A new Captain America hits the screen

 

  I'd like to talk about the ending of Captain America: Brave New World. It's borderline crazy, gratuitously overblown, willfully preposterous, and, perhaps, the most enjoyable thing about this latest edition to the MCU canon. 

  I laughed a lot as the movie smashed its way toward a Washington D.C.-based conclusion. The late-picture bombast struck me as amusing, although I'm not sure that was the reaction the creators were hoping for.

   Only the fear of spoilers keeps me from saying more. So on with the review: 

    Captain America: Brave New World spends much of its 118-minute runtime watching Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) justify his ascendance to the role of Captain America, a job once filled by Steve Rogers (Chris Evans). Although Mackie often appears in nicely tailored suits, he dons his uniform when it counts. Mackie earns his shield, which he tosses around like a lethal Frisbee.

   Director Julius Onah balances comic-book bravado and elements that sometimes resemble a conventional hunk of intrigue about how power should be wielded.

   In this outing, Harrison Ford takes over a role previously played by the late William Hurt. Ford portrays Thadeous Ross, a ruthless US president who wants to change his image from warrior to peacemaker. 

  To accomplish his lofty goal, Ross must arrange a treaty under which the world's powers will  agree to share adamantium, a much-desired substance that .... well ... who cares what it does?

   Looking older than he ever has on film, Ford appears throughout the movie; he seems committed to serving the story's serious side while not diminishing its comic-book clout.

    In the early going, President Ross invites Wilson to the White House in hopes that the new Captain America will bring the Avengers back to life. 

   Before an Avengers rebirth can occur, an aggrieved super soldier (Carl Lumbly) -- one of Wilson's warrior pals and a wrongly imprisoned victim of his own government -- takes a shot at the president. 

   The assassination attempt fails, but we're quickly assured that Lumbly's Isaiah Bradley is no revenge-seeking villain; mysteriously, he's being manipulated. Wilson pledges to clear his friend's name.

    Thematically, Brave New World touches on genetic engineering and mind control while making room for an aerial battle over the Indian Ocean when the US tries to prevent Japan from seizing control of the world's adamantium supply. 

    Plenty of well-played additional characters turn up. Shira Haas portrays a former Mossad agent who works as the president's top security aide. Giancarlo Esposito plays Sidewinder, a bad guy for hire. Danny Ramirez adds a welcome light touch as Falcon.

     Tim Blake Nelson does major bad-guy duty as Samuel Sterns, a biology genius with a grudge against the president and the need for a wig. Stern's hair has been replaced by the brain that grows outside his head. 

      The action sequences aren't exactly groundbreaking, and at times, the screenplay slows its roll so that various characters can deliver chunks of exposition.

      I have no idea how much of a splash Brave New World will make, but the movie flirts with topicality as it tries to keep the Marvel torch burning. Yes, the flame sometimes sputters, but like Mackie, Brave New World ultimately holds its own.

'Dial of Destiny:' the fun wears out

 

  Archimedes, one of the most renowned mathematicians of the ancient world, doesn’t usually show up in fantasy-reliant action movies.

 He nonetheless finds his way into Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the latest story about the fabled archeological adventurer who made his first screen appearance in Raiders of the Lost Ark way back in (gasp!) 1981. 

  This time, Indy packs his bags with references to the previous movies as well as a search for the fabled Dial of Destiny, a.k.a. the Antikythera mechanism.

  In the movie, the Antikythera is said to be one of Archimedes’s  inventions, a device that, in fictionalized IndyWorld, can locate fissures in time that allow for travel into the past. 

   In a way, the entire movie — with James Mangold taking over directing chores from Steven Spielberg — is like traveling into the past, an action-heavy adventure in which Mangold demonstrates journeyman competence but fails to generate enough of the ingredient that has distinguished the best Indiana Jones’ efforts: fun.

    The movie features appearances by a de-aged Harrison Ford, as well as the well-preserved Ford, who — in his 80s — is still willing to don his fedora and take on physical challenges. 

     Once again Indy battles (who else?) Nazis.

     An add-on: Phoebe Waller-Bridge plays Helena, the daughter of one of Indie’s old archeological cohorts (Toby Jones).

     Part adversary and part ally, Waller-Bridge adds a touch of naughtiness to the proceedings, but not enough to sustain a gleeful, whip-cracking romp. 

