Woody Allen's latest has a terrific cast, setting and plot set-up: Two friends on vacation in Spain (Scarlett Johannson, Rebecca Hall) fall for the same man (Javier Bardem), unaware that his ex-wife (Penelope Cruz), with whom he has a tempestuous relationship, is coming back on the scene.

REVIEW BY DAVID DENBY, NEW YORKER

oody Allen’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” has a natural, flowing vitality to it, a sun-drenched splendor that never falters. Two young American women go to Barcelona for the summer—Vicky (Rebecca Hall), who is bright, skeptical, and cautious, and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson), more adventurous than her friend but unformed and easily dissatisfied, a seeker without a lodestar. In the magnificent city, they meet Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), who is incapable of spending a night alone. Bardem’s natural-born lover—a painter, by trade—is as devastating as his natural-born killer in “No Country for Old Men.” He’s almost criminally attractive—soft-spoken and erudite, decent in his way but relentless, a Don Juan brought back to life as an English-speaking charmer. Both women get involved with him, and the movie becomes a complicated triangle that forms, breaks apart, and reforms; it’s also a lengthy exploration of the eternal struggle between security and passion, dependency and anarchic freedom. Allen can be literal-minded about his thematic polarities, but, in this movie, he has put actors with first-class temperament on the screen, and his writing is both crisp and ambivalent: he works everything out with a stringent thoroughness that still allows room for surprise. And, through all the twists and turns, the ochre beauty of Barcelona (as photographed by Javier Aguirresarobe) plays a major role. The characters make maybe one or two more touristic stops than is necessary, but it’s a minor flaw. You can feel Allen’s excitement in the sensual atmosphere. Spain! A seventy-two-year-old man has warmed his bones.
Allen uses a narrator (Christopher Evan Welch) to explain who the women are, and, at first, it seems as if the director is just filling in backstory and telling us things we might have noticed ourselves. But this narrator does for Allen what narrators once did for Truffaut—he allows him to skip merely functional exposition and jump from highlight to highlight. Cristina first eyes Juan Antonio in an art gallery. Later, she is sitting with Vicky in a restaurant, and the artist, dining in the same place, comes over and suggests, with virtually no preliminaries, that the three fly to a small city not far from Barcelona for a weekend of sex. “Life is short, dull, full of pain,” he says. Why not seize any opportunity for pleasure? He’s provocatively teasing the Americans, but he’s neither a cynic nor a user. He gives good value; that’s why he’s a heartbreaker. Vicky, who appears to be composed of nothing but common sense, falls in love after one night, and realizes that her fiancé, a New York corporate lawyer whose horizons don’t expand beyond business, golf, and a nice house in Westchester, will never excite her in the same way. But Cristina is the one better suited for Juan Antonio, and she enters into a prolonged affair.
The way the women play against Bardem is fascinating. Rebecca Hall, a twenty-six-year-old English actress from a theatrical family (her father is the director Peter Hall), is tall, with a long face and a wide smile—she can look radiant one minute and neurotic, tense, and gloomy the next, as if she were channelling Allen’s stumbling anxieties (a common reaction in actors working with him for the first time). With Bardem, Hall goes back and forth between desire and panic, and she’s touching as none of Allen’s other female characters have been recently. Scarlett Johansson, who is still only twenty-three, has appeared in an amazing number of movies. There’s no mystery why: she’s charming and also pliant and openly sexual in a way that obviously pleases male directors. She’s at a stage in which her sensuality is more developed than anything else in her personality, but that configuration works for her this time. Going to bed with an attractive man is not going to tell Cristina all that she needs to know about herself. Allen has successfully captured a spirit of restless indeterminacy. Does Cristina have any artistic gifts? Before the summer is over, she begins to stir.
