Grief and a lie in ‘Eleanor the Great’

 

June Squibb is 95 and still acting, a notable achievement in and of itself. In her first directorial outing, Scarlett  Johansson casts Squibb as the title character in Eleanor the Great, a movie about an aging Jewish woman who moves from Florida to New York when her longtime roommate (Rita Zohar) passes away. In New York, Squibb's Eleanor takes up residence with her daughter (Jessica Hecht) and grandson (Will Price). Tory Kamen's screenplay contrives to have Eleanor join a Holocaust survivor's group at a Manhattan JCC. Perhaps sensing Eleanor's isolation, a survivor invites her to participate. The twist: Eleanor isn't a Holocaust survivor. Posing as one, she tells the story of her roommate, a woman scarred by Holocaust experiences. Concocting a lie about the holocaust gives the movie a sour taste that can work against the empathy it tries to build. Though brief, Zohar's performance proves a standout, but the movie works its way toward a resolution that struggles to explain Eleanor's behavior when her lie takes on a life of its own. The plot hinges on a connection Eleanor makes with an NYU journalism student (Erin Kellyman), who's grieving the recent death of her mother. She's also trying to break through the resistance of her father (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a TV personality who won't discuss his grief. The actors do their best to convey the required sensitivity, and the movie's small moments are well-played. Still, contrivances and a strained conclusion didn't convince me that the subject matter -- the seriousness of Eleanor's ruse -- had been given enough weight.*

*I've been having difficulty with the spellcheck on this app, which insists on changing names to one's it finds more recognizable. That was the case in an early posting of this review. From now on, I will double check the postings to make sure that this hasn't happened. And thanks to those who have pointed these errors out to me. 

'Rebirth' follows the Jurassic formula

   Dinosaurs may be extinct, but Jurassic Park movies endure. I haven't seen every one of the six Jurassic movies that preceded this summer's edition, Jurassic World: Rebirth, but I'm familiar enough with the Jurassic formula to know it when I see it in action.

  A few positive impressions before nipping at this summer behemoth:  Director Gareth Edwards and screenwriter David Koepp cleverly construct the movie's abundant set pieces, landing one grisly sight gag I won't describe here.

  Additionally, Edwards keeps the movie's parallel storylines moving. In one, a family is stranded on a dinosaur-inhabited island on the equator. In another, a small  team traverses the same mysterious terrain in hopes of obtaining dinosaur blood samples for a pharmaceutical company.

  The family arrives in the film's jungle by accident. The better-prepared crew hopes to profit from its entry into a "forbidden" zone where they'll encounter all manner of dinosaurs: ocean dwellers, air-borne dinosaurs, and land lovers. Some of the dinosaurs have been the subject of an abandoned genetic mutilation project. CGI brings them all to polished life.

  The film's unfortunate family (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Luna Blaise, and Audrina Miranda) is accompanied by the lazy, semi-obnoxious boyfriend (David Iacono) of the family's college-bound daughter. 

  When an attack by an ocean-dwelling dinosaur scuttles their sailboat, the family is rescued by the dinosaur-hunting crew that's en route to the forbidden island, which has been ceded to the dinosaurs. No humans allowed.

   Jurassic Park Rebirth echoes the formula Spielberg began with Raiders of the Lost Arc (1981), adopting a structure that might have been snatched from episodes in a bygone Saturday serial. 

   Perhaps to temper the terror, the movie includes moments of cuteness: A baby dinosaur bonds with Miranda's ll-year-old character. 

   And, yes, a rapturous scene in which a pair of long-necked dinosaurs display affection toward each other seems designed to encourage rapture. To me, the awe felt engineered. Despite the lush jungle surroundings, little about Rebirth feels organic.

    Not surprisingly, the movie's dinosaurs keep busy trying to eat various members of the cast, succeeding in mostly predictable fashion.

     That's part of the trouble: The movie seldom creates the anxiety that surely must have been intended. Even the presence of a fierce T-Rex seems more like fan service than a horrifying lesson in the dangerous consequences of genetic engineering. 

