Battle Of The Sexes

I wish there was more battle in this lukewarm, superficial retelling of Billie Jean King's match against Bobby Riggs in 1973, as women's lib was all the rage and King fought for equal pay in the women's tennis circuit. Alas, Directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (Little Miss Sunshine) and the script by Simon Beaufoy refuse to be incisive.
Even as one cheers Billie Jean's determination, integrity, and pluck, it is disheartening that for all she changed in the world of sports and beyond, the needle has not moved much to this day. I guess in a country of competitive alpha males, a woman president is still not viable, women still make less than men, and in this day and age, we still have males touting biology as a reason for female intellectual inferiority (and a president whose attitude to women is firmly rooted in the sleazy male chauvinism of the era).
[Aside: I always wonder who these entitled, insecure pricks think gave them life. They would do well to remember who pushed them out into the world.]
If the movie is effective, it's because of the capable work of its cast. At first, sprightly Emma Stone seems too much of a waif to play Billie Jean, but Stone does a good job conveying not only King's sense of fairness but her sharp determination and her competitiveness, as well as her sexual confusion. She's good when she's vulnerable and also when she's tough. The great Andrea Riseborough plays Marilyn Barnett, Billie Jean's first female lover, who upends her private life. Their meeting at a hair salon where Marilyn is giving Billie Jean a trim is beautifully staged and played. Steve Carell is somehow very sympathetic as Bobby Riggs, a tennis has-been who loves gimmicks and gambling. Emasculated at home by his rich wife (so good to see Elisabeth Shue back on screen), he concocts matches against women as a way to earn money and stave off oblivion. Carell is very funny in a scene at a Gamblers Anonymous meeting, but he also brings opportunistic cunning and real feeling to his character and makes him not so easy to read.
The movie captures male condescension well, from Jack Kramer (Bill Pullman), the president of the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association who pays women eight times less to play than men, to the paternalistic commentary of Howard Cosell. It reflects the cultural mores that women endured without complaint in the inevitable compliments to their cuteness, even as they were making a point for themselves. Women are always seen by men as the garnish for the main course, as eye candy, and there are several scenes in which the young women players in the Virginia Slims tournament still react politely when patronized because no one knew any better.
For King, it was doubly difficult to be a standard bearer for women's rights, not only because she was a public figure, but also because, according to this movie, she found out she was gay while she was married (to a very understanding husband, solidly played by Austin Stowell). The movie dutifully reminds us that at the time for a successful woman to come out as gay was simply taboo. King stood to lose endorsements and the public's respect. The film goes out of its way to semaphore its sympathies by featuring the gay designer of the women's tennis dresses (by the way, the costumes by Mary Zophres are fantastic) as -- you will excuse the pun -- a fairy godfather to King. Even though he is played by the charming Alan Cumming, I didn't need the forced, flamboyant comic relief between him and his assistant, nor his treacly speech about gay rights at the end. Watching King in turmoil over not revealing herself to her husband, her parents, and the public is eloquent enough.
It's frustrating when movies about trailblazers choose the most conventional, crowd-pleasing route. This tale could have been a great satire. But the filmmakers use broad strokes and corny dialogue and miss the opportunity to give the topic the acerbic bite it deserves. Battle Of The Sexes is like any other "inspiring" sports movie, with a remarkable heroine instead.

