By Armond White

Guy Ritchie’s calculations in his sequel Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows are so low-down they’re almost diabolical. He has retooled the famous fictional detective character with no respect for either Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s literary creation or the ticket-buying audience. Against tradition (previous incarnations of Holmes emphasized mystery and deduction), Ritche panders to the current, degraded taste for blatancy and violence.

A scene from Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

This time, Holmes’ (Robert Downey Jr.) clash with arch villain Moriarty (Jared Harris) evokes 9/11 and Afghanistan along with the previous film’s kung fu anachronisms, over-done F/X and Ritchie’s brand of macho banter between the disguise-crazy Holmes and his fusty sidekick Watson (Jude Law). It’s what Brits call lad humor, but Americans understand it as thuggish. So Downey’s fake British accent suits Ritchie’s concoction for a facetious, half-Hollywood hit.

The period setting recalls Jonah Hex, which apparently was too sophisticated to be popular. Ritchie reboots Holmes for a market unaccustomed to thinking, impatient with suspense but eager for relentless, if monotonous, visual stimulation—and massive promotional hype. Adapting his Brit-Tarantino thuggery for the video game demographic, Ritchie often slows down the fighting and gunfire as if relaying the thought  processes behind Holmes’ actions. The narrative constantly backs up as if on rewind. Ritchie does our perception for us, creating no sense of history or emotion, just jovial machismo, brandishing close-ups of Holmes’ facial bruises, wounds and scars.

A Game of Shadows is ready-made for Xbox; its plot is a mess of contiguous chaos in drinking dens, theaters, forests, waterfalls, mountaintop castles, on trains and in great English halls. Holmes and Watson tangle with anarchist bombs, Romany rebels (led by Noomi Rapace, here the girl with the gypsy tattoo) and the dastardly Moriarty spouting nonsense like: “You’re not fighting me, you’re fighting the human condition and the tendency toward moral ignorance.” Ritchie should know.

Ritchie should also know better. His RocknRolla was one of the best action-comedies of the past decade—a funny, sexy, heartfelt play with modern British identity. The only justification for this Holmes hackwork would be to finance the sequel promised by RocknRolla’s cliffhanger ending. Instead, Ritchie abandons his own cultural creation to ruinously imitate the James Bond franchise—he’s closer to Will Smith’s Wild Wild West fiasco.

Follow Armond White on Twitter @3xChair.

January marks the beginning of a new film festival season—and what better way to kick it off than with the 21st annual New York Jewish Film Festival, Jan. 11–26? Presented in partnership with The Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the festival promises to provide a diverse global perspective on the Jewish experience with 35 features and shorts from 11 countries, many of which will be followed by post-screening Q&As with filmmakers and special guests in attendance. 

The opening night kicks off with the New York premiere of Guy Nattiv’s Mabul (The Flood). Nominated for six Ophir Awards (Israeli Academy Awards), Mabul follows 13-year-old Yoni on the eve of his bar mitzvah. Facing bullying from his classmates, an institutionalized older brother living with autism and parents who are barely on speaking terms, Yoni’s bar mitzvah becomes the catalyst for buried family secrets to come to light.

For those who have harbored a soft spot for Catskills resorts ever since they first saw Dirty Dancing, be sure to see the closing night film, the world premiere of Caroline Laskow and Ian Rosenberg’s Welcome to Kutsher’s: The Last Catskills Resort, a documentary about the last surviving Jewish resort in the Catskills and its overarching influence on sports, entertainment and “Borscht Belt” comedians.

The festival’s world premiere documentaries scan the globe, from Africa to the streets of Paris. Jonathan Gruber and Ari Daniel Pinchot’s Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story presents a moving portrait of Jonathan “Yoni” Netanyahu, who was killed at the age of 30 leading Israeli special forces in the 1976 hostage rescue mission at the Entebbe Airport in Uganda.

Avishai Yeganyahu Mekonen and Shari Rothfarb Mekonen’s 400 Miles to Freedom documents the 1984 escape from Ethiopia to Israel of the Beta Israel, a secluded, 2,500-year-old community of observant Jews in the northern Ethiopian mountains.

