The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Grade: B+

It is at least somewhat fitting that, close friends and mutual admirers that C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were, this first cinematic translation of the Lewis children’s classic should look remarkably similar to Peter Jackson’s version of “Lord of the Rings.” Mutantesque villains stomp the ground in preparation for the kill, a ragtag group traverse snowcapped mountain ranges together, cameras swoop overhead to capture the largess of battle, and humankind is yet again savior of all the land.

But this one has talking animals, an ice Queen, and children instead of hobbits.

Not unlike the “Harry Potter” series, the film suffers a touch from too literal a page by page translation – the whimsy lies in the C.S. Lewis tale itself and less in any creative conceit added by the screenwriter. Too long, violent and intense for young children, cynical adults should stay away as well. If the concept of two married otters bickering with each other is just too much to handle, this may not be the experience for you. For all its epic battles and Christ-like resurrection references, this remains a children’s story for the kid in us all.

Four siblings, brought to the countryside to escape the ravages of WWII London, find a magical land in a wardrobe closet – it was either that or watch sexy women strike nudie poses at Judi Dench’s place. They also learn lessons of loyalty, leadership, and redemption. Four first rate child actors (Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, William Moseley, Anna Popplewell) some solid voice-over work from the likes of Liam Neeson (Aslan, the Lion) and Rupert Everett (the Fox) and some genuinely glorious computer effects fill the screen with blazing color and fantasy. James McAvoy plays a faun with genuine adorableness, and Jim Broadbent delivers a delicious cameo as an adult who believes. Disappointingly, Tilda Swinton is a storybook villain of a Queen here, a one note spear in the center of the film’s heart. If the film drags, which it does, it is because there is no real threat felt or outcome questioned.

Still, a gentle and innocent heart saves the day, as brothers and sisters valiantly and energetically learn to protect one another and fight for the nature that surrounds them. Director Andrew Adamson uses imaginative and occasionally thrilling imagery to wondrous effect, and replaces Peter Jackson’s dark grays and ominous tones with blazing light and bursting Technicolor. Blood and gore is more often referenced rather than displayed, as humans, animals and various other-wordly inventions turn a harsh winter into a hopeful summer. It is surprisingly moving to see children, torn from their home and forced to adapt to both real and fantastical new surroundings, restore order and balance to the only world they can.

Check your inner curmudgeon at the door, or you simply don’t stand a chance.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0363771/

Mrs. Henderson Presents

Grade: C

212-555-7896. 212-555-8879. 222-555-5433. 222-555-9932. 212-555-1167. 212-555-3546
212-555-4872.

Dame Judi Dench reading from a telephone book would indeed be preferable to phoned-in sentiment and irritatingly old-fashioned storytelling.

I adore Judi Dench. I adore London. I adore theatre. What’s wrong with this picture?

In this “based on a true story” story, a widow decides to buy a theater in pre-WWII London. She hires Bob Hoskins to manage the place. She wants the women to strike nudie tableaus on stage for reasons to be cloyingly explained later. Dench and Hoskins bicker for no explicable reason but with gusto, which they enjoy far more than we do. Their relationship is all rather contrived and by rote, and for two great thespians they have surprisingly little chemistry together.

What is intended as a risqué, bawdy, jovial and yet quietly moving confection of “the show must go on” patriotism and showmanship is instead a drearily dull warhorse, delivered with a neverending wink and a nod at just how cheeky and naughty everyone is being. Dench is ever the grand dame, larger than life yet vulnerably smaller in shadow, and as always her mere presence lifts the material and creates an air of enchanted elegance. But the screenplay is disjointed and episodic, the characters underwritten conventions, and there is nothing particularly interesting or energetic to inspire or beguile – even the stage numbers themselves carry a lack of creativity and an air of mothballed tedium about them. Attempting to recreate war torn London, Dench is relegated to standing on a rooftop overlooking a miniature city replete with burning model buildings and itty bitty searchlights, and literally standing on soapboxes to deliver “let’s do it for the boys” orations. A melodramatic episode involving a chorus girl from the countryside, some protection-less sex with a soldier boy, and a London blitz is such an embarrassing chestnut it’s unintentionally laughable.

