Charlize Theron, Jay Roach, Charles Randolph on Bombshell, and Speaking Up About Sexual Harassment at FOX News

Posted on November 14, 2019 at 12:11 pm

Last night, a powerhouse Washington D.C. audience got an early look at one of this winter’s biggest and best movies, “Bombshell,” based on the true story of the sexual harassment complaints that caused a seismic shake-up at the most powerful media company in the world. The title is clever, referring to the “bombshell” anchors of Fox News, selected for their beauty as well as their credentials as journalists, and the “bombshell” disclosures of abuse that led to the departure of the company’s top talent, including the founder of FOX News, the late Roger Ailes and their top-rated broadcaster, Bill O’Reilly.

Following the screening at the spectacular new Washington DC office of the MPAA, CNN’s Dana Bash interviewed producer and star Charlize Theron, who plays Megyn Kelly in the film, director Jay Roach, and screenwriter Charles Randolph. Some highlights:

Randolph described himself as “the least woke man in the room,” subject to “the masculine instinct to minimize” the experiences of women, which itself causes great harm — the “refusal to acknowledge the importance of these events in women’s lives is devastating.” But “how is that helping the world? And so, he told us the the reason he wanted to tell this story: “Sexual harassment has to stop. And this has such interesting characters. They are not earnestly passive, as we see too often in “good” characters. They are filled with quirks, contradictions, internal conflicts. My parents are FOX News people. These are characters they can relate to, laugh at, laugh with, fully identify with and respect.”

Roach also comes from a “Fox News family,” he said. “This could cross over. Even my mom and my aunts could connect to this because they know them. When this story happened, we were all talking about it but I did not hear my family talking about it. The women in this film did not call themselves feminists; it is a great predicament for a story.”

Theron on taking on the role: “This film began before the Harvey Weinstein/#meetoo/Time’s Up movement. In a way, it is the origin story. But this was already a part of my life as it has been for every woman. Producing the film was easier than playing Megyn. And in some ways, playing Aileen Wuornos in ‘Monster’ was easier, because everyone knows Megyn’s face, voice, gestures so well. It took a little time for me to put my personal feelings aside. Megyn says some things I don’t agree with and some that rub me the wrong way. We have different views on a lot of stuff, but the only way to do this job is to remove yourself from those judgments and come from an empathetic place, to find the emotional arc of the story and not hide yourself away from the thorns. It’s easy to do a heroic person who does everything right and the audience immediately likes them. But it is more interesting to take a conflicted person who has a moment to do something right, not fluffy nice and cozy. We are complicated as people and the characters should be, too.” The same goes for those in the story who are not the heroes. “The harasser you most have to worry about is not the guy twirling his mustache.”

“It’s the belittling factor,” Theron said. “We’ve always been able to wrap our heads around the violent injuries. But this is also incredibly damaging. You carry this stuff, adding more weight to the luggage you never get rid of.”

Midway

Posted on November 7, 2019 at 5:40 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for sequences of war violence and related images, language and smoking
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	War-related peril and violence, characters injured and killed, guns, bombs, aerial battles, some disturbing images
Diversity Issues:	Portrayal of historic events reflects the era's attitudes
Date Released to Theaters:	November 7, 2019
Date Released to DVD:	February 17, 2020

The shocking attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese in December 1941 was not just a devastating loss, the “day that will live in infamy,” as President Roosevelt said. It was a humiliating failure of our intelligence operation. We were not prepared for war with Japan in terms of personnel, weapons, or planes. And we continued to suffer brutal defeats in the first months. If America could not start to win some battles, Japan would begin to invade our west coast.

Six months later, the three-day battle of Midway was a critically important victory for the United States. From June 3-6, 1942, American forces gave Japan its first significant defeat of the war, the result of strategy, tactics, better intelligence, and, most of all, the unimaginable dedication and honor of the Greatest Generation. This re-telling of the story has the bombast we expect from director Roland Emmerich, but the stirring story and appealing characters make it a worthy tribute for Veteran’s Day weekend.

