Just Right for November: The Ides of March

1. The Ides of March
2. Production year: 2011
3. Country: US
4. Runtime: 100 mins
5. Directors: George Clooney
6. Cast: Evan Rachel Wood, George Clooney, Jeffrey Wright, Marisa Tomei, Max Minghella, Paul Giamatti, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ryan Gosling

George Clooney made this, his second film dealing specifically with politics in 2011, a critical juncture for both real-life US political combatants as they head toward this year's Decision Day.
Clooney's film is altogether more brutal than The Candidate, which, if only for Redford's presence, retains a core of idealism, as indeed to an even greater extent do Redford's post-Watergate thrillers, All the President's Men and Three Days of the Condor. In fact the informed cynicism that The Ides of March brings to mind is that displayed in Gore Vidal's play and film about a presidential election, The Best Man, when Vidal himself was deeply involved as a Jack Kennedy supporter, as well as his sequence of political novels that began in 1967 with Washington, DC.
Co-scripted by Clooney with Beau Willimon (on whose play Farragut North the film is based) and Grant Heslov (who was Oscar-nominated for Goodnight, and Good Luck), The Ides of March is set largely in Cincinnati where the handsome liberal governor of Pennsylvania, Mike Morris (Clooney), is competing in the Democratic primary elections with his eye on the presidency. It's March, the streets are slushy with melting snow and the air's full of heady rhetoric about the future of America spoken by people with patriotic pins on their left lapels standing in front of outsized Stars and Stripes. A man emerges from the darkness to speak with disarming honesty about his liberal political positions, but he's not Governor Morris, who is in fact a background figure. He's Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling), a 30-year-old aide of great brilliance who is using a speech he's written for Morris to test and adjust the acoustics for Morris' public debate with a fellow contender. Gosling subtly suggests something indefinably suspect about his character.

Morris' seasoned campaign manager, the rumpled Paul Zara (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) demands loyalty above all else, but all to give him reassurance that his otherwise unremarkable persona is still relevant.

Clooney's critical point is that nobody's hands are clean. Everyone is fighting for their own turf, either advancing or defending their chosen interests, while outwardly professing loyalty to the cause of the candidate. They frequently end up trapped by their own weaknesses (sex, power, money) rather than being persuaded by superior arguments or circumstances. But is it better to win and deliver on half your pledges or retain your purity and achieve nothing?

The film's "money scene" comes near the end, when ousted campaign manager Zara is called into the Governor’s Chevy Trailblazer, a hulking black hearse, which has backed into an alley in Cincinnati. The conversation is unseen and unheard by the audience who are confronted solely by the vehicle for the duration of the scene until Zara climbs out, and with his fate sealed, lights a cigarette, while the car pulls away.

The Ides of March reconfirms Clooney's directorial gifts, especially his ability to sustain both dramatic tension and moral focus. With a crucial election now pending, and the incumbent Democrat in the fight of his life, this thriller entrant from last year deserves renewed consideration.

A Wild Ride to the Darkside: Drive

With no fewer than 20 previous features with the same title, one could well be forgiven lowering expectations for this thriller, even with Ryan Gosling in the starring role.

But this spacey, yet intense work, from Danish import Nicholas Winding Refn not only shows Gosling, the hot Hollywood property of the moment, firmly in control, but more than adequately challenged by Albert Brooks, near flawless as the urbane yet sadistic loan shark who dogs him almost from the beginning.

Our hero (he's never actually named)  in fact moonlights as a wheelman (that is, he drives a getaway car for bank robbers, etc) in between doing movie stunts and working for a local mechanic, who cals him only "The Kid". In his apartment building, he meets Elise (Carey Mulligan) a young mother who's awaiting her partner's release from prison, but not, as it turns out with great anxiety. The two engage in a wonderfully underplayed semi-platonic affair.

Two dark threads interwine with this urban idyll. First, the mechanic fancies himself a stock car owner with the kid at the helm but, of course such things need money, and lots more of it than he can lay his hands on. Enter Brooks, who routes his operation through a pizza parlor owned by an outcast Jewish mafioso (the suitably creepy Ron Perlman).

The second issue is that Elise's spouse, a small-time hood with the oddly statesmanlike name of Standard Gabriel, has been sprung, but he still owes protection money to another bad guy, who's now demanding (with a serious beating as persuasion), that he rob a certain local pawnshop as part settlement on his "debt".

Seeing the distress that Gabriel's position places on mother and son, our hero chips in - he offers to drive the getaway car, of course. This brings him into contact with said bad guy and the luscious but hapless Christina Hendricks (Oh the fantasies...but, we digress), a gangster's moll who even the gangster is apt to ignore.

Of course, the job is a set-up. It yields an indeterminately large sum of cash, but also precipitates a high-speed chase and marks the step-up point in the movie's violence quotient. Gabriel is shot dead at the scene, and the luscious redhead is dispatched with a shotgun blast to head.

Gosling, forced to keep his head whilst all about him are losing theirs, demonstrates he knows his way around guns and improvised weapons the way he knows his way around cars. Also, as tender as he was with Elise, he's not baove slapping said gangster's moll half silly, in order to get at the truth.

Laconic, and with seemingly permanent half-smirk throughout the proceedings, our hero might seem hard to like, but Gosling does a good job of humanizing him and investing him with a strong, but off-kilter sense of morality.

The "Miami Vice-style" titles and cinematography may be a bit off-putting, depending on your visual taste, and there's also the near cheesy New Wave soundtrack (I'm not knocking New Wave). But beyond that, Drive is a silm in which heart and mind are aligned to offer some real surprises - most of them welcome.

Take it for a spin and see.

Blue Valentine for New Year's: movie throws off NC-17 Kiss of death

The film “Blue Valentine” has recieved a new “R” rating to replace the NC-17 designation; “SNL” star Seth Meyers is hosting the White House Correspondents Association dinner.

 The movie “Blue Valentine” scored a big win before opening at the box office. The film managed to get an NC-17 ruling overturned and downgraded to R after an appeal from Harvey Weinstein. The movie, starring Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams, would have arrived at theaters DOA with the highly restrictive NC-17 rating, which prohibits individuals under 17 from viewing the film in theaters. The film  will open in limited release on Dec. 31. [THR]

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/12/09/blue-valentine-gets-new-r-rating-mr-meyers-goes-to-washington/?mod=djemSpeakeasy_h