The Invisible War

“The Invisible War” has forever changed my perception about the American military. It will stay that way for me and the people profiled in this film until action is taken. Kirby Dick’s documentary is a horrifying exposé about sexual assault and rape in the armed services. The countless veterans here speaking out about their rape considered themselves valuable individuals in an army of one. Now even that privilege has been taken away with this repulsive act. These people speak of the soldiers they once called brothers as the “they” who turned them into victims.

According to U.S. Government Studies cited by “The Invisible War,” nearly 20 percent of all the women who have served in the American military have reported being sexually assaulted while in the line of duty. As is true of most rape cases, many more go unreported. But “The Invisible War” analyzes the systemic problems in the military legal system in addressing this issue, including why so few victims openly report abuse, why little to no action is taken and why this continues to happen.

Dick finds several dozen women, many of whom appear on camera for only a moment, who were raped while serving. They belong to the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard. Each had their own reason for enlisting, and each now has their own personal trauma, but Dick’s gift is in finding how their stories are strikingly similar.

They remember their heads hitting the wall, a friend or officer suddenly being on top of them, a gun being held to their head and finding out they were pregnant later. Some of them remember this happening numerous times.

These are strong women who have been through the same training as their attackers, although now Kori Cioca, whom the film follows most closely, carries both a cross and a Smith & Wesson knife. Jesus can only provide so much protection, she says.

As a result of being attacked, Kori is suffering from severe pain in her jaw, restricting her to a diet of soft foods. For months she has been calling the VA office to receive medical coverage, but she remains at the end of a long waiting list. The movie uses jump cuts of her listening to call-waiting music on speakerphone, emphasizing her perpetual wait. When she finally goes into the office, on Veteran’s Day no less, the doctors order X-Rays for her back and nothing for her jaw. We see Kori’s mind-boggling struggle and rigorous patience and think of the many other veterans also being denied medical coverage. How can we treat our own so poorly?

But Kori is not alone, nor are the rape numbers merely statistics. It is now abundantly clear to me that rape does not just affect your body. It impacts health, society, romance, careers and lives. Dick’s film finds a terrific balance between facts and drama. Take for instance that 40 percent of female veterans who are now homeless were once rape victims, women so haunted in their PTSD that they could not bring themselves back to society to find jobs. If the numbers are unconvincing, ask Kori what it’s like to be too scared show your husband affection or what it’s like to read your own suicide note aloud.

How could these numbers be so shocking? How could this system be so broken? How is it that every general and commanding officer can claim the military has a Zero Tolerance policy? How is it that even our best and brightest Marines are neither safe nor innocent?

The hard truth is that for all intensive purposes, these soldiers are not citizens when it comes to receiving justice and legal rights. In the army, punishment and justice is administered in a closed system, delivered solely by the commanding officer. In 15 percent of the cases, the CO himself is the rapist. In the others, witnesses and suspects can simply keep silent, and the person who has reported the rape is suddenly at risk of their own court martial, threatening their rank and placement.

It’s a boys’ club that celebrates strength and nobility, and some of these investigations that aim to sweep the rape cases under the rug are enraging. One woman named Elle was raped after her fellow soldiers forced her to drink. Her case was closed due to a lack of evidence, and she was later investigated for public intoxication. Another named Ariana was told she was welcoming an assault by wearing the regulation Marine skirt. A third woman, she an active duty Marine who remained anonymous, was raped by a married officer and was cited with having committed adultery.

You begin to ask, why aren’t there more screening procedures for enrolling? Why is the percentage of rapists in the military double that of sex offenders in America? Why do preventative campaigns focus on women, not on finding the guilty? “The Invisible War” makes it seem as if these questions and problems will never end, but it calls attention to them with urgency and poignancy. It addresses flimsy counter arguments with hard-hitting numbers and a wealth of moving testimony. It even extends the need for action into the real world through a convincing portrait of rapists as predators who will act again and again, even once they enter back into our communities.

At the end of the film, Kori visits a veteran’s memorial for women and sees a display of a Purple Heart medal. Maybe she deserves a medal too, she wonders. To her this was an ordeal equivalent to going into combat, and this was her own story of survival. Is this the sacrifice she was supposed to make for her country?

