No hero worship in this 'Robin Hood'

 There's revisionism, and then there's revisionism writ so large that its undermining of expectation becomes a distraction. 

  That's how I felt about director Michael Sarnoski's The Death of Robin Hood, a movie that shreds the Robin Hood myth while asking us to acknowledge the gulf between reality and the stories we tell to mask its brutalities. Five minutes into the unrelieved grimness Sarnoski creates, and you may  find yourself hoping for a bit of illusion.

    Sarnoski, who directed Nicolas Cage as an isolated former chef in Pig, again takes us to a place where possibilities for redemption seem remote, perhaps impossible. This Robin Hood, played by a bearded, grizzled Hugh Jackman, insists that all the stories told about him are fabrications. He sees himself as a thief who terrorized people and killed for the fun of it, more criminal than lovable rogue.

    Sarnoski and cinematographer Pat Scola keep the movie's palette dark and grim, so much so that when sunlight appears, we realize we've lost touch with any form of warmth. Also missing is the verdant foliage of Sherwood Forest. Robin and the other characters are consigned to mud-caked struggles staged on rocky, forbidding landscapes. 

    A tone of brutal realism paves the way for a slender story that introduces us to Little John (Bill Skarsgard). A man devoted to Robin, John has been thwarted in his attempt to lead a normal life with a wife and kids. Margaret (Faith Delaney), one of John's children will figure in the plot when, late in the picture, she looks to Robin for help.

     To hide themselves from foes, Robin and Little John assume aliases. Robin becomes Randolph. Little John tried to lead a straight life as Edward.

    As it turns out, Robin's rampant carnage has left him with a string of revenge seekers, most of them relatives of those he viciously dispatched. In an early battle to recover John's home from invading outlaws,  Robin is badly wounded. 

    After the mayhem, Little John deposits Robin at an island priory and pretty much disappears from the movie.  Sister Brigid (Jodie Comer), a woman with healing powers, presides over the priory where displaced folks seem to have gathered. 

    The spiritual glow of Comer's character reinforces the notion that there's more at stake for Robin than flesh wounds.  He has so damaged his soul that cruelty no longer makes an impression on him. A damaged leg has left him a dead man limping.

      At the priory, Robin also meets a leper (Murray Bartlett), who seems to have a preternatural understanding of Robin's struggle. Struggle may be too strong a word because Jackman makes it seem as if Robin already knows that he's doomed himself. He has slaughtered his own humanity.

      Sarnoski, who also wrote the screenplay, can't embed all his themes in a dramatically evolving way. They sometimes protrude in dialogue like arrows fired by Robin into his victims' heads.  

     Of course, we know where the movie is headed. Sarnoski stages Robin's death scene with poetic gravity and hints of grace. No spoiler here. It would have been the ultimate cheat if Robin didn't die in a movie entitled The Death of Robin Hood.

     Late-picture attempts to show a growing attachment between Robin and Margaret arrive in a low-key fashion that dims optimism for any huge turnaround. As much as possible, Robin responds, helping to make a bow for the child and teaching her how to skin small animals. 

    He also makes an unexpected choice with regard to a  young man (Noah Jupe) who turns up at the priori, looking to avenge the killings inflicted by Robin and Little John on his family during another display of unholy wrath.

    The movie treats its cutthroat Robin with a bit of ambiguity at the end, but for most of the movie, a resigned Robin twists impassively on the spit on which his soul roasts.

    Robin's self-awareness precludes the kind of inner struggle that might have given the movie more spark.  Robin knows he's doomed from the start, a man consumed by a life without conscience, constraint, or compassion. 

     So rather than a drama about a man reckoning with his history, the movie becomes a lugubrious dirge for a man who never was a hero, as well as for the myths that we consume to dull the edges of our own troubling encounters with reality.

    That's a potentially rich idea, but there's monotony in Sarnoski's unrelenting bleakness. Sarnoski tries so hard to give the movie thematic depth that his characters are imprisoned by the concepts the movie considers. This Robin Hood is so defeated by the weight of his past, he might as well be wrapped in a shroud.

      

    

      

'Sheep Detectives' on the case

  What a preposterous idea. Who wants to watch a movie about a flock of sheep intent on discovering who murdered their beloved shepherd? Director Kyle Balda (Despicable Me 3, Minions: The Rise of Gru) turns to live action in The Sheep Detectives and finds more charm than any movie about sleuthing sheep deserves. 

  Based on German novelist Leonie Swann's Three Bags Full, Sheep Detectives has its eye on younger viewers but doesn't leave their adult escorts far behind. Sheep Detectives smartly follows a standard whodunit arc, arriving at the expected plot points with pleasing efficiency.

   The sheep know the mystery formula because the shepherd -- Hugh Jackman's George Hardy -- used to read them detective novels before they retired to the barn for a night's rest. Balda adds a bit of darkness to the bucolic background. The good-guy shepherd is murdered early on, reducing Jackman's screen time, and the story makes room for greedy ambition among its human characters.

   Overall, though, The Sheep Detectives involves endearing CGI animals who speak to one another in English. (Human characters can't hear them). Lily (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) portrays the flock's leader. Regina King gives voice to Cloud, a sheep who gets by on good grooming. 

   Previous to the loss of their caretaker, the sheep had been living an idyllic life. They suppress bad memories, and soothe themselves with a belief about the afterlife: Sheep don't die; they turn into fluffy clouds. Chris O'Dowd's Mopple is the only sheep who remembers the flock's history. Byran Cranston voices a ram who lives apart from the rest of the group.

   A winter lamb, rejected by the others, paves the way for an instructional layer about tolerating creatures who don't fit in.

   The town's human population includes Derry (Nicholas Braun), a policeman of blatant incompetence. Emma Thompson signs on as a brittle lawyer who tries to administer the late shepherd's will.  Molly Gordon plays the shepherd's daughter; she hasn't seen her father in years. The town's butcher, the appropriately named Ham (Conleth Hill), regards the sheep as potential source of profit. Nicholas Galitzine portrays a reporter who's investigating the murder, and Hong Chau plays the operator of the town's hotel.

