A writer inherits a very large dog

  When I first learned that the writing/directing team of David Siegel and Scott McGehee had adapted author Sigrid Nunez's novel, The Friend, for the screen, I reacted with a mild shudder. Smart, moving, and mired in grief, Nunez's novel seemed an unlikely candidate for a move.

   Fortunately, the filmmakers capture enough of Nunez's tone to elevate a slender story while avoiding the kind of cheap sentiment that could have trivialized Nunez's work, which, simply stated, focuses on the bond between a woman and a dog.

    The Friend revolves around Naomi Watts's portrayal of Iris, a college writing professor who's coping with the suicide of her mentor and one-time lover, a writer of some repute. Iris's grief begins to sharpen when she inherits the author's Great Dane, a 180-pound creature named Apollo.

    Like many New Yorkers, Iris lives in a tiny apartment that's ill-suited for a large canine companion, even one with a touching soulful gaze. Watching Iris walk a Great Dane makes for an arresting sight, even though the aging and arthritic Apollo hardly can be called rambunctious.

    Bill Murray portrays Walter, the author Iris regarded as an invaluable confidant. Walter forged the connections that led Apollo to Iris. His decision can be read as an ironic act of cruelty or as a jolt meant to shake Iris from the torpor that has stalled work on her second novel.

   The directors employ first-person narration from Iris to capture a bit of Nunez's spare prose as they work their way through a series of episodes. Iris fights with her landlord about a no-dogs-allowed policy. She meets with one of Walter's three ex-wives (Carla Gugino) and with his daughter Val (Sarah Pidgeon), a student who's working with Iris on an attempt to turn Walter's correspondence into a book.

    Watts skillfully portrays Iris's hesitant but growing attachment to Apollo. Though limited to brief flashbacks and a fantasy sequence, Murray proves convincing as an unapologetic womanizer who's keenly aware of his many flaws and betrayals.

   Ann Dowd helps rounds out the cast as Iris's neighbor, a woman who's allergic to dogs. Felix Solis portrays the super in Iris's building, a kindly fellow who’s tasked with delivering ultimatums from the landlord. 

    Late in the story, Tuesday (Constance Wu), the last of Walter's three wives, offers to take Apollo off Iris's hands. Iris quickly realizes that Tuesday won't tolerate an animal that can't respect her highly refined choices in furniture.

    Tom McCarthy plays the psychiatrist Iris consults in her increasingly desperate search for a solution to her Apollo problem.

  Though less precisely honed than Nunez's foray into the literary world, Siegel and McGehee's movie does a better job of translating her novel to the screen than Pedro Almodovar did with The Room Next Door, his adaptation of Nunez's What Are You Going Through -- at least that's how it struck me.

   You may never have wondered what it might be like to have a 180-pound dog dropped into your life, but The Friend will give you an idea of how much upheaval such a bulky intrusion can bring — both literally and metaphorically. 

    If I were looking for an alternate title for The Friend, I might consider this one: “Chamber Piece with Very Large Dog.”

Time to give up on 'Ghostbusters'?

 

 It would be a mistake to assume that critics never crave an evening of simple diversion. That’s how I approached Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, the latest in a comic franchise that has made intermittent appearances in the nation’s multiplexes since 1984.

 Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd, vets of the original, both appear in the new movie, a promising bit of casting and, although the first movie isn’t among my favorite comedies, I was hoping for laughs in a climate of unabashed silliness. 

  Besides, what could be better than an ample helping of the kind of straight-faced intensity only Aykroyd can deliver?

  All I can say is that hopes aren’t always rewarded. 

  Although Frozen Empire didn’t generate embittered antipathy (at least from me), I found it uninspired, callow, and guilty of misstepping by trying to whip up a real scare or two. 

   To begin with, Murray isn’t in Frozen Empire all that much. Aykroyd’s appearance goes beyond cameo levels but it’s as if he’s taking the role of straight man without a comic to foil to play against. 

   The only scene that begins to suggest wit involves Aykroyd and Patton Oswalt, who appears as a paranormal researcher working at the main branch of the New York Public Library.

   Credit Kumail Nanjiani for bringing a shabby conman’s ease to a role that figures heavily in the plot, but could have been further expanded.

    Returning to the revamped New York City firehouse of the original, the movie centers on a familiar group composed of characters from previous sequels: Paul Rudd (now an aspiring stepdad), Carrie Coon (as Mom), and McKenna Grace and Finn Wolfhard) as her two kids. 

     Grace’s Phoebe emerges as a teen with a ghost-busting gift. She befriends a spirit named Melody (Emily Alyn Lind) who happens to be a chess whiz. 

    Director Gil Kenan, working from a screenplay he wrote with Jason Reitman,  piles on franchise references and adds the requisite amount of special effects. But the principal "ghost" — an evil god named Garraka  -- lacks the necessary silliness to keep the comedy on track. The movie takes Garraka, who can coat the world with layers of life-destroying ice, a little too seriously.

    The original movie relied on Murray’s sardonic delivery and the unashamed and often tacky preposterousness of its ambitions. The giant Stay Puft Marshmallow man who trampled Manhattan in 1984 has been shattered into legions of tiny Marshmallow men, a proliferation that’s overused to the point where it loses its whacky charm.

     The movie also includes an additional team of paranormal researchers financed by the wealthy Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson of earlier movies). That group includes more characters from previous editions who are charged with studying the behavior of captured ghosts, perhaps hinting at the possibility of a rapprochement between humans and the spirit world.

      Other figures from the series reappear, notably Annie Potts, the original  Ghostbusters secretary, and William Atherton, who portrays the oppositional authority figure who wants to hold the Ghostbusters responsible for collateral damage wreaked by their efforts.

      Judging by this edition, there seems little need for another Ghostbusters. Passing proton packs from generation to generation has its limits.

      At one point, Aykroyd’s aging character refers to being in his Golden Years. He wants to spend his twilight years doing what he’s done before, busting ghosts, I guess. I wouldn’t wish a life spent playing golf on Aykroyd's Ray Stantz, but there must be a better alternative.

