Book Smart

I’ve always despised the sexist and demeaning term “chick flick,” and I was pleased to see that Susan Sarandon shared my view when I interviewed her years ago. If so-called women’s films are dismissed as “chick flicks,” she stated, then why aren’t so-called men’s films dismissed as “dick flicks”?

To me, there are no such things as “chick flicks” (or, for that matter, “dick flicks”). There are only good films, bad films and the ones that fall in between, and provided the viewer isn’t a complete Neanderthal, he should be able to separate the cinematic wheat from the chaff no matter what type of audience is being targeted.

The Jane Austen Book Club is an example of the wheat. It’s intelligent, entertaining, emotional and amusing. It sports its share of rough passages, but those flaws derive from unfortunate shortcuts taken in the screenplay (or the source material, a novel by Karen Joy Fowler), not from the topic at hand or the fact that most of the principal players are (gasp!) women.

As the title blurts out, The Jane Austen Book Club centers on a group of people who gather to discuss Austen’s literary canon. The members consist of Bernadette (Kathy Baker), the self-appointed matriarch of the club; Jocelyn (Maria Bello), who prefers the company of her dogs to any man; Sylvia (Amy Brenneman), whose husband (Jimmy Smits) just left her for another woman (breaking screen stereotypes, he leaves her for an older, not younger, woman); Sylvia’s daughter Allegra (Maggie Grace), a lesbian into extreme sports; Prudie (Emily Blunt), a French teacher unhappily married to an inattentive lump (Marc Blucas); and Grigg (Hugh Dancy), who’s actually into science fiction novels but joins the group because he’s attracted to Jocelyn.

Both the letter and spirit of Austen infiltrate these club members’ lives, as they not only apply the author’s words to modern living but also note similarities between the novels’ characters and their own particular sets of circumstances. All too often, writer-director Robin Swicord (who previously penned the exquisite 1994 adaptation of Little Women) relies on whopping coincidences to move the story along (the setting is Sacramento, which must have a population of roughly 248 since everyone’s always running into each other). But in most respects, Swicord follows Austen’s template of tracking budding (and confusing) love. And, atypically for a mainstream release, the picture allows many characters the sort of second chance usually not accorded in comparable films. Now that’s a novel idea.

Michael Clayton is the sort of movie that Hollywood should be producing on a weekly basis — but doesn’t. In most other eras, it would come across simply as a competent piece of filmmaking, a solid drama doing a yeoman’s job of making sure the audience got its admission price’s worth of entertainment. It would be part of a studio’s uniform front, in much the same way as, for instance, Warner’s 1930s crime flicks or MGM’s 1950s musicals. In fact, its proper place would seem to be with the paranoia thrillers of the 1970s, a sweaty sub-genre that houses such classics as All the President’s Men, The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor.

But appearing in 2007, Michael Clayton is a lonely figure, a deceptively low-key suspenser that trusts its audience to be intrigued by its look at corporate skullduggery. It’s a good — not great — movie, but given the “Look, Ma, no brains!” attitude of most of its contemporaries, it just might be able to ride its high IQ right into the awards season.

Far easier to follow than its impenetrable trailer would lead one to believe, Michael Clayton plays like Erin Brockovich without the populist appeal — it centers on the title character (George Clooney), a law firm “fixer” who’s always called upon to clean up messy problems for the company’s clients. Hating his job but stuck with it due to massive debts and an expensive divorce, Michael finds himself caught in the middle when Arthur Edens (an excellent Tom Wilkinson), Michael’s good friend and the firm’s best attorney, seemingly goes bonkers and threatens to derail their most important case: defending an agrochemical company against a lawsuit filed by ordinary citizens. Michael’s boss (Sydney Pollack) orders him to talk some sense into Arthur, but it turns out that the agrochemical company’s chief counsel (Tilda Swinton) is willing to go to more extreme lengths to silence the wayward lawyer.

Tony Gilroy, adapter of the Jason Bourne novels, makes his directorial debut here (as well as writing the script), and it’s an assured first effort, almost unfolding more like a soundly constructed novel than a multiplex seat-filler. Almost everything about the movie is muted — the settings, the exchanges, the emotions — and this decision gives the story a real-world gravitas that make the odious executive actions seem even more plausible than they already are. Gilroy steadfastly avoids including anything that can be deemed extraneous or overreaching, preferring to rest his faith — and the picture’s fate — in the hands of his accomplished actors and in the strength of his own script. There are no real surprises in Michael Clayton, just the awareness of a job well done.

The Farrelly Brothers have a reputation for pushing the envelope when it comes to risky business on screen, but in the case of The Heartbreak Kid, they seem only marginally more daring than Robert Wise helming The Sound of Music.

That’s because the original 1972 version of The Heartbreak Kid (with a screenplay by Neil Simon) is one mean-spirited movie, a prickly comedy about an unlikable nebbish (Charles Grodin) who suddenly decides to abandon his plain-Jane wife (Jeannie Berlin) on their honeymoon once he spots a beautiful blonde WASP (Cybill Shepherd) on the Miami beach. The movie stings because the bride is only slightly annoying — hardly deserving of the cruel treatment she receives — while the protagonist is selfish, insensitive and due for a comeuppance that he never really gets.

