She's the afterthought in his life

Jonathan Pryce and Glenn Close play husband and wife in The Wife.

The complicated relationship between a husband and wife moves to the forefront of The Wife, Swedish director Bjorn Runge's adaptation of a 2003 novel by Meg Wolitzer. The movie centers on the Castlemans, a couple brought to convincing life by Jonathan Pryce and Glenn Close.

When the movie begins, Pryce's Joe Castleman is awaiting word on whether he has won the Nobel Prize for literature. He does and the movie then shifts to Oslo, Norway where Joe, his wife and his grown son (Max Irons) have gone to celebrate Joe's success.

Of course, that's not the end of the story, but only the beginning of a slow revelation of the secret behind Joe's literary triumph. For those unfamiliar with the story, I'll say no more except to note that Close's Joan Castleman seems to have taken responsibility for every mundane aspect of Joe's exalted life, tasks she carries out despite Joe's penchant for philandering.

As events in Oslo unfold, Runge shows us flashbacks to various stages of the couple's relationship, which began when Joe, married to someone else at the time, taught writing at the college level. Joan (played as a young woman by Close's real-life daughter Anne Starke) was one of his prize students. At the time -- the 1950s -- prospects for emerging female writers seemed dim and Joan sacrificed her talent on the altar of Joe's ego.

Importantly, the movie shows us that Joan, though definitely exploited, was complicit in her fate. For reasons of her own, she loyally subordinated herself to Joe's ambitions. No one can do such a thing without paying a price, and Joan's resentments ripple through Close's finely tuned performance.

For his part, Pryce conveys the egotism and occasional cruelty of a famous Jewish-American writer. His relationship with his son, an aspiring author, reeks of authoritarianism and neglect. Joe isn't kind when talking about his son's writing, disguising his lack of compassion as an insistence on high standards.

Strong hints of threatening disclosures run throughout the movie. Christian Slater plays a wily journalist who has been trying for years to write Joe's biography. He wants Joan to help him topple Joe from his throne, a lofty perch built on the pile of critically acclaimed books the author has published.

Despite building toward an inevitable showdown between Joe and Joan, The Wife never quite feels revelatory. But Pryce and Close add undeniable polish to this peek into literary lives -- both fulfilled and wasted.

Those awful upper-class Brits

At an exclusive Oxford club, privilege and cruelty have become second nature.

Having never visited Oxford, one of the world's most prestigious universities exists only as figment of my imagination. In my mind's eye, I see bespectacled dons in flowing robes strolling across a fabled campus, beacons of erudition and discernment.

Like all fantasies, mine probably is way off base. And if I had any doubts about that, they were dispelled by director Lone Scherfig's The Riot Club, a big-screen adaptation of a Laura Wade play called Posh.

So what kind of place is the Oxford of Scherfig's movie?

Scherfig narrows her focus until she sees Oxford as a brutally uneven playing field that helps breed a class of privileged Englishmen whose money and/or blood lines establish them as men for whom ordinary rules don't apply.

Members of this detestable aristocracy have benefited from years of expensive education, learning -- among other things -- how to use money to cover their callous misdeeds.

These upper-class twits seem to believe that their lives have value way beyond those who dwell "beneath" them.

Moreover they know that someday soon, they'll be sitting behind big desks. They won't be part of the system. They are the system.

The Riot Club that gives the movie its title is so exclusive that its limited to 10 members. Each year, the club holds a dinner, a wanton mixture of drunkenness and cruelty that provides the movie with its core event.

Dressed in formal attire, members assemble at a country inn that will be wrecked before the night is through. The club's commitment to indulgence makes the fraternity brothers of Animal House look like teetotalers.

Among the stand-outs in this rancid group are Alistair (Sam Clafin). A legacy member, Alistair needs little encouragement when it comes to tapping into his worst self.

Then there's Miles (Max Irons), a student of more modest background, who can't resist the siren call of elitism. Sadly for Max, he still has a semblance of conscience.

An Oxford coed named Lauren (Holiday Grainger) offers Miles a chance at a more normal collegiate existence. Poor, deluded Max. He thinks he can maintain a relationship with Lauren and also be a member of the Riot Club.

Scherfig lets us know that the shield of privilege offers an enduring form of protection. One of the club's alumni (Tom Hollander) shows us where these young men are headed. Quietly and over drinks in clubs, they'll preserve the bond of privilege which they see as a birthright.

At first, I was put off by The Riot Club's lack of subtlety and nuance. There's little doubt about where Scherfig (An Education) stands when it comes to this kind of men-only preserve.

