Colin Firth (left) and Geoffrey Rush. © The Weinstein Company.
1) The King’s Speech
This is the least likely film to be reaching such meteoric heights of popularity. I   enjoyed it even more with a second viewing with my grandchildren for its sensitivity, its historic insights and for the fact that writer David Seidler, like the Duke of York, was a bloody stammerer. For once I can truly advise that as a Royal Blush, do not let the f _ word or s _ word floor you.  They are used in a therapeutic context as an unblocking mechanism, which Seidler found useful to help him with his stammer. Two superb actors vie as mentor and protégé, Colin Firth as Albert Frederick Arthur George, Duke of York, would-be king of England who has a debilitating speech impediment and Geoffrey Rush as his non-intimidated speech therapist Lionel Logue with the chutzpah to call his patient Bertie. If it reminds you – as it did me - of the initial resistance between Celia Johnson and Leslie Howard as moviedom’s Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins, that’s just fine. But a lot more was riding on this odd coupling than The Rain in Spain, notably the Rise of Nazism in Europe, abetted by Neville Chamberlain and the impending Battle of Britain. Elder brother David’s (Guy Pearce) dalliance with the American divorcée Wallace Simpson (Eva Best) through his brief reign as King Edward, afforded the government the perfect rationale to pressure him into abdication to marry “the woman I love.” What is treated all too peripherally is that there was no way the Brits could abide a liaison between the King of England and Adolph Hitler no matter how remote that possibility.  In addition to its two extraordinary leads, the film employs a who’s who of classical actors, many of them in cameo roles, not least among them being Queen Elizabeth, the future Queen Mother, (Helena Bonham Carter),  Michael Gambon as King George V,  Jennifer Ehle (daughter of Rosemary Harris) as Myrtle Logue, Eve Best (Wallis Simpson),  Timothy Spall as Winston Churchill, Anthony Andrews as Stanley Baldwin and a favorite of mine, Claire Bloom as Queen Mary. A lofty bow to the irrepressible Weinstein Brothers for their biggest plum since helming Miramax.

Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg. © Columbia Pictures
2) The Social Network
Millions of people log on to Facebook to check messages and photos of “friended” acquaintances in elevator cars, in barber chairs to create asocial events,  like a 350 pound lineman who is busted for steroids or Charlie Sheehan’s latest escapade. Loosely based on The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal by Ben Mezrich, The Social Network" is a fascinating biography of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and a surprisingly riveting movie. Aaron Sorkin,  master scriptwriter of A Few Good Men" (1992) and TV’s The West Wing  (1999−2006), did the film adaptation with David Fincher, signing on to direct and Scott Rudin tossing in his hat as producer. The Social Network provides a plausible depiction of the chronology of Facebook, dating back to Zuckerberg's Harvard dorm room in 2003.  Sorkin sets the tone in the opening scene with a pivotal exchange between Zuckerberg and his then−girlfriend, Erica (Rooney Mara), at once revealing his uneasy behavior and patronizing disposition. Jesse Eisenberg (who shone in the 2005 movie, The Squid and the Whale) excels at capturing the narcissism and inherent likeability of Zuckerberg. Andrew Garfield, who plays Zuckerberg's co−founder, Eduardo Saverin, offers a passionate portrayal of the best friend who is unjustly ousted from the multibillion dollar pursuit. One other noteworthy figure in the film is Armie Hammer, great-grandson of the oil magnate Armand, who portrays the Winklevoss twins (or "Winklevi"), Cameron and Tyler,  who believe that they sowed the seed that blossomed into Facebook. The one blemish on an otherwise commendable casting job is Justin Timberlake, who seems uncomfortable as the wheeling and dealing creator of Napster, Sean Parker. Throughout all of the litigation periods, sinister scheming and drunken web design projects, there is truly never a dull moment in the movie. The Social Network reflects all of the capitalistic whims that turn college kids into millionaires and friends into plaintiffs.


Christian Bale (left) and Mark Wahlberg. © Paramount Pictures
3) The Fighter  
I have dutifully added The Fighter to the list of my top 10 Boxing Movies of all time. Mark Wahlberg, who plays the junior welterweight title character based on the real-life Micky Ward, reminds me in every way of John Garfield who came out of a hardscrabble childhood akin to that of Wahlberg. The authenticity of the fight scenes rivals that of Martin Scorcese’s The Raging Bull with Robert DeNiro as Jake LaMotta. From The Champion to Rocky I, the formula doesn’t vary: the protagonist takes his lumps in the ring, the referee is poised to stop it, and the hero gets off the canvas to drop the opponent with a one-two (or even a one).  What this movie has that others don’t, are three superlative actors in addition to Wahlberg. They are Christian Bale, as Ward’s crackhead half brother Dicky Eklund, his once and future manager, a former boxer whose claim to fame is his ambiguous claim that he decked Sugar Ray Leonard (who plays himself); Amy Adams, a stunningly beautiful, poised and humorous actress who shone as the young nun in Doubt, is Mark’s girlfriend Charlene Fleming in a most non- nun-like role, and most of all, Melissa Leo as Alice Ward the domineering vile-spewing  mother of  Micky, Dicky and their seven weird sisters. Leo is one of America’s great actresses, having been part of the astonishing detective team of the Homicide:Life on the Street TV series as  Det. Sgt. Kay Howard for five seasons. She also was nominated for an Oscar for the movie Frozen River. Wahlberg’s versatility from the back of the camera, has shone through with his mega-hit HBO series Entourage.

