'Speak No Evil' thrives on anxiety

 The first thing to know about the horror film Speak No Evil is that it’s a remake of a nasty 2022 Danish thriller directed by Christian Tafdrup. The second thing: Writer/director James Watkins (The Woman in Black, Eden Lake) softens the film’s edges while sustaining the heightened level of discomfort such pictures need.

 James McAvoy provides the film’s major performance as the brash, intimidating Paddy, owner of a remote British farm where he and his wife (Aisling Franciosi) are raising their young son (Dan Hough), a kid, whom we’re told, can’t speak because of a congenital defect that affected his tongue.

  The movie opens with a scenic Italian vacation during which Paddy and his wife befriend an American couple (Scoot McNairy and Mackenzie Davis) who's  traveling with their daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler). 

  A troubled marriage between McNairy's Ben and Davis' Louise and the anxieties of a 12-year-old daughter who’s about to leave childhood, give the story a bit of psychological texture.

  You’d have to never have seen a movie to miss the signs that Paddy and his wife are hiding menace behind facades of amiability.

   Watkins delivers numerous forebodings. That's part of the point. We know what's happening, but, for reasons that eventually become clear, Ben and Louise ignore or minimize obvious warnings.

   Watkins adds a woman-power spin, showcasing Louise’s increasing assertiveness in the face of Ben’s chronic ineffectuality. But it's McAvoy who revs the movie's engine: He takes a big bite out of his role, loading up on gleefully expressed aggression.

    Both young actors are good, and McNairy and Davis, who worked together on TV's Halt and Catch Fire, hit the right notes.

    At various points, the screenplay demands healthy suspensions of disbelief, and the ending probably will disappoint fans of the original, which offered a different kind of shock. Otherwise, Speak No Evil builds enough suspense and anxiety to support McAvoy’s performance as the screen’s latest charismatic lunatic.

More 'It' proves less than rewarding

The second chapter of Stephen King's massive novel has high points, but, overall, qualifies as a miss.

It Chapter Two, the eagerly awaited second half of the big-screen adaptation of Stephen King’s 1,000-page novel, feels more like a hundred chapters than the single, concluding act of a drama based on teen bonding and supernatural terror.

Not surprisingly, given the movie's nearly three-hour length and King’s pedigree, Chapter Two has high points (the psychology that brings adults in touch with their worst childhood memories) and low points (a bloated finale that’s so effects-oriented, it puts one in mind of second-rate sci-fi.

Normally, I don’t care about a movie’s length, but in the case of Chapter Two, length fatigue sets in, overwhelming the movie’s virtues. Moreover, last-minute attempts to add sentiment and uplifting instruction doesn’t connect emotionally.

The first movie, popular but very much over-rated, created enough of a fan base to ensure that this second helping will succeed at the box office. Moreover, a cast that includes Bill Hader, James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain, Isaiah Mustafa, and James Ransone) adds to the movie’s appeal, suggesting that this is no cynically motivated knockoff.

The story takes place 27 years after the first installment. As it turns out, Pennywise -- the lethal clown played by Bill Skarsgard -- returns in 27-year intervals, which means he's again ready to terrorize the idyllic town of Derry, Me.

Director Andy Muschietti, who also directed the first installment, skillfully uses the original’s young cast in flashbacks that help enrich the darkly hued adventures experienced by the now-adult characters of the first installment. Most of these adults don't want to travel to their hometown and only one of them (Mustafa's Mike) remembers exactly what happened 27 years ago.

Not a bad set-up, but Muschietti and screenwriter Gary Dauberman can't solve structural problems inherent in a story that doesn't flow smoothly through its various episodes. Instead, Muschietti lays out chapter after chapter, as each of the returnees confronts an individual horror before the group can unite for a meaningful stand against Pennywise.

I suppose one major question emerges: Is the movie scary?

The answer depends on what you consider frightening. For me, the scares arrive in the form of fun-house attractions augmented by lots of high-end CGI. Muschietti takes full advantage of Pennywise’s shape-shifting abilities, sometimes to comic effect, as the clown transforms into a variety of bizarre creatures and desiccated demons with skin problems.

