Can a wayward daughter be saved?

     

    In Echo Valley, Julianne Moore plays a mother whose life is crowded with stress. She's grieving the recent death of her partner (Kristina Valada-Viars) and trying to deal with her antagonistic drugged-out daughter (Sydney Sweeney). She's also worrying about keeping her Pennsylvania horse ranch afloat, and late in the movie, her daughter's drug dealer (Domhnall Gleeson) tries to snare her in an elaborate extortion scheme

     Director Michael Pearce, working from a screenplay by Brad Ingelsby, begins as if the movie is going to be a disturbing examination of the problems faced by a mother whose daughter constantly promises reform but never follows through.

     Lonely and desperate, Moore's Kate refuses to abandon hope, supporting her daughter despite ample warnings that the young woman has little interest in turning her life around. 

     Pearce has hold of a premise that, though familiar, offers an opportunity for a deep dive into problems faced by parents who feel helpless when their kids venture into dangerous turf.

     Despite an initially realistic focus, the movie soon turns into a thriller involving double crosses and schemes that pull Kate into a situation in which a far-fetched plot begins to dominate.

      Fiona Shaw signs on as another ranch owner and Kate's friend, and Kyle MacLachlan appears briefly as Kate's ex-husband, who in an early scene reluctantly gives Kate $9,000 to repair the roof of her horse barn. It doesn't take much guesswork to know that the $9,000 will be spent bailing Sweeney's Claire out of a life-threatening jam.

     Moore conveys the deep torment that Kate faces as she's overwhelmed by one problem after another. And scenes between Moore and Gleeson become a tense battle for control that pushes Kate to criminal extremes.

     Despite strong moments created by a well-chosen  cast, the movie can't balance its thriller elements with attempts to explore an agonizing question: When is it time to stop trying to save a wayward child from a life ruined by one betrayed trust after another? 

 

A haunted study of ambition and class

The Little Stranger proves absorbing yet the movie ultimately fails to satisfy.

In reviewing Sarah Walters' novel, The Little Stranger, the British newspaper The Guardian noted that the author "operates in the queasy borderlands between the supernatural and the psychological" and that Waters navigates this territory with "supreme ease." The same could be said of the big-screen adaptation of Waters' 2009 novel -- at least for a while.

Director Lenny Abrahamson (Room) delivers a carefully constructed, meticulously acted and deliberately paced movie that ultimately fails to sharpen any of its potentially resonant themes. Both a ghost story and a view of a crumbling British class structure after World War II, Little Stranger creates significant interest but fails to build toward a totally rewarding payoff.

Domhnall Gleeson portrays Dr. Faraday, a physician who's summoned to a dilapidated country estate to look into the illness of 14-year-old Betty (Liv Hill), a teenager who serves the once wealthy Ayres family. Turns out Faraday had been to the estate as a boy in 1902; i.e. before its glory had begun to fade.

Slowly, Faraday's fascination with the decaying estate emerges; to him, the place, though rundown, still represents ascendance into a class that he has been forced to observe only from the outside and to which he very much aspires.

As the movie develops, Faraday immerses himself in the lives of the Ayres family. Roderick Ayres (Will Poulter) has returned from the war, his body badly burned and his spirit scarred; Mrs. Ayes (Charlotte Rampling) does her best to maintain the appearances of the family's former stature; and Caroline Ayres (Ruth Wilson) attempts to run the place.

Perhaps seeing her as a gateway to this aristocratic paradise, Dr. Faraday pursues Caroline in what surely qualifies as one of the screen's least romantic love stories.

All the while, paranormal occurrences (banging, clattering and strange scrawl on walls) appear, suggesting that the house is occupied by a malevolent presence that's intent on destroying the family. As the purported rationalist in the crowd, Gleeson portrays Faraday with an expressionless, steady hand that's a trifle boring. Wilson, who knows how to create interest and ambiguity, portrays a woman with an odd, lumbering walk and a fondness for corduroy pants.

