'The Beekeeper' has some sting

 The Beekeeper is one of those movies that hardly needs reviewing. If you don't know who Jason Statham is, you probably aren't interested in his latest hunk of kick-ass entertainment. If you do know Statham (Expend4bles, Fast X) you probably have a good idea about The Beekeeper before you see it. 

   This time, Statham portrays Adam Clay, a lover of bees. But Adam's role as an apiarist proves secondary to his commitment to dispensing justice. 

   The Beekeepers, you see, are a no-holds-barred group of agents that's so secret even the head of the CIA may not  know about them. When all else fails, The Beekeepers -- well-trained killing machines -- are called in to clean up the mess. 

   Director David Ayer (Suicide Squad, Fury) works around a slender plot in which Adam, a retired Beekeeper, sets out to avenge a wrong committed by a heartless creep (Josh Hutcherson) who owns call centers dedicated to scamming  the elderly out of their savings. 

  Hutcherson's Derek Danforth makes the mistake of stealing from Eloise Parker (Phylicia Rashad), Adam's kindly landlord. Distraught about her loss, she commits suicide. Adam's onslaught begins.

   An unashamedly ridiculous plot finds Eloise's daughter (Emmy Raver-Lampman), an FBI agent, searching for  Adam as a variety of others join her in pursuit.

   Jeremy Irons plays a former head of the CIA who has been hired to protect the callous Derek from himself and others. 

  None of this much matters; Statham's unrelieved determination and the creativity Ayer brings to the movie's violent encounters count far more than common sense. 

  For about three-quarters of its one hour and 45 minute running time, The Beekeeper serves up the right amount of sting but the trouble with such movies is that they tend to wear out their welcome. They make their points early and often.

  Oh well, it's January. The Beekeeper may lack the aplomb of a John Wick movie, but it's a well-stuffed filler for fans who like their movie violence served with over-the-top relish.

Diverse cast moves into 'House of Gucci'

  No swords, sandals or aliens can be found in director Ridley Scott's House of Gucci, a drama about the decline of the Gucci family and the murder of Maurizio Gucci, a crime engineered by his estranged wife. 

  The day after I saw the movie, the following headline appeared in Variety:"House of Gucci First Reactions Range From Absurdly Enjoyable to Bloated and Uneven Mess."

   Yes, I thought, that's it. Not one of those. All of them.

   The movie focuses more on internecine warfare among the Guccis than on Maurizio's murder. En route to the sensational 1995 crime -- for which the former Patrizia Reggiani was found guilty and served 18 years in an Italian prison -- the movie offers a sumptuous tour of the accouterments of Gucci wealth. 

   You'll also find an abundance of vividly incompatible performances given by a variety of actors speaking English in what amounts to a Babylon of variable Italian accents.  

    Sporting goggle-sized glasses, Adam Driver portrays the mild-mannered Maurizio Gucci, the man who was overwhelmed into marrying Patrizia, played in Scott's telling by Lady Gaga, who doesn’t shrink from the power of her considerable presence. 

   There's no universe in which I would have thought to cast Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons as brothers, but Scott pulls it off. 

    Irons portrays the thin-lipped, severely aristocratic Rodolfo Gucci, a man who rules over the company with his brother Aldo (Pacino), a portly exuberant man who looks as if he hasn’t denied himself many pleasures during his journey to great wealth.

   Scott brings lots of opera to the soundtrack. Why not? House of Gucci brims with oversized emotions, devious betrayals, and, finally, murder -- ingredients that fuel many operas.

   Gaga barges into the movie in much the same way as she barges into the Gucci family — willfully. She makes it clear that Patrizia easily could have overpowered the bookish Maurizio, rendered by Driver as an ineffectual young man who gradually accustoms himself to power and luxury.

    Of course, there's also Patrizia's swinging hips, generous cleavage, and pugnacious spirit.

And the rest of the cast .... 

