The woman who shook religion

  Norwegian director Mona Fastvold, who co-wrote The Brutalist with her husband, Brady Corbet, goes all in stylistically on The Testament of Ann Lee, an exploration of the life of the founder of the Shaker movement. 

  A bit of background: Shakerism began in the 1740s in Manchester, England, moving to the US in 1774, where it attracted some 6,000 members at its peak.

  Departing from the Protestant Christianity of its day, Shakers recognized sex as the source of all evil, resulting from animalistic urges released when Adam and Eve copulated in the Garden of Eden. 

   Beyond that, Shakers believed God had a masculine and feminine nature. Jesus manifested God's masculinity. Ann Lee proclaimed herself the manifestation of God's feminine nature. She was the Second Coming.

    I'm no expert on Shaker theology. Much of what I've just said comes from research, but I offer it here by way of introducing a movie that's deeply rooted, as was its main character, in what might be called "radical expression." 

   Although Fastvold's movie covers much of Lee's life,  it can't be viewed as a traditional biopic. Testament bills itself as a musical -- albeit not the kind that leaves you humming on the way out of the theater.

   Fastvold's musical numbers stem from the way Shakers prayed. Public confessions were followed by quaking and shaking, speaking in tongues, and other ecstatic movements that were thought to lead to purity. 

   Choreographer Celia Rowlson-Hall gives the movie's dances a rhythmic, ritualized quality inspired by Shaker worship. Incorporating the influence of Shaker hymns, composer Daniel Blumberg's score occasionally strikes harsh chords that seem intended to shock us out of complacency. 

   I begin by describing the movie's tonal atmosphere, greatly helped by the work of cinematographer William Rexler, because The Testament of Ann Lee speaks in its own voice, and its musical numbers sometimes make it feel like an extended art piece.

   None of that obscures the power of Amanda Seyfried's vigorous, committed performance as Ann Lee. Seyfried embeds Lee's charisma in religious commitment rather than in showy displays of oratory. Seyfried's deeply physical portrayal of a woman who renounced the flesh grounds a portrait that easily could have drifted into an ethereal haze.

   The movie quickly gets some basics across: Ann Lee had been married prior to her revelations about sex. Intimate, arduous scenes of sexual intercourse with her husband (Christopher Abbott) are followed by agonizing scenes of childbirth. 

     Lee lost four children before any of them reached the age of one, a fact some cite as motivation for her advocacy of celibacy. Abbott's James is sympathetic and supportive of Ann's beliefs until he can no longer abide her celibacy -- or his own.   

    Fastvold brings rawness to her early scenes, which have a graphic quality. Blood and sex underscore the carnality of the world that Lee would reject. The movie then assembles bits of Ann Lee's life like pieces of austere Shaker furniture, which -- by the way -- receives no mention until late in the film.

    A prison sentence Lee served in England for her pacifist views provides an opportunity for surrealistic flourishes that underscore the jailhouse visions that cemented Lee's newfound beliefs and her need to propagate them. 

     Mostly, though, Testament remains earthbound, assembling bits of Ann Lee's life like pieces of austere Shaker furniture, which -- by the way -- receives no mention until late in the film. 

    As the story progresses, it becomes less internal, focusing more on the world Lee encounters. New segments are marked by title cards that set up events or establish a mood.

   When Lee leads her followers across the Atlantic, shipboard scenes roil with turbulence, perhaps the equal of the shock of the earlier birth scenes. Her movement would be reborn in the New World -- albeit not without obstacles, including violent attacks by some who saw her as a heretic.

    The story culminates in 1784 with Lee's death at the age of 48, leaving it to us to remember that the 18th century wasn't known for the kind of fierce female leadership embodied in Seyfried's work.

   Now, for some critical cautions. I respected what Fastvold accomplished, but my involvement became increasingly intermittent as the movie wore on. Running voice-over narrations delivered by several of the movie's characters, as well as production designer Sam Bader's period recreations, sometimes made it feel as if the story were taking place in an alternate universe, cinema in a bubble.

    Centering the movie on major events in Lee's life, almost a chapter-and-verse approach, can create a draggy, episodic quality. I wouldn't want to discourage anyone from giving the movie a try, but at times during the film's 136-minute run time, boredom fogged my mind.

     Still, I can't bring myself to harsh rejection. Fastvold and her team are as committed to their approach as Lee was to hers. She makes few concessions to crowd-pleasing even if her movie sometimes feels trapped by the same formality and rigor that defines its best moments.

    

Sex, torture, and the hired help

   The Housemaid may not be a great thriller, but it hosts enough plot twists to sustain interest while offering a lush  mixture of sexual and psychological maneuvering.

  Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney team as a wealthy woman and her housemaid Millie, a woman hired to keep Seyfried's Nina's NewYork manse in shape and care for her bratty young daughter (Indiana Elle). 

