January/February 2012

OSCAR NOMINATIONS 2011
      I can’t offer much in the way of appraisal on this year’s Oscar nominations since I’ve yet to see about 10 of the major nominees, but I can safely state that it was a lousy year for movies.

       I also can write without hesitation that the group of best actor nominees is the weakest collection in decades—maybe ever. And can someone explain to me why there are nine best picture nominees? I understand the rules, but if they have to have more than five, it doesn’t make a lick of sense to not have 10. It like a critic who could only come up with 9 films for his Top 10….actually, for 2011 that was a bit of a problem.

       Yet, the Academy still managed to leave off their usual share of deserving nominees, led by what was far and away the year’s best film, “Melancholia.” Lars von Trier’s audacious psychological examination of a small group of people dealing with a possible cataclysmic celestial event was the only great movie of 2011. And Kirsten Dunst was robbed of a nomination for her bravado performance as a deeply depressed newlywed in the film.

      Staying in the best actress category, I’m baffled how the Academy could have left off Jodie Foster, a two-time winner, for her intense role as a protective mother in “Carnage.”

      Among actors, Woody Harrelson seemed deserving of a nod for his performance as a out-of-control LAPD officer in “Rampart,” as was Patton Oswalt for “Young Adult” and Corey Stoll, playing a comic Ernest Hemingway, in “Midnight in Paris.”

     Needless to say, I was pleased with Woody Allen’s nominations—best director, best original screenplay and “Midnight in Paris” for best picture. I’m still waiting to read the reaction of all those critics who have been writing for more than a decade that Woody was done as a filmmaker. “Midnight in Paris,” while not in the same category as his masterful films of the ‘70s and ‘80s, will end up being the highest gross movie he’s ever made.

      This is the seventh time Allen has been nominated for both director and writer in the same year, an Oscar record. (That tops the legendary Billy Wilder, who he passed a few years ago for most screenplay nominations.) Allen now has 14 nods as a screenwriter and seven as a director.

      Speaking of old guys, it was also good to see Christopher Plummer and Max von Sydow score nominations as supporting players, both for mediocre films that they make watchable. 

       I haven’t seen many foreign films either, but when I finally make my list, at the top will be “Certified Copy” and last year’s Oscar winner (but a 2011 release) “In a Better World.”

        As for the English-language films of 2011, even though it’s nearly March, my Top 10 (along with other picks) is still a work in progress. Thus far, here’s what I thought were the year’s best:

        1. Melancholia  (Lars von Trier)

        2. The Descendants  (Alexander Payne)
        3. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo  (David Fincher)
        4.  Midnight in Paris  (Woody Allen)
        5.  Carnage  (Roman Polanski)
        6.  Super 8  (J.J. Abrams)
        7.  Win Win   (Thomas McCarthy)
        8.  Rampart  (Owen Moverman)
        9.  Young Adult  (Jason Reitman)
      10.  Moneyball  (Bennett Miller)

       Other, worthy films last year included “Contagion,” “The Guard” and “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II,” the finalé of the bloated, overhyped series that probably deserved a spot in the best picture lineup. 

 

CARNAGE  (2011)

     This deceptively insightful, slyly comical adaptation of the acclaimed stage play “God of Carnage” traps two upper-class New York couples in philosophical combat on parenting and other assorted topics.

      At least that’s the spark that brings these four talkative parents together, attempting to resolve an assault by the son of Alan and Nancy Cowan on the son of Penelope and Michael Longstreet. Turns out, these couples have more problems that bickering children.

     While the Longsteets (John C. Reilly and Jodie Foster) attempt to play the role of sophisticated, understanding hosts, the Cowans (Christoph Waltz and Kate Winslet) just want to put an end to this uncomfortable discussion. Instead, it just goes on and on, from faux pleasantries to uncensored, political incorrect rants on gender roles, corporate responsibility and the ethical treatment of small animals. Every time the Cowans seem to be headed home, they get pulled back into the hot house fray. And because these four are so incorrigibly serious, the film is laugh out-loud funny, a biting comedy that shows upper Westside America as ridiculous, childish game players.

    Having not seen Yasmina Reza’s play, a hit in London, New York and Los Angeles, I don’t know how much she had to alter it for the screen, but except for a short opening, the film is all set in the Longstreet’s over-decorated apartment. To make a film in such tight quarters work you need a masterful director and the producers found one of the best: Roman Polanski. At 78, the still controversy magnet (three years ago, the Los Angeles district attorney tried but failed to extradite him to serve time for his 1977 sexual assault conviction) remains among the finest filmmakers in the world, showing it in “Carnage” by turning a four-person, one-set gabfest into dynamic, unrelenting cinema. Polanski knows just when to pull back and let the audience breathe and when to heat up the debate and intensify the discomfort. And, most importantly, he found the perfect cast.    

