CANNES, France -- Liberace fluttered into the Cannes Film Festival this morning and graced the masses with the heartfelt Behind the Candelabra, Steven Soderbergh’s directorial swan song and a touching May-December love story between Mr. Showmanship (Michael Douglas) and Scott Thorson (Matt Damon), his longtime arm-candy companion. (American audiences with a good cable package or their friend’s HBO-to-Go password can watch it this Sunday night.) Mr. Douglas is astonishing in a deeply committed, vanity-free performance as the effeminate, wildly successful and flamboyantly closeted piano player; and Mr. Damon brings true pathos to his role as Liberace’s unhappy boy toy. Delightfully outrageous while almost never feeling campy, with a beautiful script by Richard LaGravenese, Candelabra is the first true gay-marriage drama, an apt romance for the Obama Age where homosexuality, bedazzled as it may be in this outré ’70s-’80s period piece, is never presented as alien or perverse. (Probably the most scandalous part of this film is seeing how much Liberace loved to cook at home for Scott and sit on the couch cuddling over a bowl of popcorn.) This is a fractured fairy tale about two lonely souls, not a True Hollywood Story of immoral decline, and the result is all the more resonant.

Michael Douglas and Matt Damon. (Getty Images)

The press conference afterwards was aptly emotional (though still properly ribald), with Mr. Douglas clearly choking up about the chance to play this part. “It was right after my cancer, and this beautiful gift was handed to me,” he said after a pause to hold back tears. “And I'm eternally grateful to Steve and Matt and Richard for waiting for me."

The occasion was also a sentimental one for Mr. Soderbergh, who won the Palme d’Or here in Cannes in 1989 for his debut, Sex, Lies, and Videotape. "At the end of the day, it's really about two people in a room,” he pointed out about Candelabra. “And that was what my first film was about." He even reminisced with longtime Cannes moderator Henri Behar, who had been in that same conference room with him more than two decades ago. “My hair was darker," Mr. Behar said. "And I had hair!" added Mr. Soderbergh.

Mr. Damon laughed with the press about his many scenes between the sheets with Mr. Douglas. “I now have things in common with Sharon Stone and Glenn Close and Demi Moore,” he said. “It's great. We can all go out and trade stories.” But the main focus of attention was Mr. Damon’s revealing performance—especially the Brazilian spray tan he had gotten for the part. "The world really needed to see this,” said Mr. Soderbergh, who deliberately exploited (with Mr. Damon’s encouragement) the Oscar winner’s derrière, skinny tan lines and all. “Tonight, we'll see it on the biggest screen ever, which is jarring,” laughed Mr. Damon. “This is something you can't unsee. It will be seared into your memory."

Another hit in Cannes, which premiered last night, is an equally delightful look at excess. You want spiritual decadence? Look no further than The Great Beauty. A major revelation and one of the great triumphs of the festival, Paolo Sorrentino’s deliriously louche take on existential despair in the sumptuous bosom of Rome is a 21^st century version of La Dolce Vita, a swirling ode to the Eternal City that will make art-house audiences swoon. At last night’s press screening, virtually the entire crowd, floored by the film, sat in stunned silence through the entirety of the placid end credits—an almost unheard-of occurrence at a festival that prides itself on stampedes from one screening to the next.

Ryan Gosling. (Getty Images)

The suave Italian actor Toni Servillo plays Mastroianni’s celluloid heir, a 65-year-old journalist named Jep Gambardella with an early-career literary novella under his belt and no accomplishments other than attending debauched bacchanales ever since. And as acquaintances, friends and lovers drop like flies, Jep wanders the corridors of Roman high society in search of an enduring connection that will moor him to the world. “Roots are important,” says a Mother Teresa doppelgänger who crosses paths with Jep, in a turn that’s simultaneously satiric and haunting—a tone that Sorrentino astonishingly maintains throughout the film with a self-assurance that makes his high-wire balancing act seem effortless. It’s a perfectly tailored suit of a film, made with the most supple material and cut with masterful lines.

Less than a week remains at the Cannes Film Festival, but major titles are still to unspool, including tomorrow morning’s world premiere of Only God Forgives, Ryan Gosling’s reteaming with his professional BBF, the Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn. Their last effort was the cool-as-ice crime caper Drive; this one is their martial-arts revenge flick. Harvey Weinstein unveiled a few minutes of footage on the Croisette last Friday that made jaws drop, including a quick snippet of Oscar-nominee Kristin Scott-Thomas as a domineering matriarch with a baroque potty mouth (“How many cocks can you entertain in that cute little cum dumpster of yours?” she meows at her son’s sexy date). Further transgressions await.