 

 Unrecognizable after what must have been a gargantuan makeover, Jared Leto plays Aldo's son, a balding airhead of a man referred to by his father as "an idiot, but my idiot." Leto’s mumbled line readings are bizarre, amusing, and confounding. (Yes, that's Leto to the right, an actor who turns himself into a human special effect in  House of Gucci.)

   Salma Hayek signs on Pina, a psychic Patrizia discovers while watching TV and with whom she builds a relationship. Pina eventually helps Patrizia locate the assassins who will shoot Maurizio.

    Jack Huston appears as Domenico De Sole, a background figure who eventually moves forward to play a part in the financial drama in which the Guccis are expelled from their own empire.

   Truth be told, Scott -- working from a screenplay by Becky Johnston and Roberto Bentivegna -- doesn't do a great job with financial complications but the gist remains clear.

   At times, I wondered whether Scott was being serious or whether he was secretly gagging over high-fashion absurdity — its pretensions, its obsession with money, and its furious competitiveness.  

  At other times, I was sure that Scott was trying to be campy. 

  And at still other times, I thought he might be striving to create a great mercantile family drama.

  I settled on “all of the above.”  

 So here's my final word or two: From the start, House of Gucci, a lavish hunk of a movie, does its best not to succeed but manages to be entertaining anyway. Maybe someone should turn it into a real opera.

   And, then, there's Pacino's Aldo - vast of spirit, sloppily sentimental, and conniving. At times, I felt as if Pacino were about to swallow every scene that he's in -- and sometimes I wish he had.

    All I can say is set aside expectations and enjoy watching a director and his cast push, bully and insinuate themselves into a beautifully dressed world where trashy behavior and haute-couture pirouettes mingle and collide.

'Red Sparrow' doesn't fly high

Jennifer Lawrence takes up the role of a Russian spy.

Those damn Russians will stop at nothing when it comes to advancing their cause.

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No, we're not talking about interference in the last presidential election, but about the spycraft that tends to shape relations between Russia and the rest of the world.

Of course, we're also talking about a movie in which the Russians have invented a special spy-training agency that teaches men and women the fine arts of seduction and manipulation. Humiliation and intimidation are used to turn female students into "whores" for the Motherland, wiping out any traces of propriety or pity.

Those who make it out of the program are called Sparrows.

The aptly titled Red Sparrow stars Jennifer Lawrence as Dominika Egorova, who -- at the movie's outset -- is an acclaimed star of the Bolshoi ballet. Dominika’s career comes to an abrupt end when her leg is broken by a clumsy dance partner during a performance.

Eager to preserve her Bolshoi privileges — mostly for the sake of her ailing mother — Dominika follows the advice of her sleazy uncle (Matthias Schoenaerts), a man who happens to be a part of the Russian intelligence establishment. Without knowing exactly what's involved, Dominika agrees to be trained as a Sparrow.

Working with director Francis Lawrence, who directed Lawrence in a couple of Hunger Games movies, Lawrence (Jennifer, that is) has no trouble portraying a powerful woman who learns to walk the fine line between convincing her superiors that she’s all in with the Sparrow program and trying to preserve some of her personal integrity.

That’s no easy task considering she’s working for a branch of the intelligence service that believes her body belongs to the state.

Added to the mix are an American CIA agent (Joel Edgerton) who offers Dominika a way out of her complicated predicament, Dominika’s hardened instructor in Sparrow World (Charlotte Rampling), another Russian intelligence agency big-wig (Jeremy Irons) and the head of Russian intelligence (an under-utilized Ciaran Hinds).

Much has been written about Lawrence’s nude scene, which reveals most (but not all) of an actress who certainly has the charisma and smarts to carry a movie that’s presumably trying to attain franchise status. Lawrence creates a bold, sexy character who's also capable of calculated bursts of fury.

Unfortunatley, Lawrence isn't enough to save the day. A convoluted plot, boiled down from a novel by Jason Matthews, results in an often murky spy drama enriched by a variety of locations — from Moscow to Budapest.

