R.I.P. Bea Arthur

State Of Play

Based on the British mini-series created by Paul Abbott, State of Play is a well-made and tightly plotted political thriller of astounding pedigree. From director Kevin Macdonald (The Last King Of Scotland), to scribes Matthew Michael Carnahan (The Kingdom), Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton) and Billy Ray (Shattered Glass), to the top-to-bottom incredible cast beginning with headliners Russell Crowe and Rachel McAdams and ending with single-scene cameos by the likes of Oscar nominee Viola Davis. There's nary a disappointing name attached to the project. Even square-jawed and limp-careered Ben Affleck does solid work here as a political golden boy enrapt in scandal.

Affleck's Congressman Michael Collins takes a political hit following the public discovery of an affair with a recently deceased aide. Enter old friend and hard-boiled reporter, Cal McAffrey (Crowe), who advises Collins on how to handle the crisis and stay ahead of the media, including a proactive investigation into the young woman's supposed suicide. Soon Cal is working in tandem with rival reporter Della Frye (McAdams) who operates the newspaper's much maligned news blog and negotiating with paper editor Cameron Lynne (Helen Mirren) to keep vigilant on a story that seems open and shut. The investigation takes Cal and Della through a range of dangerous confrontations and surprising twists and turns including shocking revelations regarding Collins' wife (Robin Wright Penn), an esteemed Senator (Jeff Daniels), and a mysterious stranger that brings them all together (Jason Bateman).

It's a fun ride that's better executed than most of this sort. The acting is uniformly excellent with Mirren doing her best brassy boss lady and Crowe giving good gruff. Most of the cast does a wonderful job of remaining low key and subtly real. Affleck is the only one who can't resist chewing scenery but as a demonstrative and potentially corrupt politician, his artificial touch feels oddly appropriate for the character, even if unintentional. The writing is sharp and appreciably world weary. Reporters, for example, don't jump at the possibility of a global conspiracy but laugh at the idea given its rarity. Characters are believably ill-equipped to handle physical confrontations and are genuinely affected at the intensity of what is going on around them. The film makes a case for its extremity by treating its story as an exceptional moment in these people's lives and not another day on the job, one with murder, adultery, executions, hitmen, shady dealings, and a private military company that might just be offing loose ends. Barring a few logical inconsistencies (a given for most twisty thrillers) it's an impeccably smart and alluring treat.

Grade: B+

DVD Pick: The Wrestler

A bruised and beaten Mickey Rourke in full lumbering nice guy swagger mode is the main attraction in Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler. The film, penned by Robert Siegel, tells the story of a Hulk Hogan type down on his luck pro wrestler, Randy "The Ram" Robinson (Rourke), who was once a big star and is now a novelty item at regional shows who lives in a trailer park (when he can afford it) and makes his fun by playing as himself in an old Nintendo game with neighboring kids. His life is grueling and unsatisfying and it only gets worse from here. In an early scene, Randy's favorite dancer at the local strip club, Cassidy (Marisa Tomei), makes an off-handed reference to The Passion of the Christ and the comparison sticks, in metaphoric terms. Randy is a good man who suffers mercilessly in the ring for the enjoyment and satisfaction of others. The film can be best read as a testimony to the sacrifice of an artist to his audience. Randy is put slowly and surely through trials and torment both inside and outside the ring and ultimately Aronofky's ambiguous ending suggests something dark and completely transformative: The Passion of the Hulk.

Grey Gardens

Here is a simple fact: crazy people love Grey Gardens. The Maysle's beguiling, absurdist account of "Big" and "Little" Edie Beale has only grown its cultish flock in the years since it premiered and has become a point of affiliation for many a film loving loon. The connection felt is that of wayward disenfranchised viewer compared with wayward disenfranchised subject. The difference being the Beales were not simply anti-social but deeply troubled, perhaps mentally ill, and for lack of substantial food or indoor plumbing. Their experience was not cozily disjointed from the mainstream but most accurately madness and squalor. Still, there is a weirdly universal note within the shocking story of the conditions these once wealthy East Hampton socialites let themselves fall into. It speaks to a human want to let go and sink in to one setting, however inappropriate, as well as to the push and pull between comfort and accomplishment, striving and settling. The Beales are the extreme of a common impulse and so we can watch them with affection, horror, and perhaps a little jealousy.

To take that acclaimed documentary, whose legacy includes a pseudo-sequel (The Beales of Grey Gardens), a Tony winning musical starring Christine Ebersole, and slew of books and memorabilia, and make it a newly formed narrative drama seems like madness. And in so many ways it is. The form of the film is like a double-edged sword. Many moments from the documentary must be recreated (as it is the dominant source of info on the pair's later lives), the consequence of which is redundancy to those who've seen the doc and complete befuddlement to the uninitiated with no context in which to set such strangeness. The film weaves the past and present together, chronicling the descent of the Beales with decently rendered dramatic tension but not the least bit of suspense. We watch knowing that poor "Little" Edie's attempts to make it in the big city will fail, as everyone knows where her future lies. In fact, the only news here for those who have experienced Grey Gardens in one form or another is the film's brief chronicling of the aftermath of the original doc's release (a subject, of course, not able to be captured in the documentary). We learn that "Little" Edie did actually attend the New York premiere of the film and basked in her deranged starlet-ness and that she subsequently staged a doozy of a cabaret act at a New York nightclub. What the film offers is not a new dimension to the characters fans have grown to love, but an accurate tribute and a bit of a new ripple in their legacy. The film's final moments remind us that all either woman really wanted was to be a star. Though their lives never offered them such success, they have since come to be celebrities of a sort and now they are portrayed by bona fide movie stars. I think this fact would have tickled them both.

This brings us to the extraordinary performances which, as with all film's of this sort, are at least half the fun of watching. Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange perform wondrous feats of mimicry and soulful channeling here. Very often they are called upon to perform famous moments from the original doc, such as "Little" Edie's "The best costume for the day" speech, and they both do so with quite uniform perfection. In the less documented pasts of both women, the two actresses take more liberties and very ably create rich characters of despair and egoism whose fate as recluses hangs over our expectations and adds further layers of complexity to the early seeds of co-dependence and indulgent social detachment. As the two Edie's dance together to piano music with no concern for date or time while hordes of party goers mess their beautiful estate, we see that the later years living in a desolate dump singing along to a record player as time rolls on were never really all that far aways to fall.

Grade: B