EW review: Stars shine in 'Neverland'
Depp, Hoffman, Christie highlight this three-hankie drama
By Ty Burr
Entertainment Weekly
(Entertainment Weekly) -- Would you let your children play with J.M. Barrie?
Sure, you say you would after watching "Finding Neverland" and heaving deep sobs at Marc Forster's delicate, tasteful, immeasurably sad tale of the creation of Peter Pan.
But, really: The man (a mournful Johnny Depp) hangs out on a park bench day after day, barely speaks to his retired actress wife (Radha Mitchell) and only really comes to life when horsing around with the four strapping young Llewelyn Davies boys.
It's OK, reasons their ailing mother, Sylvia (Kate Winslet): This is the famous playwright Sir James Matthew Barrie -- a celebrity. But isn't that notion currently on trial in California?
The truth is that this "Neverland," an exquisitely wrought piece of three-hankie drama, dodges more questions than it answers about the real Barrie. And only some of them are addressed on the commentary track by Forster, screenwriter David Magee and producer Richard N. Gladstein, who defend their fiddling with historical facts by saying, well, their subject was a fabulist too.
They also insist that Barrie was an asexual aesthete trapped in his own dreams of childhood innocence. Depp's delightful, nuanced performance makes that case more convincingly, and the film is best enjoyed for its gallery of players: canny geezers like Dustin Hoffman (as Barrie's producer) and Julie Christie (as the boys' disapproving grandmother), plus the eerily gifted Freddie Highmore as the most sensitive of the Llewelyn Davies clan. Clap your hands if you believe.
EW Grade: B
'Being Julia'
Reviewed by Kirven Blount
Unlike way too many period films that are filled with stilted types carefully posed and glazed in antiquity, Istvan Szabo's "Being Julia" imagines characters of yore as actual people.
There are emotional surges and switchbacks; characters lose focus and laugh too long; portraiture is transcended. Szabo clearly glories in the complexity of personality, professing on his commentary: ''Only a human being can surprise me.''
Annette Bening was much-lauded and Oscar-nominated for her turn as Julia, the aging idol for whom all of life is a performance, and Lucy Punch rips into the dotty-ingenue role. Though the film is indeed what Bening calls ''a souffle,'' it's a joy to watch it rise.
Extras: Bening, Jeremy Irons and Szabo's commentary is a veritable acting symposium with mutual respect on prominent display; deleted scenes (including a few gems) and two making-of docs continue the lesson.
EW Grade: B
'Star Wars: Clone Wars: Volume One'
Reviewed by Gilbert Cruz
This collection of "Star Wars" short cartoons is everything the new trilogy needs to be.
Devoid of any painfully long Imperial Senate scenes, these animated films -- one of which clocks in at five minutes, the other 19 at a mere three minutes or so each -- distill George Lucas' universe to its truly essential elements: amazingly kinetic space battles and grandiose lightsaber duels.
Originally aired on the Cartoon Network in 2003 and 2004 -- and winner of an Emmy -- "Star Wars: Clone Wars" fills in the holes between "Episode II" and "Episode III" (as Lucas says of his films, ''We never actually see the war'').
Director Genndy Tartakovsky ("Samurai Jack"), who gives it all a slightly anime feel, delivers minutes on end of almost wordless, pure-action set pieces, making this disc essential viewing for fans.
Extras: An "Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith" trailer is, sadly, the standout. Two featurettes offer little other than animators talking about how ''cool'' it is to be working on the project.
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