Movie Review: The Circle

The Circle * ½ / *****

Directed by: James Ponsoldt.

Written by: James Ponsoldt & David Eggers based on the novel by Eggers.

Starring: Emma Watson (Mae Holland), Tom Hanks (Bailey), Karen Gillan (Annie), John Boyega (Ty), Patton Oswalt (Stenton), Eller Coltrane (Mercer), Glenne Headley (Bonnie), Bill Paxton (Vinnie), Nate Corddry (Dan).

 

The best thing about The Circle is Tom Hanks’ performance as the villain of the movie, especially his decision to not play the role as a villain, but just as another Tom Hanks character. It’s this decision that makes the performance work, because it makes the role all the creepier, and all that much easier to swallow. Hanks’ character is essentially a version of Steve Jobs – who works at an internet company that essentially controls almost everything, and wants to take over that little bit that they don’t. He’s so likable, so affable – so Tom Hanks – which he makes even the most insidious things he says seem reasonable – something we could all agree with. That makes it all the more chilling.

 

The worst thing about The Circle is, well, pretty much everything else. This movie, based on a novel by David Eggers, doesn’t capture the same feeling of paranoia that the novel did, streamlines the plot too much, and ends on a confusing note. The novel was a dystopia – but I don’t know what the hell the movie is. True enough, the novel had its share of issues – but generally it worked by taking our modern world, and going just a step or two beyond where we’re already at. The movie tries something similar, but because the film never finds the right tone the result is a bland, flavorless movie.

 

The film stars Emma Watson as Mae Holland – who is excited to start work at The Circle – an internet company, that has essentially found a way to combine everything we do online – from social media to banking, and everything in between – into one account. They are a monolithic company – more powerful than the government. Mae starts in customer service – but works her way up – rather suddenly – when she comes to the attention of Bailey (Hanks) – the CEO of the company. Soon, she is being used as a model for everyone in the company – and indeed in the world – and this formerly smart, opinionated young woman starts sounding more and more like a member of a cult.

 

Or, at least, that’s what I think they are trying for here. I’m not sure Watson is the right actress for this role – she has an innate intelligence to her that comes through in every scene – so you never really believe the brainwashing. The movie also changes the ending of the book – to make it more triumphant – but it really only makes it all the more confusing. The other actors in the film – however talented they may be – cannot do much with the dialogue they are given. Only Patton Oswalt – as another Circle executive – shows you what he could have done had his role been better written (Oswalt is scarier here than I’ve seen him before – but they don’t anything with that).

 

The film was directed by James Ponsoldt, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Eggers. He isn’t a good choice for the material. His previous films include very good films like The Spectacular Now, Smashed and The End of the Tour – which were modest, character driven films. Here, saddled with a narrative with a lot going on, and the necessity of building tension and fear, he really never finds his footing. The film feels like it takes forever getting started, and then just kind of fizzles out.

 

Personally, I do hope that we get more of Hanks in bad guy roles in the future. I don’t think we’d buy him as an out-and-out psychopath – but in this kind of role, he could be brilliant. He already is, in a way, here. It’s just that no one else working on the film figured out what to do.

Movie Review: The End of the Tour

The End of the Tour
Directed by: James Ponsoldt.
Written by: Donald Margulies based on the book by David Lipsky.
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg (David Lipsky), Jason Segel (David Foster Wallace), Joan Cusack (Patty), Mickey Sumner (Betsy), Mamie Gummer (Julie), Anna Chlumsky (Sarah), Ron Livingston (David Lipsky's Editor).

