Word: spader
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Young Daniel Ellsberg (James Spader) is one of the Rand Corp.'s best and brightest, writing papers for the think tank that advocate brinkmanship and "the political uses of madness" in the cold war. In 1964 his work takes him to the Pentagon, where he sees madness in action. He learns that the entire war policy, in effect, is a mess swept under a carpet of inflated enemy body counts. Asked to help write a history of the war effort, he finds that the U.S. has remained hopelessly entangled because no President wanted to be the first U.S. leader...
...relevant story but told through a man who morphs from insufferably confident hawk to insufferably righteous dove. Fortunately, Spader has built a career on making creepy soullessness intriguing. Ellsberg compares the quagmire to quicksand: it's the stalest cliche imaginable, yet Spader sells it with his bitter, weary delivery. Later, after a fact-finding trip to the front line, he says he learned "we couldn't win unless ..." He trails off, and in that moment you see his brashness silently shatter. There is no "unless...
...Brattle Theatre continues its ongoing series, “Not Nominated (By the Academy),”a selection of critically acclaimed movies that did not receive a nomination for next month’s Oscars. The Brattle’s next feature from the series, Secretary stars James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhaal and is a dark comedy about finding love through S & M. In considering possible reasons for Secretary’s Oscar snub, the Brattle asks the obvious: “Could it be the spanking?” Secretary screens March...
...couple of typing errors, and the next thing she (Maggie Gyllenhaal) knows, she's bent across the boss's desk, awaiting punishment. He (James Spader) is a sadist who sometimes lacks the courage of his convictions. But that's all right with his employee. She has enough affection for pain and humiliation for both of them. It may not be quite so all right with viewers, though. Writer-director Shainberg seems to be aiming for a dark comedy, but mostly his movie is coy without being funny, ugly without being truly transgressive, stupid when it needs to be smart...
...Brooks is but one painful example of talent going to waste: it's another case of good actors trying their damnedest with bad lines. Kyra Sedgwick, James Spader, Albert Brooks and Helen Mirren are all fine, subtle performers; here, they are relegated to stale, two-dimensional stereo-types. Lumet may as well have subtitles put in key scenes: "This man is evil, because all he cares about is money. This man is good, because he really cares about making people better...