An overloaded 'Knives Out' mystery

  A somber Catholic church in upstate New York provides a gloomy backdrop for writer/director Rian Johnson's third Knives Out movie, Wake Up Dead Man.

   Johnson, who also wrote the screenplay, immediately distinguishes his movie from its predecessors, introducing an unexpected character, a freshly ordained priest who's in trouble with his superiors.

  Father Jud Duplenticy (Josh O'Connor) has anger-management issues. As punishment for socking a deacon, Father Jud is sentenced to clerical exile at the remote Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude parish.

    It's immediately clear that Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude has taken a bizarre turn. The church's crucifix has been removed from behind the altar, and its priest, Monsignor Jeffrey Wicks (Josh Brolin), quickly asserts himself as a power-hungry nut job.  Obsessive about confession, Wicks can't talk enough about his feverish bouts of masturbation.

   Wicks also preaches a gospel of fear. In his weekly sermons, he selects one parishioner for chastisement, gauging the success of his remarks by how quickly his intimidated victim heads for the door. 

    Although Wake Up Dead Man hosts strains of mordant comedy, it's also a mystery in which the characters become pawns in a game Johnson plays, one involving a tangled plot, excessive complications, and enough red herrings to stock a fishery.

    The parishioners, of course, become suspects after the mystery’s obligatory murder, which precedes the arrival of series savior Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), an ace sleuth who speaks with the lilting intonations of a southern gentleman.

     By the time Blanc arrives, a typically large gallery of actors has already elbowed its way into the proceedings: These include a doctor (Jeremy Renner), an attorney (Kerry Washington), a cellist (Cailee Spaeny) who no longer plays, a local politician (Daryl McCormack), and a struggling sci-fi author (Andrew Scott).

     We also meet the administrator (Glenn Close) in charge of the church’s business and the caretaker (Thomas Haden Church) who has pledged his devotion to her.

     In case the cast weren’t stuffed with enough names, Mila Kunis eventually turns up as a local sheriff who’s skeptical about Blanc’s deductive methods. 

      Fair to say, Johnson’s screenplay offers laughs throughout, and an able cast knows how to mine them, even when the targets loom large. 

      In a semi-serious turn, Johnson also gets some mileage out of the faith vs. reason tensions that develop between Jud and Blanc, who begin investigating the murder together.

     As the movie's most developed character, Jud valiantly tries to conquer his anger with love and compassion. He also struggles with guilt. A former boxer, he once killed a man in the ring.

      O’Connor gives a standout performance, although Johnson wisely provides Craig with a spotlight speech  during the movie’s finale. Blanc calls it his Damascus moment.

     Watching Wake Up Dead Man, you needn't go very far before bumping into another plot point. All of this rests on a foundation filled with plot and backstory, some of it involving a valuable jewel. 

      Call it a matter of taste, but I found some of the maneuvering tiresome, and the gaggle of idiosyncratic characters can become little more than pawns in a mystery game.

     Early on, Jeffrey Wright turns up as the sensible priest who assigns Father Jud to obscurity. Wright's appearance at the end reminded me how much I missed his presence and the character he plays.

     Johnson, who's often compared to Agatha Christie, clearly has mastered the form he has employed in a trilogy that began with Knives Out (2019) and continued with Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022).

     But clever as it can be, Johnson's latest sometimes drags through its two-hour and 24-minute run time, fighting headwinds created by the story's storm of complications.

    

      

       

      

A daring 'Queer' doesn't quite payoff

 

 
   Much has been made about Daniel Craig's appearance in Queer, an adaptation of a 1985 novella by William S. Burroughs, the Beat writer best known for Naked Lunch. A movie titled Queer marks an obvious departure for Craig, the actor who starred in five James Bond movies.

    Queer takes Craig as far away from Bond as possible, giving him the role of a gay, heroin-addicted writer living in Mexico City during the 1950s, a decade that, at least in cliche, was rooted in conformity, repression, and exaltation of the mainstream.

   A literary exile of sorts, Craig's William Lee spends more time drinking than writing in the seedy digs he rents. Dissolute and needy, Lee never leaves his small apartment without a pistol strapped to his side. Meant for protection, the gun also becomes emblematic of an hombre image, a man willing to go the violent distance if necessary. He offers a reasonable approximation of what might be called the William Burroughs look.

