One can always find things to criticize at the Academy Awards television shows. Its blatant over-the-top orgy of self-congratulation and fawning, its contrived red carpet fiesta of excess, its simpering announcers whose nauseating flattery and butt-kissing is a shameless embarrassment, the contrived grandstanding of movie star worshipers, the general atmosphere of faux glamour and hype and the often stupid scripting and the corny jokes.

Despite all these hollow trappings of celebrity worship, beneath the surface lies the talent, artistry and imagination of people who create the illusions, insights and joy that have created the movies and television which have had such enormous and, yes, mostly positive impact on our lives.

That part cannot be denied by the journalists who revel in their own intellectual superiority and seem to wait for the award shows to practice their creative and often stupid snobbery.

One appalling example is the criticism of the event and its choices by Alessandra Stanley of the New York Times. Her beef, under the headline “Even the Jokes Have Wrinkles” offers high dudgeon about the older white people who seem to dominate both the attendees, their choices of films and the general atmosphere of maturity which she dubs an “AARP pep rally.”

This absurdity from a reporter who writes for a newspaper whose demographic skews older, probably older than the audience at the Oscars, from a city where the theater audience is older, where most of the shows are recycled from earlier times, where museums celebrate the past, the bulk of whose income come from advertisement for luxury goods that only the older can possibly afford. One wonders for what audience she is writing.

One is almost tempted to accuse this reporter of advocating “age warfare.”

For us decrepit folks over 50, the age of AARP eligibility, we have endured the long reign of movies pointed primarily to kiddies, teenagers, and dating couples and a starvation diet of films addressed to mature audiences, meaning folks in their thirties and beyond.

Her singling out Christopher Plummer, the 82-year-old best supporting actor winner as a straight man playing a gay as a symbol of the industry’s “progressive heart,” was yet another mean-minded comment by this ranting writer who apparently has neither understanding nor insight into the art of acting. But then, she had already put him down for having the temerity to be an older white man, a category for which she has abiding contempt. One wonders which she detests more the “older” or the “white.”

Her characterization of The Artist provided her with yet another ugly snipe, calling it “a fantasy for older Hollywood men….a star facing decline finds new vigor from the love of a younger, trophy wife.” I wonder how she acquired the birth certificates of the two main characters of this absolutely unforgettable and outstanding movie, but it does give her yet another shot against her insidious pet peeve, the aging white male.

Frankly, it surprised me that she did not take aim at Uggi, the canine star of The Artist. Perhaps he hadn’t reached the dog age to inflame her fury.

She did, however, use her research skills to determine that the median age of the academy voters is 62, as if somehow it was a badge of dishonor. Oddly, Meryl Streep, who is 63, does not escape her angry age scythe, as she mentions her record of nominations as further subtle proof that age is somehow a handicap to talent.

I wonder if she has the same prejudices against older men as she confronts the bosses at her newspaper, who are no doubt in the same age category that she obviously detests.

There was a time when movie fare was far more balanced in terms of age. There was a kid’s fare and an adult fare and the old moguls knew which was which. The problems facing Hollywood now is that the cost of movies has risen so high that lots of younger people are opting out of the audience mix while there is a steady rise of the mature with money in hand and no product that interests them.

Indeed, the time is coming when the demographic for movie attendance in large auditoriums will shift dramatically to the “AARP” old farts, who are living longer and whose depth of experience and insight will cause them to turn away from the shallow contrivances that now afflict the Hollywood film makers and marketers.

As for this clueless writer from the New York Times, I hope she is not symptomatic of what passes for objectivity in this hoary, wizened and aged 160-odd-year newspaper which has long passed the rubicon of time that incurs her wrath.

I have been trying to figure out how a movie reportedly costing close to two hundred million dollars has failed to find a paying audience. The reviews have been either glowing or certainly respectful.

The enormously talented Martin Scorsese directed the movie based upon a successful children’s book by Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, which deals with the adventures of a 12-year-old boy who literally lives within the cavernous confines of a massive Parisian train station in 1931, whose principal chore is to keep the numerous clocks in the station in working order after the death of his drunken uncle, who had been charged with that operation.

A host of actors are on board, including the young boy played by Asa Butterfield, an old man played by the brilliant Ben Kingsley, a young girl played by Chloe Moretz, and a station policeman played by the actor and satirist, Sacha Baron Cohen.

The subtext and probably the inspiring motivation for this film comes from the fact that it is also about the movie pioneer Georges Méliès whose 1902 film, A Trip to the Moon, was the harbinger of what we now know as the movie industry.

There is no question that the technical aspects of this movie are spectacular, the craftsmanship is fantastic and every background aspect of the production, the sets, the costuming, the music, the lighting and the sound are worthy Academy Award prospects. There is an unmistakable sense of absolute fidelity in the re-creation of the times and the beauty and authenticity of Paris between the wars.

With so many talented people involved in this production, I feel somewhat of an ingrate to inject my own humble critique into the conversation, but the flaws seem obvious, especially to a storyteller in another medium.

