ARGO: This is the Best Bad Idea We’ve Got

Argo (2012) – Directed by Ben Affleck – Starring Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin, John Goodman, Victor Garber, Clea DuVall, Kyle Chandler, Tate Donovan, Michael Parks, Richard Kind, Titus Welliver, Rory Cochrane, Bob Gunton, Zeljko Ivanek, Philip Baker Hall, and Adrienne Barbeau.

Why is it ARGO gets Oscar talk yet The Avengers doesn’t?

I’m being purposely obtuse, of course. I know darn well why Avengers doesn’t get any Oscar talk, but I raise the issue to once again bash on awards shows. The Oscars is supposed to represent the best in cinema, is it not? Both ARGO and Avengers are incredibly well made movies with incredibly smart scripts, fantastic directing, great acting … yet ARGO will get Oscar buzz and Avengers will have to settle for being the third highest grossing movie of all time. It reasons like this why I don’t bother with the Oscars, as they are more politically and PR-driven than an actual award of filmmaking merit.

All of that is prelude to my reaction to ARGO, a darn good movie from the engaging directing hands of Ben Affleck. I was prepared for ARGO to be a solid drama, but I was not prepared for it to be funny.

ARGO is a very funny movie, however, chiefly through the first half of the movie before settling in for a tense, suspense-filled second half. It’s a smart decision, as it’s the first half of the movie where ARGO stands out from other political thrillers. Set during the 1979 Iranian Hostage Crisis, ARGO tells the based-on-true-life tale of how CIA agent Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) extracted six American diplomats from the Canadian Embassy in Tehran. Mendez’s plan to get them out is to create cover identities for the diplomats as a film crew for an in-production science fiction film.

There are a myriads of problems with this plan, not the least of which is that it depends on putting a fake science fiction film into production in order to fool the Iranian security forces who are scouring Iran to take any stray Americans hostage. The film gets its biggest laughs from the discomfort this plan raises in the Washington bureaucrats and the open-minded embrace from Mendez’s two Hollywood partners, make-up artist John Chambers (John Goodman) and producer Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin). Goodman and Arkin are fantastic together, with Chambers’ enthusiasm balanced perfectly by Siegel’s calmer demeanor.

The Washington/Hollywood split shows an interesting approach to casting in ARGO. The Washington scenes are quick-hitting, with plenty of known actors playing bureaucrats. Kyle Chandler, Titus Welliver, Bob Gunton, and Philip Baker Hall appear in a scene or two or three to question Mendez’s plan. None of these actors are playing characters as much as they are united in a kind of Gestalt of Dissent. Their job is to act incredulous, doubt Mendez’s plan, and make the CIA look smarter. In Hollywood, Chambers and Siegel become actual characters, allowing Goodman and Arkin to develop a wonderful chemistry in their shared effort to assist Mendez.

Affleck does a wonderful job contrasting the deadly seriousness of the hostages with the absurdity of creating the fake movie. While I’m sure it would have looked incredibly bad if the news got out that the CIA was in Hollywood getting Adrienne Barbeau to sign on for a movie they didn’t intend to make, it’s great fun for us and a smart creative decision to balance off the heaviness of the situation in Iran. Or worse, that they were putting on an elaborate reading of the movie for the press, with actors in full costume, just to try and get a notice in Variety in order to fool the Iranians. It’s a bit of weird world that we live in, of course, that sees us paying money to eat popcorn to see a story that exists because hostages were taken, but this is part of the way we cope with the hardships endured by previous generations.

Chambers and Siegel display a very cinematic attitude towards the plan, which is to say, that despite the gravity of the situation half a world away, they seem to enjoy playing junior spies. Chambers has a quip for every situation, and Siegel has a laid back, dry sense of humor. Both of these approaches allow Affleck to play Mendez as a rather boring dude. He’s serious about his work (which he needs to be), and Affleck sees no reason to give Mendez a bunch of over-inflated histrionics to make himself stand out. It’s a very understated performance, which allows his few fireworks moments to have a greater impact.

