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Eye in the Sky: Mini-review

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Helen Mirren

Helen Mirren shows her tough side in Eye in the Sky

B+Alfred Hitchcock based many of his best scenes on the principle that suspense results from the audience knowing that something bad is about to happen when the characters don’t. Director Gavin Hood applies that principle to 21st century warfare in his powerful thriller Eye in the Sky, a film that raises moral and political issues at the same time as it keeps the audience on the edge of their seats.  

Eye in the Sky takes place in near real time, as a joint British-U.S. task force tracking a Kenyan terrorist safe house discovers that two suicide bombers inside the house are arming themselves for an attack that could kill dozens of civilians. However, before Col. Powell (Helen Mirren), the commanding officer, can launch a drone strike against the terrorists, Lt. Watts, the American drone pilot (Aaron Paul) spots a little girl selling bread outside the house. Realizing that the missile explosion will likely kill the girl as well, the various government officials in charge of the mission debate whether to proceed with the attack.

The issue in Eye in the Sky is simple—how much collateral damage is acceptable to stop a terrorist attack; its resolution is not. As one government official puts it, “If they kill 80 people, we win the propaganda war. If we kill one child, they do.” But director Hood isn’t just out to explore moral issues here; he’s also constructed a cracker jack thriller, one that ironically is effective because of the separation, both physical and psychological, between the decision makers and the child whose life is at risk. As those in charge ponder possible alternatives that might save the girl’s life, the time in which they can stop the terrorists dwindles. Hood creates a surreal, antiseptic setting, as the various military personnel and government officials sit in safety thousands of miles away, watching through the “eye in the sky,” cameras that show exactly what’s happening at the safe house. Contrasting scenes capture the chaos on the street outside the house where an undercover intelligence operative (Barkhad Abdi) dodges armed militia so he can provide updates. Superb acting magnifies the tension even further. Helen Mirren shows the same gritty determination she displayed two decades ago in her Prime Suspect roles, while the late Alan Rickman, in his last onscreen appearance, is perfectly cast as Powell’s sardonic superior, desperately trying to cajole the officials into making a decision. The ending of Eye in the Sky adds one needless complication that diminishes its emotional impact somewhat, but, nonetheless, the movie squarely strikes both its ethical and entertainment targets.
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45 Years: Mini-review

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Charlotte Rampling

Charlotte Rampling caps off a 45+ year career with her first Oscar nomination

A-Perhaps because of her propensity to take on risky, controversial roles early in her younger days, Chartlotte Rampling hasn’t enjoyed the acclaim of some of her contemporaries such as Helen Mirren. Now, at long last, she’s gotten a role in the film 45 Years that is worthy of her talent, and she delivers perhaps the most memorable performance of her career.

Rampling and Tom Courtenay play Kate and Geoff Mercer, a seemingly happy retired couple preparing for a gala anniversary party in their honor (hence, the film’s title, 45 Years). Then, Geoff receives a letter from Swiss authorities that they have discovered the body of Katja, his ex-girlfriend, who fell off a cliff into a glacier while they were on a hiking trip some 50 years ago. Geoff had barely talked about Katja with Kate, but, as the week goes on, Kate slowly realizes the depth of his feelings for the dead woman and questions the foundation of their marriage.

 45 Years is a movie about communication in a marriage, or, more precisely, the lack thereof. The audience soon realizes that Geoff never really discussed with Kate his earlier relationship or how serious it was, and that she now agonizes over whether he ever loved her or just viewed her as a substitute for Katja. Writer/director Andrew Haigh films most of the movie from Kate’s point of view, and the fact that she, and the audience, are unaware of exactly how Geoff is reacting adds to Kate’s sense of uncertainty. Like the glacier into which Katja fell, many scenes in 45 Years seem civil and placid but have a far deeper subtext, as questions never get resolved between the couple and Kate’s fears and distrust grow. The movie is an acting showcase for the two leads, despite the fact that it has few showy scenes. Much of Rampling’s performance is physical acting at its best, especially the final scene, as the couple dance at the party. The audience sees through their expressions, as they do not, that they really do not understand each other’s feelings at all. It’s one of the most haunting movie scenes in years. 45 Years is justifiably being hailed for Rampling’s performance, but it’s also one of the deepest and most subtle films of the year, one that will hold extra meaning for almost all couples, no matter how long they have been together. 
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Trumbo: Mini-review

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Bryan Cranston

Bryan Cranston could have used Dalton Trumbo’s help with this script.

