Review: Disobedience (2018)

* * *
Director: Sebastian Lelio
Starring: Rachel Weisz, Rachel McAdams, Alessandro Nivola

The promotional materials for Disobedience heavily emphasize the relationship between the characters played by Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams. While that relationship is most certainly a key element of the story, it isn't really what the film is about, but I suppose it's easier to sell a tale of forbidden love than it is a story about people living in a strict religious community being faced with the choice of adhering to the limiting confines of the religions teachings or being expelled entirely. Adapted from the novel of the same name by Naomi Alderman and directed by Sebastian Lelio (whose A Fantastic Woman won this year's Best Foreign Language Film Oscar), Disobedience is a carefully observed film about the struggle between the desire to be and the desire to belong and features great performances by its two Rachels.

Review: Game Night (2018)

* * *
Director: John Francis Daley & Jonathan Goldstein
Starring: Jason Bateman, Rachel McAdams

The game is real is one of the lazier story premises this side of mismatched police partners or love interests who start out hating each other only to fall in love. For proof look no further than the trailers for the absolutely atrocious looking Truth or Dare, which asks "What if a bunch of 20-somethings played a slumber party game... to death?" But even an unremarkable premise can be saved by strong execution, which is something that Game Night, a comedy about sibling rivalry and a parlor game that gets a little too real, has to its credit. Anchored by the deadpan comedic chops of Jason Bateman and the effortless charms of Rachel McAdams, Game Night suffers slightly from having more plot twists than it absolutely needs, but it's ultimately a winner.

Netflix Recommends... About Time (2013)

* * *
Director: Richard Curtis
Starring: Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams, Billy Nighy

I seem to be one of the few people who is utterly ambivalent about Richard Curtis' Love Actually, a film which has inspired love and hate in equal measure depending on who you're talking to, so when his time travel romantic comedy About Time came to theaters, I took a hard pass (though I might have given it a shot had it come out earlier in the year; as movie buffs know, there's just too much to see in November and December of each year to not be a little selective). When it popped up in my Netflix recommendations, surrounded by a lot of films that I've already seen, I finally decided to give it a chance, and while I was perhaps just in the perfect mood for its inconsequential fluffiness, I found it to be rather winning. Objectively, it is definitely lacking in some respects as a narrative; subjectively, I found it delightful.

Review: Spotlight (2015)

* * * *
Director: Tom McCarthy
Starring: Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber

In a perfect world, we could all at least agree that children are deserving of protection and that their safety should take priority over everything else. That we don't live in that kind of a world, that we live in one where people who exploit and abuse children can be not just shielded from prosecution but given multiple opportunities to perpetuate abuse, proves that we still have some evolving left to do. The story told by Tom McCarthy's Spotlight is not surprising - the specific story on which the film is based was well-publicized and there have been so many other stories of systematic sexual abuse by priests that that's now the first thing many of us think of with respect to the Catholic Church - but it's nevertheless shocking to see in action the workings of a conspiracy of silence and the abuse of institutional power undertaken to keep the ugly truth hidden. Yet Spotlight is no David and Goliath tale of taking on a massive, powerful entity and defeating it; rather, it presents itself as a story in which there is a lot of complicity to go around and even the protagonists aren't necessarily without some guilt in helping to perpetuate the silence and, by extension, the abuse.

Review: A Most Wanted Man (2014)

* * *
Director: Anton Corbijn
Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rachel McAdams, Robin Wright, Willem Dafoe

It says nothing good about the collective faith in the motives and tactics of government agencies that the biggest laugh in A Most Wanted Man comes from an agent stating that the goal of an operation is to "make the world a safer place." Not that laughs abound in this chilly political thriller based on the novel of the same name by John le Carre, but it does have a dark wit that breaches the surface every once in a while like a shark's fin. Helmed by Anton Corbijn, director of the stylishly rendered biopic Control and thriller The American, and featuring the final non-Hunger Games performance of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, A Most Wanted Man is a sharp and gripping film, which is all the more impressive for the fact that its depiction of espionage is less of the high action variety and more of the sit, observe, and meticulously collect data variety.

Review: To the Wonder (2013)

* *
Director: Terrence Malick
Starring: Olga Kurylenko,Ben Affleck, Javier Bardem, Rachel McAdams

Typical of Terrence Malick's work, To the Wonder is an absolutely beautiful film to look at. Also typical of Malick, it's a narratively elusive piece, set firmly in its characters' interior lives. Atypically, at least for me (Malick is an acquired taste), it's a film that doesn't ever really come together, one that it at once intimate and small in scale, and yet far too broad, a ponderous, shapeless story of failed loves and crises of faith. The visuals alone almost make the film worth watching, but To the Wonder doesn't really leave you with enough to hold onto for its impact to be anything but superficial.

