A WINTRY MIX

BABEL (A)

An errant shot fired off in boyish innocence by the son of a Moroccan goat herder sets off a far-ranging and interconnecting series of very unfortunate events involving four countries, three of which are thousands of miles apart from one another. The essence of Guillermo Arriaga’s observant and crackling screenplay is that the world has shrunk in terms of the mobility of its travelers, who encounter cultures and customs they sometimes misunderstand and are ill-prepared to cope with, particularly when extenuating circumstances cause bad things to happen to good people who are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Add to this a world jittery about terrorist acts and drug trafficking and you have a bubbling cauldron of paranoia and hysteria that can play havoc with political relationships among countries.

On an ordinary day, even in our roiling international climate, a 40-ish San Diego couple, Richard (Brad Pitt) and Susan (Cate Blanchett), trying travel to restore their fraying marriage, are on the last leg of their journey to North Africa. Their motor coach is traversing a desolate stretch of the Morocco desert, unaware that peril is poised on a ridge overlooking the winding two-lane highway. Two slight rag-tag figures wait for their target to round a bend, and the younger of them squeezes off a shot from a high-powered rifle his father has purchased that day to hunt down jackal preying on his goat herd.

Seconds, as many as ten, go by, before the bus lumbers to a stop and its panicked passengers begin scrambling off. The barely pubescent perpetrators have mixed emotions about the implications of their act. On one hand, they’re satisfied that the rifle can perform as its seller claimed, picking off targets up to a distance of three kilometers; on the other hand, they realize the possible ramifications of their mischief and scamper out of view and back to the family shack.

But their impulsive experiment can’t be compared to a pickup game of street softball in which a foul fly shatters a nearby window. Restitution for damages can be measured in terms of yen, dinero, or dollars. In this case, the missile was a bullet that exploded through a window of the bus and shattered the clavicle of a passenger -- Susan from San Diego. As unworldly and apolitical as the sharpshooters are, they may as well be members of a terrorist cell, as far as the investigating authorities, embassies, and consulates are concerned.

Because Richard and Susan’s return to the United States is delayed indefinitely, the Mexican nanny attending to their two children -- a well-meaning middle-aged woman whose son is getting married across the border the next day -- is obliged to make logistical decisions that have dire consequences. An affluent Japanese businessman, whose wife has committed suicide and whose deaf-mute daughter suffers from post-traumatic stress and a problematic sexual awakening, comes under inter-government scrutiny regarding his recent vacation in Morocco. And Moroccan law enforcement, assuming a terrorist plot and acting under political pressure from the United States, goes on an overreactive rampage that only compounds the original tragedy.

And what of Richard and Susan’s fellow travelers -- a melting pot of peripatetic ethnicities who are congenial and convivial until they are stranded and dehydrated on this arid and desolate stretch of North African real estate. Let’s just say that their civility unravels.

Visionary Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s métier is the high intensity drama in which unpredictably interlocking and compounding events and circumstances put disparate lives on a fateful collision course. His “21 Grams” (2003) earned two Oscar nominations in acting categories. Three years earlier, his “Amores Perros” was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film. One of the ironies of “Babel” is that there are no real villains, but as tensions escalate, nerves fray, and reason deteriorates, the number of victims and near-victims multiplies. “Babel,” infuriating and heartbreaking is up to Inarritu’s exemplary standard and should be one of the year’s most honored films.

Although they acquit themselves at least adequately, the two leads, particularly Blanchett, have taken roles that don’t begin to showcase their acting talents, but that isn’t a detraction. Among the huge supporting cast, Mexican actors Adriana Barraza (Amores Perros), as the well-meaning nanny Amelia, and Gael Garcia Bernal (Bad Education, Motorcycle Diaries, Y Tu Mama Tambien), as her skittish nephew Santiago, give trenchant performances, as do Michael Pena (World Trade Center) in his brief, but indelible turn as an unyielding U.S. border patrol officer, and Rinko Kikuchi, as Chieko, the muddled daughter of the Japanese businessman.


BLOOD DIAMOND (A)

The premise of “Blood Diamond” is that the gem industry profiteers from the black market purchase of so-called “conflict diamonds,” stones that are illegally mined in African countries besieged by civil war and take a serpentine route to European traders who sell them to unsuspecting or unknowing customers. Historically, these clandestine transactions have provided rebel organizations with the weaponry to commit mass genocide tantamount to a latter-day holocaust. An in-depth report in Time Magazine that the film has diamond merchants scrambling to effect damage control is what motivated to see a movie I might have bypassed otherwise. “Blood Diamond” will knot up your gut and inflame your humanitarian passions for nearly 140 minutes. If you’re willing to have your endurance for shocking and appalling savagery -- none of it gratuitous -- severely tested, “Blood Diamond” is involving, enlightening entertainment on a sprawling scale, with two finely etched performances that rank with the year’s most accomplished.

It opens in Sierra Leone in the 1990’s as marauding truckfuls of rebels toting semiautomatic weapons and grenades storm a native village on a mission of massacre, randomly, wantonly cutting down men, women, and children -- their own countrymen -- trying to flee the onslaught, then blowing up their bamboo huts. The wholesale butchering is unfathomable enough, then comes the realization that these rebel gangs are largely made up of prepubescent boys brainwashed into subservience as executioners.

Meticulously spared from the carnage are able-bodied men who can stand up to the rigors of harvesting diamonds as captive laborers. Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou, in a triumphant performance), a thirtyish sculpted , strapping, and stalwart Mende fisherman separated from his wife and children during the raid that sets the terrifying tenor of the film and one of its two protagonists.

One day, Vandy digs up a clear, pink diamond the size of an acorn. He can only contemplate this rarest of gems for an instant before surreptitiously wedging it between his right big and index toes. He asks the rebel commander for a bathroom break and hobbles, under the guise of urgency, into the woods to bury it. But the commander, onto the ruse, follows his captive and witnesses the frantic reburial of the stone. He confronts Vandy but circumstances intervene in the form of an aerial attack on the rebel camp by government soldiers. The commander is critically wounded, and Vandy manages a temporary escape before being apprehended by government authorities and thrown in jail, along with the commander. There, Vandy meets South African mercenary Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio) who smuggles diamonds out of Sierra Leone and into Liberia, where he finds an fervently receptive market. Archer, orphaned as a child during civil unrest in his native Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and raised by relatives in South Africa, is hopeful that diamond venturing will be his ticket off the roiling, godforsaken African continent, where educated professionals continue leaving in droves, causing an alarming “brain drain.”

