Leading Ladies On Stage—Sutton Foster in “Sweet Charity”; Laura Osnes at 54 Below

Sweet Charity

Music by Cy Coleman; lyrics by Dorothy Fields; book by Neil Simon

Directed by Leigh Silverman; choreographed by Joshua Bergasse

Performances through January 9, 2017

The New Group @ Signature Theatre, 480 West 42nd Street, New York, NY

thenewgroup.org

Laura Osnes: The Roads Not Taken

Performances through November 30, 2016

54 Below, 254 West 54th Street, New York, NY

54below.com

I’ve said it many times: we are in a golden age of sublime theater singer-actresses, and two of our very best are Sutton Foster and Laura Osnes. It’s always a treat whenever either of them are on stage, and when they appear in smaller spaces, so much the better. That’s what we get as Foster is killing it in Sweet Charity in the cozy confines of the Signature’s Linney Theater, while Osnes recently performed her captivating cabaret show at the intimate club 54 Below.

Sutton Foster (center) in Sweet Charity (photo: Monique Carboni)

Foster and director Leigh Silverman must deal with long shadows in Sweet Charity, based on Federico Fellini's classic 1956 tragicomedy The Nights of Cabiria, which starred the director’s beloved wife Giulietta Masina in the title role; Bob Fosse’s original Broadway production starred the director/choreographer’s beloved wife Gwen Verdon. So four legends of film and theater tower over this proto-feminist musical, whose tuneful and hummable score is by Cy Coleman, clever lyrics by Dorothy Fields and amusingly sassy book is by Neil Simon.

Foster’s Charity—the put-upon but endlessly optimistic dance hall hostess whose every romantic relationship ends in tears—is a dazzling creation, filled to the brim with the star’s bottomless well of charisma, pizzazz, charm and spunkiness. She can drop Simon’s sharp one-liners like nobody’s business, she can sing like a dream and her dance moves can put most of her peers to shame. As one example of many, her scintillating tap number during “If My Friends Could See Me Now” is such a show-stopper in every sense that it threatens to topple the tenuous hold Silverman has on the material.

Apparently, Sweet Charity must now be tweaked to make it palatable today: no one would believe such a beguilingly sweet thing as an almost willing doormat for men, so this hopeless romantic has been turned into a slightly more hopeful realist. Foster’s sass is less naïve ingénue and more bruised lover, and the show’s final number has become “Where Am I Going?”, originally sung by Charity before, not after, her final amorous entanglement ends in disappointment.

Such directorial intrusion doesn’t totally destroy the show: Derek McLane’s spare set, Jeff Croiter’s moody lighting, Joshua Bergasse’s serviceable choreography, the solid supporting cast and tight six-piece (all-female!) band contribute to its entertainment quotient. And Silverman knows enough to leave her star front and center, and she makes Sweet Charity as much her own as she did Anything Goes, Violet and The Wild Party. No one can do it all quite like Sutton Foster.

Laura Osnes

Minnesota native Laura Osnes made her auspicious Broadway debut in 2007’s revival of Grease, then consolidated that with winning turns in shows as varied as South Pacific, Bonnie and Clyde, Cinderella and Bandstand (coming to Broadway in the spring). For her current solo show at 54 Below—which she’s performed several times in the past couple years—she has looked at other musicals which, for various reasons, ended up not panning out for her, under the cute title Laura Osnes: The Roads Not Taken.

Opening with “Not for the Life of Me” from Thoroughly Modern Millie—which gave Foster her first Tony in 2002—Osnes proceeded through an alternate career that, in its offbeat way, is almost as impressive as what she ended up doing. Punctuated by thoroughly charming explanations of why this or that show didn’t turn out right for her (something else came along, she didn’t get called back, etc.), Osnes beguiled the audience with her bright, clear soprano in numbers from classic musicals like Fiddler on the Roof, Brigadoon, My Fair Lady and a pair of Sondheims, A Little Night Music and Sweeney Todd—all of which sounded tantalizingly right when she performed songs like “Show Me,” “Soon” and “Green Finch and Linnet Bird.”

