'Argylle': a spoofy but hollow spy game

 

   The screen bursts with activity in the unashamedly silly Argylle, but too little of it matters.

   Known for his work on the Kingsman franchise, director Matthew Vaughn lifts tongue into cheek for a multi-layered espionage spoof that casts Bryce Dallas Howard as Elly Conway, a successful spy novelist who gets caught up in the real thing. 

   The title stems from one of Conway's characters, a  debonaire agent known as Argylle (Henry Cavill) who squares off against an evil consortium known as The Division.

  Conway's pet cat Alfie accompanies her everywhere, peering out from a plastic window in her backpack. And, yes, the cat -- or some CGI version of it -- eventually figures in the story.

   Vaughn jams the movie with names and faces, offering cameos from Dua Lipa, Ariana DeBose, John Cena, and Samuel L. Jackson. Jackson spends much of his screen time watching an NBA game. Aside from a punchy  opening scene, the others seem inconsequential.

    Vaughn includes extended work from Sam Rockwell, as Aidan, a real spy who meets Elly and, in the film's early stages, emerges as her protector. 

     Bryan Cranston turns up as the head of The Division and Catherine O'Hara plays Elly's Mom. 

     Most of the characters have dual identities, a ploy that mostly serves to muddy the already murky waters. Know, though, that Elly sometimes watches real-world characters morph into her fictional creations, blurring lines in a way that's not particularly confusing but becomes repetitive.

      Jason Fuchs's screenplay includes a few clever touches and a bit of amusement. Vaughn goes for broke when he turns a major fight sequence into a dance number shrouded in clouds of red smoke. In another fight, he makes clever use of an oil slick.

       And, yes, there's a big plot twist. And, no, it probably won't knock you out of your seat.

       Neither does Argylle, which feels like an evocation of similar movies -- some directed by Vaughn.  Little more than a helping of CGI-fueled cinematic play, Argylle  overstays its welcome at a length of two hours and 19 minutes.

       But play isn't enough to save the day -- or a movie that doesn't seem to have much else on its mind.

   

Whodunit? No matter, the actors are fun

     We're in the 1950s and London audiences are flocking to a stage  adaptation of Agatha Christie's Mousetrap, so much so that the production has just celebrated its 100th performance. 

   Always eager to capitalize on a bona fide success, Hollywood has taken note: A film production looms. 

   At a party celebrating the play's success, the cynical director who has been asked to make the movie is murdered. The age-old question arises: Whodunit?

    In the case of See How They Run, it hardly matters who committed the crime. The movie is less a mystery than a genre spoof  that clearly knows the game its playing.

     Working from a screenplay by Mark Chappell, director Tom George allows his movie to run on winking humor and the pleasure of watching actors "sell'' characters that border on the parodic.

     First, there's Leo Kopernick (Adrien Brody), the obnoxious and newly murdered movie director who we learn had been feuding with the movie's screenwriter, the mincing Melvyn Crocker-Norris (David Oyelowo). 

     Two policeman anchor the story. Demonstrating a flare for character comedy, Saoirse Ronan portrays Constable Stalker, a novice cop who's eager to prove her worth.  

     Sam Rockwell joins Ronan as Inspector Stoppard, a veteran detective who's entirely too fond of drink and who's prone to falling asleep on the job. Rockwell doesn't overdo the English accent but still conveys disbelief and rueful judgment as he and Stalker set about solving the crime.

     Ruth Wilson as the play's producer and Reece Shearsmith as the aspiring producer of the movie both do fine work. Harris Dickinson finds laughs as Richard ("Call me Dickie") Attenborough.

     No need offering a cast roster but everyone seems to have understood the nature of material that may remind audiences of Knives Out, which, I suppose it must be said, was better.

    Comparison to other movies, as well as expectations associated with Glass Onion, director Rian Johnson's follow-up to Knives Out,  shouldn't detract from a movie that (bless its soul) finds a lane and occupies it well -- or at least, well enough.

    So who did it? Why, the actors, of course. They're largely responsible for delivering the generally snappy goods.

Clint Eastwood defends a wronged man

Richard Jewell brings the story of a 1996 Olympic bombing to life.

Clint Eastwood tells the story of an innocent man who was convicted by public opinion in Richard Jewell, a movie that exposes the media frenzy that turned Jewell’s life into a nightmare. Jewell, you’ll recall, worked as a security guard at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, site of a bombing that killed one person and injured 111.

It didn’t take long for Jewell to make the transition from hero to goat when word leaked that he had become a prime suspect in the bombing. Evidently, investigators — in this case, the FBI — routinely consider anyone near the site of a bombing to be a potential suspect. After discovering the bomb in an abandoned backpack, Jewell guided people to safety. None of that got him off the hook.

