“The Duchess”
*** RATING |The story of Georgiana Spencer stars Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes as the lady and her husband, William Cavendish. He’s a cold fish who becomes positively frozen when his young wife bears him daughter after daughter, but no male heir. True friendship comes to Georgiana in the person of Lady Elizabeth Foster (Hayley Atwell), who becomes her husband’s lover. Once Bess moves in, the film finds a fascinating triangle. We shouldn’t underestimate Keira Knightley’s ability to channel historic and modern into one compelling figure or her grasp of the power of dress-up to free performance. PG-13. 1 hour, 45 minutes. (To be released Saturday) Lisa Kennedy
“Ghost Town”
*** 1/2 RATING |Bertram Pincus, D.D.S., hasn’t much use for the living and even less for the dead. Indeed, Pincus is such a bitter pill, there are times you wonder if David Koepp’s comedy about the dour doctor and the deceased cad who enlists his earthly help to help wreck his widow’s new relationship stands a ghost of a chance of pulling off the transformations it hints at. But Koepp, who co-wrote the screenplay with John Kamps, has delivered a gem of a movie. Ricky Gervais, Greg Kinnear and Tea Leoni are terrific working the pain and pleasures of comedy. Kristen Wiig is impossibly funny as the surgeon who must explain to Pincus that well, yes, something happened during a routine medical procedure: He died. PG-13. 1 hour, 43 minutes. (To be released Saturday) Lisa Kennedy
“Savage Grace”
** 1/2 RATING |This film is a true-crime tragedy charting an elite American family’s descent into hell. The film, spanning 1946 to 1972, unfolds in six increasingly sordid acts, drawing us ever deeper into a world of superficial elegance, debauchery and shattering violence. Brooks Baekeland (Stephen Dillane) inherited the fortune his grandfather amassed with Bakelite plastics. When he married gorgeous Barbara Daly (Julianne Moore), his friends all agreed that the former model and would-be starlet was socially inferior. Moore’s performance as the unsympathetic porcelain beauty Barbara is fearless, especially as the story climaxes in taboo-shattering catastrophe. If ever there was a film to extinguish any envy of the lifestyles of the rich and famous, “Savage Grace” is it. R. 1 hour, 34 minutes. (Released today) Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star-Tribune
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