'Golda' marred by docudrama flavor

  

The title is slightly misleading. Golda isn't a full-blown biopic about  former Israeli prime minister, Golda Meir. It's a narrow-gauge look at how Meir handled the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the one in which Israel was attacked by Egypt, Syria and Jordan on Judaism's holiest day of the year. 

   Under a ton of prosthetic makeup, Helen Mirren plays Meir, a tough-minded woman who spends much of the movie interacting with the Israeli high command, including Israel's Moshe Dayan (Rami Heuberger).

    In this telling, Dyan comes off as less than heroic, cautioning against a large-scale mobilization of Israeli forces even though the   head of the Massad (Rotem Keinan) warned that an attack was imminent. For her part, Meir sometimes miscalculates. 

   Director Guy Nattiv, an Israeli who lives in the US, takes what struck me as an oddly off-kilter approach, introducing Meir with booming closeups of her wrinkled face and using music -- Dascha Dauenhauer wrote the score-- that wouldn't be out of place in an horror movie.

   In the days before and during the war, Meir was heavily burdened. 

   She was suffering from lymphoma but the condition didn't stop her from chain-smoking, puffing away even during radiation sessions.   

     She also agonized about mistakes that could cost lives. She keeps track of fallen Israeli soldiers, recording the number of casualties in a small notebook she carries.

     In depicting a war marked by both terrible setbacks and triumphs for Israel, Nattiv avoids the customary depiction of Israelis as brilliant tacticians who seldom err.

    An opening title card explains the movie's view about some of the Israeli bumbling. Buoyed by its 1967 victory, the country had fallen prey to hubris. Israel had become over-confident.

     The relationship between Israel and the US comes into play. 

     With President Nixon bombarded with Watergate issues, it fell to Henry Kissinger (played by Liev Schreiber) to calm Meir. Kissinger wanted to  keep Meir from intensifying conflicts between the US and Soviet Union, which was backing the Egyptians. 

   The heavy make-up on Mirren has an unintended consequence. Sometimes, it's impossible to ignore -- as in shots of Meir's swollen ankles. You keep searching for traces of the actress under the make-up, a distraction for me. 

    Suffering from cancer and coughing up blood, Meir looks as if she might at expire at any moment, although she's also unflinchingly severe and decisive when necessary.

     Perhaps to bolster verisimilitude, Nattiv intersperses news footage into the proceedings. A clip of Egypt's Anwar Sadat meeting with Meir during cease-fire talks makes for the movie's liveliest exchange.

    Golda has its moments but falters as a high-stakes political and war-time drama. The movie never seems to find its footing, partly because Golda dominates and the other characters are seldom developed beyond sketches, mouthpieces for various positions.

    A movie this focused can be intense but Golda sometimes feels as if it's moving too slowly, and Nattiv's dramatization of 18 turbulent days of Israeli history isn't always presented in clear, incisive fashion.  

   For all the cigarettes that Golda Meir smokes, the movie rarely catches fire.     

A movie based on a real art theft

  A portrait of the Duke of Wellington by Francisco de Goya disappears from the British National Gallery in London during the summer of 1961.

  Sounds like the set-up for a caper movie revolving around a carefully detailed scene in which cunning thieves find a way into the museum and a way out with the famous painting.

  But director Roger Michell has something different in mind in The Duke, the story of a real-life theft involving a 61-year-old man who never met a cause he wasn't willing to stand up for. 

 When we meet Kempton Bunton (Jim Broadbent), he has focused considerable passion on what seems an exceedingly narrow crusade. Bunton doesn't want to pay for the TV license that allowed British TV watchers to access the BBC in the 1960s. He's disabled his set so that it can't receive the BBC and sees no reason why he should be required to have a license.

   Bunton claimed he had no interest in profiting from the Wellington  heist, insisting instead that he kidnapped the painting and planned to use it as a bargaining chip to persuade the government to fund access to the BBC for the poor and for elderly pensioners.

  He was less a robber than a quasi-imaginative Robin Hood who wrote plays that brought him little response other than a copious supply of rejection letters from the same BBC that he refused to pay for.

     Michell, who died in September of last year, is best known for movies such as Notting Hill and Venus. It's no surprise then that the director, working from a screenplay by Richard Bean and Clive Coleman, has made a character comedy that places itself solidly in the British working class where we meet Bunton's family -- his long- suffering wife (Helen Mirren) and his son Jackie (Fionn Whitehead). 

