A look at America’s craziness

 

   One Battle After Another, director Paul Thomas Anderson's loose adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's 1990 Vineland, captures more of the novelist's feverish absurdity, incendiary comedy, and ragtag relevance than I would have thought possible. I don't think that was the case with Anderson's Inherent Vice (2014), another attempt at bringing Pynchon to the screen.

   In large part, One Battle After Another uses Pynchon as a springboard for an updated story that seems to sync with contemporary concerns about a badly fractured society that spins out one dizzying scenario after another.

   Wild and scattered, One Battle After Another takes a big dare. It's like a dinner brimming with side dishes and no main course. Don't take that as a failure but as an overriding observation about the incoherence of a time without a clear center. 

    A sprawling canvas allows Anderson to introduce a range of characters, some bordering on caricature. Looking like he's shedding the last vestiges of youth, Leonardo DiCaprio plays Bob Ferguson, a rebel who -- in his younger days  -- blew up buildings in cahoots with Perfidia (Teyana Taylor), a Black woman and bold provocateur who finds sexual kick in armed defiance. Wielding power turns her on.

    The revolutionaries -- dubbed French 75 -- rob banks and free captured immigrants, saving them from internment, deportation, or worse. In one scene, Black women rob a bank, stamping bold fury onto the screen.

    The insurrectionists are opposed by a militaristic government police force in which Sean Penn's Colonel Lockjaw serves as a chief field officer. Lockjaw's sexual desires push him into racist hypocrisy when he's aroused by Perfidia. His ramrod walk -- a rigid rooster's strut -- makes for an ongoing sight gag.

    The opening scenes offer an unsettling blur of incident without much context. Anderson leaves it to us to ride the roiling wave he creates.  The characters will become more defined when the film leaps ahead 16 years. Still active, the revolution seems to be sputtering. 

     Time remains fuzzy throughout. Characters use cell phones, but pay phones still can be found in the story's dystopian surroundings.

     After her fierce opening salvo, Perfidia disappears from the story; we learn that she was captured and saved herself by turning rat. She entered the Witness Protection Program but escaped. She hasn't been seen since. For his part, Bob has retreated to a remote rural area where he's raising Willa (Chase Infiniti), the assertive high-school-aged daughter he had with Perfidia.

     Bob lives in a marijuana-induced haze, but his paranoia seems reasonable; the military would like to find him. I won't say more about it, but doubts are raised about Willa's parenthood.

      To the extent that there's a plot, it kicks into second gear when Willa is captured. Bob gropes his way out of a drug-induced fog as he tries to rescue her.

       An emerging string of characters adds to the movie's encompassing weirdness. Among them are members of the bizarrely named Christmas Adventurer's Club, a highly selective fraternity of powerful white men who stand for racial purity. Lockjaw yearns to join their ranks.

      Benicio del Toro delivers a funny comic turn as a martial arts instructor who sides with the revolutionaries. He also shelters immigrants the government would like to expel.  

      The humor hinges on overstatement, broadly drawn characters, shaggy detail, and unconstrained lunacy. Always a bit confused, Ferguson spends most of the movie trying to evade capture while still wearing the tattered bathrobe in which he flees the police. To make matters worse, time and drugs have obliterated the passwords Bob needs to reconnect with his former revolutionary colleagues so that he can discover where they've taken Willa.

     Action augments the gunplay and tension. A climactic car chase over rolling hills has a stomach-dropping quality that Anderson sustains for several minutes, and just about everything in One Battle After Another benefits from Jonny Greenwood's edgy score.

     Is One Battle After Another intended as a cautionary tale about where our divided country might be heading? Some may see it that way, but I didn’t view the movie as a flashing red light. Rather, it struck me as a depiction of the febrile craziness of a moment in which nearly everything seems possessed by an over-blown sense of absurdity that’s ridiculous, dangerous, and resistant to comprehension

     Of course, it’s all too much, but that’s how things often feel.

Two very different horror films: 'X' and 'Master'

    Contemporary horror has gotten meaty enough that I'm sure it has inspired doctoral theses wherever film studies are taught. Thanks in large part to Jordan Peele (Get Out and Us), racial prejudice has joined the world of horror movies. You can include the recent Candy Man in that category, as well.