Review: Midnight In Paris (2011)

* * * 1/2
Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Owen Wilson, Marion Cotillard

These days, when Woody Allen is off, he tends to be way off. Fortunately, every once in a while, he's capable of being right on target and it's the fact that for every couple of clunkers there's a Vicky Cristina Barcelona or a Match Point that keeps us coming back. Midnight in Paris is one of his winners, a charming, magic realist comedy that just might be his best film since 1999's Sweet and Lowdown.

Review: Morning Glory (2010)

* * *
Director: Roger Michell
Starring: Rachel McAdams, Harrison Ford, Diane Keaton

The trailer for Morning Glory really didn't do it any favours. I believe my exact thought after seeing it for the first time was, "Not even with a gun to my head;" it just made it seem very generic and instantly forgettable. However, when I saw that it had gained a number of glowing reviews (including one from Stephanie Zacharek, who never likes anything), I decided to give it a shot. I'm glad that I did because I liked it quite a bit and I hope that other people give it a chance, too - after all, this may very well be your only opportunity to hear Diane Keaton duet with 50 Cent on "Candy Shop."

Rachel McAdams stars as Becky, the perpetually sunny producer of a basic cable news show who loses her job and then gets an opportunity to try her hand as Executive Producer of Daybreak, the lowest rated morning news show on network tv. After quickly establishing herself amongst the staff at Daybreak by firing the male co-host, she sets out to replace him with her hero, Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford), a grumpy but legendary newscaster currently under contract with the network but not working. She manages to get him on the show thanks to a loophole in his contract, but things get off to a rocky start. His prickly demeanor puts him at odds with Colleen Peck (Keaton), the female co-host, and his refusal to do anything but hard news makes Becky's job twice as difficult as it might otherwise be. Even worse, the show is on the verge of cancellation unless the ratings get a considerable boost.

All of that would probably provide enough story for a feature film (and, if that was the whole story, the film might actually be better, more focused), but there's also a romantic subplot shoehorned in. Shortly after landing her job Becky gets involved with Adam (Patrick Wilson), a producer at another show on the network. The attraction is instant but actually having a relationship proves to be difficult since Becky's job is not only her first priority but an all-consuming obsession.

Morning Glory is a film that survives largely on charm. Its construction is shoddy, relying on a few well-worn cliches and a surprising number of montages of McAdams walking or running as an upbeat song plays in the background in order to give the impression that the story is being pushed forward. Further, the romantic plot is problematic in that it's neither well-developed nor particularly compelling, and McAdams and Wilson don't have much in the way of chemistry. What ultimately saves the film is that McAdams is so great and has fantastic chemistry with everyone else, especially Ford. The story is much more concerned with Becky's relationship with Mike than her relationship with Adam - so much so that the big "break up" and "reconciliation" scenes that mark the story's crisis and resolution are between the former rather than the latter.

McAdams, as I said, is great and so is Ford. The film really plays to his strengths and a lot of the biggest laughs come simply from his reactions to the goings on around him. Keaton doesn't get a ton to do here but at least she gets to take a break from the hyper-neurotic character she's been stuck playing for pretty much the last decade. All in all, there's more good to the film than bad and though it's incredibly lightweight, it's still very enjoyable.

Review: Sherlock Holmes (2009)

* * *
Director: Guy Ritchie
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Rachel McAdams

Sherlock Holmes was one of the films that I was most looking forward to in 2009 and yet I somehow managed to not get around to seeing it until just recently. I blame that on end of the year good movie oversaturation, which is when as much as you want to see a certain film, you've spent so much time in the theater lately that the absolute last thing you want to do is go to the theater. Why can't decent movies be released throughout the whole year? Is it so much to ask?

Right, anyway. Sherlock Holmes, starring the increasingly awesome Robert Downey Jr., was pretty much exactly what I'd been expecting: a fun, fast moving film with plenty of gritty charm. Downey plays Holmes and Jude Law plays his trusty sidekick Dr. Watson, though as the film begins their partnership is in the midst of being dissolved. Watson is engaged and has every intention of extricating himself from Holmes' bad influence, but Holmes won't let him go and pretty much acts like Watson's fiancee has just stolen his boyfriend. The undercurrent of homoeroticism between Holmes and Watson is played up by Downey and Law and though that apparently ticked off Sir Arthur Connan Doyle's estate, it's also one of the things that makes this film so particularly delightful.

The actual plot of the film involves the mysterious Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong), who appears to have risen from the grave and threatens to take over the world with his mastery of the dark arts. It also involves Holmes' nemisis/love interest Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), who has made her way back into Holmes' life at the behest of a shadowy figure whose identity should be obvious to anyone even vaguely familiar with the Sherlock Holmes stories, and who will likely be the driving force in the inevitable sequel.