Filmmaker Joel Katz explores what it means to be white in America in White: A Memoir in Color. Katz examines his father’s role as a white professor at Howard University during the civil rights era and the influence it had on his and his wife’s decision to adopt a mixed-race child. Sam Ball’s fascinating Joann Sfar Draws from Memory details the life of graphic novelist and filmmaker Joann Sfar, author of the popular The Rabbi’s Cat series and director of the recent film, Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life. The film follows Sfar as he visits his favorite Parisian neighborhood spots and muses on his artistic process and the influence of his Algerian and East European family heritage.

For musical fans, Eytan Fox’s New York premiere, Mary Lou, promises to be “a cross between the television series Glee and the musical Mamma Mia! by way of La Cage aux Folles.” It follows a young man who finds himself in the Tel Aviv gay community, performing as a drag queen while searching for his estranged mother.

Gili Gaon’s Iraq ‘N’ Roll bridges the past and present with the story of acclaimed Jewish musicians (and brothers) Salah and Daud al-Kuwaiti. Considered the fathers of modern Iraqi music in the 1930s, the documentary follows Salah’s grandson, popular Israeli rock musician Dudu Tassa, through the process of remixing their original tunes for contemporary listeners.

Richard Oswald’s 1933 musical My Song Goes Round the World showcases the talents of the great tenor Joseph Schmidt, known as the Jewish Caruso, who faced challenges in both career and love while standing less than 5 feet tall.

Dramatic features include Adrian Panek’s dazzling period drama Daas, about the influence of 18th-century false messiah Jacob Frank. Branko Ivanda’s Lea and Darija tells the story of 13-year-old stars Lea Deutsch, known as the Croatian Shirley Temple, and her dancing partner Darija Gasteiger in pre-World War II Croatia. Katia Lewkowicz’s romantic comedy, Bachelor Days Are Over, follows a groom-to-be grappling with the conflict between marriage and following his heart.

Single screening tickets for The New York Jewish Film Festival are $13, $9 for students and seniors (62+) and $8 for Film Society and Jewish Museum members. For tickets, more information and a full schedule, visit www.filmlinc.com or www.thejewishmuseum.org or call 212-875-5601.

Drive—Fake toughness, fake sentimentality, fake style infected by Michael Mann. Brooding existential stuntman and petty criminal Ryan Gosling is so laconic and cool he’s inadvertently comic. This second-rate actor occasionally drops his Steve McQueen impersonation and lets slip Mickey Rourke’s old smile. Dir. Nicolas Winding Refn.

Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life—An inventive political, cultural, ethnic defense of France’s ’60s pop icon and rebel Serge Gainsbourg shows a caricaturist’s whimsy—especially in the Jewish self-consciousness subtext, psychopolitical anime effects and Eric Elmosnino’s lead performance. Laetitia Casta does a worthy, knockout Brigitte Bardot impersonation. Dir. Joann Sfar.

Jack and Jill—Adam Sandler, the least abashed comic actor outside the Borscht Belt, tackles Jewish self-deprecation in this sibling rivalry laff fest. Playing both male and female twins, Sandler show tribal affection by turning bad vibes into good. Al Pacino’s cameo as Jill’s suitor is both crazily romantic and a brilliant professional salute. Dir. Dennis Dugan.

J. Edgar—Using the career of longtime FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to promote a gay sympathy ought to be subversive (that’s the intention of screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, who wrote Milk). But despite Leo DiCaprio’s eager-beaver empathetic performance, this grim, humorless exercise, featuring lousy old-age makeup, turns out ghoulish and self-congratulatory—just like Milk. Dir. Clint Eastwood.

Melancholia—Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg play Eurotrash sisters waiting for the end of world—literally: A planet named Melancholia, symbolizing their depression, comes crashing toward Earth. Another Lars von Trier prank, this is apocalypse for nihilists. Dir. Lars von Trier.

