Jonah Hill

NEW YORK – No one will ever mistake Jonah Hill for a macho action star.

But the portly comic actor gets to engage in more than his share of gunplay in his new action comedy “21 Jump Street.” Appearing opposite hunky, handsome Channing Tatum in the TV remake about youthful LAPD cops going undercover at a high school to bust drug dealers, Hill got to sling weapons on screen for the first time in his career.

But, as he told it during a press day hosted by Columbia Pictures, he wasn’t entirely comfortable handling all that firepower. On the other hand, Tatum (a veteran of “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” and other action fare) handles guns with aplomb.

“I’m pretty comfortable with weapons,” Tatum told reporters. “I’ve done a lot of work with them in films.” Then he laughed. “But this person next to me (Hill) has the worst gun safety that I’ve ever been around in my entire life.”

In his own defense, Hill explained, “I had a problem because there’s a guy on set whose job it is to give you a gun, right? It’s a real gun and it’s loaded with blanks. And I had not been around guns before. But I went with a cop and trained how to shoot guns. I’m actually a pretty good shot. And so this guy was responsible for giving me a gun, so my thing was like …”

“I’m going to point it at your (groin) and pull the trigger,” Tatum chimed in.

“Right,” said Hill, “and I’m like, ‘ it had better not be loaded because I don’t want to die, I don’t want him to die, I don’t want anyone to die. And you’re the guy whose job it is to make sure nobody dies. And that’s a very serious job.

“So every time he gave me a gun,” Hill said, “I pointed at his genitalia and I pulled the trigger. And, I was like, you’re never going to accidentally hand me a loaded gun because you don’t want to not be able to have kids ever again.

“Actually, I think it’s crazy, handing real guns to actors,” Hill said. “I think that’s the scariest, weirdest energy to put on a movie set. We would joke around a lot, but obviously when it came to real gun safety we were serious about it.”

- Dennis King

Some call it “the best Hitchcock movie that Hitchcock never made.” Certainly, “Charade” has almost all the elements the Master of Suspense ever incorporated in his films, including mystery, romance, baffling plot twists, characters who aren’t who they seem to be, action, sudden jolts, gallows humor and, of course, suspense, all set against an exotic locale.

The 1963 thriller even has animated opening credits that strongly resemble the titles Saul Bass designed for “Psycho,” and a musical score that underlines the moments of tension and deadly peril with pulse-quickening effectiveness. And, hey, there’s even Cary Grant, veteran of four of Hitchcock’s best, in the lead role.

But that’s Maurice Binder’s (the early James Bond films) handiwork on the credits, and instead of Bernard Herrmann supplying the musical moodiness, we have the jazzier, more rhythmic and (at the time) more contemporary touches of Henry Mancini on the soundtrack.

And that’s Stanley Donen in the director’s chair, best known for such lighthearted musical fare as “Singin’ in the Rain” and “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.” So Cary gets to throw in a little of the screwball shtick he’s so good at but that Hitch would never allow, such as taking a shower wearing suit and tie, or pulling a goofy face — although such stuff is kept to a minimum here.

Grant and Audrey Hepburn are a perfect match, despite a 25-year age difference that almost caused Grant to turn down the part (he insisted on a rewrite having Hepburn’s character romantically pursue his, instead of the reverse, which seemed to him more dignified), and Peter Stone’s screenplay provides them with loads of witty and sophisticated repartee.

Hepburn is Reggie, a frustrated wife who’s about to divorce her mysterious husband when he turns up murdered, and she finds herself stalked all over Paris by three very shady characters (James Coburn, George Kennedy and Ned Glass) who think she’s in possession of money her late husband stole from them. Slovenly CIA agent Hamilton Bartholomew (Walter Matthau at his slouching, deadpan best) also believes she’s in possession of the loot, even if she doesn’t know it. And Grant is the suave, charming stranger whose motives for coming to her aid are unclear and increasingly suspect. Still, Reggie is hopelessly smitten with him. The story keeps you guessing right up to the very last scene. Delicious.