There are jump scares, to be sure, but it almost feels as if Chapter Two has been designed around the “horror” sequences rather than allowing the horror to emerge naturally (or supernaturally, if you will) from the story.

No faulting the performances, I suppose. Some care has been taken to ensure that the young actors evoke their adult counterparts (except possibly for McAvoy). Among the adults, Hader makes the strongest impression as a stand-up comic in the midst of a mid-level career.

I could go on and talk about the insight (yes, there is some) exhibited in Chapter Two, particularly in the way it understands the humiliations, fears, abuses, missed opportunities and embarrassments of childhood. I also could mention a gratuitous and very cruel prologue in which town bullies attack two gay men at a carnival.

I suppose you'll also want to know that Stephen King and director Peter Bogdanovich make cameo appearances.

But I’m going to put Chapter Two to rest by saying that the movie might have been more entertaining at two hours. Put another way, I’ll ask this question: Does anyone really want to take a three-hour theme-park ride? If you do, you’ll probably be happy with Chapter Two.

Otherwise, you may find a movie that wears you out before it has the sense to conclude.

She wields power. The movie, not so much.

Dark Phoenix may be the final X-Men movie but it falls short of a grand finale.

Billed as the final chapter in the X-Men series, Dark Phoenix doesn't exactly qualify as the fondest of farewells.

By no means awful, Dark Phoenix nonetheless fails to make a major splash with a concluding chapter that revolves around Jean Grey (Sophie Turner of Game of Thrones fame). Although Jean acquires great powers, she never totally dominates a story that becomes the wobbly foundation on which an uneven variety of set pieces and side trips are built.

A mind-reading mutant, the young Jean (Summer Fontana) falls under Charles Xavier's (James McAvoy) protection after her parents are killed in an auto accident in which she was a passenger and also the cause.

The story then leaps ahead. Now-grown, Jean (Turner) is still learning how to navigate the X-world. An early-picture outer-space rescue mission brings Jean into contact with a force that super-charges her powers in ways she isn't prepared to handle. She leaves the X-Men estate to search for background about her pre-X-Men childhood. She also unleashes terrible destructive powers as she morphs into Phoenix.

With Jean on the verge of raging out of control, the movie begins to question Charles' motives. Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) wonders whether Xavier isn't more interested in bolstering his ego than in maintaining the integrity of the X-Men force. Lawrence, whose superhero alter ego goes by the name Mystique, doesn't seem especially engaged, but she's given the movie's best line.

A rebellious Raven tells Charles that the women always seem to be saving the men in these stories. She wonders whether a name change isn't in order: How about X-Women? Good idea.

Nicholas Hoult's Beast also begins to wonder about Charles' motives. Is Charles putting X-Men in danger to maintain his growing status with humans who, at this moment, are happy to rely on X-Men to save them from whatever disaster happens to loom?

Meanwhile, aliens led by Vuk (Jessica Chastain) try to control Jean whose powers are so great they can be life-giving -- or some such. She might help them revive their moribund civilization, hardly the freshest of ideas.

Tye Sheridan portrays Scott Summers/Cyclops, an X-er who's romantically involved with Jean and who can't accept the fact that she might have become a world-threatening menace.

Michael Fassbender turns up as Erik/Magneto, bringing gravitas to the proceedings, which are dotted with action and special effects, some of them well executed by director Simon Kinberg. CGI and physical combat blend nicely in an extended sequence on a speeding train.

Dark Phoenix doesn't come close to the best and most serious of all the X-Men movies, 2017's Logan. You can also throw in X-Men: First Class (2011) and X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), if you're looking for more of Phoenix's betters.

In general, I've liked the X-Men movies with their devotion to talented outcasts. If Phoenix really marks the end of the series, I'll fondly remember the movies I enjoyed, forget the rest and move on to something else.

'Glass' sounds a weak final chord

James McAvoy still stands out, but director M. Night Shyamalan brings his trilogy to a tepid close.

Director M. Night Shyamalan's superheroes arrived on screen without the cache of Marvel or DC Comics branding. No comic books made Shyamalan's characters familiar to legions of young people. In Unbreakable (2000) and Split (2016) -- the first two parts of Shyamalan's trilogy of superhero films -- Shyamalan tried to stake out his own territory.