And, it is frankly offensive in 2005 for filmmakers to believe the representation of a fey gay eunuch is still acceptable. Dench is a widow, Hoskins is married, all of the chorus girls seem to have stage door Johnny’s aplenty, yet the one gay character seems exotically locked in a closet somewhere until it’s time for him to go onstage and perform with the lovely ladies.

Like the rest of the film, it’s all a throwback to a dated, mustier, one-dimensional time.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0413015/

Best of 2005

10. Paradise Now
9. Munich
8. In Her Shoes
7. The Squid and the Whale
6. Capote
5. A History of Violence
4. Match Point
3. Junebug
2. Murderball
1. Brokeback Mountain

Honorable Mentions: Batman Begins; Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith; Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire

Caché (Hidden)

First 116 Minutes: A
Last Minute: F
Final Grade: B-

Like a flavored dose of castor oil, some critics will tell you this French avant garde mystery is good for your film-going health.

Me, it tasted delicious going down, but I left with a bit of a stomach ache.

From the opening long shot, you know you’re in brilliant hands as film credits find a boldly original way of filling the screen. The long shot holds, minute after minute, and one is forced to closely observe, analyze, breathe, and wait. Many such long shots appear throughout writer/director Michael Haneke’s atmospheric piece, building tension, creepiness and suspense…until he pulls a Jeanine Pirro and loses a page from his script. The last one.

A tediously pro-forma but pleasantly married couple begin receiving surveillance video tapes of the outside of their home. Who is sending them and why they are being sent is a mystery that slowly begins to unfold as more and different tapes arrive and subtle clues appear. Childhood infractions and anguished secrets are uncovered, trustless relationships unravel, and the film quietly leads to a devastating revelation that never quite takes place. Nicely acted by Daniel Auteuil and the ever-incandescent Juliette Binoche, the film has a coolly voyeuristic flavor and several intensely startling moments that cause the heart to leap and hands to flitter over one’s eyes. It is a thrilling, percolating ride that ends with a confusing whimper rather than an anticipated bang. A final (and much talked about) “Where’s Waldo” scene is a blurry, overpopulated long shot where one is likely to either 1) not see what the director intended us to see, or 2) have perfect enough vision to actually see the director’s final dénouement, yet still leave the theater as confused as someone who hadn’t.

Left to our own devices to extrapolate and theorize whodunit, the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle assembled look more and more like a Pablo Picasso than an Alfred Hitchcock.

The impact of unresolved and unacknowledged guilt on one’s life is a weighty theme, and Haneke brings all his considerable talents to build a moody and challenging piece intentionally designed to leave us uncomfortable and in doubt. This does not, however, completely let him off the hook for failing to know how to conclude his own story. Too much, in fact, remains “Hidden.”

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0387898/

Match Point

Grade: A

In his most audacious, challenging, confident film in many, many years – let me be the first to admit that Woody Allen played me like a finely tuned instrument. Not since Scott Joplin music played while Robert Redford and Paul Newman strummed their noses at one another have I felt so gloriously duped and so wondrously manipulated.

A former pro-tennis player ingratiates himself into the lives of an upper class British family. As played by the gorgeously charming and boyishly vulnerable Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, his odd mixture of humility, graciousness, ambition, admirable independence and sexual aggressiveness keeps one forever off-balance, unsure whether he is likable, manipulative, or merely the lucky beneficiary of timing and good fortune. An accidental meeting at what will soon become his fiancé’s family estate slowly develops into a torrid love affair, and the tennis player attempts to have it all and then some by burying himself deeper and deeper into a web of deceptions, denial, self-inflicted angst and weaknesses inflamed. And still, Woody Allen is so bloody brilliant we are not sure exactly how we feel about this man.

Sharp, controlled and sophisticated, the film’s first 90 minutes deconstruct a man slowly but inevitably entranced by a life of luxury while simultaneously captivated by toe-curling (yes, my toes indeed curled sitting in the theater) passion and sexuality. As sensitively portrayed respectively by Emily Mortimer and Scarlett Johansson, wife and mistress are both far too strong, smart, and world-wise to allow themselves to fall into differing yet mutually untenable situations with the same man, yet their falls make perfect, inexorable, human sense. And still, Allen is so bloody brilliant we are not sure exactly how we feel about this man.