     The Buntons reside in unfashionable Newcastle where Bunton, who ultimately returned the painting, loses jobs and conducts solitary protests. 

     Michell spends little time on the actual theft, opting to showcase Broadbent's performance as a good-hearted, obstinate fellow whose beliefs, at least as depicted in the movie, might have been authored for a Frank Capra screenplay. 

     We're meant to look out for one another. I am you. You are me, etc.

      Broadbent and Mirren play an admirable duet in a movie that has no trouble embracing an old-fashioned spirit as it ambles toward a courtroom scene in which Bunton's barrister (a fine Matthew Goode) offers a moving defense of his client.

      It's unlikely that The Duke will find a place in the pantheon of great movies. It can't quite shake its obvious sentiment and a story element about a daughter that the Buntons lost doesn't quite find the emotional resonance Michell may have wanted.

     But the movie qualifies as a solid — if small — entertainment that gives Broadbent a showcase role. Broadbent previously worked with Michell in Le Week-End, a 2013 movie about an aging couple facing up to some of life's disappointments during a trip to Paris.

     Sadly, Michell's untimely departure -- he was 65 when he died -- will prevent another collaboration. Consider it a loss.*

*If you’re a faithful reader of Denerstein Unleashed, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve been uncharacteristically quiet of late. As a result of knee-replacement surgery, I have not seen some of the most recent high-profile movies nor have I been able to do much writing. I’m slowly working my way back and, although I’m probably going to be reviewing fewer movies for a while, will resume more regular publication in May.

    

The sad truth: 'The Good Liar' disappoints

Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren play a fine duet but an increasingly misguided screenplay lets them down.

I can’t think of a recent movie that I anticipated with more relish than The Good Liar, a semi-caper entertainment starring Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren. Why not be excited? Finally, I thought, an entertainment aimed at adults and delivered by actors who know how to serve up a line of dialogue as if it were the main course at a five-star restaurant.

So you can imagine the scale of my letdown as The Good Liar began disappearing inside a growing fog of disappointment caused, I think, by an increasingly unbelievable and complex plot that pulls what might have been a crisp entertainment into the deadening swamp of attempted significance.

None of this is to say that The Good Liar, adapted from a 2016 novel by Nicholas Searle, doesn’t include some fine acting. McKellen plays a con man who presents himself as a good-natured Brit — not too smart, pleasant company and just witty enough to keep a conversation rolling.

Mirren portrays a retired Oxford professor who lives in an insufferably bland London suburb in a house that looks as if it had been designed to say ... well ... absolutely nothing

Director Bill Condon makes it clear from the outset that neither McKellen’s Roy nor Mirren’s Betty is on a first-name basis with the truth. Before the opening credits conclude, Condon establishes that both characters are willing to falsify descriptions of themselves on the online dating service where they first encounter each other. She checks the box that says she doesn't drink while sipping from a glass of wine. No smoking, says he, puffing away.

So the question immediately arises, who is trying to con whom and why? It’s a question that has produced reliable entertainment for years, so there’s every reason to expect that The Good Liar will avoid being an exception to the rule.

I’m not going to burden you with the plot because that inevitably would involve introducing spoilers. Let’s just say that the script contrives to have Roy, who feigns injury, move in with Betty. They begin to take on the appearances and habits of a couple -- sans sex.

It doesn’t take terribly long for one of Roy’s felonious associates (Jim Carter) to show up and suggest — ever so cautiously — that Roy and Betty might enjoy a considerable financial advantage should they choose to merge their finances.

As all this transpires, Roy and Carter’s Vincent carry on a complicated ruse in which they bilk unsuspecting investors out of thousands of pounds.

And, of course, we know — simply because Mirren can’t help but project a keen intelligence — that Betty also probably has something up her otherwise unruffled sleeve.

Might it have something to do with Steven (Russell Tovey), a man she introduces as her grandson, a lawyer who makes no effort to conceal his suspicions about Roy?

Eventually, the movie must reveal its secrets, which, alas, challenge credibility. I'll provide a slight clue by telling you that Roy's facade begins to unravel when he and Betty take a trip to Berlin.

These secrets attach themselves to the story, capsizing what should have been smooth sailing toward a rewarding finale, preferably delivered with a garnish of wit.

Alas, Jeffrey Hatcher’s screenplay, which relies on lame flashbacks, has more in mind. Once again, more proves to be less.

