Examining the climate for a war crime

The Kill Team takes its cue from a 2013 documentary of the same name. The story deals with a platoon in which the staff sergeant (Alexander Skarsgard) takes a view of combat that doesn’t distinguish between frightened civilians and dangerous foes. In the role of the soft-spoken but dangerous sergeant Deeks, Skarsgard shows us how his character ingratiates himself with his men. He creates a tight-knit atmosphere that fosters a climate of secrecy and allows the sergeant to function as a kind of free agent in an Afghanistan war zone. Building blocks of brotherhood create a fraternal environment that tests the conscience of one of Deek's soldiers, the dedicated Andrew Briggman (Nat Wolff). Briggman is no softie when it comes to warfare, but his qualms about killing civilians put him at odds with the rest of the group. If you’ve seen the documentary, you pretty much know what’s going to happen, but a committed cast brings a level of tension to the proceedings. And the increasingly antagonistic duet played by Skarsgard and Wolff gives the movie a solid if troubling center. When bullets are flying and explosive devices are going off, figuring out how to behave isn’t easy but director Dan Krauss, who also directed the documentary, raises a deeply vexing question. What happens when killing in war becomes murder?

When Alice, 40, meets Harry, 27

Reese Witherspoon can't save a rom-com in which the romance isn't great -- and neither is the comedy.

Viewed through the most positive possible lens, the new romantic comedy Home Again has one element that might be regarded as fresh. A 40-year-old woman (Reese Witherspoon) disregards age differences and has an affair with a 27-year-old man (Pico Alexander).

Fair enough, but Home Again breaks little new ground with a mostly desexualized affair that stems less from desire than from confusions caused by a dissolving marriage. Besides, the whole age thing would have been more daring had Alice been written as a 50-year-old woman.

Witherspoon's Alice Kinney has arrived in Los Angeles with her two daughters (Eden Grace Redfield and Lola Flannery) to occupy the house of her late father, a well-respected director who also was known for his womanizing.

While partying at a bar with girlfriends on the occasion of her 40th birthday, Alice meets Harry (Alexander), an aspiring filmmaker.

Harry has arrived in LA with two filmmaking buddies (Nat Wolff and Jon Rudnitsky). The trio hopes to sell a screenplay writing based on a short that gained some recognition of the festival circuit.

After a drunken attempt at romance between Alice and Harry misfires, the three young men wind up living in Alice's guest house where they engage in annoyingly positive interactions with Alice's daughters and prove to be ideal tenants. Why not? They're not paying rent.

It's nice to see Candice Bergen in a brief role as Alice's mother, the woman who suggests that Alice shelter these apparently talented young men. Too bad, the screenplay gives Bergen so little to do.

Alice and Harry eventually begin a romance. The other two guys also have their eyes on Alice, but behave like gentlemen who become ridiculously (if not amusingly) protective of her when her estranged husband (Michael Sheen) arrives with hopes of patching up the marriage.

Director Hallie Meyers-Shyer -- the daughter of filmmakers Nancy Meyers (The Intern) and Charles Shyer (Baby Boom) -- has made the kind of romantic comedy that seems to exist behind the walls of a gated community where suffering is limited and all consequences easily are attenuated.

In starting her own business, Alice meets the duplicitous Zoey (Lake Bell), who hires Alice to decorate a child's bedroom. Zoey takes advantage of Alice, treating her like a nanny. Oh, the indignity.

OK, so rom-coms often rely on easy to swallow situations and posh surroundings, environments that soothe, offering palliative care for reality-weary audiences. But it's definitely disappointing to see Witherspoon, who created a real character in HBO's Big Little Lies, step backward into a world in which the most adventurous thing anyone might do is forgo the luxury of a personal shopper.

Love and cancer in a YA package

Based on an extraordinarily popular young-adult novel, The Fault in Our Stars jerks tears -- without sacrificing intelligence.

Before a preview screening of the new movie The Fault in Our Stars, I noticed that each of the two people seated directly in front of me held a full box of tissues. It turns out they were mother and son.

The young man -- evidently brave enough to venture beyond Fault's predominantly female demographic -- had read the novel on which the movie is based. His mother hadn't. She'd been prepped, though, and was ready for the disturbingly sad parts of a teen romance about two kids with cancer.

I'd read about John Green's mega-bestseller, but hadn't read the book, so I let mother and her son serve as a kind of early warning system for me: I don't know if they each used an entire box of tissues, but they were smart to be ready.

The Fault in Our Stars is what my late mother's generation used to call a three-handkerchief movie, a description that needs no further elaboration.

But -- and it's a big but -- The Fault in Our Stars deserves credit for something it isn't; i.e., dumb and condescending.

Yes, these cancer suffers -- played by Ansel Elgort and Shailene Woodley -- are physically attractive. Yes, they're bright. And, yes, they seem to have been glamorized by director Josh Boone, who makes sure the love story powers the sometimes melancholy proceedings.

But The Fault in Our Stars earns the lump it puts in your throat, and it preserves what appear to be the more ambitious aims of Green's novel: Wondering about what happens after death (possibly nothing), maintaining a healthy skepticism about confessional behavior in a support group, acknowledging that there's no way around feeling some kinds of pain and admitting that we'll all be lucky if one or two people remember us when we're gone.

Woodley gives the movie its soul. Her character -- 16-year-old Hazel Grace Lancaster -- narrates the story, thus preserving some of the novel's tone and voice.

Woodley, who also appeared in Fault screenwriters' Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber's The Spectacular Now, brings intellignce and wit to Hazel Grace, who's learned not to be swept away by anyone's hollow bromides.

Elgort, who appeared with Woodley in Divergent, tends toward hunkiness: His character is less complex than Hazel Grace. His Augustus Waters is a former high school basketball star whose cancer cost him a leg, but who can seem far too good-spirited to be true.

Most of what transpires keeps close to teen realities - except possibly for a trip to Amsterdam engineered by Elgort's Augustus. The point of the travel: to visit Peter Van Houton (Willem Dafoe), the author of An Imperial Affliction, Hazel Grace's favorite novel.

Hazel Grace wants to ask deep questions about the ending of Van Houton's novel, but the author turns out to be a bitter drunk, a character who exists mostly to raise a cautionary point for young readers: Best not to confuse wisdom on the page with the character of the author.

Dafoe doesn't hold back when it comes to portraying Van Houton's cruelty, but the trip to Amsterdam makes room for other developments, including an unfortunate visit to the Anne Frank home, accompanied by voice-over readings from Frank's famous diary.

Frank died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. She was 15. Bringing up Frank's story -- perhaps to amplify a point about embracing life amid abundant suffering -- seems too hard a tug at the heart strings, a needless exclamation point in a story that has plenty of its own emotional juice.

The story belongs to Woodley and Elgort, but the supporting cast adds flavor. Nat Wolff has a nice turn as August's friend Isaac, a teen-ager who has lost one eye to cancer and is about to lose another.

Laura Dern and Sam Trammel don't have a lot to do as Hazel Grace's parents, but the movie doesn't make buffoons out of them: They can't control a situation that's devastating for them.

Look, these cancer patients probably look a little too good for sick people, but one mustn't forget that The Fault in Our Stars makes no bones about being a Hollywood movie, and it will be seen by many who would shun a more aggressively realistic film.

Did the extended ending constitute a form of emotional piling on? Probably. Did I cry? No.

But here's the thing: I respect the tears of those who did -- and that's saying something.