Vacancy (2007)

The Review:

 In Vacancy Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale  (the reigning queen of The Underworld series) get some much needed marriage therapy when they spend the last night before the official divorce in a Bates motel where the free in-room movie is a snuff film that tries to feature them.  Nimrod Antal (the director of Kontroll a moody thriller set entirely in the Hungarian underground subway) like a scientist engaged in a rat labyrinth study, knows his way through the maze of alienation, claustrophobia and terror that Mark L. Smith's screenplay creates.   In the slow unfolding opening scenes that take place mostly within the confines of David and Amy Fox's small car, the fidgeting, the bickering and recriminations about blame for their failing marriage and dead son are intercut with shots of them seemingly talking alone in the speeding dark, the roof almost smashing down on top of their heads.  Clearly, this is a lost couple caught in the seat of their own individual sorrow and pain yet unable to break away from the mutual comfort that grief provides.  Antal quickly and efficiently underlines the psychology of these two, if tested, that can still fight for each other.  David and Amy are a lot more intelligent than the average horror movie victims (who die in a queasy and brutal series of dicers projected from their room VCR), and in a neat twist that makes Vacancy a small guilty pleasure, David really knows how to watch a film.  So, when the cameras are discovered and the mayhem begins this couple has a sensible escape plan that keeps them just barely ahead of the murderous Mason (an overheated performance by Frank Whaley) , the front desk manager with an auteur streak, and his masked assassins.   The delight of watching David and Amy crawling through the gangs secret underground tunnels, attic crawl spaces and booby hatches is only mildly marred by the stupidity of Mason's gang-- even though Frank Whaley does a good slow burn.   The moral of all this is: "Watch a movie, really watch a movie, it just might save your life."  Vacancy gets a B.     

The Plot: (from IMDB.com)

David and Amy Fox find themselves stranded in the middle of nowhere when their car breaks down. Luckily, they come across a motel with a TV to entertain them during their overnight stay. However, there's something very strange and familiar about the Grade-Z slasher movies that the motel broadcasts for its guests' enjoyment. They all appear to be filmed in the very same room they occupy! Realizing that they are trapped in their room with hidden cameras now aimed at them filming their every move, David and Amy desperately find a means of escape through locked doors, crawlspaces and underground tunnels before they too become the newest stars of the mystery filmmaker's next cult classic!

The Credits: (from The New York Times)

Directed by Nimrod Antal; written by Mark L. Smith; director of photography, Andrzej Sekula; edited by Armen Minasian; music by Paul Haslinger; production designer, Jon Gary Steele; produced by Hal Lieberman; released by Screen Gems. Running time: 80 minutes.

WITH: Luke Wilson (David Fox), Kate Beckinsale (Amy Fox), Frank Whaley (Mason) and Ethan Embry (the Mechanic).

"Vacancy" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). The usual: knife and gun violence, brief female nudity, profanity.

Broken English(2007)

The Review:

It is usually a bad sign when a romantic comedy adopts the point of view of its lovelorn heroine.  In Broken English, Parker Posey plays Nora Wilder, a woman approaching the angst of a marriagless middle age in such a high strung dither that she gets anxiety attacks at the though of just a date.  Her life is a parade of watching the already attached ask about the non-men in her life.  The men she does go out with use her either as an acting exercise or a practice date.  That is until Julian, a kind and understanding Frenchman, pops into her life.  Broken English has all the elements of romantic comedy with none of the lightness of tone.  Parker Posey gives a naturalistic performance and the whole film is shot in the greens and grays of a documentary (a la the John Cassavetes style) by first time director Zoe Cassavetes (yes, the daughter of THAT Cassavetes and Gena Rowland who makes a cameo).  All the elements of her dad's style are on display-- and yet, they only bring the picture down.  The dislocation is akin to being stuck in an Ingmar Bergman drama that is being directed as a comedy by Woody Allen.  The homage kills the movie.  Her dad may have taught her what was good.  Zoe will have to figure out for herself how to do it right.   Broken English gets a B-.    

The Plot: (from IMDB.com)

Nora Wilder is freaking out. Everyone around her is in a relationship, is married, or has children. Nora is in her thirties, alone with job she's outgrown and a mother who constantly reminds her of it all. Not to mention her best friend Audrey's "perfect marriage". But after a series of disastrous dates, Nora unexpectedly meets Julien, a quirky Frenchman who opens her eyes to a lot more than love.

The Credits: (from The New York Times)

Written and directed by Zoe Cassavetes; director of photography, John Pirozzi; edited by Andrew Weisblum; music by Scratch Massive; production designer, Happy Massee; produced by Jason Kliot, Joana Vicente and Andrew Fierberg; released by Magnolia Pictures and HDNet Films. Running time: 90 minutes.

WITH: Parker Posey (Nora Wilder), Melvil Poupaud (Julien), Drea de Matteo (Audrey Andrews), Justin Theroux (Nick Gable), Peter Bogdanovich (Irving Mann), Tim Guinee (Mark Andrews), James McCaffrey (Perry), Gena Rowlands (Vivien Wilder-Mann) and Josh Hamilton (Charlie).

“Broken English” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned) for some sexual content, brief drug use and language.

Resurrecting the Champ(2007)

The Review:

When Samuel L. Jackson gives a knockout performance the rest of the cast spars along.  In Resurrecting the Champ Josh Hartnett, however, is content to take the dive.  It is an oddly effective choice for this tale of journalistic screw-up, about not following through and checking the facts of the story on a homeless ex-boxer who is not what he contends-- at least for the first third.  When Champ turns to fighting the ghosts of the past-- the famous father, the failed marriage, the lies of self-importance he tells his son-- Hartnett has none in the closet.  His emotional life, all one note of it, rings dead, unconscious, down for the count.   Samuel L. Jackson, as the pretender, is left to spar alone.  His voice pummeled to a rasp of too much gin, heartache and blood soaked punches; his eyes filled with pain, loneliness, and the hunger for self-regard;  the body stooped like a sagging punching bag; Jackson's performance goes the full fifteen.  There is just enough pathos to make him tragic.  With a little better main support and some streamlining, Resurrecting the Champ could have been another Million Dollar Baby instead of just partly alive.  It is sad to see an almost good film die alone in an alley.  It gets a B-.     

The Plot: (from IMDB.com)

Up-and-coming sports reporter (Hartnett) rescues a homeless man ("Champ", Jackson) only to discover that he is, in fact, a boxing legend believed to have passed away. What begins as an opportunity to resurrect Champ's story and escape the shadow of his father's success becomes a personal journey as the ambitious reporter reexamines his own life and his relationship with his family.

