Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol

Runtime 132 minutes.
OK for children.

Tom Cruise in “Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol.”

Paramount is an oddly run studio. When I went to the screening at Paramount for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), I asked for a list of cast and crew. I was told there wasn’t one. I asked why not. They said they were trying to save money. The film had a budget of over $100 million and they were saving 25 cents by not printing out the cast and crew for critics? There’s some sort of common sense here?

I didn’t get an invite to a media screening for this, so I asked around. Nobody I know got an invite to a screening and Paramount’s reply was that there “were no more,” which is a Clintonesque statement that implied there had been some, but I couldn’t find anyone who went to one. One person told me that the press day was in Dubai. That would be a helpful place to have it if you were trying to keep most reviewers from seeing the film since most reviewers are located in Los Angeles and aren’t employed by people who can afford to send a critic to Dubai. And there were reviews that appeared opening day, so there were some favored critics who somehow got to see it before it opened. Generally when a studio acts in this manner, the film stinks and they know it, so they don’t want unfavorable reviews to spoil the opening weekend, when they expect to get all their money.

But that’s not the case here. I paid my way in to see it and it was worth the price of admission. The plot is ridiculous, but the situations and stunts are rewarding. The tension is non stop and the cast, Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, and Paula Patton, does a good job, especially Patton.

All the Mission: Impossible plots are, well, impossible, but this one is unusually outlandish, something about a bad guy who has stolen Russian nuclear launch codes and Tom and the gang have to get to the guy before he uses them.

It abounds with plot holes. The beginning in which Cruise is sprung out of prison and then invades the Kremlin has them coming so fast that you just forget about reality and realize what you’re seeing is as ridiculous as a Donald Duck cartoon. But that’s why you go to see Mission: Impossible films, to see Cruise and his pals accomplish the impossible, taking on odds that are worse than a million to one; not once but time and again. Just as one example, they’ve been disowned by the U.S. government and are absolutely all alone, but, lo and behold, they actually hop on a freight train in Russia that has a car that is filled with all their space age gear, and then they find the wherewithal to get to Dubai with a bunch of gear to confront the villain!

But, who cares? The cinematography is rewarding enough for a travelogue. The good guy vs. the world with a hateful bad guy is involving. This is another film where you should just leave your brain at home, relax, and enjoy it.

Young Adult

Runtime 94 minutes.
Not for children. 

Charlize Theron in “Young Adult.”

Diablo Cody could be the best scriptwriter in Hollywood. After her groundbreaking debut with Juno, now she follows up with a tale about a dysfunctional, gorgeous young woman approaching middle-age, Charlize Theron. This starts out to be a story about an unhappy young woman who returns to her small town where she was the beauty queen while in high school. There she sets out to take her high school beau away from his wife.

While this might sound as a standard soap opera, it is anything but. As this movie progresses it becomes deeper and deeper. Buttressed by an outstanding cast with terrific performances by Patrick Wilson as the object of her affections, and Patton Oswalt, as her former high school nerd classmate with whom she becomes reacquainted in a bar.

Watching Theron pursue Wilson as her relationship with Oswalt develops is a thing of beauty. But better than the acting, the film is a thought-provoking study of the morality of a young woman who, in the eyes of her contemporaries, has everything. Directed by Jason Reitman, with whom Cody collaborated on Juno, all three give award–quality performances. Also contributing with a fine performance as Wilson’s wife is Elizabeth Reaser.

While this is a serious movie, there are some uproarious lines in it. I’m told that the one I thought was the funniest is in the movie’s trailer. Had I heard it in the trailer, I wouldn’t have thought it funny, and it couldn’t have had the impact seeing it in the trailer, since it would be completely out of context. My feeling is that the numbskulls who create the trailers for movies and either show the entire story encapsulated into a minute or show the three or four best lines in the movie should be subject to Capital Punishment without benefit of trial. No trial is needed because there is no defense for ruining a good movie by showing its best parts in a trailer.

