political

Who is this guy Don McGahn?

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former FEC Commissioner Don McGahn

The Mueller Report has brought former White Counsel Don McGahn into semi-celebrity. McGahn was a major source for the Mueller Report, which portrays McGahn as one of the Trump Administration officials who, by disobeying and thwarting Trump’s orders, saved Trump from criminal charges of obstruction of justice. McGahn was the VILLAIN in last year’s
gripping documentary Dark Money, an expose of our new political environment, with unlimited secret money unleashed by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling.

The Mueller Report recounts an episode where Trump advised a note-taking McGahn that Trump’s lawyers never take notes; McGahn memorably replied “But I’m a real lawyer.” But McGahn worked his way up as a Republican Party operative, and was a GOP appointee to the Federal Elections Commission (when he wore longish preppy hair). In one particularly nasty segment of Dark Money, we witness Commissioner McGahn unashamedly grinding the FEC’s gears of enforcement to a stop.  After the FEC, McGahn went on to serve as the Trump White House Counsel, with major responsibility for the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanagh.

Dark Money’s writer-director Kimberly Reed takes us to her native Montana as conservative (but independent) Republican legislators find themselves deluged by massive and monstrous attacks from some even more conservative out-of-state sources. Intrepid small-town reporter John S. Adams and the understaffed state regulators follow the money and try to hunt down who is pulling the strings.

As the mystery unfolds, Dark Money also takes us to Wisconsin, where dark money has assaulted an unexpected branch of government. And we go to Washington, DC, to the Federal Elections Commission, where Ann Ravel, the Obama-appointed chair of the FEC, has resigned in disgust after Republican commissioners have blocked all enforcement of federal campaign finance regulation. (Disclosure: I have worked with Silicon Valley native Ravel in my day job.)

Here are some of Dark Money’s most disturbing revelations:

  • While it’s bad enough that we don’t know the extent of wealthy Americans like the Koch Brothers trying to buy elections, neither do we know about the secret election participation of FOREIGN players.
  • Dark Money sources are not stopping at trying to buy legislators and governors, but are also trying to take over state supreme courts!

And just when we need MORE scrutiny of the attempts to buy the legislative and judicial branches of state governments, we are witnessing the death of statehouse journalism.

Dark Money keeps us on the edges of our seats throughout and culminates in a real-life courtroom drama

I attended the sold-out Bay Area premiere of Dark Money, co-sponsored by Silicon Valley’s Cinema Club and by Santa Clara County. Both Ann Ravel and John S. Adams appeared at the post-screening Q&A. You can stream Dark Money from Amazon (free with Prime), iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

THE BRINK: craving relevance

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Steve Bannon in THE BRINK, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

The Brink is documentarian Alison Klayman’s up-close-and-personal portrait of Steve Bannon, the outsized personality who founded Breitbart as a “platform for the alt right” and who encouraged Donald Trump’s race-baiting right into the White House.

But even Trump is not shameless enough to keep Bannon around – as The Brink opens, Bannon has just been fired from the Trump Administration in the wake of the wake of the Charlottesville disgrace (“very fine people on both sides“).  Bannon is now embarking on a campaign of uniting the European populist Right around a common racist/ white supremicist/anti-immigration message.

Bannon, of course, is a genius at political messaging, and his major outcome was the once unthinkable re-emergence of public white supremicism – voicing those who lived under the dark, damp underside of rocks and logs with the other creepy-crawlies, and making them feel like they can walk the earth erect like other vertebrates.

Bannon is a major ham, and all too happy to let the world watch him in action.  Bannon, of all people, is savvy enough to understand that Klayman is hostile to his beliefs and career,yet he granted her intimate access.  His ego must not have allowed him to resist a movie about himself – or he learned from Trump that no publicity is bad publicity.

For her part, Alison Klayman (Ai Wei-wei: Never Sorry) is clever enough to let Bannon himself reveal his flaws.   As he thinks he is showing us his skills, he is also showing himself to be an attention-craving blowhard.  The horror isn’t that Bannon is some invincible evil mastermind but it’s in the masses (only glimpsed) that are so consumed by the fear and hatred that he peddles.

In the riveting opening sequence, Bannon describes how German technocrats designed the Birkenau death camp to be masterfully efficient.  The banality of evil is not an original thought, but Bannon’s insights are more than a little scary (and his appreciation of Nazi efficiency is uncomfortable).

