June 2014

  

 

BABY DOLL  (1956)

      I’ve probably written this before, but, for me, one of the biggest differences between films of the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s and the past couple decades of often disappointing movies is the lack of familiar faces, who were also pitch-perfect actors, in supporting roles. It bears repeating following the death of one of the best character actors America cinema has ever produced, Eli Wallach.

     Starting in the 1950s and continuing, for some, into the 1990s, movies regularly featured such indispensable performers as Lee J. Cobb, Jack Warden, Martin Balsam, Thelma Ritter, Jason Robards, Julie Harris, Arthur Hiller, Robert Webber, Richard Jordan, David Clennon, Charles Durning, Rip Torn, M. Emmet Walsh, Denholm Elliott, Cloris Leachman, Wilford Brimley and (I have to stop somewhere) William Devane (currently the president on the TV show “24”). Though some of these actors were occasionally leads, they spent most of their film and TV careers supporting the stars and made going to the movies a more enjoyable experience; enlivening even mediocre films,

      Wallach, who died last week at age 98—his last film appearance was in 2010’s “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps”—didn’t work in as many top flight pictures as many of those mentioned above, favoring instead TV and the stage. But more often than not he portrayed a smarter-than-he looked but rough-around-the-edges antagonist who savored giving the good guy a hard time.

     I was surprised when checking his filmography to see that he appeared in just two films in the 1950s, “Baby Doll” and the little-seen crime picture “The Lineup.” But he worked steadily in TV and then hit it big with his scenery-chewing performance as the toothy bandit Calvera in “The Magnificent Seven” (1960). Good roles followed in such films as “The Misfits,” “Lord Jim,” “How to Steal a Million” and, his most famous, as Tuco in Sergio Leone’s comic Western “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” But, to me, nothing he did on film ever surpassed his impressive film debut, under director Elia Kazan (both veterans of the Actor’s Studio) in the still outrageous “Baby Doll.”

      Wallach’s Silva Vacarro (this Brooklyn-born Polish Jew played a lot of Italians and Latinos for some reason) is clearly the outsider, looking dashing in a suit and tie, when he first appears in this Tennessee Williams story of white trash cotton farmers. Silva is putting on the dog for the area farmers, most of whom he’s put out of work with his giant cotton gin plant. Then the saddest example of humanity in this Mississippi backwater town, Arthur (played by the magnificent Karl Malden—add his name to the above list please) sets Vacarro’s cotton gin ablaze.

     Vacarro knows who burned his plant and sets upon his unusual revenge by bringing the fumbling Arthur his cotton to be processed in his dilapidated gin mill. There he meets “Baby Doll” (blonde sensation Carroll Baker), Arthur’s teen bride, who is one day away from her 20^th birthday and the agreed upon consummation of their two-year marriage.

    The rest of the movie is Wallach’s, as he brings out both the game-playing fun and devious plotter in this insidious character, one of Williams’ most vivid. Wallach is a busy actor; his hands and face are always in movement, but in delicate, precise mannerisms, a subtlety in creating characters that ensured his longevity in the business.

      This being the 1950s, instead of the pair sleeping together, Vacarro falls asleep in Baby Doll’s crib, (the film is an overdose of symbolism) but when Arthur returns, he, of course, assumes Vacarro has had what he’s still waiting on. The true intent is made clear when Baby Doll suddenly seems to be an adult, remarking, “I feel cool and rested for the first time in my life.”

     Earlier, Wallach delivers the key line in Williams’ screenplay: “….people come into this world without instructions of where to go, what to do, so they wander a little…then go away.” The final act begins with this unlikely trio sitting down for dinner in a comical, but equally harrowing, version of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” which is followed by gunfire.

     Fifty years later (seriously), Wallach, then 91, was still giving memorable performances, including a career-capping turn as a veteran Hollywood screenwriter in the otherwise pedestrian “Holiday.” He’s befriended by Kate Winslet’s Iris, a British writer, who is vacationing in his neighbor’s house. Not only does Arthur Abbott regale her with wonderful anecdotes from the Golden Era, but he offers Iris some needed life lessons. It’s the most touching and believable relationship in this second-rate romcom.

     But these great performances just touch the surface of this Method actor’s career and what he, as one of the last of his generation, brought to the movies.

 

 

JERSEY BOYS  (2014)

    I am second to none in my admiration of Clint Eastwood, especially his work as a director in the past 10 years, but this might not have been the right project for him. And I’m not talking about the fact that this is a musical; few contemporary directors are more musical attuned—his “Bird” is one of the best musical bios ever made.