The magic of this movie is everywhere but in the story. Technology seems to have trumped the essential ingredient of storytelling, which is “what happens next.” There is too much distraction and repetition. Close-ups of the boy actor and his emerald eyes seem excessive and disruptive.

There are too many holes in the logic of the story and too many scenes where the boy runs through the hidden network of spooky tunnels that form the labyrinth of the massive railroad station. The novelty begins to wear thin and the pacing seems to slow to a halt when various transitional materials kick in.

The film history references, while creative and interesting by themselves, do not seem to fit with the story and the central risk to the boy’s freedom. Because his father has died and he is an orphan, his most persistent danger is that he will be caught by the station cop and sent to an orphanage.

There is, of course, an attempt to wring pathos out of the boy’s plight and Ben Kingsley’s character develops arc from mean-minded to nice guy, but there is something missing. Perhaps the characters are too flat to be sympathetic and the absence of real evil perpetrators offers no real risk to our intrepid hero.

To give the devil (in this case, me) his due, perhaps maturity and the repetition of experience has wreaked havoc with my sense of wonder, but the poor attendance to this movie might indicate that I could be, at the very least, half right.

It seems obvious that the obsession with movies, their history, massive influence, remarkable technological advances, inner workings, glamour and joyous devotion to creating a parallel world to feed the dreams of millions was so tempting to Scorsese that he moved this project forward with his considerable clout, letting the story take a secondary role.

It shows.

At the outset, let me state unequivocally that I have had a lifetime love affair with the movies. The affair spans the golden age of Hollywood films and as evidence of this heartfelt attachment, I can name most of the actors in black and white films, B movies included.

I inherited this addiction from my mother who would take me with her whenever the movies changed their bill, even in the middle of the week when I should have been doing my homework. Her lure was not only the movie itself but the collection of dishes the theaters would give away free to corral their patrons during the dark days of the depression.

The movie bill in those days consisted of a double feature, news of the day, a cartoon or two, and a minute or two of coming attractions — meaning the pictures that were on deck to be seen in the next few days. There was no popcorn, only a vending machine that would dispense packaged candies for a nickel (about six choices).

Those old birds from the studios who lured you into the movie theaters were the most brashly creative propagandists and advertising geniuses of their day. They built a star system that made gods and goddesses of their actors, slapping their images all over the place, on billboards, fan magazines and gossip columns, and used the mass media with unprecedented skill, verve, and chutzpah.

Indeed, they made you believe that those actors whose love affairs and ‘derring-do’ actually happened to them in real life and seduced you to glimpse into their lurid personal lives, stunted perhaps by the fact that these actors, mostly uneducated and insecure, began to believe that they were the characters put up on that 35-foot screen. Indeed, those movie promoters invented the modern celebrity machine.

They gave away dishes and other items that lured you into the theaters in the middle of the week. They sponsored contests for kids. They coupled the movies with live entertainment like Sinatra, Milton Berle, Martin and Lewis, and many others.

They built faux palaces that made you feel you deserved the importance of entering a baroque castle with lots of gold paint and chandeliers. Remnants remain, of which Radio City Music Hall was the epitome of the era, a relic that has retained its luster but no longer shows movies.

Their advertising in the newspapers was over the top with exaggeration and drum beating bull which to this day continues its legacy of faux praise, much of it bought and paid for.

The language of the lure is still over the top only more so. Ever really read a movie blurb? They are hilarious, extracted from reviews by anyone with a computer and an opinion, but who looks at the source? Some are from the top tier of reviewers from the New York Times and other big city newspapers; others are from magazines, entertainment trade papers, television “critics”, assorted bloggers and movie critic sites where self-proclaimed “reviewers” abound, all with one thing in common: “opinions” hungry to see their critiques quoted and hopeful that their sites attract advertisers.

Here are some samples extracted from newspapers flacking new offerings, which will remain anonymous. I’ll dispense with “Best Picture”, “Best Actor” — which are ubiquitous and the absurdist exaggerations — like the overused “Brilliant”, “Ravishing”, “Remarkable”, “Breathless”, “Imaginative” and the all-purpose “Most” to underline the point.

Then there is the blockbuster word “Masterpiece” and, of course “Winner”, of the various festivals and resumes of directors for past films all embellished with an avalanche of praise words lifted from Mr. Roget’s handy thesaurus. Sometimes the flack writer will get really creative and spew “We’re Too Busy Laughing” or “The Level of Craft is Something to Behold” or “An Erotic Mindbender” or “Thrillingly Hypnotic”, or “Give Us More Like This One”, heaven forbid, and the all-purpose “You Won’t Believe Your Eyes” or “So Good You Will Have to See it Twice.”

For the “save the world” filmmakers, who offer what they believe is life-changing movies, you will find specific hype headlines like “Uncompromising”, “Brave”, “Courageous”, “Fearless”, “Daring”, and that all-purpose word of the righteous activist, “expose.”

