The Ides Of March
The Ides of March's opening scene packs one helluva punch, and not just because of what's onscreen. As the camera comes into focus and locks in tight on Ryan Gosling's wounded-puppy gaze, you realize that a New Great Director is on the scene, one with technical control and a distinctive mise en scene and a set of urgently important themes that he employs his considerable talents to explore. His name? George Clooney. As Roger Ebert says, directing one good movie proves that you had a good movie in you; directing two proves that you've got a knack for the job. With the one-two punch of Good Night and Good Luck and this stinging political potboiler, the man has passed the test. Welcome to the club, George.
If Clooney the Actor is drawn to moody, tightly wound tales of graceful men cracking under pressure, and Clooney the Director to closely observed, intensely conversational political dramas, it's appropriate that a movie in which he wears both hats fits into both categories. If critics knock it for not saying anything new about the election process, they're on the wrong track; it's an examination, not an expose, a solid, memorable entry in the Good Men Gone Wrong category, like Citizen Kane or Network, a cautionary tale of wide-eyed idealism eroded by the powerful, insistent currents of the status quo. In one corner, we've Gosling's Stephen, running a clean presidential campaign for Mike Morris (Clooney), a former governor running on a platform of hope and change we can believe in (sound familiar?). In the other, there's Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti), playing dirty in hopes of winning his candidate the Democratic presidential primary. It all seems black and white, until two women blur the lines--a shifty Times reporter (Marisa Tomei), and a promiscuous intern (Evan Rachel Wood) with a buried secret. Yes, it's your average shifting-allegiances, talking-heads topical drama, but although you've heard this song before, I doubt if you've ever seen it done by musicians quite this good. This movie might as well be titled "Orgasmic Displays of Good Acting". Every five minutes or so, there's a knockout of a small group scene in which some of the greatest performers of our time light up the screen not with blunt-force overacting, but with subtle, savvy technique. Note that not a single scene in this film features belligerent yelling; it doesn't need to. These actors are so good that they can create a sense of surging suspense and cathartic payoff without ever raising their voices. Gosling in particular scores a triumph, redeeming himself from the miscast mess of Drive. He makes Stephen's struggle with temptation not just palpable but potent and scary--his haunted glances will follow you out of the theater. Wood also breaks out in a big way, laying herself bare and displaying a mournful rawness at odds with her external beauty. Noting that Clooney, Giamatti and Tomei turn in good performances is like pointing out that Mel Gibson has made a few mistakes lately--it just goes without saying. However, it's worth mentioning Phillip Seymour Hoffman's work here. As Stephen's co-worker Paul, a man bent on maintaining honor in an honorless business, he delivers a killer monologue that's the true heart of the picture, and does so with such unforced fervency that you almost lay down your grievances and start to believe in the Big American Government again, if just for a moment. Hoffman's already racked up a career full of memorable moments; this one's my personal favorite.
With a cast like this, what's a director to do? Clooney knows what; step back and let them act. Cannily allowing his experience as a performer to influence his behind the camera style, he favors lingering, carefully composed shots that allow his actors time to really slip into the scene. However, he can move when he needs to; watch how he makes use of an old-fashioned slow zoom during a crucial scene (the one set outside of a van), and think of how any other kind of shot would've killed the suspense. But it isn't just Clooney's know-how that makes his arrival on the directing scene so thrilling; it's his moral fiber. Even when the film's middle section sags, or the script strains a tad too hard for relevance, you don't mind because you're watching the work of a newly risen artist asking important questions, and doing it in a way that provokes the mind and excites the senses. The guy's come a long way since ER. A-.
