An entertaining 'Air' scores big

   It's no surprise that Ben Affleck latched onto the story of how Nike landed Michael Jordan, made him the centerpiece of a landmark marketing campaign, and created a billion-dollar success. 

  With Air, Affleck had hold of a good story -- an underdog signs the big dog when nobody thought his company had a shot. On top of that, the story touches on what has become an all-American obsession: branding.

   Matt Damon stars as Sonny Vaccaro, a chubby basketball devotee tasked with building Nike's basketball division. In the early 1980s, the company was widely recognized for its running shoes but had yet to dent the basketball market.

   Vaccaro wanted to change that.

   The marketing mantra that developed around Vaccaro's efforts: "A shoe is just a shoe until someone steps into it."

    Well, not any someone but an athlete whose name evokes stardom of such a high order that the shoe confers its own brand of transformative magic on its wearer.

     Air may not be the most serious of works, but it entertains with a tightly written script, humor, and a lively pace.

   Damon plays Vaccaro as a man with a well-developed eye for basketball talent. When Nike was pursuing Jordan, he already had been  recognized as a player on the verge of a big-time NBA career. But few anticipated just how big MJ would get. Vaccaro did.

     Affleck, who directs a screenplay by Alex Convery, plays Phil Knight, Nike's founder, a running nerd, meditator, and New Agey boss who was ready to give up on the basketball division. Instead, he took a chance -- not so much on Jordan but on Vaccaro's judgment, which the movie portrays as unshakable conviction.

     Kicking off in 1984, Air mixes business and sports, showing how Vacarro decided to concentrate the basketball division's marketing budget, betting its $250,000 allotment on one player instead of on a number of lesser players.

    Adidas, a German company, had been the frontrunner in the Jordan sweepstakes; it had more cash to spend and Jordan initially preferred the Adidas shoe. 

    As the story develops, Vaccaro and cohorts devise a plan to give Jordan his own line of shoes. Hence, the birth of Air Jordans.

    Getting to Jordan wasn’t easy. As it turns out, the road went directly through Jordan's mom (Viola Davis). Jordan's caustically funny agent (Chris Messina) belittles Vaccaro at every opportunity, cautioning him not to call Jordan's mom. 

     Davis adds backbone to the movie. Jordan, who isn't seen much, becomes an almost marginal figure. Mom must be convinced, and she's anything but a pushover. 

     Steely and serious, Deloris Jordan was responsible not only for deciding to go with Nike but for negotiating to obtain a percentage of every shoe sale, something that evidently had never happened prior to the Nike/Jordan alliance.

     A well-cast Nike crew supports Vaccaro. Jason Bateman  has a nice turn as Rob Strasser, Nike's head of marketing. Chris Tucker portrays Howard White, a Nike exec who encouraged Sonny when others didn't.

      Matthew Maher takes on the role of shoe designer Peter Moore,  and Marlon Wayans plays George Raveling a coach who offers Vaccaro insight into Jordan as a person and as an athlete. 

     As much fun as the movie can be, it leaves you wondering whether you've been faked out. You will,  after all, have spent 112 minutes rooting for a variety of people to become billionaires, for the elevation of the humble sneaker to a magisterial throne.  

     Making us forget about that reflects a kind of genius. Affleck and Convery keep the spotlight on Vaccaro, turning Air into the story of a true believer who triumphs. They almost make you forget that Nike is a major corporation with a board, shareholders and everything that goes along with American mega-business. 

     Sure, the movie refers to Nike’s board and how it might react to the Jordan deal, but Affleck smartly maintains focus. He’s not interested in a Succession-like story about corporate in-fighting. He’s interested in the mixture of faith and perseverance that underlie a good story.

      As I said at the outset, Affleck has hold of just such a story and he knows how to tell it.

      

A writer's journey begins at a bar

 

    Some thoughts after watching The Tender Bar, the big-screen adaptation of JR Moehringer's 2005 memoir about growing up in Manhasset, NY: I'll get to a review of the movie in a bit, but I left s preview screening with two thoughts I couldn’t shake.

   First, Ben Affleck is getting better and better as an actor. He was terrific as the flamboyant Pierre d'Alencon in The Last Duel and equally good as a beer-soaked alcoholic in The Way Back, the story of a high school basketball coach wobbling toward redemption.

   In The Tender Bar, Affleck scores again as Uncle Charlie, a bartender who schools his nephew JR, the story's ostensible main character, in a variety of arts -- thinking, reading, drinking, and the behavior of men.

   A bachelor and barroom philosopher, Uncle Charle proves vital to young JR's survival -- and also to the movie's.

    Observation two: I wish I could say that George Clooney was getting more interesting as a director.

   Clooney started with the brilliant Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002) and followed with the solid Good Night, and Good Luck (2005) but his Midnight Sky (2020) foundered (at least in my view) and The Tender Bar, with a screenplay by William Monahan (The Departed), doesn’t meet expectations, either.