Naomi Watts and Sean Penn. © Summit Enertainment
4) Fair Game
The infuriation I as a reader and voter felt on following the dirty tricks of the vice-president’s office (ignominiously I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby) who outed CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, is doubled and redoubled in this immensely intelligent and engrossing movie.  As played with verve by Naomi Watts, she was given the assignment of investigating Saddam Hussein’s nuclear and biological weapons programs. Accordingly, at Valerie’s suggestion, her husband, retired ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, was sent to Niger, to verify whether or not  Sadam Hussein had stockpiled large quantities of uranium, and found no such evidence. When George W. Bush, in his State of the Union address, contended that Iraq had indeed gone shopping for nuclear material in Africa, Mr. Wilson set  the record straight in  an Op-Ed article in The New York Times, whereupon the late ultra-conservative columnist Robert Novak wrote about Wilson's  trip to Niger and described Wilson's wife as an "agency operative." Augmenting Watts’s solid performance is Sean Penn as husband Joe, humanizing another admirable figure of historic proportions as he accomplished so tellingly as Harvey Milk. Fair Game, is directed with briskness and sensitivity by Doug Liman from a screenplay by the brothers Jez and John-Henry Butterworth.  The movie doesn’t have the time nor inclination to address The New York Times’s Judith Miller’s role in disclosing Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA agent. She spent three months in jail for claiming reporter's privilege and refusing to reveal her sources in the CIA leak. In my exploration of Miller’s professional career on Wikipedia, I learned something that may amuse anyone old enough to read this column. She is the daughter of the owner of the once- famed Bill Miller’s Riviera in New Jersey.

Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen. © Focus Features
5) Another Year
The use of comedic improvisations is the staple of Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm series for HBO (there go those initials again.) The British director Mike Leigh also employs extended improvisations to build characters and storylines for his movies. The final filming draws on dialogue and actions that have been recorded during the improv process. The one time I was less than enthusiastic about a Leigh product was his heralded 2008 flick Happy Go Lucky with Sally Hawkins as Poppy, an overly sunny primary-school teacher who is determined to spread joy to the point of pandemonium. She is relentless in her exhilaration in dealing with people, inclusive of a pathologically derisive driving instructor in a series of ennui-laden sequences. On the plus side – are such like-Leigh pearls as Secrets & Lies (1996), Topsy-Turvy (1999) (about the tempestuous Gilbert & Sullivan partnership) and the marvelous Vera Drake, about a selfless abortionist with a heart of gold. The patina of altruism also permeates the endearing Another Year. Anyone old enough to read this column will be enchanted by Jim Broadbent as Tom a geologist and Ruth Sheen as Gerri, a pair whose understated love is in many ways as enticing as that of Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson in Brief Encounter. The script, developed over months with Leigh's cast, covers four seasons in the life of Tom and Gerri who would love to see their lawyer son, Joe (Oliver Maltman), find the right woman. That would exclude Mary (Lesley Manville), Gerri's excruciatingly quixotic co-worker. Mary drinks hard and flirts outrageously with the much younger Joe. Manville’s performance is devastatingly raw, one that could have her tilting with Melissa Leo for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

Umay as Sibel Kekilli. © Olive Films
6) When We Leave
German-born Umay (Sibel Kekilli) flees with her young son Cern from an oppressive marriage in Istanbul, to find a better life with her family in Berlin. She is among some 2.7 million Turkish immigrants in Germany. To her shock, her family is so intransigent in its old-world conventions, they try to persuade her to return Cern to his father in Turkey, no matter what the consequences. After some ill-fated attempts toward familial reconciliation with her parents and an intractably malevolent brother (Tamer Yigit) – she is compelled to move on again. It’s a tough movie but instructive vis-a-vis the anachronistic restraints of crimes of honor. Well worth your viewing, despite an unimaginable ending.  It was the official German entry for the Best Foreign Language film. In Turkish and German, with English Subtitles.

