Fun sours in formulaic 'Tomb Raider'

Alicia Vikander takes over the role of Lara Croft in a movie that can't resist formula.

“Shoot him, Lara. We can’t let him get to Himiko.”
If this line of dialogue from Tomb Raider doesn’t arouse ripples of excitement for you, you may not be a candidate for the latest attempt to turn a video game into something more than an over-amped funhouse of formulaic plotting and so-so effects.

When the line was uttered by one of the movie's characters, I couldn’t help wishing that the Bill Murray of the Ghostbusters era were around to add a wry and preposterous comment. Murray would have known what to say about Himiko, a departed Japanese queen also known as the Mother of Death. Open her tomb and the entire world will be doomed.

The main suspense about this edition: Can Alicia Vikander replace Angela Jolie as Lara Croft, the intrepid tomb raider? Small in stature but buffed to the max, Vikander put me in mind of a gym-obsessed Tinkerbell who's motivated by a mixture of iron-willed determination, preternatural leaping ability and a growing commitment to combat evil.

Early on, I thought Tomb Raider — which has been directed by Roar Uthaug, the Norwegian filmmaker who brought us The Wave -- might be fun. And it is -- until the movie reaches the island where the notorious, 2000-year-old Himiko has been entombed.

The movie opens in the UK where Uthaug stages a nifty bike chase through the streets of East London. An independent spirit, Lara refuses to inherit the Croft fortune. She'd rather work as a bicycle courier.

Too bad Lara is stuck with the Croft heritage. Lara's father Richard Croft (Dominic West) left home to find the mythic tomb in the Pacific. Lara grew up with a mentor (Kristen Scott Thomas). Scott Thomas doesn't have much to do in this edition but she looks as if someone dipped her in white powder, denying her even rudimentary hints of a complexion.

It has been seven years since Richard launched his island adventure. He is presumed dead.

After a few plot manipulations, Lara -- not one to accept conventional wisdom -- decides to retrace her father's steps in hopes of finding dear old Dad alive on the island.

To achieve her goal, Lara travels to Hong Kong where she hooks up with Lu Ren (Daniel Wu), the son of the captain who guided Richard to the island where some terrible -- but as yet unknown -- evil might be unearthed.

After raging seas wreck Lu's small boat, Lara and Lu are stranded on the island where they're taken prisoner by Mathias Vogel (Walton Goggins), a slave-driver who claims to have killed Lara’s dad. Vogel has been searching for the tomb of Queen Himiko ever since. It's roughly at this point that the movie's fun begins to sour.

I’m not sure whether Tomb Raider can match the popularity of the 2001 edition of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider although it’s probably better than the 2003 sequel, Lara Croft, The Cradle of Life.

Tomb Raider leaves little doubt that it's meant to function as an origins story, setting up what the filmmakers clearly hope will be a healthy franchise life.

We’ll see about that: In the meantime, know that Tomb Raider pits Lara against fiendish foes, a storm-tossed sea, a towering waterfall and other dangers which confront her as the script by Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Alastair Siddons goes through genre motions that ultimately can’t totally mask the story’s hollow origins.

In short: Uthaug and Vikander can’t make good on the promise of vibrant early scenes. By the end, enjoyment has been overrun by formula -- at least it was by me.

'Party' guests are out for blood

Despite a strong cast, director Sally Potter's arch little movie takes us nowhere we haven't been before.

It concerns me to know that I’ve sometimes felt the way Timothy Spall looks in The Party, a slender black comedy filmed in black-and-white. But even at a shockingly brief one hour and 11 minutes, The Party feels as if it could have been condensed into a 40-minute short as it builds toward a nifty punchline.

Spall, who has never projected so much doom and futility, portrays a British academic whose doctor has given him a fatal diagnosis. Haggard and expressionless, Spall’s Bill seems the personification of pitiless depression.

Joining Spall's Bill in this happily bitter ensemble piece are his wife Janet (Kristin Scott Thomas) and a variety of friends: the catty, mordant April (Patricia Clarkson), her bromide-spouting boyfriend (Bruno Ganz), a coke-snorting financial executive (Cillian Murphy), and a lesbian couple portrayed by Cherry Jones and Emily Mortimer.

The group has gathered to celebrate Janet’s appointment to a ministerial post in the department overseeing Britain's health.

The movie revolves around Albee-style insults that the characters hurl at one another while harboring secrets that will be revealed as the movie builds toward its final surprise.

Part of the trouble with movies such as The Party is that they seem to ask us to feel superior to their embittered, pretentious characters while creating few points of real identification.

Directed by Sally Potter, who also wrote the screenplay, The Party's main thrust -- the celebration that goes terribly wrong -- feels awfully familiar. Clarkson deftly delivers her character’s withering lines and Spall convincingly dangles at the end of his character’s rope, but The Party passes without arriving at a consequential destination.

Gary Oldman's finest hour

An actor's portrayal of Winston Churchill carries Darkest Hour to victory.

