thrown on the screen. To add to the confusion, the version I saw had sparse English subtitles – but I think the important parts are subtitled (I was never very good at French in school, but I remember enough to be able to piece together much of the non-subtitled, oft-repeated phrases).

Histoire(s) du Cinema is finally a love letter to, elegy of and condemnation of cinema, from one of its sharpest minds. I may not like much of Godard’s later output, but I have never doubted that he is, on some level, still a genius – even if I think he has bought too much into his own myth (no one thinks Godard is a genius as much as Godard does). The film is never less than fascinating, even if it does begin to repeat itself after a while. At four and half hours, this is a VERY long sit – and most audiences will grow restless. I do not think this is the masterpiece that its most ardent supporters do, but for what it is, Histoire(s) du Cinema certainly deserves to be more widely seen than it has been (part of that is undoubtedly do to the rights issues of using all those old clips – this held up the DVD release for years apparently). I cannot think of too many people that I would actually recommend sitting through this film to – it requires a patient audience member, willing to indulge Godard – but if the film sounds interesting to you, than I certainly think you should see it.

Movie Review: Bastards

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Movie Review: Bastards

Bastards
Directed by: Claire Denis.
Written by: Jean-Pol Fargeau and Claire Denis.
Starring: Vincent Lindon (Marco Silvestri), Chiara Mastroianni (Raphaëlle), Julie Bataille (Sandra), Michel Subor (Edouard Laporte), Lola Créton (Justine), Alex Descas (Dr. Béthanie), Grégoire Colin (Xavier), Florence Loiret Caille (Elysée), Christophe Miossec (Guy), Yann Antoine Bizette (Joseph), Jeanne Disson (Audrey), Laurent Grévill (Jacques).

The opening frames of Claire Denis’ Bastards lets us know we are in the film noir world. A bald man, in a fancy suit looks out into the dark, raining night – looking miserable. Soon, he’ll be on the dead on the concrete – having thrown himself to his death. A beautiful young girl walks naked down the street – wearing only a pair of high heels that click as she walks slowly, a dazed look on her face. A woman blames the police and their apathy for her husband’s suicide, and the state of her daughter. A grizzled older man gets a phone call – a family emergency – which makes him go AWOL from his job at sea, and head back to land to help his family. As with many of Denis’ films, she makes no effort to explain everything from the outset – preferring instead to let events unfold, and the audience to figure them out as they go along.

The second man, we soon learn, is Marco Silvestri (Vincent Lindon). The first man was Jacques (Laurent Grevill), an old friend, and current brother-in-law, married to Marco’s sister Sandra (Julie Bataille). The naked young woman is Justine (Lola Creton), their daughter, Vincent’s niece. Jacques and Sandra run a failing shoe factory, and Sandra blames all of their problems on Edouard Laporte (Michel Subor), an exceedingly wealthy, powerful man – not only does he own most of their debt, he is also the man they have accused of abusing Justine – and when we find out just how abused she was, it is stomach churning. Marco has come back to help out – although it isn’t immediately clear just what that means. What we do know is that he is moving in upstairs from Raphaelle (Chiara Mastroianni), the younger mistress of Laporte, and her young son. He charms his way into her life – and her pants – but maybe charms is the wrong word here. He is an old fashioned type of guy, and his seduction of her is gruff, and almost wordless – she puts up little resistance to his advances.

Marco is a classic noir “hero” – a normal guy who is duped into doing things he would not normally do. He is tough and intelligent – but also almost hopelessly naïve. In classic Hollywood noir terms, he is the type of character Robert Ryan would have excelled at playing. You really cannot call Mastroianni’ Raphaelle a femme fatale – she doesn’t seduce him into doing anything for her – some will even complain that she is too passive. She doesn’t seem too interested in who he is, what he does, or why he is there. Given the sexual relationship we see between and the older Laporte, it may well be that she just wants him for sex. He tries to get under her skin, but she seems impervious to his efforts – she doesn’t judge him – doesn’t want to know why he’s living in an expensive apartment, with no furniture, and yet has pawned his watch and sold his car. Marco is drawn back in by his sister – who has a one track mind of getting even with Laporte – but he doesn’t ask her the right questions – in fact, he doesn’t really ask her anything at all. That something doesn’t quite seem right about everything she is saying seems obvious to the audience – but not to Marco, who just accepts it – and then is shocked as secrets start being revealed. The film gets darker and darker, right up until its shocking final scene – which finally explains what precisely happened in a dirty shack, littered with bloody corn cobs.