  No fair telling more, but Seyfried's Nina may have more in mind than benefiting from some help around the house.

   As for Millie, she’s on parole from a sentence for murder. She needs the job lest she be returned to the slammer.  The more abusive Nina becomes -- and she's very good at it -- the more trapped her live-in housekeeper feels. 

   Brandon Sklenar portrays Andrew, Nina’s hunky, empathetic husband,  a guy who seems to have become rich without breaking a sweat. Andrew, who might have fallen into the movie from a soap opera, stands up for Millie when Nina’s torments reach intolerable levels. 

  Previously homeless and in need of a safe heaven,  Millie falls hard for him. 

   This could be a big year for Seyfried, whose performance in The Testament of Ann Lee, due on Christmas, probably will win her an Oscar nomination. Sweeney was better in Christy, the story of a woman who made boxing history, but her performance in Housemaid hits enough of the right notes.

    Although she doesn't have a big role, a severely coifed Elizabeth Perkins impresses as Andrew’s bitchy mother.

    Based on a novel by Freida McFadden, The Housemaid might be another two hour and 11-minute movie that could have hit harder at an hour-and-a-half. But director Paul Feig (A Simple Favor) knows how to manipulate our sympathies, and Seyfried’s performance adds elevated vigor.

   Some of the movie’s violence and its over-cooked sex scenes earn it a well-deserved "R" rating. A grisly scene involving a tooth adds a talking point that may make you flinch. 

    Inspired trash? Not really, but Housemaid earns additional points for glamor and unabashed guile. 

 

Movie can't match its serious subject

 Amanda Seyfried stars as a children's book author trying to cope with severe depression in A Mouthful of Air, a movie based on a novel by Amy Koppelman. Koppelman also directed the movie and wrote its screenplay. As a look at depression that can lead to suicide, Mouthful of Air falls short on insight and dramatic heft. Seyfried portrays Julie Davis, a doting mother and children's book author who lives on Manhattan's Upper Westside with her devoted husband (Finn Wittrock). Julie's mother (Amy Irving) offers help after Julie attempts suicide, as does a concerned psychiatrist (Paul Giamatti). A scene in which Julie's sister-in-law (Jennifer Carpenter) accuses her of selfishness has some power, as does the occasional tension that develops between Julie and Wittrock's Ethan. Julie's second pregnancy and a move to the suburbs has everyone walking on eggshells around the fragile Julia. Although the movie has a tough ending, it seldom digs as deeply as its subject demands. Animated examples of Julia's work don't help either.

A house with a creepy secret

 Fresh from her Oscar-nominated turn as Marion Davies in Mank, Amanda Seyfried turns up as a troubled spouse in Things Heard & Seen, a movie that takes a stab at serious horror but can't puncture the  fog of cliches that settles over it.

    Adapted from a novel by Elizabeth Brundage, the story follows Seyfried's Catherine Clarie when she accompanies her husband (James Norton) to a small college in upstate New York in the 1980s. 

     Having just earned his doctorate, Norton's George makes a big impression on the head of his department (F. Murray Abraham), an academic with a keen interest in the spiritually oriented philosophy of Emanuel Swedenborg. Abraham's character also conducts seances. 

     Hey, somebody has to believe in ghosts,  otherwise a major part of the movie would qualify as an exploration of clinical insanity, which — come to think of it — might have been more intriguing.

     Perhaps to abet the movie's spiritual/paranormal flirtations, George professes an interest in George Inness, a 19th Century  American painter and devotee of Swedenborg with a talent for creating eerie landscapes.

    It doesn't take long before the fishy stuff begins. 

    Catherine abandoned her career restoring art to support George's professional life. Instead of expressing his gratitude, George gaslights her.

    Annoyingly affable, George barely conceals his dark side. He blames his wife's mounting unease on her eating disorder, a serious subject the movie irresponsibly neglects. 

   The isolated house into which George moves his wife and four-year-old daughter (Ana Sophia Heger) has a secret history, and the supporting cast suggests other avenues of exploration that mostly fizzle.

   Another couple (James Urbaniak and Rhea Seehorn) become part of the new arrivals' social network. George does waste much time before diving into hanky-panky, starting an affair with a young woman (Natalia Dyer) who works at a local stable.

    Alex Neustaedter portrays a handy man who works on the Claire home; he knows the secrets of the house and is sympathetic to Catherine. 

    Directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini rely on at least one unforgivably convenient plot development and, most unfortunately, aren't always able to draw a clear enough line between what might deemed ghostly and what's just plain goofy.

 

How a great movie was written

    

     In 1940, screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz found himself sequestered in Victorville, California. He’d been sent to a remote ranch by Orson Welles to write the screenplay that turned out to be Citizen Kane. 

     Director David Fincher has taken on the task of telling Mankiewicz’s story, a look at a caustically cynical wit who could be amused by Hollywood's emptiness while still knowing how to navigate its treacheries.