  Moehringer, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist, wrote a well-received memoir but the movie feels cut from pieces of variable interest. 

   Played by Daniel Ranieri as a nine-year-old boy and as a young man by Tye Sheridan, JR wants to be a writer but the movie never persuades us that we should care whether he achieves his goal. 

  It's not JR's dream that made his book enjoyable; it was his practice of the writer's art, which he brought into play when dealing with the bar -- named the Dickens. Uncle Charlie presided over the Dickens and its  cast of oddball characters who gathered for fun, solace, and moments of commemoration.

   On screen, the story becomes a collection of episodes joined by several themes: The absentee father, the devoted Mom, and JR's initiation into the world of love. None of these land with much force.

   JR's biological father (Max Martini) is barely a presence in his life. He's a New York disc jockey who JR's family calls "The Voice." Abusive and prone to drink, he's hated by JR's mom (a warm Lily Rabe). 

    Rabe's Dorothy has one dream for young JR. He'll attend either Harvard or Yale. He's going to get a first-rate education.

    JR, by the way, attends Yale, where -- in the movie version -- he tells friends that he wants to be a writer. He also meets a young woman (Briana Middleton), a biracial student whose snooty architect parents make it clear they have little use for someone of JR's low breeding.

   The movie works overtime trying to establish JR's working-class bona fides; he may be a Yalie, but he's more a graduate of the bar and of his unruly family than of the prestigious university. 

   Christopher Lloyd portrays JR's grandfather, a grump who comes through for JR when it counts.

   The picture loses focus as JR steps into the "real" world, landing a job as a copy boy at the New York Times and trying to figure out next steps.

    Sheridan may be stuck with a thankless job. If JR entertained as a writer; Sheridan can't entertain by telling us he wants to be a writer.

   The story weakens whenever Uncle Charlie isn't around and feels far more comfortable with scenes in the bar than anywhere else.

   Enough. The Tender Bar generates neither antagonism nor deep affection. Put another way: If you haven’t read the book, you’d do well to start there.

A 14th Century fight to the death

 

   Brutal and dedicated to depicting the harshest Medieval realities, The Last Duel drags its sword through the muck, igniting sparks here and there as it advances toward the climactic battle of the title.

  Based on a real incident in 14th Century France, Last Duel finds director Ridley Scott working from a screenplay by Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and Nicole Holofcener. Scott divides the story into three acts, first telling about rape from the vantage point of an aggrieved nobleman (Damon) whose wife (Jodie Comer) says she was raped by Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver). 

   Not surprisingly, Le Gris -- in his second act version --  claims to have been seduced. He also serves to highlight the archaic notion that the rape is an offense to de Carrouges, women of the time being regarded as little more than property.

    Finally, Comer's Marguerite gets an opportunity to give her rendition of events.

    Breaking the story into three sections sometimes functions as a burden on a movie that lacks the mind-bending impact of Akira Kurosawa's classic multi-vantage point story, Rashomon.

    The story begins in earnest when Comer's Marguerite de Carrouges tells her husband that she was raped by Le Gris, a knight and former best friend of Damon's Jean de Carrouges.

   A land dispute instigated by Count Pierre d'Alencon (Affleck) further complicates matters. Damon's Jean Carrouges believes he's been swindled out of land that he was promised as part of Marguerite's dowry.

   The performances tend to be a bit strange. Looking like a Medieval warthog, Damon begins the movie as a stalwart warrior but soon is revealed as a dolt. Driver's Le Gris excels in cunning and narcissism. Sporting blond hair and a goatee, Affleck portrays a nobleman who relishes debauchery and greed, viewing them as feudal entitlements.

    Of the main performances, Comer's lands hardest; her Marguerite burns with conviction and a sense of righteousness. 

   Because Marguerite's story arrives last it comes close to saving the movie from some of its more risible aspects: variable accents, mud- splattered battles, and near-ubiquitous grime.

   At two and half hours, the movie becomes a bit of a slog as we await the great duel, which Scott presents with merciless brutality. 

    The two combatants square off in a walled rectangular setting and fight to the death with lances as they ride toward each other at full speed. 

   The idea: The winner will be judged to have been telling the truth. The loser dies and, in the case of Marguerite, will be put to death for perjury.

    The screenplay sometimes seems too on the nose with its feminist leanings, but Scott also weaves welcome intrigue into the story of men who seem more interested in themselves than in anything else.

     Based on a book by Eric Jager, the movie follows the book's subtitle, dutifully unfolding a story of "crime, scandal and trial by combat." I guess that also describes an uneven, intermittently engrossing movie that seems to be trying too hard to trample any lingering romanticism about the period in which it's set.

Can he coach his way to sobriety?

Ben Affleck plays an alcoholic basketball coach who takes over a failing team.