Abrahamson presents the story in a quiet way that some viewers (myself included) may find absorbing. But roughly three-quarters of the way through The Little Stranger, it's difficult not to begin hoping that a narrative kick in the pants will provide something resembling satisfaction.

Unfortunately, the movie drifts away, creating anticipation that remains mostly unfulfilled.

Wild, crazy and ... well ... dangerous

Tom Cruise plays a drug smuggler in the middle of an impossibly complicated situation.

If you really want to know the story of Barry Seal, a pilot who supposedly worked for the CIA and smuggled drugs for the Medellin Cartel, you'll have to do some on-line research or read books such as Daniel Hopsicker's Barry & The Boys: The CIA, the Mob and America's Secret History. Or you could try Del Hahn's Smuggler's End: The Life and Death of Barry Seal or you could devote your time to something other than taking a deep dive into a strange footnote to US history.

As someone who hasn't delved deeply into Seal's life (I haven't read either of the above two books), I assumed that director Doug Liman took a Hollywood-sized share of liberties with Seal's story to bring American Made to the screen. He also hired Tom Cruise to play Seal, a bored TWA pilot who -- according to the film -- went did surveillance work for the CIA in Latin America, stumbled into the drug trade with the Medellin Cartel, found himself at odds with the DEA, and cut a variety of deals as he attempted to keep himself out of jail.

Liman, who directed Cruise in Edge of Tomorrow, uses a framing device to tell Seals' tale. The smuggler makes a series of videotapes that lead us into extensive flashbacks in which Seal's complicated life of crime unfolds.

Cruise portrays Seal in typical Cruise fashion. Seal is all amped-up energy as a pilot who responds to events with pinball speed and very little reflection. Cruise's Seal has enough mischievous charm to make the movie fly, that and screenwriter Gary Spinelli's appreciation for the rank absurdity that put an unknown man into the middle of a historical maelstrom.

Seal may be a pilot, but he's no Top Gun; he's a blur of serial impulses, a down-scale version of other Cruise characters, but a welcome reminder that even when he plays a less-than-admirable guy, Cruise's big-screen magnetism holds sway.

The script isn't big on motivation: Bored with his TWA gig and dabbling in the occasional smuggling of cigars, Seal becomes a prime target for CIA agent Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson). Schafer assures Seal that legality doesn't really matter so long as he's working for the "good guys."

Seal lies to his wife Lucy (Sarah Wright Olsen) and tells her that he's leaving TWA to open his own business. As the movie progresses, Lucy senses the truth, but she, too, is dazzled by the riches that Seal's drug smuggling brings, especially when the CIA relocates his operation from Seal's native Baton Rouge to the small town of Mena, Arkansas.

Liman approaches a fractured narrative with speed that tends to give a near antic quality to the proceedings which also include an appearance by Caleb Landry Jones as Seal's dirt-dumb brother-in-law.

If you approach American Made as a Cruise-driven entertainment, you'll find an involving helping of all-American cynicism in which the world spins without the benefit of a moral compass.

To bolster the film's authenticity, Liman makes occasional use of news footage, but in American Made, tone convey's more of the movie's truth than any particular incident, and -- like most movies that deal with the rise and fall of a criminal, American Made shows the dizzying fun of Seal's rise, a time when he had so much money, he couldn't launder it fast enough.

The difficulty with this kind of buzzed filmmaking is that it immerses us in a world that spins without the benefit of any moral compass, obliterating any real sense of personal responsibility. Part conniver and part pawn, Seal resembles an adrenaline junkie looking for the next high.

Whether you see this as a statement about American life during the 1980s or as a perverted form of entrepreneurial striving may not be the point: Cruise and Liman ask us to share Seal's kicks and risk, right up until the inevitable crash puts a stark exclamation point on what has been an enjoyably crazed ride.

