New Releases for the Week of February 4, 2022

MOONFALL

(Lionsgate) Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson, John Bradley, Michael Peña, Charlie Plummer, Kelly Yu, Donald Sutherland, Carolina Bartczak. Directed by Roland Emmerich

When the moon is discovered to have fallen out of orbit and is on a collision course with Earth, the world prepares for annihilation. One former astronaut thinks she might have the solution, only nobody believes her. She and a motley crew of three embark on a dangerous, last-ditch effort to save the planet – only to discover that the moon isn’t what they think it is. The latest from disaster Meister Roland Emmerich.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Science Fiction
Now Playing: Wide
Rating: PG-13 (for violence, disaster action, strong language, and some drug use)

Jackass Forever

(Paramount) Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Jason “Wee Man” Acuna, Chris Pontius. The original cast of idiots reunites for a celebration of friendship and getting nailed in the gonads.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Comedy
Now Playing: Wide
Rating: R (for strong crude material and dangerous stunts, graphic nudity and language throughout)

Sundown

(Bleecker Street) Tim Roth, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Jazua Lanios, Henry Godman. A wealthy family on vacation in Mexico find their vacation interrupted by a distant emergency. When the family’s tight-knit order is disrupted by a relative, the tensions percolating below the surface begin to show.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: AMC Disney Springs
Rating: R (for sexual content, violence, language and some graphic nudity)

Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America

(Sony Classics) Jeffrey Robinson. Criminal defense and civil rights lawyer Robinson draws a stark timeline of racism in America, going back from slavery to Black Lives Matter, through academic lectures, interviews, and personal revelations.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Documentary
Now Playing: AMC Altamonte Mall, AMC Avenue 16 Melbourne, AMC Disney Springs, Regal Waterford Lakes, Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: PG-13 (for thematic content, disturbing images, violence and strong language – all involving racism)

The Wolf and the Lion

(Blue Fox) Molly Kunz, Graham Greene, Charlie Carrick, Derek Johns. A young woman who grew up in the Canadian wilderness returns home after a death in the family. In the woods, she discovers two abandoned cubs – a wolf and a lion. She rescues them and they form a familial bond, but after a forest ranger discovers the situation and removes the two animals from her home, the wolf and the lion escape to reunite themselves with each other and the woman who saved them.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Family
Now Playing: AMC Altamonte Mall, AMC Avenue 16 Melbourne, AMC Disney Springs, AMC West Oaks, Cinemark Orlando, CMX Merritt Square, Fashion Square Premiere, Regal Oviedo Marketplace, Regal The Loop, Regal Waterford Lakes
Rating: PG (for thematic elements, language and some peril)

COMING TO VIRTUAL CINEMA/VOD:

Alone With You (Tuesday)
Book of Love (Friday)
The Fabulous Filipino Brothers (Tuesday)
Ghosts of the Ozarks (Thursday)
Just Swipe (Tuesday)
Last Looks (Friday)
Listen Out for Love (Sunday)
Single Black Female (Saturday)
Slapface (Thursday)
The Wrong High School Sweetheart (Friday)

SCHEDULED FOR REVIEW:

The Fabulous Filipino Brothers
Just Swipe
Moonfall

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New Releases for the Week of October 20, 2017

GEOSTORM

(Warner Brothers) Gerard Butler, Jim Sturgess, Abbie Cornish, Alexandra Maria Lara, Daniel Wu, Eugenio Derbez, Amr Waked, Andy Garcia, Ed Harris. Directed by Dean Devlin

In a future where we have the ability to control the weather, the satellites that do the controlling suddenly and inexplicably start to turn on the Earth, creating massive and deadly weather events. As the weather worsens, a massive worldwide Geostorm that could potentially wipe out all life on earth is forming and it’s a race against time to find out who is behind it and stop them before our home is turned into a lifeless wasteland.

See the trailer, clips, interviews, a promo and B-roll video here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard, 3D, DBOX, IMAX, IMAX 3D
Genre: Sci-Fi Action
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for destruction, action and violence)

Breathe

(Bleecker Street) Andrew Garfield, Claire Foy, Ed Speleers, Tom Hollander. Legendary motion capture king Andy Serkis makes his directorial debut with this inspiring true story of Robin Cavendish, a young man whose life is full of adventure, promise and love but is cruelly paralyzed by polio from the neck down, leaving a grim prognosis. Refusing to live out his days in a hospital, against all odds he returns home and slowly but surely with the help of mechanically-inclined friends he works on ways to make his life – and the lives of others in his predicament – better.

