Sex, talk, and relationships on view

   I already knew that Penelope Cruz can be a terrific comic actress, but The Invite, a movie about sex and relationships, reminded me how good she can be. I can’t say I’m a huge Seth Rogen fan, but he gives what might be his best performance in this Olivia Wilde-directed movie. Wilde also has a starring role.

   Essentially, The Invite is a four-hander with Edward Norton joining the group as a firefighter who has formed a relationship with a psychotherapist (Cruz), who describes herself as a sexologist. 

   Putting two couples (Wilde, Rogen, and Cruz and Norton) into a San Francisco apartment sounds claustrophobic, but working from a screenplay by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones, Wilde makes her movie both provocative and entertaining. 

   The movie opens with Rogen’s Joe riding his folding bicycle home from his job as a music teacher at a minor San Francisco conservatory. Everything about Joe suggests defeat — from his slouch to his saturnine countenance. In hilly San Francisco, riding a bike can be punishing. Joe shows no signs of being able to escape his fate.

   When he arrives home with a bad back, Joe quickly gets into a tiff with his wife Angela (Wilde). She tells him the upstairs neighbors are coming to dinner. Joe claims that he’s been ambushed by the news. Angela’s upset that he didn’t buy wine for the occasion. We're primed for an evening of familiar bickering.

    But Joe has a specific complaint about the neighbors — Cruz’s Pina and Norton’s Hawk — make wild, noisy love that disrupts Joe’s sleep. Pina’s orgasms evidently have an epic quality. Joe insists he plans to complain. Angela slides into don’t-you-dare mode.

     It’s clear from the start that these two couples aren’t destined to be best friends forever. Norton’s Hawk has a self-possessed arrogance about him, and Pina has a pushy personality, an openness that borders on aggression. She presents herself as a free spirit.

    So where is all this going? The Invite soon turns into a movie about contemporary sexual mores and styles. Hawk and Pina, we learn, are into group sex. The noise Joe has been hearing comes from some of their orgy mates. Hawk upends Joe by bringing the subject up before Joe has a chance to complain. He feels he owes Joe an explanation.

     Wilde’s jittery uneasiness and Rogen’s inbred cynicism play well against two people who pride themselves on their maturity. I won’t describe the results, but the dialogue becomes sharply funny, and the actors are in peak form. 

     Wilde keeps things humming as we learn more about each character. Pina goes beyond her obvious eroticism. Hawk reveals a sobering part of his past, and Angela and Joe begin to see the truth that underlies their constant arguing: Their increasingly stale relationship may be teetering on the edge of extinction

     No fair telling more. The movie can’t quite decide how to end, but Wilde avoids a sentimental resolution and by the time the movie concludes, each character stands more revealed. Emotions, vulnerabilities, and personal truths have been bared. 

     Look, The Invite isn’t Chekov or Albee, but it’s engaging and deftly realized. That’s more than can be said about lots of current movies.

'The Bride!' celebrates its excesses

  It's unlikely anyone will accuse Maggie Gyllenhaal of stinting on ambition in The Bride!,  a wild farrago of a movie that resists classification. 

  Is The Bride! a horror movie or a Gothic romance? Is it a feminist reimagining of movies of the 1930s, particularly James Whale's The Bride of Frankenstein? Is it a comedy that pays homage to Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein with a rousing rendition of Puttin' on the Ritz?

  Or, is it a showcase for an uninhibited display of ferocity from Jessie Buckley in another fearless performance?

  As it turns out, The Bride! is all those things, a movie that makes no bones about celebrating its excesses, of which there are too many.

   Gyllenhaal's big-screen gamble doesn't entirely, but her  approach yields intermittent payoffs. Perhaps the genre it mostly resembles is one in which two crazy outcasts tear across the American landscape, eventually finding love.

    Buckley appears in two roles, occasionally interrupting the narrative for portentous speeches delivered by Frankenstein's 19th-century author, Mary Shelley, who inspires a manic outburst by Ida, also Buckley, a Chicago moll who winds up dead in the movie's prologue.

    Enter Christian Bale's Frankenstein, a.k.a. "Frank," who visits Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening), a scientist who has been experimenting with reanimating the dead. Poor Frank. He's lonely and craves the companionship of a woman who, like him, was created, not born. He yearns for a soulmate.

     Though she expresses reservations, Euphronious helps Frank dig up the recently deceased  Ida. Employing whizzing, flashing equipment that's heavy on old-fashioned dials and gauges, Euphronious jolts Ida back to life. 