In Midway, creenwriter Wes Tooke (television’s “Colony”) balances the big picture battles and tactical overlay with the stories of a small group of real-life heroes. At the heart of the story is Dick Best (Ed Skrein) as the cocky pilot who shuts off the engine before landing on an aircraft carrier, just for practice. His wife Anne (Mandy Moore) is as tough as he is. If this movie had been made in the 80’s, Best would have been played by Tom Cruise. If it had been made in the 40’s, it would have been Clark Gable. Skrein makes Best the quintessential American hero, cool under pressure, confident, a bit of a cowboy. Luke Kleintank plays Earle Dickenson, the first Naval pilot to be awarded three Navy Crosses. If this were made in the 1940’s, his character would be played by Spencer Tracy.

Roland Emmerich knows how to make the battle scenes tense and exciting. He shows us just how fragile and vulnerable the planes were; it feels like they’re up in the air in an orange crate. He shows us how all the pieces came together, including the quirky code-breaker Joseph Rochefort (Brennan Brown) and Edwin Layton (Patrick Wilson), who had served in Japan, and whose warnings were ignored. Bull Halsey (Dennis Quaid) struggled with excruciatingly painful illness as he became America’s most acclaimed fighting admiral. Mandy Moore as Ann Best shows us the spirit of the home front. And Nick Jonas will break your heart as a machinist captured by the Japanese.

We look back at history and we cannot help taking it all for granted. Movies like this remind us how close we came to disaster and how many lives were lost to keep us safe.

Parents should know that this film includes WWII battle footage with bombs, explosions, fire, and guns. Characters are injured and killed.

Family discussion: Why is this film dedicated to the military on both sides of the Midway battle? How were Best and Dickenson different and how were each one’s strengths reflected in their choices?

If you like this, try: Books: The Battle of Midway, by Craig L. Symonds, and The Flying Guns: Cockpit Record of a Naval Pilot from Pearl Harbor Through Midway, by Earle Dickenson, played by Luke Kleintank in the film. There is also a 1976 film starring Charlton Heston and Henry Fonda.

Harriet

Posted on October 31, 2019 at 5:29 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for thematic content throughout, violent material and language including racial epithets
Profanity:	Strong and racist language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, smoking, drug use
Violence/ Scariness:	Intense violence including brutal abuse of enslaved and free people, references to rape, guns, wartime violence
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	November 1, 2019
Date Released to DVD:	January 27, 2020

Cynthia Erivo stars as Harriet Tubman in HARRIET, a Focus Features release.
Credit: Glen Wilson / Focus Features

There should have been a movie about Harriet Tubman decades ago. And yet, this moment for “Harriet” is just right, because the story of the woman who led more than 70 enslaved people to freedom and was the first woman to lead an armed expedition for the U.S. Army was made at a time when it could be written and directed by Kasi Lemmons and star Cynthia Erivo, who is nothing less than electrifying in the role.

Harriet Tubman was a name she chose. Born to enslaved parents on a plantation in Maryland, she was called Minty, short for Araminta. Although her family was supposed to have been freed by the terms of the plantation owner’s will, his widow (Jennifer Nettles as Eliza) and son (Joe Alwyn as Gideon) refuse to acknowledge their right to freedom. Minty marries a free man she dearly loves. But when Gideon plans to “sell her down the river” to the Deep South, as he had sold her siblings, Minty decides she has to run away, no matter what the risk. She has no map, and if she did have one she could not read it. What she had was determination, the ability to run fast, the North Star, and an innate sense that helped her to elude her would-be captors.

That innate sense is part of Tubman’s legend. She had some kind of seizure disorder, probably the result of a horrific beating from the plantation owner. She thought it was a connection to God. Whatever it was, she was able to make it to safety in Philadelphia, where she met free black people of culture and accomplishment, including William Still, and Marie (the exquisitely gracious Janelle Monáe), a fictional character inspired by Tubman’s real-life friend. Her choice of a new name and her introduction to the possibilities of freedom are movingly portrayed.

But she cannot rest until her husband can join her. And so, she makes the treacherous trip back. That trip does not turn out as she intended, but it gives her a new purpose; giving other enslaved people a chance to be free.

