'Verity': Not enough trashy fun

     

  

There’s nothing wrong with good, trashy fun. That’s what I hoped to get from Verity, the fourth big-screen adaptation of a novel by the widely read Colleen Hoover. After some initial optimism, my hopes steadily dissolved. A cast composed of Dakota Johnson, Anne Hathaway, and Josh Hartnett seemed ready to deliver a story that makes room for sexual attraction, deception and blurred identity lines. In her fifth movie this year, Hathaway portrays Verity Crawford, a popular author whose stories  are told from the villain’s point of view. Johnson plays a struggling novelist who’s chosen to finish one of Verity’s books after an automobile accident leaves the author unable to walk or talk. Hartnett plays Verity’s husband, Jeremy, a charming enough fellow who develops a relationship with Johnson’s Lowen after she moves into the couple’s sleek Vermont home. Research, you know. We also meet Crew (Brady Wagner), the eight-year-old surviving Crawford twin. His sister Harper (Sienna Kulovitz) drowned in a canoeing accident. Cue the guilt and add a secret autobiography Verity had been writing. Director Michael Showalter offers glossy images and tries to add layers of suspense. Immobile through much of the movie, Hathaway still manages to register. So does Hartnett, but Johnson’s performance tends toward dullness. Oh well, the initial glamor loses its luster, and a plethora of melodramatic third-act plot twists wreck what's left of the movie's waning plausibility. As for samples of Verity’s writing ... oh, hell, let's just move on.

Hungry dinos trample the burbs

 Advanced publicity for The End of Oak Street blames a mysterious cosmic event for transporting a  typical American suburban neighborhood to a time when dinosaurs roamed the earth. 

  Anne Hathaway, who seems to be everywhere this summer, and Ewan McGregor, who lately has  been working in TV series, star as husband and wife in a high-concept job that keeps them on the run. 

  Director David Robert Mitchell can’t muster the suburban charm that Spielberg has mastered, but his movie begs for comparison with Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, which did a better job of providing a reason for why humans must struggle to keep from becoming dinosaur food, a fate not all Oak Street residents can escape.

   The movie's involuntary time travel involves a large bubble that intermittently appears and serves as a portal through time. As an explanation, it proves laughably feeble. Maybe that was the point.

    Mitchell leans heavily on two young performers — Maisy Stella and Christian Convery. They play the Platt children, who dodge dinosaurs without their parents when Convery's Brian sets out to find his beloved dog Starbuck. His sister follows, and another youngster (Jordan Alexa Davis) eventually joins them.

   The End of Oak Street seems to be turning pages in a give-em-what-they-came-for playbook, offering a series of dinosaur attacks and relying heavily on CGI to keep the film monster heavy and to ensure that these destructive behemoths prove reasonably disgusting.

   A giant snake invading a house makes for one of the best-assembled set pieces and there is (wait for it) a scene of dinosaur copulation), a stab at genre-mocking amusement in the midst of survival terror.

   Watching McGregor's character try to defend himself with a sledgehammer looks a bit silly. Hathaway wields a rifle. But the movie emphasizes flight more than fight.

    Modest attempts are made to deepen the characters. Aspiring to be more than a homemaker,  Hathaway’s Denise is writing a novel; McGregor’s Greg tipples from a hidden bottle; he has been reduced to delivering pizzas to earn extra cash. Husband and wife often argue.

   Best taken as a love letter to ‘80s cinema, End of Oak Street might have done well to lean more heavily into its goofier aspects and tried for full-out comedy. 

  As it stands, a formulaic End of Oak Street offers many views of Hathaway running, Hathaway screaming, and Hathaway expressing fear. 

  It’s not easy to spoof shlock movies without becoming one, a trap that End of Oak Street can’t entirely avoid, but credit Mitchell with moving rapidly until he reaches the film's unfortunately muddled copout of an ending.

 

Tracking Christopher Nolan's 'Odyssey'

   You've already seen The Odyssey. You've probably seen it many times.  I'm not talking about filmed versions, one in 1954 and another in 1997. I'm talking about movies that -- knowingly or not -- have retold the Odyssey story, if not literally, then by mimicking its structure. 

    You know the drill. A valiant hero is separated from all that's familiar to him. He must overcome many obstacles to achieve a goal that resonates in movies as diverse as The Wizard of Oz and E.T. The hero wants to go home, home representing everything good, stable, and familiar. 

    Put another way, The Odyssey may date to the late 8th century BC, but it created one of the templates for storytellers that endures to this day. 

