RVANews

Jobs: Is this real life?

Justin Morgan — Wed, 21 Aug 2013 11:31:55 +0000

The story of Steve Jobs is a super interesting tale of failure and redemption. The failure was near-complete and the redemption is flawed, but doesn't that make the story better?

There was Jobs sitting alone in the empty building at Apple in 1985, with all his projects and authority stripped away because he didn't deserve them, brooding. The next year, Jobs bought the computer graphics group that was to become Pixar away from George Lucas. Jobs then founded NeXT, ran out of money, then convinced Ross Perot to bail out the company which produced the workstation on which Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, which I promise is a real fact and not early 90s mad libs. Upon returning to Apple in 1997, Jobs partnered with former enemy and competitor Microsoft to release Office for Macintosh, providing Apple with the crucial infusion of capital that saved it from bankruptcy at its weakest moment. Jobs considered tablet computing to be a worthless gimmick until not long before the iPad came out. This is the story of a guy who screws up but keeps trying.

Unfortunately, the best way to experience this story for yourself is to read the Wikipedia page for Steve Jobs and Apple. It's not that the Wikipedia page is more interesting than the movie Jobs, it's just that the interesting parts of the story weren't in the movie at all. The movie seems more interested in showing Steve Jobs to be a jerk.

I get that you have to check boxes if you make a biopic. A Jobs biopic has to include Jobs founding Apple in a garage (and this one films in the real-life garage in question, which is unquestionably cool), being a huge jerk, and getting fired. Where Jobs goes wrong is taking an hour and a half just to get to 1985. It's like a Batman movie that takes 90 minutes to shoot Bruce Wayne's parents.

Plus, instead of shooting them, they just kind of get a cold. The Jobs in Jobs is an enormous jerk, but apparently the real Jobs was a world-class innovator of new ways to be a jerk. I am going to say positive things about real-life Steve Jobs soon, but it is important to start by acknowledging that he was by all accounts perhaps more talented at being cruel and terrible to others than at building consumer technology companies. The movie did get correct that he parked in the handicapped spaces at Apple, and he never stopped doing that. He preferred not to use a license plate on his car, either.

But he was also able to get people to be better than they thought possible. The highs were higher and the lows were lower, at least according to Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. But why make the movie less interesting or exciting than reality? Why would the movie whitewash the drama by spending so much time in a damn boardroom? Why show Jobs shouldering aside champagne on the day of the IPO, when it would have been so much cooler to show Jobs serving cake and champagne at the original Macintosh signing party?

Ashton Kutcher does a remarkable impression of how Steve Jobs looks when he introduces a product in a keynote, but for some reason he applies these same speech patterns every single time he talks. Steve Jobs didn't talk like that all the time (and how cool was that speech? Too cool to be in the movie, apparently).

The writers appeared to portray Jobs as a genius beset on all sides by idiots he constantly has to correct. Steve Jobs himself says you would be foolish to run a company that way, and one of Steve Wozniak's primary criticisms of the movie is that it disrespects the extremely smart people who chose to work with Steve Jobs, even at great financial risk, even when they knew his schtick. If you want to spend some time watching Steve Jobs interact with a team, go watch the entire NeXT video I linked above. Not only does it spend less time than Jobs on carrot gardening footage (which, I guess they got that detail right), but it also shows Steve Jobs interacting with his team in a way that does a lot more to show why so many Macintosh people would be willing to leave Apple to follow this jerk to his new company. I'd work for real-life NeXT Steve Jobs. I would have preferred not to have spent an entire movie with Ashton Jobs.

I also get that you have to take creative license to make a biopic: changing characters, simplifying things, shaving inconvenient facts. But why change silly details, like making movie-Jobs hate the Beatles when he famously loved them? Why turn real-life awesome genius Steve Wozniak into an inarticulate and teary-eyed Big Bang Theory-style nerdweakling who just wanted to be cool all along? Ashton Jobs discovers iconic Apple designer Jony Ive in Jobs because Ive wants to make computers blue. Real life Ive did want to make computers blue, but the reason he is Senior VP of Design at Apple right now is that he shared real-life Steve Jobs's beliefs about what design means, and it ain't the color of the box. Jobs talked about it to the New York Times in 2003:

Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it's this veneer--that the designers are handed this box and told, 'Make it look good!' That's not what we think design is. It's not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

If you think Steve Jobs is an idiot whose particular brand of salesmanship did nothing more but hoodwink the foolish for the last thirty years, you weren't going to see the movie anyway. If you just want to see what made this crazy jerk idiot some kind of insane business leader, watch these videos of the actual Steve Jobs instead. I promise, they'll be more exciting and certainly more accurate, reality distortion field notwithstanding.

— ∮∮∮ —

Why you should see this movie

You owned a Newton.

Why you should stay home

You just spent the last two hours watching videos of the real Steve Jobs on the internet--so you're probably good.

Bechdel Test

Steve has a hapless girlfriend, a wife, a daughter, a silent board member, and a secretary. Between them, they speak about ten lines total. No surprise in a movie about a famously male-centric industry.

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Do you like scary sequels of sequels of sequels?

Justin Morgan — Wed, 04 May 2011 16:00:45 +0000

There are certain rules that one must abide by in order to pathetically attempt to reincarnate a long-dead movie franchise, especially when all of the principals are working a lot in TV these days, if you know what I mean. Scream 4 not only follows these rules, but as usual, the characters helpfully explain them to you in some kind of macabre regurgitation of screenwriter Kevin Williamson's UCLA scriptwriting classes.

Rule #1

Get younger. A lot younger. The three remaining characters of Dewey Riley, Sidney Prescott, and Gale Weathers-Riley (David Arquette, Neve Campbell, and Courtney Cox) average an alarming 40.7 years of age, which isn't exactly the prime demographic for summer popcorn high school slasher flicks. A whole new crew of 21-year-old high schoolers (there are 7 actresses playing main character high schoolers who are 21 in real life, but then again, there are 723 main characters, so it's not really bad odds) are either introduced or retconned in to bring the median age on-screen down to a reasonable mid-twenties. Most impressive among these was Hayden Panettiere as Kirby Reed, who has all of the makings of a sustainable career on her hands. I guess? Guys I never watched Heroes. The jury is still out on Sydney Prescott's alleged cousin-who-was-there-all-along Jill Roberts, played by Emma Roberts (which, did you know she is Julia Roberts's niece? Roberts Roberts Roberts) and, to be clear, I never watched Unfabulous either.

Rule #2

Assume no one knows anything. It has been over a decade (I know!) since Scream 3 came out, and there are teenagers that drove themselves to see Scream 4 who weren't even born when Scream 1 was released (in South Dakota by themselves but not at night, and in six other states with a learner's permit, but still). Fortunately this is actually standard operating procedure for a Scream film, because the entire premise is that the characters know exactly how to handle finding themselves inside a horror movie. Characters from Scream 4 frequently discuss in detail precisely how events in the movie universe stack up against "the first movie," by which they mean film-within-a-film Stab 1, which since Scream 3 has been a convenient way to literally discuss the Scream series itself. But then this leads to Scream 4 characters unselfconsciously discussing how "meta" it all is. Which has been what Scream was all along, which I suppose is why it made sense for it to be brought up. Over and over. Yes we get it, Scream. Why not just go Marx Brothers and deliver filmmaking lectures right through the fourth wall to the audience already.

Rule #3

Up the bodycount. Let's all agree, for spoiler reasons, that I should say no more about this except to confirm that yes, the ol' bodycount is indeed upped.

Rule #4

Up the boobcount. There are a spectacular quantity of women who have significant screentime in Scream 4, and they look every kind of fabulous. Now, perhaps it's just because I was 16 at the time, but it's hard for me not to prefer the tasteful 90s bobs that infested heads in Scream 2 to today's flowing locks (Although Hayden Panettierre looked great with super short hair (Yes I have praised her a few times in this review it's no big deal though (OK look, honestly everyone, she's a good actress who makes interesting personal grooming choices (Don't make this weird)))). But I couldn't overlook the fact that Scream 4 has a higher proportion of female characters than Mona Lisa Smile, without any of the I-hope-no-one-catches-me-watching-this guilt. Would you like to see a movie where dozens of beautiful women ultimately fail to evade penetration metaphors? Great, I've got just the movie for you.

On the other hand, if you prefer chiseled, manly dudes on the big screen, you'll have to muddle through with the likes of David Arquette and Rory Culkin. So good luck with that.

By now, you should know whether you like Scream™ Brand Cinema Experiences. You really don't need me to tell you whether you are going to like Scream 4 or not. Look here: I can tell you that Scream 4 is better than Scream 3 (which had a different writer and was spooked by Columbine) but not as good as Scream 1. I can also tell you that you don't need to see Scream 4 out of any kind of pop culture shared experience reason. What else do you need to know? Oh yeah: still no nudity. Yes, they joke about this. No, it doesn't change things. Well, the more things change, the more they stay the Scream.

The bests (no worsts) of dating life in Richmond

Justin Morgan — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 17:00:02 +0000

Richmond, you know I love you to pieces. Over the years we've shared the best and worst of twenties dating life with each other, and on the final Valentine's Day of those twenties, I would like to pay something back. With obvious, self-centered bias towards my own personal experiences, and in consultation with no one else, what follows is my list of the very best of Richmond dating life.

Best place to gaze longingly at members of the opposite sex when there isn't really a good practical way to break the ice and hit on them

Monument Avenue at around 5:30pm when it's nice out. Honorable Mention: any adult social sports league. I have heard countless rumors of people falling in love at those things, and I have even taken a few shots at it myself, but after spending an hour throwing balls at someone and having your team's captain scream angrily at the poor volunteer referee and at their team's captain, it's a little unnatural to try to holla at some fine-looking dodgeballer.

