Moneyball

Baseball, as a sport, is so accessible and yet so rich in malleable complexity that it's easy to imagine it having been created by a Harvard dropout and called Faceball. Both the game's accessibility and complexity are on display in Bennett Miller's excellent film Moneyball. The film is based on the 2003 book by Michael Lewis, which explored a new model used by the financially disadvantage Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane to hire and field a winning team. Because the film is so layered, I chose to view it as not only an exegesis of America's favorite pastime but as a treatment of our seemingly chronic inability to let go of the familiar. Brad Pitt as Beane and Jonah Hill as Beane's Yale-educated numbers cruncher / new world visionary are truly splendid and their scenes together are finely crafted, thanks to scriptwriters Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian. One particularly terrific scene has Pitt and Hill juggling player trades so hilariously and adroitly I was reminded of the work of Hope and Crosby, Abbott and Costello, Martin and Lewis. Lovers of baseball might not love this film, but as a motion picture, Moneyball hits a homerun ... and is blessedly free of sports cliches.

The Wire Season 1 Episode 9: Game Day

The Wire Season 1 Episode 9: Game Day. The creators of The Wire clearly loved this show and all of its people, but they appeared to love some characters more than others because of the generosity they showed to them. Proposition Joe Stewart, the portly and predatory kingpin on Baltimore's Eastside, is given many singularly hilarious (and chilling) moments and lines during the series' run. The character is introduced in this episode, Game Day, as Avon Barksdale's competition. A sparkling metaphor for The Game of the drug trade, the basketball match up is rigged, of course, because neither man wants to play fair, only to win. When Joe takes the game, and $100,000, of Avon's money with a ringer, he's signalling to viewers that he's a force to be reckoned with. His appearances, which are often brief but terrific, are to be savored and studied.

Favorite Prop Joe line? Joe to stick-up boy Omar Little: "You ever steal from me, I'll kill your whole family." Joe to Nicky Sobotka (Season Two) after agreeing to repay Nicky for Joe's nephew's dirty dealings: "Fool, if it wasn't for Sergei here, you and your cousin would be some cadaverous motherfuckers." Genius.

The Wire Season 1 Episode 8: Lessons

The Wire Season 1, Episode 8: Lessons. Det. Jimmy McNulty is a terrific police officer but a wreck in nearly every other aspect of his life. He's a manipulative co-worker, an unfaithful husband, and a clueless, though not unloving, father. Episode 8 opens with McNulty setting his young sons on the trail of the Barksdale drug operation's second-in-command Stringer Bell, with whom McNulty is, understandably, obsessed. While his sons conduct a front-and-follow on Bell, McNulty loses the boys in the mall. The scene fades to the opening credits while McNulty stands helplessly by as mall security page his boys over the intercom. Later in the episode, as McNulty recounts the event to his buddy Det. Bunk Moreland, he voices no regret at involving his boys in the escapade. In fact, he brags about it. Bunk is unimpressed.
Dominic West is ostensibly the star of the series and it's no mystery why. He's a wonderful actor and his character is central to all that transpires in the first season, though the argument could be made McNulty was eclipsed by other characters in later seasons. In the first episode of the series, David Simon establishes McNulty as the catalyst for the creation of the special detail that led ot the surveillance of the Barksdale crew and revived many of his colleague's stagnant careers and stanched their cynicism. Still, it's McNulty's outsized personality and his seemingly bottomless capacity for self-pity that makes him such a delightful character to watch, cheer for and occasionally to disparage.

Warrior

Gavin O'Connor's Warrior is not a great film but it is a truly fine picture that strikes all the right chords and has an indominatable spirit at its core, much like its numerous pugilistic predecessors (from Stallone's Rocky to Russell's The Fighter). Yes, it's a stand-up cheer kind of affair but it's also thoughtful and poignant. The story is set in the crazy world of high stakes mixed martial arts caged competitions (of which I'm blissfully unfamilar) and revolves around the fractured relationship between two estranged brothers (the beefcake pinup duo of Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton) and their formerly alcoholic father (a terrific Nick Nolte). Needless to say, bitterness and regret fuels a lot of the fighting -- in and out of the ring. All three of the leads are fine as is Jennifer Morrison (House's Dr.Cameron), who plays the anxious but supportive wife of Edgerton's character. The film tracks the brother and their opponents as they move toward the predictable but tremendously entertaining last act in Atlantic City. O'Connor masterfully builds into the middle of the picture a split-screen montage of separate storylines as the brothers train for the $5,000,000 tourney. It's a super piece of film editing. Interestingly, and commendably, for a truly engagng film about fighting there's precious little blood spilled in Warrior.

