text: The Last Station 
   
   Running time 112 minutes 
   
   Written and directed by Michael Hoffman 
   
   Starring James McAvoy, Christopher Plummer, Paul Giamatti, Helen Mirren 
   
   Let the drums roll. The arrival of a movie with as much intelligence and artistry as The Last Station should also be accompanied by the sound of trumpets. For the legions of movie lovers who lament the passing of great filmmaking, don’t give up yet. This one is for you. 
   
   A period costume biopic about the last days of the magnificent Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy may not seem like box office gold in the age of aliens and teenage vampires, but the author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina is still considered one of the greatest writers who ever lived, and his story is filled with the turbulence and drama that makes for epic grandeur; attention must be paid. With lush landscapes, gorgeous clothes and estates and fabulous acting by a distinguished cast headed by Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren, this film has so much to savor and applaud that I scarcely know where to begin. Yet The Last Station is never arch, stuffy, highbrow or remote. It never keeps the audience at a distance. There’s no question that a historical drama about the death of a Russian icon will be a hard sell. But, written and directed with skill, sensitivity and humor by Michael Hoffman, it is as entertaining as it is literate. I find it rapturous and perfect. 
   
   The year is 1910, Russia is feverish with visionary Communists, the smell of revolution is in the air and everyone keeps a diary. (The movie is based on the 1990 novel by Jay Parini, which, in turn, was based on the diaries of all the characters involved.) Tolstoy (Mr. Plummer), who heads a pacifist movement that preaches passive resistance, truth, freedom and sexual abstinence, and eschews Russian royalty, free thinking, organized religion, the accumulation of wealth, the owning of private property and eating anything but vegetables, is caught in a tug of war between a scheming disciple, Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), a rabid Trotskyite who persuades him to leave all of his royalties to the Russian people, and his wife of nearly 50 years, the Countess Sofya (Helen Mirren), a jealous, overripe and hysterical drama queen who demands that he will his estate to his family for posterity. She loves her husband, but does not worship him as a spiritual prophet of God. In fact, she knows his character flaws so well that she cannot bear any more talk of hero worship, or giving away their land to the peasants. She wants to protect the works of Tolstoy for her children’s inheritance and considers Chertkov a phony sycophant and an evil influence with political ambitions of his own. “If I had a wife like you, I would have blown my brains out—or gone to America!” yells Mr. Giamatti in a clownish outburst of the kind of eye-rolling overacting that has become his trademark. 
   
   Caught in the middle is Tolstoy’s new secretary, Valentin (James McAvoy, from Atonement and The Last King of Scotland), a dedicated follower of Tolstoy’s doctrine who falls from grace in the arms of a beautiful servant (Kerry Condon), who initiates him in the pleasures of sex, to the thrill of Countess Sofya. After his wife tries to drown herself in a lake, the great writer leaves home, but falls ill in a lonely country railway station in the middle of the Russian winter, with Sofya at his side. This scene demonstrates pure poetic license; the Countess was never permitted to visit her husband’s death bed, although the Russian senate did award her all of Tolstoy’s copyrights four years after he died. 
   
   The Last Station brims with revelations about the human lives and the culture the Russians sacrificed in the name of Communist idealism. It is full of ideas, clearly detailed and vividly acted by an exemplary cast. Mr. McAvoy grows sympathetically from a tender, star-struck Valentin, deployed to spy on the countess but winning her confidence and friendship, to a man of the world, losing his faith in Tolstoy as a saint and losing his virginity in the bargain. Ms. Mirren, who is half-Russian herself, plays the flamboyant Sofya with fire and ice, igniting the screen with warmth, poise, ecstasy and intoxicating intensity. Amid the waxed mustaches and astrakhan hats, Mr. Plummer is magnetic as Tolstoy—stooped, bearded and snowy as the landscape. His memorable death scene, on the level of King Lear, is the apogee of what great acting aspires to be. 
   
   The Last Station opens this week for a seven-day trial run to qualify for Oscars, then returns on a regular basis in January. Do not wait. Experience the adrenalin rush early. This movie is passionate, profound and unforgettable. 
   
   rreed@observer.com ||||| Here's a philosophical vignette from "The Last Station," Michael Hoffman's evocation of the last year of Tolstoy's life. The great man's new personal secretary, 23-year-old Valentin (James McAvoy), is working by candlelight in his spartan bedroom when a stunning young woman, Masha (Kerry Condon), opens the door. She, like he, is a committed Tolstoyan, a member of a utopian community that Tolstoy has established on the grounds of his grand estate to celebrate the virtues of communal property, passive resistance, vegetarianism and celibate love. Valentin's commitment to celibacy—and vegetables—has been earnest and thus far unwavering, but the philosophy of the free-thinking Masha is that love should be celebrated with body and soul, so her seduction begins. The entire film is a seduction, one that draws us into a vanished world where Count Leo Tolstoy and his wife of 48 years, Countess Sofya, come to joyous, tempestuous life in a matched pair of magnificent performances by Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren. 
   
