“The Secret in Their Eyes,” the 2009 foreign language Oscar winner, was an interesting choice, especially in light of the other contenders, a group of ambitious, highly stylized dramas, (“Un Prophet,” “Ajami,” “The White Ribbon”) with unique directorial stamps.  It is especially interesting, since on its surface this Argentine drama appears so cool and conventional.

Academy voters, who generally skew older, were probably attracted to the movies’ appealing, middle aged cast, and its adult sensibilities. The story proceeds at a leisurely pace, and though it never rests, it honors multiple aspects of the complicated story, with a subtle, overarching emphasis on the social and political contexts.

It starts with a dream of two people unhappily parting at a train station.  Beautifully shot and edited, the sequence is arresting, but slightly overwrought.  Our feelings about it are mixed; there’s something a little too Hallmark card about it.  But it’s quickly revealed as occurring in the mind of a retired police official struggling to write his life story.  So it’s actually the equivalent of purple prose.  Right from the start you sense the presence of an alert, ironic sensibility behind the camera.  And then,  without warning,  a jarring flash back to a grisly murder, followed by an uncomfortable reunion with the officers’ former boss, a woman who may or may not have been the character in his autobiographical novel.

Is this a movie about an unresolved murder, corruption at the upper levels of the Argentine government, or lost love?  Turns out it’s all of that, and a lot more, delicately and precisely realized by director Juan Jose Campanella, a veteran of many TV shows.    Campanella  knows exactly how to keep the seemingly disparate elements in balance. He gets excellent support from Felix Monti’s fluid images, and his own confident editing.

Most of the story takes place twenty years in the past, as Benjamin Esposito, a prosecutor and detective, does his best to corral a suspect for the outrageous murder we see in the opening.  As the investigation begins, he and his partner, an idiosyncratic drunk with a keen understanding of human nature, have little but their own ingenuity to rely on.  Esposito believes that eyes reveal secrets, but also lies.  In the course of their investigation the two cops blithely disregard the law.  But the law and those who enforce it are not above double dealing and deceit.  Trouble ensues.

The movie has a deliberate pace, but it’s not slow. It comes to a conventional and satisfying conclusion, although the means to getting there are entirely fresh.  When the initial dream sequence is revisited, much later, it takes on a whole new significance. A lost love, between two people of different socio economic backgrounds, is so skillfully woven into the mystery that it becomes just as vital as the darkest revelations regarding the crime.

Campanella, also the co-writer, drew the material from a novel of the same title.  The quirky forward momentum, which pauses for several amusing digressions, has the flavor of the printed page, probably because there’s so much dialogue. The payoffs, which come later, have as much to do with character as plot. Because the story moves back and forth, over twenty years, the physical presence of the actors graces it with a lived in quality that no amount of print could capture.

Esposito, played by Ricardo Darin is South Americas answer to Javier Bardem; rough hewn but soulful. You may remember him from two other terrific Argentine crime dramas, “Nine Queens,” and “The Aura.”  (Both are available on DVD and highly recommended.) The acting of the entire, large cast is so precisely tuned, that the smallest moments, amounting to little more than minute facial movements, speak volumes about the characters.  A sequence near the middle, involving an interrogation that goes from whispers to roars, is as hair raising as the grisly murder. Call it one more testament to the power of screen acting.

SPLICE

A widely distributed sci fi thriller with Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley, “Splice” immediately gets your attention. With a cast of that caliber, you can’t imagine it in the same category as the cheesy commercial fodder that shows up on the Sci Fi channel disguised as movies.  But “Splice” works so hard to swim in the other direction it fails as compelling entertainment.

The set up is, well, let’s remain civil and call it time tested.  Two attractive scientists, who’ve already created a blob like life  in a test tube, long to move up the food chain by birthing a creature closer to their own image.  I’m not sure what they splice the human DNA to, or even why, but the computer graphics try to convince us they know what they’re doing.  And of course the endeavor is expressly forbidden by their employers; this time a French corporate she devil, because, if the credits are to be believed, the film is a French-Canadian co production.

The spawn of their efforts, which enters the world like a super chicken on Red Bull, eventually develops into an expressive female humanoid, but a humanoid with problems.  Fine so far, because we’ll accept the tired conventions to get the action going. But as the creature becomes an adolescent the script turns its attention on the troubles of its creators.  Most of the remaining running time is devoted to their personal problems and the resultant impact on their parenting.  We like Body and Polley, even when their neuroses get the better of them, but we’re more interested in what the creature is up to. And that, as it turns out, is not much.

There’s intelligence and taste in the production and the moment to moment direction. And the creature is physically convincing.  A few of its powers seem to develop more by the whim of  screenwriters than anything seeded in the plot line, which also takes its toll as the latter half whimpers on.

Earlier this year, George Romero’s dirt cheap “The Crazies” was rebooted with a healthy budget and a sharp cast headed by Timothy Olyphant and Rhada Mitchell. An effective shocker with a bit of an edge, it stated its case and the basic social implications, then got down to the business of thrills.  It was canny enough to sense the limitations of the idea and play to its strengths; the tried and true elimination game.

The problem with “Splice” is that the director, Vincenzo Natali, who made the smart and concise “Cube” back in 1997, never came up with a strong enough proxy to substitute for the elements we expect in the sci fi horror thrillers.   The trailer makes “Splice” look like a high voltage thrill ride; there are quick cuts to  arms stuck in lab equipment, a creature swooping down from nowhere, Polley and Brody frozen with fear.  But the actual movie is more dreary melodrama than dreamy nightmare.  You don’t fault it for its intelligence, or the convincing performances; you fault it for its arty pretensions.

Theaters like Landmark’s Ritz in Philadelphia, have become the last venue for adult dramas with adult casts, which in the not so distant past were a mainstay of popular cinema.  As a result,  a standard issue revenge flick, like the Michael Caine driven “Harry Brown,” ends up in these “art” houses, probably because it’s star, now in his late 70s, belongs to the older demographic.  But “Harry Brown no more belongs in art houses than “Harry Potter.”

I suppose the difference between “Harry Brown” and the majority of B movies masquerading as dramas, are the British accents, since the story takes place in a down and dirty part of London.  But Michael Caine’s stately and elegant presence, and our memory of him in so many deeply nuanced roles, are the only distinguishing features in this ugly and simple minded blood bath. Drama involves human interaction; the only thing Caine interacts with here is a gun.

An aged pensioner goes on a killing spree after his best friend is found murdered. His targets, the odious teenagers in a multi ethnic street gang, are shown early on to be cold blooded killers. So in terms of dramatic elements, they exist solely as prey. Brown, a retired marine who hasn’t lost his touch, stalks the worst and lets loose on them. As the rampage escalates, a miscast Emily Mortimer, the detective assigned to investigate, pursues with a grim posture that suggests she’d rather be collecting her paycheck in another line of work, or movie.

Director Daniel Barber shows he can elicit the maximum impact from the collision of bullets and flesh, even with the camera at a distance, where you’d think the carnage might feel restrained. It does not. He and his effects crew are to be applauded for the spurting fountains of red that are the most moving aspects of this dour, dispiriting mess.

A couple seasons back Liam Neeson went ballistic on a variety of scumbags living off the flesh of kidnapped teenage girls in the hugely successful “Taken.”  But director Pierre Morel, a cinematographer who directed the kinetic “District 13,” kept his absurd rampage moving with spirited energy. The rocket fuel that kept it moving made what should have been unsavory and bleak into a breathless whirlwind through several levels of Parisian lowlife.  Neesons’ sad eyed face, married to his unapologetic, libinous malice, recalled the Charles Bronson of the comically overwrought “Death Wish,” series.  In comparison, “Harry Brown” is a dirge. The lesson for filmmakers; if you’re going to make feckless trash, do it with brio.

A dash of brio might lifted Rodrigo Garcia’s well acted and crafted “Mother and Child” above the level of well intentioned melodrama, where it lives for most of its running time. But writer/director Garcia eschews the light touch that directors like Woody Allen have mastered, for deadly earnest.

A multi character drama, largely composed in a series of brief, humorless encounters between characters who don’t like each other very much, but are more or less bound by sex, kinship, or paternity, this is a roadmap of an emotional territory where you don’t want to live if you don’t have to.

