ON SCREEN

Margot at the Wedding

Starring Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jack Black
R, 92 min. (Paramount Vantage)
****

If you have minor disagreements with your sister or mother, see Margot at the Wedding to discover how much worse you could have it. Nicole Kidman's Margot is a master of manipulation and passive-aggressiveness. A successful writer who travels to her seaside childhood home for the wedding of her sister (Leigh) to amiable doofus Black, Margot psychologically castrates almost everyone in her path, including her adolescent son. Writer-director Noah Baumbach displays a rich vein of dark humor, making the movie feel like an East Coast version of Crimes of the Heart, including lines like “When you were a baby, I wouldn't let anyone else hold you. That may have been a mistake.” While the film doesn't connect with the raw power of Baumbach's autobiographical The Squid and the Whale—there's a diseased tree that has Metaphor Alert all over it—anyone who loves Kidman or messed-up family dynamics won't want to miss it. —ALONSO DURALDE

The Walker

Starring Woody Harrelson, Lauren Bacall, Lily Tomlin
R, 108 minutes (ThinkFilm)
****

Of Paul Schrader's many achievements as a writer-director, he's probably best known for his “night trilogy” of films about lonely, alienated men who do their work when the sun goes down: Taxi Driver, American Gigolo and Light Sleeper. Schrader attempts to extend the formula to a gay “walker” (Harrelson) for Washington, D.C., society matrons. Harrelson's Carter Page III does his best not to get involved with governmental politics, preferring instead to focus on his position of ruler of the roost at a weekly card game with power wives Bacall, Tomlin, and Kristin Scott Thomas. When Scott Thomas finds her lover's dead body, Harrelson shields her from scandal by telling the police he found the corpse; natch, he winds up at the center of a murderous conspiracy. Harrelson's Huckleberry Hound accent and look-how-queeny-I'm-acting performance keeps us from caring, and it's hard to figure out why he's putting himself through the wringer for Scott Thomas, who hardly seems to deserve it. —A.D.

LIMITED RUN

E.T. THE EXTRA- TERRESTRIAL 25th Anniversary Screening

The encounter between a friendly alien visitor and two distinct groups of human beings—adults and children—tugs the heart strings. Samuel Goldwyn Theater. Thurs., Nov. 29. 7:30 p.m. $3-$5. 310/247-3000 www.oscars.org/events.

THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY

Filmmaker Julian Schnabel won the “Best Director” award at this year's Cannes film festival for this film based on the true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the charismatic editor-in-chief of the French fashion magazine Elle. LACMA. Mon., Nov. 26. 7:30 p.m. $9. 323/857-6010. www.lacma.org.

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA

Director David Lean's timeless masterpiece features a stellar cast, including Omar Sharif, Anthony Quinn, Jack Hawkins, Claude Rains and Alec Guinness. Egyptian Theatre. Fri., Nov. 23. 7:30 p.m. www.americancinematheque.com.

ITALIAN STALLION

Before he was Rocky, he was the Italian Stallion! Sylvester Stallone's first film was Party at Kitty and Stud's, a sexploitation movie shot in 1970 when he was 24. The film was never released, but after the success of Rocky it was re-edited and released as Italian Stallion. Nuart Theatre. Fri., Nov. 30. Midnight. 310/479-3003. www.landmarktheatres.com.

Worth Repeating

The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone [1961]

Vivien Leigh, in her penultimate film role, stars as Karen Stone, an aging stage actress and recent widow whose career is seemingly over due to the unfortunate reality that she is fast approaching 50 and the public has deemed her too old for the roles that she still insists on playing. Mrs. Stone, left with a vast income, takes an impressive apartment in Rome, and begins to navigate, the narrator tells us, the “dark corners of her mind” that she had ignored in the past.

