Barry Levinson Makes A Statement, But Not A Point, With PoliWood

The Good: Great participation from both sides of the political spectrum, Raises a few good questions.
The Bad: Fails to land on a number of key points, Levinson talks over several of his subjects.
The Basics: Barry Levinson explores some important questions about how Hollywood celebrities influence politics without coming to any real answers in PoliWood.


When it comes to movies, my wife has a pretty simple formula for figuring out how to pick out a film I’d want to watch when we have a night to spend together: she looks up Anne Hathaway’s IMDB page and finds projects Hathaway has been involved in that I have not yet seen and she picks them up for us. That list is getting increasingly short, but my wife managed to find one such movie tonight: PoliWood. Given that my wife and I are politically active, PoliWood seemed like a documentary that we would have quite a bit of interest in and because I have largely enjoyed the works of Barry Levinson, it seemed like a good fit. PoliWood is a documentary or video essay by Levinson and it stars a number of Hollywood celebrities who are active in politics . . .

. . . admitting they are active in politics. While Levinson has some narrative to his video essay, PoliWood rambles with surprisingly little in the way of purpose. In fact, it was not until I sat down to write a review of PoliWood that I realized how little point there was to the movie.

The concept of PoliWood is simple: several actors and actresses who have gained a level of celebrity have publicly made political statements and supported candidates. The assumption has been that most of the most wealthy and outspoken celebrities are liberal and have exerted an undo influence over the American political process. Director and essayist Barry Levinson follows around several members of The Creative Coalition (a group that has largely come together to advocate for government funding of the arts) during the 2008 Presidential election. The documentary follows Anne Hathaway, Richard Schiff, Ellen Burstyn, Rachael Leigh Cook, Tim Daly, Giancarlo Esposito, Susan Sarandon, Matthew Modine and Josh Lucas as they attend political, sporting, and entertainment events.

Levinson follows the group to both the Democratic National Convention and the Republican National Convention and he comments (and documents comment from others) on the process of advocacy the celebrities utilize as they reach out to voters about issues important to each of them.

The problem is that the film does little more than that. PoliWood starts with the premise that Hollywood actors are blurring the lines between politics and entertainment. The film ends in the exact same place with no real growth in between. The subjects of Levinson’s documentary do not sufficiently address the concepts Levinson seems to want to explore with PoliWood. In his opening narration for PoliWood, Barry Levinson laments the role of the television in the American family; he talks about how daily life was changed by the invasive nature of the television and then how politicians were remade into television stars in order to get elected.

After that, Levinson follows his subjects around. PoliWood meanders around with the director asking the question of “Do Hollywood celebrities have too much influence over American politics?” and then shows them advocating for their cause and “common” Americans complaining about how out-of-touch those celebrities are with “middle” America. Perhaps the best moment of PoliWood is when Tim Daly discusses all of the non-actor related jobs he had and how he devotes quite a bit of time to “normal” things like car pools and coaching little league. In a smart, reasonable way, Daly quietly dispels one woman’s utter ignorance about how celebrities are somehow not as human or real as other people are.

But the documentary falls apart outside that. While there are decent moments, like Anne Hathaway admitting she hates talking about political issues she is not adequately informed about and some of the members of the Creative Coalition rejecting the refusal of a couple members to even hear out a successful strategist for Fox News, but largely Levinson asks questions that go unanswered or he asserts his own statements without actually backing them up in any demonstrable way in the film. For example, a number of misconceptions about celebrities are brought up during the film and one of the big ones is that right-of-center actors have a harder time getting work in Hollywood than leftists. It is not pointed out how Jon Voight and Clint Eastwood (for example) have almost constant work, even as they advocate for Republicans. Actor Robert Davi talks about a personal experience where a fan was turned off by his conservative activism, but he did not detail any issues he had with getting acting work as a result of the same activism.

Levinson also neglects to discuss at all how the influence of “Hollywood liberals” is, in part, a response to conservative businessmen advocating against social spending or progressive issues. It’s hard to say that Hollywood actors have more influence than the businesspeople who spend more money against their causes.

