Such a good film; one of the best of the year. I really enjoyed it and I'm still thinking about it. It's an exciting thriller filled with sadness. All the characters are so human and so flawed and I found myself rooting for all of them and being repulsed at the same time. It's a very dark film about choices we all make and how our choices have lasting consequences. It would be easy to say it's a film about corporate corruption but it's really about the human experience. None of us are saints and none of us are villains. Our complex lives are the result of complex choices. Tilda Swinton gives one of the saddest and most complex performances I've ever seen. I want to cry when I think about. Rarely does acting feel like art to me but her performance is art. I don't even fully understand all the things she was doing. I think her character is British but she wants to sound American to fit in or something. I'm not sure. It's such an odd and beautiful performance. She plays a strong corporate executive; most actresses would have just played her as tough and conniving but Swinton gives us a tragic figure full of complex emotions; she's fragile, terrified, bitchy, evil, sweet, confused, ugly, beautiful, unsure, extremely confident. It's rare to see actors create performances this complex. I might revisit it again, today. The more I think about it the more moved I am. And Sydney Pollack is in it, who I love. And Clooney is very good, though lots of actors could've done equally fine work in the same role. The direction is incredibly old-school in a way that inspires me. No showing off, no silly editing, very classy, simple. And the best closing credits I've ever seen. At least that I can remember. I've never seen closing credits capture an audience quite the way these do. Go see this movie. It's commercial future looks shaky.
PS Tyler Perry is No. 1 this week with a movie that got panned and for the last two weeks it was another piece of crap, The Gameplan. Has America lost it's collective mind? I can't believe then anyone would see a 2nd Tyler Perry film after seeing a first one. I sat through his first pile of sad shit and I can't imagine ever returning. Are black audiences that starved for cinema? And the preview for The Gameplan was horrifyingly bad. It's all so perplexing.
And one more thing about Tyler Perry. My gaydar goes in to overdrive when I see him. I belive, and I have nothing to back this up other than a feeling, but I believe he is a hyper-closeted-gay- black-man that panders to straight-Christian-black audiences and they lap it up. That's what I think.
1 comment:
I really liked MICHAEL CLAYTON as well.
Tilda Swinton is an excellent actress and I appreciated the texture to her character. I do see her character as a villain, but a believable, multi-dimensional one. Once she orders her goons to go criminal, you can see her steely resolve slowly break down and guilt consumes her. The best villains are ones with plausible motives and needs for what they do along with emotional reactions or vulnerabilities that any person would have in their shoes.
But I never know whether to credit the actor or director for the performance without witnessing their interaction. I think Tilda Swinton has always been a great artist with the talent to flush out characters that way, but I've seen her 1-dimensional performances in crap like CHRONICLES OF NARNIA.
So I'd like to know if Swinton brought the texture to her MICHAEL CLAYTON role or if she had to be told to do that.
MICHAEL CLAYTON's direction is plain, simple and adequate. But it's probably a case of a first-time director playing it safe as opposed to directing brilliance.
http://imdb.com/name/nm0006904/
It's not creative or risky; it's slow and subdued in its pacing and music. That's okay for me, but several people in the anemic screening I was at walked out. The pedestrians included a lesbian couple who kept talking and kicking the back of my seat, however, so everything worked out well!
THE GAMEPLAN is cheesey nonsense for babies.
VARIETY's editor Peter Bart and producer Peter Guber were saying on SUNDAY MORNING SHOOTOUT they think GAMEPLAN is a success because it's the only uplifting movie in theaters lately.
They believe all the A-list films available for the rest of this year are too dark, too political and too heavy for mainstream America to embrace them.
It's a pity, because they're pretty good films so far. But they are downers.
I've never bothered with Tyler Perry, but if he keeps cranking out hits, I may have to check his stuff out. He seems like a poor man's Martin Lawrence who is already a poor man's Eddie Murphy, who's already pretty broke.
Being a huge fan of BARBERSHOP, Spike Lee and other black-oriented films, I'd like to think I'm not a racist and the reason Tyler Perry turns me off is because his stuff rips off other people's concepts.
Tyler Perry could be gay -- the trailer for WHY DID I GET MARRIED implies there is a black husband character coming out of the closet, too. I will report back after my roommate watches it ...
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