The Company Men (2010) * * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  John Wells

Starring: Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper, Kevin Costner, Maria Bello, Rosemarie DeWitt

The Company Men begins with layoffs at a company called GTX, which is closing locations, consolidating facilities, and downsizing in order to maximize profits in an unstable economy.  Sales director Bobby Walker (Affleck) confidently believes his job will be saved, but he is delivered the bad news with a severance package, a spot for three months at a job search center where he can polish his resume and try to remain hopeful that another job is right around the corner.  Meanwhile, he has a posh suburban Boston home, a Porsche, and a wife named Maggie (DeWitt) who understandably realizes the family may need to trim expenses.  Bobby spends the first months in denial, thinking that he'll have a job in a jiff, but soon he finds himself working with his contractor brother-in-law Jack (Costner) building homes.  How good is Bobby at carpentry?  Well, he's a much better corporate salesman.

Also on the chopping block are Phil Woodward (Cooper), one of the first employees of GTX back when it was starting out as a mere shipbuilder and is now nearing 60 with even bleaker employment prospects than Bobby.  Then, there is Gene McClary (Jones), who along with GTX CEO Jim Salinger (Nelson) founded the original company which grew into this corporate monster that itself is ripe for sale to an even larger corporate fish.  Gene, despite his riches, believes the company should show more loyalty to men like Bobby and Phil, but Jim explains that the goal of a corporation is to maximize shareholder value.  They are the eternal "show me the money" people.  Gene also finds himself out of a job when he butts heads with Jim one too many times. 

If anything, Jack runs his small contracting company like Gene feels GTX should run.  Jack has two employees and takes on jobs which may not even be profitable just to keep his team working through the winter.  It's all relative, but The Company Men isn't naive enough to believe that corporations would ever behave like Jack.  As a man of a certain age, I can feel the most for Phil, who has no safety net once his employment is terminated.  In a sense, his life is gone too.  But with Phil and Bobby, we feel the squeeze as mortgage payments and car payments simply don't go away because you no longer have a job.   With that tightening comes our sympathy and in some cases empathy.

However, The Company Men ends with a sense of hope which comes just at the right time for Bobby and unfortunately too late for Phil.  It's less bleak than what happens to many people in the same situation.  As a movie depicting such sad events, The Company Men hums along with solid performances and maybe a sense of gratitude for those who have a job and maybe realize that going to a sucky job is worse than not having a sucky job to go to.  

Whalefall (2026) * * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Brian Duffield

Starring:  Austin Abrams, Josh Brolin, John Ortiz, Elisabeth Shue, Jane Levy, Emily Rudd

Whalefall is not Jaws with a whale substituting for a shark.  It's two stories in one:  A young man coming to terms with his relationship with his deceased father and the same young man who winds up in a whale's digestive tract while deep sea diving.  Whalefall combines these stories in a manner so that there is suspense in each one.  Will Jay (Abrams) survive the whale and will he learn to understand his erratic father Mitt (Brolin) who committed suicide one year prior?  Will Jay's ability to forgive and understand his father allow him to escape his present dilemma?  

First thing's first:  How does one escape the stomach of a whale before he's either disintegrated by stomach acid or churned into bits?  Unless Jay (or we) have a working knowledge of whale anatomy, we wouldn't know how to escape, which lends Whalefall plenty of scary, claustrophobic moments.  Heck, he wouldn't know which way to travel to even have a chance of seeing daylight again.  Flashbacks to Jay's interactions with Mitt act as a respite from Jay's current impossible situation by dealing with another one from the past. 

Whalefall belongs to Brolin.  His performance is the most fascinating due Mitt's unpredictability.  There are scenes in which he is tender and loving, while others where he is a mean son of a bitch.  He commits suicide by jumping off the side of his charter boat with weights attached to him so he'd drown rather than wither away from cancer, but was it also a way out of his own personal pain?  Brolin never shows us all the cards and doesn't need to.  We just know we're drawn to him, and makes us believe that Jay would dive into the ocean not only to look for his remains (which would be impossible after one week let alone one year), but to solve the eternal mystery that was Mitt.  Oh, and then there's the matter of the whale's belly and surviving that while trying not to run out of oxygen.  I forgot to mention that.  

The Social Reckoning (2026) * * *

 

Directed by:  Aaron Sorkin

Starring:  Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, Bill Burr, Betty Gilpin, Wunmi Mosaku

The Social Reckoning kept my interest while failing to emotionally engage me.  Writer-director Aaron Sorkin (who wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay for 2010's The Social Network) continues his mastery of verbal volleyball between characters while making the argument that Facebook's willful use of algorithms radicalized people with constant exposure to hate groups and hate speech that led directly (or indirectly) to the riots on January 6, 2021.  Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg made it clear that Facebook policing its content is not its job, and I can't say I disagree with the position.  More on that later.

