A Dangerous Method (2011)

When David Cronenberg -- master of exploding head psychological atom bombs, and violence mixed with sex – said he was making “A Dangerous Method,” the ménage a trois between pioneer head-shrinks Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, and Sabina Spielrein, I was stoked. I wanted envelopes torched, singed paper ashes blown in the faces of prudes. So count me wanting, put out, so to speak. Except for a few wha? spanking scenes, “Dangerous” is all talk, and I should not be surprised, as this was once called “Talking Cure.” Our focus is on Spielrein, German Jew, wealthy, and hysterically mad, put in the care of Jung (Michael Fassbender), the protégé of master head doc Freud (Viggo Mortensen). Sabina bends Jung’s tight-starched collar, and Freud feuds, and Word War I dawns, and Jung’s last scene has him going like Michael Corleone’s last scene in “Godfather, Part II,” lawn chair and all. No burning desire, no passion. Talk. Knightly’s accent grinds, and Mortensen’s Freud has all the zing of Ask Jeeves, so it’s Fassbender’s show, and he’s damn good, but a notch below “Shame,” the 2011 sex-obsessed flick that’s all dangerous method. B-

The Duchess (2008)

Keira Knightley once again stars in a period piece with corsets, drawing rooms and the myriad of problems that beset rich English types in "The Duchess." Here, she plays Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire, wife of the unimaginably wealthy Duke of Devonshire (Ralph Fiennes.)

For reasons never entirely explained, Georgiana is the toast of London and the single epicenter of the fashion world. At one point, an announcer bellows that whatever the Duchess is wearing today, all others will wear tomorrow. And I thought, "Why?" That Knightley's wigs look more Marge Simpson or "Bride of Frankenstein" only hampers the problem. (But maybe I'm just being aguy here.)

The film's main drama lies in Georgiana's crushing heartbreak under the Duke's cold indifference, lack of passion and constant affairs. When Georgiana falls for a young candidate for parliament (Dominic Cooper, fresh off the ungodly "Mamma Mia!"), the marriage falls further into misery.

Georgiana is presented as what may be the first feminist, a woman who questions her placement in society as a mere trophy or animal to be bargained over and as a woman who dares to act in the same manner as an entitled male and take a lover on the side. Knightley is good, but it's Fiennes who is the star. His Duke certainly is repugnant, but he's also strangely tragic. The man has no idea what love, joy or morality is, and knows that he doesn't have the mental capacity to ever understand those traits. Fiennes ("Schindler's List") always is good at finding such threads in his villains, and he doesn't disappoint here. Oh, cool fact: Georgiana was the great (times a lot) grandma of Princess Di. Irony, eh? B