    Ah yes, there he is, baring his sharp teeth and waving his hideously withered arms.

     Three previous Jurassic World movies stormed the box office: Jurassic World, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and Jurassic World: Dominion. Gone are the stars of those movies (Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard) but Rebirth struck me as more of a refresh than a rebirth.

     Credit Edwards (Godzilla) and Koepp, who wrote the original Jurassic Park and its follow-up, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, for keeping the movie watchable.

     But if familiarity didn't breed contempt, it didn't notch up the requisite thrills, either. Dread works best, I think, when it doesn't seem so well-managed.

Wes Anderson's grand scheme movie

 I use a notebook during screenings to keep track of specifics -- dates, locations, and colors. Things like that. If my handwriting were better these notes would be more useful, but even as they drift toward indecipherability, they serve as a memory aid.

  During the screening of director Wes Anderson's The Phoenician Scheme, I reached a point where I stopped taking notes. I couldn't keep up with the surfeit of detail that cropped up in Anderson's carefully constructed sets, each of which becomes a kind of destination that can outweigh the importance of where the story might be headed.

    Anderson tends to indulge in detailed design, so much so that it's only a mild overstatement to call his scenes  dioramas with actors. There's world building and then there's world building that feels chiseled; movies such as the Phoenician Scheme flood the screen with their drolly express detailing.

     The Anderson aesthetic is richly displayed in Phoenician Scheme, but the movie also includes dull stretches that take us from episode to episode, some set off by title cards expressing variable amounts of wit.

      So what's The Phonecian Scheme about? A greedy tycoon named Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio Del Toro) aims to control the resources of a fictional region called Modern Greater Independent Phoenicia. Zsa-zsa's ambition sends him to a tour to raise funds for an intricate infrastructure project.

     Kate Winslet's real-life daughter Mia Threapleton plays Korda's daughter Liesl, the character who brings the movie's father/daughter theme into focus. Korda wants Threapleton's Liesl to take over his empire, choosing her over his nine sons, the equivalent of non-player characters in video games.

     The problem: Liesl is on the verge of taking her vows as a nun, an occupation that would limit her ability to play Zsa-zsa's ruthless game. To the extent that it's possible, Liesl adds moral fiber to Zsa-Zsa's project: Unlike her father, she refuses to use slaves to help with any required construction. 

     A scorecard might be needed to keep track of the actors who appear in small roles. Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston turn up in a sequence involving a strange H-O-R-S-E-like game of basketball. Anderson also makes room for appearances by Riz Ahmed, Benedict Cumberbatch, Mathieu Amalric, and Scarlett Johansson. 

     Michael Cera gets more screen time as Bjorn, an insect collector who travels with Korda and Liesl. He serves as Liesl's tutor and Zsa-zsa's "guy Friday."

     The performances fit into the Anderson's deadpan presentation of a playful weirdness that extends to costumes (a striking set of pajamas) or personal appearance (Cumberbatch's graying two-tone beard).  

     Set in the 1950s, Phoenician Scheme seems more subdued than previous Anderson efforts, although it begins with a plane crash that might be read as a commentary on the preposterous inhumanity of contemporary action sequences. Zsa-zsa we learn has survived many plane crashes. He's like man living on perpetual borrowed time. Perhaps that's why he seems a bit bored with himself.

      Anderson's devoted fans who wouldn't miss one of his movies. Should others venture into The Phoenician Scheme they may have to settle for quiet appreciation of the environments Anderson creates and his occasional displays of audacity -- e.g., the basketball sequence. 

       I'm not sure where to rank Phoenician Scheme

in Anderson's extensive catalog. The movie struck me as one more stop on a continuing journey, something like a restaurant with a forgettable main course, but lots of tasty side dishes.

An animated edition of ‘Transformers’

    I admit it. I've never spent a second wondering how an ordinary bot could become Optimus Prime. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you can stop here. If you do, I’ll tell you that I’ve enjoyed a couple of Transformers movies, but would resist rending any garments should the series fade into the mists of memory. 

