historical

HIDDEN FIGURES: Woman Power, Black Power, Brain Power

by
Taraji P. Henson in HIDDEN FIGURES
Taraji P. Henson in HIDDEN FIGURES

Hidden Figures tells the hitherto generally unknown story of some African-American women whose math wizardry was key to the success of the US space program in the early 1960s.  It’s pretty rare that someone can make a historical movie about something I had never heard of, but here we are.  The screenplay is based on real events, and we see the images of the real thee women at the end of the movie.  It’s a good story.

I had forgotten that engineers used to do even the complicated calculations by hand.  Indeed, lots of aeronautical engineering calculations were needed to send the first NASA astronauts into space, and this was before the government used mainframe computers, let alone handheld calculators.  So the answer was to have, for every room of (all male) engineers, a room full of women with the job title of “Computer” to do and check the math problems.

Hidden Figures’ heroines, including an authentic math prodigy and pioneer in computer programming, are perfectly played by Taraji P. Henson, Olivia Spencer and Janelle Monae (fresh from another acting triumph this fall  in Moonlight). Remember that these women had to overcome the automatic sexism of the Mad Men era.   On top of that, they were black women working in still-segregated Virginia.  And, just to make things even more difficult,  they were working for engineers, too!

The entire cast is excellent, especially Mahershala Ali (hunky and compelling yet again), Kevin Costner and Jim Parsons as a particular officious and sexist foil.

We see one of the first massive, room-filling but delicate IBM mainframe computers.  That, calling people “computers” and the use of the programming language FORTRAN all drew chuckles from the Silicon Valley audience at my screening.

Hidden Figures does an especially fine job in depicting the tension during John Glenn’s communications blackout.  Glenn’s space capsule had a problem with the heat shield.  When it re-entered the atmosphere, there was a period of a few minutes when Glenn’s communications went dead.  During this time (and I remember it well), everyone on the planet was watching on TV and no one knew whether the craft and Glenn were being consumed by a fireball or on the way to a successful splashdown.  Those moments were unbearable.

Hidden Figures is eminently watchable, but not a perfect movie.  There are some obviously over-dramatized and over-simplified segments.  I thought I heard a character – in this movie about math whizzes – refer to “an altitude of 116 miles per hour” (which should be either an altitude of 116 miles or a velocity of 116 miles per hour).  And John Glenn has hair even though, in real life, he was balding at the time (perform a Google Image search for “john glenn mercury 7” if you want to see for yourself).

But those flaws don’t detract from the core story, which is compelling.  The audience at my screening burst into applause, which doesn’t happen that often.

JACKIE: dreary and somnolent

by
Natalie Portman in JACKIE
Natalie Portman in JACKIE

If you put a Chanel suit and pillbox hat on Natalie Portman and direct her to speak breathily, you’ve got Jackie Kennedy, which is noteworthy, but not enough reason to see the dreary Jackie.  Portman superbly paints the portrait intended by director Pablo Larrain (No), but that vision is unconvincing and not at all compelling.

Larrain’s thesis is that Jackie moved from shocking grief to a fierce determination to enhance her husband’s legacy in the three days after the assassination, intentionally creating the brand of “Camelot”.  He interweaves three stories: the assassination and funeral, Jackie’s later Hyannis Port interview with journalist Theodore H. White and a re-enactment of the First Lady’s televised White House tour.

Despite a remarkable impersonation by Portman, none of this really works.  Jackie ranges from dreary to gloomy, and in case we forget, we’re prodded by an intrusive score of sad, really sad discordant music.   One can imagine several cellists committing suicide after performing this score.

The real Jackie was bred to be a docent, and her confident White House tour was a television triumph.  Yet Jackie’s Jackie acts like she needed one more Xanax to make it through without a breakdown.  I didn’t believe Jackie’s bitter cat-and-mouse with the journalist, either.

Portman is exceptional at playing the on-top-of-the-world celebrity First Lady, the stunned and shattered victim and the laser-focused widow.  John Hurt is excellent as a consoling priest.  Greta Gerwig plays Jackie’s confidante Nancy Tuckerman, and manages  to avoid blame for ruining a movie by herself for the first time.  This is not the actors’ fault – it’s Larrain’s.

I’ll describe a movie with the word “somnolent” for the first time on this blog because I actually did drift off to sleep twice.  It would have been just once, but The Wife prodded me awake both times.

