This dark comedy doesn't sting

  Becket Redfellow's unmarried mother was disowned by her wealthy father when she insisted on giving birth to her son. Dad evidently didn't like the situation, perhaps disapproving of Mom's choice of a mate and not knowing the poor guy would expire soon anyway.

   A Dickensian childhood ensues. Mom gives birth, and dotes on her son. She insists that he's entitled to "the right kind of life," i.e., one in which he becomes an heir to the family's vast fortune, something her father never would consider. When Mom dies, young Becket is left on his own.

   Once he reaches adulthood, Becket decides to secure what he believes to be his rightful portion, Becket (Glen Powell) thinks that it would be appropriate for him to murder all the family's heirs,  leaving him as the only remaining option.

  Ambitious and charming, Becket devises various ways to eliminate his competition, knocking off his relatives one by one, even after one of them (Bill Camp) accepts him as a member of the family's financial business. 

   Always good, Camp adds welcome humanity to the proceedings; he believes the family owes Becket some help. More considerate than the other character, Camp's Warren Redfellow even finds a way to eliminate himself as a possible inheritor.

    Others are more cunning. During his childhood, Becket met Julia, who has grown into an ambitious woman (Margaret Qualley) for whom all decisions begin and end with money. She married for money, but that didn't work out. She now believes she can cash in on Becket's journey toward riches.

  Woefully underdeveloped, Qualley's ruthlessly conniving Julia is never fleshed out. Julia becomes an  emblem of greed and not much more. 

    Becket's plan receives a bit of a setback when he falls in love with the girlfriend (Jessica Henwick) of a cousin (Zach Woods) whom he murders. 

   Woods, by the way, has a nice turn as a guy who thinks he's an artist because ... well ... because he thinks he is.

   Not especially troubled by conscience, Becket devises ways to murder his relatives that are meant to be darkly comic -- killing his aunt with a poisoned tooth whitening device or setting off a dark room explosion. But these murders aren't nearly as amusing as those found in No Other Choice, another dark comedy centering on murdering the competition.

  Where No Other Choice found thematic richness in its premise, How to Make a Killing presents a world in which the privileged rich are assumed to be indulgent, useless,  and worthy of elimination. 

   Of the major performances, Henwick stands out as a likable woman who left the highly competitive world of fashion to become a high school English teacher, hardly a job that leads to a life of luxury.

    A framing device is made clear from the outset: The story begins with Becket on death row, unfolding in flashbacks as he calmly tells a visiting priest about his criminal exploits. At various points, Becket could have quit and lived a well-heeled life, but he couldn't stifle his urge to have it all.

  Director Jay Patton Ford, who directed the much better and far more trenchant Emily the Criminal, seldom achieves the biting sharpness such a story requires, and the successive murders proceed almost by rote, as if the filmmakers were thinking out loud about what to do next.

  All of this builds toward a confrontation between Becket and the head of the family, Whitelaw Redfellow (Ed Harris). Becket improbably avoids detection by two FBI agents, but the movie's approach to its major confrontation proves even less credible. 

   Loosely inspired by the 1949 Ealing comedy classic Kind Hearts and Coronets, How to Make a Killing needed more bite, satirical sting, and genuine shock. Too often, it seems to be sticking to the surface as it advances through its plot without finding much by way of a cutting edge.

Jamie Foxx scores in "The Burial'

       It may sound improbable, but The Burial might be the most entertaining movie ever made about a contract dispute. Ridiculous? Well, add this to the equation: One of the main characters in the movie owns funeral homes in Mississippi, not exactly an occupation that prompts anticipatory smiles.

      But is The Burial entertaining?

      Yes. I say this because  although The Burial tells a David vs. Goliath story that revolves around a serious issue, the movie has the soul of a feel-good comedy. 

      Moreover, Betts -- with a massive assist from Jamie Foxx -- has us rooting for a lawyer who’s already super-rich when we meet him. Foxx gives a power house performance as Willie E. Gary, a flamboyant attorney with a habit of winning. A whirling dervish of bravura energy, Gary can talk like a country preacher.

