“Deep Vote,” an Oscar winning screenwriter and a member of the Academy, will write this column — exclusively for ScottFeinberg.com — every week until the Academy Awards in order to help to peel back the curtain on the Oscar voting process. (His identity must be protected in order to spare him from repercussions for disclosing the aforementioned information.)
Thus far, he has shared his thoughts in column 1 about his general preferences; column 2 about “Solitary Man” (Anchor Bay Films, 5/21, R, trailer) and “Winter’s Bone” (Roadside Attractions, 6/11, R, trailer); column 3 about “Alice in Wonderland” (Disney, 3/5, PG, trailer), “Mother and Child” (Sony Pictures Classics, 5/7, R, trailer), and “Toy Story 3” (Disney, 6/18, G, trailer); column 4 about “Get Low” (Sony Pictures Classics, 7/30, PG-13, trailer), “The Kids Are All Right” (Focus Features, 7/9, R, trailer), and “The Social Network” (Columbia, 10/1, PG-13, trailer); column 5 about “127 Hours” (Fox Searchlight, 11/5, R, trailer), “Biutiful” (Roadside Attractions, 12/17, R, trailer), and “Shutter Island” (Paramount, 2/19, R, trailer); column 6 about “Inception” (Warner Brothers, 7/16, PG-13, trailer), “Made in Dagenham” (Sony Pictures Classics, 11/19, R, trailer), and “Somewhere” (Focus Features, 12/22, R, trailer); column 7 about “Another Year” (Sony Pictures Classics, 12/29, PG-13, trailer), “Fair Game” (Summit, 11/5, PG-13, trailer), and “Rabbit Hole” (Lionsgate, 12/17, PG-13, trailer); column 8 about “Blue Valentine” (The Weinstein Company, 12/29, R, trailer), “The Fighter” (Paramount, 12/10, R, trailer), and “True Grit” (Paramount, 12/22, PG-13, trailer); column 9 about “The Ghost Writer” (Summit, 2/19, PG-13, trailer), “The King’s Speech” (The Weinstein Company, 11/26, R, trailer), and “The Town” (Warner Brothers, 9/17, R, trailer); column 10 about “Black Swan” (Fox Searchlight, 12/3, R, trailer), “Conviction” (Fox Searchlight, 10/15, R, trailer), and “I Am Love” (Magnolia, 6/18, R, trailer); column 11 about his nomination ballots; column 12 about “All Good Things” (Magnolia, 12/3, R, trailer), “Animal Kingdom” (Sony Pictures Classics, 8/13, R, trailer), and “The Way Back” (Newmarket, 12/29, PG-13, trailer); column 13 about “Barney’s Version” (Sony Pictures Classics, 12/3, R, trailer), “Love and Other Drugs” (20th Century Fox, 11/24, R, trailer), and “Tangled” (Disney, 11/24, PG, trailer); and column 14 about “The Illusionist” (Sony Pictures Classics, 12/25, PG, trailer), “Inside Job” (Sony Pictures Classics, 10/8, PG-13, trailer), “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1” (Warner Brothers, 11/19, PG-13, trailer), and “How to Train Your Dragon” (DreamWorks Animation, 3/26, PG, trailer).
This week, he assesses three more films: “Casino Jack” (ATO Pictures, 12/17, R, trailer), “Hereafter” (Warner Brothers, 10/22, PG-13, trailer), and “Iron Man 2” (Paramount, 5/7, PG-13, trailer). The first brought Kevin Spacey a Golden Globe nomination for best actor (drama); the latter two are nominated for the best visual effects Oscar.
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“Casino Jack” is a movie about the convicted Washington influence-peddler Jack Abramoff, played by Kevin Spacey straight-up and head-on. The movie opens with a monologue shouted into a mirror about what he won’t put up with, with the result being that 30 seconds into the picture the audience dislikes the hero — and we see nothing later to change our minds. (It’s not a big mystery why the film did not capture a big audience.)
The object of the film — in which Indian tribes are promoted for the wrong reasons and bilked, deals are made with mobsters, idiot congressmen and senators are elected and controlled, and ruin comes to Abramoff, though the lobbying system rolls merrily along — seems to be that we dislike Abramoff and see him and his associates as crude, ugly, criminal and self-deceptive men who are largely responsible for the downfall of our nation.
