Movie of Turow's latest legal thriller raises a few objections

Those who remember Harrison Ford's portrayal of prosecutor Rusty Sabich will find different shadings in Bill Pullman's version, two decades later, of this leading man of American crime fiction.

In the new, TV movie version of "Innocent," Scott Turow's 2010 sequel to his 1987 blockbuster "Presumed Innocent," Sabich, now an appellate judge, has a couple of extra decades of compromise on his shoulders, the biggest being his continued cohabitation with wife Barbara.

But he has the same basic problem to confront: The author, in a kind of crime-fiction double jeopardy, has contrived to again get his antihero charged with murdering a woman very close to him. Kindle County — a place similar to Cook County, where Turow still supplements his career as a novelist with a side job as a partner in a downtown Chicago law firm — is apparently no place for a quiet courtroom life.

Ford's Sabich, in the 1990 Alan J. Pakula film, was a brooding, heavy, fundamentally masculine presence. Pullman's is a little more cerebral, more reserved, hiding his feelings, and possibly his wounds, behind a steady half-smile that could be seen as cocky or protective.

But both editions of Sabich manage to make you think the man may have enough darkness in him to have done exactly the horrific thing he is charged with, even as you know this would violate most rules of popular storytelling.

While the contrasts between two fine actors are interesting, Pullman, alas, is in a film that doesn't carry the same weight. The first in a new mystery movie franchise for TNT, which already runs several series about the law ("The Closer," "Rizzoli & Isles," even "Law & Order" reruns), "Scott Turow's Innocent" follows the outlines of the novel but never quite achieves the sense of moment of either its source material or its big-screen predecessor.

This happens despite a stellar cast that also includes Marcia Gay Harden as the bipolar Barbara Sabich, Richard Schiff ("The West Wing") as Sabich nemesis Tommy Molto, now Kindle County's chief prosecuting attorney, and Alfred Molina as Rusty's defense attorney and friend, Sandy Stern.

We open on the scene that sets everything in motion: Rusty Sabich at the bedside of his deceased wife, where, we learn, he will leave her for 24 hours before calling authorities. Before the toxicology comes in and Molto and an eager young assistant get on the case, it is ruled a heart attack.

Meanwhile, in flashback, we see the new contours of Rusty's life. His adult son Nat (Callard Harris), after some trouble getting his life in order, is following his father into the law. Sabich has an infatuated law clerk (Mariana Klaveno from "True Blood") about to move into her first private-practice job.

And Rusty and Barbara had stayed together despite what they learned about one another at the time of the events in "Presumed Innocent," including Rusty's trial on charges of murdering a colleague and ex-lover.
"Sixty," Sabich says, "is a tough age to reach knowing that love is for other people."

The pleasures of Turow's novels come from his careful, complex plotting, insight into the law and the people who shape it, and graceful, almost formal writing style. Sex, in his world, carries heavy consequences, and resolutions are rarely tidy or what they at first seem. Like John le Carre's spy novels, these are crime stories for people whose reading interests run deeper than mass-market paperbacks.

"Innocent" was a worthy addition to North Shore resident Turow's body of work, all the more so for revisiting characters who resonated so powerfully with readers in their first appearance but whose passions have been replaced, mostly, by regrets and an awareness of life's ambiguities.

Sabich was compelling then because he was never a completely sympathetic character. And in "Innocent," his decision to stay married for, in his mind, his easily bruised son and wife could also be read as a choice made mostly to protect his public reputation. Which he then threatens to destroy with another, hastier choice.

But where "Presumed Innocent" had the classic components of cinematic murder stories — lurid sex, a femme fatale, a jealous spouse, rope — the sequel hinges more on things that are better explained in print: drug interactions, Barbara's computer expertise, the self-recrimination of an intelligent man knowingly repeating a history that almost got him condemned.

And writer/director Mike Robe, who has directed for TV two other Turow novels, "The Burden of Proof" (1992) and "Reversible Errors" (2004), doesn't offer much beyond what the author has put on the page — and often feels hurried to get that much in.

It is competently, professionally done, as you would expect from a man who has directed dozens of TV movies. The story is satisfying, an intellectual cut above many TV mysteries. And a cast like this will always be worth watching.

