Margin Call (2011) - Review

By focusing on one late-night scramble, we find the emotional heartbeat of the economic crisis

January 14, 2020

This is the film that The Big Short aspired to be. Not that that isn't also a great film. But Margin Call is the Titanic of finance films, by which I mean this: We intensely follow one firm's all-night scramble to survive the financial crisis. And because of that, we are emotionally invested in the breaking tragedy more than we could be for any birds-eye analysis.

The margin call, in so many words: The bank teeters on the brink of bankruptcy because its holdings have plummeted in value while over-leveraged. Amid rounds of layoffs, risk analyst Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) burns the midnight oil and figures this out. All the cavalry is called, no matter the hour. When the creditors come calling at dawn, as a lawyer once told me, "you lose the farm."

What brilliant casting. Everyone, from Paul Bettany to Demi Moore to Stanley Tucci, nails it. Kevin Spacey as sales director presages his House of Cards ruthlessness but has more conscience than anyone else here. Salesmen may hawk anything, especially on Wall Street, but some actually do believe the best client is a repeat client. Only a few actors have the pedigree to be his CEO; Jeremy Irons is one. "How do you get to the top?" he asks the board. "By being first, by being better, or by cheating."

1917 - Review

A visually stunning dance, but difficulty cannot inspire awe
January 9, 2020

Steven Spielberg told Sam Mendes that he wept when he saw Mendes' first directorial effort, American Beauty. He may weep again at the thought of how grueling filming 1917 must have been. It took weeks to plan and film five minutes for Atonement's famed Dunkirk tracking shot; Mendes has created twenty times that to produce 1917, giving the feel of one continuous shot.

Impossible as it is to evaluate the film without invoking its style, I know that Mendes gives us much more than just another war movie. And simple as its story is, 1917 produces a complex response---not just because of its style. It is thrillingly intense, but it is not comprehensive. It's a visually stunning dance whose choreography and execution inspire me, but whose narrative does not run deeper. It is an achievement, a masterpiece of technical genius and of creative storytelling, but not of story.

Jojo Rabbit - Review

Divisive, brilliant, risky in a year of risks, but not unprecedented
January 8, 2020

In 1998 I was ten, playing sports and Nintendo 64 everyday. The Academy's Best Picture nominees included Italy's Life is Beautiful and the eventual winner, Shakespeare in Love. These two beautifully constructed films contrasted the frontrunner, the war epic Saving Private Ryan---much more serious fare, but just as masterfully made.

No other year matches our current Best Picture race better than 1998. Many will say we've never seen films like these before. What to make of them? I give them 1998.

We have jarring tonal shifts---an abrupt, total reversal in Parasite, another foreign production attempting to clear the hurdle for the first time, and a gradual one here in Jojo Rabbit---that echo the tale of two halves in Life is Beautiful. As with that film, Jojo never truly sheds its comedic tones, which I think only bolsters its credentials. That playfulness underscores the tragedy and gives the entire running time a unified feel.

Once again, we must decide how to respond to such a treatment of the Holocaust and its immediate surroundings. The schism among Jojo's audience (and critics) is real and vitriolic.

It pays to consider the wake Life is Beautiful left behind. No less a Hitler satirist than Mel Brooks argued there are limits to such comedy. "The philosophy of the film is, people can get over anything," he told Der Spiegel. "No, you can't. You can't get over a concentration camp." Moreover, he said, none of Roberto Begnini's family perished there. The Italian could never comprehend its full nature.

Little Women (2019) - Review

A timeless story filmed with creativity, vision, and intelligence
January 4, 2020

This is what happens when you take a timeless story and film it with creativity, vision, and intelligence. Louisa May Alcott's novel has been adapted no fewer than seven times. Here Greta Gerwig has produced the most mature telling, one that delights and adds deeply to discussion, and does so deftly.

As if to one of its own beloved characters, the book presented Gerwig with decision after decision to personalize her drama. She's taken each step boldly. Gone are the very young childhood scenes. We join the action as Jo decides to abandon her writing in New York to care for her ailing sister, Beth (Eliza Scanlen), back home in Concord. Youngest sister Amy (Florence Pugh) and Laurie (Timothee Chalamet) are already in France. Meg (Emma Watson) is already married to the penniless John Brooke (James Norton). Their legendary upbringing, drama productions, debutante balls, courtships---all are seen in flashback.

Why use flashback? This is the most mature telling of Little Women because of the focus that the technique forces on us. Those memories immediately shape the present. Gerwig uses warm lighting and costuming, and sometimes hairstyles, to sweeten the past. The film therefore exchanges a novel-esque, sprawling narrative feel for a pointed analysis emphasizing Jo's reflection, at a critical juncture, on her life's decisions. It is the difference between a bath and a shower. Other adaptations luxuriate in the sisters' interactions. Here there is heightened purpose if not the feeling of a domestic epic.

You Play to Win the Game - Oscar Nominations

It's all about the Academy Awards, and it's all about Best Picture

When it comes to the prestige of competitions, awards, and achievements, you don't shed the belief systems ingrained in you as a child. When hockey players say their World Cup would be nice to win, but let's be honest, it's not the Olympics, they are referring to the deep-seated admiration they have for the latter.

I'm not a member of the Academy yet, but I ought to write like I am, to take nominations and voting as seriously as members do. Or dare I say, members ought to take them as seriously as I do. How can I so arrogantly say that? Because one day when I was a small boy, I stumbled across an encyclopedia's list of Best Picture winners. Because soon after that, I found the framed piece in my grandparents' basement that captured in ranks and files every Best Picture poster. This is the list that makes my eyes widen, that I can recite by heart. Like the names engraved on the Stanley Cup, this is the list you grow up dreaming to be on. No salary, no profession can forge that kind of awe.

You create films for many reasons, artful, personal, economic, social---but you should always aspire to make the best. You play to win the game. So each year I present my Academy Award ballot.

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).