    Other names include Antonio Banderas, as a sea captain, and, more importantly, Mads Mikkelsen as Dr. Voller, a Nazi scientist who, after the war, began working in the American space program. 

   The movie kicks off with a speedy train sequence set during World War II and leaps forward to the late 1960s, the period when most of the action takes place.

    Many of the movie’s characters want to find the Dial of Destiny, the movie’s MacGuffin. Indy thinks it belongs in a museum. Voller wants to find both halves of the device and use it for his own evil purposes.

    Note: In these kinds of movies, there always seem to be missing parts that need to be recovered to activate a device’s potential. 

    In this case, Voller has a cockamamy plan to travel back in time, change the course of the war, and mastermind a German victory.

    Of course, there’s plenty of globe-hopping, taking the movie to Morocco and Sicily, among other places. 

    And, yes, there are chases galore, most executed by Mangold and company with the required skill.

     Still, it's difficult not to realize that we’re watching Mangold and his team blend the ingredients into the familiar Indiana Jones recipe, a self-conscious awareness that works against surprise.  

   Yeah, time for another chase. Yeah, time to squirm, this time thanks to a cave full of bugs.

     Ford brings a carload of trademark grumpiness to the role. He remains credible as an aging action hero — albeit one who occasionally creaks.

     The early Indian Jones movies had a celebratory quality that returned us to the days when movies could be approached with naivety and wide-eyed expectation.

     Belonging to a now-faded moment, that feeling is difficult to revive. So it's no surprise that Dial of Destiny can feel a bit stale.

      Designed as the final chapter in the Jones saga, Dial of Destiny  doesn’t generate all of the thrills we expect from a series that arguably already should have been put to rest.

      Sigh deeply and move on.

   

    

‘Call of the Wild’ goes digital

It may not be a dog but this adaptation of a Jack London novel stakes out a mediocre claim.

In The Call of the Wild, an adaptation of a classic Jack London story, the heroic dog at the center of the movie has become a digital creation. But it’s not only the dog that doesn’t seem real. The same goes for the Yukon town where the dog — Buck — winds up and for much of the movie’s romanticized sentiment. In Alaska, Buck learns to become a true part of nature, joining forces with wolves and creating a family.

Harrison Ford takes the starring human role; he’s John Thornton, a man who has fled to the Yukon after the death of his young son wrecked his marriage and his life.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. When we first meet Buck, he belongs to a judge in a small California town. Banished to the judge's porch, the unruly Buck is stolen and shipped to Alaska, the wilderness where a gold rush has created a growing need for sled dogs.

Initially, Buck is trained to pull sleds by a mailman played by Omar Sy. Sy's character travels with a woman (Cara Gee), who seems to around so that she can fall through thin ice and be rescued by the always heroic Buck.

Buck becomes a leader among the mail-service dogs but eventually loses his status when the government suspends mail delivery to remote towns that are hundreds of miles apart.

Harrison's Thornton immediately appreciates the dog's finer nature but only reluctantly forms a bond with Buck. Meanwhile, a wealthy man in search of even more wealth (Dan Stevens) tries to exploit Buck. Steven’s character becomes a classic boo-hiss villain.

The story goes exactly where you'd expect as Buck and Thornton begin life in the woods, but this version lacks the kind of grit we might expect from a story by London. It feels bloodless.

Heavyweight cinematographer Janusz Kaminski (Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, The Post) does justice by the Alaskan scenery and it's no surprise that Ford holds the screen. But even Ford can’t elevate this one from the mediocrity to which its tethered — or should I say leashed.

The dog’s movements reportedly were created in motion-capture by Terry Notary, who's known for his creation of animal movements. He does good work but I seldom forgot that I was looking at a digital creation rather than a living, breathing slobbering animal.

Call of the Wild did make me think about the advantages of digital dogs, though. They don't poop. They don't throw up on the rug. They don't need to be walked. Vet bills are negligible.

Unconvinced? Me too. Both on-screen and off, real dogs are better.

A visually rich return to the future

What's real and what's not? Blade Runner 2049 wants to know, but it may cause some head scratching..

I'm not one of those people who consult director Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982) for philosophical guidance. I liked the movie well enough when I first saw it, but haven't joined the cult of enthusiasts who make regular return visits, often followed by heated debates about what, in the movie, should be taken as real and what shouldn't.

