In 1997 there was no YouTube, no Facebook, no Twitter.
There were message boards, email, websites, maybe some very early blogs, but
the dissemination of information and access to reports, accounts, and
testimonials, for all that we thought at the time was lightning fast, was
nothing compared to today. This thought occurred to me while revisiting Wag the Dog, Barry Levinson’s
seventeen-year old film about an invented war fed to the media to distract the
public from a Presidential sex scandal two weeks before he hopes to be
reelected. In it, Robert De Niro plays Conrad Brean, a kind of independently
contracted fixer brought into the White House by Winifred Ames (Anne Heche) to
help clean up the mess and potential fallout once the story breaks. So Conrad
enlists the help of Stanly Motss (Dustin Hoffman), a big Hollywood producer, to
put the pieces in place to sell not just a war, but a whole package and all the
emotions and patriotic fervor that come with it, to the public.
A blog mostly dedicated to cinema (including both new and old film reviews; commentary; and as the URL suggests - movie lists, although it has been lacking in this area to be honest), but on occasion touching on other areas of personal interest to me.
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
Monday, September 1, 2014
From My Collection: A Beautiful Mind Movie Review
The Academy has a great history of awarding the Best
Picture Oscar to a generally lifeless, inoffensive work of
mediocrity. I can hardly say that A
Beautiful Mind is not a good movie (I regrettably put it on my top ten list
for 2001), but it certainly isn’t great. It’s not even particularly memorable
except in its simplistic depiction of mental illness.
I can’t say with any certainty to what degree John Nash
suffered with schizophrenia or how it manifested itself, but I do know that the
way Akiva Goldsman incorporates it into his screenplay, based on the biography
by Sylvia Nasar, seems almost preposterous, designed specifically to aid the
unsubtle viewer in understanding what Nash was going through. I guess I
shouldn’t fault the movie for trying to reach a broader audience, but nor
should we assume that it has anything new or interesting to say on the subject.
From My Collection: Good Will Hunting Movie Review
Good Will Hunting
was the first in a series of roles Robin Williams took that became increasingly
dark, subversive, and at times questioning the very nature of our existence. It’s
easy to see patterns in retrospect and ascribe meaning to them, but I remember
it being clear at the time that Williams seemed intent on making a serious mark
as a dramatic actor in a range of parts in (often) independent films. The years
following Good Will Hunting saw him
chase his suicidal wife into limbo as his character negotiated his own
afterlife in What Dreams May Come.
Later he was the villain in both One Hour
Photo and Insomnia. But a lot of
that seems to point right back to Gus Van Sant’s 1997 film penned by the
wunderkinds Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Of course the Oscar Williams finally
won likely helped earn him more interesting offers and afforded him greater
freedom to take risks. But without Sean Maguire, the widowed psychiatrist who
helps the title character find himself, he might have continued making more of Hook and Mrs. Doubtfire.
Key Largo Movie Review
Lauren Bacall wasn’t a great actress. This much I’ve
learned from watching the four films she made with Humphrey Bogart. But she was
a great movie star. She had tremendous screen presence and could practically
make the tough Bogart roll over and beg. In Key
Largo, their final film together, although I didn’t tally the minutes, I
would venture to say they share more screen time than in any other of their
previous three outings.
Key Largo was
based on a now obscure stage play by Maxwell Anderson about a WWII veteran who
runs afoul of a once-notorious mafia kingpin while passing through the Florida
Keys and spending time with the family of a slain war buddy. The action is very
dialogue heavy, a lot of it indoors in various settings around a hotel mostly
closed for the off season. It’s not the most expressive film for a John
Huston-directed picture, but he makes the most out of the cramped settings.
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