I found The Brink to be irresistible and watched with fascination.  To those who have had their fill of the propagandists of the Right in Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes and Get Me Roger Stone (with Paul Manafort as bonus, I say that The Brink still offers insights – and more satisfaction.  Bannon wants his political skill to be validated, but The Brink reveals how pathetically he craves relevance.

TRAVEL BAN: MAKING AMERICA LAUGH AGAIN: using comedy to explore the uncomfortable

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Comic Aron Kader in TRAVEL BAN: MAKE AMERICA LAUGH AGAIN

Since medieval court jesters tweaked royal courts, we’ve used comedy to explore difficult conversations.  In the documentary Travel Ban: Making America Laugh Again, comedians confront the misunderstanding, bigotry and hatred faced by Americans who are Muslim and by Americans whose families come from the Middle East.

One unfortunate aspect of our culture is the impatience with and resistance to accepting nuance and complication.  Many Americans are content to accept a world in which “the Middle East” is a nation – one entity that is ever-hostile to the United States and ever evil-intentioned to all Americans.

Muslims and Middle Easterners have always endured negative stereotypes, made worse by 9/11.  But, this has worsened in the Trump Era because Trump empowers and licenses the open spewing of hate speech into our national discourse.

In response, Comics Aron Kader, Raz Jobrani and Ahmed Ahmed, who performed on the Arabian Knights and Axis of Evil comedy tours, mobilized even more stand-up comics for the Travel Ban tour.

Travel Ban includes the on-stage and off-stage banter of over a dozen American comics of Middle Eastern heritage or Muslim religion.  As one would expect, some are far funnier than others. My favorite is Feraz Ozel, who also has the movie’s funniest line in response to “Why don’t the good Muslims get together and fight the bad Muslims?”  (You’ll have to watch the movie for to get the devastating punchline.

Travel Ban is NOT purely a concert film; we do see performances, but the comics also discuss their experiences off-stage.  For context, there are some bracing videos of actual hate crimes and hateful rants by ignorant “real Americans”.  And Travel Ban brings in some key factual tidbits; for example, zero Americans have been killed by anyone from any of the countries targeted by Trump’s travel ban.

This is a serious film with some hilarious comedy.   As one of the comics says off-stage, “a good comedian makes people laugh, a great comedian makes them think”.

Cinequest hosts the world premiere of Travel Ban: Making America Laugh Again.

VICE: like Macbeth, only funny

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Christian Bale in VICE

Vice is the comic biopic of Dick Cheney by writer-director Adam McKay (The Big Short).  Cheney is played by a physically transformed and unrecognizable Christian Bale.

McKay’s take is that Cheney’s driving motivation and genius is the accumulation and exercise of power – to whatever end and by whatever means.  McKay also sees Cheney as a mediocre slacker molded and fueled by Lynne Cheney (Amy Adams), whose own ambitions were limited in the 1960s by her gender.  So, this is a tale of ruthless grasping along the lines of Macbeth or House of Cards, only mostly non-fiction.

McKay drops in the horrifying real impacts of Cheney’s exercise of power, but this is mostly a very funny movie.  Donald Rumsfeld, Cheney’s mentor in power-grabbing, and George W. Bush, Cheney’s stooge, are played for laughs in very broad performances by Steve Carell and Sam Rockwell.  McKay also tosses in a funny faux ending and has Dick and Lynne, in bed for the night, erupt in Shakespearean dialogue.  Jesse Plemons plays a fictional Everyman narrator.

Bale’s performance is extraordinary, and goes well beyond the impeccable impersonation, down to every Cheney mannerism – stoneface, sneer and grunt.  Adams is excellent as his Lady Macbeth.  So is the rest of the fine cast, especially Alsion Pil as lesbian daughter Mary, Tyler Perry as Colin Powell and Shea Whigham as Lynne Cheney’s probably murderous father.

Vice is pretty good history, biography from a sharp point of view and a damn entertaining movie.

BLACKKKLANSMAN: funny and razor sharp

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Adam Driver and John David Washington in BLACKKKLANSMAN

In BlacKkKlansman, Spike Lee takes the stranger-than-fiction story of Ron Stallworth and soars. Stallworth was a real African-American rookie cop in Colorado Springs who infiltrated the local Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s.

Stallworth (John David Washington) seduces the KKK with a racist rant on the telephone, and then has his white partner Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) impersonate him at the KKK meetings. Stallworth and Zimmerman race against the clock to quash KKK violence. Along the way, Stallworth tries to romance the comely cop-hating militant Patrice (Laura Harrier).

All of the actors are excellent, but it’s Spike Lee who is the star here, taking this oddball novelty story and transforming it into an exploration of hate in America – then and now.

