The general “WTF” sensibility exuded by a new film on the scene is actually the marker of something singular and subversive. Co-directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa help inject their wry war comedy Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (B) with moments of delirious adrenaline, but it’s leading lady Tina Fey who shoulders the load of a magnificent against-type role as an embedded TV correspondent in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom. The underlying tone isn’t always sustained, but it’s a thrilling contact high watching Fey wrestle the plum part with such dexterity. Her sarcasm suits the heroine’s outlook, and she mines some unexpected depths to get to the heart of material based on the real-life memoirs of journalist Kim Barker. Sparring well with Fey are bombshell beauty and budding frenemy Margot Robbie, unconventional romantic interest Martin Freeman and a pair of actors who just played comparable parts in the thematically similar Our Brand Is Crisis – Alfred Molina as a sleazy political figure and Billy Bob Thornton as a swaggering operative, in this case of the Marines. More seasoned directors would have likely tightened some of the principal plot points into a more propulsive narrative, but their bet on an accomplished comedienne to master such a challenging dramatic role is the coup de grâce in the face of a sometimes spiraling storyline. There was also a nice recurring bit about war as an opiate and conversations with a doctor that paralleled the protagonist’s experience as someone who gets sucked deeper and deeper into the “Kabubble.” You can viscerally experience the lure of something that is simultaneously dangerous and intriguing. Fey’s proto-feminist musings and acerbic humor in the face of adversity ultimately make the movie.
Behind the Adaptation:
From The Taliban Shuffle to Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: The Movie
The movie Whiskey Tango Foxtrot was written by Robert Carlock based on the memoir The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan by Kim Barker. My friend and fellow blogger Ashley Williams of The Book Fetish Blog has collaborated with our Silver Screen Capture site to help describe the book to film translation. Let’s call her the Siskel to my Ebert in lending dueling viewpoints to the film at hand. You can read her review now available on her site, and we answer a few questions about the film together here:
Question: What made this an important story to tell?
Stephen Brown: Although the characters and contours could be sharper, the film depicts men and women driven by destiny to be superb stewards of their craft, be it military peacekeeper or crusading journalist. The protagonist’s strong POV offers an unusual portal into the story and a meaty, unapologetic female lead role.
Ashley Williams: This is a great question because there are two broad aspects with which to answer it. The first is understanding the drive of someone to put themselves in a war zone and continual danger. Kim essentially becomes a junkie – addicted to Afghanistan, seeking out ever more dangerous assignments – until it nearly destroys her. And in the book, we get so much more backstory about Afghanistan and Pakistan and why our military efforts have been so protracted. It really highlights how much the American mentality is ineffective in dealing with the cultures of Afghanistan and Pakistan
Question: What about this work is effective on the page? What makes it cinematic?
Ashley Williams: The visuals in the film really bring this story to life, but there is a humanity in the story told on the page that really made this an interesting read to me. Kim really came to care for many of the people she met in these countries. She is also able to talk a lot in the book about the seeming contradictions in the culture. It’s this next layer, of really being able to glimpse what day to day life was like, that kept me turning the page.
Stephen Brown: The you-are-there quality is dialed up to great effect, with several of the close encounters with deadly assaults among the most jarring. I did feel more could be done with the atmosphere of the “fun house” where all the journalists were lodged and that some of the relationships with locals could have been more vividly developed.
Question: What were the biggest changes made from book to film?
Ashley Williams: I laughed when I saw this question. Because SO MUCH! First, in the book, there’s Kim was a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, not a TV reporter. Aside from that, though, the film focuses specifically on Afghanistan. During the years Kim was over in Asia, she was based in India, and shuffled between Afghanistan and Pakistan with some regularity (hence the book title, The Taliban Shuffle). The whole Pakistan experience is missing from the film; but in the book, we get a good glimpse of the political climate in both places during the War and how that impacted our military effectiveness. Also, the Billy Bob Thornton character isn’t in the book.
Question: What did casting bring to the experience?
Ashley Williams: Tina Fey was spot on. Farouq, too. No one else really matters in going from page to screen because the other film characters are amalgams of people in the book.
Stephen Brown: Tina Fey owned the part with such command that I could imagine no one else in the role. I’m delighted she went out on this limb.
Question: Memoirs are notoriously tricky to adapt. They can range from cerebral (think My Week with Marilyn based on The Prince, the Showgirl and Me: Six Months on the Set with Marilyn and Olivier by Colin Clark) to adventurous (such as 127 Hours based on Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston). Where does this adaptation of The Taliban Shuffle fit in?
Stephen Brown: Despite the fact that it is very entertaining, this film won’t go down as among the best of this genre. I will say it compared favorably to Eat, Pray, Love and was an interesting examination about what an unmarried single woman in mid-life can do to shake things up considerably. These memoirs seemed destined to get the movie treatment.
