From Rolling Stone
We're watching movies in a century with the bloom still on it. Tough
sledding for actors who direct if they want to match or exceed the
success record of their predecessors. Given the 20th-century triumphs
of such icons as Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurence Olivier and
Citizen Kane auteur Orson Welles, plus directing Oscar wins for the starry likes of Clint Eastwood (
Unforgiven), Robert Redford (
Ordinary People), Warren Beatty (
Reds), Mel Gibson (
Braveheart), Kevin Costner (
Dances With Wolves), and — kill me now! — Roberto Benigni (
Life Is Beautiful),
the 21st century offers challenges galore. Here's a list of 10
actor-directors trying to stake their claim on both sides of the camera.
She's one of the highest paid actors in the world, not to mention a
tabloid staple stemming from her relationship with Brad Pitt and their
every-growing family, and her good work as a Special Envoy for the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. So when does Angelina
Jolie have time to direct movies? Well, she did. In last year's
In the Land of Blood and Honey,
a love story set against the background of the Bosnian War, Jolie had
critics saluting her skill behind the camera and at illuminating the
harsher issues of our day.
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2012 is Brad's year to "refill" and it theoretically should be Angelina's year to work down her list of films in development. She wrapped
Maleficent but since Brad had
Moneyball,
Killing Them Softly and
World War Z back to back, it should still be Angelina's turn before Brad tackles another.
Angelina is a deeply emotional person -- we've seen numerous clips of her fighting back tears when she talked about her mother or the refugees she visited. Her early films showed her singular focus on her work even as she battled internal demons. She had a string of critically acclaimed performances and back to back awards and nominations for
Gia,
George Wallace and
Girl, Interrupted. After 2001's
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider made her a big box office star and as she became more in-demand by the studios, what followed was a series of subpar commercial films --
Taking Lives,
Life or Something Like It, Gone in 60 Seconds, Original Sin,
Alexander.
Brad was less heralded as an actor when he started. He was deemed a pretty face and a box office star but a lightweight talent. But since
Babel -- his first film after he and Angelina got together -- he has turned in a string of strong, acclaimed performances and, perhaps even more important, they have been in very highly regarded and Award-winning films from
Benjamin Button to
Moneyball.
Angelina's filmography also improved after
Mr & Mrs Smith -- from the grossly underrated
The Good Shepherd and
A Might Heart to
Changeling, she signaled that she was back to working on serious, quality drama Her performances in the last two earned her her first nominations since
Girl, Interrupted. Even her genre films --
Wanted and
Salt were well-crafted commercial successes. But she hit a nasty bump with
The Tourist which turned out to be lavish eye-candy sunk by Florian von Donnersmarck's inept direction. Even without Ricky Gervais' skewering, her reaction after a clip was shown at the Globes clearly showed her disappointment.
To-date, what is starkly missing from Angelina's filmography is a film that could be considered among the year's best, never mind actually receiving an Oscar nod. Given that her output has slowed, it is all the more imperative that what few films she does make be of the highest quality. As Brad has said repeatedly, he wants his children to be proud of his work when they grow up and I am sure Angelina feels the same way.
We see it manifest in her choice of directors for her films, even if at times the material isn't a clear match for their strengths -- Fincher, known for dark and gritty films, for
Cleopatra, Aronofsky (
The Wrestler, Black Swan) for
Maleficent and von Donnermsarck (
The Lives of Others) for
The Tourist. Her desire to ensure the quality of her films is also evident in her decision to serve as Executive Producer of
Maleficent, having a direct hand in choosing key members of the cast and crew including Dean Semler as DP and the very impressive list of British thespians that make up the supporting cast.
Her enthusiasm for acting through the years have waxed and waned and more recently she became much more enthusiastic about staying behind the camera. For a while it seemed a film on Afghanistan was looming as her next directorial effort. But perhaps as a result of the feedback she received on her Afghan script and with better perspective on her experiences on
Blood & Honey, she was more tentative when she spoke with
Reuters in Sarajevo:
"I have been writing and I'd love to try at
some point to direct another film. I would like to try to learn about
countries like Afghanistan but I don't know if I am the best person to
make the film about the subject matter," she said.