Jewell (Paul Walter Hauser) makes for an unlikely main character. He aspires to be a policeman, but can’t find his way into that world, even losing a job as a college security guard. He’s overweight and lives at home with his mother (Kathy Bates). Jewell’s "suspicious" profile — a loner who lives with his mom — makes matters worse for him.

Watching Hauser, you may wonder whether Eastwood has cast a real person in the role. I don't say that as criticism but as praise. An experienced actor, Hauser proves entirely convincing as a man who can’t find his niche. Eager to be part of law enforcement, Jewell constantly overplays his hand. He expects the police to treat him as a willing colleague.

Jewell finds an ally in Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell), an attorney who believes in his client's innocence and works to clear his name. No stranger to colorful characters, Rockwell makes for an intriguing figure, an idiosyncratic lawyer who sometimes finds his client exasperating.

The two characters who represent the government and the media don’t fare nearly so well.

Jon Hamm portrays Tom Shaw, the FBI agent who leaks Jewell’s name to an aggressively seductive reporter (Olivia Wilde).

Wilde’s portrayal of reporter Kathy Scruggs has been criticized by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the paper at which Scruggs plied her trade. Scruggs is no longer alive, so it’s impossible to hear what she has to say but a scene in which Scruggs comes on to Shaw in a bar made me skeptical. It goes way beyond calculated flirtation, making it seem as if Scruggs is propositioning the agent.

As someone who worked in journalism for almost 40 years, I never knew or heard of any female reporter behaving in such an unprofessional fashion. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen but I didn't buy it.*p>
The FBI takes it on the chin, as well. Despite evidence that suggested that Jewell couldn’t have planted the bomb, the FBI persisted in keeping him a suspect. To the end, Hamm’s character insists on Jewell's guilt.

Reservations aside, Richard Jewell clearly shows how eager reporting can ignite a storm capable of ruining a person’s life. But any journalist who investigates the Jewell case beyond what's seen on screen must ask him or herself what they would have done if they had credible information about a suspect in a crime that had captured international attention.

Watching the FBI invade Jewell’s home and remove evidence provides an abject lesson in what it means to be demeaned by an investigative process. It looks bad now that we know Jewell was innocent: Had it turned out that Jewell was guilty, however, would anyone have complained?

Jewell died a few years after the movie ends. He was 44. Eastwood’s movie leaves you wondering whether he ever recovered from his ordeal, and we feel for him. It’s possible to take issue with some of the ways Eastwood treats the story and still believe that Jewell was badly wronged, thanks in no small part to Hauser's performance as a guy who flounders as he loses control of his life.

Flaws and all, Richard Jewell serves as a reminder that when outrage reaches fever proportions, no one benefits.

*If you're interested in reading more about the Scruggs controversy try this Washington Post article.
No one disputes the fact that a ruinous media frenzy surrounded Jewell once a story naming him as a suspect had been published. That would have been no less true had the movie shown Scruggs writing a story for which she had received a credible tip and left it at that.

'JoJo Rabbit,' creative but scattered

Director Taiki Waititi uses Nazi Germany as a launchpad for satire that ultimately turns sentimental.

The first mistake you can make about JoJo Rabbit is to think that the movie has anything much to do with the Holocaust. Yes, it takes place in Germany during World War II and, yes, it involves a single mother who hides a Jewish teenager in her attic, and, yes, it shows that even a charming kid can fall prey to the toxins of anti-semitism.

But director Taika Waititi’s comedy takes place in a fantasy zone where anti-semitism has been divorced from mass murder. The movie mostly deals with Germans -- either decent or comical or a mixture of both. That makes JoJo tolerable while at the same time rendering it largely inoffensive, something no satire can afford to be.

This is not to say that Waititi doesn't know what he's doing. His track record (What We Do in the Shadows, Hunt for the Wilderpeople and Thor: Ragnarok) is good and within JoJo Rabbit, you'll find plenty of cinematic invention.

By now, you probably know the set-up. JoJo (Roman Griffin Davis) is a 10-year-old fledgling member of the Hitler Youth who has created a doozy of an imaginary best friend for himself, Adolf Hitler, played by Waititi. The boy’s free-spirited mother (Scarlett Johansson) clearly loves her son and evinces a blithe approach to life that’s a bit out-of-synch with her moment; i.e., the looming defeat of Germany in the end days of the war.

Moreover, Johansson's character's fashion flair stands in sharp contrast to the depleted German civic environment that accompanied the end of the war.

Waititi takes a fractured approach to what seems less an attempt to encompass comedy and horror than an attempt to build a fantasy world in which Nazis are comical and, in which, love ultimately conquers hate.

To that end, Sam Rockwell plays Captain Klenzendorf, a Hitler Youth leader with a blasé attitude toward Nazi imperatives. He has an uber-blonde assistant played by Rebel Wilson, who might as well be wearing a sign that reads, "Hateful Nazi."