     Where Eastwood seems a fish out of water is recreating the Sinatra-loving, mob-protected second generation Italian-American community that bred the Four Seasons, the subject of this bittersweet rags-to-riches pop music tale. While he’s no doubt hampered by the trappings of the highly successful stage musical, the dramatic scenes in the film come off as Scorsese-lite, a very safe, clean-cut version of the streets where doo-wop singing and breaking and entering were happening side by side. The director isn’t helped by performances that rarely rise above caricature and a script built on clichés.

       For those of you who aren’t familiar with the pop scene in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, the Four Seasons were one of the most successful and important groups in that strange period between Elvis and the Beatles. The incredibly high-pitched voice of Frances Castelluccio (aka Frankie Valli), along with tough guy and group founder Tommy DeVito, bassist Nick Massi and songwriter extraordinary Bob Gaudio, produced hit after hit starting in 1962 with “Sherry.” Songs such as “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Walk Like a Man” and later “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” are part of the soundtrack of our lives for anyone over 50. 

      How they made it out of Newark makes for a much more colorful story than the image they presented back in the day; four clean cut Italian-American kids made good. John Lloyd Young (who played the role on Broadway) portrays Frankie, a naïve, supremely talented vocalist who never seems to be enjoying his success. At 39, Young looks way too old to play the teenage Frankie and his voice, while seeming to hit the same notes as Valli, has a grating tone that I had a hard time ignoring.

     DeVito (Vincent Piazza) is the film’s most interesting character, a flashy, amoral weasel always looking out for No. 1 who threatens anyone who might disrupt his position as group leader. His character and the groups’ “godfather,” played by Christopher Walken, show the continuing influence that organized crime had in popular music well into the 1960s. The funniest performance in the film is by Joseph Russo, playing Joe Pesci (yes, that Joe Pesci), who, as part of the doo-wop scene in Jersey, plays a key role in the formation of the Four Seasons.

     I liked that Eastwood only uses music when the group is performing, saving the film’s only classic-musical production number for the final credits. But what I didn’t like was his clumsy use of first-person narrative; letting each of the “Seasons” tell a bit of the story from their point of view, speaking directing into the camera. Not only was it diverting and abrupt, but it did little to illuminate the story. It takes an exceptional actor, usually a comedian, who can talk to the camera and make it work. (Coincidentally, one of the screenwriters is Marshall Brickman, who co-wrote “Annie Hall,” a film that brilliantly utilizes direct to the audience dialogue, as delivered by Woody Allen.)

      Eastwood does his best work when the boys are on stage, recreating the magic that this astonishing vocal quartet brought to the music scene in their day. If only he could have extended the urgency of those musical moments to the rest of the film.

 

 

EDGE OF TOMORROW  (2014)

    It seems like decades since Tom Cruise has starred in a film that didn’t involve gunfire, which, for someone on the other side of 50, makes one question his career choices. But, in this case, he’s landed in a winner.

     This near-future sci-fi movie, directed by Doug Liman, who guided the first “Bourne” and “Fair Game,” might be the best of its genre that I’ve seen since the 2009 reboot of “Star Trek.” The script, written by Christopher McQuarrie (“The Usual Suspects”) along with Jez and John-Henry Butterworth based on Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s novel, presents Cruise’s character, Major William Cage, as a reluctant warrior/hero, a military desk jockey suddenly tossed into battle. And not just any battle, but a D-Day-styled assault on Europe to stop the whirling-dervish, octopus-like aliens called Mimics.

       Cage is killed within minutes of landing on the beach, but in a “Groundhog’s Day” scenario, he immediately goes back 24 hours to relive it all over again. Not only does he improve his combat skills (learning where each Mimic will attack him from) as he keeps repeating the battle, but he get to know the war’s hero, Sgt. Rita Vrataski (a steely Emily Blunt) when she realizes he could be the key to defeating the aliens.

       Cruise delivers just the right amount of arrogance and confusing as Cage slowly tries to understand his predicament. But he’s a quick learner as he methodically advances, with Vrataski at his side, closer to finding the source of the Mimics’ power. Liman shows just enough of each scene to give us the sense of how Cage is progressing as he goes through the day over and over again. Yet the director and his writers don’t spell things out too clearly, forcing viewers to think it all through.

    “Edge of Tomorrow” isn’t without its leaps of reality (especially in the manner in which Cage and Vrataski survive incredible mayhem), and snippets of predictable sarcastic humor that have become required in this genre, but the picture also features two believable heroes and a plot gimmick that works like a finely calibrated timepiece.

 

 

TWIXT  (2011)

     I believe I recently griped about the high profile projects Sofia Coppola continues to attract despite her poor track record, while her legendary father struggles to get films made. Never mind.

     Watching Francis Coppola’s sad attempt to piece together a supernatural mystery—a mixture of David Lynch and Guy Maddin but not as interesting or other worldly as either of those directors’ works—made it clear why producers might be reluctant to put their money behind the man who made the iconic “Godfather” films along with “The Conversation” and “Apocalypse Now.”  

