Movie Review: Jay Kelly (2025)

Genre: Drama  

Director: Noah Baumbach  

Starring: George Clooney, Adam Sandler, Laura Dern, Billy Crudup, Patrick Wilson, Stacy Keach, Emily Mortimer, Greta Gerwig, Isla Fisher, Jim Broadbent, Riley Keogh  

Running Time: 132 minutes  

Synopsis: Jay Kelly (George Clooney) has enjoyed a 35-year career as a movie star. He wraps-up filming on his latest production, and his manager and life-long friend Ron (Adam Sandler) expects Jay to quickly transition to his next project. But a chance encounter with Timothy (Billy Crudup), a former friend from acting school days, forces Jay to re-evaluate his life. Having neglected all his family relationships, he takes off to Europe with Ron and publicist Liz (Laura Dern) to get reacquainted with his daughter, but forging genuine human connections does not come naturally to a lifelong actor.

What Works Well: Reflecting aspects of star George Clooney's reality, this is an introspective, thoughtful, yet also peppy and often humorous examination of choices. The script (cowritten by director Noah Baumbach and co-star Emily Mortimer) is neither judgmental nor moralizing, and avoids pat resolutions. Achieving and sustaining movie star fame meant Jay was never a good father, and he gained much more from his friendship with Ron than he ever reciprocated. Decisions and actions are presented as realities and trade-offs rather than rectifiable regrets, and Jay's reflections are rich with in-the-moment dilemmas, awkwardness, and poignancy. The superlative cast includes Stacy Keach as Jay's father, Patrick Wilson as another actor managed by Ron, Jim Broadbent as a mentor, and Riley Keogh as one of Jay's daughters. Many of the supporting characters are provided with well-rounded lives to add depth, texture, and context.

What Does Not Work As Well: The running time is longer than it needs to be.

Key Quote:

Jay Kelly (acting a death scene): That's the crazy thing...everything you thought you were...isn't true.

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Peacemaker (1997)

Genre: Geopolitical Thriller

Director: Mimi Leder

Starring: George Clooney, Nicole Kidman

Running Time: 124 minutes

Synopsis: In Russia, nuclear warheads slated for decommissioning are diverted to the black market by the corrupt General Kodoroff, who covers his tracks by detonating one device in the Ural mountains. In the United States, head of the National Security Council Nuclear Smuggling Group Dr. Julia Kelly (Nicole Kidman) is placed in charge of the government response, with Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Devoe (George Clooney) her military liaison. They relocate to Europe to track down the missing nukes, uncovering a plot involving a Balkan leader seeking a special kind of revenge.

What Works Well: This fast-paced thriller is a James Bond-type intercontinental chase with more grit and no gadgets. Director Mimi Leder delivers several excellent action scenes with minimal special effects, including the prolonged opening train heist, a bone-jarring car chase in Vienna, a superlative truck-on-a-bridge sequence, and the final breathless foot chase. The antagonist is provided with enough background context to register as a purveyor of anguished doom, while George Clooney and Nicole Kidman add the necessary star power.

What Does Not Work As Well: The logic gaps are often large, including the entire US government response being entrusted to the inexperienced Dr. Kelly. The Americans make every correct just-in-time deduction to perfectly set the stage for the next highlight.

Conclusion: A slick, effective, and anxiety-packed thriller.



All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: Ticket To Paradise (2022)

Genre: Romantic Comedy

Director: Ol Parker

Starring: George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Kaitlyn Dever

Running Time: 104 minutes

Synopsis: Divorced couple David and Georgia Cotton (George Clooney and Julia Roberts) are aghast when their daughter Lily (Kaitlyn Dever) chucks her legal career aspirations and decides to marry Gede (Maxime Bouttier), a Bali-based seaweed farmer. The bickering exes rush to Indonesia and concoct a plan to undermine Lily's wedding, with Georgia's current lover Paul (Lucas Bravo), a suave airline pilot, in close pursuit.

What Works Well: George Clooney and Julia Roberts bring plenty of star power to an otherwise routine rom-com, and Kaitlyn Dever is a winsome bride-to-be discovering there is more to life than the corporate ladder. Director Ol Parker captures pristine Indonesian landscapes in rich colours.

What Does Not Work As Well: Old fashioned sensibilities frequently border on trite, as the plot rides a linear path with stops at all the foregone conclusions. The humour rarely rises above juvenile incidents (including a dolphin encounter, a snake bite, resort room confusion, and an accidental headbutt). Billie Lourd as Lily's best friend is underused, and the movie all too often resembles an Indonesian tourist infomercial.

Conclusion: Harmless and weightless.



All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: Solaris (2002)

Genre: Psychological Science Fiction

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Starring: George Clooney, Natascha McElhone, Viola Davis

Running Time: 99 minutes

Synopsis: Psychologist Dr. Chris Kelvin (George Clooney) is summoned to the space station orbiting the mysterious planet Solaris, to help the crew deal with inexplicable events. Once on board he finds his friend Gibarian (Ulrich Tukur) has already committed suicide, and surviving crew members Snow (Jeremy Davies) and Dr. Gordon (Viola Davis) traumatized. Chris is then startled when his wife Rhea (Natascha McElhone) joins him at the space station, although she has been dead for years. 

What Works Well: Writer and director Steven Soderbergh's adaptation of Stanisław Lem's novel focuses on Chris' interactions with his deceased wife, who reappears in real and self-conscious form at the Solaris space station. Themes of grief, guilt, regret, and the essence of how humans perceive each other surface through thoughtful discourse, supplemented by dreamy visuals and flashbacks. The pacing is slow and deliberate, but the compact running length maintains engagement. 

