FILM REVIEW By Chris McCoy
Bridge of Spies Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks create a masterful Cold War thriller.
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’m not sure I’m qualified to critique a Steven Spielberg film. Large parts of my definition of how to make a good film come from Spielberg, who, in turn, distilled the ideas of old masters such as Hitchcock, Kubrick, Harryhausen, and Capra into wildly popular entertainments. Of all of the extremely talented directors to come out of the 1970s — Lucas, Coppola, De Palma, etc. — Spielberg is the most prolific and populist. Only Martin Scorsese rivals his artistic batting average. Sure, Spielberg can be cheesy, but Scorsese never really tried to make a big-tent spectacle picture, while Spielberg has occasionally elevated simple monster movies to the realm of high art. Since Spielberg’s been copied six ways to Sunday, it’s easy to take him for granted. That is, until he drops an atomic bomb of greatness like Bridge of Spies. Like Saving Private Ryan, Bridge of Spies opens with a huge, bravado sequence that sets the realm of the film’s conflict. But it’s 1957, and the Cold War is in full effect, so instead of storming the beaches at Normandy, we’re treated to an interlocking series of tracking shots of FBI agents stalking Soviet spy Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance) through Brooklyn. There are no dinosaurs or sharks or aliens in Bridge of Spies, but there is a giant monster looming just off-screen: nuclear war. I think it’s hard for people who didn’t spend their childhood in abstract fear of Soviet missiles raining atomic death to understand people’s motivations in spy movies of the period. Directors didn’t have to explain the
Breaking Up With Crimson Peak It’s not you, Guillermo del Toro. It’s me. By Chris McCoy
October 22-28, 2015
My dearest Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston), It is with heavy heart that I must inform you that I,
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ing a prisoner swap in East Berlin. Working from an excellent screenplay by Matt Charman that was rewritten by Joel and Ethan Coen, both Hanks and Spielberg are at Hanks the top of their game. Hanks is unmannered plays a hero and charming, able to summon a laugh or in Bridge of a gasp with a raised eyebrow or tense gulp. Spies. Spielberg can convey in one perfect composition what it takes most contemporary directors three or four quick cuts to get across. Even his scene transitions are things of beauty. The most important thing about Bridge of stakes, because everybody knew that a tiny slipup could Spies is its vision of America. Early on, Donovan sums up lead to the destruction of civilization. But Spielberg, ever his philosophy by saying “It can’t look like our justice systhe effective communicator, conveys the mood of the tem tosses people on the ash heap.” To fearful 21st-century times perfectly with a single scene where his everyman America, Bridge of Spies is a rebuke that reverberates from hero James B. Donovan (Tom Hanks) comforts his young Ferguson to Guantanamo Bay. Too many contemporary son Roger (Noah Schnapp) who has been traumatized by stories, from 24 to San Andreas, put sociopathic jerks in a “duck and cover” instructional film. the protagonist role and all but order you to accept them Donovan is a lawyer who distinguished himself at as heroes. But Hanks and Spielberg understand that heroes the Nuremberg war crimes tribunals, but is now living a need to behave heroically. Here, they’re putting forth a comfortable life practicing insurance law. Because of his real-life lawyer devoted to upholding America’s highest experience and integrity, he is chosen by the New York ideals, even for its enemies, as a hero to be emulated. As State Bar Association to be Abel’s attorney. His job, he is Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. said, “We are what we pretend to be, so told, is to demonstrate the superiority of the American we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” Donolegal system by mounting a defense of the accused spy. van might like Scotch in his Nescafé, but he represents an He earns the ire of the press and his colleagues when he America that at least pretends to be good. saves Abel from the electric chair. After an American U-2 spy plane is shot down over Russia and its pilot Bridge of Spies Francis Gary Powers is captured, Donovan is called on Now playing to defuse the potentially explosive situation by negotiatMultiple locations your wife, am leaving your ancestral home of Allerdale Hall, aka Crimson Peak, and filing for divorce. This may come as a shock to you, but I now think the dissolution of our relationship was inevitable from the start. Maybe when my mother came back from the grave as a hideous ghost and hissed “Beware of Crimson Peak!”, I should have listened to her. Maybe I should have noticed that you look and act just like the evil Norse trickster god Loki. Maybe I missed another opportunity to avert relationship disaster when my rich father Carter Cushing (Jim Beaver)
tried to bribe you into leaving the country. But he was such a terrible actor that I was almost relieved when he died under mysterious circumstances. And besides, you needed his considerable fortune to finish the construction of your steampunk machine that will bring the red clay mines underneath your estate back to profitability. Come to think of it, the weird scheme to create an automated clay-mining machine should have been another continued from page 42
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