Review: "Carnage"

Films based on stage plays are never hard to spot. There's the compressed cast, the static location and the carefully bookended world that exists around the characters. Perhaps most recognizably, and often to the detriment of adapting a work from stage to screen, is the theatricality -- the artifice -- of the proceedings.

"Carnage" is a wonderfully acted drama about two sets of parents, played by Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly. That's three Oscar winners and an Oscar nominee, folks.

As one might expect from such a dazzling cast, and one led by an expert director like Roman Polanski, the performances are a delight. The parents, Michael and Penelope Longstreet (Reilly and Foster) and Nancy and Alan Cowan (Winslet and Waltz), are brought together by a serious brawl between their 11-year-old sons.

Outwardly, everyone is trying to act maturely and magnanimously, endeavoring to resolve the situation without resorting to lawsuits and hysterics. Soon, though, things devolve into a quagmire of clashing egos, ulterior motives and two marriages that have carefully spackled over their deep fault lines.

"Carnage" is based on the play by Yasmina Reza, who co-wrote the screenplay with Polanski. The dialogue is sharp and stealthy, as four smart Manhattan parents reveal the bile and loathing hidden by their upper-class veneer.

The problem is, I never for a moment bought these characters as real people. As much as I often enjoyed basking in their verbal parries and thrusts, the action is always kept at emotional arm's length, as we watch these carefully constructed creatures run through their paces with all the surprises of a pre-programmed automaton.

Still, the performers themselves are nearly worth the price of admission.

Penelope is a politically correct, New Age-y type with a carefully cultivated sense of victimhood. She takes her boy's injury (the loss of two teeth) personally, and is not looking for revenge, but abject contrition. When she fails to receive it, it uncorks some serious anger beneath the placid surface.

(It's notable that the avowed peace-lover is the only one of the foursome who resorts to violence as things grow tense.)

Mike is garrulous and friendly, always ready to be seen as the mediator of conflict. But his blustery personality hides some troubling issues, from the minor (a pathological fear of his daughter's hamster) to the major (declaring marriage and children the bane of manhood).

Nancy is an investment broker, carefully coiffed and mannered, who's eternally vexed at Alan's eternal interruptions to talk business on his cell phone. A high-profile lawyer, he's handling a huge case in between needling the Longstreets.

Alan is the most mercenary of the bunch, making it quite plain he considers the spat between their sons an overblown waste of his time. But in some ways he's also the most honest, since he doesn't bother to hide the selfish instincts the others work hard to conceal.

Everything plays out in a crisp 79-minute encounter in the Longstreets' apartment, punctuated by conversations about the Darfur atrocity, the best kind of toilet mechanism and an impressive spew of vomit onto some rare art books.

"Carnage" works better when seen as a master class in acting than a workable, believable story.

2.5 stars out of four

Video review: "Moneyball"

I truly believe Brad Pitt gave the performance of his career in "Moneyball," far outpacing his overrated work in the pedantic "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button."

Playing Billy Beane, the general manager of the dirt-poor Oakland A's baseball club, Pitt shows layers and nuance that have been missing in his previous straightforward acting turns.

Billy is outwardly brash, even cocky in the face he presents to the his organization, the media and even his family. He has to, when he's trying to beat teams that can spend three times as much on player salaries. Inside, he's a nervous wreck who's convinced he's cursed.

With the help of a socially awkward young computer genius, Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), Billy institutes the then-radical concept of sabermetrics. Essentially, this means jettisoning tried-and-true methods for evaluating players and instead relying on complex mathematical algorithms to determine the best team to be had at the lowest price.

Soon Billy and his apprentice have assembled a cast of players who are over the hill, injured or playing out of position -- what Peter dubs "an island of misfit toys." After some initial stumbles, they start racking up W's.

Director Bennett Miller and screenwriters Aaron Sorkin and Steve Zaillian succeeded in making a baseball movie with very little baseball, where the real action happens not on the diamond but in the executive offices.

Video extras are a solid base hit, but they failed to put some mustard on the offerings.

At least the basic DVD edition has a few nice features -- it's so common nowadays to find all the good stuff saved for the Blu-ray. The "Moneyball" DVD comes with a making-of documentary, a feature on the real-life Billy Beane, blooper real with Pitt and Hill, and a number of deleted scenes.