While some movies rely on ridiculous but eye-popping special effects or gutter language to keep the audience’s attention, this one relies on wonderful dialogue and a challenging situation to do so, and this is a much more rewarding way to become involved in a movie. While this might not be for everyone, it most certainly was for me. I’d give Oscar® nominations for Cody, Reitman, and the four leading cast members.

War Horse

Run time 146 minutes.
OK for children.

Jeremy Irvine in “War Horse.”

Animals who can reason have been around in literature for quite a while. Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge) created them in his classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Walt Disney took them to extremes. So, even though this film is based on a 1982 novel by Michael Morpurgo and the 2007 stage play (called “the theatrical event of the decade”), the screenplay is by Lee Hall and Richard Curtis, and it’s produced and directed by Steven Spielberg, they all owe a lot of credit to Carroll and Disney.

Morpurgo, Spielberg, and his crew took that concept and put the human ability to reason in a horse, born him in pre-WWI Britain, and gave him a loving master, Albert (Jeremy Irvine), the son of Ted and Rosie Narracott (Peter Mullan and two-time Oscar® nominee Emily Watson, both of whom give wonderful performances). In the play the horses were puppets; Spielberg uses real horses.

To make a too-long story mercifully shorter, the horse, Joey, is taken from Albert and sent to war when it breaks out.

Mimicking Jack London, Spielberg tells the story from Joey’s POV, as did Morpurgo. Spielberg is at the top of his form, though, because he tells the story extremely well and gets one to believe that Joey actually can reason like humans.

Much of the movie is the moving tale of the bond between Albert and Joey, and that’s the realistic part of the movie. Clearly a bond can be formed between an animal and a human, although as one character expresses in the movie, “a horse is not a dog.” This raises the question of how smart a horse really is and do they really have the same emotional characteristics as a dog. Most of the evidence is that they do not.

Unfortunately, one of the most moving scenes in the movie is also the least credible. Joey’s best friend (another horse) is hurting but pulled to the front of a line of horses pulling a huge 8-ton German cannon to the front. Joey knows his friend is hurt, so he whinnies, or whatever horses do, makes a lot of commotion, and runs to the front of the line to substitute for his friend.

In the same scene, Spielberg has been so successful at capturing our emotions that when the German commander tells his sergeant to go ahead and use the horses as pack animals, and work them to death, even though they are tired, he seems like an ogre. But that’s what horses are there for. In the most brutal war of all time, horses were beasts of burden. (A commander shouldn’t be castigated for using them for what they are for. But this is a movie and it’s as much a fantasy as a Donald Duck cartoon.)

Two other performances stand out, Niels Arestrup, who plays a French farmer, and Celine Buckens, who plays his granddaughter. They enter the film at about the 90 minute mark when the movie is getting too long, and they revitalize it with their sparkling performances.

While the war scenes are well done, they don’t really capture the horror and stupidity of World War I, where most of the Generals on both sides were war criminals, so little regard did they have for the lives of their troops. The devastating destruction of human life in the trench warfare is shown, but not the appalling loss of life. Just as an example, in the battle of the Somme, the British suffered 57,470 casualties the first day, July 1, 1916, advancing only a little more than a mile. Despite this, British General Haig pressed on with the attack until November 19th of the same year. Despite little or no achievement, total losses for the British were 419,654 with German casualties between 450,000 and 680,000. When the offensive was eventually called off the British were still three miles short of their first-day objectives. And that was just one battle. That’s why it’s called “The Lost Generation.”

Spielberg closes the movie with a scene that looks like it’s directly out of Gone with the Wind. I hope he meant it respectfully as an homage, but it’s a direct steal.

