Crime, politics and the man who ran the FBI

J Edgar ****

Clint Eastwood's JEdgar is an excellent film that very few people will bother to see. It is a lengthy two-and-a-quarter hours, and it is about crime, the law and politics, but it's not a thriller. It is an art-house film, not a Hollywood blockbuster.

So, if you are looking for a "good night out", look elsewhere, but if you value great writing, interesting ideas and a slice of revisionist history, JEdgar will hold your attention and send you away pondering how dirty and brutal both politics and the law can be.

At the core of the film is the career of JEdgar Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio). He had a good university education and came from a stern, old-fashioned family, with a mother (Judi Dench) who imposed a strict code of morality on her son.

He was opposed to abortion and birth control. He disliked seeing immigrants in American cities, and he was a devout, narrow, right-wing thinker. He got a job in the Justice Department, where he sanctioned brutal action against immigrants and political dissidents.

His zeal made him a useful tool for the White House and in 1924 he became the head of the Bureau of Investigation, which became the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1935. Hoover held the job for 48 years.

The smart move made by Clint Eastwood and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black was to reject a long, consecutive trek through Hoover's life. They broke the film into four storylines - Hoover's job and how he performed it; his relationship with his mother; his relationship with his assistant, Clyde Tolson; and the dictatorial way he ran the FBI, gathering secrets on everyone from Al Capone to Eleanor Roosevelt.

Those narratives run concurrently, allowing the audience to see the youthful Hoover in one sequence, followed just a few seconds later by scenes of him at the end of his life. That format helps Eastwood and DiCaprio to give both the personal and political issues the same level of importance.

Hoover himself is as interesting as his actions, and that's what this film is really about. His public image was enormously powerful. In the 1930s, he was mentioned in movies about the FBI, in comics and pulp-fiction novels.

He was a neatness freak and he liked being in control. The more details he could collect, the better he liked it. The FBI he built was a cavern of secrets, so carefully concealed that, to this day, very few of his secret documents have been found.

He had a loyal secretary, Helen Gandy (Naomi Watts), who worked so closely with him that they hardly had to speak to each other. It was she, after his death, who spent two days destroying his secret documents.

Then there's his mother, played by Dench with grace but also a bite of malice. Hoover was a "mama's boy", unable to break away from her influence, and that leads to the most interesting personal theme that Eastwood weaves into the film.

It is the idea that Hoover was a repressed, deeply closeted gay man. He hired a dapper, handsome young man, Tolson (Arnie Hammer) to be his aide. They met at a time in which homosexuality was harshly repressed, and the deep friendship between Hoover and Tolson was, in fact, a gay relationship, but it was never consummated.

Around that deeply personal core swirls the hunt for the murderer of Charles Lindbergh's child; Hoover's spying on the Kennedy clan and his racist attitude towards the Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King.

It's a huge political canvas, but the film's richness and power are in the details. As you watch Hoover on screen, you hardly know that you are watching an actor, so precise is DiCaprio's performance.

The production design is superbly crafted by JamesJMurakami and, with the camerawork of Tom Stern, the style and look of America in the 1930s is not only authentic, it's beautiful .

In my opinion, it is fascinating and detailed. If you take the ride, you will find a film of great power and complexity, directed by a master.

Short Takes : We Need to Talk About Kevin ***

Superlative acting from Tilda Swinton elevates this dark and unnerving drama, based on a successful novel. Swinton plays Eva, a creative designer, but her career comes to a swift end when she gives birth to her first baby, Kevin. He's a difficult child, exhausting and demanding. As he grows older, he becomes aggressive, which creates difficulties for Eva. The arrival of a second child, a docile, sweet little girl, precipitates a family crisis. Kevin sees his new sister as a rival for his parent's attention and as he reaches puberty, he directs all his anger and destructiveness at Eva. It is as if he has hated her from birth and, inevitably, their toxic relationship escalates into violence. The film is part family-drama and part horror movie, but who is the real monster? The spiteful, destructive Kevin or his mother, who dare not confront what her son has become? Swinton's performance as Eva is amazing - detailed and completely honest - but she is matched by Ezra Miller as Kevin, a true monster with an angel's face. It's a harrowing film, superbly acted, with director Lynne Ramsay imposing a stark, oblique and, in my opinion, slightly contrived style. It's not your typical night at the movies, but it's a film you will not easily forget.

The Muppet Movie ***

Jim Henson's TV series was a sensation in the 1980s and 1990s. Twelve years later, the Muppets are back in a full-length feature film. It's about three adult Muppet fans - Peter Linz, Jason Segel and Amy Adams - who want to stage a new Muppet show, but a greedy tycoon, Chris Cooper, refuses to help. Their fundraising efforts are further hampered by a copy-cat company called "The Moopets", who try to put the real Muppets out of business. In their search for the other Muppets, they find Miss Piggy working as a fashion consultant for Vogue Paris, focusing on the "plus-sized" creations. The film has great cameo performances from Selena Gomez, Whoopi Goldberg, Alan Arkin and Mickey Rooney. The younger kids might not get the jokes, but they will love the characters, and adults with happy Muppet memories will find them as funny as they ever were. It's family fare with a capital F.