When he overhears the rebel commander menacing Vandy about his squirreled-away treasure, Archer has rosy visions of a prosperous future life in a peaceful land. He has contacts in the African Union military who owe him favors and get him sprung from prison, and he strikes a deal to have Vandy sprung as well. And so begins a complex, enigmatic, adversarial relationship between the two men who need each other to achieve quite separate goals. Vandy is resolute that he will reunite with his family, and Archer has influential friends who can help, including an American journalist pursuing a breakthrough story about the humanitarian crisis in Africa that will motivate the world-at-large to do something about it. Archer knows the geography and the ins and outs of traversing precarious rebel territory to get to internment camps. Vandy, of course, can lead Archer to the blood diamond and his last and crowning smuggling venture. If the journalist, Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly), will use her credentials to obtain logistical information, Archer will spill the beans on the network of corruption he knows firsthand from his mercenary dealings. Sweetening the exchange of information is a simmering, albeit ambivalent, romance between the two.

But it’s Archer and Vandy making the high-risk, friction-filled journey on foot along a route that reveals lush vegetation and astonishing vistas, but may as well be a vast minefield. As you might imagine, there are flirtations with tragedy, friction flare-ups between the two travelers, and at least two heartbreaking discoveries. But Archer and Vandy are also on a path of self-discovery, introspection, and conciliation that leads to an unexpected denouement.

As I indicated earlier, Hounsou is titanic as Vandy; he is brooding and explosive, stouthearted and vulnerable -- a deep-rooted, deeply imagined performance. DiCaprio, filled out, buffed, with scruffy facial hair and a reasonably authentic South African accent, has finally, at 32, attained the maturity to take on heroic roles far afield from all-American venues. His Archer is an ambivalent, evolving character, despite the single-mindedness of his pursuit and the obvious taint of his trade. DiCaprio’s a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination this year, if not for “Blood Diamond” then for “The Departed,” an equally demanding role and equally skilled performance.

Hounsou’s overall screen time parallels that of DiCaprio, but the Motion Picture Academy (and Hollywood Foreign Press Association, for that matter) no longer nominates two actors from the same film in the Best Actor or Actress categories, because the studios pre-designate who they’re putting up for consideration in each category.

In another era, Bette Davis and Anne Baxter both received Best Actress nominations for “All About Eve”. Neither won, presumably because voters were divided in their admiration, and another actress (Judy Holliday) snuck in with more votes. The DiCaprio-Hounsou collaboration reminds me of 1958, when Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier played another adversarial pair, also white and black, as chain gang escapees shackled together, but snarky towards one another. Curtis and Poitier were both nominated for Best Actor. Again, neither won, as David Niven took home the statuette for a relatively tepid performance in “Separate Tables.”

For award consideration in 2006, the new policy actually stands to benefit Hounsou, who has to be the favorite in the Best Supporting Actor category. DiCaprio, despite solid turns in two films, may have to be content with only a nomination for Best Actor (he actually received two Golden Globe nominations, one for each film) because the buzz has Forest Whittaker with a lock on the award.


CASINO ROYALE (A)

Let’s face it, all Agent 007 movie iterations have certain elements in common -- only the exact nature of the villainy, the exotic locales, and the specifics of James Bond’s assignments change from picture to picture. There are the requisite pursuits on foot and in all manner of conveyances, most of which end spectacularly in collisions and conflagrations. If chases and crashes don’t sate your hunger for action, have faith -- there hasn’t been a Bond movie made without multiple explosions that pulverize strategic targets. In the 44 years since Sean Connery blazed onto the screen with “Dr. No,” special effects techniques, now largely computer-generated, at the disposal of the “Cubby” Broccoli production company, have produced succeedingly more stunning displays of destruction. And the company never runs out of glitzy pleasure spas in which the agent can ply his trade.

No Bond film is complete without at least one double-dealing, two-timing seductress, usually espionage infiltrators who lure the randy Bond into their cabana bedrooms, then into dicey confrontations that put his life on the line. Bond is not quite invincible, so there are always scenes in which he’s being held captive, with ingenious and loathsome methods of torture applied to make him talk. Just as often, though, his tormenters aren’t looking for information, they just want the agent out of the way, and their methods have been known to include the imminent threat of dismemberment or beheading. And finally, there are the baddies themselves, frequently with gross physical anomalies that add another forbidding dimension to their sinister deeds, always with hard-to-pinpoint European accents .

And so it is with “Casino Royale,” the 21st entry in the James Bond box office sweepstakes. The last time I looked the film’s worldwide take was approaching an 007 record $400 million. Director Martin Campbell (The Legend of Zorro, Beyond Borders, Goldeneye) and screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade take Bond and us on a terrorist spy mission from London to Uganda to the Bahamas to Montenegro, with the agent eventually catching up with the chief villain Le Chiffre in a high-stakes poker game at Le Casino Royale. Le Chiffre is banker turned baddie, and his stock-in-trade is financing international terrorist rings. Because one of his deals went sour, Le Chiffre (Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen) has to scare up payoff money in a hurry to save his hide. Bond is determined to outplay him at his game, thus serving him up to his pursuers and destroying his organization. “Casino Royale” ends up on the Grand Canal in Venice where historic architectural landmarks are threatened by encroaching Adriatic tides, particularly if their water-abatement systems are breached.

Two years ago, Christopher Nolan salvaged Batman from the junk pile of overworked and uninspired Hollywood boilerplates by retrograding the legend back to its origins and recruiting Christian Bale and six other esteemed male actors from the UK to breathe soul, smartness, and renewed vitality into the good works of the Dark Knight of Gotham. Similarly, “Casino Royale” reintroduces us to James Bond before he has earned his license to kill on behalf of His Majesty’s Secret Service.

Our new 007 is Daniel Craig, an actor several talent levels above three of his four predecessors. Since 2003, the Cheshire-born actor has had leading or major supporting roles in eight critically acclaimed films, including this year’s “Infamous,” last year’s “Munich” and “Layer Cake,” plus “Sylvia” and “The Mother”. He won the London Critics Circle award as British Actor of the Year for his performance in the 2004 film, “Enduring Love”. In the fall of 2005 he won out over Clive Owen, Gerard Butler, and a couple of other UK hunks to take over the film industry’s longest running spy game.

“Casino Royale” is actually a prequel to the whole series, taking us back to the agent’s successes as a freelance assassin that caught the attention and earned the admiration of His Majesty’s Secret Service. However, his new HMSS boss, “M” (played for the fifth time by Dame Judi Dench), who runs a tight ship and has some misgivings about certain of his personality traits, particularly his cocky attitude and itchy trigger finger approach to the job. “Arrogance and self-awareness seldom go hand-in-hand,” she admonishes him as she sends him out on his first mission. She also assigns the slinky siren Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) to keep an eye on him and lend surreptitious tactical support, as well as a little off-duty diversion. Barely on terra firma in Uganda, Bond is hot on the tail of a terrorist named Mollaka (Sebastien Foucan), a pursuit that features leaps and bounds from cranes to girders at several construction sites, a five-minute stunt-a-thon that reportedly took three months to rehearse and shoot. But it is terrorist financier Le Chiffre who emerges as Bonds’ chief nemesis -- he of dark, penetrating eyes, one of which oozes drops of blood when he gets riled up.