Then there are the groups who treat film as a cultural icon and a matter of scholarly inquiry with another cluster of hype words like “classic”, “enduring” and “vintage.”

Of course in today’s world the lure goes beyond mere words. You have to endure a tsunami of advertising if you enter a movie theater on its advertised time entrapped and forced to endure 15 minutes or more of earsplitting commercials, many designed to get you to buy the obesity-encouraging, overpriced menu of life menacing goodies, served in the lobby concessions.

As if this was not enough brainwashing, you still have to endure endless coming attractions, usually eardrum endangering snippets from the latest movie spinoffs of computer games targeting the pre- and early teen set. By the time one gets around to the start of the movie, a half hour or more beyond the published feature time, you are exhausted by the assault and your potential film enjoyment meter has been compromised.

In the golden age of the black and whites, the coming attractions were five minutes long and your concentration on the story being presented on the screen was still fresh and expectant.

There is a sense, even as I write this rant, that the movie auditorium, meaning where groups sitting together in the dark, munching on unhealthy foods while being attacked with endless hype are the last gasp of a desperate industry running out of ideas as they enter an uncertain future.

As I said at the onset, I loved the movies, even the very few being offered today for those of even average intelligence, but I fear a total disenchantment is on its way, unless the moguls come up with a more engaging product for people of all ages and stop trying to overstuff us with all the hype and brainless baloney.

The Iron Lady is an interesting example of the limits of movie biography and the manner in which contemporary political and social trends leak into motion picture storytelling.

Starring the incomparable Meryl Streep, whose unique talent allows her to create and mimic the persona of the most challenging of female characters plucked from real life or fiction, The Iron Lady purports to tell the intimate story of Margaret Thatcher, one of the most powerful British prime ministers of recent vintage.

The movie, written by Abi Morgan and directed by Phyllida Lloyd, is a valiant attempt to go beyond the mask of Mrs. Thatcher’s public image and portray the real person that lurks inside what we cynics often refer to as the human contrivance. Mrs. Thatcher, as we know from recent history, was a strong, articulate and stubborn woman who climbed the fortress of the male dominated British political system and become one of the most powerful Tory Prime Ministers in recent history.

The problem confronted by the filmmakers was how to portray a woman whose singleness of purpose and political obsessions were at war with her domestic instincts as wife and mother, the ultimate dilemma faced by the modern woman competing on what was once the entrenched turf of men.

With a female director, a female screenwriter and a strong-minded female actress, the movie they have fashioned opens on a note of steep decline with Mrs. Thatcher. She is revealed as a frail figure, afflicted with senility purchasing a grocery item illustrating her still determined domestic side. We next see her in her retirement digs with her husband, played by the wonderful Jim Broadbent. We are not certain if the husband is actually alive or existing only in the memory of Mrs. Thatcher.

I have a sense that the filmmakers, in many story conferences, determined that the best way to show Mrs. Thatcher’s domestic side was to begin her story at the end of her career when she was bereft, mentally feeble and powerless, forced to endure the domesticity of home and hearth and the companionship of her husband and adult daughter as her only lifetime option.

Sprinkled throughout, the contrived flashbacks show us a woman who has put her career above the loving care of her children and the considerations of her supportive husband, but who seems to dwell on the memories of family life with far more emotion than she regards her career highlights. Oddly, there is less of the latter in the movie, which might have resulted in widening its popularity.

The filmmakers strive to show the force of her ambition competing with the obvious needs of her children and her husband. We see her driving away from her home to attend her first parliamentary session while her children chase after the car. It is a subtle illustration of separation without hysterics, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out how conflicted the movie makers were in creating that scene.

Her career as a politician is portrayed in the usual clichéd pattern of a woman against the odds, put down by her male colleagues, storming the ramparts of male domination with a stiff upper lip, and once on top of the heap showing more gumption and toughness than her male colleagues, who are portrayed as less forthright and determined to uphold the honor of what remains of the once all-powerful British empire.

There are the usual female independence manifestos necessary for this period piece. The young Margaret is depicted professing her love for her intended husband, but setting up the rules for their future. No domesticity for her, leaving her free to pursue a life of public service, to which the intended husband agrees.

Then there are scenes of domestic bliss at the beach when Margaret replays old movies of the early life when her two children were small, mugging in front of the camera to show camaraderie and her “real” feelings of motherhood, which soon must yield to political ambition.

Obviously, we are manipulated to root for her as she climbs the ladder to prime minister while the filmmakers do their best to illustrate the roles she must sacrifice as mother and wife, and as she ages and retires complete with broad hints of personal remorse.

There are lots of flashbacks and returns to the plight of her mental decline, the gaps in memory, the confusion in her mind about her husband’s death, the passing mention that her son has gone off to South Africa to be followed, apparently temporarily, by her husband. Frankly, it is hard to nail down the facts of her life and her rise to political power from this movie, which clearly concentrates on the emotional aspect of Thatcher’s life and less on the details of her career.

