Strong cast but the movie self-destructs

 

   What happens when a director assembles a strong cast and has clear command over a movie's imagery but still can't cross the finish line unscathed.

  The answer can be found in director Andrew Semans's Resurrection, a psychological thriller that's big on creating ambiguity.

 About the cast: Rebecca Hall plays Margaret, a single mom and businesswoman living in New York State. Confident in the business world, Margaret harbors a deep, unsettling secret.

  Margaret's seemingly solid world begins to crumble when she sees a man (Tim Roth) from her past at a biotech conference. The appearance of Roth's David shakes Margaret to the core.

 The performances given by Hall and Roth blend perfectly with the uneasy mood that Semans creates. 

  We're mean to wonder whether Margaret is really in danger from Roth's character or whether we're being immersed in her paranoia.

  Roth wisely underplays the menace that David represents, only  occasionally flashing a toothy grin that borders on the demonic.

 Semans makes good use of Wyatt Garfield's cinematography, which implies a populated world while at the same time pushing us deeper into Margaret's isolating point of view. 

  Margaret operates like a woman possessed. We often see her  running. She runs hard and even seems to be working during the sexual interludes she shares with a married co-worker (Michael Esper). 

   Margaret isn't running toward anything; she's running from a part of her past she wants to suppress. The effort leaves her drenched with sweat.

 Overprotective of her teenage daughter (Grace Kaufman) and eager to play mentor to an intern at work (Angela Wong Carbone), Margaret is one more character burdened by her personal history.

  All of this builds toward a violent finale and a conclusion that, on a literal level, makes no sense and which presumably Semans wants to fill with metaphoric charge. 

  Still, the movie's conclusion struck me as an unearned volley of gore and mystery that made me regard Margaret's crazed journey with more skepticism than I might initially have had.

  

A finely realized look at blurred racial lines

 

Based on Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel, Passing takes a clear-eyed look at a delicate racial issue. Set in the 1920s, Passing focuses on two women who had been teenage friends but haven't seen each other for years. Tessa Thompson plays Irene, a Black woman living a middle-class life in Harlem with her physician husband (Andre Holland). Clare (Ruth Negga) is a light-completed woman who has been passing for white. She’s married to a racist banker (Alexander Skarsgard) who, of course, has no idea that his wife is Black. The two women reunite accidentally in cafe in a New York hotel where Irene is trying to escape the heat. After the meeting,  Clare begins to discover that she’s tired of posing. She wants to rekindle the spark of Black life that promises to release her from stultification. Filming in black-and-white and employing an old-fashioned 4:3 aspect ratio, Rebecca Hall makes her directorial debut with a carefully calibrated (but never lifeless) depiction of a world that’s vanished but still relevant.  The movie gains in complexity as Clare begins to spend more time with Irene and her family. The actors are asked to convey a host of subtleties and ironies and they more than rise to the occasion. Passing leaves us with much to unpack: the constraints of propriety on the Black bourgeoisie, the longing not only for equality but of freedom of cultural expression, questions about the images that people construct to insulate themselves from harsh truths. An ambiguous ending may frustrate some viewers, but Passing approaches a host of volatile subjects with nuance, delicacy, and some of the year's most beautifully realized performances. Available on Netflix and in some theaters.

‘Godzilla vs. Kong’: Who’ll win? Who cares?

      The final battle between Godzilla and Kong takes place in Hong Kong, where the two behemoths wreak what appears to be billions of dollars worth of collateral damage, smashing high-rise after high-rise as they crash into buildings and exchange blows.

     With protesters filling the streets of Hong Kong and many of the city’s residents trying to stave off restrictions Beijing wants to impose  I couldn't help thinking that the city had enough trouble without two imaginary monsters stomping it into rubble.

    So, no, I wasn’t amused by Godzilla vs. Kong, the latest movie to bring the two classic monsters to life — or, in this case, digital life.

