The world of Merchant and Ivory

   The documentary Merchant Ivory may not be the place to look for definitive critical analysis of the work of Ismail Merchant (producer) and James Ivory (director, the duo that made a staggering 43 films between 1961 and 2007.

   Instead, director Stephen Soucy gives us an intimate look at a team composed of the meticulous, Oregon-bred Ivory and the audacious Merchant, born in India and raised as a Muslim. Soucy takes us on an informative, often revealing journey into Merchant/Ivory world. 

 Merchant and Ivory were best known for highly regarded costume dramas based on literary works such as A Room With A View (1986), Howards End (1992), and Remains of the Day (1993).  They brought a sense of literacy to art house audiences, as well as to a larger public that found the team's work beautiful and edifying. 

   Although the movie contains interviews with both Ivory and Merchant, who died in 2005 at the age of 68, it also brings insights from what could be called the Merchant/Ivory repertory company: Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter, Rupert Graves, Simon Callow, Vanessa Redgrave, Hugh Grant, Anthony Hopkins, and more.

  Packed with detail, Merchant Ivory's accomplishments are twofold: to serve as a reminder of the scope of what some regarded as prestige cinema. The documentary also reveals how two men -- often working with writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and composer Richard Robbins --  struggled to bring their pictures to the screen. 

   Not surprisingly, Merchant emerges as the dominant personality. He's described as a lovable rascal and conman with the nerve and faith required to begin productions before the money to complete them had been raised. Merchant charmed actors who hadn't been paid, and cooked for casts and crews as an act of endearment meant to convince them they were part of a family.

      Merchant and Ivory lived together as a gay couple. Few talked about their gayness, but it was understood by those who traveled in their sphere.

     It's a bit of a stretch, but when we contrast Ivory with  Merchant, we might say that skill (Ivory) makes interesting things; flamboyance (Merchant), on the other hand, tends to be interesting in and of itself.

   Soucy assembles impressive clips from the Merchant/Ivory catalog, snippets of a varied filmography that should encourage viewers to revisit favorites or discover movies they may have missed.

    It's possible that the Merchant/Ivory names no longer speak to younger audiences, but Ivory, now 95, still works. In 2018, he won an Oscar for adapting the screenplay of Call Me By Your Name, and the body of Merchant Ivory work remains impressive.

     Whatever you think about the Merchant/Ivory movies -- some saw them as stodgy, conservative throwbacks -- the two were responsible for some of the most impeccably cast and best-acted movies of the 1980s and 1990s. That’s quite an achievement.

A dense, unsatisfying 'Alice'

Another wild, crazy and scattered trip to an alternate reality.

Alice Through the Looking Glass arrives in theaters as an effects-laden, visually dense extravaganza that feels more like a wild-and-crazy theme park ride than a trip to Wonderland.

Director James Bobin (Muppets Most Wanted) takes over from Tim Burton, who made his version of Alice in Wonderland six years ago. Simply put: Burton's movie -- though no masterpiece -- was better.

Familiar characters emerge from Bobin's galaxy of imaginative sets, bizarre costumes and dizzying action. But this time, the appearance of old favorites generates little by way of fond recall.

When we first meet her, Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is a skilled sea captain who loses her father's ship to a greedy fleet owner. An unhappy Alice then walks through the famous Looking Glass.

Once she enters this alternate reality, Alice learns that she must travel through time in order to help save The Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp). The Hatter, poor fellow, has fallen into a near-terminal funk as the result of having lost his family.

Alice also meets Time (Sacha Baron Cohen), a character who controls something called a Chronosphere, a spinning globe into which Alice climbs so that she's able to go back in time, perhaps to repair past wrongs. Mostly, it's an excuse for a screenful of summer-time action.

The movie holds two queens in its hand -- the White Queen (a pasty-looking Anne Hathaway) and the Red Queen (an arch Helena Bonham Carter). Enmity between the queens traces back to their childhoods, in case you've been longing to know why they never seem to be able to get along.