Still, there are pleasures here. Mirren suggests much by doing little. When Roy experiences moments of lost control, McKellen’s face collapses. Uncertainty spreads across it like a spot of ink being absorbed into a blotter. And Carter, familiar from Downton Abbey, seems incapable of letting us down.

McKellen and Mirren deserve to be teamed again. We deserve some fulfilling adult entertainment. The Good Liar contains enough promise to keep us from suspending all hope that such mature pleasures someday may arrive — even if, for now, they must be deferred.

Bloat hits the 'Furious' franchise

A ridiculous story, lots of action and decreasing amounts of fun.

What started in 2001 as an amped-up and gritty look at the street racing subculture has spawned a total of sevens sequels. Overall, the Fast and Furious movies have done a good job of satisfying action-hungry audiences while also taking on the job of turning an ethnically diverse cast into a popular rogue family.

That was then.

In its latest incarnation -- dubbed The Fate of the Furious -- the franchise finally falls prey to a 21st Century disease: overstated bloat. Not only that, the movie has lost much of its original flavor, resorting instead to a ludicrous story in which the Furious gang becomes a kind of Mission Impossible team that must thwart the ambitions of a super villain named Cipher (Charlize Theron). Cipher wants to go nuclear and take half the planet with her.

Vin Diesel's Dominic Toretto faces what passes in such movies as a moral crisis, and the movie drags out familiar characters Jason Statham's Deckard, Dwayne Johnson's Hobbs and Kurt Russell's Mr. Nobody. A hodgepodge of a script mixes and matches characters as the ruthless Cipher coerces Dom into working against his old team.

The movie begins with Dom and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) honeymooning in Havana. With Latin beauties allowing their rumps to protrude from skimpy short shorts, a street race develops, really the last time the movie takes a serious bow toward its revved-up roots.

Director F. Gary Gray increasingly yields to the temptation of producing a clangorous noise-machine with lots of computer-generated effects, the most notable occurring when hundreds of cars tumble headlong out of a parking garage as the result of a major hacking that takes control of their computer systems.

By the end, the movie introduces a gargantuan submarine that threatens the car-crazed team. And, of course, many "hot" cars race by, although they all speed so quickly, it's difficult to admire them.

Some of the regulars get short shrift, particularly Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris, who banter with one another in limited but typical fashion. Nathalie Emmanuel portrays the group's tech genius.

A screenplay by Chris Morgan and Gary Scott Thompson includes the kind of macho lines that are supposed to be repeated outside of the theater but most of them prove ham-handed. At one point, Diesel's Dom says that the mad genius Cipher should be wary about taking her foot off the tiger's neck; i.e., him. I suppose that's the movie's idea of sage advice.

Of course, gunplay and explosions are followed by more gunplay and more explosions.

Best thing about the movie: Helen Mirren's cameo appearance.

Second best thing: Statham bringing a bit of winking humor to his role as an assassin.

Third best thing: There is no third best thing.

OK, I'm speaking only for myself here. It should be noted that this installment surely will rock the box office, that two more movies are slated and that, by now, audiences have learned to accept the preposterous and even to love it.

Once a bona fide movie, the real fate of the series is to have become a highly calculated mix of muscle, mayhem, faux menace and canned sentiment. For me, there's more noise than fun in this edition.

Death, love -- and a waste of time

A strong cast can't make anything credible out of weepy Collateral Beauty.

Burdened by a whopping contrivance, Collateral Beauty -- a movie that wants to talk about unbearable grief and the need for human connection -- resembles a luxury passenger liner that sinks soon after leaving the dock.

The luxury reference has to do with the presence of an A-list cast featuring Will Smith, Kate Winslet, Edward Norton, Helen Mirren and Keira Knightley. They're all fine actors, but Collateral Beauty blows the opportunity for great ensemble work by putting the cast into one credibility-challenging or maudlin scene after another.

The story might be viewed as a fable grounded in what may have been intended as a plausible reality, the world of New York advertising.

Smith plays Howard, a hot-shot advertising executive who loses his six-year-old daughter to a rare form of cancer. Mired in grief, Howard completely shuts down. Not surprisingly, his near-catatonic state threatens the life of the agency he founded with his partner (Norton).

The plot's big twist arrives when Norton and two of his colleagues (Winslet and Michael Pena) decide to hire a trio of actors (Mirren, Knightley and Jacob Latimore) to visit the dejected Howard as the embodiment of three abstractions: Death, Love and Time.