The Grant-Hepburn chemistry was so perfect it seemed they’d been working together for years, although this was their only teaming, and the film is still great fun to watch nearly 50 years later, especially for Hitchcock fans — even though Hitch had nothing to do with it, except maybe by way of influence.

Extras include two short “100 Years of Universal” featurettes: “The Carl Laemmle Years” and “The Lew Wasserman Years.”

— Gene Triplett

BY DENNIS KING

NEW YORK – It’s hard to tell if the two stars of the action-comedy “21 Jump Street” are more in character as cops or as teenagers as they come barging into a press conference for their new movie in full Southern California police gear – embroidered LAPD polos, baggy blue shorts and high-top Converse sneakers sans socks.

Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum

Portly Jonah Hill and buff Channing Tatum make a strong case for arrested adolescence as they lope onto a stage to face the entertainment media at a press day hosted by Columbia Pictures at Soho’s tony Crosby Street Hotel.

Hill, just coming off an Oscar nomination for his dramatic role in “Moneyball,” seems ready to have some fun with this long-in-the-making project on which he stars, serves as executive producer and co-writer of the story with screenwriter Michael Bacall.

Tatum, currently appearing in the soft-hearted romance “The Vow” and a veteran of action movies (“Haywire,” “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra”) but a stranger to comedy, seems a little more tentative about this whole loosey-goosey improv business.

Their oddball partnership on “21 Jump Street” represents a radical reimagining of the late-1980s Fox TV show (which featured the fresh-faced Johnny Depp in a breakout role) about a youthful squad of undercover LAPD cops who pose as high-schoolers to bust crime on campus. In the film, Hill plays the nerdy Schmidt and Tatum portrays the cool jock Jenko, who form an unlikely friendship at the Police Academy and then are assigned to the secret Jump Street unit to infiltrate a local high school.

Hill said he spent five years working to get the film into production, and once he overcame some initial doubts he became convinced that he was onto something special.

“Honestly, when this first came to me it was a dramatic script, and I was really against it. I did not want to make a TV show into a movie. I thought it sounded really lazy and stupid and eye-rolling and unoriginal and all of those things,” he said. “But, really, there’s like a ‘Back to the Future’ element that everyone involved understood.

“The idea of reliving your high school years, and what would that be like, and what is funny about that, what is sad about that,” he said. “And what if you think you have all the answers and you go back and you have none of the answers? And that, to me, is a really, really strong idea for a movie.

“And what if that was like a ‘Bad Boys’ meets a John Hughes movie?” Hill said. “That was what got the train moving, so whether it was called ‘21 Jump Street’ or it was called ‘Narcs’ or it was called ‘Two Cops Go Back to High School,’ I didn’t really care. That idea was what captivated me and made me want to move forward.”

“Have you seen the show in a while?” Tatum chimed in. “You know, it’s pretty funny and cool. I was a fan of the show. I watched it every single Friday. But I don’t really think you have to call this thing ’21 Jump Street,’ but I’m glad they did because I liked the show. And we paid some good homages.”

While Hill is an old hand at comedy, Tatum is widely viewed as a handsome hunk more at home in action fare. So how did he hook up with Hill?

“I got a phone call from Jonah when I was in Toronto shooting a movie, and I wasn’t sure why he was calling me,” Tatum recalled. “But he told me about his passion for ‘Jump Street’ and how long he’s been working on it. And they sent me the script over email. It seemed like one of the most fun scripts I’d read. And I just said, ‘Alright man, if you promise me that I’m going to be funny then I’ll sign on.’ And he did, he really held my hand all the way through it, and they created a great stage for you to be safe to fail and not feel bad if you didn’t know your way into a joke. Like, I know that there should be something funny in here, but I don’t know how to do it. And everybody helped me out with that.”

Hill, Tatum

A key element in making the comedy work is the Mutt-and-Jeff chemistry between Hill and Tatum. How did the actors develop that?