BDalton Trumbo may have been the best screenwriter ever to work in Hollywood as well as one of the most controversial. His life and times certainly merit Hollywood treatment of their own. Surprisingly, however, the primary weakness of the slick new biopic Trumbo is its script, one that could have used a rewrite by the scribe himself.

The film focuses on the most chaotic period in the life of Trumbo (Bryan Cranston in his first major film starring role), from the late 1940’s until the early 60’s. When the House Un-American Activities Committee began to investigate supposed Communist influence in the film industry, he refused to give straight answers when called to testify and, as a result, went to jail for contempt. Once released, Trumbo was blacklisted and unable to produce scripts under his own names but kept busy writing under other people’s names for several years, winning two Oscars. His unofficial Hollywood banishment ended when he received onscreen credit for the scripts of Spartacus and Exodus. 

Trumbo was directed by Jay Roach whose career is a mixture of big screen silliness (Meet the Parents) and more prestigious HBO docudramas (Game Change). The movie actually plays like one of Roach’s HBO projects that got a theatrical release. The talented acting ensemble does a fine job, especially those playing well-known celebrities (Helen Mirren as Hedda Hopper, Michael Stuhlbarg as Edward G. Robinson, David James Elliott as John Wayne). However, Trumbo is essentially a series of often broadly played comic vignettes, such as John Goodman as a schlock producer using a baseball bat to threaten a studio hack who wants Trumbo fired. These bits usually work, and Bryan Cranston is excellent at glibly dispensing quotable one-liners. But the movie glosses over the more serious issues it raises. When a fellow writer (Louis C.K. in the scene below) asks just how Trumbo can square his supposed radical beliefs and his strongly capitalistic work ethic, neither he nor the movie ever adequately respond. Similarly, the toll that Trumbo’s hectic pace and subterfuge take on his family doesn’t get the attention it deserves. The most valuable service the movie provides is to give many in the audience an introduction to an era that remains an embarrassment to this day for Hollywood. Trumbo does so in a glib, entertaining manner, but it never manages to really probe very far beneath the glitzy Hollywood façade it depicts so well.
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Woman in Gold: Mini-Review

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Helen Mirren

Helen Mirren supplies Woman in Gold with plenty of dramatic weight

B-The trailers for Woman in Gold, the fact-based drama about an elderly woman’s attempt to reclaim her family’s artwork that the Nazis stole in World War II, suggest that the movie is a legal thriller, Unfortunately, any lawyer can tell you that following the progress of a case, no matter how compelling the subject matter, as it makes its way through the legal system, is often as exciting paint dry. Indeed, that’s the main problem the movie faces.

Woman in Gold actually tells two stories. In one, an elderly Maria Altmann (Helen Mirren) hires an attorney (Ryan Reynolds) to help her reclaim paintings by Gustav Klimt that her Austrian family owned before World War II. After the Germans stole and later abandoned the paintings, they wound up on permanent display in a Vienna museum, widely regarded as national treasures. In the other story, a young Adele (Tatiana Maslany) sees the paintings taken and then barely escapes Austria alive, leaving her parents behind to meet their fate.

Despite most viewers’ familiarity with the subject matter through decades of other cinematic portrayals, Woman in Gold‘s flashback scenes have a power and immediacy that the more recent scenes lack. Simply put, Woman in Gold is a movie whose “present day” scenes (the bulk of the film stretches from 1998 to 2006) involve bureaucratic wrangling and a court case based on an obscure point of law. As Maria’s attorney (Randy Schoenberg, grandson of the Austrian composer August Schoenberg) points out, part of the Austrian government’s strategy is to appeal and delay as long as they can in the unstated hope that Maria will die or otherwise drop her quest for the paintings. Unlike the similarly structured Philomena, Woman in Gold winds up dragging on more than one occasion as its characters have little to do but wait as the months and years go by. Fortunately, director Simon Curtis can call on Mirren to revive viewer interest through her colorfully quirky performance in one scene after another. Mirren’s performance and the flashback scenes ensure that viewers never lose sight of what’s at stake in the movie or the depth of Maria’s outrage at an Austrian nation that was complicit in the Nazi takeover a half century earlier and remained unwilling to acknowledge its responsibility ever since. Woman in Gold is not the masterpiece its subject matter deserves, but it does give viewers a view of art at its finest, both the Klimt paintings and the acting of Helen Mirren. 
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