See the trailer and featurettes here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Biographical Drama
Now Playing: AMC Disney Springs, Regal Ormond Beach, Regal Oviedo Marketplace, Regal Pointe Orlando, Rialto Spanish Springs
Rating: PG-13 (for mature thematic material including some bloody medical images)

Faces, Places

(Cohen Media Group) Jean-Luc Godard, Agnés Varda, JR, Laurent Levesque. Legendary French new wave director Varda and acclaimed muralist JR strike up an unlikely friendship and decide to make a film together. Travelling France to photograph new faces, art is created in the most unlikely and occasionally delightful of places.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Documentary
Now Playing: Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: PG (for brief nude images and thematic elements)

Killing Gunther

(Saban/Lionsgate) Arnold Schwarzenegger, Cobie Smulders, Bobby Moynihan, Allison Tolman. Gunther is the world’s most successful assassin. So much so that the world’s other assassins are getting together and plotting to take him down. The trouble is, their plans don’t always work the way they are intended to.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Action Comedy
Now Playing: AMC West Oaks
Rating: R (for violence, language and some sexual material)

Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House

(Sony Classics) Liam Neeson, Diane Lane, Marton Csokas, Tony Goldwyn. The story of Felt, who for years hid his identity as the mystery man who helped take down the Nixon White House. Felt, a respected agent in the intelligence community discovered the wrongdoings of Watergate and became the most famous whistleblower in history – known to most as Deep Throat.

See the trailer and clips here
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Biographical Drama
Now Playing: AMC Disney Springs, AMC Universal Cineplex, Regal Winter Park Village, Rialto Spanish Springs
Rating: PG-13 (for some language)

Only the Brave

(Columbia) Josh Brolin, Jeff Bridges, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly. This is based on the Granite Mountain Hotshots, a volunteer firefighting brigade that took a heroic stand trying to defend their town from a historic wildfire. In the context of what has been happening in California, the Pacific Northwest and Big Sky country, this movie couldn’t be any more timely.

See the trailer, clips, interviews and Premiere footage here
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: True Life Drama
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for thematic content, some sexual references, language and drug material)

Same Kind of Different as Me

(Paramount/Pure Flix) Renee Zellweger, Jon Voight, Djimon Hounsou, Greg Kinnear. A successful art dealer whose marriage is on the rocks befriends a dangerously volatile homeless man as a means of reconnecting with his wife. Her dreams will send the three of them on a journey none of them could have ever anticipated.

See the trailer, clips, interviews and a featurette here
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG=13 (for thematic elements including some violence and language)

The Snowman

(Universal) Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Val Kilmer. Detective Harry Hole investigates the disappearance of a woman whose only clue is her pink scarf wrapped around the throat of an ominous looking snowman. Hole fears that this case may be linked to some bizarre murders that took place years earlier.

See the trailer, clips, interviews and B-roll video here
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Thriller
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for grisly images, violence, some language, sexuality and brief nudity)

Tyler Perry’s Boo 2! A Madea Halloween

(Lionsgate) Tyler Perry, Patrice Lovely, Brock O’Hurn, Lexy Panterra. America’s favorite grandmother returns as she and her family visit a haunted campground on Halloween and unwittingly unleash a wave of monsters, goblins, ghouls and boogeymen. Run for your lives, America!

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Horror Comedy
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for sexual references, drug content, language and some horror images)

ALSO OPENING IN ORLANDO/DAYTONA:

Golmaal Again
Mersal
Raja the Great
Secret Superstar
Tokyo Ghoul
The Unknown Girl

ALSO OPENING IN MIAMI:

4 Days in France
A Silent Voice
Golmaal Again
Inseparables
Jungle
Mersal
Raja the Great
Secret Superstar
Tokyo Ghoul
Walking Out
Where’s the Money
The Woman Who Left

ALSO OPENING IN TAMPA:

Demons
Golmaal Again
Leatherface
Let Her Out
Mersal
Never Here
Raja the Great
Secret Superstar
So B. It

ALSO OPENING IN JACKSONVILLE:

Golmaal Again
Mersal
Raja the Great
Secret Superstar
Tokyo Ghoul

SCHEDULED FOR REVIEW:

Breathe
Geostorm
Only the Brave
The Snowman
Walking Out

Independence Day: Resurgence

Jeff Goldblum realizes it was a mistake to read the reviews.