But you want something more, even allowing for the constricted budget of the smaller screen: sharper visuals, perhaps; a soundtrack that isn't so insistent on shaping your emotions; a TV-reporter character who isn't so noticably unlike any real TV reporter; reaction shots that aren't presented in the cinematic equivalent of yellow highlighter.

Above all, what you want is an interpretation of the novel, rather than merely a rendering, and a restoration of the soulfulness that makes it special.

Terry Gilliam, the heir of Fellini and the enemy of God?

The late Ted Demme once approached Terry Gilliam and asked for the secret of his cinema sorcery. Demme wanted to know how the director of “Brazil,” “Twelve Monkeys” and “The Fisher King” approached those magical transition moments in his movies where reality lurches and gives way to fantasy swirl and fever dream. The elder director, with a toothy grin, explained that he just wasn’t qualified to answer because, well, he wouldn’t know reality if he saw it.

“I never quite understand what the real world is,” Gilliam said during a recent visit to Los Angeles. “I told Ted I shoot reality and fantasy the same way because it’s all the same to me. I don’t know how to distinguish between the two, they flow into each other all the time. That’s the autobiographical part in my movies…in Hollywood, everyone takes characters and puts them into action sequences where they are threatened by outside forces, but to me the threat is your own perception of the world.”

Slippery magic, grim humor and one-man rebellions are trademarks of Gilliam’s films and, with appropriate blur, they are also trademarks of his career, which has been defined by masterpiece moments and years of misadventure. The director turned 71 this week and, a few days before that, he was presented with a Federico Fellini Foundation award for a movie career that began when he co-directed 1974′s “Monty Python and the Holy Grail’ with fellow Python troupe member Terry Jones. Gilliam’s latest screen credit is “The Wholly Family,” a short film he made in Naples that was screened this month in Santa Monica by the American Cinematheque, and at the event Gilliam acknowledged that his feature-film future is cloudy because of the financing challenges that face a maverick with a  reputation for hard luck and an even harder head.

“The heir of Fellini and the enemy of God. I like that, I’m going to use that,” Gilliam said of his new career motto. And, truthfully, it does seem the filmmaker has been tested and taunted by the heavens and (far further south) by Hollywood.

His battle with Universal chief Sid Sheinberg over 1985′s “Brazil” is now the stuff of legend; the director bought a full-page ad in Variety pressuring the studio not to re-edit the film to give it a happy ending and he won his way only after staging private “rogue” screenings  for members of the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn., which led to the group naming the original version the year’s best picture.  Then there were the months and years consumed by projects that never got off the ground at all (“Time Bandits 2,”  an adaptation of “A Tale of Two Cities”) or took flight with other filmmakers (the “Harry Potter” films, “Watchmen”) or hang in a savage state of limbo (“The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” began filming in 2000 and never came close to finishing, but Gilliam hopes still to revive it).

Movie Review: THE DESCENDANTS

I have a cellophane-wrapped DVD copy of SIDEWAYS, directed by Alexander Payne, but I have never opened it up and watched it. It ison my ever-increasing list. I have, though, seen his high school horror story ELECTION, and it is one of my favorite movies. The characters there follow their instincts or their passions, and land themselves in all kinds of trouble. They are recognizable as people, even as we are thunderstruck at their stupidity and duplicity. You are drawn not only to the protagonist, but to the antagonist as well, making you bask in a kind of tingly ambivalence.

Who is the bad guy of THE DESCENDANTS? Not that easy to answer. In Payne’s movie, characters have to respond to each other in totally unexpected ways, due to a horrible thing that happens. The movie starts with a shot of a woman piloting a speedboat, with a look of exultation on her face because she knows she has crossed the threshold of fear she thinks she can usually tolerate. We know something bad is going to happen, but we are stalled from fully knowing it by the subsequent narration of lawyer Matt King (George Clooney, at his most realistically vulnerable). He tells us about Honolulu, where he lives, and how he hears people on the Mainland speak of their desire to also live in Paradise. We then see, as he speaks, shots of the slums of Honolulu, poor kids of Honolulu, uninspired housing units in Honolulu and Matt marvels at how these people believe that there are no problems in Hawaii, as if its inhabitants are “immune to life.”