“We went for milkshakes and hung out a lot,” Tatum said with a shrug.

“Everyone asks if we knew each other before, and it’s funny because we had only met once five years before at a restaurant,” Hill said. “We didn’t actually meet, we just waved at each other. And that was the only experience we had until I called him up on the phone.

“I gotta say about this guy, in every really good movie you get to be surprised or shocked by something someone does,” Hill said. “And I think Channing walks away with this movie because you’ve never seen him do anything like this before. I think he’s the funniest part of the whole entire movie. And the second I called him and he was down to do the movie, I saw why I wanted him, which is that he is fearless.

“He was just jumping in, and he’s fearless as a person and fearless as an artist,” Hill continued. “And that’s why he’s great in this movie, because he didn’t put a wall up and say, ‘oh man, I’m scared and maybe I shouldn’t do this.’ He was like, ‘whatever you guys want, just promise me that I’ll be funny.’ He’s just honest and raw in every scene. And that’s why we became friends because we both are down to kill ourselves for our movie.”

“Thanks, buddy,” Tatum said with a wry grin.

“Now you guys are supposed to, like, roar into applause,” Hill said to the scribbling journalists.

“Nah, it was easy to get along with this guy,” Tatum said. “I think it’s really nice when you can actually see a friendship come through the screen, and I think you can actually feel it.”

Lastly, as if addressing the 2,000-pound elephant in the room, one nosey journalist asked about a certain cameo in the film that should earn huge laughs.

“Who?” Hill said. “We, umm, don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Not to give away the surprise, the journalist persisted, but whose idea was it to include the cameo?

“We don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hill said.

“If there were a cameo, that would be pretty neat,” chimed in co-director Phil Lord.

Finally, Hill laughed, “You’re wasting your time if you’re going to keep asking about that.”

Stephen J. Cannell

BY DENNIS KING

NEW YORK – You might think the guy who co-created the 1987-91 Fox TV series “21 Jump Street” would look askance at a bunch of youngsters turning his iconic cop show into an irreverent, R-rated action-comedy movie.

But the late, prolific, groundbreaking writer-producer Stephen J. Cannell was nothing if not a good sport, and to hear star Jonah Hill and co-directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller tell it, he was on board with the cheeky, big-screen updating of “21 Jump Street” from the word go.

During a press conference for the film hosted by Columbia Pictures as Soho’s Crosby Street Hotel, the stars and directors sang Cannell’s praises and speculated that the Emmy Award-winning producer would have been happy with their fast-and-loose homage to the series.

“21 Jump Street” stars Hill and Channing Tatum as mismatched pals and undercover cops assigned to pose as students to ferret out drug dealers at a local high school. The TV series is perhaps best remembered for launching the acting career of Johnny Depp.

Cannell, who died in 2010 at age 69, was reportedly considering his own film adaptation of “21 Jump Street” when he was first approached by star-producer-writer Hill (who co-wrote the story with Michael Bacall) to secure rights.

“I was nervous that he wouldn’t be psyched about a movie being made,” said Hill. “But not only was he excited about our movie being made, one of the times we were hanging out with him he was trying to get me to make a movie based on another one of his shows. He was just like down for his legacy to live on, and he wanted to get it into the zeitgeist again.”

Lord and Miller said they were also touched that the famed writer-producer was so supportive of their first live-action film. The two directors had previously been known for the work in animation, notably the feature comedy “Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs.”

For his part, Cannell is a bonafide legend in the TV industry, having garnered six Emmy wins and racked up a roster of hit series that includes “The Rockford Files,” “Greatest American Hero,” “The A-Team,” “Hunter,” “Hardcastle & McCormick” and, of course, “21 Jump Street” (which he co-created with Patrick Hasburgh) among others.

“I think he was excited that his show was going to be reinterpreted,” said Lord. “That was the thing that was most refreshing about him. He was psyched to see it grow and turn into something new.”

“It’s a shame he never got to see the finished product,” added Miller.