And then, as sometimes happens in a movie theater, my heart began to sink with dread as the film started to veer off a precipice, taking a (not to be revealed) plot turn that left me feeling angry, let-down and utterly betrayed that such an ingenious and involving screenplay could make such a trashy and bogus misstep. How could Allen have flummoxed a return volley so badly in the film’s final act? Malaise quickly set in and a premature dismissal began.

I don’t know that I have ever been so stunningly toyed with in a movie theater before.

Playing me for every last note, breathlessly surprising me at turn after turn after turn, a story of adultery, internal conflict and human frailty utilizes the very plot point I despised to transform the film into a grand aria about the nature of fortune, fate, and luck. And still, even in the end, Allen is so bloody brilliant we are not sure exactly how we feel about this man. The point, set, and match is quickly won, and one leaves the theater having been in the presence of one of our true masters.

Ingeniously devious, devilish and smart, Allen makes cinematic love to London with the same keen eye he has used for decades to capture New York – a visual involving a ring, a railing and the River Thames is the single finest screen moment of the year.

As a longtime fan somewhat bereft at his recent descent into mediocrity and repetition, it is absolutely captivating to watch Woody Allen at the height of his powers once again.

More movie info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0416320/

Munich

Grade: A-

The perfect companion piece to “Paradise Now” about Palestinian terrorists, this is a dignified journey into the heart and mind of a Sabra (native born Israeli).

Eleven Israeli athletes are murdered by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics. The world momentarily mourns, the Games continue, and a nation plans its retribution. Prime Minister Golde Meir (a masterful Lynn Cohen) sends covert assassins on an eye-for-an-eye killing spree throughout Europe, a pilgrimage to shoot and, wherever possible, make bigger headlines by blowing up eleven leaders who helped plan, support and carry out the barbarism of Munich. Separated from the terrorists they kill by a profound unwillingness to slaughter the innocent (often placing their own lives in peril) five men nonetheless battle fear, retaliation and personal conscience.

Steven Spielberg powerfully captures the essence of a people religious in foundation, persecuted for generations, and surrounded on all borders by enemies. “Never again” flows through the blood of an honorable nation willing to modulate principle and morality in the uncompromising defense of a Jewish homeland. As embodied in an eye-piercing performance by the flawless and charismatic Eric Bana, Israel has idealistic national fervor, a devout sense of family and heritage, and a kill-or-be-killed executioner instinct. Bana, like his country, also feels every pull of the trigger, every fiery explosion and every drop of blood spilled in a way that will never be shaken and becomes a part of his very fabric. The power, responsibility and impact of abandonment – of one nation for another (America is particularly taken to task for its protectionist bent) a mother for her son (forever ensuring that “Israel would become his true parent”) a father for his family, and a nation for its patriot – is an ever-present theme. What it is to be a Jew, and what it is to be an Israeli is constantly examined, scrutinized, and questioned.

Some of the year’s finest lighting design and film exposure techniques provide the film with its taut espionage thriller mood and, if a screenplay by Tony Kushner sometimes veers into Hollywood gloss (including a fervent yet improbable conversation between an Israeli and a PLO operative, and a “James Bond” femme fatale plotline) and away from clarity (informants are too often murkily explained and dialogue occasionally suffers under mumbling and the on again off again use of subtitles) the storyline is more often compelling, equal-handed and multi-layered. Neither Spielberg nor Kushner allow Israel off scot-free in its culpability, and we are constantly made to question whether violent actions are appropriate or incendiary. The film is graphically, intentionally, unapologetically bloody, and a final panoramic view chills and touches one’s heart over the violence yet to come.

“We should defend ourselves. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” a villager in Tsarist Russia once proclaimed. “Very good,” responded Tevye the Diaryman, a Jew of a different age. “That way the whole world will be blind and toothless.”

If only it were quite so unambiguous.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0408306/