RICHARD JEWELL (2019)

Rated:  R

STARS: Paul Walter Hauser, Sam Rockwell, Kathy Bates, Olivia Wilde, Jon Hamm
DIRECTOR: Clint Eastwood
GENRE: Docudrama

There is no denying that Clint Eastwood is a master filmmaker, and in Richard Jewell he has crafted a riveting drama with clearly defined good guys and bad guys that will push all of your buttons. Clearly defined, that is, if you want to buy into Eastwood's right-eous vision of the world.

Jewell (Paul Walter Hauser)--as you may or may not recall--was the security guard who discovered a bomb in an abandoned backpack in Centennial Park during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. He alerted police on the premises and saved lives by helping to get people cleared away from the scene before the blast went off--resulting in two deaths and injuring over a hundred unsuspecting souls attending an outdoor concert. 

Initially hailed as a hero, Jewell then came under suspicion as a suspect in the bombing. He is portrayed as a dimwitted loose cannon, who had a habit of getting fired from his law enforcement and security guard jobs. Jon Hamm, as FBI agent Tom Shaw, leads a team of overzealous and unscrupulous investigators bent upon fingering Jewell as the culprit. Meanwhile, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution breaks the story--and as we see so often today, another individual is convicted in the court of public opinion long before due process has run its course. Jewell was eventually cleared of any involvement in the bombing that was engineered by Eric Rudolph 

Outstanding turns from Hauser, who seems born for this role, and the reliably excellent Sam Rockwell as Jewell's feisty lawyer, make this as compelling a drama as you'll find. But the integrity of Clint Eastwood's art is compromised by his insistence on making a political statement in essentially everything he does. In this case it's an obvious and heavy-handed one--demonizing two of today's popular targets of the right (and that originates straight from the top of the McDonald's eating political food chain), the free press and the FBI. 

Eastwood saw his chance to hop on the bandwagon. He plays fast and loose with the truth, as in the portrayal of newspaper reporter Kathy Scruggs (Olivia Wilde), who broke the story about Jewell coming under suspicion, as being an amoral opportunist who would do whatever--including trading sexual favors to get a news scoop. Scruggs' former colleagues, family and friends reportedly were not contacted by the filmmakers to get the scoop on who she really was and what she was about. 

Eastwood apparently felt it was okay to besmirch a deceased person's reputation to serve his own agenda as tit-for-tat because of what happened to poor hapless Richard Jewell. But the film going public may be better equipped to smell a rat than Eastwood gives them credit for.

Richard Jewell is bombing at the box office.

Grade:  C -

JILL'S TAKE

As one of my unbendable rules, I never read reviews before seeing a film. I don't want any preprogrammed opinions sneaking into my thought processes. Alas, with Richard Jewel, Yahoo couldn't wait to plaster "worst box office opening in four generations of film-making" across my unsuspecting monitor. So I went in, ready to dump all kinds of vitriol on old Clint's latest offering.... How relieved I was not to have to do that to one of the all time great film-makers.

Richard Jewell was terrific. Engrossing. Brilliantly acted (I'll get to that later). And wrongly crucified by some, not all, film critics.

I get so (friggin') tired of people judging artistic endeavors by disagreeing politically. Just like I get pissed off with celebrities who use their public clout to endorse a political candidate. (Better they put their money where their mouth shouldn't be.) But I digress....

If Katy Bates doesn't get nominated for Best Supporting Actor for her role as Richard Jewell's mom—a hapless victim of the FBI's over zealous behavior—I will run naked down Del Mar's main thoroughfare. When Bates goes in front of the cameras, pleading for privacy and defending her son's innocence, it's cinematic magic. Pure and simple.

So what did I find fault with in this film? Very little. I wasn't bored. I didn't feel preached to. I know it was very unflattering to the press and the FBI but the story called for that. If I had to criticize anything it would be Jon Hamm's wooden performance. (And I loved him in "Mad Men.") Perhaps I should blame the screenwriter Billy Ray instead. No character deserves to be so one-dimensional.

As the movie ended, one man insisted on clapping. I wanted to join him but lost my nerve.

Grade: B+

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MIDNIGHT IN PARIS--2011

Rated: PG-13

Stars: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, Michael Sheen, Kathy Bates

Written and directed by Woody Allen

Genre: Romantic comedy

It's all about finding one's place.

