State Of Play

Let's go back eight years. Imagine that, in April 2001, Russel Crowe and Ben Affleck had opened a well-received political thriller with an impeccable source material and a popular, talented supporting cast featuring multiple recent Oscar nominees. It would have opened at number one and people would be talking about it for a while. Crowe was coming off of his Oscar win for the wildly successful Gladiator, and he was quickly becoming one of the most popular and respected leading men in Hollywood and Affleck was still a super star. Unfortunately for director Kevin MacDonald, Universal and the stars, State Of Play is not being released in 2001. Since then, Crowe has one more Oscar, but a series of personal mishaps and mediocre films (plus an added forty or fifty pounds) have taken away from his stardom, although he remains a very good actor. For Affleck, April 2001 would be a month before the wreck that was Pearl Harbor and two years before Gigli was unleashed on an unsuspecting public, effectively killing his career for a while. Since then, he has managed to calm down his personal life and regain some respect in Hollywood, both as an actor and director, but he is nowhere near the powerhouse he was at the beginning of the decade. I say all of this because, while watching this film, I couldn't help but think about the cycle of power in Hollywood, and how odd it was that these former titans were staring in a pretty good film that not many people will see (hopefully I'm wrong and it does well).
Crowe plays Cal McAffrey, a Washington Globe (I assume they couldn't use a real paper) reporter lost in the digital age. After a quick look at a seemingly unconnected murder, he hears about the apparent suicide of Sonia Baker, an aid to his college roommate, Congressman Collins, played by Affleck (never mind the fact that Crowe looks at least ten years older than his costar). Despite some objection from his editor, Cameron Lynn (played wonderfully by Helen Mirren), he begins working with young Blog writer Della Frye (Rachel McAdams) and starts to fit the pieces together (in here, he meets a medical examiner played by Viola Davis, presumably before her breakout role in Doubt). It begins to look like Sonia's murder was planned by PointCorp, a private military corporation that Collins has been investigating (unfortunately, here the plot really resembles the latest season of 24). In there is a somewhat unnecessary side plot about Cal's affair with Collins' wife, played by Robin Wright Penn. Despite the abilities of the actors, it just doesn't feel right in the film and could easily have been cut. As everything begins to come together, Cal and Della visit with Dominic Foy, a PR man played by Jason Batemen, who proves that he can excel in the right role. There are two twists ahead, one painfully obvious one involving the congressman played by Jeff Daniels (sure he's a good actor, but he doesn't really need to be here) and the second, only slightly less obvious one, involving a shadowy character we've seen a few times throughout.
Getting back to my question at the beginning, I should probably note that this is not a film that could have come out in 2001. There are three main issues at work here that are a huge part of our world today. Two are very much in the public eye and one is well known in certain circles. First is the line of journalistic integrity. There are multiple scenes questioning the morality of the interactions between journalists and police. These scenes are rather obvious in their nature, and I assume they played a stronger role in the beloved original BBC miniseries, which I have not seen. Next is the issue of Blackwater-style private armies. The issue is more of a MacGuffin in the context of the film, but it does exist. once again, it is somewhat heavy-handed, and I've been watching the same thing on 24 for weeks. The third issue, and the one that resonates most with me as a communications student, is that of the changing nature of the news industry. At the very beginning, we see a new "Mediacorp" ownership sign in the paper. The corporate masters control what prints in the paper, and the bloggers are seen to be more powerful and in vogue. Cal's Woodward and Bernstein-style reporting is seen as archaic and slow in the modern world (Woodward, along with other well-known news figures, appears in a cameo as a background reporter during a press conference).
As for the film itself, it isn't perfect. Neither twist is particularly unique or unexpected and some scenes fall flat, but the tension is there when it has to be and it makes a pretty good point about the news industry. The performances are all pretty good (especially Crowe, McAdams and Mirren) and the script is interesting when it needs to be. It looks a bit too slick at moments, but the direction is certainly competent, and there are a few really good shots (a certain sequence in a parking garage and the final confrontation come to mind). It's not a great film, but it's a good thriller that's elevated by its great cast.
Rating (out of ****): ***

Tokyo!