What Does Not Work Well: The metaphysical subject matter is a tough environment for the cinematic medium, and ultimately the metaphorical influence of the planet is largely sidelined.

Conclusion: Sufficiently thought provoking without quite soaring.



All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Midnight Sky (2020)

A visually spectacular science fiction drama, The Midnight Sky combines an end-of-the-world scenario with a crisis-in-space and personal torment, but gets distracted by multiple survival misadventures.

Earlier in his career, astronomer Augustine Lofthouse (Ethan Peck) identified Jupiter's moon K-23 as possibly life-sustaining. Around the same time he started an intense relationship with Jean Sullivan (Sophie Rundle), but eventually he neglects her and she leaves him.

Now in 2049, the Earth is being rendered uninhabitable by an unknown cataclysmic event. The ailing Augustine (George Clooney) elects to stay behind at an Arctic research station while everyone else evacuates. Seemingly alone and terminally sick, he stumbles upon a seven year old girl he calls Iris (Caoilinn Springall), who barely speaks and appears to have been left behind. She becomes his companion as he attempts to make contact with the space craft Aether travelling back to Earth from K-23.

On-board Aether are Dr. Sullivan (Felicity Jones) and Commander Adewole (David Oyelowo) along with other crew members, returning from a two year mission to test K-23's viability to support life. Unaware of the situation on Earth and unable to communicate with anyone, the Aether crew members also have to deal with a navigation malfunction.

Undoubtedly ambitious and bathed in beauty, The Midnight Sky tries to tell too many stories at once but suffers from ponderous pacing in addition to fragmented focus. Working from the Mark L. Smith script adaptation of a book by Lily Brooks-Dalton, director George Clooney does establish an intriguing premise. A debilitated last-man-on-a-dying-Earth attempting to connect with astronauts grappling with an unexplained communications blackout carries exquisite early promise.

But for too long the stories of Augustine and the Aether crew remain disconnected and divergent, squandering the early momentum. To reach an Arctic station with a more powerful antenna Augustine and the curious but silent Iris trudge across the hazardous ice and snow, and suddenly The Midnight Sky becomes a bland survive-the-elements trek. Meanwhile Aether encounters navigation issues and strays into dangerously unmapped space, and soon the crew are embroiled in an emergency repairs drama. By the time Clooney gathers up all the stray pieces for the final eloquent 15 minutes, it's well too late to salvage the original intentions.

The sequences in space are delivered with a sometimes majestic artistry, Aether a particularly elegant creation both inside and out. Clooney's performance is all existential broodiness, while Oyelowo, Jones and the other space travellers (Kyle Chandler, Tiffany Boone, and Demián Bichir) each get a couple of scenes to reflect on their predicament.

The Midnight Sky launches with a bang, but is soon drifting in both space and snow.



All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind (2002)

A biography contaminated by an attention-seeking juvenile imagination, Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind undermines itself with frivolous distractions.

It's the early 1980s and Chuck Barris (Sam Rockwell) is despondent and holed-up in a New York hotel room, refusing to open the door for long-term girlfriend Penny (Drew Barrymore). He starts writing his memoirs, chronicling his often futile pursuit of women. By the late 1950s television is a burgeoning industry and Chuck conceives of The Dating Game, although the networks initially reject the idea. He finds domestic bliss with Penny but refuses to consider marriage.

Chuck's memoirs also contain a fictional narrative about his life as a CIA-trained Cold War assassin. Recruited by the mysterious Byrd (George Clooney), Barris is assigned targets in various European cities, and meets fellow agents Patricia (Julia Roberts) and Keeler (Rutger Hauer). When The Dating Game finally takes off, Chuck uses his chaperon cover to complete his CIA missions. An assignment goes wrong in West Berlin, but Chuck finds huge success with a string of tacky television shows.

Chuck Barris left an imprint on the world of cheap television catering to the lowest common denominator and helping create a foundation for the later abominations of reality TV. Despite a seemingly boorish and self-absorbed personality he may provide the basis for an interesting story, but it's not on display in Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind.

First-time director George Clooney adapts Barris' autobiographical book but keeps all the hokum about a double-life as a secret agent. Big chunks of the film are therefore preoccupied with an alternative fictional reality, but unlike compelling dramas like A Beautiful Mind, Barris' fantasies dangle as unaddressed vestiges of a troubled psyche, cratering his real story. Meanwhile, his actual life is dealt with in a perfunctory manner, Clooney and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman unable to colour in the man behind the garish shows.

Clooney overcompensates with an infusion of style, the assassination scenes underlining fictionality with a combination of absurd humour and film noir shadings. Meanwhile Sam Rockwell throws himself into the role, fractured and frenzied as it is, in a performance that cries out for more narrative depth and less superficial glitz. Julia Roberts and Rutger Hauer add star power but are wasted in stock secret agent characterizations.

Barris may have had a mind dangerous to himself and to unsuspecting cultural victims of his television shows, but his so-called confessions are best forgotten.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Hail, Caesar! (2016)

A Hollywood comedy, Hail, Caesar! is an homage to the heyday of the studio system, and just about holds together.

It's 1951 in Hollywood, and Capitol Pictures manager Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) has a lot on his hands. The studio is filming a Biblical epic, but star Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) is kidnapped by a group of communist writers, who demand a $100,000 ransom. Aquatic musical star DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson) is pregnant and not quite sure who the father is.

On the orders of the studio boss, singing cowboy star Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich) is pressed into a starring role in a sophisticated comedy and struggles to follow instructions from director Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes). Dancer/singer Burt Gurney (Channing Tatum) is filming a navy-themed musical while potentially hiding some secrets. And all the time rival twin sister gossip columnists Thora and Thessaly Thacker (Tilda Swinton) are circling the studio looking for nasty stories to publish.

