“The Men Who Stare at Goats” is the best movie with the worst name that we’ll likely see this year. Despite its silly title—which makes perfect sense in context of the movie, but will be a mystery to anyone unfamiliar with the story—this screwball George Clooney film has many serious points to make about the state of modern warfare, but does so with a healthy dose of satire.
Based on a story that is “more true than you think” it begins when journalist Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) uncovers a story about the New Earth Army, a secret psychic battalion of super soldiers sponsored by the US government in hopes of finding a new way to fight wars. The Pentagon wants to be the first super power to develop super powers. Teaming up with Lyn Cassidy (Clooney), a veteran psychic soldier, Wilton tracks down Cassidy’s mentor Bill Django (Jeff Bridges), an eccentric New Age shaman now working at a prison camp in Iraq run by Kevin Spacey’s character, Larry Hooper. Hooper is a former psychic soldier who lived in Cassidy’s shadow until he managed to subvert the original purpose of the New Earth’s Army and take control.
Directed by hyphenate actor-turned-George Clooney’s best friend-turned-writer-turned-director Grant Heslov, the pen behind “Good Night and Good Luck” the movie has a wonky feel right from the get go. Its dizzying blend of slapstick, satire and drama is a hard thing to pull off, but Heslov with the help of his lead actors and a strong supporting cast including Coen Brothers regular Stephen Root, find just the right tone for the first hour.
In fact, the first sixty minutes of “The Men Who Stare Sat Goats” is giddy good fun; as fun a ride as there is in theatres this year. Its absurdist, filled with memorable images—Clooney staring down a goat, enlisted men doing the Watusi and a montage of Jeff Bridges embarking on a journey of enlightenment—and no joke is too broad. It’s as if Crosby and Hope had gone to Iraq instead of Singapore or Utopia. Then along comes Kevin Spacey who ruins all the fun.
It’s as if the filmmakers were afraid to stick to their guns and make a surreal free form movie so they added Spacey’s sniveling character to add in some conflict. It’s meant to up the drama of the piece but it’s the point at which the movie loses much of its zip. The conflict Spacey brings is simply not as interesting as the rest of the film. The final third of the film suffers for it, but it remains an unpredictable romp with some nice performances and pointed comments on the absurdity of war. I couldn’t help but think that if someone like Robert Altman had made this film in 1974 the message and the madness would have been intact without the spoiler of Spacey.
Beatrix Potter wrote dozens of books with titles like The Tale of Peter Rabbit and Appley Dapply’s Nursery Rhymes. Released at the turn of the last century, these stories about mischievous animals illustrated with Potter’s charming watercolors were as incredibly popular with kids as Harry Potter is today.
Miss Potter, a new movie starring Oscar winner Renee Zellweger as the author, focuses on Potter’s personal life, which was tumultuous as her books were placid. Buckling against 19th century mores the headstrong writer chose not to marry until age 47, preferring the company of her imaginary friends to real life. The movie leads us through the publishing of her first book, her battles with overbearing social climbing parents, an engagement to her first fiancé, played by Ewan McGregor, and her subsequent retreat to the English countryside. What emerges is an interesting, but incomplete portrait of the legendary writer.
Zellweger is a ringer for Potter, pulls off a convincing English accent, and succeeds in making Potter’s eccentricities seem plausible, but for all the technical aspects of the performance there isn’t much warmth here. Zellweger’s stiff upper lip hides any real emotion, and the few flashes of personality that find their way past her stern façade only hint at the reservoir of emotion underneath.
Overall the movie is well constructed, if a little incomplete. Director Chris Noonan, whose last film, Babe, was eleven years ago, shows us the major events in Potter’s life, but lacking is the passion. It makes for a decent family film, although I doubt that kids will be too taken with the love story and the English reserve, but feels like less than the sum of its parts. Potter was a 19th century rebel who championed the ecology and used her vast wealth to preserve 4000 acres of farmland. She was an active and shrewd marketer of her own books and even did some scientific research on lichens that, one hundred years after she wrote it, was given credence by the British Linnean Society. Only mildly engaging, this stiff Masterpiece Theatre treatment of her life doesn’t do justice to Beatrix Potter or her legacy.
As tittles go “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” is a mouthful. It’s quirky enough to catch your eye, I suppose, and it isn’t a cute metaphor for something else. This movie is indeed about salmon fishing in the Yemen, but it’s also about faith as much as fishing.
Ewan McGregor is Dr. Alfred Jones a rigid scientist at the British government department of fisheries. He studies spawning habits of fish, writes scientific papers and lives a life of quiet desperation. When he is approached by Harriet Chetwode-Talbot (Emily Blunt), a consultant for Yemeni Sheikh Mohammed (Amr Waked), to create a fly fishing reserve in the Yemen, he balks at first but soon not only dives in headfirst to the project, but, since this is a light romanic comedy, also discovers an interest in a life form without gills.
“Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” should do for fly-fishing what “The Big Year” did for bird watching. That is to say, not much. The mix of science, faith–fishing is a mystical past time, apparently—and romance has some charm, mostly due to the engaging performances of McGregor, Blunt and Waked, but other plot threads—like an assassination attempt–feel forced and out of place.
