A self-absorbed writer and his editor

Genius focuses on the relationship between Thomas Wolfe and Max Perkins.

Genius -- a movie starring Colin Firth, Jude Law and Nicole Kidman -- presents a handsomely mounted but somewhat tepid portrait of the relationship between volatile novelist Thomas Wolfe and his editor Max Perkins.

The gist of the story: Perkins, who also edited the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, tolerated Wolfe's alcoholic digressions and emotional outbursts because he believed in the author's talent.

In part, the movie suffers because time hasn't entirely justified Perkins' faith. Novels such as Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel don't command the widespread attention they once did.

Director Michael Grandage focuses the story on the Perkins/Wolfe relationship during the Depression years, a time when Perkins plied his trade at Scribner's. Wolfe would dump his colossus-sized manuscripts -- all written in pencil -- on Perkins' desk. Perkins then would work with the writer to whittle Wolfe's efforts to more manageable size.

When not ensconced in Perkins' Manhattan office, the movie visits his Connecticut home, where Laura Linney plays the mostly negligible role of Perkins' wife.

The point of these scenes may be to tell us that Perkins preferred the comforts of home and hearth -- he had five daughters -- to the roller coaster ride taken by those who more directly stoke their creativity fires.

Wearing an ever-present fedora, Firth inhabits the character of Perkins with ease and quiet grace, although his performance can feel a trifle sparkless. As the ebullient, life-embracing Wolfe, Law compensates for Perkins' preternatural calm with emphatic expressions of energy.

Wolfe's relationship with a married woman, Kidman's Mrs. Bernstein, mostly demonstrates the devastating consequences of Wolfe's boundless self-absorption.

Grandage's wan drama might have been better had Wolfe's work retained the regard still given to Fitzgerald and Hemingway, played in cameos by Guy Pearce and Dominic West respectively.

Otherwise, Genius -- based on a 1978 biography of Perkins by A. Scott Berg -- needed something that Perkins probably would have insisted on had edited movies instead of books: the infusion of enough urgency to prevent both period and characters from feeling trapped in the past -- as if they're being suffocated by a sepia-hued fog.

A director reflects on his career

Brian De Palma takes us on a guided tour of his work.

I once met Brian De Palma at the Toronto International Film Festival. Amazingly, De Palma hadn't attended the festival to hawk new wares. He was sitting in the back of an auditorium in a multiplex the festival then used for press and industry screenings. Had I missed something in the program? Did De Palma have a new movie? No, De Palma told me. He'd come to Toronto to catch a few films. A director watching movies at a festival in which he did not have a film to promote? Yes, it's a rarity, but, then, so is DePalma.

De Palma, the simply titled new documentary by Jake Paltrow and Noah Baumbach, takes a straightforward approach to the director's life and work, leaving most of the analysis to De Palma himself.

De Palma discusses his career, and we see clips from his filmography, all annotated by the director, who acknowledges his debt to Alfred Hitchcock, hardly a secret to anyone familiar with his work.

De Palma saw Vertigo when he was a kid, and never looked back. He sees himself as the only true heir to Hitchcock, and it's clear that he understands the master's work and knows how to amplify and twist it to create his own cinematic vocabulary.

Box office results also play a role in De Palma's discussion, no small matter when it comes to determining how a director's career will progress. De Palma's identifiable style isn't enough to ensure that he'll latch onto big studio projects -- which he says he no longer wants.

De Palma does, of course, talk about those big-ticket movies (Scarface, The Untouchables and Mission Impossible), as well as the smaller, European-based movies that he currently favors, 2013's critically derided Passion.

I was heartened to hear De Palma say that he didn't think he could make a better movie than Carlito's Way, a film starring Al Pacino. I'd call it one of De Palma's best.

Self-protection isn't the point here: De Palma can be critical of himself, and, of at least one actor. At one point, he talks about Obsession (1976), and what a pain in the butt Cliff Robertson was.

De Palma, by the way, was the first director to use Robert De Niro in a feature, 1968's Greetings.

For a man whose movies can be steeped in eroticism and violence -- and some would say misogyny -- De Palma sometimes seems more like a nerdy cinema buff than a cunning auteur. When talking about things that either surprised him or threw him off his game, he tends to use an exclamation that sounds like it's coming from a Boy Scout.

"Holy mackerel" is one of his favorites.

A documentary such as De Palma can serve as an occasion for a critic to ruminate about a director's body of work. No need. Paltrow and Baumbach's movie does that for us, offering valuable insights into both the art and business of film and illuminating the mixture of choice and chance that makes a career.

