New Film Of ‘Gatsby’ Is Far From Great

They failed in 1926 and again in 1949. They still didn’t get it right in 1974, 2000, and 2002. With all that practice you would think the filmmakers’ sixth attempt at bringing “The Great Gatsby,” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel of the Jazz Age, to the silver screen would be successful. But sadly that’s not the case. From the inappropriate sound track to the flat performances to the CGI cityscapes to the wasted use of 3D to the liberties it takes with the novel, this film may go down as one of the biggest disappointments in Hollywood history.

As the film opens, we find Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) ensconced in Perkins Sanitarium, where he is being treated for “morbid alcoholism” (This not in the book.), and as he is attempting to tell his therapist about a man named Jay Gatsby, the doctor suggests that he write his thoughts down. Therefore Gatsby’s story unfolds as a giant flashback.

The saga begins in 1922, when Nick, who was graduated from Yale University and served in World War I, moves to the mythical village of West Egg on Long Island, N.Y. He aspires to a career in bond sales on Wall Street, and it just so happens that his small cottage sits next door the palatial mansion of millionaire Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio), which is located directly across the bay from the equally ostentatious dwelling of Tom (Joel Edgerton) and Daisy (Carey Mulligan) Buchanan in East Egg. Daisy is Nick’s cousin, and her husband was in Yale with him, and so when they learn he has moved to Long Island, they invite him to dinner.

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy–they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money of their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Ch. 9

In an attempt to bring some romance into Nick’s life that night, Daisy introduces him to her friend Jordan Baker (Elizabeth  Debicki), a somewhat famous golfer. Although the relationship that develops between Nick and Jordan offers fascinating reading in the book, it is sadly reduced to practically nothing in the film. No surprise there.

One day later in the summer Nick receives an invitation to one of Gatsby’s legendary parties, and naturally he accepts. Each weekend myriad wealthy people flock to Gatsby’s mansion for free food and booze. They don’t need an invitation, and Gatsby doesn’t really know many of them. 

“I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby’s house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not invited–they went there.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Ch. 3

As Nick wanders aimlessly among the boisterous revelers at the frenetic party, he wonders aloud to a man with whom he has been speaking who and where Gatsby is, at which  point the man smiles and says, “I’m Gatsby.”

“He smiled understandingly -- much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced–or seemed to face–the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Ch. 3 

Thus begins the friendship forming the nucleus of the film, and Jordan tells Nick that Gatsby and Daisy had been in love five years ago before Gatsby went off to war, but when he returned, Daisy was married to Tom, whom Gatsby insists she doesn’t love. When Gatsby realizes that Nick is Daisy’s cousin, he asks Nick to invite her to tea. (Gatsby intentionally lives across the bay from Daisy, and he considers the green light at the end of her dock a symbol of hope for being reunited with her.) Daisy accepts, finds Gatsby there, and discovers she still has deep feelings for him. Now we have love triangle complicated by the fact that Tom has a mistress named Myrtle Wilson (Isla Fisher), whose husband owns and operates garage located in the valley of ashes.

“This is a valley of ashes–a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.” -F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Ch. 2

As the story progresses, a horrible event transpires setting in motion a series of occurrences ultimately culminating in Gatsby’s tragic downfall. If you have read the book, you know what happens. If you haven’t, I suggest you do so instead of seeing the movie the because the book is an American literary classic whereas the film merely offers still another example of Hollywood’s consistently maddening propensity for desecrating literary masterpieces.

Australian director Baz Luhrmann (“Moulin Rouge”) has explained in a number of interviews why he decided to do “The Great Gatsby” in 3-D and to forgo the appropriate Jazz Age music in favor of hip hop for the soundtrack, but I really don’t give a damn what he says. The 3-D is wasted (The only things that really come out of the screen are a few snowflakes and some words from Nick’s manuscript.), and the soundtrack is a joke. This guy probably would do a remake of “American Graffiti” and replace all those fabulous 1950s songs with the music of Bach. Or how about doing “Phantom of the Opera” and replacing Andrew Lloyd Weber’s score with country western music?

But even more disturbing than Luhrmann’s approach to the film are the robotic performances pretty much across the board. Although I liked Maguire well enough in the “Spider-Man” films and a few others in which he played the parts of a very young man, I’m afraid he doesn’t have much range as an actor. In all of his roles he rarely changes expressions, and his voice often sounds as if he is going through delayed puberty. I think he was miscast as Nick.

Unfortunately Mulligan’s portrayal of Daisy isn’t any better than Maguire’s turn as Nick. As the object of Gatsby’s longing, she exudes all the sex appeal of a rock. She doesn’t convey Daisy’s emotions believably at all, and her scenes with DiCaprio are completely devoid of any sexual tension or chemistry.

