'Pinocchio' told in a darker register

 

   If you appreciate stop-motion animation, you'll no doubt be enthralled by Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, an animated work co-directed by del Toro and Mark Gustafson. 

   I've read that del Toro has better served the familiar story's source material, a tale first told in 1883 by Carlo Collodi. Never having read the original, I'll take the word of others, notably because del Toro has made a darker version than we might expect, considering the story 's Disneyfied past.

   Note, however, that del Toro includes a lengthy World War II segment, which, if memory serves, never made it into Collodi's 19th-century work. Neither did Benito Mussolini, the pompous dictator who shows up here.

   Ostensibly a musical, the movie is more notable for its often gloomy tones than for any soaring musical work. 

   Ever obsessed with the horrors of fascism and the dread of death, Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth and more recently Nightmare Alley) works his favorite themes into this overlong movie while also acknowledging religion, albeit in somewhat ambiguous fashion. 

   Early on, Pinocchio's dad (David Bradley 's Geppetto) is seen restoring an altarpiece of Jesus on the cross. In this version, Gepetto isn't a Santa's workshop kind of craftsman. 

   The outline of the familiar story remains. When Geppetto's beloved son (Gregory Mann as both the real-life son and Pinocchio) is killed by a bomb, Geppetto drowns his sorrows in alcohol. Once a noble craftsman and loving father, Geppetto becomes an inconsolable drunk. 

   A Wood Sprite (Tilda Swinton) brings the wooden Pinocchio to life. Although death is very much on the movie's mind, Pinocchio himself has more lives than a cat. He can be killed and brought back to life. In one adventure after another, he tries to win his father's love.

   Ewan McGregor gives voice to Sebastian Cricket, who also serves as the movie's narrator. Christoph Waltz turns up as the voice of Count Volpe, the exploitative entrepreneur who tries to turn Pinocchio into a sideshow attraction. 

   Del Toro has done his best to keep Pinocchio from looking like a lovable puppet, making no attempt to conceal Pinocchio's wooden origins. He's not exactly kindling but he's no cute make-believe boy, either.

   I'm not sure how kids will respond to this version of Pinocchio. I wouldn't want to deny the creativity and care of del Toro's filmmaking but too often I found the movie more impressive than enjoyable. 

Say this: 'Birds of Prey' flies fast

Margot Robbie portrays Harley Quinn in a kick-ass display of ... well ... kickass.

Gotham used to be denominated by Batman and his implacable foes, fiends such as The Joker, The Penguin and The Riddler. If you go to the movies, you know that times have changed.

Joker, to cite one example, has become a full-fledged mental case, the living embodiment of urban loneliness and crushed dreams. Joaquin Phoenix, who's about to win an Oscar for his unnerving portrayal, took the Joker out of the comic-book realm and created a figure as disturbing as the one Michael Rooker created in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.

Now comes Birds of Prey, which tries to put Gotham back in a comic-book box, turning the movie over to Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), a character who made her big-screen debut in the woeful Suicide Squad. Director Cathy Yan and screenwriter Christina Hudson give Robbie a platform on which to display her version of crazy. Call it a mixture of girl-power and rage.

The set-up: Having just broken up with the Joker, Harley’s emotional pigtails are drooping. She’s also very angry and when Harley gets angry, explosions likely will follow. So will fights in which Harley will display her phenomenal skills. Her brutal capacities play against her little-girl looks. Make that deranged little girl looks.

Fast-moving and devoted to the idea that action can’t be too excessive, Robbie and her cohorts seldom slow the movie’s roll as it romps across Gotham, a city that has given Harley an accent that’s pure New York.

Say, this: No one will accuse Robbie of not having a good time as she fights the movie's principal villain, Ewan McGregoe’s Roman Sionis, a.k.a. Black Mask. As is appropriate for the genre, McGregor does some scenery-chewing -- with relish, of course.

As the movie develops, Harley encounters several women who have the potential to becoming sidekicks. These include a Gotham detective (Rosie Perez), a singer (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) who plies her trade at Roman's night club and goes by the name of Black Canary. A revenge-seeking woman (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) has made the crossbow her weapon of choice. She's The Huntress. Harley also meets a teen-age thief (Ella Jay Basco), an expert pickpocket who’s able to keep pace with Harley in the profanity department.

