The Winslow Boy. David Mamet’s period piece about an Edwardian scandal is sharp and deep. A proper, emotionally serene English family strives to clear the name of a family member from what they perceive as a slander (the youngest son is accused of the theft of 5 shillings and expelled from navy school). The father (Nigel Hawthorne of The Madness of King George) is an eccentric banker who sacrifices the family’s position (financial and otherwise) to clear his son’s name. His daughter (Rebecca Pidgeon) is a suffragette engaged to a military man. As the scandal envelops the family, her social life is shattered.

The family engages the services of Sir Robert Morton (Jeremy Northam), a leading barrister and politician who opposes women’s suffrage but finds himself inexorably drawn to the case and Pidgeon. What follows is a psychological study of the ties of family and the limits of honor as well as a satisfying courtroom drama.

The dialogue is understated, which is rare for Mamet, but it is still rhythmic. Mamet treats each character, major and minor, with dignity. There are no fops or fools. Everyone is multi-faceted and thus, interesting.

Hamlet. I know when I think of Hamlet, Ethan Hawke comes immediately to mind because if there is one character who needs added slacker sensibility, it is Hamlet.

Actually, Ethan Hawke captures Hamlet as he would be were Elsinore a Manhattan hotel, Denmark a corporation, and Sam Shepard the ghost of a corporate titan now deposed. All the performances are very good, with special note to Liv Schreiber’s riveting Laertes and Bill
Murray’s effortless update of Polonious. You might think the modern, New York City locale would make this Hamlet clunky, but it does not.

Blood Diamond. A gripping political thriller that does not over-preach to us about the poor, misused Third World (unlike the tendentious The Constant Gardener). It could have been 20 minutes shorter, but the last 45 minutes is white-knuckle. Leonardo DiCaprio and Djimon Hounsou give fantastic performances (this film and The Aviator showed DiCaprio moving beyond peach fuzz) and there is great chemistry between DiCaprio and the stunning Jennifer Connelly.

The Good Girl. Mike White and Miguel Arteta’s Chuck and Buck was a creepy, human story about the loneliness of a boy whose development is arrested by his mother, unfortunately, at the moment he had sex with his childhood pal. When the mother dies, Buck goes to the only other person he’s ever loved, the now grown-up neighbor boy (Chuck) who lives in LA. In The Good Girl, White’s protagonist, small town Texas sales girl Jennifer Aniston, evinces a desolation that is more pronounced. She tells us of her misery, her dead-end job, her stoner but loveable galoot of a husband, her inability to get pregnant, in voice-over. However, she too must decide if and where to go. The story is about Aniston confronting, as opposed to overcoming her surroundings, and making non-Hollywood compromises in the end. The film has several things going for it: Aniston is cooly effective; she alternates between wily/selfish and lost/depressed very well. John C. Reilly (the galoot), Jake Gyllenhaal, and Tim Blake Nelson play the men in her life, and they’re all distinctive and even soulful. Better, The Good Girl neither sanctifies or lampoons small town America. There are things to laugh at, but White writes each of his characters (including his own Bible-reading session advocating security guard) with dignity. No one is sneering, but John Mellencamp’s “Small Town” is not assaulting our sensibilities either. What I liked most was the languid pace (others may find it too sluggish) and its lack of easy, pat lesson.