But what sets this film apart from previous incarnations is not the pinnacle-reaching stunts, awesome special effects, villainy, tyranny, bitchery, and butchery, it is the compelling presence of Craig, an elite, classically trained actor who does for Bond what Bale did for Batman -- reimagine his character as more cerebral, with complex emotional underpinnings, as a deep thinker with a crusty exterior but a softer soul -- in other words, enigmatic, intimidating, but with a vulnerable chink in his armor. Craig’s restyled Bond isn’t as suave or waggish as Connery’s or as debonair and aloof as Moore’s and Brosnan’s. He’s a grittier, blue collar, manual labor Bond, but one who cleans up and fits in impressively.

Craig himself has working class roots, dating back 38 years to Cheshire, England. His dad Tim was a merchant seaman and later, after he and his wife split, a pub owner. But mother Carol was an art teacher with ambitious plans for her son on the stage. He was already acting in school plays when he was six-years-old, motivated by frequent visits with Carol to the Liverpool Everyman Theater. Meanwhile, Tim took Daniel to see his first Bond film, “Live and Let Die” (1973) and groomed him to be a star player at the Hoylake Rugby Club.

Craig may well be among the most athletic of film actors. His Bond has a metrosexual body, with pecs, abs, and a bubble butt to die for, but a prizefighter’s face, oddly asymmetrical, whose nose looks like it may have come in contact with a sucker punch or two, whose pouty lips can make him look surly or playful, depending on whether his metallic blue eyes are staring opaquely, judgmentally, or invitingly. Though the flagrantly womanizing Bonds of Connery, Moore, and Brosnan were seldom caught off guard by the duplicity of their women, Craig’s Bond seems less jaded, invests too much feeling, gets burned, and visibly grieves. “Casino Royale’s” multi-minute torture scene, in which a sculpted, stark naked 007, straddling a chair whose cane seat has been carved out , is put through an excruciating indignity involving his low-hanging private parts, somehow failed to persuade the Motion Picture Association of America that an “R” rating was appropriate, thus assuring exhibitors bountiful adolescent audiences.

This is the best 007 outing since “Thunderball” (1966), rivaling “Goldfinger” (1965) for all-time Best of Bond and clearly putting Craig on the radar screens of mainstream film audiences. At least one encore film is in preproduction, with the working title of “Bond 22” and a tentative release date in 2008.

BOBBY (C+)

Once upon a time, three quarters of a century ago, and then again 40 years ago, filmmakers cobbled together ensemble casts to play out episodic “day in the life” dramas centered around storied hostelries and their guests and employees. The first of those -- “Grand Hotel” in 1932 -- featured a Hollywood who’s who cast headed by Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford and featuring John and Lionel Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Jean Hersholt, and a cadre of other character actors of the time as stylish and affluent patrons of Berlin’s plushest hotel just before the dawning of Naziism. Over a panning shot of the hotel’s opulent lobby, one of the characters, a Dr. Otternschlag, spins an ironic observation that “people come, people go -- nothing ever happens.” Turns out the good doctor is habitually intoxicated and oblivious to the considerable goings-on, dastardly, poignant, romantic, and otherwise. Under the stewardship of distinguished British director Edmund Goulding (Nightmare Alley, The Razor’s Edge, Dark Victory) “Grand Hotel, “ based on a classic Vicki Baum play, went on to public acclaim, critical praise, and the Best Picture Oscar.

In 1967, director Richard Quine took a screenplay based on Arthur Hailey’s hack novel “Hotel” and fashioned an updated, workmanlike reiteration of the basic Baum theme, this time set in New Orleans. Again, the guests are largely well-heeled, by hook or by crook, and among their ranks are an upper crust British couple with dark secrets, a French mistress, a blackmailer, a thief, even a prosperous black couple who are barred from the establishment -- all interacting with a stuffy proprietor who is trying to stave off a hostile takeover of his fiscally ailing property by a ruthless worldwide chain and a general manager who’s trying to please and placate his boss and everyone else. Again, a cast of competent heavy hitters, including Melvyn Douglas, Rod Taylor, Michael Rennie, Merle Oberon, Richard Conte, Karl Malden -- even jazz diva Carmen McRae in her solitary movie appearance as an oyster bar torch singer who’s a one-woman clearinghouse for the events of the film. “Hotel” didn’t rise to the stature of its “Grand” predecessor, but estimable New York Times critic Bosley Crowther called it “colorful and crafty...entertaining without being at all profound.” I remember it as the better half of a double feature at the Alhambra Theater in San Francisco.

Now, in 2006, along comes Emilio Estevez’s eagerly awaited idolatrous ode to Robert F. Kennedy, gunned down by Arab insurgent Sirhan Sirhan in a food service pantry of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, only a year plus after the release of Richard Quine’s film. The assassination, just after midnight on June 5, 1968, is the wrenching watershed payoff of a film that runs us through the previous 18 hours or so in the lives of Ambassador management, staff, and guests, including Kennedy political operatives preparing for what they hope will be a California primary victory speech by the presidential candidate that evening; the boozy, blowzy lounge headliner who will introduce the conquering hero to his adoring constituents, and her indulgent husband; a very young, morally conflicted couple about to enter into a marriage of convenience to keep the groom out of the Vietnam war; and two former employees, one of them the longtime doorman and official greeter, who hang around the lobby playing chess and reminiscing and ruminating about the high and low points of their lives.

This time around, some of the juicier antagonisms and entanglements involve those responsible for the hotel’s amenities -- a racist catering manager who denies his staff time off to vote because they’re largely ineligible “wetbacks” -- clashes for pecking-order supremacy between African-American and Latino kitchen workers grousing about double shifting and other inconvenient policies -- a general manager who’s juggling a workday affair with a hotel switchboard operator while his doting, unsuspecting hair stylist wife offers wise counsel to clients with their own messy lives. Presumably, the common denominator among most, if not all, of these people is their political and spiritual allegiance with the Democratic Party and Bobby Kennedy and a candidacy portrayed by writer-director Estevez in the most altruistic, beneficent terms. There’s no doubt in my mind that the assassinations of Bobby’s presidential brother John, of the activist and reverend Martin Luther King, and of Bobby himself, in tandem with black ghetto riots and the cumulative trauma of the Vietnam war, were producing an increasingly restive and rebellious population in search of a leader who could stanch the bleeding. Only a year before, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel had penned an anthem for the film “The Graduate” that bemoaned the absence of an American hero -- “Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.”