Not all of the action can be classified as comic-book harmless. Early on, Harley jumps from a stage onto the legs of a seated man. Bones break. Roman's henchman (an effective Chris Messina) inflicts punishment on his boss's enemies by peeling the skin off their faces.

To her credit, Yan gives each of the women personality and independence. Although Robbie produced the movie, she doesn’t hog it. The basic formula finds women overcoming differences to fight a common enemy.

Yan plays with the movie’s structure, manipulating time to allow for the introduction of backstories but generally keeps pedal to the metal. After a while, the glut of action loses some of its excitement and the movie never pretends to explore any thematic depths.

No, the point here is ass-kicking sisterhood with comic flourishes that land with varying degrees of success. Still, it’s not easy to dismiss a movie in which Haley acquires a pet hyena and names the animal Bruce. A reference to the Gotham of tradition as in, say, Bruce Wayne?

Birds of Prey arrives with a subtitle that can’t be said without taking a breath: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn. You get the idea. Freed from the Joker's influence, a liberated Harley emerges. But what's with the word "emancipation?" Did Joker free her? If so is that really liberation?

But wait. I'm reading too much into a movie that isn't out to test anyone's interpretive powers.

Birds of Prey doesn't allow for much by way of reflection. At an economical 109-minutes in length, the movie plays a steady game of hurry-up, which may be a good thing because it doesn’t exactly have a lot on its mind. Part costume party, part girl-power explosion and part grunt-and-stunt festival, Birds of Prey passes in a blur.

'Doctor Sleep:' a sequel we didn’t need

Ewan McGregor stars in a labored rendition of Stephen King’s follow-up to The Shining.

Perhaps as a way of establishing its bona fides, Doctor Sleep makes what struck me as strained references (I'll reveal no more) to The Shining, the movie it follows some 39 years after its release. I won't say more, but I begin this way because, for me, Doctor Sleep stands as an act of imposture, an attempt wring more from a story that already had been told. Of course, it's difficult to call the movie a ripoff: The movie stems from a 2013 sequel that Shining author Stephen King himself wrote.

In this overlong edition — the movie clocks in at 2 1/2 hours — Ewan McGregor plays a grown-up version of Danny Torrance, the kid from the original movie. Adrift in alcohol and dereliction, Danny winds up in a small New Hampshire town, where he joins AA and tries to make peace with the terrifying visions in his head. He receives help from an AA pal (Cliff Curtis) and from his mentor, played in the original by Scatman Crothers and in the sequel by Carl Lumbly.

To give the movie a plot, Danny hooks up with Abra Stone (Kyliegh Currran), a girl who has mighty shining powers; i.e., she can see things in other dimensions and project herself into distant places without leaving her bedroom. She also sees visions that scare her and are supposed to do the same to us.

The dread, in this case, stems from a traveling band of folks led by Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson), a woman whose extra-long life is sustained by sucking the life out of those with the ability to shine. Zahn McClarnon plays Crow Daddy, Rose’s devoted number two.

Lest the supply of demonic fiends runs short, Rose recruits a young blond woman (Emily Alyn Lind to her evil cause. It doesn’t take long for Lind’s character, who's given the charming nickname of Snakebite Andi, to become as bad as the rest of the group.

What any of this has to do with Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 original seems marginal, although by the end, director Mike Flanagan transports the story to Colorado for a big showdown between Danny and Rose at the fabled Overlook Hotel, which like lots of ‘80s real estate, has become a mere shadow of itself. Danny must save Abra and rid the world of this pesky group of soul-sucking demons.

More muddled than the usual King offering, Doctor Sleep can at times seem ridiculous as it groans under the weight of having to connect with its predecessor. The movie's title, by the way, derives from Danny’s ability to help the aging slip gently into death after he lands a job at a hospice. Just like falling asleep he assures the dying.

Stuck playing a character battling his inner demons, McGregor doesn’t do much to fill the movie’s center. Ferguson, embodying a series of adjectives -- sexy, demonic, vicious and snide — deserves credit for hitting the right notes.