       Most surprising, for me, was Jodie Foster, giving her most compelling performance in 20 years as Penelope, a tightly wound, controlling woman who has created a world and personality that is bound for destruction. It’s surprising not because Foster isn’t a superb actress (with two best actress Oscars), but that she seemed to have given up on challenging roles that would push her to this level of excellent. Wearing little makeup and looking all of her 52 years, Foster rips into this character with everything she has and it is, at times, mesmerizing. It’s a crime that she was ignored by Academy voters.

     Then there’s Waltz as Alan, picking up right where he left off as the self-satisfied Nazi in his Oscar-winning role from “Inglourious Basterds.” Here he’s a slick corporate attorney who, much to his wife’s disgust, refuses to turn off his phone, taking calls every few minutes. It’s the funniest performance in the film as he nonchalantly offers brutally assessments of everyone’s motivations.

     Winslet as Nancy and Reilly as Michael have less complex roles but still have vivid moments and serve as perfect counterpoints to their spouses.

     I’m not sure why the film didn’t attract more accolades during the award’s season—in 1966, the not dissimilar, four-person slugfest “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” scored 13 Oscar nominations—but for my money it’s one of the year’s best. “Carnage” has enough unforgettable lines and exchanges to enliven 10 scripts.

A BETTER LIFE  (2011) and RAMPART (2011)
      In tone and style, these two films couldn’t be further apart, yet taken together they offer a depressingly realistic examination of life for the majority of those who live in Los Angeles: the immigrants from Mexico and Central and South America.

       When I first read the list of best actor nominees on the morning of the Oscar announcements, I did a double-take when I saw Demián Bichir’s name (misspelled on some Academy releases). How did an actor I’ve never heard of in a movie whose title I don’t recognize score an Oscar nomination? Even in all the hype leading up to the nominations, I never saw any mention of “A Better Life” or Bichir.

     Looking up the title, I recalled it being released, receiving uninspiring reviews and closing soon afterwards. Maybe because I didn’t expect much when I watched the DVD a few weeks later, I found “A Better Life,” despite its made-for-television veneer, to be an insightful and superbly acted picture.

    The film doesn’t have much of a plot, but instead focuses on a slice of life of the largely illegal hired hands who toil anonymously on hundreds of thousands of lawns across Southern California. And it succeeds by refusing to candy-coat the reality of that life or manufacture a hard-work-conquers-all scenario. With a straightforward approach by director Chris Weitz (“About a Boy”) and understated dialogue by screenwriters Eric Eason and Roger L. Simon, the film makes its points without turning into a liberal diatribe.

     Bichir’s Carlos, working dawn to dusk, is raising a teenage son who isn’t too interested in his father’s job and money worries. When Carlos is offered the chance to take over the gardening business of the man he works for, he borrows money from his sister and buys the man’s truck. From there, things go from bad to worse. The movie has its fair share of clichés, yet the understated, realistic depiction of these ubiquitous workers, who have become part of the fabric of Southern California society, makes “A Better Life” one of the essential films about L.A.  

    Bichir, who most prominently played Che Guevara in Steven Soderbergh’s two-part biopic “Che,” gives a richly textured performance as this frustrated laborer, bring a quiet authenticity to the role. I’m still a bit surprised that the performance earned an Oscar nod, even in what is clearly a down year. Yet I hope he wins—he’d probably be the least known performer ever to win the best actor Oscar.

        Another side of the life in L.A.’s minority communities is portrayed with dark, brutally raw stokes in Oren Moverman’s “Rampart.” Set in 1999 during the investigation into the biggest police corruption scandal in the city’s recent history, the movie follows disturbingly fanatical cop Dave Brown (an extraordinarily intense Woody Harrelson), a rogue officer out of step with a department attempting to clean up its image.

      Moverman, who worked with Harrelson in the equally memorable “The Messenger,”  and co-writer James Ellroy (“L.A. Confidential” and a half-dozen other pulp fiction novels set in L.A.) combine the frenetic pace of the last half of “GoodFellas” with a “Taxi Driver”-like sense of doom and violence to create a chaotic, disjointed, occasionally inexplicable ride along down the mean streets of the city.  

    Brown works in the same Rampart division (located in the middle of neighborhoods filled with recent immigrants) of LAPD that is being investigated in the corruption probe, which is no surprise. He adds to the department’s black eye when he’s caught on tape beating a Latino man who crashed his car into Brown’s vehicle.

       With a legal background, Brown knows all the right answers to stall internal affairs (including a no-nonsense assistant DA played with slick intelligence by Sigourney Weaver) yet can’t keep his bizarre home life from self destructing. While he seems to be the man in control when he’s on the job, at home Brown has become a minor player, living with his ex-wives, who are sisters (played by Anne Heche and Cynthia Nixon) and the daughter he’s had with each of them. He finds comfort (or something like that) with a defense attorney (Robin Wright) he hooks up with in a bar and trades conspiracy theories with an ex-cop (Ned Beatty) as the world closes in on him.

