Justified 

A 6-part series developed for TV by Graham Yost

Starring Timothy Olyphant, Nick Searcy, and Joelle Carter

Available on various streaming services, including Netflix and Amazon Prime

The TV series, comprising 78 episodes, premiered on FX on March 16, 2010 and concluded on April 14, 2015. Like the novel Raylan (reviewed above), the series focuses on a recurring character created by Elmore Leonard – played brilliantly in the series by Timothy Olyphant.

I watched some of it last year. And since I read the book, I’m back to watching it again.

Critical Reception 

* “A compelling and complex series.” (The Guardian/UK)

* “This isn’t just some rote crime procedural. It’s the Hatfields and the McCoys, but with federal agents, mob bosses, drug dealers, and rocket launchers. What else do you need?” (Dennis Tang, GQ)

* “The series never quite earns its gushiest accolades… but it has qualities all its own: in an age of cable gravitas, it’s genuinely funny, with the pungent eccentricity of Elmore Leonard’s universe of odd birds.” (Emily Nussbaum, The New Yorker)

Vice 

Starring Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Steve Carell, and Sam Rockwell

Directed by Adam McKay

Released in theaters Dec. 25, 2018

Available on various streaming services, including Netflix and Amazon Prime

Last night, I watched Vice. I had heard it was good. And that Christian Bale did an amazing job personifying Dick Cheney, a man that I believed, from everything I had previously read about him, was a deplorable human being. The film didn’t change my impression greatly, but it did leave me with a fuller sense of who he was and why he did what he did.

What I also appreciated about Vice was the approach the creative team took in making it. Rather than presenting a strongly fixed political viewpoint, which I was expecting, they used a clever dramatic device: a voiceover from an unintroduced narrator who peppered his narrative with subtlety snide remarks along the way. Snide enough to provide their political perspective (leaning to the left), but subtle enough to allow a libertarian or conservative viewer to go with the flow.

Vice doesn’t do everything it might have done if it were more ambitious. It doesn’t tackle the big picture – the complexity of political corruption — in an entirely convincing or satisfactory way. But, in fairness, that’s not what the film is trying to do. It’s trying to provide an explanation of how power, political power, corrupts. And it does so by depicting Cheney not as a Machiavellian monster, but as a very ordinary man.

And that makes it much more disturbing.

Critical Reception 

While the performances were universally acclaimed, the film polarized critics. Some considered it to be one of the best films of the year; others thought it was one of the worst.

* “What is perhaps most remarkable about Bale’s and Adams’s performances is that they supply depth and nuance to a film whose director appears to have had no appetite for either quality.” (Christopher Orr, The Atlantic)

* “When a movie’s premise is that its subject single-handedly moulded recent history, you want more depth and grandeur than this one provides.” (Matthew Norman, London Evening Standard)

* “It’s an ugly story of corruption, which wears a clown mask to make its horrors more palatable. And it works, both as a comedy and a scathing indictment of Cheney.” (Adam Graham, Detroit News)

* “In Adam McKay’s free-ranging, tone-shifting, darkly funny, super-meta, hit-and-miss, absurdist biopic Vice, Bale nails it as the resilient, backstabbing, front-stabbing, ruthlessly ambitious Cheney.” (Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times)

You can watch the trailer here.

Argo (2012)

Directed by Ben Affleck

Starring Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin, and John Goodman

Available on various streaming services, including Netflix and Amazon Prime

I saw Argo when it came out in 2012. I remembered it as being intense – almost nerve-wracking. And that’s an accomplishment, because it’s based on true events. I was aware of those events and, thus, how the story would end. But, as Aristotle pointed out, that’s the sign of a good drama. You can be familiar with the characters. You can know what happens. And yet, it will grip you and stay with you for days or weeks or sometimes years!

Argo did that for me. And credit must be given to the actors. But above all, IMHO, to the director. In this case, a young actor and unproven director named Ben Affleck.

The Plot 

On Nov. 4, 1979, during the Carter administration, 52 American citizens, including six diplomats, were held hostage by Iranian terrorists in the US embassy in Tehran for 444 days. It was all over the news. What wasn’t in the news was that just before the embassy was taken over, nine embassy workers snuck out and made their way to the Canadian embassy, where they stayed hidden while the CIA tried to figure out how to bring them home.