Annette Benning, Naomi Watts, Samuel Jackson, Jimmy Smits, Kerry Washington and many others are included in the sprawling cast, and they’re all fine as far as fulfilling the director’s intentions.  But you’re more likely to be engaged in identifying the procession of notable character actors, (isn’t that what’s-his-name from dah dah dah?) than getting genuinely involved with them.

Why is that? Partially it’s the film’s structure, which moves from one emotional high point to the next with mostly cause and effect connecting them.  Making matters more problematic,  the essence of each scene is telegraphed long before it’s over, so after the strategy repeats a few times, you tend to hang around waiting for one episode to end and another to begin.

Woody Allen, in “Husbands and Wives,” or “Hannah and Her Sisters,” and the Robert Altman, of “Nashville,” and “Gosford Park” demonstrate how to bring multi character pieces to life.  Both rely heavily on humor, and place way more emphasis on character and circumstance than an obvious scheme that could be taken for a “message.” (All four are currently available on DVD)

Garcia’s message, and this is indeed a message movie, is that bringing children into the world has consequences that go far beyond the simple reality of their existence.  As a cautionary tale it’s effective, but it may be more useful to high school hygiene classes than movie goers.

DVD watch

“Il Divo,” (The Diety,) a stunning, disturbing and altogether disorienting biography of Giulio Andreotti, a murderous Italian politician, is now on DVD. I find it hard to enjoy or recommend films that lose me, but this is an exception.

“Il Divo,” is a hunchbacked, devious, and charismatic member of the Italian parliament, who in spite of his deeply corrupted, violent tactics, (or perhaps because of them,) served seven terms in their legislative body.  His story is lit and shot like a never ending nightmare that reminds us Italy has only functioned as a unified state since 1900. And that their politics have been inextricably linked to the worst elements of church and state.

If Fellini and Bertolucci had a kid together, he might have been blessed with the talents of writer/director Paolo Sorrentino.  Even when his gorgeously made film confuses us with its wealth of characters and intrigues, you remain awed by the rapturous filmmaking. The DVD is a  perfect medium for us non Italians to experience it, because we can always stop the film and rewind a bit to catch up with the various entanglements and intrigues it outlines.

You may want to read a little on Andreotti and the treacherous times he lived in before tackling the movie, but it’s well worth the trouble.

Back in July of 2006, the small Chicago based distributor, Music Box Films, released “Tell No One,” a French thriller based on a novel by an American, Harlen Corben. Much to everyone’s’ surprise, the movie, winner of several French “Cesars” raked in over 6 million US dollars, a big number for a foreign language film.

“Tell No One’s” pleasantly contrived plot line, seasoned with a sexy, Gallic flavor, found favor among adults searching for an alternative to the teen directed blockbusters that normally predominate in summer. While the relatively small gross meant nothing to major distributors, it was a huge windfall for Music Box.  And its’ success proved once again, that if you offer adults smart entertainment, they’ll turn out.

The plucky small distributor, followed up with an interesting slate of foreign releases, including the sensational “Il Divo,” which I’ll discuss in a forthcoming article covering DVDS. But none of their titles burned with the viral intensity of “Tell No One.”  Until now.

“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” the latest overseas pickup from Music Box, is rapidly becoming the must see art house thriller of the year.  Running a little more than two and half hours, (with almost 30 minutes trimmed from its original length) the movie keeps your riveted with a complicated story line, perverse sex, and periodic spurts of grisly, but tasteful, blood letting.  It’s more unlikely aspects are blunted by expert filmmaking, which tantalizes you with the sense that anything could happen to the off beat characters.

Immediately after serving a brief jail term, Mikael Blomqvist, a controversial journalist, is hired by the patriarch of a wealthy Swedish family to find out how and why his favorite niece disappeared forty years ago.  As the journalist delves into the family tree, his work is secretly monitored by a voyeuristic, private investigator with a prison record herself. Spying on him through cyberspace, (hooked up to his computer) she keeps to a safe distance, until plot devices compel her to intervene.  Once the two partner up, their very different inclinations, (the investigators’ penchant for violence, the writers’ compulsive curiosity), accelerate a dangerous journey.

Why anybody other than an idiosyncratic octogenarian would hire either of these characters, and what attracts them to each other, are questions the movie never takes up.  Since I haven’t read it, I can’t tell you if these issues are addressed in Stieg Larssons’ lengthy novel, on which the deft screenplay is based.  But it matters little to the movie, as its confident filmmaking quickly disarms your rational faculties, especially when things get nasty. Given that at its heart, “Dragon Tattoo” never aspires to more than adult fun, there isn’t much to complain.

And good fun it is, especially when Lisbeth, a spiky haired lesbian with a nearly wordless demeanor, takes eye popping revenge on a predatory male, or goes ballistic on one of the several bad guys who threaten her partner Mikael. This time out the male is clearly the more genteel of the two.  And the movie is all the better for that.

Lisbeth, who never leaves home in less than head to toe, skin tight leather, is the latest in a series of darker than dark heroines who appeal to that part of our psyche that flirts with sado-masochism.  On this side of the Atlantic this archetype is best personified by Angela Jolie, whose contemptuous sneers and snarls are the high points of over the top fantasies, like “Wanted” and “Lara Croft.”  Jolie is our tepid contribution to a  tradition that was better served by a number of others, including the divinely talented Diana Rigg, who, with tongue firmly planted in cheek and body stuffed into leather jump suits, delivered karate chops to evil doers in the slyly comic, mid sixties TV series, “The Avengers.”   Oh, for the good old days.

Noomi Rapace, a thirtyish veteran of TV, playing the dragon girl with a face as frozen as the Swedish winter, makes Jolie’s half hearted sadists look like lawyers bar hopping on Friday nights. Her expressions are so tortured that when she strips down to show her dragon tattoo and protruding rib cage, you worry that sex, for her, might be a prelude to ritual slaying. Have no fear; two sequels featuring the same unlikely duo are already in the can.

“Tell No Evil,” and “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” have been secured for American remakes. But in order for them to work as popular movies both will have to be completely rethought, as the better part of their charm is bound up with their European settings and attendant attitudes. My hope is the rights holders will get distracted by subjects closer to home and leave well enough alone.  One more interesting note; “Dragon’s” original Swedish title is “Men who Hate Women,” a line that is amply illustrated in the story.

“Un Prophet,” along with “The White Ribbon,” were the odds on favorites for last years foreign language Oscar.  As it turned out, neither won.  “Ribbon,” an earnest work by a director of the highest order, was probably too dense and demanding. “The Story in Their Eyes,” from Argentina, took home the statue.  More on that one later.

“Un Prophet,” an ambitious chronicle of a young immigrant’s evolution from petty criminal to major criminal has a relentless energy not to be denied. Its ugliness is relieved by meticulous detail along with a script that refuses to fall back on sentimentality.

I believe it was Sartre who commented that the humanity of a society could be measured by the way it treated its prisoners. If that really is the case, and there’s any truth to “Un Prophet,” French prisons do not speak very well for the society that maintains them.

Bullied by the two main gangs that dominate life inside a middle level correction facility, a young Arab is ordered to murder a fellow inmate suspected of informing. But the order is just the beginning of his odyssey.

Although Malik’s sole interest is serving the six year sentence he considers unjust, and to some extent, the bi product of his illiteracy, he becomes easy prey for the designs of a ruthless Corsican Mafioso, who controls a large contingency of the prison population.

After the rude, disorienting shocks that establish the setting, the movie focuses on the process by which Malik ingratiates himself to the powers that be. In truth, he has little choice.  Eventually he learns the skills that will serve him both within and without the prison.  Along the way he sees the inevitable ebb and flow that binds him and his fellows to a cycle of crime that may be their only entrée to middle class life.

Most of director Jacques Audiard’s well observed drama takes place within prison walls, although vivid fantasies and a number of pivotal sequences liberate the camera and his protagonist from the claustrophobic settings of the films first half. The initial thirty minutes or so, which build to one of the most terrifying sequences in recent memory, are hardly relieved by what comes after, but they do set the stage for an evolution of sorts, even if it does show the human impulse to bond as more of a liability than an asset.

