The Ides of March (***1/4)

George Clooney denies wanting to be a politician, but he does play one well on screen. He must have especially enjoyed the parts where, as Pennsylvania governor and presidential hopeful Mike Morris, he gets to make inspiring speeches that’d do any Hollywood liberal proud. Morris’s campaign posters look just like the Obama “Hope” ones, only they say “Believe.” But what does he believe? After a reporter asks, he says that he’s not a Christian. Nor is he a Muslim, a Jew, a Hindu, etc. No, his sacred text is the Constitution. That director Clooney and his cowriters Grant Heslov and Beau Willimon (whose play Farragut North has been adapted here) apparently think a plausible candidate, even one in a Democratic primary, might say this—in a country where half the citizens say they wouldn’t vote for an atheist—might suggest they are a bit out of touch.

Nonetheless, you can probably like this just fine no matter what you think of its fictional candidate. It’s the politics, not the policy, that drives the plot, and the ultimately cynical take on the former may have bipartisan appeal. Political advisors and campaign workers, not candidates, are the main players on this stage. Phillip Seymour Hoffman plays Morris’s James Carville-like campaign manager, but Ryan Gosling, his number two man, is the pivotal character. Key roles also go to Paul Giamatti, as the campaign chief for Morris’s primary opponent, and Evan Rachel Wood, as the young intern whose blonde locks and flirty banter are enough to lure Gosling’s ambitious consultant into a tryst in a Cincinnati hotel.

As usually happens in political movies, scandal intervenes; the lesson of politics is that one small lapse in judgment can be the downfall of a candidate, or his advisor, or even a 20-year-old intern. I prefer a movie where the cynicism is more balanced with idealism, like Primary Colors, probably my favorite. (Though it’s probably less appealing to conservatives.) There is a superficial resemblance to that in the themes here, but Colors was to me a heartbreaking drama about the disappointment of true believers, not just a good yarn. Certainly the advisors here are not closet Republicans or anything. But they are more jaded, and Clooney’s movie is more straight political thriller than anything. That said, it is a fairly riveting one. Clooney’s storytelling is as economical as in his earlier Good Night and Good Luck (also written with Heslov). Even a Republican could love it.

IMDB link

viewed 10/13/11 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 10/13/11

The OH in Ohio (***)

? Parker Posey plays an uptight advertising executive who cannot achieve orgasm. Frustrated that he cannot satisfy her despite having a magnificent penis, her biology-teacher husband (Paul Rudd) finds an invitation by an attractive student (Mischa Barton) hard to resist. The movie marks the feature debut of director/cowriter Billy Kent.

+ I am a fool for the off-kilter appeal of Posey, though not all of her movies. She’s often funny, and eventually even touching, in a role that could easily be over-the top. Despite playing her sexual dysfunction for laughs, she and Kent make you empathize with her. Danny DeVito is also charming as the greater Cleveland area’s top pool salesman.

- The balance between humor and silliness isn’t always achieved. If there are people like the female sexuality coach played by Liza Minnelli, I didn’t think Posey’s character would have gone to her class.

= *** A fairly good humor quotient and a story that’s both smutty and sweet makes this a pleasing small comedy.

IMDb link

Bubble (***)

Steven Soderbergh’s 72-minute film is a quiet-but-not-depressing quasi-mystery involving three doll-factory workers in rural Ohio.

Director Steven Soderbergh has gone back and forth between big-budget Hollywood films like Erin Brokovich, Traffic, and Ocean’s Eleven and lower-profile, experimental efforts like Full Frontal. The shot-on-digital-video Bubble has earned some attention by being the first film simultaneously released on DVD, in theaters, and cable TV. (It aired on HDNet, a network not carried by Comcast.) Stylistically, it’s also unusual. Virtually all of the actors are residents of the Ohio town where the movie was filmed. With its realistically undramatic dialogue (much of it improvised), drab rural setting, and sparse score, you could be forgiven for mistaking this as a documentary at first. The main characters—a young guy, his older female friend, and their new coworker, a young single mom—work at a doll factory. It was scripted by Coleman Hough, who wrote Full Frontal, but the working-class folks in this film are as far removed from the Hollywood types of that movie as Soderbergh’s calm camera work is from the frenetic Full Frontal. There is one surprising thing that happens halfway through the 72-minute film, but twists and turns aren’t the reason to watch. It’s more like a little look into the lives of people who aren’t usually the subjects of those big-budget spectaculars.

IMDb link

posted 9/17/13