      The filmmaker packs a ton of plot into less than two hours, which sometimes makes the film seem more interested in shocking images than coherence. Yet the episodical, tightly edited style of “Rampart” pays off as it follows the self-destruction of Brown, who never stops deluding himself into believing he’s in the right. 

      It’s a wild, daring performance by Harrelson, who finds the perfect balance of biting humor and egotistical machismo. Not only is this character a racist, chauvinistic bully but he’s proud of it. There’s no redemption, no saving grace for Brown; he’s a powerful reminder that not everyone wearing a badge and carrying a gun is out there “to serve and protect.”

 

YOUNG ADULT  (2011)

     Hollywood has been cranking out movies for two decade about twentysomething males who  refuse to grow up—see the entire careers of Adam Sandler, Vince Vaughn and Steven Carell—but rarely are the girls represented.

     The latest film from director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody (they collaborated for “Juno”) follows the pathetic life of Mavis, a one-time high school beauty who hasn’t lost her looks (it’s Charlize Theron, need I say more) but hasn’t figured out the first thing about adulthood. She’s tasted some success as a ghost writer of a series of children’s books but, like her male counterparts, wakes up most nights with a hangover or in someone else’s bed.

     Her high school spirit is awakened when she receives an e-mail announcing the birth of the child of her former boyfriend from her hometown. With the simple-minded enthusiasm of a 16-year-old, she drives back home (from the “big city” of Minneapolis) to steal Buddy Slade away from what Mavis imagines is an awful life of fatherhood and living in a small-town.

      While she turns on the charm and school girl flirtation, Buddy (Patrick Wilson) is so involved in his new family that he barely takes note of her “stalking.” Who does notice is Matt (veteran TV actor Patton Oswalt), the film’s most interesting character who runs into Marvis her first night in town and quickly becomes her unlikely drinking buddy and confidant. Matt was ignored (and teased) by Mavis during their school days but she remembers him because he was famously beaten by bullies who thought he was gay. Left permanently disabled, Matt represents all the teens who remember high school as a nightmare that still haunts them. Yet Cody’s politically incorrect, profanely blunt script and a hilarious and heartfelt performance by Oswalt keeps Matt from becoming a figure of pity.

     Theron gives her best performance since her Oscar-winning turn as the serial killer in “Monster” (2003), turning the stunning Mavis into an ugly, petty, self-centered and nearly psychotic young adult.

   While the story could have used another subplot or two, “Young Adult” is really a character study of a generation who find themselves in a society that doesn’t require them to grow up, so they don’t.

 

TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY  (2011)

     In a cinematic world where spies are depicted as sexy, athletic adventurers with physical skills that approach superheroes—Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hawke, Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne and Daniel Craig’s James Bond—George Smiley is about as exciting and imposing as a near-sighted, retired librarian.

      Yet this taciturn, bespectacled, trench-coat wearing British spy is the archetype of the men who were on the front line of the decades-long Cold War. John le Carré’s 1974 book of the same name, arguable the most revered spy novel of the 20^th Century, follows Smiley’s return to action after being given the boot because of a bungled operation behind the Iron Curtain. Along with his mentor and boss, Control, Smiley leaves the Circus (le Carré’s sarcastic name for the British spy operation) in the hands of four colleagues, all suspected by Control of being the double-agent he’s sure has infiltrated the agency.

     When another source comes forward with info that confirms those beliefs, the Downing Street enlists Smiley to investigate those now running the agency.

     Gary Oldman, who’s been giving eclectic, memorable, but underappreciated performances since his breakthrough role as punk rocker Sid Vicious in “Sid and Nancy” (1986), is perfect as Smiley, a man who speaks only when necessary and seems so blandly ordinary that it’s a shock when he displays his razor-sharp deduction skills and bluntly direct interrogation methods. It earned him a surprising Oscar nomination, though I think it may represent a career achievement honor from the Academy voters. Yet this finely detailed performance is part of what makes “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” a disappointment.

    Every performance, every plot turn, even what passes for action scenes in this film are dialed down to such a snail’s pace that the overall effect is two hours of nothing happening. Even when the traitor is finally trapped by Smiley, it is presented in the most undramatic, elliptical manner that a viewer who blinks could easily be totally baffled by the final act.

       What earned le Carré’s book such praise—his refusal to over glamorize or overhype the process of espionage—has been impressively captured and condensed by screenwriters Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan. Yet what makes for a fascinating read turns into a sluggish, nearly inert motion picture.