   A scene from "The Last Sation," a new biographical film about Leo Tolstoy starring Christopher Plummer and Hellen Mirren. 
   
   This Tolstoy is larger than life in the eyes of that world—he's the most famous writer on the face of the planet—yet warmly and disarmingly life-size in Mr. Plummer's portrayal. He is, by his own admission, an erratic Tolstoyan. Taking Valentin on a leisurely stroll through a birch forest, he recalls longingly a passionate affair of the flesh with a Tartar girl who is by now a white-haired old woman, if she isn't dead. He still adores Sofya, and succumbs to her blandishments in another seduction scene that speaks eloquently for longevity. But he can neither fathom nor endure his wife's ceaseless sniping at the way he sees contemporary society ("You think because the peasants are poor they're morally superior") or presents himself to it ("Why do you insist on dressing like a man who looks after the sheep? You're a count, for God's sake!") 
   
   Enlarge Image Close Sony Pictures Classics 'The Last Station' also stars Paul Giamatti and James McAvoy as followers of the great novelist. 
   
   In fact, Sofya is the titan of the piece. Rather than a literary lion, she's an enchanting lioness who gets all the best lines, and goes for the dramatic jugular. Ms. Mirren goes for laughs, gasps, grins and tears, and gets them all. Having found a vulnerable woman in "The Queen," she finds a virago in this countess—at one point Sofya writhes on the floor of her husband's study while she rages in flamboyant fury against him and his chief disciple, the wily Chertkov, who is played by Paul Giamatti. (Mr. Giamatti is awfully good, though he might have flattened a bit of his archness and dispensed with a few twirls of Chertkov's waxed mustache.) But the scene, part Feydeau farce and part antic "Antigone," is a stark reminder that the countess is vulnerable too. Her nemesis Chertkov, the zealous keeper of Tolstoy's flame, wants the old man to bequeath his estate and all his royalties to the Russian people, leaving Sofya with nothing. 
   
   Enlarge Image Close Sony Pictures Classics Helen Mirren (left) as Leo Tolstoy's wife, Countess Sofya. 
   
   "The Last Station" was adapted from the novel by Jay Parini, and its structure is fairly intricate—parallel love stories (Tolstoy and Sofya, Valentin and Masha), plus interlocking triangles (Sofya and Chertkov contending for Tolstoy's soul, Sofya and Chertkov pumping Valentin for information about one another's grip on Tolstoy's property). Before and after anything else, though, Mr. Hoffman's film is a deeply satisfying entertainment that recognizes no distinction between lively and profound. (I like to think his license for stylish silliness dates back to the making of his 1991 soap-opera opus "Soapdish.") It's full of gorgeous vistas—the cinematographer was Sebastian Edschmid—as well as intriguing details: reporters and photographers, even newsreel photographers, hanging on Tolstoy's every word; a gramophone that repeats Tolstoy's words, to his displeasure (he's something of a Luddite); a delicate, wordless moment when Valentin first enters Tolstoy's study, sees annotated pages strewn across his desk and touches one reverentially. (Mr. McAvoy's performance is superb in its own right.) 
   
   The movie's title, with its religious overtones, is a literal reference to the railway station where Leo Tolstoy died a few days after leaving his wife and home, presumably to become a wandering ascetic (though he brought his personal physician with him). The little station, in the middle of a vast Russian nowhere, quickly became the site of a protomedia frenzy when telegraph wires flashed news of Tolstoy's illness, and Sofya came to see her beloved husband for the last time. The story's climax turns out to be anticlimactic, a predictable contrivance that pits the countess, for the last time, against Chertkov, who wants to manage Tolstoy's death as he managed his life. But the ending seems contrived only in contrast to what has gone before—a lovely quicksilver version of literary history, with the accent on young love that emerges unbidden, and old love that endures. 
   
   Warner Bros. Denzel Washington as the titular wanderer in 'The Book of Eli.' 
   
   'The Book of Eli' 
   
   Religious overtones slowly grow into the dominant tone of "The Book of Eli," a bizarre and sententious pastiche—part Samurai legend, part postapocalyptic western with a surprise ending—starring Denzel Washington as a wanderer heading westward with a Bible in his dusty backpack. It's not just any Bible, but the last one on earth; and Eli isn't just any wanderer, but a master swordsman/archer/gunslinger who'll do anything that's required to protect his book. The story requires a greater leap of faith than I was willing or able to muster, since Eli is also a saintly pilgrim on a God-given mission to save a ruined world. 
   
   Worse movies than this one have been taken seriously, and "The Book of Eli," which is being marketed heavily though not exclusively to Christian audiences, has the virtue of audacity; it's "The Road" with a message of hope. The directors were the Hughes brothers, Allen and Albert (the twins' last film, shot almost a decade ago, was the Jack the Ripper thriller "From Hell"), working from a script by Gary Whitta, and the elaborate production was given a distinctive sepia look by the cinematographer Don Burgess. Mr. Washington manages to sustain a heroic aura in the face of some serious silliness. Gary Oldman is scruffily impressive—and, praise be, occasionally funny—as Carnegie, an outlaw turned local despot who's determined to separate Eli from his book because, in a perverse way, he recognizes the Bible's power: "It's a weapon," Carnegie says, "aimed right at the weak and the desperate." 
   
