Movie Nation

He got his start in the films of his pal Neil LaBute, has had better than a decade of stardom, but still hasn’t had that marquee hit that would ensure his bankability as a movie star.

Aaron Eckhart was Harvey Dent and has fleshed out movies from “The Pledge” and “Erin Brockovich” to “Rum Diary” and done it with skill and style.

“I, Frankenstein” is a January movie, a creature feature and an updating of the monster myth and he’s got the title role.

And…again it’s a January movie. Future Frankenstein battles demons and gargoyles in an Earthly dystopia. We’ll talk about that and who knows what else?

Questions for Mr. Eckhart? Comment below.

Ralph Fiennes brings the many colors and contradictions of the writer Charles Dickens to glorious life in “The Invisible Woman,” a melancholy biography about Dickens’ affair with a much younger woman while at the height of his fame.

Period perfect, but with tragic overtones which rob it of romance and warmth, it is one of the most sedate and chaste melodramas ever to earn an R-rating. And built as it is upon a sterile performance by Felicity Jones (“Hysteria,” “Brideshead Revisited”), we are left wondering just what it was that the older man saw in her save for youth and beauty. Especially since the reason he gives for their affair is that his dull, matronly wife (Joanna Scanlan) bores him.

In 1883, Nelly (Jones) teaches at a boys’ school in Marsgate. She’s married, apparently well thought of, is directing a play co-written by Dickens, and seems uncommonly familiar with the author’s intentions. Of course, her husband (Tom Burke) gushes. She knew the great writer “when she was a child.”

But during the flashbacks she experiences on her haunted walks along the beach, Nelly remembers she was no child at all. She was an 18 year-old actress, least talented among a family headed by her widowed mother (Kristin Scott Thomas). And working with Dickens as he acted, toured and gave readings as the most celebrated writer of his day threw them together.

Fiennes captures Dickens’ charisma, his sympathy and his eager-to-please workaholism. The poverty he knew is just beneath the surface of this frantic, disciplined writer. The need to keep his dour wife, his large brood of children, his cast of actors, his friends and his collaborator (Tom Hollander) happy is in his manic manner — viewed in a rowdy opening night party that is straight out of “A Christmas Carol.”

“Life is nothing without good company,” he preaches. “To love and be loved is life itself,” he writes. He believes it. You can tell.

“The rewards of our profession are rarely monetary,” she confesses, and the work is “hard enough, even if you have talent.”

Nelly must reconcile herself to something she finds abhorrent, and Dickens must cope with the risk of great scandal that comes when you’re the most famous man in Britain and you’re seeing a woman who isn’t your wife.

The story stumbles back and forth between the 1883 present, when a disturbed Nelly fights off the memories of her past, and that 1865 past — which is handsomely realized but entirely too tame for this man who saw himself as above “convention.”
And there simply is no heat in the relationship, not in any modern sense. The survival strategy of being “kept” explains that, but Jones’ colorless performance makes one long for something more to grab hold of in Dickens’ fixation upon her. He was 53 to her 18. Even then, that was a huge gap.

But Fiennes holds it all together by force of what he does show us about the man, his kindness tempered with cruelty, the charity he practiced and preached, the morality he could never live up to. It’s the visible great man who makes “The Invisible Woman” worth watching.

MPAA Rating: R for some sexual content

Cast: Felicity Jones, Ralph Fiennes, Kristin Scott Thomas, Tom Hollander

Credits: Directed by Ralph Fiennes, written by Abi Morgan, based on the book by Claire Tomalin. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

Running time: 1:50

“Life of a King” is a warm and likable “make a difference” melodrama about an ex-con who teaches inner city kids about how chess can change your life.

Like “The Butler,” it’s a reminder that no, Cuba Gooding Jr.’s Oscar was no fluke, even if he’s had precious few roles over the decades to justify that opinion.

Gooding is Eugene Brown, who takes the advice of the fellow inmate, The Chess Man (Dennis Haysbert) to heart as he’s taking his leave of a D.C. penal institution where he’s spent 17 years.

“Just keep your eye on the end game…Take care of the king. Everything else follows.”

It’s a message Brown passes on to the kids stuck in detention in the failure factory known as Maud Alton High School, where Brown finds a job as a janitor and finds purpose in monitoring those unruly kids in the detention hall.

