If you think they don’t make ‘em like they used to, well, you’d be wrong. Director Steven Soderbergh and his muse, George Clooney have produced a film that uses the 1942 Michael Curtiz film Casablanca as the standard.
The Good German isn’t a remake, it’s a tribute to the films of the late 1940s that uses exactly the same technology (or lack thereof) as the golden age of Hollywood—the same lenses, the same atmospheric lighting, the same rat-a-tat-tat style of dialogue, the same everything.
Soderbergh nails the look of the period, but the film’s frankness and subject matter would never have been green lit back in the day. Based upon the novel of the same name by Joseph Kanon The Good German is about an American military journalist (Clooney) covering the Potsdam Conference in post-war Berlin. He is drawn into a murder investigation involving his former mistress (Cate Blanchett) and his driver (Tobey McGuire). That could be the plot of any number of film noirs, but Soderbergh adds in elements that would have made studio boss Harry Warner blush.
His idea was to make a retro film with the increased creative freedom that filmmakers enjoy today. That means nudity, bad language and more overt violence. It’s a more realistic take on the story, but the modern sensibility inserted into this authentic looking black and white noir is jarring. Clooney and Blanchett look like golden age movie stars—she seems to be channeling Dietrich—but behave more like Brat Packers than Rat Packers.
The movie as a whole comes off more as an experiment to please film geeks than mainstream entertainment, but in an age where cookie-cutter movies rule I’ll take one of Soderbergh’s strange (and not entirely successful) experiments any day.
During the most recent Oscars Jon Stewart’s joked, “Two of the movies nominated for this year’s Best Picture are about journalists in a relentless pursuit of the truth… and of course they’re both period pieces.” The films he was referring to were Capote and Good Night, and Good Luck, the latter of which is out on DVD this week in a beautiful black and white transfer.
The story of famed television journalist Edward R. Murrow and his on-air battle with Communist baiting Senator Joe McCarthy which led to McCarthy’s downfall isn’t a biography of either man but a narrowly focused story about the power of television of do good and the rights of the state verses person freedom. Shot through a haze of cigarette smoke this quietly affecting story feels so intimate because of co-writer and director George Clooney’s use of extreme close-ups and the choice to set 99 percent of the film in the smoke clouded CBS television studios in New York. This intimacy slowly turns to paranoia as the film takes on a claustrophobic feel that heightens the paranoia felt by Murrow who feels he is not being supported by the upper CBS brass and McCarthy who sees Communists around every corner.
This fifty-year old story feels amazingly fresh and relevant for today particularly in regard to its views on civil liberties and the existence of an acute socio-political chasm in the United States. Clooney, however, famous for his liberal politics, allows his characters to do the talking, but doesn’t preach. When Murrow says “We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason,” it is completely organic to the story and not necessarily a comment on more recent concerns like the Patriot Act. Clooney does what great directors do, he simply tells the story in a very straightforward way and allows the viewer to draw his or her own conclusions.
Good Night, and Good Luck is good entertainment, well acted by David Strathairn and a solid ensemble cast, but, more importantly is also a cautionary tale. Clooney is subtly reminding us that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, or as Bob Marley said, “if you don’t know your past, you don’t know your future.”
Glory Road: 3 Stars. There are certain clichés that people have come to expect from sports movies; the tense final game which usually goes into overtime and the winner and loser are separated by only one or two points; a gruff but caring coach; the misfit team members. Glory Road features all those and more. Very loosely based on the true story of Texas Western coach Don Haskins, who in 1966, led the first all African-American starting line-up for a college basketball team to an NCAA national championship. It’s a good story and an interesting way to present a story about race relations in 1960s America, but filmmaker James Gartner, under the watchful eye of producer Jerry Bruckheimer, adds too much material to this paint-by-numbers script that is geared to manipulate the audience into feeling inspired. That being said, the basketball sequences are good, and Desperate Housewives fans will get a chance to see Mehcad Brooks in a solid supporting role.
In “The Ides of March,” George Clooney (who also directs) plays a Democratic Party candidate. He’s the kind of guy who would make the top of Bill O’Reilly’s head pop off. He’s pro-ecology, anti-oil. He wants to tax the rich and legalize gay marriage. If he leans any further left he’ll topple over. Although Clooney has spoken out about many of these topics in real life, hasn’t made a left wing fm. Instead he’s made a warts and all political movie.
The movie focuses its story on Stephen Myers (Ryan Gosling), an idealistic campaign manager who will do anything to win, as long as he truly believes in the candidate. He is devoted to Governor Mike Morris (Clooney), a candidate in the Democratic primary. The first hour is spent getting into the campaign, learning the machinations of a big league primary run, the behind the scenes. Clooney sets up the themes of the piece–loyalty, ethics and the hard edge that comes from playing in the bigs–before taking a right turn–story wise, not ideologically–into different territory.