     The only interesting character in this blaring, disheveled movie is Kong, the sensitive but powerful mega-ape who, in this installment, displays affection for a Jia, (Kaylee Hottle), a child who can’t hear or speak.

     The movie’s human characters are reduced to gaping spectators by a negligible excuse of a plot.  As near as one can tell, the story involves an evil corporate czar (Damian Bichir) who attempts to harness an energy source, a trip to Kong’s home in Hollow Earth, and the tag-along efforts of a couple of adults --Alexander Skarsgard as a scientist and Rebecca Hall, the woman who has adopted Hottle's Jia and who presides over Kong's synthetic eco-system, the place where the movie begins.

     It’s possible, I suppose, to argue that acting, plot, and even clarity of storytelling hardly matter. What most folks want from a movie that pits a giant ape against a towering sea monster is rampant destruction.

   Mindful of that, the filmmakers not only ravage Hong Kong but an entire Navy fleet that's escorting Kong to Antarctica so that he can dive into the hole that will lead him to Hollow Earth and the much-coveted energy source.

    The movie's plot seems so preposterous that I half expect to find it being advanced by one or another of the various groups that currently specialize in bizarre conspiracy theories.

    A parallel story that seems to have been added for youth-appeal introduces a teen-age girl (Millie Bobby Brown),  her nerdy companion (Julian Dennison), and a podcaster (Brian Tyree Henry) who specializes in conspiracy theories related to the plot.

    The movie begins with Kong awakening in the artificial environment where he seems to have resided since his last big-screen appearance. Kong yawns, rises, scratches his butt, and showers under a waterfall. 

     The opening gave me hope that the filmmakers, under the direction of Adam Wingard, might be on the verge of delivering a comic take instead of the usual monster mash in which Kong celebrates his victory over various creatures by ripping off their heads and raising them as trophies. 

   But, no. 

   The case of Godzilla vs. Kong may triumph in the supreme court of movies otherwise known as the box office. But the movie sacrifices any hint of mystery and suspense for noisy displays of blunt force that leave us with only one question: Is this a movie or a demolition derby?

The incredible story of 'Wonder Woman'

A movie that tells the surprising story of how a comic book superhero was born.

In its early days, the comic-book version of Wonder Woman included homoerotic imagery, ample amounts of bondage, and other quasi-erotic suggestions that were later purged from the adventures of the world's most famous female superhero.

I confess to knowing little about Wonder Woman's origins, so I was doubly intrigued by Professor Marston & the Wonder Women, the story of how the Wonder Woman character originated in 1941. If you want to be totally surprised by the answer, stop reading now, but I'm confident you'll be interested to learn the odd path that brought this now-familiar character to realization.

In Professor Marston and the Wonder Women -- based on real events -- writer/director Angela Robinson tells the story of Wonder Woman with inclusions of lesbian and straight sex, a long-standing threesome, and a living situation that was provocatively unconventional during the '40s and '50s. Hell, it would be provocative even today.

Limited only by its small-movie look and straightforward style, Professor Marston and the Wonder Woman treats Wonder Woman creator Professor Marston -- actually Dr. William Moulton Marston -- and the two women in his life as a springboard from which to advance an argument about tolerance for those who choose to live outside the parameters of traditional marriage.

The movie also becomes an ode to the early days of contemporary feminism, but even at its most didactic, Professor Marston remains an intriguing look at the offbeat story behind Wonder Woman.

Early on, we meet Dr. Marston (Luke Evans), a respected psychologist. When the movie opens, Marston and his psychologist wife Elizabeth (Rebecca Hall) are trying to invent a lie detector. The year: 1928.

Hall's Elizabeth rails against a system that marginalizes her work as a psychologist because she's a woman. Obviously brilliant, the rueful Elizabeth hates being ignored by a male-dominated academic establishment.

