On HBO: PATERNO (2018)

PATERNO
(US - 2018)

Directed by Barry Levinson. Written by Debora Cahn and John C. Richards. Cast: Al Pacino, Riley Keough, Kathy Baker, Greg Grunberg, Annie Parisse, Larry Mitchell, Steve Coulter, Kristen Bush, Ben Cook, Sean Cullen, Peter Jacobson, Tom Kemp, Michael Mastro, Jim Johnson, Murphy Guyer, Julian Gamble, Darren Goldstein, William Hill. (Unrated, 105 mins)

There was once an air of prestige surrounding HBO's original movies, particularly in the 1990s glory days which saw them regularly producing top-notch films like BARBARIANS AT THE GATE, AND THE BAND PLAYED ON, THE TUSKEGEE AIRMEN, THE LATE SHIFT, GIA, IF THESE WALLS COULD TALK, and INTRODUCING DOROTHY DANDRIDGE, just to name a few. For the last decade, the network has specialized in at least one fact-based drama or biopic every spring, with some highlights being 2010's YOU DON'T KNOW JACK, with Al Pacino as Jack Kevorkian, 2012's GAME CHANGE, chronicling the Republican side of the 2008 election with Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin and Ed Harris as John McCain, and 2013's BEHIND THE CANDELABRA, with Michael Douglas as Liberace. The HBO spring movies have been slipping in recent years, content to rely on painstaking makeup jobs as opposed to the solid writing that made their 1990s films so memorable. 2013's PHIL SPECTOR is arguably the worst of the bunch, a slobbering Spector apologia from David Mamet, with Spector played by a frizzy wig attached to the head of Al Pacino. Last year's THE WIZARD OF LIES cast Robert De Niro in a perfect recreation of Ponzi scheme poster boy Bernie Madoff, but otherwise felt content to serve as a live-action version of Madoff's Wikipedia page, with director Barry Levinson indulging in some predictable Scorsese worship, right down to De Niro using some of his leftover Ace Rothstein schtick from CASINO.

Levinson also directs PATERNO, which goes through motions in such a "Movie of the Week" fashion that it doesn't even work up the enthusiasm to rip off Scorsese. PATERNO reunites the director with his YOU DON'T KNOW JACK star Pacino for a chronicle of the Penn State child sex abuse scandal that broke in late 2011 and quickly took down beloved, legendary football coach Joe Paterno, who died of lung cancer just two months later in January 2012. Pacino absolutely looks the part and is in appropriate "restrained Pacino" mode here. Where PATERNO drops the ball is that, like THE WIZARD OF LIES, it just goes through the story as if the script is a series of bullet points. There's nothing here you don't already know if you followed the story as it broke, and the filmmakers aren't really interested in going beneath the surface for anything substantive. It could've been so many things, especially if you're aware that when HBO originally announced the project way back in 2013, it was called HAPPY VALLEY (also the name of a 2014 documentary on the scandal from THE TILLMAN STORY director Amir Bar-Lev) and was to have been directed by Brian De Palma. Pacino was attached as Paterno from the start, and veteran character actor John Carroll Lynch (FARGO, ZODIAC) was cast as his longtime assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, who retired in 1999 and was ultimately convicted on 45 counts of child molestation and corruption of minors among other charges, with boys as young as 10 years of age. HAPPY VALLEY was put on hold during pre-production for "budget concerns" and was subsequently rechristened PATERNO when HBO gave it the greenlight once again in 2016, with Pacino but without De Palma and Lynch. It's telling that the film is now simply called PATERNO, since Sandusky (now played by eerie lookalike Jim Johnson) is seen fleetingly on maybe three occasions and has one audible line of dialogue. PATERNO opens with "JoePa" in a hospital MRI machine reflecting on the just-breaking scandal. And if you know the story, then you know the rest.

Levinson and writers Debora Cahn and John C. Richards could've taken just about any other approach and made a stronger film. They could've set it in 2001 when Paterno was allegedly first made aware of Sandusky's heinous crimes after then-graduate assistant coach Mike McQueary (briefly played here by Darren Goldstein) witnessed him raping a boy in the Penn State locker room, to which Sandusky still had access post-retirement, and would often take victims he procured from his Second Mile charity. Or, they could've focused on Sara Ganim (Riley Keough), the Patriot News reporter who first broke the story and encountered all manner of stonewalling, cover-ups, vanishing police reports, and a conspiracy of silence that would've made for a riveting investigative drama along the lines of ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, ZODIAC, or SPOTLIGHT. In terms of setting the film in 2011, the crux of the story is "Did JoePa know or not?" and at that point in time, Ganim's pursuit of that answer and jumping every hurdle in her way would've been more compelling and revealing, at least as an examination of how football is so deeply ingrained in the fabric of Penn State, thus leading to the "protect the shield" attitude of the school, the students, and the community.

