Choking on the Yellow Thick Chode.

Honestly, I don’t know how Zooey Deschanel continues to get work.

In TIN MAN, a re-visioning of L. Frank Baum’s THE WIZARD OF OZ, Zooey is ersatz Dorothy, named DG (oh, that’s soo street-cred!), lost in the magical world of O.Z. (the Outer Zone – oooh! That’s even more street!), and aided by three inhabitants of the Zone, who are analogs of the Scarecrow Without A Brain, the Tin Man Without A Heart and The Lion Without The Noive; they are named Glitch, Wyatt Cain and Raw (ooooooh! That’s the most street-credible credibleness of all! Please, oh please, may I bow down before you and self-flagellate for my uncouth uncoolness?)

The title refers to Wyatt (Neal McDonough) being a sheriff (tin star/tin man – ha! Get it?) – AND – he is found imprisoned in a steel iron maiden device. Ha! This movie is just full of those things called ideas! (May I please lie on a bed of nails to punish myself for my dearth of originality?) He’s out for revenge on the people who imprisoned him and made him watch re-runs of his family dying. Hey, it might have been an iron maiden, but at least it had cable.

The ersatz scarecrow is Glitch (Alan Cumming), once an advisor to the Queen, fallen out of favor and caged in a hanging prison like a go-go dancer. DG is thrown in with him and continues to un-act while he shows her the zipper in his head where they removed his brain (shouldn’t he just collapse in a heap or something? I thought the brain controlled, oh, EVERYTHING).

The great Raoul Trujillo is the ersatz Lion “Raw” who makes an assface of himself by looking like a cross between a bum and a Barbary sheep, and being seen so close to Zooey Deschanel.

After witnessing the unbridled vapidity of Zooey delivering every line blanker than a bedsheet, we must surmise that those acting teachers that told her she would never be an actor were right. Any jackass can do what she is doing – but it isn’t what anyone in their right mind would call acting.

The Sorceress (Kathleen Robertson, perfect physical beauty), is the magical villain: two armored neck plates which she wears constantly, so wondering why she keeps her BREASTS so open to attack – picturesque tattoos, targets for man-tongue, grab apple Bs crushed to resemble Ds, penile landing site.

And Richard Dreyfuss (oh God! Was he that hard up for work?!) is the Wonderful Mystic Man of O.Z.

TIN MAN might have been a dark adventure through new territory in an old realm; there are even some interesting twists involving DG’s parents and their relationship to the Outer Zone; instead, we get Zooey Deschanel reading her lines like a cooking recipe.

Surrounded by actual actors, Zooey does nothing for this TV mini-series (directed by Nick Willing) except bog it in the cowdung from whence she sprung. I constantly ask myself: Are these filmmakers not watching the rushes? It’s like having a veteran cast of British thespians and well-respected American actors – and then having Hayden Christensen play the lead. If you can stand Zooey’s bland delivery, bug eyes working overtime to disguise the fact she doesn’t know what to do with her monotonous face, you may be able to work your way torturously to the end of this 3-parter. Me, I’m busy bowing down before the filmmakers for their bravery in making it through a whole production without laughing at Zooey’s unthinkably ignorant attempts at acting.

Honestly, I don’t know how Zooey Deschanel continues to get work.

END

The Boat, The Wave, The Snake.

One scene in POSEIDON will live with you long after you’ve dried off and found your land legs: Kurt Russell actually drowning. Literally. In a move that is half-Method/half-Madness, Russell lets his lungs purposely fill with water to achieve what looks like someone actually drowning. And actually drowns! It was arranged that lifeguards retrieve him before he went all the way – yet what a risk for a few seconds of disturbing realism! Where is that fine line that separates the spark of life from the nullity of death? He might have escaped from New York and LA, but could Snake Plissken actually escape Death itself?

POSEIDON is the well-made remake of THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1972), with much more water and a lot less shouting.