The emotional complexity of the story begins to take shape when Marston, who teaches at Radcliffe College, enlists the help of a promising and attractive undergraduate (Bella Heathcote). At the time, Radcliffe functioned as the women's arm of the then all-male Harvard University.

In a startlingly frank exchange, Elizabeth tells Heathcote's Olive that she should stay out of bed (not the words she uses) with her husband. But eventually, it becomes clear that Olive's crush is not for the charismatic professor, who is attracted to Olive, but for Elizabeth.

And then things get even more complicated. Olive must acknowledge that she has sexual and love interests in both Marston and his wife, a situation that eventually leads to the formation of a bounds-breaking family.

Both Evans and Hall acquit themselves well, but Heathcote gives the most surprising performance. She takes Olive from a somewhat innocent student to a full and often eager participant in the socio-sexual experiment that, at least in Dr. Marston's view, constitutes a brave attempt to liberate women and teach men to respect them.

To be honest, I had difficulty determining whether the movie bought Marston's line or regarded it as something he invented to excuse his sexual cravings. Maybe both things are true, but Evans does a solid job of showing that Marston keeps up a principled front no matter what unfolds.

To tell its story, the film employs a framing device in which the head of the Child Study Association of America (Connie Britton) questions Marston about the corrupting influences of Wonder Woman on the nation's youth.

We also see the moment at which Wonder Woman was born. After Marston develops a relationship with Greenwich Village porn merchant (JJ Field), he tries to involve both women in bondage. During their initial session, Olive dons a tiara, a silver burlesque costume, and boots. Marston has an "ah-ha" moment. Suddenly, he sees Wonder Woman standing where just a few moments earlier only Olive could be found.

Marston, Elizabeth, and Olive lived together for some time and took responsibility for raising children born to both women. The movie deals with the difficulties that manifested both inside and outside such a relationship. Things didn't always go smoothly.

Although it can be taken as a somewhat subdued manifesto for sexual and female liberation, the main reason to see Professor Marston and the Wonder Women is simpler: It may not be a great film, but it sure has one hell of a story to tell.

Johnny Depp dwells in a computer

Transcendence: a muddled look at the perils of artificial intelligence

I don't know exactly what's in the hearts and minds of director Wally Pfister and screenwriter Jack Paglen when it comes to the perils humanity faces as mankind inches closer to a time when artificial intelligence threatens to undermine the biological basis of life.

And that's the trouble.

I should have left Transcendence, which purports to deal with just that subject, feeling a sense of outrage -- or at least brooding concern. I'd gladly have settled for glimmers of hope that we'll come to our senses and cling to the flesh-and-blood quality of our lives.

Instead, I left wondering what the hell Pfister was trying to say and whether too much A-line pap has diminished Johnny Depp as an actor.

I also wondered whether whether Pfister, an excellent cinematographer who has worked on almost all of director Christopher Nolan's movies (e.g., The Dark Knight and Inception) forgot that the main job of the director has less to do with cinematic flourishes (of which Transcendence boasts many) than with with storytelling.

The longer Transcendence goes on, the more it feels as if the story hadn't been thought through or perhaps had been tinkered with by a committee. Don't you think we need a love story? How about adding hybrids? No, not cars, but zombie-like folks ready to form an automoton-like army.

Depp plays Will Caster, a brilliant computer scientist whose work in the field of artificial intelligence has established him as a global genius. Caster's wife, Evelyn (Rebecca Hall), runs the business side of Will's life, raising money for his work in league with Max Waters (Paul Bettany), another computer scientist.

Early on, Will is attacked by a radical anti-technology group called RIFT. He survives a gunshot wound only to learn that he was struck by a radioactive bullet.

With death looming, Hall and Bettany contrive to salvage Will's consciousness by uploading it into a giant computer. They succeed, and the trouble starts.

Will's humanitarian impulses become distorted. With all the world's information at his disposal through the Internet, he becomes power hungry -- for the good of mankind, he says.