(2016) Science Fiction (20^th Century Fox) Liam Hemsworth, Jeff Goldblum, Jessie T. Usher, Bill Pullman, Maika Monroe, Sela Ward, William Fichtner, Judd Hirsch, Brent Spiner, Patrick St. Esprit, Vivica A. Fox, Angelababy, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Deobia Oparei, Nicolas Wright, Travis Tope, Chin Han, Gbenga Akinnagbe, Robert Loggia, John Storey, Joey King. Directed by Roland Emmerich

 

“If you’ve seen one alien invasion, you’ve seen them all.” That may not be an aphorism in Hollywood, but it damn well should be. Ever since the original Independence Day back in 1996, there have been a plethora of invasion flicks of technologically superior aliens trying to rid our planet of its native population and steal its resources for themselves, which sounds an awful lot like a metaphor for colonialism if you ask me.

In Independence Day: Resurgence, twenty years have passed since the last alien invasion failed. Technology scavenged from fallen ships has pushed our own technology far ahead, allowing us to rebuild more quickly and even expand our presence with a modern defense station on the moon. Daniel Levinson (Goldblum) is now in charge of defensive strategies for the planet, which has united after nearly having been annihilated. He believes, like most of the planet’s leadership, that the aliens will be back and we’ve been preparing for twenty years for the inevitability of that fact.

Former President Whitmore (Pullman) is visited regularly by his daughter Patricia (Monroe) who is now an aide to current President Lanford (Ward). Like her dad, Patricia is an ex-fighter pilot. She’s also engaged to hotshot maverick fighter Jake Morrison (Hemsworth) who was exiled to the moon after clipping the wing of the fighter jet of golden boy Dylan Hiller (Usher), son of the late Stephen Hiller, the hero of the War of 1996. The three of them had been close friends but were now leading separate lives. Those lives are about to get a whole lot different.

Because the aliens are back and this time they’ve brought a Mothership the size of a continent. When it lands in the Atlantic Ocean, it covers the entire ocean. The aliens, aware of what happened to the last invasion, are mad as hell and want to finish us off, something having to do with taking the molten core of the planet and using it for fuel. Dr. Brakish Okun (Spiner), who’s been in a coma since his own close encounter with an alien, awakens and has some ideas for saving the Earth (although we get to see a little bit more of his hind end than we ever wanted to) but some of those may well have to wait for the sequel that will one day come. ID4 Part 3 anybody?

There are those in Hollywood who believe that the secret to a great sequel is more of what was in the original, and that sums up this film in a nutshell. Emmerich has, justly or unjustly, gotten a reputation of delivering spectaculars with plenty of destruction but not a lot of thought in the plot department. Here, again, there are things in the story that anyone with even basic knowledge of science will roll their eyes over. For one thing, something that big landing in the Atlantic would send tsunamis that would essentially drown every coast on that ocean, as well as send enough steam and vapor into the air to cause a nuclear winter. Having something that size impact the Earth might also have consequences in terms of knocking the planet off axis. Keep in mind that a much smaller object impacting the Earth may have caused an extinction level event. Even at reduced speeds, the Mothership would have killed half the population of the planet off in an instant just by landing here gently; and they wouldn’t need to land gently to get what they’re after. It would actually be in their best interests to deliberately knock the planet off its axis; it would make their task easier.

It is a hoot to see Goldblum, Pullman, Spiner and Hirsch back in roles that we identify them with, and all of them make the most of their return. Goldblum and Pullman get the lion’s share of time, but Spiner and Hirsch are effective in their supporting roles. The “new kids;” Hemsworth, Usher and Monroe mainly are a little flat; none of them individually or collectively can replace Smith who really made the first film more fun with his swagger and his comic timing, as well as his action chops. Smith reportedly asked for $50 million to sign on here; I’m wondering if it might not have been worth it for Fox to give him what he wanted.

The special effects are, as you can doubtlessly imagine, spectacular although like much that is in this film, much along the same lines as what you saw in ID4. Monuments and icons get destroyed. People flee in terror down streets choked with cars. Dogs get saved. Catchphrases get uttered. Hordes of fighter craft engage the enemy. And as an added attraction, we get to meet the alien Queen. Note to Ellen Ripley on that one; you’re going to need a bigger boat.