Equally satisfying were her forays into more recent shows: she agily brandished the puppet Kate for “There’s a Fine, Fine Line” from Avenue Q, sang the hell out of the title song from Bring It On (which is not in the show any more, she wryly noted) and dueted with guest star Rob McClure in a sensitive “What I Meant to Say” from My Paris. There was of course the requisite “Popular” from Wicked, but that was offset by “Let Me Your Star” from TV’s Smash and a lovely “What Baking Can Do” from Waitress, which she was in the running to take over from Jessie Mueller. Instead, she’ll return to Broadway in Bandstand, which she gave the audience a taste of with “Worth It.” When I saw it at the Paper Mill last year, Osnes’s emotionally focused performance was the show’s highlight, which it undoubtedly will be on Broadway as well.

December '16 Digital Week III

Blu-rays of the Week 

Creepshow 2

The Driller Killer 
(Arrow)

The first Creepshow (1982) was fun, but its 1987 follow-up Creepshow 2 is far less memorably more of the same: its three segments have their moments (especially the third, with Lois Chiles’s manic performance as an adulterous wife who keeps running over the same man), but the overall effect is of desperation and a far cry from the original. Abel Ferrara’s insane Driller Killer (1979) stars the director himself as a tortured artist turned title murderer: if you’re into Ferrara’s twisted worldview, by all means help yourself. Both films have excellent restored transfers; extras are interviews, commentaries and features, with Ferrara’s documentary, Mulberry St., on Driller.

In Order of Disappearance 
(Magnet)

Stellan Skarsgard’s intense performance as a grieving father who tracks down those drug dealers responsible for his son’s fatal overdose is the obvious reason to watch director Hans Petter Moland’s muddled but entertaining black comedy. The violence seems real, pouring out of the father’s sorrow and revenge, which Skarsgard plays perfectly, even during the film’s final (and intentionally ridiculous) shootout. There’s a superior hi-def transfer; extras are brief interviews.

The Man Who Skied Down Everest 
(Film Detective) 

Bruce Nydnik and Lawrence Schiller’s Oscar-winning 1975 Best Documentary is a still-astonishing chronicle of the 1970 quest by Japanese daredevil Yuichiro Miura to climb and ski down the world’s highest mountain. Douglas Rain’s narration (from Miura’s own diaries) is at times redundant, but the incredible camerawork, which catches seemingly every moment of this superhuman attempt—including some of the most amazing feats ever shot—is what makes this a classic of its kind. The film looks splendid on Blu-ray.

Otello 
(Sony Classical)

Giuseppe Verdi’s classic opera might even outdo Shakespeare’s play for dramatic intensity and sorrowful tragedy, and Bartlett Sher’s new Met Opera staging catches all of that, thanks to sensitive conducting by Yannick Nezet-Segun and exceptional playing by the Met Orchestra. Then there are the emotionally rich portrayals of Aleksandrs Antonenko as Othello, Zeljko Lucic as Iago and Sonya Yoncheva as a heartbreaking Desdemona. Both the hi-def video and audio are impressive.

Sully 
(Warner Bros) 

In Clint Eastwood’s absorbing if not particularly resonant reconstruction of the celebrated “Miracle on the Hudson” in 2009, Tom Hanks gives a functional but unilluminating portrayal of one of America’s most celebrated heroes, airline pilot Sully Sullenberger. Far better because less encumbered by hero worship is Aaron Eckhart as the unsung co-pilot; in the thankless role of the worried wife phoning husband Sully, Laura Linney is all classy understatement. The film, a relatively brief but still padded 96 minutes, looks fine on Blu; extras comprise three making-of featurettes.

DVDs of the Week

Disorder 
(IFC)

Alice Winocour’s involving thriller centers around a wonderfully complicated central relationship: a French Iraq war vet with PTSD becomes a bodyguard for the trophy wife of a wealthy businessman, and when deadly home invaders arrive, his skills come in handy to save her, her child and himself. Deftly combining action with introspection, Winocour has made a volatile drama buoyed by superb performances by Matthias Schoenaerts and Diane Kruger.

Little Men 
(Magnolia) 

Ira Sachs’ latest New York City-set comic drama is a well-observed but meandering study of teenagers who become friends amid the linked difficulties of their family lives: even at 85 minutes, the film feels stretched out, as if it’s little more than a sketch turned into feature length. Sachs’ usual strength is his cast, and Little Men is no exception: the boys are truthfully played by newcomers Theo Taplitz and Michael Barbieri, and there’s good work from Alfred Molina, Talia Balsam, Jennifer Ehle and Greg Kinnear as the adults in their lives.

