Tales From the Black List: The Judge (2014)

* *
Director: David Dobkin
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Robert Duvall

Back in the days before movies lived and died by their opening weekends, films like The Judge were Hollywood's bread and butter. A mid-budget drama where the stakes are emotional more than anything, as opposed to the now commonplace massive budget behemoths where the stakes are no less than the survival of the world itself, and where a big star gets to flex his muscle as an actor, The Judge is the kind of movie that used to be a no-brainer. Times change, of course, and now projects that used to seem risk free on paper struggle to recoup even their modest budgets (though The Judge might have helped itself by cutting 30 minutes from its running time and making the first casualty its weird and wholly unnecessary incest plot). The market is no longer particularly favorable to movies like this, but I can understand why they tried and why this would have seemed like a good idea when the script hit Hollywood. Old habits die hard, after all.

Review: Captain America: Civil War

* * *
Director: Anthony Russo & Joe Russo
Starring: Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr.

I would say that a film featuring superheroes doing battle with each other is a can't lose proposition but, as one film has already shown and (if early reviews are to be believed) another is about to show, it takes more than simply throwing a couple of popular characters into the ring and having them trade punches to make a satisfactory story. With Captain America: Civil War, Marvel continues to extend its tradition of success, creating a film that is wildly entertaining while also building on the narrative established in the previous films and setting up storylines for future films. As a film in its own right and as a piece in the ever-growing Marvel universe puzzle, it's a success, which is all the more impressive when you consider that the plan crafted by its villain doesn't really make any sense, unless you think relying on a series of fortunate coincidences constitutes a solid "plan."

Review: Due Date (2010)

* * *
Director: Todd Phillips
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Zack Galiafanakis

For a lowbrow movie (and any movie that relies on not one but two masturbating dog jokes concedes any claim to being highbrow), Todd Phillips’ Due Date is a fairly enjoyable way to pass an hour and a half (give or take a minute). It isn’t a template buster or anything even remotely transcendent of the “odd couple on a road trip” genre, but it’s a funny movie and the fact that stars Robert Downey, Jr. and Zack Galifianakis commit so fully helps it work better than it probably should.

Maythew #6: Wonder Boys (2000)

* * * *
Director: Curtis Hanson
Starring: Michael Douglas, Toby Maguire, Robert Downey Jr., Frances McDormand

As someone who loves books and films in more or less equal measure, I've long had a special affection for Wonder Boys, a movie based on a novel in which the characters love both books and films. A curiously underrated film when it was released, it has aged very well and is definitely a film worth returning to.

Wonder Boys follows a weekend in the life of Professor Grady Tripp (Michael Douglas), who has not been having a very good time of it lately. His wife has left him, his mistress and boss Sara (Frances McDormand) is pregnant, the novel he has been writing for years is still not finished and his agent is breathing down his neck, one student (Katie Holmes) has a thing for him, and another (Toby Maguire) proves to be nothing but trouble at each and every turn, particularly when he shoots Sara's husband's dog and steals a piece of Marilyn Monroe memorabelia from him. Oh, did I mention that Sara's husband is also chair of Grady's department? Yeah. It's a shit storm.

All of the issues in Grady's life are really just a manifestation of his own personal stasis; he's stuck both in terms of his work and his life. Sara is pressuring him to make a choice about their relationship so that it's either over or evolving into more. He wants it to be more but, given his track record, that's also a prospect that scares him - the more that the relationship is, the more that he stands to lose. Likewise, his editor (Robert Downey Jr.) is pressuring him to hand over his manuscript which Grady insists isn't yet finished at over 2,000 pages. He can't stop writing even though he's lost sight of what the story is about because the idea of handing it over and then finding out that he's lost whatever it is that made his previous novel such a success is terrifying. To Grady it's better to be left out than to participate and fail and what he learns through the film is that that supposed safety is false because while you don't lose anything by not playing, you can't win anything either.

To my mind, Wonder Boys is Michael Douglas' best performance to date. The character type is really nothing new but Douglas' subdued performance hits all the right notes. The supporting cast, particularly Downey, McDormand and Maguire, are also excellent and leave me wondering how it is that this film didn't get a single acting nomination. Too much of a good thing, perhaps? Certainly, no other explanation makes sense.

Matt's Thoughts: For the most part, I liked this movie, but I took issue with a few of the characters. As usual, I think Katie Holmes could be excised from the film and it would make no difference to the plot. Also, Oola was an extremely minor character, basically a walk-on role, that was later thrust into the main spotlight for a pivotal task that could have been performed without her and her boyfriend.

The events surrounding the dean's dog were passed off as basically nothing, and I think they really could have been avoided entirely since the jacket was stolen as well. It just seemed like a way to spit in the dean's face twice to ensure that Grady would lose his job. If they wanted him to lose his job so badly, maybe they should have exposed his romantic relationship with Hannah to give Katie Holmes something to do.

