Jim Broadbent and Hanks in Cloud Atlas. (Warner Bros. Pictures)

Almost three hours long, a lugubrious sludge of mud soup called Cloud Atlas deserves a limp nod for pure guts, I suppose, but what I’d really like to do is burn it. Based on a genre-switching, era-hopping, style-abusing, tempo-thumping novel by David Mitchell that everyone has always labeled “unfilmable,” the labyrinthine, ridiculously bloated—$100-million, anybody?—head-scratcher of a movie is the mess that proves it.

Coming at us in sections like an exploding garbage truck, this adaptation is a single film that weaves an incomprehensible literary gumbo of unrelated stories in multiple time frames over a span of 500 years. Whew! In spite of the publicity poop about how six narratives are linked by the connective tissue of man’s relationship to man, nothing really intersects—except in preposterous threads only a nuclear physicist could formulate on both sides of an equation. All you can do while you puzzle over it like a board game is try to figure out which member of the hammy all-star ensemble, unrecognizable in lurid makeup, wigs, period costumes and rubber prostheses, is playing which man—or woman—while the viewer-unfriendly screenplay squirts and splatters all over the place. Characters fade into and out of past, present and future centuries with the grace of a battering ram. They include Tom Hanks, in his worst performance since Joe Versus the Volcano, as a crooked doctor who looks like Benjamin Franklin on the Pacific Ocean in 1849; a balding cockney skinhead who becomes a pop celebrity by throwing a critic off the roof of a literary party in 2012, and a dark-skinned one-eyed native goat-herder (you can’t make up this stuff) in post-apocalyptic Hawaii, in 2346, babbling away in a language that hasn’t been invented yet. Ben Whishaw is a gay composer in 1930s England who writes about his own murder in a diary; Halle Berry plays one of the last survivors of a lost civilization in 2346 as well as a crusading journalist in 1973 San Francisco, trapped in a stalled elevator in the middle of a power outage, whose life is endangered when she gets a scoop on a nuclear reactor meltdown, and then saved by the lover Whishaw wrote to in his lost journals back in 1936; and the marvelous Jim Sturgess is a robot warrior from a futuristic planet called New Seoul in 2144 who is persecuted for falling in love with a sexy, socially outlawed, genetically cloned slave. Susan Sarandon plays a medicine man. Faring best of all is Hugo Weaving, as a vicious Nurse Ratched wreaking havoc on a senile publisher in a nursing home, played by Jim Broadbent. Mr. Weaving has had plenty of experience. He was one of the drag queens in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. There’s more, but I hesitate to make you feel as tortured reading about it as I am telling you about it.

The book wove the various stories into each other like a lap dissolve, relating each sequence as it was being read by the person in the next chapter. In the movie, the jumble of aborted narratives crash and thrash like carnival bumper cars, fragmented and pointlessly failing to find a common theme. “Our lives are not our own—from womb to tomb, we are bound to others,” drones the narration, but as co-written and co-directed by Germany’s Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) and siblings Andy and Lana Wachowski, who created the abominable Matrix trilogy, the movie is a trash heap of rubber noses and implausible high school accents that give new meaning to the word “pretentious.” The actors are a game lot, but they should have stayed in bed. It’s ambitious and massive and fascinating to watch, like a public hanging. The sets, especially in the futuristic sci-fi thriller section, are inventive, and the real star is editor Alexander Berner (Resident Evil) for cobbling it all together. But the effect of so many characters and so many unsatisfactory plotlines is curiously bland and inconsequential. At the end of nearly three hours of metaphysical hocus pocus destined to attract the smallest number of paying filmgoers imaginable, you don’t know whether to laugh, boo or write career eulogies for all involved. I mean, Hugh Grant as a bloodthirsty cannibal? The prosecution rests.

rreed@observer.com

CLOUD ATLAS

Running Time 172 minutes

Written and Directed by Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski

Starring Tom Hanks, Halle Berry and Hugh Grant

1/4

Avatar

What's the story: It's so nice that James Cameron, the ostensible King of the World, decided to tackle something small for his follow-up to Titanic. Ha! If you haven't heard of Avatar by now, we can only assume you've just arrived to earth from Pandora. After years of hype and speculation, the 3-D spectacle hits theaters today and—surprise!—apparently delivers on all the hype and speculation. (And, really, when was the last time something like that happened?) The reviews, even from the most hardened critics have been glowing, filled with terms like "awesome" and "beautiful," and it's even drawn comparisons to The Jazz Singer because of its game-changing ability. Here at the Observer, our Sara Vilkomerson sums up Mr. Cameron's latest thusly: "Staggering outside after two hours and 40 minutes of this thing, I felt like I had to lie down and take a nap." Someone get us a pair of 3-D glasses and a blanket, stat!