I have friends who admire Unbreakable, a movie that I was happy to forget. I was more inclined toward Split, which featured a bravura performance by James McAvoy as a disturbed young man with 23 personalities. A 24th loomed in the person of The Beast, a superhuman killer who terrorized young women.

Before Split, Unbreakable brought two main characters to the fore: Bruce Willis portrayed David Dunn, a former football player turned security guard who discovered that he had amazing survival powers because his bones couldn't be broken. Samuel L. Jackson played Mr. Glass, an evil genius who was Dunn's opposite: Glass -- a.k.a. Elijah Price -- was born with bones that shattered easily. Ergo, Mr. Glass.

Now comes Shyamalan's attempt to bring these three characters together for a finale. Before it reaches its dreary conclusion, Glass proves downbeat and lumbering with Shyamalan vainly and (misguidedly) trying for some last-minute inspiration. Glass stands as a big-screen fizzle rather than what it should have been: a resonant symphonic chord at the end of a pop-cultural symphony.

Willis's Dunn -- a.k.a. The Overseer -- returns to stalk Philadelphia's streets with the help of his now-grown son (Spencer Treat Clark). Dunn dons a hooded rain parka when he's serving as a vigilante for good. Early on, he finds himself battling with The Beast, the most horrific member of The Horde, the name given to McAvoy's character's collection of personalities.

As those who've seen Split already know, McAvoy's Keven Wendell Crumb captures young women and torments them, turning them into an audience for a dazzling display of his multitude of personalities. He also does what some entertainers might occasionally fantasize about doing to their audiences: He kills them.

In Glass, McAvoy remains the liveliest member of the trio. Jackson's Mr. Glass spends much of the movie in a state of drug-induced stupor and Willis presents a grizzled version of a character whose economy of expression suggests an abiding depression.

Putting the three characters together inevitably reduces McAvoy's screen time, which doesn't help dispel the movie's gloomy inertia.

Credit Jackson with delivering the movie's twisted philosophy with an eloquence that makes you wish he didn't have to spend half the movie slumping in a wheelchair and not speaking.

The screenplay more or less succumbs when it contrives to place the three characters in a mental institution that's being run by Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), a psychiatrist who insists that she wants to save these misfits by convincing them that they're not superbeings but ordinary folks operating under grand delusions.

A couple of other actors reprise roles from earlier movies. In some very bad make-up, Charlayne Woodard plays Glass's mother. Anya Taylor-Joy reappears as the only young woman to have survived The Beast's murderous ways, although she seems to have forgotten that several of her friends didn't. Casey now believes she can speak to the real -- i.e., normal -- person behind all those Horde personalities, which include the conniving Patricia and fan-favorite, nine-year-old Hedwig.

You can get the general idea of what's going on without having seen either of the two previous movies, but the story will be clearer to those who understand its references and who recall prior plotting. Besides, I can't imagine why anyone who isn't a fan of the first two movies would want to see this one.

Glass can be faulted for many sins, some of them forgivable, dullness being the only one that really condemns it, a kind of torpor perhaps bred by all the gloomy atmosphere.

The movie doesn't end the way most superhero movies do. Even so, the odor of musty irrelevance settles over the whole enterprise. If you see Glass, I advise not thinking too much about what Shyamalan might be trying to say. I wonder if he knew.

Charlize Theron, kicker of butts

Atomic Blonde has style to spare, but wears itself out.

What's the most damning thing you can say about a movie? That its actors don't behave credibly. That it has been miscast? That its plot wobbles? That its dialogue sounds lame and wooden? That it displays too little visual imagination?

All of those are unfortunate missteps, but only one of them (the one about a story made overly complex by a needlessly fragmented narrative) applies to Atomic Blonde, Charlize Theron's plunge into the world of movies based on graphic novels.

The damning sum total of the movie's plot intricacies and icy stylizations, at least for me, is that I didn't much care about the outcome of a story set in Berlin in 1989, a time when the wall separating East and West Germany is about to topple and spies on both sides are beginning to wonder about their role in a post-Cold War world.

This sounds like John Le Carre territory, but Atomic Blonde, which springs from a graphic novel by Antony Johnston and has been directed by David Leitch, wallows in attitude and style in ways that create little by way of emotional involvement.

