bombshell

Bombshell is Jay Roach's saucy expose on Fox News in midst of the scandal and downfall of its creator Roger Ailes. The picture definitively paints Ailes as the one clear villain at its core, and that could be the film's main problem. The compelling characterizations by the supporting players and its trio of main actresses--Charlize Theron uncanny as reporter Megyn Kelly, Nicole Kidman as Gretchen Carlson, and Margot Robbie as a starry-eyed Kayla with her Fox News media dreams--make for an undeniably entertaining, watchable movie, but everyone is ultimately undermined by Roach's sloppy direction (touches include cutesy, distracting cable news-like title cards helping to announce to us who people are) and seasick-inducing photography by Barry Ackroyd. Why do we need so many frenetic zoom-ins? The frantic tension of the story is inherent within. Scenes aren't allowed to breathe, busily stacked and collapsing like dominoes; in one particular moment, where a photog is stalking outside Kelly's vacation home, what should have been frightening, feels poorly-staged and amateurish. It's when the film slows down, it's at its most effective--like a tense elevator scene and Kayla's first closed-door harassment by one of the most powerful entities in media (played with icky, theatrical creeper eccentricities by John Lithgow).

Ultimately Carlson helped spearhead the take-down Ailes, which is the main narrative of the picture, with the interweaving of Kelly coming to terms with speaking out on her past and Kayla's fresh traumas. But the parallel story line of the rise of the insidious Donald Trump to presidency (and Fox’s part in that, which is curiously too muted here) during the same time as Ailes’s downfall, doesn’t coalesce as well as it could have. Perhaps to help immediately paint Kelly with sympathy, the movie begins with Trump’s rampant Twitter attacks against her after her “tough” questioning of him in an early Republican debate. "Am I the story?" She incredulously asks. And too, we wonder, the same. The movie then moves to focus narrowly upon the hideous, cultish environment of a hideous network while stretching thin to tackle Kayla's plight (who, despite Robbie's valiant efforts, ultimately emerges as an uneven, simplistic character, perhaps because she’s a cardboard fictional composite of some of Ailes’s victims), Carlson’s bland legal counseling sessions, and Kelly’s reluctance to come forward. As this tornado swirls around, the movie loses sight of the monster the network helped create.

Bombshell is difficult to stomach because it feels so cowardly and trite in its portrayal of its subject matter. There’s something alluring about Theron’s commitment to impersonating Kelly, but simultaneously repulsive as well. Do we really feel for Kelly when the film strives to sympathetically paint her as  coming forward because of her family (the clan surprises her in a completely bizarre “jump scare” moment) while also going on to gleefully emcee he Republican convention?—one of the most repugnant ones in recent American history. Many of our American films are obsessed with either high fantasy or waxing poetic over past centuries, so it’s admirable and important for filmmakers to take a stab at our contemporary times. Perhaps we are meant to feel as queasy about the state of the nation as Kelly after drinking her maybe-poisoned coffee. In that respect, the film succeeds, but as Roach’s glossy but terrifying Game Change did, it doesn’t offer a cathartic moment of take-down that the film seems to be aiming for, because there's too much rotten about so many of the characters here at their core. **1/2


-Jeffery Berg

game change

Game Change is one of the flippin' scariest films of the year.  It's based upon Mark Halperin and John Heilemann's bestseller about the riveting and epic 2008 election of Barack Obama.  But it's only a sliver of that account (which had many fascinating and sad things to say about John Edwards), focusing instead upon Sarah Palin (Julianne Moore in her finest performance in some time).  Even though the movie tries to make you root for Palin in certain scenes (inspiring music swells during her nasty convention speech which the media largely, and inexplicably, praised), it's quite frightening to see how little she knew about world history and current affairs while in the race.  Yet even more inept and destructive is John McCain's staff, spearheaded by Steve Schmidt (Woody Harrelson), who chose Palin for the ticket without vetting her properly or testing her knowledge.  Directed by Jay Roach who did HBO's Recount, the film is a patchwork of high-intensity scenes and moves quickly like a disaster picture with Palin simultaneously destroying and reviving McCain's contemptible campaign (those racist rallies are difficult to watch again).  John McCain (Ed Harris) comes off as more of a softie as he did in the book and as he does in real life.  Showing a lack of control over matters, he's incredibly aloof from the campaign and the drama concering Palin.  Sarah Paulson is excellent as former Bush communications chief Nicolle Wallace (read her somewhat terse response to the film here), especially in the scenes where she laments her Election Day choice and when she tries to prep Palin for the disastrous, but illuminating Katie Couric interview.  But this is Moore's film.  Playing such a recognizable character satirized already with such brilliance by Tina Fey must have been no easy task.  Not to mention that I would never think of Moore playing Palin, but she disappears here, and the result is both subtle, vulnerable and terrifying.  Roach's direction is pretty derivative (I cringed at the use of Shania Twain's "Up") and I'm not really sure what the point of the movie is but it's quite entertaining and well-captured.