Richard Jewell reviews

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Sabin
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Re: Richard Jewell reviews

Post by Sabin »

dws1982 wrote
So apparently Kathy Bates is listed in the Lead Actress category for the SAG Awards, which matters because SAG voters do not get to choose category placements, unlike Oscar voters. I have no idea if the size of her role is borderline Lead/Support, or if she's genuinely supporting and this was just a mistake on WB's part. I know their FYC ads have promoted her as a Supporting Actress.
Huh, I don't think I saw this. I think I would've rated her chances more promisingly had I known this. It's pretty classic nomination fodder but not as deserving of conversation as Paul Walter Hauser or Sam Rockwell, who is certainly more deserving of a nomination for this film than his impersonation in Vice.

This film is underrated. It's far from perfect but it deserved better than to be vilified on the basis of one stupid character (Olivia Wilde/Kathy Scruggs) and for being such a historic box office failure. It's an odd film with a lot of circling points of focus that Eastwood doesn't totally bring together. I'm not convinced he's the right filmmaker for the job. Paul Walter Hauser is excellent. Daniel is right. Had Jonah Hill or a more famous actor been cast, it would've been distracting. Hauser brings the opposite of movie stardom to this role and certainly should've been in the conversation for Best Actor. Clint Eastwood does well when he is following him. Together they paint a portrait of a man with so pure a love of country (and law enforcement) that others find him hard to take seriously and dismiss him as "fitting the profile." But he's also a source of comedy who lives in his own world, and Sam Rockwell finds it exhausting to deal with because he's such an odd character. Clint Eastwood has spent the last decade details portraits of everyday heroism and Paul Walter Hauser's Richard Jewell is an unusual one and a memorable one.

Less successful is Clint Eastwood's work with the FBI or the news media because it's just so broad. It's supposed to feel like out-of-control vultures circling this man almost out of habit. I suspect the film's original attached director, Paul Greengrass, would've done a better job of making this a more successfully paranoid spectacle. As for the film's anti-establishment politics (anti-media, anti-FBI), it's hard to think of how a fair and balanced film about Richard Jewell really plays out. Between this and a de-fanged one, I'm fine with this one. Did Kathy Scruggs deserve better than Olivia Wilde's outlandish reporter? Sure, probably. She's not good but this is easily the most memorable Olivia Wilde performance I can think of. Jon Hamm fares just as bad to be honest. I really enjoy how he subverts his movie star handsomeness but this character is loathsome.

Not totally successful. Tt's stretched out at 2+ hours and there isn't much of a story to tell the more it goes along, but it's interesting in Clint Eastwood's canon and worth seeing for Hauser's performance.

BTW: I thought I saw a major continuity flaw at 01:16:00 when Sam Rockwell goes from not wearing a hat to wearing a hat in the middle of a scene. But upon closer inspection, he puts the hat on in the reflection of the mirror. Not when the camera is trained on him. Which makes it feel like a continuity flaw when it is not. Oh, that Sam Rockwell and his hats.
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Re: Richard Jewell reviews

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This is really two movies in one.

The central story of the earnest security guard who really wants to help but can't keep his mouth shut to his own detriment is a solid one. Paul Walter Hauser is excellent in the role. Sam Rockwell is equally fine as his lawyer and Kathy Bates has her best role in years as Jewell's simple but loving mother who can't understand why the authorities can't see the good in her son.

I tried to watch this with an open mind but the politics that seeps through Eastwood's lens with Jon Hamm's lazy FBI agent and Olivia Wilde's overly aggressive reporter is really too much. If their real-life characters were as truly awful as they are played here, it's difficult to believe that they would have kept their jobs for as long as they did. Only Eastwood could get away with anything so blatantly pro-Trumpian.
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Re: Richard Jewell reviews

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Precious Doll wrote:Can probably scratch Kathy Bates out of contention with this controversy and the films flat box office:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/d ... esponsible
That would be a real shame because Kathy Bates is superb in this and would be a very worthy Best Supporting Actress nominee this year. As is, quite frankly, Paul Walter Hauser. I think he is infinitely more deserving of a spot in the Best Actor lineup than a Robert DeNiro or a Leo DiCaprio. He gives an incredibly affecting performance.