Bear in mind that I am over-analyzing this movie, having lived through her time in the political limelight. There is no question that Mrs. Thatcher was a dominant and colorful figure in her prime, and there are many who can cite her accomplishments and demerits. She was clearly single-minded, often ruthless, unforgiving and determined, traits that are illustrated in the movie like boxes to be checked.

While the movie has, to my mind, numerous flaws as a film biography of a powerful political figure, I would recommend it as an interesting and sincere attempt to portray the emotional life of a legendary female politician, and an opportunity to observe an actress of extraordinary talent who makes you believe that she is the actual, real-life embodiment of the woman she has chosen to impersonate.

Indeed, the career of this former female prime minister can count as a great step forward for the gender, although it was not the first time the Brits were subject to female rule. Remember Elizabeth the First, the equally strong willed sovereign queen who cemented her dictatorial rule by executing her cousin once removed, Mary, Queen of Scots, who had also claimed the throne.

And then there is Angela Merkel, the most powerful politician in Europe today. Nevertheless, politics and gender aside, I believe there is an intelligence at work in the creation of this film that makes its viewing a worthwhile experience despite its flawed presentation.

Some, but not all live theatrical productions transfer well into movies. The movie Carnage is one of those most unfortunate cases. When I saw the award winning play, written by Yasmina Reza on Broadway, I found myself howling with uncontrollable laughter. The movie was somewhat somber and alarmingly unfunny.

Briefly, the plot goes something like this. Two eleven year old boys get into a fight resulting in one of them being injured. The parents of the injured boy invite the parents of the alleged perpetrator to their apartment to discuss how best to reconcile the boys.

The boys are mostly offstage, after a long shot bit of miming their battle at the film’s beginning, but the parents interact in ways that start out reasonably, by what appears to be well-meaning adults determined to do the right thing as parents of warring children. As they converse and get deeper into the reconciliation process they begin to unravel emotionally and reveal all the fault lines in both marriage relationships which are considerable.

Although the movie stars four experienced actors, Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz and John C. Riley and was directed by Roman Polanski, the characterizations are cramped by the film process and what is lost is the concept of interaction and timing that made the play so funny and memorable.

Perhaps it is this live interaction that makes the transfer of stage to screen so tricky. Another handicap for the process is how to come up with a scenario that can magnify a play with few characters, meaning “opening it up” by widening the focus with action and inventing additional scenes.

There was a casting flaw in Carnage as well concerning Christopher Waltz who played the male of the visiting couple. He is a fine actor and was brilliant as the Nazi in Inglourious Basterds, but trying to disguise his Austrian accent seemed to interfere with the character’s authenticity.

In the case of Carnage, it was as if the characters were doing set pieces, isolated from the others. If I sound dismissive, I fear that most audiences will feel the same way. Laughs were few and far between in the performance I attended.

There have been many movies made that originated on stage and did not lose their power in film. In the straight play category what comes to mind is Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, plays so powerful with characters so well conceived and adapted by superb actors that most of the impact of the stage performances have been replicated on the screen.

Others will have different favorites and opinions and disagree with my assertion that, in general, a movie rarely fully captures the emotional impact of a live performance.

Of course there are exceptions, perhaps many, to such a sweeping pronouncement. One notable personal exception is the black and white movie Brief Encounter written by Noel Coward, a “small” play in terms of cast adapted from an even smaller short play by Coward, but, in my opinion, one of the great transfers from stage to screen. This story of a traditional suburban housewife and a doctor, married to others, suddenly confronted with an unplanned attraction with characters played by Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson is extraordinary in its adaptation.

Indeed, some of our most renowned playwrights have had their work “transferred” to film with very uneven results, Eugene O’Neil, for example. I exempt Shakespeare from all criticism. His magnificent prose covers all faults even in the worst adaptations of his work to the screen, of which there have been many.

In the musical category, transfers from stage to screen have had somewhat more success than the straight play. The music, I suppose, has a lot to do with it although there seems to be a decline in the number of musical stage transfers than there were in decades past. Perhaps the decline is more a symptom of the fact that the era of the great stage musicals were created by a certain burst of incandescent talent that is no longer available, or as yet undiscovered, or waiting in the wings until that are called upon by public demand.

In another case of personal privilege, I thought the movie version of My Fair Lady equaled if not exceeded the power of the stage play, which was pretty marvelous in itself. I’m sure there have been many others, but this musical version of Shaw’s Pygmalion is my all time favorite with brilliant lyrics by Allen Jay Lerner that I have found unequaled in most musicals.

But aside from morphing into a reflection on the ability of film to adapt the full power of a live stage presentation, the bottom line impression of Carnage is that its movie version does disservice to the original.

There is a subtle subtext in the movie, The Artist, which powerfully grabs your imagination in ways that define the essence of storytelling and the manner in which movies can reach into the emotional truth of the human condition.