Mannix is also trying to stop smoking, and is considering a lucrative offer to quit Hollywood and join the Lockheed corporation. He has to try and keep the kidnapping story away from the press as he arranges for the star's release, and find solutions to DeeAnna's potentially scandalous pregnancy and Hobie's incompetence.

With something different going on within every soundstage, Hail, Caesar! captures the insanity of a workplace where reality is make-believe. Produced, directed and written with a jovial spirit by Joel and Ethan Coen, the film is an affectionate salute to the Golden Age of Hollywood, a place where men controlled the plots points for both the movies and the stars.

The Coen's craft their love letter without resorting to sentimentality. The intention is to deliver fun laced with satire, and along the way the full range of genres popular in the era is skewered to good effect. De Mille-level historical epics, Esther Williams-style lavish swimming pool spectacles, B-level westerns, sparkling romantic comedies and raucous musicals are all weaved into the life Eddie Manx.

He somehow maintains his composure as a crisis erupts with every phone call. His workday consists of putting out fires or delaying their spread while his mind operates at 100 miles per hour to stay ahead of the next scandal, all while battling his cigarette addiction, lying to his wife and confessing (frequently) to his priest.

Within the madness the Coens find time to delve into the mythical communist infiltration of Hollywood, here represented by leftist writers incongruously hanging out at a lavish seaside villa raising funds for their cause by kidnapping Hollywood's biggest star. It does not take long for Baird Whitlock to fall for the eloquently explained communist drivel, in what could be a nod to the typical mental nimbleness of the on-screen talent.

Hail, Caesar! never takes itself seriously, a most appropriate stance for an industry trading in formulating fleeting fantasies.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)

A satirical comedy inspired by Homer's The Odyssey, O Brother, Where Art Thou? features some enjoyable episodes but is a mostly fragmented exercise of scattered ideas looking for a purpose.

The setting is Mississippi during the 1930s with the Great Depression still lingering. Three convicts escape from a chain gang and set out across the countryside. The wordy and cerebral Ulysses Everett McGill (George Clooney) claims to have buried stolen treasure before being incarcerated. His fellow escapees are the tightly wound Pete Hogwallop (John Turturro) and the rather dim Delmar O'Donnell (Tim Blake Nelson).

As they barely stay one step ahead of the chasing posse, the trio encounter various obstacles and characters, including Pete's cousin "Wash" Hogwallop (Frank Collison), crazed bank robber Baby Face Nelson (Michael Badalucco), three distracting singing sirens, guitarist Tommy Johnson (Chris Thomas King) who claims to have sold his soul to the devil, incumbent Governor Menelaus "Pappy" O'Daniel (Charles Durning), and dangerous Bible salesman Daniel "Big Dan" Teague (John Goodman). The Ku Klux Klan also make an appearance before Ulysses catches up with his wife Penny (Holly Hunter), who is just about ready to abandon him.

Written and directed by the Coen brothers Joel and Ethan, O Brother, Where Art Thou? transposes the ancient Greek poem to the American rural south, suffering under the strain of an economic depression and the sweltering heat. It's all played for laughs, the actors over-emoting at will and most of the dialogue exchanges featuring Ulysses Everett McGill's over-elaborate prose and the stupefied reactions of his chainmates.

The film's pacing cannot be faulted, as each episode lasts about 10 minutes before the next, generally unrelated adventure kicks off. Whether hit or miss, nothing lingers for too long. The better sub-plots feature the trio of prisoners recording an impromptu hit song at an early-era radio station, and an enchanted encounter with the seductive sirens in the forest. Less successful is the run-in with Bible salesman Big Dan, while the chapters featuring Governor O'Daniel seem to rotate in a singular circle.

Wide open landscapes, appealing cinematography and an interesting colour palette that often evokes the photographs of the era maintain interest, while the period-specific folk music often moves to the foreground to provide a soulful kick.

Towards the end the film threatens to completely unravel, a case of too many marginal ideas thrown at the screen and sliding to the bottom due to a lack of cohesion. O Brother, Where Art Thou? is inspired by great literature, but achieves only modest success.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Michael Clayton (2007)

A conspiracy drama, Michael Clayton is a cerebral thriller focusing on the underbelly of big corporate machinations in the era of globalization.

Michael Clayton (George Clooney) is a fixer on contract with a large New York corporate law firm run by Marty Bach (Sydney Pollack). Michael's job is to make bad news stories go away for the firm's clients. Michael is also recovering from a severe gambling problem and is trying to get away from the rat race, but his attempts to start a restaurant business backfire. Nearly bankrupt, he is under pressure to come up with a lot of money, and fast. With Bach and his team leading a settlement conference representing the interests of large agricultural firm uNorth, Michael narrowly escapes an assassination attempt while on an upstate business trip. He is forced to take stock of what exactly is going on at the law firm.

Four days earlier, Michael was called to Milwaukee to deal with a crisis precipitated by senior lawyer Arthur Edens (Tom Wilknson) suffering a mental breakdown during a deposition. Arthur was the lead lawyer on the uNorth case, defending the firm against a class-action suit involving allegations of poisoned soil on small farms. uNorth's ruthless internal general counsel Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton) is not impressed with Arthur's disintegration, and even less impressed with Michael's pragmatic reaction to the crisis. Michael starts to investigate what may have pushed his friend Arthur over the edge of sanity, while Karen sets in motion an alternative plan to save her firm's reputation.

Directed and written by Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton is slick, cool and intellectual. Despite no shortage of criminal activity up to and including severe physical harm, the story is intended to stay just on the right side of grounded, with enough careful credibility to keep the narrative within plausible limits while also serving up excellent entertainment.