December '16 Digital Week II

Blu-rays of the Week 

Fellini’s Roma 

(Criterion)

Federico Fellini’s impressionistic 1972 kaleidoscope of the world’s greatest city—or at least the center of the world, as any Romans will willingly say—came out between his delightful TV movie The Clowns and sentimental childhood journey Amarcord. It’s filled with dozens of indelible images, including a stupendously wordless final sequence of motorcycles racing through the streets of the city at night, that compensate for its share of longueurs. The hi-def image looks superbly grainy and film-like; extras include a commentary, deleted scenes, and interviews with director Paolo Sorrentino and Fellini friend/poet Valerio Magrelli.

Henry—Portrait of a Serial Killer 

(Dark Sky)

Director John McNaughton’s 1986 cult film actually seems rather mild today, its clinical depiction of a murderer actually shows him as less evil than others he comes across—a dubious decision morally, if defensible dramatically, as shades of grey are better than simply a black and white portrait of a monster, played with shading and subtlety by Michael Rooker. The low-budget film looks quite good on Blu-ray; many extras include director commentary and interviews, deleted scenes, outtakes and featurettes.

It’s Always Fair Weather 

(Warner Archive)

This underrated 1955 musical was co-directed by star Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, who team for this rollicking if cynical saga highlighted by two unforgettable solo sequences: Dan Dailey does the honors in the hilariously drunken “Situation-Wise,” followed by the truly remarkable turn by Kelly himself doing a creative and head-spinning tap dance—on roller skates! Warner Archive’s hi-def transfer isn’t perfect—there are scenes in which the colors get muddy—but it’ll do. Extras comprise a retrospective featurette, three musical number outtakes (and one audio-only song), vintage Kelly and Cyd Charisse interviews and two classic cartoons.

Sudden Fear 

(Cohen Film Collection)

Joan Crawford appropriately chews the scenery as a successful Broadway playwright who falls for a middling actor (played with appropriate menace by Jack Palance) in this tautly-made 1952 thriller by director David Miller, who imbues a palpable sense of fear through the foggy B&W photography of Charles B. Lang, Jr., and an intense score by Elmer Bernstein. The film has received an acceptable hi-def transfer, while the lone extra is an audio commentary.

Suicide Squad 

(Warner Bros)

Director David Ayers’ extensively messy anti-superhero saga is, in its extended Blu-ray cut, 134 minutes’ worth of sequences linked most tenuously as it tries to get viewers to root for the assorted low-lifes given security clearance by a desperate U.S. government to track down and eliminate terrorists. As others have noted, in a cast filled with slumming stars—Will Smith, Viola Davis, and Jared Leto as a Joker more unhinged than Heath Ledger’s—it’s the irresistible Margot Robbie who steals the show with her alluringly insane Harley Quinn. On Blu-ray, the film looks fine; extras include featurettes and a gag reel.

DVDs of the Week

Homo Sapiens

Almayer’s Folly 

(Icarus)

Austrian iconoclast Nikolaus Geyrhalter (Our Daily Bread) returns with Homo Sapiens, his latest thought-provoking documentary, which travels from Fukashima in Japan to Ohio—and many locations in between—to record man-made places where man is no longer present: by showing states of natural decay and/or neglect by humans, the film artfully implies that nature—growing in and around these abandoned places—will flourish after we are gone from the scene. It’s too bad that, in 2011’s Almayer’s Folly (her final feature prior to her suicide last year), Belgian director Chantel Akerman adapted an early Joseph Conrad novel about a Dutch trader in the Far East to little dramatic effect.

Zoo—Complete 2^nd Season 

American Gothic—Complete 1^st Season 

(CBS/Paramount)

In the second season of Zoo, the worldwide animal takeover has reached epic proportions: although there’s something inherently silly about the series, there is some amusement watching lions, tigers, rhinos, birds, bees, etc., terrify people to within an inch of their lives. A lively if overly familiar dramatic series, American Gothic follows a sordid saga of murder in the history of a prominent family from Boston. A solid set of actors (led by Juliet Rylance and the ageless Virginia Madsen) helps keep this from becoming risible: but it still was cancelled after its first 13 episodes. Extras on both sets include deleted scenes, gag reel, featurettes and interviews.