Drive

There is so much beauty in Nicholas Winding Refn's film "Drive" that it comes close to being a work of art. It's beautifully conceptualized (the many interiors are almost tableaux), beautifully paced (it's slow but not languorous; it's deliberate, thoughtful and meaningful), beautifully acted (star Gosling has always been a prodigiously talented actor and Albert Brooks's Brooksian pacing and delivery are oddly perfectly pitched for his role as a menacing gangster). The film is exhausting and brutal and mesmerizing and not to be missed.

Contagion

Steven Soderbergh's crackerjack thriller Contagion is a film without a star but that's not to say it's starless. In fact, the movie is brimming with Hollywood A-listers -- Damon, Cotillard, Law, Winslet, Fishburne, Paltrow, Gould -- all of whom play characters are waging individual battles against a worldwide killer virus that appears to be spread through touch. Soderbergh has an uncanny gift for narrative, and having a large cast and a half-dozen cities doesn't detract from this story's clarity or urgency. I don't know what we're to make of the story's indictment of a number of governmental and quasi-governmental agency and human selfishness, but knowing Soderberg, I'm pretty sure the bottom line is if we would only stop being asses we might make it out of this alive.

The Wire Season 1 Episode 7: One Arrest

The Wire Season 1 Episode 7: One Arrest. Andre Royo's Bubbles is, like the rogue Robin Hood Omar Little, an  intriguing dramatic invention, and I suspect maybe the character is rooted in a real person the show's creator David Simon knew as a reporter at the Baltimore Sun. Bubbles has a pitiful drug habit but, strangely, he seems to rise above pity because his kindness and generosity are ennobling. In Episode 7, Bubbles asks Greggs to get his friend Johnny out of the clink and together Bubbles and Johnny go to an N.A. meeting, part of the parole deal, where Bubbles meets Walon (played by rocker Steve Earle). In one of the most affecting scenes in the first season, Bubbles rises from his seat when the call is issued to anyone wanting to live to come forward. Bubbles does so, gets the hug and the key ring and returns to his seat. His face -- one of the most interesting of all of the cast members in the series -- reads "ambivalence," "uncertainty," and "fear." It's a truly touching moment.

The Wire Season 1, Episode 6: The Wire

The Wire Season 1 Episode 6: The Wire. The episode that shared the series' title is exceptional. It opens with the battered and sadistically tortured body of the stick-up boy Brandon laid out on the hood of an abandoned automobile behind project tenements. The camera moves from that horrifying display to the squalid apartment in which the young yard boys Wallace and Pout and a half-dozen school-age children live and are preparing for the day. In a scene of brilliant economy, writer/creator David Simon and episode director Ed Bianchi establish Wallace's gentle spirit and his extraordinary, parental care of the "hoppers" who are also victims of Barksdale's predatory organization. This episode belongs to Wallace, from first to last. It's the expression on his youthful face as he stares at Brandon's discarded body that seals the viewers' emotional investment in this young man and in his fate. In many ways, Wallace becomes emblematic of what's at stake.

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark

I left just before the end of Troy Nixey's "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" because my annoyance meter had been pinging in the red zone for about an hour and I just couldn't take it anymore.

I feel a little crummy about trashing the movie because the young actress at the center of the film, Bailee Madison (Brothers), is such a trouper and I kinda wanted to see it through but then I thought "Nah. Life is entirely too short." I gave Miss Madison major props for holding her own in Jim Sheridan's "Brothers" (2009), a solid film that starred Tobey McGuire, Natalie Portman and Jake Gyllenhaal. In "Dark" Balee is opposite Katie Holmes and Guy Pearce, neither of whom seems to care about the film or their roles in it. I'd heard about actors phoning in their performances but I don't recall ever seeing it done so blatantly. I felt really sorry for young Bailee, not only was she being tortured by greedy little photophobic demons but she was having to carry the whole film on her small back.

But that wasn't even the most irritating bit in the film. I'm wary of films that begin with fearsome epilogues that give you the feeling they're probably scarier than anything in the rest of the movie, or that feature self-medicating 8-year-olds, or a father who introduces his fiancee to the daughter by the woman's first name, or a fiancee who buys a talking bear for the 8-year-old because you know animated stuffed critters are demon magnets, or a caretaker who when asked how he got nearly hacked to bits down in the basement sends said fiancee to the library to look up a book, or the presence of a Polaroid camera with flashbulbs.