Best place to say something awkward to someone you've never met

Shockoe Slip. The whole thing. That girl or dude you noticed in your social sports league is now all dressed up, tipsy, and ready for your clumsy advances. Go get 'em, tiger.

Best place to get introduced to someone by friends

Apartment parties in the Fan. Parties have a better energy than bars, and apartment parties are more single-y than house parties. If you are invited to an apartment party in the fan, and you are single, go. Don't not go, ever.

Best place to have a drink with someone you met online

Commercial Taphouse. This is a highly personal choice and depends on where you are comfortable and the other person's stated preferences, but if you enjoy a variety of kinds of beer, this is a good choice. It also has plenty of similar alternatives right nearby in case it turns out to be full when you show up, which happens because it is small and cozy.

Best place to take someone who doesn't really know Richmond that well to impress him or her that you're a Richmond genius

The cul-de-sac that East Grace forms just west of 22nd which you need to get to by going up Church Hill on Broad. It's the best view of the Richmond skyline you'll get, and if you manage to go around sunset, sometimes there are thousands of birds flying around Shockoe Valley and making all kinds of racket. Late at night it can get a little crowded because it's the closest thing we've got to Lover's Lane. Enjoy at your own risk.

Best place to take someone to pretend to them that you're cultured even if you kind of aren't

First Fridays. Head down to Broad Street between Monroe and Foushee on the first Friday of any month, and you can try to mask your confusion in the face of modern art by pretending you are studying it knowledgeably. Pretentiousness jokes aside, filling your heads with art and taking a walk in drizzling, warm rain while talking about your most personal dreams is a real date. I did that once. It's highly, highly recommended.

Best place to have an angry shouty argument with someone who you thought you were exclusive with but who didn't get that memo and went off and hooked up with someone but it got back to you because Richmond is the size of a postage stamp

Stuart Avenue between Robinson and Strawberry. I never did that ever, but in the summer when I'm sleeping with my windows open, it seems to be a rather popular spot for it. Have I ever been tearfully yelled at outdoors on that stretch of real estate? Yes. But it was totally about something else, I swear.

Best place to go for brunch the morning after you make up from the angry argument

Millie's Diner. Yeah okay this one wasn't that high of a degree of difficulty.

Best public place to make out

Richmond International Airport baggage claim. Look, sometimes you miss people and you get a little impatient, all right?

Best place to have a really fun, enjoyable night with your girlfriend or boyfriend, once you have had that conversation, and his or her friends, who turn out to be pretty cool

The Diamond for a Flying Squirrels Game. I don't care if you hate baseball. There's something about peanuts and hot dogs and sitting in a row that just makes everyone happy.

To be totally honest, that's about as far as I typically get with these things. You're on your own for where to take your parents to their first dinner with your true love, or where to shop for baby clothes. I can't help you one bit.

For now.

Rams outrun Keydets 86-80

Justin Morgan — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 14:16:52 +0000

A surprisingly frisky VMI team took VCU to the wire Wednesday in a game that bodes well for both squads. For the VMI Keydets, the win showed that they could hang with top level mid-major competition after a pair of disappointing conference losses to Winthrop and Presbyterian. For VCU, it was gratifying to get sophomore Troy Daniels off his shooting slump. Daniels, a guard out of Roanoke, hit four from beyond the arc in the first half last night for a career high 12 points after starting the season 1 for 13. Without him, the Keydets very well might have pulled off the upset.

The Commonwealth of Virginia is home to some of the most extreme basketball styles in the country in William & Mary and VMI, and now VCU has faced both victoriously in five days. Unlike the slow, mind-numbing sloth of the W&M Griffins, the Keydets spend more time running up and down the court than executing their offense. With the #2 offense in the country and the fastest tempo in Division 1 men's basketball, VMI plays an exciting style that is well worth the price of admission any time they come to town. They press continuously, giving up easy layups to get steals and open three point shots in transition. It's a dicey gamble, but when they can hit some three-pointers, watch out.

The Rams' four senior starters put their experience to good use adjusting to a shaky start. After VMI jackrabbited out to a 12-4 lead, VCU went on a run to close the first period fueled by VMI turnovers against the VCU press defense and a mountain of 3-pointers from Troy Daniels. VCU's full court defense put enough players in enough different spots than VMI was expecting to choke off VMI's ability to bring the ball up the court effectively. As the dance team took the floor for the halftime break, VCU was up 46-35 and threatened to pull away.

But VMI seemed to gain confidence instead of losing it after switching directions to face the student section, and managed to keep the game close throughout the second half. On several occasions the Keydets got within 1 point, the last of which was with 4:26 remaining in the contest. But from that point VCU went on a 6-0 run while getting some clutch offensive rebounds and grinding away enough of the clock to put the game out of reach.

For VMI, freshman point guard Rodney Glasgow bounced back from his poor shooting effort against Presbyterian to hit 50% from the floor and all five of his foul shots for 14 points. This kid is fun to watch and can break your ankles if he wants, but made several freshman mistakes that need to be ironed out over the course of the year. Austin Kenon and Keith Gabriel led the Keydets with 17 points apiece, while lanky sophomore Stan Okoye had a double-double with 10 points and 10 rebounds, but had 7 turnovers attempting to deal with VCU's deadly defense.

It is gratifying to see that Highland Springs product Brandon Rozzell has now grown up to take a leadership role for VCU. Last night he scored 18, and Wake Forest transfer Jaime Skeen notched 19 to lead the Rams to victory. The best word to describe the Rams' performance and play style is "precise." Precise in their execution of plays and in their swarming trap defense, and precise with their 9 of 17 three-point shooting.

They will need all their precision on Saturday against their toughest remaining foe and the best basketball team in the Commonwealth, the University of Richmond Spiders. Tip for the Black & Blue Classic is 7pm at the Robins Center.

Justin Year Itch: DVD Date Night

Justin Morgan — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 17:00:38 +0000

Note: First-string movie review Susan Howson is off gallivanting in the sunny Caribbi-terranean-cific so your faithful second-string movie reviewer has torn himself painfully away from "I Dream of Jeannie" reruns long enough to keep the procrastination flowing in the Capital of the, um, of the Commonwealth. What else was Richmond capital of? I can't think of anything else worth mentioning constantly.

Do you ever go on a DVD date? Sure you do! Even the most lonely-hearted or terminally monogamous among us periodically have occasion to fire up the video media replay equipment and snuggle on the couch with that available someone. But there are only so many times a person can watch When Harry Met Sally… with a member of whichever gender makes them feel special inside.

In my case, that amount of times is six. If you're like me, things start getting old after about the fourth time, when things become routine and there are no butterflies anymore and you realize that maybe this isn't going to work out, long term, but you go on just a bit longer because you just can't admit to yourself that it's over. In this case, after the sixth screening of When Harry Met Sally with the sixth girl, I firmly decided to branch out into the wider world of home date cinema. Here are my suggestions for enjoying an exciting night on the couch that will not involve a fake orgasm. As far as you know.

Life Is Beautiful

(Roberto Benigni, 1997)

A comedy about the Holocaust, you'll say, and your potentially- or fully-romantic partner will gasp in disbelief, possibly because they forgot that The Sound of Music had paved the way with the even more difficult feat, a musical comedy about the Holocaust, years before. But Roberto Benigni's comic tale of love and laughter triumphing over hatred and fear actually is relatively self-affirming and is even romantic before the whole concentration camp situation gets going into full swing. Themes of lifelong love and child-rearing may make this one a better choice for the more committed among you.

The Little Mermaid

(Ron Clements and John Musker, 1989)

Despite a strong temptation to write this entire paragraph in quotes from the movie (This is wonderful! Do you hear what I'm tellin' you? Isn't it neat? I'm not a child anymore. Don't be a guppy.), let's make a marginally more articulate case, shall we? Look, some of you might shrug off a Disney movie as something too unserious to make for actual date-viewage, but that's where you're wrong. The Little Mermaid holds up surprisingly well, despite the uncomfortably young and skimpily clad protagonists. And choosing TLM makes you fun-loving and unafraid of commitment, unlike other Disney movies with more terrifying messages. Beauty and the Beast says "I may kidnap you and drug you with a hallucinogen", while Pinocchio says "I'm a pathalogical liar and hedonist." The Sword in the Stone, meanwhile, might be a bit too blunt about what you want from the date.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

(Leonard Nimoy, 1986)

Hoping to demonstrate your soft, nerdy core surrounded by a crunchy, environmentalist shell? Look no further than this Star Trek classic. There's a romanticism to San Francisco in the 80s, a roguish charm only heightened by seeing 23rd century space pioneers gallivanting about, searching for nuclear wessals and saving the whales. For the Trekkie hoping to expose their romantic partner to the Star Trek universe, The Voyage Home is clearly the most accessible choice. That is, unless you are both already Trekkies, in which case: Wrath of Khan.

Thelma & Louise

(Ridley Scott, 1991)

Ridley Scott's masterpiece, Thelma & Louise might be just the icebreaker you need to discuss the adherence or lack thereof to traditional, heteronormative gender roles in your relationship. Plus it's a lot of fun. T&L won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar, which has gone through several name changes in its history but, unlike the Academy Award for Best Picture, will never let you down. The choice of Thelma & Louise for your special evening says many things to your couchmate, among them "I am spontaneous and love road trips" and "I will shoot you like Old Yeller if you so much as lay a finger on me without my clear, unambiguous invitation to do so." Depending on where you want the evening to go, this might be just the movie for you.

