Fall Movie Review Roundup: Politician Edition - Nixon, W., Milk

Outside of olde tymey British period pieces, biopics are easily my least favorite genre of film. Hey, you know that person you already know pretty much everything about? Well, we're going to tell you all of it...again! And it's gonna be long. And it's gonna be slow. And everyone involved is really gunning for an Academy Award, so you can count on speeches speeches speeches! You excited yet?

Knowing my prejudice, here are reviews of three new biopics - one pointless, one full of point but not perfect, one perfectly on point.

FROST/NIXON (A) 

Instead of taking you through the life of Richard Nixon (snooze), or rehashing the Watergate saga all over again, Frost/Nixon goes the All the President's Men (see: awesome) route and looks at familiar events from an unfamiliar perspective. Focusing on a series of interviews between British journalist David Frost and Nixon, almost all of this material was new to me, and for a history lesson, it's downright thrilling. Most surprising to me was how green Frost was, almost the Ryan Seacrest of his day. All style, little substance, more interested in gladhanding celebrities and fame and womanizing than hard news -- that's the Frost the movie presents. He takes on the Nixon interviews for ratings alone, and both sides are confident the discussion will be a real softball game. So when something snaps in Frost and he decides to really gut the man, it's a showdown unlike any other I've seen. How fascinating that the man to publicly (and rightly) shame Nixon really didn't give a shit about politics, and - as one character states early on - had never even voted!

If the movie sounds dry, let me assure you it is not. The pre-interview stuff is terrific, and the supporting cast (chock full of the finest character actors - Sam Rockwell and Oliver Platt on the Frost side, Kevin Bacon and Toby Jones on the Nixon side) is just top-notch. And when the main event - the interviews themselves - roll around, no one in the theater will be taking a bathroom break. I can't say enough about Frank Langella here. You doubt him as Nixon for about 30 seconds - he doesn't look a great deal like him, the voice seems a bit off - but then he just...becomes the man, right before your eyes. If I hadn't seen Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, I'd call this the performance of the year without hesitation. He has a drunken phone conversation with Frost (the sole reason for the film's wildly inappropriate "R" rating) that is a total jaw-on-the-floor stunner. And while Langella certainly overshadows Michael Sheen's Frost, it's only because the movie requires it. Sheen is fantastic, in what is probably the more challenging role. He expertly exudes that "supreme confidence on the outside, complete uncertainty of his abilities on the inside" personality that is steadily overtaking television, particularly television "news."

Peter Morgan adapts his play, and the script is about as flawless a piece of writing as the year in film has produced. And major props to Ron Howard, long one of the most "faceless" of great directors. He never brings much visual flash to the table, but there's something to be said about the outstanding performances he gets, and has always gotten, from what are typically huge casts brimming with big personalities. This is his best work since Apollo 13, and it has a similar slam-bang combo of history and human emotion. By the time the beautifully scripted final scene (shades of There Will Be Blood) rolls around, you may be shocked by how much you care about both the "villain" and the "hero" of the piece, and delighted by how much gray colors this story that seemed at the outset to be straight up black and white. A really fine film, highly timely, and one of the year's best. Oh, and it's funny as shit.

W. (B-)

An even-handed documentation of the life of George W. Bush? Who asked for this? Oliver Stone, one of the greatest nutjobs in movie history, puts his claws away for the one movie we really wanted them to be used. Hey Stoney, don't try to make me feel sympathy for the man who steamrolled this country into despair and hopelessness. Don't try to make me care about the guy who epically mishandled every major event that came his way. Get mad, dude! Josh Brolin does a great Bush impresssion, the rest of the impressively stacked supporting cast hits all the right notes, but I left feeling just as empty and confused as the past eight years of politics have made me feel.

MILK (B)

At every turn, Milk threatens to become the sort of big, goopy, Hollywood biopic I mentioned in the introduction - packed with grandstanding speeches and unearned sentimentality. The story - of assassinated gay rights activist Harvey Milk, the first openly gay individual elected to public office (city supervisor, to be exact) in California - lends itself to melodrama, but that is wisely avoided. Key dramatic moments are handled subtly, with little fanfare. The performances are mostly reserved. Sean Penn has been shamelessly hammy of late, with I Am Sam and the dreadful All the King's Men showcasing him at his most grotesque. At this point, I fully expected him to play the homosexual Milk in a tutu, diamond earrings, and bright red lipstick. Commendably, he keeps the prancing and mincing to a minimum (mincimum?), and he's pretty affecting here. The other players are strong as well -- James Franco, Emile Hirsch, and particularly Josh Brolin do fine work. 

But basically, I'm just writing about all the problems Milk doesn't have, which I suppose shows how passionless I am about the film. Like W., the matter-of-fact nature of the storytelling left me cold and somewhat uninspired. You look at what may be the pinnacle of modern biography storytelling - Spike Lee's Malcolm X - which leaves the viewer rocked, angry, and drained - and something like this just doesn't come close. It's curiously safe, strangely tame for a daring (and openly gay) filmmaker like Gus Van Sant. I understand trying to reach the largest possible audience with this material, but the fact that Milk is being released after the vote on Proposition 8 (which banned gay marriage in California) is surprising to put it mildly, stupid to put it strongly.

A bulk of the film concerns the vote on Proposition 6, a 1978 bill that would have banned homosexuals from holding teaching positions. And maybe it's naive, but I think seeing this film (if people had seen it - a big "if," I realize) prior to the election could have helped sway at least some of the closed-minded morons who voted against gay marriage last month. Ah, but if they had released this earlier in the year, it would have been forgotten by Academy Award nomination time. Call me cynical, but I have a strong feeling that's why the movie didn't hit theaters at a time when it would have -y'know - actually mattered. Watching the film post-vote, the message comes across as a lot less "we shall overcome" and a lot more "America was full of dicks then, it's full of dicks now." Only difference is that the vast majority of Californians in 1978 voted against Prop 6, showing that, at one magical time, the state of California exhibited compassion and believed in equal rights for all. We've fallen a long way, baby.

tags: milk  sean penn  frost nixon  frank langella  academy awards  oscars  ron howard  michael sheen  josh brolin  oliver stone  movies  movie reviews  

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