    Although he has little trouble finding sex, Lee stumbles when it comes to deeper relationships. He sees an opportunity for more than a fling when he meets Eugene (Drew Starkey), a handsome young photographer who we know will frustrate Lee's desires. Eugene quickly makes it clear that he has little interest in emotionally connected relationships. 

   Persistent to the point of obsession, Lee clings to Eugene, who seems untethered from nearly everything.

    Eventually, Lee persuades Eugene to accompany him on an Ecuadorian adventure. Lee plans to take a drug he's heard can make people telepathic. He hopes a psychedelic will enable him to bond with Eugene, assuming Eugene will reciprocate. Seen from the outside, the idea that they might become soul mates becomes the delusional denouement of an exotic travelogue.

   Working from a screenplay by Justin Kuritzkes, director Luca Guadagnino uses the last third of his movie to conjure images of psychedelic tripping; he adds a touch of surrealism to the proceedings, a disorienting arrival considering the carefully studied grit of its Mexico City scenes. (Much of Queer was shot in studios.)

    Guadagnino has built a reputation for “art” movies with gay content, Call Me by Your Name being a prime example. The sex scenes in Queer are more graphic than anything Guadagnino included in Call Me by Your Name.

     A small supporting cast relieves the movie's thematic claustrophobia. Lesley Manville appears as an eccentric botanist who has been studying South American psychedelics, notably a drug called Yage. A resident of the jungle wilds, she's gone a bit bonkers. 

      In what might be his most interesting work to date, Jason Schwartzman plays Joe Guidry, a gay friend of Lee's who lives in Mexico City and who seems to enjoy rambling on about his many trysts. Joe's comfortable with himself in ways Lee can't be.

     Unfolding during a sometimes fatiguing two hours and 15 minutes, Queer slogs its way through three chapters and an epilogue, providing Craig with a platform from which to take a deep dive into alienation, self-abasement, and existential loneliness.

     But Queer has a dated quality. Burroughs wrote Queer in the late 1940s, when everything about it -- including its title -- might have seemed startling; for some. the novel became an immersive wallow in the defiance associated with living on the cheap, prowling dirty streets and sleeping on dirty sheets.

   To the extent that Queer can be seen as a thinly disguised memoir, it might generate interest among Burroughs enthusiasts or those who want to remind themselves that Craig, who has appeared in some 40 movies, successfully has escaped the Bond prison.

     Queer gives Craig plenty with which to work, but the movie -- part endurance test and part curiosity -- never coheres into the bold, challenging work that must have been intended. 

     I'd call it a missed opportunity, but I'm not sure for what.

   

Daniel Craig's admirable departure from Bond

   Remember when we didn't take Bond movies seriously? Time was all we wanted from a Bond movie was nifty gadgets, charm, beautiful women, one-liners, and an out-sized villain, preferably working with Spectre.

  That's why the series could survive the switch from Sean Connery (still the best Bond) to Roger Moore to Pierce Brosnan to Timothy Dalton — and that's not even a complete list. The point: Fulfill the formula, add a few new wrinkles, and we were happy.

  Daniel Craig, the latest Bond, is about to pass the torch to another Bond, which greatly raises anticipation for No Time to Die, Craig's last swing at 007. We already know that Craig’s Bond has the power of a clenched fist. His is not a winking Bond, happy to let us in on the joke. 

   Craig has given us a Bond for our distraught, deracinated time, a bond minus joviality and bonhomie — but now with the capability of loving, and, thus, being hurt.

   Some of No Time To Die qualifies as old-style fun. Moreover, the movie's prologue and early scenes totally satisfy our craving for more Bond; i.e., they're full scenic glamor and incredible action.

    A quick summary of the set-up: An assassin's attempts to kill the wife and daughter of a man who slaughtered his family. The movie then leaps ahead to find Bond in love and vacationing in a rocky Italian village. His companion: the daughter (Lea Seydoux) who was spared by the killer in the movie's opening.

    The movie eventually begins unfolding a complicated plot involving a deadly biological weapon that can be tailored to target specific individuals -- or to wreak mass havoc.

   I don't mean to suggest that I didn't enjoy the rest of this overly long Bond, which clocks in at two hours and 43 minutes and ends with a sense of resignation that fits our moment of national and international fatigue.

