Two helpings of genre

'THE CURED:' A ZOMBIE FILM WITH MORE THAN BITE

I'm sick of zombies, so it tells you something that I found The Cured to be a surprisingly effective movie based on a reasonably intelligent screenplay. My positive reaction also may have something to do with the fact that the movie takes place in Ireland and features a strong cast. Here's the set-up: A strange virus has turned many ordinary Irish men and women into vicious flesh eaters. Much damage has been done, but a cure has been developed. Many of those who were attacking their fellow citizens again have achieved normality. There are three catches: First, those cured of this terrible virus remember the havoc they wreaked. Second, some 25 remaining sufferers -- all locked in a secure facility -- have proven resistant to the cure. Third, those who never were infected are brutally prejudiced against those who were. Early on, Senan (Sam Keeley), a cured man, is released from quarantine and taken in by his sister-in-law (Ellen Page), a woman who lost her husband in an attack and who now lives with her young son. The movie may strike some as an allegory about AIDS or some other terrible affliction that produces both physical suffering and social stigma. Director David Freyne creates a chilly atmosphere as he sharpens a conflict between Senan and one of his newly released quarantine buddies (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor). It may be far from perfect, but The Cured has more on its mind than grit and gore. It also benefits from a cast that knows how to make us feel as if what we're watching is grounded in a world populated by real people.

'MIDNIGHTERS' HINGES ON ISSUES OF TRUST

A couple drives down a lonely wooded road on New Year's Eve. If you've ever seen a horror movie or a thriller, you know that it won't be long before this husband and wife will hit something and their lives will change course. Of course, husband and wife, who've been drinking a bit, slam into a man who's standing in the middle of the road, as if waiting to be hit. From that point on, it seems as if Midnighters will be another horror movie about a dead person who refuses to stay dead. But director Julius Ramsay's debut feature proves more ambitious. The movie becomes a story about eroding trust among a group of characters whose troubles begin when they agree to cover up the accident that kicks off the movie. Lindsey (Alex Essoe) and Jeff (Dylan McTee) bumble their way through the initial cover-up. When Lindsey's younger sister (Perla Haney-Jardine) shows up, the script adds another layer of complication. The plot (and alas some brutal violence) thickens when a man identifying himself as a detective (Ward Horton) arrives, presumably to pose routine questions about the accident. The story seems an excuse to create a situation in which abundant betrayals either can be threatened or unleashed. The screenplay was written by the director's brother, Alston, who once worked as a speechwriter for Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. I wish Midnighters hadn't gone quite so far with a couple of torture scenes, but -- all in all -- the movie qualifies as a promising first feature.

Two women in a world without power

We've seen so many post-apocalyptic movies that if the real thing ever arrives, it's likely to feel anti-climactic. Still, audience familiarity with end-of-the-world scenarios hasn't stopped director Patricia Rozema from adapting a 1996 novel by Jean Hegland. In Into the Forest, Ellen Page and Evan Rachel Wood play sisters living in the northwestern woods with their father (Callum Keith Rennie). Trouble arrives when the family's home is engulfed by the darkness of a power outage. It soon becomes clear that the outage is neither temporary nor isolated. For reasons that never are explained, the outage has afflicted the entire US, maybe the whole world. Eventually Rozema's movie becomes a kind of meditation on living without electrical power, which means no Internet, no recorded music, no lights or phones. After a few weeks, gas is impossible to find. Page's Nell takes a pragmatic approach to survival while Wood's Eva harbors the illusion that she still can pursue her dream of becoming a dancer. Although mostly a two-hander, Rozema makes room for some men including a young man (Max Minghella) who tries to entice Nell into heading east with him, and an unwanted intruder (Michael Edlund) whose presence adds an ominous dimension to the sisters' struggle. You probably can tell from what I've said that Dad doesn't make it much past the first act. Page and Wood play an interesting duet, although Rozema can't always maintain enough tension, and the story too obviously becomes a fable about the power of sisterhood. Still, Into the Forest can't be accused of following the usual eruptive formula; it may be the quietest post-apocalyptic movie ever made.

The message outpaces the movie

When a gay New Jersey detective learns that she has stage-four lung cancer, she embarks on a lonely fight to ensure that her pension benefits will be awarded to her domestic partner.

If that story sounds familiar, it's probably because Laurel Hester's struggles in Ocean County, N.J., were well-covered by the media.

In 2005, Hester battled with a board of freeholders who argued that as a lesbian, she wasn't entitled to the same rights as married heterosexual police officers.

Freehold, the resultant movie, makes convincing points about gay rights, but never finds an entirely convincing way of turning them into a compelling drama.

Julianne Moore (as Hester) and Ellen Page (as her partner, Stacie Andree) act out a script that easily could have been reduced to bullet points about equality.

In addition, some of the more interesting aspects of the screenplay (Hester's initial reluctance to be identified as gay for fear of reprisals by her fellow officers) are too quickly resolved.

In a piece of oddball casting, Steve Carell turns up as Steven Goldstein, a gay Jewish activist. Wearing a yarmulka, Carell bursts through the film's often bland surface with the force of a marching band invading a library.