“But he was such a nice person,” said Lord. “You’d go to his office and he’d have those Emmys lined up back there, and it was like those end cards you see from all his shows. And he had that beautiful lion’s mane of hair.”

“He was a very handsome man,” laughed Hill.

“He was a gorgeous man,” Miller said. “Very impressive. He was always wearing those black cowboy boots, and he was just a great guy and a very supportive person. And when you think about the company he built and the number of people that he employed and the tables that he helped put food on and how much he cared about everyone who worked for him, it was really inspiring just to meet him.”

“Stephen was awesome,” said Hill. “He was a really nice guy. He was also like the King of Pasadena. He was like the most popular guy in Pasadena. Good guy. He’s missed, very much.”

NEW YORK – Movie adaptations of Broadway shows are nothing new, but just as often the creative current flows the other way. And recently it seems the number of films that have made their way to adaptations on the New York stage has tipped the scales drastically.

This month, two new productions come to Broadway that are drawn from highly popular motion pictures – “Once,” based on 2006 Dublin-set indie film that won an Academy Award for the original song “Falling Slowly,” and “Ghost The Musical,” drawn from the misty 1990 romance that starred Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore.

“Once,” which features the music and lyrics of Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova and tells the story of two street musicians in Dublin who fall into a halting romance, began life off-Broadway, as a downtown production of the New York Theater Workshop.

After a tryout run, it moved to the Jacobs Theater on West 45th St. and began previews on Feb. 28. Opening night is set for March 18.

“Ghost The Musical,” featuring a pop-rock score from Dave Stewart (of the Eurythmics) and Glen Ballard, tells the story of lovers torn apart when one dies and returns as the apparition of the title. Whoopi Goldberg earned an Oscar for her role as the kooky medium who helps the grieving woman communicate with her late lover.

The musical begins previews Thursday at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater on West 46th St. and officially opens on April 23.

In recent years, the roster of movie stories that have made their way to the New York stage seems to have accelerated. Among long-running musicals that started their lives on the big screen are “The Lion King,” “Mary Poppins,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Sister Act,” “Priscilla Queen of the Desert,” “Shrek: The Musical,” “Hairspray,” “Billy Elliot” and “The Full Monty.”

Others include: “The Wedding Singer,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Big,” “Victor/Victoria,” “Footloose,” “Sunset Boulevard,” “Legally Blonde,” “The Color Purple,” “9 to 5,” “Young Frankenstein,” “The Producers,” “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” “Catch Me If You Can,” “Elf” and “High Fidelity.”

And it’s not just musicals that find their way from screen to stage. Recent productions of non-musical movies that have been adapted as straight plays for the Broadway stage include Alfred Hitchcock’s “The 39 Steps,” Norwegian import “Elling” and Noel Coward’s “Brief Encounter.”

- Dennis King

Little Bill Daggett: “You’d be William Munny out of Missouri. Killer of women and children.”

Will Munny: “That’s right. I’ve killed women and children. I’ve killed just about everything that walks or crawled at one time or another. And I’m here to kill you, Little Bill, for what you did to Ned.”

So goes the exchange between the sheriff and the gunfighter before Clint Eastwood’s final blazing showdown — in a Western anyway.

At least that’s what Eastwood claims in one of several interviews included in the extras of the 20th anniversary Blu-ray edition of “Unforgiven.” The actor/director says he always intended the 1992 horse opera to be his last, and so far he’s kept his word.

But he certainly left the genre with a bang, literally and figuratively speaking, with his character gunning down five men in one blazing swoop, and his movie raking in big bucks at the box office and four Oscars at the 1993 awards ceremony for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Gene Hackman as Little Bill Daggett), Best Editing and, for Eastwood, Best Director.

It is only the third Western after “Cimarron” (1931) and “Dances with Wolves” (1990) ever to win a Best Picture statuette.

So how could a story about an outlaw who’s killed women and children garner so much adulation?

