From Hero to Terror.

Going through a national movie site I ran into the following typo for the recent blockbuster,

Not only did it make me laugh, but also got me to thinking about how a single letter gives it an entirely different connotation and even more important why it has that effect.

I, in no way support the theories of the current American government regarding the Middle Eastern country, but the way in which the media washes our heads constantly and almost immediately makes us connect Iran and Iraq with terrorism is terrible.

Might be even scarier than anything playing at the multiplex huh?

Savage Grace **

Director: Tom Kalin

Cast: Julianne Moore, Eddie Redmayne

Stephen Dillane, Hugh Dancy, Elena Anaya, Belén Rueda, Unax Ugalde

On November 11, 1972, wealthy socialite Barbara Daly Baekeland was stabbed to death by her son Antony with whom she was having an incestuous affair.

In "Savage Grace" director Tom Kalin recreates the events that led to the tragic consequences, beginning with Antony's childhood during which Barbara (Moore) and his father Brooks (the always subtly brilliant Dillane) moved from New York City to Paris where he became part of a erudite circle his mother had a love/hate relationship with.

Years later while living in Spain, Antony (played by Redmayne throughout most of the film) begins to explore his sexuality and while his mother encourages him to practice love with anyone he wants (Antony was gay), his father runs away with his mistress (Anaya) leaving the young man to look after his mother.

Aimlessly travelling from exotic locale to locale, the film has trouble finding an emotional center that makes the characters' story worth a listen.

It doesn't help that Kalin chooses a disenchanted, detached aesthetic either, capturing his characters in the very same way in which they tackle their lives; moving only by inertia amongst pastel colored settings and randomly chosen vignettes.

Narrated by Antony, the story has a hard time deciding if it wants to be about the mother, the son, the subsequent incest or if it merely wants to blame the missing paternal figure for everything.

Most of the letters read by Antony are addressed to his father and the words contain pent up anger and bitterness that Redmayne's soft spoken, ironic tone never taps into.

Kalin makes a mess out of settling over Antonioni like techniques of character/structure connection or postmodernist melodrama, but of course the one thing he can't really control is Moore who gives an extraordinary performance.

Her Barbara is a pocketful of surprises, she plays her like the woman who inspired the original Madonna/Whore complex for whom the acts in which she seems like a lunatic require no extra effort from sitting with high society friends for tea.

Moore, who has never been one for star turns, avoids chewing the scenery here as well and turns in delicious work that touches camp (listening to her screaming "little puta" to her husband's lover at an airport is chilling and satisfying) and the mysteries of human behavior (what she does after the airport incident...).

While it may seem that for the movie Barbara is nothing more than tabloid fodder, Moore dignifies her with the benefit of the doubt.

When the story begins to explore the mysteries of the sexual relationship between Antony and Barbara, Moore handles all of her scenes with a perfectly imperfect balance of motherly love and plain bizarre mental behavior.

As Barbara puts her hand over her son's crotch you will feel the discomfort and awkwardness of the moment, Moore on the other side has completely vanished.

Sketches of Sydney Pollack.

The incomparable Sydney Pollack has passed away at the age of 73.

With an impressive filmography that includes "Tootsie", "The Firm" and "the Interpreter", Pollack has the distinctive achievement of having directed two of the most romantic films of all time; "The Way We Were" and the Oscar winning "Out of Africa", which also happen to be two examples of a particular style he excelled at with his features.

Teaming up great lead actors with compelling stories he kept alive the adult drama in a world that constantly underestimated this audience.

While everyone else was teaming up Jessica Alba and Chris Evans in films about saving the world, Pollack paired people like Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman to deliver films that could still be thrilling by genre conventions and deliver the emotional goods.

Extracting career best performances from people like Robert Redford, Barbra Streisand and Dustin Hoffman, Pollack was also a very accomplished actor, he delivered scene stealing work in "Eyes Wide Shut" and last year's multiawarded "Michael Clayton" which he also produced.