The Credits: (from The New York Times)

Directed by Rod Lurie; written by Michael Bortman and Allison Burnett; director of photography, Adam Kane; edited by Sarah Boyd; music by Larry Groupé; production designer, Ken Rempel; produced by Mike Medavoy, Bob Yari, Marc Frydman and Rod Lurie; released by Yari Film Group. Running time: 111 minutes.

WITH: Samuel L. Jackson (Champ), Josh Hartnett (Erik), Kathryn Morris (Joyce), Rachel Nichols (Polly), David Paymer (Whitley), Teri Hatcher (Andrea Flak), Dakota Goyo (Teddy) and Alan Alda (Metz).

“Resurrecting the Champ” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has some strong language.

Mr. Bean's Holiday(2007)

The Review:

The Jacque Tati reference (Mr. Hulot's Holiday) in Mr. Bean's Holiday makes obvious all that Rowan Atkinson steals from other cinema clowns.   Where Mr Hulot actually had a holiday on the beach, Mr Bean spends eighty percent of his screen time just trying to get there.   Both are walking disasters.  Where Tati found humor in good intentions gone bad, Bean finds calamities in slightly bad intentions gone worse.  The typical Bean routine is a mini-sermon on the follies wrought by an unchecked ego. Here, Bean has won a trip to Cannes (at the time of the film festival) in a church lottery only to be straddled with a French tot (an homage to Charlie Chaplin's The Kid) when Bean's desire for the perfect video shot of him boarding the TGV train causes the boy's father to miss the pull-out.  A comic road trip ensues where misunderstanding (everyone thinks the boy may have been kidnapped) and survival comedy ( a funny one involves a stolen speaker and a recording of an opera diva singing a death aria) makes for some wryly amusing comic moments.  Willem Dafoe shows up providing some wonderful support as the counterpointing uber-Bean character: an overweening, talkative American director obsessed with recording every boring, overly symbolized, voiced-over minutiae of his life as much as much as Bean is entranced with filming his own stupidity.  All the slightly overexposed takes, and at times charming connections to past comic works had me thinking that some subtle commentary was being sneaked by, that Mr. Bean's Holiday was trying to be a G-rated subversive work of art.   Then, that would be giving Mr. Bean's Holiday a little too much credit.   It gets a B.     

The Plot: (from IMDB.com)

Mr. Bean enters a church raffle and wins a vacation trip to France as well as a camcorder. After boarding a Eurostar train and arriving in Paris, the French language proves a barrier for Bean, as he struggles to get across the city to catch a train to the south of France from the Gare de Lyon. Taking time to order a meal, he finds the consumption of a seafood platter to be a challenge. Just before catching his train, he asks Emil, a Russian film director on his way to be a judge at the Cannes Film festival to use his camcorder to record his boarding, but accidentally causes Emil being left behind at the station. Bean attempts to cheer up the director's son Stepan as the train continues south but matters are made more hectic by the fact that Emil has reported his son to have been kidnapped and Bean losing his wallet and essential travel documents at a pay phone where he and Stepan attempt to contact Emil. Heading in the direction of Cannes, Bean finds himself in the cast and disrupting the flow of a commercial being shot by the egotistical director Carson Clay. He and Stepan finally hitch a ride with the young and vivacious actress Sabine who is heading to Cannes to attend the premiere of Clay's film, in which she appears. After Bean sneaks into the showing, his camcorder images are destined to enliven the proceedings.

The Credits: (from The New York Times)

Directed by Steve Bendelack; written by Hamish McColl and Robin Driscoll, based on a story by Simon McBurney and the original character created by Rowan Atkinson and Richard Curtis; director of photography, Baz Irvine; edited by Tony Cranstoun; music by Howard Goodall; production designer, Michael Carlin; produced by Peter Bennett-Jones, Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner; released by Universal Pictures. Running time: 87 minutes. This film is rated G.

WITH: Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean), Emma de Caunes (Sabine), Jean Rochefort (Maître D’), Karel Roden (Emil), Max Baldry (Stepan) and Willem Dafoe (Carson Clay).

Zodiac (2007)

The Review:

Zodiac, the first film from David Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club, Panic Room) in five years, is an edgy obsessive masterpiece that burrows deep into the mystery of the ultimately irresolute, the seeming tantalizing solvable.  Facts and circumstances are criminalized, bent, taunted and flaunted by a perpetrator that uses ciphers, letters  and occasional red herrings with the knowledge that proof doesn't prove anything.  He uses the whole sick process to get away with it all.  The main characters are all driven crazy by their obsession to turn the circumstantial into conclusive proof. Paul Avery, the media bloodhound (Robert Downey Junior brilliantly playing the Robert Downey Junior character) tumbles from the interpreter of reality, the creator of public perception, to a booze and drug addled paranoid fearful for his life and seeking invisibility outside the jurisdiction of the killer's mind by moving two hours away from the crime scene to a houseboat in Sacramento and writing for a paper that the Zodiac never reads. Inspector David Toschi (a taciturn Mark Ruffalo) is demoted to the powerless comfort of a beat desk when the Zodiac cases criss-cross precincts, turn cold, and start to look to his superiors like an obsessed cop's crusade that is now wasting departmental time and resources.  Robert Graysmith,  an editorial cartoonist, a doodler use to seeing and drawing the big picture, connects the dots only after endlessly reviewing the articles neatly collected in family photo albums, the scattered crime archives and reinterviewing the witnesses until he is able to nail down every moment.  Jake Gyllenhaal perfectly encapsulates the patient studious character, the librarian hero, the rescuer of knowledge from powerlessness that David Fincher sees as the illuminating grace of Zodiac.  The picture has the intentional claustrophobic feel of being locked up in a file cabinet for three hours-- a really interesting one filled with the great secrets of life waiting to be opened up, lit, and read.  (The cinematography has the opacity of a time seared manilla folder.) Zodiac gets an A.   

The Plot: (from IMDB.com)

A serial killer in the San Francisco Bay Area taunts police with his letters and cryptic messages. We follow the investigators and reporters in this lightly fictionalized account of the true 1970's case as they search for the murderer, becoming obsessed with the case. Based on Robert Graysmith's book, the movie's focus is the lives and careers of the detectives and newspaper people.

