Movies

The Savages

Let it be known that I absolutely adore Laura Linney; as far as I'm concerned, she is the pinnacle of American actresses. She can elevate middle-of-the-road comedies (Man of the Year), add some gravity to lightweight romance (Love, Actually), and even inject more perfection into already flawless pieces of work (The Truman Show, The Squid and the Whale) — she's a genuine motion picture treasure.

In Tamara Jenkins' The Savages, Laura Linney (Wendy Savage) not only survives alongside the subtly piercing and equally talented Philip Seymour Hoffman (Jon Savage), she thrives.

But this isn't about Laura Linney, or even Philip Seymour Hoffman. No, the beauty of this film is the fact that it's not "about" anyone. The Savages revolves around a family and, yes, we do learn quite a bit about each of the siblings' individual, painfully somber lives. But the film smartly refrains from dwelling too long on any one character, instead allowing us to view the family as a giant, colorful, and wildly "real" canvas. We add our own colors to each character from our own experiences; perhaps you see a bit of yourself in Jon, a bit of your sister in Wendy, or even a bit of yourself in every character.

Regardless, the film makes you laugh and cry simultaneously, a fine art of balance and good taste that many filmmakers attempt and most fail to master. The Savages is a film about death, life, family, love, fear, and the power of the written (and spoken) word — but, mostly, it's about being forced to grow up ... again.

Laura Linney is pitch perfect as usual, but this film doesn't shine because of her; she shines because of this film.

The Golden Compass

Watching The Golden Compass makes you believe it was a fairly fascinating fantasy adventure in print.

The screen version — written and directed by Chris Weitz (About a Boy) from the first novel in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy — has the same problems and high points common to such adaptations.

The realization of some of the creatures and action is thrilling, but the source material was obviously complicated. A 432-page book — even one for young adults — is hard to compress for the screen.

The criticism of The Golden Compass as being anti-religious seems misplaced — at least in the movie. While the Magisterium can be seen as a substitute for the church, it can also be seen as a substitute for any repressive force. And the people have souls, even if they are walking beside them.

One problem with "Compass" is that it feels unfinished. New Line, which has since been merged into Warners, expected a blockbuster, but that didn't happen. So if you see the film, you'll have to turn a few pages to find out the what happens in the rest of the trilogy.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

The camera in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly isn't merely a camera. In the hands of Julian Schnabel and his director of photography, Janusz Kaminski, it provides a window into the world of Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), a magazine editor who finds himself almost entirely paralyzed after a stroke. He sees the ocean just beyond his hospital bed, the nurses who bob in and out of his field of vision and the loved ones who come, sometimes tentatively, to visit.

That technique is just one reason why The Diving Bell and the Butterfly earned four Academy Award nominations this year, including one each for Schnabel and Kaminski.

Any avid film buff will relish that approach and the result, a movie all the more remarkable because the story it tells is true. Bauby, an editor for Elle magazine, really did have a stroke and wind up with just one working eye and dictate his entire memoir to a nurse by blinking that eye to suggest which letters she should write. Given the extraordinary background behind the film, it seems odd that the DVD fails to provide even a brief documentary about the real Bauby, who died in 1997.