Review: "The Front Runner"

“The Front Runner” is an unflattering portrait of American politics, but even more so of the media.

Based on a book by political journalist Matt Bai, who also co-wrote this screenplay, it examines the moment when tabloid and mainstream news intersected, merged and never really looked back. This was Gary Hart’s 1987 campaign for the presidency, when the U.S. senator from Colorado was seen as the prohibitive favorite to win the Democratic nomination, only to have it all unwind in less than month when his serial philandering was reported.

For decades, Washington politicians held the journalists who covered them to a gentlemen’s agreement: look the other way when young ladies are seen going in and out of our doors, and we will give the access you need to do your jobs. It was a nearly all-male environment, both in the corridors of power and the newsrooms charged with checking them -- so the Faustian bargain was accepted.

Consider that just two years before Hart’s implosion, Teddy Kennedy was witnessed assaulting a waitress along with his protégé, Chris Dodd. It went unreported for five years, and only then in a chuckling passage in a men’s magazine.

That was the mentality held by Hart, a wonky and charismatic politician played by Hugh Jackman. Hart is a man of big ideas and enthusiasm for the future who was laid low by clinging to the unsavory practices of the past. He is annoyed, then outraged, that his philandering is not swept under the rug as it always has been.

“This is beneath you,” he seethes at a young Washington Post reporter (Mamoudou Athie) who dares bring up rumors of his affairs. “Follow me around, put a tail on me. You'll be very bored.”

This line has entered the lore of politics, but like a lot of legends it’s mostly fiction. Hart did not challenge journalists to follow him and then openly dally with bimbos. Reporters from the Miami Herald, acting on a tip from a friend of one of Hart’s conquests, staked out his D.C. townhouse and witnessed model/pharmaceutical saleswoman Donna Rice (Sara Paxton) going in and out. They only heard about the “follow me” line after the fact.

(It should also be noted that the Herald reporters, played by Steve Zissis and Bill Burr, did not “hide behind bushes” as Hart contended, which also became part of the erroneous mythology.)

Directed by Jason Reitman, who co-wrote the script with Bai and Jay Carson, “The Front Runner” is an ambitious, contemplative movie that asks hard questions without offering easy answers.

Was it unseemly for reporters to lurk around during Hart’s downtime to see who he dallied with? Should they have looked the other way, as had been practice? Was it fair for Hart’s talents and ambition to be the price our nation paid for demanding more of our politicians?

One female journalist gives a poignant speech pointing out that Hart, for all his blessings, was still just another man willing to employ his power to use and dispose of women who cater to his whims. There’s also a nice sequence where one of Hart’s campaign workers (Molly Ephraim) is charged with “handling” Rice as the story explodes, knowing she is about to be fed to the wolves.

The film reminded me a lot of early Robert Altman movies, with large casts of characters moving in and out of the frame as the camera slides past, their conversations overlapping and receding. It lends a sense of documentary-like authenticity.

There’s too many supporting actors to mention, although Vera Farmiga and J. K. Simmons stand out as, respectively, Hart’s wife, Lee, who is willing to overlook his dalliances until they become an embarrassment her, and the campaign manager who has spent years building a political machine only to watch it turn to ash virtually overnight.

Thirty years later, Hart’s fall seems almost quaint now in this day of presidential porn star mistresses, handsy politicians of all stripes and a media that has grown both quantifiably smaller and more meager in its ambitions.

Making do with the errors of the past is bad, but sometimes in reaching for something better we degrade ourselves. “The Front Runner” is the cautionary tale of our collective rise and fall.

Review: "Patti Cake$"

Patricia Dombrowski has a lot of nicknames. She prefers “Killa P,” though most call her Patti, which she has bedazzled up to “Patti Cake$,” which is also the title of the movie about her.

The license plate on her crumbling Cadillac is “PATTIWGN.” A 23-year-old aspiring rapper from the harder Jersey neighborhood, she and a fellow dreamer go by “Thick & Thin,” a reference to their respective body types. The one she really hates, though she pretends to embrace it when it’s hurled at her incessantly on the streets, is “Dumbo,” given in middle school and unfortunately what stuck.

One guy, whom Patti secretly has a crush on, disparagingly calls her “White Precious” during an impromptu rap battle, and that’s probably the one that’s most descriptive.

This audacious debut film from writer/director Geremy Jasper and starring Danielle Macdonald is in many ways an inheritor to 2009’s “Precious,” which spotlighted an obese, illiterate girl. It also borrows from “Hustle & Flow,” in that it’s the story of a person rapping about their circumstances and stuck dreams as a way of breaking out of the crabbed role other people have defined for them.

The movie is not so much about Patti being fat as the disparagement that comes with it. Patti has spent her whole life being told she’s less than because of her outsized body. That dynamic has bled into her work, her relationships and every other aspect of her existence. She’s come to internalize that pain, forge it in the fire of her resentment and spit it out back into the world in the form of brash, boastful raps.

“Patti Cake$” is not about overeating, but feeding an undernourished soul.

Macdonald is astonishing in the lead role, her broad face often buried underneath a tangle of blonde frizzles, her eyes peeking out with a mix of fear and self-assurance. We feel the crush of how others disregard her, sense the artist behind the façade of the woman who bartends and works catering events, intuitively understand her need to strive for something more.

Her best friend is Hareesh (Siddharth Dhananjay), a pharmacist and her rapping partner. He’s the ebullient ying to her downtrodden yang. They hang out, bust some rhymes and dream of one day getting onstage. Like most other Jersey kids, black and white, they idolize the O-Z (Sahr Ngaujah), a local rapper who made it big and is referred to as the “godfather,” or simply “God.” Patti has green-tinged dreams about becoming O-Z’s protégé.

Patti’s most fraught relationship is with her mother, Barb (Bridget Everett), a powerhouse of a woman who owns a big personality, big voice and big everything else. Fiftyish, a former rock singer, now a hair stylist with money problems clinging desperately to the shreds of her sexpot renown, Barb has poured all of her disappointment about life into her kid.

Cathy Moriarty shines as her grandmother, laid up by ill health and her own woes, who nonetheless gives Patti encouragement and unmeasured love.

I was also really impressed with Mamoudou Athie as a vagabond musician who reluctantly joins their group, lending his technical expertise and a gentleness that hides behind a deliberately dangerous exterior. Athie has gobs of what Hollywood used to call “presence” -- you can’t not watch him.

The scene where they compose their first song in the unlikeliest of venues, dubbing themselves “PBNJ” with a little sampling help from grandma, is pure magic. These are all people who society has told they’re nothing, coming together to create something.

I’m not a rap aficionado, but it’s hard not to be sucked into the beats and bravura rhymes of the music (by Jasper and Jason Binnick). Highlights are the catchy PBNJ intro song and “Tough Love,” which borrows from and describes Patti’s family dynamics.

“Patti Cake$” is the sort of fine little movie that can get lost in the wasteland of September releases, so I’m hoping it will find the audience it deserves, as well as some attention during the awards cycle.