     Beautifully filmed in black-and-white by cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt, Mank peers into the corrupted soul of  Hollywood of the early 1940s, a time when the movie industry tried to establish its right-wing bona fides in California even as Hitler rose to power across the Atlantic and the country had yet to recover from the Great Depression.

     Built around an intriguing performance by Gary Oldman as Mankiewicz, the movie sometimes feels like a breezy collection of bold-faced names from yesteryear -- from Ben Hecht to George S. Kaufman to S.J. Perelman. 

    The story eventually draws its energy from tension resulting from Mankiewicz's real-life inspiration for the character of John Foster Kane, none other than media titan William Randolph Hearst, played with surprising subtlety by Charles Dance. 

    Mankiewicz knew Hearst and was a frequent guest at Hearst’s San Simeon retreat, a lavish pleasure palace where Hearst entertained friends and where he and his mistress, Marion Davies (a terrific Amanda Seyfried), dwelled in isolated splendor. Hearst seldom found himself in agreement with Mankiewicz but thought him amusing.

     Working from a script by his late father Jack Fincher, the director includes plenty of famous Mankiewicz bon mots.  After a display of drunken vomiting at a dinner party,  Mankiewicz supposedly excused himself by saying that at least the white wine had come up with the fish. Not quite enough for redemption, but bad, either.

      A quick Google search will show that Mankiewicz looked nothing like Oldman, which may distract aficionados or provide further proof of Oldman’s versatility. Credit Oldman with fashioning a character who tried to balance a need for success and money with an underlying desire to ridicule and dismiss the powerful barons who held the purse strings. 

      Mank will be of particular interest to those familiar with the controversy about who deserves credit for writing Citizen Kane. Officially, Welles and Mankiewicz shared credit, as well as an Academy Award for best screenplay. 

     But in 1971, New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael wrote  a provocative two-part story that awarded the lion’s share of credit to Mankiewicz. Kael’s conclusions have been disputed by others and I have no interest in stepping into waters that have been roiled by deep research and critical partisanship.

     If you care, the movie seems to favor the idea that joint credit for the Kane screenplay was undeserved.

     Notice needs to be taken of the many supporting roles that enliven Mank: Arliss Howard turns up as a doltish Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM; Toby Leonard Moore portrays David O. Selznick, and Ferdinand Kingsley offers his version of Irving Thalberg.

      If you don't know who any of these folks are, Mank may require you to spend some time with Google, which means it's a bit of a film buff's night out.

     What about Welles, you ask? He’s played by Tom Burke, but you won’t see much of him until near the movie’s end when Welles and Mankiewicz fight about who’ll receive credit for the Kane screenplay, which everyone acknowledges to be brilliant.

      Others in the cast deserve at least cursory mention.  Lily Collins portrays Rita Alexander, the British secretary  hired to type the pages Mankiewicz — bed-ridden with a broken leg — dictated. Tuppence Middleton plays Sara Mankiewicz, the writer’s wife, a woman who abided Mank's alcoholism, gambling, and womanizing. Tom Pelphrey appears as Herman’s bother, Joseph — who went on to write and direct any number of memorable movies himself, All About Eve among them.

     Sam Troughton takes a turn as producer John Houseman, who Welles occasionally dispatched to Victorville to check on Mankiewicz’s progress and to monitor his drinking. 

     Perhaps inspired by Kane’s complex structure, Fincher moves his story out of Mankiewicz’s Victorville retreat by flashing back to better and worse times. He highlights Mankiewicz’s relationship with Marion Davies, supposedly the model for the woman Charles Foster Kane embarrassingly attempted to turn into an opera diva in Citizen Kane.

     I’m not sure if Fincher was trying to give the movie topical zing but he spends a fair amount of time on the California 1934 gubernatorial race in which Hollywood's upper echelon rallied to defeat author Upton Sinclair,  the Democratic candidate who was smeared as anti-American and a communist. 

       The screenplay suggests that the race may have marked the  beginning of manufacturing news to seduce a gullible public.

      By making a movie about the making of a movie, Fincher has taken on a gargantuan task  — not to mention that he's dealing with what might be the greatest American movie of them all. Don’t fret. Kane is a far better movie than the movie about Kane and Fincher's effort occasionally goes slack. 

      Citizen Kane remains a great movie even if you know nothing about Hearst or any of the other so-called models for its  characters. Kane may have been of its moment, but it's too damn good to stay there.

       Still, don't sell  Mank short. Fincher takes us back to a time when smart, literary types invaded Hollywood, collected some big paydays, and, in some cases, wrote fine movies. I'm not sure whether to view it as a footnote to a masterwork or an entertainment in its own right, but Fincher's Mank proves a dense, gossipy pleasure.