What I Liked About It 

* The cinematography: It sometimes felt a bit theatrical – in the sense of a stage play. This was typically when the characters were indoors and seated around a table. But it had the advantage of bringing the interactions of the actors closer to the camera, which gave their conversations more intensity.

* The direction: The movie has a docudrama feeling that, while not overbearing, does add to the verisimilitude and urgency of every scene. Kudos to a young Affleck.

* The editing: Brilliant. The cuts. The timing of the scenes. There was never a single minute that felt unnecessary or lax or elongated.

* The photography: Lots of little tricks that helped enhance the paranoid feeling throughout.

* The script: It could have been, but wasn’t, a good-guys vs. bad-guys story. It acknowledged the meddling of the US in Iran’s affairs to secure its private and geopolitical interests.

What I Didn’t Like So Much 

The backstory on the main character – the good dad trying to hold together a broken family. A little cliché.

Critical Reception 

Argo was nominated for seven Oscars and ended up winning three of them, including Best Picture. It also won the top prize at the Golden Globes and British Film Academy Awards.

* “Ben Affleck has delivered a knuckle-muncher of a thriller and a satire on Hollywood, both in one unlikely package.” (Kate Muir, Times/UK)

* “If there’s one lesson to be gleaned from director Ben Affleck’s relentlessly tense, painstakingly detailed Argo, it’s that we should consider the possibility that our history has been manipulated more than many of us would care to admit.” (Jason Buchanan, TV Guide)

* “Argo has that solid, kick-the-tires feel of those studio films from the 70s that were about something but also entertained. Only it’s as laugh outright amusing as it is sobering.” (Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post)

You can watch the trailer here.

And click here to read an article about the historical accuracy of the movie.

Directed by Bruno Dumont

Starring Léa Seydoux, Blanche Gardin, and Benjamin Biolay

Released in theaters Dec. 10, 2021

Available to rent or buy on various streaming services, including Amazon Prime

K and I like to spend an hour or so in the evening watching TV shows and movies together. By together, I mean we are next to one another. Each on our own iPad.

I’d like to spend more time watching the same shows with K so we can talk about them. But the current protocol is for me to suggest a movie from my list and for her to respond, yes or no. The problem: My list doesn’t often overlap with hers. And if the movie I suggest isn’t already on her list, her answer is usually no.

Last night, we chose a movie from her list. And we watched it together.

France is a French movie about a TV journalist. I thought it was good, although nothing about it was entirely comprehensible. It has a point of view. I think. And it has a very charismatic lead actor. But the direction is both too retro-artsy and too avant-garde for my comfort zone. It’s a film that gets you thinking the next day, which is great. But mostly by raising such questions as, “Why didn’t her husband say a single thing to her about the front-page tabloid report on her indiscretion?”

I recommend France, but with a caveat. It may leave you with the same level of confusion as it left us. And it was panned by several critics who saw it as a Black Comedy, which it is not.

Still, it was serious and interesting and engaging. I’d give it 3.75 out of 5 stars.

The Plot: 

Léa Seydoux stars as France de Meurs, a seemingly unflappable superstar TV journalist whose career, home life, and psychological stability are turned upside-down after she carelessly drives into a young delivery man on a busy street. This triggers a series of self-reckonings as well as a strange romance that proves impossible to shake. As France attempts to slow down and retreat into a simpler, anonymous life, her fame continues to pursue her.

What I Liked About It: 

All the things it didn’t do, including make clear the auteur’s view of French media and its darlings. I also very much liked the face of Léa Seydoux, who plays the lead, and the banter between her and Blanche Gardin, who plays Lou, her producer/agent/friend and booster.

What I Didn’t Like So Much: 

Several of the “scenic” shots that lasted 10 to 15 seconds longer than I felt they should have, and some close-ups that were three to four seconds too long.

Critical Reception 

* “Something here feels lost in translation. France is like trying to complete a puzzle when one of the pieces is missing.” (Adam Graham, Detroit News)

* “Even when it’s outlining its own ideas more through rhetoric than character, France keeps us on our toes regarding what’s around the corner.” (Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune)

* “In part because of the depth of Seydoux’s performance, the film becomes less an allegory of a nation and more a gripping character study, a portrait of a mask of personal and professional regard slowly slipping away.” (Mark Olsen, Los Angeles Times)

* “For those willing to take it seriously, there’s a lot here to unpack. The rest will probably just reach for the remote.” (Peter Debruge, Variety)

You can watch the trailer here.