As for DiCaprio, who has evolved into a very fine actor, he looks terrific in the part of Gatsby, but, like the other actors in the film, he just doesn’t capture the aura of his character effectively, and his accent really sounds forced. Gatsby is an incredibly complex person, and portraying him accurately would be difficult for any actor. Just ask Robert Redford, who had trouble with the role in the 1974 film version.

“He wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Ch. 6

In the film’s production notes, DiCaprio offered some insight into playing Gastby.

“Gatsby is an incredible character to play. I think he’s very much the manifestation of the American dream, of imagining who you can become… and he does it all for the love of a woman. But even that is open to interpretation: Is Daisy just the manifestation of his dreams? Or is he really in love with this woman? I think that he’s a hopeless romantic but he’s also an incredibly empty individual searching for something to fill a void in his life.”

Now in all fairness, the film is a cinematic banquet, but I highly recommend foregoing the 3-D version because it adds nothing and may even detract from the stunning costumes and gorgeous sets. But these are not enough to save the film from earning a final score of a very disappointing five.

Perhaps the ultimate lesson here is that literary masterpieces really just belong on the printed page and not on the silver screen.

 

“Iron Man 3″ Very Good, But Not Great

After a triumphant debut overseas (more than $300 million so far) “Iron Man 3” rocketed into theaters nationwide last Friday and appears poised to smash box office records on this side of the pond as well. Although I still like the original “Iron Man” better than any of its followers, the third installment surpasses the second one, and it should not disappoint fans of the series.

In “Iron Man 3” we find Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) still shaken after falling through a wormhole and snatched from the jaws of death by the Hulk at the end of “The Avengers.” Stark was so unnerved by this experience he’s plagued by insomnia and nightmares, and he also has dedicated himself to constructing a number of different Iron Man suits, and in one of the film’s best comic scenes we watch him experiment with a special model that will fly onto his body piece by piece.

The story really gets rolling when Stark learns that a dastardly villain named The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley), who bears considerably more than a passing resemblance to Osama bin Laden, is responsible for a series of devastating bombings. When Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau), the chief of security for Stark, is caught in one of the explosions, Stark issues a challenge to The Mandarin, who has proclaimed, “Some people call me a terrorist. I consider myself a teacher. Lesson number one, heroes, there is no such thing.”

Unfortunately The Mandarin accepts the invitation to come after him by attacking and destroying Stark’s spacious cliff-side home. Although Stark and his girlfriend, Virginia “Pepper” Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), escape death, they are separated by the attack, and Stark ends up (never mind how) in Tennessee, where he meets a 10-year-old genius named Harley (Ty Simpkins), who helps him repair his damaged suit and teams up with him in trying to locate The Mandarin.

Now at this point the plot becomes quite complex because in his pursuit of the villain, Stark encounters another problem known as Extremis. This experimental program is the brainchild of Dr. Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall), another of Stark’s lady friends, and it offers those suffering from various physical disabilities a complete cure. However, the treatment carries with it potentially lethal side effects.

Thus in addition to finding and confronting The Mandarin, our hero must also cope with the Extremis factor and another villain named Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce) before he can hang up his suit and rest easily until his next adventure. Is Iron Man up to the task? The only way to find out is to watch this exciting, albeit at times a bit convoluted, movie, and I’m not so sure that in trying to do too much with the film its makers may have prevented it from being better than it is.

Now don’t misunderstand me. “Iron Man 3” has plenty of action and humor to offer viewers. Downey Jr. is simply superb in portraying the most human side we have seen of Stark so far. In fact, he wears the suit less in this film than he did its two predecessors, and in the film’s production notes producer Louis D’Esposito explained why this was intentional.

“Early on in the development, we talked about this notion of taking Tony Stark back to basics because we wanted to see him just use his brain. You want to see what he can do when the odds are against him and it makes you wonder, ‘How is he going to get out of this one?’”

I really liked this approach because it gave Downey Jr. more of an opportunity to exhibit his incredible acting talent instead of just rocketing around in that metal suit. On the other hand, I question the filmmakers’ wisdom in attempting to pack so much into one two-hour film. In the production notes, producers Kevin Feige and Stephen Broussard offered some interesting insight into their reasons for making the film the way they did.

“The exciting thing about ‘Iron Man 3’ is that it’s not only the culmination of the first two films, but it’s also a follow-up to ‘Marvel’s The Avengers,’” Feige said. “It’s one of the first situations where you have a movie that is the sequel to two different films and in a way that liberates it to be more unique than anything that has come before it, which is what we’re most excited about. Tony Stark is a man who is all about the journey and character arc. When we first met him in ‘Iron Man,’ he was a pompous fellow, building weapons, and almost immediately he suffers a life-changing accident when he is blown up by one of his own missiles in Afghanistan. It galvanizes him into building the Iron Man suit and to get out of the weapons game. ‘Iron Man 2’ tests that resolve as he has some health problems and then in ‘Marvel’s The Avengers’ he faces a world-changing event that not only includes seeing the powers of other superheroes, but also having a portal to another world opened above his head.”