But there's no question that Scott's movie -- based on Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep -- set the pace for a lot of the dystopian sci-fi that followed in the wake of Blade Runner's noir-flavored foray into a dangerously decaying Los Angeles.

Now comes Blade Runner 2049, set some 30 years after the original. If you're looking for a beautifully realized vision of the world as the filmmakers think it might exist several decades from now, this new edition -- directed by Denis Villeneuve (Arrival) -- works hard to provide it.

Major credit accrues to cinematographer Roger Deakins, who makes ample use of yellow and orange hues to create a world that feels as if its enveloped in poisonous smog. Breathe at your own risk.

The desiccated landscapes of the movie's early going tell us that the world has been drained of its richness, its abundance having been exploited to the point where even a dead tree has become something a novelty. Technology may hold sway, but the Earth has become infertile.

We also learn, from opening title cards, that replicants -- genetically engineered creatures that are indistinguishable from humans -- are designed to be safe and servile. But Blade Runners, those who hunt down and "retire" replicants, still operate, searching for older replicants that had the audacity to make a case for replicant self-determination.

Prior to a screening, publicists read a statement asking critics not to reveal plot points and other surprises. OK, I'm not going to talk much about the plot except to say that it's not always easy to follow the one concocted by writers Hampton Fancher and Michael Green. I'd say that 2049 wants to be a deep-thinking detective story with a replicant hunter named K (Ryan Gosling) sent on a quest to ...

I won't say more, except to note that replicant-related peril puts the entire structure of the society Villeneuve depicts at issue.

Among the film's creations, you'll find Joi (Ana de Armas), an electronically produced holographic woman that adores K and offers no resistance when it comes to fulfilling her role as a fantasy. You'll also see Jared Leto as the head of a company that produces replicants in a performance that's too transparently spectral and weird. Leto's Wallace is served by a ruthless woman (Sylvia Hoeks) who's all business -- and bad business at that.

Even icier than she is on House of Cards, Robin Wright portrays the LAPD big-wig to whom K reports.

Gosling punctuates a purposefully inexpressive performance with small inflections, and -- if you've read anything about the movie -- you know that Harrison Ford returns as Deckard, only in a more worn-out version. The replicant hunter of the first movie evidently has been in hiding for the last 30 years, taking up residence in an abandoned Las Vegas casino where he can watch holographic Elvis projections and we can ponder a few similarities to the work of Stanley Kubrick.

The movie, which has its longueurs, perks up considerably when Ford arrives. I should tell you, though, that most of the time, I found myself in a state in which I seemed to be floating through the story, not really caring where it was going as I awaited the next intriguing bit of visual invention.

In his positive Hollywood Reporter review of 2049, Todd McCarthy astutely pointed out that the "style and tone" of 2049 owes more to Russian auteur Andrei Tarkovsky (Stalker) than to Scott's original. McCarthy's observation is correct but I wonder whether this approach -- creating an almost expanded sense of time -- doesn't deprive the picture of narrative interest while threatening to turn 2049 into a massive art project with a vision that exists more to be dissected than actually lived in. Food is now produced synthetically. As in the original, cars fly. High tech paraphernalia can be found even in the seedy tenement in which K lives. The ravages of climate change create snowfall in Los Angeles. When Leto's Wallace presides over a room in which a platform is surrounded by water that splays ripples of reflection across walls.

That's another way of saying, Villeneuve doesn't give us much reason to connect emotionally to much of anything in 2049.
I suppose 2049 serves up plenty of fodder for those who wish to philosophize about what's real and what isn't or to ruminate on how artificial intelligence changes our ideas about what it means to be human. But after the movie's sometimes taxing, 164-minute running time, I found that other more immediately pressing needs required attention.

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.

'Age of Adaline' turns gooey and soft

Blake Lively holds this romance together, but the movie is too sentimental for its own good.

Soft and mushy, nearly everything in The Age of Adaline stands in stark contrast to the crisp performance given by Blake Lively, who plays the movie's title character, a woman who stops aging at 29.

This situation -- let's call it an "age freeze" -- arises after Lively's Adaline runs her car off the road during a rare California snow storm. With help from lightning, water and a half-baked explanation from an off-screen narrator, Adaline is reborn as a person who'll never see 30.

