Movie Review: "Macbeth"

"Macbeth": B.  Here is a piece of advice for those of you planning to see the latest stunning rendition of Macbeth:  Don't go in cold.  Take a couple of hours to read the play first, if you haven't done so already, commit the main characters' names to your memory, and familiarize yourself with the setting and backdrop.  On the other hand, if your ears are finely tuned to the Old English vernacular delivered with a heavy Scottish brogue, then by all means skip my caveat, grab your six dollar box of popcorn and take your seat. 

Macbeth, one of the grimmest of Shakespeare's plays, features a bigger-than-life title character, only capable of being suitably played on film by an extremely small percentage of today's actors.  Thankfully, one in that tiny minority is Michael Fassbender, who hits another home run on the heels of his masterful performance in Steve Jobs (reviewed here on November 12, 2015; B+).  It appears that Fassbender has gone to the head of the class of actors who are cast for roles demanding visceral leaders from whom the viewers are incapable of removing their eyes.  He is a younger -- by thirteen years -- version of Russell Crowe. 

Macbeth is the story of a warrior who is the last remaining hope for Scotland's beloved King Duncan (David Thewlis) to preserve his throne.  The movie begins on the battlefields, where the loyalists, led by Macbeth, engage in hand-to-hand combat with the rebel forces fronted by the traitor Macdonald.  Director Justin Kurzel uniquely stages this combat with a mixture of real-time and super slow motion footage, thus enabling us to see the fury of war and the cruelty of the heartlessly delivered bloodshed.  It is one of the most effective renderings of combat I can remember since the Normandy Beach scene in 1998's Saving Private Ryan.

They say that behind every successful man is a successful woman.  Is it a corollary that behind every devious scheming man is a devious scheming woman?  Since Tom Petters and Deanna Coleman are not available for me to ask, I will take a cue from Shakespeare.  Enter Lady Macbeth (Marion Cotillard).

Macbeth incorrectly calculates that Duncan will reward him by designating Macbeth, the warrior who saved the throne, as Duncan's successor.  What Macbeth overlooks is that Duncan has a son, Malcolm (Jack Reynor), whom Duncan is not willing to demote notwithstanding Macbeth's heroics.  This does not sit well with Macbeth, but it is Lady Macbeth who suggests a nefarious scheme that gets Macbeth what he and his cold-blooded wife covet.  Simply poisoning Duncan's mead won't do; his murder at the hands of Macbeth is about as gruesome as can be.  Unfortunately, acquiring the kingship does not bring peace to either Macbeth or his wife.  They find that their troubles are just beginning.  Before the story is over, several more innocent victims meet their demise under the direction of Macbeth.  This is the quintessential tale of how lust for power can run amuck.

It would have made no sense to pair the mighty Fassbender with anyone but a strong female lead.  The casting of Cotillard, an exotically pretty actress with a mysterious aura, to play Lady Macbeth is a brilliant selection.  We have to believe that, notwithstanding her husband's battlefield bravery and powerful presence, Lady M has the gumption and seductive power to wile her husband toward unspeakable acts.  She is every bit his equal.  Although both guilty of the same crimes, Macbeth and Lady M react in quite different ways.  Fassbender and Cotillard seamlessly and dynamically illustrate how their dark sides overwhelm their characters.

Shakespeare often uses ghosts and spirits in his plays to serve a number of purposes.  They seem to be omnipresent and omniscient.  Sometimes the playwright uses them as vehicles to alert the readers (or theater goers) to plot developments which have occurred offstage.  At other times a spirit and one or more characters may interact in the form of a dream or dialogue to which the other characters are not privy.  Macbeth is no exception.  In this movie, three women become the personification of the famous witches (as they are called in the text of the play), who first prophesy the futures of Macbeth and his fellow general, Banquo (Paddy Considine).  The witches appear in the beginning, middle and end of the story.  You must pay close attention to their lines, especially at the beginning, as they chart the course and in a way explain the behavior of the main characters.

Movie Review: "Everest"

"Everest": B+.  If you've ever had an inclination or an aspiration to become a mountain climber, one viewing of Everest should be enough to disabuse you of that silly notion.  This exciting rendition of the ill-fated assault on the world's highest peak is based on a real life 1996 tragedy which was famously chronicled by Jon Krakauer in his book, Into Thin Air, published in 1997.