After we meet the human-interest stories onboard, the titular ocean liner is capsized by a tidal wave and floats upside down, leaving those human-interest stories to battle their way to the bottom of the ship to escape through its hull, amidst explosions, rising seawater, and the two leads trying not to be the bottom in their uneasy macho alliance.

Starring Kurt Russell and Josh Lucas in the wet roles made famous by Ernest Borgnine and Gene Hackman shouting at each other. Lucas is kinda Hackman’s role, not a priest but just as randy, a professional gambler hunting a MILF in the form of Jacinda Barrett. Russell takes up the slack in the kinda-Borgnine role, though not husband to a hooker, but something far more psychologically damaging – father to a libidinous chick (Emmy Rossum), whom he is constantly blocking from having The Sex with her boyfriend, (Mike Vogel). He’s a former mayor, at one point, establishing his bona fides in a rescue, by claiming, “I used to be a fireman.” Yeh, we saw BACKDRAFT – but can you lift this frickin’ girder off my legs?! People are so stupid, they’d more likely trust you if you claimed to be Snake Plissken.

In the pathos Red Buttons role, Richard Dreyfuss, as a sad gay man (is that an oxymoron?) waiting for a call from his ex-lover on this New Year’s Eve. A bittersweet humor in his suicide attempt: forlornly stepping out onto the deck to make a call at midnight, no reply; he throws his phone overboard, steps to the railing, climbs with the intent to follow his phone… and sees the tidal wave in the distance. Here’s the funny part: he steps down from the railing. Uh, wouldn’t it have been easier to die by actually jumping into the tidal wave than going back into the ship and suffering bruises, blood, lungfuls of seawater, people kicking your face as they’re climbing over you and Republican anti-gay policies?

Kevin Dillon as Lucky Larry. With a personality as conceited as his name, yeah, we’re pretty much rooting for the tsunami. Singer with Black Eyed Peas and the ship band, Fergie, hugs Captain Andre Braugher during a fatal dunking. For them, there’ll be no morning after…

Some gruesome deaths when the ship capsizes, but none more personal and disturbing than that of Freddy Rodriguez (in the Roddy MacDowall role as the waiter); a seemingly un-human decision made by Dreyfuss to sacrifice Rodriguez. But we need to look past the “social” contract to basic human survival. Dreyfuss (complicit with everyone else) exhibited nothing that our species doesn’t exhibit every second of every day – selfishness – to ensure survival. So much for No Man Left Behind.

Director Wolfgang Petersen and screenwriter Mark Protosevich (from Paul Gallico‘s The Poseidon Adventure) have inserted more terrifying primal fear sequences than Irwin Allen’s ’76 blockbuster; like being caught in an air shaft while water is rising, a grate at the top that won’t open; or forced to fill a chamber with water to force its valve to open and let them through – not one sliver of air at the top of the chamber, waiting in solid liquid for the valve to clank open. And then there’s Kurt’s disturbing paroxysms gulping water to actually drown…

At one point, Josh Lucas does what Hackman did at the climax of POSEIDON ADVENTURE. He dives into a lake of fire. As I thought, he simply passed through the flames on the surface and swam under them. I thought Hackman would do the same thing back in ’72 – but why and how did he die at that moment? Was it the fall? Surely not the fire on the surface of the water. In that king of disaster movies, that was the real disaster – giving up Hackman to the flames. At least he went out doing what he did best – shouting at Ernest Borgnine.

END

Red-Blooded American Funtime.

A shoot-em-up, rock-em sock-em age-fest.

RED is Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren and Morgan Freeman; they’re ex-CIA, Retired Extremely Dangerous. You betcha – each of these operatives could wipe out whole cities: Willis with his arctic cool, Malko with his leering morbidity, Helen Mirren with her sexagenarian sexiness and Morgan Freeman with his pompous voiceover.

The four principals have more years between them than all the stars of HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL combined. Ironically, watching HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL can kill you faster than any RED.

