Molly's Game: All in!

Molly's Game (2017) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for profanity, drug use and brief violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.5.18

Truth isn’t merely stranger than fiction; sometimes it’s flat-out astonishing.

Molly’s Game is the mesmerizing study of Molly Bloom, who — in a parallel universe — might have been the gold medal-winning Olympics skier that she was trained to become, from an early age.

Having become master of her own high-stakes poker domain, Molly (Jessica Chastain)
strides confidently through the room, fully aware of the impact she has on her all-male
clientele.

Or, maybe, she’d have blossomed into the high-profile lawyer being nurtured by her academic talents.

In our world, derailed by a freak accident and occasionally hampered by a rebellious spirit, she applied her preternatural intelligence to become — of all things — the “Poker Princess” known in upper-echelon circles for running weekly, invitation-only games for some of the wealthiest high-rollers in Los Angeles and New York.

Her rise and fall — and rise and fall, and rise and fall — is detailed with supernova intensity by famed scripter Aaron Sorkin, also making a splashy directorial debut in this adaptation of Bloom’s page-turning 2014 memoir, Molly’s Game: From Hollywood’s Elite to Wall Street’s Billionaire Boys Club, My High-Stakes Adventure in the World of Underground Poker.

And yes, the film is as breathtaking as that title.

Perhaps too breathtaking.

As Sorkin’s longtime fans are well aware, his rat-a-tat dialog sizzles with the manic incandescence of classic Hollywood screwball comedies, albeit on a far higher level of dramatic gravitas: often laden with information dumps that demand not only one’s full attention, but (couldn’t hurt) a college graduate’s vocabulary.

There’s a reason Sorkin’s best-scripted episodes of TV’s gone but still much-beloved West Wing clocked in at a fast-paced 45 minutes; most viewers probably couldn’t have endured more. The same narrative ferocity can be found in any isolated 15 to 20 minutes of Molly’s Game, particularly as anchored by Jessica Chastain’s hypnotically alluring starring role, and Idris Elba’s equally powerful supporting performance.

Taken as a whole, though, this 140-minute film is exhausting. Even too many chocolate milkshakes can overwhelm the most enthusiastic palate, and — as director — Sorkin has over-indulged his writing sensibilities. (Tellingly, this fate that did not befall his Academy Award-winning script for 2010’s The Social Network, when his efforts were carefully modulated by director David Fincher.)

Molly narrates her own unlikely saga, Chastain giving these events the stream-of-consciousness passion of a seasoned sportscaster. As is his frequent custom, Sorkin eschews a conventional linear approach for a three-pronged attack divided mostly between the “present” — April 2013 through May 2014 — and the whirlwind events that began a decade earlier. Occasional deeper flashbacks illuminate the childhood training sessions under her disciplinarian father, Larry (Kevin Costner), by profession a clinical psychologist and Colorado State University professor.

Spotlight: The Fourth Estate Rules!

Spotlight (2015) • View trailer 
Five stars. Rated R, for profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.20.15

Crusading newspaper journalists have been a cinema staple ever since the Ben Hecht/Charles MacArthur stage play The Front Page first hit the big screen in 1931, but true classics are rare.

The Devil is in the details: Michael (Mark Ruffalo, center) and Sacha (Rachel McAdams)
grow increasingly excited — and horrified — as a fairly simple computer search by Matt
(Brian d'Arcy) reveals that they're likely dealing with far more than just five or six
pedophile priests.

Meet John Doe, The Big Carnival, Deadline USA and Absence of Malice come to mind, and they all have one thing in common: They’re fictitious stories.

Memorable films based on actual reporters who pursued real-world scoops are more scarce, in part because few screenwriters can spin compelling drama from the day-after-grinding-day research slog that precedes a “breaking” news story, which (to the outside world) seems to come out of nowhere. The gold standard in this category remains All the President’s Men, in great part due to screenwriter William Goldman’s superb, Oscar-winning adaptation of the Bob Woodward/Carl Bernstein book.

Goldman now has equally talented company: Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer, who’ve done a masterful job with Spotlight — McCarthy also serving as director — and its depiction of the four Boston Globe reporters who won a 2003 Pulitzer Prize for their astonishing series of stories exposing the long-term cover-up of child abuse by members of the Boston Catholic Church clergy.

As was the case with All the President’s Men, Spotlight isn’t merely an engaging — even suspenseful — drama, fueled by excellent performances from a well-selected ensemble cast; it’s a valuable historical document that details a frankly heinous abuse of trust and power. It’s simultaneously cathartic and horrific: a crisply condensed depiction of an extremely complicated story that expands so far beyond initial expectations, that — were it fiction — it likely wouldn’t be believed.

But it’s not fiction; it’s grim, infuriating and relentlessly heartbreaking fact.

Not to mention another reminder of the significant service performed by newspapers and their dedicated staffs, and the frankly alarming hole we’ll be in, as a country, if the Fourth Estate is allowed to be replaced by the frivolous, empty-calorie content of “web journalism” (an oxymoron if ever one existed).

McCarthy is an actor who burst on the filmmaking scene when he wrote and directed 2003’s The Station Agent, one of the finest, quirkiest dramedies of the new century. Singer has a wealth of TV scripting credits in his still-brief career, notably The West Wing and Fringe, and he made the jump to movies with the 2013 Julian Assange dramatization, The Fifth Estate.

Both McCarthy and Singer have an ear for realistic dialog, and particularly the careful “dance” that takes place during painfully raw and intimate conversations. This film is laden with such scenes — some quite difficult to watch — and all handled masterfully both by the film’s stars, and by lesser cast members appearing perhaps only briefly.