Why Death, Love and Time? In the movie's prologue, Howard tells his staff that these are the vital ingredients in selling products. Moreover, since the death of his daughter, Howard has been writing and mailing letters addressed to Death, Love and Time. The letters give voice to Howard's anger at the way all three have betrayed him.

Howard's colleagues have two objectives: They want to save Howard from his depression, and they also want to have him declared incompetent. They'll then be able to sell the company, of which Howard is the majority owner, to an eager buyer.

To achieve their goal, this trio of ad execs also hires a private investigator (Ann Dowd) to photograph Howard talking to Death, Love and Time; the execs then will have these figures digitally removed so that it looks as if Howard is ranting to himself.

When it's not focusing on Howard, the movie doles out other forms of pain. Winslet's character wonders whether she hasn't sacrificed the chance to have a family by spending too much time at the office. Pena's character deals with a recurrence of a long-dormant cancer, and Norton's Whit worries about fixing the screwed-up relationship he has with his young daughter. She won't talk to him because he cheated on her mom.

Putting all of these fine actors into one movie must have seemed like a casting bonanza to director David Frankel (Hope Springs and The Devil Wears Prada). Too bad Allan Loeb's screenplay doesn't play to the cast's strengths: It falls to young Latimore to give the movie's most (and perhaps only) compelling performance.

If all of these actors weren't enough, the movie adds Naomi Harris as a woman who leads a group of parents who've lost children.

The drama comes to a head on Christmas Eve making Collateral Beauty an offering for the season that's intended to mix laughs, tears and greeting card wisdom. Who knows? It might have worked had Frank Capra tried it during the 1930s.

Today, Collateral Damage looks precisely like what it is: a concept that never develops into a real or convincing movie.

The terrors of long-distance warfare

Eye in The Sky brings ethnical issues into agonizing focus.

The day after I saw Eye saw Eye in The Sky, bombs went off at Brussels' main airport and in the city's subway. Although Eye in The Sky deals with fictional events in Nairobi and involves al-Shabaab terrorists who seem far removed from Europe, the movie raises issues that resound with disturbing urgency in a post-Paris, post-Brussels world.

It's also worth remembering that Nairobi has known its share of terror, including a devastating attack at the upscale Westgate Mall in 2013.

Eye in the Sky brims with questions: If it were possible to know about an impending terrorist attack or at least to suspect that one was more than likely, how much collateral damage would be tolerable to prevent it? And what if one of the people in the path of a devastating drone attack happened to be a nine-year-old girl with no connection to anyone's political agenda?

Most movies that directly tackle ethical issues melt into puddles of prosaically stated positions. But Eye in the Sky -- deftly directed by Gavin Hood (Tsotsi and Rendition) and sharply written by Guy Hibbert -- brings its issues to the fore without sacrificing much by way of dramatic credibility and tension.

The story takes place in several locations, notably Great Britain, the US and Kenya.

Early on, we meet Col. Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren), a British officer who operates out of London.

Once her mission shifts from capture to kill, Col. Powell becomes increasingly eager to get on with the job. She's a steely officer whose focus on the mission tends to obliterate all other concerns, so much so that she's willing to fudge here and there if it means taking out high-priority targets she's been pursuing for years.

Questions about the propriety of the attack are further complicated by the fact that one of the jihadists is an American citizen and two are British citizens. Under what circumstances can it be legally allowable for a country to kill its own citizens, even those participating in jihad?

Drone operations are conducted from Nevada, where a young officer (Aaron Paul) and a newly assigned co-pilot (Phoebe Fox) are charged with flying a drone over Nairobi. If there's an attack, Paul's Steve Watts will have to pull the trigger.

A conference room full of London officials must make the final decision about whether to fire a deadly Hellfire missile into a Nairobi neighborhood where the terrorists have gathered.

At this meeting, we meet a general played by the late Alan Rickman and a nervous group of civilian bureaucrats portrayed by Jeremy Northam, Richard McCabe and Monica Dolan.

Rickman's character upholds the military position. Among the others, no one wants to shoulder blame for a decision that could lead to a public relations disaster. Frequently, the characters insist on referring the matter "up," meaning they want someone of higher rank to take responsibility.

On the ground in Kenya, an operative (Barkhad Abdi) helps provide information. Abdi's character employs a battery operated camera embedded in a mechanical beetle to provide views from inside the house where the jihadists have gathered to prepare for a suicide bombing.

And that's yet another of the movie's concerns: The men and women who are conducting this mission see almost everything on screens. They're engaged in a brand of combat that operates at far remove from the scene of destruction.

