A three-part take on family relations

 

  Director Jim Jarmusch's Father Mother Sister Brother offers a trio of short films, each with the texture and open-ended quality of a carefully crafted short story. 

   Avoiding big events and shocking plot twists, Jarmusch smartly explores situations that invite us to consider the unseen past that informs nearly every moment. 

  Jarmusch begins in New Jersey, where two siblings (Adam Driver and Mayim Bialik) visit their widowed father (Tom Waits), who lives in an isolated home at the end of a dirt road.

   Little is said, but much is suggested. Awkwardness prevails.

   Dad, for example, has a sizable collection of serious books but doesn’t seem particularly interested in ideas. Dad's house is disheveled, suggesting Dad isn't financially flush. Driver's Jeff has sent Dad money. Bialik's Emily once sent funds. When her husband objected, she stopped.

   Jarmusch saves a revealing flourish for the end, and we begin to sense a theme: Family ties persist, but it's unclear how much anyone ever knows anyone else. We feel the strain of situations in which everyone seems a bit trapped by the roles they think they should be playing, or maybe they use these roles as a method of concealment.

  That idea carries into the next episode, which takes place in Dublin. Charlotte Rampling portrays a successful author who's about to be visited by her two daughters (Cate Blanchett and Vicky Krieps). Once a year, they all gather for tea, a ritual the three seem to approach warily. Still, they do as expected.

   A woman of precise expression, Mom has carefully organized the table with carefully arranged small  cakes. We sense she may have been a mother who held her kids to high standards, the kind that result either in intimidation or rebellion. 

   Again the conversations are strained, the performances, revealing. Blanchett's Timothea appears timid and insecure; Krieps' Lilith behaves more freely, yet she lies about her accomplishments and relationships. 

   The last episode takes place in Paris. The discomfort of the previous episodes gives way to a more natural flow. Billy (Luka Sabbat) and Skye (Indya Moore) play twins who meet in Paris after their parents die in a plane crash. 

   Dad was flying a small plane in the Azores. Billy wonders if their parents might have survived had Mom been at the controls instead of Dad. Clearly, the twins have ideas about their parents' personalities. Whatever caused the crash, we sense that Mom and Dad approached life as adventurers.

    Billy and Skye have been apart for a while, but they know each other in the way only twins can. They're relaxed in each other's company, freely expressing affection.

    But did they know their late parents? Mom was white; Dad was Black. The twins let us know that their parents had a penchant for being unconventional, but they're seem to be talking about style. They were, after all, a couple who left the US for what they may have seen as the freedom of Paris.

   We also learn that Billy cleared the apartment where the twins grew up before Skye's arrival: The  mementos of the past have been sent to storage, perhaps to be forgotten. When the twins visit the apartment, it's empty. The emptiness feels poignant.

   Rich in subtexts that illuminate the gap between parents and their adult children, each episode includes a touch that's repeated throughout. Among them: mentions of Rolex watches (real or fake) or use of the British idiomatic phrase "Bob's your uncle," which means something like, "Well, that's that." 

   Father Mother Sister Brother begins with Anika Henderson's rendition of the song, Spooky, a great mood setter for a movie that serves as a welcome antidote for the frenetic rush that characterizes so many current movies, even the good ones. 

   Jarmusch, who hasn't made a film since 2019's The Dead Don't Die, doesn't hurry or dot every "i." He doesn't hide behind ambiguities but leaves it to us to search for the complicated history that underlies each of the movie's mini-dramas.

 

Coppola's long-awaited opus arrives

 

  

An Elvis impersonator. A chariot race. A man who sometimes wears bright red lipstick and dresses. Hamlet's "To Be or Not to Be" soliloquy. Quotes from Marcus Aurelius and Petrarch. The Statue of Liberty, and The Chrysler Building. 

  OK, take a breath.

  I've only mentioned a few of the sights and sounds found in Francis Ford Coppola's extravagant WFT opus, Megalopolis, a movie that makes its themes clear but remains jumbled in other ways.

   I begin this way because Coppola has made an amusing, risible, sometimes exhilarating mess of a movie that either can be accepted as a bold display of cinematic ambition or as a $120 million misfire. 

   Which choice you make or whether you find yourself somewhere in the middle, mostly depends on how you regard Coppola's career and Coppola himself. You never forget there's someone with a vision behind the camera.

   The director of two great American movies (The Godfather and The Godfather Part II) always gets the benefit of my doubt -- up to a point. 

   I reached that point many times during Megalopolis as I wondered what had compelled Coppola, who's now 85, to spend 40 years hoping to make this movie, ultimately financing it with his own money.

   I wish I could say that the answer becomes obvious upon seeing the movie; I'm not sure it does. 

   So what's Megalopolis about? Here's a laundry list of themes: time, creativity, power, hubris, Roman history, urban planning, the role of artists in society,  the fate of the United States, and possibly all of humanity. I'm sure I've omitted something important, but I'll note that in an interview shown before a preview screening, Coppola said that the United States is Rome.

     You can pick that apart while I try to condense a tangled plot. Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) serves as the movie's main character, an ambitious architect with megalomaniacal tendencies and a belief that his high level of intelligence entitles him to disparage others.

     In a commanding prologue, Catilina tentatively steps onto the rooftop of the Chrysler Building. A vertiginous sequence follows and we learn that Catalina has the power to stop time, a sci-fi element explained by Catalina's invention of the substance Megalon.

    No need to memorize, it won't be on the quiz.

    Cesar's ability to freeze time reflects his power as an architect and artist. Artists can stop time -- or at least to freeze it with images, stories, etc.

    Presented in the broadest of strokes, the story centers on the conflict between Catilina and Frank Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), the mayor of New Rome, an imaginary city that resembles New York.  Deeply skeptical about those who want to create utopias, Cicero speaks the language of pragmatic politics.

     Megalopolis, by the way, is the utopia Cesar wants to build within the borders of New Rome, a "futuristic" city  in which the police cars look like they came directly from 2024, print editions of tabloid newspapers can be seen, and cigarette smoking hasn't vanished.

      Among New Rome's residents, we also meet Cicero's daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel). Early on, Julia seems more interested in partying than artistic vision, but she's drawn to Cesar, and they eventually fall in love. 

     Dad objects. So does Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), a character who enters the movie as a well-known TV reporter and Cesar's mistress.

     A striver of the first order, Wow eventually marries Crassus (Jon Voight), perhaps the richest man in New Rome. Shia LaBeouf plays Clodio, Crassus' treacherous grandson. Late in the movie, he seals a conspiratorial pact with Wow by having sex with her. He calls her Auntie Wow, suggesting a bit of incestuous creepiness.

     A large cast weaves its way through a visual showcase that mixes dreams, special effects, and diaphanous dissolves in which one image peeks through another. If there were such a thing as visual indigestion, Megalopolis could give it to you.