Age of Adaline is an adult fairy tale, but the movie winds up avoiding its more perplexing aspects, apparently so that it can turn out a conventional romance mixed with a bit of cheerleading about embracing life's greatest possibility; i.e., love.

Obviously, a woman who's never going to age must be wary about her choices. If Adaline falls in love and commits to a relationship, she's going to watch her beloved age and die.

Aside from a series of cute puppies, Adaline studiously avoids involvement. Adaline does, however, have a daughter from before the life-changing auto accident.

Director Lee Toland Krieger better hope that audiences fall in love with Lively because there's not a whole lot more to enjoy in a movie that eventually finds a wary Adaline establishing a relationship with Ellis, (Michiel Huisman), a wealthy San Francisco-based philanthropist who made his fortune in the high-tech world.

Of course, the relationship can't progress because Adaline refuses to tell Ellis (or anyone else for that matter) that she's approaching 107. Only her daughter -- now an aging woman played by Ellen Burstyn -- knows the truth about Adaline. Adaline works hard to keep it that way.

Whenever she thinks someone might recognize her from a past encounter, she bolts. Even if nothing like that happens, Adaline changes her identity once a decade, switching residences and taking on a new name.

About midway through, Ellis takes Adeline to meet his parents (Harrison Ford and Kathy Baker), where additional complications ensue.

The movie arrives wrapped in the gauze of a sentimental story that wants to reach a destination that was predictable from the moment Adaline and Ellis first exchanged looks across a crowded room.

Ford looks professorial and unheroic, which is of some interest, and Lively certainly holds the screen for the movie's 110-minute length.

Burstyn has a nice cameo as Adaline's daughter, a woman who's now old enough to enter a retirement community. The movie's mother and daughter exchanges are odd but convincing -- and something the movie could have used more of.

The Age of Adaline needed to get the stars out of its eyes, and wake up to what it actually might be saying, as opposed to the message it delivers, which is: Wake up and embrace life. Take a chance.

If you follow this advice, let me know how it works out for you. I'll be sitting in the safety of my room waiting to hear.

A game played mostly on the surface

In Ender's Game adult wisdom has become as rare as nuanced expression.

Orson Scott Card's 1985 novel Ender's Game has acquired a large and devoted following. I'm not an acolyte or even a reader of Card's popular books, so I approached the eagerly awaited movie version of the first novel in the series with an high hopes and open mind.

What I found in Ender's Game is a juvenile helping of sci-fi that wrestles with some big, topical issues, but would require ample applications of intellectual Clearasil® before it's ready to claim an unblemished place in the sci-fi big leagues.

Having said that, I certainly wouldn't dissuade fans of the books from seeing a movie that has been assembled by director Gavin Hood in ways that attempt to maximize action, much of it involving zero-gravity training exercises that pit teams of youthful combatants against one another.

If there's genius in the concept, it probably involves the way that the movie acknowledges that game-savvy youngsters are more easily adaptable to modern warfare than adults. In the future, killer instincts may not be applied at the end of a bayonet but at a digital console. Think drones on steroids.

Hood's kid-centered, tech-laden drama follows 10-year-old Ender Wiggen (Asa Butterfield) through various stages of training in facilities that orbit the Earth. Hood, who also wrote the screenplay, divides the movie roughly into thirds.

In the first (and skimpiest) section we meet Ender and his family, a sister (Abigail Breslin) and an older bother Peter (Jimmy 'Jax' Pinchak). The arrogant Peter quickly vanishes from the story, but Breslin's Valentine crops up intermittently, mostly to serve as Ender's emotional connection to a threatened world.

About that threat: It seems that at some prior time the Earth was attacked by insect-like creatures called Formics. Earth's warriors fought off the Formics, but the threat of another invasion remains.

Early on, Ender falls under the tutelage of Colonel Graff (Harrison Ford), a military commander who has been searching for a youthful warrior to lead the charge against the Formics.

A militarist to the bone, Graff believes that one big battle can eliminate the threat of future wars. For Graff, preemptive strikes are the quickest route to peace. If he weren't being played by Ford, perhaps Dick Cheney could have auditioned for the role.

Throughout Ender's training -- a combination of boot camp combined with a video-game competition -- Graff pushes Ender hard: He beleives he finally has discovered a kid with the requisite tactical instincts to take on the Formics once and for all.