An abysmal high school basketball team finds its footing when the school's alcoholic former star takes over coaching duties. Ben Affleck portrays Jack Cunningham, a man who peaked as a basketball player at Bishop Hayes High School and whose refrigerator now is stocked with beer. Jack spends his days working construction and his evenings at the local bar. When he showers, he places a can of beer where others might put a bottle of shampoo.

Director Gavin O’Connor, who previously directed Affleck in The Accountant, quickly establishes Jack’s dissolute life. Bearded and grim of temperament, Jack can be loving with his nieces and nephews but he clearly rages inside -- when he's not reeling in a woozy alcohol-induced haze.

Working in mostly somber tones, Gavin draws on Affleck’s deeply realized performance to anchor a movie that tries, perhaps a little too hard, to avoid the obvious moves we expect from a story about an underdog team overcoming great odds.

Jack returns to basketball when a priest (John Aylward) asks him to take over the school’s coaching duties from a man who recently suffered a heart attack. The team’s assistant coach (Al Madrigal) teaches math. He's burdened by too family responsibilities to be the head coach.

An unruly bunch, the Bishop Hayes team must learn discipline. Melvin Gregg plays the team’s tallest member, a kid who displays more confidence than his talent has earned. Kenny (Will Ropp) spends too much time flirting with coeds. Brandon Wilson portrays the player with the most talent. Jack must convince the kid that he can lead the team to success.

But the players, many from tough backgrounds, play second fiddle to Jack’s alcoholism. O’Connor skimps on game footage, preferring to show the sidelines where a hot-tempered Jack spews profanity at the refs. We never really learn a lot about how Jack schools the team: O'Connor presents Jack's coaching in incendiary flashes.

We learn the reason for Jack’s bitterness when the movie expands to introduce us to Jack’s estranged wife and his immediate family, scenes that might easily have been sacrificed to give the kids on Jack's team more off-the-court presence.

The Way Back isn’t likely to join Hoosiers as one of the great high school basketball movies. The movie is too committed to the grim realities of Jack’s alcoholism to swell with feel-good notes.

But credit Affleck with making Jack’s torments feel real. Basketball rivalries aside, the inescapable battle here is between Jack and the bottle.

Superheroes unite to save the world

Justice League may not be great, but it registers as OK.

When I was a kid, the only thing I liked about getting haircuts involved the well-stocked stash of comic books that the neighborhood barber kept in his establishment. I consoled myself about the discomfort of itchy hair down the back and ungodly applications of hair tonic by visiting Gotham and Metropolis or maybe even Smallville, the town where Superboy was still finding his superhero legs.

I took solace for my impending misery in Clark Kent's square-jawed righteousness as a mild-mannered reporter for the Daily Planet and in Batman's colorful gallery of villains -- the Penguin and Joker. I loved the blocky apartment buildings that defined the urban landscapes of the cities where these Manichean dramas unfolded.

These were comics made for the clickety-clack of typewriter keys, for Clark Kent's fedora and for the overwrought prose of melodrama: "The Batman, having lost his way on a lonely by-road, stops before a lone house to ask directions. Suddenly, from the house comes a scream of a wild beast in pain ...."*

I get no such kick from the current wave of comic-book movies, which typically contain bloated action sequences that rely heavily on CGI, so much so that the villain in League of Justice, the latest entry from DC Comics, is a CGI creation called Steppenwolf. In tones that sound as if they've been augmented to suggest sonic boom, Ciaran Hinds provides Steppenwolf's voice.

Justice League, which brings together a quintet of superheroes (Batman, Cyborg, Flash, Wonder Woman and Aquaman) can be judged decent by current standards and it certainly represents an improvement over the somber and self-serious Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016).

This episode has been directed by Zack Snyder, who ceded control to screenwriter Josh Whedon when Snyder, who directed Batman v Superman, left the production to be with his family after the death of a daughter.

The resultant movie isn't nearly as dark as Batman v Superman and pretty much functions as a foundation for the next installment, as well as a lively introduction to several superheroes who are new to the big screen.

Early stages of the story involve Batman's attempts to assemble a crew to fight Steppenwolf, a villain in horned-helmet who's trying to gather three mysterious boxes so that he can unleash their power and bring about (what else?) the apocalypse.

This set-up requires the movie to do some quick backup work in the form of abbreviated origin stories for Flash (Ezra Miller), Cyborg (Ray Fisher) and Aquaman (Jason Momoa).

We already know Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) and, of course, Ben Affleck's Batman. Not quite as gloomy as he was in the previous movie, Affleck's aging Batman isn't exactly charismatic, either.

These early sections work well and include the usual amount of extended action, which often seems more aimed at satisfying audience appetites for noise than advancing the story.

The main problem with the movie involves its villain, an off-the-rack menace who commands minions of flying, bug-like demons who feed on fear.