         He may be religious, but Gary has taken no vows of poverty. Aspirational to the max, he lives in a Florid mansion with his wife (Amanda Warren). He wears expensive suits, drives expensive cars, and owns a private plane he’s named "Wings of Justice." A diamond-studded watch adorns his wrist. 

      Gary, a real-life character who has been the subject of a 60 Minutes profile, isn't a revolutionary or an innovator; he’s someone who’s defiant enough to beat the opposition at its own game.

     Why not? The son of a sharecropper and one of 11 children, Gary put himself through Shaw University and North Carolina Central University School of Law. Forget Harvard Law, Gary specializes in taking other attorneys to school.

       Oh yeah, the real-life law suit that inspired the movie...

          In 1995, funeral home owner Jerry O'Keefe (Tommy Lee Jones) sued the Loewen Group, an empire-building Canadian company that was devouring smaller American funeral homes. 

       Faced with financial difficulties, O'Keefe, accompanied by his attorney Mike Allred (Alan Ruck), travels to Vancouver to meet with Loewen chief Raymond Loewen (Bill Camp) on his yacht. 

         A deal was made — or so it seemed. O'Keefe would sell several of his funeral homes to Loewen but would keep the profitable burial insurance part of his business. They shook hands. O'Keefe signed the agreement; Loewen didn't. O'Keefe's suit followed.

      Betts could have suffocated the movie in a tangle of legal issues. Instead, she takes an approach more suitable to broad-based entertainment.

   Working from a screenplay she wrote with Doug Wright, author of a New Yorker piece about Gary, Betts builds the movie around her biggest asset, the comic flare and unabashed conviction Foxx brings to the role.

   To sharpen the courtroom conflict, the easily underestimated Gary battles a Harvard Law School graduate (Journee Smollett) brought in to head the Loewen team. Known for her aggressive approach, Smollett's Mame Downs has earned a bitingly descriptive nickname, The Python.

    Infighting among Gary team members, notably between Gary and Ruck's Mike Allred, lights additional sparks. O'Keefe's long-time attorney, Allred regards himself as an expert in contract law. He doesn't easily adjust to working with Gary. Allred hasn't entirely conquered years of Mississippi prejudice.  

   Mamoudou Athie plays Hal Dockins, a young black friend of O'Keefe and recent law school graduate. Hal introduces O'Keefe to Gary and remains involved in the case, a calm counterpoint to Gary's brashness. 

   Hal also makes a discovery that sharpens the case's racial dynamics, which had been in play from the outset. Part of the reason Hal wanted Gary to lead the team involved the make up of Hinds County, Miss., where the trial would be held. Hinds County is more than 70 percent black.

   Jones wisely takes a quietly determined approach. Undemonstrative but forthright, the 75-year-old O'Keefe has a single goal. He wants to protect his fortune for his 13 children and 40 grandchildren.

     Betts keeps the movie from turning into a love fest between Gary and O'Keefe. O'Keefe is Gary's first white client but the two have enough country in them to understand and care about each other. 

    A scene in which Gary, O'Keefe and Loewen meet to discuss a possible settlement is a small classic of gamesmanship -- except O'Keefe doesn't seem to be playing a game, which gives him an edge. He wants what he wants: to drag Loewen down for all the trouble he believes the company has caused him.

   The courtroom scenes are crisply executed, the tension, sufficient, and racial issues add weight to the proceedings.

    Looking back on the movie, I realized The Burial isn't really about a case or a cause. It's not built on outrage nor is it a sardonic take on capitalist greed. Sure, it cheers for the little guy but it runs on Gary's verve; i.e., on Foxx's performance.

  The movie gives Foxx his best showcase since Ray. He wrings every bit of juice from a role he owns from the beginning to the final credits. He looks like he's having a hell of a time; his unleashed brio becomes infectious. 

A lawyer takes on a major corporation

Mark Ruffalo stars in Dark Waters, a movie that uses a deliberate approach in creating a drama of betrayed trust.

