At the Movies

Rachel Getting Married
Running time 113 minutes
Written by Jenny Lumet
Directed by Jonathan Demme
Starring Anne Hathaway, Debra Winger, Bill Irwin

Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married, from a screenplay by Jenny Lumet, is said to have been inspired by Robert Altman’s satirically free-wheeling A Wedding (1978), and probably by Ms. Lumet’s own experiences in an interracial family. As far as I’m concerned, weddings in movies tend to be guilty until proven innocent or even intelligent. Ever since the old Production Code was scrapped to allow last-minute mischief at the altar, as in Mike Nichols’ The Graduate (1967) and P.  read more »

Lola Montès
Running time 110 minutes
Written by Annette Wademant, Max Ophüls and Jacques Natanson
Directed by Max Ophüls
Starring Martine Carol, Peter Ustinov

Max Ophüls’ Lola Montès, from a screenplay (in French, German and English with English subtitles) by Annette Wademant, Max Ophüls and Jacques Natanson, is based (at least in the opening credits) on a novel by Cécil Saint-Laurent. But since no such novel exists, the credit is apparently erroneous, though Saint-Laurent (1919-2000) wrote the books from which several sex-kitten vehicles were derived for Martine Carol (1920-1967), the then very bankable star of Lola Montès.

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Allah Made Me Funny: Live in Concert
Running time 83 minutes
Directed by Andrea Kalin
Starring  Mohammed “Mo” Amer, Bryant “Preacher” Moss, Azhar Usman

Andrea Kalin’s Allah Made Me Funny: Live in Concert, from comedy material written and performed by Mohammed “Mo” Amer, Bryant “Preacher” Moss and Azhar Usman, strives to be both timely and funny as it confronts the problems of American Muslims in America after 9/11. It is certainly timely in this election year, in which one of the presidential candidates is being smeared by the use of his middle name, Hussein, though he is a Christian. One shudders to think what would happen if he, like the three comedians on display here, were a practicing Muslim.  read more »

Ashes of Time Redux
Running time 93 minutes
Written and directed ByWong Kar-wai
Starring Leslie Cheung, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung Chiu-wai

Wong Kar-wai’s Ashes of Time Redux, from his own screenplay (in Cantonese and Mandarin with English subtitles), is based on the novel by Louis Cha. It combines a martial-arts background with a fatalistic meditation in the foreground on lost loves and the vagaries of memories. One feels the passionate intensity of the filmmaker in every strand of his luminously intricate narrative. In a year in which Max Ophüls’ 1995 Lola Montès is being revived for the third time at the New York Film Festival, and rereleased at Film Forum, Wong Kar-wai suddenly strikes me the Asian Max Ophüls, and I can think of no higher praise.  read more »

Miracle at St. Anna
160 Minutes
Written by James McBride
Directed by Spike Lee
Starring John Turturro, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso, Omar Benson Miller, Matteo Sciabordi, John Leguizamo

Spike Lee’s Miracle at St. Anna, from a screenplay by James McBride (in English, Italian, German and Spanish, with English subtitles), is based on Mr. McBride’s heavily researched novel. Before launching into my very mixed review of Mr. Lee’s 20th feature film in an over-20-year largely self-promoted career in the industry, I must note that Mr. Lee once insulted me on an ABC Nightline panel after I had expressed my reservations about what I perceived as the excessive artiness of some of his projects.  read more »

The Class (Entre Les Murs)
128 minutes
Written by François Bégaudeau
Directed by Laurent Cantet
Starring François Bégaudeau, Franck Keita, Esmeralda Ouertani

Laurent Cantet’s The Class (Entre les Murs), from a screenplay by François Bégaudeau (in French with English subtitles), based on his book, is the opening-night film of the 46th New York Film Festival, an honor it richly deserves. Indeed, The Class ranks among the best classroom movies I have ever seen, and these include Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel (Der Blaue Engel) and Alf Sjoberg’s Torment (Hets), from a screenplay by Ingmar Bergman. I mention these classic clashes between youth and authority because in a much subtler and more nuanced way, The Class is disturbingly contemporary in its reflection of a spreading anti-intellectualism among the youth around the world, and not just among the youth.  read more »

The splendid David Lean retrospective concludes at the Film Forum with six of his late-career super-productions. If, as with early Fellini and late Fellini, I prefer early Lean to late Lean, I am sure that many readers will disagree with me, as they often do.

