Trailer: Trumbo with Bryan Cranston

Posted on August 16, 2015 at 7:19 am

Bryan Cranston plays Dalton Trumbo, the brilliant screenwriter whose experiences during the McCarthy era inspired some of the greatest movies ever made about freedom. Trumbo was blacklisted but continued to write screenplays by having them attributed to “fronts,” men who were hired to take credit for them. During this period, two of his fronts were awarded Oscars, which were later re-presented to the man who was truly responsible for them.

Godzilla

Posted on May 15, 2014 at 6:01 pm

All the basic ingredients are there for a slam-bang summer monster movie. We have people in helmets and hazmat suits running to try to get away from something scary. We have a scientist pleading with a military officer to trust him and the guy in camo responding that he can’t take that chance. We have a guy everyone thinks is crazy who turns out to be right. We have mumbo-jumbo about radiation and bio-acoustics. We have a tentacle(?) tease 40 minutes in. We have a corporate/government cover-up. People say things like, “There’s been a breach,” and “I can prove to you and the world that this was not a natural disaster.” Oh, and “I’m going to find the truth and end this, whatever it takes.” And “It’s going to send us back to the stone age.”

Buildings will be destroyed and a bridge will collapse. People will be told to stay home and then traffic will be at a standstill as they all ignore directions. We have a lot of globe-hopping so that international forces can be involved and iconic skylines can be trashed. And, most important, we have a very, very big monster to do the trashing. Enormous ships will be tossed around like a rubber duckie in a bathtub.

What we don’t have is a very good story. And for a movie with a lot of destruction, not enough of a sense of real investment in the outcome. The good news about CGI is that you can make anything happen on screen. The bad thing is that everyone knows you can make anything happen, so at a fundamental level, it does not feel real.

“Godzilla” begins promisingly, with a terrific opening credit sequence over “archival” footage and glimpses of redacted government reports. And ash, lots of ash, detritus from atomic fallout, pretty cool in 3D. Then there’s a little backstory. In 1999 we see the discovery of a skeleton in a Philippine mine. The rib cage is the size of an apartment building. And there’s goop! If there’s one thing we’ve learned from monster movies over years, it has to be DON’T TOUCH THE GOOP.

Meanwhile, still in 1999, we get our introduction to the adorable family — there always has to be an adorable family — living near a nuclear energy plant in Japan who will provide the emotional core of the film. There’s loving American father (Bryan Cranston) Joe Brody, distracted by some inexplicable but rhythmic tremors. There’s loving French wife (Juliette Binoche), who also works at the plant. And there’s a son, cute tyke Ford. “Earthquakes are random, jagged,” Joe explains. What he is hearing is “consistent and increasing.” We know he will have a hard time persuading his bosses, but we know he is right. And soon tragedy strikes and the cooling towers collapse. The entire community is contaminated and shut down.

Fifteen years later, Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson of “Kick-Ass”) is coming back from a military deployment where his job is “stopping bombs.” After he has an adorable reunion with his own adorable wife (Elizabeth Olsen) and son, he gets a call. Joe has been arrested in Japan, where he is still obsessed with finding the truth about what happened. He has a crazy room with walls covered in clippings connected by string to show the various conspiracies. Ford thinks his dad is nuts. He’s about to find out that he is right.

I don’t want to give away any monster spoilers here, so I’ll just say that there are some surprises for anyone not thoroughly immersed in “Godzilla” lore. I liked seeing the creature pop nuclear warheads into his mouth like Popeye knocks back spinach. And it steps things up nicely when the monster’s power charge shorts out the grids. The special effects are excellent, though only a high-altitude/low opening parachute jump makes full use of the 3D. But the story is weak and the characters are cardboard. The original 1954 “Godzilla” resonated because it personified (monstronified?) our then-new fears about the atomic age. With so many contemporary scares about environmental damage, they should have been able to find something equally potent.

Parents should know that this is a sci-fi movie in the tradition of all monster movies, with extensive mayhem,scary surprises, some disturbing images, and many characters injured and killed. There is some strong language.

Family discussion: What made the scientist and the military come to different conclusions — information or training? What was the significance of the pocket watch?

If you like this, try: the original Japanese “Godzilla” movies

Bring on the Bad Guys: Spader. Cranston…Timberlake?

