Looking Ahead: 2010 in Film

Jake Teresi — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 07:36:10 +0000

After a record-setting year at the box office, what can we expect in 2010? More of the same. Don’t expect Hollywood to surprise us when things are going so well. Expect more 3D, more talking CGI animals, more lame comedies/soft dramas starring Sandra Bullock.

Not that I’m cynical.

Seriously, there are some really interesting projects set to premiere in 2010. Here is what I’m most excited to see:

Green Zone (March) The Bourne Occupation. Based on the nonfiction book Imperial Life in the Emerald City, Matt Damon searches for WMDs right before the surge of troops in Iraq. Judging from Paul Greengrass’ non-Bourne outings (United 93, Bloody Sunday), expect a meticulously-researched, taut thriller. Not to be confused with Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg, out the same week.

Iron Man 2 (May) The exception to the unfortunate-sequel rule: sequels to superhero movies are generally bigger, badder, and bolder than their originals. The principal cast and crew is back and they’ve nabbed Mickey Rourke. The biggest movie of the year, and for good reason.

Inception (July) How do you follow up after making one of the most successful blockbusters–financially and critically–in history (The Dark Knight)? Use the new, expanded resources the studios are now willing to give you to return to your roots. This sci-fi, potentially time-travelling story (the press and trailers are vague) suggest Memento for Imax. Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page (!) star.

The Green Hornet (December) Michel Gondry, Seth Rogen superhero adaptation, just in time for Christmas, written by the scribes of Superbad and Pineapple Express. Could be all wrong, or just right. I’ll bank on the latter.

The Tree of Life (TBA) Terrence Malick makes films every half decade, if that. This generational epic, originally titled Q, has been in the works for 30 years. Brad Pitt and Sean Penn star. Expect something interesting, if not magnificent, with a pervertedly long running time.

The Beaver (TBA) A year ago, the script of “The Beaver” was number one on an “official” list of best unproduced screenplays. This quirky portrait of a CEO who suffers a mental breakdown and, following, can only communicate through use of a beaver puppet, originally had Steve Carrell attached but now has (gulp) Mel Gibson. I couldn’t think of a more fitting comeback.

The First Gun (TBA) The director of Hero and House of Flying Daggers remakes the Coen Bros’ Blood Simple for the Mandarin-speaking crowd. Hey, we do it all the time to them. Here is some sweet vengeance.

Black Swan (TBA) Darren Aronofsky’s psychological ballet thriller. Yeah, I know. I can’t wait either.

Life During Wartime (TBA) Todd Solondz’s sequel to 1998’s great dark comedy Happiness has already made the festival circuit to generally positive reviews. Apparently, it’s more talk-heavy and politically overt than his previous films. Suitably, it’s named after a Talking Heads song.

Rabbit Hole (TBA) John Cameron Mitchell has proven he’s capable of stage-to-screen adaptations. In this one, Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart star as a couple dealing with the death of their 4-year-old. Decidedly less wacky than Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

The Sad Schemer

Giampaolo Bianconi — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 21:10:00 +0000

The Informant! (Dir. Steven Soderbergh, 2009)

Films by Stephen Soderbergh fall into two categories—those like Ocean’s 11 that immerse themselves in the high sheen of Hollywood (even when the luster is dark, like Erin Brockovitch), and those like Ocean’s 12, which seem irritated that a place like Hollywood exists at all. The Informant! seems more the latter, though its anger is more focused and smaller.

Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon) plays a scientist and businessman at ADM, a nebulous agro-something company that, from the looks of it, specializes in starch and competes heavily with the Japanese. He decides to blow the whistle on a price fixing scheme that may or may not be real. What’s surprising about the crime is how commonplace it is. FBI agent Brian Shepard (Scott Bakula) remarks that Whitacre taught the FBI how five white guys talking wasn’t just a meeting, it was a crime scene. But the sense of crime is lost as price fixing just looks like pricing. Whether the scheme exists or is even a scheme at all is hard to tell.

Also difficult to figure is why Whitacre does anything he does. I suspect that telling the truth isn’t high on his list. Even Shepard—Whitacre’s handler—can’t comprehend why he’d rat out the company at which he was a steadily rising star. The answer, I suppose, is a demented quest for glory, and a deluded sense of self-sacrifice.

As any Soderbergh film, The Informant! handles its apolitical surface deftly, then uses narrative and emotion to frame the story as pure Robin Hoodism. The case Whitacre built was a cornerstone of mid-90s antitrust legislation, though you wouldn’t know it from the film. Damon sets the bar high for aching stupidity—it’s sad to watch him fumbling through the life of a super secret agent he imagines, to watch the minutiae of megalomania play out over desperate phone calls and dinners. By the end of the film, as Whitacre’s toupee slides off of his head and it’s revealed that he’s been stealing millions from ADM, my empathy-level was so high I would have signed his pardon myself.

More than emotional blackmail, Whitacre’s stupidity also manages to embody the stupidity of the biopic genre itself. As Erin Brockovitch showed, Soderbergh has mastered the genre once; and with Che, he took it beyond its potential. Now he seems more interested in exposing the inanity of the biopic, in which a character’s every banal thought can be presented as a flower of insight, every experience as a cornerstone of the individual’s narrative. In The Informant!, Soderbergh is out to dismantle these assumptions with a dark humor reminiscent of Robert Altman’s Brewster McCloud. Both films give the audience what they want—but also make sure they suffer a little bit in the process.

St. Eliot & Co. » Matt Damon

Looking Ahead: 2010 in Film

The Sad Schemer