   Director Cary Joji Fukunaga guides Craig's final bond to a noble end and provides enough of everything else that we want from a Bond movie to make the journey worth taking.

    No Bond movie is complete without seeing Bond in formal wear. He turns up in a tuxedo in Jamaica where he encounters a glamorous spy played by Ana de Armas. 

    Critics once argued that every Bond movie rises and falls with its villain. A good villain meant a good Bond -- no matter who donned  the 007 mantle.

   This time, Rami Malek upholds the banner of evil, opting to make Lyutsifer Safin a soft-spoken man with a bad complexion and an unquenchable taste for vengeance. Lyutsifer’s ambitions are big, but his personality seems small.

   Muscular and sometimes brutal, Craig receives able support from a large cast. Christoph Waltz makes a brief appearance as Blofeld. Jeffrey Wright portrays Felix Leiter,  CIA man, and friend of Bond.

    Ralph Fiennes continues to bring weight and gravity to the role of M. Naomi Harris again turns up as the ever-loyal Moneypenny, and Ben Whishaw returns as Q, the inventor of the gadgetry that gives Bond his advantage and a tech whiz who monitors Bond's moves.

   The movie even adds another 007. Because Bond has retired, MI6 has awarded his 007 designation to Nomi (Lashana Lynch), a newcomer who may gain a foothold for future Bond movies.

   The movie ultimately heads toward a remote island (where else?) from which Lyutsifer plans to launch a world-threatening attack.

    With improvements in budget and special effects, the Bond movies have been able to increase their scale with each new addition, and let's face it, scale has much to do with why we keep going to Bond movies. 

   Fukunaga doesn't shortchange us on locations -- even if we feel that Craig's last turn as Bond has more to do with what the movie is about than any threat Lyutsifer poses.

   For the record, Billie Eilish sings No Time To Die, the song that plays over the opening credits.

  No Time to Die tends to lag a bit around the three-quarter mark and it sometimes feels driven by fumes of determination, but when it's done, No Time to Die has brought Craig's tenure to a strong and worthy conclusion.

An entertaining mystery with a great cast

Knives Out couples a traditional approach with a cast of colorful contemporary characters.

Knives Out, a movie that unashamedly evokes memories of traditional whodunits, begins where it must: A group of disagreeable relatives gather in hopes of inheriting the fortune of the family’s obscenely rich patriarch.

Conveniently, the wealthy head of the family, a mystery writer played by Christopher Plummer, dies on the night of his 85th birthday celebration. Was it murder or suicide?

Director Rian Johnson isn't shy about declaring his intentions. The movie’s production design includes a rather large and prominently displayed collection of knives, part of the decor of the mansion where family members gather to snipe at one another and wait for the writer's will to be read. A greedy, duplicitous lot, the relatives all become instant suspects should it turn out that Plummer's Harlan Thrombey did not depart this life willingly.

To spark interest, the movie plays some intriguing games with casting.

To begin with, Johnson (Star Wars: The Last Jedi, The Brothers Bloom and Brick) gives Daniel Craig an opportunity to break the Bond mold. Craig portrays a private detective with an overdone Southern drawl that sounds as if the actor mastered it by bathing his vocal cords in Southern Comfort. Craig's improbably named Benoit Blanc claims that an unidentified person has hired him to assist the police in an investigation.

Michael Shannon also plays against expectation, stepping out of scary villain mode to play Harlan's pathetically ineffectual son, a man who has spent most of his life in his father’s shadow.

The writer's nurse (Mara Cabrera), an immigrant who's devoted to her boss, might be the lone character without an ulterior motive for wanting to see Harlan end his earthly journey.

Johnson flirts with caricature but a great cast won't let him get away with it. Toni Collette plays the widow of one of the late writer's sons, a woman who operates a company called Flam. The firm's business: the suspiciously broad theme of wellness. Jamie Lee Curtis appears as the haughty Linda, the writer's daughter. She's married to Don Johnson's Richard.

Like everyone else, Johnson’s character has his eye on the late writer's fortune -- as well as on the occasional woman who wanders into his view. He also delivers an anti-immigrant rant that adds a bit of topicality.