Depp doesn't inhabit a computer as well as Scarlett Johansson did in Her. (A better title for Transcendence might have been Him.)

And the supporting cast is largely wasted.

Hall does what she can as a woman whose ideals increasingly are betrayed. Bettany brings hand-wringing sincerity to his role, but the rest of the cast -- Morgan Freeman (as a scientist), Cillian Murphy (as an FBI agent) and a grim looking Kate Mara (as a RIFT activist) is largely wasted.

It's depressing to watch an actor as gifted as Freeman playing a non-character in a sea of non-characters.

Maybe that's the rub: A movie that wants to remind us of our connection to the Earth and of our precious humanity might have made more of an effort to include a few interesting human beings.

Complicated thriller misses mark

Tangled plot short-circuits Closed Circuit.

When it's clear from the outset that a movie's going bad, one tends to make quick adjustments, accepting failure and allowing any lingering expectations to slip quietly toward the nearest exit. It might be worse when a movie flirts with success for a while, but never really consummates the relationship.

The British thriller Closed Circuit falls into the second category. The movie begins well enough, creating an aura of grave seriousness and raising an important topical question: How far should governments go in limiting transparency when facing real security threats?

As director John Crowley's thriller progresses, it becomes clear that Steven Knight's screenplay is weaving such a complicated web that it will be forced to hack its way through an overabundance of detail -- often at the expense of character development that could have nourished greater involvement.

The action focuses on two attorneys (Eric Bana and Rebecca Hall) who are assigned to defend a Turkish immigrant (Denis Moschitto) who has been accused of an act of terrorism, setting off a bomb in a crowded London marketplace.

As advocates handling different parts of the case, Bana's Martin Rose and Hall's Claudia Simmons-Howe decide not to disclose to the court that they had an affair that soured, leaving rose with a ruined marriage.

Although both lawyers represent the same defendant, they have different tasks. Rose has been assigned the criminal part of the case; Claudia's job involves overcoming official resistance to sharing evidence that the government contends could compromise national security.

Both attorneys are on on the same side, but they're not supposed to talk to each other.

There's no point faulting the actors, who receive supporting help from Jim Broadbent, as an attorney general who encourages Rose to get with a program that's more interested in protecting the state than in giving the defendant a fair shake.

Also look for good work from Riz Ahmed as a government spy who's supposed to be helpful to Simmons-Howe, but who may have less honorable motives.

Crowley (Intermission and Boy A) works with cinematographer Andriano Goldman to give the movie a dark, edgy feel. But no amount of craft can justify the screenplay's cynicism, which seems to have been applied in ladle-sized helpings that drown out any honestly arrived at conviction.

The fireworks of 'Iron Man 3'

The finale is explosive, but this installment of Iron Man is not without dull spots.
What must Iron Man 3 accomplish? Must the flawed superhero of Marvel Comics fame save the world from the evil machinations of terrorism-prone villain? Must he somehow reconcile the fragility of his humanity with powers bestowed on him when he dons his protective iron suit? Or must he navigate his way through an early summer mega-movie that might be deemed a dud if it doesn't outdo its predecessors at the box office?

Iron Man 3 seems to want to accomplish all of the above goals, throwing in an explosion that demolishes Grauman's Chinese Theatre in the bargain. A metaphor for the way the movie's supposed to explode at the box office or a bit of bad-taste, post-Aurora pyrotechnics? Decide for yourself.

So, the plusses: The action set pieces of the movie's finale are scaled to impress and include CGI work that leaves you marveling at its undisguised audacity.

The minuses: Iron Man 3 makes you suffer through some significant longueurs before it crosses its 130-minute finish line. The movie's end-of-picture rewards are tempered by mid-picture sags and talky stagnation.

Robert Downey Jr. does everything you'd expect of him in his third Iron Man outing. Iron Man -- who spends a lot of time out of his suit in this episode -- is lightning fast with a retort. He's amusing, especially to himself.

