“J. Edgar Hoover‘s mystique lies in the fact that while he kept meticulous files with compromising details on some of America’s most powerful figures, nobody knew the man’s own secrets,” writes Variety‘s Peter Debruge. “Therefore, any movie in which the longtime FBI honcho features as the central character must supply some insight into what made him tick, or suffer from the reality that the Bureau’s exploits were far more interesting than the bureaucrat who ran it — a dilemma J. Edgar never rises above.”

Updated: Brett Ratner‘s Tower Heist (which opens tomorrow, and which I’m finally seeing this evening) isn’t doing all that well on Rotten Tomatoes so far. 67% isn’t awful, when I got a grade like that on a high-school exam it meant that I’d failed. A film has to get 70% or better to be called “critically approved,” I think.

“There are heist pictures that offer careful and detailed accounts of criminal procedure, generating suspense by focusing on the precise arrangements necessary to bring a brazen and improbable crime to fruition,” writes N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott. “Tower Heist is emphatically not one of those movies.

“Important plot points seem to have been edited away — or never bothered with in the first place — and credulity is strained at nearly every point.

“If this is a Robin Hood story, it is more in the manner of Daffy Duck than Errol Flynn (or, heaven help us, Russell Crowe). Which is great — or would be if Mr. Ratner were daring or disciplined enough to unleash the full farcical anarchy that Tower Heist occasionally promises but rarely delivers.

“Mediocre entertainment is not a crime — this is still America, dammit! — but Tower Heist could and should have been much more. Mr. Ratner goes for the safe bet and the easy score, which means that, for all his shows of solidarity with the working stiffs, he has more in common with the wealthy scam artist who took their hard-earned money.”

Middle-class husband loses job and convinces his wife they need to leave the big city and start a simpler life elsewhere — that’s Lost in America. Middle-class people are thrown for a loop by hippie manners and appetites (like hallucinogen-taking) — that’s the last act of Flirting With Disaster. Throw those together and remove the exceptional, whip-smart writing and you’ve almost certainly got Wanderlust, a Paul Rudd-Jennifer Aniston comedy due in February.

A person of substance and experience has seen War Horse and isn’t eating the oats like the others. He got in touch this morning. Here’s his report:

“I have a fairly high tolerance for schmaltz and sentiment. I bought into The Blind Side heart and soul. And as someone who dearly wishes that Steven Spielberg would get back on his game and deliver a winner, I was rooting for War Horse, especially as a potentially high-quality family film.

“But dear Lordy…

“My guard was up immediately when the film opened with the hoariest of cliches — a smitten lad beckoning a testy steed with an apple. When the mustachioed landlord came after the poor family for their back rent, he did everything but twirl his whiskers. By the time the comic-relief goose started squawking, it was clear that Spielberg not only wasn’t raising his bar, he was settling for the trite and true and nothing new.

“He does get probably the most important elements pretty much right: The horses are the best actors on the screen even if one flashes a Barrymore-esque profile shot that would be ridiculous in a silent movie. And the battlefield sequences, especially a cavalry charge massacre and encounters in the trenches, are duly rousing, harrowing and authentic — though not enough to top Paths of Glory or All Quiet on the Western Front.

“But tonally, War Horse is at odds with itself. It seems to be trying for almost a folk-tale feel, somewhat mythic, and then asks us to flinch at the horrors of war. The single most egregious shot is when a spinning windmill coyly hides an act of violence unnecessarily, perhaps protecting the family-friendly rating.

“Even a top-of-the-line cast can’t enliven the material when what they are asked to do is so predictable. That said, for some reason I never felt its length. But I think I was mostly eager to see just what Spielberg was going to try to get away with next.

“I don’t know what’s happened, but the man who made Saving Private Ryan didn’t make this.”

Tell me this doesn’t look like the latest high-style, elite-popcorn actioner from the director of Man on Fire, The Taking of Pelham 123, Spy Game and Enemy of the State. The guy who’s studied the chops of Tony Scott is Daniel Espinosa. I’ve seen this movie. I know this movie cold. The sink-or-swim factor will come down to the script by David Guggenheim.

I don’t want to go into this all half-cocked….actually, no, that’s okay…I’ll readily admit that this is a half-cocked notion. It’s just that two initial reactions I had to Charlize Theron‘s Young Adult character — that she’s a cautionary metaphor for “a kind of egoistic Kardashian-like malignancy afoot in the culture right now” as well as a kind of monster in her own right — have been somewhat refined.

We’re talking about an emotionally predatory Jason Voorhees here, and yet armed with a lot of sassy, funny, outrageous-deadpan dialogue. And I’m now starting to think of Theron being closer to Jack Torrance in The Shining than Jack Nicholson‘s other similar-type character, Bobby Dupea in Five Easy Pieces, whom I mentioned the other night.