Mel Brooks’ Nazi caricatures in The Producers became risible assaults on the very notion that anyone could take the staunch idiocy of Nazism seriously. Of course, millions did, so Brooks was also delivering an act of Jewish revenge that was far more effective than what Quentin Tarantino tried to accomplish at the end of Inglourious Basterds, a movie that boldly congratulated itself for presenting the face of “Jewish revenge.”

Waititi includes many comic bits, a disastrous weekend outing for JoJo when he joins the Hitler Youth, a sight gag involving German shepherds and a book JoJo is compiling on Jews. He calls it Yohoo Jew. JoJo has been propagandized for his whole life to think of Jews as non-human embodiments of evil and he decorates his room with Nazi paraphernalia much in the way kids of today put up posters of rap stars and sports figures.

Although his accent mingles his British origins with German inflection, Davis gives a sharp comic performance based on expressing attitudes that don’t always make sense for someone his age. Waititi's Hitler isn’t an act of mimicry; it’s a presentation of a fantasy figure who — true to the boy’s still-evolving imagination —- can’t settle into a solid form. As he relates to JoJo, he's a user-friendly Hitler.

Besides, there are enough anachronisms of speech (Hitler using the expression such as "Correctamundo," for example) to let us know that JoJo isn't meant to be taken as a history lesson.

As the Jewish girl in hiding, Thomassin McKenzie doesn't make much sense. She’s confident, and a little too unruffled, and she exists mostly so that young JoJo can learn that Jews are people, too. Isn't this a version — albeit a more benign one — of what happens in movies when black characters seem to exist so that white characters can be morally transformed?

But three cheers for young Archie Yates, who plays Yorki, JoJo's indomitably cheerful best friend. And also for Stephen Merchant who has a terrific turn as a member of the Gestapo.

Waititi does, of course, include some difficult notes that I won’t reveal here because they would qualify as spoilers. He tries to accommodate both broad comedy and war-time horror, but the horror can seem contrived. It’s as if he’s saying (and we and almost hear him saying it), “Look, I know that the war was no joke and neither was Nazism.”

It may seem odd to say that the movie tries to send its audience out of the theater with buoyed spirits. But Waititi wants to testify on behalf of the battered human spirit as it emerges into the light after the darkness of war.

It’s a nice idea but a mildly trivial one when played against what the Nazis did in the world. For all its creative efforts, JoJo Rabbit can seem a bit trivial, as well.

Perhaps that's because the best satire reveals; JoJo Rabbit confirms what we already know or, at least would like to believe. Hatred, bad; love, good.

An unlikely alliance in Durham, N.C.

The Best of Enemies is a stranger-than-fiction story buoyed by a strong cast.

The essential part of the story told in the new movie The Best of Enemies is true. In 1971, during a fierce argument over the integration of the public schools in Durham, N.C., a black woman and a Ku Klux Klan leader co-chaired a charrette at which the future of the city's schools was to be decided. Rather than impose a solution, the idea was to allow Durham's residents to determine how to proceed.

A Raleigh-based community organizer named Bill Riddick came to Durham to run the two-week charrette, a big meeting at which issues were hashed out in hopes of presenting several resolutions that would be voted on by a committee of Durham's citizens, half white and half black.

The story of an uneasy relationship between a Ku Klux Klan leader and a no-nonsense black activist is one of those stranger-than-fiction tales that can't help but intrigue. And you needn't be a genius to know that the resolution will involve a major transformation on someone's part.

The movie owes much of its success to casting. Taraji P. Henson plays Anne Atwater, a woman who has spent much of her life fighting with Durham's white power structure and upholding the rights of the city's black residents. Sporting outfits that add considerable enlargement to her body, Henson virtually disappears into the role of a woman whose determination and sense of righteousness speak of a drive that will not accept defeat.

Sam Rockwell, who already played a racist in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, portrays another in Best of Enemies. Rockwell's CP Ellis faces a challenge when he's asked to rub elbows with members of the city's black community.

The white power elite -- represented in part by a smooth-talking councilman (Bruce McGill) -- wants a reliably racist person to uphold support for segregated schools and to serve as its man on the inside of the charrette.

Rockwell's performance reflects the inner struggle of a man whose sense of belonging has been challenged. CP can seem a bit goofy, but we know there's something percolating inside this gas station owner. CP unexpectedly finds himself immersed in a major debate.

When CP tries to persuade the liberal owner of a local hardware store (John Gallagher Jr.) to vote with the white majority, a saddened CP is taken aback. CP learns that this man who employees blacks served in Vietnam. He fought for his country. CP didn't. For once, CP has no comeback. His world has begun to fall apart.

