"This is a movie... about a mother," Haynes said while introducing his new miniseries, Mildred Pierce (to debut on HBO March 27) at the Ziegfeld Theatre, "and tonight isn't quite the same for me because my mom can't be here tonight."

Haynes' mother died unexpectedly during the production of the miniseries, which is based on the mother of all mother-daughter tales--the 1941 novel of the same title--and features a pathetically self-sacrificing mother (Ms. Winslet) and her monstrously conceited bad-seed daughter, Veda (Evan Rachel Wood).

Winslet elected herself a sort of hen-mother throughout the shoot-but no drama for her! "You all want to enjoy your work and do the best job that you can and when the leading actor is being effervescent or positive I think it makes a big difference to the atmosphere."

Especially when the cast must endure Mildred's specialty: chicken and waffles. Ms. Wood was a fan: "Hell, yeah! Roscoe's, absolutely!" But Brían F. O'Byrne, who plays Mildred's first husband, couldn't stomach it: "It's an odd combination, and I think there's a reason why it's not around anymore." Guy Pearce, who plays Mildred's second husband, added, "Behind closed doors, you might have something like that."

The release of a Depression-era story during a seemingly endless financial crisis is a case of clever or lucky timing, though Mr. Pearce thinks that the story bears more interest than simply economic: "I just think people hopefully will relate to it more because it's an emotional story, and it's an exploration of human behavior, and ultimately that should be a timeless thing," Pearce said.

Thankfully, not all of Mildred Pierce is universal--Ms. Turner said that she's no Veda. Of her real-life mother, she said: "We have fights about stupid things. I'm not supposed to paint my nails a certain color because it looks weird." She even ate Mildred's chicken and waffles, though her character is ashamed to have a mother working in the fast-food industry. "It tasted really good--even though it was kind of cold--but it tasted really good!" Art does not, this time, imitate life. 

On the face of the Woody Allen canon, Whatever Works is a zit. I once wrote that Woody Allen on a bad day was better than everybody else on Sunday. Too many bad movies later, I don’t know where he is on Sunday In Whatever Works, he comes home after frittering away his time in Europe, but doesn’t really bother to show up at all.

The first thing you hear is Groucho Marx singing “Hello, I Must Be Going.” It serves as the theme of a flip-flop movie that shifts gears more often than a bankrupt Chrysler. To some, all great ideas are based on the premise that people are basically decent beneath their flaws, but to Larry David’s Boris Yellnikoff, an unpleasant, aging Jewish curmudgeon and failed has-been physicist with a look of terminal colic, everyone is a fully developed A-hole. His philosophy is “Whatever works.” By his own admission, he’s not likable, and this is not the feel-good movie of the year. Omega 3’s, pelvic sonograms, fresh fruit and veggies, gyms, blogs, technology, retirement portfolios, family values, eggs from free-range chickens—to Boris, they’re all diabolical rip-offs invented to make life more miserable and pretentious than it already is. Boris is a metaphor for Woody Allen (who would have been a great improvement over Mr. David in Bermuda shorts), and the movie is nothing more than a stand-up comedy routine that suspiciously resembles a Rodney Dangerfield act. Boris’ ultimate, tasteless talisman to live by: “A black man got into the White House; he still can’t get a cab in New York.” Boris is so cynical and obnoxious that he makes Ebenezer Scrooge sound like Tiny Tim.

Enter a homeless Lolita from Mississippi named Melody St. Ann Celestine (Evan Rachel Wood), who talks him into letting her sleep on his couch. Boris is just full of cheer (“Thin nonsmokers die, too”), but this little Daisy Mae from Dogpatch feeds him crawfish and greasy ribs, endures his panic attacks and marries him. Suddenly, inexplicably, he starts enjoying life. How I wish I had started enjoying the movie. No such luck. It’s as charmless as Boris, and never produces a genuinely unlined Botoxed brow until fate knocks on the door in the form of her drawling, neurotic mother (Patricia Clarkson). When she wants some fun, Boris suggests a visit to the Holocaust Museum. In the contrived tangle of events that lead to a preposterous finale, Boris jumps out of the window and lands on top of a psychic (Jessica Hecht), who falls for him while he’s visiting her in the hospital. Daisy Mae falls for a neat, clean-cut preppie with a real I.Q. (Henry Cavill), and her bullish father (Ed Begley Jr.) from a deer-hunting Red State falls for a … man!