     

Ant-Man goes to the Quantum Realm

 

  As everyone now knows, Marvel has created a  universe of interrelated characters who often find themselves fighting to save the world — or perhaps many worlds in the case of Marvel's multiverse extravaganzas. 

  I'm far from a Marvel zealot, so I don't always find it easy to remember all the ways in which Marvel has woven its intricate tapestry of superheroes and supervillains, Avengers and those who must be vanquished.

 Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, the third free-standing Ant-Man movie, can be seen as one more stop on Marvel's never-ending highway. It's not without some pleasures but doesn't climb to the top of the Marvel mountain either.

  In what probably counts as a miscalculation, director Peyton Reed inflates the Ant-Man universe, downplaying the low-stakes quality of the previous movies by setting most of the story in the Quantum Realm.

    What’s that? If you’re looking for a scientific explanation, you’ll have to search elsewhere. The Quantum Realm is one more big-screen arena for the display of bizarre creatures, weird landscapes, and other digital creations that, at least in this case, amount to a mixed bag of goodies.

    At one point, multiple versions of Ant-Man appear, forcing the “real” Ant-Man into a pseudo- identity crisis or some such. 

   And late in the movie, an impressive army of ants launches a pivotal attack. These ants, we’ve been told, have techno capabilities but the story is less interested in ant genius than in stuffing the Quantum Realm with as much bric-a-brac as possible.

    What’s notable about the humans who carry the Ant-Man banner?

     Paul Rudd returns as Ant-Man and continues his comic take on the character who, in his human form, is known as Scott Lang. 

    Ant-Man’s teenage daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) plays an important role, setting off the plot when she sends signals into the Quantum Realm, thus transporting the major characters to a dimension beyond space and time -- also possibly belief.

     Michael Douglas returns as Dr. Hank Pym, Ant-Man’s inventive, ant-obsessed father, and Michele Pfeiffer gets more screen time as Janet Van Dyne, mother of Hope Van Dyne, a.k.a. The Wasp (Evangeline Lilly). 

      The WASP, who shares the movie’s title with Ant-Man, appears when needed but sometimes seems like a bit of an afterthought.

     Inside the Quantum Realm, the screenplay divides the characters into groups, one centering on Janet Van Dyne; Janet’s importance stems from having spent nightmarish decades in the Quantum Realm. She knows its dangers.

      Ant-Man leads another group. Both groups are committed to a shopworn aspiration: They want to return home. 

     Of course, a villain must emerge.

     Meet Kang The Conqueror (Jonathan Majors), a soft-spoken fiend who has been banished to the Quantum Realm and is serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole.     

      Well, not really. Kang, too, wants out. If only he had the power core that’s necessary to launch the ship that would allow him to travel to any realm. So many realms. So many opportunities to terrorize. 

    Say this for Powers, he imbues the story with a gravitas it barely can support.

     The movie's best creation might be MODAK, a golden sphere that houses the face of what's left of a man. MODAK bills itself as the Ultimate Weapon. It’s more like a sight gag, what might have happened had Salvador Dali decided to paint Humpty Dumpty.

    Early on, Bill Murray shows up as Lord Krylar. Seems he and Janet Van Dyne had a fling during her long stay in the Quantum Realm. Reed gives Murray an entrance befitting a significant character and then allows him to vanish. 

       A word on the name Krylar: How did the drug companies miss this one, as in “ Ask your doctor about Krylar?” 

       I can’t get too worked up about Quantumania’s stumbles. I also can’t say found this edition as amusing as the original Ant-Man, which was notable for its humor and, by Marvel standards, modesty.

       I left a preview screening with a shrug. I returned from the journey to the Quantum Realm feeling less like a satisfied moviegoer than a traveler who had acquired another stamp on my Marvel passport. 

Wes Anderson's insular ‘Dispatch’

     Wes Anderson is an artful filmmaker and master miniaturist, a director who knows how to situate his films in the rich stream of cinema history. He's idiosyncratic and hardly ever seems to make a film in which his main objective is to soothe an audience. These are admirable traits and also the reasons why I always scold myself when I can't fully get behind an Anderson film.

   That's the case with The French Dispatch, a movie  apparently intended as a tribute to great magazine journalism. 

   Bill Murray plays the editor of the French Dispatch. Headquartered in the city of Ennui along the Blasé river, the Dispatch has built its reputation on the power of the written word and the idiosyncratic journalistic eye.

    Murray articulates two rules for those who work for the Dispatch. Don't cry and write in a way that makes it seem as if you did it on purpose.

   The plan: When Murray's Arthur Howitzer Jr. dies, the paper dies with him -- perhaps Anderson's way of acknowledging the disappearance of Great Editors; i.e., editorial titans who knew how to work with "difficult" writers -- and had never heard of focus groups, much less consulted one.

    An anthology divided into three parts with a prologue, the movie focuses on the Dispatch, a New Yorker-like publication complete with a table of contents and drawings. The meat of the movie involves three Dispatch feature pieces presented in black-and-white, color, and mixtures of the two.

    First among them, The Concrete Masterpiece, a story in which an art maven (Tilda Swinton) talks about a brilliant rebel painter named Moses Rosenthaler (Benicio Del Toro). 

   Imprisoned for murder, Rosenthaler uses a prison guard (Lea Seydoux) as a model. Adrien Brody enters the story as an art dealer who wants to exploit Moses's work -- and is, therefore, outraged when Rosenthaler produces frescos on the prison's walls. How the hell can those be sold?

   The best and most genuinely bizarre of the three pieces, The Concrete Masterpiece features Del Toro as a genius who seems to have separated himself from the constraints of ordinary morality. 

   Next up, Revisions to a Manifesto featuring Timothee Chalamet and Frances McDormand. McDormand plays a writer caught up in what looks like the student rebellion of 1968. She develops a relationship  -- as a kind of mentor and sexual partner -- for Chalamet's character, leader of a student revolt. She also crosses  an ethical line, helping Chalamet's character write a manifesto. 

