(Reporting from the Blizzard of ’16)

Writer-director Olivier Assayas has created a beautiful character study and meditation on the subjects of stardom, aging and generational disconnect.  Juliette Binoche gives the performance of her career as a world famous actress.  She made her stage debut twenty years earlier as an ingénue who seduces and destroys an older woman. In a revival, Binoche is asked to play the part of the older woman, and she must deal with the passage of time, the change in her viewpoint, the suicide of her old friend the playwright, and her own vulnerability to youth in the guises of her personal assistant (Kristen Stewart) and the young superstar actress playing Binoche’s debut role (Chloe Grace Moretz). Stewart is Binoche’s connection to the world of celebrity and Internet media and must support Binoche as she becomes increasingly nervous about her performance while suffering her neediness and condescension.  Grace Moretz is coming to destroy her

Binoche is noble, fragile, and bravely bears her soul and insecurities in the face of time and the vagaries of celebrity. When we meet her, she is glamorous, beautifully made up for a Chanel photo shoot and a tribute to the playwright. When Binoche makes herself sexually available to an old flame who mistreated her in the past, only to be reduced to the role of the spurned lover waiting in the hotel for the visit that never comes, it is deeply affecting.

Binoche is ambivalent about playing the role because she knows all too well the fragile state of her age, which results in passive aggressive behavior towards Stewart and capitulation to Grace Moretz. As she prepares for the role with Stewart, she is natural, without makeup and the accouterments of the star. It is as if her armor has been discarded.

Grace Moretz is electric as the the new, hot thing, seemingly deferential to Binoche while harried by paparazzi and swirling scandal. Stewart is canny, but her problems as an actress continue. Her appeal has always struck me as inexplicable. At her worst, she is capable of mere sullen boredom, and at her best, a medium cool disaffection. Here, she does a bit better, but she can’t quite elevate her blase’ demeanor to a suggestion of anything deeper.  Still, she’s adept, and does not get in the way here.

I was just talking about how professional and polished yet paint-by-numbers and predictable Bridge of Spies was and I juxtaposed it with the other film I watched this weekend – Cop Car. With a fraction of Spielberg’s budget, writer-director John Watts’s second feature is inventive, engaging and darkly comic. Two boys are running away from home when they come across what appears to be an abandoned police cruiser, and, as boys will be boys, they take it for a joyride around the fields and deserted highways of Colorado. Turns out the car belongs to a crooked county sheriff (Kevin Bacon), who lost the car to the boys in the middle of dirty business. He races against time to find them, and what follows is often thrilling and occasionally inspired. But what elevates the material is an intelligent dialogue between two boys, with one foot in the world and the other in the imagination. As they confront real danger, Watts revels in their innocence yet uses it to amp up the tension. A great deal happens to these boys, but there is no scene more gripping than when they handle firearms as if they are as harmless as the ones on Playstation.

The film isn’t without faults. It drags a bit here and there, and ultimately, its charms succumb to a more pedestrian action thriller. But it maintains a sly sensibility, and it trusts its audience to have patience and get the drift. The same can’t be said for Spielberg, who rarely extends such trust, opting for the sledgehammer. A beautifully crafted and polished instrument, but a blunt one nonetheless.

This is a disquieting look into how a single failure, even one that is in no way fatal, can fray the bond of an entire family. Tomas, Ebba and their two young children are on a ski vacation. While having lunch at the resort’s outdoor patio restaurant, at the base of the slopes, a controlled avalanche gets a little out of control and for a moment, threatens to engulf them.

How Tomas and Ebba react, and the aftermath, reveals a great deal about fear, commitment, gender expectations, the frailty of masculinity, the dangers of self denial and the ability of people ostensibly in love to casually, cruelly gut each other.  I know that seems a mouthful, but it’s all there in this literate, intelligent picture. See it with spouse, boyfriend/girlfriend, and/or friends, and you’ll be chatting deep into the night.

The film was rightly bandied as a potential Best Foreign Film nominee, but it did not make the cut,  perhaps because it never takes a strong stand. It is as gray as gray gets.

Remade, horribly, as a Julia Louis Dreyfus/Will Ferrell picture.