The point of Whatever Works is that the universe is made up of nothing more than meaningless blind chance, and no matter how ridiculous everything gets, there are some meaningless blind chances that could only happen in New York. Larry David is one of the puzzlements of contemporary show business. He’s ugly, bald and as funny as Alzheimer’s; his baffling popularity on TV’s Curb Your Enthusiasm is bad enough, but on the big screen, he leaves me cold as a frost-free ice machine. But what do I know? I hated Seinfeld, too. Nobody plays Woody Allen better than Woody himself. Why hire a sad, boring substitute with one expression and pasty knees? Whatever Works is a dubious idea at best, but when nothing works, it’s time to throw out the script and move on to omething that does. Many things go awry here, and some of them could have been fixed, but fixing a Woody Allen movie would be like trying to get the toothpaste back into the tube after it’s already been squeezed.

rreed@observer.com

Playing the film's mandatory naive young girl, Evan Rachel Wood, with her deep orange hair and strapless princess-cut dress, hopped and skipped her way inside after speaking to half of the press line. She said she'd be right back; she was not.

Debra Messing teetered in, saying how much absolutely she adores—adores!—Mr. Allen's work.

An Olsen twin showed up.

Mr. David walked in on the early side, wearily looking around as the fans began to chant his name in unison.

Finally, even Mr. Allen shuffled in with Soon Yi Previn, again without too many unnecessary stops or greetings. (He did speak briefly with NY1's George Whipple.)

Robert De Niro walked in, smirking, with Grace Hightower on his arm. Ms. Hightower's expensive heel briefly got caught as it pierced a hole in the red carpet, causing Mr. De Niro to halt and examine the problem at her feet.  But as soon as Ms. Hightower managed to yank her heel out, they continued on with their brisk pace.

Jane Rosenthal, the co-founder of the festival with Mr. De Niro, was one of the few arriving guests eager to express her excitement.

"The distributor called us and asked, 'Would you like to open with a Woody Allen movie?'" she said.  "And we said, 'How soon can we see it and yes!'"

Then Ms. Rosenthal let slip those trite words that have been said so often regarding Mr. Allen's films that they've barely retained meaning.

"It's a quintessential Woody Allen movie," she announced. "It's his return to New York."

Ms. Rosenthal was also pleased with the pairing of Mr. Allen and Mr. David. "I think it's extraordinary," she said. "I think Woody has found a new muse! He managed to bring out the Woody in Larry."

Nearby documentarian Morgan Spurlock, one of the jurors for the festival, was equally enthusiastic.

"I love Woody Allen. I love Larry David. How would I miss this?" he told the Daily Transom. "For me, of all the Woody casts over the years, I think this is the most perfect bit of casting I have ever seen. It's just ideal. To find someone who is as eccentric and neurotic as Woody is just genius."

Mr. Spurlock said that while his experience lies more in the documentary genre, he would love a chance to work with Mr. Allen at some point.

"If he would call, I would be like, 'Where do you want me to be and what time? I can be there right now! I'm putting on my pants! Where should I go?'" he said. "Even if I was like passerby number six, I wouldn't even care."

Just as Mr. Spurlock was speaking, Harvey Keitel and wife Daphna Kastner were walking down the carpet without stopping for anyone. Until, that is, a female reporter from a curious travel website called Citybuzz blocked his path, holding her mike out, and begging with her big eyes for him to stop and perhaps say something interesting. Mr. Keitel, seeing this, began to speed up, walking directly towards the eager reporter. Then he thrust his hands forward, grabbed her face, and planted an open-mouth kiss, before walking away and not saying a word.

"Did that really just happen?" the reporter asked her camera guy.

"Yeah, and I got it on tape!" the cameraman replied.

"I would have rather gotten an interview," grumbled the reporter, before packing up her equipment and leaving.

Talk about comebacks. In The Wrestler, a post-Rocky look at a junked-out, has-been fighter who won’t leave the ring even though he’s long past his prime, Mickey Rourke rises from the dead to resuscitate not only his acting career but his personal self-respect as well. In interviews at film festivals in Toronto and Venice (where it won the top prize), the battered, bloated and facially disfigured former boxer who made his first impact as a method actor in 1982’s Diner and 1983’s Rumble Fish before hitting the road to ruin talked about how The Wrestler has saved him from a self-destructive Hell’s Angels lifestyle of violence, arrogance and cynicism that rendered him unemployable. Well, it’s good to see an obviously gifted man once written off as a freak punch his way through a meaty role with the hunger of a starving lumberjack tearing into raw steak. Now he attends press dinners with pet Chihuahas tucked under his arm, feeding them from his plate.