If someone told you that Bonham Carter, under the customary ton of makeup, was really a very large toy, you might believe it. More than others who suffer the same fate, Bonham Carter has an air of China-doll unreality about her.

As for Depp, his silly ramblings as the Hatter made me again wish that he'd once and for all leave childhood films behind.

I could say more, but all I'll tell you is that the amusements are skimpy, the sights overwhelming and the whole business seems to have lost the heady, mind-warping spin of Lewis G. Carroll.

In short: Big production, small yield. In 3D, of course.

When British women fought for the vote

A slice of history that shouldn't be forgotten.

Currently, two women (one in each major party) are trying to become president of the United States.

Britain already has had a woman prime minister, and many other countries -- Germany, of course -- have elevated women to their top power positions.

This is not to say that every vestige of gender inequality has been wrung from a still-patriarchal world, but to point out that it wasn't so long ago that the political arena belonged exclusively to men.

Suffragette, a straightforward period piece about the struggle by British women to gain the vote, returns us to a time when women were denied one of the most basic of democratic rights.

Suffragette focuses on one woman's political awakening. She's 24-year-old Maud Watts, played with nuanced intensity by Carey Mulligan.

As the movie develops, Maude must risk everything -- her husband (Ben Whishaw) and her young son (Adam Michael Dodd) -- to push for a cause she deems essential if women are to have a voice in how British society evolves.

Whishaw's character loves his wife, but acquiesces in the way that women are abused at the laundry where Maud works, also his place of employment.

Watts' involvement in an increasingly militant movement begins when she joins a co-worker (Anne-Marie Duff) at a meeting. Pharmacist Edith Ellyn (Helena Bonham Carter) serves as the main organizer, a woman who's eventually driven to extremes to accomplish her goal.

Before Suffragette concludes, some of its women will have resorted to violence: Not surprisingly members of the movement engage in a familiar-sounding debate about how far they are justified in going to advance their cause.

Director Sarah Gavron, working from a screenplay by Abi Morgan, does her best work in scenes that show how the movie's women are subjugated. They are sexually harassed and demeaned in the workplace. And they find little support from male co-workers.

The film takes place in 1912, some 16 years before British women were granted full voting rights.

When we meet the movie's women, the battle for the vote had been going on for some time, led by figures such as Emmeline Pankhurst, portrayed in a cameo by Meryl Streep.

Streep's brief appearance comes off as an attempt at prestige grabbling. It's a way of nodding at history rather than exploring it.

It falls to a character named Steed (Brendan Gleeson) to represent the male opposition. A Scotland Yard detective, Steed tries to convince women they'd be better off if they simply went home and tended to their domestic lives. He also arrests them, and clearly stands as a staunch defender of the current order.

Suffragette attempts to turn itself into a clarion call for activism in a battle that remains unfinished, but the movie's real value has to do with the urgency of many of its performances and with the way in which it reminds us that some of the things we take for granted only resulted from hard-fought and costly battles.

Familiar tale proves entertaining

Cinderella returns, this time with special effects and Cate Blanchett

Taking a break from Shakespeare, director Kenneth Branagh manages a neat trick: He serves up a visually witty and passably entertaining version of a story so familiar, we hardly can believe anyone wants to tell it again.

Lily James (of Downton Abbey) appears as Cinderella, a preternaturally understanding young woman who does her best to adjust to the substantial misfortunes fate deals her -- the early-picture death of her mother (Hayley Atwell) and the later demise of her doting father (Ben Chaplin).

It seems Dad made only one major mistake in his life: After being widowed, he married the conniving Lady Tremaine (Cate Blanchett) and brought his new wife and two daughters (Sophie McShera and Holliday Grainger) into his stately home.

You don't need to know much more because you already get the drift.

The pleasures of this Disney-produced edition of Cinderella have less to do with discovery than with its visual extravagance, created in part by cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos.

Branagh's use of computer generated imagery serves to suggest a connection with Disney's fanciful animated version, a 1950 release that's regarded as a classic. Technological advances allow Branagh to offer novel views of wonders such as lizards turning into footmen for a pumpkin that has been transformed into a carriage.

