ClariseSamuels

Given the awards and glowing reviews this film garnered, it's hard to stand up and say, "this film bored me." Nevertheless, this was the case. I don't like documentaries about road trips, and I'm pretty sure this is what I just watched. Frances McDormand has noted in interviews that she has often fantasized about chucking it all in and taking off in a van, which in her case sounds more like a romantic fantasy about discovering the true beauty and true grit of America, perhaps something like Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley or maybe even Kerouac’s On the Road. However, the story pretends to be about social justice, even though it is ironic that the protagonist in real life is a world-famous actress, whose net worth is listed as $30 million and whose husband's net worth is listed by various sources as being anywhere from $20 to $100 million. Half the cast is comprised of actors who are real van-dwellers, and in keeping with this pseudo-documentary style, there is very little plot, sparse dialogue, no dramatic tension, and an ending that resolves nothing. The film stops just short of romanticizing the lifestyle of the homeless, or as it is rephrased, the "houseless," which makes it sound better, but the film also ducks and basically hides under McDormand's van when it begs the question, how did it come to this in one of the richest countries in the world? Answer: Because there are not enough socialist programs in the United States, and yes, the government has a responsibility to take care of the people, which means, among other things, equitable distribution of income and higher taxes for the rich. This is not a subject that multimillionaire producers want to ponder–they would rather focus on wanderlust and beautiful sunsets. Thus, there is no talk of the dangerous ultraconservatism that grips the United States, the rampant undereducation of the American people, the outrageous cost of American medical care and prescription drugs, the recent shocking wave of racism and antisemitism, the desperate need for stricter gun laws, and the list goes on. Some of these antecedents helped to land these people in their vans. Sadly, if social justice is what the director and producers of Nomadland were after, they missed the mark by a mile.

A Star Is Born never loses its appeal as the ultimate American rags-to-riches success story—with a love story to boot. First made in 1937 with actors Janet Gaynor and Fredric March, the film was remade in 1954 with Judy Garland and James Mason, then again in 1976 with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson, and now we have the twenty-first century version with Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper. The film’s hype and award-season nomination sweep is partly due to the impressive soundtrack of heartfelt songs sung with the powerful mezzo-soprano voice of Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, known popularly to most of us as Lady Gaga, who also co-wrote many of the songs. To begin with, there are many surprises in this film: 1) The moving and emotionally fervent songs were sung live on the set by Gaga and Cooper; 2) it appears that Bradley Cooper could have been a rock star if he had not succeeded as an actor; and 3) Stefani Germanotta is a natural beauty who goes to great lengths to make herself look as bizarre as possible with her platinum hair and overly dramatic make-up in her persona as Lady Gaga. Strangely enough, Gaga said in an interview that she felt ugly looking like her real self in the role of Ally. There is also an autobiographical footnote in the film when Ally confesses that producers always told her they like the way she sounds but not the way she looks, which might explain Gaga’s decision in real life to make herself look as outrageous as possible. In the film, Ally says that producers complained about her nose, and in interviews Gaga admitted that this tidbit was from her real experience. (Ironically, Gaga’s patrician nose is quite elegant and reminiscent of ancient Roman aristocracy—there’s nothing wrong with her nose.) The film begins strongly with a meeting of two musical minds—Ally lives at home with her dad, works as a waitress, and only gets to sing at night at a drag club where they tolerate that she is a real female because they like her. Cooper plays a famous country rock star, Jackson Maine, who is so famous that he could stumble drunkenly into any tiny bar in any city and instantly be recognized by every single person sitting there, which puts him in approximately the same league as Mick Jagger or Elton John. Cooper’s character is strikingly authentic as a musician and rock star, but Cooper’s dramatic skills are a bit rough and unpolished in this role, as are those of Lady Gaga. Gaga is playing her real self stripped naked, so to speak. She is unable to completely transcend her natural reticence about her real self to be convincing in the role of Ally. And Jackson Maine is supposed to be drunken, difficult, and debauched, with a perpetual chip on his shoulder; yet, he turns into a tender, docile lamb every time he looks lovingly at Ally. The viewer might wonder whether this is Jackson Maine, Ally’s lover, or Bradley Cooper, Lady Gaga fan. The f-word dominates the script so unremittingly that at times it sounds like they are speaking an unfamiliar and deviant dialect of the English language. The across-the-board award nominations for this film are a true testament to the impressively large fandom of Lady Gaga, making this film part of the popular culture that the Academy seeks to include in its nominations.

Sometimes you have to wonder what the critics are looking for in an Oscar-worthy movie, and how they manage to find it in a film like The Favourite. This what-if-Queen-Anne’s-court-was-lesbian premise is historically off the wall, given that two of the protagonists, Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz) and Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) were historically documented to be extremely devoted to their husbands. The historical basis for the lesbian theme apparently harks back to some vindictive rumors that were circulated during Queen Anne’s reign (1702–1707 as Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and then until 1714 as Queen of Great Britain and Ireland) by malicious and jealous courtiers. At Versailles such a scenario might have been plausible, but the stodgy, uptight English court of the eighteenth century? The French Catholic aristocracy felt they needed a priest only twice in their lives—when they married and when they died—but the English took the Anglican Church and the wages of sin very seriously. Since Henry VIII, the ruling monarch has been the head of the Church of England, and this kind of liberated behavior would have been severely repressed during this era. So the film has to be accepted as a fantasy, and a wild, absurdist one at that. Billed as a comedy-drama, it’s not that humorous. I didn’t laugh once. The actors are consummate professionals, and the costumes and period sets are perfect; nevertheless, the film is wearisome. Dark hallways looming up at the camera and a preoccupation with a wide-angle lens distortion known as pincushioning (usually considered a photographic flaw but used in this film as a feature) are recurring stylistic devices. Colman’s acting in the role of Queen Anne is of the highest caliber, but she always has to act sick, moody, and on the verge of hysterics, so her character is also wearisome. Her Queen Anne seems to be quite stupid and unable to comprehend politics, economics, military strategy or anything that does not cater to her sexual needs and her personal vanity. Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone are rivals for the Queen’s affections, and their characters display the worst kind of female wiles and weaknesses, stopping just short of hair-pulling and scratching each other’s eyes out. Scenes are introduced with text graphics that are random quotations, sometimes skewing the letters with arbitrary spacing. The film is artistically conceited. In the end, it does not produce the desired effect, which presumably is to depict the absurdist and existentialist view that there is no intrinsic meaning in life. The musical score is as pretentious as the rest of it, vacillating between Baroque violins and a bizarre chiming sound that is supposed to set a mood but is instead unnerving and bewildering.

Space exploration movies, especially those based on a true story, are always riveting. First Man is no exception. Unlike the film Apollo 13, which explored the friendship and solidarity between Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise, this film focuses on the professional and emotional journey of one astronaut, Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling), who holds a place in history for being the first human being to set foot on the fine powder that pervades the surface of the moon. Clearly, there was teamwork involved in this endeavor as well. Armstong did not fly to the moon by himself—he was accompanied by Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. Nevertheless, even though his crewmates were with him the whole time, and the interdependency between them was obvious, Armstrong’s fierce inner strength, and his laconic and terse inability to express his deepest emotions both at home and at work, depict him as an iconic loner. It was not just one small step for [a] man and one giant leap for mankind, it was a giant leap for astronaut Neil Armstrong as an individual and a man whose personal journey had literally taken him to the moon. Director Damien Chazelle beautifully balances the professional man with the private individual, who was difficult to live with as a spouse, who loved his children but could not always demonstrate paternal affection, and who respected his copilots even as he distanced himself from them. Generally unknown or forgotten details about Neil Armstrong come to light in this screenplay, such as the fact that he lost a 2-year-old daughter to brain cancer in 1962. Given his impassive and stoic personality, he was never completely able to assimilate his grief. He is shown dropping his daughter’s bracelet in a moon crater during his 22-hour Apollo 11 lunar exploration. Although this scene is not wholly based on fact, Armstrong did wander away from Aldrin briefly to spend a few minutes by himself at the edge of what is known as Little West Crater. This went against the scripted actions that had been carefully planned before the launch. It was thought he might have left something there as a memento, not uncommon practice for astronauts who walked on the moon. Armstrong’s biographer suspected he left something from his daughter, as did others. Also, not generally known was that Armstrong was probably not NASA’s first choice to be first man. He was shoved to the head of the line with the death of Gus Grissom, who perished in a flash fire during a “plugs-out” test. Grissom was purported to be lined up for commanding the first lunar landing mission. As a strong-willed, hard-working Midwesterner from Ohio, Armstrong was not the easiest character to depict on screen. He was not glamorous or flamboyant, his life was scandal-free, and he avoided the limelight. Ryan Gosling attempts to recreate this inner and dispassionate strength, which was a kind of discrete reserve worn like a protective armor. The portrayal is accurate, but for those who have never experienced the quiet, unflappable self-restraint of a certain kind of Midwestern personality, it may have appeared that Gosling was underacting. He wasn’t. As for Claire Foy in the role of Armstrong’s wife Janet, she has demonstrated what appears to be an infinite acting range. She has effortlessly glided from a flawless portrayal of the young Queen Elizabeth II to an equally flawless portrayal of a Midwestern (from Illinois) suburban housewife who has to stay home to mind the kids, bravely live her life in the dark shadow of possible widowhood, and give her difficult astronaut husband a ton of support. Also noteworthy, the moon landing scenes and the eerie silence of space as the astronauts approach the lunar surface make this film an almost mystical experience.

A somewhat offbeat yet still traditional love story about a couple who meet in New York City, this is a kind of modern-day Asian Romeo and Juliet. Rachel Chu (played by Constance Wu) is a hard-working Chinese American, whose single mom put her through school and watched her daughter graduate with a PhD in Economics and then go on to become the youngest economics professor at NYU. This plot may also qualify as the Asian version of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, because Rachel is unacceptably poor (that is to say, middle class) and inappropriate for the family of her intended, Nick Young (Henry Golding). He is the heir apparent to the multibillionaire real estate empire built by his Singaporian parents and grandparents. Rachel is blissfully unaware that Nick is the “Prince William of Singapore” (more like the Donald Trump, Jr. of Singapore) because in New York City, he acts normal and likes to play basketball at a sweaty, grimy YMCA. Due to return home to inherit his family’s dynasty, the prodigal son shocked his family the year before by deciding to spend another year in New York with Rachel. As the film opens, he tells Rachel over a deli platter followed by dessert that he wants her to come home with him and attend the wedding of a family member. It will also be an opportunity for Nick to unveil his new love to his family. The most prodigious obstacle to the match is Nick’s mother, Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh) who is bound by tradition, culture, and family loyalty. Eleanor Young, now separated from her husband, is cold and arrogant. She is, like all the billionaires of Singapore, mired in the lifestyle of the outrageously rich and surrounded by senseless luxury. She is preoccupied with materialism and social status, notwithstanding that she started out in life as an Oxford law student. She has almost lost her soul in this insipid world; however, her love of family, country, and culture will prove to be her only deliverance. The charm of the plot is the innocence of Rachel, who is down-to-earth, humorous, and spontaneous. Underneath her naive and fun-loving exterior, she is an intellectual Wonder Woman, who can, if provoked, sustain a game of wits based on lifelong discipline, direction, and academic training. Rachel has a hidden strength, and she has a secret weapon. She has a PhD, which she wields like a magic lasso. Billions of dollars cannot buy Rachel’s level of intellectuality. Hollywood has a long history of indicating intelligence in a woman by giving her a pair of glasses. Rachel doesn’t have glasses, but she has x-ray vision. She can see through the superficiality of ostentatious riches. A kind of Chinese Cinderella, at the end of the story, she is the only woman whose delicate foot fits into the glass slipper, and she is the true princess who will live happily ever after—in between publications, academic conferences, and teaching classes on game theory.

This film is a bit of a noble failure complete with beautiful Cornish landscapes, costumes, and nineteenth-century period sets. Cousin Rachel, played by Rachel Weisz, follows a traditional thriller plot based on the black widow theme. Did she or didn’t she poison her husband Ambrose, whose young cousin Philip loved him like a father? Ambrose, a wealthy English landowner, is sent off to the warmer climes of Italy to recover from what would appear to be a respiratory ailment. A man who never had much time for women, he falls madly in love with a widow named Rachel, whose sweetness and kindness is raved about in letters to Philip (Sam Claflin) back in England. To the family’s surprise, Ambrose marries Rachel in Florence; however, he never makes it home with his new wife because he falls fatally ill with a tumor that affects his brain, making him paranoid and hallucinogenic. His letters now rant about the evil wife who is trying to kill him with her “bitter brew,” the homemade herbal teas she concocts in an attempt to nurse him. Ambrose dies and his estate is in trust until Philip, his heir, turns 25. As the widowed wife, Rachel should have been made heir, but Ambrose’s last will was never signed. Philip goes to Italy to settle the estate, just missing Rachel, who took off after the funeral. He already hates her, convinced that she is sinister and deadly—a woman who married his cousin for his money and, according to Ambrose’s last letters, perhaps helped to dispatch him at the end. Amid this cloud of suspicion, Rachel finally comes to England to visit her late husband’s estate and family. Philip dreads meeting his wicked cousin, stays out late on the day of her arrival, and orders the servants not to feed her until he comes home no matter how hungry she is. And then he meets her. Rachel finally enters the story. She is stately, undeniably beautiful, and oddly sanguine. How does Philip confront her? He immediately falls in love and wants first to give her the family jewels to compensate her for the loss of her legacy, and then shockingly decides to hand over the entire estate to her on his twenty-fifth birthday. Rachel flies into insulted anger over the jewels but, in a paradoxical twist, accepts the estate with equanimity. Philip’s about-face is never fully explicated, except that he curiously finds her to be irresistible and even longs to marry her. Unlikely, given he is barely 25 in the story, and Weisz is playing 40ish; considering the culture of the period, she is too old for him. Weisz has to play a woman who is enigmatic, mysterious, and unknowable, sometimes appearing strangely secretive and malevolent, but at other times cheerful, sunny, and innocuous. Weisz nails the enigmatic part but struggles to switch over to the more lighthearted innocence of the alternate persona. Philip is young, romantic, and impressionable. Claflin is believable in the role but the script does not clarify the psychological complexity of his character, which makes his impetuous decisions look absurd. The action is slow. As for the question, did she or didn’t she?, the finale does not leave the question as open-ended as is suggested by Philip’s voiceover narration. The ending resolves the issue in a fashion that is swift and abrupt, and having failed overall to hold the viewer’s interest, the film is disappointing.

This film is the much anticipated comeback of renowned director Steven Soderbergh, known for his Ocean’s Eleven and Twelve heist movies as well as other classics like Sex, Lies and Videotapes. Heist movies can be extremely entertaining, and there was certainly enough entertainment value here to keep the viewer glued to the screen. Nevertheless, it does not quite play like the vintage brand one would expect from one of the world’s most talented directors. And there is no shortage of talent—Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Katie Holmes, Seth MacFarlane, a small part for Hilary Swank, and a supporting role for, surprisingly, Daniel Craig. Craig’s role as Southern blue-collar Joe Bang, who appears to have a low IQ unless he’s making a bomb, in which case he becomes a chemistry genius, is a far cry from James Bond or even for that matter, from Craig’s character in Layer Cake. His crew-cut hair is bleached albino white, he sports an unhealthy pallor with sunken eyes, offset by body-building muscles, too many tattoos, and a Southern accent so thick that maybe it would only be found in a remote pocket of hillbilly, Appalachian society, and even there it may not exist. His most famous line here, “Ah aym iyn-CAR-cer-RATED,” hints at parody. This is all perhaps a tribute to Craig’s acting range, because if you were madly in love with James Bond, after seeing Joe Bang, you’ll get over it. Not that Craig will care. He has never been very receptive to fawning fans, even before he married Rachel Weisz, back when he tried to deter the swooning mobs by standing up at a Bond premiere in London and publicly announcing, “I love Satsuki Mitchell.” Channing Tatum plays Jimmy Logan who, laid off from a construction job because of an old injury, decides he needs to get easy money and to do so, plans the perfect heist. Rather than rob a bank, he robs the NASCAR Coca-Cola 600 race where the cash bets are delivered by way of pneumatic tube transport, which is a network of tubes that propels cylindrical containers by air vacuum. The containers hold the cash and end up deep underground in a basement to which the thieves have access. In order to pull this off, they have to break master thief Joe Bang out of jail for one afternoon and then safely return him before anyone notices he is gone. There are accomplices, including Bang’s two halfwit brothers (Jack Quaid and Brian Gleeson). Katie Holmes plays Jimmy Logan’s ex-wife and mother of his adorable little girl (Farrah Mackenzie), who can sing and dance and compete in Little Miss West Virginia’s beauty, glitz, and talent contest. The plot is complicated and often elucidated by the characters speaking in their exaggerated Southern brogue, which is at times impossible to understand. The confusion is such that the viewer will simply focus on the action, which is well directed by Soderbergh. And with all those famous actors producing a fair number of magical moments, the film is watchable.

