J. EDGAR Review

"J. Edgar" (2011)

"J. Edgar" should've been one of the best films of the year. There's no reason for it not to be, but here it is -- an epic missed opportunity that turns what could've been a riveting drama about one of America's most controversial figures into a long, ponderous mess of a movie. All the elements were there and ready for something great, too. It's directed by Clint Eastwood ("Million Dollar Baby," "Changeling") from a screenplay by Dustin Lance Black ("Milk") with Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead role as J. Edgar Hoover.

Clint Eastwood is a master of mood, and here is no exception. The issue, however, is how noncommittal he is on the subject. When ambitiously tackling such a man of history -- one who was powerful and hated but never understood -- you have to pull out the stops. Eastwood doesn't. He puts all the pieces in place but never engages them fully. We're left with something stolid and stagnant, not a juicy biopic as we might have expected. It's still respectable and sophisticated entertainment because Eastwood is incapable of making something not watchable. But the disappointment cannot be ignored, the feeling that whatever opinion you may draw about J. Edgar, neither side is with any conviction here.

And while Eastwood's direction and Dustin Lance Black's script falter, the acting stands tall. Leonardo DiCaprio disappears within the exterior of a conflicted and unruly man. Hoover ruled the Federal Bureau of Investigation like a mad bulldog from 1935 until his death in 1972. Nobody dared cross him even though he schemed and blackmailed without shame -- this includes a cruel, anonymous letter to Martin Luther King, Jr. After seemingly playing the same character in both "Shutter Island" and "Inception" last year, it's richly satisfying to watch DiCaprio successfully transform himself, an acting feat that could no doubt earn him a Best Actor nomination or even win.

Armie Hammer of "The Social Network" plays Hoover's FBI associate director and life-long companion, Clyde Tolson. It's remarkable to note that Hammer, a relative newcomer since his breakout last year, holds his ground next to DiCaprio and -- in some instances -- even outshines him. Both actors, however, are hampered by layers of distracting prosthetic aging makeup.

Tolson is Edgar's dark secret, and a majority of Black's screenplay is purposely speculative about their relationship. And while an important aspect of the man's life, Black takes the easy way out. Sure Hoover was terrible and did some terrible things -- but he was gay. And while he bases most of the film around Hoover's repressed homosexuality, he also uses it as reasoning for his hidden evils and paranoia about commies and radicals. His sexuality is not the only reason -- that's too simple, and even with DiCaprio's performance this tactic threatens to make Hoover one-dimensional, which he's certainly not. 

Scenes between Hoover and Tolson are nuanced and the film's best. In a most wrenching scene, Hoover's mother Annie (played with stern severity by Judi Dench) calculates what's going on between her son and Tolson. "I'd rather have a dead son than a daffodil," she says. The effectiveness of these moments, though, point to the film's greater downfall. Every gay man of that generation was repressed and struggling with something profound -- that's no mystery. So let's focus on what made Hoover different than the rest of those men.

Archive: "Eastern Promises" (2007)

A man gets his throat slit, and shortly after, a woman stumbles into a pharmacy saying she needs help as there is a puddle of blood accumulating at her feet. This murder and hemorrhaging is how "Eastern Promises" opens, a movie that begins with a shock and never lets up. It's a thriller from director David Cronenberg, who also directed 2005's "A History of Violence"; he knows a thing or two about the horrors of human nature, and he has an inexplicable ability to link the brutality with the beautiful. The pregnant woman in the film is actually a 14-year-old girl who gets raped and dies during the delivery of a blood-covered fetus. This newborn baby becomes the central focus in the eyes of the characters where, throughout the streets of London, there lurks an underground Russian mob that has emigrated there and brought an entire crime family with them.

The baby is delivered in a hospital by a midwife named Anna (Naomi Watts). She is determined to protect the child and therefore begins a search for any ancestors of the now dead mother. She finds a diary on the body that leads her to a restaurant owned by Semyon, who happens to be the head of the mafia family, Vory V Zakone. Anna talks with Semyon about the woman, the baby, and the diary, and she explains everything to him not realizing exactly who she may be dealing with.

Anna lives with her mother and uncle, and although he helps to translate the diary, her uncle severely warns Anna not to get involved with those people because they are capable of unthinkable acts. These acts of which are soon discovered in shocking detail within the dead mother's diary. Secrets are revealed, and things start getting complicated when the importance of the diary, the innocent midwife, and the mafia family all become intertwined. All Anna cares about is the baby, and she quickly discovers that both her life and the baby's life are in danger.

Semyon has a behaviorally violent son named Kirill, and there's also a loyal driver and bodyguard named Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen). Nikolai is the key player here as he is trusted by both Semyon and Kirill. He is also trusted by Anna only because she feels required to trust him. He's the best there is in this world she has delved into; she senses something about him, just as the rest of us watching him do. As we follow the slowly winding and unraveling plot, what becomes so brilliant is that it isn't about the who or the what. It becomes entirely about the why, and why people do things, and how they react and recoil and double-cross, and how everybody has the same expectations of each other and how those expectations get twisted right back around. It takes a while to fully understand this why aspect because of a surprise near the end, but I have already given away far too much.

Naomi Watts is as lovely as she always is, but it's definitely Viggo Mortensen who runs the show providing us with his absolutely best performance yet, deserving of serious awards consideration. No, he isn't Russian, but don't let that for a second allow you worry about whether or not he pulls off the accent. He digs within himself and dives so deeply into the role that you'll have a hard time even recognizing him at first. He is tough-as-nails and has an eerie stillness about him, but he also has much more to him than what he wishes for others to see; underneath that cover of body tattoos is a haunted man. Mortensen single-handedly adds a layer of morality to an already accomplished thriller, and Cronenberg himself even admits that "Eastern Promises" would not be the same movie without this actor on the screen.

