All the Money in the World

How can such a great thriller from such a great director have such ugly cinematography?  Don't get me wrong, right away I noticed Ridley Scott's penchant for gorgeous master shots.  He can capture the atmosphere of Italy quite well in a single take — and I realized that Ridley loves Rome like Spielberg loves back-lighting.  Yet, this may well be the ugliest filter I've ever seen in a movie.  Perhaps I could count 300 and The Immortals, which sear my eyes, but those are caricatures to begin with and were never meant to be taken seriously.  This, though?  Really, Ridley?  Why?  The only place I've seen filters like these done worse and played straight is in television, with shows like Riverdale and Smallville (and I was a fan of the latter).  The colors for this movie feels artificial, lifeless, and dull, and to make it worse, Christopher Plummer has a fondness for wandering around in dimly lit room that accentuate all of these problems.  This movie practically a doctoral thesis on how digital cinematography can go wrong.

Okay, okay, I understand, Ridley Scott is an auteur, and this was an intentional decision on his part in order to make the feel of the film reflect the coldness of its most pivotal character, J. Paul Getty.  I don't buy it.  It isn't enough of a reason to make this film look like puke, and I suspect that  shooting the movie on film would have lent more gravitas to the performances.  After all, Paul Thomas Anderson recently made a movie about a cold and detached individual, and he didn't let that deter him from making everything of his canvas.  Besides that, this is a period piece, yet the cinematography makes it feel like anything but.

With all of that having been said, yes, the hype for Christopher Plummer didn't disappoint.  For those not in the know, J. Paul Getty was initially played by Kevin Spacey, until the actor fell into disgrace.  Ridley Scott recast him at the last minute with the legendary Christopher Plummer, which was a stroke of genius.  First, Plummer looks more like J. Paul Getty to begin with.  Second, Kevin Spacey's persona as an actor brings with him a hint of villainy in every role.  Plummer plays J. Paul Getty without that baggage and creates a more nuanced character, someone whom you can have more conflicting feelings on.

All the Money in the World is about the former richest man in the world, oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, and how his grandson, J. Paul Getty III gets kidnapped in Italy for ransom money.  Getty Senior refuses to pay the ransom, since it would encourage  people to kidnap his other grandchildren, and refuses to do anything about the situation that might create a bad business situation.  He figures that he might get a former CIA agent, played by Mark Wahlberg, to find the kid and retrieve him without making any compromises.

Getty III's mother Gail, played by Michelle Williams, thinks like a normal person and finds this atrocious.  Most people will relate to her opinion more.  What's interesting, though, is that when I reviewed this movie other the phone for my own mother, she said that while she would be like Michelle Williams, she also understood Getty Senior's outlook, and it is interesting.

Far and away, the best thing about this movie is Plummer.  He takes a character who is incredibly extreme and manages to make him sympathetic, a man who never knows who he can trust because everyone, even family, seems to want something from him.  He's frugal, even to the point of claiming that not even his grandson is worth paying any money for, while also saying that he has a special love for him.  He captures an interesting balance.  As I said, far more than Spacey could have done.  Of all of the men supported for Best Supporting Actor, I hope that he wins.

The second great performance comes from Michelle Williams, who manages to look and feel like a normal mother.  She doesn't look excessively pretty, but she have the look of someone who became ugly for an Oscar-bait role, either.  She looks beautiful in the way that a normal mother who takes care of her appearance would.  She manages to take her character through a range of emotions, the best of which being her  states of disbelief and denial, where she's not  quite shedding tears but clearly looks in over her head.  For a moment, I misremembered the list of Oscar nominees and thought that she was one of them, but then I looked them up and realized that she wasn't on there.  That's right.  They had to put Meryl Streep on there instead.

For those just tuning in, my last several reviews have all taken potshots at the Academy for not recognizing that there's female talent outside of the Streeposphere.

The other performance that really stood out came from Romain Duris, who played a kidnapper called Cinquanta.  He's a likable guy, someone who doesn't want to see Getty III hurt and doesn't derive pleasure from his work.  He has the passion of an Italian, and a heart for family, and a sense of honor, and a knowledge of things in life that are valuable.  He delivers my favorite line in the movie, something that reminded me of a significant cultural difference between Americans and the rest of the world.

"Americans! I don't understand you. For us, family is everything. We are obbligo. I was born into my family, and that decides my whole life. My whole life."

The idea that family  determines anything about who you are offends many Americans.  Consider how many people disliked the notion that there was a special Force Family in STAR WARS.  Yet, in many other places in the world, your family relations determine not only the situation you're born into, but who you are as a person.  Not all of the world is quite so individualistic.

Anyhow, Mark Wahlberg did a fine job, although not anything particularly surprising.  I will defend hi against people who say that he can't act, but he isn't necessarily the most flexible actor.  I also didn't pay much attention to him considering that his character was obviously fictionalized.

To end on that note, the end credits make sure to point out twice that this movie was a dramatization inspired by true events.  Do not assume that it represents the real events all that well.  For example, the last scene with J. Paul Getty depicts a significant even in his life that didn't happen until years after the kidnapping.  However, the basic inspiration is true.  Family did initially assume that Getty III was joking around and wasn't in actual trouble.  J. Paul Getty did refuse to pay the ransom of $17 million dollars and cited dangers to his other grandchildren as a primary reason.  He was infamously frugal.  He did end up negotiating the highest amount of money that was tax deductible (which was a little higher than in the movie, if I recall).  However, Getty III's father had a little more involvement than in this film, but Scott found the drama more interesting if he wasn't present in the story and if he focused on the contrast between Gail and her ex-father-in-law as two opposing, extreme personalities from different worlds.