4 stars

Rampart

After the 1992 Rodney King beating was caught on tape, everyone had questions about the victim we were seeing. “Rampart” looks at the other side of the police brutality video, profiling a bad, racist cop who deserves all the pain that comes to him but recognizes he’s human all the same.

Oren Moverman’s (“The Messenger”) film takes place in 1999 Los Angeles, when the LAPD was notorious for corruption. For Dave Brown (Woody Harrelson), racism is a part of his daily routine. He’s got the mentality that we know to be stereotypical and wrong, and yet he’s been around so much that he displays a logic and understanding that can be hard to fully disagree with.

When a Mexican gangbanger collides with Dave’s cop car, the man shoves his car door into Dave and tries to make his escape, only for Dave to chase him down and beat him senseless. The violence is caught on video, and the DA’s office feels Dave is the perfect scapegoat to throw to the press as they juggle their own corruption allegations.

As he tries to escape his punishment and remain on the police force, “Rampart” follows Dave’s descent to rock bottom. Before long he’s pulled all of his strings with a former colleague (Ned Beatty), his on the street contact (Ben Foster) and the defense attorney who is his current lover (Robin Wright), and he’s got no one left to turn to in support of his reckless ways.

Less of a crime procedural and more of an emotionally poignant character drama, “Rampart’s” effort to make us feel empathy for this evil man is built on the fiery performance by Woody Harrelson. Blackmail, framing, adultery, brutality and racism; this guy does it all, but Harrelson is careful never to let Dave take sadistic pleasure out of all his hatred.

We see him as a nuanced man, powerless amidst his own family. He was married to two sisters (Cynthia Nixon and Anne Heche) and fathered a daughter with each. His oldest, Helen (Brie Larson), is now a man-hating lesbian and holds his dad responsible after Dave earned a reputation as “Date-Rape Dave” for allegedly murdering a man trying to rape a woman. He had his reasons for doing what he did to that guy, and they may have even been noble, but what matters is that his family doesn’t feel the same. You wonder then where Dave’s external hatred comes from.

Moverman shoots from canted angles and behind grated bars and windows to show just how skewed a perception Dave has on life. It gets over-stylized at times, and you beg for the simple gritty realism to be found in his previous film “The Messenger.” That movie contained more raw emotion in one, motionless shot that lasted for nearly nine minutes than “Rampart” does in its portrait of a much more emotionally intense character.

Still, “Rampart” is a powerful film. The movie’s cryptic screenplay and open-ended climax has left many audiences frustrated, but the ending doesn’t matter so much as the hard truth that for even the worst guy in the world, we wouldn’t wish upon him the pain of having nothing left.

3 ½ stars

Damsels in Distress

“Damsels in Distress” is like an art house “Mean Girls.” It’s about a foursome of college girls who are insufferably quirky and manufactured indie cute instead of the usual cliché catty. They look at every thing with sunny optimism and act to help crazy, depressed and stupid people from suicide. But the movie is so wrapped up in its own craziness that it ends up being about nothing at all.

As soon as the movie begins, Violet, Heather and Rose (Greta Gerwig, Carrie MacLemore, Megalyn Echikunwoke) flank a new, timid girl on the first day of college orientation. This girl in need of their help and friendship is Lily (Analeigh Tipton), who starts off as a normal human being but changes when she quickly realizes her new friends are cut from a different cloth.

Their speech sounds bookish and scripted, and their voices are rigid and without normal inflection. They use vocab heavy expressions like “youth outreach,” “golden oldie,” “only numerically,” “vulgarity is in essence blasphemous” and most notably of all, “Playboy Operator.” When Lily asks about the frat houses on campus, it turns out traditional slang, like “Greeks,” is also foreign to them, but that can be excused because their campus only has houses with Roman letters.

They operate a suicide prevention center in which they encourage depressed people to tap dance and eat donuts. Violet wants to start a new dance craze like the Charleston or Twist, but it turns out she’s an emotionally damaged orphan and is struggling with relationship problems.

The problem with these characters is that they’re hypocritical. They’re just as damaged and crazy as the people they aim to help, so this level of sunny optimism has never sounded more condescending. But the movie tries to write this off as intentional, firstly because Violet isn’t depressed, she’s just “in a tailspin,” and secondly because she doesn’t see why suffering from a fault prevents you from criticizing it in others.