[SPOILER ALERT:  Bad history in historical movies enrages me, and there are two examples that appear in the last ten minutes of Jackie.  First, as Jackie is preparing to move out of the White House, we see Ladybird Johnson actually fingering the fabric for new curtains, which CERTAINLY did not happen for a variety of reasons, chief among them being that Ladybird was too decent.  Second, we see a flashback of JFK spinning Jackie around a White House dance floor like a polka king; of course, JFK’s chronic back condition did not allow him to move like that.]

LOVING: the love story that made history

by
LOVING Credit: Ben Rothstein/Focus Features
Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton in LOVING.  Credit: Ben Rothstein/Focus Features

The landmark 1967 US Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia overturned state laws that banned interracial marriage.  Loving is the story of the real couple behind that ruling, and it’s a satisfying love story of two modest people who would rather not have been forced to make history.

Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton convincingly bring the lead characters to life.  As the more vibrant character, Negga is especially winning.  Edgerton is just as good as he plays the stolid and far less demonstrative husband.

Marton Csokas, with his pitiless, piercing eyes, is remarkably effective as the Virginia sheriff dead set on enforcing Virginia’s racist statute in the most personally intrusive way.  Too often, actors seem to be impersonating Rod Steiger in In the Heat of the Night when they play racist Southern sheriffs, but Csokas brings some originality to his performance.

Loving is directed by one of my favorites, Jeff Nichols of Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter and Mud (which he calls his “Arkansas Trilogy”).  Nichols specializes in leisurely paced dramas that evoke their settings in the rural South.  Nichols’ languid style works well in telling stories that have moments of shock and violence.  However, there is no dramatic courtroom face off or thrilling high point as we watch these people live their workaday lives, so Loving drags a bit in places.  Nevertheless, Nichols does an excellent job of depicting the ongoing dread of racist terror that these people lived under.

Michael Shannon, who owes his career breakthrough to Nichols’ Shotgun Stories and stars in his Take Shelter and Mud, shows up in a sparkling cameo as a LIFE magazine photographer.  If you perform a Google image search for “Richard Mildred Loving”, you’ll find the real LIFE photos, which make it clear that Nichols went to great lengths to make the characters and the settings look very, very much like the Lovings and their environment.  I don’t need “lookalikes” in a historical movie, but the makeup and wardrobe on Edgerton and Negga (and especially Richard Loving’s mother) are remarkably close to the real people.  And the scenes at the drag race and on the Loving’s sofa are recreated in almost chilling accuracy.

I studied Loving v. Virginia, along with other major civil rights and individual rights cases, in law school in the mid-1970s .  Then, the idea that a government could outlaw a marriage between people of different races (and even the word “anti-miscegenation”) already seemed ridiculously obsolete and perversely quaint.  But I hadn’t realized that the ruling in Loving v Virginia was only 8 years old at the time I studied it. California had such a law, too, which wasn’t repealed until 1948, and I have a friend whose Filipino and Mexican-American parents were kept from  marrying by that statute.

History is made by real people.  Loving is both good history and a watchable personal story.

DVD/Stream of the Week: FREE STATE OF JONES – sound and compelling history, with a sizzling McConaughey

by
Mahershala Ali and Matthew McConaughey star in FREE STATE OF JONES
Mahershala Ali and Matthew McConaughey in FREE STATE OF JONES

Free State of Jones is the compelling story of resistance to the Confederacy and to white supremacy by Southerners during and after the Civil War. Matthew McConaughey stars as Newton Knight, an overlooked but quite singular figure in American history. It is little-known, but the Confederacy actually lost control of some Mississippi counties to poor white farmers who tired of fighting a war to benefit the rich slave-holders.

I am a pretty serious Civil War history buff, and I was planning to skip Free State of Jones entirely until I found out about writer-director Gary Ross’ commitment to taking the history seriously. In fact, Ross has posted a very impressive website which outlines the historical events and figures depicted in the movie and even links the primary historical source material. I’ve never seen such a credible effort by a filmmaker to explain how he got the history right. Here’s a New York Tines article about the movie, Ross and his website.

In the second act of his career, McConaughey has delivered brilliant performances in excellent movies (Mud, Bernie, The Paperboy, Killer Joe, The Wolf of Wall Street, Dallas Buyers Club, True Detective). Here, he positively sizzles as the intensely principled and determined Newt Knight. The rest of the cast is excellent, too, especially Mahershala Ali (House of Cards) as an escaped slave turned Reconstruction political organizer.