Also, I have to say that this is probably the best performance Olivia Wilde has ever given. In the past, such as in Her, she barely registers. In this she is like almost finally alive and present inside of a character and a role. It's a shame that Eastwood and the screenwriter defamed Scruggs (or however that story is currently being perceived) because the role is the most entertaining Wilde has ever been but she can't bask in the work. Instead she has to defend her part in the movie.
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Re: Richard Jewell reviews

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As with most Eastwood, I'll need a second viewing before I can render a definitive verdict.

It has a lot of really strong stuff--particularly the interactions between Jewell, his mother, and his attorney. The Centennial Park sequence is really solid. The premise in general is really interesting in that it's essentially about a man who very much believes in the goodness of The System whose life is destroyed by that system. Paul Walter Hauser may not have the look of a leading man, but he's excellent here and serves the film so much better than a more known actor like Jonah Hill (who was originally attached) would have. Jewell is portrayed as a bit of a Barney Fife type: difficult to take seriously (by regular visitors to Centennial Park, but also by people working with him), prone to overreaction. In terms of personality, the way he acts, the way he carries himself in general, he registers strongly as someone I could know in real life. Kathy Bates is also really good as his mother (and it had to be some type of clerical error that put her on the Lead ballot at SAG--this is very much a classic supporting turn) with a classic Oscar clip towards the end that's pretty much a homerun. I was actually really glad they didn't portray the mother/son dynamic as the overbearing mother/helpless son--Eastwood (and Ray) never really feel the need to editorialize on the reason that Jewell lives with his mother. Rockwell is really good too--I actually like him more than in either of his Oscar-nominated performances. This character kind of has the classic Eastwood thing that resonates so strongly with me: The character isn't a conventional hero, isn't the nicest guy, but he's very much driven by an offhanded decency. I just wish Eastwood extended that to some of the other characters like he so often does.

For example, the journalist/FBI plot. I'm not going into the politics of it, and I don't agree with the contention that it shows Olivia Wilde's journalist sleeping with Jon Hamm's FBI agent in exchange for information--at least I don't agree entirely. He does say something like "do you think you can fuck information out of me?", and they do appear to leave to have sex after which she has her story, but there does also seem to be some kind of pre-existing relationship there. It's still not good, and I think the movie could've dealt with her getting that information in any number of other ways, but I don't think that plot point has exactly been framed accurately in the media discussion. The bigger issue for me is the way Olivia Wilde's character is a stand-in for the general media attack on Jewell. I haven't read any of Kathy Scruggs' reporting on Richard Jewell, but Atlanta Journal-Constitution's claim--that her reportage (simply that Jewell was being looked at by the FBI as a suspect) was true--was not wrong. Other news outlets took that information and ran with it, but it's not fair to pin the hysteria on her. The movie does try to redeem her by having her discover that Jewell could not have been the bomber, having her relay the information to Hamm (who doesn't care), and having her sympathetically cover Jewell's mother's press conference, but it feels like a too-late stab at redemption. It's still more than Hamm's character gets, whose last line is "I still think your client is guilty as hell".