    Unless you've been living in isolation, you know that director Christopher Nolan has made his version of The Odyssey, opting to avoid literary flourishes that might have struck contemporary ears as unrecognizably florid. At one point, Telemachus, son of Odysseus, calls his mother "mom." I did a double take when I heard Odysseus referred to as "daddy."

    A bit strange, yes, but the heart of the movie involves an episodic account of the perils Odysseus faces on his return trip to Ithaca after the Trojan War.

    As you can guess, there isn't much smooth sailing in The Odyssey. Seas roil and blood is shed. Odysseus' adventures may remind younger viewers of horrors they've encountered in Marvel movies. In Nolan's hands, they serve as tests of Odysseus' character and cunning, with cunning sometimes trumping issues of character.  

     Looking grizzled and battle-worn, Matt Damon, as Odysseus, highlights Odysseus' internal conflicts. How many men must be sacrificed to save most of the loyal soldiers who accompany Odysseus on his journey home? Put another way, Odysseus  — the ultimate pragmatist — constantly wrestles with his conscience. 

    Odysseus’ journey pauses when he washes up on the shores of a secret island inhabited by Calypso (Charlize Theron), an immortal beauty who offers Odysseus a chance to live with her forever. 

     No, says Odysseus; he’d rather be mortal and return to his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway). Embittered and lonely, Penelope has spent the last 20 years warding off freeloading suitors who have invaded Odysseus' home, notably the sly Antinous (a terrific Robert Pattinson).

    Nolan also adds many of the side characters that bring color to the epic story. Eumaeus (John Leguizamo), a blind swineherd, remains loyal to Odysseus throughout his long absence, demonstrating that virtue isn't necessarily confined to those of noble birth.

      All of this plays against a counter story. Telemachus (Tom Holland) leaves home to find the father he doesn't know, although his trip isn't quite as fraught as his father's.

     Nolan presents a narratively complex story in segments, some of which merge easily and others which can make the movie seem a bit discombobulated, particularly at the outset.

   Sometimes, Nolan hurls us into some of the movie's  episodes without build-up, but he brings the story's bits and pieces together in the movie's finale, arguably the best and most commanding part of this gargantuan effort.

    In one of the movie's more engaging episodes, Odysseus encounters Circe (a compelling Samantha Morton), a witch who can turn men into animals, thus exposing what she regards as their essential natures.

     Then there's Menelaus (a strong Jon Bernthal) and his wife Helen (Lupita Nyong'o), both of whom Telemachus visits in hopes of learning his father’s whereabouts. Zendaya turns up as Athena, the goddess who appears to Odysseus, sometimes as a reminder of the pain he has inflicted on others.

       As he customarily does, Nolan minimizes the use of special effects. I’ve read that the fearsome Cyclops was created with a mixture of puppetry, animatronics, and a performance by Bill Irwin. An enormous Trojan horse was built to lay the groundwork for one of the movie's most powerful scenes. A chastened Odysseus witnesses the carnage wrought when he deceived the Trojans, entered Troy, and conquered the city. 

    With victory comes horror and remorse, a twist that might be dubbed "the agony of victory." 

      The Odyssey is worth seeing, but I wasn't swept away by a film that seems targeted for greatness, an A-list production in front of and behind the camera.

     Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema keeps early scenes dark, simulating the look of candlelit interiors. He often presses his camera close to faces, presumably to bring intimacy to the proceedings.

       Production designer Ruth De Jong opts for naturalism rather than period-piece cliche, and Ludwig Goransson's score pumps adrenaline into clangorous depictions of battle, perhaps trying to replicate the thudding rhythms with which Homer’s poetry originally was delivered. 

        A masterwork with ample amounts of blood and gore, the story retains much of its power, even if some of its monsters seem more related to the era of Ray Harryhausen’s artifice (1963's Jason and the Argonauts) than contemporary visual pyrotechnics. 

     Nolan sustains a clear vision, coaxes out several memorable performances, and hits home when it counts, but I was expecting something more encompassing; I wanted a movie in which I could get lost, and got a movie that I tracked with interest.

   Ah, the cyclops. Ah, the whirlpool. Yes, there's Odysseus tied to a ship's past because he insists on hearing the irresistible siren song that could cause him to leap overboard and face certain death.

   The movie seemed best when it didn't feel like a checklist of Odyssey high points bolstered by a strong cast and a commitment to imagery. The Odyssey was filmed with 70mm IMAX cameras that beautifully capture the sandy expanse of beaches and the imposing emptiness of seas at sunset. The Odyssey may not be consistently compelling, but in the stillness of those moments, Nolan writes poetry of his own.