Gil, (Owen Wilson) a Hollywood "hack" screenwriter who aspires to be a novelist, has come to Paris with his fiancee and her parents. The parents are on a business trip. His material girl, Inez, (Rachel McAdams) is all about shopping. Gil--an incurable romantic--has a fantasy about living in the City of Light during the golden age of the twenties, where he could rub elbows with the legendary artists and writers of the Lost Generation. He talks about chucking Hollywood and moving to Paris. Neither Inez--who thinks he's gone off the deep end-- nor her stuffy parents, understand him.

Gil ends up walking the streets alone at night, and at the stroke of midnight, a vintage Peugeot pulls up and he is ushered into the vehicle to join a group of revelers inside. In short order it becomes apparent that he has entered a time warp, as he in turn meets F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, and a host of other literary and artistic figures. He even gets the opportunity to have his novel-in-progress critiqued by Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates). Then there is Adriana, (Marion Cotillard) an alluring flapper who may be stealing his heart.

Midnight In Paris is peppered with Woody Allen's trademark philosophical musings about life and death, as it meanders through the winding streets of the city and of time--arriving at a small, yet comforting epiphany (if you've spent most of your life wondering why life isn't very satisfying) about why it's imperative for us to BE HERE NOW.

A charmingly quirky movie, Midnight In Paris is much like the Parisians themselves. They won't wear white tennis sneakers on the city streets, as if that were some kind of major fashion gaffe, but then, they don't mind if you bring your dog into the cafe and let him sit at the table with you while you dine.

Sometimes finding one's place is as much about finding one's place in time as it is anything else. Midnight In Paris is time well spent with a bunch of fascinating characters who spring to life from the pages of history.

Grade: B +

REVOLUTIONARY ROAD (now playing at home where you just blamed that fart on your dog again)

Revolutionary Road--from Richard Yates' 1961 novel-- could have been subtitled: "Lives of UNQUIET Desperation." What came into my head as I watched this bored young suburban couple from the fifties go at each other tooth and nail was a Mexican soap opera, where someone is pissed-off at someone else in every stinking scene. This movie isn't THAT over the top, but it gives you an idea of the predominant tone.

Leonardo DiCaprio is Frank Wheeler, and Kate Winslet is April, his wife. They're the perfect couple, or so their friends believe. But Frank dislikes his job, and April is chronically dissatisfied with...well, LIFE. Some of us are just never going to be content with the nice house with the white picket fence and the 2.3 kids running around in the yard--even though that was the ultimate dream back in the fifties. April feels that she's special--an aspiring actress--but when that doesn't go well, her disappointment is all consuming. So she adopts a new dream. She and Frank will move to Paris, where she'll work as some kind of secretary...or sumpthin.

It's half-baked pie in the sky, but she wins Frank over to the idea. April just wants to LIVE,

so practicality is not her strong suit.

Now, their friends believe that the Wheelers are whacked, but don't dare let on because this was the last decade we had where people were actually polite to one another. But the fire is back in the young couple's eyes as they look forward to their "liberation." Until things start looking up for Frank at work--a promotion--and the bird in the hand begins to look much better to him. Will this be the death of yet another of April's dreams? The pull of security. The pull of freedom. Something we've all struggled with at times.

DiCaprio and Winslet swing for the fences in their fighting scenes--two people in "love" who cross the line and go for the jugular--trying to inflict as much emotional abuse on each other as they can before their shouting match voices give out. Perhaps not since Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? have we witnessed an onscreen couple emit such raw emotion.

Kathy Bates has a turn as realtor Helen Givings-- and Michael Shannon is wickedly delightful as her mathematician son, John, who's on furlough from the mental institution where he's been receiving electric shock treatments. John is a loose cannon, and when he comes a calling, his blunt and prickly assessments of the Wheelers' relationship further stirs up the hornets nest that is their life together. Ironically, John seems to be the only character in Revolutionary Road who has the freedom to be who he wants to be. And I, for one, would love to be able to just rattle off whatever I damn well please and have it dismissed with a wave of the hand and a "Oh, He's not well!" Come to think of it...

Revolutionary Road is, above all, a film about dreams--and how it is often more important to be chasing a dream than to catch up with one. Lose your dreams and you may lose your mind...or worse.

When that happens, it's all over but the shouting.

GRADE: B