Graff often is seen in the company of a psychological officer (Viola Davis). Davis's character advocates for Ender's mental well-being, something in which Graff has no interest.

Butterfield, who appeared in Martin Scorsese's Hugo, does an good job combing the geeky and violent impulses that define Ender. From time-to-time, Ender question's the idea that conflicts are best resolved with healthy applications of violence. Butterfield succeeds in making Ender's internal conflicts real.

As he advances through his training, Ender comes into conflict with another cadet (Moises Arias), a young man who seems to have a Napoleon complex. Petra, a cadet played by Hailee Steinfeld, helps Ender learn the ropes.

But the real star of this portion of the movie is a training facility where the cadets face off in a zero-gravity environment. Hood returns to this special-effects well a little too often. Repetition sets in.

The movie's third act offers some redemption. Ender moves into the final stage of his training, which involves preparing to lead the Earth's forces into a decisive battle with the Formics.

At this point, he meets Mazer Rackham (Ben Kingsley), the warrior who lead Earth's forces to victory in the first encounter with the Formics.

Replete with a Maori-style facial tattoo that makes him look like a futuristic Queequeg, Kingsley apes the one-note severity of the other adults in the movie, but projects more depth than Ford, who makes a return to sci-fi. Think Han Solo without a personality.

Hood and his technical team save the best for last, using Ender's final training exercise as occasion to unfurl a series of dazzling special effects that add a level of sensory thrill that should please genre fans.

I won't spoil the ending, but those familiar with the story know that the story probably is intended as a cautionary tale. In truth, though, Ender's Game derives more energy from its staunch militarism than from any other source.

A summary: Ender's Game has been made with enough competence to please fans of the series and perhaps to expand that audience a bit. The entire enterprise has a juvenile flavor, interrupted by occasional bouts of brow furrowing as the story attempts to grapple with Big Questions. Unlike Ender, the movie doesn't emerge at the top of the sci-fi class, but it's nowhere near the bottom. And if sequels loom, there's plenty of room for improvement after what can be called a decent enough start.

Jackie Robinson, American hero

This big-screen bio-pic offers an old-fashioned mix of baseball nostalgia and social conscience.
Almost everyone agrees that Jackie Robinson -- the man who broke baseball's color barrier in 1947 -- was a genuinely heroic and important American figure.

Robinson, who died in 1972 at the age of 53, was an intense ballplayer and an intense public figure. He rightly has been lionized and honored by professional baseball -- the sport that took an ungodly amount of time getting around to allowing black players onto its fields. The grass may have been green, but the sport remained lily white, as many have observed.

42 -- a movie focused on Robinson's early career -- turns out to be a solidly conceived look at the former Brooklyn Dodger, a historical highlight reel served up with a generous helping of baseball nostalgia and some feeling for the turbulent racial climate of the period.

Written and directed by Brian Helgeland, 42 does a decent job of showing some of the difficulties faced by Robinson (Chadwick Boseman) after Dodger president and general manager Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford) decided that it was time to expand baseball's diversity, as well as its market share.

42, of course, is not the first movie to focus on Robinson. The actor played himself in a corny 1950 biopic which you can watch in its entirely on You Tube. After I saw 42, I watched The Jackie Robinson Story again. It, too, provides some of the highlights of Robinson's ascent from the old Negro leagues to the minor leagues (he broke in with the Montreal Royals), as well as his early and often difficult days with the Dodgers. When it comes to baseball prowess, both movies emphasize Robinson's speed, base-stealing abilities, power and competitive fire.

Obviously, production values have taken a quantum leap since 1950: It's now possible for filmmakers to recreate some of the long-vanished ballparks in which Robinson plied his trade: Ebbets Field (in Brooklyn), the Polo Grounds (in Manhattan), Crosley Field (in Cincinnati) and Shibe Park (in Philadelphia). As a kid, I was a rabid New York Giants fan, so it was an exquisite pleasure to see the Polo Grounds resurrected for a fleeting moment -- even as a CGI-created phantom.

The two principal characters in Helgeland's traditionally conceived -- if abbreviated -- bio-pic are Robinson, well-played by Boseman, who physically resembles the first black Major Leaguer, and Ford, who portrays Rickey as a jut-jawed, cigar-smoking executive who minced few words and who deftly balanced both profit and social motives.

