Sarah's Key

“Sarah’s Key,” a starkly photographed French film (subtitled in English), is compelling for most of its 111 minutes running time.  Each of its two storylines is a microcosm focusing on individuals living through their time:  Paris, summer 1942, the Vel’ d’Hiv Round-up and its victims; Paris sixty years later when the French must live with that ugly bit of history and its consequences.  While the screenplay by Gilles Paquet-Brenner and Serge Joncour is probably faithful to the novel on which it is based (by Tatiana De Rosnay), half its story (that set in the present day) is just not as engaging as the other half. 

A little history:  One year into the Nazi occupation of France, the Nazis pushed forward their “Operation Spring Wind,” in which they instructed the French to round up adult, foreign-born Jews and deport them.  The conquered French were overly enthusiastic in their implementation, and dragged men, women, and children, including French-born Jews, first to the Vélodrome d’Hiver (an indoor cycle track and stadium with no water, no functioning toilets, insufficient medical personnel and supplies, and far too many people), thence to transit camps and finally to the concentration camps, primarily Auschwitz.

Kristin Scott Thomas as Julia Jarmond in present-day Paris.

The film opens delightfully. Warm white light, children playing, their laughter is the film’s soundtrack.  The end of the film showing a silent child is devastating.  The present day section is brilliantly led by Kristin Scott Thomas, but even she cannot make journalist Julia Jarmond and her family as engrossing as Sarah Starzynski and her family.  What’s interesting is the history Julia’s researching, in which she discovers that the former residents of her in-laws’ apartment were a Jewish family deported during the Vel’ d’Hiv Round-up in the summer of 1942.  She learns about the Starzynskis and becomes obsessed with little Sarah.

There are several fine performances in this film, but three are exceptional:

-         The radiant Ms. Scott Thomas as Julia Jarmond, an American in Paris for two decades, she is a journalist married to a Frenchman, with an adolescent daughter.  Her research for an article on the Vel’ d’Hiv leads to a quest to find, or at least find out what happened to the child Sarah.

-         Mélusine Mayance is splendid as 10-year-old Sarah Starzynski, a French Jew living in Paris with her parents and younger brother Michel.  She’s a terrific kid, strong and brave and resolute in her own quest to return to her brother.

-         Natasha Mashkevich is just superb as Sarah’s mother. She’s heard the rumors that the French police plan a mass arrest of Jews, so the moment that pounding on the door begins, she starts a freefall into panic.  She acquiesces to her daughter’s calm plan, gathers most of her family to her, and slowly shatters as the French police -- not the Nazis -- tear husbands from wives and mothers from children.  Beautiful, heart-wrenching work.

Mélusine Mayance as Sarah Starzynski in 1942.

This is not to say these are the only ones, but they stand out in a good cast.  The farm couple who aid Sarah are just wonderful.  The set of their shoulders tells all about the year of Nazi occupation and collaborators among their neighbors.  Dominique Frot as Mme Dufaure has a wonderful face, careworn and warm.  I’ll be interested in seeing her other side in another role.  Niels Arestrup as Jules Dufaure is gruff and grandfatherly and quietly heroic. It was also a pleasant surprise to see Aidan Quinn as an American living in Italy.  I'll say no more than that.

English speaking sections seem stilted, as if director Gilles Paquet-Brenner didn’t quite get what the actors were saying.  I imagine that the NY and Italy sections read better than they play here.  As the film switches back and forth between Sarah’s story in the past and the secondary one having to do with Julia’s own life and family, I kept yearning to go back to Sarah’s as, I suspect, did Julia.

(c) 2010 Hugo Productions, Studio 37, and the Weinstein Co.

While the particular story of Sarah Starzynski is fiction, the Vel’ d’Hiv Round-up of July 1942 was real.  The French police overzealously complied with the instructions of their Nazi occupiers.  “Sarah’s Key” is worth your time, so I’m not going to tell the whole plot here.  Suffice it to say Sarah’s story is riveting and representative of the horrors of that time, when the human face of France looked in a mirror and saw monsters in addition to the better-known heroes of the Resistance.

~ Molly Matera, signing off.  Think I’ll go read a book.

Sagebrush, Horses, and a Dog Are Not Enough

“Cowboys & Aliens” was fast-moving, fun, and sometimes funny, and as long as that’s all anyone expects, fine.  Not all films based on comic books, though, feel as emotionally empty as this one.   