But my main beef is the film's title. It's total BS because the entire premise of the film is there is some really bad shit going on in the dark. Don't bother.

Our Idiot Brother

The idiocy of the title of Jesse Peretz's clever little film is an ironic guilelessness that sets our hero, Ned, played by the always entertaining Paul Rudd, apart from nearly every other adult human on the planet ... which might explain why animals and children adore him. The story's premise is that Ned -- an eternal flower child and organic farmer -- gets released from prison after doing time for selling pot to a uniformed officer with a sad story (yes, he's that trusting) and bounces from one of his three sisters to the next, invading their dysfunctional space and, oddly and, well, guilelessly uncovering the hollow cores of their lives. It's a clever tale that features some fine acting from Rudd, his trio of sisters played by Zooey Deschanel, Elizabeth Banks and Emily Mortimer, and Steve Coogan who plays Ned's repugnant documentarian brother-in-law. A sedate and intelligent hippie's movie that is only tangentially about smoking weed.

The Wire, Season 1 Episode 5: The Pager

The Wire, Season 1 Episode 5: The Pager. For all of its complexity, the Wire deals mostly with primal motivations -- greed, lust, envy, sloth, etc. And for a series that has assembled such a rich assortment of characters, the writers offer precious little in backstory for them. We know practically nothing about the characters' childhoods or previously lives. It seems that all that matters is who these profoundly damaged (and damaging) people are and what they do today.

This episode, The Pager, ends chillingly with the off-camera abduction of the stickup boy Brandon by Stringer Bell and his murderous lieutenants. The viewer has no idea what will become of the boy, who is also the lover of rogue Robin Hood Omar Little, but Clark Johnson, a brilliant director who delivers a wonderful performance in Season 5, creates an atmosphere of nearly unbearable dread that will inevitably to lead to another primal motivation -- revenge.

The Wire Season 1, Episode 4: Old Case

The Wire Season 1, Episode 4: Old Cases. Earlier HBO series had set standards for violence, nudity and profanity (The Sopranos, Oz) but none was as artful in the use of the F-bomb as The Wire. At times it was, as Detective Carver said so beautifully in Episode 3, "unbe-fucking-lievable." In this episode, Detectives McNulty and Moreland re-examine the scene of the late-night shooting of a young woman who'd been a sexual consort of Avon Barksdale. The scene lasts about 5 minutes and the only words uttered by the two detectives are some variation of the F-bomb. It's brilliant in a brash, post-modernist way.

The Wire, Season 1 Episode 3: The Buys

The Wire, Season 1 Episode 3: The Buys. The Wire might just as well have been called The Unit because of the complex interconnectedness the writers of the series created between the detectives working to bring down the Barksdale empire. Still, the importance (and limitations) of electronic surveillance in building the case against the oily Avon and his merciless henchman Stringer Bell is preached most consistently and fervently by Det. Lester Freamon. In this episode, Lester emerges from behind his handcarved miniatures to show he's real Bal'more Poh-leese. He'd been shuttled off to the pawn shop division for being a conscientious lawman but "the unit" reignites his passion for catching the bad guy with determination and intelligence, day by day, piece by piece. His caring, fatherly mentoring of the young detective Roland Pryzbylewski is one of the more interesting evolving relationships in the series. Cool Lester Smooth is an extraordinary character in an extraordinary show.

Tabloid

I've often wondered how documentarians settle on their subjects. The subject has to be of personal and, at least to some degree, public interest and there must be enough "story" to capture an audience's imagination. In the case of Errol Morris's Tabloid -- the fantastic (in the sense of mind-boggling) story of Joyce McKinney, a former beauty queen who was accused in the late '70s of kidnapping her Mormon boyfriend and forcing him into a weekend of sexual slavery -- the subject matter is riveting, like a Barnum and Bailey carnival attraction. It's so outlandish, in fact, that this tale of sexual exploitation, religious zealotry, and international intrigues simply MUST be true. Or, as my friend said as the credits rolled, "You can't make this shit up." McKinney, who provides most of the narration of her sad tale, is quite possibly mad, which of course is sad, but at the same time she is absolutely captivating. A guilty pleasure but a pleasure nonetheless.