The Blu-ray version adds a featurette on selecting the movie's cast and crew and another about adapting a non-fiction sports book into a feature film. There's also a preview for the 2012 season of the "MLB" video game series.

Movie: 3.5 stars out of four
Extras: 2.5 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "The Scalphunters" (1968)

One of the pleasures of doing the Reeling Backward column is discovering new talents I hadn't heard about before, or rediscovering new aspects of actors and filmmakers with whom I had some familiarity.

I've enjoyed finding more films from Ossie Davis' long movie career, and I encountered another delightful performance in 1968's "The Scalphunters." It was Sydney Pollack's third feature film credit after his TV apprenticeship, an enjoyable Western comedy about a grizzled fur trader (Burt Lancaster,) an educated slave out of his element (Davis), some enterprising American Indians with their own peculiar take on capitalism, and the aforementioned scalphunters.

In a previous column, I marveled at Davis' ability to play a young soldier in "The Hill," despite being nearly age 50 at the time. The year "The Scalphunters" came out, Davis turned 51, yet convincingly portrayed a character much younger.

I think I figured out Davis' trick: He simply declined to age, until he reached the point in his career that he felt ready to tackle older-man roles. Talk about Method.

Lancaster is ostensibly the lead, Joe Bass, but it's worth nothing that he largely disappears from the center of the movie, residing both literally figuratively on the periphery of the story. During this time Joseph Lee, a cagey slave who plays the underhanded motives of the white people against each other, takes the limelight.

In terms of narrative, there isn't much of one. A trapper, Bass has his winter's worth of fur pelts stolen from him by a Kiowa chief named Two Crows (Armando Silvestre, a Mexican actor who makes for a charismatic but unconvincing Indian). As payment, they give him Joseph Lee, whom they had captured from the Comanches.

Bass, with Lee in tow, follows the Kiowa with the intention of stealing back his furs, when the Indians are attacked by a large group of marauders led by Jim Howie (Telly Savalas). Indian scalps are worth $25 apiece, and Howie and his gang are the sort to acquire money in whatever way they can get it. Bass' mule laden with furs is merely a bonus.

After slipping down a cliff wall, Lee is captured by Howie, who figures he'll fetch $1,500 at the slave auction before they move on to Mexico and out of the reach of the long arm of the law. Lee, who realizes slavery is abolished south of the border, begins ingratiating himself with Howie and his mistress, Kate (Shelley Winters), in hopes of accompanying them entire way to freedom.

Meanwhile, Bass shadows the wagon train, attempting through various means to get back his furs. The most clever of these is poisoning the next water hole with locoweed, so the group's horses bolt and go crazy, killing several men.

Even though story-wise there really isn't much going on, I so enjoyed the four main actors in their roles. Lancaster does his wonderful high-low thing, playing a man of dubious cultural refinement who somehow seems to retain his sense of human grace. He's an illiterate liar who isn't above stealing and fighting dirty, but by gods, he reasons, at least he doesn't trade scalps for a living. The man's stubbornness is his calling card, and his curse.

Telly Savalas had one of those careers where he could play lecherous villains and noble heroes, and yet the characters had a similar through-line. His Jim Howie is not a truly dastardly man -- he does evil things not because he enjoys them, but because they profit him. And profit is all that Howie truly cherishes. Even his relationship to Kate is largely transactional: She figures he's the best chance she's got at a lifetime of comfort, and he gets regular sex and companionship.

It is a marvel to me that anyone, anywhere, at any time ever considered Shelley Winters an attractive woman. With a brassy attitude, screechy voice, three chins and a girdle that groans mightily at its task, Kate is a walking study in repulsion. She at least treats Joseph Lee with something like compassion, seeing him as a more refined companion than Jim Howie -- especially since he's servile and doesn't hit her.

But Ossie Davis' Joseph Lee is the star that makes "The Scalphunters" shine brightly. I loved the way Davis delivers his dialogue, in bright, clipped readings of perfect enunciation and diction. His voice carries almost like he's on a stage and trying to reach the back row.

