Michael Kerwin’s blog

"This comedy-drama is one of
the best lawyer films made during any time period."

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Counsellor At Law is taken from Elmer Rice's hit Broadway play that
starred Paul Muni, who refused the movie role. This thought-provoking drama
is about the rags-to-riches tale of an assimilated Jewish lawyer who is
crushed when he learns that his Wasp wife is unfaithful and still looks
down upon him because of his humble beginnings despite his success and
the kindness and love he shows to her. It's eloquently directed by William
Wyler ("Roman Holiday"/ "Ben-Hur"). It catches the actor known as the Great
Profile, John Barrymore, at his peak before in a few years he would decline
because of his losing bout with alcohol. Working with breakneck speed dialogue,
as was the case with early talkies, Barrymore resorted to using cue cards
since he was beginning to have trouble remembering his lines. But that
didn't effect his brilliantly restrained performance that was filled with
character integrity, pathos and deep emotion. The Waspish Barrymore played
the Jewish lawyer with great conviction and sincerity, catching the workaholic
lawyer's deepest fear of disbarment over a questionable ethical decision
he made a number of years ago to save a guilty client he believed would
be reformed if given a chance from an unfair long sentence–which proved
to be the case. 

In its serious moments, this comedy-drama is one of the best lawyer
films made during any time period. Despite the clichéd characters
and story, and the claustrophobic setting of the entire film set in the
lawyer's spacious office, the film always feels like it's a rip-snortin'
movie and the genuine article and never stage-struck. 

George Simon (John Barrymore) has risen from the parents of Jewish
immigrants, residing in poverty, to become a powerful NYC lawyer, partners
in a prosperous Fifth Avenue Empire State Building office with John P.
Tedesco (Onslow Stevens). He's in all his glory just after getting an accused
murderess off on a not guilty verdict, and on the day after his office
is filled with clients from all walks of life–from the most prominent
and wealthy to the impoverished from his past. Also calling on him is his
dear loving mother (Clara Langsner), who is
proud of her son but worries he's not happy. When his pampered blueblood
wife Cora (Doris Kenyon) calls upon him and brings the spoiled snobbish
boy and girl from her first marriage, who have kept their father's name
of Dwight, we can see how distant she is and that the self-absorbed snob
is only concerned with her own image. 

Wyler builds the story around the characters in the workplace, both
workers and clients, before introducing the plot. By showing a number of
clients interacting with the hotshot lawyer, from important politicians
ringing him up for advise to his doing a favor for his former neighborhood
pushcart lady whose son (Vincent Sherman), he knew as a baby, was clubbed
hard on the kop and arrested for making a radical speech at Union Square.
It also shows him acting in a dubious moral way, as he bilks the rich clients
by padding their bills while he cuts his fees for the poor as if he were
a modern day Robin Hood. He also engages in insider trading that would
make Martha Stewart kvell with envy. His office staff consists of his brilliant
lonely heart law clerk Weinberg and his super-efficient and loyal secretary
Miss 'Rexy' Gordon (Bebe Daniels), who has crush on him that he doesn't
even notice. For comic relief there's the colorful switchboard operator
(Isabel Jewell), who endearingly changes tones at the drop of a hat when
talking either with the clients or friends. Charlie McFadden (John Hammond
Dailey) was a professional criminal, who was saved by George and hired
to do private eye work for the firm. It's McFadden who comes through to
save the day when George is faced with the biggest crisis in his life,
as one of those Silk Stocking lawyers (Elmer H. Brown) has the goods on
him for providing a phony alibi but has to drop those charges when McFadden
comes up with some dirt on him. 

George is pictured as someone not about to apologize that he did
something illegal. Instead, he sees his whole life crashing down on him
if can't practice law because he doesn't have a clue what else to do with
his life. When things get cleared up over the disbarment matter and he's
uncharacteristically jubilant for the moment, the next stunning blow is
that his wife is taking a boat to Europe with her lover (Melvyn Douglas)
aboard. This leads him to think about jumping out of his office window;
but, he's stopped by his loyal secretary, who sees this as her chance to
be with the man she loves. 