“Un Prophet” has been compared to “The Godfather,” but it doesn’t have nearly the scope of Coppola’s classic. For one thing, there’s almost no place for a female voice. Interestingly, Audiard, writer and director of the remarkable “Read My Lips,” from 2001, has shown an uncanny ability to weave a unique male/female dynamic into the fabric of a suspense thriller.  Let me digress on that one for a minute.

“Lips,” begins as a drama about the tentative relationship between a cloistered and deaf office worker and a low level convict, then gracefully evolves into a nail biting caper flick.  Carla, a plain office worker generally reviled by her co workers, is handed the unenviable task of finding a place for the sadly disheveled Paul, who, as the movie begins, spends his nights in broom closets. Their slow process of bonding eventually yields an ideal team for an imaginative, hair raising robbery. The characters are not so much acted as inhabited by brilliant actors; Emmanuelle Devos and Vincent Cassell.  Get the DVD!

I don’t mean to minimize the strengths of “Un Prophet,” because it moves toward a breath taking set piece that fully exploits the wealth of details accumulated early on.  But it doesn’t have the positive libido of Audiard’s earlier work, where so much more is at stake.

The screen writer of several other French thrillers, Aduiard knows the genre and the people. “Un Prophet” is a work of grit and integrity.  But its isolated character leaves us cold.

Both “Un Prophet” and “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” are screening in Philadelphia. Both run a solid two and a half hours, and are more than worth the trip…especially considering the studio drivel currently filling local screens.

“The Ghost Writer,” adapted by Roland Harris from his novel, “The Ghost,” and directed by the 76 year old Roman Polanski, is intelligent, smartly acted and handsomely shot. While it doesn’t have the stylistic élan of the director’s finest works – “Chinatown,” “Rosemary’s Baby,” “Tess,” (among others,); the knowing direction and visual flourishes keep reminding us a master craftsman is in charge.  And yet at the end, the movie isn’t as effective as we’d like it to be.

There’s no way to talk about this movie without some mention of Polanski’s topsy-turvy career.  There’s the temptation to relegate him to the past, say the 70s, when more attention was on his work than his court case. And it’s true that his most trenchant essays on the tortured psyche came in that middle period, before his wife was murdered in one of the most bizarre spectacles of the century. But every once in a while he’s re-established his credentials; in 1994 with a successful adaptation of the dark play “Death and the Maiden,” and then in 2002 with the multi award winning, “The Pianist.”  It’s just that “The Ghost Writer,” doesn’t measure up to his best work.

The set up generates a fair amount of interest.  Taking direction from current political scandals, it takes a fictional swipe at the relationship between George Bush and his British ally, Tony Blair.  And while we’ve seen this played out on the world stage, the movie tries to examine the murkier aspects of what’s on record from a different angle.

A middling writer, (Ewan McGregor) is hired to help a recently retired Prime Minister (Pierce Brosnan,) complete his autobiography after his “ghost writer” washes up on a beach, assumed to be a suicide.  The new hire, saddled with a nearly impossible deadline, is rapidly dispatched to a beachside compound where Adam Lang and his staff have been ensconced get the book done.

At exactly the moment McGergor accepts the assignment, a former colleague accuses Lang of having facilitated the torture of several suspected terrorists. The writer quickly realizes that the book could turn out to be more than predictably self aggrandizing, if he can just get his subject to talk. And, at first, Lang seems wiling.   But as he becomes enmeshed in a growing scandal that brings the threat of criminal charges, the work slows down.  While Lang, his wife, and staff struggle to stave off the press and other hostiles, the writer, mission interrupted, the “ghost” becomes drawn into the circumstances surrounding the former ghost writer’s demise.

McGregor is credible as a resourceful journeyman suddenly immersed in a political intrigue several levels beyond his pay grade.  Brosnan, by now the most seasoned of pros, deploys a host of idiosyncrasies to realize the mercurial Lang.   Olivia Williams, as Lang’s  troubled wife, takes a role constructed from the kind of conventions we recognize the moment she’s introduced, and breathes a bracing if icy life into it.  She’s the real surprise here.

Underused, at least in the US, Williams has the kind of face that transforms from mildly troubled to deeply ravaged with the slightest gesture.  Even though her character is shortchanged in terms of deveopment, sometimes to the point where her mood changes feel improvised, the actress rivets our attention in every scene.

The script is studded with low key wit. And it wastes no time getting started.  But before we get to the real problem a profusion of details, mainly delivered through dialogue, relegate suspense to the back burner.  Miss a few lines and you’re struggling to keep up.  And this is a problem that plagues the entire movie.

It isn’t that the writing isn’t good; it’s that the nature of the material, which originated in a different form, is better served by a leisurely pace.  As a movie, “Ghost Writer” is never less than skillful; it’s just too dense to get really juiced.

Then there’s the issue of motivation. McGregor ‘s first telling clue that all is not well, comes when he goes through the dead writers stuff and finds something that reveals an inconsistency in Lang’s story.  A photo leads him to former associates, which, in turn, brings on the bad guys we know are waiting in the wings.  You’d think at this point our hero would at least smell the trouble brewing, but he doesn’t. Ok, we’ll let that slide because we know he has to put himself in jeopardy in order for the story to continue. But there’s more.

Threatening weather clues us that evil lurks the first time McGregor ventures beyond the gaze of the PM’s security guards.  But we don’t know why or who he’s up against until more than an hour into the picture, again an impediment to the creation of real suspense. The problem is –  we don’t know the real problem.

Then there’s the surprise that comes in the last few minutes, a revelation that while cleverly conceived, is not very revealing.  More than that, it really doesn’t impact most of what we’ve already seen.

“The Ghost Writer” arrives on the heels of two other suspense driven features; “Green Zone,” and “The Crazies,” which is a horror movie, although many of the same elements of filmmaking are present.

The elements in “Green Zone,” are so predictable that we’re ahead of the story at the most critical junctures.  As it follows an inevitable glide path there are simply not enough diversions to keep us from becoming complacent. “Ghost Writers’” problem is exactly the opposite; we’re too much in the dark. As the plot becomes deeper and denser it defies our participation, which keeps us at arms’ length. We’re thankful when the proceedings are goosed by a well mounted chase or a distracting bit of sex, but we’re still iced out of real involvement.

“The Crazies” is little more than a formulaic horror thriller, but it studies its well travelled landscape with several  unexpected speed bumps, and as a result is much more successful in keeping us engaged. We know right from the start that the small town is under siege, but a half dozen inspired set pieces, all of which take place within the movie’s established boundaries, give it a fresh veneer.  If you’re a fan of the genre, you come away from it satisfied.

It doesn’t seem fair when films with serious aspirations are shown up by their poorer relatives, who have nothing on their minds but cheap thrills.  But when writers and directors defy  the rules of suspense so well articulated by the old masters; Hitchcock, Carol Reed, (“The Third Man”)  Don Seigel, (the original “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” “Dirty Harry,”)  they do so at their peril.

It’s one thing for a movie to fictionalize recent history, but another for it to render it in the conventions of an overheated action movie.  It becomes even more of a stumbling block when the script fails to tell us more than we already know, at the same time it trumpets its concerns with blaring self importance.

Shortly after the occupation of Baghdad, Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller, (Matt Damon,) is assigned the risky task of securing the locations where Saddam supposedly stored weapons of mass destruction.  Several costly fire fights later, with nothing to show for his dangerous mission, Miller begins to doubt the accuracy of military intelligence.  When he complains at a briefing, his superiors all but squash him.

Reprimanded and ordered to continue, Miller decides to investigate the reliability of their intelligence on his own.  It soon becomes evident that the information on which the entire war is being prosecuted, originated from a single source.

Sound familiar? In addition to the already mentioned elements, the movie boasts a female journalist who’s alleged to have been tipped off about the whereabouts of Saddam’s WMDs.  Add to that a Baathist General on the run, whose face appears on a set of playing cards that identify him as the architect of the countries’ chemical warfare program.

Matt Damon plays Miller with more than his customary diligence.   Greg Kinnear oozes oil as a mendacious bureaucrat. Amy Ryan and Brendan Geeson, stellar character actors, decorate the scenery without chewing it up.  You yearn to see all of them in more challenging roles.