   By the time of the second movie, I found myself asking just how much quirkiness and intricate detailing I could tolerate. 

   OK, part three, The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner. Jeffrey Wright portrays a writer who's working on a profile of a chef. Listening to Wright's delivery of the segment’s abundant dialogue has its rewards. But Private Dining Room, which also makes room for animation and crime, seems crowded to the point of indulgence.

   Almost every Anderson movie has a finely etched quality as well as a whimsical sense of humor and French Dispatch is not without those qualities. Still ....

   I wouldn’t say that Anderson has chiseled the life out of his movie; it's more that the chiseling almost becomes the life of an intricate inward-looking movie that carves out a place for itself — but not always for an audience. 

   Is it possible for a movie to talk to itself?

A charming father/daughter comedy

 

    Sophia Coppola brings a light but knowing touch to On the Rocks, a comedy that teams Bill Murray and Rashida Jones and is bound to evoke memories of Murray's terrific turn in 2003's Lost in Translation, another movie in which he teamed with Coppola. 

    But this is a different Murray, at once more familiar but also cracking open new terrain as a father who believes that he must  help his daughter (Jones) determine whether her husband is cheating.

     Murray's performance is so engaging, it's easy to forget that Jones keeps pace. She portrays Laura, a Manhattan novelist who's juggling motherhood (two young children) and a stalled attempt at writing a new mystery. She also suspects that her husband (Marlon Wayans) is having an affair. 

     It's not difficult to understand why Laura has become  suspicious. Frustrated and harried, she's pretty much on her own. Wayans' Dean constantly travels for work, some sort of tech business that seems to be booming. 

     And what's that woman's cosmetic bag doing in Dean's  suitcase anyway?

    Coppola captures a level of Manhattan living in which no one spends much time worrying about money and in which busy lives are the norm. The movie's surfaces are warm and inviting, but On the Rocks boasts just enough depth to kick superficiality to the curb. 

     The story opens with Murray's Felix speaking to his then young daughter. "Remember, don't give your heart to any boys. You're mine until you're married. Then you're still mine."

     This kind of statement could have opened a door to psychological waters in which another movie might have drowned. 

      But as the story unfolds, we learn that Felix views his daughter as a companion and playmate. And despite frequent expressions of exasperation, Laura enjoys meeting her father's expectations. 

     Murray makes it easy to see just how persuasive Felix can be as a man of relaxed charm and good humor. He's rich, well-traveled, appealing and obviously smart enough to have made a small fortune in the art business, wealth that entitles him to move about the city in a chauffeur-driven limousine. 

     He also owns a classic sports car, the centerpiece of a very funny scene. Watching Felix talk a New York cop out of giving him a speeding ticket makes for a richly humorous pleasure. 

      When it comes to male and female behavior, though , Felix remains happily "unwoke." As an experienced philanderer, he  knows enough about men to be confident in his judgment.

      Although he fudges a bit here and there, we suspect he's certain that Dean is cheating. Of course, the male behavior Felix knows best is his own.

     The movie's plot finds Felix suggesting a variety of measures to track Dean's movements. 

      By the time Felix and Laura follow Dean to a Mexico, traces of sitcom thinking have begun to peek through. Still, the Mexican setting allows Murray to sing a surprisingly sweet version of Mexicali Rose.     

        From the start, it's clear that Coppola plans to travel first class, putting us into luxe Manhattan settings, swank restaurants, and upper-crust parties. She's selling a New York fantasy that's difficult to resist. 

    And in these COVID times, not only does resistance seem pointless, it would be downright foolish.  Obviously, Coppola had no idea that her movie would hit during a pandemic. But On the Rocks qualifies as a smart piece of escapism and a perfect antidote to the desperation of the moment. Enjoy.

Jim Jarmusch makes his zombie movie

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

Wes Anderson's distinctive 'Isle of Dogs'

Stop-action animation, a great voice cast, and strangely insular atmospherics make the director's latest appealing.

I’m not a total fan of Wes Anderson, the director whose work includes The Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Moonrise Kingdom and The Darjeeling Express). But there’s no arguing that Anderson is one of the few directors working today who follows his imagination wherever it leads him. To enjoy his movies, you must accept his apparent unwillingness to curb his idiosyncrasies or to tailor his work to popular expectation. You must accept -- and perhaps even welcome -- what feels like the willed insularity of Anderson's world.

In Isle of Dogs — Anderson’s latest — the director employs stop-action animation to create a story in which a Japanese mayor banishes all the dogs in his city to an island where the city dumps its trash.

Every dog lover will recognize this as a horrible situation and Anderson doesn’t shrink from the inherent sadness of a society so cruel that it condemns a species that has done nothing to deserve being ostracized.

The city's authoritarian Mayor Kobayashi (voice by Kunichi Nomura) -- a lover of cats -- takes a sadistic approach to an epidemic of dog flu that turns once faithful companions into health hazards. Totally committed to his own power, Kobayashi refuses to change his mind even when a researcher develops a serum that will cure every flu-carrying pooch.

Although it feels all of a piece, Isle of Dogs is a linguistic mash-up. The abandoned dogs speak English and the Japanese characters speak Japanese (no subtitles). There's also an American exchange student who, of course, speaks English. A reporter for a high school newspaper, she crusades to topple Kobayashi's rule.

The animation is impeccable and creative — from doggie expressions to cityscapes to the forlorn trash heaps where the abandoned dogs roam. You'll also find outstanding voice work from Edward Norton, Bryan Cranston, Scarlett Johansson, Bill Murray, Greta Gerwig and more.

Cranston’s mangy Chief may be the most distinctive of the dogs. A stray who doesn’t believe in trying to please humans, Chief warns others that he's not afraid to bite.

Sometimes when I watch an animated movie I can’t help trying to visualize the human actor behind the animated character.
Cranston’s voice is unmistakable, but — for the most part — I forgot about who might be doing the voice work and immersed myself in the visual environment Anderson and his team so ably create.

