‘Figaro’ falls onto the plus side of the ledger

    Falling for Figaro runs on familiar fuel -- the most notable ingredient being a story about an aspiring singer who wants to win a major contest so that she can jump-start an opera career.

   A bit of eccentricity (the movie takes place mostly in Scotland) and a moderate helping of opera keeps the movie from singing an aria composed entirely of cliches. 

   A successful London financier, Danielle Macdonald's Millie has always wanted to be an opera singer. Early on, Millie walks away from a lucrative promotion at her firm. She heads for rural Scotland where she hopes to be accepted as a student by Megan Geoffrey-Bishop (Joanna Lumley), an irascible former diva in need of extra bucks.

   Millie not only sacrifices money, she also leaves her London-based boyfriend (Shazad Latif) and faces a torrent of abuse from Geoffrey-Bishop, who peppers the movie with acerbic one-liners.

   A sullen handyman (Hugh Skinner) does Geoffrey-Bishop's bidding but puts up with her because he, too, is a budding singer.

   The town has one inn, presided over by a flinty, kilt-wearing gentleman (Gary Lewis) who roots for Millie’s success.

    I don't know whether Macdonald (Patti Cakes, Dumplin,' and French Exit) and Skinner did their own singing, but their characters play off one another with ease. 

     Macdonald is determined enough to make the far-fetched credible, and Skinner has brooding Heathcliff-level charm. Lumley makes the most of an opportunity to play a venomous taskmaster who, of course, really cares about her students.

   The music -- from various operas including Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro -- elevates material that might otherwise have left director Ben Lewin (The Catcher Was a Spy and The Sessions) with nothing to do but trample his way across well trod ground.

'Bird Box': a wan helping of horror

Sandra Bullock joins the post-apocalyptic fray in Bird Box, a movie about a woman trying to find safety for herself and two small children. The situation is dire because the world has been ravaged by a lethal menace that, following current movie fashion, never is really defined. All that's clear is that those who have the misfortune of looking at the world will die, mostly by suicide. Normal vision has become fatal. Director Susanne Bier quickly gets down to business: Bullock's Malorie and her two charges (Vivien Lyra Blair and Juian Edwards) must negotiate a dangerous river to reach their only hope for safety -- and they must accomplish this goal while wearing blindfolds. The movie shifts between this river trip and events that occurred five years earlier when a flight to safety brought a pregnant Malorie into the home of Douglas (John Malkovich). There, a variety of refugees from the ill-defined terror try to survive. These include another pregnant woman (Danielle Macdonald) and a veteran (Trevante Rhodes) who leads an expedition (via GPS) to obtain groceries. The tensions in the house unfold in reasonably predictable fashion until the narrative catches up with itself and rejoins Malorie's river expedition. Comparisons with the far better A Quiet Place seem inevitable with Bird Box coming up a loser in any game of compare and contrast. Bullock gives a strong, fiercely determined performance; the rest of the cast is in equally good form. But in trying to surpass generic horror, Bird Box achieves only limited success.

Can she rap her way out of Jersey?

Gritty and energetic, Patti Cake$ gives Danielle Macdonald a breakout role.

It's important to know that Patti Cake$, a movie about the emergence of a female rapper, takes place in the lower-class depths of New Jersey. First-time writer/director Geremy Jasper understands that for some folks, Jersey can be the place that nurtures them and the place they most want to escape. This dual pull infuses Patti Cake$ with dynamism.

Jasper tells the story of Patti Dombrowski, played by Australian actress Danielle Macdonald. A heavy-set young woman, Patti dreams of shaking the world with her rap lyrics.

It's easy to accuse Patti Cake$ of being a formula job about a no-name woman who tries to buck the odds and make it big. It's also fair. Patti Cake$ qualifies as a kind of a rap Rocky built around a female character who's taunted by neighborhood jerks who derisively call her "Dumbo," a nickname she's been saddled with since childhood.

Fortunately, there's more to Patti Cake$ than the formula suggests. Among other things, it introduces audiences to Macdonald, who brings swagger, pathos and an ability to rap to the screen.

At 23, Macdonald's Patti calls herself "Killa-P" or "Patti Cake$," alter egos that help her survive the hard life to which she has been assigned.

So let's be clear. I'm not a rap enthusiast, but I recognize that rap requires a significant skill set: the ability to rhyme, the ability to create a narrative -- and, perhaps above all, a vocal dexterity that can turn a voice into an instrument of street poetry, blunt assertion, and staccato riffs.

I've read that Macdonald never had rapped before landing the part. I don't know who schooled her in the fine points of rapping, but she's plenty convincing as the driving force behind a group called PBNJ, initials derived from peanut butter and New Jersey.

Joining Patti in PBNJ are Hareesh (Siddharth Dhananjay) and a character who dubs himself Bastard the Antichrist (Mamoudou Athie). A strange, nearly silent dude, Bastard lives in a shack in the woods and provides music and rhythms for the group.

Jasper mixes kitchen-sink grit and fairy tale aspiration to create a movie of power and pulse.

Patti, who works as a bar tender, lives with her mother (Bridget Everett) and her ailing grandmother (Cathy Moriarty). Mom, who once aspired to be a singer, drinks too much and relies on Patti to help keep the family afloat financially. Mom also makes fun of Patti's dreams.

But Mom is an alcoholic with a twist; she actually can sing; her abilities come into play during the film's appropriately rousing finale.

Populated by the aging and embittered, the bar in which Patti works stands as a metaphor for dead-end Jersey lives that wind up stewing in a shot-and-a-beer world they'll never escape and which Patti longs to flee.

Patti's role model is a rapper and impresario known as O-Z (Sahr Ngaujah), a member of rap royalty who lives like a pasha in a beautifully appointed home where Patti finds herself working a party after landing a catering job. Patti decides to take a chance and rap for O-Z, who cruelly dismisses her, accusing her of being a "culture vulture," a white person who appropriates black culture for their own purposes. I wish the movie had allowed for a little more reflection about that, but it clearly sets up O-Z as a rap elitist, one more obstacle for Patti to overcome.

The movie soothes some of the sting of cultural appropriation because "Bastard" is black and because Hareesh, who works in a pharmacy, has Middle Eastern roots. PBNJ is a multi-cultural experience.

Audiences pretty much will know where Patti Cake$ is headed, but its familiar path is paved with a Jersey spirit that's reinforced by the introduction of a Bruce Springsteen song during the end credits.

Not surprisingly, the movie ends at a contest in Newark where wannabe rap stars square off against one another. It's a fitting denouement for a movie that, like its main character, succeeds in firmly planting its feet and announcing, "I'm here. Deal with it."

In the movie, the period in the preceding sentence probably would be followed by a profane exclamation point, a word beginning with "m" and ending with "rs." And, yes, there's an "f" in the middle.