(c) 2011 Universal Studios and Dreamworks

A pathetic but accurate description of human behavior is that for us to all get along and work together, we need an external enemy.  Here they’re buggy and reptile-like aliens with flying machines and stuff that doesn’t belong in New Mexico desert canyons.  And what do they want?  Not to experiment with us, and certainly not to learn from or about us.  They just want what countless humans have wanted before them:  filthy lucre.

It’s a clever idea with seemingly lots of potential:  Take your standard western elements (like big rancher, bad son, pacifistic storekeeper, preacher, sheriff, boy, dog, horses and sagebrush), add aliens, mix well.  So what went wrong?  I haven’t read the original comic book, and its writer isn’t credited…. So did someone like the idea and the artwork and ditch the rest but never quite finish?  Director Jon Favreau is, of course, the director of “Iron Man,” which is a splendid example of an excellent film adaptation of a comic book series.  There are five quite competent screenwriters credited and all of them — generally working in pairs — know what they’re doing:  Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman & Damon Lindelof and Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby.  Is five the magic number that equals too many cooks?

The film opens with a guy in the middle of nowhere. He wakes up without knowing who or where he is, with an odd metal bracelet locked on his wrist and a bloody wound in his side.  Since it’s Daniel Craig, this could be a James Bond movie.  Three guys on horseback are somehow silent until they’re right on top of him.  Craig as the man without a memory is stoic and quiet — not a stretch for him.  When asked his name, he doesn’t know.  When asked what he does know, his answer is “English.”  Whatever he may not recall, he remembers how to be a smartass.

Soon we meet Clancy Brown as Preacher Meacham, who has some of the best lines, but there are a lot of snappy one-liners in the film.  Brown brings to Meacham a depth of humanity that’s barely written.  Sam Rockwell does his usual good work as Doc, the saloonkeeper who is simply a decent man trying to live non-violently with his neighbors.

Once in town, the man without a memory is discovered to be Jake Lonergan, a stagecoach robber and possibly murderer.  This saddens some people, since he did stop the bullying of Doc by Percy Dolarhyde.  Paul Dano is that arrogant and incompetent son of the rich and powerful man of the territory.  One could either say he serves no useful purpose on the planet or that “he’s young, he’ll grow out of it.”  Under normal circumstances, no he wouldn’t. 

Adam Beach does good work as Nat Colorado, the sometime babysitter of Percy, and the guy who would have been a better son of the same powerful man — but he’s an Indian and it’s not as if he could really be treated decently by the rancher Harrison Ford plays, Woodrow Dolarhyde.  Dolarhyde, rich rancher, is no Ben Cartwright.  He’s a bad man, in fact, and leverages his wealth against his neighbors and protects instead of teaching his son. 

When Lonergan and Percy are cuffed into the same tiny wagon to be handed over to the federal marshal in Santa Fe, Dolarhyde and his men, as well as the townspeople, are on hand and so view the attack by alien flying machines, which shoot out explosions as well as hinged metal lasso-things that grab up captives.  A couple nice people and some not so nice are swiped up in a way that would probably shatter their spines. (Please note, I did suspend my disbelief.)  These flying machines and lassoings look swell yet somehow do not terrorize the populace as they ought.  

Attacks by night by unknown enemies create allies of all humans. Colonel Dolarhyde rounds up a few people to go after the strange attackers who grabbed his son, including his ranch hands and cowboys; Nat Colorado; Emmett Taggert, the required boy (well played by Noah Ringer), whose grandfather the Sheriff (Keith Carradine) was also taken; Doc (Sam Rockwell), whose wife Maria was taken (very nice characterization by Ana de la Reguera); the Preacher, of course; the dog; and Ella (Olivia Wilde), a rail-thin woman who keeps trying to talk to Lonergan.  She wears a holster slung across her poplin dress, rides a horse as well as any man (as all Western heroines must), and doesn’t quite seem to belong.

Ella is one thing that went very right in this film.  She’s called “whore” more than once (by criminals), but otherwise the women aren’t treated badly here.  Doc loves his wife, Black Knife, the chief of the Apaches (Raoul Trujillo), loves his, and Jake Lonergan loved his Alice (Abigail Spencer).  With a common enemy, there’s lots of heroism on the part of people who didn’t know they had it in them, but no one holds a candle to Ella.  She was the one character who was truly more than she seemed, not to mention she performed the most heroic action.  (Unfortunately Mr. Favreau et.al. didn’t get this moment quite right.  He needs to read more comics.)