The film’s title is a conundrum. Who are the true hostiles, the Native Americans or the American settlers? A seasoned army captain is asked to escort an aging and sick Cheyenne chief (Wes Studi) and his family back to their homeland in Montana, after having endured seven years of prison for war crimes. Captain Joseph Blocker, played by Christian Bale, balks to the point where he is threatened with court-martial, prison, and a loss of his pension if he does not obey the orders that come directly from U.S. President Benjamin Harrison in the year 1892. But things have changed since the Battle of Wounded Knee, in which Blocker had fought. Back East, influential citizens have begun what would evolve into the long and slow process of the United States government paying reparations and making official apologies to indigenous peoples. The popular advocacy on behalf of Native Americans was in its infant stages. The Indians were wronged by the white settlers; they were dispossessed; their lands were stolen from them; they suffered indignity and they died in droves from white man’s diseases. Laws were passed prohibiting their spiritual practices. It was just a handful of voices, but President Harrison was being harassed by prominent citizens. Under political pressure, the President ordered Chief Yellow Hawk and his family to be released from prison and escorted home. Blocker had seen slaughters conducted by Indians in his long career as a U.S. soldier. He mistrusts Yellow Hawk, but the military commander is forced to accept orders, and the journey of a thousand miles begins. Against all odds, Yellow Hawk becomes an unexpected source of wisdom and support. Early on the travelers meet a victim of the Comanche Indians, a young widow, Rosalee Quaid (Rosalind Pike), out of her mind with grief because her cabin in the middle of an empty plain had been burnt down, her husband and three children murdered as she miraculously escaped. The trek on horseback to Chief Yellow Hawk’s sacred homeland, where he is eventually buried, is disturbed by Comanche attacks, deserters, and abduction. When the group finally arrives in Montana, we receive a brief tutorial on the history of gun violence in the United States. There is a shootout on the sacred Indian land which is privately owned by a crazy, gun-toting, white senior who threatens to kill the entire party if they don’t get off his land. (Americans are suffering the legacy of this mentality to this day in Texas, where ambiguous legislation allows gun owners to take the law into their own hands.) The movie has all the elements for greatness in the genre of Westerns and nearly achieves it. Christian Bale is a force of nature; Rosalind Pike is a pillar of feminist strength. With their wordless romance, fate decrees that Rosalee is compensated for her losses. But there are historical inaccuracies and questions to deal with. Conflicts with Comanches ended in the 1870’s when the last Comanche bands surrendered to the U.S. Army. The character of Rosalee is educated and no stranger to fashion; it’s not clear why she and her husband built a log cabin exposed in the middle of isolated and dangerous territory. And there were trains and stagecoaches they could have taken for their journey to Montana; civilization was right around the corner in 1892. The fictional plot is a bit of an anachronism. Nevertheless the broader story of racism, misappropriated land, and the destruction of Native American culture is historically accurate, and these issues still have implications in the present.

Film musicals have a long and venerable history in Hollywood, although we see less of them now in this age of skepticism when viewers are slightly less inclined to be seduced by the magic and the illusion of the big screen. Films based on Marvel Comics, which now rule the industry, have succeeded in resurrecting some of that old wizardry that makes the audience forget themselves as they plunge into a make-believe world. Trying to make a magical musical in the twenty-first century that references the classics of the 40’s and 50’s is a risky business, but La-La Land has succeeded in charming its audiences with its song, dance and simple love story of two young people with a dream. Nevertheless, translating what is basically a stagecraft into a musical film is difficult. The forced artificiality of breaking out into song and dance (the phenomenon known as “I feel a song coming on”) is born of the architecture and design of stage and theatre, which is artificial in and of itself. Suspension of disbelief is required for performances limited by the spatial dimensions of the stage, but with live theatre, we are prepared for this practiced tradition of Western civilization going back to ancient Greece (although props and scenery were not invented until after 1600, and the position of scenic designer did not evolve until the 1920’s). The risk of too much theatrical artificiality is a lurking threat behind this film, but it is to some extent salvaged by the performances of Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling. Their singing voices are so-so but they dazzle when they dance, and Gosling cuts an eloquent profile at any piano. He is the perfect picture of the artist as a young man—romantic, angry, frustrated, a loner who is misunderstood even by the one woman who loves him. From the moment the characters of Mia and Sebastian meet, setbacks, misunderstandings and financial concerns delay and frustrate their relationship until finally it fails. At the end of the film, a fantasy sequence replaying their entire romantic history in an idyllic version of how things might have been is a poetic testament to the harsh realities of life and how it interferes with the hopes and dreams of the individual. For the most part, the two lovers both achieve what they wished for, but the personal price was high. The poignant, old-fashioned nostalgia of the film is enhanced by the musical score, most especially the haunting refrains of the song “City of Stars,” sung by Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling.

Tonight the Hudson Film Society of Quebec did a showing of Una Mujer Fantástica (A Fantastic Woman), which won the 2018 Oscar for Best Foreign Film (Chile). The film is a fascinating portrait of a transgender woman who had a tender, loving relationship with an older man. His death caused her a paroxysm of grief, which she was barely able to indulge, because his passing allowed his alienated family, including ex-wife and adult children, to disavow the unconventional relationship that had embarrassed the family and made them feel disgraced. Marina, a beautiful and elegant young woman who had made the transition from male to female (played by the enigmatic Daniela Vega, a real-life transgender woman), found herself in a nightmare scenario where she was evicted and without rights when the man who had protected and cherished her suddenly died of an aneurysm. In conservative Chile, his sudden death while sharing his bed with a trans woman meant she was subject to questioning from the police as well as a humiliating physical examination that was an outright violation of privacy. Vega started her transgender transformation in Chile at the age of 17 and was trained to be an opera singer from the age of eight. Director Sebastián Lelio found Vega styling hair in Santiago while he was researching transgender individuals and their experiences. Vega stood out among the others, and Lelio wrote the script based on her complex character and a desire to answer the philosophical question, “What is a woman?” Vega carries the entire film from start to finish, and her expressive eyes and features convey a subtle array of emotions and every conceivable shade of grief, anger, fear, love, forgiveness, and fortitude. Sometimes the subtlety requires patience on the part of the viewer (silences, long pauses, terse remarks). However, it doesn’t matter how the viewer feels about the politics of sex change. By the end of this film, you will perceive only a sensitive, beautiful individual who navigates her way through sorrow and intolerance and is merely a human being, one who is as she says, “of flesh and blood.”

A while back, spy movies were dominating our local theaters, but this summer it seems that Marvel and DC Comics have taken over the world. As the first solo feature film for Wonder Woman since its creation in 1941, it must have been a challenge to find the right person for the role. Who has muscles, beauty, intelligence, charm, physical grace and alacrity, and a thick head of jet black hair? My first choice would have been Catherine Zeta-Jones, but unfortunately Hollywood would want the actress to be under 40. The pickings must have been slim, which is how a former beauty queen and Israeli unknown (Gal Gadot) jumped from relative obscurity to a Hollywood film that has already made over $800 million at the box office. Gadot gives Wonder Woman a multilayered persona and a martial arts mystique with her bullet-proof bracelets, golden Lasso of Truth, and god-given sword, and she also adds to it a mysterious, not-quite-identifiable Hebrew accent. Princess Diana of Themyscira, a.k.a., Diana Price, is not your average princess. She was born into a secluded island paradise for women only, a mystical place steeped with Greek mythology, whose inhabitants claim ancient ancestry that harks back to Zeus himself. They are Amazonian warriors, who are trained for war from childhood by practicing swordsmanship and skilled hand-to-hand combat. They are mortal, but they have longevity and superhuman strength. The little princess is told by Hippolyta, her mother (Connie Nielsen), that she did not have a father—her mother sculpted her from clay, and Zeus infused her with life. (It's not clear how the island civilization produces babies, although their ancient philosophical treatises conclude that men are in fact necessary for reproduction.) Coincidentally, all the inhabitants of the island speak English with a vaguely Israeli accent. Diana has even greater strength and skill than her compatriots, including the island's greatest warrior general, Antiope (Robin Wright), who is also her personal trainer. The little girl grows into a perfect picture of royal elegance, courage, and magnanimity. But the peace of the island, which is magically hidden from earthly view by a translucent, watery curtain, is disturbed by the appearance of an American WWII pilot, Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), who somehow permeates the protective curtain (which malfunctions easily) and crashes into the water. Thus begins the journey of Diana to end the "never-ending war," the one prophesied by all the elders on her island. She is convinced that the monster behind the war machine is the god that causes everyone a big headache, Ares, the god of war. It was Diana's destiny from birth to challenge Aries and destroy him, thus restoring humanity to the good creatures that they were meant to be. Classic and mythical superhero tale though this may be, the script has an underlying theme regarding the paradoxical nature of human nature, as seen from the perspective of a naive, unblemished, and highly evolved being. Wonder Woman might as well be an extraterrestrial as she perceives humanity through alien eyes, often shocked and confused by the contradictions, the indifference, and the ambiguous morality of the human species. "You are getting what you deserve!" she lashes out at Steve Trevor. "It's not about what you deserve," he insists, "it's what you believe." And figuring out what humans believe is a complex and disturbing investigation that may in the end confound even Wonder Woman.

Dunkirk is a WWII film about the drama of Operation Dynamo. But it is actually a film about wartime courage, and even more importantly, it is about wartime fear. Not just average fear, but the kind of fear that shocks every nerve in the system and threatens to cancel out reality, replacing normalcy with an absurd void; the kind of fear that comes dive bombing out of the sky with a screaming terror that can deafen the ears and jar the soul. The stars of this film are unknown actors, in keeping with the notion of the unknown soldier, the anonymous young men who were fed like fodder into a faceless, wartime death machine. They are young men with nondescript features, strangely bearing a resemblance to each other, as if they were all related to each other—brothers, sons, and cousins—all facing a grim reaper who cares nothing for their hopes, dreams, and aspirations, and who robs them of their individuality as well as their future. The movie casting does not draw attention to the fact that smaller, supporting roles are filled with big-time names. As you watch the film, a certain familiarity starts to clue you in. Is that Kenneth Branagh? Benedict Cumberbatch? Tom Hardy? Mark Rylance? They are hiding under officers' naval uniforms and aviation gear. They do not want to steal the spotlight from the cast that is playing the most important role in the film—the anonymous soldier on the beach who falls into a crumpled-up heap every time the German dive bombers make another sweep across the sky. This is the eternal essence of war—horror, desperation, hopelessness, and death. Mark Rylance is the quiet, bland, and unassuming Mr. Dawson, one of the civilians who has in May of 1940 answered a frantic call from prime minister Winston Churchill. Hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers are stranded on the French shore of Dunkirk, surrounded by the Germans, and they are close but yet so far from the White Cliffs of Dover and home. Churchill has ordered the requisitioning of small fishing boats, launches, pleasure craft and yachts to make the treacherous journey across the English Channel and take on as many soldiers as they can possibly fit in their modest vessels. (Many of the boats were requisitioned by the British Navy and were manned by experienced personnel; some were helmed by the private owners.) These vessels could navigate the shallow waters that the large military warships could not. The small boats, known as the Little Ships of Dunkirk, comprised about 850 private boats that sailed from Ramsgate, England to Dunkirk. Mr. Dawson, a private civilian, is among them, and the bravery of this and other insignificant sea captains like him is fiercely heroic and yet strangely unremarkable. The private citizens who volunteered are just average people doing what they have to do. Mr. Dawson has nerves of steel, and he is determined and uncannily courageous; nothing can force him to turn back. Although this is not intended to be a feel-good movie, the epic sight of hundreds of watercraft emerging from the mists of the sea to effectively rescue 338,000 men trapped on a WWII beach is nothing less than cinematic history. Director Christopher Nolan has made a WWII movie like no other.

In this 2015 film, Michael Moore returns with social commentary, parody, ironic humor and a complete disregard for fashion, and as always, he is courageous and brazen in his own eccentric and heartfelt way. In this endeavor, he is embarking on a global tour to see what other countries are doing right to help their own citizens within the framework of socialist institutions. For the fanged, venom-dripping ultraconservative anti-socialists of the United States, all copies of this film would be rounded up on an American Kristallnacht and burned in a heap. But for liberals, Michael Moore is more like a compassionate yet sharp-witted angel, a savvy truth-seeker who is determined to change the world. His choice of weapons is, as always, the documentary. Moore is an optimist, and he admittedly gives us the best face of how socialism works in countries that are decidedly more enlightened than the United States. Americans fiercely believe that they live in the greatest country in the world, and indeed, as a military, industrial, and technological giant, this is a fact. But when it comes to being an enlightened government that takes care of its people and puts "the pursuit of happiness" for average citizens above all else, the USA has fallen flat on its face and shows no signs of ever making itself "great again." Moore investigates a series of philosophically enlightened principles as they are employed abroad. Surprisingly, when foreigners were asked where they got some of these socialist philosophies that would be deemed wild and crazy by American right-wing conservatives, the answer was, "it's an American idea," or "it's in the American Constitution." So, what does Moore discover on his world tour? These are facts, although obviously, there are problems and pitfalls while every government struggles to keep up with rising costs, especially with respect to health care. In Italy, as well as the European Union, all workers get a minimum of four weeks vacation. Italians get time off for maternity leave and even get "honeymoon leave." All Italian workers receive a bonus for a thirteenth month of pay (presumably so that they have enough money to go on vacation). In France, school cafeterias serve nutritious 4-course meals prepared by a trained chef and regulated by municipal supervision. French schoolchildren receive sex education to be taught not just about birth control methods but to be taught responsibility and respect toward others in intimate relationships. In Finland where their students are now the highest performing in the world, they use unconventional educational theories--no homework, no standardized tests, a shorter school day, and an emphasis on play and the joy of learning. In Slovenia, university education is free, even for foreigners from the States, who can take the entire curriculum in English. Germany is outstanding for labor rights, where the individual happiness of every worker is paramount. In the German schools, Holocaust education is mandatory, and children are taught that they have to take responsibility for their history and to learn from it. In Portugal, street drugs have been decriminalized and the emphasis is on treatment, not on punishment and imprisonment. They now have a much lowered level of drug abuse and drug-related death in Portugal. Criticized at first internationally for their decision to decriminalize drugs, Portugal is now pointed to as a model for best practices. In Norway, the humane prison system, even for society's greatest offenders (serial murderers, rapists), is focused on rehabilitation and good quality of life for the prisoners. The main "punishment" is to restrict their freedom and keep them away from society. In Tunisia, it took a revolution to overthrow a dictator and implement full women’s rights in the Tunisian Constitution of 2014, which includes easy access to women's health and abortion clinics. In Iceland, after a revolutionary day in 1975 when all women went on strike, Icelandic women became prominent in government. The first woman president in the world to be democratically elected took office in Iceland in 1980, and Iceland is considered to be the most feminist country in the world. After the Icelandic bank failure of 2008, Iceland became the only country to send its bankers to jail. Iceland's economy has since recovered. Moore also does a quick review of the 1989 end of the Cold War, when German citizens took to the Berlin Wall with ice picks and helped to knock it down. So, is the United States of America still the greatest country in the world? Philosophically speaking, not by a long shot. And President Trump's somewhat misguided vision of greatness, along with poor presidential advisers like Steve Bannon, is only going to make matters worse.

Despite some of the appallingly bad reviews of this film, I had to download it from Netflix if only because Owen Wilson and Pierce Brosnan are two of my all-time favorite actors. Fortunately, with a Netflix film, you can watch it on your desktop computer without forcing your unsuspecting spouse to share your fandom preferences, and you can fast-forward the movie over the parts lacking in substance, which in this case was about half the film. A lovely young WASPy couple with the bland name of Dwyer (Lake Bell and Owen Wilson) are on their way to an unidentified Southeast Asian country that is possibly Thailand, where the dad has accepted a good job as a waterworks engineer. The movie opens stylishly with high production values as we see the kindly prime minister of this venerable land get assassinated in spite of the watchful eye of his devoted bodyguard. When the bodyguard realizes that his leader has been killed, he commits harakiri. From there, we switch suddenly to a happy family of four on an airplane, and the focus is now on the Dwyers. The Dwyers arrive the day of the Revolution, and after enjoying only one peaceful morning in their city hotel, they suddenly realize that they are trapped in the pits of hell. The rebels want to kill all the Westerners in town, which would not seem to be in line with their political agenda, since they presumably want to stage a government coup (the film was originally entitled “The Coup”) and not carry out some kind of fanatical, terrorist mission against all evil Westerners. The cinematic tension focuses on the Dwyers’ two little girls since the parents are most concerned about their safety and well-being. For example, when Jack Dwyer comes home from having witnessed a violent street scene and wants his family to leave immediately, the older daughter is missing because she decided to go swimming in the hotel pool by herself even though she’s not old enough to go anywhere by herself. It is necessary for the cinematic suspense, but highly unlikely that the daughter would have slipped past her overprotective mom, who never even noticed she had left the room. Owen Wilson is always adorable in comedic scenarios. Here his acting range is being stretched to the limits, but he just about gets to where he needs to be as a desperate dad trying to save his family. Lake Bell, another good comedy actor, is also attempting to reach the outer periphery of her range and also with limited success. It doesn’t help that she has a weak script with lines like, “Oh, man, I’m scared,” as she is about to make a death-defying leap from one rooftop to another. Brosnan’s role as Hammond, a British government agent, is gritty and noticeably downplays his still handsome profile. He explains to Jack Dwyer that his operatives encouraged the now fallen government to allow Western control of the country’s industry, and thus the Brits were indirectly responsible for the upheaval. This role might have given Brosnan some bite, but he is a secondary character that is never fully developed. The title “No Escape” has echoes of Sartre’s “No Exit.” But Sartre envisioned hell being a place where one is stuck for eternity with people one does not like, as in the Sartrean proclamation “hell is other people.” In this film hell is Southeast Asia when the masses are out of control, and it’s no longer about eating authentic Thai food and taking quaint photographs of flute players and fishing boats.