Unlike James Dean, Montgomery Clift and Marlon Brando—pretty boys who declared war on their good looks with disastrous results—Mr. Rourke has lived to prove there’s dough to be earned with those dewlaps. In The Wrestler, he continues to beef up his body with steroids and suntans, making no effort to conceal the decay. With his long, dyed-blond locks and ravaged face, he looks like a creepy cross between a crazy Gorgeous George and Charles Laughton’s Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Darren Aronofsky, an arty, self-conscious director I have never cared for, does his best work to date, extracting from his star the edge, pain and hetero-depravity within himself, and Mr. Rourke, realizing he’s got nothing to lose, wisely trusts the boss’ instincts. It’s like he knows this is his last chance, so he’d better show the scars and all. From start to finish, you are almost unable to believe this is acting. Like Jack Palance in Requiem for a Heavyweight, the man you’re watching not only has the role of a lifetime; he seems to be living it, too. The result is the most brutally honest performance of the year.

He plays Randy “the Ram” Robinson, a washed-up pugilist who was once a draw on the fight circuit. But that was 20 years ago. Now he’s lucky to eke out a living stacking shelves in a New Jersey supermarket warehouse, fighting anybody in local gyms who will take him on for extra money, and trying not to get killed before the bell. He’s partially deaf and cauliflower-eared, with a face like a Halloween mask and the kind of long, straw-yellow hair in a bun you see on aging waitresses and church organists; even his tattoos are faded. Living alone in a seedy trailer, piercing his skin with staple guns, smashing his head with metal garbage cans and folding chairs, he lives in a bleak world devoid of all color except for his green spangled tights, and he’s totally alone in it. His estranged lesbian daughter (the exceptional ingénue Evan Rachel Wood) makes an occasional appearance, as does a compassionate sometime girlfriend (another terrific performance by Marisa Tomei), but she’s an aging stripper with a child to raise in Trenton, N.J., and no time for romance. How sad is that? After recovering from a heart attack brought on by years of self-abuse, he makes a touching attempt to retire, but loneliness and social ineptitude force him back into the arena for the respect and applause that are missing from his empty life. Subjecting his body to epic slammings and energy-enhancing drugs, he figures whatever happens, it’s got to be better than the misery and rejection he gets in the outside world. It’s a plot so familiar it borders on cliché, and elements of everything from Champion to Million Dollar Baby are inescapable. But there’s no denying Aronofsky’s commitment (gone are all traces of arty self-indulgence that have been his trademarks in junk like The Fountain); the tough script by Robert D. Siegel, which never begs pity for its downbeat characters; and especially Mickey Rourke’s raw, naked passion, which makes his galvanizing performance a real awards contender, and provides a jump-start for a career with a dead transmission.

rreed@observer.com

Harrison Ford pierced his ear after a "semi-drunken" lunch with Ed Bradley and Jimmy Buffett. Oh, Harrison, it could have happened to anyone. [P6]

Shia LeBeouf tried and tried, but couldn't score a date at The Beatrice Inn. [P6]

Ashley Dupre has been looking for a New York public relations agency to represent her and reportedly scored with the Susan Blond agency. Stay tuned for movie deal and a possible endorsement for a brand of men's socks. [NY Daily News]

Evan Rachel Wood can hardly handle Marilyn Manson's Mansinthe. [Intelligencer]

Gossip Girl is officially the most important show on televsion. [NY Mag]

Laura and Jenna Bush talk about collaborating on their children's book. [NY Daily News]

Eli Manning wed his fiancee in Mexico over the weekend. [NY Daily News]

Hmm, let's see. There's a sprinkling of underage sex, a generous dose of the word "kike," references to bestiality, and some timely—and no doubt, thought-provoking—allusions to the War in Iraq. The Transom was told this was provocative, cutting-edge stuff—although, it should be noted The Transom had just sneaked out the other day for a matinee of The Aristocrats and wasn't about to find itself shocked by some naughty words.

And yet...