“There are two classic stories that have appeared in the ‘Iron Man’ comics — one is older and the other is more modern,” Broussard said. “The older is the character called The Mandarin, and he is one of the most famous villains in the franchise. The character dates back to the 1960s, and we wanted Shane [Black] and Drew [Pearce] to take that idea and make it contemporary for present-day audiences. We also wanted to combine that with another storyline in the comic called Extremis, which came out not too long before the first ‘Iron Man’ film in 2008. It deals with the biological enhancement of humans, and Tony must face super-powered humans in that. So we just thought, wouldn’t that be interesting if we tried to combine these two stories into one for ‘Iron Man 3’?”

Although I can understand their rationale for doing what they did with the film, I think developing both plots more fully in two separate movies might have been a better way to go because there are times when on plot gets in the way of the other and vice versa.

The acting in the film is consistently excellent. In addition to Downey Jr.’s fine performance, Paltrow, who recently was named by People magazine as the most beautiful woman in the world, is wonderful as Potts, and Hall is equally good as Hansen. The always outstanding Don Cheadle returns to reprise his role as Col. James “Rhodey” Rhodes, who is Stark’s best friend, and while both Pearce and Kingsley make terrific villains, Kingsley is particularly chilling as The Mandarin. In the production notes, Kingsley provided some insight into his character.

“The Mandarin’s motivation is to turn the pyramid of civilization as we know it on its head by referring quite accurately to iconography, history and ironies that are contained in any civilized state. He picks at them quite viciously and remorselessly to justify the correctness of his desire to destroy this particular civilization, which he considers absurd. It’s a sense of rightness, not of evil, that motivates him and he wishes to basically turn all our landmarks and the things we cling to as emblems on their heads.”

In addition to the fine acting, the film is a showcase for spectacular special effects. The scene in which lethal helicopters destroy Stark’s house is remarkable, and the final battle also offers a real visual treat.

As I said earlier, fans of this series should not be disappointed, and I give the film a solidly respectable eight. Of course the next question is whether or not there will be an “Iron Man 4,” and when you see what Stark does at the end of this film you may have your doubts. But I don’t.

“Scary Movie 5″ Is Terrifyingly Terrible

Consider for a moment doing any of the following: 1. Having a root canal sans Novocain; 2. Sitting through a marathon of Tyler Perry films; 3. Watching Keanu (I-Can’t-Act) Reeves play Hamlet; 4. Falling into the path of an oncoming New York subway train; 5. Being shoved into a sleeping bag filled with black mambas; 6. Seeing a remake of “Casablanca” starring Pee Wee Herman and Rosanne Barr.

I would rather do any or all of the above than sit through “Scary Movie 5” a second time. Hollywood has hit a new low with the release of this insultingly stupid, totally tasteless, and embarrassingly inept fifth installment of the series that began back in 2000. Perhaps because it did not receive one positive review on Metacritic.com, the filmmakers will get the message and spare us the agony of churning out No. 6. But whatever they decide, one thing is certain; yours truly has seen his last one.

It’s probably appropriate that a movie this horrendous opens with a scene between two of the most classless “stars” in Hollywood – Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan. Yes, these two notorious bad actors meet in Charlie’s bedroom filled with cameras to make a porn tape, and after a scene that is at once pathetically humorless and patently repulsive, the two are relaxing in bed. Suddenly an invisible force lifts Charlie into the air and smashes him into various places around the room before returning him to the bed.

At this point, Lindsay decides she has seen enough paranormal activity and says she is leaving. But before she has the chance to escape, the same force begins throwing her about the room until she manages to turn it back on Charlie, who is hurled into a camera and killed. Now we are informed that Charlie’s three children have gone missing, and in the meantime Lindsay is sent back to her second home in jail for the murder of Charlie.

Now new characters take over the film, as the focus switches to the search for Charlie’s children, and we move ahead a few months to find Snoop Dog and Mac Miller (played by themselves) combing the woods for some marijuana plants. After they steal a plant, they hide out in an isolated cabin where they encounter three animalistic creatures that turn out to be Charlie’s children. Snoop and Mac receive a reward for turning them in, and Charlie’s brother, Dan Sanders (Simon Rex) and his wife, Jody (Ashley Tisdale ultimately adopt them and take them to live in a new home equipped with multi security cameras to monitor paranormal activity.