Then there's Ransom (Chris Evans), the writer's grandson, a guy who doesn't seem to care about money, but who nonetheless has become pretty good at spending it. In disdaining the rest of the family, the character of Ransom provides Evans with what must have been a welcome chance not to be Captain America.

I doubt you'll leave the theater burdened by heavy philosophical baggage. Most post-movie conversations likely will focus on Johnson's preposterously wily characters and the actors who seem to be having such a good time playing them.

The point here is entertainment and aside from allowing the proceedings to run a trifle long (two hours and 11 minutes), Johnson delivers what Knives Out promises: wry amusement, a mystery resolved at the last moment, and enough snide observation to justify the appropriately caustic treatment these characters so richly deserve.

A caper movie, country style

Director Steven Soderbergh has fun with Lucky Logan, a heist movie set in West Virginia.

It's a bit of a stretch to think that anyone has been eagerly waiting to see Daniel Craig, the current James Bond, play a hillbilly safecracker from West Virginia. But Craig does just that in Steven Soderbergh's Logan Lucky, a caper movie in which a group of West Virginia rednecks stage a robbery at the Charlotte Motor Speedway during the Coca-Cola 600, a NASCAR race held on Memorial Day weekend.

Those who try to mine veins of importance from Logan Lucky, which was written by Rebecca Blunt, may find themselves straining. Logan Lucky stands as an enjoyable -- if slight -- caper comedy build around odd ball casting that creates much of the movie's appeal -- that and Soderbergh's understanding of how to freshen a formula.

An unlikely duo of Channing Tatum and Adam Driver play brothers. Tatum's Jimmy Logan is a beleaguered construction worker who loses his job for not reporting a pre-existing health condition; he has a limp. Jimmy's brother Clyde (Driver) works as a bartender despite having a prosthetic lower left arm, a souvenir from his military service in Iraq.

Jimmy would like to spend more time with his daughter after his divorce from Bobbie Jo (Katie Holmes). But Bobbie Joe and her husband (David Denman) plan to move to a swankier town, leaving Jimmy with a great need for money if he wants to maintain a relationship with his daughter (Farrah Mackenzie), a child who participates in beauty pageants.

With no legitimate prospects in sight, Jimmy uses the code word that his brother knows signals trouble. "Cauliflower."

The rest of the movie follows a pleasingly predictable pattern in which Jimmy assembles the crew he needs to pull off the heist. One of Jimmy's primary partners in crime is Joey Bang (Craig), a felon whose participation presents Jimmy with an obstacle. Joey's in jail. Jimmy contrives a scheme to get Joey out of the slammer so that he can put his larcenous plan in motion.

Jimmy's sister (Riley Keough) plays a role in pulling off a robbery that allows Soderbergh to revel in West Virginia color, sometimes in ways that seem a trifle self-conscious.

To further complicate matters, Joey insists that his participation is contingent on Jimmy involving Joey's two brothers (Jack Quaid and Brian Gleeson), a couple of guys who probably never will be mistaken for MENSA candidates.

Two additional performances are worth mention. Seth MacFarlane shows up as Max Chilblain, a British race car impresario, and Hilary Swank makes a late-picture appearance as a cop who's trying to nab the thieves.

Like many heist movies, Logan Lucky requires a healthy suspension of disbelief, and it's tough to avoid not thinking of the movie as a kind of knockoff of Soderbergh's Ocean's series, only with dirt under its fingernails.

I enjoyed Logan Lucky, even though I was seldom unaware that I was watching actors tapping into their inner rednecks. As it stands, the cast seems to be having the kind of good time that transfers to an audience.

A couple of clicks toward even more weirdness and Logan Lucky might have landed Soderbergh in Coen Brothers territory. Now that really would have been something to behold.

Bond is back, but where's the fun?

Daniel Craig is serious as a clenched fist, but at 148 minutes, Spectre is a Bond too long -- and a bit boring, as well.

Remember when Bond movies were fun?

With a wink at the world and a playful attitude toward 007's legendary sexual prowess, Bond movie etched themselves into pop-cultural immortality -- which in this instance means 53 years of entertainment.

Now comes Spectre, the 24th film in the series that will not die. No expense has been spared to fill Spectre with action, exotic locations and IMAX-worthy scale.