Heaven knows, enough has been speculated about Bobby Kennedy to assure us he was no saint. And we’ll never know whether or not he would or could have delivered as the savior America was longing for. Estevez is too young to remember much about RFK, but his dad Martin Sheen (who appears in “Bobby” as some vaguely defined man of position and means) was a staunch Kennedy supporter and friend, and the children of the revolution lore surrounding his political ideals and personal magnetism has been passed down. I, for one, am not too young to remember the downcast, surly mood of the nation in 1968 and the hopeful candidacy of Bobby Kennedy. I also remember chatting with friends that fateful night at a San Francisco bar named Cloud Seven, when news began circulating that our healer/emancipator had been shot. The bar emptied out in minutes, everyone heading home to turn on their TV’s, where there were already replays of the exploding shots and the ensuing pandemonium and anguish, as the wind was sucked out of the sails for change.

But we are no longer politically naive, and what is blatantly anomalous about the clips of RFK’s campaign speeches, as they are interwoven into Estevez’s paean, is that they are not particularly inspirational or motivational. Addressing a nation beleaguered by the casualties of war, the torching of inner-city neighborhoods, distrust of government and big business, and the disenfranchisement of its youth, Kennedy’s words are high-minded enough, as befits a man of principle and vision, but his delivery, intoned with a Brahminesque Boston accent that was, nevertheless, characteristically whiny and nasal, lacks conviction, passion, and energy. Perhaps it’s indicative of the desolate mood of the country at the time that we hitched our healing to the vigorous-appearing kid brother of a martyred president. And maybe after four years of listening to the Johnson Texas twang, an accent that omits the letter “r” where it ought to be and puts one where none belongs, was more refreshing than distracting.

If, as it has been widely suggested, America traded in its youthful innocence for jaded cynicism amidst the rumble and rubble of the 60’s and subsequent fallout from Watergate, that may explain why Bobby Kennedy’s words now sound so much like what we hear all the time from candidates and office holders who routinely say whatever they need to in order to get elected and, once elected, hold onto power. In 1968, we still took candidates and leaders at their word, believed implicitly in their integrity, if not their infallibility, placed them on a pedestal of trust. Thirty-eight years later, we know better.

Yes, there are parallels between the abysmal national condition of 1968 and the current appalling state of the union, and Estevez does manage to convey those equivalencies. But “Bobby” plays too much like soap opera -- many of the vignettes are formulaic and tedious. Even the carnage at the Ambassador, where five others were struck by bullets as bystanders wrested the pistol from the assassin’s grip, was stagey and way too coincidental. Combine that with the filmmaker’s blind-eyed bias, and one has a hard time regarding the whole venture as anything close to epoch-making.

Still, there are some surprising performances, despite the lack of real character development. I can see the motion picture Academy bestowing a Best Supporting Actress nomination on Demi Moore, as the sotted, melancholic chanteuse, Virginia Fallon. In his first big-screen appearance in ten years, Harry Belafonte delivers a quietly eloquent performance as ex-Ambassador-employee Nelson. Sharon Stone, looking unglamorously middle-aged, is ingenuous and tenderhearted as beautician Miriam Ebbers. Nick Cannon and Shia LaBeouf, as semi-nerdy, buttoned-down Kennedy volunteers, have some amusing scenes after they unsuspectingly ingest sugar cubes laced with acid. And Freddy Rodriquez (Six Feet Under) is the conscientious, agreeable, and eternally optimistic busboy Jose Rojas, who has to relinquish tickets to a key L. A. Dodgers game because of a double-shifting mandate and winds up tackling Kennedy’s assassin in the food service pantry.


BORAT (B-)

It’s a tough call with “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” to assess just who is more primitively socialized -- the forthrightly boorish, obliviously audacious, proudly lascivious Kazakhstani TV personality, dispatched to the U.S. with his documentary producer Azamat to soak up and report on American culture and customs, or the cross-section of largely shallow, mercenary, amoral, bigoted, mean-spirited Americans he meets and interacts with traveling east to west on his way to California and a hopeful hookup with bosomy actress Pamela Anderson, including a group of South Carolina fraternity jocks, who claimed in a lawsuit after the film’s release that they were encouraged by the producers into making racial and sexist slurs.

We are meant to believe that Borat Sagdiyev, a character invention of gifted British improv comic and actor Sacha Baron Cohen, comes by his utter crassness innocently. Devoid of inhibition or refinement, he says and does whatever comes naturally -- like babes before they learn that words and actions can be hurtful. His stream of consciousness babble is undeniably rude, crude...and, yes, very funny. Whether or not his character is even remotely authentic is painful to contemplate.

American obsession with violence in mainstream movies is rivaled only by our growing fondness for gross-out humor based on bodily functions and body types, and “Borat” is guaranteed to sate the most voracious appetite for scatological situations and hilarity at the expense of human dignity. The scene that evokes the most full-throated groans -- mostly from young males in the audience -- is one in which a near-naked Borat and a totally nude and repellently obese Azamat (Ken Davitian) engage in a lumbering, hideously repugnant, and wickedly funny wrestling match in their hotel room.

Through it all, Borat is an affable, take-it-as-it-comes kind of guy -- after all, life in Kazakhstan is seen as antediluvian and arduous -- except when it comes to Jews, of whom he has a pathological fear, imagining them to be a monster race of butchers. Ironically, the only kind hearts and gentle people he meets in his cross-country journey are an elderly Jewish couple who run a B&B that Borat and Azamat book into inadvertently.

Do you sense a certain ambivalence on my part? Right on. And I’m sure that’s just what Cohen intended. I’d be shocked if the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which nominates 10 leading actors for its annual Golden Globe Awards -- five in the category of drama and five for musical or comedy -- doesn’t include Cohen among its nominees. He is eminently deserving, even if his character and his film are in almost unendurable bad taste. Almost.

THE HISTORY BOYS (A)

“The History Boys,” the film adaptation of Alan Bennett’s Tony award-winning play from last year is, at its core, about a class of irrepressible Yorkshire schoolboys being prepped and groomed for their undergraduate entrance exams into Oxford and Cambridge, by a trio of temperamentally and philosophically diverse instructors. I say, at its core, because Bennett’s boldly literate and infectious screenplay, is brimming with lessons of life far beyond rote learning and scholarship, not the least of which is being self-aware and true to one’s inner stirrings. It’s the most percipient and sharp-witted talkfest to grace the big screen in years, a bonanza for those who enjoy scholarly argumentation, candid interpersonal dynamics, and exuberant repartee, a bore for those who don’t read, shorthand their conversations, and thrive on sight gags, gaudy visuals, and brazen sound.

Critics are sharply divided about this film, I dare say in direct proportion to their willingness to be drawn in by the art of the spoken word. Some have complained that it’s the claustrophobic filming of a stage play -- preposterous when one considers director Nicholas Hytner’s probing camera closeups of the boys and their teachers in moments of tense and tender intellectual and emotional vulnerability.