 

Cowboys, rustlers, ranchers and Apache warriors join forces, people who hated each other save each other, big fight scenes have dynamite, bows and arrows, and Harrison Ford gets to hold a spear like a lance as if he were a knight of olde.  Good people die, as do bad people.  So how come there’s no emotional resonance? 

I like Daniel Craig, and I’m perfectly pleased to watch his neat butt running up a craggy hill, swimming, whatever.  But somehow those pale blue eyes aren’t as sharp — or squinty — as Clint Eastwood’s would have been….And much as I like Harrison Ford, if I could have had Eastwood as Jake and Robert Ryan as Dolarhyde, well, then, what sparks might have flown….

See what I mean?

The film offers a nifty production design by Scott Chambliss and fine art direction by Christopher Burian-Mohr and Daniel T. Dorrance, as well as fitting set decoration by Karen Manthey. Visually the film is swell.  The actors are fine, the pace excellent.  The script offers some snarky lines for everybody, and I particularly enjoyed the upside down riverboat in the middle of the plains of New Mexico. 

“C&A” is a good ride, it’s got its gasps and jumps and guns and explosions plus a boy and a dog.  Is everybody who survives the better for the experience?  Well, yes.  Story-wise it appears to have hit the right notes.  Guys who weren’t particularly good or brave do the right thing when it’s time.  Guys who were downright bad do the same.  So what went wrong here?  Can you tell I'm frustrated?

Is it that the aliens are not interesting?  Even when we meet one in Lonergan’s memory and again at the climax (or one of them, there are several climaxes), we get it — the big ugly dude Lonergan scarred in his escape remembers Lonergan’s actions and he’s pissed off, etc.  This should personalize it as a sentient being and all that. Somehow it’s just not effective.

Harrison Ford as Dolarhyde and Daniel Craig as Lonergan.  (c) 2011 Universal and DreamWorks

If you expect no more than a traditional Saturday afternoon “B” western with added weaponry and explosives, you’ll be fine.  If, however, you’re looking for characters who are known by more than their function in the plot, this isn’t the movie for you.

Note to Society:  Remember, visually the film works.  Characters are appropriately dressed (by Mary Zophres), the town, the horses, everything looks right.  And lots of cowboys smoked.  The apology for smoking at the end of the film was offensively funny.

~ Molly Matera, signing off.  Almost – but not quite – wishing I still smoked, just for spite.

The End of an Era

Fans of Harry Potter books and films will see “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 2)” no matter what reviewers say, as they should.  Nevertheless, I must grouse a smidgen.  There are good things and bad things about this, the eighth and last of the series of films based on the seven Harry Potter novels by J.K. Rowling.  One of the delightful things about those novels for the readers was observing the children grow up as they struggled through each year at Hogwarts.  The movies gave us the extra pleasure of watching the child actors playing them grow into adults.  That’s been so much fun that no matter how annoyed I may be at aspects of any of the films — including this one — I cannot say I didn’t have a good time.  I did.

The thing is, “…Deathly Hallows (Part 2)” is not part of a miniseries.  Its previous episode did not air last Monday night on television.  It should be a standalone movie, but it is not.  While understandable — this was an exceedingly difficult task to master — I’m afraid Steve Kloves’ script directed by David Yates just didn’t quite do it.  They dropped us into the middle of the action, picking up where we left off at the end of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 1),” which, however seemingly logical, leaves many viewers confounded.  The last of Rowling’s Potter books pulled together elements, themes, and people from the previous six books.  That’s a lot of characters, places, and history that the audience is expected to remember.  The first film devoted to telling the story of the last book was very well done, with a cliffhanger ending leading to anticipation for this year’s finale.  However, no one viewing a movie should be required to re-view the previous film or to reread the book to understand what’s going on in the beginning.  I doubt anyone without a solid grasp of the stories will ever find their way past the confusion of the first fifteen minutes of this final film.  Of course, once the action starts, most will not care.

(c) 2011 Warner Brothers Entertainment, Inc.