The most striking thing about Darkest Hour, the story of how Britain teetered on the edge of defeat in World War II but regained its moral resolve, involves Gary Oldman's make-up and performance as Winston Churchill. Although he seems the least likely of actors to tackle Churchill, Oldman and makeup artist Kazuhiro Tsuji pull off a near miracle. They give us a Churchill who's domineering, insecure and witty, but also a man sagging as the weight of decision falls on his shoulders.

There aren't many sure bets these days, but it seems certain that Oldman will be nominated for a best-actor Oscar for what he has done in a movie directed by Joe Wright (Pride and Prejudice and Anna Karenina).

Wright directs with a sure if somewhat heavy hand, underscoring the momentous nature of nearly everything that happens in Darkest Hour. The major question before Churchill and his war cabinet: Should Britain negotiate some sort of peace agreement with Herr Hitler, as Churchill refers to the Austrian paperhanger?

The alternative: battle until victorious or until the last British warrior falls.

We all know how the story turns out, but at its best, Darkest Hour -- which depicts some of the events leading up to the civilian evacuation of British soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk -- reminds us that history only looks inevitable when viewed through a rearview mirror.

In 1940, it was by no means certain that Britain could withstand the German onslaught. The US had yet to enter the war, and Hitler's armies were toppling one European country after another.

Audiences that have seen Dunkirk already are prepped for Wright's movie, which recreates behind-the-scenes haggling among the anti-Churchill forces. Neville Chamberlain (Ronald Pickup), who Churchill replaced as Prime Minister, wanted to stave off destruction by negotiating with Hitler. Stephen Dillane appears as Viscount Halifax, a Chamberlain ally who was even more anxious to capitulate than his friend.

King George VI (in a fine, subtle performance from Ben Mendelsohn) had doubts about Churchill, whom he both feared and mistrusted -- at least during the early days of Churchill's Prime Ministership.

Wright doesn't pay a great deal of attention to the women in Churchill's life. His wife Clementine (Kristin Scott Thomas) bolsters Churchill's ego when it begins to flag. Lily James plays Elizabeth Layton, Churchill's secretary, a young woman he initially intimidates but whom Churchill eventually sees in human terms.

Some scenes are as hokey as Churchill is bombastic. Besieged by doubts late in the movie, Churchill takes a ride on the underground (supposedly his first ever) to mingle with the people, listen to their views and draw on their strength.

Of course, Churchill was a large man -- both physically and in importance. The movie is at its best when Oldman delivers important Churchill speeches ("We shall fight on the beaches, etc.") and when peppering his performance with Churchill's many peculiarities: He couldn't abide single-spaced typing, drank whiskey with his breakfast and throughout the day and seldom could be seen without a cigar.

So the verdict is mildly mixed. Darkest Hour isn't as great as the historical moment it depicts but Oldman's performance certainly rises to the occasion.

Charles Dickens has an affair

Ralph Fiennes acts in and directs The Invisible Woman.

The most compelling reason to see The Invisible Woman -- a look at a long-running affair between author Charles Dickens and actress Nelly Ternan -- has less to do with the lure of illicit romance than with Ralph Fiennes' engaging portrayal of Dickens, an author of abundant talent, indefatigable energy and dazzling complexity.

In what might be his must spirited performance ever, Fiennes (who also directed) reminds us that Dickens was a self-dramatizing celebrity with an enviable capacity for work. Not only did Dickens write his often lengthy novels, he directed plays, acted, spoke frequently at public gatherings, fathered 10 children and conducted a busy, extracurricular personal life.

When Fiennes reads Dickens' prose to the author's adoring fans, he makes it clear that Dickens keenly understands the drama in his own work. In fact, drama -- sometimes even melodrama -- might be the most important thing to Dickens, both in his writing and in his private life.

The movie's title suggests that Ternan (Felicity Jones) was forced to subordinate herself to the demands of the great man's image. The 45-year-old Dickens was married when he met Ternan, who was 18 at the time of their first encounter. Dickens discovered Ternan while he was directing and acting in an amateur production in Manchester.

According to the movie, Dickens eventually separated from his wife, but never publicly acknowledged his 13-year relationship with Ternan, a woman who (in the movie's view) understood and appreciated him in ways that his staid, portly and mostly resigned spouse (a fine Joanna Scanlan) never could.

In one of the movie's best scenes, Scanlan's Catherine gently concedes the race to Dickens' heart, but warns Ternan that no woman ever will be as important to the great man as his adoring and voracious public.

Working from a script by Abi Morgan -- who adapted a book by Claire Tomalin -- Fiennes alternates between Ternan's life as a married school teacher and her youthful days with Dickens. The structure emphasizes the fact that Ternan -- often seen taking brisk walks on a lonely Margate beach -- is struggling with her past.

Jones tempers youthful enthusiasm with growing unease. Ternan, we learn, is a mediocre actress whose mother (a fine Kristen Scott Thomas) takes on a difficult task: She angles to advance her daughter's prospects while also protecting her.

At one point, Dickens' friend and fellow author Wilkie Collins (Tom Hollander) tries to convince Nelly that she's duty bound to break with convention and accept the role of perpetual mistress. Men, Nelly says, can afford to be sexual pioneers: Victorian women can't.

