sorana_necula_reset

Dir: Richard Laxton. Starring: Dakota Fanning, Greg Wise, Emma Thompson, Claudia Cardinale, Robbie Coltrane, Julie Walters, Derek Jacobi, Tom Sturridge, David Suchet, James Fox, Russell Tovey. The just-wed John Ruskin and Effie Gray, in the   film   that takes her name, have an early scene that feels like a premonition of all that’s about to go wrong. It’s superficially quite romantic: they’re in a horse-drawn carriage, bustling towards his parents’ home in Denmark Hill, where they’ll reside for the foreseeable future.   The light is perfect, their faces warmly content. But the last beat of the scene is telling. “Close your eyes,” says John (Greg Wise) to Effie (Dakota Fanning), who obliges, giving her husband a perfect portrait. She instantly becomes a picture for his inspection, an object of critique. It’s as if her own gaze, her entire perception of the world, doesn’t count. And so it proves. John’s work is paramount, and Effie, 10 years his junior, dit...

It’s been said of great mimics that they capture not just the voice and the manner of their subjects but their very souls. Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, master impersonators and stars of the new comedy “The Trip to Italy,” are after something less grand and, in many ways, funnier. The movie is a sequel to “The Trip” (2011)—both were directed by Michael Winterbottom—and it repeats the earlier film’s mixed tone of hilarity and melancholia, as well as its absurd premise: the two men (they play themselves) are on an all-expenses-paid trip for the  Observer . Their tough assignment is to drive through beautiful country, eat lavishly, and stay in exquisite small hotels, all so that one or the other can write high-toned culinary drivel for the paper. (They don’t actually know anything about food.) “The Trip” was set in the bleakly magnificent scenery of the hills and moors of the North of England; this film is set mainly along the incomparable coast (Liguria, Amalfi) of Italy. As the men ...

The Beirut beauty salon where most of  “Caramel”  takes place is likely to be a familiar type of establishment, even to viewers who have never been to the Lebanese capital. What the shop lacks in sleekness and chic it makes up for in the kind of friendly, sisterly warmth that could be found, for instance, in  “Beauty Shop,”  the distaff installation in the “Barbershop”  franchise. Ms. Labaki, who also wrote the screenplay with Jihad Hojeily and Rodney Al Haddad, plays Layale, owner of the shop, which is called Si Belle. Like many unmarried women in the Middle East, Layale, in spite of her professional independence, lives with her parents. She is also having an affair with a married man and spends anxious hours waiting for him to call, ignoring the attentions of a handsome traffic policeman who is obviously smitten with her. Women of various shapes, sizes, ages and backgrounds gather to bond and gossip. Their camaraderie is occasionally disrupted by a cri...

Most of ''The Emperor's Club,'' adapted from a short story by Ethan Canin, takes place on the green, pastoral campus of St. Benedict's, an all-male boarding school where the sons of the ruling class are trained in the classics, ethics and the proper knotting of school ties. The time is the mid-1970's, but the most important aspect of the setting is its nostalgic aura of timelessness. Apart from the length of the boys' hair and the sound of a James Gang record being played before curfew, it might as well be the 50's or any decade after the Civil War. Even when the film flashes forward in its second half to the co-educational, multicultural present day, it insists on continuity rather than change. Schools like this, it suggests, are still where power is passed on, character is molded and choices are made that change the lives of teachers and students alike. And movies set in schools like this one are exactly where you expect to see these choic...