Puss in Boots—More Shrek dreck, this time losing what little appeal the Puss in Boots character (voiced by Antonio Bandera) brought to previous episodes of the franchise. At least there are fewer human facile grotesques, but all the fairy tale/pop culture satire (from Humpty Dumpty to Jack and Jill) and feline cuteness becomes a jumbled-up overload. Dir. Chris Miller.

Real Steel—Hugh Jackman’s Lost Father and his Estranged Son (Dakota Goyo) come together in the near future of robot boxing—a metaphor for mankind’s displaced emotions in the digital age. This surprisingly touching footnote to producer Steven Spielberg’s A.I. is a fairytale of archetypes. Dir. Shawn Levy.

The Rum Diary—Another try-and-miss attempt at putting Hunter Thompson’s fevered journalism on screen. Although Johnny Depp’s too old to play the young Gonzo writer, the dissolute story ignores optimism and innocence. It is dully cynical. Dir. Bruce Robinson.

The Skin I Live In—A fairy tale using sexual anxiety as identity crisis. Mad scientist Antonio Banderas falls in love with his human guinea pig (Elena Anaya) in a narrative as convoluted as it is engrossing. Twisted yet ultimately humane, it gloriously refutes Lady Gaga. Dir. Pedro Almodóvar.

Take Shelter—Midwestern laborer (Michael Shannon) becomes unstable, sensing apocalypse in the changed wind (as Bob Dylan would put it). Political paranoia takes elemental, eschatological form, driving wife (Jessica Chastain) and blue-collar buddy (Shea Whigham) to the edge. Tipping into horror movie cliché, the political tension gets unbearably overwrought. Dir. Jeff Nichols.

Tower Heist—Eddie Murphy’s sharp, profane delivery can’t save this witless high-concept heist movie about a team of luxury apartment workers (led by Ben Stiller) seeking revenge on their Madoff-Trump boss. Dir. Brett Ratner.

50/50

The buddy comedy genre faces cancer. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is helped through crisis by Seth Rogen. Decent emotions get cheated of depth by blithe, nonspiritual approach. Dir. Jonathan Levine.

The Descendants

George Clooney shakes off the snark, but filmmaker Alexander Payne puts it back on in this Hawaii-set story of how Americans squander their paradise and advantages. Adultery, greed, family dysfunction and death go unenlightened by the film’s stupefying visual banality. Dir. Alexander Payne.

Drive

Fake toughness, fake sentimentality, fake style infected by Michael Mann. Brooding existential stuntman and petty criminal Ryan Gosling is so laconic and cool he’s inadvertently comic. This second-rate actor occasionally drops his Steve McQueen impersonation and lets slip Mickey Rourke’s old smile. Dir. Nicolas Winding Refn.

Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life

An inventive political, cultural, ethnic defense of France’s ’60s pop icon and rebel Serge Gainsbourg shows a caricaturist’s whimsy—especially in the Jewish self-consciousness subtext, psychopolitical anime effects and Eric Elmosnino’s lead performance. Laetitia Casta does a worthy, knockout Brigitte Bardot impersonation. Dir. Joann Sfar.

Jack and Jill

Adam Sandler, the least abashed comic actor outside the Borscht Belt, tackles Jewish self-deprecation in this sibling rivalry laff fest. Playing both male and female twins, Sandler show tribal affection by turning bad vibes into good. Al Pacino’s cameo as Jill’s suitor is both crazily romantic and a brilliant professional salute. Dir. Dennis Dugan.

J. Edgar

Using the career of longtime FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to promote a gay sympathy ought to be subversive (that’s the intention of screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, who wrote Milk). But despite Leo DiCaprio’s eager-beaver empathetic performance, this grim, humorless exercise, featuring lousy old-age makeup, turns out ghoulish and self-congratulatory—just like Milk. Dir. Clint Eastwood.

Melancholia

Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg play Eurotrash sisters waiting for the end of world—literally: A planet named Melancholia, symbolizing their depression, comes crashing toward Earth. Another Lars von Trier prank, this is apocalypse for nihilists. Dir. Lars von Trier.