This is what I would consider decent summer entertainment; no more and no less. The script is a bit lame-brained but I don’t think anyone is expecting David Mamet here. The effects are more than equal to the task, but they don’t really set the bar any higher; once you blow up the White House (as they did in the first film) the sight of famous places getting destroyed doesn’t really do much for a savvy audience. In short, this is a time-waster that is perfect fodder for shutting your brain off, drinking an ice cold soda, stuffing your face with popcorn and candy and escaping the summer heat for a couple of hours.

REASONS TO GO: Impressive visuals as always. It’s a hoot to see Goldblum, Hirsch, Spiner and Pullman still at the top of their games.
REASONS TO STAY: Plot riddled with holes of logic and science. A bloated and often incomprehensible plot is not helped by the absence of Will Smith.
FAMILY VALUES: Lots and lots of destruction (they always go for the landmarks), plenty of violence, some profanity and a couple of disturbing alien images.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Seven actors reprised their roles from the original; the part of President Whitmore’s daughter Patricia was recast from Mae Whitman in the original to Maika Monroe here because Whitman isn’t conventionally pretty met with outrage on the Internet. Also, Will Smith (whose salary demands were rejected by the studio) appears as a portrait in the White House.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 7/16/16: Rotten Tomatoes: 32% positive reviews. Metacritic: 32/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Battleship
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: The Free State of Jones

Melancholia

 

Kirsten Dunst is sinking fast.

(2011) Science Fiction (Magnolia) Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland, John Hurt, Stellan Skarsgard, Alexander Skarsgard, Charlotte Rampling, Brady Corbet, Jesper Christensen, Udo Kier, Cameron Spurr. Directed by Lars von Trier

It is not often you root for the end of the world at a movie.

Lars von Trier is a Danish director of some renown who is known for movies with remarkable imagery and an artistic aesthetic. His films sharply divide audiences; some proclaim that he is a genius, others a charlatan. Critics tends to moon over him like a lovesick teenager.

I try to take each film as it comes to me, and not review the filmmaker so much as his work. I will say this; I’m not the sort of person Lars von Trier makes movies for. It’s not that I have a problem with trying to make something that is art; I respect any attempt to do so and encourage it. There is room in the world for all sorts of palettes.

But then there is Art. The kind of thing that is created by people who think Art is above everything, who deliberately try to shock and disturb not so much to make a point or even force the viewer to confront their own viewpoints but simply to grab attention. I view this with the same affection I have for a child screaming at the top of their lungs in an inappropriate setting; the message that is being sent is “Look at me! Look at me!”

The film here is divided into two parts, preceded by a prologue of images that essentially tell you the story in a series of slow-moving interactive pictures many of which appear on the trailer. The first part is entitled Justine and is about the character of the same name. Justine (Dunst) is a brand new bride who is at her wedding reception at the home of her super-wealthy brother-in-law John (Sutherland) who is married to her sister Claire (Gainsbourg).

Among the wedding guests are Justine’s parents, Dexter (Hurt) and Gaby (Rampling) – who along with Claire have British accents, something Justine doesn’t have – and who don’t get along at all. Dexter is a bit of a womanizer and Gaby somewhat bitchy. Also there is Justine’s boss Jack (Stellan Skarsgard) who is also her husband Michael’s (Alexander Skarsgard) best man. Jack is tightly focused on getting a tag-line for an advertisement Justine has been working on and sends Tim (Corbet) to get it.

It turns out Justine has some psychological problems, ranging from clinical depression to possibly bipolar disorder and like her mom she’s also a bit of a bitch. She manages to alienate nearly everyone at the wedding. For the viewer, it’s like being at a party that gets more and more awkward to attend. Da Queen was urging me to leave the party but like witnessing a train wreck, I felt compelled to see what the damage would wind up being.

The second part is entitled Claire and shows her, John and their son Leo (Spurr) coping with the sudden appearance of Justine some time after the wedding. She is pale, nearly inert and looked for all the world like an addict coming down from a major bender. The atmosphere is tense with John fed up with Justine’s antics and Claire trying to appeal to her sister in some way.

Hanging over all of this, literally, is planet Melancholia, a gigantic rock that suddenly appeared from behind the sun and is threatening to collide with Earth. While John insists that Melancholia will merely pass by, Justine seems convinced that the Earth is doomed. She knows things, after all.

Having a character “know things” is a bit of a cop out. It’s lazy writing. I will grant you that Dunst, who won the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival for her work here, gives a brave performance, having to urinate in her bridal gown on a golf course, portray a character who isn’t very likable at times and turns up stark naked and sexually aroused at the sight of the approaching planet.

