Review: Vice (2018)

* 1/2
Director: Adam McKay
Starring: Christian Bale, Amy Adams

132 minutes is a lot of time to spend saying absolutely nothing. While Vice may mock the post-Nixon Republican party for believing in nothing but the power of power itself, the film is just as intellectually, emotionally, and morally empty. Dick Cheney, pulling the strings of the Bush II administration, stripped away many of the checks and balances that are meant to keep American democracy from slipping into tyranny, destabilized the middle east by invading a country knowing that the reasons for invasion were specious, and just generally left the world in a worse place than he found it when he became Vice President. These are things that we already know, though I suppose it may be worth the reminder given the recent trend towards taking a softer view of the Bush II years in light of the mess that's now in power. Vice says nothing new, nothing insightful, and actually laughs at the idea that there is an insight to be had. "What do we believe in?" a young Cheney (Christian Bale) asks his mentor, Donald Rumsfeld (Steve Carell), who can only burst out laughing in response. But nobody believes in nothing. Even the Joker believed in chaos, which is the absolute freedom of the individual to do as he or she pleases. A film that is content to argue that its protagonist believes in nothing is a film without a narrative rudder. It is sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Review: The Big Short (2015)

* * * 1/2
Director: Adam McKay
Starring: Steve Carell, Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling

Writer/director Adam McKay is best known for his broad comedies, having now made several with Will Farrell (both Anchorman movies, Talladega Nights, Step Brothers, and The Other Guys), so on the surface he might not seem like the obvious choice to tell a story about the 2008 financial crisis which resulted in the collapse and subsequent bailout of the United States' major banks. However, if The Big Short wasn't a comedy, its story would be too damn depressing to watch. McKay, who adapted the screenplay with Charles Randolph from the book of the same title by Michael Lewis, takes a self-referential, aside-heavy approach to the story that, in its way, seeks to be educational in addition to entertaining and largely succeeds. It's just sort of a shame that the inescapable fact of the story is that, in the end, the joke isn't on any of the characters in the film (or the real people some of them are based on) but on all of us.

Review: Velvet Goldmine (1998)

* * *
Director: Todd Haynes
Starring: Christian Bale, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Ewan McGregor

Todd Haynes has made a lot of films for grown ups, but his 1998 film Velvet Goldmine is a film that is best encountered for the first time during adolescence. Like The Catcher in the Rye, it's a work that you can appreciate as an adult, but which has the greatest impact if you're a teenager because it's so calibrated to speak to the ways that teenagers experience the world as a place full of both possibility and phoniness that puts the lie to the notion of possibility as they stumble their way through the building of their identities. Though it received mixed reviews and low box office on its release, it's a film that a lot of people seemed to have adored as teenagers (and which teenagers are apparently still discovering today). When you see it as an adult, it may have lost just a bit of its sparkle, but it remains an entertaining and engrossing film.

Review: American Hustle (2013)

* * *
Director: David O. Russell
Starring: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Renner, Jennifer Lawrence

I like David O. Russell. I don't think he's made a bad film (even the much maligned I Heart Huckabees has a place in my heart), but I think he's only made one truly great film (Three Kings). The rest fall on a spectrum from "good" to "really good" with American Hustle falling smack dab into the middle of "good" - mostly entertaining and fun, but ultimately all surface. To be honest, in a year with so many great films to its credit, I'm sort of baffled that this one could be anyone's pick for the year's "best." It's a fine film with many fine actors turning in fine performances, but in the end it's a trifle with only small pockets of greatness nestled within it.

Review: The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

* * * 1/2
Director: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway, Gary Oldman, Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt

I already feel bad for whomever is tasked with the inevitable reboot of the Batman franchise because even if they turn out a competent and perfectly fine film, it’s bound to suffer in comparison. What writer/director Christopher Nolan accomplished with his three Batman films so completely transcends genre limitations and expectations that it feels reductive to call the films “comic book movies” or action movies, and it’s difficult to imagine that a new take on the story can be anything but a disappointment. With The Dark Knight Rises Nolan brings his series to a close, and brings it full circle, leaving an indelible mark on the cinematic landscape.

Review: The Fighter (2010)

* * *
Director: David O. Russell
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Melissa Leo

The Fighter is David O. Russell's most conventional film and the only feature length film he's directed that he didn't also have a hand in writing, which is perhaps why it doesn't quite have the passion of his previous efforts. I mean, sure, it gets the adrenaline pumping during its finale, but overall it's something of a detached effort. Luckily it's got four solid performances pushing it forward.

The Fighter tells the story of "Irish" Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg), a welterweight boxer struggling to make his mark. As the story opens, however, the focus is on Ward's half-brother Dicky Ecklund (Christian Bale), a former boxer who is now the subject of a documentary about crack addiction. Dicky - "the pride of Lowell" thanks to having knocked down Sugar Ray Leonard once upon a time - has convinced himself that the film crew is detailing his comeback rather than his continuing descent, and he's more or less enabled by everyone in his life, particularly his mother, Alice (Melissa Leo). Since Dicky acts as his brother's trainer, his drug problem has some pretty major negative effects on Micky's career and after an altercation with police which results in one of Micky's hands being broken, Micky decides that he can no longer afford to maintain the professional side of their relationship.

