STARRING: Ruben Blades, John Cusack, Cary Elwes, Cherry Jones, Angus MacFayden, Bill Murray, Susan Sarandon, Emily Watson DIRECTOR: Tim Robbins OPENS: Dec. 8 in N.Y.C. and L.A.; wide Dec. 25
No age was so towering that a cynic looking back could not have contempt for it. To re-create the bustling, politically contentious '30s, when a young Orson Welles tried to stage the socialist musical The Cradle Will Rock with federal funding, Robbins has splashed a couple of dozen real people onto a garish movie mural, Diego Rivera-style. While Welles (MacFayden) and producer John Houseman (Elwes) try to persuade their government patron...