     I can't single out any of the performances but will note that Driver works his way through an arc that includes Cesar's arrogance, moral collapse, and rebirth as, let's say, a true artist or, in the movie's terms, a man who finally can love.

     Plaza seems totally committed to her role, as does LaBeouf, who delivers a major helping of craziness.

     Laurence Fishburne portrays Cesar's driver, a loyalist who also provides occasional narration.

     It's difficult to discuss acting when the characters function as archetypes that represent the story's conflicting values. Crassus stands for capitalist greed, for example.

     Coppola's screenplay, by the way, draws on a real bit of history, the Catilinarian conspiracy of 63 BC. You can look it up. But characters' names are linked to Roman history, and Coppola presumably sees parallels between the Roman Republic on the cusp decline and ... well ... I don't need to spell it out for you.

     Coppola does that with dialogue -- often presented in form of bromides, aphorisms, and quotations from philosophers. Many lines have on-the-nose clarity, and the film's ending borders on agitprop as Coppola invites the audience to engage in a conversation about what kind of future it wants, topping it off with a greeting card flourish: We owe it to the children.

     Megalopolis can be as baffling as it is engaging; it may serve as a kind of exclamation point to Coppola's long-standing commitment to cinematic daring, as well as an expression of hope for a chaotic world.

      Whatever it is, it left my head spinning.

       

A racing magnate faces a big test

 

   After his work in House of Gucci, you might have thought that Adam Driver wouldn't want to play any more Italians. One English-speaking Italian might be enough for any career.

 But here he is as Enzo Ferrari, the Italian sports car entrepreneur who suffers from the loss of a beloved 24-year-old son, neglects his wife (Penelope Cruz), and carries on a long-standing affair with a younger woman (Shailene Woodley) with whom he has another son.  

   And, then, there's racing.

   Ferrari affords director Michael Mann the opportunity to recreate the Mille Miglia, a grueling 1,500-kilometer race that gives the movie its most harrowing twist.

  The drivers in Ferrari reminded me of bullfighters -- proud, arrogant men who know they're risking their lives.

   Once a driver himself, Ferrari encourages his drivers not to waver at crucial points in a race, even when two cars are trying to make the same turn. He makes it seem as if their manhood is on the line.

   That's tough stuff, and as Driver plays him, Ferrari steels himself against paying an emotional price for any damage that might result from his single-minded commitment to winning. 

   Mann's movie unfolds during three months of 1957, a year in which Ferrari battled to save his company from bankruptcy while dealing with an embittered wife who had leverage over him. She owned half of his company.

  With another fine performance, Cruz creates a character who treats her wandering husband with simmering contempt that threatens boil into rage. No patsy, Cruz's Laura also wants to protect her stake in the company.  

   Ferrari eventually learns that he'll have to shed his speed-boutique mentality and sell a minimum of 400 cars per year to keep his company on the road. Since its founding in 1947,  Ferrari had been selling a few cars a year to well-heeled buyers.

    Lacking capital, Ferrari assays what he must risk to find big-time backing, at one point from Ford. Business and sport converge. To secure  financing, Ferrari also believes he must win the Mille Miglia.

    Mann (Collateral and The Insider) gained prominence with TV's Miami Vice. Early movies such as Thief  (1981) and Manhunter (1986) were small gems. Many count Mann's Heat (1995) among their favorite movies.

     Mann resists the temptation to over-stylize Ferrari, and in Driver, he finds an actor who communicates the torment beneath Ferrari's composed facade. Ferrari knows he has subordinated other elements in his life to his racing obsession.

     To his credit, Mann also shows a softer side Ferrari mostly keeps hidden. We see it in tender scenes between Ferrari and his young son, a boy Laura insists cannot inherit the Ferrari name until she dies, another source of contention.

    The racing sequences are exciting but Mann backs them up with plenty of off-the-track intrigue.

    More than a pure racing movie and less than a comprehensive bio-pic, Ferrari focuses on a man who’s trying to hold his life and company together. He and others pay a price for his efforts.

    Ferrari may hit an occasional bump, but Mann, now 80, knows where to find the dramatic fuel that keeps his movie  running.

'White Noise' never seems to find its footing

   In adapting Don DeLillo's 1985 novel, White Noise, for the screen, director Noah Baumbach has made a wildly uneven movie that soars and sinks until it arrives at a brilliant end-credit musical number set to LCD Soundsystem's New Body Rhumba. 

      Some of White Noise struck me as abrasively funny, although it's easy to make fun of academic pretension, one of the movie's early preoccupations. Otherwise, Baumbach sends his movie here, there, and everywhere, spewing cleverness but never finding its footing. 

      Looking as if he hasn't made a trip to the gym in months, a pot-bellied Adam Driver plays Jack Gladney, a college professor specializing in Hitler studies, a field he pioneered. 

    Jack's wife Babette (Greta Gerwig)  works with the elderly and is addicted to pills known as Dylar. (What these pills do remains a mystery until near the movie’s end.)

   A fourth marriage for both Jack and Babette, the couple lives in a college town with the kids from their combined households, four in all.

   Don Cheadle turns up as Murray, one of Jack's colleagues, a professor who lectures on pop culture. Murray hopes to do for Elvis what Jack has done for Hitler, turn the King into an academic rage.

   At one point, Jack and Murray give dueling lectures that Jack treats as a clash of egos and which Baumbach deftly stages with each professor trying to out-dramatize the other.

    Baumbach soon introduces a disaster-movie element that’s foreshowed by an early-picture lecture Murray gives on the deeper meaning of car crashes in movies.

     When a truck and a train collide, the little college town that Jack and Babette call home is threatened by an "airborne toxic event." Toxic clouds pollute the air.

     Fearing contamination and heeding an evacuation order, the family piles into a station wagon and flees the advancing cloud. The movie suddenly becomes a cockeyed disaster pic full of roads glutted with traffic, impromptu shelters, and escalating fear.

    Baumbach keeps many of DeLillo's ironic jokes. Jack, for example, bills himself as an expert on Hitler but he doesn't speak German. Supermarkets become meccas of personal fulfillment. Consumerism attains the status of a new religion.

     All of this in the service of obliterating any consciousness of mortality in a culture that can't bear to face the prospect of death, a fear that haunts both Jack and Babette.

     A late picture development brings Jack face-to-face with unpleasant truths, including a confession of infidelity by Babette that leads to ... oh well ... it doesn't exactly matter because it feels as if Baumbach has deposited us in another movie, one in which Jack tries to unravel the mysteries of Dylar.

   Baumbach sets the story in the 1980s, just as DeLillo did. That means White Noise can feel dated. Amusing in spurts and obviously ambitious, White Noise never becomes a self-sufficient romp through a fractured culture.