Ashley Williams: I agree that the book won’t go down in history the way a memoir of say, Sandra Day O’Connor or Ruth Bader Ginsberg might. And I admittedly haven’t read many other memoirs of reporters embedded in Iraq and/or Afghanistan. The film and book are so different, I really am not sure they are comparable. But comparing this memoir to the book Eat, Pray, Love or the inexplicably popular Wild, the difference for me is that Barker doesn’t come out of this with an amazing epiphany or self-actualization moment. She’s an ordinary woman who ended up in this extraordinary situation and she learned a lot about herself, but I read this more as an exploration of how running from something can take us to places we never expected. That circumstances can drag us more deeply into something than we desire, and at some point, we have to decide how we want to live.
Did you have favorite plot points?
Stephen Brown: There weren’t that many standout moments, but I actually liked a sequence in the last fifteen minutes when a minor character is re-introduced, and a moment of catharsis ensues.
Ashley Williams: It’s so funny that Stephen mentions his favorite fifteen minutes at the end of the film, because this was glossed over in the book, awarded three to five sentences max. For me, in the book, it was Kim’s going away party, the resolution of her friendship with Farouq.
Question: So was it overall something you’d recommend?
Ashley Williams: Yes, both the book and the film. The book because it’s a perspective I don’t think we have seen a lot of in a tense region that is so different than our own. And the film because I was thoroughly entertained.
Stephen Brown: Absolutely. I was very pleasantly surprised and entertained. This isn’t one of those film experiences that stays with you a long time, but it is far more accomplished than expected.
provided year-round by parent organization, the Atlanta Film Society.
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Oscar weekend has arrived, and starting tomorrow I’ll be reporting live from Hollywood thanks to 
One of the most acclaimed Hungarian films in recent years tells the tale of a father endeavoring to bury his son, but there’s so much more to the story. László Nemes’s chilling you-are-there style Holocaust drama Son of Saul (A-) takes viewers deep into horror and chaos where a heroic dad’s singleminded mission to provide a proper burial for his offspring is complicated by his role as a Jewish prisoner inside a WWII Auschwitz Concentration Camp where he serves as part of the “Sonderkommando” unit that disposes of the dead. Told within stifling quarters over the course of less than two days in 1944, the story is focused on Saul’s leviathan task while he fends off SS-guards and smugglers in his midst as the burial and even overall escape becomes either elusive or imminent. Much falls on the shoulder of lead actor Géza Röhrig, and he is magnificent in a muscular role requiring few words. Nemes’ direction often relies on tight close-ups and sound effects that prompt viewers to fill in an even more terrifying complete picture. Told with the propulsion of near-constant motion, it is an extraordinarily effective glimpse into history. Due to some of the labyrinthine plot details that undergird the narrative, the emotional core occasionally gets short shrift. It is essential viewing in this historical sub-genre and a harrowing, insightful experience.
As both a cinema and technology enthusiast, I am thrilled that Dolby Laboratories is sponsoring my trip to cover The Oscars in Hollywood the weekend of February 27-28, 2016 culminating in the February 28 ABC telecast. Here are some technology trivia facts — and links to my reviews – for some of the most celebrated films of the past year. These are the films nominated for Academy Awards,using Dolby technology:
Where To Invade Next (A-) is a strange misnomer for writer/director Michael Moore’s most eye-opening and consistently accessible documentary to date, which is only tangentially about the military. In the film, the on-screen auteur stages a series of mock infiltrations into some of the great global societies to steal and stake claim to brilliant ideas and bring them back to the U.S. Sometimes a land grab and occasionally a grab bag, Moore’s trenchant travelogue transports us to schools in Finland and France, prisons in Norway, CEO roundtables of Iceland and the halls of government in Tunisia, to name just a few of his eye-opening encounters. The intrepid iconoclast of the progressive persuasion challenges all sorts of cultural assumptions and delivers plain-spoken innovations and surprising belief systems. The film is a spiritual sequel to his 2007 film Sicko in which Europeans frolicked in the bliss of their universal healthcare; but this movie is much more engaging and entertaining. Using his trademark humor and everyman interview style, he arrives at a profound thesis that many of the world’s great ideas did come from America; they just got lost a little bit on the journey. Moore speaks a little softer and carries a slightly less pulverizing stick, and it’s an entertaining and insightful lark. Those who choose to hear the provocateur’s message will be rewarded.