   That, of course, isn’t going to happen. The new animated Transformers One not only charts a path for sequels, it boasts enough inventive animation to push noise-weary watchers past its loud, repetitive battles. 

    Chris Hemsworth, Brian Tyree Henry, and Scarlett Johansson lead the voice cast, and director Josh Cooley (Toy Story 4) adds enough cheeky humor to stave off Transformers fatigue. 

    Hemsworth provides the voice for Orion Pax, a bot who’s subjugated to the oppression that consumes the planet Cybertron. Orion and his pal D-16 (Henry) work as miners, drudges who are expected to revere Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm),  the autocratic Transformer who runs the place. 

     The story centers on Orion’s attempt to reach Cybertron’s surface. Once there, he and a trio of bots that includes D-16, Elita-1 (Johansson), and B-127 (Keegan-Michael Key) try to win freedom for Cybertron's downtrodden. 

     Elita adds assertiveness, and B-127 brings humor. Whatever the situation, he won't shut up.

      Eventually, the quartet revives an older bot (Laurence Fishburne) who remembers the time before Sentinel enslaved ordinary bots, who lack the power to transform.

      In a welcome addition, Steve Buscemi gives voice to the treacherous Decepticon Starscream,

     Transformers One takes shape as a buddy movie, an action onslaught, and a story about underdogs who triumph. Perhaps to add political spin, the screenplay pits the dedicated unity of rebellious bots against Sentinel’s selfish authoritarianism.

     Cybertron puts the team's visual chops on display -- both above and below ground.

      I’m always a little put off by movies that require glossaries. Transformers, of course, has its share of ear-challenging names. To take one example, Cybertorn worker droids mine a substance called Energon, which provides the planet’s energy. Ordinary bots lack the “cogs” that allow for transformation, the key to power on Cybertron. Qintesson invaders add to the problems the defiant bots face.

      And, oh yeah, our quartet of  bots searches for the Matrix of Leadership, the object that serves as the movie’s MacGuffin.

      Who'd have guessed that anyone could get this much mileage from a Hasbro toy? Not me. But that’s the world we live in, and if we can’t change it, we should at least appreciate attempts to give it humor, visual invention, and a simple ethos.

     That’s the transformation audiences deserve. Credit Transformers One for trying to provide it.

          

A romcom mashup that sputters

 

   Fly me to the moon or so goes the lyric. On second thought, if it means sitting through the mashup of romcom moves, intrigue, and satire that's being peddled in the new comedy Fly Me to the Moon, I'll happily remain on Earth.  

  Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum star in roles that seem intended to evoke memories of the comedies of yesteryear -- updated with a dose of conspiratorial thinking on the part of screenwriters Keenan Flynn, Rose Gilroy, Bill Kirstein, and director Greg Berlanti.

  Fly Me to the Moon isn't meant to be taken too seriously, but it often feels slight, and inconsequential, a big-screen bauble hasn't been polished enough to shine.

  Johansson plays Kelly Jones, an unscrupulous marketer who's recruited by a shadowy government agent (Woody Harrelson) to help sell the public on NASA's Apollo 11 mission, which, in 1969, landed the first humans on the moon.

  As the Apollo launch chief stationed in Cocoa Beach, Fla., Channing's Cole Harris resists efforts to commercialize the mission. He gradually yields, accepting   the idea that putting astronauts on cereal boxes will help provide much-needed support for NASA funding.

   The movie attributes Cole's all-business attitude to the seriousness of the task and to a past tragedy. He was the launch director of Apollo 1, which resulted in the deaths of three astronauts.

   Harrelson's Moe Berkus has more in mind than elevating NASA's popularity. He involves Kelly in a scheme to set up a faux moon landing that he plans to televise regardless of what the real astronauts accomplish. Berkus refuses to risk losing what he views as an ideological battle with the Soviets.

   Blather about a faked moon landing isn't new, but little of the movie's maneuvering passes the credibility test, and the romance between Kelly and Cole poses no threat to the likes of Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert or any of the other great romcom pairings.