Michel Clayton demands concentration and rewards it handsomely. This is a film where scenes are sometimes joined mid-stream, while others appear to truncate early. Nothing is over-explained; the threads are laid out slowly, carefully, but not necessarily in an easy-to-weave pattern. All the events take place over just a few hectic days, but the subtle shift in perspective that occurs in starting near the climax and then drawing back to a few days prior achieves the desired unhinging effect.

Gilroy reveals his secrets on his own terms and according to his chosen pace, and the pay-off is immense. Once the conspiracy starts to take shape it all makes sinister sense, and the events are all driven out of a sense of knee-jerk desperation by corporate leaders wielding enormous power and pushing the envelope due to incredible strain. None of the characters have all the answers, plenty of loose ends remain beyond the reach of any tidying up, and the mess of corporate chicanery represents a familiar spiraling public relations disaster leaving many scattered victims in its wake.

The story boils down to a battle of wills between Michael and Karen, and they only meet twice, at the beginning and end of Michael's ordeal. They are two deeply flawed individuals, wracked by insecurity. In Michael's case his failures are now almost fully public, his humiliation complete once he has to grovel for a loan from Marty. Karen's anxieties are more concealed, but Gilroy bores into her fragile psyche with astonishing scenes of Karen practicing her public persona in private, the general counsel able to hide her jitters from everyone except the woman in the mirror.

George Clooney keeps his charisma wattage in check and delivers an understated performance, one of his most powerful and compelling screen achievements. Swinton gets fewer scenes but is equally magnificent, creating for Karen an icy exterior to conceal demons waiting to burst forth in all the wrong directions. Tom Wikinson and Sydney Pollack lend weighty veteran support, and Michael O'Keefe makes an appearance as another unapologetic shark in the corporate boardroom.

Michael Clayton is a rare example of a supremely smart thriller, where the battle lines are vague and the puppet masters may be hidden in business suits, but are no less lethal for it.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Money Monster (2016)

A hostage thriller, Money Monster addresses the collision between television celebrity business advice and the real world where investment decisions can have ruinous implications.

Lee Gates (George Clooney) hosts the weekly live Money Monster show on cable television where he dishes out stock investment tips in a glib flash-and-dash format. The more grounded Patty Fenn (Julia Roberts) is his producer, and she stitches the show together despite Lee's often juvenile antics. During live filming, the stage is invaded by Kyle Budwell (Jack O'Connell), a deeply disturbed man waving a gun. He forces Lee to put on an explosive vest and insists that the cameras keep rolling.

Kyle is upset that he followed Lee's advice on a previous show and invested all his life savings in the stock of a company called IBIS Global Capital, run by CEO Walt Camby (Dominic West), who has now disappeared. IBIS stock promptly tanked when the company lost $800 million due to a so-called algorithm glitch. Live on-air, Kyle rails against the corrupt system. With Patty communicating through his earpiece, Lee regains his composure and tries to buy time by trying to find answers as to what really went wrong with the stock. The solution to the mystery of the missing millions passes through IBIS Chief of Communications Diane Lester (Caitriona Balfe), as well as an algorithm expert in Seoul, hackers in Iceland, and a miners' strike in South Africa.

Directed by Jodie Foster, Money Monster works well when it's within the confines of the television studio. With an unstable Kyle hijacking the show, Lee's world flashing before his eyes and Patty trying to maintain some semblance of control, Foster constructs a taut story that gives a face to the victims of stock market machinations and exposes the shallow world of television punditry. The film maintains a steady current of tension, with the aggressor's instability invading the carefully crafted world of slick marketing, and just the right drizzle of humour injected to keep the drama in check.

The script (co-written by Alan Di Fiore, Jim Kouf and Jamie Linden) works its way to the uncomfortable foundations of the modern system of capitalism. Honest blue collar working men like Kyle are the recession victims, and their only mistake is trusting the make-believe world of charlatans like Lee Gates, a modern-day snake oil salesman. Walt Camby is revered for creating wealth by transferring money using inexplicable software, and while he is the celebrity of the business world men like Kyle simply pay the price in wrecked lives.

The parts of the film away from the studio are not as impressive. Foster takes brief sojourns to Asia, Europe and Africa to underline the interconnected modern world of global finance, but these scenes end up being mere snippets. The final third breaks out of the studio completely with the quest for answers spilling into the streets of Manhattan, and the film starts to unfortunately resemble a contrived Bruce Willis type action film.

The two central performances are excellent and never flag. George Clooney and Julia Roberts, despite sharing few scenes together, exude smooth star charisma and confidence. Clooney's wattage translates perfectly to the cocky personality of Lee Gates, forced through the hostage ordeal to see himself as others see him. Roberts' calm performance allows Patty to emerge as the one voice of reason is a world gone quite mad in pursuit of riches and revenge. Jack O'Connell is suitably unhinged, giving Kyle depth as a man seeking apologies and answers, but not without faults of his own.

In a world where money is virtual and no questions are asked as long as wealth is created out of thin air, Money Monster has no heroes, just victims and charlatans.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: One Fine Day (1996)

A good quality romantic comedy, One Fine Day enjoys star power in the form of Michelle Pfeiffer and George Clooney, and settles into a pleasant if entirely predictable story of an unlikely romance developing between two stressed single parents.