I’m not going to belabor this one. Shining fans seeking a second helping probably will give the movie an initial boost, but even diehards will have to admit that Flanagan (Oculus) doesn’t have Kubrick’s visual sense nor can he imbue his movie with the brooding grandiosity that made the original seem like a major movie.

I don’t know if The Shining should be called a classic, but it still has some sway. This one? Just another day at the multiplex — or maybe considering its length, a day and a half.

Shooting up in Scotland again

A highly stylized and very loopy sequel to 1996's Trainspotting.

That fun-loving, heroin-shooting gang from Trainspotting, director Danny Boyle's 1996 stylistic plunge into down-and-out life in Edinburgh, is back for a second helping in T2 Trainspotting. In what amounts to a case of big-screen recidivism, Boyle allows echoes from the first movie to resound throughout a boisterous second helping. Boyle brings non-stop energy to a movie that attempts to create poignancy about the way childhood friendships can devolve into tattered adult lives.

A simply plot involves attempts by the group to open a high-end brothel, but the real fun of T2 consists of reuniting with familiar characters who retain substantial amounts of their old humor, uncontrollable brutalities and criminal preoccupations. These guys are all 20 years older, but not a hell of a lot wiser.

When Ewan McGregor's Mark returns to Scotland from Amsterdam, he's hardly surprised to learn that his former cronies are upset with him for having absconded with funds they all should have shared.

The movie's gallery of maladjusted men includes Mark's pals Simon (Jonny Lee Miller) and Spud (Ewen Bremner). Then there's the psychopathic Begbie (Robert Carlyle), the thuggish lout who escapes from jail to seek revenge against Mark and to reunite with a wife and son who aren't exactly overjoyed about his return. Sharing space with Begbie is like living with someone who keeps a loaded gun on the nightstand.

Part of the movie's enjoyment involves seeing how these actors have aged. Sporting a closely cropped haircut and neatly trimmed mustache, Carlyle seems to have added bulk that makes Begbie as physically threatening as ever.

Still showing traces of his youth, Simon has taken up with a Bulgarian refugee (Anjela Nedyalkova), promising her that she'll be in charge of the brothel he wants to build, euphemistically calling it a spa in what John Hodge's mildly satirical screenplay offers as an example of Edinburgh's march toward gentrification.

T2 doesn't have much on its mind, but it's buoyed by Boyle's relentlessly stylized approach, which includes flashbacks, quick cuts, freeze frames, overly saturated colors and lots of splash.

Trainspotting was seen as a breakthrough film. T2 lacks the electrifying juice or novelty of its predecessor, but it's enjoyable in a loopy way -- even if it is an exercise in superfluity. Credit Boyle with specializing in upbeat movies about downbeat lives.

If you're looking for a better movie about what happens when former pals reunite, try Donald Cried, a comic indie set in Rhode Island during a bleak winter. A Wall Street banker (Jesse Wakeman) returns to his hometown after his grandmother passes away. Wakeman's Peter has the misfortune of losing his wallet on the bus trip he took to his desolate destination. The subsequent lack of funds forces Peter to hook up with an old high school buddy (Kris Avedisian). Avedisian, who also co-wrote and directed, plays Donald, a character who manages to be both innocent and offensive at the same time. Avedisian's Donald is the high school guy who was tolerated by his buddies, who always tried to keep him at arm's length. Inadvertently abrasive in nearly everything he does, the shaggy, ill-kempt Donald never seems to have left his high-school self behind. Wakeman and Avedisian play off one another in ways that are funny, nervy and realistic. Avedisian's Donald is a wounded soul who nonetheless retains his pluck, and that makes Donald Cried a weirdly bracing comedy about the clash between those who want to leave their hometown behind and those who never will escape its hold.

'Beauty and the Beast:' One more time

Disney's reprise of its 1991 animated hit should please old fans and make some new ones.