This is an excellent drama that knows how to combine comedy with
drama, and never forgets what force is driving this powerful story. It's
a complete triumph. 

Photos
click to amplify
Rafy, Columbia Pictures
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Diggings Articulation

There's nothing like bad timing to kill whatever chances a big had.

Most pictures take so long to develop, write, rewrite, green-light, produce and market that getting to release day is like tip-toeing through a minefield.

The events of Sept. 11, 2001, ripped into the release plans and eventual returns for several terrorist-related movies, most notably "Collateral Damage."

A wave of highly publicized kidnappings and child slayings will do nothing for "Trapped," which Columbia, coincidentally or not, kept from everyone's sight until Friday's "cold" opening.

"Trapped" has the single distinction among kidnapping movies to involve three concurrent situations of one-on-one hostage-holding.

Serial kidnapper Joe Hickey (Kevin Bacon), masochistic wife Cheryl (Courtney Love) and Joe's possibly learning-impaired cousin Marvin (Pruitt Taylor Vince) stage their fifth child theft six months after the fourth.

While Dr. Will Jennings (Stuart Townsend) is at a medical conference in Seattle, to which he has piloted himself in his own plane, Joe breaks into Jennings' home in Portland, Ore., grabs Will's asthmatic 6-year-old daughter Abby (Dakota Fanning), and hands her off to Marvin, who drives her to a remote cabin in the Eastern Cascades.

Joe stays in Jennings' home with notions of making distraught mommy Karen (Charlize Theron) his playmate while Cheryl apprehends Will in his hotel room.

Greg Iles adapted his own novel "24 Hours," which is the time frame for each kidnapping, but the deadline isn't given much weight in the story and none at all toward the end.

While the film is all too obviously marking time, two of the three one-on-one pairings turn unnecessarily lurid and nasty. After about 75 minutes, it begins to feel like we're just waiting for Iles to deliver the rest of the script.

It doesn't help that director Luis Mandoki is enamored of shaky, hand-held cameras or that Karen behaves foolishly.

A chaotic climax, hurled from the editing room, costs "Trapped" what little is left of its credibility.

Although we get, finally, a patch of motivation, it's sketched in hazily and never tied to the earlier kidnappings, the outcomes of which aren't mentioned.

"Loose Ends" would have been a better title.

By far, the strongest scenes are those least representative of such movies ? the ones shared by the expressive-eyed Fanning, who played Sean Penn's precocious daughter in "I Am Sam," and Taylor Vince, who strives valiantly to build a sympathetic schlemiel.

Those who remember him as Paul Newman's sensitive buddy in "Nobody's Fool" know he has the chops. What he needs is the time and the movie.

'Trapped'


Executive:

Luis Mandoki

Stars:

Charlize Theron, Courtney Appreciate, Kevin Bacon

MPAA Rating:

R for violence, language and procreant volume

The Game

Directed by David Fincher.

Written by John Brancato and Michael Ferris.

Starring Michael Douglas, Sean Penn, James Rebhorn, Deborah Kara Unger,
Peter Donat, Carrol Baker, and Armin Mueller-Stahl.

By Vladimir Zelevinsky

Imagine if each and every Agatha Christie novel ended with the
revelation that the butler did it. Each novel might be different from the
other novels, more or less suspenseful, more or less interesting, but the
ending would be the same. Sounds highly unlikely, doesn't it?

Well, yes, it does, but maybe not if you're a writer of Hollywood
thrillers. They all end with the main character (also known as "good guy")
trouncing the villains (also known as "bad guys"), and getting the
attractive female (also known as "the girl").

The Game

is a
Hollywood thriller. There, now you know everything you need to know.

The bright, optimistic, so-cheerful-it-hurts conclusion is a particular
disappointment in this case, especially because for a while it looks like

The Game

might be a winner, so it's sad that it gets so lost in the
end.