Helly Nahmad poses in front of a Picasso. (Photo by Arnaldo Magnani/Getty Images)

As The Observer—and every other news outlet—has been scrambling to report in detail, the city is abuzz over the high-profile indictment and arrests of figures in an art-world money laundering scheme involving seven-figure card games, international sports betting rings and mixed martial arts fighters who played the Rocky Balboa role of debt collector. Now, The Observer has exclusive information on the high-stakes poker games at the heart of the ongoing investigation.

To recap, here's what we know so far.

Art dealer and collector Hillel (“Helly”) Nahmad, who runs the Helly Nahmad Gallery inside the Carlyle Hotel on Madison Avenue, was named in a sweeping federal criminal indictment in which it is alleged that the 34-year-old Mr. Nahmad joined with Russians named Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov and Vadim Trincher to launder millions of dollars.

According to the indictment:

The Nahmad-Trincher Organization used online gambling websites, operating illegally in the United States, to operate an illegal gambling business that generated tens of millions of dollars in bets each year.

The Nahmad-Trincher Organization laundered the proceeds of the gambling operation through a host of American bank accounts and Titan P & H LLC (“Titan”), a plumbing company in the Bronx that the Nahmad-Trincher Organization acquired a fifty percent interest in as repayment of a gambling debt.

The Nahmad family, descended from a banking dynasty in Aleppo, Syria, is "one of the richest and most powerful art-dealing dynasties in the world" according to Forbes, which estimates the family fortune at more than $3 billion, citing, in addition to the New York gallery and another in London that is run by a cousin (also named Helly Nahmad), a warehouse near Geneva International Airport said to hold up to 5,000 works of art, including 300 Picassos.

According to Forbes, the FBI’s Eurasian Organized Crime Squad uncovered "high-stakes poker and sports-betting dens that were frequented by prominent New Yorkers in the financial, sports and entertainment fields."

The Observer can share for the first time details of the high-stakes card games mentioned in the indictment as "COUNT TWENTY (Illegal Poker Business)." At least five sources have come forward to discuss with The Observer the inner workings of these high-stakes card games. All agreed to speak on the condition that they would not be identified. They include two people who personally attended the games in question, one who helped run the games for many months, and a fourth who is intimately involved in business transactions with many of those named in the indictment.

Several sources with firsthand knowledge of the games named some of the players, including household names in the world of finance such as Daniel Andrew "Andy" Beal, chairman of Beal Bank, who makes no secret of his enjoyment of and expertise in poker, along with others who are less eager to publicize their affinity for Texas hold ’em. According to two sources, one well-known financier "is there every week."

Also spotted at some of the city's high-stakes games have been boldfaced Hollywood names like Tobey Maguire, Leonardo DiCaprio, Nick Cassavetes, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.

It's unknown how these allegations will impact those who are not named in the indictment but are alleged to have played in the games. According to no fewer than five sources, one regular player from the finance world who is active in high-level political fund-raising "is very nervous" about the indictment and arrests.

Both Helly Nahmad and "The Russians" (Messrs. Tokhtakhounov and  Trincher) have apartments in Trump Tower. One resident of Trump Tower told The Observer, "I'd see these guys for three to four years coming into Trump Tower, and they didn't live there. They would go not to Helly's but to the Russians' apartment. Other times they'd go to The Plaza. One thing I'll say about Helly, I have never seen a human being who has more good-looking girls."

One gentleman The Observer spoke to worked at the card games. He quit a few months ago when various poker players started getting calls from the feds. "They started contacting professional players and anyone potentially involved for information and confirmation months ago, and have been trying to bust the case for a while," he said.

A source close to Eugene and Ilya Trincher—the sons of Vadim Trincher, who is named in the indictment, as is Eugene—claims that the elder Mr. Trincher is a mystery, even to the sons' closest friends. "Nobody knows what Vadim’s business actually is, because Vadim doesn’t talk to anybody.”

The former employee claims that Eugene and Ilya Trincher were partners in heading the sports-betting operations, and that the younger Trinchers were the go-to sports betting option for many Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs. Apparently they weren't bookmakers in the traditional sense, in which the goal is simply to line up even amounts of capital on both sides of a bet and live off the 10 percent vigorish collected from losing bettors. Instead, they had created an "algorithm" that predicted which teams would win. Ilya Trincher was rumored to be living in one of the priciest houses in L.A., with rent anywhere between $40,000 and $50,000, alleged to be funded by sports gambling money, including bets of up to $1 million per game.