     Initially, Ida, who can't remember her past, hardly seems an ideal partner for Frankenstein, played by Bale with a mixture of sincerity and goofiness, punctuated by occasional bursts of violence, mostly to protect Ida.

    Nothing if not loyal, Frank sticks to his lovelorn mission. He and Ida wend their way across the country, making stops at a roaring Chicago party, a sophisticated New York City black-tie event, and a rural drive-in theater.

    The wandering duo frequently attends movies, all of which star romantic lead Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal). As we all once did, Frank learned about romance from the movies.

    Irate Chicago mobsters and a detective duo (Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz) pursue the fleeing renegades, as images of Bonnie and Clyde flash through our collective heads.

   Despite efforts to mask his appearance, Frankenstein can't always hide his stitched-together face, and Ida's tousled blonde hair and blood-red lips are accompanied by an ever-present stain on her right cheek, a souvenir from her reanimation. When it's popularized on tabloid front pages, her look turns into a fashion statement.

      I can't say that Gyllenhaal blends the movie's cornucopia of ingredients into a satisfying whole. She creates a mixed-bag of a movie that dashes across the screen, dazzling with its theatricality, amusing with its satiric fillips, and repelling with splashes of body horror. 

    Eclectic to the max, The Bride! practically drowns itself in movie love as it tries to match Buckley's expressions of unrestrained wildness. Say this, though: The Bride! earns the exclamation point in its title.

       

       

     

A racing magnate faces a big test

 

   After his work in House of Gucci, you might have thought that Adam Driver wouldn't want to play any more Italians. One English-speaking Italian might be enough for any career.

 But here he is as Enzo Ferrari, the Italian sports car entrepreneur who suffers from the loss of a beloved 24-year-old son, neglects his wife (Penelope Cruz), and carries on a long-standing affair with a younger woman (Shailene Woodley) with whom he has another son.  

   And, then, there's racing.

   Ferrari affords director Michael Mann the opportunity to recreate the Mille Miglia, a grueling 1,500-kilometer race that gives the movie its most harrowing twist.

  The drivers in Ferrari reminded me of bullfighters -- proud, arrogant men who know they're risking their lives.

   Once a driver himself, Ferrari encourages his drivers not to waver at crucial points in a race, even when two cars are trying to make the same turn. He makes it seem as if their manhood is on the line.

   That's tough stuff, and as Driver plays him, Ferrari steels himself against paying an emotional price for any damage that might result from his single-minded commitment to winning. 

   Mann's movie unfolds during three months of 1957, a year in which Ferrari battled to save his company from bankruptcy while dealing with an embittered wife who had leverage over him. She owned half of his company.

  With another fine performance, Cruz creates a character who treats her wandering husband with simmering contempt that threatens boil into rage. No patsy, Cruz's Laura also wants to protect her stake in the company.  

   Ferrari eventually learns that he'll have to shed his speed-boutique mentality and sell a minimum of 400 cars per year to keep his company on the road. Since its founding in 1947,  Ferrari had been selling a few cars a year to well-heeled buyers.

    Lacking capital, Ferrari assays what he must risk to find big-time backing, at one point from Ford. Business and sport converge. To secure  financing, Ferrari also believes he must win the Mille Miglia.

    Mann (Collateral and The Insider) gained prominence with TV's Miami Vice. Early movies such as Thief  (1981) and Manhunter (1986) were small gems. Many count Mann's Heat (1995) among their favorite movies.

     Mann resists the temptation to over-stylize Ferrari, and in Driver, he finds an actor who communicates the torment beneath Ferrari's composed facade. Ferrari knows he has subordinated other elements in his life to his racing obsession.

     To his credit, Mann also shows a softer side Ferrari mostly keeps hidden. We see it in tender scenes between Ferrari and his young son, a boy Laura insists cannot inherit the Ferrari name until she dies, another source of contention.

    The racing sequences are exciting but Mann backs them up with plenty of off-the-track intrigue.

    More than a pure racing movie and less than a comprehensive bio-pic, Ferrari focuses on a man who’s trying to hold his life and company together. He and others pay a price for his efforts.

    Ferrari may hit an occasional bump, but Mann, now 80, knows where to find the dramatic fuel that keeps his movie  running.