Posted on August 30, 2013 at 3:59 pm

I always say that superhero movies are defined by the villains. So in the midst of all the debate about Ben Affleck as the new Batman, I am much more interested in the possibility that Bryan Cranston as bad guy Lex Luthor. He is a perfect choice. And it has been announced that James Spader will play Ultron in the next “Avengers.” He’s been good at being bad since “Pretty in Pink.” Very promising! And one more rumor: Justin Timberlake apparently wants to play Riddler. It will be hard to top Jim Carrey (or Frank Gorshin or Cesar Romero), but I’d like to see him try.

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Interview: Bryan Cranston and John Goodman of “Argo”

Posted on October 17, 2012 at 8:00 am

In Argo, Bryan Cranston (“Breaking Bad”) plays the CIA chief who supervises Tony Mendez, the character played by director Ben Affleck. And John Goodman plays real-life Oscar winner John Chambers, the genius in make-up and prosthetics who secretly worked with the CIA on disguises. Mendez called Chambers for help in setting up the fake Hollywood studio they needed to create cover identities to get the six Americans hiding out in Iran back home. A small group of journalists met with Affleck, Goodman, and Cranston to talk about the film.

What is the challenge in playing a character based on a real person, knowing that people who knew him will see the film and people who didn’t know him will think that they know what he was like based on your performance?

John Goodman: First and foremost, I had a responsibility to the character I was playing because he actually existed. He was a well-respected makeup artist, so I just felt the responsibility to not step on my foot.

Brian Cranston: My character was a composite character, and I think it was carefully crafted that way because at the time that you keep cutting back to the CIA and finding out more information and what’s happening back there, it was important to not have the audience confused for a second. If there was numerous people that were at the CIA giving him instruction and guidance, if the audience is going, “Which guy is it? Was that the guy from the White House or is that the guy…” then, we’re in trouble, because then they’re not listening. So, we didn’t want to slow it down and so my character became the composite character. But you know, it’s interesting. Some people will say, “Well, actors, they’re liars, right? They get up and pretend and say they’re someone else,” and the truth is that we desperately seek the truth and the honesty of a character, and we don’t feel completely comfortable until we find out how to play someone with that integrity. But yes, I think Ben and John had slightly more sense of responsibility because they’re portraying real people.

What do you think was going on inside the minds of these men as they went through these extraordinary challenges?

Bryan Cranston: Well, I had the good fortune of coming to Langley, Virginia early on before we started shooting and I sat down with a few CIA officers of varying degrees of experience. I wanted to get sort of a baseline of who these people are, and get a sense of the culture that they live in, and I guess what I came away with is that it’s not dissimilar from any other corporate structure. They’re still complaining about the boss and his crappy idea, and “that’s not going to work,” and there’s stale coffee in the break room and there’s all these kinds of things that they have to deal with. I think at first they were a little reticent to open up to a stranger. At first they would say, “There are several things we can’t talk about, you know, mission wise.” And I go, “I’m actually more interested in what your personal life is like and what sacrifices that were made with your spouses, what were you able to tell your children? How did it affect you? Your relationships? Do you guys drink? Did you go to a certain place to associate with other officers?” And there’s very much a club, in fact, one of the things that I found interesting was that a lot of them will socialize within and marry within, so that one guy was married to a CIA officer and their daughter was a CIA officer, and so it’s the family business. What I thought, going in, was “This is going to be completely different from anything that I have ever known” but it became sort of familiar to me. I just wanted to craft this man being a dedicated servant, truly believing in the value of the CIA and what he’s providing for it. I had a sense that, if this worked, this would be Jack’s last mission, that I’m going, “it’s not going to be any better than this, so I’m going to get debriefed and walk away.”

John Goodman: It’s like the idea of a man who manufactures disguises, disguising a part of his life and hiding in plain sight and serving his countries with the tools of his trade.

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Interview: Ben Affleck, Director and Star of “Argo” (Part 1)

Posted on October 14, 2012 at 3:11 pm

Ben Affleck directed “Argo,” the incredible story of a real-life 1980 CIA rescue mission, and he plays Tony Mendez, the “exfiltration” expert who came up with the idea to create a fake Hollywood film production company and get the six American out of Iran by convincing the people who had captured 52 other State Department employees that these six were members of a Canadian film crew, scouting locations for a big sci-fi/fantasy film. I spoke to him about the movie with a small group of journalists, the day after a screening attended by some of the real people rescued by Mendez.

You did something really remarkable in combining what is really two movies with two completely different tones in this film. How did you put that together so skillfully?