The movie attempts a somewhat tepid romance between Edgerton’s CIA man, a character who finds himself on the outs with the CIA after he blows his cover protecting a source. Edgerton gives a muted performance that dampens any sparks that could have enlivened his relationship with Dominika. p>
The movie's atmosphere isn’t one defined by virtue. Many of the characters are advancing personal agendas, notably, an American traitor portrayed by Mary-Louise Parker who has possession of floppy discs that both the Russians and Americans are eager to get their hands on.

There’s no point dwelling on a plot that generates too little suspense, but it should be noted that Red Sparrow includes a brutal scene of torture which many will find difficult to watch.

Downbeat and doom-struck, Red Sparrow doesn’t reflect the kind of intricate intelligence that defines spy movies adapted, say, from the work of author John LeCarre nor does it offer the brash pleasures of overstated action we associate with movies with blockbuster aspirations.

The result: A medium-grade thriller that relies on Lawrence and a reliable cast, but which comes off as watered-down and more than a bit weary.

Logic murdered in 'Assassin's Creed'

Big name cast takes a shot at a movie version of a video game.

I suppose these days nothing should surprise us, but I must admit that I was taken aback to learn that Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons, Charlotte Rampling and Brendan Gleeson all appear in Assassin's Creed, a movie derived from a video game about which I happily confess total ignorance.

Plotted to the max, Assassin's Creed revolves around a long-standing rivalry between The Assassins and The Knights Templar, opposing groups that vie for possession of the Apple of Eden, a gizmo that contains the genetic DNA code for free will.

Under the guise of promoting world peace, the Knights plan to use the apple to control mankind.

Divided between two time periods -- the present and 15th Century Spain -- the story begins by introducing us to Callum Lynch (Fassbender), a murderer sentenced to die by lethal injection. Lynch receives his punishment, but instead of drifting into oblivion, he mysteriously (perhaps even incomprehensibly) wakes up in a strange Spanish facility run by Abstergo Industries, which is presided over by Irons' Rikkin.

Rikkin's daughter Sofia (Cotillard) takes charge of connecting Lynch to a machine she invented. It causes him to explore his genetic roots by living as his 15th Century Assassin ancestor, Aguilar.

The Assassins, by the way, are an amoral group that pledges to use darkness to preserve the light. They'll protect the Apple of Eden by any means necessary.

And, yes, this is another movie that takes on conspiratorial airs, one more shadowy projection of the idea that somewhere unknown to us ordinary folks, the real drama unfolds.

There's a point to Cal's time travel: By becoming his 15th Century ancestor, Cal will be able to tell his industrial captors (a front for the Templars) where to find the coveted apple.

Forays into the past give director Justin Kurzel, who directed Fassbender and Cotillard in a screen version of Macbeth, an opportunity to pour on the action; the Spanish segments involve blurry battles in which the Assassins engage the Knights who are trying to wrest the apple from its owner at the time, Sultan Muhammad.

At this point, Cal acquires a female sidekick (Ariane Labed), who helps him kick butt. He also leaps off tall buildings, which -- I've read -- is a bow to the video game.

The movie's complicated conventions (often spelled out in mind-numbing expository dialogue) make it difficult to care what happens.

Some of Kurzel's imagery is strange enough to command interest, a gathering of 15th century clerics at which two Assassins are to be burned at the stake, for example. Moreover, Kurzel knows how to create menacing moods.

It occurred to me that the movie might be more fun as a cascading series of shadowy images, providing the actor's never opened their mouths.

The actors, however, do speak, treating the material as seriously as if they were doing Shakespeare, which -- come to think of it -- would have been a far better use of everyone's time.

Are all geniuses created equal?

The Man Who Knew Infinity tells the story of an Indian math whiz who encounters the British establishment.

The less familiar you are with the story of Srinivasa Ramanujan, the more likely you are enjoy The Man Who Knew Infinity, the story of an Indian mathematical genius who was forced -- because of deeply embedded British racism -- to beat his head against the wall of Great Britain's academic establishment.