The supporting cast helps. Anne Heche plays CP's wife and Babou Ceesay portrays Riddick, a man with the unenviable job of trying to get the blacks and whites of Durham to listen to one another.

To me, the Klan venom in Best of Enemies seemed a trifle toned down, but Wes Bentley does a convincing job as a Klansman who has no interest in examining his values.

Robin Bissell, who has spent most of his career producing movies, makes his directorial debut. He smartly relies on his actors to carry the day.

Look, no one likely will mistake Best of Enemies for a great movie and there's always a danger that a movie such as Best of Enemies encourages people to elevate the anecdotal to something more than it is. I wish Bissell had found ways to show more of the discussions that took place at the charrette, and the movie sometimes loses dramatic steam.

Still, you could do worse than Best of Enemies and Hollywood has, many would argue that the Oscar-winning Green Book is one such example.

A small aside: Three recent major movies -- The Best of Enemies, Green Book, and BlacKkKlansman -- have been set in the 1960s and 1970s. Whatever you think of these movies, another truth must be acknowledged: It's past time for Hollywood to catch up and give stories about racism some present-tense urgency.

A scattered 'Vice' falls short

Christian Bale scores as Dick Cheney and the supporting performances are mostly sharp, but director Adam McKay's look at the powerful veep offers too little fresh insight.

Regarded by many as the insidious power behind George Bush's empty presidential throne, Dick Cheney represents one of the strangest of political anomalies: Throughout his career, Cheney occupied a variety of power positions without ever revealing anything resembling an intriguing personality.

In excoriating Cheney, Vice, introduces us to an empty vessel of a man who tried (and mostly succeeded) at filling himself with power, either being near it or having it himself. It's a thesis of sorts, but Vice is too busy being clever to get much beyond that. At times, I wondered if the movie weren't more about its own comically rueful tone than it is about Dick Cheney.

Director Adam McKay delivers a free-wheeling, but not entirely fresh satirical indictment of Cheney and, only by inference, of many of the Neocons who supported similar positions.

McKay (The Big Short) leaves no doubt about where the movie stands. Vice opens with a howlingly drunk Cheney, as a young man, being pulled over by the cops. McKay then jumps to 9/11 as the vice president bypasses the president and gives the Defense Department authorization to shoot down any plane deemed a threat. This is followed by a quick view of real footage depicting a beleaguered America that would have fit nicely into a Michael Moore documentary.

The approach seems clear: Pieces of Cheney's career will be juxtaposed in ways that create a dizzying mosaic of bold strokes and blunt observations. Some work; some don't.

Still, audiences may want to see Vice for Christian Bale's impressive disappearing act of a performance as Cheney or for Sam Rockwell's amusing turn as an eager George Bush or for Steve Carrel's unashamedly conniving Donald Rumsfeld or for Amy Adam's no-nonsense portrayal of Lynne Cheney, the woman who evidently launched Cheney's career. She insisted that Cheney, then her fiancee, shed his wastrel ways after getting kicked out of Yale.

In his post-Yale days of the early '60s, Cheney had been spending his time in his home state of Wyoming working as a telephone lineman. When he got his second DWI, an embarrassed Lynne laid down the law; shape up or she'd find a more suitable partner. Cheney began to straighten himself out.

McKay's wild -- some might say "scattered" -- approach worked well in The Big Short, but it's overdone here with the movie racing through Cheney's resume: a stint as an intern to then-congressman Rumsfeld, a turn as Gerald Ford's Chief of Staff, 10 years in the House of Representatives, service as Secretary of Defense and, of course, an eight-year run as George W. Bush's vice president.

According to the movie, when Cheney took the vice presidential job he was determined to run the show. Desperate to have the more experienced Cheney as a running mate, Bush agreed to allow Cheney to take over the burden of matters such as foreign affairs and the military.

Vice takes a scalding -- and many will say appropriate -- view of Cheney's vice presidential activities, which include maneuvering the country into the Iraq war, justifying torture and ... well ... the list is long and, at times, as messy as McKay's movie.

McKay seems to have adopted a more-is-more approach to the material. At one point, Alfred Molina shows up as a waiter at a Washington restaurant who recites the menu, which for comic purposes has been turned into a checklist of Cheneyesque ideas. How about some "enhanced interrogation?" Care for some Guantanamo Bay?

The movie also features voice-over narration by Jesse Plemons and a last-minute reveal about why Plemons’ character is narrating the movie. At times, the narration makes it seem as if the movie is being read to us.

A set of fake end-credits rolls at a time when, or so the movie fantasizes, Cheney could have retired from public life in order to protect his gay daughter Mary (Alison Pill) from unwanted scrutiny. Fantasy, yes, but the closest the movie comes to saying anything positive about Cheney involves its depiction of his supportive relationship with Mary. Cheney tries his best to stand by her, although expedience eventually wins out.