Something stunningly clever is at work in the minds of the French filmmakers who have created this exquisite original that not only grabs your total attention but also encompasses the many reasons why movies have had such an enormous impact on our lives.

On its glossy surface, it is the story of a silent film star of enormous popularity and charm who, after reaching the heights of fame, becomes shipwrecked on the shoals of the new technology of talking pictures, which he refuses to acknowledge. At the pinnacle of his fame and by sheer coincidence, he interacts with an ambitious young woman fan who burns to be a star of the first magnitude.

There are, of course, echoes of other movies, of which A Star is Born and Sunset Boulevard are the exemplars. A star falls, a star rises. The once famous star goes into deep decline while the younger ingénue rises to the top. In fact, if you take the time to analyze this movie, you will note that nearly every emotional cliché and melodramatic artifice you have ever seen in the movies, and in life, is cast your way.

There is decline and fall, greed and stupidity, unrequited and fulfilled love, loyalty and disloyalty, great joy, deep depression and sadness, victory and defeat, the miraculous bonding between dog and master, the hollowness and transiency of fame and fortune, and the always reliable, just-in-the-nick-of-time redemption. The old standby of illustrating decline by excessive drinking and showing the pistol as a potential suicide or murder weapon is blatantly illustrated.

Every hot button of manipulation used in movie storytelling from the very beginnings of the film industry is employed. Indeed, this 100 minute movie is the existential history of the movies and why it has survived and prospered not only as trivial entertainment but as a powerful life changing medium.

The story unfolds as a black and white silent movie with dialogue as subtitles, which illustrate how only the most meaningful dialogue is chosen, eliminating all the sounds and cacophony of the bloated communication, noise, and nonsense with which we are assaulted with in today’s film storytelling. Everything is pared down to its essentials. And the old adage “less is more” is exquisitely affirmed.

In every category, the movie makers were not only authentic but inspired. The director, Michel Hazanavicius, has assembled a remarkable collection of talent. Jean Dujardin as the male lead is impeccable in his brilliant rendition of the silent star. His charm is infectious right down to his incredibly winning smile, albeit with slightly disarranged eyeteeth, an imperfection that humanizes and enhances the truth of his character. Bérénice Bejo as the female up and coming actress is every bit the potential star with incredibly beautiful legs and figure and a style that can fill a large screen with awesome female fidelity.

One of the exceptional actors in this ensemble is a Jack Russell who plays Uggi with great verve and intelligence showing amazingly human traits that make Lassie look like a bit player.

But it is the research and craftsmanship of the set designers and the skillful photography of Guillaume Schiffman that recreate the sense of historical authenticity and provides the environment for the actors to operate within the director’s imaginative vision. Bear in mind that most of those associated with this venture are French and the director is of Lithuanian ancestry, which makes their perspective that of outside observers, which speaks volumes for universal insight and the movie medium as a global language.

Resurrecting the details of the late nineteen twenties and early thirties Hollywood is a masterpiece of set and costume design that should make the Brits envious. One must pay more than casual attention to the architecture of the homes, the furnishings, the appliances, the plates and glassware, the decorative touches, the knick knacks and wall coverings, the period cars, the manner of the crowds, the hair and makeup styles and most important of all, the wonderfully tailored costumes and the way they have been fitted to the bodies of the actors and extras.

This was a recreated time when men and women wore hats and beautiful clothes and took pride in their appearance, when the rules of dress and conduct emphasized self-regard and courtesy and when glamour and allure was integral to the possibility of high aspirations.

Of course, the real world of hard times, inequality, poverty and despair for many people was just outside of the dark auditorium in those days but, for a few cents, people were allowed into the dream factory for a brief time to nourish their hopes and immerse themselves in romantic reveries.

Obviously, I am in thrall to the moviemakers of The Artist for refreshing my optimism in these dark days of cynicism and despair and providing some hope for getting in touch again with civility, joy and spiritual buoyancy.

If this movie doesn’t deserve Academy Awards for everyone involved, I’ll eat my father’s fedora (figuratively, of course).

I have always enjoyed the books of John le Carré and greatly admired the elegant prose, the subtle nuanced plot constructions and robust characterizations of people engaged in conspiratorial endeavors.

He was clearly a master of the narrative of the behind-the-scenes battles between the intelligence bureaucracies of the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom, the latter under whose aegis he was gainfully employed for a time before being bitten by the novelist’s bug.

With that sense of admiration, I approached the movie Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy hoping that it would reinforce my respect for this author and the undoubtedly sincere attempt to resurrect his work in an environment that no longer sees the struggle against communism and the Soviet Union as a flash point in today’s global struggles.

It is, in effect, a remake of the much-revered adaptation starring the late great Alec Guinness. The moviemakers should have left well enough alone.

Sad to say, I found the movie static, narratively flawed and turgid, and came away wondering why so many talented people had come together to make a movie whose story-telling was so listless, lacking in what-happens-next tension and largely incomprehensible, doubly so to those in the audience who were not familiar with John Le Carré’s spy novels.

