Nov 28
The scrupulous style of Clint Eastwood comes to rest on the life of the first FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. J. Edgar is a discreet picture, one with unexpected kindliness. At the same time, Eastwood doesn’t pull any punches. He’s not afraid to leap into provocative areas of Hoover’s life, including his sexuality and his desire for power.
Based on the life of boxer Micky Ward, The Fighter is a biographical picture that lacks a certain oomph. Nominated for seven Academy Awards, the film won two (Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress). It also scooped quite a few Golden Globe nominations, once again winning the supporting acting awards.
David O. Russell’s movie is indeed deserving of the acting accolades it has received, but the connecting tissue is deficient. The film feels too sporadic and unfocused, leaving large patches of vital stuff uncultivated. The convolutions of the Ward family are examined hastily, leading to a “happy ending” before we know what hit us.
Michael Mann’s Ali is an interesting but problematic film. It carries an uneven, longwinded tone that is perhaps suited to its legendary subject, but there are moments where a lighter hand might have made the story more human. The picture is concerned with Muhammad Ali’s life for a period of about ten years, beginning with his title win over Sonny Liston and ending with the Rumble in the Jungle fight in 1974.
Mann’s direction runs the risk of being considered heavy-handed and, in many instances, it is. There isn’t a moment of intimacy in the picture that escapes stylized cuts and an overload soundtrack’s interjection, creating a rift that separates us from Will Smith’s dynamic, on-point performance as the titular icon.
Smith is Cassius Clay and we join him after he’s returned from his Olympic victory. He is a bold, outspoken fighter and he speaks in rhymes, something that dazzles reporters and fans. An allegiance to Malcolm X (Mario Van Peebles) and the Nation of Islam impacts his personal life and promises him opportunity in the ring, but Clay is determined to be his own person. He drops his slave name, becoming Muhammad Ali.
There’s also the matter of the Vietnam War and the draft, something Ali opposed. This led to banishment from boxing and, interestingly, a deepening of his friendship with sports journalist Hoard Cossell (Jon Voight) and a coarsening of his friendship with assistant trainer Drew Bundini Brown (Jamie Foxx). Ali’s love life is also a subject, as are his stances on religion and race.
Mann admirably tries to set the stage using music and the political climate, but what we have with Ali is mostly an exercise in style. We are on the outside looking in with respect to personal relationships. The women of Ali’s life just dip in and out with little consequence, almost seeming a waste of some rather good performances from Jada Pinkett Smith, Nona Gaye and Michael Michele.
What we end up with instead is a bunch of scenes that look great, like Ali’s jogging through parts of Zaire in an almost spiritual haze, but they do little to connect us to the personality. Music blasting, Mann sets us up with tremendous visuals delivered in sublime style, but he seems to not care much for the personal details.
Because of the director’s attention to detail, the fights are fantastic. This is where he concerns himself most with minutiae and this is where it actually works, as the way fighters move in the ring is something to behold under Mann’s vigilant, cautious eye. The actors, especially Smith, look every bit the part and can function and move the way they should in the ring.
Smith’s performance is exceptional and, truth be told, it’s hard to imagine another actor in the role. He nails down the assertiveness and conceit of the character and attempts to shine some light on Ali’s transcendent struggles, but it doesn’t seem like there’s much time for that. Even the passionate connections he makes ring hollow, which is a shame.
What could have been a sharp historical film is a mere style excursion from a director who, in all honesty, knows better and is capable of so much more. His other pictures, like the glorious Heat, have balanced elegance with humanity to a much greater effect, but the levels are off with this one and the result is a lethargic, uncharismatic mound of averageness.
Apr 5
The act of speaking to a large crowd is terrifying for many people. On most lists of common fears, in fact, public speaking ranks almost always near the top. It’s a wonder more horror movies haven’t been made about it, come to think of it. In The King’s Speech, Tom Hooper’s brilliant and beautiful film, the horror of public speaking is compounded by a stammer and by the sheer importance of the content of the speech.
The 2010 Academy Award winner for Best Picture explores the stammer of King George VI and the reactions of those around him. What can be done about such a powerful man who must, by the nature of his placement in life, speak to large groups of people? Worse still, the king must be the people; he must vocalize their wishes and speak on their behalf. What’s to be done if the king cannot speak?
The monstrosity that is Cleopatra is still regarded as one of the most expensive movies ever made. The 1963 film was supposed to be an enormous hit for 20th Century Fox but it would up nearly bankrupting the studio, clocking it at a massive $44 million after being originally tagged with a $2 million budget. The notoriously ungainly production featured a host of problems that included a very ill star, countless production delays and a healthy dose of moral outrage.
The original cut of Cleopatra presented to the studio by its director Joseph L. Mankiewicz was six hours in length. It was chopped to about four hours for an initial release, but Fox demanded further cuts and it was brought down even more to the dismay of the filmmaker. Mankiewicz wanted it split in two parts to preserve the impact, but that idea was tossed by the studio. Apparently testing the already annoyed Fox on such matters was a mistake.
