Earn This

Part 3 of our Aaron Sorkin exploration…

Rating: 3 and a half stars (out of 4)

The opening sequence of The American President is so good, it would be enough to carry the rest of a mediocre film into watchable status.  Thankfully, though, it doesn’t represent the extent of the pleasures here, in the film that eventually pushed Aaron Sorkin to write a little show called “The West Wing.”  Here (with subsequent partners Martin Sheen and Joshua Malina on hand as side characters), he focuses his attention not on the president’s inner circle but on the man himself—and one key woman.

President Andrew Shepard (Michael Douglas), recently widowed, faces the prospect of attending a state dinner alone.  Meanwhile, a liberal environmentalist group has hired a gun-ho lobbyist named Sydney Ellen Wade (Annette Bening) to press the White House to campaign for a bill aggressively fighting fossil fuel emissions.  When the president walks in on a meeting where Sydney blasts him, he’s kind of intrigued, intrigued at her passion and pluck and lack of political correctness.  He asks her to be his date to the state dinner.

It’s hard to imagine a sitting president ‘dating,’ so to speak, and Sorkin milks the hesitancy that the public would likely feel.  Shepard wants nothing of it; when asked by aides to give them something to say about “the Sydney issue,” he responds that there’d better be something wrong in Australia.  By creating opposition forces (in this case, Republicans) who attempt to discredit Shepard with character attacks and defame Wade’s name, Sorkin adroitly conveys his message regarding media and politics.  As one character notes, would FDR ever have been elected, in a wheelchair, if he’d had to campaign in front of a television?  It’s doubtful, and other anachronistic historical situations (such as political affairs that reporters used to keep quiet) are not mentioned—but they’re implied and understood nonetheless.

What’s perhaps most notable, on first blush, in The American President, is the remarkable chemistry between Bening and Douglas—the acting here is never short of exemplary.  Think of the scene in the ‘dish room’; before the two share their abbreviated first kiss, Bening conveys wonderment, little-girl embarrassment, and doubt with nary a word.  Likewise, Douglas, who’s never been one of my favorite actors, gives in my mind his finest career performance, drenching his character in realism and warmth.  Like Bening, he never overplays the moment—not the laughs, not when he chides aides, not when his presidential challenger (Richard Dreyfuss) begins spreading lies.  These are remarkably controlled performances.

The acting is matched by the writing, with scenes that slide between above-average and exceptional.  The aforementioned opening scene displays rapid-fire walk-and-talks that would become a Sorkin trademark in “West Wing,” but, good as they are, I was struck by something else.  Note the way we become aware of the president’s status as a widower: his press secretary (Anna Deavere Smith, the NSA in “WW”) casually mentioning that they can’t parade their boss around as the ‘lonely widow.’  The room goes quiet for a moment before she apologizes to his instant forgiveness.  A lesser movie would have beaten us over the head with this information; Shepard might have stared mournfully at a photograph of a woman on his desk, or his daughter might have melodramatically imparted the news.  Sorkin, though, integrates it seamlessly into the free-flowing scene, and the exchange reveals several details about the characters, including the president’s informal relationship with his staff and his lack of pretension.

Likewise, the subplots involving the political battles being fought by the staff—over gun control and environmental regulations—are skillfully handled.  Not every scene is exceptional, but the film moves with the kind of supremely entertaining smoothness that far, far too films achieve (or, at times, seem to aspire to).  Every exchange bristles with some kind of conflict, and Sorkin includes character-defining situations for all the key players; for example, an early scene where Shepard plays pool with his chief of staff (Sheen) feels even more integrated in the story after the second such scene.  The president, frustrated over the disapproval of his relationship with Sydney, wonders why Sheen always liked to give advice but never wanted to run for anything himself, never wanted to put himself out there.  If I did, he replies, “you’d be the most popular history professor at the University of Wisconsin.”  It’s a devastating line, though one that doesn’t ruin Sheen’s character because we understand that it comes, partly, from the staff’s exasperation with the president’s passivity.

Director Rob Reiner (A Few Good Men) makes good decisions himself (major props for never cutting back to shocked looks from Sydney’s sister during her first phone call with Shepard), but the most credit has to go to the actors and Sorkin.  He’s never afraid to ask the arresting questions, the ones on everyone’s mind that nevertheless sometimes go unsaid.  Early on, Sydney’s boss (John Mahoney) bluntly inquires, “Are you sleeping with him?”  And at the end of the aforementioned pool scene, the president ponders, “If Mary hadn’t died three years ago, would we have won?”  The ironic recognition that he might have won his first election with help from that event but now is vulnerable to character attacks just completes Sorkin’s critique of modern politics.  Few critiques, however, can legitimately be leveled here.

Our next Aaron Sorkin exploration…

Rating: 2 stars (out of 4)

The trailer for Charlie Wilson’s War and its IMDB page promise two very different movies.  The latter will remind you of the tremendous amount of talent that has been gathered in front of and behind the camera, but the former promises only a breezy, lazy film about a potentially weighty topic.  Believe the trailer.

War, based off George Crile’s book of the same name, chronicles Congressman Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks), a Playboy representing a district in Texas that doesn’t want anything, and his covert funding of Afghans after the invasion of the Soviets in 1979.  Director Mike Nichols and writer Aaron Sorkin strive for comedy, not drama, though, but it strangely all feels muted.  I would have preferred the film to not be so light-hearted, but that would have been easier to take if it was funnier.  War is borderline-competent, but hardly inspiring.

The cause of the Afghans is brought to Charlie’s attention by Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts), who, apparently, has enough time on her hands to be concerned about such things.  No other motivation is provided for her.  Charlie, it turns out, sits in a powerful position in Congress, and with one phone call he can double the U.S. budget for Afghanistan.  Joanne wants more, though, and so before long he’s on a plane to Pakistan and walking through refugee camps, which finally gets his attention.  The final player is Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a CIA operative who seems permanently miscast in his role (Gust, not Philip).

I mentioned before that a fair amount of talent was assembled for this flick—a jaw-dropping amount, really, when you think about it.  Even the cinematographer and composer have been nominated for Oscars, and when you line up Hanks, Roberts, and Hoffman with Nichols (Closer) and Sorkin, you expect greatness.  Sadly, everyone here has been better, especially Sorkin, whose screenplay and storyline don’t measure up to his other pronounced successes, both in film (The American President, A Few Good Men) and television (“The West Wing” and “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip”).  There are chuckles to be had, and there’s nothing embarrassing, but it’s not nearly as funny as I expected, and Sorkin removes almost altogether the dramatic undercurrent that gave his other work heft.  Likewise, Hanks, Roberts, and Hoffman are all fine, but they’ve done better work—not coincidentally, I imagine, because they’ve been pushed harder elsewhere.