The opening of the film is stark and jumps right into the story, scenes all bleak and gray and shadowed.  John Hurt reflects everyone’s feelings of sadness with a touch of despair as Ollivander, providing some much needed reminders of the story so far.  He looks haunted, perhaps foreshadowing the ghosts to come.  Soon Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) lead us to explosive action at the famous goblin bank, Gringott’s, affording Helena Bonham Carter the fun of playing her mad character Bellatrix as if Hermione were impersonating her.  With magical manipulation, goblins and heroes make their way into the catacombs of the bank, through twisting turning rail rides down to the vaults.  This is all enough fun to make you forget you may not quite recall why you’re here.  (It’s about the Horcruxes.)  And then comes the dragon.  A most fabulous dragon in a rip-roaringly good series of shadowy scenes bursting into light and flame. 

“Deathly Hallows Part 2” brings us to the final battle between the remaining stalwarts at Hogwarts (now under the rule of the deceptively wicked Severus Snape) against evil personified (snakefied?) by Lord Voldemort.  Hogwarts as we’ve known it is defended but destroyed, our beloved Neville Longbottom (Matthew Lewis) gets his due at last, Harry and Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) fight it out a couple times, and the long-suffering Severus Snape (Alan Rickman) is finally vindicated.  Unfortunately that exposition of Snape’s hidden history — in which Harry, Ron, and Hermione finally see the truth behind Snape’s extraordinarily brave actions while they misjudged his every move — was just plain long.  However valuable the information, you can’t, in one segment of the last movie, go back and retell an entire story that took seven films to tell in the first place.  Well, they did, but it certainly stopped the flow.

Matthew Lewis, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, and Daniel Radcliffe.

  (c) 2011 Warner Brothers Entertainment, Inc.

The huge cast of well defined characters makes performance analysis beyond the scope of this review, however: Helen McCrory shows us the human face of the wrong side; Jason Isaac is unusually subdued as the broken Lucius Malfoy; and Draco, well Tom Fenton does a fine job of making us feel sorry for the bully we’ve hated all these years.  All three of our usual suspects are as much fun as ever, lovely looney Luna Lovegood is again personified simply and truly by Evanna Lynch, while Maggie Smith’s Professor McGonagal put me in mind of Miss Jean Brodie — another film to see again.  Ciaran Hinds snuck in as testy Albeforth Dumbledore in a heartwarming scene.  Seeing (almost) everybody one last time was bittersweet as they fought for their shattered world.  I could natter on about everybody, but a reasonably complete list to remind you of the actors playing these well-known characters is on IMDB .

There’s fun to be had in this movie, as well as disappointment in two flavors.  One: that the last film does not live up to the expectations of the second to last.  Two (and more importantly): that it’s the last film.  Alas and sigh.  The epilogue of J.K. Rowling’s final book on Harry Potter, his friends, enemies, and their adventures, was a tad tedious, obviously written so it would be clear she wasn’t writing any more of them.  It’s a bit tedious here, too, but it does tie everything up with hope, more than real life can guarantee.  Now I want to go back and read the entire series of books all over again, then watch all eight movies. 

In the future when we have Harry Potter DVD nights and watch Parts 1 and 2 back to back, none of my niggling will matter.  This one’s mighty dark, but it’s still fun.

~ Molly Matera, signing off and moving on.  Sigh.

He Sings, He Dances, He Punches Out Hitler!

“Captain America: The First Avenger.” The very title implies this is the precursor for next summer’s Marvel film, “The Avengers,” but “Captain America” is a terrific ride all by itself, with laughs, friendship, thrills and chills. And look at that cool poster!

(c) 2011 Paramount Pictures

The opening and closing scenes are in the present, with most of the story taking place during an artfully depicted World War II, starting in Norway: night, a church. Outside: Snow, Nazi storm troopers, tanks and the head of Hitler’s weapons division (HYDRA), Johann Schmidt, malevolently and joyfully played by Hugo Weaving. Inside the church is David Bradley (Filch from Harry Potter films) as the towerkeeper trying to protect a magical glowing thing of legend. Is it a spoiler to say the bad guys win this battle?

In New York City, the runt of the litter, Steve Rogers, is trying to enlist in the US Army — again. He’s like that guy in the old Charles Atlas ads — the skinny youth getting sand kicked in his face by the thick-necked pea-brained strongman. Young Steve is not merely scrawny, he’s got all sorts of ailments that make him 4F. His buddy Buck drags him to a double date at the World’s Fair, at which Howard Stark is demonstrating some magical machine of the future that doesn’t quite work yet. Dominic Cooper as Stark is suave yet courageous, a bit sleazier than slick, a genius nonetheless.