Making a movie about a complex legal case that spanned 17 years can't be easy. Director Todd Haynes and star Mark Ruffalo accomplish the daunting task in Dark Waters, the story of an Ohio attorney who takes on DuPont, one of the world's leading chemical companies.

Ruffalo portrays Rob Bilott, a Cincinnati-based attorney who specializes in defending companies like DuPont. After some initial foot-dragging, Bilott agrees to represent a West Virginia farmer (Bill Camp) whose cattle are being poisoned by toxic waste that has been dumped near his acreage. Bilott's target: DuPont.

Those familiar with Haynes' work (Wonderstruck, Carol, Far From Heaven) know that he can be as much stylist as a storyteller. But here, Haynes works in an unassuming fashion. He's wise enough to know that a story that impacts so many people needs little embellishment.

Dark Waters moves beyond the plight of a single farmer to encompass the drinking water of an entire town. The chemical in question also was used in Teflon, a non-stick coating familiar to most Americans.

Early on, we meet the head of Bilott's law firm. Tim Robbins portrays an attorney who eventually buys into Bilott's mission, a stance that doesn't please all the partners. Some of them view Bilott as a traitor who's biting the hands that feed the firm.

And Tim's wife ( Anne Hathaway impressive in a smallish role) isn't blindly supportive; she resents the fact that the case takes Bilott away from his children.

Among the supporting cast, Victor Garber also stands out as the head of DuPont. Initially cordial, Garber's character turns vicious when his company's interests are threatened.

But it's Ruffalo who carries the movie; he creates a portrait of an attorney who couldn't be less slick. As a church-going ordinary guy, Bilott feels no need to put self-righteousness on display.

Bilott's case against DuPont involves the use of a chemical called PFOA. It takes lots of heavy research to discover what the chemical is and how it has been used. Persistence trumps genius-level legal maneuvers.

You might say that everyone involved with the production -- from cinematographer Ed Lachman to Haynes -- serves a story that rightly has been compared to movies such as Norma Rae, Erin Brokovich and The Insider.

That's not to say that Dark Waters lacks atmosphere. The movie makes its case while capturing the bleak environs of a failing West Virginia farm and the grayness of Midwestern environments that have seen better days.

Basing the movie on a 2016 article that appeared in The New York Times Magazine, screenwriters Mario Correa and Matthew Michael Carnahan do a fine job capitalizing on the inherent drama of a tale involving betrayed trust.

The film reinforces a sobering conclusion: In the end, we can't rely on the government or on corporations for protection. We have to hope that people such as Bilott will take on fights that initially look futile.

Don't expect an explosive movie. Dark Waters gradually insinuates itself into consciousness in ways that make you shudder; it presents a clear case of a company that put its own interests ahead of the general good.

A family caught in a moment of crisis

Actor Paul Dano moves behind the camera to direct Wildlife, a big-screen adaptation of a Richard Ford novel set in Great Falls, Montana, a lonely outpost where a mother (Carey Mulligan) and her son (Ed Oxenbould) have been moved by Dad (Jake Gyllenhaal), a guy who can't seem to settle into anything. The town of Great Falls marks Dad's latest stop on what seems to have been a road to nowhere. Gyllenhaal's Jerry ignites the drama, which begins in 1960, when he's fired from his job tending the greens at a local golf club. The club offers him his job back, but Jerry -- stuck in a rut created by what seem to be obscure but irrevocable principles -- refuses. Instead, he's off to fight forest fires, putting his life in danger for very little money and leaving his wife to tend to their teenage son Joe. Joe, played with just the right degree of quiet confusion by Oxenbould, tries his best to cope, taking on the uneasy role of man of the house. With Jerry off fighting fires, Mulligan's Jeanette begins what seems a willed unravelment. She takes up a relationship with Warren Miller (Bill Camp), an unlikely love interest who owns the local car dealership and whose friendliness toward young Joe wavers between sincerity and calculation. Oddly, Jeanette drags her son into the whole business, taking him to dinner at Miller's house. Could anything be more uncomfortable for a kid? The fires raging away from the town suggest a looming conflagration but the fire that rages in Mulligan's performance pushes the movie toward its sad final shot. Not always easy to read, Wildlife nonetheless entangles us in the lives of characters who defy easy definition.