On Friday and Saturday, Sept. 19 and 20, Lawrence of Arabia (1962), with Peter O’Toole, Alec Guinness, Omar Sharif, Anthony Quinn, Jack Hawkins, Jose Ferrer, Anthony Quayle, Claude Rains, Donald Wolfit and Arthur Kennedy, screens at 2 and 7.

And on Sunday and Monday, Sept. 21 and 22, The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), with William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, Sessue Hayakawa, James Donald and Andre Morell, will be shown.  read more »

Moving Midway
Running time 95 minutes
Written and directed by Godfrey Cheshire

Godfrey Cheshire’s Moving Midway, from his own screenplay, provides a profound meditation on the paradoxes of race in America through a discovery of his own Southern family’s hitherto hidden secrets. Mr. Cheshire, a transplanted Northern film critic, was impelled to make the film when he learned that a North Carolina relative named Charlie Hinton was planning to move an 1848 plantation house known as Midway from its commercially overrun community outside of Raleigh, N.C., to an empty field some miles away.

But the film was shaped also by a second discovery, that of the existence in New York of another Hinton, Robert, an African-American professor of African studies at New York University, from a letter printed in The New York Times and signed “Robert Hinton.  read more »

Hounddog
Running time 93 minutes
Written and directed by Deborah Kampmeier
Starring Dakota Fanning, Robin Wright Penn, David Morse

Deborah Kampmeier’s Hounddog, from her own screenplay, has survived a disastrous screening of a rough cut at 2007’s Sundance Film Festival to open next week in New York. As Julie Bloom described this high-wire act in the Arts and Leisure section of the Sept. 14 Sunday New York Times, “It was known as the ‘Dakota Fanning rape movie’ [at Sundance]. The press screening for Hounddog elicited actual boos, not to mention eviscerating reviews. Even before that, evangelical groups protested the film after someone involved in its early financing alleged publicly and erroneously that Ms.  read more »

Lakeview Terrace
Running time 110 minutes
Written by David Loughery and Howard Korder
Directed by Neil LaBute
Starring Patrick Wilson, Kerry Washington, Samuel L. Jackson

Neil LaBute’s Lakeview Terrace, from a screenplay by David Loughery and Howard Korder, based on the story by Mr. Loughery, explores our interracial malaise at a time when we are facing the ultimate test of our true feelings on the tangled issues involved. Not that Lakeview Terrace is predominantly concerned with how whites perceive blacks. For once, the shoe is on the other foot when a mixed-race couple, Patrick Wilson’s grocery-store-chain consultant, Chris Mattson, and his African-American wife, Kerry Washington’s Lisa, move into a secluded Southern California community right next door to Samuel Jackson’s widowed LAPD officer, Abel Turner, who has two small children.  read more »

And now for some good movies. Film Forum, in association with the British Film Institute, is launching a long overdue two-week, 16-film retrospective, Sept. 12 to Sept. 25, of David Lean’s lushly directed, written, and acted works. If you like British acting, as I always have, you’re in for a nonstop treat. The series begins with two of Lean’s Charles Dickens classics on Friday and Saturday, Sept. 12 and 13: Great Expectations (1946), with John Mills, Valerie Hobson, Bernard Miles, Francis L. Sullivan, Finaly Currie, Martita Hunt, Anthony Wager, Jean Simmons, Alec Guinness, Ivor Barnard, Freda Jackson, Torin Thatcher, Eileen Erskine, and Hay Petrie, at 1, 5:25, and 9:50; and Oliver Twist (1948), with Alec Guinness, Robert Newton, John Howard Davies, Kay Walsh, Francis L.  read more »

The Women
Running time 114 minutes
Written and directed by Diane English
Starring Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Debra Messing

Diane English’s The Women, from her own screenplay, is supposedly based on George Cukor’s 1939 adaptation by Anita Loos and Jane Murfin of Clare Boothe Luce’s 1936 Broadway play. Both the 1936 play and the 1939 movie were funny in a bitchy, misogynist way. Luce was said to have loathed New York society women, and enjoyed ridiculing their fetishes and foibles. Ms. English’s strongly feminist take on the material divests the comedy of all its humor. Actually, Ms.  read more »