Director Matt Brown opts for prestige, hallowed-halls packaging with a cast that features Dev Patel, as Ramanujan, and Jeremy Irons, as G.H. Hardy, an established mathematician who insists that Ramanujan provide proofs of his discoveries.

The movie's most interesting thematic wrinkle centers on the difference between two approaches to mathematics -- Ramanujan's intuitive grasp of mind-bending theories -- and Hardy's more dogged, academically respectable plodding. Hardy isn't entirely dismissive of intuition, but he also believes in dotting every "i" and crossing every "t."

As played by Dev Patel, Ramanujan claims to be channeling information about the universe from God. Hardy seems to view Ramanujan's approach as a form of unacceptable romanticism.

Gradually, Hardy comes to respect Ramanujan and lobbies for his admittance to the inner circle of recognized mathematicians who have done significant work at Trinity College.

Mostly set in the early 1900s, the movie emphatically underscores the bigotry that once pervaded British academic circles. Few of Trinity's dons believe that an otherwise uneducated Indian from Madras could develop ground-breaking proofs on his own.

When we first meet Ramanujan, he's a 25-year-old shipping clerk with a wife (Devika Bhise) who he must leave behind when he travels to England. The difficulties of this long-distance relationship are exacerbated by Ramanujan's overly possessive mother. She hides the letters her son lovingly writes to his bride.

Irons makes Hardy's insistence on playing by well-established academic rules credible, but Patel has difficulty getting beyond the trademark avidity he has been bringing to the screen since he appeared in Slumdog Millionaire.

The movie derives added tension from a social and personal question: Can Ramanujan retain his confidence while he's constantly being berated by one or another of Cambridge's elite? He arrives in Britain expecting to function as an equal to the school's academicians. He views them as colleagues, but quickly is pushed into subordinate roles.

Hardy's friend and fellow mathematician Edensor Littlewood (Toby Jones) supports Ramanujan. Jeremy Northam fills a small role as Bertrand Russell, the famed playwright and mathematician who warns Hardy against restraining Ramanujan.

There aren't many surprises in the arc of Brown's story, whose major accomplishment involves introducing Ramanujan's name to uninformed audiences -- albeit in a decorous fashion that never quite stirs the imagination.

'Race,' the Jesse Owens story

Not a bad movie, but the subject deserved a better one.

Despite a strong performance from Stephan James as Jesse Owens, Race proves an only passable account of the track star's life -- from Owens' victories as a student athlete at Ohio State to his stunning triumphs at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

A sprinter and long jumper by trade, Owens won four gold medals in Berlin, a feat that was widely celebrated as a slap in the face to Hitler and his Nazi minions, racists who hoped to use the games as a demonstration of unbeatable Aryan superiority.

Director Stephen Hopkins' dutifully tells Owens' story -- or at least parts of it -- but he's so busy recounting events that he doesn't get deep enough into anything.

None of this is to say that Race, with its double-edged title, is an act hagiography.

Owens is shown making mistakes, notably an affair he had while he was engaged. And some of the movie's supporting players are also depicted as flawed.

Avery Brundage (Jeremy Irons), an influential member of the International Olympic Committee in 1936 and later its head, was a construction mogul whose dealings with the Nazi government sparked controversy. Brundage wouldn't listen to progressive voices who insisted that this particular Olympics should be boycotted.

The movie also shows that Larry Snyder (Jason Sudeikis), Owens' tough-love coach at Ohio State, wrestles with alcohol problems, and, at times, seems insensitive to Owens' problems.

The movie takes a pretty positive view of Leni Riefenstahl (Carice van Houtem), the filmmaker whose Olympia set new standards for sports photography. Of course, Riefenstahl also made Triumph of the Will, a propaganda documentary and near exaltation that chronicled the massive 1934 Nazi rally in Nuremberg.