The movie is largely set among artists, in a kind of restaurant-and-studio bohemia (still a possible way of life in Barcelona, perhaps). What happens in this world when you have more promise than you can fulfill is made evident, with tragicomic results, by the figure of Juan Antonio’s former wife, Maria Elena (Penélope Cruz), who is highly intelligent and talented but so tempestuous that she creates havoc wherever she goes. (She’s like a Frida Kahlo without the discipline to work.) The American women yearn for something more than bourgeois stability, yet Allen means for us to understand that a life of passion alone can lead to craziness. Maria Elena is an enactor of her own unhappiness; she makes accusations, steps across sexual boundaries, pulls out knives and guns. Cruz has never done anything like this: with her downturned mouth and wild black hair, she looks witchy and unbeautiful. For Vicky and Cristina, the divorced couple are a vision of Heaven and Hell at the same time. Juan Antonio and Maria Elena can’t get along, but their rebarbative effect on each other produces some good paintings. Is the art that emerges worth all the mess? The answer Allen offers is a tentative yes. One is meant to emerge from “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” believing that happiness may be elusive, even impossible, but that life has a richness greater than one’s personal satisfaction. There’s something stronger in the air—a largeness of spirit, as well as abundant physical beauty. The characters may suffer, but the filmmaker exults.

 
With: Bill Maher, Julie Maher, Kathie Maher, Andrew Newberg, John Westcott, Sen. Mark Pryor, Jose LuisSteve Berg, Ken Ham, Francis Collins, Jeremiah Cummings, Mohammad Hourani, Father Reginald Foster, Mohammed Junas Gatfar, Rabbi Dovid Weiss, Rabbi Schmuel Strauss, Dean Hamer, Rev. Terre van Beverren, Propa-Gandhi, Ray Suarez, Geert Wilders, Fatima Elatik, Father George Coyne, Tal Bachman, Bill Gardiner, Larry Charles.
(English, Spanish, Arabic dialogue)
 "Skeptics unite: You only have to lose your inhibitions. That, in sum, is the underlying message of Bill Maher and Larry Charles' brilliant, incendiary RELIGILOUS,  in which comedian/talkshow host Maher inquires of the religious faithful and finds them severely wanting. By providing an example to other non-believers, Maher is, um, hell-bent on launching an even more aggressive conversation on the legitimacy of religion than he has on HBO's 'Real Time With Bill Maher.' The only recent comparable example of entertainers venturing into such serious cultural-political territory is Penn & Teller's Showtime series, 'Bullshit!,' which skewers sacred cows from a skeptical-libertarian perspective. Charles' previous smash, Borat, used funnyman Sacha Baron Cohen to make satirical/political points, but the particular intensity and seriousness of Maher's project are nearly unprecedented. Indeed, its arrival shortly after the death of George Carlin -- a profound influence on Maher's standup act and politics -- suggests the kind of film Carlin might have made in his prime.                                                                                                                                          "Standing at the spot where believers say Armageddon will be waged -- Megiddo, Israel -- Maher opens his case with a grim warning that those who believe in a so-called 'end of days' may be making a self-fulfilling prophecy. Scene also suggests the considerable globe-trotting Charles, Maher and his crew did for the film, from heartland America to Amsterdam to the Holy Land to the Vatican, and also establishes Charles and lenser Anthony Hardwick's method of covering every segment with two cameras.                                                     "Maher devotes the first hour to Christian faith, weighted toward evangelism, with amusing personal recollections of growing up Catholic with a Jewish mom. Not missing a beat, he even interviews his mom, Julie (who died after filming), and sister, Kathy, in the New Jersey church they attended, uncovering exactly why his parents left the church -- their use of birth control.  In a string of frank, often hilarious but always well-considered conversations with various Christians, Maher incisively asks them exactly what skeptics always ponder about religion in general and Christianity in particular. To John Westcott of Exchange Ministries, which tries to 'convert' gay men, Maher questions, given that Jesus never once talked about homosexuality, why is it such an issue for New Testament Christians? To churchgoers in Raleigh, N.C., he notes there's no firm proof that Jesus Christ ever actually lived. Perhaps most profoundly, he asks Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), a devout evangelical, 'Why is faith good?'                                                                                                                                       "To the film's credit, Maher never engages in Michael Moore-style gotcha tactics, but rather asks questions that raise more questions, in the form of a Socratic dialogue. To believers expecting a blind hatchet job, this will prove both thought-provoking and a bit disarming; skeptics may be surprised (as Maher is) by the occasionally smart replies to his queries.  