Puss in Boots

More Shrek dreck, this time losing what little appeal the Puss in Boots character (voiced by Antonio Bandera) brought to previous episodes of the franchise. At least there are fewer human facile grotesques, but all the fairy tale/pop culture satire (from Humpty Dumpty to Jack and Jill) and feline cuteness becomes a jumbled-up overload. Dir. Chris Miller.

Real Steel

Hugh Jackman’s Lost Father and his Estranged Son (Dakota Goyo) come together in the near future of robot boxing—a metaphor for mankind’s displaced emotions in the digital age. This surprisingly touching footnote to producer Steven Spielberg’s A.I. is a fairytale of archetypes. Dir. Shawn Levy.

The Rum Diary

Another try-and-miss attempt at putting Hunter Thompson’s fevered journalism on screen. Although Johnny Depp’s too old to play the young Gonzo writer, the dissolute story ignores optimism and innocence. It is dully cynical. Dir. Bruce Robinson.

The Skin I Live In

A fairy tale using sexual anxiety as identity crisis. Mad scientist Antonio Banderas falls in love with his human guinea pig (Elena Anaya) in a narrative as convoluted as it is engrossing. Twisted yet ultimately humane, it gloriously refutes Lady Gaga. Dir. Pedro Almodóvar.

Take Shelter

Midwestern laborer (Michael Shannon) becomes unstable, sensing apocalypse in the changed wind (as Bob Dylan would put it). Political paranoia takes elemental, eschatological form, driving wife (Jessica Chastain) and blue-collar buddy (Shea Whigham) to the edge. Tipping into horror movie cliché, the political tension gets unbearably overwrought. Dir. Jeff Nichols.

Tower Heist

Eddie Murphy’s sharp, profane delivery can’t save this witless high-concept heist movie about a team of luxury apartment workers (led by Ben Stiller) seeking revenge on their Madoff-Trump boss. Dir. Brett Ratner.

By Mark Peikert

“I don’t think I’ve ever said the words ‘I’m proud of myself,’” Ellen Barkin said over coffee recently at Soho’s MEET at The Apt. “But this movie is the greatest accomplishment of my career.”

Barkin was speaking of Another Happy Day, which she produced and stars in, but that statement could have been about any number of projects over the course of this past year. In April, she made her Broadway debut in The Normal Heart, winning a Tony Award in the process. This summer saw the release of the indie film Shit Year, with its sure-to-be-iconic poster of Barkin in runny makeup, eyes mostly closed, a cigarette dangling from the side of her famous mouth. But it’s Another Happy Day, writer-director Sam Levinson’s first film, that has the former Upper East Sider so uncharacteristically happy with herself.

Ellen Barkin produced and starred in Another Happy Day.

“Quite frankly, I’m having a very good five years,” she said seriously. “I never say nice things about myself and I get yelled at all the time for not owning my accomplishments, but I do have to say over the last five or so years… And it has really hit home in the last year.”

Another Happy Day finds Barkin leading a cast that includes Ellen Burstyn, Demi Moore and Kate Bosworth. Her role as Lynne—a divorced and remarried mother of four struggling to get through her eldest son’s wedding day amid family dysfunction—was, according to Barkin, “the most difficult, rewarding, complicated, cathartic role of my life. This was a killer.”

Among other reasons, Barkin found the role challenging because of her character’s less-than-stellar parenting skills.

“To sit up there on the screen and basically tell the world that I, Ellen Barkin, made some very big fucking mistakes as a mother…” she said, of how audiences might view her performance through the lens of her past. “I’m not a bad person, I’m not a bad mother. It could have traumatized my children.”

Ellen Burstyn, left, George Kennedy, Thomas Haden Church and Demi Moore co-star in Another Happy Day with Ellen Barkin.

Some pressure was removed thanks to Barkin’s close relationship with Levinson, son of director Barry Levinson, who gave Barkin her big film break in 1982’s Diner. “As a producer, I was lucky enough to be working with an extremely gifted and wildly focused, unbelievably well-informed, very strong writer-director who worked really fast,” Barkin said, then grinned. “That writer-director was also a first-time writer-director, so anything that was asked of him he thought was normal. And it was fabulous!”