In many ways, Bastards is more straight forward than much of Denis’ recent work. Yes, there are flashbacks and forwards, and she never gives the audience all the information they want until the final scene, yet the film is more straight forward than films like White Material or The Intruder. The film’s violence – sexual and otherwise – is strong and shocking, but then given the material it pretty much needs to be. Denis is not just using the violence to shock the audience, its part of her larger narrative arc, inspired by Faulkner’s Sanctuary. It will likely offend some, as the victims in the movie seem passive – almost accepting of their victimization (they certainly do not fight back against it). A character like Lola Creton’s damaged young woman remains an enigma right until the end – a victim of just about everyone else in the movie, but one whose interior world is never explored. Raphaelle is a character who also threatens to be an enigma as well – is she just using Marco, or is there something deeper going on there – right until her final moments, when the character snaps into focus. Sandra goes from grieving widow into something much more insidious as the movie goes along. Laporte, we sense from the outset is sinister – it doesn’t help that he seems to be made to look like Robert Blake in Lost Highway – but just what his character does still surprises. Into this world, Marco comes wholly unprepared. Lindon does a marvelous job in his role – making Marco into a man’s man – the type we don’t see much of in films anymore – but one who ultimately is a lot softer than he first appears. The poor bastard has no idea what’s coming for him.

Movie Review: Captain Phillips

Movie Review: Captain Phillips

Captain Phillips
Directed by: Paul Greengrass   
Written by: Billy Ray based on the book by Richard Phillips & Stephan Talty.
Starring: Tom Hanks (Captain Richard Phillips), Barkhad Abdi (Muse), Barkhad Abdirahman (Bilal), Faysal Ahmed (Najee), Mahat M. Ali (Elmi), Michael Chernus (Shane Murphy), Catherine Keener (Andrea Phillips), David Warshofsky (Mike Perry), Corey Johnson (Ken Quinn), Chris Mulkey (John Cronan), Yul Vazquez (Captain Frank Castellano), Max Martini (SEAL Commander), Omar Berdouni (Nemo), Mohamed Ali (Asad), Issak Farah Samatar (Hufan). 

The scenes that open and close Paul Greengrass’ Captain Phillips are what elevate the film above the level of a typical thriller. For the vast majority of its running time, Captain Phillips is the type of intelligent, intense, well-crafted thriller that we have come to expect from Greengrass since his breakthrough film Bloody Sunday (2002) – through his 9/11 film United 93 (2006), the second and third Bourne movies, and his Iraq war film Green Zone. Greengrass is one of the few directors who is able to use handheld camera work and rapid fire editing, and still keep everything clear for an audience. Where someone like Michael Bay often tries to do the same thing, the result is often action sequences that are incoherent – but I have never felt that way in a Greengrass movie. He uses the same approach in Captain Phillips – and it’s even more effective here than in his previous films. But as good as the majority of the runtime of the movie is, it really remains the opening and closing of the film that deepens the work as a whole – and makes it into more than just a well done, intense thriller.

The story of Captain Phillips is well known by now. He was the Captain of an American cargo ship – the Alabama Maersk – in 2009, when off the coast of Somalia, his boat is attacked by two skiffs containing four, armed Somali pirates. They are able to outflank the pirates on their first attempt, but the next day when they try again, they are unable to do so. The four men board the ship, and because no one on the ship is armed, they quickly take over. The majority of the crew hides below deck, while Phillips and his officers are stuck in the control room with the pirates. They don’t just want the $30,000 they have on board – they think that taking over an American ship should net them millions. After an intense few hours, the pirates agree to leave the ship in the rickety, enclosed lifeboat – but take Phillips with them. The Marines are called in – one way or another, Phillips and his captors are not going to reach Somalia.

Because Greengrass cast Tom Hanks as Phillips, we know almost immediately that he is a good guy – but Greengrass establishes this anyway in the opening scene, where his wife (Catherine Keener) drives him to the airport. As they drive, they talk about the worries they have for their children – whether they’ll work hard enough in school, whether they’ll find a good job, etc. Everything seems to move so fast, and is so competitive, that they worry their kids won’t have the same advantages they had. Greengrass then does an interesting – and bold thing – as he cuts immediately from Phillips and his wife, to Muse (Barkhad Abdi), the leader of the pirates who will take over his ship, in Somalia. Just like Greengrass immediately establishes sympathy and humanity with Phillips in his brief opening scene, he does the same thing for Muse and the other pirates in Somalia. What choice do these men have, other than to do what they do? They are ruled by brutal warlords who demand they go out and make money. If they don’t, they’re doomed anyway. Right off the bat, Greengrass has established the complex moral world his movie takes place in by establishing the humanity of all the players. This will not just be an easy thriller about good guys and bad guys, but something far more complex.

