Uncut Gems - Review

Every new plan is another final last stand
December 27, 2019

The first thing you want to know is, does Adam Sandler really pull this off? Be prepared: This role is tailored so tightly to him that no one else could fit, and we are seeing him if not naked then stripped of protective layering for the first time. His zany comic madness heightens the stress level of what is already a frenetic situation. This man is a hustler, a hawker, who never stops talking his way out. Yes, another talent could have played Howard Ratner, but Howard then would have been an altogether different person, and I can't find a better way to commend Sandler than that.

The question I keep asking myself, though, is different. But we'll get to that later. More important is to praise Uncut Gems as a fine achievement that centers not just on Sandler's performance but also on incisive writing and rapid dialogue. Plenty of films squeeze their protagonists under deadline pressure; rarely is it so keenly felt. Howard's ordeal takes place over several days, yet his and others' effusions make even the zwanzig Minuten of Lola Rennt seem longer in comparison.

Howard runs a New York jewelry store. He's the kind of hopelessly lost, manic gambler who will pawn Kevin Garnett's championship ring for the loan to make another bet, which, if won, would allow him to pay back the goons he owes.

Dolemite is My Name - Review

The 'Ghetto Expressionist', energetically and artfully honored
December 23, 2019

The real Rudy Ray Moore often attended church with his mother and even spoke there to the congregation sometimes. We see no churches in this film, nor his mother, but I share this biographical bit to get at this: If that seems inconsistent with the vulgar, pimping Dolemite character he assumed on stage, remember Moore's overall attitude toward it. Because the film does, and splendidly.

"I don't want to be referred to as a dirty old man," Moore said, "but rather a ghetto expressionist." Here is a man who loves show business, wants stardom so much that he would do anything to succeed. He doesn't start with filth. He isn't filthy outside of his Dolemite persona. Struggling as a Los Angeles nightclub emcee and record shop salesman, he decided he would dive into the raunchiest material to make a name for himself. In the process he painted life within those "five blocks in every city in America" and gave them the entertainment he knew they wanted.

21 Bridges - Review

Long night for NYC, not for us
December 16, 2019

A grey haze sets in over the Manhattan skyline. We see it in the opening shots. Tonight will be a long night shrouded in a fog, left behind by two cop killers, that Andre Davis (Chadwick Boseman) must sift through in order to bring them to justice.

They've left eight NYPD officers dead in Brooklyn after a robbery gone sour. (Robberies always go sour for somebody, though.) Detective Davis shows up and quickly is on their tail. The suspects are hiding in midtown; the FBI wants to wrest control of the search from him if they cross state lines. So he decides to do what we're here to see---close the 21 bridges as well as the ferries and tunnels out of Manhattan and fence in the Bad Boys.

Marriage Story - Review

A Masterful Elegy for a Marriage
December 14, 2019

What God has joined, let no man put asunder. I learned in my upbringing and believe today that two bodies become one, one body and one life, in marriage. And so it takes that kind of divine effort, herculean and otherworldly, for its participants to tear apart a life so joined. Formidable too is depicting that deconstruction as flawlessly as Noah Baumbach has here. He has created a masterful elegy for Nicole and Charlie's love story that includes as much joy and pain as their marriage did.

Where did it even go wrong? Neither can begin to articulate it at first. We open to the best love-story montage since Up, in which we hear the tender essays they've written each other at the behest of their marriage counselor. It's only for our ears, however. When Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) simply won't read hers aloud, as was the deal, it's the beginning of many agreements that retroactively become mere discussions, and the first indication that she may be the driving force behind the separation.

The montage will be the most editing Baumbach does for the rest of the picture. There may not be a more real depiction of everyday life in any film ever, from the real way Charlie (Adam Driver) and Nicole talk to each other, to the naturalness of his lighting, to the way logistics affect them and the divorce proceedings, to Charlie's acting troupe's background conversations, to the new awkwardness felt in familiar situations. Scenes flow freely. Baumbach gives them the immediacy of theatre, but without so much self-reverence as to make scenes one long take. Characters will walk out of the shot, continue talking, come back. We are making sense of uncertainty like our couple is. And as for the dialogue---sanctus statim is another thing I learned in Catholic school. That translates, give it the Oscar now.

The Report - Review

A Sunlight Problem
December 13, 2019

Imagine a dry, plodding All the President's Men with little personality. For that matter, imagine Robert Redford bereft of his charm. What would you have left?