Anderson bows to Japanese film culture — often in humorous ways. At one point, for example, he employs a bit of the score from Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai as a wry commentary on the action.

I wouldn't call Isle of Dogs a kids' movie, although it centers on 12-year-old Atari (Koyu Rankin), a boy who steals a small plane, crashes on Trash Island and winds up helping to rebuild a bridge between dogs and humans.

One question seems unavoidable: Does Anderson’s movie have a seriously deep meaning? Is it an allegory or simply another display of Anderson's eccentricity?

I’m not sure where I stand on the question, an uncertainty about Anderson's work that has bothered me before. But I also find his artistic expressions personal and intriguing, full of small touches that can be as pleasing as the film’s overall design.

Toward the end of the movie, a dog and his new family are served heaping bowls of red meat, something of an apology from the previously abusive humans. Each puppy gets the same food -- only in tiny bowls. I’m not entirely sure why this detail made me smile. Perhaps because it’s emblematic of Anderson's approach, placing irresistible bits of minutiae against backdrops that seem to have been created with something that might be called "cockeyed control."

Disney scores with another 'Jungle Book'

CGI animals and a strong voice cast help director Jon Favreau sell a familiar tale.

Adaptations of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book don't exactly make for fresh news. So when I first saw the title on a list of 2016 releases, I found it difficult to get excited about another jungle journey, even one equipped with a CGI menagerie.

As it turns out, Disney's Jungle Book, directed by Jon Favreau, is bright (even in 3D), appealing and in at least one inspired sequence, engagingly loopy.

The story focuses on Mowgli (Neel Sethi), a boy who was raised by wolves and suddenly finds himself targeted by a tiger named Shere Kahn (voiced by Idris Elba).

The story is narrated by Bagheera (Ben Kingsley), the sagacious panther who first brought young Mowgli to Raksha (Lupita Nyong'o), the wolf who becomes his surrogate mother and who tries to instill him with the lore of the pack.

Elba gives voice to a convincing villain, a somewhat battered tiger who's motivated by a desire to keep fire out of the jungle. Shere Khan thinks it's not enough to exile Mowgli from the jungle by returning him to his human tribe. He wants to kill the boy.

In the early going, I half wondered whether Mowgli's flight through the jungle hadn't given Disney an excuse to produce a kiddie version of The Revenant, another wilderness survival epic. But Favreau balances the movie's convincingly dangerous situations with enough comic moments to keep fright in check.

To insure the success of its effort, Disney has surrounded first-timer Sethi with a strong voice cast. In addition to Kinglsey and Elba, you'll recognize Bill Murray as the voice of the conniving but good-spirited Baloo, a bear with a honey jones.

The movie even breaks into song with a Murray-voiced rendition of The Bare Necessities, which was used in Disney's 1967 animated version of The Jungle Book. The song seems awkwardly inserted because this version of Jungle Book isn't really a musical, but once you get past its slightly jarring arrival, the song is sort of fun.

Even though we never see him, Christopher Walken does scene-stealing work as the voice of King Louie, a giant orangutan with evil on his mind.

Louie wants Mowglie -- referred to by the animals as a "man cub" -- to return to his own kind, capture fire and deliver it to the power-hungry king who lives in an impressively created temple that has been overrun by all manner of monkeys.

Walken, too, is given a musical number, I Wanna Be Like You.

Animal purists may find this entirely anthropomorphic endeavor to be a little prone to cuteness. Despite Favreau's amazingly skillful use of CGI, the movie's spirit often follows a cartoon template with creatures (wolf cubs, for example) that are petting-zoo cuddly.

Although the movie expresses deep reverence for elephants -- all creatures bow before them -- it also makes sure to find a way to put a baby elephant into danger, an incident that provides the movie with an opportunity to showcase the human ingenuity that Mowgli possesses.

But there are also strangely alluring creatures that aren't quite as kid friendly: Ka, a giant snake voiced by Scarlett Johansson, tries to tempt Mowgli with her hypnotically seductive voice.

Favreau paces the movie at a speed that tends to help push criticism aside. Panthers with British accents? Why is it that some of the animals talk and some don't? And, most importantly, concerns about whether some of the realistically presented animal fights are too vivid for the youngest viewers to handle. The movie has been rated PG.

Overall, though, The Jungle Book proves entertaining and likable without delivering too heavy-handed a message about the way humans, the masters of fire, tend to destroy jungle habitats.

Stay put for the end credits, which are entertaining in their own right.

Never mind the war, let's sing

Despite a few chuckles, Rock the Kasbah pretty much seems pointless.

The new Bill Murray comedy, Rock the Kasbah, makes room for a worthwhile story of courage: A brave Pashtun woman risks her life to defy cultural norms so that she can sing on Afghanistan's version of American Idol.

In the case of the movie's Salima, the risk goes beyond being laughed off the stage. Salima's life is threatened by the men in her village, most of whom see her behavior as a cause for shame.

Salima's a fictional character, but the story has roots in reality. In 2008, singer Setara Hussainzada appeared on Afghan Star, the Afghan version of American Idol. Another woman, Lima Sahar, also competed on the show.

Hussainzada has been the subject of two HBO documentaries, 2010's Afghan Star and a 2011 follow-up, Silencing the Song: An Afghan Fallen Star.

Unfortunately, director Barry Levinson, working from a screenplay by Mitch Glazer, trivializes the story of his fictional singer by focusing on Richie Lanz (Murray) a bottom-feeding American who organizes tours for rock groups.

Remember? I told you this was a Bill Murray comedy.

When the movie opens Richie -- who lives in a dumpy apartment in Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles -- is so down on his luck, he accepts a job taking a no-name singer (Zooey Deschanel) on a USO tour to Afghanistan.

Once in Kabul, Deschanel's character quickly realizes that she's in danger, and arranges to leave the country. She takes Richie's money, and his passport, stranding him in a two-star hotel in Kabul.