Who should see it: Watchmen's Dr. Manhattan (he's blue like the Na'vi aliens!)

Nine

What's the story: Nope, this is not "The Tiger Woods Story." Nine, based on the Broadway musical adaptation of Fellini's 8 1/2, comes from Chicago director Rob Marshall and features a cavalcade of female stars ranging from Oscar contenders like the lovely Marion Cotillard and Penelope Cruz to old war horses like Sophia Loren and Dame Judi Dench and everyone in between (Kate Hudson, Fergie, Nicole Kidman). And! As the man these ladies spend the movie orbiting around, the milkshake drinking Daniel Day-Lewis. The reviews for Nine have been mixed, but if you think we're going to pass on the opportunity to see Daniel Plainview sing and dance, you clearly don't know us very well.

Who should see it: Tiger Woods.

Have You Heard About The Morgans?

What's the story: To answer the question posed by the title: unfortunately, yes. This latest bit of romantic comedy pabulum—the type of film we're sure New York Times film critic Manhola Dargis would have an expletive ready for—stars the nominally charming Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker as a warring Manhattan couple banished to Middle America by the Witness Protection Program. (Don't ask.) And, wouldn't you know it: they fight! And have culture clashes with the locals! And, uh, you might as well just rent The Ugly Truth or The Proposal instead.

Who should see it: Those unlucky enough to get shutout of Avatar showings.

Also opening this weekend: Jeff Bridges gets his Oscar-hype on in the country western drama Crazy Heart; and all hail Emily Blunt as the Queen in The Young Victoria.

Will Ferrell did not have a child graduating from the school. And he is not among the school’s notable alumni, which include broadcaster Barbara Walters, filmmaker Sofia Coppola and New Yorker film critic David Denby. The actor’s presence, as a few resourceful parents learned and his publicist confirmed, was a personal favor to Today host Meredith Vieira, who had a daughter graduating that day.

“You might wonder why I’m doing this,” Mr. Ferrell, dressed in a nondescript gray suit, told the assembly from a podium in the school’s quad. “Well, I was paid $10 million—so this will be the last graduating class!”

Unfortunately, the comedian’s jokes failed to impress an audience that included at least one descendant of gourmet supermarket chain founder Eli Zabar, also an alumnus, and a li’l Lehman Brother. 

Mr. Ferrell called Dr. John Love, the principal of Upper School, the “Love Doctor.” He informed the audience that by the time he graduated high school, the “Corrupt Non-Culture University School,” he had kissed one girl, one time. He suggested that perhaps a member of the graduating class could go on to be the first black president, except that that had already been done.

“He totally missed the punch line!” said Victoria Goldman, author of the perennially popular Manhattan Family Guide to Private Schools, there to support her graduating nephew. “He should have said that someone here will be the first Jewish president! He just fell flat.”

Mr. Ferrell concluded: “Seniors, repeat after me: Dare to dream, dream to dare … love the Kardashians!” And the audience finally surrendered and shook with laughter.

But what is the actual reality?

This year, graduation week began with St. Ann’s, the moneyed-bohemian, touchy-feely, grade-less crown jewel of Brooklyn Heights. Once dominated by the children of artists and writers—alums include designer Zac Posen, gallerist Vito Schnabel (son of Julian), actress Eva Amurri (daughter of Susan Sarandon) and spawn of Sigourney Weaver and Ellen Barkin—the school has in recent years welcomed the children (and money) of investment bankers looking for a little artistic street cred.

Around 7 p.m. on Tuesday, June 9, parents, many in cocktail frocks, filed into St. Ann’s Church on the corner of Montague and Clinton Streets. Their kids wore suits and colorful knee-length dresses instead of caps and gowns. Mini-fans were distributed at the entrance; the old church often gets stuffy.

The St. Ann’s graduating class elects five student speakers, the most memorable of which was a smiley young girl in a floor-length, sleeveless cream gown and weighty diamond earrings named Kimi Lee.

Ms. Lee, whose father teaches print-making at the school, struggled to describe her unique education at St. Ann’s. Maybe it was like a carnival, or maybe …

“It can be an orgy, because, after all, the St. Ann’s ethos has always been uninhibited, experimental, gratifying and incestuous,” she told the audience, before offering that perhaps the best adjective to describe her education was “delicious!”

Another speaker, Sam Sullivan, a student of poetry, said some very romantic things about “enchanted gardens” and “childish frolic” and the importance of “fantasy!”