     Actually, “Twixt,” apparently referring to being “betwixt” dreams and reality, starts off promising, with Tom Waits, longtime Coppola favorite, narrating the background about the setting of the story, Swann Valley. Waits offbeat, sarcastic tone promises something interesting that never happens.

      Val Kilmer plays third-rate writer Hall Baltimore, whose series of witch books are losing their popularity, evidenced by his arrival on a “book tour” in this tiny burg. He finds he’ll be autographing books at the local hardware store, which features a small space for selling books. No one knows him except the enthusiastic sheriff (Bruce Dern), who has a great idea for a story that he hopes to collaborate on with Baltimore. Oh, and by the way, there’s a teenage girl’s body impaled with a stake lying unclaimed at the morgue.

       Baltimore would rather get the hell out of town, until he has a dream in which a ghostly figure (Elle Fanning) leads him to a deserted hotel, where, decades ago, a father killed all his children before they turned into vampires. Now this hack writer is interested. Later, he’s guided through this dream world by none other than Edgar Allan Poe, who once stayed in the hotel.

     Coppola’s script—from an idea, he has said, that came to him in a dream—is filled with slight, but amusing literary references and even some inside Hollywood winks (Kilmer, drinking while attempt to start the story of this town, does perfect, unexplained, imitations of Marlon Brando and James Mason while his ex-wife Joanne Whalley plays his wife), but they can’t make up for the dreary, repetitive story.

      It’s not as if the filmmaker/winemaker has been on the skids for years; his last two pictures, “Tetro” (2009) and “Youth Without Youth” (2007), were superbly made and fascinating; “Tetro” made my Top 10 for 2009. But it’s all about box-office and none of his last three pictures have done much business. I just hope the 76-year-old gets a few more chances: like few other filmmakers in my lifetime, any time he steps behind the camera a masterpiece is possible.

 

 

THE RAILWAY MAN  (2014)

     For the most part, this low-keyed British film is a very familiar examination of a solider dealing with wartime trauma and the frustrations of those around him trying to help. What distinguishes this entry in post-war life, especially through its first half, are the quiet, perfectly measured performances of Colin Firth as Eric Lomax, the former World War II POW; Nicole Kidman as Patti, the woman he meets years later and marries, and Stellan Skarsgård as Eric’s wartime buddy Finley, who sees himself as his brother’s keeper

      Both Patti and Finley do their best to pull Eric out of his funk, which isn’t clearly explained as far as how it has impacted his life. Though we see he is already stuck in his memories as a young, returning solider, the film never explains how he’s survived through the years: did he hold down a job, ever have relationships, seeks out profession help? When the film introduces him, he’s already in his forties and, most of the time, just a bit quirky.

     The movie, directed by independent filmmaker Jonathan Teplitzky from a script based on a book by the real Lomax, picks up steam when it flashes back to the war and a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Burma where Eric endures torture.

     As much I enjoyed the acting of the three principals—it’s one of Oscar-winner Firth’s finest performances—I think I would rather have seen a documentary on Eric Lomax and gotten a more fleshed-out story of his fascinating life. “Railway Man” offers the highlights and feels too much like a sketch when the story deserves a broader canvas.

     

 

FLASH GORDON (1980)

    If you didn’t know any better, this sci-fi adventure, with its guileless acting, cheesy primary-colored sets and disjointed direction, could pass for a straight-to-video dud. Yet this adaptation of Alex Raymond’s 1930s comic books—and the movie series that followed—was a high-profile Dino De Laurentiis production, directed by highly regarded British filmmaker Mike Hodges (“Get Carter,” “Pulp” and, more recently “Croupier”) and written by one of the 1970s top screenwriters Lorenzo Semple Jr., who worked on “Papillion,” “The Parallax View” and “Three Days of the Condor.” And the supporting roles are filled by a roster of first-rate international actors.

      Despite its status as a cult favorite, there’s really nothing very memorable about “Flash Gordon”—it’s not as amusing as the clunky 50s sci-fi B-movies and looks as ancient as a horse and buggy alongside of “The Empire Strikes Back,” released the same year.

      Not sure what happened: certainly hiring the inexperienced Sam J. Jones, who has worked steadily, if without distinction, on television since this film, didn’t help. As Hodges later explained, “Flash Gordon” was “the only improvised $27-million movie ever made.”  Badly improvised, I would add.

     Jones, plays Flash, the quarterback for the New York Jets, who finds himself being hijacked to the planet Mongo along with a TV actress (a pretty but dull Melody Anderson) and a misunderstood scientist (Topol, looking very different than he did in “Fiddler on the Roof.”) There they somehow manage (not very convincingly) to avoid the evil clutches of Ming the Merciless (a slumming Max von Sydow), mostly because of the efforts of his vixen daughter (Ornella Muti), who immediately has eyes for hunky Flash.