The problem is that this is one of the many ways not to make a good political film — portraying all the major characters as rats, and those victimized as greedy and stupid, and challenging all members of the diverse American audience to agree with a narrow point of view ideologically. Many of them will suspect that the game is fixed — that the bad guys could not be that bad, or possibly bad at all, since they would have to believe that Abramoff’s partner, Michael Scanlon, as played by Barry Pepper, is a total jive idiot; that others portrayed, like Tom DeLay and Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition, are bad and crude; and that all legislators and various presidents who knew these men were corrupt morons.
This begs the question of how Abramoff was so hugely successful in the first place, since would not a lobbyist have at minimum to be charming, pleasant, and convincing? There is, in fact, some evidence that Abramoff, among his family, was loved as a decent husband and father — though his wife, at the end of this movie, shouts out that he’s insane.
One way of fixing this (among others) would be to give Spacey all these better qualities, so the movie can benefit from the contrast between the appeal of the man and the mess he got himself and others into. That, offhand, would seem to explain no less about the real person, and make his culpability not less disturbing but more, and perhaps even cause the audience to question the Washington institutions which existed before and live on after guys like Abramoff.
The political film has the reputation of being the longest shot in Hollywood, and the good ones are few and far between. Yet the simple lesson that they have to be built on character and ideologically detached, all the more so if they hope to make a point about historical good and bad, is still little known, to judge from recent efforts. Those interested in making the next one might have a look at the Budd Schulberg-written and Elia Kazan-directed “A Face in the Crowd” (1957), which opens with Andy Griffith in a southern county jail, seemingly a charming drifter playing his guitar. He is discovered by a radio interviewer, and his down-home charm soon captivates the whole country. Via his radio show, he gains political influence, with more to come. It takes the length of the movie to discover that beneath his charm, he is a full-out psychopath whose ascent to political power would be frightening. In the meantime, not only Andy, but everyone else in the cast, good or bad, is someone welcome to us each time they appear.
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For decades now, dating back to the haunting “Play Misty for Me” (1971), Clint Eastwood has been directing and producing interesting, difficult films. He is not one of self-proclaimed indie mavericks who rolls his own ball down the middle of the alley, though he has had some big successes and won major awards. He works fast but does not pick easy material, and some of his pictures, like “Unforgiven” (1992), have been masterpieces; others, like “Bird” (1988), have been pure labors of love. I have said on this Web site that “Mystic River” (2003) was over-acted and “Million Dollar Baby” (2004) was two unrelated pictures (one with every boxing cliche and no payoff, and the other a tear-jerking appeal for euthanasia), but both “River” and “Baby” won Oscars, confounding this commentator. I liked “Gran Torino” (2008) better, and felt that it didn’t get the Oscar recognition that it deserved.
Eastwood’s latest film, “Hereafter,” is a lower-key, more genial movie, starring Matt Damon as an ordinary, working-class guy who has the psychic ability to communicate with the dead (hardly a first in movie history), which he regards as a “curse, not a blessing,” and tries to get away from. But he finds his story woven in with the story of a little boy (Frankie McLaren) in London miserably bereft of his twin brother (George McLaren), and a Parisian newscaster (Cecile de France) nearly drowned in a tsunami and subsequently haunted by the memory of dim figures from the time during which she was unconscious. Damon’s effort to escape from his powers brings him to Paris, where he intersects with the other two — a coincidence? the movie thinks not! — and the three of them recognize one another and at last achieve happiness (Damon and the beautiful newscaster with one another).
I can’t say for sure that the lightweight theme caused the movie to fail, since that’s been no problem for other movies. (Compared to “Black Swan” or “Inception,” this is Shakespeare!) But the idea of a hereafter is not dramatized here, it is revealed, and perhaps that is as offensive to others as it is to me. There is no scientific backing for this idea — if there were proof, the person who had it could collect $1 million from the American magician James Randi (“The Great Randi”), in whose presence on Johnny Carson’s show Uri Geller was unable to bend spoons or perform a single one of his tricks. In the movie, a gentle female scientist, supposedly ostracized in the Alps for her threatening ideas, says the evidence is clear but ignored — but images of the hereafter have changed in every age and culture, with many “explanations” and nothing certain. Harry Houdini wanted to believe in it, so as to contact his mother, but every seance he went to resulted in Houdini exposing the medium. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who did believe in the hereafter (and also in fairies), and who knew Houdini, proclaimed that Houdini was a medium himself and didn’t know it. Suppression by the scientific establishment is the claim of all paranormal groups, from Ufologists to Scientologists, but in fact paranormal ideas are non-falsifiable, have nothing to do with science, and do not threaten scientists. It’s an old, old story — see the 1952 book “Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science,” by Martin Gardner.