Free State of Jones effectively combines the elements of political drama, romance and war movies into an absorbing drama, one which connects the dots between the 19th Century and the 20th and beyond. It’s now available on DVD from Netflix (and coming soon to Redbox) and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

FREE STATE OF JONES: sound and compelling history, with a sizzling McConaughey

by
Mahershala Ali and Matthew McConaughey star in FREE STATE OF JONES
Mahershala Ali and Matthew McConaughey in FREE STATE OF JONES

Free State of Jones is the compelling story of resistance to the Confederacy and to white supremacy by Southerners during and after the Civil War.  Matthew McConaughey stars as  Newton Knight, an overlooked but quite singular figure in American history.  It is little-known, but the Confederacy actually lost control of some Mississippi counties to poor white farmers who tired of fighting a war to benefit the rich slave-holders.

I am a pretty serious Civil War history buff, and I was planning to skip Free State of Jones entirely until I found out about writer-director Gary Ross’ commitment to taking the history seriously.  In fact, Ross has posted a very impressive website which outlines the historical events and figures depicted in the movie and even links the primary historical source material.  I’ve never seen such a credible effort by a filmmaker to explain how he got the history right. Here’s a New York Tines article about the movie, Ross and his website.

In the second act of his career, McConaughey has delivered brilliant performances in excellent movies  (Mud, Bernie, The Paperboy, Killer Joe, The Wolf of Wall Street, Dallas Buyers Club, True Detective).  Here, he positively sizzles as the intensely principled and determined Newt Knight.  The rest of the cast is excellent, too, especially Mahershala Ali (House of Cards) as an escaped slave turned Reconstruction political organizer.

Free State of Jones effectively combines the elements of political drama, romance and war movies into an absorbing drama, one which connects the dots between the 19th Century and the 20th and beyond.

ALL THE WAY: LBJ comes alive

by
Bryan Cranston in ALL THE WAY
Bryan Cranston in ALL THE WAY

Lyndon B. Johnson, one of American history’s larger-than-life characters, finally comes alive on the screen in the HBO movie All the Way. Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad, Trumbo) is the first actor who captures LBJ in all his facets – a man who was boring and square on television but frenetic, forceful and ever-dominating in person.  All the Way traces the first year in LBJ’s presidency, when he ended official racial segregation in America with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

LBJ was obsessed with gaining and keeping political power, and he was utterly ruthless and amoral about the means to do that. His tools of persuasion included deceit, flattery, threats, promised benefits and horse-trading. He was equally comfortable in playing to someone’s ideals and better nature as well to one’s vanity or venality. In All the Way, we see one classic moment of what was called “the Johnson treatment”, when LBJ looms over Senator Everett Dirksen, and it becomes inevitable that Dirksen is going to be cajoled, intimidated or bought off and ultimately give LBJ what he wants.

LBJ was so notoriously insincere that one of the joys of All the Way is watching LBJ tell completely inconsistent stories to the both sides of the Civil Right battle. Both the Civil Rights proponents (Hubert Humphrey and Martin Luther King, Jr.) and the opponents (the Southern Senators led by Richard Russell) must determine whether LBJ is lying and to whom. Each of them must make this calculation and then bet his own cause on his perception of LBJ’s real intentions.

But LBJ amassed power for two reasons – he needed to have it and he needed to do something with it. Along with the LBJ’s unattractive personal selfishness and the political sausage-making that some may find distasteful, All the Way shows that Johnson did have two core beliefs that drove his political goals – revulsion in equal parts to discrimination and poverty. We hear references to the childhood poverty that led to the humiliation of his father, to the plight of the Mexican schoolchildren in Cotulla, Texas, that he mentored as a young man, and his outrage at the discriminatory treatment suffered by his African-American cook Zephyr.

Bryan Cranston brilliantly brings us the complete LBJ – crude, conniving, thin-skinned, intimidating and politically masterful. Besides Cranston’s, we also see superb performances by Melissa Leo as Lady Bird, Anthony Mackie as MLK, Bradley Whitford as Hubert Humphrey and Frank Langella as Richard Russell.

All the Way is remarkably historically accurate. It does capsulize some characters and events, but the overall depiction of 1964 in US history is essentially truthful. As did Selma, All the Way drills down to secondary characters like James Eastland and Bob Moses. We also see the would-be scandal involving LBJ’s chief of staff Walter Jenkins, a story that has receded from the popular culture. Vietnam is alluded to with a reference to the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which is fitting since Vietnam grew to become LBJ’s nemesis and the national obsession only after the 1964 election.