One source said that Edwin Ting (known as Eddie, also indicted) "ran the highest-stakes poker games in New York, probably made more money than anyone else ever did playing poker in New York." The source continued, “He’s just a Chinese guy from Queens, graduated from Baruch College. His wife was a poker dealer, now he’s a millionaire (and a real scumbag, by the way)."

According to a source with knowledge of Russian organized crime, the first person listed in the indictment, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, known as Taiwanchik, is from Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and "has the highest ranking you can have in the Russian prison system. He’s part of the prison brotherhood. They sit in jail with newspapers, caviar and laptops."

Another part of the sports betting picture is Noah Siegel, known as "The Oracle," who was also indicted. According to the former employee, The Oracle wasn't involved in business decisions; instead, "he was the smart kid with glasses who knows every player on every team and would pick the winning teams" with the goal of bankrupting traditional bookmakers.

The employee The Observer spoke to and all others working the games were asked to sign disclosures stating that they “never met” certain celebrities, and they were not allowed to use phones during special bookings, which included "a lot of lawyers, a lot of finance guys, a lot of hedge funders."

Another name that came up during The Observer's investigation was the R&B record producer Irv Gotti a.k.a. Irving Lorenzo, who is known to run games. One source was shocked that Mr. Gotti was not snared in this dragnet. He said Mr. Gotti "surprisingly was not raided during this whole thing, which is extremely strange. The feds have walked into his [poker game] in the past and have never shut him down."

One source painted a picture of how the whole thing works.

"First of all, you have an apartment that’s rented under somebody else’s name. You buy a poker table, some chips and chairs, and a casino shuffler on the black market, because they’re illegal to buy. The shuffler is to make the players feel comfortable that there’s no cheating going on. There are two dealers and two to 10 players per game. There are two to three waitresses and also 'massage girls.' The games go anywhere from six to 48 hours. Generally, the games start in the evening and finish in the morning, because most people need to go work, see their families and whatnot."

Another gambler who frequented the game spoke of the card shuffler but put a different spin on it. "It wasn't so much to prevent cheating. It was there to ensure there was always a freshly shuffled deck." This gambler recalled attending games hosted by Mike Sokoloff, a New York society fixture who dated Charlotte Ronson, that were frequented by David Lee (then a New York Knick, now a Golden State Warrior), as well as "a lot of other Knicks." This gambler said he "saw David Lee at the Molly Bloom games as well," referring to the 34-year-old socialite who is referred to as “Poker Princess” in the indictment and is the sister of Olympic skier Jerry Bloom.

A different source also referred to the Poker Princess: "Molly Bloom just ran games, flew private jets back and forth to run games for the wealthy."

According to someone with inside knowledge of the games, “There are no nobodies in this indictment, literally. These people are simple businessmen—not mob, not anything relating to it. They are maybe doing some organized crime, but they’re not the mob."

Simple businessmen they may be. But there's a good chance that not-so-simple trouble awaits. One source with extensive knowledge of the casino industry told The Observer that U.S. tax law requires all winnings to be reported as income. And as a check on the dishonesty of individual gamblers, a casino is required to report any payout in excess of $10,000.

Like a guy catching a straight flush on the river—it's a solid bet that this 84-page indictment naming 33 individuals is only the tip of the iceberg.

Quvenzhané Wallis gives her director Behn Zeitlin a big hug.

The red carpet was aglow with the incandescent twinkle of Hollywood’s stars on Monday night at the 22nd annual Independent Film Project Gotham Awards. With Oscar winners Matt Damon and Marion Cotillard amongst the evening’s honorees and the likes of Jack Black, Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, John Krasinski and so many more blazing a trail through the double doors of Wall St.’s Cipriani’s, it was no wonder that the less glamorous side of the velvet rope was a veritable press feeding frenzy. Lucky for us, then, that we had sharpened our claws.

As the guests took their seats for the ceremony, The Observer was whisked upstairs to a private viewing room, lest we cavort too rambunctiously with the delicate A-List crowd. There we watched over the evening’s events like demi-gods looking down from the heavens upon the cherubs pecking away at their meals, with eight year old nominee Quvenzhané Williams and 13 year old Jared Gilman leading the underage coterie.