Here, Riefenstahl is portrayed as a rebellious spirit, defying Joseph Goebbels (Barnaby Metschurat) so that she could make her own film rather than the one that the propaganda minister wished to see.

Those who know little or nothing about Owens' life can view Race as a learning experience, but even the racial barriers in a script from Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse can feel as if they're being played by-the-numbers, including the virulent racism Owens faced at Ohio State, where he broke three world records at a now legendary 1935 Big Ten meet in Michigan.

A recent New York Times story briefly describes Owens life after the Olympics. He made an unsuccessful foray into Hollywood, dabbled in vaudeville, and, at one point, lost his amateur status, the article notes.

Desperate to support his family, he toiled at gas stations, and performed stunts in which he ran against race horses.

American racism kept Owens from capitalizing on his victories in Berlin. His triumphs abroad, presented here with the expected celebratory quality, didn't do much to change the racial climate at home, something the movie could (and should) have done more to dramatize.

Odd isn't it? When it comes to fictionalized sports movies Hollywood has no trouble serving up inspiration, but when it latches on to a historically important story, it can't get beyond an effort we'll call "adequate," and perhaps instructional for those unfamiliar with Owens' life.

Given all its volatile and exhilarating ingredients, it's disappointing that Race doesn't have greater impact.

This teen romance goes South

Beautiful Creatures comes on like a Twilight wannabe, but turns into lushly photographed drivel.

A small-town southern boy, he yearns to experience the world beyond the stultifying, church-dominated confines of Gatlin, South Carolina. New in town, she's more worldly than any of her high school peers. Oh, and by the way, she has supernatural powers that, at age 15, have yet to be harnessed.

Despite their differences, these two -- Ethan Wate and Lena Duchannes by name -- are kindred spirits. We know this because they both read books that the have been banned from the town's library. He's into Kurt Vonnegut. She carries a Charles Bukowski paperback with her, a signifier that underlines her status as an outsider with a capital "O."

Together, Ethan and Lena try for epic romance in Beautiful Creatures, an apparent Twilight wannabe that asks the now-familiar but still preposterous question: Can humans and fantasy beings find true and maybe even lasting love?

In this case, the fantasy beings aren't vampires; they're witches who prefer to be called "casters," as in spell casters. Ethan (Alden Ehrenreich) and Lena (Alice Englert) try to make a go of it, he with his curiosity, sensitivity and aw-shucks grin and she with a protective layer of teen superiority.

Ethan is easy-going. Lena, on the other hand, is not one with whom one wishes to trifle. When she's angry, she's liable to furrow her brow and create a psychic vibe that shatters every window in her high school classroom.

Lena's mysterious uncle, Macon Ravenswood (Jeremy Irons), has brought his niece to Gatlin to protect her from a family curse dating back to a Civil War battle.

For Lena, the stakes couldn't be higher. When she turns 16, she stands a chance of being claimed by the dark forces that claimed her mother Serafine (Emma Thompson) and her flirtatious cousin (Emma Rossum).
Yes, you read right. This lush bit of young adult blather features appearances by Irons and Thompson, both of whom sport southern accents. Irons brings out his inner aristocrat; Thompson seems to be enjoying herself as an arch and malicious "caster" who's able to inhabit the bodies of otherwise upstanding folks. Rossum, too, seems to have found a way to remain lively amid the story's Southern Gothic moodiness.

If the presence of Irons and Thompson weren't cause enough for concern about possible cinematic decline, the movie also makes room for the gifted Viola Davis, who plays Amma, the town librarian, a woman who has been looking after Ethan and his reclusive father since the boy's mother died.

To make matters worse, writer/director Richard LaGravenese (evidently intent on trying to provide a new big-screen fix for withdrawing Twilight addicts) seems to take his adaptation of Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl's young-adult novel seriously. Cinematographer Philippe Rousselot follows suit with lots of lush imagery -- at least when the movie's functioning in its idea of the real world. The special effects associated with the world of casters prove considerably less captivating.

