Movie Box Review

NEW GIRL - With a well-deserved full-season pick-up, this is one of the bona fide hits of the new season, so much that the network is already using it as a piece in its scheduling games--a repeat airs in the 9:30PM slot this Thursday , and a new episode next Wednesday at the same time to target the other networks' new sitcoms.

X-FACTOR - OK, it's not a blockbuster.  But its solid ratings are giving FOX wins on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and that's the kind of "disappointment" any network would envy.

TERRA NOVA - Similarly, its 3.1 rating isn't blowing anyone away.  Paired with HOUSE, however, it's keeping the network a strong 2d on Mondays.

Holdovers - HOUSE and the Sunday animation line-up.

GLEE -  OK, not "struggling"--it's still a very strong 2d place in its timeslot.  But its time as a phenomenon seems to have passed.

FRINGE - It's already the poster child for "barely hanging on;" one or two ticks lower and it'll have to air in a parallel universe.

There are certainly areas for improvement on the FOX schedule, but none of them are disasters.

I don't know that there's an actor in movies today more fun to watch than Brendan Gleeson.  Gleeson is probably best known for playing Mad-Eye Moody in several of the Harry Potter movies, but he's been giving sensational performances since John Boorman's The General, and has popped up in Hollywood pictures like Braveheart, AI, Gangs of New York and Green Zone. He's a throwback, in a way, to the old-time Charles Laughton kind of actor, not because he's also a big guy, settled in his flesh, but because he lets his joy in the art of acting inform his performances.  His work, even in very serious roles, puts a smile on your face.

In THE GUARD, Gleeson plays Sergeant Gerry Boyle, a genially unprofessional policeman in a small Irish town.  Boyle isn't corrupt, exactly, but he mostly doesn't give a crap, not about solving crimes and certainly not about following procedure.  (He's perfectly content to let a speeding car go by his observation post until it crashes off a nearby road.)  Boyle doesn't just frequent prostitutes, he imports them from Dublin for cheerfully elaborate fantasies (the girls are the cops).  He finds his own insistent political incorrectness hilarious, and he's a thorn in the side of just about anyone who has to deal with him.

Luckily for audiences, the person who has to deal with him most is another sterling actor:  Don Cheadle as FBI Agent Wendell Everett.  Everett, who hails from Wisconsin by way of the Ivy League, comes to town to hunt a $500M cocaine shipment (or maybe it's $200M--everyone knows the cops exaggerate street value),and he's as horrified by every sentence that comes out of Boyle's mouth as he is disgusted by his work ethic; naturally, this is a buddy comedy.  

Watching Gleeson and Cheadle banter John Michael McDonagh's dialogue back and forth is like witnessing a Wimbledon championship match--each actor knows exactly how far he can push his character's eccentricities, and each is a master at squeezing the maximum amount of sly juice out of every line.  Boyle deliberately provokes Everett just for the sport of it, and Everett knows he's being played, but can't help himself from responding; it's predictable, and irresistible  If the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote had repartee, it might sound like this.

As a movie, The Guard is a fairly insubstantial riff on the Guy Ritchie Lock, Stock and 2 Smoking Barrels/Snatch black comic thriller mode.  (It even features Mark Strong, a Ritchie stalwart, as one of the villains.)  The picture doesn't have the meat of In Bruges, a comic thriller that starred Gleeson with Colin Farrell a few years ago, and which was written and directed by this McDonagh's brother, the celebrated playwright Martin.  John Michael M  hadn't directed a feature before, and his action chops are rudimentary., although the photography by Larry Smith (he shot Eyes Wide Shut) is very attractive  McDonagh knows enough, though, to stand back and let his actors do their thing with his sharp dialogue, and that's all The Guard really needs.

The Guard plays like the pilot for a TV series you'd instantly program into your DVR--it's a procedural, but perfectly cast.  Gleeson and Cheadle bring style and infinite charm to their every scene, and overall, the movie is tremendously entertaining.  These two need to make another film together, as soon as possible.

Pending the arrival of this week's finale, Mike Newell's 2005 HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE may be, on balance, the most satisfying of the series.  It combines first-rate moviemaking with one of J.K. Rowling's most ingeniously constructed, emotionally rich stories--capped, of course, by the unveiling of Ralph Fiennes as the finally fully alive Lord Voldemort.

Newell isn't the cinematic wizard that Alfonso Cuaron is, and visually Goblet of Fire is a bit of a step backwards from Prisoner of Azkaban.  Newell, who started his career in the 1960s, had made such fine films as Donnie Brasco, Four Weddings and a Funeral and Dance With A Stranger, but he wasn't exactly an epic adventure guy; when he tried the genre again after his Potter sojourn, the result was the sad Prince of Persia.  Roger Pratt, who had photographed Chamber of Secrets, returned behind the camera for Goblet of Fire, making for a somewhat more stagier look and more old-fashioned lighting.  In other respects, though, the picture certainly has more drive and snap than the Chris Columbus chapters, with sharp editing by Mick Audsley (who's worked often with Stephen Frears) and score by Patrick Doyle.

Newell handles the action well enough (the dragons and mer-people are extremely convincing, and the living maze quite disturbing).  He also compellingly guides viewers through the complications of the storyline--screenwriter Steve Kloves had his hands full with Goblet of Fire, which could easily have been expanded to 2 full-length films (it's too bad so much of the Quidditch World Cup and the Hagrid/Madame Maxime romance had to be lost).  It would have been easy to tangle the audience in the shifts between Twiwizard Cup action sequences, inter-student conflicts and the overriding Voldemort plot, but Newell and Kloves do a yeoman's job of steering the tale forward.  

Newell's greatest strength is with the actors.  The usual giant cast of British veterans inhabit Goblet, and they're joined by Miranda Richardson (who had starred in Dance With A Stranger), delicious as Rita Skeeter; David Tennant, briefly but scarily vicious as Barty Crouch Jr; and especially Brendan Gleeson, so good as Mad-Eye Mooney that it's too bad subsequent chapters didn't give him more to do.  (And of course there's Robert Pattinson, whose on-screen death became an omen of how successful he'd become as one of the undead.)  Goblet of Fire, though, is most notable as the movie that first showcased how polished its young stars had become.  The Yule Ball storylines allow them (especially Rupert Grint) to show off their comic chops, and Newell gives Emma Watson a lovely little Audrey Hepburn moment as she walks down the stairs at the ball and everyone else in the cast realizes how beautiful she is.  Later on, as the story takes its darker turns, Daniel Radcliffe faces down Ralph Fiennes--Amon Goeth of Schindler's List in all his sneering villainy--and proves himself a worthy adversary.