Media mayhem: The team at ABC Sports try making sense of a terrorist attack in ‘September 5’.
Special Note: Apologies for the delay in covering some new release titles (Emilia Perez; Magic Beach; Flight Risk; Companion, etc). The situation is being addressed.
SEPTEMBER 5 ***1/2 (95 minutes) M
The terrorist attack at the 1972 Munich Olympics in which 12 Israeli athletes were murdered is depicted in this excellent period piece from the jagged perspective of the harried members of the ABC Sports broadcast team who found themselves on top of a story they were deemed unqualified to report.
From inside their crammed production office they frantically arrange coverage of the continuously morphing hostage event while wrestling with the ethics of showing live footage to the world, knowing that things could turn deadly without notice.
Superbly directed in full-on thriller mode by Tim Fehlbaum (who co-wrote the Oscar-nominated screenplay with Moritz Binder & Alex David), a battery of hand-held cameras capture the crew as they try making sense of what’s going on, their fevered arguments and high-pressure decisions fighting against time and the need to assess the fractured information coming at them from all sides.
The tightly wound ensemble is lead by Peter Sarsgaard as ABC Sports head Roone Arledge, John Magaro (so good in The Big Short) as producer Geoffrey Mason and Ben Chaplin as operations chief and the team’s resident, self-appointed ethicist.
The film does a great job capturing the tension spikes of a rapidly unfurling crisis at a formative point in the evolution of electronic media when journalists placed a much higher value on such things as principles and sources.
It’s no doubt intentional how the film serves as a contrast to the operation of mainstream media today, where oceans of information have resulted in a deep disregard for ascertaining whether there are any actual facts involved.
The film also goes to great lengths in vividly recreating the heft of the technology, with particular emphasis on broadcast cameras the size of refrigerators.
PRESENCE **** (85 minutes) MA
Now here’s a great ghost story.
A troubled family move into their new suburban home, their movements being intimately tracked by a floating camera that, we soon learn, is a spirit that seems to have been awaiting their arrival.
The spectre listens in on the family’s problems, which includes a teenage daughter who is in recovery from the loss of her best friend.
Veteran director Steven Soderbergh (remember Sex, Lies and Videotape from 1989?) and gun screenwriter David Koepp (Jurassic Park; The Paper, which should have earned him and brother/co-writer Stephen an Oscar) have come up trumps with this innovative and compelling take on the traditional spookfest.
Eschewing the usual raft of scare tactics for something more tactile, the point-of-view device proves very effective in building tension from small gestures and movements that would otherwise seem unremarkable.
Fans of the supernatural will love the offerings here, with top work from Lucy Lui (the mother), Chris Sullivan (the father), Eddy Maday (the athlete son) and especially Callina Liang (the daughter), who senses something watching her.
Great stuff.