The local KKK is a bunch of clowns. Paul Walter Hauser (Shawn in I, Tonya) plays a member of the Colorado Springs Klan posse, which tells you all you need to know about their efficacy. Suffice it to say that this gang who can’t burn a cross straight will get their comeuppance. Even their media-slick national leader, David Dukes (Topher Grace), is ripe for an epic prank.

As the moronic Klansmen bumble around and even name Stallworth their leader, BlacKkKlansman is riotously funny. But Spike makes it clear that racial hatred is not going to be wiped out in the 70s with the Colorado Springs KKK. When David Dukes lifts his glass to “America First”, it’s chilling.

At the end of the film, Spike lets go with his patented dolly shot, and we are sobered by a racist symbol unbowed. Then, Spike takes us seamlessly into the present with some actual scenes from contemporary America. It’s very powerful, and, when I saw it, many audience members wept.

John David Washington and Topher Grace in BLACKKKLANSMAN

Spike is inclusive – inclusive with intentionality – and this goes beyond the Ron/Flip buddy partnership. The Civil Rights movement benefited from Jewish support, and Black leaders like Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King Jr. worked hand-in-hand with Jewish colleagues. But Jews (and all whites) were less welcome in the Black Power age. In BlacKkKlansman, Spike makes it clear that African-Americans and Jews are natural allies in the struggle against bigotry, and seeks to revive the alliance.

Spike also celebrates the Afro.  BlacKkKlansman boasts the most impressive assembly of Afros, perhaps ever, especially Harrier’s.   Oscar Gamble, Franklyn Ajaye and Angela Davis would be proud.

Spike also masterfully employs period music to tell this story: Ball of Confusion, Oh Happy Day, and, of course,  Say It Loud -I’m Black and I’m Proud.  Somehow, he even found a place for Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl).  But Emerson Lake and Palmer’s Lucky Man may be the most perfectly placed song.  It’s all pretty stellar.

Spike Lee has made two cinematic masterpieces: Do the Right Thing and 25th Hour.  BlacKkKlansman may not be a masterpiece, but it’s right at the top of Spike’s other films and it’s perfect for this age in America.

SORRY TO BOTHER YOU: audacious and savagely funny

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Lakeith Stanfield and Tessa Thompson in SORRY TO BOTHER YOU

The savagely funny social satire Sorry to Bother You rips both the excesses of 21st century capitalism and the popular response to those excesses – apathetic submissiveness.  This may be the most original American film of the year.

Sorry to Bother You is set with specificity in Oakland, but the story is about the greater corporate-dominated culture.  A sinister corporation named Worry Free flourishes by enlisting consumers to “lifetime contracts” for their employment and household needs; Worry Free clients/employees are provided for life with meals, housing (in barracks crammed with bunk beds) and clothing (hospital scrubs) in return for menial factory labor.  The Worry Free system, of course, is slavery.  Almost nobody cares about that – this is a vapid culture where the most popular TV game show is I Got the Shit Kicked Out of Me, where each week’s contestant is beaten and humiliated for mass entertainment.  Only the insurgent group Left Eye resists, with graffiti and guerilla actions.

Cassius (Lakeith Stanfield), a young man without prospects, is living in his uncle’s Oakland garage with his avant-garde artist girlfriend Detroit (Tessa Thompson).  Cassius is overjoyed to finally score a telemarketing job, even though his new boss explains that every applicant is hired.  Cassius’ telemarketing career is futile until he acts on a tip from an older colleague (Danny Glover) to “use your white voice”.  Suddenly, Cassius vaults to the top of the telemarketing world, and is promoted to make big money pitching Worry Free’s slave labor force to global manufacturers. This raises the question, when does “success” become “selling out”?

Complicating matters for Cassius, his former telemarketing buddies and Detroit take on The Man by organizing a union.  Cassius becomes both the butt of a viral YouTube video and estranged from his support system just as Worry Free’s founder (Armie Hammer) offers Cassius an even bigger opportunity.  Finding slavery not  profitable enough, Worry Free is about to launch what is horrifically called “the future of labor” – a sci-fi solution to create a work force “more durable and compliant” than human slaves.  If Cassius decides to expose the atrocities, how will the public react?

Sorry to Bother You is the first feature as writer-director for Bay Area artist and rapper Boots Riley,  It’s an impressive film debut for Riley, who has proven himself to be a first-rate social observer and satirist.