Stanley Tucci as Dr. Erskine

Stanley Tucci is wonderful, warm, and wounded as Dr. Abraham Erskine, the immigrant scientist who lives in Queens and commutes to his Brooklyn lab. It is he who perceives the inner hero in Steve Rogers. Erskine’s serum may give Steve the physique to enable him to fight the good fight and beat down the Nazi bullies. That Steve is the opposite of the megalomaniacal man on whom an earlier version of the serum has worked but failed — that would be Johann Schmidt, a.k.a. Red Skull  — might even the odds between Allied and Axis powers.

Chris Evans does a sterling job in this film, ranging from computer enhanced (diminished?) “before” pictures pre-injections and “vita-rays” to a helluva specimen, retaining his sweetness, his simplicity, his straightforwardness. Steve Rogers is the boy next door, and his alter ego Captain America the least vainglorious of the comic book superheroes. It will be fun to see him counter the behavior of the other Avengers next summer.

As Colonel Chester Phillips, Tommy Lee Jones is at the top of his form with a script that gives him full rein. Every team of scientists needs a growling military type, and Jones’ Colonel Phillips is bullheaded but resigned to being proven wrong on occasion. Jones is wry, sarcastic, sincere, aw he’s just swell.

Colonel Phillips and Private Lorraine

As that most unusual heroine, Agent Peggy Carter, Hayley Atwell plays it totally straight and it works. Carter’s strong, skilled, susceptible to a true hero, not just the he-men flexing muscles (like the hilarious Gilmore Hodge played by an actor with a 1940s Hollywood-style name, Lex Shrapnel). Atwell looks like a British soldier/scientist from the 1940s (kudos to the designers for everyone’s clothing and hair). No damsel in distress, this is one superhero’s almost-girlfriend you want fighting at your side.

Hugo Weaving is a swell villain as both the mad Nazi Johann Schmidt and the failed experiment and supervillain Red Skull. He is menacing, he’s witty, he is scarily logical, and he’s pure evil. Fabulous work with or without the mask.

Hugo Weaving as Johann Schmidt

The deft Toby Jones plays creepy Nazi doctor Arnim Zola, who probably thought he was pretty nasty stuff until he started working with Johann Schmidt and his “tesseract.” Jones oozes contempt, fear, avarice, and ambition as Zola, and I anticipate more fun stuff in future outings.

German and Brooklyn laboratories make for fun with knobs and meters and needles and cranks and levers and all sorts of things more visually entertaining than modern computers. But what really makes “Captain America” magical is the actors. The entire production is taken seriously, from director to make-up, and every actor plays it straight. In one scene, a portrait painter cringes between Dr. Zola and Red Skull as they argue. His subject’s a mad monster, the scientist not much better, and the portrait painter knows it — his fear is silently and perfectly played by David McKail.

The terrific cast includes Sebastian Stan as Steve’s best buddy Bucky Barnes, Michael Brandon as Senator Brandt, Neal McDonough as ‘Dum Dum’ Dugan, Derek Luke as Gabe Jones, Kenneth Choi as Jim Morita, JJ Field as James Montgomery Falsworth, Natalie Dormer as Private Lorraine, and (spoiler!) Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury.

Director Joe Johnston has done an outstanding job bringing to vibrant life the script by writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (based on the comic books by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby).

This let’s-get-together-and-beat-the-Nazi-bullies film is polished to a high gloss with a vibrant and uplifting score by Alan Silvestri. There are also some hilarious USO numbers with Captain America and the “Star-Spangled Singers” doing a pitch perfect patriotic song written by Alan Menken with terrific lyrics by David Zippel.

“Captain America” is fun from first to last, and that includes the Easter egg with trailer scenes for next summer’s “The Avengers.” The film’s final sequence (pre Easter egg) might leave you with the feeling that this movie is just one huge teaser for the next Marvel studio blockbuster, but that would mean you were thinking way too much. Not to mention, would that all teasers were half as good as this movie.

~ Molly Matera, urging you to do yourself and the movie houses a favor by using their air conditioning -- they’re running on high with or without you!

Missing Theatre

I feel like I haven’t been to the theatre in months, and I miss it. Don’t get me wrong, I love the movies. But seeing something live onstage is a different experience, a different vibration, and one of the things that has kept me sane (as well as can be expected) all these years.

