J to P

A girl's smile, near the end of this charming romantic comedy, brought laughter to the entire theatre: sulking in her room, apparently betrayed by her lover, she hears his outrageous suggestion through the door, considers it, and allows a slightly lop-sided expression to run across her face. Such a detail, impossible on the stage, captures the power of film to move and delight us.

The story, when summarized, sounds banal: a marriage of convenience in order to prevent the deportation of a young woman forces a man who had been avoiding commitment into a series of mishaps, in tandem with the troubles of a companion suddenly troubled by impotence. But as executed on the screen, I found the film delightful, especially an extended chase of the two main characters by the owner of a very large bulldog, and, of course, that haunting smile.

Five women in various stages of life crisis decide on Austen as the anodyne for their pain: six novels, six discussion leaders. But wait: they number only five. Then one of the women, ill at ease in human relationships (she raises dogs instead), invites a young man she has more or less picked up in a bar, thinking that he can not only fill out their number but also serve as a new partner for the recent divorcee in the group. This kind of thinking runs throughout the movie, which occasionally makes the viewer wonder whether anybody could really be as screwed up as the repressed high school French teacher in the group. (Then you meet her mother, Lynn Redgrave in a cameo as a woman with a severe personality disorder, and it all makes sense, though I suspect that a good deal of Redgrave’s performance was cut from the film—she appears for only a few minutes.)

Apparently the plots of each of the six sections of the film echo the narrative structure of the Austen novel under discussion. The film is good enough to make me want to reread the novels then watch the movie again to see how the puzzle works.

If this film has as strong an impact on you as it did on me, prepare to be rocked. I don't expect to get to visit the Gombi National Park where it was filmed, and the footage of Jane Goodall among the chimpanzees, much larger animals than I had been expecting, intercut with earlier pictures of the same woman in the same place, and, in one instance, with the same animal, forty years ago, I found quite touching.

It's one thing to read descriptions of animal behavior, and another actually to see it. Now I suppose I must have read somewhere Dr. Goodall's remarkable discovery of tools used by chimpanzees, but seeing (and in Omnimax you're seeing on a huge scale) an animal tear the leaves off a twig, insert it into a gigantic termite hill, then pull out supper on a stick, struck me with great force. For this "ant-fishing" is not instinctive: rather, the chimpanzees have learned this technique and passed the skill down over a number of generations. A tool-using culture, a phrase we had used as a way to distinguish human beings from other species, now takes on new meaning, especially when coupled with the fact that chimpanzees and humans share 95% of the same DNA. Forget "Spirit": bring your kids to this film.

A jealous man with a young beautiful wife employs an unemployed ex-soldier, first as a chauffeur then as a business manager. The man is Turkish, the young people German, and immediately attracted to each as he deliberately throws them together. What can he have expected would happen? But there’s a catch: she’s heavily in debt and a pre-nuptial agreement prescribes that should she ever leave her husband, she’d take away only her debts. In retrospect the story seems predictable, but as the plot plays out you’re never quite sure what turns it will take, right up to the final O.Henry twist. Three engaging actors make you care more than, in retrospect, you care to admit, for a film whose political symbolism seems hard to escape.

Rowan Atkinson’s peculiar brand of lunacy, when applied to a James Bond-style caper, requires carefully calibrated performances by the supporting cast, notably the assistant and the female spy who must cover for the principal’s incompetence without ever acknowledging it. The villain of the piece, brilliantly played by John Malkovich, affects an attitude of utter boredom that offers a perfect foil to Atkinson’s low-key hero.

The plot, though somewhat superfluous in this kind of film, leads, through a series of logical though ridiculous steps, to the coronation at Westminster Abbey of a Frenchman as King of England, interrupted by a "hidden camera" performance of Rowan Atkinson dancing to ABBA’s "Does Your Mother Know", a sequence worth the price of admission in itself.

Like its predecessor, “The Fast Runner,” this movie offers a privileged view of Inuit culture seen from the inside. This time film-makers Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn explore the first contact of the Inuit people with white culture in 1912. The white people actually portrayed in the film—a pair of trappers who have taken the trouble to learn Inuktitut—do not come off badly, but the devastating effect of white culture is painfully exposed.

The rich spiritual life of the Inuit, eloquently captured in an extended monologue by the tribal shaman, contrasts with the perverted version of Christianity practiced by Inuit converts, who mercilessly use food as a weapon of proselytism.

One notes the harsh contrast between the spiritual richness and the material poverty of these people living in the unforgiving climate north of the Arctic Circle. To find such an advanced state of civilization—the art of living well together—amid such physical vulnerability seems like an unfair trick of fate. I have rarely seen a film that provoked such good conversation and serious reflection. By all means, see it with a bunch of good friends.

In a football game, fans of opposing teams sit within shouting distance of each other, with cheerleaders and marching bands urging support for the players on the field. The trench warfare of World War I resembled a deadly game with opponents constantly within rifle range, separated by no more than the width of a football field. In one sense it was an extraordinarily personal war, with the enemy always visible as recognizable, individual human beings. As the war progressed, it became more and more impersonal, as generals sent waves of troops to be cut down by machine gun fire.

In December 1914, with the war but a few months old, an extraordinary event occurred in which Scottish, French and German troops, moved by the music of Christmas, improvised a cease-fire, shared an impromptu worship service, and on Christmas Day moved through no-man’s land to recover and bury the bodies of fallen comrades. Enemy combatants shared food and drink and participated in a pick-up game of soccer, all treasonable acts in contravention of military discipline. Then, knowing that an exchange of artillery barrages would devastate their counterparts, the soldiers moved back and forth across the battlefield to share the shelter of their respective trenches.

“Joyeux Noël” begins with French, English and German schoolboys reciting jingoistic poems calling for steadfastness against an inhuman enemy, a message repeated later in the film by those in high command, a doctrine that makes the Christmas Eve fraternization all the more remarkable. How could such an unlikely event have come about? As portrayed in the film, the points of commonality among the troops, at least in this early stage of the war, outweighed their differences. Soldiers on both sides of the line were familiar with the land, a point symbolized by a small cat that ran back and forth between the trenches. Many of the combatants shared not only religious belief but a common language for its expression in the form of the Latin Mass. They shared Christmas carols—“Silent Night,” “Adeste Fideles.” They shared an incredible loneliness for wives and sweethearts separated by a psychological distance much greater than geographical on this first Christmas Eve away from home.

The physical proximity that allowed music to be heard, and even shared, allowed all these commonalities to coalesce in a remarkable celebration of humanity in the midst of an inhuman conflict. Can one imagine a comparable scene taking place between Christians and Muslims in Afghanistan or Iraq, or even amid tribal conflicts in Africa? “Joyeux Noel” captures a precious moment in history in which the inherent goodness of the human creature briefly outweighed the inherent violence. A year later in the war the moment would have been impossible. Now, nearly a century later, the story seems unthinkable. Yet it did happen, and this sad but beautiful film captures an episode worth treasuring.

You figure it would take a writer to make a film consisting of two stories about writing, in which the climax comes with the publication of a manuscript, but given that the audience knows that fact in advance, how are you going to sustain interest? And with a subject of food, cooking, and eating, does anyone really care? Oh, yes! “Julie and Julia” offers the greatest paean to the basic pleasures of life since “Babette’s Feast,” coupled with portraits of sustaining romantic love in two different generations, in itself a joyful departure from the usual movie fare. And finally “Julie and Julia” gives us Meryl Streep, embodying the legendary Julia Child, from her days as the only female at the Cordon Bleu school in Paris to the publication of “Mastering the Art of French cooking,” Stanley Tucci as her diplomat husband, and Amy Adams as a contemporary stressed-out functionary who decides to give meaning to her life by cooking through the entire Julia Child book in a single year, recording her progress in a blog. Forget what the critics say about the imbalance between the two stories: they form a culinary counterpoint in which one flavor sets off the other. Go see this film and celebrate life.

In the middle of one of the Marx Brothers movies Harpo leads a troupe of black adults and children in a production number called "Who Dat Man?" Even taking into account the differences in racial sensitivity between the present and the 1930's, I have always found this sequence difficult to watch for its preservation of humiliating racial stereotypes. That was the 1930's, but I was taken aback when, early in "Jungle Book 2," a group of animated dark-skinned Africans mount a production number called "Jungle Rhythm" to a jazz background. What can Disney have been thinking?

That reservation aside, I found this to be a thoroughly enjoyable movie, not least for the voice of John Goodman as Baloo, the outsized bear. A number of years ago one movie reviewer cited Goodman's performance as the best example of dancing by a big man he'd ever seen on film. Knowing Goodman's physical grace and size enhances our appreciation of Baloo's cartoon antics.

Shere Khan, the maleficent tiger, is one of the best screen villains I've seen (far superior to the bad guys of the James Bond or "Die Hard" series) and the vultures who constantly heckle him provide fine comic relief. The musical score mostly relies on proven favourites such as "The Bare Necessities," but I was happy to hear that infectiously good-humoured song again. (If you've forgotten the song, you can hear it with sub-titles at http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/junglebook2/index2.html?DETECT=SWF.5000000)

Mowgli, with the voice of Haley Joel Osment, faces a difficult personal conflict between the safety (and relative boredom) of the village and the adventure (and peril) of the jungle. Since this replicates the existential problem encountered by any child reaching adolescence, the film takes on a kind of primordial significance and acquits itself well, to my mind.

When I was young we had a skill game consisting of a wooden box with controls coming out the side. The idea was to tilt the surface of the box so that a marble would negotiate a winding path without falling into any of the holes. “Juno” represents a successful navigation of a pathway fraught with opportunities to go wrong. A sixteen-year-old girl, finding herself pregnant, decides to carry the child to term and then give it up for adoption to a couple she has interviewed. The number of ways in which such a film could go wrong (and in which previous films and television shows have gone wrong) staggers the imagination. To see a film that manages to avoid these pitfalls has produced general celebration among reviewers. It’s hard to claim that “Juno” is a great film, but it remains enjoyable throughout and a tour de force of acting for the heroine (played by Ellen Page, supported by a fine entourage). We see a young girl who tries to conceal her vulnerability behind a barrage of smart talk, but have you ever known anyone so precociously articulate? We see the extent to which adolescents turn for expertise to other adolescents. And we look, perhaps with dismay, at how sexuality for this generation has become, well, crass, and life looks like a plain strewn with the wreckage of fallen icons since nothing—absolutely nothing—is sacred.

You’ve heard the expression “crazed with grief,” so you’re willing to cut William Keane a little slack as you watch him search the Port Authority Bus Terminal for his abducted six-year-old daughter. But almost immediately something strikes you as off, beginning when Keane asks a ticket-seller to recall a sale of a bus ticket “last September” and then accosts random travellers to ask if they’ve seen the girl. Later, his attempts to find a job consist of sticking his head in a doorway and saying, “Hey, I need a job; do you have any work?”

Director Lodge Kerrigan take us into the man’s paranoia by framing virtually every shot from Keane’s shoulders to the top of his head, bringing the audience much closer than our comfort level would dictate to episodes of vodka, cocaine, and impersonal sex.

The film becomes downright harrowing when Keane meets and befriends a woman with a six-year-old daughter whom she entrusts to his care. “No, no, no” we want to shout, even as we wonder what kind of school, in the twenty-first century, would let a non-relative call to a first-grader through the schoolyard fence and then take her away.

The film’s sudden ending brings both bewilderment and relief as we escape from an uncomfortably intimate visit to the world of mental illness.

Welcome to the quaint British village of Little Wallop (pop. 57), home of Anglican priest Walter Goodfellow (Rowan Atkinson), his wife (Kristen Scott Thomas) and their two children. Into their world of problems (she ready to run off with a golf pro, he too wrapped up in picayune parish matters to notice) comes a most unexpected housekeeper (Maggie Smith, in one of her most delightful roles since “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie”). In this black comedy any problem can be solved if one’s isn’t overly scrupulous about the occasional “disappearance.” Good things come in small packages—don’t let this little gem escape you.

It was reported recently that a former member of the Toronto City Council (and mayoral candidate) used to intimidate opponents, and even allies, verbally to the point that aides went to great lengths to avoid meetings at which he was present. As a consequence, people became reluctant to take him on, and many of his actions which perhaps deserved closer scrutiny escaped examination. A person willing to go to any length—no holds barred—enjoys a substantial psychological advantage over someone with a more balanced approach. In short, bullying works.

The violence in Kill Bill, Vol. 1 had a similar effect on this viewer, and perhaps on others: here was a director willing to stop at nothing. As a result, we approach Kill Bill, Vol. 2 somewhat cravenly, just as the director intended. Knowing that the central character has had a daughter, we silently beg the director not to do her harm. We tacitly plead with him not to confront us with actual scenes of torture. Happily, we get our wish. Yet the violence in Kill Bill, Vol. 2 is no less shocking than in the first film.

Director Tarentino has employed the shock effect of the first film to remarkable aesthetic advantage by stretching time nearly to the breaking point. Since we expect violence, Tarentino can keep us on edge by delaying its delivery. This technique gives an extraordinary sense of menace to the most commonplace situations. Knowing that someone is going to explode into violence, we remain in a constant state of apprehension during the time that the character delivers an apparently calm monologue.

In this context, Tarentino can fill in the gaps in the narrative without the slightest risk of losing our attention. This stretching of time applies to the very acts of violence themselves. Kill Bill, Vol.1 distinguished itself for the sheer number and rapidity of deaths. Kill Bill, Vol.2 has a much smaller body count and the methods of death are much slower. Tarentino plays with time so confidently that we can accept the notion of female lead Uma Thurman being buried alive in a coffin underground while the director takes us through an extended flashback explaining the technique by which she will eventually extricate herself.

In Kill Bill, vol.2 we finally meet Bill, played by David Carradine. An opera composer will often delay the entrance of a leading singer for dramatic effect. "Otello," for example, begins with a violent storm that threatens to destroy the ship bearing Otello and all his men. An apprehensive chorus on shore describes the progress of the vessel and the brilliance of its captain in bringing it through safely. By the time Otello steps on stage, he is already a hero in our eyes. Tarentino carries the process to its extreme so that for all intents and purposes Bill doesn’t even appear until the second film, but the extreme violence carried out as his behest has so conditioned us that we feel a menacing tone beneath his expressionless conversation. We know that something terrible will happen whenever we see him; it’s just a matter of waiting, and Tarentino exercises a sure judgement of just how long he can make us wait.

One is reminded of Hitchcock’s insidious device in "The Birds": we see a woman sitting on a bench, then the camera cuts to birds gathering on a jungle gym behind her. We cut back to the woman, then back to the birds, more numerous now than before. Again Hitchcock alternates between the waiting woman and the gathering birds, but now he alters the rhythm: we see the woman carrying out the most mundane actions, checking her lipstick in a mirror or looking for a cigarette, but during this period the camera does not cut back to the birds. Our tension mounts, not knowing what is going on behind the woman, to the point that we’re practically screaming for Hitchcock to show us what we want to see, even though we dread seeing it. Tarentino has learned the lesson well, and uses a variety of delaying techniques, including scenes of remarkable beauty, before delivering the violent act that we have been anticipating.

Never has violence been used so artistically. One would think, after the carnage of Kill Bill, Vol.1 that we would be inured to further shocks. Yet the four deaths in Kill Bill, Vol.2, despite their inevitability, still surprise us. Those who took a pass on the first film had good reasons for doing so—it offended in many ways. But those who survived to see the second film can experience a remarkable psychological journey.

I find the situation of abused children among the most distressing subjects for a film, and “Kisses” has more than enough distress. Kylie and her neighbour Dylan, both around twelve years old, have seen enough of life to be unhappy with their families and pessimistic about their prospects improving. A few days before Christmas Dylan tries to intervene when his father attacks his mother. The man pursues the boy, Dylan eluding him with Kylie’s help, and the two children decide on the spur of the moment to run away. Up to this point the film has appeared in grim shades of black and white but as the children make their way into Dublin on a canal scow, delicate shades of colour come into play. Kylie has brought along a bit of money which they squander on jackets, roller shoes and candy. Unable to locate Dylan’s older runaway brother, with whom they had intended to spend the night, the young people experience a terrifying episode with two men who abduct Kylie. By morning, the bright pink of Kylie new coat has faded considerably, along with the children’s hope for a happy outcome to their adventure.

Overall, those who assist the fugitives greatly outnumber those bent on harming them, but their eventual return home in a police car takes us back to the unhappy black-and-white of the opening, with the exception of a brief touch of pink for a heartbreaking, fleeting kiss.

"Kissing Jessica Stein" asks us to accept the premise that a smart, attractive, single, 28-year-old Jewish businesswoman, unable to find a man who will meet her exacting standards of being the right kind of smart and the right kind of funny, will answer a "woman seeks woman" personal ad. For want of information to the contrary, I accepted the premise and enjoyed a quirky, funny romantic comedy with its fair share of authentic insights. At one point the woman with whom Jessica Stein has been living for several months confronts her for not acknowledging their relationship, even to herself, and therefore not to her friends or family. The ending may seem like either a cop-out or an inevitability, depending upon how you feel about the premise. I'd rate this above "Kate and Leopold" or "Sidewalks of New York" among recent romantic comedies.

The exponential increase in scientific research following World War II included a number of experiments that we would now describe as unethical, demented, or just plain loony. In "Kitchen Stories" a team of Swedish observers study the habits of eighteen single Norwegian male volunteers, supposedly in order to design a more efficient kitchen. (Think IKEA, if you like.) The observer, dressed in coat, vest and tie, sitting near the ceiling atop a kind of lifeguard chair, records every movement of the farmer subject on a chart, day after day, for a period of months. (The observers live in tiny trailers next to the subjects’ houses.) The observer is forbidden to communicate in any way with the host subject. The film, which focuses on one such pairing, begins like a Monty Python sketch, exploring the comic possibilities of a ludicrous situation. The development of the inevitable relationship between two solitary men, though never unamusing, eventually turns touching and even moving, as they try to preserve their humanity within the impossible stricture of non-communication. Predictably, the need for interaction finally overcomes the need to obey the rules. Along the way, we learn a fair bit about Norwegian life, including a delightful snow-scooter. A quirky, life-affirming film worth seeing.

a surprisingly good two-hander for Kevin Spacey, who, as one reviewer points out, has always seemed a bit extraterrestrial even in his earthly roles, and Jeff Bridges, who played the other side of the equation in "Starman." Complaints that the film tries to have it both ways seemed justified at the end. I prefer to accept Prot at face value (even though, as the film failed to point out, the name is a partial anagram of Porter, his supposed real identity): that he really does travel on light energy, see ultraviolet light, cure the mentally disabled, and explain the complexities of a faraway galaxy to bewildered astro-physicists. Spacey remains calm and accepting throughout, occasionally amused but never condescending. Jeff Bridges sacrifices family obligations to throw himself into the case, and acquits himself well as the film's "straight man," but it's really Spacey's movie, and a thoroughly engaging performance.

Relationships are so inherently difficult and demanding, and there are so many other challenging problems in life, genuine compelling issues such as careers, children, and self-understanding, that the temptation to deal with these issues and postpone working on relationships can be irresistible. If you add to the inherent complexity of relationships the added burdens of extramarital affairs, midlife crises, or the death of a child, the bonds of love can be stretched to the breaking point. The issues are so universal, so fundamental, and so important that you'd think we'd see them as the basis for most adult movies. That we have gotten used to this not being the case says something about the value we place on relationships and makes the impact of the Australian movie "Lantana" all the greater.

Set within the context of the police investigation of a woman's disappearance, the film depicts the contrasting interactions among and between four marriages with sensitivity and a good deal more honesty than appears in most American films ("In the Bedroom" being a notable exception). You may squirm as you watch half the characters refuse to share their feelings, even with themselves, and recall the words of a character in Alice Munro's story "Queenie": "Men are not normal, Chrissy. That's one thing you'll learn if you ever get married."

We come to care for each of these characters individually. We see their point of view, understand their limitations, partly because of the skill of the actors, partly because of the emergency they find themselves involved in. So their difficulties in communicating, in relating, become our own. We don't simply shrug and say "Get a therapist." Their pain resonates with our own personal failures.

Imagine a romantic comedy without dogs, torn wedding dresses, teenagers, bathroom jokes, male virgins or unemployed beer-drinkers--in short, a treat. Dustin Hoffman plays Harvey, a professional jingle-writer (and pretty fair jazz pianist) who just doesn’t seem to fit in. His wife has left him for someone more presentable, while his daughter, about to be married, bypasses Harvey and asks her stepfather to give her away.