The plot concerns an uptight investment banker, Nicholas Van Orton
(Douglas), who gets from his brother a gift certificate to a company called
"Consumer Recreation Services". This company, for a sizeable fee, puts its
clients into a custom-made adventure - weird things start happening,
strangers drop cryptic clues, and the plot thickens. After a long (and
frequently tedious) set-up,

The Game

hits a high note and manages to
sustain it for quite a while. It's fun to watch the protagonist drawn
deeper and deeper into a twisting plot, where it's not even clear anymore
what is the game and what is reality. This ambiguity makes the movie seem
like it might actually be about something interesting and important. Then
the ambiguity is resolved (after pretending several times that we finally
know what's going on), and the movie crashes and burns, becoming as generic
as its title.

Maybe the customary Hollywood desire to wrap things up neatly is to
blame. The intriguing notion that Nicolas might just be paranoid and losing
his mind is not developed in any way. The fact that he starts as a
businessman, ruthless up to the point of being inhuman, is lost as
well.

Director David Fincher (

Seven

) obviously went a long way from his
first movie, the Filmed In Confus-o-Vision

Alien 3

, but still
mistakes insufficient lighting for atmosphere. Douglas does a good but
uninspired job; set design is gothic and impressive; and the score is
tingling with suspense. But all in all, this works only to prod the viewers
into reacting the way they're supposed to.

If this sounds like a good way to kill a couple of hours, go for it. If
not, you can check out the collection of short stories,

The Club of
Queer Trades

, by G.K.Chesterton, and read "The Adventure of Major
Brown". It has the plot identical to

The Game

, but has more fun
doing it.

With its stylish visuals and general creepiness,

The Game

might
trick you, for a while, into thinking that you're watching something
worthwhile, but the illusion won't last long. It might look like fromage,
and it might smell like fromage, but if it tastes like Cheez Wiz, you know
what it is.

Grandma's Boy

Grandma's Boy

COMEDY:

2006-01-06

1:36

R (Profanity, Drugs, Sexual Situations, Nudity)

2.35:1

Allen Covert, Linda Cardellini, Doris Roberts, Shirley Jones, Shirley Knight, Peter Dante, Nick Swardson, Joel David Moore, Kevin Nealon

Nicholaus Goossen

Barry Wernick and Allen Covert & Nick Swardson

Mark Irwin

U.S. Distributor:

20th Century Fox

Subtitles:

none

For those who think reviewing films is easy and fun, I offer

Grandma's Boy

as my rebuttal. That's 96 minutes (plus travel time) and $6.00 (matinee price) that I'll never get back, no matter what I write here. Legal theft. This is one of those movies where you stay rooted in your seat just to see how bad it can really get. And every time you think it has hit the bottom, the filmmakers find a passage taking them lower.

Grandma's Boy

is the kind of production that demands comparison to

Freddy Got Fingered

when it comes to bad taste and bad entertainment. (Although, to be fair,

Freddy

remains king.)

Consistently unfunny and consistently offensive,

Grandma's Boy

makes a person wonder what the money men saw in the finished product to earn it a theatrical distribution (20th Century Fox hid it from critics, not offering press screenings). Something like this should have been shelved or, better yet, buried. There are plenty of toxic waste dumps around this country where prints of

Grandma's Boy

would be at home. It's only one week into 2006 and I can say with confidence that I have seen one of the year's worst movies. If luck is with me, I won't have to sit through something this torturous in a long time.

Alex (Allen Covert, looking eerily like - believe it or not - Mel Gibson) is a 36-year old pot-smoking video game tester who is evicted from his apartment for failure to pay his rent. It turns out that his no-good roommate took Allen's rent money and spent it on Filipina hookers. At first, Alex tries to crash at the infernal house of his drug dealing friend, Dante (Peter Dante), but that doesn't work out. Next is Jeff (Nick Swardson), but an embarrassing late-night incident ends that arrangement. In desperation, Alex moves in with his grandmother, Lilly (Doris Roberts), and her two elderly roommates, the oversexed Grace (Shirley Jones) and the overmedicated Bea (Shirley Knight). At work, where Alex is debugging the latest hot game title from wunderkind designer J.P. (Joel David Moore), there's a new project manager to contend with. Her name is Samantha (Linda Cardellini) and she's there to keep things on schedule. And, of course, something develops between Alex and her.

