Don’t Look Up

Making America late again.

(2021) Disaster Comedy (Netflix) Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Rob Morgan, Jonah Hill, Mark Rylance, Tyler Perry, Timothée Chalamet, Ron Perlman, Ariana Grande, Kid Cudi, Himesh Patel, Melanie Lynskey, Michael Chiklis, Tomer Sisley, Paul Guilfoyle, Robert Joy, Jack Alberts, Ting Lik, Lance A. Williams, Shimali De Silva. Directed by Adam McKay

 

Some of you might remember the competing apocalyptic comet/meteor collision movies Armageddon and Deep Impact, both of which came out in 1998. Both featured American governments that acted decisively upon finding out about the upcoming end of days in an effort to avoid the end of Life as We Know It. But what if such a calamity occurred during the presidency of someone less competent?

Astronomer Dr. Randall Mindy (di Caprio) and the PhD candidate he’s mentoring Kate Diblasky (Lawrence) are by no means the upper echelon in their field, but they do have the advantage of looking in the right place at the right time (or, more to the point, the wrong place at the wrong time). They find a comet heading on a collision course with Earth and it will be here in just six months – time enough to maybe do something about it.

Except that President Orlean (Streep) and her idiot son/Chief of Staff Jason (Hill) are more concerned about the upcoming midterms than they are about a giant rock heading our way. Frustrated by a lack of government action or even interest, the two scientists take their case to the media in the form of the morning news program The Daily Rip. True to form, the talking head anchors Brie (Blanchett) and Jack (Perry) are more concerned with the disintegrating love life of pop star Riley B (Grande) than about their audience being wiped out by an oncoming – and very preventable – disaster.

The characters here are broadly drawn; clearly the President here is meant to be Trump and Jason could be Ivanka. There’s also a billionaire (Rylance) who seems to be cribbed from the Elon Musk book of billionaires. When Randall wonders why people aren’t panicking, we wonder the same thing. Of course, the movie was written to be a satire on the response to climate change (it can also be construed as a satire on the response to the pandemic but it was written years before COVID-19 was even a thing) but don’t that fool you; this is a time capsule of life in These United States circa 2021.

This is also a satire of the State of the Union, as it were. I suspect that even Trump would have reacted with a little bit more alarm had he been faced with an approaching comet, but then again, who knows? I have a feeling that those who really need to see the movie likely won’t; first off, because they’ll see it as another smack in the face from them liberal Hollywood socialists, and secondly won’t recognize themselves in it anyway. As one critic pointed out, how are you supposed to write a vacuous talking head blonde broadcaster when there already is a Laura Ingraham?

There are a few too many moving parts here and some of the big names in the cast are given very little to do, which is only to be expected. The one big sin that the movie commits is trying to do too much; I get that there’s an awful lot to satirize when it comes to our reaction to the climate crisis, but there comes a point where the point gets lost in the noise of all the ancillary points that McKay is making.

And maybe the offense that we’re all guilty of is the same one that this movie makes; we’re too busy talking at people to notice that we’ve stopped talking with people. The latter situation involves listening, and there’s precious little of that going on at this point in time. Maybe that’s the point that McKay is trying to make, but it does get lost in all the points he’s making about social media, broadcast news, the GOP, big business, and our general state of malaise.

REASONS TO SEE: An absolutely stellar cast. A commentary on spin and misinformation, particularly in regards to climate change and the pandemic.
REASONS TO AVOID: Preaches to the choir.
FAMILY VALUES: There is profanity, sexual content, violence and nudity.
TRIVIAL PURSUITS: The film was nominated for four Oscars at the 2022 Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Netflix
CRITICAL MASS: As of 2/11/22: Rotten Tomatoes: 56% positive reviews; Metacritic: 49/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Mars Attacks!
FINAL RATING: 7/10
NEXT: Catch the Fair One

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Spotlight

Michael Keaton knows he’s on a roll.

(2015) True Life Drama (Open Road) Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, Brian D’Arcy James, Stanley Tucci, Elena Wohl, Gene Amaroso, Billy Crudup, Jamie Sheridan, Paul Guilfoyle, Len Cariou, Doug Murray, Sharon McFarlane, Neal Huff, Duane Murray, Brian Chamberlin, Laurie Heineman. Directed by Tom McCarthy

Reporters are sometimes referred to as ink-stained wretches, harkening back to the 19th century when that was literally true. They’ve traded quill and parchment for computers and the Internet, but what remains true today as it was then – few in the general public really have a sense of what goes in to writing and reporting the news.