From a DC Comics graphic novel (by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner), RED follows Frank Moses (Willis) as he evades CIA operatives sent to kill him, led by Cooper (Karl Urban). It’s easy to evade bad guys in movies who still can’t aim after all those years of CIA training. Yes, it’s the yawn plot device of CIA trying to kill its own ex-operatives. Frank recruits his old team mates to get to the bottom of why. (Why? Because it’s the CIA, stupid! That’s what they do.)

Cooper culls Frank’s file from curmudgeonly CIA analyst, Ernest Borgnine (that guy’s still alive?!).

Poffy goes RED

Beautiful Mary-Louise Parker is Sarah, a cubicled government accountant who dwells romantically on her spy novels, merely a phone flirtation for Frank, until he inadvertently pulls her into the chase and she finds herself on the lam with an All-American Hero more virile than any Fabio-based cover model. Her wonderment, amusement and sensual excitement are pitch-perfect, with just that right dash of spinner cuteness. Positively glowing.Brian Cox is The Russian Guy. Was Rade Sherbedgia busy? In forbidden love with Helen Mirren. (Who isn’t in forbidden love with Helen Mirren?..)

Suddenly – Richard Dreyfuss! He’s a slimy weapons contractor (cough–Halliburton) who uses the CIA as his personal hit squad, under orders from the vice president — oh, so this is culled directly from the desk of the real-life Dick Cheney (Dreyfuss played that low swine in W.); here, the VP is Julian McMahon (appropriately, Dr. Doom from FANTASTIC FOUR, and the real-life son to a former Australian Prime Minister, William McMahon).

RED is solid action-comedy that doesn’t take itself too seriously, yet seriously commits to delivering cheeky China White straight-to-the-vein outlandish bombast. Just how drunk was the stunt coordinator who thought up the eye-popping gag of Willis stepping from a spinning car, guns aimed and blazing? And how uber cool (and sexually arousing) is Helen Mirren pumping an automatic machine gun or Bruce Willis in hand-to-hand combat beating up on some guy half his age?

Of course, the mindless action would be immaterial were it not punctuated by the personalities of the principals; Willis, Malkovich, Mirren and Freeman armed not only with guns that never run out of ammo, but a dry, deadly wit that only comes with the accumulation of years that these red-blooded wolves have spent howling at the moon.

END

Mopus Opus.

A well-intentioned redemption movie that follows all its formulas sweetly, MR HOLLAND’S OPUS then tries one last tear-jerk that just makes us feel dirty, paying off with a piece of elevator muzak that is so memorable, it will have you humming something else within five minutes of hearing it.

Richard Dreyfuss is Mr. Holland, a composer who begrudgingly takes a job as a high school music teacher to make ends meet. His methods are rigid at first, as he forgets that music is meant to be fun. Then he remembers. Then his students forget. And so on.

There’s the faithful, supportive wife (Glenne Headly), the brash football coach buddy (Bill Meister), the anal principal who butts heads with Holland over his “revolutionary” methods, like teaching rock and roll and other devil’s music (William H. Macy), the wet-mouthed schoolgirl with the crush (Jean Louisa Kelly, who sexes Holland with a sensual rendition of Someone to Watch Over Me), the schoolgirl unsure of herself whom Holland gives confidence (Alicia Witt), the underprivileged black kid with no rhythm– hang on now!– The wha-? Terrence Howard pretends really badly that whitey Dreyfuss teaches him soul… and finally, for this man whose life revolves around sound – his wife births a deaf son. Writer Patrick Sheane Duncan shows us that the Poignant Plot Device Handbook is a harsh mistress.

Throughout his career of coaxing musicality from his students and sending them out into the world, Holland slaves over a masterpiece that we only hear in snatches as he toodles on his piano and scribbles notes.

Then the big payoff. Holland, old, exhausted, forced into retirement, is given a final surprise by his students, as they assemble in the auditorium as an orchestra to perform his magnum opus for the first time. And after 30 years of working on this piece of music which he brazenly calls American Symphony; after all that sweat and sacrifice and slaving, his magnum opus sounds like – elevator muzak! In 12/8 time, a tuneless, embarrassing, meandering piece of unmemorable laundry detergent commercial. And look at the faces on the crowd: inspired, majestic, flavor bursting in your mouth not in your hand.

