Jigsaw puzzles and skateboards

Kelly Macdonald gives Puzzle its center.

Kelly Macdonald, who made a major impression on HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, scores in Puzzle as a housewife living a drab life with her garage-owning husband (David Denman) and her two teen-age sons (Bubba Weiler and Austin Abrams). As the only person in the house who's happy, Dad can't seem to understand why everyone else doesn't share his contentment. A movie such as Puzzle isn't exactly shrouded in mystery: We know that Macdonald's Agnes is due for some break-out moves. She begins to find her voice when she discovers that she's a whiz at assembling jigsaw puzzles. She sees patterns where others see chaos. When Agnes travels to New York City to buy puzzles, she notices a note on the bulletin board of a game store. Turns out a wealthy investor (Irrfan Khan) is searching for a partner to enter a doubles jigsaw contest. Not everything Agnes does to break a mold defined by her Catholicism and convention feels credible, but Macdonald's tentative, slowly emerging performance gives the film a strong center. Based on a 2010 Argentinian film Rompecabezas, Puzzle employs a fine cast that's a bit let down by a story that never quite peaks. Still, director Marc Turtletaub respects the performances, which are all first rate and Puzzle tallies a distinct — if minor — victory.

An authentic look at world of skateboarding. Is that enough?

Skate Kitchen immerses us in the world of teenage girls who live in and help define skateboard culture. Director Crystal Moselle, who directed the fine documetary Wolfpack, gives her movie lots of authenticity, building her story around Camille (Rachelle Vinberg), a skateboarder who's frequently at odds with her single mother (Elizabeth Rodriguez). Mom thinks her daughter should find something better to do with her time than use Manhattan as a skateboard playground by latching on to the back of trucks or sliding down banisters, for example. Maybe Mom is right: Early on, Camille is "credit-carded," a phrase referring to what happens when an errant skateboard lands in a boarder's crotch. Moselle spends more time developing the skateboard scene than she does with a plot that ultimately finds Camille establishing a relationship with a boy (Jaden Smith) who once dated one of her skating buddies (Dede Lovelace). Frankly, I'm a little tired of movies steeped in teen culture, even when it's presented with a degree of realism that makes the movie feel as if it might have been derived from a documentary. I've read that the cast includes many non-actors, young women from something known as the Skate Kitchen Collective. A documentary about them might have been just as revealing as this meandering feature.

Worlds away from the original

Jurassic World may satisfy audiences, but for me, the thrill is gone.

Jurassic World, the latest successor to the 1993 megahit Jurassic Park, includes chatter about gene-splicing and a few other concessions to the moment, but the movie still manages to feel dated and even a bit stale: a mixture of standard shocks, rote plot developments, dinosaurs gone wild and cornball moments that play like bad Steven Spielberg.

There's a possible reason for that: Spielberg, who directed the original, served as an executive producer of this edition and selected its director and co-writer Colin Trevorrow.

Mostly unknown to mass audiences, Trevorrow made a much-admired indie, time-travel movie called Safety Not Guaranteed (2012). I wish I could say that Trevorrow hit this one out of the park (Jurassic, that is), but the best I can muster is subdued acknowledgement that he's assembled a movie that many will find satisfactory.

Alas, I am not a member of that group.

For me, Jurassic World lacks the bite and the fright of the original. It is neither ironic, nor completely sincere and its attempts at tongue in cheek humor feel more or less blatant.

At one point, for example, Trevorrow and his colleagues show a giant sea monster devouring a live white shark that's been suspended from a hook. Some may see this as a commentary on past blockbusters, but the filmmakers seem little concerned that the primary purpose of this brutal spectacle is to allow the audience to delight in a feeding frenzy.

This and lots of other action takes place at a theme park off the coast of Costa Rica. Tourists evidently flock to Jurassic World to enjoy views of dinosaurs in their natural habitat. The disasters of the first movie mostly have faded from memory, and Jurassic World has become a prime family destination.

True to show-business fashion, the owner of Jurassic World (Irrfan Khan) has pushed his staff to come up with a new and more frightening dinosaur. Heaven forbid that the ravenous multitudes become bored with the same old predators.

The wizards at Jurassic World have responded by genetically engineering a creature called Indominus rex, a massive white beast that's being kept under wraps. Think it eventually will get loose?