I shivered with delight whenever he addressed Joe Bass, calling "Mr. Baaasss!!" with a rising crescendo. That over-the-top enthusiasm hides a mountain of obsequiousness, of course, but that is the plight when you are a slave at the mercy of people far less intelligent than yourself.

It could have been just a minor piffle, but Ossie Davis and the rest of the cast transform "The Scalphunters" into a joyous comedic reverie on the dusty plains of the West.

3 stars out of four

2012 movie preview

"Baggins, we loves it, we loves it, we loves it forever!"

For super-fans of J.R.R. Tolkien and the film trilogy based on "The Lord of the Rings," 2012 can be summed up this way: the arrival of "The Hobbit," and a bunch of other movies.

With the "Harry Potter" series all wrapped up and the "Twilight" franchise sputtering to an end, there's nothing bigger on the cinematic calendar than the prequel to "LotR," which (in a familiar move) is being split in two.

Super-heroes will flex even more muscle this year, with "Spider-Man" seeing a reboot and the latest Batman iteration attempting to outdo "The Dark Knight." A potential new roster of heroes rises with "The Avengers," who could potentially ride this thing into the 2020s.

Here is a look at the year in movies, with personal favorites starred. (Release dates can and will change.)

*Red Tails (Jan. 20) -- Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding Jr. star in this WWII action/drama based on the exploits of the all-black Tuskegee Airmen.

The Grey (Jan. 27) -- Liam Neeson, rejuvenated as an action hero, leads a group of oil drillers stranded in Alaska and hunted by wolves.

W.E. (Feb. 3) -- Madonna (yes, that Madonna) wrote and directed this dramatic take on the affair between England's King Edward VIII and an American divorcée.

The Woman in Black (Feb. 3) -- Daniel Radcliffe tests the post-Harry Potter waters in this supernatural period thriller.

Safe House (Feb. 10) -- Denzel Washington goes deliciously bad again playing a criminal held prisoner in a CIA facility overseen by rookie agent Ryan Reynolds.

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (Feb. 17) -- Nicolas Cage opts for a sequel of perhaps his most craptastic cinematic effort -- and that's saying something.

The Secret World of Arrietty (Feb. 17) -- A Disney animation effort in the Japanese anime mold about a family of tiny people discovered by big people.

This Means War (Feb. 17) -- Spy action/comedy about two agents who discover they're dating the same woman. Starring Reese Witherspoon, Tom Hardy and Chris Pine.

Wanderlust (Feb. 24) -- Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd play Manhattanites who lose their jobs and end up in a free-love commune.

Dr. Seuss' The Lorax (March 2) -- The good doctor's lesser-known titles haven't fared so well as animated adaptations. Taylor Swift and Zac Efron provide voices.

*Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (March 2) -- Could be the year's first big action tentpole, with Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton as post-fairy tale arse-kickers.

*The Raven (March 9) -- John Cusack stars in this highly fictionalized take on the life of Edgar Allen Poe, recast as a hunter of serial killers.

Mirror Mirror (March 16) -- The first of two very liberal Snow White adaptations, this one starring Lily Collins with Julia Roberts as the evil queen.

*The Hunger Games (March 23) -- A ton of expectations are waiting for this film version of the Suzanne Collins YA novel about a world where teens fight to the death on TV.

Wrath of the Titans (March 30) -- Sequel to the remake of "Clash of the Titans"; Perseus goes to hell to rescue Zeus. Let's hope the 3D is better.

The Three Stooges (April 13) -- Still sounds like a bad joke, but the Farrelly Brothers (remember them?) go retro looking for some nyucks.

*The Avengers (May 4) -- Four super-heroes previously featured in their own films (Thor, Captain America, Iron Man and The Hulk) team up with some new recruits to battle Loki, the evil god of tricks.

Dark Shadows (May 11) -- Johnny Depp and Tim Burton team up again for a movie version of the cheesy TV show about vampires.

The Dictator (May 11) -- Prankmeister Sacha Baron Cohen's latest stars himself as a fictional Middle Eastern potentate who comes to America.

Battleship (May 18) -- The desktop game becomes a CGI-laden action flick with ships and spaceships. The trailer produced much mockery.