After being at Levinson’s side for the three years from writing to filming, Barkin said her need for his input as an actor had already been satisfied, leaving her free to focus on her producing chores. “So I’d have to finish the scene,” Barkin recalled, “and say, ‘OK, that’s an hour you’ve been lighting that. Too long. Kate Bosworth is maybe the prettiest girl in the movies. You don’t need that much time. Save it for me!’ It actually really worked.”

Another Happy Day seems to be the perfect grace note for Barkin to end her year. “I feel inspired, invigorated, energized,” Barkin said. “I feel brand new, with a life’s worth of experience behind me. And I feel that at 57 years old, I am ready to embrace whatever it is I have to offer as an actor and as a producer. And not to be afraid of it.”

50/50

The buddy comedy genre faces cancer. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is helped through crisis by Seth Rogen. Decent emotions get cheated of depth by blithe, nonspiritual approach. Dir. Jonathan Levine.

The Descendants

George Clooney shakes off the snark, but filmmaker Alexander Payne puts it back on in this Hawaii-set story of how Americans squander their paradise and advantages. Adultery, greed, family dysfunction and death go unenlightened by the film’s stupefying visual banality. Dir. Alexander Payne.

Drive

Fake toughness, fake sentimentality, fake style infected by Michael Mann. Brooding existential stuntman and petty criminal Ryan Gosling is so laconic and cool he’s inadvertently comic. This second-rate actor occasionally drops his Steve McQueen impersonation and lets slip Mickey Rourke’s old smile. Dir. Nicolas Winding Refn.

Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life

An inventive political, cultural, ethnic defense of France’s ’60s pop icon and rebel Serge Gainsbourg shows a caricaturist’s whimsy—especially in the Jewish self-consciousness subtext, psychopolitical anime effects and Eric Elmosnino’s lead performance. Laetitia Casta does a worthy, knockout Brigitte Bardot impersonation. Dir. Joann Sfar.

Jack and Jill

Adam Sandler, the least abashed comic actor outside the Borscht Belt, tackles Jewish self-deprecation in this sibling rivalry laff fest. Playing both male and female twins, Sandler show tribal affection by turning bad vibes into good. Al Pacino’s cameo as Jill’s suitor is both crazily romantic and a brilliant professional salute. Dir. Dennis Dugan.

J. Edgar

Using the career of longtime FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to promote a gay sympathy ought to be subversive (that’s the intention of screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, who wrote Milk). But despite Leo DiCaprio’s eager-beaver empathetic performance, this grim, humorless exercise, featuring lousy old-age makeup, turns out ghoulish and self-congratulatory—just like Milk. Dir. Clint Eastwood.

Melancholia

Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg play Eurotrash sisters waiting for the end of world—literally: A planet named Melancholia, symbolizing their depression, comes crashing toward Earth. Another Lars von Trier prank, this is apocalypse for nihilists. Dir. Lars von Trier.

Puss in Boots

More Shrek dreck, this time losing what little appeal the Puss in Boots character (voiced by Antonio Bandera) brought to previous episodes of the franchise. At least there are fewer human facile grotesques, but all the fairy tale/pop culture satire (from Humpty Dumpty to Jack and Jill) and feline cuteness becomes a jumbled-up overload. Dir. Chris Miller.

Real Steel

Hugh Jackman’s Lost Father and his Estranged Son (Dakota Goyo) come together in the near future of robot boxing—a metaphor for mankind’s displaced emotions in the digital age. This surprisingly touching footnote to producer Steven Spielberg’s A.I. is a fairytale of archetypes. Dir. Shawn Levy.

The Rum Diary

Another try-and-miss attempt at putting Hunter Thompson’s fevered journalism on screen. Although Johnny Depp’s too old to play the young Gonzo writer, the dissolute story ignores optimism and innocence. It is dully cynical. Dir. Bruce Robinson.

The Skin I Live In

A fairy tale using sexual anxiety as identity crisis. Mad scientist Antonio Banderas falls in love with his human guinea pig (Elena Anaya) in a narrative as convoluted as it is engrossing. Twisted yet ultimately humane, it gloriously refutes Lady Gaga. Dir. Pedro Almodóvar.

