Siblings struggle with life crises

 
   

       The Millers aren't a happy lot.

       One of the Miller sisters (Julianna Marguiles) writes novels that sell but she's frustrated by her husband's inertia. A once-successful author (Campbell Scott), he's currently unable to write. 

   Another Miller sister (Gretchen Mol) abandoned her career as a rising rock guitarist to raise her children and support the career of her rock musician husband (Patrick Wilson), a guitarist who spends most of his time on tour and who drinks too much.

    Andy Miller (Edward Burns), the third Miller sibling, recently was dumped by his wife (Morena Baccarin). An artist by trade, Andy is trying to find his footing in a relationship with a friend (Minnie Driver) of his soon to be ex-wife.

   Written and directed by Burns and featuring a strong ensemble cast, Millers in Marriage piles a lot on its plate, so much so that it often seems as if it's working through a checklist of 50something problems.

  Although he includes flashbacks to various pivotal points in the characters' lives, Burns doesn't do much to make the family background of three siblings part of the story. And putting each character at a major turning point feels a little too pat.

    Each sister looks beyond her marriage. 

Marguiles's Maggie has her eye on a local handyman (Brian D'Arcy James). Mol's Eve is tempted by a charming rock journalist (Benjamin Bratt).

    Despite a reasonable amount of conflict, the movie seldom catches fire, and its settings lean toward comforting affluence. Nothing wrong with that but it's almost as if Millers in Marriage is afraid to muss its hair. Too bad. More mess might have been what the movie needed. 

      

 

A boy longs for music in colorful 'Coco'

A Latino cast of characters fills Disney/Pixar's holiday entry. Oh, and by the way, the holiday is the Day of the Dead.

An animated movie built around Mexico's Day of the Dead and a story in which ruthless ambition and murder play pivotal roles? At first blush, such a movie seems like something that might have sprung from the imagination of director Tim Burton, no stranger to blending macabre touches into animated fare.

Not to worry. Disney/Pixar's Coco, which includes what might have been darkly hued ingredients, plants its feet firmly in a colorful world that serves as a backdrop for the movie's foray into Mexican culture. The Day of the Dead (Dia de Los Muertos) may be one of Coco's key events, but the movie puts its emphasis on family ties that extend through generations and, ultimately, serve as a source of strength for the living.

Guess what? The whole thing more or less works. Coco, Disney's holiday offering from Pixar, makes for an engaging entry into the canon of vividly realized Pixar animated features. To say that Coco bursts with visual diversity and color understates the case.

The story centers on Miguel (voice by Anthony Gonzalez), a boy who wants to follow in the footsteps of his hero, a recently deceased but enormously popular singer named Ernesto de la Cruz (voice by Benjamin Brett). De la Cruz became a singing sensation; young Miguel comes to believe that he's the great-great grandson of the venerable de la Cruz.

The problem: Miguel's family has gone into the shoemaking business and has forbidden all musical activity lest such frivolity upset Mama Coco, the shriveled family matriarch who gives the film its title. An explanation of the family's anti-musical stance would require spoilers. All I'll say is that the screenplay provides one.

According to the movie, the Day of the Dead marks the occasion on which the spirits of departed ancestors are supposed to return to mingle with their still-living loved ones. A series of plot machinations involving a trip to a local cemetery finds Miguel headed in the opposite direction.

Instead of awaiting the visits of the departed, he visits them in the Land of the Dead.

Much of Coco takes place in the Land of the Dead, a domain Disney treats as if it had been conceived as an addition to one of its theme parks, a fantastical world dominated by fully dressed skeletons, dazzlingly bright colors, vaulting towers, engaging characters, a busy transportation hub, and a villain who's more pompous than scary.

Miguel hopes his trip to the Land of the Dead will be productive: He wants to meet de la Cruz, receive the great singer's blessing and return home to pursue his musical dreams. But Miguel also meets Hector (voice by Gael Garcia Bernal), a tattered skeletal presence who's on the verge of being forgotten and who may have something to do with Miguel's quest.

Hector is that sorriest of souls. He'll be forgotten because there's no one to put his photo on a family shrine; he won't be able to cross the bridge that connects the living and the dead -- an arching display of marigold petals -- for a visit with his relatives. He'll vanish from his family's records, as if he never had lived.

I can't say exactly how kids will react to a story that makes room for jealousy, ego, and deceit, but I'm guessing that Coco's bright colors and Miguel's unflagging exuberance will stave off any bouts of kiddie fright and depression.

Besides, the skeletons in The Land of the Dead lean aren't immune from cartoonish behavior, coming apart and reconstituting when bones fly in different directions. These skeletons retain the personalities and relationships that they enjoyed in life. They're a lively bunch who give the lie to any notion that an afterlife might involve eternal rest.

Among the "dead" characters, Miguel finds his great-great grandmother (Alanna Noel Ubach). On the living side, we meet Miguel's grandmother (Renee Victor), a woman who serves as the family's enforcer, but who never fails to accompany discipline with robust expressions of love.

I've read that the filmmakers worked hard to incorporate authentic details of Mexican culture into the story and to sprinkle the dialogue with Spanish. Co-directed by Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina, the movie also includes touches that anchor the story in the Land of Disney, notably a sidekick Xolo dog named Dante that accompanies Miguel on his adventures.

In Coco, Disney and Pixar realize a complex and visually dense world that contains music and musical numbers without being a musical.

The movie may encourage youngsters to ponder the perils of succumbing to the blinding light of celebrity and it shows -- in obviously literal fashion -- that there's much to be gained from honoring and remembering those who have gone before us. And, of course, there's the Disney value that transcends all cultures: pursuing a dream.

