By Susan Granger
Special to WestportNow
“Beauty and the Beast” is Bill Condon’s hybrid live action/digital remake of the “tale as old as time” — with sumptuous special effects and enhanced character back stories.
Set in rural France in 1740, it introduces brainy Belle (Emma Watson) whose academic father, Maurice (Kevin Kline), has been imprisoned in the Beast’s labyrinthine castle.
Because he was once a spoiled young Prince, spurning pleas for assistance from an old lady/witch, the ghastly, horned Beast (Dan Stevens) has been cursed until he can find true love.
Eager to escape the confines of her provincial village and unwelcome romantic advances by boorish, boastful Gaston (Luke Evans), Belle offers to exchange places with her beloved father.
Welcomed by the Beast’s anthropomorphic household, Belle meets Mrs. Potts (Emma Thompson, warbling the title song), her son Chip (Nathan Mack), candelabra Lumiere (Ewan McGregor), mantel clock Cogsworth (Ian McKellen), feather-duster Plumette (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), Madame Garderobe (Audra MacDonald) and her harpsichord husband, Maestro Cadenza (Stanley Tucci).
Their lavishly dazzling, Busby Berkeley-like “Be Our Guest” musical number took six months of planning and 15 months to complete.
Transitioning from Harry Potter’s pal Hermione Granger to fabled Belle, Emma Watson exudes feisty cleverness, ingeniously inventing a laundry mechanism using a horse and a barrel.
Walking on lifts in a prosthetic muscle suit, Dan Stevens (“Downton Abbey”) personifies the gruff yet intellectual Beast via performance capture and MOVA, a facial capture system.
While Beauty and the Beast bond over their shared love of literature, too much has been made of Gaston’s admiring sidekick LeFou (Josh Gad) being gay; it’s a subtle nuance, nothing more.
Adapted by Stephen Chbosky (“The Perks of Being a Wallflower”) and Evan Spiliotopoulos (“The Huntsman: Winter’s War”), it reflects the contemporary social consciousness that’s been raised since 1991, when Disney’s animated version was nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award.
Director Bill Condon (“Dreamgirls”) and musicians Alan Menken have added four new songs, including the bittersweet ballad, “How Does a Moment Last Forever.”
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Beauty and the Beast” is an elegant, yet nostalgic 8. It’s enchanting.
What does it take to survive at work?
That’s the question posed by “The Belko Experiment,” a psychologically provocative horror/thriller, set in a factory in Bogota, Colombia, where 80 of Belko Industries’ American employees have been relocated.
One morning — on a day when local personnel have been sent home by heavily armed security guards — there’s an ominous announcement on the intercom that they will be participating in a ruthless game and “in eight hours, most of you will be dead.”
Understandably alarmed, they quickly discover that all the doors and windows of their high-rise building have been blocked by metal shutters, so there’s no escape.
Then they’re told to pick several of their co-workers to die — with the warning that failure to comply will result in more of them being killed remotely by a tracker microchip that has already been embedded at the base of each employee’s skull “for security reasons,” supposedly in case of a hostage situation.
To no one’s surprise, a “Lord of the Flies” mentality takes over. Systems middle-manager Mike Milch (John Gallagher Jr.), who is sexually involved with co-worker Leandra (Adria Arjona), urges everyone to work together to try to find a solution.
In contrast, COO Barry Norris (Tony Goldwyn), along with creepy Wendell Dukes (John C.McGinley), opts for sacrificing the weakest and least essential among them as terror ensues.
Written by James Gunn (“Guardians of the Galaxy,” ”Slither”) and directed by Greg McLean (“Wolf Creek,” “Rogue”), it suffers from stereotypical characters, a cliché-riddled plot and bleak predictability.
On the Granger Gauge, “The Belko Experiment” is a relentlessly chaotic 5, filled with violent carnage.
(Editor’s Note: Westport resident Susan Granger grew up in Hollywood, studied journalism with Pierre Salinger at Mills College, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with highest honors in journalism. In addition to writing for newspapers and magazines, she has been on radio/television as an anchorwoman and movie/drama critic for many years. See her reviews at www.susangranger.com.)
