Tag Archives: biopics

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Trickier Dick

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Vice

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

Remember when the Vice President of the United States shot some guy in the face, and then the guy with the snoot full of buckshot apologized to the V.P. for all the trouble? That really happened!

When did the upper reaches of the Executive Branch go so brazenly corrupt, so treasonously, moronically, dumpster-fire-with-a-spray-tan wrong?

It’s not as recent as you think.

With Vice, writer/director Adam McKay remembers a time long before moronic presidential tweet storms, when the quiet, steady rise of a ruthless power broker rewrote American politics and changed the course of history.

V.P. Dick Cheney was often thought of as the de facto decision-maker in George W. Bush’s presidency, and McKay uses absurdist humor and a spellbinding cast to give that line of thinking a more weighty focus.

Christian Bale is characteristically flawless as Cheney. With added girth from (according to Bale) “eating pies” and the trademark Burgess-Meredith -as-the-Penguin speech pattern, the physical transformation alone is astounding. But it is the way Cheney’s cut throat ambition, scorched-earth power grabs and soulless devotion to ideology contrasted with his familial tenderness that Bale articulates so astutely.

Because of, or perhaps in spite of, his legacy, Cheney is a fascinating figure, and Bale makes that fact endlessly resonate.

But fittingly, Vice‘s secret weapon is Amy Adams as Cheney’s wife Lynne who commands the screen as equally as Bale. In a performance full of subtle power of ferocity, Adams casts Mrs. Cheney as a pivotal and equally ambitious partner in Cheney’s climb, publicly lessening his weakness as a politician and privately demanding his allegiance to their plan.

Bale and Adams anchor an utterly glorious ensemble (including Sam Rockwell as “W” and Steve Carrell as a dead ringer for Donald Rumsfeld) that—with the help of McKay’s blistering script and wise direction—utilizes comedy to inform, illustrate, and act as an outlet for the otherwise soul-blackening disgust one might carry around with them concerning the American political system.

In 2015, after a slew of directorial successes including Anchorman, Talladega Nights and Step Brothers, McKay redefined the term “filmmaker Adam McKay” with the blistering, cynical, hilarious, informative and angry The Big Short.

In an act of all out heroism or masochism, McKay did all he could to help us understand the housing collapse with that film. He so understood his material (dry) and his audience (confused/disinterested) that he would cut away periodically to let a bubble-bath-soaking Margot Robbie explain a bit of vocabulary.

It was perhaps his way of saying: This is really important, guys. Pay attention!

Turns out, McKay is just as pissed off about the polluting of American politics, with his conspicuous outrage and biting comic sensibilities again proving to be powerful fuel.

From the film’s false ending and sudden Shakespearean detour to the unapologetic face-shooting, Vice has a definite “can you believe this shit?” air about it, a nod to the need to laugh so you won’t start crying.

Thanks to McKay and his tremendous cast, you might just do both.

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Writers Unblocked

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Can You Ever Forgive Me?

by Hope Madden

People forget that Melissa McCarthy was nominate for an Oscar. It’s a stiff year for female leads, but she might just nab another nom for her turn as a misanthropic writer in the true story, Can You Ever Forgive Me?

A one-time best seller, author Lee Israel (McCarthy) is feeling her shelf life. Unwilling to conform to any kind of expectations—particularly those placed on females in the publishing industry—she finds herself facing the reality that no one wants a book on Fanny Brice, and no one wants a book by Lee Israel.

McCarthy’s socially inept and down-on-her-luck biographer sits in a dingy bar midday, drinking away her unemployability, her cat’s illness and her writer’s block when in beams a boozy ray of sunshine disguised as upbeat alcoholic hustler Jack Hock (Richard E. Grant).

It’s here that director Marielle Heller’s film hits its stride. McCarthy’s energy, her dimples and her infectious good nature have buoyed any number of mediocre films. But here, she carves a low key, solitary figure unable and unwilling to open up. It’s a fascinating about-face for McCarthy.

Set Israel’s curmudgeonliness against the unbridled zeal and charm Grant brings to his character, and a compelling odd-couple-on-the-skids is born.

To pay her bills and exercise her talent, Israel begins forging letters from literary icons and selling those forgeries at bookshops across New York. The wondrous respect this film has for writers, for the written and spoken word, and the nostalgia it has for a past when those elements were likewise revered generates a lovely, literary atmosphere.

Co-writer Nicole Holofcener again subverts ideas of entitlement and self-destruction with a screenplay so full of empathy it’s impossible to dislike the deeply unpleasant Israel.