An attempt at a latter-day Theatre of the Absurd, this screenplay does not have the intellectual charm of a Samuel Beckett or Eugene Ionesco, or even for that matter, an Arthur Schnitzler. But with Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Léa Seydoux, and Ben Whishaw on board, there is certainly no shortage of talent in this production. The basic premise is a dystopian state that does not allow people to be single. If you ever noted on a Saturday night that our society is a couples’ world, this film takes that observation over the top and into the realm of science fiction, where it may actually qualify for the mild horror genre. At first the viewer will be intrigued by the drama of a basic dilemma—if you don’t find the perfect match at the hotel to which you are sent, then you will be transformed into the animal of your choice. The film’s protagonist David (Colin Farrell) says he wants to be a lobster if he doesn’t meet his match. A match entails finding someone with whom you share a salient characteristic such as nearsightedness, cold-heartedness, or even a medical condition such as constant nosebleeds. David fakes cold-heartedness to match up with someone he doesn’t care about and is found out. The punishment is severe, so he escapes this sick version of a honeymoon hotel and becomes a “loner,” part **** of renegades who lives by their wits in the woods. Their leader (Léa Seydoux) is just as bizarre as the Fascist dictators she has rejected. Loners are prohibited from forming relationships with each other, and because they are constantly being hunted, they all have to dig their own grave so as not to inconvenience the others when they are killed. For most of the film, there is a heavy emphasis on conversation rather than action. Because living in an emotionally suppressed society makes for insipid conversation, these people drone on relentlessly about uneventful trivia. The characters are robotic citizens who talk slowly, react slowly, and are too boring. David finally finds some meaning in life when he falls in love with an equally nearsighted loner (Rachel Weisz). Thus, the second half of the film is about the dilemma of two loners illegally caught in a romance and the drastic measures to which they resort to escape their fate. The background music is a squeaky violin meant to underline the already unsubtle message of the film—romance has turned into something grim, tawdry, and unrecognizable in this fictional universe. Even true love, rare though it may be, in this context is merely another outlandish and depressing proposition. There is no redemption to be found here, no ray of hope, and the pervasive hopelessness unfortunately tries the viewer’s patience to its limits.

The spy genre continues to be one of the most popular Hollywood themes making the rounds in the theaters. This time we have an adaptation from the master himself, John le Carré, starring Ewan McGregor as a citizen spy who is reluctantly dragged into a Russian Mafia intrigue, and Naomie Harris, fresh from her role as Moneypenny in the last James Bond extravaganza. In this film Harris is no longer an unobtrusive sidekick for Bond’s sardonic and self-assured bravado. She is one of the two principals, and she plays an intelligent lawyer who is trying to heal her damaged marriage. Having her empathetic husband fall into the good graces of a Russian Mafia front man who is about to be fired from his job as chief accountant and then murdered along with his family, only serves to make her marital woes that much more complicated. Gail (Naomie Harris) and Perry (Ewan McGregor) are trying to mend their marriage on a romantic holiday in Marrakesh, when Gail leaves Perry alone at a restaurant after dinner just two nights before they are due to fly back to London. Sitting by himself, he attracts the attention of a friendly but coarse and obnoxious Russian named Dima (Stellan Skarsgård). Dima invites Perry to his table, takes him to a party meant for decadent millionaires only, and then insists upon an early morning tennis match. Finally, after having bonded heavily with the mild-mannered professor of poetics, Dima tells Perry his dark secret. He is the chief accountant in charge of all the Swiss bank accounts for the Russian Mafia, now headed by a businessman/gangster called the Prince. Dima is in possession of incriminating knowledge; he knows that when he signs off on the accounts a few weeks hence, he and his family will be murdered, as was the previous accountant. He needs Perry to take back to London for him a memory stick of all the numbers and names on the Swiss bank accounts, which include top members of British Parliament. The British government is about to accept billions of dollars in funding from the Prince, who masquerades as a legitimate multibillionaire businessman. Dima needs to expose the scam and convince the British government to offer him and his family asylum in England. Perry agrees to be his messenger. Thus begins a complicated and tense escapade, where Perry and Gail get more and more involved, along with the small number of British government officials who are willing to investigate the scandal and try to bring it down. This is not the kind of spy movie where there are multiple chase scenes in cars, speedboats, and planes. This is a more subtle kind of spycraft that involves a lot of talking, political negotiations, and patient waiting. As in real life, sometimes the action lags; nevertheless, the quiet, low-key kind of suspense generated by the plot is unrelenting from the first scene to the very end. McGregor has to carry what is occasionally a talking-heads plot for the entire film along with a lot of help from Harris, and the two of them make a good team. Skarsgård, who is actually Swedish, is brilliant in the role of Dima.

As an undergraduate German major who would eventually get a PhD in German literature, I went to Germany to study in the summer of 1974, barely thirty years after the Holocaust. Being Jewish, I felt the weight of Germany's recent history bearing down on me oppressively. As I walked around the streets of Munich and made a special trip to visit the Dachau concentration camp, I grappled with the fact of the atrocities. Were all Germans sick and sadistic? The answer was no, but the phenomenon of the Holocaust is such that the national hysteria that overtook a previously civilized country will have to be psychoanalyzed for at least a hundred years to come. True, **** implemented a police state with spies everywhere. Schoolchildren were brainwashed to turn in their own parents. If a citizen was suspected of being oppositional, SS trucks rolled into the village, rounded up the accused and shot them in the town square. It was a dire warning for any individual who wanted to protest the **** regime. But what about mass protests of a kind that overwhelmed and could not be suppressed? There was no such thing in Germany at that time. Labyrinth of Lies (Im Labyrinth des Schweigens) addresses the West German state of the early 1960's, where a younger generation had grown up ignorant of the Holocaust and never even having heard of Auschwitz. This in spite of the fact that West Germany was paying monthly reparations to Holocaust victims (on par with Social Security checks), while East Germany blamed capitalist society for the Holocaust and denied all responsibility. Josef Mengele, the psychosadistic doctor who tortured and murdered children with revolting experiments, was still on the loose and would remain so for the rest of his life. Adolf Eichmann, who oversaw the mass deportation and systematic murder of Jewish multitudes, was being hunted down in Argentina by the Israelis, who would eventually abduct him, try him in Jerusalem, and hang him for war crimes. A young German prosecutor in Berlin, Johann Radmann, played by German actor Alexander Fehling, becomes aware that his generation did not know of the crimes perpetrated by their parents nor were they aware that **** criminals still walked among them. Radmann, who is a composite of several prosecutors in the real-life story, sought to rectify the injustices that were still under his control. The film documents the attorneys' gathering of hard evidence and eye-witness accounts which were all faithfully recorded. It was a turning point for the Germans when the prosecutors went to court to try **** criminals who were still living their post-war lives in Germany as “normal” citizens, some of them holding important government positions. For the first time, the Germans were washing their own dirty laundry, even though from 1963 to 1965 only seventeen **** criminals from Auschwitz were tried for war crimes by their German peers. The film depicts Radmann collaborating with Mossad, Israel's CIA, in the failed search for Mengele, who was living in South America, but who continued to visit relatives every year in Germany. The age of German denial is over. Today every German schoolchild spends two years studying the history of the Weimar Republic and the **** regime, including the Holocaust. The Kollektivschuld (collective guilt) that hovered over the Germans was extended to the adult children and grandchildren of the Holocaust criminals, and now seems to be fading out with the great-grandchildren. German students abroad complain that they are still asked difficult questions by foreigners. The psychological phenomenon of the gruesome and insane hold of a swarthy, ugly little sadistic murderer named Adolf ****, whose psychotic mental problems remained undiagnosed throughout his life, as well as the psychotic criminality of approximately 800,000 SS officers and soldiers who worked for him, is one that will be studied for years to come. This film, which has been masterfully constructed, gives us new insight into the German psyche, seen at both its worst in the persona of **** who suffered no remorse, and its finest in the form of Radmann, who grapples with horror, disgust, and nightmares over the grim legacy that he has inherited from a generation of Germans who went mad.

A film about drone warfare makes one think there will be many battle scenes, a lot of soldiers, and much blood and gore. But this film is different—this movie depicts how warfare is conducted in the board room by high-ranking military officials, cabinet members, prime ministers and presidents. It also depicts the high-tech kind of war that is waged with drones and surveillance equipment that can be as small as an insect as it flies through the air and silently enters buildings through windows and other apertures. Helen Mirren plays Colonel Powell, who after six years of tracking terrorist extremists, has finally cornered three of her most-wanted in one building in Kenya. The original plan was to capture, not kill, until the surveillance “beetle” enters and transmits a horrific scene to Powell and her associates, as well as Lt. General Benson (Alan Rickman) in London who is watching the events on screen with other important British politicians—two terrorists are making their final video before they suit up with their explosive vests as they prepare for a suicide mission. The plan to capture, not kill, has to be changed almost immediately, for the military has less than an hour to release a “hellfire” on the building before the terrorists board their vehicles and head for their destination, which is most likely going to be a crowded mall. The hellfire will kill everyone in the building, as well as people in a limited perimeter around the building, a risk which is referred to as “collateral damage.” In order to change the plan, quick conferences are needed with British higher-ups, and because one terrorist is an American citizen, the Secretary of State has to be interrupted in China, where he is participating in a ping-pong tournament. The approvals are quickly gathered, the sights are set on their target, the countdown begins, and then at the last minute, an innocent little Islamic girl sets up her table to sell bread smack in the middle of the dangerous periphery surrounding the building. Thus begins an agonizing process of calculating how to reduce the collateral in order to save the life of one child before an estimated eighty or so people are murdered in a crowded mall. The process is nerve-wracking, time is running out, and the British politicians are very squeamish about the whole idea of killing a child. Classic philosophical dilemmas are in this fashion presented—the Rousseauian argument that the goal of the state is the realization of the common good as identified by the will of a political community and expressed through its government; and the famous philosophical “Trolley Problem,” a thought experiment where the choice is to divert a train that is about to kill five people onto a track where it will only kill one, or do nothing. Although the choice to save many instead of only one may seem plausible, no one wants to be responsible for making that decision. The weapons of war are depicted with fascinating realism in this film. Mirren is at her best as a high-ranking military officer who wants her country's enemies taken out at all costs; she is close to being ruthless. The late Alan Rickman as a senior lieutenant general is beautifully understated in his calm determination to do the right thing and guide the process from a conference room. He is formidable when he delivers a key line, “Don't ever tell a soldier that he doesn't know the cost of war.” And playing a Kenyan native who is recruited to be an undercover spy for the British is the unique Barkhad Abdi, who before starring in the film Captain Phillips had no previous acting experience—he is a joy to watch on screen.

Understandably, this is a comic book movie, and therefore the cartoonish quality is to be expected, and is perhaps even required. Nevertheless, it is not a very entertaining or enjoyable comic book. Ryan Reynolds plays Wade Wilson, an ex-military sniper who enjoyed shooting down the enemy and brags about his score card. In civilian life, he is a bit of a dud, until he finds his true love, Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), in a bar populated by gun-toting lowlifes. Vanessa is a former prostitute, and like Wade, she had a traumatic childhood. True love for these two means living in a dark apartment in a dark universe, where romance is focused on insatiable sexual needs—the only genuinely romantic part is that they are actually faithful to each other. The movie had potential to create an artistic universe where good is in its eternal struggle with evil, where the villains are a monstrous threat to humanity, and where the heroes are both strong and vulnerable, vicious and tender-hearted at the same time—such is the stuff that action-hero comic books are made of. All of these elements are present; yet, Deadpool is a bit of a cesspool—the script is a running monologue of relentless banter for Reynolds’ character, and only occasionally are the jokes humorous enough to make you smile. Profane language is persistent, and vulgarity is proudly displayed like a fashion statement. The violence is the main feature of the film, and the violence is of a somewhat perverse quality that drowns out the attempt at humor. Nobody laughs at this movie. There is presently a cultural phenomenon known as the “hipster,” which seems to be invading Hollywood films. Hipsters are an under-40 crowd of petty intellectuals, who are crassly superficial, wildly materialistic, and surprisingly hostile. Their motor-mouth banter is the branding of their style, and Hollywood scripts are starting to reflect this vapid culture. Deadpool wearies the viewer with its verbal tedium, in spite of the fact that Reynolds’ performance is a tour de force, Baccarin is in fine form, and the two characters who are vintage Marvel heroes, Stefan Kapicic and Brianna Hildebrand, do a great job. Unfortunately, Marvel Comics never intended for superheroes to act like hipsters. But there’s hope for the future—the hipsters are approaching their 40’s, and by strict definition, they will be too old to keep witlessly joking their way through life.

Although Simon Pegg is not credited with any writing on this film, one always expects that his presence will guarantee a hilarious film that is absurdly complicated, intriguing, and great fun to watch. But this time, maybe not so much. Pegg's fast-talking, nervous character, Jack, who mistakenly thinks he has just met his perfect match on a blind date set up by a friend, is certainly a tour de force that provides some psychological insight into a motor mouth who is perpetually engaging Freud's free-associative method. However, Jack's emotional journey does not have the expressive intensity or uncanny absurdism to make the film a study in brilliant comedic discourse—not quite achieving that signature blend which can be recognized as pure Peggian. The chemistry between Nancy (Lake Bell) and Jack is too overstated to be a comedic adventure that is also appealingly intellectual. They both carry around notebooks with mantras (such as "learn French" and "get stronger thighs") and other simple self-help exercises. The constant referencing of these sophomoric notebooks by both characters is a major thread in the plot. To establish that they accidentally fall in love, the film resorts to a montage of images showing the two lovers acting wild and crazy at the bowling lanes, with Nancy often in kneeling positions to show off her derriere as viewed in jeans that are so tight, the seams are surely about to split open. Presumably, this gives Jack more incentive to fall madly in love. Bell's character is particularly problematic. Nancy is also a jittery talker, but her persona is a bit darker than Jack's, for she is disillusioned and jaded about the state of her love life. She has nearly given up on the singles scene, preferring to avoid a party and stay in her hotel room, eating by herself and watching “The Silence of the Lambs,” which for bizarrely unexplained reasons, she knows by heart. Nancy is an odd admixture, acting like the British answer to a ditzy Annie Hall (Bell is actually American), but without the saving grace of being lighthearted, naive, and charmingly adorable. Instead, Nancy combines Annie Hall with the protagonists usually played by Woody Allen, a disenchanted Sad Sack who feels like an eternal loser at love. She is sardonic, hostile, and withdrawn, but unlike Allen's characters, she is not engaged in a deeper philosophical quest to resolve her sense of alienation. (And an almost incomprehensible dialogue about “The Blow Job Paradox” does not count as a philosophical system.) In the end, her quest is rather basic, if not positively adolescent—she simply needs a boyfriend. The resolution to the dilemma of the mistaken identity and the resulting bond between Nancy and Jack becomes increasingly predictable and not terribly humorous. As far as Simon Pegg movies go, this one has its moments, but it merely skims the surface of Pegg's prodigious talent.

In keeping with the spy theme, and having in recent months seen Mission: Impossible-Rogue Nation, The Man from U.N.C.L.E, and Spectre, it is high time to review the film that spoofs them all—Spy, with Melissa McCarthy and Jude Law. Maybe spy spoofs have been done before, but McCarthy makes this one unique, because she is so screwball that you either sit there in dismayed disbelief or keep a box of tissues on hand to wipe tears of laughter from your eyes. Jude Law is the blond-haired, blue-eyed CIA spy, Bradley Fine, who is so suave and elegant, he could easily stand in for Daniel Craig. Unlike the British 007, however, he cannot make a move without his backup, Susan Cooper, played by Melissa McCarthy, who sits at a CIA office computer with an earpiece, GPS tracking, and surveillance cameras. A trained spy herself, she is deskbound, and her job is to support Fine and give him a heads up whenever he is in danger. Fine is attached to Cooper at his end with his own earpiece, and she directs his every move. She is understatedly brilliant, and he can't function without her. At the start Fine is acting like the American answer to James Bond, in attendance at a garden party for the filthy rich, wearing a tuxedo, and bent on a dangerous mission. He sniffs out the criminal he is seeking in the basement, the only man who can tell Fine where to find a suitcase nuclear bomb that will cause devastation in the wrong hands. The evil gangster scornfully dismisses the gun Fine aims at him, noting that if Fine kills him, he'll never find the bomb. Fine is equally scornful but before he can adequately reply, he sneezes, accidentally pulling the trigger and killing the mobster. After Fine's WTF outburst, he consults with Cooper via earpiece, who takes the blame for forgetting to pack his antihistamines. Shortly after, Fine breaks into the home of the mobster's daughter, where Cooper, back at the office, is shocked and devastated to see Fine killed on camera. After that, she convinces her boss to send her out into the field to find the suitcase nuke, since she knows who all the players are while she remains unknown to the criminal mobsters. Thus begins the slapstick world tour of Susan Cooper. Her bosses insist on giving her disguises that make her look even plainer and dumpier than she really is. One frumpy wig and T-shirt ensemble is such that Cooper complains, “I look like someone's homophobic aunt.” In Rome, the Italian men drive around in Ferraris obnoxiously shouting out admiring remarks to beautiful women on the street; Cooper gets passed over without comment. She is not unaware of the fact that she is overweight and considered to be drab and baggy, but she relies on her sharp intellect and self-deprecating wit to openly confront society with their ambivalence about her appearance. (In real life, McCarthy is overweight but actually very pretty.) The silly plot is about a different kind of superhero—the timid, tubby female understudy who is lucky to be even peripherally associated with such glamorous spy activity becomes the chief operative. And she prevails. (Tiny spoiler—Jude Law's character doesn't really get killed.)