Or, they could've given Pacino something more to do that look doddering and befuddled as the 84-year-old Paterno. In a way, that's accurate, as Paterno clearly comes off as a man whose football-focused tunnelvision made him pretty much oblivious to, if not everything else around him, then at least the seriousness of Sandusky's crimes. This was a man who spent over 60 years in coaching and concerned himself with little else. One of the more interesting moments comes when he doesn't even get the optics of how bad it would look if he admitted waiting two days to tell the university higher-ups what he heard about Sandusky because he "didn't want to ruin" their weekend. More details like that would've helped, but scene after scene just has Pacino's JoePa puttering around, looking confused, and unable or unwilling to understand the gravity of the situation as if to say "Why is this happening to me?" But this approach is a cop-out: by never really substantively getting into JoePa's head and relegating Ganim to the sideline for much of the second half, PATERNO never has to take a stand, it never has to risk criticizing its subject, and it never has to do anything beyond ensuring that Pacino gets nominated for an Emmy and a Golden Globe next year. BARBARIANS AT THE GATE, AND THE BAND PLAYED ON, and their HBO contemporaries of the '90s didn't earn their deserved accolades by sidestepping the issues, pulling their punches, and letting the makeup department do the heavy lifting. PATERNO offers a generally fine Pacino performance that his fans will want to see, but this film should be more than a showcase for its iconic star.

On HBO: THE WIZARD OF LIES (2017)

THE WIZARD OF LIES
(US - 2017)

Directed by Barry Levinson. Written by Sam Levinson, John Burnham Schwartz and Samuel Baum. Cast: Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Alessandro Nivola, Hank Azaria, Nathan Darrow, Kristen Connolly, Lily Rabe, Kelly AuCoin, Geoffrey Cantor, Steve Coulter, Neil Brooks Cunningham, Michael Goorjian, Diana B. Henriques, Michael Kostroff, Kathrine Narducci, Amanda Warren, Gary Wilmes, David Lipman, Sophie Von Haselberg, Clem Cheung. (Unrated, 132 mins)

As far as HBO prestige biopics go, THE WIZARD OF LIES is on the lesser end--not as good as YOU DON'T KNOW JACK but nowhere near the depths of the slobbering apologia of David Mamet's loathsome PHIL SPECTOR. A chronicle of disgraced financier, stockbroker, and former NASDAQ chairman Bernie Madoff, who was arrested in late 2008 for perpetrating the biggest Ponzi scheme in US history, a massive fraud to the tune of $65 billion. The fortunes of famous people (Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, John Malkovich, and, as if he hadn't endured enough in his life, Elie Wiesel), the life savings of Madoff's millionaire friends and some ordinary average people, as well as the funds of numerous Jewish-based charity organizations were lost in what ended up being a 16-year scam where all the stocks, trades, reports, statements, paper trails, everything was made up by Madoff, who was eventually crushed under the weight of it and couldn't find a way out, especially after the housing market crash of 2008. It was after that event that nervous investors began withdrawing their money, prompting him to lure in others to cover the cash that wasn't there, seduced by Madoff's bogus financial reports that showed his investments were still making money despite the severe downturn in the market.

Anyone familiar with the Madoff scandal knows what happened and that most of the money was never recovered, but THE WIZARD OF LIES doesn't really have anything to add. It does offer Robert De Niro as Madoff, in a slouchy and slightly nasally performance that's accurate as far as the Madoff we've seen in news footage, but director Barry Levinson (DINER, RAIN MAN) and the three credited screenwriters, among them Levinson's son Sam, never really let the viewer into Madoff's head to know what makes him tick or what drove him to do what he did. They're working from book by New York Times financial writer Diana B. Henriques (who appears throughout as herself in a hokey framing device that has her interviewing De Niro as Madoff), but from what's presented here, we don't see the charismatic guy that roped so many people into his scheme and somehow convinced them to put their entire fortunes in his hands. Just because he's got De Niro in the lead, Levinson (who previously directed the actor in SLEEPERS, WAG THE DOG, and WHAT JUST HAPPENED) instead tries to make a low-energy Martin Scorsese movie, complete what what sounds like a Scorsese mix cd (The Platters' "The Great Pretender" and the Animals' "House of the Rising Sun"--how did the Rolling Stones "Gimme Shelter" not make the cut during a "Madoff scrambling for investors" paranoia montage?) playing at a swanky anniversary party for Madoff and his wife Ruth (Michelle Pfeiffer). At this same party, an obsessive-compulsive Madoff goes around inspecting each and every plate to make sure they're spotless while shattering the ones that aren't in a scene that lets De Niro riff on his Ace Rothstein hissy fit over blueberry muffins in Scorsese's CASINO (this bit was also referenced in EQUITY, another recent financial dud). THE WIZARD OF LIES plays like a listless Scorsese knockoff, bullet-pointing its way through the story to such a degree that Wikipedia should've been credited as a fourth screenwriter.