Alice, who is fiercely supportive of Dicky, pressures Micky not to turn his back on his brother and, perhaps even more importantly, not to turn his back on her by cutting her lose as his manager. However, several other people in Micky's life - including his father (Jack McGee), his other trainer Mickey O'Keefe (played by the real O'Keefe), and his girlfriend Charlene (Amy Adams) - make him see the necessity of cutting Alice and Dicky, and the insanity that seems to follow in their wake, out of his career. This starts a veritable war over Micky, who understands that his mother and brother bring too much drama but ultimately still feels a great deal of loyalty to them. He's given an ultimatum but, in the end, gets to have his cake and eat it too as his mother and brother end up in his corner alongside his girlfriend, father and trainer.

The four principal actors are all very good and though I've read reviews in which Bale and Leo's performances are described as bordering on "cartoony," I have to disagree with that assessment. Just because a role seems showy, doesn't mean that there aren't people like that who exist in the real world. Personally, Bale's portrayal of Dicky reminded me a lot of a guy I know casually through my real job, so the performance rang with authenticity to me. Likewise, I have no doubt that Leo's portrayal of Alice could easily remind a viewer of someone they've known. Their characters have very forceful personalities, huge presences, but the performances are skilled and I don't think that either is overly-mannered or scenery chewing.

Bale and Leo have the most colorful roles (although the actresses playing Micky and Dicky's army of sisters are pretty colorful themselves), but the quieter performances from Wahlberg and Adams give the film its emotional resonance. Part of the problem that I had with The Fighter is that it kind of gives short shrift to Micky and, by extension, to Wahlberg. Micky is the story's official subject but the film consistently seems more interested in his brother, which is perhaps why one of the "big" moments - when Micky reveals his frustrations about living in Dicky's shadow, telling his mother, "I'm your son, too" - falls a bit flat. I mean, Micky is absolutely right but it seems like an afterthought given that the film itself is fascinated by Dicky at Micky's expense.

In the end, while I really liked the four performances of The Fighter, I found the film itself too unfocused and some of the conflicts (particularly that between Charlene and Micky's family) resolved a bit too tidily. It's a good movie, but it falls far short of greatness.

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Review: I'm Not There (2007)

* * * 1/2
Director: Todd Haynes
Starring: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, Ben Whishaw

This is how it’s done. Rather than forcing a narrative through-line on someone’s life, Todd Haynes’ fractured, jig-saw puzzle of a movie instead breaks the narrative apart and works to distil the essence of its subject, exploring the various personas of the man commonly known as Bob Dylan. Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Richard Gere, Marcus Carl Franklin, and Ben Wishaw are all on hand, each embodying a different facet of the man and the myth.

The six actors play six different characters (seven, depending on how you gage it): Bale is Jack Rollins, folk protest singer who eventually becomes Father John, the preacher; Ledger is Robbie, an actor who portrays Jack in a film; Franklin is Woody Guthrie, a young musician trying to reconcile those who have influenced him with the time in which he himself is creating; Blanchett is Jude Quinn, a self-consciously quirky star; Gere is Billy the outlaw; and Wishaw is Arthur, who is in the process of being interviewed. These different stories weave in and out of each other, comment on each other and, in some respects, work against each other to highlight the ways that "Bob Dylan" the public figure is ever changing, a series of different personas that have been given the opportunity to take center stage. Not all of these stories are successful - for me, the Billy sections were a little rambling and unfocused and I consistently felt my mind wandering. The film would have worked better, I think, if they’d cut this particular story out entirely.

However, even though I didn’t particularly care for his section of the film, Gere himself is quite good in the role. Billy is the most understated and unaffected of all the central characters, perhaps because he’s the only one who isn’t a direct evocation of Dylan himself but of a figure who inspired him. All of the actors playing facets of Dylan are very good, though Wishaw isn't given the opportunity to show much range in his portrayal. Everyone talks about the performance by Blanchett, and it must be admitted that something magical happens when she appears on screen, perfectly embodying the Dylan of Don’t Look Back, that maddening, self-constructed prophet and eccentric. This section of the film also features Bruce Greenwood as a British reporter who becomes Jude Quinn’s antagonist, seeing through his bullshit and challenging him on it. Greenwood is really great, matching Blanchett blow for blow, and also appears in the Billy sections as Pat Garrett, the man who (supposedly) killed Billy the Kid.

As far as a plot goes, there isn’t really that much to say. It’s an episodic film focusing on bits and pieces of public, private and musical life that are, obviously, reminiscent of or inspired by Dylan’s own life. These moments unfold in different ways, with the Robbie and Jack/John sections being the most straightforwardly told and the Jude, Woody and Billy stories playing out in a more dream-like fashion, surrealist in their construction, while Arthur acts as a connecting figure, a sort of Greek chorus waxing poetic as he’s being interviewed. The music, too, is a way of connecting the stories with the songs not only commenting on what’s going on, but also being used to segue from one story to another.

This is a really inspired film and, like La Vie En Rose, a welcome change of pace from the by the book musical biographies that have come out in the last few years.