July 2011

HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY
HALLOWS: PART 1 (2010)/PART 2 (2011)
As disappointing as most of the movies have been in this epically successful franchise, the final chapter comes to a very satisfying conclusion.

The two-part film manages to be unrelentingly bleak and intense yet, at the right time, appropriately sentimental. The countless famous faces who filled the supporting roles in these adaptations of J.K. Rowling’s best sellers show up in the finale, if only for a second or two. More prominent are Ralph Fiennes, as the ghostly, noseless Lord Voldemort, determined to destroy Harry; Maggie Smith as the feisty Prof. McGonagall, who leads the Hogwarts “army” against the dark forces; Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix Lestrange, whose hate for Harry knows no bounds; and Alan Rickman as Prof. Snape, the most mysterious and complex character in Harry’s circle.

Daniel Radcliffe (Harry), Emma Watson (Hermione) and Rupert Grint (Ron) look grim and defeated as they face one incredible obstacle after another, all leading toward Harry’s destiny. Yet even after 10 years of inhabiting these characters, the threesome still seem like kids playing themselves. You’d think that Radcliffe, concluding his run as the star of the most popular series of films in cinematic history, would have at least a few impressive moments in this 4 ½-hour finale. He does not. He remains a purely reactive actor, who spends too much time staring emotionless into the camera. After all this time, when Radcliffe takes off his signature glasses, Harry Potter disappears.

In Part I (probably an hour too long), Harry, Hermione and Ron magically fling themselves across the British countryside in search of Horcruxes (objects that contain bits of Voldemort’s soul) one step ahead of the evil lord’s Death Eaters. This pitch-black adventure has an ominous end-of-time tone, but for the non-Harry Potter aficionados the purpose is a tad ambiguous.

The teens, as they are want to do, engage in petty arguments and then make up as the fate of the world or England or the witchcraft (not sure which) hangs in the balance. The film could have used a bit more of Voldemort and less of his faceless minions (excepting Bonham Carter).

Part II picks up without a break, but immediately improves on the first 2 1/2 hours by relocating the action to Hogswarts. This magical centerpiece of the previous six installments is now a gloomy, repressive, prison-like institute (I’m not sure why so many students and teachers even returned), but it remains a haven for Harry, bolstered by loyal friends and mentors, including the previously unknown brother of the recently deceased Dumbledore (Michael Gambon, still the boy’s guiding light), memorably portrayed by Ciarán Hinds.

Unlike Part I, the second half gets down to business quickly. Voldemort, slowly being diminished as Harry destroys his soul, makes a final assault on Hogswarts, in a battle fought by a seemingly endless number of wizards and witches, reminiscent of “Lord of the Rings.”

Director David Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves do especially good work in Part II as they summarize Harry’s history, fill in the many, many holes of the series and give everyone in the huge cast some important bit of business while keeping the intensity level at full throttle.

In one of the film’s most spectacular effects, the trio escapes the vaults of a sinister bank by hitching a ride on a very angry, Grendel-like dragon. (It’s the one sequence I would have enjoyed seeing in 3-D, but overall I prefer a 2-D movie world.) Energetic scenes like this would have done wonders for “Goblet of Fire” (2005) and “Half-Blood Prince” (2009), two of the more forgettable volumes of this encyclopedic series.

While 2004’s “Prisoner of Azkaban” remains the gold standard of these eight movies, “Deathly Hallows” memorably brings this extraordinarily imaginative (if frustratingly laborious) fantasy to its logical conclusion, allowing Harry and Voldemort to settle their feud mano-a-mano. Now, I guess, all those wizards and witches can get back to whatever they usually do on a daily basis.

CARLOS (2010, TV)
Ilich Ramirez Sánchez, a Venezuelan who was educated in the Soviet Union, was the most wanted terrorist for 25 years before his capture in 1994. Known as Carlos, he organized cells to commit bombings and murders in the name of Palestinian liberation. Most famously, he led an assault on OPEC headquarters in Vienna and took the ministers and members of their delegations hostage.

This French-German produced three-part miniseries, first shown in the U.S. on Sundance Channel, uses available facts and screenwriters’ imagination to paint a behind-the-scenes chronicle of Carlos’ criminal career. Edgar Ramirez, whose U.S. film work has included roles in “Domino” (2005), “The Bourne Ultimatum” (2007) and “Vantage Point” (2008), gives a charismatic performance as Carlos, portraying him as a strutting, hedonistic revolutionary who seems as interest in promoting himself as he is in advancing the cause.

While Ramirez’ performance is the main reason to devote six-hour to this production, it also exposes the extent that the Soviets and their satellite states were supporting terrorism against the West before the Cold War ended. At one point, the Soviet leaders offer support to anyone who takes out Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Kadafi gives Carlos millions for the same purpose.

Without the protection he received from Eastern European (and Arab) countries, Carlos would have been killed or brought to justice long before the ‘90s. Yet, the West’s willingness (especially in the ‘70s and early ‘80s) to negotiate with Carlos seems extraordinarily naïve today.