None of this means that it’s not entertaining or that it doesn’t tug your heartstrings. Sometimes people read my reviews and claim that they didn’t understand why I didn’t like the movie when, in actuality, I did like it. So to clear that up, I did like this movie. Even though it’s long and the premise is fantasy, it is extremely well made; the acting is superb, as are the war scenes. Particularly well done are the final scenes when Joey gets chewed up by barbed wire (which was plastic so posed no harm to the horse).

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Run time 158 minutes.
Not for children.

Rooney Mara in “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”

So the big question is, why do a remake of a film that came out just last year? The answer? Money. The facts are stark. While the Swedish original collected over $94 million worldwide, it only collected a little over $10 million in the United States (translating to less than 1 million viewers). The money guys looked at this and started counting up the money they could make with an American remake out of Stieg Larsson’s wildly successful books. Lots of Americans are put off by over two and a half hours of reading subtitles.

While David Fincher ably directs this thriller, it is clearly not up to the Swedish original, even though Rooney Mara admirably channels Noomi Rapace (the protagonist in the Swedish film), and Daniel Craig gives his best performance yet, abetted by award-quality background music by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross that sets the tone throughout.

Good as Mara is, she’s no Rapace. And there was really no reason not to allow Noomi to reprise her role in the American version, since she speaks perfect English, as evidenced by her role in the abysmal Sherlock Holmes film that was just released. For some reason, Mara doesn’t capture the sympathy that Rapace created for her character. Even so, Mara’s interpretation is adequate to create the tension in what is basically a whodunit.

Adding to the quality of the film are the outstanding performances by Christopher Plummer and Stellan Skarsgård. Because all four principals give such wonderful performances, and there is rarely a scene when one isn’t onscreen, this is a long film that never lags.

As for the plot, Plummer hires Craig to find his long lost niece, who disappeared one day in 1966. Craig hires Mara, a hotshot internet researcher, to help him as he delves deeper and deeper into the convoluted history of Plummer’s dysfunctional family.

The opening titles constitute the worst part of the film. They are, in a word, nonsensical. They are off-putting and have nothing to do with the film that follows. What were they thinking? Why start a movie with something that might lose the audience immediately?

The other weakness of the film is the first hour where Mara doesn’t establish much of a sympathetic reaction to her bizarre character, probably because Fincher leaves a lot of her background out of the story, background that is explained more explicitly in both the book and the Swedish version. When she finally links up with Craig after about an hour, the film picks up considerably.

Since very few Americans actually saw the Swedish film (which should remain as the authentic film interpretation of the books by those who read them and see both film versions), this version can stand on its own. Without knowledge of the prior version with which to compare this, most audiences should find this satisfying. Even though I’ve seen all three films and read two of the books, including the first upon which this is based, I still found Fincher’s film interesting and tense, despite the fact that the sex and violence are considerably toned down from the Swedish originals.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Run time 128 minutes.
OK for children.

I didn’t like Robert Downey, Jr.’s first iteration of Sherlock Holmes (2009) and I don’t like this one, either, also directed by Guy Ritchie. If possible, I liked this less than the first. As an aside that I did find amusing, the IMDB lists the writers as Michele Mulroney and Kieran Mulroney “and one more credit.” When you click on that one more credit, it turns out to be Arthur Conan Doyle. If Sir Arthur had lived to see what they’ve done to his detective, ma, I doubt if he’d want to be mentioned, even in passing like this.

I don’t like the innumerable fights so idiotic they can’t even be choreographed, so they are shown with cuts so quick and fast you can’t tell what’s happening or who’s doing what to whom. I don’t like all the innuendos implying that Sherlock has a sexual lust for Dr. Watson (Jude Law again), and that his brother, Mycroft (Stephen Fry), now likes to parade around in the nude. I don’t like the non-existent plot, which is limited to the animosity and rivalry between Holmes and Prof. Moriarty (Jared Harris, in a good performance). I don’t like the silly stunts that are so physically impossible they defy any credibility whatsoever. I don’t like the pseudo-intellectual approach to fighting in which Holmes plots each move in his mind (which we see) before the fight. Then we have to see the fight yet again. It’s bad enough to watch these ludicrous machinations once, much less twice. I don’t like the elegant, intellectual Holmes of Basil Rathbone being reduced to Downey’s dirty, disheveled, unshaven bum. I don’t like the clever, intricate plotting devised by Sir Arthur for Holmes to deduce being changed into a James Bondian super-adventure that requires no deduction or clever thinking whatsoever. I don’t like the unfunny attempts at repartee between Holmes and Watson, where they unsuccessfully strain to be clever.