As I mentioned, it’s this first half of the film where ARGO stands out from other political thrillers. The back half is solidly put together and delivers a fair amount of tension, but it’s nothing that you can’t find in a whole host of other movies. Once Mendez hits Iran, ARGO is simply an extraction movie. To go back to the Avengers comparison, that script is much more complicated than this script, yet both of them do exactly what their respective movies need. The back-half of ARGO doesn’t need to be complicated because we’re already invested in the story. Really, the big star of the back half of the film isn’t Mendez or the hostages, but Bryan Cranston’s Jack O’Donnell.

O’Donnell is Mendez’s supervisor and at the start of the film he brings Mendez into a meeting wit the State Department, but encourages him to not get involved. State wants to run this situation, and O’Donnell is happy to let them do it. Mendez can’t help picking apart all of the various ideas that State has come up with to get a hostage out, as they’re the kind of ideas that sound good from a distance but would fall apart up close. (Like wanting to give the six hostages bikes so they could peddle for a border that is, as Mendez reminds them, several hundred miles away.) When Mendez comes up with his plan, State is hesitant to even listen, let alone sign on, but Mendez and O’Donnell’s sales pitch leads to two of the film’s best lines.

Both are from O’Donnell. On the way in to see Vice President Mondale (Hall) and another diplomat (really, the names of the diplomats and politicians are completely unimportant; as I said earlier, they work together to provide the Gestalt of Dissent), O’Donnell tells Mendez that talking to these two is going to be like “the Muppets talking to Statler and Waldorf.” Once inside the meeting, Mondale is skeptical and openly wonders if they don’t have better ideas, to which O’Donnell replies, “This is the best bad idea we’ve got.”

It’s O’Donnell that has the best dramatic scenes in the back half, too. After telling Mendez that the White House has called off the plan, Mendez stews on it (he takes a bottle of alcohol from the Canadian embassy but barely touches it), and then decides he’s going ahead with the plan anyways, White House be damned. This causes all sorts of problems for O’Donnell because Mendez’s plan needs his help. Specifically, O’Donnell needs to get the seven plane tickets out of Tehran confirmed before Mendez gets to the airport, or they’ll be all dressed up with nowhere to go. Cranston is fantastic running around Washington getting these tickets verified (he needs Presidential approval) and there’s a good bit of tension in Tehran with Mendez and the hostages getting through security. There are a couple beats that come off as trumped up, such as the tickets not being approved when Mendez checks in, but then appearing 30 seconds later, or Siegel and Chambers getting back to their office just as the Iranian security guard was pulling the phone away from his ear, but they don’t hurt the film in a significant away.

Indeed, even though I knew everyone was getting out, Affleck and his team do an amazing job creating as much tension as they do about what is essentially seven people getting on a plane. Affleck uses a lot of close-ups and a lot of contrasting frantic Iranians with nervous Americans, but it works really well.

Since I don’t watch awards shows, I don’t have any way of handicapping ARGO’s chances for getting nominations, but this is a very good movie. It is a quiet movie, though, that seems destined to be lost between the summer’s noise and the winter’s emotion. The only kick I get out of awards is that I realize that if people I like getting nominated or even win, that means there’s a greater chance I get to see more of them. There’s been a critical response around ARGO that Ben Affleck has arrived as a director. We see that Warner Brothers has taken notice, as Affleck was rumored to be in consideration for the Justice League movie. Both of these are good things for me because I like Affleck as a director. I see ARGO much less as a sign that he’s arrived, and rather as a sign that he’s established himself as a director who makes movies I want to see, as much for the stories he chooses to film as the way in which he assembles them.

Whatever film he directs next will be a film I’m already lined up to see.

CREEPSHOW: It’s Father’s Day and I Got My Cake!

Creepshow (1982) – Directed by George A. Romero – Starring Hal Holbrook, Adrienne Barbeau, Leslie Nielsen, Ted Danson, E. G. Marshall, Stephen King, Ed Harris, and Tom Atkins.