But this time, a dizzying pre-credit sequence -- set during the Day of the Dead in Mexico City -- proves the most exciting part of the movie.

Amassing a crowd of extras reported to number about 1,500, director Sam Mendes guides Daniel Craig's Bond through an escapade that finds 007 scampering over roofs and elbowing his way through crowds of revelers in skeleton costumes. He finally hops onto a helicopter for a white-knuckle battle with an ugly villain.

The movie's opening gives you the feeling that this edition of Bond is going to blow the roof off the theater, thanks in part to spectacularly good design: Mexican rhythms, the traditional Bond theme and an amazingly fluid camera blend in ways that let you know that some very talented people are at the controls.

It's an opening that's tough to match -- and director Mendes, who directed the far better Skyfall -- never tops it.

Mendes seems to have approached Spectre with the same dutiful seriousness that infects Craig in his fourth outing as Britain's most legendary spy.

Many critics applauded the dark hues that Craig brought to the Bond series when he took over the job in 2006's Casino Royale. Craig made Bond credible in a post 9/11 world -- or so the argument went. Glowering menace seemed preferable to nonchalant ease.

Is it possible that this approach has worn out its welcome?

Let's look at some of the elements:

-- Lea Seydoux (Blue is the Warmest Color) comes across as a more life-sized Bond girl than some, but Bond movies tend to be at their best when nothing about them seems life-sized or attainable.

-- Monica Bellucci plays an intriguingly sexy widow, but she's not around long enough to spice things up.

-- And the Bond villain? Christoph Waltz picks up the bad-guy cudgel as the head of Spectre, the organization that's threatening the world.

Poor Waltz. He'll never top the terrifyingly polite SS guy he played in Inglorious Bastards. Here, he again opts for understatement, which may have been his only choice, but he's neither frightening nor arch enough to fill the bill.

-- Ralph Fiennes brings near-actuarial sternness to the role of M.

-- Ben Whishsaw holds his own as the inventive Q, the character in charge of the movie's gadgetry.

-- Naomi Harris, who plays Moneypenny, might be the closest the movie gets to finding a good, old-fashioned Bond beauty. She takes care of Bond business with no-nonsense efficiency and welcome traces of worldly wit.

Cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema leans toward a sepia-tinged palette that reinforces the movie's more-or-less serious tone, a tone which -- by the way -- a cluttered plot can't really support.

As for Craig: He's brusque, sometimes raw in his expression of emotion. He gives Bond the force of a blunt blow to the head.

There also are suggestions that Bond is an assassin who never really has thought much about what he does, an interesting attempt to give the character some existential lift, but is this really what we want from Bond?

Look, many of the important elements can be found in Spectre: action, killer clothes, romantic dinners on speeding trains, globe-hopping and one ogre-like villain (Dave Bautista's Hinx) who rises to the occasion, something accomplished only intermittently by this overly long helping of Bond.

For James Bond, life gets harder

Does Bond still have it? An exciting Skyfall puts the question to a staunch test.

As an iconic movie hero, James Bond has died many deaths, only to be reborn in new guises for new times. Once known for his impeccable style and unquestionable taste in martinis and women, Bond recently has settled into a recessionary mode -- at least as far as his erstwhile playboy image is concerned.

In Skyfall -- his third Bond movie -- Daniel Craig has become an even blunter, more stoic Bond. In a time when drones target terrorists, when small units of highly trained Navy SEALs can seem more effective than entire armies and when shadowy villains seem more interested in lethal disruption than in global conquest, the single-handed bravado of Bond might seem as out-dated as the preposterously ambitious villains of 007's big-screen formative years.

Skyfall continues Bond's march into the future -- and more. It entertains, chastens and finds its own distinctive voice.

In keeping with this new spirit, Skyfall features an amusingly sly villain, a former MI6 agent played with wily, seductive ease by Javier Bardem, who adds to the gallery of classic villains he began creating with Anton Chigurh in No Country For Old Men.

Despite his casually expressed cruelty and the threat he poses to British intelligence, Bardem's Silva isn't the only enemy Bond must face. Bond also must do battle with time. He's forced toward introspection as he wonders whether he's truly up to the task of combating the evil Silva and preserving the integrity of MI6. The devious Silva threatens to expose a raft of agents on the Internet. He must be stopped from executing a cyberterrorist assault on secrecy.

