Tag Archives: George Clooney

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Batman (1943)

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It can be pretty hard to compare one Batman to another Batman. The points of similarity between the super-campy Adam West iteration, the super-rubber Michael Keaton iteration, and the super-dark Christian Bale iteration essentially begin and end with the pointy ears. Val Kilmer and George Clooney are both sleepwalking through their outings, so there’s that. Ben Affleck’s latest incarnation in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice looks to change it up yet again, providing a more world-weary Dark Knight Rises spin on the superhero. Surely the longevity of the character is the major contributing factor to the gradual shifts in tone, as with goofy/serious Bond and goofy/serious Sherlock, and it’s true of the Caped Crusader in the comics as well.

We talked about all of that in our review of Batman Returns, but it’s far more obvious when we go all the way back to the 1943 serial Batman. “Batman and Robin” wasn’t at all a part of the cultural lexicon at this point. The character had only just appeared in 1939, largely as a response to the popularity of counterpart Superman, and so the 1943 theater release of the 3.5-hour marathon serial was for many the very first encounter with Batman. More importantly, 1943 was arguably the height of World War II, meaning that a solid 85% of theatrically-released serials felt compelled to include a strong commentary on nationalistic duty and American pride. Batman was no different. Watch it today and you might find yourself using different descriptors, those being really really racist.

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NYFF, Special Screenings

O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)

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This year’s New York Film Festival played host to a 15th Anniversary screening of O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the Coens’ Dirty Thirties road movie, though it hardly seems like that much time has passed. I might have described O Brother differently — say, the Coens’ Dust Bowl love letter or the Coens’ Homer homage or the period highbrow escapee buddy whatever — except that the directing duo melted all of that babble away in the post-screening “discussion” of their writing process. “We just started with ‘three guys on the road'” said Joel; Ethan added, “then we tarted it up with Homer.” That was that. Next question. The Coens are experts at both of those things: interpretive film direction and film interpretation deflection.

But they were no less the storytellers on stage, despite their succinctness, and they were joined by O Brother stars George Clooney, John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson as well as legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins. The latter was a pleasant surprise, and though the Coens have recently worked with the likes of Emmanuel Lubezki and Bruno Delbonnel it’s endlessly exciting that Deakins will return to the fold (as will Clooney) for the next Coen film Hail, Caesar!; if it’s at all the blend of O Brother and Barton Fink that it appears to be, then it can’t come soon enough.

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Writer Series: Michael Crichton

Rising Sun (1993)

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1993 is very likely the pinnacle of Crichton-ness: Jurassic Park shot the writer to a level of stardom he’d only grazed with the likes of The Andromeda Strain and Westworld, and filmmakers scoured his existing properties for an opportunity to catapult themselves into Spielberg-level notoriety. This needed to happen fast, before anyone else jumped on a Crichton adaptation, but there were essentially only three of his novels that hadn’t yet been adapted. One was Congo, which featured super-smart gorillas, so that wasn’t much of an option (until it was, years later); second was Sphere, a really weird subterranean “imagination adventure” that couldn’t possibly be adapted (until…well, you know); and the third was Rising Sun, a relatively low-key murder mystery masquerading as a cultural economic diatribe (or is it a diatribe masquerading as a murder mystery?) that seemed to provide a perfect mix of commentary and storytelling. For quick kicks, the choice was an obvious one.

And as tends to happen with projects undertaken for such reasons, Rising Sun sadly marks the downward trend in Crichton adaptations sloping sharply away from Jurassic Park. Probably anything would fail to measure up to Park, but the tale of clashes that is Rising Sun failed thoroughly in every arena (except the box office — it rode Park‘s wave to a pretty good domestic haul). TGSC, baby. TGSC.

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TV Review

Better Call Saul 1.5 – “Alpine Shepherd Boy”

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We’ve talked a lot over the course of the last few reviews about how Better Call Saul fares in relation to predecessor Breaking Bad. We’ve talked about Jimmy’s character, his moral standing and his concern over the presentation of his image. We’ve talked about the supporting cast and about the beautifully Bad-like cinematography, we’ve talked about the brilliant set pieces in episodes like last week’s “Hero“, and we’ve talked about how all of this adds up to something that ties into the original show but also stands alone.

We’ve also mentioned in passing that Saul has a good sense of humor, but the latest episode “Alpine Shepherd Boy” demands a somewhat more straightforward dispatch: Saul is funny. Really funny. Jimmy has the dark wit and sheer quotability we know makes Saul Goodman such a fun character (“Don’t drink and drive — but if you do, call me!”) and in Saul he obviously gets a lot more time to shine. In Bad he was kind of the comic relief (although that phrase kind of plays down his importance, doesn’t it?) and much-needed muscle relaxant amongst the insanity of Walter White’s crusade. Bad focused on the drama — Saul, while still a fledgeling series, has already found a way to play with that focus.