The filmmakers do two things right. Linda Cardellini is cute enough to take some of the sting out of watching the movie. (She doesn't get much chance to show her acting ability, but there's ample evidence elsewhere that she has talent. Here, she's just a pretty face.) And the video games look like real video games. Everything else in the film is wrong, wrong, wrong. Take the worst skit in the history of

Saturday Night Live

and expand it to 15 times its expected running length, and you're left with

Grandma's Boy

. While few of the people involved in the making have a direct connection with

SNL

, they almost all come out of Adam Sandler's Happy Madison production company, and this is among the worst things to crawl out from under that rock. You know you're in trouble when Rob Schneider makes his obligatory cameo, and things don't improve when David Spade shows up for about a minute (and he says something other than "no").

Not only are none of the jokes in

Grandma's Boy

funny, but it's sometimes bad how far they miss the mark. Are we supposed to laugh when a surprised woman enters a bathroom to be sprayed by the product of Alex's Lara Croft-fueled masturbation session? Is it supposed to be funny to watch the elderly Mrs. Partridge French-kissing a stoner who sucks his thumb at night? What about the fat geek who nuzzles the nipple on a surgically enhanced breast for 13 hours? Or the uber-nerd who acts like a robot when he gets nervous? These things don't sound amusing on paper, and they come across worse on celluloid.

At one point, everyone might have loved Raymond, but I'm not sure his TV parents are too thrilled with him now. In the wake of the show's end, Peter Boyle has started doing Alka-Seltzer commercials and Doris Roberts has been forced into this movie. Roberts spends most of the film looking dazed and confused. Maybe she didn't read the script ahead of time. That would be one explanation for why her face often has a sour expression not unlike that worn by Boyle in the antacid ads. Comparing their respective post-

Everybody Loves Raymond

projects, he got the better one.

This is Nicholaus Goossen's directorial debut. The evidence at hand would indicate he's not going to have a long and profitable career behind the camera but, in the event that he does, this is a title he will likely expunge from his resume. It probably won't be difficult, since it's unlikely than many unfortunate souls will be suckered into paying money for this atrocity. As much as the film sneers at its characters, so viewers will sneer at it. And sneering is one of the milder forms of hostility deserved by

Grandma's Boy

. Other, more appropriate expressions of anger are likely illegal, although, considering the theft of time and money committed by the filmmakers, not necessarily immoral.

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Home Delivery

It happens not often, but a movie sometimes transcends weaknesses in document and direction.

Take "From Hell," which screenwriters Terry Hayes and Rafael Yglesias based on the "graphic novel" by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell. Graphic … say again? Other sources refer to the movie's origin as comic books.

Whatever. Dozens of films have been drawn from the five murders of prostitutes that are ascribed to Jack the Ripper.

"From Hell" garbles the basic material and still reaches the finish with a flourish - more to the credit of the screenwriters and some good players than to the direction of twins Allen Hughes and Albert Hughes.

Funny how gas-lighted Victorian England in 1888 can come out looking like a music video in search of a stabilizing force.

The prostitutes of London's Whitechapel section are being disemboweled by someone with a knowledge of medicine who disarms them with premium-priced grapes (Grapes were dear then?) and astringent booze just before street surgery.

Jack never operates without his top hat, cloak and produce.

Assigned to investigate are Inspector Abberline (Johnny Depp) and the paternalistic Sergeant Godlev (Robbie Coltrane in a rare serious characterization).

Police Commissioner Warren (Ian Richardson) encourages them to find a suspicious American Indian or a Jew, one of the film's several allusions to anti-Semitism.

Abberline frequents the local opium den, swigging his chasers from a flask (And what else have you got?). Apparently when high, he's freest to exercise his second sight, an unnecessary and under-amplified plot point that is dragged in only to validate his hunches.

As prostitutes such as Polly (Annabelle Apison) die or get lobotimized like Annie (Katrin Cartlidge), Abberline develops an appetite for the intoxicatingly beautiful and smart Irish immigrant Mary Kelly (Heather Graham).

Still, he has time to consult with former surgeon Sir William Gull (Ian Holm in the most riveting performance). Gull is personal physician to the royal family and head of a med school.

"From Hell" (a valid but misleading title) begins ineptly, typically cluttering the landscape with too many initially ill-defined characters and trying to build tempo through editing alone.