   The human characters add some of the eccentric flavor of an Ealing comedy to a story set in the English countryside. 

   It's a stretch to think of The Sheep Detectives as a family-oriented classic, but the movie proves amusing enough to earn its place in the world of talking animals that speak the language of quirky entertainment.

Sometimes a little corn helps

 Calling a movie corny usually qualifies as a condemnation. Let's call Song Sung Blue an exception to the rule. Starring Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson, the mostly buoyant Song Sung Blue tells the story of a Milwaukee couple that finds its calling with a Neil Diamond tribute act.

  And, yes, the movie makes heavy use of Sweet Caroline, a Diamond anthem that fans can't get enough of -- even if the movie's characters think overuse diminishes Diamond's other achievements.

   You'll hear lots Diamond tunes, all packaged with verve and presented by Jackman and Hudson with crowd-pleasing gusto that doesn't tarnish when the movie takes a shockingly dark turn involving Hudson's character.

    Director Craig Brewer (Hustle & Flow, Dolemite is My Name) gets the most out of a pairing in which Jackman, as an alcoholic auto mechanic with musical ambitions, and Hudson, as a single mom and hairdresser who begins her career doing spot-on Patsy Cline impersonations.

    Jackman's Mike and Hudson's Clair soon dub their act Lightning & Thunder, and become local sensations. He's Lightning. She's Thunder.

   At one point, the duo even serves as the opening act for Pearl Jam. Eddie Vedder (John Beckwith), Pearl Jam's frontman, recognizes that Lightning & Thunder can energize crowds with liberating verve.

    It doesn't take long for Mike and Claire to form a family that includes her teenage daughter Rachel (Ella Anderson) and her younger son (Hudson Hensley). Mike's daughter (King Princess) also fits into the family, though with a bit more difficulty, and the two teenage girls form a convincing bond.

    The film has its oddities. Mike's manager  (Fisher Stevens) also happens to be his dentist. Jim Belushi appears as a booking agent who lands Lightning & Thunder jobs at venues that don't exactly qualify as glamorous. Michael Imperioli plays a Buddy Holly impersonator who joins the Lightning & Thunder band.

     In a disarming turn, Shyaporn Theerakulstit portrays  the owner of a Thai restaurant who hires Mike to run karaoke nights when a horrific accident leaves Claire depressed and slipping into a fog induced by painkillers.

     Brewer keeps things humming, skimming through incidents that might have sunk the movie. Rachel's unplanned pregnancy, for example, is dealt with a little too breezily.

      Based on a 2008 documentary by Greg Kohs, the movie feels authentic enough, though, and Brewer isn’t afraid to jerk a few tears. Even if you haven't been yearning to take a plunge into Neil Diamond nostalgia, Hudson’s dynamism and the movie’s high spirits make for a rewarding diversion.

     

     

An overloaded 'Deadpool & Wolverine'

   I saw Deadpool & Wolverine on a giant IMAX screen, yet I wouldn't call this wild foray into the Marvel Universe a movie. It's more like a variety show featuring a surfeit of Marvel characters, two bantering hosts (Deadpool and Wolverine) and enough chaotic action to barrel through two hours and seven minutes. 

  Director Shawn Levy punctuates the show with profane one-liners, self-conscious swipes at Marvel tropes, playful violations of the illusory fourth wall, and an appearance by Peggy, a mixed-breed dog named as Britain's Ugliest Dog in 2023.

    In short, no one will accuse Deadpool & Wolverine of skimping.

    Ryan Reynolds (as Deadpool) and Hugh Jackman (as Wolverine) headline the show, which does have a plot of sorts. Deadpool and Wolverine join forces to save the multiverse time stream in which Deadpool (aka Wade Wilson) operates --  or some such.

    Do we really care about the outcome? Not much; the movie has less to do with plot than with the collection of sideshows that dominate its superhero circus.

     A second-tier group of villains includes Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen of Succession fame), Cassandra Nova (Emma Corbin), who happens to be Professor X's evil twin, Lady Deathstrike (Kelly Hu), and Pyro (Aaron Stanford). If these names mean nothing to you, you've either avoided or escaped the MCU web and can stop reading.

     At one point, Deadpool and Wolverine are banished to The Void, which seems to be a place composed of Mad Max outtakes and where characters from various strains of the multiverse mix and mingle. 

     A team of additional Marvel characters eventually joins  Deadpool, whose goal is to earn his place as an important contributor in the Marvel Universe of superheroes. He wants to be part of the Marvel A-team.

    One of the movie's producers,  Reynolds offers a steady stream of Deadpool snark, much of it aimed at Wolverine, whose chiseled torso and bulging biceps suggest an abiding aversion to body fat.

     As for Jackman's performance, let's just say that if there's ever an Oscar for sneers and snarls, challengers should throw in their towels now.

      Nostalgia becomes part of the mix. Wolverine even dons the yellow and blue suit that harkens back to another comic book era. 

      The screenplay makes several references to 20th Century Fox, the studio associated with the X-Men films. Disney acquired Fox and that's mentioned as well, an over-used inside joke that tells us that Marvel fans are supposed to be as familiar with MCU's corporate saga as they are with the characters.

      Need more info? Early on, Deadpool returns to ordinary life, working as a used car salesman. Wolverine's return from the dead receives a humorous gloss. At one point, an army of alternate universe Deadpools appears: A bloated baby Deadpool tops the list of sight gags.

    Known for the Night at the Museum franchise, Levy makes his Marvel debut with a shamelessly raucous addition to the Marvel Universe. It's not worth pointing out instances of fan service in Deadpool & Wolverine; the entire movie qualifies as fan service.

      My bet. Hardcore fans will gorge on this heaping Marvel meal; others might prefer to seek their big-screen nourishment elsewhere.

