She’s an assistant with big ambitions

The High Note may not top the charts, but it’s easy to take.

The High Note stands as one of those mediocre movies that prove watchable enough to make it worth a look. As cliche-ridden as it is glitzy, The High Note sneaks by with an attractive cast that keeps the movie moving toward its inevitable feel-good finale. Dakota Johnson plays Maggie, a young woman who works as an assistant to an R&B star Grace Davis (Tracee Ellis Ross), a woman whose once-soaring career has hit its downside. Maggie may only be an assistant but she encourages Grace to break the mold that has made her successful and stake out new turf. Maggie's plan doesn't sit well with Jake (Ice Cube), Grace's long-time manager. He wants to stick with a greatest hits approach and book her into a long-running gig at a Las Vegas hotel. Meanwhile, Maggie hopes to start a career as a record producer. Lo, she meets a talented young singer (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) at a grocery store. Her belief in the young man's talent (and her natural feel for R&B) is supposed to be enough to launch a major career for Harrison's character. Johnson mixes naivete with charm in playing a character who qualifies as an R&B nerd. Maggie learned about R&B from her DJ dad (Bill Pullman), a guy who once hosted a powerhouse radio show in Los Angeles. Ross, daughter of Diana Ross, tempers Grace's diva bitchiness with enough humanity to keep her from becoming obnoxious. Some of the plot points in Flora Greeson's script tip from improbable to downright unbelievable but director Nisha Ganatra (Late Night) gives the production (and some of its musical numbers) plenty of gloss. I haven't done star ratings on movies in years, but if I did, The High Note would qualify as a quintessential example of the two-and-a-half star breed, a palatable if lesser entertainment.

Father and son tackle the wilderness

Walking Out revolves around a view of manhood that's steeped in the self-sufficiency of men who brave the rugged mountains of Montana, hunting for elk and living out an ethos built around a relationship to the mountains and its wildlife. The story: Fourteen-year-old David (Josh Wiggins), who lives in Texas with his mother, makes his annual visit to his father Cal (Matt Bomer) in Montana. Cal and David hike into the mountains so that David can snare his first elk, a metaphor for his coming-of-age. Working from a story by David Quammen, directors Alex and Andrew J. Smith deliver a metaphorical tale about fathers and sons and how their roles can shift as circumstances change. The relationship between Cal and his father (Bill Pullman) are seen in flashbacks that add a multi-generational touch. Not surprisingly, Cal and David run into trouble in the mountains and the movie becomes a stark survival tale -- albeit one that tries not to overplay its hand. The story's poignancy stems from the knowledge that fathers and sons never really know one another. In sum: a medium-impact survival story set against the grandeur of forbidding and beautiful surroundings.

Another alien attack. Ho Hum.

They're back. Aliens take another shot at Earth in scattershot Independence Day: Resurgence.

Independence Day: Resurgence wasn't made available to critics until its Thursday night opening. That doesn't necessarily mean that the movie was being hidden from critical view or that audiences should presume that Resurgence will be a misguided mess.

You can judge for yourself if you venture into Resurgence. My vote: The massive size of the alien craft in Resurgence -- some 3,000 miles in diameter -- is matched by an equally massive lack of imagination. If director Roland Emmerich was trying to re-capture the entertainment magic he found in the 1996 original, the trick fell flat.

Off-the-rack plotting and cliched dialogue mark what appear to be a scattershot collection of scenes. Watching Resurgence is a bit like watching a boxer throw nothing but jabs -- most of them missing their target. The movie flails.

Here's one indication of the fall-off since '96. Jeff Goldblum, an actor who knows how to create characters of cynical intelligence, seems to be imitating himself as Dr. David Levinson. He's off his game.

It may not be fair to say that Resurgence is imitating the first movie, but it has a derivative feel as earthlings battle giant creatures who arrive on a spacecraft that destroys large parts of the Earth before anyone can figure out what to do about it.