Of course, I knew in advance that the story was about “moles” in the highest ranks of British Intelligence and the attempt by the George Smiley character, played by Gary Oldman, to uncover the conspiracy for his own personal ambitious ends and what we presume is his underlying loyalty to the cause of Western values.

We know, too, from the actual historical knowledge of British defectors in high places that the reason for their traitorous conduct is a profound disillusionment with corrupt Western values, as opposed to their high-minded view of the communist future, a premise that lost all credence since the fall of the Soviet Union in the early nineties proved it wrong-headed.

And yet, even armed with this knowledge and the expectation of understanding the narrative thrust of the movie, I confess I could not follow the story line presented in this film. The heavy-handed flashbacks and editing choices left me totally confused about who was who and what was what.

Please understand that my personal movie meter is based upon believability of the characters, authenticity of the environment, plot tension, the suspense of storytelling, and the emotional impact of the experience of the parallel world created by the movie craftsmen. I take the position of the average, educated moviegoer who seeks both insight and pleasure from observing a parallel world created for our engagement.

Filmmakers have long mastered the technical ability to create all the necessary props to create the reality of their vision with imagination and authenticity. In this movie, the environment is artfully contrived to represent the world one believes is London and the office environment of British Intelligence and other countries central to the story at the height of the cold war. The background music is, by far, the most compelling element of this film, and would have enhanced the impact the film had on me if I could truly understand what was going on.

Unfortunately, the actual events in this story seemed like watching a chess game play out, but without having any knowledge of the game. You saw the tension in the players’ concentration and in their facial language, but couldn’t understand any of the moves they made on the chessboard.

I am a stickler for narrative clarity. There was little in this movie. Nevertheless, there is a certain type of moviegoer who believes he or she has broken the code of the filmmaker’s alleged profundity while others of lesser insight or intelligence have not the capacity to “get it.” This is also an affliction of many movie reviewers, some who have given this movie glowing reviews.

Interpreting the mass reaction of audiences is something you begin to understand after many years of observing movies in dark auditoriums surrounded by other people. There is a kind of silent exultation when a great movie ends and you must reluctantly exit the world created by the filmmaker and his or her large team of colleagues who have constructed the events and environment of this imaginary world. Oddly, some moviegoers will burst out in applause, a baffling but obviously sincere effort to register their admiration and delight in what they have just witnessed.

I am sorry that my conclusion about this movie is so negative, but aside from my personal critique of what I perceive as its flaws, perhaps it is the timing that is the worst enemy of this film’s appreciation. The risk of devastating confrontation between the west and the Soviet Union is largely over and all the backroom conspiratorial maneuvering, once so vital and intriguing, is now less compelling as story fodder to engage us emotionally.

Or is it that I am more protective of my time and resent wasting it watching something that induces boredom?

Having read all three of Stieg Larsson’s novel trilogy featuring his super heroine Lisbeth Salander, and having seen all three of the Swedish movies adapted from those books as well as the American version, I have arrived at one conclusion.

The Swedes win, at least when it comes to the first film adaptation of the trilogy, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Larsson’s narratively compelling, bizarre revenge fantasy of a badly abused young woman with a very compromised persona, which comes alarmingly close to a diagnoses of Asperger Syndrome, was a one in a million super world-wide best seller hit. Its provenance is equally bizarre since the talented Larsson died before the first book was published and his vast inheritance is muddied by Swedish law, which gives the rights and inheritance to his blood relatives instead of the common law wife who was his helpmate throughout the composition of his books.

The plots of his three books, a smorgasbord of kinky sex and incredibly evil doings, are an object lesson in narrative drive, and his observing eye and knowledge of technological and financial detail is nothing short of astonishing. Indeed, the mesmerizing plot of Larsson’s three novels are so compelling and complicated as to make its adaptation to the screen an extraordinary challenge.

Above all, the filmmakers who apparently were dedicated to sticking with the spider web-like plot turns and keeping true to the weird and shockingly perverse aberrations of all the principle characters, had to compromise action with exposition to supply some understanding to those in the audience who had not read the books.

For an American audience, the Swedes had the advantage since they could provide subtitles so that English speakers could follow the twists and turns in the plot and deliberately shrink the exposition to make it more marketable to a worldwide audience not fluent in Swedish. Also, the chances were that most dedicated novel readers in Sweden, which is a highly literate nation, were far more familiar with the characters and plot than those in other countries who were served up the text of the novels in translation.

In the Hollywood version, one has to have read the book to have some understanding of what was going on. The scriptwriter Steven Zaillian and director David Fincher chose a murkier course and made it maddenly difficult to follow the plot line and apparently thought that long exposition passages would suffice to keep the narrative moving along. They didn’t.

Worse, the most fatal flaw in the production, which is rich in production values and in portraying the scenic wonders of the snow clad landscape of northern Sweden, is almost incoherent in making its dialogue understood. The sound design is a disaster. Characters talk but are difficult to hear and understand, especially with the incessant background noise provided to needlessly hype the authenticity of reality and the constant iteration of a musical background designed to needlessly punch up the sense of menace.