Poker for big names and fat wallets

Aaron Sorkin makes his directorial debut with Molly's Game, a movie that features some winning hands from a somewhat limited subject.

When I was browsing the internet looking for information on the real Molly Bloom, I came across a review of Bloom's book, which serves as the basis for writer Aaron Sorkin's eagerly awaited directorial debut.

A website devoted to books about poker featured a headline that suggested that the book struggled to find both an audience and a point.

I'm not sure that Sorkin's adaptation of Bloom's book, Molly's Game, will have trouble finding an audience, but it does have a bit of difficulty finding a larger point. Bloom's journey took her from an Olympic caliber skier to a woman who made a ton of money running high-stakes poker games before running afoul of the law.

In real life, Bloom's LA-based game attracted players such as Ben Affleck and Tobey Maguire. She evidently operated legally until she began taking a cut of the biggest pots. Such "raking" is illegal and evidently changes friendly games (even when played for ridiculously large stakes) into crimes.

Don't get me wrong. Molly's Game can be entertaining, and it features an energized performance from Jessica Chastain as Bloom, a woman whose brother Jeremy Bloom became both an Olympian and an NFL player.

Molly Bloom was on a similar Olympic track until a freak accident derailed her career. At loose ends, she headed to LA where she eventually moved from a gofer at high-stakes card games to an impresario of such big-money affairs.

Perhaps taking a cue from Bloom's book, Sorkin has Molly narrate the movie, a dialogue-heavy plunge into her point of view that, at times, makes it feel as if Molly's reading us the movie.

As much as any writer, Sorkin has a way of making it seem as if he's in the know about whatever subject he tackles. He floods the screen with poker jargon and makes sure that every actor speaks with the kind of rapidity that marked the great screwball comedies of yesteryear. The result can be dizzying, skilled actors engaging in tricky verbal workouts.

Idris Elba adds weight as Molly's attorney. Watching Elba and Chastain bat words over the metaphorical net that separates their characters creates a pleasure all its own.

Bloom's story moves from Los Angeles to New York City, unfolding in episodic fashion, almost as if Sorkin drops little short stories into the larger mix. This approach highlights the work of a strong supporting cast.

Jeremy Strong portrays Molly's first LA boss, a character who makes no attempt to be anything less than obnoxious. Michael Cera does good work as an arrogant player with skills; Bill Camp does a terrific job as a skilled player who swan-dives into a terrible losing streak, and Chris O'Dowd impresses as a dim-witted drunk who works off a gambling debt by bringing some troubling folks into one of Molly's New York games, figures from the Russian mob.

Kevin Costner has one of the movie's best small roles. He plays Molly's authoritarian father, a philandering psychology professor who presides over a flock of high-achieving offspring.

Up to a point, Sorkin benefits from the lavish surroundings that Molly created for those who gambled at her table: drinks, fine food, fancy hotel rooms and beautiful women to wait on both winners and losers.

Earlier, I mentioned that the movie might have difficulty making a point. By the end, it seems as if Sorkin wants to hold Molly out as an example of female achievement. She used her wits to create a small empire and honorably refuses to supply the FBI with the names of those who sat at her table. Public exposure might have ruined lives and destroyed families.

Pretty noble for someone who knows she made a small fortune serving the gambling addictions and fantasies of men who were willing to throw money at her in the form of out-sized tips.

I was entertained by much of Molly's Game, which -- at 140 minutes in length -- probably runs 20 minutes longer than necessary: Sorkin turns cards over with enough flair and snap to keep his movie watchable, but, in its entirety, the movie doesn't make the case for why Bloom's story is more than a sketch in a bigger picture that remains unpainted.