Review: The Infiltrator

Manuel here with a review of The Infiltrator which opened yesterday nationwide.

Fact: Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic is one of the most influential films of the 21st century. That’s not a qualitative assessment but an increasingly common thought that’s rankled in my brain. Can you believe Soderbergh actually struggled to get his film financed because Hollywood execs didn’t think audiences would want to watch an entire film about the drug trade?

Fast-forward to summer 2016 when USA is premiering Queen of the South, Netflix will bring us season 2 of Narcos, two competing El Chapo TV series are in development, and Bryan Cranston’s The Infiltrator joins an ever-growing list of films about the war on drugs that range from the sublime (Sicario) to the pedestrian (Blow) with everything in between (Savages, anyone?).

In Brad Furman’s The Infiltrator, the Breaking Bad actor plays U.S. Customs Service special agent Robert Mazur who, as is par for the course in certain genres, decides to take on one last job to go undercover as “Bob Musella.”...

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Doc Corner: 'Zero Days' is One of the Year's Best

Glenn here with our weekly look at documentaries from theatres, festivals, and on demand.

Alex Gibney works with such ferocious regularity that it’s sometimes hard to keep track. Last year alone he had three films released following two the year before that. His latest, Zero Days, falls into the camp of Gibney films in which he most excels - those like Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room that allow him to exercise his skills at investigative journalism and dig deep into exposing organizations and those who surround them. While it lacks the pop fancies that made Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief such a success, Zero Days is Gibney’s best documentary in years.

Told with all the propulsive, thrilling excitement of a Hollywood spy blockbuster, Zero Days lifts the lid on a series of cybercrimes (reportedly - the film certainly makes a valiant case for it) committed by the US government in alignment with Israel against Iran and their potentially dangerous nuclear program. The crimes backfired drastically and exposed America and the world to a future of uncertain technological warfare...

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Tweetweek: Skarsgård, Fences, and... yes... Politics

Time for a quick diversion - tweets that amused or edified this week, somewhat randomly selected.

Get it, Kangaroo. pic.twitter.com/ghyR1msaCJ

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) June 14, 2016

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#ImWithTweet

I know I promised no political talk on the blog until September so I'll let others do the talking as it was such a big political week that it's hard to avoid. That's reflected in our roundup of amusing tweets this week. But first let us begin with this giddy tweet from Patches who claims he had had a few drinks when he wrote it but to us it's the perfectly clear minded truth.

More after the jump of course...

Movies are insane. People pretending to be other people! Depicting reality, yet constructing it! Angles! Mood! Holy hell. Movies.

— Maester Patches (@misterpatches) June 10, 2016

Now that we're all getting behind Hillary Clinton, let's admit that Anne Hathaway has never once been bad in a movie.

— Louis Virtel (@louisvirtel) June 8, 2016

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Make America Link Again

• Vague Visages why critics often fail when writing about acting
• EW Forget to link up to the Meryl Streep as Donald Trump thing. Sadly no better video has emerged than this very shaky cel phone
• Playbill in the most exciting theater news imaginable The Lovely Laura Linney and Cynthia Nixon will co-star in the revival of The Little Foxes. The best part? They'll be alternating roles periodically!
• TFE ...If you missed our Smackdown which featured The Little Foxes you should read it. It is a great play which made for an excitingly cutting movie with killer performance by Bette Davis and Patricia Collinge. Can't wait to see it on stage and see what Linney & Nixon do with those two very different roles.

• Slate the enduring influential portrait of genius and mediocrity in Amadeus 
• The Tarzan Files has images from Total Film's behind the scenes report on the Legend of Tarzan
• Variety Netflix releases some data on how quickly people binge watch but not enough. I mean, I wanna hear how often a viewer DOESN'T complete a show. There must be stats on that and is that how they decide what to cancel?
• Variety Geena Davis producing a documentary on Hollywood's gender inequality
• /Film JK Simmons is working out a lot to play Commissioner Gordon. Doesn't he know Gordon never gets any action beyond telephone calls and holding a gun?
• Village Voice on Brian de Palma and divisive auteurs eventually being labelled masters
• Comics Alliance James Wan talks about why he chose to direct Aquaman over Flash as both were offered to him
• Pajiba on the worst thing about Warcraft. Yup, we have another incredibly good looking actor (this time it's Daniel Wu) buried in makeup and latex until you can't recognize him.
• TFE ...If you missed the last podcast we talked about this problem with franchise pictures. Why do they keep hiring beautiful actors when they intend to cover up their beauty and make them unrecognizable?
• Antagony & Ecstasy a rare 10/10 review for The Lobster 

Off Screen
SBS a breakdown of victim blaming using pie charts