"Charlie Wilson" wages campaign of sharp satire

Charlie Wilson: "Do you drink?"
Gust Avrakotos: "God yeah."

I've waited all year for a movie that manages to properly mix its politics with pure entertainment, and after suffering through "Lions for Lambs," "In the Valley of Elah" and other earnest offerings, Mike Nichols and Aaron Sorkin have finally come through with the right stuff.

Most of the complaints I've heard about this Washington politico-comedy is that it soft pedals the politics in the cause of poking fun at D.C. culture, but after watching it I just have one question for these critics: Just how spoon fed do you really need your politics to be? 'Cause if you look even an inch below the surface of this one there's indeed a whole lot going on.

But I guess a word or two about the plot might be in order first, since many, many more people turned out to watch those damn Chipmunks squawk than tuned in for this in week one. Tom Hanks (heard of him?) plays Texas congressman Charlie Wilson, a conservative Democrat who is perfectly happy to just party his way through life until he gets fixated on the Muhjadeen's struggle to kick the Soviets out of Afghanistan. He gets assists from Philip Seymour Hoffman as beaten-down CIA agent Gust Avrakotos and Julia Roberts as wealthy Houston socialite Joanne Herring. Luckily, Nichols and Sorkin see the pure ludicrousness of waging the cold war from Texas, and they play this out as a broad but often sharp satire.

Going in, there were two people that had me worried about this one, Mr. Hanks and Mr. Sorkin. I know Hanks is beloved by many, many people, and I concede that he is a great actor, but he's usually just so smug that I want to smack him over and over until he just shuts up. Here, however, he plays Wilson like the "Bachelor Party" player he was, and it just works. And, more importantly, he gets out of the way when, about 15 minutes in or so, Hoffman arrives to deliver his first great performance of 2007 (though I think "The Savages," when I finally get to see it, will certainly be another one.) Roberts is here too, of course, as is delightful Amy Adams as Wilson's top aide, but they're really given little to do.

It's the arrival of Hoffman's Avrakotos in Wilson's office that just sets the tone of this flick perfectly. It verges on bedroom farce as Wilson's aides, busty broads all, of course, keep breaking into his first meeting with Avrakotos to prep him to face charges that he snorted cocaine while hanging out with strippers in Las Vegas. It's timed just right to make you laugh out loud.

And after the debacle that was "Studio 60," I was more than a little worried that Sorkin had lost his touch too. I really enjoyed the first three episodes of that NBC single-season show, but after that it seemed like he let his anger at the religious right just consume him and cloud his vision beyond the ability to deliver anything even mildly entertaining. Thankfully, "Charlie Wilson's War" is much more "West Wing" than "Studio 60," and it shows that Sorkin still has a real ear for the way things work in our nation's capitol (where I worked, briefly, as an intern for Maryland's U.S. Senator from the great city of Baltimore, Barbara Mikulski.)

There comes a moment near the end of "Charlie Wilson's War" when I was sure things were going to turn for the much worse and we were gonna be pounded over the head with an ending that assumed we were unable to absorb any of the points that were so deftly made thus far. It starts with Hanks adapting one of the expressions that just make my blood curdle, that misty-eyed look that makes you sure he's about to break into some kind of self-righteous speech about what we should all think.

But then Sorkin and Nichols pull back from the brink. It turns out that, thankfully, Charlie is just drunk, and we're left to, mostly, draw our own parallels between his personal crusade and what's going on in the world today.

With three winners in a row ("Walk Hard," "Sweeney Todd" and now this), it's just been a really fun week to go to the movies. I'm hoping that continues today with "The Great Debaters," but frankly fearing that might just be way too earnest for my taste. Tune in tomorrow to find out, and enjoy every minute of your merry Christmas! Peace out.

"Terminate" this TV project immediately

I don't really like being in the business of telling people not to watch something, especially when I haven't seen it yet myself. It's just not my natural setting, I guess.