The film is impeccably made by Greengrass. Normally, I don’t like the shaky handheld camera work, and rapid fire editing that Greengrass specializes in. However, I do think that Greengrass uses it better than any other director working right now – and here, it aids him immensely in his storytelling. As the majority of the action takes place in the small lifeboat, which rocks over the waves in the ocean, and the shaky camera work places us right alongside the characters – it immerses us in the situation, and helps to generate tension throughout.

The film is also aided immensely by the performances – particularly those by Hanks and Abdi. Abdi is a newcomer, who is asked to hold his own next to Hanks – and he is more than up to the task. His Muse is intelligent and thoughtful – more so than his accomplices, two of whom seem like little more than scared kids, and the third who is more brutal and violent. To him, this is a business transaction – nothing more – and while he is not above using violence, he doesn’t see much point in it if it can be helped. It is a dynamic debut performance. Hanks is one of the most likable, and relatable actors in movie history, and his Captain Phillips makes the most of the association we have with the actor before walking into the theater. His Phillips is heroic, but in a more subdued way than most heroes in a thriller would be. He does what he can to protect his crew once they have been boarded, and he even does what he can to help the pirates themselves on the boat. He doesn’t want anyone to die, but he knows full well that if the pirates don’t give up, they will be doomed – and they may well take him with him. It is a fine performance throughout the movie – but becomes a great one in the film’s closing scenes. Those scenes, details of which I won’t reveal here, are the type of scenes that normally do not happen in a thriller of this sort. Normally, once the action climax of the film has passed, the movie ends – this one extends it beyond that point, and gives us a view of the shock and trauma we normally never see. It is in these moments where the full weight of the movie hits us the hardest – and elevates the entire movie.

Captain Phillips is an uncommonly complex moral movie. Yes, Captain Phillips is undeniably a good guy, and the pirates are the “bad guys”, but things are not that simple. Audiences are conditioned to root for Americans in the movies, and against the invaders – and some will undoubtedly still do the same thing when they watch Captain Phillips. And yet, this is not a film where everything is quite so simple. I am reminded of the moment in Greengrass’ United 93, when he cuts back and forth between the passengers on the plane praying to God, and the two hijackers praying to Allah, drawing the similarity between the two of them – no matter if you’re the “good guy” or the “bad guy” you are praying to God when the end comes. Captain Phillips takes this link between the two even farther, making for a much more complex than a typical thriller. If you want a thriller – than Captain Phillips more than fits the bill – this is one of the most intense movies of the year. But it is also more than that. Most thrillers, you forget by the time you hit the parking lot. You won’t be able to shake Captain Phillips quite that easily.

Movie Review: Computer Chess

Movie Review: Computer Chess

Computer Chess
Directed by: Andrew Bujalski.
Written by: Andrew Bujalski.
Starring: Patrick Riester (Peter Bishton), Wiley Wiggins (Martin Beuscher), Myles Paige (Michael Papageorge), Robin Schwartz (Shelly Flintic), Gerald Peary (Pat Henderson), Gordon Kindlmann (Tom Schoesser), Jim Lewis (John), Freddy Martinez (Freddy), James Curry (Carbray), Bob Sabiston (McVey), Tishuan Scott (Keneiloe), Chris Doubek  (Dave), Annie LaGanga (Carol).

I have never been much of a mumblecore fan – but that could well be because I haven’t been watching the right movies. Andrew Bujalski is considered probably the first name in mumblecore – and until Computer Chess, I had not seen any of his movies. In the past few years, we’ve seen some mumblecore names move (or attempt to move) into the mainstream – actress Greta Gerwig, actor/writer/director Mark Duplass, and director Joe Swanberg for example, have all done movies with bigger movie stars and/or director in an attempt to move beyond their small, but loyal, fan base. Bujalski doesn’t seem much interested in that – not yet anyway – but that doesn’t mean Computer Chess is a typical mumblecore film. For one, it’s a period piece – taking places in the early 1980s, shot in black & white, on video – and not the good digital video everyone shoots on these days, cheap, old school 1980s video.

The movie takes place over a long weekend when computer programmers from around the country converge on a low rent hotel in order to pit there computer chess programs against each other. The winner gets bragging rights, a cheque for $7,500 and an opportunity to go up against a real life chess master – Pat Henderson (Gerald Peary) – who has not lost yet, but believes that at some point around 1984, we will be beaten.