But if you're going to make a point, you might as well make it emphatically. Scherfig does. These British one percenters (actually, it's probably a fraction of one percent) are exposed, indicted and vilified.

They're in a class by themselves -- at least one hopes they are. They all deserve to be throttled.

A somber, silly 'Red Riding Hood'

Red Riding Hood tries to enter a teen-oriented Twilight zone. This dismal failure is redeemed only by the occasional inadvertently evoked laugh.

Red Riding Hood: "Why, Mr. Critic, what big claws you have." Critic: "The better to rip you to shreds." Venom, like most potent drinks, should be poured judiciously, and Red Riding Hood is too easy a target to bear the brunt of a totally brutal assault. Besides, a lack of epic scale keeps the movie from entering the upper echelon of big-screen stinkeroos, although it definitely earns its place among a host of less important flops.

Aside from the fact that the movie springs from an idea as generic as it is bad - a werewolf terrorizes a medieval village - Red Riding Hood suffers from undistinguished direction, wretched writing and acting that ranges from bland (the movie's young leads) to overwrought (Gary Oldman as Solomon, a werewolf hunter).

The movie's marketing calculations seem obvious. Red Riding Hood looks as if it has been designed to appeal to the Twilight crowd, right down to the hiring of director Catherine Hardwicke, who directed the first Twilight movie.

The cast, I presume, is meant to make young hearts flutter. Amanda Seyfried portrays Valerie, the movie's title character. Two suitors: Peter (Shiloh Fernandez) and Henry (Max Irons, son of Jeremy) fight over Valerie.

So much for the eye candy.

Of the adult cast, only Julie Christie (as Grandma) seems to have any inkling of what the movie could have been, showing occasional flashes of leering, subversive wit.

I was half-tempted to begin this review by proclaiming Red Riding Hood the best comedy of the year, but decided against it because all the laughs are inadvertent, deriving mostly from a ton of portentous dialog.

-- "It was the most brutal winter I could remember."

-- "Come with me or the streets will run red with blood."

Or my favorite, an exchange between villagers after someone suggests that Valerie be handed over to the wolf, a snarling, scrawny computer-generated beast the size of a pony.

One villager: "You can't give her to the wolf. That's human sacrifice."

Another: "We've all made sacrifices."

Ain't that the truth?

Some of the additional chuckles derive from the movie's attempt to draw class distinctions among the squalid townsfolk who suffer through a dark, cold winter that's punctuated with werewolf attacks.

We learn, for example, that a woodcutter earns far less than a blacksmith. That's why Valerie's mother (Virginia Madsen) wants her daughter to marry blacksmith Henry instead of woodcutter Peter. She urges her daughter to move on up, as it were. For her part, Valerie - who provides the movie with occasional bits of narration - insists on following her heart.

Seyfried, who seemed so promising on TV's Big Love has yet to show much A-list potential on the big screen. She spends much of Red Riding Hood looking perplexed, as she peers out from beneath the hood of her trademark red cloak, a gift from Grandma.

Of course, the Red Riding Hood story is well known, so it's up to the filmmakers to find some juicy subtext and oddball embellishments.

How's this for an add-on? A sinister Oldman arrives in town with a giant iron elephant in tow; we eventually learn why he's traveling with such a bizarre prop, putting an end to what might be the movie's only real mystery -- and a minor one at that.

Screenwriter David Johnson (Orphan) dabbles in themes that range from sexual to silly, with the two often overlapping.

He also introduces a variety of red herrings to go along with Valerie's red cloak. Because the wolf spends most of its time as as human, we're led to wonder whether he could be hiding in the guise of the village dullard or an earnest looking fellow who signs up for wolf hunts or, of course, in the person of grandma, who lives in a cabin outside the village and serves Valerie unappetizing bowls of gruel.

All, however, is not grim. At one point, the villagers believe that they've killed the wolf. Their celebration involves a communal dance scene that's something to behold: Swaying villagers getting down with their bad selves.

I've read that the movie has been transformed into a novel by author Sarah Blakley-Cartwright. According to a recent Los Angeles Times article, Blakley-Cartwright "would spend as many as 14 hours each day writing, occasionally taking a break from her typewriter to visit the set or interview the characters for inspiration."

I'm amazed that anyone could spend 14 minutes writing about this misbegotten tale, but that - as they say - is another story.

A blood moon announces the worst of the werewolf attacks. By the time it arrives, I found myself thinking that the only thing that could have made this movie any more preposterous would have been the arrival of Sarah Palin to shoot the wolf from a plane that was speeding over the fog-shrouded landscapes. Come to think of it, that would have added a welcome touch of lunacy to a movie that's too somber to recognize its own silliness.