But that doesn't mean that they aren't affected by what they're doing or that they're unaware of the many ironies that infiltrate their high-tech worlds.

I can't know Hood's every intention, but beneath all the bickering, politicking and worrying about who may get blamed for what, you'll find something else: The movie demonstrates that the people who make these terrible decisions don't take them lightly. They'll all have to live with the consequences of choices that seldom produce clear-cut results.

The movie's smart enough not to delude us: It reminds us that there are situations in which every option has an awful -- and perhaps even unbearable -- downside.

Taut and chastening, Eye in The Sky leaves you saddened and shaken.

Wishing 'Trumbo' had been better

Bryan Cranston commands the screen in a bio-pic that's regrettably wooden.

During the Black List period of the late 1940s and 1950s, Hollywood shamed itself, joining a national witch-hunt designed to root out Communists from cultural institutions that presumably were being subverted.

One of the people caught in this maelstrom of chest-thumping, patriotic excess was Dalton Trumbo, the Colorado-bred screenwriter who had written movies such as A Man to Remember (1938), Kitty Foyle (1940) and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944). Trumbo also wrote Johnny Got His Gun, an acclaimed 1939 antiwar novel which won a National Book Award and which shook me to the core when I read it in high school.

In 1947, Trumbo was subpoenaed to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). He was found in contempt of Congress for telling the Committee his political beliefs were none of its business. As a result of his defiance, Trumbo served nearly a year in prison, and was blacklisted by Hollywood studios for the next 13 years.

Desperate to support his family, Trumbo -- part of a group dubbed The Hollywood Ten -- turned out scripts for the King Brothers, schlockmeisters who didn't give a damn about politics.

Trumbo also persuaded other writers to pose as the authors of scripts he wrote. Trumbo's screenplay for Roman Holiday won an Academy Award. Screenwriter Ian McLellan Hunter fronted for Trumbo, and received the Oscar.

It wasn't until Spartacus (1960) that Trumbo's name again appeared on a movie screen, thanks mostly to the courageous insistence of Kirk Douglas, the movie's star.

OK, that's the background.

In the bio-pic Trumbo, Bryan Cranston, an actor of considerable command, plays the title role. Cranston captures the writer's wit, commitment and contradictions. Trumbo was a leftist who liked the trappings of wealth, and made no bones about hungering for recognition.

In a sometimes wooden and prosaic movie, Cranston does the kind of stand-out work that may earn him a best-actor nomination, even if -- at times -- it feels as if he's doing a one-man show on Broadway. In some ways, Trumbo is a one-man show rather than a richly developed movie, but it has its merits.

As the viperous Hedda Hopper, Helen Mirren gives the movie's second best performance. Hopper was a flag-waving right winger, as well as a power hungry gossip peddler who could make or break careers and didn't let those she wrote about forget it.

Director Jay Roach faced a difficult problem in making Trumbo. He's dealing with Hollywood personalities, some of whom are so well known they resist being played by other actors.

Michael Stuhlbarg comes close to capturing Edward G. Robinson, an actor who supported those who were being demonized by HUAC, but who ultimately named names. David James Elliott has the thankless job of portraying John Wayne; he finds the intonations in Wayne's voice, but we've all seen John Wayne and ... well ... you know how the rest of the quote goes.

Dean O'Gorman portrays Kirk Douglas, one of the story's heroes.

Louis C.K. creates a portrait of deep-seated depression as Black Listed writer Arlen Hird, a composite character who never quite understands Trumbo's preoccupations with success. Put another way, Trumbo wasn't exactly a purist when it came to politics.

As the crassly entrepreneurial but fiercely loyal Frank King, John Goodman steals every scene he's in. Diane Lane plays Trumbo's wife, Cleo. Elle Fanning has a nice scene as Niki, Trumbo's oldest daughter, a firebrand in her own right.

Roach's previous efforts include Meet the Parents, Meet the Fockers and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, not exactly the best preparation for this kind of material.

Trumbo doesn't fully engage the ideological battle the Hollywood Ten fought or, perhaps, more accurately, the war that was fought against them.

But even this CliffsNotes version has some emotional clout, a testament to the inherent power of the story, to Cranston's charisma and to the fact that Trumbo's suffering was, by any measure, entirely unnecessary.

'Woman in Gold' fails to mine rich ore

Helen Mirren headlines a story about the quest to recover art looted by the Nazis.