But even here, the Bond series faces adaptive pressures. Is Silva out to conquer the world as a result of a maniacal lust for power? Not really. He's more disgruntled employee than global threat. And as we eventually learn, he has good reason to be upset.

To fulfill its mission of creating a more human Bond, the series has brought on a director whose reputation hardly hinges on action. Sam Mendes (best known for American Beauty, Road to Perdition and Revolutionary Road) doesn't skimp on action set pieces, but he brings a welcome sense of dramatic grounding and psychological heft to the proceedings.

The trick, one supposes, is to balance innovation with tradition. There are beautiful women (Naomie Harris and Berenice Marlohe), an appearance by Bond's Aston Martin DB5 and a prologue that has Bond toppling onto a speeding train, as well as a bit in which the world's most famous spy races a motorcycle across rooftops in Istanbul. But Skyfall remains as much about propelling Bond into the 21st century as it is about delivering the winking thrills of yesteryear.

Maybe that's why Skyfall's most weirdly flirtatious scene takes place when the blond, soft-spoken Silva captures Bond and taunts him with homoerotic advances. For his part, 007 remains unfazed.

The need for redefinition pervades just about every aspect of the movie. M, the fabulous Judi Dench, is under threat from a bureaucrat (Ralph Fiennes) who thinks it's time for her to retire. The venerable Q has been replaced by a youthful version, played here by Ben Whishaw. Gadgetry seems to have been kept to a minimum.

Even the movie's climax feels a bit shrunken. The action eventually shifts to Bond's boyhood home in Scotland, where an old mentor (Albert Finney) is enlisted to help beat back Silva and his minions, who put the house (not fondly remembered by Bond) under severe assault. You get the idea: The scale of the picture exceeds the grandeur of its themes.

This being the 50th anniversary of the indestructible Bond franchise, it's fair to say -- as I already too much have -- that Skyfall is committed to entertaining while perpetuating the series. It continues the exciting, often intriguing and clever retooling of the Bond mythology, but what's really at stake isn't the continued existence of a weary, threatened world, but the future of Bond himself.

Physically powerful and much less prone to puckish humor than any of his predecessors, Craig may just carry Bond into the future with will, muscle and a severely knotted brow. Bond, as you'll notice, accepts each new assignment "with pleasure.'' It's to Craig's credit that we feel as if there also will be equal amounts of pain.

'Tintin' made my head spin

Parts of The Adventures of Tintin are as creative as you'd expect from Steven Spielberg, but the movie left me feeling a bit woozy.

With just about everyone climbing on the 3-D bandwagon, it’s hardly surprising that Steven Spielberg – an acknowledged master of popular entertainment – has tried his hand at it.

In the animated The Adventures of Tintin -- from a comic-book series by the Belgian artist who went by the name of Herge -- Spielberg shows off a mixture of motion-capture animation and moving camera work that makes for a dizzying ride. The story is an amalgam of three Tintin stories, consistent, I suppose, with this milkshake of a movie.

The dazzling opening sequences are set in a flea market where the intrepid Tintin (voice by Jamie Bell) purchases a model ship called The Unicorn. Of course, this is no ordinary model, but a vessel that holds a key to the mystery at the movie's heart. That means the bad guy -- one Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine (Daniel Craig) -- wants to get his hands of the ship. Sakharine tries politeness before resorting to stronger measures.

The story eventually unites Tintin and Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis), an unashamed drunkard, whose rundown ship has been hijacked by Sakharine.

The story sends this unlikely duo in search of lost treasure, and allows Spielberg to put his hero through a variety of action-oriented trials that are bound to remind audiences that Spielberg also directed the Indiana Jones movies.

The action is skillfully mounted, of course, but there’s too much of it, and it culminates in a clash of dueling cranes that's louder than it is exciting. Moreover, the combination of motion-capture (animation just short of photo-realism) and frenzied activity creates the unwelcome sensation of an amusement park ride run amok – at least it did for me.

I wouldn’t say that Tintin is fall-down funny, but there are welcome splashes of humor, the best involving a couple of bumbling police officers voiced by Nick Frost and Simon Pegg.