Did I mention the movie's lovable mice?

An able supporting cast helps bring Chris Weitz's screenplay to life, as well.

Richard Madden plays the prince in this version, never a great role. The prince's father (Derek Jacoby) presses his son to get married, but pushes for the young man to wed a royal.

We also meet a devious Grand Duke portrayed by Stellan Skarsgard, who's ultimately saddled with the task of bringing additional intrigue to the story.

In this telling, Lady Tremaine -- a.k.a. The Wicked Stepmother -- tries to cook up a conspiracy with the Grand Duke that will prevent Cinderella from fulfilling her romantic destiny.

I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that the gifted Blanchett makes the role her own, avoiding the temptation to create a sneering caricature.

The fairy godmother is played by Helena Bonham Carter, an actress who attempts to wring every bit of amusement out of her role.

This Cinderella isn't delivered with a heavy hand, and the result is an entertainment that boasts a wide range of secondary pleasures.

Examples: Dante Ferretti sets are suitably impressive. Sandy Powell's costumes provide their own amusement, particular those of Drisella and Anastasia, the two impossibly snooty stepsisters. Evil Stepmom boasts a preposterously expressive collection of hats.

Given the scale and color of the production, it's hardly surprising that Cinderella functions like a musical in almost every respect, except for the fact that it has no musical numbers. I can't say I missed them.

The primary audience -- girls and tweens -- probably will enjoy the movie, and the parents who accompany them won't suffer. To ask for anything more from another telling of the Cinderella story might be to demand the impossible.

A dark, melodramatic 'Les Miz'

You may find imperfections, but the big-screen version of Les Miserables ultimately proves stirring.

The voices sometimes seem to be straining. An abundance of extreme close-ups tends to give the movie a feeling of cramped intimacy. Although filmed mostly on sets, the movie steeps itself in gritty 19th century realism. It's a musical with dirt under its fingernails.

I'm talking about Les Miserables, the big-screen adaptation of the much-revered musical that made its debut in Paris in 1980 and seems to have been in production somewhere ever since.

Melodramatic, operatic and seen through cinematographer Danny Cohen's dark lens, Les Miserables bypasses its imperfections, ultimately getting where it needs to go. It's less a story well-told than a production massively mounted, but that may be precisely what the material needs.

Based on an 1862 Victor Hugo novel, Les Miserables thunders its way through nearly three hours of suffering, death and melodrama, frequently miring its cast in mud, muck and -- as the title promises -- the kind of bone-deep misery that might have roused envy even in Dickens, himself no slouch when it came to injustice and suffering.

As directed by Tom Hooper (The King's Speech), Les Miserables is top heavy with marquee names, including Anne Hathaway, who tackles the role of the tormented Fantine in a performance in which emotion seems to spill from her every pore.

I'm not going to provide background for every character in Les Miz, but Fantine, you may recall, is a single mother, a status that caused her to be scorned and persecuted for profligacy in France of the 1800s. And, yes, it might be advisable to bone up on Hugo's story before you go because plot points breeze by as if propelled by wind machines.

The story centers on poor Jean Val Jean (Hugh Jackman), the ex-convict who violates his parole and spends a lifetime fleeing Javert (Russell Crowe), a lawman who applies justice like a lash. Amanda Seyfried turns up as Fantine's daughter, Cosette, a woman who eventually is sheltered by Jean Val Jean.

All of this takes place against a post-revolutionary historical backdrop in which the monarchy has been restored in France, and the people are suffering under the weight of too much regal indifference.

The movie's third act deals with the revolt of 1832, introducing us to Marius (Eddie Redmayne), a revolutionary who's smitten by Cosette. Be assured barricades will be stormed. The spirit of the people will be aroused. You will be stirred.

To heighten the feeling of emotional urgency, Hooper had his actors sing their numbers as the cameras rolled rather than relying on lip-synching. The technique is employed to mixed result.

Jackman, who has a history in musical theater, carries it off convincingly, as does Hathaway. Crowe, who has a background singing with rock bands, is only moderately successful. Trussed up in the costume of a 19th century lawman, Crowe moves around as if encased in plaster. Javert's a rigid guy, but Crowe never seems entirely comfortable playing him.