    Instead, Baumbach's White Noise feels like a collection of the accumulated absurdities that once fired DeLillo’s imagination in a novel that many considered unfilmable. Pehraps they were right. Some things should be left on the page.

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.

A 14th Century fight to the death

 

   Brutal and dedicated to depicting the harshest Medieval realities, The Last Duel drags its sword through the muck, igniting sparks here and there as it advances toward the climactic battle of the title.

  Based on a real incident in 14th Century France, Last Duel finds director Ridley Scott working from a screenplay by Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and Nicole Holofcener. Scott divides the story into three acts, first telling about rape from the vantage point of an aggrieved nobleman (Damon) whose wife (Jodie Comer) says she was raped by Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver). 

   Not surprisingly, Le Gris -- in his second act version --  claims to have been seduced. He also serves to highlight the archaic notion that the rape is an offense to de Carrouges, women of the time being regarded as little more than property.

    Finally, Comer's Marguerite gets an opportunity to give her rendition of events.

    Breaking the story into three sections sometimes functions as a burden on a movie that lacks the mind-bending impact of Akira Kurosawa's classic multi-vantage point story, Rashomon.

    The story begins in earnest when Comer's Marguerite de Carrouges tells her husband that she was raped by Le Gris, a knight and former best friend of Damon's Jean de Carrouges.

   A land dispute instigated by Count Pierre d'Alencon (Affleck) further complicates matters. Damon's Jean Carrouges believes he's been swindled out of land that he was promised as part of Marguerite's dowry.

   The performances tend to be a bit strange. Looking like a Medieval warthog, Damon begins the movie as a stalwart warrior but soon is revealed as a dolt. Driver's Le Gris excels in cunning and narcissism. Sporting blond hair and a goatee, Affleck portrays a nobleman who relishes debauchery and greed, viewing them as feudal entitlements.

    Of the main performances, Comer's lands hardest; her Marguerite burns with conviction and a sense of righteousness. 

   Because Marguerite's story arrives last it comes close to saving the movie from some of its more risible aspects: variable accents, mud- splattered battles, and near-ubiquitous grime.

   At two and half hours, the movie becomes a bit of a slog as we await the great duel, which Scott presents with merciless brutality. 

    The two combatants square off in a walled rectangular setting and fight to the death with lances as they ride toward each other at full speed. 

   The idea: The winner will be judged to have been telling the truth. The loser dies and, in the case of Marguerite, will be put to death for perjury.

    The screenplay sometimes seems too on the nose with its feminist leanings, but Scott also weaves welcome intrigue into the story of men who seem more interested in themselves than in anything else.

     Based on a book by Eric Jager, the movie follows the book's subtitle, dutifully unfolding a story of "crime, scandal and trial by combat." I guess that also describes an uneven, intermittently engrossing movie that seems to be trying too hard to trample any lingering romanticism about the period in which it's set.

'Skywalker' closes a long 'Star Wars' series

JJ Abrams' finale is sure to inspire pros, cons and middling reactions, but it gets the job done.

JJ Abrams moves quickly through his 2 1/2 hour wrap-up of the Skywalker series, making sure the pack the movies with ingredients designed to please the fan base while arriving at an entirely expected destination. That's not a spoiler. What? You expected evil to triumph?

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker -- the ninth movie in the series -- brims with the battles, familiar characters and the sentiment that we've come to expect from the Star Wars movies. Maybe that’s enough.

I looked at the one-line description of the movie on IMDb: It reads, "The surviving Resistance faces the First Order once more in the final chapter of the Skywalker saga." Do you need to know much more?

Some fans felt Rian Johnson veered too far from the revered Star Wars formula in the previous chapter, The Last Jedi. I enjoyed that movie's approach but also believe that Abrams had no choice but to reassert the franchise's familiar themes in bringing the Skywalker saga to its conclusion.

Almost from the movie’s start, Daisy Ridley's Rey leads the charge against the aforementioned First Order, an evil group that's trying to establish a new empire of Siths. As the story unfolds, various characters will find their true selves, Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) again will rear his hideous head and a bit of nostalgic casting will make us remember when Star Wars had yet to reach industrial-strength levels.

Billy D. Williams revives Lando Calrissian; the late Carrie Fisher appears briefly as Princess Leia. (Abrams used footage shot but not used in the last episode). Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) gets a bit more screen time, as do C-3PO and R2-D2. Mark Hamill turns up.

Working from a screenplay he wrote with Chris Terrio, Abrams mixes droids, creatures and many of the characters who have taken over the series: John Boyega's Finn, Adam Driver's Kylo Ren, and Oscar Isaac's Poe Dameron.

En route to its conclusion, the story makes more stops than a local subway train. The crew of Poe's ship breathlessly hurries from one place to the next, servicing the plot as they push forward.

The finale, of course, delivers the expected mix of action and emotion. For me, the emotion is more understood than felt, but fans may buy into it. In some ways, the plot of a Star Wars movie hardly matters because all of them pit the forces of hearty rebels against imperial evil, just as all build toward genealogical revelations about who's related to whom.

Of the creatures, the most amusing arrives when Maz (Lupita Nyong'o) reappears to perform a technical operation that's needed to keep the story moving.

Did I mention that Naomi Ackie plays a new character; Her Jannah rides a kind of hybrid creature that most resembles a horse that has been outfitted for Mardi Gras.

Pile on the effects, rely on Isaacs to add a bit of swashbuckling swagger, challenge Daisy's identity and throw in a surprise or two about the other characters.

The Star Wars series has given Disney the proverbial license to print money. Parts of the fan base always find something to grumble about. Others will feel that they've been amply rewarded. I can't imagine anyone would want to walk into The Rise of Skywalker if they haven't seen the previous eight movies.

Why rattle on? I'm not enough of a fanboy to get staunch about Skywalker. It's enough to say that Abrams has finished the Skywalker series in ways that mostly satisfy, providing some epic sights as he goes.

Case closed. Box office open.

Can a divorce really be amicable?

Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver play a divorcing couple in director Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story.

In a divorce, it eventually becomes clear to one or both partners that the person in whom they had placed their trust no longer is the person they believed them to be. Suddenly, the most intimate person in one's life becomes an unfamiliar antagonist.

This isn't true of every divorce, but it's the underlying dynamic that drives Marriage Story, the latest movie from director Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale, Frances Ha, The Meyerowitz Stories. The always insightful Baumbach tells the story of two creative types who love each other, but whose marriage has run out of gas. Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) has decided that her acting chops have sustained the career of her husband (Adam Driver), an acclaimed experimental theater director. Driver's Charlie reaps the rewards and adoration. She's an also-ran.

Eventually, the situation proves intolerable for Nicole -- that and the fact that Charlie has slept with a member of the Manhattan theater company he runs.

To pursue her career, Nicole moves to her hometown, Los Angeles, a city that Charlie loathes. She eventually lands a big role in an important TV show.