Anthony Weiner's failed comeback

What to make of Anthony Weiner, the former New York Congressman and mayoral hopeful who wrecked his career with a sexting scandal? I didn't quite know before I saw the documentary Weiner, and I still don't. Still, I found the documentary about Weiner's attempted comeback intensely watchable. Weiner works on multiple levels, as a look at a ferociously driven man trying to overcome his past, as a portrait of a strained marriage and as a testament to the stark absurdity of our politics. I suppose I don't need to remind you that these days our political climate regularly devolves into a cacophonous mixture of issues, personal failings, posturing and media glare. Directors Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg received what looks like near-unlimited access to Weiner during the 2013 primary campaign in which he tried to become the Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City. As he seeks reinstatement into public life, Weiner relies heavily his wife, Huma Abedin, a woman whose boilerplate description lists her as "a long-time aide to Hillary Clinton." As Weiner unfolds, relations between Abedin and her husband hit rough spots, particularly when another round of sexting was (you'll pardon the expression) exposed. Never shy about expressing himself, Weiner tries to cling to his views on issues, even as the world around him collapses. It's a bit like a passenger on the Titanic focusing on the elegant dinner ware as the ship takes on catastrophic amounts of water. There's a sadness to Weiner because watching his self-destruction is as sobering as it is compelling. Weiner may have been trying to prove that there are second acts in American life. After watching Weiner, it's difficult to imagine that he'll get a chance at a third.

A house under siege -- by a demon

The Conjuring 2 has plenty of jolts, but falls short of its predecessor.

Another summer, another exorcism.

Yes, it's time for The conjuring 2, a second chapter in the adventurers of real-life ghostbusters Lorraine and Ed Warren.

Beginning their work in the 1950s, Lorraine and Ed became the couple you'd call if you suspected that your house had been possessed by demons, other than the ones that cause the toilet to overflow at inopportune times or make the microwave die when you haven't got time to buy another.

Of course, most of our problems are nothing compared to those that put the Warrens on the paranormal map.

Set in 1977, The Conjuring 2 focuses on the troubles of (Frances O'Connor), a single mother who lives in London with her four children, one of whom -- young Janet (Madison Wolfe) -- suffers intermittent bouts of possession.

Like The Conjuring, which told the story of a "haunted" house in Rhode Island, this one focuses on another residence, a North London house that became the focal point of a story dubbed "The Enfield Poltergeist."

The first movie took place prior to the Amityville Horror case that made the Warrens famous; this one takes place in 1977, seven years after Amityville.

At first, the Warrens (Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson) resist involvement. But even at home, Ed and Lorraine aren't what you'd call a typical couple.

-- Ed keeps busy painting pictures of some sort of mysterious demon.

-- Lorraine has horrifying visions, one in which she sees her husband die.

Ed and Lorraine seem out of step with the '70s cultural zeitgeist that spawned the Bee Gees, so much so that when Wilson's Ed picks up a guitar, it's to sing Elvis tunes. Can't Help Falling in Love With You is a particular favorite.

Barely scraping by, the fatherless Hodgson family tries to cope with demonic visitors in North London. The screenplay -- credited to Wan and three additional writers -- quickly dispenses with any doubts about Janet's possession: Others see and hear what Janet sees and hears, phenomenon such as furniture sliding across rooms and loud, thumping noises that interrupt the night.

The house in London's Enfield borough isn't exactly a prize. Paint has begun to peel from the walls, the basement exudes horror-movie possibilities, and the furniture has seen more than its share of wear, particularly a fraying armchair that occupies a corner of the house.

The movie unites its American and British strands when the Catholic Church asks the Warrens to check out the goings-on in Great Britain. The Church wants to know if there are grounds to send in the exorcists or whether this is one more hoax.

Wan, who helped redefine contemporary horror with 2004s Saw and who directed The Conjuring, knows the tricks of the demonic-movie trade, dishing out enough jolts -- many involving severe property damage -- to startle most audiences.

A small supporting cast doesn't have much to do. Franka Potente shows up as a psychologist eager to debunk Janet's stories. Unfortunately, her character isn't well-enough integrated into the story to justify her presence. Simon McBurney signs on as a researcher who's disposed to believe the Hodgson's story.

For all the frightening folderol, Wan can't match the achievement of the first movie -- and, this time, I was overly conscious of exactly how Wan was using his skills to help us overlook some pedestrian writing and to make audience members pop out of their chairs as if the theater had become a giant toaster and they, the bread.