CD/DVD of the Week

Rush—2112 40^th Anniversary 

(Mercury/Anthem)

Its breakthrough 1976 album 2112 made Rush one of the top prog-rock groups, consolidating—and, to these ears, improving—their sound with Permanent Waves (1980), Moving Pictures (1981) and Signals (1982), still its three best albums. Hearing 2112 today, there’s undeniable dross (“Lessons,” “Tears”), but the musical confidence is there in spades for the band’s peerless instrumentalists: drummer Neil Peart, guitarist Alex Lifeson and bassist Geddy Lee (the less said about Lee’s vocals and Peart’s lyrics, the better). This 40^th anniversary set includes the original album, a second CD that includes new versions of 2112 tracks by the likes of Dave Grohl with Taylor Hawkins and Alice in Chains, and live tunes from Rush’s 1976 and ‘77 tours. There’s also a DVD featuring a healthy segment of a 1976 concert, a new interview with Lifeson and producer Terry Brown, and looks at Billy Talent recording “A Passage to Bangkok” and Grohl/Hawkins doing “Overture” for the second CD.

December '16 Digital Week I

Blu-rays of the Week 

The BFG

(Disney/Dreamworks)

Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s delightful children’s book might be too determined to conjure up the magical and the sentimental simultaneously, but at its best, it shows that Spielberg still has no equal making movie enchantment that pleases both children and adults. Mark Rylance is a perfect Big Friendly Giant; even motion-capture photography can’t obscure his expressiveness and emotional hugeness. The little girl Sophie is wonderfully played by Ruby Barnhill, and Janusz Kaminski’s dazzling cinematography, John Williams’ lively score and Joe Letteri’s phenomenal special effects add to the fun, even if ultimately pales in comparison to a classic like E.T. The hi-def transfer is first-rate; extras include featurettes, interviews and an appreciation of scriptwriter Melissa Mathison, who died after the film was finished.

Heart of a Dog

(Criterion)

When performance artist Laurie Anderson’s beloved dog Lolabelle died, she dealt with her grief by making this lovely little valentine of a film that’s part catharsis, part shaggy-dog story and 100% pure emotion. At its core, Anderson deals with loss—not only Lolabelle, but also (though unmentioned) husband Lou Reed—even providing insightful personal observations about New York post-Sept. 11 and our current security state. The film’s visuals are more than adequate on Blu-ray; extras include a discussion with Anderson, deleted scenes and her Concert for Dogs, which she performed in Times Square.

Howard’s End 

(Cohen Film Collection)

The peak of the uneven James Ivory-Ismail Merchant-Ruth Prawer Jhabvala team’s career was this absorbing 1992 adaptation of E.M. Forster’ classic novel about the shifting relations and attitudes among the different classes in Edwardian England: it’s old-fashioned filmmaking done so well that it’s transfixing to watch. Ivory’s directing and Jhabvala’s writing were never equaled by them before or after, while the cast—Emma Thompson, Anthony Hopkins, Helena Bonham Carter and Vanessa Redgrave for starters—is flawless. The restored film has a spectacular film-like sheen on Blu-ray; extras include a new Ivory interview, vintage Ivory and Merchant interviews, on-set interviews and featurettes.

The Quiet Earth

(Film Movement Classics)

In New Zealand director Geoffrey Murphy’s 1985 sci-fi drama, scientist Zac believes he’s the last person on earth after “The Effect” caused a mass disappearance: soon he meets a young woman, Joanne, and later, Api, a Maori man. This weird ménage a trois (of sorts) is interesting for awhile, but Murphy loses control with a dissatisfying open-ended final sequence that’s visually breathtaking but hollow. Bruno Lawrence is riveting, especially when he’s onscreen alone for the first part of the film. The new hi-def transfer is sharply detailed; the lone extra is an entertaining commentary by astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse with film writer Odie Henderson.

DVDs of the Week 

Ants on a Shrimp

(Sundance Selects)

Maurice Dekkers’ documentary, which follows chef Rene Redzepi (of Copenhagen’s famed Noma restaurant) traveling to Japan to open a Noma in Tokyo in a tightly compressed five weeks, is captivating in its numerous fly-on-the-wall glimpses of Redzepi dealing with colleagues, balancing the very real cultural differences between East and West and fixing any number of bugaboos targeting such an ambitious endeavor. Best of all are priceless moments such as the looks on several faces when something called “sperm emulsion” is unveiled for eating.