All the Way was adapted from a Broadway play for which Cranston won a Tony. I saw three movies in theaters last weekend and none of them were as good as All the Way. LBJ’s 1964 makes for a stirring story, and All the Way is a compelling film. Seek it out on HBO.

ELVIS & NIXON: the eccentric meets the quirky

by
Michael Shannon and Kevin Spacey in ELVIS & NIXON
Michael Shannon and Kevin Spacey in ELVIS & NIXON

In December, 1970, an addled Elvis Presley was isolated and indulged by his hangers-on and feeling cranky enough to shoot out a TV set in Graceland.  He decided that he needed a “federal agent at large” badge, and his quest sparked an impromptu visit to the Nixon White House, resulting in the all-time most requested photo from the National Archives (below).  All this really happened, and the historical comedy Elvis & Nixon imagines the details, with the iconic characters fleshed by two of our finest screen actors, Michael Shannon (Elvis) and Kevin Spacey (Richard Nixon).

In the movies, Shannon usually projects a hulking menace, but here he uses his imposing presence to dominate and suck the oxygen out of a room.  Of course, Shannon doesn’t have the sexual energy of Elvis, but his intensity makes up for it.  As impaired and wacky as Shannon’s Elvis is, he can be a charming flatterer and knows how to make the most of his celebrity and sexual power.  He wins over Nixon by bringing up their common distaste for commies and the Beatles, and shamelessly complementing Nixon’s homely looks.

Spacey goes beyond impersonation of Nixon’s well-known mannerisms to reach the seasoned pol, the cagey and amoral tactician, the doting father,  and, above all, a man submerged in an unquenchable pool of resentfulness.  In particular, Spacey perfectly delivers one classically Nixonian chip-on-the-shoulder monologue.  And few can portray social awkwardness as well as Spacey.

In Elvis & Nixon, Nixon forces himself to keep a straight face as Elvis explains that “I want to go undercover”.  Because his movie experience has given him a mastery of disguises, Elvis continues, he can infiltrate the Rolling Stones and the Black Panthers, slipping back and forth between them with no one the wiser.   [Note: There were only five Rolling Stones – wouldn’t they have noticed a sixth one?]  The real Elvis reportedly coveted the federal badge so he could take his guns and drugs on airplanes.

The two men size each other up and probe.  Each man is using the meeting for his own ends.  The humor comes from Elvis’ eccentricities and the hopelessly square and insecure Nixon’s reactions.

Elvis & Nixon is not a guffaw fest, but it has a few LOL moments.  Otherwise unadorned, the Elvis-Nixon meeting itself is bizarre enough, but Shannon and Spacey make it especially worthwhile.

elvis nixon

Stream of the Week: TRUMBO – the personal cost of principles

by
Bryan Cranston in TRUMBO
Bryan Cranston in TRUMBO

In the movies, going to jail for your principles is overrated. But in the historical drama Trumbo – about the 1950s Hollywood blacklist – we get to see the real extent of the sacrifices made by the principled man and his family.

Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) was a novelist and Hollywood screenwriter who was named as a Communist, was sent to prison for contempt of Congress and then blacklisted by the Hollywood studios. After prison, Trumbo had to earn his living by writing without credits (the credit going to other writers as “fronts” or to fictional “writers”). He received no screen credit for the Oscar-winning screenplays for Roman Holiday and The Brave One. Nor for the noir classics Gun Crazy and The Prowler. Eventually, the end of the blacklist period was signaled when Trumbo received screen credits for his work on Exodus and Spartacus.

It’s a compelling story and Trumbo was a very compelling character – flamboyant, full of himself, wily but sometimes politically naive. Cranston is really quite brilliant in capturing Trumbo’s wit, signature eccentricities and his emotional turmoil.

Families are often collateral damage, and that was the case here. We see the impact on Trumbo’s wife (Diane Lane) and daughter (Elle Fanning) – not just the financial and social hardships, but in living with a man under so much stress.

To tell the story of this historical period, some characters are compressed – but not distorted. Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren) is portrayed as the leader of the blacklist (which would have flattered her), and John Wayne’s (David James Elliot) role is prominent. There’s a composite character who represents the other victims of the blacklist, played by Louis C.K. (another really fine performance from C.K.). Edward G. Robinson (Michael Stuhlbarg) represents the good liberals who caved under pressure and named names. Kirk Douglas (Dean O’Gorman) and Otto Preminger (Christian Berkel) are historical good guys (but not without self-interest). John Goodman has a hilarious turn as a low budget producer. The entire cast does a fine job, but Cranston, Stuhlbarg, C.K. and Fanning are extraordinary.