“Before anyone in the so-called real world has a chance to fool us, the gardeners, the graduates, into believing that our lives are about power or money or anything else equally mind-numbing,” he warned, “let us go out and just be, because only good can come from that. In the real real world, there is nothing, but love.”

Mr. Sullivan then pulled out a guitar and led those gathered in a swaying, earnest rendition of ABBA’s Dancing Queen. 

Later that evening, the students would be headed to a rented after-party in a loft—the secret address was texted to graduates around 11 p.m.—where they would celebrate their commencement with ironic beer like Miller High Life and Busch; sweaty grinding; and privately hired security guards. The after-after-party was at Dumbo Park, where the graduates traditionally watch the sunrise.

At 10 a.m. the next morning, there was a power trifecta of graduations.

At the West End Collegiate Church, mothers with carefully hair-sprayed up-dos and tweed designer suits swooned over their sweet boys with neatly combed hair and gentlemanly loafers, a surprising number of which spoke with British accents. In the audience, The Observer spotted the actor Hugh Grant, wearing a brown blazer and slacks, smirking as the Collegiate boys made their way inside. (Among the graduating class was a James Murray Fitzgerald Grant—presumably a relation.)

Before the director of the Museum of Modern Art, Dr. Glenn Lowry—whose son Nicholas graduated in 2000—delivered the commencement address, a tall, skinny, student-elected speaker named James Englander Underberg got up and referenced some raucous party behavior.

“In second grade, we learned the proper way to show respect for someone’s home,” he said. “For example, how to christen a host’s elevator by breaking a bottle and running away or help bleach a guest’s rug.”

Outside after the ceremony, some of the boys lit stogies. “I was born to hold a cigar!” a young man with freckles named David Rattner was overheard to brag. This summer, Mr. Rattner, who lives on the Upper West Side and is headed to Brown in the fall, will work for Mr. Bloomberg’s reelection campaign. “I have some plans for the future, but I’m allowing myself some freedom,” he said, adding that he has watched Gossip Girl, but found it a bit hollow. “It is a hyperbolic representation of my life,” he said.

“I wasn’t invited here today because I have some gifted capacity to deliver a message of inspiration for the future, no,” declared Ms. Washington, her hair pulled tightly back, dressed in a blue-and-white skirt suit. “You’ve invited me here because I am one of you—a Spence girl, through and through.”

Ms. Washington continued: “Your love and support for one another has gotten you worried a little about leaving here. You love Spence. And you are not sure what to expect. To that I will say, ‘Good, you should be a little nervous, because ladies, the world is not exactly like Spence.’” (Here the parents began to chuckle.)

“Make Ms. Spence proud!” later enjoined Bodie Brizendine, head of school.

Up at the Riverdale campus of Horace Mann, whose class of nearly 200 was four times most of the others, the red, gold, and white Chanel purses were in full bloom.

Upper East Side parent Debra Jaliman, “a Fifth Avenue dermatologist,” said her daughter was headed to the University of Pennsylvania. “It was her first choice; she got in early decision,” Dr. Jaliman bragged. “She worked so hard at Horace Mann and her dreams came true! It’s hard to get A’s here, so if you get the A’s, you’re going to get into an Ivy League school.”

A gentleman in a navy power suit and loafers was not so forthcoming, though he did allow that his second child was graduating from the school. “Horace Mann has been in the public eye a lot lately in a negative light,” he apologized.

Indeed, given New York parents’ traditional guardedness, it’s surprising that NYC Prep materialized at all.

But then again, it is co-produced by the formidable Liz Alderman, who attended the Brearley school for girls (considered the best in its class; as the saying goes: “Chapin girls sleep with the doctors, Spence girls marry the doctors, and Brearley girls become the doctors”) and then returned to teach at the school after Harvard. Another producer, Matt O’Brian, attended Stuyvesant.

“We’re just native New Yorkers that wanted to bring a fresh, East Coast perspective to the teen docu-soap genre and show the rest of America how New York kids operate,” Ms. Alderman said. “These kids have more opportunity than almost any other place on the planet.”

Ms. Goldman, the guidebook writer, expressed skepticism about the show. “Nightingale is the top school in the group!” she said disdainfully. “Anyone going to the top 10 or 15 schools would be smart enough not to be a part of this.”

Ms. Alderman was responsible for easing the concerns of interested parents, who would have to sign off on their children’s participation. Most of them asked her, “If this were your child, would you let them do it?”