For all its hyper activity, the movie often feels exhausted, perhaps because it taps into an already mined thematic vein in which old antagonisms are evaporating like morning mist exposed to new sun.

Theron's performance as the self-possessed Lorraine Broughton embodies nearly everything you need to know about Atomic Blonde. A cooly efficient MI-6 agent, Lorraine arrives in Berlin to obtain a list of western spies a wannabe Stasi defector (Eddie Marsan) has offered to sell before it reaches Soviet hands.

Ably demonstrating her mastery of martial arts choreography (think Hong Kong movies of a couple of decades back), Theron plays a spy so cool she takes ice baths. Lorraine's blonde hair frames the countenance of a character who has been trained to turn her face into a mask. It's possible that Lorraine has worn her spy mask so long, it has become real.

Lorraine is bruised and bloodied by fights, but the bruises feel like physical post-it notes, self-conscious attempts to add realism to an overall atmosphere rich in faux trappings. Watch out for Lorraine's high heels.

Lorraine is asked to work with another British agent, James McAvoy's Percival. Percival, who has plied his trade in Berlin for some time, claims to know everything about this increasingly corrupted environment.

With his hair cut short, McAvoy offers plenty of scenery-chewing mania, but a framing device adds to the feeling of a mishmash unified only by style and attitude. Intermittent breaks in the action arrive when Lorraine is debriefed by an MI-6 desk jockey (a dyspeptic-looking Toby Jones) and a CIA operative (a bearded John Goodman).

Sofia Boutella portrays a French spy who has a sexual encounter with Theron's character. Does it mean anything? Or is it just a way for the filmmakers to add an LGBT twist to a story that wants to be hip, which -- in this case -- requires a bit of prurient seasoning?

Protracted and built around the grunting exhaustion of the protagonist and her enemies, a late-picture fight scene packs some wallop, as does a car chase in which the crunch of colliding metal smashes against your ear drums. Moreover, the movie's opening scenes are cool enough to feel like exercising without breaking a sweat.

But for all Theron's punches, kicks and icy stares, the movie's flirtation with ideas remains unconsummated. Besides, how many stylistic trump cards can one movie play before you start wondering whether it has anything else in its deck? For me, so many that I eventually stopped caring what Atomic Blonde might deal next.

He has personalities to spare

James McAvoy helps give M. Night Shyamalan's Split its charge.

First things first. Apart from The Sixth Sense, I'm not much of an M. Night Shyamalan fan. Having said that, I also have to say that Shyamalan's latest qualifies as a better-than-average horror/thriller, a movie that at its best, exhibits a nightmarish intensity.

Mostly set in a basement occupied by a loner with Dissociative Identity Disorder; i.e., multiple personalities, Split provides actor James McAvoy with a dream vehicle.

McAvoy acts out a variety of his character's 23 different personalities -- all set around a situation in which McAvoy's Kevin abducts three high-school girls and holds them as prisoners. Kevin declares his hostages "sacred food," and, in one guise or another, administers to them or scares the daylights out of them.

The kick of the movie involves the way these young women (Jessica Sula, Haley Lu Richardson and Anya Taylor-Joy) discover Kevin's various personalities, which include a nine-year-old boy named Hedwig, a prissy schoolmarmish woman and a guy who seems to regard himself as the caretaker of Kevin's underground domain. The precise location of Kevin's lair is part of the movie's mystery.

When Kevin meets with his mostly sympathetic psychiatrist (Betty Buckley), he usually appears as Barry, a flamboyant fashion designer. Buckley's character carries the burden of expanding the movie's reach. Her character believes that those suffering with D.I.D. may hold the key to a dimly understood form of human transformation.

Of the young women, only Taylor-Joy's Casey receives much by way of background; her story -- seen in flashback -- involves horrific experiences with an uncle who helped turn her into a dejected outsider.

None of this is to say that Split doesn't have exploitative elements: The girls all wear short skirts and sometimes less, the movie's climactic scenes probably push a little too hard and not all of Split proves credible.

Still, McAvoy, with shaved head and predatory grin, approaches his perverse task with obvious relish, and Shyamalan whips up plenty of tension -- even in the face of some predictable twists and turns.