Sally Hawkins (red dress) and the Maids of Dagenham. 
© Sony Pictures Classics.
7) Made in Dagenham
There’s a lot of Norma Rae in Director Nigel Cole’s Made in Dagenham.  As a matter of fact there are doppels of pluck and good humor such as you’d find in Cole’s Calendar Girls of 2003, in this affectionate tale of women auto workers in the late 1960s seeking equal pay. Ford was the largest auto manufacturer in Europe, employing some 40,000 workers in England alone. The ladies of the machinists union in Dagenham, were classified as unskilled and paid considerably less than their male counterparts — among whom were their own husbands and brothers. As Rita O’Grady, Sally Hawkins personifies Sally Field as the unprepossessing worker who rises up to become an esteemed leader of the union. I was not a fan of Hawkins in Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky nor of her recent Broadway experience in Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession, but here she  comports herself appealingly. The always reliable and comically gifted Bob Hoskins plays Albert, a union organizer who encourages Rita to strike for equal pay —to the dismay of the union bosses. Needless to say, Ford eventually throws in the towel, becoming a passionate advocate of gender equality and  even cooperated with the making of this film.

Annette Bening (left) and Julianne Moore. © Focus Features.
8) The Kids are All Right
This year’s version of It’s Complicated and Something’s Gotta Give is the breeziest family comedy of the year and the most enlightened movie on lesbian partnering since Mädchen in Uniform.  Written and directed by Lisa Cholodenko,  the premise of The Kids Are All Right is that gay marriage is ipso facto in American households and as worthy an addition to the pantheon of movie comedies as Bringing Up Baby and Sitting Pretty. Annette Bening, in her finest role, is Nic, an OB-GYN and the family’s breadwinner. Julianne Moore is Jules, the at-home Mom to their two kids, the 18-year-old Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and her 15-year-old brother, Laser (Josh Hutcherson).  Joni , is set to leave for college and embrace a new sense of independence, while Laser doggedly follows the dictates of Clay (Eddie Hassell),  a bullying ne’er-do-well whose rough-housing with his father sparks a  curiosity about the sperm donor responsible for his very being. The dutiful sister Joni obliges her brother by tracking down the sperm donor, who turns out to be a genial restaurant owner and organic farmer named Paul, played with characteristic sang-froid by Mark Ruffalo.     

Dustin Hoffman and Paul Giamatti are Panofsky pere et fils.
© Entertainment One
9) Barney’s Version
Paul Giamatti is one of the select few movie actors with the faculty of playing and looking like much older men than his chronological age. Others include Laird Cregar, Orson Welles, Paul Muni and Philip Seymour Hoffman. As Barney Panofsky, a misanthropic character based on Mordecai Richler’s 1997 novel about a Quebec-born anti-hero who is a Montreal film producer, Giamatti has his best role since that glorious comedy Sideways.  The comic chemistry he had with Thomas Haden Church in that storied movie, is revivified with a menschadik rapport between Dustin Hoffman as his father Izzy, a retired Montreal cop whose affection for his son is summed up in one word:  boychik.  Only Barney Panofsky, would have the chutzpah to pursue and woo a party guest, Miriam (the astonishingly beautiful and brainy Rosamund Pike), at an opulent wedding reception for Barney and the Second Mrs. P, (Minnie Driver). His leave-taking of his first wife Clara is an abrupt dash from a Rome maternity ward after viewing a baby that bears no facial or racial resemblance to him. You may ask why would the gorgeous and intellectual Miriam be drawn to a just-married man, short of stature, tubby, balding, with an unholy passion for malt whisky and Montecristo cigars and whose best friend Boogie (Scott Speedman) is persuasively drug-addicted? And the answer in the words of Tevya might be “I don’t know.”  What I do know is you’ll have a helluva good time with Barney and Izzy Potofsky.

Lambert Wilson as Christian (left) and Michael Lonsdale
as Luc. © Sony Pictures Classics.
10) Of Gods and Men
Perched in the mountains of North Africa in the 1990s is a monastery in which eight French Cistercian-Trappist monks live in harmony with their Muslim brothers. Their story and ultimate fate became the subject of international news coverage and the culminating points of violence and atrocities in Algeria. This particular monastic order – interestingly enough - has no apostolic mission of evangelism or proselytizing. When a crew of foreign workers is massacred by Islamic terrorists who issue an ultimatum for all foreigners to leave the country,  the monks eschew military protection and  the government asks them to return to France. The dilemma for each of them is “Shall I leave or stay,” in light of their good works with the Islamic community. Their choral chants of hymns and psalms four hours a day embolden them for whatever perfidious fate awaits.  I was struck by the ensemble portrayals of each superb actor. I was particularly taken by Michael Lonsdale who plays the avuncular Luc, who looks and even sounds like Andy Rooney. He has been a presence in cinema for more than a half-century in films of such directorial giants as Fred Zinneman, Costa-Gavras, Stephen Spielberg, Louis Malle, Francois Truffaut and Rene Clement. But I’m certain you’ll be struck – as was I – by the magnetism, humanity and versatility of Lambert Wilson who portrays Christian, the leader of the monks. I was astonished by his performance and chided myself for not being more familiar with his work over the years. In reading his bio, I learned that he was as facile a singer as he is a dramatic actor. (The second coming of Yves Montand?).  Publicists Aimee Morris and Sophie Gluck were typically helpful in arranging for a one-on-one interview with Lambert Wilson at the Regency Hotel in New York. In French with English subtitles.