But it’s a cheat, and “Damsels in Distress” seems to break its own silly rules at will. They aim to date frat boys, preferably moronic ones so they can improve them, but claim to resist the urges of other handsome men. It seems as if they carry a specific kind of odor. They also object to institutions and elitism found in the school newspaper, but they celebrate the frat houses and argue there is a difference. The movie isn’t really sure what these girls believe but knows it should be offbeat and quirky.

“Damsels and Distress” plays like a perpetual eye roll. It is exhausting semantics and word play for its own sake. The movie is directed by Whit Stillman, who is called a precursor to both Mike Leigh and Wes Anderson and certainly borrows other pages from Woody Allen. But Stillman lacks the realism in Leigh, the visual bravura in Anderson and the endearing wit of Allen. It’s unlikely that the three of them combined could put out something this insufferable.

1 ½ stars

Goodbye First Love

“I’ll always love you and never know why,” Camille says to her boyfriend Sullivan, a romance in the French film “Goodbye First Love” based only on the idea that it is their first. The point the movie is making is that perhaps that’s enough, but even the film is too caught up in these longing moments to suggest anything substantive or true.

The film starts in 1999 when Camille (Lola Creton) is only 15 yet dating a college student, Sullivan (Sebastian Urzendowsky). Their chemistry is built on their sexuality and little else, so when he drops out of school and leaves for South America on a whim, Camille should be good to be rid of him. But she’s a miniature drama queen, threatening suicide and pondering what she’ll do without him as she lays on beds in the fetal position and leans emptily against walls. They exchange letters, but it’s not enough. “I can call, but I won’t,” Sullivan explains. “Hearing you won’t be the same without touching you.”

These are romance novel lines befitting a teenager, and perhaps these empty words mean a lot to them. But some months later, Camille’s moved on, cut her hair and enrolled in architecture school. After years have passed, she starts a relationship with her older teacher Lorenz (Magne-Havard Brekke), who she bonds with on an intellectual level rather than a sexual one. The two have moved in together and even tried to have a baby when Sullivan returns home and the two can’t separate themselves again.

This is a messy relationship, and if it were in a Hollywood romance it would be transparently so. But Director Mia Hansen-Love gives it the art house, French style with low-key dialogue, expressive montages, abrupt editing and urgent cinematography with nowhere to go. It tries to make the film more visually suggestive than intelligently emotional, and it stifles the potential of the characters.

Creton is a new, young actress I discovered in Olivier Assayas’s “Something in the Air,” and she’s effortlessly warm, delicate and loveable. But her character Camille doesn’t even have much to say. Her mother talks about how before she was in love she seemed full of life, but we never see that side of her, nor do we see how someone like Lorenz can find her mature and brave beyond her age. The movie instead just has her looking melancholic, performing odd jobs at theaters and night clubs to pass the days.

And when she does speak, her dialogue can be notoriously cheesy. There’s a scene where Camille and Lorenz are driving, and he drops a big, overly poetic axiom on her that’s treated as off the cuff. Instead, the movie’s big payoff moments of romance are in Sullivan and Camille’s staring, swooning and steamy sex scenes.

“Goodbye First Love” has plenty of the heartbreak and passion that comes with a first love, but it misses out on the more grounded moments of reality.

2 ½ stars

Rapid Response: Kiki's Delivery Service

For all the praise given to Hayao Miyazaki for his fantastical imagination, the man is also a master at portraying the beauty of the real world. He shows us the simple themes that teach our children to grow and the thrill of an adventure. “Kiki’s Delivery Service” is Miyazaki’s most modest production, free of most fantasy and anime trappings, and yet it is no less magical.

“Kiki’s Delivery Service” was the follow-up to Miyazaki’s masterpiece “My Neighbor Totoro,” a simple but delightful film about a child who discovers a hidden realm of the forest and a magical creature with loveable qualities. What it shares with “Kiki’s,” as well as several of his other films, is that it is a kids movie free of any bad guys. It populates the world with characters who are only polite, caring, heartwarming, plucky and fun, and yet it creates a story with emotional poignancy and drama.

