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Robert clacks away at that keyboard

THE DYING GAUL (2005). Director: Craig Lucas. Screenplay by Craig Lucas from his play.

"You can do anything that you want as long as you don't call it what it is." 

Robert (Peter Sarsgaard), a struggling screenwriter, is inexplicably offered a million dollars for his script called The Dying Gaul, even though the producer, Jeffrey (Campbell Scott), thinks he should rewrite the gay lead characters as a straight couple. Robert takes the money, and doesn't exactly put up much resistance when the closeted "bisexual" Jeffrey comes on to him. Before long the two have entered into an affair behind the back of Jeffrey's wife, Elaine (Patricia Clarkson of Carrie). Elaine, intrigued by Robert, enters a gay web site to chat with him, and then creates a phony identity with which to send him texts and emails, pretending to be his dead lover. Then things get even more warped ... The Dying Gaul has a lot of problems, not the least of which is that Hitchcock himself would have trouble wringing drama out of a movie in which characters seem to spend most of the time clacking away at their keyboards; in fact the movie becomes tedious after awhile. However, the three leads all give good performances, although Sarsgaard's [Blue Jasmine] stereotypical "queeniness" seems to come and go like a bad accent. One scene when he starts crying when he and Jeffrey are having sex borders on camp. An even bigger problem with the movie is that these are not likable people, and the ending makes one of them, no matter how justifiably angry, seem almost psychotic. Lucas could have taken this premise, as contrived as it is, and said something about a lot of things, but this muddled movie doesn't really seem to be saying anything about anything. On the stage, this may have worked, but presented all too literally on the screen it just doesn't.

Verdict: There are times when this almost seems homophobic! **.

Cate Blanchette

BLUE JASMINE (2013). Writer/Director: Woody Allen.

Jasmine (Cate Blanchette) once had a successful husband, Hal (Alec Baldwin of The Departed), a great life in New York, plenty of money, and pretty much never let her sister, Ginger (Sally Hawkins), whom she finds declasse, forget it. But now her husband is a jail suicide, her life is in tatters, she's flat broke, and her stepson, Danny (Alden Ehreinreich), won't even talk to her. Who does Jasmine turn to, but Ginger in San Francisco, with whom she moves in, continuing their love/dislike relationship. Flashbacks show Jasmine's former life, and reveal that Ginger's ex-husband, Augie (Andrew Dice Clay), who invested with crooked Hal and lost all of his money, still believes that Jasmine knew everything the man was up to. Ginger has a boyfriend, Chili (Bobby Cannavale), but enters into an affair with Al (Louis C.K.), who turns out to be married, while Jasmine fights off advances by her dentist employer, and meets a great guy in widower Dwight (Peter Sarsgaard of Green Lantern), only to have ... well, that would be telling. Blue Jasmine is Woody Allen's [Shadows and Fog] best movie in years, a totally absorbing comedy-drama with expert thesping, a great cast, and a totally winning lead performance from Blanchette, who manages to make Jasmine sympathetic in spite of everything. The movie examines how we can love people we may not otherwise respect or approve of, and looks at how lives can go completely awry without any warning, especially when it comes to people left behind when their loved one is convicted of  various malfeasances. Blanchette won a completely deserved best actress Oscar, as well as several other best actress awards.

Verdict: Near-perfect with a fantastic Blanchette. ***1/2.