Pic gets in satirical digs at all faiths -- and yields some of its biggest laughs -- with clever inserts of clips from movies and other sources spinning off the topic at hand, be it fantastical Biblical tales, Mormon beliefs or the number of empires that have invaded Israel. Snarky subtitles are often inserted underneath conversations, meant to undercut the interview subject.                                             "Latter section turns to Judaism and Islam, of which Maher is an equal-opportunity critic. Jewish laws around the Sabbath come in for some heavy ribbing, while the current wave of violence by wings of Islam is faced head-on. Chats with Muslims, from rapper Propa-Gandhi to scholars at the holiest Jerusalem sites, expose an internal debate raging among contemporary Muslims. While he examines the Big Three religions of the West at length (Eastern faiths get a pass in "Religulous"), Maher even gets in some choice stabs at Mormonism (whose tenets may astound those not in the know) and Scientology.                                                                          "Ending minutes, though, will catch auds up short: Suddenly, the laughs die down, and as in his closing monologues on 'Real Time,' Maher turns deadly serious with a final statement that will stir raging arguments in theater lobbies.                                                                                                                                                          "Considering he was once a minor comic on the circuit and a supporting thesp in generally awful film comedies, Maher's transformation into one of America's sharpest social critics is remarkable. He takes no script credit, but his periodic monologues to the camera are undeniably written, and written well. Charles basically lets Maher do his thing, and does little other than record scenes as they happen. Tech credits of significant note belong to editors Jeffrey Groth and Christian Kinnard, who have assembled what must have been a daunting pile of footage into a notably sharp and smooth-running feature that never lags for a second. Behind the scenes, the research team of Robyn Adams, Chelsea Barnard and Sophie Charlessupport Maher with considerable data."

  "CHOKE is another weird fable about masculine identity from Fight Club novelist Chuck Palahniuk, brought to the screen by actor-turned-director Clark Gregg in a tone that could be called 'screwball raunch.' Where Fight Club asked if it’s possible for men to define themselves in a modern world that has no room for their drive toward violence,  CHOKE  focuses on the other side of the male id: sexual adventurism, as embodied by Victor Mancini (Sam Rockwell), an 'historical interpreter' for a colonial museum-cum-theme-park and a man deeply addicted to sex. Like Fight Club, it's a thought-provoking work with narrow general audience appeal. Unlike Fight Club (which failed at the box office before finding an enduring audience on DVD), CHOKE is also a film with a modest budget whose distributor actually knows they've got a cult title on their hands. Expect everyone involved to do a better job getting the word out and an appropriately-scaled audience into the moviehouse, using Fight Club and a new soundtrack by indie rock legends Radiohead as sells.                           As defined by CHOKE, a sex-addict is someone who has to do it—compulsively and usually perversely—no matter where they are or what the risk. As in Fight Club, Victor resorts to a customized 12-step program, but he’s stuck on step three because of intimacy issues that can only be eluded by a quick relapse into orgasm’s endorphin rush.  Most of Victor’s problems flow from his complex relationship with his mother (Anjelica Huston), a sociopathic nonconformist now hospitalized in the early stages of dementia. In Victor’s childhood, Mom was constantly stealing Victor from foster homes and forcing him onto the road to share her manic exultations. Victor both adores and reviles her, and he’s never forgiven himself for the way he escaped her: by intentionally choking on a meal in a public restaurant, using the attention this drew to get mom nailed for kidnapping. Twenty-plus years later, Victor is still choking on food in public places—a con artist’s scam to fleece the good Samaritans who take a parental interest after they save him, but also a metaphor for his still-stifled life. But then his mom’s new doctor turns out to be a beautiful woman (Kelly Macdonald), and Victor is forced to confront all his fears of intimacy and the misshapen nature of his emotional life.                                     