While it contains several inspired performances, droll dialogue and impeccable period detail, Joel and Ethan Coen’s send-up of Hollywood Hail, Caesar! (C+) doesn’t come together with quite the finesse of the brothers’ typical efforts. It depicts one day in the life of Hollywood in the golden years, but the result is far from vintage. James Brolin is sturdy but impenetrable as the film studio executive protagonist who must simultaneously contend with a playboy movie star (an enjoyable George Clooney) kidnapped by a group of screenwriters during the filming of a biblical epic, dueling gossip columnists (both played with tart delight by Tilda Swinton) and an array of minor subplots with stars ranging from a sassy Scarlett Johansson to a debonair Ralph Fiennes, chewing the scenery. While the tone is broadly comedic, both the scope of the plot and the reach of its impact are often protracted and diminished, as if the auteurs knew this was a lark and just didn’t really give it all they’ve got. It’s not enough of a satire of filmmaking or a skewering of the studio system or an examination of storytelling or the changing times to really stand out. Channing Tatum and Alden Ehrenreich are underused gems; both of their short-changed characters could be in a much more interesting movie. But like middlebrow Woody Allen films or pizza, even when it’s mediocre, it’s still pretty good. So let it be with the Coen Brothers’s Caesar.
I saw David O. Russell’s Joy (D+) so you don’t have to. Loosely based on the life of a divorced mom who transforms herself into the entrepreneur of the Miracle Mop empire in the early days of television home shopping, this maudlin seriocomedy takes roughly 90 minutes before it gains a pulse. By the time the story stirs any momentum in a prolonged TV studio sequence, Russell has already failed to generate any consistent tone or believable characters. Bits of the inspirational loosely true story and some facets of Jennifer Lawrence’s occasionally compelling performance as the title heroine (Mother of Invention? Mopping-Jane?) are the only components that bring any life at all to the proceedings. The auteur’s usual repertory ensemble including Robert DeNiro and Bradley Cooper are painfully dull and inconsistent in their roles. The final reel unspools unceremoniously to the finish line but can’t compensate for the inert narrative that led us there. For a film about a magnate of retail, the writer/director fails to make the sale.
A Felliniesque fantasia on life, love and art, Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth (A-) is an answer to cinephile prayer. There will be many who dismiss this Swiss Alps resort set comedy-drama as pretentious drivel or avoid the film altogether for fear of glacial pace; but those seeking an appropriately contemplative requiem on the choices made in the sunset of life will treasure the movie’s nontraditional narrative structure, formalist art direction and unconventional approach to character development. Giving late career-best performances as an aging composer, filmmaker and actress, respectively, Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel and Jane Fonda (in a potent extended cameo) are a master class trio bearing wisdom and fortitude. They’re also really funny in their wry honesty. Rachel Weisz and Paul Dano are both strong as generational counterpoints. David Lang’s music, especially the work he created for Caine’s fictional composer, is sheer bliss. Sorrentino captures a grotesquerie of fascinating people against gorgeous backdrops in conversations that comprise a protracted art house aria. Like the film’s spas, green pastures and alpine wilderness, the film leaves room for characters to breathe and discover one another in harmony. Some may argue there’s very little plot, and they’d be pretty much right. But the film is impeccably perceptive in peeling back the layers of humanity and stripping its characters bare of the familiar. The wit and wordplay devised by an Italian writer/director is stunningly universal; and despite its older stars, this autumnal film beats with a youthful heart.
Andrew Nackman’s 4th Man Out (B+) is a funny and naturally charming comedy about a 24-year-old small-town everyman auto mechanic (Evan Todd) who comes out as gay to his entourage of three very heterosexual bros, played by a pack of TV comedy actors Parker Young, Chord Overstreet and Jon Gabrus. The dynamic of revealing his pent-up news to stunned, unsuspecting straight guys is rich territory for comedy and pathos, and the first-time filmmaker successfully delivers an indelible tale. Todd and Young in particular create a marvelous bond as they maneuver through the machinations of manhood and as the quartet redefines the rules of their relationships and routines. Hockey viewing, clubbing and poker night all take on a different lens with the hapless trio meaning well but hitting some awkward notes. Also compelling is Todd’s earnestness as he portrays a man trying on his newfound identity for size; he is a revelation in the role and carries the film’s emotional weight powerfully. Most of all, it’s frank and funny and plumbs an often unexplored dynamic. It was fun to watch a film evocative of some of my ’90’s favorites Chasing Amy and The Brothers McMullen.
The 1950’s New York City of Todd Haynes’ Carol (B+) is gorgeous to behold. A stardust fantasy inked in pinks, draped in lavender and spiced with holiday peppermint sticks, it is also home to a burgeoning forbidden romance between an unhappy housewife played by Cate Blanchett and a timid shopkeeper played by Rooney Mara. Haynes films key sequences of this slow-burn drama via raindrop covered glass panes, through architectural lines that separate characters from one another and in front of mirrors that reflect tender love blossoming amidst the suffocating funhouse of a society in transition. The lead actresses are note-perfect in their commitment to characters and provide a fascinating portal into the sometimes too formalist unfolding of the proceedings. Haynes may be the ideal director for this austere work, skilled at keeping his heroines and the audience at safe distance from their surroundings and capturing the longing of outsider protagonists hoisted in space and time to alien earthly environments. If folks are left wanting a bit more, well, that’s sort of the point.