The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Aaron Sorkin, 2020) — A-
Jumanji: The Next Level (Jake Kasdan, 2019) — C-
Tucker: The Man and His Dream (Francis Ford Coppola, 1988) — B+
X-Men: The Last Stand (Brett Ratner, 2006) — B-
The Player (Robert Altman, 1992) — A
The Color of Money (Martin Scorcese, 1986) — A-
Halloweentown (Duwayne Dunham, 1998) — C
Star 80 (Bob Fosse, 1983) — B+
The Game (David Fincher, 1997) — A-
Back to the Future Part III (Robert Zemeckis, 1990) — B
To Catch A Thief (Alfred Hitchcock, 1955) — A
Rebecca (Ben Wheatley, 2020) — C
Aaron Sorkin’s latest, The Trial of the Chicago 7, is the perfect movie for this time and place, both because of its focus on the power and importance of protest and free speech and because of its old fashioned version of whitewashed liberal politics.
First, its relevancy to the 2020 of protest and social justice. Having been alive and awake for at least six months, watching television and on-the-ground Twitter reporting, and being in the streets with firsthand knowledge, I found much of the focus on the need for political protest in a democratic society and the ways in which our government and its agents use authoritarian tactics to try and disrupt protest to ring true.
No 2020 protests have resulted in as much damage to real, unarmed humans as the protests of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago — at least, none that I’ve been to or seen. But there has been plenty of tear gas, unidentified officers, victim-blaming, and malicious tactics used against protesters by the police across the country in 2020, all of which is present at some point in The Trial of the Chicago 7. In fact, the scene were the police and the National Guard chase down and corner the protesters before throwing them through a glass storefront felt very reminiscent of the tactics used by the Philadelphia police trapping protesters between Route 676 and a steep hill earlier this year. There’s a short Inquirer video below, or check out this 10-minute video on the New York Times investigation into the PPD’s actions in this specific instance.
But watching clips from the recent town hall with Joe Biden and reading some testimonials from Biden voters in this week’s Inquirer made me realize the ways in which this movie’s easy-to-swallow platitudes about doing the Right Thing and standing up for What’s Right are just as relevant right now. Predictably for a Sorkin screenplay, there’s a lot of tête-à-têtes and it is incredibly well-structured, zipping from scene to scene with aplomb, but there’s also a lot of moral posturing and mildly center-left preachiness. This movie is the cinematic equivalent of putting up one of those “hate has no home here” signs on your lawn: it’s objectively a good thing to do given the current situation, but if all you do is put it up and pat yourself on the back for it, that’s certainly not enough.
This movie isn’t really for us, though. This movie is for our parents and maybe even our parents’ parents. Which I guess is fine; I don’t think we can reasonably expect Sorkin to start creating genuinely far-left art with too sharp a political bent. But that’s fine, because I don’t think the white male septuagenarian who created The Newsroom is the right voice to speak to us about the Black Panthers in the ’60s. We should just let him make these padded-edged mainstream liberal courtroom movies — after all, he makes them pretty well.
- I do like how malleable the new Jumanji franchise seems to be, but it’s mostly pretty boring. I suppose if you’re going to do a big budget mediocre sequel to a big budget mediocre reboot, you might as well include multiple Danny DeVito impressions.
- Francis Ford Coppola’s capper for the wild ride of his ’80s filmography is a biopic about an innovative but failed carmaker that absolutely zips along. Tucker: The Man and His Dream oozes nostalgia for American idealism and innovation, while occasionally nodding to the inherent unfairness and darkness of its time period. It makes sense that it was originally planned as a musical; the set design, performances, and pace all feel primed to be punctuated by big, showy musical numbers that just never happen. I actually think the movie is all the better for it, because as much as I love musicals, this is a fascinating story all on its own without the distraction of the varying quality of songs throughout.
- There’s a lot of good ideas in X-Men: The Last Stand. The “cure” gun things add a great dimension to this universe. I’m kind of excited to move beyond this trilogy into the Wolverines and the younger casts, though, because I feel like I’ve had enough of these.
- I’ve seen a handful of Robert Altman movies before, all of which I really enjoyed and thought were very good; but I haven’t completely connected with one that has made me truly understand his appeal and want to immediately watch more. The Player is the one that clicked for me.
- I recently realized that the only ’80s Scorcese I’d seen was Raging Bull, which was released in 1980 and basically feels like a ’70s movie. I had no idea that Tom Cruise was in The Color of Money when I started it, so that was a great surprise. Young Cruise, charismatic, cocksure, and full of simmering intensity, seems like a perfect fit for Scorcese, so it’s too bad they never worked together again. This movie, starring Robert Redford as an aging pool shark who begins mentoring Cruise, doesn’t feel quite as fully Scorcese as some of his classics, but his authorial voice is still all over the place in the aesthetics and even the performances.
- Halloweentown is a Disney Channel original that I hadn’t seen as a child, and there’s not much more to say about that. It was fine.
- Bob Fosse’s final movie, Star 80, is a pulpy, creepy thriller that makes the smart decision of tipping off the viewer from the very beginning. It’s based on the true story of Playmate Dorothy Stratten, played by Mariel Hemingway, who was murdered at age 20 by her boyfriend and manager Paul Snider, played by Eric Roberts.
- It’s interesting to me which of David Fincher’s movies crossed over from just filmbro movies to actual bros, because it seems like the two biggest ones are the ones that are the most puzzle-like, featuring a central question and a really strong twist — Se7en and Fight Club — and to a lesser extent, his most recent movie, Gone Girl. I feel like The Game fits perfectly into that genre, to the point where it’s literally just a puzzle where, even if you don’t know what the twist is going to be, you can tell there’s going to be one. And yet, it’s one of Fincher’s most forgotten movies.
- Back to the Future Part III almost feels like an episode of a procedural set inside this universe; the beginning of a bunch of similar stories. If the first two movies are the main story — the pilot — then the third is just a of-the-week adventure in a long line of adventures that never actually happen. That sounds kind of derogatory, but I really like of-the-week stories and wish there were more TV shows that still applied that formula and probably wouldn’t even have minded if there had been more BTTF movies that took the same approach. It’s nothing like the first two, but it’s pleasant and fun.
- To Catch a Thief stars Cary Grant as a reformed but infamous cat burglar on the run from the police as he tries to catch a copy-cat burglar to prove his own innocence. But surprisingly, this movie is much a romance as it is a Hitchcock thriller. It’s like a European travel love story starring Grant and the incomparable Grace Kelly sandwiched in between a classic Hitchcock story of wrongful accusations and tense chases. Also, I love when a movie seems like its ending but you feel like it was too easy and then the movie is like not so fast and then there’s 20 more minutes.
- I never miss a Lily James movie, although Lily James movies are occasional misses; case in point, the newest Ben Wheatley movie, Rebecca, and the first sign that the idiosyncratic and original British director has given up. It’s technically not a remake of a Hitchcock movie, but a second adaptation of the same source material, but it really lives in the 1941 Best Picture winner’s shadow. James plays a newlywed who must fill the shoes of the titular deceased ex-wife of her new man, played by Armie Hammer. Wheatley is great at psychological horror and he does a fairly good job of ratcheting it up in the middle act of the movie. But, nobody is Hitchcock, and that’s only accentuated when you’re making a movie that he’s literally already made. James and Hammer are lacking in chemistry, and while you’d think “handsome, brooding rich man with a temper” would be right up his alley, it doesn’t work.