“My answer was always, ‘Yes, of course.’ Reality TV is now a fundamental part our collective culture and the TV landscape,” said Ms. Alderman. “It’s a genre that is not going to go away. … Take the reins and make this genre your own.”

The schools that participated did not allow filming inside their walls, and their names are not mentioned. But according to a few speculative online parents’ forums, the brash Peter “PC” Peterson has already graduated from Dwight, where another cast member, Jessie Leavitt, 17, is a senior; the pretty Kelli Tomashoff, 17, is a junior at Birch Wathen Lenox; Sebastian Oppenheim, the 16-year-old “player,” is a sophomore at the Ross School in East Hampton; Taylor DiGiovanni, 15, is a student at Stuyvesant; and Camille Hughes, 16, is a junior at the Nightingale-Bamford School. (Nightingale recently sent out a letter to parents and alumnae, clarifying that the school did not O.K. Ms. Hughes’ participation and advised against it.)

“Maybe the parents are thinking that this is a good opportunity,” Ms. Goldman said. “But … the focus should have been on college admission, not who’s hooking up with whom.”

Ms. Goldman then confessed that she’s writing her own (fictional) series about the world of private schools. Title: Admissions Impossible. She said MTV and the CW are both interested.

—Additional reporting by Caitlin Keating and Eliza Shapiro

ialeksander@observer.com

Forget about Bridget Jones’s Diary or Love, Actually (but just for a minute!). This 1995 Ang Lee film is about as satisfying a romantic film as you are going to get, compliments of Jane Austen (natch). There’s the always-fabulous Emma Thompson (who wrote the screenplay) as poor good-girl Elinor Dashwood, the sensible sister as opposed to Kate Winslet’s tempestuous loves-to-walk-even-when-it’s-raining Marianne. Hugh Grant is the stuttering swoopy-haired Edward Ferrars! Tom Wilkinson is the dad! Alan Rickman loves Kate Winslet but she loves the feckless John Willoughby (played by Greg Wise, who in real life  has babies with Emma Thompson). We’re telling you this one has it all—including an excellent but far-too-small role by our would-be husband Hugh Laurie as the grouchy (typecasting!) Mr. Palmer. Swoon city.  [HBO2, 2:00 p.m.]

 Tuesday: Broadcast News 

This will movie will make you laugh and break your heart. Albert Brooks, William Hurt and Holly Hunter star in this 1987 classic from James L. Brooks.  You think it’s nuts now with Maddow and O’Reilly and that crazy big-headed Keith Olbermann? Check out the wacky network news crowd, where Mr. Brooks is the hilarious sweaty-mess smart reporter who just can’t compete with William Hurt’s pretty boy, cry-on-camera WASP-y appeal. Also, look for Jack Nicholson in an unbilled cameo as the big cheese network news anchor. Can you imagine a world where Jack Nicholson is your local news anchor? No offense to Pat Kiernan, but that is a wonderful world indeed. [AMC, 4:30 a.m.]

Wednesday: Make Me a Supermodel

We can’t lie: We’re a little bit sad that this is the last episode of Make Me a Supermodel. Somehow those evil geniuses over at Bravo came up with a way to make America’s Next Top Model even better, cattier and more fun without Tyra Banks. We’re down to the final three (though we miss you, big-bottomed Salome!): hot underwear-model-in-the-making Jonathan, sweet American blockhead Branden, and the former dancer Sandhurst. Who will win?  And what on earth are we going to be reduced to watching when this is over? [Bravo, 10 p.m.]

Thursday: Young Guns

Gosh, remember those heady 1988 days when Young Guns had the all-star cast of man meat to make certain eighth-graders (ahem) go nutso? So you have Emilio Estevez (looking more Martin Sheen-y than ever before) as Billy the Kid, his real-life brother Charlie Sheen playing the mellow one (ha!), Lou Diamond Philips shoehorned into something kinda ethnic, Dermott Mulroney as someone else, and head-butting Kiefer Sutherland as the poet who falls in love with some Asian chick he calls China Doll … cause he loves her. Terrance Stamp is a good guy and Jack Palance is a bad guy and at one point they all get high and see things, and people die and maybe get hung and, according to IMDB, Tom Cruise plays an uncredited cowboy. Whatever, trust us: It’s amazing. Screw High School Musical, why don’t people make movies like this anymore? [Cinemax, 6 p.m.]

