Horrible Bosses 2

Surprisingly, I liked Horrible Bosses 2 better than Horrible Bosses 1. At its core, the set-up is basically the same, but the laughs are more sustained and the comedy fresher. The three leads—Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, and Charlie Day—manage to transcend the one-dimensionality of their characters and at times create great comedy. There’s a wonderful moment when they’re hiding in Chris Pine’s closet (with plans to kidnap him and hold him for ransom so they can retaliate against his father, a businessman who burned them in a deal) and his maid is absent-mindedly hanging clothes on the rack. She slides a bunch of slacks to the left, revealing terror-stricken Charlie Day, who had been hiding behind them. He moves to the left too, to re-conceal himself. Then the maid, still completely unaware, slides the pants to the right, adding another pair of slacks to the rack. Rinse and repeat. It’s hysterically funny, and it’s the kind of ingenious, silly, wonderful thing you’d see in the Marx Brothers or the Three Stooges.

The timing in this movie is absolutely perfect. Jason Sudeikis, whose character is the man-whoriest of the three, diverts his easily distracted attention at always just the right moment. Charlie Day hones his skills at being the last one to get the joke. Only Jason Bateman seems to have stagnated, playing the perpetually annoyed straight man that he hasn’t had to perfect since Arrested Development. (The only change is that he unexpectedly falls in love with Jennifer Anistion’s character and dotes on her without reciprocation. But this little nugget is barely utilized.)

As for Jennifer Aniston, she’s even deadlier (and more delightful) than she was in Part 1. She and Kevin Spacey reprise their roles as the horrible bosses from the first movie, only their parts are secondary now. But their characterizations have also improved the second time around. Spacey is now behind bars, but manages to send the boys with their tails between their legs on multiple occasions. (He seems to be having a wonderful time playing such a detestable man, and yet, there comes a point in the movie when you’re on his side more than that of the protagonists.) Aniston, who you may remember was cast as a nymphomaniac dentist, is now attending sex addiction group therapy sessions. But she’s not particularly committed to beating her sexual problems, and she inserts herself into the kidnapping scheme of the three heroes as a kind of naughty foil. The guys break into her office in order to steal nitrous, only to be derailed when Aniston and her group therapy group arrive unexpectedly. Bateman, who’s supposed to be playing watch dog, is forced to interact with the group, and there are some genuinely horrifying lines of dialogue exchanged between him and Aniston. Horrifying and funny, of course. I was surprised no one walked out of the theater.

I looked back at my review of the first film, and was reminded that the movie seemed slightly off-kilter, and not always in a good way. Yes, it was funny, but with the sequel now in mind, it’s obvious the actors had not yet hit their stride. They find a rhythm in Horrible Bosses 2 that really sells the humor, from the cheap shots to the overly gross sexual innuendoes to the purely insane moments that only work out of pure luck, or maybe pure talent. My only problem with the sequel was that the heroes began to annoy me with their constant stupidity. Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis reminded me of every annoying kid I grew up with who couldn’t shut up, and I found myself, like Jason Bateman’s character, wanting to smack them both repeatedly. But their performances were terrific even if they grated on the nerves at times.

With Christoph Waltz, Jamie Foxx and Jonathan Banks. Directed by Sean Anders. Written by Anders and John Morris.

The Usual Suspects

I hold to a sort of unwritten rule when it comes to writing fiction of any kind: Don't let the plot twist drive the story. Plot twists are tantalizing, which is why they often intoxicate writers, but the screenplay written by Christopher McQuarrie for The Usual Suspects is nothing more than a long, drawn-out red herring. Everything about the movie hinges on its now famous surprise ending, which I will not divulge here in case someone reading doesn't know. (I did know, going in, which was a little frustrating, but I did still find myself getting suckered just a tad.)

The reason plot twists are deadly for stories--if indeed the stories exist solely to surprise us with the twist at the end--is because everything, from the plot to the characters to the order of events to the ways in which the story is told, becomes a device, a pawn in the author's game of tricking the audience or the reader. Not only does it become shamelessly manipulative at some point, it also forces the writer to relinquish a certain amount of richness that comes from making the characters the actors and not the pawns. When a movie is character-driven, the twist is the icing on the cake and doesn't necessarily make or break one's enjoyment of the film.

The Usual Suspects is just one big build to the end, and it's a surprisingly humorless crime film, full of needlessly complex developments and dialogue and hopelessly in love with its own cleverness, as inane as it really is. Director Bryan Singer doesn't help much. He seems to be at the mercy of McQuarrie's script too. In the end, The Usual Suspects is little more than a pastiche of Singer's and McQuarrie's cinema favorites. They're trying to pay homage with a clever update of crime and noir films for the 90s. But there were several better homages of that decade, namely L.A. Confidential (1997). (See also Jackie Brown, also 1997.)

The difference between a film like this and the far superior L.A. Confidential is partly one of style, and partly one of characterization. L.A. Confidential mined the richness of its oddball, displaced characters and managed to weave this exploration into the overall story. The Usual Suspects just deals in smoke and mirrors. The plot involves five criminals who team up while in prison to do a job involving lots of money and cocaine. But it turns out that someone has double-crossed them, and there's a lot more going on than they think. (The reverse is true for the viewer: there's a lot less going on.)