CHOKE  traces Victor’s comedic journey with an unrepentant libertine panache worthy of Aristophanes, François Rabelais or Henry Fielding. Where Fight Club director David Fincher gave a glistening noir sheen to Palahniuk’s comedic visions, Gregg opts for sitcom sunniness, as if to say that Victor and his hilarious sexual adventurism aren’t as weird as we take them for. In CHOKE sex is inherently ridiculous, perversion isn’t oddball stuff but a universal human principle and Victor is far more an everyman than he is a de Sade. Gregg is aided in achieving this oddly uplifting viewpoint by the great Sam Rockwell, at last allowed to hold the screen again in a movie tailored to his special gift. A brilliant comic actor rather than a comedian, Rockwell is able to move from farce to drama without letting you see the shifts. There’s a danger and magnetism in those hangdog eyes that makes Rockwell work as both blue-collar Don Juan and Fate’s punching bag, and his range and focus are critical to keeping ’s diffuse blend of satire, sexual burlesque and Freudian melodrama from flying apart. There are quibbles to be made about  CHOKE here and there—budgetary seams that show, inelegant transitions to and from flashback scenes and Anjelica Huston’s oddly stagy dialogue as an arch character that might be easier to swallow if Julie Christie hadn’t just depicted a similar mental degeneration in Away from Her with such naturalistic grace. But CHOKE ’s virtues far outweigh its flaws. Gregg has achieved something unique—part Wes Anderson, part Mel Brooks—and a rare American comedy that is simultaneously brainy and unafraid to be in touch with the human body.  CHOKE doesn’t always go down easy, but there’s a cult audience out there that certainly won’t want to spit this one out. "(Ray Greene, Boxoffice)

     "Georgiana Spencer (Keira Knightley) was a mere 17 years old when the Duke of Devonshire (Ralph Fiennes) began courting her — not that the ways of courtliness were among His Grace's skill sets. It is hard to imagine, in fact, what commonly recognizable human traits — aside from a passion for his dogs — this dour, emotionally constipated 18th-century man possessed. Essentially, he was doing a deal with Georgiana's mother (Charlotte Rampling), who has assured him that the Spencer women are historically adept at producing male heirs. And the Duke, whose other negative attributes included stupidity, believed her.                              "You can imagine their wedding night. The girl is required to lie back and think of England — or at least that vast portion of its acreage that is the Duke's domain. What he may be thinking of is unimaginable to us. Essentially, he is grimly standing to stud. Alas, Georgiana proves incapable for the longest time of producing male children. She is, however, capable of producing gossip. She is a fashion plate, a gambling addict, a drinker, a fiercely loving mother and, even though women did not have the franchise, a shrewd participant in Whig politics. At a certain level, THE DUCHESS is a parable, possibly even a fantasy, about female empowerment.                                                                                                                                                   "Fortunately for us, however, it does not linger often or long at that level. As movies like this go — stately homes constantly arustle with the sound of lingerie falling gently to the parquet floors — it is quite a lively, and even occasionally a rather touching, piece. The Duchess takes in a young woman named Bess (Hayley Atwell) who is being abused by her brutish husband. In due course, she becomes the Duke's mistress, living more or less comfortably with the Duke and Georgiana. (It is a very big house.) Georgiana also takes a lover: a rising politician, Charles Grey (Dominic Cooper), who will one day father her out-of-wedlock child and, eventually, become prime minister. The film is refreshingly cool about the scandalous activities it recounts. Its three screenwriters neither totally neglect nor totally embrace period language, so the dialogue has a pleasantly straightforward quality. Something similar can be said for Saul Dibb's direction. He's a relative newcomer to feature films, but he's neither overawed nor of a mind to be satirical about the stately homes his characters inhabit — or, for that matter, about their costumes, entertainments or taste in home furnishings. His manner is that of a reserved realist, and that keeps our attention focused where it should be — on the convolutions of plot and character. His actors are not distracted by the quaint or the arcane. Nor are we.                                              "The players are uniformly good, but a special word must be said for Fiennes, whose portrayal of physical awkwardness and painful taciturnity never begs either for laughs or for sympathy. He is, to borrow the title of a touchstone modernist novel, a man without qualities, a creature who might fall over were he not propped up by the invisible scaffolding of tradition, manners and his aristocrat's utterly unexamined sense of perfect entitlement. He doesn't have to think because no one has ever asked him to, and sometimes you see in this performance a dim, sad restlessness, a desire to rectify than condition, that he cannot manage. If thoughts of Prince Charles stray into your mind as you watch His Grace, that's your business. The same is true of Georgiana, who is the ancestor of Princess Di, except, that in the 18th century, her brain cells were not yet completely replaced by air. She conveys a nice sense of an untutored woman trying to embrace the world beyond the bounds of her class, while not being harassed by it — or by the tabloids, which existed in primitive form in those days, too.

"THE DUCHESS, however, does not insist on such analogies; they're there for you if you want to find them. Mostly it trusts the intricacies of its story to hold your interest. And it does, with casual ease and unself-conscious style and wit. It has been some time since a period piece has breathed so easily."