Take Shelter

Midwestern laborer (Michael Shannon) becomes unstable, sensing apocalypse in the changed wind (as Bob Dylan would put it). Political paranoia takes elemental, eschatological form, driving wife (Jessica Chastain) and blue-collar buddy (Shea Whigham) to the edge. Tipping into horror movie cliché, the political tension gets unbearably overwrought. Dir. Jeff Nichols.

Tower Heist

Eddie Murphy’s sharp, profane delivery can’t save this witless high-concept heist movie about a team of luxury apartment workers (led by Ben Stiller) seeking revenge on their Madoff-Trump boss. Dir. Brett Ratner.

30 Minutes or Less­—A satire about the competition for money and recognition that drives Americans crazy, made more humorous than cynical by Danny McBride and Jesse Eisenberg’s solipsistic humanity as kidnapper and victim. Minor but authentic new millennium century comedy. Dir. Ruben Fleischer.

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975—An unenlightening curio that pilfers unused footage shot by Swedish TV documentary reporters about U.S. black radicalism. It waxes nostalgic about matters now swept under the “post-black” carpet. Dir. Goran Olsson.

Columbiana­—Striking entertainment and an emotional action movie. As a sexy, damaged assassin hunting down drug dealers to avenge her parents, Zoe Saldana gives the movie star performance of the year—a soulful, modern-day Irma Vep. Dir. Olivier Megaton.

The Debt—Shameless-bordering-on-ludicrous Holocaust exploitation, as a Mossad trio brings a Nazi war criminal to justice. In flashbacks, Jessica Chastain plays the same rueful agent as Helen Mirren—a cipher out of a spy novel. Dir. John Madden.

Drive—Fake toughness, fake sentimentality, fake style infected by Michael Mann. Brooding existential stuntman and petty criminal Ryan Gosling is so laconic and cool he’s inadvertently comic. This second-rate actor occasionally drops his Steve McQueen impersonation and lets slip Mickey Rourke’s old smile. Dir. Nicolas Winding Refn.

Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life—An inventive political, cultural and ethnic defense of France’s ’60s pop icon and rebel Serge Gainsbourg shows a caricaturist’s whimsy—especially in the subtext of Jewish self-consciousness, psycho-political anime effects and Eric Elmosnino’s lead performance. Laetitia Casta does a worthy, knockout Brigitte Bardot impersonation. Dir. Joann Sfar.

The Help—America’s Jim Crow history reduced to sisterhood entertainment about servants and masters. Still, the white actresses (Emma Stone, Bryce Dallas Howard) take center screen, squeezing out the black actresses (Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer). Dir. Tate Taylor.

Our Idiot Brother—Not even Paul Rudd’s charm can redeem this story of a holy fool—a hippie throwback—who shames his three bourgeois sisters. Smug, preachy and visually hideous. Dir. Jesse Peretz.

Restless—Doomed girl (Mia Wasikowska) and gloomy boy (Henry Hopper) crash funerals and muse on death and godlessness. A nihilistic love story for depressive teens. Dir. Gus Van Sant.

Straw Dogs—An affront to our art heritage and sense of humanity, this shoddy remake of Sam Peckinpah’s 1971 masterpiece reduces psychological depth (about a man defending his home) to cheap slasher film theatrics and dumb political agit-prop. Dir. Rod Lurie.

Toast—Biopic about British food writer Nigel Slater’s childhood (Oscar Kennedy and Freddie Highmore) is actually a funny and edgy story about the development of a gay man’s sensibility. Helena Bonham Carter wonderfully portrays Slater’s nemesis/inspiration—a full-blown, memorably ambivalent characterization. Dir. S.J. Clarkson.

Warrior—Tom Hardy, Joel Edgerton and Nick Nolte as brothers and dad who take family dysfunction to the boxing ring. Loopy premise but lots of high drama and deep theatrics. Dir. Gavin O’Connor.