A great deal of that success, of course, comes from McCarthy’s authenticity. The performance is nuanced and understated, as is the entire film, and aching of self-inflicted loneliness. She creates an believable and yet unusual character—one who embarks on a deeply strange yet somehow fitting journey.

The story of Lee Israel offers a weirdly optimistic if cautionary tale for misfit women. It’s also a great reminder that Melissa McCarthy can really act.

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Everything Except Temptation

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The Happy Prince

by Hope Madden

“Why does one run toward ruin? Why does it hold such fascination?”

Oscar Wilde, by way of writer/star Rupert Everett, wonders these potent lines partway through The Happy Prince, director Everett’s biopic of the infamous decadent/undeniable genius.

Everett’s tale flashes backward and forward but mainly focuses on the period between Wilde’s 1897 release from prison and his death in 1900. A rather bleak time in a very rich and colorful life, but Everett’s execution never forgets the heights, and his performance is haunted with the fall.

Upon his release, Wilde finds support with sometime lover and literary agent Robert Ross (Edwin Thomas) and writer/friend Reginald Turner (Colin Firth – delightful, especially when his character is not the focus of a scene). But Wilde cannot or will not deny his desire for Alfred “Bosie” Douglas (Colin Morgan).

It is a perfect vehicle for a film that lays bare this particular genius and that rumination on running toward ruin. Only a few years earlier, Wilde’s ego required recompense from his lover’s father, who’d libeled him. Wilde’s suit, however, only uncovered his own then-illegal dalliances and instead of recompense he found himself facing hard labor.

And yet, even with emotional support from his friends and financial support from his wife jeopardized by the decision, Wilde joyously takes Bosie back and the two travel to Naples to misbehave.

Everett’s film more than forgives Wilde’s wildness, though it doesn’t go so far as to fully admire it. His lead performance is colored by an understanding of the difference between living lustily when you have everything, and when all that you once had is forever out of reach.

As a writer and director, Everett tries too hard to use Wilde’s short story The Happy Prince to create a running metaphor, perhaps suggesting that Wilde’s end, like the story’s, reaches transcendence. It’s a tough sell, passing off the short’s image of voluntary self-sacrifice as analogous to Wilde’s fall from grace.

Otherwise, though, the first-time filmmaker delivers a vision edged with the melancholy of a brilliant mind never again able to see the world as bountiful and beautiful. It’s as touching as it is resonant, and nothing in The Happy Prince articulates this tragedy as beautifully as Everett’s performance.

It’s a performance simultaneously full of life and of death. You see the enormous loss, but more than that, the deflating ugliness of this world etched on Everett’s face, echoing in his every gesture.

Everett’s instincts behind the camera come as a nice surprise. With more than 70 acting credits to judge by—many of them quite fine, some even awards contenders—the real surprise is that he had this performance in him.

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If You Believed

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First Man

by Hope Madden

We’ve seen a lot of movies about astronauts, loads of sometimes great films about the US space race and the fearlessness of those involved. Director Damien Chazelle’s First Man is something different.

Chazelle strips away the glamour and artifice, the bombast and spectacle usually associated with films of this nature. His vision is raw and visceral, often putting you in the moon boots of the lead, but never quite putting you inside his head.

The director’s La La Land lead Ryan Gosling plays Neil Armstrong in this biopic of the first human being to set foot on the lunar surface. It’s another of Gosling’s impressive turns: reserved, with an early vulnerability that hardens over time to a protective stoicism.

A no-frills Claire Foy plays Armstrong’s wife Janet, and the characters the two actors carve share a bristly chemistry that adds to the film’s committed authenticity. It also provides some kind of emotional center for the story.

Chazelle’s observational, unhurried style doesn’t draw attention to the drama. There is nothing showy about this film. That understatement allows the most startling, horrifying and awe-inspiring moments their own power. The approach also quietly reminds you of the escalating pressures shouldered by Armstrong as he and NASA faced tragedy after tragedy in the name of space exploration.

Gosling shares screentime with an enormous and talented ensemble boasting many fine performances and just as many welcome surprises. Though most roles are very small, Shea Wigham, Jason Clarke and Corey Stoll stand out.

Stoll, playing a socially obtuse Buzz Aldrin, offers an enjoyable foil to Gosling’s composed Armstrong, sparking one of the film’s only real grins.