Hooper doesn't quite suffocate the production, but I wish he had let it breathe some, and I got tired of watching close-ups of the singers. Hooper must have wanted his camera to bring us close to the performances, but the face of a singer -- particularly when grappling with heavy emotion -- isn't always a thing of beauty.

The major numbers in Les Miserables -- At the End of the Day, I Dreamed a Dream and One Day More -- are effectively performed, and there's even a bit of comic relief. Sacha Baron Cohen makes an appropriately despicable and conniving Thénardier, an inn-keeper who for a time takes charge of Cosette. Baron Cohen receives an able assist from Helena Bonham Carter -- now a specialist in playing grotesque-looking women -- as Madame Thénardier. Samantha Barks makes a bit of splash as their daughter, Éponine.

I'm not a particular fan of musicals, and Les Miz involves wall-to-wall singing with almost no spoken dialogue. I can't exactly say that Les Miserables left me humming any of its tunes. But whatever problems the big-screen version has, I mostly enjoyed it and even felt a slight tingling of the spine during its finale. Put another way, Les Miserables has genuine theatrical power.

'Dark Shadows' casts too small a spell

It's not exactly cursed, but this Tim Burton/Johnny Depp collaboration is as dramatically flat as it is visually elaborate.

I can't say I was overjoyed when I first heard that Johnny Depp planned to reunite with Tim Burton for a movie in which Depp would play 200-year-old Barrnabas Collins, a vampire and the most memorable character in Dark Shadows, which first appeared as a TV soap opera in 1966.

Although HBO's True Blood looms, and I plan to watch it, I'm close to being vampired out. I'm also a bit tired of watching Depp bury himself under piles of make-up and bizarre costumes. The campy prancing of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies has worn me out.

A friend used to say that by the late stages of his career, Marlon Brando had stopped being an actor and had turned himself into a special effect. Although Depp hasn't gone quite so far off the deep end, he's also becoming something of a specialty item. Need some first-class comic weirdness? Call Depp.

Depp's next two movies -- The Lone Ranger (as Tonto) and Pirates of the Caribbean 5 (again as Captain Jack Sparrow) -- don't exactly promise a return to Donnie Brasco form. I'm by no means suggesting that Depp's mailing in his performances, but he does seem to be spending a lot of time writing pretty much the same letter.

Burton, who now has collaborated with Depp on eight movies, seems in need of a creative re-charge, as well.

The opening of Dark Shadows -- eerie and ominously dark -- turned my initial fears into hope. Maybe Burton would accomplish something amazing, namely boosting soap opera into the category of grand opera, creating a movie that was both mysterious and sprawling.

It was not to be.

Depp and Burton have devoted their considerable skills to a mostly superfluous enterprise that's rich in Gothic atmosphere and visual creativity, but which doesn't have much else going for it.
Working from a screenplay by Seth Grahame-Smith, Burton creates a movie that too seldom gets beyond random chuckles.

And there's something inherently troubling here: Putting this much effort and production value into Dark Shadows seems roughly equivalent to performing open heart surgery for a mild case of indigestion. At the risk of losing track of my metaphors, this is overkill.

Burton and Depp are too accomplished to fail entirely. Dark Shadows has its moments as it brings Barnabas, who became a vampire in the 1800s, into the 1970s. Newly arrived in the disco era, Barnabas encounters everything from macrame to mirror balls to bitterness about the Vietnam War.

Depp plays his vampire as straight as Barnabas's rigid posture. When Barnabas addresses a group of pot-smoking hippies, Depp's comic-timing proves impeccable. "It is with sincere regret that I must kill all of you," he says. Barnabas's failure to see the irony in the formality of his remark makes the moment amusing.

A beautifully mounted prologue sets up the vampire part of the story. Barnabas is turned into a vampire by a witch (Eva Green), a woman he ditched in favor a fair-haired beauty (Bella Heathcote). Green'a Angelique takes her revenge by casting a spell that forces Heathcote's character to leap off a cliff.

