I doubt that this is Charles Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby, but I can’t say since I’ve never read the novel.  On its own, however, Douglas McGrath’s film is palatable and admirably directed.  Nearly as dandy as the mature dialogue is Rachel Portman’s soothing score and Ruth Myers’s realistic costumes as all three serve the tale of a good man surrounded by shocking avarice and self-interest.

A measure of charm but not much else, I’m afraid, comes from Charlie Hunnam in the title role, and the same is true of Anne Hathaway as the girl Nicholas loves.  I dislike Jim Broadbent’s crude voice in the part of schoolmaster tyrant, but he himself is convincingly wicked.  Then there’s Christopher Plummer, as Nicholas’s uncle, moving from serviceable to authoritative, and Tom Courtenay is also first-rate.  For the most part the cast is distinguished in this not great but good tragicomic film.

Released in 2002

Cover of Nicholas Nickleby

I said below that Chinatown is the 1970s’ 1937.  The Australian director Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby (2013) is not 2013’s 1922.  It’s fantasyland’s 1922, with its hyperbright visuals, formidable set design, quicksilver editing, etc.  It’s a pretty pleasurable trip from the man who directed Moulin Rouge, complete with Moulin Rouge romanticism, and if it’s style-over-substance, does this really matter so late in the game?  Scott Fitzgerald’s novel has long been a classic, and everyone knows what its themes are.  By this time we might as well see a highly visual Gatsby.

Leonardo DiCaprio (Jay Gatsby) is fine for Luhrmann’s purposes.  Tobey McGuire, as Nick Carraway, is an impeccable, likable innocent.  The women in the film don their gay apparel (that is, their dazzling costumes), and Carey Mulligan and Elizabeth Debicki look fabulous.  The acting of both is effectual, even though Miss Mulligan is not really the Daisy Buchanan of the novel, which is Luhrmann’s fault.  He co-wrote the screenplay.  As Tom Buchanan Joel Edgerton starts out phony, but doesn’t stay there.

One wishes the writing in this glitzy entertainment had been consistently convincing but, at any rate, Luhrmann does respect Fitzgerald’s story—almost as much as he respects . . . glitzy entertainment.

Leonardo DiCaprio (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Chinatown (1974) is a genuinely great pop movie, film noir par excellence.

This is the 1970s’ 1937, and how interesting it is!  True, the film’s ending is too grim and ugly, but it serves to remind us that the world of crime is more horrifying than noir was ever allowed to tell us.

Superlative work from Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway.

Chinatown (1974 film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Directed and scripted by Terence Davies, The Deep Blue Sea (2012), based on Terence Rattigan’s 1952 play, is a thematically rich enterprise about a woman who leaves her older husband for another man, only to be rejected by him after the woman’s failed suicide attempt.  The film provides a message regarding the frequent failure of shallow people (such as the lover, Freddie Page) to understand those whom they love, or “love.”  It also presents a woman, Hester Collyer, who does what all of us do:  She lives strictly according to her physical and psychological needs, both positive and negative.  And, oh, how it alienates her lover!  As I said, the film is thematically rich.

It begins with Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto accompanying Davies’ images, music which shortly becomes inappropriate because it is too lovely and sweeping.  What follows, however, is limpid and disturbing film drama, slow-moving but memorable.  Rachel Weisz is darkly sensitive, poised but trembling, and not at all butch as Hester.  Tom Hiddleston and Simon Russell Beale are also flavorously true.

The Deep Blue Sea (2011 film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)