MR. HOLLAND’S OPUS is a cry for art, a plea for creativity, a pledge against mediocrity – and the American Symphony is the turd in the swimming pool of musical appreciation.

It is blathered quite overtly that Mr. Holland’s true opus is the collective education of his students over the years. THEY are his masterpiece…

Thank Christ! For a moment, we thought we’d have to continue to hold our “inspired” faces for your laundry detergent commercial…

END

A Whale of a Tale.

Da… dun…

Da-dun…

Dun-dun Dun-dun Dun-dun Dun-dun Dun-dun – toodle-oooo (those are the French horns)…

When Steven Spielberg first heard John Williams‘s simple, ominous JAWS theme, he apparently thought it was a joke. Now who’s laughing?

They just don’t make ’em like this anymore. Matter of fact, even this film’s director, Mr. Household-Name himself, Steven Spielberg, don’t make ’em like this anymore. JAWS put Spielberg into the A-Plus List. He has been trying to capture the natural ease and gutshock power of JAWS ever since.

Amity Island – a great place to get eaten. A white pointer shark is terrorizing beach vacationers and Sheriff Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) battles the tourist-minded Mayor Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) to keep the beaches closed. Death in the water and death upon land (for the tourist trade) forces the town to employ a grizzled seadog, Quint (Robert Shaw), a funky marine biologist, Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), and aquaphobic Brody to hunt the Great White down.

I still cannot explain why Method acting in the 70s was so much better overall than it is in the late 2000s. Look at Brody interacting with his wife (Lorraine Gary) and kids (the same interaction is masterfully captured by Spielberg in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, 1977); look at the extras, not behaving like they’re one step closer to a SAG card, but behaving like hick islanders without a camera filming them; look at the snide asides between the excitable Dreyfuss, the intolerant Shaw, and the frustrated Scheider, inhabiting their characters like scales on fish.

And JAWS captures The 70’s Wench idiom; defining young women in the 70s, there was a hairstyle, a body style, a clothing style, a breezy attitude that women have somehow lost over all their sexual revolutions of the last decades. The opening scene of JAWS finds a 70’s Wench nude in the moonlit water, the first victim of the great white.

Steven Spielberg, dressed like he has just returned from the Gay Volleyball Finals, is eaten by a homophobic shark.

We do not see the shark. Because the model kept breaking down. (Not the 70’s Wench, the shark.) Nicknamed “Bruce,” the animatronic shark created for the movie was so erratic and unrealistic, Spielberg decided to keep it off camera as much as possible. Yet the few seconds we see Bruce’s dead, dead eyes and razorkill jaws are enough to cast an unworldly chill in our spines. And therein lies one of the great serendipities of movie-making legend. Spielberg has been credited with keeping the shark mysterious and thereby heightening the movie’s tension, when in fact, that decision was nothing more than working around budget and time constraints with a malfunctioning monster.

Movie deviates from Peter Benchley‘s 1974 novel of the same name. In the book, Hooper has an affair with Brody’s wife, the Brodys’ class issues with the upper-class island community are prevalent, Mayor Vaughn is in deep with the Mob, and Quint dies when a rope lashed to his leg drags him under with the shark (Benchley trying for an Ahab moment?).

TV writer Carl Gottlieb was brought in to tighten Benchley’s screenplay (of which many drafts were rejected, according to imdb), restructuring the longwinded book into the compelling movie we love and fear.

In 1975, JAWS was not only the highest grossing film of all time (until STAR WARS would wrench that title from its fins in 1977), the head-game impact it made on the world depleted beach trade in the mid-70s; people stopped swimming for fear of sharks; untold shark television specials and documentaries were greenlighted, not to mention Peter Benchley’s average novel going “superbestseller” (was that before or after JAWS went supernova?).

All on accounta Bruce eating all those 70’s Wenches. And who doesn’t like to eat 70’s Wenches?