It’s hardly surprising that Spielberg, who long ago earned his action stripes, knows how to keep a movie moving. And those who grew up with the Tintin series may find the movie satisfying. Personally, I found the opening credits -- which boast an appealing hand-drawn look -- more winsome and winning than almost anything that followed.

For me, Tintin’s adventures felt about as convincing as the look of Tintin’s trusty dog Snowy – which is to say that these adventures felt carefully calibrated to maximize motion capture and 3-D as much as to create any feeling of spontaneously generated pleasure.

I don't know how Tintin might play without the 3-D, but it proved too much for my eyes, which longed for the respite of some quiet exposition, say Tintin tap-tapping on his trusty typewriter.

A chilly 'Girl With The Dragon Tattoo'

Director David Fincher's Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is good, but may not ink an indelible mark.

It’s fair to say that The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo qualifies as one of the most eagerly anticipated movies of the holiday season. Given the groundwork that already has been laid, how could it not?

The late Stieg Larsson’s trilogy of novels -- of which Dragon Tattoo is the first – still sells off the charts. We’ve already seen big-screen Swedish versions of all three books, and there hardly seems to be a person attuned to popular culture who hasn’t heard of Lisbeth Salander, the tech wizard and ace hacker who harbors deep secrets and who remains Larsson’s most memorable character.

The new and beautifully crafted version – from director David Fincher (The Social Network, Zodiac and Se7ven) -- has been made with consummate care, and – most importantly -- Fincher has found an actress in Rooney Mara who matches the brilliantly edgy work done by Noomi Rapace in the Swedish original -- and that's saying a lot.

Salander’s appearance – spiky hair, multiple piercings and a pallor that might make a vampire jealous -- feels both familiar and strange. She’s like a human porcupine with quills fully extended. Touch, and you'll probably get hurt.

(An FYI: Mara appeared briefly in the opening of Fincher’s The Social Network, playing the young woman Mark Zuckerberg insulted in the movie’s first scene.)

Like Rapace, Mara also shows occasional flashes of beauty, traces of softness beneath the hardcore exterior. She’s one hell of a character, and you definitely wouldn’t want to cross her.

So what else do we get?

We get the kind of richer, more varied look that stems from having a large Hollywood budget. We also get scenes that are shocking and ghastly.

We also get the same kind of labyrinthine (a nice way of saying overly complex) plot that marked the first movie, a story full of former Nazis, wealthy aristocrats, and skeptical journalists -- not to mention serial killing, rape and revenge. And even more than his Swedish predecessor, Fincher falls prey to the furrowed-brow seriousness the material seems to evoke, pulp striving for art.

This march toward artistic legitimacy is abetted by a fine cast.

Daniel Craig brings the expected gravity and a touch of vulnerability to the role of journalist Mikael Blomkvist; Robin Wright portrays Blomkvist’s journalistic partner and sometime lover; Stellan Skarsgard appears as a member of the wealthy and highly dysfunctional Vanger family, and Christopher Plummer plays Henrik Vanger, the ranking member of the Vanger clan.

Plummer’s character summons Blomkvist to the Vanger island retreat, and hires him to investigate the long ago murder of a favorite niece, Thus, the story begins.

Two strands lace throughout the opening chapters of the story: Salander’s and Blomkvist’s, and these eventually are joined in Steven Zaillian’s script, which one imagines to have reached phone-book-like proportions to accommodate the story's two-hour and 38-minute length, not all if it fleet.

Now if you’ve read the book and seen the Swedish movie, you may inevitably find yourself playing a game of compare and contrast: It’s not easy to watch Fincher’s movie without trying to remember how the same situations were handled in both the book and the earlier film. This either becomes a distraction or a source of enjoyment, depending on your temperament.

The bottom line: I thought the Swedish movie was fine (with an exceptional turn from Rapace), but I liked Fincher’s English-language version a little better, maybe because I found myself caught up in the mood and atmosphere created by Fincher and cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth. I wouldn't call The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Fincher's best work, but he definitely knows how to serve up a chilled and even classy dish of deviance and menace.

An outlandish 'Cowboys & Aliens'

This genre mash-up offers bits of fun, but its aim isn't dead-on.

Say this: There’s nothing deceptive about the title Cowboys & Aliens, an action-oriented summer movie in which cowboys square off against marauding alien invaders.