"We were offered a lot of money by other distributors if we cut out the ending and made it more of a Mean Girls scenario," said producer Carl Levin, not without a touch of pride.

We asked if he was a member of the tribe.

"Yes," Mr. Levin laughed. "And I wrote some of the anti-Semitic jokes in the script!"

The film stars Evan Rachel Wood as Kimberly Joyce, a nastier, dirtier incarnation of Reese Witherspoon's calculating teen queen Tracy Flick. Seducing a lesbian newscaster, Kimberly croons: "I could never give up men. I like cock too much. But sometimes, I just need a woman's touch."

Ms. Wood turns 18 in September. "I'm all for owning your sexuality," she told us. "But I think my sexuality isn't quite like Kimberly's. I couldn't find myself in her at all."

Maybe that's a good thing. Kimberly spouts lines like "Get lost, you unkempt miscreant!" and orally services several characters of both genders. She accuses a mild-mannered English teacher of sexual assault, betrays her best friend and tells a Muslim girl that Arabs are the "worst race to be." Comedy!

The afterparty, featuring Twinkies as hors d'oeuvres, was held at Slate Plus Lounge in Chelsea. Hangers-on shot billiards in the club's pool hall while the few celebs in attendance stayed put in the V.I.P. area, which was set off by a glittery bead canopy and lit by hanging halos.

We were thrilled to find Jonathan Silverman there. The lovable shlub from TV's The Single Guy and star of both Weekend at Bernie's and Weekend at Bernie's II, Mr. Silverman told us he is betrothed—"Look at that, the engaged guy!"—and is working on several independent films.

"I just did a pilot for Jerry Bruckheimer," he said. "Right now it's the only thing that Jerry Bruckheimer has ever touched that didn't turn into something."

In a more secluded corner sat Adrian Grenier, who isn't a movie star but plays one on TV. The Entourage star smiled sheepishly as a bevy of girls swooped in to pose for pictures. He wore a forest green T-shirt and plain jeans.

"I think it's significant the film takes place in L.A. They're so affected there," he said. Mr. Grenier's a city boy: he grew up in New York and attended LaGuardia High School, studying theater and dance. For now he's back in Manhattan, "living and shooting a short film, Euthanasia. One of the characters is modeled after Evan Rachel Wood." She couldn't do the film herself? "She's too big! She blew up!"

We bid Mr. Grenier bon soir. "Be nice, be nice," he said, batting those big ol' lashes. Hmm?

We asked director Marcos Siega about the film's more offensive moments, such as the slurs aimed at minorities and Jews. "Some people are gonna hate it, but what are you gonna do?" Mr. Siega shrugged.

What are you gonna do indeed? Pretty Persuasion's positive lessons about diversity had already been confirmed for The Transom moments earlier. Upon entering the club, we'd noticed two young women eyeing us from afar. As we walked past, one girl turned, made eye contact, and said with a smile:

"You were great!"

"Thanks!" The Transom chirped, realizing we'd been mistaken for a dark-haired Jewish boy in the film. We didn't have the heart to explain that, despite The Transom's fairly Semitic features, not all the chosen people are the same.
—Michael Grynbaum

Boss (Mr. Duvall) and Charley (Mr. Costner) are the last of the free-range cowboys-a dying breed of callused cowpunchers on a cattle drive who hate fences, railroads and all signs of encroachment on what used to be the wide-open spaces of the American frontier. Although they've been partners on the trail for 10 years, both men have secrets in their past they have never revealed to anyone, including each other. Boss is also a kind of foster father to the other two members of their crew-Mose (Abraham Benrubi), a hulking lug with the power of an ox and the mind of a child, and an orphaned Mexican teenager they call Button (Diego Luna). When Mose and Charley's dog are killed, and Button is seriously injured and kidnapped, by a mean-spirited rancher named Denton Baxter (another unforgettable entry in his portrait gallery of villains by the intimidating British actor Michael Gambon), who uses his hatred of "free-grazing" cattle passing through his territorial boundary lines as a cover-up for his real plans to steal their herd, Boss and Charley invade the nearby town, where the local citizens are victimized by Baxter and the cowardly sheriff (James Russo). With the boy's life in the balance, no time to wire for a federal marshal and a tremendous storm coming, Boss and Charley are stranded in the hostile town with only the doctor's sister (Annette Bening, without a shred of makeup, in one of her most appealing roles) to help. The saloon showdown and the inevitable O.K. Corral shootout reminiscent of High Noon keep the pace focused in the barrels of the guns without much surprise, but Mr. Costner's strength as a director is the way he balances the violent action sequences with the kind of introspective character analysis that keeps the audience interested and concerned. Based on The Open Range Men , a novel by Lauran Paine, the screenplay by Craig Storper gives all of the participants plenty of time to develop and space to move around in. Boss hit the trail after his wife died, and Button is the son he never had; Charley has lived a life of guilt ever since he killed a man as a teenager and turned to a career as a gunslinger before finding inner peace on the "open range." Making plans after the storm to get revenge against the cattle thieves while the whole town scurries away, Boss and Charley's daunting, life-threatening crisis forces them to share their inner thoughts with each other in moments of piercing intimacy. Even when they are forced to fall back on the wisdom of their fists and their Winchesters, they never lose their sense of humanity and fair play. This may be the best example of male bonding since Butch and Sundance. Unlike the old stereotypes played by Jimmy Stewart in boots, they are reluctant heroes, warts and all. Out of the mud and the blood, the film is, above all, a love story between these two men, and between Charley and the pioneer woman he learns to trust. It's the kind of flick that makes grown men cry.