By now, everyone knows that Will Smith -- hero of the first movie -- sat this one out. Maybe he didn't want to participate in space battles that look like Star Wars knockoffs. Maybe he's tired to carrying blockbuster-sized burdens.

A screenplay credited to five writers, including Emmerich, makes room for fresh blood. Liam Hemsworth shows up as a fighter pilot as does Jesse T. Usher, who's portraying the son of the character Smith played in the first movie.

Sela Ward signs on as the new, strictly business president of the US.

Of course, some of the actors from the 1996 edition return: These include Bill Pullman, now a former president who has nightmares about another alien invasion. Brent Spiner reprises his role as Dr. Okun, a guy who has been in a coma since 1996, and who, as a result, hasn't had a haircut in two decades. Judd Hirsch drops by as Goldblum's grumpy but supposedly lovable father.

Most of the jokes implode and the story -- Earth vs. a queen-bee alien -- is just one more exercise in overkill from a movie that looks as if it had been hastily assembled under threat of alien invasion; i.e. plot elements and characters are introduced without finesse. Worse yet, Resurgence builds little tension; it just just hurtles along, leaving nothing in its wake but planetary destruction and something we already have in large enough supply, disappointment.

A store clerk who' s really an avenger

Denzel Washington gets serious about taking out Russian mobsters.

Hardware store salesman by day. Avenger by night.

He's The Equalizer, the title character of a new thriller that reunites Denzel Washington with Antoine Fuqua, the director who guided Washington toward his best-actor Oscar in 2001's Training Day.

In The Equalizer, which is based on a 1980s TV show, Washington plays Robert McCall, a loner who works at a Boston big-box store called Home Mart. A believer in healthy eating and physical fitness, Robert helps an overweight co-worker prepare for a fitness test he must pass in order to become a security guard at Home Mart.

Health-oriented as he is, McCall is also an insomniac. He stays up all night, drinking tea in a 24-hour Boston diner and reading number 91 of the 100 great books he's set out to conquer.

Robert's monkish existence (as well as his reading of Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea) is disrupted when he meets a young prostitute (Chloe Grace Moretz) who's been badly beaten by her pimp. Thus stirred, McCall's desire to protect the weak sets him on a course in which he tries to free the young woman from the tyranny of her vicious Russian mobster pimps.

In his battle with the Russians, McCall displays so much physical prowess we immediately know that he's no ordinary guy: After all, ordinary guys don't usually know how to push a corkscrew through an opponent's chin.

Later, we learn (as if we hadn't already guessed) that McCall's a former secret agent who's trying to live an anonymous life.

Washington wastes his gravitas and star power on a thriller that takes itself more seriously than it should and which culminates in an over-the-top battle in the Home Mart store, a series of deaths by hardware that's as gruesome as it is preposterous. Watch out for nail guns and power drills.

It's probably best not to think much about the social dynamics at work here. McCall is one of those disconnected characters who's trying to move through life without leaving traces.

The supporting cast tries to match Washington's intensity. Marton Csokas plays a sadistic Russian who has been sent to Boston to slow McCall's vengeful roll. Melissa Leo turns up in a small role as one of McCall's former associates, and, in what surely qualifies as the most thankless acting job of the year, Bill Pullman portrays Leo's husband, a true afterthought of a character.

The Equalizer probably will score big at the box office, but for my money, the movie traffics in the kind of revenge that works best when not presented in A-list, IMAX super-productions.

Washington's substntial presence pushes The Equalizer into the center ring, but the movie never really establishes itself as anything more than another over-amplified butt-kicker. And Fuqua's attempt to create a near-superhero -- while simultaneously maintaining an atmosphere of gritty urban realism -- hardly encourages plausibility.

Impressive as it is, McCall's vengeful spree doesn't prove emotionally satisfying. By the end, McCall's violence no longer express our collective outrage or our desire for moral balance: It's just what the man does.