Tyson

This movie is a surprise! And so is Mike Tyson. I confess I don't follow boxing, but I acknowledge it is one of the great theaters of human struggle. And the sport makes for some of the greatest movies of all time! High stakes for any film, and this inventive and captivating documentary rises to the challenge.
Mike Tyson, himself, is the best choice to tell his own story. Not only is he coherent; he is downright eloquent. He provides a personal history that is tragic and honest. His hardened, solid exterior belies a personality delicately balanced on a history of brute achievements, leaning into the chasm of disaster and failure that threaten to swallow him up.
The director, James Tobak, has the good sense to let Tyson shape his story in large chunks. The shooting and editing support this. He is often shown sitting in front of a fence or rail detail that is broken into rectangles and squares, and the film is set up almost the same way, broken into pieces of conversation, pictures side by side, vintage footage and interview multilayered as Tyson's voice overlaps himself, engaging us with every word.
Mike Tyson is tragic in the classical sense. His powerful recounting of his decision to give up fighting is mesmerizing. He is thoughtful and introspective, at one point elaborating on the meaning of his tatoos and how they fit into our cultural, iconic understanding of them.
This is a movie you should see, if not to understand Mike Tyson; then to understand that there are plenty of us whose every battle is really about the neighborhood we grew up in, and the kids who broke our glasses, taunted us, and made us run home from school. For Mike Tyson, he has never quite beaten those bullies.
Tyson is a Sony Pictures Classics release by James Tobak.

Observe and Report

Seth Rogan is a funny dude. But I felt that in Observe and Report, he just dared me to laugh. I mean, is it wrong that I just accept this movie as a send up of strange, wonderful, sad, funny, and scary America? Rogan's character, Ronnie, is so familiar to me that if I laugh at him too much, I feel I am just like Ray Liotta's Detective, at the short end of his very short patience, handing out crushing bad news just to make fun of Ronnie as he crumbles. No - I am even more like the detective/voyeur hiding in Liotta's closet gleefully anticipating Ronnie's reaction to the bad news. Upon exiting mid conversation and excusing himself to leave, the detective apologizes: "Sorry - I thought it would be funnier than this." I know the audience members caught themselves thinking the same thing.


That said, I enjoyed the film very much, and there are many funny moments. I like the relationship between Ronnie and his mother, I like his whole team, their flaws, their interests, and their friendships. I like Ronnie and his unwaivering, if insane determination. Every character is solid and unique. I laughed out loud at many careful details, like photos of the security guard twins pinned to the "suspect board" with "Dick color?" on a note beside them. And I love the outrageously drunk Brandi. And the Mall Manager's exhasperation. And the Danny McBride Crack Dealer! And Aziz Ansari's inspired "F-U" sequence as Sadaam!

But the movie also brought up some issues I've been pondering about how people think of themselves. I work on an airport where there exists a paintball business. Grown men bring their children out to learn to shoot each other. Granted it is all in good fun, and the paintballs hurt, but are not fatal. Like Ronnie, they aren't allowed to shoot each other with real guns, and they are pretend infantry, or guerillas, or whatever, just as Ronnie is a pretend cop.

They even have pretend wars that look like real ones. Once they hosted a Vietnam staging, complete with helicopter to drop off the infantry. I could never figure out why anyone would want to relive that, or if they really were. It felt so disrespectful to those veterans who had really experienced Vietnam for people to make a recreation out of it. A pretend real war game with pretend victims just didn't seem right. Just who were they trying to be?

Then one day, parked in our lot, was a protest car. Things, I thought, are now superbly absurd. Across the car's windshield was written "No War". I watched the people standing around the car, and concluded they clearly weren't with the paintball players. Or were they? Was this car protesting war, or protesting pretend war? Or was it a pretend protest? Everyone looked very serious, protesters and paintballers alike. Were they as confused about their roles as I was? I expect they were. But they were also living out some sort of weird contract that they would respect each other's choices in the roles they had taken on.

And here I come back to the beauty of Ronnie in Observe and Report. Despite everything, he does come to accept his role in the pretend-cop universe. Even better, he comes to understand it, and embrace it, as do the people around him. So as we voyeurs emerge from the movie theater where we spied on Ronnie in order to laugh at him, we realize that Ronnie really does know who he is. And because of that, I guess he wins!

Observe and Report is a De Line Pictures/Legendary Pictures production directed by Jody Hill.