The Gray Man

Directed by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo

Starring Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans, and Ana de Armas

Released in theaters July 15, 2022; now streaming on Netflix

This past Monday, I watched The Gray Man. K warned me against watching it. She told me it got nothing but terrible reviews. And, as it turned out, it mostly did. But I was exhausted from work, and felt the need for some mindless entertainment. “I’m going to give it five minutes,” I told her. And I watched the entire thing.

Not because it was any good. But because it achieved my purpose in giving it a go: It completely distracted me for two solid hours. It was bad in many ways, but it was never dull. And at the end, I had to admit, I liked it.

The Plot 

The movie has no plot. Here’s how I’d describe it: Imagine the first five minutes of any James Bond you’ve ever seen and multiply it by 10. Then keep it going, without rhyme or reason, for 120 minutes.

Just to give you an idea, so you’ll be prepared: One of the two principals, a 110-pound woman, runs around a compound being shot at by dozens of machine guns, carrying a rocket launcher on her back, taking down helicopters and killing at least three dozen highly trained soldiers in less than three minutes.

Critical Reception 

* “All that effort and all that money should have paid for a better screenplay.” (Robert Levin, Newsday)

* “It’s a big, noisy, explosive adrenaline rush – a live-action spin on that old MAD magazine comic, ‘Spy vs. Spy’ – and about as deep.” (Gary M. Kramer, Salon)

* “It’s kind of like watching a movie that’s a trailer for itself.” (Peter Rainer, NPR)

You can watch the trailer here. 

Delicious 

Release date (USA): Jan. 14, 2022

Directed by Eric Besnard

Starring Gregory Gadebois, Isabelle Carre, and Benjamin Lavernhe

Available on various streaming services, including Amazon Prime

The Plot 

France, 1789, just before the Revolution. With the help of a young woman, a chef who has been sacked by his master finds the strength to free himself from his position as a servant and open what could be the first modern restaurant in France.

Delicious is certainly a “foodie” movie, along the lines of Chef and Julie and Julia. But it’s also the story of a prideful but talented man who manages to reinvent his career and his personal life through a relationship he develops with a woman who pesters him into taking her on as an apprentice as he tries to eke out a living in a rural inn, making meals for weary travelers.

What I Liked About It 

Great production and costume design, artistic cinematography, what feels like an authentic period drama, and a sweet and uplifting story.

Interesting 

One of the most enjoyable aspects of the film is the conceit that it is the story of how the French “restaurant” was invented. Apparently not true.

Critical Reception 

* “A sweet and savory tribute to food, pleasure, and égalité at a particularly piquant moment in French history.” (New York Times)

* “Delicious is far more than tasty eye candy. Strip back the inescapably gobsmacking palette, and you have an enveloping story of regret, freedom, and will set against the backdrop of pre-revolutionary France.” (James Hanton, Outtake Magazine)

* ”You could do a lot worse than this well-intentioned tale of mirthful mouthfuls and other appetites.” (Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times)

You can watch the trailer here.

Christine 

World premiere Jan. 23, 2016, Sundance Film Festival

Written by Craig Shilowich

Directed by Antonio Campos

Starring Rebecca Hall, Tracy Letts, and Michael C. Hall

Available on various streaming services, including Netflix and Amazon Prime

I heard about this movie in 2016, when it premiered at Sundance. It sounded like an exploitation project, so I decided not to watch it. Then, last week, it appeared in my “recommended for you” feed from Amazon Prime. Something about the poster – this young woman sitting, Mona Lisa-like, at a news desk in front of a camera – drew me in.

It was riveting. Disturbing. Moving. Credit goes to Antonio Campos, who directed it, and to an excellent cast. But mostly to Rebecca Hall, who did an amazing job depicting the protagonist.

The True Story the Movie Was Based On 

Christine Chubbuck was a reporter at a Sarasota television station, where she handled community affairs news. In 1974, at the age of 29, she killed herself on air.