Penetrating the cocaine cartel

Bryan Cranston plays an undercover agent in The Infiltrator, a teeming drama about the drug war in the 1980s.

Set during the 1980s, The Infiltrator tells the story of an undercover US Customs agent who helps crack a vast money-laundering scheme connected to Pablo Escobar and the Medellin drug cartel.

The life of an undercover agent consists of dodges and duplicity. He or she must establish real connections with criminals before turning the tables on them.

That's not a new story, but with Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) playing undercover cop Robert Mazur, The Infiltrator has a strong center.

Mazur won the trust of major cocaine dealers by posing as Bob Musella, a businessman with money-laundering expertise and ties to the New York mob. Musella made money for big-time drug czars, but also recorded their conversations with equipment hidden inside his expensive brief case.

Watching this kind of movie affords a double pleasure. On one level, The Infiltrator relates a story about a cop who's trying to bring down bad guys. Ably directed by Brad Furman (The Lincoln Lawyer) -- the movie benefits from constant tension because, at any moment, Mazur could be exposed.

On another level, there's voyeuristic kick to be found in the milieu that Mazur penetrates. It's a world in which the top guys no longer get their hands dirty, but which also is populated by lots of scary people who do.

According to the movie, which is based on a true story, Musella convinces kingpins with obscene amounts of cocaine cash that he'll invest their loot in small companies that are entirely legitimate. He also involves one the world's biggest banks in his operations.

The movie brings up some of the same issues as Donnie Brasco; i.e., the pain that's felt when undercover cops finally complete their work. They're putting people behind bars who trusted them, some of whom they've even grown to like.

It's also challenging to go deep undercover, and still be a devoted father and husband.

While dining in a restaurant with his real wife (Juliet Aubrey), Mazur's undercover world intrudes: An underworld associate unexpectedly shows up. To preserve his cover, Mazur humiliates an unsuspecting waiter. His behavior shocks both his wife and us, and serves as a sobering reminder of the problems faced by those who live two lives.

Furman surrounds Cranston with a terrific supporting cast. John Leguizamo gives another live-wire performance as a savvy informant. Benjamin Bratt, in his best big-screen work yet, plays Roberto Alcaino, an all-business Escobar henchman with charm to burn, culinary talent and an ability to savor the pleasures of the moment. He's cocaine royalty.

The DEA even gives Mazur a fake fiancee (Diane Kruger), a woman who's on her first undercover assignment and who turns out to be surprisingly good at her work.

And when Musella and his faux fiancee socialize with Alcaino and his wife, you get a feeling for the combination of loyalty and largesse that seduces people into the drug business.

A whispering mobster in a white suit (Yul Vazquez) becomes one of the movie's scarier characters, a man of variable sexual appetites who likes to be regarded as too dangerous to be trifled with.

Amy Ryan shows up now and again as Mazur's boss, a tough woman who seems to have been deprived of the gene for empathy.

At 60, Cranston may be a trifle old for the part, but he's especially adept at showing the discomfort Mazur feels in playing a role in which missteps can be fatal.

Mazur, whose work actually took five years to complete, probably should already have given up the chase when the movie begins. He knows that he should be home with his wife and kids, but he wants to catch bad guys. Still, he's not crazy enough to be immune to fear.

In all, the movie does a fine job of showing the perils of undercover work. The closer one gets to the quarry, the more likely the chances for success and the greater the letdown when the ruse finally must be abandoned and fake alliances are betrayed. So goes the complex plight of the undercover cop: He's the hero who can feel like a heel -- and Cranston never lets us forget it.

'Ride Along 2' quickly crashes

Kevin Hart and Ice Cube reunite for a second helping bickering buddies.

A sequel to the 2014 hit, Ride Along 2 arrives at a time when Oscar nominated movies are still clogging theaters, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens continues to keep the turnstiles spinning. It's as if the movies haven't yet recovered from last year's hangover.

So it's hardly surprising that Ride Along 2 reflects Hollywood's unstoppable tendency to re-wrap ingredients that led to previous success. This second helping does little more than add a bit of Miami glitz to a formula that wasn't especially inspired to begin with.

As fans of the series already know, Kevin Hart's Ben Barber is a bumbling dope. Ben, a wannabe cop in the first movie, now has a job as a uniformed police officer in Atlanta. He's also poised to marry Angela (Tika Sumpter), a woman whose brother James (Ice Cube) is a hard-boiled Atlanta detective.

You know the drill. Ben does dumb things; Ice Cube's James tells Ben that he has done dumb things. Hart revs his comic engine; Ice Cube scowls.

An especially lame story finds James traveling to Miami to help find a hacker (Ken Jeong). Eager to prove his worth, Ben wants to tag along. A reluctant James agrees, hoping once and for all to prove that Ben hasn't got the right stuff to be a detective.

Showing about as many facial expressions as the frozen-faced Ice Cube, a stiff Olivia Munn portrays a Miami detective who rounds out the law enforcement side of the equation.

Benjamin Bratt plays a less-than-frightening drug lord who corrupts public officials. He, too, is after Jeong's character.

Whether you find Ride Along 2 to be laugh-packed depends on how funny you find Hart. He's energetic, and likable enough, but there's not enough fresh humor in Ride Along 2 to compensate for the numbing amount of gunplay or a particularly gross scene in which Ben is forced to pick hair-covered nachos out of a trashcan and eat them.

Director Tim Story, who made the first movie, as well as the much better Ice Cube comedy, Barbershop, makes Ride Along 2 seem less ragged than it actually is by sprinkling it with female bodies and high-gloss shots of Miami.

Look, I've got nothing against dumb comedies and obviously, Hollywood doesn't either, but even dumb comedies need more by way of novelty than Ride Along 2 manages to muster.