Weekend—Rather precious but not unaffecting love story about two young gay British men (Tom Cullen and Chris New) facing the limits of attraction and commitment. An indie take on the ’70s classic Sunday Bloody Sunday. Dir. Andrew Haigh.

Chasing Madoff (+)

I liked this documentary about Bernie Madoff, which has received mixed reviews.

The star of the movie is Harry Markopolos, an expert in the brokerage field. While looking for potential investors, Markopolos and his partners are rejected by individuals who have invested with Madoff, happy with the huge, regular returns they receive from him. When his partners ask Markopolos if he can compete with Madoff’s returns, he takes one look at the monthly statements and says it’s impossible. Why? Because the returns always rise and never fall. Markopolos concludes that Madoff is operating a Ponzi scheme.

What is a Ponzi scheme? It occurs when the money coming in from new investors is used to pay earlier investors, rather than the profits coming from investing in the market. The people who pull in the new investors get a cut of the new money. Madoff ultimately took in $50 billion from people. In some cases, the professionals who invested with him must have known that the profits were not real, but they greedily accepted them.

Markopolos brought the matter to the attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission. For reasons never explained, the SEC didn’t adequately investigate the matter, even though the fraud was obvious. The Ponzi scheme ended when the market fell and there were no new investors to pay the old ones. The film contains footage of a very interesting congressional hearing during which Rep. Gary Ackerman makes monkeys out of the SEC representatives who know nothing.

Markopolos says that from the time he learned of the Ponzi scheme until it was uncovered by law enforcement, he felt his life was in danger from Madoff and his investors who were enjoying the profits. You will enjoy the interviews with Markopolos, who is a brilliant guy with a great sense of humor. One woman interviewed in the film said, “I’ll always think of Harry Markopolos as a Greek hero.” I thought, he is an American hero with a Greek name.

Bernie Madoff destroyed the lives of many people. My hope is that he lives to be 120 and spends every one of his remaining years in prison.

By Armond White

Restless
Directed by Gus Van Sant

All that keeps the death-infatuated Restless from being laughably dismissed like last year’s Charlie St. Cloud is that it’s signed by Gus Van Sant. No mere sentimentalist who would employ a tween heartthrob like Zac Efron, Van Sant specializes in serious gloom.

Gloom, along with Van Sant’s special element of sexual pathology, sets Restless apart from the typical two-hankie liebestod. Shy boy Enoch (Henry Hopper) meets whimsical, fatally ill bird-lover Annabel (Mia Wasikowska, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, here wearing Mia Farrow’s pixie haircut from Rosemary’s Baby) and they muse on their sexual neutrality and the mystery of death. Together they visit cemeteries and crash funerals; both are bright and prone to brooding. She reveres Darwin (“single greatest idea man”) but is the opposite of a life force. After a close call, Annabel reports to Enoch “I’ve been dead for three minutes and you know what’s there? Nothing.”

Mia Wasikowska and Henry Hopper in Gus Van Sant’s Restless

Van Sant peddles Nothing while other tragic teen love stories usually sell romantic overload. It’s part of his hipster creed to cancel optimism and faith to muse on meaninglessness. In Restless, Van Sant emphasizes morbid whimsy, even employing Nico’s warbled elegy “The Fairest of Seasons.” (“Do I really have a hand in my forgetting?”) He shamelessly references the bombing of Nagasaki to justify teenage nihilism, and one shot lets Annabel’s bird book replace the Bible so this “naturalist” romance is actively, implicitly nihilistic. Their “romance” traces their individual lack of effect in society.

All this pessimistic calculation could maybe strike a chord with hopeless youth who feel misunderstood, even in a Lady Gaga world. But that would result in a freak hit—weirdly sanctioning Van Sant’s own grown-up Gaga hopelessness as in his very calculated Nicole Kidman hit To Die For, though, interestingly, not the formulaic Finding Forrester (Too gay. Too upbeat. Van Sant has learned his lesson.) No-fun Gus shows the kids doing variations on snow angels, imitating crime-scene body outlines—a boldly negative switch on the sprawled body outline of David Bowie’s Lodger album cover that was celebrated in Todd Graff’s joyous Bandslam.