I did like seeing Rachel McAdams for five minutes. And I really liked seeing Noomi Rapace, the original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, looking beautiful and speaking perfect English. She’s what kept me in the theater (that, and my knowledge that I would be able to write this critique).

Since I missed the media screening, there were maybe 12 people in the theater for my 5 p.m. screening on opening night. 11 of them applauded when the film ended. I thought maybe they were applauding that it was finally over, but my friend disabused me of that unkind thought.

New Year’s Eve

Run time 110 minutes
OK for children.

Robert De Niro and Halle Berry, among many others, star in “New Year’s Eve.”

These “cavalcade of stars” movies are generally a complete waste of time. This one, directed by Garry Marshall, is better than most, mainly because Marshall knows his way around a comedy, plus he gets good performances from some members of his cast, like Zac Efron, Katherine Heigl, Jon Bon Jovi, and Michelle Pfeiffer, who gives her Diane Keaton impersonation. In fact, had I not known better I would have thought that it was Diane, but the Diane of 20 years ago.

There’s no plot that I could determine, just a bunch of vignettes (eight in all) about people on New Year’s Eve tied together by Hilary Swank’s effort to get the big ball fixed so it could drop on time. There are lots of others in this but it would take up my entire allocation of words to list them.

There is a coming-of-age first, Abigail Breslin becoming a young woman and getting a romantic kiss. Then there are those who clearly were only on the set for a day or two, like Robert De Niro, who is terminal and in bed for most of his few scenes.

There is one dichotomy that really hit home. Swank gives a maudlin speech about never giving up and second chances, a big turn around for the woman who starred in the most disgraceful homage to giving up ever made, Million Dollar Baby (2004).

Despite that, the vignettes are relatively harmless and while generally uninvolving, it’s better than sitting through some other films that are out there right now.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Run time 130 minutes
OK for children.

Gary Oldman in “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.”

John Le Carré, the author of the book, is the pseudonym for David Cornwell. As Cornwell, he wrote two fine, small British mysteries, Call for the Dead and Murder of Quality. They epitomize what is apparently a dying genre, but both are entertaining. Then he wrote The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. It became a worldwide bestseller and a popular film starring Richard Burton (one of Burton’s few good films) as George Smiley, allowing Cornwell to quit his civil service job and become a fulltime novelist.

While Spy was a terrific thriller, unfortunately for me, his succeeding books have been long, convoluted, and uninteresting, albeit bestsellers.

This movie, for me, follows his novels very well, because it’s long, convoluted, and slow. Directed by Tomas Alfredson from a script by Bridget O’Connor & Peter Straughan, Smiley (Gary Oldman), Le Carré’s longtime protagonist (actually making his first appearance in Call for the Dead) has retired but there’s a mole in the British spy organization and Smiley is called in privately by Control (John Hurt) to find him or her. For good measure, maybe to appeal to the critics, Alfredson also throws in a spot of anti-Americanism.

What results is an awful lot of talk. Smiley doesn’t smile much, nor does he talk much. What he does is think, I guess, and listen. The first half of the film is inordinately slow and confusing. Maybe that’s part of the charm, but I generally think it’s nice to know what’s going on, instead of spending more than half of the movie trying to figure out what’s going on. It’s one thing to have a mystery about whodunnit, but it’s quite another to have a mystery about whatthehellisgoingon for an hour and a half.