Since the roles are basically cut-outs, the stars were just included for box office receipts and, with the possible exception of Hoffman, could have been played by just about anyone.  Roberts’s blatantly gratuitous bikini shot falls under the same money-seeking category; Nichols doesn’t even bother to be subtle about that or try to justify it with a reason.

War moves forward reasonably, and there’s a story beneath the sheen, but the ending is far from dramatic—though, I suppose, the film isn’t supposed to be.  It’s all here, as shown faithfully by the trailer.  The first scene shows us Wilson in a hot tub with naked women and drugs, and within about 60 seconds, his attention is drawn to a television report about the war in Afghanistan.  The rest of the film plays out just the way you’d expect it to, replete with belly dancers, assistants who look like models (including Amy Adams, who’s much too gorgeous to be relegated to such a small role), and heavy liquor served at ten AM.  It’s all a bit act, but the funniest parts (such as an exchange between Hanks and Hoffman about U.S. policy in Afghanistan) were already shown in the trailer.  It just doesn’t seem like the kind of movie that would have taken very long to make; and before you know it, it’s done, clocking in at just over an hour and a half long.

Curiously, at the very end of the film, perhaps in an attempt to place Charlie’s actions into context, Nichols and Sorkin give us a hint about the unintended consequences of Charlie’s actions, and suggests where we went wrong.  The expression on Hanks’s face at his recognition ceremony—and, of course, the postscript—implies dissatisfaction with what he did.  Hey, Aaron—there’s the drama.  That’s what I wish this film had explored.

With the much-anticipated The Social Network dropping in theaters this Friday, I thought it appropriate to look back on the career of the inimitable writer Aaron Sorkin.  A comprehensive piece will be arriving later this week, but for now, let’s review a few of his most prominent films.

Rating: 3 stars (out of 4)

A Few Good Men is one of those movies, like Remember the Titans, that runs so smoothly on the strength of a well-written script and solid acting that you don’t realize in retrospect how standard its structure is.  It is immensely enjoyable and can be watched a few times without losing its luster, so long as you don’t expect it to change the world.  It works better than a movie like Titans because it doesn’t concern such a retread theme and because the writing is stronger.

At the beginning of the movie, two Marines, Pfc. Louden Downey and Lance Cpl. Harold Dawson (James Marshall and Wolfgang Bodison) enter the barracks of Pfc. William Santiago, stationed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and assault him.  Hours later he is pronounced dead, presumably from poison that was on a rag stuffed down his mouth.  Santiago had recently petitioned base commander Nathan Jessup (Jack Nicholson) for a transfer off the base; for this, he was willing to rat out Dawson for illegally firing a round across the fence line into Cuba.

The question the Navy doesn’t want discovered is whether the two Marines were sent to Santiago’s room on someone’s orders, to perform a “code red,” an informal procedure of punishing a wayward member of a platoon.  In the hopes that the case is buried, they assign defense of the Marines to a young, carefree lawyer, Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise), who lives in the shadow of his late, extremely successful father and has a track record for plea bargains.  Lieutenant Commander Joanne Galloway (Demi Moore), however, is determined to go deeper, and she refuses to let Kaffee give up on the case.

The back-story emerges, slowly, which I like, and the blame frequently shifts parties.  Do we blame the Marines for their actions?  Santiago for ignoring the proper chain of command in selling out a peer?  Jessup, who was in charge of everyone involved?  Or what about his right-hand man, who may have delivered his order to attack Santiago?  Did Santiago even die as a result of the attack or because of a pre-existing condition?  Even at the end, there is no definitive answer: everyone had a hand in the incident, and you are left to determine the proportions of guilt for yourself.

Predictability comes, though, in the film’s procedure.  The bulk of the time is spent either in the courtroom or in Daniel’s apartment, where he and Joanne and assistant counsel Sam Weinberg (Kevin Pollak) prepare the defense.  Unfortunately, I have to agree with Roger Ebert, who noted that the movie makes its ending even more predictable because it telegraphs it: Daniel announces ahead of time what their strategy is for questioning Jessup on the stand.  The climactic Cruise vs. Nicholson showdown, riveting already, could have been even better if we didn’t know exactly what was coming.  Sadly, as Ebert noted, “We are not allowed the pleasure of discovering Cruise’s strategy for ourselves, and Nicholson’s behavior seems scripted and inevitable, and is robbed of shock value.”

I don’t share all of Ebert’s negativity about the film, though, thanks to its other merits, notably its good pacing and skillful handling of the rising action.  Sharp writing abounds (no surprise given that Aaron Sorkin wrote the screenplay based on his own play).  When Joanne tells Daniel he isn’t right for the job, he says, “You don’t know me.  Normally it would take someone hours to discover I’m not fit for the defense.”  And Nicholson’s concluding monologue on the stand, though foreshadowed too explicitly, is positively electric.

Some small details work, while some don’t.  The dead father that Cruise’s character has to live up to has been around the block a lot, but it’s not overplayed and does add depth.  The movie wins points with me for not having Daniel and Joanne character become attached romantically, which seemed all-too-obvious thanks to their good looks and rocky beginning.  Finally, a couple of the courtroom moments seemed a little fake in that they would never stand in real life, but that’s relatively insignificant.

The acting is reliable on all fronts—down to Kevin Bacon as the lead attorney for the prosecution, but most especially the lead actors.  Cruise’s charismatic-when-he-wants-to be Daniel who discovers the joy in doing the right thing, and Nicholson’s widely-praised Jessup sneers and snarls and cuts through his words with a heartless intensity that you can feel from your living room.

A Few Good Men doesn’t break any new ground, but it’s a great yarn and asks an important question: When, if ever, can your conscience allow you to override orders from a superior as a member of the United States military?  Seeing this movie might cause you to think about that a little deeper.

