Capone's Art-House Round-Up with KILL THE MESSENGER, YOU'RE NOT YOU, and PRIDE!!!

Hey, folks. Capone in Chicago here, with a few films that are making their way into art houses or coming out in limited release around America this week (maybe even taking up one whole screen at a multiplex near you). Do your part to support these films, or at least the good ones…


KILL THE MESSENGER
Probably the worst thing you could do going into KILL THE MESSENGER is think it's a thriller. While there are certainly many tense moments that will make your stomach tighten and throw your system into a paranoid hyperdrive, the film itself is actually a gripping, true-life drama about Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper man Gary Webb, played with a perfect blend of cocky and modest by Jeremy Renner (THE TOWN, THE HURT LOCKER, THE AVENGERS), in what is arguably the finest acting he's ever done. Filmmaker Michael Cuesta has taken an almost incomprehensible series of events and made sense of them with a story that works as both a investigative procedural and a portrait of a man made paranoid by the CIA.

Without meaning to, Webb discovers links between drug smugglers bringing cocaine into the inner cities of the United States with the assistance of the CIA, essentially birthing the crack epidemic in this country. After traveling as far as Nicaragua to follow his story, Webb writes an epic, multi-part exposé for his second-tier newspaper, scooping major outlets like the LA Times and The Washington Times, both of which are so pissed that this nobody beat them at their own game, they target him and his facts for intense investigation. In one instant, he's the talk and hero of the town; not long after, he's a pariah in the eyes of the institution of journalism. Meanwhile, the CIA subtly feeds details of Webb's life (including an affair years earlier) to various media outlets, who lap it up and ignore the real story.

Cuesta wisely casts many familiar faces in supporting parts so we can keep track of who's who in this web on intrigue and conspiracy. Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Oliver Platt, Rosemarie DeWitt, Barry Pepper, Tim Blake Nelson, Ray Liotta (in one of his best creepy roles in quite some time), Michael K. Williams, Michael Sheen, Paz Vega and Robert Patrick are all in this film in roles of various sizes and importance, and they're all solid. Winstead is particularly good as Webb's editor, who acts as something of a buffer between him and the newspaper brass until she can't any longer.

The film's second half is where the scariest material creeps in, and we begin to see the impact these allegations against Webb had on his career, family life and reputation. KILL THE MESSENGER is messy, smart look at human behavior and just how unjust and cruel a place the world can be to someone dedicated to telling the truth. Long after it was too late to do any good, the CIA admitted that most of what was in Webb's stories was true. There's something both exciting and desperate about the way Renner captures this man putting his life and perhaps even the safety of his family to the side in order to uncover a great wrong in the world. I wouldn't go so far as to say the film is inspirational, but it might inspire you to question those who say they are here to protect you. KILL THE MESSENGER isn't a thriller; it's more of a horror story.


YOU’RE NOT YOU
This is an odd little film that escaped premiering on the Lifetime network primarily due to a whole lot of bad language. YOU’RE NOT YOU centers on Kate, a lovely classical pianist (played by Hilary Swank), who has the perfect life with a handsome husband (Josh Duhamel), envious friends (including Ali Larter) and an expansive, lovely home. But while still in her prime, Kate is diagnosed with ALS (as in the Ice Bucket Challenge charity recipient), which forces her to give up the piano, and leads to a rapid decline in motor skills, which eventually lands her in a wheelchair and in much need of care-taking.

At first, her husband is happy to carry her from her chair to the bathroom to the shower to bed, and otherwise help her out, but Kate start to feel horribly guilty and demands that they get a caregiver during the day while the husband is at work. And while there are better candidates, Kate see potential in college student Bec (Emmy Rossum, playing a character not to far astray from the one she plays in Showtime's "Shameless"), who has no practical experience taking care of herself, let alone another human being. Kate sees her as a fixer-upper, in need of some real-world experience thinking about someone other than herself. Think of YOU’RE NOT YOU as MY FAIR LADY, but depressing. And it's clear that since Kate and her husband never got around to having kids, Bec is something of a surrogate "kid" for her to save from a horrible life of drinking, drugs and horrible men.