That said, I several times had to sit through a commercial Sunday night during Fox's Sunday night animated lineup, which was pretty darn funny. Just in case anyone out there has more of a life than me (which often isn't much of a challenge), I can tell you it was for Fox's simply craptastic take on the "Terminator" saga. I do hope I'm wrong about this, but it just gives me a really queasy feeling.

Which is a real shame, because being a devoted "Firefly"/"Serenity" fan, I wish nothing but the best for Summer Glau (which would be, of course, a revival of "Firefly" on the Sci-Fi Channel, but that keeps getting less and less likely.

So, what's my beef with this new "Terminator"? Well, besides that it's just thoroughly unnecessary, my animosity peaked Sunday night when I heard this rather unwitty exchange between whatever yarnhead is now playing John Connor and the Terminator played by Ms. Glau, as they're getting into a car:

Connor: I'll take shotgun.
Glau: I'll take 9-millimeter.

Now, if that's not enough to make all you Ahnold fans out there cringe, the terminator played by Ms. Glau is actually named Cameron. Believe me, I couldn't make this stuff up.

But why should I get so worked up about a silly TV show that doesn't even premiere until Jan. 13 on Fox? Well, the short answer is I probably shouldn't, but "The Terminator" series has always been close to my heart if for no better reason than Salisbury, Md., the tiny burg where I spent my entire childhood, is also the hometown of Linda Hamilton (and Frank Perdue the late chicken king, for that matter.) Besides, is it too much to ask that my favorite movie franchises not get watered down to pure garbage?

I know that, with the writers' strike ongoing, your choices will be limited this winter, but please, please, please don't watch this new "Terminator."

Good things to come

I had planned to offer an equally bitter comment about Will Smith's "I Am Legend," but seeing that it made $76.5 million this past weekend, the biggest December opening ever, just zapped all the energy out of me to do so.

I'll just say this: The key to my disappointment with "I Am Legend" is pretty much summed up in the movie by Smith's Robert Neville himself. Neville, along with supposedly searching for the cure to a virus he helped create but is somehow immune to, spends a lot of time listening to Bob Marley.

Now, I've got nothing at all against Mr. Marley, and am in fact listening to "Legend" right now (I'd have to imagine that the makers of this movie thought the coincidence in titles was rather clever.) But, back to my rather longwinded point. Of all the great Bob Marley tunes out there, Neville is fixated on "Three Little Birds," easily the most generic one of all.

To me, the movie "I Am Legend" exists in the same realm, a completely tired tale about a man-made virus (stop me if you've seen "28 Days Later" or any number of better movies on this subject) that manages to build very little interest at all before trotting out monsters that were swiped most directly from the end of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" but could come from any number of paint-by-numbers horror flicks. The best thing about "I Am Legend," in fact, was the two trailers that ran before it, one for "Iron Man" and a simply sensational look at "Dark Knight" (Heath's Joker is just gonna kick royal ass.)

And one more thing, while were on the subject. As cool as director Francis Lawrence's vision of post-apocalyptic New York is, I'd like to call for an immediate moratorium on blowing up my favorite city in the world on the big screen. I don't know why movie directors get such a thrill out of decimating NYC, but I'm just damn tired of seeing it. 'Nuff said.

But, enough bile for a Monday morning. For the first time in well, a very long time, there are actually three movies coming out this weekend that I want to see.

I'm thoroughly on board the Dewey Cox bandwagon, and am convinced that "Walk Hard" will be that rare spoof that manages to sustain its gag and be funny from start to finish. And, though I can definitely take or leave Tom Hanks, the teaming up of Mike Nichols and Aaron Sorkin for "Charlie Wilson's War" should also be pretty entertaining too.

The one I most want to see, however, is Tim Burton's "Sweeney Todd." I'll find out tomorrow morning if this one is too bloody to open in my little corner of the world this weekend, which I fear may be the case but obviously hope won't be.

Three movies worth seeing? Now that's what I call a Christmas gift!

And, since anyone who sat through all that certainly deserves a reward, here's the trailer for "Leatherheads," the football flick starring George Clooney, John Krasinski and, I have the misfortune of telling you, Renee Zellweger. Enjoy, and have an entirely bearable Monday. Peace out.