Video review: "Confirmation"

If you’re looking for a fair and balanced depiction of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court, you won’t find it here. “Confirmation” pretty well stacks things against Thomas, who was accused of sexual harassment by a former employee, and in favor of Anita Hill, his accuser.

She is the main character, who “changed history” by “making a stand.” The story, and the filmmakers’ sympathies, are clearly in her court.

What you will find are a pair of fine performances by Kerry Washington as Hill and Wendell Pierce as Thomas, playing two smart and ambitious African-Americans who braved the fiery hell of the media frenzy. Greg Kinnear also shines as feckless then-Senator Joe Biden, whose often inept chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee led to the spectacle of elected officials publicly discussing pubic hairs and the authenticity of Long Dong Silver’s… uh, assets.

Director Rick Famuyiwa and writer Susannah Grant do an excellent job of capturing the political climate of the early 1990s. The Republican operatives are shown as willing to do just about anything to support the nomination of Thomas, including conjuring up kooky diagnoses of Hill’s supposed “erotomania.” Meanwhile, the Democrats are transparently looking to “Bork” another conservative nominee because he won’t vote the way they like.

Sexual harassment was the cudgel they came up with, but anyone would do.

Without overtly depicting their relationship in flashbacks, the HBO film leaves some doubt as to the veracity of Hill’s claims. The film short-changes the other witnesses who testified for and against Hill, with several other former employees corroborating Hill’s statements about sexually graphic discussions in the office, but also omitting a dozen or so women who denied the claims and testified on behalf of his character.

Still, it’s never unclear where the filmmakers’ sympathies lie. Hill’s account is never doubted, while Thomas never receives the benefit of that doubt.

Perhaps the most egregious example is having Charles Ogletree (Jeffrey Wright), a revered Harvard law professor, telling Hill he’s supporting her because Thomas is “less qualified than some of my students.” Really? One wonders how many of his students had headed up two key federal agencies and been appointed a U.S. Court of Appeals district judge.

It’s a hallmark of the age we now live in – which the Thomas hearings helped usher in – in which disagreement is tantamount to revulsion. Our nation’s sense of civil discourse has never really returned.

In the end, “Confirmation” amounts to little more than picking at old scabs. We don’t learn anything we didn’t know already, though we get a better sense of Hill and Thomas as three-dimensional human beings.

Bonus features are rather thin. There are brief Q&As with Washington and Pierce on the historical impact of the hearings, plus a “Character Spot” featuring other cast members discussing the roles they play.

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Video review: "The 5th Wave"

It’s funny how in young adult novels and their movie adaptations, young adults are always the key to saving the world.

In real-life it’s pretty rare for a teen to have a momentous impact on history -- Joan of Arc, King Tut… not many others.

Oh, well. It’s a central conceit of much popular storytelling that the audience sees themselves in the main character -- so why not tailor the character to them?

Here it’s Chloë Grace Moretz as Cassie, an unremarkable kid in a normal town when alien invaders swoop in and take over. They do so slowly, in stages, targeting humanity’s technology, environment, etc. in succession. The fifth and final wave is infiltration of human hosts by the invaders’ control.

There’s a lot of similarity to both “The Hunger Games” and “Divergent” franchises. The female lead is indoctrinated into a militaristic existence in which young people are expected to fight and die for the cause. And, exhaustingly, there are multiple cute boys wandering into the tale to tempt and/or betray our heroine.

Here they are Ben (Nick Robinson), a classmate Cassie was sweet on, and Evan (Alex Roe), a somewhat mysterious country boy she stumbles upon after all the youngsters are rounded up by the U.S. Army, conveniently leaving her behind.

There follows some gun fights, hand-to-hand action in which our formerly mousy protagonist suddenly becomes a badass, etc. There are a couple of large plot twists, which will only seem surprising if you haven’t been paying any attention.

“The 5th Wave” isn’t bad, but after a dozen or more of these YA movies it’s hard to enjoy something when you see everything coming.

Bonus features are pretty good. The DVD comes with a feature-length commentary track with Moretz and director J Blakeson and two making-of featurettes: “Inside The 5th Wave” and “Sammy on the Set.”

Upgrade to the Blu-ray and you add three more featurettes -- “The 5th Wave Survival Guide,” “Training Squad 53” and “Creating a New World” -- plus deleted scenes and a gag reel.

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Review: "The 5th Wave"

I think we all know the essential ingredients of these science fiction young adult book-to-film adaptions by now:

• Post-apocalyptic dystopia
• Female protagonist who's "not special" but is really the Chosen One
• Teen (and younger) recruits inducted into military-style training and combat
• Smirking adult overlord pulling the strings
• Supernatural abilities/challenges
• An inordinate number of dreamy boys wandering about

"The 5th Wave" isn't the worst of these, nor is it the best, but it suffers from following three "Hunger Games," and two "Divergent" movies. Not to mention five "Twilight" flicks, which eschew the apocalypse but tick everything else off the list. Or two "Maze Runner" movies, which simply swap out the gender of the main character.