Director Peter Sollett (Raising Victor Vargas) wrings emotion out of Hester's losing battle with cancer, and Moore certainly does her best to look as if she's on death's door.

Still, the biggest surprise in this undernourished drama centers on Michael Shannon, who plays Hester's partner, a cop who may not be fluent in the language of diversity, but whose conscience and decency lead him in the right direction.

It's not exactly a compliment to say that Shannon's Dane Wells might have made a more interesting subject than either of the movie's two principals. After all, Wells had nothing to gain in the fight other than to act out of his conviction that his partner had been a good cop who deserved his loyalty and support.

'X-Men' + time travel = a winner

It's difficult -- perhaps impossible -- to say anything critical about the glut of comic-book movies without sounding like a cultural elitist and, even worse, a scold.

Still, I can't proceed with what's going to be a positive and even enthusiastic review of X-Men: Days of Future Past without expessing a little dismay about the way Hollywood continues to cannibalize the backwaters of popular culture.

This move toward the mainstream turns the once-forbidden fruit of comics into tentpole entertainments that can't help but diminish the pleasure of those who shared in what once amounted to a semi-secret society based on avidity and accumulated knowledge, much of it useless.

There, that's off my chest.

Now about X-Men. The latest installment is a superior helping of a big-screen Marvel comic that boasts creative special effects, a mostly involving story and some very good acting.

The story, which brings together various generations of X-men, begins in a horrible dystopian, war-riddled future. Things are so bad that Patrick Stewart's Professor X and Ian McKellen's Magneto have united in a last-ditch attempt to stave off the destruction of humanity.

To accomplish their goal, Professor X and Magneto employ the consciousness-shifting powers of Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) to send Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) back to 1973. Wolverine's time-travel mission: to prevent the assassination of industrialist Dr. Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) and, thus, alter the course of a history that otherwise would lead to wholesale slaughter.

Director Bryan Singer, who hasn't directed an X-Men movie since 2003, judiciously uses the '70s -- reminding us of everything from lava lamps, to the Vietnam War to Richard Nixon. Wisely, though, Singer doesn't overwhelm the story with the events and curiosities of the '70s: He uses them as punctuation to create an effective mixture of humor and gravity.

Upon returning to the '70s, Wolverine must locate younger versions of Professor X and Magneto, played respectively by James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender.
It's a bit of a stretch to think that McAvoy's Charles Xavier could mature into someone who looks like Patrick Stewart. But there's no faulting McAvoy's performance as a dissolute and cynical young man who has yet to find his inner nobility.

Fassbender, who like McAvoy has played this role before, is entirely convincing as the young Magneto, summoning the out-sized polarities of a personality that seems at ease with both its humane and malevolent impulses.

The key to the plot's resolution can be found in the character of Raven, a.k.a. Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), the shape-shifting mutant who can avert total doom and who also looks sleek in her form-fitting blue outfit.

The themes of this installment mimic those of previous movies. Society's mutants -- those who represent upward steps on the evolutionary ladder -- are scorned by those who either are threatened by their presence or want to harness mutant powers as a means of advancing personal agendas.

As one who has the latter ambition, Dinklage's Trask comes as close as we get to an identifiable villain. Trask has invented destructive creatures called Sentinels, which seem to threaten both humanity and mutants.

What else needs saying?

Not much really. Singer -- in his first X-men movie since 2003's X-Men 2 -- cooks up some fine special effects, among the most impressive, the elevation of an entire stadium that hovers perilously above the White House.

In all, X-Men: Days of Future Past proves entertaining and well-constructed, a helping of comic-book adventure that knows how to wink at itself without undermining its loftier purposes. These mostly boil down to a question as simple as, "Can't we all get along?"
Not all of the X-men are given equal time in this edition, but if Days of Future Past -- a title that sounds a bit too much like a grammar lesson -- stands as an exemplary addition to the never ending cycle of comic-book movies. If we have to have them, they should at least be this much fun.

'The East' poses difficult questions

Acting and intrigue help elevate this thriller about eco-terrorism.

The eco-thriller The East deals with the often-fraught relationship between conscience and action, inviting us to ponder whether the two ever can be brought into complete agreement.

The movie has the right team to consider such a question. Actress Brit Marling co-wrote The East with director Zal Batmanglij, who directed Marling in Sound of My Voice (2011), an effective and involving drama about life inside a cult.

Marling, who stars in The East and who also starred in the haunting Another Earth, is an unusual actress; she seems to play characters who are both doers and observers, projecting a divided sense of self that's full of puzzle-like complexity.

In The East -- a thriller that focuses on a committed band of eco-terrorists -- Marling portrays Sarah, a woman who works for a company that provides security services to corporations that are fearful of becoming targets for environmental extremists.

Headed by a no-nonsense boss (Patricia Clarkson), the firm seems as concerned about profits as it is about protecting lives and repuations. Not a client? In danger? Too bad.

Ambitious and calculating, Sarah leads a double life. She lives with a boyfriend who doesn't know exactly what she does. He believes she's on a business trip to Dubai while she's actually infiltrating The East, a band that conducts trageted anti-corporate operations called "jams."