January, of course, isn't known as prime territory for quality movies, but Split is creepy enough to satisfy the folks who like this sort of thing.

Stick around for the epilogue that begins during the end credits. It contains a surprise.

Not the best of 'X-Men' movies

Fear Apocalypse? Not with the X-men around.

For some reason, X-Men: Apocalypse was screened for critics a couple of weeks back. Normally, early screenings are welcome, but with a movie as diffuse as this one, the details already have begun to blur into a miasmic haze of mutants and overblown action.

As for those mutants, their powers can be kept straight only by devotees with an addiction to Marvel Comics or those willing to keep a scorecard.

Best as I can recall, X-Men: Apocalypse boils down to this: Another bad-ass villain -- this one more than 5,000 years old -- must be fought by a bunch of X-men with idiosyncratic powers.

Of course, both the bad guy and X-Men are crammed into a high-stakes battle of one sort or another. You already know the drill; a digressive plot is punctuated with lots of wanton destruction.

Call this a medium-grade helping of X-men, another Marvel Comics movie that's glutted with mayhem and characters from Marvel's over-populated universe.

In this case, the story centers on Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac), a character who was entombed in ancient Egypt. A terrific actor, Isaac is buried under lots of make-up. He's recognizable, but I half wondered whether it mattered who was playing this powerful villain.

Once revived from millenniums of slumber, Apocalypse assembles a posse consisting of rogues. These are (wait for it), the proverbial Four Horseman, and they're led by Pole Magneto (Michael Fassbender). Magneto, we learn, has been living a quiet life after his family was destroyed in Auschwitz.

The Holocaust as a comic-book plot device? Best not to think about it.

Years after World War II, Magneto experiences new injustices. He's then reborn as an angry mutant with an abiding grudge against humanity.

Olivia Munn plays Psylocke, a woman with telepathic powers, a chip on her shoulder and a costume that enables her to moonlight at an S&M festival.

Meanwhile, Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) schools fledgling mutants in the art of putting their powers to good use rather than destroying civilization. He's assisted by Hank McCoy/Beast (Nicholas Hoult).

Additional mutants include Scott Summers (Tye Sheridan), a mutant whose brother Alex/Havoc (Lucas Till) already understands his powers. And you'll find a bunch of other mutants including Quicksilver and Nightcrawler, characters I mention only because I like the names.

By the way, the ability of some of these mutants to shoot destructive rays from their fingertips or eyeballs created waves of low-rent nostalgia for me, echoes of the old Flash Gordon serials.

This time, X-Men keep appearing in what seem to be droves, including Jennifer Lawrence's Raven.

Despite the man X-Men, director Bryan Singer, can't quite elevate this one into the superhero stratosphere. Too bad, he's done better X-Men work before, notably in 2014's X-Men: Days of Future Past.

I can't say that I hated watching Apocalypse. It unreeled with the usual fury, but its playbook evolves over two-and-a-half hours without finding much that's inspired.

And really, after Hunger Games and other X-Men movies, can't Jennifer Lawrence find something better to do with her time and talent? Et tu Michael Fassbender.

A new look at Dr. Frankenstein

It's sufficiently dark, but Victor Frankenstein also can be quite silly.

James McAvoy takes avidity so far over the top, we can see spittle flying from his mouth in the late scenes of Victor Frankenstein, another take on Mary Shelley's much abused novel.

Perhaps following McAvoy's lead, Scottish director Paul McGuigan joins McAvoy in excess. Maybe he encouraged it. In any case, McGuigan -- along with a more subdued Daniel Radcliffe as Igor Strausman -- pushes the production over a steep Gothic cliff until it plunges into a pool of silliness.

Before the lightning strike that brings Frankenstein's man/monster to life, the movie spends much of its creative capital recreating a 19th century environment in which the insane rationalism of Dr. Victor Frankenstein vies with more traditional views, namely that the creation of life is not the business of science.

Prior to the unveiling of his major achievement, Dr. Frankenstein introduces a small sampling of London's scientific community to a homunculus, actually a monstrous creature resembling a mutant chimpanzee. The movie clearly wants us to know that Frankenstein may have bitten off more than he can chew by zapping life into dead flesh.