During the first eight minutes of her program that morning, Chubbuck covered three national news stories and then a shooting at a local restaurant the previous day. The film reel of the shooting had jammed, so Chubbuck shrugged it off and said on-camera, “In keeping with the WXLT practice of presenting the most immediate and complete reports of local blood and guts news, TV 40 presents what is believed to be a television first. In living color, an exclusive coverage of an attempted suicide.” She then she pulled a gun from her purse and shot herself in the head.

Interesting 

Craig Shilowich, the producer and screenwriter, decided to make the movie after reading Chubbuck’s story online. It fascinated him, he said, because he had struggled with depression for seven years in the wake of 9/11. He was especially interested Chubbuck’s pre-suicide struggle. He interviewed some of her former newsroom colleagues and read news stories to build what he could with hard facts. The rest, he said, was imagined.

Critical Reception 

The movie, not surprisingly, received medium to very favorable reviews. But Rebecca Hall’s performance was praised universally. She was nominated for dozens of (and won several) best-actor awards at various film festivals.

* “Far from the austere death march it might threaten to be on paper, this is a thrumming, heartsore, sometimes viciously funny character study, sensitive both to the singularities of Chubbuck’s psychological collapse and the indignities weathered by any woman in a 1970s newsroom.” (Guy Lodge, Variety)

* “Hall makes it impossible to look away from this portrait of a woman brought to the heartbreaking conclusion that she’s beyond hope.” (David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter)

* “Rebecca Hall gives one of the great performances of the year… in Christine, an intense, stomach-turning, unblinking drama.” (Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times)

* “A compelling drama that is simultaneously respectful and provocative.” (Tara Brady, Irish Times)

You can watch the trailer here.

And click here for an interview with Rebecca Hall about the life of Christine Chubbuck.

About Christine Chubbuck 

Chubbuck spoke to her family at length about her struggles with depression and suicidal tendencies. She had attempted to overdose on drugs in 1970 and frequently referred to that event.

Her focus on her lack of intimate relationships is generally considered to be the driving force for her depression. Her mother noted that “her suicide was simply because her personal life was not enough.” Her brother Greg agreed that she had trouble connecting socially. He believed her constant self-deprecation for being “dateless” contributed to her ongoing depression.

About Rebecca Hall 

Rebecca Maria Hall is an English actress and film director. She made her first onscreen appearance at age 10 in the 1992 television adaptation of The Camomile Lawn, directed by her father, Sir Peter Hall. She got her breakthrough role in Christopher Nolan’s thriller The Prestige. In 2008, she starred in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress. Hall then appeared in a wide array of films.

Hall made her directorial debut with Passing (2021), receiving critical acclaim. She has also made several notable appearances on British television. She won the British Academy Television Award for Best Supporting Actress for the 2009 miniseries Red Riding: 1974. In 2013, she was nominated for the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress for her performance in BBC Two’s Parade’s End.

An “enraged letter” from Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul to his editor at Knopf, Sonny Mehta

Copy editors are an essential cog in the wheel of publishing. Despite this, their relationship with the author can sometimes be a strained one. Case in point, this angry letter from Nobel Prize-winning author V.S. Naipaul, which he fired off after receiving his edited manuscript from an apparently overzealous copy editor.

10 May 1988

Dear Sonny,

The copy-edited text of A Turn in the South came yesterday; it is such an appalling piece of work that I feel I have to write about it. This kind of copy-editing gets in the way of creative reading. I spend so much time restoring the text I wrote (and as a result know rather well). I thought it might have been known in the office that after 34 years and 20 books I knew certain things about writing and didn’t want a copy-editor’s help with punctuation or the thing called repetition….

It happens that English – the history of the language – was my subject at Oxford. It happens that I know very well that these so-called “rules” have nothing to do with the language and are really rules about French usage. The glory of English is that it is without these court rules: it is a language made by the people who write it. My name goes on my book. I am responsible for the way the words are put together. It is one reason why I became a writer.

Every writer has his own voice. (Every serious or dedicated writer.) This is achieved by the way he punctuates; the rhythm of his phrases; the way the writing reflects the processes of the writer’s thought: all the nervousness, all the links, all the curious associations. An assiduous copy-editor can undo this very quickly, can make A write like B and Ms C.

And what a waste of spirit it is for the writer, who is in effect re-doing bits of his manuscript all the time instead of giving it a truly creative, revising read. Consider how it has made me sit down this morning, not to my work, but to write this enraged letter.