Co-writer/director Jake Goldberger has turned this “true story” into an uplifting formula film with obstacles popping up, like clockwork, every so often in the script. We can’t fret too much over what Brown does to support himself once the janitor job ends, over the lack of actual chess and chess instruction that supposedly turns these kids from newbies to champs, or Brown’s abrupt transformation from ex-con who’s been “Scared Straight” into a teacher demanding that these kids “Stand and Deliver.”

Yeah, it’s like that.

But Gooding brings just enough streetwise credibility to make Brown work. The kids are distinct and believably troubled, particularly Malcolm H. Mays as a promising convert who could go good or bad, and Kevin Hendricks as a true believer student whose idealism Brown must live up to every day.

And Haysbert, in just a couple of scenes, brings a world weary gravitas to the lifer known as The Chess Man. As predictable as everything that happens between his first scene and his last may be, Haysbert sells the idea of what the game means to him and how important mastering it should be to these kids.

“Only my mind gets out” of prison, he confesses, “every time I open a board.”

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for thematic elements, some drug content and brief violent images – all involving teens

Cast: Cuba Gooding Jr., Malcolm H. Mays, LisaGay Hamilton, Dennis Haysbert, Rachae Thomas, Richard T. Jones

Credits: Directed by Jake Goldberger, written by Jake Goldberger, David Scott, Dan Wetzel. A Millennium Entertainment release.

Running time: 1:41

The new year has barely begun, but we’ll be hard pressed to find a movie as disturbing — on many levels — as the darkly comic Israeli thriller “Big Bad Wolves.”
It’s about the torture of an accused child molester-serial killer. The torturers are sure they have their guy. The accused keeps protesting his innocence and suffering horribly.
We see cops tase the guy’s dog, kidnap him, beat him with a phone book, bloody him and ruin his life. The police smirk and joke around as they carry out this destruction.
“Maniacs aren’t afraid of guns,” one experienced toenail-yanker says, justifying this lunacy. “Maniacs are afraid of maniacs.” So, that’s just who the cops become — maniacs.
And chillingly, co-writers/directors Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado intercut grim crime scene moments and extended, dread-building torture sessions with chuckles at the funny ring tones on this or that cop’s phone, at the bullying butterball son of the rotund police chief (Dvir Benedek of the Israeli sumo comedy, “A Matter of Size”) who parrots his dad’s criticism of loose-cannon cop Mickey (Lior Ashkenazi).
A game of hide-and-go-seek ends with a little girl snatched from the closet of the abandoned house she and her friends are playing in. We aren’t given the “evidence” the cops have for making mild-mannered school teacher Dror (Rotem Keinan) their one and only suspect. Next thing you know, four cops are dragging Dror into an empty warehouse and beating his head in with a phone book. A hidden teen tapes the torture on his phone.
But when that video goes viral, there’s no outrage. Kids in Dror’s junior high school class laugh at it and assume the police must have had good reason. His boss is the same way.
And Dror doesn’t go to other cops or the media to protest this. That’s puzzling, in a stack-the-deck sort of way.
Still, a scandal is about to erupt and Mickey is put on leave from the force. Most of the movie is about the bizarre, sometimes excruciating “enhanced interrogation methods” Dror is subjected to in the most cavalier ways. And not just by Mickey.
Most disturbing of all is the amusingly matter of fact way the movie suggests that every Israeli you run across has some experience torturing somebody. Everybody’s an expert. National service in the Army is the rationale for that. A scene or two with an unconcerned Palestinian bystander suggests that people used to dehumanizing others have no problem waterboarding, busting fingers or playing with fire with any suspect, Muslim or Jewish. The Army taught them.
Like “Hostel,” many moments will make you avert your eyes. There’s a touch of “Dragon Tattoo” self-righteousness. Like “Touch of Evil,” we’re made to ponder the “any means necessary” approach of police whom we’re just supposed to trust will “always get their man.”
And here and there, we’re supposed to laugh. Even though Keinan does a poor job of playing the cumulative effects of broken bones, burns and cuts, torture is a hard thing to turn funny. Perhaps that’s the broader point. If you laugh at this, you’re culpable, too. And if you made a comedy about something your security folks have been caught doing more often than not, perhaps the filmmakers are as well.