Its title heroine is a 13-year-old witch in training. Her responsibility at this age is to find a city free of other witches to call home for one year and make it on her own. It’s a simple story of a girl growing up and leaving home, with the only magical difference being that she can fly. It takes a lot of growth for Kiki to find the thing she does best and make a living out of it, and her problem is not finding business for her delivery service but sticking to it, putting up with the hardships of the job and learning to bounce back when she’s unable to fly the way she used to. Miyazaki finds a way to illustrate the excitement, struggle and tedium of Kiki’s job, and he does so without manic action or mean-spirited characters.

There’s a scene in the movie that sums up just how adorable this film is. Kiki goes to a little old grandmother’s house to make a delivery. It’s a pie that she wants delivered to her granddaughter’s birthday party, but it isn’t prepared, so Kiki is about to be sent on her way with her agreed upon pay when Kiki decides to stick around and help fix the granny’s oven so she can still make the delivery. She does all of this work with pluck, not magic, and it pays off in spades when she visits the granny again later. The harsh twist is that after frantically delivering the pie through the pouring rain, the recipient is ungrateful and announces to the party, “Grandma sent us one of her disgusting pies again.” It exposes the hardships of life without making a classical villain.

Miyazaki has a wonderful visual imagination, but there’s nothing fantastical to see in “Kiki’s.” Rather, the real world beauty and pastoral landscapes are the most impressive and truly emphasize Miyazaki’s gift for sharp cinematography. Take a look at the striking low angles during the opening shots that paint Kiki as someone deep and in thought, not a spoiled, excitable brat but someone with room for growth. Notice how he creates the illusion of motion within his films and generates suspense. When Tombo’s bike is careening down the highway, there are lines approaching the bottom of the frame that quickly vanish and reappear whereas another director wouldn’t be so diligent. Even when Kiki prepares to fly on her broom, she doesn’t just take off in a whoosh. We see her hair and dress billow in front of her intense focus. In fact “Kiki’s” flight sequences are not nearly as graceful as those seen in “Nausicaa,” “Castle in the Sky” or otherwise, but they have invigorating and joyous moments of action, especially in the film’s climactic rescue.

“Kiki’s Delivery Service” may not be the best place to start in exploring Miyazaki’s catalog, but it’s a cute, funny and exciting film that is one of his best.

The Best Albums of 2012

Oh, I’m sorry. Did you expect me to write a list about movies? Well, it’s my blog and I can do what I want. And there’s no way I’m making a Top 10 list until I see “Django Unchained” on Christmas Day anyway, so you’re just going to have to wait.

But despite never having done one before, I really wanted to make a Top 10 list of my favorite albums of the year. I listened to more music, went to more concerts and read more music criticism this year than any year in the past, and likely several years combined. I wanted to share the music I’ve discovered this year, but I also wanted to test myself in writing about music, which as several friends have previously informed me, I shouldn’t be ashamed of.

Does that make me an expert? No. It’s almost a guarantee that a few of the albums I have here will appear on my list exclusively. Some of those that are universally loved don’t really come into my wheelhouse (for what it’s worth, I enjoyed “Channel Orange”), and although I listened to enough to make a decent list, I still have a long way to go.

Almost all of these albums are artists I discovered in the last year alone, ousting out albums by long time favorites like Bruce Springsteen, Jack White, The Killers, Silversun Pickups, Smashing Pumpkins, St. Vincent and David Byrne, Aerosmith (did you honestly listen to this? I didn’t), two by Neil Young and two (so far) by Green Day that didn’t register with me as strongly.

What I did come up with however shows that although I’m mostly a rock guy, I cling to music that is arty, dreamy, poppy and heavy. Hopefully next year I can claim to have a list as diverse. Continue reading “The Best Albums of 2012”

Off The Red Carpet: Week of 11/28 – 12/5

I was tempted to just post this article on Tuesday, because this week has been HUGE for Oscar news. Three categories shortlisted and the first of the critics’ awards dropped; that’s a lot to cover.