The Wire, Season 1, Episode 2: The Detail

The Wire, Season 1, Episode 2: The Detail. The series had an enormous cast of characters and the second episode continued the introductions. Who could be sure which of the many characters would become peripheral and which would be central? One thing was made more certain in this episode, however: Larry Gilliard Jr.'s neophyte drug overseer D'Angelo Barksdale would be a pivotal figure as his naivete is played by his drug lord uncle, Avon Barksdale, and the unit detectives trying to bring down the Barksdale empire.

The extended scene with Detectives Moreland, McNulty and Greggs in the interrogation box with D'Angelo is wonderfully written and seems especially foreboding for the young man.

The Wire, Season 1, Episode 1: The Target

The Wire, Season 1, Episode 1: The Target. The series opens with a young street tough and a Baltimore homicide detective conversing over the body of a boy who'd been killed for grabbing the kitty in a dice game -- something he'd done on several occasions before. This time, however, "Snot-boogie" would be gunned down "over some bullshit," as the street tough says. Thus the tone of this series is set -- talk is coarse and reductive, life is tenuous, the rules of the game are unfair when they're not nonsensical and yet everybody plays because "this is America."

(No, the series was not perfect. Some seasons were decidedly stronger than others, some of the acting was noticeably weaker and the writing, on more than one occasion, was far too pointedly polemical for my taste, and yet, despite all of that, the stories of "this American life" were as addictive as the heroin they were slinging in the project towers.)

The Wire

The Wire, the greatest television show in human history, debuted on June 2, 2002. This phenomenal program went leagues beyond routine police procedurals and courtroom shenanigans to explore the intricate intersections of life and law (and lawlessness). As a countdown to the 10th anniversary, I will be viewing all 60 episodes over the coming months and posting thoughts about each. Come along.

Fright Night (2011)

Craig Gillespie's Fright Night is a good time with gore galore. A remake of the 1985 film of the same name (seems like just last week when I saw that movie), this version stars Anton Yelchin as a young biter-fighter who takes on his hungry neighbor, Jerry, played by Colin Farrell. Like the original, which starred William Ragsdale and Chris Sarandon in those roles, this Fright Night is refreshing in that it dives right into the feeding -- there's nothing coy about the vampy Jerry. He's a biter with balls who won't be denied. A car chase through the Nevada desert is a high point of the movie in which the special effects are modest compared to other films featuring the supernatural. Gillesipie gets winning performances from the entire cast but standouts are Farrell, David Tennant (of Dr. Who fame) as Las Vegas showman / vampire killer Peter Vincent and the ever-entertaining Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Superbad), as Ed, an early believer in Jerry's evilness. Good show!

The Help

Two of my three moms worked in some capacity as "the help," so I've not looked forward to seeing Tate Taylor's movie. Films about privileged tyrants -- the suburban variety -- infuriate me, and I too frequently imagine the cruelties on the screen being visited upon those dear women, and their sisters. I wonder what might they have endured so that they could feed their own families, keep a home and, perhaps, put away enough money for the future. A lot of what Taylor has put on the screen -- particularly the maids' coddling of their employers' children -- made me terribly uncomfortable. While presenting these women's genuine affection for their charges and the grace with which they lived their lives, these scenes also showed how insidious was the world in which they were trapped, as one character described it, where they reared their own tormentors. A major plot element, the maid Minny's revenge, though wonderfully cathartic for the audience, seemed ultimately more demeaning of Minny than her victimizer. Still, I was deeply moved by many, many scenes in the film, and thought individual performances -- principally Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Emma Stone, Jessica Chastain and Bryce Dallas Howard -- were truly outstanding.

Cowboys and Aliens

In Jon Favreau's Cowboys and Aliens, all goes wrong in a dusty Wild West town just so that resident humans will set aside their differences (prejudice, extortion, genocide and imperial oppression) and pull together to kick some evil alien butt.
The movie opens when an amnesiac saddle tramp wearing a strange bracelet (Daniel Craig) wanders into the desert town owned by a heartless cattleman (Harrison Ford) and home to a mysterious beauty with a pretty huge secret (Olivia Wilde). The saddle tramp remembers nothing, not even his own name, but is lethal in hand-to-hand combat (think Jason Bourne circa 1868). Soon it's revealed that the weird bracelet is an alien weapon and the only thing that seems to stop these greedy alien gold marauders.
The film is populated with stock characters most of whom have some really important life lesson to learn while riding to the rescue of their kinfolk who were roped like steer and pulled heavenward, presumably to be poked and probed. (Ouch.) Favreau has staged some cool action sequences, including the aforementioned rustling, but Favreau's famous wit is MIA.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