     

     

A frustrated father and a troubled son

 In adapting his stage play, The Son, for the screen, director Florian Zeller finds emotional moments that ring true amid many that miss badly. Zeller, the French playwright who directed The Father (2020), explores what happens when a father (Hugh Jackman) -- divorced and remarried -- tries to keep his mentally troubled son Nicholas (Zen McGrath) from ruining his life. Jackman's convincingly exasperated performance reflects the difficulty of communicating with a kid who dissembles and has little insight into his self-destructive behavior. The New York-based story kicks off when Nicholas's former wife (Laura Dern) asks Jackman's Peter for help dealing with Nicholas, who has been skipping school. Peter and his wife Beth (Vanessa Kirby) take in the seventeen-year-old, a decision that's complicated by Peter and Beth's situation; they've recently become parents to a new infant son. Nicholas's increasing inability to cope diverts Peter's attention from work and the important Washington job he's about to land. During a trip D.C., he's lectured by his high-achieving, bullying dad, played by a briefly seen Anthony Hopkins in a powerful scene. Among the movie's problems: We don't really get to know Nicholas, partly because he keeps himself hidden and partly because he's reduced to a single dimension: The problem kid who resents his father for leaving his mother. The movie contrives to reach its expected conclusion with Zeller adding a misguided scene that just doesn't play. Too bad. The Son misses an opportunity to deal convincingly with a difficult but important subject.

A less-than-memorable 'Reminiscence'

   Few genres have proven as consistently intriguing as film noir. At the same time, the lingering influences of noir have created movies that display their noir trappings in such blatant fashion that they border on parody. 

   Sadly, that's the case with Reminiscence, a sleekly mounted mix of sci-fi and noir tropes set in a climate ravaged Miami where the streets are perpetually flooded.

    Hugh Jackman stars in a story built around a gimmick. Jackman's Nick Bannister operates a business in which clients don a headset, climb into a tank, and take guided trips through their memories. 

    An intolerable present has created a need for escape into the past -- and clients are eager to pay for it. 

    Director Lisa Joy (a showrunner for HBO's Westworld) makes it seem as if Jackman is watching a movie. The memories of his clients experience are visible to him in hologram form, turning him into a voyeur who peers into other people's lives.

     Thandiwe Newton plays the savvy Watts, a woman who assists Nick in his business and plays the role of devoted sidekick when the going gets rough and violent -- as it must.

    This being the world of noir, a femme fatal must become part of the tale. One day, Nick is about to close up shop when a customer pounds on the door. Enter Mae (Rebecca Ferguson), a woman who might as well be carrying a sign that says, "I'm beautiful and dangerous." 

    Nick is jolted.

     So are we -- by the flagrantly cliched feeling of the moment, followed by a later scene in which Mae sings a sultry version of Where or When, a song with lyrics that mirror the movie's time-warped themes. ("It seems we stood and talked like this before.")

     When Mae suddenly disappears, Nick sets out to find her, delving into her past in the bargain. His journey carries him into an underworld of drugs and shady characters and a plot that's too convoluted to engage.

      Grimly obsessive as Nick, Jackman may not wish to press this one into his book of indelible memories. Ferguson seems stuck playing a type rather than a character.

     Among the more colorful miscreants Nick encounters: Saint Joe (Daniel Wu),  a drug czar who hangs out in a New Orleans nightspot, and Cyrus Booth (Cliff Curtis), a corrupt cop who supplies most of the movie's menace and who participates in a big fight scene with an underwater finale.

    A powerful businessman (Brett Cullen), his wife (Marina de Tavira), and creepy son (Mojean Aria) also figure into the proceedings, slimy rich types who have enough money to avoid the worst of dystopian existence.

    Joy strains to create a Bladerunner vibe, but a generic quality and the lead characters to go with it prove too much to overcome.

    Nick narrates the story, delivering lots of second-rate dialogue that has the ring but not the sting of noir. 

   "Nothing is more addictive than the past," he says at one point.

   Not in this movie.

Gary Hart's fall from political grace

The Front Runner doesn't quite make it as a relevant foray into the world of journalism and politics.

In 1987, Gary Hart fell from political grace. Hard.

A sure bet to win the Democratic nomination for the presidency in 1988, Hart was undone by names that suddenly dominated the news, notably, a girl named Donna Rice and a yacht named Monkey Business.

Hart defended himself against charges of marital infidelity by insisting that his private life was no one’s business but his own. He was staunch in his resolve, but couldn't save himself.

Hart’s fall probably is destined to become a footnote in American political history, unless you’re convinced — as some are — that Hart’s story changed journalism and the fate of the US. That’s a heavy burden for one man to carry and it’s also a burden that the movie The Front Runner can’t carry, either.

Based on All the Truth is Out, a fine book by journalist Matt Bai, The Front Runner tries to take an encompassing approach to Hart’s story, leaning toward a view that blames the press — particularly a couple of Miami Herald reporters — for staking out Hart’s Washington, D.C. townhouse in hopes of confirming a dalliance with Rice.

As a result, the press and the national debate became focused on character (or lack of it) instead of the salient issues of the day -- or so the argument goes.

Director Jason Reitman had a hand in writing the screenplay, along with Bai and Jay Carson, a political operative who also works in the entertainment business, having done multiple duties on Netflix's House of Cards. The screenplay makes various points throughout but Front Runner remains frustratingly diffuse.

Hugh Jackman has been cast as Hart. Jackman does as well as possible in conveying Hart’s intelligence, his insistence on not answering certain kinds of questions and his refusal to listen to a staff that knew he was in more trouble than he realized.

The peripheral performances are a mixed bag. Steve Zissis and Bill Burr portray two Miami Herald reporters, narrowly focused guys who see only one side of the journalistic argument: Get the story, let the chips fall where they may.

Mamoudou Athie plays a Washington Post reporter (a composite figure) who agonizes about what his editors want him to ask Hart. Ann Devroy appears as an editor at the Washington Post who claims that the press isn't going too far: Powerful men shouldn’t abuse their power with impressionable young women.

Molly Ephraim has a nice turn as a Hart aide who understands how painful it is for Rice (Sara Paxton) to have been thrust into a maelstrom. Ephraim's character winds up selling Rice out anyway.

I’m an admirer of actor Alfred Molina, but even he can’t overcome the images of Ben Bradlee created by actors in previous movies (Jason Robards in All the President’s Men and Tom Hanks in The Post) — not to mention a couple of documentaries in which the real Bradlee can be seen.

