'Snowden' isn't paranoid enough to be interesting.

Nothing excites in Snowden, the latest film from Oliver Stone, for whom the Edward Snowden case seems a rather obvious next step in a career spent shedding light on America’s demons—or at least pointing to the darkness in which they skulk like ever-present Boogeymen. Stone’s movies, as we all hopefully know by now, aren’t meant to be treated as historical documents. (For that matter, neither should any other director’s movies, no matter how “based-on-a-true-story” they claim to be.) Rather, the best of Stone’s work (such as his mesmerizing masterpiece JFK), asks us to question the status quo, to remain skeptical of what we’re told by the powers-that-be. That’s where Stone shines as a director, even when his thesis feels practically emblazoned on the screen like a permanent caption, or like the opposite of something you’d see with those dark sunglasses in They Live: QUESTION AUTHORITY. 

Joseph Gordon-Levitt tries his damnedest as Edward Snowden, the CIA contractor who in 2013 released classified intel about the NSA’s troubling surveillance practices, and who now resides in Russia, because if he returns to the U.S., he will face charges—of espionage and other crimes—that will likely put him in prison for the rest of his life. But both Snowden the man and Snowden the movie fail to generate any heat as a subject: While the real Snowden remains a significant news story and an important—and controversial—figure in contemporary history, he’s essentially a pasty middle-class computer nerd, and the things he discovered can only be dramatized by distilling often inscrutable computer jargon. Watching someone type things on a word processor, or transfer files from a computer to a chip, just isn’t that exciting, even if in reality human lives across the globe are held in the balance.

When Oliver Stone made JFK, he was in full command of the medium. JFK runs around three hours, yet it speeds along like the best kind of crackling, tingling pot-boiler. Stone used actual footage (including the famous Zapruder film of the actual assassination) and intertwined it with dramatizations, following every kooky conspiracy rabbit trail down into its respective, labyrinthine rabbit hole. What Stone created was a movie equal parts truth and fiction, but brilliantly fused together with Stone’s sharp eye for detail and the best kind of bombastic performances. (Even Kevin Costner seemed alive in JFK.) But where JFK rivets, Snowden languishes. 

Like JFK, Snowden implores us to pay closer attention to our government’s actions, but this time Stone is going through the motions. The film would benefit from a more paranoid, eerie sensibility, like those great conspiracy thrillers of the 1970s (e.g. All the President’s Men, a movie in which we constantly feel a sense of impending dread, and in which the subject, an ominous and paranoid President Nixon, is ultimately more interesting than pasty, friendly, Charlie Brown-esque Edward Snowden). There’s only one scene that comes close to this style: When Snowden is speaking to his superior (played by Rhys Ifans) via telecast, and the man’s face is framed by the enormous screen so that Snowden stands like the meek silhouette of a chess pawn in the wake of this sneering, scowling, terrifying countenance, which represents government overreach and duplicity at their worst. It’s worth noting that Joseph Gordon-Levitt speaks at a lower octave than usual, apparently imitating the real-life Snowden, and that this monotone, dulled-out effect on his voice represents a metaphor for the rest of the movie. We’re dulled out too, even if the movie does raise extremely important questions about the nature of surveillance and the ways in which our government monitors other countries, not to mention its rationale for so-doing. If Stone is right, then we’ve ostensibly used the War on Terror to justify our own fascistic agenda, and that is indeed something to worry about. But Oliver Stone has lost momentum: there’s no vitality to this movie. Even the exchanges between Gordon-Levitt and Shailene Woodley, who plays his longtime girlfriend Lindsey, feel uninteresting: They fight essentially about the same thing over and over again: He can’t communicate (because he’s bound to keep silent about his work with the CIA), and what he knows is eating him up. But their skirmishes feel like the stuff of bad soap operas, and Woodley is reduced to playing the nagging, concerned wife, a role that Sissy Spacek had in JFK (although Spacek made it work better than Woodley.)