The Credits: (from The New York Times)

Directed by David Fincher; written by James Vanderbilt, based on the books “Zodiac” and “Zodiac Unmasked” by Robert Graysmith; director of photography, Harris Savides; edited by Angus Wall; music by David Shire; production designer, Donald Graham Burt; produced by Mr. Vanderbilt, Mike Medavoy, Arnold W. Messer, Bradley J. Fischer and Cean Chaffin; released by Paramount Pictures. Running time: 158 minutes.

WITH: Jake Gyllenhaal (Robert Graysmith), Mark Ruffalo (Inspector Dave Toschi), Robert Downey Jr. (Paul Avery), Anthony Edwards (Inspector Bill Armstrong), Brian Cox (Melvin Belli), Elias Koteas (Sgt. Jack Mulanax) and Chloë Sevigny (Melanie).

“Zodiac” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It contains extremely graphic gun and knife violence, as well as alcohol abuse and cocaine use.

Death at a Funeral (2007)

The Review:

The British are never funnier than when they get punched in their stiff upper lips.  Death At a Funeral takes a great gleeful swipe at British composure and an even greater delight in burying  the corpse.  The mourners at the funeral of the beloved family patriarch unwittingly ingest psycho-hallucinogenic substances, a little doo-doo, commit unintentional manslaughter, blackmail, get naked and go generally daft.  The director Frank Oz, an American (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Bowfinger and the voice of Miss Piggy) throws the monkey wrench of American slapstick into the center of British farce and still manages to make Death At a Funeral a quintessentially British comedy, just sunnier.  America is returning the favor of the  British retooling of American genre movies (Paul Greengrass and The Bourne films being the prime example) by crossing the Atlantic and getting the British comedy out of the pea soup fog of black farce.  The great, but the very small in height Peter Dinklage pops up as a "wee" blackmailer who not only has photos of him and Dah in flagrante delecto, but also submits to the most outrageous example of 69 in film history.   Another example of America giving it to the Brits by adding a little sex comedy.  Still, Oz just manages to makes it a pretty much hit and miss affair.   More hits than miss.   He never really gets the right comic tone.  Still, Death At a Funeral is funny enough to make the most dour Brit laugh in recognition.   Its gets a B.     

The Plot: (from IMDB.com)

On the morning of their father's funeral, the family and friends of the deceased each arrive with his or her own roiling anxieties. The son, Daniel (Matthew MacFadyen), knows he will have to face his flirty, blow-hard, famous-novelist brother Robert (Rupert Graves), who's just flown in from New York--not to mention the promises of a new life he's made to his wife Jane (Keeley Hawes). Meanwhile, Daniel's cousin Martha (Daisy Donovan) and her dependable new fiancé Simon (Alan Tudyk) are desperate to make a good impression on Martha's uptight father--a plan that literally goes out the window when Simon accidentally ingests a designer drug en route to the service, leaving him prone to uncontrollable bouts of delirium and nudity in front of his potential in-laws. Then comes the real shocker: a mysterious guest who threatens to unveil an earth-shattering family secret. It is now up to the two brothers to hide the truth from their family and friends, and figure out how to not only bury their dearly beloved, but also the secret he's been keeping.

The Credits: (from The New York Times)

Directed by Frank Oz; written by Dean Craig; director of photography, Oliver Curtis; edited by Beverley Mills; music by Murray Gold; production designer, Michael Howells; produced by Diana Phillips, Share Stallings, Laurence Malkin and Sidney Kimmel; released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and Sidney Kimmel Entertainment. Running time: 90 minutes.

WITH: Matthew Macfadyen (Daniel), Keeley Hawes (Jane), Andy Nyman (Howard), Ewen Bremner (Justin), Daisy Donovan (Martha), Alan Tudyk (Simon), Jane Asher (Sandra), Kris Marshall (Troy), Rupert Graves (Robert), Peter Vaughan (Uncle Alfie), Thomas Wheatley (the Reverend), Peter Egan (Victor) and Peter Dinklage (Peter).

“Death at a Funeral” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian) for profanity, nudity, drug use and an excremental sight gag.

Superbad (2007)

The Review:

Like two lonely whales echo-locating for a mate, Seth (a rotund, bug eyed, perpetually peeved Jonah Hill) and Evan (a squared off, nerdy looking Michael Cera emitting total good boy charm) bark the sexual profanity of love-lorn nerds on the prowl.  Superbad is that classic of teen cinema that is great at perfectly translating the oral jisms of the lonely adolescent male.  Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg haven't created a comedy.  They have created an (autobiographical) anthropological study of the eternal quest for all young males for booze and sex.  Seth and Evan want to get it all before they go off into that bleak world of adulthood (read college). Sure, Superbad travels the journey of all teen comedies, but does it with heart and the realistic knowledge that all the dirty words are just a call for attention and understanding.  Seth and Evan are constantly bumping into the ruder elements of the adult world, are punched and bloodied, and still come out clean.  The rude surprise of Superbad is that the adults, two cops intent on overstepping the law in the prankish way possible  (overplayed by Seth Rogen and Bill Hader with a queasy loutishness),  really want to be kids. The stupidity of officers Slater and Michaels wears thin after ten minutes, and drags the film down for the remainder of their screen time.  Superbad  aims for the no surprise charm of Seth and Evan (and the female world that matters) realizing what really great guys they are.   In the end they know that they must part and go into that world alone.   Superbad gets a supergood B+.  

The Plot: (from IMDB.com)

Three teenage friends Seth (Jonah Hill), Evan (Michael Cera), and Fogell, AKA McLovin (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) have only two more weeks before they graduate from high school. They have one mission in life and that is to score with a hot chick before they graduate. The only problem with that scenario is that all three are geeky nerds. Yet there is light at the end of the tunnel when Seth and Evan are invited to a wild party at one of the hot chicks house. However, the only way they can come is if they buy the liquor for the party. Fogell comes to the rescue with a fake ID. All three are driven to make this a night to remember, and what happens to them over the next several hours will be burnt into their memories forever. Douglas Young (the-movie-guy)

The Credits: (from The New York Times)

Directed by Greg Mottola; written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg; director of photography, Russ Alsobrook; edited by William Kerr; music by Lyle Workman; production designer, Chris Spellman; produced by Judd Apatow and Shauna Robertson; released by Columbia Pictures. Running time: 117 minutes.

WITH: Jonah Hill (Seth), Michael Cera (Evan), Seth Rogen (Officer Michaels), Bill Hader (Officer Slater), Kevin Corrigan (Mark), Joe Lo Truglio (Francis the Driver), Martha MacIsaac (Becca), Emma Stone (Jules), Aviva (Nicola) and Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Fogell).