Toward the end of the movie, Nelly has a conversation with a sympathetic cleric (John Kavanagh), and the movie proceeds to a redemptive finale. Nelly apparently has digested her past, and is ready to move on.

Fiennes has directed before (Coriolanus), but I'm not sure that he's mastered the art of being on both sides of the camera. In The Invisible Woman, his work in front of the camera surpasses what he achieves behind it, despite able assistance from cinematographer Rob Hardy and production designer Maria Djurkovic, who team to create a finely detailed 19th Century environment.

For all of its achievements, The Invisible Woman seems a small potatoes drama, a minor and sometimes sluggish portrait of Victorian womanhood into which the character of Dickens breathes most of the movie's life. I can't know Fiennes intentions, but I find it difficult to believe that's what he had in mind.

Student and teacher, but which is which?

Imagine that you are a man in your 50s, and that you once aspired to being an important novelist. Time has passed, and you find that your life has devolved into teaching uninterested (and mostly ungifted) students in a French town where your wife runs an art gallery. You know -- without question or doubt -- that your dreams have turned to ash.

If you can imagine such a man, you already know quite a bit about Germain, one of the main characters in director Francois Ozon's In the House.

Fabrice Luchini -- an actor who knows how to lose himself in the deluded self-seriousness of the characters he plays -- portrays Germain, a man we meet while he's grading papers and waiting for his wife (Kristin Scott Thomas) to arrive home from work.

Germain's life begins to change when he discovers 16-year-old Claude (Ernst Umhauer), a student who takes care of his invalid father and who has been deserted by his mother. Germain quickly learns that Claude may have writing talent, although judging by the assignments Germain gives ("What I Did Last Week"), it's small wonder that most of his students don't give a damn.

It's just here, though, that Ozon begins to reveal his subject: the way we can become ruinously absorbed in other people's fictions.

In this case, the teacher plunges into the student's work. Claude decides to write about Rapha (Bastien Ughetto), a classmate who likes basketball and who appears to live an ultra-normal life with his mother (Emmanuelle Seigner) and father (Denis Ménochet).

Claude finds fascination in the apparent normalcy of Rapha's family. Germain encourages his pupil to immerse himself in the lives of this "typical" family. For his part, Claude needs little encouragement to become aroused by Seigner's Esther.

Ozon shows us what Claude is experiencing with his "adopted" family, but here's the tricky part. We see everything through Claude's eyes. Is he telling us the truth or is he inventing most of what we're seeing? Is he a perceptive documentarian or a budding novelist or, perhaps, a bit of both?

Once again, Ozon (Under the Sand and Swimming Pool) gives us a thriller unburdened by the need for conventional thrills, a drama in which tensions transfer from the characters to us as we try to work our way through the maize that Ozon constructs.

All of this takes place against an intellectual backdrop that explores the processes by which fiction is created and the consequences that can result from the conspiratorial bond between writer and reader.

Luchini is perfectly cast as a teacher who increasingly falls under the sway of a wily student, and Umhauer, who flashes an ambiguous smile, plays his part with malicious aplomb.

All of this builds to one of the most memorable concluding shots you'll see in any movie, a beautiful depiction of Ozon's themes. In fairness to Ozon, I won't describe the shot here. Discover it in a theater.

In the House deals with serious issues, but Ozon's touch is mostly light, and the story is not without humor, much of it rooted in the story's smart and devious fascinations.

Fishing for romance in an unlikely spot

Everything about the romantic comedy Salmon Fishing in the Yemen sounds unappealing, maybe even ridiculous. Here's the drill: A wealthy sheikh (Amir Waked) wants to create a river for salmon in the parched deserts of Yemen. His British financial representative (Emily Blunt) asks a fisheries expert (Ewan McGregor) to design the salmon habitat, a multi-million dollar task that he views as sheer folly. McGregor's Fred, who works for the government, resists until he's pushed by his boss who's being pushed by his boss, Kristin Scott Thomas as a manipulative PR woman who works for the Prime Minister. Scott Thomas's Patricia Maxwell thinks that the salmon project might be a welcome rarity: a feel-good story from the usually distressed Middle East. Director Lasse Halstrom works his way through Fred's crumbling marriage, which must fall apart for romance to blossom between Fred and Blunt's Harriet. Harriet's slowly developing attraction for Fred also faces an obstacle: Harriet is involved with a British soldier serving in Afghanistan. When she receives word that her beau is missing and presumed dead, she goes into the expected funk. McGregor does a nice job of allowing Fred's charms slowly to peek through the character's geeky devotion to fish. Scott Thomas makes spectacularly officious PR woman, and Waked, as the sheikh, projects wisdom and whimsy as a ruler with an outlandish dream and equally outlandish amounts of money to pay for it. But Salmon Fishing in the Yemen is only intermittently rewarding, with Lasstrom serving up a bit low-key humor and a plot that's not particularly compelling. See it for McGregor's charming turn or, better yet, wait for the DVD. Know this though: McGregor and Blunt have a lot more to offer than Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried, the stars of Hallstrom's last romance, Dear John.