It's one 'Mother!' of a movie

Director Darren Aronofsky's wild-ass horror movie aims big -- maybe too big..

Take the exclamation point in the movie's title seriously. Watching director Darren Aronofsky's Mother! is like reading a book in which every word has been italicized for effect: the silences are oh so ominous, the creak of a shoe on a wooden floor can be jarring and when a furnace fires up, it's like a bomb has exploded. The aural atmosphere of Mother! has been amped up to take what starts as a chamber-piece helping of horror and inflate it to the point of explosion -- maybe beyond that.

In his efforts to harness as much on-screen venom as possible, Aronofsky has enlisted an A-list cast led by Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem. Bardem plays a poet; Lawrence plays his devoted wife. The couple has just moved into an isolated country home.

Irritable to the point of hostility, Bardem's character ignores Lawrence's character. She plasters walls and works on turning the house into a little piece of paradise. You probably have a pretty good idea where all attempts at creating paradise wind up.

Buried in an increasingly chaotic plot, you'll find a mordant comedy about the burden of uninvited guests. The first of these is a man who identifies himself as an orthopedic surgeon (Ed Harris). The surgeon excuses his intrusion by saying he thought he had arrived at a bed and breakfast inn.

Harris' character smokes when asked not to, and claims to be a devoted fan of Bardem's work. He also says he's dying. It doesn't take long for the surgeon's wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) to show up. She's so rude, she makes Harris's character look considerate. She leaves a mess wherever she goes and pushes Lawrence's character into all manner of unwanted conversations.

To augment this bizarre scenario, the couple's two grown sons (Brian Gleeson and Domhnall Gleeson) show up and immediately engage in a Cain-and-Abel style fight over their father's will.

The credits identify Lawrence's character only as Mother; Bardem is referred to as Him. This tells us that we're watching a film that wants to mine a metaphorical motherland. As is often the case, Aronofsky aims big.

Aronofsky toys with every horror trope he can find: eerie basements, spurts of blood and a steady stream of unexplained noises.

All the while, Aronofsky frames Lawrence's face in booming close-ups; Lawrence expresses perpetual consternation over the fact that her husband insists that these uninvited guests stay; his desire amounts to a betrayal.

Generally, Lawrence's character behaves in ways that make little sense, a problem that afflicts much of the rest of the movie, but Aronofsky seems intent on making us ride a wave that swells with bizarre shocks.

With a movie such as Mother!, much hinges on whether Aronofsky can tie things together. Watching Mother! is like listening to a very long (and not entirely interesting joke) hoping that the punchline makes the time we're investing worthwhile.

Now if you want to excavate some meaning from all the stylistic bric-a-brac, try this. Bardem's character is a self-absorbed artist who pays very little attention to his wife. He allows his guests to insult and berate her, every now and again offering his apologies. The fact that Harris's character is a fan suggests that Bardem's character will put up with anything -- so long as it's accompanied by massive adulation.

Aronofsky carries this notion to wild extremes in the movie's final act, which I won't describe here because Aronofsky's images do have a surprising quality that should be discovered in a theater.

Aronofsky (Noah, Black Swan, The Wrestler and The Fountain) certainly knows how to create vivid images but when he finally wraps up his movie, I had the sense that I had just watched a perversely overproduced and willfully malicious episode of The Twilight Zone. It's as if Aronofsky has channeled impulses from filmmakers such as Roman Polanski (Rosemary's Baby) and Michael Haneke (Funny Games) and given them an even more twisted spin.

Mostly I felt sorry for Lawrence, a gifted actress playing a character who takes a psychological and physical beating as the film progresses. Aronofsky may be trying to describe a particularly loathsome form of male behavior, especially among artistic men, but to make his point Lawrence must become the movie's sacrificial lamb.

Whatever the case, it's worth noting that in enlarging the characters played by Bardem and Lawrence to float his allegorical balloons, Aronofsky mostly ignores their humanity. I took the movie's preoccupation with close-ups as significant, a way of locking its characters in the prison of a tormenting vision.