The opening siege is tense.  Greengrass’ recreation of Iraq in the grip of chaos, reportedly shot in Morocco, is appropriately harrowing.  He quickly establishes a landscape of pervasive upheaval, which, juxtaposed on life in the Green Zone, where women in bikinis casually fraternize with officers and press at poolside, speaks volumes about “multinational” forces.

But the movie isn’t content with the inherent tension of the locale and its tragedy. It wants to reduce the problem of the war and its advocates to a few bad guys with a single agenda.  As it hurtles forward, and that’s the only way to describe the way this one moves, the canvas keeps shrinking, until it seems like Damon is the only one in the country with the moxie to ferret out the truth. As the focus narrows to several characters on a collision course, he starts dodging bullets like a super hero out of Marvel comics.  Though I consider myself sympathetic to the movie’s politics, I found myself increasingly aggravated by its uncomfortable mix of matinee heroics and didactic tone.

Can you blame Brian Helgeland, an accomplished writer, for the way he’s treated the book, “Life In the Emerald City,” on which his screenplay is based? I haven’t read it so I can’t say, but I’ve heard the author, Rajiv Chandrasekaran speak,  and he came off as  far more sophisticated than the script that fronts his work.

Greengrass gave two Bourne thrillers, (“Bourne Supremacy,” and “Bourne Ultimatum,” a veneer of credibility that played smartly against their unlikely action scenes.  Credibility never became an issue, because nothing was at stake; you couldn’t fault the films, even when the camera cheated its way through chases and shoot outs that defied physics.

But “Green Zones’” relentless, hand held camerawork and sketchy lighting are more than distracting; they’re headache inducing.  In fact, most of the protracted action sequence that concludes the movie feels like it was shot from a camera attached to a bungee chord and dropped from a window.  Out of focus, dark, grainy images; pumped up by the bombastic score, insult your intelligence and gravity at the same time.

Last week, as I was composing a mildly negative review of Tim Burton’s “Alice In Wonderland,” the movie was raking in 116 million at the box office.  This, after early industry wags predicted about half that figure. By Sunday night it was the biggest March opening on record.

These numbers, coming at what’s usually a slack period at the theaters, reveal several trends on the ascent:

Theater attendance has increased, moving almost inversely to the negative movement of the economy.  Under the circumstances you’d think people would be more inclined to sit in front of their flat screens at home; but no, they’re showing up at the multiplex with increasing frequency.  One possible explanation; movie tickets are a lot cheaper than weekend getaways.

Disney did an excellent job marketing the film; I knew this the moment I walked into a 9:45 screening at a small town theater in Florida and discovered the place  three quarters full, with mainly adults in the seats.

Burton and Depp are a draw; they’ve made enough films to have developed the kind of fan base that immediately responds to seeing their names together.  But Depp on his own doesn’t seem to mean as much; despite his charismatic lead in Michael Mann’s “Public Enemies,” the movie struggled to break even.

3D is a compelling selling point; people seem willing to pay an extra three bucks for the clunky glasses the theaters insist you buy along with your ticket, that they then request you “recycle” on your way out. Recycle?  Hmmm?  Does that mean they’re going to charge you less the next time a 3D movie screens? I don’t think so.

The industry view is that the positive experience of the 3D “Avatar” created an appetite for more.  But you could see the germ of that earlier in the year, when a number of otherwise standard issue horror titles, distinguished only by spurting blood and body parts, earned substantially more than they should have.

As is rapidly becoming the norm, Alice’s 3D effects were added in post production. According to the editors, the decision to enhance the high def footage didn’t come until mid January, about 6 weeks before its scheduled release date.  Digital images, as it turns out, lend themselves to the illusion of depth.  All it takes is gobs of money and scores of artist/technicians.   Alice was completed in time for its scheduled release, at a reported 200 million, although the studio may have cooked that figure to impress the media. One never knows.

Disney was smart in its placement of “Alice,“ at precisely the moment “Avatar’s” popularity began to wane, although compared to James Cameron’s masterwork, Burton’s movie comes off like a gallery of stills.  The studios are well aware that theaters worldwide have been equipped for the new medium.  But they couldn’t have anticipated the huge cash bounty Avatar called forth. Now that the floodgates have opened, a host of other features, like “Clash of the Titans,” are currently being overhauled to take advantage of the seemingly unquenchable taste for images that float in space

So we can expect in a steady stream of 3D, at least until the public gets sideswiped by a string of bloated losers, almost a certainty.  Or people just grow weary of actors hanging in front of them like super sized lap dancers.

We’ll soon see how word of mouth impacts “Alice’s” second week. I overheard a lot of grumbling on my way out of the theater.   But it doesn’t really matter, as Disney’s second pass at “Alice” has already rung the cash register to the tune of 240 million worldwide.

Two remakes this week; a second go-round for Disney with “Alice in Wonderland,” and a polished reworking of 1973’s, “The Crazies.” While “Alice” aims high, the “Crazies” hits harder.

Tim Burtons’  ”Alice in Wonderland,” is actually the third English speaking version of the Lewis Carroll classic made here.  (There have been others, overseas.)  Paramount first tackled this meandering fantasy back in 1933, generating a wealth of publicity in connection with the casting of Alice. They alleged to have auditioned seven hundred professionals and amateurs before settling on Charlotte Henry, a relative newcomer. Debuting at Christmas time, featuring a bevy of well known actors, and incorporating fabled episodes from both “Alice,” and the sequel, “Through the Looking Glass,” it still failed to captivate the mass audience.

Walt Disney was always intrigued by the material, and early in his career produced a couple of shorts with the title character in the lead.  But the real labor went into his Alice from 1951. He was determined to contrive a narrative that honored the satire at the film’s core at the same time it pleased children with its luscious premise; a little girl who falls down a rabbit hole and ends up in an unpredictable “wonderland.”

The Disney artists were given significant latitude in creating the movies’ look. The script, largely episodic, tried to convey the essence of the novels.  But like the Paramount from the thirties, its satire, which had a lot more to do with the 19^th century than the 20^th, proved too remote for audiences.  Disney later conceded that he and his team failed to find the emotional core of Alice, and consigned the film to TV, quite extraordinary, as his general procedure was to broadcast only excerpts from his animated features, like “Pinocchio,” and “Sleeping Beauty,” and then, strictly as a prelude to their re-release in theaters.

I saw Alice, several times, on Disney’s TV show.  Long before seeing it in color I remember being mesmerized by the striking images and the lightning fast editing.  The animated Alice, beautifully realized, seemed adrift in wonderland, which was totally out of synch with anything in my world. The entire experience got “curiouser and curiouser,” without making much sense.

Disney’s  Alice was a noble experiment,  but anchored to impossibly dense material it was probably unsuitable for children and too arcane for many adults. The same can be said for Tim Burtons’ expensive and elaborate update.  This time Alice is 19, awkward lower middle class, and struggling under the yoke of the Victorian social mores in the 1860s. Faced with an unappealing marriage proposal, a subterranean tumble spares her from having to make an unpleasant decision.  It’s a promising set up, and Mia Wasikowska  is an open minded and sympathetic Alice.

The scenes that follow her fall, that detail her drug induced transformations, are captivating as a metaphor and a starting point for her journey.  Tweedledee and Tweedeldum, among her first distractions, happily inhabit a middle ground between the classic illustrations on which they’re based and seamless CGI effects.  Then comes Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, and Helena Bonham Carters’ Red Queen, probably the films’ most wondrous elements. Depp, a frequent Burton collaborator, and Carter, his wife, get the flashiest parts, and they’re both as puzzling and magnetic as you’d expect.

But then the problem of story intrudes, and the movie stumbles.  Carroll didn’t really care about forward momentum, leaving screenwriters and directors the burden of contriving a middle that moves to a satisfying conclusion.  But the movies’ promising set up, that introduces Alice as a woman struggling with her identity,  is almost cavalierly abandoned.  Alice’s age, verging on adulthood, provides her little other than athletic ability.  As it lumbers forward the lavish design fails to compensate for routine plotting that mimics every other fantasy/ spectacle where a hero or heroine is called to perform on the battlefield.  And it suffers in comparison to most.