You'll probably see Bale's name on the short list for a best-actor Oscar. Prosthetics and weight gain help, but he has captured Cheney's incipient smile, his understated venality and the matter-of-fact attitude he seemed to bring to even the most outrageous suggestions. He was a big believer in the unitary executive theory that concentrated power in the president's hands and minimized the need for any balance of power. The idea seemed to come to its fullest fruition after 9/11, the point at which the movie begins to bog down in expositional chores.

What's missing from all of this? New insight into Cheney, a politician whose career was punctuated by heart problems that become more prominent in the latter part of the movie.

Vice tells Cheney's story and, by extension examines what can be seen as an on-going deterioration of American political life. But the movie's dramatic potential is undercut by its view of Cheney as a political hollow man driven only by ambition and a thirst for power: He's pretty much the same guy from start to finish.

There's entertainment in McKay's movie and a variety of sharp-edged comic performances, but by the end, you may find yourself vainly waiting for McKay to pull the thematic string that unifies his jigsaw of a movie and keeps Vice from falling onto the side of the ledger where disappointments are recorded.

McDormand bristles in 'Three Billboards'

In the town of Ebbing, Missouri, things aren't going well.

Mildred Hayes doesn't brood. After her daughter was raped and murdered on a stretch of lonely Missouri highway, Mildred ran out of patience with the local police for failing to locate a suspect and make an arrest. Mildred took matters into her own hands, renting three rundown billboards outside of her hometown of Ebbing, painting them red and advertising the fact that the police chief dropped the ball.

"Raped While Dying." "And Still No Arrests" "How Come Chief Willoughby?"

Mildred's bold move upsets the police and the townsfolk of Ebbing, Mo. But here's the thing: Mildred doesn't give a damn who she offends. She's angry, grief-stricken and intent on obtaining justice for her departed daughter.

Director Martin McDonagh's often funny third feature, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, brings the British/Irish director to the American heartland for a movie that proudly displays its wild variations in tone. Three Billboards makes its mark as a genre farrago: it's a dark comedy, a profane assault on authority figures, a diatribe about small-town hypocrisies and a comedy built around characters whose speech boils with profanities.

Frances McDormand receives showcase space from McDonagh as Mildred, a woman who spreads her venom the way bees pollinate flowers -- liberally. No one is spared: not the terminally ill Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson), not Mildred's son (Lucas Hedges), not her former husband (John Hawkes), an unreliable fellow who left her for a 19-year-old (Samara Weaving), and certainly not police officer Dixon (Sam Rockwell), a dim-bulb of a cop with a vicious streak and a reputation for racism.

The British born McDonagh (In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths) occasionally seems to be straining to hit notes of political incorrectness as he reveals the blatant homophobia and racism of some of his characters. But touching moments and genuine expressions of feeling also turn up as characters are brought face-to-face with their humanity -- often under terrible circumstances.

Whatever its ambitions, Three Billboards derives its charge to McDormand; Mildred is so furiously committed to her own truth that she doesn't hesitate to provoke, even tossing the local priest out of her home. Of course, Mildred's language proves significantly less polite than a simple invitation for the priest to leave.

The movie's intemperate characters sometimes soften: A bit of homespun wisdom emerges from an unlikely source or a touch of decency is expressed by a character such as Rockwell's Dixon, a comic-book-reading cop who may be too stupid to know how thoroughly reprehensible he can be.

To keep everything slightly off balance, McDonagh sometimes mixes brutal and tender sentiments in the same scene. His approach creates ragged edges, but, like his main character, McDonagh may not care. Three Billboards takes its cues from McDormand, who infuses Mildred with uncompromising strength, the kind that allows a formidable woman to go toe-to-toe with any man and strike fear into his trembling heart. She marches to her own drummer and is more than ready to knock down anyone who stands in her way.

A forgettable, lightweight 'Laggies'

A young woman suspended in the limbo between adolescence and adulthood.

The fact that poor, college-educated Megan (Keira Knightley) feels at odds with her life as it's unfolding -- something I learned in the first few minutes of Laggies -- didn't strike me as especially compelling.

My predilections aside, it's Megan's generalized malaise that provides a backdrop for director Lynn Shelton's mildly amusing but ultimately negligible comedy.

Fearful of marriage to her devoted but drippy boyfriend (Mark Webber), unsure about a career path, and out of synch with her life-long friends, Megan refuses to be swept away by the felicities surrounding the impending wedding of one of her gal pals (Ellie Kemper).

What's a young woman to do? Pursue a career? Make wedding plans of her own? Fit into the group profile being carved out by friends who (thanks to mobile media) are in constant touch with one another?

Megan's answer is a good one: None of the above.

