The Informant Review: Would you hire The Informant? - Movie Reviews, Film Reviews, Movies, Films, Entertainment, Film Entertainment, TV, Television, TV Reviews, Television Reviews

Back in 2009, one of the first films that I went to see at the Toronto International Film Festival was The Informant, starring Matt Damon and Scott Bakula. I had never really checked out a film festival before and so the experience itself was rather strange. It’s interesting then that one of my first films at the festival was a pretty strange film itself. First and foremost is the fact that Matt Damon almost disappears into the role of Mark Whitacre as a bio-chemist at a middle-American corn producer known as ADM.

There are a number of actors who can’t really move beyond their fame. Actors like George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Robert DeNiro and Woody Harrelson are the kind of actors who I can only ever see as the actors they are and not the roles that they play. There are exceptions to that rule, for instance, Woody Harrelson in ‘Defendor’, Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden in ‘Fight Club’, and George Clooney as Everett McGill in ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’ Matt Damon on the other hand can sometimes be a bit of a wild card in the roles that he takes. Roles like ‘Dogma’ or ‘Ocean’s 11’, while incredible, are roles in which he seems to have been cast for the fact of his status as an actor whereas a role like Jason Bourne or Will Hunting, he finds a way to disappear into the role he is playing and you almost forget who he is.

I would put ‘The informant’ in the category of one where he disappears, the subtle way in which he portrays a nervous yet simple man who believes in doing the right thing despite his co-workers views of things and business practices is nothing short of brilliant. But the portrayal is not the only good thing about the film. As the story progresses, you start to realize that things are not entirely what they seem in the world Mark Whitacre inhabits. This begins a series of twists and turns to the plot that would normally be seen in a crime drama or a political thriller but feels right at home in this rather strange and quiet comedy.

Perhaps it’s the fact that so many of the characters seem genuine and honest in the way they deal with the situation at hand, the question of price fixing in the international markets of corn, that makes some of the eventual betrayals so damning and difficult to watch yet so very funny at the same time. The film ultimately becomes one in which there is no clear bad guy in all of it. Not because people haven’t done something wrong, but because you end up caring about the characters despite what they’ve done. None of the characters really seem underhanded or angry in what they do. Perhaps that’s why when things start to go wrong you don’t really see it coming.

So much about this movie is understated and unexpected. From the acting to the camera work and the storytelling, which I think is what makes it work so well. This isn’t a movie about clear lines between right and wrong, or good versus bad. It’s about people, and the way in which people go wrong in their pursuit of success.

Would you hire The Informant? I probably wouldn’t, but I would definitely hire the people who made the film.

Silver Linings Playbook Review: Can you find the Silver Lining in your life’s Playbook?

“Life is a struggle that no one actually survives.”

It’s a difficult thing to do, figure out how to cope with the world around you and the problems you encounter. Things are hard, they take work and even then there aren’t really any guarantees you’ll achieve anything. Is it any wonder that people go a little crazy? How crazy can things get though? Perhaps what’s crazy is the world around us, or even the people in it. No matter what it is some people can’t cope, or they don’t cope very well. At the core of Silver Lining Playbook is the question of what do you do then. How do you deal with a world that makes you crazy?

The story centers around Pat, a guy recently released from a mental institution after a traumatic incident sent him over the edge with a condition he didn’t know he had. Now living with his parents, he struggles to figure out how to move forward when in some ways he is still very much stuck in the life he left behind. With no job, no prospects and a town full of people who know what happened to him, he tries to find some aspect of his life to hold onto while managing his condition. What he ends up holding onto is his wife. Very much out of his life since the incident, Pat becomes focused on the idea of getting his wife back despite the reality that he isn’t allowed to communicate with her.

Sufficed to say this proves to be more difficult then it seems to him and he begins looking for a work around to this problem through his very supportive friends and family. There’s only one problem, his friends and family aren’t the benchmarks for normality either. And this becomes the perfect mix for a family rom-com with an interesting twist on it. It’s long been a staple of the romantic comedy genre to question the idea of normal. Stories from the 80s and 90s were big on this kind of theme, particularly in the realm of the high school drama version of a romantic comedy. Since then many stories have tried to establish what normal is, or at least what we want normal to be with some success here and there.

For Silver Linings Playbook however, normal is in fact the abnormal. Most of the characters have some strange way of dealing with the world. But in particular what makes it all work is the quirky way in which Pat, as played by Bradley Cooper, lives in the world. He is very honest and direct with people about what he sees or feels yet he does it with a kind of charm and openness about himself that it’s hard to feel insulted by him. Topped off by the fact that he has learned to try and look for the silver lining in even the most horrible things.

What’s interesting is that because of the unusual nature of the characters, I was never quite sure where they will end up. Romantic comedies have a tendency to go in certain ways. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. More recently they’ve tended to get a little ridiculous with their storylines. This film feels neither ridiculous nor cheap. It goes for the emotionally honest moments and with Jennifer Lawrence, Robert DeNiro, Chris Tucker and Bradley Cooper in the roles they manage to hit them pretty well.

Can you find the Silver Lining in your life? I can honestly say that this movie is something of a silver lining in my life right now.

Why did TIFF go younger this year?

