An unlikely alliance in Durham, N.C.

The Best of Enemies is a stranger-than-fiction story buoyed by a strong cast.

The essential part of the story told in the new movie The Best of Enemies is true. In 1971, during a fierce argument over the integration of the public schools in Durham, N.C., a black woman and a Ku Klux Klan leader co-chaired a charrette at which the future of the city's schools was to be decided. Rather than impose a solution, the idea was to allow Durham's residents to determine how to proceed.

A Raleigh-based community organizer named Bill Riddick came to Durham to run the two-week charrette, a big meeting at which issues were hashed out in hopes of presenting several resolutions that would be voted on by a committee of Durham's citizens, half white and half black.

The story of an uneasy relationship between a Ku Klux Klan leader and a no-nonsense black activist is one of those stranger-than-fiction tales that can't help but intrigue. And you needn't be a genius to know that the resolution will involve a major transformation on someone's part.

The movie owes much of its success to casting. Taraji P. Henson plays Anne Atwater, a woman who has spent much of her life fighting with Durham's white power structure and upholding the rights of the city's black residents. Sporting outfits that add considerable enlargement to her body, Henson virtually disappears into the role of a woman whose determination and sense of righteousness speak of a drive that will not accept defeat.

Sam Rockwell, who already played a racist in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, portrays another in Best of Enemies. Rockwell's CP Ellis faces a challenge when he's asked to rub elbows with members of the city's black community.

The white power elite -- represented in part by a smooth-talking councilman (Bruce McGill) -- wants a reliably racist person to uphold support for segregated schools and to serve as its man on the inside of the charrette.

Rockwell's performance reflects the inner struggle of a man whose sense of belonging has been challenged. CP can seem a bit goofy, but we know there's something percolating inside this gas station owner. CP unexpectedly finds himself immersed in a major debate.

When CP tries to persuade the liberal owner of a local hardware store (John Gallagher Jr.) to vote with the white majority, a saddened CP is taken aback. CP learns that this man who employees blacks served in Vietnam. He fought for his country. CP didn't. For once, CP has no comeback. His world has begun to fall apart.

The supporting cast helps. Anne Heche plays CP's wife and Babou Ceesay portrays Riddick, a man with the unenviable job of trying to get the blacks and whites of Durham to listen to one another.

To me, the Klan venom in Best of Enemies seemed a trifle toned down, but Wes Bentley does a convincing job as a Klansman who has no interest in examining his values.

Robin Bissell, who has spent most of his career producing movies, makes his directorial debut. He smartly relies on his actors to carry the day.

Look, no one likely will mistake Best of Enemies for a great movie and there's always a danger that a movie such as Best of Enemies encourages people to elevate the anecdotal to something more than it is. I wish Bissell had found ways to show more of the discussions that took place at the charrette, and the movie sometimes loses dramatic steam.

Still, you could do worse than Best of Enemies and Hollywood has, many would argue that the Oscar-winning Green Book is one such example.

A small aside: Three recent major movies -- The Best of Enemies, Green Book, and BlacKkKlansman -- have been set in the 1960s and 1970s. Whatever you think of these movies, another truth must be acknowledged: It's past time for Hollywood to catch up and give stories about racism some present-tense urgency.

A frustrating 'Knight of Cups'

Director Terrence Malick's journey through Los Angeles.

I know many serious film lovers who are slavishly devoted to the films of director Terrence Malick, so much so that they transfer the brilliance and emotional depth of films such as The Tree of Life to lesser works, notably the recent To the Wonder (2012).

With Knight of Cups, Malik provides another test for devotees because this strange foray into the libidinous world of Hollywood leaves a gaping maw of consternation in its wake.

Malick begins with a quote from The Pilgrim's Progress, a 1678 Christian allegory. Author John Bunyan's work about a journey to the Celestial City isn't the only source Malick quotes: He also cites passages from The Hymn of the Pearl, a Gnostic myth about a boy sent to Egypt to retrieve a pearl from a serpent.

I bring all this up not to demonstrate my knowledge of Christian literature, which is -- at best -- confined to perusals of Wikipedia, but to suggest that Malick's willful obscurity seems a frustratingly protracted exercise in navel gazing as filtered through what feels like a dense spiritual fog.

Equally troublesome is Malick's tendency to pepper his films with the barely audible thoughts of his characters. He blurs their speech and de-emphasizes anything resembling human connection. His characters live in worlds of their own.

This approach has been likened to dreams; but dreams and poetry always have been tricky stuff for movies, and they can do a filmmaker in as quickly as they can save him or her.

In Knight of Cups, Malick mostly abandons linear storytelling as he soaks in the often beautiful imagery of his collaborating cinematographer, three-time Oscar winner Emmanuel Lubezki.