Café Society

To be honest, the only reason that compelled me to see the latest Woody Allen film is that the cinematographer is Vittorio Storaro. His masterly touch certainly takes it to a higher level. His images are creamy. Some are breathtaking, like a shot of two lovers on the beach. He is beautifully abetted by the production design of the great Santo Loquasto, a longtime Allen collaborator.
So what about the movie, you might ask. Well, it's classic late-period Allen, skimpy on characters and plot, and dusted lightly with ancient jokes. Still, Café Society is not as slapdash as some of his recent outings. It is imbued with a feeling of nostalgia for the 1930's, a time when women were glamorous, nightclubs were swanky and popular music was masterful (as usual, the old standards soundtrack is delightful). Café Society is about the loss of first love; a bittersweet look at the impossibility of everlasting romance.
It is also a movie about different kinds of Jews. There are working class Jews, communist Jews, Hollywood Jews, and gangster Jews, all in one family. Allen has genuine warmth for this neurotic clan. This loving nostalgia and a good cast make this movie enjoyable.
Jesse Eisenberg plays Bobby Dorfman, a young man from the Bronx who moves to Los Angeles in search of a job. Unlike many actors who have tried and failed, Eisenberg refuses to imitate Allen's nerdy shtick. He is a canny actor, but it would be nice if he toned down that neurotic energy and cerebral edge of his. Still, he is effective as the fish out of water in glamorous Hollywood who gets a job at his uncle Phil's agency. Phil Stone (Steve Carell) is flashy, rich, and as a powerful agent, namedrops stars with panache. After much pleading, Bobby starts running errands for him and falls in love with his secretary, Vonnie, played with melancholy poise by Kristen Stewart. I didn't take Stewart seriously when she was younger and eternally pouty, but she has found her stride and here she is mesmerizing. Allen himself provides a narration that is unessential, but which aids in the feeling of longing for the past. The rest of the characters seem to have been imported from Annie Hall. The fabulous Jeannie Berlin plays Bobby's mom, and Corey Stoll plays his gangster brother, wasted without a part and saddled with an unnecessary wig (but I'll take him whenever and however I can get him). Blake Lively plays another Veronica, the other "shiksa" goddess for whom Bobby ends up falling. I wonder if the multiple Veronicas are Allen's homage to Kristof Kieslowski's The Double Life Of Veronique.
The plot is at once simplistic and convoluted and it surprises no one, but the palpable feeling of ruefulness, of losing your love to lesser but richer prospects, of the useless yearning for what could have been, is moving. This movie has more feeling than most of Allen's recent films. He has an opportunity to dwell on the uneasy combination of Hollywood glamour and bickering striving Jews, of Jews straddling between their family traditions and making it in the world, but Allen is too lazy to stitch these strands together insightfully. For a far more profound and devastating look at this topic, I heartily recommend Indignation, based on the novel by Phillip Roth, also playing.
Storaro's magic and that lovely sense of loss are about the only thing that works for Café Society. The jokes feel ancient, and some of the attitudes, like a cruel, uncomfortable scene between Bobby and a hooker are way past their expiration date.  I am also nostalgic for legendary swanky nightclubs that I never knew, wonderful popular music, and people dressing up to go out, but not for the kind of casual, rancid misogyny that is ever present in Allen's films.  He is not one with the times.