END

Hi. We’re the Ku Bush Klan. And we’re gonna FUCK EVERYONE!

Putting the W in WMD.

First came RAIN MAN. Then FORREST GUMP. Now, in a long line of congenital idiots, comes W.

But wait, Bushies! Do not dismiss this movie as leftie revisionist conspiracy. Director Oliver Stone‘s W. is a fair and balanced representation of America’s 43rd president, George Walker Bush. Insert joke: “which means it shows him as the imbecile he is.”

No, W. is too fair. Not because the movie portrays George W Bush (affectionately known as “W,” redneckingly pronounced, “Dubya”) as intelligent, lucid or principled – on the contrary, he’s portrayed as the enabled, amoral, irreconcilably ignorant rich brat he’s always been; it is “too fair” because it clobbers us with one small aspect of W’s psyche – his relationship with “Poppy” (father, George Herbert Walker Bush), the 41st president – instead of examining the adverse affects that W’s obsessing over his father’s approbation brought down on planet Earth.

Oliver Stone (writer/director of 1991’s JFK and 1995’s NIXON) seems to miss all potential target audiences: Bushies will hate W. for the irrational reason that anything remotely disparaging toward their sheltered idiot-child “should” be hated, and the other 75% of America will find no red meat to indict the doofus C-student they so stupidly elected twice.

Movie opens after 9/11, in the Oval Egg, with the Bush cabinet creating a vivid catchphrase for the group of countries ideologically opposed to America, settling on Axis of Evil, the president flippantly throwing Iran, Iraq and North Korea into the pot – even though none of those countries acted in concert against the U.S., unlike the WWII Axis countries.

This should reveal something to America: there IS no Axis of Evil; merely a concoction of a few dappled minds (including, but not limited to, the fear-swillers: David Frum, Michael Gerson, Dick Cheney, W) who portrayed merely religious contingents as whole countries.

Hate those dangerous Arab WMD’s…

The primary players in this Greek tragedy are introduced, with varying success: Josh Brolin is the eponymous W, channeling the spirit of doofus admirably (with the light at the right angle, the resemblance is scary); Bruce McGill makes a reasonable George Tenet (CIA); Toby Jones is a slimmer version of walking rectum, Karl Rove; Jeffrey Wright leans hard on his General Colin Powell; Richard Dreyfuss cannot possibly plumb the depths of the slime-pit Dick Cheney crawled from, but tries hard (it is common knowledge Cheney runs the Ku Bush Klan, but movie marginalizes his involvement); Dennis Boutsikaris is not frog-faced enough to play Wolfowitz; I always thought Barbara Bush was a 1920 storeroom mannequin in disrepair – apparently not, as Ellen Burstyn gives her voice here; Scott Glenn is way too noble to be the ludicrous Donald Rumsfeld; Ioan Gruffudd brings the British accent (and a sensible sweater) for his Prime Minister Tony Blair; and Thandie Newton does Condoleeza Rice like a caricature audition for Saturday Night Live.

Movie follows three segments of W.’s life (a pre-pol in college in 1966, pre-pres, and post-9/11), skipping back and forth as often as W skipped out of day jobs; at one point, W simply walks off an oil-rig mid-shift – a directionless, privileged quitter, with not a shred of responsibility. Bush Snr (James Cromwell as Poppy) pulls strings to get W out of jail, land him summer jobs, slide him into Harvard, yet W keeps disappointing with his vacuous and impulsive irresponsibility. It would be the same traits he would bring to the stolen presidency in the dark winter of 2000, along with his “gut” decision-making (rather than informed leadership), to earn him the lowest favorability rating of any president in America’s history. Imagine how disappointed his father is NOW…

The performances are uneven – Brolin, Wright, Cromwell, Dreyfuss pulling the weight of all the others who seem miscast – but Stone’s direction is stellar. Written by Stanley Weiser, these characters exist in a vacuum; a disconnect between backstage and the world stage.

