(Tom McCarthy, 2015)
Spotlight has a great real-life story as raw material. It also has an outstanding cast of character actors and movie stars all committing fearlessly to this treatment of that story. What it does not have is a writer-director with any real feel for cinema.
That's not to say there is nothing to recommend in Spotlight; it is an engrossing, beautifully-acted procedural, with plenty of finely-observed details that bring the story and world to life. It's screenplay has some nice moments and a few fine characters.
Previous true-life procedurals like All the Presidents Men and the Insider combined sharp scripts and great actors with bravura direction. It's just that I don't think McCarthy is capable of "bravura". He is fantastic with actors, and this film is really well paced, giving out just enough exposition to keep an audience interested but never enough to slow things down so much that they might become bored.
The story follows a specialist team of reporters at the Boston Globe as they investigate a story of the Catholic Church and it's decade-long cover-up of paedophile priests. Those reporters are played by the likes of Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams while Liev Schrieber appears as the new Editor of the Paper, an outsider and Jew, who pushes for the story to the displeasure of most of the city, it seems.
McCarthy shoots it all like it's television. From 1997. Flat, "realistic" lighting, dull blocking and compositions. The camera moves little, and never with any real sense of purpose, either thematic or aesthetic. It feels as if he has learned to direct from a book of How to Direct. Directing: a Fools Guide, perhaps?
It's a shame, because this could and should be an important film about a hugely controversial topic. Instead it is a mediocrity; never bad - its far too tasteful for that - but never great either.
Showing posts with label Tom McCarthy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tom McCarthy. Show all posts
Sunday, 27 December 2015
Sunday, 22 May 2011
WIN WIN
(Tom McCarthy, 2011)
Win Win is a recession-era comedy drama stripped of any rage or passion about the times which give the film its setting. It focuses on Paul Giamatti's small town New Jersey lawyer as he struggles to keep his head above water financially, running his struggling business and providing for his family, while coaching a High School Wrestling team in his spare time. Everything is complicated by the arrival into his life of the teenage Grandson of an elderly client who happens to be a talented wrestler.
The neatness of that premise is reflected in more or less every aspect of the film. It is a safe, careful drama with some comedy, never overly ambitious, only mildly funny, scrupulously modest in its aims and achievements. McCarthy crafts believable, warmly likeable characters and his fine cast bring them nicely to life, with Giamatti and Amy Ryan (as his wife) as dependably solid as ever. One key role is miscast however; as the teen Wrestler, Alex Schaffer is adequate in the early, monosyllabic scenes, but once required to tackle more dialogue his work suffers. He is good in the wrestling scenes, which work well enough.
But then everything works, while nothing works brilliantly, and this is the films problem. McCarthy is competent as a visual director, solid as a storyteller, but there is not one transcendent moment in this film, no belly laughs or truly moving dramatic scenes, no truths captured, no beauty on display. His compositions are workmanlike, the lightng and colours flat and anonymous, the soundtrack virtually sublimnal (the use of the National over the end credits may in fact be the highlight of the film). It is pedestrian, utterly predictable in its middlebrow tastefulness. Never a struggle and a mildly enjoyable experience, Win Win represents a slightly dispiriting trend within American Indie cinema; the rise of the middl of the road Adult-oriented comedy-drama.
Win Win is a recession-era comedy drama stripped of any rage or passion about the times which give the film its setting. It focuses on Paul Giamatti's small town New Jersey lawyer as he struggles to keep his head above water financially, running his struggling business and providing for his family, while coaching a High School Wrestling team in his spare time. Everything is complicated by the arrival into his life of the teenage Grandson of an elderly client who happens to be a talented wrestler.
The neatness of that premise is reflected in more or less every aspect of the film. It is a safe, careful drama with some comedy, never overly ambitious, only mildly funny, scrupulously modest in its aims and achievements. McCarthy crafts believable, warmly likeable characters and his fine cast bring them nicely to life, with Giamatti and Amy Ryan (as his wife) as dependably solid as ever. One key role is miscast however; as the teen Wrestler, Alex Schaffer is adequate in the early, monosyllabic scenes, but once required to tackle more dialogue his work suffers. He is good in the wrestling scenes, which work well enough.
But then everything works, while nothing works brilliantly, and this is the films problem. McCarthy is competent as a visual director, solid as a storyteller, but there is not one transcendent moment in this film, no belly laughs or truly moving dramatic scenes, no truths captured, no beauty on display. His compositions are workmanlike, the lightng and colours flat and anonymous, the soundtrack virtually sublimnal (the use of the National over the end credits may in fact be the highlight of the film). It is pedestrian, utterly predictable in its middlebrow tastefulness. Never a struggle and a mildly enjoyable experience, Win Win represents a slightly dispiriting trend within American Indie cinema; the rise of the middl of the road Adult-oriented comedy-drama.
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