Taking its title from a tarot card, Knight of Cups casts the always adventurous Christian Bale as Rick, a screenwriter who's searching for meaning in his generally hollow life. Foundering in a sybaritic material world, Rick is a forsaken man.

When he's not engaged in sexual relationships, Rick is seen walking, driving his vintage convertible or looking at things. Of course, the gifted Lubezki gives Rick (and us) plenty at which to stare as Malick's camera explores Los Angeles.

Because most of Rick's quest (if that's what it is) involves women, Malick finds an opportunity to bring a diverse core of actresses to the screen.

Nancy (Cate Blanchett) plays Rick's ex-wife, a physician who works in a clinic. Karen (Teresa Palmer) appears as a Las Vegas stripper. Helen (Frieda Pinto) works as a model. Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) gets pregnant by Rick. She's married to someone else.

As if flipping through a deck of Tarot cards, Malick structures his story around chapter headings such as The Moon, The Hermit and more. It takes more effort than it's worth to connect these titles to the hazy unfolding of Malick's Los Angeles-based scenes, some which include Rick's father (Brian Dennehy) and his bother (Wes Bentley).

Father and son are locked in an explosively angry duet.

Antonio Banderas presides over a Hollywood party attended by various Hollywood "insiders," a boisterous Bacchanal.

At first, it seems as if Malick wants to make a movie about another lost soul snared by the siren call of Hollywood hedonism. But he also seems to want to give Rick's searchings spiritual meaning: A lost soul, Rick is separated from God and trying to establish a connection or maybe he's just seeking meaning in a godless world or maybe ...

Well, in the end, who really cares what Rick is seeking?

We've all got troubles of our own, and Malick never convinces us (or at least me) that we should get involved with his.

Kristin Wiig breaks many molds

Is Kristen Wiig an actress, a comedian, a sketch artist or maybe a daredevil?

She's probably all of those things -- and she brings a bit of each to Welcome to Me, a purposefully weird comedy in which Wiig plays Alice Klieg, a woman suffering from borderline personality disorder.

Alice's life changes when she wins the California lottery and decides to use her new-found fortune to finance her own talk show.

Obviously no one in his or her right mind would put someone like Alice on TV -- except for a financially strapped production company that's wallowing in failed infomercials.

As a compulsive fan of Oprah Winfrey, Alice believes that she can become a talk show host, but her idea of a talk show involves sharing weird recipes (a meatloaf cake), near-hysterical reenactments of childhood traumas and a series of programs devoted to neutering dogs.

I'd be lying if I told you I knew exactly what to make of Welcome to Me, which was directed by Shira Piven from a screenplay by Eliot Laurence.

The movie made me laugh; it made me queasy and, by the end, I concluded that it couldn't quite sustain its crazy premise.

Still, Wiig doesn't flinch from the challenge of carrying the movie, even though she receives support from Wes Bentley and James Marsden, as the owners of the infomercial business, as well as from Joan Cusack, as the show's director. Linda Cardellini plays Alice's best friend, and Tim Robbins appears as Alice's therapist, a role that's handled with enough seriousness to keep the movie off-balance.

But then everything about Welcome to Me is a bit off-balance, and I imagine that audiences will include those who laugh, those who squirm and perhaps even a few who walk out.

Wiig has had big hits (Bridesmaids), voiced animated characters (How to Train Your Dragon) and veered away from the mainstream (The Skeleton Twins).

Welcome to Me again takes Wiig off the beaten track with a comedy about a mentally ill character who finds a temporary home on television. Draw your own conclusions.

It probably would be wrong to categorize Welcome to Me as any kind of media satire: Like Wiig, it exists in its own category-resistant world -- and probably is better off for it.

Odds favor big-screen 'Hunger Games'

It's not as good as the book, but The Hunger Games has lots to recommend it.

Movie, good. Book, better.

We’re talking The Hunger Games, one of the more anticipated movies of a year that has yet to produce an entertainment with blockbuster potential. Adapted from the first in a trilogy of novels by Suzanne Collins,The Hunger Games surely will be scrutinized in the way all novels with devoted followings are; i.e., there will be intense interest in whether director Gary Ross (Seabiscuit and Pleasantville) has honored both the letter and the spirit of Collins’s novel.

Burdened by too much exposition and less emotionally resonant than the novel, the big-screen version of The Hunger Games nonetheless is marked by sufficient fear and fervor to push it onto the plus side of the ledger. Just as important, the filmmakers have found an actress (Jennifer Lawrence) who's capable of displaying the mixture of toughness and vulnerability the story demands.