    Eventually, Flash’s never-give-up spirit convinces rival tribe leaders, played by British stage actors Timothy Dalton and Brian Blessed to join him in the battle to overthrow Ming. Blessed gives the film’s most entertaining performance as the constantly amused, Viking-like Prince Vultan, who is always ready for a fight.

    I was reminded of this plodding mess after seeing “Ted” a few years ago. The characters John and Ted are obsessed with “Flash Gordon” and Jones’ appearance at a party makes for one of the film’s hilarious centerpieces. But the actual film is never as funny or clever as anything in “Ted.”

  

    

THE IMMIGRANT  (2014)

     This story of the arrival of a Polish woman and her sister at Ellis Island in the 1920s is as predictable as a bad sitcom. Screenwriters, since before movies had sound, have been penning heartbreaking stories of pretty immigrants putting their faith in seemingly helpful men who eventually use them as income sources. “The Immigrant” doesn’t do much to expand on the cliché.

     Bruno (Joaquin Phoenix), who manages a low-rent burlesque show, “rescues” Ewa (Marion Cotillard) from being deported and thus separated from her ill sister, only to put her in his show and, while falling for her, coerces her into working as a prostitute.

     After writer-director James Gray’s first, and most impressive film, “Little Odessa” (1994), about the Russian-Jewish community of New York starring Tim Roth, he has hitched his wagon, for better or worse, to Phoenix. The unpredictable actor, costarring with Mark Wahlberg, in Gray’s “The Yards” (2000) and “We Own the Night” (2007), was miscast in both, though “The Yards” was a good, if minor, picture. Gray returned to the quiet intensity of his first film in the underrated “Two Lovers” (2008), with Phoenix and Gwyneth Paltrow as mismatched neighbors.

      While Gray brings an authentic look and feel to this new film, as he has in all his movies, the story is just too shopworn. If it wasn’t for yet another astonishingly intense, emotionally rich performance by Cotillard there would be no reason to watch at all. This moving performance follows her memorable work in “Inception” (2010), “Midnight in Paris” (2011), “Contagion” (2011), “Rust and Bone” (2012) and her breakthrough, Oscar-winning role as Edith Piaf in “La Vie en Rose” (2007).

    Mid-film, Bruno’s magician cousin (Jeremy Renner) shows up to create the film’s triangle (like magic?), but it never feels genuine—just an overused screenwriting device, like too much of this film.

 

 

NIGHT FLIGHT (1933)

     One of the many aviation films of the era, this story of cargo pilots in South America, despite its all-star cast and dramatic subject, never manages to develop the characters or the situation's urgency to make it very compelling.

     Another story of gutsy, wisecracking pilots was turned into one of the great adventure movies by director Howard Hawks and screenwriter Jules Furthman six years later in "Only Angels Have Wings." In this David O. Selznick production starring John Barrymore, Clark Gable, Helen Hayes, Myrna Loy, Robert Montgomery and Lionel Barrymore, polio serum for a dying child must be transported ASAP from Chile to Rio de Janeiro and, of course, a wicked storm in sweeping across the continent.

     John Barrymore, bellowing orders at the top of his lungs and stalking around his office imperiously, plays Riviere, the manager of the transport company. He spends most of the movie standing in front of a very impressive floor to ceiling relief map of South America, tracking the progress of his pilots and philosophizing on the importance of their mission.

     Gable is the fearless pilot battling the elements as his distraught wife (Hayes) prepares for bad news. The one scene between Barrymore and Hayes (at the time, America’s most acclaimed thespians) is a battle of overacting, but it’s the only time the two legends appeared together on screen.

     Coming off best is Montgomery, playing a devil-may-care pilot who ignores orders to return to the airport and instead finds company in a local brothel. (Such nonsense would soon end when Hollywood started enforcing its Production Code.) 

      Director Clarence Brown, who went on to direct such classics as “Anna Karenina” (1935), “The Yearling” (1944) and “Intruder in the Dust” (1949), keeps the action moving, shifting the point of view from the pilots to Barrymore’s driven taskmaster to the hand-wringing wives, yet few of the characters and little of the  dialogue ever seem more than just make believe. 

April-May 2014

THE GREAT BEAUTY (2013)

    Like a ruminating, 600-page novel from Graham Greene or Saul Bellow, this Italian masterpiece is wide in its scope yet filled with small moments of epiphany, offering a devastating examination of modern society through the eyes of one fascinating, but deeply flawed man. In this case, Jep, a self-effacing, cynical journalist and celebrity partier who just turned 65, leads viewers through the decadent environs of the rich and bored of Rome; the old trying to hold on to youth, the young failing to grasp the pointlessness of it all.