We next see the two things that Matt is in the process of letting go. First he reveals that he is descended from six generations of a family that has always lived on the Big Island, meaning that he, himself, is part Hawaiian, as his grandfather several generations back married a descendant of one of King Kamehameha’s wives. His family (and we see his many cousins) own the last tract of pristine, virgin land in Hawaii, and Matt, as sole trustee of the estate, has to make the decision on whether to sell the land (which would make the cousins happy, because they would be extremely rich), or to not sell it, which would make the islanders happy, because there would be no large-scale development.

The second thing deals with what happened to his wife, Elizabeth. As she was speeding along, she was thrown out of the boat during a sharp turn, and hit her head hard. This produced a coma, and there is hope that she’ll wake up, and Matt is soon facing another decision (don’t worry- the movie isn’t really about whether or not she survives). The two of them have gotten distant over the past year with Matt going on a lot of business trips, and when he’s in the hospital, wildly optimistic (like the rest of the family) that she is going to wake up, he says to his comatose wife that he is ready to talk, he is ready to change…if she would just wake up.

'A Dangerous Method' movie review, trailer: Cronenberg explores the human mind

Yet, it’s not a performance focused on the theatrics. By the end of A Dangerous Method, Sabina is a fully functional adult and aspiring psychoanalyst. One can tell that there is a lingering shadow of her former self, but, for the most part, she is cured. Her diagnosis is complicated and never fully explained. It’s mostly sexual in nature (she enjoys paddling), and likely dealt with an abusive upbringing.

Mortensen is enjoyable as Freud; however, the character feels like a third wheel. Many of his scenes are him writing a letter to Spielrein or Jung, offering his thoughtful two cents. Of this three-person tango, the Freud character trips up.

Cronenberg, a director who is willing throw in savage surprises for the viewer, is restrained with A Dangerous Method. He lets the story and its characters percolate. They move about their historical universe, slowly and methodically getting to know one another. The movie’s subtlety, which may be mistaken for dullness, is one of its strongest suits. It makes sense that a movie about thinkers would be a thinking man’s film.

Director David Cronenberg has carved out a career of making wonderfully off-kilter movies. From "Videodrome" to "The Fly to A History of Violence," the man has looked into the fears and eccentricities of the human condition for more than 40 years.

With his latest film, "A Dangerous Method," the director looks further into the human brain. Much further.

The 99-minute movie, based on a play by Christopher Hampton, which itself was based on a book by John Kerr, examines the trials and tribulations of Carl Jung’s relationship with one of his most difficult patients: Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley).

Jung (Michael Fassbender) treats Sabina from her earliest stages of hysteria, when she experiences so many tics that she has difficulty pronouncing words, to her final stages of psychotherapy, when the line between patient and doctor becomes blurred. To help with the unusual case, Jung seeks the advice and mentoring of Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen), the well-respected neurologist credited with the birth of psychotherapy.

This terrain feels refreshingly novel for a director who is remembered as much for his daring special effects and displays of sexuality as he is for clever, thoughtful filmmaking. A Dangerous Method islike a three-person tango, an allegorical microcosm of what can happen in the complicated field of psychotherapy.

Throughout the film, which is expertly staged to look like turn-of-the-century Europe, all of the actors come into their own. Fassbender, in particular, finds subtle strength behind Jung. He’s analytical and blunt with his assessments, yet Sabina gets under his skin. She becomes a pet project, a woman he needs to cure. However, when his methods do, in fact, work, he’s left with an emptiness, a yearning to get closer.

Movie Review: Melancholia

"Worlds colliding, Jerry! Worlds colliding!"

After seeing Lars von Trier's latest movie, "Melancholia." I couldn't help but think of lines that George Costanza uttered to Jerry Seinfeld (of course in an episode of Seinfeld) when two different aspects of his life that he didn't want to meet were on a collision course.

von Trier's "Melancholia" does a similar thing but with literal repercussions, at least from my perspective.
"Melancholia" tells us the tale of two sisters who are polar opposites in every respect. Justine is a free-spirited career woman who's blond, attractive and just about to have it all marrying a perfect man, and by her nature, rejects it all. Claire is dark-haired, gaunt in appearance and his given her life over to her very successful husband and perfect son, and yearns for Justine's life. This is literally set against the backdrop of the discovery of a new planet named Melancholia that's careening through space, supposedly only going to pass by Earth.