The cast includes Gabriel Byrne, Kevin Spacey, Chazz Palminteri, Stephen Baldwin, Kevin Pollak, Benicio Del Toro, Pete Postlethwaite, Suzy Amis, Giancarlo Esposito, Dan Hedaya, and Peter Greene. All of them play characters pulled from various film noir thrillers of the past. The film was well-received by many critics and viewers, and garnered an Academy Award for Best Screenplay. Spacey also took home an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. 106 min. ★★

Margin Call

Margin Call takes place over about a 24-hour period in which a New York investment bank foresees the impending financial crisis of 2008 and tries to save itself, effectively screwing over everyone else in the process. Kevin Spacey heads the cast as a middle man who grapples with the morality of selling out at the cost of so many other companies' very existence.  

It's a grimly keen assessment of Capitalism; a lovely little tragic-comedy full of lonely figures in business suits trying to hold on to as much of their money as possible. All the business-world jargon that confuses most of us in real life sputters out of the lips of the characters in this movie with irony: half the time no one knows exactly what is meant by "volatility index" and the like. You keep waiting for the movie to translate it for you. Even the big boss (Jeremy Irons) asks for plain English when a meeting is called to discuss how to deal with the storm that's brewing.

This movie humanizes the business world and dehumanizes it at the same time. It placates the idea of class warfare by suggesting how infinitely culpable every one was in the economic downturn that continues to problematize our money matters here and abroad.

It's a tight, compelling little economics thriller with capable performers in front of the screen. There's no maudlin sympathizing with the Wall Street types. Director J.C. Chandor apparently prefers to appear objective. While that's seemingly impossible to do, in the process, he keeps the movie's subject from lending it a sense of self-importance. The fact that it takes place in one brief period (virtually a day and a night and the following morning), gives the movie a sense of urgency. It's a slick move, like something out of a bad Western, and you can only appreciate the fact that Chandor wasn't trying to make this the Godfather of Wall Street movies.

As a result, what we've got here is a pretty damn good movie. Spacey is wonderfully good. Zachary Quinto, as an intelligent young employee who has a mind for numbers (he's got a doctorate from MIT to boot), shows promise. He was a good Spock in Star Trek and here he demonstrates his ability to play other types of characters. Demi Moore is restrained, and therefore pretty good, as one of the higher-ups. Simon Baker too plays his character--one of the bosses--with a sleazy passive confidence. With Paul Bettany, Stanley Tucci (showing a remarkable screen presence in his brief but important role), Penn Badgley, and Mary McDonnell.

L.A. Confidential

L.A. Confidential (1997) is the definitive modern pulp noir. Set in 1950s Los Angeles, it's about the decaying power of corruption in the police department. This is the kind of movie you experience with sheer glee, because it taps into the very base, gritty, sensual pleasures and fascinations that make movies such fun: murder, sex, blackmail, corruption, and ambiguous characters who simultaneously defy and embody the good guys vs. bad guys theme. In fact, L.A. Confidential is so gritty and seedy, that by the end you feel dazed. The movie punches you in the gut. But what elevates the material, transcending the whole genre of pulpy thrillers of which it is very much an homage, is the humanizing of the main characters.

Russell Crowe, as the brute force member of the LAPD, Bud White, is astonishingly good. He seems to be all macho energy--an invaluable asset when it comes to intimidating suspects--but he's vulnerable too. Crowe looks like someone who would throw people through windows and take a girl out to the movies in the same day, and he's well cast in the role. It was one of the movies that made him a star. He thrives in parts like these.

Kevin Spacey seems to be having a wonderful time as the cop who courts Hollywood. He's a creative consultant for a hokey TV cop show, and it's where he lives. Spacey is so effortlessly good that he's probably overlooked amidst the more dramatic roles. When he and Guy Pearce are having a heart to heart and Pearce asks him why he became a cop, he doesn't give a long speech about some traumatic childhood experience that imparted within him a lifelong desire to see justice served. Instead, all he says is, "I can't remember." It's delightfully antithetical to the cliched soliloquys so many movies (even this one at times) resort to, the kind that generally end up in little blurbs for the Oscars, to showcase a performance. It's impossible to characterize an entire performance in one 30-second clip, and Spacey is living proof of this.

What strikes me about L.A. Confidential is how creepy it is. The corruption is so believable, and flies so squarely in the face of the mythology about Hollywood and the 1950s, that you find yourself feeling genuinely at uneasy. The movie taps into our underlying fear and distrust of authority figures. It asks: How do we know that they have our best interests at heart? More frightening--what if they do, but are willing to break the law to carry out their own brand of justice? Like the corrupt police chief played by Orson Welles in Touch of Evil, playing God with a badge becomes an intoxicating drug. Sooner or later it's uncontrollable, and it never remains untainted by corruption, greed, and vanity.