"Unless I felt I was somebody that can really contribute, I don't think I would do it," she added.
"I
think it's important for film-makers to know what they are trying to
say when they make a film. If you're gonna do something about another
country, make sure to surround yourself by extraordinary people from
that country and really know that country and let that country speak
through you. Don't try to give the country your own voice."
Angelina clearly has talent as a writer and director but she needs to reassess what projects she should tackle to further improve her skills and burnish her credentials. Focusing on films that are obvious extensions of her political advocacy work may not be the best way to further her directorial career. She risks pigeon-holing herself as a filmmaker constantly pursuing a political agenda and neglecting to broaden her skills. And having her as the director given the activist reputation she brings with her may not work best for those stories either.
To be a successful director, Angelina must make films audiences
actually want to see -- films that can, at the very least, earn back their cost.
Blood & Honey, fine as it was, was viewed as bitter medicine -- good for you but hard to sit through. With a cast of unknowns and released in the local language, it made back just a fraction of its cost in theatrical. While they never expected it to be hugely profitable, neither she nor Graham King can afford many more like it.
Ben Affleck, who occupies the
top slot on Peter Travers' list and whose films are also produced by Graham King, has certainly established himself as a talented, skillful and successful director.
The Town was a both a critical and commercial hit and his latest,
Argo, almost certainly will be as well.
Argo is a well-crafted, highly entertaining thriller that deserves all the praise it has received. It should do very well at the box office and is already touted as a leading contender for several Awards. King was left reeling with huge financial losses after Scorsese's
Hugo and Johnny's T
he Rum Diary and
Dark Shadows. Even his investment in
World War Z is looking precarious with its well documented problems. Amidst all his recent setbacks, Affleck is the one bright spot among the talent King has nurtured a relationship with over the years.
With her directorial career on hiatus, we thus go back to Angelina's films in development. I would like to see
Salt 2 get off the ground since I found the original highly entertaining and with the right script and director, Evelyn Salt could rightfully take her place beside James Bond and the Bournes. But they need a director who can raise
Salt 2 the way Sam Mendes raised
Skyfall.
I would like to see
Cleopatra get made as her true story hasn't been told and it could be an excellent epic the likes of which hasn't been seen since
Lawrence of Arabia and
Ben Hur. Ang Lee seems like the best match of all the names that have been floated.
I am less enthusiastic about
Scarpetta because it sounds like a generic procedural that's already been squeezed dry by CSI.
The Luc Besson film could be good if Besson is back to the form that made
La Femme Nikita,
Leon: The Professional and
The Fifth Element. But that's a big "if".
Gertrude Bell could be another
Lawrence of Arabia epic especially given that they were contemporaries and Bell was pivotal in the formation of present day Iraq. But a lot would depend on the script and how inspired Ridley Scott is with the material. Scott's plate is overflowing with projects and while historical epics are right in his wheelhouse, it might be better if he passes it on to someone else just as he passed
Gucci to his daughter Jordan.
I would like to see Angelina's wish to work with the likes of Fincher, Aronofsky and David O. Russell come to fruition. I would like to see her string together films of the same quality that Brad has managed of late and get the recognition her talent deserves.
Movie Review
Warner Brothers Pictures
Ben Affleck in "Argo," which he also directed.
Published: October 11, 2012
At one point in
“Argo,” a smart, jittery thriller about a freakish and little-known chapter of
the Iranian hostage crisis,
a Hollywood producer says that history starts as farce and ends up as
tragedy. He seems, as someone rightly points out, to have it backward.
But as a professional dissembler, he knows better. Because much like the
revolutionary shock troops who seized the United States embassy on Nov.
4, 1979, and turned the crisis into gripping political theater watched
by the entire world — tune in tomorrow when America goes on trial, with
the special guest star the Ayatollah Khomeini — the producer knows that
historical events alone don’t cut it. You need lights, camera, action.