With Mother!, Aronofsky huffs, puffs and damn well tries to blow the house down. But this time out, I found myself wondering whether there was anything more to the movie than the ominous howl of all that huffing and puffing.

Raw, brutal 'Revenant' proves riveting

Leonardo DiCaprio plays a man locked in a ferocious battle for survival.

After a brief prologue, The Revenant immerses us in a fierce battle that takes place in a forest bathed in eerie light. I'm not sure I've ever seen anything quite like the way director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's camera captures an Arikara Indian attack on a white hunting party.

Instantly, Inarritu -- with an amazingly able assist from cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (Birdman, Gravity and The Tree of Life) -- throws us off balance. Inarritu's images are shockingly realistic, yet his movie almost feels as if it's taking place in an alien world where the natural environment alternates between beauty and cold indifference.

I've read that Inarritu (Birdman and Babel) did most of his filming at dawn or dusk, times when the light feels chilled and elusive. His decision paid off.

There's not much build-up to the movie's opening bloodbath, but that may be fitting: The Revenant isn't about pauses and reflection; it's a heart-pounding story of one man's attempt to survive the frontier in the 1830s.

In what surely was a physically grueling experience, Leonardo DiCaprio plays Hugh Glass, the tracker who tries to plot a course that will save the small group of men who survive the movie's opening attack. These surviving hunters are being led by Andrew Henry (Domhnall Gleeson), a man who struggles to remain even-handed in what increasingly looks like a blood-thirsty slaughterhouse.

DiCaprio's Glass spans two worlds. He's a white man who was married to a Pawnee woman who was killed by white soldiers. He has a half-Pawnee, teen-age son (Forrest Goodluck) to whom he's entirely devoted.

If you've read anything about The Revenant, you already know that one of the movie's most shocking scenes occurs when a bear attacks Glass. Making use of convincing CGI, Inarritu presents a harrowing assault in which Glass is so severely mauled, we expect him to die on the spot.

The word "revenant" means one who has returned from the dead, and the term never has been more aptly applied than to the character DiCaprio portrays in this bloody, physical and obviously demanding performance.

As The Revenant progresses, it becomes clear that Glass again and again will be tested.

If you're looking for survival strategies, you could do worse than multiple viewings of Inarritu's adventure. The Revenant offers lessons in how to catch and eat raw fish or cauterize a severe wound.

In another of its memorably gory scenes, Glass removes the entrails from a newly dead horse so that he can crawl into the animal's carcass, using what's left of its warmth to preserve himself from the cold. His emergence from the animal after a blizzard stands as one of Glass' many symbolic rebirths.

Not only does Glass face natural obstacles; he also must deal with a human enemy. John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) believes in money and survival; he tries to convince his companion, Bridger (Will Poulter), that they should put the wounded Glass -- reunited with the other hunters after the bear attack -- out of his misery. So long as Glass remains alive, he only can slow the party down. They must drag him over rough terrain on a litter made of wood.

Speaking with a frontier accent that sounds like a cross between a garbage compactor and Tommy Lee Jones, Hardy again loses himself in a role, so much so that it may take you a while even to realize he's in the movie. Nothing about The Revenant dissuaded me from thinking of Hardy as one of the best screen actors working today.

Working from a screenplay by Mark L. Smith and Inarritu that's partly based on a novel by Michael Punke, The Revenant forces Glass into one life threatening situation after another, each presented in convincing enough fashion to make the movie a stomach-tightening ordeal.

Late-picture attempts to add an ethical dimension to the movie's revenge plot (I haven't talked about it much to avoid spoilers) aren't especially convincing, and at two and a half hours, Glass probably faces one challenge too many.

But The Revenant provides Inarritu with an opportunity to present a view of the frontier as a place of nearly unrelieved brutality and looming death, all augmented by Lubezki's brilliant cinematography.