    The six-hour 1979 television movie, one of the best every made, got away with the placing because it is so long and was shown in one-hour bites on the small screen. I re-watched the TV version a few months ago and it remains a masterful work, elevated by a brilliant performance by Alec Guinness as Smiley. While much of what Oldman does in the new version is very reminiscent of Guinness, Oldman takes a low-key role down at least another notch.

     For those unfamiliar with the story, the film may feel fresher and less plodding, but they also my get lost in the maze of minutia that is crucial to the unfolding of the plot. There are just too many scenes of Smiley sitting and staring, adjusting his oversized, ‘70s style glasses and then sighing.

    The acting, as one would expect, is all first rate, with Colin Firth, Ciarán Hinds, Toby Jones and David Dencik, playing the four Circus chiefs under the glare of Smiley’s investigation and John Hurt as Control. Also superb is Mark Strong (“The Guard,” “Body of Lies”) as a damaged agent who was caught in the middle of this game of chess between the Soviets and the British.

    Swedish director Tomas Alfredson has the austerity of the piece down pat, but he never is able to get the blood and guts of this spy tale flowing. 

EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE  (2011)

     You’d have to be a rock not to be emotionally affected by the final act of this overwrought Sept. 11 drama. But the road to the payoff is excruciatingly long, led by an annoyingly pretentious young boy who truly tests the limits of sympathy.

     Nominated for a best picture, this contrived film, based on Jonathan Safran Foer’s bestseller, follows Oskar’s adventures as he attempts to find a lock that will fit a key that belonged to his father (Tom Hanks), who died on what the boy calls “the worst day ever.”

      Oskar (played by Thomas Horn) tramps around New York City as if he’s living in Mayberry, encountering such a cross section of considerate, interesting and diverse people that I half expected Mayor Bloomberg to have a writing credit. The boy’s metaphorical search to unlock his emotional response to the sudden loss of his father might have worked on the page, but on screen it feels manipulatively clever and painfully obvious.

     I knew I was in for a long haul during the opening scenes showing Oskar and his father engaging in intellectual battles and educational challenges—a relationship so balanced and stress-free that it could only happen in a Hollywood movie.

      And if the Sept. 11 tragedy wasn’t enough emotional baggage, the story throws in a World War II survivor who hasn’t spoken in years, to serve as a spiritual guild for the boy.

      Director Stephen Daldry (“Billy Elliott,” “The Hours”) and screenwriter Eric Roth (“Forrest Gump,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”) are as good as anyone in the business at constructing movies that Oscar voters love. In fact, this is the first feature Daldry has made that didn’t earn him a best directing nomination.

      The lone bright spot in this tear-soaked picture is 82-year-old Max von Sydow, whose performance as the above mentioned mute deserved to be surrounded by a better film. It’d be great to see this magnificent actor receive the Oscar, if only as recognition of his standing as one of the towering figures in the history of world cinema. Von Sydow has never stopped working since his debut in 1949, first as the cinematic alter-ego of director Ingmar Bergman and, since the 1960s, as one of Hollywood’s most distinctive supporting players.

ROAD TO NOWHERE  (2011)

     The only reason this picture was released in theaters was because it was billed as cult director Monte Hellman’s comeback. If you’ve never heard of this “legendary” filmmaker, don’t feel bad—he’s probably the most overrated indie director of the 1960s and ‘70s.

      His reputation is based on three pictures, “Ride in the Whirlwind” (1965), “The Shooting” (1966)—two Westerns starring a pre-stardom Jack Nicholson—and  “Two-Lane Blacktop” (1971), which features a great performance by Warren Oates.

    “Road to Nowhere” is just his second film in 30 years and the rust shows. The convoluted plot involves Mitchell (Tygh Runyan), a filmmaker working on a fictional film about a small-town scandal that is never fully explained. While Hellman shows conversations about the actual crime and numerous scenes from the film within the film, it was never clear to me what exactly happened, other than someone was killed and money disappeared.

    The only interesting aspect of the film is Shannyn Sossamon, a stunning actress who co-starred with Heath Ledger in “A Knight’s Tale” (2001), but has done little of substance since. Here she’s quite good, playing both the actress starring in Mitchell’s film and the woman at the center of the real-life scandal.

      Hellman and screenwriter Steve Gaydos (a longtime editor at Daily Variety) touch all the right bases to turn “Road to Nowhere” into a cult favorite—here’s seven simple rules for aspiring cult directors:

       1. Use non-actors (or actors that act as if they’re amateurs)

       2. Set the film in exotic locations even when it makes no plot sense. And try to make the title sound existential with words like “road” and “nowhere.”
       3. Keep the plot and dialogue as vague as possible and leave huge gaps in the plotline. This makes it easier for critics to create their own “meaning” for the film.
       4. At least one character has to be a filmmaker or wannabe filmmaker and, even better, set part of the film on a movie set.
       5. Make sure you show the main character watching old, classic movies on television and then have him comment on them. Referring to Hollywood history makes any film an instant cult classic.
       6. Hope that no one pays to see it, because if it becomes even a minor hit critics won’t be interested in “rediscovering” the film a few years later.
        7. Don’t make too many films; the more movies one of these “unappreciated masters” makes, the harder it is to explain away all the bad films.