The awards soon got underway, much to the delight of the recipients. Honoring their intentions as champions of independent cinema, the jury not only rewarded the biggest Hollywood names but the industry’s up-and-comers for their contribution to film. Beasts of the Southern Wild writer and director Benh Zeitlin was undoubtedly the big winner of the night, scooping statuettes – well, glass cuboids - for Breakthrough Director alongside the Bingham Ray Award, dedicated to the late film executive.

Mr. Zeitlin was so swept up with his first victory, however, that he scarcely noticed he had procured a second, pausing in his role as the obliging interviewee only to dash back downstairs to claim his newest prize.

“The fact that the film has gotten out into the world has been overwhelming,” he told The Observer, “And I never imagined this many people would not only see it but champion it, and make it their business to help the film get out there. It has completely changed my life.” A spate of critical successes at Cannes, Sundance, the LA Film Festival and the International Film Festival has seen Louisiana-based Mr. Zeitlin’s awards cabinet go from empty to engorged in a matter of months.

Another director honored for his work during the event was David O. Russell, whose work on the likes of The Fighter and new release Silver Linings Playbook secured his status as a deserving IFP Gotham Award recipient. "With an independent film you are with your little family and you work together all day every day, and that’s the real difference," he explained. "You’re all there for the passion, and I prefer that because projects have to come from the heart. You have to dig deep."

Academy Award-winners and Gotham honorees Mr. Damon and Ms. Cotillard are certainly no strangers to widespread acclaim, but both seemed similarly touched by their newest prestigious accolade. Ms. Cotillard was every inch the elegant belle of the ball, dazzling in an array of Chopard jewelry and a stunning Christian Dior couture gown.

Clearly her nationality influences not only her wardrobe but her passion for various projects, telling The Observer: “I really cherish the fact that I’m able to share my French movies worldwide, because we have amazing creativity in France.” The softly spoken actress, who stars in the recently released Rust and Bone, seemed quite overcome with emotion, before continuing: “With this film I had one of the greatest journeys ever, and to share this very unconventional love story outside of my country is something that I enjoy more than anything. I never choose a movie because of whether it’s independent or not, it’s just a story that’s got to take me. But independent movies have the freedom of telling stories that nobody except a special director would tell.”

Mr. Damon echoed the Parisian sweetheart’s sentiments, divulging, “I’ve never set goals for my career. Each movie is just story-telling, and I never wanted to not do a bunch of good movies because I was waiting to make a great one.”

The evening was particularly poignant for the actor, who recalled his first attendance at the Gotham Awards some 15 years earlier in the year Good Will Hunting was released. The best-buddy-Ben-Affleck spot was filled not by his usual partner in crime, but by Mr. Krasinski, who became fast friends with the honoree after meeting on the set of The Adjustment Bureau, in which Mr. Damon and Mr. Krasinski’s wife Ms. Blunt, starred. The Observer did contemplate asking whether Mr. Damon’s onscreen dalliance with his friend’s spouse ever induced some awkward glances around the dinner table, but we opted to forgo stirring the salacious pot on this occasion.

Back to the matter at hand, Mr. Damon said he enjoyed the ubiquitous montage of his roles over the years, but revealed, “It’s always a little cringe inducing – if you have a bad or mediocre day at work, it’s alive forever, so that part [of working in film] is always a little weird.”

But Mr. Damon, who plays the lead in upcoming indie flick Promised Land, needn’t worry about bad days at the office, given that his most recent prize was for Lifetime Achievement – at the grand old age of 42. “I hope this is like a buoy marker – a half time thing,” he laughed. “I want to do this for another 50 years!”

And with that, our time with Mr. Damon was up, and he was briskly shepherded to the after party with the rest of his showbiz pals. Alas, we did not get the opportunity to put on our dancing shoes and join in the film festivities, but the evening was quite the show itself.

Cipriani Wall Street, 55 Wall Street, cocktail reception at 6:30pm, dinner and awards ceremony at 7:30pm, tickets and information can be found at http://gotham.ifp.org/.

Matt Damon (Getty Images)

This year's Gotham Independent Film Awards, a November fete that is part of the late-year slurry that's ultimately processed into Oscar nominations, are to feature special tributes to actor Matt Damon, director David O. Russell, and Participant Media's Jeff Skoll. The Gotham Awards organizers aren't just big fans of the Bourne movies and I Heart Huckabees--both men are Oscar contenders this year, with Mr. Damon starring in and serving as co-writer for Promised Land (a Participant Media production--hi, Mr. Skoll!), and Mr. Russell directing the much-anticipated Silver Linings Playbook.