If Inarritu was trying to give his movie mythic status, I don't believe he succeeds. In some ways, The Revenant is a glorified action movie, its scenery coated with ice and snow and brimming with forest mystery. But there's no denying that The Revenant feels as if it's taking place in a frozen expanse where both Glass and an audience are effectively put through a merciless wringer.

Lament it if you will, but that's part of what we've come to regard as entertainment.

Yes, the Force really awakens

J.J. Abrams gives George Lucas' franchise new life.

A mixture of new and old faces help director J.J. Abrams relaunch the Star Wars series, now part of the Disney empire. Those who feared that Abrams' Star Wars: The Force Awakens wouldn't honor George Lucas' long-running achievement needn't fret: Abrams has created a transitional movie that contains a mostly winning mix of Star Wars nostalgia and new additions.

Truth be told, the series may be better off now that Lucas has handed the reins to someone else. Abrams, who also helped revive the Star Trek franchise, easily surpasses the last three films: The Phantom Menace (1999), Attack of the Clones (2002), and Revenge of the Sith (2005).

Abrams took no chances when it comes to filling the movie with actors who serve as reassurance that Disney plans to respect the Lucas legacy.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is not that Harrison Ford returns as Han Solo, but that he's actually in a substantial amount of the movie -- along with his old pal Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew).

Ford's appearance -- as well as that of Carie Fisher, C-3P0 and R2-D2 -- helps launch the cast that presumably will carry the series forward, namely Daisy Ridley, who plays Rey, a feisty young woman who rises from the role of space scavenger to helping to save the galaxy from the First Order.

In case you haven't been reading the advance stories, The First Order is the evil organization that has taken over where the Empire left off.

Ridley's Rey, who lives on the planet Jakku, is joined in her efforts by Finn (John Boyega), a Stormtrooper who defects from the First Order.

Finn has no interest in being an enforcer for the Dark Side, represented here by Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis), General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) and Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie).

Driver's Ren gets the most screen time: He wears a mask and speaks in a Darth Vaderesque voice, although he's not quite as imposing as his predecessor.

Oscar Isaac turns up as another newbie; he plays Poe Dameron, a gung-ho pilot for the Resistance.

Without making too much of a fuss about it, Abrams introduces a variety of new creatures and a new droid, a rolly-polly creation known as BB-8 that struck me as something of a lovable high-tech beach ball.

The movie's meager plot involves a search for Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill). Luke must be found because he's the last remaining Jedi, the only person capable of ensuring that the Force is passed to a new generation.

Did I care about the plot? Not really. And although the movie's screenwriting team (Lawrence Kasdan, Abrams and Michael Arndt) adds plenty of winking humor, it may be less about generating laughs than serving as a welcome reminder that the original movies weren't ordeals: They were fun.

There's even a scene that pays homage to Lucas' penchant for taking us to bars where aliens hang-out with Lupita Nyong'o giving voice to Maz Kanata, a space pirate whose eyes are covered with goggles and who dispenses a bit of wisdom -- or what passes for it in a Star Wars movie.

Of course, composer John Williams returns to score his seventh Star Wars film.

Despite the presence of the kind of father/son elements that informed the better Star Wars movies, we probably should consider it a positive development that a young woman has a major role here and likely will continue to have one as the series progresses.

Who knows? Given enough time, Rey may even give Katniss Everdeen a run for her money.

A beautifully acted 'Brooklyn'

Saoirse Ronan plays a young woman who learns to claim her destiny.

Eilis Lacey spends a good deal of Brooklyn, the movie derived from a 2009 novel by Colm Toibin, in a disoriented state. A girl from Enniscorthy, County Wexford, Eilis travels to the U.S. in 1951 after her older sister Rose arranges for her to leave Ireland.

Eilis makes the trip, but it is not yet her journey. And that's the basis of a coming-of-age movie that embraces an old-fashioned style that files the roughest edges off its story, but allows its central performance to carry us along with it.