The End of the Tour has been met with controversy, as the family and many friends of the late David Foster Wallace object the very existence of a movie portraying him – saying that it would be the last thing he would want. To be fair, the portrait painted of the author in the movie kind argues for them – I find it hard to believe that the character of David Foster Wallace in the movie would want to a movie made about him, with someone else playing him, as he is very conscience of how he is viewed, and tells the interviewer there to write a profile on him that is wary – knowing full well that the writer can spin things however he wants, and make Wallace look however he wants him to look, and Wallace is nervous about coming across as an asshole in a piece he has no control over. It’s rare to see a movie that actually argues against its own existence, but The End of the Tour is one of those movies. What makes it interesting however is not so much the Wallace character, but the David Lipsky character – the Rolling Stone reporter played by Jessie Eisenberg who comes to interview Wallace. In his review of the film, Matt Zoller Seitz compares their relationship to the one at the heart of Milos Forman’s Amadeus (1984) – with the less talented person extremely jealous of the more talented one, and that makes sense. Throughout the movie, it’s made clear, again and again, that Lipsky doesn’t really understand Wallace – and is also seething with jealously at the man who has everything that Lipsky wants, and seemingly wants to reject it. Jason Segel has garnered most of the praise for his portrayal of Wallace in the film – and it is a good performance, even if I never really believed that the character he was playing was capable of writing a book like Infinite Jest (a novel I am currently reading). But it is Eisenberg who is the real star – playing another of his series of assholes who don’t realize that they’re assholes.

The movie opens with Lipsky at a reading of his novel – The Art Fair – which is sparsely attended. His novel isn’t going to be a bestseller, and he’s working at Rolling Stone to make ends meet, when he reads a review of Infinite Jest, saying that the year’s book prizes have been settled – as the novel is the type of once in a generation novel that could not be topped (that turned out not to be true – as the book didn’t win all those awards – although it’s critical reputation remains laudatory). Lipsky’s girlfriend suggests that if the book really is that good, than perhaps he should read it. Cut to him a few hundred pages in the books, muttering “Shit”. It really is that good. Lipsky ends up convincing his editor to allow him to follow Wallace on the last stop on his book tour to write a feature interview with him. He travels to Wallace’s small, Illinois hometown, and then onto Minneapolis, doing an interview with him. What he finds is a normal, soft spoken guy – who is full of opinions and thoughts and insights, but wary of all the praise he has received. He wants to keep his normal life – which is something Lipsky quite simply finds unnatural. Does he not realize that he’s a genius, and can do anything he wants? Why does he stay in his snowbound, small city, teaching at the small college near his home? Lipsky’s resentment of Wallace grows throughout the movie – until, inevitably, it leads to arguments.

The film was directed by James Ponsoldt, from a screenplay by Donald Marglies, based on the book Lipsky wrote years after the interview (and after Wallace’s eventual suicide). It’s not a bad movie, but it is a rather bland one in the Sundance kind of way. The film strains too hard to try and search for clues to Wallace’s suicide, more than a decade later. Segel, an unlikely choice to play Wallace, does a fairly good job with his performance – toning down his usual comic persona, for something more thoughtful and soft spoken. Eisenberg dives headlong in his, unworried about making his character likable or sympathetic – which he is neither. He is a little more than a vulture, invading Wallace’s space and taking advantage of him – doing things that probably cross the line of what a journalist should do, all the while insisting on competing with Wallace in a competition that he cannot possibly win, and which Wallace has no interest in competing in.

So, should The End of the Tour have even been made? I’m not entirely sure. On one hand, like all biopics it cannot possibly get the complete portrait of the man at its core – and I think the film realizes this.  And to a certain extent, it leaves Wallace more than a little bit of an enigma, as Lipsky is clearly too self-involved, to see anyone else, including Wallace, clearly. So, as a portrait of Wallace, I don’t think the movie really does any harm to his reputation or his appearance. As a portrait of Eisenberg’s reporter, it is far better. It’s not a bad movie per se – but I’m still not sure it should have been made.

Movie Review: The Spectacular Now

The Spectacular Now
Directed by: James Ponsoldt.
Written by: Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber based on the novel by Tim Tharp.
Starring: Miles Teller (Sutter), Shailene Woodley (Aimee), Brie Larson (Cassidy), Masam Holden (Ricky), Dayo Okeniyi (Marcus), Kyle Chandler (Tommy), Jennifer Jason Leigh (Sara), Nicci Faires (Tara), Ava London (Bethany), Whitney Goin (Aimee's Mom), Andre Royo (Mr. Aster), Bob Odenkirk (Dan), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Holly).

The Spectacular Now is that rare film for teenagers that doesn’t try to preach good messages at them, nor try to shock the audience with teens abhorrent behavior (like the collected works of Larry Clark). Instead, it deals with teenagers openly and honestly – it treats both the characters and the audience with respect. Yes, one could argue that the film is a “message” movie, or that the plot could have easily been made into an afterschool special – but as Roger Ebert never tired of saying “A movie isn’t about what it’s about – it’s about how it’s about it”. That is certainly true of The Spectacular Now which took what could have been a formulaic plot and preachy movie, and turned it into a quietly moving character piece.