Perhaps it was how Eastwood, directing from David Webb Peoples’ superb screenplay, portrayed the grim consequences of violence, and how he dealt with themes of aging, human limits and mortality in an a starkly honest and sometimes moving way.

Eastwood sat on this script for years, waiting until he was old enough to play Munny, a reformed outlaw and killer, struggling to raise two children on a failing farm, until a bounty offered by vengeful prostitutes lures him out of retirement. The excellent Morgan Freeman plays Munny’s old partner, and Hackman is convincingly mean-spirited as the brutal sheriff of Big Whiskey, Wyo., where the action centers.

Photographed in artful noir tones by Jack Green, Eastwood’s last roundup is now packaged inside a 54-page hardback book full of behind-the-scenes photos and insight, complete with four documentaries and an episode of the ’50s TV series “Maverick,” guest-starring a very young Eastwood as — what else — a gunfighter.

— Gene Triplett

Woody Harrelson

Los Angeles police officer Dave Brown is an unmitigated monster with a badge. He’s the very embodiment of the term “police corruption,” and in “Rampart,” writer-director Oren Moverman’s searing character study, he’s played by Woody Harrelson with such amoral ferocity that he bears an uneasy kinship to the murderous psychopath the actor played in 1994’s “Natural Born Killers.”

Drawn from a noirish story by crime novelist James Ellroy (“L.A. Confidential”), who shares screenwriting credit, this nerve-jangling cop saga takes its title from the LAPD’s scandal-plagued Rampart division. In the late 1990s, that gang-infested area near downtown L.A. was ruled by renegade cops taking bribes from drug dealers, pilfering cocaine from evidence lockers, brutalizing local citizens and even pulling off a daring bank robbery.

Amid the violence, squalor, chaos and white noise of this precinct strides the dirtiest cop of all – Dave Brown, a feral predator in close-cropped hair, aviator shades and crisp blue uniform.

His street nickname gives ample proof of his vigilante take on the job: Date-Rape Dave, for the suspected serial rapist he shot and killed under suspicious circumstances. In his self-proclaimed code, Brown is an equal-opportunity hater, dissing everyone from women to minorities, suspected perps, innocent bystanders and even fellow cops.

Often the target of Internal Affairs probes, Brown’s latest dust-ups with police brass – personified by disgusted I.A. investigator Ice Cube and attorney Sigourney Weaver – involve strong-arming a petty convenience-store thief, beating a suspect senseless on video (shades of Rodney King) and being involved in a dubious shooting.

And the toxic aura of Brown’s life extends well beyond the job. At home, he maintains an acrimonious relationship with two ex-wives – sisters (Anne Heche and Cynthia Nixon) with whom he’s fathered two daughters. Although he’s cheated on both women, they all manage to live under one roof in an uneasy, volatile truce.

Director Moverman previously worked with Harrelson on 2009’s “The Messenger,” another hothouse drama of tortured men doing deeply troubling work. This time, the director leads Harrelson deeper into the dark corridors of his character’s psyche, and the result is harrowing and starkly unsettling.

Since his early days as the goofy bartender on “Cheers,” Harrelson has charted an ambitious path in challenging roles devoid of movie-star vanity, ranging from psycho killers to idiot good-old boy to drug-addled hippies. And he always plays them with frightening commitment.

In Dave Brown, a cunning sociopath who somehow manages to beat the system at every turn, Harrelson essays one of the most relentlessly downbeat characters in recent memory. And while he doesn’t quite manage to make us care about the guy, he does make his anguished throes of self-loathing and rage and self-destruction utterly fascinating and urgently compelling to watch.

“Rampart” is a visceral crime drama whose central lesson is difficult to winnow amid all the story’s urban sleaze, disorienting bleakness and emotional squalor. But as an object lesson in how one wondrously skillful and unnervingly dedicated actor can inhabit the soul of a character so damaged, deranged and unredeemable, it’s a punishing triumph.

