Reviews

Deriving its title from "La Vie en Rose" (one of the most famous French songs in history), "Ma Vie en Rose" is a courageous film that presents a controversial topic in a truly captivating, childlike light.

Ludovic Fabre is convinced that he was meant to be born a little girl. With all his seven-year-old wisdom, he calmly explains that his male gender is simply "a scientific error," one that he will soon correct. But instead of becoming female, Ludo becomes prey. His schoolmates tease him, his principal expels him, and his soccer teammates beat him up. Ludo's two older brothers, who are on the same soccer team, do nothing but watch.

Throughout the film, the true colors of Ludo's brothers and of everyone around him are revealed as they each try to deal with his behavior. Ludo's teacher makes an admirable speech about respecting those different from you. Ludo and his eccentric grandmother grow closer. But a terrible rift develops between Ludo and his seemingly-loving mother, Hanna. When her family is living in a comfortable neighborhood and her husband has a good job, Hanna makes every possible excuse for Ludo's gender confusion. She lets him grow his hair long and even wear a skirt, and when Pierre, Ludo's father, makes the mere suggestion to cut their son's long hair, Hanna snaps, "Well, why don't we just crucify him?" But in a powerful and painful shock, Hanna is revealed to be only a fair-weather friend to her son. After Pierre is fired (apparently because of Ludo's attempts to "marry" the boss's son), Hanna suddenly turns on Ludo, screaming and snapping at him, blaming him for all the family's problems. Both Ludo and the viewer feel completely crushed and betrayed. After Hanna physically abuses him in a scene of scary intensity, Ludo runs away, and the ending that follows is truly remarkable.

"Voici l'anglais avec son sang froid habituel." This French saying -- roughly translated as, "Here come the English with their usual cold-bloodedness" -- has never been more fitting than in Alfred Hitchcock's "Dial M for Murder."

After he discovers that his wife Margot has been cheating on him with Mark Halliday, an American author of murder mysteries, Tony Wendice spends a year stalking his old schoolmate Charles Swann, then blackmails him into killing Margot. Tony has devised a complicated strategy for the perfect murder, but he plans it out down to the most minute details so much that when a few of those little details go wrong, the entire plan is botched, and Swann ends up dead instead of Margot. But Tony refuses to be discouraged and immediately hatches another scheme to have Margot convicted of Swann's murder and sentenced to death. It works, but as Margot's execution date approaches, her lover Mark Halliday begins putting his skills as an author of detective stories to work to save Margot and uncover the truth.

While this movie may prove that there's no such thing as the perfect murder, it also proves that there is such thing as a perfect murder mystery, one that's gripping, scary, and smart, and all completely without any nudity or profanity. To me, the most interesting thing about "Dial M for Murder" was the impeccably polite behavior and iceberg calm that was maintained throughout. Sure, Tony is trying to kill his wife without getting caught, but that's no reason for anyone to get very upset, or even raise their voices. When Margot discovers of Tony's true intentions, for example, she simply says, "I don't seem to be able to feel anything" (!!). When one of the characters does get mad, it's more likely to be because no one offered to take his coat than because of the murders and attempted murders that are flying around. And after his plots are finally revealed by Mark Halliday and some clever policemen, Tony simply offers his wife -- the one he has just made two attempts to have killed! -- a glass of brandy. She accepts!

How fine is the line between fantasy and reality? And if we unleash our imaginations, just how far will they take us? These are two questions explored by Marc Foster's beautiful "Finding Neverland." JM Barrie is a lonely author stuck in a loveless marriage to a social-climbing wife and a suffocating world of adult primness until he finds creative muses – four of them, to be exact – in young brothers George, Jack, Peter, and Michael Davies. Though he also strikes up an instant friendship with their beautiful widowed mother Sylvia (Kate Winslet), it is clear that her sons are the real magnet. With his powerful imagination, Barrie creates a series of magical adventures for the boys ... until Sylvia's failing health and eventual death intrude upon their world of make-believe.

The weepy scenes are many, but there are definitely laughs in-between. In one scene, Barrie is asleep in bed with a tuft of blondish hair under the covers beside him, assumed to be his wife until the covers are thrown back to reveal his brilliant pet dog, Porthos. (Besides changing his breed from St. Bernard to Newfoundland, the movie took almost no liberties with Porthos.) Earlier, Barrie commands Porthos to stand on his hind legs, takes hold of his paws, and says in the most passionate, serious voice, "Dance with me!" I don't know how Johnny Depp did it without laughing! The two share a merry waltz in the middle of the park. Throughout the film, Depp's Barrie manages to keep his feet on the ground while his head is in the clouds, but in real life, Barrie's overactive imagination often gave him problems in distinguishing fantasy from reality.

Though Depp is brilliant as usual, he is nearly acted off-screen by young Freddie Highmore, whose ability to convey so many powerful emotions through a single glance or sigh is simply amazing. His glowing performance makes it crystal clear why Barrie chooses Peter as the namesake of his greatest masterpiece, the boy who never grew up. Though Charles Frohman (Dustin Hoffman), Barrie's grudging producer, is skeptical throughout the film that "Peter Pan" will be a hit – even calling it "my nightmare" on opening night – its instant success soon eclipses Barrie's recent theater flops. It would later go onto eclipse his forty other plays and dominate his life, but that's a depressing tale for another time. (In real life, Frohman was devoted to making Peter Pan a hit, and Barrie was the one full of doubt.) At a private performance of the play for the Davies family, Peter Pan turns to them and asks the famous plea to clap their hands. The four boys are all too awestruck to clap ... until their stuffy grandmother, who has spent the entire movie disapproving of Barrie and his fun with the boys, positively bangs her hands together to save Tinkerbell's life. More than anything, her actions capture the magical spell that "Peter Pan" still holds over any audience. I was clapping my hands, too. The movie truly made me believe.