Though Gosling’s distant performance and Chazelle’s near-verite style mirror Armstrong’s increasingly walled-off psyche, it becomes difficult to connect with characters. First Man deposits you inside the action but keeps you at arm’s length from Neil Armstrong.

As gritty and unpolished as the film is, Chazelle never loses his sense of wonder. The jarring quiet, the stillness and vastness are captured with reverence and filmed beautifully.

Those images of silent awe are as stirring as anything you will see, but it’s the visceral, queasying and claustrophobic moments underscoring the death-defying commitment to the cause that will shake you up.

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Snapped

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Colette

by Christie Robb

Emotional, entitled, white men seem omnipresent these days. They’re on the news. They’re on social media. They’re on the big screen. At least with the biopic Colette, they are confined to an historical period safely a century behind us.

Colette gives us the origin story of French novelist Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (Keira Knightley), a Madonna-like figure of the early 1900s who emerged from a small provincial village to become the toast of Paris, reinventing herself over the years as a novelist, mime, actress and journalist.

She wrote frankly about women’s independence, sexuality and aging. She sparked a riot at the Moulin Rouge in 1907 when she performed a lesbian love scene in a pantomime. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. She wrote the book Gigi, which was adapted for the stage where she personally selected a then-unknown Audrey Hepburn for the leading role in 1951. The book then became an MGM musical that won nine Academy Awards in 1958 (including Best Picture). When she died, Colette was the first woman in France to be given a state funeral.

But before all that, Colette married a bully named Willy (Dominic West). Over a decade her senior, Willy was a popular writer who put out music reviews, stories and novels. Quite a bit were written by other people in a factory system where Willy provided the brand, but others produced the work. He compelled his wife to join the team, asking her to mine her childhood experiences so he could publish them under his name. Once the Claudine books became popular, he would lock Colette in a room until he was satisfied she had written enough.

The movie tells the story of Colette’s time with Willy and traces an arc from her awkward introduction into Paris salon society to an eventual break with the abusive hack and first steps toward an independent life.

Knightly is masterful inhabiting the multifaceted Colette, using her eyes to hint at the hurt she’s experiencing while wielding a bold bravado as a shield in her constant verbal fencing matches with her husband. West presents as a believable blowhard—initially charming, then volatile, narcissistic, abusive, and ultimately self-pitying, sniveling and weak.

Given the breadth of Colette’s life and its many acts, it makes sense that director Wash Westmoreland would focus on a distinct part of it. However, because of his desire to give screen time to so many of the big Personalities of the Belle Époque and to keep the focus squarely on the time period of the Colette/Willy relationship, the movie seems simultaneously thinly-sketched and agonizingly long. With so much of the movie involving Colette being shit on, the movie verges on indignity porn. How much can this woman take, before she snaps?

But when she snaps…it’s so good. Oscar-bait good.

Given this week, I’d have vastly preferred it if more of the movie had focused on the glorious and adventurous life Colette led after she dumped Willy and struck out on her own. But, even so, it’s a story of liberation and the claiming of a woman’s power. Something that’s needed.

I just hope there’s a sequel.

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Hellhound on My Trail

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Blaze

by George Wolf

Outlaw country musician Blaze Foley lived too hard and died too young, a life so steeped in cultish mystery that even the director of his biopic believed an urban legend about what led to Foley’s tragic death.

Ethan Hawke, who also co-wrote the film with Foley’s ex-wife Sybil Rosen, presents Blaze’s story with respectful grace and an observational tone that moves casually but cuts deeply. Seemingly drawing inspiration from frequent collaborator Richard Linklater (who has a cameo role in the film), Hawke’s directing style is unassuming and unhurried, mining resonance from small moments that define his subject.

It seems cosmically right that a virtual unknown singer-songwriter, Ben Dickey, plays Foley, who may be best known to mainstream country fans as the writer behind songs recorded by artists such as Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett, and John Prine.

Dickey, who was working as a chef when Hawke offered him the role, is a revelation. Though more physically imposing than the real Foley, Dickey reveals the demons that frequently bested Blaze, pushing him to sabotage his relationship with Sybil (Alia Shawkat-also stellar) as well as his chances at big-time music business success.

With music such a big part of the film, Hawke’s decision to present it in its live, raw glory reaps big dividends.

Dickey mimics Blaze’s phrasing, picking and rambling onstage persona to eerie perfection, getting an impressive assist from Charlie Sexton as fellow troubadour Townes Van Zandt. Sexton (who had an 80s hit with “Beats So Lonely,” has been Bob Dylan’s guitarist for years and appeared alongside Hawke in Boyhood) gives the film solid layers of reference as the drawling Van Zandt charms a radio DJ (Hawke) with stories of Blaze, the little-known legend.