Shaun of the Dead

(Edgar Wright, 2004)

Very little in the world can set hearts ablaze quite like the quiet confidence and chiseled good looks of Simon Pegg, and Shaun of the Dead is Simon at his Peggiest. It's not just that terrifying zombies might cause at least one of you to require enhanced physical contact as an excuse for comforting. It's not just that you'll finally learn what the hell cricket bats are for. It's that SotD is the touching story of two men struggling to define their love for each other in a world that expects them to at least go through the motions of pursuing opposite-sex romantic relationships. That the touching, triumphant tale of sorrow and redemption is packaged as a horror spoof makes it all the stronger.

Virginia wins round one of the health care mandate grudge match

Justin Morgan — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 16:07:15 +0000

In a battle of Virginia's duly elected representatives in government, Kenneth Cuccinelli (58% of Virginia voters in November 2009, about 1.1 million) is taking the fight directly to Barack Obama (53% of Virginia voters in November 2008, a shade under 2 million) over the constitutionality of the health care mandate. This is going to be a uniquely Richmond battle. Originating in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Richmond, the case would end up in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals if it's, well, appealed. The Fourth Circuit is also headquartered in Richmond, meaning that the case could spend its entire pre-certiorari life within the friendly confines of the Tattooed City. For those of us who enjoy following court cases and who appreciate when Richmond and Virginia's contributions to constitutional law do not involve droopy drawers, this is exciting. (Note: do not Google the term "droopy drawers." It also means something unconnected to the Virginia General Assembly.)

Though other states have bound together with Florida to mount their own challenge to the federal insurance mandate, I am rooting for Virginia's case to be the one that hits the Supreme Court and which ultimately decides the fate of the law. For one thing, it will keep Cuccinelli busy and out of trouble. Secondly, the Fourth Circuit is known to work quickly, so if we're lucky, the case could hit the U.S. Supreme Court for the 2011-2012 season. If the NFL has a lockout that year, we will be looking for other diversions.

So far, only one procedural step has been taken in the Cuccinelli variant of anti-Obamacare legal challenge, but it's an interesting one that gives a preview of how each side will argue its rights, and how the case could be viewed by federal judges. On August 2, Federal District Judge Henry E. Hudson ruled that the case could move forward in his court, despite a routine pre-suit challenge by the federal government on Cuccinelli's right to sue. I am most emphatically not a lawyer, but opinions like these are written in surprisingly readable English, so I decided to wade into the dispute and see what's already taken place. (Read along at home if you're not planning to do any work today, and feel free to point out where I screwed up in the comments. Here's the Judge's decision.)

The judge didn't rule on the "merits": whether he thought the Commonwealth of Virginia was right, or whether he thought Kathleen Sebelius was right (Obama's Secretary of Health and Human Services, and the person who Cuccinelli is specifically suing on behalf of Virginia in the case). But Justice Department lawyers (representing Sebelius, and from now on referred to as the DOJ) had put in a motion saying that Virginia couldn't sue the government on this issue for any of a multitude of reasons, any one of which would have been good enough to scuttle the lawsuit before it even gets momentum. In football terms, it was a full-on blitz by the defense on the first play from scrimmage to try to sack the QB and force a fumble, but Cuccinelli savvily dumped off to the running back for an easy first down. In relationship terms, despite Sebelius playing a little hard to get, Cuccinelli managed to get her to agree to a first date, moving the relationship forward.

According to the DOJ lawyers, there were two main problems with Cuccinelli's lawsuit. First, it was arguing that they didn't have subject-matter jurisdiction. In other words, that a federal court doesn't have the right to hear the type of case Cuccinelli was trying to bring. And second, that Cuccinelli didn't state a proper claim. Is there an actual interesting question here that is worth deciding? The fact that defendants are able to motion to end a case before it even starts is, to me, pretty awesome. It's a good way to cut to the chase and keep frivolous or flawed lawsuits out of full-blown trial. Next time you're having an argument with your spouse or significant other, tell them they failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted and see if that works.

Let's take the two objections one at a time. I pulled out my notes from college on justiciability (I'm a nerd, but Constitutional Law is the only class for which I still have my notes. Hell, it may be the only class for which I actually took notes). According to the best professor at Case Western Reserve University (Prof. Laura Tartakoff), federal courts can only hear cases where the plaintiff shows standing, lack of mootness, and ripeness. The case most certainly is not moot, so the DOJ focused on the other two objections. In this case, the DOJ argued (among other things) that Virginia had no standing, because they were fighting paternistically on behalf of citizens, and so there was no injury that the state itself suffered due to the health law. But Virginia has passed its own law saying that no citizen should be forced to purchase health insurance, meaning that there was a legitimate controversy between Virginia and the federal government that needs to get sorted out. There's also a law that says that you can't sue the government to prevent it from taxing you, but that objection was swept aside pretty handily by Cuccinelli because the suit is really more about the conflict in federal and state laws about the mandate, not about taxation specifically, and the judge agreed. So check, Virginia has standing.

In addition, the DOJ also argued that the case wasn't yet ripe. I have vivid memories of daydreaming in class about hardback books of court cases ripening on the vine like strawberries. But the idea with ripeness isn't how tasty and delicious the court cases have become, so much as you don't want people suing each other over stuff that hasn't impacted anything yet. The health mandate doesn't become binding until 2014, went the DOJ's argument, so shouldn't Virginia wait until then to sue? But because Virginia and its citizens are going to have to start preparing for the impacts of the federal health insurance mandate well before 2014, the judge agreed with Cuccinelli again that the case was ripe. Check, Virginia has ripeness, and the Commonwealth's suit was declared by the judge to have achieved subject-matter jurisdiction.

So, it's time to mark our calendars for oral arguments on October 18, right? Not so fast, my friend. Virginia still had to prove that they were stating a legitimate claim. The next question the judge had to consider was whether, if Virginia was totally right about everything that it was saying in its suit, would it not matter at all because the Federal Government has clear and unimpeachable authority under the constitution to force everyone to have health insurance?

Judge Henry E. Hudson emphatically disagreed with the DOJ. This is the part of the opinion where we get a preview of how the judge might rule later on, and it looks like he's a Cuccinelli fan, at least in this instance. The judge, for example, said the mandate "literally forges new ground and extends Commerce Clause powers beyond its current high watermark." Feel free to debate the literally-usage and metaphor-mixage issues with that particular statement in the comments, but if the judge is right, then the claim is certainly a legitimate one that should go to trial. Ultimately, this is the argument upon which the entire case will likely turn.

Cuccinelli's argument, in a nutshell, is that Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce doesn't allow them to force people to engage in interstate commerce, by forcing everyone to have health insurance. The DOJ argued, on the other hand, that everyone already engages in interstate commerce in the health care market because everyone gets sick at some point in their lives, and therefore Congress has a legitimate interest in making sure people can pay for it (which many without insurance, and even several with it, obviously can't). I agree with the judge's ruling in this case that the suit should go forward, because there certainly is an issue here that needs to be resolved about what the federal government does and doesn't have the power to do.

At the same time, it's pretty clear to me that people's participation in the market for health care is a matter of interstate commerce, and I also think Judge Hudson is going a bit too far calling it a high watermark for federal commerce power. In 1942 and in 2005 the Supreme Court affirmed that congress had the power to regulate the private growth of wheat and weed for personal consumption. If planting a seed and baking (or getting baked on) the resulting crop is interstate commerce, then affording drugs has to be.

So with the dismissal of the DOJ's motion, the suit will move onward to arguments on October 18. With the way the judge signaled his opposition to the case, and the conservative makeup of the Fourth Circuit, this victory could be the first of many for Cuccinelli in his effort to get Obama's health bill before the Supreme Court. But though Cuccinelli can send the district court Quaffle through hoops all he wants, it really only matters who captures the Supreme Court Golden Snitch.

Immaculate Inception

Justin Morgan — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 10:00:22 +0000

It's a delicate thing to make movies that people understand well enough to like, but not quite well enough to vanish unremarked and unnoticed. Do it right, and people will talk about your movie for years. Do it consistently, and your career is made forever. In 1999 my favorite movie was American Beauty because of what it Said about Things, plus I was experiencing a Thora Birch phase. But no one talks about it now except to make jokes about whether there is, indeed, so much beauty in the world, because ultimately it was a little simplistic. Donnie Darko, meanwhile, was a spectacularly intricate puzzle of a movie from around the same time, filled with Gyllenhalls and paradoxes. But because true understanding of that movie requires a Ph. D. and the DVD commentary, it's lucky it even got seen at all.

Meanwhile, The Matrix (which I initially disliked because, for example, seriously what was that mirror blob thing) has spawned a tiny library of books about philosophy and religion and still carries remarkable memetic currency. Not only that, but I can now quote the entire thing verbatim. You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain. Along the same lines, Inception succeeds despite not making any damn sense because just enough of it makes just enough sense to engage, but not overload, your analytical brain with a thoroughly original diversion. Where it leaves The Matrix behind is in emotional heft, which is due almost entirely to Marion Cotillard's nightmare-inducing performance. I'm serious. The night after I saw the movie I was woken up by a Cotillard Inceptimare.

Inception sets up as a classic heist movie. There's a crime too perfect to resist, a gang that must be recruited and trained, some planning to be conducted, and an old timer wanting to pull just one last job. But instead of Cloonzing around with nine other thieves, ringleader Dom Cobb (Leonaro DiCaprio, looking like he may have finished puberty finally) and sidekick Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, ditto) insert themselves into other people's dreams to steal their private thoughts. As per the Heist Movie Official Handbook, the "one last job" is more ambitious than anything the gang's ever done before, and, just as naturally, a new member must be recruited to the gang so that the rules of engagement have a reason to be discussed out loud by the seasoned pros. Sticking to an established formula is one of the many smart choices writer/director Christopher Nolan makes. Unlike his previous films, this one eases up just a smidge on the storytelling innovation.