Rating: 3 stars (out of 4)

Is The Town ‘Heat meets The Departed,’ as the ads portray?  No—it’s better.  Is it Gone Baby Gone, Ben Affleck’s scintillating first directorial effort?  Not quite, although comparing anything with a Dennis Lehane adaptation (hello, Mystic River and Shutter Island) is unfair.  Should it put the final nail in the coffin of the notion, put forth on the basis of some wooden performances, Affleck has no cinematic talent?  One can only hope.

As in Gone, Affleck makes a gritty side of Boston an integral character in his story.  This time it’s the suburb of Charlestown, which supposedly endures the most bank robberies, per capita, of any town in the country.  But this is no moral drag—our protagonists, led by Affleck’s Doug MacRay—are doing the pilfering.  See that security guard over there, the one who’s 5’10”, 225?  “He’s about to get robbed.”

In the film’s opening robbery, MacRay’s crew microwaves security tapes, checks for fake rolls of bills, and persuades the bank manager named Claire (Rebecca Hall) to open the vault—all neat touches that keep one’s interest amidst the usual “Get down on the floor!” stuff. (Are you listening, Inside Man?) But when Jim (Jeremy Renner) abducts said bank manager and lets her go with a vow of silence, Doug realizes he has a problem.  Fearing Jim’s impulse control, he agrees to supervise and befriend her to stay abreast of what she’s thinking, and something resembling a romance blossoms between the two.

Other subplots include the FBI’s efforts (led by Jon Hamm, from TV’s “Mad Men”) to track down these serial robbers and the friction between Doug and Jim over their past and future.  The latter represents the most interesting conflict in the movie, making it a bit frustrating that it’s not developed more, especially alongside the other, more conventional threads.  The thrills of The Town are its characters, much more nuanced and shaded than the ones in most crime dramas (cough, Heat).  Jim is the hot-wire act of the group, the one who can’t resist pounding one of his hostages to a pulp or arrogantly taking off his hockey mask during an attack on a couple neighborhood thugs.  Renner is excellent at making him a tightly-coiled, twitchy little punk; when he surprises Doug and Claire at a café, his menacing insouciance clash perfectly with Doug’s nervousness and Claire’s befuddlement.

When Doug declares that he wants to flee Boston, Jim reminds him that he served 9 years in jail in order to keep him alive.  But that’s not enough for Doug, who doesn’t want to stay in the same place he and his cronies have lived their whole lives; with Claire, hopefully, he’ll get away from the FBI, from his white-trash childhood flame, Jim’s sister (Blake Lively, as up-and-down as she is in “Gossip Girl”), from memories of his imprisoned father (Chris Cooper, predictably excellent), from streets that he can’t walk down without fear of being attacked for one reason or another.

As such, The Town is more character-driven than the previews would suggest, and it thankfully provides its talented ensemble cast moments to shine (as so many movies don’t).  I wouldn’t have minded more Cooper, as always, but in addition to him, Pete Postlethwaite (florist-by-day, kingpin-by-night), Hall, and Renner all leave impressions.  Even Affleck himself isn’t half-bad, suggesting depth in his character’s indecision over his profession and his loyalty to his old friends versus his new one.

And as director, Affleck imparts a reassuring sense of pacing, a calming sense of quietude, a remarkable command of tone.  He uses numerous establishing shots of the neighborhood, whether from overhead or street-level, of buildings about to be inhabited, reminding us that the sense of place defines everyone here.  The chase scenes all emphasize the narrow, seemingly dead-end streets of Charlestown, features that keep said scenes fresh and propulsive; they’re not Bourne-style, uber-crisp chases, but they’re not supposed to be—just like the robbers, Affleck is thoughtful and skilled, but intentionally rough around the edges.  Even those distorted nun masks remain in memory, demonstrating that movies can still startle people, if they know where to look.

The Town is imperfect enough that I’ll have to see it again to truly understand its place with other solid films.  The FBI’s work is standard fare, and there’s a hint of flab in the ending after Doug’s crew leaves the location of their final caper, but Affleck (co-writer of the adaptation of the script, based on a novel) redeems it with his character’s final phone call to Claire.  Indeed, I was greatly relieved that the ending avoids natural pitfalls, from minor to potentially devastating.  I love when I can foresee a movie’s last line and hope I’m right, and that’s exactly what happens here.  My favorite dialogue, though, comes when Jim and Doug prepare one final escape from danger.  “See you in Florida,” the latter says, to which Jim replies, “See you when you get back.”

Yeah…maybe.

“Silence is the enemy.”

At some point on this past August 11^th, at Jiffy Lube Pavilion in Virginia, it all went away.  At some indefinable moment, while realizing that time had seemed to stop as Green Day obliterated tedium on their way through a legendary, two-hour-and-45-minute show, while observing that Billie Joe Armstrong is a frontman in ways that few are today, while deducing that this band had become much more expansive and adventurous than their critics would admit, all of the Green Day hate that I used to store up in my head had drifted away.  It had been eradicated by the firework-propelled opening of the title track to their last album, by the seamless transition from songs written 16 years ago to ones written less than 16 months ago, and by the connection and genuine love felt from the audience to its entertainers.  There was nothing left but admiration.

In my formative music years, I had to deal with an internal Green Day disapproval meter that pointed to red less because of actual knowledge than from some nebulous perception that they were too popular.  I wasn’t enamored with many of their songs that enjoyed radio love, and so, outside of “Basket Case,” I gave their music little attention.  When the trio teamed up with U2 to re-make “The Saints are Coming” for the New Orleans Saints in preparation for the 2006 NFL season, I loathed the pairing.

Shortly after that, I felt inexorably drawn towards something I had tried to resist.  “Saints” turned out better than I expected, but, mostly, Fugazi happened.  I wore out their discography in that fall of ’06 (my freshman year of college), and Dookie was next in my iTunes library.  Every time I got to the end of The Argument, I would prepare myself to stop the music…until I heard “I declare I don’t care no more / I’m burning up and out and growing bored,” heard the band start running, and suddenly the pause button was the furthest thing from my mind.  The revolution was underway, propelled by the inescapable fact that over a half-dozen songs off that album had implanted themselves in my mind without conscious intention—indeed, probably despite some conscious intention.

And so, for much of college, my interest in Green Day slowly expanded, albeit reined in by the cognitive dissonance engendered by that fall and the knowledge of my earlier distaste.  As such, it took until the last 12 months to see them as more than a one-album band.