From dreaming of stardom while riding in a truck bed, to antagonizing barroom audiences, to a visit with Blaze’s once-abusive, now senile father (Kris Kristofferson), sequence after sequence rings more organic and true than most found in music biopics.

It’s clear this a passion project for Hawke (and, of course, for Rosen), who is smart enough not to let that passion interfere with authenticity. Blaze gives Foley the re-birth he clearly earned – as a conflicted, damaged soul longing to be heard.

 

 

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40 Whacks

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Lizzie

by Hope Madden

Screenwriter Bryce Kass has some interesting thoughts on the case of Lizzie Borden, the American woman suspected in the 1892 ax murders of her father and stepmother. In director Craig William Macneill’s hands, those intriguing ideas receive a proper, historical treatment.

Whether they have merit or not is mainly beside the point.

Lizzie (Chloe Sevigny) was a spinster of 32 when her parents died. She was home at the time, as was the family’s Irish immigrant servant, Bridget Sullivan (Kristen Stewart).

The film does not create a whodunit atmosphere, instead painting a historically realistic picture of some of the details that may have driven Borden to commit the crimes—likelihoods that wouldn’t have been considered in 1892 and have, therefore, rarely been taken into account over the years.

The struggle facing a single woman—economic and otherwise—is handled throughout this film with a desperate grace that elevates most scenes. Sevigny’s wily, lonesome outsider role plays to her strong suit. She shows here, as she did in 2016’s Love & Friendship, a capacity with the delicate language of the entitled.

Kristen Stewart continues to impress, even with a brogue. Yes, she is again morose, conflicted and put-upon, so maybe her range isn’t as strong as I’m suggesting, but she really knows her niche.

The way Macneill and Kass piece together the well-known pieces to this puzzle, this time considering how each may impact and be impacted by the fact that Lizzie was an unmarried woman, is consistently compelling.

Do the filmmakers take their somewhat subversive approach a step further than necessary, moving from honest if overlooked likelihood to vague possibility to “are they doing this just to be lurid”?

They do.

It doesn’t sink the film, though, mainly because Stewart and Sevigny commit to the direction and keep it from feeling exploitive. Plus, it is a fresh and believable take on a very old, oft-told story, so that counts for something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwgtDHISXtQ

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Hot Wheels

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Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot

by Hope Madden

In case you are missing it, Joaquin Phoenix is having one hell of a year. The inarguable talent is fresh off the relentlessly wonderful You Were Never Really Here (watch it right now!). Later this year we’ll get the chance to see him in Mary Magdalene as well as Jacques Audiard’s Western, The Sisters Brothers—both films boasting extraordinary casts.

Sandwiched in between his turns as gun-for-hire (YWNRH) and Jesus (MM), the clearly versatile actor portrays cartoonist John Callahan in Gus Van Sant’s biopic Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot.

Portland-based Callahan used creating cartoons as an outlet for his frustration, creativity and humor following a car accident that left him paralyzed. His simple visual style (both arms and hands were badly compromised by the paralysis) and his dark, taboo-driven humor found favor and protest in his hometown newspaper.

Phoenix charms and breaks hearts in equal measure as Callahan. What the actor conveys in breathtaking fashion is discovery. After Callahan’s accident and through his fleeting moments of clear-headedness, the character affords Phoenix many opportunities to recognize, accomplish or notice things for the first time. His interaction with an adorably saucy sex therapist, for instance, is pure joy.

His is not the only wonderful performance in the film. Jonah Hill effortlessly conveys a wearied tenderness that reminds you how truly talented an actor he is. Jack Black has a small but gloriously Jack Black role, and the AA group (Udo Kier, Beth Ditto, Mark Webber, Kim Gordon and Ronnie Adrian) offer rich and interesting characters regardless of their minimal screen time.

Rooney Mara, on the other hand, seems like she’s acting in an entirely different film. I fully expected her character to be a figment of Callahan’s imagination, pulled intact from another movie.

Van Sant bounces back from a creative lull (The Sea of Trees, anyone?), showing, among other things, his remarkable knack for period detail.

And while the 12-step structure feels both too stifling and too familiar for such an irreverent central figure, Van Sant bursts through that frame with a non-chronological series of vignettes and wild antics. As the film progresses, step by dutiful step, Van Sant fills gaps with quick jumps back and forth through drunken episodes and pivotal moments.