We see also actual file footage of Ronald Reagan, Robert Taylor and Joe McCarthy, along with some still photos of the ever-ominous Richard Nixon.

Trumbo is a very successful and insightful historical study, and Cranston’s performance was Oscar-nominated.  Trumbo is now available to stream on Amazon Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and a host of PPV outlets.

TRUMBO: the personal cost of principles

by
Bryan Cranston in TRUMBO
Bryan Cranston in TRUMBO

In the movies, going to jail for your principles is overrated.  But in the historical drama Trumbo – about the 1950s Hollywood blacklist – we get to see the real extent of the sacrifices made by the principled man and his family.

Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) was a novelist and Hollywood screenwriter who was named as a Communist, was sent to prison for contempt of Congress and then blacklisted by the Hollywood studios.  After prison, Trumbo had to earn his living by writing without credits (the credit going to other writers as “fronts” or to fictional “writers”).  He received no screen credit for the Oscar-winning screenplays for Roman Holiday and The Brave One.  Nor for the noir classics Gun Crazy and The Prowler.  Eventually, the end of the blacklist period was signaled when Trumbo received screen credits for his work on Exodus and Spartacus.

It’s a compelling story and Trumbo was a very compelling character – flamboyant, full of himself, wily but sometimes politically naive.  Cranston is really quite brilliant in capturing Trumbo’s wit, signature eccentricities and his emotional turmoil.

Families are often collateral damage, and that was the case here.  We see the impact on Trumbo’s wife (Diane Lane) and daughter (Elle Fanning) – not just the financial and social hardships, but in living with a man under so much stress.

To tell the story of this historical period, some characters are compressed – but not distorted.  Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren) is portrayed as the leader of the blacklist (which would have flattered her), and John Wayne’s (David James Elliot) role is prominent.  There’s a composite character who represents the other victims of the blacklist, played by Louis C.K. (another really fine performance from C.K.).  Edward G. Robinson (Michael Stuhlbarg) represents the good liberals who caved under pressure and named names.  Kirk Douglas (Dean O’Gorman) and Otto Preminger (Christian Berkel) are historical good guys (but not without self-interest).  John Goodman has a hilarious turn as a low budget producer.  The entire cast does a fine job, but Cranston, Stuhlbarg, C.K. and Fanning are extraordinary.

We see also actual file footage of Ronald Reagan, Robert Taylor and Joe McCarthy, along with some still photos of the ever-ominous Richard Nixon.

Trumbo is a very successful and insightful historical study, and Cranston’s performance is Oscar Bait.

SPOTLIGHT: edge of the seat drama

by
Rachel McAdams, Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo in SPOTLIGHT
Rachel McAdams, Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo in SPOTLIGHT

Bolstered with some superb supporting performances, filmmaker Tom McCarthy turns a journalistic procedural into the riveting. edge-of-your-seat-drama Spotlight. The story centers on a team of Boston Globe investigative reporters (Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, Brian d’Arcy James, John Slattery and LievSchrieiber) as they untangle the sex abuse scandal in the Boston Archdiocese. Starting with the already-known Father Geoghan case, they uncover sexual abuse by two Boston priests, then four, then thirteen and soon an unthinkable magnitude, all intentionally covered up by the Church. Reminiscent of All the President’s Men, the team’s shoe leather efforts nets the Big Story.

We already are familiar with the horrible and disgusting revelations. But writer-director Tom McCarthy builds suspense and keeps us totally engaged in this brilliantly paced movie. McCarthy also wrote and directed the brilliant, character-driven fictional films The Visitor and The Station Agent.

Michael Keaton, coming off his tour de force in Birdman, is especially good here, especially in a reflective scene near the end. McAdams and Schreiber are also solid. Ruffalo has the most showy part, as a frenetic and volatile reporter.

But this most compelling acting comes from several of the supporting players, especially Michael Cyril Creighton, Jimmy LeBlanc and Anthony Paolucci as survivors of sexual abuse. The ever-reliable Jamey Sheridan is superb as a diocesan lawyer. Richard O’Rourke is affecting as an addled pedophile priest. Paul Guilfoyle, so convincing as true blue guys in CSI and Primary Colors, gets to play convincingly smarmy here. I don’t see Richard Jenkins in the credits, but the voice of an expert psychotherapist sure sounds like him.

At the end, McCarthy uses epilogue titles to effectively show the extent of the horrors revealed.

All in all, Spotlight is the first top rate movie of the Fall.