When 21^st Century Breakdown was released last May, I was compelled to listen only because a friend played it for me.  My initial thought concerned my inability to get “Know Your Enemy” out of my head after just two listens, and then I observed other details about the album that didn’t jibe with Green Day stereotypes—that songs were often broken down into sections with disparate sounds, that the band was incorporating elements from all sorts of musical genres—and some that should always have been apparent—namely, that Billie Joe has one of the most underappreciated gifts for melody of our time.

Rolling Stone put it well in their review of Breakdown: “What’s more bizarre: the fact that they sound so ambitious and audacious on their eighth album, or the fact that they even made an eighth album?”  And therein lies Green Day’s walking contradiction; punk bands simply don’t last as long as they have.  They don’t evolve the way they have.  Dookie dropped just weeks before Kurt Cobain killed himself; what other bands of their genre are still relevant?

And a large part of Green Day’s evolution has been their thematic interest.  American Idiot shocked everyone; the joke went something like, ‘Wow, things are so bad, even Green Day are writing protest songs.’  Yet, paradoxically, that album was the most ‘punk’ of their career.  And the rants against the Bush administration and 2004’s political climate enlivened critics and fans alike, cultivating a career renaissance that happened even without a sharp decline.  Without a massive change in sound or a fall from grace, their seventh album redefined their career, a more impressive feat than you’d imagine.

In fact, Idiot became so recognizable that I longed for more people to go back and listen to their earlier work, to understand that 2004 wasn’t the first good year of their lives.  And before this month’s concert, I hadn’t even bought the album, my youthful resistance still holding a bit of ground.  But the show did many remarkable things, not least of which was converting me to Idiot.  In the last couple weeks, I’ve determined it’s indispensable to own alongside Breakdown, both because the latter naturally follows the former and also simply because the former is stellar.

Both these albums’ strengths were amplified live; Green Day and Billie Joe, now at least, convince you that they take themselves and their music seriously.  In an age of insouciance and apathy, bands that do so stand out; this is a substantial reason why the Arcade Fire are the new media darling.  Green Day’s contradiction can be summed up as such: they give a shit—about the world around them, with or without Bush in office—and don’t give a shit—about people’s expectations for them, about their genre’s constraints, about their history.  I mean…9-minute, 5-part suites?  Over a minute of quiet piano slowly introducing songs?

The show also furthered a key point of Breakdown—how far the band has progressed from their punk roots (in all ways except their politics).  The genre’s ideology emphasizes minimalism; it would never approve of the elaborate, sweeping show GD put on, not the lengthy interludes during songs or the flames bursting forth during the loudest moments of the most impassioned numbers.  Billie Joe channeled the spirit of all great frontmen by running around like a controlled drunk, always emphasizing inclusivity.  Someone threw me a lei?  Sure, I’ll put it on.  Want one fan on stage?  Why not 30?  It all worked, splendidly, and it proved to be done by a band living on its own terms.

Over the course of the nearly 3 hours, GD pulled, by my count, four tracks from Breakdown (the singles: title track, “Enemy,” “East Jesus Nowhere,” “21 Guns”), several from Idiot, occasional quirky deep cuts like “King for a Day,” and, of course, juicy Dookie standouts.  I would have loved me some “Nice Guys Finish Last” or “The Static Age,” but the band threw out more than a few bones, namely “She” and Warning’s “Minority.”  Would I have preferred one or two additional songs to be played in lieu of some of the mid-song interludes?  Perhaps, but it’s hard to complain about anything in the presence of such energy, such ferocity, such charisma.  GD have entrenched themselves as a peak live band of our time, possessing the ability to transport audience members into another world, the way great films and books do.

Really, though, a look back on the band’s discography reveals a few patterns that might have clued us in to their potential longevity.  The music and lyrics are consistently smarter than one would imagine, every song managing to sustain independence from its brothers while yet maintaining propulsive drive. (Dookie, for example, is one of the great energizing albums out there, but it has a heart and soul.) Throughout their career, they’ve written indelible breakneck rockers (“Burnout,” “Nice Guys,” “Idiot,” “Holiday”), effortlessly smooth power ballads (“Having a Blast,” “Redundant,” Worry Rock”), and then occasionally pulled back for change-of-pace slow-burners (“Good Riddance,” obviously, plus “Are We the Waiting”; “Last Night on Earth” still blows, however).  Their use of tension and release, especially on “Jesus of Suburbia” and “Letterbomb,” is masterful.  Except for the underrated Warning, their albums are typically too long, over-loaded with trimmable filler, but that’s sort of the point: with nothing to lose and nothing to prove, they always seem to be tossing off ideas just to see what sticks.

Billie Joe’s lyrics, from 1994 until now, are stronger than casual critics will give him credit for (Dookie wrings humor and mischievousness out of nothing, and the last two have many quotable lines), and his gift for hooks is borderline criminal (“Jesus” reins in this category, possessing enough hooks for about 7 songs; see also “Basket Case,” “Coming Clean,” “Scattered,” “Church on Sunday,” “Brat”).  But it was only Breakdown that allowed me to see all of this, that allowed me to go back and listen to everything that came before, to realize that there was much more there than meets the eye.  That album’s staying power, frankly, stunned me; but it shouldn’t have, not with its diversity, smooth flow, and abundant creativity, hooks, color, and intelligence.

They’ve just never hit these peaks before—the epic bridges of “Static Age,” the second “Gloria,” “21 Guns”; the release when Billie Joe cries, “My generation is zero / I never made it as a working-class hero!”; the titanic drum lead-in back to the final chorus of “Enemy”; the passionate, inimitable Green Day gallop of the first “Gloria,” “Christian’s Inferno,” and “American Eulogy.”

On Nimrod’s “Worry Rock,” they declared, “Promise me no dead-end streets / And I’ll guarantee we’ll have the road.”  Well, Billie Joe, you should never fret about not having that road.

Rating: 4 stars (out of 4)

Earlier this year, Leonardo DiCaprio teamed up with Martin Scorsese for the astonishing Shutter Island, a profoundly disturbing foray into the mind of someone who didn’t always know what was real.  Now, a few months later, he’s paired himself with Christopher Nolan for Inception, a profoundly dizzying foray into dreams and reality.  From the guilt-ridden memories of a dead wife down to the nature of illusion and perception, Inception shares more than a few similarities with Shutter, and, while Inception is a very different type of film, the quality and impact are very nearly the same—which is extraordinary praise.  All told, DiCaprio has put together one of the best years for an actor in the past decade.