Even the great Christopher Plummer, who plays a key character in the film, whose voice is one of extraordinary resonance, was, in parts, difficult to understand. I am not judging this on the basis of my own hearing, which is faulty, but on the absolute fidelity of my wife, who left the theatre complaining of deep gaps in understanding the dialogue, which is crucial to the understanding of the plot.

Daniel Craig provided a workmanlike Mikael Blomkvist a crusading journalist having an affair with his colleague editor at their muckraking magazine Millenium with the consent of her husband. Apparently sex in all its forms is like mother’s milk to the Swedes. In this movie alone we have rather descriptive scenes of sadism, lesbian sex, anal penetration by an object, murder as a sexual turn on and the usual straight sex in various modes.

Frankly, to understand the plot of this movie one should read the book first or seek help on various book report sites as an aid to comprehension.

Both Noomi Rapace, the Swedish actress, and Rooney Mara, the American actress who played the super heroine Lisbeth Salander, were outstanding in conveying the character’s strange behavioral tics and lack of empathy, although the American version portrays her character as softening at the end, a jarring turnabout and, in my opinion, another adaptation mistake.

I don’t know how this movie will be received by English-speaking audiences, but I am hopeful that the director of the second and third installment and the script writer will learn by their mistakes and make the plot of the second two in the series a lot easier to understand.

Warren Adler is the author of 32 novels and short story collections published in numerous languages. Films adapted from his books include ‘The War of the Roses,’Random Hearts’ and the PBS trilogy ‘The Sunset Gang’. He is a pioneer in digital publishing. For more information visit Warren’s website atwww.warrenadler.com.

After seeing Clint Eastwood’s excellent biopic, J.Edgar, I was reminded of Mark Anthony’s funeral oration in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”

With excellent reproductions of the era and the magnificent acting of Leonardo DiCaprio and a wonderful cast, Eastwood tells the story of J. Edgar Hoover, a sexually conflicted, complex, and single-minded man who was both extravagantly reviled and praised for founding, building and operating, with dictatorial efficiency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and forging it into a powerful arm of the Federal Government.

DiCaprio portrays J. Edgar from a superb script by Dustin Lance Black, which encapsulates the man’s life from childhood to death. He is portrayed with pitch-perfect, warts-and-all exactitude as someone obsessed with fervent and often bigoted patriotic zeal, driven to heroic fantasies, often deliberately fictionalized to enhance his image and spur recruitment of a coterie of educated and motivated men, who walked in cult-like lock step to Hoover’s institutional and personal commands.

Sometimes painful to watch as DiCaprio peels away the man’s reserve and humanizes him in ways smalls and large, we see unfolding the maturing of a man who grows progressively more paranoid and powerful as he grows older. We see the influence of a dominant, much loved mother and a relationship between two men, Hoover and his longtime companion and assistant, Clyde Tolson, that is tender, loving and affectionate, long before such relationships became acceptable in the popular culture. The relationship avoids the question of sexual consummation, although it is without question a sincerely loving one, beyond even the traditional elements of strong male bonding.

Eastwood, whose right-of-center credentials and reputed total command and control over story and every other detail of movie making, does not spare Hoover in assessing his willingness to sacrifice ethics and morality to the cause of building his beloved FBI.

He does not avoid accusations of Hoover using blackmail tactics to retain his power over presidents and others in the power structure, especially in sexual matters. He illustrates Hoover’s propensity to fictionalize his personal exploits, glorifying service to the FBI and projecting and often exaggerating the image of G-men, a euphemism for his band of agents, as upright, brave, courageous and heroic, fighting for God and country. Young boys were recruited to think of themselves as junior G-men and working for the FBI was portrayed as one of the great careers open to educated and dedicated young men.

He takes us through the early days of crime fighting before and during the Depression and wrecking havoc on gangsters during prohibition. He is shown obsessed by the communists and radicals who are attempting what he believes is a takeover of the United States, a very real threat during and after World War II, and does not shy away from Hoover’s wariness of the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King Jr. who he believed had radical motives, a position that did not win him many friends outside of the bureau and has, to some degree, diminished his reputation.

Still, the movie goes out of its way to make clear that he was not a racial bigot by using the device of having a black agent work with him on writing his memoirs, and the script calls for him to dub Senator McCarthy an “opportunist.”

I lived in Washington for many years during Hoover’s heyday. Seeing him and Tolson (a familiar pair) around town, and having met and befriended numerous FBI and ex-FBI men, my view about Hoover and the FBI he created is more or less the bottom line that I believe Eastwood intended when he created this movie. Having called Hoover to account for “the bad” with eagle-eyed accuracy, he weaves into the story what can only be counted as “the good.”