   A Scene From 'Book of Eli' 1:30 Watch a scene from "The Book of Eli," a new film starring Denzel Washington as a drifter carrying a special book through a post-Apocalyptic wasteland. Video courtesy of Warner Bros. 
   
   But the movie is aimed at two targets moving in different directions—people of faith and fans of violence. While the religious content makes itself felt, sometimes strongly, the heavy action quotient—the story of Eli the slasher—tears feelings to tatters. Jennifer Beals is Carnegie's blind wife, Claudia, and Mila Kunis is Solara, his sexy stepdaughter. In the midst of a veritable valley of death, Solara looks and sounds like a Valley Girl. 
   
   Write to Joe Morgenstern at joe.morgenstern@wsj.com 
   
   DVD FOCUS 'Inside Man' (2006) Denzel Washington is an unflappable hostage negotiator and Christopher Plummer is a banker with a secret in this film, directed by Spike Lee, that's partly a police procedural and partly a comic fantasy that revels in the richness of New York City's polyglot culture. Clive Owen is Dalton, a brainy criminal who strides into a bank's Wall Street branch and announces that he and three friends "are making a very large withdrawal." The screenplay, by Russell Gewirtz, operates confidently in action mode but is always willing to pause for an oddball encounter, a rambling story or a great, tossed-off joke. 'The Man Who Would Be King' (1975) Christopher Plummer is Rudyard Kipling in John Huston's peerless version of the classic Kipling story. While Huston dreamed of having Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart play the leads, that pairing was not to be. Once you've seen the movie, though, it's next to impossible to imagine anyone else in the roles but the stars who play them: Sean Connery and Michael Caine as Daniel and Peachy, two worldly ex-sergeants looking for unworldly wealth in the mountain kingdom of Kafiristan. Saeed Jaffrey is the desperately decent Billy Fish. The cinematographer was Oswald Morris, and Maurice Jarre wrote the music. 'Calendar Girls' (2003) Helen Mirren co-stars with Julie Walters in "Calendar Girls," a not-nude iteration of "The Full Monty" (which was hardly a show-all extravaganza). The clever script, by Juliette Towhidi and Tim Firth, takes off from a real-life story. In 1999 a group of middle-age women in a small English town sought to raise a few pounds for charity by publishing a calendar with whimsical photos of themselves, in the nude, performing such traditionally domestic tasks as arranging flowers. The calendar, of course, became an international hit. The movie is very funny and surprisingly likable until it goes Hollywood. -- Joe Morgenstern ||||| Helen Mirren is a lusty, roaring wonder playing, of all things, the long-suffering wife of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer in peak form). Countess Sofya, married to the old man for 48 years and the mother of his 13 children, is beside herself over her husband's decision — in the last year of his life — to will the rights to his great literary works not to her but to, of all things, the Russian people. 
   
   Sofya faints dead away at the sight of Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti channeling Uriah Heep), who manages the utopian movement that Tolstoy founded. She spits contempt at Chertkov, calling him her husband's "boyfriend," and rages at the very sight of him. 
   
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   Mirren has worn the crowns of Elizabeth I and II onscreen, but she's never played a drama queen like Sofya. To watch her threaten, cajole and seduce her husband is a treat Oscar voters cannot ignore. The incomparable Mirren is simply astounding. And Plummer, red-faced with embarrassment at his own desire for his wife after all these years, is her match. The sight of these two acting giants going at each other should come under the heading of pure, rowdy pleasure. 
   
   The film itself, energetically directed and written by Michael Hoffman, can't always rise to the level of its two dynamo stars, though James McAvoy gets in some tasty licks as Valentin Bulgakov, Tolstoy's worshipful secretary. By the end, when the estranged Tolstoys say their final goodbyes at a train station, you'll be too much in thrall to care.
target: – Critics are hopping aboard at The Last Station, a lively drama about Leo Tolstoy's final days starring Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren. Here’s what they’re saying: “The arrival of a movie with as much intelligence and artistry as The Last Station should also be accompanied by the sound of trumpets,” writes an ebullient Rex Reed for The New York Observer. “ This movie is passionate, profound and unforgettable.” Nearly every critic raves about Mirren, who “is a lusty roaring wonder” playing Tolstoy’s long-suffering wife, writes Peter Travers in Rolling Stone. “To watch her threaten, cajole, and seduce her husband is a treat Oscar voters cannot ignore.” Plummer’s Tolstoy is great, too—he’s “warmly and disarmingly life-sized,” writes Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal. He calls the movie “a lovely quicksilver version of literary history.” But AO Scott of the New York Times is less impressed. “You will certainly see better acting” in other movies, he writes, “but it is unlikely you will see more. To say the actors overdo it would be an understatement.”