In the movie's early scenes, Iron Man, a.k.a. Tony Stark, is mired in a personal crisis. He can't sleep. He's having anxiety attacks. He's puttering around his laboratory with obsessive fervor, trying to figure out how to make parts of his Iron Man suit leap from the ground and attach to his body. He's also neglecting his relationship with Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow).

Director Shane Black (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) has been assigned the job of following Iron Man through his psychological malaise. Black, who also wrote the Lethal Weapon movies, assumes the franchise's helm to mixed effect, perhaps because he has limited experience with the heavy-lifting required to direct an effects-laden mega-movie.

Still, there are sights to be seen. A prime example: The finale includes a spectacular airborne rescue in which Iron Man saves 13 officials who've been jettisoned from a plane. Good stuff, but the main enticements of this third installment arrive in the form of tasty side dishes.

Ben Kingsley plays a terrorist called The Mandarin, a villain who evokes scary echoes of Osama bin Laden. Rebecca Hall, not the first actress who springs to mind when you think about franchise movies, makes a nice addition as one of Tony Stark's former girlfriends. And Iron Man finds a bit of temporary companionship in an eight-year-old kid (Ty Simpkins), who joins him for mid-picture plot duties.

Guy Pearce signs on as Aldrich Killian, an evil entrepreneur who mutates into a scorching, fiendish Iron Man foe. Pearce seems to be having as good a time as can be had with a sadistic -- if slightly off-the-rack -- villain.

One thing's sure: After this installment, Iron Man's going to need a new home. Early on, he's blasted out of his cliff-hugging Malibu home. This can't sit well with Paltrow's Pepper Potts, the woman who shares Iron Man's residence. Perhaps she's consoled by being Iron Man's main squeeze, although Paltrow's straight-shooting Potts seldom proves as interesting as Hall's morally ambiguous Maya Hansen.

Iron Man 3 is one of those critic-proof movies that has enough successful bits and pieces to keep general audiences and fanboys reasonably well-satisfied.

For me, the movie proved enjoyable in the same way that fireworks are fun. Moments of waiting are punctuated by vivid bursts of action and color that vanish into the night sky leaving only wisps of smoke to grasp at as we await the arrival of the next blockbuster. Iron Man 3 makes plenty of noise, but its pleasures are spectacularly insubstantial.

'Lay the Favorite': A break-even bet

Director Stephen Frears offers a light take on the world of gambling.

After watching Lay the Favorite, the latest film from British director Stephen Frears, I turned to the Rotten Tomatoes web site to see how the film -- which debuted at last January's Sundance Film Festival -- had fared with other critics.

I was shocked to see that Lay the Favorite, a gambling comedy based on a true story, had scored a paltry 26 percent on the Tomatometer. In other words, most of the critics that Rotten Tomatoes tracks not only disliked Lay the Favorite, they came close to hating it.

I admit to shock because Lay the Favorite, which could be considered a very distant cousin of such Frears' movies as 1990's The Grifters, hardly qualifies as an object for cinematic scorn. It's not Frears's best work, but it's a colorful and sometimes amusing look at people who make their living betting, and it involves characters who aren't pushed to the tawdry limit.

Casting way against type, Frears puts British actress Rebecca Hall in the role of a private dancer who sets out to break new career ground in Las Vegas. After failing to land a job as a cocktail waitress, Hall's Beth Raymer finds work placing bets for a professional gambler (Bruce Willis) who's attracted to her abilities with math -- as well as to the way she fills out a pair of short shorts.

Problems arise because Willis's character -- one Dink by name -- is married to Tulip (Catherine Zeta-Jones) a woman who doesn't like competition. Tulip takes a strictly business approach to marriage: She insists that Dink vowed to take care of her, and says she'll reciprocate as long as he doesn't stray.