Hoover was a motivational genius, a brilliant organizer who inspired loyalty and dedication from his underlings who worshiped him. Talk to any ex-FBI agent who worked on his watch and you will invariably get the same opinion. He established an FBI checking system that was as foolproof as possible to keep questionable people from serving in government, a system that, with some exceptions, was as thorough as possible and is still in operation today.

He established an FBI forensic capability second to none, and a fingerprinting system that is a crime fighting wonder. Yes, he was rigid, intolerant; often thin-skinned and egocentric. In his later years, the media pounded him with regularity, inspiring not only sharp criticism but outright hatred.

Some say he overstayed his office by years largely because he had the goods on those who made the decisions to keep him there. Maybe so.

But J.Edgar, the movie, is more than just a mere contrived biopic. There is something transcendent about it, something that can enhance our understanding about America and the people who wield power over our lives. It is worth the time to see it and ponder its lessons. Eastwood and his great cast have added some special insight into how a democracy blunders ahead, often with imperfect leaders who somehow rise above their flaws for the greater good of all of us.

I recently saw the movie Martha Marcy May Marlene, which bravely took up the question of the insidious influence of bizarre cults on unsuspecting young people.

Having lived through the era when such cults were media fodder and a number of friends and relatives had lost adult children to this phenomenon, and having written the well-received novel, Cult, I was interested in how the filmmakers approached the subject.

Those, like myself, who were around in the sixties and seventies when cults were portrayed as actively recruiting and brainwashing their unsuspecting victims into walking zombies for profit and control, who saw families destroyed and worse, have been lulled into believing that that era is over. Far from it. There are thousands of cults operating in this country and many more abroad. Some are quite prosperous and upcoming generations should be forewarned.

Of course, we were shocked by the mass suicide of Jonestown and the brutality and violence of Manson and his so-called “family” and other weird manifestations of mind control, which brought into the popular culture terms such as “deprogramming” and images of dull-eyed young people selling flowers at airports.

The media once feasted on such stories, although they never quite delved deeply enough into the phenomenon to increase the public’s understanding of the subtle ways cynical and power-hungry people use phony spiritualism, alienation, and communes run by guru pretenders for power and profit. All of them purveyed what seemed like idealistic causes but their real agenda was, and still is, designed to capture the minds of innocent people and, through devious mind control means, corral them into doing their bidding.

From time to time, cults have been exposed and media excitement ensues when their destructive methods are exposed. Remember David Koresh and his Branch Davidians? He was one of many. And there is no greater example than those sad fools who blow themselves up, convinced that heaven offers them the proverbial 72 virgins or some such contrived reward in the afterlife.

Since the subject of brainwashing is so difficult for most of us to understand, it reaches us as distortions and confuses those who have never been exposed to its capacity to break down one’s personality with swift and efficient force and enslave the will of an innocent victim. All we see is the resulting ruined lives, minds devastated, and personalities destroyed.

I give the movie Martha Marcy May Marlene, “A” for effort, but “B” for execution, although I do not wish to detract from its sincere and largely successful effort. Obviously, the filmmakers wanted to make the point that it’s easy to slip into a cult, in this case a Manson like “family,” but a terrible chore to get out of it.

It was this latter manifestation that was illustrated in my novel. Once the victim’s mind had “snapped” into cult mode, the unsnapping requires a massive assault on the victim’s mind to untangle the coded messages injected into it by the sinister forces of the cult leader.

I am indebted to Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman who wrote the definitive explanation of this process and gave us the term “Snapping” which is the title of their excellent book on the subject, Snapping: America’s Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change.

While most of the acting is excellent, and the movie does depict the terrible dilemma of a victim’s dealing with the separation from the cult, it could have added another dimension by showing the process of deprogramming which can be difficult and, in some cases, brutal. Nevertheless, the filmmakers did capture the victim’s agony, paranoia and the inevitable “floating” of her mind back into the magnetizing memories of the cult experience.

The filmmakers chose to show how well-meaning relatives tried valiantly to help the victim through her difficulty with separation, but failed in their efforts because of their ignorance of what had been done to the victim’s mind. Perhaps this lack of knowledge influenced a less than satisfying and confusing ending.

This could have been an important movie at a moment in history when this growing and powerful phenomenon is largely ignored. It suffers from good intentions and weird editing that makes it impossible for the viewer to fully understand the plotting. In addition to a tongue twisting title that largely defies memory, the ending is, perhaps deliberately, confounding and unresolved.

I understood the premise and waited patiently to learn what triggered the unwitting victim’s need to escape the cult, which was never clear from her point of view. In fact there were so many holes in the motivation of the characters that it became difficult to see how this woman victim was ever going to adjust to a normal life.

I hate to be nitpicking what I consider a movie that, despite it flaws, should be seen by everyone as a cautionary tale of what could happen to an unsuspecting victim by a sinister cult leader bent on recruiting followers for whatever nefarious purposes he or she has in mind. Think of it as a cautionary tale.

The fact is that the cult phenomenon is out there still recruiting more and more victims for its insatiable maws.