Richard Dreyfuss remarked on THE VIEW: “It leaves out how terrified people were of their own president.”

The film won’t have historical legs because the issues that defined the W presidency are given short shrift or glaringly omitted. Authorizing torture is mentioned once, over breakfast – there is no Abu Ghraib, no Guantanamo, no John Yoo; that scene (like other allusions and brief intimations), is more an inside wink to audiences well-versed in that travesty of justice, who will nod their heads and say to themselves: “Ah! Look at the mess he got into with that one!” There is no contention over the 2000 or 2004 elections, no dirty Swift Boating campaign, no massage gaffes at the G8 Summit – we just don’t see these events.

As for the lie of WMD in Iraq (this is not contention any more – it’s in all the literature), Frank Rich, Vincent Bugliosi, Bob Woodward and countless others have researched and concluded that W knew he was lying when selling the “mushroom cloud” to America as justification to invade. Whereas this lie should be a defining moment in any George W. Bush character study (What kind of a man would do this?), we get the barest rationalization that W is going after Saddam to finish what his father started. “My dream is to see peace break out in the Middle East! …UN resolution or not – we’re going to war!” Again, the real reasons are not slammed up against the real outcomes of this ignoble, ignorant, unlawful decision.

W’s life seems free of consequences, when we all know that isn’t true, and – worse – the consequences affecting planet Earth are ignored.

Bush had asked the two men [Rumsfeld and Bremer] point-blank who was in charge of finding the WMD… Bremer indicated it was Rumsfeld’s responsibility. Rumsfeld said Bremer was in charge. [Bush] wanted someone in charge… Since the CIA had insisted Iraq had WMD, the agency could go find the weapons. So finally, two and a half months into the war, the administration was going to give some focus to the hunt.
— “State Of Denial,” Bob Woodward.

Powell protests over America’s ideology going astray over a few terrorists, “We blew it before 9/11, because people weren’t doing their jobs right,” attacking Iraq is “not New World Order – that’s World Gone Mad.” (Powell’s character is prescient screenwriting from Weiser, as this movie was completed before the actual Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama in 2008). Cheney clarifies the admin’s position: It’s about energy resources. And – “there is NO exit strategy.”

As sinister as Cheney’s “no exit strategy” sounds, there is no mention of the chilling callousness of having no “infrastructure” strategy. Forget “empire-building” – what these meatheads called their grandiose intrusive blunder – even running water and electricity in war zones was out of the Bushies’ purview. Further, no mention is made of W running on the ticket of “no empire-building” then immediately using the excuse of 9/11 to go empire-building (which was in reality a euphemism for “energy-controlling”).

A movie about the world’s biggest meathead – with so little meat.

Not even an accurate biopic, W. is an insular, one-dimensional fairytale of a cowboy moron’s rise to power, from an alcoholic tail-chaser to the bumbling, born-again dumbest president of the United States. Like W, the movie talks a lot but says nothing.

Key events in W’s life are condensed, making the movie one big montage: W’s alcoholism, subsequent conversion to born again soberness, early political life; his wife (Elizabeth Banks – way too sexy to play W’s man-boy Laura); his decision not to be out-christianed or out-Texaned on the campaign trail; coached by Karl Rove…

And here we shake our heads in outrage again: when Rove coaches W, a picture is presented of a Rain Man cramming for an exam, not someone educating himself, studying documents and assessing intelligent solutions to national issues; we never see W reading – a salient point. Rove would coach W to counter attacks from the hostile press or public, not through knowledge, but memorization. Exactly like the 2008 Repub VP nominee, Sarah Palin. Sure, Dems and Repubs all work this way, but with this particular pol, his duplicity and ignorance became so transparently obvious through his public actions and responses. Still, Brolin never quite grasps W’s condescension. (The real W explains political strategy to the press as if speaking to five-year-olds because that’s how political processes are explained to HIM.)