Inception’s plot, enveloped in secrecy as hype mounted before its July 2010 release, seemed labyrinthine when the teasers and trailers were leaked, and watching it once hardly clears everything up.  To sum up as much is necessary: Cobb (Leo) practices a form of theft called extraction, whereby he breaks into a person’s mind, invading their dreams to exploit their subconscious at a time when its defenses are lowered.  He’s recruited by a wealthy businessman named Saito (Ken Watanabe) for a more dangerous, more captivating, idea: “if you can steal an idea from someone’s mind, why can’t you plan one there?”

Thus, the “Inception” of the title represents planting an idea in someone’s mind, while he dreams, that is subsequently believed to be self-conceived.  A fascinating concept, to be sure, and it’s one that, the film implies, Cobb has been toying with for years.  He’s most attracted to Saito’s offer, however, because he’s promised the ability to return to America, something that hasn’t been possible since the death of Cobb’s wife Mal (Marion Cotillard).  So he enlists long-time associate Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), an architect named Ariadne (Ellen Page), and other merry men, much like Danny Ocean assembled his team of thieves.

Soon, Cobb and his team are hurtling themselves into dreams within dreams within dreams; before seeing this movie, I already thought that ‘false awakenings’ were perhaps the creepiest thing I could contemplate, and here, the subject would have to ‘wake up’ 3 times to actually return to reality.  And in the process, Nolan creates some of the most astounding, awe-inspiring visual sights I’ve ever seen: a Parisian city folding over on top of itself like an Origami creation; water bursting through the sides of a building in a dream as a person is dropped into a bathtub; a freight train barreling down a highway, tossing aside cars as though they’re flies; structures that disintegrate, piece by piece, into the ocean; and, above all, that zero-gravity fight scene that has left me and everyone else jaw-dropped.  It simply has to be seen to be believed, probably should have been longer, and—along with everything else—should ensure that Nolan has all of the technical and visual Oscars locked up for 2010.

The idea that Cobb’s team are instructed to plant concerns the heir of a wealthy corporation (Cillian Murphy) dissolving his father’s empire, but Inception truly advances the motif of family devastation and reconciliation through Cobb, in his motivations for accepting the job and his own subconscious guilt that has been dogging his work.  Nolan, who spent 10 years working on the script, drives the plot forward with a remarkable amount of efficiency and stability—upon subsequent viewings, the film feels more coherent, not less, and everything just seems to fall into place precisely where it should.  The notion of dreaming, of invading someone else’s mind, of challenging the idea that everything that occurs inside our head is ours and ours alone, faces stricter and stricter tests as the film progresses.  And, simultaneously, Nolan ratchets up the action as the climax approaches, helping obliterate the potential torpor that could be engendered by a two-and-a-half hour running time.

I won’t get too bogged down in discussing theories and deciphering plot details; that’s not the subject of a movie review.  But I’ll say a few things to indicate how much I’m fascinated by this discussion.  It’s critical to note that it seems that Nolan, in the world he created, did not actually give us/his characters a way to differentiate dreams from reality—only to differentiate being in someone else’s dream or not.  Unless that top was a special type of totem (which I haven’t ruled out), it can’t differentiate reality from a person’s own dreams.  Because of that, and because the top may not have been Cobb’s actual totem (since it was his wife’s), the final shot—fascinating as it is, theoretically—is more a red herring than anything else.

I’ll say that I’m immensely intrigued by the scene where Cobb tests out his chemist’s (Dileep Rao) sedative, wakes up and tries to spin the top, and doesn’t actually do so—was he still in a dream from that point onward?  And I’m essentially convinced that the last scene does not represent ‘reality’…a position that, of course, hardly limits the number of possibilities of what did happen.

At first, I thought that Inception, though great, had a bit of an inherent ceiling built into it, since it was more of an action-packed thriller than an intense psychological study (compare with the superior Shutter).  And several reviewers noted that it resonated more strongly on an intellectual and visceral than an emotional level, and that may be true.  But, upon further reflection, I realized that I was fascinated by the notions that Nolan floats: that, once it takes hold, an idea can rarely be eradicated or changed within someone’s mind; that we have no way of knowing whether our world is real or not (Descartes’s “Dream Argument” that also informed Shutter) and, critically, that it doesn’t matter whether that top was about to fall over or not.

That is where Inception truly hits me like a ton of bricks; the more I’ve debated it with people afterwards, the more I’ve come to accept a very similar theme to Shutter.  We wonder what was real, and what was just in Leo’s head—and we debate theories proposing that everything we saw was a dream, or that someone was performing inception on him—and we decide that the distinction doesn’t matter.  Scorsese’s film emphasized the blur between sanity and insanity; here, the blur between dreams and reality is used to tell us that what’s ‘all in our heads’ can be real.  In Cobb’s mind, he had resolved his guilt, had moved his way past the stress that was infesting his life, had forgiven himself to the point where he could see his children.  His turning away from the totem at the end indicates that he doesn’t particularly care, that he shares a philosophy put forth about halfway through the film, a line that when I first heard I immediately stored in my brain as a potential movie theme: “Their dreams have become reality; who are you to say otherwise?”

So, yes, there are a couple tiny flaws within Inception; I still wonder if it could have been more philosophical, but, as I have to tell myself, not every great movie has to be brooding and contemplative.  Inception has it—that indefinable trait that enables it to still floor you, still leave you drained and tired, still make you want to remain planted in your seat during the credits, after 4 viewings in 3 weeks.  It’s the trait that makes it stick in your mind long afterwards, that keeps you awake at night as you toss and turn its ideas around in your head like a spinning washing machine.  It’s not just a complex plot that invites discussion about ‘what happened’; it’s more than that.  It’s not just filled with delectable visual treats.  It’s all of those things—and my, is it those things—but it’s a classic, a 4-star movie instead of a 3 or 3.5, because it has it.

Made in a time when movies simplify themselves, cater to the least common denominator, and bank on re-makes and sequels and adaptations, Nolan’s movie is an incredibly creative work, and every aspect of it is performed with pristine crispness, as though everyone involved realized its potential and didn’t want to be the weak link.  The cinematographer (Wally Pfister) and film editor (who at one point has to piece together scenes from 4 different locations and dreams states while still keeping us on point) have to be recognized at Oscar time along with Nolan.  Hans Zimmer’s score is an outstanding touch, something else that buzzes around in head long afterwards.  From the actors, there’s not a bad performance here, as supporting characters from Page to Watanabe to Cotillard to Tom Hardy enliven the screen.  But at the center of it all, in almost every scene, is DiCaprio, who trims his performance of any movie-star fat yet still commands the screen.  In a scene at the end, when he closes his eyes and makes his entire body sigh, feeling the weight of his guilt leaving himself, he imparts a bit of his character into everyone in the audience.