The plot really doesn’t pick up and become comprehensible until Ricky Tarr (Tom Hardy) enters the film well beyond the halfway point. That’s when it becomes clearer and there are actually a couple of people to care about.

Smiley’s unemotional presence becomes somewhat grating, and the mole is so obvious from the very beginning that there is really not much reason to sit there for two more hours before s/he is revealed.

Hugo

Run time 130 minutes.
OK for children.

Asa Butterfield and Chloë Grace Moretz in “Hugo.”

Director Martin Scorsese is halfway there with this movie. He has moved out of violence and barbarity into more gentle human emotions, and that’s good. Alas, unfortunately, he still hasn’t found a pair of scissors with which to edit his films. Once again he seems to have put every single foot he shot into this, making it at least 40 minutes too long.

And that’s too bad because this is a sweet story with excellent acting. It’s the story of an orphan boy, Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield), who surreptitiously cares for the huge clock in a Paris railroad station, living in the rafters, à la The Phantom of the Opera, after his father, Jude Law, dies in a fire near the start of the film.

When a mean shopkeeper, Georges Méliès (Ben Kingsley), takes Hugo’s prized notebook, he tries to get it back. He is befriended by Méliès’ stepdaughter, Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz), who helps him because she’s looking for “adventure.”

What progresses from there is a true adventure that deals with the earliest days of filmmaking. Set in the 1930s, this is highly appealing, with a heartwarming story, excellent acting, and displays wonderful restorations of some actual films made at the dawn of the filmmaking era.

Butterfield and Moretz give fine performances for actors so young (13). Even though Moretz looks several years older than Butterfield (maybe because she is taller), she is less than two months his elder. Even so, what appeared to be a disparity in their ages was somewhat bothersome. I kept wondering why a girl, who appeared to be several years older, would have such an interest in such a younger boy.

But this wasn’t enough to keep the film from being delightful, despite its length.

There’s a B story involving the station guard (Sacha Baron Cohen), who is trying to capture as many orphans as he can to sell them to orphanages, and the girl he pursues, Emily Mortimer. Cohen gives a surprisingly good comedic performance outside of his better known profane characters like Borat and Br?no.

Kingsley and Helen McCrory, Méliès’s wife, Jeanne d’Alcy (Mama Jeanne in the movie), give performances that expertly capture their seemingly inscrutable characters so essential to maintaining the mystery that permeates the film.

The Descendants

Run time 115 minutes.
Not for children.

George Clooney and Shailene Woodley in “The Descendants.”

One would not think that a movie about a family in which the mother, Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie), is in what appears to be a terminal coma; the father, Matt King (George Clooney), is forced to take over the care of the two daughters; and the daughters are difficult — to say the least — would be one of the truly funny pictures of the year. But thanks to director Alexander Payne’s acute sense of pace and timing, and a terrific script (Payne, Nat Faxon, and Jim Rash, from a novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings), that’s exactly what this is.

It’s a movie I wasn’t particularly excited to see, but I was overwhelmed by how good it is. While Clooney gives the best performance of his career as the paterfamilias, and while Shailene Woodley contributes an award-worthy performance as his 17-year old daughter, Alex, the one who made the film as funny as it is (in parts; there are also parts that are touching), is Nick Krause, who plays Sid, Alex’s goofy boyfriend. Several times he had me laughing out loud uncontrollably. If anybody gets an Oscar® out of this film, it should be Krause.

As implied, Clooney gives a wonderful performance as the harried father who has a lot on his plate. This isn’t the egotistical Clooney who thinks he’s cool and clever and who inundates his films with one ECU after another. Here he’s just a normal (albeit rich) guy who has a lot of problems and is doing his best to deal with them. In an award-quality performance, some of the funniest scenes in the film are just the looks he gives the various people with whom he comes in contact.

The other three members of the cast who gave exceptional performances were Robert Forster, who plays Elizabeth’s father, Scott Thorson; Amara Miller, who plays Matt’s younger daughter, Scottie; and Hastie, who is a very convincing coma victim, even though she never says a word.

