Control as Curtis.

Joyless Division
Anton Corbijn’s gorgeous Ian Curtis biopic loses the man

Control +++½ SAM RILEY, SAMANTHA MORTON THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY, TBD

The Darjeeling
Limited ++++

OWEN WILSON, ADRIEN BRODY

FOX SEARCHLIGH T, R

Wes Anderson’s whimsy gets

a little heavy—a good thing

Never afraid to be too cute,

filmmaker Wes Anderson here

literally saddles his grieving

characters with a lot of baggage.

Banged up after their father’s

death, three brothers ( Wilson,

Brody, and Jason Schwartzman)

embark on a spiritual journey in

India with the old man’s suitcases

around their slumped shoulders.

The luggage credit goes to

Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton;

Anderson’s not afraid to be too

chic, either, and the pinks and

greens of the subcontinent suit

his dashing style. Better yet, the

dense elegance of The Darjeeling

Limited manages to enrich the

substance of its take on trust

and family. Anderson worked

similar thematic turf in The Royal

Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic

With Steve Zissou, but they only

boiled down to lightweight fun,

while this meditation, however

dizzily madcap, doesn’t shy

away from the serious.

Clooney does Clayton.

wolfish attorneys with equal

parts rusted cynicism and golden

honor. As if this were a travesty of a ⁰⁰⁷ film, he gets heckled

out of a poker game in his first

scene, and then barks and pleads

like Robert Redford in one of the ’⁷⁰s conspiracy thrillers the

movie improves on. He’s also not unlike Bogart in the ’40s—cool,

sad, and tragic, a classic hero

for a corporate world.

Swelling with ardor in every ravishing black-and-

white frame, perfectly attuned to the raw pulse of late-’70s post-punk, and yet still inescapably

hollow, Anton Corbijn’s tribute to Joy Division’s

Ian Curtis turns the singer’s short life and

troubled times into…into what exactly? Corbijn,

famous for his icon-forging work as a portrait photographer (he has shot for Spin) and video

director, lavishes the man and his mates with

angelic light and plunges them into infernal

shadows, so the movie looks like an intimate

and immediate elegy. And Riley, in the lead

role, could be a more magnetic stage presence

than even Curtis himself. From his first moment

onscreen—as a schoolboy testing a David Bowie

swagger in his walk and J.G. Ballard imagery in

his throat—he moves with an ease that heartily

glamorizes the singer’s angst.

But the director, deeply interested in

surfaces and otherwise guided by a fan’s

blind passion, has little to say about the inner

life of his tortured subject—a bright and delicate

kid from Manchester who hanged himself at age ²³—so Control shapes up awkwardly. It’s a

rock-star biopic about a beautiful boy who

didn’t stick around long enough to become

a real man, much less an actual rock star.

There’s no bio in that—just bitter poetry and

adolescent gloom.

Or you can think of the film as the most

gorgeous public-service announcement ever

made. Message: Marrying too young increases

the risk that love will tear you apart. Though

Corbijn lavishes Curtis and his

mates with angelic light and plunges

them into infernal shadows.

Corbijn treats Curtis’ epilepsy the way English-lit

groupies treat John Keats’ tuberculosis—as an

existential drama, rather than an unfortunate

illness—he mostly defines the singer as a fragile

romantic trapped between two women. There’s

Deborah (his wife, played marvelously by

Morton) and then Annik (the exotic groupie

played by Alexandra Maria Lara), and maybe

they never come to life here because Deborah’s

memoir formed the basis for the film. If we

can’t feel a connection to them, then Curtis feels

opaque to us—just another tragic poster boy

pinned to the bedroom door.

Michael
Clayton +++++

GEORGE CLOONE Y, TILDA SWINTON

WARNER BROS., R

Clooney is out of sight in

masterful corporate thriller

For years, Manhattan lawyer

Arthur Edens ( Tom Wilkinson)

has been defending an amoral

agribusiness in a class-action suit.

He’s also been in treatment for

manic depression, and when he

simultaneously suffers a nervous

breakdown and an attack of

conscience, his colleague Michael

must clean up the mess. As

created by first-time director

Tony Gilroy (who scripted the

Bourne films) and played by

Clooney, Clayton dashes among

cops, hit men, loan sharks, and

Gone Baby
Gone +++½

CASEY AFFLECK, MORGAN FREEMAN

MIRAMAX, R

Ben Affleck directs his brother in crime drama. Wait, come back!

Maybe it’s the legacy of Dare-

devil or the whole thing with the

Lopez woman, but the phrase

“directed by Ben Affleck” doesn’t

really get your mouth watering.

Thus, a shock of incredulity

heightens your enjoyment of

this vividly scuzzy Boston-set

crime flick. Adapted from a

Dennis Lehane novel, the movie

follows two detectives—Patrick

Kenzie (Affleck the younger) and

his girlfriend, Angie (Michelle

Monaghan, though the part

is so plastic it doesn’t really

matter)—working to outsmart

drug lords and conflicted cops on

a missing-child case. Although

Ben isn’t always—how to put

it?—technically competent

behind the camera, he’s a whiz

at wringing juice from the

character actors who give this

melodrama its gritty life.

Evan Rachel Wood and Jim Sturgess

SPOTLIGHT ON

The Music of Across the Universe

A jukebox musical by way of Abbey Road, Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe has the guts to risk embarrassment and the skills to execute some memorable pop psychedelia. The characters enact a kaleidoscopic story of love in the ’60s through inventive covers of Beatles classics, including “I Want to Hold Your Hand” (rearranged as an emo anthem) and “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” (featuring a menacing Uncle Sam). Playing off his own messianic persona, Bono offers the pièce de résistance as a Ken Kesey–style guru crooning “I Am the Walrus.” U² g’joob!

Wilson, Schwartzman, and Brody hit India in The Darjeeling Limited.