New York Film Critics Circle Announce 2012 Awards

I wrote more on the Oscar chances for all of these movies now that the NYFCC has had their say at a new blog called The Artifice. Just know that “Zero Dark Thirty” is now the movie to beat, McConaughey and Weisz have earned a new life, and “The Master” is facing an increasingly uphill battle at a nomination. (via nyfcc.com) UPDATE: Turns out the movies that do not appear on this list didn’t do as badly as everyone expected. The NYFCC has a complicated ballot voting system to determine winners in each category, and this year just about every category was taken to multiple rounds of voting to determine a consensus, proving that 2012 has a wide array of great movies with supporters in every camp. In fact, “Lincoln,” which performed so handsomely here, actually placed fourth on the overall ballot for Best Picture, behind “The Master” and “Moonrise Kingdom.” (via J. Hoberman)

Best Picture: Zero Dark Thirty

Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow – Zero Dark Thirty

Best Screenplay: Tony Kushner – Lincoln

Best Actress: Rachel Weisz – The Deep Blue Sea

Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis – Lincoln

Best Supporting Actress: Sally Field – Lincoln

Best Supporting Actor: Matthew McConaughey – Bernie, Magic Mike

Best Cinematographer: Greig Fraser – Zero Dark Thirty

Best Animated Film: Frankenweenie

Best Non-Fiction Film: The Central Park Five

Best Foreign Film: Amour

Best First Film: David France – How to Survive a Plague

searching-for-sugar-man-main

Documentary Feature category shortlisted

Maybe normal people think it’s crazy that documentaries, of all things, could make some movie buffs so up in arms. And yet that is the case every year when the Documentary Branch of the Academy announces their shortlist. Now granted, last year these people snubbed Werner Herzog, Errol Morris and Steve James, so it was unlikely there was going to be even greater fervor this year. But, despite me having seen only a handful, the number of films I’ve heard of on this list of 15 and the number still absent speak to how great a year it’s been for documentaries. All this despite the branch’s head Michael Moore instating new rules, such as the requirement to get your movie screened in New York and L.A. and reviewed by The New York Times. Here’s the list: (via Oscars.com)

“Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry”

“Bully”

“Chasing Ice”

“Detropia”

“Ethel”

“5 Broken Cameras”

“The Gatekeepers”

“The House I Live In”

“How to Survive a Plague”

“The Imposter”

“The Invisible War”

“Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God”

“Searching for Sugar Man”

“This is Not a Film”

“The Waiting Room”

So missing from this list is “The Central Park Five,” which if you were paying attention above just won the NYFCC honors, “West of Memphis,” “The Queen of Versailles,” “Paul Williams Still Alive,” “Marley,” “Jiro Dreams of Sushi,” “Samsara” and “Marina Ambrovic: The Artist is Present,” which, admittedly, could be a short list all its own. This list of 15 could be a lot worse than it is, and the few that have been snubbed won’t have any trouble getting seen. This is me trying to not get too angry.

SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN

Visual Effects category shortlisted

The Academy announced on Thursday the list of 10 potential nominees in the Visual Effects category. The full list is below: (via Oscars.com)

“The Amazing Spider-Man”
“Cloud Atlas”
“The Dark Knight Rises”
“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”
“John Carter”
“Life of Pi”
“Marvel’s The Avengers”
“Prometheus”
“Skyfall”
“Snow White and the Huntsman”

You’ll immediately notice the snub of “The Impossible,” which has an unbelievably lifelike depiction of a tsunami hitting Thailand. My guess is that “The Impossible’s” sequence, while dazzling, is just a small part of an otherwise effects free movie, thus paving the way instead for these 10 gargantuan Hollywood blockbusters. “Snow White,” “John Carter” and “Spider-Man” may all be surprises, but more pleasant surprises would’ve been something like “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” “The Grey,” “The Cabin in the Woods,” “Looper,” “Flight” or even “Chronicle” from way back in February.

Best Live Action Short Film Category shortlisted

This may come as a shock, but the Live Action short category is actually news! The news here is that the shortlist has a record 11 films on it due to a tie in the voting. That won’t mean any more or less nominees, still anywhere from three to five, but it’s something. The only names you’ll recognize however are Ron and Bryce Dallas Howard for their short film “when you find me.” Good luck seeing any of these. (via Oscars.com)

“A Fábrica (The Factory),” Aly Muritiba, director (Grafo Audiovisual)

“Asad,” Bryan Buckley, director, and Mino Jarjoura, producer (Hungry Man)

“Buzkashi Boys,” Sam French, director, and Ariel Nasr, producer (Afghan Film Project)