   At the same time, a lively Johansson brings plenty of verve to a role that allows her to employ a variety of accents. Channing's character, on the other hand, seems to have been written in ways that minimize some of the actor's strengths, notably charm and good humor.

    The supporting cast adds little. Anna Garcia portrays Kelly's assistant, and Jim Rash plays the deluded director Kelly hires to fake the moon landing. A frustrated director of commercials, Rash's character is waiting for Hollywood to recognize his brilliance.

   The movie wastes Ray Romano as a NASA engineer and the movie's resident sadsack.

    The Apollo astronauts, of course, reached the moon. This one? If not a case of crash and burn, its overlong two-hours and 11 minutes hardly rocket to new heights.

    

Wes Anderson visits the ‘50s in ‘Astroid City’

 

  In Astroid City, director Wes Anderson returns to the 1950s to create a self-consciously expressed artificial environment in which he can ... well ... I'm not sure exactly what. 

  Astroid City overloads on the dry visual wit that has distinguished Anderson's style. Anderson's movies (The French Dispatch and The Grand Budapest Hotel) are so strenuously stylized that one can only assume that we're meant to revel in the cleverness.

   In this case,  Anderson creates a phony desert landscape in which he locates the town of the movie's title. The story and its characters feel like miniatures encased in high-quality plastic, Bakelite perhaps. 

   I guess the question arising from all this is whether Anderson's approach transcends playful amusement? The dialogue and some of the issues (the rise of atomic weapons) suggest he has more in mind than chuckles.

   Whether you can make that leap with him seems to turn audiences into supporters or detractors or, just as likely, those who are simply confused. Watching Astroid City, I alternately found myself in all of those categories. 

     One of Andreson's best sight gags involves a highway constructed in the middle of Astroid City. The road ramps upward and then ends abruptly, suggesting that the town's early optimism ran out of gas. Make what you will of that. I laughed.

   Anderson populates Astroid City with a large and notable cast.

   Jason Schwartzman plays Augie Steinbeck, a war photographer who's traveling with his four kids and the ashes of his late wife, a once loved woman whose remains have been stored in a Tupperware bowl. 

   To add to the story, the little town plays host to a mini-convention of Junior Stargazers. A funny Jake Ryan portrays Augie's son Woodrow,  a nerdy Stargazer with a serious scientific bent. 

    If all this weren't enough, Anderson adds another meta layer. We know from the start that everything that unfolds in Astroid City is part of a television play that's introduced in black-and-white sequences by a character called The Host (Bryan Cranston).

   Later Adrien Brody will turn up as Schubert Green, the man who seems to be directing the play which was written by Conrad Earp (Edward Norton).

   Of all the movie’s many actors, Brody alone seems entirely comfortable in this world. He retains a sense of fluidity that other actors can’t always achieve when visiting AndersonWorld. 

   As you probably can tell, Astroid City can be regarded as a scorecard movie. You'll need one to keep track of the many actors who pop up. Jeffrey Wright plays General Grif Gibson, a military man who addresses the Stargazers. 

    You'll also find appearances by Matt Dillon, Steve Carell, Hope Davis, and Liev Schreiber.

   More notable is the work of Scarlett Johansson who plays movie star Midge Campbell and who -- during the course the play we're watching -- converses with Augie. Both characters speak from their motel rooms, observing each other through windows.

   Midge pops back and forth from the play to black-and-white behind-the-scenes sequences that show us what's happening backstage at the production.

    Other characters also appear in both realities.

   The performances are molded into the movie's deadpan style that's enjoyable if you pick out highlights, notably a dance sequence led by Montana, a cowboy played by Robert Friend. 

    A scene in which an alien lands in Astroid City is as funny and beautifully executed as it is cheesy -- in the manner of third-rate 50s sci-fi.

    And, oh yes, Tom Hanks.

    Hanks pays the grandfather of the Steenbeck brood; he shows up for the burial of his daughter's ashes and connects the movie to the grief that drives Augie and his kids.