'Prada 2': Less devlish but still amusing

 

  It has been 20 years since The Devil Wears Prada became a box-office hit. The Devil Wears Prada 2, a belated sequel, reunites the principal players -- Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci -- for a movie that loads up on glamor, fashion, and unbridled ambition in the world of magazine publishing.

   Director David Frankel returns with a story that contrives to bring Hathaway's Andy Sachs back into the world of Miranda Priestly (Streep), the tyrannical taste-making editor of the first installment.  Tucci's loyal Nigel still works as the design maven at Priestly's Runway magazine, which resembles Vogue in stature in the world of high fashion.

   Blunt's Emily has moved on to an influential position with Dior, which receives a major plug here. She's still embroiled in a rivalry with Andy, who's more or less the movie's main character. 

    Andy's trouble's begin when the newspaper for which she has been working is closed, a bit of news delivered by text while half the staff is attending an awards ceremony. Andy's investigative reporting wins first prize, a Pyrrhic victory that precedes her unemployment.

     No unemployment checks for Andy, though; she's quickly hired to help bring some "integrity" to Runway, where she once worked. In the midst of a PR crisis, Runway's owner hires Andy behind Miranda's back.

     The luxe atmospherics, definitely part of the movie's appeal, seem a little at odds with the many lofty defenses of journalism that are launched, mostly by Andy.

    A few other characters work mostly in service of the plot. Justin Theroux plays gazillionnaire Benji Barnes, who also happens to be Emily's new love interest; Lucy Liu, plays Benji's wealthy ex-wife, a woman who's not caught up in all the corporate craziness, and Kenneth Branagh portrays Miranda's new love interest, a role that pretty much wastes his talents. Same goes for Patrick Brammall, who's squeezed in as Andy's partner in a superfluous romance.

    Devil Wears Prada 2 also plays a game of cinematic name-dropping with cameo appearances by Donatella Versace, Naomi Campbell, Heidi Klum, Tina Brown, Molly Jong-Fast, Kara Swisher, Jon Batiste, Marc Jacobs, Karl-Anthony Towns, and more. The movie even manages to add a number by  Lady Gaga to its bold-faced parade of glitter.

     Despite the celebrity glut, the real attraction centers on the interactions between the principal actors who are part of a scheme in which Andy tries to save the magazine and Miranda's job as a corporate takeover and major cutbacks loom.

     Miranda may be as haughty as ever, but Streep makes her a bit more subdued in this outing. If the rest of the cast breaks no new ground, the actors ably meet the script's requirements, and the movie passes easily.

     Put another way, Prada 2 delivers a fair measure of upscale amusement in an expectedly glossy package. 

     

A May/December rom-com

  The Idea of You returns Anne Hathaway to the rom-com arena as a 40-year-old woman who falls for a 24-year-old member of a boy band (Nicholas Galitzine), one of those manufactured groups that inspire seventh-grade girls to plaster posers on their bedroom walls.

  A May-December romance revolves around the increasing sexual and romantic assertions of Hathaway’s recently divorced character. As you might guess, the wounds of divorce serve as a mandatory marker for an impending rebirth.

 To add complication, Hathaway’s Solene has a 16-year-old daughter (Ella Rubin) and a judgmental ex-husband (Reid Scott) who left her for another woman. 

 The movie’s cute-meet takes place at Coachella, the music festival to which Solene reluctantly escorts her daughter and several friends. Solene mistakes Galitzine’s private trailer for a public bathroom, generating a cute meet initiated by the desire to pee. Hey, whatever gets you there.

  Solene owns a successful art gallery in LA. Conveniently, she employs able assistants who allow her to pursue the burgeoning romance when Rubin’s Izzie leaves for summer camps. Solene travels with Galitzine's Hayes on the band's European tour.

  Adapting a novel by Robinne Lee, director Michael Showalter presents Galitzine’s Hayes as a self-aware young man who yearns to transcend the  limitations of a career built around boy-band superficiality. He’s looking to enrich his life with something genuine.

  The movie’s two stars generate chemistry while the plot tilts into topicality. The romance becomes tabloid fodder during the European tour.

   Obstacles arise on cue, and as the story evolves, the movie loses some of its early comic flavor without inspiring much by way of serious consideration.

   These days, my expectations for rom-coms are pretty low but this one has an inherent problem: Hathaway, an Oscar-winning actress and A-Lister, outshines Galitzine, who's asked to play the kind of star who makes women weak-kneed. 

    Let's leave it at this: A pre-summer bauble with a sturdy rom-com structure, Idea of You understands that it needs to be a bit more than eye candy -- or maybe that's just Hathaway at work.