From this point on the film continues its inferior parodying of the following: “Paranormal Activity,” “Black Swan,” “Mama,” “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” “Sinister,” “Fifty Shades of Grey,” “Madea,” “Inception,” “Evil Dead,” “The Cabin in the Woods,” and “Insidious.”

As one who has endured the unmitigated agony of sitting through such worthless films as the “Paranormal Activity” and “Madea” series and “Mama,” I can tell you that the only thing worse than viewing any of these films a second time is having to watch an ineptly acted, shoddily made, and irrefragably inferior film that purports to parody them.

As the minutes during this horrific viewing nightmare dragged by (The film’s running time of 86 minutes felt tantamount to at least four or five hours.), I found myself becoming increasingly angry because I would never be able to recoup the hour and 26 minutes of my life I had wasted watching such a debacle, and now I even have grown weary writing about it. Therefore, let’s mercifully wrap it up.

“Scary Movie 5” may well be the worst film I’ve ever had the misfortune of seeing. In addition to being totally devoid of any humor and being filled with myriad ineffectual and tasteless sight gags, it has no redeeming value whatsoever. Thus, this film has the dubious distinction of receiving the worst rating of my stellar career. Yes, film fans this one gets an ultimately insulting minus 10!!! Even so, I must admit that one word in its title is apropos. Just think about the fact that some people actually pay to see a film like this. NOW THAT IS SCARY!!!

“42″ Pounds Out A Grand Slam Homer

“Now batting for the Brooklyn Dodgers, number 42, Jackie Robinson.”

When the public address announcer at Ebbets Field spoke these words on April 15, 1947, the world of major league baseball changed forever. Thanks to the vision and compassion of Branch Rickey, the president and general manager of the Dodgers, the first African-American ever stepped up to the plate in a formerly all-white league. And, as the cliché goes, the rest is history.

The road to that day in 1947 was far from an easy one for Robinson, who endured myriad examples of racism from fans and even his own teammates. Robinson’s struggles during his incipient two years in baseball, first with the minor league Montreal Royals and ultimately with the Dodgers, are chronicled in “42,” an outstanding film starring newcomer Chadwick Boseman as Robinson, and Harrison Ford as Rickey. In addition to being terrifically entertaining, albeit at times infuriating because of the racial prejudice it obviously had to address, the film is a nostalgic reminder of the time when baseball truly was the national pastime and when players trotted onto the diamond for the love of the game instead of outrageously inflated salaries. (Robinson’s signing bonus was $3,500.)

The film opens in Rickey’s office, where he shocks those present by announcing, “Gentlemen, I have a plan,” and then proceeds to explain that the plan is to bring a Negro ballplayer to the Brooklyn Dodgers. After doing some research into the matter, Rickey goes after Robinson, and during their first meeting in his office, the curmudgeonly Rickey tells Robinson that he must be prepared to endure unimaginable prejudice if he plays for the Dodgers, prompting the following conversation.

Robinson: You want a player who doesn’t have the guts to fight back?

Rickey: No. I want a player who’s got the guts not to fight back.

Robinson: You give me a uniform, you give me a number on my back, and I’ll give you the guts.

And of course Robinson keeps his end of the bargain.

“42” is a superbly acted, brilliantly directed, and beautifully photographed film suitable for just about everyone. It does, however, contain a number of scenes depicting disgusting examples of racial prejudice, and in the film’s most disturbing segment, Ben Chapman (Alan Tudyk), the manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, mercilessly taunts Robinson during a game using the N word copiously.

All of the baseball game scenes in the film are excellent, and older fans of the game will love seeing the shots of such grand old ballparks as Ebbets Field and Forbes Field, where those wonderful old-fashioned scoreboards stood in the outfield. You can have your multi-million-dollar instant replay electronic marvels. Give me instead that hand-operated scoreboard with the Longines clock atop it that dominated left field in Forbes Field for years. Yes, those were the days.

Undoubtedly “42” will find a well-deserved place among great sports movies as it should, but it is more than just baseball film. It’s a story of courage, dedication, compassion, and vision. In the film’s production notes, producer Thomas Tull (“The Dark Knight Rises”) offered a perceptive perspective of Robinson’s story.

“I went to the Baseball Hall of Fame when I was 7 years old, which is when I first learned about Jackie Robinson, and his story stayed with me. It touched me and made me wonder what it was like for him because it’s hard for me to fathom what he endured, both as a baseball player and as a man. It really is a classic hero’s journey — someone who has unbelievable odds stacked against him and has the fortitude to overcome those odds and effect great change. When he broke the color line, it marked a turning point, not only in baseball but in history. In that way, it is a moment that transcends sports.”