J.K. Simmons, a Reitman regular, plays Hart's campaign manager, a role that could have used some expansion. Still, Simmons conveys the dejection that haunts a man who sees a cause in which he deeply believes going down the drain.

In dealing with Hart’s wife, Lee, who's played here by Vera Farmiga, the movie suggests that Lee and Gary Hart had reached some sort of agreement about how they’d conduct their marriage with Lee stipulating only that she didn’t want to be embarrassed by her husband. After the Rice debacle, Lee Hart found her home in Troublesome Gulch, Co., besieged by reporters. She became another victim.

Nearly everything about The Front Runner plays against unstated ironies. Bill Clinton survived Monica Lewinsky and the current resident of the White House has set a new bar for what we know about the sexual behavior of a president.

If you haven’t read Bai’s book, you should. But the real story of Gary Hart remains unknowable. Was he a hero who stood up for rights of privacy? Was he an arrogant man who believed he had a license to be reckless? Was he really brilliant enough to have altered the course of American history? Did he foresee every important problem we face today?

Reitman does a good job creating the chaotic swirl that surrounds a political campaign. He also inserts enough sardonic humor to make Front Runner entertaining but the movie can't sustain the kind of absurdist kick that Reitman brought to his best movies: Thank Your for Smoking, Juno, and Up in the Air.

If The Front Runner is meant to be taken as a cautionary tale, it arrives 30 years too late. In the current bold-faced clash between powerful politicians and journalists, the Hart story already has been consigned to small print.

Not the greatest movie musical

The Greatest Showman feels like a generic version of a big-screen musical.

A musical about P.T. Barnum -- a man whose name has become synonymous with all-American hucksterism -- might be a welcome addition to the current moment of hyperbole and rant. But The Greatest Showman, which stars Hugh Jackman as Barnum, isn't that movie.

Torn between mild criticism of Barnum's ability to sell anything and a view of Barnum as a champion of those who are different (he invented the circus sideshow), The Great Showman lands a middling blow.

Director Michael Gracey, an Australian who thus far has done lots of work in commercials, turns out a generic musical that features lots of bubbly music from a quartet of songwriters that include two lyricists from La La Land (Benj Pasik and Justin Paul). I never thought the music in La La Land reached knock-out levels; the same goes for the music in The Greatest Showman, which feels like a musical that has been engineered to hit all the appropriate notes -- from buoyancy to lyricism to foot-stomping rigor.

But the calculation is impossible to ignore as we learn the story of Barnum, a man from the wrong side of the tracks who married upward. Michelle Williams portrays Charity Barnum, a character who doesn't allow her affluent upbringing to stand in the way of her unwavering support for Barnum, a lower-class striver who wants to prove that he can give Charity the kind of life her snooty family regards as her birthright.

As the story develops, Barnum opens a circus/museum in New York City. He acquires a variety of acts -- from the diminutive Tom Thumb (Sam Humphrey) to a bearded lady (Keala Settle) with a robust singing voice.

The movie also shows how Barnum develops a relationship with the more artistically oriented Phillip Carlyle (Zac Efron). Barnum persuades Carlyle to join his circus as an investor and partner. Carlyle quickly falls for a trapeze artist named Anne (Zendaya), but class strictures and the racial prejudice of his family limit Carlyle's willingness to acknowledge his feelings publicly.

Once he establishes himself as a circus impresario, Barnum decides that he needs to class-up his act: he brings Swedish songstress Jenny Lind (Rebecca Ferguson) (a.k.a., the Swedish Nightingale) to the states for a series of concerts that make a ton of money.

Tempted by an opportunity to elevate his status, Barnum turns his back on the unusual people who helped him become rich. He devotes all his time to Lind, wrecks his marriage and eventually sees his fortunes reduced to nothing.

Will he come back? Does the circus have three rings?

Of course, Barnum eventually transcends his vanity and again becomes a champion for the purity of family love and for those society sees as "different," all of which plays like the hooey that Barnum tried to sell to the rude and scoffing multitudes of his day.

Jackman knows how to occupy the center of a musical and does so with verve, style and unflagging command. Efron holds his own as a sidekick. Williams and Ferguson, along with Zendaya, give the movie some welcome female presence.

The retro 1800s production design keeps pace with the performances, but a ton of effort and expense can't elevate The Greatest Showman to the upper levels of the movie musical pantheon. It's gaudy, overproduced and, for the most part, more committed to spectacle and shine than anything of lasting worth.

Wolverine's darkest journey yet

Logan admirably argues against unearned comic book kicks.

For reviewers, the threat of overstatement always looms. Safe to say, though, that Logan -- which appears to be the final installment of the Wolverine series -- is one of the darkest comic book movies yet, a plunge into personal crisis for a mutant who has grown weary of clawing his way through endless opposition.

Existential fatigue aside, Hugh Jackman's Wolverine still creates enough gruesome sights to make more squeamish audience members wince. Still, both literally and metaphorically, a depressed and nearly forlorn Wolverine has grown sick of himself and of the world.

I wonder, too, whether this addition to the Marvel Comics' inexhaustible repertoire isn't itself a kind of death wish for the exhausted comic-book genre -- or at least as close as a big-ticket movie can get to one. Inescapable whiffs of mortality and decay outweigh any suggestion that a new generation of mutants will continue the good fight.

Whatever his objectives, director James Mangold (Wolverine, 3:10 to Yuma and Walk the Line) boldly examines the gulf between comic book reality and life. In the world of comic books, superheroes seldom die, and even if they do, they somehow manage to resurrect themselves for the next installment. Not so in world Logan currently inhabits.

Bearded and looking as if he's been given a terminal diagnosis, Jackman introduces us to a Wolverine who's drowning his sorrows in alcohol and who, in the movie's opening, only reluctantly takes on a group of thugs who are vandalizing the limo that he's driving while trying to live out his days on society's frayed edge.

Mangold, who contributed to the screenplay, begins his story in 2029, a time when the fabled X-men have been scattered, their ranks depleted. Despite his best efforts to remain isolated, Wolverine finds himself looking after 11-year-old Laura (Dafne Keen), a girl who has been engineered to battle foes by a shady operation based in Mexico and run by the evil Dr. Zander Rice (Richard E. Grant).