Spectre is uneven to say the least. There are scenes that are everything Bond fans could wish for, and there are scenes that are borderline absurd. The most brilliant thing about Spectre is the pairing of Daniel Craig and the glamorous Léa Seydoux. Those two make a beautiful couple with the most intense romantic chemistry, and if Craig were not already married, one would swear that he fell in love on the set. Seydoux brings out the best in Craig. Be that as it may, Spectre has glaring flaws. It would seem the producers, director, and writers had plenty of time to develop the script; nevertheless, the script is half-baked, and Craig does most of his acting during chase scenes and rescue scenes. His lines are terse and laconic, if not positively epigrammatic. Director Sam Mendes must have read the criticism about the female roles in Skyfall, because every Bond girl in Spectre (there are four of them!) is intelligent, fearless, and undeniably strong. Seydoux plays the main love interest in the role of Madeleine Swann, and although she fiercely denies being a damsel in distress, Bond has to rescue her at least three times (possibly four, if you count the train scene, where there is a question mark about who rescued whom). The first rescue scene in the Austrian Alps, where Swann is abducted by the bad guys, brings back the Bond of yore. Bond not only shows up on the tail of the bad guys who escape in their Range Rovers, but he is skillfully piloting a BN-2 Islander military plane commandeered on very short notice. Nothing in the script explains how he absconded so quickly with an airplane borrowed from the British Army. He simply shows up in the cockpit, and he proceeds to rescue Swann by crashing the plane. Unfortunately, it is precisely that kind of illogical plot with its preposterous premises that got Pierce Brosnan replaced by Craig in the Bond franchise. Naomie Harris is back with a strong supporting role as Moneypenny. Ben Whishaw as Q has an improved persona, and he is no longer just the kid who still has “spots.” Ralph Fiennes continues as M, a role which he had just taken over at the end of Skyfall. He’s been rehearsing at home, it seems, because he has developed his M to perfection. Fiennes has turned M into a force to be reckoned with, at almost Oscar-level intensity and nearly out of place in a Bond film. We do not get to see enough of Monica Bellucci, now on record as the oldest Bond girl (age 50 at filming). She is dark, mysterious, and quintessentially beautiful, but her presence in Spectre is too brief. The fourth Bond girl is Stephanie Sigman, who hails from Mexico, and one suspects she nearly ended up on the cutting room floor. She shares an opening scene with Craig, who then leads her into a hotel room ostensibly to make love. Next thing she knows, he’s climbing out the window. She has one line for the entire film: “Where are you going?” And then she’s out. Christoph Waltz is not quite as evil as he was in Inglorious ****, but he gets scarier toward the end. Mendes tries to pay homage to classic Bond, but his directorial heart is not in it. Bond mistakenly asks for a martini, shaken not stirred, at a health bar where he is instead served a green smoothie for vegans only. The classic Bond car shows up as a brand new Aston Martin DB10 intended for Agent 009, but Bond steals it and trashes the magnificent vehicle in a canal in Rome. When Bellucci’s character asks him his name, he doesn’t say it with his usual austerity because he is too busy kissing her, so he is still panting when he says, “Bond. James Bond.” Not the same effect. Nevertheless, Craig is still handsome, dynamic, and charismatic. He’s good to go for another round, as long as he publicly apologizes for saying he would rather slit his wrists than play Bond again.

There is an explosion of spy movies making the rounds—The Man from U.N.C.L.E, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (Tom Cruise), Kingsman: The Secret Service (Colin Firth), not to mention the trailers for Spectre (Daniel Craig), which are now on YouTube. In addition, we are between Jason Bourne installments (Matt Damon/Jeremy Renner), as well as between Taken installments (Liam Neeson). I won't even mention Bill Nighy in the recent Johnny Worricker TV series. Or Red, for that matter (Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, et al). You would have thought spying had gone out of style when the Cold War ended, but U.N.C.L.E. (which is an acronym for United Network Command for Law and Enforcement) is set in the 1960's when the Cold War is still in full swing. Strangely enough, the principal spies, who represent the United States, England and Russia, are working together on this one. Someone has acquired a nuclear bomb, but the evil perpetrator is an independent operator who wants to give the bomb and related classified information to someone who could use it— the chief culprit being a vicious blond whose name is Victoria Vinciguerra (Elizabeth Debicki). The original U.N.C.L.E. television show, which I used to watch slavishly as a child, featured two suave and blasé characters named Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin, played originally by Robert Vaughn and David McCallum. Now they are played by Henry Cavill, fresh from his Man of Steel role and acting very American as a CIA spy, and Armie Hammer, who is acting very Russian as a KGB spy. (The official formation of the spy network called U.N.C.L.E. only occurs at the end of the film.) To this has been added a female spy and a love interest for Kuryakin in the form of Gaby (Alicia Vikander), a double agent who reports to her British boss Waverly (Hugh Grant). Except for Grant, they are all extremely young, going against the recent tide flowing in the direction of aging spies who can still dazzle when they are truly provoked. In this film the CIA and KGB agents start out trying to kill each other and end up having to work with each other, which is an amusing cause for friction and rivalry between the two. In the meantime, Gaby and Kuryakin have to pretend to be engaged, when in reality she can't stand him although she slowly warms up to him. This leads to a comical scene when the two are bored to death in a luxurious hotel room, and Gaby puts on loud music and sunglasses, while she dances around rather eccentrically in her pajamas hoping to kick some life into the extremely serious and dedicated Kuryakin. Solo, in the meantime, emerges as the primary catalyst throughout the movie, and Cavill is very endearing in this role, displaying a youthful and very American ability to be optimistic and cheerful, even when the enemy captures him, drugs him, and ties him up for torture. With so many spy movies on all the silver screens, the spy genre has to keep inventing spies that break the mold and are appealingly unique. In U.N.C.L.E., the mold had to be broken with respect to three spies, not just one, and the results are entertaining and successful. Although the plot line is sometimes a little confusing, and one could stop and ask who is Victoria working for, and she wants to give the bomb to whom? And who is Gaby working for and how did she triple-cross everyone? It doesn't matter. The film is a humorous and absorbing caper, almost irresistibly lively, the kind that was a lot of fun back in the 1960's.

Tom Cruise really does risk his life in the opening scene of this movie. It is not an optical illusion or a stunt man. It is Cruise himself hanging on for dear life to the side of an airplane that has taken off and become airborne. However, he has been harnessed so that if he had slipped in the filming, he would have presumably survived, falling only a few feet before being secured. But how many actors could perform that stunt even with a harness? One gets the impression that Daniel Craig takes an island vacation when it's time to film the stunts—he relies on a professional double to do the risky stuff. This film may at times be a little overwhelmed by the many chase scenes, but the plot keeps the audience guessing about which double agent is betraying whom. Cruise's character, the indefatigable Ethan Hunt, is a man who has a guardian angel sitting on his shoulder so that no real harm can ever befall him. He is a strict purist, a defender of the peace, a human superhero, and as the CIA head (Alec Baldwin) puts it, “the living manifestation of destiny.” (A few critics commented on the guffaws provoked by this line—nobody laughed at my showing in Montreal, but oddly enough, at the end of the film there was a round of applause.) In short, Hunt is to spies as the Dalai Lama is to Buddhist monks. The IMF (Impossible Mission Force) is trying to stop the latest incarnation of evil, Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), from assassinating all the heads of state as part of a master plan conducted by the Syndicate, an international crime network. Lane is an insanely criminal mastermind, and in no time at all, he has Hunt captured and hanging by his wrists in a torture chamber. Even Hunt cannot escape from this dilemma until a beautiful double agent, Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) enters the room and miraculously releases him. Like Hunt, she is unflappable, invincible, and incorrigible. She is neither Bond girl, nor Bourne girl, nor any kind of girl. Ilsa Faust defies categorization. She is unique. Thus begins a bizarre relationship between the two spies based on mutual respect, mutual desire for self-preservation, and mutual attraction, although consummate professionals that they are, they keep their distance from each other. Romance is clearly for mere mortals, a weakness that disciplined ninja-like warriors cannot afford to indulge. For them being impassioned means that you would do anything to save the world, whereas more carnal inclinations are to be derided as juvenile distractions. In the end we have what has been termed the American answer to James Bond, and though Ethan Hunt is somewhat lacking in that droll British elegance, our roll-up-your-sleeves kind of folksy spy is actually more appealing. In a world where everyone has been speculating for years about who is going to replace Daniel Craig as the next 007, no one ever asks who is going to replace Tom Cruise. There's a reason for that—he is incontestably irreplaceable. Fortunately, Liam Neeson has set a new precedent with the Taken series, where aging spies who just want to retire are forced back into action because they are simply too good to hang out their gone fishin' sign. Neeson still inspires admiration at 63. Cruise is only 53, and like the character of Ethan Hunt, he can only get better with age.

The Rewrite is a romantic comedy that sometimes flirts dangerously with being appallingly mediocre, and just when you think the film is about to go off the deep end and graduate from being mundane to being simply awful, Hugh Grant and Marisa Tomei yank it back from the brink and set it straight again. There is also some support from J.K. Simmons, Allison Janney, and Chris Elliott with respect to the yanking effort. Grant is playing Keith Michaels, an Oscar-winnng screenplay writer who has not written anything of substance for at least fifteen years. In the interim he has had a few box-office turkeys, a divorce (his wife left him for the man who directed his best movie), and he is alienated from his grown-up son. His agent (Caroline Aaron) still loves him but can’t get him arrested, and she finally suggests that he take a temporary job as writer-in-residence at a college in upstate New York, where he will teach screenplay writing. Michaels balks at the idea, his philosophy being “those who can do, those who can’t teach,” until the electric company shuts off his lights, at which point any kind of employment starts looking attractive. Michaels arrives in Binghamton, New York with a bad attitude and a chip on his shoulder. He’s a Hollywood snob who has no use for the Home of the Spiedie Sandwich. He has his first supper at Wendy’s where he meets a student who has already signed up for his course (Bella Heathcote). He immediately sleeps with her apparently because he’s an incurable cad which means there he stands, and he can do no other. She is not his true love, however, and he comes close to being fired for cavorting with an undergraduate. His true love turns out to be an older student named Holly (Marisa Tomei), a single mom who works two jobs and believes she can still establish herself as a writer in her late 40’s, whereas Michaels has given up on hope and optimism, even though he secretly admires Holly for being so positive. Slowly, she and a handful of associates pull Michaels out of his low-level despair and force him to respond to humanity once again. There are quirky but lovable characters—J.K. Simmons is the English department head who is obsessively devoted to his wife and four daughters; Allsion Janney is a hard-hearted, toughened bird who wants to fire Michaels for violating ethical principles but who can be easily seduced by her love for all things Jane Austen, and Chris Elliott is a Shakespeare expert who prides himself on having the perfect quote for every situation. The film actually gives a fairly realistic view of eccentric and idiosyncratic literature professors who may like their students but often hate each other, and who have trouble understanding that their professorships have locked them up in an Ivory Tower where they have a rather distorted perception of reality. In other words, they have no idea how weird they are. Michaels, however, turns out to be the genuine article. He finds his true calling by teaching others, and he seeks to inspire, encourage, and advise. He ignores department politics to the best of his ability, and as an outsider, he brings out the best in his colleagues. He falls in love with Holly, who is an age-appropriate student, but will not proceed until the writing course ends and the relationship can be deemed kosher. The surprise in this was not the ending, which was highly predictable, but in the understated performance of Hugh Grant, who has lost his playboy handsomeness and has acquired a steely grit that he never had before. His sarcasm in past roles was always charming and superficial; now his caustic wit denotes toughness, fortitude, and an elaborate defense system for facing a hostile world. Tomei has also evolved into a character with more depth and complexity. It would appear that Tomei and Grant, ages 50 and 54 respectively, are now fully formed grown-ups.

In December 1987, I saw Into the Woods on Broadway with Bernadette Peters. The musical had just opened the month before, and it was charming, original, and entertaining. Translating the musical and stage format to the screen expands the spatial representation to the world of reality, or pseudo-reality, given that the story is a fairy tale, and that expansion is problematic for it dilutes the concentrated power of the original format. The most innovative aspect of the original effort was the clever intertwining of several prominent fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm. A baker (James Corden) and his young wife (Emily Blunt), who cannot conceive, live next door to a nasty, old lady (Meryl Streep), who looks exactly like a witch and turns out to be a real one—she has a vegetable garden that grows magic beans, and she cursed the couple long ago when the baker’s father stole some of the beans from her. In order to lift the curse, the couple has to provide the witch with a milky-white cow, a golden slipper, a red cape, and corn-yellow hair in three days before midnight. In the meantime, the old witch visits her adopted daughter, who has very long hair and lives in a tower. That would be Rapunzel (Mackenzie Mauzy). The magic beans, of course, grow a giant stalk that is climbed by a young boy named Jack (Daniel Huttlestone), and the kingdom is ruled by a handsome prince (Chris Pine) who is seeking a wife and who meets a young woman named Cinderella (Anna Kendrick) at the ball. The woods of the small kingdom contain wolves and a hut occupied by a grandmother—a little girl visits granny wearing a red cape with a hood (Lilla Crawford). As per the original story, there are dilemmas and scenarios that would have shocked the Grimm Brothers. For example, the baker’s wife has a one-night stand with Prince Charming, and that takes place after he has had his happily-ever-after wedding with Cinderella. And Cinderella is very frustrated about life with the prince because everything is too perfect. The witch is actually just an overprotective mother who can’t accept that her daughter’s childhood has ended. They all come together in the last act to fight a common foe, which is a giant who has descended by way of the stalk and wants revenge upon little Jack for stealing from her and accidentally killing her husband. Live theatre creates its own microcosmic reality; thus, the stage version is not as jarring when the characters are constantly breaking out into song. Generally speaking, in a musical stage production the singing is well integrated. On film, the integration of the singing has to be more nuanced, and it is very difficult to achieve just the right timing in a film setting that appears to occupy a realistic landscape. There is a constant air of “I feel a song coming on...” that can weary the audience. Streep makes for a good witch, albeit maybe a bit too exaggerated if one is to believe she is also a loving mother. Blunt has the strongest role as the baker’s wife. All the actors seem to be desperately seeking their character, including Anna Kendrick as a petite, brunette Cinderella, a description which doesn’t quite fit the profile. (Blunt’s plaintive line, “I’m in the wrong story,” strikes a chord in more ways than one.) The two princes, Cinderella’s prince and Rapunzel’s prince (Billy Magnussen) are as handsome as princes can be, but they are overly fickle and shallow. If the reasons behind their fickleness are complex, that complexity is never explored. And the film is overly long. Although the visual representation of the fairy-tale kingdom is brilliantly magical, if not positively supernatural, it is not clear that this is the fairy-tale version that the children want to see. The Broadway version was more openly cynical, and it was also strictly for grown-ups.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences must have a soft spot for films that are about their own industry, for how else do you explain that Birdman snatched up the highest honors at the Oscars this year? The cast is filled with veteran actors whose reputation precedes them—Michael Keaton, Emma Stone, Andrea Riseborough, Edward Norton, Naomi Watts and Zach Galifianakis are the featured players, and they are all well-known stars. Keaton plays an actor whose heyday is long over. It has been over twenty years since he was famous for being a comic book character named Birdman. Now determined to make a comeback as a serious actor, Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) has written, produced and is starring in his own Broadway play, based on a short story by Raymond Carver, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” Broadway is the dream destination for many a serious actor, but director/writer Alejandro Inarritu sees the seedy side of the glamour. The backstage fitting rooms are cluttered, dark, and depressing. Actors are all psychologically damaged. They are obsessed with sexuality; they are angry and frustrated; and they have broken families and broken lives. Riggan himself is functional but psychotic—he thinks he has superpowers, he has auditory hallucinations where he hears the voice of Birdman, his old character, who is constantly berating him. And most dangerously, he thinks he can fly. As the show’s producer, Riggan is depending on his male lead, Mike Shiner (Edward Norton), to attract large audiences. Shiner is famous but he is an alcoholic who believes that his devotion to his art has elevated him to a priesthood that makes him an untouchable demigod. When Shiner gets drunk on stage in previews and disrupts the show so that the curtain has to come down on a shocked audience, he merely excuses himself with the arrogant belief that previews are not that important. Riggan’s daughter Samantha (Emma Stone) works for her father as his assistant, a job she hates, but she is fresh out of rehab and is lucky to be employed. She is disheveled, lost, and spiritually battered as is every member of the play’s cast. The theatricality of the stage is a different kind of acting from film acting. One has to exaggerate one’s gestures, project one’s voice, and pretend that you are unaware of the hundreds of people sitting in the audience. We see Keaton and company practicing their craft on stage, but when they leave the stage, they are unable to leave behind the theatricality. We have actors playing actors, who then must be actors playing actors who are acting in a play; then they exit the stage and go back to actors playing actors. There are fifty shades of subtlety involved, and they can’t identify all the hues. They simply keep acting like they are on a stage the whole time. It makes for an eccentric artificiality, which starts to become tedious by the end of the film. Theater critics do not fare well in this film. The most powerful critic in New York City admits to Riggan that she is going to close down the play with a scathing review, even though the play hasn’t opened yet, and she has not seen a single preview. She is described by Riggan and Shiner as a woman who looks like she just licked the derriere of a homeless person, an imbecile insult that boggles the mind. In general, magical realism is an interesting genre, but when the “magic” part is actually a manifestation of symptoms of mental illness, it’s not that interesting.

