Wag the Dog

Boy, the things one does to maintain a reputation. Some will keep telling lies until it just escalates out of proportion. Others, if really desperate, will resort to murder.

Thankfully for Conrad Brean (Robert De Niro) and Winifred Ames (Anne Heche) of Barry Levinson's Wag the Dog, they resort to the former. Just days before the election, the President is caught up in a sex scandal. What do Conrad and Winifred do? Hire Hollywood producer Stanley Motss (Dustin Hoffman) to manufacture a fake war with Albania to distract the media.

Of course, such a scenario would be impossible to pull off today (the media;s more interested in people's sex lives than world events), but David Mamet and Hilary Henkin's script certainly provides an amusing "what if" situation. They're not afraid to show how gullible the mass population can be. (Hey, the internet churns out celebrity death hoaxes all the time.)

And Levinson enlists choice actors for his film. De Niro and Heche both try to keep the situation in order while at the same time silently panicking from the stress. Levinson also enlists the likes of Kirsten Dunst (as an actress hired for fake news footage) and Woody Harrelson (as a criminal posing as a war hero), and both make the most of their brief screentime. But it's Hoffman who owns the show.

Wag the Dog is a dark and clever little satire. Again, such a thing would be impossible to achieve in real life but then again, this was released not long before the Lewinsky scandal came to light...

My Rating: ****1/2

Bugsy

Martin Scorsese's Casino focuses on the fall of Las Vegas, Sin City being reduced from gangster mecca to tourist trap. Four years earlier, Barry Levinson made a film about the rise of the city, transformed from barren desert to illuminated enterprise.

The film is Bugsy, which is about gangster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel (Warren Beatty). Siegel wasn't as deadly as Al Capone nor as smart as his associates Meyer Lansky (Ben Kingsley) and Mickey Cohen (Harvey Keitel), but he was smart enough to get by. (Sort of.)

Siegel was also a womanizer, so casting Beatty was a smart decision. The film doesn't shy away from Siegel's violent temper either. Beatty portrays Siegel as ruthless but is willing to show his damaged side. Siegel makes it clear he wants to be remembered for something big.

Levinson makes Bugsy look like it's from the 1940's. Unlike Bonnie and Clyde, the other gangster film starring Beatty, violence isn't glorified though it is just as bloody. It's in a similar style as Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, right down to the sepia tones in the cinematography.

Bugsy is very good. The best work came from Beatty and a firecracker Annette Bening (husband and wife once production wrapped). In fact, a double feature of this and Casino would be pretty sweet.

My Rating: ****1/2

Sleepers

Barry Levinson's Sleepers is one of those films that may be hard to watch, depending on the person. Still, Levinson makes sure that the film sticks in the viewer's mind.

Sleepers opens with the introduction of Lorenzo "Shakes" Carcaterra (Joe Perrino), Michael Sullivan (Brad Renfro), Tommy Marcano (Jonathan Tucker) and John Reilly (Geoffrey Wigdor), our four protagonists from Hell's Kitchen. After a prank goes horribly wrong, they're sent off to a juvenile facility where it's a living hell.

Years pass. Shakes (Jason Patric) works for a newspaper. Michael (Brad Pitt) is a lawyer assigned to prosecute Tommy (Billy Crudup) and John (Ron Eldard), both on trial for murder. (Not their first time in the courtroom either.) It's a battle of morals for them and those watching the case.

As with most criminology cases, understanding the motives behind the crime is key. One crucial reason for why criminals do what they do is what happened in their childhoods. The more abuse they endured, the more severe their crimes will become. This can most definitely be applied to Tommy and John.

As mentioned above, Sleepers really stick in your mind once the credits start to roll. The performances are great, especially a very menacing turn from Kevin Bacon. (How he still doesn't have an Oscar nomination is anyone's guess.) Also, I love the look in Patric, Pitt, Crudup and Eldard's eyes expressing the damaged souls within them.

My Rating: ****1/2

Diner

Of course I've stated that most of my favorite movies are from the 1950's. But what do I think of movies set in the 1950's?

Barry Levinson's Diner focuses on five best friends in 1959 Baltimore reflecting on what their futures hold for them. They're college age, but maturity hasn't really kicked in for any of them yet.

The highlight of Diner is the screenplay. The dialogue just flows naturally. It doesn't sound superficial in any of the lines. It sounds like normal conversation. Good thing it got nominated too.

Although far from being one of the best movies I've seen, I have to say Diner is a very good movie. The performances are very good, the story is very good and the mood is quite good. The only problem I had was that the story had a few weak spots. That aside, Diner, as I said before, is very good.

My Rating: ****1/2

The Natural

Baseball: the national pasttime. When it comes to the movies, it's just as great as the sport itself.

Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford) could have been the greatest to ever play the game until a scandalous incident sidetracked his career. Years later, Roy is back, hoping to take one last crack with the struggling New York Knights. The problem is, no one on the team believe there's anything left in this aging rookie.

It's definitely an uplifting movie, I can say that. No matter how much he is belittled, no matter how much he is criticized, Hobbs keeps going. Redford has a strong supporting cast including Glenn Close, Robert Duvall and Kim Basinger. One of the best baseball movies I've seen.

My Rating: ****1/2