FAIR GAME: The Film Babble Blog Review

FAIR GAME 

(Dir. Doug Liman, 2010)

The true story of former CIA operative Valerie Plame and her husband retired diplomat Joesph C. Wilson is told in this thriller/melodrama based on Plame's book "Fair Game: My Life As A Spy, My Betrayal By The White House."

As portrayed by Naomi Watts and Sean Penn (in their third film together) we follow them through the dense details of how their reputations were besmirched by the Bush administration in the early aughts when Wilson reported that "some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

Plame's CIA identity was exposed in the press and Wilson's work for the government is threatened, but the film seems to stress that what was more important is that their marriage was being torn apart.

It begins with Plame recruiting her husband to travel to Africa to investigate reports that Niger has sold 50 tons of "yellowcake" uranium ore to Saddam Hussein. Of course, he finds no trace of yellowcake and files a report to that effect as well as writes an op-ed piece for the New York Times entitled "What I Didn't Find In Africa."

The controversy surrounding the couple, stupidly dubbed "Plamegate", becomes extremely messy as does the movie. Many scenes are too strained and too choppy for the appropriate mood and there's an annoying inconsistent shaki-cam framing which detracts from its possible emotional power.

It's the stateside companion to Paul Greengrass's just as forced film GREEN ZONE in which army officer Matt Damon complains to an excruciating degree about not being able to find Weapons of Mass Destruction anywhere.

Penn and Watts make a convincing couple - their arguments over Plame's reluctance to go public with the facts are initially involving, but their attempts at intensity grow more and more tiresome as the film progresses to its predictable conclusion.

There is a wasted, and fictional, subplot involving an Iraqi doctor (Israeli actress Liraz Charhi) who works with Plame to find out the extent of Iraq's nuclear program. This also concerns the doctor's physicist brother in Baghdad, played by Khaled Nabawy, who Plame promises will be safely re-located if he helps out. We also get Chief of Staff Scooter Libby (David Andrews) and Senior Advisor Karl Rove (Adam LeFevre) basically just being evil as they plot to discredit the heroic couple.

Then there's a cameo by Sam Shepherd as Plame's wise father that's so badly shot that we can barely see it's him until halfway through the scene. With it's speechifying and constantly interspersed ominous shots of Washington locations (the White House, the Capital, the Pentagon, etc.) FAIR GAME has noble intentions, but its the cinematic equivalent of listening to hours of the liberal radio network Air America. 

Hearing the hosts bitching non-stop about how we were lied to in order to justify the Iraq war - even if you agreed with them - was painful and a large part of why that network failed. And it's the main reason this film fails too.

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INSIDE JOB: The Film Babble Blog Review

INSIDE JOB
(Dir. Charles Ferguson, 2010)


"I don't know what credit default swaps are. I'm old fashioned that way." - George Soros


That makes 2 of us. There are many things like that in this documentary that I was completely in the dark about going in, yet in a sober (and sobering) manner INSIDE JOB explains the financial meltdown of 2008 in a fairly graspable way.


Matt Damon calmly narrates the film, taking us through segments entitled "How We Got Here", "The Bubble", "The Crisis", "Accountability", and "Where We Are Now". It's a lot of complicated information to take in, but through interviews with key players such as the before mentioned financier George Soros, U.S. House Representative Barney Frank, former NY State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, Economics professor Nouriel Roubini, economist Paul Volcker, and many others, the film does an impressive, if at times impenetrable, job of breaking it down.


Ferguson, whose previous film the Iraq war doc NO END IN SIGHT was just as exhaustive, has a real knack for assembling a powerful narrative out of a tangled web of sometimes extremely confusing criteria. We learn about corporate fat cats pocketing millions sometimes billions of dollars from corrupt loans.


We see power point presentation style graphics that help define CDOs (collateralized debt obligations), subprime lending, and all kind of mortage mayhem. We even get an interview with a former Wall Street "Madam" (Kristin Davis) who supplied investment bankers with prostitutes.


It's an excellent eye-opening documentary that thankfully uses a minimum of Michael Moore-ish methods like pop song punctuation.


Peter Gabriel's "Big Time" plays during the opening credit swoop through the Manhattan skyline, and Ace Frehley's "New York Groove" provides a backing beat to footage of excessive lifestyles, but such touches don't intrude at all on the thesis at hand.


INSIDE JOB is more informative than it is entertaining and its conclusion that criticizes President Obama for doing little to change the situation is depressing, but it's an incredibly well crafted and sharply focused work that got my mind reeling.


That is, even if I still can't tell you exactly what a credit default swap is.

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Lars von Trier's ANTICHRIST Now Out On DVD And Streaming On Netflix Instrant

ANTICHRIST (Dir. Lars von Trier, 2009)

This abstract horror film begins with a vivid black and white sex scene opening in which it looks like Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainesbourg are actually doing the deed. As a married couple copulating, Dafoe and Gainesbourg writhe in slow motion unaware that their baby boy (Storm Acheche Sahlstrøm) has gotten out of bed and is walking around their apartment.

Their son climbs to the ledge of an open window. He falls to his death in the snow below.

From there the film changes into color, but it's not that colorful. Dafoe and Gainesbourg Pale light bathes Dafoe and Gainesbourg's skin with gray tones setting the mournful mood.

Gainesbourg is going out of her skin over her son's death while Dafoe, a therapist, tries to tend to her with his cold and clinical methods. Dafoe decides they should retreat to a cabin in the woods because nothing says horror like a cabin in the woods! I half expected them to find the "Book Of The Dead" there.

Shadows and light move through many gothic shots of the nature surrounding them and yep, strange evil things start to happen such as Gainesbourg calling their surroundings "Satan's garden" and a fox with a voice out of THE EXORCIST saying "choas reigns" to Dafoe.

Many other weird and disturbing things happen to the couple, none of which I feel like relating.

Sexual madness is an overriding theme with excruciating scenes of genital mutilation. Gainesbourg had been working on a thesis about genocide in the same cabin the year before so there's that too.

ANTICHRIST is full of incredibly lucid cinematography and excellent acting by its 2 leads (who are the only people in the film after the son's death), but it's a disgusting and dreadful work that I could not see the point of at all.

Director von Trier has previously made thought provoking and vital films like DANCER IN THE DARK and DOGVILLE, but this is a wretched work that I wouldn't wish upon anyone - even the former co-worker of mine that recommended Paul Haggis's CRASH to me.

However Criterion deemed the film worthy enough to add to their mighty collection, and I see many folks on the internet calling it a masterpiece, but I felt absolutely assaulted by it. To each their own I suppose.

The Criterion Collection edition contains the following special features: an audio commentary by von Trier and professor Murray Smith, interviews with von Trier and the leads, a collection of video pieces delving into the production, a documentary called "Chaos Reigns at the Cannes Film Festival 2009", and a booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Ian Christie.

Or you can watch it with no frills on Netflix Instant. Just don't say you weren't warned.

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