De Niro certainly looks the part as Madoff, and while he's not exactly busting his ass, he seems to be coasting somewhat simply because he isn't really given a character to play. It's as if Levinson and HBO figured "Well, De Niro's gonna look just like Madoff, so everything should just fall into place." Pfeiffer is a great American actress who works too infrequently to re-emerge for inconsequential movies like this (she's been offscreen since co-starring with De Niro in Luc Besson's 2013 mob comedy THE FAMILY). Though she spent time with Ruth Madoff to help prepare her performance and looks a lot like her, Pfeiffer comes off less like Ruth Madoff and more like a tribute to Edie Falco's work as Carmela Soprano. On top of that, she's miscast, as the 58-year-old actress looks several years younger, making it a pretty tough sell to buy that she's playing a 70-year-old who's been married for 50 years. Alessandro Nivola and Nathan Darrow are fine as Madoff's sons Mark and Andrew, who worked for their father and claimed, along with Ruth, to be unaware of the scheme. Some of the film's high points come from the effect of the scandal on their lives, afraid to leave their homes for fear of being accosted by friends, former co-workers, and random strangers, and their arcs are all the more tragic considering Mark would hang himself in 2010 and Andrew, after distancing himself from his father and trying to salvage his own reputation, would succumb to cancer in 2014 at just 48. Despite working in fits and starts (Ruth's hurtful reaction to her favorite hairdresser firing her as a customer is well-played by Pfeiffer), THE WIZARD OF LIES' chief priority is making sure De Niro looked like a dead ringer for Madoff. It doesn't have much else to say and actually seems so bored with itself that it completely forgets about Hank Azaria, cast as Frank DiPascali, the top Madoff associate who ran the inaccessible 17th floor where all of the books were being cooked--a vital figure in the Ponzi scheme, he disappears from the film around 75 minutes in and is never seen or mentioned again. The more THE WIZARD OF LIES goes on, the more you realize that perhaps the better approach, especially since ABC just aired the Richard Dreyfuss/Blythe Danner miniseries MADOFF a year ago, would've been to examine this story from the perspective of anyone involved with it other than Bernie Madoff.

On DVD/Blu-ray: THE HUMBLING (2015) and FEAR CLINIC (2015)

THE HUMBLING
(US/Italy - 2015)

Even though nobody really liked literary lion Philip Roth's universally-panned 2009 novel The Humbling, it's easy to see what appealed to Al Pacino when he bought the movie rights shortly after it was published. The protagonist, Simon Axler, is a legendary stage actor renowned for his devotion to Shakespeare, indirectly linking it to Pacino's terrific 1996 semi-documentary LOOKING FOR RICHARD and his portrayal of Shylock in 2004's THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, and is also roundly criticized for being past his prime and a hammy version of what he once was, charges often justifiably leveled at the inconsistent, hoo-aah!-prone 74-year-old screen legend. While Pacino does some top-notch--and restrained--work here, THE HUMBLING starts fine but quickly devolves into a grating, self-indulgent misfire, with Simon suffering an onstage breakdown and haplessly attempting to off himself with a shotgun as an homage to Hemingway ("Hemingway must've had longer arms," he concludes) before being admitted to a psych facility. Once released, he's visited by 31-year-old Pegeen (Greta Gerwig), the daughter of some past stage colleagues. Pegeen has nursed a crush on the 65-year-old Simon since childhood when he was a family friend, and though she's an out lesbian, she seduces him, much to the disapproval of her just-dumped ex (Kyra Sedgwick) as well as her parents, Simon's now-estranged friends Asa (Dan Hedaya) and Carol (Dianne Wiest). Meanwhile, Simon is badgered by his agent Jerry (Charles Grodin) to get back to work and is stalked by Sybil (Nina Arianda), a deranged fellow psych patient who wants him to kill her pedophile husband, who she claims has been molesting their young daughter.