A lawyer takes on a major corporation

Mark Ruffalo stars in Dark Waters, a movie that uses a deliberate approach in creating a drama of betrayed trust.

Making a movie about a complex legal case that spanned 17 years can't be easy. Director Todd Haynes and star Mark Ruffalo accomplish the daunting task in Dark Waters, the story of an Ohio attorney who takes on DuPont, one of the world's leading chemical companies.

Ruffalo portrays Rob Bilott, a Cincinnati-based attorney who specializes in defending companies like DuPont. After some initial foot-dragging, Bilott agrees to represent a West Virginia farmer (Bill Camp) whose cattle are being poisoned by toxic waste that has been dumped near his acreage. Bilott's target: DuPont.

Those familiar with Haynes' work (Wonderstruck, Carol, Far From Heaven) know that he can be as much stylist as a storyteller. But here, Haynes works in an unassuming fashion. He's wise enough to know that a story that impacts so many people needs little embellishment.

Dark Waters moves beyond the plight of a single farmer to encompass the drinking water of an entire town. The chemical in question also was used in Teflon, a non-stick coating familiar to most Americans.

Early on, we meet the head of Bilott's law firm. Tim Robbins portrays an attorney who eventually buys into Bilott's mission, a stance that doesn't please all the partners. Some of them view Bilott as a traitor who's biting the hands that feed the firm.

And Tim's wife ( Anne Hathaway impressive in a smallish role) isn't blindly supportive; she resents the fact that the case takes Bilott away from his children.

Among the supporting cast, Victor Garber also stands out as the head of DuPont. Initially cordial, Garber's character turns vicious when his company's interests are threatened.

But it's Ruffalo who carries the movie; he creates a portrait of an attorney who couldn't be less slick. As a church-going ordinary guy, Bilott feels no need to put self-righteousness on display.

Bilott's case against DuPont involves the use of a chemical called PFOA. It takes lots of heavy research to discover what the chemical is and how it has been used. Persistence trumps genius-level legal maneuvers.

You might say that everyone involved with the production -- from cinematographer Ed Lachman to Haynes -- serves a story that rightly has been compared to movies such as Norma Rae, Erin Brokovich and The Insider.

That's not to say that Dark Waters lacks atmosphere. The movie makes its case while capturing the bleak environs of a failing West Virginia farm and the grayness of Midwestern environments that have seen better days.

Basing the movie on a 2016 article that appeared in The New York Times Magazine, screenwriters Mario Correa and Matthew Michael Carnahan do a fine job capitalizing on the inherent drama of a tale involving betrayed trust.

The film reinforces a sobering conclusion: In the end, we can't rely on the government or on corporations for protection. We have to hope that people such as Bilott will take on fights that initially look futile.

Don't expect an explosive movie. Dark Waters gradually insinuates itself into consciousness in ways that make you shudder; it presents a clear case of a company that put its own interests ahead of the general good.

They con their way to laughs

Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson play clashing con artists in The Hustle, a reasonably entertaining comedy.

The Hustle -- a comedy starring Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson -- remakes 1964's Bedtime Story, a movie that itself was remade as 1988's Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, a much-praised comedy that starred Michael Caine and Steve Martin. Clearly, the aim here was gender reversal with women taking the lead as dueling con artists locked in a competition meant to tax all their felonious skills.

The comedy derives from a classic oil-on-water clash of personalities that are embodied in Wilson's unashamedly crude Penny and Hathaway's ostentatiously sophisticated Josephine.

Though uneven and burdened by a coda that works against the movie's feminist tilt, the comedy benefits from three attributes: An inviting setting -- Beaumont Sur Mer (a fictional town on the French Riviera) -- and two all-in performances from Hathaway and Wilson.

Clad in costumes that amount to a one-woman fashion show, Hathaway employs a variety of accents, mostly to good comic effect. Wilson adds plenty of ribald energy.

The con jobs carried out by these women aren't especially convincing and a major gag (Wilson's character feigns blindness) flirts with questionable taste, but Hathaway and Wilson work well together and there are enough chuckles to satisfy amusement-hungry appetites.

The story revolves around a competition in which the two women, who are battling for possession of the same luxe turf, try to con a young app developer. Alex Sharp brings gee-golly innocence to his portrayal of a tech whiz with money.

The big gags sometimes feel like examples of sketch humor dropped into the story. At one point, the women wrangle high-priced engagement rings from various marks -- notably, a Texan played by Dean Norris. Penny poses as Josephine's crazy sister, a mad woman who purportedly accompanies any marriage to the lustrous Josephine. Once exposed to Penny, the enticed fiances can't flee quickly enough.