Popping in and out of the story is Kristin Scott Thomas as the aggressive spokesperson for he Prime Minister. She’s used for comedic relief and pulls off the part with aplomb. If the rest of the film had the spark she brings to her scenes we might have been better able to forgive its plot transgressions.
Down with Love is an homage to the 1960’s Rock Hudson / Doris Day “battle of the sexes” sub-genre. The filmmakers have captured the look – Renee Zellweger’s clothes look like they were just uncrated from a time-capsule discovered in Jackie O’s closet circa 1963 – but falter when it comes to the tone of the film. The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead, if you know what I mean. The actors, likeable though they may be, have none of the ease that Hudson and Day had with this sort of material. The kitsch-o-meter is dialled up to 10, but only Ms. Zellweger’s impressive speech near the end where she reveals her elaborate plot to snare the lusty Catcher Block (Ewan McGregor) has the sense of campy fun that this whole film desperately needs to succeed. Down with Love tries hard, but is winking so firmly at itself, it threatens to give itself a black eye.
While sitting atop the Castel Saint Angelo in Rome waiting to interview Angels & Demons star Ewan McGregor, I had a panoramic view of the city and the beautiful chaos that makes life in the Eternal City tick.
The traffic is crazy and there are people everywhere. It’s an intense place, even more so, I imagined, if you were shooting a big budget Hollywood picture that takes place in some of the city’s busiest spots.
“The funny thing is I didn’t shoot any of it in Rome,” McGregor said when asked. “I shot in this place called Caserta. There’s a palace in Caserta that I thought it sounded really romantic, so I arranged for my wife to come over and spend a weekend with me, but it’s a dump, a horrible place. I’m sorry but it’s just a suburb of Naples that’s exploded around this old palace. It’s really nasty. Not a good place.
“Apart from that I did most of my stuff in L.A. because my character is mainly inside the Vatican and of course, the Vatican didn’t want us to shoot inside their buildings so they built the Sistine Chapel on the Sony soundstages in L.A. They also built the exterior of St. Peter’s Square, this huge, huge set, in the parking lot of Hollywood Park Racetrack in south L.A. That was cool. I saw it from an airplane. I was landing at LAX and I looked down and thought, ‘God, that’s a big set… look at that.’ Then I realized it was ours.”
Despite never having stepped foot in an actual church during the shoot, McGregor convincingly pulls off the roll of Camerlengo Patrick McKenna, a priest who acts as the pope’s right hand man in the film adaptation of Dan Brown’s novel.
“We had a priest from New Jersey who came over and was our religious advisor for any of the technical things,” McGregor said, “the ceremonies and the ritual stuff. But he also gave us a kind of idea of what would be going on behind the scenes during those ceremonies and humanized it for us.
“It looks so precise from the congregation’s point of view but in actual fact behind the table there is a guy with matches trying to light the incense. He put that into it for me which was great.”
The training paid off, he says, at least superficially.
“I didn’t get to understand the meaning of all the ceremonies; why everything is in a certain order, but I did learn enough to look like I knew what I was doing, hopefully.”
There’s a reason why “Beginners,” a melancholy new family drama starring Ewan McGregor, Christopher Plummer and Mélanie Laurent feels so authentic. Director Mike Mills (the “Thumbsucker” filmmaker, not the R.E.M. bassist) based elements of the story on his real life. The result is an intimate portrait of a man shaped by the influence of his parents.
In this nonlinear story we follow the broken timeline of Oliver’s (McGregor) broken life. He’s having a strange year. First his mother dies of cancer, then, just as he is coming to grips with her passing, his 75-year-old father Hal (Plummer) comes out of the closet, announcing that he’s always been gay and now that his wife is gone he’d like to explore that long buried aspect of his life. Hal’s news is followed by turns both good and bad. First he meets a wonderful man, but just as their relationship is blossoming he is diagnosed with stage four cancer. The cumulative effect of all these events sends Oliver deep inside his own head to a sad and bad place until he meets Anna (Laurent), a beautiful actress with father issues of her own.
Told in flashbacks embellished with many stylistic flourishes, the movie never allows Mill’s montages and other frills to overwhelm the story. Mills, who along with his personal connection to the story, brings a keen sense of how real people conduct themselves in times of stress, isn’t afraid to allow his characters to be introspective. A good portion of the story is internal, conveyed by McGregor’s dour expressions, Plummer’s dignity and Laurent’s vulnerability.
Even the meet cute of the McGregor and Laurent characters—her voice is shot, laryngitis, and she has to communicate with a notepad—which would normally be too quirky by half for me, works because this isn’t a fluffy rom com but a textured look at why people behave the way they do.
Mills has also drawn expert performances from his cast. Plummer looks ripe to earn another Oscar nomination for his touching take on a man who finds happiness only to have it taken away too soon and McGregor and Laurent make a compelling couple.
Topping off the tender tale is the cutest on-screen dog since Benji who provides unique insight into Oliver’s emotional maturation.