So while I peruse the papers (and the discount emails that I require to fit my budget) as to which theatre to visit very, very soon, have a look at this article by Deborah Magid. What Deborah writes about the role of theatre in society has long been my belief, and she says it well while introducing her readers to a new project, “America: Now and Here.”

Deborah’s article is in the online magazine, JUiCYHEADS at:
http://juicyheads.com/link.php?PLHFKWIH


"America, Now and Here,” in which visual artists, musicians, filmmakers, playwrights, and poets will attempt to “use art to have a dialogue about America,” is an interesting concept, and like all theatre, cannot exist without its audience. Theatre, after all, is a communal art.

Is the tour coming near you?

~ Until next time, Molly Matera signing off to get some newsprint on my fingers.

“X-Men: First Class” Brings the Story Back to the Beginning

There are a number of memorable characters in director Matthew Vaughn’s “X-Men: First Class,” but I won’t be mentioning them all. You can and should meet them for yourselves.

Full disclosure: I have missed several films in this franchise, and I don’t recall the comics at all. This stood me in good stead to thoroughly enjoy “X-Men: First Class,” for in addition to the film’s own merits (which are many), the story held more suspense and uncertainties for me than for avid fans and aficionados. Not quite recalling, I could wonder, “Was not she with Magneto in the first film? What’s she doing here? Who’s this dude? And what’s Kevin Bacon got to do with it all?”

The film opens as “X-Men” did, in 1944, at the separation of young Erik Lehnsherr from his parents entering the concentration camp. Some go left, some go right. Erik’s anger and despair manifest in the shaking and bending and rending of the metal gates — with his mind. Dr. Schmidt (the fun-loving Kevin Bacon) teaches him control through torture as if he were a lab animal.

Meanwhile, in Westchester, we meet 12-year-old Charles Xavier coming upon someone disguised as his neglectful mother in the kitchen. This is young Raven, disguised from her true blue form, which she will later call “Mystique.” Charles takes her in, despite the fact that he’s a child himself. Neglectful parents can be useful that way.

World War II chills into the Cold War. James McAvoy as the grown-up Charles Xavier is having fun at university and making his adoptive sister Raven (the wonderful Jennifer Lawrence) quite jealous. As we pull up to 1962, Erik Lehnsherr, too, is quite grown up. This tortured soul is now played by Michael Fassbender, describing himself as Dr. Frankenstein’s monster in a search of the Nazi doctor. Following the money, Erik travels to Switzerland, then to South America, then to the United States to find his “creator,” who now goes by the name Sebastian Shaw.

Some things Kevin Bacon said as Dr. Schmidt (and his other persona, Sebastian Shaw) nagged at me, a little bitty niggling in one part of my brain, while the rest had a fine time. He kept talking about the Atomic Age, which started in the 1940s, so why would it have affected him, already a middle-aged man in 1944? Mind you, I enjoyed him. Bacon does a jolly Nazi doctor, megalomaniac, egomaniac, and accomplished all that was required of a dastardly villain with relish. A little chewy, but fun.

Ah, that danged split atom. So many complications it spawned. Rushing the natural selection of evolution into high gear. Although I don’t quite understand why or how Shaw came to be a mutant, he has some nifty powers that make him tough to kill and allow him to retain his youthful appearance 15 years after we first see him. Bacon’s big grin dominates his manipulation of the American and Russian military, and throughout his evil is gleeful. He also has a nifty helmet his Nazi buddies designed for him that blocks psychic intrusions. More on that anon.

Erik and Charles first meet because of Shaw, and because of Moira MacTaggert (Rose Byrne) — Moira saw the impossible, accepted it, then sought out Professor Xavier. Even more difficult, she convinced the CIA and the military to include Xavier in their search for a missing general. What they found and lost was Sebastian Shaw and his entourage. What they found and kept was Erik Lehnsherr in a fantastic display of his control of metal and magnetic fields, and his utter lack of control over himself.

From here the story moves along briskly, Charles and Erik displaying their mutant abilities to one another and discovering those of Shaw and his minions, while searching out mutants to join the good guy fold. These two actors are splendid, vying with one another for intensity.  Friendship and trust develop between the two men without slowing the action.   It’s fun, it’s fast, it’s far sadder than one might expect.

