Movies That Make You Cry When a Room of People Stand Up While Someone Shouts at Them to Sit DownIt is an honor and a privilege to get another court-room drama written by the king of the modern court drama, Aaron Sorkin.
The king is flexing hard. It feels timely and historical, with an excellent script and an impressive story I knew very little about. In a Sorkin movie everyone talks like Sorkin and has the perfect response to every quip thrown in their direction. His style is so inseparable from court room dramas just as Fincher's is from serial killers. This is because it's the perfect situation for two people to be trying to outwit each other with people watching. It allows for the closest thing to theater we can realistically get on film, and the man's scripts are pure theater.
Performances all around super, I specifically appreciated that it seemed less polished than other Sorkin films like A Few Good Men. You get Mark Rylance and Sacha Baron Cohen with weird long hair instead of Tom Cruise and Demi Moore. I'd be surprised if this film didn't get nominated for a ton of acting awards, everyone seemed to have completely transformed into their characters, I was especially impressed by Redmayne, Rylance and Lynch.
If I'm getting nitpick-y, I found the directing a bit clunky. All the cutting between scenes was effective to me but some of the shooting inside the court room and the choices of camera angles threw me off. You never want anybody to inhibit Sorkin but I'd love to see what someone like Ron Howard or Soderbergh could do with this script. I think having someone with a bit more visual flare could have brought out even more from Sorkin's writing.
Put some respect on the name. All hail Sorkin!
Edit: A couple years ago I got an ad on Instagram for an open casting call looking for someone to play Allen Ginsberg in this film, which I thought was hilarious cause I am not a balding Jewish 40 year old man.