“Superbad” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Supernaughty.

White Light/Black Rain:  The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (2007)

The Review:

White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is a living testament  for the survivors of the only nuclear bombs dropped on humanity.  It is a tribute to the soul's ability to withstand the most horrible blows. It provides for a national remembrance for a country on the verge of national Alzheimer's. Seventy-five percent of Japan's present population was born after the events of August 6, 1945.  The director Steven Okazaki in the beginning of White Light/Black Rain randomly questions Hiroshima teens out avidly shopping about the significance of that date.  Not one showed any knowledge of what happened.  “I’m bad at history,” says one girl gleefully.  The fourteen "Pika don" (“‘Pika don’ was like a dirty word for the bomb, one survivor says.  Pika don people became untouchables.”) given voice document discrimination both public and national.  The government refused to acknowledge them and give them benefits of any kind until they formed their own Political Action Committee and shamed the now non-imperialist democratic government into granting them lifetime health benefits.   "It is as if they were just waiting for us to die," says one survivor. Graphic color and black & white footage of the aftermath, most of it culled from newly released American government medical archives shows the human picture, while the survivors (many of them relating the events for the first time in their lives) movingly evoke the emotional and mental radiation that has encompassed their entire life.  Sakue Shimohira  (just ten years old at the time) remembers how she and her sister watched the body of her mother collapse to ashes at their smallest touch.  Her sister despondent "jumped in front a train going at full speed," relates Shimohira.  She wanted to do the same, but at the last second jumped away.  “I realized,” she says, “There are two kinds of courage, the courage to die and the courage to live.”  White Light/Black Rain is a moving testament to all those who had the courage to live.  It gets an A+.

The Plot: (from IMDB.com)

As global tensions rise, the unthinkable now seems possible. The threat of nuclear weapons of mass destruction has become frighteningly real. WHITE LIGHT/BLACK RAIN: THE DESTRUCTION OF HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI, by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Steven Okazaki, looks at the reality of nuclear warfare with first-hand accounts from those who survived and whose lives were forever changed by the atomic bomb.
Even after 60 years, those bombings continue to inspire argument, denial and myth. Surprisingly, most people know nothing or very little about what happened on August 6 and 9, 1945, two days that changed the world. This is a comprehensive, straightforward, moving account of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the point of view of the people who were there.
Featuring interviews with fourteen atomic bomb survivors, many of whom have never spoken publicly before, and four Americans intimately involved in the bombings, WHITE LIGHT/BLACK RAIN provides a detailed exploration of the bombings and their aftermath. In a succession of riveting personal accounts, the film reveals both unimaginable suffering and extraordinary human resilience. Survivors (85% of victims were civilians) not vaporized during the attacks (140,000 died in Hiroshima, 70,000 in Nagasaki) continued to suffer from burns, infection, radiation sickness and cancer (another 160,000 deaths). As Sakue Shimohira, ten years old at the time, says of the moment she considered killing herself after losing the last member of her family: I realized there are two kinds of courage the courage to die and the courage to live.
Other survivors include: Kiyoko Imori, just blocks from the hypocenter, she is the only survivor of an elementary school of 620 students. Keiji Nakazawa, who lost his father, brother and two sisters, then devoted his life to re-telling his story in comic books and animation. Shuntaro Hida, a young military doctor at the time, began treating survivors immediately after the explosion and, 60 years later, continues to provide care for them. Etsuko Nagano still cant forgive herself for convincing her family to come to Nagasaki, just weeks before the bombing. With a calm frankness that makes their stories unforgettable, the survivors bear witness to the unfathomable destructive power of nuclear weapons. Their accounts are illustrated with survivor paintings and drawings, historical footage and photographs, including rare or never before seen material.
Steven Okazaki met more than 500 survivors and interviewed more than 100 before choosing the 14 people in the film. He says, Their stories are amazing, shocking, and inspiring.
WHITE LIGHT/BLACK RAIN, an HBO Documentary Film, details the human costs of atomic warfare and stands as a powerful warning that with enough present-day nuclear weapons worldwide to equal 400,000 Hiroshimas, we cannot afford to forget what happened on those two days in 1945.

The Credits: (from The New York Times)

Directed, written and produced by Steven Okazaki; Geoff Bartz, HBO consulting editor; Sara Bernstein, supervising producer; Sheila Nevins and Robert Richter, executive producers. An HBO Documentary Films presentation produced by Farallon Films.

Starter for 10 (2006)

The Review:

Starter for Ten is a British coming of age film with an oddly American charm reminiscent of a John Hughes teen comedy (The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles). That would make its star James McAvoy (The Last King of Scotland) the new Molly Ringwald.   The comparison is apt considering they are both freckled redheads that generate an engaging, effortless on screen charm and innocence.  Tom Hanks produced the film, and first time director Tom Vaughan is a Brit schooled in HBO and Showtime dramadies-- so there is no loss in the translation across the Atlantic.  Meaning that at its heart Starter for Ten is a romantic comedy with a university setting.  Done the British way this would be a tragedy of love lost and hard work found.  Here, all first year Bristol student Brian Jackson has to do is lose the wrong girl in order to find the right one while maintaining the friendship of his less educated mates and cram for a nationally televised college bowl competition. It is all pretty traditional stuff directed with a minimal of clutter and unnecessary complications and enough whimsy to work.  Get it done and let's all go to the pub cinema, really.   Starter for Ten only seems fresh to British eyes.  It gets a a B.

The Plot: (from IMDB.com)

Set in 1985, working-class student Brian Jackson (McAvoy) navigates his first year at Bristol University.

The Credits: (from The New York Times)

Directed by Tom Vaughan; written by David Nicholls, based on his novel; director of photography, Ashley Rowe; edited by Jon Harris and Heather Persons; music by Blake Neely; production designer, Sarah Greenwood; produced by Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman and Pippa Harris; released by HBO Films/Picturehouse. Running time: 96 minutes.

WITH: James McAvoy (Brian Jackson), Alice Eve (Alice Harbinson), Rebecca Hall (Rebecca Epstein), Catherine Tate (Julie Jackson), Dominic Cooper (Spencer), Benedict Cumberbatch (Patrick), James Corden (Tone) and Mark Gatiss (Bamber Gascoigne).