Gadot, who earlier this year established Wonder Woman as one of the best comic-book franchises, acquits herself well as a member of the emerging Justice League. Equally engaging is Miller, who has been given the lion's share of the movie's wisecracks. Another welcome presence, Momoa turns Aquaman into a tattooed rogue whose attitude ranges from casual to cynical.

The story unfolds against a backdrop of doom. Since Superman's death in Batman v Superman, villainy has erupted and the world has lost its knight in shining armor. Henry Cavill, who plays Superman, is listed in the movie's credits, but I won't tell you more about how the Man of Steel figures into the story.

The movie's superheroes must hold their egos in check and unite to conquer evil; saving the world proves to big a task for any single superhero. "Stronger together" didn't quite carry Hilary Clinton to the heights she hoped to scale and it doesn't totally work for Justice League, either, but the movie has entertaining elements and enough superhero chemistry to keep the DC wheel spinning toward the next movie.
*I have this quote on a Batman comics cover and linked to it. The link didn't take and I couldn't find the source again, but you get the idea about the overheated prose.

A gangster epic that falls short

Ben Affleck tries his hand at a large-scale, Prohibition era movie.

In Live By Night -- Affleck's second adaptation of a novel by author Dennis Lahane after 2007's Gone Baby Gone -- the director broadens his reach with a gangster story that begins with crime in Boston and moves to Prohibition rum-running in Florida.

But once Live By Night leaves Boston for Tampa, Fla., the movie goes South, as well, losing both focus and authenticity. Put another way, Live By Night represents a step backward from Affleck's work in both The Town and in Argo.

In look and in scope, Live by Night qualifies as a big, rambling gangster movie with Affleck at its center. Affleck plays Joe Coughlin, an ordinary guy who returned from World War I determined never to be bossed around again. As a result, Joe becomes an outlaw, probably not the occupation his police official father (Brendan Gleeson) had in mind for his son.

Joe quickly gets crosswise with Albert White (Robert Glenister), the head of the Boston's Irish mob. How could it be otherwise? Joe has been carrying on an affair with one of the mobster's mistresses (Sienna Miller). Joe's in love with Miller's Emma Gould. Let's just say she's more pragmatic about the relationship.

After a stint in jail, Joe winds up in Tampa where he takes over the rum-running business for the head of the Boston Italian mob, one Maso Pescatore (Remo Girone). Joe has two ambitions: to support himself and to avenge himself on Albert White, who also has moved to Florida.

Back in Boston, White not only nearly beat Joe to death; he also took out his rage on Emma.

Joe's romantic life moves on when he falls for the sister of a Cuban rum runner (Zoe Salanda). His crime dealings also put him in contact with the local sheriff (Chris Cooper), a man who claims to be incorruptible but who ignores the criminals who thrive in his midst, as well as the local chapter of the KKK, which is lead by a sneering sadist named RD Pruitt (Matthew Maher).

In all matters violent, Joe receives help from his pal Dion (a bulked up Chris Messina).

If all this weren't enough, an additional subplot introduces the sheriff's daughter (Elle Fanning), a young woman who's corrupted before turning to evangelism.

Affleck loads up on gangster glamor, vintage cars and a variety of locations that create the impression that the movie wants to enter the big-time gangster pantheon.

Affleck also doesn't skimp on gun play and harsh violence, which he punctuates with double-barreled blasts of portentous dialogue about fate, justice and the way things tend to come back to haunt a person in unexpected ways.

As Joe, Affleck appears in nearly every frame, but this is one of his more subdued performances, maybe because he's also overseeing the logistics of a large-scale production with a big cast and tons of atmosphere, much of it confined to a crime-riddled section of Tampa during the 1930s.

Intermittently intriguing, Live by Night doesn't pack the intended wallop. Its ideas seem to grow artificially from a story that badly needed paring down. In the end, Live By Night feels more like a well-appointed imitation of a gangster epic rather than the real thing.

2 superheroes, 1 movie ordeal

Batman v Superman takes itself way too seriously. And let's face it: Some movies shouldn't try to think big thoughts.

Remember when comic book movies were fun? Well, you'll have to use your memory because there's not much fun to be found in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

A Zack Snyder-directed comic book extravaganza, Batman v Superman comes on heavy, as if it's carrying the weight of a fallen world on blockbuster-sized shoulders.

I use the word "fallen" advisedly because the screenplay -- credited to Chris Terrio and David S. Goyer -- loads up on quasi-religious references as it turns Superman into a god-like savior, albeit one whose flock can turn against him.

Whatever its ambitions, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice becomes a dark and often brutal ordeal that clocks in at two hours and 33 minutes.

There are surprises in Batman v Superman, so I'll simply tell you that the movie's complicated (and sometimes incomprehensible) plot eventually features a showdown between the two superheroes; it's part of the movie's bloated, overextended finale.