A second helping of big-screen trickery

Now You See Me 2 continues the adventures of magicians with larceny up their sleeves..

Now You See Me 2 attempts to occupy brave new franchise turf with a souped-up repetition of a formula that enjoyed success when the original was released in 2013.

Here's what I wrote about the original:

"If you bother to play Now You See Me back in your mind (and there's no compelling reason you should), you'll be hard-pressed to believe that the intricacies of its plot were remotely possible anywhere but in a screenwriter's imagination: Three writers were involved in creating the screenplay and story. They find entertaining moments in what otherwise amounts to a self-defeating hodgepodge of conceits, ploys and attempted fake-outs."

Now, I could say almost the same thing about a second installment that's more unashamedly outlandish than its predecessor and that replaces Isla Fisher with Lizzy Caplan, the female in these male-dominated proceedings. But, for me, this is a case in which the movie's 126-minute running time contains enough amusement to keep boredom at bay.

The movie's Horsemen (Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco and Caplan are still magicians with a taste for larceny and for staging the improbably big finale.

This time, The Horsemen are coerced into working for the evil Walter Marbry (Daniel Radcliffe), an entrepreneur who has staged the ultimate vanishing act: He has faked his own death.

Marbry wants the Horsemen to steal something called "the stick," some sort of gizmo capable of deprogramming any computer.

Director Jon M. Chu does a nice job with the scenes involving magic, presenting them with the swiftly efficient wave of his cinematic wand.

Of course, the tricks we see are possible only in a movie where reality readily can be altered and audiences are accustomed to suspending disbelief as easily as they reach for the next bite of popcorn.

Some of the movie takes place in Macau, where the magicians visit Iong's Magic Shop, supposedly the world's best magic store. A grandson (Jay Chou) and his grandma (Tsai Chin) run this cluttered emporium of tricks and illusions.

This year's version also throws in a half-brother for Harrelson's character, an evil sibling (also played by Harrelson) with a predatory smile and a curly wig that makes him look like a demented version of Matthew McConaughey, something McConaughey previously has accomplished all on his own. Still, it's a weird effect.

We also learn that Mark Ruffalo's Dylan -- the FBI agent who's actually in cahoots with the Horsemen -- has reason to harbor a long-standing grudge.

Also returning -- albeit on the movie's fringe -- are Morgan Freeman as Thaddeus Bradley, a man who has made his living exposing the ruses behind magic tricks, and Michael Caine, as ... well ... see the movie.

There's no need to over-praise (or over-trash) a movie such as Now You See Me 2. The actors wear their roles well, and the result is a caper movie that's not afraid to ask us to go with its magical flow -- no matter how phony it seems.

It may help to think of Now You See Me 2 as a teeming helping of what might be called "magic unrealism."

More tales from New York City

Rebecca Miller's Maggie's Plan finds amusement in its characters' pretensions.

Watching writer/director Rebecca Miller's Maggie's Plan, I wondered whether something magical hadn'toccurred. Had Woody Allen and Noah Baumbach merged into an entirely new third person?

You all know Allen, and are familiar with his New York state of mind. The Baumbach connection requires only a little more explanation. Baumbach (Frances Ha and Mistress America) has worked with Greta Gerwig on several films, and Gerwig plays a pivotal role in Maggie's Plan, a New York-based movie in which the dialogue sometimes sounds as if it's standing on Allen's shoulders.

But Miller has her own view, one that sees characters as trapped by their pretensions and by relationships that are swamped by ego and need. As such, Maggie's Plan is a mostly pleasing seriocomic take on contemporary relationships.

Gerwig portrays Maggie, a young woman who has created one of those fuzzy, new-economy livelihoods: She tries to link artists with the commercial world.

Though single, Maggie wants a child. She arranges to acquire the seed of a sperm donor, a fellow named Guy (Travis Fimmel) who's carving out a career as a Brooklyn pickle maker. The Bavarian, he says, qualifies as one of his best.

Maggie's best pals (Bill Hader and Maya Rudolph) are a cynical couple who already have a child and seem immune to the massive child-centeredness of so many new parents.

Of course, Maggie's path to motherhood can't be simple. Just before she begins negotiating the tricky procedure of self-impregnation, she meets John (Ethan Hawke), a "ficto-anthropology" professor who's working on a novel.

John has needs that aren't being satisfied by his wife (Julianne Moore), a Columbia professor with a major academic career. He also has two kids.