After the Wedding (Efter Brylluppet) (2006)

The Review:

After the Wedding is that rare melodrama that absorbs with its honesty.  Jacob (an angry, melancholic Mads Mikkelsen) after spending the last twenty years of his life charitably overseeing an Indian orphanage unwillingly returns to his native Denmark to discover the secret love and family he left behind.  The two former lovers recriminate, insinuate, and ultimately reconcile in a surprising and heartfelt way that reveals their selves, and the true nature of charity and family.  More spoilers would only ruin the movie.   This 2006 nominee for Best Foreign Language film, takes on the big themes of melodrama-- love, death and all the rest-- with the sparseness of the Dogme style. (Dogme 99 values the natural--  no artificial lights, only on location sets and music in pursuit of pure cinematic truth.  In practice, especially in the hands of its main advocate, Lars von Triers, it is a hypocrisy of itself: a self indulgent, over stylized cousin to cinema verite that is neither cinematic nor verite.) The gritty naturalistic lighting gives the underlying emotional honesty anchor.   After the Wedding feels like the first truly realized Dogme film. Just don't forget to bring a box of tissues.   It gets a well deserved A. 

The Plot:  (from IMdb.COM)

Jacob Petersen has dedicated his life to helping street children in India. When the orphanage he heads is threatened by closure, he receives an unusual offer. A Danish businessman, Jørgen, offers him a donation of $4 million dollars. There are, however, certain conditions... Not only must Jacob return to Denmark, he must also take part in the wedding of Jørgen's daughter. The wedding proves to be a critical juncture between past and future and catapults Jacob into the most intense dilemma of his life.

The Credits (from The New York Times)

Director - Susanne Bier; Screen Story - Susanne Bier; Executive Producer - Peter Aalbæk Jensen; Department Head Makeup - Charlotte Laustsen; Screenwriter - Anders Thomas Jensen; Executive Producer - Peter Garde; Composer (Music Score) - Johan Soderkvist; Producer - Sisse Graum Jorgensen; Cinematographer - Mørten Soborg

With:  Mads Mikkelsen - Jacob; Rolf Lassgård - Jørgen; Sidse Babett Knudsen - Helene; Stine Fischer Christensen - Anna
Christian Tafdrup - Christian; Frederik Gullits Ernst - Martin; Kristian Gullits Ernst - Morten; Ida Dwinger - Annette; Mona Malm - Grandmother; Meenal Petal - Mrs. Shaw; Neeral Mulchandani - Pramod, age 8

Becoming Jane (2007)

The Review:

Beware the filmic literary biography that concludes that great works are just moments from a writer's life written down verbatim.  The directors and writers should be trundled on the side of their heads for trivializing the art over the inspiration. Becoming Jane doesn't become Jane Austen. For the Jane addict their is an inevitable squeal of delight to see all the great moments of the six Austen opuses nicely checklisted and squared off in less than two hours.  For the rest of us, this is just another Austen adaptation shot nicely, with a decent cast of Brits barely concealing their distaste for being stuck in the one-hundredth serious costume drama of their careers.  Anne Hathaway (as her name implies) plays the young Jane as if she were stuck in a Shakespearean tragedy, intoning each Austen aphorism solemnly as blank verse.  No irony or wit is displayed in this heroine that talks about nothing but irony and wit. Only James McAvoy seems to be having the tiniest fun as the Darcy inspiration Thomas Lefroy.   He plays Lefroy as a snarkier Hugh Grant before he admitted he was caught with his pants down. He is the only true Austen character.   The rest is all a very unbecoming B-. 

The Plot: (from IMDB.com)

Jane Austen (Hathaway) is a young girl who wishes to be a writer while her mother (Walters) thinks otherwise. Although she is offered many marriage proposals she accepts none until the mischievous Thomas Lefroy (McAvoy) shows up and turns her world around. At first she finds him ignorant and self centered but as she gets to know him, they start to flirt and eventually fall in love. Lefroy became the inspiration for Mr. Darcy in one of Austen's most beloved novels, Pride and Prejudice. Lefroy's relatives disagree with the match and threaten to disinherit him if he marries her. Austen's mother also disagrees with the match for he will not be able to provide well for the family. As a result of this, Lefroy tries to convince his love to runaway with him. Instead, Jane stays with her family and ends her affair with Lefroy and begins to write some of her greatest works of all time.

The Credits: (from The New York Times)

Directed by Julian Jarrold; written by Sarah Williams and Kevin Hood; director of photography, Eigil Bryld; production designer, Eve Stewart; produced by Graham Broadbent, Robert Bernstein and Douglas Rae; released by Miramax Films. Running time: 112 minutes.

WITH: Anne Hathaway (Jane Austen), James McAvoy (Tom Lefroy), Maggie Smith (Lady Gresham), Julie Walters (Mrs. Austen), James Cromwell (Reverend Austen), Laurence Fox (Mr. Wisley), Ian Richardson (Judge Langlois), Anna Maxwell Martin (Cassandra Austen) and Helen McCrory (Mrs. Radcliffe).

This film is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has sexual innuendo.

The Night Listener(2006)

The Review:

  Robin Williams seems to do his best work when he thinks no one is watching.  In The Night Listener Williams plays Gabriel Noone a gay writer searching for the truth about a young boy's life of abuse at the hands of pedophile parents.  The manuscript comes over the transom of his publisher raw, shocking, bulging with life too horrible to be true.  And when Noone talks to the boy and his guardian, an ex-lover points out that the voices sound the same. The Night Listener then becomes a psychological drama between Noone and the boy's guardian Donna (an edgy, emotionally wrought Toni Collete) determined to keep the mystery alive.   Williams and Collette engage in a cat and mouse where the prize is identity itself:  the one you have and the one you create to keep the desperation of ordinary life at bay. The Director Patrick Stettner refuses to come down on either side of the question, at least until the disappointing end.  The coda is like the final scene of a bad horror film that wants a sequel. At least, The Night Listener is good at acknowledging the insanity that lies at the edge of all gripping literature-- the writer's need to both believe in and separate himself  from the story.     It gets a B. 

The Plot: (from IMDB.com)

In the midst of his crumbling relationship, a radio show host begins speaking to his biggest fan, a young boy, via the telephone. But when questions about the boy's identity come up, the host's life is thrown into chaos.

The Credits: (from The New York Times)

Directed by Patrick Stettner; written by Mr. Stettner, Armistead Maupin and Terry Anderson, based on the novel by Mr. Maupin; director of photography, Lisa Rinzler; edited by Andy Keir; music by Peter Nashel; production designer, Michael Shaw; produced by Robert Kessel, Jeffrey Sharp, John N. Hart Jr. and Jill Footlick; released by Miramax Films. Running time: 82 minutes.