How does Dustin Hoffman do Harvey? Rumpled, ill-fitting clothes and unruly hair assist the characterization but mostly it’s the way he walks, the way his mouth turns small and distorted, and a dozen other applications of his craft that I couldn’t identity: what a great actor!

Emma Thompson plays an unmarried airport survey-taker with an intrusive aged mother who seems to spend all her time calling her daughter’s cell phone. The early part of the film contains more uncomfortable social moments than I can recall seeing in a long time—you wince in sympathy for the main characters. Eventually they get together for an awkward but adult interaction. Recommended for grown-ups.

Canterbury Cathedral has been in existence some 1400 years. It must make a difference to grow up in a country that looks on time with that kind of perspective. Imagine a working-class neighborhood in which the same people remain, generation after generation. It isn’t hard to picture four men who have been buddies for more than fifty years, first as school chums, then as war-time pals, then as drinking buddies. Imagine that one of them, Jack, dies, leaving the request that the others scatter his ashes in the sea. Such a situation requires them to deal with issues of life and death, and the meaning of Jack’s presence in their lives, thoughts for which they do not possess easy means of expression.

"Last Orders" makes the viewer share that feeling of difficulty of expression. The accented language requires an effort to comprehend. The flashbacks, involving different actors, require concentration to keep everyone straight. The complex relationships of loyalties and betrayals are exposed little by little. The success of such a film rests on the excellence of its ensemble acting, and the team of Michael Caine (as Jack), Bob Hoskins, David Hemmings, Tom Courtenay and Helen Mirren (as Jack’s wife) perform flawlessly. A fine film.

No one is more naïve than the naïve man who thinks he is sophisticated. Nicholas Garrigan, a young doctor who opts to practice in Uganda rather submit to a partnership with his tyrannical father, finds himself acting as personal physician to Idi Amin. The young man, surrendering to the ruler’s immense charm, accepts Amin’s self-portrayal as a man of the people trying to establish a free country against opposition from his predecessor’s partisans and the British who formerly ruled the colony. Seeing Amin through Garrigan’s eyes, we at first associate Amin’s persona with other powerful men we have known. Garrigan’s intoxication with his sudden position of authority as personal advisor (“the only man whose judgement I trust”) blinds him to the psychotic side of a dictator who murdered 300,000 Ugandans during less than a decade in power.

The film seduces us as completely as Amin seduces the doctor. A bleak opening scene in Scotland, full of grays and blacks, suddenly explodes into reds, yellows and oranges, accompanied by infectious dancing to a hypnotic drumbeat when the young man reaches Africa. Who would not yield to those entrancing rhythms? Forrest Whitaker embodies the powerful personality of Idi Amin in a tour de force of acting, displaying an irresistible charm which James McAvoy, reminiscent of a young Hugh Grant, seems helpless to resist. This is a marvellous, though troubling, film.

When you're thirty and Italian and the father of a one-year-old, or unmarried but living with a woman who's expecting your child, or unmarried and seeing a succession of different women, or unattached but unwilling to go into your late father's business, even though everyone expects it of you, you might be tempted to buy a camper and drive it to Turkey to train divers for work in Polynesia, bizarre perhaps, but at least it's a way to give your life some significance so that when you're forty and your life is effectively finished you won't feel it's all been a waste, I mean, you loved her once, right, but the passion just isn't there anymore, and it makes more sense to split up now than make a child grow up with all that unhappiness, but you're having a really tough time thinking this thing through because your cell phone constantly keeps ringing and if you turn it off, it would only make things worse, but that eighteen-year-old, I mean, I know she hasn't even finished high school, but she's so hot, man (won't you cover for me if Giulia calls?), and what about Giulia's mother, who having survived thirty years of unresponsiveness from her therapist husband has finally decided to leave him and seek her freedom: is it possible, after all, that marriage and parenting may be the most meaningful thing a man can do in this life? Tough question when you're thirty. Tough question anytime, but enough to generate a first-rate comedy.

Where is there room for optimism in "Last Wedding," where three young relationships disintegrate, the result of immaturity, infidelity, and lack of respect? As in "Sidewalks of New York," people say "We need to talk," but never do, despite being well-educated and articulate. Well, the women are not be trifled with. A young architect, having landed her first job, refuses to suffer the put-downs of her failed architect partner. Another women refuses to accept the weak excuses ("It was meaningless and inconsequential") of her English professor husband who has succumbed to the temptation of sex with an ambitious student. The third refuses to admit the failure of her recent marriage, nor to let her husband just slink away. The final scene shows the three guys together in a hot tub, silent, but presumably thinking "Women are impossible. What do they want, anyway?" etc. It is said that there are only two kinds of relationships, those that the partners are working on and those they've given up on. How sad that movies seem to show us only the latter.

Imagine a producer of rock music, a mature woman in her fifties, who has been operating in this culture since the ‘70’s. She continues to work with musicians in their twenties, who evidently take her lead in preserving an ethos that was current before they were born. She’s a survivor, whose share of hits has paid for her house in Laurel Canyon, California and supports a life-style centering on music and marijuana. Frances McDormand inhabits the role like a second skin and gives one of the finest performances of her career. If you enjoy rock music or marijuana or fine cinematic acting, "Laurel Canyon" will please you whenever she is onscreen.

Now imagine Christian Bale as a first-year psychiatric resident at a California hospital. Having more difficulty with that one? How about Kate Beckinsale as a brilliant geneticist specializing in the genome of fruit flies? A bit tougher. Now for the real test: imagine Natasha McElhone as a second-year medical resident. Surely at this point you’ll insist that I’m pulling your leg. I wish I could say I was making this up, but this trio forms the "conflict" in "Laurel Canyon": Christian Bale plays the uptight son of the pot-smoking record producer, Kate Beckinsale his sheltered fiancée, and Natasha McElhone the love interest who threatens his relationship. If you can find any of that remotely believable then you’ll enjoy the remainder of "Laurel Canyon."

I believe this film has gotten an undeservedly bad press. I laughed all the way through and quite enjoyed it. Here’s the premise: two New York divorce lawyers consistently find themselves opposing each other in court—she, principled and conventional; he raffish and iconoclastic. They despise each other’s tactics and, by film’s end, discover that they’re really in love. Pierce Brosnan does raffish really well; Julianne Moore does the best she can. More about that later. Happily, they have a crisp, witty script to work with and a couple of first-rate loonies as clients for the climactic conflict. Reviewers have complained that Parker Posey is wasted in the role of a fashion designed married to a punk rock star. I think she’s perfect. When the Julianne Moore character tries to ingratiate herself by describing her law firm as "the Tiffany’s of divorce practice," Parker growls petulantly, "I wish you were the Home Hardware so you could cut off his balls with a chainsaw." Who could better deliver a line like that? And the woman judge who has to contend with the battling attorneys in her court has no more patience with Pierce Brosnan’s shenanigans when she ends up marrying the pair. "How would you like to be the first man ever to be held in contempt at his own wedding?"

This brings me to the problem of Julianne Moore, a gifted actress but not really the right one for the part. All the way through the film I kept thinking about how the role seemed to have been written for Diane Keeton. But we have a problem of ages. While Pierce Brosnan is 53, Julianne Moore at 43 was thought to be old, a stumbling block that the film tries to overcome by giving her a very youthful fifty-two-year-old mother, in the hope that the audience, doing the arithmetic, will come up with a younger age for the heroine. Now Katherine Hepburn was 42 when she played the comparable role in "Adam’s Rib." Who are you going cast nowadays? Julia Roberts is too young (and expensive), Meryl Streep (55) and Goldie Hawn (59) too old. For my part, I would have gone with Keaton (58): you need comedic talent in this kind of film. But I found it entertaining regardless.

If I had never seen Reese Witherspoon before this film, I should have no desire ever to see her again. Her solitary acting gesture, raising her shoulders, opening her mouth and eyes wide and looking ahead with an expression of astonishment, wears thin very fast. Now Ms. Witherspoon impressed me with her talent and intelligence in "Pleasantville" and "The Importance of Being Earnest," so I’m willing to cut her a bit of slack in a film evidently intended to pay the rent, or whatever movie stars do with their money, but this film does nothing to enhance her reputation though it probably advanced her career. If you are compelled to see the film, enjoy Sally Field as a double-crossing villain and Bob Newhart as a politically savvy doorman.

Much has been made of the extraordinary sets for this movie, filmed on five enormous sound stages. The trouble is, we’ve become so accustomed to the extraordinary that we’re likely to respond the same way bored teenagers do to the Grand Canyon: they look over the edge, say, "Hey, neat!" then turn back to their comic books (I’m obviously dating myself; these days they’d be returning to their Ipods and cell phones). Much has been made of Jim Carrey’s acting, but how many changes can you ring on the theme of the melodramatic villain, master of disguise. Meryl Streep obviously enjoys playing a panphobic aunt, but I’m afraid I also tired of her before I was supposed to.

One doesn’t tire of the children: Violet, the inventor; Klaus, the doer; little Sunny, the biter. And one wouldn’t tire of the movie, either, if there were really a movie here. Unfortunately, this is too obviously just the introduction for movies to come. We’re introduced to the main characters and situation: the Baudelaire children, orphaned when their wealthy parents perish in a mysterious fire, require all their wits to survive a succession of nightmarish injustices. Sets, villains, injustices—all larger than life, all weirdly distorted: the movie version more than makes up for the absence of description in the eleven volumes (and counting), according to my daughter, who has read a fair number of the books. But all we get are a succession of episodes, with obviously loose ends to be taken up in the "further adventures." Huge amounts of money have obviously gone into creating this phantasmagoria, but it takes more than a "series of events" to make a real story.

This companion film to Clint Eastwood’s “Flags of Our Fathers” gains power from having a single, fairly straightforward tale to tell. A framing episode in the present provides the source material for the story: a series of letters written by Japanese soldiers hiding in a network of tunnels where they await the attacking American forces in 1944. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (played by Ken Watanabe), sent by the Japanese High Command to defend the island, must contend with substantial obstacles. The destruction of the main fleet means that the island troops will receive no reinforcements. General Kuribayashi’s unorthodox strategy of avoiding a pitched battle against the superior American force in favour of attacking the invaders from an elaborate series of tunnels does not sit well with a number of his subordinates. Yet the general never falters in his efforts to make the best of a losing position.

The film, mostly in Japanese with English subtitles, includes flashbacks of the homes and families that the soldiers have left behind, along with quotations from their lost letters. At the climax of the movie, we watch the faces of Japanese soldiers as they listen to a letter, written by a young captured American soldier just before his death, translated on the spot into Japanese. Eastwood makes his point simply and powerfully: the American’s letter is no different from the ones the Japanese soldiers have been writing.

As with “Flags of Our Fathers” Eastwood has drained the scene of colour, so that the red circle of the Japanese flag serves as the only alternative to drab browns and greys until late in the film when American bombs produce shocking orange flames. This is a potent, incredibly sad film, not only one of the most sympathetic war films I’ve seen but one of the best in the past year.

World-weary whimsy is a helluva difficult mode to sustain and, not surprisingly, "The Life Aquatic" has a bumpy course, not unlike the career of its eponymous hero. But when it succeeds you just gotta love this movie, with its continual affectionate nods to movie tradition.

Steve Zissou (Bill Murray) has been photographing and gently faking his sea-related adventures for so long that he’s begun to lose track of the difference between reality and cheap pseudo-documentary. Then a "jaguar shark" (or something) swallows his best friend and, well, a man’s gotta to what a man’s gotta do, so Murray leads his motley crew on a quest for revenge. That’s the fragile narrative thread guiding the film, but as always in this kind of film, the real story lies in the interruptions. Wes Anderson has assembled a cast who can make surrealism engaging if not entirely believable. Angelica Huston plays a man-eating monster with a tender heart, Jeff Goldbloom her former husband and current paramour, Cate Blanchette a pregnant report trying to write, or not write, an article on Zissou, Owan Wilson a pilot for Kentucky Airlines who believes himself to be Zissou’s unacknowledged son, Willem Dafoe a German crew member jealous of the "son’s" intrusion. At the centre of the film, appearing in virtually every scene, stands Bill Murray, whose guiding philosophy seems to be "whatever."

I won’t soon forget the commando raid on a deserted island in which the crew members, clad in skintight silver suits, one by one vault the tennis net of a derelict hotel. One is seduced by the prevailing mood of insouciant lunacy in which the "lookout" sings David Bowie songs in Portuguese while a band of pirates overruns the ship. Captions keep appearing on the screen, blurring the distinction between the "actual" action and the filmed action, which unfolds like a very peculiar dream (including some of the strangest underwater creatures since "Finding Nemo.")

Whimsy may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but if you liked Wes Anderson’s "The Royal Tennanbaums" or "Rushmore," you won’t want to miss "The Life Aquatic."

I haven't laughed so hard since Woody Allen stopped making funny films. This wildly off-beat animated feature supposes that a former CIA agent turned social worker has persuaded a superior alien culture that the mosquito is an endangered species and that earth's human population, however unintelligent, needs to be preserved as an essential element in the insect's food chain. A rogue scientist from this superior culture has unleashed on earth an indestructible life form programmed to destroy everything in its path; a lonely Hawaiian girl insists on adopting the creature as a pet dog. If you can tolerate a bit of sentimentality in the last third of the picture (this is Disney, after all), you're likely to have more fun than you thought possible at a kid's flick.

This is one of the most harrowing films I’ve seen in a long while. It starts slowly, poetically, calmly, with a soothing narrative voice leading us into the story, but by the end I could scarcely wait for a scene to end before something truly awful happened.

The film opens with the circulation of warning about a pedophile who has recently returned to a neighbourhood full of children after two years of incarceration for indecent exposure. We meet Sarah Pierce (Kate Winslet) and her daughter Lucie, and Brad Adamson (Patrick Wilson) and his son Aaron. Sarah and Brad become acquainted, involved, and then deeply involved. Both experience loveless, stifling marriages, she to a husband who finds sexual satisfaction with Internet images of women; he with a wife who treats him like a child and insists that their son sleep in bed with them. We also learn more than we want to about the pedophile Ronnie McGorvey (Jackie Earle Haley), who lives with an aging mother whom he calls Mommy.

As the film progresses it becomes evident that title refers to the adults, not to the actual children. The neighbourhood mothers entertain fantasies about Brad, whom they call Prom King. Brad, for his part, only pretends to be studying for a bar exam he has already failed twice, and evokes his glory days as a college quarterback by joining an evening football league.

When an older friend takes Sarah to a book club meeting to discuss Madame Bovary, Sarah offers an articulate defense of the eponymous character, all the while thinking about her frantic coupling with Brad. The film is filled with cases of arrested development, including a retired police officer, compelled to leave the force after mistakenly shooting a thirteen-year-old boy, who now spends his time waging a one-main campaign against the relatively harmless pedophile. As the action begins hurtling forward, the adults seem to regress more rapidly, culminating in Brad’s ill-considered attempt at a high-risk skateboarding maneuver. This is not a film for the faint of heart, but it admirably justifies the Oscar nominations for Winslet and Haley.

“LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE”

“Schadenfreude” has been defined as taking pleasure in the misery of others, and seeing a totally dysfunctional family in operation tends to elicit either laughter or tears. “Little Miss Sunshine” works so long as we keep laughing: at Alan Alda, an unrepentant hippie; at Greg Kinnear, a motivational speaker who remains a loser; at Steve Carell, whose failed suicide reconfirms his self-image as a failure (no longer America’s No.1 Proust scholar); at Toni Collette, the wife and mother who tries to hold the family together; at the ridiculous, trashy pageant to which they transport young Abigail Breslin in a broken-down VW bus lacking first and second gears. The movie bogs down when it tries to become earnest; happily that doesn’t happen very often. I found it to be an entertaining film with a bunch of off-beat moments and quirky performances that lift it out of the formulaic.

Stephen Sondheim based this musical on the Ingmar Bergman film, “Smiles of a Summer Night,” whose title refers to a popular legend concerning the summer solstice when day ends in an endless twilight: the first smile is for the young who know nothing; the second smile is for fools who know too little; the third smile is for the old who know too much. “Time out of joint” might describe the situation at the beginning of this romantic comedy set in Sweden at the turn of the 20^th century. A middle-aged lawyer--married to an eighteen-year-old girl, still a virgin after eleven months of marriage--visits his old flame, an actress whose current lover, a military officer, takes a dim view of their reunion. The lawyer’s son, a divinity student, languishes with love for his stepmother. Three couples find themselves thrown together for “a weekend in the country” at the estate of the actress’ dowager mother and shenanigans reminiscent of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Sondheim’s brilliant wordplay conveys the dual moods of romance and cynicism while his music, inventive variations on ¾ time, sustains the intrigue in a kind of musical soufflé. The current production in the small Court House Theatre in Niagara-on-the-Lake keeps every member of the audience in intimate touch with the action. A reduced on-stage orchestra, deftly arranged scenery and an ensemble of skilled singers combine in a kind of theatrical chamber music. As always with Sondheim, wit and charm seduce us into an ultimately moving experience.

The Stasi, or East German Secret Police, numbered some 100,000 employees and 200,000 informers in support of a system whose stated goal was to “know everything,” a system that held East Germany in a state of perpetual paranoia throughout the Cold War. When Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) finishes bugging the apartment of playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), aware that the neighbour across the hall will have observed his visit through her peephole, he warns her that if she breathes a word of the affair her daughter will lose her position at the university. The same captain gives an illustrated lecture on interrogation techniques to a group of Stasi trainees. You get the idea. If anyone had told me that I would feel sympathy for a Stasi officer, I would have been incredulous, yet such is the case.

In “The Lives of Others” neither the captain nor the playwright fit into the system. Indeed, with a system based on insane internal contradictions, it’s hard to imagine how any moral person could fit in. The captain believes fervently in his work of detecting and pursuing enemies of the state, yet believes just as fervently in the justice of the system, which would leave innocent people alone. So he bristles at the idea of building a case against the playwright—an anomaly among East German artists for not attacking the state—so that a high-ranking bureaucrat can have his way with the playwright’s girlfriend Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck).

When the playwright anonymously pens an article for a West German newspaper calling attention to the high rate of suicide in East Germany, the captain, to whom the hidden microphones disclose every detail of the playwright’s life, omits damning evidence in his reports. The tightening knot and its tragic denouement take place in 1984. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent accessibility of secret files give the playwright the opportunity to figure out the story.

The bleakness of life under the regime, represented in shades of grey, contrasts with the hauntingly beautiful musical score, which enters the action tangentially in the form of a “Sonata for the Good Man,” which the playwright plays on the piano and the Stasi captain hears through his headphones. This is a beautifully controlled piece of movie-making.

Robert Altman's "M*A*S*H" (1970) captured the attitude of an era--a spirit of playfulness, a determination to find some source of fun even in the grimmest circumstances, a refusal to take oneself or one's place in life too seriously. Elliot Gould, who starred in that film, seemed to perpetuate that spirit in the persona he embodied in subsequent films.

That spirit of playfulness seems now out of date. In the 80's and 90's, there was no longer a place for people who refused to take authority or their jobs seriously. That kind of person was the first to be let go in corporate "down-sizing," The Type-A personality seemed to rule the world. In the new millennium, people have recognized the importance of relieving stress, but often even mental health takes a Type-A form: 9:00-9:05, smell roses; 4:00-4:30, spend quality time with offspring.

Elliot Gould's career seems to have suffered from the change of public attitude toward play. Who embodies that kind of irreverence nowadays? One thinks of Bill Murray and Herald Ramis in "Stripes" or "Ghostbusters," but insouciance seems no longer viable as the basis for a film career.

For those of us who continue to admire "M*A*S*H," three decades later, the prospect of Elliot Gould in a movie returns us to an era when a fair proportion of the population of a certain age believed life to be fun. Now whether or not you agree with Brian Armstrong that life is "a constant struggle for excellence," you may be sure that the belief that life is fun will not get you a job in today's world. So those of us who continue to believe in life as an essentially joyful experience take the subway to re-view Elliot Gould as Phillip Marlowe in "The Long Goodbye" (1973) with special fondness.

