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defrogIndeed.
The Ides Of March
George Clooney-directed film about the campaign manager of a fictional Democratic Presidential candidate, and how they both end up selling out their ideals in the name of power.
Which may not be news to anyone, but it still makes for a fascinating film – provided you find boiler-room politics and closed-door strategy meetings fascinating (which I do). The film follows hot-shot campaign manager Stephen Meyers, who claims that he can’t do what he does unless he believes in the candidate, but has his standards put to the test after an ill-advised meeting with a rival strategist threatens to go public, and he inadvertently discovers a dark secret about his own candidate, after which things just start getting worse and worse.
There’s all kinds of things people will find flawed about a film like this – from the lack of an explosive, shocking ending to the lack of whatever partisan political statement they want it to make about Democrats and/or Republicans. But political agendas (or lack thereof) aside, it’s a tightly-written script with some excellent performances from just about everyone (particularly Ryan Gosling in the lead role). One of the best films I’ve seen so far this year.
J. Edgar
Clint Eastwood-directed biopic of J. Edgar Hoover, the famous (and infamous) director of the FBI who helped create and modernize the FBI as we know it – to include, unfortunately, the practice of spying on left-wing activists and wiretapping suspects without warrants, among other things.
Love him or hate him, Hoover’s story has all the makings of a great film (to include his secret homosexuality). But this isn’t it. Leonardo DiCaprio makes a convincing Hoover (at least in his prime – as Old Hoover, he just looks like DiCaprio in old-guy make-up), but Dustin Lance Black’s jumbled screenplay goes back and forth in time, then makes an already confusing narrative even more baffling by putting Hoover in the role of “unreliable narrator”, prone to exaggerating the details of his own life story.
Which is frustrating because if anyone’s story needs a straightforward telling, it’s Hoover’s. But I came away from this none the wiser about the man or his motivations or why his story even matters. Even the story of his secret love for his No.2 man Clyde Tolson seems to lack the punch and significance it otherwise ought to have given Hoover’s anti-subversive Puritanism. It’s not a whitewash, at least, but it still adds up to a squandered opportunity to tell one of the most fascinating stories in 20th Century America.
The love that dares not speak its name,
This is dF
The Ides Of March
George Clooney-directed film about the campaign manager of a fictional Democratic Presidential candidate, and how they both end up selling out their ideals in the name of power.
Which may not be news to anyone, but it still makes for a fascinating film – provided you find boiler-room politics and closed-door strategy meetings fascinating (which I do). The film follows hot-shot campaign manager Stephen Meyers, who claims that he can’t do what he does unless he believes in the candidate, but has his standards put to the test after an ill-advised meeting with a rival strategist threatens to go public, and he inadvertently discovers a dark secret about his own candidate, after which things just start getting worse and worse.
There’s all kinds of things people will find flawed about a film like this – from the lack of an explosive, shocking ending to the lack of whatever partisan political statement they want it to make about Democrats and/or Republicans. But political agendas (or lack thereof) aside, it’s a tightly-written script with some excellent performances from just about everyone (particularly Ryan Gosling in the lead role). One of the best films I’ve seen so far this year.
J. Edgar
Clint Eastwood-directed biopic of J. Edgar Hoover, the famous (and infamous) director of the FBI who helped create and modernize the FBI as we know it – to include, unfortunately, the practice of spying on left-wing activists and wiretapping suspects without warrants, among other things.
Love him or hate him, Hoover’s story has all the makings of a great film (to include his secret homosexuality). But this isn’t it. Leonardo DiCaprio makes a convincing Hoover (at least in his prime – as Old Hoover, he just looks like DiCaprio in old-guy make-up), but Dustin Lance Black’s jumbled screenplay goes back and forth in time, then makes an already confusing narrative even more baffling by putting Hoover in the role of “unreliable narrator”, prone to exaggerating the details of his own life story.
Which is frustrating because if anyone’s story needs a straightforward telling, it’s Hoover’s. But I came away from this none the wiser about the man or his motivations or why his story even matters. Even the story of his secret love for his No.2 man Clyde Tolson seems to lack the punch and significance it otherwise ought to have given Hoover’s anti-subversive Puritanism. It’s not a whitewash, at least, but it still adds up to a squandered opportunity to tell one of the most fascinating stories in 20th Century America.
The love that dares not speak its name,
This is dF