Observers of the movie business have pointed out that Batman v Superman represents the opening salvo in Warner Bros. attempt to launch a series of comic book franchise movies to rival Disney's Marvel Comics fare. That may be the real battle here, and it's reflected in the way Snyder introduces many secondary characters, including the mostly superfluous Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), who eventually joins the fray.

I noticed that Aquaman was listed in the final credits and had to scan backward over the movie in an attempt to remember whether I'd actually seen him.

Attempts are made to keep the movie from miring in nostalgia. Perry White (Laurence Fishburne), editor of The Daily Planet, reminds us that no one reads newspapers anymore. And there are numerous references to a world so hopelessly mired in evil that the whole notion of "good" has been rendered meaningless.

In another stab at topicality, a Senate committee chaired by Senator Finch (Holly Hunter) looks into collateral damage caused by The Man of Steel when he saved Lois Lane (Amy Adams) from swarthy-looking terrorists.

There's plenty of action in Batman v Superman, little of it distinguished. Snyder (Man of Steel, Watchmen and 300) seems more interested in explosions and rapid-fire editing than in imaginatively conceived set pieces.

Besides, after Brussels and in a world in which images of 9/11 still resonate, one must question the taste of filmmakers who insist on destroying urban landscapes. At one point, Bruce Wayne even gropes his way through the gray ash of a devastated cityscape in which buildings have been reduced to rubble.

Why evoke memories of 9/11 in a fantasy movie?
Now as for the casting...

Ben Affleck makes for a glowering, charmless Batman. Sporting stubble and eventually donning a Batman suit that looks as if it weighs as much as a subway car, Affleck seems to be having about much as a guy who just learned that his tax return is being audited.

Henry Cavill, who played Superman in 2013's Man of Steel , shows Superman wrestling with his conscience as he tries to sort through his loyalties. Let's just say that the movie's depiction of these inner struggles may make you wonder whether the "S" on Superman's chest might actually stand for "superficial."

In this telling, Lois Lane knows that Clark Kent and Superman are the same guy. They live together and Clark ... er Superman ... even cooks dinner once in a while.

Beyond all of this calculated updating, a "my-cape-is-longer-than-your-cape" undercurrent ripples through the movie. Putting the two superheroes in the same movie adds marquee value, but winds up shortchanging both of them.

The movie doesn't do much better when it comes to villainy. Jesse Eisenberg makes a dithering, demented Lex Luthor, a corporate tycoon who's as interested in power as he is in profits. Lex fancies himself the orchestrator of the burgeoning conflict between Batman and Superman, but comes off as a deranged twerp.

Not surprisingly, Kryptonite -- the substance that's fatal to Superman -- plays a role here; it's possible that the whole production was infected by Kryptonite. If not, something else must have robbed the movie of its powers to entertain.

She's gone -- but to where?

Director David Fincher takes on a bestseller with lots of trashy but entertaining twists.

In the beginning, the marriage seems idyllic. An attractive young magazine journalist teams up with a gorgeous woman who earns her living writing quizzes for magazines. They live in New York City, and appear to be clued to a power-couple track.

Then, comes the derailment.

He loses his job: She doesn't have a whole lot happening in her life. They decide to abandon New York City and head for his hometown in Missouri. There, he'll run a neighborhood bar, and she'll have entirely too much time to wonder what happened to her life.

So goes the setup for director David Fincher's eagerly awaited adaptation of Gillian Flynn's 2012 best-seller, Gone Girl, which stars Ben Affleck as the husband and Rosamund Pike as his wife.

Gone Girl is the kind of movie about which much can't be said. To discuss the plot in any detail puts one knee deep into spoiler territory.

For those who haven't read Flynn's book, all that really needs to be known is that Affleck's Nick Dunne arrives home from work on the day of his fifth anniversary to discover that his wife is missing.

Signs of violence suggest that he should call the cops: The rest of the movie concerns the search for Pike's Amy as Fincher provides us with various views of the marriage at the film's tricky heart.

After a slow and somewhat awkward start, Fincher eventually gets down to business, playing with our sympathies as Nick comes under suspicion in his wife's disappearance.

One minute, we feel Nick may be getting a raw deal. The next minute, we're leaning toward Amy's version of things and wondering whether Nick isn't a monster who killed his wife.

Each character gets a turn at narrating the story. We hear Nick in voice-over fragments: Amy's view is presented in the form of excerpts from her diary (read by Pike).

Affleck's performance isn't showy, but it's effective. He's playing a guy whose life is spinning out of control. Affleck's Nick does his best to cope and to combat what seems to be a long-standing depression.

Pike confronts a different problem: Amy tends to be more of a sketch than a fully drawn character -- albeit the sketch gets more interesting as the movie progresses.

The supporting cast is first rate. Kim Dickens, familiar from HBO's Treme, does nice work as a detective in the Francis McDormand, Fargo mode, and Patrick Fugit (who starred in Almost Famous as a kid) plays her skeptical sidekick, Officer James Gilpin.