But seeing the film again brings us face to face with the other side of that era: aimlessness, self-indulgence, naiveté. (The flower children's idea of a military policy was essentially "Why can't everybody just be nice?") At the end of the film, Marlowe confronts the person who had set him up: "You used me." Only to be told, "That's what friends are for." So Marlowe shoots him, then walks down the street to the strains of "Hooray for Hollywood." There's no going back to the 70's. Perhaps it's just as well.

Terry Gilliam’s movies leave us with unforgettable images. Think of "Brazil," "Time Bandits," and the inventive animations he created for "Monty Python and the Flying Circus." It should be no surprise that such a creative visual imagination would rely on storyboards as a basis for planning his movies and then challenge costume and set designers to come up with ways to realize the images. It should also be no surprise that such a mind would be attracted to, even obsessed by, the theme of "Don Quixote," the man from La Mancha so infused with deeds of derring-do from chivalric romances that he undertook to live the chivalric ideal on his own, transforming the events of ordinary life to fit in with his delusion.

"Lost in La Mancha" displays the storyboards that Gilliam created for a film called "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote." A contemporary reader, played by Johnny Depp, was to have been transported to the 16th century where Don Quixote, played by the venerable French actor Jean Rochefort, conscripts him to serve as Sancho Panza. "Lost in La Mancha" opens a door on the pre-production phase of film-making then goes on to chronicle the debacle that ensued when the project encountered a catastrophic combination of circumstances: the illness (and eventual death) of the main actor, adverse weather on a grand scale, and under-financing. I don’t include the impossibility of realizing Gilliam’s vision: the storyboards, the ingenious use of puppets, the set construction all pointed to a doable, if difficult, enterprise.

Have you ever felt lost, not just in a geographical sense but truly unsure of your bearings, wondering why you’re where you are, confused about what you should be doing? I felt that way arriving in Quebec City for my last academic job, and arriving in Southern California for my first, and through much of high school: out of place in an alien culture.

Now take the plight of over-the-hill movie actor Bob Ross, played by Bill Murray, in Japan to film a whiskey commercial, unable to speak or read a word of Japanese. Director Sofia Coppola alternates between exterior shots that make Tokyo look like something from another planet and interior shots of an impersonal, hypermodern hotel where curtains open automatically in the morning and one’s futile attempts at sleep are interrupted by the sounds of a fax transmission. Or consider the lot of Charlotte, whose photographer husband has abandoned her in the same hotel while he carries out his assignment. Eventually the two might, but despite their unhappy situation there seems to be no plausible possibility of a relationship. He’s married with children; she’s thirty years his junior.

You can see why Sofia Coppola went to great efforts to get Bill Murray for this role. Murray’s face, body language and tone of voice communicate the attitude of a man resigned to his existence, yet capable of looking at himself ironically and even of sustaining a fugitive spark of hope. Scarlett Johansson portrays a young woman determined not to remain a passenger on life’s journey yet frustrated at not being able to define herself. Both characters take a darkly comic view of their situation without any illusions about being able to change it.

So we have a sadly sweet romance with nowhere to go. When the Bill Murray character proposes an escape, he speaks geographically but thinks metaphorically and sees that there is no way out. At the very end of the film he whispers a few words into Charlotte’s ear and they embrace for the first time then part. She smiles for the first time since they have met and we are left to speculate about those words. Can there be any further romance for two people so in need of affection?

Actors and director appeal to that part of us that has ever felt lost or confused and draw us in with a sure grasp. This is one of the finest films I’ve seen in a long time. But for goodness sake, don’t see it alone.

Even in a mess of a film like this one can find nuggets of pure pleasure: a child cast as a lobster in a school Nativity play; Hugh Grant, as the Prime Minister of England, doing an impromptu dance; "All You Need is Love" at the end of a wedding, with choir, pipe organ, trumpets, trombones, saxophones and electric guitar; Liam Neeson’s face; Hugh Grant offering to have an inconsiderate boyfriend executed: "I could just have him killed. The SS are a charming bunch, ruthless trained killers just a phone call away."; occasional lines like "Which doll shall we give Beverly: the one that looks like a transvestite or the one that looks like a dominatrix?"; Billy Bob Thornton as a boorish American president; Rowan Atkinson as a store clerk wrapping a Christmas present beyond all reason. Unfortunately, the film as a whole is cloying, manipulative, and unbelievable. You’ll do well to give it a miss.

“LOVE AND OTHER DISASTERS” (Toronto International Film Festival)

Seeing the premiere of this film among an audience of cineastes multiplied the pleasure of witty dialogue, a first-rate cast and sure-handed direction by writer/director/producer Alek Keshishian. To be sure, most people can be expected to pick up references to “All About Eve,” “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “Notting Hill,” but would your average audience burst into spontaneous applause after a tango, ostensibly undertaken by the leading lady to demonstrate that she wasn’t intoxicated after three drinks? Like the Steve Martin routine in “L.A. Story” (first he’s asked to walk a straight line, then to juggle three balls, then to walk on his hands), the dance begins with basic steps, then becomes progressively more outlandish until the couple is executing professional-level kicks. Keshishian seizes your mind in the opening sequence—announcing the film’s mood of self-referential post-modernism—and never lets go: it’s one of the most delicious films I’ve seen in a long time, playing elegant variations on the cliché of the girl whose closest friend (and roommate) is a gay man because he’s unthreatening. You probably won’t recognize the names of the actors (Brittany Murphy has been the spokesmodel for Jordache Jeans and done a bit of singing), but late in the film, when Gwyneth Paltrow and Orlando Bloom appear briefly as the “proper” stars to the play the roles in the unfolding screenplay whose “real-life” representation you have been seeing in the film, they are the ones who seem out of place, so convinced have you been by the acting of Ms. Murphy, Santiago Cabrera and Matthew Rhys. Don’t let this film escape you when it eventually comes into general circulation.

Those who remember the 60’s as a period of benevolence and community, and wish to preserve that illusion, may wish to pass on "The Magdalene Sisters." A framed portrait of John F. Kennedy appears several times in the course of the film as an ironic visual comment on the barbaric practices of the Magdalene asylums, the last of which was closed only in the 1990’s. I don’t know what the phrase "home for unwed mothers" conjures up in your mind, but I was unprepared for the systematic cruelty and humiliation practiced by the nun guards against the adolescent inmates of this prison disguised as a live-in laundry. We follow in detail the fortunes of three girls, one raped by her cousin, another forced to give up her baby by her father and the local priest, a third not even a mother at all, but simply the kind of girl "likely to lead the lads into temptation" and confined out of a confused concern for the common good.

In this particular asylum in Ireland, the girls were locked into their dormitory at night and forbidden ever to speak with each other. Girls were punished for slight offenses by having their heads shaved. Presented this way it sounds not unlike an army boot camp, but where boot camp is designed to break down individuality in order to build up a soldier, the Magdalene asylums were designed to destroy the individual and leave her destroyed. One girl who succeeded in escaping was returned to the asylum by her father who proclaimed angrily that she no longer had parents and that they no longer had a daughter. After four years of mistreatment two of the other girls do manage to escape. An explanatory paragraph at the end of the film paints an unhappy picture of the later lives of these escapees, several of whom remain living.

While we see the story mostly through the eyes of the girls, the occasional insights into the minds of the nuns suggest that many of them have abandoned any pretense of justification for their actions and actively enjoy tormenting their charges. This is not a pleasant film to watch, but it represents the fate of some 70,000 girls, imprisoned for indefinite terms during the fifty-year period of the asylums’ existence, a scandalous story relatively unknown.

"The Majestic" asks the question, "How many clichés can you cram into one movie?" Jim Carrey resolves to re-open The Majestic Theatre, and as he gathers the entire town to help, you can almost hear the voice of Mickey Rooney saying, "I know, kids, let's put on a show!" Martin Landau, dying of a heart attack, looks at Jim Carrey and says, "I love you, son." Carrey, tears in his eyes, replies, "I love you ... (beat) (beat), Dad." Carrey, called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, tries to read a prepared statement, falters, tries again, takes a drink of water, turns to his lawyer and whispers, "I just can't do this," then pulls out a copy of the United States Constitution and reads the First Amendment. The televised hearings make their way to a tiny town in California, where Carrey's new girlfriend watches with her father. It's like seeing David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive" without the sex, the irony or the surrealism. If you enjoyed the trailers, the movie is just like that, but sitting through the whole two-and-half hours doesn't give you any more than the trailers did. Save your time and money.

A twenty-year-old girl, shortly before her wedding, discovers in her mother’s diary a clue to her father’s identity. Actually, three men could have been her father, so she invites all three, confident that she will be able to identity a man she has never met. Not much of a plot, but that hardly matters because the plot serves only as an excuse to string together a couple of dozen ABBA songs. Those who have seen the musical (and this must include nearly everybody, judging from its success) may wonder why bother seeing the movie: what can be different?

To answer that question I invite you to think back to the 1966 film, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” or if you missed that, the 1964 Beatles film, “A Hard Day’s Night,” both directed by Richard Lester, a supremely inventive director whose iconoclastic approach to musicals on film exerted a strong influence on “Mamma Mia.” There are only so many things you can do with a song in a theatre, whereas on film you’re limited only by your imagination. You can develop a crowd scene to ridiculous proportions or cut from one setting to another to match phrases of the music; “Mamma Mia” does all of this and more.

Other reasons may be less obvious. The multiple stage versions of the show generally selected singers who could act. The film selected actors who could sing (okay, some of them marginally, but you experience the same kind of vulnerability in “Mamma Mia” that you felt in Woody Allen’s “Everybody Says I Love You”). Having Meryl Streep play (and sing!) the mother adds an unexpected depth to the mother/daughter relationship. (Unexpected because deep emotion never really played an important part in the stage musical.) And having stars such as Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth among the potential dads makes these characters a bit more three-dimensional as well. But essentially the film belongs to Meryl Streep and Amanda Seyfried (whose previous experience has mostly been in television).

Quibbles: they left out two of my favourite songs from the show, “Under Attack” and “What’s the Name of the Game.” The added dialogue invariably slows things down unnecessarily. It’s impossible to meet Richard Lester’s standard consistently.

Things to watch for: Benny Andersson (an member of ABBA) turns up in a brief cameo playing a piano incongruously played on a pier, and also accompanies “Thank You for the Music,” sung during the closing credits.

The French have always had a fascination with what Americans would call B-level entertainment. In the nineteenth century Baudelaire, Mallarmé and others idolized Edgar Allan Poe, a second-rate poet by American standards, and devoted their best efforts to translating his work into French. Americans think of circuses as entertainment; for the French they are an art form. (In contemporary terms, look to "Le Cirque du Soleil.") The masters of French cinema have achieved some of their finest work transforming American sub-genres into their own idiom. Godard’s "Breathless" derives not from the work of Welles or Ford but from B-picture gangster flicks.

"The Man on the Train" pays homage to the conventions and clichés of the western, in particular the plot of the aging gunslinger coming to town for one last bank job, but the result is unmistakeably Gallic, an endearing depiction of a fleeting interaction between two solitary men from different worlds. Johnny Hallyday, former pop singer, plays a bank robber whose embarkation from a train in a small French town sets the plot in motion. With the only hotel closed for the off-season he accepts temporary lodging with a passer-by, a retired French teacher played by veteran actor Jean Rochefort. (You will remember him from "The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe," "Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?", "The Hairdresser’s Husband," "Ridicule," and many other films.) Where the taciturn Hallyday seems to utter scarcely a hundred words in the whole film), the verbose Rochefort delights in having an audience and plies him with (mostly unanswered) questions about a life he has seen romanticized in movies.

Each man tries on the other’s shoes. The Rochefort character puts on Hallyday’s leather jacket in his absence and plays sheriff with only a mirror for an audience. The Hallyday character takes a turn at conducting a French tutorial. Under the gunslinger’s tutelage, the Rochefort character fires a pistol for the first time in his life, while he is able to supply the remainder of a poem that has been haunting the Hallyday character. (Poetry comes as naturally to the French, at any level of society, as pop music does to Americans.) I spent the entire film in a state of delight at the interplay between these two men, and would probably have to go back to Paul Newman and Robert Redford in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" to find a film whose real content was the pleasure of two fine actors playing off against each other.

Inevitably such a film must end. The Rochefort character has been waiting for a triple-bypass operation, the Hallyday character for the appointed heist. In retrospect you realize the extent to which the film has been founded on the theme of trust. The Rochefort character allows a stranger into his home; the Hallyday character, once his intentions have been divined, trusts his host not to betray him. Both men finally are betrayed, but not by each other, and the conclusion may seem a jarring reminder that the idyllic encounter we have witnessed has no more staying power than a soufflé. But enjoying that soufflé has provided moments of supreme pleasure. Perhaps this is one of the crowning achievements of French art, the glorification of the transitory. I would see this film again in an instant.

The French regard as art forms activities that North Americans consider frivolous: clowns, circus performers, jugglers, mimes. Tightrope walking, which we think of as merely a stunt, enjoys a flamboyant title in French: funambulisme. Having long been fascinated by the career of Philippe Petit, funambuliste extraordinaire, I found this documentary film on his most celebrated exploit delicious in every frame. The purpose of this brief account is to persuade the rest of you to see it. In an effort to appeal to North American audiences, the film-makers have told the story in the form of a bank heist, with an elaborate preparatory scheme, false identities and the rest, with dates and times of day announced in the corner of the frame. For me, they needed only to show Petit himself, a perpetual fifteen-year-old, supremely confident of his ability to pull off spectacular displays. You need to understand the “naughty boy” side of this performer, who includes unicycling, sleight of hand, and pick pocketing among his talents. The fact of his activities—including tightrope walking between the towers of Notre Dame Cathedral and between the towers of the Sydney Bridge in Australia—being illegal only adds to their attractiveness for the performer and his accomplices.

The moment that Petit first heard of plans to build the twin towers of the World Trade Center, he knew that he had to walk in the air between them and waited impatiently for the blueprints to become realized as actual skyscrapers. Those who have heard of the exploit in 1974 may not have thought in detail of the logistics involved: how to send a cable between the towers, how to carry all the equipment past security guards, how to stabilize the wire against wind and the elasticity of the towers themselves. All this the film presents in the style of a caper. But then, in the moment when Petit actually walks between the towers, the French sensibility of the film emerges and carries us away in the sheer sublime beauty of the feat. I earnestly invite you to share the joy of this remarkable story.

The Coen brothers love the technique of movie-making and they make movies exceedingly well (The Hudsucker Proxy; Fargo; The Big Lebowski; O Brother, Where Art Thou). The trademark of their style is a film that takes the conventions of a genre, burnishes them brilliantly, then pushes them just a step further into surrealism. "The Man Who Wasn't There," an ode to the 40's film noir, executes the requirements of the genre so elegantly that we succumb to the virtuosity of the seemingly familiar and are totally blindsided by the final plot twist. "But that's part convincing as Crystal's live performance in "America's Sweethearts."

Political paranoia movies tend to pit a sympathetic protagonist against a virtual army of faceless opponents, since the hero never knows whom he can trust. In "The Manchurian Candidate" Denzel Washington plays an army major who’s been experiencing a strange dream ever since returning from action in the Gulf War. "Post-traumatic stress syndrome," says the military physician. "Take your meds." The major tries to reach other members of his company, only to discover that most of them have died—a heart attack here, an automobile accident there. One poor chap, also troubled by dreams, has scrawled page after page of notes, with nightmarish illustrations, but his mind seems too far gone to be of assistance.

The major’s search focuses on Raymond Shaw, a vet formerly under his command, decorated with the Congressional Medal of Honour for saving his platoon, and now in line to be a vice-presidential candidate. All the men whom the major has been able to find describe Shaw’s heroic deeds in precisely the same words. Almost seems like a conspiracy, doesn’t it? When the major succeeds in reaching Shaw, played by Live Schreiber, he discovers a mercurial character, sometimes genuine, sometimes robotic, almost as if he were being controlled by someone else. And who might that be? Enter his mother, the U.S. Senator from New York, played by Meryl Streep, who throws herself into this meaty role with visible relish. By turns charming or ruthless, she’s managed to displace a distinguished old politician (Jon Voigt) from the ticket in favour of her son.

In the film much is made of implanted computer chips, but that’s all for show—effective control takes place through post-hypnotic suggestion. Director Jonathan Demme conducts this fast-paced remake of the John Frankenheimer classic with a nice eye to contemporary touches. I particularly liked the television reporting of the political convention: the main visual has two different text banners scrolling underneath it and multiple background patterns: it’s all just a bit too much to comprehend. The use of big-screen television at the victory announcement also seems just one degree exaggerated. This is television in italics, the cinematic equivalent of a raised eyebrow. I thought it was fine stuff.

I’ve seldom felt such a strong combination of fear and sadness as in watching this film. A seventeen-year old Colombian girl, fed up with a degrading job at a flower factory and pregnant by a boy who doesn’t love her, succumbs to the temptation of becoming a "mule," transporting drugs to New York in the form of swallowed pellets. (The film shows her using large grapes to practice overcoming the gag reflex.) Customs officials in New York intercept and interrogate her but draw the line at x-raying pregnant women and finally let her go. She is taken to New Jersey to deliver herself of the pellets, but panics when one of the other mules dies, evidently the result of a pellet opening inside her stomach. She flees to New York, a city that we see through the eyes of a frightened girl, unable to speak English. For a time she finds refuge with the sister of the girl who died, but the sister knows nothing of her activities and the burden of maintaining a structure of lies eventually proves too much for the young girl.

We sympathize with Maria and admire her self-respect and courage. At the same time we suffer with the girl as her naiveté and innocence come up against a cruel and inhumane drug industry. This is a beautifully made but utterly chilling film.

Just in time for the holidays comes a romantic comedy that begins rather than ends with marriage, a film that includes genuine relationship challenges of career and parenting problems addressed by partners who fundamentally like each other. Of course, this being a Hollywood movie, the rules of realism get bent a little: the story covers roughly twelve years, the entire life-span of a dog, without anyone but the dog showing the slightest signs of aging, and while Marley—the world’s worst dog—causes mayhem on a colossal scale, nobody ever lifts a finger to clean anything up. (Hey, the set designer has to earn a living.) Some may find it a stretch to see Owen Wilson as a responsible parent and partner rather than a perennial playboy, and Jennifer Aniston as part of an enduring relationship, but it’s 2009—everybody deserves another chance. As the trip leader said on our honeymoon cruise, “Don’t set your expectations too high and you’ll probably have a good time.” I had fun; you may too.

Charles Ives once composed an anthem whose text began, "Lord God, thy sea is mighty, and our boats are small." Seeing "Master and Commander" made me understand these words as never before. This epic tale was filmed almost entirely at sea, with remarkable attention given to the accuracy of historical details. The movie takes the form of a yarn, with naval engagements at the beginning and the end, and a fascinating depiction of life at sea in between. Sailing ships at the turn of the 19th century had to carry not only sufficient provisions to supply the crew but also materials to repair damage to sails and hull due to storm or battle.

Introductory words announced the number of guns and number of men on board, two pieces of data that define the role of a ship. The commander, played by Russell Crowe, must be both a master tactician and a masterful judge of men, for naval success depends on hierarchy of command in which each link plays a crucial part. Between the framing battles the film traces the course of the British ship in pursuit of its French attacker, a voyage that carries the two vessels across vast distances through weather conditions that include both terrifying storm and fever-producing calm. Their travels take them to the Galapagos Islands, where the ship’s doctor, an amateur naturalist, is fascinated by swimming iguanas, flightless cormorants and giant tortoises.

The story-telling never releases its grip on the viewer as the camera brings us one vignette after another, each giving greater insight into the men who choose life on the sea.

A minor cavil: the haunting melody heard three times in the course of the movie is not the invention of the men credited with the music but is rather the work of Thomas Tallis, a notable English composer of the Renaissance.

A good con story is always a delight, and whoever thought up the plotline of "Matchstick Men" should be congratulated. Parents in the audience may be troubled by the involvement of a 14-year-old girl in the operation, but the story answers any objections in a way you'll not likely guess. So, as I as, a superior con story involving both the short con and the long con. But then, I'm guessing, a committee got ahold of the idea. "Let's give the main character an eye twitch," one suggests. "Let's make him a neatness freak," says another. "How about we give him Tourette's Syndrome," says still another. "I know," says another, "Let's make him open and close every door three times." Someone adds, "Let's give him all these tics and twitches at once!" When the original writer expresses misgivings, the assistants say, "No, every twitch will bring the performance closer to Academic Award status." So the juggernaut rolls on. The director decides to use a jaggedly moving camera to match Nicholas Cage's tics and then the editor decides to cut the film so that every movement jumps nervously to the next. Thus a perfectly good con movie turns neurotic. Enjoy it if you can.