Rarely will you see a rookie actor turn in a performance as dazzling as Boseman’s in this film. In addition to covering flawlessly every base of human emotion, he exhibits that rare ability to communicate his thoughts and feelings without speaking. In so doing, he makes us share in Robinson’s deepest emotions, and in the aforementioned scene during the Phillies game, Boseman is so convincing in his heartbreaking display of frustration and anger that I wanted to stand up and throw something at the screen when Chapman was bombarding him with one racial slur after another. Unquestionably a star was born in this film, and in the production notes, Boseman offered some interesting insight into portraying Robinson.

“Once you know the full scope of what he did — on the baseball field and in his later work in the Civil Rights movement — you realize that his contribution to society was tremendous, and not just in the sports world. He paved the way for people in every field, so I feel a personal connection to him because I am literally standing on his shoulders right now.

“Sometimes what a person doesn’t say is more powerful than what they say. And the way Robinson played the game was so outspoken and demonstrative; he was able to perform in the most clutch moments and on the grandest stages. That spoke volumes, and it added value to Robinson’s words when he did become vocal.

“I had to take it all in and ask myself what that must have been like. What would that do to me? He obviously feels everything that any person would feel in that situation: anger, frustration, and fear. But he has pride in his race and an unshakeable sense of self that enables him to stand in the storm, which is a difficult thing to do. It ultimately comes down to basic human dignity — just respect me as a human being.”

As you would expect, Ford’s portrayal of the irrepressible Rickey is spot on, and his scenes with Boseman are consistently superb. The two of them have an outstanding chemistry, and the mutual respect between the two of them is clear. Certainly it’s early for Oscar buzz, but I’ve already seen one article mentioning the possibility of a best-supporting nomination for Ford, and I certainly would have no quarrel with it.

Another key performance in the film is that of Nicole Beharie, who plays Robinson’s wife, Rachel. She also has great chemistry with Boseman, and in addition to being a great baseball movie, “42” is a touching love story because no matter what hardships Robinson endured, his wife constantly stood by him and supported him.

Other noteworthy performances include Andre Holland as journalist Wendell Smith, Christopher Meloni as Leo Durocher, John C. McGinley as Red Barber, and Lucas Black as Pee Wee Reese.

I walked into the theater with very high expectations for “42,” and I was not disappointed. From the story to the acting to the sets to the baseball scenes, the film is an unequivocal 10. But this movie isn’t just a hit. Here’s what it is. It’s the bottom of the ninth, two men are out, the home team is trailing 7-4, the bases are loaded, and the count on the batter is 3 and 2. And this film delivers a walk-off grand slam homerun. Don’t miss it.

Perry’s “Temptation” Is A Hellish Waste

Have you ever wondered where people of different professions go when they die? For example, as a former professor of English and journalism I often thought that heaven for those in my line of work might be someplace where you could walk through a park and find William Faulkner or Shakespeare or F. Scott Fitzgerald or Herman Melville or Nathaniel Hawthorne or Charles Dickens or Edgar Allan Poe just hanging out on a bench waiting for someone to sit down and talk. Conversely, an English professor’s hell would consist of being confined to a room with an endless supply of freshman compositions and red pens.

The recent death of iconic film critic Roger Ebert gave me pause to consider a movie critic’s heaven and hell. Of course heaven would be a place to watch “Casablanca” sitting between Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman or to have lunch with Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly as you quiz them about “Rear Window” or to ask Paul Newman how he ate all those hard-boiled eggs in “Cool Hand Luke.” And what constitutes critics’ hell? How about being imprisoned in a theater where the only things playing are Tyler Perry films?

Although Perry probably is best known for his Madea films, he also occasionally makes a serious movie, and his latest foray into this area is “Tyler Perry’s Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor.” Now in case you are wondering why I deigned  subjecting myself to this soap opera that’s not even worthy of running on Lifetime, the answer is a simple one. My choices were reduced to this movie or “G.I. Joe,” neither which elicited a paroxysm of joyful anticipation from me; thus, I resorted to a coin flip, and here we are.

Because this film’s title is so absurdly long, I shall forthwith and hence refer to it as “Temptation” and tell you that it begins in the office of a marriage counselor where a husband and wife are trying to patch things up. But the whole session fails when the husband storms out saying that he just can’t take things anymore. At this point the following riveting dialogue takes place.

Wife: “I don’t want to hurt him. He deserves better.”

Counselor: “Better than you?”

Wife: “Yeah.”

Counselor: “Why do you feel that way?”

Wife: “He’s a nice guy. Consistent, loving, but I feel like we’re roommates, not husband and wife.”

From this conversation, the counselor deduces that the wife has met another man who makes her feel much more important than her husband does, and she launches into a story about her sister, a flashback that forms the main story in the movie. And here’s the saga of Judith (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) and Brice (Lance Gross).