  Then there's the world of horror served straight no chaser, movies that are more aligned with the history of horror than with any topical issue. These movies require that we know that filmmakers are keenly aware of horror conventions and precedents. Such films may be violent and even vile, but we're expected to be in on the joke. 

 

X
    Let's start with a movie that's both a riff on previous efforts and an attempt to deliver an alarmingly  sleazy helping of horror. 

  X walks in the bloody footsteps of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and a variety of other movies that aficionados will easily identify. 

   Director Ti West (The House of the Devil, The Innkeepers) also takes a bow toward Boogie Nights as he tells the story of a group of young folks who gather at an isolated farmhouse to make a porn film. The year: 1979.

    The cast includes the porn movie's female leads (Brittany Snow and Mia Goth) and a young woman (Jenna Ortega) whose original job involves the production's sound. Ortega's Lorraine eventually decides that if she's going to work on a porn film, she might as well be in one. Porn seems less a matter of talent than of a simple decision. Yes or no? The women decide.

   The men are represented by Martin Henderson as a low-rent impresario with few illusions about what he's doing. He's joined by Owen Campbell as RJ, an aspiring filmmaker who deludes himself into thinking he's making an independent film. Kid Cudi plays the well-hung Jackson, the male star of the porn film which is given silly a throwback title, The Farmer's Daughter.

    Trouble, of course, lurks. The crew has rented a facility from a farmer and his wife, characters we instantly recognize as lethally dangerous. Both are old to the point of desiccation with leathery skin that looks as if it might have been preserved in formaldehyde. 

     I won't get into spoilers but you should know that West doesn't skimp on gore or nudity. He tries to serve two masters: an audience that's hip to horror ploys but also wants to be creeped out and shocked.

     He does a bit of both in a movie that adds thematic weight to its blood-clogged pores, much of it centering on Pearl, the farmer's wife. Pearl laments the loss of her beauty and sexuality and, therefore despises, a youthful crew that has turned sex into something that requires only consent.

     The old woman wants nothing more than to be desired, the one thing age has denied her. West occasionally photographs her with backlighting that seems to liberate her from time and hints at how she might once have looked.

     (I haven’t named the actress that plays Pearl but suggest you look it up after you’ve seen the movie.)

     Occasionally, we see a preacher railing about sin and hellfire on a black-and-white TV in the farmer's house, a detail that yields an unexpected payoff before the movie ends.

     West does a reasonably good job of mixing skin and gore, although the movie's willingness to kneel at the altar of contemporary horror keeps it a bit hemmed in: We know we're watching a movie -- albeit one that inhales deeply and breathes sleaze.

       Whether you want to breathe along with it remains an open question. Know this, though, X may not transcend its horror  niche but it embraces it with unwavering commitment.

     

Master
    In Master, director Mariama Diallo takes a different tack. Diallo has made a horror film in which the characters are haunted by institutional racism at fictional Ancaster College.

      The prestigious school has a tarnished history.  In its early years, a woman was hanged for witchcraft. Since then the students have perpetuated a legend: Every year, the witch's ghost selects a freshman whose soul she will steal on the anniversary of her death.

      Enter Jasmine (Zoe Renee), a high school valedictorian who we instantly know will be the witch's next target. Along with her roommate Amelia (Talia Ryder), Jasmine is assigned to Room 302, which has a history of turning at least one of its occupants into a victim. 

       It's less a room assignment than a sentence.

       At Ancaster, Jasmine faces both supernatural and social threats. The student body isn't welcoming. 

       A fine performance from Regina Hall as a housemaster and tenured academic helps raise questions about the price a black student pays to prove worthy in an institution steeped in white bona fides.

       Amber Gray plays Liv Beckman, a Black professor who pushes wokeness on her students. Jasmine's paper on  The Scarlet Letter earns an F from Beckman. Poor Jasmine. She failed to connect Hawthorne's story to critical race theory.  

      The film also makes room for a mystery about a woman who insistently phones Hall's character and, of course, there's the ghost.

       Master might be a case in which the horror could have been dropped to good effect. Racism in academia remains a valid and important subject and it might have benefited from a bit more subtlety.

        Eerie manipulations and obviousness aside, Master still manages to hit some powerful notes about the endemic persistence of racism in the so-called "best of circles."

    

The Shaft family adds another generation

The new version of Shaft can be funny and brash, but it's also scattered and its unashamed political incorrectness can be grating.