The trippier aspects of both the early Paramount and the animated Disney, celebrated by the drug culture of the sixties, are passed over by Burtons’ overly literal storytelling.  Stripped of its satirical brio, the movies’ content isn’t rich enough to captivate adults. And though I’m way outside the demographic, I can’t see the sophisticated, hard edged characters holding the attention of young children. Talking dogs and rabbits are commonplace these days.

Burton, one of our foremost stylists, had an interesting take on “Sweeny Todd,” although I think the film lost something by making its leads younger than the originals in Sondheim’s’ brilliant theater piece.  His early features, “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure,” and “Edward Scissorshands,” work better because the characters complied more readily with Burton’s idiosyncrasies.  His remakes, like “Planet of the Apes,” and “Sleepy Hollow,” suffered because their source material wasn’t as malleable.  “Alice,” among his most ambitious projects, occupies an awkward space somewhere between the tepid remakes and the sturdier, stand alone originals.

As it began I had high hopes that Burton might completely reinvent Alice and her world.  That was probably too much to expect. Now, can we please leave Lewis Carroll’s’ work to the students of history and politics, its rightful heirs?

George Romero wrote and directed “The Crazies” in 1973, at a moment when distrust of the military, stoked by endless bad will from the Viet Nam war, reached an apex.  Now, almost 40 years later, in the wake of another war that’s put a bad taste in our mouths, the movie has been revisited. The story is the same, dressed up with better production values and performances by some very good actors.  And while it doesn’t resonate on levels the best horror films reach, it’s effective as a waking nightmare about military might gone haywire.

When a drunk interrupts a little league game with a loaded shotgun, the local sheriff, (Timothy Olyphant,) is forced to shoot him.  Shortly afterwards the cops wife, (Radha Mitchell,) a doctor, becomes puzzled by the listless behavior of a rural farmer. When the farmer burns down his home, killing his wife and child, the sheriff goes looking for a connection, and soon identifies a problem with the drinking water.  But before he can stop down the local system, his town is set upon by a gas masked strike force.  Things rapidly turn deadly, on a frighteningly large scale.

The situation is hackneyed, but it’s spiked by a host of refreshing incidents. The sheriff is ahead of the audience, which helps.  And as the community faces a full scale assault, the writers have contrived scenes of nerve jangling tension.

After the picture sets up the problem, the issue shifts to escape. It opens up the original, which, budgeted at around $250,000, was limited, even back in the seventies, when money went a lot further. The whole movie is shot with a soft, dreamy focus , complemented by slightly burned colors,  that recall the way a lot of B movies looked in the 70s, in the same way the story more or less mimics Romero’s original.

There’s a terrific scene where a car full of escapees gets stuck in a car wash. The claustrophobic feeling of riding with the passengers as the car slowly progresses through a wash cycle is exponentially amplified by the possibility that “crazies” are waiting at the other end.  A scene where a small boat passes over a large, submerged aircraft is a chilling precursor of the disaster to come.

As the noose tightens on the town, scenes pay off with the sort of bloodletting we’ve come to expect from the genre, so the weak of stomach should be warned. The violence, while unrelenting, is subdued by current standards.  Still, the R rating is well earned.

Romero hit the right nerve when he created his watershed “Night of the Living Dead.” Made in 1968, for pennies, it played havoc with the tensions that beset the nuclear family of the time.  That had been done before, but not with the same cutting brutality.  Exacerbating the nervousness was a nagging bit of racial commentary, that added an additional layer of discomfort.

Romero’s original “Crazies,” liberally borrowed from his “Living Dead.” A lot of it took place in a farmhouse, where the characters faced off against each other at the same time they confronted an onslaught of crazies from their own community.  The remake, while expertly directed by Breck Eisner, is less about personal squabbles and more about the spectacle of a complete breakdown in civil society.

The horror movies that stay with us, from “Dracula,” to “Rosemary’s Baby,” to “The Exorcist,” to Kubrick’s “The Shining”  are bound up with our most intimate  and for the most part, inarticulate anxieties.  As we examine them, we usually find the influence of Freud or Jung on their conceptual schemes. And finally, these dark shadows, that live in the basement of our conscious lives, are what take us by the throat.

The problem with “The Crazies,” is that it’s most disturbing aspects are mainly on the surface, a surface we’ve visited many times before. It’s most effective terrors are the product of the filmmakers’ techniques. We leave the theater disturbed, but for the most part because we’ve been expertly manipulated by professionals who know how and when to goose us.  The fear, palpable in the films’ best moments, is more physical than psychological.  You look over your shoulder, to see if your neighbor might be coming for you, but not to yourself, where the real terror lives.

The trailer for Martin Scorseses’ “Shutter Island” comes across like a horror film, and a chilling one at that. But when the release date was changed from late October to last week, rumours suggested the project was having an identity crisis.

It was also assumed that the master’s 21st feature was less than Oscar material, and that it would suffer in comparison to the weightier features distributors slot for the fall, when they’re more likely to be considered for year end awards.

Paramount was smart, not because “Shutter Island” is lesser Scorsese, although it is, but because it’s an oversized B movie that makes no attempt to conceal its origins. Now, amidst the mediocre Valentine’s Day slush and spineless action films currently showing, it’s a stand out.

The distributor was smart because it ruled its’ first weekend, giving Scorsese the biggest opening of his career. Apparently the trailer worked. Still, it’s misleading because the movie is more of a super sized film noir than a big budget scare fest. In fact there isn’t a “boo” moment in its entire 2 hours and 18 minutes. So it’s a tad deceptive, although the real problems have more to do with an overstuffed production, which is disproportionate to the scripts cagey but context bound ambitions.

Teddy Daniels, (Leonardo De Caprio) a federal law officer, arrives on an island asylum for the criminally insane to find out how one of the inmates/patients disappeared. There are portents of bad things to come from the very beginning, as a gallery of twisted faces and bodies seems to warn him that something’s amiss.

Since this is 1954, psychiatry and its practitioners are, to some extent, alien to working class cops. Shortly after their introductions the resident doctors,(Ben Kingsley and Max Von Sydow) confound Teddy and his new partner, (Mark Ruffalo) with their ambivalence toward the investigation. Making matters more distressing are Teddy’s frequent flashbacks to his dead wife and nightmares from his war time experiences.

The atmosphere thickens as inmates warn Teddy about cruel and unusual treatments. At the same time the doctors’ waning cooperation mires the investigation in procedure. Then a storm hits, which, in addition to keeping the cops on the island, threatens the survival of the most dangerous patients, who are kept in a maximum security compound swathed in a mystery of its own.

We’ve been here before; a troubled cop, evasive docs, fearful patients crying wolf, flashbacks to a past screaming for cloture. Working from a novel by Dennis Lehane, whose “Mystic River” and “Gone, Baby, Gone,” made graceful transitions to the screen, Scorsese brings the bounty of filmmaking resources he’s accumulated over the past 40 years. And it shows in the rich production design and fluid story telling.

But fluid imagery is not coherence, and Laeta Kalogridis’ script has a larger investment in Teddy’s disorientation than the whereabouts of the missing patient. And as more hydra like elements come to bear on Teddy, the more fragmented the movie becomes.

The stylized images, from an almost surreal seascape that opens the picture, to our first look at Teddy’s sweaty and pained expression, to the maze of corridors in a labyrinth like hospital ward, suggest that there’s a lot more trouble here than the disappearance of a patient. All of this is absorbing, if just slightly exaggerated. But then Scorsese, who rises to the challenge of keeping us interested in his ultimate intentions, slowly abandons credibility, just as the threats close in on Teddy and his partner.

Scorese did the same thing in his high power remake of “Cape Fear.” As he pumped more and more sexual tension into the plot line Robert DeNiro’s psychopath and the metaphorical storm at the movie’s conclusion became almost surreally overblown. He doesn’t have to go that far here, because a unifying thread pulls a lot of “Island” together in the last reel, but the same problem intrudes.

The heart of the material, rooted in fifty years of scholcky, B movies, (near and dear to so many movie lovers,) is betrayed by self important production and wearying length, that lead us to expect more. And why shouldn’t we, when Teddy’s recollections of liberating the death camp at Dachau, are as elaborate as anything in “Inglorious Basterds?”