OK, the desire to weaponize mutants isn't exactly fresh, but it's serviceable enough to keep Logan on its grim path.

Laura escaped Mexico in the company of her nurse (Elizabeth Rodriguez), a woman who wants to save the girl from those who would satisfy their lethal ambitions by turning her into a killing machine, a task for which she's been given Wolverine-like, retractable claws.

Laura believes that she can find refuge with other mutants in North Dakota, where she'll other mutants supposedly live. A skeptical Wolverine accompanies on her journey.

Perhaps drawing inspiration from the ever-growing slate of dystopian movies, Mangold creates a shabby world that's not immune from the ravages of aging, punctuating the dark mood with well-conceived action set pieces that don't skimp on vividly displayed brutality. Being clawed by Wolverine does not lead to pretty outcomes.

Wolverine and Laura are joined on their trek by Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), who has reached the age of 90 and who suffers from fits that, quite literally, shake the world around him. If he fails to take his medication, Charles convulses, creating tremors that rival a small earthquake.

When Logan's out trying to earn money, an embittered Caliban (Stephen Merchant), a mutant with tracking powers, watches over Charles who's living in a fallen water tower on an abandoned Mexican farm. It's Wolverine's job to supply Charles with the expensive medication that controls his seizures.

Jackman and Stewart play off each other nicely, and Keen more than holds her own as a wild child whose temper never should be aroused.

The movie's conclusion doesn't quite match its buildup, but Jackman and Mangold catch you up in the Logan's forbidding moods, making the movie one of the most gripping Marvel-inspired movies yet.

'Chappie' is ... finish the rhyme yourself

A robot with consciousness gets lost in another junkyard of a movie.

Chappie -- a movie about a robot with the same consciousness as humans -- never seems able to resolve a rash of internal conflicts. Is it unashamed B-movie trash? Is it a goofy send-up that turns a robot into a silly child? Is it a descendant of Short Circuit or of RoboCop? Is it something else entirely?

Because it never answers these questions Chappie turns into another junkyard of a movie that takes what might generously be called a casual approach to logic.

For director Neill Blomkamp (District 9 and Elysium), the third time hardly qualifies as a charm.

So what do we get?

Blomkamp's story about a robot who's given consciousness and then is captured by thugs features:

-- An over-amped Dev Patel as an engineer who has figured out how to make a fully conscious robot.
-- Then there's Hugh Jackman as a brooding former military man who wants to make the ultimate fighting robot, but whose creation has been put on hold.

-- And don't forget Yo-Landi Visser and Ninja, South African rappers who belong to a group called Die Antwoord. They appear as a team of tattooed miscreants who are softened to the point of redemption by their contact with Chappie.

-- Sigourney Weaver, in an entirely negligible role, plays the head of a company that builds police robots for the city of Johannesburg.

When the movie opens, the city's crime rate is down and the robot cops seem to be functioning with great efficiency.

This germ of an idea could have provided the basis for an interesting merger of sci-fi and police procedural.

Instead, Blomkamp vents his impulse for rampant action coupled with moments of oddball comedy in which the innocent robot refers to the shady characters who are trying to teach it their felonious ways as "mommy" and "daddy."

Chappie trying to mimic the strut and speech of the street-wise gangstas who have taken control of him seems puerile.

These ploys may have been intended to be amusing, but to me, they looked dumb, particularly because they're repeated ad nauseam as the movie builds (or perhaps stumbles) toward the moment when Johannesburg's robot police force is hacked and criminals run unimpeded throughout the city's streets.

One more thing before we leave the world of artificial intelligence behind.

I'm sick of seeing real newspeople in works of fiction. Chappie opens with CNN's Anderson Cooper narrating a feature about the way robots have helped reduce crime in South Africa. Cooper sets the stage for what's to come, but it's time newspeople gave more thought to the ways in which they're used to lend an aura of authenticity to otherwise preposterous movies.

Such participation may give a movie an air of credibility, but it doesn't necessarily do the same for the participating newspeople.

Back to Chappie.

At times, Blomkamp tosses an idea at us, say when Chappie -- who's rather lithe for a robot and is voiced by Sharlto Copley -- wonders why Deon bothered to make him in the first place if he's doomed to expire when his batteries, which can't be replaced, run out.

Just what we needed, a reminder of another movie, a bit of A.I.-like poignancy?

Chappie, by the way, ends in a way that seems to open the door for a sequel. I couldn't help thinking that a second movie might be more interesting than the one I just watched.

That doesn't mean I'm advocating for another helping. Take it as a statement about the inadequacies of this first installment.

'X-Men' + time travel = a winner

It's difficult -- perhaps impossible -- to say anything critical about the glut of comic-book movies without sounding like a cultural elitist and, even worse, a scold.

Still, I can't proceed with what's going to be a positive and even enthusiastic review of X-Men: Days of Future Past without expessing a little dismay about the way Hollywood continues to cannibalize the backwaters of popular culture.

This move toward the mainstream turns the once-forbidden fruit of comics into tentpole entertainments that can't help but diminish the pleasure of those who shared in what once amounted to a semi-secret society based on avidity and accumulated knowledge, much of it useless.

There, that's off my chest.

Now about X-Men. The latest installment is a superior helping of a big-screen Marvel comic that boasts creative special effects, a mostly involving story and some very good acting.

The story, which brings together various generations of X-men, begins in a horrible dystopian, war-riddled future. Things are so bad that Patrick Stewart's Professor X and Ian McKellen's Magneto have united in a last-ditch attempt to stave off the destruction of humanity.

To accomplish their goal, Professor X and Magneto employ the consciousness-shifting powers of Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) to send Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) back to 1973. Wolverine's time-travel mission: to prevent the assassination of industrialist Dr. Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) and, thus, alter the course of a history that otherwise would lead to wholesale slaughter.

Director Bryan Singer, who hasn't directed an X-Men movie since 2003, judiciously uses the '70s -- reminding us of everything from lava lamps, to the Vietnam War to Richard Nixon. Wisely, though, Singer doesn't overwhelm the story with the events and curiosities of the '70s: He uses them as punctuation to create an effective mixture of humor and gravity.