One of them is hopelessly old school. That means he’s homophobic and misogynistic. He has built a reputation on the streets with his fists, his guns and a take-no-prisoners attitude.

The other is a millennial, an MIT graduate who works in data analysis at the FBI. He’s brainy and culturally adept, comfortable with the social fluidity of a multicultural world.

The gimmick: Both are named Shaft. They're father and son.

John Shaft, you’ll recall is the iconic black detective who emerged in the 1970s as part of the Blaxploitation wave that kept turnstiles spinning. In director Tim Story's new version of Shaft, the youngest Shaft (Jessie Usher) hasn't seen his rogue father in years.

The twist: The son must turn to his street-wise dad for help in discovering who murdered his best friend, a Muslim veteran (Avan Jogia) who seemed to be getting his life together after going through a difficult time with drugs.

I’m not sure what Story had in mind with this new version of Shaft, which checks so many boxes you might call it with a multiple choice movie. It’s a buddy comedy (albeit between father and son), an action thriller with a plot that’s so disposable you don’t really need to follow it, a generational comedy in which a son continually taps the breaks on his father’s out-dated, politically incorrect views on women and gays, as well as a movie that features high-caliber weapons taking out what can seem like hordes of bad guys.

Samuel L. Jackson portrays Shaft, as he did in director John Singleton’s 2004 entry into the Shaft series. The role, of course, dates back to the 1971 original and a variety of sequels starring Richard Roundtree, who makes a movie-stealing appearance late in this edition.

To reiterate: Jackson's Shaft is the son of Roundtree's Shaft and the father of Usher's Shaft. Got it?

Here’s something to consider. Jackson is 70. Roundtree is 76. The movie tells us Jackson’s Shaft is 60. Even at that, the math doesn’t quite work. Oh well, looking for realism in this version of Shaft is about as useful as thinking you’re going to get through the movie without a substantial quotient of MF expletives. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you have no business seeing the movie anyway.

Jackson has played variations of this character before; his performance not only reprises his previous work as Shaft but includes echoes of Jules, the hitman he played in Pulp Fiction.

All of this results in a hit-and-miss affair, a movie that's probably best seen with a large audience that’s willing to get raucous — roughly in the way the ‘70s movies were received.

Story tries to evoke ‘70s nostalgia with Shaft’s throwback attitudes, with a score that makes ample use of the Isaac Hayes' theme from the original and with an immersion in the mean streets of Harlem -- not to mention the suede dusters you see all three characters wearing in the movie's sequel-promising final shot.

Usher makes a fine foil for Jackson, slowly emerging as something less than the guy his father accuses him of being. Jokes about whether Usher's JJ can be called a "real" man embody the movie’s conflicted spirit. Yes, some of these jokes can be taken as insulting and even homophobic. I guess they're supposed to explain how an out-of-touch father tries to taunt a son who grew up with his mother and who's fluent in the language of the 21st century.

So can these two men find a single page on which both can thrive — and, oh yeah, solve the mystery at the movie’s core?

You already know the answer. Turns out that Shaft the Younger is skilled with guns and well-trained in a Brazilian form of martial arts and both men are capable of laying out their enemies without feeling an iota of compunction about taking human lives.

Women in Shaft basically serve the plot. Mom (Regina Hall) isn’t around for much of the movie; young shaft’s love interest (Alexandra Shipp) has a bit more to do. But when they do appear, these women have no trouble establishing their presence, claiming equal footing with the male characters.

Did I laugh at some of the comedy? Yes. Did I find the violence excessive and not stylish enough to turn into something that could be appreciated purely on cinematic terms, as we might in a John Wick movie? Yes to that, as well. Were the jokes about gays a bit repetitive? Yes, again. Did the movie get better when Roundtree finally makes his appearance? Another yes. Was there at least one piece of action that caught me by surprise. Well, there would have been had I not already seen it in the movie's trailer.

So where do I stand on Shaft?

The whole movie may be too preposterous to take offense; remember Story also directed two Ride Along movies. But know this as well, there’s no character here who’s likely to attain the iconic status of the original Shaft. That movie was tightly wedded to its time. This one is less of its time than it is a spawn of dozens of other movies. As I said at the outset, a box checker.

How much you enjoy it depends on how many of those boxes you're able to check.