In New York City, businesswoman Melanie Parker (Pfeiffer) is divorced and raising her young son Sammy on her own. Sammy's dad is a rock band drummer who frequently misses family events. Jack Taylor (Clooney) is a popular newspaper columnist, also divorced, and sharing parenting duties for his young daughter Maggie, who is Sammy's classmate. One frantic morning Jack's lack of organization results in both Sammy and Maggie missing the bus and then the boat for a day-long school trip. Jack and Melanie are stuck with their kids on a working day, and Melanie is immediately hostile towards Jack.

A further mix-up results in Melanie and Jack switching mobile phones, further complicating their schedules. Eventually they are both forced to agree to trade-off caring for the two children. Melanie tries to prepare for a big presentation at her office despite Sammy's disruptive presence, while the more laid back Jack tries to untangle a big political corruption scandal that may cost him his job, while caring for Maggie and sometimes Sammy. As the day rolls on, Melanie and Jack move from animosity to romance.

Directed by Michael Hoffman, One Fine Day is a small notch above standard rom-com fare. Most of the shine comes from the two leading actors lending their considerable charisma to the principal roles. Michelle Pfeiffer and George Clooney both possess high wattage, and they turn on the charm to good effect, allowing the sparks of love to emerge slowly from the mess of a chaotic day spent chasing kids and fulfilling work duties. Pfeiffer is comfortable and assured as an established star, while Clooney is on the cusp of finding his big-screen groove, and together they make for an attractive couple.

The film offers one relatively fresh angle by presenting both protagonists as divorced single parents, juggling high-stress careers and child care, their work routines easily thrown into disarray when the kids' plans are disrupted. Melanie and Jack are on an equal social footing, extending to an equivalent level of mutual cynical mistrust due to still-healing scars from failed marriages. The jaded realism adds a welcome wrinkle to the couple's evolving dynamic.

Not surprisingly, there is little else in One Fine Day that is even remotely original as the film moves through all the usual gears. The laughs are mild, the kids are cute, the office bosses are crusty, the moments of crisis are never too threatening, the dash to the climax (appropriately, the destination is a kids' soccer pitch) is frantic, and the ending is as preordained as the sun setting at the end of the day. Of course, the locations are scrubbed clean and the music is dreamy.

The running time unnecessarily creeps towards two hours, and the film outstays its welcome well after it is apparent that Melanie and Jack will find a way to end their fine day on a positive note. The relatively under-used supporting cast does not help. While the kids (Alex D. Linz and Mae Whitman) are sound and avoid descending into an overdose of cutesiness, Charles Durning as Jack's boss and Amanda Peet as an office vamp get very few scenes to make an impact.

One Fine Day delivers exactly what the genre demands in the form of a far-fetched meet-cute come true, with the bonus of luminous leads investing enough talent to tilt the balance towards enjoyment rather than tediousness.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Ides Of March (2011)

An inside look at the United States political process, The Ides Of March delves into the ruthless backroom machinations that define election campaigns. The film is almost incredible, and also likely too close to the truth for comfort.

Governor of Pennsylvania Mike Morris (George Clooney) and Arkansas Senator Ted Pullman are locked in a tight race for the Democratic party presidential nomination. The next big milestone is the Ohio primary, and both campaign teams are going all out to win. Veteran Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman) runs Morris' campaign, assisted by the young, bright and idealistic Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling). Their opponent is Pullman's campaign manager Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti). New York Time journalist Ida Horowicz (Marisa Tomei) is covering the nomination battle.

Stephen genuinely believes that Morris is a positive change agent who is capable of great achievements. His attention is momentarily distracted by attractive campaign intern Molly Stearns (Evan Rachel Wood). They seduce each other and start a steamy affair. Meanwhile, Paul is working overtime to try and secure the critical endorsement of influential North Carolina Senator Franklin Thompson (Jeffrey Wright). Considered a king-maker, Thompson is negotiating with both campaigns, effectively selling his support to the candidate who offers him the most attractive White House position. All appears to be going well for Stephen, until he receives a phone call from Duffy, who wants Stephen to defect to the Pullman campaign. A rapid series of cascading events then throws the nomination race into turmoil, threatening to end Stephen's promising career.

Directed and co-written by Clooney as an adaptation of the play Farragut North by Beau Willimon, The Ides Of March exposes a two-faced political system that presents a fake public profile while running on a cut-throat culture of deceit, back-stabbing and betrayal. That politics is a blood sport is not new; that the participants engage with a deadpan matter-of-factness while twisting the knife is never less than disturbing.

The events portrayed are only loosely based on fact, but while too much drama is packed into a few days of campaigning, the individual misdoings all ring true as actual headlines from real political wars. Clooney moves the talk-fest along swiftly, allowing each event to shine brightly but ever so briefly in the glare of the 24/7 news cycle: there is always the next outrage waiting to feed tomorrow's talking heads.

Appropriately, the candidates are the articulate faces of their respective campaigns, but very much secondary characters in the overall context. The strategy, policy, negotiations and message control are the domain of men like Paul, Stephen and Tom. They are the backroom operatives who prefer to stay in the dark, spinning stories to reporters but manipulating events from behind the curtain. The film is a compelling chronicle of a battle of wills, and Clooney constructs it with zest, focusing on soul-destroying compromises driven by the rampant ambition to win at all costs.

A dream cast contributes greatly to the film's appeal, with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti biting into their roles with glee, allowing Ryan Gosling to adopt the more cerebral and circumspect approach. Stephen is at the centre of the film, and Gosling treats the role as a story of awakening. Stephen transforms from idealistic bright young assistant campaign manager to a veteran of the political wars, a journey that will require him to taste bitter disappointment and discover just how far he will personally go to safeguard his dreams.

Evan Rachel Wood radiates an outer innocence and inner self-indulgence, always hinting that Molly wants to play in a league that may just be too tough for her. Marisa Tomei suffers somewhat from a vaguely underwritten role as the clinical reporter Ida.