Erivo is incandescent in the role, one of the great performances of the year in a story that is as vital as history as it is timely.

Parents should know that this is a film about slavery and escape and war, so there is extended peril and violence, including beatings, attacks, and abuse with references to rape. There is a Civil War battle scene. Characters drink and use strong language.

Family discussion: Why did Harriet Tubman choose that name? What name would you choose? Who is most like her today?

If you like this, try: “Glory” and Nate Parker’s “Birth of a Nation”

The Current War: Director’s Cut

Posted on October 24, 2019 at 5:35 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for some violent content and thematic elements
Profanity:	Brief strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol, smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Flashback to Civil War scene with guns, animals and humans electrocuted, discussion of "humane" executions, sad death of wife and mother, tense confrontations
Diversity Issues:	Anti-immigrant prejudice
Date Released to Theaters:	October 25, 2019
Date Released to DVD:	March 30, 2020

There’a a saying usually attributed to Balzac: “Behind every fortune is a crime.” There is a fairy tale quality to stories of people who have exciting new ideas that change our lives and are rewarded with unimaginable fortunes, from the grad students who created Google to the garage tinkerers who founded Hewlett-Packard and the college dropouts who created Microsoft and Facebook.

But as any business school student knows, it takes more than a brilliant or even a monumentally disruptive idea to create a business. That requires the ability to execute. It is one set of skills to jot down great thoughts in a notebook but another set entirely to bring it all to life. It takes courage, because ordinary people are afraid of anything new and people who are invested in the old ways will try to stop you. And it takes a singular purpose that looks a lot like ruthlessness. That is the story “The Current War,” which is not as much about the inventions that transformed America from being lit by gas lamps and candles to being lit and powered by electricity as it is about the control of those inventions and the fortunes they made.

The three major players are America’s greatest inventor, Thomas Alva Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch), entrepreneur and engineer George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon), and visionary Serbian immigrant Nikola Tesla (Nicholas Hoult). Also in the mix is one of the wealthiest men in the world, J.P. Morgan (Matthew McFayden) and the current Spider-Man, Tom Holland, as Edison’s aide Samuel Insull.

At the center of their battle is the fight over what kind of electricity will be used, Edison’s lower voltage direct current, which was safer but more limited in range, and the Tesla/Westinghouse alternating current, which travelled over longer distances, was powerful enough to fuel machinery as well as light bulbs, but was also more dangerous, potentially fatal. (Now you know what AC/DC means and how the Australian rock group got its name and why their first album was named High Voltage.)

Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon avoids the too-often stuffy quality of prestige historical dramas with refreshingly dynamic camerawork from DP Chung-hoon Chung (“The Handmaiden,” “Stoker”) and editing by Justin Krohn and David Trachtenberg. The opening shots are as striking as any you’d find in an art-house or superhero movie, blowing the dust off of the idea that movies set in the past have to be stodgy to be taken seriously. The script by Michael Mitnick packs a lot of developments and details into the story, from the illness of Edison’s wife to the conflicts (and jealousy) between the talent and the money to the shifting loyalties and various strategic maneuvers (legal and illegal), some as complex as the engineering specs for the various contraptions. One fascinating detour reminds us that as soon as new technology is invented, someone will try to figure out a way to use it to kill people (it was still so new there was no word for electrocution). Another reminds us of the connection between the characters on screen and the very technology we use to tell their story.

“The Current War: Director’s Cut” places the human drama in the midst of cultural and technological shifts and shows us how they affect and are affected by each other. Vivid, compelling characters, smart, witty dialogue, and a cherry-on-the-top ending making this film not just enjoyable, but, yes, illuminating.

NOTE: The official title of this film includes the words “Director’s Cut” because after it premiered at the Toronto Film Festival its release was put on hold because Harvey Weinstein (the distributor) was caught up in the #metoo accusations. The version shown at the festival was re-cut by Weinstein and director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon was not happy with that version. Martin Scorsese came on as a producer to make sure he was able to release the version he wanted.