Laughs sporadic in 'Little' comedy

Here's a test you can apply: If you find Little consistently hilarious, you and I are on different comedy wavelengths. Executive produced by 13-year-old Marsai Martin (of TV's Blackish), Little reverses the Tom Hanks' comedy Big (1988). The twist: This time, an adult (Regina Hall) winds up in the body of her 13-year-old self (played by Martin).

The movie's single joke is tethered to the kind of feel-good message you might find in a self-help book: Adults shouldn't abandon the kid in themselves; they should respect the true self they learned to repress when they reached maturity.

Hall plays Jordan Sanders, the bitch-on-wheels owner of a company that invents apps -- at least it's supposed to invent them when Jordan isn't terrorizing or berating her employees.

After an encounter with a kid with a wand (yes, it's a flimsy conceit), Jordan wakes up as the 13-year-old she once was. Jordan has a teenager's body, but she retains her obnoxious adult personality. She also finds herself in the care of her astonished assistant (Issa Rae). Rae's April seems to have one job: allowing herself to be abused by her dictatorial boss. Now that the boss has shrunk to kid size, could the tables be turned?

It doesn't take long for an over-amped but mostly wasted Hall to take a back seat to Martin, who -- fairness dictates -- must be credited for turning herself into a convincing teen version of Jordan's older self, a kid who still carries the adult Jordan stylish purse wherever she goes.

A bit of psychology may have been intended to temper Jordan's meanness. She's overcompensating for childhood humiliations by becoming an adult ogre. When she was a kid, Jordan's dad told her that no one bullies a boss. Sick of being pushed around, she vowed that she would join the ranks of those who push others around.

It's nice to see a movie portray a black woman as successful, although Little takes the easy out to make the point: Jordan lives in a super-slick Atlanta apartment and drives a BMW that's a real head-turner.

The adult Jordan doesn't have much time for romance: Luke James signs on as a suitor but Jordan refuses to make an emotional connection with him.

A subplot about the pressing need for Jordan's imperiled company to invent a business-saving app doesn't add much. Neither does 13-year-old Jordan's relationship with a trio of nerds, the only kids who are willing to befriend her, and Little suffers an unpleasant taste lapse when Jordan -- in her 13-year-old body -- flirts with her hunky teacher (Justin Hartley).

Martin obviously has a future, but Little isn't the new Big. As far as broadly conceived comedies go, it's medium-sized at best.

A teenager faces a crisis of conscience

The Hate U Give highlights racial problems without sacrificing the humanity of its characters.

The two photos above make a key point about the new movie The Hate U Give, an adaptation of a young adult novel by Angee Thomas. One photo shows actress Amandla Stenberg as a character who attends a tony private school, has a white boyfriend and white girlfriends. The other photo shows the same teenager in her neighborhood after a traffic stop results in the shooting of one of her friends by a cop.

The same teenager, different circumstances. That's part of what drives this involving look at a high school student battling with social and personal issues and the powerful ways in which those issues can intersect.

There's enough material in The Hate U Give to create a mini-series -- and it's possible that Thomas's novel would have been better served in such an extended format. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't see a movie that deals convincingly with many real issues, mostly without subordinating the humanity of its characters to the art of scoring political points.

Stenberg's Starr Carter has a strong family life. Her mother (Regina Hall) believes in education and tries to shield her kids from the worst temptations of the neighborhood where the family lives. Her dad (Russell Hornsby) instills Starr with pride in her blackness. As a man who served a prison term, he understands the code of the streets. He also owns the neighborhood grocery store and has committed himself to the Garden Heights section of a city the movie never names.

Starr has two brothers, an older half-brother (Lamar Johnson) and a younger brother Sekani (TJ Wright), characters who expand the movie's already strong sense of family.

The pivotal action occurs when Starr meets an old friend Kahlil (Algee Smith) at a neighborhood house party. Later that night, she becomes a witness to Kahlil's killing by a policeman, a traumatic event that reverberates throughout the rest of the movie.

A neighborhood drug dealer (Anthony Mackie) has an interest in keeping Starr from telling her story in court. Unable to find employment elsewhere, Kahlil worked for the drug dealer at a very low level.

Working from a screenplay by Audrey Wells, director George Tillman, Jr. has made a movie that speaks to the complexities of racial issues in America. Starr's white boyfriend Chris (K.J. Apa) is well-meaning but not always attuned to Starr's existence as a black kid. And it's not all his fault, either. Starr has done a good job of keeping the two parts of her life separate.