For his part, Charlie's career begins to stall and he can't accept the idea that his family, which includes a young son (Azhy Robertson), no longer can call itself New York-based.

Baumbach begins the movie with a nifty bit of trickery. We hear the content of letters in which each of the spouses lists the good points about their mate. The movie then undermines what seems an expression of love and goodwill by telling us that these letters were written at the suggestion of a mediator after the couple agreed to divorce.

The movie is less the story of a marriage than the story of a break-up. What appeared to be a good marriage was fraught with difficulties, the most important being Charlie's self-absorption. Early hopes for an amicable divorce eventually wind up in the hands of lawyers.

Laura Dern portrays Nicole's lawyer, a shark who knows how to find blood in the water and move in for the kill, isn't afraid to soften her hard edges. Ray Liotta turns up as Dern's male counterpart, another lawyer whose strategy involves biting into the nearest jugular. Liotta's character takes over after Charlie tries to do business with a reasonable, realistic lawyer, a terrific Alan Alda in full mensch mode.

Baumbach works hard to turn Marriage Story into an equal opportunity movie for each side. He evidently doesn't have a taste for the kind of drama that rips us apart, and he introduces comic elements that stem from Nicole's mother (Julie Hagerty) and her sister (Merritt Wever).

An attempt at farce in which Wever's character serves Charlie with divorce papers is overwrought to the point of annoyance. And there are two instances of characters doing musical numbers that easily could have been cut from a movie that doesn't quite know when to end. But I guess you could say the same about Charlie and Nicole's marriage.

When no one wants to know the truth

Adam Driver stars in The Report, a movie about a senatorial aide who tries to uncover the real story behind CIA torture.

Adam Driver's single-minded intensity perfectly suits the character of Dan Jones, a Senate aide charged with investigating the CIA's use of torture in the days following 9/11.

Jones's boss -- Annette Bening's Sen. Dianne Feinstein as chair of the U.S. Select Committee on Intelligence -- supports him but exercises more caution than Jones would like.

It makes for a heady conflict, the committed truth-teller vs. the politically astute senator who wants to find the truth but who can't avoid playing all the angles. It works because Bening's too nuanced an actor to let us push Feinstein into the box of caricature.

If you're looking for a political slant, know this: The movie tries to balance anti-Bush leanings with a slam at the Obama administration, which wasn't eager to see Jones's report see daylight, either. Jon Hamm appears as an Obama aide who insists that his boss knows the score, even if he doesn't want to spread it across the nation's headlines.

Director Scott Z. Burns has assembled a fine group of supporting actors in what amounts to a by-the-numbers procedural about the ways one branch of government tries to exercise oversight over a government agency that relies on secrecy.

Maura Tierney portrays a CIA agent of single-minded intent; i.e., she sees nothing wrong with what became known as "enhanced interrogation techniques;" i.e., waterboarding and other forms of humiliation. Corey Stoll plays a lawyer who, at the film's opening, tries to school Jones in the unhappy fate of whistleblowers.

We also learn that the enhanced interrogation techniques were developed by independent contractors (Douglas Hodge and T. Ryder Smith) who challenged CIA agents who believed the best way to obtain information was to convince detainees that an agent was on their side. The argument: Not only were the enhanced interrogation techniques immoral; they didn't work.

Burns, who wrote the screenplays for The Bourne Ultimatum and An Inconvenient Truth) dutifully follows the drama as it depicts Jones's five-year effort to discover the truth. He also offers unflinching views of some of what the CIA did to detainees in its fruitless efforts to get the jump on terrorism.

The Report sometimes lacks the pulse-pounding excitement we expect from political thrillers, but it's a serious effort and it offers a rare view of the kind of person who can’t be sidetracked. For Jones, learning exactly what happened becomes a near-sacred duty.

Jim Jarmusch makes his zombie movie

Every now and again, I come across a movie that I watch without being able to form much of a connection. That certainly was the case with The Dead Don't Die, director Jim Jarmusch's belated entry into the world of zombie movies. Employing a cast led by Bill Murray, Adam Driver, and Chloe Sevigny -- all of whom play small-town cops — Jarmusch deadpans his way through a dreary foray to a small town where the dead are popping up from their graves. There's little point making this kind of movie without taking aim at a decaying world. To that end, Steve Buscemi portrays a racist farmer who wears a "Keep America White Again" hat, a take on ... well ... you know. Strange things begin to happen in the tiny fictional town of Centerville and it doesn't take long for the dead to begin chewing on the living. Murray and Driver display little emotion as the movie progresses. Tilda Swinton adds to the weirdness quotient. She shows up as the town's mortician, a woman who also happens to wield a mean samurai sword. At one point, Jarmusch shatters convention. Driver's Ronnie justifies his gloomy outlook by telling Murray's character that he knows things will end badly because he’s read the script. Jim, he says, showed it to him. Oh, I forgot to mention that Tom Waits portrays a hermit who wanders through the woods outside of town and that Danny Glover appears as the owner of the town's hardware store. The idea of riffing on zombie movies, a deadened American culture, global warming, and small-town insularity isn't exactly new. Because The Dead Don't Die was selected as the opening offering of the Cannes Film Festival, I expected a more robust movie -- even if that movie kept faith with Jarmusch's low-key style. The Dead May Not Die, but this movie sometimes feels as if it's in need of life support. Oh well, maybe it’s me. I’ve admired some of Jarmusch’s movies and been unimpressed by others. For me, this one staggered its way onto the negative side of the ledger.

A black cop infiltrates the KKK

In BlacKkKlansman, director Spike Lee tells an incredible true story about American racism.

As is the case with every state in America's often wobbly union, Colorado has no shortage of shameful racist history. In the 1920s and 1930s, Denver’s mayor — Ben Stapleton — was a known member of the Ku Klux Klan, as were other notable public figures in the state. The controversy over Stapleton's Klan affiliation continues: Some argue that Denver's Stapleton neighborhood, built on the site of the old Stapleton International Airport, should be renamed.

But Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman -- set in Colorado Springs -- doesn't derive its power exclusively from the state's shameful past. In telling the story of Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), a black Colorado Springs detective who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s, Lee turns a glaring spotlight on a moment that has relevance in the deeply troubled present. Post Charlottesville, it's no longer possible -- if it ever has been -- to give hate-group activities the security of historical shelter.

No stranger to controversy, Lee can be both a cinematic agitator and a gifted filmmaker. Often he’s both — and in the same movie. He's able to mix the stark strokes of agitprop with softer dramatic tones; he can allow for nuance and humor or he can ignore dramatic shading entirely. The approach makes sense when Lee works in areas in which clear racial lines are drawn, the most famous example being Lee’s incendiary Do the Right Thing, now 29 years old.

With BlacKkKlansman — co-written by Lee and three other writers -- Lee has hold of another story that allows him to address racial issues in a way that's volatile, telling and sharply attuned to the tragic absurdity of unleashed bigotry and ignorance.