Burn After Reading
Running time 96 minutes
Written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
Starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton

Joel and Ethan Coen’s Burn After Reading, from their own screenplay, strikes me as one of the most willfully awful movies I’ve ever seen. What makes it even worse is that every one of the “name” performances—George Clooney, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, and Tilda Swinton—seem determined to best each other in projecting the idiocy of their caricatured middle-aged losers. Yet the early scenes are not intended for middle-aged audiences, but, rather, for teenage viewers and listeners who can be expected to howl with laughter at every gratuitous use of the F and S four-letter words.  read more »

August Evening
Running time 127 minutes
Written and directed by Chris Eska
Starring Pedro Castaneda, Veronica Loren, Abel Becerra

Chris Eska’s August Evening, from his own screenplay (in English and Spanish with English subtitles), was reportedly filmed for what is described in the production notes as an ultra-low budget of under $40,000. The 32-year-old Mr. Eska has already won for this, his debut feature film, the 2008 Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award, given to a feature film with a budget of under $500,000; the Best Film Awards at the Los Angeles and Woodstock Film Festivals; and the Best Ensemble Award from the Los Angeles Film Festival.  read more »

A Secret
Running time 105 minutes
Written by Claude Miller and Natalie Carter
Directed by Claude Miller
Starring Cécile De France, Patrick Bruel, Ludivine Sagnier, Mathieu Amalric

Claude Miller’s A Secret, from a screenplay by Mr. Miller and Natalie Carter, based on Philippe Grimbert’s autobiographical novel Un Secret, retitled in its English translation Memory, a Novel, transcends the perhaps perceived banality of still another film about the Holocaust with a marvelously nuanced narrative floating through time with memorable characters who never beg for our pity. Yet it touches on the ultimate horror of this insane period in world history by focusing not so much on the toll taken of the dead, but on the toll taken of the living survivors wracked with their life-blighting guilt.  read more »

Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Day of Wrath (Vredens Dag) (1943), from a screenplay by Dreyer, Paul Knudsen and Mogens Scot-Hansen, is being shown in a new 35mm print from New Digital Restoration in a special one-week run at IFC Center from Aug. 29 to Sept. 4. The film was shot in Nazi-occupied Denmark in the midst of World War II, and Dreyer fled Denmark shortly after the film was released. Hence, Day of Wrath was subsequently analyzed in some quarters as Dreyer’s allegory on the oppressive German occupation of Denmark. Be that as it may, it remains today a fierce attack on 17th-century religious intolerance and witch-hunting.  read more »

A Girl Cut in Two (Li Fille Coupee en Deux)
Running time 115 minutes
Written by Claude Chabrol and Cécile Maistre
Directed by Claude Chabrol
Starring Ludivine Sagnier, François Berléand, Benoit Magimel

Claude Chabrol’s A Girl Cut in Two (Li Fille Coupée en Deux), from a screenplay by Mr. Chabrol and Cécile Maistre, is the 51st film of Mr. Chabrol’s illustrious career, which began on an unusually high note with Le Beau Berge in 1958. Mr. Chabrol, now 78, once remarked that when confronted with the endless palaver about the French New Wave, of which he was one of the charter members from Cahiers du Cinema: “There are no Waves, New or otherwise, there is only the ocean.  read more »

My Mexican Shivah
Running time 98 minutes
Written by Alejandro Springall and Jorge Goldenberg
Directed by Alejandro Springall
Starring Sergio Kleiner, Blanca Guerra, Raquel Pankowsky, Sharon Zundel

Alejandro Springall’s My Mexican Shivah, from a screenplay by Jorge Goldenberg and Mr. Springall, based on a story by Ilan Stavans, is another of the recent examples of the Jewish Diaspora absorbed in the preservation of its identity and its rituals in countries around the world. As its title indicates, My Mexican Shivah is all about the seven-day mourning period after the death of a loved one. In this instance, grandfather Moishe (Sergio Kleiner), a patriarchal community’s life of the party, drops dead after cavorting to the noisy rhythms of a mariachi band.  read more »