And then there's the movie's key scene: It involves a fight in a steam bathhouse where Nikolai, completely naked, fends off two blade-wielding enemies. He steals their weapons from them and lunges at them with stab after stab. In a time when fight scenes in movies are mostly derivative, this one stands a step above and is so visceral and in-the-moment, you have to see it to believe it. It's in this scene that the movie's use of violence is most evident as a tool for building suspense to an almost unbearable level; there is a searing brutality here that is heart-pounding and breath-taking. We see Viggo Mortensen's character as a paradox of a man split between the human nature of good and evil. He dishes out so much violent destruction, it could only be seen as bad, but this is right as we are seeing it being used towards justice and what is good.

Archive: 'Funny Games'

Movie Review
Funny Games (2008)


Movies have the ability to manipulate an audience's expectations and twist their logic right around. In the case of "Funny Games," this is a movie that superimposes a game into the game of the genre it's making a statement about. The movie is a weapon against its own audience, and it puts not only its characters under tough conditions but also its viewers. It's an evening out that will screw with your head and, however much you may dislike it, it will stick with you.

"Funny Games" is a nearly shot-for-shot English-language remake of writer-director Michael Haneke's original 1997 German movie of the same name. It's a twisted thriller that is meant to be a commentary on the casual bloodlust we see in many horror films today. No, Haneke is no moralist as, with this film, he's basically a sadist condemning sadism. Nonetheless, nobody can call him a hypocrite because, contrary to popular belief, the violence is kept to a minimum. Most of the violence is done through the use of harrowing off-screen violence, which is actually more effective. I've heard so much about how this mockingly sadistic movie is just as equally vile, awful, and disgusting as any other American horror movie. It has been considered an equivalent to "Hostel," but it's absolutely not. Those going to see this movie looking for "torture porn" are going to be receiving a rude awakening.

The premise is this: An upper-class American family--mother Anna (Naomi Watts), father George (Tim Roth), and young son Georgie--goes on a vacation to their summer cottage. While unpacking and preparing everything for their leisurely stay, Anna gets news from her son that there's somebody at the screen door. It's a young man named Peter (Brady Corbet) who stops by wanting to borrow four eggs. Upon receiving them, he drops them. There's something creepy about the way he's acting, and we know something is wrong. He is soon joined by an even more unsettling young man named Paul (Michael Pitt) who is polite yet demanding. Anna requests for the two men to leave, but then enters George who asks to be explained what is happening. Things get heated, and next thing we know, dad gets smacked in the leg with a driver.

The two men who arrive to the family's home are more archetypes than actual people. They show up wearing short shorts, canvas shoes, white sweaters, and white gloves. They come with a simple game to play betting that in the next 12 hours, Anna, George, and Georgie will all be dead. And so begins their passive-aggressive, disturbingly kind and genteel torture techniques that have absolutely zero motivational reasoning. Anna asks, "Why don't you just kill us?" leaving Peter to remind her to never forget the importance of entertainment. The point is clearly made about the notion that violence is now considered a harmless game, and there's an underlying stream of bleak and twisted humor that emphasizes the movie's sideways nihilism.

We're forced to sit back and watch as the two young men put a pillowcase over the son's head and force mom to strip down all while dad watches with a bleeding leg. They play a cruel game of hide-and-seek with the body of the family's golden retriever that they beat to death. During this moment, Paul turns and looks to the camera. This isn't the only case where he addresses the audience, making side remarks, asking us what we want to see happen next. In one bizarre sequence, he actually "rewinds" a scene, allowing us to see how the scene could've gone two ways. We witness the crowd-pleasing moment and then watch as it gets taken back, stripping us of our Hollywood ending. It's at that moment we realize we've been sucker-punched, unable to cheer for the good guys, and that's exactly what Haneke has intended.

Similar to Haneke's "Caché," there are some importantly placed shots that create nerve-rattling tension. There are moments of uncomfortably long takes, especially during one scene where there is the annoyingly loud drone of a NASCAR telecast in the background that's like nails on a chalkboard. It keeps you on the edge of your seat, like everything else in the movie, because it's ultimately meant to be an unpleasant experience. Haneke makes a statement about how violence and torture are now an acceptable form of entertainment through making a movie that basically demonstrates the same thing while being anything but entertaining.

While Naomi Watts serves as executive producer, she also gives a shockingly raw performance. There is a point in the movie where we watch for a good 10 minutes Anna struggling to stand after the psychopaths have left her family's house. This sequence continues to go on for a long while, and a few people began leaving the theater during this portion of no violence. Seeing this movie is a lose-lose situation because if you leave the theater there, you're a bad person, but if you stay for the rest, you're still a bad person. We rightfully become irritated with whose left of the family, and by the end of it all, we realize we just witnessed something awful, but worse yet, we also realize it's exactly what we were waiting for.

It's entirely reasonable to despise Michael Haneke's mean and manipulative remake of his own film, and I'm sure many people will hate it. I mean, I hate it myself but only because it nailed me. The movie won, and it got me. It's meant to play a trick on you, and in that, it succeeds. I'm not recommending this film to anyone because it's not actually particularly enjoyable, but I'm also not dismissing it. "Funny Games" is certainly not entertainment, but it is an experience.