Review: "Bombshell"

If “Bombshell” looks like a bunch of Hollywood liberals teaming up for a vicious takedown of Fox News, the hated epitome of right-wing media, that’s because it is.

That doesn’t make it any less delicious or entertaining. And it’s as good a cinematic exploration aw I’ve seen of how sexual harassment is tolerated and even condoned.

Director Jay Roach’s last two films were a hagiography of lefty screenwriting icon Dalton Trumbo and a send-up of Republican congressional candidates. Screenwriter Charles Randolph won (deservedly) an Oscar for writing “The Big Short,” an angry and hilarious look at the housing lending crisis that set off the Great Recession.

They’re core members of the Liberal Hollywood Elite©.

And yet, “Bombshell” possesses layers and subtleties. It treats its characters as living, flesh-and-blood creatures full of complexities and contradictions. You may even be shocked to hear some of the Fox News women come out looking brave, even a little heroic.

You may have seen that freaky trailer where Margot Robbie, playing an ambitious up-and-comer at the network, is riding in an elevator. Then in walk Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson. They warily study each other through sidelong glances, the tension palpable, and you wonder how the hell the studio convinced Kelly and Carlson to portray themselves.

Except they didn’t. Kelly is played by Charlie Theron, and Carlson by Nicole Kidman. I’m not sure what kind of makeup or even possibly CGI effects were employed, but they look so much like the women they portray you’d swear there was some DNA swapping.

The voices are really good, too. Theron sounds so much like Kelly, with her upstate New York accent and odd word emphasis, it’s downright eerie. Kidman is great, too, though Carlson doesn’t have as distinct a speaking style to emulate.

These are showstopper performances that I’m sure will be remembered during the awards season.

The story follows along in 2016 during the last months of the tenure of Roger Ailes, the notorious political fixer-turned-news-mogul who ran Fox News from its inception. He’s played by John Lithgow in a naturalistic fat suit and facial prosthetics. You’d never call it a sympathetic portrait, but Lithgow manages to find the humanity inside the ogreish exterior.

Ailes believed in giving the audience what it wants, or at least what he’s convinced they wanted, which was right-wing opinion segments, short skirts and lots of yelling. He helped create Donald Trump as a viable candidate and then found himself tied to his yoke, as have so many others.

Robbie’s character, Kayla, is an amalgam of women used and abused by Ailes and a corporate culture that openly treated its on-air talent as sex objects. She begs Ailes for advice to launch her career, and they share a scene of pressure and submission that’s just devastating to watch.

Kate McKinnon plays Jess, a producer who befriends Kayla and has a brief romance with her. Jess is a liberal lesbian who hides her identity because she couldn’t get a job anywhere else but Fox News, and now no other network will hire her.

An excellent supporting cast includes Allison Janney, Connie Britton, Mark Duplass, Rob Delaney, Malcolm McDowell, Stephen Root and Liv Hewson.

The best part of the film is the middle section, where the word is out about Ailes’ disgusting behavior and the lawyers are circling. Rather than the walls closing in, the newsroom breaks down into a cheerleading squad led by Jeanine Pirro and a few others, handing out “Team Roger” T-shirts and insisting people wear them.

The #MeToo movement has sparked a lot of good things and also some predictable overreaching and backlash. This is basically the first mainstream movie to deal with the issue head-on, and it’s both chilling and exhilarating.

Many of us who haven’t been affected sit in our privileged perches and wonder how anyone could commit this kind of behavior, or why anyone puts up with it. “Bombshell” is a bravura portrait of how ambition, fear, lust and hypocrisy can combine in the most awful ways imaginable so that people feel trapped.

Video review: "The Artist"

Here's an interesting fact: three out of the last four winners of the Academy Award for Best Picture have been foreign-made. Though the latest, "The Artist," is somewhat debatable in that it was shot in Los Angeles with a few recognizable American actors in supporting parts. But the filmmakers and lead performers are French.

In actuality, "The Artist" is a really film that transcends borders. It's a love song to silent American films, as seen from across the Atlantic.

