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, a semicompetent Butchery melodrama that spins a grabbily manipulative (not to speak fictitious) story of lives threatened by the Nazi menace, never stopping to wonder if the undamaged agreement isn't in slightly poor know. Anybody who blanched at the artifice of

Schindler's List

(another example of dupe art cited by Ms. Croce) should really recoil from the blatant deck-stacking perpetrated by

The Aryan Brace

's director/co-writer, John Daly (an accomplished producer with lone 1993's

The Petersburg-Cannes Special

to his creative credit). Elevate h offer-upon Jews influence on hint or stare defiantly into the camera, spouting impromptu speeches about getting some of their own back a person day; all the while, violins wail in the background. Pardon me if I'm leaping to a conclusion, but I think we're meant to

feel

something here.

Set in Hungary in 1944, the story revolves around Joseph Krauzenberg (Martin Landau), a wealthy industrialist who's struck a deal to spirit his extended family to safety in Palestine ? by turning over his entire estate to the Nazis. Third Reich bigwigs like Himmler (Danny Webb) and Eichmann (Steven Mackintosh) figure in the clandestine arrangement, although the biggest danger may be to the Vassmans (Kenny Doughty, Caroline Carver), a pair of married servants introduced to us as the last Aryans in Hungary working for Jewish employers. But unbeknownst to their bosses, the Vassmans are Jews themselves, and also active participants in resistance activities that could get them executed as soon as the Krauzenbergs leave the country.

Obstacles pile up like cliffhangers in an old RKO serial. Will the Krauzenbergs make it to the airport, or will the shifty Nazis double-cross them at the last minute? Will the Vassmans be found out? What brutal fate awaits them if they are? The risk factor is upped so methodically and shamelessly that Daly might have considered slipping the movie stage entirely and taking his story straight to the videogame console. ("

Final Solution 3

, for PlayStation.")

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The effort is almost professional enough to constitute a genuine affront, largely due to the presence of Landau, who can seem credible even when a filmmaker is directing him to really pour on the schmaltz. Luckily, little else about

The Aryan Couple

is up to his level, especially Daly's ham-fisted writing ? which is almost all exposition ? and the absurdly lyrical British accents sported by the Nazis. Not even a token guttural consonant attaches itself to these anti-Semitic orators' perfectly enunciated hate speech. Take an uninformed middle-schooler to the film, and he may emerge believing that Poland was invaded by the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Is it still victim art when the designation "art" is in question? Croce might know, though the best encapsulation of

The Aryan Couple

's self-serving indignation comes from a sister sociologist: Sarah Silverman, who last year challenged her audience with the out-on-a-limb observation, "Nazis are A-holes, and I'll be the first one to say it." Daly is just as adept at knocking down straw men; the problem is that he doesn't intend it as a joke.

There’s nothing quite so nostalgic as going back in habits – remembering what could have been, where life’s turning points happened, recalling antediluvian loves and most suitable days. The idea of someone starting life old and living life backwards – getting younger each day – seems a zealous premise for a integument, and it’s the nucleus of T
he Intrusive Case of Benjamin Button
, a tale of Benjamin (Brad Pitt) born in unaccustomed circumstances in 1918 as a cosset prehistoric mortals with arthritis and blotchy skin.
Dumped by his official frame on the steps of a boarding legislature for the ill and venerable, Benjamin is cared for by Queenie (Taraji Henson), who doesn’t expect the child to unexploded long. Come what may, Benjamin gets stronger by the date, aging backwards through middle age where he finds work as a tugboat hand and meets the love of his life Daisy (Cate Blanchett).

It’s a curious story indeed, a long and rambling exploration of time and what we make of it. Unfortunately though, director David Fincher (

Fight Club, Se7en, Zodiac

) makes far too much of it (it’s nearly three hours long), and although there are moments of tenderness, it’s impossible to overcome the problem that this originated from a short story (by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald) and that with one character moving in a different direction from the others, the story can only be a series of unlinked events. Screenwriter Eric Roth’s solution to the problem – to have Daisy recall Benjamin’s life from her deathbed – numbs us from any real emotional connection to the characters and means we know where things are heading from the start.

Blanchett and Tilda Swinton (who plays a lover of Bejamin’s before he finds Daisy) are in great form, but Pitt is directed as rather gormless and unemotional – a Forrest Gump or Chauncey Gardiner character with little depth or insight for his unusual way of experiencing the world. We are left to wonder only at the marvels of make up and special effects and wait – for a very long time – for the moment when Brad Pitt emerges as a teenager – with flawless skin and a full hairline.