The learned Horvendile in his blog about this film writes an intriguing analysis of styles in Marvel and DC Comics, in which he explains that in the early years of the comic book series, the paths of Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr (later “Magneto”) did not cross in their youths. Happily the comic book series rewrote history twenty years into the run, and had them meet as young men, thus inspiring a great story of friends turning against one another — like two brothers in a civil war; or the Virginian and Trampas (that’s American literature, Owen Wister’s stories of two boisterous and virtuous young men who make different moral choices that make them enemies). This historic friendship between Charles and Erik makes their enmity as they lead their people on opposite sides of the struggle all the more poignant. Instead of merely showing a right-minded hero and an ornery villain, the heartbreak is built in.

Erik cannot give up the search for “Schmidt,” who brought out his anger and despair and thereby his power to move and manipulate metals. How ironic that Erik’s worst enemies, the Nazis, made the helmet that will eventually protect him from the probing mind of his only friend, Charles Xavier. Michael Fassbender is a many-layered actor as he becomes the Magneto we recognize. He sees a world that forces him to the outside because of his mutation, just as in his youth the world forced him to the outside because he was a Jew. What he doesn’t see is hope.

James McAvoy as Charles Xavier (Marvel)

What Charles Xavier — whether played by James McAvoy or Patrick Stewart — sees everywhere is hope. Not so tough since he came from a privileged background. He is a mutant due to his psychic abilities, but not only are these capabilities invisible, they afford him great power. Yes, this young man, never tortured, never without, never ashamed, uses his power for good. Erik speaks for the cynical among us when he remarks sarcastically upon what a “difficult” environment of luxury Charles was brought up in. An argument for nurture over nature in a film about mutants?

Matthew Vaughn’s direction is brisk even while it gives loving attention to the main characters, their relationships, their powers, and the booms and crashes and light shows those powers create in play and in battle.

Government folk: Rose Byrne as Moira MacTaggert believes what she sees and becomes a staunch supporter of the (not yet named) X-Men. Ms. Byrne’s style is simple and true, and I readily believed she was Moira. Oliver Platt made an all-too-brief appearance as the Man in Black. Likewise Ray Wise as the Secretary of State stating dreadful things. Let’s hope he reappears. And the under-sung Matt Craven as CIA Director McCone was governmental, annoying, predictable, and then human, in the best sense.

The mutants on either side of the battle don’t stand out so much individually but work very well together: Nicholas Hoult as Hank McCoy (later Beast), Caleb Landry Jones as Sean Cassidy (Banshee), Edi Gathegi as Armando Munox (Darwin), Lucas Till as Alex Summers (Havoc), Alex Gonzalez as Janus Quested (Riptide), and Jason Flemyng as Azazel. While Zoë Kravitz looked good as Angel Salvadore, she was lusterless.

Eva Magyar’s brief appearance as Erik’s mother was raw and heart wrenching. Charles’ and Erik’s lack of mothers in opposite ways gave opposite effects.

As for Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique, how brilliant is this young woman. In the 2010 release “Winter’s Bone” she gave a gritty performance as the unglamorous Ree Dolly, then follows it up in 2011 with the young Mystique in this healthy Marvel franchise. She and/or her agent are geniuses. And then of course, there’s her phenomenal acting. She embodies this child — for really, Raven, her name in her “disguise” of a non-mutant, is just a teenager, a pouting adolescent, jealous of her adoptive brother Charles, who comes to soar with joy at her new found fellow-mutant friends, finally finding herself torn between two points of view, two modes of behavior, more than two identities, and two men.

Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique (Credit:  Marvel)

The funniest scene is the one out of time, in which the two mutant buddies approach Hugh Jackman’s surly Wolverine in a bar, and back away at his foul-mouthed response to their civil greeting. (This gives Jackman the questionable honor of being the only actor to play the same comic book superhero in five movies.) Another nod for fans of the earlier films is a very brief appearance by Rebecca Romijn. Look for it.

Vaughn and screenwriters Ashley Miller, Zack Stentz, Jane Goldman (based on a story by Sheldon Turner and Bryan Singer, who is also a producer of the film and director of the first two “X-Men” films) go back to the beginning of Bryan Singer’s vision of this Marvel comics tale and do it more than justice. They’ve revived the saga with characters and actors as powerful and engrossing as their predecessors. James McAvoy boldly steps into the footsteps of young Charles Xavier, allowing us glimpses of Patrick Stewart’s future Professor X; and Michael Fassbender introduces us to the Erik who will become Ian McKellan’s Magneto.

There are some drab bits. January Jones looks good for Emma Frost but does nothing. Everyone else stood up from those comic book pages, but she might still have been frozen there. Someone should have told her that even mutants have emotions and humor.