This dog tells the story of 'his' humans

Based on a best-selling novel 2008 novel by Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain qualifies as one of those less-than-stellar big-screen entertainments that still has some appeal, mostly because so many of us are dog lovers. Now, I have to say that I've never imagined that if any of the dogs I've known could have talked, they'd have sounded like Kevin Costner. But that's what happens in The Art of Racing in the Rain. Race car driver Milo Ventimiglia acquires a golden retriever puppy and names the dog Enzo (voice by Costner). The twist here involves telling the story from Enzo's perspective as Ventimiglia's character tries to make it big in racing circles, finds a wife (Amanda Seyfried) and adds a daughter to his family. Enzo narrates all of this, sometimes with humor, sometimes with feelings of dejection. It takes Enzo time to adjust to new arrivals in "his'' family because he regards his relationship with Ventimiglia's Denny as special and exclusive. Directed by Simon Curtis (My Week With Marilyn and The Woman in Gold), Racing in the Rain eventually moves from cuteness to tears -- at least that seems to be the intent. Kathy Baker and Martin Donovan show up as Denny's in-laws, a couple with whom he eventually finds himself in conflict. I was a bit surprised to learn that Enzo -- after watching a documentary on television about Mongolia -- starts to give his thoughts a New Age twist. He believes that really good dogs will be reincarnated as people in their next lives. You might have some fun trying to figure out who your dog might return as should he or she reincarnate through another lifetime. Your speculations probably will say more about you than your beloved pet. There's not much else to offer about this family-oriented, lump-in-the-throat story, aside from saying that I haven't read the book and the movie didn't make me feel as if I should. The movie was enough.

A cleric caught in a web of torment

Paul Schrader’s First Reformed, a movie with which to reckon.

In director Paul Schrader's First Reformed, Ethan Hawke plays a minister who presides over the First Reformed Church, a once-proud but diminished church in upstate New York. Hawke's Reverend Toller wears a constricting clerical collar that seems more of a choice than a requirement. When he's outside of the church a long black overcoat gives him an ominous look, as if he's wrapped himself in a cloud of heavy gloom.

Toller stands on an altar built from personal guilt. As a former military chaplain, he sold family tradition to his son, urging him to enlist in the military. The young man followed his father's advice and was killed in Iraq. Toller's wife subsequently left him. From the look of things, Toller has spent the ensuing years turning his life into a form of punishing penance.

Toller's church is part of a larger organization run by a minister (Cedric Kyles, a.k.a. Cedric the Entertainer) who understands the business of operating a mega church and wants to create a successful event as First Reformed approaches its 250th anniversary, an occasion that's to be celebrated with a reconsecration ceremony.

Worried about Toller's obvious depression, Kyles' Pastor Jeffers cautions that even Jesus didn't spend all his time in the Garden of Gethsemane. He thinks Toller should lighten up.

Both Toller and his church seem to be stuck in a harsh spiritual winter. Once a stop on the Underground Railroad and a bastion of fiery abolitionist morality, First Reformed now tries to get by with a depleted gift shop. It has become a minor tourist attraction.

Schrader broadens the movie's thematic reach by linking the future of the church to ecological plunder. Jeffers and Toller are supported by Balq Industries, a company run by Edward Balq (Michael Gaston), a businessman who represents a more-or-less American attitude about separating business practices from religious dictates that might -- if taken too seriously -- interfere with those same practices. Balq is one of the country’s major polluters.

Sparse and austere, First Reformed does have a plot of sorts. Mary (Amanda Seyfried), a young pregnant wife turns up at First Reformed to talk to Toller. It turns out Mary's husband (Philip Ettinger) does not want her to bring a baby into a world that he believes is headed toward an irrevocable environmental catastrophe. Mary wants Toller to convince her husband to support her pregnancy.

Toller visits Ettinger’s Michael to see what he can do to persuade the young man that all hope is not lost. Schrader then does something truly rare in movies: He allows two characters -- Toller and Michael -- to engage in an extended philosophical conversation, the kind with consequences. If the world is bleak, diminished and joyless, can survival still have any meaning?

Michael soon answers the question for himself by blowing his brains out with a rifle.

Michael, who has flirted with ecoterrorism, serves as a kind of catalyst that pushes Toller deeper into a torment that's expressed in a journal that he keeps and which serves as the movie's narration. Toller, by the way, already is suffering from a serious but unspecified illness that he insists on ignoring. He urinates blood, the life leaking out of him.

Toller apparently has had a fleeting affair with a choir director (Victoria Hill) who clearly cares about him and fears that he’s unraveling. In a moment of swift and perhaps unforgivable cruelty, Toller rejects her.

The increasingly distraught Toller begins to wonder whether Michael may have been right. Perhaps an act of terror, namely a suicide bombing, is the only way to draw attention to the monstrous crimes that are being committed against God's creation.

Schrader, who wrote Taxi Driver, is no stranger to compelling but tormented characters. Although all the actors in First Reformed are good, Schrader puts the movie squarely on Hawke's shoulders. It's no easy job. Hawke plays a character who lives on a fault line of irreconcilable contradictions.