Directed by Guy Ritchie, the film explodes with bursts of kinetic energy in a series of solid action sequences. On a couple of occassions he slows down the action and allows Holmes to narrate, step-by-step, how he's going to come out the victor and then showing us the sequence again but sped up. It's a good strategy because Holmes is a character defined more by logic than by brawn and these sequences allow him to explain how even when things are getting physical, he's still proceeding in a methodically logical way towards the best possible conclusion (for him anyway; it doesn't work out so well for the guys he beats up). All in all, Ritchie and Downey do an excellent job at defining Holmes as a character, even though two of the character's more famous features (the deerstalker hat and "Elementary, my dear Watson") have been dropped.

The film doesn't run particularly deep (not that I was expecting it to; this is a Guy Ritchie movie, after all) but it's flashy and entertaining enough to keep that from really being an issue. It has great energy and the performances by the three leads are quite winning. The only real issue that I have with it is that it goes to such great lengths to set up the sequel that I half expected the words "to be continued..." to pop up right before the credits. It kind of left me with the feeling that Sherlock Holmes was more of a trial run and that the real movie will be the follow-up.

Review: State of Play (2009)

* * * 1/2
Director:Kevin MacDonald
Starring: Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Helen Mirren

State of Play is a refreshingly smart and adult film from director Kevin MacDonald. Based on the British miniseries of the same name, the Americanized version is a fast paced procedural thriller with a couple of great performances to its credit. Is it an instant classic? No, but it’s a solid, well-made movie and better than the average post-Oscar/pre-summer fare.

It begins with a double murder, when a street kid and a pizza delivery guy in the wrong place at the wrong time are gunned down in cold blood. At first it seems like a run of the mill drug related offense but soon connections start to be made between this crime and the more high profile murder of Sonia Baker, an aide to Congressman Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck). Collins’ college roommate was Cal McAffrey (Russell Crowe), now a reporter with the Washington Globe and the greatest champion of Collins’ innocence. Collins is currently investigating the practices of PointCorp., a private militia that has been making a fortune in Iraq, and for McAffrey the murder and subsequent revelation of the victim’s affair with Collins reeks of a ploy to discredit the investigation.

McAffrey is teamed up with young reporter Della Frye (Rachel McAdams), whom he intends to give a crash course in real reporting. McAffrey is part of a dying breed – the print reporter who deals in hard facts – while Frye is representative of the future – an internet writer (dismissed by McAffrey as a blogger – horrors!) who deals primarily in gossip and speculation. They get off to a rough start but are soon working together like a real team under the watchful and increasingly irritated eye on their Editor-in -Chief, Cameron Lynne (Helen Mirren in a delightfully bitchy performance). Their investigation puts them in the cross-hairs of various nefarious factions and forces McAffrey to confront truths about his friend – and his friend’s wife (Robin Wright) – that he’d rather not acknowledge.

Crowe is an actor whose skill I admire a great deal though few of the films he’s made in the past decade have sparked my interest. He plays McAffrey as a man who obviously loves his job and is dedicated to it at the expense of personal relationships. More than once the Collinses accuse him of using them and their friendship for the sake of furthering his story and he has little to say in his own defence. Crowe renders a performance that is well-rounded in a way that few actors bother with for their non-Oscar bait fare. Mirren is the other standout of the cast and the scenes between the two crackle with energy. The whole film could have just been the two of them discussing the story and it would have made for a highly entertaining viewing experience. McAdams holds her own with both and Affleck is well-cast as the crusading but all too human politician, though it takes some suspension of disbelief to buy that he, Crowe and Wright were all in college together.

Though the film has all the hallmarks of your average thriller – the twisting plot, good guys who end up being bad guys, the killer who is always one step ahead – it’s focus on the mechanics of how the reporters put their exposé together gives it more weight and substance, making it closer in spirit to a film like All The President’s Men than the more forgettable fare that gets tossed out so often. One of the things that makes State of Play so different – and one of the things I really liked about it – is that the characters react to things like people rather than characters. So often in films people get shot at and then shrug it off like it’s nothing; here the characters are allowed to be scared, even the hero.

I’ve never seen the original State of Play but having seen this version, I really want to. I think that a good way to measure an adaptation is by how much it makes you want to seek out the source material, and in that respect this one is extremely successful. I’m sad to see that State of Play isn’t finding more success – particularly in a year that saw Paul Blart: Mall Cop at #1 for like 4 weeks – but hopefully it will find an audience once it comes out on DVD because it definitely deserves to be seen.