Then again, this easing up on storytelling innovation happens at the expense of just a little bit of storytelling. New crew-member Ariadne (Ellen Page, who has been done with puberty for quite some time, thank you very much) is brought along mighty quickly for my tastes, and much potential for humor and experimentation with the rules of the Inceptiverse (not to mention any hint of real romance) is trimmed out of an extremely lean second act. And it's not as though very many questions get answered about how this whole thing exactly works.

But it's hard to blame Nolan for rushing exposition a bit. When you have a luxurious 90 minute Matryoshka doll of a climax in your movie that you've been slow-roasting in your brain for a decade, you can't dick around letting everyone learn everyone else's last name and favorite food. After all, the fun part of the rollercoaster isn't where you go uphill.

What Hath Michael Bay Wrought?

Justin Morgan — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:00:48 +0000

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (T:RotF) is a magnificent achievement. It is bad in all of the ways a movie can possibly be bad, while breaking important new ground in movie-badness that movie-philosophers will be puzzling over hundreds of years hence. I sat, immobile and horrified as the sheer magnitude of its unholy bulk rolled over me, as an eyeless, legless, mad serpent would roll, crushing me mindlessly beneath its poisoned scales. As painful as the movie was, and it was painful indeed, what drives me into a despair from which I doubt I will ever recover was the twofold knowledge that it is making such spectacular amounts of money that we will never be rid of its influence unless a nearby undiscovered magnetar mercifully pounds our civilization with a gamma ray flare that destroys all electric technology on Earth, and that the audience around me on that fateful night absolutely adored the movie. I'm sure a few of you will/did, too, and may God have mercy on your souls for what you have done.

T:RotF opens two years after the events of the first film. Optimus Prime (played by a truck) is working with the military, while Sam (played by Shia LaBeouf) is preparing for college far from his girlfriend Mikaela (Megan Fox). Meanwhile, the Decepticons are doing something evil in ways that don't make sense and ultimately don't matter. Look, the plot is not important, and that's not just a thing I'm saying to make a joke this time. The plot is literally not important. This is scale invariate, too, like a fractal of plotholes. The highest level of plot makes no sense, but neither do individual scenes. Occasionally, continuity isn't maintained from shot to shot. Honestly, maybe it's best to think of it more of an exercise in character-driven cinema rather than trying to mentally track the plot.

Unless you would like to remain sane. Remember Jar Jar Binks? I don't, because he never happened. There is a Jar Jar Binks character in T:RotF, except for stupider, and this time they're twins. Plus, I'm pretty sure that the character interactions in T:RotF say things about women that are best not delved into. So maybe, instead of thinking about the characters so much, it would help to just focus on the huge fights and pretty people and catchphrases and explosions. Right? Isn't that the point here?

I know that Megan Fox is hot to most dudes, although she's not at the top of my personal list (and frankly, I'm a little baffled about what the big deal is). So there it is, one nice yet backhanded thing I can say: Megan Fox is in this movie. But for the ladies, and for those dudes who prefer these sorts of things, is Shia LaBeouf your cup of tea? What about John Tutorro - does he get your motor running? I hope so, because T:RotF includes footage of significantly more of Mr. Tutorro's rear than I would have wanted to see, ever.

In terms of fights, the biggest problem is that we can't really see them. Director Michael Bay's addiction to moving the camera around like it's taking evasive action makes it tough to see all of the cool fighting that I assume is taking place on screen, the way you could in (say) a Lord of the Rings movie.

The explosions were cool a few times. Let's not get too excited though.

But mostly, if you're considering whether you will enjoy adding to Michael Bay's fabulous wealth to experience the worst yet the highest-grossing movie of the year, ask yourself one question. Do I enjoy jokes about balls? Not clever jokes, really, just the kind where someone is kicked in them, or someone else lands on someone's balls, or maybe that a robot has balls. To many, and certainly to the audience I shared a theater with for the duration of this experience, ball jokes are incredibly hilarious. For them, T:RotF was a comedy-packed laughter-filled romp.

But this is what causes such vitriol from the rest of the movie reviewing community, and what caused me plenty of cognitive dissonance for the last couple of days. People love this damn movie. And who am I to stand as some sort of movie-loving arbiter? Is what I love about movies somehow better than what those people love about movies? Yes, and I will tell you why: I disapprove of $200 million computer generated robot testicles. For the love of pete, will someone please reverse the 2009 trend of putting CGI private parts into action movies? Thank you.

Don’t Take Pelham 123

Justin Morgan — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:30:38 +0000

Hostage movies are really about people. Which is the kind of statement that is super eye-rollable, because every movie is about people. The point, though, of course, is that it's the unusual, interesting people involved in the hostage taking or rescuing that drive these movies to be powerful. Think of the top hostage movies you've seen: Die Hard, where Bruce Willis is potentially the most interesting hostage rescuer ever; Dog Day Afternoon, where Michael and Fredo Corleone preside frantically over a botched robbery that spirals out of control; or even Beauty and the Beast, as captivity drives a beautiful nerdy interesting heroine to insanity and ultimately Stockholm Syndrome, as inanimate objects begin to speak to her and her monstrous jailor becomes, finally, to her, a prince.

The Taking of Pelham 123, unfortunately, contains characters approximately as interesting as the average subway car, which is another way to say that they aren't interesting at all. Denzel Washington, played by Denzel Washington, is a subway switchboard guy in New York City. Bad John Travolta, played by John Travolta (there is a Good John Travolta [Grease, Face/Off] a Bad John Travolta [Swordfish, Face/Off], and a Female John Travolta [Hairspray]), hijacks a subway car, which actually means he takes it to a place and then stops and waits. When Washington notices that the subway car has stopped and starts hailing the driver, Travolta sets up the rules of this particular hostage movie, and the plot begins to move down the well-established, entirely uninteresting rails of Hostage Movie Convention.

Without giving too much away for those of you who are into entirely homogeneous uninteresting hostage movies and just can't wait to hit the theater, Pelham's plot is most notable because of what doesn't happen. There aren't any incredible realizations or reveals or riddles solved that help the good guys break the bad guys down. There aren't any brilliant, game-changing plans by the bad guys that we've never seen before. Quite the opposite, in fact. Enjoyment of this movie requires strong suppression of the "Why did they [bad guys, good guys, cameramen, whoever] do that thing? That made zero sense at all, and in fact no person would do that ever" reflex.

That isn't to say that there is no tension. As is necessary for an action movie of this type, there are the occasional Things that need to be transported to a Place which not Go As Planned. Top Gun and Crimson Tide were quite long ago for director Tony Scott, but they did happen. At the same time, it's pretty hard to understand what is transpiring when the camera is crammed up John Travolta's nose and set to choppy blur mode. One can almost imagine Scott on set, cajoling Denzel to make a more intense version of the Denzel Washington Concerned And Confused Yet Smily Face, and coaching Travolta into his Pursed Lips, Knitted Brows, I Am A Very Bad Man face, while bringing the camera in closer and closer with each subsequent take.

At this point in the review, the canny and subtext-understanding reader typically has gathered enough information to understand whether she would like to expend hard-earned dollars, precious particularly in this economy, for the viewing of a particular moving picture. But for those still on the fence about such questions, allow me to administer a simple test.

Question One: Would you be excited by a movie with a scene where a subway car goes faster than the subway car speed limit? We're talking tens upon tens of miles per hour, here.

If you answered yes, then, by all means, go take Pelham 123 to all of its tedious, uninteresting stops. I personally wish I had stuck to movies about robots or balloons.

Up is a good movie

Justin Morgan — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 13:53:55 +0000

Up is the sort of movie that you go see if you never see movies. A sophisticated grown-up drama masquerading as a kid's adventure, Up takes the audience through an emotionally complex roller coaster while keeping all but the very smallest children engaged. It's almost unfortunate that Pixar's movies are so successful with kids and adults alike, because it makes it tough to have a nice, adult date to see this (believe it or not) super romantic movie on opening weekend without being overwhelmed by counterromantic little kids. But whether you're surrounded by excited, occasionally-shouting-advice-to-the-screen imps or the silence of your own couch, Up is sure to jump right up into your lap warmly and give you a big sloppy lick in the face.

After (the extraordinarily adorable, customary short cartoon and) the lengthy expository backstory-establishing first act, septuagenarian Carl Fredricksen (vocally played by either Lou Grant or Captain Davies, depending on exactly how much older than me you are) decides to tie balloons to his house and fly it to South America. The weird thing about Carl, from a movie criticism perspective, is that in his dotage he's become kind of a dick. Covetously possessive of things and clinging to memories, Carl is a surprising choice for a Pixar protagonist because, unlike your Woodys and your Nemos and even your Lightning McQueens, it's not like ol' Carl is charismatic or hilarious. But, somehow, I don't care how many bodies Carl leaves in his wake (parent alert: there is blood in this one). Convincing us to love that old codger is one of the most incredible things Pixar has pulled off yet, and that includes the time they convinced me that a toaster could fall in love with an iPod.

Naturally, Carl winds up with a group of misfits and, against all odds, wins the ball game at the end with a crazy play he just made up. Ha! Just kidding. But seriously about the misfits though. Carl's eventually-acquired raiding party is quite a crew of useless rejects, from the ambiguous boy scout equivalent Russell, to Dug, the most accurately depicted soul of a golden retriever ever captured on film.