Parents should know that this film include the sad illness and death of wife and mother, offscreen murder and execution, electrocutions of people and animals, Civil War scenes with shooting, and some strong language.

Family discussion: What is a bigger factor in success — having the best idea or being able to put it into practice — or wanting to win above all? What is Edison’s most important invention? Why did Elon Musk name his company Tesla?

If you like this, try: two biopics about Edison, “Young Tom Edison” with Mickey Rooney and “Edison the Man” with Spencer Tracy

The Laundromat

Posted on October 10, 2019 at 5:46 pm

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language, some sexual content and disturbing images
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking and drug dealing
Violence/ Scariness:	Boat accident, electrical accident, murder characters killed, sad loss of spouse
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	October 18, 2019

The numbers are unimaginable. The vocabulary is mind-numbing — and intended to be so. One of the biggest financial scandals of all time is known as the Panama Papers, a global money laundering/tax evasion/corruption-concealing scheme involving some of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful people, including politicians and crooks. They hid their money in what are called “shell” corporations — shell as in “shell game,” where the pea is always under the shell you don’t pick. The interlocking network of these companies was revealed with the help of a still-undisclosed whistleblower thanks to the tireless work of a group of non-profit journalists who had to comb through millions of arcane legal documents to understand and explain it all.

Great journalistic coup. But unlike a simple straightforward fraud like the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, which was depicted in two different and very watchable film versions, starring Oscar winners Robert De Niro and Richard Dreyfuss, the Panama Papers mess was so big and complicated it seemed impossible to put into dramatic form. That was the challenge faced by journalist Jake Bernstein, who wrote the sober, meticulously detailed book, and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns (“The Bourne Ultimatum”), who wrote the colorful, funny, and dramatic movie. Director Steven Soderbergh knows how to do a heist film following “Oceans 11” and “Logan Lucky,” and he wisely structures this as another story of clever thieves outwitting ordinary people. Except this time the people outwitting are not lovable underdogs and the people outwitted are us.

Our guide to this world is an irrepressible pair of lawyers played by Antonio Banderas (playing Ramón Fonseca) and Gary Oldman (as Jürgen Mossack). It is hard to say which is more charming, their impeccably bespoke suits, which get increasingly outrageous over the course of the film, or their cheerful frankness about their equally cheerful and highly lucrative lack of any shred of integrity or responsibility. The linked stories that illustrate different aspects of the scheme are introduced by Fonseca and Mossack who explain what is going on and tie the stories to “rules” that underly the legal and human realities that created this monster. They should have just quoted Pogo: We have met the enemy and he is us. Or, as one of them says, “The world does not want to be saved.”

“Think of them as fairy tales that actually happened,” they tell us. “They’re not just about us. They’re about you.” Their first rule: “The meek are screwed.”

And that is how we meet a nice lady named Ellen Martin (Meryl Streep), devoted to her husband (James Cromwell). When the pilot of the tour boat ride they are on is distracted, there is an accident, it sinks, and her husband is killed. Ellen is devastated. And then she finds out that the tour boat’s insurance company will not pay, and then she finds out that it does not really exist. It exists on paper, but it is just a shell company used for money laundering, and it never pays out on claims. There are no claims officers, no offices. It’s a mail drop run by a man who gets paid $15 per signature for acting as representative for hundreds of shell companies.

We peek into other stories. A shakedown of a Chinese official does not go as planned. The literally shocking death of a low-lever functionary throws the whole system out of whack because she is — on paper — a director of 25,000 companies. And a betrayal leads to a brutal lesson in the value of values, which turns out to be less than we might hope.

It is briskly told, with a heightened, farcical tone that ends with not one smart twist, but two. Soderbergh knows how to entice us into paying attention, and entertain us until we are willing to think.

Parents should know that this movie concerns a real-life massive financial fraud, with many stories of betrayal and theft, peril, accidental death and murder, sexual references and non-explicit situations, personal and professional betrayal, drinking, drugs, and very strong language.

Family discussion: Who is in position to prevent this kind of abuse? What is the difference between privacy and secrecy?

If you like this, try: “The Big Short” and the books and documentary about the Panama Papers