Heading South
Ever since she played Lynn Redgrave’s party-girl roommate in 1966’s Georgy Girl, Charlotte Rampling has been known for an acting style of cool detachment. Her allure is undiminished by the years. At 59, she continues to project a dignified sensuality. She’s eschewed a Hollywood career, making few American movies. But Swimming Pool, The Statement and the recent Lemming show an actress who’s lost none of her appeal. (We won’t even discuss Basic Instinct 2, done, no doubt, for a quick paycheck.)

Her latest has her as a Boston French-literature teacher vacationing at a Haitian resort where the young male employees service the lonely older female guests. Karen Young and Louise Portal costar as other guests looking for sun and sex. With Charlotte Rampling on hand, the trio’s aim of convincing themselves that they’re still desirable is an easy task.

Scoop
Woody Allen is back, acting in his own film, and all is right with the world. In his second consecutive feature set in London and starring the lovely Scarlett Johansson, he plays a second-rate magician who calls an American journalism student out of the audience. Inside a magic booth, Johansson’s student meets a spirit who tells her he was murdered by a serial killer who happens to be a famous aristocrat. Hugh Jackman, shedding his Aussie accent for the Queen’s English, is well cast in this bright, breezy comedy-mystery. The pace is quick, with the magician and the journalist scurrying around London looking for clues. Ms. Johanssen is the best young actress of her generation, and Allen’s familiar screen persona is a welcome sight in these troubled times.

Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos
Despite its bland title, this superb Matt Dillon–narrated documentary records the story of a noble effort that ended in failure. In the early 1970’s, then–Time Warner chief Steve Ross tried to turn professional soccer into a major American sport by buying a struggling team called the New York Cosmos. Back then they were playing to a handful of spectators in dilapidated Downing Stadium on Randall’s Island, with a patchy field and dank locker rooms. The movie features former Cosmo players, international stars whom Ross paid dearly to import in order to lure fans. Most notable is Edson Arantes do Nascimento, known everywhere else in the world as Pele, the Babe Ruth of soccer. It worked for a time.

Ross was a sports visionary. He believed that the then–recently retired Brazilian star, the most famous athlete in the world this side of Muhammad Ali, would bring instant credibility. With Pele leading the Cosmos out of Randall’s Island and over to Giants Stadium, the Cosmos and the rest of the North American Soccer League became headliners. But then Pele retired for good, and importing other international stars like Franz Beckenbauer, Giorgio Chinaglia, and Carlos Alberto wasn’t enough. The league expanded too quickly and other teams didn’t have the Cosmos’ deep pockets. Their own efforts to import big-name stars led to bankruptcy. Then the NASL’s ABC television deal, crucial to long-term success for any sport, lasted only one year as the ratings tanked. The league folded midseason, in 1985.

Besides simply retelling these events, we get perspective from former team officials, sportswriters, Marv Albert, and the Time Warner executives who had to answer to the stockholders. Each has a different take on why the league failed. Once in a Lifetime brings back the seventies, when America was emerging from the Vietnam War and the turmoil of the civil rights movement, and sports fans thought soccer would be the new sensation. But just a decade or so after the NASL’s demise, the United States hosted the World Cup, and a more modest pro league survives today. That’s the legacy of the New York Cosmos.

Edmond
This is an example of a dreadful film getting produced on reputation. David Mamet is one of the most respected writers of his generation. But his screenplay wastes the talents of actors who should have known better. They’re lost in a morass of blood and pretentious babble.

William H. Macy portrays a businessman whose office meeting is postponed. So he goes home and leaves his wife. She’s portrayed by Rebecca Pidgeon, who often appears in hus-band Mamet’s movies. Then, with no clear destination in mind, he heads to a bar and meets Joe Mantegna, who sprouts truisms about life that will soon permeate this talky, violent bore. Seeking sex, Macy’s character heads to various strip joints and meets some willing participants, starting with Denise Richards and Mena Suvari. Incredibly, he refuses to meet their monetary demands and wanders off, his anger brewing.

After enduring a beating by a pair of three-card-monty thugs and killing a would-be mugger, he finally ends up in bed with a waitress and acting hopeful, Julia Stiles. So good in the recent remake of The Omen, her character is too intelligent to be believed, given the choices she makes. The rest of the movie deals with Macy’s character continuing to babble about the state of the world on his swift trip to prison for murder. A plot turn involving sex in prison was gratuitous.

Edmond is pretentious and pointless.