Cruz and Banderas in top comic form

 

 The movie Official Competition begins plausibly enough. A  successful businessman decides that money isn't enough: He needs to leave a cultural legacy. What better way to make a mark than by financing a movie? Argentine directors Gaston Duprat and Mariano Cohn start with that premise but quickly settle into a look at the competitive conflict between two actors (Antonio Banderas and Oscar Martinez) who have been cast in a project that's supposed to fulfill the businessman's dream. Jose Luis Gomez plays the tycoon, a naive fellow who buys the rights to a novel he hasn't bothered to read. Sporting an out-sized pile of frizzy red hair, Penelope Cruz portrays the film's director, a woman with novel ideas about how to obtain the performances she wants from her two stars. Much of the film focuses on rehearsals as the actors prepare for the shoot. Banderas's Felix, who has had some popular success, eschews method-oriented probing. Martinez's Ivan, who teaches acting, takes the opposite view, insisting on depth and authenticity. Duprat and Cohen have a gift for sight gags, one involving a boulder that has been hoisted into the air by a crane. Cruz and Banderas display finely honed comic chops and Martinez helps ground the movie with Ivan's seriousness. Official Competition may not expand your view of filmmaking. But the movie proves entertaining and funny and Cruz and her two compatriots work at levels that fill Official Competition with enjoyment.

Almodovar's look at mothers and history

 

   For much of his career, director Pedro Almodovar has devoted himself to a pleasure-filled aesthetic. Almodovar's Parallel Mothers doesn’t entirely abandon the director's love of splash colors. Almodovar's characters typically arrive on screen drenched in decor and design. The women in his movies seldom appear ordinary.

  Of course, there’s another side to this coin. Does the emphasis on exteriors cloak what’s on the inside of all those characters? Is Almodovar playing a sly game with us?

  Living in Spain, Almodovar must know that his country’s leap into post-Franco modernism carried risks, even as it brought gender fluidity, sexual expression, and bold artistic expression.

  The joys of liberation threaten to obscure a brutal past in which dissent and dissenters were not tolerated.

  That's the troubling foundation on which Almodovar allows Parallel Mothers to unfold, focusing his story on a successful photographer (Penelope Cruz) who's trying to settle a debt with the past.

   In her work. Cruz's Janis meets Arturo (Israel Elejalde), a forensic archaeologist. She wants Arturo to help excavate a site which the folks in her hometown have identified as the location of a mass murder. Janis's great grandfather was among those slain by fascist soldiers.

   As the story evolves, the personal and the political prove inseparable. Janis sleeps with Arturo, becomes pregnant, and opts to keep the baby. The married Arturo isn’t ready to leave his ailing wife. Janis seems intent on being a single mother.

   Almodovar sketches all this quickly before settling into the main part of the movie, which deals with Janis’ relationship with another young mother (Milena Smit), this one still a teenager.

    The two women meet when both are in labor and sharing a room at a Madrid hospital. 

     Almodovar opts for a contrivance (I won’t reveal it here) that easily could have sunk his movie, pushing it toward cliche. Instead, he shows us how the two women are drawn together as they face troubling questions, some  hinging on generational differences.

     Still a young woman, Smit’s Ana is less attuned to recent Spanish history than Janis. She’s a kid and she’s given a nearly impish look that’s reinforced by Smit’s performance.

     Additional characters appear. Almodovar veteran Rossy de Palma portrays Janis’s editor, a woman who hires Janis for glossy photoshoots. Ana’s mother (Aitana Sanchez-Gijon), an actress, seems too preoccupied with her career to fully acknowledge her daughter.

    Cruz’s performance holds the movie together. Cruz has talked about the intuitive connection she has with Almodovar.  Since 1977, she has made seven films with Almodovar, including Volver (2006) and All About My Mother (1999).

   I don’t know if Cruz is romanticizing her relationship with Almodovar but her work here is first-rate. She’s playing a character burdened with her own issues while fulfilling a cultural responsibility, an obligation to the past.

    At a key point in the movie, Janis also must make a crucial decision about her own relationship to the truth.

    By the movie's end, Almodovar has reminded us of a lesson that goes beyond Spain, the Spanish Civil War, and totalitarianism. We must dig up the past before we can put it to rest. We owe it to the dead and to ourselves.

They can save world. What about the movie?

 

  Who says movies can't be educational? 

  The 355, a Bond-like thriller starring Jessica Chastain, derives its title from Agent 355, a real-life woman who spied for the rebel colonists during the Revolutionary War. 

  Yes, that was news to me, too.

  Oh well, the movie's title hints at the only revolutionary thing about it. The 355 quickly establishes itself as a formula job that tries so hard to attain franchise status, it might as well have been called The 355, Chapter 1. 

  Directed by Simon Kinberg (X-Men: Dark Phoenix) from a screenplay he wrote with Theresa Rebeck and Bek Smith, The 355 pits five women -- Chastain, Lupita Nyong'o, Diane Kruger, Penelope Cruz, and, late in the movie, Fan Bingbing -- against an evil genius who's trying to snare a device that can cripple the world's computer networks.

