Michael Winterbottom's "A Mighty Heart"

Michael Winterbottom's "A Mighty Heart" - based on Mariane Pearl's book about the brutal death of her journalist-husband Daniel and her willful ability to cope with this loss - is a smart, tough film, as one would expect from any politically-driven movie from this uncompromising director. And as Mariane, Angelina Jolie impressively abandons herself in a committed, vanity-free performance.

But there's a hole at the center of this otherwise convicing polemic: Daniel Pearl himself is virtually missing and, by extention, so is the connection that would pull in an audience. While the talented Dan Futterman is well-cast as Pearl and effective in his few brief, fleeting scenes, there simply isn't enough of him.

This is a crucial flaw that reviews have inexplicably overlooked.

His Daniel Pearl is a ghost even at the beginning of the movie, a conceit which could have been intentional on Winterbottom's part. Nevertheless, it seriously constrains his film. "A Mighty Heart" is in desperate need of more exposition wherein we'd get to know Pearl and what drives him and, consequently, feel some empathy for him before he is abducted and beheaded.

Without these early scenes, we're left with an impassioned, tightly-coiled film that somehow leaves one cold.

(Artwork: Angelina Jolie and Dan Futterman as Mariane and Daniel Pearl in Paramount Vantage's "A Mighty Heart")

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Anyone interested in perusing some 2060 of my film reviews, dating back to 1994, can do so by simply going to RottenTomatoes.Com

cinema obscura Triple-Header: "Neverwas" (2005) , "The Big White" (2005) & "Lonely Hearts" (2006)

Straight to video.

Straight to cable.

Straight to hell.

Straight to nowhere.

So was the shared fate to two star-heavy flicks that caught my attention - belatedly - this week.

2005's "The Big White," directed by someone named Mark Mylod, stars Robin Williams, Holly Hunter, Woody Harrelson, Giovanni Ribisi, Tim Blake Nelson and Alison Lohman. It plays on The Movie Channel (TMC) on July 14 and 22. Is that a premiere?

Meanwhile, Joshua Michael Stern's "Neverwas," also from 2005, is toplined by Aaron Eckhart, Ian McKellen, Jessica Lange, Nick Nolte, William Hurt, Michael Moriarty, Brittany Murphy, Vera Farmiga, Alan Cumming and Cynthia Stevenson. It's new on DVD.

I won't burden you with a synopsis for either film because, with those lists of players, who cares?

One more question: Exactly how bad could these two be not to have been released?

Same goes for "Lonley Hearts," with stars John Travolta, James Gandolfini, Salma Hayek, Jaret Leto and Laura Dern, and which played only two markets - New York and Los Angeles - before going straight to hell, er, DVD.

For the record, it's a remake of Leonard Kastle's cult fave, "The Honeymoon Killers."

Cinema Obscura is a recurring feature of The Passionate Moviegoer, devoted to those films that have been largely forgotten. Suggestions welcome.

(Artwork: Poster art for "The Big White," "Neverwas" and "Lonely Hearts")

Au Revoir, Jean-Claude, 1933-2007

The death of the wonderful French actor, Jean-Claude Brialy, at age 74 on Wednesday in Paris is yet another reminder of how we're losing a little bit of the French film community every day.

It's been said that American stars aren't what they used to be - that, as Davis, Hepburn, Bogart, Fonda and Brando have passed on, there is no one who has truly replaced them. This sense of urgency and panic is even more acute in France.

I became aware of it when Jean Gabin died. That was the end of a great era in French filmmaking, I thought. Matters got more desperate when Yves Montand and Simone Signoret passed, but I was comforted by the fact that we still had relative newcomers Gerard Depardieu and Catherine Deneuve.

While someone like Patrick Deware died young, there was Isabelle Huppert, his contemporary, who has prevailed.


But each year, I become aware that few new French stars have emerged and when someone as valuable as Brialy passes, there's the feeling that something important is being lost. Depardieu and Deneuve are still active, Jeanne Moreau pops up occasionally, but Jean-Louis Trintignat hasn't sparkled in years.

And where is the unique and indispensible Bernadette Lafont? Michel Piccoli? I miss you, Delphine Seyrig! R.I.P.


No, the New Wave isn't new anymore. It isn't even old.

It doesn't even exist.

But, for now, let's reflect on its greatness, and Jean-Claude Brialy's place in it.

I suggest you rent Eric Rohmer's irresistible "Le genou de Claire" ("Claire's Knee"), Brialy's greatest triumph, and mourn what we have just lost.

(Artwork: Sincerely, Jean-Claude; Brialy as a bright, promising young actor; poster art for "Claire's Knee"/"Le genou de Claire")

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Anyone interested in perusing some 2060 of my film reviews, dating back to 1994, can do so by simply going to RottenTomatoes.Com

cinema obscura: Peter Bogdanovich's "At Long Last Love" (1975)

Criminally maligned - and mostly by people who haven't even bothered to see it - Peter Bogdanovich's sublime homage to the '30s film musical, "At Long Last Love," is ripe for a little rediscovery and some decided re-evaluation.