This is a new take on the Count Dracula story, and it gives actor Luke Evans in the title role a good opportunity to carry an entire film, playing a strange admixture of good and evil. Unlike most Faustian types who make a pact with the devil because they lust for power, money and knowledge, this would-be Faust is forced to seek out the devil to protect his countrymen and his family, particularly his son. His motives are noble and lofty—he has to keep the evil Turks out of his Romanian province, where he is a prince, actually Vlad the Impaler, so named because he grew up as a hostage of the Ottoman Empire , where he was trained to be a soldier who was famous for killing thousands pitilessly. After repenting of such a lifestyle, he becomes a loving husband and father, and comes home to reign in his castle as the prince of Wallachia. Finding out that the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed (Dominic Cooper), to whom Vlad pays taxes, has come to town to recruit a thousand young men from Wallachia, including Vlad’s own young son, causes a crisis of faith. Vlad returns to a cave where he knows there is a monstrous presence, a vampire trapped in the shadows, who awaits someone to discover him, then come back to him willingly and agree to trade places with him in exchange for the powers of darkness. Vlad returns to the cave willingly after he realizes he cannot defeat the Ottoman Empire without help. He makes a deal with the grotesque vampire—he can enjoy the powers of darkness for three days; if he resists drinking blood for that period, he will be restored to himself; if not, his vampirism will become a permanent state, and he will become the vampire trapped in the shadows. Thus begins Vlad’s challenge. He acquires fantastic strength and the ability to turn himself into a swarm of bats, but like all vampires, he is sensitive to sunlight and pure silver. Single-handedly he walks into a small army of Turkish troops and destroys them, much to the shock of his compatriots. His wife begins to notice some suspicious changes, and he confesses to her the pact that he made. Will the new Dracula win the war in three days? The landscapes are dramatically dark and eerie, and Luke Evans seems to have mastered this persona, having just played a heroic leader and a protective father in the last Hobbit installment. Dialogue is ridden with clichés and character sketches are weak—self-sacrificing wife, evil sultan, horrific demon, handsome child, trusting associates, and robotic enemy armies. It’s all there, the difference being that this Dracula has to control his thirst for blood, which is the only plot line that lends the story some depth and complexity, since the eternal battle of the soul to choose either good or evil will always generate some interest. Evans is classically handsome and athletically fit, and his charisma alone is enough to make the film, in spite of everything, highly watchable.

It is always entertaining to see a lot of young people on a stage singing and dancing their hearts out, especially when they are always in synchronization and in perfect harmony—as long as one ignores the odd circumstance where the group leader vomits on stage because of nerves. This is a film about a cappella singing, which is group or solo singing without any accompaniment. To compensate, the performers can mimic percussion and other instruments with their voices. In other words, they “make music with their mouths.” It is depicted as a subculture on college campuses, with a series of national competitions that result in a grand prize for the ultimate winners. All actors can sing, dance, and fence, as well as act, and this movie is a good excuse to let them do all those things (minus the fencing). The film is almost a showcase for Anna Kendrick, who plays Beca, a disgruntled undergraduate who would rather be DJ'ing in LA, but who has promised her professorial dad to at least give higher education a chance. She arrives on campus and the very same day is approached by The Bellas, an all-female a cappella group that desperately needs to beef up their membership and to repair their damaged reputation. Although Beca has expressed no interest in singing and performance art, she joins the group and becomes the star performer almost immediately. A petite brunette, she is physically slender and beautiful, as is the red-headed Chloe (Brittany Snow) and blond Aubrey (Anna Camp). Beca's soulful eyes are always professionally made up with black eyeliner that must be waterproof, because her make-up is perfect even when she's in the shower and when she's crying. In case this kind of blond, brunette, and red-headed perfection is sending the wrong message to anorexic undergraduates, the group (in desperation) accepts Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson) as a new addition. They also welcome an African-American (Ester Dean) to their ensemble. However, these less conventional characters are presented as parodies. Even the one Asian in the group (Hana Mae Lee) has some kind of exaggerated speech defect that renders her almost inaudible when she is speaking; it is not clear how she is able to project her voice as a singer in the group. It all comes together when the group starts their sassy, sashaying stage numbers, which are all excellent. The producers have forged ahead with Pitch Perfect II, which is opening in another week as of this writing. At this point, the actors who are playing undergraduates are in their late 20's; Kendrick and Snow are 29, and Camp is 32, which is only going to strain credulity even more.

The 3-part series concludes with the characters who have become so familiar, they feel like old friends—Gandalf, Bilbo, Thorin, Galadriel, Tauriel, Legolas, and others. Martin Freeman as Bilbo has to carry the entire film with his dwarvish friends, which are King Thorin (Richard Armitage) and the rest of the motley crew. The third installment wraps up the prequel to The Lord of the Rings film trilogy and just in time, because although as charming as ever, The Hobbit was beginning to wear just a bit thin. The murderous talking dragon, Smaug, who possesses the baritone voice of none other than a distant relative of Richard III (Benedict Cumberbatch), was awakened at the end of Part II. Now the vile, sadistic, and rather intelligent beastie, who acts suspiciously Norse, is set on death, suffering, and destruction. The fire-breathing creature relishes the helplessness of his victims; nevertheless, he is not immune to a long iron arrow that is bravely aimed at his heart by Bard of Laketown (Luke Evans), thus bringing a long reign of terror to an end. The gold and jewel-filled mountain is no longer guarded by the sleeping monster, and the Dwarves can reclaim their ancient home. The only problem is that news of Smaug’s death spreads, and a lot of creatures feel they have a claim to the pile of gold in the mountain, thus forming five armies—Dwarves, Elves, the good citizens of Laketown, Orcs heralded by Were-worms, and a fusion army of Orcs and goblins from Gundabad. The influence of Old English is notable but not always consistent, as there is the occasional glaring anachronism, such as “Come on!” and “We’ve got this.” The focus of the plot is on war, with respect to the military logistics and strategy of the final battle. The film is most entertaining when it is not overly centered on the five armies of the title squaring off and vowing to annihilate each other. There are intriguing subplots, such as Smaug’s deadly rampage and Bard’s bravado. Thorin’s temporary insanity and his duel with Azog (Manu Bennett) provide for some tension as well as a classic encounter between good and evil. The Romeo and Juliet dilemma between Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) and Legolas (Orlando Bloom), son of the Elven King, becomes more complicated when it is clear that Tauriel is in love with Kili the Dwarf (Aidan Turner). If Legolas is off limits to Tauriel because she is a lowly Silvan Elf while Legolas is an Elven prince, there is clearly a conflict when Taureil is tempted to switch species and run off with Kili. Another subplot involves Gandalf the Wizard (Ian McKellen) and the loyalty he inspires in Galadriel (Cate Blanchett). Azog , like Smaug, is conspicuous for being a brutal incarnation of evil, although Azog is a big dumb lug and lacks Smaug’s eloquence. Subtitles are used to translate his ancient Orkish, where he issues orders that sound something like, “Schmool la boole!” The uneven but still riveting film takes the viewer up to the spot where the Lord of the Rings trilogy begins.

The Theory of Everything refers to the elusive resolution to the paradox that faces all physicists. This is the fact that there are two major theories in physics—the theory of general relativity, which is used to make very accurate predictions about the behavior of massive objects in space, such as planets, stars and galaxies, and the theory of quantum mechanics, which predicts, also with great accuracy, the behavior of invisible particles such as protons, neurons, and quarks. The problem is that the two theories contradict each other, but since they are employed in completely different realms, there is usually no conflict; however, there are a few situations where the two theories are both applicable and stand in opposition to each other. Therefore, another more integrating and all-encompassing mathematical equation is needed to unify the two theories and reconcile all the forces of the universe, and this is called the Theory of Everything, sought in vain by Albert Einstein himself for the last thirty years of his life. As critic Mike Scott pointed out about the film, Hawking’s preoccupation with the Theory of Everything appears as a background process, superficially discussed in conversations and occasionally depicted on blackboards filled with mathematical formulas. A layman’s version of the theoretical quest is given by Hawking’s wife, Jane (Felicity Jones) when she tells a dinner guest that there are two major theories of physics to be reconciled, one dealing with the large objects (“potatoes”) and one dealing with the small objects (“peas”). Since the film is based on Jane Hawking’s autobiography (Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen), the emphasis is on the romance between Jane and Stephen Hawking (played by Eddie Redmayne), their subsequent marriage and raising of children, their heartbreaking but in many ways triumphant struggle with his ALS, and their ultimate break-up. It is actually a fascinating aspect of his life, perhaps almost as fascinating as the Theory of Everything. Through sheer determination, a young man who was given two years to live not only survived for fifty years (and counting), but he resolutely sought to have all the experiences he would have had as an able-bodied adult—career, romance, marriage, children, and even divorce and remarriage, and then another divorce. As a friend who picks up the young Hawking to carry him up a flight of stairs asks rather pointedly, “Stephen, is everything affected?” And Hawking replies, “No, it’s a different system—it’s automatic.” Eddie Redmayne comes as close to becoming his subject as is possible for any actor to get. Despite the intrigue and complications in his personal life, Hawking was always obsessively at work on brilliant ideas that included the discovery of Hawking radiation, his theories about the origin and boundaries of the universe, and his best-selling popular science books, among other projects and theories, making him one of the most famous physicists in the world. The details of this ongoing intellectual process would have made for an interesting portrayal in the film, since his work is the most fascinating and most important part of the miracle of Stephen Hawking’s life.

On the surface, this is a lovely, and perhaps, somewhat facile foodie movie, but it has to be seen as much more than that. This film is actually a foodie fairy tale. Like a typical fairy tale, it has a prince, a princess, a king and a queen. (The queen is evil at first but then she turns good.) There is also a palace and a lush fairy-tale landscape in the countryside of France. The plot starts with a warlike battle where there is a senseless death of a loving mother, leaving an indelible mark of grief on a family headed up by a wise king. The tragedy sends the royal family wandering into the wilderness, seeking a Promised Land, which they eventually find in a small French village. And then the royal family finally gets their happy ending after they can settle in and resume the family business, which of course, is an Indian restaurant. That last part might not sound like your typical fairy tale, but then foodie fairy tales are a genre unto themselves. And like a good fairy tale, underneath the saccharine plot devices there are profound universal truths to be mined and extracted. The Journey of the title is only a hundred feet because the wise, widowed, and elderly king (Om Puri) sets up his Indian eatery directly opposite a house of haute cuisine (one hundred feet away) that specializes in the most exquisite French fare and has earned a royal mark of distinction—a Michelin star. Of course, Madame Mallory (Helen Mirren), as the ambitious queen/restaurant owner, is not satisfied and covets the acquisition of her second Michelin star. Every star is a Holy Grail, and three stars would mean that the food served at such a place is nothing less than a menu for the gods. In the beginning, Madame Mallory regards the new Indian restaurant as a competitor to be roundly defeated and shut down. But beyond the 100 feet, there is a greater Journey described in this film, as the Indian family leaves their home turf and migrates into uncharted territory, where there are dragons and sea monsters, as well as those uncouth pirates who would wish them harm. The family’s presence in a strange land acts as a catalyst and an irritant, teaching a small town tolerance and acceptance, and introducing a foreign cuisine that eventually becomes a fusion of French and Indian fare. At first the wise king/Indian restaurant owner will not let the prince (Manish Dayal), his adult son and a brilliant chef, work for Madame across the road. The protective father tells the elegant Madame Mallory unequivocally, “French food is French food, and Indian food is Indian food.” And referring to the racist graffiti that she washed off the wall with her own hands, she replies, “Monsieur, I think I just spent the whole morning washing those words off your wall.” Appearing a little more subtly than the other plot devices is a Rousseauian back-to-nature philosophy, with a call to eat more carefully and to respect the produce of your local region. In this film, olives are picked from nearby groves, mushrooms are found in the woods, and the milk for the cheese comes from the cows in neighboring fields. After seeing this film, you will shop more selectively for your food, and you will vow to be more creative when you cook dinner the next evening. As for the saccharine happy ending, such is the stuff of fairy tales.

This film seeks to explore, reductio ad absurdum, the difficulties imposed on the time-travel genre by a phenomenon generally known as “the grandfather paradox.” This is the problem that arises if one goes back into time and commits an action that prevents one’s own birth, such as killing one’s own grandfather, but it can also be more liberally applied to any action committed after traveling back into time that may affect the initial action that was taken to go back into time. So, if I travel back before my birth and kill my grandfather before my mother is conceived, I won’t be born; therefore I was not present to make the decision to go back into time to kill my grandfather. Not being there to commit that crime means my mother was born, after all, which means I was born and the loop starts all over again. Many scientists, novelists, and filmmakers have sought to work around and somehow resolve the grandfather paradox. The only explanations that make sense are the ones that claim we can only back into time to a parallel universe, where we change history in the parallel universe, but the universe we live in stays the same. However, the Spierig Brothers, who wrote and directed the film, have decided to go to Hades in a handbasket and to fly in the face of everyone whoever had a logical thought about cause and effect. Their hero, the bartender played by Ethan Hawke, works for a company that sends him into the past at regular intervals to prevent heinous crimes. They can only make short time jumps, because long jumps damage the mind and cause insanity. Hawke’s character has already made one jump too many, and has taken an unauthorized jump outside the allotted zone, so his mind is warped by time, so to speak, and he is trying to find out the identity of a man called the Fizzle Bomber, who in 1975 kills 10,000 people in New York City with one bomb. I would yell spoiler alert, but the spoiler is so bizarre, that as one critic put it, you’re left at the end yelling, WTF??? So here’s the spoiler—the bartender/time agent is awaiting the entrance of someone he knows is coming in for a drink, because it’s John, his younger self. John is a transsexual, who was once a girl named Jane who was a baby left on the doorstep of an orphanage. She was born with weird internal wiring, both male and female, but was only aware of her female parts. Then Jane met a stranger one night, who was John traveling in time, lost her virginity, and had the baby alone because John suddenly left her sitting forever on a park bench. After a C-section, complications demanded that the female parts be taken out and the male parts extended. Jane became John. And John comes in the bar telling Ethan Hawke (who is John’s older self looking much different because of facial reconstruction after almost being burned to death) about how the mysterious male left him to have a baby that was later stolen from the hospital. That same baby was delivered to the orphanage, and was named Jane. Yes, that’s right, John, Jane, the baby and the bartender are all the same person, traveling through time, meeting up with each other, and having unorthodox relationships with themselves. I know you’re asking why didn’t Jane recognize herself after she became John as her own lover who deserted her? There she was, clearly looking at John in the mirror after her sex conversion, but he/she is sitting in the bar telling Ethan Hawke she never saw John again after he left her on the park bench. Her transsexual conversion turned her into John, and she didn’t notice? She apparently had no recollection of what time-traveling John, her future self and past lover, looked like. Maybe memory loss occurs after gender conversion. Anyway, Ethan Hawke’s bartender keeps reliving this scenario because he’s continually going back into time to find the Fizzle Bomber. Finally, he retires from the firm to the year 1975 in NYC, just before the Fizzle Bomber pulls off his major coup, and he finds the Fizzle Bomber, looking very aged and very crazy, sitting in a laundry mat. And guess who it is? I think the Spierig Brothers are poking fun at the grandfather paradox. At one point, Ethan Hawke’s character bounds down the stairs to the bar’s basement, and he sings a line from a rather tuneless song: “I’m my own grandfather...” That was a clue. Instead of being his own grandfather, he’s actually his own mother, father, and grandfather. Who spawned the first version of Ethan Hawke’s character? No one knows. They’re stuck in an endless loop like “a snake eating its own tail.” Ethan Hawke does a remarkable job at making this senseless scenario interesting, and Sarah Snook is equally brilliant at playing both Jane and John. And all those physicists out there who are working hard to resolve the grandfather paradox can clearly stick it in their ear, courtesy of the Spierig Brothers.