“Curfew,” Shawn Christensen, director (Fuzzy Logic Pictures)

“Death of a Shadow (Dood van een Schaduw),” Tom Van Avermaet, director, and Ellen De Waele, producer (Serendipity Films)

“Henry,” Yan England, director (Yan England)

“Kiruna-Kigali,” Goran Kapetanovic, director (Hepp Film AB)

“The Night Shift Belongs to the Stars,” Silvia Bizio and Paola Porrini Bisson, producers (Oh! Pen LLC)

“9meter,” Anders Walther, director, and Tivi Magnusson, producer (M & M Productions A/S)

“Salar,” Nicholas Greene, director, and Julie Buck, producer (Nicholas Greene)

“when you find me,” Ron Howard, executive producer, and Bryce Dallas Howard, director (Freestyle Picture Company)

“Amour” sweeps European Film Awards

It isn’t so often a Palme D’Or winner can actually devour every other award its up for. “Amour” won Best European Picture, Director for Michael Haneke, Actor for Jean-Louis Trintignant and Actress for Emmanuelle Riva. That’s why this is increasingly looking like an even bigger Oscar contender than some are predicting. For what it’s worth, Haneke has already won Best Director for both “The White Ribbon” and “Cache.” (via Indiewire)

Week 7 Predictions Continue reading “Off The Red Carpet: Week of 11/28 – 12/5”

Rapid Response: Hamlet (1948)

Let’s face it; you don’t come to me for an analysis of Shakespeare, so I won’t bother. What I can say is how terrific Laurence Olivier’s “Hamlet” is, not because it’s a faithful adaptation (it’s not) of the most enduring play ever written, or even because Olivier is the 20th Century’s best figure head of the classical actor, but because it set the stage for how to adapt the Bard to the screen. It values sumptuous visuals and symbolic set dressing to establish moods and themes over a strict retelling of the play, acknowledging full well it can’t get all of Shakespeare’s prose into the screenplay.

The result is a film that borrows a haunting aesthetic from both “Citizen Kane” and Jean Cocteau’s “Beauty and the Beast.” Desmond Dickinson’s deep focus cinematography coupled with the foggy set dressing in front of black infinity backdrops gives “Hamlet” a ghastly effect that emboldens the story’s more fantastical and spiritual themes. I love the labyrinth of a castle Hamlet and Horatio stand atop during the film’s first act. It’s a surreal set that doesn’t make spatial sense, and it makes the appearance of the ghost of Hamlet’s father all the creepier. When he appears, he’s framed in between two spears that make it look like he’s entering through Heaven’s Gate. Olivier uses the fog and backdrop to isolate Hamlet (see: him carrying his sword downward approaching the phantom) in truly iconic ways.

“Hamlet” has minimal editing and a surplus of wide shots, but the film never looks “stagy.” The camera acts as its own character on stage, approaching others and backing away as a part of the conversation and providing Olivier with room to breathe when his voice is really booming. It’s an active surveyor, often providing more context than the actors themselves. Look at one shot where Ophelia has just finished talking to Polonious. Out of the corner of her eye, she spies Hamlet sitting forlornly in a chair at the far end of the corridor, and we get his reaction shot in return. Both perspectives indicate visually what is going through these characters’ heads in a way that theatrical staging could not.

But the film won Best Picture where Olivier’s previous “Henry IV” did not because Olivier himself provides such fire in the role of Hamlet. They say playing is the ultimate actor’s challenge because it requires so much complexity and range, and Olivier is quiet and forlorn without losing his thunderous tone, most of all during the scene where he kills Polonious. Olivier was already a gigantic stage legend well before he attempted “Hamlet” or “Henry IV” on film, and he even had a lucrative career in Hollywood, both in “Wuthering Heights” and “Rebecca.” But this is the role that defines him as an actor. He’s the only actor to win an Oscar for a Shakespearean role, and he deserves it.

Future filmmakers like Kenneth Branagh would eventually tackle “Hamlet” in full, and others would adapt the story to modernity in ways that are so much more daring, but Olivier’s “Hamlet” set the stage for them all.

Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock has the most recognizable silhouette in all the world, yet Sacha Gervasi’s film “Hitchcock” is little more than the silhouette of the man. It only hints at his many vices, fetishes and moments of pure genius, content instead to be an amusing caricature.