Friday: Close Encounters of the Third Kind

People often forget just how awesome this Steven Spielberg movie is. And sure, it came out in 1977, which was a rather crowded year considering how many other great movies came out (Annie Hall, Star Wars, Saturday Night Fever) but do not forget about this! For one thing, take a minute to think about the fact that Richard Dreyfuss was a movie star! Then think about how cool it is that Mr. Spielberg got Francois Trauffaut to appear in it, not to mention this movie has what must be the best cinematic use of mashed potatoes ever.  Eat it, Cloverfield. [Bravo, 1 p.m.]

Brad Pitt thinks it's "inappropriate" for Angelina Jolie to make friends with the couple's household staff. [Page Six Magazine]

Big Love star Ginnifer Goodwin (and Katie Holmes's ex) Chris Klein have broken up. [Us Weekly] 

Hugh Grant has been pawning excess groupies ("eligible Stateside ladies") off on his British guy friends. [Page Six Magazine, second item]

New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is dating the Food Network's Sandra Lee. Also, it seems there is some tension between the AG and his younger brother, Good Morning America's Chris. [P6]  

A hand injury from a summer car crash has forced actor Shia LaBeouf to pull out of the upcoming film Dark Fields. [NYDN]

Well, the plot thickens. When we went to Ain't It Cool this morning (yes, we're still furiously checking that site multiple times per hour, as if we were twenty-years-old), the story had mysteriously vanished. Hmmmm. After conducting a quick Google search, we were happy to find we weren't hallucinating as another website, First Showing, had picked up the story as well. But when we clicked on the link inside their posting, it took us to story about Beverly Hill Cop 4. Grrrrr. What gives? More importantly, why do we care so much about a hack rom-com that we'll never see?

Old flames, it seems, snuff hard. For the second time in a month, Hugh Grant and his onetime girlfriend, Elizabeth Hurley, have been spotted together—most recently at New York’s J.F.K. Apparently more of a Bruce Willis-and-Demi Moore kind of relationship than something less platonic, Mr. Grant, 47, tagged along with Ms. Hurley, 42, her new husband, Arun Nayar, and her five-year-old son, Damian, last month on a trip to the Maldives.

But this time, the duo arrived at the airport sans Mr. Nayar and child. In a vain attempt to evade sparking any rumors of a rekindled romance, the actors left the terminal by separate exits and in their own cars. The task of blowing Mr. Grant’s cover, however, fell to his limo driver, who posted the rom-com poster boy’s name in his window.

Perhaps in the future, Mr. Grant will choose to cross the Atlantic in a private plane. After all, only six years after picking up Andy Warhol’s Elizabeth Taylor for £2 million, the Londoner is preparing to auction the piece tonight at Christie’s for an estimated £15 million profit.

Just Hugh are you Liz hiding from Mr. Grant? [Daily Mail via HuffPo]

The affable Mr. Grant, who is finally showing his age (agreeably, I must add) by playing something besides Peter Pan in an Armani suit, is Alex Fletcher, a washed-up rock ’n’roll has-been who once pounded his pelvis through countless hits in a 1980’s group called PoP! It’s been almost 20 years since he last made the charts, his wallet is as thin as a lemon twist in a green-apple martini, and he can’t even get a one-night gig at Knotts Berry Farm. Suddenly he’s approached by a current pop diva named Cora to write a song for her new CD. Cora, played with a style bordering on narcolepsy by newcomer Haley Bennett, like a hilarious combo of all the brainless Britneys and Jessicas on the Grammy scene today, wants to introduce the song at Madison Square Garden. Composing a new hit could be the comeback Alex has been praying (and braying) for, and he’s only got five days to do it. All he needs is a lyricist.

Enter Sophie Fisher (Drew Barrymore), the neurotic plant lady who waters his ferns. Sophie is not in the mood to write love songs. She’s still nursing a broken heart after being dumped by an N.Y.U. professor (Campbell Scott) who used the intimate details of their affair as material for his latest novel. The first half of the movie centers on the diabolical ways with which the desperate Alex talks the reluctant Sophie into becoming his writing partner. Think Marvin Hamlisch and Carole Bayer Sager and They’re Playing Our Song, with movie stars and production values. The second half follows them through all-night work jams, heated recording sessions, music videos, bouts of falling in and out of bed (and love), and ends up on the night of the big event at the Garden, where Alex bumps and grinds his way to stardom and ties together all the loose ends with the undulating verve of a middle-aged, arthritic Tom Jones. The vulgar, cheesy and idiotic rock numbers are the highlights of the movie, a terrific parody of the junk kids watch today on MTV, and Mr. Grant hams his way through them like Mick Jagger after a hip replacement.