The use of dramatic irony to instil fear usually makes us think of teen horror movies, as in "Don’t go down into that dark cellar, you silly girl." When we watch Holocaust movies, dramatic irony serves both as a background of terror and as a shield of anticipation. "Max," one of the creepiest films I’ve seen in a long time, takes place in Munich in 1918. Max Rothman (John Cusack) has returned from the war having lost his right arm and with it his career as an artist. He becomes a successful art dealer with a beautiful wife, two children, and a mistress (none other than Leelee Sobieski).

Max makes the acquaintance of a young corporal by the name of Adolf Hitler. Where Max returned from the war to wealth, family and status, Adolf returned to solitude, poverty, and anonymity. A would-be artist, he shows his work to Max, who encourages him to "dig deeper," and forsake his conventional landscapes for something that will express the inner torments that clearly beset him. Young Hitler, played by Noah Taylor, displays the traits we might expect: volatility, intense inwardness, contempt for social conventions, self-doubt, incipient anti-Semitism. What comes across as most unnerving is the rage of artistic impotence, Hitler incapable of expressing himself in his chosen medium. We get horrifying glimpses of the alternatives, the writings that will become "Mein Kampf" and the honing of the rhetorical skills that will turn a pathetic little man into a frighteningly effective demagogue.

The film adopts the dark hues of Max Ernst and the German Expressionists to portray the birth of the National Socialist party out of frustration at the draconian conditions of the Versailles Treaty. The contrast between the dark streets and the brightness of the Rothman home suggest how easy it was to make wealthy Jews the scapegoats for conditions of poverty and powerlessness. Unaccountably, John Cusack’s character constantly uses anachronistic idioms from the 1990’s. Otherwise, this is a thoroughly compelling, and most unsettling, film.

We've all been there. You're sitting at the doctor's office, nothing else to read, so you reach over to a three-year-old Reader's Digest and start thumbing through. Finally you end up reading the anecdotes in "Laughter the Best Medicine," and you may even chuckle once in awhile, but by the time you leave the office, you've forgotten everything you've read and have only an aftertaste of disappointment at having settled for so little. No, you haven't been neuralized; you've just been to another mediocre movie.

Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith provide congenial companionship for eighty-two minutes and the variety of aliens--much more fun than their "Star Wars" counterparts--offer amusement. But when you find yourself laughing at a talking dog you realize that you're only a few steps away from television.

I didn’t have high expectations for this movie, but I hoped it would at least be amusing. Instead it ranks as one of the worst I’ve seen in a long time. The story, such as it is, comes largely in the form of flashbacks to the Cold War era and the United States’ putative research into the military applications of parapsychology, as in “A superpower should develop super powers.” The prospect of George Clooney, Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey giving deadpan demonstrations of New Age phenomena should have been entertaining, perhaps along the lines of John Cleese showing a band of recruits how to defend themselves against an enemy wielding a banana. Alas, the result didn’t even come across as silly; it was just stupid. Ewan McGregor, playing a journalist uncovering this story, seems unable to decide whether to act impressed, skeptical or downright incredulous. The movie’s premise sounded promising but I found the product to be a real disappointment.

Films like this don’t come along very often—tight editing, an outstanding screenplay, first-rate acting, an appropriately sombre musical score, a story worth telling. Michael Clayton (George Clooney in the best film I’ve seen him in yet) serves a high-power New York law firm as a fixer—someone who deals with inconvenient troubles by operating in the shadows. Clayton has troubles of his own—hoping to provide for the future, he has invested everything he had in a “sure thing” restaurant deal that has gone belly up. Now he has a week to raise $75,000 to cover his share of the losses.

But this doesn’t compare with the law firm’s problem. Their chief litigator (Tom Wilkinson) in a law-suit involving UNorth--an agro-corporation whose principal product turns out to be a major carcinogen--has gone off the deep end, demolishing the defence by planning to publish a vital secret document in the interests of the plaintiffs. Senior counsel for UNorth (Tilda Swinton), seeing her career about to go up in flames, yields to dark impulses. Clayton’s boss (Sydney Pollack) counts on him to contain the damage.

The structure of the film—told mostly in flashback—offers a hint early on that Michael Clayton may have had enough of his ethically dubious career, but we have to await the film’s coda to see how he will accomplish a graceful exit with all accounts settled.

No wasted words, no superfluous scenes, just enough “normal life” to prevent our moral compasses from going too far askew in a world of “players”: this is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time.

That Shakespeare’s plays admit of a variety of interpretations becomes evident in two recent productions of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in High Park. Several years ago we delighted in a performance involving a lithe seventh-grader as Puck: the staging included trampolines, hidden wires to “fly” the lad, and a good deal of tossing around by other cast members in a memorably “air-born” production. This time around the company has cast as Puck a remarkable acrobat who climbs about the set, poses impossibly half-way up a pole, and generally convinces us that he could really fly around the world in forty seconds. The so-called Mechanicals (the players in the play-within-a-play) form a rap group taking occasional liberties with the rhythms of the Bard’s immortal language. Jamaican accents give a new lilt to the speeches of the Duke and his bride, while youthful players in the other main roles contribute to the helter-skelter pace of this physical comedy in the woods. You might not choose this as a definitive performance, but the beauty of Shakespeare is that you don’t have to have a definitive performance. More than a thousand people crammed into the High Park amphitheatre for this performance, living testimony that Shakespeare is alive and well in Toronto.

This is the best of the films I’ve seen recently. Sean Penn’s ebullient performance as Harvey Milk, a San Francisco gay activist, murdered not long after his election to the city’s Board of Supervisors, carried me along with the crowds to whom he uttered his signature greeting, “I’m Harvey Milk and I want to recruit you.” The climax of the film comes in the struggle between the California gay community and the religious right, led by singer Anita Bryant, who endeavoured to repeal a law protecting citizens from losing their jobs on the basis of sexual preference. (In particular, the right wanted to eliminate gays—whom they described as perverts and pedophiles—from the state educational system.) The film resonates with the recent passage of an initiative in California forbidding same-sex marriage. Highly recommended!

There’s a long tradition of works that encourage the audience to root for the villain, usually by providing the villain with an excuse (such as justifiable revenge in “Sweeney Todd”) or making the villain more likeable than the forces of the law (for example “Bonnie and Clyde”). Alfred Hitchcock loved to manipulate audiences into “guilt by association. In “Strangers on a Train,” for example, you generally identify with the innocent Farley Granger character but still find yourself emotionally involved with the Robert Walker character trying to reach a key piece of evidence through a grating. In “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You,” the sly playwright Christopher Durang has a nun suddenly pull out a revolver and shoot a man in self-defense. The audience laughs in shock, but presumably finds the action justifiable. A few moments later, when the nun kills another man, who was about to commit a mortal sin, justifying her action by saying that now he would go directly to Heaven, the audience becomes uneasy, just the effect Durang intended.

“Mimi, or a Poisoner’s Comedy,” set in France during the reign of Louis XIV, asks us to identify with a “bad marquise” who enjoys a life of licentiousness which her father threatens to end by cutting off her allowance, unless she becomes “completely good.” Mimi discovers the advantages of poison as a way out of her troubles, with her father as the first victim. So far, so good (or bad). But Mimi really is a bad marquise, who enjoys poisoning people, even though their death brings her no personal gain. Presumably much of the audience shared my discomfort in watching an armless, legless beggar dispatched in agony on the stage.

So this becomes the challenge for the team of Allen Cole, Melody Johnson and Rick Roberts who concocted this soufflé of an entertainment: can they keep the fluffy confection from falling as they tread the narrow line between entertainment and morality? They succeed through a musical score that owes a good deal to both Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Sullivan and to a cast who encourages us not to take any of this too seriously.

The opening number, set on an enormous bed, holds the key to our identification with the four main characters--the marquise, her husband, their maid, and their gardener—who enact a complicated ménage à quatre before our very eyes while singing about the pleasures of wanton sexuality. Their high spirits are so infectious that the marquise’s father, who brings an end to the merriment, seems like a terrible spoilsport.

The long reign of Louis XIV encompassed the careers of two of France’s most gifted dramatists, Molière and Racine, the illustrious exponents of French classic comedy and tragedy, respectively. The play “Molière” presents the rivalry between the two men from the perspective of Racine, contemptuous of popular taste and ready to join forces with a Machiavellian archbishop to bring down the crowd-pleasing Molière. Yet the ebullient Molière continues to capture the heart of king, court, contemporary audiences and the audience attending this play, over the self-righteous, dour Racine. The rivalry provides the context for a diverting game of play within a play within a play, as a revolving onstage proscenium arch takes us backstage to the personal and political intrigues reflected in the plots of Molière’s comedies (in contrast to the noble or mythical subjects of Racine’s tragedies). You need to keep your wits about you: the same actor portrays a lecherous cleric and the archbishop whose outrage at such a depiction leads to an elaborate plot to divert the king on a military campaign in order to destroy Molière in his absence. Happily the producers decided on period music by Lully to provide the occasional interlude. The supporting cast displays energy and enthusiasm in this drama about drama, but the evening belongs to the irrepressible good humour of Molière.

The biggest brainwashing campaign in history took place in the United States after World War II when women, who had been competently carrying out every job in the workforce, had to be persuaded to abandon their positions in favour of returning GI’s. Magazines, newspapers, and the nascent television industry conspired to produce a new ideal of woman as homemaker, marveling at her appliances. College-educated women were taught that knowing what kind of floor wax to select was an appropriate use of their intellects.

In "Mona Lisa Smile" Julia Roberts plays a young art history teacher, fresh out of UCLA, arriving at Wellesley College in 1953, expecting to spread liberating ideas among the brightest and the best only to find her efforts rebuffed not only by administrators and colleagues but by the students themselves. One young woman, whom she helps apply to Yale Law School, chooses not to go when accepted. "You told me I could do anything I wanted," she informs her dismayed teacher, "and this is what I want," showing off her new wedding ring. "But you don’t have to choose," the teacher persists. "You can bake your cake and eat it too." But to no avail.

Ten years after the time of the film, I was captivated by Wellesley’s musical tradition when our men’s glee club joined forces with their choir. (The Wellesley Chamber Choir performs a trio by Mendelssohn at the beginning and end of the film.) At the time, I found the practices of "late minutes" and "gracious living" at Wellesley, Mount Holyoke, and other women’s colleges merely quaint. The film meticulously recreates other traditions such as maypole dancing and hoop-rolling which, in context, are seen as part of an incredibly restrictive, conservative social framework.

Twenty years after the time of the film, I taught briefly at Wellesley College and was amazed to find that, even though the twentieth-century had mostly passed, music students were mostly ignorant of it. (The department chairman, though despising twentieth-century music, taught the course himself in order to show his broadmindedness.) I was impressed with one of the younger male teachers, whose techniques I had described as free-wheeling and innovative. "Don’t use words like that," he begged me. "Do you want to get me fired?" Wellesley installed a new president that year who visited every academic department in turn. When she asked us our plans for the future she expressed surprise when we had none. "Every other department has come forth with requests for new funding and new staffing," she said. I dared to disclose that we had considered expanding our treatment of non-western and contemporary music, but before I could even finish the sentence, one of the women said "But we decided against it, because it might mean sacrificing part of our existing program."

Fifty years after the time of the film, Wellesley College evidently considers these traditions a thing of the past since they gave full cooperation to the making of the movie. To be fair, times have changed. My daughter attends a school which promotes the accomplishments of women to the point that the existence of another gender is never even acknowledged. But anyone with girl children should see this film.

You’ve probably known someone of such strong will and supreme self-confidence that people tend to go along with that person, even when common sense would tend to dictate otherwise. Suppose that person were self-delusional, or even psychotic. In "Monster," Charlize Theron plays the strong-willed woman and Christina Ricci the one who buys into her dreams and promises against her better judgment. Now given the circumstances that the Theron character murders half a dozen men in the course of the film, the relationship between the two women will have a certain interest, but just as Alfred Hitchcock specialized in implicating the audience in his characters’ guilt, so "Monster" manipulates the viewer. Our first introduction to the main character comes through voice-overs describing the fantasizing childhood of a pretty little girl. At the time we don’t realize that the narrator is totally unreliable so we begin with a reservoir of sympathy that tends to excuse her occasionally forays into prostitution. (Only much later do we learn that she’s been turning tricks since she was thirteen.) When a client beats her and, well, let’s just say tortures her, to avoid being too graphic, and she takes out a pistol and kills him, we are inclined to say, "The bastard had it coming," thereby taking the first step down the slippery slope with the Theron character.

Much has been made of how Charlize Theron (whom we admired as the beautiful young woman who initiates the young leading character in "The Cider House Rules") underwent a massive "uglification" to take on the role in "Monster." Much more impressive, to my mind, is the utter transformation of body language. When she stands in a bar, feet spread apart, and invites a fight with anyone who thinks he can take her on, we see a woman we wouldn’t want to tangle with. When she attempts to "go straight," seeking an office job despite a complete absence of credentials, experience or references, we’re impressed at how well she fits the role of supplicant, though we’re not completely surprised when the inevitable rejection brings a quick reversal into a foul-mouthed, aggressive street person. And for all her self-assurance in promising to take care of the Christina Ricci character, there is always something a little "off," like the touch of weirdness we sometimes observe in "characters" on the subway.

One measure of the movie’s power is the way it captures our concentration on the present moment of the story despite our awareness of how it turns out (Aileen Wuornos, who actually narrates several sections of the film, was executed by the state of Florida in 2002). This is a remarkably unsettling film.

You know the way a really fine performance of a piece of music not only enhances your esteem for the work itself but also makes you exclaim anew at the wonder of the musical process? That’s the sensation I took from the production of Shakespeare’s comedy currently on stage at Toronto’s High Park. In addition to admiring the acting and stagecraft, I marvelled again at the sheer magic of Shakespeare’s language. How can anyone have combined words so inventively and so musically?

Music plays an important role in the play, with Brazilian drumming appropriate to Mardi Gras reminding us of the festivities attending the Duke’s upcoming nuptials. It seemed as if the entire cast, when not occupied onstage, contributed to the vast array of percussion distributed about the three-level stage.

The director took advantage of the youth of his cast to offer us a high-kinetic version of the "Dream." Puck, played by a grade seven student, flies frequently with the assistance either of wires or wiry performers. And you’ve never seen a troupe of "Mechanicals" quite like this one, with a virtuoso Nick Bottom the Weaver and a Thisby done up as a Judy Garland look-alike. Oberon makes his first startling appearance behind the audience at the top of the hill, and if the electronic distortion makes his voice sound a bit too much like Darth Vader, the same distortion technique makes the fairies sound utterly ethereal.

A generation raised on movies tends to forget the electrifying impression of theatrical special effects. Oberon, instead of hiding behind a tree, conceals himself within a collapsible cylinder suddenly dropped from the flies. Puck appears from a trap which, moments later, has turned into a trampoline.

This is truly an ensemble production in which nearly every player has a chance to shine. Take a picnic to High Park for an unforgettable evening of theatre.

"The New Main Street Singers," "The Folksmen," and "Mitch & Mickey," some of the biggest names in folk music from the 60’s and early 70’s, get together thirty years later for a concert in Town Hall to honour the memory of the recently deceased entrepreneur who helped make them household names. The film "A Mighty Wind" takes its title from the song they sing together to conclude that magical reunion. It all seems so authentic that you want to go back and listen to your old "Folksmen" records, but in fact it’s all the invention of Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy, another pseudo-documentary in the style of "Best in Show."

I was pleased to learn how these peculiar films get made. Guest and Levy write out the story in enormous detail, leaving out only the actual dialogue. Then they bring in a troupe of gifted improvisational comedians to do a vast number of takes, then sort out the best items and weave them into a movie. You’ll recognize half a dozen actors from "Best in Show" and an even greater number from "Waiting for Guffman," which I’d love to see if anyone has it on video. According to an interview in "Eye" magazine, Guest and Levy had intentionally held back on the jokes in this film. You never would have known it from the guffaws that the filled the theatre when I saw the movie. Yet folk-music fans need not worry: you’ll never see a more affectionate satire. Personally I would have ended the film with the Town Hall concert (I confess I’m a sucker for three performing ensembles collaborating on the same number), but I can’t think of when I’ve had a more enjoyable time from start to finish in a movie theatre.

Clint Eastwood has achieved a reputation as an uncompromising director and actor, always ready to put the production ahead of his own ego. In "Million Dollar Baby" he teams up with Morgan Freeman, and the easy interplay between the two men--one the owner of a gym and boxing trainer, the other a one-eyed former fighter now serving as live-in caretaker—represents the most enjoyable part of this film, eliciting the relationships between Paul Newman and Robert Redford in their two films together or, more recently, the obvious pleasure that Dustin Hoffman and Robert DeNiro took in working together for the first time in "Wag the Dog." Eastwood and Freeman are both tough old dogs in a world where, according to a sign on the wall of the gym, "Tough Is Not Enough."

Into this arena comes Hillary Swank, a would-be woman boxer with a great deal of determination, some native skill, and a willingness to work harder than one might think possible, looking for a teacher. Reluctantly and against his better judgement, the Clint Eastwood character takes her on and leads her into some remarkably realistic-looking fights. At this point, perhaps two-thirds of the way through the film, the story takes a different turn, presumably faithful to its literary source, and I felt somewhat manipulated emotionally, but never denying the artistic integrity and fine acting of the leading trio. In time I will probably forget the downbeat ending and hold on to the Freeman-Eastwood relationship as a memorable bit of movie-making.

What's the future going to look like? If you think of all the science fiction movies you've seen, there doesn't seem to be much originality (OK, only Woody Allen could come up with the Orgasmatron in "Sleeper".) Many of these movies have intriguing plot lines but their portrayal of technology in the years to come doesn't leave you with a lot of memorable images. Films like Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" or Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" stand out as brilliant exceptions. Even after you've forgotten the stories of these films, you'll hold on to the haunting depictions of technology. I'd love to hear other nominations in this area. ["2001: A Space Odyssey" and the original "Star Wars" are hard to measure because their visual language has become a virtual lingua franca for the genre.]

Now comes Steven Spielberg in "Minority Report," a dazzling visual display in which unforgettable images also serve as critical plot elements, a real tour de force of film-making. In 2054, it has become possible to intervene in a murder case before the crime has been committed. Three "pre-cogs," two young men and one young woman floating in a special milky bath, dream of violent acts yet to come. When their visions reach a consensus, a wooden ball rolls down a long transparent chute bearing the name of the intended victim in a crime of passion. [In the rare case of premeditated murder, a red ball will come down the chute bearing the name of the would-be perpetrator.]

As the film opens, a vision from the pre-cogs has triggered a wooden ball and Tom Cruise stands before a glass screen, moving images about with his hands, to the accompaniment of the Schubert "Unfinished Symphony," which he almost seems to be conducting. After all, if Hewlett Packard already markets a computer whose screen images can be manipulated by touch, it doesn't seem to be such a stretch to imagine a giant screen whose images can be moved at a distance by an operator wearing special gloves. Cruise must discover among these images some clue as to where the crime will occur.

At last he figures out the location and members of the pre-crime squad jump into a giant hair-dryer and fly off to the scene of the intended crime. [This delightfully old-fashioned contraption made me think of "Brazil."] They intervene just in time, and the would-be murderer is packed off to a kind of apartment house where criminals evidently live perpetually in suspended animation.

In the future, retinal scans replace DNA or fingerprints as identificatory tests. As by-product, advertisers can bombard you with individually crafted messages as you pass through any public area. Your house, like Bill Gates' home right now, remembers you and caters to your tastes with images and music of your liking. Hologramic videos are contained on little glass discs reminiscent of the lenses that the optometrist places before your eyes when trying to correct your vision. To carry out house-to-house searches, the pre-crime patrol sends out mechanical spiders to slide under door jambs and conduct retinal scans.

All these apparently peripheral details pertain directly to the plot, which turns out to be an old-fashioned murder mystery. Anyone who loves the cinema will spend much of the evening wriggling with delight at the spectacle of a master film-making and story-teller constructing a movie about vision: eyes (literal as well as figurative), dreams, false images, recorded images, and witnesses. References to other movies abound. At one point Tom Cruise, now a fugitive, escapes into a crowd of people all carrying opened umbrellas, a scene lifted directly from Hitchcock's "Foreign Correspondent."