The Gotham Independent Film Awards are among the minor-tier stops--along with the Hamptons Film Festival, Santa Barbara Film Festival, and Hollywood Film Awards--that can give the impression that an actor or director is "due" for an Oscar with lifetime achievement awards coming right before the Oscars and along with the release of their new film. Viva independent film!

Handlebar and all, Axl Rose preaches the rock gospel. (Paul Bruinooge/ PatrickMcMullan)

In celebration of the long desired end of Fashion Week, DeLeon Tequila and Nur Khan hosted what would be the last of their fabled Electric Sessions last night at the Hiro Ballroom (which, for the record, is still open) with Guns n’ Roses.

The Observer plays the waiting game.

• Doors at 9 p.m., we pop in around 10:30 hoping to dodge most of the wait for what was rumored to be an 11 p.m. start time. Seems like a decent idea, right?
• 11:15 hits and we bump into a few friends who had just left the temporary palatial penthouse home of Axl Rose at The SoHo Grand Hotel: “Yeah man, we were just over there and literally 10 minutes ago they ordered a ton of room service.” This did not bode well for a packed house hungry for high school rock.
• We spot a glowing Sienna Miller holding court with boyfriend and baby daddy Tom Sturridge, and can’t help but think that dude should lock it down.
• Olivia Wilde and Jason Sudeikis host an impeccably attractive table in the slightly grungy Hiro.
• Even Jared Leto seemed a bit confused as to where the rock band was hiding.
• Checking in with Tyler Winklevoss. We both immediately realize how bratty we feel when we grumble about waiting around for a free GnR show.
• Wanting to get the real school, we shoot Nur a text, who is quick to inform The Observer that Axl is in fact slated to go on at 12:15, and relief washes over us like an awesome wave.

Damon and a homeless dude people were freaking out about. (Paul Bruinooge/ PatrickMcMullan)

A bit more mulling about, and we see Nur take the stage.

• “Yo, shit, that’s Nur dude! They’re totally about to come on!” remarks a hyper observant party-goer.
• In the corner of our eye we spot Justin Timberlake and Matt Damon stopping to strike a pose in front of the camera. Both card-carrying members of the way-more-famous-than-you club.
• Ok, wait. Something’s happening – the lights are dimming, cigarettes ritualistically lighting up, the slow rolling “unnnghhhhhhhhhh” of a bass guitar being flicked on.
• There he is. Axl Rose himself. Handlebar moustache in full effect: “How are you tonight, fucktards!?!” he asks politely before launching into his first song, ‘You’re Crazy.’
• We notice a tweet from a colleague a few hordes of people away: “Holy shit, Axl Rose still has it.” And he did, in fact, still have it.
• Warm up out of the way, Axl takes the microphone to his lips, stares deep into each and everyone’s soul, and posits the question: “Do you know where you are?” We were in the jungle, baby.

Damon.

There isn’t much to add to We Bought a Zoo, since the title says it all. Away from the screen for six years, director Cameron Crowe (Jerry Maguire) returns with this holiday-season sugarplum designed to please children of all ages in multiplexes of all sizes. Based on a book by Benjamin Mee, a British writer and former columnist for The Guardian whose family actually purchased a run-down zoo called Dartmoor Zoological Park and turned it into a 30-acre tourist attraction in Devon, England, that is still thriving, the movie (written by Mr. Crowe and Aline Brosh McKenna, who wrote The Devil Wears Prada) transported the setting to Southern California, but it lost none of its sense of fun and adventure in the trip across the pond. Animals are the same everywhere, and so are the people who love them.

Benjamin Mee is played by Matt Damon, a smart and gifted actor who brings an abundance of intelligence and heart to a role that is not much more than a pencil sketch on paper, fleshing out the role of a tired, confused, overworked and heartsick widower with two kids to raise (see George Clooney in The Descendants) who is fed up with the declining world of journalism.Deeply despondent after his wife dies suddenly of cancer, leaving his family behind to chase around the globe on dangerous and controversial assignments loses its appeal. So he chucks the job, the frequent flyer miles and the pity from well-meaning, energy-sapping friends, uproots his kids from school and, to the shock of everyone around him, takes a plunge into ice water and invests his inheritance in a piece of rural real estate miles away from everything familiar to start all over again. Even his own brother Duncan, played by Thomas Haden Church, thinks he’s turned into a nut job. Duncan, it seems, once ran away from society and spent some time in Bali trying to find himself. What he found was that like in the song, he missed people who need people. Undeterred, Ben tackles the job of renovating a zoo to meet government inspection standards in time for a grand reopening. The task takes it toll, in more ways than one.