The Big Short

A fun, hair-raising, if rather tardy, outrage-inducing satirical romp by Adam McKay, based on Michael Lewis' book about the financial whizzes who realized that the world economy was going to tank back in 2007 due to subprime lending practices. It is a gnarly topic, but breezily explained by a very game cast. Instead of going for the full-out dramatization of a non-fiction book, McKay and co-screenwriter Charles Randolph use some fun devices to keep the story urgent. Some of the characters speak in voiceover and break the fourth wall, roping us in as accomplices. Celebrity guest stars, like Margot Robbie in a bubble bath, explain to us in almost plain English some of these incomprehensible, diabolical instruments. It's 80% exposition, but it doesn't feel like it.
All the actors deserve kudos for credibly wrapping their tongues around the deliberately impenetrable financial jargon. They are all fantastic. Christian Bale, who rarely gets the opportunity to be funny, is melancholy and awkward as Dr. Michael Burry, a t-shirt wearing renegade who managed a big fund in California, looked at mortgage defaults and decided to short that market. That is, to bet against it.
A very funny Ryan Gosling stars as an AAA asshole called Jared Vennett, a big shot at Deutsche Bank, who decides to go into the shorting business for himself, like a rogue cowboy (this kind of behavior is applauded at banks). An excellent Steve Carell plays fund manager Mark Baum, and a wonderful team of supporting players rounds up this white male saga of financial chicanery and destruction.
The story follows how different people started snooping around the securitized mortgage industry, to slowly and painfully reveal that the world would collapse on a tailspin of unregulated greed, corruption, malfeasance and corporate criminality, which not only went unpunished, but was rewarded with a trillion-dollar taxpayer bailout. The movie works the audience up into a lather of disbelief and outrage. It is fitting that it opens with a quote from Mark Twain, the father of American satire. If it were drama, it would be too bitter to swallow. But satire can hurt more than drama, and McKay is delightfully, and rightfully, incensed about it. He manages to keep the laughs and the suspense pumping while clearly explaining what happened.
It is a strange vicarious thrill to find oneself rooting for these banker guys shorting billions of dollars of toxic instruments, and waiting (hoping!) on the edge of our seats to see if they cash out. Some of them seem to have a conscience, like Baum; others like Vennett, don't. Others, like Burry, are ruled by their own strict professional compass. All of them are brilliant masters of the financial universe, and it takes them forever to figure it out. Meanwhile, the audience cannot help but be seduced by the allure of the billions of dollars bandied about in conversation. We are eavesdropping where we will never be welcome. These terrible guys are our fantasy proxies, which is rather depressing. The tension between the serious outrage and the comedy is deftly handled, but what exactly are we laughing at? We were played, and are still being played like idiots.
Together with cinematographer Barry Ackroyd, who is known for his gung-ho work on films like The Hurt Locker, Captain Phillips and United 93, McKay keeps the complicated explanation moving and stitches together collages of images of recent history with fast cuts of how rosy things looked back before 2008 and the human debris that followed: people living in tents, lines snaking around depressing job fairs.
My favorite scenes are at the local level, when Baum and his guys go to Florida to take an actual look at the housing market. It's a sweltering ghost town. Mail piles up in abandoned houses, gators loll about in brackish swimming pools. Strippers take out loans on five houses, while local banker bros brag about giving loans to people without incomes, trying to impress the horrified bankers from New York.
McKay feels the need to insert a couple of discreet but unnecessary touches of humanity. Baum is reeling from a terrible loss, which is what makes him into a crusader. We see a family lose their home and it is sad, but I don't think the movie needs these tears. It is devastating enough as it shows us how the system is made to game us; how despite endless protestation, nothing has changed. We're dupes in the biggest con on Earth. We are still living the fallout of that disaster, the government is still not regulating the banks, and banks are still creating toxic products, albeit with different names. Politicians are still at the service of Wall Street. The middle class is being strangled, and somehow poor people and immigrants, as Baum says, are blamed for everything.
Nothing to laugh at, really.

ps: Check out this unsurprisingly mean-spirited review and masterpiece of cognitive dissonance from The Wall Street Journal. It's kind of a hoot.

