New York and LA on Damned United and An Education

The Damned United is clocking in at a whopping 83 on Metacritic, with three scores of 100 from AO Scott, Kenneth Turan and Andrew O’Herir. It looks like good news for Michael Sheen, and for Peter Morgan on script yet again.

Though his notoriously big mouth often got him into trouble, Clough is a great character for Sheen to play because his personal charm invariably — but not always — got him out of the difficulty. Sheen captures this duality, showing us a man who was delusional to the point of oblivion about how what he was saying would be received by the world at large…

Though it is nominally about what partisans call “the beautiful game,” there’s barely any on-field footage in “The Damned United.” What we get instead is fine acting and directing, splendid dialogue and a story too outrageous to be made up. When you come to think about it, after all, part of coaching is acting a part, and these guys were some of the best.KT

---

And Mr. Sheen, for his part, expands his remarkable anthology of famous modern Britons, turning the actor’s art into a form of Plutarchan character study. I can’t assess the accuracy of the portrait — provincial American part-time soccer dad that I am, I had never heard of Brian Clough before — and it obviously is not complete. But Mr. Sheen’s performance is persuasive and illuminating not only of the man’s doubts and aspirations but also, as if from within, of his world. AOS

And the raves for An Education after the cut.

Turan on Mulligan:

With just a few film roles behind her, including flighty Kitty Bennett in the Keira Knightley-starring “Pride & Prejudice,” Mulligan seizes the character of 16-year-old Jenny in a once-in-a-lifetime way. The notion of the single performance that creates a star overnight is surely one of Hollywood’s biggest cliches, but this is one time when you can take it to the bank. ¬∂ That may seem ironic because there is nothing Hollywood at all about this British independent film written by Nick Hornby from a sliver of a memoir by journalist Lynn Barber and costarring American indie stalwart Peter Sarsgaard. And the director is Denmark’s Lone Scherfig, who has an unerring instinct for illuminating the quirkiness of human nature.

Mulligan is exceptionally empathetic through all these changes, gifted with the ability to make us believe in Jenny as an innocent, Jenny as a person of experience and all the Jennys in between. This is a performance, and a film, to cherish for this year and always.

And the Wall Street Journal’s Joe Morgenstern (like Foundas and Gonzales, no pushover) writes:

There are thrillers, and then there are thrillers. No shots are fired in “An Education,” and the closest thing to a car chase is a bit of brisk driving after the theft of an old map. Yet this tale of an English schoolgirl’s hard-won wisdom is thrilling all the same‚Äîfor the radiance of Carey Mulligan’s Jenny, who’s wonderfully smart and perilously tender; for the grace of Lone Scherfig’s direction, and the brilliance of Nick Hornby’s screenplay, which took its inspiration, in the fullest sense of the word, from a short memoir by Lynn Barber. The film opens Friday in New York and Los Angeles; national release won’t begin until Nov. 20. That’s a classic distribution strategy to create pent-up demand, but I can’t keep my admiration pent up for another six weeks. No movie I’ve seen in a very long time has touched me so deeply, or bestowed so much pleasure.

I have to agree on An Education, and I know you all are sick of hearing about it – and it’s a damned shame that it is taking so long to be available to see. I think that the film is going to be more powerful, and/or enjoyable for those who have lived through the ups and downs of life. What I mean by that is the film’s focus on what creates character and depth in a person. It isn’t being a fresh-faced beauty. Sure, that’s the message we get on a daily basis here in America, that it is all about being young and beautiful. What I realize as I get older is that youth is a commodity.

But this film is the first I’ve seen to really talk about the value of education – both hard-learned lessons that have to do with some creepy guy, and the richness a university education can bring to anyone, especially a young woman. And so, in addition to how good it is all around, I am grateful that it exists. It’s worth mentioning that three of the year’s deepest and most profound films were directed by women: The Hurt Locker, An Education and Bright Star.