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JULIE & JULIA Working overtime as writer, director and producer, Nora Ephron has taken a pair of books – My Life in France, by Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme, and Julie & Julia, by Julie Powell – and combined them into one irresistible motion picture. It's a film that rises two stories, on one hand focusing on the legendary Julia Child (Meryl Streep) as she begins her journey toward becoming one of America's greatest chefs, and on the other following Julie Powell (Amy Adams) as her idea for a blog – cook all 524 recipes in Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 365 days – eventually leads to fame and fortune. The Julia Child segments of the film are magnificent. As the towering, exuberant Child, Streep delivers another astonishing performance, never lapsing into mere caricature but steadfastly making sure to capture all facets of the woman's personality. The best parts of the Child sequences focus on the marriage between Julia and her husband Paul (Stanley Tucci, reuniting with Streep on the high heels of The Devil Wears Prada). Movies aren't normally where we turn to watch happily married couples in action, but the Julia-Paul relationship is one of the most blissful seen in years, and Streep and Tucci dance through their interpretations with the grace and ease of an Astaire-Rogers routine. When compared to the Julia Child portions, the Julie Powell chapters aren't nearly as compelling, but they're far from the drag that others have suggested. And as in Babette's Feast, Eat Drink Man Woman and Big Night (another foodie flick with Tucci), the camera gazes so lovingly on each prepared dish (even the burnt ones!) that it's virtually impossible to exit the theater without wanting to head immediately to a gourmet restaurant. That, then, is one of the beauties of Julie & Julia: While other ambitious movies are content targeting the heart and the mind, this one adds another palatable layer by also going for the stomach. ***1/2
MY ONE AND ONLY Actor George Hamilton, known more for his perpetual tan and his playboy image than for his film canon, lands executive producer credit on My One and Only, and that's because this time, it's personal. In short, the picture purports to be loosely based on Hamilton's life just as he was on the verge of making it in Hollywood, but that the movie never provides us with a believable bridge between "then" and "now" is just one of the problems that plague it. Unfolding in 1953, the film finds the teenage George (Logan Lerman) and his slightly older brother Robbie (Mark Rendall) being yanked out of their New York home by their Southern belle mom Ann (Renee Zellweger), who's tired of the philandering ways of her bandleader husband Dan (Kevin Bacon). Ann sets off on a cross-country jaunt to find a (wealthy) Mr. Right to marry her, but for the most part, she only meets losers: a former beau (Steven Weber) now facing financial ruin; a humorless military man (Chris Noth) who will brook no opposition; a paint-store magnate (an amusingly cast David Koechner) with hidden issues; and so on. Zellweger, in the sort of role Melanie Griffith would have been hand-delivered about a decade ago, isn't bad, but she's overshadowed by practically everyone else in the cast, starting with the two actors cast as her witty, wisecracking sons. Scripter Charlie Peters falters when it comes to the big picture – the film is too episodic to build much steam, and the ending doesn't provide the intended uplift – but he scores with the heated confrontations that pop up throughout the piece. Whether it's Ann arguing with George, with Dan, or with just about anyone else who crosses her path, these head-to-heads are juicy enough to repeatedly lift the movie out of its dusty designation as just one more coming of age yarn. **1/2
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