That being said, I would recommend this to people if they asked about it specifically, but it probably wouldn't be the first movie to come to mind if they didn't bring it up in conversation first.

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: Zodiac (2007)

* * * *
Director: David Fincher
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr.

Zodiac is David Fincher’s most mature and focused film to date. Mixing elements of police procedural, newspaper story, and thriller together while sidestepping most clichés inherent in those genres, the film is utterly engrossing and effective. I know some dislike the film’s non-resolution, but given the real-life circumstances the ending really can’t be helped and, besides, having an ending that provides more questions than answers fits well with the overall tone of the rest of the film.

The film begins on July 4, 1969 with the murder of Darlene Ferrin and the attempted murder of Mike Mageau. After shooting both multiple times the killer leaves and calls the police to claim credit for this crime and for a double murder six months earlier. A month later he writes letters to various San Francisco newspapers along with coded messages that he claims hold clues to his identity. The cipher is eventually solved – not by any of the government agencies working on it, but by a history teacher and his wife – but the killer’s identity remains a mystery. Meanwhile, more letters arrive, more people are killed, and as the decades pass the case gets colder and colder.

The story is structured in such a way that different characters take the lead at different times. Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.) is the San Francisco Chronicle’s crime reporter and becomes an expert on the case. He is eventually sent evidence from one of the crime scenes – in the form of a bloody piece of a victim’s shirt – as a thinly-veiled threat and as the case continues to drag on, his life begins to unravel thanks to alcohol and drugs. Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) is one of the detectives assigned to the case whose job is made doubly difficult by the fact that the crimes took place in different jurisdictions and the sharing of information is sometimes done grudgingly. He and his partner Bill (Anthony Edwards) follow various leads and even find a likely suspect in the form of Arthur Leigh Allen (John Carroll Lynch), but just can’t conclusively prove his guilt. After several years Bill excuses himself from the case, exhausted by it, but Dave keeps on until eventually being suspended from the force after being accused of writing a forged Zodiac letter. The third and final lead is Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), a cartoonist for the Chronicle who will eventually write a book about the Zodiac killings.

The way that the film moves Graysmith into the story’s centre is very well done. He hangs on the periphery at the beginning, not particularly welcomed into any investigative aspect because, after all, he’s just a cartoonist. He forms a friendship with Avery, who in one scene admonishes him for “hovering” at Avery’s desk, and through him absorbs all the information that Avery discovers while reporting on the case. When Avery is out of the picture and it begins to look like the police have given up on solving the case, Graysmith decides to put all the evidence together himself in the hopes of illuminating something. Toschi, frustrated by the department’s inability to make a solid case against Allen, decides to quietly help Graysmith by giving him tips and Graysmith eventually comes to the same conclusion as the police that Allen is the Zodiac.

Though the film itself makes a fairly persuasive case against Allen, it isn’t really about discovering the identity of the Zodiac killer. It is more a film about obsession. Graysmith needs to know the identity of the killer, just as the Zodiac needs to flaunt himself to the police and the general public. During the course of his quest Graysmith puts himself directly into danger (one sequence involves him doing something so spectacularly stupid that it has to be seen to be believed) and effectively destroys his marriage in the process, and although he believes that he solves the puzzle in the end, the film itself isn’t so sure. Throughout the film, doubts are cast not only as to the identity of the killer but as to how much the Zodiac is actually responsible for. He claims more victims than the police are willing to give him credit for, some of the letters may be forgeries, a phone call to a local morning show may not be from him at all – in short it’s about the mythology of the killer rather than solidly proving his identity.

Though the film runs at over 2 and a half hours, it is well-paced and constructed in a way that suspense can be maintained throughout. The characters – save for Graysmith’s wife who gets a thankless part in the story and is a waste of Chloe Sevigny’s talent – are well developed and expertly played. Downey provides the film with flair, Ruffalo is solid as the increasingly weary Toschi, and as Graysmith Gyllenhaal is like a Hardy boy in over his head. Of particular note in technical aspect is the cinematography by Harris Savides, which gives the film a very old school look and feel. Zodiac is the whole package, a period film that doesn't simply wear the mask of time and place, but captures the spirit of it in every aspect.

Review: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

* * * 1/2
Director: Shane Black
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Val Kilmer

I’d been hearing about Kiss Kiss Bang Bang for years but only just got around to seeing it and now can’t wait to see it again. It’s a funny send up of noir films and conventions, a self-referential Hollywood story, and a buddy movie all rolled into one, with plenty of action and a lot of wit. Plus a bit of gratuitous nudity, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Our protagonist and narrator – though he readily admits that he’s not a very good narrator – is Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey, Jr.), a thief who stumbles into an audition while fleeing the police. He impresses the director and is flown out to Los Angeles for another audition and finds himself drawn to a woman at a party. The woman is Harmony (Michelle Monaghan), a childhood friend who ran away to Hollywood with dreams of becoming an actress. Reunited, he lets her think that he’s a private detective which might have been fine but for the fact that Harmony’s sister shows up in town and promptly dies a gruesome death, which Harmony is certain was murder.