At one point, Toller even offers a version of the famous F. Scott Fitzgerald definition of a first-rate intelligence: "the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."

In Toller's case, those contradictory ideas involve pain and pleasure, love and the futility, guilt and redemption. Schrader pushes those ideas to extremes that result in an ending which is both unforgettable and which surely will puzzle many viewers. I won't describe it here but I believe it is intended as a moment in which Toller's fragmented soul achieves its unity.

The movie's images are spartan and purposefully depleted -- right up until the point when Schrader includes a fantasy scene in which Toller and Mary float over the world, a visual precis of the movie’s diagnosis of the material world that begins with a natural idyll and ends with ecological catastrophe.

For those who are new to Schrader's work, it's worth knowing that when he as a young film critic, he wrote an important book: Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dryer. Those familiar with that book and with the work of the aforementioned directors will note the way their influences play out in First Reformed. (The book has been republished with a new forward and with Schrader's observations about additional directors.)

The style to which Schrader refers has to do with holding images until they teeter on the edge of boredom, of not providing a lot of visual cues but demanding that viewers explore the images that are put in front of them, of limiting the use of music so that when it’s heard, its impact is heightened, of providing eventual release for emotions that have been tamped down throughout.

Schrader, a man of serious concerns, has managed to spend a life in film. He has written for Scorsese -- not only Taxi Driver, but Raging Bull (as co-writer), The Last Temptation of Christ and Bringing Out the Dead. His own movies include American Gigolo, Blue Collar, a remake of Cat People, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, and Affliction.

Schrader can be a confounding figure who both understands Hollywood and who follows an auteur's lonely path. I'd be lying if I told you that I totally "get" Schrader, but I will tell you that First Reformed stands as a stark work that resounds with cinematic echoes (Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest, for example) and yet feels rooted in the present moment of threat, disunity and unbridgeable moral gaps. It is a work that isn't' afraid to look at something most movies try their best to avoid: deep despair.

An uneven 'Gringo' founders

The movie features a surprising comic turn from David Oyelowo as a mid-level executive with the world's worst luck.

Another exercise in cynical comedy with a violent streak, Gringo includes at least one element we haven't seen before: A Nigerian businessman nicely played by David Oyelowo struggles to establish himself in a less-than-honorable segment of the US economy.

Overall, though, Gringo seems stuck in a genre rut that’s too familiar to any strike strong chords.

It doesn’t help that Gringo's purposefully convoluted plot revolves around a medical marijuana pill that a variety of different folks are trying to use for ill-gotten gains or that the screenplay involves the kind of strained cleverness that allows for apparently unrelated characters to crisscross.

It’s enjoyable to watch Oyelowo, still best known for having portrayed Martin Luther King in Selma, play a beaten-down chump who has piled up some major debt. His immigrant character, who believes in following rules, makes a perfect target for his scheming bosses at a Chicago-based pharmaceutical company, a duo played by Joel Edgerton and Charlize Theron.

As the story — most of which takes place in Juarez, Mexico — unfolds, director Nash Edgerton — Joel’s brother — introduces a variety of supposedly colorful characters, some of them outright duds. I'm thinking of a couple (Harry Treadaway and Amanda Seyfried) that works in a guitar shop. These two more or less stumble into the plot as does a predictably ruthless Mexican drug lord (Carlos Corona) known as The Black Panther.

Edgerton and Theron fulfill the movie’s dueling viper quotient with Theron giving her all as a woman for whom cunning, calculation, and profane insults come as easily as breathing. At one point -- presumably to show how callous her character can be -- the screenplay has Theron's Elaine do an impression of a deaf woman trying to speak. A line is crossed: An attempt to be funny makes you wince.

Also on board, Thandie Newton as the wife of Oyelowo’s beleaguered Harold, a woman whose infidelity constitutes a case of dramatic piling on.

But that’s the deal. Nothing goes right for poor Harold as the movie puts him through a half-serious, half-comic wringer that includes the arrival of the brother (Sharlto Copley) of Edgerton's character, a supposedly reformed mercenary who we first meet trying to straighten out his crooked life by doing volunteer work in earthquake-stricken Haiti.

Amusing in spurts, Gringo is easily shrugged off, probably because little about it seems plausible or pointed.