Upon returning to the '70s, Wolverine must locate younger versions of Professor X and Magneto, played respectively by James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender.
It's a bit of a stretch to think that McAvoy's Charles Xavier could mature into someone who looks like Patrick Stewart. But there's no faulting McAvoy's performance as a dissolute and cynical young man who has yet to find his inner nobility.

Fassbender, who like McAvoy has played this role before, is entirely convincing as the young Magneto, summoning the out-sized polarities of a personality that seems at ease with both its humane and malevolent impulses.

The key to the plot's resolution can be found in the character of Raven, a.k.a. Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), the shape-shifting mutant who can avert total doom and who also looks sleek in her form-fitting blue outfit.

The themes of this installment mimic those of previous movies. Society's mutants -- those who represent upward steps on the evolutionary ladder -- are scorned by those who either are threatened by their presence or want to harness mutant powers as a means of advancing personal agendas.

As one who has the latter ambition, Dinklage's Trask comes as close as we get to an identifiable villain. Trask has invented destructive creatures called Sentinels, which seem to threaten both humanity and mutants.

What else needs saying?

Not much really. Singer -- in his first X-men movie since 2003's X-Men 2 -- cooks up some fine special effects, among the most impressive, the elevation of an entire stadium that hovers perilously above the White House.

In all, X-Men: Days of Future Past proves entertaining and well-constructed, a helping of comic-book adventure that knows how to wink at itself without undermining its loftier purposes. These mostly boil down to a question as simple as, "Can't we all get along?"
Not all of the X-men are given equal time in this edition, but if Days of Future Past -- a title that sounds a bit too much like a grammar lesson -- stands as an exemplary addition to the never ending cycle of comic-book movies. If we have to have them, they should at least be this much fun.

A thriller under heavy thematic weather

Prisoners is one of the most effectively grim thrillers in a long time.

Denis Villeneuve's new thriller, Prisoners, brings an alarming shiver to the screen, not only because its story generates a dire and escalating sense of creepiness and dread, but because cinematographer Roger Deakins's corroborating imagery tends to be dark, damp and as unforgiving as the hard-driving rains of a Pennsylvania winter.

The French-Canadian Villeneuve (Incendies) has made a movie that sometimes feels as if it's happening in an alternate reality, one in which moral rot has penetrated the heart of a small Pennsylvania city.

That may sound more like the basis for a horror movie than a thriller, and it's worth knowing that Villeneuve -- working from a script by Aaron Guzikowski -- stirs suggestions of horror into the movie's intensely dour mix.

The title is apt in many ways, not the least of which is the way in which Villeneuve and Deakins depict the American landscape as one imprisoned by gloom, almost as if nature has become an accomplice in some ill-defined decline.

The story could have been inspired by any number of real-life crime scenarios. Hugh Jackman plays Keller Dover, a struggling carpenter whose life -- and that of his wife (Maria Bello) -- receives a terrifying jolt when his young daughter is kidnapped along with the daughter of a neighboring couple (Viola Davis and Terrence Howard).

Dissatisfied with the work of a local detective (Jake Gyllenhaal), Keller takes matters into his own hands, kidnapping a prime suspect, a young man (Paul Dano) who hasn't progressed beyond the mental age of 10. After being questioned by police, Dano's Alex Jones is released for lack of evidence.

Davis and Howard gradually slip from view as the script concentrates its moral ambiguities in the hands of Jackman (fierce and uncompromising) and Gyllenhaal (a cop with an eye twitch and a bad haircut).

Believing that only Jones can lead him to his daughter, Keller proceeds to imprison and torture the mentally challenged man, and the screenplay begins introducing a near-barrage of red herrings.

The initial disappearance of the children takes place during a Thanksgiving dinner that's being shared by Jackman and Bello and Howard and Davis. It's clear that the two families -- each of which also has an older child -- are accustomed to spending time together, but as the story progresses, it also becomes clear that Jackman's Keller is the most extreme member of this quartet; he's a recovering alcoholic, a hunter and an amateur survivalist who's deeply schooled in the notion that men take care of themselves and that society -- with its wafer-thin veneer of laws -- cannot be trusted.

The screenplay doesn't overemphasize Keller's dissatisfaction, but he's the kind of blue-collar guy who easily could feel that the system -- however he defines it -- might, at any moment, betray him.

Sporting gray hair and the shuffling walk of a woman aged beyond her years, Melissa Leo plays Alex's aunt, the woman who helped raise him.

Of course, we feel the anxiety of parents who aren't sure that their children remain alive. Of course, we feel the brutal effectiveness of torture scenes that take place in an abandoned apartment building that Keller owns but can't afford to renovate. And the film holds our attention through its 2 1/2-hour length.

It's difficult to discuss much more without spoilers, but know that Prisoners -- though encompassing, well-acted and morally ambitious -- includes a bit of overreaching in its finale, perhaps an attempt to underline the movie's thematic seriousness. at times, the screenplay loses credibility amid Villeneuve's thickening applications of tension and mood.

Unlike more traditional thrillers, Prisoners does not offer a totally cathartic sense of relief. It wraps things up, but the physical and moral dampness that pervades everything feels as if it might never dry.

Searching for his inner warrior

It may not be a classic, but The Wolverine proves solid.

Moving the Wolverine series to Japan seems to have been good for both Wolverine and for his audience. Efficiently titled and unafraid of an occasional quiet moment, The Wolverine turns out to be a worthy addition to the Marvel Comics gallery of big-screen superhero movies.

Hugh Jackman already has demonstrated his talents as a hero with anger management issues, but director James Mangold (Walk the Line and 3:10 to Yuma) proves that he's equally adept at creating a big-screen comic book.

As has been the case with most of this summer's "blockbuster" fare, Wolverine can't be called a total success: You'll find segments that sag and drag, but there's still plenty to pull you into a story about this troubled mutant, a character whose pain isn't only inflicted by enemies but by his own turbulent emotional life.

This time, Wolverine -- a.k.a. Logan -- even wonders whether a mutated life that includes immortality is really all that appealing.