Judith and Brice were childhood sweethearts, and when they grew up and were married, Brice took a job in a pharmacy, and Judith obtained a graduate degree in psychotherapy in the hopes of setting up practice as a marriage counselor. But the only job Judith could find right away was a position with Wise Counsel, an organization that finds dates for millionaires. Now Judith was reared by her fanatically religious mother (Ella Joyce), and so she is quite naïve about worldly matters. In fact, Janice (Vanessa L. Williams), the head of Wise Counsel, and Ava (Kim Kardashian), one of Judith’s colleagues, are constantly criticizing her for the conservative way she dresses.

Judith thinks she is happily married, but recently Brice has committed a few unpardonable sins for a husband, and then at work she meets Harley Madison (Robbie Jones), a billionaire who may want to invest in Wise Counsel. From the time he walks through the door of the firm, Harley is attracted to Judith, and Janice, who is no fool, assigns her to take care of him. Of course a 3-year-old could figure out that Harley is everything Brice is not, and when he puts the moves on Judith, she finds him very hard to resist.

In the meantime, the pharmacy where Brice works hires Melinda (Brandy Norwood), a young woman who is on the run from her maniacally abusive ex-husband. One day when the guy wanders into the pharmacy, Melinda barely escapes being seen, and as soon as he leaves, she tells Brice that she has to quit and move on. Brice convinces her to stay by telling her he will protect her. How heavy duty is all this?

Will Harley finally seduce Judith? Will Brice find out that another guy wants his wife? Will Brice’s promise to protect Melinda lead to romantic involvement for him? Will Judith’s religious upbringing keep her on the straight and narrow path? Or will she say the hell with everything and descend into a life of sin? If you want to find out the answers to all of these questions, watch the film. Or if you don’t want to subject yourself to the agony, send me an email, and I’ll give you the answers.

“Temptation” is an embarrassingly shallow film despite a fairly decent performance by Smollett-Bell. And it was headed for a final score of zero until a plot twist I never saw coming dragged it kicking and screaming from the muck of complete obscurity into the realm of forgettable inferiority. It offers nothing original, and with one major exception near the end, all of it is completely predictable. But based upon Perry’s comments in the production notes, the film offers a deep look into marital problems.

“It’s about a woman who starts to get restless in her relationship and her choice to be with another man has a huge effect on the rest of her life. She goes on a journey — in her career and in her marriage — and she ends up in a very different place than she expected. This is definitely one of the most provocative movies — sexually and otherwise — that I’ve made. There are a lot of people who struggle in their relationships. They make bad choices about their marriages. They get divorced. And so many of them don’t step out of their situation and really think about the consequences of what they’re doing. This movie asks, ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ It sends up a flag.”

Apparently a lot of moviegoers are saluting Perry’s flag because the film was third at the box office last week, and I really can’t understand why people flock to this guy’s movies. This one boasted a script that a third-grader could have written, and with the exception of Smollett-Bell’s performance, I thought the acting was generally pretty weak. I also found the constant repartee between Judith and Harley tediously repetitious. In fact, at one point I thought if he said, “If you were mine” one more time, I would completely lose my composure and begin screaming innovative obscenities.

You can watch a better soap than “Temptation” any day on television, and most Lifetime movies contain much more depth than this one does. However, because of the surprise in the story and the work of Smollett-Bell, who really makes us feel her character’s pain and confusion, I eschewed the temptation to award the film a goose egg, and it gets the final score of a generous four. Nevertheless, the best place for “Temptation” is in critics’ hell!

Seeing Olympus Fall Is Most Disturbing

The United States of America does not negotiate with terrorists.

But will it do so if the stakes are high enough?

This is the conundrum facing top-ranking government officials in “Olympus Has Fallen,” a highly entertaining political thriller directed by Antoine Fuqua (“Training Day”) and starring Aaron Eckhart, Gerard Butler, and Academy Award-winner Morgan Freeman.

As the film begins, President Benjamin Asher (Eckhart), his wife, Margaret (Ashley Judd), and their son, Conner (Finely Jacobsen), are en route from Camp David to an elaborate party accompanied by Secret Service Agent Mike Banning (Butler) and his team. Banning is a former U.S. Ranger and the president’s close personal friend in addition to being the head of the group assigned to protect him.

Now I must be very careful here not to give anything away, and so we’ll just say that a serious incident occurs during the trip, and the film moves ahead 18 months. Because of what happened, Manning has been transferred to the Treasury Department, where his office overlooks the White House, and it is at this point when all hell breaks loose.