To make matters worse, a tattooed mercenary (Bruce Willis) claims Richie owes him $1,000 for helping to get Deschanel's character out of the country. He gives Richie 24 hours to pay up.

A couple of shady gun runners (Scott Caan and Danny McBride) offer Richie a way out. They'll pay him to deliver ammunition to a group of local villagers who are trying to defend their homes.

After an encounter with an IED, Richie and Willis' character reach the village, and Richie discovers Salima.

In the middle of all this and for no apparent reason, Kate Hudson appears as a hooker with (yes) a heart of gold, a woman who's trying to use the war to gather a nest egg that will launch her in the real estate business once she returns to the states.

Doing his best to convey Richie's perpetual cynicism and all-around crumminess, Murray ambles though Kabul (the film was shot in Morocco), a war-torn city where there are no rules, and where foreigners gather at a club where they drink and indulge in other pleasures.

Despite its ravaged location, the movie can't escape the bright glare of Hollywood cliche. A seedy, no-account guy must find a way to redeem himself. Richie discovers his route to salvation by standing up for Salima.

It's roughly the same pattern Murray established in last year's St. Vincent: the apparently irredeemable guy who's not as bad as he initially seems.

Although there are some chuckles (credit Murray), this dragged-out, shambles of a comedy doesn't amount to much of anything.

Maybe that wouldn't have mattered had Rock the Kasbah been funny enough to make us overlook its shortcomings or serious enough to excuse a very sporadic supply of laughs.

Pop culture -- a history and an oddity

WHERE FUNNY GOT ITS START

Popular culture seems constantly engaged moments of self-veneration, some of worthless activities and others of worthy phenomenon. Director Douglas Tirola's documentary, Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead, tilts toward the worthy end of the spectrum as it chronicles the brief history and pop cultural influences of National Lampoon magazine. For me, the best part of this look at a magazine whose satiric irreverence still reverberates throughout the movie world involves seeing some of the people who became part of Lampoon family in their younger days, notably Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, John Belushi and Gilda Radner. But Tirola rightly spends more time with Doug Kenney, Henry Beard and Bob Hoffman, the comic minds who were instrumental in launching the magazine. Businessman Matty Simmons gets his share of the limelight: He helped create the Lampoon commercial empire, if that's not too grandiose a term for for the magazine's various spinoffs. Lasting from 1970 to 1988. National Lampoon, of course, became best known for a single cover, a photo of dog with a revolver pointed at its head. The caption: "If You Don't Buy This Magazine, We'll Kill This Dog".

SHAMELESS, CREATIVE, VIOLENT AND SILLY

Japanese director Takashi Miike (Audition, 13 Assassins and Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai) strikes again with Yakuza Apocalypse, a movie that almost can't be separated from the word "midnight" -- as in "midnight movie." The term generally applies to films that refuse to be tamed either by convention or taste. This time, Miike gives us a movie featuring Yakuza vampires. Not enough? Add sword fights and a giant green creature who shows up late in the proceedings to trample the Earth; it looks like a cheesy Muppets ripoff blown-up to the size of a building. Yakuza Apocalypse is amusing for its sheer gall and for the way it throws many genres into Miike's Cuisinart without apparent concern for where the blood will splatter. Yakuza Apocalypse plays like a stream of consciousness movie in which the characters are caught in Miike's crazy flow. Yakuza Apocalypse may not be Miike's best, but it's willing to try just about anything in its pursuit of the occasionally repulsive and, more important, the outrageously nonsensical.

The salvation of a nasty old man

Bill Murray is at his scuzzy best in St. Vincent, but too much sentiment diminishes his accomplishment..

When we talk about movies that canonize their characters, we're usually talking metaphorically. Although St. Vincent, which stars Bill Murray, doesn't actually confer sainthood on the character Murray plays, it comes as close as possible without submitting its case to the Vatican, complete with two certified miracles.

Murray, who can look disheveled even when he's standing still, plays a man on the verge of dereliction. Financial troubles have put Murray's Vincent in danger of losing his Brooklyn home. But it doesn't look as if Vincent would need much by way of external pressure to have him heading for the local saloon or the race track.

Desperate for money, Vincent agrees to babysit for a kid who just has moved next door (Jaeden Lieberher). Newly separated from her husband, the boy's mother (Melissa McCarthy) knows no one in her new neighborhood and must rely on the acerbic Vincent for help.

So will a cute and very bright boy worm his way into Vincent's cold heart?

Come on, it's a movie, and no matter how gruff Murray plays Vincent, we know from the outset that he'll eventually prove himself to be a decent enough fellow.

The movie wastes little time reassuring us that hard-ass Vincent has a good side: Fairly early on, Vincent is shown visiting his wife in the upscale nursing facility where he's struggling to keep her.

Murray makes it touchingly clear that Vincent loves this woman, who's evidently stricken with Alzheimer's. Perhaps Vincent's life started its down-hill plummet when his wife was institutionalized.

Occasionally, Vincent has sex with a pregnant Russian pole-dancer and prostitute (Naomi Watts). He treats her with scorn, but we know that when the chips are down, he'll come through for her, too.

Late in the movie, Vincent suffers a stroke, which pushes him into disability territory, and perhaps opens an Oscar path for Murray.

It's clear that Murray, who knows how to play nasty, could have made a sentiment-free movie about a man who's going to spend the rest of his life stewing in his beer.

But director Theodore Melfi doesn't have the stomach for flat-out misery, and he pushes the film toward an ending that shamelessly tugs at happily-ever-after heart strings.

Murray keeps St. Vincent watchable, and it's refreshing to see McCarthy play a character who's not cut from the same crude cloth that seems to have characterized most of her work since Bridesmaids (2011).

Still, the main reason to see St. Vincent is to savor of the bitter tastes Murray brings to this character and to imagine the hard-bitten movie that could have been.

In the end, though, St. Vincent's sweet-and-sour mix doesn't totally compute: It's like getting a sappy Valentine's card from Charles Bukowski.