That is The Report, a movie about a similarly important subject. America looks at itself in the mirror and decides whether to hold itself accountable for torturing detainees in the wake of the September 11 attacks. It's monumentally important. Eating healthy is important, too. It's up to the chef to serve vegetables raw or to garnish them. Here we don't have hibachi but rather raw vegetables. It's a chore more than a pleasure.

The Ides of March (2011) - Review

A Winning Candidate
December 10, 2019

Let's start with the title. Much has been said about it. Is George Clooney reaching too far to compare the machinations in his film to those of Brutus and Cassius? I would say, well, that was the most powerful empire on earth then, and that was how the sausage was made. This is the most powerful nation on earth now, and this is how ours gets made.

Ryan Gosling plays the suave lead surrounded by juggernauts---the even suaver Clooney as Mike Morris running for the Democratic nomination and employing Stephen Meyers (Gosling) as his No. 3 behind Philip Seymour Hoffman as Paul Zara; Marisa Tomei as a voracious reporter he must feed and spar with; and Paul Giamatti managing the rival candidate's campaign. Evan Rachel Wood also turns in a fine performance that has to be both vulnerable and confidently sexy. That's a lot of big players. Acting is not going to be a liability for this film.

Ford v Ferrari - Review

Vive l'Exposition
December 7, 2019

Ford v Ferrari gets Le Mans very right. It understands the 24-hour endurance race's personality and quirks. It also gets the 1966 race's climax, its feel and its truth, spot on. That's what defends the film from its tonal equivocation and its expository dialogue. But it can't do all the heavy lifting. Like Ken Miles says, there really is more speed just yearning to break out of this picture, but not under these confines set for it. Not as a buddy-comedy that tries to transcend its genre.

Joker - Review

The rejection Arthur feels becomes the rejection Arthur expects
December 5, 2019

I should have recognized one of Joker’s main ploys for what it was at this moment. The troubled, dejected Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) had shared an elevator with pretty neighbor Sophie (Zazie Beetz). He had followed her around Gotham one day---stalked is the more keen word. And so now she confronts him by knocking on his apartment door. “Were you following me today?” she asks. They begin a romance.

Beautiful women do not show up at the doors of strangers who fancy them, no matter how suitors may dream of it. It turns out only the prologue is real---Arthur has imagined every subsequent, romantic encounter with her. She in fact has not supported him at the comedy club, nor at his mother’s hospital bedside, as we’ve seen. But I felt needlessly torn and misled. When he does daydream, as when he views Robert De Niro’s Late Nite Show and places himself on stage, forging a bond with the host, Todd Phillips frames it clearly. He does not with Sophie.

The Mall Trip

“Do you remember when we went to King of Prussia?” Katja asked me and laughed as she drove us home through the city of Wiesbaden. Of course I remembered.

Four of us that day had made the pilgrimage to King of Prussia, the world’s largest shopping mall. My father was much younger than I am now. Katja, my step-mother, was barely in her twenties, a college kid. And behind them, just out of sight, lurked the tykes. My brother was four. I was seven.

We left Mom’s house to spend every other weekend with them. Dad and Katja had moved from Germany into a small apartment above his new boss’s garage on a sprawling Main Line property, replete with a gated driveway and a lake covered in moss. “Don’t go near that,” Dad said that winter weekend when the lake froze over. But God created frozen lakes for kids to play hockey on, even if they don’t have skates and their father rushes out mid-game to prove with one stomp of his boot how fragile the ice is. That is what they were dealing with. They were substitute teachers trying to corral the miscreants.

Pop's Eulogy

Good morning everyone, and welcome---our family joins me in thanking you for coming today to support us and more importantly, to honor and remember my grandfather.

The story of a junior starts with a senior. Paul and Mary welcomed the newborn Paul Jr. in 1944 and gave him his competing Italian-Irish heritage, though his very Italian neighborhood of 49th Street, West Philadelphia made sure the Italian side in him won out. Our Lady of Angels was his home parish. Before long he attended Annunciation, and then Monsignor Bonner and briefly St. Joseph’s University. Vietnam raged by that time, and the Marine Corps came calling for him.

Pop, as we called him, traveled the country with the Marines. He trained mostly on helicopters. As we remember him telling it, just before he was scheduled for deployment in Asia, there was a change in the military’s plans, and he thankfully never had to see combat.

Upon his homecoming he finished at St. Joe’s---ever a source of shared pride between him and my brother Brian---and he took jobs teaching at colleges and as a tax accountant. He admired Cadillacs and loved doo-wop---Deon and the Belmonts, Frankie Valli, the days when harmony was king.