The idea that love can break the spell of a powerful curse sounds as familiar to us as fairy tales themselves. In the case of Beauty and the Beast -- as imagined by Disney in a new live action version of its 1991 animated edition -- the Beast, a callous prince who has been cursed by a haggard old woman, must find love before the last petal drops off a rose kept in his dank castle. Absent such a love, the Beast and a gaggle of courtiers who've been turned into inanimate objects forever will be doomed to their cursed fates.

Disney's lavish remake its 26-year-old animated classic, Beauty and the Beastt, created little by way of anticipatory excitement for me. I'm no fan of remakes that take advantage of advances in digital technology just to wow us, in this case with talking versions of a clock, a teapot, a candelabra and a feather duster. And, yes, these digitally created do-dads probably show more personality than some of the story's human characters.

Having said that, this version -- starring Emma Watson (Beauty), Dan Stevens (Beast) and directed by Bill Condon (Dreamgirls) -- has enough whimsy and amusement to satisfy those who also will be buoyed by reprises of the Alan Menken/Tim Rice musical numbers -- with a couple of new additions.

Much of the credit for the movie's engaging collection of talking bric-a-brac goes to the actors who supplied the voice work: Emma Thompson voices Mrs. Potts, the teacup; Stanley Tucci gives life to as Maestro Cadenza, a harpsichord; Gugu Mbatha-Raw adds her vocal prowess to Plumette, the feather duster. The voice behind Cogsworth, the clock, belongs to Ian McKellen; and Ewan McGregor can be heard as Lumiere, a dashing candelabra.

Condon spices things up with references to Busby Berkeley, a ton of production design, a major investment in costumes and a generally capable cast that includes Luke Evans as the impossibly conceited and ultimately duplicitous Gaston and Josh Gad as his loyal sidekick LeFou.

You've probably read that Disney has made LeFou a gay character. That may be daring for a Disney version of Beauty and the Beast, but nothing in this upbeat entertainment seems designed to take the glow off the movie's mass-appeal luster.

The film even neuters the Beast, who has been given a leonine countenance -- with horns and bad teeth added for the sake of fright. This Beast makes threats on which he fails to deliver, and isn't quite as self-assured in his menace as you might expect.

Still, he's softened by Beauty, and by the end, it's difficult to say that anyone would mind if the Beast remained a beast rather than returning to his more Disnified form as a devilishly handsome prince.

In a nice touch, Beauty and the Beast begin their rapprochement when Belle (Beauty) discovers that the Beast has a well-stocked library. She's an avid reader, evidently the only one in the tiny village she and her father (Kevin Kline) call home.

There have, of course, been numerous versions of this 18th century tale from Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Velqleneuve, including Jean Cocteau's landmark 1946 version, but classic stories seem capable of enduring as many retellings as anyone possibly could desire.

This one opts for a visual razzle-dazzle that plays against Watson's plucky but somewhat ordinary Belle. I wouldn't say that Condon and company achieve perfection, but they've provided a lively, entertaining version of Disney's animated entry from the 1990s.

If we were going to have another Beauty and the Beast, I'm not sure what more we could have justifiably asked or expected.

Spies in a world shorn of honor

Ewan McGregor and Stellan Skarsgard enrich Our Kind of Traitor, an engaging adaptation of a John le Carre thriller.

Almost any John le Carre novel has the potential to yield an intelligent, big-screen thriller. Adapted from a 2010 le Carre novel, Our Kind of Traitor proves the point, deftly luring us into a world populated by Russian mobsters, British academics, and British intelligence agents, all of them operating against backdrops that extend from Marrakech to Paris.

Perfectly timed to compete with the bloated drivel of summer, Our Kind of Traitor reminded me of the kind of movie pleasures I'd lately been missing, namely characters who find themselves in situations they couldn't possibly have anticipated and which prove morally taxing.

Early on, we meet Perry (Ewan McGregor) and his wife Gail (Naomi Harris), a couple vacationing in Marrakech in hopes of reviving a sagging marriage. Self-sufficient professionals, Perry and Gail are dining in a restaurant when Gail abruptly leaves to handle a business matter.

Left alone, Perry is approached by a convivial Russian (Stellan Skarsgard) who invites him to have a drink with his companions, a surly looking bunch. Perry reluctantly accepts, and soon finds himself accompanying Skarsgard's Dima to a party full of temptations, mostly in the form of drugs and women.