If you haven't already seen this wonderful movie -- easily the best of 2011 -- you may be put off by the knowledge that "The Artist" is silent and black-and-white. Don't be. While certainly artistic, this film isn't arty.

Instead, it's a gorgeous and emotionally transporting celebration of cinema. Jean Dujardin plays George Valentin, vainglorious king of Hollywood until the "talkies" invade and make him seem artistically antiquated. Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo) is the spitfire ingénue who lands a bit part in one of his movies, and turns into a big star herself.

Dujardin is a delight as the narcissistic but generous-hearted Valentin. With a pencil mustache and raconteur's smile, he's part Errol Flynn and part Gene Kelly -- especially during the smash musical finale.

Writer/director Michel Hazanavicius gives us a film that is self-aware but not self-absorbed. Foreign or not, "The Artist" is a triumph.

Extra features are commendable, if not as extensive as I might like.

There's a blooper reel and a Q&A with the cast and filmmakers. A half-dozen making-of featurettes explore topics like the film score and costumes to the Hollywood locations used throughout the film.

Movie: 4 stars out of four
Extras: 3 stars

Reeling Backward: "Time After Time" (1979)

Sigh. After my recent attempt at revisiting the time-traveling craze of the late 1970s and early '80s led me to watch the wrong movie, the mushy romance "Somewhere in Time," I thought I'd circle back and watch the movie I meant to see: 1979's "Time After Time." This film, which came out a year earlier, promised to be more of a straight action/fantasy than a kissy-kissy story.

Alas, it was another disappointment.

This was the debut feature film of director Nicholas Meyer, a novelist who segued into movies as a screenwriter. He would go onto a distinguished career, including directing "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan," universally recognized as the best in that series, and the sixth Trek movie, which was pretty good, too.

His screeningwriting career has outpaced his directorial efforts, with other notable script credits including "The Informant," "Sommersby," "The Prince of Egypt," the under-appreciated "The Human Stain," and "The Seven-Per-Cent Solution," based on his own book, for which he received his only Oscar nomination.

I saw "Time After Time" as a kid, and remembered as being a much darker film. It's a fanciful story about writer H.G. Wells chasing Jack the Ripper through time using a machine he built. David Warner made a lasting impression as the gentleman serial killer, but Malcolm MacDowell as the protagonist is something of a wet blanket -- a socialist dreamer who's disappointed that the future hasn't turned out to be the workers' utopia he'd imagined.

The premise, of course, is a total lark. The story is set in 1893, when Wells was 27 and had yet to write any of his famously futuristic novels. The first, of course, was "The Time Machine" in 1895, and the idea is supposed to be that Wells got the notion for his writings by traveling 86 years into the future. Never mind that Wells wasn't a scientist, and couldn't have successfully built a toaster oven, let alone a time-traveling machine.

But even if one swallows the time-traveling thing, not to mention the idea that Wells' best friend was secretly The Ripper, the story -- based on a novel by Karl Alexander -- just doesn't do all that much with the premise. Jack (actual name: Dr. John Leslie Stevenson) realizes the coppers are about to nab him, so he jumps into Wells' machine and dashes off to 1979. (Why he chose that date, other than it is the same year the movie came out, remains a total mystery.)

Fortunately, Wells designed the machine with an auto-return function that automatically brings the gizmo back unless one has a long reddish wand-key. He goes after John, making sure to stuff his pockets with money before the trip.

The biggest downside of the movie is that it focuses too much on the stuck-out-of-time aspect rather than the conflict between the two men. When Wells does finally catch up with John, he simply knocks on his hotel room door and demands that the killer return with him back to 1893 and face the authorities. Only a simpleton would expect a man responsible for dozens of murders to comply, so it's no surprise when John assaults Wells and dashes off.

Instead, the plot focuses too much on Wells' romance with Amy Robbins (Mary Steenburgen), a modern liberated woman who more or less throws herself at Wells. ("I'm practically raping you," she exclaims when Wells hesitates when their first date ends up with them in bed.) Needless to say, The Ripper soon focuses his ire on her, building up to the inevitable showdown, and of course the predictable moment where Wells has to tell Amy he's a time-traveler, which puts a kink in their sex life.