I suppose there are metaphors here and I suppose that I’m not getting them. For me, this was an excruciating two hours that seemed a pointless exercise in making pretty images, which I grant you were in some cases breathtaking, gallery worthy. However, the movie did nothing for me but leave me with an angry wife who demanded an explanation as to why I’d dragged her to the Enzian to see this.

Again, I don’t have a beef with trying to create a work of art. But there’s art and then there’s Art. The difference is that the former is a communication between the artist and the audience, a point that is being made or some insight imparted. The latter is an exercise in self-indulgence.

I have written a review that could easily have been condensed to two words, but I’m making a point. All of these words I’m putting to page are extraneous and ultimately superfluous. They are unnecessary wastes of time for you, the reader for which I apologize. All of the review you need to read is this: Fuck Art.

REASONS TO GO: Some pretty images and Dunst makes a brave effort.

REASONS TO STAY: Where to begin? Pretentious, overbearing, badly written, aggravating, awkward – it’s just a mess masquerading as art.

FAMILY VALUES: Graphic nudity, sex and implied masturbation, as well as some bad language.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The above image, used in the movie’s poster and briefly seen in the prologue, is based on John Everett Millais’s 1852 painting Ophelia.

HOME OR THEATER: Don’t do it. For the love of God, don’t do it.

FINAL RATING: 1/10

TOMORROW: Winnie the Pooh

New Releases for the Week of November 25, 2011

THE MUPPETS

(Disney) Jason Segel, Amy Adams, Chris Cooper, Rashida Jones, Alan Arkin, Jack Black, Billy Crystal, Zach Galifianakis, Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy. Directed by James Bobin

It’s been awhile since we’ve seen the Muppets onscreen and quite frankly, the lot of them have gone their separate ways. Some of their fans still carry the torch however, and one of them learns that the Muppets Theater, where their show took place, is about to be bulldozed to the ground by a greedy oilman who wants to drill into the oil deposit below the theater. Energized to save his beloved Muppets, he enlists the help of a whole lot of celebrities to help save the day – but can he get the Muppets back together again?

See the trailer, clips and web-only content here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Family

Rating: PG (for some mild rude humor)

Arthur Christmas

(Columbia/Sony Animation) Starring the voices of James McAvoy, Jim Broadbent, Hugh Laurie, Bill Nighy. Santa Claus has gone high tech. The increasing world population has meant that the North Pole’s gift-delivering operation has had to make some changes, much to the chagrin of several generations of Santas including the ne’er-do-well younger son, Arthur. When it appears a child has been overlooked, it will be up to Arthur to deliver it old-school, and in the process restore everyone’s faith in Christmas. This is the latest from the wonderfully warped minds at Aardman animation.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website

Release formats: Standard, 3D

Genre: Animated Feature

Rating: PG (for some mild rude humor)

The Descendants

(Fox Searchlight) George Clooney, Beau Bridges, Robert Forster, Judy Greer. A somewhat indifferent husband and father is forced to face his responsibilities and come to terms with his past when his wife is involved in a boating accident in Hawaii. He discovers that his view of the world is not necessarily what reality is, and that there are things that are worth fighting for.

See the trailer, clips and a featurette here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Dramedy

Rating: R (for language including some sexual references)

Hugo

(Paramount) Asa Butterfield, Chloe Grace Moretz, Sacha Baron Cohen, Jude Law. A young boy finds a home in a Paris train station after a series of tragic circumstances. He finds that his father has left him an automaton with an odd heart-shaped lock. The search for the key that fits that lock will lead to an adventure of magic and mystery unlike any other you’ve ever seen – and this was directed by Martin Scorsese, so that alone should whet your appetite.

See the trailer, clips, featurettes and an interview here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard, 3D

Genre: Family

Rating: PG (for mild thematic material, some action/peril and smoking)

Melancholia

(Magnolia) Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alexander Skarsgard, Kiefer Sutherland. As a planetoid approaches the Earth on a collision course, a young newlywed awaits the end of the world with her friends and family. This film became infamous for director Lars von Trier’s meltdown at the Cannes Film Festival where Dunst won the best actress award at the prestigious festival.

See the trailer, clips, an interview and a link to view the full-length film here.

