Money Monster

A note for screenwriters and directors: if your film is aiming to vent some righteous fury at the system, it helps if the vessel for doing so is compelling, charismatic, and heroic. Or at the very least, sympathetic.

Money Monster's vessel for that is regular working stiff Jack O'Connell, who, after losing his life savings, snaps and walks into the Manhattan TV studio of a Jim Cramer-esque financial pundit (George Clooney) with a gun and bomb. As the on-air hostage situation escalates into a worldwide media phenomenon, the show’s director (Julia Roberts) and production team attempt to uncover just why a company touted by the show, and in which the hostage-taker invested, sustained heavy losses.

 
So, it’s angling to be Dog Day Afternoon for the post-Great Recession, cable news era. But, sadly, O’Connell’s no Al Pacino. His desperate gunman ultimately says very little, and comes off as totally out of his depth. He doesn’t even manage a satisfying moment of putting Clooney in his place, or getting the audience to dislike him. And Clooney is really trying to be dislikable, playing to the hilt a caricature cocktail of Wall Street bro, showbiz prima donna, and gasbag pundit. But he acts circles around O’Connell when the two share the screen.

The writing is just as weak, unsubtle and eye roll-inducing even by movie standards of disbelief. When the action leaves the studio to the streets below, the implication is, of course, that this is a rare and unfamiliar event for Clooney’s rich loudmouth, walking amongst the regular people. Yet as obvious as that is, the film ultimately never says a thing about real financial crises of late. The impetus for the story's conflict is revealed as nothing more than generic Hollywood white collar bastardry.

The whole thing is also tonally askew. Moments of moralizing or that are supposed to be heartwarming directly follow moments of tragedy or tension, or at least are supposed to have tension. Jokes are thrown in at the most inappropriate times (a subplot involving a penile enhancer defuses the tension before it’s even really built). Other parts are funny, but seem like they weren’t intended to be funny.

At the very least, Clooney and Roberts are still pros, navigating the jarring shifts in tone and doing what they can in each scene. If nothing else, they give the whole thing a brisk momentum that keeps it from stalling into a total mess. Thanks to them, as well as said humor and overall technical competence, Money Monster could hold some entertainment value as a fun bit of unintended cheese. But as the important, timely message thriller it aspires to be, it’s not even close.

Captain America: Civil War

About the only thing wrong with Captain America: Civil War is the title. Cap’s (Chris Evans) name may be on the thing, and he certainly plays an integral part. But it’s more accurately an Avengers movie, and the strongest individual character arc belongs to Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.). And while the conflict between the characters is gripping, it’s not quite a war on the level of the Civil War comics. This is merely an observation, though, not a complaint, of which I have few.

The film literally namedrops The Empire Strikes Back, as perfect a blockbuster as there’s ever been. Sure, making funny pop culture references is a standard part of the Marvel formula, but it feels like the studio is slyly eliciting comparison to what’s likely the be-all and end-all of movies for many. And you know what? They’ve managed a film that can back up such an audacious claim. Yes, it’s that good.

The movie opens with an Avengers mission in Nigeria that accomplishes its objective, but results in the deaths of many civilians. This latest incident, on top of all the destruction in the previous films, leads the nations of the world to adopt an agreement that would put superheroes under government authority. Tony Stark, restless and guilt-stricken, supports the idea. Captain America, apprehensive that answering to the government could prevent them from saving people, opposes it. This difference of opinion comes to a head and sides are taken when the bombing of a diplomatic gathering is blamed on Cap’s childhood friend Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), formerly the assassin known as the Winter Soldier.

The Civil War comic event was a months-long conflagration spanning most of the Marvel universe, and was a rather one-sided affair (Stark’s faction acted rather super-villainous, some thought). Smartly, the film takes a different approach, paring the conflict down to a more intimate level and giving both sides compelling arguments and motivations, if not equal points. Despite the side-taking marketing angle (Team Cap or Team Iron Man), rooting interest in the viewer’s chosen team eventually diminishes, giving way to an aura of tragedy that the heroes are coming apart. And the villain (Daniel Brühl) is revealed to be a more thoughtful and sad figure, a nice counter to the (somewhat apt) criticism that Marvel’s baddies are mostly generic one-offs.

