Review: "LBJ"

Rob Reiner is the last guy you’d expect to draw a sympathetic portrait of Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 36th President of the United States who, more than anyone, was responsible for America’s tragic involvement in Vietnam. A politically outspoken filmmaker his entire career, Reiner demonstrated against the war and, by his own admission, loathed the man who threatened to send young men like him there to fight and die for a lost cause.

But “LBJ” does indeed take a kindly, or at least balanced, look at the president who was the ultimate mix of the highest nobility and the crassest venality. In the film, he’s the sort of man who would berate subordinates while squatting on the toilet in full view, then valiantly twist the arms of like-minded Southern politicians to pass landmark civil rights legislation.

The story (screenplay by Joey Hartstone) takes place during the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the days afterward, with flashbacks to Johnson’s failed 1960 bid for the Democratic nomination, recruitment as vice president and subsequent dissatisfaction with his subservient role.

Though Reiner and Hartstone map out some of the relationship between Johnson and JFK (Jeffrey Donovan), and between LBJ and his wife, Lady Bird (Jennifer Jason Leigh), the real dynamic at the center of the tale is Johnson’s antagonism with Bobby Kennedy (Michael Stahl-David). RFK sees the scrappy Southern politician as an irksome emblem of the racist past, useful for securing the Texas vote and nothing else.

Johnson, for his part, seems genuinely mystified at having his vast experience in the corridors of Congress cast aside so he can preside over useless committees that serve mostly to keep him away from the limelight.

It’s a revelatory performance by Woody Harrelson as LBJ. At first it might seem a bizarre casting choice, given Harrelson’s colorful history of kooky and comedic roles. After seeing the film, though, it’s hard to imagine any other actor in the role.

Prosthetics help somewhat with drawing the resemblance closer, with Harrelson outfitted with Johnson’s horseshoe hairline, jowls and droopy basset hound ears. He’s got the corn-pone speech pattern down to a T, and the jangly body language of a man who projects bravado but is never quite comfortable in his own skin.

We get a few get examples of “The Treatment,” LBJ’s infamous in-your-face style of negotiating that could include browbeating, charm and begging -- sometimes within the space of a few sentences. The chief target is Sen. Richard Russell (Richard Jenkins), a Senate ally of Johnson’s from Georgia who (incorrectly) assumed the ascension of another Old South politician to the White House meant the indefinite enduring of Jim Crow.

The movie doesn’t get into Vietnam at all, other than a couple of brief mentions during the movie and some sobering end titles.

“LBJ” has had a troubled birthing. The screenplay languished on the “Black List,” an annual catalogue of the best unproduced scripts. Reiner shot the film in 2015, and it debuted at the Toronto Film Festival over a year ago before finally picking up a tiny distributor.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the movie is how funny it is. LBJ was a king of the one-liner, and just as often said things that were hilarious without his intending so. “Never underestimate the intensity of martyr’s cause, or the size of a Texan’s balls,” he says.

The film is at times a bit too sentimental, occasionally dipping a toe into sappy. (The musical score by Marc Shaiman doesn't help, laying on the syrupy strings.) Perhaps in trying to do justice to one of the most reviled men of his day, the filmmakers tipped a little too far in the other direction.

But “LBJ” is still well worth a look for Harrelson’s peppy and affecting performance.

Review: "Battle of the Sexes"

The match was a lark, a piffle, a silly spectacle, until it became something more. Likewise, the film version of the iconic 1973 tennis game between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs is much weightier and more substantial than you’d think.

It shows the game itself, of course, featuring Emma Stone and Steve Carell as King and Riggs. If the volleying looks slow and wimpy compared to what you’d see today, it’s not because a pair of Hollywood actors couldn’t make a better show of it. Go watch tapes of the real match; the movie copies it pretty well. All sports got faster and stronger; Serena’d kill either one of them.

But “Battle of the Sexes” focuses more on the year leading up to the faceoff, giving it context within changes happening in the sport and society as a whole. Directed by “Little Miss Sunshine” team Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton, from a screenplay by Simon Beaufoy (“Slumdog Millionaire”), it’s also an astute character study of two people who were more alike than we’d think.

The early 1970s was the era of women “libbers,” Roe v. Wade, the first large wave of women entering the workforce and finding the traditional corridors of influence barred to them. Men liked the free love stuff, but wanted to keep the country clubs and the reins of power. Naturally, they resented people like King who had the audacity to demand that the male and female tennis champions be paid the same.

Carell looks pretty well like Riggs, with the help of some false teeth and a wig. Stone resembles King not at all, and even a pair of glasses and dark brown shag haircut fail to close the gap. But each manages to carve an authentic character out of the fog of history.

Stone’s King is at once headstrong and retiring, very self-aware and also self-effacing. She squares off with Jack Kramer (Bill Pullman), the smug head of the chief tennis association, and starts her own competing league for the top women players. Sarah Silverman plays Gladys Heldman, who provided the business savvy and sponsorship -- from Virginia Slims, because doesn’t smoking and tennis go great together?