Movie anthologies are a tough sell; you’ve got a trapped audience that you’ve got to keep entertained for two hours or so, and because you’ve chosen to tell a bunch of little stories instead of one big one, you’ve got to constantly keep winning them over. It’s a much safer strategy to pull the Robert Altman or Paul Thomas Anderson card and let your small stories intertwine, so they spread out over the course of the film, weaving in and out. CREEPSHOW doesn’t do this, but it does have a clever linking strategy of presenting the movie as one issue of a 1950′s-styled horror comic book.

George A. Romero serves up five rather tasty short stories over his two hours, with a framing device involving a little kid having the comic we’re watching taken away from his by his dick of a dad (Tom Atkins).

While technically a horror movie, there’s not a whole lot of scary in CREEPSHOW. There is a good amount of creepiness, though, which the title promises, so it’s all good.

The first story, “Father’s Day,” sees a mean, dead old bastard (Jon Lormer) come back from the dead to enact revenge on his crappy family. His daughter Bedelia killed him because he was a loud-mouthed ass who kept yammering for his cake. Sounds reasonable. But now, poor Bedelia feels moderately bad about it, and returns to the family estate every year on Father’s Day to sit on daddy’s grave and suck down some Jim Beam. Everyone else in the family thinks it was a good turn to kill the old bastard because now they get to live in his house. Ed Harris shows up playing the new husband of one of his grandkids or great-grandkids and he’s the only halfway decent member of the family.

This year turns out to be special because Daddy Dead Guy comes back from the grave to enact his revenge – which means to kill everyone. It’s all sort of blah, but Romero paces it quickly so the story never stalls out. When the walking corpse shows up with a head on a plate blathering that he finally got his cake, though, I was glad this story was done.

“The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill” is next and it stars Stephen King, who wrote the movie. It’s … an uneventful piece. Jordy finds a crashed meteor in his backyard, touches it, dreams of riches, and then starts growing grass all over his body. Again, it’s not a very good story, but it’s quick and interesting enough. There’s something nice about how King plays Verrill like a total idiot whose dream of wealth consists of getting $200 out of the local university, but the best part of the story is the end, which first sees Jordy blowing his own head off, and then a shot of the highway hints that the grass will extend out away from Verrill’s farm and towards the city.

While the two stories haven’t been all that great, so far, the change-up that CREEPSHOW throws at you – these are not nice people and these are not people who survive – gives the movie both an old-timey feel and a fresh approach. Maybe because the stories are so short we’re allowed to simply watch the carnage and suffering and not feel too bad about it.

The next two stories are the reason to watch CREEPSHOW, however.

First up is “Something to Tide You Over,” which stars an incredibly bad-ass Leslie Nielsen burying Ted Danson up to his neck in beach sand. Ol’ Leslie is p*ssed off because Danson was screwing his wife, so he comes up with this plan to bury both of them in the surf, then let Ted watch the woman drown as the tide comes rolling in before dying himself. It’s a really dark story and I’m not lying when I say Leslie Nielsen has never been better. Even the ending, where the drowned victims come back to life to bury Nielsen in the sand works. As the story comes to an end, we can still hear Nielsen defiantly yelling, “I can hold my breath a long time!” Great story, which is matched by the fantastic story that follows.

“The Crate” is the longest story in CREEPSHOW and also its best. Professor Dexter Stanley (Fritz Weaver) comes into possession of a crate that’s been stashed in a hidden alcove beneath a stairwell. The only reason the janitor finds the crate is that he’s dropped his last quarter and he’s jonesing for a soda pop. Dexter and the janitor open the crate and some weird kind of abominable midget yeti comes out and tears the f*ck out of the janitor. Dexter panics and runs to his pal Henry’s place. Henry (Hal Holbrook) is married to a younger harpy (Adrienne Barbeau) and has a passive, schlubby approach to life. Wilma totally dominates and emasculates him, but while he fantasizes about taking revenge, he always ends up shrugging his shoulders and saying, “Yes, dear.” When Dexter tells Henry about the abominable midget yeti, Henry devises a plan to solve his problem, getting Wilma to come to the university where he sacrifices her to the crate monster.