Everest expeditions are led by a handful of mountaineering outfitters from around the globe.  There is a delicate balance between these companies, as they are, indeed, competitors, but at the same time there is a certain amount of mandatory cooperation among them.  The optimal time for ascent is early May, due to usually favorable weather conditions.  As was the case in 1996, the climbing "season" might come down to less than one week.   The result is scores of climbers, most of whom have paid more than $60,000 for the privilege, attempting to traverse the same face of the mountain, across the same mostly narrow passageways, simultaneously.  Sometimes those treacherous passageways must be shared by climbers going up with those coming down.

The film follows Rob Hall (Jason Clarke), the leader of Adventure Consultants, one of the several companies offering guided climbing expeditions.  He bids his pretty pregnant wife, Jan (Keira Knightley), goodbye at the Auckland airport.  As he heads down the concourse to catch his flight to Kathmandu, Jan's eyes well up with tears.  Foreshadowing, or just a natural reaction by a young mother-to-be?

The first half of the story, which I found just as interesting as the second, establishes the preparation which the climbers and the guides must undertake before they even get close to the summit.  The frenzied street scenes of Kathmandu are in stark contrast to the tranquility the adventurers hope to find on the mountain.  From there it is on to a base camp, which resembles a refugee tent city with people from dozens of different nations.  Many of the climbers, such as Texan Beck Weathers (Josh Brolin), stroll in like rock stars.  They are experienced mountaineers who give new meaning to the phrase "living on the edge."  A big part of Weathers' personality is bravado.  Maybe that's a necessary component to climbers like him who are willing to risk their lives for a momentary thrill.

The venture includes almost six weeks of getting acclimated to the high altitudes.  In the base camp we meet Scott Fischer (Jake Gyllenhaal), Hall's counterpart as the leader of the rival mountaineering company, Mountain Madness.  Gyllenhaal's portrait of Fischer is what you might expect from a stoner waiting in line for a Grateful Dead concert: totally laid back, in the moment, seemingly oblivious to the impending perils, preserving his strength for the endeavors ahead.  Compared to Hall, Fischer appears almost detached from his responsibilities.  The two men have shared a mountain, this mountain, before.  Deep down these two realize that the other is not the enemy; the true adversary is the mountain itself.  There is some discussion about ropes being in place and oxygen tanks having been abundantly dispatched in more-than-adequate supply.  Fischer is coughing a lot.  Again we wonder, is some or all of this foreshadowing?  Perhaps red herrings?

Even before the groups leave for their final ascent we can feel the external forces which could lead to imprudent decisions.  If climbers with one of the groups successfully reach the summit while those from other groups do not, the public relations wound to those latter groups will be devastating.  For most of the climbers this will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, either for reasons of health, advancing age or prohibitive costs.  It's now or never.  The presence of Jon Krakauer (Michael Kelly), a widely read writer for Outside magazine, with Hall's group adds another layer of tension.

The second half of the film, in which we go up Everest with the climbers, is an amazing feat of cinematography.  A tip of the hat must go to cinematographer Salvatore Totino.  The adventurers use shaky metal ladders to cross crevices so deep that they appear bottomless.  We simultaneously experience the beauty of "the earth's rooftop" with the hazardous traps the route cruelly entails.  Following many days at base camp, the climbers proceed to four additional camps, each a thousand or more feet higher than the one before.  The expert guides know that time must be spent at each location so that their charges can acclimate to the thinning air.  Oxygen deprivation will not only play tricks on the mind, it can also lead to life-threatening illness such as pulmonary edema.

On the day of the final ascent, when the Adventure Consultants group is awakened with 12:30 a.m. reveille, Hall announces more than once that their "turnaround time" (i.e., the time by which those who've managed to conquer the summit must begin their descent) can be no later than 2:00 p.m.  As soon as the words are out of his mouth we know that deadline will not be met.  What we don't know, unless we've read Krakauer's book, are the consequences of failing to do so.  The most prophetic line in the story is recited by someone at base camp.  "The mountain makes its own weather."

Unfortunately, choppy editing constitutes one of the most irksome defects of the movie.  We see a climber in a certain position on the mountain, and a moment later he is nowhere near the original spot.  This wouldn't be so bad if we could more easily differentiate among the multitude of climbers who look more or less the same with similar mountaineering apparel, fogged up goggles, hoods and scarves, and plenty of facial hair.  I suppose it would have been asking too much of director Baltasar Kormakur to require his cast to wear name tags.