Meanwhile, to prepare Harry for his role the director of the film has arranged for him to shadow an actual detective, known to all as “Gay Perry” (Val Kilmer). While they’re out on the ride-along, they find a dead girl who later turns up in Harry’s hotel bathroom. The two murders are, of course, related and part of a tangled plot involving money, family strife, impersonation, and the long-ago adaptation of a pulp novel beloved by Harmony’s mother.

That novel – and the pulp/noir genre in general – plays a major role in the film, acting as a kind of sign post pointing out the plot’s direction. For example, early in the film Harry tells Perry that the novels always involved two murders, seemingly unrelated, that prove to be firmly linked – I imagine that if he’d known then how closely reality would emulate fiction he’d have paid more attention later when talking about how the novels always involved some form a torture before the hero solved the plot. The film really plays with the conventions of the genre, counterbalancing the harder edges of the story – which does get quite dark and violent – with a protagonist who is unlike the anti-heroes normally found in noir. Harry’s a goofy guy, always getting injured, never having the upper hand – he’s not the Humphrey Bogart or Robert Mitchum type. Perry, on the other hand, displays some of the characteristics of the classic archetype with the difference that he’s gay. In making the character gay the story not only adds another layer to the Harry-Perry relationship, it also plays on the sexual undercurrents present in a lot of classic noir stories.

As friends and antagonists, Downey and Kilmer play off of each other brilliantly. I’m half-way tempted to just make a video of a bunch of their exchanges and let it speak for itself, but I doubt I’d be able to limit myself to just a couple of minutes. I don’t generally hope for sequels, but I really wouldn’t mind seeing them as these two characters again and given how much fun they seem to be having, I’d wager that they wouldn’t mind revisiting these characters either. As the love interest Monaghan manages to keep up and even steal a few scenes herself. I’m not overly familiar with her as an actress but she’s much more alive in this role than she has been in other films I’ve seen her in, which may be a testament to the skills of Shane Black and the energy his direction injects into the story. Major kudos to Black in every respect, as his debut is a smart, subversive, and fun film.

Review: Tropic Thunder (2008)

* * *
Director: Ben Stiller
Starring: Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black

Well played, Mr. Stiller. Tropic Thunder is the rare Hollywood satire that actually satirizes aspects of Hollywood and movie making rather than just taking light, easy shots that have already been well-trod by several other movies. It also manages to balance its elements, easily mixing comedy with action and plays kind of like a comedic version of Hearts of Darkness, the documentary which details the tumultuous filming of Apocalypse Now.

Tropic Thunder is the title of the movie within the movie as well as the book that movie is based on. The book was written by Four Leaf Tayback (Nick Nolte) and relates the story of his rescue from a Viet Cong prison camp. Four Leaf acts as a consultant on the film adaptation and, when the cast starts acting like prima donnas, suggests to director Damien Cockburn (Steven Coogan) that he take them out to the jungle and shoot the film gorilla style. Shortly after being dropped off, a combination of Indo-China era landmines and drug traffickers brings the film to a halt, but the cast still thinks they’re making a movie. Following the lead by waning superstar Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller), the cast makes its way deeper into the jungle, still in character and still acting out scenes they think are being filmed by hidden cameras.

The other four members of the cast are Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), a drug addled comedian, rapper Alpha Chino (Brandon T. Jackson) whose greatest concern is promoting his energy drink “Booty Sweat,” Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey, Jr.), a celebrated actor who engages in intense preparation to get into character, and Kevin Sandusky (Jay Baruchel), a young actor making his film debut and the only person who has actually read the script (“I don’t read scripts,” Lazarus informs him, “scripts read me.”). These four become separated from Tugg after an argument and later have to rescue him when he’s captured by the drug traffickers.

The actors in the film are all pretty much perfectly cast from Nolte down to Baruchel. Black is an actor I like a lot but, School of Rock aside, I think he’s better in supporting roles, as little bursts of spastic energy rather than as the chaotic force that drives the whole movie. Stiller, too, is pulled back in the best possible way, rendering a more restrained (and effective) performance than he has in a long time. As for Downey, he quite simply walks away with the movie. I don’t even really know how to describe the performance; I think his stunning dissection and deflation of full immersion method acting is something you just have to see for yourself to fully appreciate.

What raises Tropic Thunder above the more typical Hollywood self-mockery is Stiller’s control over the subject. So often movies like this edge a little too far over the top so that as a viewer you feel a real disconnect from the material because it bears no resemblance to what you’ve already seen for yourself. The trailers which precede the film and the Oscar ceremony that comes at the end, for example, are satirical without being ridiculous (I would totally see Satan’s Alley and I’m kind of surprised that The Fatties and Scorcher aren’t already movies). It’s a cleverly written movie and well executed both in front of and behind the camera.