Starr's best white girlfriend Kayleigh (Sabrina Carpenter) has appropriated black styles of speech, but her understanding of black life stays pretty much on the surface.

Starr herself sees the educational advantage of attending a private school. According to her own description, the public high school she would have attended is a place "you go to get drunk, high, pregnant or killed."

The movie also includes the presence of a black policeman (Common). Common's Carlos, who's also Starr's uncle, tries to make a reasonable case for why the white officer behaved as he did when he pulled Kahlil over.

Tillman obtains strong performances from a deeply committed cast led by Stenberg, who embodies the often contradictory poles of Starr's identity with intelligence, determination and appropriate amounts of consternation.

The Hate U Give maintains a terrific sense of what's at stake in every moment, even as it tries to corral every topical issue it can find. Perhaps that's the point. Young black people can't necessarily dodge any of these issues and The Hate U Give becomes a film that takes a powerful look at how one young woman tries to achieve her measure of success without abandoning her sense of self.

These waitresses have spunk

Support the girls ably mixes comedy and desperation

Regina Hall of Girls Trip lands a welcome leading role in Support the Girls, a comedy set in a Texas restaurant called Double Whammies. I don’t know if the two Whammies are meant to suggest boobs and butts, but the movie makes no secret of the fact that the scantily clad waitresses of Double Whammies are as much of an attraction as the burgers and brews.

Playing Lisa, the restaurant's manager, Hall functions as an exasperated mother hen who cares about the young women who work for her. Early on, Lisa organizes a car wash to pay for the defense of one of her employees, a young woman who faces legal difficulties after running over her abusive boyfriend.

A bit of sad, self-awareness underlies Hall’s performance. Older than the women who work for her, Lisa knows that she no longer can compete when it comes to turning the heads of her leering customers, a group of men that she keeps in check with a zero-tolerance policy toward harassment.

Setting the story over a single day in Lisa’s hectic life, director Andrew Bujalksi gives us plenty of atmosphere and lots of colorful characters; the spunky Maci (Haley Lu Richardson) and Danielle (Shayna McHayle) make the biggest impressions in an ensemble of cheeky (no pun intended) young actress who compose the movie's impromptu sisterhood.

If Bujalksi had been looking for an alternate title for his movie, he might have tried Lisa’s Very Bad Day. His screenplay follows Lisa through a series of catastrophes — small and large: an attempted burglary at the restaurant, an argument with her boss (James Le Gros) and an incident that suggests irreconcilable differences with her a husband (Lawrence Varnado), a guy who spends his most of his day staring at a computer screen.

Informal and sassy, Support the Girls might have looked like a pilot for a sitcom, but Bujalski obviously feels for these characters. He understands the indignities that lurk in their workplace, as well as the collegial support it takes to keep from surrendering to them.

Some of Double Whammies' customers may want to objectify the restaurant’s waitresses, but Bujalski never does. He keeps them funny without sacrificing their humanity.

'Girls Trip' offers major laughs

A raunchy comedy about four women who reunite in New Orleans.

Malcolm D. Lee, who directed the Best Man movies and Barbershop: the Next Cut, knows how to make crowd-pleasing movies -- and that's a good thing.

Girls Trip, a raunchy comedy based on the enduring bonds of black sisterhood, is Lee's latest foray into the lives of 40something black people who -- for the most part -- are leading successful lives.

In this case, four women -- former college roommates -- spend a reunion weekend in New Orleans. But where movies such as the recent -- and deeply abysmal -- Rough Night, strained to push women into the Bachelor Party/Bridesmaids oeuvre, Girls Trip leaps in with remarkable aplomb.

Lee builds the movie around big comedy scenes of the kind that make you laugh in spite of yourself. One involves torrential urination and the other, a grapefruit. No fair describing either, but you should know that they're not for those who shy away from R-rated comedy.

In addition to some funny writing (intermittent, I admit), the movie features four actresses who create appealing characters: Regina Hall, Jada Pinkett Smith, Queen Latifah and Tiffany Haddish. Haddish portrays a firecracker of a woman whose profane expressions and attitude qualify as one of summer's better special effects.

The story revolves around Hall's character. Hall's Ryan is a best-selling author who espouses a you-can-have-it-all philosophy that has great appeal among women. She's married to a former NFL star (Mike Colter). Billed as an ideal couple, the two are on the verge of signing a lucrative TV contract, thanks to the efforts of Ryan's white agent (Kate Walsh).