There's humor, too, watching these two horny toads try to get their fat, dirty fingers through Annette Bening's proper china tea cups, or Mr. Duvall, indulging his sweet tooth with a hankerin' for an expensive stick of chocolate "from Switzerland, Europe," and a good Cuban cigar. With his own horse sense and peculiar code of ethics, he's a perfect counterpart to Mr. Costner, whose inner rage hides a decent heart. I always thought this very contemporary filmmaker made a better baseball player than cowboy, but the way he wears his battered hat like a scar and spits between the crack in his two front teeth, he puts the Marlboro man to shame. No matter what you think of his films-and he's had some flops so noisy they sounded like the bombing of Hiroshima-you have to admit that his passion for movies always shows. He cares what they look like, how they play out for an audience, what they have to say on paper and on celluloid. He shows sensitivity for other actors and a great eye for composition: two horses struggling to cross a river upstream in a breathtaking long shot. A herd of cattle slugging through a field of bluebells. The Milky Way, from the point of view of a man sleeping on his saddle. The proud, silent looks on the faces of the local citizens as a whole town gets its dignity back. Mr. Costner knows more than most directors how to make a movie speak through the camera lens, and the excellent cinematographer James Muro makes a perfect collaborator. The test of any really great movie is how well it transports the viewer beyond the screen into its own aesthetic vision. With Open Range Mr. Costner makes Canada look like Montana and all of us feel like we're moving west with the wagons in 1882. It doesn't feel like make-believe at all. No paper moons in canvas skies. And danger lives behind every Indian sign.

People seem to like what Mr. Costner does. Since Dances with Wolves and Bull Durham , it's been easy to rush to judgment. I still get hives when I think of Waterworld , but even that critical massacre made a profit. Open Range was made for a more modest $23 million budget and figures to become an ever greater popular box-office success. I'm kind of larked up by all of this. Frankly, I've had it up to here with movies about computer technology, punk-rock bands and zit-faced teenagers trying to get laid. My own world-weary Stetson is off to Kevin Costner and Open Range , a rare sagebrush saga with the welcome kind of value, integrity, intelligence and old-fashioned cinematic artistry we could desperately use more of.

Teenage Wasteland

Heading for a badly needed vacation, I leave with a few parting words on two more movies you might want to see in the next few weeks. Evan Rachel Wood is a formidable actor of inestimable maturity with the patrician beauty of Grace Kelly and the emotional depth of Garbo, who-as fate, providence and Hollywood casting confusion would have it-just happens to be temporarily trapped in the body of a 13-year-old child. She became a guilty habit of mine during her dazzling run in my favorite, now-defunct television series Once and Again , and she has made the kind of small inroads in feature films that a few years ago were offered to the nubile Reese Witherspoon. This may change on Aug. 20, when the teeming masses get a look at Thirteen , a grim and harrowing look at uncontrollable urban teenagers making a brief mall stop near you on their way to Hell.