Perhaps the film could have been a bit shorter, but I still left the theatre feeling exhilarated.

All during the Depression Hollywood turned out films depicting the rich enjoying their riches for the entertainment of poor people (most of the country) with little hope of escaping their poverty. The Astaire-Rogers films came from this era, as did the “Thin Man” films with William Powell, Myrna Loy and the dog named Asta. Men in evening clothes and women in long gowns disported themselves in Art Deco splendour, apparently unaffected by the desperate times. “Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day,” set in London in 1939, evokes that tradition of luxe and carefree living except that the leading characters are both frauds. The charmingly named Delysia LaFosse (her name evoking the French for “delightful fake”) is really Sarah Chubb, a nobody from Pittsburgh, while her “personal secretary,” Guinevere Pettigrew, is a failed governess who pinched Ms. LaFosse’s calling card from an employment agency. Delysia lives in an apartment paid for by one lover in which she sleeps with the producer of a musical in which she hopes to star, allowing her to move up from a singing gig with a third lover. During the twenty-four hours referred to in the title, Delysia tries to keep all these bubbles afloat with the reluctant assistance of the prim Miss Pettigrew, a clergyman’s daughter bent on liberating her employer from a prison of pretence.

Those who assume that Amy Adams, the wide-eyed, somewhat ditsy Delysia, is just playing herself should catch her as Tom Hanks’ efficient personal assistant in “Charlie Wilson’s War.” Frances McDormand, as Miss Pettigrew, of course has long-standing credentials as an actress in a variety of roles. Quite apart from the dialogue, it is worth watching the way these women inhabit their roles through the way they move, Ms. Adams mincing about her apartment like Billie Burke in “Dinner at Eight” (another of the Thirties movies about the rich), Ms. McDormand, portraying a woman of no fixed address, sleeping sitting up in a train station. Compressing twenty-four hours into an hour and a half gives this film the frantic quality of a French farce. In such a fragile piece of cinematic soufflé, style is everything and the two actresses, particularly the luminous Ms. Adams, keep the picture charmingly airborne.

Other cartoon voice-overs take us by surprise. I would not have guessed from what I recall of John Goodman's roles that I've seen on the screen (most recently as an aging hippie in "My First Mister") that his voice could evoke the tenderness that we hear from his large furry monster, but the relationship he establishes with a cartoon infant becomes quite touching, and while the situation and the animation obviously contribute, I'm convinced that the quality of the voice is the essential ingredient in making us feel authentic emotion in a bizarre situation.

You get a bad feeling about a film, even before it starts, when it is preceded by half a dozen previews for movies you’d never go to see in a million years. (Is anybody really going to buy a ticket for “The Forty Year Old Virgin”?) In “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie play good-looking, charming, emotionless assassins, which doesn’t seem like much of a stretch for either actor. They each have access to thoroughly unrealistic gadgets that would make James Bond jealous, and they live together in the kind of house that exists only in the movies. Each keeps the professional identity secret from the other until, at last, they are assigned to take each other out. Now you may wonder why anyone made this movie, especially with these actors, when Jack Nicholson and Kathleen Turner did a much better job of it in “Prizzi’s Honor” (1985), but such is Hollywood.

The film reaches its low point when Pitt and Jolie abandon their arsenal of hi-tech weaponry and engage in hand-to-hand combat. Pitt has been hailed as this generation’s Robert Redford, but can you for even a moment imagine Redford getting involved in anything so tasteless. (If you want to see Redford in some entertaining spy movies, go rent “Three Days of the Condor” (1975), “Sneakers” (1992), or even “Spy Game” (2001), where he gives Brad Pitt a lesson in classiness.)

Eventually Mr. and Mrs. Smith join forces against the bad guys (or, in fairness, even worse guys), leading to a pointless car chase and ending in an overextended scene in a Costco showroom in which the pair murder dozens and dozens of nameless, faceless killers. This has to be one of the worst movies I’ve seen all year. (Not a good way to celebrate your birthday.)

Jean Rochefort has been a mainstay of French cinema for half a century. You may have seen in him in such fine films as:

· Le Grand blond avec une chaussure noire / The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe (1972)

The latter film began as a film version of Don Quixote, with Rochefort in the lead role, but became derailed when the star required a serious operation during filming. This, along with catastrophically bad weather in Spain, forced director Terry Gilliam to turn the movie into a pseudo-documentary about the difficulty of making a film of Don Quixote.

What, you may wonder, is such a fine actor doing in “Mr. Bean’s Holiday,” one of the most annoying films I have ever seen? Presumably, they paid him.

There are puzzle films like "The Usual Suspects" and "Memento" that you see several times and talk about with friends in order finally to work out a solution. Then there's David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive," which parodies dozens of themes you've seen before: the young would-be actress, arriving starry-eyed in Hollywood, the Nancy Drew-style investigation into matters better left uninvestigated, the B-films where lighting and camerawork and music make you want to shout "Don't open that door!", thugs controlling the production of a movie. a hapless hit man whose mistakes make his situation worse and worse, or an enigmatic figure who says, "If you do good, you'll see me two more times; if you do bad, you'll see me three more times." The sheer skill with which the film was made grips your attention, but I'll be darned if I can understand the story. I'll be happy to receive an explanation from more perceptive views.

If you dislike Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore, if you don’t find amusing a running gag of a composer trying to keep people from placing coats on his grand piano, if you aren’t ready to accept the conceit that a woman who comes in to water the plants may have an uncanny gift for rhyming phrases, then you may not care for this film. I loved it. In contrast to the pretentiousness of “Dreamgirls,” “Music and Lyrics” represents a light-hearted send-up the pop music industry. Hugh Grant plays an 80s performer who makes his living, such as it is, appearing at fairs and amusement parks to recreate his old persona before a crowd of adoring, and aging, female fans. Suddenly opportunity knocks. Cora, a current teen idol—spawn of an industry in which people’s careers turn on the whim of an uneducated adolescent—turns out to have been a fan of the Hugh Grant character and requests that he write her a new song. But where will he find a lyricist? Enter Drew Barrymore, the plant waterer. Witty dialogue and deft performances by the leads handily support this bit of froth. You might like it too.

We tend to think of the world depicted in Mutum as exotic because it’s so different from our own: people eking out a life from marginal farms, a child’s death that in our community would be prevented by a tetanus shot, little awareness of or contact with what we consider news. Yet this represents ordinary life for the majority of the world’s population. Mutum shows us this life through the eyes of a ten-year-old boy whose tendency to think and wonder sets him apart from the rest of the family (and annoys the hell out of his violent father). Why did uncle have to leave? Is older brother going to die? Why is father so angry all the time? This is a beautifully photographed film, well worth seeing.

Whoever described architecture as "frozen music" was pretty close to the mark, for just as music emerges from and gives meaning to silence, so architecture emerges from and gives meaning to empty space. When the protective curtains were first removed from the new gallery at St. Andrew’s College, even before the finishing touches of lamps and moldings had been installed, the mere sensation of the way space had been transformed was enough to take my breath away.

The difference between music and architecture, of course, is that a musical composition is normally the complete realization of its creator’s idea. If this idea presents challenges to the performers, they are expected to surmount them; if it presents challenges to listeners, they are expected to stretch their understanding. The creator of a building normally has to make concessions to those who extend the commission, often to the point that the original concept loses a good deal of its force.

Now imagine an architect who refuses to compromise his creative ideas for the sake of commercial success, who only entertain suggestions consistent with his original concept. Such a man might see only a small fraction of his designs realized, but those which come to life will have a lasting influence on the people who live and work in them. Such a man was Louis Kahn.

I have had direct experience with only two of Kahn’s works. One was the steel boat serving simultaneously as living quarters, transportation and concert stage for the American Wind Symphony. I saw the barge and heard the ensemble on a memorable 4^th of July in Pittsburgh when they performed the Handel "Royal Fireworks Music" to accompany a forty-five minute pyrotechnic display. The other is the library of Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, where I spent a remarkable week at their annual summer institute of technology. From the outside, the library harmonizes agreeably with the brick buildings that neighbour it. On the inside the structure sings a chorus of concordant lines and spaces.

Few of us will have the opportunity to visit Kahn’s masterpiece, the capital of Bangladesh, a building so rich in design that a local architect wept when told that it would be allotted no more than ten minutes in the documentary film about its creator. We might be more likely to visit the Jonas Salk Institute, in La Jolla, California. Even in the two-dimensionality of film we get a sense of the remarkable spiritual effect of this building.

Like many great creative artists, Louis Kahn was more successful in his work than in his dealings with people. But few geniuses have a personal life that includes siring three families more or less simultaneously, each unknown to the others. Nathaniel Kahn was only eleven when his father died, and in this film he undertakes to visit his father’s buildings as a way of getting to know the man who had been such an enigma in his young life. Seeing the film, we start out thinking of the undertaking as quixotic but end with a deeper appreciation both for the older man’s legacy and for the younger man’s quest, which combines archival footage of his father at work and interviews with colleagues and family members.

The film cites an old Jewish proverb says that God can be known only through His works, an expression which strikes me deeply because I cannot imagine a Christian making such a statement. Yet it is through Louis Kahn’s works that his son has helped us to understand both the architect and the man. I have not known many architects, and no great ones, but the interviews with I.M Pei, Philip Johnson and Frank Gehry included in this film impress me with the graciousness and humility of these rich creative minds. But perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising to be humbled by the idea that one’s genius should lead to not just a painting or even a large sculpture but an entire building. This is a film well worth seeing.

"Ethnic," according to the old (1958) New Webster's Dictionary mounted on a pedestal in the room where I sleep, means "designating a group distinguished by customs, characteristics, or language." But we all know that ethnicity really means people different from the regular people, i.e., us. So now imagine a movie written and narrated by and starring a thirty-year-old unmarried Greek girl, living with her parents, in which the Greek community serves as the norm, and Ian Miller, the fellow she falls in love with, and his parents, become the ethnic minority (after all, there are only three of them, and Tula, the Greek girl, has thirty first cousins, all living in the same neighborhood of Chicago).

In another movie, the issues of personal freedom versus cultural control might be treated as serious problems. In this movie they become the source of merriment and endearment. Sure, the relatives drive you nuts, but they mean so well and they put on such great parties! Food becomes a running gag. "Are you hungry?" "No, thanks." "Fine, I'll make you something." or "Mother, he's vegetarian." "Vegetarian?" "He doesn't eat meat." "Fine, I'll cook him some lamb." Ian's mother brings a bundt cake to the party, which Tula's mother receives with utter non-recognition and incredulity.

Tula's brothers continually try to humiliate Ian by giving him incorrect Greek phrases to pronounce. So on the night before the wedding, Ian gets everyone's attention and announces, in Greek, "I have three testicles." You've seen this kind of movie before, but don't let that stop you. It's good for you. Here, have another one.

Guy Madden has been making idiosyncratic films for some time. This quirky view of Winnipeg is a thoroughly entertaining train ride—the way the film is shot gives the impression that the train runs through the back alleys of Winnipeg as well as along the usual tracks. Along the way we learn that Winnipeg is the sleep-walking capital of the world. Of course we also learn a lot of mythical information about the city, with nothing to distinguish the mythical from the real. At one point the director rents the building in which he grew up, installs his mother in the house and engages professional actors to portray his siblings as youngsters, then recreates crucial episodes from his childhood. Archival footage weaves in and out of the black-and-white hand-held contemporary footage, producing what the director calls a docu-fantasy. Seeing a moderately surreal film such as this reminds us of how much we’re missing seeing only the usual commercial fare. You don’t have to be Canadian to be entertained by “My Winnipeg.”

Give a person of above-average intelligence, untroubled by an interfering ego, the very best teachers in the world, and be prepared to see real learning take place. Unlike some actors turned director, Clint Eastwood harbours no illusions about knowing it all, but being Clint Eastwood, he has access to the finest instructors as well as top-flight talent for every aspect of his productions. "Mystic River" is Eastwood’s best film, which is to say that it’s a very fine film indeed.

Eastwood has always adopted a respectful attitude toward his material, sometimes too respectful, as in "The Eiger Sanction," which often remained slavishly loyal to mechanical details of the plot. But "Mystic River," while preserving much of the dialogue of Dennis Lehane’s novel, demonstrates the director’s sure hand and adopts a laconic cinematic style akin to the speaking style of Eastwood’s acting roles.

Eastwood as director has persuaded a top-drawer ensemble of actors, including Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon, Tim Robbins, Laurence Fishburne, Marcia Gay Harden, and Laura Linney, to adopt the same selfless attitude toward the story, resulting in a film that achieves greater emotional depth than its literary source. In particular, Sean Penn turns in one of the most astonishing film performances I have ever seen as the father of a nineteen-year-old murder victim. Tim Robbins offers a dismaying portrayal of a man whose soul has been gradually destroyed by the effects of a horrifying childhood experience. Kevin Bacon and Laurence Fishburne play the police officers who relentlessly seek the girl’s killer. Despite the violent nature of the subject, Clint Eastwood consistently chooses understatement and suggestion in place of graphic imagery. The music Eastwood himself composed for the film complements the elegiac visual tone. This is an outstanding film.

Over the course of the long weekend I saw a great number of previews for films I have no interest in watching but which obviously cost a great many millions of dollars to produce. It’s sometimes hard not to become cynical about the whole film industry. Then you see a film like "Mystic River," which justifies the whole process.

Okay, so it’s all hokum, but it’s really good hokum. Nicholas Cage, Jon Voigt, Helen Mirren, Ed Harris and Harvey Keitel appear in a treasure hunt intended to clear the name of Thomas Gates (an ancestor of the Nicholas Cage character), implicated as a conspirator in the assassination of President Lincoln. The chase takes the crew to colourful locations associated with previous capers (notably several by Alfred Hitchcock) and while the film provides no real competition for its illustrious models, it provides good entertainment, particularly in the conceit that complicated century-old mechanisms await only the right touch to begin their clockwork movements.

Those who enjoyed Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner) will recognize the lead actor, playing a monolingual Inuit who, diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1952, is sent to a hospital in Quebec City where no one speaks his language or understands the intense loneliness of being cut off from his wife, his children, and the Far North. He tries to imitate others in his ward (imagine encountering both tableware and spaghetti for the first time), tries repeatedly and unsuccessfully to escape and return home. Finally a sympathetic nurse brings him into contact with a young Inuit boy, also being treated for tuberculosis, who can translate and, in return, learn something of the lore and craft to which he has never been exposed. This is a powerful and compelling story of loneliness, culture shock and human dignity. (French with English subtitles)

Those without thirteen-year-old daughters may not be aware of the Mary Kate & Ashley phenomenon—twin sisters who started making videos of cute detective stories and ended up with a billion-dollar empire. "New York Minute," their first theatrical release, is meant to appeal to all the young girls who buy Mary Kate & Ashley clothing, read Mary Kate & Ashley fan magazines, and generally idolize the Olsen sisters. (Never mind that the tabloids claim that Mary Kate is anorexic: the girls have projected, and protected, a squeaky clean image.)

Those with a low sugar tolerance are warned against this movie, a high-caloric confection of a film. Everything about it is a fake as the candy that doubles for glass in movie special effects. The funny thing is that it gives the impression of a teen movie--at virtually every turn the girls are having their clothes ripped off or are colliding with attractive young men (or both at once). But it’s all pretense—nothing improper is ever shown, no profane word is ever uttered. The girls appear either in towels or in the kind of wardrobe no teenager ever saw (unless she was head of a billion-dollar empire).

The film is rescued from terminal cuteness by Eugene Levy, playing a truant officer with pretensions of becoming a real policeman, and the owner of a black beauty parlour who puts the girls back on track when they emerge, soaked and grungy, from the New York sewer system. Otherwise the movie glides along with an effortless ease captured midway through by the image of preternaturally cute girls being passed hand over hand above a crowd when they toss themselves into a rock concert mosh. If you think a trip to the circus isn’t complete until you’ve covered your face with cotton candy, you won’t want to miss this film.

The novels of Charles Dickens, like the Ghost of Christmas Present in "A Christmas Carol," overflow with vitality. The villains display viciousness, particularly toward children, untempered by charity. If the good people display an unrealistic abundance of generosity, it comes as a relief after the unmitigated sadism of the villains. A film adaptation of a Dickens novel requires first-rate character actors to make us believe in the larger-than-life personages and the new "Nicholas Nickleby" abounds with such talent.

Jim Broadbent plays Wackford Squeers, the schoolmaster from hell, whose malevolence is exceeded only by that of his wife, the most frightening woman I’ve seen on screen since Lotte Lenya in "From Russia With Love." Christopher Plummer, as Ralph Nickleby, takes malicious pleasure in attempting to ruin his nephew and debauch his niece. James Fox nearly succeeds in his assaults on the virtue of the two heroines.

Against this array of maleficence we welcome the ebullient kind-heartedness of Nathan Lane’s itinerant theatre director (and Barry Humphries’ cheerfully over-the-top performance as his wife). The young people run through this gamut of treachery with stout hearts and clear souls, and if the eponymous character seems uncharacteristically free of flaws, his disarming lack of self-interest makes him pleasant company for the two hours of the film. I suspect Nathan Lane’s return in the final scene was the invention of the screenwriter/director, but we’re glad to let him oversee the double wedding and after such harrowing adventures we eagerly embrace the happy ending.

It’s considered unfair to criticize someone for something they didn’t undertake, so I’ll simply say that if I were making the film, and didn’t have to compromise for the sake of obtaining financing (as Australian director Lawrence Johnston conceded in the Q&A), and I had the gorgeous footage of night scenes—both rural and urban—that he had gathered in the course of a year, and the marvellous orchestral score by Cezary Skubiszewski, I would have included just the compelling images and the lush music and omitted the banal talking heads. Or, if I really had to include human speech with the music and images, I would have sought poetic words or evocations of dream rather than some yahoo saying that when he was a kid he hated to come in from playing and go to bed. The beautiful images and the haunting music, especially in the portion of the film before the opening credits—a kaleidoscopic panorama of lightning shots—make the concessions to popular taste all the more regrettable.

What does the phrase “a magical evening at the opera” conjure up for you?” I doubt that you will have imagined the succession of effects that Robert LePage concocted for the Canadian Opera Company production of music of Stravinsky from around World War I. The sound and sight of the seldom-seen cimbalom highlighted the performance of “Ragtime” to open the program. Then, as the performers moved on to songs and choruses (including Four Russian Peasant Songs for ten women and four French horns), a troupe of actors gathered around a lamp and created shadows of animals, birds and flowers using only their hands.

After the intermission came “The Nightingale,” based on the fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson. Singers controlling puppets waded through a pond in the area usually occupied by the orchestra pit (if this is hard to visualize in the abstract, it was hard to believe even when you saw it), including a life-size nightingale that soared around the stage while a coloratura soprano sang in a remarkably high register. Just when you thought you’d seen it all, as Death came to claim the Emperor a huge death’s head appeared and grotesque appendages unfolded like the Canadarm on the International Space Station. The music of the first act, composed in 1908, owed a good deal to Debussy. The last two acts, written five years later and after the composition of The Rite of Spring, sounded like nothing I’d ever heard before. Altogether, an extraordinary evening.

No, it isn't "Priscilla in the Desert" turned into a chorus line. The royalty in question are a set of German stamps printed during the Weimar Republic, containing a defect that makes them rare and exceedingly valuable. The stamps serve as the driving gimmick behind a preposterous, thoroughly engaging con movie worthy of David Mamet.

The story opens in a gas station store where a young man named Juan successfully runs the "change for a large bill" con. But when a new cashier takes her place at the till, he succumbs to the temptation of running the con again in the same store and is caught by the first cashier and the manager. At this point, a policeman apparently intervenes and leads the young man off the premises, promising that the money will be returned when the report is filed.

One reviewer claims that the older man flashes a police badge. No such thing. He merely flashes a gun, and even that turns out to be a plastic toy. You have to keep alert to details like that if you're going to follow this story, for the "policeman" turns out to be a more experienced con man named Marcos, in search for a new partner, who judges that Juan's innocent face (he's the Argentinean Matt Damon) can be put to good use.

Even warned that nothing is as it seems, you'll be fooled by the complicated deceptions, but if you take pleasure at seeing a magic show, you'll enjoy the twists and turns of this genially larcenous movie.