Lakeith Stanfield is excellent as the stoic, hunched Cassius, and so is the rest of the cast (Thompson, Glover, Steven Yuen, Omari Harwick, Germaine Fowler).  Armie Hammer’s performance as the unapologetically monstrous entrepreneur is delicious.  Kate Berlani sparkles as the new telemarketing “team leader”, who, having drank the Kool-Aid, spouts corporate management babble.

Sorry to Bother You is a riot – in the comedic sense and also as sociopolitical disruption.  Nary a joke goes awry, from Detroit’s self-crafted earrings to the security code in the corporate elevator.  And Riley plays a final joke for us (and on us) in the closing credits.

Stream of the Week: THE TEACHER – a peek into communist dread

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THE TEACHER
THE TEACHER

In the superb drama The Teacher, it’s the mid-1980s and the Iron Curtain is still defining Czechoslovakia; (The Teacher is a Czech movie in the Slovak language). The title character’s position as a high school teacher makes her a gatekeeper to the children’s futures, and she’s unaccountable because she’s a minor Communist Party functionary. Wielding blatant academic favoritism and even overt blackmail, she uses the advantage of her political status for her own petty benefit – coercing shopping errands, car rides, pastries and other favors from the parents of her students. Finally, she causes so much harm to one student that some of the parents rebel and seek her ouster.

Will the other parents support them? What of the parents who benefit from the regime? And what of the majority of the parents who must decide whether to risk their own futures? The risk is real: the regime has already reassigned one parent, a scientist, to a menial job after his wife had defected.

The Teacher benefits from a brilliant, award-winning performance from Zuzana Mauréry in the title role. What makes this character especially loathsome is that she’s not just heavy-handed, but grossly manipulative. Mauréry is a master at delivering reasonable words with both sweet civility and the unmistakable menace of the unspoken “or else”.

The acting from the entire company is exceptional, especially from Csongor Kassai, Martin Havelka and the Slovak director Peter Bebjak as aggrieved parents. Writer Petr Jarchovský has created textured, authentic characters. Director Jan Hrebejk not only keeps the story alive but adds some clever filmmaking fluorishes as he moves the story between flashbacks and the present.

The Teacher was the best foreign film at the 2017 Cinequest.  It can now be streamed on Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.

THE DEATH OF STALIN: gallows humor from the highest of scaffolds

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Jason Isaacs and Steve Buscemi in THE DEATH OF STALIN

One might not expect the death of Josef Stalin and the subsequent maneuvering of his cronies to make for a savagely funny movie, but that is exactly what writer-director Armando Ianucci has accomplished in in The Death of Stalin.  In his Veep and In the Loop, Ianucci has proved himself an expert in mocking the ambition, venality and flattery of those reaching for power.  In The Death of Stalin, he adds terror to his quiver of motivations, and the result is darkly hilarious.

Serving Stalin was a high-wire act.  By the end of Stalin’s Great Terror, everyone still standing in the Soviet leadership had survived by flattering Stalin and by loyally carrying out every Stalin command, no matter how misguided and/or murderous.  Given that the slightest misstep – or even a wholly imagined fragment of Stalin’s paranoia – could lead to a summary bullet-in-the-head, this was no small achievement.  These may have been the most powerful men at the very top of a superpower, but they have all been traumatized into extreme caution by years of fear.

For example, when Stalin suffers a cerebral hemorrhage and falls to the floor, his guards are afraid to burst into his room.  When Stalin is discovered on the floor by his housekeeper, the regime’s top leaders gather around him and decide on next steps.  The first question is whether to call a doctor, because they fear that if Stalin wakes up and finds that someone else has made a decision, he will have them executed.  (Once they get past that, they must work around the fact that Stalin has already killed or exiled all the competent doctors in Moscow.)

Of course, it would be absurd for Stalin’s inner circle to refrain from calling a doctor for hours and hours.  But it really happened.  So did all of the other key occurrences in the movie, although the events were compressed from the real six months into a three-day movie plot.

This cast is brilliant.  Steve Buscemi is cast as Nikita Kruschev and proves to be an inspired choice.  Jason Isaacs, with a ridiculously broad (but historically accurate) chest full of medals, is especially delightful as Field Marshal Zhukov.   Michael Palin, as Molotov, has one of the best bits as he deadpans political correctness while figuring out whether he can admit that the sudden release of his imprisoned wife is really good news.  Each one of the actors – Simon Russell Beale, Olga Kuryenko, Paddy Considine, Jeffrey Tambor, Andrea Riseborough – gets to shine with Ianucci’s dialogue.

This is gallows humor from the highest of scaffolds.  The Death of Stalin is an insightful exploration of terror – and hilarious, too.