I Served the King of England
Running time 120 minutes
Written and directed by Jiri Menzel
Starring Olrich Kaiser, Ivan Bamev, Julia Jentsch

Jiri Menzel’s I Served the King of England, from his own screenplay, based on the novel by Bonumil Hrabal, has been honored as the Czech Republic’s official selection for the 2008 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. But despite the grim, Holocaustal period in which the film is set, it is mostly bubbly and ebullient in its stylistic execution. The story begins on a physically absurdist note as a markedly short convict, Jan Dite (Olrich Kaiser), is led out of prison by a much larger guard after being released from 15 years of penal servitude for having collaborated with the Nazis during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia.  read more »

THE ROMANCE OF ASTREA AND CELADON
Running time 109 minutes
Written and directed Eric Rohmer
Starring Andy Gillet, Stephanie Crayencour

Eric Rohmer’s The Romance of Astrea and Celadon (Les Amours d’Astrée et de Céladon), from his own screenplay, is based on Honoré d’Urfé’s 17th-century novel, which itself is set in fifth-century Gaul; it is a pastoral romance involving the shepherds of the Forez plain. This is Mr. Rohmer’s most recent, and reportedly final, film. Actually, it is amazing that Mr. Rohmer, now nearing 90, has remained active and moderately bankable this long in a career that spans more than half a century, from Journal d’un scelerat in 1950 to L’Anglaise et le Duc (The Lady and the Duke) in 2001 and Triple Agent in 2004.  read more »

Bruce Goldstein has programmed a fantastic five weeks of French film noir and thrillers, spanning 1937 to 2000, and playing from now through Sept. 11 at Film Forum. The series has already begun, but it’s not too late to catch Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Cercle Rouge (1970), with Alain Delon, Yves Montand and Gian Maria Volonte, on Friday, Aug. 15, and Saturday the 16th at 1, 3:50, 6:40 and 9:30. Jacques Becker’s Touchez pas au Grisbi (1954), with Jean Gabin, Rene Dary, Lino Ventur and Jeanne Moreau, screens on Sunday the 17th at 2:55, 6:35 and 10:15, and Monday the 18th at 2:55; Melville’s Bob Le Flambeur (1955), with Roger Duchesne and Isabelle Corey, plays Sunday at 1, 4:40 and 8:20, and Monday at 1 and 4:40.  read more »

VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA
Running time 96 minutes
Written and directed by Woody Allen
Starring Penélope Cruz, Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, Javier Bardem

Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, from his own screenplay, is close to his 40th feature film in an almost 40-year career that began in earnest in 1969 with Take the Money and Run, and has proceeded through the years with more ups and downs, more ins and outs, more breakthroughs and breakups, and more hits and flops than that of any other director I can think of, from any period in film history. Now in his 70s, he has managed to astound me by coming up with one of the most felicitously written, edited, acted and directed romantic comedies of his entire career.  read more »

SIXTY SIX
Running time 93 minutes
Written by Peter Straughan and Bridget O’Connor
Directed by Paul Weiland
Starring Greg Sulkin, Eddie Marsan, Helena Bonham Carter, Ben Newton

Paul Weiland’s Sixty Six, from a screenplay by Peter Straughan and Bridget O’Connor, based on a story by Mr. Weiland, reminds me of a Brazilian film I saw not so long ago. That film climaxed with Brazil’s victory in the World Cup competition just as Sixty Six commemorates the year that England won the coveted international soccer title. I must say that the Brazilian movie on the subject had a more interesting political subtext than Sixty Six, which has been subtitled in the production notes as A True…ish Story, and is reportedly patterned after Mr.  read more »

ELEGY
Running time 108 minutes
Written by Nicholas Meyer
Directed by Isabel Coixet
Starring Penélope Cruz, Ben Kingsley, Patricia Clarkson, Peter Sarsgaard

Isabel Coixet’s Elegy, from the screenplay by Nicholas Meyer, based on the short novel The Dying Animal by Philip Roth, enters a metaphysical region between life and death that few films have ever dared to explore. Ms. Coixet and Mr. Meyer have managed to capture much of the bittersweet humor of Mr. Roth’s brilliant confrontation of old age, his own included. The director and the scenarist are aided in no small measure by a very accomplished cast headed by Ben Kingsley as David Kepesh, Mr.  read more »