You’ve known people like this: he’s aggressively articulate and self pitying; she gorgeous, modestly talented, and malleable. Nineteen months into their relationship the initial bloom has faded and, young as they are, they decide to break up. But he has an Idea: if they make an agreement not to commit to another person before both have found new partners, they can avoid the pain that usually accompanies breaking up. He’s so enthralled with this idiotic notion that he invites as documentary film crew to record the process so that the whole world can appreciate his genius.

Here’s where the ensemble cast of this movie really shines. You need to keep in mind that the film was made for practically nothing, with Toronto serving for once as Toronto, and not some American city. Acting in this kind of fake documentary requires a particular skill. Let me cite one example. Melanie, the girl of the pair, has no difficulty finding a guy—no surprise—and Rob, the guy with the Idea, feels betrayed: this wasn’t their agreement. In an act of desperation he knocks on the door of the girl across the hall, explains that he and Melanie are breaking up, and asks the girl if she’d like to go out for coffee. We watch her eyes move uncertainly back and forth between the guy, who’s clearly a loony, and us (the camera of the documentary), unsure which sight is more unsettling. She does go out with him, tolerates his insulting behaviour, and even has sex with him (remember, a guy wrote the script).

Melanie’s new boyfriend, to his credit, wants nothing to do with the documentary, so when he occasionally appears in the frame his face is digitally distorted, just like the body parts in "Eyes Wide Shut," but this time by the film-maker rather than by the censor.

I found the self-conscious tension of a bad relationship being filmed with the knowledge and consent of the participants to be quite delicious, the sort of thing Woody Allen might have dreamed up. A film worth seeing.

Have you seen enough movies about what happens to people who stumble upon large amounts of money belonging to a drug cartel that you think you might be able to avoid their mistakes and stay alive? Let’s hope you have more sense than that. Do we need another such movie? Well, if it’s made by the Coen brothers, it’s bound to leave an impression, starting with a weapon you probably haven’t seen in movies before, an oxygen gun used to kill cattle. (No cattle died in making this movie; need I say more?)

Carnage you’ve seen before; no surprise there. But the Coen brothers have an uncanny ability to terrify with slightly skewed scenes—an angle, a screen composition, a bit of dialogue that just isn’t quite right. Given the presence of a sociopath on the loose, it doesn’t take much to unnerve the audience. And did I mention the number of simple, decent country folk who die just because they happened to cross his path?

Under the circumstances we cling to any hint of stability we can find, in this case the wrinkled face and weary eyes of Tommy Lee Jones, who hasn’t been such a welcome sight since he saved us from aliens in “Men in Black.” Jones plays a sheriff, in a family tradition of sheriffs, who finds the new breed of bad guys and bad crime scenes enough to make him want to seek retirement. By the end of the film you’ll be ready to retire with him. Stick with Tommy Lee Jones, you tell yourself throughout the two hours of this film, and you probably won’t die. That doesn’t go for members of the cast, you understand, just you as a member of the audience. With Jones you’ll survive the film. As for nightmares, you’re on your own.

You’ve read stories of trench warfare in World War I, how the English and German soldiers would exchange Christmas greetings, then go back to trying to destroy each other. These were soldiers fighting at the behest of their countries. It wasn’t personal. The trench warfare between Bosnia and Serbia is another matter, with soldiers fighting out of personal hatred. "No Man’s Land" has two soldiers from opposing sides trapped between enemy lines. They have the same language, they even knew the same girl from school, yet their common culture increases, rather than reducing, their enmity, and offers in miniature the picture of an irresolvable conflict. The film offers many opportunities for laughter, which the audience seizes upon gratefully, nervously, for the situation maintains an high level of tension. The humor builds with the intervention of United Nations peacekeepers--accompanied by reporters, swarming like flies around a garbage truck—comical in their ineffectiveness, chilling in the indifference of those in command. The ending offers a potent symbol for the bleak outlook on civil war, not only in the former Yugoslavia but in dozens of similar conflicts around the world. The final image, on its surface a man lying peacefully, will remain with you forever. A powerful film, well deserving of its Oscar.

Some reviewers have noted accurately that Hollywood hates successful career women. In this case, it’s not enough for Catherine Zeta-Jones to be fabulously talented head chef of a fancy New York restaurant. The screenplay has to make her so obsessive that her employer has insisted she see a shrink (Bob Balaban): this woman has no life beyond food. Thus she finds herself singularly ill-equipped to deal with a young niece when her sister’s death leaves her the only relative available to take care of the girl (Abigail Breslin). Reviewers see this as a love story between Catherine Zeta-Jones and Aaron Eckhart, the assistant chef hired to fill in when the head chef is ordered to take some time off. Because my daughter was just about the age of young Zoe when I left her house to set up on my own, I see the film through Zoe’s eyes—the effect on a little girl of losing a parent, moving to a new city, entering a new school, and trying to make sense of an adult world whose problems have a direct impact on her life. Those who admired Abigail Breslin in “Little Miss Sunshine” will have good reason to celebrate her performance here among somewhat less flamboyantly idiosyncratic figures. Music, by the way, plays an important part in the plot, and Philip Glass’s score provides discreet interludes in between unashamedly emotional arias from Puccini and Verdi. If you like food, music or children, you won’t want to miss this one.

Québécois film-maker Denis Coté offers a somewhat bleak appraisal of the impossibility of real intimacy without communication. Two Bulgarian speakers--one living in Québec, the other in Sofia—after several months of exchanging messages in an Internet chat room, get together for a three-week rendezvous in an isolated cabin outside Montréal. Their initial meeting is followed by a considerable amount of fun and physical intimacy. Then the man becomes intoxicated at an amusement park and makes out with another woman. The couple doesn’t address the problem. He begins taking long photographic forays, leaving her alone in the cabin. When the supposed proprietor of the cabin, supposedly checking to be sure everything is all right, sexually assaults the woman, she kills him. None of this is discussed. She eventually bakes a chocolate cake to celebrate their two-week anniversary, but he has evidently already dismissed the possibility of a successful relationship. As a psychology graduate intern, I have now seen enough couples to recognize this common failure of attractive, clueless people to make a relationship work, but it still hurts.

In the Q&A session following the screening, the director described a half-year e-mail correspondence with the Bulgarian actors whom he eventually brought to Québec for the filming, even though they were speaking a translation of the script and he understood not a word of Bulgarian. Interesting challenge which almost seemed to replicate the thesis of the film itself.

Writer/Director/Actor John Cassavetes established his reputation in a series of documentary-style films offering distinctive "slice of life" images before this style became a cliché. These films often featured his wife Gena Rowlands, whose convincing performances added depth and poignancy to the productions. A regular crew of ensemble actors including Peter Falk nimbly handled the risks of improvized dialogue.

Now in "The Notebook" Cassavetes' son Nick relies on a strong cast (including Gena Rowlands, along with veteran James Garner and newcomers Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams), superb cinematography and a strong story to carry him successfully past the perils of the flat-out romance. The difficulty of avoiding mawkishness (Erich Segal's "Love Story" comes to mind) leads filmmakers into hybrid genres like romantic comedy and romantic thrillers, so great is the risk of sentiment turning into sentimentality. A less gutsy, more sensible director would have steered clear of a screenplay based on the power of narrative to bring a woman back, as least intermittently, from dementia. But Garner and Rowlands handle this hazardous material like old pros while Gosling and McAdams convey the all-consuming emotion of first love with refreshing recklessness. Joan Allen as the girl's mother portrays a southern aristocrat whose surface charm conceals a ruthless determination; Sam Shepard as the boy's father provides a convincing source of the boy's stubborn allegiance to a vision.

"The Notebook," like the cinema verité of the elder Cassavetes, doesn't give much room for neutral responses: you'll either love it or you'll hate it. I loved it.

From the first scene “Notes on a Scandal” impresses us with how movies differ from the printed word. Philip Glass’s hypnotic repetitions provide the perfect musical background for a story of obsession, while the use of extreme close-ups invades our comfort zone by bringing us too intimate a vision of these characters and their lives.

The narrator Barbara Covett (what a name!), played by Judi Dench, a veteran history teacher in a London comprehensive school that has seen better days (and where precious little teaching seems to take place), writes in her diary with surprising sensuality about the arrival of young Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett), and we come to realize that the older teacher is “grooming” the young woman in much the manner of a male pedophile preparing his prey.

Sheba meanwhile succumbs to temptation by becoming involved with a fifteen-year-old male student who brings her the sexual satisfaction that eludes her with her older husband (Bill Nighy), and temporary respite from the extraordinary psychological demands of raising a child with Down’s syndrome.

Great actors draw us into their worldviews, no matter how repulsive we might find them in the abstract. Barbara’s discovery of Sheba’s secret gives her unimagined power over the younger woman but she uncharacteristically miscalculates Sheba’s submissiveness with reciprocation of her affections. Barbara, we eventually learn, has her own hidden secrets. In both cases we are fascinated by relationships, willingly entered, that the protagonists must know can only end badly. A first-rate film.

What's the point of reading reviews if you don't heed them? They said that "Novocain" tried unsuccessfully to be a comedy and a mystery and a romance, all at the same time, and they were right. They didn't say you'd have to watch a man pulling out all of his own teeth. Yuck. Whether you like Steve Martin or not, avoid this one.

In many parts of the world people have long made their livings from diving for fish, pearls, what-have-you, without the assistance of scuba equipment. It was probably inevitable that competitions would arise to see who could go the deepest on a single breath (and predictable that such competitions would involve a fair number of casualties). But most participants would not be covered by an IMAX camera crew. “Oceanmen” recounts two different approaches to the quest for extreme depth, one mechanically aided (a diver rides a weighted sled to the designated level, then grabs a balloon for a speedy return to the surface), the other relying on yoga techniques to remain underwater for as long as eight minutes. Both succeed in reaching unheard of depths but the second, “constant weight” approach, leaves audiences well, breathless, as scenes go on underwater without a cut for far longer than anyone of us would feel comfortable.

You know, when you go to an all-star jazz concert, you see a bunch of first-rate instrumentalists enjoying making music together. The leader lays out the melody of a familiar song, then, one by one, each of the musicians gets to play a riff. In "Ocean's Eleven" the theme is being cool, and each of the stars makes his contribution. (Yes, it's the masculine pronoun, because this really is a guy movie. Julia Roberts appears as a prize that would make a man seriously reconsider his priorities, and it takes a star of that power to make the point convincing, though some critics have questioned whether JR is the right star for the role.)

You remember the camera work in "The Sting"? Lots of fancy old-fashioned wipes and fades connecting one scene to the next. In "The Sting," another movie about style, the camera makes its own stylish comment. Steven Soderbergh's camera goes one step further in "Ocean's Eleven," as if announcing its place among the list of characters and, sure enough, just like each of the characters, the camera gets to participate in a con. (To say more would be to disclose an important plot element.) Looking cool, acting cool--these guys even get to talk cool, thanks to a crackling script by Ted Griffen. (For me, the only jarring note was a postscript when, the con over, the action leaves the fairy-tale world of Las Vegas and we have occasion to think about real people in real relationships.) But what a jam session--with Carl Reiner, Elliot Gould, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt and George Clooney and company in the happiest heist in years.

When we become adult we learn that when something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. So when an Irish fisherman (Colin Farrell) pulls up a nearly-drowned girl in his net, he realizes she can’t really be a mermaid. Probably not even a selkie, as his precocious young daughter maintains. But surely he yearns for her to be a happy ending to his story even as he knows there must be an unhappy ending to hers. When her singing seems to summon forth unheard of catches he finds himself ever more ready to suspend disbelief. But old stories have a way of catching up with one and Ondine, selkie or woman, is no exception. An Irish fishing village provides a setting where life and legend sometimes seem to blur. I enjoyed this film a lot and hope you do too.

Robin Williams offers the finest portrait of a severely repressed personality going over the edge since Catherine Deneuve in "Repulsion." His nervous habit of pushing up his glasses suggests that he isn't seeing the world clearly, an image underlined by the jagged cracks in his car windshield. Sy Parrish ("Sy the photo guy"), the technician in a department store photo operation, inhabits a sterile world, as hermetically sealed as the hamster cage he keeps in his apartment. He has contrived to make the Verdon family his own, and has covered one wall of his apartment with copies of their personal snapshots. Then another set of pictures disclosing the husband's affair shows Sy's surrogate family to be less than perfect, a discovery which, combined with the loss of his job, drives Sy over the edge.

The director establishes a peculiarly creepy tone to the film, not only through Robin Williams' remarkably self-contained performance but also through cropping the images we see so as to deny us our usual comfort zone of context. An hour and a quarter of narrowly circumscribed frames, in which you keep expecting something nasty to happen, sets up the climax in which Sy goes berserk. The director also plays on our fear of pedophilia as we see Sy offer a present to one child and take a series of ever closer pictures of another. Unlike stalker films based on the predator's need to control or possess, "One-Hour Photo" seems to be based on a lonely protagonist's need for a family, but the absence of conventional violence in no way diminishes the disquieting effect of the film.

Before watching this video, reflect on the phrase “not seeing what’s right under your nose,” and the notorious unreliability of “eyewitnesses.” If you ever believed that vision consists of the mind’s taking in and processing reality, think again. We see what we look for. In the experiment, involving watching a game with two three-person teams, one in white shirts, the other in black, subjects are asked to count the number of times the white team passes the ball. In a subsequent test, subjects are deliberately inebriated and then asked the same question. Perhaps not surprisingly, only 8% of the inebriated subjects recall the unusual event in the middle of the video. Perhaps more surprising is the finding that 46% of sober witnesses fail to see it. Okay. Now watch the video and see if you find the reported results believable.

Imagine that you and your partner have found time in your hectic schedules for a brief diving vacation at some tropical paradise. You’re both experienced divers, in terrific physical condition, and you’re looking forward to the special enjoyment of seeing beautiful undersea wildlife. You arrive at the resort, enjoy dinner and a good night’s sleep, and appear at dockside at 8:30 a.m. along with a couple of dozen others for the boat ride to the diving area. You stow your duffel under the seat, don an oxygen tank, watch the skipper take a head count, then head beneath the surface, where you are transformed from an unwieldy top-heavy landlubber into a graceful aquatic sportsperson. You marvel at coloured fish and coral formations then return to the launch area at the designated time only to find that the boat has left without you. (This evidently isn’t as rare as one might think.)

What a nuisance, you think; we’re going to be stuck here for another half hour until the leader notices his error and returns for us. An hour passes, and another. You and your partner are irritated but not worried, although you do jettison your oxygen tanks. (Serves them right!) Your life jacket keeps you buoyant and your body is enclosed in rubber, leaving only your face exposed to a bit of sunburn. More hours pass and you try to figure out what has happened to the boat. Then shark fins appear.

This is a disturbing movie, not least because it doesn’t follow the expected rhythms of Hollywood. The sharks in question were neither computer-generated effects nor mechanical beasts as in "Jaws." I suppose I wouldn’t much fancy being deserted on land either, but there’s a special helplessness being in open water, unable to attract the attention of the occasion sighted vessel nor to reach safety unaided. The dread you experience in this movie is totally different from the thrills of a teen scare flick.

In making "Open Your Eyes," Alejandro Amenabar didn't have anything like the budget available to Cameron Crowe for "Vanilla Sky," a remake of the Spanish film. Seeing the films in reverse order produced bewilderment at first--where were the big-time stars, where was the fancy car, the glitzy apartment, the high-tech polish. Eventually the authenticity of the original took over, aided by the steadiness of Amenabar's vision and the consistency of his musical score (composed by the director himself), and in contrast to the motley of pop tunes in "Vanilla Sky." Key plot elements appeared much more clearly in the original, specifically the splice of 150 years, giving the main character the choice of real life in the year 2145 or a perpetual dream world created from his subconscious. Penelope Cruz, who plays the same role in both films, appears as a mature young woman in the earlier film, with none of the hyperkinetic cuteness of the remake. For an American-Canadian, the back-to-back viewing of these two films in two days provides an eye-opening experience of what the rest of the world means by "Americanization": the money, the power, the polish, the arrogance. In this context, the American insistence that other countries should not be able to subsidize the preservation of their own cultures becomes downright obscene.

"You know, I've discovered something. We don't have to go to New York to be happy. We can be happy right here in St. Louis." The year is 1944, America is at war, and an earnest affirmation of basic values of home and family ring true. But for that same sentence to be expressed in 2002--man, I don't care if you are Tom Hanks' son, hasn't anyone told you about irony and post-modernism? Kevin Kline, in a charming cameo role, tells the Colin Hanks character that his story is full of attractively crazy people, but that it just doesn't have an ending. Same thing goes for the film.

I felt frustrated watching the Oscar presentation for short films, realizing that I’d seen none of the nominated entries and probably never would. But this being Toronto, I had a second chance at the Bloor Cinema’s presentation of "Oscar Shorts."

"THE RED JACKET" (Germany) If a feature film is like a novel, this 18-minute entry is like a beautifully crafted short story. This summary depends on words but the story-telling itself occurs in images, leaving the viewer to fill in the cause-and-effect relationships. The film opens with a red jacket lying in the middle of a highway. A police officer picks it up and brings it back to the scene of an accident. A man looks at an empty place at the breakfast nook; we see a photograph of his son. By the time we’ve connected the dots, the jacket is on its way to Sarajevo as part of a relief package of clothing. A young Bosnian boy determinedly obtains possession of the coveted prize, then looks in horror as his house goes up in flames, his parents murdered by enemy soldiers, who shoot the lad when he gets too close. An international medical team puts him on a plane to a hospital in Germany, and if you’ve followed this far you can probably guess where the story leads, but you need to see the film to appreciate the way the colour red prevails over duller hues like life prevailing over death.

"HARVIE KRUMPET" (Australia) A quirky tale told in claymation, "Harvie Krumpet," winner of this year’s Oscar, traces the life of a Polish youngster, afflicted with Tourette’s Syndrome, who survives humiliation and failure, finds romance, and manages to turn even senility into an amusing life-affirming experience.

"NIBBLES" (Canada) This film gives new meaning to the word "animation," as even buildings and trees keep changing their shape, imitating the effect of reflections in the water. You’ve never seen so much food consumed as in this four-and-a-half-minute fishing trip.

"(A) TORZIJA (Slovenia) A Bosnian choir, waiting to board a plane to take them to a choral competition, puts on an unexpected performance in a barn in order to save the life of an injured cow in the throes of calving. It is difficult to imagine a more unlikely subject for a story, nor a more sympathetic treatment. A magical fourteen-and-a half minutes.

"SQUASH" (France) This film would have received my nomination for an Academy Award. Two men, a maniacal boss and his hapless employee, compete on the squash court in a game played for mortal stakes, with a psychological battle every bit as bruising as the intensely physical match. The moving camera communicates the increasing level of tension by adopting ever more unusual angles as the competition progresses, to the point that the audience shares the physical exhaustion of the players. The scene never leaves the narrow confines of the court as the aggressiveness of the game mounts to the level of the gladiatorial. An extraordinary thirty minutes mixing life with sport.

Late in her career, Bette Davis appeared in number of films that set the standard for contemporary horror movies: "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane", with Joan Crawford (1962); "Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte" (1964), "The Nanny" (1965). These were films that scared you out of your wits without recourse to blood and gore. I stopped going to horror films when the genre started to rely on the physically revolting rather than the psychological for its effects. Freddy Kruger and his ilk just turned me off.

Now "The Others" offers a horror film in the old style--relying on mind games rather than stomach-turning sights for effect. But when has a horror film been so lovingly photographed, or accompanied by such a musical score (written by director Alejandro Amenabar), laced with sadness as much as with fear. Nicole Kidman shows herself to be a worthy successor to Bette Davis. For those accustomed to teenage scare movies of the "don't open that door" variety, "The Others" may seem tame, but for those who revere "The Turn of the Screw" as the greatest ghost story ever written, "The Others" is not to be missed.

The opening section of the film feels wrong. Would a police chief in the midst of divorce proceedings really be more-or-less openly carrying on an affair with a married woman, even in Florida, which seems to have displaced California as the capital of weirdness in the States? To have his ex-wife-to-be acting as the chief detective in an investigation that implicates him seems rather contrived. But then the plot takes a strange turn: what had seemed false turns out actually to be false. The police chief, played by Denzel Washington, has been royally set up, and the rest of the film consists of his efforts to prove his innocence. So far it sounds like a run-of-the mill action movie, but the timing is exquisite. You know the way physical comedy depends on split-second interactions. Exactly that kind of rhythm comes to play here but in the interest of a thriller. At one point the Denzel Washington character is trying to delete his name from incriminating telephone records in a computer and transmit his doctored records into a printer before an incoming fax can deliver the legitimate records. People enter and exit with all the rapidity of a French bedroom farce, but in this drama it builds tension of a different kind. A battle between two men hanging from a precariously balanced balcony grating is just one of the many episodes in which we root for the hero to survive long enough to solve the frame-up. A very stylish execution of the genre.