There’s a lot to like here. Despite the silliness of the plot mechanics, Music and Lyrics, written and directed by Marc Lawrence, has a script that is admirably rooted in believability instead of sight gags and Will & Grace one-liners that nobody in real life could ever possibly say. A further advantage is the two stars, who demonstrate a chemistry that is rare in most of today’s comedy fiascos. Who needs jokes when you’ve got a pair this huggable? With her steno pad and her watering can, Ms. Barrymore is a marzipan kewpie doll waiting to get munched. The furtive, scruffy, self-adoring charm that Mr. Grant has been getting by on for years works to his advantage. He’s so retro he even has one of those waterbeds that come equipped with a barf bag. The singing and dancing in the overproduced musical finale is hilariously bad, and he’s a clumsy riot doing both—in front of thousands of extras. Nobody is more surprised than me, but I have to admit I found Music and Lyrics unexpectedly warm and ingratiating.

Into the Breach

Breach is a cold, gimlet-eyed dossier on the surveillance and eventual arrest of F.B.I. agent and secret Soviet spy Robert Hanssen. It’s about how the craftiest spy in the bureau was trapped and outsmarted by a boy young enough to be his son, and everything in it is the truth. It even begins with Attorney General John Ashcroft (remember him?) announcing Hanssen’s capture. But the story of what happened up to that point makes for an adventure so hair-raising that it challenges credulity.

Now considered the most dangerous enemy agent in the history of the bureau, Hanssen gave the appearance of a dour, no-nonsense, religiously obsessed family man. He was the last person in Washington anyone could suspect as a traitor, a security breach and a mole. But a special unit within the bureau had been following his clandestine movements for years, unable to nail him in the act of espionage. Meticulously written, realistically acted and suspensefully directed, Breach tells the story of the spy who eluded world experts and the young, ambitious office clerk who did what nobody else could do in bringing him to justice. Chris Cooper is magnificent as Hanssen, and Ryan Phillippe gets the role of his career as Eric O’Neill, the junior G-man whose patience, diligence and strategy outwitted and outlasted everyone else to beat him at his own game, risking his own life to do it.

At first, Eric thinks he’s been recruited by an F.B.I. task-force officer (Laura Linney, wasted here, but both efficient and effective as always) to spy on a sexual deviant. But when Hanssen takes a paternal interest, driving him to church, welcoming him and his wife into the family, and relying on him for the simplest trusts, Eric comes to like the guy. One creepy thing the movie does effectively is demonstrate how real spies are not comic-book villains, and Chris Cooper’s character is neither black nor white; he’s the perfect chiaroscuro. When Eric finally learns how many state secrets his boss has passed and how many deaths he has caused, it comes down on his conscience like a jackhammer. Downloading Hanssen’s Palm Pilot, watching Hanssen and his kind, thoughtful wife (Kathleen Quinlan) in pornographic videos, detaining him in traffic while the bureau searches his automobile, breaking into and resealing his mail while trying to hide his mission from his own wife (Caroline D’Havernas), Eric sweats through hell. The movie builds Hitchcockian tension leading up to the decisive finale, when Eric finally seals his boss’s fate on Sunday, Feb. 18, 2001—a day that will live in F.B.I. history. There’s an even bigger shock yet to come, but why spoil it? This is one of those movies to which you might want to bring smelling salts.

The painstaking moment-to-moment details and the claustrophobic device of putting the viewer inside the camera as the salient facts unfold are trademarks of the gifted director Billy Ray, who made the critically acclaimed journalism thriller Shattered Glass. As the film’s stoic moral compass, Ryan Phillippe works harder than ever, achieves more than I thought possible and earns respect. The uneasy feeling of claustrophobia extends to the eyes and pinched, painful expressions in Chris Cooper’s masterful portrayal of the enigmatic, elusive Hanssen. Breach is a tough, bare-knuckle look at the new cyber-terrorism that holds you captive from start to finish.

Valen-tunes!

Ben Vereen and Baby Jane Dexter are two performers as far apart as Anchorage and Austin. Yet they share kindred souls in their passionate approach to entertainment, and like space heaters, are both currently warming cold nights after dark on the Manhattan cabaret scene.