    For the most part, the appearances of the movie's many actors lack the joy of  recognition that sometimes can be derived from a large, recognizable cast. Here, they come and go without fanfare.

    Astroid City looks like one of those towns that were constructed for atom bomb tests and, at various points, we see mushroom clouds in the background. The town is named for an astroid that long ago smashed into earth, leaving a portion of itself as a valued memento.

     Anderson divides the movie into acts, which heightens the sense of remove that he creates; for me, at least, this is both Anderson’s strength and weakness. His characters can be more like objects than people and they operate in the coded way that fits the rest of the film. 

     At times, Astroid City has a piercing brilliance that I found captivating. Overall, though, the movie proves fitfully enjoyable, something we observe as if looking through a microscope meant to satirize and dissect cliched images of lonely Western landscapes. If they were paintings, they might be admired for their cartoon-like clarity.

    My advice: Grab what you will from the passing tray of oddities, ignore what baffles you. Sometimes Astroid City feels like a collectors show of mid-Century bric-a-brac; best to take it booth by booth.

‘Black Widow’: action, humor, wobbly accents

 

   Black Widow, the eagerly awaited next helping of Marvel mayhem, isn't exactly the kind of movie that redefines a genre or challenges you with unexpected depth.

   But -- you knew a "but" was coming, didn't you? -- the movie uses its Avengers heritage to good effect and, damn, if it doesn't include some agreeable humor, not the winking self-reflexive kind (at least not entirely) but laughs that stem from watching an unsettled family try to define itself.

    Right there, in the middle of a Marvel superhero movie, a kind of twisted family sitcom to go along with a story in which the heroes battle a villain who controls the minds of women.

    Black Widow begins in Ohio, introducing us to what seems like a typical suburban family. There's a catch: When Dad (David Harbour) arrives home, he tells his wife (Rachel Weisz) that they have an hour to leave town with their two young daughters (Ever Anderson and Violet McGraw). The year: 1995.

   Australian director Cate Shortland wastes no time leaping into action, sending a message that whatever else Black Widow will offer, it's not going to skimp on chases, fights, globe-hopping, and a plot that feels as if it might have been gleaned from a James Bond out-basket.

   About that family. After their escape and a quick landing in Cuba, they're separated. The film then leaps ahead 21 years. 

    In these 21st Century scenes, we learn that the family has been torn apart by Dreykov (Ray Winstone), a Russian mega-baddie who has been building an army of automaton warriors by taking over the brains of kidnapped girls trained in a facility known as The Red Room.

   Daughter Natasha (Scarlett Johansson), already an Avenger, is living on her own in trailer with help from a guy (O. T. Fagbenle) who brings her supplies.  She's running from US Secretary of State Thaddeus Ross (William Hurt) — at least I think that’s what’s happening. 

    Because few of us would want to watch a movie about a fugitive living in a trailer in Norway, the movie quickly contrives to put Natasha (a.k.a., The Black Widow) into motion. 

    For those who haven't pressed every Avengers movie into their book of memories, an assurance: I, too, had to read up: The movie takes place at a time when the Avengers have broken up; i.e., in the interim between Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War. 

    Johansson has done her Widow bit in other Avengers movies, but keeps things humming in this semi-solo effort. 

   Happily, the movie adds Florence Pugh to the mix. Pugh plays the grown-up version of Natasha's younger sister Yelena,  a Russian-trained assassin who, like Natasha, must decide whether the ties of early years still have meaning.

    Yelena, by the way, has acquired an antidote that can reverse the control Dreykov has over the core of stolen children he has raised to kill, but as is the case with many of these Marvel movies, the plot strikes me as little more than a necessary bother — like wearing a tie to a job interview.

    The movie gives the two women a chance to play sibling rivalry games and also reunites them with their mother and father, both of whom have gone their separate ways, as well.

   This part of the movie affords Harbour an opportunity to do an amusing comic riff on being a superhero. He's the Red Guardian, once a true believer in Soviet myths and now a somewhat paunchy guy who looks nothing short of ridiculous in his superhero outfit.