And vulnerability -- chance-taking, in particular -- is a theme that permeates Bennett’s percolating narrative, in which the hearts and minds of the instructors are as much impacted by the boys, both inside and outside the classroom, as the other way around. Near the end of the film, one of the students, Dakin (Dominic Cooper), comes on to first-year adjunct instructor Irwin (Stephen Campbell Moore) with a euphemistic invitation to have a drink together. Dakin knows Irwin is gay, but when the teacher pretends not to understand the sexual nature of the advance, Dakin persists by accusing the instructor of hypocrisy for being timid and reclusive about his personal life while advocating courageous, unconventional thinking in the classroom. Though the accusation is to the point, Dakin delivers it with such earnestness and humility that Irwin’s defenses fall in plain view of a camera closeup.

Of the two other teachers, Mrs. Lintott (Frances de la Tour) is the faculty matron, nurturingly Mother Earthen toward the boys and cheerleader for their pursuit of higher learning. A surface extrovert, she takes a conservative, traditional approach in the classroom and is circumspect about her personal life, though she hints occasionally of missed opportunities and unfulfilled longings. Though she is fond of him personally, she questions the classroom demeanor of her colleague Hector (Richard Griffiths), whose freewheeling General Studies course features bursts of song, reenactments from famous movies, and unbridled bantering, some of it overtly sexual. Hector, a hulking, seriously obese figure, is archetypically “gay as a goose,” an orientation lost on nobody. Eventually his antics outside the classroom get him in hot water with the headmaster (Clive Merrison) and what follows is one of the film’s most heartbreaking scenes.

While Hector supplies the joie de vivre, the élan, that fuels the boys’ curiosity about life and encourages them to explore their sensual sides, it is Irwin, as their history mentor, much closer to their age, who imparts the prerequisites for getting into Oxford and Cambridge. Don’t just regurgitate textbook facts. Dare to be different in interpreting history. Take a fact and bend it, spin it, embellish it. Be controversial. Be outrageous. Shake people up. Get yourself noticed. He badgers them in a way he may have wished someone had badgered him, and, by golly, it works.

“The History Boys” is populated with key cast members -- all of whom inhabit their characters with uncanny perception, clarity, and depth -- of the National Theater production staged in London and New York. It is, unequivocally, one of a handful of preeminent 2006 films -- cogent, articulate, passionate, and funny.


THE GOOD SHEPHERD (C+)

As frothy as a Boston frappe as is “The Holiday,” “The Good Shepherd,” Robert De Niro’s third turn as film director, is an all-you-can eat buffet dinner that drops anchor in the pit of your stomach. It is a somber, doleful, unnecessarily bloated tale, weighing in at 160 minutes, about a buttoned-down, buttoned-up Yalie grad named Edward Wilson (Matt Damon) who gets buttonholed at a pageant of the university’s legendary Skull and Bones Society into signing up with the Office of Strategic Services, an even more euphemistic and secretive organization, predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency, in its prestigious formative years. It is assumed that the character of Wilson is based on the life of James Jesus Angleton, head of CIA counterintelligence from 1954 to 1974.

Wilson, living in an emotional vacuum after witnessing his father’s suicide, is right out of central casting as a CIA operative, a resolute, unquestioning patriot, who internalizes every emotion, including the fear of mortal danger, in deference to his undying love of country. His lone inadvertence in life is being seduced by the manipulative daughter of a U.S. senator -- Clover/Margaret Ann Russell (Angelina Jolie) -- on the eve of his departure for Europe, a liaison that gets her pregnant and obligates him to marry her. The year is 1939.

The film actually opens a few days before the fated Bay of Pigs invasion in April, 1961 and flashes backwards and forwards through the intervening 22 years of Wilson’s career. He’s out of the country for the first six years of his son’s life, and when he finally returns home after the end of World War II, his wife suggests they sleep in separate rooms until they have a chance to get reacquainted. But Wilson works very long hours, even in Washington, and they can never discuss what it is he does with that inordinate chunk of every day. She’s testy and suspicious, he’s defensive and distancing. They go through the motions of a marriage for appearances sake and for the sake of a son who doesn’t know what to make of either parent. And there is the inevitable other woman, Laura (Tammy Blanchard), who actually preceded Clover/Margaret, the implication being she was the real love of Wilson’s life before the ill-advised tryst that caused him to have to do the right thing.

When the Bay of Pigs operation ends up a failed fiasco, evidence points to a mystery figure who may have subverted the attack by tipping off a Cuban intermediary. Who that someone is will come as a surprise to most audiences and serves as the film’s payoff, its only truly gripping sequence and a long time coming considering its unwarranted running time. After the embarrassment of Bay of Pigs, President Kennedy orders a complete overhaul of the CIA, but Wilson’s tenure is untarnished, and he survives to extend his career well into the 1970’s.

De Niro has assembled a cast of weathered warhorses, including himself, to take the parts of government power players, good ole Skull and Bones boys, other espionage operatives, and miscellaneous shadowy types, who appear to be duplicitous and menacing, even when we’re not certain if they really are or, for that matter, who they really are. Such is the dark nature of the spy game, don’cha know. In this mix, besides De Niro, are Alec Baldwin, Billy Crudup, William Hurt, and Joe Pesci. Even Keir Dullea, as Senator Russell, and Timothy Hutton, as Wilson’s father, come out of mothballs to play cameos.

Damon’s “less is more” performance is hauntingly right on the mark and reason enough to see this film, if nothing more tantalizing overall is playing at the nearest multiplex. His countenance through much of the film is that of a man unable to pass gas, but who wouldn’t even if he could. He’s in tight control of himself and his domain, humorless, and fastidious about detail, protocol, and propriety, baring his soul to no one. The man is in desperate need of an emotional purge, but it never happens. Damon excels as characters whose outward lives belie their inner demons. You may recognize aspects of Tom Ripley and Colin Sullivan (The Departed) in Edward Wilson.

But “The Good Shepherd” is, for the most part, short on character development. Besides Wilson, there is only one other role that occupies enough screen time to be multidimensional. It is that of Dr. Fredericks (the always adroit Michael Gambon), Yale professor and Wilson mentor, who, accused of plagiarism, is ousted from the university. Later, it turns out that Fredericks has not only led a double life of intrigue, but has behavioral liabilities that put him at high risk.

“The Good Shepherd” is one of those films that is finely crafted in every respect, but whose totality is unremarkably bland, even tedious.


THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS (B+)

To be frank, I’m not a fan of Will Smith -- it’s a personal thing, but I’m not usually enamored of men who ooze charisma from every pore and are universally adored. I feel the same way about George Clooney, whose magnetism is so effortless and about whom I have never heard or read an unkind word. On the other hand, I have read unkind comments attributed to Smith that reveal biases that offend me personally. And those biases, for better or worse, fuel my antipathy toward Smith both as a man and an actor. But after years of boycotting his films -- which hasn’t affected his popularity one bit -- I gave in and decided to see what all the critical fuss was about regarding his current movie, “The Pursuit of Happyness,” based on a true story. I saw...and I agree with the consensus that this may be a career-defining role for Smith. It’s hard not to admire the actor’s finely-tuned, deeply felt, and refreshingly unmannered performance as Chris Gardner, male counterpart to the persistent and unsinkable Molly Brown.