        It probably doesn’t matter that the resulting product is an unwatchable mess. Ten years from now, Hellman devotees will be calling it the best film of the 2010s and articles will be written in Film Comment about the director’s keen insight into a cynical Hollywood and a corrupt American society. I can hardly wait.

December 2011

THE DESCENDANTS  (2011)
      I can’t imagine many plot scenarios less appealing: workaholic father forced to reengage with his children after a boating accident leaves his wife comatose. Yet in the hands of Alexander Payne, who has few equals in filtering serious issues through his offbeat sense of humor, this pitch-perfect picture offers an unusually truthful portrayal of both modern family relationships and the comedic aspects of even the gravest circumstances

       Central to making the film work at such a high level is yet another impeccable performance by George Clooney, easily the most reliable barometer of Hollywood quality working today. Whether he stars in a wacky comedy (“O Brother Where Art Thou?” “Intolerable Cruelty”), an intense drama (“Michael Clayton,” “Syriana”), the combination of the two (“The Three Kings,” “Up in the Air”)  or is sitting in the director’s chair (“Good Night, and Good Luck”), Clooney’s name on a film is as close as you can find to a guarantee that it will be among the year’s best.

      Here he’s Matt King, a well-connected Hawaiian real estate lawyer and descendent of island royalty King Kamehameha. While he’s dealing with his wife’s condition and coping with being a fulltime parent to two daughters—a precocious pre-teen and a rebellious college-age girl—he is representing his family as they negotiation with developers to sell a large parcel of beachfront property on Kauai.

       Just when you think you know where the film is headed, a very natural, but unexpected plot turn sends King and his daughters (along with Sid, the elder girl’s thick-headed friend) to Kauai for some sleuthing.

      It’s the rare movie that offers such a complex and subtle father-daughter relationship, superbly written by Payne, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash from Kaui Hart Hemmings’ novel and fueled by two exceptional performances. Shailene Woodley, the star of the TV series “The Secret Life of the American Teenager,” gives a star-making performance as Alexandra, the older daughter who can be a total pain, but shows the maturity to straighten up and take on responsibility when it’s necessary. This isn’t a one-way relationship, as Clooney, surprisingly convincing as a rather ordinary father figure, finds a center to his life while facing a series of extraordinary events with his daughters.

     But the film overflows with well-written, superbly acted characters, including Amara Miller as younger daughter Scottie, a 10-year-old growing up too quickly for her father to handle; veteran actor Robert Forrester as Clooney’s feisty father-in-law; Judy Greer as the wife of a real estate agent who becomes entangled with the King family business; and Nick Krause as the continually amusing Sid.

     Despite a resume that features “Election,” “About Schmidt” and “Sideways,” this may be Payne’s best film. “Descendants” walks a narrow path between the tragedy and absurdity of life to create one of the most entertaining and insightful family dramas in recent years.

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO  (2011)

     Why is it that the rest of the world manages to enjoy and appreciate American films without feeling the need to remake them in their own language?

     There’s no French version of “The Bourne Ultimatum” or an Italian-language adaptation of “The King’s Speech.” Where’s the Japanese take on “The Fight Club?” Sounds ridiculous, yet, in this country, you can’t get people into the theater unless England-speaking movie stars are playing the major roles. Thus, the superbly made and admired Swedish film, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” has been made palatable for American audiences, the remake hitting the nation’s theaters barely a year after the original.

     Putting aside the redundancy of its existence, this David Fincher-directed remake is a first-rate thriller, slicker and more direct than the original, but equally fast-paced and involving.

     Daniel Craig plays Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading Swedish journalist (the actors are English speaking but the setting remains frigid Scandinavia), whose work with the magazine Millennium has just resulted in a massive court ruling against him for libel. Out of sorts, he’s persuaded to investigate the long-ago murder of the teenage niece of Henrik Vanger, a retired businessman (Christopher Plummer). Blomkvist moves into a servant’s quarters on the island where various family members reside, even though most haven’t spoken to one another in decades.

      While Blomkvist’s probe into this dysfunctional family methodically unfolds, the film cross-cuts to Lisbeth Salander, a multi-pierced, emotionally repressed young computer expert—who investigated Blomkvist before he was hired by Vanger—is dealing with a new court-appointed guardian (she’s a ward of the state) who’s a repulsive sexual predator.