The film takes a while to focus. The Hughes count on set designs, under-lighting and gore to compensate for their lack of skill in building suspense and visual narrative.

On the subject of the Ripper alone, they could have studied such films as Alfred Hitchcock's "The Lodger" or even Hugo Fregonese's "Man in the Attic."

What's surprising, then, is how the film's second half improves as the Hugheses settle down, scrap the trendy effects and hone in on villains from two sectors of society, at least one of which I can't remember seeing demonized before.

The script leaves a few critical points unresolved (face it - we're in the film epoch from hell), but so much coalesces so nicely in the final reel that "From Hell" manages to satisfy more than it deserves to.

'From Hell'


Director:

Allen Hughes, Albert Hughes

Stars:

Johnny Depp, Heather Graham, Ian Holm

MPAA Rating:

R, conducive to strong violence/gore, sexuality, phrasing and dope content

This is a handsomely mounted and forcefully dramatic glorification of Queen Bess. It holds a succession of brilliantly played scenes, a opulence of prize diction, pointed excerpts from English history and a series of awe-inspiring tableaux.

It projects Flora Robson in a conception of the British regent which holds the imagination. Her keen aptitude in dovetailing the strong and frail sides of Elizabeth's nature makes a solid keystone for the production.

Action ranges from cumbersomely dull to sharp, hardhitting flashes of excitement. Where director William K. Howard seems to get in his most telling dramatic effects are the sequences which build up to Laurence Olivier's undoing as an English spy and his subsequent escape, the queen's confronting of her coterie of exposed betrayers, and the burning of the Spanish armada.

Sprightly plied are the romantic passages. It's a two-cornered play for Olivier. First object of his deportment is his childhood sweetheart and lady-in-waiting to the queen, persuasively treated by Vivien Leigh. His other idyllic moments bring him in contact with the daughter of a Spanish nobleman. As the Spanish beauty Tamara Desni blends a compound of charm and sympathy.

From the refuse specifics pointer in the documentation of ownership to the rallying chant-along finale, "Sarafina!" doesn't faithfully revel in gyves. Then again, neither does the apartheid it's singing and dancing around. A surreal blending of showtime musicality with police-dog reality, the movie touches upon the political issues in its own unhinged way.

It stars Whoopi Goldberg as Mary Masembuko, a high school teacher in the blacks-only township of Soweto, South Africa. Married to a radical fighter on the run, and stowing away his AK-47 rifle behind her stove, she teaches government-line history to the students, but interjects with the real truth about those Great Moments in Afrikaner History . . .

Now, hold the phone. Which part of South Africa is Goldberg from? Her accent doesn't make it quite clear. Could it be the Orange Free State of New York? Obviously, her prime purpose is coattail power. By headlining this adaptation of South African playwright Mbongeni Ngema's political-consciousness musical, she bears the message to America's video rental stores.

The actual story (the one with the real South Africans in it) is about the growing consciousness of trusting school kid Sarafina (Leleti Khumalo). A student in Goldberg's class, she soon gets the word on the white lies in her textbooks. She also learns about other treachery. There are government informers and puppets (including writer Ngema as a constable) everywhere and the police are just itching to roll out the German shepherds, tear gas and armored cars. Newly charged, Khumalo criticizes her mother (Miriam Makeba) for playing nanny to pampered white children. She also realizes mentor Goldberg is in real danger.

Based on the real children's resistance movement in Soweto in the mid-1970s, "Sarafina!" unleashes images of now-archetypal facets of South African political life: the funerals, the stone-throwing youths and so forth. With its song-and-dance call to defeat injustice (the play was written before the repeal of apartheid laws), it's basically "Agitprop: The Musical!" Imagine an African Doris Day waking up in a police state, singing about it (to mbaqanga music), then learning that even the innocent get their heads bashed in.

Director Darrell James Roodt offers some well-choreographed, if modestly budgeted moments. There's something undeniably stirring about entire groups of black children in preppie school uniform doing "West Side Story" routines against the dusty shantyscape. Khumalo is extremely appealing. When she speaks daily to — and deifies — a photograph of black leader Nelson Mandela, then in musical fantasy scenes imagines herself as him, the scenes work primarily because of her in-built naivete.