All in all, this is an excellent addition to the “X-Men” series of films, with a fast-moving storyline, plenty of action (all of it visually comprehensible, unlike some other “action” films I could name), humor, deep characterizations, and proof that the “Others” among us are as human as we are.

The good guys...... (Credit:  Marvel)

How do I know this film gets it right? It makes me want to go back to the “beginning” of the film series to see what happens next.

~ Molly Matera, turning off the computer but not the light. I have stacks of comic books to go through.

Hanks and Roberts Do Not Do It Again

Tom Hanks’ latest foray into the hearts of America is “Larry Crowne.” There’s no resemblance to Thomas Crown. There’s no affair. There’s no heist. There’s no heat. There’s no excitement, no anticipation, no worries.

Hanks plays Larry Crowne, a popular and jolly team-leader type in a familiar chain store called “U-Mart.” He walks into a meeting with management expecting to be named Employee of the Month again, only to be fired. The excuse for downsizing this 50-something guy is that he can’t go any higher in the company because he never went to college (having spent twenty years in the Navy prior to his years serving this employer). I don’t believe that for a moment, it’s clearly ageism, and this film just as clearly wants to show that anyone practicing ageism is a fool. Larry Crowne will reinvent himself. He looks unsuccessfully for a new job. He does get unemployment insurance, but that’s not enough to pay the second mortgage he took on his house in order to buy out his ex-wife. Things are not going well for Larry, a swell guy who’s having a mid-life crisis not of his own devising. The world is sticking it to him.

But Larry doesn’t take things lying down. He chats with his yard-sale addicted neighbor Lamar played boisterously yet sincerely by Cedric the Entertainer. Lamar and his wife (Taraji P. Henson) are sweet and supportive of Larry, but have no more depth than any other character in the film. Larry goes to the local community college and is encouraged to take a public speaking class, and he goes for it. He pumps endless gallons of gasoline into his gas-guzzling SUV until he sees someone else putting a pop bottle worth of gasoline into a cute little motor scooter, so he adventurously buys one second hand. He scoots into a parking place at school and meets a pretty girl young enough to be his daughter, who clearly thinks he’s cute – for an old coot – and befriends him, teaching him to dress, among other things. Don’t worry, she’s got a boyfriend.

Valderrama and Mbatha-Raw (Universal Pictures)

Feel like you’ve already heard this story? You have, it’s in the television commercials and the trailers. And like many a perfectly pleasant film, everything you ever needed to know about it is in the commercials, so when you come out of the theatre, you’re still hungry. It’s nice. Hanks is nice. Julia Roberts is nice -- she has some fun playing a grumpy gus, Mercedes the cynical, disillusioned, college professor, married to a pretty skeavy guy played sleazily by Bryan Cranston, before she slowly grows into her usual gorgeous grinning self when she finds the hope of happiness. In Larry Crowne, of course.

Wilmer Valderrama reverts to the 1950s as Dell Gordo, the leader of the motorscooter ‘gang,’ Rita Wilson is barely amusing as a caricature of a bank loan officer; Pam Grier is sultry yet oddly believable as Mercedes’ buddy and co-worker, Frances. In fact, Grier and Roberts have the most believable relationship in the film. Gugu Mbatha-Raw is cute and sassy as “Talia,” who takes Larry Crowne under her cool wing. Particularly sweet is George Takei as Dr. Matsutani, apparently a terrific economics teacher.

Do I sound grumpy? It’s a sweet movie, really. But there’s no suspense. There’s no drama. The comedy is slight. The ending is precisely obvious from about 12 minutes in. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy myself for 98 minutes. It’s just that there’s not much of a there there.

I feel bad not liking this feel-good film. It’s just bland. Mr. Hanks directs his actors well enough. It’s the script by Hanks and Nia Vardalos (“My Big Fat Greek Wedding”) that, while well structured, relies too heavily on the actors to create characters from the lifeless forms on the page. Every character performs a purpose to further the plot – the development of Larry Crowne just when he thought he was done – but none of them are particularly real or interesting, despite the charm of the actors. So if you want a few giggles, some smiles along with your air conditioning, and an assured (I mean, really, have you seen the poster?) happy, hopeful ending, go ahead, see Larry Crowne. But eat beforehand and make reservations for afterward.

~ Molly Matera, craving a fulfilling film.