It doesn't matter which sociopolitical problem you feel is being addressed in Rise of the Planet of the Apes (or any of the earlier entries in this timeless franchise). The film works for all (or none) of them. It's a wonderfully crafted, visually arresting motion picture.
Rise is directed by Rupert Wyatt and stars (ostensibly) James Franco (good but not great) as a misguided but charitable scientist who is artificially boosting the brain cells of chimps in his quest for a cure for Alzheimer's, which his father (played by John Lithgow) suffers. Alzheimer's seems to have replaced consumption and cancer as Hollywood's fatal disease du jour.
Despite some tinny acting in places, Rise is a rollicking, full-bore "F-U" to The Man (however he's defined) and a rousing "Got Yo' Back" to all of oppressed Apedom (ditto). Notice the way "monkey" is used to demean the apes in the film; an epithet by any other name.
The film, which features an amazing tracking sequence early on that follows a chimp at play and sets the bar really high for later sequences, is enormously entertaining and not a little bit cathartic, at least for me, after the recent congressional budget debacle.
It is another remarkable achievement in the melding of live action and computer-generated animation, which, IMO, makes the actual "star" star of this movie Andy Sirkis (known by most as the creature Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy) and the crew that created his character, the rebel leader / warlord chimpanzee Caesar (no subtlety in the naming there). The film's final tree top shot is, as the kids say, awesome.

A Better Life

A poor undocumented Mexican immigrant in L.A., intent on giving his 14-year-old son A Better Life, borrows money from his sister and buys his boss's truck and lawn care equipment. On the first day of his new life, the vehicle and tools are stolen by a fellow immigrant he's befriended. That's the wind up. The pitch is father and son (Demian Bechir and Jose Julian, respectively) set out to find the thief and the truck and salvage the father's dream and the son's future.

Chris Weitz has directed a warm film about illegal immigration that has so many moments of genuine, unadorned humanity that I couldn't help but pull for the disconnected pair. At one point during the search, father and son find themselves in the barrio, surrounded by faceless, struggling masses. The boy turns to his father and asks, his face a study in indignation, "Why did you have me? Why do poor people have children?" The father, dumbstruck, sets his eyes in the middle distance so as not to betray the pain he feels and says to his son. "Don't say that. Don't ever say that."

See this film before it gets away.

Friends with Benefits

I thoroughly enjoyed Will Gluck's 2010 film Easy A with the entirely too charming Emma Stone. Gluck's Friends with Benefits has a lot of the same breezy insouciance and snappy sophistication but it also has two enormously catalytic stars at the center -- Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis. They snap, crackle and pop from the first frame. The film -- which really is more about the journey to true love than the arrival -- has tons of sex talk and skin, but it's not dirty ... well, it is kinda dirty, but it's all good.

Horrible Bosses

The stars of Horrible Bosses are not the three gentlemen pictured here but the writers. Well, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis and Jason Bateman (left to right) ARE the stars but go with it. Writers Michael Markowitz and John Francis Daley really know their way around intricate, comedic plotting and masculine vulgarity. The script for this gem of a movie about three schmucks who work for bosses they REALLY would like to kill is dynamite ... a 21st century bawdy fest where everything goes wrong and then right and then .... It's culturally sharp and observant. Howlingly funny.

Captain America

Joe Johnston's Captain America has a swashbuckling verve to it that enhances what is basically a Dirty-Dozen-On-Steroids treatment of the origin of the Marvel comics hero, a 90-pound weakling who gets a makeover courtesy of 1940s-era Stark Enterprises (see Iron Man). Chris Evans' face, biceps and pecs are pretty formidable team as they take on the maniacal Nazi fiend Red Skull, played by Hugo Weaving (who else?). The ever-reliable Tommy Lee Jones brings fairly substantial weight to his role as Col. Phillips, who begins the film as a C.A. skeptic but eventually turns into a believer, especially after he sees the kind of attention the Captain gets from Special Agent Peggy Carter (I LOVE women named Peggy). The movie is a fun time though I am sure the good Captain (ironically, a classic example of an Aryan ubermensch) will be soundly pummeled this summer by a bespectacled British kid named Harry.