Men in Black 3 (May 25) -- MiB2 was one of the laziest sequels in memory -- can a 10-year layoff improve matters?

Snow White and the Huntsman (June 1) -- The second Snow White movie, and much grimier. Kristen Stewart is Snow, Charlize Theron is the queen, and Chris Hemsworth is the third wheel.

*Prometheus (June 8) -- A lot of mystery surrounds this Ridley Scott sci-fi thriller, with most people guessing it's a prequel to "Alien." Charlize Theron and Noomi Rapace star.

Jack the Giant Killer (June 15) -- Jack the Beanstalk gets the big-budget treatment from "X-Men" director Bryan Singer.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (June 22) -- The first of those classic literature/horror mash-ups arrives onscreen, with Abe honestly kicking butts of blood-suckers and slave owners.

Brave (June 22) -- The newest animated film from Pixar stars their first female protagonist in a Scottish-flavored sword-and-sorcery tale.

The Amazing Spider-Man (July 3) -- Just five years after the trilogy ended, Spidey gets a reboot with an all-new cast, including Andrew Garfield as the webslinger. Could be good, but falls firmly into the "But, why?" category.

*The Dark Knight Rises (July 20) -- The Batman franchise has a huge hurdle to top the last film, which featured one of the greatest villain performances of all time. Somehow I doubt Catwoman (Anne Hathaway) and Bane will measure up to the Joker.

Total Recall (Aug. 3) -- Colin Farrell replaces Ah-nold in this remake of the 1990 sci-fi minor classic.

Argo (Sept. 14) -- Ben Affleck directed and stars in this action/drama about a CIA "exfiltration" expert tasked with getting six Americans out of Iran during the revolution.

Looper (Sept. 28) -- This sci-fi thriller stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a time-traveling hitman who realizes his next target is his future self (Bruce Willis).

Frankenweenie (Oct. 5) -- Tim Burton remakes his first short film as a stop-animation feature about a boy who jolts his dead dog back to life.

Gangster Squad (Oct. 19) -- This highly stylized look at the fight to keep New York mobsters out of 1940s Los Angeles stars Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Sean Penn and Josh Brolin.

Wreck-It Ralph (Nov. 12) -- The bad guy of a video game wants to be the hero in this Disney animated flick.

Skyfall (Nov. 9) -- This long-delayed James Bond flick arrives with Daniel Craig battling a villain (Ralph Fiennes) from M's (Judi Dench) past. Sam Mendes directs.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn -- Part 2 (Nov. 16) -- Vampire lovers and werewolf enemies face off against nosferatu royalty in the culmination of the often-hootworthy series.

Gravity (Nov. 21) -- Sandra Bullock plays an astronaut stranded in space trying to get back to Earth and her daughter. With George Clooney.

Rise of the Guardians (Nov. 21) -- Fall's big animation tentpole finds mythical creatures (Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, Jack Frost, Tooth Fairy) ganging up to fight the Bogeyman.

Les Miserables (Dec. 7) -- Victor Hugo's epic novel has been made into numerous films, but this version is based on the Broadway musical. Starring Hugh Jackman.

*The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Dec. 14) -- Peter Jackson wove magic with "Lord of the Rings," and there's no reason to expect less from the prequel tale. Boring Bilbo Baggins sets off on an adventure with a baker's dozen of dwarves, acquires some jewelry and sees the world. The second half, subtitled "There And Back Again," arrives in 2013.

*World War Z (Dec. 21) -- Based on the best-selling book that takes a serious, sober look at a zombie apocalypse. Starring Brad Pitt.

Django Unchained (Dec. 25) -- Jamie Foxx stars in this Civil War-era actioner from Quentin Tarantino, as a slave-turned-bounty hunter takes the fight to a Mississippi plantation.

The Great Gatsby (Dec. 25) -- Leonardo DiCaprio plays the title role and Carey Mulligan is Daisy in this ambitious adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald book.

*Lincoln (December) -- Steven Spielberg tackles the life of Abraham Lincoln, with Daniel Day-Lewis in the title role. Less a biopic than a portrait of leadership during America's darkest days.