And you know what?  You get a pretty good performance out of that and a nice drama about the the extremes of stoic individualism versus compassionate family bonds.  Christopher Plummer is a legend.  And the color grading sucks.  I'm not sure which one of those is the greater takeaway for me.

The Post

Spielberg can make an Oscar-worthy movie on a dime, it seems.  While The Post doesn't reach the same level of prestige storytelling as some of his bests, Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, Lincoln, and others, this most certainly won't detract from from his portfolio.  One day, I will have all of Spielberg's movies, and will watch them in a marathon, and this movie will hold up as one that belongs and contributes to the Spielberg Pantheon.

John Williams takes a back seat and only has one moment to shine, in the third act when the Washington Post begins to turn on their printing press.  Spielberg obviously enjoys the mechanics of the printing press, and so it has its own musical motif now.  Otherwise, the Man just hovers there in the background, his presence more of a spectator to the drama than an active player.  This was one area where I wish that the film wasn't made within a few months of its release date, so that Hollywood's most famous duo could spend more time developing their symbiosis.

Instead of John Williams, Spielberg seems to rely far more on his other longtime collaborator, Janusz Kaminski.  This movie highlight's Kaminski's talents more than anyone else's.  You can tell that it's shot on film; the canvas has a certain life to it.  The lighting is just right, rich and filled with depth, while also not bringing attention to itself.  Amateur photographers such as myself, however, will look at what Kaminski accomplishes and get jealous.

All the talk for this movie has been behind Meryl Streep, who gives a solid performance as usual, but I thought that Spielberg regular Tom Hanks gave a more engaging performance as Ben Bradlee.  He was more immersed and seemed less like he was on autopilot.  Bob Odenkirk gave what was, in my view, the second-most interesting performance of the movie as Ben Bagdikian, the assistant editor who tracks down the source of the Pentagon leaks.  I would also like to give a shout-out to Jesse Plemons, who I recently saw in Game Night and always knew as "that guy."  He's a good comedian and has one of those faces that people think looks funny, but just as a reminder, he also played a lawyer in this movie and a pilot in Spielberg's other drama, Bridge of Spies, plus was in the Paul Thomas Anderson film The Master.

This leads me to a rant about the Academy Awards.  Tom Hanks delivered an excellent performance, but of course he didn't get nominated for an Oscar because there's so much talent tot recognize that you inevitably have to ask, "Who would you have him replace?"  That's good.  It means that the Academy recognizes that there's so many talented actors that it's hard to just pick a top five.  However, they do not treat the women's category in the same way.  Meryl Streep only showed up and did her regular thing.  She gave a standard drama film performance.  It's good, and Spielberg certainly knows how to frame, edit, and pace a film in order to bring out the best performances possible, especially when he allows people to have conversations in long, continuous master shots.  However, I think that a lot of this reflects more on Spielberg's talent and not Streep's, and what's more, even though Streep gave a solid performance, she wasn't so good that she was in the year's top five female leads.  In order to nominate her, the Academy had to bump Gal Gadot, Vicky Krieps, and many other talented actresses with great performances last year, who could have used the career boost far more than Streep.  Yet it seems that many Academy voters simply don't think that the field is as crowded as the men's, and it reflects poorly on them.

Regardless of whether or not I felt it deserved an Oscar nomination, Streep's performance doesn't detract from the film.  It matches the tone, and I don't have anything bad to say about it.

In a movie about editors, The Post has great editing.  The flow within each scene and for the story overall works quite well.  The movie engaged me, and it felt like a worthy drama from start to finish.  You can feel all of the talent behind it.  The only two moments when the editing seemed to falter, for me, were in the prologue and the epilogue.  The prologue shows the person releasing the papers, which gives a lot of interesting information, but it didn't feel as organic as the rest of the movie.  The prologue...well, I'll get to that in a minute.

As everyone knows, this movie has political context.  The story is a timeless American tale, which Spielberg seems to do quite well.  He is very good at capturing what is timeless and resonant and mythic about history, which he has shown again and again and again, and that is why this movie fits right in with a Spielberg marathon.  Since it's timeless, Spielberg could have made this movie at any time.  The rights to the film were purchased back in 2016, before the most recent presidential election, and the script was written before that.  The script, in and of itself, does not seem to target anyone who was in power when it was released.  With all that having been said, the movie is timely and topical, and Spielberg said that the script grabbed him specifically because of the current political environment.  The script remains neutral and doesn't necessarily date it, except for a few changes.  I'm 99% certain that the epilogue, which flashes forward to Nixon banning the Washington Post and setting up Watergate wasn't in the original script.  The reason why I say that is because it isn't edited like the rest of the film and feels out of place.  The movie seems to naturally end on a definitive note, with a beautiful shot of Ben Bradlee and Katherine Graham walking through the printing press floor.  It's beautiful,and then the movie switches to the epilogue, which is shot differently, acted differently, and overall seems like an interpolation.  Others have noted it as well, namely the famous Screen Junkies in their review of the Oscar nominees.  Overall, I'd say that most everyone should agree with the story, but conservative viewers will naturally see a certain hypocrisy behind the camera.  Liberal viewers, of course, will appreciate how it manages to merge the timeless and the topical.

For fans of Spielberg, it's worth watching.  It isn't quite vintage, but it still has many great elements.  Certain things could throw people off, of course.  If you don't like Meryl Streep, this movie will annoy you.  Your political leanings will definitely affect your enjoyment of the film, but hopefully most people will appreciate the story in-and-of itself as well as the artistry that went into it.  Above all, if you love John Williams, you should adjust your expectations and look forward more Spielberg's special bond with his other BFF, Mr. Kaminski.  While this isn't a Spielberg film that I plan to revisit often, it does help complete his body of work and cement his legacy as a director who regularly captures and standardizes Americana in the world of cinema.