Wes Anderson checks into a grand hotel

Evoking a bygone era -- or a director's carefully realized vision of it.

Watching Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel, I wondered whether the Marx Brothers wouldn't have fit right into the visual intricacies and loopy grandeur of Anderson's impressive production.

It's not that Anderson's nostalgic comedy has an antic spirit or that it's full of rapid-fire word play, it's more that Anderson has concocted a fantasy that embodies the feeling of European culture at a certain moment, perhaps the interval between two world wars.

Anderson creates a time full of aristocratic pretension, ornate elegance and formal manners. The Marx brothers probably would have trashed this world, created by Anderson in the fictional Eastern European country of Zubrowka.

Anderson may not embrace everything about this bygone environment, but he establishes it with astonishing precision. At times, it almost seems as if the entire production belongs inside a snow globe.

Anderson's great strengths center on production design, color and visual wit. Even a young woman's face can't be presented without adornment. Saoirse Ronan's Agatha, for example, has a swooping red birthmark on the right side of her face. A young lobby boy at the once stately Budapest Hotel draws a pencil thin mustache under his nose.

Considerable pleasures can be found in Anderson's mixture of artifice and art: Anderson creates a charmed atmosphere in which the principal characters are introduced along with the main story line, a tale told by Zero Mustafa (F. Murray Abraham ) to a writer (Jude Law) who's visiting the Grand Budapest.

Mustafa explains how he came to own the Grand Budapest, which -- at this point in the tale -- is in a near-fatal state of decline.

Thus begins a flashback. As a young lobby boy, Mustafa found a mentor in Gustave H. (Ralph Fiennes). Gustave becomes the movie's most memorable character, a concierge so well-schooled in the arts of service that he has sexual liaisons with many of the hotel's elderly women guests. They adore him, even though Gustave may have been a homosexual.

What ever his sexual preference, Gustave embodies all the surface qualities necessary to create the illusion of taste and distinction so vital to a certain segment of European civilization.

By the time, the movie is over, Anderson deepens his definition of what it means to be civilized, particularly when one realizes that life is short, brutish and subject to violent intrusions by war and other catastrophes.

Anderson's complicated, story-within-stories plot eventually comes to revolve around a supposedly priceless painting called "A Boy with Apple." The painting is left to Gustave by Madame D. (an unrecognizable Tilda Swinton), one of his aging fans.

Madame D's son Dimitri (Adrien Brody) wants the painting back. A tangle of betrayals and murders ensue. At times, the plot -- which includes a prison break -- has the over-stuffed feel of excess baggage.

That bothered me a bit, but with this kind of movie, the icing tends to be far more important than the cake, a fitting comparison because elaborately decorated pastries play a key role in advancing the plot.

Although Grand Budapest Hotel is small and highly polished, it boasts a large cast that includes Jeff Goldblum, Harvey Keitel, Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe, Mathieu Amalric, Tom Wilkinson, Edward Norton and, in passing, Owen Wilson.

The heart of the story belongs to Fiennes and newcomer Rivolori. The two create a relationship in which Gustave -- a man known for his "liberal" use of perfume -- develops a genuine fondness for his young charge. If there's a love story here, it's between Gustave and Mustafa.

The movie ends with a title card that pays homage to Stefan Zweig, an Austrian writer credited with inspiring the script and who seems connected to some of the sensibilities that seem to interest Anderson. Overwhelmed by a rising barbarity in the world, Zweig committed suicide in 1942.

In a way, The Grand Budapest Hotel is a movie about sensibility. Gustave's refinements of speech (broken by the occasional epithet) contrast with Demitri's bluntness: Brody sounds as if he arrived in Zubrowka after a stop in one of New York's outer boroughs.

I can't say that Grand Budapest proceeds without sometimes losing steam. But there are enough rare sights to make the journey worthwhile: An elevator with a shocking red interior, the pink grandeur of the hotel's facade, and the changing aspect ratios that Anderson uses to evoke times past.

Moreover, the overplayed gentility of the characters remains quietly amusing throughout.

But there's a problem in all this: Anderson's sensibilities are so refined that he sometimes seems to lose sight of the audience. I enjoyed The Grand Budapest Hotel enough, but also sometimes saw it as a kind of art object, something too far removed from recognizable experience to encourage connection.

By now, though, most audiences have come to regard Anderson (Moonrise Kingdom, The Darjeeling Limited, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and Rushmore) as an acquired taste.

The taste here? Call it bittersweet.

'Monuments Men' misses the mark

Intriguing subject short-changed in Clooney-directed movie.

In his sixth directorial effort, George Clooney has made a middle-of-the-road movie about an intriguing subject, the attempt to rescue priceless art seized by the Nazis during World War II.

The Monuments Men of the title are a group of aging academics and art specialists charged with saving paintings, sculpture and monuments from Hitler's rapacious legions. Upper-echelon Nazis wanted to appropriate most of western art for a gargantuan museum to be named after the Fuhrer. Pieces that didn't make it into Hitler's art mausoleum would find their way into the private collections of Nazi bigwigs.

Clooney also stars in the movie: He plays Frank Stokes, an art historian from Harvard's Fogg Museum: Stokes leads the culture-saving effort after assembling his team in what amounts to a subdued Dirty Dozen style.

Matt Damon plays James Granger, an art expert from the Museum of Metropolitan Art in New York; Bill Murray portrays architect Richard Campbell; John Goodman appears as a sculptor; Jean Dujardin portrays a French art dealer; and Bob Balaban plays Preston Savitz, a character whose professional skills weren't entirely clear to me. British actor Hugh Bonneville takes on the role of a British art expert who's trying to rehabilitate his reputation as a drunk.

Cate Blanchett has a smaller role as Claire, a French woman who works at a Paris museum, and who has been forced to assist the Nazis in their pilfering. It takes a while for Damon's character to convince Claire, who also has ties to the Resistance, to help find hidden art treasures: She's fearful that the U.S. will appropriate masterpieces in much the same way as the Germans have done.