World War I took an incredible toll not only in human lives lost but also in human spirits damaged, sometimes beyond repair. We know about the waves of soldiers being sent into an assault and being cut down by enemy fire; we have some distant understanding of the horrors of trench warfare. But the survivors of shell-shock and post traumatic stress syndrome often remain silent. “The Oxford Roof Climber’s Rebellion” offers a perspective on how the horrors of the “war to end wars” altered T.E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia) and poet Robert Graves. Playwright Stephen Massicotte takes as his point of departure the actual encounter of these two men at All Souls College at Oxford in the 1920s, where they became friends and allies against the establishment attitudes of Lord Curzon, British Foreign Secretary (and president of the Anti-Suffrage League). Massicotte adopts the conceit that Lawrence and Graves, finding themselves more or less powerless against what they see as the wrong-headedness of British foreign policy, wage a half-playful/half-serious campaign of passive aggressiveness involving climbing roofs and hanging inappropriate objects in inaccessible high places.

The wittiness of the dialogue keeps us laughing while we’re in the theatre. Only later, as we put ourselves into the shoes of the engaging main characters, do we understand the bleak hopelessness they must have experienced in seeing that the resolution of World War I, far from ending war, made another war almost inevitable. Our enjoyment of their theatrical hijinks postpones our appreciation of their underlying desolation.

This is the kind of play that elevates your esteem of the power of theatre. From the outset we are struck by the contrast between the slender Graves and the pallid, almost emaciated Lawrence and the stout, florid Lord Curzon, whose ample girth and ruddy complexion seem to symbolize his power. The seemingly simple set yields continual surprises as doors and windows appear and vanish during quick scene changes disguised by the sounds and flashing lights of bombs and artillery, continual reminders of war’s psychological aftermath. The exchanges between Lawrence and Graves give voice to the tension between often-reckless idealism and desire for the good tempered by the practical necessities of supporting a family. Beneath the sardonic humour we sense both men’s suffering.

That errors in settling World War I continue to haunt us today only makes the play more relevant. If you can get to the theatre before the play closes on December 17 you won’t be sorry.

Regular big gamblers, known as "whales," receive special treatment by casinos: lavish suites, their choice of cuisine, and other favours to suit their tastes. Early in "Owning Mahowney" we see such a client arrive at the gaming room, preceded and followed by a pair of security guards while an attendant holds back the ordinary gamblers to let the entourage pass. By the end of the film the eponymous protagonist has gained the status of "whale." But where does he get the money given his modest salary as a bank vice-president? He steals it from the bank. Phillip Seymour Hoffman recreates the Toronto character who, between 1980 and 1982, managed to defraud the institution of roughly ten million dollars to support a geometrical progression of losses, each time taking a bit more in an effort to recoup the previous disaster.

Mahowney, known as "The Iceman" by the casino operator, portrayed by John Hurt, plays for hours at a stretch, impervious to any distractions from the pure act of gambling. His girlfriend, played by Minnie Driver, asks him to acknowledge his addiction and to seek help. Mahowney will admit only to having a "financial shortfall." The camera shows occasional flourishes, such as a cut from the spiral staircase of the bank to the spinning of a roulette wheel, but for the most part the film serves as an unadorned chronicle of single-minded self-destructiveness, the most unnerving account I’ve ever seen of a life destroyed by compulsive gambling.

Magic in the movies takes various forms. The Harry Potter films make different forms of wizardry into a curriculum at Hogwarts Academy: “real” magic becomes a given. Recent films such as “The Illusionist” or “The Prestige,” on the other hand, treat magic as an explainable illusion achieved by human ingenuity. Then there are films such as Bergman’s “Fanny and Alexander” in which incidental, unexplainable magic occurs at critical moments, such as the effort to smuggle the eponymous children out of the wicked bishop’s palace in a large wooden chest. The bishop, suspicious of the plot, rushes upstairs to find the children, or some magic simulacrum thereof, lying safely on the floor. Fairy tale stories might not even be considered magic at all, since what we would consider miraculous events turn out to be normal within the realm of the fairy tale.

“Pan’s Labyrinth” introduces elements of fairy tale magic into the context of grim political reality. The story takes place in Spain in 1944. A regiment of Franco’s army under the leadership of Captain Vidal has been dispatched to wipe out a band of rebels hiding in the hills. Travelling with the company of Fascist soldiers is Carmen, a widow recently married to the captain and now in an advanced state of pregnancy, and her daughter Ofelia. The sadistic captain takes pleasure in showing prisoners the array of instruments with which he plans to torture them in order to extract information.

Young Ofelia, played by eleven-year-old Ivana Baquero, loves to read fairy tales. Soon after their arrival at the garrison she follows a preying mantis into a labyrinth, where a faun tells her that she is really a princess and challenges her to accomplish three tasks to demonstrate her worthiness. (He cites a moon-shaped birthmark on her shoulder as evidence of her royal status.) Ofelia’s adventures carry her into a repulsively muddy root-system of an enormous tree and later into a large chamber inhabited by a man who wears his eyes in his hands.

All the while Ofelia tries to tend to the needs of her mother, whose pregnancy is ending badly, while staying out of the way of the stepfather-captain, whom she detests. Director Guillermo Del Toro keeps us off-balance with tricky editing that takes us one or two steps further into the action than we would normally expect. The “magical” aspects of the film occur so matter-of-factly that we remain slightly uncertain of which world is real and which imaginary and we start to notice parallels between the two worlds: Ofelia’s journey’s into the magic world seem to coincide with a servant’s clandestine visits into the hills to assist the rebels; Ofelia deals with her stepfather in a most fairytale fashion—giving him a potion (in this case, an overdose of a sedative prescribed for her mother). And while the evil Captain cares above all to preserve his lineage with a son, the underworld wants to recover the lost princess that would assure its survival. This film has received glowing reviews, highly merited. Probably not a good idea to bring the children.

"The Panic Room" begins with eye-catching credits reminiscent of Saul Bass's work on "North By Northwest": the names appear to be enormous signs mounted on New York buildings and photographed from a great variety of angles. The film begins as any good terror film should--a minimum of exposition and right to the conflict. So the burglars come on the very first night that a woman and her daughter have moved into their Manhattan townhouse. Virtuoso camerawork traces the intruders' attempts to get in. At one point the camera appears to pass through the handle of a coffee cup! But once the burglars manage to get into the house and the action proper begins, the film seems to fizzle out. I never had any doubt that Jodie Foster would prevail over the three clowns attempting to rob her. Who could hope to win against the sheer determination of her face, the force of her will, and the resilience of her desperate imagination? "Straw Dogs," despite being an incredibly offensive film, nonetheless set the standard of tension for the siege movie, and "The Panic Room" falls far short of that standard.

Am I the only one bothered by scenes in which the period costumes obviously come out of the costume department never having been worn before? Is mine the only ear disturbed by locutions unlikely to have been uttered in the period being presented? Does no one else object to the writer/director/star of a movie set in 1917 Alberta wearing a beautiful California tan and sporting a beautiful smile full of gleaming white teeth? It seems to me that if a movie makes elaborate claims of authenticity these are not minor quibbles but reasonable objections. Critics have praised the realism of the war scenes, and I have no reason to disagree, but for a film named after a major battle in World War I, there seems to be a considerable imbalance between the romance and the battle. The director seems to apologize for the disproportion by saying that audiences nowadays want romance and have no patience for protracted battle. Perhaps the era that could appreciate “Saving Private Ryan” has disappeared irretrievably into the past.

When I first saw this film in 1975, I was impressed by the intriguing story and the virtuosic penultimate shot, in which the camera appears to pass through the bars of a window. Thirty years later I admire Antonioni’s encapsulization of an era. Nowadays one would hesitate to hitchhike, or to pick up a hitchhiker, but thirty years ago it was not only a commonplace way to get about, but a metaphor for life: you could get somewhere different, possibly in the direction you intended to go, but at least elsewhere. In this context, imagine being able to hitchhike a life. This is the situation Jack Nicholson finds himself in. A journalist traveling in Africa, he is tired of his work, his wife, his life. When a fellow traveler in the same hotel suffers a heart attack, the Nicholson character, struck by their physical resemblance, decides to take on the deceased man’s identity, using the itinerary in his date book to decide his course. Along the way he runs into a young architecture student, played by Maria Schneider, content to accompany him. The casual attitude toward life direction, which felt entirely comfortable when the film first came out, makes a powerful contrast to the goal-driven style of contemporary life.

Of course complications ensue. Nicholson’s wife, who didn’t care much for him while he was alive, takes a much stronger interest after his death, as does his producer/boss, eager to make a documentary tribute. And when Robertson, the Nicholson character’s new identity, turns out to have been a weapons merchant, other more threatening parties take an active interest as well. We travel with the main characters to London, Munich, and Barcelona as the Nicholson character discovers the difficulty of being someone else and of shaking off an unwanted past. This film, beautiful and captivating in its first release, now carries a deeper resonance of social history in its re-release. Don’t miss it.

Michael Tremblay, one of Canada’s leading playwrights, has used the character of Albertine, based on one of his aunts, in a number of plays. In “Past Perfect,” in which she appears at age 20, Tremblay attempts to show the source of the later character, but in the production currently playing at the Tarragon Theatre, Albertine’s personality seems to have been fully formed: she’s already a frightening embodiment of the narcissistic personality disorder. The universe resolves around Albertine, and her good looks, sharp tongue, and utter recklessness lead to her getting her own way much of the time. In this five-character play we see Albertine interact with her mother, sister, brother, and ex-fiancé, the latter figure standing in for the audience since, as the only non-family member, he’s the only one who hasn’t grown up in a dysfunctional relationship with Albertine. Each character tries to take her on but she inevitably wears them down. Only the ex-fiancé, who has now become the sister’s boyfriend, manages to escape; the others remain enmeshed.

I found the actors outstanding but the script problematic. The scene is set in Montreal during the Depression, but the language of feelings and relationships employed throughout the play didn’t exist until well into the 70s. (The music, the post-modern Music for 18 Musicians by Steve Reich, also jars anachronistically.) I don’t know the original French text, but the English translation uses every cliché you can imagine. The force of personality of the actors largely overcomes the lameness of the language but it remains a constant impediment to fully embracing the play.

All right; put away the jokes that Ben Affleck with his brain erased isn’t really any different: this is one exciting movie. Affleck plays a reverse engineer who’s paid well to decode the inner workings of electronic devices, with the proviso that his memory has to be wiped so he can’t use the secrets he uncovers. Now he’s offered a single three-year job that will make him rich for life provided he’s willing to give up three years of memory. Sure, go for it. Thing is, the project is a machine that tells the future. Having seen the future, which includes his demise at the hands of his employers, Affleck declines the $90 million paycheck in favour of twenty commonplace items which, if used properly, will help him evade both the bad guys and the U.S. government (naturally). Uma Thurman makes a swell sidekick in the second half of the film, an extended survival game. If you believe that a movie isn’t a movie unless you get an adrenaline rush, you won’t want to miss this one.

"Personal Velocity" presents three sketches of women dealing with relationships. The quasi-documentary photographic style draws us in, even as the voice of a narrator tends to distance us from the action. Adapted for the screen by Rebecca Miller from her own short stories (she also directs), the film has a strongly literary feel to it. We'll get a freeze-frame while the narrator offers a quick outline of a new character. Occasionally the narrator's words bring laughter to the audience, as in the second story when the main character "felt ambition ooze out of her like pus from a lanced boil." When she lands a major job as a senior editor in a publishing firm, she "suddenly realizes that she is going to dump her beautiful husband like a redundant paragraph." The main character in the third story, discovering that she is pregnant, "can imagine [the unborn baby] sucking the security out of her life as it grows, cell by cell." I'm not sure what to make of sentences like these, that don't seem to belong in either a short story or a movie. But the film does bring to life, without ever resolving, situations that men in the audience will know only second-hand: the plight of the victim of spousal abuse; the conflicted feelings of a young woman toward her high-profile lawyer father; the confused world of a woman who believes of every event that "it's gotta mean something; it's gotta be a sign." This is the sort of film you should see with someone who can talk about it with you afterward.

Stanley Kubrick’s films illustrate a number of basic themes, among them, as critic Norman Kagan notes, “the futility of intelligence and the mistrust of emotion.” We may disagree with this fairly nihilistic view of life even as we’re entertained, intrigued or amazed by the unexpected images that Kubrick brings before our eyes.

Morwyn Brebner’s play “The Pessimist” brings this paradox to mind—how a playwright can thoroughly engross an audience while ringing changes on a philosophy that many of us would disavow. Marcus, a director dying of an unspecified illness, gathers his actress/wife Suzanne, playwright Wheal and ingénue Hesterpryne for a weekend in the country to rehearse a play called “The Pessimist” that Wheal is in the process of completing. Into this company stumbles a hapless politician named Philip, hoping to make a favourable impression on local farmers.

The phrase “the futility of intelligence and the mistrust of emotion” would describe the play pretty well except for the face that Morwyn Brebner keeps us laughing throughout. The extraordinary multi-level set seems to have been constructed entirely of straw, as if the entire play could be encapsulated as “a roll in the hay.” Sexual desire runs rampant: the politician experiences an ill-concealed passion for the actress, the director and the playwright can’t keep their hands off the scantily-clad ingénue: Brebner makes ample use of the conventions of French farce, with blackout scenes substituting for the usual multiple bedroom doors.

“Mistrust of feeling” takes expression in the theme of zombie-ism, announced in the opening lines of the play, in which we learn that zombies have no feelings. Throughout the play scenes will open in dim light with a group of actors moving in stereotypical zombie fashion. Then with a flick of the lights they continue the play as if nothing had happened, the idea being that the actors are really zombies from which all emotion has disappeared. At the very end of the play Suzanne reaches out to her husband with apparent genuine feeling, a gesture that he rejects.

Death haunts the play without ever being acknowledged. No one seems willing to talk about the director’s imminent death, least of all the director himself. When the ingénue, now having become the lover of the playwright, takes the liberty of making suggestions for the manuscript he has shown her, he retaliates by writing her out of the script, “killing” the character. The bumbling politician discovers that his party has decided to kill his candidacy. And let us not forget that the entire action takes place in a garbage dump.

The play has received generally pallid reviews, but I enjoyed myself throughout its eighty minutes of witty dialogue, even as I had to distance myself from its pessimistic outlook.

The theme of how a community deals with a nonconformist runs through a good deal of twentieth-century literature. Benjamin Britten’s opera about a solitary sailor who goes mad after the deaths of his apprentices takes on a special edge in our era of heightened awareness of pedophilia and child abuse.

Britten lightens the downward spiral of the action with episodes involving comic village types—the barmaids, the elderly dope fiend, the randy bachelor. But at the end the music we best recall belongs to the sea, the storm, the difficult existence of those who choose life by the sea, and the fate of one who cannot fit in.

The opera opens with an inquest into the apprentice’s death and we immediately become aware of Peter’s otherness as the tempo of his speech remains stubbornly out of synch with that of the presiding officer. The love duets with the schoolteacher who hopes to redeem Peter by marrying him are bittersweet. Peter’s mad scene, sung completely without accompaniment, has a chilling effect. When Captain Balstrode, the voice of reconciliation and tolerance throughout the drama, instructs Peter at the end of the drama to sail his boat out of sight of land and then to sink her, we wonder whether, after all, that isn’t the best course.

Throughout the opera we hear the music of the sea, at once the source of the town’s livelihood and a force of destructiveness, the sea which will outlast any human life. For all the admirable singing by the principles, this opera belongs to the chorus and orchestra, and the Canadian Opera Company distinguishes itself on both counts. A fine performance of a twentieth-century masterpiece.

In “Oklahoma” Ado Annie, asked which of two suitors she prefers, answers simply “Whichever one I’m with.” Laurie, the musical’s female lead, needs no man to define her. Romance is fine, but she can live with its absence. “Never've I once looked back to sigh over the romance behind me; Many a new day will dawn before I do!” No such strong feminist statement for the heroine in “Phantom of the Opera,” who spends the entire play being tugged back and forth between the masked, hideously deformed cellar-dwelling phantom who urges her to come over to the dark side (shades of Dark Vader!) and the dashing count who pleads for her love. The poor girl has no identity whatever save as a partner for one of these two men, neither of whom looks like a very promising match. Andrew Lloyd Webber, whose music I confess I detest, borrows shamelessly from the worst of Puccini, not only for his harmonies but also for the filthy notion of having one of the leads tortured onstage. The film version of the show, freed from the limitations of live theatre, celebrates unbridled excess in every aspect of the production: flamboyant costumes, subterranean scenes lit by thousands of candles, flames and explosions, accompanied always by thudding prose and mawkish music. This is an all-inclusive show: something objectionable for everyone.

Eighty-five minutes may be a bit too long for a one-joke movie, but one has difficulty faulting such an endearing film. An alien crashes in northern Ontario where he meets an assortment of characters not materially stranger than himself. Thrown into jail for assaulting a cigarette machine, he becomes a born-again Christian who attracts a following through his ability to levitate. Meanwhile, an inept crew of American government agents plots to capture the alien and bring him to their secret laboratory behind Niagara Falls. Director/writer Rob Stafaniuk takes the lead role with electrified hair, a slightly peculiar walk and a frown that seems perpetually on the verge of tears. If I tell you that the cast includes a talking beaver, you’ll probably never go to see this charming, low-key movie, so perhaps it’s best not to mention it.

Just making a film within a confined space does not present great obstacles. Theatrical dramas take place within confined spaces and movies made from plays frequently preserve the basic structure of their source with only occasional glimpses outside to "open up the play" But making a satisfying action film within a confined space offers a worthy challenge to director and cinematographer. In this case, after a brief prologue in which the protagonist is shown to be manipulative, insincere, dishonest and unfaithful—in other words, your typical publicist—the rest of the movie stays within a stone’s throw of the last free-standing telephone booth on 58th Street in Manhattan.

The phone rings after the publicist has just finished making a call. He picks it up and hears the rather disembodied voice of a sniper who has him in his sights (we see the red laser dot on his body to confirm the target). It seems the shooter has a hobby of following people around the city, learning a good deal about their personal lives, and taking it upon himself to punish dishonesty. Two recent such events convince the victim of his peril, which increases when the sniper takes out a pimp who tries to evict the publicist from the phone booth. The police arrive in force, presuming the publicist to be armed, and the bulk of the film takes the form of a double stand-off as the publicist simultaneously tries to keep the sniper and the police from shooting him.

As the sniper carries out his plan of humiliating the publicist before killing him, our sympathies gradually shift, and it is interesting to reflect on how this change in perspective comes about. In the first part of the encounter, as we learn the details of the publicist’s venality, we tend to identify with the sniper. We have all been victims of dishonesty at one time or another and part of us would like to see the publicist get his comeuppance. But as the sniper continues to toy with the helpless man, like a cat with a trapped mouse, we see the tormentor as no less manipulative than his victim, and by the time he begins to threaten the publicist’s wife and mistress, both of whom appear in the gathering throng, our feelings change: we might condone execution but we draw the line at torture.

As our loyalties change, we take an interest in how the publicist might escape from a seemingly hopeless position. His attempt to call 911 on a cell-phone fails because the sniper has bugged the phone booth and can hear the voice of the 911 operator. The way the plot plays out strikes me as both ingenious and satisfying.

The film opens and closes with a montage intended to link the overhead satellite by which cell phones communicate with the overhead sniper.

A note to theatregoers: A sign outside downtown theatres warns that patrons of "Dreamcatcher" will not be offered refunds. This is not, as I had supposed, because "Dreamcatcher" is such an awful movie that any sane person would want to leave well before the end, but because the film accompanies a 15-minute trailer for "Matrix 2—Reloaded," coming out this summer, and fans had been going for the trailer alone then seeking a refund.

The first time I read The Diary of Anne Frank, even though I knew how it would end, I kept looking at the dates of the journal entries, matching them against the date of the Allied liberation of Europe, and wishing the family could hold out against disclosure just a few more days.