His producing work with the late Anthony Minghella also provided Pollack with a deserved place in film history, considering he made films like "The Talented Mr. Ripley".

Nominated for several best director Oscars he took it home for "Out of Africa" which in a way sums up the remarkable career of who also seemed to be a very charming man.

By exploring the basic core of human relationships he touched people everywhere and proved that we're affected by the same things, whether we're European royalty in Africa or drag performers in national television.

Then She Found Me **

Director: Helen Hunt

Cast: Matthew Broderick, Colin Firth, Helen Hunt, Bette Midler

Ben Shenkman, Lynn Cohen, Salman Rushdie

April (Hunt) is a 39 year old schoolteacher desperate to have a child.

However things begin to go wrong for April once her husband Ben (Broderick) leaves her, followed by the "what else can go wrong?" death of her adoptive mother (the wonderful Cohen).

Then with the reappearance of her biological mother; the sassy, mildly famous daytime talk show host, Bernice Graves (Midler), who deeply wants to reconnect with the daughter she gave up decades before, the film finds itself trying to explore the human condition like Woody Allen, only to end more like a rejected sitcom pilot.

Hunt's directorial debut, and slightly narcissistic self casting, proves to be very much like everything she's done in the past.

Hunt, very much like April, seems to be stuck in a rut, in which she knows she isn't giving all she has, but feels safe enough to follow.

April is built with the same hysterical behavior that made Jamie Buchman so funny in "Mad About You" and Carol Connelly so affecting in "As Good As It Gets", but as one character it all feels a bit too much.

To this sprinkle a bit of ethnic humor (Jewish culture in this case), the Mr. Right (who else but Firth?) everyone can tell is good for her and you end with nothing but good intentions served in a stuffed platter.

Midler is as reliably charming as ever and Firth fills his character with nuances that come off looking adorable when they should feel annoying, but as a whole the film fails because of its structure.

Hunt has copied the style of some of the great television directors she worked with, but she has forgotten that in cinema you don't have the aid of commercials.

When one of her mothers dies and the other one appears three minutes later without an invitation to try different car insurance or a new fast food meal in between, we feel we too have been cheated of something.

For every moment in which the low keyness of the script achieves real emotion (a scene where April takes a nap with her boyfriend's children) there's one that feels like uncomfortable self parody (a subplot involving Steve McQueen) often leading us to wonder when exactly did we change the channel.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian *1/2

Director: Andrew Adamson

Cast: William Moseley, Anna Popplewell, Skandar Keynes,

Georgie Henley, Ben Barnes, Sergio Castellitto, Damián Alcázar, Peter Dinklage

One year after their adventure featured in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe", the Pevensie kids (Moseley, Popplewell, Keynes, Henley) find themselves during WWII London missing the thrills they felt in Narnia.

Just in time to indulge their ennui they are magically transported back to the place they missed so much only to realize that more than a thousand years have passed after their last visit.

They have been summoned by Prince Caspian (Barnes), a Telmarine prince trying to regain his throne after being betrayed by his uncle Miraz (Castellitto).

The Telmarines conquered Narnia after the Pevensies left the first time, practically exterminating all the magical creatures that inhabited it and even worse denying their very existence to subsequent generations.

Now Caspian finds himself seeking help from "old Kings and Queens" he never knew existed and before you can say Exodus metaphor he has united with mythological creatures to defeat his uncle and reestablish balance in Narnia.

For a film that sounds so promising and exciting in words, "Prince Caspian" pretty much feels like Nah-rnia.

Everything in it is bigger than before, the set pieces are astonishing and the visual effects couldn't be better. Yet again they could, because somewhere in between dancing trees and mouseketeers, the story lost its need to thrill.

It's as if the filmmakers took for granted the need to make audiences believe they were watching something magical and unique, choosing instead a complete ho hum mood.
The acting is respectable (Tilda Swinton has a very small scene as the White Witch and gives the film its only life), even though the casting is a bit racist as they place all non-British actors in the roles of the savage Telmarines, complete with violent conquistador armors and distinctively forced accents, but somehow not even this is able to keep your interest.