It's dragged down by a glum sameness, and the sense that it's a cut-rate knockoff.

Genre pictures tend to be formulaic, but these YA sci-fi movies literally seem to be built on an identical formula from which filmmakers seem afraid to diverge.

In all of them, though, what's constant is that young people hold the key to the world's salvation. And that love will find a way to insert itself into the proceedings, whether it belongs there or not.

Chloë Grace Moretz, one of the most interesting film actors under age 20, plays Cassie Sullivan, a self-described ordinary kid in an ordinary town. Then a giant alien spaceship appears over the Earth one day, uncommunicative and mysterious. The intentions of "The Others" -- really original name, idn't it? -- are soon made clear by a series of attacks aimed at wiping out humans while preserving the planet.

First an electromagnetic pulse takes out all our tech. Then rising waters flood the cities near the coast or major lakes. Then a super version of avian flu. And so on, until not that many people are left, struggling to survive -- and competing to do it. A shocking opening scene shows Cassie blowing away a wounded guy.

"How do you rid the world of humans? First your rid the humans of their humanity," she narrates.

The fifth and final wave is the most devious: the Others, which are described as bug-like parasites, infiltrate human hosts and send them out to kill remaining survivors.

Luckily, the Army has finally gotten its act together and come to the rescue. They arrive at the refugee camp where Cassie and her family are living, with promises of shelter, protection and training for the final fight to come. It seems kids make the best recruits because it's easier to detect whether they've been infected than adults.

Maria Bellow plays a hardcase sergeant with a deathly pallor who shows the youngsters the ugly face of the enemy. The commander is the stern but charismatic Colonel Vosch (Liev Schreiber). Cassie herself gets left behind during the roundup, but her young brother Sammy (Zackary Arthur) is taken. She's determined to be reunited with him but there are... setbacks.

Nick Robinson plays Ben Parish, who was Cassie's big crush back in high school before the Others came. Now he's selected as squadron leader, though he butts heads with headstrong emo ragegirl Ringer (Maika Monroe).

Meanwhile, Cassie is wounded and nursed back to health by Evan Walker (Alex Roe), whose dimples blow away even Ben's. He's living in the woods by himself, but has some secrets for Cassie to discover.

There's a big twist about two-thirds of the way through the film, which I guessed pretty early in the going, and you probably will, too. Also a somewhat smaller twist... which is also telegraphed in a major way.

Director J Blakeson -- that's sic; he's too cool for punctuation, apparently -- and a trio of screenwriters keep things moving at a brisk pace, and manage to present reasonably distinct characters. Moretz is the strong point, able to reflects aspects of vulnerability and determination without seeming like a two-dimensional movie construct.

The kissy stuff is just death, though, interrupting the plot just as it's getting into third gear.

I haven't read the novel by Rick Yancey upon which it was based, but it's no surprise that it is a trilogy like its YA sci-fi brethren. So that means if you're looking for a satisfying conclusion to this story, we're just getting rolling here.

Assuming, that is, "The 5th Wave" does well enough to recoup its $38 million budget -- about half that of the first "Hunger Games" and "Divergent" movies -- and post a reasonable profit. Which isn't a sure thing: just in the past three years cinematic adaptations of "Mortal Instruments," "The Host" and "The Giver" all had modest-to-weak debuts that doomed the chance of sequels.

Based on this movie, I'd put the chances of a 6th wave at 50/50 at best.

DVD review: "The Soloist"

I don't usually do this sort of thing. But if you're one of those people who skipped going to see "The Soloist" in theaters -- and judging by its modest box office receipts, that's most of you -- then you owe it to yourself to see this movie on video.

The best drama of the first half of 2009, "The Soloist" is not a crowd-pleasing film that hits the expected inspirational notes in its tale of two fractured souls. It's the story of a pair of men who are each in their own way damaged as humans, and find a bit of solace in their unexpected friendship.

But they do not fundamentally change as people. As the end credits roll, Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr., in a career-capping performance) is still a lonely newspaper columnist cut off from those around him, and Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx) is still suffering from schizophrenia, and playing his music on the streets.

What makes their journey indispensible is the exploration of how their friendship gives them a sense of meaning that allows them to carry on, despite their differing challenges. Lopez writes about Ayers in his column, and Ayers is allowed to deepen his passion for music.

The DVD arrives with a healthy set of extras. There's a 20-minute making-of documentary, five deleted scenes, a short featurette with the real Nathaniel Ayers and Steve Lopez, a look at the dire homeless situation in Los Angeles, and a short animated film about a woman who loses her home.

All of this is somewhat rote, although the commentary track by director Joe Wright is refreshing for his tendency to ramble on amusingly about what inspired him while shooting particular scenes. One interesting revelation is that while Wright encouraged his actors to improvise dialogue, Foxx's disjointed speeches and strange verbal associations were taken directly from Susannah Grant's screenplay.

Movie: B+
Extras: B