As the first African-American member of the Colorado Springs Police Department, Stallworth (John David Washington) faced racism from some of his co-workers but found his niche as an undercover officer. His work in exposing the Klan began when he responded by phone to a newspaper ad seeking KKK recruits.

Eventually, Stallworth even spoke with white supremacist David Duke (Topher Grace), then Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

Obviously, infiltrating the Klan required face-to-face contacts that Stallworth couldn’t make. Enter fellow detective Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver). In meetings with Klan members, Zimmerman posed as Stallworth, another bit of deception because Zimmerman happened to be Jewish, not a favored group among Klansmen.

Early on, Lee connects Stallworth's story to period realities about race. Sent to a speech by Kwame Ture -- formerly Stokely Carmichael (Corey Hawkins) -- Stallworth finds himself in the awkward position of being a "spy" who’s not necessarily at odds with Ture’s analysis of America's racial situation.

Stallworth's presence at Ture's speech in itself qualifies as racially suspect: The Colorado Springs police worried that Ture would inspire violent protests among the city’s black population.

Let me leap ahead: Perhaps because he's both a storyteller and commentator, Lee concludes his movie with footage of what happened in Charlottesville, Va., the white supremacist rally that Donald Trump tried to address evenhandedly with his good-people-on-both-sides comments.

Let's be honest, there aren’t two sides to a story of bluntly expressed racism that, in BlacKkKlansman, is directed at the African-American students of Colorado College. One of those students (Laura Harrier) also becomes a romantic interest for Stallworth, a man grappling with conflicting identities. He understands racism as well as anyone but is also reluctant to accept his comrades as “pigs," lest he is branded with the same label. Initially, he doesn't tell Harrier's character that he's a cop.

Washington, son of Denzel Washington, handles the movie’s double-identity requirements with simmering anger and wit. He and an excellent Driver don’t become immediate soul mates, which seems entirely realistic. They’re both doing their jobs. Driver plays a Jew without a strong Jewish identity. He hasn't given much previous thought to racism.

This being a Lee movie — Jordan Peele of Get Out fame produced — you won't find many subtly expressed ideas; the defense for the movie’s lack of nuance becomes obvious: When dealing with Klansmen, nuance would not only be superfluous but a notably stupid form of moral temporizing.

And, yes, Lee uses the absurdity of Stallworth’s situation to give the movie a variety of humorous scenes. When Duke visits Colorado Springs, Stallworth is assigned the task of guarding him. He even convinces Duke to pose for a picture with him, the city's only black policeman.

Finnish actor Jasper Pääkkönen plays the scariest of the racist Klansmen, who — at one point — confronts Driver’s Flip Zimmerman with suspicions that he might be Jewish, a tensely comic scene that hinges on whether Zimmerman has been circumcised. These Klansmen are in no danger of being confused with MENSA members.

Lee also adds references that link his movie to the American movie past, strategically inserting footage from Birth of a Nation, the 1915 D.W. Griffith movie that lionized the Klan, as well as from Gone with the Wind.

Lee has taken dramatic liberties to be sure -- Harrier's character is an invention and Driver's character wasn't Jewish. Overall, though, Lee does justice to a story that would be impossible to believe if it weren’t true. Lee again puts the pedal to the metal in trying to acknowledge an ugly part of American life that shouldn’t be swept under any red, white and blue rug -- then or now.

A welcome 'Star Wars' addition

Director Rian Johnson takes the reins for Last Jedi and the result mostly satisfies.

Now, where were we?

If you're among the zillions of Star Wars enthusiasts, you know that the last chapter (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) concluded with young Rey (Daisy Ridley) finding her way to a remote island where Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) had withdrawn from all things Jedi, including battling whatever evil currently had harnessed the dark side of the series' fabled Force. Luke, we learned, had hung up his Lightsaber.

Now comes Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the next installment of what's billed as a Star Wars sequel trilogy -- and the plea for Luke to shake off his funk continues.

This edition should please fans as it deftly barrels its way through two and half hours with only a few lags as the screenplay fulfills expositional obligations.

Director Rian Johnson (Brick and Looper) picks up the reins from J.J. Abrams and gives us a Star Wars with a bit of nuance, flashes of humor and plenty of well-crafted action.

What brings the whole enterprise to life -- aside from the generosity of its spectacle -- are the inner torments of characters who embody the great Star Wars theme: the tension between the light and dark sides of the force. This clash, of course, includes the knowing acknowledgment that even the most morally superior characters might be a hairsbreadth away from answering the dark call.

In a way, the plot of any Star Wars movie could be its least important attribute. You already know that Rey has found Luke Skywalker, so the only remaining question is whether she persuades him to leave his island retreat -- formally known as the planet Ahch-To -- and return to action as an inspiration for the Resistance, which is busy fighting the First Order.

The First Order, of course, is run by Supreme Leader Snoke, a cadaverous-looking creep played by Andy Serkis with the usual CGI boost. Snoke has great power, but looks so decayed, you half wonder how he lifts himself out of bed in the morning.

Disney, which has taken charge of the Star Wars franchise, has cautioned critics against revealing spoilers. I don't consider it a spoiler to tell you that unlike its 2015 predecessor, this edition includes more than a cameo appearance by Hamill. His Luke quickly establishes himself as a cranky, bearded figure who has shed every bit of the wide-eyed enthusiasm of his character's youth.

A bit of sadness tempers the fun. The Last Jedi marks Carrie Fisher's last performance. Fisher appears as General Leia Organa, head of the Resistance, and yes, Fischer's presence is more than ceremonial. (Fisher died a year ago this month.)

Johnson does a good job of weaving new characters into a mix that brings back Adam Driver, who digs as deep as he can as Kylo Ren. Kylo Ren tops Snoke's list of prospects to become the new Darth Vader. Ren, you'll recall, killed his father, Han Solo, in the last episode.

Look for Laura Dern, with purple hair, as Vice Admiral Holdo, evidently the second in command of Resistance forces after General Leia. Benicio del Toro plays DJ, a hacker who knows how to disable a device that figures heavily in the plot. Del Toro gives Last Jedi a sly, juicy boost. Finn (a returning John Boyega) and Rose Pico (newbie Kelly Marie Tran) are forced by circumstance to trust del Toro's genially larcenous character.

As you can tell, many characters populate this increasingly complex story. Oscar Isaac returns as the dashing pilot Poe Dameron. Also returning: Domhnall Gleeson as General Hux, another First Order purveyor of evil, and Lupita Nyong'o, the goggle-eyed pirate Maz.

Ridley already proved herself a worthy addition to the Star Wars fold and does nothing here to convince us that we weren't right to welcome her for what evidently will be a long run.