That's the broad description of "Melancholia," a movie that I've been looking forward to for quite some time. Danish director/provocateur Lars von Trier wrote and directed the film which has been receiving great acclaim. That acclaim has been overshadowed by statements made by von Trier during a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival. Those statements revolved around von Trier expressing some sympathy for Nazis in comparison to what he goes through directing a film. As a result of those statements, von Trier has since been banned from Cannes and he has actively said that he'll no longer participate in any sort of press setting. I've seen the video of his making the statements, and from my point of view, it was more of von Trier basically putting his foot in his mouth rather than any sort of real Nazi sympathy. Anyone who knows von Trier's work knows that he likes to provoke and push buttons, and that's all he was doing with this press conference, but at least from my point of view, it was hardly in any sort of malicious way. Of course, I say this as an American who just doesn't have the same perspective that the foreign press does, and so naturally, I tend to think this was all unfortunately overblown.

Will this affect how a potential viewer will come into this? Honestly, I don't know. I know it didn't affect my enjoyment of the film at all and I'd just hope that if you're of the mind to see it, you'll certainly give it a chance.

As I said above, von Trier like to push the buttons and it's evident in all of his work. He certainly does it with "Melancholia" with his two main characters who I don't see as necessarily being "characters" per se, but more the personification of different aspects of woman in general. Their portrayal can be seen as both sensitive and pretentious and that can certainly come at odds for how you'll feel about them by the end. I've come to embrace the pretentiousness of von Trier's work simply because he knows how to balance it all with effective technical proficiency and leaves it all open to lively discussion. Justine and Claire are at first glance, somewhat simplistic metaphors. But after post-viewing examination, there's way more there to go after if you're inclined. I've described how I see them in broad strokes, but as is the case with all of von Trier's movies, he invites you to bring your pads and cleats to play and make your own interpretation.
It's an absolutely beautiful looking movie that brings to play all of von Trier's visual tricks. Pristine composed shots that work in tandem with intentionally jittery handheld camera moments all designed to provoke and force the viewer to put together the pieces. von Trier uses excerpts from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde to punctuate his scenes and furthers the haunting beauty of his film.

Kirsten Dunst plays Justine and Charlotte Gainsbourg plays Claire. Dunst has certainly received much acclaim for the work, even winning the Best Actress award at Cannes for her work here. It's no doubt her most complicated work, though as a character, she comes off very unsympathetic, but as I said above, I couldn't just see her as a character alone, but more as an aspect/concept given personification. It's a very show-y performance in comparison to what Gainsbourg has to do and so for some, Claire might come out more slighted in the end. But again, as a concept given personification, Claire is certainly true to how she's set up. That set-up is quite literally the polar opposite of Justine, and so it would seem fitting that she's more downplayed.

von Trier has assembled some capable support for Dunst and Gainsbourg, but they're strictly support to his concepts. Stellan Skarsgård and Alexander Skarsgård play Justine's boss and husband-to-be respectively (though they're not related in the film). John Hurt and Charlotte Rampling play Justine's and Claire's divorced parents who act more as definition to Justine more than anything else. Keifer Sutherland and Cameron Spurr play Claire's husband, John and son, Leo and again, act as definition to her concept. It's all good work, but as I said above, it's strictly support for Dunst and Gainsbourg.

I've said it before, and I'll no doubt say it again, I'm a huge fan of Lars von Trier and any new movie from him is an event for me. I found "Melancholia" to be mesmerizing, though I don't think it will be that way for most, unless you know what you're getting into with a Lars von Trier movie. His movies aren't passive experiences and require an audience to bring in their own interpretation. His bleak outlook on life won't give you a feel-good experience, but will certainly give you plenty to ponder after the fact, as long as you're willing to take the ride. "Anti-Christ" was von Trier's "horror" film and now with "Melancholia" we've got his science fiction film, though they only fit the genres in the broadest of ways. von Trier's films have worked as trilogies and both "Anti-Christ" and "Melancholia" look like they're the first two parts of a new one (I'd love to see what he'd do with his own version of an "action" film- though I'd also like to see him finish the trilogy that he started with "Dogville" and "Manderlay"). Regardless of what he does next, I'll be there to see it and I certainly do recommend "Melancholia" very highly.