    Much of the time, it seems as if The 355 has been concocted to demonstrate the obvious: Women can make butt-kicking movies, too. 

    Of the women, though, only Kruger seems adept at projecting a killer vibe. Nyong'o plays a computer whiz who's trying to break with her MI6 past. Cruz? I'll get to her later.

   Chastain's Mace (short for Mason) and Kruger's Marie, a German agent, begin the movie as antagonists, squaring off in a chase sequence set in the Paris Metro. 

    Mostly, though, these women don't travel by subway. Instead, they globe hop from Paris to Marrakesh to Shanghai as the story contrives to unite them against a common foe.

   Absent a compelling story, we're left to wonder whether someone thought A-list pizzaz could elevate the movie's collection of undistinguished action, predictable plot points, personal betrayals, and slick packaging. 

   The 355 does feature one unusual job: Cruz plays a shrink with a narrow specialty. Her Graciela counsels Colombian secret agents and enters the picture to provide therapy for a rogue agent played by Edgar Ramirez. 

   Sebastian Stan portrays one of Mace's fellow CIA agents as well as a sort of minor (very) love interest.

   If by some miracle, there's a second helping of this uninspired brew, a title already awaits. How about The 356?

Bob's Cinema Diary 6/23/20: 'Babyteeth,' 'Wasp Network,' 'Daddy Issues'

Babyteeth 

Talk about a parental nightmare. Your 16-year-old daughter falls for a 23-year-old drug user without a home. He's tattooed, sports a mullet, and doesn't seem to give a damn about anything. His name is Moses. That's the set-up for director Shannon Murphy's Babyteeth. But wait. There's more. Milla (Eliza Scanlen), the teenager in question, is no ordinary kid. She's got terminal cancer. So Milla's parents (Essie Davis and Ben Mendelsohn) face a problem. How do you say "no" to a kid who can't ruin her future because she doesn't have one?  Another teenage weepy about a kid with a terminal disease? Not exactly. Working from a screenplay by Rita Kalnejais, Murphy adds whimsical stylistic flourishes and enough emotional realism to upset expectations. A pianist who abandoned her musical career, Mom is about to drown in deep emotional waters. A psychiatrist by trade, Dad is so overcome with trepidation about what looms that at one point he gives himself a shot of morphine. Parental performances are strong but the movie belongs to Scanlen and Toby Wallace.  Wallace gives Moses lots of rough appeal. You never doubt that a good kid lurks beneath Moses' bad-kid surface. Babyteeth is the kind of movie you might approach with dread, but one that turns out to be more creative than you initially might have imagined. None of the characters want to be boxed-in by cliche. If Scanlen's name rings a bell, it might be because she played Beth in Little Women, one of last year's best-received movies.

Wasp Network

If you're looking for a good movie by director Olivier Assayas, you might want to try 2005's Summer Hours. I wish the same could be said for Assay's latest, Wasp Network, now showing on Netflix. Having already teamed with Assayas in 2010's Carlos, Edgar Ramirez plays a Cuban who in the 1990s leaves his wife (Penelope Cruz) and daughter to defect to the US. As we later learn, Ramirez's Rene Gonzalez is part of a Castro-conceived program to infiltrate Miami Cuban circles that carry out oppositional activities against the regime. A muddled narrative brings the so-called Wasp Network program to light, introducing two additional characters. Gael Garcia Bernal portrays team leader Gerardo Hernandez and Wagner Moura portrays a slick operative who takes a Cuban-American wife (Ana de Armas). Assayas seems to be aiming for epic scope, but can't put the pieces of the movie together in a way that staves off confusion. Although she doesn't get as much screen time as the men, Cruz makes a strong impression as a woman wounded by her husband's defection and betrayed by the revolution she avidly supports. The same goes for de Armas, another woman whose life becomes collateral damage as the plot unfolds. The performances are all strong, some of its scenes connect and the movie looks great, but Wasp Network registers as a misfire from a fine director and an extremely good cast.