The story of how a persistent woman and her inexperienced young attorney manage to reclaim five Nazi-looted paintings by artist Gustav Klimt suggests a powerful drama dealing with the continuing reverberations of the Holocaust.

Woman in Gold builds its story around one of those paintings, Klimt's 1907 painting Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. But if Klimt's gold-leafed portrait deserves masterpiece status, the movie about efforts to restore it to its rightful feels like by-the-numbers, Middlebrow fare.

Helen Mirren brings the expected amount of wit and bite to the role of Maria Altmann, one of the few surviving members of a wealthy, cultured Viennese Jewish family.

After the Anschluss, Maria and her husband escaped to the U.S. Most of the rest of Maria's family was killed by the Nazis, who also looted the Altmann art collection, including the portrait of Maria's aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer.

Years later, the Austrians have come to regard the Bloch-Bauer portrait as a national treasure. Referred to as "Austria's Mona Lisa," the painting carries a price tag of more than $100 million.

Early on, Maria -- already in her 80s and living in Los Angeles -- hires attorney Randy Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds) to help her retrieve the art, perhaps as a way of keeping her family heritage alive.

The grandson of composer Arnold Schoenberg, Randy predictably resists -- at least initially. Just as predictably, he becomes absorbed by the case, which slowly takes over his life.

Bland to the point of blankness, Reynolds adds little to the proceedings. In another performance that hardly registers, Katie Holmes plays the attorney's wife.

Working from a screenplay by Alexi Kaye Campbell, director Simon Curtis (My Week With Marilyn) adopts an overly familiar structure, juxtaposing action in the present with war-time flashbacks in which Nazis move toward annihilating Vienna's Jewish population.

The best of these flashbacks show the lavish pre-war lives of a well-assimilated Jewish family that sees itself as a part of the city's fabric.

Max Irons portrays Maria's husband, an opera singer, and Allan Corduner appears as Maria's father, a man who can't quite believe that his secure position in Vienna could crumble so quickly.

As Aunt Adele, Antje Traue brings vibrant sophistication to the role of the woman whose portrait is at the movie's heart, and as a young Maria, Tatiana Maslany embodies the tension and fear that's being inflicted upon Jewish families.

Though well-shot, the movie's flashbacks tend to be overused and telegraphed.

An example: To pursue the case, Maria reluctantly agrees to return to Austria. After a meeting with Austrian officials, she tells Schoenberg she wants to walk back to her hotel alone. It almost seems as if she's excusing herself so that she can have another flashback.

Curtis does a reasonably good job of guiding us through the legal tangles surrounding attempts at restitution, battles that involve Austrian committees and art bureaucrats, as well as a 2004 appearance before the U.S. Supreme Court. An Austrian arbitration panel finally brought the case to its conclusion in 2006.

In Vienna, an Austrian journalist (Daniel Bruhl) helps Maria and Randy in their battle, but this character also could have used more fleshing out.

The issues involved in Altmann's story are rich enough: Maria's understandable resistance to setting foot on Austrian soil and unresolved questions about how much Holocaust awareness depends on a vanishing generation of survivors.

Rather than allowing these issues to open up for us, Curtis keeps them encased in a drama in which they don't fully resonate.

Woman in Gold isn't a bad movie, and its story is interesting enough to keep us engaged, but it needed more than dogged competence to give startling new life to the horror and injustice that are so much a part of this tale.

A bland food movie set in France

Despite a good cast, The Hundred-Foot Journey doesn't show enough vitality.

Prior to a preview of screening of The Hundred-Foot Journey, a movie about food and culture clashes in the south of France, Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey appeared on screen to explain -- in mildly cute fashion -- that they had co-produced the movie. Winfrey, who has been known to promote a few books in her time, evidently brought Richard C. Morais' 2011 novel to Spielberg.

I don't know how involved Spielberg and Winfrey were in the movie's production, but their participation probably didn't hurt when it came to attracting a cast that's led by the great British actress Helen Mirren and the equally impressive Indian actor Om Puri.

Mirren and Puri play opposing restaurateurs who conduct a high-level food fight in a small French town.

Mirren's Madame Mallory runs a classic French restaurant that has earned a coveted Michelin star. Against the advice of his family, the widowed Puri's Papa opens an Indian restaurant in an abandoned farmhouse that's located directly across the street from Madame Mallory's establishment.

The two restaurants are 100 feet apart, a short distance, but one that stands in ironic contrast to the cultural chasm separating the two cuisines.