Paranormal Activity 3
I get a kick out out of well-done horror just as much as the next guy, but well-done horror is just about impossible to find these days. Yes, just about any half-decent slasher flick can jump-start your pulse, but do these movies really chill your blood? Do they follow inside your garage, up your stairs, into your bedroom? No. These stories of spirits and serial killers and demons in the dark startle and disturb, but never truly terrify, because, while childhood shadow-fears are still good for a few goosebumps, they fail to realize that every story of man vs. monster is inextricably linked with something much more terrifying--the conflict between man and his own inner darkness. That's why The Exorcist and The Shining and Alien and Apocalypse Now (a horror movie no matter what it says on the label) linger in the windmills of our minds for years, while we sleep off the Blair Witch Projects of this world in a matter of minutes. Still, there's something to be said for a horror movie that shoots low and hits its target, that cares not for true, insightful terror, but simply endeavors to hang as many well-crafted scares as it can on a paper thin string of plot. Paranormal Activity 3 sets out to achieve this simple task and does so, oh, about 60% of the time. It's not a movie, it's a theme park ride, one that gets in some nifty twists and turns but also goes off the rails just a little too often for it's own good.
The plot of all three Paranormal films can easily be collapsed into a single sentence: a couple of thirtysomethings set up a camera to track some otherwordly force they suspect is prowling 'round the house, and then we watch through the lens as they fall victim to said force. The pros and cons of this format are glaringly obvious; it lends the proceedings a gritty immediacy, but also stipulates that characters sacrifice reason for the sake of narrative. In order to give us anything resembling a cohesive plot, the filmmakers are contractually obligated to create characters with the IQ of a slow lori, people so stupid that they prize getting the right camera angle over snatching their beloved from the grip of death or what have you. PA3 bypasses this problem by putting budding videographer Dennis (Christopher Nicholas Smith) at the center of the story. It's a clever idea, and co-directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman (Catfish) have some deliciously freaky fun with it, especially in the film's mid-section. As he and his wife (Lauren Bittner) try to pin down whatever's going in the kids' room, Dennis's idiosyncratic methods of surveillance grow more and more ingenious--he uses mirrors, wide-angle lenses, and, in a particularly memorable setpiece, a fan that allows for constant panning and scanning. Like all good suspense scenes, these have a palpable something's-off tingle--you could know exactly what was going to happen and still get goosebumps from the infectiously eerie mise en scene. Here it is, I thought to myself, a voyeuristic picture that successfully overcame the constraints that plague such films. Nope. Having played a steady game of sturm und drang for about an hour, Joost and Schulman forfeit their hand with a finale so batshit insane that no human being, no matter how deluded, would film it. There are ninety-year old murderers running around and levitating bodies and bloodied corpses and all manner of genuinely creepy images, and all we can think is I'm really glad Dennis's camera hasn't run out of battery. I'm all for suspension of disbelief, but the messy final act practically asks the viewer to shoot disbelief in the head and then flee the scene. The sad thing is, there's a genuinely scary climax here when you factor out the "found footage" angle. And so the very gimmick that puts asses in seats to see Paranormal Activity 3 is also it's Achilles heel.
One of the (small) joys of the picture is watching Joost and Schulman make a confident transition from documentary filmmaking to genre work. These guys clearly know how to craft a confident piece of mainstream entertainment. But with good talent comes great responsibility, and, while the directors certainly know their way around a jump scene, they also seem incapable of refraining from cheap shots. One prankster jumping out in a monster mask is no biggie, but a false scare every ten minutes, combined with jump cuts straight out of a 90's music video, is pushing it. For some, this won't be an issue; a scare is a scare, no matter how it's presented. But that's just a tad worrisome; movies put us in an altered state the way (I'm assuming) good drugs do, and so we ought to be awful picky about the quality of the product we're being sold. Nonetheless, while we shy away from bad comedy or drama, but, for whatever reason, mediocre horror movies have become something of an addiction for us; we know the effect will be half-decent at best, but every Halloween season we start using again out of pure habit. It's about time we whip out some of the oldies-and-goodies and remind ourselves that, right now, we're settling for horror pictures that lack morals, and, even worse, often even lack the technique to do amorality right. And that's the true terror. C.
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