Broadcast News (1987)

Outline: Young, driven news producer Jane Craig (Holly Hunter) works with talented reporter/best friend Aaron Altman (Albert Brooks) until she's assigned to charismatic (albeit less talented) Tom Grunick (William Hurt).

Could they be rivals for the same anchor position and the same woman's heart?! Oh, I bet you figured that out already.

Listen, can I tell you something? I don't get this movie. Imagine, if you will, that because Jane's played by Hunter, she's the Holly Hunter specialty: prickly and super intelligent but still warm and passionate. So, basically, pretty awesome.

Naturally, her best friend is in love with her. Who wouldn't be? Sadly, between Brooks and writer/director James L. Brooks, Aaron's such an asshole that I never wanted her to end up with him. He's miserable, so he seeks to make her miserable in turn. That's not what best friends or people who are in love with you are supposed to do. How can he honestly tell Jane that he "semi-seriously" thinks that Tom is the devil, prevent the two of them from being together at every turn, and then tell Jane that he's mad at her? What the hell is that? Am I supposed to sympathize with this jerk?

I guess journalistic ethics mean nothing to me because I didn't entirely understand why what Tom did was so wrong. I liked Tom. I liked Jane with Tom. He wasn't perfect by a long shot, but he cared about her, and he liked her the way she was (condescension and all). I think Jane's problem could have been solved if she could just get Tom to understand why what he did was a breach of ethics.

So this leads me to the important question of the evening: do I even like writer/director James L. Brooks? He's directed five movies, I have seen four. Terms of Endearment rocks - no doubt about it. I have no real feelings about As Good As It Gets, but I think whatever I used to like about it has been diluted by its numerous airings on the superstation. Spanglish? Well, I saw that.

I'm going to level with you: James L. Brooks movies kind of suck. I think the characters are supposed to come off as real because of their quirkiness or eccentricity (for more on the problem with that, click here), but, most of the time, they're just mean. I don't like that. I don't want that from a movie. It's like watching only the episodes of Gilmore Girls written by Daniel Palladino. You're selling yourself short. B

My real concern in posting today, though, is the results of last night's SAG awards, which I can assure you I watched. Reese Witherspoon? Yes. Philip Seymour Hoffman? Absolutely. But the cast of Crash? WTF?! There was nothing wrong, per se, with any individual performance in the movie. Even so, as I read somewhere and would surely link to if I could remember, any film that cites race as the only source of conflict in the world today is just as ridiculous as one that pretends that race doesn't matter.