The trick of Cowboys & Aliens involves allowing disparate but familiar genres to bump up against each other, to mix clichés from western and sci-fi movies in hopes that the combination results in something fresh. I’m not sure it does, but it certainly results in something that's brazenly outlandish, an unabashed summer movie full of unabashed summer-movie ingredients.

In reasonably short order, the movie's cowboy caricatures get crosswise with alien caricatures. The resultant collision doesn’t quite revitalize either genre, but the whole enterprise is so patently absurd, it can’t help but offer bits of whacked-out fun.

The script plants its sci-fi seed early. In the movie’s opening scene, Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) wakes up in the middle of the desert. He has no memory of how he got there or even who he is. He notices a strange-looking shackle on his left wrist. Clearly (at least to us), it’s the product of a civilization that’s more technologically advanced than the one Jake knows.

Before 20 or so minutes have passed, our lone cowboy finds himself at odds with a cruel cattle baron (Harrison Ford). Sure we’ve been down this road before, but both Craig and Ford – owners of two of the craggiest faces in the business -- seem built for it.

Cowboys & Aliens saunters through standard Western situations, doing a pretty good job with them. Jake rides into the town of Absolution. After a dust up with the bullying son (Paul Dano) of the local cattle baron, Jake lands in the clink.

Ford plays Woodrow Dolarhyde, a grizzled rancher who runs his spread and the town with an iron hand. Dolarhyde even thinks he can control the sheriff (Keith Carradine).

Craig glowers; Ford sneers, and both bring movie-star punch to the proceedings as Cowboys & Aliens makes its way through some tensely enjoyable scenes. Few things in movies quicken the pulse as reliably as macho posturing, and Cowboys & Aliens has its share.

Eventually, the aliens -- who fly around in aircraft that resemble giant dragonflies -- begin strafing the town. They also yank some of the townsfolk onto their ships, presumably for further study.

The aliens don’t exactly represent a triumph of sci-fi imagination. Their standard-issue horror-movie look seems to have been cobbled together from previous aliens and leftover slime, and director Jon Favreau (Iron Man) and eight credited screenwriters don't give them much motivation beyond a predatory desire to conquer planets and take their gold.

Favreau and his team try to stuff as many summer thrills as possible into the movie’s saddlebags: encounters with thugs from Logergan’s former gang and with a band of Apaches, for example.

Sam Rockwell plays Doc, the saloon keeper who loses his wife to the aliens. And Olivia Wilde portrays Ella, a mysterious woman who joins the posse that sets out to find and fight the aliens.

Here’s a shocker: To battle the monsters, cattle baron and cowboys, thugs and law-abiding citizens, Indians and whites, must set aside differences and act for the common good. The aroma of an obviously stated “message’’ – never a good thing in either cowboy or alien movies -- wafts across western landscapes, beautifully photographed by cinematographer Matthew Libatique.

Craig hits a single note and holds it throughout the movie; he's playing a brutal man who’s unsure what he may have done in his past. Ford, who lately hasn’t exactly been hitting box-office bulls eyes, plays a character without a trace of Indiana Jones twinkle in his eye.

Watching Cowboys & Aliens, I kept thinking that if Clint Eastwood ever makes another Western, he might do well to cast Ford in a role that allows him fully to explore his dark side, something he can’t do in a movie as lightweight as Cowboys & Aliens.

Audiences likely will ride this Cowboy to financial success, but the alien invasion does more than threaten the denizens of a dusty western town; it forces the movie toward the expected raucous climax in which a small band of humans tries to defeat the aliens. A reminder: Noise is not the same as real excitement.

Cowboys and Aliens arrives at the nation's multiplexes with criticism-defying protection. Too crazy? “Well what did you expect from a movie called ‘Cowboys & Aliens?’ Logic? Coherence?”

Not necessarily, but I did expect a movie that did more than put its cowboys, aliens and us through a catalog of summer-movie paces.

Cowboys & Aliens, which has a fair measure of violence and gore, can also be amusing, but its aim isn’t dead-on. There’s no reason aliens (assuming there are any) couldn’t have visited Earth during the 19th century. The characters in Cowboys & Aliens don’t seem quite as amazed about this as you might think.

It’s almost as if they – like us – have seen too damn many movies.