Money Monster

From Bruce Springsteen’s Devils and Dust:

I got God on my side
I’m just trying to survive

Got my finger on the trigger
But I don’t know who to trust

Want some good news?

I paid just $5 to see a matinee of Money Monster. And yes, it was worth the money.

More good news? The film wraps in a tidy and brisk 98 minutes.

The film was directed by Jodie Foster, working from a script by Jamie Linden, Alan DiFiore, and Jim Kouf. In an interview in Entertainment Weekly, Foster said ” I was happy to make the film for 20 cents” meaning “However we could get it off the ground.”

Foster and Clooney on the set

In the same interview, George Clooney responded that he got wind of the film because “She sent me a letter. She offered me, like, $12 bucks.”

Julia Roberts signed on because George Clooney had sent her the script. She had time to read it, she liked it, and she had very few scenes with Clooney.

Well you can be sure the actual numbers on their paychecks were considerably higher for both Clooney, Roberts, and Foster. But that’s really besides the point.

The real topic of the film is of course – money. George Clooney plays Lee Gates, a cable network TV talking head, with his own daily TV show that is filled with schtick and graphics, and jokes. If Gates hadn’t knowledge and skills, along with a track record of successful picks, he would’ve been bounced off the air long ago. So we can assume that he knows, in the main, what he is talking about. We might say that he is a cross between a carnival barker, a huckster  in the days of the Old West who sold bottles of a ‘magical elixir  – to cure what ails ya‘ from the back of a covered wagon, and at the same time comes off about as well as Jeff Daniels as Will McAvoy from The Newsroom.

Hail, Caesar!

From Golgotha to West Malibu….from Busby Berkeley to Preston Sturges to the near never-ending series of MGM musicals – if you are of a certain age, or are familiar with That’s Entertainment (from 1974), then this is an ideal film for you.

Actually Hail, Caesar begins in the confessional box in a church somewhere. It is 4 in the morning, and Eddie Mannix, played brilliantly by Josh Brolin is feeling the need to get something off his chest. It seems he’s been smoking due to the pressures of his work (running a major Hollywood studio), and he’s promised his wife that he had or would give up smoking.

So begins the Coen Brothers homage (or is it a send-up?) of the old Hollywood , circa early 1950’s, when the studios controlled the actors under the star system. Now Brolin’s Mannix runs Capitol Studios – a thinly disguised MGM – and answers only to an unseen head of the overall corporation who is based in New York or somewhere other than Hollywood.

In truth, this is a zany look at the movies from actual movies being shot – there are westerns, a biblical film (Hail, Caesar), light-hearted drawing-room comedies – many within the huge sound stages, and others on location on studio back-lots. We get to the editing process, the studio campus and commissary, and even the uniformed guard at the studio gate has a speaking role.

We get to watch a director struggling and failing to get an actor to effectively say something like, Would that it twere so simple.

But wait there’s more. There’s a kidnapping, there’s the threat of the Communist scourge, Mannix is doing a film (the film within the film that we are watching called Hail, Caesar – A Tale of the Christ) that requires him to sit down with a priest, a rabbi, a reverend, and a Greek Orthodox cleric and ask them if they’ve done a credible version of Jesus.

Now this scene falls a little short of being howlingly funny, and it is more like a take-off on an old joke – 4 clerics walk into a bar – only it is not a bar but an oak-panel board room of the film studio.

The Monuments Men

On the webpage for George Clooney’s movie The Monuments Men, under the tab for story, we find:

Based on the true story of the greatest treasure hunt in history, The Monuments Men is an action-thriller focusing on an unlikely World War II platoon, tasked by FDR with going into Germany to rescue artistic masterpieces from Nazi thieves and returning them to their rightful owners. It would be an impossible mission: with the art trapped behind enemy lines, and with the German army under orders to destroy everything as the Reich fell, how could these guys – seven museum directors, curators, and art historians, all more familiar with Michelangelo than the M-1 – possibly hope to succeed? But as the Monuments Men, as they were called, found themselves in a race against time to avoid the destruction of 1000 years of culture, they would risk their lives to protect and defend mankind’s greatest achievements.

I’ve no problem with the above description aside from the obvious stretch to consider or label this film an action thriller.

The Monuments Men is film in which George Clooney is basically asking us to consider the question: Does Art Matter?

He’ll ask you to consider this multiple times as we hear this either as part of a dialogue or as narration. Of course Art matters. Clooney even takes the trouble to answer this question for us as well:

Gravity (2013)

I always wanted to see a sunset over the Ganges, I just didn’t think it would be today.

Actually, I didn’t see it. I only heard about it from George Clooney as Matt Kowalski in the film Gravity. He had a unique perspective when he saw it. You know, jet-packing around in space. He along with Sandra Bullock who plays Ryan Stone, are out making some repairs to their space shuttle.

They are linked to earth via radio transmissions. From Earth, we hear what Ed Harris as Mission Control in Houston is telling both Stone and Kowalski. Until they lose the radio connection. Which occurs after they and their craft were severely impacted by debris from a blown up satellite hurling towards them at unimaginable speeds.