The issue is one of weight. It’s not a matter of where we’re directed to place our emotions, because that’s clearly on Teddy, but rather where we are to place our attention. There’s just too much information and too many directions. The issue is further complicated by fishy, mannered performances from Kingsley and Von Sydow, although they’re not entirely to blame; ham fisted dialogue handicaps their credibility the moment they open their mouths. This is intentional, no doubt, as Scorcese is too much of a movie scholar, and an artist, to allow distractions to creep into his movies unintentionally.

Clearly, Scorsese wanted to have fun with the trappings of low budget quickies like Samuel Fuller’s “Shock Corridor,” or facile ironies in Rod Serling’s celebrated “Twilight Zone,” from TV. But most Bs and certainly the TV shows, are short and to the point. At the two hour mark, “Shutter Island” is a bit of a shlog. Characters like Patricia Clarkson’s fugitive therapist, and Ted Levine’s cop, while planted early in the story, make themselves known so late they add more in the way of annoyance than suspense. And yet the movie keeps us amused.

Scorsese has had nothing less than a brilliant career, and we’re entitled to expect more and better films to come. The commercial success of “Shutter Island” will no doubt set him free to follow whatever creative impulse moves him. And at its worst “Shutter Island” is classy entertainment.

So why, finally, is it a bit of a letdown? You can get a clue by looking backwards at several Hitchcock’s, like “Vertigo,” “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” or “Rear Window;” similarly rigged mind benders. The Hitchcock’s, lighter on the surface, are even dark at their core, and reveal more of that core with repeated viewings. I don’t think the same can be said for “Shutter Island.”

The deepest troubles with “Island” have a lot to do with the subterfuge that clouds the movie’s crucial middle sections. Hitchcock was obsessive about the building blocks of his stories. Even when his running times are close to, or more than two hours, there’s almost nothing that you’d cut for relevance. When we total up the sum of watching them, this amounts to the difference between a fleeting and passionate engagement.

Scorsese has given us a stirring opening and a heartfelt conclusion, but not the obsessively marshalled guts that make the Hitchcock’s so compelling. That’s why one trip to “Shutter Island” may be enough.

NOTE: The following article discusses themes and events in one of the five foreign language films nominated for this year’s Academy Award. While the film is not plot dependent, and nothing is revealed that would compromise the experience of seeing it, readers should be advised that this review focuses on several talking points that have made it so controversial.

“A German children’s film,” the subtitle of Micheal Haneke’s prize winning “The White Ribbon,” barely hints at the way this film engages its principal subjects. But it points us in a certain direction, and may help us to divine the writer/director’s intentions from its earliest passages, making it a lot easier to follow as it gets more complicated. In any case, this is not to be mistaken as a film for children.

Full disclosure; I arrived a moment or two after the opening titles, completely unprepared for the flood of blazing black and white images, which had the effect of a plunge into an icy stream. And though I’d read about the movies’ win at Cannes, and had a fair idea of the what it was up to, I didn’t anticipate the other worldly ambiance, every bit as startling, in its own way, as “Avatar.”

A small town in rural Germany, 1913. A farming community, generally controlled by its wealthiest landowner and his consorts, a pastor and a doctor, is slowly shaken by a series of inexplicably violent events that arrive without rhyme or reason.

The first few incidents, random and puzzling, are taken into account and absorbed, as if they were accidents. But as time goes by, and they accumulate, it becomes increasingly apparent that the perpetrators are united by an inarticulate but potent rage and that that they will not be stopped. When one member of the community points to the children, he’s identified as a pariah and sent packing.

The story isn’t as straightforward as it sounds. Writer/director Haneke takes his time developing various crosscurrents, providing ample details on the relationship of its people to each other, and almost as important, the land itself. While life is an ongoing challenge, there’s a shared sense of purpose, in spite of the inequities of a nearly feudal social structure. That is, until the town is challenged from within.

Although it lacks a central protagonist, the story is initially narrated by a young school teacher, who, in dealing with the children as a group, becomes the first to sense their restless energy. Eventually the teacher takes a back seat to an omniscient point of view. We see things he couldn’t possibly know about, like a hellish exchange between an unhappy married couple, and the humiliation visited on a well meaning female servant. Since he’s just one of many players it doesn’t compromise the films coherence or power. And while the events are mysterious, this is not a mystery, so little is at stake when the all seeing director abandons the single vantage point.

The script is anything but linear. As he assays the community, Haneke brings us cheek to jowl with an exhaustive catalog of everyday life, from a love affair governed by the strict protocol of the times, to the ripple effect of a fatal accident on a family of field workers. The half dozen stories, which move at the same clip, establish a steady rhythm, which is gradually disrupted by the behavior that defies the best efforts to deny it.

The “white” ribbon of the title refers to an honor bestowed on young people for purity of behavior. Early on the pastor lectures his large brood about the importance of aspiring to the godliness mandated by their belief system. This, at the same time he unsparingly punishes his oldest son for masturbating. We see similar parent to child cruelty as it’s manifested in other families, which sets the stage for a wave of inarticulate rage.

There’s more than a hint of Freud in all this. The aforementioned adolescent is manacled at bedtime . A callous father insists on confining his daughter after a young man proposes to her. Children are held to absurdly strict standards of behavior. The children band together to strike back. But Haneke doesn’t stop there. He shows them terrorizing their peers just as readily as their parents.

When the film first played in Europe there was speculation about the significance of the stories’ time and place. Some took it as an exegesis on the fascist impulse that saw its full expression in the birth to the Third Reich. Others saw Haneke’s intentions as more universal and only coincidentally linked to Nazism.

My view is that he wants to have it both ways. There’s no getting away from the specifics of the period; “The White Ribbon” concludes with the announcement of the assassination that started World War I, the fallout of which set the stage for Hitler’s rise to power. But Germany’s failed economy and the resulting social inequity, (a subsidiary concern in the movie) played a more pervasive role than the simmering evil that haunts the characters here. Haneke seems just as intent on identifying a general heart of darkness as its specific time and place. Still he’s taken full advantage of a moment that moves inexorably toward Nazi Germany.

There isn’t a single overwrought moment in the movie’s nearly two and a half hour running time. The power of the film is in the matter of fact delivery of the most candid details. Nothing is underlined. But even quiet segments are rich with feeling. Among the several that grabbed me: a sequence where a little boy, whose father is recovering from a serious accident, queries his young nanny about the nature of death. The child’s attitude is so guileless it leaves the nanny at a loss to respond.

Another scene, where a boy endangers his life at the urging of a friend, is captured with such dark beauty it almost stops the flow of events.

A great deal of credit goes to cinematographer Christian Berger, who’s already taken several European awards for his luminous black and white images. Berger frames and lights the children with knowing precision. At times his camera seems to pear directly into their souls.

Haneke has a well earned a reputation for his pitiless depictions of human failing. Some have called him a misanthrope. I found the psychological torture of “Funny Games,” (which he made twice, originally in German, then years later, in English,) singularly repellent. But at the same time I couldn’t fault its intentions.

I had similar problems with “The Pianist,” which caused a considerable stir when it came out in 2001, largely due to the way it portrayed a sadomasochistic music teacher, who, from time to time, expressed self loathing by “cutting” herself. I saw it with a standing room only crowd at a large festival. After the first scene of self mutilation there was no problem with seating; half the young women walked out. As for the movie, in spite of its deadly earnest, it came off as both hysterical and pretentious.

“The Hidden,” (“Cache” in Europe) a low key drama about the surveillance of a middle class Parisian couple, doesn’t press any hot buttons, but is far more interesting and complex. Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche play two people with a troubled past in this award winner from2005. It’s a good introduction to themes that Haneke takes up again and again. Like the rest of his theatrical features, it’s available on DVD.

“The White Ribbon” works because it presents characters without pretention or presumption. Each one seems motivated from within. The movie has been cast the same way. The people, and especially the peasants, have faces as weathered as their clothing.

This is the sort of challenging movie whose absence of convention will frustrate some to the point of complete rejection, and keep others asking important questions for quite some time.

Although this weekend’s studio releases, “Valentine’s Day,” “The Wolfman,” and a Harry Potter knock off, (the title of which is so unwieldy I can’t get it straight no matter how often I see it in print,) are attracting sizable crowds, my advice is to stay home with a good book and a few DVDs.