Review: "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy"

Like its main character, George Smiley, "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" plays its cards very close to its vest -- too close, in fact. The result is a nearly affectless espionage tale, a Cold War spy thriller that's chilly and boasts few thrills.

Smiley is refreshingly different from the standard cinematic spy. He's in late middle age, doesn't move in very much of a hurry, eschews guns (most of the time) and has a personality so dry, it's no surprise that his wife, Anne, has left him. Wearing huge owlish eyeglasses and an unctuous mien, Gary Oldman as Smiley resembles a tobacco store clerk more than he does James Bond.

"Tinker" is based on the 1974 novel by John le Carré, unread by me, which was turned into a seven-part BBC miniseries in 1979, with Alec Guinness playing Smiley. With its dense plot and confusing maze of characters -- I was still struggling to keep the names straight by the end -- the story might have been better suited to the episodic rhythms of television than a two-hour movie.

The film begins with the fall of the leader of British Secret Intelligence Services, known only as Control (John Hurt). He had sent one of his top agents, Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong), to Hungary to learn the identity of a double agent at the very top of their leadership. The mission goes awry, Prideaux is shot, and Control and Smiley, his right-hand man, are brought down in the ensuing scandal.

But was the theory of a mole really nonsense? Suffering through a lonely forced retirement, Smiley is given a shot at redemption when the civilian leadership appoints him to learn the truth. This proves quite a challenge, since the four men Control suspected now run "the Circus," as the members of the intelligence agency refer to themselves.

They are: Percy Alleline (Toby Jones), Bill Haydon (Colin Firth), Toby Esterhase (David Dencik) and Roy Bland (Ciarán Hinds).

Alleline would seem to be the most likely suspect, since he openly challenged Control's authority and ended up assuming the position for himself. Alleline has had a great deal of success running "Witchcraft," a super-secret operation that has opened up a pipeline of information from inside the Soviet Union.

Smiley only has a few allies, including a promising young agent, Peter (Benedict Cumberbatch) and an old retiree. He catches a break when Ricki Tarr (Tom Hardy), a rakish spy who first uncovered the theory of the mole and had thought to have gone rogue, turns up at his house.

I won't try to summarize the different twists and turns of the plot, mostly because it remains a blur. It's old-school cloak-and-dagger stuff, with everyone simultaneously suspicious of each other and highly on guard.

Director Tomas Alfredson, the Swede behind the moody vampire drama "Let the Right One In" (which was followed by an American remake), and screenwriters Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan seem intent on crafting a film that resembles its protagonist too much.

It's one thing to have the main character be fetchingly mysterious, and quite another to have him remain a total cipher. Despite a fine performance by Oldman, George Smiley has no interior, and serves only to investigate and find things out to further the plot. Watching a movie about him is like playing chess against a computer.

2.5 stars out of four

Video review: "Contagion"

"Contagion" is a well-made science fiction thriller that engages the intellect better than must such films generally do, but sometimes fails to grab our hearts along with our brains.

Director Steven Soderbergh assembles a huge cast of stars -- including Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Laurence Fishburne, Marion Cotillard, Jude Law and Elliott Gould -- and sets them to encounter an outbreak of a deadly virus called MEV-1. The human population starts dropping like flies, and it's up to a loose consortium of scientists and government officials to race for a cure before mankind finds itself exterminated.

Screenwriter Scott Z. Burns cleverly doesn't go for the usual end-of-the-world tropes, in which the disaster is seen through the eyes of a small band of survivors. Instead, he offers a newsier docu-drama feel in which humanity's soaring grace and grimy faults are left to play out with logic and sobering authenticity.

People grow selfish and petty, and governments begin the task of coldly calculating which lives are worth saving and which are not. But amid the panic is self-sacrifice and generosity.

Even though it's better at making us think than letting audiences feel the characters' plight, "Contagion" remains an ambitious, worthy portrait of fear and hope.

Extra features are fair at best. The DVD edition comes with only a single featurette, "Contagion: How a Virus Changes the World."

Upgrade to the Blu-ray/DVD combo, and you add two more featurettes: "False Comfort Zone: The Reality of Contagion" and "The Contagion Detectives."