Brendan Gleeson’s portrayal of Father James, the tormented priest, is what saves this film from being a confusing morass of conflicting philosophies. Father James, a priest in a small countryside parish in Ireland, is haunted, lonely, and struggling with a number of demons. He still mourns his late wife, whose death drove him to become a priest; he has a disaffected relationship with his adult daughter (Kelly Reilly) who visits him after having recently attempted suicide; and he is a borderline alcoholic. His most intimate relationship is with Bruno, his dog. The film starts out with Father James in the confession box. A parishioner, whom Father James recognizes by voice, confesses to him a long childhood history of being sexually abused by a priest, who is now deceased. The abuse went on for several years, involving a number of children, and caused a scandal that had been reported in the news long ago. The parishioner has a bizarre plan to rectify the injustice that he suffered—he wants to kill a priest, not an abusive priest, but a good priest like Father James, and he makes a date to meet him on the beach in a week. Father James does not overreact, to say the least. He discusses the case with a superior, who tells him to report it to the police, but he is reluctant. He says he knows who the parishioner is, but he does not want to take impulsive action. During the week that transpires, which is marked day by day on the screen, Father James gives evidence of being deeply depressed, perhaps suicidal. In fact, the entire film is about death and suicide. The daughter visits him after a suicide attempt. Then Father James has to visit a prisoner who committed a grisly murder; the prisoner requests the death sentence even though there is no death sentence in Ireland. An elderly novelist who lives alone asks Father James to get him a gun, preferably a Walther PPK, so that when the time comes, he can kill himself rather than succumb to the frailties of dementia. Father James himself is suspiciously casual about the death threat he experienced in the confession box. During the week, the priest has arguments and one fist fight with other villagers. He drinks himself silly. He tells off a lot of people. A rich villager offers him a dubious financial scheme, and insanely ends up urinating on a classic masterpiece that he owns. The only point taken is that the millionaire is mentally ill. Father James goes to the police inspector to talk, but the police inspector is distracted by his young, gay lover with the thick New York City accent, who is so hyperactive that he clearly is suffering from mental problems as well. A young wife in the village is promiscuous and currently cheating on her husband with an African car mechanic. She doesn’t check in as being completely normal either. The most depressing part of the job is administering last rites, which Father James says is never easy, although with the aged, “it’s not any easier but it’s more understandable.” At the hospital, he is called in to give last rites to an accident victim. The Emerg doctor (Aidan Gillen) is smoking outside the building; he is jaded, callous, and militantly atheistic. He tells the priest, “I know the atheistic doctor is a cliché.” In short, there’s not one pollyanna to be found in the entire village. And during that troublesome week, the priest’s church is burned down by an arsonist, and someone viciously kills Bruno, presumably the same villager who wants to kill the priest on Sunday. In one last phone call to his daughter, Father James declares what he says is the hardest part of humanity—forgiveness. This film isn’t about faith, more like using faith to escape reality, and even then, faith is not very effective. Father James only becomes a priest to escape the pain of widowhood, and he continues to drink himself into oblivion. And he never officially reports the death threat delivered in the confession box, for apparently, it’s a sin for a priest to commit suicide, but it’s not a sin if someone volunteers their services and does the dirty work for him. In the end, there’s no redemption for the believer or the atheist, just a glimmer of hope for those who can forgive.

The Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” the acronym for which was LSD, comes to mind in this film where the drug of choice is called CPH4. It’s not clear that this drug puts the addict in a pleasurable state of mind since it appears to cause much suffering, angst, and if overdosed, death or molecule disintegration and an omnipresence that is usually only attributed to God. Scarlett Johansson in the title role captures just the right balance of female vulnerability and steely superpowers that make her a force to be reckoned with. She is abducted in Taiwan by Korean bad guys, who sew a bag of the blue crystal-like substance into her abdomen with the plan to send her home and have the bag removed by the drug dealers. But first she is roughed up in a holding area, again by Korean hoodlums, who accidentally cause the bag to rupture and leak into her system. The drug has thus been administered to her, and she starts to obtain extrasensory powers and phenomenal strength because CPH4 allows the recipient to start using more than 10% of her brain. This is the primary theme of the plot, and all else hangs from this premise; it justifies the supporting role of Morgan Freeman, the neuroscience professor who has based his career and about 6,000 pages of publications on the study of how humans can use more of their brain matter. Unfortunately, this nineteenth-century belief has been dismissed long ago, but if one keeps up with the controversy about the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI), this dilemma is not as far-fetched as it would seem. We use 100% of our brain, but our intellect, reason, logic and enormous creative powers are based on only a tiny portion of our DNA that is different from that of a chimpanzee. We share about 96% of the same genetic material as a chimpanzee. That last bit is enormously powerful and is what makes us human. It has been hypothesized that if we can make a robot that emulates a human brain and then perhaps wire it to be just a little more evolved than a human brain, we are in danger of making a robot that can evolve by itself into something that may be omniscient, omnipresent, and dangerous, which is to say, we may unleash forces that we cannot control. Billionaire inventor Elon Musk and others are raising the alarm about the unpredictable dangers of AI. Lucy, if she were actually a human or a robot whose brain has been tampered with to jump ahead on the evolutionary ladder, may be a sample of what we would be dealing with. Just a slight revision in the film’s explanation behind how the fictional drug works changes the implausible premise of the film to a realistic one. Johannson is superb in the rendering of her transition from human to demigod. And Egyptian-born Amr Waked is excellent as the French police officer who feebly offers her protection even though she could wipe the floor with him. And it seems that Hollywood has found a new source for evil—Koreans. Russians used to be the bad guys, and then the Cold War ended. And many ethnic groups get offended if they are portrayed as stereotypical thugs; by the time The Lion King was produced, the only acceptable bad guy was a Brit (Jeremy Irons as the evil uncle) since Englishmen cannot claim to be ethnic. (They are the standard by which all ethnicity is measured.) Director Luc Besson did not overlook this option—Julian Rhind-Tutt is a bad guy who is also an English twit. In any case, some excellent Korean actors like Min-sik Choi (as Mr. Jang) will now be more employable.

Despite the critics’ complaints about clichés, The Judge keeps the action moving and manages to entertain. It was an Oscar-nomination vehicle for Robert Duvall in the title role, who roared through the script so that even his clichéd lines sounded like originals when spoken by such a legendary actor. However, the film was a disappointment for Robert Downey, Jr. in the role of the sharp, city-slicker lawyer, Hank Palmer. Downey has told the press that he covets an Oscar, and this was the first attempt from the ma & pa production company with the unlikely name “Team Downey” to get him a nomination. Although Downey has his moments, there is still more than a hint of the Iron Man persona lurking underneath the attorney's expensive suit and designer sunglasses. Downey is still magnificent to behold with his intensity and his sensitive dark eyes as he deals with a father who is so stubborn that he is self-destructive. And his character's questionable ethics as a brilliant lawyer who can get anyone to walk suits his problematic personality. (He is his usual hyperactive self in the film, which is written into the script when his ex-girlfriend says he talks continuously “like vomit.”) When accused of only defending the guilty, Downey’s best line is, “Innocent people can’t afford me.” A surprisingly effective performance pops up in the form of Billy Bob Thornton, who plays Dwight ****, a steely lawyer with an ax to grind, and even when he sees his enemy defeated and broken down in tears, his sense of humanity, which arises only for a moment, is quickly suppressed. There are some philosophical thoughts about the nature of justice buried in the script, but many weak areas prevail. Hank Palmer has two brothers. The older brother (Vincent D’Onofrio) seems to bear no relation to him; the younger brother (Jeremy Strong) is autistic but the autistic personality is not consistently portrayed. Much to my amusement, Downey has a few love scenes in this film, and he actually has a scene with an onscreen wife. Of course, the only reason he appeared with a wife was to make it clear that they hated each other and were definitely getting a divorce. His love scene with the young bartender (Leighton Meester) shows them kissing only briefly, and it’s a long shot. The more complicated kissing scenes with his hometown ex-girlfriend (Vera Farmiga) look a little stiff and uncomfortable. So I had to smile when Farmiga remarked in an interview that producer Susan Downey was on the set the whole time, and that Farmiga kept looking over to Mrs. Downey for approval because, after all, Susan Downey kisses her husband all the time. So that explains the robotic moves. Farmiga is a great actress; it’s hard to make her look wooden. I suspect that if Robert Downey wants an Oscar nomination, he should issue an edict announcing that the producer isn’t allowed on the set.

This 3D stop motion animated film is for children, although some parts of it might give the kids bad dreams, even though all's well that ends well. The viewer is enticed by a richly dark vision of the streets of London circa late 1800's, when the townsfolk were undereducated, vulgar, and easily seduced by myths, superstitions, and local legends. There are well-defined class strata characterized by the aristocracy, who eat the finest cheese in the town of Cheesebridge and who wear white hats, and the working class shmegegges, who speak a thick brogue, are quick to initiate witch hunts, and wear the inferior red hats. At the center of their low-class hysteria is the knowledge that the town is infested with little monsterlike trolls who live in the sewers and who are said to snatch children and valuables; the trolls are purported to have once eaten an abducted baby. The little monsters have no clothes, and they hide their nakedness by wearing boxes around the midriff, taking their Christian names from whatever product appears on the box labels—hence, Fish, Oilcan, Wheels, and Shoe, among others. The boxes have a dual function because at any time they can hunker down and snap the lid closed in order to hide in plain sight, which they do whenever they feel threatened or scared. They speak a funny alien language understood by only one human, Eggs (Isaac Hampstead Wright), the baby they abducted but did not eat; in fact, they lovingly raised the child as their own, having abducted him only to rescue him from a malevolent force. Back in town the aristocratic mayor, Lord Portley-Rind (Jared Harris), feels that the boxtrolls are vermin who have to be exterminated. The trolls are safe in their underground lair by day, but by night they emerge to rifle through garbage cans for interesting odds and ends that they use for a surprising purpose—they are in fact brilliant engineers. Their underground cavern has a ferris wheel, fantastic gadgets, and they have strung the roof of the cavern with light bulbs that mimic the stars in the night sky. The trolls are a loving community of harmless little imps, so ugly that they are almost cute. They snack on ladybugs, their favorite meal. But a menace is at work in the land of the humans, as the mayor enlists the help of a ruthless businessman named Archibald Snatcher (Ben Kingsley) to use his mobile contraption to wipe out the trolls. It is a long and arduous process that goes on for almost ten years. As the troll population dwindles, Eggs turns 10 and begins to understand that he is different from the trolls, a human who tragically lost his parents as a baby. He becomes an advocate for his surrogate troll parents, and it is his destiny to save the trolls from extinction. In the process, he meets the mayor's daughter, who befriends him and supports his mission, little Winnie (Elle Fanning). Snatcher longs to trade in his red hat for a white hat, the equivalent of ditching his Honda Civic and buying a Ferrari, a goal he will attain if he wipes out all the boxtrolls. In Cheesebridge, another symbol of ultimate class is having the luxury of eating the finest cheese at cheese-tasting parties. The mayor spends many tax dollars on acquiring the world's best cheeses, even if it means canceling the plans for a children's hospital. Ironically, Snatcher aspires to this cheese-loving elite even though he is violently allergic to cheese, which causes his face to become dangerously swollen. Snatcher's henchmen are the ones who have to actually take the adorable monsters by surprise and capture them as the trolls sit helplessly shaking with terror in their little boxes. The trolls are as innocent and as playful as pups, and Snatcher's henchmen become vaguely aware of this dilemma as they continue their roundup. They have been convinced that the trolls are evil and that humans are good, and that it is for the good of human civilization that all trolls should be exterminated. In reality, Snatcher postpones killing the trolls and takes them back to his factory where he employs their engineering skills through forced labor, a bit like a concentration camp. The henchmen gradually become more and more uncomfortable with their reign of terror and their Gestapo tactics, as they begin to glean the true nature of the trolls, and it is up to Eggs to save the day. The children may end up having nightmares, nevertheless the film is an interesting child's morality play on the nature of good and evil, as well as a subtle commentary on racism, antisemitism, and intolerance.

The Trip is a 2010 movie I downloaded from Netflix, partly because I was very impressed with Steve Coogan in Philomena, where he starred and co-wrote the screenplay. The Trip is a romp, and it’s one of those romps that turn out to be more fun for the actors than the audience, although that’s not to say that the audience can’t enjoy it too. But it’s always a problem when actors play themselves in a movie. What is to be gained by playing yourself in a movie that creates an otherwise fictionalized setting? In The Trip, it turns out to be very little. Actors usually hide behind their characters, and they can freely play out the best and worst instincts known to humanity—that’s what actors do; it is their profession. But when they play themselves, which is not recommended, they hide behind their character only selectively, wanting to aggrandize their best characteristics, and when the human foibles are portrayed, well, that’s just the fictional part, or at the very least, as Coogan insisted in an interview, it’s an exaggeration. Trying to figure out which parts are real and which are exaggerated or just pure fiction becomes the challenge for the audience, who has better things to think about than the faults to be found in Steve Coogan and his co-star, Rob Brydon, In short, The Trip centers on Coogan getting a magazine commission reviewing the best restaurants in Northern England, where one can find exquisite haute cuisine that would rival Paris. England is generally not known for such superb fare, a reputation that goes back at least a couple of centuries. (Heinrich Heine traveled to England in 1827 and said that when he left, he threw himself at the feet of the first French chef he met.) Coogan admits that in real life he would never accept such a commission, and that he has no skill in the art of culinary critique. In the movie, he also has no such skill. He never once inquires about ingredients, never once savors a trace of rosemary or marjoram, and when given an elaborately mixed green drink that was the pride of the house, his only remark was that it looked like snot. That’s fine for real life, but in the fiction played out in the film, how did Coogan earn his commission? Instead, the trip is an excuse to celebrate a bromance between two very talented, attractive, and charismatic British actors, because that is who they are in real life. They rib each other, put each other down, and enjoy a rivalry that centers on who can sing the most octaves and who can do the best impersonation of Michael Caine, James Bond (differentiating between Connery and Moore), and Woody Allen. Coogan wins hands down with Woody Allen—his impersonation of the famous Brooklyn stutter is so perfect, it almost sounds like a voice-over. The two actors are charming, almost irresistible. But when it comes to women, Brydon has thrown in the towel and is faithfully married (both in the film and in real life), while Coogan is a real jerk with women (both in the film and in real life). The film has him a little depressed, because Mischa (Margo Stilley), his girlfriend, refused to go on the trip with him and instead went to the States to further her career. But in spite of his romantic grief, he still picks up a pretty clerk in his rural hotel. The next morning he barely bids her adieu; it’s not clear that he even knows her name. This behavior, it later comes out in the plot, is routine for Coogan. In real life, Coogan is happily paired up with a woman half his age (he’s 49), who is a model best known for her cheesy lingerie ads that make her look like she’s a 40DD. Now, was that an “exaggeration” in the film when he was depicted as being a cad who has minimal respect for intelligent women? Will the real Steve Coogan please stand up? In the future, Coogan should stick to fictional characters who allow him to forget himself. It’s for the best. Nevertheless, The Trip entertains even as it bewilders.

This film is a close-up of a worldly vampire couple (Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston) who have been around for about five hundred years, give or take a century. The plot is minimalist and what little plot there is plays itself out very slowly, as this is a movie whose dialogue and cinematographic details have to be savored like a fine wine, or at the very least, like the best blood available to middle-aged vampires—which is Type O negative, to be smuggled out of hospital blood banks and paid for with wads of cash. Biting humans is a bit boorish in the twenty-first century, even if one disregards the problem of too many humans harboring microbes and viruses that can make a vampire ill. The two vampires, appropriately named Adam and Eve, are married but spend a lot of time apart to pursue their particular interests and pastimes. The film opens with Eve living in Tangiers where she is at home in a messy apartment cluttered with books from every literary period and in every conceivable language. She speaks all those languages fluently, including Arabic and Japanese, and she can speed-read a book by moving her hand lightly and swiftly over the page. Adam, however, is of a different intellectual bent. He is a musician living in Detroit who writes hauntingly evocative rock & roll compositions, having evolved away from the classical music that he wrote hundreds of years ago. He claims he gave Schubert the adagio to a symphony without ever expecting acknowledgment, for after all, as their friend Kit (John Hurt) notes, getting the work out there is the most important thing. At this stage in Adam's life, fame no longer interests him anyway, and it would attract too much attention, so he labors alone in a run-down house that is as messy as Eve's, and he is nostalgic for the hard rock of the sixties and early seventies. With the help of a human acquaintance (Anton Yelchin), who gets paid handsomely for his services, Adam collects vintage guitars from the acid rock era. He rarely leaves his house except for the odd trip to the hospital to pick up a fresh supply of blood from the bribed doctor who helps him (Jeffrey Wright). Adam always wear tight black pants, T-shirts and a leather jacket, and has dark hair hanging in his eyes. Eve sports a thick head of long white hair that makes her blonder than blond, a beautiful albino. They can only go out at night and even under tungsten lighting, they wear stylish sunglasses. They are slender, elegant, and attractive—looking like a very hip couple who somehow survived the drug-addicted sixties with their personal style and their political philosophy intact. Together, after Eve leaves Tangier to join Adam in Detroit, they exude power and a high-voltage kind of energy. Things get complicated when Eve's little sister (Mia Wasikowska), an impulsive and reckless vampire, shows up for a visit. Because of her intrusion, Adam and Eve are forced to abandon the safety of Adam's reclusive life in Detroit. They flee back to Tangier, where they find their precious blood is in short supply, forcing them for the first time since the fifteenth century to consider more radical forms of procurement. This low-level plot, however, is not the point of the film. Adam and Eve are observers of human behavior and are far superior to the average human in intelligence and wisdom, as well as bereft of all ego because having lived for 500 years means that their greatest achievements are behind them, and they have nothing left to prove. Instead, they are scholars of art history, music, literature, and architecture. With hands so sensitive that they have to remain encased in gloves, Eve can tell the age of an object merely by touching it. Their running commentary, always caustic and ironic, shows shrewd insight into the complicated nature of human nature. They are fine connoisseurs of antiques and historic buildings, taking great pleasure in admiring the craftsmanship of the good, old days. They live for the pleasure of the moment, the satisfaction of drinking only the best blood, the odd creative project for which they cannot take credit, and the romance of their eternal relationship with each other. Tilda Swinton is a terrifically blasé vampire who understands intuitively that after 500 years, it's the little things that make life meaningful. Tom Hiddleston is equally brilliant at being droll, although not nearly as cheerful as his wife, and positively depressed, if not suicidal, about the vampiric condition. Their vampiric state is not quite evil or damned, but more like the resignation of aging hippies whose heyday is over and has left them mostly with a lot of memories, anecdotes, and artifacts. Their damnation is more about their jaded pessimism, and their intrinsic understanding that humans have somehow lost their way and cannot evolve or mature, which the couple see so clearly without being able to do anything about it. That, more than anything else, is truly the vision of the damned.