Despite record bad weather and mostly bad movies people are turning up at the theaters. Maybe it’s cabin fever.

The big numbers are partially due to the “Avatar’s” continuing popularity, but also the surprising performance of two female friendly titles, (“Dear John,” “Leap Year,”) and the continuing interest in several lauded art house items, including “Crazy Heart,” which is turning into a slow burning hit.  Mel Gibson’s “Edge of Darkness,” has drawn audiences, although the reported budget of 80 million, an instance of studio bloat if ever there was one, may keep the film from turning a profit.

Usually, January, and the early stretches of February, are notorious dumping grounds for troubled studio titles and lame horror films. The studios dump them unceremoniously for quick play offs.  “The Wolfman,” in spite of its intriguing trailer, has been sitting around for almost two years awaiting release.  The John Travolta shoot ‘em up, “From Paris With Love,” a tepid bit of nonsense if ever there was one, is a complete flop.  Advance word on “Valentine’s Day,” is poor, although it has opened very big.  None of these will be remembered come awards time.

Now, a sprinkling of DVDs.

A Serious Man

“A Serious Man” is the latest Coen brothers output, and believe me, had it not been for their recent successes like “No Country For Old Men,” and “Burn After Reading,” the movie would never have been made.  This is the most narrowly focused and personal of their many films, and weeks after seeing it and a host of conversations, I’m still not sure what to make of the vituperative and bitter mood that informs its every frame.

Larry Gopnick, a college professor consumed with worry about an imminent tenure decision, helplessly watches as every player in his middle class, Jewish world, disses him in one way or another. His wife confesses her love for a successful, blowhard neighbor, his kids behave abominably at home and school, his penniless brother camps out in his house and won’t leave, and both colleagues and students unconscionably hector him. There’s nothing subtle about any of this.

Larry’s circumstances, and the debilitating rumination that keeps him from taking action, provide a canvas for the Coen’s scabrous portrait of middle class Jewish life in the Midwestern suburbs of their youth. Is their objective here revenge or sophisticated satire?  Probably both, and more; the movie has ambitions on several levels. It even begins with an emblematic fable from the “old world.”   Regardless or intent, they’ve taken great pains to create a gallery of irredeemably selfish and self important bloodsuckers, driven, in large part, by the need to wreak havoc on poor Larry, a classic, “schlemiel;” (a slang term from Yiddish, for a character who’s unable to cope with adversity, or experience good fortune.)

Roger Deakins’ camera is merciless in capturing every repellent physical detail of both the people and the oppressively flat landscape. Only a sexy, neighbor, who entices Larry with nudity and pot, has any kind of visual appeal, and she’s shown as aimless and bored.

The Coen’s have played their characters for fools before. But sometimes, as in their superior “Fargo,” “Blood Simple,” and “Burn After Reading,” they’ve rigged the scripts with a playfulness that masks the detachment at their core.  Here, contempt verging on outright anger is up front.

You will either be fascinated or disgusted by this ensemble of grotesques. Maybe both, as I was.

Bright Star

Writer/director Jane Campion, opting for lethal solemnity over anything that might be mistaken for entertainment, has concocted a one note love story that wears its seriousness like a hair shirt. And while there may be more truth than fiction in this labored telling of the chaste and doomed affair between the poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne, a kind of Victorian fashion designer, it doesn’t matter. The entire proceeding is so tastefully bloodless it invites a long snooze.

You get a clue as to what the rest will bring the minute the lovely, usually blonde, Abbie Cornish appears in an unflattering frock and matching dark hair.  Her early, chilly interaction with the poet and his grating brother sets the stage for a predictable and flat relationship, built on her blossoming appreciation for poetry and literature.

In the interests of veracity, energy is at an absolute minimum. The sets and locales are spare and hard on the eye.  Ben Whishaw, playing Keats, delivers the poetry with conviction, but the director has failed him by adhering to a strict control over tone that kills any involvement in the story beyond respect for its uniformity.

Whatever happened to the inspired writer/director of “The Piano,” and “Sweetie?” Back in the 90s Campion’s work teemed with visual invention and wit, and picked up a slew of awards both here and abroad. Even when she went over the top, with “Holy Smoke,” you sensed her involvement with the characters. Nothing there prepares us for this.

“Bright Star” goes a long way to explaining why kids show indifference to literature. Its fans, will no doubt, point to the disciplined execution and adherence to reality, but it’s all for naught because you can’t sit through it.

Whip It

This is Drew Barrymore’s debut as a director. It’s a routine but amusing look at women’s roller derby that owes much of its considerable appeal to Ellen Page’s wide eyed performance.

Page, who starred in the altogether winning “Juno,” plays Bliss Cavender, a small town Texan, who, you guessed it, longs to escape the football games and beauty pageants that define the local culture.  So she lies her way into auditioning for a raucous ladies skating team, then struggles to keep up with the rough and tumble competition, secretly defying her mother’s plan to advance her career through the Junior League.

Bliss’ aspirations to downward mobility are underdeveloped in a script that telegraphs its intentions way in advance, putting even more pressure on the actors to rise above it.  Tethered to a PG-13 rating, and all that implies, the movie sorely needed a shot of vulgarity to kick it into high gear.  As it is, the few rough edges are barely enough to keep it, well, rolling.

Daniel Stern and Marcia Gay Harden, seasoned pros, do their best to freshen up the thankless roles of clueless parents. Barrymore adds a bit of spunk as Smashly Simpson, one of the rollers.  Kristin Wiig and Juliette Lewis try to seem bad, as girls who aren’t nearly as bad as they should be.

One of these days Wiig, a comedic chameleon, is going to break out in a part that gives her the space to run wild. Let’s hope it happens before she’s eligible for social security. In the meantime we have to settle for mere glimpses into her hilariously twisted psyche. See: “Ghost Town,” “Adventureland,” and Saturday Night Live.

The Burning Plain

Guillermo Arriaga’s compelling puzzle drama deserved better when it limped into theaters last fall and was met with mostly critical indifference, and some outright hostility. Why it didn’t win more respect is more of a mystery to me than the story line, which demands close attention, but rewards it with ample feeling, and a satisfying ending.

You might know Arriaga as the writer of “Amores Perros,” “21 Grams,” and “Babel,” all of which were directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. “Amores Perros,” one of the most riveting of recent films from Mexico, announced the coming of a talented team that was not to be denied a seat at the table of world cinema.

Arriaga applied the same motif to all three of his collaborations with Inarritu; separate but intertwined stories featuring a spectrum of diverse characters, operating at different and sometimes opposing levels of society.  “Amores Perros” struck me as the best served by this strategy. The other two, undeniably urgent, had a whiff of contrivance that blunted their impact.  Also, subtlety is not director Inarritu’s strong suit.

“Burning Plain,” is Arriaga’s debut as both writer and director, and he’s recruited an excellent cast, topped by Charlize Theron and Kim Bassinger.  Theirs are not the only strong performances, but they’re certainly the most erotically charged.  The others, including Jennifer Lawrence, (a real up and comer,) John Corbett, and a host of international players, well serve Arriaga’s intriguing tale of passion, murder, and racial strife.

The movie begins with an explosion and two deaths, and then moves backwards to explain how they occurred.  Suffice it to say that two families were in opposition, along with a love affair that defied economic and racial barriers, powerful anger, and a tragic misunderstanding.

Two stories are developed simultaneously, representing two distinct time periods. They’re neatly intertwined, but to divulge how and why would reveal too much of their surprising connection.

“Burning Plain,” shot by two master cinematographers, Robert Elswit, (“There Will Be Blood,”) and John Toll, (“Gone, Baby, Gone,”) has a rich, appealing look. Apparently it was made as two separate productions, which were then cut into one film.

My guess is that Arriaga intended a lot more than the suspenseful drama that came out in the end, and that critics were disappointed that it was less than a masterpiece.  In spite of that it’s suspenseful and absorbing. Good performances too!

Say what you will about the Academy Awards, they’re as reliable as any other year end prizes.   It’s the show that’s really an endurance test. And while the whole enterprise has been derided as a venal and self serving family celebration, there are mitigating factors.