A whiff of a story blows through the increasingly rampant action. Two brothers (Nick Robinson and Ty Simpkins) are sent by their parents to visit their aunt Claire (Dallas Bryce Howard). As the super-busy manager of Jurassic World, Claire initially delegates responsibility for her nephews to a less-than-enthusiastic assistant.

Of course, things go awry. Indominus breaks loose, people are gobbled up or trampled, and Trevorrow piles on action that's supposed to quicken the pulse.

The actors often are stuck gaping at the special effects, cueing the audience that it's time to respond with a sense of wonder.

A word or two about the movie's wafer-thin characters.

Chris Pratt plays Jurassic World's raptor trainer and animal advocate. He also provides an obligatory love interest for Claire. Both Pratt and Howard are given an old-fashioned gloss that revolves around faux bickering and lame banter.

For her part, Howard's character spends most of the movie running from danger in high heels. A bow to the unabashed movie glamor of yesteryear?

In another failure of imagination, the movie introduces us to Jurassic World's head of security (Vincent D'Onofrio). This guy harbors conspiratorial ideas about using dangerous dinos for military purposes. Once again the government wants to co-opt science to bolster its own malignant ambitions.

In its most daring twist, the movie treats its raptors as tolerant of those who are friendly to them. At times, these raptors stop just short of being cuddly, thus reflecting the dual Spielbergian sense of danger and intimacy.

Here's one way to evaluate the movie: Close your eyes for 10 minutes. Then open them. Jurassic World will look pretty much like it did when you stopped watching. People will be running. Some will be eaten. Others will scream. It's chaos, I tell you. Chaos.

Not much thought seems to have been given to exacting sympathy for those poor souls who become dinosaur food, and the only thing about Jurassic World that made me scream were some obvious, early picture product placements. Too bad the dinosaurs didn't gobble some of them up, as well.

An Indian romance -- with great food

A story built around a contrivance -- but one that works.

The Lunchbox -- a first feature from Indian director Ritesh Batra -- may well leave you an appetite for two things: home-cooked Indian food and the possibility of bridging the loneliness gap.

Batra, who also wrote the screenplay, builds his movie around deliverymen who bicycle their way through Mumbai, some of them delivering hot lunches to a regular clientele. Some of these lunches are prepared by restaurants and some by spouses.

Nimrat Kaur) is one such wife, a woman who makes lunches for her mostly unappreciative husband (Nakul Vaid).

Ila wants to recapture the heart of a husband who has grown indifferent. With advice from an upstairs neighbor who yells instructions out her window, Ila begins putting special effort into preparing her husband's lunches.

Given the complexity of Mumbai's delivery system -- depicted by Batra in near-documentary style -- it's a wonder that anything arrives at the right place at the right time.

The story hinges on the fact that mistakes do happen. Thanks to a mix-up, Ila's delicious lunches wind up awakening the wrong palate. The recipient of Ila's culinary efforts is Saajan (Irrfan Khan), an older widower who works as an accountant and who is on the verge of retiring.

At first reluctantly and then with a bit more enthusiasm, Saajan begins to train his replacement (Nawazuddin Siddiqui).

When Ila learns that it's not her husband who's receiving the lunches, she begins enclosing small notes in the lunch boxes that are returned to her after each meal.

Saajan responds to the notes, and we become ensnared by the movie's big question: Will the two ever meet?

Beautiful and warm, Kaur is perfectly cast as Ila, and Khan projects a calm and steady presence. He's playing the kind of character we don't often see in films, a really good guy.

There's another refreshing thing about The Lunchbox. Like many movies, it's built around a contrivance. This time, though, the contrivance works to challenge the characters rather than to simply kick the story forward.

Batra seems to understand that a bustling, vital city either can revivify the spirit or drown it in loneliness. He has found an engaging way to spin a tale about two burdened hearts longing for fulfillment.

Ang Lee conquers 'Life of Pi'

A much-admired novel becomes a magical movie experience.

For years, I resisted Yann Martel's Life of Pi, a 2001 novel that I associated with soggy New Age thinking, the kind of spiritual eclecticism that lacks any genuine rigor. I also confess to being puzzled when I read that Ang Lee, a director of diverse interests and previously demonstrated talents in movies such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Broke Back Mountain, planned to make a big-screen adaptation of Martel's novel about a boy who finds himself shipwrecked on a life boat with a full-sized Bengal tiger.