The Social Reckoning stars Oscar-winner Mikey Madison as Frances Haugen, a dedicated Facebook employee who finds herself willing to turn over evidence of Facebook wrongdoing once a friend of hers posts anti-DEI rhetoric in a confrontation with police, which is shown in an effective prologue.  Frances wants to know how her friend, who was mostly apolitical and happy, suddenly transformed into an angry, drunken, and argumentative influencer.  Frances works with Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (White), who finds Frances is the only Facebook employee willing to talk to him and break her non-disclosure agreement.  

As played by Madison, Frances is intelligent and socially awkward, which are two reasons she is reluctant to trust Jeff.  However, she is blown away in both of those departments by Jeremy Strong's Zuckerberg, who raises Jesse Eisenberg's cold and socially awkward Zuckerberg to the tenth power here.  Strong doesn't play Zuckerberg to be even remotely likable and Sorkin is content to make him the arrogant villain who asks for advice and ignores it anyway.  The man advising him not to be such a prick is Charlie, played by Bill Burr in an engaging performance as someone trying to stop Zuckerberg from driving the company straight off a cliff in the court of public opinion.  Zuckerberg abandons the company's initial mission statement to be one where people connect and instead opts for a version which tears people apart and ends friendships and familial relationships.  Why?  Mostly because leaning towards Republicans, who favor deregulation in business, would be a financial win for the company.  It's a practical decision and one can argue it was best for shareholders who want to see a monster return on their investments.

I admired the performances in the movie while understanding The Social Reckoning is an invitation to thought.  I'm of the belief that it isn't a platform's job to fact check anything, of which Facebook agrees.  I'm reminded of Bill Maher's editorial from a few years back stating that protecting someone from the world is a mother's job, not a social media platform's.  With the advent of AI, some posts all over Facebook and other sites are clearly lies, but it's up to the user to determine what's true.  It's ironic that in a world with so much information at its fingertips, some people are more misinformed than ever. 

American Hostage (2026) * * * (series on MGM Plus)

 

Starring:  Jon Hamm, Giovanni Ribisi, Mireille Enos, Kristoffer Polaha, Adam Arkin, Jonathan Tucker, William Jackson Harper

Maybe Tony Kiritsis saw Dog Day Afternoon and was inspired to involve the media in his kidnapping of mortgage banker Dick Hall.  Tony (Ribisi) is a frustrated Indianapolis Korean War veteran who feels his mortgage company is up to shenanigans as it forecloses on his business.  He takes Hall (Polaha) hostage at the bank with a shotgun tied to his neck and walks him from the bank to his apartment.  Tony demands to be interviewed by the local news station's Fred Heckman (Hamm), who Tony believes will give him a fair shake and allow him to voice his pent-up anger at Hall and the world in general.

Fred is an old-school reporter who wants to get back to covering the news instead of just reporting it.  He has a pending offer from a large New York station that promises grand things to Fred, but he's not sure he wants to leave Indy.   However, the Tony/Dick Hall saga places Fred into the middle of the story, and in some ways he becomes the story.  Fred Heckman differs from other Jon Hamm characters because, at least through the first four episodes, he is shown to be a loving family man with no trace of Don Draper or Special Agent Adam Frawley (from The Town) anywhere to be found.  Hamm is quite good here playing an honest and decent man (unless the next episodes throw a curveball).  

Ribisi gives us a kidnapper who may be crazy or may be someone pushed to his limits.  Ribisi provides depth to someone who we think we know, but we find he isn't showing us all the cards.  What throws a monkey wrench into the story is how a growing number of locals sympathize or side with Tony.  Mortgage bankers or corporate types tend to elicit little sympathy from the public, even if the man is a husband and father.  Just watch the Luigi Mangione saga unfold and you'll see all the evidence you need that the previous statement is true. 

American Hostage mostly moves along although I'm sure the episode is upcoming in which the series reverts to the past to tell us more in-depth about Tony and Fred.  Both have their own sad stories to tell, and American Hostage captures a sense of time and place which allows them room to breathe.  There is humor in the shameless actions of Tony's and the station's attorneys who are actually thinking about granting Tony immunity since the bank's actions may be more criminal.  If this isn't an allusion to the Mangione case, then nothing is.  

Verity (2026) * *

 

Directed by:  Michael Showalter

Starring:  Dakota Johnson, Anne Hathaway, Josh Hartnett, Brady Wagner

We know a movie like Verity lives and dies by its pending Big Reveal.  It's coming because Nothing Is What It Seems in the Verity Crawford household in rural Vermont.  Verity Crawford (Hathaway) is a famed best-selling author with a loving husband named Jeremy (Hartnett) and an adorable young son Crew (Wagner).  One day following a lackluster book reading attended by three disinterested spectators, published but not famous author Lowen Ashleigh (Johnson) is approached by Jeremy and her agent (after a not-so-meet cute between Jeremy and Lowen) to ghost write Verity's new book.  Why?  We learn once Jeremy invites Lowen to stay at the Crawford home that Verity was involved in a near-fatal car accident which left her paralyzed and catatonic.  The publisher is expecting a new Verity Crawford book and we're treading dangerously on Milli Vanilli ground here.  