It’s a really fantastic story, put over the top by the great Hal Holbrook as a passive man turning into an active man.

Last up is “They’re Creeping Up on You!” which sees E.G. Marshall playing a rich, bug-phobic assh*le who gets eaten by bugs. It’s gross and sort of awesome.

The film ends with our little kid taking a voodoo doll to his dad as revenge for throwing away his comics.

And really, who hasn’t been there with their parents?

What’s most impressive about CREEPSHOW is how well paced everything is – the stories that work take up the most screen time and the ones that don’t help fill out the two hours. Leslie Nielsen and Hal Holbrook give fantastic performances, Romero’s directing is totally solid and professional, and the overall idea that we’re watching a comic book come to life makes CREEPSHOW a solid, somewhat unique film, and well worth a watch.

THE FOG: We’re Honoring Murderers

The Fog (1980) – Directed by John Carpenter – Starring Adrienne Barbeau, Tom Atkins, Jamie Lee Curtis, John Houseman, Janet Leigh, and Hal Holbrook.

When you watch a lot of movies (as you might have noticed, I do), you can sometimes run the risk of seeing too much of one film in another. That said, when watching John Carpenter’s THE FOG, it’s pretty easy to see his influence people like Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarrantino, specifically as it relates to the way they construct a movie like FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, which is one-half set up as we simply get to know the characters, and then one-half action conclusion.

THE FOG is constructed in a similar (though not identical) manner; Carpenter spends nearly an hour of his film setting up the last half-hour of action. There’s a few hints of horror early on but the main characters are kept largely out of harm’s way. Windows shatter, mysterious shadows knock at doors, and a brick in the wall jumps off the wall, but these things more to create a mystery for the characters to solve rather than to provide some massive fright. For the most part THE FOG is content to take its time to build up its characters and set up its mystery so when the supernatural fog starts to roll in, people understand that it’s a very bad thing and appropriately freak out.

Watching THE FOG now, it’s sort of amazing how anachronistic it’s structured compared to contemporary horror and action films. THE FOG is not a roller coaster; it’s a section of roller coaster perhaps, as we spend lots and lots of time making that slow climb to the top and then have one big drop to the bottom after we’ve crested. Personally, I love THE FOG because Carpenter does such a great job introducing and developing his characters. By the time the fog starts rolling in to Antonio Bay, I actually cared enough about these characters to understand why they were reacting the way they did; this is critically important, because as much as everyone is afraid of the supernatural fog and the 100-year old ghosts, they all have individual fears and quirks, too. These aren’t just random people getting whacked for our enjoyment; they have real lives and fears and dreams that are interrupted by a supernatural fog and a band of ghost lepers.

Out-of-towner Elizabeth Solley (Jamie Lee Curtis) is a young girl on the road to nowhere. She’s a talented artist but she’s drifting – she’s old enough to know that where she was isn’t where she wants to be, but young enough to think hitching to get somewhere is a good idea. When Nick Castle (Tom Atkins) picks her up, she tries to play experienced, but Nick quickly catches her in a mini-lie that reveals her to be far less world-smart than she claims. They hook up, but Carpenter doesn’t sensationalize the sex or draw out the seduction. In their first scene together Nick picks her up, they start to chat (which feels more functional than seductive), and then the windows shatter in Nick’s truck. The next time we see them is later on in bed, post-coital, and there’s a knock on the door, which causes Nick to have to get out of bed because 1. it’s his house, and 2. because he’s the kind of guy who lets the woman stay in the bed while he puts his pants on and deals with the interruption. We know what’s waiting for him on the other side of the door is a creepy ghost man in the fog, but he doesn’t, so there’s little tension generated for the characters, but a good amount for us.

