Michael Clayton

"Michael Clayton" is a direct descendant of the corruption-themed thrillers of the seventies (such as "Serpico" and "Chinatown"), but it loses nothing in dropping the characteristic downer ending. With the possible exception of "Atonement," which I've still yet to see, "Clayton" is the least arty of the Best Picture nominees (in terms of style--not necessarily substance), but it's terse, slick, exciting and one hell of a polemical. Films like this sometimes go slack and take a pedantic piddle, but this one's tight, bouncy and smart. Tony Gilroy, the writer and director (this is his first go at the latter), has a knack for giving potentially-shopworn sentiments an entertaining kick (such as taking the profusion of anti-lawyer bigotries and turning them into "The Devil's Advocate"). He doesn't disappoint here; he draws out his characters and gives them so much to do in so little time (the movie spans less than a week) that the proficient actors in those parts can't but sparkle--it may be from exhaustion. It certainly looks that way with George Clooney (Clayton), the tired fixer who finally wants out (an old standard, but one that's frenetically enlivened here); he was at one time kindred to the broad hero of "Thank You for Smoking," but has finally crashed to planet earth. His situation is so bad it would be "Kafka-esque" if he had a spare moment to think it through. The only really substantial problem with this movie is that it has too many characters in too many places--some look like others and, though there's a tight Hollywood wrap-up, one's not entirely sure of everybody's affiliation at the end--but that's like saying the movie is too interesting. It doesn't give you the aesthetic thrill ride that "There Will Be Blood" does, but "Clayton" stays blissfully above the speed limit.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Terry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a wild ride, but in the end, an unsubstantial one. The movie becomes slack when Raoul Duke/Hunter Thompson (Johnny Depp) and Dr. Gonzo (Benicio Del Toro) go to Vegas for a second round; only bits and pieces match the zingy high of the first half, such as Thompson whipping his battered white Cadillac onto an airport runway, an ether walk (that Gilliam seems to have borrowed from his Monty Python days) and Thompson literally running into himself in San Francisco, 1965. The movie abandons the surreal social satire of the early scenes—the “electric snake” comes chiefly to mind—for not-so-subtle jabs at a square narc officer convention and muddled hoopla about the failure of the sixties and the American dream. This may be effective in the book, but in the movie the sixties spirit seems to have been squashed by meandering drug bingers like Gonzo and, to a lesser degree, Thompson. The fail-safe is that the movie is such a ripped quagmire that it seems to mean something, anyway—particularly if when you view the film, you’re going by its characters’ examples.

Regardless, the initial wackiness is as great as Brazil or 12 Monkeys and maybe even a little bit more disorienting; you literally stumble out of your seat when the movie’s done. And the actors are as willfully cartoonish as the direction. The movie’s decline is not ruinous; it’s merely a comparative letdown.

Thank You for Smoking

"Thank You for Smoking" leaves the kind of bitter taste in your mouth that cigarettes do. In its conception of the world everyone's either a sap or a douche bag. It's libertarianism taken to an extreme--a moral vacuum wherein nobody's to be trusted. Its depiction of lobbyists as insidious, amoral spinners is warranted--making them agents of big tobacco, to boot, is almost a cheap shot. And so is turning their opponent, a well-meaning Vermont senator (William H. Macy), into an impotent prig--by the film's end, he wants to digitally remove cigarettes from old movies and replace them with coffee mugs and candy canes. I suppose that counts as satire, but come on... It's more of a jab at Spielberg's flashlights-for-guns swap in his re-release of "E.T." than the liberal politicians whose views the filmmakers (and novelist Christopher Buckley)--ironically--see as arrogant. That today's general public would buy the B.S. that the spin doctor sells about cigarettes' "positive attributes" is something that I can't buy; the movie, however, takes it for granted that they would and do. Even though the film is clever and lively, it's also farfetched, manipulative and--politics aside--too damn smug. When I agreed with some of the points it made, it made me feel kind of like a douche bag, too.