Obviously, that's not a lot of infectious enthusiasm on the part of the filmmakers to provide extra goodies for those who pass up the Redbox kiosk to plunk down money to add "Contagion" to their permanent video library.

Movie: 3 stars out of four
Extras: 2 stars

Reeling Backward: "Roots: Episodes IV-VI" (1977)

Click here for the first part of my essay on "Roots" episodes I-III.

It took me a little longer to get through the second half of "Roots" than it did the first. Part of the reason was my schedule, but I'll admit my enthusiasm for the miniseries waned the longer it went on. If the first couple of episodes was groundbreaking television, a depiction of slavery and its terrible consequences, by the last couple go-rounds things had devolved into fairly standard soap opera-y stuff with a historical backdrop.

The last episode -- which remains the third most-watched television event -- is a borderline embarrassing litany of shenanigans and double-crosses as the descendants of Kunta Kinte, led by huckster/chicken fighter Chicken George, play a game of one-upsmanship with some local Rebs who have started a sort of proto-Ku Klux Klan.

Still, there's far more good than bad here, and I'm glad I took the time -- nine hours, minus commercial breaks -- to cross "Roots" off my to-do list.

Without getting into a rote recitation of the plot, I'd like to comment on a few things I've noticed about the series.

The first is the tendency to cast actors who start out being way too old for their parts. New members of the family are typically introduced using the adult actor while the character is in his or her teen years -- leading to some laughably incongruous assertions of youth.

Leslie Uggams, as Kunta Kinte's daughter Kizzy, was 34 when the show aired. Kizzy is first shown at age 16. Even more interesting is the heavy age make-up used for the time setting 18 years later when her son, Chicken George, has grown to manhood. At this time the character of Kizzy is the same age Uggams was in real life. Doubtless she did not have gray hair and neck wattles.

Similarly, Ben Vereen was 31 when he played young Chicken George, who is eventually shown in old age.

Georg Stanford Brown, playing Chicken George's son Tom Harvey, was also 34 when he took over his teen role. Though he was rather youthful-looking and fairly believable as a teenager.

I'm not sure if this was a conscious choice to show how hard a life slavery made for, so a 49-year-old woman is depicted as a bent old crone. More likely the producers thought it better to cast a mature actor who could pull off the role, rather than trying to coach up a teen performer and then age them decades hence.

The portrayal of white characters varies throughout the miniseries, though they become more cartoonish as time goes by. Lloyd Bridges is the main heavy of the last couple of episodes as Evan Brent, a thoroughly hateful racist who gleefully joins the Confederate Army and drives Chicken George out of the territory, despite having gained his own freedom. Brent single-handedly creates the KKK by musingly burning some holes in a flour sack with his cigar, which become eye-holes for their masks.

Evan's brother Jemmy is even more over-the-top, begging Tom Harvey's help after deserting from the army, then attempting to rape Tom's wife while he is away fetching clothes to cover Jemmy's Confederate grays.

Brad Davis is allowed a redemptive part as Old George Johnson, a scampy young white thief who is appointed overseer of the Harvey plantation but befriends the slaves, calling them his family. He ends up saving Tom's life by pretending to whip him at the orders of Brent and the other masked nightriders, when actually he flails the ground with the rawhide.

I would like to address the authenticity of "Roots," as written by Alex Haley. Historians have largely discounted the accuracy of his tale of his long-ancestor, Kunta Kinte, passing down his story and African traditions through oral history. Though Haley was always clear that the novel was a fictionalized version of his family history, he insisted the genealogical tree was as he described it.

Personally, I tend to favor his side of this argument, since written documents and histories are highly suspect when it comes to an entire people being ripped from their homeland and forced into subjugation, even adopting the surnames of their white owners. Besides, if Haley's great-great, etc. -grandfather was not Kunta Kinte, I have not doubt his story was very much like it.

More disturbing was the claim, upheld in a court of law, that Haley plagiarized "Roots" the novel from Harold Courlander's "The African." Indeed, the similarities were hard to ignore, and made worse by the fact that several sections of text were repeated virtually verbatim.

The judge in the case even told the BBC, "Alex Haley perpetrated a hoax on the public." Maybe, but it made for some great, memorable television.

3 stars out of four