Hall's Ryan travels to New Orleans to give the keynote speech at Essence Fest, a gathering for black women. She invites her former college pals along. They call themselves "The Flossy Posse."

Queen Latifah portrays Sasha, a journalist who has been reduced to running a celebrity gossip blog. Pinkett Smith portrays a divorced nurse and mother of two, a woman poised to reveal her wild side, and Haddish appears as the loyal member of the group, a woman whose irrepressible energy seems boundless and who's not afraid to unleash a powerful punch or get everyone drunk on absinthe.

At one point, the women drink too much absinthe and hallucinate, an occasion for Lee to bring ridiculous freshness to what could have been a giant misstep.

The absinthe symbolizes the women's goal. They're supposed to let loose, but a bit of harsh reality stands in their way. As it turns out, Ryan's life is far from perfect. Her husband philanders and his current partner (Deborah Ayorinde) happens to be in New Orleans.

To further complicate the proceedings, Ryan runs into a former classmate with whom she obviously shares an unkindly romantic spark (Larenz Tate).

As for Pinkett-Smith's Lisa, she's contending with a young man (Kofi Siriboe) with a very large ... well .... you know.

As is the case with most raunchy comedies, Lee's -- co-written by Kenya Barris and Tracy Oliver -- is not without sentiment nor can it resist a bit of morale-boosting cheerleading for female empowerment. Oh well, those are standard ingredients in this kind of fare, as well.

All this is bolstered by brief appearances from Common, Diddy, Mike Epps and more.

Raunchy comedies aren't everyone's favorite, but for those who like them, Girls Trip will do quite nicely. It may even turn out to be one of summer's few real surprises.

A 'Barbershop' that's not all laughs

The third comedy in the Barbershop addresses a serious subject.

Though not entirely successful at fusing all its parts, Barbershop: The Next Cut deserves credit for not straining to provide non-stop laughs to audiences that visit the Chicago-based barbershop in which most of the movie takes place.

Twelve years after release of the first sequel to the 2002 original, this new version launches a full-frontal attack on gun violence in Chicago's South Side. Spike Lee tackled this subject in last year's Chi-raq, but Barbershop approaches it in a way that's more conventional, but no less heartfelt.

Ice Cube, who's also one of the film's producers, reprises his role as barbershop owner Calvin Palmer. During recent hard times, Calvin was forced to take in a partner (Regina Hall).

The result: Half of the barbershop -- once a sacred male preserve -- is now a beauty salon for women.

From the start, the characters make it clear that they're working in an embattled neighborhood where the sound of gunshots has become common place. The neighborhood death toll is ever-present in the minds of South Siders, who feel helpless to do anything about the city's rampant gang violence.

Director Malcolm D. Lee has set himself a difficult task. He tries to address Chicago's problems while not shortchanging the part of the audience that has come for a solid shot of escapist entertainment.

To this end, we meet Eddie (Cedric the Entertainer), a long-time veteran of the shop who hardly ever seems to cut anyone's hair. J.B. Smoove joins the movie as One-Stop, an all-purpose entrepreneur who operates out of the shop. You need it? One-Stop will help you find it. Lamorne Morris portrays Jerrod, the nerd of the group, and Utkarsh Ambudkar appears as Raja, the Indian barber and resident outsider.

On the female side of the room, we find Draya (Niki Minaj), a beautician who has eyes for Rashad (Common). This does not please Rashad's wife (Eve), and leads to yet another subplot.

A more affecting subplot involves Calvin's son (Michael Rainey, Jr..), a high school kid who may be thinking about joining a gang.

The movie's high point arrives when Calvin decides that the neighborhood needs a 48-hour truce. To encourage a violence-free weekend, the shop offers free cuts.

Deeply conflicted, Calvin also contemplates moving to the city's north side, where he can operate his business without the distraction of small arms fire and ensure his son's safety.

OK, Barbershop: The Next Cut won't be confused with a masterpiece. We hardly get to know the promising teen whose murder prompts the truce, and the gags hit home with intermittent accuracy.

But a game cast keeps the movie watchable, and there's no denying The Next Cut has something on its mind, which is more than you can say for most recent comedies.