A couple of major tensions break through the movie's somewhat frozen surface. First, there's an on-going argument about whether any piece of art is worth a human life. That raises additional questions about the importance of culture, even during war-time duress.

Early on, Clooney's Stokes asks President Roosevelt -- a leader for whom art was not a top priority -- what the war will have meant if, at the end of it, Michelangelo's David has been reduced to rubble.

The Monuments Men also race to keep important art objects out of the hands of the advancing Russians, who are portrayed as eager to get their hands on landmarks of Western civilization.

As it turns out, much of the stolen art was hidden in German mines, but the movie's discoveries have a plodding feel. The men's various missions proceed without much vigor.

That seems a major miscalculation: The Monuments Men is like a caper movie -- only without the caper.

The screenplay by Clooney and Grant Heslove (based on a book by Robert M. Edsel) makes some attempts at humor, most of it italicized by one of the most disappointing musical scores in recent memory, a shock since it was written by the gifted Alexandre Desplat, whose work I've almost always admired.

The movie attempts to differentiate among the characters in broad ways, but, as depicted here, these are not the most interesting group of people. Moreover, Clooney doesn't find enough ways to demonstrate either the men's passion for art or their expertise.

Ironically, the movie could have benefited from more talk about art. Michelangelo's Madonna of Bruges turns up, as does a famous Ghent altar piece, but for a movie about the enduring importance of art, Monuments Men pays too little attention to it.

Oh well, call it a miss by some very talented people: This little-known and clearly fascinating story deserved more than the shrug The Monuments Men induces.

Bill Murray makes a credible FDR

Hyde Park on Hudson is a smaller work than a great president deserves.

At 62, Bill Murray remains a mystery and a marvel, an actor who seems willing to try almost anything. I don't know about you, but if I were casting a movie in which President Franklin Delano Roosevelt figured in a major way, Murray's name probably wouldn't have made my shortlist.

As it turns out, Murray's FDR is the best reason to see director Roger Michell's Hyde Park on Hudson, a small-potatoes drama that revolves around a tepid sexual affair between FDR and his cousin Daisy (Laura Linney).

Judging by two recent movies, American history seems to be shrinking. Steven Spielberg's Lincoln deals with four months in the life of the 16th president and is as much about about legislative process as individual triumph. Hyde Park on Hudson, which doesn't even feature FDR's name in the title, focuses on another tiny sliver of history, showing more interest in FDR's libido than his leadership ability.

Even taken as a minor work, Hyde Park on Hudson remains problematic. It's difficult to understand what might have attracted the womanizing FDR to Daisy, a plain flower of woman who narrates the movie, but who comes across as severely challenged in the personality department. She's the poor cousin FDR draws into his powerful sphere, but she pretty much remains an outsider, never quite finding a niche in Roosevelt's inner circle.

According to the movie, FDR begins this lackluster affair on the eve of an expected visit to his mother's Hyde Park estate by King George VI (Samuel West) and his queen (Olivia Colman). FDR's mother (Elizabeth Wilson), who owned Hyde Park, anxiously tries to whip the household into shape for the royal visit. FDR's wife Eleanor (Olivia Williams) offers assistance, wit and tolerance when it comes to her husband's wandering eye. By this time, Roosevelt's marriage is mostly about appearances.

There are a couple of good scenes involving Daisy. The best of them has FDR's trusted secretary "Missy" LeHand (Elizabeth Marvel) schooling Daisy in the need to accept the fact that she isn't and never will be FDR's one-and-only.

Slim as it is, the movie picks up steam when the King and Queen arrive. Audiences already will be familiar with West's "Bertie," the main character in the much-acclaimed The King's Speech. Scenes in which the king and queen puzzle over American ways are mildly amusing (they fret about the prospect of having to eat hotdogs at an FDR-arranged picnic), and a late-night talk between FDR and the king allows Murray to show just how skilled a politician FDR was.

Of course, FDR was president long before the 24-hour news cycle. The press ignored his peccadilloes, never reported that polio had forced him into a wheelchair and generally cooperated in creating the illusion of authority Roosevelt needed to become one of the U.S.'s greatest presidents.

Michell captures the languid warmth of a New York State summer, as well as the feel for a mansion that the British regarded as "quaint," but which was sumptuous by American standards. As befits the title, the house becomes a kind of character in the movie, the frame on a very small picture.

To say that the story told in Hyde Park on Hudson is a footnote to history is perhaps giving it more credit than it deserves. The political stakes involve the king's attempt to ascertain whether Britain could count on the U.S. as an ally as it marched inevitably toward war with Germany.

Mild and mostly forgettable, Hyde Park on Hudson again underscores the fact that in his generation of SNL alums, no one has evolved into a more accomplished, versatile and adventurous actor than Murray. He makes clear the contrast between FDR's private life and public image and enables us to see just how much FDR understood the importance of maintaining that gap. Too bad, he's not in more of the movie.

Welcome to Wes Anderson's dollhouse

Moonrise Kingdom is intermittently amusing, distinctive and not always easy to digest.



I loved director Wes Anderson's last movie, an animated adaptation of Fantastic Mr. Fox, a children's story by Roald Dahl. For me, over-the-top admiration for an Anderson movie isn't the norm. Watching Anderson's latest -- Moonrise Kingdom -- reminded me that my responses to Anderson's work usually are more complicated and far more mixed than with most directors.

Typically, I find myself admiring Anderson's skills and impressed by what seems to be his unwavering commitment to the peculiarity of his own sensibilities. Inevitably, there will be places in an Anderson film where I chuckle, perhaps ruefully. These amusing moments often involve Bill Murray, who has appeared in such Anderson films as Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, The Royal Tenenbaums and, of course, Rushmore.

But if Anderson's audience divides into fans and non-fans, I lean away from fandom.