     As in life, there is no real plot. The film, written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino (best known for his 2008 film “Il Divo”) is a series of parties and dinner engagements and other encounters Jep has with the “beautiful” people. Most of his rich, talkative friends are longing for something more but they have no idea how, nor the talent, to get there.

    Jep—played to perfection by acclaimed Italian stage director and actor Toni Servillo—published a highly regarded novel when he was young, as we learn through his many sparkling conversations, but never wrote fiction again; instead he became a highly paid celebrity journalist. The only difference between Jep and his friends is that he’s sadly aware of his failures, which, he feels, gives him the right to judge all in his presence.

     In one of the film’s most uncomfortable scenes, Jep methodically deconstructs all the lies and pretences of a middle-aged woman who boasts of her superiority because of the books she’s written and her devotion to her family. (Later in the film, he asks her, “Have we ever slept together?”)

    What makes Jep such a compelling character is that he is so well spoken, so spot on in his observations, even as he enjoys the hell out of this hedonistic existence.

    We’re offered a glimmer of hope in the second half of the film when Jep falls into a relationship with a much younger woman, the troubled daughter of a friend. The pair seems to thrive on each other’s awareness of the sadness of their lives. Needless to say, the relationship is doomed.

     If it’s possible for a film to be both life affirming and existentially bleak, “The Great Beauty” is it. The picture also points out that the one perfect, true love can sustain a real romantic for a lifetime, allowing him or her to put aside the pointless sound and fury of daily life and find an inner piece that pulls them through.

      There is a moment early in the film when Jep comes home at dawn after a night-long party. We see his luxury apartment, with a view of the Coliseum; he seems to be living the perfect life. But the film offers a deeper, more clear-eyed view of the facades that surround us and how we often mistakenly accept them as evidence of happiness and success.

      It’s hard not to compare “The Great Beauty” with the works of Federico Fellini, especially “La Dolce Vita” and “8 1/2,” two of the 20^th Century’s greatest films. That director Sorrentino has even attempted to tread on the master’s milieu shows he’s fearlessly ambitious; that he succeeds on so many levels elevates him to world class status. 

     Along with Servillo, and veteran cinematographer Luca Bigazzi, the filmmaker has fashioned an unendingly compelling and thoroughly insightful look at a country whose potential has been frittered away for the past half century and, on a bigger scale, how contemporary man continues to grasp blindly for something meaningful in life. In “The Great Beauty” this still young century has found its defining film.

GORDON WILLIS (1931-2014)

     How can you not love a guy whose nickname is “The Prince of Darkness”? Not often will I be remembering a cinematographer in this space, but Gordon Willis, who died on May 18, shot so many of my favorite films, leaving such an indelible stamp on them, that he deserves a place beside the great directors of his era.

    Truthfully, if his only film work had been on the first two “Godfather” pictures, I’d still be writing this. The sparsely lighted, shadowy, neo-noir look he helped create for Francis Coppola’s masterpieces is as much a part of those movies’ legacy as the lines “I made him an offer he couldn’t refuse” or “Leave the gun, take the cannoli.” Just watch some of those interior scenes with Brando or Pacino with an eye to the lighting and you can see the role Willis played in creating these iconic characters.

      Paramount executives were shocked when they first saw the dailies because scenes were so dark, actors faces shadowed; yet Coppola fought to keep Willis and his now iconic photographic vision.

      And then there are his collaborations with Woody Allen. Starting with the bright, sunlit “Annie Hall” to the tricky, movie-as-life “The Purple Rose of Cairo,” Willis defined the look of Allen’s films during the writer-director’s most fertile period. Standing out in that stretch are two masterful black-and-white pictures: “Manhattan,” certainly one of the most beautiful movies of the last half-century, capturing Woody’s at his most romantic; and “Zelig,” filled with photographic slight-of-hand that has never been equaled and so essential to the story that Willis should have been listed as co-director. It did earn him a belated first Oscar nomination.

     Willis did grittier work for Alan J. Pakula, serving as DP on the crime thriller “Klute” and the director’s two great political pictures “The Parallax View” and “All the President’s Men.” His work on “President’s Men” is especially impressive, helping turn a paper-chase into a taunt thriller as he contrasts the flat, fluorescent look of the Washington Post newsroom with the dark rooms of the bureaucrats and the ominous  pitch black of the parking garage where they meet “Deep Throat.”  

      After finally being honored with an Oscar nomination for his “Godfather” work—for “Part III” in `1990—he only shot three more films; two for his old pal Pakula, “Presumed Innocent” and “The Devil’s Own,” and “Malice” for Harold Becker.