Rove coins the public catchcry of W “being someone they’d like to have a beer with” – but didn’t W stop drinking long before he ran? Which made even that phrase just another lie…

W’s embarrassing and laughable malapropisms and dysfunctional grammar are slotted in offhandedly – not disparagingly – almost as comic relief. Movie shies away from WHY he is such an abysmal communicator – his low intelligence, hence, zero credentials to run a “nookuler” superpower. Grandest irony is that he married a librarian! (Holding stark, opposing political views to W, we can only presume Laura is a weak, unprincipled gold-digger for marrying him.)

Stone emulates Marty Scorcese in juxtaposing disturbing visuals over jovial soundtrack (Adventures of Robin Hood under W’s cavalier decision to run for politics, Yellow Rose of Texas under war scenes, The Battle Hymn of the Republic scoring the Mission Accomplished moment), yet this ain’t no laughing matter. When Rumsfeld says of Afghanistan “It’s not a war – it’s an exercise”; when W quotes St. Augustine to rationalize “Just” War; when W as Texas governor never pardoned anyone on Death Row, presiding over 152 executions (the highest number in modern history); when the Real World consequences of the Middle East conflict have displaced/ destroyed/ debilitated over 2 million people, it becomes too serious to satire, only proving what a soulless, murderous hypocrite this supposed “christian” is.

In the movie, W gives up pie as “sacrifice for the war” (we don’t see the 2004 public dinner where he tastelessly jokes about his inability to find WMD – bet the dead soldiers’ families were laffing their asses off); film doesn’t show him “giving up golf” because he “shouldn’t be enjoying himself while young men and women are dying” (then filmed on a golf course after making this statement); film doesn’t show W’s statement about bin Laden “dead or alive” (six months later: “I don’t know where he is… I just don’t spend that much time on him”)…

W is half a movie, like PASSION OF THE CHRIST or STAR WARS EPISODE III, where the film-makers took it for granted the world knew the story, so did not bother to develop it cogently. The movie poses questions and pretends no answers – when even a precocious cucumber like me, only mildly interested in politics, KNOWS the real-world answers. Mention is made of Carter installing solar panels on the Shite House roof (before “green” was an admirable fad), yet no talk of Reagan immediately ripping down the panels when he took office (That’s Our Republican Hypocrite!); W’s cabinet issues a media blackout on soldier caskets returning from war – but we don’t see press secretary Tony Snow lying “There is no media blackout”; W is told Saddam didn’t have WMD but pretended to – but the movie posits wrong reasons for Saddam’s pretense. (The real reason is simple: with a dangerous neighbor like Iran, Iraq didn’t want to publicly announce it was defenseless, so Saddam had to cooperate with the U.S., letting inspectors swarm his military facilities, while snickering over his shoulder to Iran as if he was duping the U.S. The U.S., as usual, too blunt-headed to discern this subtlety.)

The last question posed to W at a press conference, “What were your mistakes?” culls the Obligatory Hollywood Introspective Moment from Brolin, rather than the weak-chested, blank-eyed, weasel-sniveling backpedaling and stuttering that the real life W met that question with. Maybe Stone is trying to be ironic or subtle, because his film is LOADED with W’s mistakes, but because they are mentioned so fleetingly with no follow-through, the audience can’t see them as mistakes.

But that “mistake” scene highlights the film’s overall “mistake”: casting Josh Brolin. Y’see, Brolin is cool. Always will be. And he’s playing a guy who is just an intrinsic fuckin’ douchebag. And Brolin just can’t quite make it to that deep a level of douchebaggery… No one is that good an actor.

Movie ends abruptly during a dream sequence where W is waiting for a fly ball that is not coming down, and we see in Brolin’s eyes the most prominent unanswered question of the W era: “Where do we go from here?” Either that, or “What the hell am I doing here?” Or “How the hell did I get here?” Most likely, “I wonder if I’ll have time for a bike ride before breakfast tomorrow?”

With W’s lame duckidency limping to a shameful, disgraced end, we can only be thankful that the real Axis of Evil – George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove – will soon be disbanded.

END

A Romantic State of Union.

