DENIAL: This Year's TRUTH

Now playing at an indie art house near me:

DENIAL (Dir. Mick Jackson, 2016)

This is this year’s TRUTH, and that’s not a good thing.

If you’ve forgotten about TRUTH, which was about the 2004 “Rathergate” scandal, and released this same week a year ago, that’s completely understandable because it was a unremarkable piece of pure Oscar bait; an issue movie with big stars that was engineered to win awards.

But it was bait that was rejected and won no awards - it didn’t get any major nominations – and it faded away.

DENIAL will maybe fair better as it’s about a much weightier subject – i.e. the holocaust – and it’s a much better film, but it resembles TRUTH in that it so self importantly depicts a true-life scenario involving a fight for justice headed by an idealistic woman who was born to make inspirational speeches.

In this case, a curly red-haired Rachel Weisz plays author/historian Deborah E. Lipstadt whose 2005 book “History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier” serves as the film’s basis.

With curly red hair and a not terribly convincing Queens accent, Rachel Weisz plays Lipstadt, who we meet teaching a class on the basics of holocaust denial: how deniers claim that the killings weren’t systematic, the numbers of deaths were exaggerated, that there weren’t gas chambers, etc.

During a Q & A at DeKalb Community College in Atlanta in 1994, Lipstadt is challenged by a man named David Irving, portrayed by Timothy Spall with a permanent scowl, who declares “I’ve got a thousand dollars in my pocket I’ll give to anyone who can prove Hitler ordered the killing of the Jews!”

A few years later, Irving sues Lipstadt, and her publisher, Penguin Books, for libel claiming that Lipstadt’s 1993 book “Denying the Holocaust,” which labeled him as “one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial,” damages his livelihood and reputation as a serious historian.

Lipstadt travels to London for the trial and gets lawyered up with an ace legal team including British-Jewish lawyer Anthony Julius (Andrew Scott), who represented Princess Diana in her divorce; and barrister Richard Rampton (Tom Wilkinson).

The fly fishing, wine loving Rampton insists that they take a trip to Auschwitz so that he can inspect it like a crime scene. Lipstadt is emotionally stirred by walking around the gray haunted grounds of the former concentration camp, while her team coldly concentrates on the forensics of the case.

It’s nearly halfway through the film before we get to the trial, in which the team’s strategy is for neither Lipstadt nor any Holocaust survivors to testify because Irving, who’s representing himself, will have a stage on which he can intimidate and mock them.

Irving’s case centers around the existence of gas chambers for the purpose of killing Jews at Auschwitz, and he argues that there is no evidence of the chimneys or ducts that the Nazi’s poured poison pellets into and his statement “No Holes, No Holocaust” becomes a newspaper headline and a famous Revisionist slogan.

This is compelling stuff story-wise, and David Hare’s (THE READER) screenplay is sharply written but Jackson’s unimaginative execution of the material makes for too many scenes that just serve to carry us from beat to beat instead of building any momentum or compelling suspense.

Despite the undeniable passion that Weisz brings to her part, some of her line readings are stilted and off, possibly due to her handling of Lipstadt’s accent. However, she fares well with warmth in a downtime moment at her apartment with Wilkinson (don’t worry there is no contrived romance here or elsewhere in the film).

Sadly, Spall’s Irving is just an evil caricature of a sad man with a flimsy case. There’s no scene or moment that’s reveals anything about the guy that we can’t guess from the get go.

The arching theme of fighting for truth against a movement founded in lies is especially relevant these days in light of our current political climate in which a certain candidate’s outrageous utterances are scrutinized and debunked daily, but DENIAL doesn’t really have much to say beyond its presentation of the basic facts of the trial’s circumstances.

While it’s a very watchable, and reasonably entertaining movie, DENIAL only exists to discredit a horrible point of view that has already been well discredited, and get some award season action in the process. But as we get further into fall, and it gets overshadowed by bigger and better projects, and largely forgotten, I predict that’ll it will join TRUTH on the shelf of earnest but overreaching historical melodrama Oscar bait fails.

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OZ: Not A Bomb But No Magical Masterpiece Either

Opening today at nearly every multiplex in the Triangle area:

OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL 
(Dir. Sam Raimi, 2013)

At one point in this movie, Sam Raimi’s lavish prequel to “The Wizard of Oz,” when James Franco as the title character is making his way through the Land of Oz, I half expected him to run into a gang of Hobbits. These lush green 3D fantasy worlds can really look alike, you see.