      The Academy attempted to amend for the injustice of its membership through the years and awarded Willis an honorary Oscar in 2009. But he hardly needed an official stamp for most movie fans of the 1970s—two “Godfathers,” “Klute,” “Annie Hall,” “Manhattan” and “All the President’s Men” tell his story. Few cinematographers in film history have left such a rich and distinctive legacy.

FADING GIGOLO (2014)

     Even when a Woody Allen film is less than stellar, if the writer-director-actor has an on-screen role it inevitably makes the movie worth watching. Surprisingly, he's only appeared in two of his past 10 pictures, as a music promoter in one segment of “To Rome With Love” (2012) and as a second-rate magician in “Scoop” (2006).

      This John Turturro-directed film offers Allen the juiciest role he's had in years—probably since he played the title role in his underrated “Deconstructing Harry” (1997)—playing Murray, a retired bookstore owner who becomes the arranger (in other words, a pimp) of paid sexual encounters for his friend Fioravante (Turturro).

     This is an odd little film that seems to stumble from one idea to the next without any real intent. Most of the acting comes off as forced and pretentious; even the usually reliable Turturro is stoic to a fault.

      The tall tale begins when Murray's doctor (Sharon Stone) asks him if he knows anyone who would be interested in a ménage á trois. Why she would ask this elderly bookstore owner about such matters is beyond me, but he comes through, convincing the reluctant Fioravante, a part-time florist, to meet with her. Soon he's working regularly, as Murray starts soliciting clients all over the city.

     The strangest part of the film occurs when Murray hooks up a Hasidic Jewish woman (the striking French actress-singer Vanessa Paradis), whose rabbi husband has passed away, with Fioravante. When a Hasidic community patrolman (Liev Schreiber), who is in love with the woman, gets suspicious, Murray is accused of breaking Jewish law. In an Allen-penned film, the sequence would have been played for broad comedy, but here it sits uncomfortably between jaw-dropping reality and Woody one liners.

      At some point I stopped caring about the story and just enjoyed Allen stammering through this strange comic creation. In what may be a caustic commentary on the criticism of Allen's lack of people of color in his own films, Murray has a sharp-tongued live-in girlfriend who is African-American and he plays "uncle" to her four young boys. It just adds to the quirkiness of Murray, an unrelentingly positive man who goes from rare book dealer to pimp without missing a beat.

THE COUNSELOR  (2013)

      Like a thousand films that came before it, "The Counselor" looks great on paper, but much less when realized on the screen. Directed by one of Hollywood's most reliable filmmakers, Ridley Scott, and starring two of the best actors working today, Michael Fassbender and Javier Bardem, this thriller about a lawyer who foolishly tries to throw in with the other side of the law is so lacking in basic structure and substance that it became irritating before it reached the 30-minute mark.

     What makes the film’s failure so ironic is that this incomprehensible script is the work of one of America’s greatest writers, Cormac McCarthy.  Author of such masterful novels as “All the Pretty Horses,” “The Road” and “No Country for Old Men” (all made into better films than “The Counselor”), McCarthy has turned spare dialogue and unexpected, bloody violence into an art form. Think of McCarthy as the Sam Peckinpah of novelists.

     While his style works beautifully in print, it hasn’t always had a smooth translation to the more literal-minded cinema. I found the film versions of both “The Road” and, despite its Oscar acclaim, “No Country” lacking clear narratives and fully formed characters. A novel can get away with being ambiguous, artfully vague, but it’s the rare film that can pull it off.

     “The Counselor” is the 80-year-old’s first attempt at an original screenplay and, to his credit, he creates a script that is very much in the spirit and style of his printed work.

Fassbender plays the nameless title character, a not to successful (I’m guessing here) lawyer who always seems a bit lost, humorless and lacking in the type of charisma you expect from someone only referred to as “the counselor.” Bardem, as an oily businessman named Reiner, is so over-the-top loony that he seems to have drifted in from the set of the latest “Hangover” sequel. He and the mysterious Westray (Brad Pitt, playing a character right out of a Tarantino film) have brought the counselor in on this sweet, but dangerous drug deal and when it goes wrong, it really goes wrong.

     There’s a very odd scene between the counselor’s fiancée (Penélope Cruz) and Reiner’s evil-hearted mistress (Cameron Diaz), but otherwise neither actress is given much to do, even when they become more crucial to the plot.

      It’s one of those films where every elliptical conversation ends with some quasi-thought-provoking question that only confuses the counselor (and, in most cases, the audience). Deep-dish philosophy is fine but it can’t substitute for basic, old-fashioned storytelling.