Johnson and his production team gives us plenty of visual diversion -- from Luke's monkish stone hut (it looks like something sculptor Andy Goldsworthy might have created) to the imperially sized vessels of the First order to the obligatory trip to a bustling casino planet -- it's called Canto Bight -- where rogues, aliens, and intergalactic swells meet and mingle.

New creatures pop up, notably cute little Porgs, a type of seabird that inhabits the planet Ahch-To. Thankfully, the Porgs are used sparingly enough not to create an overdose of cuteness, the dreaded Ewok effect.

Look, directing a Star Wars movie requires an ability to juggle a large cast of characters without creating too much confusion, as well as a commitment to preserving Star Wars mythology without miring the series in undue reverence for its past. Every new Star Wars movie must earn its own stripes.

Johnson gets the job done and, in the bargain, makes us the beneficiaries of his success.

A caper movie, country style

Director Steven Soderbergh has fun with Lucky Logan, a heist movie set in West Virginia.

It's a bit of a stretch to think that anyone has been eagerly waiting to see Daniel Craig, the current James Bond, play a hillbilly safecracker from West Virginia. But Craig does just that in Steven Soderbergh's Logan Lucky, a caper movie in which a group of West Virginia rednecks stage a robbery at the Charlotte Motor Speedway during the Coca-Cola 600, a NASCAR race held on Memorial Day weekend.

Those who try to mine veins of importance from Logan Lucky, which was written by Rebecca Blunt, may find themselves straining. Logan Lucky stands as an enjoyable -- if slight -- caper comedy build around odd ball casting that creates much of the movie's appeal -- that and Soderbergh's understanding of how to freshen a formula.

An unlikely duo of Channing Tatum and Adam Driver play brothers. Tatum's Jimmy Logan is a beleaguered construction worker who loses his job for not reporting a pre-existing health condition; he has a limp. Jimmy's brother Clyde (Driver) works as a bartender despite having a prosthetic lower left arm, a souvenir from his military service in Iraq.

Jimmy would like to spend more time with his daughter after his divorce from Bobbie Jo (Katie Holmes). But Bobbie Joe and her husband (David Denman) plan to move to a swankier town, leaving Jimmy with a great need for money if he wants to maintain a relationship with his daughter (Farrah Mackenzie), a child who participates in beauty pageants.

With no legitimate prospects in sight, Jimmy uses the code word that his brother knows signals trouble. "Cauliflower."

The rest of the movie follows a pleasingly predictable pattern in which Jimmy assembles the crew he needs to pull off the heist. One of Jimmy's primary partners in crime is Joey Bang (Craig), a felon whose participation presents Jimmy with an obstacle. Joey's in jail. Jimmy contrives a scheme to get Joey out of the slammer so that he can put his larcenous plan in motion.

Jimmy's sister (Riley Keough) plays a role in pulling off a robbery that allows Soderbergh to revel in West Virginia color, sometimes in ways that seem a trifle self-conscious.

To further complicate matters, Joey insists that his participation is contingent on Jimmy involving Joey's two brothers (Jack Quaid and Brian Gleeson), a couple of guys who probably never will be mistaken for MENSA candidates.

Two additional performances are worth mention. Seth MacFarlane shows up as Max Chilblain, a British race car impresario, and Hilary Swank makes a late-picture appearance as a cop who's trying to nab the thieves.

Like many heist movies, Logan Lucky requires a healthy suspension of disbelief, and it's tough to avoid not thinking of the movie as a kind of knockoff of Soderbergh's Ocean's series, only with dirt under its fingernails.

I enjoyed Logan Lucky, even though I was seldom unaware that I was watching actors tapping into their inner rednecks. As it stands, the cast seems to be having the kind of good time that transfers to an audience.

A couple of clicks toward even more weirdness and Logan Lucky might have landed Soderbergh in Coen Brothers territory. Now that really would have been something to behold.

A bus driver who writes poetry

Jim Jarmusch's Paterson proves quietly affecting.

Jim Jarmusch's Paterson might be viewed as an attempt to connect with a frayed piece of a romanticized blue-collar past. Set in Paterson, N.J., and populated by a main character with the same name as the town, the movie walks in the shadow of some of the city's more renowned sons: Lou Costello, Allen Ginsberg and William Carlos Williams to name three.

On it surface, Paterson brings us into the life of a bus driver (Adam Driver) who writes poetry and whose live-in lover (Golshifteh Farahani) makes cupcakes, designs draperies and dreams of being a country singer.

Jarmusch takes us through a week in Paterson's life; at first, it may seem as if Paterson's art is not to be taken seriously, but it grows as the movie progresses in typical Jarmusch deadpan fashion, part meditation, part reverie, part fantasy portrait of a lumpen world where art lives without any trace of pretension.

Paterson is the kind of quiet movie in which a meeting between Paterson and a young poet (Sterling Jerins), proves stirring, an impromptu connection between artists. We also see Paterson driving his bus, listening to the conversations of passengers, two working men exchanging boastful stories about women or two kids talking about Halloween costumes.

Every night, Paterson takes his bulldog Marvin for a walk; he stops at the local bar for a beer and listens to the various travails of the customers, the most pointed of which is a story of scorned love. William Jackson Harper plays a man who doesn't seem to know how to take "no" for an answer.

Of course, the bartender (Barry Shabaka Henley) keeps pictures of some of Paterson's more famous residents on the wall behind the bar, his own hall of fame.

The movie gives both Paterson and Laura artistic lives; she dreams of having a Tammy Wynette brand of success. Her ambitions are cockeyed and outward. Paterson doesn't really seem to have dreams. He just does his thing, yet it's Paterson's poems that really seem to matter in the flow of things.

There's a sweet softness to Paterson, which -- I suppose -- can be taken as a near ode to the grace in ordinary lives, a grace that's disrupted when Paterson and Laura attend a movie, and Marvin eats most of Paterson's poetry notebook.

Has the art battle finally been lost?

Paterson probably is inconceivable without Driver, who adapts to Jarmusch's style with spectacular ease -- and without totally suppressing his personality. There's sincerity, but also a bit of wry irony to Paterson -- and that's all thanks to Driver.

The poems Paterson writes are the work of Ron Padgett, including an ode to Ohio Blue Tip matches. Early on, Paterson stops by the Great Falls, a Paterson landmark, to finish writing a poem. Jarmsuch superimposes images of the falls on Paterson as he sits and writes. Words of his poem appear on the screen. Perhaps the inexorable flow of water and the writing of a poem are really the same thing. Or maybe we're just watching a guy who's stopping for a quiet lunch.

After Paterson's notebook is lost, a Japanese visitor (Masatoshi Nagase) tries to bring a dejected Paterson back to his art. It may sound a bit trite, but every loss also opens a new blank page. Do we, the movie may be asking, have the courage to face the opportunity it presents?

