Publish and/or perish

The Ghost Writer

Crit

A blurb in the trailer for Joon-ho Bong's Mother trumpets it as "the best Hitchcock movie in years," or words to that effect. Well, I haven't seen that yet, but this mystery-thriller is the best new Hitchcock film I've seen in years. And funny, I'd completely forgotten that it was Polanski until the end credits rolled.

The obvious and conventional wisdom is that the Pierce Brosnan character, former Prime Minister Adam Lang, = Tony Blair, but in fact, his DNA includes generous dollops of W (fitness mania, paranoia, homeland security über alles) and Bill Clinton (a wife at least equally formidable to whom he is defiantly unfaithful), and he is even given a Nixonian signature line at one point. Best role for Ewan McGregor since . . . hell, I don't know . . . Moulin Rouge? Trainspotting? A long while, in any case. Maybe he can finally leave Obi-Wan far, far behind.

Trailers

• Cyrus--Possibly excellent, with awkward John C. Reilly falling (duh!) for Marisa Tomei, and Jonah Hill, weirder- and creepier-looking than ever (tall cotton, that) as her dealbreaking, romance saboteur of a son.
• Letters to Juliet--Ooh, this gives me the shivers. Looks like an unconscionable sloppy-sentimental waste of Vanessa Redgrave, Amanda Seyfried, Gael García Bernal, and, OMG, Franco Nero.