       Though Rooney Mara, who had a small role in Fincher’s “The Social Network,” doesn’t quite match the unrestrained ferocity of Noomi Rapace in the original, the relative newcomer brings a welcomed touching sadness to Lisbeth even as she’s enacting violent revenge or doing her best to steer clear of the world. It’d be easy to lose sight of Lisbeth’s humanity while portraying this spiked-haired, impossibly cool character, but Mara proves up to the task and, in doing so, makes the film something special.

     Eventually these two master sleuths (Lisbeth can seemingly hack into any computer system or e-mail account) join forces; Mikael bringing out the best in Lisbeth as they get dangerously close to the shocking truth behind the mystery.

     If my memory is to be trusted, there are only slight differences between the two versions: Fincher brings a flashier filmmaking style to the film, intensifying some of the action, while Steven Zaillian’s screenplay provides a bit more interaction (sexual and otherwise) between the two leads. Topping the original are the crisp cinematograph by Jeff Cronenweth and a pounding score by Trent Rezner and Atticus Ross.

   All of which shows that this fascinating, if unwieldy, tale of long-hidden family secrets and the two quirky individuals charged with investigating would probably be just as good in Chinese.  

SON OF THE GODS (1930) and OLIVER TWIST  (1922)

      While most film depictions of racial prejudice address injustice in the past, “Son of the Gods,” a rarely screened melodrama, tells a contemporary story of racism against Chinese Americans.

      Unfortunately, this early sound film from Frank Lloyd (director of best picture winners “Cavalcade” and “Mutiny on the Bounty”) is undercut by casting of unmistakably Caucasian Richard Barthelmess in the lead and an utterly compromised ending.

     Barthelmess plays a wealthy Chinese businessman’s son, who, when the film opens, is attending college and attempting to fit into mainstream society. Because he looks no different than any of his white friends, it’s a shock when a group of girls at a nightclub go ballistic when they find out he’s a “chink” and that he might touch them.

     Later, after quitting school and travelling in Europe, a well-to-do woman pursues him, only to publically humiliate him when she learns he’s Chinese.

     Understandably, Sam grows bitter and forsakes all his father stood for, making life difficult for the whites he does business with and shutting himself off from society.

     I won’t reveal the surprise conclusion, but it allows for a Hollywood happy ending even as it weakens the film’s point.

     Barthelmess, who always looked as if he was about to face his executioner, is unconvincing as a man anyone would think was Chinese or even raised in a Chinese community. I can only guess that he was cast in this role because he played a Chinese man (using heavy makeup) in “Broken Blossoms.”

    Constance Bennett, as the woman who grows to love Sam despite his differences, shows here why she became one of the top stars of the 1930s, going on to star in “What Price Hollywood?” (1932), “The Affairs of Cellini” (1934), “Topper” (1937) and “Merrily, We Live” (1938). She’s already comfortable acting with sound, in sharp contrast to Barthelmess.

     While the direction isn’t up to Lloyd’s high standards (camera movement is severely reduced because of the limited range of the microphone), there’s a short flashback sequence to Sam’s youth in San Francisco that truly looks like a clip from a film shot at the turn of the century. It’s a moment of emotional gravitas in a film that ends up pulling its punches.

     Lloyd’s 1922 condensed version of the Charles Dickens’ classic is a better example of the director’s keen ability to tell a story on film. Beautifully staged and shot, “Oliver Twist” also benefits greatly from the presence of two of the era’s best actors, Lon Chaney and Jackie Coogan.

    Coogan is as plucky and unpretentious as Oliver, the orphan who suffers the indignities of 19^th Century England, as he was in his legendary role in “The Kid” (1921).

      Chaney is surprisingly restrained as the notorious Fagan, avoiding the Jewish caricature than has tainted the book over the years, including in Alec Guinness’ performance in the David Lean film version.

     Even with those two legends in the key roles, George Siegmann gives the showiest performance, bringing out the masochistic evil of henchman Bill Sikes. Siegmann, who started in movies in 1909, had roles in D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation” and “Hearts of the West” and played Porthos opposite Douglas Fairbanks in the 1921 version of “The Three Musketeers.”

     The tinted print of “Oliver Twist” has been superbly restored and probably ranks as one of the better silents still existing from the early 1920s. It’s worth seeing out.

    Though he worked sparingly after World War II, Lloyd didn’t retire until 1955. “The Last Command,” starring Sterling Hayden as Texas legend Jim Bowie, was his final film.

HUGO (2011)

    As unimaginable as it seems that the director of “Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull” and “The Departed” would make a 3-D children film, it’s clear what drew Martin Scorsese to “Hugo.”

     Beyond the cute, episodical tale of a young orphan living in the clockworks of the Paris train station in the 1920s, avoiding the clutches of a heartless security guard and befriending a prickly magic shop proprietor, the soft-hearted movie is about the rediscovery of French film pioneer Georges Méliès. When Scorsese’s not making movies, he’s one of the country’s foremost film historians and supporter of preservation and he clearly enjoyed recreating the studio and movie sets of Méliès’ groundbreaking pictures.