“Romantic comedies” have long been relegated to the demeaning stable of Chick Flicks because their sophomoric bent allows them no breadth of intelligence or forays into behavior with balls – pussies browbeat men into behaving like pussies, whilst pulp novella situations play out in a world inhabited by pussified male models and Jennifer Lopez.

Director Rob Reiner‘s THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT is exactly the opposite; not only is the male protagonist anything but a pussy, or unlikely to be pushed into being one, the movie is intelligent and charming, yet masculine enough for men to appreciate, with astute writing and full-bodied characters, and takes into account the fact that some viewers can apprehend more than just boomboxes outside bedroom windows or fart jokes.

Michael Douglas is The American President, Andrew Shepherd, a widower with his second term election looming. Annette Bening is lobbyist Sydney Ellen Wade, whom he falls for. The obstacle between the smitten lovers is nothing short of the aura of the Presidency itself, and writer Aaron Sorkin (A FEW GOOD MEN) brings a depth of humanity and humor to this situation that is sorely lacking in American love stories.

…in the land of the Kree
And the home of the braves.

Douglas effortlessly inhabits the President’s mantle and it is a constant joy to see him imbue this office with a power that we know the real President does not have, a poignancy we know the real President does not possess and a humanity we know the real President has long since lost. (As in most American movies portraying the Presidential post, the refrain must unfortunately read, “We can dream, can’t we?”)

When President Shepherd orders an attack on a foreign country, his concern is for the civilians with families who will be working the foreign embassy when it gets bombed; it is a heart-wrenching decision for him – as opposed to the real life President G.W. Bush’s flippancy when asked whether he suffered any pangs of conscience after greenlighting the Iraq war, “I made the decision. I sleep well at night.” To the real life President, “only one thing matters – winning.”

Sociological disparities like this litter the film: we realize that opposing party leader, Bob Rumson’s (Richard Dreyfuss) smearing of the President’s love life and his half-baked jabs at Shepherd’s “flag-burning, hippie girlfriend” were reined in by the film-makers, after being aware of the real-life President stooping to outright lies to blacken his opposition (Bush versus Kerry, 2004).

And though it is obvious much White House protocol was passed over with a wave of the Hollywood wand, the movie is so well-made these deficiencies seem like trivialities.

Supporting players are suitably brilliant: Martin Sheen (as Shepherd’s Chief of Staff and confidante), Michael J. Fox (reprising his role as some kind of Alex Keaton within the President’s cabinet), David Paymer (the role of pollster couldn’t be more suited to a character actor so jumpy and uncomfortable), and John Mahoney (the character actor with his picture next to “father figure” in the dictionary).

The intelligent dialogue snaps and crackles like an electrified fence with a small animal thrown against it:

In a debate in the Oval Office, Sheen chastises Fox for questioning the president’s decisions, “The president doesn’t answer to you–”
“Oh yes, he does! Because I’m a citizen. And this is my president!… ‘Cause in this country, it is not only permissible to question our leaders, it is our responsibility!”

When Fox, in turn, melodramatically spins the president’s duty to uphold the truth, “People are so thirsty for truth, they’ll crawl through the desert until they find it. And if they find it’s a mirage, they’ll drink the sand,” the president counters with what we know to be the unfortunate truth, “They don’t drink the sand because they’re thirsty. They drink the sand because they don’t know the difference.”

Brings a tear to the eye that people could be this cognizant and lucid. Pity none of them are in government.

THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT never loses its focus on the love story, the element which actually holds our attention – rather than make us wince – due to being played out by intelligent adults, instead of 16-to-20 year-olds making all their decisions under the influence of hormones and beer, or pussified male models and Jennifer Lopez. Witnessing the chemistry between Shepherd and Wade, we can’t help but speculate that if the real-life Presidency could experience one-tenth of this heady hallucinogen with a woman one-hundredth as vivacious and witty as Annette Bening, there would be a million times less political turmoil in the world.

As it is phrased outside Presidential circles: “Dude, you need to get laid more often.”

END