Joe Wright’s The Soloist, from the screenplay by Susannah Grant, is based on the book The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music, by Steve Lopez. The subtitle of the book says virtually everything about this film, about a Los Angeles Times columnist, Steve Lopez, who in April 2005 began a series of pieces about a onetime musical prodigy named Nathaniel Anthony Ayers who’d been reduced by an acute case of schizophrenia to playing a two-string secondhand violin in downtown Los Angeles slum doorways and alleys.

Robert Downey Jr. plays Lopez, and Jamie Foxx plays Ayers, the destitute street musician, and certainly the redemptive element in this saga of a transformative friendship is the glorious music of (mostly) Ludwig van Beethoven spread across the soundtrack. Mr. Wright and his screenwriter, Ms. Grant, have gone to great lengths to reproduce the intransigent realities of urban homelessness and mental illness in the slow, setback-filled progression of their only partially regenerative narrative. They have taken a few liberties with the biographical facts to speed up the story, but they have resisted the temptation of a grossly sentimental ending, and for that they deserve to be commended.

In addition, Mr Downey and Mr. Foxx both turn in Oscar-worthy performances in their very strenuous and detail-drenched roles. Mr. Downey is particularly impressive in the indispensable bite he gives to a characterization that might otherwise have sunk in the swamp of excessive altruism. Mr. Foxx, a talented musician on the piano in his own right, nonetheless had to master the fingering on both the violin and the cello before he could be convincing in his extensive simulations on the screen.

Catherine Keener is somewhat wasted in the thanklessly marginalized role of the columnist’s finally reconciled ex-wife. If anything, this platonic all-male love story is the antithesis of a chick flick, and the presence of Ms. Keener’s sharp-tongued Mary Weston in the proceedings becomes embarrassingly superfluous as the picture progresses. Similarly, Lisagay Hamilton as Ayers’ long-suffering sister, Jennifer, is not given much more to do than sit next to her brother during the film’s concluding concert scene.

In the only other significant role in the film, Nelsan Ellis’ charity house supervisor, David Carter, has to patiently explain to the columnist the limits of psychiatry in the miracle seeker’s quest for an instant cure for Ayers’ schizophrenia. But even after Ayers turns violently on his would-be benefactor, Lopez persists in pursuing his quixotic quest for the ex-prodigy’s rehabilitation.

Mr. Wright’s two previous prizewinning feature films, Pride and Prejudice (2005) and Atonement (2007), established his credentials to undertake The Soloist. Ms. Grant’s most notable screenwriting credit is for Steven Soderbergh’s Erin Brockovich (2000), for which Julia Roberts won an Oscar in the title role.

I might note just in passing that this is the second film I have recently reviewed that seeks to glorify the desperately endangered profession of print journalism from coast to coast. The Soloist itself contains a scene that strikes an uncomfortably timely note in what I took to be a parody of the usual soothing syrup squirted out to reporters about to be laid off by their employers. Never send to know for whom the bell tolls, etc.

asarris@observer.com

This year’s Golden Globe nominees were announced today. And while Joe Wright’s historical romance Atonement cleaned house, garnering 7 nods in this round, there was still room enough for Jodie Foster. After learning of her best actress nomination for her role in Neil Jordan’s The Brave One today, Ms. Foster, 45, apparently reacted with glee. “I can’t wait to have some rubber chicken and listen to the unscripted banter with all of those fine actresses,” she said, according to the AP.

Of course, the operative word here is neither rubber nor chicken; it just has to be actresses. That’s because today is also when CNN.com decided to out the heretofore cagey actress, calling her a lesbian. In the segment, “Jodie Foster thanks gay partner,” (which you can view here), the news outlet’s entertainment correspondent, Kiki King, drew this conclusion from a recent speech Ms. Foster delivered. On Dec. 4, the star of the forthcoming Nim’s Island was given the Sherry Lansing Leadership Award. During her thank-you routine, Ms. Foster acknowledged “my beautiful Cydney, who sticks with me through all the rotten and the bliss.” She was almost certainly referring to her “best friend,” Cydney Bernard.

