Review: "Seberg"

Jean Seberg was an "It Girl" before we really had a name for that. She was a struggling American actress who went overseas and became an overnight success in the French New Wave, with an iconic role in "Breathless."

With her short pixie blonde haircut and torrent of real-life affairs and marriages, Seberg was also on the bleeding edge of the sexual revolution. Her career stalled in the late 1960s and early '70s, and by 1979 she was dead at the age of 40 in an apparent suicide.

Her story has largely been forgotten, but the biopic "Seberg" gives us a fuller telling, including the reason for her disgrace: a vicious and deliberate campaign by the FBI to discredit Seberg for her alliance with the Black Panthers, including her relationship with leader Hakim Jamal.

Kristen Stewart plays Seberg in a nuanced role that reflects her long, slow slide into paranoia and dispiritedness. At the start of the story she is so powerful and independent, driving her expensive sports car into hostile black neighborhoods without any fear of reprisal. She is in command of her own choices.

By the end, she has been withered down to a fearful, spiteful creature who feels very much at the mercy of circumstances beyond her control.

Anthony Mackie plays Jamal, and their early romance -- while both are married -- is quite torrid and erotic. There's one red-hot scene where they practice her acting lines with a real gun as Seberg casually flaunts her body to him: part enticement, part declaration of her sole ownership of her womanhood.

Otto Preminger picked Seberg from obscurity as a teenager to star in "Saint Joan," a traumatic experience both emotionally and physically. She learned to move past her victimhood, using men as they seek to use her.

But then the feds get their hooks into her, for really the slimmest of reasons. It was their (illegal) practice in those days to infiltrate and discredit upstart political organizations that threatened the status quo. Their surveillance of Jamal reveals their affair, and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (never seen but felt) seeks to use it to sow dissention among the Panthers.

Jack O'Connell plays Jack Solomon, the young FBI agent put in charge of the case. At first he sees it as part of the job, but comes to resist the hard tactics against a woman choosing her own causes and associations. He eventually takes steps to warn her, though they are not accepted for obvious reasons.

Vince Vaughn plays the mercenary partner, drinking hard and caring little about anything except following orders. His ethos is simple: do the job, reap the rewards. Colm Meaney plays a higher-up who has to crack the whip on Solomon's waffling.

Zazie Beetz plays Dorothy Jamal, Hakim's wife, who can accept a certain amount of philandering from her revolutionary spouse but draws the line at a famous white (in her eyes) dilettante. The women's eventual clash is bone-deep in its impact.

It's a well-acted movie, a slow-burn dramatic thriller than some may need time to warm up to. Director Benedict Andrews and screenwriters Anna Waterhouse and Joe Shrapnel opt for mood and lingering moments over move-the-ball plotting.

My main complaint about the film is it becomes too much the story of a G-man's conflict about participating in a starlet's destruction than the psychological terror she is experiencing. The movie needed to keep the focus on Seberg with Solomon as a tertiary character, but instead the middle section in particular almost feels like "The Lives of Others."

The revelation of the campaign against Seberg was actually revealed by the FBI literally days after her death, and figured into Congressional investigations of the time. her memory was pretty well mislaid after that, until now.

A disclaimer: I saw "Seberg" almost three months ago during the busy runup to the awards cycle. I didn't have time to rewatch it before writing this review, so my recollection for details may have frayed though I think my emotional memory is solid enough to write about it. Do with this information as you will.

Video review: "Joker"

Like a lot of movies centered around a singular great performance, “Joker” suffers somewhat from being so dominated by its central character. This is, of course, the madman villain from the Batman franchise, indelibly played by Heath Ledger and less so by Jared Leto.

Now Joaquin Phoenix tackles the role in a grim, R-rated psychological drama that seems barely tethered to the comic book world that spawned it. Like Phoenix’s other amazingly off-kilter performances of recent years -- “The Master,” “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot” -- he brings such singular, loopy energy to the role that you come away believing no other actor could’ve played the part.

You could argue “Joker” is a comedy, especially as it’s directed and co-written (with Scott Silver) by Todd Phillips, best known for gross-out comedies like “The Hangover” trilogy. Certainly there is a dark undercurrent of humor here, with Phoenix playing Arthur Fleck, a pitiable clown whose dream is to make the whole world laugh.

But there’s so much of a creepy vibe as we follow Arthur on his journey toward becoming the Joker that you’re more likely to grimace than chuckle.