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Writer Series: Charlie Kaufman

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002)

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Charlie Kaufman’s feature screenplays have only been adapted by four directors. There’s Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich and Adaptation.), there’s Michel Gondry (Human Nature and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), there’s Kaufman himself (Synecdoche, New York and the upcoming Anomalisa). The fourth is none other than George Clooney, who chose the Chuck Barris biopic Confessions of a Dangerous Mind as his directorial debut.

Confessions was a battle of personalities from the start. Kaufman, still a youngish scribe, was already gaining a reputation as a writer very involved with a given film at every stage (up until now that was a point in his favor; stay tuned). Kaufman attracted some big interest, and Bryan Singer was originally attached to direct Johnny Depp in the lead role. Once the two of them moved on it was Clooney who moved into the director’s chair, arguably enjoying the height of Clooneydom following O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Ocean’s Eleven. And the largest personality of them all might be Chuck Barris himself, author of the autobiography Confessions, host of a dozen late-night gameshows, veritable connoisseur of crap TV. Barris claimed he worked as an international CIA assassin on the side while producing television by day, which has never been confirmed or denied but does indeed make for one hell of a story.

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Locke (2013)

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The past few years have seen no shortage of films structured entirely around a sole character. 2009 had Moon, 2010 had 127 Hours and Buried, and the past year alone had two Oscar nominees in Gravity and All Is Lost. Each of these films hangs entirely on the neck of one actor or actress, usually with some help from the voices of unseen characters or a well-placed flashback. Gravity was helped along by the simple fact that it has what may be the greatest special effects of any space movie ever. Also: George Clooney.

Locke doesn’t have George Clooney. In fact, Locke doesn’t have the set-up that you might come to expect from a one-man show: no outer space VFX or otherwise stark settings, no survival story in a desert or on a boat or six feet under. All Locke has is a car, a bluetooth phone, and Tom Hardy in the central role of construction foreman Ivan Locke. Despite (or because of) the bare-bones constituency at work here, Locke is still easily as engaging as any of the aforementioned predecessors.

When Ivan Locke gets in the car and takes off on a two-hour drive to London, he has a list of calls to make and things to accomplish along the way. These items include breaking the news to his wife that he cheated on her and is en route to the birth of his child by another woman; fielding distressed calls from said woman as she endures complications in labor; training an underqualified drunk to complete the gargantuan tasks his foreman position requires while he absconds; and explaining his sudden absence to his children, his boss, his boss’s bosses, and pretty much everyone else he happens to know. His singular goal, you may have guessed, is to not have all of this go to shit.

Importantly, Locke himself is an extremely well-drawn character. Writer and director Steven Knight sits behind the camera for the first time with Locke, but his writing credentials include Eastern Promises and Dirty Pretty Things. While Ivan could have easily just been a regular nobody in a car enduring the consequences of his mistake, we’re instead treated to a man who preaches precision, practicality, logic, reason. He’s an intelligent and levelheaded worker well aware of his own faults in the situation – the question is whether his mantra of exactness will create an exit to his predicament or force him deeper into the hole.

By portraying Ivan’s work life and his family life as two very distinct parts of the same character, Knight and Hardy answer that question twice. Yes, he loses his job – but the project he abandoned still has legs due to his careful steering of the players involved after his departure earlier in the evening. The proper trucks will enter the proper gates and pour the proper amount of the proper kind of concrete into the proper place, and all will be well.

A family and a home are a tad more complicated. Again, Ivan is a man who consistently speaks (and thinks) in the most accurate terms possible – he corrects his employee at the mention of 200 trucks (“218 trucks”) and his boss at the mention of his position of the past ten years (“nine years”). Later, as his wife comes to terms with the fact that Ivan has been unfaithful to her, she can only find one response to his insistence that it only happened one time: “The difference between once and never is everything.” Ivan, trapped in his ways, can only concede the point with silence.

Steven Knight is a writer to watch after Locke, as the details are more carefully attended to in this tight screenplay than any other in recent memory. Even Ivan’s last name “Locke” and his work associations with cement and concrete play into the themes of being steadfast, solid, immovable in the face of tough odds. It goes without saying that Tom Hardy more than pulls his weight in this film, and he continues to be an absolute force in the acting world – I’ll look forward to everything he does next, and to rewatching Locke in the future.