The only thing that disappointed me about the film was the cinematography (Phedon Papamichael). The entire film is set in Hawaii. Anybody who watches Hawaii Five-0 on TV is aware of the gorgeous prospects available in Hawaii because each segment of that show starts with an aerial shot of Hawaii in eye-popping color. Papamichael eschews allowing the scenery to occupy any part of the enjoyment of the film, greying the color and robbing Hawaii of its stunning color. However, I’m told that Hawaii is often grey, so he apparently chose to show it as it is. But this is a movie. I want to see the dream.

But just because it’s not a travelogue for Hawaii is certainly not a reason not to go see this interesting, highly entertaining film.

Today’s hand deals with planning at the outset. Here’s your hand, sitting West:

Here’s the auction:

West North East South

Opening lead: Ace of Spades

The dummy comes down and here are your two hands:

West East

Before you play you must analyze your cards. How are you going to make this hand? It looks as if you must lose four tricks, one Spade, one Diamond, and one Club. And since South sat for the double, she probably has the King of trump. There’s no way to finesse it, so you have to lose that, too. How can you make it?

The answer is that you must play North for the King of Diamonds, and you must set it up before drawing trump. Why? Two reasons. You have to lose a Club and you need to keep the Ace before you set up a way to get rid of your three of clubs. The second reason is that if you lead to the Ace of Hearts immediately, you have no entry to the board, which is where you are hoping to get a trick if you can set up the Queen of Diamonds.

So you trump the second spade in your hand and lead immediately to your Queen of diamonds on the board. If South has the King, which is unlikely since North doubled, showing the good hand, you are toast. But if North goes up and takes the King, no matter what North leads back, you can make the hand. If he leads a Club, you take the Ace, take the Ace of Diamonds in your hand. Lead to the Ace of Hearts. Play the Queen of Diamonds and sluff your three of Clubs. You lose the King of Hearts, but you only lost three tricks, making four, doubled.

Here’s the four hand layout:

I’ll close with a bidding commentary. When a player opens 4 hearts, a double by an opponent is for takeout. If a player opens 4 Spades, a double is penalty. If an opponent wants to make a takeout bid over a 4 Spade opener, he bids 4 NT. That asks partner to bid her longest suit. Here, after the hand was played, South asked me if she was correct to sit for the double and I explained her partner was asking her to bid. What should she have bid? Although a double often asks for the longest suit, it also generally implies four cards in the unbid major, so I would bid 4 Spades with her hand, even though she has 5 Clubs. If Partner doesn’t have 4 spades, she will correct to her long suit. Here, NS is cold for 4 Spades. Actually they can make an overtrick, losing only the two minor suit Aces if they play the Diamonds correctly.

A Dangerous Method

Run time 99 minutes.
Not for children.

Viggo Mortensen in “A Dangerous Method.”

This is the story of 50-year-old Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) and his acolyte, 30-year-old Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender), at the dawn of the 20th century and how their relationship started with a “hysterical” female patient of Jung’s, 20-year-old Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley). Into the mix is another patient, mid-30s psychiatrist Otto Gross (Vincent Cassell), described by Freud as an immoralist and drug addict, who attacks Jung’s morality, causing a downward spiral. As one should expect, given that it’s the story of the birth of psychoanalysis based on past sexual experiences, it’s mostly talk with some sex and some nudity.

Director David Cronenberg developed the film from screenwriter Christopher Hampton’s play, The Talking Cure. Watching this film takes a lot of concentration and thought because it’s a history of the development of psychoanalysis and its sexual component. Unknown to many, the film shows that Sabina, who became an analyst herself, had a strong impact on the thinking of both Freud and Jung. Hampton based much of the story on Sabina’s hospital records, personal journals and correspondence with both Jung and Freud. This movie gives her much more credit for a lot of the methods that have heretofore rested solely with Freud and Jung.