Barbara is a film where every breath pause has meaning, and a sideways glance is not an arbitrary gesture but a nervous, paranoid tic that is necessary in order to remain one step ahead of the Stasi, the East German secret police who make the American McCarthy era look like a Sunday picnic. Portrayed here is a disconsolate cinematic landscape, austere, stripped bare of consumerism and bourgeois excesses. Fame and glamor have no place here; there is only the countryside and the rustic life of the villagers. There are subtle signs of the solidarity that will one day arise in reaction to a Communist government that believes the average citizen is their worst enemy. But there is also an elaborate system of citizen informants who help the Stasi by spying on each other. There is the beauty of the natural landscape, some meaning from one's work, some comfort from one's home, and the fact that no matter where humans dwell, they fall in love. In Rilke's Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, he writes of the sounds he hears in the city streets when he longs for the country-- “Someone calls out. People are running, catch up with each other. A dog barks. What a relief.” In Barbara, the sound of a dog barking at night in the village countryside is not a relief; it is cause for alarm for it could mean that the Stasi are lurking about outside the apartment house of the chain-smoking young doctor, played by Nina Hoss in the titular role, who dared to apply for a permit to leave East Germany and immigrate to the West to join her fiance. In response, the authorities banish her from her prestigious hospital in Berlin and exile her to a small hospital in the outlying regions. She is also under surveillance, a tense situation that sometimes makes the film work as a subtle thriller, her request for an exit visa having marked her as an enemy of the State. If she disappears from sight for hours at a time, as she sometimes does to have a secret rendezvous with her Western boyfriend, she will be accosted afterward by the local Stasi officer, her apartment pulled apart in search of contraband, and a female officer wearing rubber gloves will ask her to strip down for a body search. This is her life, a life that she abhors, and she lives only for the day that she will escape with her boyfriend's help. In the meantime, she has to take care of the patients assigned to her at the regional hospital, where a talented physician, Dr. Andre Reiser (Ronald Zehrfeld), has also been banished from Berlin after a hospital scandal involving professional negligence on his part. He is resigned to his lot, and takes pleasure in the natural beauty around him, his books, and his work. He has even managed to **** together enough equipment so that he has his own personal laboratory at the clinic. He is strangely attracted to Barbara, despite her coldness, mistrust, and her barely hidden contempt for the fact that unlike her, he cooperates with the Stasi and submits reports about individuals as requested, including reports about Barbara herself. A wary respect develops between the two, and Reiser begins to hope that he can win Barbara's affections. She appears to be unobtainable, detached, and horrified by his appreciation for the life that he leads and the circumstances he accepts. But then her genuine empathy for her patients begins to draw her in, and her fiance's Western world of business dealings, money, and acquisitions stand in stark contrast to a simpler, more spartan but uncontaminated world where she is desperately needed. She says nothing at a hotel tryst with her lover when he tells her that after he smuggles her out of the country, she will no longer have to work. Having started out with single-minded resolution, Barbara reaches an agonizing fork in the road. The stark beauty of the cinematography parallels the ascetic values of the repressed, restricted, and censored society of East Germany in the 1980s. A nighttime scene on the beach under moonlight shows Barbara, usually looking as severe and grim as the society in which she is trapped, suddenly blossoming into something almost supernaturally beautiful as she reaches the point where she understands the true nature of her dilemma. Her transformation is the story of this film.

Although this movie is ostensibly about birdwatching, the fanatical enthusiasm for this hobby is actually the background for coming-of-age, dealing with grief, and relationships between parents and teenagers. David Portnoy, a 15-year-old played by Kodi Smit-McPhee, is still coping with the death of his mother and the fact that only 1.5 years after the tragedy, his father (James Le Gros) is marrying the attractive nurse (Daniela Lavender) who tended to his mother in her dying days. David's chief consolation for his loneliness and grief are his two best friends (Michael Chen and Alex Wolff) at school, with whom he has formed the school's birdwatching society—referred to as “birding” only if one is truly serious and devoted to the cause. Instead of being comic-book geeks or computer nerds, this birding society of three, which barely qualifies them for club status at their high school, is obsessed with collecting knowledge and sightings of every kind of bird species they can possibly identify in their geographical area. They are fans and devotees of a famous ornithologist who lives nearby and has published books on the subject, Dr. Konrad (eccentrically played by Ben Kingsley). When the club meets at the school library, despite their inability to attract and hold new club members, they amusingly conform to Robert's Rules of Order even if the Chair is obliged to say, “The Chair recognizes himself.” Their goal is to list and recognize countless bird species, and if possible, to sight endangered species. The real prize is the almost non-existent chance of sighting a bird that is supposed to be extinct, which David is sure he has one day when a strangely colored duck lands in the road in front of his bicycle. The threesome set out to find the invaluable duck, which they hope has migrated to the nearest wildlife refuge area, and in so doing, David escapes his father's house the weekend before the wedding. The boy is haunted by memories of his deceased mother, an expert birder who taught him her skills, and is also awkwardly establishing tentative romantic relations with his first girlfriend (Katie Chang). His disappointment in his father's decision to re-marry so soon has put a pronounced strain on their relationship. Although lacking the sentimentality and misty-eyed idealism of say, The Summer of '42, this coming-of-age story has a certain charm, as the scholarly pursuit of birdwatching by teenagers who have all the time in the world to perfect their art provides an unusual and interesting twist.

As a native of northern New Jersey who grew up with many Italian working-class friends, I strongly resented the unnaturally thick Jersey accent as portrayed by Scarlett Johansson in her role as Barbara Sugarman. Sugarman is a Jewish name, as noted by the parents of Jon Martello (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) when he brings her home and introduces her to his Italian-American family, although in one scene Johansson sports a crucifix around her neck, so that detail was either a mistake or she was supposed to have had a Christian mother and a Jewish father. In any case, the film was directed and written by Gordon-Levitt, who is admittedly showing signs of youthful genius (but not necessarily in this film); however, Gordon-Levitt was born in Los Angeles, and like a lot of Hollywood actors and directors who did not grow up in industrialized northern New Jersey, his concept of a primitive, uncultured working class in New Jersey, especially of Italian origin, is highly exaggerated and misconceived. Yes, Ol' Blue Eyes came from Hoboken, and it is there that you will find the thickest so-called “Joisey” accent, but that is because of Hoboken's proximity to New York City, which is standing right there on the opposite shore of the Hudson. Indeed, that accent originates from the depths of Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. It affects parts of New Jersey by association only. The erroneous concept that this accent originated in New Jersey goes hand-in-hand with the Hollywood belief that New Jersey is the cultural pits of the planet. For the record, I have never met a New Jerseyan who talks like that. As noted, it is only in limited parts of North and Central Jersey where the New York City dialect is spoken. The majority of the state can be found speaking the Philadelphia region dialect, where the word “Joisey” is unheard of. And certainly, Barbara Sugarman, who is shown to have been raised in a semi-affluent middle-class environment, would not have been speaking such a thick brogue. When Hollywood gets it wrong, they go over the top, and they love to go with the cliches. My next objection is the subject matter of the film, which again, stresses the primitive, if not positively elemental, level of culture that is presumed to exist in the State of New Jersey. (Remember Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler? Also, over the top with its depiction of working-class New Jersey.) Jon Martello is not only mindlessly promiscuous to the point where dogs in the street are more discriminating than he is, but he is addicted to pornography and prefers pornography to genuine relations with real women. He watches pornography relentlessly, **** fiendishly, and confesses everything to the priest at his local church, where he then dutifully recites the number of Hail Mary's and Lord's Prayers he has to say to atone for his sins. (The number usually varies with the number of times he watched porn movies or had sex out of wedlock.) Just when Martello and Sugarman are becoming almost unbearably tedious, a breath of fresh air arrives in the form of Esther (Julianne Moore), who proceeds to lend some dignity and depth to the scenario. She is a much older woman for Jon Martello, characterized by the grief that she experienced in her recent past, which makes her extremely open and emotionally vulnerable but with a unique charm, a sort of latter-day Annie Hall. She is easy-going and forgiving, but also a wellspring of wisdom, and it is only through a rather odd coupling with her that Martello becomes humanized and stops acting like a beast gone mad in the woodlands. Moore almost saves the film, but the cartoonish characterizations that precede her entrance unfortunately predominate. Director/screenwriter Gordon-Levitt is still young, and he will have to work a little harder to do a truly sensitive film the next time around.

The Grand Budapest Hotel is more remarkable for its similarity to previous work by Wes Anderson than it is for its basis in the works of Stefan Zweig. Anderson makes much of this literary inspiration but the movie is not based on any particular Zweigian tome—Anderson claims it is a conglomeration of two works by Stefan Zweig. First, Ungeduld des Herzens, literally The Impatience of the Heart. However, as a someone who holds a PhD in German literature, I would translate it as “The Restless Heart” (sorry, there are no italics in the Metacritic text box!), whereas the English edition is in fact called Beware of Pity. The second work cited by Anderson is Rausch der Verwandlung, literally translated as The Intoxication of Transformation, but again, I would translate it as “The Ecstasy of Change”—the English title is actually The Post Office Girl. In addition to merging influences from these two works, Anderson has put Zweig himself in the movie, thus incorporating biographical elements as well. It is such a mishmash that it appears the most Zweigian element in the movie is Tom Wilkinson's portrayal of the aged author. Wilkinson bears a strong resemblance to Zweig. I was more struck by the resemblance of the film to Moonrise Kingdom. The cinematography has the same eerie lighting that gives it a fairy-tale aspect, and the subject matter is treated in the same Andersonian style—a lot of eccentric characters merging together in unconventional ways. And the script has a very Andersonian bearing with no relationship whatsoever to the style of Stefan Zweig. Like Moonrise Kingdom, sentences are short and declarative. Characters express themselves rather tersely and bluntly, but in a heartfelt way, which is charming and extremely American, even perhaps Californian. Only Ralph Fiennes as Gustave has a European flavor to his personality, but despite his British accent, he is too exaggerated (as are many of the characters) and has no real connection to a Zweigian mode of expression. Another noteworthy resemblance to Moonrise Kingdom is the cast—we see Edward Norton, Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray, and Harvey Keitel making a comeback. And there are surprises, such as Ron Goldblum and Owen Wilson. A bit like the post-office girl of Zweig's novel, a young lobby boy who is escaping the devastation and overwhelming poverty of war finds himself in an opulent and extravagant hotel that gives him privy to the lives of the preposterously rich. It both changes him and forces him to take refuge in his real self, however humble. The film tells the story of how this grand old hotel of the Austro-Hungarian Empire changed and evolved over the years, becoming more sterile and functional with modernity, but more specifically the film recounts how the lobby boy eventually became the sole owner of the hotel. That is the essence of the Zweigian influence, in addition to the fact that the story is being told to the young Stefan Zweig (Jude Law), who later recounts the tale in his writings as the elder Stefan Zweig (Tom Wilkinson). Unfortunately, Grand Budapest Hotel is not quite as charming as Moonrise Kingdom, and by the end of the film, the endless train of eccentric behaviors and character quirks starts to daze the viewer's mind. Additionally, the film neglects to capture the essence of the German spirit, much like Eyes Wide Shut tried to convey the essence of Arthur Schnitzler's Traumnovelle but failed because it was just too American. Perhaps it is just a fact that Hollywood directors find it difficult to comprehend the shadowy depths and the tortured substance of modern German literature.

In spite of a few cliches and some generalizations about Italian-Americans, not to mention New Jerseyans, this movie is so charming that you are disappointed when it's over. No matter how many times we see the rags-to-riches stories that are so common among celebrities, there is something perpetually appealing about this kind of story─four youngsters who are undereducated, lower middle-class, and bored to the point where committing petty crimes is the most excitement that life has to offer them, realize that they have a uniqeness about them, a spark of genius, that makes them different from everyone else. They put all their money on this one shot in a million, which is that someday they are going to be famous, and that every naysayer who ever dismissed them will live to regret it. And their wildly overconfident predictions then proceed to come true. Not only do they make it big in the music industry, these four kids from Mob-infested Newark, NJ would invent a new sound that would characterize the 60's and early 70's, and they would become the background music for the lives of millions of baby boomers who came of age during that era. I grew up in northern New Jersey, where most of my high-school friends were Italian-Americans, and hearing the tough-guy Italian dialect and the familiar songs of the Four Seasons made me feel positively nostalgic for the good, old days. There is a spirit to the Italian-American culture that is stoically upbeat (putting aside the criminality of the Mafia). Even if they became plumbers, electricians, hairdressers, and car mechanics, every Italian friend I had was a superstar. They were all talented, whether they knew it or not, and they all saluted life with all its up and downs, joys and tragedies, as something they had to tackle with guts and courage. Nothing could keep them down for long. They were fearless. I don't know if that's what they are like in Italy, but the Italian predilection for romance, family loyalty, and cultural pride combined with American optimism produced a unique culture that thrived in the State of New Jersey. The collective personality of the Four Seasons, a bland American name for such pronounced ethnicity, was a peculiar blend of Italy, the United States, and the working classes of New Jersey. The film delves into the band's personal story, perhaps not as profoundly as we would like, for the light-hearted influence of the original Broadway musical prevails. But the four actors who portray the original band members, most notably John Lloyd Young as Frankie Valli, are mesmerizing in their perfect imitation of the sound and style of the Four Seasons. And when the four join together to do a few simple side steps in unison while performing on stage, they light up like a magical force of pure music and synchronization. The perfection of the imitation is as riveting as the original.

Comparisons to Groundhog Day are inevitable, for the same premise is in effect here. One man is doomed to live the same day and over and over until he achieves what he set out to do. In the 1993 film starring Bill Murray as the unfortunate protagonist caught in a cosmic loop, a supernatural force condemned him to repeat the day every time he went to sleep at night, for he was the victim of his own moral lassitude and his inability to feel any empathy for his fellow human beings. However, he falls in love with a journalist played by Andie MacDowell, who is an angel by comparison, and in order to win her, he has to change, and since he has only one weekend to woo her, the divine solution is to repeat the day countless times until he gets it right. As a result of the time warp afforded by this exercise in infinity, he learns to play the piano, he learns to speak fluent Italian, he becomes a skilled ice sculptor, and he learns to feel compassion for others. And then he gets the girl, and the time warp magically ends. Finally, he achieves his goal—to become morally perfect and to move on to the next day. In Edge of Tomorrow, Tom Cruise’s character, William Cage, is not the humorous and ironic character that Bill Murray plays, nor is his assignment to cover Punxsutawney Phil’s shadow on Groundhog Day. He is an army major who has been wrongly assigned to combat in a futuristic D-Day. This time the shores of Normandy are crawling with aliens, not Germans, and they are a hateful species of octopus-like creatures, known as Mimics, who come barreling along like whirling dervishes. They are controlled by a monster octopus, their Emperor, who acts as a universal consciousness. They can only be stopped if the Emperor dies. Not having seen weaponry since basic training, Major Cage comes close to refusing his orders, finds himself accused of desertion and is then abducted and locked into a robot-style combat outfit on D-Day the Second. He is deployed against his will, and he immediately blunders, makes a wrong move, and he is killed on the beach, but not by one of the drone aliens—he is killed by a rare, superior Mimic whose blood imparts to Cage the ability to die and then wake up alive to start the day again. Each time he remembers the mistakes from the previous day, and each time he corrects himself and gets a little closer to his goal before stumbling and getting killed again. The tension of reliving the same day in Edge of Tomorrow does not have the same level of variety and innovation that we saw in Groundhog Day. The plot is advanced by the need to save the world from an alien invasion. The lack of variety in the different scenarios is offset by Cage’s understanding of the predictable features he will encounter each time he wakes up after being killed. He learns how to handle the crewmates who think he is arrogant and who reject him for being woefully lacking in combat skills. He learns how to deal with the hard-as-nails drill sergeant (Bill Paxton) who has no respect for him and treats him with contempt. And he recognizes the renowned “Angel of Verdun,” Rita (Emily Blunt), a female soldier who somehow had mastered the art of killing Mimics, because she too had been infected with the blood of a Mimic, and she too reset the day each time she was killed, always learning from her mistakes—until one day, she was wounded but didn’t die, and a blood transfusion robbed her of her power. When she sees Cage on the battlefield, she recognizes his condition, and they join together. Whenever they reach the point where they fail, she kills him to reset the day and start over. And each time he has to reintroduce himself, make her understand who he really is, and try to advance a little further once again. There are a few places in the film where the action lags, and although the chemistry between Cage and Rita is interesting, her complete lack of femininity as a soldier with an obsessive mission prevents any romance and renders her more mechanical and less human than she should have been. Nevertheless, Blunt delivers a powerful performance, and Cruise is masterful. The ending spells a deliverance that the viewer did not expect, and strong supportive roles by Bill Paxton and Brendan Gleeson (as the grouchy general who wants to destroy Cage’s pretty face) add layers of depth and nuance that the film might not have had otherwise. Tom Cruise is magnificent as he carries the entire film with ease, and he seems to be getting better with age.