Nicole Beharie plays Robinson's wife Rachel, a woman portrayed as ceaselessly supportive of her husband during his time of trial, frustration and achievement.

As is the case with many baseball movies, Robinson forms a relationship a with newspaperman. As a black man writing for a black-owned newspaper in Pittsburgh, Wendell Smith (Andre Holland) was denied admission to the Baseball Writers Association of America. I've read that it was Smith who first suggested to Rickey that he consider Robinson.

Helgeland, who directed A Knight's Tale and who wrote the screenplays for movies such as L.A. Confidential and Mystic River, doesn't flinch from the racial ugliness that Robinson faced, concentrating much of it into a single game. Phillies' manager Ben Chapman (Alan Tudyk) crudely hurls racial insults at Robinson. Rickey insisted that Robinson not fight back, that he have the courage not respond to the abuse.

Interestingly, the movie covers only Robinson's first year in the Majors, stopping short of the rest of his 10-year career and the life that followed baseball. By his second year in the Majors -- or so I've read -- Robinson began responding to those who taunted him. I'd have liked to see some of that.

Helgeland populates the movie with names familiar from that now-hallowed period in baseball. We meet pitcher Ralph Branca (Hamish Linklater), manager Leo Durocher (Christopher Meloni), shortstop Pee-Wee Reese (Lucas Black) and right fielder Dixie Walker (Ryan Merriman). Reese, an acknowledged Dodger leader, made a point of accepting Robinson, as did Branca. Walker was less tolerant, as were the many other Dodgers who signed a petition protesting the fact that they were being asked to take the field with a black player.

In many ways, 42 is an overly burnished bit of socially-conscious baseball hagiography. Helgeland makes little attempt to deliver Robinson in his entirety.

Looking at Robinson's time in baseball through a rear view mirror, the racism of the period can seem as blatant as it was detestable, an obvious target for today's audiences. Robinson, of course, knew that his battle with racism didn't end when he left the playing field, where in his first season he took Rookie of the Year honors and helped the Dodgers win the pennant.

Although it falls short of Golden Glove movie status, 42 succeeds within the parameters it sets for itself. Helgeland seems to have wanted to give his movie an old-fashioned spin that didn't allow for much of the righteous anger about racism that Robinson had no trouble expressing. The movie is about Robinson; it isn't made from his point of view.

If we're lucky, though, 42 will familiarize a new generation with one of the enduring figures of American life, a hero whose discipline, dedication and courage far exceeded whatever virtues we associate with the comic-book characters who seem to have taken over American movies these days. 42 may be an idealized portrait, but that could be precisely what Helgeland wanted and what he thought Robinson deserved.

An outlandish 'Cowboys & Aliens'

This genre mash-up offers bits of fun, but its aim isn't dead-on.

Say this: There’s nothing deceptive about the title Cowboys & Aliens, an action-oriented summer movie in which cowboys square off against marauding alien invaders.

The trick of Cowboys & Aliens involves allowing disparate but familiar genres to bump up against each other, to mix clichés from western and sci-fi movies in hopes that the combination results in something fresh. I’m not sure it does, but it certainly results in something that's brazenly outlandish, an unabashed summer movie full of unabashed summer-movie ingredients.

In reasonably short order, the movie's cowboy caricatures get crosswise with alien caricatures. The resultant collision doesn’t quite revitalize either genre, but the whole enterprise is so patently absurd, it can’t help but offer bits of whacked-out fun.

The script plants its sci-fi seed early. In the movie’s opening scene, Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) wakes up in the middle of the desert. He has no memory of how he got there or even who he is. He notices a strange-looking shackle on his left wrist. Clearly (at least to us), it’s the product of a civilization that’s more technologically advanced than the one Jake knows.

Before 20 or so minutes have passed, our lone cowboy finds himself at odds with a cruel cattle baron (Harrison Ford). Sure we’ve been down this road before, but both Craig and Ford – owners of two of the craggiest faces in the business -- seem built for it.

Cowboys & Aliens saunters through standard Western situations, doing a pretty good job with them. Jake rides into the town of Absolution. After a dust up with the bullying son (Paul Dano) of the local cattle baron, Jake lands in the clink.

Ford plays Woodrow Dolarhyde, a grizzled rancher who runs his spread and the town with an iron hand. Dolarhyde even thinks he can control the sheriff (Keith Carradine).