If you're the sort of viewer who thinks that one terrific set piece is enough to put a movie over-the-top, then you'll be amply rewarded by a breathless fight staged atop a speeding bullet train.

The story also benefits from a considerable amount of Tokyo-style exoticism. Can any movie that makes room for stealthy Yakuzas be all bad? And what about the impressive, towering Samurai robot that stomps into the finale?

The movie's screenplay -- a Mark Bomback/Scott Frank adaptation of a 1982 comic book by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller -- places Logan at the center of a battle for control of one Japan's leading corporations. To up the dramatic ante, the screenplay contrives to deprive Wolverine of his super powers, making it increasingly difficult for him to kick the requisite amount of butt. He loses the ability to heal his wounds instantly. He may be headed for death.

Wolverine also is having troubling dreams about his late lover (Famke Janssen), a beautiful presence beckoning him to reunite with her in death.

The story moves Wolverine and his razor-sharp, retractable claws from an isolated life in Alaska to the bustle of Japan, forcing him into situations in which he must rediscover his inner warrior and renew his commitment to it.

At the beginning of the movie, Logan's totally fed up with fighting and in full Greta Garbo mode: He wants to be left alone. He lives a hermitic existence in a cave, venturing out for activities such as standing mournfully in the rain. He gets rained on a lot.

Once in Japan, it doesn't take long for Wolverine to wind up as the protector of beautiful Mariko (Tao Okamoto), the granddaughter of Lord Yashida (Hal Yamanouchi), a tycoon who owes his life to Wolverine. We learn about the relationship between Wolverine and Yashida in the movie's prologue, a compelling sequence set in Nagasaki at the precise moment when the U.S. dropped its second A-bomb.

The story also introduces a red-headed, punkish Japanese woman (Rila Fukushima), a character who becomes a kind of back-up for Wolverine, who needs all the help he can get to protect him from Mariko's sinister father (Hiroyuki Sanada) and a villainous blonde woman called Viper (Svetlana Khodchenkova). Viper is plenty attractive, but kissing her qualifies as a life-threatening mistake.

I wasn't overly impressed by Mangold's use of 3-D, but, in the main, director of photography Ross Emery has made a good-looking movie, taking full advantage of the Japanese settings and, at times, giving the story the feel of a James Bond movie, assuming 007 had hairy mutton chops and a really bad haircut.

Dull spots and all, Wolverine passes muster as one of the more solidly executed of summer's offerings. Thankfully, then, there's no need to sharpen any critical claws.

A dark, melodramatic 'Les Miz'

You may find imperfections, but the big-screen version of Les Miserables ultimately proves stirring.

The voices sometimes seem to be straining. An abundance of extreme close-ups tends to give the movie a feeling of cramped intimacy. Although filmed mostly on sets, the movie steeps itself in gritty 19th century realism. It's a musical with dirt under its fingernails.

I'm talking about Les Miserables, the big-screen adaptation of the much-revered musical that made its debut in Paris in 1980 and seems to have been in production somewhere ever since.

Melodramatic, operatic and seen through cinematographer Danny Cohen's dark lens, Les Miserables bypasses its imperfections, ultimately getting where it needs to go. It's less a story well-told than a production massively mounted, but that may be precisely what the material needs.

Based on an 1862 Victor Hugo novel, Les Miserables thunders its way through nearly three hours of suffering, death and melodrama, frequently miring its cast in mud, muck and -- as the title promises -- the kind of bone-deep misery that might have roused envy even in Dickens, himself no slouch when it came to injustice and suffering.

As directed by Tom Hooper (The King's Speech), Les Miserables is top heavy with marquee names, including Anne Hathaway, who tackles the role of the tormented Fantine in a performance in which emotion seems to spill from her every pore.

I'm not going to provide background for every character in Les Miz, but Fantine, you may recall, is a single mother, a status that caused her to be scorned and persecuted for profligacy in France of the 1800s. And, yes, it might be advisable to bone up on Hugo's story before you go because plot points breeze by as if propelled by wind machines.

The story centers on poor Jean Val Jean (Hugh Jackman), the ex-convict who violates his parole and spends a lifetime fleeing Javert (Russell Crowe), a lawman who applies justice like a lash. Amanda Seyfried turns up as Fantine's daughter, Cosette, a woman who eventually is sheltered by Jean Val Jean.

All of this takes place against a post-revolutionary historical backdrop in which the monarchy has been restored in France, and the people are suffering under the weight of too much regal indifference.

The movie's third act deals with the revolt of 1832, introducing us to Marius (Eddie Redmayne), a revolutionary who's smitten by Cosette. Be assured barricades will be stormed. The spirit of the people will be aroused. You will be stirred.

To heighten the feeling of emotional urgency, Hooper had his actors sing their numbers as the cameras rolled rather than relying on lip-synching. The technique is employed to mixed result.

Jackman, who has a history in musical theater, carries it off convincingly, as does Hathaway. Crowe, who has a background singing with rock bands, is only moderately successful. Trussed up in the costume of a 19th century lawman, Crowe moves around as if encased in plaster. Javert's a rigid guy, but Crowe never seems entirely comfortable playing him.

Hooper doesn't quite suffocate the production, but I wish he had let it breathe some, and I got tired of watching close-ups of the singers. Hooper must have wanted his camera to bring us close to the performances, but the face of a singer -- particularly when grappling with heavy emotion -- isn't always a thing of beauty.

The major numbers in Les Miserables -- At the End of the Day, I Dreamed a Dream and One Day More -- are effectively performed, and there's even a bit of comic relief. Sacha Baron Cohen makes an appropriately despicable and conniving Thénardier, an inn-keeper who for a time takes charge of Cosette. Baron Cohen receives an able assist from Helena Bonham Carter -- now a specialist in playing grotesque-looking women -- as Madame Thénardier. Samantha Barks makes a bit of splash as their daughter, Éponine.

I'm not a particular fan of musicals, and Les Miz involves wall-to-wall singing with almost no spoken dialogue. I can't exactly say that Les Miserables left me humming any of its tunes. But whatever problems the big-screen version has, I mostly enjoyed it and even felt a slight tingling of the spine during its finale. Put another way, Les Miserables has genuine theatrical power.