Director Chris Addison doesn't seem to be chasing cinematic history; the movie makes no attempt to conceal its escapist impulses, so even if The Hustle fails to enter the pantheon of great comedy, it proves reasonably entertaining. Moreover, its two stars manage to dispel the aroma of familiarity (what another con-job movie?) that could have put a choke-hold on their efforts.

Second-rate material sinks 'Serenity'

Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway drown in a thriller set on a Caribbean island.

Serenity, a new movie starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway, tells the kind of story that’s meant to be played back in viewers' heads once the movie concludes. That sort of exercise can fun, but in this case, the playback likely will lead to an unhappy conclusion: Not only do the pieces in the movie’s puzzle seem mismatched, but the whole enterprise is marked by silliness and over-reach.

Serenity begins as a noir thriller in which an abused wife (Hathaway) asks her ex-husband (McConaughey) to kill her current husband (Jason Clarke). Not only will the murder net McConaughey’s Baker Dill a cool $10 million, but it will also help his son escape a vile stepfather.

The movie takes place on a Caribbean island the movie calls Plymouth, a detail that has as little meaning as just about everything else in this misfire.

When we first meet Baker, he's a boat owner who takes beer-guzzling customers on day-long fishing expeditions. Early on, Baker gets crosswise with two customers by refusing to allow one of them to reel in The Big One, a giant tuna Baker evidently has been trying to catch for years and with which he's developed an Ahab-like obsession.

Baker is aided in his efforts by an assistant (Djimon Hounsou), a man who tries to help Baker control his temper. Baker thinks Hounsou's recently widowed character has brought him bad luck.

When he’s not at sea, Baker carries on an affair with a woman played by a wasted Diane Lane. Lane’s character gives Baker money when the fish aren’t running — if that’s what fish do.

The plot picks up when Hathaway, in overdone blonde femme-fatale makeup that borders on Halloween costume chic, shows up to enlist Baker in her plan: She wants Baker to take her current husband to sea and drop him into the drink.

Meanwhile, the movie dishes out colorful detail as if it were afraid it might run out of ways to add flavor.

An example: Baker, who lives in an abandoned shipping container, has a unique idea of what it means to take a shower. He sheds his clothes, runs naked toward a cliff and leaps into the ocean.

Speaking of showers, director Steven Knight (Dirty Pretty Things and Eastern Promises) also films a lot of scenes in the rain which — McConaughey’s character — doesn’t have sense enough to come out of.

Now and again, the story ambiguously cuts to images of Baker's son working at his computer. The screenplay lamely suggests a near-paranormal connection between Baker and his teenage son, who’s still back on the mainland.

To add to the sense of mystery, a man in a suit (Jeremy Strong) keeps following Baker but continually fails to connect with his quarry. When the two finally meet, the movie indulges in silly exposition about games, rules and the unknowable nature of reality.

The whole enterprise is marked by a thorough lack of credibility, a problem that mounts as McConaughey’s performance goes increasingly over-the-top.

McConaughey’s Baker wants to catch The Big One, but it’s not the fish that gets away: It’s this whole preposterous, self-serious movie.

A dense, unsatisfying 'Alice'

Another wild, crazy and scattered trip to an alternate reality.

Alice Through the Looking Glass arrives in theaters as an effects-laden, visually dense extravaganza that feels more like a wild-and-crazy theme park ride than a trip to Wonderland.

Director James Bobin (Muppets Most Wanted) takes over from Tim Burton, who made his version of Alice in Wonderland six years ago. Simply put: Burton's movie -- though no masterpiece -- was better.

Familiar characters emerge from Bobin's galaxy of imaginative sets, bizarre costumes and dizzying action. But this time, the appearance of old favorites generates little by way of fond recall.

When we first meet her, Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is a skilled sea captain who loses her father's ship to a greedy fleet owner. An unhappy Alice then walks through the famous Looking Glass.

Once she enters this alternate reality, Alice learns that she must travel through time in order to help save The Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp). The Hatter, poor fellow, has fallen into a near-terminal funk as the result of having lost his family.

Alice also meets Time (Sacha Baron Cohen), a character who controls something called a Chronosphere, a spinning globe into which Alice climbs so that she's able to go back in time, perhaps to repair past wrongs. Mostly, it's an excuse for a screenful of summer-time action.

The movie holds two queens in its hand -- the White Queen (a pasty-looking Anne Hathaway) and the Red Queen (an arch Helena Bonham Carter). Enmity between the queens traces back to their childhoods, in case you've been longing to know why they never seem to be able to get along.