Directed by Barry Levinson (who teamed with Pacino for the 2010 HBO film YOU DON'T KNOW JACK) and co-written by Buck Henry (penning just his fourth screenplay in the last 30 years), THE HUMBLING gives Pacino ample opportunity to shine in long, single-take monologues and he's up to the challenge. But too much of it plays like second-tier Woody Allen, right down to the very Allen-esque opening credits, the young woman throwing herself at the short old guy, and the presence of Wiest, who won both of her Oscars in Allen films (not to digress, but why hasn't Pacino ever worked with Allen?). There's also an unavoidable and wholly coincidental parallel to last year's BIRDMAN, another film that dealt with an aging, washed-up actor drifting in and out of reality while planning a comeback. The early promise gives way to endless pontificating and shouting matches, the possibly Alzheimer's-stricken Simon being an unreliable narrator in Skype sessions with his therapist (Dylan Baker), and even some tired "old lady being raunchy" humor with Simon's housekeeper (Mary Louise Wilson) matter-of-factly advising Pegeen on how to better store her sex toys, which is just an excuse to hear an elderly woman say things like "vibrator," "butt plug," and "double-dong." The subplot with Arianda's Sybil gets entirely too much screen time and goes nowhere, other than to underscore a hinted-at but never-confirmed detail about Simon and Carol's past that doesn't really need Sybil to enhance it. Pacino dials it down and plays it straight throughout and he's always great to watch when he's legitimately invested in a project, and Grodin gets some laughs as the very Charles Grodin-esque agent, but there's ultimately no reason to care about any of the characters in the forgettable THE HUMBLING. Among the critiques of Roth's novel was that it felt like a short story padded to barely-novel length at 140 pages. To that end, THE HUMBLING is faithful, having little to say and taking nearly two interminable hours to say it. (R, 107 mins)


FEAR CLINIC
(US - 2015)

Indiegogo crowd-funding helped make this feature-length spinoff of the six-episode 2009 FearNet web series a reality for its tens of fans. The web series starred A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET horror icon Robert Englund as Dr. Andover in six six-minute segments, each specifically devoted to a patient's phobia. In the film, shot in Medina, OH, Andover's clinic is in a state of disarray after comatose patient Paige (Bonnie Morgan) dies following a session in his "fear chamber," a machine that produces hallucinations of a patient's fears in order to directly face and fight them. Paige was one of several Andover patients who survived a restaurant shooting rampage a year earlier, and they've all noticed manifestations of the others' deepest fears creeping into their own reality. The FearNet series co-starred cult horror convention fixtures Danielle Harris and Kane Hodder because of course it did. Harris and Hodder dropped out of the film, so Englund is joined by future convention fixture and CURSE OF CHUCKY star Fiona Dourif (Brad's daughter) as the tough, proactive heroine Sara. You also get Kevin "Still Coasting on Being 'Waingro' in HEAT" Gage as a handyman named Gage; Thomas Dekker (TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES) as a wheelchair-bound shooting survivor whose big revelation won't surprise anyone; daytime soap vet Brandon Beemer; former porn star Angelina Armani; and Slipknot/Stone Sour frontman Corey Taylor as an insubordinate, bad-tempered orderly.

FEAR CLINIC was directed by Robert Hall, whose LAID TO REST (2009) and CHROMESKULL: LAID TO REST 2 (2011) have very minor cult followings with the most undemanding of today's horror fans. Hall and screenwriter Aaron Drane don't give Englund much to work with, but the veteran actor turns in a strong and surprisingly sympathetic performance that doesn't rely on standard mad doctor histrionics. At times recalling a subdued Jack Palance, Englund's Andover is a shattered altruist who was sincerely trying to help his patients only to find that his "fear chamber" inadvertently opened a portal to an alternate world whose evils begin materializing in the real one. A committed Englund (acquiescing to the demands of no one, he gets naked twice) is the film's sole saving grace but by the end, his work is all for naught when his face is stuck on some nonsensical CGI creature as Hall and Drane briefly elevate FEAR CLINIC from boring to shameless, opting to rip off Stuart Gordon's 1986 classic FROM BEYOND with fear subbing for the pineal gland. Robert Kurtzman--the "K" in KNB--handled some of the atrocious makeup and creature effects and just because Taylor is in the cast, the closing credits are accompanied by Stone Sour's lunkheaded cover of Metal Church's "The Dark." The film feels like it was made 20 years ago and has no ending, and afterwards, you realize the only thing you have to fear is not fear itself but rather, the idea of crowd-funding for FEAR CLINIC 2. (R, 95 mins)