I’m not going to give away the twist, but it is really then that the movie picks up steam. The first hour is good stuff, great acting from Paul Giamatti, and P.S.H. and a fascinating, if occasionally dry look at life in the political fast lane. Then comes the blackmail, the meetings in darkened stairwells and double crossing journalists.
Gosling impresses as he makes his way from idealism to stark realism, and Clooney looks like he was born to sit in an oval office, but it is the supporting cast who really shine.
Giamatti and Hoffman reek of the backroom. They play opponents but are cut from the same cloth, men who are two steps ahead of everybody else in the room.
“The Ides of March” takes a bit too long to get to the game changing moment, but when the acting is this good, it’s worth the wait.
Leatherheads takes us back to 1925 when college football ruled while the allegedly professional players were mostly thugs who played drunk and thought nothing of brawling during regulation play. They were kind of like hockey players only without the sticks.
George Clooney, who also directed the picture, is Dodge Connolly, the over-the-hill captain of the Duluth Bulldogs, a rough and tumble team on the verge of bankruptcy. To increase the team’s popularity he recruits college ball’s most popular player, Princeton’s Carter “The Bullet” Rutherford (The Office’s John Krasinski). Carter isn’t just famous as a ball player, he’s also a war hero who apparently got a whole platoon of Germans to surrender. He the all-American hero, but one Chicago Tribune editor thinks his story is too good to be true and sends impish reporter Lexie “I’m not really the homemaker type” Littleton (Renee Zellweger) to “break the myth of the boy hero.”
As Lexie searches for her story, Carter and Connolly become rivals on the field and for Miss Littleton’s affection.
As a director Clooney nails the period and the conventions of screwball comedy. Taking a page or two from the playbooks of Howard Hawks, George Cukor and Frank Capra, the masters of the madcap genre, Clooney hits most of the right notes. He populates the movie with colorful characters in great looking clothes, sets up a love triangle and even throws in some farce. The movie looks great, touched with a beautiful nostalgic glow and the dialogue is snappy—it’s just too bad the pacing isn’t.
For all its attention to period detail and the splendor of the production design, Leatherheads falls flat, devoid of any of the free-for-all spirit of the rowdy brand of football that is the basis of the story. The cast hands in nice performances—Zellweger’s pouty lips are perfect for the period and Clooney has put away serious George in favor of the pratfalling goofy George—but they are often undone by scenes that last too long. Look up the definition of screwball comedies and you’ll see the word “snappy” used to describe both the pace and the dialogue. Clooney only got it half right.
Marketing wise Leatherheads should have had been a field goal. You have football for the guys and George Clooney for the gals, but despite Clooney’s obvious love for the genre it feels more like an incomplete pass.
“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.
First time director Tony Gilroy is best known for writing the first two Bourne movies. Those scripts crackled with energy and high-wire tension. In Michael Clayton, a new legal drama starring George Clooney, he has dialled back the action but upped the intrigue.
Mixing elements of Erin Brockovich—corporate malfeasance, but without the bustier—and Syrianna, Michael Clayton sees Clooney playing the world weary title character, a lawyer who specializes in damage control.
He is called in to fix a situation involving his firm’s top litigator, Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson), who suffered a nervous breakdown while taking a deposition in a multi-million dollar case. Clayton soon puts two and two together and figures out that Arthur’s mental collapse was triggered by an ethical dilemma.
Feeling that he has not been following his moral compass and perhaps has indirectly had a hand in corporate malfeasance that has led to the death of innocent people, Arthur behaves irrationally and calls himself “Shiva the God of Death.” It’s Clayton’s job to set him back on track.
On the other side of the table is Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton), a corporate lawyer who will do anything to protect her company’s reputation, even if that means breaking the law.
Michael Clayton is about the law, corporate responsibility and the limits to which a person will allow their morals to stretch before conscious kicks in.
Told mostly in flashbacks, Michael Clayton is the kind of socially aware, whistle blowing drama that packed ‘em in during the 1970s but has been largely absent from the multiplexes in recent years, but if anyone can entice audiences to a thriller with more paranoia than thrills it’s Clooney. His trademarked good looks are amply on display—Gilroy takes full advantage of his star, taking every opportunity to fill the screen with Clooney’s face—but this isn’t Danny Ocean, the calm, cool and collected character he played so successfully in the Ocean’s 11 series. Clayton is a conflicted character, a jaded, weak man with more problems than solutions.
Michael Clayton has some story problems—several storylines are left dangling and the end seems a bit too pat, but the three leads—Clooney, Swinton and Wilkinson—hand in great performances and it is a blast to see the great director Sydney Pollock, best known for making movies that unveil abuses of power, playing a grizzled senior litigator who may be a little less than honest.
Ocean’s 13, the third installment of the modish crime comedies, involves an over-the-top casino owner, the giant tool that drilled the Chunnel and George Clooney in very nicely tailored suits. With style to burn and an all-star cast of Hollywood hunks, director Stephen Soderbergh returns to the roots of the franchise after the unfortunate European vacation of Ocean’s 12, unraveling a convoluted but exciting story that’s as smooth as a fine cigar.