But Laggies is less an incisive character study than a medium-grade, Seattle-based comedy that's slightly elevated by a couple of its performances, notably from Sam Rockwell (as an attorney and the father of a teen-age daughter) and Chloe Grace Moretz (as that rebellious but ultimately good-hearted adolescent).

Sans her British accent, Knightley does her best to bring a bit of luster to a character who's essentially depressed.

Rather than allowing Laggies to find its own rhythm, Shelton relies on the awkward contrivances of Andrea Seigel's screenplay.

By chance, Megan runs into Moretz's Annika outside a convenience store. Annika implores Megan to buy liquor for her underage buddies. Megan does, one of the many questionable decisions she makes.

In need of a week of evasion from personal pressures, Megan crashes at Anika's house. She makes up a story that convinces Rockwell's Craig to let her stay.

An underused Gretchen Mol shows up as Anika's mother, a woman who left her husband to pursue a career as a lingerie model, thus turning Craig into a single dad.

It doesn't take much insight to guess that Megan, who already has accepted her boyfriend's proposal, is going to fall for glib but lonely Craig.Skipping over the real issue, Laggies winds up being a so-so romcom that left me in the position a critic least wants to occupy: I shrugged.

He comes of age in a water park

I recall reading somewhere that a single caring adult can alter the whole trajectory of a kid's life, particularly if that adult shows up at a critical point in a young person's development.

I thought about that while watching The Way, Way Back, a comedy about a dejected, angry teen-ager who blossoms under the mentorship of the owner of a Massachusetts water park called Water Wizz.

Fourteen-year-old Duncan (Liam James) seems entirely uncomfortable in the world until he meets Owen (Sam Rockwell), an adult who senses the boy's loneliness and encourages him have a little fun.

For Duncan, loosening-up is no easy task. He's stuck on a month-long beach vacation with his divorced mother (Toni Collette) and the new man in her life (Steve Carell). To make matters even worse, Carell's Trent and Collette's Pam are in the early stages of their relationship and have yet to settle important territorial issues.

Just to add a little more insult to the already festering pile of Duncan's injuries, Trent's daugther (Zoe Levin) is a stuck-up, socially conscious teen who's totally condescending toward the dweebish Duncan -- at least when she's not entirely indifferent toward what she perceives as his worthless existence.

Directed and written by Nat Faxon and Jim Rash -- actors and screenwriters who won an Oscar for adapting The Descendants for the screen -- The Way, Way Back can't entirely overcome the familiarity of what amounts to yet another teen reclamation project. But the movie offers interesting wrinkles en route to a predictable -- if slightly attenuated -- finale.

To begin with, The Way, Way Back allows Carell to play to a jerk. Carell's Trent declares his jerkhood from the movie's outset, and does little to change our opinion of him as the story develops.

In Pam, Trent seems to have found a woman so desperate to hold onto a potentially stable relationship that she'll put up with a lot. Trent seems more than willing to take advantage of the situation. He shows far more interest in socializing with another couple (Rob Corddry and Amanda Peet) than in testing the waters of stepfatherhood -- or even in spending time with Pam.

Duncan's shot at self-affirmation arrives in the form of Rockwell's Owen, who becomes a kind of surrogate father for Owen. Not only does Owen offer Duncan a job at Water Wizz, he knows how to relate to a kid, in part because he still is one. In a way, the movie is Owen's coming-of-age story, too.

The cast is further bolstered by Allison Janney, who plays Trent's garrulous neighbor and Anna Sophia Robb, who appears as Janney's daughter, a girl who's smart enough to take an interest in the dejected Duncan, who suffers one indignity after another. An example: He's forced to explore the beachfront Massachusetts town where the story unfolds on a pink girls' bicycle he finds in Trent's garage.

Maya Rudloph appears as one of Sam's employees, and both Faxon and Rash play small roles as water-park workers.

To their credit, Faxon and Rash provide some shading, even for the dislikable Trent, and they belatedly give Collette a chance to dig more deeply into a character with an alarming tendency toward over-dependence.

For all of this, The Way, Way Back may leave you shrugging, perhaps because we've been down this road too many times, perhaps because the movie tends to be a bit bland and perhaps because the adult conflicts -- though sketchily presented -- are more interesting than Duncan's problems.

Let me backtrack a bit, though. It's convenient, but a little inaccurate to classify The Way, Way Back as a coming-of-age story. In truth, neither the movie's teens nor its adults fully mature.

Rather, they're brought to the brink of important life changes. Faxon and Rash keep the movie's ending upbeat, but allow us just enough room to speculate about whether these characters really will be able to sustain new and better versions of themselves.

One psychopath too many?

A movie that criticizes itself as it goes along, but is most notable for its wild performances.

Generally speaking, one psychopath should be enough for any movie. That rule, however, doesn't apply if you're writer/director Martin McDonagh (In Bruges) and you're determined to make movie devoted to the principle that nothing succeeds like excess.