WITH: Robin Williams (Gabriel Noone), Toni Collette (Donna D. Logand), Bobby Cannavale (Jess), Rory Culkin (Pete D. Logand), Sandra Oh (Anna).

Hostel(2006)

The Review:

Hostel a gory tale about a backpacking trip across Europe that goes wrong, tries to slap you with its nihilism and jolt the jaded horror movie fan with its elevated levels of gore.  Director Eli Roth sneakily filters the point of view through the Ugly American sensibility that most of Europe and the world has of the U.S., only to flip it into a neat little revenge fantasy.  The main characters: an Icelander twenty something, a college brat, and his square mensch friend are backpacking through Europe in search of easy drugs and sex.   They are suckered into Bratislavia where they become the victims of  a torture and murder club with high paying clients.   There are some uneasy associations with the holocaust.  The torturers are predominantly German speaking.  Bratislavia, a former communist bloc country has adopted a puked out remnant of American capitalism at its worst.  It has become a Queasyland for the rich bored and jaded. Even worse, the survivor is the ugliest of the Ugly Americans-- an American monster destroying the monsters of its own creation. If it wasn't so competently made its anti-American, misogynistic, homophobic nihilism wouldn't be so unsettling.    But it is, and so Hostel gets a very unnerving B.    

The Plot: (from IMDB.com)

Paxton, Josh and Oli are backpacking across Europe when they are told about a hostel in Slovakia. Once they hear that this hostel is infested with beautiful European woman who only want tourists, they quickly get on a train to the wonderful promise land. As soon as they get there, they start having the time of their lives. Soon after they arrive, they slowly start to realize that this hostel is hiding a terrible and dark secret.

The Credits: (from The New York Times)

Written and directed by Eli Roth; director of photography, Milan Chadima; edited by George Folsey Jr.; production designer, Franco-Giacomo Carbone; produced by Mike Fleiss, Mr. Roth and Chris Briggs; released by Lions Gate Films. Running time: 95 minutes.

WITH: Jay Hernandez (Paxton), Derek Richardson (Josh), Eythor Gudjonsson (Oli), Jan Vlasak (Dutch Businessman), Barbara Nedeljakova (Natalya), Jana Kaderabkova (Svetlana), Jennifer Lim (Kana) and Rick Hoffman (American Client).

Stardust (2007)

The Review:

If you're going to borrow characters from Shakespeare, take the good ones and not the castoffs.  The three witches from Macbeth have major appearances in Stardust.  They sacrifice animals and read entrails, but no prophecies are made.   The head witch Lamia  (played with a winking unctuousness by Michelle Pfeiffer in heavy old age makeup) is vain and desperate enough to use all the magic in her power to restore her lost youth and beauty. The other two serve only to bicker and give occasional moral support. Add to the mix a simple youth on a quest to prove his love and you have a fairy story.  Add more,  perhaps brothers evil enough to kill one another off and become the prophesied new king of the realm and you have a modern plot twist.  Add still more, a deus ex machina in the form of a swashbuckling cross dressing Captain Shakespeare (played with great abandon by a gleefully tongue in cheek Robert De Niro) patrolling the skies in a dirigible pirate ship and you have a modern anachronism enshrouded in a pirate tale enshrouded in a gay comedy.   (That is The Pirates of the Caribbean influence.)  Stardust gets strangled in its own fog of  plot, something a fairy tale should never do.   (They are after all  meaning not meanings, symbol but not symbolism.  They should  exist in their own self-contained world and logic.) It makes the mistake of having its hero play early as a mistaken love sick fool, and more importantly, it makes the quest an errant one.    It mistakes accident for destiny.  Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake; Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) who made his fame on the modern English gangster picture knows enough to keep the visuals nice and the action tight and changing, but can't resist resorting to winking awareness in a story that exists purely on motive and no psychology. He makes Stardust too aware for its own good.  Vaughn makes Stardust a fractured fairy tale.   It gets a B.

The Plot: (from IMDB.com)

The Credits: (from The New York Times)

Stardust” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has mild violence and off-color humor.

Directed by Matthew Vaughn; written by Jane Goldman and Mr. Vaughn, based on the novel written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Charles Vess; director of photography, Ben Davis; edited by Jon Harris; music by Ilan Eshkeri; production designer, Gavin Bocquet; produced by Mr. Vaughn, Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Michael Dreyer and Mr. Gaiman; released by Paramount Pictures. Running time: 130 minutes.

WITH: Claire Danes (Yvaine), Charlie Cox (Tristan), Sienna Miller (Victoria), Ricky Gervais (Ferdy the Fence), Jason Flemyng (Primus), Rupert Everett (Secundus), Peter O’Toole (the King), Michelle Pfeiffer (Lamia) and Robert De Niro (Captain Shakespeare).

Walmart:  The High Cost of Low Price(2005)

The Review:

Documentaries like Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price aim to impress with their long lists of corporate sins documented, interviewed, and redocumented again.  They just forget to add something new, something shocking the average person hasn't read or seen in the local paper.  Without that emotional need, the blunt force approach to documentary making never fully convinces.  The Roger Moore's of this world knows this and as a result create memorable films that convince with real heartache even as they bulge with agitprop.  The Robert Greenbaum's get stuck with the nice films that get get buried in the midnight slush of Starz Cinema or HBO.  Some of the sins of Walmart: killing local mom and pop businesses, cheap foreign labor forced to lie and work long hours, sexual and racial discrimination,  environmental abuse, too much in store security and not enough preventing the real crimes occurring in the parking lot,  deliberately fudging hours to avoid paying overtime and more. So much paper, facts and talk (most of it from ex-Walmart employees) is pushed about that the viewer is left numb from the weight avalanching from above.   It is nice.  It is convincing.  It is also somewhat sterile.  Walmart: the High Cost of Low Price gets a low cost B.  

The Plot: (from IMDB.com)

This documentary takes the viewer on a deeply personal journey into the everyday lives of families struggling to fight Goliath. From a family business owner in the Midwest to a preacher in California, from workers in Florida to a poet in Mexico, dozens of film crews on three continents bring the intensely personal stories of an assault on families and American values.

The Credits: (from The New York Times)

Directed by Robert Greenwald; director of photography, Kristy Tully; edited by Chris Gordon, Douglas Cheek, Robert Florio and Jonathan Brock; music by John Frizzell; produced by Mr. Greenwald, Jim Gilliam and Devin Smith; released by Brave New Films. In Manhattan at the Village East, Second Avenue at 12th Street, East Village. Running time: 97 minutes. This film is not rated.