Swank has won two Academy Awards, and that isn't a fluke; she earned them with tremendous acting work, so to see her in this role and realize how good she is shouldn't come as a total surprise. Despite her being confined to a wheelchair, it's clear that playing Kate was a physically demanding role that required her to be contorted and exhausted for much of the film. Her speech gradually goes from mild slurring to near incomprehensibility so gradually, you almost don't notice it until people in the film start needing Bec to translate.

But Rossum is also surprisingly strong as a woman finally learning to take pride in herself, rather than just lashing out at the world and those who want to be good to her. A lovely young man (Jason Ritter) attempts to begin dating her, and she keeps him at a distance while she continues to sleep with a married professor (Julian McMahon). Her avoidance of positive influences gets old after a while, but Rossum makes most of it work. Marcia Gay Harden and Frances Fisher plays Bec and Kate's trainwreck mothers, who want so little to do with the situation between Bec and Kate that they either ignore it or attempt without conversation to stop it. Those scenes seem almost unnecessary and keep us from the far more interesting relationship between these two very different women.

Slightly more interesting than the moms is the presence of Loretta Devine as a fellow ALS patient who Kate meets at the hospital. Devine and her husband (Ernie Hudson) meet Kate and Bec, and the four become friends, bouncing sound advice off each other. The characters are completely unnecessary, but I love love Devine and Hudson, so they get a pass ...barely.

There are certainly some smaller powerful moments in YOU’RE NOT YOU, but not quite enough to get me to the finish line. Director George C. Wolfe (working from the book by Michelle Wildgen) doesn't really offer us much more than salty language, pretty faces and a fairly authentic, if predictable, storyline. Swank's aggressively painted performance is almost worth the price of admission if you're a fan of hers; otherwise, you can do better on the emotional powerhouse movie front than this.


PRIDE
As far as feel-good crowd-pleasing British film of late, director Matthew (Simpatico) Warchus' latest PRIDE has got most of them beat hands down. There are few things I enjoy less than being taught a lesson by a socially relevant film from any nation, but PRIDE has something going on that seems as important today as it was in 1984, when the events in the movie take place. That doesn't mean there aren't a few cringe-worthy moments when you feel like you're being led by the hand through this true story of a London-based gay and lesbian activists, but most of the film goes beyond simply well-meaning and becomes something special.

The activists in question, living under the uncaring thumb of then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, discover that their normal level of police harassment has declined of late, mostly because the striking miners of the nation have been receiving the brunt of the brutality. To show their solidarity, they for a fundraising organization called Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, which ended up raising more money for the Union of Mineworkers than pretty much any other group during the strike. They choose as the recipient of their goodwill a small Welsh village, which needless to say doesn't take to them right away. But as the months go on, the grateful villagers (most of them, anyway) form lasting bonds with the colorful outsiders, and the rest is history.

Working from a screenplay by Stephen Beresford, director Warchus almost has it too easy, especially with the cast at hand. Up-and-comer Ben Schnetzer plays Mark, the leader of LGSM, and he's as magnetic an actor as I've seen recently (he'll be prominently featured in the upcoming WARCRAFT movie as well). He's just gay enough to make the men of the town uncomfortable and the women feel close to, but butch enough that the men come around to befriending him after a short time. In fact, if there was one complaint I had about the film it's that it effectively de-sexualizes the gay characters to make them easier to be accepted.

The story of PRIDE is actually told through the eyes of a young, still-closeted gay man named Joe (George MacKay), who walks into this situation right as it's taking off. He's far and away the least interesting character in the film, but I think that's somewhat deliberate as he's mostly the observer of these significant events. Far more interesting are supporting characters played by the great Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, Dominic West and Paddy Considine, perhaps the most remarkable character in the whole film, as the miners' representative who simply accepts the kind help of the LGSM without question and asks his fellow townspeople to do the same, even if it makes him less than popular for a time.

PRIDE makes the amateur mistake of creating villains in the town, who just feel manufactured and representative, rather than like real people who might just be afraid of gays. The real bad guy in the piece is the Thatcher administration, who are well represented in the film via archival footage of the prime minister and her lackeys; the film doesn't need caricature antagonists as well. But on the whole, the film brings forth a lot of great message in an entertaining package that will probably win over even the most resistant and cynical audience members. But I'm guessing if you have any desire to see this movie, you don't need any more convincing that cooperation is the best defense against oppression.

-- Steve Prokopy
"Capone"
capone@aintitcool.com
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