He lives with his mother (Frances Conroy), a feeble-minded invalid, and yearns after his down-the-hall neighbor, Sophie (Zazie Beetz). Just as things start to look up for him, Arthur begins a long spiral into madness and mayhem.

Robert De Niro plays Murray Franklin, the TV talk show host Arthur idolizes. When video of Arthur bombing at stand-up comedy goes viral, Murray is among those to pile on.

I’ve heard the complaint that “Joker” somehow idolizes “incels,” a term first used to describe, then insult, men who are unable to have relationships with women. I learn this has become an online community where men embrace the term and project their negative emotions on others, often in misogynist ways.

These critics must have not seen the movie I did. The idea that “Joker” is a celebration of pathetic loser who feels squeezed out by society is pretty bonkers from where I sit. Examining how a person reaches a place of utter nihilism is an act of creative bravery, not indulgence.

But maybe “Joker” is the perfect reflection of our age, in which we are urged to shun that which we don’t understand rather than engage with it.

Video extras are a mite disappointing, consisting of just four documentary featurettes:

• “Joker: Vision & Fury”
• “Becoming Joker”
• “Please Welcome… Joker!”
• “Joker: A Chronicle of Chaos”

Movie:

Extras: 

Review: "Deadpool 2"

The first “Deadpool” was the naughty, foul-mouthed cousin of the Marvel Comic Universe -- sharing much DNA but separated by sensibilities and different studios. One of the running jokes of the lively sequel is that they can’t afford any of the “expensive” other heroes to share the screen as they did in the latest “Avengers” flick… though they manage to sneak in some cameos.

Once again, unkillable killer Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds), aka Deadpool, visits the mansion of the X-Men school, only to find the same two downmarket mutants around: the steely Colossus (voice of Stefan Kapičić) and the firecracker teen Negasonic. Though there’s a quick peek at some of the other X-folk hiding out in an antechamber.

It’s another slapdash, freewheeling train of one-liners and ultra-violence, with Deadpool as our merry ringmaster. If you’ll remember from the last movie, Wilson was a special forces soldier turned mercenary who was experimented upon nastily, rendering him a scarred monster who can nonetheless heal virtually any wound.

The thing about Deadpool isn’t that he’s indestructible -- he’s most very destructible. He gets destructed, or deconstructed, on several occasions, only to knit himself back together. In an early sequence he decides to blow himself up over some sad occasions, only to have the pieces bundled up to reform again.

Without giving anything away, Deadpool finds himself in need of a new purpose in life, and latches onto a 14-year-old mutant from New Zealand, Russell (Julian Dennison), who dubs himself Fire Fist. (He likes the kid too much to tell him how awful the moniker is.) He’s a troubled youngster heading down a dark path.

Around this same time, a strange cyborg dude from the future, Cable (Josh Brolin, playing his second super-baddie this month), pops up to take out Russell for some crimes his adult self committed. He’s got a metal arm, robotic eagle eye and a surly attitude. It becomes a running battle, with Cable wielding a variety of futuristic weapons and Deadpool his ability to take a punch and give a quip.

When things don’t work out with joining the X-Men, he even decides to start his own super-team, naming it X-Force for reasons of gender equality, and because he couldn’t think of anything more original. It’s a gangly crew of low-level mutants and one extraterrestrial, although Domino (Zazie Beetz), a churlish lass who claims her power is “good luck,” seems like a keeper.

The film is directed by David Leitch, a veteran stunt coordinator who made the leap behind the camera with “Atomic Blonde,” which for my money was even better than the similar “John Wick” flicks. The screenplay is a return of the same trio, Simon Kinberg, Lauren Shuler Donner and Reynolds himself.

The sequel has a few dead spots around the middle, though it’s still an insanely smart, fast-paced merry-go-round of fun and f-words. Deadpool again repeatedly breaks the fourth wall, commenting upon the movie as it unspools.

For instance, one background player from the last movie gets a brief, nervous speech, and Deadpool immediately declares, “No more speaking lines for you!”

Or, when Cable delivers another gravelly bit of doom dialogue: “You seem very dark. Are you sure you’re not from the DC Universe?” Before Colossus is about to go toe-to-toe with a very large, cult favorite villain, Deadpool announces “the big CGI fight.”

Make sure to stick around for the end credits, where Deadpool makes some unexpected appearances in related superhero venues, including one hilarious reprisal, which I’ll not spoil. “Just cleaning up the timelines,” he offers.

It’s not quite as funny or filthy as its predecessor. But “Deadpool 2” still has a gleeful sense of shamelessness to it that, at least in this little corner of the superhero genre, fits like leather spandex.