Craig glowers; Ford sneers, and both bring movie-star punch to the proceedings as Cowboys & Aliens makes its way through some tensely enjoyable scenes. Few things in movies quicken the pulse as reliably as macho posturing, and Cowboys & Aliens has its share.

Eventually, the aliens -- who fly around in aircraft that resemble giant dragonflies -- begin strafing the town. They also yank some of the townsfolk onto their ships, presumably for further study.

The aliens don’t exactly represent a triumph of sci-fi imagination. Their standard-issue horror-movie look seems to have been cobbled together from previous aliens and leftover slime, and director Jon Favreau (Iron Man) and eight credited screenwriters don't give them much motivation beyond a predatory desire to conquer planets and take their gold.

Favreau and his team try to stuff as many summer thrills as possible into the movie’s saddlebags: encounters with thugs from Logergan’s former gang and with a band of Apaches, for example.

Sam Rockwell plays Doc, the saloon keeper who loses his wife to the aliens. And Olivia Wilde portrays Ella, a mysterious woman who joins the posse that sets out to find and fight the aliens.

Here’s a shocker: To battle the monsters, cattle baron and cowboys, thugs and law-abiding citizens, Indians and whites, must set aside differences and act for the common good. The aroma of an obviously stated “message’’ – never a good thing in either cowboy or alien movies -- wafts across western landscapes, beautifully photographed by cinematographer Matthew Libatique.

Craig hits a single note and holds it throughout the movie; he's playing a brutal man who’s unsure what he may have done in his past. Ford, who lately hasn’t exactly been hitting box-office bulls eyes, plays a character without a trace of Indiana Jones twinkle in his eye.

Watching Cowboys & Aliens, I kept thinking that if Clint Eastwood ever makes another Western, he might do well to cast Ford in a role that allows him fully to explore his dark side, something he can’t do in a movie as lightweight as Cowboys & Aliens.

Audiences likely will ride this Cowboy to financial success, but the alien invasion does more than threaten the denizens of a dusty western town; it forces the movie toward the expected raucous climax in which a small band of humans tries to defeat the aliens. A reminder: Noise is not the same as real excitement.

Cowboys and Aliens arrives at the nation's multiplexes with criticism-defying protection. Too crazy? “Well what did you expect from a movie called ‘Cowboys & Aliens?’ Logic? Coherence?”

Not necessarily, but I did expect a movie that did more than put its cowboys, aliens and us through a catalog of summer-movie paces.

Cowboys & Aliens, which has a fair measure of violence and gore, can also be amusing, but its aim isn’t dead-on. There’s no reason aliens (assuming there are any) couldn’t have visited Earth during the 19th century. The characters in Cowboys & Aliens don’t seem quite as amazed about this as you might think.

It’s almost as if they – like us – have seen too damn many movies.

'Morning Glory' tries for comic sunshine

Harrison Ford gives a grumpy, one-note performance. Rachel McAdams works hard at looking like a TV producer who's working hard, and Patrick Wilson finds himself in a badly undernourished romance. All of these statements help define Morning Glory, a mild comedy about television that lacks either the character development or satirical bite of Broadcast News, a 23-year-old movie that touched on many of the same issues. * As Morning Glory unfolds, it becomes clear -- at least it did to me -- that the comedy has been misconceived. * Diane Keaton is a comic standout as an egotistical co-anchor of a once-prominent morning television show on an all-news cable station. Had the movie revolved around Keaton and McAdams, as a young executive producer who's hired to boost the show's dreadful ratings, it might have been a true delight. * But Morning Glory opts to focus on the troubled relationship between McAdams and Ford, who plays a once formidable TV newsman who has been shelved in an era when the line between news and entertainment has blurred. * Thanks to a mildly convincing plot contrivance, Ford's Mike Pomeroy is assigned to co-anchor Daybreak, a show he views with the kind of contempt one might reserve for ... well ... a crappy morning TV show. * Director Roger Michell finds a few laughs here -- most centered on broad comedy involving the show's weatherman, and Jeff Goldblum scores as the network's acerbic top dog, but the movie can't overcome a script that seems unclear about what it's after. Satire? Romance? Laughs? Social commentary? Whatever the movie's searching for, it doesn't find enough of it to lift Morning Glory into the upper echelon of fall releases.