Art photographer William Eggleston makes a cameo appearance in Restless as an X-ray tech, apparently just to authenticate Van Sant’s spare, elegant visual anatomization of soullessness. Restless contrives to turn Van Sant’s absurdly praised “Death Trilogy” (Gerry, Elephant and Last Days) into an ongoing series.

Drive
Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn

So many better movies echo throughout the wannabe thriller Drive—including bad movies, like the entire Michael Mann catalog—that the resonance nearly drowns out the film’s brazen imitation of one particularly good movie: Walter Hill’s 1978 The Driver.

That Ryan O’Neal film now becomes a Ryan Gosling vehicle—an immediate decline. Gosling plays a loner stuntman who does underworld transport for Jewish mobsters on Hollywood’s fringe. His jaded view of life is part of his alienated cool, warmed over by a single mother waitress (cry-baby Carey Mulligan) awaiting the arrival of her ex-con Latino boyfriend. Director Nicolas Winding Refn shows no sense of how classes and ethnicities mix in L.A. He prefers evoking the sleek, unreal, existential cool of film noir loners.

But Refn’s cinephilia is specious and imprecise, while Hill’s revisionist modernism uncannily updated the aesthetic and spiritual essence of both American and European noir (Anthony Mann as well as Jean-Pierre Melville) into an original, idiosyncratic vision. Hill’s The Driver wasn’t a thriller it was thrilling, featuring the best on-screen car chases to this day. Refn, infected by Mann, produces fake toughness, fake sentimentality and fake style.

Drive is so relentlessly inexpressive of the modern world that it’s often inadvertently comic. Not just when the inadequate Gosling drops his dull Steve McQueen impersonation and lets slip Mickey Rourke’s old smile, but especially when his laconic Old Boy routine clashes with a group of vicious old goats—Ron Perlman and especially Albert Brooks as hypersensitive machers. Brooks’ zany turn as a psychotic has the best dialogue (“It’s not bad timing, it’s bad luck”), but it’s not quite as zany as Refn’s mannerisms, which get hilarious during Gosling’s rampages, especially a hammer attack in front of nude, silicon-enhanced strippers who look on idly like the mannequins in Kubrick’s Korova Milk Bar.

Refn’s good facial videography and portentous thrumming music turns hardboiled storytelling into obviousness. The monotonous, derivative Drive should be retitled Drone.

The Hedgehog (+)

I truly enjoyed this film from beginning to end. It has a slow rhythm, and although nothing very exciting happens until the very end, it is totally absorbing.

Paloma (Garance Le Guillermic) is an 11-year-old girl living in the lap of luxury. She lives in a Parisian home with her father, Paul (Wladimir Yordanoff), and her mother, Solange (Anne Brochet). Her mother, who talks to her plants as though they were humans, has been in analysis for 10 years.

A scene from The Hedgehog.

Paloma is precocious and wise beyond her years. Tired of life, she is determined to kill herself when she reaches the age of 12. She constantly records life in her apartment building using a camcorder given to her by her father, which irritates everyone. While Le Guillermic is a good actor, physically she looks 16-18 years old, so that is a little jarring.

On the ground floor of the building lives Renée (Josiane Balasko), the concierge. I live in a building with a concierge and always think it sounds so posh when I say, “Leave it with the concierge.” In this case, when Renée identifies herself as such, it is translated in the subtitle as “Janitor.” Nothing wrong with being a janitor, but frankly, I’d rather be an American concierge.

Renée, who appears to be in her 60s, is a tough-talking and even tougher looking woman. She states that she has never had her hair done at a salon, and looks it. Into the apartment building moves a handsome, elegant Japanese man, Kakuro Ozu (Togo Igawa). A romance begins between the two, both of whom have had prior marriages. In the meanwhile, Paloma is recording everything.

To see Renée slowly allowing herself to drop her prickly, protective exterior—that of a hedgehog—and exhibit the true sensitive character of her persona is wonderful to behold.

The film establishes once again that, far more effective than anything else, such as special effects or beautiful locales, is a good story. And that is what this is.

(In French with English subtitles.)