And it's only then when you realize what the problem was all along; despite the fact that this is clearly fantasy with Christian allegories at the bottom of it all, it's still a story about selfish kids who travel between worlds to satisfy their apparent blood thirst (even if you don't see actual blood in the film).

Even worse, once all the problems are solved with such efficiency and ease you wonder if a whole movie was needed for them to go through this?

With an exuberant running time of 140 minutes, the film at least remains true to its time shifting structure, because leaving the theater you feel you too have aged a thousand years.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ***

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett

Karen Allen, Shia LaBeouf, John Hurt, Jim Broadbent, Ray Winstone

The "Indiana Jones" films have always been successful for one important reason; with their gleeful combination of excitement, vintage serial aesthetics and pure star power, they make you feel like it's the first time you've been to the movies.

The series kickstarted more than a quarter of century ago with the flawless "Raiders of the Lost Ark" which was followed by two other films, in what turned the main character into the ultimate adventure hero.

Now at 65, Ford reprises his role as the khaki, whip and Fedora clad, snake hating archaelogist with the same refreshing energy and charisma he possessed twenty years ago.

Following what has become a formula, the film opens with the Paramount logo turning into a real mountain, this time set in Nevada (which instantly reminds you of Richard Dreyfuss) where a group of KGB agents, led by Colonel Doctor Irina Spalko (a superb Blanchett in full Ninotchka before Paris mode) have kidnapped Indy and take him to an army vault where he is forced to help them find a mysterious crate.

After failing to stop the Communists, surviving a nuclear attack and being suspected by the FBI of having Red liaisons, Indy is fired from the university where he works in and sets off to find Harold Oxley (Hurt), his mentor who mysteriously disappeared while doing research in South America.

All of this, of course, has happened within the first thirty minutes which also introduce us to Mutt Williams (LaBeouf) a greaser who becomes Indy's sidekick, the search of the mysterious title skulls in Perú and the return of Marion Ravenwood (Allen who is perhaps the best thing in the movie).

By no means a reinvention, this is a direct throwback to what we have come to expect of Indy's films. including the visuals (director of photography Janusz Kaminski emulates Douglas Slocombe's work from the first three films and the visual gags paying homage to the Lucas/Spielberg filmography are a joy to behold).

In a constantly changing world, where threats come in unexpected shapes and forms, it's somehow relieving to return to a time and place where enemies came with distinctive uniforms and accents.

What's ironic is that as insulting and politically incorrect as that sounds at the center of the film lies the contradiction that is Imperialist ingenuity, something so well concocted and marketed that it ends up appealing to everyone because it touches the unique ground of human excitement.

Not to say that "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" is American propaganda, because even if it reduces Communist Russians to villain stereotypes it has established that none of this is real and for a Spielberg film it's even a bit critical of the era.

When Indiana gets blacklisted, we see a country so blinded by fear that it didn't care to make a difference between right and wrong and when later we see a 50's archetypical American suburb get smashed to bits by nuclear testing we come closer to grasping the terror behind it.

Not even Mayans where the Inca ought to be or the continuous need to raise the level on stunts and pyrotechnics will take you out of this ride.

And that's the other thing that makes "Indiana Jones" so fantastic: their ability to exist in a world where everything can, and probably will, happen.

A parallel universe of sorts where Indian, Mayan and Christian deities all get to share the spotlight with bizarre military plans based on conspiracy theories.

And a universe for that matter where a senior citizen is able to reignite the engines of our deepest fantasies, the ones we grew up to, the ones in which we were astronauts, spies or archaelogists and the world seemed to be but the next adventure.

We Are Family!

A few months ago, when everyone left from the Golden Era of Hollywood seemed to have been passing away, my morbid mind led me to ask myself what about the de Havilland sisters?

Now in their 90's Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland still hate each other's guts like they did more than 60 years ago.

"The Independent" has a great feature on their rivalry which is at times scandalous and often heartbreaking, leading us to wonder if they'll also try to beat each other to the grave.