Political thriller ‘Miss Sloane’ released almost exactly a month too late

Images courtesy EuropaCorp.

Ever since they started putting TV previews ahead of the trailers in movies, they’ve had a strange affinity for advertising sultry, off-primetime dramas hinging on a single character. Shows like Hawthorne or The Client List, whose advertisements are simply a barrage of out-of-context maximum-drama moments from stars who could no longer make it in Hollywood. Miss Sloane mostly feels like an extended pilot for one of those shows — though that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Like the series it feels akin to, the movie focuses intensely on its lead character, Elizabeth Sloane (Jessica Chastain), a fast-talking, no-nonsense, amphetamine-popping Washington lobbyist. Sloane is hand-picked to lead the fight against a bill going through the senate that would require background checks on all gun sales, closing the infamous gun show loophole. Unexpectedly, Sloane refuses, and ends up leaving the firm and taking charge of the push to get the bill passed. Working against colleagues of several years, Sloane is staring down not only the wealthiest lobby on the hill, but a set of opponents who are intimately familiar with her tactics and vices.

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Applying Chaos Theory: Rogue One’s got jokes

Oh, wow. Suddenly, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, this PG-13 movie about a desperate suicide mission, something much darker than the Star Wars franchise has ever approached, is looking pretty cute. By my count, that’s four snappy one-liners in just 1:35, almost all of them accompanied by a reaction from our lead character that’s pure gold. What a fun, family-friendly space adventure this will surely turn out to be.

Obviously, this is a complete departure from the first trailer…

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The Open Bar Review – Suicide Squad: Extended Cut

Paul and I discuss the nuances of the added material in the newly-released extended cut of Suicide Squad. 

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Warren Beatty returns to the silver screen in sharp Hughes biopic

Images courtesy 20th Century Fox.

Rules Don’t Apply is a movie split in half between joy and somberness, the big-eyed dream of Hollywood and its unremarkable reality. It’s an extremely good and interesting film.

Too bad no one will ever see it.

Rules Don’t Apply is partially a biopic of Howard Hughes (Warren Beatty, who also writes, directs and produces his first film in 15 years), but is mostly a love story between aspiring actress Marla Mabrey (Lily Collins) and Frank Forbes (Alden Ehrenreich), one of Hughes’ drivers. Hughes is a super-creepy old man who keeps a network of young actresses he brings in to Hollywood and drivers he maintains for them whose explicit purpose is to make sure the actresses don’t have sex. The drivers are strictly forbidden from trying anything, both characters are deeply Christian and Forbes has a fiance, Sarah Bransford (Taissa Farminga), back in Fresno, but he and Mabrey can’t keep their eyes off each other. Their sexual tension builds and eventually erupts. Then, the movie wakes up to a sobering second half in which they quickly split and their lives crumble.

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Director, star spoil intriguing spy movie

Images courtesy Paramount Pictures.

Robert Zemeckis and Brad Pitt each owe Steven Knight a stiff drink. He wrote a sharp, intriguing film and they ruined it.

Allied follows a pair of spies, Max Vatan (Pitt) and Marianne Beausejour (Marion Cotillard). Tasked with assassinating the German ambassador in Casablanca, French Morocco, the duo falls in love on the job. A couple of years later, they’re married with a child in London, but Vatan is informed that Beausejour may have been a Nazi spy all along. He is tasked with disinforming her and executing her if the charges prove true.

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