- Dennis King

“Rampart”

R
1:48
2 ½ stars
Starring: Woody Harrelson, Ice Cube, Sigourney Weaver, Anne Heche, Cynthia Nixon
(Pervasive language, sexual content and some violence)

Jean Dujardin, Berenice Bejo, "The Artist."

His wit is obviously still as sharp as the blades he wielded in the unlikely role of a scary mob boss in “Drive,” not dulled by this devastating disappointment.

But Brooks was not the only one unjustly snubbed in the 84th Oscar race. What of Tilda Swinton’s implosive portrait of a mother burdened with a profoundly bad boy in “We Need to Talk About Kevin”? Or Michael Shannon’s heart-shredding turn as a man imagining the approach of an apocalyptic storm that’s going to destroy everything he loves in the little-seen drama “Take Shelter”?

We might also question the exclusion of Shailene Woodley’s wise-beyond-her-years teen daughter in “The Descendants” and Michael Fassbender’s tortured sex addict in “Shame.”

We could go on, but there are some worthy contenders this year, so here’s how I’m calling the winners of Sunday night’s Hollywood showdown.

BEST PICTURE

George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, "The Descendants."

“Drive” should be parked at the top of this category, but Nicolas Winding Refn’s noirish crime-thriller-with-a-soul was apparently dismissed by Academy voters as just another ultraviolent, car-crashing guy movie. Most members were feeling sentimental this year, so the nominated nine include the maudlin “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close,” the epic family fare of “War Horse,” and two sweet love letters to the movies themselves, “The Artist” and “Hugo,” which were bound to get love in return (10 noms for the former, 11 for the latter).

There are deserving films of emotional and topical weight, such as “The Help,” about black housemaids and the white women who employed them in the early ’60s South, and “The Descendants,” a comedy-drama about a Hawaiian land owner coping with family crisis. But the heartstring-plucking “The Artist” has the added novelty of being silent and in black-and-white, which seems to be capturing the affections of the Oscar gods.

Should win: “The Descendants.”

Will win: “The Artist.”

BEST ACTOR

¿Quien es Mas Macho? George Clooney o Brad Pitt? It might not make much difference, because while the two “Ocean’s 11” buddies are duking it out for the Best Actor trophy, Jean Dujardin just might silently steal away with the prize for the ability he displayed in “The Artist” to speak volumes with his soulful eyes and eloquent gestures, without uttering a sound. Gary Oldman’s perfectly-pitched stillness as a cunning but desperately lonely spymaster was gold-worthy in “Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy,” and Pitt hit a homer in the sports drama “Moneyball.” But Clooney has never locked into the humanity of a character with more depth and sensitivity than he displayed as a Hawaiian landowner with serious family issues in “The Descendants.”

Should and will win: George Clooney.

BEST ACTRESS

Glenn Close just wasn’t believable as a man in “Albert Nobbs,” but Rooney Mara was supremely convincing as a female street tough in “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” Meryl Streep

Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, "The Help."

 delivered a dead-on feature-length impression of Margaret “The Iron Lady” Thatcher and Michelle Williams did much the same portraying Marilyn Monroe in “My Week with Marilyn.” But “The Help” glowed with the gravity and grace of Viola Davis’ African-American housemaid suffering the humiliations inflicted by white Mississippi housewives in the early 1960s. She won a lot of hearts, including those of many Academy voters, no doubt.

Should and will win: Viola Davis.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Even more amazing than funnyman Albert Brooks’ against-type turn as a murderous menace in “Drive” is the fact that he’s not among these nominees. That’s a criminal oversight. The five contenders who did make the cut certainly gave noteworthy performances, particularly Kenneth Branagh playing his personal idol Laurence Olivier in “My Week with Marilyn,” and Jonah Hill as the nerdy baseball recruiting consultant in “Moneyball.” Nick Nolte always looks good playing his rough-edged, weather-

Christopher Plummer, "Beginners."

beaten self and Max von Sydow was yet another silent wonder as a mute in “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close,” but with Brooks unjustly absent from the picture, Christopher Plummer is the outstanding competitor here, having already won several honors for his widower who comes out of the closet at age 75 in “Beginners.”