Benji (Alexander Skarsgard), the quietly magnetic leader of the group, presides over sessions featuring lots of hugs, some of them dispensed during an oddball game of spin-the-bottle. The group lives in a burned-out shell of house in the protective seclusion of a forest.

Two members of The East stand out. Ellen Page proves entirely convincing as Izzy, an eco-ideologue who wrings all feeling out of her decisions. Toby Kebbell portrays Doc, a disillusioned physician with first-hand experience about the perils of Big Pharma.

The members of The East are smart and not entirely unsympathetic. When they're not "jamming," they attempt to live by authentic communal values, and they seem to care about one another.

They're also Freegans, part of the culture that lives on food discarded before it spoils. They seem to have the courage of their dumpster-diving convictions.

The screenplay pulls Sarah in and out of the group, occasionally returning her to corporate headquarters where she reports on activities of The East.

Predictably, Sarah begins to develop personal relationships within the group, attachments that further fragment her already divided life. We know that Sarah eventually will grapple with confounding moral questions: Where do her sympathies lie? Can she accept extreme measures in pursuit of morally defensible ends? Can harming people -- even obvious corporate villains -- ever be justified? Can there be "revolutionary" action without collateral damage?

Think of The East as a better-than-average political thriller, though not a perfect one. The "jams" conducted by The East aren't always credible, and it would have been interesting to know a little more about Marling's character. Still, The East qualifies as a drama with something important on its mind. That, strong performances and a fair measure of old-fashioned tension separate The East from a crowded thriller pack.

Old material in an ancient city

Woody Allen's To Rome With Love is no valentine.

Watching Woody Allen in his new film To Rome With Love, I found it impossible not to wonder whether, at 76, Allen hasn't lost a little something off his fast ball -- at least as an actor. Playing a retired opera director who believes he has discovered a gifted new tenor, Allen's one-liners arrive a bit late, like a tardy traveler after the train already has left the station.

But watching a cranky Allen do his cranky thing isn't the only problem with To Rome With Love: Allen isn't at his best behind the camera, either: To Rome with Love seems consistently off-key, a comedy that's unable to find a sustained rhythm.

In To Rome With Love, Allen plays Jerry, a man who visits Rome with his wife (Judy Davis) to meet his daughter (Alison Pill) and her new fiance (Flavio Parenti). When it comes to delivering a line, by the way, Davis doesn't miss a beat.

Jerry also meets the father of the future groom (Fabio Armiliato), an undertaker blessed with a beautiful singing voice -- but one he's only able to use while singing in the shower.

The undertaker's plight leads to a sight gag that stands as the movie's comic centerpiece, but you can see it coming all the way from the Via Veneto, and, once revealed, the joke is repeated enough to lose its edge.

Allen isn't only interested in Jerry's desperation. As if writing short stories for The New Yorker, he weaves a variety of brief tales into a series of alternating vignettes on love Roman style or, more precisely, Allen style -- adding a footnote about the perils of celebrity, which doesn't really amount to much.

In these additional stories, Alec Baldwin plays an architect who's revisiting Rome. Once an ambitious young man, Baldwin's John is a study in capitulation; he now designs shopping malls. Early on, John runs into a young architecture student (Jesse Eisenberg) who lives in the Trastevere neighborhood, John's former haunt.

Eisenberg's character shares an apartment and a relationship with Sally (Greta Gerwig), but he's smitten by one of Sally's visiting friends, a young actress played by Ellen Page.

Rather than developing into a real character, John becomes a kind of spectral observer: He's constantly commenting on Eisenberg's moves, warning him that if he falls for Page's Monica, he'll surely be sorry.

Allen uses another of the movie's stories to comment on the perils of celebrity. Roberto Benigni plays Leopoldo, a nondescript Roman who suddenly finds himself hounded by photographers and TV journalists eager to record his every thought -- no matter how banal. The joke here centers on the fact that Benigni's character is being stalked by an avid but fickle media that turns him into an attention junkie before shifting its gaze to someone else.

In yet another story, a provincial husband (Alessandro Tiberi) is forced to introduce a gorgeous hooker (Penelope Cruz) to his conservative Roman relatives, claiming that she's really his wife. This farcical situation arises after the young man's real wife (Alessandra Mastronardi) gets lost looking for a hair stylist in Rome, and winds up in a flirtatious relationship with an Italian actor (Antonio Albanese).

The point: Through these adventitious adulterous relationships, husband and wife are able to unlock their libidinous vaults -- and grow.

The fault here lies not with the cast, but with material that's too anemic to sustain full-blooded drama or robust farce. Even the Roman setting can't disguise the fact that Allen seems to be treading water.

To Rome With Love might have been unbearable had it not been for Rome itself. Allen and cinematographer Darius Khondji bathe the Eternal City in affectionate light as they take us through some of its major sites, seldom veering off the beaten track. But even that only goes so far.

Allen's final shot -- a brass band playing Volare on the Spanish Steps -- doesn't vibrate with the expected magic, and as I took it in, I felt much as I did throughout most of this pleasantly mediocre addition to Allen's amazingly large collection: It just wasn't enough.