The key component is that Theron’s Mavis Gary, an alcoholic writer of young-adult fiction who visits her hometown to nab an old boyfriend (Patrick Wilson) who’s now married with a kid, is unrepentant, and if anything is deeper into her mudhole at the end than at the beginning. That’s certainly Jack Torrance, all right. The other factor is a kind of balls-to-the-wall acting style that isn’t looking for empathy or sympathy. Either you embrace the fact that Mavis is a noxious wreck and that there’s nothing about her that is comforting or relatable…or you don’t.

It was clear from the get-go that Nicholson wasn’t playing a normal, average, relatable, ah-shucksian guy in The Shining. That moment when they’re driving up to the Overlook in that yellow VW and talking about the Donner party and Nicholson goes “See?…it’s okay…he saw it on the television!” with that goofy demonic look in his eye, you knew he was coming from a grand guignol place. On some level this is what Theron is doing also, I think. She’s not playing “one of us.” She’s playing a myopia-afflicted freak…but sharing dark cryptic laughs as she goes along, or at least for the first three-quarters of the film.

You know she’s neurotic right away, and you start to see the obsession early on, and then she gets into it a bit more, and then she gets worse and worse. I think if you go into this film knowing the old third-act redemption routine simply isn’t in the cards and the only way to go is to roll with crazy Mavis while getting your bedrock reality fix from Patton Oswalt‘s half-crippled guy, the film will work for you. And you may find, as I have, that Theron’s “arc” (if you want to call it an arc) is a little bit like Jack Torrance’s gradual descent into lunacy.

Compare The Shining‘s staircase-and-baseball-bat scene with the front-yard freakout, wine-on-the-dress scene in Young Adult, and you’ll notice a vague similarity or two.

Patrick Wilson’s vaguely wimpy Buddy Slade isn’t exactly Wendy swinging the bat and whimpering “I just want to go back to my room and think this over!”..but he is a bit of a softie and a pudgehead. But Charlize/Mavis saying “Look, you’re miserable here…this town is awful…I’m here to save you and I’m furious that you’re not hearing me!” isn’t all that far from Jack saying “You’ve had your whole fucking life to think things over! What good is a few more minutes gonna do you now?”

I hate to admit it, but “Nordling”‘s War Horse rave on AICN, which was posted early this morning, deserves respect and consideration. He’s a fool for that sappy, sweeping Spielberg stuff, but he knows how to write, and that implies he may know (or at least picked up some knowledge of) other things besides.

The only thing I’m kinda half-wondering is why doesn’t Nordling mention the pretty young girl (seemingly played by Celine Buckens) we’ve seen in the trailer with the sad, soulful eyes and a tear streaming down her cheek?

Update: I’m told that it’s a separate girl in that “Albert and Joey galloping alongside a moving convertible” scene. I’m speaking of the girl who feels moved to stand up in said convertible to better appreciate the sight of Albert (Jeremy Irvine) and Joey keeping pace. (I for one certainly know this feeling. I’ve been there. If I see something that touches or moves me, I almost always stand up in order intensify the connection, even if I’m in a moving car.)

“War Horse is old fashioned, and I mean that in the best possible sense,” Nordling begins. “It wears its emotions on its sleeve, and there is no place for cynicism in that world. It has obvious films like All Quiet On The Western Front and the films of John Ford and David Lean in its DNA, but the end result is all Steven Spielberg. War Horse is an epic that has Spielberg doing what he does best. He takes the audience on an emotional journey through World War I and out the other side, and the film very much feels like Spielberg paying tribute to the filmmakers he loved as a young man.

“War Horse is what you’d call an ‘old soul.’ It’s a film that could have been made — perhaps not with the technology but definitely with the heart — in Hollywood’s heyday. David Selznick would have adored War Horse.

“And then there are those scenes where Spielberg puts his classic touch on them and those scenes burn themselves indelibly into my mind. The way all the horses react when a companion is put down. The horrors of trench warfare, and the terror of mustard gas. A cavalry charge that’s straight out of Lawrence of Arabia‘s assault on Aqaba.” [Wells interjection: now this is the scene I’m anxious to see!] The beautiful cinematography. War Horse is most definitely a Steven Spielberg work, and he pulls out all the stops to bring the audience into a time that hasn’t been on film very much recently, and he does it with an elegance and a passion that can only come from him.

“It’s not a perfect film” — no! — “but anyone who loves movies and Spielberg’s work in particular really cannot miss this. War Horse is what movies are all about — transporting the audience into a world that will never exist again. As for myself, I loved every moment. For me, War Horse is magnificent.”

For Leonardo DiCaprio, playing J. Edgar Hoover “meant memorizing endless monologues that needed to be delivered with Hoover’s own breakneck cadence,” writes N.Y. Times reporter Brooks Barnes in an 11.2 profile. “Additionally Mr. DiCaprio, who typically comes accessorized with a supermodel girlfriend in real life, had to wrestle aggressively with a man and then kiss him. Oh, and wear a dress.”