For one, the nominees are selected by professionals in their respective divisions. Actors nominate actors, art directors, art directors, writers, writers, etc.  I think we can assume they know more about their work than we do, so the process seems sensible.  (There are exceptions to this, but only one that’s really significant; the entire Academy votes to nominate Best Picture.)  Once the field is narrowed down to four or five names (in all but the “Best Picture” category,) everybody votes for all categories.

What happens after that has been explained to me several times, but I still don’t understand it. When the final votes come in, Price Waterhouse makes ten piles of ten, placing the top choices in the first pile, the rest in the other nine, in descending order of popularity.  Although what happens next is not secret, it remains a mystery.  Two Academy members of long standing took me through the process, but after a few minutes, conceded that they didn’t really get it.  Nor did anyone else they knew.

In any case, you know that the “race” concludes at a big television event where people are ranked first on whether they win or lose, then on their clothing, and finally on the content of their acceptance speeches. Length, like neatness, is also a factor.  Afterwards they party while we turn to news on our flailing economy.

The recent addition of five titles to the “Best Picture” category has brought hisses from some quarters, cheers from others.  Detractors point to it as a concession to the studios, which, in recent years have taken a back seat to more ambitious, mid budget indies, more than a few of which come from the UK.   According to this argument, the extra slots make it easier for second rate work to get into the running. Supporters take the opposite view, that expansion affords greater variety.

The first year of “ten” favors the supporters’ argument. All ten nominated films have received respectable reviews. They represent most of the popular genres:  Science fiction – “District Nine;” animation -“Up;” studio drama – “The Blind Side;” and low budget drama from Britain – “An Education,” a film that’s grossed less than 5 million.   These in addition a sophisticated adult comedy -“Up In the Air,” a superior genre film – “Hurt Locker,” and the urban indie – “Precious.”

“Inglorious Basterds,” the international hit from Tarrantino, got the nod, as well as the latest Coen Brothers’, “A Serious Man,” which is anything but a hit. And then, of course, there’s “Avatar,” which,  beyond all the commentary it’s generated, both good and bad, resides in a category all its own; biggest box office of all time.

To the expansion, I say, why not? As a culture we seem to be stuck on the idea of ten best lists.  And though the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is constantly accused of cronyism, nepotism and plain old bad taste, this year’s nominees argue against that.  Below, a handful of random notes on the highlights, none of which will help you win the office pool.

Best Picture

A friend and Academy member recently insisted that I choose between “Avatar,” or “Hurt Locker,” for Best Picture, as the town has pretty well identified these two as best in show.  It seems to me like having to choose between Art and Sports, but then I’ve never been much for picking the best of anything.  As for the others; “Up In The Air,” “Precious,” and “An Education,” provided me with a great deal of pleasure, for very different reasons.  This is the way it’s supposed to be.

“A Serious Man,” an interesting but trying work, has limited appeal; had it not been made by the Coen brothers, it would never have made it to the big screen.  I’ll talk about it when the DVD release happens.) I’ve discussed “An Education” in an earlier column, and I continue to admire it.  “Precious,” another film of high caliber, grossed close to 45 million, more than five times its cost, and came to its success through director Lee Daniels’ uncompromising vision.  Finally, what impresses about these three films is their disregard of tried and true convention. And when I say that I’m referring to more than the endings; I’m talking about the 95 or 100 minutes before the stories wrap.

For those trying to second guess the Academy, there’s this to consider; “Hurt Locker,” is a superior war film, but it’s been labeled “dark” by many Hollywood wags.  Read, “hard to sit through.”  I don’t think it’s any darker than a slew of other highly regarded war films, from Eastwood’s “Flags of Our Fathers,” to Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan.”  It just has less dialogue.   “Avatar” is literally its polar opposite, and more of an upper.  You take it from there, but I’d bet on “Avatar.”

Best Actor

Jeff Bridges is considered a lock for “Crazy Heart.”  As I said last week, he’s deserving of recognition, but I’m still haunted by Colin Firth’s quiet but fearless performance in “A Single Man.” Here, a reliable actor showed unexpected wizardry.

Morgan Freeman and George Clooney need no introductions; their careers flourish. But Jeremy Renner, a working actor who’s toiled in relative obscurity, came out of nowhere. War films rarely give actors the latitude to stand out, and “Hurt Locker’s” script is relatively spare, but  Renner made the most of it, then took it one step further.  Good thing he took off his helmet for some of the more daring moments; otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to read the nearly insane determination on his face as he goes about the thankless job of disarming IEDs.

Best Actress

How often do guilds of professionals honor the novices among them? Not often, in my experience.  But this year actresses nominated two of their number who had never appeared in a single feature;  Carey Mulligan  (“An Education,”) an actress from British TV, and Gabourey Sidibe,  (“Precious,”) a woman who’s never been in front of a camera before.  They passed over better known names like Abbie Cornish in “Bright Star,” and Emily Blunt in “The Young Victoria.” Good for them!

Helen Mirren got yet another nomination for “The Last Station,” a film about the aged Leo Tolstoy.  After debuting at Cannes the film struggled to get a distribution deal.  Somehow it also got a nomination for Christopher Plummer.  Once again, the membership went out of its way to honor little seen work.

Best Director

The fact that James Cameron, (“Avatar,”) and Kathryn Bigelow, (“Hurt Locker,”) were married many years ago, has not gone unnoticed by the Hollywood community.  People have said that until “Locker,” Bigelow, who’s made several smart action films, has never been taken as seriously as her male peers. I think it has more to do with her material than her gender. In truth, this is by far the best script she’s directed.  Whether she overtakes “Avatar” or not, she has now entered the major league.

Best Supporting Actress

A host of familiar names appear in this category.  Mo’nique, a comic who turned heads with her volcanic energy, and won a Golden Globe, will most certainly take home an Oscar.  But Anna Kendrick held her own against Clooney and Farmiga in “Up in The Air.” No small feat. The hope is that she’ll find other parts that expand on her talent.

Penelope Cruz must have been nominated for the way she spilled out of her costume in “Nine,” because it couldn’t have had anything to do with the mostly witless lines she read in this misbegotten mess. Why the academy looked past what’s probably her best work to date, in “Broken Embraces,” is beyond me, but it may have something to do with the way foreign films are considered.  As I understand it each country puts forth one film for Academy consideration.  Did that keep them from being able to nominate her for Almodovar’s latest?  This is one of those questions that even my friends in the Academy aren’t sure about.

Best Supporting Actor

There are two unlikely nominees here; Christopher Plummer playing Tolstoy, and Christoph Waltz as the Nazi everybody loved to hate in “Inglorious Basterds.”  I found Waltz’ performance humorous but mannered, maybe because the whole film left me cold.

Best Cinematography

The craft of filmmaking is so far along, and the tools so remarkable, that there are countless striking images set before us each year.  Every movie I liked this year had a look that captured my attention from the first sequence.  But Christian Berger’s black and white images in “The White Ribbon,” went beyond that.  They kept us completely engaged in Michael Haneke’s challenging story about deviant behavior in a small German town back in 1913.  I’ll have more to say about “White Ribbon,” in another column.  At this moment it seems to be running neck and neck with the entry from France, “Un Prophete,” for best foreign language film.

Best Original Screenplay

The writers had the guts to nominate three “difficult” film this year; “The Messenger,” “Serious Man,” and “Hurt Locker.”  They also went against the grain and recognized the animated “Up.”  “Inglorious Basterds,” makes it five.  Apparently the writers weren’t that impressed with Cameron’s script for “Avatar.” Weren’t there any other original scripts out there that merited their attention?  I guess not. I fault the studios for their relentless search for the next Batman.

Best Adapted Screenplay

This has always struck me as an odd category.  It stands to reason that if you start with strong material, from a book or play, you get a strong script.  Countless lousy films have proved the opposite.  This year, “District Nine,”  “An Education,”  “Precious, Based on the novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire,” and   “Up in the Air,” came from novels.  All were successful as film scripts. But there’s one more nominee, another Brit flick called “In the Loop.” I haven’t seen it. Does anyone out there care to comment?

There are scads more categories; music, editing, art direction, etc. etc.. They go on like the show itself, seemingly forever.  Your only hope is that the material written for co-presenters Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin will keep you conscious until the best picture is crowned. While the show starts at 6 PM on the west coast, it doesn’t get rolling in the east until 9.  Good luck.