Part of the charm of Computer Chess is seeing the period details. Pretty much all the men in Computer Chess – and all but one of them are men – are not quite as nerdy as the guys in 1980s movies like Revenge of the Nerds – but they aren’t that far off either. They have cheap haircuts, geeky clothes, and haul around massive computers from one room to another. When they need to show things to a larger group in a conference room, they use an overhead projector. Shooting in cheap 1980s video makes sense for this movie – like the rest of the period details, the look, however crude, simply fits. Bujalski structures the movie almost as a mocumentary, but doesn’t really try to fool you into thinking its real.

The film is a comedy, but a low-key one – that occasionally borders on the absurd. A running joke in the movie involves one programmer (Myles Paige) whose reservation was lost by the hotel (if he ever had one), and runs around trying to get someone else to allow him to stay with them. When he finally does get a room, it is inexplicably filled with cats.

The film has many characters, who very gradually, we get to know. My favorite character is Peter (Patrick Riester), who is one of the underlings on the team who won last year. He, like many of the other characters, is shy and quiet – has trouble relating to other people. Throughout the movie though, he will gradually come out of his shell – he has a rather sweet relationship with the one woman at the competition (Robin Schwartz), perhaps because he’s one of the only ones who doesn’t make an awkward pass at her. He is also drawn in by an older couple, who is at another conference at the hotel – a new age retreat for swingers, it appears like. Bujalski gets some comic mileage out of comparing and contrasting these aging hippies, with the new wave nerds, but the scenes between Peter and this older couple go a little deeper than mere comic fodder – they are awkward, funny, and strangely honest.

The movie also does something unexpected – at least by me. While there is a lot of “geek speak” as it were, there are also some rather intelligent conversations about the future of artificial intelligence – and what it all means. I’m not sure the strange twist the movie takes near the end – involving one of the programs, and it’s developing intelligence, really works all that well, but damn it if it wasn’t strange and interesting.

And that pretty much describes the movie as well to me. It’s strange and interesting – unlike most of what I see in any given year, and while not wholly satisfying to me (the film has generated some rapturous reviews), is certainly one I’m glad I saw. I’m not quite sure what it all means, but watching it was something different and unexpected. So I’ll try and not let another Bujalski film pass me by.

Movie Review: Gideon's Army

Movie Review: Gideon's Army

Gideon’s Army
Directed by: Dawn Porter
Written by: Matthew Hamachek & Dawn Porter.

Everyone charged with a crime in America is entitled to a defense – although not everyone can afford a great defense lawyer, everyone is supposed to get a qualified lawyer to represent them – to look out for their interests. As the wonderful documentary Gideon’s Army shows, the public defenders who represent those who cannot afford their own lawyer really do care about their clients. They believe in what they do, and work hard for their clients. The problem is that they often have well over 100 clients at a time – so not all of them get the defense they probably need. For the 90-95% of the people charged, who the movie says will plead guilty to some sort of crime or another, this may not be as big of a deal. They are charged, they are guilty, they know they cannot win, so they look to their lawyer to get them the best deal they can get. But to those other clients – those innocent of what they are charged with – the prospect of having a public defender scares them to death. How much time can a PD really spend on any one case?

The film focuses mostly on two PDs in Georgia – Travis Williams and Brandy Alexander. They know most of their clients are guilty – Alexander tells two shocking stories – one about a man she was working hard to defend, who at the same time was plotting her murder if he was convicted, and another about a man who almost gleefully confesses to raping his stepdaughter. Still, they work long, hard hours trying their best to represent their clients – with little time to mount a defense, and almost no resources in which to do it. The film will eventually concentrate on two cases – one for each lawyer. In the case Williams defends, there is fingerprint evidence found on the scene – but those fingerprints were never tested. Williams doesn’t have the resources to test them himself, so instead he tricks the DA into doing it for him – but even when the fingerprints don’t match, the DA still wants to press on in her prosecution. With Alexander, we see her mount a defense step-by-step, gradually trying to build up reasonable doubt in the jury. The film isn’t an advocacy documentary for these two cases though, as much as it a portrait of the PDs themselves. If it advocates anything, it’s that PDs deserve more credit and respect than they get.

