Post-apocalyptic sci-fi that tilts juvenile

Mortal Engines can't find characters to keep us interested in its 'visionary' design.

It's not difficult to see why Lord of Rings guru Peter Jackson might have wanted to be involved with Mortal Engines, a big-screen adaptation of a British YA novel by Philip Reeve.

Set 1,000 years in the future, the movie includes a massive version of London that moves through a post-apocalyptic world on giant treads. It also features a balloon habitat that floats in the sky, a variety of scruffy looking characters who could be extras from a Road Warrior movie and a Lazarus Warrior, a once-human creature who gave up memory and pain to become a mostly mechanical creation.

These are the ingredients in which Jackson, who serves as the movie's producer and one of its writers, may have seen mind-blowing visionary possibilities.

Under the direction of Christian Rivers, these possibilities are only partially realized. It's telling, for example, that the movie's Lazarus Warrior -- he's named Shrike -- might be its most interesting character.

The rest of the cast is stuck playing characters who have a generic quality, cardboard cutouts roaming this imaginatively conceived (if seldom plausible) world.

A complicated story involves the evil plans of one of mobile London's big-wigs (Hugo Weaving). Weaving's Thaddeus Valentine has a strikingly blonde daughter (Leila George) who idolizes him but who eventually will be forced to face disillusionment about her father.

This isn't much of a spoiler because the bulk of the action revolves around two other characters. A history buff named Tom (Robert Sheehan) devotes himself to collecting pre-apocalypse memorabilia while harboring dreams of being an aviator. Toasters from "ancient" times fascinate Tom.

The plot contrives to throw Tom into the company of Hester Shaw (Hera Hilmar), a young woman with a scarred face and a deep hatred for Valentine.

Expelled from London, Tom and Hester find themselves on the run but eventually must return to the city to stop Valentine from executing his hyper-destructive plans, which (of course) involve an ambition to make himself the world's most powerful man.

Some of the movie's set pieces (an opening chase in which the mobile London chases a smaller city and "ingests" it) fly by in an entertaining fashion but you'd have to have emerged from a 50-year coma not to know that the initial hostility of Hester toward Tom eventually will turn to love.

The movie manages to wring a bit of humor out of what it calls "old tech," i.e. stuff that's recognizable to audiences in 2018.

Before the movie's great final battle, Tom and Hester visit a city constructed behind a wall and led by a monkish looking Asian man who screams of fictional stereotyping. This, after hooking up with Anna Fang (South Korean pop star Jihae), a pilot with her own agenda and a haircut so severe, it might have edges that cut.

The final battle involves Valentine's deployment of a weapon that would have been at home in an old Flash Gordon serial, but by then, it's difficult to believe anything's really at stake, aside from finding a way to conclude the proceedings.

Oh well, Mortal Engines doesn't generate disdain -- at least it didn't in me -- but it's difficult to avoid thinking that not enough has been accomplished by a scrapheap of a movie that can feel both old-fashioned and old hat.

An epic in bite-sized chunks

The eagerly awaited adaptation of Cloud Atlas boasts a large cast, carloads of make-up, six major stories, nearly three hours worth of visual bravura and a variety of amusements. Transcendence? That's another story.

First, the good news: For a movie that's two hours and 52 minutes long, Cloud Atlas does not present viewers with an endurance test. That's no small accomplishment.

Directed by Lana Wachowski, Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer, the movie probably shouldn't work at all. It alternates (not always elegantly) between six stories in six different genres, involves actors playing multiple roles, tests the limits of make-up artistry and tries to wrap things up with a cosmic bang that makes room for a string of woozy ideas about reincarnation, the connectedness of all life, the elasticity of boundaries and more.

By any measure, this lavishly conceived adaptation of David Mitchell's 2004 novel should be breaking out in flop sweat before it hits the 30-minute mark. The fact that it doesn't stands as testimony to the skill, commitment and ambition of the Wachowskis (still best known for their Matrix movies) and to Tykwer, who made his biggest mark with Run Lola Run.

The most enjoyment I got out of Cloud Atlas involved trying to identify the various actors in their multiple guises as the movie fragmented into mini-hunks of narrative spread over a half-a-dozen settings and time periods -- from 1846 to a post-apocalyptic future.

The stories in Cloud Atlas are told by an aged tribesman named Zachry (Tom Hanks) and are presented as a massive campfire tale with mythic and spiritual overtones. All stories are one story -- or something to that effect. You can tell that the two Wachowskis and Tykwer are after something big, but Cloud Atlas seems to work best in small doses, as its many stories unfold.

A brutal comic high point arrives when Hanks (as the lower-class author of a book called Knuckle Sandwich) tosses an imperious British critic off the roof of a skyscraper during a book party.

In fairness to critics, I should point out that there probably are at least as many filmmakers worthy of such treatment as critics, but that's another story.

If you're unfamiliar with the book, a quick idea about a few of its stories. The tale involving the author of Knuckle Sandwich focuses on Timothy Cavendish (Jim Broadbent), a publisher who gets crosswise with a brother who imprisons him in an institution for the aged.