To say that Seven Psychopaths is over-plotted misses the point because the point is a ton of over-plotting that propels a large cast of characters through one wild scenario after another.

To keep the movie percolating, McDonagh has hired an ace cast of oddball actors: Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson and Christopher Walken, all of whom have plenty of offbeat credibility.

The result is a Los Angeles-based movie that hums along, dropping in stories within stories, tying them all together in scenes that take place in the desert and find the characters debating over how to conduct a proper gun battle.

Farrell plays Marty, a screenwriter who has a title for movie -- Seven Psychopaths -- but no story to go with it. His pal Billy (Rockwell) seems to know a good deal about psychopathy and offers to help.

As it turns out, Billy runs a dog-stealing racket with his buddy Hans (Walken), a strangely philosophical fellow whose wife (Linda Bright Clay) has been hospitalized for cancer.

Harrelson enters the story as a mobster whose dog -- a Shih Tzu named Bonny -- has been stolen by Billy.

The screenplay makes room for appearances by Harry Dean Stanton (as a Quaker who's trying to avenge his daughter's death); Long Nguyen (as a Vietcong veteran seeking revenge for the May Lai massacre), and Tom Waits (as a guy who -- along with his girlfriend -- played by Amanda Warren -- sets out to eliminate as many serial killers as possible). Did I mention that Waits appears in almost all of his scenes carrying a bunny?

True to its hip nature, the movie contains dollops of self-criticism. At one point, Hans complains about the the way women tend to be shortchanged in these kinds of movies. Too bad he's right because one of these women is Abbie Cornish, who plays the girlfriend who junks Marty early in the film. Gabourey Sidibe (familiar from Precious) has a cameo as a woman Harrelson's character tries to blame for losing his dog.

For once, it's not Walken who gives the movie's most outrageous performance. That honor goes to Rockwell, who's playing a wacked-out guy with enough lose screws to fill ten trash pails. That's not to say that Waken doesn't quietly walk off with his share of scenes, probably because he's smart enough not to try to out-wacko Rockwell.

Seven Psychopaths is fun -- until it isn't, and it requires a high tolerance for self-conscious writing, for performances that try a bit too hard to be outlandish and for the kind of movie-mad post-modernism that makes its hipness as difficult to ignore as a loud tie.

McDonagh's movie can be seen as a satirical take on violent genre movies, as a violent genre movie or as a movie that, in its best moments, makes you laugh in spite of yourself.

'The Sitter' is R-rated rot

If you keep up with celebrity news, you know that Jonah Hill no longer fits the roly-poly profile that his fans have come to love in movies such as Superbad and Cyrus. I've read that the newly minted Hill has lost 40 pounds.

Earlier this year, Hill hit a new and encouraging career mark in Moneyball, which probably represents the height his artistic achievement to date. In that movie, Hill played a brainy baseball analyst whose statistical approach to the game helped the general manager of the Oakland Athletics (Brad Pitt) put together a winning season.

Hill's latest - The Sitter - reportedly was filmed prior to Moneyball, but arrives in theaters in the midst of the holiday season. You may want to think of it as a blatant exercise in counter-programming, as well as a step backward for Hill.

Here's the thinking: With family-oriented fare such as Hugo, Arthur Christmas, The Muppets and the upcoming Adventures of Tintin crowding every multiplex, a raunchy comedy just might appeal to every disgruntled guy who dutifully accompanied a date to the latest Twilight movie.

And in a week of buzzless national releases, it's also possible that The Sitter will appease those who hate the idea that Hollywood -- with visions of Oscar dancing in its head -- tends to go prestigious at the end of the year.

I'm not in any of those groups, so for me, The Sitter represents a reminder of the kind of movies Hill may have to shed - along with the excess weight - if he's going to sustain a career.

Director David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express and Your Highness) seems to be doing his best to obliterate memories of such early acclaimed work as George Washington and All the Real Girls. Although The Sitter boasts a couple of moments that try to make nice, it's a mostly distasteful romp through a series of implausible and profane gags, many involving kids who are too young for major exposure in this kind of comedy.

A pre-weight loss Hill plays Noah Griffith, a young lives at home with his single mother (Jessica Hecht). The plot contrives to have the reluctant Noah babysit for three difficult kids, an anxiety-ridden 13-year-old (Max Records), a precocious girl who hides behind thick layers of make-up (Landry Bender) and a sullen Latin-American adoptee (Kevin Hernandez).

The screenplay further contrives to have Hill's Noah score some cocaine for his girlfriend (Ari Graynor) -- with the kids in tow, of course. As if to declare its salacious intentions, the movie opens with Noah performing oral sex on Graynor's character, a favor that she won't reciprocate. Hey, I don't like giving away jokes in reviews, but you should know something about the movie's mindset.