As a result, much of the movie swirls around Levinson making his own assertions and spreading his philosophy. He ends the movie where he begins it: articulating his own personal philosophy that television might be a destructive force in substantive political debates. PoliWood fails to back up or present a sophisticated view of its own premises (Levinson, for example, comments on how Al Gore drew attention to the global warming crisis through An Inconvenient Truth - reviewed here! – by essentially becoming a Hollywood celebrity while completely ignoring that the documentary only became a phenomenon because of Gore’s political celebrity and that if he had not been Vice President, he never would have managed to get the documentary produced) and the result is a lackluster documentary that only serves to reiterate the idea that the political process in the United States is damaged.

For other documentaries, please check out my reviews of:
Craigslist Joe
Jedi Junkies
Trek Nation

4/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Heartbreak, Elation And Heartbreak, Highland Park Might Belabor Itself, But It Works!

The Good: Decent acting, Engaging plot progression/pacing, Interesting characters
The Bad: Painfully obvious plot conceit.
The Basics: When a group of teachers think they have won the lottery, their lives change and they work to change the run-down community in which they live.


As Summer Blockbuster Season gets into full swing, we have a rare phenomenon. This weekend, there are no major films hitting theaters, so I am devoting some time and attention to art films and smaller releases. Today, that takes the form of Highland Park. Highland Park continues the trend in movies that exploded last year during Oscar Pandering Season where teachers work to reform their communities. Far more like Here Comes The Boom (reviewed here!) than Won’t Back Down (reviewed here!), Highland Park is a dramedy with a conceit that writes the plot, as opposed to characters who move the story.

Highland Park has a very simple plot that creates a story that has a built-in conflict that works around waiting for the metaphorical shoe to drop. This is a lotto pool story where teachers (and a principal and maintenance worker) put all their hopes on winning the Mega prize lottery drawing in order to stop their community’s backslide into poverty. But the film sets up an explosion when it makes it obvious that the person who was responsible for buying the lotto ticket abandoned the numbers and went with different numbers. So, a full third or half of the film is spent waiting for the revelation that the people counting on the millions they think they won is now coming.

Opening in the Detroit suburb of Highland Park where the city’s infrastructure is crumbling and the mayor is destroying more than she is building, the principal of the high school gets together each week decides he is out of the school Mega Millions lottery pool. After ten years of playing the same numbers, Principal Lloyd Howard is disillusioned and he finds himself working not to tell his teachers and support staff that they are all about to lose their jobs. When it comes out that he has had to cut jobs and programs, Howard finds himself as the bearer of bad news and a pariah in the community. When Ed, the school’s retired maintenance worker who continues to work on the furnaces and is part of the lotto pool goes out of town, he has an epiphany about the group’s luck.

But when the school lotto pool’s numbers are called after ten years of playing them, Lloyd Howard suddenly finds his life turned around. He and the other members of the betting pool begin making big purchases and revitalizing the local economy. Pushing for grant money and using resources based on the promise of the winnings. He gets into a game of one-upsmanship in with Mayor Shirley Paine on spending private and public funds to revitalize Highland Park. When Ed returns from his time in the woods and reveals to the others that he bought tickets with different numbers, everyone turns against him, though Howard is more understanding. He then has to go up against Paine without any resources and suffers her wrath when she turns the media against him.

Highland Park might have an obvious conceit, but it feels fresh for the most part. The film goes through a bit of a lull in the middle as the viewer waits for Ed to return and the members of the betting pool spend money they do not yet have. The film works well at setting up the fall, but it only truly picks up again as the characters spend the last twenty-five minutes reacting to the truth of their situation. In a classic sense, Highland Park is a well-constructed dramedy that contains all the elements to plausibly come together the way it does. This is where character saves Highland Park.

Highland Park may not have the most original plot, but the characters are interesting. Ed, upon realizing that he is at fault for not buying the lotto ticket that everyone planned on, gives a decent speech about how everyone is the same as they were before they thought they won the money, so they are not out anything. This speech could have been a super-cheesy monologue that guts the reality of the film. Instead, it is delivered by Danny Glover’s Ed and he sells the lines with a proficiency that makes it seem more inspired than hokey. Glover makes Ed into an understated hero who is entirely viable and realistic.

The film is led by Billy Burke. Burke is arguably the very best thing to come out of The Twilight Saga (reviewed here!) and in Highland Park he once again proves he has the chops to open a film, even if it is a smaller movie. Burke is entirely believable as Lloyd Howard. His character is painted early on as an idealist and a former troublemaker who has since made good as the beleaguered school principal. Burke has the body language to play the role as if he has been carrying a great weight for a considerable amount of time and when his whole posture changes as his character becomes more assertive, the viewer is convinced easily that it is the character’s rebirth of spirit. Burke does a decent job of alternatively playing crushed and a thinker who can outmaneuver the more experienced Shirley Paine.