The trouble is, in a movie about South Africa, what possible happy ending could Khumalo's own story conclude with? Musicals end happily after all, and people aren't linking hands across the Transvaal yet. The movie dips into the Doris Day genre again. Battle-weary Khumalo's final revelation is not that resistance is futile, or that Mandela's photograph is actually just a photograph. It's that brutal police massacres may come and go, but Mom is a girl's best friend.

Tuesday, February 17th 2004

photo: Allen Yee

In the rut: Dutton, Ryan, and Epps

Against the Ropes

Directed by Charles S. Dutton
Paramount, in release

Cut me, Mick! Maybe that'll keep me awake. With the same movie star hairdo that squashed

Jennifer Aniston

's bid for store-clerkness in

The Good Girl

,

Meg Ryan

shakily assays another non-rom-com role, this time in a sports flick based on the life of Detroit sportswriter turned boxing agent

Jackie Kallen

. But what could have been a

Working Girl

hoot gets mired in redundant assertions of Kallen's feistiness. See our miniskirted babe take her job and shove it, strut out of typecast tough-talker

Tony Shalhoub

's office like it's a

Hot Topic

runway show, badger typecast wise man (and director)

Charles Dutton

into coming out of coaching retirement. As in

In the Cut

, Ryan's mentoring of a young black man gets played for walk-on-the-edge cred: See her brave the projects looking for typecast sports bad boy

Omar Epps

(who she's sure will be great if he'd just work as hard at boxing as

she

does at making her Midwestern vah-wells sound so flay-yat). As a gloves-off

Erin Brockovich

, Ryan never makes it into the ring.

More by Laura Sinagra

Give “Twilight'' points for being different. This is a
picture with aging characters who aren't cuddly or twinkly or
fretting over whether to get plastic surgery. These people are
dangerous, with lots of experience in telling lies and no time to
waste.

That might make “Twilight'' sound interesting, so let's say
something else about it right away: The atmosphere is heavy. It's as
if every character were carrying an invisible weight, or the air was
made of oatmeal. Writer-director Robert Benton obviously intended to
paint this neo-noir in somber tones, but he's succeeded beyond what's
good for his movie.

Take Paul Newman's mustache. What were they thinking? Here's
the most handsome 73-year-old alive, but in the film he's partially
hidden behind sad-sack facial hair. He plays a down-and-out detective
who is also a vigorous man in his 60s, hopping in and out of bed with
younger women. The mustache makes Newman look like a grandfather.

Characters and mood are what “Twilight'' offers beyond the
routine detective story. Gene Hackman and Susan Sarandon play
formerly glamorous movie stars living together in an old
Hollywood-style mansion. Now it's all slipping away, and you can feel
it in every frame. He's dying and needs to tie up some loose ends, so
he asks his old pal Harry (Newman) to deliver a package for him.

We all know this from watching movies: If someone asks you
to deliver a package, don't do it. Apparently, though, Harry hasn't seen
enough movies because the next thing he knows he's getting shot at
and has no idea why.

The process by which Harry finds out why becomes the story
of “Twilight.'' In the meantime, there is opportunity for Sarandon
to act earthy and sexy and drive all the old men crazy. James Garner
shows up as an old cop and lumbers around in his cynical, likable,
matter-of-fact way.

It's all totally watchable, and yet there are times when the film
seems to have no reason to exist.
The ending is particularly sour and unsatisfying, though maybe that's
Benton's shrewd attempt to make the audience understand how the
characters feel — disillusioned to realize there really wasn't much
point to anything after all.

Newman is a disappointment. There is no faulting the truth
of his performance, but one can't help but wish he had something more
lively to do. Maybe he smiles in “Twilight'' or raises his voice,
but if he does, I don't remember. He plays it like just another
quiet, depressed guy with a mustache — believable, but no fun.

A television proclivity coordinator who's content to stay single until the right send up comes along suddenly meets the man of her dreams–or so she thinks. He's rich, handsome and available, but, with his jealous ex-girlfriend, a pushy mother and a tendency toward obsession, she in a wink discovers the actually of the ex- adage 'You can't find a book by its cover.'