As Igor -- introduced as a circus hunchback who Dr. Frankenstein cures -- Radcliffe provides the film with sporadic narration and a bit of welcome sensitivity. (Frankenstein discovers that Igor isn't a hunchback at all; he has a very large abscess.)

An autodidact, Radcliffe's Igor has taught himself medicine and anatomy. He's so grateful to Dr. Frankenstein for liberating him from his circus-freak existence that he readily joins the doctor's search for a new Prometheus.

Igor even has a love interest, a trapeze artist (Jessica Brown Findlay) he saves in the movie's opening scenes.

Andrew Scott signs on as a grim inspector from Scotland Yard, a policeman who insists on investigating Frankenstein's activities, which he's certain are pernicious.

Drawing from previous movies and playing with our perceptions about Shelley's story, McGuigan relies on production design and computer graphics to create an eerie environment.

And, yes, it all might have made for a rousing good comedy had Mel Brooks not already done it in 1974's Young Frankenstein. The screenplay pays a quick homage to Brooks when Frankenstein corrects someone who pronounces his name -- and I'm going phonetic here -- Frank-en-steen.

The resultant movie may not be monstrous; it is, however, somewhat risible, a dark, labyrinthine affair in which great wheels turn, electrical flashes erupt and the whole business -- which begins in near arty fashion -- eventually short circuits.

A young wife's vanishing act

Chastain and McAvoy strike impressive notes in The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby.

The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them is a hybrid creation that results from making a two-hour feature out of two separate movies that ambitiously tried to observe a troubled marriage from the vantage points of both husband and wife.

This amalgamated production, which stars James McAvoy and Jessica Chastain, may not achieve greatness, but it's not without its virtues.

Chastain gives another deeply inhabited performance, this time playing a woman who's trying to shut down most of her feelings, and you certainly sense the high ambition in director Ned Benson's approach. He includes the work lives of the characters, as well as their relationships with parents and friends.

In this version, Benson proves a master of slow disclosure, gradually dispensing relevant information as we become more familiar with the characters. An estranged husband and wife are dealing with a tragic event that totally upended their marriage and just about everything else in their lives.

The movie moves back and forth between Eleanor (Chastain) and Conor (McAvoy). They open the movie in a scene set during their courtship. They're in a restaurant, and Conor lacks sufficient funds to pay the bill.

The adventurous Eleanor devises an escape route, bonding the couple with an illicit act that suggests the outlines of the relationship we'll get to known better as the story progresses.

After a suicide attempt, the shattered Eleanor moves in with her parents (Isabelle Huppert and William Hurt). A university professor, Hurt's character tries to help Eleanor, often to no avail.

Dad does, however, introduce her to a professor and former colleague (Viola Davis) who's teaching a course on identity formation, and who approaches life with a savvy, slightly cynical air that's a bit too unvaried to be totally convincing.

McAvoy's Conor, who's trying to keep a struggling bar and restaurant afloat, moves in with his father (Ciaran Hinds). In contrast to his son, Hinds' character operates a highly successful bar and restaurant, but seems stuck in his own brand of misery anyway.

Bill Hader plays Conor's pal and the chef at his restaurant, a guy who evidently has had a long-standing relationship with his buddy.

Eleanor Rigby (an avid Beatles fan, her father saddled her with the name) vanishes from Conor's life. Again and again, he tries to make contact with her.

At about two hours in length, the movie overstays its welcome, but I found it watchable, even when I felt as if I were observing actors trying to work out difficult issues in various challenging scene studies.

The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby makes you (at least it did me) eager to see Benson's two-film study of a marriage. Perhaps, then, its best parts -- and there are many -- would cohere in a more impressive way.

'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.

Technique rules in stylized 'Trance'

Director Danny Boyle's new thriller misses the mark.
Is it possible for a director to put too much skill on display? I wondered about that while watching Danny Boyle's new thriller Trance, an over-produced hunk of intrigue that revolves around an art theft.

Boyle seems to be trying for a dizzying head trip of a movie, but in Trance, technique doesn't always translate into mind buzz; instead, technique seems to breed more technique.