The problem with “Carlos” is that by the middle of Part II, the trappings of his life become so repetitive that it often sounds like the actors are repeating lines from previous scenes. You can only watch him mistreat women, speechify about the importance of the cause, plan bombings and make deals to acquire weapons so many times. This would have been a first-rate three hour movie.

In fact, many film critics last year were insistence about treating it as a feature film, ignoring that it was first shown on television, lured into including it on end-of-the-year Top 10 lists (both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times) by its screening at Cannes. The New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society named “Carlos” the year’s best foreign film.

French director Olivier Assayas, best known for “Irma Vep” (1996) and “Clean” (2004), impressively integrates TV clips from the actual events with the drama to create a mixture of truth and fiction that many people often object to but, in this case, makes for entertaining television. While “Carlos” isn’t the masterpiece many critics claimed, it offers an unforgettable portrayal of this prototypical terrorist, a forerunner of those who have become all too familiar in the 21st Century.

THE DIVINE LADY (1929)
Frank Lloyd, who went on to direct Oscar-winning best pictures, “Cavalcade” (1933) and “Mutiny on the Bounty” (1935), won the best director Oscar in the second year of the Academy Awards for this version of the Lady Hamilton-Lord Nelson romance. (His films “Weary River” and “Drag” from that year were also cited.)

What was unusual about Lloyd’s win—it hasn’t happened since—at the ceremony covering 1928-29 was that “Divine Lady” (nor his other films) wasn’t among the movies considered for best picture. Though the Academy didn’t announce official nominations in the early days (the process became standardized by 1930), Lloyd won over Harry Beaumont who directed the year’s best-picture winner “Broadway Melody” and Ernst Lubitsch for “The Patriot” among others.

The story’s legendary romance takes place in the late 18th Century, when Emma, in a loveless marriage to a British ambassador, falls for a young naval officer, who goes on to become one of the most famous military heroes of the Empire. As the affair becomes a well-known secret among the British upper class, Horatio Nelson earns his legendary status in sea battles with Napoleon.

Later sound versions of this story include “That Lady Hamilton” (1941) starring Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh and “The Nelson Affair” (1973) with Peter Finch and Glenda Jackson as the famous adulterers. But, in fact, words don’t do much to improve this simple love story.

In “Divine Lady,” Victor Varconi plays Nelson in the feminized style of silent-era sensitive heroes while Corinne Griffith dominates the film as Emma, who rises from uneducated domestic to behind-the-scenes powerbroker. It earned this popular actress her only Academy Award nomination.

As well constructed and fast-paced the first half of the film is, the second half, with its elaborately staged sea battles, clearly earned Lloyd his Oscar.

Why the film wasn’t among the best picture selections probably had something to do with studio politics because it’s both technically and dramatically a far superior film than the eventually Oscar winner, “Broadway Melody.” Voters were just being trendy: they thought this faddish idea of talking pictures was actually going to change the business.

PAGE ONE: INSIDE THE NEW YORK TIMES (2011)
It’s not hard to differentiate a theatrical film (even a badly made one) from a TV movie. What determines which documentaries I pay $8 to see compared to those I watch for free on PBS or A&E is not nearly as clear. It doesn’t seem to be about the quality of filmmaking or depth of content or subject matter. I’m guessing that it’s just a matter of getting the right company behind a project.

In 2009, a superbly made, well-written documentary chronicling the Chandler family’s stewardship of the Los Angeles Times aired on the local PBS station. “Inventing LA: The Chandlers and Their Times,” written and directed by veteran documentarian Peter Jones (he’s filmed bios of Bette Davis, Judy Garland and Edward G. Robinson among others), offered an insightful portrayal of one of Southern California’s most influential families, with a special focus on game-changing publisher Otis Chandler, and the financial rise and fall of the newspaper.

Comparatively, “Page One” offers a narrow, scattershot look at the New York Times and various media issues (Judith Miller, WikiLeaks, Tribune bankruptcy, mergers, layoffs, internet startups) from the past few years. Writer-director Andrew Rossi’s (co-written with Kate Novak) laundry-list approach to the subject ends up short-changing nearly every issue raised, yet the filmmaker does offer a pinhole peek behind the curtains of this legendary institution.

Despite its deficiencies, I thoroughly enjoyed “Page One” as it follows the Times’ media desk reporters covering stories that nearly all revolve around the demise of the traditional media and how newspapers are dealing with the fallout.

Having spent most of my life in a newsroom, it was déjà vu watching and listening to the Times reporters working the phones, interacting with their editors and those editors pushing those stories to their bosses. For the rest of the movie-going public, I’m not sure anyone will much care. The only aspect of “Page One” that makes it of interest to non-journalists is the presence of David Carr, an outspoken, erudite reporter who arrived at the Times late in his career (after bouts of drug addiction, time spent homeless and stops at weeklies and magazines) but is the perfect spokesperson for traditional media. His quick wit and eagerness to offer an opinion, along with his disheveled, rickety appearance, bring a reality-show craziness to what otherwise is a film short on sympathetic characters.

In what may be the most insightful moment in the film, Carr holds up a printout of a page from a website whose owner has just been preaching the worthlessness of newspapers during a panel discussion. Carr has cut out all the stories that were produced by mainstream media and then asks what the site would offer without aggregating the work of reporters getting paid by newspapers.