Knightley’s over the top acting as a psychotically disturbed young woman at the beginning of the film is disturbing and uncomfortable to watch. In fact, it almost lost me. I’m glad I stuck with it, but it’s hard to know if Sabina was really this sick or if Knightley just overacted. It’s either overacting or an award-quality performance. But, of course, one of the points of the movie is that psychoanalysis can cure, or at least help, severely disturbed people.

The acting is worth the price of admission. Mortensen gives a remarkably pleasing performance as Freud, and Fassbender is a more than satisfying Jung. Cassell shows his range as the neurotic Gross, a big leap from his role as the French arch-criminal Jacques Mesrine (in 2008’s Mesrine: Killer Instinct and Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1).

The ambience of the movie is exceptional. Although set in Vienna and Zurich, the film was shot in Cologne, Bodensee (Lake Constance), and Vienna itself. The locations are beautiful and the recreation of early 20th-century Europe evocative. Many scenes were shot in Freud’s actual house in which he lived from 1891-1938.

If you pay attention to all the talk, you can learn a lot and be entertained at the same time.

The Muppets
 for children
 for adults
Run time 108 minutes.
OK for Children

“The Muppets.”

I freely admit that I would have had to have been dragged yelling and screaming against my will to see this had I not been invited to an 11 a.m. screening at Disney that allowed me to eat lunch at their excellent commissary. So it was a complete surprise to find that the film is not only not a complete drag, it’s colorful, musical, and fun, with the Lucky Strike extra advantage of the presence of the redoubtable Amy Adams.

While children won’t notice it, the plot is sparse to give it the best of it. There is absolutely no reason why a doll like Amy Adams would date a fey dope like Jason Segel for ten years waiting for marriage. There’s nothing to indicate why she would love him, and put up with him spending all the time available to him with his Muppet brother. Further, the movie doesn’t explain how Jason could have a Muppet for a brother. How did that work? We never see Jason’s parents to see if one of them is a Muppet. For adults, this is too much to suspend credulity.

Even so, there are some charming cameos by people like Alan Arkin, Mickey Rooney, Whoopi Goldberg, and many others, along with a good performance by Chris Cooper as the bad guy.

The movie is too long for an adult and doesn’t have enough singing and dancing. What singing and dancing there is, however, are very good. The last half hour drags and the ending is preachy, although I guess that’s a staple of the Muppets; they’ve gotta get their message in (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

Playing and defending no trump is the most challenging part of bridge. It requires planning and doing things that are counter-intuitive. Here’s today’s hand:

Dealer: East

Bidding:

South West North East

Opening lead: 3C

First the bidding. When East reverses by bidding two Hearts after her one Diamond opener, West is forced to bid again, so chooses the weakest response possible, considering that he has the unbid suit, Clubs, stopped. East likes her hand and raises to game.

Superficially, it looks like you can take three spade tricks, two or three diamonds, and a heart or two, plus one Club. But closer inspection shows that this is all dependent on transportation. You have to get rid of the Ace of Spades on the board before you take your King and Queen in your hand. Plus you have to take two diamond finesses for this to work. But your hand is woefully weak and the singleton Ace of Spades doesn’t help transportation since your only real entries are spades. How are you going to get to your hand enough times to accomplish all this?

You take the first trick in your hand with the Club Jack. Then you take your first diamond finesse. If the honors are split, you can take three diamonds. When East wins the Queen of diamonds, she returns a spade to the board’s singleton Ace. You now have to play East for the Ace and Jack of Hearts to get back to your hand. So you lead the Heart 6 to your Ten. East takes her Jack. Recognizing the transportation problems and wanting to keep the lead on the board, East takes her Ace of Hearts, figuring she’d then put the lead back on the board (that would leave the KQ of Hearts on the board) and you’d be stuck with no way to get to your hand to take your two spades and the second diamond finesse.