Stone’s intentions may be admirable, but this kind of juiceless dramatization of real events is inherently un-cinematic, at least when it comes to narrative film. I don’t think anyone else could have done much better. Nixon made for great cinema because of, well, Nixon, not to mention Deep Throat and the aids sneaking through the Watergate hotel, and eerie scenes in dimly lit parking garages, and because there’s something more dramatic and exciting about hard-scrabble journalists sniffing out a story and pounding away at typewriters. Moreover, while Snowden has a clear hero (assuming you take up Stone’s side of the argument, which is the only side you’ll get from this movie), the villain isn’t quite as clearly shaped. It’s the impersonal face of bureaucracy, without a Nixonian head, a King Coopa to destroy once you get to the hellish castle. All of these may be reasons to see instead CitizenFour, the Oscar-winning Snowden documentary that Laura Poitras directed. (Poitras, incidentally, figures into this film too: She’s played by Melissa Leo.)

With Zachary Quinto, Tom Wilkinson, Scott Eastwood, Logan Marshall-Green, Timothy Olyphant, Joely Richardson, and in a glorified cameo as a Snowden prototype, Nicolas Cage. Written by Stone and Kieran Fitzgerald. 

"The Big Short" takes a deftly comic look at the 2008 housing bubble.

At once documentary and narrative, comical and cynical, The Big Short is a refreshingly un-self-important end-of-the-year release from director Adam McKay. McKay, who’s best known for making such silly comedies as Anchorman and Talladega Nights, has plenty of experience with movies about terrible people in positions of power. Now he’s made a film which depicts real people who did real damage, even though some of the names have been changed. The Big Short examines the housing market crash of 2007-08 and the financial entrepreneurs who predicted it and profited by it. It’s a virtual who’s-who of the country’s greediest people. The film’s wry tone will likely overshadow the real weight of its subject matter. But thematically speaking, this movie is on the level of a massive-scaled Victorian novel: It’s both fascinated by and critical of capitalism, and even if it doesn’t punish its characters with the moral authority of a Trollope or a Dickens, it’s a film capable of lighting a fire in its audience.

The material covered by The Big Short (it’s adapted by McKay and Charles Randolph from Michael Lewis’s nonfiction book) is dense and at times confusing if you are, like me, woefully under-educated about sub-prime mortgages and swaps and all things mortgage-related. McKay knows his material is difficult, which may be one of the reasons he resorts to at times audacious moments of humor. The market’s crash was, of course, a very bad thing for a lot of people. And you can feel the film’s indignation as it depicts all of the financial entrepreneurs who profited by the crash. Playing hedge fund manager Michael Burry, Christian Bale is—according to the movie—the first to recognize a housing bubble. It’s 2005, and Burry, who wears a T-shirt and cargo shorts to the office and blitzes himself out to heavy metal while he stares into a computer screen all day, decides to short the market. His colleagues are horrified that Burry will bring their company to ruin, and the big lending companies are only too happy to take his money, never dreaming that Burry will ultimately be taking theirs.

The film tracks various other financial people who, like Burry, make the decidedly amoral choice to short the housing market, to profit off the impending financial ruin of others. Their attitude is: Anyone can figure this out, but nobody’s looking, so why not us? Moreover, the mortgage industry had been giving housing loans to anyone with a signature. Why shouldn’t they take advantage of the bad behavior of these lending companies who are offering the American Dream to those who cannot afford it?

McKay really emerges as a first-rate director here. Anchorman and Talladega Nights have their moments, but they are both too loosey-goosey in their structure. Working with different material and different actors, and fueled by healthy cynicism, McKay has found his niche as a director. At times, the actors speak directly to the camera, but their speech is always laced with humor, as though we were watching one of Christopher Guest’s mockumentaries. At other times, the movie is surprisingly humane in its treatment of its characters. Steve Carell, playing another investor, named Mark Baum, is a good example of this. Baum is a prickly rat of a man (he looks like Templeton from Charlotte’s Webb) who barges into his group therapy session and interrupts everyone with his loud complaining, only to leave again to take a phone call. He’s caught up in the noise of his own life because he’s doesn’t want to deal with a personal tragedy for which he feels guilty. Later, he’s the one who realizes that taking advantage of other people’s bad practices isn’t good: it’s just more bad behavior.

Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt co-star, although their performances don’t really register. Gosling is quite good at playing a self-aggrandizing asshole, and does that very well here. Pitt’s character is the most laid-back of the bunch: he’s into sustainable living, since he believes the crash will permanently wreck the global economy. (Sustainable living is so much easier when you’re rich.)

With Melissa Leo, Marisa Tomei, Hamish Linklater, John Magaro, Rafe Spall, Jeremy Strong, Finn Wittrock, Max Greenfield, Stanley Wong, and in amusing cameos, Margot Robbie, Anthony Bourdain, and Selena Gomez.

The Fighter

For me, boxing is about as uninteresting as good taste is to Kathy Griffin. I liked Cinderella Man but it's such a bland subject to me that much more is needed than the back and forth of the two prizefighters and the ever popular theme of an underdog triumphing over insurmountable odds. Apparently entire cities of people can rally behind a boxer as though he's a symbol of all their hard work, blood, sweat, values, etc., but how many times do we have to sit through a movie that's made of such subject matter before we're asleep with boredom? Director David O. Russell makes The Fighter less about boxing and more about the family of sleazy, opportunistic worms and their selfish investment in the career of son/brother Micky Ward, whose brother Dick had his time in the limelight in the 1970s against a fighter named Sugar Ray. Dick is now a crack addict, and the addiction keeps pulling him apart from his brother as both a friend and a trainer and mentor. Nevertheless, Dick's mom Alice, who manages Micky's boxing career, is blinded by Dick's past glory and is convinced that he's necessary to Micky's success. She's waiting for Dick to make his big comeback, and biding her time with Micky's boxing campaign. They're thrilled that HBO is doing a documentary on Dick until they discover it's a documentary about the horrors of cocaine addiction.

As Micky, Mark Wahlberg does a formidable job playing the emotional center of the movie. Wahlberg will probably not get the recognition he deserves for initiating The Fighter and for his performance, but he's quite good. The problem is he's not really playing anything new for himself as an actor. He's basically a nice guy. We feel confident that he can do what is needed to win, and we trust Wahlberg as an actor to carry the film. Christian Bale, as Dick, has the more extreme character. His glassy-eyed stares and wobbling swagger make him seem a bit nightmarish--he's trying to show us the ravages of addiction and in the process becomes something increasingly hideous. I wasn't even particularly sympathetic towards him. He seemed like a leech sucking away his younger brother's potential, urged on by the Mama Leach, Alice (Melissa Leo), whose part is probably the most delicious one in the movie (along with the parts of her seven dried-up, spaced-out daughters, who do pretty much whatever Mama tells them).

 This is probably one of the funniest movies of the year. Russell gives us such a bleakly comic look at this royally f***ed up family that it has the effect of watching an episode of Jersey Shore. They revel in the gutter as though it were lined with satin and roses, and their opportunism is so unveiled that you can't help but laugh at their efforts to protect their turgid family unit from outside invasion. Amy Adams, as Micky's girlfriend, represents the first real threat to the family's shell. She sees how much they're ruining Micky's chances to really succeed as a prizefighter, and she has the audacity to stand up to their "us verses the world" act.

The relationship between Dick and Micky is truly what drives the film's story. Without Micky's fear of letting go of his brother--of essentially betraying him by realizing how destructive Dick is to Micky's career and his life--he could easily move on to brighter pastures and recognize his potential. However, it's not as simple as Dick being a useless leach. He's got instincts that can't be ignored when it comes to boxing, and Micky realizes that he does still need his brother's help. Perhaps the dramatic tension is a bit predictable, but the movie's comic realism helps to lighten the load of the drama. We're already enjoying the juicy scenes of the family in-fighting more than the boxing anyway.

Overall I'd say The Fighter exceeded my expectations because it went so much against the grind of the typical boxing movie, and I was very thankful that David Russell and everyone else involved in making the movie took the care to be funny and realistic in their approach. With Jack McGee and Frank Renzulli. Written by Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy, and Eric Johnson.