Parker Posey give the viewer nothing new as Paine, but she plays the part well-enough that she could credibly have risen to be the mayor of the crumbling city. John Carroll Lynch and Blake Clark have good supporting roles, but they are well within their established ranges. Rockmond Dunbar steals his scenes as Shaun, one of the teachers who has less pragmatic goals for the money they think they won. Dunbar has great screen presence and his dynamic presentation of Shaun makes the relatively minor character seem very vital.

Like the other movies in the same genre, Highland Park is unlikely to light the world ablaze and it will be entirely overlooked come award season. But, it is a fun movie that makes for wonderful counter-programming the usual to mindless summer fare.

For other works with Michelle Forbes, please visit my reviews of:
True Blood - Season 2
Lost - Season 4
Homicide: The Movie
Homicide: Life On The Street - Season Six
Homicide: Life On The Street - Season Five
"Preemptive Strike" - Star Trek: The Next Generation
Star Trek: The Next Generation - Season 6
Star Trek: The Next Generation - Season 5

6.5/10

For other television reviews, be sure to visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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A Perfect Family Saga Of Weird Timelessness: The Royal Tenenbaums Stands Up!

The Good: GREAT characters, Acting, Mood, Plot, Production design, Soundtrack
The Bad: Nothing comes to mind . . .
The Basics: An amazing piece of drama, the Tenenbaum family stands on the brink of destruction until Royal returns to try to gain redemption in The Royal Tenenbaums.


I've had a thing about Ben Stiller for a while; I watch every movie with him I can and I end up disappointed. Mystery Men, Zoolander (reviewed here!), and whatever else I've seen him in. I repress the memories. I write reviews, then repress it. The Royal Tenenbaums changes all of that. It figures: all he had to do was take a dramatic role and he works perfectly!

The Royal Tenenbaums is a character study of a strange upper class American family. The film revolves around Royal Tenenbaum, a disbarred lawyer who abandoned his children twenty-two years ago. His children were all geniuses: Chas who is an international finance master, Margot who is a brilliant playwright who has stopped producing, and Richie who was an amazing and famous tennis player. Richie's friend, Eli, is a novelist who is also a drug addict. Royal's wife, from whom he has been separated is Ethel, is a psychologist who is being courted by her accountant, Henry Sherman. When Chas, widowered for a year, has a nervous breakdown, the Tenenbaums come back together in Ethel's house. It is at this time that Royal claims he is dying and moves in as well hoping to reconcile with his family. In the course of the film, it quickly becomes clear that Royal is a liar, Eli is horribly drugged, Chas needs help and Richie is in love with Margot. And Margot's husband, Raleigh has no chance with her.

The Royal Tenenbaums is a family saga about one of the oddest upper class families ever conceived. Written by director Wes Anderson and actor Owen Wilson, this film is like a "Magnolia" Light, with less torment or less obvious torment. Presented as if it were a novel, The Royal Tenenbaums periodically presents chapter openings and then continues with the characters actually progressing from the way the scene is set up on the page.

The magic of this film is that it has the feel of a novel. It has the complexities, the lines that we want to come back to again and again. Moreover, the sets are so richly colored and decorated it's visually impressive: beautiful to the eye. The incredible thing about the writing is that it has all of the pauses of paragraph breaks throughout the film. So, there are moments when the viewer comes in on the reaction to startling information being revealed and it works perfectly to have these shots that establish the scenes, then move. Perfect.

Add to that, the musical direction is amazing. The themes seem almost constant and when "Ruby Tuesday" belts out after a moment of profound revelation, the emotions in the viewer just burst over with Richie. All of the music is great and perfectly timed.

The characters are all intriguing. Chas is amazing in his wounded sensibilities, hurt and protective. He makes so much sense in lieu of his wife's death. But all of the other characters are equally intriguing. Margot's strange backstory is hilarious and Richie's life is just plain understandably tormented. So sad, but so wonderful to watch. Eli . . . Eli is just the strangest freak to grace the screen since Edward Scissorhands (though not in the same way).