FROZEN RIVER
Running time 97 minutes
Written and DIRECTED BY Courtney Hunt
Starring Melissa Leo, Misty Upham

Courtney Hunt’s Frozen River, from her own screenplay, plays out as one of the strongest feminist statements I have ever seen onscreen. Her two major characters, Ray (Melissa Leo), an abandoned trailer-park wife with two children, and Lila (Misty Upham), a similarly abandoned wife, whose mother-in-law has “stolen” her baby son, join forces in an alien-smuggling partnership across the frozen ice of the St. Lawrence River. Their alliance, formed out of desperate economic hardship, has a very rocky beginning, as Ray accuses Lila of stealing her husband’s car, which has been parked outside a Mohawk Reservation Bingo Hall with cash prizes.  read more »

In Search of a Midnight Kiss
Running Time 90 minutes
Written and DIRECTED BY Alex Holdridge
Starring Scoot McNairy, Sara Simmonds, Katie Luong, Brian Matthew McGuire

Alex Holdridge’s In Search of a Midnight Kiss, from his own screenplay, regards démodé downtown Los Angeles with the same fiercely lyrical affection Woody Allen has lavished on Manhattan over the decades. This alone would make the film strikingly original, but in addition, its tempestuous love story, with its heartbreaking complications, is well served by a cast of comparative unknowns. This talented assemblage is headed by Scoot McNairy as Wilson, the director’s alter ego, and Sara Simmonds as Vivian, the salty-tongued blind date who leads Wilson on a wild frolic across the well-worn streets of a part of Los Angeles that has known better days and years and decades.  read more »

BRIDESHEAD REVISITED
RUNNING TIME 135 minutes
WRITTEN BY Jeremy Brock and Andrew Davies
DIRECTED BY Julian Jarrold
STARRING Matthew Goode, Ben Whishaw, Emma Thompson, Hayley Atwell, Greta Scacchi, Michael Gambon

Julian Jarrold’s Brideshead Revisited, from a screenplay by Jeremy Brock and Andrew Davies, is based on the seductively class-ridden novel by Evelyn Waugh. This literary masterpiece has, strangely, never been made into a movie, though it was the source of a popular 12-hour television miniseries that aired in 1981, with Jeremy Irons, Anthony Andrews and Diana Quick in the lead roles now assigned to British newcomers Matthew Goode, Ben Whishaw and Hayley Atwell.  read more »

THE DARK KNIGHT
RUNNING TIME 152 minutes
WRITTEN BY Christopher Nolan and Jonathan Nolan
DIRECTED BY Christopher Nolan
STARRING Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Michael Caine, Aaron Eckhart, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gary Oldman and Morgan Freeman

Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, from a screenplay by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan, based on a story by Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer, is, of course, ultimately from a series of comic books published by DC Comics, with the creation of the Batman character attributed to Bob Kane. In the world of comic-book superheroes, the Batman franchise has specialized in the most eccentrically colorful villains. I still remember Michael Keaton’s Bruce Wayne/Batman character looking out of the corner of his eye at Jack Nicholson’s clownish antics as the Joker in Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman, the second such cinematic transfer after Laslia Martinson’s 1966 Batman, with Adam West reprising in a campy fashion his hit television role.  read more »

I finally caught up with that much abused chick flick, Sex and the City, directed by Michael Patrick King, from his own screenplay, based on characters from the book by onetime New York Observer columnist Candace Bushnell. I happened to have been a steady patron if not a rabid fan of the half-hour television series. How did the two-hour-plus movie compare with the HBO series? As the French would say, pas mal. It started slowly and unpromisingly in a giggly fantasy fashion, and when I use the term “fashion,” I do so advisedly. But when Sarah Jessica Parker is left at the alter by Chris Noth, all the pathos of a rejected 40-year-old woman floods her face with a burst of Zolaesque realism.  read more »

Diminished Capacity
Running time 92 minutes
Written by Sherwood Kiraly
Directed by Terry Kinney
Starring Matthew Broderick, Alan Alda, Virginia Madsen, Dylan Baker, Bobby Cannavale, Louis C. K.