At Feinstein’s at the Regency, Mr. Vereen lacks the room to illustrate the precision steps that made him a Bob Fosse protégé, but he can still wiggle his thighs with the elegance of the late Avon Long. He’s not a jazz singer, but he does have an undeniable sense of rhythm and time that even improves banal songs from Hair, Pippin and the awful Jesus Christ Superstar that seem irrelevant out of context. Most of his song list aims to please the undemanding tastes of the musically unsophisticated (they are there in full force, shouting back from the expensive tables), but in his tributes to Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr., he strikes gold with ballads. Oddly, an over-arranged “Misty” is accompanied only by a snare drum without the snares, but most of the act is refreshingly devoid of frills. It’s autobiographically structured, but he doesn’t dwell on adversity, like the near-fatal 1992 motor accident that resulted in a stroke, or the predictions that he could never work again. I guess this is the season when every singer in town will be coughing up the dreary, overrated and ossified “My Funny Valentine.” He does it in three tempos, accompanied only by the thud of a bass, when even one is more than enough. Still, it’s always pleasant to spend time in the company of a survivor, a pro, and a performing prince. Ben Vereen is all three.

Holding court at the hot new Metropolitan Room at Gotham through Feb. 24, Baby Jane Dexter reminds me of colored lights, forbidden absinthe and big brass beds. If she’d lived in the New Orleans red-light district in a previous era, she would have been the most popular white girl in Storyville. Her specialty is hotfoot barrelhouse and wrist-slashing blues, which she wails like nobody’s business, and her fans lap it up like howling hound dogs, hungry for more. I always liked her raucous style, but I never expected to hear standards from the Great American Songbook in her repertoire. On this, the very best act of her career, she’s finally discovered classics by Kern, Hart and Johnny Mercer, too. And I’m happy to report that her lived-in baritone gives them a personal spin as unique as it is intense. On “Make Believe,” she phrases behind the beat. On “Some Enchanted Evening” there’s no beat at all; she doesn’t even follow Richard Rodgers’ melody. But she makes you feel the subtext of the emotions hiding in Oscar Hammerstein’s lyrics. She sings a Harold Arlen song about a reefer man, a Leslie Bricusse–Anthony Newley song about a candy man, and a Lieber-Stoller song about a “Love Potion No. 9” with equal grit and aplomb. She also tells about her own 12-step program to overcome a fatal addiction to … frozen hot chocolates at Serendipity. Simply hilarious. Then, without a bathroom break, she wafts dreamily into a rapturous “Fools Rush In” heartbreaking enough to knock your socks off. The best way to appreciate her unusual musical candor is to stop resisting her and give in. Baby Jane just kind of overwhelms you. And bless her pointed head, she does not sing “My Funny Valentine.”

In case you're hoping to win Gawker's contest to get a cameraphone picture of George Clooney out in the city today, we can save you some trouble:

When we reported earlier this week that City Bakery on West 18th Street would be closed for the filming of a movie, we narrowed down the possibilities to two: Music and Lyrics By (starring Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant) and Michael Clayton (with star and producer George Clooney).

But signs posted on the partially-closed block confirm: it's not George. It's Hugh and Drew.

- Tom McGeveran

In his directing debut, Richard Curtis, beloved as the screenwriter of Notting Hill , Four Weddings and a Funeral and Bridget Jones's Diary , bastes a bloated battalion of bores for what is supposed to be a celebratory feast devoted to the theory that even in troubled and cynical times, "love actually is everywhere." Nice sentiment for a needlepoint sampler, maybe, but the multiple stories designed to conjure visions of this filmmaker's sugar plums add up to no more than skits on British telly about fathers and sons, husbands and wives, friends and officemates, aging rock stars and the horny heads of mighty nations. Except for one black person, they are all white-bread Anglo-Saxon heterosexuals, which should give you some idea of how believable, diverse and au courant the movie is. The cast of characters is vast, with a famous face in almost every cameo, and includes a cuckolded crime writer (Colin Firth) who flees to the South of France for inspiration and falls for a housekeeper who speaks nothing but Portuguese; a recently widowed father (Liam Neeson) who shares his powers of seduction with his precocious 11-year-old son; and a shy junior manager (Laura Linney) who has a mad crush on a sexy co-worker, but is too disabled by a guilt-ridden pathological devotion to her mentally ill brother to consummate the affair. Meanwhile, her fatuous boss (Alan Rickman) busily toys with getting himself seduced by the office slut, torturing his long-suffering but devoted wife (Emma Thompson), who is the sister of England's randy new prime minister (Hugh Grant), who chases everything in panties. Mr. Grant, who has never passed a mirror he didn't want to kiss, does an oversexed bachelor spin on Tony Blair while nose-thumbing an oil painting of Margaret Thatcher. He's the most absurd character on the premises-a hip P.M. who discos till dawn, shakes his fanny through the halls of 10 Downing Street and, in the film's most implausible sequence, battles for the sexual conquest of a curvaceous staff member with the lecherous, fang-dripping and thoroughly obnoxious President of the United States (Billy Bob Thornton, in another of his many wigs, parodying the worst flaws of both Bill Clinton and George Bush).

