Russell Crowe goes louche in Frogville. With a less-than-fetching nouveau paunch, he’s no De Niro doing LaMotta, but chicks on both sides of the channel dig his swinish unshaven insouciance. The once buff Maximus in “Gladiator” is now Max, a roguish player in the investment market. After scoring a questionable seven-figure coup, Max pops over to Provence for an errand. He spent boyhood summers at the chateau and vineyard of his late Uncle Henry (Albert Finney), who dispensed bons mot such as “The importance of a good blue suit can never be over-estimated.” It’s time to unload the property, but Proustian flashbacks upset the sale. Freddie Highmore from “Finding Neverland” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” plays 12-year-old Max in these savory interludes. Recalling a kiss and a whisper from a local girl brings Max to his senses. Marc Klein adapts the 2004 novel “A Good Year” by Peter Mayle. Mayle and director Ridley Scott, pals since their days in the advertising business, have roots in Provence: Mayle now lives there and Scott vacations at his own vineyard. “A Good Year” indulges an Epicurean fantasy of their good life in the French countryside. Shelve this comic romantic drama as an estrogen genre alongside “Under the Tuscan Sun.” With Marion Cotillard, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Jacques Herlin, Didier Bourdon, Isabelle Candelier and Charlie Willis. 117m. (Bill Stamets)
Talking Screens, December 16-22, 2022: "All The Beauty and The Bloodshed" is One of the Year's Finest | "Bardo" is a Small Story Told on an… "Avatar: The Way of Water," "All The Beauty and The Bloodshed," "The Volcano: Rescue From Whakaari" and "Bardo." PLUS: Bresson's "Au Hasard Balthazar," Andersson's "About Endlessless"; FACETS' "Holiday Detour" series; Chicago filmmaker-in-residence Daniel Nearing's "Sister Carrie" with an orchestra at Siskel; "The Thirty-Ninth Christmas Sing-A-Long & Double Feature" at the Music Box and Music Box Of Horrors and Shudder pull…