Raimi is counting on familiarity here, with plot points matching the beats of the 1939 original (even has an extended black and white opening), but as keen on the details as he and his crew are, OZ feels like just another souped-up fairy tale update, interchangeable with the kind of projects Tim Burton and Johnny Depp have been doing for the last decade or so. 

It's a notch above, say, Burton's ALICE IN WONDERLAND, but not enough of a notch that makes it anything special. If it really was something special, it wouldn't be releasing at this time of year.

Franco certainly puts in an energetic performance as carnival magician con-artist Oscar Diggs, especially when he finds himself in a hot air balloon caught in a tornado. That's when he calls upon some 127 HOURS-ish method skills. Unfortunately the film's comic thread of Franco reacting to fantasical events with a modern day wiseacre delivery goes down as badly as it did in YOUR HIGHNESS.

On his journey on the Yellow Brick Road through the Dark Forest to Emerald City, Franco meets a cast of characters including some counter-parts to folks he knew back in black and white Kansas including Zack Braff as Finley the Flying Monkey (a CGI-ed monkey sidekick in a bellhop uniform, mind you), Michelle Williams as Glenda, Mina Kunis as Theodora (looking, at first, positively like a porcelain creation), China Girl (an actual porcelain creation via CGI voiced by Joey King) and Rachel Weisz as Evanora. 

The trio of beauties, Williams, Kunis and Weisz all become witches (one good, two bad), with Kunis getting transformed the most into the iconic green-skinned Wicked Witch of the West who screeches at the top of her lungs, and yes, gives us an ample sampling of that famous cackle. Kunis does her best, but still seems miscast, and the story-line of how she feels wronged by Franco isn't satisfyingly fleshed out.

The premise of a selfish scoundrel finding redemption by becoming what others believe in, in this case, the Munchkins, the tinkers, and the farmers of Oz thinking that Franco is their wizard savior from the reign of the Wicked Witches and using his trickery he becomes just that, is a well worn one that packs very little power in this all too conventional family friendly fairy tale.

There's a sometimes jarring disconnect between Franco and the artificial landscape surrounding him. I haven't been as aware of the heavy use of green screen since the STAR WARS prequels. In one bit, another allusion to the original WIZARD OF OZ, which has Franco and Williams travelling in bubbles in the sky, it was hard not to visualize the actors stumbling around on a sound stage - the desired effect of experiencing a different world sure wasn't happening there. Raimi's SPIDER-MAN movies are much more visually convincing.

OZ isn't directly based on any of L. Frank Baum's original Oz novels - it's supposed to be set a few decades before the first one ("The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" from 1900) - so it's a prequel to both the books and the 1939 movie, but despite the efforts of the capable cast, the savvy director, over 20 writers (that's right), and hundreds of computer animators it comes off more like glorified fan fiction than canon.

Still, it's not a total bomb; it's passable entertainment if you don't go in expecting a magical masterpiece (and if you're a Raimi fan you'll enjoy the Bruce Campbell cameo). It also may inspire some kids to seek out Baum's books, and watch the 1939 classic so there's that. 

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Hard To Get On Board With Bourne Without Bourne

Opening today at nearly every multiplex in Raleigh and the Triangle area:

THE BOURNE LEGACY (Dir. Tony Gilroy, 2012)

In retrospect, maybe it was a mistake for me to re-watch all of the Bourne movies recently in preparation for the new one.

To have those three fine fast-paced films so fresh in my brain, hurt more than helped for me to buy into a fourth film featuring neither star Matt Damon, nor director Paul Greengrass.

Especially when the connective tissue is that THE BOURNE LEGACY takes place during the events of the previous film, THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM (2007), with return appearances by David Strathairn, Scott Glenn, Albert Finney, and Joan Allen, all wrapped up in the vast conspiracy that’s a lot more confusing this time around.

“Jason Bourne was just the tip of the iceberg,” says series newcomer Edward Norton, as the corrupt CIA bigwig in charge of, well, everything, to enforce the continuity, but it rings hollow as it was a line said in the last movie.