Turning history into farce probably wasn’t
what Antonio J. Mendez, a Central Intelligence Agency officer, was after
when he was tapped to help free six State Department employees stranded
in Tehran. While revolutionary forces were overrunning the embassy and
taking hostages, including the 52 men and women who were held for 444
days, five Americans fled undetected. Eventually, they made their way to
safety, including at the Canadian ambassador’s house, staying hidden
(with a sixth escapee) while the C.I.A., the State Department and the
president struggled to find a way to ferry them home. Mr. Mendez, a
wizard of disguise, came up with the cover story for the six escapees
that improbably stuck: They would pose as a Canadian movie crew.
It’s a doozy of a story and so borderline
ridiculous that it sounds — ta-da! — like something that could have been
cooked up only by Hollywood.
Ben Affleck,
however, who directed “Argo” from a script by Chris Terrio and cast
himself in the pivotal role of Tony Mendez, realized that comedy alone
wouldn’t do. American lives, after all, were at stake (a situation that
contemporary viewers will be all too familiar with), and so, after
opening the movie with a bit of history and archival imagery, he rushes
into the moment’s jarring, unsettling craziness with a cinematic whoosh.
Fast and faster, he sets the skittish stage with convincing
you-are-there re-creations and then jumps back and forth between the
chanting, exultant Iranian protesters outside the embassy and the
freaked-out Americans inside it.
Mr. Affleck, working from Mr. Mendez’s book,
“The Master of Disguise,” and a 2007 Wired magazine article,
“The Great Escape,”
by the journalist Joshuah Bearman, embellishes the official story
without eviscerating it. Given how great the very premise is, it makes
sense to stick more or less to the official record — a series of
photographs from the hostage crisis that is juxtaposed with stills from
the movie show how close Mr. Affleck hews to the evidence — and he and
his production team clearly had fun with the Chia Pet facial hair,
oversize glasses, wide collars, fat ties and earth-toned threads.
Shrewdly, he visually transmits the escalating claustrophobia of the
escapees’ confinement with billowing cigarette smoke, small rooms, a
limited palette and shallow depth of field.
Better yet, after setting your pulse racing,
he smoothly downshifts, easing from the high anxiety of the opener —
which evokes 1970s political thrillers like Sydney Pollack’s
“Three Days of the Condor” — into something looser, mellower and funny. After Mendez spitballs escape plans with his bosses (including an amusing
Bryan Cranston,
popping neck tendons), he receives the green light to go Hollywood. To
make the movie idea work, he flies to Los Angeles, where he brings in an
old colleague, John Chambers (
John Goodman, breezy and reined in), a real makeup artist who received an honorary Oscar for
“Planet of the Apes.” Next on board is a dyspeptically seasoned producer, Lester Siegel (a wonderful
Alan Arkin), who helps make the fake project, now a science-fiction flick called “Argo,” look legit.
The Hollywood angle brings lightness and
levity into the movie, serving as comic relief that Mr. Affleck uses
contrapuntally with the increasingly tense, perilous situation in
Tehran. The scenes of Mendez swanning through Los Angeles, across a
rooftop party at the Beverly Hilton and a studio lot, where Chambers and
Siegel set up shop, are enjoyably preposterous. Then again, as the
Hollywood veterans knowingly observe, there is a certain kinship between
the spectacle they’re putting on and the really big show the Iranian
revolutionaries have staged. Budget aside, it comes down to selling the
story and the roles persuasively, which the escapees — nicely played by
Clea DuVall, Tate Donovan, Scoot McNairy, Rory Cochrane, Christopher
Denham and Kerry Bishé — soon learn.
Mr. Affleck handles his own roles, on camera
and behind it, with a noticeable lack of self-aggrandizement. He
doesn’t show off with his direction or the performances, going for
detail instead of bombast with eerie silences, traded glances, trembling
gestures and beaded sweat. (It’s a good guess that he’s committed the
unnerving opening of “Three Days of the Condor” to memory.) His own
delivery can be so tamped down that he sometimes registers as overly
restrained, almost bland, yet his control serves the material, partly
because it would have been a mistake for him to try to upstage this
story, much less Mr. Goodman and Mr. Arkin. And then, in the end, this
is a story about outwitting rather than killing the enemy, making it a
homage to actual intelligence and an example of the same.
“Argo” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). For language and revolutionary fervor.