Managing a lost cause that comes with a lot of sick animals and a loyal, unpaid staff of four led by a tough zookeeper named Kelly (a surprising turn by a deglamorized Scarlett Johansson) becomes a money-draining full-time responsibility that costs Ben every penny of his life savings. His teenage son, Dylan (Colin Ford), still mourning the loss of his mom, sinks into a pit of resentment, while his 7-year-old daughter, Rosie (perky Maggie Elizabeth Jones), jumps up and down with glee, jubilantly shouting, “We bought a zoo!” The stipulation in the purchase agreement was that the new owner must restore the zoo to its original state and make it fully operational. There isn’t much conflict, but we eventually meet and fall for 50 endangered species of animals that need to be rescued, from a shipment of runaway snakes to a moody, 650-pound grizzly named Buster who sometimes needs Paxil for depression. Along the way, you learn a lot of things. Bengal tigers have to be separated because they don’t get along. You never use the word “cages” (they’re politely called “enclosures”). Dylan thinks he’s in hell. Rosie loves everything, including the rats collected to feed the snakes. Just when Ben finally runs out of money, a trust fund the wife left in her will allows them to open with everyone chipping in—including Dylan, who draws the logo for the new zoo.

The ups and downs of survival while hanging on by their fingernails are too linear for spontaneity and the happy ending is nothing short of contrived, but the performances are sincere and Mr. Damon actually seems to be having a ball, giving one of the best and most mature performances of his career. The relationship between Ben, still hiding from the pain of loss, and Kelly, a 28-year-old animal lover with no personal life, wisely avoids the Hollywood clichés that too often furnish easy solutions for loneliness, while Dylan sees fate in a restorative way when he discovers romance with Kelly’s cousin (Elle Fanning, who, like her sister Dakota, is growing from child actor to leading lady with sex appeal faster than a flying bullet). The roles are mere outlines for meatier characters, but Mr. Damon brings a depth of humanity to the zealous but underwritten zoo owner that is guaranteed to inspire confidence. We Bought a Zoo has more soul than substance, but I’ll be darned if it didn’t put a smile on my face and keep it there. In a furrowed brow of a Yuletide season filled with movies so dark and ugly you can’t watch them without wincing, I see nothing wrong with feel-good movies like War Horse and We Bought a Zoo. Like the notes to studio executives scrawled on lobby cards by eager sneak-preview audiences back in the day, I say “Give us more like this one!”

rreed@observer.com

WE BOUGHT A ZOO

Running Time 124 minutes

Written by Aline Brosh McKenna and Cameron Crowe

Directed by Cameron Crowe

Starring Matt Damon, Scarlett Johansson and Thomas Haden Church

3/4

Damon and Paquin.

Trapped somewhere in the red tape of independent filmmaking between money and marketing, Anna Paquin delivers a very fine performance in the very odd starring role of a very bewildering film called Margaret. Written and directed by the excellent award-winning playwright Kenneth Lonergan (You Can Count on Me), which is one of its major draws, it was filmed in 2005, tied up for years in lawsuits, and hindered by the deaths of its two most illustrious producers, Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack. Six years later and 30 minutes shorter, it is finally being released in limited runs as a 2½-hour art film that is something of a well-intentioned mess. In the time between shooting Margaret, editing it down from its original three-hour director’s cut and Anna Paquin’s emergence in True Blood, we watched her grow up from troubled teenager to vamping vampire. Some things are better off left unchanged.

