Category: Eleanor Ringel Cater

When we first glimpse Chester MacFarland (VIggo Mortensen), the protagonist of “The Two Faces of January,” he could well be a Master of the Universe from “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” Tom Wolfe’s classic chronicle of greed run amok.

For that matter, he could be Wolfe himself, in his creamy white suit and snazzy broad-brimmed hat. Plus, on his arm, is the proper accoutrement: a drop-dead gorgeous blond. As it turns out, she’s his wife — much younger and properly adoring — Colette (Kirsten Durst).

The girl who’s gone in “A Walk Among the Tombstones” isn’t married to Ben Affleck. Her hubby is a drug dealer who, relatively speaking, is a pure-cut hero compared to the scum who kidnapped his wife.

As the matriarch of the dysfunctional family in “This is Where I Leave You,” Jane Fonda, does a very clever thing.

She sports a pair of boobs so perky and, well, sizable, that almost everyone on screen makes a joke about her new enhancements. I have no idea whether these babies are real or photo-shopped, but either way, they serve an important function.

They distract us from wondering how much cosmetic work she has or has not had on her face.

All things being equal, Denzel Washington’s new movie, “The Equalizer,” gets things done. Taking a page from the “Taken” playbook, Washington posits himself as a mild-mannered (on the surface) AARP-ready guy a la Liam Neeson’s recent career swerve into action heroism.

Not that Washington hasn’t flexed those muscles before — in movies like “Man on Fire,” “Safe House,” “2 Guns,” and more.

However, “The Equalizer,” is far more focused on the contrast between the regular-guy, who works as a manager at the local Home Mart — hmm….yellow themed as opposed to orange.

The strange thing about “Love is Strange” is how very un-strange it is.

It’s the story of two people in love, newly married, who, due to financial difficulties, must live apart until said difficulties are solved.

One goes to stay with a nephew, married to a writer, with a shy, awkwardly adolescent son. The problem (s)? She works at home and their houseguest is inevitably in the way (plus, he must share a room with the aforementioned teen).

And, they live in Brooklyn. Not the Brooklyn of the Times or New York Magazine, but an older, more staid, more not-Manhattan Brooklyn.

It could’ve been a joke Joan Rivers told on herself. Something about biting the dust while under the knife — a typical self-deprecating Rivers spin on her own penchant for multiple cosmetic surgeries.

Only she would’ve made it really funny. And really, really transgressive.

Rivers didn’t have much of a movie career. No wonder. Just how, one wonders, would Hollywood have cast a pretty petite blonde with a biting wit and a tongue double-dipped in acid and vulgarity? Not exactly Julie Andrews. Or Meryl Streep.

The Italian film “A Five Star Life” isn’t likely to garner a lot of five-star reviews.

It’s too singular. Too…unfinished.

It’s also the sort of movie Hollywood seldom, if ever, makes: one about an attractive woman in her mid-40s. (Aside: one could almost see Lauren Bacall in the role 50 years ago, but she would’ve also had to throw a coin in a fountain and wish for true love; plus, she’d be de facto i.d.’d not as an attractive woman but an attractive spinster).

Not so here. Elegant and sophisticated, Irene (Margherita Buy) makes her living visiting…well…elegant and sophisticated hotels all over the world. Paris this week, Gstaad the next.

The bond between Atlanta and the late Sir Richard Attenborough, who recently died at age 90, goes a good deal deeper that most of us know.

In January 1983, the actor/director came here to present a benefit screening of “Gandhi,” his epic film about Mohandas K. Gandhi, the Indian leader whose unshakable adherence to nonviolence ultimately freed his country from colonial rule and inspired Martin Luther King, Jr. in his battle for civil rights.

I interviewed Robin Williams once. It was the early ‘90s, and he was pushing “Flubber.” He was funny. He was kind. And he was, as he himself admitted, a very hairy man.

As it happens, I also interviewed Lauren Bacall, another loss from last week. In fact, she was my very first interview as the movie critic for the Atlanta Constitution.

What I thought when I heard about Robin Williams’ suicide. He wanted to keep working. He loved the actor’s life. So did Lauren Bacall. So did Humphrey Bogart and John Wayne, for that matter.

Moliere died on stage, in the middle of one of his own plays. He sounds pretty lucky.

You don’t know how tempting it is to review “Mood Indigo” by simply listing all the visual delights Michel Gondry crams into his newest flight of fancy.