MPAA Rating: Unrated, with graphic violence, descriptions of sex crimes
Cast: Lior Ashkenazi, Rotem Keinan, Dvir Benedek, Tzahi Grad
Credits: Directed by hidji. A Magnet release.
Running time: 1:49

Oscar has been doing all in his power these past few years to limit the impact of the less legit but more entertaining Golden Globes on the Academy Awards. Move the Oscars up and back, change nominations date, add to the best picture field.

People still watch the Globes. And their impact on the Oscars — in the past they limited the field by deciding, with their ten best picture (five drama, five musical or comedy) field, who had a legit shot at a nomination.

But in their ten nominations this year, they’ve got “Rush,” which is a film nobody is talking about a best picture. And “Philomena,” which has similar limited best picture buzz.

“12 Years a Slave,” “Captain Phillips,” “Gravity,” “NEbraska,” “Her,” The Wolf of Wall Street,” “American Hustle,” and “Inside Llewyn Davis” are the other Globes nominees.

No “Dallas Buyers Club,” no “All is Lost.” I kind of think “Llewyn Davis” is an outsider looking in Oscar film, too. No realistic shot. But that one and “August: Osage County” have awards bait pedigrees, even if they don’t deserve the honor.

So if Oscar puts up a full slate of ten nominees they should be significantly different from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s take.

The actress and actor Globes fields should contain pretty much every Oscar nominee — Blanchett and Dench, Bullock, Thompson and either Streep (ugh) or maybe Amy Adams as a lead actress in “American Hustle,” Redford, McConaughey, Elba, Hanks and…Idris Elba? I don’t hear “Mandela” buzz, so possibly Leonardo DiCaprio will get that spot.

Best animated film? “Croods” vs. “Despicable” vs. “Frozen” or “The Wind Rises.”

The point, as always, is that all of Oscar’s efforts to avoid having repeat acceptance speeches and further erosion of their brand have failed. Most of the same nominees, certainly most of the same winners.

Folks with Dwayne Johnson’s new “Hercules” feature have got to be sweating things a bit over the low turnout for the no-name “Legend of Hercules” that opened in fourth place this weekend. On the one hand, nobody saw it, so it won’t use up the audience the way “Olympus Has Fallen” did for “White House Down.”

On the other hand, nobody wanted to see a Hercules movie. Well under $9 million.

“Lone Survivor” opened wide, has Oscar pretentions (screenplay, etc.) and did a whopping $38.5 million on its first weekend in front of a national audience. It opened Christmas in NY/LA.

“August: Osage County” did very well platforming into other markets. Over $7 million.

“Her” opened reasonably wide, and finished just outside of the top ten.

Nobody but nobody expected the all-guys, bloody and downbeat combat picture “Lone Survivor” to do over $25 million this weekend.

But it’s headed towards a $37 million opening (wide), according to deadline.com. Saturday will be the most telling day, but based on a boffo Friday, it looks like a hit.

“The Legend of Hercules,” meanwhile, appears to be falling down to expectations — $8-8.5 million. That’s good enough for third place in a field still dominated by holiday releases.

“Her” and “August: Osage County” and “Inside Llewyn Davis” also go into wider release this weekend, and could get a Golden Globes bounce if Sunday night is good to them. “Osage County” has cracked the top ten, “Her” is at 11. “Llewyn” isn’t doing much of anything outside of New York.

Almost certainly.

Well, almost.

Decent (not rapturous) reviews for “Lone Survivor,” which opened in a couple of markets over Christmas, should help Mark Wahlberg climb back up that January mountain (he’s had a movie in January every year since “Contraband” blew up for him a couple of years ago).

“The Legend of Hercules,” which aims to be the “Olympus has Fallen” to Brett Ratner’s summer release, “Hercules” (in theaters first, stealing the thunder), was hidden from critics and has been roundly trounced in reviews. A true “January” movie.

Box Office Mojo says this “Legend” won’t do more than $8 million. Zero awareness for it, in other words. Weak cast, little advertising. They’re abandoning it.

But “Lone Survivor”? That should win the weekend — $23 million plus, says Mojo. That seems optimistic. The picture has zero date movie appeal.

The Hollywood Reporter figures it’ll do $19 or so.

The Box Office Guru thinks $15-16 is in line.

EVERYBODY says “The Legend of Hercules” is only headed toward $8 million this weekend.