Tying the entire movie into a neat little bow is the style chosen by director Pete Doctor. Doctor stays consistent to the visual style of his Pixar directorial debut Monster's Inc., with more of a cartoonish sensibility than the dust- and lens-flare-filled WALL·E or the warm, European feel of Ratatouille. It works well for the material, whether we're in Carl's flying house or in the wilderness of South America.

The cartoonish style fits because the entire idea is so cartoonish. Like don't get me wrong, here, things definitely don't make sense occasionally. As the house was flying through the air using balloon-aided lift, I thought thoughts about plumbing and refrigeration. How's the food storage situation going to work when you're in the sky? And for such an old man, Carl's quite the spry agile individual when he wants to be.

But then I'd get a good look at Carl, who was modeled as squarely as his house, as in with right angles making up his jaw, or Russell, who is as round as the balloons pulling the house through the sky, and I realize that the tone Pixar was trying to strike here was approximately three-quarters of the way from a documentary to a Road Runner cartoon.

And not to get too tediously subtexty, here, especially because I ought to probably leave that kind of thing to trained professionals with liberal arts educations, but creating the visual analogy of Carl : house :: Russell : balloon doesn't strike me as an accidental or entirely aesthetic choice, and it's likely that it's not the only case in the movie where a thing is a symbol for another thing. Pixar's continually increasing mastery of the subtle art of saying things without saying them is only going to help their movies become classics long after their current success.

But none of that crazy stuff needs to matter to you. What's important here is the emphatic declaration that the Golden Age of Pixar isn't over yet.

Angels and ZZZ-mons

Justin Morgan — Wed, 20 May 2009 11:30:56 +0000

Why is the second movie in a series often the best? Plot-wise, we no longer need to sit through tedious introductions or origin stories. Our protagonists are established and understood characters whose traits can now be tested, and whose rules can now be broken. Unfortunately, Angels and Demons fumbles all opportunities to test, refine, or even reference character traits from the original movie. The follow-up to the 2006 blockbuster The Da Vinci Code, Angels manages to suck what little fun and life there was left out of a movie where people in the audience thought about a book they read once while watching actors on screen pretend to think about things they read in books once. I think.

In Code, an epic battle is joined when Christianity is pitted against women, a battle I would not have liked to handicap, because I've known many Christians and many women. In the sequel Angels (which was actually written beforehand, which might make for an interesting I-am-my-own-grandfather novel-movie relationship if both movies didn't steadfastly refuse to make any more than the most passing and fleeting reference to the potential existance of the other), the stakes are decidedly smaller when Roman Catholicism squares off against the scientific method for what seems like about the nine billionth rematch. I say squares off, but really it's just the idea of Roman Catholicism against the idea of science. No, that's wrong too. It's more like some people say some of the more uninteresting, unchallenging things about both the idea of science and the idea of religion that have ever been uttered, while Detective Scott Turner (Tom Hanks, who actually is playing Dr. Robert Langdon, but who had more sexual tension with Hooch than with his current costar) runs around trying to keep people from killing each other in bizarre ways for mysterious reasons.

Even more bizarre than the creative ways Dan Brown offs his victims was the creative way writers David Koepp and Akiva Goldsman, along with director Ron Howard, put some concrete shoes on the plot of the novel and dropped it into the Meditaranean sea. Any trace of potential romance between Hanks and brunette costar du jour Ayelet Zurer is snuffed out, which longtime readers of my reviews (or, frankly, anything I've typed into a keyboard ever) know is sure to arouse (ha!) my displeasure. Now, maybe I can forgive the decision that there was no time for love, Dr. Langdon. It's the tension-killing, detail-level changes that don't make sense. Why would the movie give us the first clue in a fax, whereas the novel's first clue is literally branded into the living flesh of a poor victim? I'm no Hollywood director or writer by any means, but it strikes me that eschewing romance and violence to squeeze in a few more details on the finer points of papal succession doesn't seem to be the best strategy for creating top-rate blockbuster entertainment.

Fortunately there is one thing that Ron Howard gets right, and that is lush, beautiful shots of Roman scenery and Vatican interiors. The city is pretty to look at, and the movie is drenched in the paint and chisel of Renaissance masters. But if that's all you've got going for your movie, you might want to consider spicing things up a little bit. I recommend a tasteful, implied, off-camera sex scene.

One negative element of my movie-going experience wasn't entirely under Ron Howard's control, though. The blame rests with the folks I saw the movie with, at the new Movieland theater on Boulevard. If you plan to spend time in a darkened theater enjoying an audiovisual presentation, you should probably take your bluetooth headset out of your skull, because not only can you not hear with that thing crammed into your eardrum, but the rest of us have to watch the thing blink madly for two hours as though your head was some sort of aircraft. Especially when you don't use it for the three phone calls you took during the movie, as all three of which for some reason required the physical suspension of your actual cellular phone next to your ear. But not your right ear, because that's the one with Sputnick stuck up it. What happened to Movieland's rumored zero-tolerance policy towards disruption?

X-Men Bore-igins

Justin Morgan — Wed, 06 May 2009 11:30:35 +0000

Visualize me rear-ending your car. Great, now those of you who have a personal connection to the X-Men franchise, or (for some reason) a personal connection to the preview, will be prepared for the hopefully relatively more minor disappointment you will feel when you read the following sentence. X-Men: Origins is not a very good movie.

Released a month after a rough draft was leaked on the internet, X-Men Origins: Wolverine (X-MOW, coincidentally the name of the grass-cutting mutant who tends the grounds at the X-Mansion in the comics) still feels unfinished in the theatrical version. Maybe it's the script that injects fat jokes and a fart joke into a film franchise that, up until now, had struck a more serious tone. It could be the radically predictable plot, even for those of us who have never gone anywhere near the comics. But regardless of the reason, Wolverine leaves viewers feeling none of the gourmet-comic-action meal satisfaction of a Dark Knight or an Iron Man, or even an X-Men 2.

Hugh Jackman (whose character goes by approximately six names during the film, all of which actually makes sense, more or less) is a killing machine, due partly to his bone claws but mostly to his regenerative abilities. His brother Victor (Liev Schreiber, who is actually reasonably terrifying) is at least equally good at killing things, but is more psychotic and generally less well groomed. Both brothers are eventually recruited to aid the U. S. Military in some sort of secret program with a hazy purpose and hazier methods. Despite the fact that I have described nine minutes of plot, it is now necessary for me to draw the curtain tight again lest I reveal enough clues for you to accurately extrapolate the remainder of a relatively surprise-free movie. In football this is called "telegraphing your passes," and in film this is called "boring."

There are a few highlights, however. It is no accident that Hugh Jackman's Wolverine was chosen as a good character to expand in the first film. Jackman is an effortless-seeming actor with fantastic comedic timing, and Wolverine's mysterious origins and obvious allure make it the best choice to anchor a franchise. And yes, there is a cool thing that happens with a helicopter. But for a movie whose entire raison d'être is to show me cool fights and explosions, it doesn't help that director Gavin Hood (who actually has respectable-movie cred) keeps the camera in tight and the cuts tighter.

It is also tough to respect the plan to append not one but two independent scenes after the movie is over, one of which you will entirely fail to see depending on the theater you attend to see the movie. This means that after paying your $9.50 and waiting for the credits to end, you will still not have seen the entire movie unless you somehow identify which theaters are showing the other scene (likely impossible) and buying a ticket. Taking a trip to the internet to squeeze the last bits of meaning from the toothpaste tube of a movie has become a time-honored tradition, but going to the internet to read about the parts of the movie that were not shown to you when you bought a ticket to see it is something I can't endorse. I realize that the point is to sell DVDs and Blu-Ray Discs. I get the point, and I am saying that the point is stupid.

You can use this as a metaphor for this entire movie. The primary point of X-Men Origins: Wolverine is not to create an enjoyable thing. The point is to convert the interest and goodwill remaining in the X-Men film franchise into dollars as efficiently as possible. We have previously discussed in this space that some people knowingly and willingly participate in this transaction, and I do not judge those people for what I am equally guilty of whenever a High School Musical sequel appears. But let's not deceive each other, here. An adamantium spade is still a spade.

1 Star Movie, 5 Stars Funny

Justin Morgan — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 11:00:53 +0000

17 Again is a stupid movie that is absolutely uproariously hilarious. We're talking about a movie the plot of which can be entirely and thoroughly described as "Big backwards," which, if not cuter or sweeter or more poignant, 17 Again certainly made me laugh out loud more, which I think means it's funnier, which I'm pretty sure is blasphemy. But there's nothing else for it. Easily Entertained Platonic Female Companion (EEPFC, who accompanies me to all Zac Efron films I review because, as she says, "He's so pretty!") (and by "says" I mean "says repeatedly every time he's on screen, so like 517 times per movie") laughed and clapped and even maybe cried a little, and really what else do you need? Although it must unequivocally be emphasized that, despite any comedy-related praise I might lather upon it, 17 Again is as dumb as if you gagged Helen Keller and put her in a soundproof room, wrapped in wool, and history forgot everything she stood for.

Your 17 Again script was written by the guy who wrote Bringing Down the House, and we're in the capable directorial hands of Flock of Seagulls from Pulp Fiction (as in, the guy who told Travolta that "it's in the cupboard. No no, the one by your knees."). This is Zac Efron's fourth straight movie where he has played basketball sweatily. The high school actors are so old that the movie probably should have been called "22 Again." But yet it caused uncontrollable hooting among the adults in the Midlothian theater audience, like owls with Tourette syndrome (little known fact: fewer than one third of those with Tourette syndrom present coprolalia, or involuntary swearing, as one of their symptoms), as if to say, "Who ... who ... who cares if it's idiotic?"

