In most instances the combination of writer/director Barry Levinson and actor Robin Williams will result in a smart, funny movie; this is certainly true of their previous collaborations, Toys and especially Good Morning, Vietnam. Going back to the same political territory he worked so well in Wag the Dog, Levinson uses the (entirely justified) controversy over electronic voting machines and the fact that Americans are getting as much of their political insight from comedy shows like The Daily Show and Letterman than straight journalism, if not more.

Man of the Year launches from the premise that Tom Dobbs (Williams), a lightly fictionalized version of Jon Stewart, takes an audience suggestion that he run for president to heart; Stewart, at least so far, has resisted the urge though we are a long way from even the 2008 primaries. Eschewing the massive spending of the major party candidates–Dobbs runs as an independent–he draws crowds and press coverage from his TV-driven name recognition.

Jack Menken (Christopher Walken, playing a good guy for a change) and Eddie Langston (Lewis Black, who of course was formerly a regular on The Daily Show, nicely tones down his normal angry guy schtick to snarkily ironic), manager and producer of his show, keep the same roles in the very modest, odd campaign but they cannot get Dobbs to use any humor, he insists on staying serious. This unsurprisingly turns off the potential voters who come out to his events until he cannot hold it in any more at the final debate, the only one Dobbs is invited to, when he ignores the groundrules to directly confront the other candidates on their obfuscation, evasion and willful use of insignificant but emotionally appealing issues.

From there the campaign goes into star mode, or at least that’s how Levinson portrays events. Meanwhile Eleanor Green (Laura Linney), a system test manager at Delacroy, the company making the new electronic voting system, uncovers a huge bug in the software. Bringing it to executive attention, she’s sloughed off with a promise of a fix but in fact there isn’t time to do it. After realizing at an election night company celebration that nothing was changed she confronts the CEO and general counsel (Jeff Goldblum), who gives her a long speech full of bullshit.

Green and Dobbs meet up, fall in love and suffer for their good hearts. I’m not sure why Levinson brings in a bit of pure thriller to climax the plot rather than leavening it with humor but that’s the weakest aspect of the movie. Otherwise it pretty much hits on all cylinders. I also wonder if the movie will give Stewart, Bill Maher, Dennis Miller and a few others second thoughts about getting into politics and Al Franken is a potential candidate for the Minnesota Senate seat occupied by Norm Coleman in 2008. One pothole most of them would hit is use of drugs when younger but Levinson has Dobbs answer it by calling it BS, just an excuse by politicians and their media friends to use irrelevant emotions to avoid dealing with real problems.

I especially like the point that Langston (Black) makes about television. TV, he says, makes everything meaningless by making both sides of issues equal. For instance, a news show will put a lunatic Holocaust denier and an eminent history professor side by side, the same amount of screen space and speaking time. After so many years of this we just tune out the details as noise, the politics as pandering.

recommended, Man of the Year is smart funny and shows how we can break through the noise.

Having seen the Hong Kong original and being a big fan of Martin Scorsese’s mobster flicks I was doubly anxious to see The Departed. Really, Nicholson, Damon, Wahlberg, DiCaprio, Sheen the Elder, Ray Winstone, even Alec Baldwin slammed together in a devious cops v. robbers matchup, going back to what Scorsese does best. Frankly I never did get Gangs of New York or The Aviator.

Nicholson’s Frank Costello has been running all or a big part of the Irish mob for years and somehow never gotten pinched by the cops, at least in part because he tends to think for the longterm. As an example, he recruits Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) in his early teens, sends him to the Massachuessetts State Police academy and helps him rise rapidly into a position of authority in the Special Investigations Unit.

Leonardo DiCaprio’s William Costigan Jr. also attended the academy, attempting to reject the life trajectory set by the men in his family, of whom only his father had been honest. Yet Captain Queenan (Sheen) and Sgt. Dignam (Wahlberg, whose foul vocabulary is the antithesis of his angelic face) don’t see that Costigan can evade his fate and so they ask him to go deep undercover. To proof his cover he’s arrested, kicked off the force and spends three months in jail on an assault beef. On release he does everything necessary to get noticed by Costello and get into his crew.

So starts the final conflict that drives The Departed to its climax. Costello finds out he has a rat and Queenan and Captain Ellerby (Baldwin) find out they have a mole, but neither side knows their informer’s identity. Costigan and Sullivan soon understand they’re in a race to find the other first, the winner’s prize is to live.

One thing that Martin Scorsese does very well in his films is ensure the plots and dialog are authentic, logical and consistent. Some movies which may otherwise be enjoyable fall apart for me by leaving gaping unexplained logical flaws or ask us to believe a smart, successful character hasn’t noticed something which is as visible to him or her as to the audience, but Scorsese doesn’t make this mistake.