Anyone who takes even a basic look at the schedule for TIFF this year will notice a bit of a difference in the type of films which were scheduled to play. In the past you would have seen a focus on independent films and Hollywood films which would focus on a more experienced, filmmaker focused audience. You had films like “The Ides of March”, “The Informant” and “Shame”. This year however you can see more of a skew towards a younger audience with films like “Spring Breakers”, “Dredd 3D”, “On The Road” and even “Much Ado About Nothing”. What’s the significance of such a move? Is there a reason for it? What can be done about it?

The answer to most of those questions is yes, all with the exception the last one. Mainly because I’m not sure they need to do anything about it. Long time patrons of the festival might look at the people involved in this year’s films and say why do we need to appeal to a younger audience? Why do we need films starring Kristen Stewart, Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens? Aren’t they all just attention grabbing Disney stars with no real talent? First and foremost I would say that anyone who insists upon saying such things probably hasn’t taken the time to actually watch any of the work of any such stars and I am a big believer in the idea that you can’t judge a person’s talent if you haven’t taken the time to give it a shot.

I’ve actually seen some of their work, including some of the films I mentioned earlier, and I would say that they have real talent. It’s a little on the rough side in some areas but they aren’t supposed to be seasoned veterans of the craft because they aren’t yet old enough to have put in the kind of time a seasoned veteran would need to appear as such. Plus in looking at some of these films, they may have actually done so. They’ve been given the opportunity in many of these films to stretch their acting muscles and turned in pretty good performances.

Some might say that TIFF has to be careful not to alienate its core audience of filmmakers. But who’s to say they did? “On The Road”, while starring Kristen Stewart, is based on a Jack Kerouac novel. Hardly the tween fluff she is often accused of doing. As I said in my review, Spring Breakers was a film by Harmony Korine maker of such films as “Kids”, not exactly someone known for creating films that teenagers are encouraged to see. In fact Selena Gomez actually encouraged her younger fans not to see it given its more adult content, even as hundreds of younger girls sat in the audience after the screening while she said it. These are not exactly films which betray many of the ideas that TIFF built its reputation on.

Even if it were, why is that so wrong? I’ve said it before and I will say it again, film is not a uniform media. It’s not required to conform to a particular idea of what a good film is or who should be in such films. Some filmmakers and their films may present themselves that way, but that’s only one of many narratives available to creators in the visual arts. The most prominent narrative is that film is a reflection of society, and if TIFF wishes to stay true to that above anything else, then it has to be willing to broaden its appeal to more than just its core audience.

TIFF has to stay relevant to the audiences of today and not all of them are 30+ filmmakers who remember Sylvester Stallone as Rocky instead of The Expendables. At a certain point you have to recognize the bigger audience and figure out if you can appeal to them as much as those you admire.

Why did TIFF go younger this year? I think that much is obvious.

Can "Writers" write from anywhere but the heart?

I have been a long time believer in the idea that a writer that is worth the words they write does so from a place of passion. A place where they care about the material they are creating and the ideas they are talking about through it. But is that actually true? Do you actually have to write with your heart and soul or do you simply get better at it if you do it often enough? Not long ago I watched a speech given by acclaimed TV writer Matt Nix, creator of such TV shows as Burn Notice. In it he looked at the idea of art and how he went about it. He spoke of some of the most common advice that any writer gets when he or she starts out. Primarily, that you should write what you know. Some of the most fundamental things about ourselves that we know is how we feel, how we think and how we act, even if we can’t quite articulate all those things in the moment itself. But is that the same as writing what you know?

Are writing what you know and writing from the heart the same thing? Is it possible to do one or the other, or do we do both at the same time? Watching the new film Writers from Josh Boone, I had to ask myself that question. The film is based on the personal experience of the writer/director himself and I think it really shows in the story being told. Starring Greg Kinnear and Jennifer Connelly as well as younger actors like Lily Collins and Nat Wolff, it’s the story of a family of writers struggling to express themselves to each other after the parents of the family get divorced and the mother has remarried. Thankfully, each of them has writing as a way of coping with their lives. Three of them have taken to writing to express themselves in some way, perhaps not to each other or about each other directly, but to someone.

Each of them writes about the experience of their lives and the way in which it has shaped them and their ideas about the world. To quote from the film, “Writers are the sum of their experiences, go have some”. When a person writes however, they often aren’t talking about the situations themselves. Personal experiences can be used in and modified to fit for a story, but there is usually a deeper truth in the experiences that is at the core of the story being told. Sometimes the meaning is that there is no meaning, but by and large a combination of such experiences overall is about life or love or culture. Rarely is it the case that these ideas aren’t somewhere in the script or book or film.

This film is very much about coming to terms with those experiences, which is what most writers do through their work. A lot of films focus on the ultra dramatic moments in life. The moments in which someone finds out their spouse has been cheating on them, or the moment two people meet and fall in love. “Writers” is very much about the moments in between such events. It’s about that second when you realize “Oh wait, that’s what I learned from that mistake” or “Now I realize that this is how I dealt with it and moved on”. And aren’t those the moments in which you truly understand what was going on with that experience? Those are the times when you feel comfortable enough to write down what it is that happened and how you feel about it now. That’s the point where what you know and what you feel meet, and I think that’s what “Writers” is in fact about.

Can writers write from anywhere but the heart? I think they can, but the heart always has to enter into it somewhere, and watching a film like “Writers” is one of the best ways to explore that about yourself.