Of course by the time Stephen emerges at the other end of the Ohio primary, his idealistic dream is a nightmare of corruption, his path to success littered with victims. But in the high stakes world of politics, the prize comes with the reward of enormous power, justifying all necessary means.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Thin Red Line (1998)

A lyrical World War Two drama, The Thin Red Line explores the psychology of soldierhood in the context of the Guadalcanal campaign. The film mixes intense battle action with slow moving, narration-driven introspection scenes to create a unique but not always successful experience.

A collection of soldiers are thrust into battle when the United States mounts an invasion of Guadalcanal to halt the Japanese plans to control the south Pacific. The men include Witt (Jim Caviezel), who is thoughtful and philosophical about the war's purpose and always one step away from wandering off on unauthorized leave; Welch (Sean Penn) a no-nonsense down to earth soldier's soldier; and Staros (Elias Koteas), a Captain who cares about his men, perhaps too much.

The hard-driving Lieutenant Colonel Tall (Nick Nolte) is the local commander, and he is eager to make up for lost time after being passed over for promotions throughout his career. Captain Gaff (John Cusack) is Tall's loyal second-in-command. The soldiers engage in fierce combat to dislodge the Japanese from a strategic hilltop, and then push on towards the Japanese rear positions. But territory is gained at a high cost, and each man has to deal with the chaos of war in his own way.

At times, The Thin Red Line represents war as wall paper with a soundtrack of pensive poetry. The visuals may be impressive, and the narration a morose and thoughtful reflection of soldiers' thoughts, but the pace, particularly in the opening and closing 45 minutes, is as close to watching paint dry as a movie can get. Terrence Malick directs with his trademark disregard for what may be popular, opting instead to focus on the beauty of a Pacific paradise being invaded by the ugliness of war. With a running time of close to three hours, the film occasionally rewards patience, but also tests it to the limit.

The action scenes, when they come, are heart-pounding, all the more so thanks to the contrast with the languid pace of the set-up. The middle of The Thin Red Line is an absorbing, meat-grinder of a battle in three phases. The US soldiers are first pinned down and picked off by unseen Japanese troops dug into the hillside. The middle phase finds a small group of soldiers charging at the key Japanese fortification to try and force a breakthrough. The final phase involves a rout of the Japanese
rear lines.

Malick matches Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (also from 1998) in capturing the agony and ecstasy of war, the pulsating kill-or-be-killed calculus quickly disposing of human pauses once the battle is joined. This is a war film that is not afraid to show fighting men as confused, terrified and error-prone. When heroes do step forward, they do stand out, although in their rush to claim glory, commanders like Tall also find ways to cheapen the achievements earned on the battlefield.

Less successful is the attempt to humanize the soldiers. Despite the mammoth running length, there are just too many individuals cluttering up the front lines, and too many actors given too little to do. With Malick endlessly focusing his cameras on wildlife and still life, the soldiers are shortchanged into insignificance. The likes of Adrien Brody, Woody Harrelson, John C. Reilly and Jared Leto are reduced to little more than extras in the context of a three hour film. John Travolta and George Clooney are each on screen for about 30 seconds. Nick Nolte, Jim Caviezel, Sean Penn and, to lesser extent, John Cusack are treated marginally better, but the film is definitely stained with the mark of name actors slipped into meaningless roles to try and salvage box office.

The movie offers up two half-hearted character conflict points, and they are both overdrawn. Tall and Staros clash about battle tactics, with Staros refusing  to obey orders that would have put his men in harm's way. The stand-off between the two men is prolonged to the point of exhaustion. Meanwhile, in a bizarre chase for dramatic tension that goes nowhere, the loyal Gaff dares to demand from Tall that the men be supplied with water as they fight. Ponderously spouted narration about the futility of war does not make up for the lack of genuine narrative substance.

Flawed as it is, The Thin Red Line is a worthwhile and cerebral addition to the catalogue of war epics that care more about damage caused than territory gained. The film may choose aesthetics over content, but it never loses sight of the losses on all sides.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Intolerable Cruelty (2003)

A romantic comedy set in the world of a divorce lawyer and his clients, Intolerable Cruelty rides the glowing charisma of stars George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones, but flounders after a bright start.

Miles Massey (Clooney) is a slick divorce attorney who specializes in either securing or escaping large settlements for well-heeled clients, and rarely loses a case. When the stunningly beautiful Marylin Rexroth (Zeta-Jones) captures her husband Rex (Edward Herrman) with his lover on video, she thinks that she has an open and shut case to claim at least half of his considerable fortune. Working for Rex, Miles is able to prove that Marylin is a gold digger who only ever married Rex for his money, and she gets nothing. But despite humiliating her, Miles is smitten by Marylin, and the attraction is mutual.

Marylin pretends that she wants to rehabilitate herself, starts planning for her next marriage, and claims to have fallen deeply in love with oil tycoon Howard D. Doyle (Billy Bob Thornton). She even seeks Miles' help to draft an iron clad prenuptial agreement to prove that she in not after Howard's money. However, Miles is suspicious of her motives and he is proven right, although even he does not know how far Marylin will go to achieve financial independence.

Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen (with only Joel credited), Intolerable Cruelty is one of the relatively weaker Coen efforts. A romance with just the slightest of edges, the film rides on a predictable rail, and even the supposedly big twist is easy to foresee. Which is not to say that the stars don't shine, because Clooney and Zeta-Jones are worthy adversaries. Both play characters who are sexy, smart and single-minded about getting what they want, and watching them circle each other before pouncing to either kill or kiss is rarely dull.