For those unfamiliar with Collins’s work, a brief introduction:

The Hunger Games tells the story of Katniss Everdeen (Lawrence), a 16-year-old living in yet another dystopian future. After an unexplained apocalypse, the country of Panem replaced what we know as North America. The Capitol -- the most advanced part of Panem -- exploits and rules each of Panem’s 12 districts. Katniss hails from District 12, formerly Appalachia and one of the poorest sections of Panem.

Economic exploitation being insufficient torment for the residents of the districts, the Capitol each year stages The Hunger Games, a lethal contest that resembles the TV show Survivor. The name of every district child from the ages of 12 to 18 is put into a national lottery. One boy and one girl from each district are then selected to compete. The 24 competitors -- known as Tributes -- battle to the death. The last remaining Tribute wins. And it’s all on TV, of course.

Katniss, whose father died in a mining accident, has had plenty of time to hone her survival skills. She engages in illegal poaching to feed her emotionally crippled mother and her younger sister, exploring the forbidden forests around District 12 with her pal (and potential boyfriend) Gale (Liam Hemsworth).

The story begins in earnest when Katniss’s sister Prim (Willow Shields) is selected to represent District 12 in The Hunger Games. Katniss immediately volunteers to replace her sister, a substitution allowed by the rules of what otherwise seems an arbitrary game, which is manipulated by high-tech gamesmakers who control the game’s physical environments.

I won’t bother you with additional details except to say that Collins’s book, which consists of Katniss’s first-person account of the games, does a better job when it comes to exposition, probably because everything transpires from Katniss’ highly focused point-of-view.

In order to handle expository chores on screen, Ross is forced outside the arena, where we see the control room where technicians oversee the games. The bearded Seneca Crane (Wes Bentley) runs the control room. Look, it's never a good sign when a movie has to stop to explain itself.

In the book, Collins’s propulsive narrative gathers momentum from Katniss’s observations, doubts, craftiness and occasional deliriums. On screen, Katniss’s inner life becomes the responsibility of Lawrence, the young actress who was nominated for an Oscar for her work in Winter’s Bone. Lawrence must suggest with looks and presence what Katniss was able to convey with words in the novel. She gets awfully close, although I have to say that Lawrence wasn't quite as battered, desperate and crafty as the Katniss of my imagination, the one put there by Collins's prose.

Josh Hutcherson plays Peeta Melark, the other competitor from District 12. A baker’s son, Peeta falls for Katniss, a development that gives the movie a bit of romantic spin -- or does it? Can competitors in this deadly game allow themselves to have feelings for one another? Are Peeta’s feelings real or are they part of a strategy related to winning the game?

The movie tries to include most of the events that kept the novel percolating, but shortchanges the more resonant emotions of Collins’s book, particularly those involving Katniss and Rue (Amandla Stenberg). A 12-year-old competitor from an agricultural district, Rue develops a touching relationship with Katniss during the games.

The movie’s adults are mostly well cast. Woody Harrelson plays a watered-down version of the dissolute Haymitch Abernathy, a District 12 competitor who won the 50th Hunger Games and a reluctant mentor to Peeta and Katniss, who have been thrust into the 74th edition of the games. Elizabeth Banks portrays Effie Trinket, the ridiculously pretentious woman appointed to escort Katniss and Peeta to the Capitol. Stanley Tucci shows up as Caesar Flickerman, the host of the Hunger Game TV interviews and a master of faux sincerity. Lenny Kravitz has a nice turn as Cinna, the Capitol resident who’s responsible for helping to shape Katniss’ public image. And Donald Sutherland plays the head of Panem, a cunning and cruel leader who seems to have been inserted mostly in preparation for the next installment.

Ross and cinematographer Tom Stern do a good job creating District 12, a grim, coal-mining area that has been given a look that evokes the Great Depression. But The Hunger Games isn’t exactly coy when it comes to dealing with themes such as the degradations of poverty, as well as exploitative TV, voyeurism, and political oppression. In a way, the movie is another hybrid, a picture that has been crossbred from Survivor, The Truman Show and maybe Lord of the Flies.

Collins’s book seems better paced than the movie, which -- in its quieter moments --falls a little flat, and I’m not sure how much the big-screen version will astonish and captivate those who haven’t read the book.

But Hunger Games is smarter than most fiction aimed at young adults, and it isn’t afraid to explore the dark, bloody terrain of a society that’s willing to amuse itself by brutalizing its children. To the Tributes, the games are a matter of life and death. For everyone else, they’re a TV show.


So a recommendation with only mild reservations. Taking a cue from Katniss’s weapon of choice -- the bow -- I’d say that The Hunger Games definitely hits the target, although it's no bull's eye. And now that the world of Collins’s novels has been established, it should be easier to give us an ever better second helping.