Midnight in Paris (2011)

“Midnight in Paris” is a delight. A reminder that Woody Allen is one of the best movie writers/directors out there no matter how creepy he is off camera. This is a comedy about a struggling American novelist (Owen Wilson) who becomes lost – figuratively and literally – in Paris’ nighttime streets, the lights and spirits of deceased artists, musicians and writers lulling him in utopia. Then he gets lost – in time – when a 1920s taxi, every night at midnight, whisks him away to the days of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, Cole Porter and Ernest Hemingway, what Owen’s Gil considers the greatest era for artisans in history.

Back in 2010, Gil is the fiancé of a wealthy woman (Rachel McAdams) who as with her Tea Party parents rejects anything not American and has no appreciation of art. Only status. She openly pines for a former professor, a know-it-all played wonderfully by Michael Sheen, who starts off every sentence with, “If I’m not mistaken,” when he is indeed. So, yes, Allen uses the crutch of the wicked girlfriend to allow his male hero the right to fall in love with the more pure Adriana (Marion Cotillard), the mistress of Picasso. Small error in a grand film.

This just isn’t a new classic Allen comedy, it’s a tweak at nostalgia fever by both Tea Party Americans who long for the founding days of America, and daydreaming liberals who think art was somehow more pure 100 years ago. Both are wrong. “Midnight” has more wit than any film I’ve seen all year. The best joke has Hemingway, Picasso, Fitzgerald, Dali (Adrian Brody!) and dozens of others treated as biopic shadows. Picasso belligerent, Dali talking nonsense and Hemingway uttering every word like a bull fighter with a rifle slung over his shoulder. It is all a wicked satire ala homage. The great artists (and he never says it, but Founding Fathers) we uphold as gods are as false as the notion that life was happier in 178whatever. Fact: You were likely to die of small pox than live out a life of glorious freedom, no matter what cracked teapot Michelle Bachman says.

The best scene has Gil talking to Dali and his fellow surrealists, fretting over his time travel predicament, confused by the mess of his life, and they nod their heads, knowingly and approvingly. Flustered, Gill spits out, they’re surrealists, they have no concept of normal. Fantastic screenplay. Wilson has never been more likable, and “Inception” star Cotillard knocks every other female onscreen out of the park. A

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

I had no literary prejudices going into the new big-screen “Sherlock Holmes,” starring Robert Downey Jr. as the fictional sleuth. I’ve (sadly) yet to read a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle story. That said, gritty director Guy Ritchie serves us a “new” Holmes who is an underground boxer prone to dark rooms, not bathing and sleeping on the floor. He is gruff and dirty, as is the 1890s London around him. He’s like no Holmes I’ve seen before, and Downey is wonderful in the lead. The standard plot, which gallops but never breaks into a full run, has the duo of Holmes and Watson (Jude Law, wonderful) unmasking a dark arts master (Mark Strong) bent on world domination in line with a Batman villain. Ritchie provides brilliant scenes where Downey as Holmes mentally breaks down an action – say, a fistfight – before seeing it through. But as the climatic fight arrives, the trick is dropped. And it’s a bit disappointing. This is a fairly solid movie that is more of a franchise set-up then full-fledged film. Moriarity appears in shadow, and it got my head spinning about who will play him. I’d love to see Russell Crowe take the part. That would be a helluva match up. B