A stricken Barnabas follows, but rather than dying in the crashing surf below, he's turned into a vampire by Angelique, who wants him to endure his grief eternally. To add to his suffering, she binds him in chains and buries him.

All of these actors turn up in Collinsport, Maine, in 1972. Still a witch, Green's character has taken over the town's shipping industry. Heathecote's Victoria Winters has become a governess, who works for the Collins family, which occupies a 200-room mansion, a dilapidated emblem of faded glory.

When a crew of hapless construction workers digs up the coffin in which Angelique buried Barnabas, he springs into action, vowing to restore the family's stature.

The rest of the cast includes Michelle Pfeiffer as the matron of the Collins family; Chloe Grace Moretz as the family's sullen teen-ager; Cully McGrath as David, the troubled boy of the clan; and Jonny Lee Miller as David's shiftless father.

Sporting a shocking red wig, Helena Bonham Carter portrays Julia, a doctor who has been hired to help restore David's mental health. Jackie Earle Haley appears as the family's caretaker, a scowling lump of a man whom Barnabas recruits as his attendant.

Before the movie concludes, Burton wheels out a barrel full of special effects, and he ends with a flurry of gothic romanticism that's not unlike the romanticism of the Twilight movies, only more grandly and more operatically expressed.

Burton's lavishly designed set pieces, a cameo from Alice Cooper and occasional humorous asides aren't enough to make something consistently enjoyable out of this extravagantly mounted entertainment. Maybe Dark Shadows shouldn't have been exhumed, but left to molder in the nearest pop-cultural graveyard.

'The King's Speech' delivers fine acting*

If you're looking for entertainment that bolsters the hope that the British aristocracy, given sufficient prodding and pressure, is capable of real nobility, The King's Speech might be just your cup of tea.

If you're a movie fan, the best reasons to see The King's Speech -- aside from the heavy Oscar push that surrounds it -- are the performances of Colin Firth, as stammering King George VI, and Geoffrey Rush, as Lionel Logue, the self-proclaimed speech therapist who helped the king overcome his stutter.

As directed by Tom Hooper, the movie strives to show how national symbols -- a monarch, for example -- can provide rallying points during times of severe crisis, in this case the approaching ravages of World War II. King's Speech also offers a fair measure of humor as it pits George's patrician personality against the brash methods of a commoner (and an Australian at that) who comes off as part therapist, part self-help guru and part provocateur.

George's story takes place against a backdrop of once-scandalous drama. George, known as Bertie to members of his family, did not aspire to rule. He took the throne reluctantly in 1936 when his older brother, King Edward VIII (Guy Pearce), abdicated so that he could spend his life with a twice-divorced American woman, Wallis Simpson (Eve Best).

Firth conveys all of George's difficulties of speech, but supplement them with wit, insecurity and, most importantly, intelligence and judgment that emerge even when the words don't. Evidently, George was teased by his siblings and bullied by this father, King George V (Michael Gambon).

Childhood traumas aside, the future king had a heightened sense of duty and an understanding of royal responsibility that may have eluded his brother. The final scene in which tutor helps student give a famous war-time speech stands as a moment of tastefully orchestrated, crowd-pleasing inspiration.

Tellingly, George's big speech seems almost quaint when compared to the way in which information spreads around the globe today. In the late 1930s, people huddled around their radios to listen to speeches that united them in moments of fearful expectation. And no group of gabbers appeared immediately afterward to dissect every word.

Working from a script by David Seidler, Hooper creates the right blend of palace ambience and ordinary life, and the scenes between Firth and Rush -- the real heart of the movie -- are carried out with wit and barb.

As Queen Elizabeth -- the mother of the current queen -- Helena Bonham Carter conveys a mixture of pragmatism, common sense and wifely devotion that's bracing in its let's-get-on-with-it spirit.

W Timothy Spall appears as Winston Churchill; Derek Jacobi has a nice turn as the Archbishop of Canterbury; and Claire Bloom appears briefly but effectively as Queen Mary, wife of George V.