Daddy Issues
Henrietta (Kimberley Datnow) moves from London to Los Angeles when she's summoned to join the board of her late father's firm. It seems that Henrietta -- who aspires to be a stand-up comic -- once lived with her dad and attended school in LA. That’s convenient because Henrietta has friends from back in the day, which means the movie has a supporting cast. Alice (Alice Carroll Johnson), one of Henrietta’s old pals, tries to convince a small group of reunited friends that she's a successful talent agent. In reality, she's a gay woman trying to make ends meet by providing non-sexual companionship for a benevolent Sugar Daddy who misses his late wife and only seems to want someone with whom he can watch TV. When Henrietta moves into her father's LA house, she learns that Nolan (Tanner Rittenhouse) also lives there. He works for dad's company and developed a relationship in which Dad became a kind of mentor. Henrietta's attempt to reunite with an old boyfriend goes nowhere. Director Laura Holliday never convinced me to care about any of this or to believe that Henrietta had real comedy chops. That would have been fine had Daddy Issues been a movie about the difference between wanting to do stand-up and actually pulling it off. Somewhere, there’s a movie here, but no one seems to have found it.

A director slips into depression

Antonio Banderas leads the way in director Pedro Almodovar's Pain & Glory.

In Pain & Glory, director Pedro Almodovar tells the story of an aging director who's creaking has ways toward the last good night. As Salvador Mallo, Antonio Banderas makes us feel his character's pain even when he's doing something ordinary, getting out of a taxi, for example. A master of eye-popping color, Almodovar almost makes it seem as the blood has been drained from Banderas's face. But more about Banderas later.

Working in a reflective mode, Almodovar has made a movie that begs to be taken autobiographically.

Scenes in Mallo's home were shot in Almodovar's Madrid apartment. Banderas wore Almodovar's clothes during the filming and styled his hair in the swept-back fashion Almodovar favors. Of course, Banderas has a long history with Almodovar, having starred in Almodovar's Labyrinth of Passion (1982) and later in movies such as Law of Desire, Matador, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and even later in films such as Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! and The Skin I live In.

So, Pain & Glory arrives on-screen weighted with a history that's reflected in the screenplay when Mallo reconnects, after 32 years, with the actor (Asier Etxeandia) who starred in what apparently was the director's best film.

Mallo's connection with his past comes at a time when depression keeps him from work. He reads. He sometimes writes. But mostly he's holed up in his apartment, where he remembers his life as a child.

Flashbacks to childhood, some induced when Mallo decides to try heroin, show us the relationship between young Mallo (Asier Flores) and his mother (Penelope Cruz).

An early-picture close-up of Cruz washing clothes in a river near the village where Mallo was born so intensely captures Cruz’s beauty that it feels as if the image should be lifted from the screen and framed. It's practically a love letter.

In another flashback, we glimpse the future. Young Mallo auditions for a church choir. The other boys can't carry a tune but Mallo can sing. He has a voice.

Mallo recalls the birth of his sexual desire in a scene in which the young Mallo watches Eduardo (Cesar Vicente), a workman who's putting up tiles on the wall of the family's home. When a nude Eduardo washes away the dirt of work, Mallo is overwhelmed. His mother arrives home and we sense that she's confirming what she already knows about her son.

Almodovar, as always, is in fine form, but Banderas's performance makes the movie. It almost feels as if his bearded face is being pulled down by the drag of Mallo's depression. Banderas doesn't so much portray depression as embody it. With graying hair and beard, the handsome Banderas has made his face drab.

If the movie is meant to be autobiographical, Almodovar isn't always kind to himself. Mallo cruelly sabotages his renewed friendship with Etxeandia's character. He indulges in heroin and seems to treat the devoted woman who assists him (Nora Navas) as nothing more than a sounding board for his laments.

At one point, Mallo -- perhaps as an act of contrition -- gives his estranged actor friend the rights to a story he has written. The story becomes a one-man showcase for the actor, a stage production that's highlighted by a confessional recounting of the days when the narrator was unable to save a youthful lover from the ravages of heroin.

But even that story becomes suspect when, after many years, the lover (Leonardo Sbaraglia) returns to Madrid from Argentina. After accidentally stumbling across the play, he meets with Mallo. Turns out that the former lover is content, stable and living a life that seems altogether more fulfilling than Mallo's.

There also are scenes that seem lifted from life, as when Mallo listens to his now-aging mother instruct him in how she wishes to be displayed in her coffin. This rosary, not that one. And please, no bound feet. That might constrict her freedom in the afterlife.

Although there's a play within the movie and other references to art -- both visual and verbal -- Pain and Glory isn't nearly as playful as much of Almodovar's work. Winds of sadness and defeat blow through much of the movie. Even when we learn that Mallo will resume his career, it doesn't feel like a triumph. We've already seen that he has nothing in his life but filmmaking. Is that enough? Shouldn’t life have more?

