A very slender and very odd movie

At a mere 117 minutes in length, no one will accuse Deerskin, of trying to overstay its welcome. A darkly hued comic offering from France, Deerskin stars Jean Dujardin (The Artist) as a sour middle-aged man whom we meet while he's driving. Georges's wife evidently gave him the boot and he's on the road. Early on, Dujardin's Georges lets us know he's on a wacky quest: He pulls up at the home of a guy who's trying to sell a heavily fringed deerskin jacket that looks as if it has been gathering dust since the 1960s. Although the jacket is a couple of sizes too small, a delighted Georges buys it. He then checks into a small hotel, where he admires the jacket for its "killer style" and often talks to it. As it happens, the guy who sold Georges the jacket also threw in a video camera, which enables Georges to present himself as a filmmaker. Conveniently, he meets Denise (Adele Haenel), a local bartender who aspires to be a film editor. He persuades her to finance his film. But that's not all. Driven by an absurd and entirely senseless ambition, Georges dreams of eliminating every other jacket in the world. It may take some time, but he wants his deerskin beauty to become the only surviving jacket. Georges begins filming his bizarre attempts to rid the world of jackets -- which eventually turns bloody as Georges's mania blossoms. But, hey, a film still must be made. Denise decides that even without a script, Georges's footage might make a movie. Director Quentin Depieux's drab palette doesn't do much to up the ante of a movie that's as slender as one of the fringes on Georges's beloved jacket. Georges's ignorance about filmmaking can be amusing but Deerskin is too closeted in its oddball conceit to find much by way of meaning.

'Monuments Men' misses the mark

Intriguing subject short-changed in Clooney-directed movie.

In his sixth directorial effort, George Clooney has made a middle-of-the-road movie about an intriguing subject, the attempt to rescue priceless art seized by the Nazis during World War II.

The Monuments Men of the title are a group of aging academics and art specialists charged with saving paintings, sculpture and monuments from Hitler's rapacious legions. Upper-echelon Nazis wanted to appropriate most of western art for a gargantuan museum to be named after the Fuhrer. Pieces that didn't make it into Hitler's art mausoleum would find their way into the private collections of Nazi bigwigs.

Clooney also stars in the movie: He plays Frank Stokes, an art historian from Harvard's Fogg Museum: Stokes leads the culture-saving effort after assembling his team in what amounts to a subdued Dirty Dozen style.

Matt Damon plays James Granger, an art expert from the Museum of Metropolitan Art in New York; Bill Murray portrays architect Richard Campbell; John Goodman appears as a sculptor; Jean Dujardin portrays a French art dealer; and Bob Balaban plays Preston Savitz, a character whose professional skills weren't entirely clear to me. British actor Hugh Bonneville takes on the role of a British art expert who's trying to rehabilitate his reputation as a drunk.

Cate Blanchett has a smaller role as Claire, a French woman who works at a Paris museum, and who has been forced to assist the Nazis in their pilfering. It takes a while for Damon's character to convince Claire, who also has ties to the Resistance, to help find hidden art treasures: She's fearful that the U.S. will appropriate masterpieces in much the same way as the Germans have done.

A couple of major tensions break through the movie's somewhat frozen surface. First, there's an on-going argument about whether any piece of art is worth a human life. That raises additional questions about the importance of culture, even during war-time duress.

Early on, Clooney's Stokes asks President Roosevelt -- a leader for whom art was not a top priority -- what the war will have meant if, at the end of it, Michelangelo's David has been reduced to rubble.

The Monuments Men also race to keep important art objects out of the hands of the advancing Russians, who are portrayed as eager to get their hands on landmarks of Western civilization.

As it turns out, much of the stolen art was hidden in German mines, but the movie's discoveries have a plodding feel. The men's various missions proceed without much vigor.

That seems a major miscalculation: The Monuments Men is like a caper movie -- only without the caper.

The screenplay by Clooney and Grant Heslove (based on a book by Robert M. Edsel) makes some attempts at humor, most of it italicized by one of the most disappointing musical scores in recent memory, a shock since it was written by the gifted Alexandre Desplat, whose work I've almost always admired.

The movie attempts to differentiate among the characters in broad ways, but, as depicted here, these are not the most interesting group of people. Moreover, Clooney doesn't find enough ways to demonstrate either the men's passion for art or their expertise.

Ironically, the movie could have benefited from more talk about art. Michelangelo's Madonna of Bruges turns up, as does a famous Ghent altar piece, but for a movie about the enduring importance of art, Monuments Men pays too little attention to it.

Oh well, call it a miss by some very talented people: This little-known and clearly fascinating story deserved more than the shrug The Monuments Men induces.