The documentary doesn’t have a narrator, and has an quiet, understated score that only plays some of the time. The movie doesn’t try to ramp up the drama into phony Hollywood-style theatrics, but instead just watches as these dedicated PD’s try their best to mount a defense, even though everything is stacked against them. While the film is about the justice system, it is also about the increasing divide between the haves and have-nots – the haves can afford the best lawyers, working round the clock on their case alone. The have-nots – which there seem to be more have – have to make do with dedicated lawyers, who have little time, and no money to do the same thing. Is it any wonder why most of them simply plead out? You can go broke, lose your job, your house and your kids just by being charged with a crime, even if you are eventually acquitted. The system is stacked against them, and no matter how dedicated these lawyers are, that doesn’t change the basic facts. It’s no wonder most Public Defender’s leave after a few years. No matter what they do, the odds are stacked against them – the work long, hard hours for little pay, and see the justice system they believe in stacked against the weaker people in society. Would you stick around too long for that?

Movie Review: The Heat

Movie Review: The Heat

The Heat
Directed by: Paul Feig.
Written by: Katie Dippold.
Starring: Sandra Bullock (Ashburn), Melissa McCarthy (Mullins), Demian Bichir (Hale), Marlon Wayans (Levy), Michael Rapaport (Jason Mullins), Jane Curtin (Mrs. Mullins), Spoken Reasons (Rojas), Dan Bakkedahl (Craig), Taran Killam (Adam), Michael McDonald (Julian), Tom Wilson (Captain Woods).

Melissa McCarthy seems to be at her best when she’s the least scripted. She was the best thing about Judd Apatow’s This is 40 last year, despite her limited screen time, and as her the extended scene of her over the end credits shows, she seemed to be making it up as she went along, leaving her co-stars laughing as her increasingly insane rant goes off in a million different directions. It’s at moments like these that her immense comic talent is truly at its best. There are moments in The Heat when that side of her comes out – but unfortunately not as many as I would have liked. For the most part, she is shoehorned into a buddy cop comedy alongside Sandra Bullock that simply isn’t up to her level (nor Bullock’s for that matter).

The movie stars McCarthy as Mullins, a Boston PD detective, who takes her job of cleaning up the streets very seriously – so seriously in fact, that she has no problem running people down with her car. That she bears no resemblance to how a cop in the real world would have to operate goes without saying. A drug dealer she has just arrested comes to the attention of the FBI, who thinks he may be the key to a bigger kingpin – so they send in Ashburn (Bullock), to question him – which, of course, infuriates Mullins. Neither of these women play well with others – they do not have, nor want, partners. But for seemingly no other reason than because the screenplay needs them together, they are partnered up on this case to crack this drug ring.

I have to admit, that even now – not long after I watched the film, the details of what the plot of the drug dealers actually is in the movie has already started to grow hazy. It doesn’t really matter though – the movie really isn’t about its crime plot, but rather about putting these two women, who in the time honored tradition of buddy comedies start out hating each other and then grow to become best friends forever, in absurd comic situations. If nothing else, The Heat shows just how much chemistry McCarthy and Bullock have together. Bullock has the “straight” role, something she hasn’t done often before, but she excels at it here. She’s a stick in the mud that needs to loosen up, and let others into her life, or else she’s destined to be alone forever. Because Bullock is so good at playing it straight here, it allows McCarthy to go bat shit insane, which is when she is at her best. The movie gives her more space to run wild than the abysmal Identity Thief did earlier this year, and McCarthy makes the most of it.

Unfortunately, other than the two leads, there really is nothing else in the movie that is at all interesting. A talented supporting cast – including Oscar nominee Demian Bichir, Marlon Wayans, Jane Curtain, Spoken Reasons (with a name like that, he has to be a rapper, right? Or perhaps a slam poet – do they still have those?), Michael Rapaport, Dan Bakkedahl and Taran Killam (slowly becoming the most consistent performer on SNL every week) – are pretty much wasted. They get steamrolled by Bullock and McCarthy. And Paul Feig, a colleague of Judd Apatow shares Apatow’s inability to cut his movie to an appropriate length. Like his last film, Bridesmaids (which I quite liked – but not as much as many did), his film goes on far too long, and grows slack. By the end, it has worn out its welcome.

I liked parts of The Heat more than the whole. Bullock and McCarthy are as good as they can be in the movie – and it is refreshing not only to see a mainstream, buddy cop movie center around two women, but also have neither one need a man to make them complete. They’re both single – and neither is given a love interest (although the running gag of McCarthy’s past lovers is pretty amusing) – and neither need one. But in the end, a movie like The Heat rises and falls on just how funny it is – when you’re movie is basically just a clothesline in which to hang jokes, the jokes better be funny. Some are, most aren’t. The movie probably goes 1-for-3 in terms of good jokes to bad – which may be good in baseball, but in a movie, that’s a whole lot of jokes falling flat.