Same Sport But Different Games

Last weekend marked the end of the regular college football season.  We are now on to the bowl games, forty of them to be exact.  That is about thirty too many, but like a fool I will probably watch at least portions of most of them.  That's what ESPN is counting on, right?  That network, together with their business affiliate ABC, will televise all but three of those games.  There are one hundred twenty-eight FBS (Division 1 Football Bowl Subdivision) programs, meaning that 62.5% of them will fill one of the eighty bowl team slots.  You have to be pretty mediocre -- or worse -- not to be a bowl game participant.  In fact, three teams with below .500 records (including the 5-7 Gophers) will play in a bowl because the NCAA was forced into making an exception to their rule of a team needing at least six wins to become bowl-eligible; otherwise they would not have had enough teams to fill up those eighty slots.

I personally enjoy the college game more than the pros -- most Notre Dame fans do -- but I have to admit that the more rigorous requirement for NFL teams to make the playoffs is a better system.  Out of the thirty-two NFL teams, only a dozen of them (37.5%) qualify for the playoffs.  That's one of several reasons the NFL has taken over as America's favorite sport.  (Yes, as a baseball fan, it's hard to believe I just wrote that sentence.)  One could argue that because it's relatively hard for a pro football team to make the playoffs, the importance of each regular season game is magnified.  Teams can rarely afford, say, a three game losing streak.  Plus, a team's won-loss record impacts whether they will get to play at home if they do make the playoffs.  You will seldom see a below average team in the NFL playoffs, and almost never see such a team playing at home in the post season.

What about the on-field games themselves?  Even though the NFL has a better playoff qualification format than the NCAA has for bowl games, which product is preferable from a fan's viewpoint?  Sure, you will find more elite athletes and excellent football players on a typical pro team than you will on a college team.  But that does not necessarily mean that the pros have a more entertaining game.  Let's look at seven rules differences between the college game and the pros which directly impact how the game is played and the level of fans' enjoyment of the sport.

1. Sideline Pass Receptions.  In the college game, a receiver (or an interceptor) has to get one foot in-bounds after he has control of a pass before he steps out of bounds.  If he fails to get at least one foot down in-bounds, the pass is ruled incomplete.  In the pro game, a receiver (or interceptor) must get both of his feet down in-bounds in order for the pass to be ruled complete (or intercepted, as the case may be).  Consequently, it's much tougher for a pro quarterback to complete a sidelines pass than it is for his college counterpart.  The Edge: I like the college rule better, as it results in more big pass plays, which in turn make the game more exciting.  I am surprised the NFL does not adapt the college rule, since almost all the rules which have been put on the books recently favor the offense.  As the saying goes, "Defense might win championships, but offense puts fannies in the seats."

2. Down By Contact.  In college football, a ball carrier is deemed down, and the play whistled dead, as soon as his knee, elbow, butt or any other part of his torso touches the ground, even if he slips on lose turf or trips over his own shoelace.  In pro football, a ball carrier is not deemed down unless contact with an opposing player occurs in the process of his going down, or if an opposing player touches the downed ball carrier before he can get up off the ground.  This rule gains importance in inclement weather or with poor field conditions.  The Edge:  I prefer the pro rule, although it could lead to more injuries.  For example, if a ball carrier is down, but not by contact, he might get reamed by a defender before he can rise.  Good sportsmanship and the threat of unnecessary roughness penalties mitigate the concern.

3. PATs.  Until this year, the college rules and pro rules regarding PATs (point after touchdown kicks) were the same.  The ball was placed on the two yard line.  Since the holder on a PAT puts the ball down seven yards behind the line of scrimmage, and because the goal post is ten yards beyond the goal line, the distance of a PAT when the line of scrimmage is the two is nineteen yards (2 + 7 + 10).  During the past offseason, however, the NFL Rules Committee decided that PATs were boring because they were almost never missed.  Every NFL kicker can kick a nineteen yard PAT or field goal in his sleep.  Therefore, to spice up the game and create more fan interest, the Committee moved the line of scrimmage for PATs from the two yard line to the fifteen yard line.  That makes PAT kicks thirty-two yards (15 + 7 + 10) instead of just nineteen.  The Edge:  Being a traditionalist, I was originally against the NFL rule change.  Too gimmicky, and NFL kickers should be able to handle a thirty-two yard kick with ease.  However, what we have learned in the first three-quarters of the season is that the longer PATs are not the gimmes that we thought they'd be.  Maybe the kickers are over-thinking it.  Anyway, I'm coming around to liking the change.  By the way, there are no rumors regarding the college rule makers following suit.  They still put the ball down on the two for PATs.