Terry Kinney’s Diminished Capacity, from a screenplay by Sherwood Kiraly, is based on Mr. Kiraly’s gentle and yet hilariously hectic novel spoofing the insane predilections of people entangled in the mania surrounding the hunt for an obscure baseball card of a Chicago Cubs player from the early days of our national pastime. Again, as with The Wackness, for a low-budget project, Diminished Capacity is blessed with a blue-ribbon cast. Most notably, Matthew Broderick as brain-damaged Cooper, a downward-drifting Chicago journalist, and Virginia Madsen as Charlotte, a spunky, divorced mother of one and Cooper’s former flame in their hometown, LaPorte, Mo.  read more »

The Wackness
Running time 110 minutes
Written and directed by Jonathan Levine
Starring Josh Peck, Ben Kingsley, Olivia Thirlby, Famke Janssen

Jonathan Levine’s The Wackness, from his own screenplay, takes place in New York during the summer of 1994, when the newly inaugurated mayor, Rudy Giuliani, was beginning his now notorious crackdown on all sorts of petty crimes and even mere nuisances. His name is taken in vain several times during the course of the narrative, as if he and he alone were responsible for taking all the fun out of the Lindsay/Dinkins Fun City. Still, “fun” is spelled for the most part as D-O-P-E to the musical accompaniment of the hip-hop rants of the period.  read more »

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson
Running time 118 minutes
Written and directed by Alex Gibney
Starring Hunter S. Thompson, Johnny Depp

Alex Gibney’s Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, narrated by Johnny Depp, gets so far inside the tortured soul of its subject through his writings, musings and media sightings that it is amazing how much of the outside world breaks in to illuminate the political and social convulsions Hunter both reported and embodied. Indeed, Gonzo turns out to be the most absorbing film, fiction or nonfiction, I have seen this year.  read more »

The Last Mistress (Une Vieille Maitresse)
Running time 104 minutes
Written and directed by Catherine Breillat
Starring Fu’ad Ait Aattou, Asia Argento, Roxane Mesquida, Claude Sarraute

Catherine Breillat’s The Last Mistress (Une Vieille Maitresse), from her own screenplay, is based on Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly’s provocative 19th-century novel, and is her most ambitious undertaking to date in terms of a formal narrative with period costumes and a targeted mainstream audience. Hence, most of the nudity and sexuality are deferred to the film’s climax, in which a penniless and newly married aristocrat discovers that his passion for an old discarded mistress can outlast his supposedly eternally true love for a beautiful, virginal and wealthy heiress of noble lineage.  read more »

Tell No One (Ne Le Dis à Personne)
Running time 125 minutes
Written by Guillaume Canet and Philippe Lefebvre
Directed by Guillaume Canet
Starring Francois Cluzet, Marie-Josée Croze, Marina Hands, Kristin Scott Thomas

Guillaume Canet’s Tell No One (Ne Le Dis à Personne), from a screenplay (in French with English subtitles) by Mr. Canet and Philippe Lefebvre, is based on a best-selling American mystery novel—Tell No One. Whereas the book was set in New York, the film was shot in Paris with many changes from its literary source. In its present form, it is as much a love story as a murder mystery, with more than its share of Hitchcockian quirks and surprises.  read more »

Trumbo
Running time 96 minutes
Written by Christopher Trumbo
Directed by Peter Askin
Starring Joan Allen, Brian Dennehy, Michael Douglas and others

Peter Askin’s Trumbo is based on the play, Trumbo, by Christopher Trumbo, and is clearly a labor of love and ideological affinity for all the Hollywood celebrities who participated in the production. The Hollywood blacklist ensnared the playwright’s father, Dalton Trumbo, and many other talented people in the period of the cold war, the House Un-American Activities Committee, Senator Joseph McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover and other cruel relics of a bygone era. Trumbo’s withering take on these instruments of his torture could be used as a club against the Bush-Cheney administration for its perceived assault on the Bill of Rights in the name of national security.  read more »

Brick Lane
Running time 102 minutes
Written by Abi Morgan and Laura Jones
Directed by Sarah Gavron
Starring Tannishtha Chatterjee, Satish Kaushik, Christopher Simpson, Zafreen