The movie stars Miles Teller as Sutter – a high school senior, who is always the life of the party. When we first meet him, his beloved girlfriend Cassidy (Brie Larson) has just broken up with him, and Sutter goes on a bender – or more accurately, uses the break-up as an excuse to do what he was going to do anyway, and get hammered. Sutter gets hammered a lot, and drives around town drunk – but as Cassidy says “He drives better this way” – which is the type of thing alcoholics tell themselves. The next day when he wakes up on a random lawn, his car nowhere in sight, Aimee (Shailene Woodley) is standing over him. They are in the same year in school, but barely know each other. Sutter is popular, Aimee is not. But she’s sweet and kind to Sutter – drives him around the neighborhood as she’s on her paper route to help him look for his car. The two agree to have lunch one day at school that week. And so an unlikely romance begins.

You can probably see where the movie is going in terms of its plot – and largely you would be right. The Spectacular Now features many of the scenes you would expect in a typical teenage movie – including prom, graduation, experimenting with sex, etc. – and yet it deals with each of them in a much more realistic way than the typical movie does. This isn’t a film like She’s All That, where the popular kid takes the wallflower and turns her into the beauty you’d have to be blind not see she was all along. When Aimee walks into prom, she’s looks nice – but she isn’t gawked at by everyone. Even the relationship between Sutter and Cassidy feels natural – she still “loves” him, but knows it’s best for her to put some distance between them. She doesn’t suddenly become a bitch when she sees him with someone new.

The movie handles pretty much everything well – including the scenes where Sutter has his long term delusions about his father (Kyle Chandler) shattered. It would have been easy to make these scenes into a standard issue blowup – with the two yelling at each other, but the way director James Ponsoldt handles it is just about perfect. That goes for most of the rest of the movie as well. It’s refreshing to see a movie about teenagers that deals with them this openly and honestly – that doesn’t shy away from clichés at times, but makes those clichés feel real. It isn’t always prom that changes people lives – but smaller, more intimate moments.

In this, the movie benefits greatly from the performances by its entire cast. Teller is excellent as the teenager who views himself as invincible and has an inflated sense of himself – nothing can harm him, everyone loves him, he doesn’t need college, etc. He’s the life of the party, and he’s more than happy to live in the “now” rather than think about the future. The movie is really his story as he gradually realizes that many of those things simply are not true. Throughout the movie he grows up – at least a little – and makes steps towards improvement. For her part, Woodley nearly matches Teller, as the shy girl who gradually opens up. If she doesn’t quite match Teller, it’s because her role isn’t quite as well defined – this is almost certainly do to the fact that the highly acclaimed book by Tim Twarp the movie is based on is written from Sutter’s point of view. There are times though that you have to wonder what she is thinking – why she falls for Sutter so hard, although Sutter is certainly partly correct when he cruelly tells her she only loves him because he’s the first person to actually notice her. But she’s young, in love and doesn’t notice the flaws that finally drove Cassidy away. Speaking of Cassidy, the immensely talented Brie Larson does an excellent job at making her a fully rounded character in limited screen time – she makes you care about her character quite a bit, and worry for her as well. Does her final revelation to Sutter actually sound like a good idea to you? Or is she simply going too far in the other direction? And finally Kyle Chandler does an excellent job in just a few scenes as Sutter’s father – essentially acting as a time machine to let Sutter know just what he’ll become if he continues the way he’s going. Yes, the movie may in fact underline this a little too heavily with some on the nose dialogue – but Chandler sells it.

I also loved the way the movie ended. To those who have read the book (which doesn’t include me) some thought the ending to the movie was more upbeat than that of the book. But in reality, it’s really an ambiguous ending. What precisely does the look on Aimee’s face in the final frames of the movie really mean? That’s up to the individual viewer to decide. But regardless, it’s just about a perfect way to end this uncommonly intelligent, sensitive movie about teenagers.

Movie Review: Smashed

Smashed

Directed by: James Ponsoldt.