Look closely and you will spot an actual member of the Davies family. In reality, there was a fifth Davies brother, Nicholas, called Nico, born in 1903. Nico married in 1926 and welcomed his only child, Laura, in 1928. Laura appears in "Finding Neverland." Just after the first performance of "Peter Pan," she is the theater patron who says to Freddie Highmore (playing her real-life uncle), "This is Peter Pan! How wonderful!" She is credited under her married name, Laura Duguid. I would like to add that I have read several biographies of JM Barrie, beginning since long before this movie was released, and that the rumors of pedophilia are totally untrue. Barrie loved the Davies children platonically, not sexually, and both of the boys's parents considered him a friend – though they were sometimes bewildered by the author's oddities, and quite understandably so.

Even longtime Shirley fans may be surprised by "Now and Forever." The movie was filmed with Paramount studios – not with Shirley's parent company Twentieth Century Fox – in 1934, before Fox producer Darryl Zanuck had perfected the successful Shirley formula (cute songs, cold hearts for her to melt, young couples for her to play cupid to, happy endings). Thus "Now and Forever" falls into the category of a Shirley vehicle without the standard Shirley story. It is an awkward position for any movie, but this impressive, talented cast makes it work.

Gary Cooper and Carole Lombard star as fun-loving, irresponsible con artists Jerry and Toni Day. The only thing that this devoted yet dysfunctional duo seems to hate more than being together is being apart. When they are suddenly landed with custody of Jerry's young daughter Penny (Shirley Temple), it is Toni – and not Penny, as many believe – who persuades Jerry to give up his criminal career. But Jerry flounders at his desk job, and desperate to prove that he can provide for his new family, he soon returns to thieving and dishonesty. In a standard Shirley device, Penny tries to melt the heart of crusty curmudgeon Felix Evans, the victim of one of Jerry's cons, but her attempt fails, for Evans is revealed to be a con artist himself, and he blackmails Jerry into helping him steal jewels. The drama, gunfight, death, and sorrow that follow all make this film a very unusual one for Little Miss Sunshine. There is no happy ending, no dancing, and only one song sequence (the cute number "The World Owes Me a Living").

But this does not mean that Shirley fans should avoid "Now and Forever." Rather, it's divergence from the usual Shirley story make it more interesting and memorable than many of her other films. But beware: You should avoid colorized version of this film, and see it in black-and-white if you can. The color is bright, garish, and unrealistic, and in many scenes, Shirley's famous curls are actually red instead of blonde. Yikes!

"Sparkle, Shirley, sparkle!" Gertrude Temple cried between takes whenever her little daughter's energy flailed. As Ching-Ching, an American girl living in China, Shirley sparkles, all right; she just never dazzles. Little Ching-Ching is full of happy grins and spouts plenty of wise Chinese proverbs, but not once does she break into one of the delightful song-and-dance routines that make Shirley's other films so memorable. She only dances very briefly in this movie, and it is a great disappointment to fans who want to see the tapping that made her such a world famous star.

Another disappointment is the absence of memorable music. Shirley's song "You've Gotta Smile to be Happy" showcases her impressive talent for mimickry -- she channels Eddie Cantor and Ginger Rogers, among others -- but her other two songs, "Goodnight My Love" and "That's What I Want for Christmas," completely lack the snap and fun of catchy classics like "On the Good Ship Lollipop" (Bright Eyes), "Animal Crackers in My Soup" (Curly Top), "At the Codfish Ball" (Captain January), "Oh My Goodness" (Poor Little Rich Girl), or "The Old Kent Road" (The Little Princess).

What sparkle Shirley does achieve is snuffed by the dreary adult performances. Ching-Ching's rural guardians, the Kruikshanks, and her pal Sun Lo are almost laughable. Alice Faye's character, Susan Parker, is clearly in love with Ching-Ching, but that's about the only emotion she seems to have. Susan has been harboring doubts about her engagement to the very contrived, cardboard character Richard Hope -- largely because of Richard's sickly enmeshment with his mother, played to meddlesome perfection by Helen Westley -- when she begins to feel a budding romance for Ching-Ching's rich, handsome guardian, Thomas Randall. Her choice between the two men is supposed to seem dramatic and difficult, but instead Susan only comes off as indecisive and wishy-washy. In another Shirley film, "Poor Little Rich Girl," Alice Faye displays a natural chemistry with her on screen husband Jack Haley, but in "Stowaway," Susan's relationships with both are Richard and Thomas are severely lacking, and together these three adults manage to display all the passion of a dentist office. Arthur Treacher does add some charming and unexpected wit in his small role as Thomas's butler, but if you want to see the full extent of Temple and Treacher's talents, watch them together in "The Little Princess," but not "Stowaway."