L.A. Confidential recalls real murder cases that have fascinated us for decades. It's based on the book by James Ellroy, who in part became a mystery writer because he was so affected by the gruesome, still-unsolved, murder of his own mother. The story inadvertently conjures up images of the Black Dahlia case of 1947, which of course happened in L.A. only a few years before the events of this movie. Most closely connected to that story of a would-be actresses' brutal murder is the thread in L.A. Confidential about a call-girl agency, run by a sleazy millionaire (David Strathairn). He fixes up girls to look like movie stars. He has a 'Rita Hayworth' and a 'Lana Turner' and a 'Veronica Lake' (played by Kim Basinger, the only actor in the movie to win an Oscar, and probably the least deserving person in the movie of all, even though she's not bad). Veronica Lake, it should be noted, is best remembered for playing dames in grimy B movies. It's pure enjoyable trash, and one of the great films of the 1990s.

With Danny DeVito as a smut-peddling journalist who writes for a Hollywood gossip magazine called Hush Hush, Simon Baker, and James Cromwell as the police chief, Dudley Smith, an almost mythological creature. He seems to see through a person's soul, and he's a sly, dark mastermind with a hacky Irish accent. He's absolutely terrifying. ★★★★

Horrible Bosses

What's most fun about this movie is seeing Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston, and Colin Farrell playing audaciously horrible human beings who drive their subordinates (Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, and Jason Sudeikis, respectively) to want to murder them. Aniston hasn't been this much fun in years, and you probably already knew Spacey was made for this kind of live-wire psychotic CEO part. Farrell is the least recognizable (physically), and yet you get the feeling he's had some experience playing the "tool" before.

Horrible Bosses may not score any points for originality (it acknowledges its plot similarities to Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train and ignores its similarities to the Jane Fonda-Lily Tomlin-Dolly Parton workplace comedy Nine to Five), but at least it treats us to some moderately dark humor delivered with nothing but fervent zeal from its cast. Most of them seem delighted to be playing such over-the-top characters for once. Bateman and Sudeikis pretty much do their usual schtick. Charlie Day scores highly as an easily agitated dental assistant whose boss (Aniston) has been sexually harassing him with impunity.

Midway through, the movie takes an unexpected turn that changes it from a darker version of Office Space to a darker version of the afore-mentioned Nine to Five, which was about three women kidnapping their sexist boss so that they could make some worker-friendly changes in the office. It's the kind of wish fulfillment fantasy employees will cheer for, and yet there's always a bitter feeling in the back of your mind that you're rooting for three would-be killers.

Horrible Bosses ties things up too conveniently at the end, but it's a diverting enough hour and a half. Directed by Seth Gordon. With Jamie Foxx and, in a bit performance, Donald Sutherland.

Moon

[note: this contains spoilers]

In Moon, Sam Rockwell plays Sam Bell, the lone crewman living on a lunar outpost where energy is harvested for around 70 percent of the earth. Sam seems fairly well adjusted to his solitary environment. His only company is a computer named GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey). For a good half hour or so you wonder if we’re supposed to stand up and applaud the filmmakers for having seen 2001: A Space Odyssey enough to reference it in myriad ways. It’s not just the computer reminiscent of HAL, but even some of the shots, such as the scenes of Sam exercising that recall Gary Lockwood maintaining his fitness regiment aboard the spaceship in 2001. Fortunately, Moon changes things up, offering a hypnotic, trippy and perhaps inconvenient, unsettling idea: that since clones are replicated human beings, they must certainly feel pain, grief, loneliness, sorrow, joy, angst, etc.

Sometimes it seems that science fiction is the most difficult genre in which to create original ideas, but maybe the problem is that not enough people who make science fiction movies have read enough and seen enough outside the genre. Time will tell what becomes of the careers of first-timers Nathan Parker (screenwriter) and Duncan Jones (director). They’ve obviously had plenty of exposure to sci-fi, because Moon has a good deal of the paranoid corporate thriller that was perhaps more terrifying than the alien in Alien. However, they aren’t too worried about looking like the movies that have shaped their own, because Moon manages to remain something interesting on its own terms.

As for Sam Rockwell (who resembles Eric McCormack), his acting deepens with every scene, and the fact that he’s a bit obscure serves the movie well. It would have been disastrous to cast Tom Hanks or some other mega-star. Sam Rockwell is much more of an everyman. Kevin Spacey’s vocal performance isn’t too demanding for him as an actor, and I’m curious as to why he took the part. (Perhaps it was simply because he believed in the work). “GERTY” is a fun expansion of the HAL character: it has a computer screen displaying a face with emotions that change constantly to reflect the appropriate response to its human counterpart.

Less pretentious than 2001, Moon is a much more internalized space thriller. Instead of showing us how machines have taken over, Moon shows us the precariousness of manufacturing human beings…they’re not less human, they’re equally as human, but it’s easy for the corporation that made them to sleep at night with clones manning their operations rather than humans. Of course, Sam doesn’t know he’s a clone until this is revealed to him by another clone. (Which begs the question: how did the other clone know?) It’s a perplexing set of questions to consider. ★★★