Brooklyn focuses on young Eilis, beautifully played by Saoirse Ronan, familiar to moviegoers from movies such Atonement, The Lovely Bones and Hanna.

Ronan inhabits her character so thoroughly, it seems as if we're watching a flower break ground, stretch to meet the sun's warmth and eventually bloom. Without affectation or undue showiness, Ronan manages to carry a movie that spans the distance between two very different worlds.

When Eilis arrives in the U.S., she takes up residence in a boarding house run by Mrs. Keough (Julie Walters), a good-hearted woman who also happens to have a dictatorial streak when it comes to the women who live in her home.

Gradually, Eilis begins to encounter the new life into which she has been thrust. She's helped by a local priest who cares about her welfare and who is portrayed by Jim Broadbent without a trace of cynicism.

Eventually, Eilis lands a job as a clerk at a department store and begins studying accounting. She also meets Tony, (Emory Cohen) a young Italian man who works as a plumber, but who -- along with his bothers -- hopes to start a construction business that will relocate his family to Long Island.

As the story develops, Ronan begins to taste the freedom and sense of possibility that her sister (Fiona Glascott) so ardently wishes for her. She even learns to hold her own at the table with other women who board with Mrs. Keough.

Eventually, Eilis learns that Rose has passed away. Before Eilis returns to Ireland to comfort her grieving mother, Tony insists that they marry. He wants to make sure that she'll come back to him.

Eilis agrees, but we don't know exactly how committed she is to this marriage; she's still living her sister's dream, not her own.

Back in Ireland, Eilis begins to see a side of life she never experienced while growing up.

Instead of the world narrowing, it suddenly seems to be opening. Not knowing that Eilis is married, one of the town's bachelors (Domhnall Gleeson) begins to pursue her. She lands a part-time job, and comforts a mother who has known her share of grief.

Obviously, Eilis eventually must make up her mind about whether to remain in Ireland or return to the U.S. and resume the life that seemed to offer her so much.

Director John Crowley must have sensed that Ronan could keep the movie on track, so he supports her with nostalgic period design and allows the story to unfold without undue fuss. Nick Hornby's script is both economical and respectful of its characters.

Well-cast and nicely appointed, Brooklyn might be one of the least cynical movies of the year, an engagingly wide-eyed look at a world in which a young woman learns that she has something to say about the way her life will unfold.

The movie's modesty and Ronan's lovely performance make it a pleasure to watch.

Does a robot have a mind of her own?

Ex Machina may not be great, but it has a lot going for it.

Here's a lesson Hollywood would do well to learn: Smarter trumps bigger when it comes to sci-fi films. For a long time, smart is precisely what we get from director Alex Garland's debut move, Ex Machina, the story of two men and a robot.

The movie begins when a computer programmer named Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) is summoned to spend a week with his boss Nathan (Oscar Isaac), a reclusive genius who runs a Google-like internet company that has given him shameful amounts of wealth.

Reachable only by helicopter, Nathan's home seems to have been carved into the rocky cliffs of a lush landscape. The place is part retreat and part laboratory, a location that's at once ominous, alluring and so design-dominated that it seems to have had every ounce of humanity wrung from it.

It took me more than half the movie to remember that Isaac, an actor who manages to look different in every role, is playing Nathan.

In last year's A Most Violent Year, Isaac portrayed an impeccably dressed, upwardly mobile businessman who was trying to grow his oil delivery service amid gangster-like competition in the New York metropolitan area.

Here, Isaac portrays a billionaire recluse, a manipulative guy who throws off sparks of danger. Nathan works out on a heavy bag, and often wanders about his home shirtless. He regards himself not only as the smartest guy in the room, but maybe in the entire world.

In a way, Gleeson has the more difficult role; his Caleb is an open book, a normal guy trying to keep pace with a genius, a job that we sense may be beyond his skill-set.