Because Dima belongs to the Russian mafia, these temptations come with obvious forebodings: Perry's crude, tattooed associates make no attempt to conceal their carnal appetites.

Full of robust charm and confidence, Dima assures Perry that he needn't be alarmed. He calls him "professor." He overpowers Perry's resistance with loudly expressed charm.

Of course, Dima has an ulterior motive. He wants Perry to transport a memory stick to London. As the man who launders Russian mob money, Dima says he'll name prominent Brits who are in cahoots with Russian crime czars. In return, he wants asylum for himself and his family.

The rest needn't be revealed here, but director Susanna White and screenwriter Hossein Amini treat le Carre's work kindly in a story that focuses on characters who are trying to get out of predicaments rather than penetrate secret inner sanctums.

Once Perry agrees to transport the memory stick, he's in over his head. A British operative (Damian Lewis) pushes Perry to become even more involved, arguing that he holds the key to saving Dima and his family.

Of course, betrayals and bureaucratic fumbles abound, as well as subterranean motivations in which money trumps anything resembling patriotism or honor.

In Dima, Our Kind of Traitor finds a terrific character. Entirely engaging, ebullient and tough, Dima makes no bones about having dirty hands. Yet, we understand Perry's fascination with him. Dina suggests something bigger and more life-affirming than his circumstances might have us believe, a deep understanding of the world's ways. He also knows how to use truth as weapon.

But it's not only plot and performance -- McGregor's best in a while -- that makes Our Kind of Traitor so intriguing; it's the movie's knowledge, acquired from le Carre, that the rot of barbarism can be found beneath the civilized veneer of societies that run on murderous greed. That attitude carries us past the movie's improbabilities and coincidences -- if not to greatness then at least to sustained interest.

In le Carre's fallen world, as made clear in the movie's gripping opening, there's always a chance that the purity of a snow-covered field will be stained with the blood of a beautiful innocent.

Great cast puts 'Osage' on the map

A family that goes way beyond dysfunctional.

The big-screen version of Tracy Letts's Pulitzer Prize winning play -- August: Osage County -- may not reach the cinematic stratosphere, but it mostly holds it own. Credit several stand-out performances in the movie's large (and talent heavy) ensemble.

Trimmed from three to two hours, the movie version of Osage County also benefits from the tart humor in Letts's screenplay.

Moreover, director John Wells, known mostly for great TV work such as ER and The West Wing, wisely recognizes that his cast and Letts's writing constitute the movie's strongest suit.

A slight alteration to the movie's ending takes a bit of the sting out of Letts's drama, but Wells and cinematographer Adrinao Goldman add at least one dimension that's difficult to capture on stage.

They make it clear that the drama emanates from the flat desolations of the Oklahoma landscape. This sense of place serves as sturdy foundation for a caustic view of an American family steeped in bitter discord.

The story begins when the family's poet father Beverly (Sam Shepard) vanishes from home, leaving his embittered, pill-popping wife Vi (Meryl Streep) to browbeat the three grown daughters she summons in the wake of her husband's unexplained absence.

Julia Roberts's Barbara arrives with her estranged husband (Ewan McGregor) and her teen-age daughter (Abigail Breslin). Julianne Nicholson plays Ivy, the daughter who stayed behind and has become her mother's caretaker. Juliette Lewis portrays Karen, the wayward daughter who brings her fiancé (Dermot Mulroney) with her for the visit.

Additional characters include Vi's Sister Mattie Fae (Margo Martindale); her husband Charles (Chris Cooper); and their grown son, known to the others as Little Charles (Benedict Cumberbatch).

Streep provides the centerpiece for this deranged family table. Her Vi, a woman suffering from mouth cancer, spews vitriol along with cigarette smoke. She's one of those cruel people who views her venomous attacks as necessary examples of truth telling.

In reality, Vi isn't quite so courageous: She's a woman with a mean streak as wide as the Oklahoma flatlands, one of those people who feels cheated by life and refuses to take it lying down.