      Méliès invented such filmmaking techniques as the dissolve, split screen and double exposure and essentially created movie special effects while making hundreds of shorts from 1986 to 1913. The magician started making movies, and soon created one of the first movie studios, after seeing an early demonstration of the Lumière brothers’ cinématographe, the first movie projector, in 1895.

     Méliès most famous production, the 15-minute-long “A Trip to the Moon” opened in 1902. But his fame lasted just a few years as his short works lost popularity to more realistic and longer films. He lost his studio by 1910 and was out of the business three years later. More than a decade later, his contributions to the cinema began to be recognized and he was award the Legion of Honor by the French government. He died in 1938.     

    While it is a worthy effort to shine a light on Méliès’ accomplishments (though I wonder how many viewers will even realize he’s an actual historical figure), the film’s production design is the only reason to see the picture. The Méliès recreations and the wondrous world of the train station, especially the intricate workings of the station’s clocks, should win designer Dante Ferretti his third Oscar.

    The story and acting leave much to be desired, as the adventures of young Hugo (Asa Butterfield) and the shopkeeper’s daughter (Chloë Grace Moretz, trying way too hard) grow tiresome quickly and the angry adults (Ben Kingsley playing the mysterious shopkeeper as a Dickens-like villain, and Sacha Baron Cohen as the fascist security guard) playing out cliché roles.

    Don’t let the reviews fool you: This really is a kids’ film; a very elaborate, expertly construction one, but a movie not made for real fans of the director.

THE TRIP  (2011)

     As we all have learned, it’s all about the journey, not the destination. For better or worse, that’s the theme of this extended comic skit between Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, playing characters based on themselves as first introduced in Michael Winterbottom’s “Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story.”

     This time, Winterbottom, one of Britain’s most adventurous directors (“The Claim,” “The Road to Guantanamo,” “A Mighty Heart”), sends the constantly bickering pair on an eating tour of Northern England. During their stays at beautifully tended country inns, their meals at chi-chi restaurants and driving through the astonishingly picturesque countryside, we’re treated (aka subjected) to Brydon’s endless vocal impressions of Anthony Hopkins, Michael Caine, Sean Connery and Ian McKellen among others and Coogan’s constant putdown of his talents. (At one point, they do dueling Woody Allen impressions across the dinner table.)

     Coogan, the more successful of the two (as long-running British TV character Alan Partridge and in various Hollywood films), plays the arrogant, needy superstar, picking up every young woman he meets and spending countless hours on the phone with agents. Brydon, also a staple of British TV comedy, simply misses his wife and newborn baby.

     Everyone has friends who they enjoy spending time with….up to a point. And at that point, you’re tempted to strangle them. Both Coogan and Brydon fit that description. Depending on your tolerance level, “The Trip” will feel excruciatingly endless or wildly hilarious. And, if you can’t get enough of these guys’ humor, the film is actually a trimmed down version of the six-episode British television series. I think I’ll pass.

MY WEEK WITH MARILYN  (2011)

    Despite two superb portrayals of movie legends—both going well beyond impersonations—this depiction of the making of the Laurence Olivier-Marilyn Monroe 1957 movie, “The Prince and the Showgirl” never rises beyond stagy recreation.

      Based on the recollections of Colin Clark, a young assistant on the British film, the movie paints Monroe as needy, manipulative, naïve, disturbed, fun-loving, a great actress, a terrible actress, irresponsible and totally dedicated. Just like the other thousand remembrances of the actress since her death in 1962, this one offers a Marilyn everyone can pick their favorite personality for. I think that’s an important reason why this slightly talented pin-up girl from a half-century ago remains such an object of interest: you can select whatever Marilyn you want to like and it’s just as viable as anyone else’s.

    This cult has turned her into the most overrated actress in film history and “My Week with Marilyn” does its part to validate the myth. Director Simon Curtis, making his feature debut, is clearly enamored of Marilyn.

     It’s the classically trained British performers, led by Olivier (played to perfection by Kenneth Branagh) and Sybil Thorndike (Judy Dench), who are painted as elitists for expecting Miss Monroe (played by Michelle Williams in a performance beyond what the real Monroe could ever hope to give) to know her lines and show up for work on time. It’s really the fault of her sycophant, soul-sucking personal assistants (especially acting coach Paula Strasberg, well played by Zoe Wanamaker) who don’t really care about Marilyn the person. And, of course, it’s the terrible life of a Hollywood star that slowly eats away at her sanity. Who can blame her?

     One feels pity for this woman who couldn’t handle the pressures of her chosen profession and ended her life at 36 (if it wasn’t suicide, it was pretty close), but thousand of other performers have faced the same stress, the same temptations, the same expectations and done quite well. Sometimes, listening to the Marilyn story—in this film and elsewhere—you would think she was the only beautiful woman who ever faced hardship in Hollywood.