Although conceivably a romance, the romantic elements are the most poorly developed elements of the film. Miles' emotions are more about lust and conquest, Marylin has grander agendas linked to financial freedom, and the two are attracted to each other abruptly and mostly out of animal magnetism rather than warm enchantment. The movie works better when the two are competing rather than courting, and some good humour is provided by eccentric supporting characters including Cedric the Entertainer as a private detective and Jonathan Hadary as an unforgettable Baron Krauss von Espy.

But the film takes a sharp turn towards cretinism in its final third, and what was a reasonably enjoyable sparring match for adults turns to poorly conceived farce. An assassin by the name of Wheezy Joe (Irwin Keyes) is introduced, and while the character is admittedly funny, he takes the film far from its grounded premise and towards juvenile humour. The film deflates and never reclaims its good will.

Intolerable Cruelty is flighty entertainment, tolerable but not all that enduring.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Syriana (2005)

An intellectual tour-de-force delving into the morass of Middle East geo-politics, Syriana launches a thrilling multi-pronged probe of its subject, and emerges with a realistic portrait of a depressing impasse.

The film tackles several interlinked sub-stories. Weary CIA Agent Bob Barnes (George Clooney) tangles with arms dealers in Tehran, and in the process loses control of a sophisticated anti-tank missile. His next assignment is to travel to Beirut and assassinate Prince Nassir (Alexander Siddig), the progressive heir to an oil-rich Arab country. Once in Beirut, Barnes crosses paths with the militant group Hezbollah, particularly the brutal Mussawi (Mark Strong).

Big oil companies in the US want Nassir out of the way because he threatens to upset the status quo. Idealistic energy consultant Bryan Woodman (Matt Damon) overcomes the tragic loss of his young son to become Nassir's trusted advisor, and together they plan Nassir's modernization of his country.

A large merger of oil companies Connex and Killen is unfolding in the United States. The consolidated company will control vast oil and gas reserves in the Middle East and Asia, and is most interested in stability. Attorney Bennett Holiday (Jeffrey Wright) is hired to investigate the proposed merger, which appears to be a fait accompli. Bennet's boss is political power broker Dean Whiting (Christopher Plummer), working behind the scenes to ensure that the more compliant Prince Meshal (Akbar Kurtha) ascends to the throne instead of Nassir.

The merger of Connex and Killen results in mass layoffs in the oil fields of the Middle East. One of the casualties is Pakistani migrant worker Wasim (Mazhar Munir) and once unemployed he drifts under the Islamist influence of charismatic recruiter Muhammad Sheikh Agiza (Amr Waked). Wasim is radicalized and prepared for a terrorist suicide mission, using the anti-tank missile seized in Tehran.

Delving into the world of Middle East politics is a daunting task, and Syriana succeeds with aplomb. The fast paced episodic structure preferred by director Stephen Gaghan (adapting the book See No Evil by Robert Baer) is a perfect fit with the fragmented yet labyrinthine relationships that define the region. And other than ignoring the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, Gaghan expertly assembles the pieces of the puzzle and tightly packs the 128 minutes of running time with multiple stories of ever increasing tension.

While Syriana's structure works in its favour, it also allows Gaghan to get away with some short-hand. The various stories hold enormous impact thanks to the short sharp jabs style of delivery, but this also leaves plenty that is unsaid and unexplained. The need to fill in the blanks serves the film's intellectual credentials but also gives it a free pass to gloss over what could have been interesting details.

There are few happy emotions in Syriana. The film mimics the Middle East's pathetic entrapment into a cycle of pessimism driven by greed and the crushing imperatives of oil, which flows along with espionage, arms trading, corruption, corporotocracy, torture, extremes of wealth and poverty, militant Islam and terrorism. The polluted streams of evil feed off each other and accelerate the downward spiral of violence and subjugation, sucking entire societies into the vortex. Progressive voices are trampled because the system is dependent on maintaining the existing structure among the entrenched power brokers, and change represents an unacceptable risk to the production of oil and profits.

The ensemble cast members are all appropriately dour or conniving. Clooney won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his portrayal of Bob Barnes (effectively Baer's character), a disillusioned agent who has seen too many battles and too many betrayals in the back alleys of the Middle East, but knows of no other life. Christopher Plummer is at his oily best as a literal backroom kingmaker. Matt Damon and Akbar Kurtha represent the earnest but naive attitude of optimism that occasionally sprouts in the region, and their characters predictably hurtle towards the impenetrable brick wall of international rules set by others. Also in the cast are Chris Cooper as a Killen executive, Amanda Peet as Bryan Woodman's wife, and William Hurt as one of Barnes' few trusted allies at the CIA.

By the time Gaghan wraps up his stories, all his key characters have been profoundly impacted, and of course absolutely no meaningful positive change has been achieved. In the Middle East potential saviours are swallowed by the desert, drowned in oil, and quickly forgotten as the tide of oil-fuelled violence marches on abated.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Monuments Men (2014)

Inspired by true events, The Monuments Men recounts the story of Allied attempts to find and safeguard precious art as World War Two rages on the battlefields of Europe. The slice of history is worthwhile, but the film is preachy and lacks an emotional focus.

With the Allies preparing to wrest Europe from Nazi control, art expert Frank Stokes (George Clooney) convinces President Roosevelt that a special effort is required to safeguard Europe's artistic treasures from destruction and theft. Stokes assembles a group of art and architecture professionals including James Granger (Matt Damon), Richard Campbell (Bill Murray) and Walter Garfield (John Goodman). They are joined by Frenchman Jean Claude Clermont (Jean Dujardin) and English army officer Donald Jeffries (Hugh Bonneville). The group receives basic military training and arrives on the Normandy beaches a few weeks after the D-Day landings.