Sporting a wig that covers Vi's chemo-assaulted hair, Streep gives the kind of showy performance that demands attention, but her's is not the best work in Osage County.

For that, you need to look to look to Martindale, whose Mattie Fae has a totally lived-in feel. The same goes for Cooper: His Charles is given one of the play's more moving moments. In the face of so much craziness, he becomes a spokesman for simple decency.

Equally good are Roberts as the daughter with guts enough to stand up to her mother, and Nicholson, whose character acquires unexpected strength as the movie progresses. Lewis might be the weakest of the sisters, but when the material calls for Karen to have her moment, she delivers.

Misty Upham appears as the Native American housekeeper hired by Beverly to care for Vi. She's used by Letts as the play's one stabilizing presence.

Wells finds touching moments amid the comic clangor, which -- on screen -- tends to be overwhelmed by a slew of late-picture revelations. There's screwed-up, and then there's "too damned screwed up," a condition of which Osage County becomes an unfortunate example.

Still, a lunch scene packs plenty of comic punch, and there's enough fine acting here to keep August: Osage County on the map -- if not to make it one of the year's most highly regarded destinations.

Fishing for romance in an unlikely spot

Everything about the romantic comedy Salmon Fishing in the Yemen sounds unappealing, maybe even ridiculous. Here's the drill: A wealthy sheikh (Amir Waked) wants to create a river for salmon in the parched deserts of Yemen. His British financial representative (Emily Blunt) asks a fisheries expert (Ewan McGregor) to design the salmon habitat, a multi-million dollar task that he views as sheer folly. McGregor's Fred, who works for the government, resists until he's pushed by his boss who's being pushed by his boss, Kristin Scott Thomas as a manipulative PR woman who works for the Prime Minister. Scott Thomas's Patricia Maxwell thinks that the salmon project might be a welcome rarity: a feel-good story from the usually distressed Middle East. Director Lasse Halstrom works his way through Fred's crumbling marriage, which must fall apart for romance to blossom between Fred and Blunt's Harriet. Harriet's slowly developing attraction for Fred also faces an obstacle: Harriet is involved with a British soldier serving in Afghanistan. When she receives word that her beau is missing and presumed dead, she goes into the expected funk. McGregor does a nice job of allowing Fred's charms slowly to peek through the character's geeky devotion to fish. Scott Thomas makes spectacularly officious PR woman, and Waked, as the sheikh, projects wisdom and whimsy as a ruler with an outlandish dream and equally outlandish amounts of money to pay for it. But Salmon Fishing in the Yemen is only intermittently rewarding, with Lasstrom serving up a bit low-key humor and a plot that's not particularly compelling. See it for McGregor's charming turn or, better yet, wait for the DVD. Know this though: McGregor and Blunt have a lot more to offer than Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried, the stars of Hallstrom's last romance, Dear John.

A gay father and his straight son

Christopher Plummer brings charm to Beginners.

Beginners has received lavish praise in most quarters. I wish I shared the enthusiasm of many of my colleagues, but I found the movie a mixed achievement, best when focusing on the relationship between a straight son (Ewan McGregor) and his gay father (Christopher Plummer); weakest when dealing with the son's burgeoning love affair with a French actress (Melanie Laurent).

Alternating between scenes in which McGregor's Oliver pursues a relationship with Laurent's Anna and flashbacks to Plummer's character's final years, the movie doesn't dig deeply into either situation, suggesting more than it dramatizes.

Here's the twist: Plummer's Hal didn't come out until his wife of 38 years passed away. Hal was 75 when he began openly exploring the gay life, pursuing his gayness with personal gusto and organizational frenzy. He hosts gay movie nights, gay letter-writing sessions (protests mostly) and other activities that revolve around his long-hidden sexuality.

To its credit, Beginners is not a story about Hal's hypocrisy. Within the context of Hal's repressive times, his behavior made some sense. His wife, Georgia (a wonderful Mary Page Keller) knew Hal was gay before they married. She thought she could change him. By the time she realized she couldn't, Hal and Georgia had established a life together, which they both liked.