Two priests suffer in 17th century Japan

Martin Scorsese takes his long-awaited crack at a novel by Japanese author Shusaku Endo..

If director Martin Scorsese chooses to grapple with questions of doubt and faith, he should at minimum be commended for the singularity and intensity of an interest that seems to have marked much of his cinematic career, perhaps his entire life.

So it's no surprise that after 30 years of trying, Scorsese finally has taken a crack at the Japanese novel Silence in what some are calling the third in his trilogy of overtly "religious" films. The first two being The Last Temptation of Christ and Kundun.

Written by Jay Cocks and Scorsese, the movie takes place in 17th century Japan at time when the country is being purged of its burgeoning Catholic population. The Japanese authorities are intent on staving off this first salvo of encroachment from the West.

Working from a 1966 novel by Shusaku Endo, Cocks and Scorsese create a grim world of suffering. The Japanese use a mixture of rigorously polite cajoling and brutal torture to persuade Christians to renounce their faith.

The most common form of renunciation involves stepping on a bronze tile or fumie that has been engraved with a religious image, thus marking an outward and incontrovertible sign of rejection of an abhorred western theology.

Silence weaves a story around its many torture sequences. Two Portuguese Jesuits (Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver) sneak into Japan to find their mentor Cristovao Ferreira (Liam Neeson). They can't believe what they've been told: Ferreira has renounced his faith and taken a Japanese wife. He lives contentedly in Nagasaki.

Before they leave for Japan, their superior (Ciaran Hinds) warns the two priests that Catholics are being tortured and killed in Japan. He cautions them against what surely will be a life-threatening journey, but they insist on proving that their mentor didn't betray his faith, a task that's doubly important for them because they took their faith cues from Ferreira.

Visually, Garfield and Driver couldn't be more different. Looking increasingly Christ-like or at least like a movie version of Christ, Garfield's Rodriguez has doubts, expressed by his inner voice and prayers. His experiences in Japan test his faith, and he posses the questions that are supposed to drive the movie.

These questions are stated -- often whispered by Garfield as queries about why God doesn't seem to hear the cries of the suffering faithful -- but they don't animate the movie or give it a sense of urgent, necessary life. Some of that may result from Garfield's inability to penetrate the depths of Rodriguez's tortured soul.

Driver, who's less seen because the two priests eventually split up, is an unusual looking actor, but here, he's been given the face of a gargoyle, otherworldly and strange.

Now, when it comes to torture, the Japanese are portrayed as adept and serious. They drip boiling water on bare flesh; they tie people to ocean-side posts and let them drown as the tide crashes in; they behead people; and they wrap people in straw and set them on fire. As a kind of piece de resistance, Christians are hanged upside down, their heads stuffed into holes in the dirt. Small incisions are made on their necks so that their blood slowly drains out of them.

The Japanese characters are strangely problematic, sometimes cartoonish. The Inquisitor who engineers all this torture (Issey Ogata) has a caricatured look. I've seen Ogata's performance described as comic. It's certainly weird and unexpected.

At one point, he hears disconcerting news and his body nearly deflates, something in the manner of air released from a balloon. Very strange.

Yosuke Kubozuka plays Kitchijiro, a self-confessed sinner who sometimes guides the priests and who has become something of an expert on what it means to renounce one's faith. He's a repeat offender.

Oddly, the movie lacks an exalting climax. I can't say more about this without revealing what should be discovered in a theater, but I'll also say that the issues Scorsese takes from Endo aren't general issues of faith in the face of terrible suffering, but issues pertinent to Catholic ideas about faith, martyrdom and apostasy as Endo (and subsequently Scorsese) interpret them.

Torture, of course, is an obviously condemnable form of coercion and watching it is appropriately appalling, but I don't know why we should be more interested in this particular part of Japanese history than we are, say, in the Spanish Inquisition that preceded it by several centuries.

Still, this is where Scorsese has landed to make a film that has been bracingly shot by cinematographer Rodrigo Preieto, whose images have staying power and depth.

It's not easy to reach a solid conclusion about Silence. As intellectually fraught as the movie can be, it also can be boring and stilted. At 161 minutes, it may seem nearly interminable to those who aren't caught in its sway.

For a movie that seems to want to explore questions about the nature and obligations of faith, Silence feels as if it has veered off into an exotic and foreign territory from which it has excavated a story full of gruesome sights and narrowly focused preoccupations.

Like the character Garfield plays, Silence too often feels like it's living in a world of its own and talking mostly to itself.

Yes, the Force really awakens

J.J. Abrams gives George Lucas' franchise new life.

A mixture of new and old faces help director J.J. Abrams relaunch the Star Wars series, now part of the Disney empire. Those who feared that Abrams' Star Wars: The Force Awakens wouldn't honor George Lucas' long-running achievement needn't fret: Abrams has created a transitional movie that contains a mostly winning mix of Star Wars nostalgia and new additions.

Truth be told, the series may be better off now that Lucas has handed the reins to someone else. Abrams, who also helped revive the Star Trek franchise, easily surpasses the last three films: The Phantom Menace (1999), Attack of the Clones (2002), and Revenge of the Sith (2005).

Abrams took no chances when it comes to filling the movie with actors who serve as reassurance that Disney plans to respect the Lucas legacy.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is not that Harrison Ford returns as Han Solo, but that he's actually in a substantial amount of the movie -- along with his old pal Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew).

Ford's appearance -- as well as that of Carie Fisher, C-3P0 and R2-D2 -- helps launch the cast that presumably will carry the series forward, namely Daisy Ridley, who plays Rey, a feisty young woman who rises from the role of space scavenger to helping to save the galaxy from the First Order.

In case you haven't been reading the advance stories, The First Order is the evil organization that has taken over where the Empire left off.

Ridley's Rey, who lives on the planet Jakku, is joined in her efforts by Finn (John Boyega), a Stormtrooper who defects from the First Order.

Finn has no interest in being an enforcer for the Dark Side, represented here by Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis), General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) and Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie).

Driver's Ren gets the most screen time: He wears a mask and speaks in a Darth Vaderesque voice, although he's not quite as imposing as his predecessor.

Oscar Isaac turns up as another newbie; he plays Poe Dameron, a gung-ho pilot for the Resistance.

Without making too much of a fuss about it, Abrams introduces a variety of new creatures and a new droid, a rolly-polly creation known as BB-8 that struck me as something of a lovable high-tech beach ball.

The movie's meager plot involves a search for Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill). Luke must be found because he's the last remaining Jedi, the only person capable of ensuring that the Force is passed to a new generation.

Did I care about the plot? Not really. And although the movie's screenwriting team (Lawrence Kasdan, Abrams and Michael Arndt) adds plenty of winking humor, it may be less about generating laughs than serving as a welcome reminder that the original movies weren't ordeals: They were fun.