Gentlemen thieves Danny Ocean (Clooney) and Rusty Ryan (Brad Pitt) are about to pull off the biggest heist of their careers, but this time they’re not in it for the money. They hatch a plan to avenge their mentor Reuben Tishkoff (Elliott Gould), struck down by a heart attack after being jilted by a business partner. With his Swifty Lazar glasses and trusting nature Rueben allowed himself to be taken for everything he owned by the shifty casino owner Willie Bank (Al Pacino).
Ocean and his henchmen (the 13 of the title) hatch an elaborate plan to crack the uncrackable security system at Bank’s newest casino, taking him for wads of cash, and embarrassing him in the process. All they need to do is fake a natural disaster.
Ocean’s 13 is effortlessly cool, a hipster’s delight of jazzy camera moves, chic colors and a la mode art direction. It looks so great you won’t realize that the cockamamie caper is about as realistic as Don Cheadle’s faux English accent until well after you’ve left the theatre, but that’s OK. If you want to get an inside look at crime and criminals, watch Court TV. This is escapist fun that doesn’t take itself seriously and doesn’t expect you too either.
Ocean’s 13 isn’t about the caper, it’s all about the camaraderie of the actors. It’s all style and little substance; attitude mixed with a dollop of humor to take the edge off and it succeeds in its effortless way in becoming one of the most agreeable movies of the summer.
Syrianna certainly has the most complicated and ambitious movie currently in the theatres. The movie consists of overlapping storylines, a technique director Stephen Gaghan used effectively in his Academy award winning script for Traffic a few years ago. The stories range from the back-room boys in Washington to the men sweating in the oil fields of the Persian Gulf, to a dirty tricks CIA operative to form a political thriller that shows the human consequences of the furious pursuit of wealth and power.
Syrianna has much to recommend it, from George Clooney’s portrayal of a CIA hitman who struggles to find his moral center while those around him seem to be losing theirs to the skilful way that director Gaghan weaves together the complicated story, building up to an unforgettable climax.
Clooney’s is a quiet performance that grows more interesting as we learn more about his character. Little by little we are let into the world of international political dirty tricks and past the steely façade of Clooney’s career CIA agent.
Releasing Syrianna at this time of year when most of the films in the theatres are of the “feel good” variety is a bit of a risk, but it may be a welcome antidote to talking lions, giant apes and dancing Broadway producers.
“Up in the Air,” the third film from director Jason Reitman, takes the best elements from his first two films, “Juno” and “Thank You for Smoking” and molds them into one seamless package.
George Clooney is Ryan Bingham, a high flying “termination engineer” who fires people for a living. Hired by independent companies, he flies from city to city doing the dirty work when it comes to mass lay offs. He’s perfectly suited to the job and with the recent global economic downturn, cousin, business is a boomin’. He’s a road warrior who loves the perks of the job, the air miles—his goal is to hit the 10,000,000 mile mark—the status cards and life in airports. On the road 322 days a year (“That leaves 43 miserable days at home,” he says.) he says all the stuff that people hate about traveling—the recycled air, the artificial light and warm sushi—are the things that remind him that he is home. Other than his job he’s commitment free, other than the odd woman he meets in an airport or hotel bar, like Alex (Vera Farmiga), a fellow road warrior who gets “turned on by Elite status.” His carefully constructed life may come crashing down, however, when his boos (Jason Bateman) hires Nathalie (Anna Kendrick), a know-it-all IT expert who has an idea that may ground him permanently.
It’s possible that George Clooney is the only actor working today who could make Ryan Bingham likeable. He uses every ounce of his considerable charm to make this man who treats commitment like a disease and fires people for a living bearable, much less likeable but he does. If he didn’t the movie wouldn’t work on the level it does, it would simply be a smug (and timely) social satire on how some people have found ways to benefit from the recent economic downturn. Instead it’s a heartfelt portrait of a man who tries his best to isolate himself from the pain and hurt of real life (and his job). Clooney, in what may be his strongest outing yet, combines bravado and vulnerability in one very appealing package.
Jason Reitman has found a balance in style between the heartfelt clarity of “Juno” and the biting satire of “Thank You for Smoking. He’s pitch perfect with the tone, mixing cynical with witty, creating one of the nerviest movies of the year. Opening a comedy about firing people when job market is on red alert takes some stones, but Reitman wisely attacks the subject head on, using vignettes of recently terminated people as a sad comment on the times we live in. Those scenes add some profound emotional heft to the story while Clooney and leading lady Vera Farmiga do the rest with a wonderfully acted relationship between two sharks that leads Bingham to an existential epiphany.
Clooney and Farmiga aren’t the only high fliers in the cast; Anna Kendrick, a young actress best known for her role in Twilight shines as the overly meticulous IT expert who has a thing or two to learn about people.
It’s hard to believe that “Up in the Air” is only Reitman’s third film. It’s the feel bad feel good movie of the year, so self assured, so strong in style and performance that it should get much notice at awards time.