As the film begins Karen Stone is visited by the Contessa (Lotte Lenya) and the young swarthy lothario Paolo di Leo (Warren Beatty, in a role that must be seen, as well as heard, to be believed). The Contessa is quite an amazing character, as she's part social grand dame, yet simultaneously all pimp, who farms out young men to lonely and loaded women of a certain age, and it is Karen Stone that the Contessa has set her dollar sign filled eyes upon.

While there is a definite line of misogyny throughout the film, what with the notion that a woman's life is up as she begins to go gray, and that any hint of sexuality at this point in her life will lead her to her doom, the film is a must see for its bravery in its blatant depiction of a certain kind of human need. And if you like train wrecks, there's always Warren's amazingly imprecise Italian accent as the prototypical gigolo, and to a lesser extent, Jill St. John as an American starlet on the make for both a career and a man.—ALONSO DURALDE

HOMO MUST

THE WALKER

Woody Harrelson plays a popular Washington D.C. gay confidant to some of the capitol's leading socialites in this contemporary drama. Kristin Scott Thomas, Lauren Bacall and Lily Tomlin co-star as the privileged wives of powerful men who find solace in “the walker’s” wit. Rigler Theatre at The Egyptian. Wed., Dec. 5. 7:30 p.m. www.outfest.org.

DVD Throwdown

CLASSIC VS. CLICHé

When I was four years old my parents divorced and both decided they were too young to raise a child. So Raggedy Anne and I were packed up and sent to live with my paternal grandparents in the country. Of course with me being as sweet as banana pudding, my city dwelling maternal grandparents also wanted a hand in my upbringing. So I would spend every other weekend in their city house with it's postage stamp front yard next door to the Episcopal Church. On Sundays my grandmother would “tsk-tsk” under her breath at those “misguided” churchgoers as she backed her Cadillac down the driveway and drove us across town to Southside Southern Baptist where the “true” gospel was spread. On alternate Sundays I was bustled into the hard pews of the Church of the Blessed Sacrament by my devout Catholic country grandmother—just one of many bones of contention between the two women of my formative years.

These two women, so different and to this day, years after their deaths, still the most influential and guiding forces in my life. From one I learned the value of hard work: how to cook, how to sew, how to remove blood stains (a valued lesson in the South), how to shell butter beans, how to grow tomatoes, how to honor your heritage. From the other I learned a great appreciation for beauty: prize-winning roses, lemonade in cut glass pitchers, the proper way to set (or “lay” as she always said) a table, classical music, and fine art. I may have come from a “broken” home but no one ever made me feel as complete as my grandmothers.

So with my obvious bias to grandmas I fell instantly in love with our first film A Very Serious Person from Wolfe Video. This is the story of a young gay boy who lives with his terminally ill grandmother in a very posh New York City (very Eloise) and the last summer they spend together in their beach house at the Jersey Shore. The legendary Charles Busch, who stars as male nurse Jan, co-wrote and directed this story and he is truly wonderful, but the standout is redheaded P.J. Verhoest as the sensitive grandson Gil. Gil is the type of gay boy who'd much rather pass the summer days in his room surrounded by the magic of the familiar (his colored pencils, notebooks, and posters of old movie stars) then have their spell of security broken by outside interference like swimming lessons. Gil is me.
From serious to seriously silly, up next is Coffee Date from TLA Releasing. The story of straight, uptight, white-bread Todd who becomes friends with flamingly gay Kelly and then being assumed by all his straight friends that he too is gay. Amusing? Yes. Heartfelt, real or groundbreaking? No. The main characters are broad sketches of straight and gay stereotypes while the supporting characters are all competing to be kookier than the last. Low budget, a little lowbrow, and a definite low score.

So, the winner is obvious, right? A Very Serious Person takes the crown of this Throwdown without breaking a sweat. As Jan says “Only common people sweat. I have pity for low class people with no control of their sweat glands.” Or as my grandmother would say to those lost churchgoers of so long ago, “Tsk-tsk. How truly sad to try so hard and achieve so little.”
—GEORGE SKINNER