Waist Deep(2006)

The Review:

Rapper Tyrese Gibson can deliver quite a bit of gangsta intensity.  Unlike the rest of the hoods in the annoyingly arch Waist Deep, Tyrese delivers it with a ferocious sincerity that gives credence to the anger of this father seeking to retrieve his kidnapped son from the local gang king.  The rest of the cast emotes as if silence doesn't exist in their vocabulary. In fact,  Waist Deep plays so fast and loose with black stereotypes that it never really notices that its own racial insult. The director, Vondie Curtis Hall (the Mariah Carey atrocity Glitter) manages to stage ok fights and chases, but he is never able to overcome the inherent silliness of the dialogue and the ineptness of a script that switches midfilm from a tale of black on black retribution to another about white on black persecution.  It aims for martyrdom only to slap on the cheesiest redemptive ending of the last five years.  Only a director who can't make up his mind would want it both ways. Even Tyrese becomes tired of all the indecision. In the last scenes Gibson's eyes droop and his mouth emit sonorous nonrappy sounds.  By then Waist Deep is already in way over its head.   Its gets a C-. 

The Plot: (from IMDB.com)

"I'll always come back for you," single father O2 tells his young son Junior. This parental promise is put to the test when O2 is suddenly plunged into a do-or-die situation; trying to go straight for Junior's sake, this recently paroled ex-con is forced to go back outside the law after his son is kidnapped in a carjacking. The resulting chase and shootout have left Junior in the hands of Meat, the vicious leader of the Outlaw Syndicate. O2's shady cousin Lucky tries to mediate, but is caught between criminal and family loyalties. The only person who can or will help O2 get his son back is wily street-smart hustler Coco, whose path fatefully crossed O2's just moments before the kidnapping. When Lucky gets word to O2 that Meat expects $100,000 for Junior's freedom, O2 and Coco seize the opportunity to pit rival elements of the South Los Angeles underworld against each other. "It's either all or nothing," realizes O2. With the clock ticking down, the heat between O2 and Coco rises as they become a lawbreaking couple, on an tear through a range of Los Angeles neighborhoods. Can they outwit the underworld and save Junior and themselves?

The Credits: (from The New York Times)

Directed by Vondie Curtis Hall; written by Mr. Hall and Darin Scott, based on a story by Michael Mahern; director of photography, Shane Hurlbut; edited by Terilyn A. Shropshire; music by Terence Blanchard; production designer, Warren A. Young; produced by Preston Holmes; released by Rogue Pictures. Running time: 97 minutes.

WITH: Tyrese Gibson (O2), Meagan Good (Coco), Larenz Tate (Lucky) and the Game (Big Meat).

Disturbia (2007)

The Review:

Generation Y can't handle the classics.  In Disturbia, the teen scene remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, Shia LaBeouf  doesn't so much inherit the Jimmy Stewart role as sweats it out.  LaBeouf's Kale serving three months of house arrest, ankled with an electronic monitoring device, his itunes and game subscriptions cut off, is forced out of boredom to become the neighborhood voyager.  This kid knows eerily too much about everything going on in his neighborhood, and his suspicions are uncannily right.   Kale is all knowledge with no power, reduced to jonesing for the new girl next door and watching helplessly as  the neighbor across the way, the one Kale knows for sure is a murderer, continues his serial killer ways. LaBeouf as great as he is playing conflicted nerd teens with an edge of despair, still is not quite ready to assume the Stewart Everyman mantle.  He'll need a little more chest on his hair for that. LaBeouf's roles are still more types than characters, more tricks and techniques than actual emotion, more seeming than being.  Eventually his manhood would catch up with him and he would be consistently great.  So Disturbia ambles along on a cloud of semi-menace and barely competent support that makes one wistful for the sneaky delights that Grace Kelly, Thelma Ritter and Raymond Burr were able to provide in the original-- irritating some with the need to kill off six characters while Hitch was perfectly fine with one,-- and only focusing on suspense when more gore and blood would pass it into the realm beyond PG-13.  The Tweens might think it is cool, but the adults would know that it is really a B.    

The Plot: (from IMDB.com)

After his father's death, Kale Brecht becomes sullen, withdrawn, and troubled -- so much so that he finds himself under a court-ordered sentence of house arrest after a run in with the law. His mother, Julie, works night and day to support herself and her son, only to be met with indifference and lethargy. The walls of his house begin to close in on Kale. He becomes a voyeur as his interests turn outside the windows of his suburban home towards those of his neighbors, one of which Kale begins to suspect is a serial killer. But, are his suspicions merely the product of cabin fever and his overactive imagination?

The Credits: (from The New York Times)

Directed by D. J. Caruso; written by Christopher Landon and Carl Ellsworth, based on a story by Mr. Landon; director of photography, Rogier Stoffers; edited by Jim Page; music by Geoff Zanelli; production designer, Tom Southwell; produced by Joe Medjuck, E. Bennett Walsh and Jackie Marcus; released by Paramount Pictures. Running time: 104 minutes.

WITH: Shia LaBeouf (Kale), David Morse (Mr. Turner), Sarah Roemer (Ashley), Carrie-Anne Moss (Julie) and Aaron Yoo (Ronnie).

The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)

The Review:

 Jason Bourne, a character that is all kinesis, thought welded to stimulus, has been blessed with a director in Paul Greengrass that knows and feels him to the core.  Only a director so intimate with the kinesis of film making can make the Bourne films such an action delight.  Greengrass has always been a political director.  United 93's seemingly objective account of the almost takeover of that ill fated plane that crashed into a Pennsylvania field, condemns in its evenhandedness all the little ineptitude's of the Bush administration that led to the worst (and still ongoing) tragedy of the new American century.   In the Bourne Ultimatum action and memory are fused.  The fights and chases erupt in a posttraumatic shock rife with both the threat of self-annihilation and the urgency of self-reclamation from a rogue government denying him the right to even know himself on any level other than what they define.   Bourne fights to shake off the black hood around him-- to see things clearly with his own eyes.   Greengrass chops shots so that they just barely register. They exist as a reflection that gathers wholeness over time. We see what Bourne can see only in shards. The Bourne Ultimatum is that perfect union of action and intent that every film strives for.  It gets an A.  

