Orpheus in Hades

The Soloist

Crit

Anytime Robert Downey Jr. is in a film and you come out talking about someone else, that someone else has done something pretty spectacular; so with Jamie Foxx here.

I've sometimes said that the Oscar-darling "afflicted guy" often isn't as challenging as a character more in the range of what we see in everyday life. Well, there's nothing simple about this afflicted-guy performance; Foxx's Nathaniel Ayers makes us uneasy throughout, always as uncertain of what he'll do next as those in his life must be. Not a great film, but a great performance.

By the way, the trailer does not prepare you for the hell of LA homelessness that the film portrays; apparently the producers were afraid that that would be too big a downer. Instead, the trailer emphasizes the uplift that is indeed a keynote of the film, but not the only one.

Trailers

• Angels and Demons--Nah: didn't like The Da Vinci Code; why expect anything better?
• Taking Woodstock--Oh, hell, yeah! Ang Lee directs a comedy about the disorganized organization of the greatest cultural moment of my youth (not that I was there; not that I'm bitter).
• The Boat That Rocked--Oh, hell, yeah, notwithstanding that Richard Curtis (Love Actually) directs! Pirate radio off the coast of England in the '60s!
• Imagine That--An Eddie Murphy is a terrible thing to waste.