I'll have more thoughts later.
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Re: Richard Jewell reviews

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Precious Doll wrote:Can probably scratch Kathy Bates out of contention with this controversy and the films flat box office:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/d ... esponsible
Probably, but sometimes these things backfire.
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Re: Richard Jewell reviews

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Can probably scratch Kathy Bates out of contention with this controversy and the films flat box office:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/d ... esponsible
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Re: Richard Jewell reviews

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Mister Tee wrote:
dws1982 wrote:So apparently Kathy Bates is listed in the Lead Actress category for the SAG Awards, which matters because SAG voters do not get to choose category placements, unlike Oscar voters. I have no idea if the size of her role is borderline Lead/Support, or if she's genuinely supporting and this was just a mistake on WB's part. I know their FYC ads have promoted her as a Supporting Actress.
Honestly, I don't think anyone's ever explained how SAG decides which categories performances get placed in. Is it a studio decision, or a SAG committee's? Does anyone know?
I seem to remember reading long ago, when, in consecutive years, Benicio Del Toro and Jennifer Connelly got Lead SAG nominations en route to Supporting Oscar wins that the studios had decided to place them in Lead for SAG. But that's a nearly twenty year-old memory, and I don't have any idea where I read it--whether it was actually from someone in a position to know, or whether it was just speculation on an older version of this board.
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Re: Richard Jewell reviews

Post by Mister Tee »

dws1982 wrote:So apparently Kathy Bates is listed in the Lead Actress category for the SAG Awards, which matters because SAG voters do not get to choose category placements, unlike Oscar voters. I have no idea if the size of her role is borderline Lead/Support, or if she's genuinely supporting and this was just a mistake on WB's part. I know their FYC ads have promoted her as a Supporting Actress.
I posted about this over at The Film Experience. This happened to Meryl Streep back in 2002 -- her Adaptation performance was listed as lead on the SAG ballot, despite it being considered supporting everywhere else (including the Globes, where she won that category). It was even odder, because she had a lead role in The Hours, which was also listed on SAG's ballot.

The upshot: she wasn't nominated for either. But of course she made the Oscar ballot in support, so it didn't seem to have any lasting effect. You could make the case that, back then, when the Oscars were still being awarded in late March, there was more time to clear up any ambiguity like this, while now, with a tight deadline -- tighter still this year: nominations January 13th -- any glitch could be fatal. We'll have to see.

Honestly, I don't think anyone's ever explained how SAG decides which categories performances get placed in. Is it a studio decision, or a SAG committee's? Does anyone know?
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Re: Richard Jewell reviews

Post by dws1982 »

So apparently Kathy Bates is listed in the Lead Actress category for the SAG Awards, which matters because SAG voters do not get to choose category placements, unlike Oscar voters. I have no idea if the size of her role is borderline Lead/Support, or if she's genuinely supporting and this was just a mistake on WB's part. I know their FYC ads have promoted her as a Supporting Actress.
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Re: Richard Jewell reviews

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I found the Richard Jewell trailer to be very compelling and had high hopes for it (which seem to be validated by positive initial reactions which are now being reported after a recent screening). I also think the story of a regular Joe who is put on a pedestal by the media and then hastily thrown into the garbage once public sentiment turns is very au courant for the moment we’re in as a society right now.

Paul Walter Hauser, Sam Rockwell, and Kathy Bates are all now being discussed as “in the mix” now for nominations as well as the film itself.
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Re: Richard Jewell reviews

Post by Greg »

Per Wikipedia, filming began on June 24. So, production and post-production took only 3 months.
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Richard Jewell reviews

Post by Sabin »

No reviews but a trailer.

Clint Eastwood might not quite be on the hot streak he was fifteen years ago but he's still swinging. I'd wager that if Sully was released a little bit later in the year, it might have factored into a few more races than it did (Picture, Actor, Screenplay, and Sound Mixing don't see like a far-off stretch).

What we know is that it's a big ensemble piece with Sam Rockwell, Jon Hamm, Kathy Bates, and Olivia Wilde. Billy Ray is writing it. He's a strong writer who seems like a very good fit for Clint Eastwood. It follows themes of the average American at odds with corrupt establishment. At this point, Paul Walter Hauser seems like an incredibly limited actor playing remarkably dim-witted people (I, Tonya, BlacKkKlansman) but it's hard to argue that he's seems perfectly cast as a man with as limited understanding of what's going on as Richard Jewell.

Could be good.
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