All of the main characters in “Hereafter” are sympathetic, and much of the film is very well-done — particularly the death of one twin and the life of the other amid London poverty and social-service, and a suddenly-ended romance between Damon and a sweet girl he sees too far into — but somehow the film just doesn’t come alive, with one major exception.
The opening scene, on a Caribbean island, shows a tidal wave rearing up and engulfing a luxury hotel, rolling up the market street of a small town, and carrying the heroine underwater into the hereafter and out again. It is excellent movie-making, and though I know it had to be done with digital effects, I’m damned if I know how! This, to me, is a great mystery of life, and I’d gladly honor the visual effects technicians responsible for it in the here and now!
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“Iron Man 2” teaches us, yet again, how important it is to have a plot we can believe in. Not literally believe, but believe in movie terms, as we believed in the Oz of the original “The Wizard of Oz” (1939).
The first “Iron Man” had a story the viewer could follow and experience with suspense, believing somehow that Iron Man might save humanity from a recognizable peril. “Iron Man 2” does not have such a story, and despite the presence of a tremendous and usually-lovable cast — Robert Downey, Jr., Don Cheadle, Gwyneth Paltrow, Scarlett Johansson, Mickey Rourke, and Garry Shandling as a fatuous senator — one watches events transpire with an incredulous tedium. Sam Rockwell, as a rival arms manufacturer, dancing and gloating over this or that piece of evil technology he has stolen and squealing in dreadful hip slang, does not provide comic relief because he is no more false than the others. He is merely less tolerable, which is saying a lot.
It comes down to a battle between Downey and Rourke in metal suits which elevate into the beyond by shooting fire out of the shoes. Oh, yes, Cheadle has a suit, too, and is on Downey’s side. Downey is a vain jackass, and for the first time ever has no redeeming qualities, except for being the hero. Cheadle, with his sad eyes, is always a pleasure to look at, and his soft voice a pleasure to hear — though most of the dialogue doesn’t make sense. Justin Theroux is the screenwriter, and gives each character the quality of someone who thinks he’s witty but isn’t, though this is clearly not the intention. Rourke has a corny Russian accent, because his father was a Russian nourished in Siberia by Stalin, and carries an out-of-date grudge against the U.S. He has no conscience whatever, having been deliberately raised in some mechanical space. He causes race cars to upend at Monte Carlo by shooting lightning from his hands — his one power the others don’t have — but Paltrow comes driving the wrong way up the track to save her boss Downey, who is arrogantly risking his life when she told him not to. Johansson is “security,” first on Downey’s side, then against him, sitting in his lap and trying to seduce him (sorry, no flesh visible), then back on the home team, routing twelve of the enemy all by herself in a choreographed routine which goes on too long and is unbelievable but mildly cute. Downey seems right to call her “a triple agent,” but we don’t understand how this works, except it all turns out okay in the end.
More metal suits go shooting through the night — visually impressive, but to what end? Downey’s chest-battery heart is nearly failing, but he comes up with a new element that has more power. (Can it be used for flashlights?) Finally, the Russian has Iron Man and Black Man at either end of the electricity shooting from his hands (again). Will they overcome? Yes. Big surprise. Downey and Paltrow stand on a rooftop, overlooking a vast city where hundreds of thousands must have been destroyed in passing (but none that we see). All through the picture, these two have quarreled with grating, would-be wit. He has constantly disobeyed her loyal counsel, flouted her love. Now he interrupts her with a sudden kiss. They continue kissing. Asbestos curtain, as one would write in vaudeville days.
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Photo: Robert Downey, Jr. in “Iron Man 2.” Credit; Paramount.