The Ides of March: All primary colours; no shades to be found

Based on Beau Willimon’s play Farragut North, which was loosely based on the 2004 Democratic primary campaign of Howard Dean, The Ides of March concerns a young press secretary’s education in the sort of compromise, corruption and throat-cutting that the weary sages tell us is essential to getting ahead in politics. But Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling) has it both ways—he’s simultaneously idealistic and shrewd—so when push comes to shove his fangs push their way out of his baby gums and he proves to be the all-too apt pupil of his immediate superior (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the opposition’s poacher (Paul Giamatti), the manipulative journalist (Marisa Tomei) he thought was his pal and, of course, the charismatic candidate he works for, Pennsylvania Governor Mike Morris (director and co-scripter George Clooney), who mostly stays in the film’s margins until its final act, until then entering the foreground only for a highly conspicuous, strategically placed scene of intimacy between he and his true-blue wife.

Much of the pleasure to be had in The Ides of March emerges from the initial buzz of the promise of victory emanating from Morris’ camp, of which Meyers is the behind-the-scenes star. A couple of beautifully realized scenes find Meyers flirting with a smart, lovely intern named Molly (Evan Rachel Wood). Clooney has assembled a magnificent cast and, with the help of cinematographer Phedon Papamichael, he crafts some superb flights of ping-pong dialogue in carefully composed close-ups. For much of the first half, there’s a slightly exposition-heavy quality to the dialogue that feels weirdly stagey yet gradually makes sense as you start to glean just how much of what we’re hearing and seeing is illusory or fundamentally full of shit. And herein lies the film’s weakness: it is precisely as cynical as you’d expect a movie about US politics from Clooney and his regular producer/collaborator Grant Heslov to be, while lacking in any specific or especially poignant revelations. Everything is tweaked to play neatly into the narrative schema, including an unexpected death that constitutes the limpest sort of plot twist (the reason it’s unexpected is because there’s no good reason to expect it). Clooney is a fine directorial talent, but the material—occasionally clever but never wise—is finally more shallow than it clearly wants to be. Still, worth checking out if you’re curious.

Win Win: So-so

Win Win immediately announces itself as the natural successor to actor-turned-writer/director Tom McCarthy’s The Station Agent and The Visitor. McCarthy very deliberately steers his alternately desperate or lonesome characters into each other’s paths, his quiet collisions challenging them to reach out, to make space in their troubled lives for unlikely, difficult, though finally rewarding alliances. But Win Win is where the filmmaker’s tendencies begin to look less like variations on a theme and more like formula—and somebody else’s formula at that. By shifting away from the somber warmth of the first two films into a sort of humanist comedy, McCarthy has, perhaps inadvertently, sacrificed what measure of tonal distinction his directorial approach had previously nurtured. The result is a perfectly likeable if belabored go-for-it movie that may very well get McCarthy his broadest audience yet, though few will likely walk away from it wondering about or even remembering who made it.

Paul Giamatti plays Mike Flaherty, a Jersey lawyer, family man and high school wrestling coach burdened with enough problems (dwindling practice, losing team, clogged toilet, busted copier, falling tree, dying boiler...) that by the time he does something underhanded we’ve already forgiven him. Mike siphons some revenue out of an elderly client in the early stages of dementia played by Burt Young, an endlessly entertaining actor to behold when he gets pissed off. Along comes said client’s grandson Kyle (Alex Shaffer), a teenager with an atrocious dye-job on the run from a bad situation in Ohio. Having just delivered Leo to a nursing home and unwilling to send Kyle back to an empty house (mom’s in rehab), Mike decides to take Kyle in… and soon discovers the kid’s a tiger on the mat!

You can see where this is going. Which, you know, is okay I guess, but it really takes a while to get there. There’s at least one utterly superfluous character here (Station Agent’s Bobby Cannavale, also with bad hair) and a half-dozen scenes that add precious little to the story or stakes, including an annoying paint-by-numbers mid-point montage set to Bon Jovi. The casting of Giamatti’s a no-brainer: save a couple of pep-talky scenes where he strains a little, he’s very enjoyable in another sympathetic shlubby bit. Shaffer’s so natural you almost don’t notice him. Amy Ryan as the take-no-shit wife gives Mike’s home life a little gravity and consequence: she works to fill each of her scenes with some sort of spark. It's clear that McCarthy has a special gift with actors—it’s just that Win Win feels too dependent on these actors to supply all the nuance.