Blurred Lines

Honor isn't as simple as In or Out

On the main court, Nicholas* traded forehands with his opponent, whose high loops the freezing April gusts pushed unpredictably around the court. Eventually, if Nick could feel his hands and keep his discipline during the long rallies, he would whip those hands through—as quickly as Delaware had ever seen—and pummel a winner that the pasty boy across the net couldn’t touch. It was Greek god against high school nerd, almost literally. Nick’s father and uncle shouted in Greek illegal instructions from behind the fence to our potential state champion, and the public school’s diminutive top player played a soft game and wore Abdul-Jabbar-esque goggles.

I walked over from the adjacent courts where our two doubles teams were stampeding over more tennis fodder. My first year as head coach of my alma mater was starting well. This would be our third team win in as many contests.

John looked on in his windbreaker and sunglasses with his arms folded across his chest. Muscular and lean at forty, a veteran coach, he’d taken up a post behind Nick but far from his entourage of Mediterranean rowdies. “Perfect for Nick to play,” he said, referring to Goggles across the net, without diverting his attention from the point unfolding. “Especially this early in the season.”

“Building patience,” I said.

Grandmom's Eulogy

Anna Marie Ettorre, 1937-2016

Hot off the presses of my grandmother’s favorite magazine, People, this past year were the headlines documenting Harper Lee’s new book, Go Set a Watchman. What grabbed the headlines wasn’t merely the hype—for Lee had come out of a long seclusion to publish her first book since To Kill a Mockingbird—but the subject matter. It is about the difficult day that comes for each of us, when we realize our parents are not the infallible gods of our childhood, but human just like us—when we can no longer view them through our Atticus Finch-tinted glasses if we wish to understand them and, in the end, love them.

Fittingly when that day came for me, it was Grandmom herself who sat with me, this woman who spent more time with me than any other except my mother, at Pica’s restaurant. I share it now, not because it was our most memorable meal together—certainly that honor falls to something she made—but because it was our most profound. We talked of the old days, and I was finally old enough to understand. Then she cried, and we ate together—two things she did a lot in our company.

Home Marathon: First place, ND Magazine

Notre Dame Magazine writes in its Winter 2016 issue:

Where there’s a will there’s not always a way. Michael Augsberger ’10 details his journey from fledging runner to desperate miscreant in his “Home marathon” essay, which won first place in this magazine’s third annual Young Alumni Essay Contest.

Editors spent a day reading the entries in the 2015 contest and selected the winners after follow-up readings and discussions. The names of the authors were not attached to the essays and were not revealed until after the winning entries were chosen.

Read the full essay here: http://magazine.nd.edu/news/63103/

The Writing on the Wall

As the mural of my high school's great athletic moments was unveiled to the public in the fall of 2012, I divulged a few behind-the-scenes stories about its creation in our alumni magazine. Here was the product.

Eat as much protein as you like, Tom Higley ’86, but you’ll never grow as tall as you stand in our new Mulvena-Mazik Fitness Center.

There he is, a seven-foot, younger version of himself adorning the fitness center wall, perpetually breaking the tape at the 1985 county meet. He’d just erased a Dickinson runner’s lead in the final 30 meters. “Something inside me told me to go for it,” he said back then. “And I did.”

The mural that Higley graces is Salesianum’s own Ashburn Alley, walk of fame, and Division I stadium lobby rolled into one. Its pictures and narratives fill five walls. The long timeline relives our moments of athletic triumph—and those heartbreaks glorious because of the monumental efforts they elicited.

A School's History in Pictures and Stories

One of my best memories from working at my old high school, Salesianum in Wilmington, Delaware, was being asked to research and write a mural for the athletic center renovation. We finished in late 2012 and dedicated the new center shortly afterward.

Following a summer of writing and research, eighty-eight moments emerged: The school's greatest athletic achievements and most dramatic contests since its founding in 1903. Then a team of architects and designers laid out the artwork covering two stories of wall space using the photographs we lifted from archives, newspapers, and yearbooks.

Click to view the full PDF version of the modern era mural (2000-present).

Calm Yourself

What’s it like inside a timeout—and inside the most important timeout of the season—with new Salesianum basketball head coach Brendan Haley ’82? Not as action-­‐packed as you might think.

Printed in Distinguished Gentleman, 2013

You are 17 again and sweaty, wearing longer shorts than you ever have in your life, treading on an acrylic blue chicken on your way to talk with your math teacher. He hates numbers. High school is one hell of a place.

You are losing. He has thirty seconds. He looks to the assistants around him, then turns to you. Fifteen seconds.