For the most part the acting here is strong though as usual DiCaprio doesn’t do it for me. Here he’s over the top with anxiety, never seeming more than a few sharp words away from tears, and while his character is certainly in a high stress situation its the one performance that doesn’t ring true; I find it difficult to believe that Nicholson’s mobster, a masterful judge of character, doesn’t take one good look at his face and smell something fishy.

I don’t usually mention the soundtracks of (non-musical) films but the selection here is really special. The standout is Van Morrison’s live version of Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Number, taken from The Wall: Live In Berlin concert, which the Irishman makes all his own, and, perhaps as a touchstone to the director’s similarly-energied GoodFellas, the Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter.

recommended

I’ve been of two minds about seeing yet another biopic of a musician caught up in the demands of stardom and ego so it got past me in the theatrical run but with a little free time today and HBO On Demand finally saw Walk the Line, the 2005 movie about Johnny Cash, his rise to stardom and romance with June Carter. I suppose all those Oscar nominations, including Reese Witherspoon’s win for Best Actress, came from somewhere in the deserving territory.

Witherspoon actually is pretty good as the true love of Johnny’s life. Joaquin Phoenix, nominated for his portrayal of the Man in Black, was good but not far from his normal (IMO) scene-chewing standard job. The best acting for my money was Ginnifer Goodwin as Vivian, the first wife, though perhaps its sympathy for what her character went through only to lose her husband to addiction and the other woman. I also really liked Ridge Canipe as a very young Cash and Lucas Till as slightly older brother Jack, their interaction was sweet and natural in a few early scenes showing the source of Johnny’s core pain as well as his drive.

The film only really covers about sixteen years in the singer’s life, except for about six minutes (I just checked) of screen time with the young boys, from his Air Force service in 1952 through 1968, when June finally accepts his wedding proposal. Johnny actually had been asking her time and time again for years, clearly in love with her from the moment they met on a Sun Records tour in 1955. Vivian, of course, was home pregnant with their second child the night of that Texarkana show.

Phoenix and Witherspoon do their own singing, the movie doesn’t use the original recordings, which I think was a good choice, comparable to Gary Busey’s terrific job in The Buddy Holly Story, rather than Jamie Foxx’s lipsynching in Ray. Foxx was great, and definitely the better actor, but in this aspect Walk the Line surpasses the Oscar winner.

The script is by Gill Dennis and James Mangold, from Cash’s two autobiographies, and Mangold directed. I generally like Mangold’s work, especially Cop Land and Identity, though I think he could have easily made this better by cutting 20-25 minutes from the 136 minute run time. Some of the scenes were too soft and others unnecessary, like the tape bomb in the tree and the confrontation with record label execs over recording his Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison album.

recommended

Although a bit uncertain over whether it wants to be a farce or romantic comedy, this flick out of the Wilson/Ferrell/Vaughn crew is still pretty funny. Not as funny as it could have been if Owen Wilson’s puppy dog eyes were left out and the plot attached more completely to the actual wedding crashing, but still okay.

Wedding Crashers is the story of John Beckwith (Owen Wilson, the blonde brother) and Jeremy Grey (Vince Vaughn), mid-30s DC yuppies who have the rulebook for how to successful crash any wedding as the penultimate source of loose women. Only superhot loose women for them, easily acquired through a complete set of stories, tricks and over the top joie de vivre suitable to any crowd. The opening 30 minutes or so, as we watch the pair go through a sequence of weddings and after-wedding sex, are brilliantly hilarious.

Then they decide to crash the wedding of the season, the oldest daughter of the Secretary of the Treasury. Not only is he Owen’s economic idol, his family is intended to model the Kennedys with multi-generational political service, touch football games at the family compound and a passion for sailing. At the wedding Vaughn hooks up with the seemingly kooky youngest daughter (played with flair by Down Under hotness Ilsa Fisher) and Wilson with the middle daughter (Rachel McAdams)–Vaughn as per SOP for a single slog but Wilson falls for his.

The second act of the film covers the 36 hours after the wedding when the boys are invited back to the Clearly estate. Immediately we get two wrenches–McAdams is essentially engaged (to Bradley Cooper, Will from Alias) to a two-faced bastard and Fisher is not going to let Vaughn off the hook that easily. Here’s where the film turns into a just above average romantic comedy: Wilson and McAdams are clearly meant for each other but Cooper is slick and sleazy enough to keep them apart. And tough, as he and his buddies are not above repeated beatings to keep the status quo.

The script by new boys Steve Faber and Bob Fisher and the direction from David Dobkin, who worked with Vaughn in Clay Pigeons and Wilson in Shaghai Knights (the sequel, not the first), has sufficent laughs and hot chicks to make up for the slower bits. Although the creepy scenes towards the end with Will Ferrell, as Vaughn’s crashing mentor, would surely have been left in the editing room if Chazz Reinhold had been played by a less commercially significant actor.

recommended