It was satisfying (as someone who lost his job because of these fools’ mismanagement) to see Carr working on his devastating piece that exposed Tribune executives a bunch of roguish, sexist egotists, leading to the resignation of the company’s No. 2 clown, Randy Michaels (Sam Zell’s right-hand man).

The film offers only glimpses of soon-to-be executive editor Jill Abramson and managing editor Dean Baquet (former L.A. Times editor) but the current top man, corporate-slick Bill Keller, gets plenty of screen time, mostly trying to justify things the Times did wrong.

In my ways, the documentary already feels dated, never rising above a 101 guide to the world of 21st Century newspapering as it shifts and crumbles on a weekly basis. The film would have benefitted from examining the ways the industry has gone back to its roots in a desperate bid to increase profit margins. Returning from the early days of journalism are multiple editions (now on web sites), emphasis on the sensational (once crime now celebrity) and promotion of an ideology (now found in blogs and twittering).

Many critics have ripped “Page One” as being too kind to the Times, which the leftwing still blames for promoting the Iraqi war and missing the mortgage collapse story. Yet it remains the bastion of liberalism (and I use that term as meaning giving voice to those remain underfoot of the ruling elite) and the scourge of the rightwing. When both sides hate your guts, it probably means you’re doing a reasonably fair job.

Of course, the dead-tree media makes mistakes and screws up on stories but it hasn’t been replaced—not by TV, the internet, bloggers, tweeters or any other half-ass media mode that becomes the flavor of the year. Find me a web site that can pay hundreds of reporters an average of about $100,000 a year each to dig into the corruption that permeates the government, business and most other aspects of society and I’ll admit that print is done.

As media executives like to say: we’re still working on that business model. The replacement isn’t in the wings and I’m guessing it won’t be even after the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, Boston Globe and this country’s other major newspapers have run their last roll of newsprint. That’s the documentary I’d be willing to pay full price for.


ROYAL FLASH (1975)
Twelve years after “Tom Jones” launched the sex-comedy-adventure genre, this deviation on the theme slipped in and out of theaters virtually unnoticed.

Despite a cast filled with British stars under the direction of Richard Lester (who had just finished his very similar “Musketeers” pictures), this late 19th Century tale of a bogus war hero (the irritatingly cocky Malcolm McDowell) manipulated by Col. Bismarck (a snarling Oliver Reed) to destabilized Germany isn’t much fun.

Actually, with a more commanding lead actor (Albert Finney, Michael Caine, Sean Connery) and played straight, this might have been a half-way interesting picture. In addition to Reed, playing the future chancellor as the epitome of German arrogance, the film features Alan Bates as his somewhat loyal assistant, Britt Ekland as the icy princess McDowell’s Harry Flashman is forced to wed, Brazilian actress Florinda Bolkan as Bavarian royalty into kinky sex, and, briefly, Bob Hoskins as a British cop.

Flashman, a coward who enjoys the fruits of being mistaken for a hero during the British engagement in Afghanistan, takes pleasure in humiliating Bismarck during the German’s visit to England. But he pays the price later when he’s tricked into visiting Germany and then required to impersonate the future king by Bismarck and his minions. It’s all rather silly, made more so by McDowell, a mediocre actor whose entire career is based on his performance in Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange.”

Lester’s career caught fire when he hooked up with the Beatles to make the quintessential pop music movie, “A Hard Day’s Night” (1964) and its follow-up “Help” (1965). He also made the superb chronicle of a disintegrating marriage, “Petulia” (1968), with great performances by Julie Christie and George C. Scott and two interesting Sean Connery films “Robin and Marian” (1976) and “Cuba” (1979). He later managed to turn the “Superman” sequels into overblown comedies, much to the chagrin of fans of Richard Donner’s original.

I also recently caught his 1962 feature debut, “It’s Trad, Dad!” (later renamed “Ring-a-Ding Rhythm!), the calling card that earned him the career-making Beatles film.

It’s less a film than a series of musical performances, featuring early 1960s artists Del Shannon, Gary U.S. Bonds, Gene Vincent, Chubby Checkers and various British Dixieland bands (popular in England at the time and called “trad” by hipsters).

The cartoonish plot involves a small town’s mayor (a Winston Churchill lookalike), who wants to ban the playing of this corrupt music that the local teens are enamored of; no one mentions that this is 40-year-old music. His campaign sends Helen and Craig (minor pop singers Helen Shapiro and Craig Douglas) to a nearby radio station/recording studio to recruit acts for a protest concert.

The offbeat humor—the narrator interacts with the actors and, repeatedly, the third wall is broken—the poking fun of government and business leaders and a kinetic filming style paved Lester’s path to becoming the go-to-guy for youth-oriented pictures of the era.


SOMEWHERE (2010)
The title of this Sofia Coppola exasperating trifle is as vague and insubstantial as the picture itself.

While critics (and Oscar voters) went gaga over the writer-director’s “Lost in Translation,” it would have been just as incoherently arty if it wasn’t for the charismatic performances of Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson. Coppola’s other movies, “The Virgin Suicides” (1999) and “Marie Antoinette” (2006), contain a few nice moments, but without Hollywood’s love of nepotism, she’d be making cheeky commercials for a beer company.