“Be more physical,” he says. His eyes are fixed. His arms are steady. “More physical.”

Ten seconds.

Back to the Semi-Pros

Of course Ben Davis drove a nicer car than you, he just didn't act like it

March 23, 2009

Ben Davis went to my father’s high school. A reception room precedes the office of the dean of admissions, whose omnipotence carries to the ends of the world such that he decides who gets to pay $22,000 in a given year for the privilege of attending the Augustinians’ campus. When the sun is right—early on the East Coast—Malvern Prep’s acres almost bear outlines of the Villanova cathedral tower’s long shade.

Davis stood in the dean’s office, leaning against the wall, those protracted shadows shrinking. An ornamental side table lay underneath his feet.

We first met seven years ago in that office, when I was an eighth-grader looking to go to Malvern Prep for high school, but the conversation moved like traffic out of a concert venue. One-way. Frozen in time, Davis continually stared at a scorching home run he had just hit, his piped Malvern uniform still piping from the force.

Above the photograph of him, the title USA TODAY NATIONAL PLAYER OF THE YEAR hovered like a mistake curveball. Not many wide-eyed prospective students missed the framed poster on the dean’s wall. “Wow,” I said. That was our conversation. Then, he was Malvern’s finest athletic product, a Seattle Mariners catcher. Seven years later he would be my teammate.

Aloha to the Streak

Notre Dame's football team ends a long bowl-game drought

First published in The Dome, April 2009

They say it takes one day for every hour of time-zone difference to recover from a long plane trip.

Yet according to the game clock, the Irish needed just twelve minutes to adjust their internal clocks five time zones away from South Bend against a jetlag-less team eating home cooking.

At Christmas Eve’s Hawaii Bowl, the Warriors obviously forgot to mention the old wisdom to Robert Hughes, the sophomore tailback who punched in the opening touchdown. Ditto to Jimmy Clausen, whose West Coast roots perhaps eased his adjustment to HDT—Hawaii Destruction Time. The Californian’s 22-for-26 day included a 69-yard bomb to Golden Tate to the house in the second quarter.

Also forgotten was the NCAA-record bowl losing streak of nine games after Notre Dame put up 28 points—all Clausen passes, three of which went to Tate—in a span of 14:27 to all but seal the deal by the middle of the third. Both Tate’s 177 receiving yards on six catches and Clausen’s 406 passing yards and five TDs (both school records) earned the players co-MVP honors for their Hawaiian vacations.

Vive le Ref

Refereeing as a tryout for benevolent dictator

September 2014

Suppose you were born into enough luck in the Middle Ages or Ancient Rome. What kind of emperor would you have been?

Ah, now wait a second. You’d like to think you’d have been an enlightened ruler. Free the slaves, frown on war. From our modern perspective, it’s tempting to say you’d have risen above the moral limits of your day. But when human slavery drives your economy, your allies behead their wives because it’s faster than getting an annulment, and your security detail isn’t quite as tight as the Secret Service, tyranny looks a lot more appetizing.

I love to ask myself this question. It’s an exhaustive test of our moral aptitude. It evaluates not only how we wield authority but also, crucially, how well we recognize the evils that today are customs. What will cause posterity to read about us and cry, “Barbarians!” just as we do with human sacrifice and slavery?

I ask: How virtuous am I, really? How much is merely a product of my environment? As a dictator, would I have been compassionate, or merciless, or merely lazy? Free the slaves—more likely I’d have driven my slaves to the bone, with the enthusiastic support of all my contemporaries.

Since we cannot travel back in time, the only way to know the answer is to find some small post vested with absolute authority. This is why I referee soccer matches.

Summer Ping

Aluminum Bats: The story of their surge into amateur ranks, their production, and their tragic power

First published May 6, 2009.

Brandon Patch was dealing on that Montana summer night. The 18-year-old Miles City Mavericks pitcher had held Helena, two-time state champions, to just one earned run through four innings. The score was tied at three.

Under those late July lights, the season was drawing to a close. Brandon, a tall, husky southpaw, was making his final start for his American Legion baseball team. The black and red numeral—11—swayed against his grey road jersey as his hands remained still until they separated.

Then his left leg finished bent high above a stiff right leg, as he’d done since he was a kid. “Ping!” the bat sounded another grounder or lazy fly, and another Helena Senator was put out. One down, bottom of the fifth.

Quinn LeSage dropped his warm-up bats in the on-deck circle and walked to the plate. The 6’5” first baseman was garnering looks from Division I colleges. He dug in, and Brandon fired a ball and a strike in succession.