It's 1989. Mike O'Donnell (Zac Efron, who, when pondering, scratches his head very very carefully so as not to disturb his spectacular hair) is on top of the world. The college scout is there to watch his big basketball game and give him a scholarship, his girlfriend is super hot (Allison Miller), and he knows how to dance like a cheerleader, which is apparently a plus in 1989.

But after playing the "It's nothing." "No tell me what's wrong!" game with his girlfriend when he's supposed to be prepping for basketball (please, never play this pick-an-argument game; she'll tell you when she wants to), Mike learns a fact that sends all of his plans crashing to the ground. He realizes that his life is not going to go the way he thought it was.

Sure enough, twenty years later, he has grown up to be Matthew Perry.

We need to address two ridiculous things. No, three. The first ridiculous thing is that teen Mike O'Donnell is played by Zac Efron and adult Mike O'Donnell is played by Matthew Perry, which is kind of less believable than the body-swapping vortex part that comes later. The second thing, well, honestly, we're wasting our time here. What with one thing or another, none of which (things) make any sense, Mike is rejuvenated into his high school Zac Efron body, and that's when things get hilarious.

The lion's share of the hilarity is due to the tremendous work of Thomas Lennon as nerdy sidekick Ned Gold. Without Lennon, and the fact that his character is pretty accurate as Hollywood portrayals of nerds go, the whole thing falls apart. Sterling Knight is also strikingly funny as the deadpan Alex O'Donnell.

Does it matter that you probably already know what all the jokes are? As you're sitting in the theater (or on your couch, because this would make a fantastic Netflix), watching the entirely predictable yet, somehow, perfectly timed and executed jokes play out in front of you, are you going to care that you could have sketched out the entire plot with a notepad and a pencil and ten minutes? If so, the four star rating does not apply to you. If not, enjoy!

But please do not misunderstand me here: if you want a movie set in the 80's with heft and darkness and characterization and which you'll remember, see Adventureland. But if all you want is to laugh a lot at a funny nerd and some stereotypes of high school and never think of it again, you've come to precisely the right place.

Furiouser and Furiouser

Justin Morgan — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 11:30:01 +0000

Go find a piece of paper and a pen. No, go ahead right now. I'll wait. Go over to the copier and pull out a blank sheet, or find some space next to the hardcore lyrics you're writing, or flip over your blueprints for the slave trail museum and write on the back.

Now I want you to close your eyes and think about the title of the movie Fast & Furious. Do you have the title really solidly visualized in your mind? I know you don't, because you're reading this review right now. Okay, while picturing Vin Diesel and Paul Walker (or Michelle Rodriguez and Jordana Brewster, depending) write the first things that come to your mind on your paper. Just a few words, or maybe a sentence or two. Great.

Now if you wrote "awesome" or "bangin'" or "good movie," then you'll probably like Fast & Furious. If you wrote "stupid" or "waste of money" or "makes no sense," then you can go ahead and sit this one out without thinking twice. Once in a while this job is the easiest in the universe. This is one of those times.

Moviegoers not already addicted to the franchise who are lured out to cineplexes by the spectacular box-office number put up last weekend by Fast & Furious ($72.5M, highest April weekend ever, possibly because only terrible movies come out in April) are bound to be disappointed. Even the genuinely well-crafted overture action sequence can't rescue what, without three prequels and a big name on the cast list, would surely have disappeared without a trace into drinking-game land. But then again, there's no question that plenty of people will (and obviously did) enjoy the heck out of it. People don't chew bubble gum because they're hungry, I guess.

Fast/Furious trivia buffs (Furiosos? Fasters? Furries?) will notice quickly that Fast & Furious (F&F) is really a semiquinquel: inserted into the FF universe between 2 Fast 2 Furious: Not Even Vin Diesel Signed On And Who Could Blame Him Given That Script (2F2F: NEVDSOAWCBHGTS) and The Fast And the Furious: Tokyo Drift (TFATF: TD), it provides (I hope you aren't eating anything right now, because you may choke on it) backstory and character development. Some old puzzles which, honestly, kind of were already answered to my satisfaction, are revisited. Cute little references to the original and to Tokyo Drift are made, which are sure to please the Furioso crowd. Everyone pretty much agrees to pretend that 2F2F never happened.

Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel, who looks, as always, like he's made out of mountains with tattoos on them) is pulling admittedly well-directed and fun-to-watch capers in South America with his crew, which (the crew) pretty much consists of everyone they could scrounge up from the first three movies who wasn't a rapper. That is, until things go wrong, for reasons that aren't explained all that clearly, but which cause everyone to say dramatic things for a scene or so. What with one thing or another, Dom ends up returning to Los Angeles for reasons which are explained quite well enough, thank you, but which (reasons) also push him on a path of revenge and destruction through the LA gang underworld. Which I think was kind of the plot of the first one.

Meanwhile, Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker, who doesn't sound nearly as much like Keanu Reeves this time) is a cop again, and is hot on the trail of a Los Angeles gang lord. Some form of cop executive leadership has given Brian's crime-stopping squad a time limit on catching the gang lord, so Brian has to try to go undercover ASAP as a driver for the aforementioned gang lord to blow the case open from the inside. Which, you may recall, is pretty much the plot of the second one.

As driven (ha!) as Brian is to catch the bad guy (when the bad guy is a drug lord, as opposed to your plain-old stick-up artist and convicted beats-up-other-people-guy like Dom who, in Brian's book, is a warm and fuzzy good guy, because, and I swear to you I am not making this up, he "has a code,") Dom's revenge quest has another gear (oo!) entirely. Will the two hot-headed grease-noggins learn to work together to get what they both want?

Look, I don't know if you've ever seen any action movie before, like ever, but don't expect to be in a hell of a lot of suspense on that score. These are the sorts of thing you should be in suspense about: whether anyone has some especially badass-sounding one-liners when they kill anyone else, whether anyone takes their clothes off or some approximation thereof, and whether any action scenes were particularly mind-blowing. Unfortunately, the answers are: no; not that I recall although there's one scene where some headlights are set to high beams for a distractingly long period of time and I do not mean like the lights that shine from the front of cars, I'm talking more in terms of nipples on boobs here; and yeah, but it happened at the beginning.

Which leaves us where we started. Did you want to see this movie before reading this review? By all means, get some popcorn and knock yourself out. Did you feel lukewarm or luke-cold or even repulsed by the whole sorry affair? Keep chilling, dawg, and just trust me: you're not missing out.

I Love You, Man

Justin Morgan — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:00:56 +0000

“Let me review Duplicity,” I said, but no, everyone in the RVANews palace was more interested in hearing about I Love You, Man instead. Duplicity, guys! It will not make sense and I will just get to make fun of it! Plus I heard that there was a naked scene involving a girl! But now here we are today, with me frantically trying to think of how to describe whether a thing will make someone laugh, one of the most unpredictable emotions a human being can experience. But (readership of blogs I may or may not once have had notwithstanding) nobody wants to hear me complain. I Love You, Man it is.

Here, try this. I Love You, Man is like a trip to Joe’s Inn in the Fan. Years later, as you look back on your mid-twenties (or early teens, or late fifties, or whatever RVANews’s demographic is) you’re not going to remember the incredible feast you had at Joe’s. But you probably had some good times there, because it’s comfortable, and it’s good, and it doesn’t really challenge you all that much. Depending on who you brought with you, you’ll probably enjoy yourself a ton more than you would at the technically superior yet much more intense Edo’s. And isn’t that just what you want sometimes? I'm hungry now.

Peter (Paul Rudd, who I’m told is somewhat good looking) has everything a person could want from life. He has a successful career, lives in Los Angeles, and just got engaged to the love of his life, Zooey (Rashida Jones, who is in the select elite class of Hollywood starlets who are wicked smart, making her like double-hot). But his life is lacking only one, crucial element: dudes who are just friends.

For most of his life, this hasn’t been a problem. But a wedding is the one time in a man’s life when he must stand before his friends, family, and whatever personification of spiritual or governmental authority makes him most comfortable, and declare irrevocably that this particular person standing next to him is his Best Man. The choice is an important one, because this person will need to drink alcohol and then talk about you at the reception in front of many others, a process which could be incredibly charming or incredibly disastrous, depending.

But, let’s be honest, here. Dudes are kind of repulsive sometimes. If you’ve focused all of your life’s relationship building energy on finding that special female non-platonic someone, how are you going to find Mr. Right, as well? And how will your fiancé react to your search for The One?

Not so implausible, right? Does anyone really understand the process by which men become friends? I know I sure don’t. The emotional restrictions imposed on men by contemporary western society are a little limiting when it comes to cultivating platonic male-male relationships, because it’s not like we can just have pillow fights in our underwear while drinking White Zinfandel like chicks do. No, ours is a lonelier road to hoe, friendship-wise.

At the same time, it’s not like these are uncharted waters, here, given that Larry David has been making sitcoms about this exact subject for going on twenty years. If you’ve seen Seinfeld before, you probably can predict where this little boat is planning to navigate itself.

But what truly makes I Love You, Man the solid, four-star, Joe’s Inn caliber meal of a movie is the tremendous cast. Little touches, like Jon Favreau (Vegas, baby) playing the unlikable husband of the fiancé’s best friend, or diamond-in-the-rough level unveilings like Sarah Burns (delightfully awkward as the fiancé’s uncomfortably single friend) make it the movie it is. It’s even better that, despite the palpable gender wars-based slant of the plot synopsis and unlike many romantic comedies, the movie doesn’t really cheer for one gender over the other, mean that you can comfortably take members of the opposite sex without fear of being smacked or irritably interrogated for laughing at too many jokes. Somehow, they hit exactly the right halfway point between He’s Just Not That Into You (in one corner, fighting for the female side) and Superbad (in the other, solidly representing dude-dom).