No fresh message in 'The Last Word'

At one point in The Last Word, the camera lingers on a wall of photographs showing Shirley MacLaine at various stages of her life, one of them reminiscent of the impish look MacLaine brought to Billy Wilder's The Apartment. The photos are supposed to be images of from the life of the character MacLaine's playing, but the moment offers an opportunity to reflect on a career that's worthy of celebration. I can't think of anything else I'd want to celebrate about The Last Word, a sentimental comedy about an embittered older woman (MacLaine) who enlists a young newspaper reporter (Amanda Seyfried) to write her obituary. MacLaine's Harriet wants to maintain control of her image, even in death. When a cranky older woman meets a plucky younger woman, it's a safe bet that formula will prevail. By the end, the older woman will have become lovable, and the younger woman will have taken a step toward maturity. Director Mark Pellington can't conceal the movie's many contrivances. The worst of these involves Harriet's decision to soften her image by mentoring a young black girl from the projects (AnnJewel Lee Dixon). Harriet thinks such a relationship will look good in her obituary. Mentor or not, Harriet never shows any interest in understanding the girl's environment, and Dixon is saddled with dialogue that goes heavy on unbecoming F-bombs. In scene-after-scene, Pellington struggles to make us chuckle as he wends his way toward the mush-pit of sentiment that constitutes the movie's finale. It's a bit sad to see MacLaine trying to breathe life into low-grade material that has about as much interest in the realities of aging as Paul Ryan has in lobbying for a statue of Karl Marx on the National Mall.

It's one 'Ted' too many

Laughs in short supply as Seth MacFarlane brings back the bear.

Near the beginning of Ted 2, the sequel to the 2012 comedy about a teddy bear that comes to life, director Seth MacFarlane stages a production number, a song-and-dance routine that evokes memories of Busby Berkeley. Dancers glide over highly polished floors in a number (Steppin' Out With My Baby) built around men in tuxedos, a silvery chorus line and, of course, Ted.

If you don't know by now, Ted (voice by MacFarlane) is a button-cute toy and foul-mouthed resident of Boston. Ted is pals with Johnny (Mark Wahlberg), the guy who owned him as a kid and who, as an adult, has devolved into a class A schlub. Recently divorced, Johnny has an unhealthy interest in Internet porn.

The joke? The cute bear has a mouth that could make a longshoreman blush.

That gives you a clue about McFarlane's comedy. He tends to create a friendly, feel good surface and then shreds it with jokes that are profane and even purposefully offensive.

But guess what? Once was enough.

Maybe it's the moment, but I wasn't in the mood for what feels like an endless stream of jokes about black men and their private parts. Nor was I in the mood for gay jokes or sexist jokes or any of the other so-called jests that Ted 2 tries to peddle in its efforts to give political correctness a sharp poke in the eye.

The second edition opens at Ted's wedding. He's marrying bombshell Tami-Lynn (Jessica Barth). The couple couldn't be happier.

The movie then flashes forward by a year.

Living in a cramped apartment Ted and Tami-Lynn are at each other's throats. With their marriage threatening to dissolve, Ted suggests that the couple have a baby.

The problem: Ted -- who began his existence as a toy -- doesn't have the one appendage that accounts for so many of the movie's jokes.

As the plot develops, Ted and Tami-Lynn learn that adoption isn't an option because Massachusetts has decided that Ted isn't human. He's property.

The movie then chronicles Ted's fight for rights, a turn that allows MacFarlane to make references to the struggle for black and gay rights. MacFarlane seems to be serious about all this, but raising important issues in this context is a bit like wearing a tuxedo to a mud-wrestling contest.

The movie's legal thrust introduces Amanda Seyfried as novice attorney Sam L. Jackson; when she's not taking hits off a bong, she represents Ted in court. MacFarlane also gives her a musical number. She sings Mean Ol Moon around a camp fire.

Then there's an entirely useless storyline in which Donny (Giovanni Ribisi), the weird half-wit from the first movie, persuades a Hasbro executive (John Carroll Lynch) to try to steal Ted, murder him and cut him open to find out what brought him to life. The plan: To make more Teds.

There's more pseudo-seriousness when Morgan Freeman shows up as a prominent civil rights lawyer who winds up playing the movie's moral anthem by telling us what makes us human in a courtroom speech.

Ted 2 is better than McFarlane's last movie, the disastrous A Million Ways to Die in the West, and there's always an audience for this kind of humor.

Me? Let's put it this way, a scene in which Wahlberg's Johnny finds himself covered with semen made the semen scene in There's Something About Mary (heaven help us we're talking semen scenes) look as if it might have been written by Oscar Wilde.

Ted 2 isn't exactly a rehash; it is, however, hash, a low-down, unsatisfying jumble.

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.

A dark, melodramatic 'Les Miz'

You may find imperfections, but the big-screen version of Les Miserables ultimately proves stirring.

The voices sometimes seem to be straining. An abundance of extreme close-ups tends to give the movie a feeling of cramped intimacy. Although filmed mostly on sets, the movie steeps itself in gritty 19th century realism. It's a musical with dirt under its fingernails.

I'm talking about Les Miserables, the big-screen adaptation of the much-revered musical that made its debut in Paris in 1980 and seems to have been in production somewhere ever since.

Melodramatic, operatic and seen through cinematographer Danny Cohen's dark lens, Les Miserables bypasses its imperfections, ultimately getting where it needs to go. It's less a story well-told than a production massively mounted, but that may be precisely what the material needs.