If someone told you that Bonham Carter, under the customary ton of makeup, was really a very large toy, you might believe it. More than others who suffer the same fate, Bonham Carter has an air of China-doll unreality about her.

As for Depp, his silly ramblings as the Hatter made me again wish that he'd once and for all leave childhood films behind.

I could say more, but all I'll tell you is that the amusements are skimpy, the sights overwhelming and the whole business seems to have lost the heady, mind-warping spin of Lewis G. Carroll.

In short: Big production, small yield. In 3D, of course.

A sometimes blurry 'Interstellar' vision

How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen a worm hole?

Christopher Nolan's Interstellar provides us with reason to re-appreciate the genius of director Stanley Kubrick, who brilliantly opted to use minimal dialogue in his momentous and still glorious 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Nolan, who wrote the screenplay for Interstellar with his brother Jonathan, includes some surprisingly opaque dialogue that -- at least momentarily -- deflates the grandeur of his deep-space enterprise.

Kubrick's genius consisted of not trying to explain everything. He allowed the mystery of his movie to match the incomprehensible vastness of space.

Nolan, on the other hand, offers dialogue that explains without always clarifying all of the movie's narrative lapses in what amounts to a strange and not quite digestible mixture of homespun virtue and theoretical physics.

It's one hell of a tall order, I suppose, trying to span the distance from dirt farms to black holes.

To be fair, it should be noted that along the way, Nolan creates images that give the movie a stunning, forceful presence -- no small achievement.

It's the conception behind the drama that sometimes falters. Nolan begins with yet another view of a depleted Earth. Agriculture is failing, population has diminished and breathable air is on schedule to run out.

Is there a way out of this dystopian trap?

Enter Matthew McConaughey as Cooper, a NASA pilot turned farmer, who finds his way to a secret NASA hideout where he's recruited by Dr. Brand, a renowned physicist played by a weary-looking Michael Caine.

Cooper's assignment: to fly the ship that will journey through a worm hole and beyond. It's part of an attempt to find a new galactic home for the dwindling populace of Earth.

To pursue this mission, Cooper -- a widower and father of two -- must leave his young kids (Mackenzie Foy and Timothee Chalamet) in the care of their grandfather (John Lithgow).

The explanation for how Cooper goes from farmer to space hero is not especially convincing, but it launches him on a voyage of salvation along with a crew that includes Anne Hathaway's Amelia, the daughter of Dr. Brand.

I don't think it's spoiling anything to tell you that the scientists in Interstellar are operating under the assumption that an unspecified being (or beings) is providing humanity with an assist in its quest for survival.

After his acceptance speech at this year's Oscars, I wondered whether McConaughey already had traveled in space, but he brings a down-home Texas twang and lots of high-level fretting to the role of a man thrust into the position of trying, as a mere human, to do something usually reserved for superheroes; i.e., saving all of humanity.

If there's a truly compelling reason to see Interstellar, it centers on the grandiosity of Nolan's space vision, made significantly more powerful when seen in Imax. Nolan captures the vastness of space, and some of the action scenes involving docking maneuvers of space craft are suitably impressive.

Cooper's adventures keep him away from Earth for quite a while. So it's not surprising that somewhere toward the middle of the movie's two-hour and 49-minute span, Cooper's kids become adults, played by Jessica Chastain and Casey Affleck.

Of the two, Chastain has the more important role because we're told that her character has a powerful love bond with her space-voyaging father. More about that later.

Nolan fills individual set pieces with tension, but the greater question (will mankind survive?) doesn't exactly keep us on the edge of our seats, and when the dialogue tries to incorporate scientific jargon, the outlines of Nolan's human drama tend to blur.

Those familiar with Nolan's blockbuster filmography (a couple of Batman movies and Inception) hardly will be surprised by the movie's ambition, but it's a bit odd that Interstellar tries to bring the whole business to its conclusion by telling us that love (in this case between father and daughter) has the potential to bridge the space/time continuum -- or something like that.

At times, Interstellar feels reminiscent of Kubrick, and at other times it feels almost Spielbergian, particularly in opening segments that take place in a future that has been made to resemble the Dust Bowl years of the Great Depression.

I wore out on Hans Zimmer's creative but inescapable score, which provides both menace and cosmic inspiration. Zimmer hits highs, and then tries to repeat them.

One of those highs involves a Michael Caine recitation of Dylan Thomas' Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night, which serves as a kind of poetic bit of cheerleading, encouraging humanity to rage against the dying of the light -- which in this case reaches beyond individual death to the extinction of the entire species.

