Category: Eleanor Ringel Cater

It’s rarely fair weather in “Cloud Atlas,” a movie that can sometimes be as pretentious as its title.

The thing is, I LIKE the title of David Mitchell’s best seller. You may wish to take that as an early guide: if you are turned off by the title and/or the book, maybe you need to stick to “Argo.” Which, if nothing else, works fine as a straightforward thriller.

However, like many an aging hippie, I was fascinated by the movie’s Other Lives, Other Times, Other Souls narrative. “Cloud Atlas” time-warps through 6 different stories, some set in the past, some in the near present and others in an imagined future (actually two futures, one in 2346, the other in 2144). The cast hops, skips and jumps as well; the protagonist of one tale may be a bit player in another.

There’s a story I’ve been telling for years about sequels, but it is so appropriate in the case of “Taken 2” that I can’t resist telling it again.

Back in the 1980s, after “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” became a big hit, Paul Reubens, aka Pee-wee Herman, was asked if he planned on making a sequel.

What would happen, he replied. They steal my bike again?

The real-life events behind “Argo” are so thrilling it would be almost impossible to mess up a movie about them.

But Ben Affleck gives it the ol’ college try.

How? By mucking up director Affleck’s burgeoning career as an actor-turned director by casting Ben Affleck, the actor-turned-Bennifer-joke, in the starring role.

You’ve doubtless heard of “Brokeback Mountain.”

What about a Brokeback Movie?

That’s a movie where the first half and the second half don’t really fit together. “Fatal Attraction” is a good example: First part, sophisticated morality play, post “Sexual Revolution;” second part, crazy bunny killer.

So is the new sci-fi film, “Looper.”

Clint Eastwood’s “Trouble With the Curve” has nothing to do with his recent Trouble with the Chair.

Except, I guess, that he’s in full Crusty Old Coot mode in both — sort of Dirty Harry as played by Walter Brennan.

This is full-press “Gran Torino” territory, with the modified Clint squint and lip-curl. As Gus, an aging scout for the Atlanta Braves, he doesn’t want to face up to his failing eyesight and aching bones. But an old pal (John Goodman) in management knows that Gus just isn’t up to snuff anymore. Rather than force him to retire, he convinces Gus’s reluctant daughter, Mickey (Amy Adams), to go on the road with him.

In the title role of “The Master,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film, Philip Seymour Hoffman is part Elmer Gantry, part Elmer Fudd.

Bruited just about everywhere as a look at the ugly underbelly of Scientology (as opposed to the overbelly…? Or maybe belly just comes to mind because Hoffman shows off a primo paunch), “The Master” culminates in an utterly confounding manner.

But the more I think about it, the more I believe “The Master” is as simple as faith. Misplaced faith, in this case, but still rock-solid simple.

The Bernie Madoff mess would make an amazing movie all on its own. But put Richard Gere in the picture and unless you throw on an unknown Julia Roberts as well….well… the movie is more likely than not to be all about Gere.

There are a few exceptions: Edward Norton (in his first film) managed to wrest “Primal Fear” out of Gere’s grip. And “Chicago’s sheer razzmatazz cornered the star into being an ensemble player (and a very effective one).

Jodie Foster’s generosity in “Sommersby” summoned something different than his usual self-admiration, as did honing in on Clifford Irving’s sheer chutzpah in “The Hoax.”

The word for the movie — “The Words” — is…disappointment.

No, it’s more like, pretentious.

Or maybe, annoying.

Okay, let’s go with…drivel.

Just like Stella and her Groove, David Cronenberg’s got his crazy back. The Canadian director, best known for transgressive horror films like “The Fly” with Jeff Goldblum, has been keeping to the straight and narrow (relatively…) for the past few years with pictures like “A History of Violence, ” “Eastern Promises,” and, most recently, “A Dangerous Method.”

His newest picture, “Cosmopolis,” takes him back to the disquieting and mind-blowing movies that made him famous. Movies like “Scanners,” with its exploding heads and “Dead Ringers’ with twin gynecologists played by Jeremy Irons and “Videodrome” with its tummies-turned-video-players.

Movies released in the dump days of August are not movies for which distributors have big hopes. Thus, 12 movies opened last week and another dozen or more are being released before Labor Day.

Two of the films are about couples troubles.