But this is unlikely to happen, given that its releasing studio, 20th Century-Fox, has kept the film buried and off home entertainment for more than three decades now. Exacerbating matters is the fact that Fox recently saw fit to give Walter Lang's rather embarrassing "Can-Can" (1960) the deLuxe, two-disc DVD treatment.

Driven by a rich Cole Porter score (of familiar standards and melodies more esoteric) and filled with an affable cast of good sports - Burt Reynolds, Cybill Shepherd, Madeline Kahn, Dulio Del Prete, Eileen Brennan, John Hillerman and Mildred Natwick as playboy Reynolds' dowager mother - the film is a classic still waiting to be discovered.

Bogdanovich was arguably at his most creative on this movie, filming it in color but designing it largely in black-and-white, so that the only colors in the film are his actors' skin tones. He also enlisted his cast of game, nonprofessional singers to perform their songs live, every one of them, and despite the hasty assumptions that were made at the time of the film's release, the singing is fine here - more than fine actually, given that Shepherd, Kahn and Del Prete all sport trained voices, while Reynolds affects a soothing Dean Martin-style croon.

To complement the stress-free singing, choreographer Rita Abrams kept her dance routines light and easy-going. The result is that the dancing here has the off-the-cuff, scratch-pad casualness of the in-between numbers in the Astaire-Rogers films. The film doesn't feel choreographed.

"At Long Last Love" is clearly an attempt to impersonate the movies of Fred and Ginger, with Bogdanovich affecting the unobtrusive directorial style that George Stevens and Mark Sandrich brought to the dancing team's films. It is decidedly old-fashioned in its artificiality, but "At Long Last Love" is also post-modernist, mixing in a neo-realist musical style pioneered by both Vincente Minnelli and Stanley Donen. It's a daring experiment that works - again, despite what you've heard.

Curiously, several versions of the film exist. Under the gun to get "At Long Last Love" out in the summer of 1975, Bogdanovich delivered a print clocking in at 118 minutes. Following the disasterous critical reaction, the film was cut down to 105 minutes. Two versions of it, in fact, played Radio City Music Hall. The film that opened there was not the same movie that closed. (Regarding the critical reaction, I hasten to add that there were/are several reputable critics who actually like "At Long Last Love.")

The syndicated TV version is even shorter, although it reinstates some fleeting, charming musical bits that were originally cut for time. The 16mm version of the film, which runs roughly 130 minutes, presents "At Long Last Love" in its most complete form and includes the two numbers that originally opened the film - a terrific "Down in the Depths" by Kahn and Del Prete's "Tomorrow." (As conceived, each of the four lead characters had an introductory song, although Kahn's and Del Prete's were excised just before the film's release.) Still missing, however, is Mildred Natwick's "Kate the Great" number.

Given that Fox has no interest in the film, it would be great if it handed it over to Criterion, so that Bogdanovich could put together a definitive archival edition.

If only.

Cinema Obscura is a recurring feature of The Passionate Moviegoer, devoted to those films that have been largely forgotten. Suggestions welcome.

(Artwork: Original artwork for Fox's "At Long Last Love")

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Anyone interested in perusing some 2060 of my film reviews, dating back to 1994, can do so by simply going to RottenTomatoes.Com

façade: John Wayne @ 100 Years

If he were still with us, John Wayne would turn 100 today. But the fact is, he never left us, thanks to those indelible, iconic images preserved on film and thanks especially to the popularity of home entertainment.

Wayne was arguably the first "film personality," someone known more for his presence than for his acting ability. In fact, despite the fact that he made classic films under the tutelege of some of our greatest filmmakers, Wayne was largely unappreciated as an actor, a situation that was exacerated by his politics in general and by his involvement in the incedinary "The Green Berets" in particular.

It wasn't until he made Henry Hathaway's "True Grit" (for which he won an Oscar) and, later, Don Siegel's "The Shootist," that Wayne was finally, belatedly, appreciated for the companionable, lived-in quality of his acting. He was finally on par with Gary Cooper, who was always considered more of an actor but less of a film force.

And so, in celebration of Wayne's birth, your own personal, at-home film festival is advised. At the top of the list, I'd recommend, Howard Hawks' "Red River," John Ford's "Fort Apache" and "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon," Allan Dwan's "The Sands of Iwo Jima," Ford's "The Quiet Man," Howard Hawks' rousing "Rio Bravo," Ford's seminal "The Searchers" aand the aforementioned "The Shootist." (I was never a fan of "True Grit.") On the lighter side, go with Hathaway's North to Alaska" and Hawks' "Hatari!"

Savor Wayne and learn why film acting is such a singular, near-intangible accomplishment. The good ones - you can't catch acting for a second. They just are. And so it was - is - with John Wayne.

(Artwork: An atypical view of The Duke, on vacation in Acapulco in 1959 and looking strikingly different, thanks to Phil Stern's camera lens)

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Anyone interested in perusing some 2060 of my film reviews, dating back to 1994, can do so by simply going to RottenTomatoes.Com