John asks Maggie to read the first chapter of his novel. She does. Because she seems to understand his authorial intentions, he falls for her. She falls for him, probably because she's buoyed by his reliance on her. She's needed.

Miller skips John's break-up, and moves ahead several years. Now married, John and Maggie have a daughter of their own, and Maggie often finds herself caring for John's kids from his previous marriage.

Nothing like marriage, kids and family entanglements to take the bloom off the romantic rose.

Maggie begins to see that she has turned herself into a capable (her word) helpmate who nurtures John's ego and tends to his domestic needs.

The rest of the plot should be discovered in a theater, but know that it's not the story that makes Maggie's Plan appealing. Rather, the actors and a collection of amusing small moments create a welcome sense that Maggie's Plan is as much a comedy of manners as a rom-com that revolves around another indeterminate Millennial woman.

Gerwig plays Maggie as an apparently guileless woman who might be the most unprovocative dresser (long skirts or dresses, sweaters and loafers) to appear in a movie for some time. Maggie looks like a woman who's doing a Diane Keaton impersonation, but can't get it right.

As an insecure academic with literary aspirations, Hawke is funny and credible. Hawke's John never seems to know where he's going, unless its on a journey into his own head.

But it falls to Moore to deliver a comic masterpiece of a performance as Georgette, a Danish woman with a bizarre European accent and a personality composed of acute angles. Massively stilted, Georgette probably sounds like she's giving a lecture even when she's brushing her teeth.

Miller explores what it's like to fall in and out love in what many aptly have described as a mash-up of stylistic contexts: from screwball comedy to personal drama.

Whatever it is, Maggie's Plan shows us something about the way the omelettes of contemporary lives are made -- by, as the saying goes, breaking lots of eggs.

In Miller's case, many of those eggs are cracked directly over the characters' heads.

An unblinking look at refugee life

Trying to survive in French housing projects is no picnic..

If you have any interest in the world's immigration problems, you owe it to yourself to see director Jacques Audiard's Dheepan, the story of three Sri Lankan refugees who wind up living in a bleak housing project in the downscale suburbs of Paris.

To escape Sri Lanka, Dheepan -- the movie's title character -- creates a faux family. Yalini (Kalieswari Srinivasan) poses as his wife and the mother of nine-year-old Illayall (Claudine Vinasithamby), an orphaned girl plucked -- almost at random -- from a refugee camp.

After arriving in France, Dheepan lands a job as a janitor in a complex of buildings that's overrun by violence and drugs.

Almost from the start, we know that Dheepan is no pushover; he's a former fighter with the Tamil Tigers, a group that opposed the Sri Lankan government in a long and brutal civil war.

As played by Jesuthasan Antonythasan, the quiet but alert Dheepan constantly must be on guard. He knows that his survival, as well as that of his impromptu family, hinges on his ability not to call undue attention to himself.

Some of the movie deals with typical issues faced by immigrants: struggling with a new language, enrolling a child in school, mastering the ebb and flow of daily life in strange surroundings.

All of this takes place against the lawless backdrop of housing projects where unemployment runs high and gunfire has become commonplace.

Audiard does nothing to mar a track record that includes movies such as the 2001 thriller Read My Lips and 2009s A Prophet. If you've seen either of those movies, you have a feel for Audiard's style, an unforced realism that centers on characters pushed into extreme situations.

In Dheepan, which won the Palme d'Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, Audiard builds toward a violent conclusion that, at first, may strike you as too similar to a B-movie helping of blazing revenge.

I won't give away more, but know that this eruption directly connects to Dheepan's past. There's only so much a man like him can take before he snaps, and when he snaps, he reverts to his warrior past.

A brief epilogue feels too good to be true, but Audiard may have decided he owed both his characters and his audience some respite from the hardcore realities he has depicted.

If so, I was more than ready for it.

The Louvre during World War II

A Russian director on how culture becomes a spoil of war.

One masterpiece in a lifetime may be more than we reasonably can expect from any artist. Russian Ark (2003) stands as such a work, director Alexandr Sokurov's tour de force.

In Russian Ark, Sokurov took us through St. Petersburg's Hermitage Museum in a single, resonant 100-minute take that allowed us to immerse in 200 years of Russian history.

So when Sokurov turned his attention to the Louvre in Francofonia, his latest movie, expectations inevitably ran high, perhaps so high that even Sokurov couldn't meet them.