The trailer for Tokyo! asks us the film's essential question: "Do we shape cities, or do cities shape us?" The three parts of the film, each by a different director, all answer the question in their own way. The three sections all take place in a very modern Tokyo and, aside from the aforementioned question, deal with transformation, anarchy and rebirth, respectively. The first (and best) segment is "Interior Design," directed by Michel Gondry of Eternal Sunshine fame. The second, Merde, is directed by Leos Carax, who also made Lovers On The Bridge and Pola X. The final segment, Shaking Tokyo, was created by Bong Joon-ho, most famous for The Host. I think I have to rate the films on their own, but as an overall experience, Tokyo is a must-see. Everything comes together to form a beautiful portrait of the city, and a far more authentic one than the type allowed by an anthology like Paris je t'aime.
Gondry's opening segment, Interior Design, is about a young couple who move to Tokyo for their careers. The husband is an aspiring filmmaker, but his work is extremely dense and comically overwrought (the sequences of his film that we do see are probably the funniest moments in the film), and it only plays in a porn theater. His wife is even less assured. She can't find work and she loses the car. They are staying with a friend, but she wants to get rid of them, even though it's impossible to find suitable housing. The husband seems happy, and people are seeing his film. Eventually, the wife begins to disappear in the city, between the walls. Then she turns into a chair. I'm sorry if that's a bit spoilery, but I rarely get to write "then she turns into a chair." It vaguely reminds me of my last paper on The Metamorphosis. This film shows a more restrained Gondry than normal (yes, even with the chair thing). His wild, innovative visuals made Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind an instant classic, but they didn't work as well on or The Science Of Sleep or Be Kind Rewind. Until the end, this is simply a very good looking film (although not the best looking of the three). Even the effects showing her transformation aren't the focus. Interior Design is the lightest of the three films, and it makes a great introduction to the tone of the film and to the city itself.
Leos Carax's Merde is the strangest part of Tokyo by a fairly large margin (yes, that includes the chair thing and the robot pizza man in the third one). I haven't seen any of Carax's other work. I assume they don't all concentrate on sewer-people running around cities terrorizing people. You probably couldn't maintain a respected career on that premise. Merde opens with a fantastic tracking shot showing the main character (eventually named Merde) running down the sidewalk and just generally bothering people. He pushes them, steals their money and cigarettes, eats their flowers and just generally makes them uncomfortable. He is hideous and mumbling in an incoherent language. Next we see him running through the sewers where he finds some grenades, which lead to another fantastic sequence. After this, the film goes down a bit in terms of quality. A lawyer who looks exactly like him and speaks the language flies in from France to represent him at his eventual trial, and the rest of the segment deals with his trial and sentencing while the rest of the country riots in his support and defense. Some of these moments have a rather unpleasant feel to them. I can't think of a good way to describe them aside from that, but they just felt a bit off. The word that it is tagged with is anarchy, but I think it deals more with language barriers, Japanese nationalism and parodying Godzilla (especially in the opening and closing moments). The Godzilla stuff probably works best, but overall it's still a fun time, just not so much in the second half.
The final segment, Bong Joon-ho's Shaking Tokyo, is far less funny than the others, but is also the best looking of the three. I have not seen Bong's extremely successful film The Host, but his 2003 film Memories of Murder is one of the best procedurals I've ever seen (it's better than the very similar Zodiac) and helped kick off what has been a brilliant decade for Korean cinema. The film is about a Hikkomori (a type of shut-in that has become a large issue in recent years in Japan) who has not left his home in ten years. His father sends him money and he subsists off of delivery food, especially pizza. One day, as his pizza is being delivered, an earthquake strikes, and the beautiful delivery girl falls unconscious. He tries to help her without contact, but eventually he sees a tattoo of a power button (like on an X-box) that says coma. He presses it and she wakes up and observes the odd perfection of his OCD-like collections of pizza boxes. This causes her to become a shut-in as well. The man decides that he has to find her and ventures outside for the first time in years. When he gets outside, he discovers that everyone else has gone inside. The only thing he sees is a pizza-delivery robot. After another quake, everyone runs outside and he finds her, and another button makes her stay. This segment is about rebirth. The story is the most conventional, but it's simply a beautiful film. Every shot is well-framed and carefully considered, creating a fascinating beauty in the clutter of the man's home.
So, do we shape cities, or do they shape us? Well, Interior Design, seems to come down on them shaping us. The characters change (in many ways) when they get to Tokyo, and the wife is "shaped" into something completely different. Merde's lead character certainly shapes his city. A cult forms around him and parts of Tokyo descend into anarchy. Shaking Tokyo is somewhere in between. Hikkomoris are a trend in Tokyo, and the stresses of the city are probably to blame, but the man certainly shapes the world around him. I think that's why it was shown last, even though the tonal shift seems a bit off when they go from two comedies to a drama. Overall, while it may not be completely consistent, Tokyo! is a wonderful look at the city and the people that make it.
Rating (out of ****) ***1/2