The screenplay, based on a memoir by the real Beth Raymer, also introduces a New York-based bookmaker. An over-zealous Vince Vaughn plays Rosie, a gambler who's as impressed by himself as he is by any of the teams on which he bets. Unlike Dink, Rosie's an illegal bookmaker, and Beth goes to work for him in New York when things turn sour in Las Vegas.

Along the way, Beth becomes involved with a journalist (Joshua Jackson), a mostly normal guy who represents -- at least for a time -- a break with the hustling world.

The major achievement of the screenplay by D.V. DeVincentis, involves the ways in which the characters are forced to behave challenge our initial assumptions about them. And although none of the performances are likely to turn up on Oscar's short list, they're mostly within the range of what Frears is looking for, a slightly cracked comedy lodged in the unpredictable world of gambling.

Lay the Favorite isn't a change-your-life movie. I'm not sure it has a whole lot to say, but it doesn't take itself seriously enough to qualify as a demonstrably bad bet.

Ben Affleck goes to 'Town'

Ben Affleck and Jeremy Renner as partners in crime.

Boston has been very, very good to Ben Affleck. The actor and sometime director jump-started his career with Good Will Hunting (1997), a Boston-based movie he co-wrote with Matt Damon. In 2007, Affleck directed Gone Baby Gone, a crime yarn set in the Boston area. With the volatile new thriller, The Town, Affleck returns to the Boston scene for more tough-talking crime.

Adapted from a novel by Chuck Hogan, The Town bristles with pungent dialog, hard-boiled acting and vivid characters from Boston's criminal class. The movie takes place mostly in the Boston neighborhood known as Charlestown. There - or so we're told at the movie's outset - bank robbery practically constitutes a family business.

Affleck portrays Doug McCray, a bank robber mired in a standard problem: McCray's had his fill of the criminal life, and wants to go straight. Too bad the neighborhood - embodied in a dangerous, loose cannon of a criminal played by Jeremy Renner - keeps pulling him back for one job after another.

Like many before him, McCray pins his hopes for redemption on a woman (Rebecca Hall). Hall's Claire Keesey works as an assistant manager at a bank McCray and his boys rob in the movie's gripping opening scene. They also kidnap Claire briefly. The robbers wear skeleton masks that make them look especially menacing, and that keep Claire from identifying her tormentors.

Worried that Claire may have picked up a clue or two, McCray establishes a relationship with her. He wants to make sure that she can't incriminate him or any of his felonious cohorts. Not surprisingly, McCray begins to fall for Claire, allowing himself -- maybe for the first time -- to imagine life away from the mean streets of Charlestown.

But escape from the past never proves easy, and the script - credited to Peter Craig, Affleck and Aaron Stockard - places plenty of obstacles in McCray's path: neighborhood loyalties; a reflexive hatred of cops and a bit of old-fashioned intimidation to mention only a few.

The Town boasts the kind of gritty authenticity that we've come to expect from good crime movies, all of it bolstered by fine work from Affleck's supporting cast.

Last seen defusing bombs in The Hurt Locker, Renner can scare the daylights out of you even when he's smiling. Jon Hamm (of TV's Mad Men) stretches a bit as an FBI agent, and Pete Postlethwaite has a nice turn as a florist who runs a small crime empire. Don't overlook Chris Cooper, who shows how much an actor can accomplish in very little time. He appears in one scene as McCray's imprisoned father.

No Boston-bred movie can (or should) escape Fenway Park - home to the city's beloved Red Sox -- and The Town is no exception. I won't say more except to note that the use of heavy artillery during the movie's finale tends to blow away what's best about The Town: the way it captures the tone and texture of life among the criminally inclined. There's enough firepower in the movie's final scenes to make you wonder whether you're in Boston or Baghdad.

By that time, though, you will have gotten what there is to get from The Town. The movie's real pleasure derives from thrust-and-parry dialog and from characters accustomed to living on a dangerous edges.

Affleck's performance also helps. He makes McCray intense, serious and street-wise. At its best, his movie follows suit.