Perhaps to ensure that the movie's demographic doesn't tilt entirely toward an older crowd, the cast also includes two attractive young actors: Manish Dayal and Charlotte Le Bon.

Dayal plays Hassan, one of Papa's sons and the cook at the family's new restaurant, Maison Mumbai.

Handsome, talented and sincere, Hassan needs a love interest. Enter Marguerite (Le Bon), a sous-chef at Madame Mallory's much revered restaurant.

Look, I get it. No one expects a movie like The Hundred-Foot Journey to be anything more than a charming assemblage of food shots and romance with a hint of a plot blowing through the proceedings like the pungent aroma from a good kitchen.

I didn't even mind that the movie's depiction of xenophobic French reaction to the "invasion" of "foreigners" doesn't have much bite.

At one point, a group of malcontents sets fire to Maison Mumbai. Hassan's hands are badly burned in an attempt to extinguish the blaze, but the incident is treated with a "no-harm, no-foul" casualness that's difficult to believe.

As it turns out, charm isn't easy to manufacture. Director Lasse Hallstrom (The Cider House Rules and Chocolat) can't keep The Hundred-Foot Journey from becoming as bland canned soup -- even with fetching views of the gorgeous French countryside.

The story is entirely predictable. Hassan wishes to adapt to his new country and learn the basics of French cuisine. Not only does he master traditional cooking, but he eventually moves to Paris where he triumphs in the upscale world of conspicuously trendy food consumption.

Hassan becomes a superstar of molecular gastronomy, landing on the cover of important culinary magazines.

Will success spoil Hassan or will he ultimately opt for a more homespun life?

There's not much suspense about the outcome, but predictably needn't be a liability in a movie such as The Hundred-Foot Journey. The movie's real sin has less to do with its formulaic tendencies than with with its inability to sustain a vibrant sense of life.

The Hundred-Foot Journey is the kind of movie that suggests that cast and crew may have thought they were betting on a sure thing. Instead, they wound up with a negligible piffle, almost an August throwaway.

Puzzling, no? It's as if someone put a lot of tasty ingredients in the pot, but somehow forgot to light the stove.

'Hitchcock:' doesn't cut deep enough

Calling attention to the Master of Suspense without adding a great deal of insight.

Earlier this year, Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo ended the 50-year reign of Citizen Kane as the greatest movie ever made -- at least according to a much-watched poll conducted by the British magazine Sight & Sound. Then came the eagerly awaited but generally disappointing HBO movie, The Girl, an examination of Hitchcock's weirdly obsessive relationship with actress Tippi Hedren, who starred in both The Birds and Marnie.

As if to keep this mini-revival percolating, we now have Hitchcock, a film with a title that suggests an extensive biography but which focuses only on the ordeal Hitchcock faced in making Psycho, a landmark horror film that caused a generation of moviegoers to think twice when pulling back a shower curtain.

For all of this renewed interested in Hitchcock, the cumulative impact of the Sight & Sound poll and two movies about the renowned Master of Suspense have added little by way of fresh insight into one of the screen's most peculiar geniuses, as well as one of its most formidable talents.

Hedren's story already had been recounted in Donald Spoto's 1981 biography, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock. And aficionados long have been familiar with much of the lore surrounding the making of Psycho, the 1960 classic that Hitchcock shot in black-and-white and infused with some of the impolite energies of low-rent horror.

For those who are unfamiliar with Hitchcock's life, Hitchcock -- directed by Sacha Gervasi (Anvil! The Story of Anvil) and starring Anthony Hopkins as Hitchcock -- offers the amusement of backstage meandering through Psycho's evolution. Precisely who wishes to watch such a movie remains a little unclear to me. We'll see.

Some background: After North by Northwest, Hitchcock turned his attention to a 1959 novel by Robert Bloch. Bloch's Psycho was inspired by the case of real-flie serial killer Ed Gein. Arrested in 1957, Gein specialized in murder and the exhumation of body parts.

Psycho's road to the screen was bumpy, requiring Hitchcock to mortgage his home to finance a movie that Paramount and its long-time chief -- Barney Balaban (Richard Portnow) -- regarded as an astonishingly bad idea.

The screenplay for Hitchcock -- credited to John J. McLaughlin and Stephen Rebello -- portrays Hitchcock in a period when he found himself at odds with his wife Alma (Helen Mirren). Alma is portrayed as the woman behind the man, truly Hitchcock's better half. According to the movie, Alma should be regarded as essential to Hitchcock's overall success.