But King is also staggered by her attraction to Marilyn Barnett (Andrea Riseborough), a hairdresser who eventually becomes her lover. This while she was married to Larry King (Austin Stowell), a former player who gave her unwavering support as a fellow athlete. The scene where he learns of their affair, but still tenderly applies ice packs to her knees with well-practiced efficiency, is sensitive to all three souls.

(The film fiddles with history here; King began to explore her attraction to women years earlier, and started the affair with Marilyn in 1971. And she was King’s secretary, aka employee, not a hairdresser. Years later she sued King for palimony, which resulted in her sexuality being publicly outed.)

Riggs is portrayed much as the world saw him: an over-the-hill former champ with a gambling addiction who was down on his luck and saw challenging the top women’s players of the day as a way to garner attention and money. With his own marriage to Priscilla (Elisabeth Shue) foundering, he used his gift of gab and natural showmanship to play up the King match, dubbing himself a “male chauvinist pig” and giving interviews about keeping women in the “bedroom or the kitchen,” stuff he may not have even half believed.

Largely forgotten today is that Riggs had already challenged and beaten the top-ranked female player of the day, Margaret Court (Jessica McNamee). Every film needs a villain, and Court is shoehorned into that role, sneering at King’s dalliance with full religious fervor. (This owes more to Court’s modern-day fight against same-sex marriage in her native Australia than anything she said or did at the time, methinks.)

Both Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King are revealed as flesh-and-blood creatures who lived behind the headlines. They make for an interesting pair: the hustler and the heroine, the lobber and the libber. They put on a show for funsies, and people paid attention and not a few minds were changed a wee bit.

In real life, King remained friends with Riggs until the day he died, which was awfully chivalrous of her.

Review: "American Ultra"

"American Ultra" is a quirky take on an old saw. This action comedy stars Jesse Eisenberg as a seemingly normal guy who discovers one day that he has amazing skills, including the ability to take down armed assailants with his bare hands. He wasn't even aware he could do this, until he does it.

We've seen this idea before with "The Bourne Identity," "The Matrix" and countless other flicks. The notion holds appeal because maybe anyone of us could be revealed as the badass chosen one, too.

The twist here is that Eisenberg is seemingly the last guy on Earth who could secretly be a trained super agent. It starts with the actor's small stature, unimpressive physique, soft features, trembly voice and disappearing chin. If you looked up "beta male" in the dictionary, it'd probably have his picture as an illustration.

Screenwriter Max Landis ("Chronicle") layers on the reinforcing characteristics. Mike Howell is an unassuming stoner who clerks at the Stop-n-Go, gets high with his girlfriend, Phoebe (Kristen Stewart), draws an amateur comic starring Apollo Ape and Chimp the Brick, and does little else. He's wracked with crippling phobias, including a violent aversion to leaving his town of Liman, West Virginia.

As the story opens, they are about to fly off on a Hawaii trip where Mike plans to pop the question. (Hawaii? Fancy ring? Must've been a lot of double-shifts at the Stop-n-Go.) But he's unable to get on the plane, and worries that he's just slowing Phoebe down. But then some big guys in black camo show up out of nowhere and try to kill him, and Mike easily takes them out armed with nothing more than a piping hot cup o' soup and a spoon.

Here we have the classic trope about the master spies deciding that a rogue agent who hasn't done anything to anybody in years needs to be eliminated -- even if it requires expending many more agents' lives and the entire operational budget to do it. Listen, spooks: if Jason Bourne decides he wants to retire on the beach, let him get fat on barbecue and piña coladas.

Topher Grace plays the maniacal young CIA chief who goes after Mike, and he's got a small army of his own twisted agents to do it. Of course, he always sends them against clerk-boy in twos and threes, instead of calling the whole gang in at once. On several occasions he's literally got a bunch of his "tough guy" spies sitting around doing nothing while he picks a pair to be the latest sacrificial lambs.

Lesson two, spooks: if you have 17 guys to dispatch against one, why in the world would you not just send all 17?

Connie Britton plays the good CIA gal who recruited Mike (unbeknownst to him) and is still looking out for him. Walton Goggins, so great on the "Justified" TV show, is the Laugher, one of the evil toadies. John Leguizamo turns up as your friendly neighborhood drug dealer, and Tony Hale plays a nebbishy desk agent caught between loyalties.

It's a fun ride, and director Nima Nourizadeh keeps things moving at a snappy pace. Eisenberg and Stewart have nice chemistry together in between all the chases and dismemberments. (Though I recommend the little-seen "Adventureland" if you really want to see some romantic sparks fly between them.)

"American Ultra" succeeds under the wallflower charms of Jesse Eisenberg and a clever script. Sometimes even pathetic losers can kill you with a spoon, so be nice.