Based on an 1862 Victor Hugo novel, Les Miserables thunders its way through nearly three hours of suffering, death and melodrama, frequently miring its cast in mud, muck and -- as the title promises -- the kind of bone-deep misery that might have roused envy even in Dickens, himself no slouch when it came to injustice and suffering.

As directed by Tom Hooper (The King's Speech), Les Miserables is top heavy with marquee names, including Anne Hathaway, who tackles the role of the tormented Fantine in a performance in which emotion seems to spill from her every pore.

I'm not going to provide background for every character in Les Miz, but Fantine, you may recall, is a single mother, a status that caused her to be scorned and persecuted for profligacy in France of the 1800s. And, yes, it might be advisable to bone up on Hugo's story before you go because plot points breeze by as if propelled by wind machines.

The story centers on poor Jean Val Jean (Hugh Jackman), the ex-convict who violates his parole and spends a lifetime fleeing Javert (Russell Crowe), a lawman who applies justice like a lash. Amanda Seyfried turns up as Fantine's daughter, Cosette, a woman who eventually is sheltered by Jean Val Jean.

All of this takes place against a post-revolutionary historical backdrop in which the monarchy has been restored in France, and the people are suffering under the weight of too much regal indifference.

The movie's third act deals with the revolt of 1832, introducing us to Marius (Eddie Redmayne), a revolutionary who's smitten by Cosette. Be assured barricades will be stormed. The spirit of the people will be aroused. You will be stirred.

To heighten the feeling of emotional urgency, Hooper had his actors sing their numbers as the cameras rolled rather than relying on lip-synching. The technique is employed to mixed result.

Jackman, who has a history in musical theater, carries it off convincingly, as does Hathaway. Crowe, who has a background singing with rock bands, is only moderately successful. Trussed up in the costume of a 19th century lawman, Crowe moves around as if encased in plaster. Javert's a rigid guy, but Crowe never seems entirely comfortable playing him.

Hooper doesn't quite suffocate the production, but I wish he had let it breathe some, and I got tired of watching close-ups of the singers. Hooper must have wanted his camera to bring us close to the performances, but the face of a singer -- particularly when grappling with heavy emotion -- isn't always a thing of beauty.

The major numbers in Les Miserables -- At the End of the Day, I Dreamed a Dream and One Day More -- are effectively performed, and there's even a bit of comic relief. Sacha Baron Cohen makes an appropriately despicable and conniving Thénardier, an inn-keeper who for a time takes charge of Cosette. Baron Cohen receives an able assist from Helena Bonham Carter -- now a specialist in playing grotesque-looking women -- as Madame Thénardier. Samantha Barks makes a bit of splash as their daughter, Éponine.

I'm not a particular fan of musicals, and Les Miz involves wall-to-wall singing with almost no spoken dialogue. I can't exactly say that Les Miserables left me humming any of its tunes. But whatever problems the big-screen version has, I mostly enjoyed it and even felt a slight tingling of the spine during its finale. Put another way, Les Miserables has genuine theatrical power.

'In Time' may have you clock watching

Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried play for time in a monotonous, one-note thriller.

The sci-fi thriller In Time takes place in a world in which the wealthy can extend their lives indefinitely and the rest of the population is programmed to die young.

In the movie's dystopian future, time has replaced money: Workers are paid in time, and people buy, sell and trade time in order to prolong life. Of course, time (like money) isn't easily acquired -- and some people steal it.

That's an intriguing premise, but writer/director Andrew Niccol, who also wrote The Truman Show and who wrote and directed the similarly chilly Gattaca, doesn't do enough with it.

Justin Timberlake plays Will Salas, a young man who -- since turning 25 -- has been scuffling to earn one additional day at a time. The plot contrives to put Will in the company of Amanda Seyfried's Sylvia Weiss, a rich girl whose father (Vincent Kartheiser) has accumulated vast amounts of time for himself and his family. He does this by exploiting the poor.

The movie goes to some lengths to mount a class-conscious social critique. The rich live abundantly in a zone referred to as New Greenwich. The poor are walled off in a ghetto where they're always borrowing time at exorbitant interest rates.

Not surprisingly, Timberlake's Will winds up on the run with Seyfried's Sylvia. A cop (Cillian Murphy) follows in hot pursuit. Seyfried's Sylvia gradually realizes that her life of privilege has been built on intolerable exploitation of the poor: She joins Will in a Bonnie and Clyde-style rampage.

Niccol gets amusing mileage out of the fact that everyone in this world looks 25. An example: Sylvia's father, mother and grandmother all appear to be the same age.

Additional interest is generated by the way in which people give each other time. They lock arms and transfer hours. (A luminous clock -- planted in an arm -- ticks off every hour and second of a person's life.)