The world’s strongest virus, Cobb says, is an idea, because we can’t forget having thought something, and we can’t deny what we believe, even if we rationally think otherwise. So, in your mind, is your top still spinning?  And do you care?

Boys Like Girls (2006) – 2.5 stars

Love Drunk (2009) – 4 stars  

In the mid-to-late 00s, Boys Like Girls have piggybacked onto the pop-emo scene trail-blazed by bands like the (the infinitely more talented) All-American Rejects.  A genre that has now almost completely abandoned its Rites of Spring roots, emo’s path of change has traversed Sunny Day Real Estate and Weezer and Jimmy Eat World, coming to rest somewhere in between Fall Out Boy (ugh) and AAR, with an eye turned ever towards mainstream acceptance.   

In between those two is BLG, whose self-titled debut proved that there was a healthy market for such music, one likely appealing most to teenage girls.  A fair number of them ate up the predictably over-the-top emotions expressed on said album, which featured a couple sharp, exhilarating tracks that lifted off (“The Great Escape” and “Five Minutes to Midnight” most prominently), but which sank without a trace by the end. 

A 12-song work that should have been 2-4 shorter, with that many more re-worked, Boys Like Girls, at its nadir, exemplifies the worst traits of this kind of schmaltzy pop-rock.  The lyrics sustain that kind of immature, woe-is-me attitude—“Who said it’s better to have loved and lost? / I wish that I had never loved at all,” etc—that, apparently, people still find poignant.  When the melodies fade away, there’s not much left in the songs’ originality or sturdiness to make up for it, and lead singer Martin Johnson’s voice just gets thinner and thinner.  The aforementioned two opening tracks, plus a couple more, are worth downloading, but that’s about it.

All of which makes their 2009 sophomore release, Love Drunk, that much more surprising.  This is a massive step forward, though not via a significant musical shift.  Indeed, it’s merely the other end of the spectrum, projecting the best feelings in emo-pop.  This is what they should have always gone for, the kind of loud, hyper-melodic, blood-pumping, Top Gun-style-campy music that’s best belted out loudly from the car.  When they sing “We’re heading for a heart, heart, heartbreak” or “I used to be love drunk, but now I’m hung-over” or “I wish that I could turn this car around, but she’s got a boyfriend now,” they sound carefree instead of overly caring, closer to delighted than despondent, loose rather than lost. 

And THAT is the critical distinction—and the philosophical bent that really makes the album work.  Self-misery would have sunk this project—and it wouldn’t have fit with the music—but the freewheeling thoughts blend together perfectly with the anthemic choruses to actually uplift you.  When I saw some of these song titles (particularly “She’s Got a Boyfriend Now”) I nervously foresaw some Pinkerton or Narrow Stairs-esque lyrics; instead, they treat such situations as opportunities for freedom and novelty.

And they marry such sentiments to songs whose ability to withstand repeated playings, I’ll be honest, stunned me.  Thanks to the playfulness and energy, the vastly improved hooks, and the fact that the songs are now drenched in color rather than projecting the same boring hue, they’re able to stir up that feeling of grand romanticism to which many similar bands only aspire.  Despite re-using some elements (start-stop basslines, falsettos), their previously-dormant sense of songcraft masks flaws: Tracks like the opener and “Chemicals Collide” are as good of stress-relievers as I’ve heard. 

No, Allmusic, “Two is Better Than One” (sung with Taylor Swift, but whatever) isn’t the worst of the ballads on here, for at least it has some punch and a decent grip on melody.  It has tangible flaws, to be sure, but the real penetrating stares should be directed at the tracks that most recall the second half of their debut: “Someone Like You” and “Go,” which commits that crime of all music crimes, the limpid album closer. (Why, oh why, don’t bands just dance with what brought them?  I’m looking at you, Jawbox.   And Placebo.)

So, on some level, Love Drunk is what it is, but deep down, it’s not.  Much as the snobby will hate it, this kind of music can be bad or good, depending on its execution, just like all rock can be.  Their career has proved that.  But for the most part, this is very well-executed—and fun.

In a lot of ways, this kind of music compares with country.  There’s not a ton going on, musically, which redirects attention onto the vocals and lyrics.  And, perhaps for that reason, the attitude and philosophy of the genre—the culture, if you will—is presented so forcefully as to feel like it’s being shoved down your right.  Your appreciation, therefore, will be highly dependent upon your approval of that culture.  But if you’re OK with it—and you’re finished with all 3 All-American Rejects albums—turn here.

Rating: 3 and a half stars (out of 5)

Neon Trees opened for The Killers in 2008, inviting a natural comparison to a band they clearly respect.  A couple years later, the Trees are playing a gig at the upcoming Lollapalooza concerts, their lead single “Animal” gets some radio play, and…they’re also plugging Las Vegas vacations.  OK, so they haven’t become Killers-level huge yet, but there’s enough on Habits, their debut LP, to suggest they can.  

Whooshing through in a breezy 29 minutes, Habits is a fairly by-the-books dance-pop-rock album, with lots of nods to imperfect relationships and some endearingly catchy hooks.  Yet the Trees manage to sound both mainstream and independent—like they’re doing their own thing, and it just happens to sound like this.  “Animal” is suitably indie-quirky, with dance-friendly synths and a come-and-get-me refrain—“Oh, oh, I want some more / What are you waiting for? / Take a bite of my heart tonight”—but it tends to grate a little under heavy repetition.  Fortunately, quality-wise, it’s really only in the middle of the pack here. 

The real stand-out is the follow-up, “Your Surrender,” where U2 meets Rooney, with a hint of the Arcade Fire thrown in underneath. (If this sounds as appealing to you as it does me, buy this album; otherwise, don’t.) It works primarily because the refrain eschews that annoying sense of worthlessness found in too many of these songs, adopting instead the same kind of mischievousness as “Animal,” but with more confidence—“How long till your surrender?”