For more on the movie this is the website

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller

Rating: R (for some graphic nudity, sexual content and languge)

My Week With Marilyn

(Weinstein) Eddie Redmayne, Michelle Williams, Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench. A 23-year-old assistant on the film set of the 1956 classic The Prince and the Showgirl becomes attracted to Marilyn Monroe, starring in the film with Sir Laurence Olivier and simultaneously on her honeymoon with playwright Arthur Miller. When Marilyn yearns to get away from the pressures of the film and of being Marilyn Monroe, he takes her away for a week to show her the pleasures of idyllic British country life.

See the trailer and clips here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Biographical Drama

Rating: R (for some language)

The City of Your Destination

Sir Anthony Hopkins is tired of being stalked by man-shaped rainclouds.

(2009) Drama (Screen Media) Anthony Hopkins, Laura Linney, Omar Metwally, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alexandra Maria Lara, Ambar Mallman, Hiroyuki Sanada, Norma Argentina, Norma Aleandro, Luciano Suardi. Directed by James Ivory

Our heroes may seem to be one thing on the surface. However when we dig deeper, we may find our first impressions to be much mistaken; in fact, often that status as a hero might not bear close inspection. Then again, whose life can?

Omar Razaghi (Metwally) is a literature professor who wants to write an authorized biography of reclusive but obscure author Jules Gund but the trustees of his estate prove to be polite but firm in their refusal of permission. Omar’s overbearing girlfriend Diedre (Lara) convinces him to trek down to Uruguay to see if he can persuade them in person. Although surprised by his appearance, they put him up at the author’s estate nonetheless.

The trustees consist of Adam (Hopkins), Gund’s ambitious brother; Arden Langdon (Gainsbourg), Gund’s meek mistress and Caroline (Linney), Gund’s acerbic wife who is the one putting up the most resistance to Omar’s request. Factor in Adam’s quiet partner and the arrival of Deirdre and you have a quagmire of emotion and secrets waiting to explode.

I know the plot here is somewhat vague and that isn’t entirely by design – I’m still trying to figure out what this movie is about and haven’t up until now. This is based on a novel by Peter Cameron but curiously has more of a drawing room theatrical atmosphere to it.

This is the first movie directed by James Ivory that his production partner Ismael Merchant hasn’t been involved in (Merchant passed away in 2005 and Ivory filmed it in 2007; legal battles held it out of theaters until 2009) and while longtime Merchant-Ivory writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala did contribute the script, there’s a sense that this may be the final curtain for the production company that brought some of the most memorable movies of the last 20 years to the screen, including Howard’s End and Remains of the Day. Ivory is 83 as of this writing and given that this movie wasn’t a financial success (and the production company hasn’t had one in quite awhile), it may be a bit difficult for him to secure financing for another production. There are those in Hollywood who think his kind of movie is out of vogue; smart is certainly not in at the moment, assuming that it ever was.

There is definitely some high-mindedness to the script and this is most definitely written for those who have more than mindless fun on their itinerary at the theater but smarts don’t a great movie make. For one thing, the critical role of Omar is terribly miscast. Omar is supposed to be a smoldering, sensual presence but Metwally doesn’t have that kind of personality. In fact, one gets the idea that he is a bit overwhelmed by the script and his fellow cast.

After all, Hopkins is one of the greatest actors of this generation and any opportunity to see him work is worth taking. Linney has shown flashes of brilliance at times and even when she isn’t at the top of her game she usually puts on a performance worth seeing.

Part of my issue is that the movie moves along at a snail’s pace. A motion picture implies that there is some sort of movement but this one seems to have paralysis of the pacing. Merchant-Ivory movies always take their time to unfold, but this one never really does, instead plodding along at a majestic pace like a dowager grandly taking her time to descend the stairs to the dinner table, the essence of dignity.

I wish this movie had shown a bit more character, a bit more zing and a bit less intellect. Some movies are all balls and no brain while others are all brains and nothing below the belt (as this one is). There is a happy medium between the two, and it would have made for a much more interesting cinematic experience.

WHY RENT THIS: Hopkins is always worth seeing.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: There doesn’t seem to be much of a point. Pacing so languid as to be comatose. Metwally seems out of his depth.

FAMILY VALUES: There is some brief sexuality with implied nudity (but you really can’t see anything naughty).

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: In the original novel, the character of Caroline is French but when Linney expressed interest in playing the part, it was re-written as American.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: None listed.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $1.4M on an $8.3M production budget; this was a commercial failure.

FINAL RATING: 5/10

TOMORROW: Missing Pieces