Sarah Gavron’s Brick Lane, from a screenplay by Abi Morgan and Laura Jones, is based on the rapturously received 500-page first novel by Monica Ali. The story begins on a sustained lyrical note as teenage Nazneen (Tannishtha Chatterjee) and her little sister Hasina (Zafreen) chase each other across the sensuously photographed rice paddies next to their home in a village in Bangladesh. The musical accompaniment is a melodious Bangladeshi children’s song composed by Jocelyn Pook.  read more »

Get Smart
Running time 110 minutes
Written by Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember
Directed by Peter Segal
Starring Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson

Peter Segal’s Get Smart, from a screenplay by Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember, is based on a satiric television series with characters created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry. In fact, Mr. Brooks and Mr. Henry are listed in the film’s credits as “consultants.” This leads one to wonder if the timely jabs at an anonymous Bush-like president and a Cheney-like vice president can be attributed at least partly to the Brooks-Henry team.  read more »

Charles Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux (1947), in a new 35mm print, will be shown at Film Forum for one week, June 13 to June 19, at 2, 4:30, 7 and 9:30. Chaplin (1889-1977) is supported by Martha Raye, Isobel Elsom, Marilyn Nash, Mady Correll, Irving Bacon, William Frawley and Charles Evans. The film was originally titled A Comedy of Murders, and the idea was reportedly suggested by Orson Welles, though it may have also been based on the real-life Parisian serial killer Landru, the subject of several French films.

Chaplin and Raye do a takeoff on the rowboat scene in Josef von Sternberg’s An American Tragedy (1931) that is even funnier than the one Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca performed on television. Chaplin’s stunned reaction to Raye’s signature raucous laughter in a later scene is one of his most hilarious sight gags in the talkie era. Forget the artistically and politically myopic reviews of the time (with the notable exception of James Agee’s complete rave) and its subsequent flop at the box office. It is a masterpiece. See it. 

asarris@observer.com

Quid Pro Quo
Running time 82 minutes
Written and Directed by Carlos Brooks
Starring Vera Farmiga, Nick Stahl

Carlos Brooks’s Quid Pro Quo, from his own screenplay, transports us into a strange world of guilt-ridden fetishism by which the legitimately physically handicapped incite envy in a small group of able-bodied eccentrics. The film begins with Nick Stahl’s Issac Knott, a New York City Public Radio reporter, who begins to tell his own personal story, and the mystery that surrounds it, over the airwaves. Isaac has been confined to a wheelchair since surviving an automobile accident that killed both of his parents when he was 8 years old.

The crash itself is never shown over the course of the film, but the scenic approach to the accident is repeated many times, with stunning images of symmetrically arranged plants serving as counterpoint to the shady setting in which the handicapped-wannabes choose to congregate.

Issac is not lacking in his own fetish objects for recovery, most notably a pair of magical shoes that send tremors of feelings up his legs so that he can finally stand on his own power, and with a pair of canes that liberate him from his wheelchair. Another of his fetishes is a Milwaukee brace that also aids his recovery.

For the group that Issac is investigating in his broadcast, his wheelchair is itself a magical means of transforming the non-handicapped into the handicapped. At first I thought that the whole film was becoming an extended sick joke ridiculing all the agitation about supplying access to the handicapped.

But then arrives Vera Farmiga’s Fiona, a beautiful and accomplished woman with a morbid desire to enter what she considers Isaac’s privileged realm of incapacitation. Hence, she is so disappointed when Isaac begins to regain the use of his legs that she steals his shoes for a short time to hinder his recovery. But when she does finally return them, it is with a feeling of terminal resignation, and she disappears shortly thereafter. Isaac tries in vain to find her, but we already know the “secret” of Isaac’s accident, and it plays out like a detective story, with the complete solution to the mystery locked in the detective’s psyche.

The ambitious indirection of the film’s visual style is reflected in the director’s own comment on the direction of his cast: “I told the actors in rehearsal to think of the story as unfolding entirely within that moment that transpires between deep sleep and wakefulness. So from the earliest rehearsals and creative discussions and final sound design, we approached t