There's even a scene that pays homage to Lucas' penchant for taking us to bars where aliens hang-out with Lupita Nyong'o giving voice to Maz Kanata, a space pirate whose eyes are covered with goggles and who dispenses a bit of wisdom -- or what passes for it in a Star Wars movie.

Of course, composer John Williams returns to score his seventh Star Wars film.

Despite the presence of the kind of father/son elements that informed the better Star Wars movies, we probably should consider it a positive development that a young woman has a major role here and likely will continue to have one as the series progresses.

Who knows? Given enough time, Rey may even give Katniss Everdeen a run for her money.

Generations mix in 'While We're Young'

A semi-sharp comedy of manners from director Noah Baumbach.

There's a point during Noah Baumbach's While We're Young when one of the characters, a frustrated documentary filmmaker, refers to himself as an old man. Even as a comparative statement, it's a stretch. Played by Ben Stiller, the "aging" documentarian is in his mid-40s.

For those of us for whom the mid-40s long ago have slipped into (or perhaps out of) memory, Stiller's statement may prompt involuntary snickers.

But then Baumbach, 45 himself, isn't necessarily interested in actual aging. Among other things, his movie is about losing touch with the promise of youth. What happens when one realizes that the salad days are over and even the most exotic dressing can't put the crisp back into life's lettuce?

It's a potentially rich subject for a director who has been making films since 1995's Kicking and Screaming and whose filmography includes The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding, Greenberg, and Frances Ha, as well as the upcoming Mistress America.

With age 50 in sight, does Baumbach worry about reaching his full potential?

While We're Young can be seen as a zeitgeist comedy set in New York City, a place where success and failure tend to exist in dramatic counterpoint.

When things aren't going well, New York is an easy place to feel small and failed. That makes it an ideal spot for a character played by Stiller, a self-conscious sad sack who's flirting with defeat.

I had a conflicted response to While We're Young. I didn't care much about the concerns of its principal characters, a middle-aged couple (Stiller and Naomi Watts) and a couple still in their 20s (Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried).

At the same time, I found some of Baumbach's observations about these characters to be amusing and, on occasion, pointed.

Baumbach spends a good deal of time playing with generational styles and tastes, sometimes flip-flopping them between his middle-aged and the still youthful characters. The older characters, for example, are Google obsessed; the younger ones don't Google because they take pride in not knowing things. Why bother?

Stiller's Josh hasn't come close to fulfilling his potential. He's been working on his second documentary for 10 years, and can't get beyond a six-hour, sleep-inducing rough cut.

Watts' Cornelia frets about being childless. She works as a producer for her father (Charles Grodin), an acclaimed documentarian who's at a stage where he's receiving lifetime achievement awards. He's the worst possible father-in-law for Josh, a constant reminder of what Josh hasn't accomplished.

Driver's Jamie and Seyfried's Darby latch onto Josh at a film class he's teaching. Gradually, the tables turn, and Josh and Cornelia begin clinging to this younger, free-spirited duo.

Jamie's so unconcerned about being hip, he's actually hip. And unlike Josh, he's far too young to fear making fatal mistakes.

For her part, Darby dabbles with entrepreneurial craft projects: She makes ice cream.

Watching Josh and Cornelia try to turn back the clock can be amusing -- in a painful sort of way. They attempt to keep pace with the younger couple, most ludicrously at an Ayahuasca get-together where everyone ingests a psychedelic brew before barfing out inner demons.

Baumbach sticks fairly close to the surface as he allows these characters to reveal their inner preposterousness, Cornelia's laugh-out-loud foray into hip-hop dancing, for example.

It's not entirely surprising to learn that Jamie may not be living in the moment as much as he pretends to be, a development that dominates the movie's third act.

The story pretty much derails when it gets caught up in ethical issues involving a documentary Jamie is making (yes, he's a filmmaker, too).

While We're Young proves entertaining enough, but its many small observations don't add up to anything bigger.

By the end, I found myself wondering whether the plights of these self-absorbed characters could have been reduced to one perceptively amusing New Yorker cartoon. Put another way, I had a few good chuckles, and quickly turned the page.

Another Hollywood family grieves

It's not as bad you might think, but This is Where I Leave You is burdened by formula.

A mother (not Jewish) tells her four grown children that her departed husband (Jewish) made a final request: He wanted his family to sit shiva, the seven-day period of mourning that follows a Jewish death. During the period, the family receives guests who wish to pay condolences.

This is Where I Leave You uses a suburban shiva as a contrivance around which to string a strong comedy cast that's anchored by Jason Bateman and Tina Fey.

If you've seen the much-exposed trailer, you've got a pretty good idea about the movie's humor, which tends toward dismaying predictability.

And you certainly won't be surprised to learn that This is Where I Leave You eventually attempts to wring emotion out of the family's alternately awkward and combative encounters. The movie was directed by Shawn Levy (Date Night and Night at the Museum) from a screenplay by Jonathan Tropper, who adapted his own novel.

The story centers on Bateman's Judd Altman, a pleasant enough fellow who produces a radio talk show. Judd's life comes apart when he arrives home to find his wife (Abigail Spencer) in bed with his boss (Dax Shepard).

We are, of course, talking about an ultimate-bad-day scenario: Almost immediately after Judd's marriage and job go down the drain, he receives a phone call informing him of his father's death.

Judd, who becomes a kind of sitcom version of Job, heads home where he reunites with his mother (Jane Fonda) and siblings.

His older brother (Corey Stoll) runs the family's sporting goods store, and is manfully trying to perform his sexual duty with his wife (Kathryn Hahn). She's desperate to become pregnant.

Judd's sister Wendy (Fey) has a wavering marriage and two small children, one of whom has a fondness for using his potty in public, something the movie apparently regards as so hilarious, it must be repeated several times.

The irresponsible Altman brother (Adam Driver) shows up with an older woman (Connie Britton) in what's supposed to be his first serious relationship.

As the story unfolds, Judd reconnects with Penny (Rose Byrne), a woman who liked him in high school and who looms as a potential love interest. God forbid anyone in a Hollywood movie experience anything resembling lingering dejection and loneliness.

Timothy Olyphant turns up sporadically as one of Wendy's former boyfriends, a guy whose promising future hit the skids when he was brain damaged in an auto accident.

Not enough characters? Throw in Ben Schwartz as the local rabbi, a clergyman who the Altman brothers knew and tormented as a kid, and who now arrives to torment an audience.

The writing mixes sit-com style cleverness with heartfelt exchanges, creating scenes aimed at Hollywood's solid double; i.e., a blend of laughs and tears.

Apart from the fact that none of the siblings looks as if they've sprung from the same gene pool, the movie comes off as a formulaic attempt to be quirky.

Neither as painful as the trailer might lead you to believe nor as successful as it surely wanted to be, This is Where I Leave You feels like a movie that wanted to click in a big way, but put far too much effort into trying. It shows.