Spotlight covers the Boston Globe investigative reporting team – also called Spotlight – and their game-changing  2001 investigation of the Roman Catholic Church and the sex abuse scandals that was being covered up by the Church. It’s an important enough story that writers McCarthy and Josh Singer felt that it needed to take precedence over the reporters who reported the story – something that journalism films rarely do. Even All the President’s Men, perhaps the most respected journalism film of all time, elevated reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward to heroic proportions.

With a new managing editor now in place, Marty Baron (Schreiber) who comes to the globe by way of the Miami Herald and other papers, Baron suggests that a long-gestating story – about Fr. John Geoghan who had been convicted of multiple counts of child abuse – and the Church’s role in covering up the scandal – get coverage by the Spotlight team.

This was no small matter. Boston was and is a very Catholic town. The Church is very much entwined in a whole lot of secular matters, including politics, business and of course, the news. Baron gets an invitation early on by affable Cardinal Law (Cariou) to meet with him so that Baron is made to understand his place in how things work in Boston. Quite frankly, it’s a chilling moment.

Spotlight editor Walter “Robbie” Robinson (Keaton) and his team of senior reporter Mike Rezendes (Ruffalo), reporter Sacha Pfeiffer (McAdams) and reporter Matt Carroll (James) are turned loose on the story. The bulldog-like Rezendes goes after court documents that lawyer Mitchell Garabedian (Tucci), who is representing several survivors against the Church, informs him have been sealed. The softer Pfeiffer interviews survivors, often seeing them dissolve into tears of shame. Robinson works the golf courses and receives troubling and veiled threats to back off.

Eventually the team begins to realize that the cover-up involves more than one priest in Boston…and eventually more than one city around the world. As the scope of what they’ve discovered begins to unfold, the team realizes that they may be in over their heads. They also realize they can’t ignore their own connections to the Church – but can they ignore the suffering of the many victims, who begin to number in the thousands?

The story is, of course, one that we’re all familiar with as the scandal involving the Church became international news a decade ago. Fortunately for us, McCarthy chose not to make the reporters the central aspect of the story. This movie isn’t about them, although they get the most screen time and they are in many ways our own avatars. No, this is about the victims and the story, which required some often tedious work to bring to print. Many journalists who have seen this have said this is the most accurate depiction of journalism in the history of film. Despite the nature of the work which involves a lot of time on the phones and on the web, McCarthy manages to keep the movie from being boring.

Part of the reason for that is because he has a cast to die for. Keaton, so marvelous in Birdman, is on a definite roll. Not only is he turning in Oscar-worthy performances but he’s doing it in Best Picture contenders, as this will surely be. As for Ruffalo, this is his finest performance yet, playing the pugnacious Rezendes like a heavyweight champion daring his sources to take their best shots. He is passionate about his job and as the scandal deepens to global levels, his frustration with the Church he grew up with and his realization that he could never go back to it now is more than memorable; it’s unforgettable.

=As this took place primarily in the fall and winter – with a notable pause to cover the attacks on the World Trade Center, for which several flights originated at Logan Airport – the screen always has a kind of cold and distant quality, ranging from autumnal rain to winter snow. There are rarely sunny days in a movie, befitting the subject. I’m sure the real reporters felt that sunny days might never come again.

This is most definitely one of the best movies of the year and a serious Oscar contender in a number of different categories. While some might recoil from the subject matter, it is handled delicately and respectfully. While some might think that this is a boring procedural, let me reassure them that it’s simply not the case. Simply put, this isn’t the easiest subject matter to tackle – but it’s done so well that you leave the theater knowing you’ve just seen something special. And it is.

REASONS TO GO: Riveting performances and story. Excellent writing. Powerful and emotional. Accurate rendition of how news is reported.
REASONS TO STAY: Drags a tiny bit in places.
FAMILY VALUES: Some fairly foul language, adult themes and sexual references.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Investigative reporter Ben Bradlee Jr. is the son of Benjamin Bradlee, the editor of the Washington Post who oversaw the Watergate reporting of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein depicted in the film All the President’s Men and who was portrayed by Jason Robards in that film. Keaton used Robards’ performance as a template for his own, mixed in with his own observations of the real Walter Robinson.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 11/30/15: Rotten Tomatoes: 97% positive reviews. Metacritic: 93/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Absence of Malice
FINAL RATING: 9.5/10
NEXT: The Good Dinosaur