After a string of the types of comedies in the last few years designed primarily to out-shock, out-chick, or out-weed each other, I Love You, Man is a nice way to ease into the summer movie going season with likeable, relatable characters. And I swear I will stop reviewing these solid yet unspectacular romantic comedies and giving them four stars, whenever they stop putting out solid four-star romantic comedies.

Watch the Watchmen. If you want.

Justin Morgan — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:00:21 +0000

Watchmen does to the normal superhero movies what Heathers did to brat pack flicks. Unless you enjoyed the graphic novel (fanboy is a term I resent; were there Snow Falling on Cedars fanboys?), or you've boned up a little in advance, you'll be ill prepared for the spectacularly R-rated moviegoing kick in the nether region you'll receive once you strap yourself in. Is there a point to the violence? Yeah, although it doesn't play as well on screen in 2009 as it does in print in 1985. In fact, it can be an overdramatic, overacted piece of shock-cinema at times. But both fans and non-fans who want a little bit of sociopolitical heft to their mindless action can find their glass more than half full of enjoyment by the time the credits roll.

Watchmen starts with a fight. A masked man bursts into a dark apartment, startling its burly occupant (Jeffrey Dean Morgan, which may be hot to Grey's Anatomy viewers, although I wouldn't know) who was just sitting down to enjoy some political television. This is your first clue that something unusual is happening here - we don't mix our political movies with our superhero ones, typically. Is Tobey Maguire's Spiderman a Young Republican? You have no idea.

But there's no time for politics now: a fight is on. With one still-anonymous butt well and truly kicked by an anonymous boot, it is time for one of the best opening credit sequences in modern cinema (didn't like it? what's your favorite, then?) as our (anti-?) heros are introduced, and the most iconic images of the mid-20th century are remade to show how they would have happened in Watchmen's alternate history.

It's a compelling yet dystopian alternate history, but from what I hear, the real-life 1980s were no picnic. In the fake 1985, we have won the Vietnam War. Richard Nixon is just beginning his fifth term. Multiple generations of masked heros have fought criminals since the thirties, some working directly for the government, others retiring and revealing their identities for monetary gain, while a select few choose to keep their identities and their lives private. Violent crime and materialism are on the rise, and the Cold War is reaching its peak, just like the real 1985.

When an alumnus of the once-united masked crusader band The Watchmen is murdered, it's up to the only other member who still fights crime, Rorschach, to figure out what's going on. This sounds very cuddly and typical, but like Heather, Heather, Heather, and Veronica, these are not very nice people and they do not play well with others. This is pretty much the theme of Watchmen, when it comes down to it. On a global political stage, and on a more personal level, it pays to be a controlling jackass, because you pretty much do get what you want. But (the film then asks), is it really worth it?

This is a morally ambiguous superhero movie, is what I'm trying to say, about as morally ambiguous as you're going to get out of ol' Hollywood and DC comics. Watchmen is also complicated. Not in a "whose side is everyone on" sort of way as much as a "I can't remember which character they're talking about" way. The comic book is 338 pages long, and in virtually none of the panels is only one thing happening. The movie is, like Kate Winslet in Titanic, ample yet not overabundant at 163 minutes. Even the omission of 95% of the entendre-tastic metaphoric content of the graphic novel still leaves plenty of opportunity for things to mean other things, and this may be too much for some.

Typically I would have mentioned other actors by this point, but there's a ton of them and some of their identities may need to be a secret at the start of the movie, so we might as well skip on to more important movie review topics. Like, for example, I'd feel like I wasn't doing my job here if I didn't mention the spectacularly high frequency of wang shots in this movie. Like, we're talking about a dozen CGI full frontal male scenes. There are literally hundreds of jokes I want to make at this point, but RVANews employs a few folks under the age of 25 and I wouldn't want to offend their delicate youthful sensibilities. Suffice it to say that if enormous superhero genitals get your motor going, then you're in luck. I personally wouldn't know.

For the rest of us, there is another negative: the overacting. Yes it's a superhero comic book movie, but I saw Iron Man and Dark Knight last year, and now I have high standards. When it comes to Watchmen, though, the aforementioned Jeffrey Dean Morgan is pretty much the only character 100% at home in his own (pretend) skin.

All in all, it's an enjoyable, intense piece of theater, but only if you're prepared to turn your brain off in some ways but full throttle in others. If giving benefits of doubts to superhero movies is your thing, then by all means give it a shot. If you read the graphic novel and enjoyed it, you'll have a hard time being disappointed by much. Just don't say I didn't warn you about the overacting, the length, and the superhero schlong.

VCU Moves On to Round Two

Justin Morgan — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 23:48:46 +0000

An ugly opening half defensive slugfest turned into a hot second half for both teams, but the VCU Rams survived and moved on in the second round of the CAA tournament today against the Georgia State Panthers, 61 to 52.

Georgia State's standout guard Joe Dukes had a season-high 24 points, but couldn't get much help from a team that was overmatched athletically for most of the night. Meanwhile, outside shooting from VCU's Bradford Burgess and Brandon Rozzell and the superpowers of Eric Maynor kept the Rams just out of the Panthers' reach throughout the second half.

Bradford Burgess made all four shots he took, including the first two shots for VCU in the second half, both from outside the arc. Rozzell racked up 12 points on 4/9 shooting. And Maynor drained 7 of his 11 shots with the sort of zen-like calm we've gotten used to from Eric over the past four years.

Maynor wasn't calm for the whole afternoon, though. With around 6 minutes left and VCU leading by 10 following a Maynor 3-pointer, Eric was called for his third foul on the defensive end. To the Ram-friendly crowd, it didn't look like Maynor fouled anything but the basketball. As he was walking away from the scene of the crime, Maynor found himself muttering angrily at a referee. It was likely only the weight of his second CAA Player of the Year award that kept the ref's whistle out of his mouth.

It was the hot shooting in the second half that kept VCU on top, but the Rams gained their dominating lead in the first half with smothering defense and some athletic play. For example, with 11 seconds left in the half, Maynor brought the ball down the floor and tried to penetrate, like he typically does in last-second situations. The Georgia State defense naturally collapsed, so Maynor kicked the ball out to Rozzell for a last second three point shot. Off the mark. But then Sanders materialized out of nowhere to collect the short rebound from a foot above the rim and throw it downwards through the basket an instant prior to the buzzer to take the 60% lead, 24 to 15.

The crowd was the most puzzling aspect of the game for me. Cheering after the exciting plays and angry yelling embarrassing things at refs isn't the way to be a home crowd. Making some noise on defense might be a good idea in the semifinal.

Eh. The girls they chose to profile were interesting, but it wasn’t fun to watch their self-control issues piss off other campers for 90 minutes. The teachers and the metal chick WERE fun though.

Justin Morgan — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 18:03:11 +0000

Why does hollywood perpetuate the myth that girls love to kiss guys who have prickly unshaven sandpaper face? I have tried this and let me tell you that girls do NOT seem to love that at all.

Justin Morgan — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 17:58:03 +0000

The sense of humor in this movie is perfectly tuned to be out of phase with my sense of humor, so that though I could recognize that there were jokes, I laughed zero times.

Justin Morgan — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 17:55:04 +0000

It’s just not that terrible

Justin Morgan — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 12:37:37 +0000

Why do we love overgeneralizations about dating so much?

Is it an evolutionary thing? Our brains, hard coded by millions of years for basic mate-seeking, the bright deuterostome edge of which was subsequently reprogrammed by hundreds of thousands of years of natural selection for raw pattern recognition, are now trained to make us automatically snort and giggle whenever someone points out that girls love drama yet guys hate commitment.

Which is of course ridiculous: not all girls are that dramatic, and I know plenty of guys who have no problem committing. Isn't the notorious "friend zone" just the exact same lack of commitment, stereotypically the lack of which comes from women, at a slightly different relationship phase? Then again, isn't lack of commitment more desirable, like, to anyone? Isn't that part of the potentially hard-coded, desire-inducing reason why we sometimes push people away? But yet am I really making any more sense right now with this second level of relationship overgeneralization abstraction, or am I just yet-again appealing to the intersection of the two top things human brains are designed to obtain: sex and organized information?

He's Just Not That Into You is a movie that appeals to exactly this intersection, which is the best way I could think of to say "this movie is exactly like every other decent romantic comedy ever." Honestly, we can end the review real quick if you're urgently considering a ticket-purchase decision as we speak. Here, take this quick quiz (Each yes answer is 1 star):

Do you own a Meg Ryan movie?
Do you lose at least one hour of productivity per week at work discussing relationships (yours, other people's, celebs') (the one hour I assume you make up at lunch or after hours of course), and kind of wish it was somehow your job to discuss relationships full time? (If It is somehow your job to discuss relationships, even obliquely, and you intentionally chose that job for this reason, give yourself 2 points on your answer card and let me know where I can send my resume.)
Have you seen Love Actually more than once, on purpose, because you thought it was cute and not because of any weird Bill Nighy issue?
Did you get out a pen and tear a piece of paper out of a notebook to take this quiz, because you enthusiastically give things the benefit of the doubt even when they're kind of dumb and derivative?

Tally them up. That's the number of stars you'll give this movie out of five. To see my score, see the top of this column.