Well, I wish I could say it was my own skill, I don’t think it was. They’re really smart actors, they kind of looked at the material on the page and did me a favor of playing it honestly. Because it was played realistically it kind of blended anyway. If it hadn’t, I suppose I would’ve had a bunch of conversations about how we were going to get the jigsaw puzzles to fit, but all the parties, Bryan Cranston, John Goodman, and Alan Arkin were really pretty adept. They knew how to play it real, and that kind of saved my bacon.

Did you anticipate that there would be so much connection to current events and what do you think the movie can say about where we are now?

I was kind of stunned, naturally, just to see that the material that I looked at for research from 30 plus years ago all of a sudden was looking exactly like what was on the evening news. That surprised me and it surprised everybody and obviously, it was just a terrible thing for everyone. I expected the movie to be resonant to the sense of what happens when the United States gets involved with the government of another country and overlooks some of the negative things they may be doing because they’re pro-Western, the unintended consequences of revolution, those are the kinds of things I was anticipating. What it ended up being more about, in some ways, was an homage to our clandestine service and our foreign service folks, who, as illustrated by these tragic events do a lot, sacrifice a lot, put themselves in harm’s way, give up a lot to go overseas. Our Foreign Service folks are doing a lot and making a lot of sacrifices for us, and sometimes it’s even the ultimate sacrifice.

It really seems like you shot it as if it was a film made in the 70s, starting from the old Warner Bros. logo.

I thought it would be a trick of the brain, where, if you’re looking at a movie that looks like the kind of movie that was made in the 1970’s, it’s easier for the brain to subconsciously accept this notion that the events they’re watching are taking place during that period. Now, you can’t do that if you’re doing a movie about the Revolutionary War, but that’s why we had this interesting advantage. Even better, that era that I was trying to replicate, to sort of fool the brain, was a really great era for film-making, so I got to copy these great films and great film-makers, Lumet, Pakula, Scorsese.

How does it complicate things when you’re making what is basically a living history film, knowing that the people who were really there will see it?

It’s about a whole story, you know, and you have to maintain the integrity and the honesty of the spine of the story. That’s one profound responsibility because. I want them to look at it and say, “Yeah, that’s basically it.” Now, the real takeover was four hours long, and we have five minutes. That’s the kind of thing that we need to do to sort of compromise. It was raining in the real takeover, it’s not raining there. There are some details that are naturally changed. But the essential spirit of it, that has to be preserved. You know somebody did find a picture of Khomeini with the darts in it and say, “Who did this?” They really did blindfold people and things like that. I also have a responsibility to make a good movie, to tell a good story, because that’s what I do, and so those two things are constantly intentioned with one another, because I want to make it true, but I gotta make it good, you know?

How much was changed for dramatic purposes?

The main change, really, is the cars in the runway. They got to the third checkpoint, they got through, that was all the same, and they got there and sat there and they said, “Well, your plane has been delayed.” I thought, “Well, we’ve all been through that!” And then they got on the plane and left, and so in an effort to sort of externalize that and make the third act work, I added the sort of, them just barely getting away, when in fact they got away a little bit more ahead of the wire. But that really, fundamentally, in my view, doesn’t change the story. The same things happened, you know? It was a close-call in terms of trying to get out in terms of their own deadline. Most of the sins, really, in terms of story-telling, are sins of omission, you know? Not being able to include the fact that Pat Taylor got money from her co-workers or that in Ottawa they approved this special session to make these passports that had never been done before. You have people who are all alive, there’s a natural tendency to feel like, “Well, this is my story.” So you have to sort of do everyone’s story justice, and also take into account the sort of Rashomon phenomenon where you hear slightly different accounts from different people, and definitely maintain the realism of it while not sacrificing what’s really interesting about it.

What movies of the period ended up inspiring elements of this film?

There were a lot of them that I had seen and I still watched again, and I liked “The Thing” for my hair, and I liked Killing of a Chinese Bookie, the Cassavetes movie, for the sort of seedy LA, I just loved the look, the feel, the way they use zooms, the way it felt kind of raw but you also realized it was choreographed—and I didn’t expect to see that coming. There’s a movie called Let Me In that I watched, that’s really good, a guy named Matt Reeves directed it, the remake of the original one, and I thought it was really well directed and watched it with my DP, and we were looking at stuff that they did with focus in that movie, you know, keeping things in the foreground, focus, and maybe soft the background—that was something that I didn’t expect to influence me and it really did.

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