Yours,

Vidia

(From The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul by Patrick French. Source: Letters of Note)

Uncle Frank 

World premiere Jan. 25, 2020 at the Sundance Film Festival

Written and directed by Alan Ball

Starring Paul Bettany and Sophia Lillis

Available on Amazon Prime

Part coming-of-age story, part road-trip, part time piece, Uncle Frank is a mostly feel-good movie about a young southern woman in the 1970s whose transition to adulthood is complicated by learning that her favorite uncle is gay.

What I Liked About It

* Great performances by Bettany and Lillis.

* It could have been just a feel-good movie. But it is, in the end, better than that.

* It was a good reminder of how closeted homosexuality was in the 1970s.

What I Didn’t Like So Much 

Knowing Ball’s work beforehand (see About Alan Ball, below), I was expecting a bit more irony and originality than Uncle Frank delivered.

Critical Reception 

Uncle Frank was nominated for and/or won many festival awards, but did not snag any of the majors.

* “Uncle Frank doesn’t have the witty indirectness of American Beauty or Ball’s TV classic Six Feet Under, but it has a strong and very convincing performance from Bettany.” (Peter Bradshaw, Guardian)

* “It’s a poignant dysfunctional family drama laced with warmth, sadness, humor, and hope.” (Randy Myers, San Jose Mercury News)

* “Uncle Frank, a finely acted, often deeply emotional period piece that, despite its share of strong moments, stacks the deck too much for its own dramatic good.” (Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times)

You can watch the trailer here.

Interesting 

Uncle Frank came out (no pun intended) in 2020 – a year after Alan Ball’s American Beauty won five Oscars, including Best Picture.

About Alan Ball

Uncle Frank is not an autobiography, Ball said. But it was, he admitted, autobiographically inspired. Ball grew up and went to college in the South (Georgia and Florida). He escaped to New York City, where being gay was more accepted.

After American Beauty and Uncle Frank, Ball developed Six Feet Under, True Blood, and the short-lived Here and Nowfor HBO.

The Courier 

Released in theaters Mar. 19, 2021

Directed by Dominic Cooke

Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Merab Ninidze, and Rachel Brosnahan

Available on various streaming services, including Amazon Prime

I’m getting into Cold War books and stories lately. Why now? Perhaps because we’ve all come to realize that the Cold War did not end in Dec. 1991, as advertised. No. It is very much going on today. And the potential consequences are as grave today as they were in 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The Courier is a movie based, mostly, on actual events. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Greville Wynne, a British businessman that was recruited by British and US intelligence services to help them spy on the Russians. His job was to courier messages to and from Oleg Penkovsky, a Russian official. (Penkovsky was hoping that by giving secrets to the West, he could avert the nuclear war that seemed to be imminent.)

The Courier is not a great movie, but it is a good one that does a good job of conveying – in the direction, the lighting, the costuming, and the sound – the anxious, noirish, almost theatrical mood of the world back then on the eve of destruction.

Interesting: Fact and Fiction 

Although the major events of the movie are factual, there are a number of elements that were fabricated. Not by the screenwriter, interestingly, but by the source of the plot: Wynne himself. Apparently, after he was returned to England on a prisoner exchange, he had trouble finding good work to support his family. So, he became, as one critic put it, a “rent-a-spokesperson for all kinds of espionage stuff.” He made appearances in the media about anything related to spy craft. Even on subjects he knew little about. “[Wynne], bless him, for all his wonderful work, was a menace and a fabricator,” said Nigel West, an expert on British and American intelligence organizations. “He just couldn’t tell the truth!”

Critical Reception 

* “Benedict Cumberbatch delivers a masterclass in ‘acting in a vacuum’ with this disappointing historical spy drama that fails on almost every level except for the dazzling performance of its leading man.” (Kevin Maher, Times/UK)

* “Masterful in every detail… completely compelling and one of the best films of 2021.” (Michael Medved)

* “Combine impressive production values and a ratcheting up of suspense, and you’re in for a solid genre entry. Don’t expect more than that.” (Randy Myers, San Jose Mercury News)

* “If there’s such a thing as a Cold War Comfort Movie and let’s say there is, The Courier fits the bill perfectly, ticking off many of the familiar boxes of the genre.” (Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times)

You can watch the trailer here.