Live By Night

Posted on January 12, 2017 at 5:45 pm

Ben Affleck the director picked the wrong screenwriter and the wrong star for “Live By Night,” based, like his far better “Gone Baby Gone” on a book by Dennis Lehane.

Unfortunately, this time Ben Affleck the director picked Ben Affleck the screenwriter and Ben Affleck the actor for this crime drama set in post WWI, prohibition-era Boston and Florida. Affleck the director has a good eye for detail. He understands the pacing of individual scenes, selects a great cast (other than himself), cinematographer (Robert Richardson), and composer (Harry Gregson-Williams) and has a good sense for visual storytelling. But in this case he was let down by Affleck the screenwriter, who allows the storyline to become so episodic it loses energy. And Affleck the actor gives the weakest performance in the film. He wants to be strong and stoic but comes across as blank and unfocused. It is disappointing to see Warner Brothers, the studio behind gangster classics, produce a film that has nothing of their grit or vitality.

Affleck plays Joe Coughlin, son of an Irish-American cop (Brendan Gleeson) who returns from fighting in WWI determined not to answer to anyone again. He wants to make his own rules. So he becomes involved in crime. Even criminals have rules, and Joe breaks those, too, having a passionate affair with Emma (Sienna Miller), who is supposed to be the girlfriend of the boss of the Irish mob. She betrays him (revealed early in the film, unlike the book), and is reported killed in a chase that ends with her car going into the water. He is badly beaten and then sent to prison.

When he gets out, he goes to Tampa, where he and his friend Dion Bartolo (Chris Messina) muscle their way into the crime scene there. Joe becomes involved with Graciela (Zoe Saldana) and she encourages him to take over the rum distribution. Immediately after telling him she will not sleep with him, she sleeps with him, discomfiting even in a retro story. More thuggery. More killing.

A local cop named Figgis (Chris Cooper) explains that he associates with crooks but is not one himself. His compartmentalization is geographic as well as moral, and he outlines for Joe with a map where he can operate. Later, when Joe needs leverage, he shows Figgis photos of his adored daughter Loretta (willowy Elle Fanning), hooked on drugs and prostituting herself. Joe will tell Figgis where she is in exchange for redrawing those moral boundaries. We later see Figgis punishing her by whipping her bare behind. And she becomes an Aimee Semple McPherson-style evangelist, showing the needle scars on her arms to the crowd as proof of her redemption, and calling on her followers to stay away from the demon rum that Joe is selling.

Joe’s run-ins with cruder thugs, including the KKK, are intended to show that he, too compartmentalizes and perhaps to raise the question of how each of us draws lines, and then redraws them, as we make choices about how far we will go. The excellence in production design and cinematography only show by contrast the superficiality of the story which like the other recent period film from an actor-turned-director, Warren Beatty’s “Rules Don’t Apply,” puts form above substance, or, worse, thinks they are the same thing.

Parents should know that this is a gangster film with extensive violence, including many graphic and disturbing images and characters who are injured and killed. The film also has strong language including racist epithets and sexual references and situations.

Family discussion: Why did Joe want to talk to Emma? How was Joe different from some of the other gangsters? How did his experience in the army influence him?

If you like this, try: “The Godfather,” parts 1 and 2

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The Accountant

Posted on October 12, 2016 at 5:50 pm

Ben Affleck plays the title character in “The Accountant,” a man on the autism spectrum who has what clinicians call a “flat affect” and some obsessive-compulsive tendencies, but also the math skills of a 93 petaflop computer and the martial arts skills of a Navy Seal who competes on weekends as an American Ninja Warrior.

Director Gavin O’Connor (the underseen gem “Warrior“) and screenwriter Bill Dubuque (the underseen “The Judge“) have concocted a twisty thriller with surprises up to the last minute. The crafty back-and-forth structure keeps the information just out of our reach until it is exactly the right moment for it to fall into place.

After a brief opening shoot-out, we go back in time to see the Wolff family. The parents are meeting with a specialist, who is explaining what it means to be gifted but not neuro-typical. The boy they are discussing is Christian (Seth Lee), who is speed-solving a jigsaw puzzle as his younger brother Brax (Jake Presley) watches. We are given three important pieces of information in this scene. First, Christian cannot handle not being able to finish the puzzle. Second, when the piece that fell off the table is located, we see it fit into place from underneath — he has been working on upside-down puzzle pieces, the blank underside rather than the picture.

Third, his parents do not agree on how to help him. His mother accepts the advice of the specialist, who says that Christian’s hyper-sensitivity to stimulation means that he should be protected from light and noise. But his father (Robert C. Treveiler), who is in the military, insists on the opposite. If light and noise bother Christian, “he needs more.”