Obviously, neither Lee nor anyone else could have attempted to tell such a story before the advent and continued sharpening of computer-generated imagery. (Lee employed CGI and footage of a real tiger in bringing Life of Pi to the screen.)

To both my surprise and relief, Lee's 3-D version of Martel's novel has moments so magical, they recall the splendid imagery of bygone classics such as The Thief of Bagdad. Life of Pi includes so many dazzling sights (from fanciful to fierce) that it instantly qualifies as one of the screen's bona fide visual splendors.

The story -- told by an adult Pi to a visitor to his Montreal home -- begins by recounting the experiences of Pi's younger days. As a child, Pi grew up in Pondicherry, India. His father owned and operated a zoo, where young Pi learned about animals. These early and highly idealized Indian scenes are entirely captivating and sensual, as if one were inhaling the story through jasmine-infused vapors.

As he grows, Pi becomes interested in religion -- or should I say, he becomes interested in many religions: Hinduism, Catholicism and Islam. He's open-minded about his spirituality, despite the pleas of his rationalist father to settle for one set of beliefs. By believing in everything, perhaps the boy believes in nothing, his father rightly cautions.

Pi's father also teaches his son a lesson about the predatory nature of tigers in a scene that's likely to unsettle younger children; I know it unsettled me. It's a harsh reminder that the natural world, of which we're both a part of and apart from, doesn't always conform to our anthropomorphic expectations.

When Pi's family falls on hard times, Dad decides to sell the animals in Canada. The family boards a cargo ship with the animals, and heads to the new world. When a storm sinks the ship, Pi finds himself sharing a lifeboat with a small menagerie: a vicious hyena, a wounded zebra, an orangutan, a rat and a large tiger named Richard Parker.

For those who are not familiar with the book, I won't say too much more about exactly what happens, but the story forces a resourceful and increasingly battered Pi to learn to live with a wild and often agitated tiger, who just as easily could regard Pi as lunch as a worthy companion.

Suraj Sharma, a non-actor selected by Lee from a field of 3,000 candidates, plays Pi of the lifeboat sequences, really the heart of the movie. The youngest version of Pi is played by Ayush Tandon. The adult Pi, who tells the story, is portrayed by Irrfan Khan. All of them are good, but Sharma had the difficult assignment of acting as if the tiger actually were present. There's a feeling of unstudied realism to his work, as well as a consuming and youthful avidity.

Gerard Depardieu makes a cameo appearance as a cook on the ship that's carrying Pi's family to Canada, but the real stars of Pi are Lee and his technical team. Images of flying fish and of a night sea enriched by the reflection of a million stars have a breathtaking quality that make the movie an enchantment, even during the few moments when it appears to be running out of steam.

Lee's movie relies more on sights than sense -- not necessarily a bad thing for a fable. When Pi and Richard Parker arrive on a remote island populated by meerkats, the movie compounds the exoticism that Lee already has established.

For all its splendid physicality, Life of Pi is also a metaphorical journey into the unknown. Pi grows up in a cocoon of comfort. He adopts many religions. But the storm strips him of the support system he so carefully has constructed (home, faith and family) and brings him into contact with the irreducible and sometimes terrifying primacy of nature. It's not only faith that helps him, but a survival manual he finds on the lifeboat, along with a supply of food and water -- and, just as important, his willingness to look nature in its fierce eye.

The adult Pi begins the story by telling a visitor that the tale he's about to recount will leave the listener (and presumably us, as well) believing in God. I can't say that the movie has that kind of impact because Life of Pi is more about about the role of storytelling in our lives than it is about Pi's spiritual quest.

But however you take the movie's mildly ambiguous ending may be beside the point. You will believe that Pi suffers. You will feel the threatening majesty of a panicky tiger. And, at times, you will see the taunting beauty of the world in which Pi is driven to near despair. You also will feel the disconnect between the imaginatively rich world of Pi's youth and the more constricted world of his adulthood.

At its best, Life of Pi is a genuine wonder -- not because it affirms our spiritual beliefs but because it affirms the power of movies to shatter the daily strictures that govern ordinary life and transport us into worlds beyond what our own experience can deliver.