The first 20 minutes of “Somewhere,” the least interesting of her four films, consists of two scenes showing bored movie star Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff) watching pole-dancing twins perform in his Chateau Marmon hotel room and then watching his 11-year-old daughter (Elle Fanning) ice skate. If this sounds like the beginning of something disturbing, you’ve already imagined a better screenplay than Coppola produced.

Instead, the film aimlessly follows Johnny and Cleo as they spend time together after the girl’s mother dumps her on this diffident, emotionally remote actor. They drive around Los Angeles, travel to Italy for a movie promotion and then spend a weekend in Vegas before Cleo heads to summer camp. Nothing much happens or is said as Johnny drags himself through his shallow existence (the struggle being rich and famous it such a burden) while Cleo looks past her father’s flaws and tries to forge a normal relationship. The film is filled with long takes of characters’ sitting around staring off in the distance, substituting, I guess, for actual meaningful dialogue. It also features the most insipid soundtrack you’ll ever endure.

It would be easy to dismiss this film if it hadn’t been given an end-of-the-year, for your consideration release—like her equally unpopular “Marie Antoinette”—while her father’s recent movies (beautifully made, thought-provoking “Tetro” and “Youth Without Youth”) were barely released. More than ever, Hollywood, like the music industry, is only interested in the work of the young and the hip, even when audiences reject their inferior work.


THE NEXT THREE DAYS (2010)
Five years ago, Paul Haggis was the flavor of the year in Hollywood. After writing the screenplay for the 2004 Oscar-winning best picture, “Million Dollar Baby,” for Clint Eastwood, Haggis made his directorial debut with “Crash,” which promptly won the 2005 best picture Oscar. No one had ever been the credited screenwriter of back-to-back best pictures.

Since then he’s scripted two outstanding Bond flicks, “Casino Royale” and “Quantum of Solace,” helped write two 2006 Eastwood pictures, “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters from Iwo Jima,” and wrote and directed the underappreciated home-front war picture “In the Valley of Elah.” I’m sorry to report that his batting streak has abruptly ended with this overwrought, improbable action picture.

Russell Crowe, who had his own back to back glory starring in best picture winners “Gladiator” (2000) and “A Beautiful Mind” (2001), plays as a college professor, happily married and father to a little boy. Then, one morning, police bust into their Pittsburgh home and before you can say “Hey, this doesn’t make sense,” his wife (Elizabeth Banks) is sentenced to life in prison for the beating death of her boss.

Crowe’s intense John Brennan then does what any good husband would do: plan a prison break to free her. In the best scene in the picture, John meets with an ex-con (Liam Neeson memorable in a five-minute appearance) who has written a how-to on escaping prison. He offers the basic tenants of planning an escape and John takes it from there, utilizing his vast experience (he taught English) to commit a federal crime.

The attempt to break her out and avoid capture is cleverly plotted and creates intense action, but it never feels like anything more than an outlandish movie conceit. If you can’t buy the premise, everything that follows is just a waste of time.

HARVARD MAN (2001)
With rare exceptions, Hollywood no longer serves as the refuge for rogues, charlatans and itinerant tough guys---essentially the backbone of the industry from the 1920s through the ‘60s.

When you read stories of the Golden Era of Hollywood, they are filled with filmmakers who lived wild, adventurous lives, landing in the movie business because they knew how to tell a good story. Now, the model director is Steven Spielberg, a smart, extraordinary talented but rather colorless character who will never be found drunk on a set or wake up in a Mexican jail.

It turns out that movies fueled by whiskey sours (and later cocaine) were much more interesting and inventive than those boosted by Starbucks cappuccinos.

I once held out hope that James Toback was one of those old-fashioned characters (in his own rather erudite way). A Harvard grad, obsessive gambler, one-time NYU English professor who is a born contrarian, he wrote and directed some indulgent but fascinating pictures in the 1970s and ‘80s.

Toback made his name with his screenplay for “The Gambler” (1974), a semi-autobiographical story about the dark side of wagering and then made his directing debut with “Fingers” (1978), with Harvey Keitel as a concert pianist who works as a collector for his loan-shark father. In the ‘80s, he wrote and directed “Exposed” (1983), an eccentric New York romance with Nastassja Kinski, Keitel and dance legend Rudolph Nureyev, and the documentary “The Big Bang” (1989), an exploration of life and other assorted issues.

His famed peaked when he scored an Oscar nomination for writing “Bugsy” (1991) for Warren Beatty. Since then, Toback’s work has been an odd collection of barely released pictures focusing on sex, race and those living on the margins of life.

“Harvard Man,” easily his most incoherent and amateurish effort, attempts to capture the current pulse of the student body at American’s most prestigious university and Toback’s alma mater.

Adrian Grenier, who went on to play the movie star in “Entourage,” is Alan, an irresponsible student athlete and unlikely ladies’ man who arranges to throw a Harvard basketball game (he’s on the team) for the bookie father of his girlfriend (Sarah Michelle Geller) in exchange for quick cash to help his parents. Problems ensue when two uncover CIA agents, who just happen to be involved in a kinky sex arrangement with one of Alan’s professors, set their sights on bringing down this gambling syndicate.