Robots could have written this script

The robots are fun, but the script never gets beyond cliches

In Real Steel -- a movie about boxing robots -- Hugh Jackman looks as if he's about to jump out of his skin. Forced to compete with tons of clanging heavy metal, an amped-up Jackman always seems to be trying for a knockout as a former boxer who now competes in the world of robot pugilism. The sport, if that's what it is, looks like a cross between cage fighting and professional wrestling.

Look, robot boxing isn't a half bad idea for a movie: Set in the near future, Real Steel suggests that we've reached a point where men no longer beat each other to a pulp, but use robots to channel their aggression. Too bad, a woefully unsophisticated script ties robot boxing to a sappy and overly familiar father/son story.

Jackman plays Charlie, a neglectful father who, during the course of the movie, gets to know his 11-year-old son (Dakota Goyo). It seems Charlie, an archetype of irresponsibility, skipped out on the boy's mother when he learned she was pregnant. After Mom's death, Charlie agrees to spend a summer with his son, providing the boy's uncle pays him off.

You needn't have studied film theory to know that the initial testiness between father and son will develop into something more affectionate. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but director Shawn Levy, best know for his work on the Night at the Museum series, doesn't exactly demonstrate a deft touch.

The supporting cast includes Hope Davis, as the boy's aunt, and Anthony Mackie, as a fight promoter, but people are secondary to the boldly presented smash-and-crash robot fights that develop as Charlie and son advance the career of Atom, a discarded sparring robot that earns a shot at the title.

Real Steel is far too predictable to garner much respect, but it did leave me with one question: Why wasn't it released during the summer, when it's a lot easier to forgive noise, immaturity and an onslaught of cliches?

'Origins' explores Wolverine's beginnings

I'm not an X-Men junkie. I can't tell you whether "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" will please those who've immersed themselves in the comic-book series. But as someone whose seen the "X-Men" movies, I can tell you that "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" generates enough heat to keep its heroic mutants on Hollywood's payroll.

Switching gears from his work in "Rendition," director Gavin Hood takes the helm of the series to tell us how Wolverine finds his way to mutant stardom. Hood tends toward streamlined thinking, clinging to the basics of comic-book filmmaking. He steeps "Origins" in bellicose melodrama, amped-up action and fleet editing. The movie clocks in at a reasonable 97 minutes.

Hood also embraces (perhaps too eagerly) the excesses of the comic-book form, and he seldom misses an opportunity to show off Hugh Jackman's torso. I know a woman who plans to see "Origins" only because of Jackman. She'll see a lot of him. At one point he appears in the buff, turning into Nude-o-rine, a mutant streaking across a green meadow. Wolverine seems to have no trouble finding time -- even during the most difficult situations -- to strip down to his T-shirt for a fight. Mostly, Jackson seems to be acting or flexing, which in this movie probably amounts to roughly the same thing.

Liev Schreiber makes a welcome addition to the cast. He portrays Victor Creed, the mutant who eventually turns into Sabertooth. Creed is Wolverine's brother, an animalistic mutant who embraces his status as something that sets him apart from the rest of society, particularly in areas concerning morals. A tightly edited opening credits sequence marches through several wars. Besides learning that mutants can recover from wounds that would kill any human -- a handy skill -- we see that Creed has no compunction about killing innocent people. He's the living, breathing dark side of the mutant force, and Wolverine constantly struggles to prove that he's not like his bad-boy brother.

Besides Shreiber, the biggest additions to the story are Danny Huston (as a rogue general) and Lynn Collins (as a teacher with whom Jackman's character becomes romantically involved when he flees government service and tries to live normally). Wolverine's attempt at domesticity does not involve a leap into some manicured U.S. suburb. He works as a lumberjack in Canada and lives in an isolated cabin atop a mountain bordered by spectacular cliffs. Collins' characters shares Wolverine's humble abode, but her role doesn't amount to much. Huston, on the other hand, seems sharp as a twisted military man who sees the mutants as potential WMDs.

In movies such as "Origins," government almost always can be counted on to do the wrong thing. At a time when polls tells us that most Americans are thinking positively about the present administration, this mistrust of official power may not resonate as loudly as it has in previous editions. Perhaps to compensate, "Origins" adds psychological gloss to its anti-government posturing; father/son conflicts and sibling rivalries dominate. Don't look for depth, though: These issues are so clearly pasted onto the movie's surface, they might as well be labeled.

If you seek out "Origins" do it because of your devotion to the boldness of its comic-book conceits and for a backgrounder on how Logan became Wolverine. I'm not suggesting that "Origins" is without logical flaws, but overall it computes, and it builds toward an ending that features a nice ironic touch. (I wish Hood hadn't bothered with a short scene that's dropped into the end credits. It ties up a loose end that didn't need tying and gives the movie an unneeded moral slant. I also could have done with one less agonized scream from Wolverine, who seems to drop to his knees and howl every time he hears tragic news.)

Hood, who won an Oscar for his South African movie "Tsotsi,'' keeps the pacing tight, and seldom wavers from his obligation to give the audience a mega-helping of Jackman. Buffed and ready, Jackman serves the role well, although I'm not sure he has the depth that a different actor might have brought to the proceedings. Maybe it doesn't matter. This isn't a movie that suggests; it screams its thoughts out loud, carrying them right into some typically bloated end-of-picture action.

"Origins" is not big on astonishing revelations. We learn how Jackman got those retractable metal claws -- devices that seemed hard to square with any known facts about evolution. Mostly, though, "Origins" takes familiar "X-Men" themes, and laces them throughout this look backward. Can mutants harness their powers for the good of mankind? Should they?

The action sequences are mostly good if overly abundant, and, with a couple of exceptions, the special effects are fine. I don't know whether "Origins" has blockbuster potential, and its tethered to the a problem most origin movies face: It must march us toward a conclusion that we've known from the outset. Still, "Origins" does enough to ensure that the series doesn't topple from its perch as a mainstay of our comic-book culture. Is it great? No. But I'd be wary of those who insist on sharpening their claws on it.