At the Movies

Rented 3 movies 3 the other day:

THE HUMAN STAIN

It's often difficult to film a good book. The best movies usually come from not particularly great books. I don't know how many people go out of their way to read "Gone With the Wind." "Casablanca" was being scripted as it was being written, up to the last day.

Any book by Philip Roth is going to be worth reading; he's one of the great American writers. And his books are rich in thought and interior monologue, so simply recording the story line on film isn't always going to be satisfactory.

And in this case, we have Gary Sinise playing Roth's famous alter ego, Nathan Zukerman - an odd piece of casting - and muttering homilies off screen as a narrator.

Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman and Ed Harris are always watchable.

The story itself is rich and fascinating as it deals with the Great American Issue - Race - and love and betrayal.

Not great...but damn good.

MUNICH

After the murder of Israeli athletes at the '72 Olympic Games in Munich, Golda Meir ordered the assassination of the murderers by a very covert cell of Mossad operatives.

Spielberg has made a roller coaster of a film. We follow this band of killers from Rome to Paris, Athens, Lebanon, London and Amsterdam, half cheering them on, half horrified at their efforts.

The film is peculiarly well-balanced in its "sympathies." It neither applauds nor condemns these men, who are in any event condemned to lives of torment and uncertain futures by their own acts.

It is fascinating to see Daniel Craig playing a Jewish South African assassin, only a year before he emerged as James Bond.

Geoffrey Rush is wonderful as the Mossad control agent.

Eric Bana is an odd duck and not my favorite actor, but he does a fine job here as Avner, the central character, who is on screen throughout.

The movie was nominated for dozens of awards, including Best Picture and Best Director honors at the Academy Awards, losing the first to "Crash," and the second to Ang Lee for "Brokeback Mountian."

Helluva good movie.

FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS

The first of 2 movies that Clint Eastwood made (simultaneously) about the battle for Iwo Jima during WWII. The second film is "Letters from Iwo Jima," showing the point of view of the Japanese. Both films were nominated and won many honors.

Eastwood is a first-rate consummate film maker, one of the best ever. And this is a powerful and sad and thoughtful movie.

Of course, there are many battle scenes and they are terrifying and bloody and "realistic." We are not presented with gushing spurting blood-for-the-sake-of-blood, but frightening moments that simulate the moment to moment little horrors of war.

The bayoneting of Japanese soldiers is not offered as triumph, but as awful necessity. We realize that these are not the hated enemy as they die, but men.

The full story here, however, is about the aftermath, the lingering of the PR campaign that followed the famous photograph of the men raising the flag on the hill.

And that story belongs largely to Ira Hayes, the Native American, who felt so deeply that he didn't deserve this label of "hero." Hayes is played by the Manitoba Ojibwa actor, Adam Beach, who already has quite a resume, including a dozen episodes of "Law and Order:SVU" this season.

Somewhere in the back of my ancient head, I know that the Ira Hayes story was told before in the movies, but I can't seem to find it this morning.

The battle scenes do go on, but this is a fine movie and it stays with you after you've taken the disc out of the player.