Fear not, action fans, for there’s still the big, satisfying slugfest with all the heroes (including a few new ones) we were promised. But it’s the smaller, closer, more personal fights that are truly affecting, so great is the underlying emotion and weight. Evans is still as much the moral rock as he’s ever been as the good captain, and Stan reveals a sad emptiness to his character. But this is inarguably Downey’s movie. This is the finest he’s even been in the series, his tortured soul barely being contained by his smart-aleck exterior. The clashes of character as well as fists add more fuel to the fire with every scene the three share. By the time the picture reaches peak climax, the effect is nearly as tragic, shattering and cathartic as a certain familial reveal in Empire. If Disney didn’t also own Star Wars, Marvel could tell The Force Awakens to eat its heart out, and would be totally justified.

The film also breaks new ground for the series in its structure. Remember how Age of Ultron was so stuffed that it seemed like it was bursting at the seams? Well, turns out Civil War is a bit of a continuation of that storyline, tying up loose ends, closing or moving along some arcs, and giving each new character a moment besides just introductions. What seemed like a narrative high wire act in one picture turns out to work splendidly over two, balancing many character arcs and subplots without becoming too busy or convoluted. It even finds room for whole new players and subplots, such as the strong debut storyline of Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther, or the new Spider-Man (Tom Holland) in what amounts to a preview for the coming Disney-Sony co-production starring the charater (it's enjoyable, but it's still pretty blatantly a preview). And it still works!

As a matter of fact, that leads me to the lone complaint I have. Civil War is the best Avengers movie and best Iron Man movie yet, and could be the best Captain America movie (though The Winter Soldier is still tough to beat). Not only does its unexpected and successful execution of a two-film narrative bode well for Infinity War, but the picture clearly plants seeds and leaves things to be resolved then and there.

And after all that, we have to wait two years to see it.

Green Room

Green Room is a slick, nasty little piece of work. That’s a compliment, I assure you, considering the genre and moral universe this film occupies. It is undoubtedly not for everyone, but for certain audiences—grindhouse horror fans, cult film connoisseurs, or any angry viewer looking to purge a little tenseness and bloodlust—this is a cinematic gold nugget, a movie to seek out and enjoy with a like-minded crowd.

The unfortunate protagonists of this horrific ride are The Ain’t Rights (Anton Yelchin, Alia Shawkat, Joe Cole, and Callum Turner), a punk rock outfit eking out a hand-to-mouth existence on the road. They've manage to land the worst gig imaginable: a dive venue and gathering place for a neo-Nazi gang in the backwoods of Oregon. The group’s performance goes off without much incident, until one member unwittingly witnesses a murder backstage. As a result, the band, along with a friend of the victim (Imogen Poots), are held hostage in the club’s green room, in a situation there appears to be no way out of. Well, no peaceful or pretty way, anyway.

There’s a rough-around-the-edges look to the production, befitting the punk rock element of the story and the unceasing tone equally. The violence is pretty stark (I’ll just say that dialogue specifically lists guns as out of the question, limiting the killing to messier means). Writer-director Jeremy Saulnier certainly gets the most out of the limited space in which the mayhem unfolds. At times, the enclosed eponymous room creates a claustrophobia so suffocating you almost feel like the tension’s going to burst, in a sense both figurative and inexplicably physical. In other scenes, cramped, dank hallways seem like paralyzing chasms, full of terrors unknown.

What’s most effective, though, is that despite choosing villains so simple to root against, the film doesn’t simply make them faceless cannon fodder (or sharp thing fodder in this case) or caricature. The antagonists all seem like real, bad dudes you could run into in real life, and are scarier for it (sometimes more so when you’re waiting for something to happen than when it’s happening). They’re so effective that one of the movie’s selling points, Patrick Stewart taking a villainous role, almost seems a little out of place, his mannered, more written and fleshed-out ringleader clashing with the rawly terrifying hoodlums in his service. That said, it is interesting to see the veteran lend his refined gravitas to a force of evil.

That character realism works both ways. The rockers being held prisoner are terrified as any normal person would be, which only ups the tension for the viewer. All attempts at movie heroism are swiftly, sometimes bloodily put in their place by the circumstances. And when the film employs one of those corny recurring dialogue motifs as a narrative thread, it’s rudely rebuffed, a finger in the eye of cliché that’s totally appropriate and totally punk. It even elicits a hearty laugh, all the more cathartic because such sentiment is so rare in a picture this unforgiving. 

Green Room is cheap thrills as art, like going out to an all-night dive to satisfy your midnight munchies and unexpectedly getting something close to gourmet. I’ll stress that it’s a dish with a very specific taste; in fact, I’d imagine on many a pallet it would go down like a shot of arsenic. Those with the taste and stomach for this sort of concoction (and you know if you are), on the other hand, will gobble it up.