The IT Crowd—The Complete Series

(MPI)

The punning title—referring to a makeshift IT department of a small company—is the best joke of this painfully uneven four-season-long British sitcom that largely wastes a talented cast: Chris O’Dowd, Richard Ayoade and Katherine Parkinson manage to elevate some of the humor, despite its essential crudeness. (The awful laugh track doesn’t help matters.) The series’ fans will love that this is finally available on DVD, since all 25 episodes—and a true bonus, the never-before-seen finale episode, The Internet Is Coming—are included on the five-disc set.

Neither Heaven nor Earth 

(Film Movement)

Director Clement Cogitore turns the vast wastelands and battlefields of Afghanistan—where a battalion of French soldiers fights a never-ending battle with mostly vaporous enemy forces—into a metaphysical hellhole where men mysteriously disappear, to the growing dread of the squad and its increasingly bemused leader (played by a terrific Jeremie Renier). Although Cogitore doesn’t quite grasp his demanding concept in full, enough of war’s confusion and futility are intensely conveyed to make this a welcome addition to the genre. Extras are Cogitore’s commentary (in English) and his 30-minute short, Among Us.

CD of the Week

American Moments—Neave Trio

(Chandos)

The estimable young ensemble, the Neave Trio, doesn’t take the easy way out on this recording; instead of Beethoven, Mozart or Haydn, they tackle a trio of trios that aren’t as well-known: one (from 1909) by a teenaged prodigy named Erich Wolfgang Korngold, another composed around the same time as Korngold’s by the American Arthur Foote, and another written a generation later by a young man named Leonard Bernstein. These attractive works are performed by the Neave musicians with well-proportioned brio, elegance and muscularity; Korngold’s youthful but effortlessly mature work especially sounds bracing and graceful in their hands.

2016 New York Film Festival Roundup

54^th New York Film Festival

Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York, NY

September 30-October 16, 2016

filmlinc.org/nyff2016

The two best films at the recent 54^th New York Film Festival were made by a playwright becoming a major director in his own right and a long-time festival veteran.

Casey Affleck and director Kenneth Lonergan on the set of Manchester by the Sea

With Manchester by the Sea (now playing), his third film in 16 years, playwright Kenneth Lonergan has made a searing, emotionally devastating (but often hilarious) study of Lee, a divorced man—harboring memories of a horrific tragedy that ended his marriage and destroyed his family—who, when he returns to his hometown after his beloved older brother dies, is made guardian of his 16-year-old nephew. Lonergan’s marvelous script is crammed with his usual brilliantly realistic dialogue spoken by many compellingly realized characters; his extraordinary directing comprises his effortless handling of a jumbled chronology and his uncanny way of knowing when to allow silence or to use music—Lonergan even gets away with Albinoni’s by now overexposed “Adagio” to carry one of the film’s most pivotal sequences. The sublime acting starts with Casey Affleck (who, as Lee,  carries the film on his shoulders without giving away his emotions), and includes Lucas Hedges as Lee’s caustic nephew, Michelle Williams as his ex-wife and partner in misery, Kyle Chandler as his brother, Gretchen Mol as his brother’s ex (and nephew’s estranged mom), and priceless appearances in small roles by veteran stage performers like Stephen McKinley Henderson, Missy Yager, Quincy Tyler Bernstine, Heather Burns and even Matthew Broderick. To cap things off, Lonergan provides himself with one of the best (and funniest) director cameos since Hitchcock.

Dave Johns (left) and director Ken Loach (right) on the set of I, Daniel Blake

Ken Loach never shies from wearing his heart on his sleeve, and even when he becomes didactic, his filmmaking is filled with so much fury and justified anger that even something like I, Daniel Blake (opens Dec. 23)—in which a middle-aged man is put through an emotional and physical ringer by a horribly inefficient British welfare bureaucracy—threatens to, but never does, become a melodramatic soap opera, thanks to the forceful honesty, hurt and humanity in every frame. Paul Laverty’s curt script is bluntly effective, as is Loach’s unsentimental, understated direction; and the acting by Dave Johns—a dead ringer for Phil Collins—is devastatingly truthful in its depiction of the dignity retained by someone caught in grinding government machinery.

