Bridge of Spies

Movies to See Right Now

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Mark Rylance in BRIDGE OF SPIES
Mark Rylance in BRIDGE OF SPIES

My recommendations this week:

    • The Martian – an entertaining Must See space adventure – even for folks who usually don’t enjoy science fiction;
    • Bridge of Spies – Steven Spielberg’s Cold War espionage thriller with Tom Hanks, featuring a fantastic performance by Mark Rylance.
    • Sicario – a dark and paranoid crime thriller about the drug wars.
    • Prophet’s Prey – a Showtime documentary about child sexual abuse in a polygamous religious cult.

My Stream of the Week is the extraordinary Russian drama Leviathan, a searing indictment of society in post-Soviet Russia – and it’s one of my Best Movies of 2015 – So Far.  Leviathan is available streaming on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Flixster.

October 29 is a pretty cool day for Turner Classic Movies, with three completely disparate films that I recommend.  First, if you have teenagers jaded by today’s empty horror flicks, Freaks will knock them for a loop.   Bad things happen at the circus. And bad things happen in Freaks, one of the most unsettling horror films (and the least politically correct), because it was filmed in 1932 with real circus freaks.

If you are ready for some vintage camp, there’s the 1960 low-budget and self-mocking horror comedy Little Shop of Horrors.   The story was remade into a Broadway musical which, in turn, was adapted into the 1986 Little Shop of Horrors starring Rick Moranis; the 1986 version is a much, MUCH better move, but the 1960 version has its own sublime silliness.  The young Jack Nicholson first made a name for himself with a hilarious turn as a masochistic dental patient.

Finally, as funny as a heart attack, is the riveting 2005 Oscar winner The Hurt Locker.  Kathryn Bigelow directed this hypertense story of an adrenaline-fueled GI bomb defuser (Jeremy Renner) in the Iraq War.  The Hurt Locker won the first Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director for a film directed by a woman.

BRIDGE OF SPIES: pretty good spy story with a great Mark Rylance

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Tom Hanks in BRIDGE OF SPIES
Tom Hanks in BRIDGE OF SPIES

In Steven Spielberg’s true-to-life espionage thriller Bridge of Spies, Tom Hanks plays James B. Donovan, the insurance lawyer who went on a Cold War secret mission to negotiate the trade of a captured Russian spy for the captured US spy plane pilot Francis Gay Powers.  That Russian spy was Rudolph Abel, played by Mark Rylance – himself perhaps the best reason to see this movie.

Rylance is a top echelon Shakespearean actor from the UK – best known in the US for his star turn as the dour Thomas Cromwell in the television miniseries Wolf Hall.  In a remarkably minimalist yet evocative performance, Rylance reveals a man who lives by a code and is doggedly loyal to his own misguided cause – with absolutely no expectations of fairness or mercy from anyone else.  The effect is to make us sympathize with a guy who is trying to give our most menacing enemy our dearest nuclear secrets.  As my friend Karyn noted about Rylance, “less is more”.

This is not a great movie.  Sure, Spielberg is the master of entertainment (complete with sentimentally swelling music at the end).  After the movie’s riveting opening sequence of spy craft, we settle into a sometimes ponderous segment showing the Abel trial and the U-2 missions.  Bridge of Spies takes off again when Hanks’ Donovan must head behind the Iron Curtain.

[SPOILER ALERT – After seeing the film, I was compelled to research James B. Donovan to see if he really represented Abel and negotiated both the Abel-for-Powers deal AND the release of over a thousand Cuban prisoners from the Bay of Pigs fiasco.  Indeed, he did – all of the acts depicted in the movie seem to be factual.  But the real James B. Donovan was not the Everyman portrayed by Spielberg and Hanks.  Before going into private practice, Donovan served a stint as the General Counsel of the OSS – the predecessor of the CIA.  While slipping off to East Berlin to barter for Powers, he was on the New York City Board of Education.  And, instead of returning to obscurity after bringing Powers back to the US, he ran for US Senate from New York.]