   One of the movie's major set pieces involves breaking Harbour's Alexi out of a grim Russian prison? Cue the avalanche.

    For her part, Weisz plays things straight as Melina, a wily woman who always seems to know more than she lets on.

   The underlying motivation is simple enough. Natasha and Yelena want to find the Red Room, destroy it, and kill Dreykov, the fiend has ruined the lives of so many young girls.

   Of course, the finale is scaled large.

   The movie's variable Russian accents might be a key to understanding the whole enterprise. They're funny, a bit botched, and not without charm. 

   Even non-Marvelites will get the gist and you don't need to know anything about the Avengers to enjoy the way the movie pokes fun at BlackWidow's trademark pose. 

    Before striking, she looks like an Olympian about to launch in a speed-skating event, fitting for a movie that’s agile enough not to fall through thin ice.

Can a divorce really be amicable?

Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver play a divorcing couple in director Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story.

In a divorce, it eventually becomes clear to one or both partners that the person in whom they had placed their trust no longer is the person they believed them to be. Suddenly, the most intimate person in one's life becomes an unfamiliar antagonist.

This isn't true of every divorce, but it's the underlying dynamic that drives Marriage Story, the latest movie from director Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale, Frances Ha, The Meyerowitz Stories. The always insightful Baumbach tells the story of two creative types who love each other, but whose marriage has run out of gas. Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) has decided that her acting chops have sustained the career of her husband (Adam Driver), an acclaimed experimental theater director. Driver's Charlie reaps the rewards and adoration. She's an also-ran.

Eventually, the situation proves intolerable for Nicole -- that and the fact that Charlie has slept with a member of the Manhattan theater company he runs.

To pursue her career, Nicole moves to her hometown, Los Angeles, a city that Charlie loathes. She eventually lands a big role in an important TV show.

For his part, Charlie's career begins to stall and he can't accept the idea that his family, which includes a young son (Azhy Robertson), no longer can call itself New York-based.

Baumbach begins the movie with a nifty bit of trickery. We hear the content of letters in which each of the spouses lists the good points about their mate. The movie then undermines what seems an expression of love and goodwill by telling us that these letters were written at the suggestion of a mediator after the couple agreed to divorce.

The movie is less the story of a marriage than the story of a break-up. What appeared to be a good marriage was fraught with difficulties, the most important being Charlie's self-absorption. Early hopes for an amicable divorce eventually wind up in the hands of lawyers.

Laura Dern portrays Nicole's lawyer, a shark who knows how to find blood in the water and move in for the kill, isn't afraid to soften her hard edges. Ray Liotta turns up as Dern's male counterpart, another lawyer whose strategy involves biting into the nearest jugular. Liotta's character takes over after Charlie tries to do business with a reasonable, realistic lawyer, a terrific Alan Alda in full mensch mode.

Baumbach works hard to turn Marriage Story into an equal opportunity movie for each side. He evidently doesn't have a taste for the kind of drama that rips us apart, and he introduces comic elements that stem from Nicole's mother (Julie Hagerty) and her sister (Merritt Wever).

An attempt at farce in which Wever's character serves Charlie with divorce papers is overwrought to the point of annoyance. And there are two instances of characters doing musical numbers that easily could have been cut from a movie that doesn't quite know when to end. But I guess you could say the same about Charlie and Nicole's marriage.

'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.

'Endgame' delivers what fans expect

It takes three hours for this Marvel Comics series to reach its conclusion, but the movie mostly succeeds..

Watching Avengers: Endgame —- the last chapter in what seemed an endless series of movies that kicked off in 2008 with Iron Man — another title kept running through my head, Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye. It’s not that Chandler’s 1953 novel, made into a fine movie by director Robert Altman, resembles this Marvel Comics extravaganza in any way. It’s simply the title. At three hours in length, Marvel takes its time bringing this long-running series to a close. Judging by Endgame's sometimes melancholy tone, Marvel itself had a difficult time letting go.