Then there's the futuristic story in which a genetically engineered beauty called a fabricant (Doona Bae) is rescued from a life of servitude by Hav-Joo Chang (Jim Sturgess). Bae's character is then propelled into a leadership position in a revolt against an oppressive regime of elites. The year: 2144. And, yes, it's just here that the movie tips its hat to Soylent Green, the 1973 visit to dystopia starring Charlton Heston.

There's even an appearance by the devil himself (Hugo Weaving), who tries to lure Zachry to the dark side by encouraging his baser instincts and by over-acting.

I won't recount all the stories, but will say that they seem intended to make a point that goes something like this: In the eternal recurrence of everything, reincarnated beings keep playing different roles in different dramas, all of which build toward last-minute escapes that, in this movie, can seem more corny than profound.

Speaking of profundity. The screenplay (also by the movie's directorial trio) takes a long time before advancing a variety of spiritual points that seem to have been sprinkled over the movie's dialog like fairy dust. I don't think it's possible to take them as seriously as the movie seems to want us to take them.

If I were going to be a little more arch about it, I'd say that thematically, Cloud Atlas is a bit like climbing the world's highest mountain in search of an ultimate truth only to find a Port A Potty at the summit. The reward isn't nearly as loft as you'd hoped, but why be arch? Could get you thrown off a roof.

The cast is large and, for the most part, effective. If you get bored, you can play a game called, Trying to Spot Hugh Grant, who in several scenes has been made to look nothing like himself.

You also can express gratitude to the movie gods that Halle Berry, in a variety of roles, seems to have subdued her instincts for overdoing things. I'm sure I'm forgetting someone, but the rest of the cast includes Susan Sarandon, James D'Arcy, Ben Whishaw, David Keith and many more actors of varying pay grades.

Credit Weaving for outdoing Louise Fletcher in a Nurse Ratched-like role, part of the segment in which Broadbent's publisher character (remember him?) is confined to an asylum.

Fans of the Matrix should be mollified by the ways in which the Wachowskis have created Neo-Seoul, the city in which the futuristic scenes of 2144 take place.

In a segment set in 1975, you can discover what Hanks looks like with blonde hair, not necessarily a revelation but a minor curiosity nonetheless.

Strictly in movie terms, the trio of talented directors messes up the pacing of the final scenes, which (at least to me) felt as if they should have concluded about 15 minutes before they actually did. But there's no denying the Wachowskis and Tykwer also whip up some magical images. If nothing else, the movie tends toward visual opulence, some of it expressed with wit.(See below).

So what the hell am I saying here? I guess I'm saying that there's plenty to enjoy in this over-stuffed cornucopia of a movie, but if you're looking for transcendent cinema, you may be disappointed. For all its ambition, Cloud Atlas -- like much of life -- is entertaining only in parts. Is it damning with faint praise to say that rather than stirring my emotions or elevating my consciousness, this extra-large helping of movie mostly amused me?

A salute for 'Captain America'

It may not be great, but the latest Marvel Comics origins movie is better than expected.

Captain America: The First Avenger begins where many comic book stories find their origins -- with vicious Nazis. As World War II rages, a fiendish Nazi harnesses a power that is both occult and mythical. Johann Schmidt, a fiend with the towering posture of a wannabe ubermensch, threatens to destroy all of the world's major cities.

Back in the U.S., diminutive Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is devastated by the 4-F rating he's assigned by his draft board. Rogers, who weighs an anemic 90 pounds, wants to fight for his country. Eventually, he's given an opportunity to participate in a top-secret program designed by German refugee scientist, Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci with a German accent).

Here's where the comic book fun begins in earnest. After being placed in a machine that zaps his cells, Rogers emerges with a health club physique. He also has lightening speed and the ability to out-leap even the most gifted high jumper. He's transformed into Captain America, and almost immediately swings into action.

I'm condensing, of course, but that's the gist of director Joe Johnston's hearty contribution to the origin stories that precede next year's release of The Avengers. Johnston, who directed the retro favorite Rocketeer, again dips into nostalgia. It's as if the 1940s world he creates == an America full of futuristic expositions and war-bond drives -- has been assembled from dozens of patriotic posters and old movies, a fantasy version of the past that's particularly satisfying.

Evans brings self-effacing charm to the title role. He's joined by a variety of strong performers. Tommy Lee Jones plays a gruff Army officer who's not entirely sold on Rogers' abilities. Hayley Atwell portrays the Army officer who assists in Rogers' training and who eventually becomes his love interest -- in chaste fashion, of course.

Villainy is supplied by Hugo Weaving who plays Dr. Schmidt, a character who eventually reveals himself as Red Skull, a man with a skeletal face that clearly places Johnston's movie in the land of the comic book. Red Skull looks as if his skin has been ripped off, exposing the raw underside of a countenance that already seemed plenty evil.

The action sequences in Captain America tend to be somewhat extended, which I found a bit boring. But there are plenty of battles for action fans, and a prologue and epilogue that explain how Captain America will be catapulted into the present for the upcoming Avengers movie.

And, yes, in some sense, Captain America, like Thor, is a preview of coming attractions for The Avengers, which promises a mega-helping of Marvel Comics heroism.

Still, Captain America has some kick, and it can be found in the star-spangled spirit that, like its title character, carries the day.