What truly sets Habits apart from its contemporaries in the somewhat-amateurish danceable post-punk scene, what makes it sound less pre-packaged than you’d expect, are the surprising shades of gray lurking underneath the songs.  Neon Trees manage to infuse these songs with more than a few traces of muffled darkness, as though coming from just under a pillow, a technique that works effectively against their natural pop leanings.  Songs like “Sins of My Youth,” “Girls and Boys in School,” and “Our War” bring forth cloudier arrangements than one might expect, which helps them sustain repeated plays.  Of most interest is closer “War,” a touching near-ballad both uplifting (particularly in the vocals) and tantalizing, as one can envision it having been further developed at the hands of a more refined band.

Other worthy tracks include “1983” (sometimes, they don’t hide their influences all that much), with legitimately striking twists and turns; but, the thing is, with an eight-song album, you’d better have a very high batting average.  Allmusic calls “Love and Affection” pure Bloc Party, but all it sounds like to me is a forced melody and those aforementioned irritating attitudes—the “I just don’t understand why my love isn’t good enough” kind. 

That’s the only truly skippable song here, but a fair number of tracks combine traits with faults (formulaic ‘soaring’ choruses, uninspired lyrics, similar sounds); they’d do well to freeze-frame the “Fuck all the rest and forget the rules!” coda of “Girls,” their strongest boundary-pushing moment here.  In the meantime, though, if you have an itch for this kind of music—and especially with Rooney’s Eureka looking like a disappointment—feel free to enjoy Neon Trees for what they are, rather than asking them to be something else.

Rating: 4 stars (out of 4)

“With Inception hitting theaters, we take a look at movies that take a dark view of the future.”  So declared the Rotten Tomatoes website today, and in the same spirit, I revisit 2006′s criminally underappreciated sci-fi classic.

Every once in a while, a movie comes out that puts together every aspect of cinema so magnificently that you can’t imagine how it could be better.  Such movies don’t remind you why you go to the theater; any solid one can do that.  Such movies instead remind you of the transcendental power of cinema, the life-affirming revelation that all great literature, music, and movies can possess when constructed by masters.  Children of Men is such a movie.  Upon its release, this was the best film to come out since 2004.

Based on the science fiction book by P.D. James, Men is set in Britain in 2027, when the world is exactly like ours but for one crucial difference: humans are infertile.  No one under 18 years old is alive.  The government passes out suicide kits with the slogan, “You decide when.”  With no prospects for long-term survival, anarchy is the rule around the world.  Britain arrives at the most successful method for handling the situation by prohibiting immigration, deporting and locking up any illegals, and enforcing a police state.  A walk to work is an opportunity to be attacked by a rabid police dog.  A visit to a coffee shop in the morning might be your last.  Is it the lack of innocent children that corrupts people?  Or the sheer fact that there’s nothing to live for?   

Clive Owen prefers to play amoral characters, and he has a particular affinity for people who derive strength from destruction occurring around them (see Croupier, Closer).  Yet here it is the rest of the world that has fallen apart while he ultimately finds a measure of decency and redemption.  He plays Theo Faron, an ex-activist now resorting to mindlessness.  He carries too much suffering from his past to be bothered by the death of the youngest person alive, which captivates everyone else.  His ex-wife Julian (Julianne Moore) takes him out of his shell by arranging for him to be the caretaker of Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey, solid), an African woman who miraculously is pregnant.  The government wants no part of any foreigners, and rebel groups want to use the baby for political purposes, so it is left to Theo to keep her safe and deliver her to the Human Project, an organization dedicated to planning for the future.   

The set-up might seem a perfect opportunity to lionize Theo, but the movie never makes that mistake.  He’s a broken-down man who fights for Kee because she reminds him of the child he and Julian had together who died at the age of two.  Children of Men, though, is less a character analysis than a study of the human condition.  Theo speaks to both the ways that society and culture can shape an individual’s behavior and to the extent to which one can forge his own path.  Theo, having endured too much pain at the hands of fate, has withdrawn from life at the beginning, but the arrival of a baby transforms him, most notably in a stunning scene in which he delivers the child.  But there are also smaller decisions he makes independent of fate, which together are the main reason you walk out of the theater feeling good about humanity amidst the terror and carnage.

In many respects, Children of Men is an adventure story, as Theo and Kee, with a midwife named Miriam (Pam Ferris), have to escape and evade the violence surrounding them, but it is filled with so many rich scenes and tender moments of humanity that it transcends its genre.  Though a violent rebel group named the Fishes wrecks their plans more than once, there is no battle against a specific enemy here.  This is a battle against the world, against our human flaws, against apathy, against dangers that we bring upon ourselves. 

Director Alfonso Cuaron allows us to see small measures of goodness amidst the carnage: how people try to replace children the best they can with pets—dogs, kittens, sheep, roosters, goats, and birds roam the squalid streets and buildings—as though they must care for something.  After Kee’s baby is born, it is Theo, not the mother, who knows how to care for the baby; he’s done it before, but no one Kee’s age has even seen a child.  And Jasper (Michael Caine, also impressive), Theo’s best friend who deals with the end of the world with strawberry-flavored weed and classic British music, provides some levity but also deeply cares for his catatonic wife, a former journalist who was tortured, probably for exposing the nasty ways of the government.  In both the sunshine in his scenes that belies the generally grey and dark blue hues of London and in Theo’s rare laughter around him, viewers can observe how much joy Jasper brings.     

None of this, however, can obscure the movie’s darkness.  It makes a statement about what would happen with no children to keep us innocent and no accountability for adults’ actions to keep our base desires in check.  It’s not political, but the implications of the anti-immigrant policy reverberate, particularly in a startlingly close to home depiction of a refugee camp that would not be out of place in today’s news.  In another poignant scene, Miriam explains to Theo what the gradual awareness of infertility felt like, in an abandoned school where the playground is desolate except for the quiet humming and singing of Kee, reflecting her divorce from the rest of society.  “I was there for the end,” Miriam says, and Theo, watching Kee swing, replies, “And now you can be there for the beginning.”  He wants her to relish that, but this movie informs us that this wouldn’t necessarily be enjoyable if we continued to acted like this.