4. Hash Marks Width.  This is a subtle difference which isn't always apparent to TV viewers but is easily ascertained in person.  In college football, the hash marks are set wide apart; forty feet, to be exact.  The NFL used to have the same width, but in 1972 they narrowed the gap from forty feet to just eighteen and a-half feet, matching the width of the goal posts.  What are the ramifications of wide vs. narrow hash marks?  There is an old saying in football that the sideline is like an extra defender.  In college, when the ball is placed on a hash mark, you have a "wide side" of the field and a "short side."  A defense will position more players on the wide side because, as just noted, the sidelines act like a twelfth defender.  Some teams always have one of their cornerbacks (the better one) assigned to the wide side (the "field corner"), and the other CB assigned to the short side (the "border corner").  The offense, realizing that there are more defenders to the wide side, might position more of its players to the wide side to counter-act the defensive alignment.  It may run more plays to the wide side to give the ball carrier additional space to run laterally before heading upfield.  On the other hand, the offense might attempt to take the defense by surprise by running a play to the short side.  It is a cat and mouse game between the offensive coordinator and the defensive coordinator.  This additional element of strategy makes for a more interesting game versus the bland setup in the NFL where the narrow hash marks mean that there is no appreciable difference between the wide and short sides of the field; the ball is close to the middle, width-wise.  The other obvious difference is in the kicking game.  The NFL's narrower hash marks make it easier for a place kicker to line up his kick.  A college kicker facing the wider hash marks has to deal with severe angles, which get more acute the closer you get to the goalposts.  The Edge:  This is analogous to the old baseball debate about American League (designated hitter) rules versus National League (no designated hitter) rules.  Just like National League managers have to employ more strategy, so do the college coaches.  The distance from the pre-snap placement of the football to the sidelines is an extra variable which the pro coaches don't typically have on their plate.  If you enjoy more strategy, the college hash mark rule is for you.

 

5. The Clock.  College and professional football games all last through sixty minutes of running time, and in both cases, each team is provided with three charged timeouts per half.  But there are two major differences between the college and pro games concerning how and when the clock is stopped.  The most obvious difference is the presence of the Two Minute Warning in the NFL during each half.  Hooray for the NCAA for not falling victim to that shameless excuse to subject the television viewers to three or four more minutes of commercials in a game that already lasts too long!  Are we to believe that when the New England Patriots have the ball, quarterback Tom Brady, whose salary cap compensation this season is $13 million, does not know when there are two minutes left in the half?  The other major clock rules difference is the NCAA's momentary stoppage of the clock following a first down to enable the officials to "move the chains."  In the NFL, the clock keeps ticking while the chain gang does their thing.  The Edge:  I'm calling this one a tie.  I would like the Two Minute Warnings employed by the NFL to cease and desist -- I know that will never happen -- but I prefer the NFL method of not stopping the clock after first downs to move the chains.  Stopping the clock for such purpose, even if only for a matter of a few seconds, invites opportunity for foul play on the part of the timer.  Keeping the clock running is more transparent.

 

6. Defensive Pass Interference.  This is one of the most controversial subjects in the pro game, due to the severity of the penalty.  In the NFL, defensive pass interference (DPI) is a "spot foul," meaning that the ball will be placed for the next snap at the spot of the foul.  If the DPI occurs fifty yards down field from the line of scrimmage, the result is a fifty yard penalty.  (If the infraction happens in the end zone, the ball is placed on the one yard line.)  When you take into consideration that at least a fourth of the DPI calls are disputed, and are subject to human interpretation if not human error, the penalty is way too stiff.  In the college game, the penalty for DPI is fifteen yards from the previous line of scrimmage.  The Edge: The college rule is much more realistic and consistent.  The defense is still severely penalized, but the call is not a game changer as much as it is in the NFL.

 