Tyler Perry nails his role as an attorney whose confidence stems from his unquestionable slickness. He specializes in defending accused husbands. Neil Patrick Harris portrays one of Amy's former boyfriends, a preppie type who never gave up his crush on her.

Carrie Coon deserves special mention: She plays Nick's twin sister, a woman who's entirely devoted to him, but who also knows his weak spots.

Fincher (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Social Network, Zodiac and Se7en) is not a breezy director: He moves deliberately, and he may be guilty of letting an hour and half's worth of movie stretch into two hours and 25 minutes.

But in the end, Gone Girl's many twists and turns -- Flynn wrote the screenplay -- carry the day, turning the movie into fun with a trashy tilt.

Beyond that, Fincher lands some nice -- if obvious -- satirical blows to the media solar plexus: In the 24-hour news cycle, commentators often treat crime stories as morality plays that demand constant blameworthy targets.

To be honest, I wasn't sure that Fincher didn't take the material more seriously than is warranted: In some ways, Gone Girl struck me as glorified and bloodier version of some episodic TV shows, and it's probably unwise to generalize about the state of marriage from what see of Nick and Amy.

Still, Gone Girl provides enough mordant humor and intrigue to keep us engaged right up until the movie's provocative and, I suppose, cynical finale. It's a movie for anyone who's ever said the words "I love you" through clenched teeth.

'To the Wonder:' A master mumbles

From its intriguing title to its trancelike beauty to the half-mumbled thoughts of its characters, everything about Terrence Malick's To the Wonder suggests that the director wanted to follow his masterful Tree of Life with something equally meaningful.

This time, though, Malick -- whose visual skills are never in question -- seems to be looking for deep meanings within a thin, schematically presented story that may have had little chance of taking him where he probably wanted to go.

The story, which whispers its way through the movie, involves a romance between an American engineer (Ben Affleck) and a woman living in France (Olga Kurylenko). Affleck's Neil makes an apparent move toward commitment when he brings Kurylenko's Marina to Oklahoma, along with her 10-year-old daughter (Tatiana Chiline).

"If you love me, there's nothing else I need,'' Marina says, perhaps to herself. Malick's characters are locked inside lives in which disappointment and yearning echo like cries in a lonely canyon. Who's listening? Maybe no one.

Marina better be right about not needing anything more than love because what we see of Oklahoma doesn't offer much to sustain interest, and it should go without saying that the ache of poetic romance is better felt in France than in the bleak Oklahoma subdivision where the story settles.

Malick presents Marina as a nymph-like creature who spins and dances around Neil's sparsely furnished house. She says she's happy, but it doesn't take long for her isolated daughter to begin longing for home. Who could blame her? I, too, was yearning for Paris the moment Malick set his cameras onto the desolate Oklahoma plains.

Malick eventually introduces another major character into this quietly desperate mix. Javier Bardem portrays the troubled Father Quintana, a priest who wanders around visiting the poor and talking to God, who (sad to say) isn't talking back. Father Quintana hasn't exactly lost his faith, but he's mired in some sort of spiritual fatigue. He's doing what's expected of him, but he's not feeling the priestly vibe.

At one point, a dispirited Marina returns to Paris with her daughter. While she's away, Neil strikes up a relationship with an old friend (Rachel McAdams), a practical westerner who seems well-suited to an Oklahoma-based lifestyle. Later, Marina returns to the U.S. in hopes of obtaining a green card. Her relationship with Neil resumes.

During one of her Oklahoma visits, Marina meets Anna (Romina Mondello), an Italian woman who tells her to get out of Oklahoma and seek a better life. Good advice.

To the Wonder is not plot-driven. It's not character-driven, either. It's driven by some nearly ineffable yearning that always seems to find its way into Malick's work -- for love, for spiritual renewal, for finding meaning in a world that can be beautiful photographed and still feel deeply alien.

Kurylenko and McAdams both play characters who, in this muted endeavor, surpass Affleck's Neil by a mile -- at least when it comes to interest. The deadpan and empty nature of Affleck's character make it difficult not to wonder what either woman sees in him.

At first I wondered whether Affleck had the resources to fill out this kind of vaguely defined character -- and then I began to wonder whether any actor could have brought Neil fully to life. As the cliche goes, there's no there there.

To describe To the Wonder as uneventful seems as superfluous as saying Hip-Hop music has a beat. We spend most of our time watching Malick exercise his cinematic chops, often to a heavy-duty musical sampler that includes work by Wagner, Berlioz, Hayden, Respighi, Tchaikovsky, and Gorecki.

Look, I have admired much of Malick's small but powerful body of work. And I gave To the Wonder the benefit of as much doubt as possible -- right up until the moment when my desire for anything resembling drama no longer could be suppressed. I wanted Malick to stop poeticizing and start dramatizing.