What the viewer gets is a complex drama about how people interact and what binds individuals - especially in a family - again. Royal's quest for redemption from his family is complicated several times, yet still her perseveres.

What makes the film rewatchable often is the acting. The acting here is wonderful. Gene Hackman is great as Royal. He makes Royal horrible in his simplistic selfishness. He plays Royal different from every other villain he has ever created. He embodies the worst in fatherly neglect and he does it with a sense of humor.

Gwyneth Paltrow, Anjelica Huston and Owen Wilson are each great as Margot, Ethel, and Eli. But Luke Wilson plays a mature and complex role in Richie. He is a sensible character and Wilson plays the part with serious determination that illustrate his potential as a great drama actor.

But Ben Stiller does it here. He acts as Chas. He ACTS! Here he's not Ben Stiller playing Ben Stiller as Zoolander, here he's Ben Stiller playing Chas Tenenbaum. There's no hint of Stiller's ego and repetitive humor scheme here. He gets into the part of a paranoid businessman in a red workout suit. This is the role he deserves an award for.

That's not to say the film doesn't have humor. It's funny in a lot of places, but it's also horribly sad and wrenching. It may take a few viewings to understand all of the different elements - just as a great book may require more readings - but heck, who wouldn't want to see a well stylized film about a brother with an Oedipal Complex, a father in search of redemption and a paranoid man in a workout suit with children in identical outfits rushing around trying to save themselves. It's a lot of fun, but it requires initial patience. It's worth it, though.

A great cast, intriguing characters and amazing direction make this film a must see.

For other works with Bill Murray, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
The Fantastic Mr. Fox
Zombieland
Get Smart
Charlie's Angels
Cradle Will Rock

10/10

For other film reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2002 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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Nothing Extraordinary About The Rain: The Rainmaker Is Utterly Unmemorable!

The Good: Good acting, Good characters, Good pacing
The Bad: Idealistic themes and plot
The Basics: Simple and predictable, The Rainmaker doesn't fail to please, but it does little beyond meeting our expectations.


There are some novelists who write one or two good novels, then spend the rest of their careers churning out the same two stories over and over again. Their works populate every bus station, airport and drug store. John Grisham, Tom Clancy and V.C. Andrews are three such authors who have written enough garbage such that their paperbacks will always be available in any grocery store that has books.

So, as you may figure, I went into John Grisham's The Rainmaker with pretty low expectations. It turns out that The Rainmaker is one of Grisham's two works that were pretty good, one of the two that established him, it appears, as a paperback staple.

The superlative aspect of this film is the acting. Four actors especially give extraordinary performances. They are: Matt Damon (rather predictably as his character Rudy Baylor, is the lawyer protagonist), Danny DeVito (the loser lawyer Deck Schifflet), Claire Dane (as an abused wife) and Danny Glover (as the strangely uncredited Judge Tyrone Kipler). The real standout of the four is Claire Danes. Danes plays Kelly Riker with amazing versatility. She is vivid as a broken, lost, hurt and depreciated human being. Her acting took me by surprise. She's truly quite fabulous as Kelly.

The Rainmaker focuses on Rudy Baylor, a newly bar-approved lawyer. He is taking on an insurance company for denying the claim (and payment) of a youth with leukemia. With the aid of the sloppy Deck, Rudy makes and tries a case against a corporate law team that seems to have all of the advantages. Interspersed with his big trial, Rudy comes to the aid of Kelly, a victim of domestic abuse by her alcoholic husband. Rudy's special interest in the young woman comes from the fact that he grew up watching his father beat his mother.

That's the type of character fact that is slipped into The Rainmaker throughout. Usually, the details involve Rudy. Occasionally, we get a fact about Deck or Judge Kipler that flesh them out as viable individuals. Character is something sufficiently built up in The Rainmaker and that's refreshing.

What isn't is the plot. It plods along without any real intensity or passion. It's slow and it feels slow. The idealism gets tired early on. The sense of hope throughout the film is labored.

In all, I'd recommend the film for a rainy afternoon where you're bored and want a film you don't have to think much about. Outside that . . .

For other films involving lawyers, please check out my takes on:
The Verdict
The Social Network
Philadelphia

5.5/10

For other film reviews, please check out my lists of movie reviews by clicking here!

© 2011, 2001 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.




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