Besides, Mom developed a set of sardonic defenses to cope with the situation. For my money, she's the movie's most interesting and least explored character.

In what amounts to its central irony, Beginners has Hal contracting lung cancer soon after leaving the closet. He's most alive at a time when he's dying, maintaining a relationship with a joyful younger man (Goran Visnjic).

Director Mike Mills, who previously directed the indie hit Thumbsucker, includes some gimmicky touches: insertion of old photos and panels from a cartoon series on which Oliver's working. Oliver provides a narration that stresses the peculiarities and similarities of the different time periods the movie covers. There's even a talking dog -- or at least one whose thoughts are projected on the screen with subtitles.

Oliver takes over Hal's Jack Russell terrier after his father's death, an event that has already transpired when the movie opens. That leaves Oliver to tell the story in flashbacks as events trigger memories of his father's recent death.

McGregor does a fine job portraying an emotionally guarded character who doesn't know quite what to make of his dying father's gayness.

For me, the love story between Oliver and Anna produced as many yawns as sighs. Previously seen in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, Laruent is an interesting actress, but her character -- a woman who also has father issues -- serves mostly to show that Oliver can bring himself to the brink of commitment without actually going over the edge.

It's interesting, though not vital, to know that Mills lived through the movie's main situation, only learning that his father was gay after his mother died. It's more important to know that Beginners is good-hearted, and it certainly benefits from the quiet abandon and humor that Plummer brings to the role of a man who's determined to enjoy every moment he has left.

If there's a compelling reason to see Beginners, Plummer provides it.

Jim Carrey compelling as a con man

Jim Carrey brings dynamo force to the story of a brilliant con man and the guy he loved.

Jim Carrey might be the closest we’ll ever get to a perpetual motion machine in movies. Carrey's irrepressible will seems to drive everything he does, but his high-beam energy and toothy smile serve seldom have served him better than in I Love You Phillip Morris, a movie based on the true story of con man Steven Russell.

During a criminal career that was most active during the ‘90s, Russell posed as an attorney and as a chief financial officer. He was caught a variety of times, and staged several escapes from prison. He evidently excelled at being a criminal and at sidestepping the consequences of his actions -- at least for a while.

Directors Glen Ficarra  and John Requa treat Russell’s story as a platform for energetic comedy, moving from scene-to-scene with hells-a-poppin’ fury. They give the movie a near-antic quality that both complements Carrey’s performance and obliterates thinking time for the audience. It’s almost as if Ficarra and Requa decided that Russell’s story was so intriguing, they had no reason to tack on thematic exclamation points.

Still, I Love You Phillip Morris is more than a con-man caper movie. It’s also a gay love story that blossoms during one of Steven’s prison sentences. In a Texas penitentiary, Steven meets Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor), a sensitive southerner who looks to Steven for both love and protection.

Carrey and McGregor play a convincing duet. Phillip falls under Steven's spell, devoting most of his attention to his lover. Steven, on the other hand, juggles a cornucopia of activities – his life with Phillip, his various scams and lots of wanton spending.

None of this has anything to do with how the movie starts. When the movie opens, Steven -- working as a police officer at the time -- is living what appears to be a conventional life. He's married to a religious woman (Leslie Mann) with whom he has a daughter.

When Steven tells us about his gayness – in a narration that runs throughout the movie – he does so with zesty relish. He treats his gayness in breezy, by-the-way fashion. Like just about everything else in Steven’s life, his sexual orientation is presented as an in-your-face fact, not as an issue for judgment.

Steven either doesn’t see (or refuses to acknowledge that he sees) anything strained about announcing his gayness while he’s still married. And although, Steven often experiences bouts of panic when the police are closing in, he appears to be immune to either guilt or remorse – except perhaps in matters concerning Phillip.

A sense of infectious wildness pervades the material, which requires a generous appreciation of absurdity. If the movie had a mantra, it might go something like this: The world is loopy. Don't try to make sense of it.

I don’t know exactly what we learn from Steven’s story, but I do know that I Love You Phillip Morris moves in lively fashion and that Carrey has delivered a performance that amounts to a sustained act of daring. Not because he's playing a gay man, but because he's playing a character who does despicable things -- but usually without shame. It’s almost as if Steven’s so damn confident about his dynamism that he believes no one possibly could hold his criminality against him.