The King's Speech may be kept from greatness by something we might call a misproportioned sense of history. As Hitler prepared his malicious assault on civilization. it's necessary to remember that the world faced far more important and profoundly unsettling issues than one man's struggle with a speech impediment.

So for all is Oscar-wrothy cache and its heavyweight cast, The King's Speech remains something of a footnote to history -- nicely rendered, but a footnote nonetheless.

*The King's Speech opens in Denver Christmas Day and is now working its way around the country.

Burton meets Lewis Carroll: Call it a draw

Alice will fall down the rabbit hole and meet ....Johnny Depp, who plays the Mad Hatter.

Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland is richly imagined and abundantly creative, so much so that it's impossible to watch this version of Lewis Carroll's classic without acknowledging the extraordinary amount of effort that must have gone into it. But the hard work of the filmmaker probably isn't the sort of thing you want to be thinking about on a trip to Wonderland, referred to as Underland in Burton's edition.

In adapting Carroll's tale for the screen – in trendy 3D, of course – Burton has brought his considerable powers to a story that has been given a contemporary gloss, picking up elements from Carroll and putting them through a Disney Cuisinart that turns Alice's story into a increasingly boisterous tale of female assertion, Alice as an avatar (you'll pardon the expression) of newfound identity.

Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is on a search to discover her true self – the right Alice as opposed to the Alice who is not quite the character the tale requires. The script by Linda Woolverton takes Alice on a second trip to Wonderland. She doesn't remember the first, which occurred when she was much younger. This time, Alice -- now 19 – tumbles down the rabbit hole in an attempt to flee a marriage proposal from the obviously dull Hamish (Leo Bill), a young man notable only for his pinched face and troubled powers of digestion.

Once in Wonderland, Alice navigates us through Burton's effects, beginning with the rotund duo, Tweedledee and Tweedledum (voiced by Matt Lucas). The mix of live actors and CGI creations proves reasonably seamless, but CGI trumps most of the live performances with Stephen Fry giving sly voice to the Cheshire Cat, a creature that can dissolve into thin air at a moment's notice, and Alan Rickman bringing Yoda-like wisdom to Absolem, the Blue Caterpillar who dispenses advice while puffing on his hookah. (Yes, we're talking smoking in a Disney movie, great puffy clouds of it.)

Burton has concocted a visual cornucopia, but among his human actors, only Helena Bonham Carter really stands out. Bonham Carter's Red Queen has a large head and a mercurial temperament that catapults her from unrestrained conviviality to off-with-their-heads fury. Bonham Cater essentially steals the show, although she's not always walking away with a grand prize.

Not every one fares quite as well. A one-note Crispin Glover shows up as the scowling Knave of Hearts. And Burton stalwart Johnny Deep portrays the Mad Hatter.

Part of the reason that Depp and Burton have worked so well together over the years (from Edward Scissorhands to Sweeney Todd) involves Depp's ready-for-anything attitude. But I quickly grew tired of him as the Hatter, a character that doesn't allow for much variation, a problem that troubles all of the actors and totally undermines Anne Hathaway, who's cast as the White Queen. Hathaway does her best to appear as if she's floating through every scene, a woman untethered from any earthly moorings. She's so detached, I half wondered whether someone hadn't filled her head with helium.

The story moves toward a battle between Alice and the fierce, dragon-like Jabberwocky, and although there are some nice humorous touches (The Red Queen using a pig as a footstool, for example), the movie embeds most of its madness in its visual fabric instead of teasing it to the surface where it belongs.

Missing from Burton's movie – which proves intermittently enjoyable -- is the tipsy Carroll quality that knocks us off our moorings. The story is told in straightforward fashion that misses the feeling that we've been shoved into a world that's ready to turn our heads inside out. I never felt as if Burton had pulled off the ultimate head trip, even when he was skillfully shifting perspectives as Alice grew in size or turned into a shrunken miniature version of herself.

Put another way: I'd say Burton has met Carroll, and although both survive the encounter, neither comes out entirely victorious by the time Alice in 3D Land crosses the finish line.