In He's Just Not That Into You, which I swear I'm actually going to talk about now, Gigi (Ginnifer Goodwin, who adorably just inherited Meg Ryan's career if she wants it) has a problem. She's never really sure what the men in her dating life are trying to say to her, nonverbally, when they aren't calling her back. This isn't really her fault, though, because (we're told quite early) women train each other to misinterpret relationship things. Anna, Beth, Janine, and Mary all have relationship problems too (Scarlett Johansson, Jennifer Aniston, Jennifer Connelly, and Drew Barrymore, respectively, coincidentally also the cast of an impressive percentage of my intra- and post-adolescent daydreams), involving various relationship issues that aren't quite their fault either, but they're kind of vaguely not sure about whether it is (their fault), which may or may not be intended to be insightful.

Meanwhile, Conor, Alex, Ben, and Neil (Kevin Connolly, Justin Long, Bradley Cooper, and Ben Affleck) are, on the whole, relatively care- and introspection-free most of the movie, and have no idea that much of anything is really their fault, apparently in another nod to pseudo-insight. Arm the cliché-cannon, Hollywood, it's time to crank out another romantic comedy.

But isn't that kind of the point of the book? Maybe things really kind of are as simple as everyone kind of instinctually wants to try to make them. Maybe it's enough for a movie to be cute and dumb and adorable and kind of funny but not that memorable. And though the inevitable bowtie ending is a little too cute, every once in a while, things do work out for some people in the end. The winking self introspection makes me entirely forgive the overgeneralizations and 129-minute running length. The theater full of giggling, happy women and big screen full of Ginnifer Goodwin didn't hurt, either.

A defensive blowout

Justin Morgan — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 23:09:39 +0000

It was a total team effort from the Rams on Homecoming night, as all five starters produced between 8 and 13 points on excellent all around shooting to trounce William and Mary 76 to 54. The Ram press was in full force all night long, helping to create 25 points off the Tribe's 19 turnovers.

VCU returned from last week's away loss to UNC-Wilmington ready to play, hopping out to an early lead and never looking back. The Rams never let the Tribe within 10 points after a rocket-like ascension early on, and kept the lead above 15 for much of the game. The Tribe found their stroke late in the first half, closing with an 11 to 5 run, reaching a halftime score of 39 to 24. That would be the highlight of their night, however, as the Rams looked to get back on track in their CAA schedule.

Though the outcome of the game was entirely unconcerning, there were some injuries that were. Brandon Rozzell went down with a knee injury with 13.9 seconds remaining in the game after a tough collision away from the ball. According to Anthony Grant after the game, it was just a re-aggravation of a previously hyperextended knee. Rozzell has been averaging 20 minutes and 7 points per game, and has dropped in some clutch three pointers this season.

Eric Maynor also went down in the second half with some sort of head injury after being pushed into his own bench. Somehow between being pushed and leaving the court dazed, Maynor managed to drop in 2 more points on a fast break outlet pass. Maynor returned after only a few minutes of inactivity looking alert and ready to play.

VCU got off to a hot start, with a Sanders hook shot in the lane off the opening possession. The VCU press seemed to catch W&M off guard on the subsequent inbounds pass, leading to a quick turnover and a Rodriguez 3-pointer, putting VCU up 5-0 before the Tribe could even attempt their half-court offense. The W&M zone isn't collapsing well on the ball, allowing Sanders and Pishchalnikov to the inside game for 4 early baskets.

At the first media timeout, VCU's press had caused 3 turnovers, leading to an 11-5 lead with 15:30 to play in the first half. VCU was 5 for 6 from the floor at this point.

VCU's offense seemed to slow down as Pishchalnikov and Sanders took a bit of a rest, but the offense picked up again to take a 22-10 lead with 7:13 remaining.

That's when the fury of the Commonwealth was uncorked upon the poor Tribe, assassinating William and Mary's by-then-feeble upset hopes.

Joey Rodriguez took what seemed like a terrible 3 point shot. That's until Larry Sanders apparated out of nowhere to snag the ball out of the air with one extended nine-foot arm and slam it home. The Siegel center at this point registered approximately 4.7 on the Richter scale. Feeding off the crowd, the VCU offensive went intercontinental over the following few possessions. A Maynor floater in the lane, a Pishchalnikov finger roll, and a ridiculous Maynor three-pointer (after which he fell over practically on top of my laptop, requiring me to push him back on to the court using the very fingers typing this article) had VCU up by 19 with 3:29 remaining in the half, and Tribe coach Tony Shaver so frustrated that he earned himself a technical foul. After two calm foul shots from Maynor, the Rams led 34 to 13 and the outcome was never again in even the shadow of a doubt.

As the second half wore down beneath 10 minutes remaining, the sold out Siegal Center croud became so bored that they started doing a progressively more boisterous wave while the Rams were on offense, while taking no-noise naps during the Tribe's offensive possessions. I didn’t even mind. Their intensity during the first half earned them the chance to be lazy. My only request to the Siegal Center Faithful: do the Black and Gold chant more often, not just when the students coordinate their shirts to their seating location, and when the game is already out of reach. Make signs, and get the cheerleaders and the non-students involved. Imagine being a poor William and Mary basketball player while each side of a sold out arena is chanting either "Black!" or "Gold!" at each other. From the court, it sounded incredible.

Some good injury related news happened in this game as well: T. J. Gwynn returned after 14 games on the sidelines to a cheer from the crowd. Gwynn has the potential to be a solid contributor, particularly given VCU's lack of depth in their frontcourt.

Prior to the game, Eric Maynor was recognized at mid-court for becoming VCU's all-time career assists leader to a standing ovation from the sold out Siegal Center crowd.

I think the part of the sweeping epic film where the heroine gets married and has a kid is like the season of the high school TV series where they all go to college. It just isn’t quite the same.

Justin Morgan — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 20:46:24 +0000

Honestly.

Justin Morgan — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 20:35:51 +0000

Well that was very subtle. I guess? Look I didn’t really like anyone in this movie, and in fact it was kind of boring. Westerns aren’t my scene maybe.

Justin Morgan — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 20:33:44 +0000

Oh interesting mission to jupiter STAR CHILD I AM VERY OLD SUDDENLY

Justin Morgan — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 20:27:01 +0000

Man is the real zombie.

Justin Morgan — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 20:18:35 +0000

FroZZZt/NAPxon

Justin Morgan — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:26:32 +0000

Ever since I got back from Frost/Nixon, I've been browsing the internet in growing bewilderment.

I double-checked the Academy Award nominations (as though I hadn't already created a spreadsheet, checked the odds for each category at online betting sites, and committed all the nominations to memory). I'm pretty sure that it's not good directing if you manage to gloomily sidelight every character as melodramatically as some kid's first short film in cinema school. Honestly, I was really hoping that Frost would get Nixon so riled up that he'd angrily flick on the lights so I could maybe see whatever the hell was going on. So maybe I misremembered that Frost/Nixon got a best directing nomination. Nope - there it is on the Best Directing wikipedia page.

Huh.

Well, that's okay. Maybe the academy felt that placing a biographical political drama in (literally, I'm not kidding here) more gloom than the Mines of Moria was an interesting directorial choice. But I absolutely must have misremembered the adapted screenplay nomination, because if you're making a movie based on a play based on an interview, and all you can come up with to add are contrived transparently plot-railroading scenes and the most worthless love interest in biopic history, plus you decide to weirdly intersperse "The Office"-style faux documentary interview clips that yank viewers right out of the flow of the movie, you can't possibly have fooled people into thinking it was an exceptional job of scriptwriting.

Oh, right: I always forget. Best adapted Screenplay is like Cinematography. It always has at least one head-scratcher among the bunch.

Which brings me to the real alleged crown-jewel of the film: Frank Langella's Academy Award, BAFTA, Golden Globe, and SAG nominated Richard Nixon. Having honed the role in London and on Broadway, Langella brought a true depth and soul to his performance of the Lear archetype that was incredible to behold. But this isn't Frost/Lear, it's Frost/Nixon, and Langella's Nixon was, well, it wasn't Nixon. It was Saturday Night Live, angrily unbalanced, joke-about-sex-and-get-drunk Nixon played by a tremendous actor whose admitted talent only kept his buffoonish portrayal from veering into the ridiculously comic. But that doesn't make it Nixon.

See for yourself:

This is the honest-to-betsy actual Nixon.
This is gruff angry unbalanced movie Nixon.

This review is harsh because I expected more. I expected to have Nixon revealed to me in ways that felt true. Stop telling me how great Nixon is at dominating a conversation with his intellect – show me! Frankly, for the truly revealing dramatic laying-low of a powerful personality, why not just rent the DVD with the original interview on it? I just added it to my personal queue.

Look - it's an okay movie. There are funny bits, of which I think at least one was not in the preview. There are fun wild stabs at the bizarre modern political landscape. "He wiretapped 17 people! Seventeen!" is pointed, and the very idea that a political interview can be adversarial at all is jarring to modern day audiences who are accustomed to only getting such interviews from comedians (which, maybe, means nothing has changed). Some of the other actors, Oliver Platt and Michael Sheen (as Frost himself, in particular) do great work.

I even understand that you need to add a woman to keep me interested, and you might want to ham up the Nixon a little for dramatic appeal. Film is a business, and gruff explosiveness sells tickets, especially when it's gruffly joking about sex in a preview. But if Tina Fey can do a more accurate Nixon than your leading man, then you swung and you missed.

I thought Brock was going to fall out of his seat and hurt himself laughing. We both intend to quote this movie regularly for the next six months so get ready for that to be annoying.

Justin Morgan — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:24:29 +0000

1/3 of the way through I was bumping the rest of the trilogy excitedly up to the top of my queue. By the end I had deleted them from my queue and am now trying to forget this movie ever happened.

Justin Morgan — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:19:50 +0000