The comedy starring Ellen Page and Michael Cera averaged an astronomical $63,000 on three screens, beating out Atonement—currently, according to buzz and conventional wisdom, the Oscar forerunner for best picture—which had an impressive $55,000 average on two screens and The Golden Compass, which managed a rather respectable $42,000 average on 10 screens. So, to recap, in a town where neither Atonement, nor The Golden Compass faltered, Juno shined brightest. A Reitman hasn’t been this popular in this city, since the first Ghost Busters in 1984.

Meanwhile, Enchanted (No. 3) dropped two spots, but maintained a healthy $13,000 average in its second week, staving off an especially robust No Country for Old Men (No. 4), with an equivalent average, but showing at one less theater in its fifth week. (Old men, maybe not. But, old movies? Sure!)

Savages (No. 6) expanded into four theaters but, with all the stellar competition, could only manage to move up two spots. Its average, which is hovering around $20,000, means this one should stick around in the top ten for at least a couple more weeks.

Beowulf (No. 9) took the steepest drop, hemorrhaging close to 50 percent of its business and sliding six spots in its fourth week. With another special effects laden fantasy film, Compass, debuting, this should come as no real surprise.

And if Grace Is Gone didn’t star John Cusack—in a role where the veteran actor is practically begging to be nominated for an Oscar—and wasn’t being distributed by the Weinsteins, it would be this week’s Straight-to-the-Netflix-Queue Award winner. Playing on four screens—two in the city—the film suffered a $3,500 average and couldn’t break into the Manhattan top ten. Hmmm … maybe it was the glasses?

List of theaters: Paris, Zeigfeld, Oprheum, East 85th St., 86th St. East, 84th St., Lincoln Plaza, 62nd and Broadway, Lincoln Square, Magic Johnson, 72nd St East, Cinemas 1, 2 &3rd Ave, 64th and 2nd , Imaginasian, Manhattan Twin, First and 62nd St., Angelika Film Center, Quad, IFC Center, Film Forum, Village East, Village Seven, Cinema Village, Union Square, Essex, Battery Park 11, Sunshine, 34th Street, Empire, E-Walk, Chelsea, 19th Street East, and Kips Bay.

Manhattan Weekend Box Office: How moviegoers in the multiplexes of middle America choose to spend their ten-spot is probably a big deal in Hollywood. But here in Manhattan, the hottest movies aren't always the ones making the big bucks nationwide. Using Nielsen numbers for Manhattan theaters alone and comparing them to the performance of the national weekend box office can tell you a lot about our Blue State sensibilities. Or nothing at all! Each Monday afternoon, we will bring you the results.

BY REX REED

The genuinely talented Joe Wright has made a film to make us believe in movies again. MORE ...

Must I Atone for My Love of Atonement?

BY ANDREW SARRIS

From Keira Knightley to the hair and makeup lady, the people behind this adaptation of Ian McEwan’s WWII epic created a movie so good, it’s almost sinful. MORE ...

Kidman’s Face Is Perfect for Sci-Fi!

BY SARA VILKOMERSON

Last weekend, family fun ruled the box office as Enchanted, that Amy Adams-Patrick Dempsey Disney fairy-tale romp, was again No. 1, bringing in another $17 million, totalling more than $70 million overall (that’s a lot of Mcdollars). This might be good news for New Line, ready to unveil its big hitter for the season, the ambitious The Golden Compass. MORE ...

Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt think stripping for the camera—any camera—is poor form. But Keira Knightley sure doesn’t seem to mind. For Interview’s December/January issue, the Atonement star says sayonara to her fashionable frippery. (Never mind that she looks like actress Famke Janssen’s evil, thigh-clamping character in GoldenEye on the cover; at least the poor thing doesn’t have Tom Ford chewing on her ear.) But, hey—that’s okay! Human beings are deeper, more complex than just a two-dimensional photo or a clip of their bosoms-n-bums. “People are many different things at once,” Ms. Knightley told the floppy pub. “We can be complete wankers one minute and totally fantastic the next.”

Next! At just 22 years old, Ms. Knightley—who must by now have more magazine covers under her, um, garter than Cindy—thinks of her present self as enjoying a “Hollywood-glamour phase.” Gone are the days, the actress said, of her “girl next door” persona, and thank God for that! “I think it’s wonderful to have those aesthetic fantasies [of Hollywood-glamour]. Those films pretend that you can wake up in the morning with bright red lipstick and perfect false eyelashes and hair,” she said, seemingly forgetting about people like the singer Eve, who needn't pretend at all. “I have always loved being transported to another time and place, and I love to be carried away in a fantasy.” Yup, that is pretty fun.