In Theaters/On VOD: THE BAY (2012)

THE BAY
(US/UK - 2012)

Directed by Barry Levinson.  Written by Michael Wallach.  Cast: Will Rogers, Kristen Connolly, Kether Donohue, Christopher Denham, Stephen Kunken, Frank Deal, Nansi Aluka, Kenny Alfonso. (R, 83 mins)

Upon a cursory glance, the very notion of Oscar-winning director Barry Levinson (DINER, GOOD MORNING VIETNAM, RAIN MAN, BUGSY, DISCLOSURE, SLEEPERS, WAG THE DOG) helming a found footage faux-documentary horror film produced by Oren Peli (PARANORMAL ACTIVITY) and the Strause Brothers (SKYLINE) seems absurd and insulting beyond comprehension.  Sure, Levinson's not at the pinnacle of his career now but in the '80s and '90s, the guy was practically unstoppable, even with something like 1992's misbegotten TOYS sullying his resume.  There were all those hit movies (he also wrote 1979's AND JUSTICE FOR ALL), plus his contributions to television: writing for THE CAROL BURNETT SHOW, and producing HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREET and OZ.  Now here he is, 70 years old and trying to hitch a ride on the found footage bandwagon?  With all due respect, Mr. Levinson, there are other coping mechanisms for what you're going through.  You could've just bought a sports car and gotten your ear pierced.

But hold on a second.  THE BAY is actually good.  It's an unsettling and surprisingly solid addition to played-out subgenre that's admittedly on life support.  People turn out in droves for these movies whenever they open, but nobody seems to like them anymore.  It's too bad THE BAY arrived just in time for the backlash, because it's one of the better found footage flicks to come down the pike.  Levinson and screenwriter Michael Wallach approach it as a collage of confiscated footage acquired from a web site called govleaks.org, as part of a film being made by journalist Donna Thompson (Kether Donohue), who was a student reporter and blogger covering the July 4th festivities in the fictional Claridge, MD in 2009.  A strange bacterial outbreak spreads throughout the small town of 6200, with residents breaking out on boils and blisters, almost like some sort of flesh-eating virus. What Thompson has pieced together from the assorted footage (from her cameraman, from others' home movies, security cameras, police dashboard cams, cell phones, etc) is that two oceanographers (Christopher Denham, Nansi Aluka) were aware of something odd happening in the Chesapeake Bay in Claridge at least six weeks before the 4th.  The mayor (Frank Deal), blew off the information that passed his desk about marine life in the bay being toxic and infested with rapidly-growing parasitic isopods, due in part to a local factory farm disposing steroid-loaded chicken excrement into the bay but also because of toxic materials dumped into the bay by the mayor's baby:  a cost-effective, privately-owned, corner-cutting desalination plant that provides Claridge's drinking water...from the bay.  Now the residents are infested with these parasites, which are growing at an alarming rate and eating their way out of their human hosts.

As the outbreak worsens and panic spreads over the course of the day, Levinson and Wallach show the paranoia and the frighteningly plausible levels of buck-passing bureaucracy that result.  Early townie speculation blames the situation on everything from Satanists to Al-Qaeda.  The FBI immediately shuts down Thompson's blog.  A frazzled ER doc (Stephen Kunken) Skypes with a CDC official who bluntly tells him "Just leave the hospital."  That same CDC official is later shown getting the run-around from a Homeland Security representative, telling him "This whole town has been wiped out in one day!" to which the Homeland Security guy coldly and matter-of-factly replies "It's a small town...let's keep it in perspective."

The cast is largely unknown--Denham can currently be seen in ARGO, and Kristen Connolly was in THE CABIN IN THE WOODS--which helps the sense of realism.  Most found footage films are more interested in quick, cheap scares, but Levinson makes THE BAY an eco-horror film with an environmental point to hammer home about everything from privatization to the food we eat to the endless red tape that puts people last if they're in the equation at all.  There's politics at play here (it takes place on the most American of holidays) and the filmmakers are unabashedly on the left, so how much you get out of the film or how plausible or serious you find it may depend somewhat on your leanings.  THE BAY is an effectively grim B-movie that never offers any outright jolts, but Levinson does a terrific job of establishing a dread-filled sense of conspiratorial doom that escalates throughout.  As sick and tired as a lot of us are the found footage fright flicks, THE BAY is one that actually has something to say, which is perhaps what attracted a filmmaker of Levinson's caliber to such an unusual project.