It’s more than just bad acting (though there is no shortage of that) that turns this simplistic story into a muddled, disjointed embarrassment. Toback’s script is more intent on deflating Harvard’s standards---its teachers, students---and, for good measure, the CIA than telling anything resembling an interesting story.

Since this disaster, Toback directed the equally dumb “When Will I Be Loved” (2004), starring Neve Campbell as a promiscuous woman who is offered a large sum of money to sleep with an elderly man, and the documentary “Tyson” (2008), in which the ex-champ tries to explain his dysfunctional life.

June 2011

THE TREE OF LIFE (2011)
As much as I appreciate any filmmaker who attempts to raise the level of intellectual discourse beyond the freshman psychology typical of most American movies, Terrence Malick’s unsatisfying mixture of impressionistic, art film sensibilities with a picturesque remembrance of boyhood feels as cold and shallow as the worst of those portentous European imports from the 1960s.

What sinks “Tree of Life” is the reclusive writer-director’s reliance on a dreamy, rootless narration that attempts to give meaning to repetitive, wordless images of a domestic drama, offering only vague understanding of the characters or their place in the world. Malick attempts to wrestle to the ground nothing short of the meaning of life, all but assuring that his ambitions will fall short.

And what, in god’s name, is the point of the 20-minutes segment in the middle of the film depicting the creation of the Earth, from its simmering beginnings to the appearance of dinosaurs? The images are wondrous—a first-rate power point presentation that would impress anyone who received it in an e-mail—but the history lesson immediately grinds to a halt the little energy the story had generated to that point and makes it hard to take the rest of the picture seriously. It comes off as an idea you’d expect to find in a student film.

The story this pre-man pictorial interrupts is narrowly focused on the Waco, Texas upbringing of three boys by their very different parents (well played by Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain), recalled by the eldest son Jack (played as an adult by Sean Penn).

Early on in the film, characters react to the news that the middle son has died at age 19. The circumstances are never revealed. What he was or what become of his other brother is never mentioned. In fact, other than the contemporary scenes of Jack (many years after the death of his brother), none of the boys are depicted beyond their early teen years. Maybe I missed some clue early on, but it took me until mid-way through the picture before I realized that the couple had three children (and I never heard the names of the other two). Clearly, people without names represent something bigger and more thought-provoking than us common folks with names.

What the film does best is offer a very authentic, richly detailed recreation of what it was like growing up as a boy in the 1950s and moving portrayals of very concerned parents. Pitt, as the obsessively strict and domineering father who bullies young Jack into becoming an equally intimating person, has rarely been as convincingly rooted in real emotions. Chastain, in her first major film and looking like Cate Blanchett’s younger sister, provides a balm for the father’s constant verbal abuse, as the luminous, life-affirming mother who never stops offering unqualified love.

So how do Jack and his brothers turn out? How were their lives affected, for better or worse, by their childhood? Malick leaves that out. He gives clues that the adult Jack is troubled, maybe suicidal and there’s a glimpse of a woman who may be his wife. That’s really the extent of the character development provided this character whose childhood is the focus of most of the film. Instead, Malick offers metaphysical meanderings about the creator’s intent. At least, I think so.

Frustrated and disappointed would best describe my feelings after watching this movie with no tension, no arc, no drama. Malick’s last two pictures, “The Thin Red Line” (1998), also short on traditional structure but grounded on the battlefield during World War II, and “The New World” (2005), reconstructing the story of Pocahontas and John Smith, are among the handful of great films made in the past 20 years. In those films, he found a balance between the interior intellectualizing of big ideas and traditional dialogue, action and character development.

Director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki’s (“The New World, “Children of Men”) impeccably composed, soft-focused scenes—nearly every shot in this 2-hour and 18-minute movie could stand alone as an evocative still photo—never amount to anything substantial; they’re just a seemingly endless collection of pretty pictures.

Of course, greater minds than mine have anointed “Tree of Life” as a work of genius: it won the Palme d’Or (the top prize) at Cannes and Roger Ebert, in his laudatory review, wrote that “the only other film I’ve seen with this boldness of vision is Kubrick’s ‘2001: Space Odyssey’ and it lacked Malick’s fierce evocation of human feeling.”

To me, Malick’s bold vision plays like an unresolved poem asking the same unanswerable questions man has been ruminating about since the dawn of time. But, like so many artists before him, Malick has confused ethereal dialogue for insight; substituting pristine images for substance.


HORSE FEATHERS (1932)
This Marx Brothers classic essentially amounts to three brilliant set pieces along with musical interludes (all four brothers offer a version of Harry Ruby-Burt Kalmar’s “Everyone Says I Love You”) and a tedious football scene that fills out the film’s 68 minutes.

But these three comic gems never grow old. The film opens with Groucho, as Prof. Quincy Adams Wagstaff taking over Huxley University, addressing the student body and then offering his education philosophy by singing “Whatever It Is, I’m Against It” (another gem from Ruby and Kalmar).