Watching a film depicting the isolation, deportation and extermination of the Jews in Warsaw in the period from 1939 to 1945 fills one with feelings of helpless sadness. As you see these people descend successive levels of deprivation while trying to maintain a positive attitude, what would you say to them if you were granted speech? What good would it do to reveal the unspeakable ending?

Virtually everyone disappeared. A rare exception, a concert pianist named Spzilman, provides us not with an example of heroism but something perhaps more valuable from an historical perspective: a set of eyes. Director Roman Polanski gives us a narrow incomplete view of an event too incomprehensibly evil to display outright. We watch the brief Polish resistance through a broken pane of a window in a deserted hospital. Spzilman, hiding from the Nazis, occupies empty flats, peering from behind curtained windows, and barely surviving starvation with help from members of the resistance movement.

The irony of survival in these circumstances is captured in a haunting image of the solitary figure stumbling down a long avenue of buildings reduced to rubble. Spzilman lives to perform Chopin over the national radio network but the half million other Jews who inhabited Warsaw in 1939 vanished forever. Polanski’s haunting film serves as their memorial.

"The Piano Teacher" is the finest depiction of sexual repression I have seen since Roman Polanski’s "Repulsion" (1965), and also the most disturbing. (It contains one extended scene of self-mutilation that I found unwatchable.) Where "Repulsion" depended on the brilliant acting of Catherine Deneuve, "La Pianiste" features Isabel Huppert in a demanding role as the piano teacher from hell, who treats her students with both psychological and physical cruelty. Subjected to the interference of a stifling mother (played by Annie Girardot), with whom she shares not only an apartment but even a bed, and the genetic curse of a father who died of insanity, the teacher tries to ensnare one of her students into a sadomasochistic sexual relationship. The fine acting, superb photography and exquisite musical selections make this difficult film unforgettable.

You realize this isn’t the Disney version early on: Gepetto has been talking affectionately to his pet cricket, who chirps and hops around on his workbench, but when Pinocchio comes to life he unwittingly steps on the cricket and kills it. So there won’t be any "Give a Little Whistle" or "When You Wish Upon a Star" in this production.

Instead playwright Eleanor Albanese has gone back to Carlo Collodi’s original story of 1882 and retold it in the style of the Italian commedia dell’arte, with the half dozen actors each playing several different roles and music based on Italian folksongs.

The director draws actively upon the richest resource available in live theatre: the imagination of the audience. Two players stretch a broad ribbon of blue fabric across the stage and we are transported beneath the sea. The most telling theatrical effect comes in the portrayal of the eponymous puppet. Actress Ingrid Rae Doucet carries the wooden figure and speaks for him, with no attempt at ventriloquism. Rather her face openly displays the emotions behind the words so that we come to accept actress and puppet as a single unit. At the end of the play the puppet turns into a live boy, played by a young chap dressed in the same costume as the puppet, with an electrifying effect. A show worth seeing.

Surely there’s a mistake here. You’re telling me that while listeners in North America could hear the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and other British rock groups on the radio, fans in Great Britain could not? You’re saying that a radio monopoly by BBC, which refused to countenance the broadcast of such “pornography,” extended to the mid-60s? Evidently this really was the case. Eventually “pirate” radio stations came into being, broadcasting from off-coast ships anchored in international waters and, unlike the BBC, supported by commercials. Originally these commercial stations aired more or less the same kind of “respectable” programming heard on the official station but then a Texan established three offshore stations imitating the format of American commercial radio.

Here lies the basis of a story, turned into a film called “The Boat That Rocked,” which debuted in Great Britain last April to mixed reviews. To begin with, coming in at three hours it seemed far too long for its slender tale to support. Now the film has been re-edited, cut to around an hour and a half, and brought to North America with the title, “Pirate Radio,” in which form I saw it last night in a preview. What’s the word? The sound-track is terrific, Phillip Seymour Hoffmann, Bill Nighy and Rhys Ifan have a great time as leading members of the illicit radio operation, supported by an excellent cast including Kenneth Branagh, clearly enjoying his role as their government nemesis, and a brief appearance by Emma Thompson. The film concludes with a sensational image that will last long in my memory, and is endearing throughout as it explores the relationships among the men who spend full time on the boat, relieved by occasional visits from a boatload of their girlfriends. Unfortunately, it’s still too long for the material, and for protracted stretches must get along on good will. That said, I think you’ll find it an enjoyable movie.

I enjoy theatrical occasions in which I can compare my responses to those of Adriana. In the production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s "Pirates of Penzance" on Saturday, which we both enjoyed, Adriana objected to having middle-aged women appearing as the bulk of the Major-General’s nubile daughters. Having directed shows of this sort in the past myself, I was willing to cut the North Toronto Players a bit of slack in this regard. On the other hand, I strongly objected to rewriting some of the music to make it sound like 50s-style rock & roll (in a production that turned the pirates into a motorcycle gang), whereas Adriana saw nothing wrong with introducing music from "Grease" into the middle of the score. We both thought the male and female leads sang exceptionally well, though we were both troubled by the soprano’s habit of contorting her jaw whenever she went for a high note. Though at first baffled by seeing a woman in the role of the Major-General, I thought she did a fine job of it. Adriana thought the role should have been cast for a woman in the first place. (Less than a year at The Linden School and she’s already an outspoken feminist.)

A teenage boy named Venkatesh survives on his own in the Indian city of Panjim by working in a hotel, supplementing his income by buying plastic bags wholesale and selling them individually on the street. He becomes fascinated with an unused swimming pool situated on a luxurious estate in the hills above the city and manages to secure an additional job helping its owner with gardening chores. The pool serves as a symbol for the separation between poverty and wealth, a particularly wide gulf in India. Yet this never becomes an angry film. On the contrary, the story surprises us with lessons of generosity followed by even greater generosity. “The Pool,” while lacking the flamboyance of “Slumdog Millionaire,” offers a memorable depiction of determination and the redeeming quality of love.

For years Garrison Keillor has hosted a radio program called “A Prairie Home Companion,” a variety show with country & western music, fake commercials for Powdered Milk Biscuits, and tales of Lake Wobegone, a small town in Minnesota “where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” Keillor has collected these stories into Lake Wobegone Days (1985), Leaving Home (1987) and a novel, Lake Wobegon Summer 1956 (2001). The same low-key humour informs Keillor’s Happy to Be Here (1981), We Are Still Married (1989), The Book of Guys (1993), and Love Me, A Novel (2004). He has also made a number of recordings including A Young Lutheran’s Guide to the Orchestra. Listening to Keillor’s rich, relaxed baritone voice, either singing or speaking, tends to make worries vanish in a happy regression to simpler times.

Robert Altman, another Midwesterner, has specialized in ensemble productions with a number of overlapping story lines and dialogue lines. His long career has included M*A*S*H (1970), McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), Nashville (1975), 3 Women (1978), A Wedding (1978), The Player (1992), Short Cuts (1993), and Gosford Park (2001), to name only a few. If you were going to make “A Prairie Home Companion” into a movie, Altman would be your man.

But how do you turn a radio show into a movie? Combining backstage activity with onstage entertainment is right up Altman’s alley, and he does it brilliantly, with some virtuoso camera technique, clever editing, and cooperation from actors recruited to beef up the variety show: singers wholesome (Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin) or off-colour (Woody Harrelson and John T. Reilly), assisted by Lindsay Lohan, in the first unaffected acting I’ve seen from her since her debut in the remake of The Parent Trap (1998). [If this is the “new” Lindsay Lohan, I’m all for it.) But what about Lake Wobegone? Evidently Garrison Keillor’s marvellous monologues were deemed uncinematic, and cut from the film. In their place we have a lame subplot about an actor dying during a performance, and the insertion of an annoying “angel of death.” Kevin Kline and Tommy Lee Jones are tacked on, to no great effect, in the roles of a security guard and the Texan who, having purchased the theatre where the radio show takes place, intends to shut it down. The resulting film is endearing without being engaging. Keillor serves well as the show’s host, but stripped of his role as storyteller he tends to disappear into the background. I found the result pleasant but disappointing.

Imagine an earlier era—the end of the 19^th century—when people took magic shows a good deal more seriously than we do today, a world in which the rivalry between magicians bent on duplicating and topping each other’s feats might be described as an obsession. The story hinges on an illusion called “The Transported Man,” in which a magician enters a cabinet and seconds later emerges from an identical cabinet on the opposite end of the stage. I have seen Doug Henning perform a variation of this illusion on stage and can testify to its power.

The illusion can be done using a double, but suppose it would be achieved in actuality—teleportation! (It’s actually more complicated than that, but I don’t want to give away too much of the story.) Herein lies the obsession of the magician played by Hugh Jackman, who spends two years and a considerable amount of money to persuade Nikola Tesla, played remarkably by David Bowie, to build a machine capable of achieving in fact what rival magician Christian Bales achieves through illusion. Michael Caine appears as the inventor who helps to contrive and build the great illusions of a stage show, and Scarlett Johansson portrays the magician’s assistant who acts as the physical link between two men who lives are intertwined in deadly competition. While the mixing up of flashbacks and present action occasionally makes the film hard to follow, the obsessive, even ruthless, rivalry holds our attention throughout. Only afterward do we reflect on how skilfully the film manages to shift our allegiance from the Jackman character to the Bales character (pay careful attention to scenes involving a beautiful little girl). I was astonished to find that the film ran for 128 minutes—it seemed much shorter.

If you can’t be original, at least be inventive. Why would you want to watch yet another romantic comedy? Because Michael Ian Black has breathed a bit of fresh life into the genre. Start with Anderson (Jason Biggs), still mourning the death of his fiancée a year after the event, and Katie (Isla Fisher) reluctant to accept a proposal from her “perfect boyfriend.” In a restaurant on a dare from a friend Anderson proposes to Katie, a complete stranger; on a whim she accepts. Predictable problems ensue. On a bus ride to meet his parents, the couple encounters a woman with a distended belly and Anderson offers her his seat. Katie, starry-eyed at the prospect of maternity, begs permission to touch the woman’s belly. Anderson puts his head at the same spot and believes that he can feel the infant kick. “When are you due?” he asks the woman. “I’m not pregnant!” she declares and moves to get off the bus. The rest of the movie pretty much resembles this, with offbeat friends, quirky parents (excellent performances by Joe Pantoliano and Edward Hermann as the couple’s fathers). I liked it; you might, too.

“THE PRESTIGE”

Imagine an earlier era—the end of the 19th century—when people took magic shows a good deal more seriously than we do today, a world in which the rivalry between magicians bent on duplicating and topping each other’s feats might be described as an obsession. The story hinges on an illusion called “The Transported Man,” in which a magician enters a cabinet and seconds later emerges from an identical cabinet on the opposite end of the stage. I have seen Doug Henning perform a variation of this illusion on stage and can testify to its power.

A sense of justice runs deep in the human psyche. Even schoolchildren seem to have an inherent sense of fairness and will respond viscerally when it appears to have been denied. We’ve all seen films about people unfairly incarcerated, but “Presumed Guilty” indicts a system in which injustice seems to be intrinsic. The presumption of innocence that forms a cornerstone of the Anglo-American justice system does not exist in Mexico, where the accused must prove innocence and 95% of judicial verdicts are “guilty.” With policemen paid to augment their arrest records and prosecutors untroubled by what we would consider gross abuses of the rules of evidence, many innocent people end up behind bars. In this case, a team from the University of California, Berkeley takes an interest in the case of a young man randomly accused of homicide. They manage to obtain a retrial which, astonishingly, takes place before the very judge who’d handed down the original decision. Not surprisingly, he returns a second guilty verdict. This documentary gives faces and personalities to the supporting characters, from the prisoner’s girlfriend to the arresting officers who have conveniently forgotten every detail of the case. A fine piece of film-making.

An unusual set greets the audience: vertical display boards mounted with architectural drawings, a variety of models, including a complicated boxlike structure downstage centre. A girl enters to make a few last-minute adjustments to the model and to replace a thumbtack that has fallen from one of the drawings. Offstage a pompous voice rattles on rather longer than one would expect from an offstage voice. Then three men enter including, we learn, the girl’s architecture professor and two examiners.

At first the men listen respectfully as the girl presents her work, a model for a public indoor swimming pool. They ask for clarification on a number of points, which she competently provides. Then the questioning becomes less sympathetic. The examiners systematically demolish the project in words and then turn their antagonism against each other, with the hapless young professor making futile attempts to preserve a modicum of academic decorum. Eventually the examiners turn on the girl, their remarks becoming openly sexist and racist.

The four-person play runs 74 minutes without an intermission, and under a relentless barrage of words the audience welcomes little pieces of stage action (the two examiners re-crossing their legs in unison, for example.) Occasionally one notices that this is a play—a lapse in the dramatic illusion—but for the most part we are engrossed by the way the attractive Korean student holds her own against the attacks of her tormenters, finally disarming them in an elegant coup de theater.

At last a musical that dares ask the question, "If you succeed in offending every possible minority group, does that make it all right?" What does it take to turn a very funny movie into a smash-hit musical? In a word, hokum. Mel Brooks knows every ploy, trick, shtick, glitz and flim-flam of Broadway, from key-changes and chorus line to sequins and spangles, from mirrors to moving lights, and shamelessly steals gimmicks from every show he’s ever seen (including his own movies), pumping up the spectacle with the vulgarity of vaudeville until any possible objection is carried away on a tidal wave of kicking legs, pirouettes and pizzazz. "The Producers" benefits from a first-rate Max Biyalastock, a more-than-adequate Leo Bloom, and an extraordinarily tall and talented Ulla (product of Toronto’s Sheridan College music program). Behind every scene you can hear Mel Brooks giggling as he manages to top every joke with another, and even if it’s a groaner, he’s got you laughing right to the end with a preview of coming attractions: "She Shtupps to Conquer," "47th Street," and "South Passaic." This show is irresistible.

Salvation through mathematics? The thought may seem absurd to those tormented by trying to add fractions with unlike denominators or remember which way the signs go in the quadratic formula. Those who love mathematics marvel at the elegance of a proof (for example, the demonstration that the square root of two is irrational), or puzzle over the paradox that Bertrand Russell constructed from the notion of a set that is a member of itself. I remember the excitement I felt in geometry class when our teacher, having painstakingly demonstrated a particular property for one angle of a triangle, uttered the magic words "in like manner," and suddenly the whole proof fell into place for the other angles as well.

The irresistible attraction of mathematics lies in its simplicity. Even the most arcane, abstract constructions ultimately depend on nothing outside the system. A problem can be posed in any language and solved, at least in principle, by anyone at all. One requires no life experience to do mathematics--indeed, mathematical genius often manifests itself at an early age, in an appreciation of the lovely relationships among numbers.

"Proof" leads its audience along a well-constructed path. Those who love the theatre will appreciate it as a first-rate piece of stagecraft. The first act closes with one of the most electrifying lines in recent memory. One scene in the second act opens with a carefully-prepared sight gag which elicits prolonged gales of laughter as the audience acknowledges how cleverly it has been set up.

The subject of the play will be familiar to those who have seen "A Beautiful Mind"--a mathematician must like John Nash, having made brilliant contributions to a number of fields in his youth, succumbs to a mental disorder that leaves him unable to work and dependent on his young daughter who, gradually crushed under the burden, begins to wonder whether she has inherited her father's dementia as well as his intelligence.

A flashback towards the end of the play shows the mathematician rejoicing in the return of his powers, sharing with his daughter the excitement of the work he has begun. His performance sweeps everything before it, especially for those familiar with the accomplishments of sheer intellect. Freeman Dyson used to astonish his colleagues at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies by announcing that he felt "particularly strong today," soliciting any unsolved problems they might have lying around, and proceeding to make connections they'd been unable to see despite weeks of work. So we feel a shiver in the theatre when the mathematician's promising new work turns out to be gibberish.

The burden of the play, as well as of its story, rests on the youthful shoulders of the daughter. We see her beginning to open up to the outside world after her father's death, yet we also witness her potential collapse. Which way will she go? The answer lies in the mathematical proof of a celebrated problem (the play's elliptical references to elliptical functions suggest Fermat's Last Theorem). Salvation through mathematics? Why not?

Aside from adding the name of Adam Sandler to the short list of male actors I'd prefer not to see again (Mickey Rourke, Nicholas Cage), "Punch-Drunk Love" offers a lesson in the need for someone to ride herd on a writer and director. Up to a point, one is willing to suspend judgment and disbelief, giving the film-maker the benefit of the doubt and an opportunity for it all to make sense in the end. "Punch-Drunk Love" abuses that trust.

The Adam Sandler character, in addition to a partially-controlled violent streak, seems to bring mayhem all around him. Early in the film, as he stands outside his factory, staring at the highway, a car comes speeding past, flips inexplicably into the air and crashes. There is no follow-up, no investigation, not even a glance to see whether anyone is injured. Inside the factory, a forklift goes berserk, sending piles of containers crashing crazily to the floor. (The factory makes only novelty toilet plungers, yet does sufficient business to employ four men. Does this ring true for you?)

Unable to function socially, he calls a phone-sex line, naively telling details of his life to a rapacious woman who sends a quartet of thugs from Utah to California to rob him. (Does this seem faintly unbelievable?)

Meanwhile, the Emily Watson character, who isn't given much to do in the movie besides smile, is supposed to have fallen in love with the Adam Sandler character as a result of seeing a photo of him with his seven sisters. (Are you having a credibility problem yet?) She supposedly occupies an executive position in an unnamed firm, and is competent as well as attractive. So what is she doing aggressively pursuing this guy?

From time to time the screen goes into a series of unexplained colors (I'm not making this up), and for the longest time your gullible reviewer is convinced that there's some point to it, but we never find out.

This film has earned positive reviews in a lot of respectable newspapers, so I went to the theatre prepared to give it a fair shake, but left feeling disappointed and baffled.

The moment you see the words “Inspired by a true story” under the opening credits you know you’re in for a rough ride. The screenwriters have taken their cue from “Storytelling for Dummies.” You know the advice I mean: put plenty of obstacles in your hero’s path. At every point in the narrative, ask yourself, “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” and then make it happen. Hit them when they’re down. So we have to watch Will Smith being kicked in the teeth for two hours without ever losing his smile or his cool. Now Will Smith is an agreeable actor, and we’re eternally grateful to him for saving Planet Earth in “Independence Day,” but this kind of emotional manipulation--in which the audience peeks through hands held over the eyes as the hero loses his wife, his livelihood, his apartment, and his hotel room, while still providing an appropriate role model for his young son—gets to be a bit much, “true story” or no. Happily, in the enlightened San Francisco portrayed in this film, a black man with an engaging smile and a positive attitude need never encounter a trace of racial prejudice or bigotry. Nobody’s mean—the hero just suffers a succession of really tough breaks. Those who enjoyed “Life Is Beautiful” will probably like this film as well.

"My Fair Lady" debuted on Broadway when I was Adriana’s age, and as she and I listened to the cast album on the drive home after seeing "Pygmalion" at the Shaw Festival, I pointed out that the recording would have been made before the premiere, before anyone knew that this was going to be one of the greatest musicals of all time. As we listened to Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews, I encouraged Adriana to imagine being in that opening night audience, hearing all these songs for the first time, not knowing that they would become "standards."

So faithfully did Lerner and Lowe respect Shaw’s text that when you see "Pygmalion" on the stage you keep hearing song cues without ever hearing the songs. When I saw the film version with Leslie Howard, that’s the way I understood "Pygmalion"—"My Fair Lady" without the songs.

But the production at the Shaw Festival offers audiences much more than this. Shaw matched his protagonists evenly, giving Eliza’s lines as much power and persuasiveness as Professor Higgins’. The current production shows just how much "My Fair Lady" softened and sweetened the less attractive aspects of Henry Higgins’ personality: stars like Rex Harrison prefer to be shown in a good light. On stage we see Higgins’ rude, boorish, overbearing side as well as his cleverness and wit. In the play the women’s roles—notably Mrs. Pearce and Henry’s mother—come across much more strongly than in the musical, and this stage Eliza seemed rather feistier than either Julie Andrews or Audrey Hepburn (the Eliza in the film version of the musical). As for Freddy Eynsford Hill, deprived of his glorious tenor solo he’s nothing more than your average upper-class twit. t

Stripped of both songs and the big production values of George Cukor’s film musical, "Pygmalion" lets the words shine through and the dramatic tension of a carefully-wrought play carries a performance well worthy seeing.