Shortly after President Asher welcomes the prime minister of South Korea to the White House, North Korean terrorists launch an all-out assault on the White House on both the ground and through the air. The orchestrator of the attack is a North Korean former terrorist named Kang Yeonsak (Rick Yune), who blames the United States for the death of his parents and who demands that the U.S. military forces withdraw from North Korea. He also wants the codes for something known as Cerebrus so he can destroy all of America’s nuclear weapons.

After the devastation to the White House, the president and some of his top cabinet members end up down in the bunker with Yeonsak and some of his cronies. This guy is a ruthlessly sadistic bastard who would just as soon shoot people in the head as look at them, and he takes great pleasure in physically abusing some of the president’s staff members.

While all of this is transpiring, Manning, who remains fiercely loyal to the president despite being demoted for something that really was not his fault, has witnessed the attack on the White House from his office window and subsequently has managed to sneak into the shambles that once was the Oval Office without being detected by the terrorists. And now what we basically have from this point on is a retelling of “Die Hard” set in the White House.

After the president and vice president are taken to the bunker, Speaker of the House Allan Turnbull (Morgan) takes over as president, and Manning is able to contact him. A man of few words, Manning says simply, “I’m here. Use me.” Thus the rest of the film chronicles Manning’s efforts to rescue the president.

Despite two details that bothered me about it, “Olympus Has Fallen” is a fine action film that grabs you from almost the outset and holds your interest until the very end. All of the performances are excellent, and the film boasts plenty of action and suspense along with a few humorous lines to offer some welcome comic relief at just the right moments. Of particular interest to me in the movie was the work of the Secret Service agents and their willingness to do anything to protect the president, including jumping in front of a bullet aimed at him. In the film’s production notes, Fuqua explained how the Secret Service helped motivate him to make the film.

“Think about that for a second. Your job is to prevent the president and his family from being hurt. You are expected to step in front of a bullet, if necessary. I don’t know too many people who would volunteer to do that. My appreciation for them is phenomenal. Their lives are constantly at risk and when I learned all of this, I wanted to honor them with this movie.”

Eckhart is outstanding his role as the president, and both Angela Basset and Melissa Leo turn in fine performances as the head of the Secret Service and the Secretary of Defense respectively. Of course, not much can be said about Freeman that hasn’t been noted before. He’s simply one of the finest actors alive, and in the production notes, Fuqua was generous in his praise of him.

“Morgan brings a majesty to everything he does. He is one of our great actors. When he agreed to do the film, it immediately elevated the project. What I find special about him is that he brings so much power to a role, and yet there’s always a gentleness about him. If the nation were falling, I would want someone like Morgan Freeman to take the helm. He’s a national treasure, and it was an honor to work with him.”

The character who really makes this film work, however, is Manning, and Butler plays him to the hilt. This guy is John Rambo, Jack Bauer, and John McClane all rolled into one fearless enforcer who becomes Yenosak’s (Yune makes a great villain.) worst nightmare. By the time the film ends, we have still another movie character to add to the list of all-time indestructible heroes.

The movie also offers some stellar special effects, and the scenes of desecration to the White House and Washington are so good that they become quite disturbing as we watch our nation’s capital under siege. And seeing the White House reduced to smoldering rubble is most disquieting.

As much as I enjoyed he film, however, two things bothered me. In the first place, I couldn’t accept the reason for Manning’s demotion as a viable one given his history with the president. It just didn’t ring true. And I also dislike films in which many of the action sequences occur in such subdued lighting that it’s difficult to see who is shooting at whom.

That being said, I still highly recommend “Olympus Has Fallen” (Give it solid seven.) as a captivating and intriguing thriller. The scenes in the bunker are particularly effective, and it’s a film that will set you thinking about our country’s vulnerability to terrorism. And it’s really unnerving to think what could happen if indeed Olympus ever falls.

“The Call” Rings In Good Suspense

“9-1-1. What is your emergency?”

How many times have you heard these three numbers and four words uttered in films or on television shows? Of course the correct answer is countless. But they are particularly significant in “The Call,” an intriguingly entertaining and tautly suspenseful new thriller starring Academy Award-winner Halle Berry, because the film is set in the emergency call center for the Los Angeles Police Department.

Jordan Turner (Berry) is a mainstay emergency dispatcher in what LAPD insiders refer to as “The Hive,” the area where all the “worker bees” aka emergency dispatchers take calls placed by people seeking help for everything from attempted murder to intruders to heart attacks to bats in the house. As we watch her handle calls, it is immediately evident that she’s very proficient in what she does and possesses the requisite ability to make instantaneous decisions. Unfortunately however, Jordan is human, and human beings make mistakes.