The Heartbreak Kid was well-received and earned Oscar nods for Berlin and Eddie Albert (terrific as Shepherd’s dad), but in today’s climate, only the least commercially minded filmmakers would attempt such a poison-laced satire. And the Farrellys, who’ve mellowed considerably over the years, wouldn’t be those filmmakers. So in their version, the groom (Ben Stiller) is generally a nice guy, his new bride (Malin Akerman) is an outright nightmare, and the beach bunny is no longer a callow, self-centered brat but a sweet-natured and down-to-earth gal (Michelle Monaghan).

That’s not to say the siblings have completely backed away from their raunchy roots. The movie earns its R rating, thanks to plenty of salty language, some acrobatic sex scenes (though why is it that in American movies, a healthy sexual appetite is always depicted as a vice or a disease to be shunned?), and one startling crotch shot. Much of it is funny (stay through all the closing credits for a satisfying capper set at summer camp), some of it merely infantile, but the picture includes a few clever twists, and Akerman proves to be a real trouper as she degrades herself in the name of modern screen comedy.

Eight years was too long to wait for the next film from the great Milos Forman (Amadeus, Hair, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), and the fact that Goya’s Ghosts isn’t better feels like an outright betrayal of our collective patience.

Directing his first picture since 1999’s underrated Man on the Moon, Forman (who also co-scripted with Jean-Claude Carriere) has crafted a visually stunning but dramatically sloppy drama that kicks off in Madrid at the end of the 18th century, when Brother Lorenzo (Javier Bardem) emerges as a major player in the Spanish Inquisition that led to the torture, imprisonment and (often) deaths of innocents falsely accused of sinning against the Catholic Church. One such victim turns out to be Ines (Natalie Portman), a lovely lass whose refusal of pork at a local tavern (she doesn’t like the taste) brands her as a “Judaizer.” Her wealthy father (Jose Luiz Gomez) tries to bribe the church — and Lorenzo in particular — to let her go, but instead the Grand Inquisitor (the great character actor Michael Lonsdale) elects to keep her behind bars while Lorenzo gives in to his lust and rapes the girl.

Bearing witness to this unfortunate chain of events is artist Francisco de Goya (Stellan Skarsgard), depicted in the film as an apolitical opportunist who nevertheless criticizes his country’s terrible conditions through a series of bootleg portraits. As the painter for both Lorenzo and Ines, Goya’s in a position to mediate between all concerned, a task that doesn’t pan out exactly as planned.

Skarsgard is effective as a cautious Goya, and it’s a pity he doesn’t rack up more screen time. Bardem is quietly menacing while Portman earns our sympathy — at least until she’s saddled with a second role during the picture’s final hour. Indeed, what had been working as a somber study of absolute power corrupting absolutely gets derailed when the story leaps forward 15 years, presenting us with jarring tonal shifts and wallowing in implausible melodrama. The total immersion into the film’s staggering production values helps a great deal, but even it can’t obscure a storyline that turns so silly, you half-expect Mel Brooks to show up reprising his “Inquisition” musical number from History of the World Part I.

The dark may have been rising, but my eyelids were repeatedly falling as I struggled to stay awake during the interminable and exhausting The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising. Based on one of the books in Susan Cooper’s award-winning fantasy series, The Seeker comes across less as a faithful adaptation of a beloved story than as a cash-in-quick product meant to appease small kids who can’t abide the waits between Harry Potter or Narnia flicks.

Also owing a passing nod to the Lord of the Rings trilogy (though, oddly, most reminiscent of the R-rated Russian imports Night Watch and Day Watch), The Seeker concerns itself with Will Stanton (Alexander Ludwig), an American kid living in a quaint British burg with his large family. Young Will learns from Deadwood‘s Ian McShane and other village protectors that he’s the only person who can enter the eternal fray between “the light” and “the dark” and protect the planet from being conquered by an evil entity known as The Rider (Christopher Eccleston). This designation allows Will to draw upon his heretofore unknown abilities to travel through time, telekinetically start fires, and make a mean martini (OK, just kidding on that last one).

About the best one can say regarding The Seeker is that at least it’s preferable to last year’s Eragon, another Fox fantasy yarn with variable special effects, a vapid youth for a lead, and a tendency to plagiarize at will. But the movie can’t win no matter which way it turns: When it’s not excruciatingly dull, it’s downright cheesy, thanks to the sort of stylistic flourishes (slo-mo action, deliberately shaky camerawork, frame-filling close-ups of furrowed brows) that inspire giggles when the material doesn’t warrant such pseudo-hipster treatment. The smallest of children might indeed be wowed by The Seeker, but everyone else will be busy seeking the nearest exit.

This article appears in Oct 10-16, 2007.