    

THE FIFTH ESTATE  (2013)

     One of the most interesting and  troubling developments in journalism in the past few years has been the emergence of websites willing to publish anything leaked to them, without consideration of its truth, its importance, its consequences. With everything—from government secrets to shady corporate dealings to all our personal information—stored on someone's computer, the possibility of the information becoming public seems inevitable.

      The cache of intel being slowly released to the media by Edward Snowden will turn out to be just the tip of the iceberg.

     Before Snowden, there was WikiLeaks, a website created by Australian hacker Julian Assange, to provide an outlet for anyone willing to anonymously open the window on the secret dealings of governments and corporations, in hopes of forcing both to operate with greater transparency.

     The idea of turning a website success, and the controversy surrounding it, into a commercial movie seems a daunting task, but filmmaker Bill Condon (“Kinsey,” “Monsters and Gods”) pulls it off to some degree by doing what he’s done in the past—putting the spotlight on smart, talented but less than admirable characters. Assange is all that and more: an arrogant, deceptive, paranoid loner who is never wrong.

     Benedict Cumberbatch (“12 Years a Slave” and TV’s “Sherlock”) keeps “The Fifth Estate” from becoming a tiresome collage of laptop typing and shots of world capitals as his “organization”—it’s really just him and the enthusiastic Daniel Berg (played by Daniel Brühl, the arrogant racecar driver in “Rush”)—convinces insiders to pass along incriminating information. With his shaggy white hair, unchecked confidence and brusque tone, Assange, at least this version of him, provides enough evidence to label him both hero and traitor.

    The film is at least 30 minutes longer than necessary as it contains too many repetitive scenes and a failed attempt at big-picture symbolism (Condon keeps returning to an imaginary scene of a huge office with hundreds of Assanges working at their desks), but the central relationship between Assange and Berg remains interesting, right up to its inevitable break.

     After WikiLeaks teamed up with major newspapers to release thousands of U.S. State Departments emails and cables connected to the war on terror, Assange became a pariah to Western governments and he ended up taking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. There he remains.

     I never felt like the film takes seriously the fears of the establishment (represented by State Department officials, slickly portrayed by Laura Linney and Stanley Tucci, and various newspaper editors) about Assange’s mission, leaving only the somewhat naïve, sincere Berg to provide of a voice of sanity.

     But what the film most blatantly neglects is that the reality of this surge of unearthing secret dealings doesn’t result in a more open society (as Assange imagines) but in more secrecy, more security, more official eavesdropping. As admirable as the motivations of WikiLeaks (still going strong as a website) and other organized whistleblowers, the results might be making matters worse.

YOU AIN’T SEEN NOTHING YET  (2013)

     Watching this challenging, complex film, with its nimble use of time-shifting and multimedia as it examines the line between drama and reality, it’s clear you are in the hands of a master. It was the penultimate film directed by legendary French filmmaker Alain Resnais, who died on March 1 at the age of 91.

     Resnais directed two of the touchstone movies of the French New Wave movement (which he was only peripherally connected), “Hiroshima mon amour” (1959) and “Last Year at Marienbad” (1961), both post-modern studies of man drifting aimlessly away from society, unsure of the world and his position in it. At least, I think so. Resnais’ films tend to be elaborate puzzles, posing unanswerable questions and following the irrational needs of the human heart. Things are rarely as they seem in a Resnais film.

     My favorite of the director’s 68-year career (before “Hiroshima,” he was primarily a documentarian) is his 1977 foray into English-language cinema, “Providence,” starring British stage icon John Gielgud as a dying writer who creates (or remembers, it’s hard to tell which) a story about his backstabbing, vitriolic family. Already, Resnais, then just in his mid 50s, was examining the view of life from the far end, the attempt by those near death to find some meaning.

      He’s been very productive since turning 80, directing five films this century, including “Life of Riley,” yet to be released in the U.S., along with one of his best films in years, “Private Fears in Public Places” (2006), a thoughtful examination of the difficulties in finding and maintaining relationships among the middle-aged.

    “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” (a rather unnecessarily flip title) brings together some of France’s best known actors and directors (playing some version of themselves) as they gather for an unusual memorial service for beloved, if difficult, playwright Antoine d’Anthac. His assistant plays a video of the author’s latest production of his version of the play, “Eurydice,” for the assembled, which includes Mathieu Amalric, Michel Piccoli, Lambert Wilson, Anne Consigny and Sabine Azéma (Resnais’ wife). The video inspires these older actors to recreate their roles in earlier versions of the play, pairing off and reciting the lines in different parts of d’Anthac’s home (though sometimes it seems as if it is happening in their imaginations/memories).

    Though certainly pretentious and talky, the film is also filled with intense emotions and Resnais’ usual insight into the games between men and women, the foolishness and irrationality that love brings out. It helps to be somewhat familiar with the Greek legend of Eurydice, who, after she married Orpheus, dies and goes to the underworld. A distraught Orpheus arranges through the gods to follow her with the hope of bringing her back to the world of living, but there is much to overcome to make that happen. It has been the basis of numerous plays, operas and films through the years.

