Dangerous Liaisons (Stephen Frears, 1988)

Michelle Pfeiffer and John Malkovich in Dangerous Liaisons

Cast: Glenn Close, John Malkovich, Michelle Pfeiffer, Swoosie Kurtz, Keanu Reeves, Mildred Natwick, Uma Thurman, Peter Capaldi. Screenplay: Christopher Hampton, based on his play and a novel by Choderlos de Laclos. Cinematography: Philippe Rousselot. Production design: Stuart Craig. Film editing: Mick Audsley. Music: George Fenton. 

"Wicked" is a word that has lost a good deal of its pejorative quality, and not just in Boston where it became slang meaning "excellent." There's an attractive quality to wickedness that's lacking in words like "evil." Which is not to say that the wicked pair of the Marquise de Marteuil (Glenn Close) and the Vicomte de Valmont (John Malkovich) aren't reprehensible, but that they fascinate us with their sly wit and determined pursuit of their aims. Close in particular makes the marquise so delicious that there's a considerable shock when she self-destructs upon the failure of her plans, and perhaps the audience even has a glimmer of pity for her final comeuppance. The choice of Malkovich to play Valmont was controversial: He's an actor known for eccentric roles, not the type for a suave seducer. And yet he gives Valmont a snake-like fascination -- so snaky that at one point he even hisses at Swoosie Kurtz's Madame de Volanges -- that makes his conquests of Uma Thurman's Cécile and Michelle Pfeiffer's Madame de Tourvel plausible. He also brings out the vulnerable side of Valmont, so that we find it credible that this implacably rakish figure could find himself undone by this conquest of Madame de Tourvel. But then again, who wouldn't find themselves undone by Michelle Pfeiffer, then at the early peak of her career? In casting Dangerous Liaisons, Stephen Frears followed the lead of Milos Forman, who cast Amadeus (1984) with American actors instead of the British ones usually called on for costume dramas set in Europe, a move that shocked some critics -- especially the British. (The exception in Dangerous Liaisons is Peter Capaldi as Valmont's henchman Azolan, and his Scottish accent stands out oddly.) The irony here is that Forman was at work on his own version of the Choderlos de Laclos novel, called Valmont (1989), which was doomed by being released a year after Frears's film. Dangerous Liaisons won Oscars for Christopher Hampton's screenplay, Stuart Craig's art direction and Gérard James's set decoration, and for James Acheson's costumes. Close and Pfeiffer were nominees, as was George Fenton for a score that blended nicely with excerpts from Vivaldi, Handel, Bach, and Gluck.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (David Yates, 2016)

Dan Fogler, Eddie Redmayne, and Katherine Waterston in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Newt Scamander: Eddie Redmayne
Tina Goldstein: Katherine Waterston
Jacob Kowalski: Dan Fogler
Queenie Goldstein: Alison Sudol
Credence Barebone: Ezra Miller
Mary Lou Barebone: Samantha Morton
Henry Shaw Sr.: Jon Voight
Seraphina Picquery: Carmen Ejogo
Gnarlack: Ron Perlman
Percival Graves: Colin Farrell

Director: David Yates
Screenplay: J.K. Rowling
Cinematography: Philippe Rousselot
Production design: Stuart Craig
Costume design: Colleen Atwood
Music: James Newton Howard

I think I enjoyed Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them more than I did any of the Harry Potter movies, but mainly because I wasn't distracted by thinking about what had been left out between the novel and the film. That's because Fantastic Beasts is J.K. Rowling's first original screenplay. She has a way to go yet as a screenwriter: There are too many events and incidents to keep track of, and the story gets swamped by the special effects. But we are clearly in the same realm as the Potter books, even if this movie is set in the 1920s and in New York City, where Muggles are called Non-Majes. (Which even an explanation didn't keep me from hearing "non-Madges" and thinking, "people who don't like Madonna.") And even though there's a lot of noisy CGI work going on, Rowling and her cast have given us some engaging new characters in Newt Scamander, Tina and Queenie Goldstein, and Jacob Kowalski, all of whom seem to be set for a long run of sequels. Eddie Redmayne is terrific as usual, and Colin Farrell makes a fine villain until the ending reveals him to be Johnny Depp in disguise. It was a box office hit, of course, and most of the critics seemed to like it -- the pans seemed to be colored by a weary recognition that here was what seemed to be the launch of yet another blockbuster franchise. I agree that we could do without that, but it's better than yet another Transformers movie. And there's something agreeable about even a Potter-adjacent work.

Queen Margot (Patrice Chéreau, 1994)

Daniel Auteuil and Isabelle Adjani in Queen Margot

I thought I knew enough about 16th-century French history, if only from reading Robert Merle's Fortunes of France books, to follow Patrice Chéreau's Queen Margot fairly easily. But the film's rather hyperactive opening almost kept me in the dark: literally, because it begins with a Protestant man accidentally getting in bed with a Catholic man, and an ensuing fight. Then we shift to the wedding of the Catholic Marguerite de Valois (Isabelle Adjani) to the Protestant Henri de Navarre (Daniel Auteuil), and an ensuing riotous wedding night, during which Marguerite refuses to go to bed with her new husband but, feeling randy, goes out into the streets to pick up a man. The man, with whom she has very passionate sex against a wall, turns out to be the Protestant we saw earlier, La Môle (Vincent Pérez). And when Marguerite rescues him during the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, they begin an affair. But wait, there's more. There's court intrigue involving the somewhat insane Charles IX (Jean-Hugues Anglade); his mother, Catherine de' Medici (Virna Lisi); and his brother, the Duke of Anjou (Pascal Greggory). There's internal and international squabbling between Protestants and Catholics. There are poisonings and boar hunts, and a lot of other stuff. Eventually, I sorted it all out, but it left me feeling a bit overwhelmed. It's beautifully filmed by Philippe Rousselot, and the costumes by Moidele Bickel were nominated for an Oscar. The screenplay by Chéreau and Danièle Thompson is adapted from a novel by Alexandre Dumas, and neither screenplay nor novel should be relied on for historical accuracy. Adjani seems to struggle a bit with the vagaries of her character, whose sympathies shift from Catholic to Protestant and from man to man all too easily. The standout performance is that of Lisi, who was an international sex symbol in the 1950s and '60s, and makes the scheming Catherine a figure of some complexity.