Always a major part of the festival, documentaries this year made a huge leap: Ava Duvernay’s 13th (on Netflix) was the first non-fiction film to be selected for Opening Night. Duvernay’s exhaustive subject—how the 13^th amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery, has incarcerated more Americans than ever (mostly non-whites)—begat an intelligent, impassioned documentary that thoughtfully shows how blacks have been treated since the Civil War, with dozens of talking heads discussing those sundry racial issues that are still at stake.

Other documentaries tackled subjects from bank chicanery to Broadway. Anyone outraged that no big bank execs were punished for actions that led to the 2008 financial meltdown—except for mere billions of dollars in fines, but far more in bailouts and bonuses—will be enraged anew by Abacus—Small Enough to Jail, director Steve James’ probing look at how tiny Abacus Bank in New York’s Chinatown was the only financial institution hauled into court. (And, as James shows, overreach by New York’s attorney general was the bigger story.) Best Worst Thing To Ever Have Happened (now playing) engagingly charts the difficult birth of Merrily We Roll Along, composer Stephen Sondheim and director Hal Prince’s biggest flop, as director Lonny Price—one of the leads in the original 1981 Broadway production—looks back affectionately at its original failure and its second life of worldwide revivals. And in Hamilton’s America (on PBS), the biggest Broadway smash in decades is dissected to death: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s flawed but entertaining hip-hop founding-fathers musical doesn’t deserve such hagiographic treatment, like Public Theater head Oskar Eustis ludicrously equating Miranda with Shakespeare or noted theater critics Jimmy Fallon and Michelle Obama calling it the greatest piece of art ever. Sigh—don’t these people see classic films, read serious literature or look at great sculpture and paintings?

But the festival’s best documentary was My Journey Through French Cinema (opens spring 2017):

Bertrand Tavernier, director of
My Journey Through French Cinema

 even at a staggering 190 minutes, Bertrand Tavernier’s personal chronicle of what most moved him onscreen since he became besotted with movies in his youth is done so beautifully, so charmingly, so admirably, that you wish it would go on for several more hours (at least the end credits hint at a Part 2!). As always with Tavernier, there are marvelous anecdotes, brilliant insights, treasured observations: when discussing composer Maurice Jaubert among the greats of ‘30s and ‘40s cinema, Tavernier’s passion comes through so forcefully that you feel his warmth, his embrace, his marvelously attuned personality to all things cinematic.

With Duvernay, there were other notable female directors at the festival. New Zealand’s Allison MacLean returned home for The Rehearsal, a sharp look at a young man from the sticks who arrives in the city to attend acting school, where he learns responsibility and maturity. MacLean’s fresh group of actors is led by James Rolleston as the young man and Alice Englert as the underage girl he falls for; there’s also the always watchable Kerry Fox as head acting instructor. I may be the lone dissenter when it comes to Maden Ade’s Toni Erdmann (opens Dec. 25), an overlong, occasionally funny but stretched-beyond-its-slender-means portrait of a practical-jokester father who surprises his successful daughter in Bucharest—only to bug her mercilessly. The problem is that dear old dad is nothing more than a plot device instead of a living, breathing character; indeed, when Ade drops him into his daughter’s life, the director seems to be trolling her own movie. Despite impressive performances by Peter Simonischek and Sandra Hüller, it ends up as frustrating and irritating as her previous film, Everything Else. (New drinking game: every time the father pops his false teeth in—or takes them out—take a drink. You’ll be blotto in no time.)

After an auspicious start to her career (debut All is Forgiven and more accomplished follow-ups, The Father of My Children and Goodbye First Love), French director Mia Hansen- Løve has regressed: her shallow 2014 feature, Eden, gives way to Things to Come (now playing), starring a somnambulistic Isabelle Huppert as a philosophy professor with a long-term marriage, two teenage children and a psychosomatic mother who suddenly finds herself freed, as she says: “I got divorced, my children have moved out, and my mom died. I’m free.” What could have been an insightful portrait of a middle-aged woman beginning several new chapters is instead turned by Hansen-Love into a meandering soap opera that not even the redoubtable Huppert can save.