Oscar predictions, actor and actress

OK, time to get serious. We're approaching the three awards that tend to be most remembered: best actress, best actor and best picture. Don't get me wrong. It's great that Oscar gives the rest of the industry its due. We need reminders that art direction, music, cinematography, make-up, costumes and editing are vital parts of the movie industry. But you rarely hear folks leave a movie gushing about a great editing job, and most of the time cinematography seems to be equated in the poplar mind with pretty pictures. If most people are willing to admit to a bit of ignorance when it comes to the technical aspects of movies, nearly everyone feels qualified to opine about actors, as well as on the overall quality of a film. So let's get to my predictions about who'll win best actress and actor at this Sunday's (Feb. 26) Oscars.

Best actress, the nominees:
Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs
Viola Davis, The Help
Rooney Mara, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady
Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn

I wasn't a big fan of The Help, but I am an admirer of Viola Davis, and I think she'll win in this category. Most observers seem to argue that the best-actress contest boils down to a battle between Davis, who played Mississippi maid Aibileen Clark in The Help, and Meryl Streep, who portrayed former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady. I'd rule out Rooney Mara, who was fine and flinty in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. She's young, and should have more shots at an Oscar. I didn't buy Glenn Close as a woman masquerading as a man in Albert Nobbs, and although Michelle Williams, as Marilyn Monroe, was the best thing about the slight and negligible (I know, lots of people love it) My Weekend With Marilyn. She'll probably go home without a statue.

Best actor, the nominees:
Demian Bichir, A Better Life
George Clooney, The Descendants
Jean Dujardin, The Artist
Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Brad Pitt, Moneyball

I suppose this one boils down to a race between George Clooney (The Descendants) and Jean Dujardin (The Artist). I initially favored Clooney, but shifted after the Screen Actors Guild went for Dujardin. An awful lot of actors cast ballots in the Oscar voting. I certainly wouldn't be upset if Clooney were to win, but as we inch toward Sunday, Dujardin seems to be the favorite.

And did I happen to mention the Cinema Salon Wednesday, Feb. 22? No, well let me clue you in. I'll be joined by Denver Post Film Critic Lisa Kennedy, Starz Denver Film Festival Director Britta Erickson and Oscar maven Bob Becker at 7:30 p.m., Wed., Feb. 22 at the FilmCenter/Colfax, 2510 E. Colfax Ave. Chances are good that we'll put on a more interesting show than you'll see Sunday night when the Oscars are awarded.

'The Artist' is one of the year's bset

It may be silent, but The Artist earns some very laud applause.

Sometimes at a film festival or in the company of a particularly interesting filmmaker, I have been fortunate enough to experience something akin to what I imagine audiences felt during the silent era, a sense of child-like wonder at the special felicities associated with the moving imagine – from a quickening of the pulse to the breaking of a heart.

Naturally, I loved Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, a movie that understands and celebrates such early pleasures. I'm equally grateful that in a year when the final Harry Potter movie boomed its way toward supersonic levels of fantasy, director Michel Hazanavicius brings back simpler joys in The Artist, a black-and-white silent movie.

Although The Artist tells a familiar story – a silent star (Jean Dujardin) hits the skids when talkies arrive – the movie nonetheless feels fresh, buoyed by a love for the movies, and perhaps even more importantly by a fascination with the gleam that movies (and everything about them) seem to give off, radiant light of unparalled intensity. The Artist also features a great dog, the importance of which shouldn't be underestimated.

Set in Hollywood, The Artist begins with Dujardin’s George Valentin at the peak of his career in the silents. Not surprisingly, Valentin relishes his celebrity, wearing it as flamboyantly and easily as a cape flung around his ample shoulders.

Dujardin, of course, has the right look for this kind of role: He’s handsome with a high-wattage smile. Valentin lives with the wife (Penelope Ann Miller) and loyal pooch in one of those lavish Hollywood mansions, something straight out of Sunset Boulevard, only less creepy. An obscenely large painting of a beaming George in top hat and tails hangs next to the front door, George's tribute to himself.

The story contrives to mix Valentin's fate with that of a young dancer (Berenice Bejo). Valentin gives the star-struck dancer her first break. She goes on to have a career that not only survives the transition to sound but flourishes. She’s Peppy Miller, a star with a name that sounds as if had been borrowed from a soft drink.

Not to be outdone, Valentin decides that he must carry on with what he regards as a purer form of movie artistry. He wants to make one more silent movie to prove that the studio types – represented here by John Goodman – are wrong. But Valentin succeeds only in showing how right Hollywood is to embrace sound. The public wants the next new thing, and Valentin's picture flops.

Hazanavicius makes a brief, startling and witty use of the sound in one of Valentin’s dreams, perhaps the movie’s most clever moment, but he's not resorting to silence as a gimmick; the absence of the human voice enhances the story.

The Artist balances Valentin’s melodramatic decline with an upbeat ending that’s designed to send audiences home smiling. Hazanavicius accomplishes this without late-picture expressions of profundity or phony uplift, but with one of the great and least fettered forms of human delight: tap dancing. Need I say more?