Mr. Lonergan writes elegant, painfully honest, moment-to-moment dialogue that is better suited to the stage than to cinema, where pacing is everything. In this long, leisurely theater piece with camera angles, Ms. Paquin plays Lisa, a 17-year-old New Yorker who witnesses a bus driver (Mark Ruffalo) run a red light and kill a pedestrian (Allison Janney) carrying a shopping cart. Feeling apathy for the driver and guilty because she was distracting him by chasing the bus to admire his cowboy hat, the girl tells the police it was an accident. Traumatized to the point of hysteria, she then sets about to change her original eyewitness account, but nobody will believe her. Distraught and frustrated, she begins to savage everyone she knows—family, friends, classmates and teachers alike. Uninvited, she attends an informal memorial service attended by friends of the victim, invades the life of the dead woman’s best friend (a superb Jeannie Berlin), convinces distant relatives to sue the Manhattan Transit Authority, threatens the bus driver, terrorizes her neurotic actress mother (a colorful performance by J. Smith-Cameron, who in real life is Mrs. Kenneth Lonergan) and wrecks her new love affair with a South American businessman (played by the famous French actor Jean Reno). In no time at all, the audience’s patience wears thin. Precocious works for a while, but this girl is opinionated, arrogant, emotionally unstable and given to talking in elliptical sentences that make you want to scream, “Stop the projector—I want to get off!” The case has been closed and the financial settlement paid, but Lisa has more things to say, more facts to correct. Flitting from one person to the next to unload her conscience, under the thin veil of getting the facts straight, Lisa rants and manipulates until she doesn’t appear to be cooking on four burners. By the time she forces another student to terminate her virginity and then seduces a sympathetic but foolish professor (Matt Damon, in a tiny cameo), claiming she’s pregnant and in need of an abortion, the character has lost all contact with the viewer and Mr. Lonergan’s screenplay has gone haywire.

Good acting prevails, especially by Ms. Smith-Cameron as the screwy mother and Jeannie Berlin, who gives one of the most complex portrayals of a stereotypically overeducated, analytical, aggressive, literal-minded, New York Jew I have ever seen. She still sounds exactly like her mother, Elaine May. But this is very much a movie about writing, and despite the sincerity of the dialogue, the style does not fit a cinematic format. As a director, Mr. Lonergan lacks the tempo that keeps audiences rapt, and he has a lot to learn about editing. As Lisa becomes obsessively relentless in her pursuit of justice, her cause takes over her life, interferes with her schoolwork and damages her mind. The script works best when it shows the difficulty of people trying to relate to each other verbally in an age of emails and sound bites, but eventually you just want to yell “Shut up!” Mr. Lonergan reduces everyone to hysterics and then leaves them stranded in their own clouded misery. There is no ending. Lisa and her mother go to the Metropolitan Opera and sob their way through Renee Fleming’s singing of The Tales of Hoffman. From start to end credits, very much an example of good work that doesn’t translate.

By the way, did I fail to mention there is nobody in Margaret named Margaret?

rreed@observer.com

MARGARET

Running Time 149 minutes

Written by Kenneth Lonergan

Directed by Kenneth Lonergan

Starring Anna Paquin, Matt Damon and Mark Ruffalo

2/4

Damon.

It is often predicted that the world will no longer end with the whimper of a long, boring war, but with the scream of a fatal, incurable and fast-moving plague. Addressing that theme in time to scare the living daylights out of everybody, Contagion is a star-studded, apocalyptic wake-up call to the horrors that await mankind in a test tube. We’ve made so much progress in terms of immunology, technology, scientific research and medical miracles that the planet considers itself immune to everything from small pox to swine flu. But there’s still no cure for cancer or AIDS, and the canvas of new viruses gets broader every year. So the topicality in Contagion is dark and unquestionable, if not creepy and off-putting. Tracking the global spread of an infectious virus that leads to deadly brain hemorrhages with no vaccine, writer Scott Burns and maverick director Steven Soderbergh have jump-started the serious fall movie season with an ambitious project that packs a wallop without much guarantee of commercial success. We have enough to worry about already; this movie says why bother, since we’re all doomed anyway.

Telling a complex story in a coherent narrative arc has never been one of Mr. Soderbergh’s strengths, and chronicling the day-by-day panic of a killer virus jumps all over the place. Melding elements from diverse sources, the film has a documentary quality that wastes the talents of an impressive A-list cast. The bubonic plague epidemic that wiped out half of Europe in the Middle Ages was finally traced to a contaminated well in a town square. To discover the origin of the mutating horror in Contagion you have to wait until  the very last scene. The trajectory actually begins with Day 2. Feeling ill, a jet-lagged Gwyneth Paltrow returns to Minneapolis from a business trip in Hong Kong with a strange cough that leads to a migraine headache. Before her husband (Matt Damon) has time to properly welcome her home, she goes into a seizure, foams at the mouth, and dies in the E.R. Their son is the next victim. Like wildfire, the sickness spreads to the people she met on her trip who begin to gag, sweat and faint from Tokyo to Texas. As the cases multiply, so do the guest stars. At the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, health official Laurence Fishburne puts Kate Winslet, a leading doctor in the field of communicable diseases, in harm’s way to investigate the outbreaks with mortally toxic results. Meanwhile, at World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva, researcher Marion Cotillard tries to trace the virus back to its origins in Asia, where she is kidnapped. Isolating people exposed to the virus is hard enough, but how do you quarantine 98 million people in China?