Huppert is also front and center in Elle (now playing), a slick, exciting and stylish thriller that does little to counter the charge that Paul Verhoeven makes provocative but empty thrillers. Huppert plays a video-game design executive whose rape by a masked intruder sets her on an increasingly dangerous course of revenge, at the same time she’s juggling difficult relationships with her best friend (with whose husband she’s carrying on an affair), her ex-husband, her barely-adult son and the memory of her murderous father. The amazing Huppert nearly makes this contradictory character real; even if she’s boxed in by Verhoeven and writer David Birke’s conceits, she gleefully takes over Elle.

For his new film-buff’s film Julieta (opens Dec. 21), Pedro Almodovar tries his hand at aping Hitchcock, but although there’s style galore, there’s little of the rigorous craft Hitchcock poured into even his most outrageous creations. Almodovar bases his film on a trio of short stories by Alice Munro, but there’s a curious lack of feeling; not helping matters is Alberto Iglesias’s insistent and misleadingly portentous score (not to mention tossed-in music by Grieg and Debussy). Although leavened by the presence of Emma Suarez and Adriana Ugarte as the title character at ages 50 and 25, Julieta finds Almodovar, despite typical juicy roles for his actresses, coming up with ever diminishing returns. Similarly, Olivier Assayas—who made Personal Shopper (opens Mar. 10) with Kristen Stewart in mind—has made an almost total failure in which he forgets his strengths: namely empathy and artistry. Stewart’s title character is also a medium who attempts to contact her recently deceased twin brother—also, naturally, a medium—while getting involved in what turns out to be a brutal murder. Not helped by a bogus script, Stewart sleepwalks (or Vespa-rides) through it all, coming to life only when she’s stalked by a stranger on her phone.

Graduation (opens Feb. 10), Romanian director Cristian Mungiu’s latest slow-building study, follows a small-town bureaucrat looking for a way—legally or illegally—to have his daughter pass her all-important exams, the difference between getting a needed scholarship to a British college or staying in their crumbling burg. As always with Mungiu, the moral dilemma isn’t entirely clear until, finally, the film explodes in a series of sequences from which the conflicted protagonist can no longer hang on to his own moral stance but grasps at straws to stay above water. The performances are unerringly true, though parts of Mungiu’s narrative—like the father’s fairly open relationship with a woman at his daughter’s school—beggar belief.

Another Romanian director, Cristi Puiu, demands equal patience from viewers: Sieranevada is his third consecutive film of at least 2-1/2 hours’ duration, after his masterpiece The Death of Mr. Lazarescu and its tepid follow-up, Aurora. The nearly three-hour Sieranevada (its title is never explained) follows a doctor and his wife as they arrive at his parents’ apartment for his father’s memorial service. Puiu chronicles, alternately amusedly and bemusedly, interactions among family members that run from the mundane to the profane to the ridiculous: an inordinate amount of time is spent among brothers-in-law over whether the Sept. 11 attacks were an inside job. Puiu specializes in extraordinarily long takes in the close quarters of the apartment, while his cast’s familial camaraderie transcends the film’s ultimate flimsiness. 

With Neruda (opens Dec. 16), Chilean director Pablo Lorrain has made a fascinatingly free-form hybrid of the biopic and fiction about poet Pablo Neruda, the beloved Chilean Communist and thorn in the side of the authorities: by adding a made-up character of a police detective (Gael Garcia Bernal) who tracks the anti-government rebel, Lorrain turns Neruda’s life into an analytic mélange of fiction, politics, the cult of personality and biographical facts, with the brilliant actor Luis Gnecco a dead ringer for Neruda.

As a retired music critic living in a Rio apartment she refuses to sell to the building’s developers in Kleber Mendonca Filho’s Aquarius (now playing), Sonia Braga gives a fiercely committed performance that lets us inside the world of a widowed 68-year-old breast cancer survivor in all her complexity, whether it’s ambivalent relationships with her grown children and women friends, still-aroused sexuality, and deep loathing for those trying to get her to move out. Braga’s sensual appearance—that long mass of black hair still puts one in mind of her breakthrough nearly 40 years ago in Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands—outclasses Filho’s unsubtlety: his three-part film begins with a long flashback to our heroine as a young woman, includes two—count ‘em, two—blasts of Queen on the soundtrack (since Braga’s character wrote a book on the great Brazilian composer Villa-Lobos, it’s surprising we don’t hear his music until the final scenes), and culminates with a colony of termites becoming an outsized plot development and hoary metaphor.