Nathan tells Caleb that he wants help in testing one of his inventions, a robot named Ava. The task: To determine whether Ava has developed consciousness independent of her creator's programs. Can Caleb come to regard Ava as he would a human?

Played by former Swedish* ballet dancer Alicia Vikander, Ava seems to have her own personality. She's built to reveal the high-tech workings that keep her operating, but also to be subtly sexy.

Ex Machina isn't without deficiencies, but its setting and premise are so encompassing, we feel as if we've been transported into an alien world -- not exactly forbidden, but not entirely comfortable, either.

Garland -- who also wrote the screenplay -- gives himself lots to work with: That's hardly surprising because he also wrote the screenplays for 28 Days Later, Never Let Me Go and Sunshine, all movies with juicy subtexts.

As the characters in Ex Machina interact, they keep us guessing about their motivations, but it's Isaac who gives the movie its tension: His Nathan can be hospitable, but he's controlling, secretive and scary.

As the story develops, Caleb begins to be drawn into Ava's world. This, of course, raises questions about what it might mean if he falls for Ava. Can man and machine find happiness together? Can Caleb get Ava out of what has become her mountain prison? Is Ava really a machine?

Directing with a sure hand, Garland keeps us off guard for a long time. In the end, though, Ex Machina can't quite carry its intelligence across the finish line for a truly resonant finale. At just the moment when the movie should enlarge, it seems to shrink and get smaller.

Still, the performances are strong, and at its best, Ex Machina serves as a cautionary tale about what can happen when men are left alone with their very expensive toys.
*In an earlier posting, I misidentified Vikander as Danish. My bad.

Music from the fringe

Michael Fassbender spends nearly all of Frank -- an oddball movie about an avant-garde rock musician -- wearing a giant head made of papier-mâché.

The head seems like the kind of amusing stunt David Byrne might have attempted back in the halcyon Talking Heads days, except for one thing: Frank never removes the beach-ball sized orb, even during what seem like normal conversations with his bandmates.

The look of the head is interesting for its near parodic ordinariness. The artificial head boasts a modest haircut, large blue eyes that look as if they might have been appropriated from one of those annoyingly wide-eyed Margaret Keane paintings and a perpetually open mouth.

Director Lenny Abrahamson and Fassbender use the disguise without undue flourish, a wise choice because it's weird enough without being italicized.

The band, by the way, is called Soronprfbs, an unpronounceable name that suggests that this group of musicians couldn't care less about how their music is received.

The story focuses on Jon, a keyboardist played by Domhnall Gleeson. Jon joins the band by accident after the group's keyboardist attempts suicide.

Jon soon finds himself spending almost a year with the group in a secluded hideout where Frank inches his way toward Soronprfbs' first album.

The rest of the group is far from hospitable. Maggie Gyllenhaal appears as Clara, a woman who plays theremin and who makes no attempt to conceal her contempt for Jon, whose often cheery voice-over narration creates an ironic counterpoint to reality.

The group also includes the band's manager (Scoot McNairy), a drummer (Carla Azar) and a French-speaking bass player (Francois Civil) who also loathes Jon and regards him as a smiling no-talent.

The movie breaks its isolation when Jon arranges for the band to perform at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, a spawning ground for cutting edge bands.

Not surprisingly, Frank is ill-equipped for a coming-out party, and Gyllenhaal's Clara seems to view the entire idea of "entertaining" as a sell-out.

I've read that the movie is a riff on the real-life experiences of co-writer Jon Ronson, who wrote the screenplay with Peter Straughan. Ronson evidently worked with Chris Sievey, a British musician and comic who died in 2010. Sievey created a character named Frank Sidebottom, who wore a head very much like the one donned by Fassbender in the movie.

You don't have to know anything about that backstory to appreciate Abrahamson's movie, which deals with the fragility of genius in a way that can be quietly funny.