It’s 1981, amidst a sluggish San Francisco economy, and Gardner peddles bone density scanners for a living. He’s a knowledgeable, persuasive salesman, but these scanners are a hard-sell because their price tag can’t be justified by the marginal improvement in imagery over garden-variety X-ray machines. Chris is in debt up to his armpits from his original investment in inventory, so his wife Linda (Thandie Newton) double shifts at a laundry. But day care for their son Christopher (Smith’s real-life son Jaden Christopher Syre Smith) eats up a big part of her earnings. They’re behind in the rent, owe back taxes, and he’s a parking ticket scofflaw.

Chris is a devoted husband and father, smart, conscientious, and hardworking, but he never went to college, never learned a trade...and is black. He does, however, have a knack with numbers and is a whiz at solving puzzle games. And he’s entitled, he reasons, to every inalienable right inscribed in the Declaration of Independence, including “the pursuit of happiness” and a piece of the American Dream. Through some dogged maneuvering, Chris manages to snare a spot in Dean Witter’s stockbroker apprentice program. But there are catches: No salary for the first six months, and only one trainee selected from the apprentice pool for an actual broker position.

With creditor wolves howling at the door, and eviction from their apartment a day away, Linda bolts for New York and refuge with a sister, leaving her son behind with her insistent husband. Chris has a legitimate shot at a job with long-term potential, but he has to moonlight selling the scanners nights and weekends to keep young Christopher and himself afloat. Just when you think things can’t get much worse, they do.

Over a lifetime, I’ve seen a chuck wagon full of “against all odds” movies, and, truth be told, I’m a sap for narratives that play on triumphs of the spirit. What elevates “The Pursuit of Happyness” above the ranks of so many other films of that genre is its foundation in actual events, an intelligent, well-imagined screenplay by Steve Conrad (The Weather Man), sure-handed direction by Gabriele Muccino, and a high-energy, fully invested performance by Smith. Still, there is the nagging improbability of anyone being able to maintain dignity and optimism when the sky is constantly falling. As the struggles and setbacks pile up, one can’t help heaving a pained sigh: “When is this guy going to finally catch a break?” If Chris Gardner really exists -- and the end credits do clue us in on his life after the end of the film -- he was some hot ticket, and Smith was just the right guy for the role.


LITTLE CHILDREN (B-)

I try not to be unduly influenced by reviews I read before I see a film, but everything I read about “Little Children,” dating back to late summer, had me primed for a profound filmgoing experience, including what I now recognize as a hyperbolic and arcane interview in Filmmaker magazine. I should always be suspect when artists get all mystical and transcendental about their vision and methodology.

I wish I could chime in with the majority of critics and a couple of my movie maven friends and throw my support behind “Little Children” as a candidate for Best Picture. The San Francisco Film Critics Association has already bestowed that honor on Todd Field’s second major directorial project. But Field’s sense of narrative rhythm, cohesion, and credibility and the authenticity of some of his characters and scenes just doesn’t jibe with my personal ring of truth, just as it didn’t in “In the Bedroom,” which wowed critics and audiences and left me flat five years ago.

“Little Children,” based on a novel by Tom Perrotta, who also collaborated with Field on the screenplay, is essentially about two situations -- the idyllic false front of suburbia, which is hardly a groundbreaking topic in film (remember “The Ice Storm”), and the fact that among the many flaws in human character and behavior is that most of us never fully outgrow our childhoods, either because our parents have overprotected us or we were denied access to certain areas of personal development and/or fulfillment. The coalescence of these two themes could have engendered a cogent, compelling tale, fusing dramatic intensity with dark humor, and for the first 20 minutes to half-hour, “Little Children” holds that promise, before contexts become far-fetched and characters begin acting out of character.

The setup for “Little Children” goes like this: Sarah Pierce (Kate Winslet) is a restless, spiritually deflated housewife, who goes through the motions of being a conscientious mother to daughter Lucy (Sadie Goldstein), a child who demands too much of her energy and limits her individuality as a woman. One day she walks in on hubby Richard (Gregg Edelman) while he’s enjoying an intimate moment with images on an Internet porn site. It’s a hilarious scene for us moviegoers, but Sarah is not at all amused.

She and three other bored and disillusioned moms gather regularly with their kids at a local playground and ho-hum about their own humdrum lives and speculate about the lives of others in the upscale enclave. They cluster on a park bench and trade stories while their kids are off doing their thing on the swings and slides. On good days, the disenchantment, longings, and lassitude are interrupted by the arrival of Brad Adamson (Patrick Wilson), a studly, stay-at-home dad, with his toddler son Aaron (Ty Simpkins), whom he obviously idolizes. Brad, who a couple of ladies have nicknamed “The Prom King,” was a football quarterback in high school and college and is more hands-on with his kid’s recreation than the moms across the way, who he seems not to notice. All is not roses and rapture in Brad’s life, either. Wife Kathy (Jennifer Connelly) is the high-powered breadwinner, and though she doesn’t lord it over Brad in so many words, it’s clear that he’s not exactly her hero, and her sexual interest in him is waning. In fact, Brad has tried and failed twice to pass the bar exams; he’s been studying, but halfheartedly, for a third try. He seems adrift and unfocused.

Sarah’s chums dare her to strike up a conversation with Brad, even bet her five bucks that she can’t get his phone number. To their shock, she not only gets his number, but a smooch on the lips as well. In what does not appear to be mock horror, they gather up their kiddies and flee the playground. Thus, Sarah and Brad begin an illicit, emotionally equivocating relationship that fulfills certain unmet needs, but exposes more deeply rooted baggage. As a gesture of magnanimity, Kathy encourages Brad to invite his playground pal over to dinner. But when it dawns on her that Sarah knows more about Brad than a passing acquaintanceship warrants, she deliberately drops a utensil on the floor, then dives under the table expecting to catch Brad and Sarah playing footsies. I don’t deny it’s a funny piece of business, but would a prideful professional woman indulge her suspicions with such a stunt?

The ambiguities of Sarah and Brad sometimes pale in magnitude to the tortured existence of Ronnie (Jackie Earle Haley), who has returned to the community after a prison sentence for child abuse, not specifically defined. A man-child in his early forties, he lives with his doting, eternally forgiving mother May (Phyllis Somerville), whom he calls “mommy,” in a symbiotic relationship that comes within a whisker of incest. While I acknowledge, even relish, the fine line between tragedy and comedy, their scenes together around the house exceed the boundaries of believability, and Ronnie and May play as ghoulish caricatures.