Granted, Malick always seems to be looking for something deep, and it's possible that the sadness in Malick's work stems from the somber realization that the world never fulfills our deepest longings. Few filmmakers are able to make boredom feel quite so exquisite; vacancy, quite so suggestive.

But To the Wonder may disappoint even Malick's more ardent fans. It does more to make us wonder what Malick's after than to help us experience the somber mystery of a world that seldom -- if ever -- wants to requite our love.

'Argo,' one of the year's best

An entertaining new thriller from Ben Affleck tells a far-fetched but true story.

The new thriller Argo -- impressively directed by Ben Affleck -- brims with fakery, much of it deadly serious.

Affleck perfectly blends a near-satirical take on Hollywood hucksterism with a pulse-pounding thriller about the rescue of six Americans who were hiding in the Canadian ambassador's home in Tehran after the 1979 start of the Iran hostage crisis.

Argo revolves around a plan so bizarre, it almost requires extra suspension of disbelief. But wait. That's not entirely true. Though enhanced for entertainment purposes, Argot tells a true story.

In it, Tony Mendez (Affleck), a skilled CIA agent, poses as a Canadian money man to cook up a scheme in which he'll fake the making of a major Hollywood movie. Mendez will then enter Iran, claiming that he's on a location-scouting mission.

The fake movie -- called Argo -- supposedly requires arid backdrops for its Star Wars-like story. It's also supposed to serve as a cover for the escaping hostages, who'll pretend they're part of the movie's crew.

Lacking any other ideas for rescuing the six Americans, the CIA adopts what it considers "the best bad idea" available.

Skillfully using real footage throughout, Affleck begins with a quick prologue tracing the rise and fall of the Shah and his replacement by Ayatollah Khomeini. This refresher course sets the table for a movie that spans improbable psychic distances: from Washington to Hollywood to Istanbul to Tehran.

Affleck brings frightening power to the moment when Iranian throngs overrun the U.S. embassy, allowing us to experience what it might be like to find ourselves in the midst of a hostile crowd fueled by its idea of righteous anger. The storming of the embassy is as harrowing as some of the Hollywood scenes are amusing.

For the record, the mob held 52 Americans hostage in the trampled U.S. embassy while the six Americans on which the movie focuses made their way to the Canadian ambassador's home.

Affleck receives whip=smart support from John Goodman, as savvy Hollywood make-up artist John Chambers, a specialist in prosthetics, and from Alan Arkin, as the cynical producer of the fake film.

If there's any justice, Arkin's performance as Lester Siegel will earn him an Oscar nomination in the supporting actor category. Is there anyone better at making a wisecrack sound like the unassailable voice of experience?

The movie's other stand-out performance belongs to Bryan Cranston, Mendez's boss at the CIA, a Washington-based agent who must fight his way through various obstacles to provide Mendez with the back-up he needs to make his crazy plan work.

Chris Terrio's screenplay recognizes that people under extreme duress often try to cover their stress with humor. When Siegel says he wants a credible script, he reinforces the point by insisting that if he's going to make a fake movie, it damn well better be a fake hit.

The Hollywood scenes are entirely justified because the success of Mendez's scheme depends on establishing the aura of a credible production. The assumption is that the Iranians will check to see whether Argo qualifies as the real deal. It costs the CIA $15,000 to option the Argo script, which has been languishing in turn-around.

I don't know how much liberty the screenplay takes with real events, but Affleck wisely engineers the movie for maximum suspense, tightening the screws of tension as he goes.

The only performance that gave me any pause was Affleck's. Bearded and sporting 70s length hair, Affleck tends toward unmodulated seriousness. Maybe it makes sense: As the movie's director, he probably didn't want to dominate a story that has lots of moving parts.

I don't think there's false note in Argo until an ending that has Mendez reuniting with his estranged wife. Perhaps Affleck felt the movie needed an epilogue to balance with the prologue that began it.

But considering how much has been accomplished prior to that, why quibble? Argo reminds us of what we should expect from a lot more mainstream movies: terrific stories told with insight and style.

They're casualties of a shifting economy

Woes in the world of management; execs feel the pain, too.

Just about all the men in The Company Men have enjoyed success. Their houses are spacious. They drive upscale cars. Their kids don't want for anything. Class trip to Italy? Not a problem. They're competent businessmen who believe they've earned the fruits of corporate life at a Boston company that made its name building ships. Of course all bubbles eventually burst, and, in the hands of director John Wells, The Company Men becomes a lingering look at what happens when a company begins to shed once valued employees who have turned into excess baggage.

Dead weight, it should be noted, has nothing to do with skill, experience or even prior success. It has to do only with balky parts of the company that have become a drag on profits and, thus, a worry for stockholders. A company that made its bones in the rugged world of manufacturing now sees its future in a newly acquired health-care subsidiary. And all those men who built and sold the ships? Well, that's why we have scrap heaps.