Two romances: one with real signs of life Reviews of The Lucky One, Think Like A Man

Zac Efron and in another adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel. Just what we've been waiting for.

Nicholas Sparks seems to write novels that automatically turn themselves into movies; it's almost as if the romantic vapors of Sparks's prose waft off the page and then seep their way into the nation's multiplexes.

The Lucky One, the latest Sparks novel to reach the screen, displays most of the hallmarks of Sparks's re-heated romanticism in a story that focuses on an apparently accidental event that brings two people together.

These Sparks-inspired movies -- and The Lucky One is no exception -- are the dramatic equivalent of elevator music, melding pretty pictures with the kind of soulless drama that allows audiences to guess each line of dialog before a character even recites it. Some people like these carefully packaged, easy-on-the-eyes love stories, which also seem to require the presence of an actor with cred in the hunk department. I'm not a fan.

In this case, Zac Efron plays Logan, a combat-weary Marine who returns from Iraq with a case of post-trauamatic jitters. After a little research, Logan and his faithful German shepherd walk (yes, I said walk) from Colorado to Louisiana to look for a woman (Taylor Schilling) in photograph he found on a bombed-out Iraqi battlefield. He finds her running a small business that boards and grooms dogs.

Logan's about to explain about the snapshot, but Schilling's Beth is focused on something else, and he can't bring himself to tell the story anyway. Instead, he takes a job at the kennel, where he quickly endears himself to the woman's young son (Reily Thomas Stewart) and to her grandmother (Blythe Danner).

Beth is slower to warm to Logan, but we know that she'll eventually fall for him. We also know that there will be obstacles, the principal one arriving in the person of Beth's bullying ex-husband (Jay R. Ferguson), who also happens to be the local sheriff.

And then there's Logan's looming secret about the photograph, which leads to a scene that's supposed to threaten to knock the characters off their pre-determined tracks. We know better: No one in movie such as this gets knocked off his or her tracks.

As the mysterious stranger, Efron gives a minimalist performance, which is a kind way of saying he makes an actor like Channing Tatum, who also has appeared in an adaptation of a novel by Sparks, look expressive. Schilling brings more life to her role, but this is the kind of movie in which acting comes awfully close to posing. Maybe that makes sense. The characters in The Lucky One don't really have relationships; they romp through montages.

Director Scott Hicks, who hasn't exactly been breaking new ground since he came to international notice in 1996 with the much-accalimed Shine, opts to follow the Sparks formula, which means that even Louisiana's fetid, swampy waters emit a lustrous, romantic glow.

Lively, attractive cast brings life to formulaic Think Like a Man

If you're looking for a livelier romantic fantasy than The Lucky One, you may want to try the big-screen adaptation of Steve Harvey's best-selling Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man.

Harvey's book of strategic advice for women isn't exactly a natural source for big-screen entertainment, so don't expect miracles.

Worse yet, the movie seems designed to sell even more copies of Act Like a Lady by making constant references to it or having characters read it while prominently displaying the cover. There's even an appearance by Harvey himself.

One more caveat: Think Like a Man is little more than a glorified sitcom, but it's made tolerable by an attractive cast that manages to add humanity to what amounts to a fantasy set in the world of bright, mostly successful black professionals with a few white folks around the movie's fringes.

I don't know about Harvey's book, but the movie seems to take aim at a thirty-something audience that believes in a post-racial world that we'd all like to believe has arrived -- even if we're not entirely sure it has.

A lavishly appealing cast includes: Meagan Good as Maya, a woman who decides to invoke Harvey's 90-day rule: No sex with a new suitor until three months have passed; Taraji P. Henson as Lauren, a CEO who's skeptical about the Harvey approach, and Regina Hall as a single mom who tries to woo a mama's boy (Terrence J) away from his domineering mother.

The guys, who convene at a small gym for basketball and chat, include Romany Malco, as a budding composer and the movie's resident "play-ah," and Kevin Hart, as the movie's source of comic relief. Jerry Ferrra, familiar from HBO's Entourage where he played the often hapless Turtle, fares better here as an indecisive young man who has the good fortune to be living with Kristen (Gabrielle Union). Fans of this kind of movie will be treated to a self-referential cameo from a slightly older veteran of similar fare, Morris Chesetnut.

I laughed a few times and found the general vibe to be pleasant enough in a movie that at least isn't out to convince us that it's anything more than date-night fluff.