Almodovar, who’s 70, paints a portrait of a cinematic bad boy in his twilight years. In a way, that makes Pain and Glory a story about the kind of loneliness for which no antidote has yet been discovered.

Kenneth Branagh rides the Orient Express

Branagh directs and stars in Murder on the Orient Express, but his version of the 1934 Agatha Christie novel seldom clicks.

I'd be lying if I told you that I recall every detail of director Sidney Lumet's 1974 hit Murder on the Orient Express, but I do remember that the movie was fun. Albert Finney appeared as the great Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, heading an all-star cast that included Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, John Gielgud and Sean Connery.

The trouble with Kenneth Branagh's new version, which stars Branagh as Poirot, is that the movie can't wring enough enjoyment out of the journey from Istanbul to Calais -- not for the train's passengers and, more importantly, for us.

Murder on the Orient Express mostly serves to showcase Branagh's turn as Poirot in his version of Agatha Christie's classic 1934 mystery, and, no, Branagh isn’t as good as Finney.

Before the preview screening of Orient Express, I wondered why Branagh had bothered to remake it. After the movie concluded, I could find no special reason for him to have taken another go at material that also has yielded a 2001 TV movie in which Alfred Molina portrayed Poirot.

In this latest outing, Branagh upstages a hefty cast, which includes Michelle Pfeiffer, Josh Gad, Willem Dafoe, Penelope Cruz, Derek Jacoby, Judi Dench, Daisy Ridley and Leslie Odom Jr. Johnny Depp signs on, as well.

Branagh tries to provide visual bang for the buck with exterior shots of the mountains across which the train speeds, an avalanche that derails the engine, and even a few scenes outside of the train. The drama’s resolution takes place in a tunnel where the suspects are lined up at a long table as if they were about to stage a news conference.

I tired of Branagh's Poirot, particularly given the movie’s monotonous structure: Poirot interviews suspects (i.e., the supporting cast) one after another, each appearing in perfunctory fashion as if Branagh is following a time table rather than a script.

Nothing, of course, is as it seems, but Branagh doesn't optimize the participation of a strong cast. Only Pfeiffer comes close to receiving her own small showcase. Mostly, the supporting characters fail to generate keen interest.

For those who haven't read Christie's novel or seen the 1974 movie, there's no point spoiling the mystery, although it's worth noting that lots of attention seems to have gone into the movie's production design, creating the illusion that we're on a most opulent journey.

When Poirot finally solves the mystery, the movie hits its stride, but much of Orient Express proves a snooze-worthy ride in the company of a morally insistent detective who so values balance that he only eats eggs of precisely the same size.

If the light from your mobile device weren't likely to disrupt the experience of others, I'd suggest that this is one journey on which you might consider bringing a book -- perhaps something by Agatha Christie.

Another visit from Derek Zoolander

Ben Stiller revives a character that should have been left alone.

The original Zoolander (2001) became a cult favorite in the days when you still could find a Blockbuster store at which you could rent a weekend's full of dumb comedies. Here we are, 15 years later, and you'll have to go to a multiplex -- at least for a while -- to catch the even dumber sequel, Zoolander 2.

But there's dumb funny, and just plain dumb, and after you chuckle at renewing your acquaintance with the movie's collection of "ridiculously good-looking" dopes, there's not much left to tickle the funny bone in this amped-up rehash.

I suppose ardent fans of the first movie will turn out, but despite the return of Ben Stiller (as Derek Zoolander), Owen Wilson (as Hansel), Will Ferrell (as Mugatu) and the addition of Penelope Cruz (as an Interpol agent, fashion police division), this one proves overproduced and undernourished.

The movie opens with the collapse of the Derek Zoolander Center for Kids Who Can't Read Good and Who Want to Learn to Do Other Stuff Good, Too. The building, a holdover from the first movie, falls into the East River.

A series of newscasters -- Katie Couric among them -- tell us that Derek's wife (Christine Taylor) died in the collapse. An incompetent father, Derek soon loses his son to social services and retreats to a cabin in the frozen wilds of extreme northern New Jersey.

He's so dispirited, he can't even do his patented Blue Steel look anymore.

We also learn that Hansel, Derek's modeling rival, has retreated from the limelight; he's ashamed to show his face, which was scarred when the Zoolander Center crumbled. Hansel now lives in the Malibu desert among of tribe of misfit nomads that includes Kiefer Sutherland and others who try to buoy Hansel's by catering to his taste for orgies.

Derek and Hansel soon are summoned to Rome for a big modeling job that could resurrect their faded careers. Zoolander goes so that he can prove he's capable of raising his 11-year-old son, played by Cyrus Arnold.