From a 4.3.10 HE posting about same: “Okay, I’ve flipped through most of Lance Black‘s J. Edgar Hoover script — i.e., the one that Clint Eastwood reportedly intends to direct with Leonardo DiCaprio as the FBI kingpin — and I haven’t come upon a scene calling for DiCaprio to wear lace stockings and pumps and a cocktail dress. So we’re safe on that score.”

HE’s Manhattan correspondent Jett Wells attended Tuesday night’s (11.1) premiere screening of Oren Moverman‘s Rampart at the Sunshine plex on Houston Street. Here’s his report:

Rampart star Woody Harrelson, Ben Stiller at Tuesday night’s premiere.

“It felt suffocating being surrounded by a ridiculous and cluttered amount of celebrities in such a small theater. Is that Courtney Love? Yup. Martha Stewart? Yes, indeed. Oh hey…yes, Steve Buscemi and Michael Shannon looking for their seats. You couldn’t talk about the iconic faces without looking like an ogling jerkoff, but that didn’t stop all the turning heads in the front rows.

“Before the screening Ben Stiller delivered an introduction, explaining how he first met Oren at the Nantucket Film Festival a year or two ago. He was a big fan of his work but he hadn’t seen his new film with all-star cast featuring Woody Harrelson, Sigourney Weaver, Steve Buscemi, Ice Cube and Robin Wright. He asked the reluctant director to say a few words. “Just stick through it to the end,” Moverman said. And then we were off.

“Rampart is about an angry, Vietnam-vet, sex-addicted, misanthropic LA cop (Harrelson) who longs for the days when cops could muscle out the bad guys by taking them out and cleaning up the red tape later with winks all around. I think.

“While the film is built around strong writing and clever camera angles, the only thing I could pull out this wonky plot line is Harrelson’s performance — his darkest and most sincere since Natural Born Killers. He smokes what seems like six cartons of cigarettes throughout the film (a la Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart), while sleeping with Robin Wright and other random women as he gets his rocks off while acting as a righteous, misunderstood hero defending his name.

Rampart director Oren Moverman, Woody Harrelson.

“His character, Dave ‘Date Rape’ Brown, is an evasive father with two ex-wives. He’s been on the job for 27 years. The setting tells us the LAPD is in the middle of scandal, but Moverman doesn’t focus on the details. Brown, whose nickname stems from his having allegedly killed a serial rapist without being convicted, is convinced that higher powers are trying to use him as a patsy to take the fall for the corrupt city government after he’s filmed beating a man almost to death. He’s convinced it was all set-up.

“The story seems more convoluted in retrospect, and it feels that way when you’re watching it. But the one bothersome, ignored plot line in the film is Brown’s family situation. He lives with what seems to be his two ex-wives who live in two separate adjoining condos, and he living in a small adjacent guest house. While his two daughters despise him for his secrecy and drinking problems.

“It feels like a Mormon polygamy situation, but there’s no way this grizzled cop is anything like Mitt Romney so what’s the deal? It’s bothersome and distracting that no one explains what’s going on with this vital storyline.

“Brown slips into his ex-wives homes to act like a missing husband, slipping into their beds. This involves him asking in so many words, ‘Will you sleep with me?’ Really, who says that?

“Overall the film has a solid core and shows Moverman’s obvious talent, but Harrelson’s performance carries the film even if 30 percent of it doesn’t any sense. Is it an Oscar-worthy performance? Maybe, meh, but at least it reminded me what kind of performance Harrelson still has burning inside him. It’s a refreshing revival in an otherwise bizarre and frustrating film.”

Here’s my somewhat more positive Toronto Film Festival review.

George Clooney has told USA Today‘s Susan Wloszczyna (a.k.a. “Suzie Woz”) that Alfonso Cuaron‘s Gravity “is a very odd film, really. Two people in space. No monsters. It’s more like 2001 than an action film.”

Clooney and costar Sandra Bullock play astronauts working on an orbiting space station. “A satellite blows up and space junk causes damage,” Clooney explains. “We go out in space suits, and she and I are tethered together, floating through space. [So] it’s a two-hander with only two actors in the whole film.” Oh, and “Sandy is the lead.”

Gravity began filming last May in London, and reportedly cost about $80 million — not that much for a sci-fi FX flick. Clooney said that an early cut was recently screened for Warner Bros, executives. The studio will open Gravity on 11.21.12. The Wiki page says it wasn’t shot in 3D but converted to 3D in post-production.

“It is the first time I’ve been in 3-D and, hopefully, the last time,” said Clooney.

When a wife says she can smell the whiff of betrayal on a cheating husband, people nod and go “uhm-hmm”…knowing exactly what she means. And people know exactly what Marlene Dietrich meant when she told Fred Zinneman that people could “smell” the fact that From Here To Eternity was a must-see despite there having been no publicity. But people resent others claiming they can smell what a forthcoming movie will probably be like, based on the usual indicators (including the unmistakable whiff of calculated emotional mauling).

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