Should and will win: Christopher Plummer.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Academy voters gave a rare nod of respect to a comedic performance for Melissa McCarthy’s fat-joke-sensitive member of the wedding in “Bridesmaids,” Berenice Bejo managed to say it all with her bright eyes and dazzling smile in the silence of “The Artist” and Janet McTeer was the single saving grace of “Albert Nobbs.” Even more remarkable was seeing Jessica Chastain prove her versatility yet again in “The Help,” her fifth movie in a banner year that included memorable turns in “Take Shelter,” “The Debt,” “The Tree of Life” and “Coriolanus.” But Octavia Spencer has already proven to be an awards magnet for her angry African-American maid with a wicked sense of vengeance in “The Help,” and she’s about to add another trophy to her mantle.

Should win: Jessica Chastain.

Will win: Octavia Spencer.

BEST DIRECTOR

I’m going to go with the way things ought to be. The director of the year’s Best Picture should win for helming that picture. Of course it often doesn’t happen that way, which is one of

Michel Hazanavicius

the great mysteries about how the minds of Academy members work. But the new kid on the block, Michel Hazanavicius, has already taken top honors at the Directors Guild Awards, which bodes pretty well for a directing Oscar win for “The Artist,” his black-and-white valentine to America’s silent era, although “Hugo,” Martin Scorsese’s fanciful, family-oriented 3-D billet-doux to early French cinema, has the veteran craftsman running a very close second.

Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” was an imaginative but lightweight adult fairy tale, Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life” was an artful meditation on existence and mortality that meandered between powerful and plodding. In “The Descendants,” Alexander Payne brought out the best in George Clooney while painting a painfully funny and moving portrait of a shattered family slowly beginning to pull itself together again. But Hazanavicius has it.

Should win: Alexander Payne.

Will win: Michel Hazanavicius.

Quick guesses in other categories:

Best original screenplay

Woody Allen, “Midnight in Paris.”

Best adapted screenplay

Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon, Jim Payne, “The Descendants.”

Best animated feature

“Rango”

Best documentary feature

“Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory.”

BY DENNIS KING

I have a friend who prides himself on correctly guessing Oscar winners every year – despite the fact that he rarely ever sees any of the nominated movies. With a cold eye, he scans the nominees, figures the odds and picks the winners like a seasoned racetrack tout. And he has a slew of office Oscar pool wins and radio contest prizes to prove his prowess.

I, on the other hand, invariably see almost every nominated film and performance, get all sentimental and emotional about my favorites, and usually pick the long shots and dark horses to win – with predictably dubious results.

The lesson? When it comes to Oscar guessing, don’t play your favorites, play the odds. (Of course, all of this must come with the bracing caution that, with some 5,700 qualified Oscar voters, a rigorously secret ballot, a roiling atmosphere of monumental egos, behind-the scenes politicking and boardroom alliances, the Academy Awards are virtually unpredictable. There are always upsets and surprising wins.)

So with that in mind, this year I’ll (mostly) play the odds and humbly offer this bookmaker’s roster of supposedly predictable winners.

Best Supporting Actor:

Kenneth Branagh of “My Week With Marilyn” is the odds-on favorite. He’s a great actor who’s due. (Any upset – which often happens in this category – could come from one of two film titans: Christopher Plummer of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” or Max von Sydow of “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.”

Best Supporting Actress:

In another upset-prone category, “The Artist’s” sprightly Berenice Bejo is favored to win and should. But ensemble members of the high-minded social drama “The Help,” Octavia Spencer or Jessica Chastain, could garner a surprise win.

Best Actor:

Close odds between Hollywood insider George Clooney of “The Descendents” and suave Frenchman Jean Dujardin of “The Artist” make this a tight race. Our vote’s for Dujardin, but we guess the very popular Clooney to add a partner to his 2005 Oscar for “Good Night, and Good Luck.”