Timberlake and Seyfried -- who seem to be vying to see whose face can reveal the least -- aren't exactly a combustible item, the score by Craig Armstrong tends toward monotony, and -- to tell you the truth -- I can't say I believed a minute of this coolly mounted tale.

I was surprised to learn that In Time is a mere 110-minutes long. For me, the movie seemed to expand time rather than make it go faster. What went wrong? Niccol does a good job creating a time-conscious world, but doesn't have a strong enough story to keep his movie ticking.

A somber, silly 'Red Riding Hood'

Red Riding Hood tries to enter a teen-oriented Twilight zone. This dismal failure is redeemed only by the occasional inadvertently evoked laugh.

Red Riding Hood: "Why, Mr. Critic, what big claws you have." Critic: "The better to rip you to shreds." Venom, like most potent drinks, should be poured judiciously, and Red Riding Hood is too easy a target to bear the brunt of a totally brutal assault. Besides, a lack of epic scale keeps the movie from entering the upper echelon of big-screen stinkeroos, although it definitely earns its place among a host of less important flops.

Aside from the fact that the movie springs from an idea as generic as it is bad - a werewolf terrorizes a medieval village - Red Riding Hood suffers from undistinguished direction, wretched writing and acting that ranges from bland (the movie's young leads) to overwrought (Gary Oldman as Solomon, a werewolf hunter).

The movie's marketing calculations seem obvious. Red Riding Hood looks as if it has been designed to appeal to the Twilight crowd, right down to the hiring of director Catherine Hardwicke, who directed the first Twilight movie.

The cast, I presume, is meant to make young hearts flutter. Amanda Seyfried portrays Valerie, the movie's title character. Two suitors: Peter (Shiloh Fernandez) and Henry (Max Irons, son of Jeremy) fight over Valerie.

So much for the eye candy.

Of the adult cast, only Julie Christie (as Grandma) seems to have any inkling of what the movie could have been, showing occasional flashes of leering, subversive wit.

I was half-tempted to begin this review by proclaiming Red Riding Hood the best comedy of the year, but decided against it because all the laughs are inadvertent, deriving mostly from a ton of portentous dialog.

-- "It was the most brutal winter I could remember."

-- "Come with me or the streets will run red with blood."

Or my favorite, an exchange between villagers after someone suggests that Valerie be handed over to the wolf, a snarling, scrawny computer-generated beast the size of a pony.

One villager: "You can't give her to the wolf. That's human sacrifice."

Another: "We've all made sacrifices."

Ain't that the truth?

Some of the additional chuckles derive from the movie's attempt to draw class distinctions among the squalid townsfolk who suffer through a dark, cold winter that's punctuated with werewolf attacks.

We learn, for example, that a woodcutter earns far less than a blacksmith. That's why Valerie's mother (Virginia Madsen) wants her daughter to marry blacksmith Henry instead of woodcutter Peter. She urges her daughter to move on up, as it were. For her part, Valerie - who provides the movie with occasional bits of narration - insists on following her heart.

Seyfried, who seemed so promising on TV's Big Love has yet to show much A-list potential on the big screen. She spends much of Red Riding Hood looking perplexed, as she peers out from beneath the hood of her trademark red cloak, a gift from Grandma.

Of course, the Red Riding Hood story is well known, so it's up to the filmmakers to find some juicy subtext and oddball embellishments.

How's this for an add-on? A sinister Oldman arrives in town with a giant iron elephant in tow; we eventually learn why he's traveling with such a bizarre prop, putting an end to what might be the movie's only real mystery -- and a minor one at that.

Screenwriter David Johnson (Orphan) dabbles in themes that range from sexual to silly, with the two often overlapping.

He also introduces a variety of red herrings to go along with Valerie's red cloak. Because the wolf spends most of its time as as human, we're led to wonder whether he could be hiding in the guise of the village dullard or an earnest looking fellow who signs up for wolf hunts or, of course, in the person of grandma, who lives in a cabin outside the village and serves Valerie unappetizing bowls of gruel.

All, however, is not grim. At one point, the villagers believe that they've killed the wolf. Their celebration involves a communal dance scene that's something to behold: Swaying villagers getting down with their bad selves.

I've read that the movie has been transformed into a novel by author Sarah Blakley-Cartwright. According to a recent Los Angeles Times article, Blakley-Cartwright "would spend as many as 14 hours each day writing, occasionally taking a break from her typewriter to visit the set or interview the characters for inspiration."

I'm amazed that anyone could spend 14 minutes writing about this misbegotten tale, but that - as they say - is another story.

A blood moon announces the worst of the werewolf attacks. By the time it arrives, I found myself thinking that the only thing that could have made this movie any more preposterous would have been the arrival of Sarah Palin to shoot the wolf from a plane that was speeding over the fog-shrouded landscapes. Come to think of it, that would have added a welcome touch of lunacy to a movie that's too somber to recognize its own silliness.