Or consider that Hernandez' Rodrigo has a fondness for cherry bombs and frequent urination. I guess someone thought it would be hilarious to watch Rodrigo relieve himself on the dance floor in the middle of a girl's Bat Mitzvah.

Noah's search for cocaine (surely a worn-out substance as far as either comedy or drama is concerned) puts him in contact with Karl (Sam Rockwell), a drug dealer who displays a boundless but obviously false sense of bonhomie.

Rockwell is one of my favorite actors, and he's certainly game for a far-out role, but he's stuck in a movie that tries to temper its foulest impulses with occasional flashes of sensitivity. Case in point: The scene in which Noah informs Records' character that it's OK to be gay or another in which Noah tells off the philandering father of the three unruly charges for whom he ultimately and predictably develops some fondness.

J. B. Smoove, Method Man and other black actors can be found on the movie's fringes, but they're mostly restricted by writing that tends to be too caricatured to be funny.

Hill is likable enough to survive this kind of comedy, but little in The Sitter serves to amuse. Built around car theft, drugs, exploding toilets, profanity, and other forms of inappropriate or illegal behavior, The Sitter is one of those comedies that manages to be more unpleasant than funny.

There's plenty of 'Conviction' in this one

Hilary Swank and Sam Rockwell have convictions.

Some levels of persistence defy explanation.

That’s pretty much what I concluded after watching Conviction, the story of Betty Anne Waters, a Massachusetts woman who worked to save her brother from a life in prison. Blessed with a first-rate cast led by Hilary Swank, director Tony Goldwyn takes a stirring look at a case that would have flown under the radar had it not been for Waters' heroic efforts.

A waitress by trade, Waters put herself through college and then law school just so she could appeal her brother’s murder conviction. Ultimately, she brought her brother’s case to the attention of Barry Scheck’s Innocence Project, a group that specializes in fighting for the release of prisoners through the use of DNA evidence, a technique that didn’t exist when Kenny Waters was found guilty.

Swank’s performance, aided by a pitch perfect Massachusetts accent, captures the determination it took for Waters to stay a course that lasted 18 years, and she receives able assistance from a strong supporting cast. Sam Rockwell portrays Waters' brother Kenny, a Massachusetts guy who had plenty of rumbles with local police before he found himself on trial for a brutal murder. Rockwell conveys both Kenny’s volatility and his charm. Kenny appalled those around him with sudden displays of temper, but quickly appeased them with bursts of goofy humor.

Minnie Driver plays Betty Anne’s supportive best friend, a fellow lawyer. She's good, too, but Juliette Lewis has an eye-opening turn as a woman whose testimony helped convict Kenny. Toward the end of the movie, Lewis has a scene that may well catapult her into Oscar consideration in the supporting actress category.

No faulting the rest of the cast, either. Melissa Leo hits all the right notes as the police officer who pushed for Kenny’s arrest, and Peter Gallagher handles the role of DNA maven Barry Scheck with the easy pragmatism of an attorney who's been around the legal block more than a few times.
Conviction mostly focuses on Waters' legal struggles, but it does attempt to deal with the domestic turmoil that resulted from her commitment to her brother. Waters' marriage deteriorated, and, at one point, her two sons chose to live with their father.
For all its acting prowess and the presence of an undeniably strong story, Conviction isn't flawless. The movie ultimately is built for inspiration, and Goldwyn has said that Conviction can be viewed as a love story between brother and sister. He’s certainly not wrong, but his movie might have benefited from a little more outrage at the injustices experienced by those whose lack of resources binds them to a legal system that too easily can ignore them.

I guess the rest of this review contains SPOILERS, so read on at your peril.
Goldwyn, who visited Denver along with Waters, defends a decision that he made regarding Kenny's fate. The movie ends without telling us that six months after his release from prison, Kenny died as a result of injuries sustained during a fall. Test audiences evidently felt that such knowledge deflated the movie, and Goldwyn ultimately concluded that the story's major themes had little to do with Kenny's death.
It seems to me, though, that acknowledgement of Kenny's fate could have strengthened the case for making prompt use of DNA evidence. The innocent should not be languishing in our prisons, especially when the technology exists to exonerate them. Kenny was robbed of 18 years of his life. His death only magnifies the injustice he suffered.

Waters is too strong a woman to allow the cruel irony of her brother's demise to tie her in knots. “The last six months were the happiest in Kenny’s life,” she says.

Spend five minutes with Waters and you'll know that she's the real deal. She still works at the bar depicted in the movie; she’s not full of herself, and she's instantly likable, an ordinary woman who accomplished something extraordinary.
If you want to know the definition of the phrase “I’ve got your back,” you need look no further than Waters and the movie that introduces her to the world at large.
Sure I've got my quibbles with Conviction, but it's well worth seeing.