All the touches from the hand of Cuaron, who collaborated with four others on the screenplay as well, have a revelatory effect: the chilling music that underlies a cold shot of a London alleyway before Theo and Kee traverse it; a camera shot that lingers for a moment on a kitten crawling up Theo’s leg; the high-pitched ringing noise in Theo’s ears, reflecting his proximity to a prior bombing, that ominously plays periodically throughout the movie.  Even when you don’t think Cuaron’s doing anything, he is, be it through purposeful background music, a camera splattered with blood, or a vivid, single-shot presentation of a car attacked from all sides using a hand-held camera.  He understands the power of creating a world in which you can lose yourself for a couple hours.  So many movies fail to take advantage of scenery and background, existing in nondescript places, but cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and Cuaron create a London 20 years from now—complete with houses literally barricaded from the outside world, billboards declaring that avoiding fertility tests is a crime, and bone-shattering explosions in coffee shops—that stays with you long after the credits roll.

And the last ten minutes are by themselves more emotionally affecting than most movies taken as a whole, one of the top five most affecting segments I’ve ever seen on film.  From the moment when the cries of Kee’s baby silence a squadron of government troops pounding a rebel hangout to the concluding scene in a boat, Children of Men goes from being a great movie to an exceptional one.  Hope mixes with despair, as the desires of the soldiers to get a look at the baby are diverted by a bomb from the rebels and as Theo shows Kee how to hold the baby amidst fighter planes lighting up the morose sky.  In his face as he carries the two girls away from danger, it is also, once again, apparent that Clive Owen plumbs emotional depths that few other actors can.  He resists the natural urge to look sanctimonious, or foolishly proud, or smug; instead, he cares about nothing more than protecting them, and his eyes simply gaze outward, as though looking towards the future.  He looks real—battered and bruised but finally stable.  For the first time in many years, he’s happy that he opened his eyes in the morning—just like us.

Rating: 3 stars (out of 4)

Taking a quick break from Dan’s animated movie series to present a film I watched in theaters last summer and again recently.  I’m sure Dan will have you back to your regularly-scheduled programming shortly.

On first glance, The Taking of Pelham 123 could be yet another insipid Denzel Washington movie; certainly it inspires comparisons to Inside Man, where he likewise played a hostage negotiator.  But Pelham gets a lot more right than Inside, or Denzel’s previous collaboration with director Tony Scott (Man on Fire), or, for that matter, many of Denzel’s recent popcorn-y flicks.  It generates much sharper tension and feels much more mature and weighty, and, propelled by its two lead actors, it captivates one’s attention for its entire running time.

A remake of a respected 1974 thriller, Pelham stars John Travolta as one bad dude—Ryder, a Fu Manchu- and neck tattoo-sporting guy who, along with a few associates, takes control of a New York Subway car underground and parks it in the tunnel between two stops.  After disconnecting all but one car and 18 hostages, he makes contact with the train’s control center, where self-proclaimed “civil servant” Walter Garber (Washington) happens to get the call.  So begins the chess match, with Ryder demanding $10 million from the mayor before he starts killing hostages.  A NYPD hostage negotiator expert (John Turturro) is eventually brought in, but we know that Ryder will want to talk only to Garber.

It’s an inherently interesting if somewhat recycled plot line, but this film doesn’t rest on its laurels.  Writer Brian Helgeland, who penned Man on Fire (not to mention, ahem, Mystic River), helps Scott and the actors generate moments of genuine suspense and tension.  For much of the film’s midsection, with Ryder on the subway car and Garber on the phone trying to talk his way through everything, I felt myself consistently on edge.  A sequence with money in transit to the subway as the clock ticks is crisply executed.  What’s more, the fact that Ryder proves willing to actually kill if people don’t obey him adds to the level of suspense—one might expect, coming in, that he won’t win, in the end, but seeing an early shooting tells us that we can’t always predict what will come next.

A sequence culminating in Garber revealing the details of a bribe he recently took pulses with energy.  Ryder, who has access to the Internet and can do background searches, intuits that a man of Garber’s stature would not be operating a layman’s job unless he had slipped up somewhere along the line.  He’s also intrigued at the thought of his seemingly decent counterpart paralleling himself in one way: trying to make a dishonest buck.  Thus, with a crowd gathering around Garber’s speaker as the situation escalates, Ryder grabs a teenage hostage and vows to kill him unless Garber spills the details of his scam.  The cuts between the kid, the gunman, and the gradually sadder Garber are exhilarating, and Washington’s few tears at the end strike the perfect note. 

The moment also illustrates another interesting point about the movie—nobody comes out unscathed.  Aside from Garber’s indiscretion, the mayor (James Gandolfini) has recently faced a scandal (of the sexual variety, we infer) and really just wants his time to expire so he can retire to an island somewhere.  These touches—particularly as Ryder makes comments about the dirtiness and sleaze of the city—help elevate Pelham above most thrillers. 

On a somewhat related note, it was also nice to see that Washington’s character was no great hero.  He’s almost passive, a reluctant participant, clearly embarrassed about his previous misdeed; and he delivers no grand, Denzel Washington-style pronouncements or shouting matches with his adversary.  It’s immensely enjoyable to see Washington pull off this kind of role as skillfully as he does, in the aforementioned confessional scene and throughout the rest of the movie; what’s more, and critical for the movie, is that his character, and his acting, compliments Ryder and Travolta well.  Travolta eats up the role, over-the-top in a calculated and intentional way, but he never falls into caricature.  He looks legitimately scary, and he acts that way too, always with a sense of rage (largely stemming from a previous conviction) and carelessness—and intelligence—that elevate him from most cinematic villains.  And the supporting cast further enhances the film—John Turturro and James Gandolfini illustrate the value to be had in casting legitimate actors in ‘entertainment’ movies.

Pelham probably would have benefited from a little more background information on the hostages.  The hijacking occurs after no set-up whatsoever, which is a little bit of a nod to the modern ADD generation and isn’t necessary in a movie that’s hardly too long.  And Ryder’s ultimate comeuppance isn’t the most inspired climax of all-time.  Scott, for his part, can’t resist some of his patented visual flourishes that are probably unnecessary (such as the presentation of the opening credits), but, thankfully, he tones it down for the majority of the movie, perhaps being constrained by the stationary nature of the train car.

To that end, Pelham isn’t really an action movie.  The few shots we see of cars crashing are tangential to the main story, which primarily features talking between its two leads.  It’s a psychological battle between someone not really cut out for this, someone with other problems on his mind, forced to constantly listen to instructions from his superiors as he improvises with his counterpart, who’s clearly enjoying the ride a lot more.