In this telling of the tale, a gallant and well-mannered screenwriter, Whitfield Cook (Danny Huston), who had worked with Hitchcock on Strangers on a Train, arouses Hitchcock's jealousy by establishing a flirtatious relationship with the attention-starved Alma, who evidently had become accustomed to tolerating Hitchcock's fascination with chilly, beautiful blondes.

So what of Hopkins's performance? Keep in mind that Hitchcock was not only a great director but a prominent figure in American culture, mostly because of his television show, Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Long before I had heard of the auteur theory, I knew about Hitchcock, understood something about his style and eagerly lined up to see anything he had chosen to direct.

Put another way, I've seen Hitchcock, and even in a fat suit, Hopkins is no Hitchcock. Still, the obviously gifted Hopkins does his best to find Hitchcock's humor and flair for showmanship, as well as his moments of insecurity. Mirren does better as the steadfast Alma, a woman whose plainness of appearance was matched by a widely acknowledged sharpness of mind.

The movie's small performances can be entertaining. Scarlett Johansson makes a credible Janet Leigh; and James D'Arcy's canny imitation of Anthony Perkins proves a minor delight.

Moreover, Judy Becker's production design -- particularly of the Hitchcock home -- captures the bright rigidity of the '50s, down to the twin beds in which Alma and Alfred slept.

If you're a Hitchcock fan, all of this may strike you as intriguing and you may want to devote some time to discovering where the screenplay has taken liberties with fact. Invention aside, this sometimes amusing look at Hitchcock doesn't dig deeply enough into either Hitchcock's psychology or his artistry to qualify as anything more than a by-the-numbers curio about the making of a movie that has stood the test of time as one of the greatest of all horror movies.

'Arthur' didn't need remaking

An unnecessary remake of a medium-grade comedy.

After watching Russell Brand play an infantile drunken billionaire in the entirely unnecessary remake of 1981’s Arthur, I thought about stopping at the nearest saloon and ordering a double. A stiff drink might have washed away the taste of mediocrity that pervades a juvenile comedy that has been tweaked for a new century.

Whatever its faults, the original – which earned the estimable John Gielgud an Oscar for playing an imperious butler named Hobson -- tops this silly remake in nearly every way.

To begin with, Brand lacks even the small amounts of pathos that Dudley Moore brought to the title role, and Helen Mirren -- terrific an actress as she is – can’t add the same level of dry humor that marked a Gielgud performance steeped in witty disdain.

In fairness to Mirren, it should be noted that Gielgud was given better dialog. Besides, Mirren’s playing Arthur’s nanny, not his butler. Creepy, no? A grown man with a nanny? Is it hilarious when she Mirren’s Hobson tells Arthur to be sure to wash his “winky?” If you answered “yes” to that question, let’s agree never to talk dirty to each other.

Screenwriter Peter Baynham follows the same basic plot as the original. Arthur's mother orders her Hopelessly playboy son to marry an upper crust New Yorker or be disinherited. In the original, Arthur’s father – head of a large corporation -- issued the marriage ultimatum. The gender changes in Baynham’s script do little to freshen characters that weren’t exactly novel 30 years ago.

The 2011 edition of Arthur boasts a variety of additional miscalculations, not the least of which is the fact that the woman Arthur is ordered to marry (Jennifer Garner) is more appealing than the woman he falls for (Greta Gerwig), a Queens resident who conducts unauthorized guided tours at Manhattan's Grand Central Station and who aspires to write children’s books.

Baynham and director Jason Winer try to make the movie acceptable for 2011 with a half-hearted reference to the recession and an end-of-picture resolution that finds Arthur 12-stepping his way toward sobriety. And you certainly won’t be surprised to learn that the movie refuses to take its silliness straight, mixing in a bit of sentimentality at the end.

I suppose that one’s reaction to Arthur hinges on Brand, who looks more dissolute than Moore, who had the appearance of a drunken gnome. Funny as a wanton rock star in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Brand didn’t exactly knock me out in last year’s Get Him to the Greek, and he’s even less amusing here.

In a how-the-mighty-have-fallen aside, it should be noted that Nick Nolte appears in a small role as the father of Arthur’s fianceé. Watching Nolte do this kind of thankless job made me sad, which isn’t what a movie such as Arthur is supposed to do.

And, no, I didn’t stop for that drink. I went home and streamed the original on Netflix, an activity that only confirmed what I already suspected. The remake goes nowhere.