With Hitler still harbouring grandiose ambitions of opening a massive art museum in his name and filling it with stolen loot, Stokes' men use spotty intelligence reports and spread out to various towns to try and locate the hidden caches of art seized by the German army. Granger makes his way to Paris, and connects with Claire Simone (Cate Blanchett), an art curator who was forced to collaborate with the occupying Germans but managed to keep detailed records of key art pieces. Meanwhile, Jeffries risks his life trying to save a treasured statue in a Belgian church. With the Germans in full retreat, Stokes and his men have to race against time to find and recover the art treasures of Europe.

The Monuments Men is a well-staged spectacle, professionally produced and overflowing with good intentions. But writer, producer and director George Clooney struggles mightily to find the right tone, and never gets there. The film oscillates wildly between juvenile levels of humour, attempting to capitalize on the long-ago reputations of Goodman and Murray, and scenes that desperately overreach to try and grasp some level of solemnity.

In the attempts to find a serious core, the film often veers towards commentary about the Holocaust rather than the artwork, unintentionally deflecting from the purpose at hand. The supposed highlight scene of Stokes face to face with a captured German officer fizzles miserably, Stokes' tiresome speech about buying a bagel from a Jewish cafe in New York going exactly nowhere in the context of the film.

In a case of spoon-feeding overload, on four different occasions Clooney takes to the pulpit to spell out, in lengthy monologues, the importance of the Saving The Art Mission. On three of these occasions, he uses a microphone to emphasize the preaching. In essence the film's audience is given no credit for being able to grasp the importance of attempting to save the world's most famous and valuable pieces of art.

The film also falls short in providing meaningful depth to any of the main characters. Stokes and his team are portrayed as well-intentioned and jocular, but precious little else is revealed about any of them.

Despite the shortcomings, The Monuments Men is passable entertainment, delivered with plenty of pomp and polish. Cate Blanchett as Claire emerges as by far the most interesting character, facing a dilemma about how much she can trust the newly-arriving Americans in uniform, as compared to just-departed Germans in uniform. And the star-filled cast members do their best, stretching the thin and uneven material as far as it will go with pure charisma.

Like a merely average portrait, The Monuments Men is pretty to look at but lacks a sense of lingering resonance.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Gravity (2013)

A lost-in-space two-person epic, Gravity is a spellbinding exploration of survival at the most primordial level.

The crew of the space shuttle Explorer is orbiting Earth while repairing the Hubble telescope. Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is a mission specialist, a scientist on her first space flight. She is grappling with the repair work along with fellow space walker Sharif (Paul Sharma) while veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) zooms around them wearing a thruster pack. Mission Control (voice of Ed Harris) informs the Explorer crew that the Russians have just destroyed a nearby malfunctioning satellite, creating debris. This eventually triggers an unintentional catastrophic chain reaction of satellite explosions, and a large and destructive debris field heads straight to Explorer.

The warning is received too late. Sharif and the on-board crew are killed and the vehicle is destroyed. Stone and Kowalski are the only survivors, drifting in space and running out of oxygen, cut off from all communication back to Earth. Kowalski uses his thruster pack to rescue Stone from an uncontrollable spin, and tethered together they try to make their way to the International Space Station, hoping to use a Soyuz module to return to Earth. On the way to the ISS Kowalski calms down the frantic Stone by getting her to talk about her life, and she reveals that her four year old daughter died in a playground accident. They close in on the ISS only to find it partially destroyed, and despite her best efforts Stone is soon detached from Kowalski and left on her own, deep in space, with no rescue in sight.

Alfonso Cuaron directs Gravity from a story co-written with his son Jonas, and it is 90 minutes of cinematic bliss. In glorious 3D, the vastness of space comes alive, the emptiness overwhelming, the loneliness crushing. The fragility of humanity's deceptively routine space excursions comes into sharp focus when everything goes wrong, and equipment worth millions of dollars is reduced to space dust in seconds. Stone and Kowalski are alone together, and later, Stone is just alone. Really alone. Her fight for survival is a test of individual will to stay alive in the most harrowing of circumstances, and Cuaron creates an ethereal journey for Stone to navigate.

Despite all the bulky equipment, the film quickly humanizes Stone. As soon as we meet her she is feeling nauseous, her space rookie status all too obvious as she struggles with the repair assignment, her demeanour fluctuating between assertive scientist and fish out of water. Later Kowalski coaxes out of her the personal tragedy of a dead young daughter, Stone now a woman burying herself in her work in a failed attempt to bury her grief. As her space journey goes all wrong, Stone has every reason to give up hope, give in to the catastrophic circumstances, and get ready to reunite with her daughter, but that is not how the human spirit has triumphed against existential threats over the millennia.

Sandra Bullock owns Gravity, her performance filled with vulnerability, determination, uncertainty, self-doubt, and resourcefulness. Acting through space suits, helmets, with hardly any dialogue, and against a backdrop of destroyed technology and a majestic floating Earth, Bullock cuts through all the distractions, and finds the simplicity of a woman in big trouble who needs to stop hyperventilating long enough to gather herself and improvise a course to safety.

George Clooney reliably plays his usual cocky and confident persona, but Matt Kowalski is the secondary character, providing essential support but ultimately moving aside and allowing Stone the scientist and mother to determine her fate.

While creating his own aesthetic, Cuaron salutes previous space classics, with strong nods to 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien, and Apollo 13. Gravity plays on the same theme of human endurance and ingenuity pushed to new magnificence when confronted by calamity. As astronaut Ryan Stone finds new ways to surprise herself on her quest for survival, Gravity's mystical pull is irresistible.

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.