Had enough? I haven't even gotten to the part about the naked couple who meet as stand-ins for two porno stars, or the beautiful new bride torn between her groom and his best man, or the waiter who travels all the way to Wisconsin to find fulfillment with two American nymphomaniacs at the same time, or the vulgar, clownish has-been pop singer (Bill Nighy) trying to make a comeback. Some of the sketches come to nothing, others are abandoned totally when writer-director Curtis runs out of ideas and can't think of anything else for them to say. All of them are accompanied by a relentless, headache-inducing score of noisy, second-rate tunes from the British pop charts.

It isn't often that you find so many swell folks making asses of themselves while trying desperately to seem très amusant . I found them all lost, superficial and annoyingly dull. In the end, the whole cast alights from the same plane in the arrivals hall at Heathrow. Where did they go? When did they leave? Why are they all on the same flight? And while I'm asking questions, where are Glenn Miller, Judge Crater and Amelia Earhart?

This movie is so unfunny, uninspired and unoriginal I swear it could have started out as a club-footed Coen Brothers vehicle for George Clooney. Certainly it's a misguided catastrophe on the level of Intolerable Cruelty . In fairness, I confess I seem to be a minority of one. People all around me screamed with delight every time Hugh Grant bumbled and winked and flirted with himself in the paroxysm of self-love that has become his acting style. People need humor, no matter how dense and doltish it is. They need a little Christmas, they need it early, and the idiotic thought of Britain's prime minister dashing through the snow on Christmas Eve looking for poontang and getting trapped in a roundelay of Christmas carols is enough to satisfy the most sophomoric tastes. I don't know what other light refreshments are planned for the forthcoming festive season, but personally, I like a little higher octane in my holiday punch.

Dance Therapy

Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks is a two-hander about the lonely, rigid widow of a Baptist minister filling in the blank spaces and empty days of her retirement years in Florida, and the troubled, flamboyant and angry gay dance instructor who arrives for weekly sessions of bitchy tea and sympathy. In two acts and seven scenes, the "passive-aggressive queen with bad attitude" and the "tight-assed old biddy" mellow and melt their protective veneers until she learns to jitterbug, tango, waltz, fox-trot, cha-cha and disco, he learns to trust, and both of them learn the healing powers of compassion and the restorative values of friendship. It's the kind of sit-com that should keep community dinner theaters busy for years. The play isn't much, but the main reasons to see it in its present form are called Polly Bergen and Mark Hamill. They are knockouts, dispensing magic in two stylish, high-spirited star turns of vigor, versatility and just the right combination of humor and humanity to make audiences laugh and cry at the same time. You won't find actors of their eminence in summer stock. How lucky we are that they dropped in.

Ailing Cat

Like most Tennessee Williams plays, I've seen countless productions of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof , but none as limp as the current revival at the Music Box. From the ludicrous set to the exaggerated Southern drawls, nothing jells. I've visited my share of plantations in the Mississippi Delta, but I have yet to find one with brown rattan, white wicker, wooden wainscoting, wrought iron and ugly upholstery in the same room. This could be a house in the Bronx, but never the estate of a rich cotton planter like Big Daddy. As the vulgar, self-made redneck dying of cancer, Ned Beatty is no Burl Ives, but the second act, which is his big scene with his alcoholic son Brick, shows him off to excellent advantage and is the best of the three acts. The big surprise is Jason Patric as a studly, understated Brick. Usually Brick is a disillusioned observer, pickled in bourbon and nearly catatonic. Mr. Patric is an arresting mixture of sensuality and dissipation whose flame still burns brightly behind glazed eyes. The big disappointment is movie star Ashley Judd as his conniving wife, Maggie. Of all the mesmerizing ladies I have seen in this commanding and erotic role, she is the choppiest, flightiest, noisiest and least convincing. Her accent is so phony that, like everything in Anthony Page's production, it seems made in Taiwan. Every word is accompanied by a gesture, whole sentences stick to the roof of her mouth like grits. Worst of all, this Maggie and Brick seem to hate each other. They talk over and around each other, rarely touching or making eye contact. In the last scene, when Ms. Judd moves Mr. Patric to the bed to conceive the child that might seal their inheritance of Big Daddy's money, there is so little warmth and chemistry between them that they scarcely look like they have even been introduced. I don't think this is exactly what Tennessee Williams had in mind for two of his sexiest animals, fighting tooth and claw for domination of the species. This Cat doesn't growl, it just meows awhile and wanders off looking for Little Friskies.