In “2 Days in New York,” Julie Delpy and Chris Rock (in his best movie performance) are trying to stay together despite her rambunctious brood of assorted French relatives and friends of relatives who’ve descended upon them for the titular two days. In “Celeste and Jesse Forever,” the title pair, played by Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg, want a divorce, but seem more bonded than most long-marrieds.

If you know the AMC series “The Killing,” then you already know Joel Kinnaman.

I didn’t and, I didn’t.

I do now.

All it took was a screening of a killer-smart movie Kinnaman made in Sweden in 2010. Called “Easy Money’ (or, in its native land, the provocative-sounding, less Rodney Dangerfield-redolent “Snabba Cash”).

“Easy Money” is a tale of dirty money. JW (Kinnaman) is an economics major who aces exams but worries about social studies. As in, how to get along with the rich and…then richer. You see, he’s from the wrong side of Sweden (I had no idea they had a wrong side).

It’s 50 years after the fall and the luminous tragedy that was Marilyn Monroe still lingers.

She died a half a century ago this month on August 5, 1962. Accidental overdose? Suicide? Kennedy-orchestrated murder?

We still don’t know. And we’re still fascinated. Very fascinated.

As the superb new documentary, “The Queen of Versailles,” so effortlessly demonstrates, royalty is a relative term.

We are not talking about Marie-Antoinette and her equally doomed King Louis XVI here. We are talking about Jackie and David Siegel, a gilded couple in Orlando, Florida, who learn the Golden Rule the hard way. As in, he who has the gold, rules.

A Dark Knight rose in Colorado last week.

Except he wasn’t a knight. And he was worst than dark. And the only way he “rose” was by climbing up the steps at the stadium-seating theater.

We know the rest. Or enough of it. The acts of valor, the names of the dead, the stories of near misses and dead hits. We know what the guns were, how much ammunition he ordered and where he got it. We even know his name.

Having rather enjoyed “The Amazing Spider-Man,” I was thinking of a different way to write about it instead of a straight-on review or the usual superhero comparisons.

So I came up with this — focusing on the notion of Mad Scientists. As in Welsh actor, Rhys Ifans as the unfortunate scientist who turns himself into Spidey’s nemesis, The Lizard. Like most scientists in movies (especially the mad ones), he starts out with good intentions. But, well, best laid plans and all that.

Ernest Borgnine died last week at age 95.

I’m not sure anyone ever did bad guys any better.

How shall I count the numerous ways he was nasty on screen?

Let’s see: He beat Frank Sinatra to death in “From Here to Eternity.” He threw harmless hobos off trains (it’s the Depression) as the vicious conductor in “Emperor of the North Pole.” He stabbed Royal Dano in the back in “Johnny Guitar.” He conceived the deadly mission that sent most of “The Dirty Dozen” to their deaths.

Woody Allen didn’t have an idea for a movie this year, but he made one anyway.

The 74-year-old filmmaker has turned out a picture a year (or close enough) since his feature debut in the mid-1960’s. “To Rome with Love” continues his European period. Previous settings have included London (“Match Point”) Barcelona (“Vicky Christina Barcelona”), and Paris (“Midnight in Paris”).

From the opening scene — an Italian traffic cop addressing the camera — the fit feels wrong. Rome isn’t Woody territory somehow. The city demands the robust surrealism of Fellini— his circus-freak chaos and fantastical appetites.

Nora Ephron made me feel good about my neck.

Then she had to go and die young — 71, leukemia — and I feel bad.

And not just about my neck.

It’s only in retrospect that my respect for her as a filmmaker has grown. Her collections of essays — “ I Remember Nothing,” “ I Feel Bad About My Neck,” “Crazy Salad,” to name a few — were always wonderful. Tasty and tart and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny.

Would you answer this ad?

“Wanted: Someone to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. You’ll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once before.”

It is a genuine classified; check with Jay Leno if you don’t believe me.

With the exception of the dismal “Joe Versus. the Volcano” or the fanboy romp, “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” when I see the word “versus” (or “vs.”) in a movie title, I tend to think, um, classically.

As in, “Godzilla vs. Mothra

But here’s “Lola Versus,” a movie as open-ended — or incomplete, depending on your tolerance for Manhattan-set indie rom-coms — as its title.