We will learn more about the consequences of that disagreement later.

Christian grows up to be an accountant, operating out of a tiny office in a strip mall. (Is the name of his firm, ZZZZ, a reference to one of the most notorious accounting frauds of the 1980’s?). He advises a couple on how to use home office deductions to reduce their tax bill and shows no interest when the receptionist tries to fix him up with her daughter. He then takes on a big case, tracking down a missing $61 million at a company about to go public, where he meets Dana, the very bright young CPA who discovered the discrepancy in the financial reports (Anna Kendrick, lighting up the screen as always). But there is more to him, including a treasure trove that includes originals by Pollack and Renoir and a #1 Action Comic (first appearance of Superman, worth about $3 million), a torturous nightly ritual, a Siri-like virtual assistant who seems to know everything and some very serious guys with guns who are determined to kill Christian and Dana.

Meanwhile, a government official (JK Simmons) is trying to track down a mysterious figure who shows up in photos of some of the most dangerous people in the world, a guy who appears to be their…accountant. He blackmails a savvy young woman on his staff (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) into tracking him down. And a paid assassin (Jon Bernthal) efficiently deals with people he has been assigned to take care of, who may or may not be connected to all of this.

As he did with “Warrior,” O’Connor plays with the borders of genre. There are unexpected moments of humor (“We should go” turns out to be very funny when the tone and timing are right). And he knows how to make us feel for the characters, giving some heft to the puzzle and action. By the end of the film, we get the same satisfaction Christian does in seeing that last piece fit into place.

Parents should know that this film includes intense, sustained action-style violence involving adults and children with martial arts and guns, characters are paid assassins and criminals, fraud, very strong language, and parental abandonment.

Family discussion: What does it mean to be neuro-typical? Who was right about Chris, his father or his mother? What was the purpose of his nightly ritual?

If you like this, try: “Warrior” from the same director

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Drama Thriller

Can You Spot the Future Stars in these PBS Shows?

Posted on April 2, 2016 at 3:06 pm

Mental Floss has a great round-up of early appearances by stars from Ben Affleck to Sarah Jessica Parker, Morgan Freeman, and Michael Keaton as they made their first screen appearances on PBS shows for kids.

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Actors

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

Posted on March 23, 2016 at 11:00 am

After the refreshing superhero palate-cleanser that was “Deadpool,” it’s tough to get back into the ponderous, self-important, choir-of-angels soundtrack, too long by at least 45 minutes. Even the title is much too long. Do we really need another scene (and then ANOTHER scene) of Bruce Wayne’s parents being shot in a comic book movie? But that is not going to daunt director Zack Snyder, who lives for this sort of thing, and so here we are. The movie is literally and metaphorically murky, with muddy cinematography that turns every character’s eyes into pupil-less, drone-looking pools, except for the guys who can make theirs glow, via effects so retro they could have come from the old Flash Gordon serials. The storyline is secondary at best, just a series of setups for action sequences. It’s no secret that if you want to have a human fight Superman, you have to find some kryptonite to make him susceptible to human weapons. But then when we need him to be back to full strength, there he is. At a crucial moment, the turning point is simply ridiculous. So much of the chaos could have been circumvented if a couple of the characters ever had a conversation — or a cell phone. And everything stops when character takes the time for a detour into computer files that do nothing but set up the next movie. Isn’t that what extra scenes after the credits are for?

Batman and Superman have a lot in common — they were both orphaned as children and long before Spider-Man learned that with great power comes great responsibility, they were both living that credo, standing for, as the Superman radio and television program said, “Truth, justice, and the American way.” Indeed, they had a long comic book bromance going until the 1980’s, when they began to be at odds, focusing on what separated them. They are, after all, literally from different worlds. Brooding loner Batman/Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) is a vastly wealthy industrialist, his only confidant the trusty butler Alfred (Jeremy Irons). Superman/Clark Kent (Henry Cavill), was sent to Earth from Krypton as a baby, then found, adopted, and raised with a lot of love and support on a bucolic farm by the Kents. When he grows up, Clark Kent works as a reporter alongside the woman he loves, Lois Lane (Amy Adams).

An alien attack on Gotham destroys Wayne Enterprises’ headquarters building in a brief action sequence more arresting and visually striking than the ones that follow. Wayne, watching Superman up in the sky and suffering devastating loss and guilt over the deaths of his employees, is not sure whose side Supe is on. After the attack, Superman is treated as a hero, but Wayne is not the only one who is suspicious and threatened by someone so powerful that no earth laws could stop him if he decided to go rogue. Later, when Lane is captured, Superman’s rescue operation ends up with many people dead and many questions unanswered.

Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg, enjoying his twitches), as rich and powerful as Wayne, seems to be behind various nasty ventures, and is very, very interested in getting hold of some kryptonite, despite the objections of a Kentucky Senator (Holly Hunter). So, a lot of people here are concerned about power — how to use it, how to constrain it, how to balance it — and that would be a great issue to explore in a superhero movie in 2016, but this one is more interested in whether a rich guy with a utility belt can beat a guy with super-strength, invulnerability, laser-vision, super-speed, and the ability to fly, and then whether anyone can defeat a big monster who bursts from Kryptonian primordial ooze.

Any Batman movie has to have an elegant society party. This one is, hosted by Luthor, and a mysterious woman (Gal Gadot, by far the best part of the movie) shows up to tantalize Wayne with her beauty and steal the very data he was there to steal himself.

And any Superman movie has to have a trip to the Fortress of Solitude, so that happens, too, and all I could do was wish I was there instead of watching this film.

Parents should know that this film includes constant comic book style fantasy violence with many explosions, and massive destruction, nukes, supernatural and military weapons, scary monster, characters injured and killed, some strong language, alcohol including drinking to deal with stress, and non-explicit nudity and a sexual situation.

Family discussion: How would/should the world respond to a real-life superhero who could not be subjected to our laws? Or to a vigilante like Batman?

If you like this, try: the Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan Batman movies and the comic books

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Fantasy Series/Sequel Superhero

Gone Girl

Posted on October 2, 2014 at 6:00 pm

Amy (Rosamund Pike) is watching television, vitally, even viscerally enthralled by what is happening on screen. The look on her face, mingled fascination and calculation, a hint of tooth and claw under her placid, golden girl beauty, is one of the most mesmerizing sights on screen this year.

Pike gives an extraordinary performance in the title role of David Fincher’s film based on the sensationally popular thriller by Gillian Flynn that was carried by just about everyone riding public transportation last year, many of whom became so engrossed that they missed their stops.

Ben Affleck is perfectly cast as the once-glamorous and smooth, now just slightly seedy Nick Dunne. His face is still handsome but his jawline is softening, his eyes are beginning to get puffy, and his smile, still calibrated for a face a little bit handsomer than the one he has not quite adjusted to seeing in the mirror.

On their fifth anniversary, Nick’s wife Amy (Pike) disappears, leaving behind some disturbing signs of a struggle and the front door open. Nick calls the police and spends the night with his twin sister, closest confidant, and business partner, Go (Carrie Coon). He sleeps in his clothes and does not clean up the next morning. He knows he will be a more compelling vision of a devastated husband if he looks like a mess.

That is the first indication of one of the story’s key themes: the gulf between the way we present ourselves and the way we are. We learn through flashbacks and Amy’s diary about how they met and fell in love, or a reasonable facsimile. They were buoyed by ease and that made marriage feel easy, too. They had glamorous writing jobs in those last few moments before print publishing collapsed. They had a charming brownstone, bought with Amy’s money, or, rather, the money her parents earned by publishing a successful series of children’s books inspired by their daughter, the Amazing Amy stories. Her parents set aside the profits for the daughter who inspired them. But then there was the recession. Jobs, gone. Money, gone. The economic downturn eroded the golden couple’s notion of each other, of themselves, of success. It is so easy to be in love when you don’t have to blame each other for everything turning out so badly.

When Nick’s mother became ill, they moved back to the small town in Missouri where he and Go grew up, to help take care of her. With the last of their money, they bought a house and a bar for Nick to run with Go. Amy stayed home and wrote in her diary. And now she’s gone.

If there’s one thing television news loves to cover, it’s a missing blonde woman. The Nancy Grace-ish Ellen Abbott (a dead-on Missi Pyle) is all over the story. Is Nick the tragic young husband, longing for his wife to return? Or, as we have seen too often in this high-profile cases, is he a murderer so heartless that he staged the whole thing? One detective (“Almost Famous'” Patrick Fugit) thinks the simple answer is usually the right one. His partner (Kim Dickens, nicely wry) believes in complications. This case has plenty.

No spoilers here. Either you’ve read the book and already know or you haven’t and deserve to be surprised. I’ll just say there are superb performances by everyone, including Tyler Perry as a celebrity criminal defense lawyer and Neil Patrick Harris and Scoot McNairy as Amy’s former boyfriends. And Fincher keeps the energy taut and the tone deliciously nasty.

Parents should know that this is a crime story with some bloody violence, as well as sexual references and situations, nudity, strong language, and drinking.

Family discussion: What would have happened if Nick and Amy had kept their jobs and money and stayed in New York? What will happen after the ending of the movie?

If you like this, try: “To Die For” and the novels by Gillian Flynn, including Dark Places, soon to be a movie starring Charlize Theron.

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Based on a book Thriller