Those who want to be hauled off to Lala Land by Ms. Knightley, can take a trip to director Joe Wright’s Atonement, which opens on Friday.

Despite all expectations, 2007 is turning out to be a sorry year for movies. That’s why Atonement has rejuvenated my flagging energy at the very last minute. Elegantly directed by Joe Wright (Pride and Prejudice), meticulously acted by a perfect cast, immaculately adapted by the great British screenwriter Christopher Hampton and lavishly filmed with a respect for both intimate detail and sweeping narrative, Atonement is everything a true lover of literature and movies could possibly hope for. It is unquestionably, without any reservations, my favorite film of the year.

Based on the critically praised best seller by Ian McEwan, it’s a story of a youthful jealousy that leads to a monstrous falsehood that in turn ruins the lives of a disparate group of people, and ultimate retribution that comes decades too late. On the hottest day of the summer in 1935, just a few years before the war, the wealthy, vacationing Tallis family is expecting guests at their vast country estate. Precocious youngest daughter Briony, a fledgling writer of 13, played by the patrician and deeply sensitive newcomer Saoirse Ronan, is impressionable, sexually naïve and resentful of the attention older sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley) receives from the boys, especially the hunky gardener Robbie (James McAvoy), the housekeeper’s son, who’s beneath their social station, and whose college education at Cambridge has been financed by their father.

From an upstairs window, Briony watches Cecilia strip off her clothes and lure Robbie into the fountain. Nothing happens beyond a kiss, but Briony’s scheming imagination sets into motion the mischief that will impact their lives forever. When the girls’ older brother Leon (Patrick Kennedy) arrives for the weekend with an arrogant friend who drunkenly assaults a female cousin, Briony falsely identifies the innocent Robbie as the rapist. Convicted and punished for a sex crime, Robbie’s life is ruined. Four years later, he leaves prison and joins the army, but the estranged Cecilia has remained true, and the unjustly separated lovers endure years of grief, desire and emotional tension in the Henry James tradition until they meet in a moving scene set in a terminal cafe right out of Brief Encounter. The repressed Briony, meanwhile, surmounts her own class boundaries by nursing the broken bodies of soldiers in a war-torn hospital, but making amends comes late. Decades later, when she turns the saga into a hugely successful novel for posterity, everyone is relieved that the story had a happy ending. Or did it? In an electrifying finale, offered almost as a postscript, Vanessa Redgrave appears as the dying Briony to publicize her book, still suffering guilt for the damage caused by the deluded fiction of her youth, and reveals the actual facts. Atonement at last? True or false, a writer always has the last word.

The genuinely talented Joe Wright does an engrossing job of turning literature into cinematic poetry. In one magnificently constructed scene after another, he transports us from the idyllic sunlight and chlorophyll of the British countryside darkened by the storm clouds of approaching war, to the blood and chloroform of the trenches in France, the terror in the streets and bomb shelters of London and the galvanizingly surreal nightmare on the beaches of Dunkirk, shot in the perpetual half-light of an abandoned carnival with a bombed carousel in the backdrop. The sets and costumes stagger the imagination. And a uniformly brilliant cast brings three-dimensional humanity to the pages of Christopher Hampton’s script. The impulsive Briony, who sends the wrong man to hell, is played at different stages in her life by two remarkable actresses—Ms. Ronan is a staggeringly assured youngster, and Romola Garai as the mature version of the same tortured character is haunting. They both outclass and upstage the lovely but serenely bland Keira Knightley, who is all cold angles without soft edges. As the wronged man, James McAvoy fulfills the promise he showed in The Last King of Scotland, easily emerging as the film’s star in an honest, heart-rending performance of strength and integrity that overcomes the romantic slush it might have been.

Atonement is both a lyrical adaptation of great fiction and a revelation of the potential power of cinema to twist, mould, convince and entertain. Cynics may dismiss it as a period weepie from the Merchant/Ivory school, but Atonement is so much more than that. The five-minute tracking shot of the carnage at Dunkirk, the rush of water surging through a tube station as people die seeking shelter from the blitz, nurses marching in formation around a hospital as the lights go off, one by one, above them—all indelible images that transform a great book many called “unfilmable” into an overwhelming experience that has revived my faith in motion pictures.