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The requested URL /savages.htm was not found on this server.

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Robert Siodmak (”Phantom Lady”/Criss Cross”/”The Killers”) stylishly
directs and Herman Mankiewicz does the taut screenplay, of a dark film
noir based on a story by Somerset Maugham. The Christmas title is misleading,
as there’s ‘no joy to the season’ in this movie. Gene Kelly and Deanne
Durbin are cast against type. Durbin, Universal’s savior because of the
huge grosses from her family musical films which saved the studio from
bankruptcy, chooses an image change in requesting the lead in this bleak
drama. But she balked at playing a prostitute, as her part was written
by Maugham. Instead she plays a blues singer in a New Orleans dive. Most
of the film is told in flashback.

The film opens with newly appointed army officer Charles Mason (Dean
Harens) receiving a telegram that his fiancée Mona jilted him to
marry another, even though he was flying to San Francisco on his Christmas
leave to marry her before shipping out overseas. The shocked second lieutenant
still flies to San Francisco, but his plane makes a forced landing in New
Orleans because of bad weather. Stopping overnight in a hotel he’s befriended
by a loudmouth reporter Simon Fenimore (Richard Whorf), who senses how
lonely it is for the soldier to spend Christmas Eve alone and persuades
him to relax in a nightclub (which appears to be a front for a brothel).
The club’s hostess, Valerie de Merode (Gladys George), introduces Charles
to the star attraction, the singer Jackie Lamont (Deanna Durbin), and the
two later go to a Midnight Mass and she then innocently spends the night
in his hotel room where she gets a chance to tell him her story.

Warning: spoiler to follow in the next paragraph.

Jackie reveals that her real name is Abigail, and that she’s a transplanted
Vermonter who three years ago fell in love with Robert Manette (Gene Kelly),
who comes from an old aristocratic Louisiana family. Robert’s a charmer
and has a pathological devotion to his overbearing mother (Gale Sondergaard),
who consents to the marriage because she thinks Abigail can help her wastrel
son become more responsible. After six months of a blissful marriage where
Abigail is unaware of her husband’s faults, Robert slays and robs a local
bookie. Abigail becomes involved in covering up the crime with Robert’s
mother as police investigate, but it’s to no avail as Robert is convicted
and sent for a long stay in Angola prison. When the mother blames her for
not saving her son, Abigail leaves the family mansion, changes her name
to Jackie and works in the nightclub. Jackie still is in love with Robert,
which confounds Charles. But her story straightens him out, and when the
rainstorm clears he decides to skip flying to the west coast and instead
plans to go back to the base. Before Charles checks out, he learns Robert
escaped and goes to look after Jackie. The soldier discovers Robert holding
the reporter hostage in his wife’s dressing room and threatening to kill
her after accusing her of being a tramp and unfaithful. Abigail explains
she took the gig so she can also be in prison like him. Before the tormented
Robert can shoot his wife, a policeman kills him. The last words heard
are “You can let go now, Abigail.”

The film uncovers an ugly side to family values, even hinting at
incest and homosexuality. Hans Salter’s use of Wagner’s Tristan theme to
open and close the relationship between the star-crossed lovers, and Durbin
doing a nightclub number of Always to indicate how blind love can be destructive
in the way it consumes the soul–reinforces the bleakness of the film noir
thriller.

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It’s a compelling film noir despite not digging into even darker
depths, which is mainly because Durbin refused to be made into a soiled
character. Nevertheless, it ably conveys a brooding sense of despair and
the sinister performances by Kelly and Sondergaard are special.

Photos courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
Emily Rios is Magdalena, a young jail-bait about to be illustrious in "Quinceañperiod."
Fourteen-year-old Magdalena is about to be celebrated. Her Mexican-American subdivision in Los Angeles’ Echo Store follows the Latin American usage of Quinceañera. A girl’s quinceañera is a immensely formal affair filled with ritual, music and hoof it.  

But two seemingly disparate traditions come together to form Quinceañera. The movie’s also inspired by the Kitchen Sink dramas produced by the British film industry in the 1950s and early ’60s. They were set in the working-class districts of Britain’s industrial north. In contrast to the romance and escapism seen in films about the upper classes, the sociopolitical storylines in Kitchen Sink dramas struck a gritty, realistic tone.

The quinceañera and those British dramas merge seamlessly in the bilingual Quinceañera, a film written and directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland. There’s also something very contemporary in the way a non-traditional family forms after Magdalena and her black-sheep cousin, Carlos, are cast out of their own families.