He berates everyone in his sight, including a pushy professor who he orders to “go home to your wife…I’ll tell you what, I’ll go home to your wife, and outside of the improvement, she’ll never know the difference.”

The film’s highlight is the scene in which Groucho interrupts an anatomy class, duck walking in front of the large, bearded professor and then, after the teacher offers a flurry of 10-cent words, peering up at the man and asking: “Is this stuff on the level or are you just making it up as you go along?” He eventually takes over the class, with Chico and Harpo as his most interested students. (Zeppo, 11 years younger, plays Groucho’s son!)

And then there’s the speakeasy scene with Chico and Groucho trading absurd repartee as Groucho seeks the password for entrance (don’t tell anyone, but it’s “swordfish.”)

“Duke Soup,” “Night at the Opera” and “A Day at the Races” are more fully formed pictures, but “Horse Feathers” is always worth a look just for these classic moments and the presence of Thelma Todd, as the “college widow,” who also starred with the brothers in “Monkey Business” (1931).

A star of silent films, Todd made a smooth transition to sound and was on her way to a successful career when she died of carbon monoxide poisoning, at age 29, in 1935. Though a reportedly corrupt Los Angeles DA’s office ruled it a suicide, many believe (and still do) that her and her husband’s refusal to sell their Hollywood restaurant to mobsters led to her suspicious death.


SUPER 8 (2011)
Though he wasn’t behind the camera, the touch of vintage Steven Spielberg is all over this wonderfully rendered boyhood adventure in 1970s Middle America.

Somewhere between “E.T” and “War of the Worlds,” this Spielberg-produced and J.J. Abrams-directed made-for-summer entertainment never descends into out-of-control special effects extravaganza, remaining rooted by its heroes (a small band of budding high school filmmakers) and its genre lineage back to small-town monster invasion flicks of the 1950s.

Set in an Ohio valley town during the summer of 1979, “Super 8” captures the enthusiasm and know-how of a group of friends making a vampire film when a train wreck upends their community. Yet even as the crisis escalates and grows more mysterious, the boys (and their newly recruited leading lady) continue to plug away at their Super-8 movie.

The film has many (maybe too many) moving parts, but it’s all held together by Joe (played by 15-year-old Joel Courtney), the immature, soft-spoken make-up expert of the crew. As the film opens, Joe, who has just lost his mother in an industrial accident, struggles to adjust to life with his sheriff’s deputy father (Kyle Chandler) while attempting to play it cool around Alice (an impressive Elle Fanning, Dakota’s younger sister, but already a veteran of two dozen movies and TV shows). Not only does Alice (and Elle) turn out to be quite an actress, but she possesses the same adventurous spirit as Joe and his buddies.

The rest of the troupe is Charles (Riley Griffiths), a chubby, bossy auteur who runs the show; Cary (Ryan Lee), the pint-sized explosive expert; and Martin (Gabriel Basso) the nerdy leading man. A rare combination of excellent casting and Abrams’ understated writing creates high schoolers who are both true to their time and clearly defined individuals. Not since “The Wonder Years” was cancelled have I seen a group of teens that rings as true as this collection.

Abrams, creator of TV’s “Lost” and director of the excellent “Star Trek” reboot, doesn’t try to do more than tell the story and that’s a good thing. His smartest decision is to keep the “plot” in the background as long as possible and the kid’s vampire movie and their relationships in the foreground.

And please, don’t leave your seat before the credits have run—it may turn out to be the most entertaining five minutes you spend in the theater this year.

TOO BIG TO FAIL (2011, TV)
It’d be easy to dismiss this HBO docudrama about the 2008 financial meltdown as checklist picture making: familiar faces keep popping up portraying the key players and offering talking points as this frightening tale of unchecked avarice and slippery ethics unfolds.

But director Curtis Hanson (“L.A. Confidential,” “The Wonder Boys”) and scripter Peter Gould (from Andrew Ross Sorkin’s book) understand that these names—everyone is identified with subtitles—have to become flesh and blood if viewers are to appreciate the intricacies of the investment bankers’ schemes and the maneuvering by the government to extricate the country from the mess.

First and foremost is Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson (William Hurt in his best performance in decades), the Bush Administration’s point man forced to cajole, beg and eventually threaten these improvident bankers. Paulson carries the weight of the crisis on his shoulders, but his resolve never flags as he battles private industry greed and legislative dithering. Hurt’s ability to portray both intelligence and world-weariness turns him into a compelling, determined figure.

Also leaving impressions are Billy Crudup as the jittery Timothy Geithner, then head of the New York Fed and now Paulson’s successor; Paul Giamatti as the gloomy Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke; and Topher Grace as a cynical Paulson advisor.

On the other side of the negotiation table are James Wood as the arrogant, self-serving Richard Fuld, head of the doom Lehman Brothers; Bill Pullman as sensible Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan; and Tony Shalhaub as John Mack, Morgan Stanley’s head man. Somewhere in the middle of the infighting are Warren Buffet (Ed Asner), seen having ice cream with his grandkids while giving financial advice, and Christopher Cox (Peter Hermann), SEC chairman who acts like a deer in the headlights when asked to act.