A series of cameos from the likes of Kristin Wiig, Sting and Benedict Cumberbatch doesn't do much to add merriment.

Justin Theroux, who appeared in the first movie, also turns up, as does Billy Zane, but the movie almost seems as if it's satirizing itself rather than poking fun at the world of high fashion.

The first movie had some difficulty expanding what began as a sketch into a full movie, and this one struggles even more with a Rome-based story involving the murder of pop stars and a plan to eliminate such fashion icons such as Vogue's Anna Wintour, Tommy Hilfiger , Vera Wang, Valentino, Marc Jacobs and others. Perhaps because they're good natured, these gods of fashion appear in the movie; they may live to regret it.

And, no, Donald Trump who did cameo duty in the first movie, skipped this one.

The fun wears out quicker than a fashion trend, leaving us wondering why anyone thought it would be a good idea to revive characters who should have been allowed to remain favorites of their zealous fans while leaving the rest of the world alone.

A 'Counselor' badly in need of advice

A great pedigree can't save this scattered, mildly pretentious thriller.

Tell me you weren't looking forward to The Counselor, a thriller with a screenplay by novelist Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men), direction by the talented if variable Ridley Scott (Gladiator and Prometheus) and acting from a cast that includes Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz and Cameron Diaz.

That's the kind of pedigree that should excite moviegoers, especially those who are attracted to the spare toughness of McCarthy's worldview. In The Counselor -- McCarthy's first piece written solely for the screen -- the esteemed author creates a world in which toxic mixtures of greed and desperation reap heavy consequences and in which any display of naivety sets one up for an unimaginably dire fate.

The characters in The Counselor are surrounded by forces they can't control: Their only mistake lies in believing that a degree of control might be possible. When things go terribly wrong (as they must in a movie such as this) no amount of improvisation or bravado can spare the hapless. They're exposed for what they are: someone else's prey.

Contrary to its title, The Counselor isn't really about an individual; it's about systemic rot, most of it taking place in lavishly appointed environments where high-class consumption is the rule, much of it funded by money derived from the drug trade.

In The Counselor, drugs support the criminal upper class, an observation that seems a little tiresome for someone of McCarthy's stature. "Drugs again?" we ask ourselves, as we fight to stave off disappointment.

Fassbender plays a nameless attorney whose motivations are so sketchily presented, they're almost irrelevant. The Counselor feels as if his back is to the wall. He's helped a lot of criminals. Now, he wants to cash in by involving himself in a drug deal. He also wants to find a happily-ever-after situation with his wife, played by Cruz as the only character in the movie with any claim to innocence.

Fassbender's character deals with two associates. The wealthy Reiner (Bardem) is a genially sly man with an outrageous, blown-back hairstyle that make him look as if he just put his finger in a live electric socket. Reiner can be comical, but he warns the Counselor that deals such as the one he's contemplating tend to take on a life of their own. If everything sours, the Counselor won't have the slightest idea of how to cope. He'll be dangerously out of his depth.

The Counselor also meets with Pitt's Westray, a relaxed man with a fondness for a white cowboy hat. Westray also issues warnings to the Counselor. The easy-going Westray seems to understand that he may have pushed his luck too far. Perhaps he already should have abandoned crime, but he's playing things out, maybe even egging disaster on.

Diaz is cast in the movie's most mysterious role: She plays Malkina, a woman we first meet when she watches Reiner's pet leopards chasing down prey on an open plane. It doesn't take much by way of intuition to know that Malkina's all business and that when she does business, it will be bad business -- if not for herself, then for those she encounters.

In a bit of self-conscious boundary stretching we see Malkina having sex with Reiner's yellow, convertible sportscar. No, I'm not kidding. I won't describe exactly how this bizarre feat is accomplished. Know only that it involves Malkina doing a cheerleader-like split atop the car's windshield. Scott may be making a point in weirdly literal fashion: This woman gets off on material things.

The world of The Counselor is ripe with intrigue and abundant corruption, and yet, the movie can't be called a success.

To begin with Fassbender's character is never well-enough defined to hold the center of a movie. Bardem, so impressive as the lethal Anton Chigurh in the big-screen adaptation of McCarthy's No Country For Old Men, gives a performance that flirts with shtick, alternating comic exaggeration with a feeling that he briefly has returned to his senses, something like a jazz musician picking up the melody after a wild improvisational riff.

Diaz seems sufficiently jaded as a woman who strives to create a straight line between her intentions and her actions, even if those actions show up on the wrong side of the moral ledger.