Nolan's gigantic exercise soars and sinks, even as its boosted by amazing sights: a planet on which ocean waves reach mountainous heights and a journey past a black hole, for example.

Some viewers may find that Nolan has infused Interstellar with palpable human longing. If you share that view, the movie may strike a deep chord with you.

Me? I can't think of a recent movie that gave thrills with one hand while eliciting groans with the other. You'll have to see Interstellar for yourself to determine on which side of the line you land.

I'm not sure you'll agree, but I thought Nolan's movie represented an outsized amalgam of unlikely bedfellows, the Beatles and Einstein. It goes something like this: All you need is love -- and quite possibly an advanced degree in physics.

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.

'Dark Knight' rises to a fitting conclusion

Director Christopher Nolan keeps things dark and dangerous as he brings his Batman series to a startling conclusion.

The Dark Knight Rises might be the first summer blockbuster that could benefit from massive doses of Prozac. Darkly hued and mired in Bruce Wayne's Imax-sized funk, this Batman movie sets a ton of anarchic violence against a backdrop in which a masked villain takes aim at Gotham, destroying it in bits and pieces before his hoped for finale, a nuclear explosion that will send the place shrieking toward oblivion.

And if all that weren't enough, billionaire Wayne also takes a hit in the pocketbook; he goes broke during the course of a 164-minute movie that includes -- among what may be too many layers -- a bit of corporate intrigue.

For all of that, Dark Knight Rises has a riveting quality that's bolstered by an encompassing and masterfully created sense of dread. Director Christopher Nolan packs his movie with dark forebodings that create a feeling of what might happen when the center no longer holds and chaos begins to reign.

I'm still trying to figure out exactly what values Dark Knight Rises tries to uphold -- if any, but there's no denying that Nolan's movie is daring, strange and, in its best moments, startlingly extreme.

The opening parts of Nolan's third and final installment of the Dark Knight series reminds us that Wayne has become reclusive after being blamed for the death of district attorney Harvey Dent, a rogue lawyer who, since his death in the last movie, has been wrongly lionized by the citizens of Gotham. They view Dent as a heroic crime fighter.

Wayne's devoted butler Alfred (Michael Caine) suggests that his employer quit playing savior to a forlorn world and begin living a fulfilling normal life. Wayne, of course, isn't done with Batman, who resurfaces as dense clouds of doom begin forming over Gotham. The city has been targeted by terrorists.

Before Dark Knight Rises concludes, these terrorists will have attacked the Gotham Stock Exchange and a packed football stadium, and for much of the time, Batman won't be able to do a damn thing about it. About half way through the movie, he's captured, transported to arid climes and thrown into an imprisoning pit.

Put aside comic-book expectations. Dark Knight Rises would sooner rip out its tongue than plant it in its cheek. Even more than in the first two installments, Nolan strives to create an environment in which a battered world is about to be consumed by calamitous waves of terror.

Christian Bale retains his hard-won title as the most most intense and obsessive of all Batmen. During the course of the movie, Bale takes the kind of beating that makes you wonder whether he shouldn't follow these performances with long stints in an upscale sanitarium.

Only Anne Hathaway's Catwoman -- a.k.a. Selina Kyle -- hints at levity. Hathaway's sultry sarcasm shoots beams of light across cinematographer Wally Pfister's otherwise inky palette and provides a bit of contrast to Hans Zimmer's doom-struck score.

Some of the movie's characters are familiar: There's Caine's Alfred, of course. Morgan Freeman's Lucian Fox continues to provide Batman with his vehicular toys. Gary Oldman, as Gotham's police commissioner, adds to the seriousness.

Joining Hathaway on the newbie side of the ledger are Marion Cotillard (as Miranda Tate, a member of the Wayne Enterprises board); Joseph Gordon-Levitt (as a Gotham cop who still believes in Batman); and Tom Hardy (as Bane, the villain with a Darth Vader-like voice and a leather mask that's every bit as weird as Hannibal Lecter's.) (I thought it was me, but I've been reading that lots of people had difficulty understanding all of Bane's rumbling pronouncements.)

Nolan does a first-rate job with the action, which is chaotic but comprehensible. The special effects (all manner of destruction) are well conceived. They pass in hurried review as Nolan creates feverish swirls of action, commendably avoiding the cliche of The Big Moment, grand entrances for Batman, etc.

Perhaps to keep us unsettled, Nolan never gives this epic-sized movie a solid core, but focuses on an out-of-control society in which various forces contend for supremacy.

