Hey, folks. Capone in Chicago here, having just concluded Day One of my first Ebertfest experience. With a smaller fest like this one, the opportunities to meet some of the filmmakers is fairly limitless. I got to chat briefly with writer-director Ramin Bahrami (MAN PUSH CART; GOODBYE SOLO), whose film CHOP SHOP was screened here. Perhaps more remarkable was getting to meet the "stars" of the life-altering documentary TROUBLE THE WATER, Kimberly Rivers Roberts and her husband Scott Roberts. The film also happened to premiere on HBO last night, and Rivers footage from inside the heart of Hurricane Katrina will make you experience that event in a way no other documentary could. I'm about to head down to be a part of a critics panel called "Film Criticism and the Internet," and I'm not really sure if the online critics on the panel will be looked at as the enemy or the Second Coming...perhaps somewhere in between. Anyway, on with this week's reviews...

I had the great pleasure of meeting Robert Downey Jr. a little over a year ago, just before his world exploded. IRON MAN was still more than two months from hitting theaters, and the world at large barely knew what TROPIC THUNDER was, let alone could its inhabitants contemplate that Downey would get an Oscar nomination for performing in blackface. And while we did talk about those two films a great deal, the movie that he really wanted to discuss was the one he has just finished shooting with ATONEMENT director Joe Wright, a film called THE SOLOIST. I remember like it was minutes ago Downey locking eyes with me to tell me how profoundly the experience of making that film was to him and co-star Jaime Foxx, how they had shot large portions of the movie in and among the homeless community in Los Angeles. I remember him relaying to me how impressed with Foxx he was and how deep in his soul his comrade had reached to pull out his portrayal of Nathaniel Ayers, a former Julliard student now living on the streets. The way he described the film was so profoundly moving that he had convinced me that he would not only own the summer of 2008, but probably the awards season as well (the film was originally slated for a fall release).

I don't remember exactly when I first saw the trailer for THE SOLOIST, but I do recall that it was after I saw TROPIC THUNDER and that my heart kind of sunk that day. I wasn't concerned because Downey was playing do-gooder L.A. Times reporter Steve Lopez (the film is based on his book), or even because the movie looked bad. No, the reason I died a little death that day had more to do with my first thought after seeing the trailer all the way through: "Wow, look at Jaime Foxx going full retard."

The strangest part of finally seeing THE SOLOIST was that everything Downey told me is right there on his face, up there on the screen. His interactions with homeless men and women are fascinating, and Foxx's complete dedication to this character as a part of that world is undeniable. Somewhere in these facts is a truly wonderful story, but this movie does not get it right. Wright consistently and without mercy undercuts any credibility his actors and his source material have given him by front-loading his movie with painfully, in-your-face messages and stylistic choices that bury some solid dialogue in its attempts to get inside Nathaniel's troubled mind. For example, he does things with his soundscape with overlapping voices, fading in and out as if what they're saying isn't as important as the fact that they are floating around in Nathaniel's brain. But the problem is sometimes what the voices are saying is important and offer clues to the birth of his mental troubles. We get a few flashbacks to his childhood and time at Julliard, but those moments are pretty standard-issue, mental illness, disease of the week scenes.

Much like the recent STATE OF PLAY, THE SOLOIST spends a bit of time contemplating the sickly state of newspapers in America, but the most analysis we really get is Downey's editor and ex-wife, played by Catherine Keener, saying something about noticing the trend of "our stock price goes down, and we lose reporters we can't afford to lose." The newsroom banter seems like forced hip-speak, although Downey sells it as best he can. I also didn't buy that for a guy who seem fairly concerned about losing his job, he spent a shitload of time out of the office hanging out with Sebastian, the central figure in a series of articles about the homeless that won Lopez recognition and many awards. But there are these other moments that really rang false for me involving Foxx listening to Beethoven, Sebastian's favorite artist. Instead of just letting us watch the look of wonder come over Foxx's face (the man can actually act, you may know), Wright decides to treat us to a light show of what he thinks Sebastian is seeing when he closes his eyes to listen to music. Um, why? Even watching Downey watching Foxx was far more compelling than any of these ridiculous bells and whistles and fireworks.

THE SOLOIST isn't a terrible film or painful to sit through, but its meandering ways make the whole film seem intellectually out of focus. More than anything, I was disappointed. Wright managed to pull these two gifted actors together into this movie and squandered what that moment in time that could have been. For all of its gravitas, good intentions and a handful of great scenes, THE SOLOIST still ends up feeling hollow and pointless--not offensive, but certainly not the best use of your movie-going time on Earth.

-- Capone
capone@aintitcoolmail.com