Field has staged a surreal scene in which Ronnie arrives at a town swimming pool packed with chattering, frolicking youngsters and ritualistically dons goggles and a pair of flippers before going in. He is the only adult in the pool and is there long enough to make two or three underwater dives to check out little butts and crotches before any of the moms and dads along the periphery begin to take notice. Once he is spotted, pandemonium reminiscent of scenes in “Jaws” breaks out, and parents, acting like panicked horses in a stable fire, whinny and flail, their kids dutifully scamper out of the water, and a pair of cops appear out of nowhere to lead the pervert away, protesting that he was merely seeking relief from a hot, summer day. Would a convicted child abuser, even one with a childlike mentality himself, released into a community that knows all about him, take a conspicuous dip into a poolful of potential victims with their parents bystanding right by? Give me a break.

Then there’s the character of Larry (Noah Emmerich), booted off the police force years earlier for having an itchy finger on the trigger at the wrong time; he’s also suffering from a broken marriage, a further affront to his machismo. Larry, who’s recruited Brad to quarterback his team in weekly pickup games and post notices about the pervert throughout the neighborhood, is an obsessed one-man posse where Ronnie is concerned. When he pushes the righteous envelope far beyond rational bounds and tragedy occurs, he does a complete about-face that is much harder to fathom than the havoc he’s wreaked beforehand.

Despite my misgivings about Field and his film, I have to give the director high marks for eliciting superb performances from his cast, with the exception of Somerville, whose turn as Ronnie’s mother is entirely too self-conscious and stagy. Winslet is an amazingly gifted actress -- it’s no accident that, at 31, she will already have earned five Academy Award nominations. She has a tendency toward plumpness -- she admits to having to work hard to keep her weight in check. Some would describe her as Rubenesque, and that works well for a variety of roles. She can be voluptuous if clothed to emphasize her curves. De-emphasize those curves by loosening her attire and she can appear just a little frumpy. In “Little Children,” she is neither dressed, coifed, or painted to attract attention. She’s neither plain nor fancy, she’s just real, and the absence of artifice is what attracts Brad. Brad, in turn, is the antithesis of Sarah’s powerbroking husband. “The Prom King” is stuck back in his scholastic glory days, and he is, if anything, an underachiever, modest in his expectations of life. He comes close to being an Adonis, but hasn’t any clue about that.

Winslet has one of the screen’s most expressive faces, and it can reflect within a single closeup shot, emotional responses that are diverse, even contradictory. When Sarah playfully asks Brad to kiss her in the playground to deliberately shock the other mothers, she isn’t prepared for her own reaction when he obliges. Winslet’s face registers ardor, giddiness, embarrassment, and guilt within seconds of the smooch.

Wilson, appearance aside, is not just another Hollywood golden boy. A graduate of Carnegie Mellon University with a B.F.A. in drama, he showed off his lyric tenor singing voice in the original Broadway musical production of “The Full Monty,” went on to a major dramatic supporting role as Joe Pitt in the HBO adaptation of Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America,” for which he was nominated for an Emmy and a Golden Globe in 2003. The following year, he starred as Raoul in the film version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera”.

Finally, there is Jackie Earle Haley. A TV actor in the 70’s, 80’s, and early 90’s, Haley had not been in front of a camera for more than 10 years when he was cast as Ronnie in “Little Children”. He is the loneliest and most irretrievably lost little child in the film, and Haley’s deeply immersed performance manages to coax feelings of sorrow and pity from us, despite the creepy repugnance of his character. His last scene is as heartbreaking as it is horrific.

By coincidence, I was TV surfing the other night and came upon an Independent Film Channel showing of Field’s “In the Bedroom,” which underwhelmed me when I saw it four years ago. Despite the fact that it is an endlessly long, slow descent into the utter depths of depression, I stayed with it long enough to change my mind about the authenticity of its characters and, in particular, the potency of Sissy Spacek’s performance, which I found so lacking the first time around. Maybe I should give “Little Children” another go and see if certain situations and behaviors ring truer to me the second time around.


FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION (B+)

“For Your Consideration,” from mockumentary filmmaker (and writer, actor, musician) Christopher Guest (This Is Spinal Tap, Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind) takes a broad swipe at the fatuousness of the motion picture and television industries by exposing, in a devilishly facetious and occasionally brilliant manner, the disproportionate weight and urgency attached to celebrity in America and the self-important puffery of those who have achieved celebrity status. The ensemble cast, none of them, by design, A-list movie celebrities in real life, relishes this opportunity to stick it to an industry in which they toil as niche troupers, although the performance of Catherine O’Hara as an aging player whose comeback role is generating Oscar buzz even before the finished film is in the can, may in fact be an actual candidate for a Best Supporting Actress nomination this year.

Here’s the premise of “For Your Consideration”. Three journeymen actors, currently filming a low-budget drama called “Home for Purim” set in the American South during the 1940’s, learn, one by one, that soundstage observers are already touting their performances as Oscar worthy. Overnight, their humility and dedication to high-minded standards dissolves in a frothy media barrage spearheaded by self-important TV talk-show hosts and grandiloquent insider shows such as “Entertainment Tonight” and “Access Hollywood, ” which specialize in news-breaking exclusives aimed squarely at starry-eyed gossip gluttons. Because the viewership for these shows runs inordinately high, the investigative anchors achieve celebrity status in their own right as super snoops and champions of a vicarious-living public’s “right to know.” Some of the film’s giddiest moments arise from the pretentious pomp with which they deliver their scoops.

Eventually, all the clamor surrounding “Home for Purim” has its producers and studio executives nervous about the story’s intrinsically Jewish content. Not wanting to limit the audience for their sudden hot property or risk turning off Motion Picture Academy voters, they decide that some ethnic cleansing is in order and, amidst protests from the cast and director, water-down the dialogue and change the title to “Home for Thanksgiving,” the ramifications of which only strengthen the satiric postulation of Guest’s film.


THE HOLIDAY (A)

Once upon a time -- 60 years ago, give or take -- people were far less apologetic about their romantic idealism and their love of fairy tale relationships. The staple products of the dream factories during Hollywood’s Golden Age were mood-elevating, spirit-buoying movies that made audiences forget their troubles for a couple of hours and reaffirm their belief that most people are intrinsically honorable, that every cloud has a silver lining, that good inevitably triumphs over evil, and, well, you get the idea. Even films about war, crime, and conflicted personalities and alliances ended hopefully, if not happily.

Between late 1944 and late 1947, Hollywood produced five films that have become legendary as holiday classics: “Meet Me in St. Louis,” “The Bells of St. Mary’s,” “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “Miracle on 34th Street,” and “The Bishop’s Wife.” But all five were enormously popular at the time of their release, “The Bells of St. Mary’s” outgrossing every other film in 1945. Three of the five were nominated for Best Picture Oscars, and, what is even more to my point, even the critics chimed in with their praise. For instance, the dean of newspaper film critics, esteemed New York Times scribe Bosley Crowther, in his review of “Meet Me in St. Louis” on November 29, 1944, had this to say: “It is a warm and beguiling picturization (quaint terminology, by today’s standards) based on Sally Benson’s memoirs of her folks... Let those who would savor their enjoyment of innocent family merriment, with the fragrance of dried-rose petals and who would revel in girlish rhapsodies, make a beeline right down to the Astor. For there’s honey to be had inside. In the words of one gentleman, it is a ginger-peachy show.”