Written by: Susan Burke & James Ponsoldt.

Starring: Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Kate Hannah), Aaron Paul (Charlie Hannah), Octavia Spencer (Jenny), Nick Offerman (Dave Davies), Megan Mullally (Principal Barnes), Mary Kay Place (Rochelle), Kyle Gallner (Owen Hannah), Bree Turner (Freda).

Mary Elizabeth Winstead has a great face. I don’t just mean a beautiful face, although that is undeniably true, but an open and honest face. It’s something in her eyes, which just scream out for sympathy and understanding. I’ve been a fan of hers for a while, without every knowing precisely why – since beside her performance in Tarantino’s Death Proof, I cannot say she’s been great in anything (and even there, it could be because she spends the entirety of her performance in a cheerleading outfit). But finally in Smashed, she has been given a great role. The movie itself is a fairly typical story of a recovering alcoholic, although a well-made and honest one, with a little bit of a twist. But the reason to see the movie is Winstead, who is great.

Winstead plays Kate Hannah, a first grade teacher who has been an alcoholic for years. We first meet her stumbling out a bar and meeting a girl sobbing in the parking lot – who invites herself along for a ride home. Although Kate is just an alcoholic, and not a drug addict, she ends up smoking crack with this woman, and waking up the next day not knowing where she is. She decides it’s time to slow down a little bit – cut back on the drinking, and her husband Charlie (Aaron Paul) says sure, why not? He’s an alcoholic as well, but doesn’t view it as a problem. The slowing down doesn’t work, and soon Kate is just as drunk as ever, ends up peeing on the floor of a convenience store when the clerk won’t sell her the alcohol she wants, and then puking in front of her first graders the next day. When one of them innocently asks if she’s pregnant – because her mommy puked when she was pregnant with their little brother – Kate decides it’s better than admitting the truth and says she is. This gets back to the principal (Megan Mullally), who is happy for her. The only person who sees through Kate’s lies is VP Dave Davies (Nick Offerman), a recovering alcoholic himself, who invites her along to a meeting. She goes – and soon has decided to stop drinking altogether. From this point, the movie becomes a fairly standard recovering alcoholic movie – complete with relapses – but one with a little twist- everything was fine with Kate when she was a drunk – it’s when she gets sober that her life crumbles around her.

Smashed is not a particularly original look at alcoholism – it doesn’t transcend the genre like a film such as Leaving Las Vegas does. But it is an honest examination about what it means to be an alcoholic, and how tough it is to get sober. When you’re drunk all the time, you don’t consider the consequences of your actions – you don’t spend a lot of time thinking about how you’re drinking effects yourself or those around you. When you’re sober though, those questions become more important. So as Kate gets sober, and sees her husband still nearly constantly drunk, she starts to question the strength of their relationship. Are they simply together because both of them like to drink, and marrying your drinking buddy essentially means you never have to drink alone. It’s no fun to be the only sober person at a party, and that is essentially what Kate’s life becomes. No wonder she throws herself into those AA meetings and the friends she meets there – she knows no one else, not even her mother, who isn’t constantly drinking.

Winstead is great in the scenes where she is drunk. She is the type of drunk who thinks she is the life of the party – that she is funny, charming and everyone loves her. In reality, she is loud, incoherent and kind of a bitch when she’s drunk – she’s just too drunk to notice it. Her performance goes beyond the slurred speech and the stumbling of many movie drunks – she is the type of drunk I used to see during my limited trips to the bar in my college days. Once she gets sober, she starts to see the people around her how people must have viewed her – and she doesn’t like it. For his part, I also quite liked Aaron Paul, from Breaking Bad. Yes, Charlie is a drunk. But he’s not a mean or abusive drunk – just a thoughtless one. He is, in fact, a nice guy. The last scene in the movie implies that maybe this entire movie, with a different protagonist, is about to start again.

Smashed is a fine movie that is elevated by Winstead’s great performance. There have been a lot of movie drunks over the years – next to making a movie about the Holocaust or playing a handicapped person, playing a drunk is the best way to get yourself an Oscar nomination. But Winstead’s performance is genuinely great in this movie. You feel sympathy for her, you root for her to succeed and at times just want to give her hug. She looks like she needs one.