My Interview with Lambert Wilson.

Lambert Wilson Photo: Hal Drucker

Since our time was limited and I already had reams of material on his acting credits I decided to concentrate mostly on Lambert Wilson’s musical background. I likened his dual talents to that of the late French actor Yves Montand and the film and stage actor and cabaret singer/composer Jeff Daniels for whom he has a high regard.

“I had training as a young actor in England where they prepare you for everything from classical theater to musical comedy,” he told me. “ I also took classical singing lessons. Yes, operatic. I did Ned Rorem, Charles Ives , Samuel Barber and Leonard Bernstein and scared myself tremendously. I started too late in life, but it has enabled me to recently do musical theater, including the role of Fredrik Egerman in Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music in Paris. I must admit that my favorite composer of all time is Stephen Sondheim. I’m a defender of his work in France. And it has been hard work. The music in A Little Night Music is extraordinary.”

I agreed and advised that I had seen the original on Broadway with Glynis Johns, Len Cariou as Egerman and Hermione Gingold.

“It was a great moment for me,” he continued, “when I saw Sondheim arriving on the stage in Paris, being cheered by an entire audience paying this tribute to him. I think he was tickled pink.  For years I tried to convince theater directors to put on Sondheim. For years they said no. We have a wonderful theater in Paris called the Theatre du Chatelaine a little bit like an opera house that is ideal for American musicals

Was Night Music done in French?

Just in English because as you can appreciate, it’s very difficult to translate Sondheim.  So we had French subtitles projected onto the stage but of course it was a reduction of the text. A couple of years ago I did Leonard Bernstein’s Candide in Paris. I was proud to be there. Years and years ago I did an album which was just called Musicals and included titles from the Great American Songbook.But I was just too green. I was frightened. I was singing live with the Monte Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra.

Name a song or two from it.

“Well, from Kurt Weill and Alan Jay Lerner’s Love Life I did Here I’ll Stay, From Weill and Ira Gershwin, I did My Ship from Lady in the Dark. From Bernstein’s On The Town I did Lonely Town.”  

Three  gorgeous songs, I acknowledged. Do you recall the first stage musical you ever saw? “I remember going to London with my father when I was probably 12. We went to see Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s Show Boat. I remember this extraordinary chorus line of the entire company doing a tap dancing finale and I was completely enchanted. Well it’s not very original if I say, Old Man River, is my favorite song from the show, is it?”

Why not? Frank Sinatra did it in a white suit in a movie entitled Till the Clouds Roll By..    

“It’s interesting that for Of Gods and Men, I worked with a musical coach who is a specialist in religious singing. He had been a choir boy. I was very drawn to the Catholic right basically because as a little boy all the kids used to go to church on Sunday. In the meantime I would wait for them in the village so I had this sort of frustration and interest over what the church was about.  It sort of stayed in me, this desire to be part of something that everybody would do and also was mysterious.

What about favorite movies and screen actors?

“I wanted in the seventies to become an American actor. I wanted to be Robert Redford and all of his films of that time. Jeremiah Johnson, Three Days of the Condor, the Sidney Lumet films, the Sidney Pollack films, along with English films that starred Glenda Jackson, Alan Bates, Julie Christie, Dirk Bogarde  - those were my gods, not at all, the French actors. Not even (Jean-Paul) Belmondo.  I was drawn towards Cary Grant. We all are. Not necessarily North by Northwest.   I’m very partial to Bringing up Baby. He was a master of perfect clowning.  I don’t know if you are familiar with a French actor Louis de Funès. He was a genius of comedy, a tiny man in the sixties and seventies. And I was very partial to Fred Astaire. Instead of listening to French pop music, I would listen to Astaire.   I think actors have to sing, to dance and they also have to direct.  George Geutary became an instant star in the U. S. movie audiences, in Gershwin’s  An American in Paris with his Stairway to Paradise.Maurice Chevalier? Yes of course. And Jean Gabin was a ‘monster’ – a pure cinema animal - and that is said affectionately.  My dream would be to do any Sondheim musical on Broadway.  But I have to get a green card.”