Here's the story: A worker at a London auction house (James McAvoy) helps orchestrate an art heist in which a valuable painting by Goya will be stolen. The theft is successful, apart from one detail: During the theft, McAvoy's Simon is conked on the head. He loses his memory, and can't recall where he stashed the stolen painting.

The chief thief (Vincent Cassel's Franck) tries torture as a memory aid, pulling out several of Simon's fingernails. When that doesn't work, Franck switches gears, hiring a hypnotist (Rosario Dawson) to help unlock McAvoy's lost memories.

Nothing more than a classy MacGuffin, the painting quickly recedes in importance as Boyle plays with issues of betrayal, loyalty, desire and obsession. The result: An overly complex story that remains watchable without totally engaging on either an emotional or intellectual level.

Because Trance blurs the line between what's apparent and what's real, it's constantly playing games with us. We invest attention in scenes that we take as real only to discover that we're watching one of Simon's hypnosis-induced hallucinations.

McAvoy trades on his lively, nice guy image. Rosario, who at one point appears fully naked -- as in full-frontal nudity -- projects a sense of calm control, and Cassel manages a fair amount of mobster menace.

Known to audiences for movies such as 127 Hours, 28 Days Later and the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire, Boyle may have been betting that the journey rather than the destination would carry the day -- that along with McAvoy's avidity, Dawson's sexiness and Cassel's brutish force.

It's not an entirely good bet. Once you break through the visual trickery, flashbacks and hypnotic falderal, Trance isn't especially difficult to out-guess.

Those familiar with Boyle's work won't be surprised to learn that Trance has its share of vividly realized scenes and moments. Boyle keeps our eyes and his camera busy, but that's not ultimately enough.

Cheers for a new edition of 'X-Men'

This prequel offers a good deal of fun.

It trivializes history, beckons to our inner mutant, and, oh yeah, offers a fair measure of summer fun. We're talking X-Men: First Class, a prequel that shows how the series' mutants split into opposing groups -- those with a "can't-we-all-get-along" credo and those who mistrust humankind, and, therefore, seek to destroy it.

First Class mostly hits the spot with an origins story that explains how Magneto and Professor Charles Xavier came to occupy their respective positions in a Marvel Comics universe occupied by mutants who are leaving humans in the dust as they move up on the evolutionary scale.

Magneto, you'll recall from previous X-Men movies, is the evil mutant; Professor Xavier helps train mutants to aid humankind.

In the hands of British director Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass), X-Men: First Class advances the franchise by moving backward in time, specifically to the Cuban missile crisis which pitted the U.S. against a mighty Soviet foe, a looming nuclear showdown that feels almost quaint by today's standards.

This foray into history yields a surprisingly entertaining prequel that survives a few brushes with effects that border on the cheesy.

Credit a strong cast led by Michael Fassbender, who plays Erik, the young Holocaust survivor who will grow up to be Magneto. Erik has difficulty balancing his desire for revenge -- a Nazi killed his mother -- and his willingness to help others.

Played with conviction and charisma by Fassbender, Erik eclipses a youthful Charles Xavier (James McAvoy). Charles, also a mutant, tries to persuade Erik to join him in a quest that not only will help settle Erik's Auschwitz score, but also will benefit the rest of humanity.

The preternaturally good-natured Charles has grown up in the company of Raven (Jennifer Lawrence), a red-haired, blue-skinned mutant who can change appearances, often morphing into a lovely young blonde who wants to fit into human society.

In pivotal early action, we meet a Nazi doctor (Kevin Bacon) who's trying to force young Erik to use his psychic powers to advance evil causes. As it turns out, this Nazi doctor is Sebastian Shaw, a mutant who wants to rule the world and who re-emerges in the 1960s with a beautiful but chilly assistant, January Jones' Emma Frost.

Once the movie arrives in the 1960s, The X-Men crew gathers and begins its training, first under the guidance of a CIA official (Oliver Platt) and then on its own. Rose Byrne, last seen in "Bridesmaids," portrays a more sympathetic CIA operative.

This time around, the mutant crew includes Hank (Nicholas Hoult), Alex (Lucas Till), Sean, (Caleb Landry), Armando (Edi Gathegi) and Angel (Zoe Kravitz). Before the movie's finished, all the mutants will acquire comic-book names related to their powers: Beast, Havoc, Banshee and Darwin, for example.