Before we continue, I should tell you that this isn’t the end of Marvel comic movies or of every character who has graced the Avengers series. And, no, I’m not going to dwell on plot, partly because critics have been cautioned about including spoilers and partly because I’m not sure that the plot and its various twists make much difference. The general outline of the story already has been drawn; the last installment —- Infinity War —- pitted the Avengers against Thanos (James Brolin}, a super-villain. Even before the beginning of Endgame, Thanos had wiped out half of the universe's population.

This edition includes a robust cast of characters from the Marvel Universe, so many that all but the most avid Marvel fan would be wise to attend the movie with a scorecard. But if character development doesn’t entirely surpass action in Endgame, it at least stands on equal footing. There’s also a fair amount of humor in the work of directors Anthony and Joe Russo, the brothers who brought us 2018’s Infinity War.

About the movie's humor: Reviewers will mention it for good reason. Endgame doesn’t skimp on humor, much of it self-referential, some of it simply amusing. But this doesn’t mean you’ll be falling out of your seat; it does mean that the filmmakers understand that a three-hour journey can’t be made unless it provides a few laughs.

Endgame stands as a sequel to Infinity War although you probably needn’t have seen that movie to follow this one. Still, if you’re not plugged into the Marvel universe, I see no reason to start now. And, yes, I’m wary of movies that have helped turn popular entertainment into a comic-book-based smorgasbord. I’m also aware that there’s little point railing against an already-established victory. As far as the box office is concerned, these movies represent a Hollywood Olympus that most viewers are happy to revisit with a frequency that has enriched much of Marvel's empire.

As for Endgame, I’ll give you a few of the high points. First, Robert Downey Jr., whose work as Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man, ignited the Avenger's flame. A distressed-looking Stark is seen early in Endgame; he’s on a space ship floating through the outer reaches of space or as he puts it, a thousand light years from the nearest 7-Eleven. Without offering any overly revealing explanations, suffice it to say that Downey gives a real performance; i.e., one in which Stark relates more to his human side than to his superhero self.

Joining Downey are a variety of other superheroes. These include Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk, the anger-motivated muscle man who in this edition has found a way to blend his fury with the normal intelligence of his alter-ego Bruce Banner. Chris Hemsworth’s Thor makes a large impression, not only by wielding his mythic hammer but by displaying a new and expanded girth. Thor, we learn has become a beer-guzzling sloth complete with a potbelly. The newly debauched Thor adds welcome laughs.

We see more of Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) than I expected. Same goes for Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow. As I've said, bring a scorecard and you'll be able to check off every superhero arrival in the movie's bulging roster.

The Russo brothers try to give each of the main characters his or her due by introducing a plot conceit that allows the movie’s structure to be divided into a variety of mini-movies that include moments of genuine poignancy.

Let’s talk about the movie’s ending. Yes, it’s protracted but it’s also marked by a reasonably surprising undertow: Victories seldom come without an underlying sense of what has been lost in the fight. That's not to say that you'll be weeping uncontrollably. The Russos deftly engineer the finale in ways that are bound to elicit cheers from the faithful; they nicely balance moments of loss with the obligatory rush derived from superhero achievements.

But wait; there’s more. The climactic action is followed by a series of epilogues that are meant to tug at the heartstrings and which probably will accomplish this goal for many of the faithful.

Avengers: Endgame goes to great lengths to deliver what its fanbase expects: big battles with cosmic stakes, a bit of self-deprecation and a plethora of superheroes that are happily and reverentially showcased.

Wes Anderson's distinctive 'Isle of Dogs'

Stop-action animation, a great voice cast, and strangely insular atmospherics make the director's latest appealing.

I’m not a total fan of Wes Anderson, the director whose work includes The Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Moonrise Kingdom and The Darjeeling Express). But there’s no arguing that Anderson is one of the few directors working today who follows his imagination wherever it leads him. To enjoy his movies, you must accept his apparent unwillingness to curb his idiosyncrasies or to tailor his work to popular expectation. You must accept -- and perhaps even welcome -- what feels like the willed insularity of Anderson's world.