Foxcatcher

A horror film. As dark a movie as you'll ever see with a Hollywood cast, Bennett Miller's film about millionaire John du Pont's relationship with Olympic wrestling champions Mark and Dave Schultz, is profoundly disturbing. I came out of it wanting to dunk myself in a bath of Clorox. This is high praise. I, for one, am grateful for an American film that challenges our increasingly unsustainable obsession with heroism.
Like most movies based on real stories, Foxcatcher may not be entirely faithful to the real events that transpired, but it takes them as a springboard to explore the corrupting power of money.
It is about a loser with all the money in the world, an extremely creepy Steve Carell, who takes Mark Schultz (a solid Channing Tatum), an Olympic gold winner with zero money, under his wing. du Pont is obsessed with Olympic wrestling, with patriotism, winning, guns and the American way. He is heir to the enormous du Pont fortune and he lives alone; that is, with his disapproving mother (Vanessa Redgrave, doing almost nothing and killing it). He is unloved and deeply warped by unhappy money.
The real heroes, the Schultz brothers, are hardworking regular people trying to make a living. Somehow, they were unable or were not chosen to parlay their olympic gold medals into endorsement deals. So they are losers, stuck working hard to eke out a life. Meanwhile, John Eleuthére du Pont, scion of a blue blood American family is, by all accounts, a winner. He has inherited everything he could possibly want, except what he can't have, which is a life. du Pont is a failed athlete, a wannabe coach. He wants to be a mentor, father figure, brother, teacher to a winner, by which he assumes he will garner the admiration of the entire nation. But he is too feeble, or too pathetic, or too damaged to do anything worthy. Thus, he achieves personal glory by buying his prestige.
It is possible that he wants to be the father he wishes he had, or that he gets a kick out of watching semi-naked muscular men pile up on top of each other. Wisely, Miller and the screenwriters (Dan Futterman and E. Max Frye) don't clutter the film with cheap psychology or flashbacks of his lonely childhood. In one scene, he opens up to Mark, and with one line about a childhood friend, we learn all we need to know about what it is like to be him.
Miller lets the story unfold at a stately pace as we watch with growing despair how toxic du Pont's embrace of Mark Schultz is. Carrell, sporting a fake nose, bad teeth, bad skin, and bad eyes, summons a man who seems to be asphyxiating under his own repression, of something so bottled up, it sucks the life out of anyone, including himself. He is an inspired choice, since as a comedian, and particularly as Michael Scott, in The Office, Carell has demonstrated he's capable of going to uncomfortable extremes of maladroitness, self-delusion, self-absorption and lack of social finesse. Even though the character of John du Pont is humorless, he cuts so ridiculous a figure as a wrestling groupie, Carell finds ways to sneak in the funny, in a very unsettling way. Like Michael Scott, du Pont is a loser with power, but from hell and on steroids.
du Pont wants the Schultz brothers to come to his remote mansion and train with him, but David (an excellent Mark Ruffalo), the eldest, and the real father figure to Mark, is a high school coach and a decent family man, and he doesn't want to go. However, with enough bags of money, du Pont eventually lures him. You think you can't buy integrity? Think again. du Pont's money is as irresistible to David and the U.S. Olympic Wrestling Federation as it must be to our long-suffering representatives, who can't campaign for office without begging for corporate munificence. Once the checks are written, politicians cannot be beholden to anyone but their benefactors, just as Mark and David have to cater to the man who is buying their lives. It is true corruption and it destroys everything.
One can extrapolate this story of one rich man's capacity to buy everything with money with the nature of life in America. After all, du Pont is a patriot, as concerned with the notion of freedom as any of those rapacious Republican titans of industry who bandy the term about only for what suits them. He talks in empty platitudes about freedom. A freedom that apparently only applies to those with means. Freedom to buy your way around so that everybody is at your service. The kind of freedom that turns others into slaves.
In du Pont's admiration for Mark there must be a tinge of envy. His is not the well-intentioned attention of a real mentor. It's the manipulation of a narcissist. Miller doesn't tip his hand before he has to, which makes Foxcatcher a harrowing movie. As we discover du Pont's mind games, and his psychological troubles, we realize in growing horror that his charitable motivations are a calculated ruse to aggrandize himself. His manipulations and his detachment from normality really creep up on you.
With enough money, everything becomes a circus. The wrestlers have no choice but to indulge du Pont's pathetic coaching fantasies. In this movie, du Pont can't wrestle, let alone coach, his way out of a paper bag, nor can he be a true role model for anyone, since it is all a lie. Perhaps if he were a European aristocrat, he'd be content to snort his millions up his nose, lose them at Monte Carlo, waste them at Saint Tropez, or whatever it is those people do. But as an American, he is delirious with the imperative to be heroic. He has the misfortune of being a loser in the land that does not suffer them gladly. But unlike most losers, he is armed with money, and extremely dangerous.