Best Actress:

Another close race between Viola Davis of “The Help” and Oscar stalwart Meryl Streep (two previous wins and 15 nominations) of “Iron Lady,” with socially conscious show-biz voters giving the twice-nominated Davis her first win.

Best Director:

Following the tea leaves of the Directors Guild Awards, where Michel Hazanavicius of “The Artist” won the top award, the imaginative French writer-director ought to take home the directing statuette. (Note that Hazanavicius was also nominated for Best Original Screenplay and Best Achievement in Film Editing).

Best Picture:

If we were handicapping a win, place and show scenario, it would go this way: “The Artist,” by a nose over “Hugo,” with “The Descendents” running third.

Bromance muscles out romance in the wildly uneven “This Means War,” a largely dunderheaded date movie that careens between over-the-top, macho buddy bluster and contrived love-triangle antics that are too cute by half.

Tom Hardy, Chris Pine, Reese Witherspoon

Populated by an impossibly buff and beautiful trio of leading actors – Tom Hardy, the chameleon-like Eames of “Inception,” Chris Pine, the studly new Kirk of “Star Trek,” and one-time America’s sweetheart Reese Witherspoon with her perky Valentine face – the film amounts to an off-kilter effort to bridge the gap between big-bang, hyperkinetic action fare and chipper, chick-flick fluff.

In the hands of the director who calls himself McQ (whose resume meanders from the blunt-force action of “Terminator Salvation” to the campy silliness of “Charlie’s Angels”), it’s an action romance that falters on both fronts – its explosive scenes are too chaotic and incoherent to satisfy action fans and its romantic conceit is too tepid and contrived to win over dreamers.

The set-up is this: Tuck (Hardy) and FDR (Pine) are ace CIA field agents and best pals who, in an action-packed, Hong Kong-set opening sequence, briskly dispatch an international villain named Heinrich (Til Schweiger), James Bond-style, and then turn their attentions to their love lives when they return home to Los Angeles.

Tuck is a lonely-hearts romantic who botched his marriage, lost his true love and is now looking to get back into the game with an online dating service. FDR is a shameless womanizer who seems to take his lifestyle cues from Playboy magazine, circa 1970.

On a parallel track we meet Lauren (Witherspoon), a smart, efficient consumer products tester who obviously could get any guy she wants but for some reason relies on the raunchy ministrations of trashy gal-pal Trish (a zestfully foul-mouthed Chelsea Handler) to coax her into the online dating scene.

The upshot is that Tuck and Lauren are matched up and spend a great evening out on the town. However, at the end of the night Lauren wanders into a jam-packed video store (they still have those?) and has a meet-cute encounter with FDR, who was hanging nearby looking out for his buddy.

Quickly, Lauren, unaware of Tuck and FDR’s friendship, finds sparks flying with both guys. For their part, Tuck and FDR puff up and agree to a mano-a-mano competition to win Lauren’s heart.

So the two suitors employ their considerable spy skills – along with wiretaps, tracking devices and crews of CIA spooks – to chart Lauren’s every move and execute increasingly devious strategies to win her over. Actually, it’s all kind of creepy, in a stalkerish sort of way, but screenwriters Timothy Dowling and Simon Kinberg (writer of “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” appropriately enough) concoct enough sharp dialogue and amusing clandestine set pieces to score a few honest laughs.

While the lean and sexy Witherspoon certainly holds up her end of things, the film’s best bits seem to revolve around the comic male bonding of Hardy and Pine, who invest their characters with winning doses of cynicism and vulnerability. Both are at ease in the rough-hewn action scenes, and both seem to ooze regular-guy charm in their decidedly sexist competition.

As the title might suggest, “This Means War” is a macho declaration between the two handsome, hunky male leads. Witherspoon seems relegated to playing a lovely bystander in this decidedly scattershot bromance.

- Dennis King

“This Means War”

PG-13
1:37
2 stars
Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Chris Pine, Tom Hardy, Chelsea Handler
(Sexual content, some violence and action, language)