Jon attempts -- rather foolishly it seems -- to bring Frank's talents to a wider audience, something that takes its toll on Frank and leads to a finale that's mildly redemptive and touching in a bittersweet way.

An 'Anna Karenina' rich with artifice

A radian Keira Knightley shines as Anna, but it takes time for the story to break through all its artifice.

Director Joe Wright and playwright Tom Stoppard have tried (boy, have they tried) to avoid the musty odor of costume drama in adapting Tolstoy's masterpiece, Anna Karenina, a novel that has been brought to the screen at least a dozen times.

Wright (Pride and Prejudice, Atonement and Hanna) immerses the movie in theatrical artifice and dazzling stagecraft. He uses model trains as real trains. He sets scenes in front of a proscenium arch. He has characters walking on catwalks suspended over the sets. His opening scenes quickly destroy the naturalistic grounding we're accustomed to finding in period pieces.

Rather than adding a sense of contemporary urgency, Wright's artfully exercised gimmickry gives Tolstoy the feeling of an opera -- albeit one in which the characters never sing. Exposing us to the artifice of the settings can be both distracting and instructive, and one presumes that Wright wants to put the empty facade of a highly defined society on display. He plays urban falseness against the more authentic realities of country life, breaking away from the confines of sets and filming rural scenes on actual landscapes.

Amid all this, the story clarifies itself in concise bursts. I sometimes felt as if I were watching greatest hits from Anna Karenina, snatched from the pages of Tolstoy and presented in a giddy whirl.

Wright and Stoppard concentrate on Tolstoy's story of passion and ruin, one of the great themes of the novel. Anna (Keira Knightley) is married to Karenin (Jude Law), a government minister. She has a young son and most likely believes herself to be happy and well-placed in society. Then, she meets the alarmingly attractive Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). Anna's world is rocked by the intrusion of undeniable passion, a desire that will lead her away from the constraints required to keep up appearances in a world of scintillating Tsarist-Russian surfaces.

Vronsky represents another facet of appearances; he's striking in his white uniform, a figure who -- as the late Pauline Kael once said of someone -- looks as if he belongs on top of a wedding cake.

Anna's story is set against the backdrop of another tale. Levin (Domhnall Gleeson) is a young man who initially is rejected by a princess (Alicia Vikander). He then retreats to his rural estate where he tries to relieve his painful self-consciousness by joining with the peasants in physical labor.

Consider this a gloss on Tolstoy's story. There are many additional characters and currents that ripple through a movie that sometimes seems as if it's caught in a limbo between the stage and the screen with hints (as already noted) of opera and even of ballet tossed in for good measure.

A stylized ball where Anna and Vronsky dance calls much attention to itself, as does a lot of what Wright attempts. Wright's betting that no amount of artifice can squelch the story's emotional life.

To the extent that this holds true, credit must be given to the performances, most of which survive the movie's devotion to so much uber-artistry. Knightley can be radiant, determined, vulnerable and shattered as Anna. Law, who has been made to look clerical and plain, makes a sturdy Karenin, a man trying to control a situation that's spiraling toward chaos. Attuned to the importance of social arrangements, Karenin seems incapable of connecting marriage with passion. Taylor-Johnson makes a dashing if increasingly distressed Vronsky.

The main actors are bolstered by a large and well-selected supporting cast that includes Kelly MacDonald as Dolly, Anna's sympathetic sister-in-law, a woman trying to get over the adultery of her husband (Matthew Macfadyen.)

Once the affair between Anna and Vronsky is exposed, Wright no longer can maintain the movie's spinning frenzy. The pace slows. Prices must be paid.

Credit Wright with pushing the medium and trying a fresh approach to Tolstoy. I can't say it entirely works, but in the end -- many of the emotions associated with Anna's tragedy remain, and I doubt whether any actress could bring more to the role than Knightley, who embodies nearly all of Anna's epic passion and gathering torment.