Given my reaction to "Somewhere in Time," one might reasonably conclude that I'm simply anti-romantic. I don't believe that's true, but I do object when movies brazenly introduce a character, usually a woman, into movies that don't require a romantic angle.

"Time After Time" is about hurtling oneself through the fourth dimension, experiencing gobsmacking culture shock and (in Wells' case) profound disappointment, while chasing the most infamous killer in history. That's not enough to build an engaging tale around? Why does there have to be a girl?

I should also mention that the movie romanticizes Jack the Ripper by turning him into a standard-issue killer who slits women's throats or stabs them in the torso. Though there is one moderately gruesome scene where the police find a body they think is Amy's, including a severed hand. That's curious, since John is always show favoring small, scalpel-like implements -- it'd be pretty hard to lop off a whole limb.

In reality The Ripper was the gruesomest of murderers, not just killing prostitutes but disemboweling them, removing the uterus or other organs, stuffing foreign objects in their mouths or body cavities. People who kill like that do so out of a fetishistic obsession, and we never really see why John is so obsessed with his bloody trade.

Warner's still a hoot, penetrating the screen with an icy stare. I also enjoyed the transformation of John from a three piece suit-wearing Victorian gent into a 1970s dude with a hippie flair, including one denim jeans-and-vest outfit, complete with large square sunglasses, that was probably considered quite fashionable at the time.

Yet another reason why, despite some terrific filmmaking, I still think the '70s represents the cultural nadir of America.

2 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "Aces High (1976)

As regular readers of this space may know, I have a long fascination with World War I aviation. I've continually sought out movies about pilots of that era to watch -- and mostly continue to be disappointed in what I've found. I'm afraid "Aces High," a 1976 film starring Malcolm McDowell that had stirred in me a great deal of anticipation, will be added to the list of less-than-sterling WWI dogfighting flicks.

The source of my interest started in an unlikely venue: video games. I was thrilled with the 1990 game "Red Baron," which offered a historically accurate portrayal of air combat from 1914 to 1918. From there, visits to the Smithsonian's Air & Space Museum and reading several books on the subject only increased my ardor for the derring-do of these 20th century knights jousting in the skies, often with an antiquated notion of chivalry.

A big part of my fascination also likely explains why so many of these films leave me wanting more. I loved researching the airplanes, guns and hardware of WWI air combat. Remember, barely a decade after the Wright brothers first flew, men were using the rickety contraptions in warfare. Technological innovation soars during times of war, as various sides try to gain the strategic upper hand -- in this case, by gaining tactical advantages in the air.

The introduction of a new model of plane could tip the tide of the battle in the skies, as pilots with now-inferior aircraft attempted to take on adversaries with faster or more maneuverable planes.

I liked the fact that in "Aces High" the pilots actually discuss the various airplanes, their capabilities and advantages. Most of the squadron uses R.A.F. S.E.5s, a mainstay of the British flying corp, while one of the older pilot favors the French Nieuport 17.

The combat sequences in the film are generally quite good -- showing the air duels from the perspective of the pilot's cockpit. I also appreciated the fact that director Jack Gold often shot two or more planes together instead of just using special effects. So we can see exactly how close the combatants in a dogfight really were. (Allegedly the film re-used some air combat footage from "The Blue Max" and a Roger Corman movie.)

McDowell plays Maj. John Gresham, commander of a British squadron headquartered in a dilapidated air field 10 miles from the front lines. Gresham is an excellent pilot and stern commander, relying on small core of veterans to see their missions a success. There is a constant stream of inexperienced recruits coming through who quickly die -- 14 days is the current average -- and the stress has driven Gresham to drinking heavily.

His right-hand man is Capt. Sinclair, whom everyone calls "Uncle," due to his being older and less brash than the cocky younger fellows. Sinclair is played by Christopher Plummer, in a subtle turn.