I'll tread lightly to not introduce spoilers, but Verity keeps our interest long enough so we can learn what secrets the Crawford house reveals.  Lowen swears Verity turns her head to look at her while her nurse has her outside.  Lowen also stumbles upon Verity's autobiography in which she confesses that she hates her children because they've stolen Jeremy's attention and she may or may not have killed Crew's sister in what was ruled a canoeing accident.  It's not wise to leave a confessional autobiography lying around indicating that you killed your daughter.  Just saying.  

Predictable things happen between Lowen and Jeremy, and we question other characters' motives once the surprises are unleashed on us.  The reasons provided for what is happening are silly and any tragedies could've been avoided with one character giving another a heads up as to what they're doing and why, or maybe not following another's advice to the letter.  Such things will get you in hot water.  I know I'm being vague, but if you see Verity, you'll see what I mean.  

Knight and Day (2010) * * *

 

Directed by:  James Mangold

Starring:  Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Peter Sarsgaard, Viola Davis, Paul Dano, Jordi Molla

Knight and Day is fun enough to survive its sometimes elongated action scenes made as CGI was coming into its own.  It is made with wit and humor, with Hitchcock's famed Maguffin taking center stage.  The Maguffin is the object everyone is after.  The heroes want to keep it out of the villains' hands, and in this case, it is an everlasting battery which will negate the use of chargers.  The bad guys want to sell it on the black market and kill its creator (Dano), a brilliant young man, while secret agent Roy Miller (Cruise) wants to protect the kid and the battery.  

June (Diaz) is dragged into this international intrigue by being on the wrong plane at the wrong time.  Roy is a fellow passenger on the rather empty plane who dispatches a group of assassins aboard hired to kill him.  Soon, June is whisked away to deserted islands, trains riding through the Alps, and scenic cities around the globe with the charming Roy, who seems to enjoy having a companion along as he dodges numerous attempts on his life.  Roy works for a super secret agency which apparently handles tasks the CIA and FBI won't touch.  He is now persona non grata with the agency due to being set up by his fellow agent (Sarsgaard) who wants to sell the battery on the black market.  

The material isn't as important as the style.  Cruise and Diaz are clearly having a ball with the absurd plot, and there is an emotional tug which pulls Roy Miller along and leads to a startling discovery which is both cruel to his loved ones and sad.  However, it is the life he chose.  

Digger (2026) * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Alejandro G. Inarritu

Starring:  Tom Cruise, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Huller, Jesse Plemons, Michael Stuhlbarg

Digger's marketing campaign did its box-office performance no favors, but maybe that was necessary in order to protect its Big Reveal.  However, the reveal itself doesn't add much depth or interest to the film.  What we have are superior actors spewing lots of dialogue and yelling at each other.  Digger's art direction and set decoration may wind up nabbing some awards, but the rest can sleep in when the Golden Globes, Actor Awards, and Oscar nominations are announced. 

The scenery in some cases draws attention away from the characters, and that may be just as well, since there isn't one we care about in the whole movie.  Digger Rockwell (Cruise) is an oil zillionaire who wakes up one morning to find his beloved cat has hours to live and one of his oil rigs in Greenland exploded and caused a massive glacier to separate from the mainland and drift towards continental Europe.  Once it crashes into Europe, we'll see tsunamis and floods like none the continent has ever experienced, or so says Dr. Ganesh (Ahmed) who works for U.S. President Compson (Goodman), who is dying of anal cancer.  

It's now up to Digger to save the day, until the plot twist reveals itself about thirty minutes into a movie which already is trying its mightiest to be Different.  It is different indeed, but not a positive different.  Inarritu and Cruise want to make larger statements about impending environmental doom which Inarritu himself discussed in his Oscar speech for directing The Revenant.  He stated how he was unable to film certain scenes in the snow because snow was scarce even in the mountains.  Now we have Digger, which is a full extension of that idea which apparently wasn't made with entertaining the audience in mind.  

Digger is an unpleasant experience with characters we don't care about mouthing lots of words which add up to soliloquies and speeches that drone on endlessly.  I'm not going to be mean and give away any spoilers, because by the time they arrive, Digger is pretty much already spoiled.  During the many years in which Tom Cruise played one action hero after another, I lamented that he could be using his talents for other projects which present us with his vast acting range.  He's a superb actor, but with Digger I suppose I should've been careful what I wished for.