Jordan has recently come back from a break when a call comes in that will change her life. She has just settled herself into the chair in front of her station when her phone line lights up, and she barely has time to say, “9-1-1. What is your emergency?” The caller is a frantic teenager named Leah Templeton (Evie Thompson), who says someone is trying to break into her house. Jordan effectively helps her hide from the intruder, and it looks as if the caller will be safe. But then Jordan commits an egregious mistake that violates all her training, and the resulting tragedy makes Jordan resign as a dispatcher and become a trainer for new operators.

The film moves ahead three months, and we now join Jordan as she is teaching new employees how to work in “The Hive.” When one of the trainees asks a question, Jordon offers the following advice: “The most important thing to remember about this job is this: Stay emotionally detached. Don’t get too involved in your PR’s (person reporting) crisis, and never ever make promises because you can’t keep them.”

And to emphasize how important their job is, she says, “If you’re wondering why security is so tight, that’s because we’re the ears and eyes of the whole city. We’re the link between every human crisis and every first responder, fire and police departments. If The Hive goes down, this whole city goes dark.”

Jordan is just wrapping up her tour and training session when one of the operators takes a call that she begins to have difficulty handling. As fate would have it, Jordan is the only one available to help out, and as she takes over, she learns that the caller is Casey Welson (Abigail Breslin), another teenager who has been abducted and is in the trunk of the kidnapper’s car. As Jordan continues to talk with the Casey, she becomes convinced that the abductor is the same nut with whom she had been involved three months ago when disaster struck in the Leah Templeton case. From this point on, the film becomes an incredibly tense game of cat and mouse combined with a race against the clock to identify the whacko and save Casey’s life.

Under the direction of Brad Anderson (“The Machinist”), “The Call” is an effective and entertaining thriller that effectively establishes and sustains plenty of suspense because after Casey connects with Jordan on the phone, the film pretty much proceeds in real time. This serves to give the film a nice sense of urgency, and with the scenes alternating between those at the call center and the ones of Casey in the clutches of the demented kidnapper, the tension becomes almost unbearable. In the film’s production notes, Anderson explained what aroused his interest in making the film.

“I read the script, and the novelty of the story and the world it depicted attracted me to the project. 911 calls have always fascinated me. We hear the calls but never really know what goes into the call. We only get bits and pieces. This film will answer a lot of those questions.

“Most of the story takes place in the course of one day, a couple of hours. It’s almost kind of a real-time type scenario and it’s very contained, literally contained. I mean, much of the action occurs at the call center, and in the trunk of a car. I was sort of interested in the idea of how to tell a story, dramatically and visually and cinematically, in such a small space. It posed a lot of challenges, but that was part of the draw for me, as well.”

The major key to the film’s effectiveness is Berry’s excellent portrayal of Jordan. The actress is particularly gifted at communicating her thoughts, emotions, and feelings with her eyes, and as Jordan talks to Casey, you can see the fear and intensity on her face. In the production notes, Berry explained what she liked about doing the film and how she enjoyed meeting actual 911 operators as she prepared for the role.

“I love this genre of film. I love to be a little bit scared, but also [films with] a cerebral content to it, as well. Jordan is at the top of her game. She’s established in her job. She’s one of the best operators in the Hive, which is what the 911 center is called in our movie. She’s a happy girl, but then things happen and she starts on a different journey, a life-changing experience.

“I’ve always wondered who these people are and what they look like. And I think that’s one of the elements that makes this movie interesting, because everybody says, ‘Who are those people? What kind of training do they have, and how do they stay so calm under such pressure?’ So it’s been kind of nice to put a face to all these people that do this job.”

Watching the activity in The Hive and seeing the pressure the operators are constantly subjected to was a real education for me. I don’t know why anyone would want the job, but those who do this kind of work certainly deserve plenty of respect and admiration.

Despite the fact that Breslin spends much of the film imprisoned in the dark trunk of a car, she conveys her character’s panic and fear very well, and when we finally do get a more thorough glimpse of her character, she succeeds in making us share in Casey’s nightmare.

Now the villain in the film is a guy named Michael Foster (Michael Eklund), and although he certainly imbues his character with the necessary weirdness for this movie, Eklund’s role presented the film’s main weakness for me. In the first place, we don’t see a whole log of him during the film, but more importantly we don’t get enough information to explain what turned him from an ordinary guy into a sadistic serial killer. Yes, we can figure out his motivation, but it is not developed fully enough, and while this wasn’t enough to spoil the movie, it definitely prevented it from being a truly classic thriller.

Taking everything into consideration, I have decided to work out a formula for arriving at this film’s final score. Let’s take the number 911 and subtract the last two numbers from the first one leaving the film at a respectable seven. The movie definitely is worth seeing, and if you choose to do so and don’t agree with my final assessment of it, you make the call.