You probably can see where I'm headed in writing about Moonrise Kingdom, perhaps the most Andersonian of Anderson's films, a tiny story built around artful set decoration, distinctive imagery and a story that seems to be taking place in a universe composed of elements that have been tweaked just enough to throw them out of whack. The look of a Scout camp in Moonrise Kingdom, for example, suggests a Norman Rockwell painting -- only drained of nostalgic exultation.

For me, watching an Anderson movie is like marching at attention rather than walking. There's not much room for meandering. Anderson's works seem made to be appreciated in a certain way, and even when I think I see what Anderson is getting at, I have trouble totally connecting to his movies.

This time, Anderson tells the story of Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) and Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward). What's different about Sam and Suzy's love-at-first-sight tale? Sam and Suzy are 12-year-olds making their way through the summer of 1965. They fall in love before either their bodies or their minds are prepared for romance.

Sam, we learn, is an orphaned member of the Khaki Scouts, a stand-in for the Boy Scouts. He's attending scout camp on the fictional island of New Penzance, off the Massachusetts coast. Suzy Bishop lives on the island with her family -- mom, dad and three brothers. Suzy and her siblings listen to Benjamin Britten recordings on her portable phonograph. She often has her nose buried in a book. On the surface, things look normal enough, but the rooms of the Bishop house can seem like isolation chambers.

It's hardly surprising that Suzy's parents (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand) object when their daughter runs off with Sam. Suzy's parents enlist the help of the local sheriff (Bruce Willis), who also happens to be having an affair with McDormand's character. Sam's scoutmaster (Edward Norton) frets about the situation, and a social worker (Tilda Swinton) threatens to return Sam to foster care or maybe place him in an orphanage.

The adults in the movie are not quite ogres nor are they exemplary. Both Murray and McDormand are playing attorneys, characters who have acquired material success, and who want to expose their children to culture, but who also seem miserable -- at least in the non-emotive way of most Anderson-created characters. The trick for Anderson's actors seems to involve presenting outlines that can be colored in by the audience's crayons -- assisted, of course, by the occasional sharp line of dialog in Anderson and Roman Coppola's screenplay.

Toward the end of the movie, one adult -- a scoutmaster played by Anderson vet Jason Schwartzman -- offers to marry Sam and Suzy, cautioning them to think seriously about what they're doing. This bit of silliness provides an instance in which Anderson's approach works well. Schwartzman's offer makes no sense. but it connects Sam and Suzy with a co-conspirator who's willing to accept their view of things.

At one point, I wondered whether Suzy -- with her affectless delivery -- and Sam -- with his goggle-eyed glasses -- might not be more at home in an artfully drawn comic strip than in a movie. During their lovers' flight, Suzy invites Sam to French kiss and touch her breast. Sam complies, but in the typically inexpressive fashion that Anderson favors. Suzy and Sam don't seem like kids discovering their sexuality; they're puppets in Anderson's playhouse.

All of this builds toward a major flood of the island, which makes sense because Sam and Suzy met while Suzy was preparing for an appearance in an amateur production of Britten's opera Noye's Fludde (Noah's Flood). I guess if Sam and Suzy had their way, the Earth would be flooded, the rest of humanity would be wiped out and they would walk hand-in-hand onto a waiting ark, sole survivors of a necessary conflagration.

Sam, in particular, is a kind of outcast. Until a heroic turnaround by one of his fellow Scouts, he's scorned by boys his own age. Even the foster parents who had been caring for Sam don't want him back.

Those who enjoy visiting these Anderson-created worlds seem to like them very much. I appreciated Moonrise Kingdom in a whacky sort of way that did not always equate with either enjoyment or illumination. My feelings about Anderson's work remain unresolved.

If you're looking for a different take on the '60s -- or more precisely -- if you're interested in the continuing ramifications of life in the '60s, you may want to check out Peace, Love and Misunderstanding, director Bruce Beresford's seriocomic look at the present-day conflict between a mother (Jane Fonda) and the adult daughter (Catherine Keener) she raised during the free-and-easy, pot-smoking '60s. Faced with divorce, Keener's Diane -- a successful New York attorney -- leaves Manhattan with her two children (Elisabeth Olsen and Nate Wolf) to visit her mother in Woodstock, N.Y., an iconic locale for peace, love, protest and marijuana. The resentment of children with "hippie" parents is a legitimate and under-explored subject, but Peace, Love and Misunderstanding mostly blows it. Fonda's character comes off as a shrill parody of '60s values, a woman stuck in a time warp -- but confident that it's the right place to be. Meanwhile, Diane's son Jake (Wolf) runs around Woodstock with a video camera, exercising his wannabe filmmaker muscles and introducing the dreaded film-within-a-film conceit. Peace, Love and Misunderstanding stands as an example of what happens when a lot of talented people are shackled to second-rate material. Much pot is smoked, but this one doesn't inhale deeply when it comes to working through its characters' very real issues.

Get high on 'Get Low'

Most reviewers have spent ample time praising Robert Duvall's work in Get Low, a satisfying drama about Felix Bush, a backwoods hermit who makes a public appearance in order to plan his own funeral. The catch: Felix wants to stage the funeral before he dies so that he can attend. Rather than providing a platform for encomiums, the funeral is supposed to allow folks to say what they really think of the bearded old codger. Duvall plays these kinds of taciturn loners with ease, never feeling a need to peek out from behind the character; he's predictably good. But for me, Bill Murray -- as the undertaker who agrees to stage Felix's funeral -- steals the show. Like Duvall, although in an entirely different way, Murray refuses to ingratiate himself with an audience. He's wry, smart and perfect as Frank Quinn, a man with slightly checkered past. Sissy Spacek offers able support as Mattie Darrow, a woman who seems to know Felix's secrets. Lucas Black excels as Quinn's assistant, and Bill Cobbs has a nice turn as a preacher and one-time friend to Felix. Director Aaron Schneider does an able job with a small movie built around one man's severe expression of guilt. Set during bleak 1930s, Get Low stands as a lovely little drama, even if it seems to have been designed mostly to accommodate Duvall. Thankfully, it does right by just about everyone else in the cast, too.