What “Too Big to Fail” dramatizes is how reluctant the men who caused this disaster (by selling bundles of bad mortgages) were to make personal compromises to save the nation. For those who question the need for government regulation, this movie should be required viewing; the greed of these men (a quality clearly necessary to some degree in their business) as their community burns around them is jaw-dropping.

Less reported in the mainstream media were the heroic efforts by a group of Bush appointees whose natural instinct were to kowtow to business interests. Paulson, former head of Goldman Sachs, Geithner and their advisors, hardly a liberal among them, use their financial smarts and the power of the government—in ways we never saw on CNN while the crisis unfolded—to avert what they all agreed would have been a quick plummet to a depression as bad or worse than the 1930s version.

But no matter how powerful the message, it would have been lost amongst the lingo and multiple characters without Hurt’s masterful performance. Not since his 1985 Oscar-winning turn as a political prisoner with wild imagination in “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” has this thoughtful actor had a role equal to his talent. After making his film debut in the high-profile, confusing sci-fi picture “Altered States” (1980), Hurt quickly became a star with memorable performances in “Eyewitness” and “Body Heat” in 1981 and “The Big Chill” (1982) before winning the Oscar. His work took on a studied passivity, even in good films such as “Broadcast News” (1987) and “Accidental Tourist” (1988), which seemed oddly out of date by the 1990s.

He occasionally had roles in major films—“Lost in Space” (1998), “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” (2001), “Syriana” (2005)—but most of his work over the past two decades has been in small, little-seen pictures. He did score an Oscar nod for his very uncharacteristic, manic performance in “A History of Violence” (2005) and was quite good as the father in “Into the Wild” (2007), increasing his visibility as a character actor.

He’s 61 and, obviously, a cable TV movie isn’t going to revive his career, but it’s good to see an actor who seemed destined for greatness 30 years ago show he can still deliver a powerful performance.


ALL THIS, AND HEAVEN TOO (1940)
This overstuffed melodrama was Warner Bros.’ answer to “Gone With the Wind” and not a very convincing one.

Based on a popular novel (by Rachel Lyman Field), it follows the bittersweet, unrequited romance between a loyal, loving governess (an unusually mellow Bette Davis) and the children’s doting father (Charles Boyer), set in 19th Century France.

It’s not worth sitting through unless, like someone writing this review, you’re determined to see ever film nominated for best picture (amazingly, nominated over more deserving 1940 films “The Shop Around the Corner,” “His Girl Friday,” “The Sea Hawk,” “Pinocchio,” “The Westerner” and “The Mortal Storm”) or just can’t miss any movie starring the legendary Bette.

No doubt, the only reason it scored a best picture nod was because Warners sunk so much money into the production. It looks great and is efficiently directed by Anatole Litvak, but the story never catches fire and the characters aren’t very memorable.

It also earned Barbara O’Neill, who overacts in nearly every scene, a surprising supporting actress nomination for her role of the mentally unbalanced wife of Boyer. Not coincidentally, she played Scarlett’s mother (though she was just four years older than Vivien Leigh) in “Gone With the Wind” the year before. In “All This, and Heaven Too,” her obsessive jealousy toward Davis’ younger, prettier governess turns into tragedy for everyone.

Boyer, an underrated actor whose French accent and classic good looks too often stereotyped him, gives the best performances in the picture as a man struggling to hold his family together while caught between these two women. The actor was in the middle of the American portion of his career, having starred in three classic romances: the comedy “History is Made at Night” (1936) with Jean Arthur; as the much-imitated Pepe le Moko in the ultimate Hollywood exotica, “Algiers”; and opposite Irene Dunne in the original “Love Affair” (1939). He followed “All This” with excellent dramatic work in “Hold Back the Dawn” (1941), “Gaslamp” (1944) and “Arch of Triumph” (1948).

A MURDER OF QUALITY (1991)
Before launching his career as the pre-eminent chronicler of the Cold War, British writer (and former spy) John le Carré wrote this Agatha Christie-inspired murder mystery, set in a small university town filled with an assortment of flawed, secretive residents.

George Smiley, who later served as the protagonist in more than one of le Carré’s spy tales, slums in this story as Miss Marple’s stand-in. This BBC television movie stars Denholm Elliott as Smiley, on break from his government work, who is asked by his wartime espionage friend (Glenda Jackson in one of her last acting gigs before turning to politics) to check on a woman who wrote her an ominous letter.

Needless to say, this mysterious woman is murdered and Smiley arrives in town just in time to tag along with the local police as they investigate most of the town’s population as suspects. Everyone has a story—and a reason to dislike the victim—and Smiley’s soft-spoken, insinuating manner turns out to be the key to unlocking their true feelings.

Le Carré, who adapted his novel for the teleplay, brings his acerbic, cynical tone to this highly entertaining whodunit. The acting is all first-rate, led by Elliott, a character actor whose long career in film and TV includes playing the museum curator and mentor to Indiana Jones in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and as a love-starved gentleman in Woody Allen’s “September.” Two-time Oscar winner Jackson, arguably the greatest film actress of the 1970s and early 80s, is a lively presence in her few scenes here.