Here is the key to the hand. You discard your King of Hearts on her Ace, so when she leads another heart, you are able to the trick in your hand with your Heart Ten. Since you discarded your King from the board, you have the eight to play from the board. That allows you to take two spade tricks in your hand and the second diamond finesse, which works, and the King falls when you play the Ace, the diamonds splitting favorably giving you your three diamond tricks. So you end up taking three spades, three diamonds, two hearts and a club, making three. If you dump your king of hearts on her Ace, the hand can’t make.

My Week with Marilyn

Run time 101 minutes
OK for children.

Michelle Williams in “My Week with Marilyn.”

One of my bridge partners, now deceased, was married to Marilyn Monroe’s psychiatrist. One evening he took her out for her birthday dinner, and who showed up but Marilyn herself. His birthday present to her was dinner with Marilyn. All those years later she glowed as she told me of that night. She said Marilyn couldn’t have been sweeter or more attentive, as if my friend were the only person in the world who mattered.

Marilyn Monroe remains an enigma to this day. She was a star in a world that didn’t contain Oprah or all the other talk shows that strip a celebrity naked emotionally, so that the world knows everything there is to know and then some.

The filming of The Prince and the Showgirl (1956) is legendary for the relationship between Marilyn (Michelle Williams) and her co-star Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh). According to the legend, Marilyn was difficult, constantly late, and she drove Olivier nuts.

This film is based on the autobiographical memoir of the same name by Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne), which followed his first, The Prince, the Showgirl and Me, and recounted his experiences working as third assistant director on the film. But one week was missing. A few years later he came out with the titular memoir that explained why that week was missing, and that’s this film.

Director Simon Curtis clearly knows about pace. There’s not a second that drags. And he gets the most out of his cast. Michelle Williams gives an award-quality performance as Marilyn. She not only looks and moves like Marilyn, she acts like her and she captures her insecurities, but also her presence as a star and how she used it.

Branagh is charming as the exasperated Olivier. I remember the film well because it’s one of my favorites, and even though Branagh doesn’t look a thing like Olivier, he sounds exactly like him.

The color photography (Ben Smithard) is beautiful, especially in catching Marilyn’s ripe red lips.

Redmayne gives a scintillating performance as the young man infatuated with a gorgeous movie star. Because the relationship is romantic but platonic, it takes a lot of skillful acting by both Redmayne and Williams to capture its sweetness.

The script (Adrian Hodges) is very good, even if it does steal a Goldwynism (“The most important thing in acting is honesty … And once you learn to fake that, you’re in.”) and puts it on Olivier’s lips.

The Artist

Run time 100 minutes
OK for children.

From l, Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo in “The Artist.”

There’s a reason why there has only been one silent film made since the 1930s. And that reason is that they are excruciating to sit through. They are passé and their appeal is strictly esoteric.

This is a story about a silent film star, George Valentin (Jean Dujardin), who looks like John Gilbert, circa 1927-31, whose career is undone by the talkies. When he’s still on top he gives a young dancer, Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo), a break and she becomes a star, effortlessly making the conversion from silent to talky.

That’s about it. She likes him and mourns his descent from stardom and does what she can to help him. But the film is far too long to not hear any dialogue. Even though it’s done well technically and the acting is very good, it’s just tedious to sit through. The only silent films I can sit through are Laurel & Hardy two-reelers, which are generally less than 25 minutes.

The film has lots of nostalgic old Los Angeles locations, including Mary Pickford’s house across the street from my house where I grew up. These are lovingly captured by DP Guillaume Schiffman, which is unusual, to say the least, since most of the filmmakers are French, including director Michael Hazanavicius, whose previous efforts were spy spoofs.

Both Dujardin and Bejo give fine performances, as do the rest of the cast. The acting isn’t campy; it’s as realistic as a silent movie can be.

If silent, black and white films were something lots of people wanted to see, they’d still be making them. They aren’t because most people don’t.