As the plague gains momentum, Homeland Security clocks in, suspecting bioterrorism and requesting sample vaccines to be injected into the drinking water like fluoride. Schools close. Naturally, as in all international crises, there are always the profiteers. After Laurence Fishburne is ordered by the Food and Drug Administration to keep research a secret, Elliot Gould shows up as a scientist who defies the shutdown of his research lab, growing the virus himself and taking credit for a medical breakthrough in print. Meanwhile, Jude Law enters the national radar as a sleazy journalist who makes millions by peddling a false cure in the form of a homeopathic treatment called forsythia. Mr. Soderbergh illumines every shadowy corner of this global pandemic with hypothetical examples of what to expect in an actual case of germ warfare. The Secret Service escorts the president out of Washington,  through an underground passage. Banks, gas stations and public transportation collapse. Nurses go on strike. Hospital generators expire. Pharmacies are looted for bogus serums. Evacuation routes are blocked. Cities are looted and left in trash piles. And while the volume of misinformation builds, here’s a contemporary anxiety to mull over: in the age of Twitter, Facebook and the Internet, it’s easier to reduce an entire civilization to hysterics than ever before. None of the fragmented subplots are followed to a satisfying conclusion. Even after Jennifer Ehle, as a dedicated and heroic lab researcher, ignores government approvals and permissions for human experiments and tests a trial vaccine on herself, inoculations are determined by national lottery depending on birth dates.

Juggling multiple plotlines proved successful in Mr. Soderberg’s Traffic (and even more so in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s vastly superior Babel). Here, the conceit just seems jagged and annoying, without achieving the desired synchronicity. The film often looks like a lengthy public health announcement on the requirements for travel vaccinations. A lot of the medical technology in the dialogue is too technical for the lay mind to grasp.  Who knows from “viral protein cells”? Do stick around for the epilogue—a clever re-enactment of how the virus started, and an explanation of Day 1. The ensemble cast is excellent, if underused. And some of it is downright gasp-inducing, especially when the characters see Gwyneth Paltrow’s lovely head open and the scalp pulled down over her eyes on the operating table. I found Contagion both flawed and fascinating, but it’s not an entertainment.

rreed@observer.com

CONTAGION

Running Time 105 minutes

Written by Scott Z. Burns

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Starring Matt Damon, Kate Winslet and Jude Law

2.5/4

In the The Adjustment Bureau, now in theaters, Matt Damon's campaign is engineered by fedora-wearing angels, who make little tweaks in reality in order to propel his candidacy. And in Limitless, opening Friday, Bradley Cooper plays a failed writer who stumbles onto an experimental smart drug that unlocks the "other 80 percent" of his brain. Soon enough, he, too, is a senatorial shoe-in. 

In the movies, of course, anything's possible. "Remember Animal House?" asked longtime operative Roger Stone, noting that the comedy's end credits portrayed John "Bluto" Blutarski as a future senator.

These days, even with supernatural assistance, defeating a New York incumbent would probably be an uphill climb, though Mr. Stone pointed out that "if divine intervention includes hundreds of millions of dollars, it could happen."

Hollywood's plot devices are probably easier for audiences to stomach than the brutal reality of politics in the state, noted veteran consultant Hank Sheinkopf. "A movie could never show the aggravation, the personal drain and the emotional upset of a real campaign," he pointed out.

Randy Credico, who mounted an unsuccessful bid against Senator Charles Schumer in 2010, was still fuming about his primary loss when reached by The Observer. "Chuck's got the real angels, which are the guys with $25 million!" Mr. Credico said. "Plus, he controls every federal judge."

Mr. Credico was speaking from the airport, where he was awaiting a flight to Nicaragua. The purpose of the trip was "to take a look at an assembly that actually debates stuff," he said, and to work on a book. "It's a kiss-and-tell," he added. "Schneiderman and Cuomo won't be happy. I know where the skeletons are buried, and they're all going to come out." Mr. Credico claimed he already had a publisher and an editor lined up.

Next stop, Hollywood!