It’s the justification that co-writer and director Tony Gilroy, who was the screen-writer of the other Bournes, and his brother Dan, give us to expand the series’ narrative, that the network of entangled secret government programs has various agents in the field, and here’s another one who is in confused conflict with his superiors. And his adventures are just as exciting so let's put up the Bourne banner for him too!

Jeremy Renner, racking up his third franchise after MISSION IMPOSSIBLE and THE AVENGERS, is that other agent, who has been genetically enhanced by a regimen of little green and blue pills prescribed by a top-security scientist played by Rachel Weisz, who also doesn’t know the full scope of what’s going on.

Count me with her - despite the fact that this is by far the talkiest Bourne, a lot of the exposition about the clusterf*** of evil operations just goes in one ear and out the other, as it’s obvious the film is more about its fight scenes and ginormous motorcycle chase climax through the streets of Manila, Philippines than its perplexing plot mechanics.

The stoic Renner, who is just as indestructible as his predecessor, has some impressive moves - one unbroken shot of him running/climbing up the side of a house, jumping through a window and shooting somebody might be the physical highlight of the movie.

Trouble is the film is too drawn out - it takes a while to get going as it cuts back and forth between Renner training in the arctic, and the well-groomed evil old men in the corridors of power trying to get a handle on what Bourne brought down on them. Then when some momentum is built, the film stalls then starts again, then stalls…

Renner and Weisz on the run does amount to a few thrills, the slick stylish look of the film (provided by master cinematographer Robert Elswit) is attractive, and the fiercely focused performance by Norton as the stop-at-nothing antagonist certainly has its merits, but Bourne without Bourne just doesn’t cut it.

This errant adaptation of the first of Eric Van Lustbader's continuation of the late Robert Ludlum's Bourne novels doesn't have enough action to satisfy action fans, and the project never quite gels plot-wise.

THE BOURNE LEGACY isn’t a boring or bad movie, it’s just not inspired enough to get it up to par with the rest of the series.

Although Damon and Greengrass wanted to make another Bourne, maybe they should be glad they got out when they did. The Gilroy brothers - a third brother, John Gilroy, edited the film - seem to be tapped out on this material.

After watching all four films in the last week, I know I am.

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Despite The Cloying Quirks, THE BROTHERS BLOOM Works

THE BROTHERS BLOOM (Dir. Rian Johnson, 2009)


The opening set-up montage featuring the title's namesakes as kids is narrated by the voice of the actor, writer, and smooth magician Ricky Jay. 

Jay did the same duties for the striking beginning of MAGNOLIA 10 years ago so he lends an air of familiarity immediately to the punchy proceedings.

Likewise, straight out of the Wes Anderson playbook, comes another montage in which Rachel Weisz displays how she "collects hobbies." These devices recall the notion of a sea of quirk that Michael Hirschorn of the Atlantic envisioned a few years back ("Quirked Around" Sept. 2007). 

Hirschorn wrote that due to the likes of the Andersons (both Wes and Paul Thomas) and their peers, there was a threat that indie cinema could drown in quirk. It's an empty threat though; quirky characters in strained, possibly life endangering situations - the 'cinema of cringing' it could be called - have been the norm since the dawn of movie history. 

THE BROTHERS BLOOM, about con-artist brothers (Adrian Brody and Mark Ruffalo), has many bits that feel like re-fried quirk from other flicks, yet it still works, gloriously too at times. For some reason Brody is called Bloom while Ruffalo goes by Stephen so the title I don't get, but whatever. Brody, tired of an endless series of cons, decides he wants the "unwritten life" but Ruffalo gets him to go on one last big score. 

Of course, a woman (Weisz) fouls things up and twists them around and around in their little art smuggling scam. Brody says of his brother's cons that they are like the narratives of some Russian novelist, containing “thematic arcs and shit.” We're swept through scene after scene of double crossing with some predictable turns, yet just like the quirks they can be forgiven with such a capable cast and a not too clever for its own good tone. 

Brody and Ruffalo carry THE BROTHERS BLOOM and play off each other with the believable edge of siblings. Wiesz gels well with them too even with her sitcom girlfriend vibe going strong. The film shows director Johnson getting comfy with comedy, though it must be said that it isn't quite on the level of his previous dramatic work - the brilliant BRICK. 

Without a doubt, the stale "style over substance" complaint will be used in many reviews but many moviegoers will enjoy swimming in this particular sea of quirks.

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