Things change when young Stephen Croft (Peter Firth) is assigned to the squadron. He was Gresham's protege when they were at school together, and his sister is engaged to the commander. Over the course of a week of increasingly dangerous missions, Croft goes from being completely inept in the cockpit to more confident, has his heart broken and sees his admiration of Gresham angrily rejected.

"Aces High" just never really comes together as a human story. Though the air fights are well done and engaging, the on-the-ground action relies on familiar tropes about young men at war. As a glimpse at the early history of aviation combat, it scores well, but as a complete story it's shooting blanks.

I've got a few more WWI aviation flicks in my Netflix queue -- maybe I'll get lucky someday.

2.5 stars out of four

Review: "The Artist"

Love, love, love!

For the first time in 2011, I have fallen, madly, for a movie. "The Artist" is a French film (but about, and largely of, Americans) that is in black-and-white and silent (!) to boot.

Never fear -- this is not a snooty art-house film intended only for people wearing black turtlenecks. It's a rapturous movie full of passion and artistry, self-aware but not self-absorbed. "The Artist" is about movie-making, in the way that great Hollywood movies have turned a loving (yet acerbic) gaze at themselves, like "Singin' in the Rain."

I cite "Singin'" because star Jean Dujardin reminded me very much of Gene Kelly in that film, with a heavy dash of Douglas Fairbanks Jr. thrown in. With a pencil mustache, slicked hair and rascal smile, he plays George Valentin, an aging matinee idol of silent films who finds his star falling with the advent of "talkies," or sound pictures.

At the same time, Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo) -- love that name -- the sparkly young ingénue who literally bumps into Valentine at one of his premiers and causes a stir, becomes the biggest light in Hollywood's new age of sound.

When I say that "The Artist" is silent, it is not of course absolutely lacking sound like the films before 1929, which were accompanied by a live orchestra or recorded music. Writer/director Michel Hazanavicius had the ingenious idea of showing us one of Valentin's movies first, operating under the familiar principle of demonstrative acting broken up by title cards for dialogue.

But then the camera pulls back to show the movie-within-a-movie being made -- but the people's mouths still flap soundlessly, and written dialogue provides their words for us.

Hazanavicius retains this charade throughout ... with two notable exceptions that fidget with the film's internal conventions.

The wonderful original score by Ludovic Bource is essential to the story, since virtually every second of film is accompanied by music. Bource also mixes in samples of scores from other movies -- the great Bernard Herrmann's eerie/gorgeous theme from "Vertigo," one of my favorite pieces of movie music, is employed beautifully in one pivotal scene.

There is a love affair between Valentin and Peppy, but it's pure and chaste. He's married, unhappily -- Penelope Ann Miller plays the wife, and the dissolution of their relationship is shown in a montage that pays homage to "Citizen Kane" -- and isn't the type to stray.

Although Valentin is undeniably a ham, and is overly fond of himself, he isn't a cad. He just loves the limelight, so when it's yanked away he folds into himself, like a flower denied the sun.

A number of recognizable American actors take supporting parts in the film, and it's a hoot to watch them attack silent acting. James Cromwell plays Valentin's doting chauffeur, who sticks by him even when his wages disappear. John Goodman is the chief at Kinograph Studios -- not an entirely bad fellow, but one who always knows where the greenbacks are. Missi Pyle plays a starlet tired of being upstaged by Valentin's showboating.

When the talkies invade, Valentin refuses to make the jump, insisting that audiences never needed to hear him talk before. It's stubborn pride, and even he knows this, but nothing can push him to compromise his artistic integrity.

It's an interesting exercise to consider exactly how serious an artist Valentin was. Truly, he made daffy little pictures in which he always played the handsome adventurer, accompanied by his smart little dog (who is his best friend in real life, too). Essentially, he starred in adventure serials that were already getting stale before sound pictures came along.

Hazanavicius harkens back to the first decades of movies -- even using the old-fashioned 1.66 aspect ratio -- with a mix of reverent nostalgia and modern ingenuity. "The Artist" isn't really a deep meditation on art and movies, but a joyful celebration of filmmaking and filmmakers.

4 stars out of four