A haunting sense of fatalism undergirds Dark Knight Rises, and there's little to suggest that our battered species ever will run out of hideous villains. This time, the fiends aren't nearly as distinctive as a Batman nemesis such as the Joker, but as Bane, Hardy exudes so much frightening authority, you believe he could turn Batman into a loser.

In the end, it's not so much the action-oriented excitement that makes Dark Knight Rises so compelling; it's the tenacity with which Nolan clings to a forbidding vision in which nothing and no one ever feels truly safe.

Love, sex, drugs and too much else

It starts as if it's going to satirize the highly commercial world of Big Pharma. In the shift to romcom something is lost."

It's got drugs, love and sex, but these obviously volatile ingredients don't mesh especially well in Love & Other Drugs, a romantic comedy starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway, both of whom sometimes bare as much body as they do soul. And, by the way, before you call the DEA, we're talking primarily about licit drugs of the prescription variety.

Love & Other Drugs starts out as if it's going to be a lively expose of the ways in which the pharmaceutical industry pressures and coaxes doctors into prescribing one drug over another.

But Big Pharma probably needn't fret. Love & Other Drugs proves too scatter shot to hit any target for long: In addition to romping through the highly commercialized fields of the drug industry, the movie also attempts to refresh a romcom formula, examine self-imposed emotional barriers and toss in a few crass jokes for good measure.

The surprising thing - at least to me - about Love & Other Drugs is that it was directed and co-written by Edward Zwick, who has made fine movies, but who also helped create the landmark TV show thirtysomething, which had plenty to say about relationships, work and young families. It's interesting that this time out, Zwick - whose best big-screen work includes movies such as Glory and Blood Diamond - can't quite find a pulse on which to put his finger.

For all its ambition, Love & Other Drugs may be remembered for a variety of nude scenes between Gyllenhaal and Hathaway, who now officially closes the cover on her Princess Diary days.

Gyllenhaal and Hathaway worked together in Brokeback Mountain, only in that movie his character was a married gay man. This time, Gyllenhaal goes hetero with a vengeance, playing Jamie Randall, a womanizing drug salesman who bribes receptionists and sometimes helps doctors with their ... ahem ... social lives.

The only physician given much attention in the film - an internist portrayed by Hank Azaria - seems a bit of a sleazebag himself. During one telling moment, Azaria's Dr. Knight laments the state of contemporary medicine. We might be have been more sympathetic had he not delivered his analysis at a pajama party that morphs into an upscale orgy.

By now, you're probably wondering what happened to the romantic comedy part of the movie. Let me get you up to speed on that.

During the course of his work, Gyllenhaal's Jamie meets Hathaway's Maggie Murdock, a young woman who has Parkinson's disease. She's interested in sex, not long-term relationships. She's also angry and emotionally defended, not a surprising combination for someone with an incurable disease.

The next two words tell you something very significant about the movie.... They're "of course."

Of course, Jamie and Maggie fall for each other, even though she's ill and he's a committed womanizer who heretofore has shown no interest in stable relationships. And, of course, they get close and then pull apart and then....

Well, you know the drill.

Gyllenhaal's running at high speed here, playing a whip-smart underachiever who dropped out of college. Hathaway's Maggie is an artist, who's brash in ways that emphasize her cleverness and her desire to hold the world at arm's length.

Zwick sets the movie in the 90s, a decade when the economy was on the rise and so were other things. The story takes place during the dawning of the age of Viagra, the drug that catapults Jamie into the financial stratosphere. Oliver Platt appears as Jamie's drug-company mentor.

The movie can be smart, but it's also marred by an unfortunate tendency to dip into Judd Apatow territory. Jamie's brother (Josh Gad), is a dweeby entrepreneur who adds unnecessary gross-out jokes to the proceedings. And there's joke about a drug-induced erection that won't subside; it sticks out like a .... Let's just say it's too cheap for a movie that seems intent on finding some real emotion.

Those emotions can seem genuine, although I sometimes found myself watching performances by Gyllenhaal and Hathaway rather than becoming involved with their characters, young people who were being forced -- albeit kicking and screaming -- into accepting love.

It would be remiss to conclude a review of Love & Other Drugs without mentioning that Jill Clayburgh, who died earlier this month after a prolonged battled with leukemia. She appears briefly as Jamie's mother. She's also slated to appear in a 2011 movie. RIP to a fine actress.

As a thirtysomething fan, I was eager to see Love & Other Drugs, hoping it would successfully take Zwick away from the historical and topical subjects that seem to have dominated his movie career. But Love & Other Drugs wanders all over the place, touching down at a variety of entertaining and successful points without delivering on the high hopes the assembled talent engenders.