How about Crowther’s comments about “Miracle on 34th Street” when it debuted in June, 1947: “For all those blasé skeptics who do not believe in Santa Claus -- and, likewise, for all those natives who have grown cynical about New York, but most especially for all those patrons who have grown weary of the monotonies of the screen, let us heartily recommend the Roxy’s new picture, “Miracle on 34th Street.” As a matter of fact, let’s go further: let’s catch its spirit and heartily proclaim that it is the freshest little picture in a long time and maybe even the best comedy of the year.”

Mr. Crowther had a reputation for being stuffy, crabby, and ascerbic, but, apparently even he could be transported by a chunk of cinematic confection. The secret of the success of these classics -- why they still enchant millions of TV viewers of all ages every holiday season -- is no secret at all. It’s “escapism,” folks, as in “forget your troubles, c’mon get happy.” And nostalgia -- there’s something all fuzzy and snugly about the naiveté of the good ole days. Yes, and perhaps a subliminal longing for warmer hearts and gentler people -- something to be hopeful about -- dare we suggest, a return to common civility. All five of those signature feel-good films were made at the tail end of World War II and the two years immediately thereafter, when there was a brief era of good feeling, a calm, a relative state of harmony, before we were plunged into the Cold War, the arms race, and became collectively paranoiac by the great Red Scare. The holiday classics from the 40’s are enticingly sweet fare -- whimsical, idealistic, optimistic -- just as they were to audiences of their day, when they were a lot closer to the realities of life than they are now, in an edgy era of dissonance, detachment, discord, and disillusionment.

As I’ve noted before, people my age often generalize that “they don’t make movies like that anymore.” Well, they do, every once in a while, as with a current, comparably themed release called “The Holiday,” an improbable, but enormously entertaining and endearing romantic idyll, featuring a classy cast of mostly likable characters, headed by two multifaceted Brits named Kate Winslet and Jude Law, a canny script written by director Nancy Meyers (Something’s Gotta Give, The Parent Trap, Father of the Bride), stylish settings, and glossy cinematography. “The Holiday” is not meant to inform, incite, or inflame; it’s not epic filmmaking, not groundbreaking in any way, doesn’t carry a pithy message. It’s a feel-good fable in the “Love Actually” (2003), “Sleepless in Seattle” (1993) mold, meant to uplift us during a season mythologically hitched to a wagonful of good will, but which, in point of fact, is a stressfest that brings out the surly and sad in far too many of us.

Here’s the setup: Iris (Winslet) and Amanda (Cameron Diaz) are 30-ish professional women, thousands of miles removed from one another, who have stayed in unfulfilling relationships years too long. Iris, a London journalist, has had an on-again, off-again romance with newspaper colleague Jasper (Rufus Sewell), who essentially keeps her around as a muse and buddy -- until the paper’s publisher announces Jasper’s engagement to another coworker at the office Christmas party. Humiliated and near hysteria, Iris retreats to her country cottage in Surrey. Amanda, head of a Hollywood company that produces movie trailers, catches her long-term squeeze Ethan (Edward Burns), who composes film scores, in a lie about the affair he’s been having with his receptionist and throws him out of her sprawling Beverly Hills villa.

Heading into the holiday season, when no one should be alone, to say nothing of alone and distraught, Iris and Amanda are determined to make quick getaways from the scenes of their respective breakups. The two connect through an internet ad and agree to swap houses for two weeks, starting the very next day. Iris is quicker to settle in, adapt, and assimilate in Amanda’s Tinsel Town milieu than Amanda is in Cotswolds country, but before long, both women have formed nurturing attachments with kindred souls in their new surroundings that lead to self-discovery, restore their emotional equilibrium, and affirm the warm and giving spirit of the holiday season.

Iris becomes acquainted with 90-something neighbor, retired screenwriter, and chirpy raconteur Arthur Abbott (Eli Wallach) and a playful, tenderhearted film-scoring chum of Ethan’s named Miles (Jack Black), who’s also rebounding from a deceitful misalliance. A serendipitous coincidence brings Amanda together with Iris’s dreamboat, book-editor brother Graham (Law). There are some unexpected developments and revelations along the way to keep “The Holiday” from traveling a treacly and entirely predictable course, though the outcome is never really in doubt. And that’s okay, because, after all, fairy tales are suppose to end happily for those whose hearts and minds are in the right place.

But the hearts and minds of today’s hardened corps of film critics reside in the provence of smugness and cynicism, and films like “The Holiday” are fair game for their fangs. Everyone, including me, is entitled to his or her opinion, but why are fantasies involving pretty people in love consistently reviled, while fantasies involving grotesque creatures in conflict are consistently revered.

More and more in our society, we abbreviate, oversimplify, categorize, pigeonhole, “reductivize”. The flagrant misuse of “comedy” is an example. If a film has a few amusing scenes and some witty repartee, it’s a comedy. Under these misguidelines, “All About Eve” would be labeled a comedy, regardless of its prevailing issues of opportunism and deceit . “The Talented Mr. Ripley” was boiled down to a story about a serial killer, an unenlightened use of the word “serial,” and a disservice to an emotionally complex character who became entangled in a web not entirely of his own spinning. “Brokeback Mountain” got too real, up close, and personal with male sexuality, and its frank and raw humanity had to be salved over by many in the media. It became the gay cowboy movie, parodied to the point of trivialization.

Too many film critics fall into the trap of gross reductivism. “The Holiday” thereby gets reduced to an annoying (to me) genre known as the “chick flick,” or worse yet, the “date movie,” even by female reviewers such as Ruthie Stein of the San Francisco Chronicle, flagship journal of a city whose social fabric is so pridefully nonsexist. By inference, what the Ruthie Steins of the film critiquing craft are saying is: “Hey, guys, be forewarned -- this movie contains graphic scenes of kindheartedness, self-awareness, and humanity, mushy situations, and characters so affable, agreeable, trustworthy, and beguiling they will offend your brutish jock sensibilities. Better you should feast on a blood-rare gorefest.

I’m reminded of a song Jerry Herman wrote for his musical “Mame” 40 years ago. It comes in the middle of the show at a point when Mame has lost her fortune in the stock market and can’t even cut it as a switchboard operator or ribbon clerk. She comes home disconsolate, but her young nephew, her cook, and her houseboy (whom she can no longer afford to pay) raise her out of the doldrums. It’s still a week before Christmas, but they decide not to wait. Thankful they have each other and a few token gifts, they rise up singing: “We need a little Christmas, right this very minute.” With the world in such turmoil, we indeed need a little Christmas, right this very minute. “The Holiday,” in the traditional spirit of the season, provides that diversion. Go see it and feel hopeful, at least for 138 minutes.