THE QUEEN (UK, Stephen Frears)
Despite its unfortunately generic title and potentially boring subject matter - a few days in the life of today's British royalty - The Queen is a richly acted and utterly compelling look, necessarily fictionalized to some extent, at the political machinations that went into place after the death of Princess Diana in 1997, when newly elected Prime Minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) eventually forced Queen Elizabeth II (Helen Mirren, Oscar-bound) to set aside propriety by publicly honoring Diana, who by then was disgraced in the royal court and hadn't been liked by Her Majesty in years. The film very cleverly and slowly manipulates our feelings towards the Queen, at first presenting her as the head of a snobbish royal family totally clueless about the expectations of the modern world outside, then eventually suggesting that it was a public obsessed with the tabloid celebrity of Diana who, in their tacky, blubbering grief over the death of a passive-aggressive socialite, made a mockery of the dignity that British royalty - and by some extension, Britain itself - had long cherished. Yet Frears, who in his past life as a roguish anti-establishment filmmaker should be the last person to apologize for the Queen, keeps the argument open as to what place monarchs even have in our modern world. There is a lot of inherent sadness in The Queen: the obvious one being the tragedy of Diana's death-by-paparazzi and the less tangible and more profound one being Elizabeth's awakening to royalty's own irrelevance, after centuries of honor and power, in an age where some pipsqueak Prime Minister tells her how to act and where Elton John plays Westminster Abbey. There's even yet a third, barely discussed sense of loss, one which might speak loudest to Frears, where the great white hope that was Tony Blair - the first Labour Party leader to become Prime Minister of the UK in eighteen years and a seeming progressive - would, within half a decade, become derided by his own people as George W. Bush's "lapdog." Elizabeth, who during that one week became far shrewder about the fickleness of the public, delivers this warning to Blair herself. But politics aside, The Queen stands as a crisp, fascinating drama, a private look at one of the Western world's most enigmatic public figures, and Helen Mirren performs masterfully as usual. Don't let the suggested pomposity of the subject matter sway you from seeing this film. It's a strong and thought-provoking piece of entertainment. And I'm glad to see this new breed of biopic (Good Night and Good Luck and Capote being other examples) that tell us much more about their subjects' souls, simply by honing in on one major event that helped define their lives, than any of those dull cradle-to-grave biographies ever did. My only complaint: the scene with the deer is stupid.

THE QUIET AMERICAN (US/Australia, Phillip Noyce)
This film was supposed to come out in late 2001, but Miramax feared that releasing a film about pre-war Vietnam might make post-9/11 audiences uncomfortable, especially as it warns against the dangers of the U.S. meddling with third world countries. So they sat on it for a year and released it with little fanfare. Too bad, as The Quiet American is fantastic, the sort of film Hollywood should be putting out but isn't. It's a faithful adaptation of Graham Greene's prescient 1955 novel about Vietnam between its French and American wars, packing more punch now, of course, since we can watch it with a post-war perspective. It's a typical Greene setup, a love triangle set against a heavier political crisis: In 1952 Saigon, a cynical British journalist (Michael Caine, 20 years too old for the part but never better) and an idealistic American "medical worker" (Brendan Fraser) both fall in love with a local taxi dancer, and their differing opinions about what's best for her reflect their views about her country's future, as the communists drive out the French and U.S. presence becomes suspiciously more noticeable. Caine and Fraser perfectly inhabit their roles, and Do Thi Hai Yen brings a resonance to her character, who I felt was merely an exotic cypher in the novel. Nobody writes like Graham Greene these days - he had a knack for exploring the dark sides of all his characters, and allowing them to commit acts of great betrayal against even their closest friends. Which may be why Miramax was afraid to back it in these we-are-good, they-are-evil, end-of-discussion times. The story is a bitter pill to swallow, bringing up the troubling idea that maybe the world would be better off if the U.S. just minded its own damn business. Of course that idea makes The Quiet American even more timely than ever right now. Director Noyce preserves the pungency of Greene's grim outlook, and the amazing cinematographer Christopher Doyle is completely in his element here, painting mid-50's Vietnam as a shadowy, crumbling beauty. Even without his usual collaborator Wong Kar-Wai, he puts in his very best work.

QUILLS (US, Philip Kaufman)
Entertaining if heavy-handed Oscar bait about the last days of the Marquis de Sade, as his pornographic writings get smuggled out of his cell at the Charenton Asylum in early 19th century France and become an embarrassment for the poor abbot running the asylum. For some reason I have never managed to see a Philip Kaufman film, despite the notoriety of much of his work (The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Henry & June, The Right Stuff, etc.) Now that I have seen the man in action, I'm certainly of no mind to rush out and explore his earlier films. He is a capable director, but has nothing special to offer. This film feels like a compendium of the work of director Milos Forman, in that it combines the madhouse of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the historical lunatic-genius of Amadeus and the maligned pornographer of The People Vs. Larry Flynt. One wonders if Forman himself would have been able to add any real relevance to the story, as those three previous films say far more about art, jealousy, insanity and free will than Quills can cough up.

However, it is a handsome production, and the cast all put in the good performances you'd expect: As the chuckling Marquis, Geoffrey Rush is a devilish though beleagured libertine; Joaquin Phoenix once more puts on the phony British accent as the troubled religious man whose friendship with the Marquis is put to the test; Kate Winslet is fine, though her role isn't that well-developed (and, yes, she does get naked again - it must be in her contract); Michael Caine rounds out the feted quartet as the cold-blooded doctor called in to set Charenton "right" again, no matter the cost. But the film, based on Doug Wright's off-Broadway play, still feels stagebound. Though Kaufman does "open it up" for the big screen, his direction is so ordinary that it cannot hide Wright's stagy (though crisp) dialogue, nor the uncinematic narrative. As for the story itself, it's your standard "Renegade Artist vs. Hypocritical Establishment" drama. Sex good, censorship bad, blah blah blah. You've seen it all before. Quills does provide some fun, and it's manipulative in the best sense (the Marquis comes across as a really great guy), but it mistakenly believes it is has something new to say. Which might be forgiveable if it were at least erotic or even vaguely offensive, a more fitting tribute to the Marquis. But outside of one brief three-way sex scene, some religious heresy, and a few unhappy glimpses of Geoffrey Rush's bottom, it's little more than the Hollywood version of naughtiness. I recommend instead the wild 60's film Marat/Sade (also based on a play) or the truly bizarre French puppet(!) film Marquis if you want a more potent taste of the life and mind of de Sade.