Polanski lowers his voice in 'Ghost Writer'

Pierce Brosnan and Ewan McGregor, nose-to-nose.

In Shutter Island, director Martin Scorsese decided to bring his considerable technique front-and-center. Scorsese pushed his ingredients into a hyper chamber of thrills where extravagant visual gestures become the norm. In his new thriller The Ghost Writer, Roman Polanski -- another top-ranked director -- follows a different route.

Although there are terrific images in The Ghost Writer – beginning with the opening shot of a ferry docking at a Massachusetts beach town – Polanski doesn't call attention to his cinematic virtuosity. He's telling a story, and if the story eventually bogs down in its own intricacies perhaps Polanski should be forgiven. The Ghost Writer is quietly involving, a thriller that doesn't aim for the usual adrenalin-fueled shocks.

Adapted by Robert Harris from his own novel, The Ghost Writer tells the story of a writer (Ewan McGregor) who's hired to ghost write the memoirs of a British prime minister (Pierce Brosnan). Brosnan's Adam Lang was forced to resign as the result of torture-related disclosures. Lang evidently turned suspected terrorists over to the CIA, an action that caused a furor in Britain.

After leaving office, Lang (an attractive Tony Blair-like figure) moved to the U.S., becoming a Massachusetts residentin exile. McGregor's character – referred to only as The Ghost – is hired after another ghost writer dies, an apparent suicide.

Just about everyone in the movie knows more than The Ghost, who gradually begins to understand that he may be in danger. The Ghost must weave his way through a web of intrigue and deception as he tries to uncover the truth about a former Prime Minister who can be charming but who also indulges a volatile temper.

McGregor, whose recent work in movies such as Amelia and Angels and Demons has been disappointing, pulls off a neat trick: He's playing a writer whose career has been subordinated to the lives of others. The Ghost may be well paid, but there's no public recognition of his existence. He's an authorial invisible man.

Brosnan ably portrays a beleaguered public man living in enforced privacy with his wife, the terrific Olivia Williams, and an assistant (Kim Cattrell) who may be more than a workmate. Timothy Hutton has a nice small turn as Lang's cagey lawyer, and Tom Wilkinson proves especially sturdy as a Harvard professor encountered by The Ghost toward the end of the movie's second act.

There are some great touches here. Polanski, who shot the film in Germany, gives the Langs an ultra-contemporary house that looks like a seaside bunker on the outside and yields to modern sterility on the inside. Williams makes intelligence look sexy, and we feel as if we -- like the title character -- have gained access to the private world of a once-important man who has resurfaced in disgrace. Lang is about to be charged by the World Court with crimes against humanity.

Polanski seems drawn to characters who are in over their heads, and the movie – particularly in its final scenes – does an admirable job of showing the disconnect between the earnest sobriety of public displays and the sloppy realities of private life.

During a long-ago film course, I watched scenes from Polanski's breakthrough Knife in the Water over and over again. The professor discussed the ways in which Polanski created tension and he certainly hasn't lost his touch. He has a great capacity for inwardness and concealment -- if not for selecting the best material.

Still, The Ghost Writer pulls us into its orbit, a whirlwind of intrigue and corruption that destroys anything caught in its wake, and there are bits and pieces that any director would envy: the tension that accompanies a set piece in which The Ghost tries to elude men who follow him onto a ferry or the intentionally obvious way Polanski plays a waiting game with the audience, following the progress of a note as it's passed from hand-to-hand in one of the movie's final scenes. At its best, Ghost Writer's makes us feel as if we're eavesdropping on conversations that we're not supposed to hear.

Whether Polanski's endlessly publicized, on-going legal troubles limit the movie's appeal remains to be seen, but The Ghost Writer shouldn't be dismissed. Here's a movie in which it's not the characters who are seductive, but the movie itself. Polanski's gift is one of insinuation and guile. I guess we shouldn't be surprised, then, that The Ghost Writer becomes less persuasive as its secrets are revealed.