And then there's the narrative itself. It takes an awfully long time for the story to lock in, and when it does, we watch less because we care about the outcome, but because we simply want to see the various chunks of story find a semblance of coherence. This is more a formal accomplishment than a deeply felt human one.

It's equally true that McCarthy's dialogue, though sometimes mordantly witty, carries the weight of pretension, so much so that by the movie's end, some of the characters (notably a crime lord played by Ruben Blades) begin to spell out the movie's harsh themes in an approach that's probably too clear, an example of literary obviousness that recursively articulates what we already know.

All of this makes for intermittently intriguing but only partially satisfying viewing experience, a movie in which adornment and opulence are conspicuously displayed as part of Scott's attempt to seduce us, and -- at times -- to show the gap between the upper classes of criminal life and the minions who serve them. We catch glimpses of the lumpen work force that keeps the drug wheels spinning, whether it comes to creatively executed assassinations or the drudgery of moving more product.

Scott and McCarthy put a lot on the table here, trying hard (too hard, probably) to add spice to a fairly routine story that, in its overall arc, looks as if it's trying to punish characters who have lived too large.

Scott and McCarthy have chosen a strange way to fail; their overly complex a story-telling approach makes things too difficult at the outset, and the proffered explanations for what we've been watching make the movie too easy in the end.

It sounds like an odd and perhaps even disrespectful thing to say about a McCarthy-written movie, but The Counselor could have used a rewrite.

Another "Pirates" movies sets sail

This edition of 'Pirates' doesn't sink, but it seldom soars.

The Pirates of the Caribbean movies have been plundering the box office for eight years, and the fourth edition – Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides – seems in no danger of sinking the franchise's mega-bucks ship.

The series’ fourth movie has enough swash and buckle to please hard-core fans. Johnny Depp serves up the usual mincing helping of Captain Jack Sparrow. Penelope Cruz adds a bit of steam, and a slew of mermaids turn up. When threatened, they snarl and sprout fangs. Hey, who said these movies had to make sense?

What this edition doesn’t have (aside from a feeling of sustained vigor) is Gore Verbinksi: The director of the previous Pirate movies has moved on. Verbinski recently directed the wildly inventive Rango, a gritty animated western that played with the genre in smart, knowing ways.

Verbinski, who surely needed a change of pace, has been replaced by Rob Marshall (Chicago, Memoirs of a Geisha and Nine). Marshall can’t duplicate the intricate action set pieces in which Verbinski helped to reinvent the lost art of visual comedy – not just physical comedy and pratfalls, but a comedy in which the camera and environment were full participants in a series of extended jokes.

Of course, this latest edition of Pirates has action (in largely superfluous 3-D at some locations), but it’s not inspired action. In fact, little about this edition of Pirates seems inspired: It’s an acceptable helping of a franchise: No more.

And Depp? Well, no amount of mascara can conceal the fact that he’s pretty much done everything he can with the role of Captain Jack. Still, if you're up for an encore, he's fine.

The plot finds a variety of folks scrambling to discover the legendary Foundation of Youth while the script figures out ways to add amusements, as well another pirate. A scowling Ian McShane portrays Captain Blackbeard.

For me, the movie never surpasses its opening. The story leaps into rollicking high gear as Captain Jack Sparrow escapes from a London jail. A Sparrow impostor is introduced, and Marshall makes room for a delightful cameo from Judi Dench and an amusingly bloated performance by Richard Griffiths as King George.

The movie’s opening – more or less a prologue – eventually gives way to the rest of the story, which is marred by stretches that drag and drone. Sparrow eventually finds himself aboard Captain Blackbeard’s ship along with Cruz’ Angelica, who says that she’s Blackbeard’s daughter. Captain Barbosa (Geoffrey Rush) also chases after the Fountain, as does a group of Spanish noblemen. Never mind why mermaids enter the story. They have a plot function, but their real purpose may have more to do with special effects than with dramatic necessity. Still, a beautiful mermaid (Astrid Berges-Frisbey) provides whatever soul the movie has.

I enjoyed listening to Rush and McShane deliver their lines with over-the-top relish, but by now, the franchise feels so familiar, I can’t watch without experiencing a degree of self-conscious detachment: “Oh,” I say to myself with no particular enthusaism, “This is where I’m supposed to be thrilled.” “Here’s where I should be laughing.” “And how long is this thing anyway?”

The answer: Two hours and 16 minutes – some of which proves to be fun, some not. I think we may have reached the point where audience anticipation and excitement has surpassed what the Pirate movies can deliver. Will that put a stop to them? I wouldn’t bet on it.