You see as we are told, In space there is nothing to carry sound. No air pressure. No oxygen. Life in space is impossible.

Which meant, in regard to the debris hurtling at them – there is nothing at all to slow it down. After the debris has shredded them, both literally and figuratively, Kowalski and Stone have become un-tethered to each other, and separated from the shuttle.

Kowalski’s jet pack is running low on propulsion, and Stone is running low on oxygen. Will they reconnect and even if they do – what next?

That’s your setup. Directed by Alfonso Cuarón, from a script that Cuarón and his son Jonas wrote together, this is a monster of a film that lacks oxygen, gravity, and space aliens yet is as thrilling as can be.

Yes, the overall story is about the will to survive and get home, which is anything but new, but for we viewers, this is a remarkable cinematic experience. I can’t even begin to imagine how labor intensive this must have been to produce a film of this scope with live actors, special FX, CGI, and built for a 3D IMAX screen.

Truly this is a stunning visual experience. The film also has an involving musical score which adds to the experience. Cuaron has also pulled a few rabbits out his director’s hat in the form of long takes – in fact the opening take runs for about 17 minutes without an editorial cut.

When you factor in the disorientation we feel – as I said – there’s no up or down, horizontal or vertical. Our view perspective remains in place as this activity is happening in front of us, but for the onscreen actors, all of those terms have no meaning.

Good Night, and Good Luck

Good Night, and Good Luck is not only the title of the film, but it was also famed journalist and TV newsman Edward R. Murrow’s signature sign-off at the conclusion of his broadcasts.

The film begins at an industry dinner to honor Murrow. In 1958, Edward R. Murrow, speaking at the Radio-Television Directors Association annual meeting, said that television should and could produce important journalism.

“To those who say people wouldn’t look; they wouldn’t be interested; they’re too complacent, indifferent and insulated, I can only reply: there is, in one reporter’s opinion, considerable evidence against that contention. But even if they are right, what have they got to lose?

“Because if they are right, and this instrument is good for nothing but to entertain, amuse and insulate, then the tube is flickering now and we will soon see that the whole struggle is lost.

“This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise, it is merely wires and lights in a box.”

It is safe to say that television has progressed beyond being just lights and wires in a box. Forty seven years after that speech was made, in 2005, George Clooney brought that speech back to life in his film Good Night, And Good Luck.

That’s Clooney standing on the left, Strathairn seated in the back, and Robert Downey Jr seated on the far right.

Clooney starred as CBS TV-News Producer Fred Friendly. David Strathairn portrayed Murrow. Together they took on the junior Senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy who, while claiming to be protecting the United States from the insidious Communist scourge which was infesting the country, was really creating an atmosphere of suspicion, fear, hysteria, and paranoia. It was the classic example of the medicine being worse than the disease. It was the era of McCarthyism where a smear tactic has as much impact and effectiveness as a bullet.

David Strathairn as Edward R. Murrow talking to his countrymen during a broadcast of his show, See It Now

The American

The American opened on September 1st. I had intended to see the first show in the morning but I had to stick around for a UPS delivery, so I had to wait until today, the 2nd  to see it.

Directed by Anton Corbijn and starring George Clooney, The American is another of those laconic and iconic male characters, you know – the strong and silent type. While Corbijn’s style is a bit unique, the story of an assassin on his last job isn’t.

Corbijn takes his time getting into the story despite the lengthy pre-opening credits sequence of a shootout in Sweden that Jack survives and leaves three corpses behind. That’s no spoiler because – guess what: he wasn’t going to die in the first 10 minutes. Anyway, Corbijn’s style is to present scenes in a semi-detached manner, or without much in the way of exposition. He trusts you the viewer to be able to grow with the story and piece those seemingly stand alone scenes together.

Clooney as Jack, or Edward, or Mr. Butterfly, gives away nothing. He doesn’t answer questions directly or at all. It’s not so much that he is a brooding guy tormented by something from his past – in fact we never learn anything about his past. He’s kind of an enigma, and it seems that’s the way Jack wants it. An assassin can’t afford to make friends.

Up In The Air

As the film opens, we are aloft over a standard mid-size American city. In fact, we will see a whole series of cities  beneath our wingtip montage style. After touchdown, a series of talking heads appear. No, these are not TV newscasters or on-the-scene reporters. These are people who have just been given the news that they have fired, let go, laid-off, sacked, or canned, due to restructuring, downsizing, or other variations of the corporate mumbo-jumbo that basically means hit the road Jack, you’re outahere.

Up In the Air is the story of Ryan Bingham, a termination professional, portrayed by George Clooney. He is a corporate sky-warrior whose profession is to fly across the nation firing people. His firm is a corporate consulting firm hired by other corporations to fly into town and give the bad news to those employees deemed no longer needed.

You might call him the ax-man.

Bingham seems perfect for his job. He’s sincere, he not only knows what to say, but he also knows when to say it. He has heard all of it, be it anger or anguish from those who have just been given their walking papers, a kazillion times over.

We may not admire his work, but we can readily see that he is very good at it. In fact, his firm is in such high demand, that Bingham is on the road over 300 days a year.