In Francofonia, Sokurov takes an unfortunately discursive look at the fabled French museum during World War II, focusing on two men: Jacques Jaujard, the Louvre's war-time director, and Franz Wolff-Metternich, the German officer and art expert chosen by Hitler to preside over the Louvre.

Jaujard and Metternich had an uneasy relationship, but both wanted to preserve the artistic heritage of the West by ensuring that the Louvre would retain its status even after the war. Much of the Louvre's art was hidden around the country prior to the German occupation, and Metternich seems to respect efforts to keep the Louvre French.

Not content to limit himself, Sokurov uses the story of Jaujard and Metternich as the basis for a sometimes intriguing, often ponderous examination of deeper questions about the way art is acquired.

In Sokurov's view, art and war are inevitable bedfellows, an observation he shares in a narration that he delivers. When countries are conquered, art becomes a spoil of war.

Sokurov's observations thread through a movie that employs location shooting, awkwardly acted re-enactments involving Jaujard and Metternich, newsreel footage of the German occupation of Paris and appearances by actors playing Napoleon and Marianne, French symbol of liberty.

Sokuruv further confuses matters with a recurring piece of business in which he attempts to communicate with the captain of a ship that's carrying valuable art through a powerful storm. A culture's artistic heritage threatened by natural turmoil? An attempt to add another layer of metaphor?

Informative, self-involved, stimulating and scattered, Francofonia can't always find a balance between brilliance and banality. I'm not sure I'd call it a failed work, but I certainly wouldn't proclaim it a wonder, either.

Still, it was nothing short of brave for Sokurov to make another museum-based movie after Russian Ark. Or maybe it was folly: After all, any artist who creates a masterwork forever is condemned to compete with him or herself.

Andy Samberg hip hops for laughs

A rapper falls on hard times.

I wanted to laugh.

And I often did, but Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping -- Andy Samberg's new comedy -- isn't uproariously funny and its cascading series of musical parodies certainly can't touch the winner and still champion mock-doc satire, This is Spinal Tap.

Put another way, Samberg hasn't made Spinal Tap for the Hip-Hop generation.

That's not to say that the movie, which is stocked with a surfeit of musicians and SNL vets, doesn't occasionally strike gold -- or at least a significant amount of gold plate.

Hamburg plays Conner4Real, a rapper who broke into the business with two boyhood pals (Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer), teen-agers who hit it big with a group called Style Boyz.

After the breakup, Conner enjoys some solo success, but his eagerly awaited second album tanks.

Somber, Taccone and Schaffer are all members of The Lonely Island, the trio that created SNL Digital Shorts, comic videos that fans will recognize as precursors to this full-length effort.

As a promotional scheme and commercial tie-in, Conner's management team signs a misguided agreement with an appliance company named AquaSpin. Every time an AquaSpin appliance is turned on, a Conner4Real song plays. The result: global power outages and rampant hostility toward Conner.

A strong comic cast, mostly underutilized, supports Stamberg's efforts. Tim Meadows plays Conner's manager), Sarah Silverman, his publicist and Maya Rudolph, a representative of the appliance company that goes into partnership with Conner. Bill Hader has a small part as a roadie and guitar wrangler.

You'll also see lots of real musicians: Questlove, Mariah Carey, Ringo Starr, Justin Timberlake, Snoop Dogg, Seal, D.J. Khaled, Usher, 50 Cent, Pharrell Williams and more.

The movie's collection of pop stars and rappers adds satirical weight. They talk with reverence about the StyleBoyz, an obvious joke because it's difficult to imagine that this group of white nerds could have made it big in the world of rap -- even by appropriating black styles.

In the album that flops, Conner goes way wrong with his choices. The main tune on his new album -- Not Gay -- is a belated cry for gender equality that lands with a thud, even with Conner's supposed genius for creating memorable catchphrases.

Much effort has gone into the movie's production numbers, presented as part of the sagging star's tour of the nation's arenas. The tour, by the way, eventually is hijacked by Conner's opening act, Hunter the Hungry (Chris Redd).

A Sacramento-bred suburban kid, Conner's egotistical personality seems less imaginatively conceived than some of the movie's rap lyrics.

Some of those lyrics are clever in a rude sort of way. I enjoyed a scene at an awards show that results in confusion over which crew is shooting which star's behind-the-scenes documentary. There's also something audaciously crazy about the idea that a rapper would write a song based on the way Spanish is spoken in Spain -- with a "lisp," says Conner.

So how do we sum up Popstar? Mostly sunny with sprinkles of laughs and no real taste for the rabid bite of satire.