The climax involves a ferocious battle of wills between mutants who are forced to take sides. Forgive me for thinking that Erik's arguments for the dark side can be more persuasive than the opposition's plea for understanding, a conclusion that may have more to do with the power of Fassbender's performance than with the strength of Magneto's powers of reason.

You get the idea: This is an enjoyable comic-book view of history as a bubbling cauldron of oppositional forces locked in a tug of war that never can be fully resolved -- at least not without jeopardizing a franchise.

A history lesson from Robert Redford

The Conspirator tells an interesting story, but it's awfully earnest -- and that's the trouble.

What do you do when a movie tackles an interesting subject, boasts a prestigious cast, delivers a message with which you generally agree, and you still give it your enthusiastic endorsement?

Here's what I do: I say that you may want to see Robert Redford's new movie The Conspirator, but you probably shouldn't expect to be blown away. Redford's movie has its virtues, but it's also overly earnest and dry, a bit of civics lesson on film.

I'm betting that not many Americans know the story of Mary Surratt, a 42-year-old woman who was hanged in 1865 for being part of the conspiracy that led to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth. Surratt, a staunch Catholic and proud Southerner, owned a Washington, D.C., boarding house where the conspirators plotted the president's murder. She claimed innocence.

At one point, Surratt was offered leniency on condition that she disclose the whereabouts of her youngest son, John. John later admitted to helping hatch a plot to kidnap Lincoln, but insisted that he had no part in the president's assassination. John Surratt remained in hiding during his mother's trial; he ultimately was tried and acquitted.

In telling Surratt's story, Redford takes a step forward from his last directorial outing, 2007's Lions For Lambs. Preachy and obvious, Lions made a head-on attempt to deal with the consequences of the war in Afghanistan. Steeped in period atmosphere, The Conspirator proves more subtle, although it's impossible not to see parallels between the issues raised by the Surratt trial and those surrounding military proceedings at Guantanamo.

Rather than providing us with a definitive answer about Surratt's guilt, Redford uses the movie to defend a principle: A nation of laws - especially during times of heated public sentiment -- must offer fair trials even to those whose guilt seems beyond question. Justice must be served; the craving for vengeance, resisted.

Working from a script by James D. Solomon, Redford focuses on Frederick Aiken (James McAvoy), the lawyer who's assigned to defend Surratt before a military tribunal.

At first Aiken wants no part of the Surratt case. Like just about everyone else in Washington, he has little doubt about her guilt. As the story develops, Aiken begins to understand that, at minimum, Surratt deserves a hearing, something the military seems disinclined to provide.

Redford surrounds McAvoy with a powerful cast. Robin Wright portrays Surratt as a strong and devoted mother: She won't betray her son to save he own life. Surratt makes no bones about her loyalty to the Confederacy, but insists she knew nothing about what the plotters were discussing when they gathered in her boarding house.

Tom Wilkinson plays Reverdy Johnson, the Maryland lawyer who involved Aiken in Surratt's defense; Danny Huston portrays Joseph Holt, the prosecuting attorney; and Kevin Kline appears as Edwin Stanton, Lincoln's Secretary of War.

According to the movie, Stanton wanted a quick verdict; he was interested in satisfying the public hunger for vengeance that followed the assassination. Kline's Stanton is a severe, unforgiving man who thinks the demands of the nation, as he sees them, take precedence over individual rights.

Evan Rachel Wood terrific as Veda Pierce in HBO's recent version of Mildred Pierce, brings emotional urgency to a movie that sometimes seems to be striking courtroom-drama poses. She plays Surratt's daughter.

Credit Redford & company for attempting to illuminate a little-known chapter of American history, and giving the movie a persuasive period look, but The Conspirator can feel restricted by its courtroom setting and by what seems a carefully worked-out agenda, the need to remind us that emergency situations shouldn't obliterate our freedoms. At times, the movie seems as committed to making points as it is to telling a story.

Still, there's no point damning Redford's effort, even if it ultimately emerges as a musty addition to the canon of socially conscious movies that don't so much raise questions as answer them.