Quinceañera opens as Magdalena attends her cousin Eileen’s nearly perfect quinceañera. The special day for Eileen would have been flawless had not her brother, Carlos (Jesse Garcia), showed up and caused a ruckus.

Carlos lives with his 85-year-old great-great uncle, Tomas. Tomas wheels a shopping cart through Echo Park selling champurrado, a Mexican hot drink. He’s a kind, sweet-natured man who genuinely cares for his nephew, a young man deemed unworthy by his parents.

Magdalena’s dreams of a beautiful quinceañera that includes a Hummer limo ride for herself and her friends come crashing down. Her fundamentalist father, a minister at a storefront church, sees the world in black and white. Magdalena crosses a line he will not accept and she leaves her parent’s house to live with Uncle Tomas and Carlos.

Once the realistic complications in Carlos and Magdalena’s lives kick in, Quinceañera turns from being a fluffy look at Latino life to a genuine drama of young people searching for a place in a world that rejects them. The film’s three principal actors, Emily Rios as Magdalena, Jesse Garcia as Carlos and, most of all, Chalo Gonzalez as Tomas, all bring touching authenticity to their characters.

In the tradition of the Kitchen Sink dramas, Quinceañera finds truth in its characters. Not even the movie’s happy ending rings falsely.

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The first motion pictures adjusting of George Orwell’s political fable to reach the screen was in 1955, an animated version that tended to disparage the author’s brutally hard-edged satire of autocratic governments. I guesstimate they figured that since “Animal Farm” was encircling talking animals, they’d select it into a cartoon and change the ending. Now, with advancements in computer graphics and animatronics, plus the success of the “Babe” movies, we have a more convincing account using mostly truthful-looking animals and sticking a short closer to the plot. It’s an improvement, but it’s not what most fans of the soft-cover were probably hoping for.

You all remember the story. It’s commonly taught in high school and, ill-advisedly, in lower grades. The lesson warns against the dangers of complacency and failing to assume as a replacement for oneself. The story of Animalism is a thinly disguised account of the rise of Russian Communism, here serving as a reference on the side of all such dictatorships that promise one dislike but carry another. It begins on Manor Be killed, string by a lazy, alcoholic farmer named Jones. One night an elderly boar, Old Serious, calls a meeting of the animals to tell them his spectre of a perfect everyone. He explains that Confine is at the root of all their troubles and that only by overthrowing Cover shackles and working as a replacement for themselves will they achieve actual equality and exuberance.

He dies, but his words live on; and before long the animals overthrow their master, oust him from the farm, and take for granted control. Then all goes fountain-head until two of the animal leaders, the pigs Snowball and Napoleon, make a note of c depress greater than-yuppy. Eventually, Napoleon chases Snowball away and assumes the role of despotic dictator, essentially alluring over where Farmer Jones left off, leaving the idle about of the animals in worse condition than they were in in the vanguard the insurrection.

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It is symbolic, of line. Manor Farm is Russia; its modify to Animal Allotment is the U.S.S.R. Husbandman Jones (Pete Postlethwaite) is Czar Nicholas; Previous Critical (voiced by Peter Ustinov) is Karl Marx, looking and sounding, however, more fellow Winston Churchill; Snowball (Kelsey Grammer) is Leon Trotsky; Napoleon (Patrick Stewart) is Joseph Stalin. The powerful but leaden-witted horse Boxer (Paul Schofield) represents the working class; the fast-talking pig Squealer (Ian Holm) the propaganda ministers of the world; the ribbon-loving horse Mollie (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) the defectors. And so on. The story is told in flashback by the dog, Jessie (Julia Ormond), who, in the film at least, is the but brute who has an whisper of what’s truly going on. Jim Henson’s Creature Purchase provided the animatronics and special effects, although they are not up the standards of the “Babe” films.

Most of the version line follows Orwell’s account, and for this reason I can marginally push the film. But, the deviations are annoying. Why are Hollywood filmmakers so in its entirety of themselves that they intend they can seriously improve upon a literary immortal? I can take it directors and screenwriters trimming a novel to fitting a two-hour time slot, but I take a rest perturbed when they think they know more than a book’s author and start changing whole scenes. Over of Demi Moore’s comments about “The Scarlet Letter” a few years back: “We wanted to update it for the nineties. Besides, who reads it anymore, anyway?” Uh, like, how apropos half a million drunk secondary kids a year, among others.