The Company Men has obvious relevance in a time of economic duress. It begins during the Bush administration and continues for a year. For a while, the movie does a good job chronicling the fate of newly unemployed executives, men who are unaccustomed to viewing themselves as failures or showing up at a less-than-luxe placement center.

All well and good, but somewhere along the line, Wells begins to succumb to predictability; he shrinks from the tough conclusions that deserve to be drawn from this story and offers light at the end of a dark economic tunnel. He also concentrates his attention on a well-heeled management class, paying relatively little attention to workers who also have been cast aside. In fact, they're mostly invisible.

Ben Affleck plays Bobby Walker, a confident salesman who's among the first to be fired. He's followed by a variety of others, including Chris Cooper's Phil Woodward, an executive who worked his way up from the factory floor. Tommy Lee Jones plays the tough-minded head of the ship-building division, a guy who values his employes and who believes in the old-fashioned way of doing business; i.e., making things and selling them for a profit. His view obviously is losing traction.

As Bobby's brother-in-law, Kevin Costner gives a nice small performance. He's a contractor who mistrusts what he sees as Bobby's white-collar arrogance. Costner's Jack Dolan ultimately helps Bobby rediscover a sense of purpose in hard, physical labor, not the first evidence of the cliches that increasingly make their presence felt.

Scenes at the fictional GTX Corp. ring true, as does the performance of Craig T. Nelson as the company's hard-assed CEO. Nelson's character has adjusted to new economic realities and is blessed with the ability to avoid looking back. He's aided in his downsizing efforts by an equally tough woman (Maria Bello) who delivers lots of bad news to lots of angry employees.

Affleck gives a convincing performance as a man whose confidence is put to the test. When men are fired, their egos also are downsized. They've lost their place in the world.

It's fair to say, though, that Wells' screenplay might have benefited from a harder edge and a tougher conclusion. The Company Men should not be dismissed, but when it's done, you may realize how much more it could have accomplished.

Ben Affleck goes to 'Town'

Ben Affleck and Jeremy Renner as partners in crime.

Boston has been very, very good to Ben Affleck. The actor and sometime director jump-started his career with Good Will Hunting (1997), a Boston-based movie he co-wrote with Matt Damon. In 2007, Affleck directed Gone Baby Gone, a crime yarn set in the Boston area. With the volatile new thriller, The Town, Affleck returns to the Boston scene for more tough-talking crime.

Adapted from a novel by Chuck Hogan, The Town bristles with pungent dialog, hard-boiled acting and vivid characters from Boston's criminal class. The movie takes place mostly in the Boston neighborhood known as Charlestown. There - or so we're told at the movie's outset - bank robbery practically constitutes a family business.

Affleck portrays Doug McCray, a bank robber mired in a standard problem: McCray's had his fill of the criminal life, and wants to go straight. Too bad the neighborhood - embodied in a dangerous, loose cannon of a criminal played by Jeremy Renner - keeps pulling him back for one job after another.

Like many before him, McCray pins his hopes for redemption on a woman (Rebecca Hall). Hall's Claire Keesey works as an assistant manager at a bank McCray and his boys rob in the movie's gripping opening scene. They also kidnap Claire briefly. The robbers wear skeleton masks that make them look especially menacing, and that keep Claire from identifying her tormentors.

Worried that Claire may have picked up a clue or two, McCray establishes a relationship with her. He wants to make sure that she can't incriminate him or any of his felonious cohorts. Not surprisingly, McCray begins to fall for Claire, allowing himself -- maybe for the first time -- to imagine life away from the mean streets of Charlestown.

But escape from the past never proves easy, and the script - credited to Peter Craig, Affleck and Aaron Stockard - places plenty of obstacles in McCray's path: neighborhood loyalties; a reflexive hatred of cops and a bit of old-fashioned intimidation to mention only a few.

The Town boasts the kind of gritty authenticity that we've come to expect from good crime movies, all of it bolstered by fine work from Affleck's supporting cast.

Last seen defusing bombs in The Hurt Locker, Renner can scare the daylights out of you even when he's smiling. Jon Hamm (of TV's Mad Men) stretches a bit as an FBI agent, and Pete Postlethwaite has a nice turn as a florist who runs a small crime empire. Don't overlook Chris Cooper, who shows how much an actor can accomplish in very little time. He appears in one scene as McCray's imprisoned father.

No Boston-bred movie can (or should) escape Fenway Park - home to the city's beloved Red Sox -- and The Town is no exception. I won't say more except to note that the use of heavy artillery during the movie's finale tends to blow away what's best about The Town: the way it captures the tone and texture of life among the criminally inclined. There's enough firepower in the movie's final scenes to make you wonder whether you're in Boston or Baghdad.

By that time, though, you will have gotten what there is to get from The Town. The movie's real pleasure derives from thrust-and-parry dialog and from characters accustomed to living on a dangerous edges.

Affleck's performance also helps. He makes McCray intense, serious and street-wise. At its best, his movie follows suit.