The Monuments Men

It takes a lot of work to make Bill Murray not remotely interesting. George Clooney obviously spent too much time with his CIA cronies planning the dismemberment of Sudan (South Sudanese now free, how 'bout that?) that he got completely detached from a moviemaking process.

The movie looks like a cheap piece of Cold War propaganda with characters pronouncing poorly written bathetic monologues obviously borrowed from the Voice of America of the "Red Scare" period.  America is a force for universal good, Russians are the cartoonish enemy and Germans are so non-soldierly (children warriors or psychopaths) that they evoke compassion or disdain, rather than being presented as a dangerous foe. Of course, no American philanders, even in Paris, or drinks in excess. The only "our" guys killed are those "furriners" (Brit and Frenchman), who are even more schematic than the majority of characters and their death does not register as a tragedy.

The director of "Good Night and Good Luck" stooped to the level of McCarthy-level agitprop. So what? Christian Socialist Dostoevsky returned from the penal colony as anti-Semitic, Prussian-admiring imperialist. Jacobin General Bonaparte became the Emperor Napoleon and... a Catholic. Power, or the illusion of it, makes wondrous transmutations of character.

Massacres in now "free" Southern Sudan.

Anna Karenina

                                 Keira Knightley as Anna Karenina. Still from the official site of the movie. 

"Tolstoy, you proved with art and talent,

That woman should not make it up

When she is mother, duly married,

Nor with court chamberlain, nor with aide-du-camp."

Epigram by poet Nicolay Nekrasov, Tolstoy's contemporary

Seriously, Tom Stoppard despite his (being a good Czech) disdain for the Russian culture did not do a bad job in translating Tolstoy for a Hollywood screen. Small fault is that he did not understand that Tolstoy hated Karenin and everything he represented but, as a great artist, did not want to succumb to caricature. However, the  most surprising, for somebody living in Britain, is Stoppard's complete lack of understanding of the aristocratic culture. He could read Proust better to understand the difference between "very" and "not very noble" ... Duke. Vronsky family are obviously post-Petrine upstarts. Prince Oblonsky is a Ryurikid and Lowin, as a natural fiancee for a Ryurikid Princess belongs to the lineage of the old boyars (as did Tolstoy himself, though his family's title of Counts was relatively new). Settling him, as director did, in a rich peasant's hut is bizarre. Calling his looks "bourgeois" would be considered a humiliation and result in a duel.