     “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet,” though it won’t be remembered along side of Resnais’ masterpieces, is among last year’s top foreign films, an engaging and astute master class in this timeless tragedy.

OUT OF THE FURNACE (2013)

       North Braddock is one of the many communities in the Pittsburgh area that once thrived in the glimmer of the steel industry. For a time, it was at the center of it—Andrew Carnegie’s first steel mill opened in North Braddock in 1875—until the industry moved out of the country in the 1990s. This film, set around 2008, takes place well after the area has been decimated by the economy, a community filled with desperate people with little future.

      One of them is Russell Baze (Christian Bale, as good or better than he was in “American Hustle”), who, despite actually having a job at the last remaining local mill and a beautiful girlfriend (Zoe Saldana), worries about his dying father and his unsettled, unpredictable brother Rodney (Casey Affleck). Though 15 years younger, Russell and Rodney reminded me of so many guys from my graduating class; capable of much, but, because of circumstance or inclination, stuck in that hometown rut.

      Director and co-writer Scott Cooper (“Crazy Heart”) and his production team, filming in the actual community, have perfectly captured the gritty atmosphere—from the under-lit, narrow interiors of the old company row houses to the rundown, nearly abandoned streets—but the script is still a few rewrites away from being screen-ready. Overloaded with clichés and predictable plot turns, the screenplay doesn’t come close to matching the film’s half-dozen good performances and authentic background.

      I wanted to like this film, but it ends up being just an exercise in excellent acting, especially by Bale and Woody Harrelson, who plays the psychopathic leader of a scary Appalachian clan. The impressive supporting cast also includes Sam Shepard (ubiquitous in these kinds of films), Forest Whitaker and Willem Dafoe.

     Another thing that bothered me about this film were its similarities to “The Deer Hunter,” too many to ignore. Both are set in small towns outside Pittsburgh and focus on the efforts of a serious, responsible man (Bale/Robert De Niro) to save a reckless “brother” (Affleck/Christopher Walken), who, after serving in a war, finds his only outlet in destructive behavior. And, just in case you didn’t catch the homage, “Out of the Furnace” also includes a serene, symbolic deer hunting scene.

     There’s nothing close to the heartfelt ending of “Deer Hunter” in “Furnace,” which is a good thing, but, by then, the film had taken too many familiar roads to leave much of a mark.

THE GRANDMASTER  (2013)

     You could argue that it is senseless to criticize a martial arts extravaganza for its lack of substance, yet even the most juvenile of action movies offer some purpose for the mayhem. Be it the end of the world as we know it or controlling the drug traffic on a street corner, screenwriting 101 requires movies to supply a point to all the spaceships, car chases, superheroes, gunfire and bloodletting.

      Yet “The Grandmaster,” the latest from Wong Kar Wai, Hong Kong’s most celebrated filmmaker, is about nothing more than martial arts masters proving who’s style is better, a one-upmanship that last a lifetime. These “masters” don’t make life better for their people or improve their status in the world (what they do for a living is never examined) or defeat any type of real enemy. And what makes the film’s plot most ridiculous is that the action is set during the invasion of China by the Japanese in the late 1930s and the post-war turmoil that ended in China becoming communist. Monumental times in the ancient kingdom yet this group of well-dressed, mob-like families are more concerned with what style of martial arts is more effective—Northern or Southern.

      Like Wong’s other films, including “Chungking Express” and “In the Mood for Love,” “Grandmaster” is spectacularly beautiful, often more staged pictorial than drama. The Oscar-nominated cinematography of Philippe Le Sourd and the astonishingly detailed editing turn the fight scenes into master classes of modern film style. Seemingly hundreds of cuts go into a few minutes of fisticuffs. But it all seems so arbitrary and pointless.

      The writer-director tries to hold the film together through its main character Ip Man, a real life martial arts legend who, at the end of his life, was Bruce Lee’s mentor. Though the film attempts to be a biography of sorts of Ip Man, he never emerges as more than an image, the distinguished face of Tony Leung. The great Hong Kong actor (in most of Wong’s films, along with “Hero” and “Lust, Caution”) is always watchable, but here he’s given little to do.

      Wong tries to spice up all the stagey, predictable fight scenes with a romance between Ip Man and his rival’s young daughter (Ziyi Zhang of “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”) but that subplot seems tacked on and uninvolving.

     I’ll buy into amazing kung fu action, but only if there is a payoff at the end. Just don’t give me a bunch of guys flinging their legs and arms around for bragging rights, while the Japanese are ravaging the country, killing half the peasantry.