     My rant on the real Monroe aside, the film’s focus on Clark’s (played by Eddie Redmayne as a wide-eyed, dopey schoolboy) time spent with Monroe after her husband, playwright Arthur Miller, goes back to the states, doesn’t bring out anything interesting or new about the actress.

    But Williams finds a way to create a character who is probably more complex and interesting than Monroe ever was, showing this bundle of contradictions as doomed to a life of despair, in spite (and because of) her fame. It’s an excellent performance, but how much of it is Marilyn is anyone’s guess.

     Though Williams was equally impressive in “Blue Valentine” (2010) and “Wendy and Lucy” (2008), this performance officially moves her into the major leagues and part of the discussion of Hollywood’s best actresses.

     Just as remarkable, especially considering the film’s clunky and unimaginative script (by Adrian Hodges), is Branagh’s turn as Sir Larry. He captures the great man’s vanity and bravado along with the subtle ways he altered his voice, used his eyes and mouth when acting and even how he held his head. For fans of Olivier, Branagh’s performance is worth the price of admission.

      It’s especially ironic that Branagh (amazingly, at 51, a year older than Olivier was in 1957) would portray the acting legend, after repeating Olivier’s triumphs as an actor-director with his remakes of “Henry V” (1989) and “Hamlet” (1996) early in his career. Since then, Branagh’s career has stalled until his recent television work as the moody detective “Wallander” has rejuvenated his career. This role may score him an Oscar nod and accelerated his film opportunities.

     The actual “The Prince and the Showgirl” was a major disappointment and my dim memory of it (I haven’t watched it in 20 years) is as a stiff, embarrassingly unfunny waste of everyone’s time and effort.  On top of that, many survivors from the production have cast doubt on the veracity of Clark’s recollections about his and Monroe’s time together. But who cares: it’s just another piece of Marilyn memorabilia that fails to offer any sense of perspective to this oft-told tale.

THE ARTIST  (2011)

     There’s nothing worse than coming into a movie with preconceived notions. In this case, I expected to see a silent movie about the real consequences of the arrival of talking pictures. Instead, “The Artist” is a parody of a silent movie; an artificial movie in which the people act like characters in a silent movie, not real people who acted in movies in the 1920s. “Singin’ in the Rain,” a musical comedy, brought a more realistic portrayal of the era to the screen.

      How can I believe in these characters if they act as if they’re silent movie clichés instead of a flesh-and-blood people dealing with the complete changeover of their industry? French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius, who wrote and directed the film, seems to have a surprising hit on his hand along with a shoo-in for a best-picture Oscar nomination, but, to me, the movie fails in almost every aspect.

      Jean Dujardin, a French actor best known for his turn as a comic spy in two “OSS 17” films for Hazanavicius, plays George Valentin (a little too close to Valentino for my taste), a star of American silents who finds his career all-but over when sound sweeps the business in 1927-28. At the same time, a perky extra (Bérénice Bejo) Valentin meets at an opening and gives a break to, emerges as a matinée idol of the re-tooled art form.

     So begins the “A Star Is Born” plotline as these two lives head in opposite direction while never losing sight of one another.  There’s little more to the script and, beyond a few beautifully staged and shot scenes, the film is slow and visually uninteresting.

Dujardin, though handcuffed by the director’s insistence for artificiality, has a handful of emotionally truthful moments, but not enough to salvage this shallow film.

      One of the film’s better performances is given by Penelope Ann Miller as Valentin’s unhappy wife. It’s eerie how much Miller looks like actress Dorothy Comingore, who played a thinly veiled version of silent star Marion Davies in “Citizen Kane,” another movie this silent copies. (Later, it lifts sections of the score to “Vertigo” to intensify a key dramatic scene—that seems like cheating.)

       It seems that the allure of a 21^st Century black-and-white silent—forget about its content or purpose—was all that was needed to turn “The Artist” into a critical hit.

     In fact, even with all the technical advances of the past 80 years, I have my doubts that “The Artist” would make a Top 10 if it was competing against films from 1928. In many ways, this film is made for moviegoers who haven’t seen that many silents. For those who know silent filmmaking, this has to be a disappointment in that Hazanavicius makes little attempt to replicate any of the stylistic touches of the late silents or even direct the film with any of the flair of the era. This is a silent film made as if it were a 2011 Hollywood release—with little camera movement and predictable composition. Some of the most innovative filmmaking the cinema has ever seen took place before sound, but you’d never guess that from “The Artist.”

    Maybe I was expecting too much. It’s not a bad film, but if it was in color and with a soundtrack would it even have been released? Like many believed about talking pictures, “The Artist” is purely a novelty.