Happy New Year

… is a remake of La bonne année, a 1973 film by Claude Lelouch that is, by all accounts, a lot better than this one. But since I haven’t seen that one, I came to this one unprejudiced, and I have to say I enjoyed it quite a bit. It begins as a simple heist movie, which isn’t bad at all, but in the middle it turns into something quite different, and that’s even better. It’s a showcase for the talents of Peter Falk, and who doesn’t like Peter Falk? I loved him as Columbo, and the funny thing is, I have never seen an episode of “Columbo” in its entirety. Imagine that, learning to love a character through simply glimpsing little bits of business here and there while the TV happens to be on. If you haven’t seen it already, check him out playing himself in Wim Wenders’s brilliant Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin). There is also Charles Durning, one of my favorite character actors, and Wendy Hughes, a cool Grace Kelly type who should have been better known by now.