Standing in Hitch’s (Anthony Perkins) shadow is of course his wife Alma Reville (Helen Mirren), a long time screenwriting partner and assistant director who never got the attention she deserved. This is her story more than Hitch’s, about how during the production of “Psycho” their marriage hit a rocky patch. She started a professional affair with Whitfield Cook (Danny Huston) that was bound to turn into a romantic one, and all the while “Psycho” was turning into a dog of a movie.

Despite the massive success of “North By Northwest,” Hitchcock was still being called old-hat by the press, championing French New Wave masters of suspense like Claude Chabrol and Jules Dassin poised to take his throne. As a change of pace, he decided to make a low-budget horror movie based on the murders of Ed Gein (Michael Wincott), but it sickened the studio heads and the censors, forcing Hitch to finance the movie himself.

This is Film History 101. It touches on how Hitchcock bought up all the copies of “Psycho” to prevent people from knowing the ending, how the censors objected to a toilet being shown flushing on camera and how directors and actors were locked into contracts with the studios, but it doesn’t reach to explain how the studio system really worked or even how the master himself found inspiration for all of “Psycho’s” brilliant ideas.

Instead, “Hitchcock” may as well be “Rocky,” the old-guy jumping back in the ring to prove he’s still got it. Does it take liberties in the process? That’s hard to say, and I believe Gervasi, the documentarian behind “Anvil! The Story of Anvil,” did his research. But was Hitchcock really bothered he never won an Oscar? Did he really think TV “cheapened” him? Did he really spy on his leading ladies in the same way Norman Bates did?

The real pleasures of the movie are the performances and the coy, immature humor on sexuality and violence. Hopkins is more dirty-old-man than macabre, but he has some fun orchestrating terror, either on set getting Janet Leigh (Scarlett Johansson) to scream during the shower scene or in the movie theater lobby as the audience screams during the finished product. The movie’s best gem is James D’Arcy as an impeccable Anthony Perkins. He only has one big scene on Hitch’s casting couch, but he owns those ominous wide shots.

“Hitchcock” is less of a movie buff’s movie and more for someone who is familiar with the master of suspense but hasn’t dug too deep in his catalog. Coincidentally, watching his films remains the best and most enjoyable way to really understand the silhouette of the man.

3 stars

Anna Karenina

Is there something stopping Joe Wright from just making a musical? The production design in “Anna Karenina” is sumptuous in its color and glamour, but it’s out of place putting these Russian costume drama characters in an old-fashioned playhouse, a constant and misguided reminder that the whole world is a stage and we be but players on it.

Set in a rustic theater, Wright shuffles around sets and props on a single sound stage with balletic precision to transport Tolstoy’s sprawling novel to new places and move through the story at a brisk pace. It’s a daring approach, but Wright either needs to commit to his gimmick or drop it entirely. Seemingly at random we see a character in flowing evening ware clambering up back stage rafters. Sometimes a background figure will appear and perform a pirouette or strike up a tune on a tuba, and at other times the movie will forget the stage conceit altogether.

God knows this is a pretty film to look at, but boy is it garish. A curtain will rise and a multi-million dollar backdrop posing Anna as an angel in a Renaissance painting will be for nothing more than a momentary distraction. It indulges in undulating bodies during love-scenes and bathes its forbidden lovers in glaring doses of white. Wright’s long takes and wide shots are visually mystifying at times, but he chops the story up so much to account for the aesthetic.

It tells the story of Anna’s (Keira Knightley) affair with Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a decorated soldier once engaged to Anna’s younger sister. The two carry on without concern from Anna’s lifeless husband Karenin (Jude Law), but when she seeks a divorce and reveals she’s pregnant, the law prevents her from ever seeing her children again.

Even in a story of many characters and romantic threads, Wright’s approach feels thin, undermining the novel’s themes of forgiveness in love because his visual flourishes don’t say all they’re meant to. Knightley is typecast in roles like this, but she’s overacting in her attempt to be bigger than the scenery. It doesn’t help that Taylor-Johnson and his silly mustache are miscast.

I’ve been a big champion of Wright’s over-stylized departures into genre territory before (“Atonement,” “Hanna”), but this time he’s drawn too much spectacle out of the sport.

2 ½ stars