Also memorable are Joss Ackland as the pompous, retiring headmaster of the boys school, whose brother was a colleague of Smiley’s during the war; Billie Whitelaw as a violent, mad homeless woman who seems to be the perfect suspect; Matthew Scurfield, playing the put-upon, sardonic chief inspector and 17-year-old Christian Bale as a student whose cheating on a science exam turns out to be a crucial clue to the crime.

Few writers’ work has been so successfully translated to the screen (small and big) as often as le Carré. First and foremost is the brilliant miniseries made from “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” (1979) and “Smiley’s People (1982) starring Alec Guinness, which capture the moral and political duplicity of both sides of the post-war “war.” Fine films were also made from “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold” (1965), featuring one of Richard Burton’s best performances; “The Russia House” (1990), with Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer attempting to trick the Soviets; and the more modern works, “A Tailor of Panama” (2001) with Geoffrey Rush and “The Constant Gardener,” which investigates the underhanded world of the legal drug trade.

“A Murder of Quality” seems minor in comparison, but this fast-paced amusement is well worth seeking out while we le Carré fans await the film version of “Tinker, Tailor” coming to theater’s later this year, with Gary Oldman as Smiley.


GET LOW (2010)
Few modern actors have defined a character type to the extent that Robert Duvall owns the cinematic version of the Southern eccentric. Starting with his Boo Radley in “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962), this San Diego-born actor has been drawn to unbalanced sons of the Confederacy, including in the Faulkner tale “Tomorrow” (1972), as an obsessively strict father in “The Great Santini” (1979), a senile landowner in “Convicts” (1991) and the raving revival preacher in “The Apostle” (1997).

These roles offer an unending array of opportunities for fussy acting and pretentious personality traits and the 80-year-old Duvall has fallen prey to letting his “acting” dominate a performance. Yet when he finds the more subtle balance of comic quirkiness and stubborn righteousness, these portrayals can be memorable.

His Felix Bush in “Get Low” is one of his more entertaining and believable oddballs, a short-tempered, unhappy hermit who decides to hold a wake while he’s still alive and well. Speaking only when absolutely necessary, Felix negotiates with the local funeral director (a seriously exasperated Bill Murray) over the details of the get-together. He originally wants anyone who has something to say about him to attend and then decides to raffle off his substantial property, which ups the expected crowd considerably.

Behind his plans is his desire to finally confess to the circumstances, from many years ago, that spurred his anti-social lifestyle. Complicating matters, an old sweetheart (Sissy Spacek) has returned to town---the film is set in 1930s Tennessee---after the recent passing of her husband.

While the film occasionally grows frustrating as characters continued to put up with this old coot’s nonsense, it is hard not to be won over by these characters’ lived-in emotions and the unsentimental portrayal of Depression Era life crafted by director Aaron Schneider (a cinematographer making his feature debut).

Spacek, who quietly continues to have an exceptional post-50 career, plays a tough-minded but forgiving woman who finds out she understand less about Felix than she thought.

Another always welcomed supporting player, Bill Cobbs, memorable as the barkeep in the little-seen, superb 1987 TV series “Slap Maxwell” and the narrator in “The Hudsucker Proxy,” plays a minister who knows the best and worst of his old friend Felix.

If “Get Low” (Felix’s phrase for being six-feet under) had done better at the box office when it was released late last year, it probably would have earned Duvall his seventh Oscar nomination. It’s this great and busy (he’s been in 13 films since turning 70) actor’s best performance since his memorable turn as a cattleman in “Open Range” (2003).


BEGINNERS (2011)
Writer-director Mike Mills wastes the touching story of his father’s coming out of the closet at age 75, by focusing his movie on his own relationship problems instead of those of his gay father.

It’s always dangerous to build expectations based on reviews and trailers, but I came to this film expecting to see a funny, insightful and probably teary tale of a long-married senior exploring gay life and how it changes the man’s relationship with his son. That 81-year-old Christopher Plummer, who seems to be at the peak of his career with recent memorable performances in “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,” “The Last Station,” “Syriana” and “The New World,” portrays the gay father signaled that “Beginners” had the chance to be something special.

Instead, the film offers bits and pieces of the final years of Hal’s life as occasional flashbacks while the bulk of the story follows the dull, repetitive romance between son Oliver (Ewan McGregor) and a charming French actress (Mélanie Laurent; she played the Jewish theater owner in “Inglourious Basterds”) and Oliver’s too-cute-it-hurts relationship with his father’s dog.

Not only does the structure make for a sluggish movie but it leaves one wishing for more than just the few superficial scenes that address how Hal denied his sexuality for nearly his entire life. Plummer gives another smart, nuanced performances but he’s a supporting player as we endure Oliver and Anna slowly coming together and then apart. The character of Hal’s partner, played by Goran Visnjic, is less developed than the dog’s.

In many ways, “Beginners” plays like a picture made in the 1970s or ‘80s, when the subject was still being treated by Hollywood with kid gloves. The picture even makes a point of offering mini-lessons in gay pride and Harvey Milk. (Did the filmmakers forget that Sean Penn won an Oscar for portraying Milk just three years ago?) As hard as it tries, this film never figures out whether it’s a romantic comedy or a social-issue drama.