It’s a really well developed sequence by Carpenter – from pick-up to knock-at-the-door, we see that Elizabeth is a young woman physically, but still making that transition from girlhood to womanhood on an emotional level. In Nick, she finds a solid, older man who’s looking to be important to someone. Both of them have emotional holes that the other can fill, and the exploding truck windows simply bring this into clearer focus for them. Carpenter gives us all of this information but he doesn’t bludgeon us with it; in the 2011 cinematic landscape, THE FOG almost comes off as high literature.

The other center of the film is Stevie Wayne (Adrienne Barbeau), who runs the town’s radio station from the lighthouse. Stevie is a fantastically conceived character; from her position high above town she has the best view of the fog’s actions and in her position as the one and only DJ, she’s the Voice of Authority for the townspeople. In that last positioning, she’s both of the town and apart from it. She has a voice-only relationship with the local weatherman, and relies on an older woman to watch her son, Andy, while she’s at work.

Andy likes to play down at the beach and he finds a gold doubloon that turns into a piece of wood with the word “DANE” carved into its surface. The Elizabeth Dane is the heart of the mystery and I like how Carpenter doles out the mystery in disconnected pieces – we get a feel for the whole story but the townsfolk do not. Andy finds the “DANE” driftwood, but to him and his mother, it’s just driftwood. It’s Father Malone (Hal Holbrook) who learns the full story when finds a journal his grandfather wrote 100 years ago and then stuck in the church’s wall, but he doesn’t tell this to Andy or Stevie. Andy’s head is already filled with ghost stories from the previous night, when Mr. Machen (John Houseman) told him the tale of the Elizabeth Dane, but to Andy it’s just a story. Nick and Elizabeth find the first dead body out on the missing boat when a water-logged man falls on top of Elizabeth. It’s only when they get to the church at the end of the film that the players are able to piece everything together.

Stevie takes that block of wood to work with her, and it first leaks saltwater and then explodes into flame. A ghostly voice comes across the radio that promises revenge, and the “DANE” etching on the driftwood becomes “6 MUST DIE” before changing back. Antonio Bay survived a 100 years earlier because the town murdered members of a leper colony that had come seeking refuge. The lepers had asked for permission to build a colony a mile away and the town’s leaders agreed, but then betrayed the lepers by building a false fire on the night of a heavy fog, which caused the leper ship to crash into the rocks and sink. The six town founders kept the lepers’ gold and founded their town.

The current day is the 100th anniversary of the town’s founding, so the ghosts of the leper ship have come back to kill six townsfolk as revenge. Stevie sees the fog coming in and pleads with someone to go save her son because she can’t get through the fog to get him before the fog envelops her house. Nick and Elizabeth rescue him and then Stevie’s radio voice implores everyone to get to the roads the fog hasn’t taken. The fog is herding them all to the church, however, for the final showdown. Father Malone, Nick, Elizabeth, and Andy are joined by Kathy Williams (Janet Leigh) and her assistant. Kathy has been the big organizing force for the anniversary celebration, and her husband is missing (he was on the boat that endured the fog’s initial attack), so she’s caught between what she knows of the town’s history (as Father Malone told her, “We’re honoring murderers”), her love of the town’s present, and her missing husband.

Father Malone bears the largest guilt over the actions, and takes the church’s gold cross (made from the lepers’ gold) to offer himself up as a sacrifice so the six, century-old murders can be properly avenged. Nick interferes and saves him, pulling him away from the gold cross and the ghost lepers. The ghosts takes the cross and disappear and the fog recedes back out onto the water.

Everybody wins.

Except the ghosts’ presence was more about revenge of life than recuperating stolen gold, so after everyone thinks everything is swell, the film’s last beat has a small patch of fog return to the church, where the lepers’ leader beheads Father Malone with a sword.

THE FOG is a quietly strong movie that emphasizes strength of story and character over shocks and monsters. Everyone gives a solid performance, but Hal Holbrook’s haunted, guilt-driven Father Malone is the character that will stick with me.