7.  Overtime.  I have saved the category for which there should be the clearest preference for one set of rules.  In college, if a game goes into overtime, each team is guaranteed at least one possession, starting at the opponent's twenty-five yard line.  The offense retains the ball until it scores, turns the ball over, runs out of downs or misses a field goal attempt.  If the score is still tied after one overtime, another overtime period is played, and so on until one team ends an overtime period with more points than its opponent.  In the NFL, the overtime period is played more or less like a fifth quarter, which starts with a kickoff.  It is sudden death (i.e., whoever scores first wins), with one key exception:  If the team receiving the overtime kickoff scores a touchdown (or the defense scores a safety) on the initial overtime possession, the game ends at that point.  The Edge:  The NFL overtime rules are, by far, superior to the NCAA rules.  The college rules for overtime are analogous to the National Hockey League's three-on-three overtime rules, because the way the game is played during overtime employing those rules is vastly different from the way it's played during regulation.  In other words, it's artificial and gimmicky.  (There's that word again.)  Additionally, the team winning the college overtime coin flip will assuredly choose to play defense last, so that it knows what it needs to do (TD or field goal) when they get the ball.  The outcome of a football game should not be so dependent on who wins the coin flip.  In the NFL, it's obviously better to win the coin flip than to lose it, but losing it does not put your team up against the wall immediately.  In fact, Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer won an overtime coin flip against the Rams last month and chose to play defense (with the wind at The Purple's backs) first.  Just make sure your opponent does not score an opening drive TD, and you have an even chance of winning the game.

Movie Review: "Spotlight"

"Spotlight": B+.  There are certain categories of movies to which I am almost involuntarily drawn.  For example, I find myself making an extra effort to watch Alfred Hitchcock mysteries, Gary Cooper westerns, Woody Allen comedies and Diane Lane anythings.  Films showing behind-the-scenes newspaper operations usually fascinate me as well, and are therefore also on the list.  Spotlight does that genre proud, following the four-person investigative arm of the Boston Globe as it relentlessly tracks down and exposes the perverted crimes of the Catholic Church's Boston archdiocese.

Veteran journalist Robby Robinson (Michael Keaton) is the Spotlight group's hands-on leader, but he equally shares the grunt work with the other team members, including Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) and Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams, sans makeup).  Spotlight had been working on a big police corruption story, but when new Globe editor-in-chief Marty Baron (Live Schreiber) arrives on the scene from Miami, he soon has the quartet shifting gears to probe some puzzling circumstances surrounding claims of priest pedophilia from decades ago.

 

The biggest hurdle standing in the way of the journalists' quest for the truth is not the lapse of time between the alleged acts and the present day.  Instead, it is the reluctance, followed by the resistance, of people directly or indirectly associated with the Catholic Church to cooperate with the Spotlight investigation.  Included among that group of people are some of the directors of Catholic Charities, who feel that any expose of church misconduct will undermine the nonprofit's philanthropic mission.  Potential witnesses, particularly older folks, refuse to provide information because of their misguided allegiance to the Church, which plays an important role in their lives.  Still other obfuscators are attorneys who hide behind attorney-client privilege or obscure privacy laws, and relatives of the suspected priests, hoping to let sleeping dogs lie.

 

Nevertheless, the Spotlight team is a band of intrepid investigators who, perhaps at the risk of their own career suicide if not their physical well-being, are not afraid to keep digging.  They realize they are taking on one of the most powerful institutions in the city, if not the entire country.  They pursue leads and cleverly connect seemingly unrelated evidentiary nuggets of information.  When they reach the point where they realize that the highest levels of the archdiocese are complicit in the crimes, the tension mounts.  Adding to the drama is the slowly unfolding realization that someone on the Globe staff itself may have buried leads to which concerned readers alerted them years before.

 

Two of the Spotlighters, Robinson and Rezendes, are native Bostonians.  People they've known all of their lives strongly urge them to quit their attempt to resurrect the cold cases.  Friendships and long-standing business relationships are threatened.  Some opine that it is the outsider, new editor-in-chief Baron, who is stirring the pot, not being appreciative of "all the Church has done for the city."

 

Keaton is convincing as group leader Robinson, a veteran newsman who doesn't let one dead end or uncooperative source dissuade him from carrying on.  He is dogged and feisty, and fits my stereotyped notion of a brash Bostonian.  Schreiber as top man Baron plays it straight, reminding me of a younger Harrison Ford.  He balances being the man with the veto power with simultaneously being the new kid on the block, listening carefully to the input of his subordinates before making decisions with historic consequences.  Most of the good lines go to Ruffalo's Rezendes, particularly when he wants the Spotlight team's discoveries to go to print immediately against the wishes of his boss, Robinson.  Stanley Tucci lends strong support as Mitchell Garabedian, a stressed out lawyer who represents many of the victims who, in their youth, were abused by priests and have psychologically suffered ever since.

 

People who live in the Twin Cities are quite familiar with this shameful black mark on the Church.  In fact it seems every year we learn of more diocese across the US where the transferring of pedophile priests from one parish to another was commonplace.  Were it not for the courageous investigations by the Boston Globe, followed by other media organizations, it's likely this sick practice would have been even more rampant.