This movie really has to be rated on two levels—a philosophical level and a purely cinematic level. For philosophy, it gets a 10 and for cinematic achievement it gets a 5, which averages out to 7.5. Director Spike Jonze raises questions that AI experts and philosophers have been arguing about since the invention of the Turing test in 1950. In this film Theodore Twombly, played by Joaquin Phoenix, comes across a new AI operating system called OS1, not to be confused with IBM's now discontinued OS/2 released in 1987. When Theodore signs on, he starts an interview where he is asked if he wants a female voice or male voice. He is also asked to describe his relationship with his mother. After being cut off in the middle of his reply, his very own, supposedly customized operating system comes to life in the form of Samantha, the voice of Scarlett Johansson. Samantha sorts his email and does other computerlike tasks, but her engaging personality is such that she can also talk to him about his problems, accompany him when he walks out the door (as long as he keeps his handheld computer with the photographic eye in his shirt pocket), and finally fall in love. Can a person fall in love with a computer operating system? Philosophically exploring this question is a great thesis, but it makes for a slow-moving film. The kind of man who would resort to this kind of romance, which includes two cybersex scenes that are positively uninviting, has to be a desperado. And Theodore is most definitely an antisocial nerd who has turned inwardly to such an extreme that he is pathetically deluded. He has a few coworkers he talks to, he has two friends in his building, and he has an ex-wife that is presented as the main reason he has receded into such a high level of self-stimulation. His full-time Internet-based job is to write letters for any occasion (****), and then he comes home and plays with 3-D video games. Such is his rather circumscribed life until he signs on to OS1 and meets Samantha. Phoenix does a good job of portraying the kind of antisocial behavior that is required for this lifestyle; but the characterization goes overboard, and Theodore elicits little sympathy from the viewer. He is too strange, too reclusive, and too disconsolate. After a while, the viewer starts to wonder where the film is going with this theme. The only tension to keep the plot moving is the question of how will Theodore resolve his delusional romance with an operating system. The film raises philosophical questions about the true nature of romantic love. Is everyone who falls in love deluded to some extent? Are we talking to the Other when we are in love, or are we talking to the illusion that we have created in our minds? And if a computer can simulate that illusion, then what is this emotional and psychological process really based upon? Phoenix's greatest scenes are when he is walking around with a goofy smile and a strange shimmer in his eyes because he is a man in love. But that biochemical/sociopsychological state has been induced by an entity that is basically a figment of his imagination, a computer program that acts like a human. The question of what is this thing called love takes on new dimensions. With respect to cinematic matters, the movie swerves into Theodore's banal and tepid friendship with a neighbor (Amy Adams), who like him, finds herself traumatically divorced. Flashbacks to his ex-wife (Rooney Mara) become overly repetitive, and the sterile world of the near future is constantly referencing a society that we already see on the streets—people walking around in public seemingly talking to themselves out loud, but they are really plugged in to their cell phones. The director noted in an interview that in order to provide contrast for the very blue skies, they introduced red into the landscape. This red color comes out as bright orange on the DVD version. It appears everywhere—Theodore's shirts, his interior décor, sheets and pillows, buildings, and even industrial trailers in the background are all a day-glow orange. One wonders what the symbolic significance of orange might be only to find out that it was all supposed to be red. Red has symbolic significance; orange does not. The streets of the futuristic city are in fact Shanghai. The mist in the background is not a theatrical element; it is merely the air pollution and smog that are poisoning the city in real life. In the end, Her has to tackle the problem of how to resolve a romantic relationship with a computer. We eventually reach a resolution in the final scenes, although it is not a logical or satisfactory conclusion. Theodore has presumably been changed by the experience although no radical change is evident, and the vague, open ending leaves more questions than it answers.

This should have been a great movie, one that could have possibly swept the Oscars. A small group of aging artists and art scholars who are physically out of shape get together out of a sense of universal and moral obligation, join the armed forces and undergo a painful basic training in order to undertake Mission Impossible. Theirs was not a separate peace, but actually a separate war—they were trying to save the history of Western culture and civilization. **** criminality as an insane, hysteria-ridden, and sadistic mass murderer was a separate issue from his interest in art. He had started out as an artist who flunked out of the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. His paintings and sketches were mediocre, dull landscapes and uninspired figures. **** lacked originality, style, and anything that even came near creative imagination. His rejection from the academy reportedly caused him to fly into a hysterical rage that was frightening to witness—it was a harbinger of what was to come. In the film,George Clooney, in the role of museum curator Frank Stokes (based on the real-life George L. Stout), is the leader of the seven men who were selected to try to retrieve the millions of paintings and sculptures that were stolen by the ****. Most pieces were stored in underground caves slotted to go to German museums. A significant amount of art was destroyed by the ****, not because of the “Nero decree” (**** instructions to destroy all military and transportation infrastructure if he should die or if Germany should lose), a decree which apparently did not mention art, but because avant-gardism (Picasso, Miro, Dali, Klee, and others) was considered by the **** to be unworthy of the spirit of the Third Reich and of poor or degenerate quality. The film, like most Hollywood cinema of a historical nature, is historically inaccurate, which is probably why director Clooney changed all the names of the original team. For a blow-by-blow analysis of all the inaccuracies, read “How Accurate Is The Monuments Men?” at ****. But even as a fictionalized account loosely based on a true story, the film runs amuck because it is difficult to follow the plot as the seven men split up and tackle different aspects of the situation, later reuniting for the final coup that takes place in the underground mines. Some of the best scenes are shown in the film trailer, such as the scene where Matt Damon, playing art restoration expert James Granger, is frozen in place because his foot is firmly planted on a land mine. When Clooney's Frank Stout has to recruit Damon's James Granger, there is an amusing chat at a bar where Stout informs his friend that the entire squad will consist of six men. When Granger objects to the small number, he's informed that he will bring the total to seven. “Oh, that's much better,” Damon (Granger) replies with a dry sarcasm. Clever conversations, which one would presume are Clooney's forte, are not predominant in the film. A much touted scene where Bill Murray, playing architect Richard Campbell, is in the camp shower and hears a Christmas recording from his family over the PA system gives an up-close and sensitive portrayal of his reaction. Nevertheless, the scene was set up in such a way that it was telegraphed well in advance and looked like it could have come straight out of MASH. The musical score is dramatic but at times distractingly grandiose. There's no romantic intrigue, except for an awkward flirtation between Damon's character and that of Cate Blanchett. They should have had an affair—it would have made Damon's character more complex and less dull. But with a brilliant round-up of actors like George Clooney, Matt Damon (replacing Daniel Craig who quit just before filming began), John Goodman, Cate Blanchett, Bill Murray, Jean Dujardin and Bob Balaban, not to mention Hugh Bonneville from Downton Abbey, this film was surprisingly low key and slow moving, and in the end it's the art that holds the viewers' interest, even though we did not get to see nearly enough of it.

Darren Aronofsy is being billed as “visionary” director, and in general, I would have to agree with that assessment. He's still young, and his fame is based on a mere handful of movies, so there are still great expectations for this brilliant and politically engaged director. With Noah, Aronofsky reached for the sky, almost literally, and went slightly askew in an attempt to do a strange admixture that included disaster movie, blockbuster-for-teenagers movie, and a Biblical epic that would appeal to the faith-based audience. It was a tall order. Did Aronofsky succeed? To a certain extent, although there are some glaring weaknesses. In general Noah is a sweeping and inspirational film. It explores the faith of one man who was chosen to lead the world forward after certain disaster, and also the frustration of dealing with G-d, who is often silent and remote, or who communicates with signs and wonders that are open to multiple interpretations. Let's not forget that in Exodus, Moses wants to know the Lord's name. The answer in Hebrew has been translated as “I am who I am,” which is inaccurate because it's more literally translated as “I will be what I will be.” What kind of name is that? G-d never gives a straight answer. His answers sound like a New Age philosopher. Yoko Ono would probably come up with lines like that. Aronofsky mined the Midrash, the rabbinical interpretation of the Bible, for some of his own interpretation. The Midrash is a good source, but Aronofsky also took some strange liberties. Probably the greatest anomaly in the film, or Aronofsky's most fantastical element, is that Noah supposedly received help in building the ark from a horde of fallen angels. These angels appear in the form of giant rock monsters, and they vaguely resemble transformers; they don't just help with the ark—they pretty much do all of the heavy labor. The idea of angels helping Noah is entirely acceptable; rock monsters, however, are a little off-the-wall. And the costumes sometimes look too modern—did they really wear scarves that are fashionably wrapped around their necks? (Aronofsky is often photographed wearing fashionable scarves.) In one scene, Noah (Russell Crowe) is wearing what vaguely looks like a polo shirt and jeans. There is an overemphasis on the purity and innocence of animals, and the sanctity of vegetarianism. Animals hunt and kill other animals, although they do it by instinct and not design. Aronofsky is reported to be a vegan. Some scholars say the Garden of Eden was meant to be vegetarian; others disagree. Nevertheless, if the Old Testament demanded it, every Orthodox Jew would be a vegetarian to this day. There are strict rules for koshering meat given in great detail in the Bible—killing an animal painlessly is paramount. Kosher slaughter is quick and painless; if pain is incurred even accidentally, then the meat is not kosher. Noah's vegetarianism may have been implied by a Biblical passage where permission to eat meat, with restrictions, seems to have been given after, but not before, the Flood. Another exaggeration in the film was that some kind of Industrial Revolution was destroying the Earth at the time. No one is sure when Noah lived. However, in Biblical times the population of the planet was just a tiny fraction of what it is today. Even if every individual did something to poison the Earth, with so few people, the affect would be negligible. Nevertheless, the Biblical version states that humans were evil and had to be wiped off the face of the Earth, with the exception of Noah and his family. The story is open to interpretation, especially if the entire story is an allegory, which is another theory. To complicate matters, shortly after the release of the film, Aronofsky announced that he was an atheist. Atheists are entitled to make Biblical films if they are so inclined, but for the faith-based audience, the director's atheism might be a serious sticking point, if not positively baffling.

This film might be better entitled, “Inside the Clinically Depressed Mind of Llewyn Davis.” If the world of music is often overglamorized, Ethan and Joel Coen have gone to great trouble to completely deglamorize it so that just about everyone who participates is a loser. That is, unless you happen to be the one person in the room who wins the lottery, such as the young Bob Dylan, who is briefly depicted at the end of the film as one of the neophyte folksingers who gets a break at the well-known Village nightclub, called the Gaslight Cafe, designed to be a public showcase for new talent back in the 60's. Beat poets like Allen Ginsberg gave readings there, and the Gaslight later metamorphosed into a club for folk music, where many young folk singers got a start. The swarthy and handsome Oscar Isaac, playing the title role of Llewyn Davis, does a superb job of depicting an angry, frustrated young folk singer who plays the Gaslight but just can't get a break anywhere, even though he briefly captured a recording contract when performing as part of a duo with a partner who later committed suicide. That is where the depression in this movie begins. Going solo, Davis cannot collect royalties on a single recording or attract the attention of a single agent. As a libertine and free-thinker who is self-absorbed and who lives for the moment, he has no spouse, no children, and no place to live. He crashes every night at the homes of friends, including a couple where he seduces his friend's wife (Carey Mulligan) and accidentally gets her pregnant. Because she only wants her husband's child and not Davis's, she requests that Davis pay for her illegal abortion. The critics had high praise for this film—in terms of making a film depicting someone who constantly makes bad decisions and leads a destructive lifestyle, and who is probably suffering from undiagnosed depression that causes him to explode into foul-mouthed tirades, the Coen brothers have done a good job. But since it is never clarified that this is a profile of mental illness, it becomes an unrelentingly stark and grueling portrayal of a talented young man who is on a hopeless downward spiral. Davis's self-centered and egomaniacal personality is such that he is unable to care about anyone but himself. He can't even be trusted with a cat. Three cats suffer from Davis's sociopathic indifference to the fate of others. There is not a single spark of sunshine in this man's life. His friends are at best friendly rivals. The woman he impregnated despises him. He is alienated from his sister and his nephew; his father is in a nursing home that is, like everything else in this film, dark, gloomy and joyless. Davis has no real desire to communicate with his father, and just as well, because his father is in the late stages of dementia and merely sits and stares blankly into space. The only sign of life is that his father soils himself while Davis is visiting, as if we needed more proof that everything in Davis's life is malfunctioning. Davis's finances have also broken down catastrophically. He has no money to buy a proper winter coat or a pair of boots. He is always freezing to death and malnourished. But when well-to-do friends take him in and ask him to play a song at dinner, he erupts in rage for being treated like a trained pony, when clearly he doesn't perform for free; he only performs to “make a living.” His day job was that he once worked as a merchant mariner, and when in desperation he tries to go back to sailing, he is, as always, met with insurmountable obstacles. I would not want to give away the ending, but there is no ending to give away. The ending starts over at the beginning. There is no redemption to be found here; no lesson to be learned. Except for a few songs that lift this film out of its perpetually bleak Weltanschauung, this story is purely the heavy-handed tale of a tragic hero who has no one to blame but himself.

In terms of freshness, this entertaining comedy is unique. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever explored the behind-the-scenes world of the voice-over artist. Many films have shown the trials and tribulations that thespians have to bear when the camera is rolling, but rarely do we see what goes on inside the sound booth. Lake Bell is the director, screenplay writer, and star of this film. She is a gifted mimic who can do a number of authentic-sounding accents, and has apparently been experimenting and practicing since childhood. This film provides her with a perfect vehicle to showcase her prodigious talents. The story focuses on a young voice actress (Bell), who is trying to make a name for herself in the male-dominated world of voice-over. Her own father (Fred Melamed) is a living voice-over legend, and although he patronizes his daughter and encourages her to continue with her activities as a voice coach, he is extremely critical of her talent and dismisses the idea that she can ever achieve the same stature as her father. The film opens with dad telling his 30-year-old daughter, who is still living at home, that his young mistress is moving in, and he would appreciate it if she moved out that evening. She can't afford her own place, so she packs up and moves in with her married sister (Michaela Watkins). She then begins the daunting task of competing with the best male voice-over artists in Hollywood, stealing jobs from under their noses, but her real challenge is when she has to compete against her own father. The movie is inspired by the late Don LaFontaine, who, unknown to most moviegoers, is the most legendary voice-over artist who ever lived. He is famous for his melodious baritone voicing the introductory words, “In a world...,” a phrase that is said to be owned by his estate, although it is unclear how such a mundane phrase can be owned by anyone. In the invisible realm that exists within the sound booth, we see a world that parallels the more famous and familiar side of Hollywood. The voice artists have their own superstars, their own casting calls, their own awards ceremony—and, as depicted in the film, they even give out their own lifetime achievement award. It's a universe onto itself, and one that is largely hidden from the public. Being a master of one's voice involves taking care of one's voice the way a ballerina would take care of her feet. The film shows voice actors doing exercises that are almost comical, such as putting a cork in one's mouth and repeating all the vowels. Bell's character, Carol, is an ambitious, nervous, and hyperactive young woman whose antics are highly amusing—every time she lands a job and makes progress with her career, she does a little dance of joy that involves twirling her hoodie in circles while she gyrates hilariously, sticking her rear end in and out in a manner that may well be inimitable. Bell's character has a real gripe with young women whose voices are misused to be seductively childlike, an accent that Bell has a problem with in real life as well. She calls it the “sexy baby squeak.” It must be a southern California thing, because I have never met a teenager or a grown woman who talks like that, although I have occasionally heard this accent in Hollywood comedies (and there is a demonstration of the baby squeak in the film). Bell has said in interviews that she strongly objects to this accent, which she calls a dialect, because it makes intelligent women sound stupid. One has to admit that Bell's vocal tones are resonant and silvery, although you might ask why an intelligent performer such as she would make YouTube videos that show her prancing around in her underwear. Should she not be as concerned about looking stupid as she is about sounding stupid? Bell, however, pulls it off gracefully even though it's a shame that even the brilliant actresses have to show off their wares to attract the attention of [male] directors. [Revised 8/10/17]