But back to our young lovers. Ehrenreich lays on as much charm as he can muster; Englert (the daughter of Australian filmmaker Jane Campion) sometimes seems to be channeling whatever sullenness Winona Ryder left behind when she exited her teen years, but softens enough to keep her character from curdling.

Ehrenreich and Englert do not make for the most memorable big-screen couple. Whether you consider it a low bar or not, they're no Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, the last actors to try to find happiness as characters from different dimensions.

I suppose there are some pleasures here, though for me they were mostly inadvertent. Macon Ravenswood lives in a vine-covered derelict cliche of a mansion that's modern and spare on the inside. At one point, Davis' Amma brings food to the gravesite her late Uncle Abner and asks for guidance. LaGravenese even manages to work a Civil War re-enactment into the movie's inflated finale. All of this might have been more fun had LaGravenese spiked the entire concoction with more daffy spin.

I don't know if young adults will turn out for Beautiful Creatures. If they do, perhaps more of these books will find their way to the screen. As for me, I was happy as barbecue sauce on a well-cooked rib to say goodbye to Gatlin, where it seemed as if I had spent far too much time and found far too little reward.

''The Words:" How about a rewrite?

This melodrama seems to be looking for something more serious than anything it finds.

A successful and well-respected author takes the stage for a public reading of his latest novel. Our willingness to accept this supposed literary titan as the real deal depends on what we think of his writing.

So here's the first sentence that Dennis Quaid's Clay Hammond reads: "The old man stood in the rain." Really? That's it? A bit of scrawl that's only a step above "a dark and stormy night?"

Fortunately, the movie quickly leaves Quaid and begins showing us the story his character is reading, an improvement (though a small one) over the writing we've just heard.

Hammond's tale centers on Rory (Bradley Cooper), an aspiring writer who lives in New York City with his girlfriend and soon-to-be-wife (Zoe Saldana). Rory's writing career is going nowhere. His confidence is ebbing. His father (J.K. Simmons) suggests that it might be time to look for a job.

A frustrated Rory eventually does seek employment, landing a low-level position at a literary agency. But Rory still dreams of becoming a literary success, and his self-image is tied to that dream.

As often happens in lesser works of fiction, contrivance -- masquerading as fate -- intervenes.

During a honeymoon trip to Paris, Saldana's Dora buys Rory an old briefcase. Upon returning to the U.S., Rory discovers an unpublished manuscript tucked in one of the briefcases folds. Lo, it's a terrific book about an American GI in post-war France.

Because The Words has been operating with a kind of precise predictability, we immediately know that Rory is going to appropriate the novel, that it will become a major success and that he will have launched an impressive (if fraudulent) career.

To add another layer of complexity, directors Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal, who also wrote the screenplay, dramatize the story told in the purloined novel. That tale features Ben Barnes as a GI turned writer and Nora Arnezeder as the French woman who steals his heart and with whom his life hits a tragic snare.

But back to the story that Quaid's character is reading.

In that melodramatic tale, the old man who was standing in the rain (a withered-looking, bearded Jeremy Irons) reappears to claim authorship of the book Rory has passed off as his own. Irons's character wants Rory to wrestle with his conscience.

Rather than adding dizzying complexity, the movie's stories-within-stories approach feels entirely routine. It does, however, bring about a few minor realizations. Among them: Cooper should henceforth try to avoid appearing with Irons, who -- even in a silly role -- can't entirely hide his superior acting chops.

The rest of the cast doesn't exactly soar, either. Quaid's face shows plenty of mileage, but he's stuck in slim role in which he's both admired and challenged by a literary groupie (Olivia Wilde). Wilde's character attends Hammond's reading and very obviously is looking for more than bookish inspiration.

It's entirely possible that The Words wants to explore big themes: The tension between life and art and what happens when a young man's ambition is unmatched by his talent, but the movie winds up feeling as thin as the paper on which its multiple novels are printed.

The Words tells many stories. Unfortunately, all of them are mediocre.