First-time director Catherine Hardwicke closes in on the angst and anger of adolescents jockeying for power and popularity in the pressure cooker called "Girl Culture"-a dangerous and self-destructive subculture fueled by cool, abstract experiments with sex, drugs, body piercings and crime. Ms. Wood plays Tracy, a normal, intelligent, pig-tailed kid who leaves her teddy bears and Barbie dolls behind when she enters junior high and hits the ground running. Peer-pressured into emulating the fastest girl in school, a lost cause named Evie (played by Nikki Reed, who co-authored the screenplay with director Hardwicke, based on her own true experiences in the Girl Culture scene). Desperate to fit in, Tracy becomes anorexic, snorts cocaine, steals pocketbooks, pierces her tongue and navel, and mutilates her body with scissors, needles and razor blades, right under the nose of her own mother, a chain-smoking, recovering alcoholic who is too self-involved to notice. The single mother, played by Holly Hunter with the gothic weirdness of a dying vampire, already shares her shotgun house with a live-in cokehead lover and a best friend whose mother is a crack whore. Since her home environment is already filled with people who are one step away from jail themselves, it's no wonder Tracy ends up in threesomes perfecting her technique for oral sex and goes from straight A's to flunking the seventh grade. It's the other side of the moon from Peggy Ann Garner in Junior Miss.

Thirteen is a new slant on the dysfunctional-family genre film. This time, the family is in a state of suspended psychosis. I have no idea what it all means. I'm not a parent, so I confess I am blissfully ignorant and out of touch on the subject of uncontrollable adolescent hysterics. I shudder to think any of this bleak despair is for real, but I'm told it doesn't address even half the horrors of today's teenage twilight zone by the long-suffering parents of modern American kids with credit cards and raging hormones who make the delinquents in Rebel Without a Cause seem like illustrations in Archie and Veronica comics. It must be irritatingly inconvenient for an accomplished talent like Evan Rachel Wood to be relegated to 13-year-old roles that are far from pretty in pink. She's still a marvel as the downwardly spiraling Tracy, and the only reason I can think of to suffer through the graphic sadism of this movie. As Tracy inevitably deteriorates, the color washes out of the film in a state of anemia very much like her own. Ms. Wood's vulnerability fuses the print with its only life force, but her cobalt blue eyes fade and the movie turns pretentiously black-and-white. Everyone in it needs a blood transfusion, and before it's over, so will you.

The Real Deal

Passionada (opening Aug. 15) is a charming and luxurious romantic interlude carefully constructed to cool the embers of a smoldering summer and briskly lead the way to the hopeful changes of autumn. Set in the Portuguese fishing community in New Bedford, Mass., it follows the lives of three generations of women in the Amonte family whose husbands, fathers and sons were lost at sea on a doomed vessel called the Azorean Blue . Grandma Angelica (the fabulous Lupe Ontiveros) is a pragmatic matriarch who doesn't want to see her own widowed daughter waste her life living in memories of the past. Daughter Celia (Sofia Milos, who plays a detective on CSI: Miami ) is a grief-stricken widow haunted by the sea and eternally devoted to her dead husband, singing love songs in a cabaret but eschewing the attention of every man in town. Celia's daughter Vicky (lovely Emmy Rossum, the Metropolitan Opera singer who played the young Audrey Hepburn in the ABC biography The Audrey Hepburn Story ) deplores the Old World traditions and tries to set Mom up with dates on the Internet. Into their lives boogies Charlie Beck (Jason Isaacs), a professional British gambler banned from U.S. casinos for card-counting. Vicky promises him a date with her mom if he'll teach her all the tricks of the gaming tables. Thus begins an elaborate, dishonorable seduction based entirely on lies, but greatly enhanced by fresh dialogue, solid performances and the realistic direction of the gifted Dan Ireland, who made an indelible mark with The Whole Wide World , an underrated film that also brought Renée Zellweger to prominence.

History repeats itself, because the best thing about Passionada (a title derived from the traditional Portuguese music called fado ) is Jason Isaacs. This is the dashing actor who stole The Patriot out from under Mel Gibson as the British military zealot who pursued Mr. Gibson's hero throughout the American Revolution, and whose unforgettable résumé of handsome villains now includes the dark and sinister Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter series. In his first contemporary romantic leading role, he's as unique and charismatic as the young Cary Grant of 60 years ago. Working his way into a woman's heart under false pretenses, then as passionate about proving himself worthy of her trust as a coltish athlete on the way to his first Olympic competition, he is spectacularly appealing. Jason Isaacs is the real deal. Why isn't he a big star already?