Ocean's Twelve (Steven Soderbergh, 2004)

Ocean's Twelve is one of my favorite Steven Soderbergh films and the best reflexive takedown of the sequel ever made. It jovially begins as a shameless retread of Ocean's Eleven before spiraling out of control by exaggerating every aspect that made that film a success until the result is a bewildering mess and a giddy commentary on the lazy self-satisfaction of most sequels. Somehow, the in-joke-heavy, pally nature of the acting among Hollywood's A-list does not lapse into pure smugness, perhaps because as much fun as the film has in deconstructing overdone studio mechanics, it also invites the audience to have fun with the cast, provided the viewer can let go of the desire for any kind of fulfillment from the plot. Ocean's Eleven sublimated all of Soderbergh's aesthetic tics into an unexpected crowd pleaser; its first sequel let all the new fans know what they were in for.

My full review is up at Spectrum Culture.

The Descendants (Alexander Payne, 2011)

With its blocky opening narration and almost immediate diagnosis of hopelessness, Alexander Payne's The Descendants seems destined to hobble itself out of the gate, with not even its parched wit capable of saving it. Slowly, however, it emerges one of the most honest, least insistent films Hollywood has ever made on the subject of saying goodbye, with all its regrets, frustrations and revelations both welcome and unwelcome. Payne, who co-wrote the adaption of Kaui Hart Hemmings' novel with Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, uses the few plot hinges merely to explore the contours of human reaction to a tragedy, making for one of the most subtle, interior movies I've ever seen get greeted with almost universal, instant praise.

The title refers to the unexpected ancestry of protagonist Matt King (George Clooney), a lawyer who resides in Oahu. King is the descendant of Hawaiian royalty, a princess who married a white missionary. And as he explains to the audience, his lineage gives him and his extended family ownership of a 25,000-acre land trust, which is set to expire in seven years. Rather than wait for the land to legally fade from their hands, his cousins want to sell the property for development, making them all extremely rich. Matt, the trustee of the land, is all on-board with this plan, until a boating accident leaves his wife in a permanent coma and changes the way he thinks about everything.

I say permanent coma without fear of spoiling, for the film openly states the hopelessness of Liz's condition within the first 10 minutes. The Descendants is not a film about the possibility of everything going back to normal but of making peace, of reassessing one's life and finding ways to cope with dramatic upheavals. And by deliberately preventing any kind of Hail Mary finale that miraculously restores Liz to full health, Payne and co. take away the safety net, ensuring that the emotional tumult Matt and the other characters endure is not for nothing.

Clooney gives what may be his best performance as Matt, whose conflicted attitudes toward his family only make the strain of Liz's accident harder. Matt is so stressed that even his narration is stand-offish. His first words in voiceover mock the views of those who think that life in Hawaii is magically better when he's watching his wife die in a hospital. "Paradise?" he hisses rhetorically. "Paradise can go fuck itself." Often absent with work, Matt must suddenly shoulder the responsibility of his two daughters: 10-year-old Scottie (Amara Miller) and 17-year-old Alexandra (Shailene Woodley), both of whom nurse their own issues regarding their family. Scottie gets out her feelings over her mom's condition by showing photos of her to disturbed classmates and bullying the other children. Alex, on the other hand, knows a secret about her mother that drove a wedge between them just before the accident, tearing her between hatred for her mother and anguish at this turn of events.

Payne's film manages to capture these conflicting, often contradictory, reactions with clear humor but also a masterful grace that suggests a peak for the writer-director, who has never put forward the nuance and full emotional range of his characters so strongly. In another film, one could accuse the constant shifting of character relations and behaviors to be the sign of characters remolded for plot convenience. But by largely stripping away the plot from this story, Payne illuminates the messiness of grief, the way it wracks us with anger one second, sadness the next, and how people make armistices with each other even as they find new enemies. Payne trusts his audience to follow the erratic but never arbitrary emotional arcs of his characters, and anyone remotely paying attention will understand completely how Alex can be so belligerent to her father when they reunite yet almost become his partner when the two go searching for answers about Liz's life.

The most classical of modern movie stars, Clooney has always been solid in a literal sense, physically and emotionally. He confines his tears to a few quiet moments, away from others, almost away from the camera itself. The narrow range of expression Clooney allows himself makes Matt's feelings hard to place, leaving his erratic actions to suggest the play of thoughts tugging at the poor man. The fraying lawyer can scream his grievances at his comatose and turn around and slap his daughter for doing the same mere seconds later, able to vent in private but refusing to let his children be jaded as he is. Writing about what Clooney does here is extremely hard, because he doesn't use any of the tics actors employ for this stock kind of performance. He doesn't tremble, doesn't act outwardly aggressive, doesn't go numb. Instead, he deals with each reaction as it hits him, even if they're only seconds apart, but he also continues to operate in the world around him, not retreating as such characters often do.

But Clooney isn't the only standout here. Besides the two fantastic performances by the actresses playing Matt's daughters, The Descendants boasts a number of character actors putting in fantastic work. Nick Krause initially takes up space as Alex's spaced-out, rude boyfriend, but a small exchange between Matt and Sid late in the film completely alters the way Matt (and the audience) perceives the boy, and Krause doesn't have to change his performance at all to handle the shift. Beau Bridges appears as a cousin looking for that payout from the land trust deal, the kind of affable burnout so lively and easygoing you never feel as sorry for him as you probably should. Best of all is Robert Forster, who plays Matt's father-in-law but just as easily could be Matt's dad for how completely Forster taps into Clooney's wavelength. Forster essentially acts out the film in miniature, experiencing the full emotional range in only a few minutes of divided screen time. He, too, holds his tears, but he does not hold his tongue, and his vicious rants put Matt and Alex in their place just when they start to absolve themselves of any culpability in their positions.