The Plot: (from IMDB.com)

Rogue agent Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) is being hunted by the people in the CIA who trained him to be an assassin. Still suffering from amnesia and determined to finally learn of his true identity, he is lured out of hiding to contact a journalist named Simon Ross (Paddy Considine), who has been following his story. Throughout his research, Ross has gathered valuable information about Bourne and Treadstone, which trained him. This is rather inconvenient for U.S. government official Noah Vosen (David Strathairn), who is hoping to start a new organization under the codename Blackbriar (which is briefly mentioned at the end of the first film) which would follow in Treadstone's footsteps.
With intent to kill Bourne and the journalist before they expose the program's disturbing secrets, Vosen sends agent Pamela Landy (Joan Allen) to lead the search effort. Simultaneously, Paz (Edgar Ramirez), one of the remaining living Treadstone assassins, is dispatched to find and neutralize Bourne and Ross. In order to finally learn of his true origins and find inner peace, Bourne will have to evade, out-maneuver, and outsmart the deadliest group of highly-trained agents and assassins yet.

The Credits: (from The New York Times)

Directed by Paul Greengrass; written by Tony Gilroy, Scott Z. Burns and George Nolfi, based on a story by Mr. Gilroy and the novel by Robert Ludlum; director of photography, Oliver Wood; edited by Christopher Rouse; music by John Powell; production designer, Peter Wenham; produced by Frank Marshall, Patrick Crowley and Paul L. Sandberg; released by Universal Pictures. Running time: 111 minutes.

WITH: Matt Damon (Jason Bourne), Julia Stiles (Nicky Parsons), David Strathairn (Noah Vosen), Scott Glenn (Ezra Kramer), Paddy Considine (Simon Ross), Edgar Ramirez (Paz), Albert Finney (Dr. Albert Hirsch) and Joan Allen (Pam Landy).

Lonesome Jim (2006)

The Review:

In Steve Buscemi's second directorial effort "Lonesome Jim", Buscemi takes the sad sack route again. This however, is a sweeter take.  Jim Rough (played with a perpetual moan just short of a whine by Casey Affleck) comes back home when his dreams about being a writer in the Big Apple take a sour turn. Jim, a victim of what he describes as "chronic despair",  is forced to take over responsibility for the family business when his older brother, consumed in his own discontent, intentionally smashes his car into a tree and survives; and his mom is wrongfully  imprisoned when the Feds discover that the business is a front for Fedexing drugs.  In responsibility Jim finds his cure in confronting the mom's younger brother Evil to do the right thing and confess that he mailed the drugs, by taking over the coaching of his brother's scoreless girls basketball team-- and an angel in Anika (the therapeutic Liv Tyler) a nurse and single mom with whom he has a semi-casual sexual relationship.  Buscemi is great in setting up situations where the barest, sharpest truths can be said and come off as deadpan wit.  He knows that, at least in the movies,  that the medium size despair is powerless in the face of persistent and cheerful innocence. Here, Mary Kay Place is great in providing the subtle cheerful support the plot needs.  She is that piece of optimistic parenting that children want to strangle and then kiss once they realized she has been right all her life.  Liv Tyler doesn't have to do much but smile and talk soothingly to make Buscemi look good.  It all gets a nice little B.         

The Plot: (from IMDB.com)

Jim runs out of money in New York and returns to the small Indiana town he grew up in. He doesn't enjoy being around his family and doesn't want to help out at the family business. After his brother ends up in a coma, he is forced to help out at the ladder factory his parents run. He meets his Uncle Stacey who is using the plant to disguise his drug dealing. Jim meets a beautiful nurse with a precocious son and starts a unsteady romance. Love and patience eventually help him to find some happiness in life.

The Credits: (from The New York Times)

Directed by Steve Buscemi; written by James C. Strouse; director of photography, Phil Parmet; edited by Plummy Tucker; production designer, Chuck Voelter; produced by Galt Niederhoffer, Celine Rattray, Daniela Taplin Lundberg, Jake Abraham, Gary Winick and Mr. Buscemi; released by IFC Films. Running time: 91 minutes.

WITH: Casey Affleck (Jim), Liv Tyler (Anika), Mary Kay Place (Sally), Seymour Cassel (Don), Kevin Corrigan (Tim) and Mark Boone Junior (Stacy).

Avenue Montaigne (2006)

The Review:

Leave it to the French to turn artistic malaise and artistic discontent into a sunny comedy.   Avenue Montaigne's three intersecting stories: a burnt out classical pianist wanting to retire, an art collector selling his life collection, and a popular soap actress wishing to do more serious stuff but stuck playing a Feydeau heroine in a comedy that lacks psychological depth-- all eventually chuck art for life.  They ramble in and out of concert halls, theaters and bars colliding with the life force that is Jessica (a most winningly sweet Cecile de France).  Fathers face death, sons and fathers quarrel, lovers spate and reconcile, and ultimately life wins out.  Where art fears to tread, life cheerfully rushes in.  Avenue Montaigne covers the basics so well, that its inherent conservatism in a country that is found of the dour pen and the poisoned cocktail seems surrealistically radical.  Comedy is after all just a tragic film run backwards in a projector.  Avenue Montaigne knows that point extremely well.  Catch it in Paris on a rainy day.  It gets an A-.

The Plot: (from IMDB.com)

Catherine, hugely popular (and wealthy) from her long-running television soap opera, longs for glory on the big screen. She prepares to star in a Feydeau farce about to open on the 17th, but despite all her success she wonders if her work has any value or meaning. Jean-François, piano prodigy with an international reputation, is preparing for a major Beethoven recital on the 17th, yet he basically just wants to be alone. Jacques, a businessman turned art connoisseur, has amassed an extraordinary, highly personal art collection, but on the 17th it will all be sold off. Catherine, Jean-François and Jacques have all devoted their lives to art, yet what kinds of lives has art given them? They sometimes cross paths and nurse their neuroses at a café where they are waited on by Jessica, recently arrived in Paris on her own quest for fame and fortune.

The Credits: (from The New York Times)

Directed by Danièle Thompson; written (in French, with English subtitles) by Ms. Thompson and Christopher Thompson; director of photography, Jean-Marc Fabre; edited by Sylvie Landra; music by Nicola Piovani; production designer, Michèle Abbé-Vannier; produced by Christine Gozlan; released by ThinkFilm. Running time: 100 minutes.

WITH: Cécile de France (Jessica), Valérie Lemercier (Catherine Versen), Claude Brasseur (Jacques Grumberg), Albert Dupontel (Jean-François Lefort), Laura Morante (Valentine), Sydney Pollack (Brian Sobinski), Christopher Thompson (Frédéric Grumberg) and Dani (Claudie).