Stream of the Week: THE BRAINWASHING OF MY DAD

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THE BRAINWASHING OF MY DAD
THE BRAINWASHING OF MY DAD

In honor of Cinequest, this week’s video pick is The Brainwashing of My Dad, which had its US Premiere at the 2016 Cinequest.

Ever notice how people who watch a lot of Fox News or listen to talk radio become bitter, angry and, most telling, fact-resistant? In the documentary The Brainwashing of My Dad, filmmaker Jan Senko as she explores how right-wing media impacts the mood and personality of its consumers as well as their political outlook. Senko uses her own father Frank as a case study.

We see Frank Senko become continually mad and, well, mean. And we hear testimony about many, many others with the identical experience. Experts explain the existence of a biological addiction to anger.

Senko traces the history of right-wing media from the mid-1960s, with the contributions of Lewis Powell, Richard Nixon, Rush Limbaugh, Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch. Senko even gets right-wing wordsmith Frank Luntz on camera to explain the power of buzz words. If you don’t know this story (Hillary was right about the “vast, right-wing conspiracy”) , Senko spins the tale very comprehensively. If you do know the material (and my day job is in politics), it is methodical.

This topic is usually explored for its impact on political opinion. Senko’s focus on mood and personality is original and The Brainwashing of My Dad contributes an important addition to the conversation. One last thing about the brainwashing of Senko’s dad – it may not be irreversible…

I first reviewed The Brainwashing of My Dad for its U.S. Premiere at Cinequest 2016. The Brainwashing of My Dad is available streaming on Amazon Video, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

THE POST: riveting thriller and revelatory personal portrait

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Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep in THE POST

The Post may be a docudrama, but it plays as a thriller and an astonishingly insightful portrait of Katharine Graham by Meryl Streep. It’s one of the best movies of the year – and one of the most important.

Essentially, this movie is about a corporate decision, but master storyteller Steven Spielberg sets it up as a tick-tock, high stakes thriller.  Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham (Streep) must decide whether to publish the Pentagon Papers at a moment when her company is most vulnerable to market forces and government intimidation.  Nothing less than the American principle of freedom of the press hangs in the balance.

The Post also delivers the personal and feminist transformation of Katharine Graham, learning to move beyond her Mad Men Era roles as wife/mother/socialite andto , for the first time, assume real, not titular, command of a business empire.  And she goes All In on the ballsiest gamble any CEO could make.  To say that Streep brings Graham to life is inadequate.  Streep IS Graham. It sometimes seems like Streep can get an Oscar nomination without even making a movie, but this performance is one of Streep’s very best.

Spielberg surrounds Streep with a dazzling cast.  Tom Hanks lowers the pitch of his voice and becomes the swashbuckling editor Ben Bradlee.  Tracy Letts gives us another fine performance, this time as Graham’s financial guru Fritz Beebe.  As Bradlee’s second wife Tony, Sarah Paulson ignites a monologue with her piercing eyes.

Bruce Greenwood is quite brilliant as Robert McNamara, Graham’s old friend and the architect (and unwilling sta) of the Pentagon Papers. Greenwood is such an overlooked actor, and he’s so reliably good (he was even good in Wild Orchid, for Chrissakes).

The Pentagon Papers was the 7,000-page secret official history of the American involvement in the Vietnam War. Commissioned by then Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, the Pentagon Papers chronicled the years of bad decisions by the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administrations and, especially, the deceitfulness of JFK’s and LBJ’s public optimism about the War.  The truth was that the US government knew that the war was unwinnable and that it was only prolonged because nobody knew how to get out while saving face.  The US President in 1971, Richard Nixon, was following the same course, unnecessarily wasting the lives of another 20,000 Americans during his term of office; the ruthless Nixon and his henchman Henry Kissinger were desperate to keep the Pentagon Papers secret.  A private sector defense expert, Daniel Ellsberg, had access to the Pentagon Papers and sought to have them published, and The Post tells this story, which takes the audience from a jungle firefight into the courtroom of the US Supreme Court.

Baby Boomers will appreciate being transported back to quaint 1971 technology: typewriters, one-page-at-a-time Xerox machines, rotary pay phones, real typeset and ink presses.  (And cigarette smoking in restaurants and cigars in the workplace.)

I’ve also written an essay on some of the historical figures and events depicted in The Post: historical musings on THE POST.

The Post is worth seeing for Streep’s performance, for the history (incredibly important at this moment in the nation’s history) and for the sheer entertainment value.  One of the year’s best.