As interesting and entertaining as these flashes are, the chaotic lack of chronology fits so poorly with the rigid timeline of the film around it that the whole feels like an experiment gone wrong.

But so much of the film goes very, very right—thanks in large part to another award-worthy performance by Phoenix.

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WTF

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LBJ

by Hope Madden

This is Spinal Tap. Stand By Me. The Princess Bride. When Harry Met Sally. Misery. A Few Good Men.

What does that list say? That director Rob Reiner came out of the gates as a filmmaker who defined a generation. And also, that director Rob Reiner hasn’t made a good movie since the mid-Nineties.

LBJ does not turn that tide.

Reiner directs Woody Harrelson as our 36th president, a larger-than-life Southerner as crass as he was cunning, as charming as he was quarrelsome.

Maybe he just wanted to be loved.

I’m not kidding—that seems to be the thrust of Reiner’s film, written for the screen by Joey Hartstone. His script covers a window in Johnson’s career opening at his failed bid for the presidency and closing as he helps a mourning nation recover from the assassination of JFK.

Harrelson—as fine a character as you will find—relishes every second inside this conundrum of ego and insecurity. His scenes are riveting, particularly those he shares with another character actor of the highest order, Richard Jenkins. Jenkins portrays Georgia Senator Richard Russell, conservative and racist. The sparring between the two politicians, so ably brought to life by these talented actors, gives the film a sense of purpose as it sheds light on the true nature of Johnson’s character.

But the rest of it is bullshit.

Beautifully lit, clean-cut men looking earnest and overwhelmed, ask “How is he going to do all of it?” and receive the awe-struck answer, “The same way he always does.”

Aside from Harrelson and Jenkins, the ensemble is unable to rise far enough above Hardstone’s superficial writing and Reiner’s sentimental direction to leave a mark.

So Lyndon Baines Johnson, who pushed the Civil Rights Act through the Senate and mired us in the Vietnam War, is being remembered onscreen for pouting because the good looking rich kids who took over the White House wouldn’t let him in their clique?

It’s a shame Woody and LBJ couldn’t have taken their excellent collaboration to a better production.

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Welcome

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Jungle

by Hope Madden

It is hard to go wrong with a story as viscerally affecting as that of Yossi Ghinsberg, an Israeli who took a year off from his life to seek adventure. He found it in the Jungle.

Beautifully portrayed by Daniel Radcliffe, Yossi heads to Bolivia where he befriends Swiss schoolteacher Marcus (Joel Jackson) and American photographer Kevin (Alex Russell).

Director Greg McLean (Wolf Creek) invests a good chunk of Jungle in letting us get to know this amiable, romantic trio—searching souls that seek some kind of connection with nature, humanity and life.

They find something that may be too good to be true when Yossi meets the mysterious jungle guide Karl (a wonderful Thomas Kretschmann). Together the foursome head into uncharted territories in search of lost tribes, rivers full of gold and other wonders not found on the typical tourist to-do list.

You know what they say about things that sound too good to be true.

Frustrations run high, mercy runs low, faith in leadership wanes, and eventually, an accident separates Ghinsberg from the group. He is on his own to survive the jungle, starvation, delirium, and one nasty, squirmy head wound.

Adapting Ghinsberg’s autobiography, screenwriter Justin Monjo sticks to highlights, which gives the film an artificiality it never fully shakes. McLean’s camera embraces both the overpowering beauty of the extreme environment as well as its shadowy, jagged, sometimes toothy menace. He just needs to learn when to leave it alone.

Speaking of alone, Radcliffe spends about 1/3 of the film on his own. For anyone still wondering whether Harry Potter can act, this film should set aside all doubt. Radcliffe is a natural fit for deeply decent characters, and his expressive face helps him communicate an enormous amount of unspoken content.

He’s great, as is the story and the balance of the cast. It’s just the writer and director who let us down from time to time.

Jungle is at its worse when McLean shows how little faith he has in his material and his audience, leaning on emotional manipulation and an almost oppressively leading score to ensure we are getting his point.

There are other questionable decisions, like the dream sequences, which offer little to the film besides the opportunity to objectify the few—all lovely, all nameless—women who grace the screen.

Jungle is, if nothing else, a powerful testament to Daniel Radcliffe’s potency as an actor. It’s also an unbelievable story, and Radcliffe’s performance ensures your keen interest regardless of McLean’s antics.