Indeed, in its elegant view of grief, The Descendants also broaches the subject of responsibility and the need to settle one's affairs, even if they are of one's family. Matt must contend not only with his dying wife and his troubled children but that trust of land passed down through generations until those who own it not only don't look Hawaiian but cannot speak the language. But they were still entrusted with it, demanding more than just financial considerations in its handling. That point is humanized at the film's climax when Judy Greer's character must handle an issue of her husband's that proves the most harrowing moment of the movie. It is precisely these mature actions that make the seemingly sorrowful ending one of hope and affirmation, confirming this as Alexander Payne's best work to date and one of the finest American productions in years.

The Ides of March (George Clooney, 2011)

The Ides of March is a political drama under the mistaken belief it's a thriller. It film hinges on a Shocking Revelation telegraphed in the first five minutes, the fallout of which wishes to throw the audience for a loop but instead unfolds in tedious predictability. Its title, which connotes portentous imagery of politics at its nastiest, fails to capture the true mood of the film. There is no sense of doom hanging over George Clooney's film, only a sad resignation. A more accurate, and no less political, title would have been CNN's perennial sign off, "We'll Have to Leave It There." In an attempt to ensure wide box office appeal, Clooney's film waters down its rhetoric and potential depth of savagery behind the scenes to come to the banal, universal truth that politics corrupts people, a maxim accepted at face value and not explored to any extent.

As such, The Ides of March embodies the same neutered centrism we see in our current president. Clooney plays his presidential candidate as the Obama of 2008 but with even more broad appeal. He's got military experience, leadership experience, and all the talking points that made Obama a symbol of change. But in breaking the clay feet of this alloyed idol, Clooney tries so hard to blame the idea of politics in general, of that commonly accepted evil, that he fatally undermines any possible belief the audience could have in the idealistic innocence of its politics-savvy protagonist.

That politico would be Stephen Myers (Ryan Gosling), a 30-year-old whose campaign experience and acumen gives him the chops of a politician twice his age. He is ruthless, myopically focused on humans as numbers (he throws the upcoming generation under the bus since they can't vote), and arrogant, yet we're made to believe he only throws his calculating support behind causes in which he believes. But however thin that premise is, one cannot blame him for buying into Pennsylvania Gov. Mike Morris (Clooney). A hardcore, passionate liberal who also balanced his state's budget and served honorably in the military, Morris can steamroll the Republicans with ease, especially as they have no remotely viable candidate (sound familiar as we head into 2012?). Unfortunately, he has to get through the Democratic primary first, and internal politics prove far trickier and harder than the big fight.

In this aspect, The Ides of March puts forward an intelligent and engaging view of the political process, in which infighting brings out the most petty and backstabbing actions. Stephen's boss, Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman), has spent so much time in these trenches that he's grown completely paranoid, not of Republican spies but defections between Democratic sects. He has good reason to worry when the rival campaign manager, Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti), comes by looking to steal away Stephen and his genius. Beau Willimon wrote the original play about his experiences working the Howard Dean campaign in 2004, but the fever pitch of the contest between Morris and Pullman more readily recalls the downright vicious fight for the Democratic nomination in 2008. And even though Obama's victory over McCain made history, his struggle to nab the nomination over Hillary Clinton made for far more gripping politics.

But the film barely even starts to get into this side of the game before it introduces a comely young intern named Molly (Evan Rachel Wood). With a sultry, beckoning haircut she must have skipped out on five hours of canvassing to get, Molly doesn't even fully walk into frame before you know exactly where this story is going. Wood plays Molly (who is also the daughter of the DNC chairmen, because why not) as a teenage minx, so comically seductive that Stephen's lapse in judgment is simply ridiculous. Then comes the expected revelation of Molly's connection to the main plot, and Wood turns the dial from "femme fatale" to "damsel" as Gosling moves to clean up everyone's mess, including his own.

At this point, the film breaks into three unified but distinct narratives: the issue of Molly's "problem," Morris' campaign, and Stephen's attempts to handle not just those but the ire of Paul for daring to meet with Duffy. The problem is that Clooney splits his time ineffectively, and he assumes that the Molly story and how it relates to the other characters is so stunning and dark that it exudes an atmosphere of clandestine cover-ups and intrigue. It doesn't, and Clooney's pleasing classical style only further hinders the film by using shadows in such a way as to be pretty, not eerie.

For a film about the seedy side of politics, The Ides of March lacks the true level of disgust needed to articulate its own points. Clooney and Gosling do their best to communicate a knowledge—already gained or slowly dawning—of the darkest depths to which politicians and the process as a whole can go. But neither feels it. These are not people living in the immediate aftermath of Nixon, capable of producing works so dark that even a triumphant, inspiring movie like All the President's Men feels borderline nihilistic. Clooney's just working off the frustration of partisan gridlock and internal squabbling. He's made a film about the incurable poison of politics when every frame clearly communicates that he thinks this all could work if people could just get their crap together. Then again, no wonder he thinks that when the film omits the true pitfalls of politics; how can anyone expect to talk about how twisted the election process is when money doesn't get mentioned once?

In their final exchange, Duffy warns Stephen to get out of politics before it jades him, a pointed bit of advice from someone who looks and sounds like Paul Giamatti. The film, however, suffers precisely because it stops before becoming completely cynical, stopping at the tipping point that turns an ambiguous final judgment by Stephen into a final half-measure that speaks more to the movie's cowardice than an embodiment of full-on political distrust. This kind of movie just isn't in Clooney's blood; when he stages a political fight, he needs a side to lionize as he had for Good Night, and Good Luck. The Ides of March needed a director on Tom Duffy's wavelength, not Stephen Myers'.