A Rubric Cube calendar. The pianocktail that allows you to compose a tune and concoct a cocktail at the same time. The doctor-prescribed treatment for a case of “water lily in the right lung” (very expensive). A tray of oven-baked snacks that come in tiny dollhouse ovens. A movable feast (literally).

If you happen to know — or happier still — happen to love Woody Allen’s moon-drenched “A Midsummer’s Night Sex Comedy,” it’s all but impossible to look at his newest, “Magic in the Moonlight” without regarding it as a kind of autobiographical bookend to the earlier film.

Think back to the Woody Allen Saga, circa 1982.

He is newly in love — besotted with his cultural opposite, flirtatious flower child Mia Farrow, the waif-like ‘60s siren who, at 21, snared Old Blue Eyes himself, Frank Sinatra. It’s worth noting that he, at 50, was at his most irrelevant. In 1966, nobody gave a flying flip about Ring-a-ding-ding. Well, nobody under 30, that is.

Maybe “Once” was enough for writer/director John Carney.

The Irish filmmaker’s low-key 2006 movie was a surprise hit in the U.S. — so much so that it was subsequently turned into a successful Broadway musical, also called “Once.”

Not that his sophomore effort, “Begin Again,” is all that bad.

It isn’t. But it lacks the considerable offbeat charm of its predecessor.

Monkey See Monkey Do. Monkey doo doo.

This is hardly Pulitzer Prize writing, but the entire time I was watching “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,” I could not get this rude little jingle out of my head.

Its predecessor, “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” did the near-impossible: it resurrected a series that had trashed its own legacy throughout the early ‘70s.

As post-apocalyptic films go, “Snowpiercer” has several things going for it.

First, the director is South Korean Bong Joon-ho, working in English for the first time. A few years ago, he made a stunning and original film called “The Host,” — a monster movie unlike anything you’ve seen before, partly a straight-on yum-yum-eat-‘em-up saga of a Nasty Thing that comes from a river and starts killing everyone in sight, it’s also a tender story of family and loss.

“Obvious Child” offers the responsible critic (and we are assuming I am one…) an interesting conundrum.

What if you heartily agree with the point the picture is trying to make and applaud it for doing so, but the movie itself is, well, so-so.

A recent example would be “12 Years a Slave,” a very good movie in many ways. Good enough to be deemed the Best Picture of the year at the Academy Awards.

Has the World Cup given you a taste for the world’s greatest sport?

If so, do you have any idea how hard it is to find world-class soccer again once the Cup is won? In the U.S, I mean. Everywhere else in the universe, God’s Chosen Game will continue at the same feverish pitch

So here’s what I thought. Maybe it would help to suggest several soccer movies to help you through the inevitable withdrawal period.

You hear that Tom Cruise is starring in a movie called “Edge of Tomorrow” and two things  go through your head. Couldn’t they find a better title than one that sounds like an old afternoon soap from the ‘60s?

And this time-loop concept…didn’t Bill Murray do it about as well as it ever could be done in “Groundhog Day?” And wasn’t it done about as routinely as possible in “Source Code?”

Yes, Yes . And yes.

But it makes no difference.  “Edge of Tomorrow” is one of the coolest sci fi/action thrillers to come along in quite a while.

A few years ago, I was asked to contribute to the National Society of Film Critics newest book, “The X List,” subtitled “Movies that Turn Us On.”

You’d be surprised by what turns critics on (maybe not…)

Roger Ebert chose a movie he’d co-written, “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.” The Wall Street Journal’s Joe Morgenstern went for Brad Pitt’s “Troy.” Time’s Richard Schickel chose “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.” Peter Travers from Rolling Stone admitted he gets hot and bothered by “Body Heat.”

Here are my reviews of three movies that are out in theaters right now — “Belle;” “Maleficent” and “A Million Ways to Die in the West.”

“Belle,” which was “inspired” by a true story, is a richly gorgeous film. “Maleficent” is impressive, and any movie with Angelina Jolie has natural star power. “A Million Ways to Die in the West” shows that Seth MacFarlane really loves Westerns.

Movies don’t come more mouth-watering than “Chef,” written, directed and starring Jon Favreau.

Favreau hit it off with audiences with his very first film, “Swingers,” which essentially did two things.

1) It made Vince Vaughn a household name.

2) It made it ok — cool, even — to embrace the whole moldy Rat Pack thing. Only, of course, slightly re-edited, so that all the cool people are absolutely cool about race and women’s greatest wish is to be treated as a sex object.