In Isle of Dogs — Anderson’s latest — the director employs stop-action animation to create a story in which a Japanese mayor banishes all the dogs in his city to an island where the city dumps its trash.

Every dog lover will recognize this as a horrible situation and Anderson doesn’t shrink from the inherent sadness of a society so cruel that it condemns a species that has done nothing to deserve being ostracized.

The city's authoritarian Mayor Kobayashi (voice by Kunichi Nomura) -- a lover of cats -- takes a sadistic approach to an epidemic of dog flu that turns once faithful companions into health hazards. Totally committed to his own power, Kobayashi refuses to change his mind even when a researcher develops a serum that will cure every flu-carrying pooch.

Although it feels all of a piece, Isle of Dogs is a linguistic mash-up. The abandoned dogs speak English and the Japanese characters speak Japanese (no subtitles). There's also an American exchange student who, of course, speaks English. A reporter for a high school newspaper, she crusades to topple Kobayashi's rule.

The animation is impeccable and creative — from doggie expressions to cityscapes to the forlorn trash heaps where the abandoned dogs roam. You'll also find outstanding voice work from Edward Norton, Bryan Cranston, Scarlett Johansson, Bill Murray, Greta Gerwig and more.

Cranston’s mangy Chief may be the most distinctive of the dogs. A stray who doesn’t believe in trying to please humans, Chief warns others that he's not afraid to bite.

Sometimes when I watch an animated movie I can’t help trying to visualize the human actor behind the animated character.
Cranston’s voice is unmistakable, but — for the most part — I forgot about who might be doing the voice work and immersed myself in the visual environment Anderson and his team so ably create.

Anderson bows to Japanese film culture — often in humorous ways. At one point, for example, he employs a bit of the score from Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai as a wry commentary on the action.

I wouldn't call Isle of Dogs a kids' movie, although it centers on 12-year-old Atari (Koyu Rankin), a boy who steals a small plane, crashes on Trash Island and winds up helping to rebuild a bridge between dogs and humans.

One question seems unavoidable: Does Anderson’s movie have a seriously deep meaning? Is it an allegory or simply another display of Anderson's eccentricity?

I’m not sure where I stand on the question, an uncertainty about Anderson's work that has bothered me before. But I also find his artistic expressions personal and intriguing, full of small touches that can be as pleasing as the film’s overall design.

Toward the end of the movie, a dog and his new family are served heaping bowls of red meat, something of an apology from the previously abusive humans. Each puppy gets the same food -- only in tiny bowls. I’m not entirely sure why this detail made me smile. Perhaps because it’s emblematic of Anderson's approach, placing irresistible bits of minutiae against backdrops that seem to have been created with something that might be called "cockeyed control."

'Rough Night' founders -- badly

A strong cast can't save this formulaic and unfunny comedy.

It doesn't matter that the raunchy comedy Rough Night was directed by a woman. It also doesn't matter that Rough Night employs a group of talented actresses that includes the fiercely funny Kate McKinnon.

And while we're on the subject of irrelevance, you should know that it's equally unimportant that Rough Night gives us a much-needed opportunity not take Scarlett Johansson seriously or that the movie makes no fuss about a gay theme with Zoe Kravitz and Ilana Glazer playing former lovers.

Similarly, Jillian Bell's portrayal of the gal pal who Johansson's character has outgrown since the two bonded during dissolute college days is of little consequence.

It doesn't even matter that the movie follows a well-tested formula for crass comedies.

All of these things could have made a difference had this comedy about former college classmates who gather for a bachelorette party in Miami been either perceptive or funny. Maybe, Rough Night isn't funny precisely because of its inability to get close to anything that might be called incisive.

An attempt to darken the comedy -- the women accidentally kill a man they believe to be a male stripper -- isn't handled with enough wit or finesse to save the day. No Weekend at Bernie's, Rough Night arrives on screen as a painful misfire.

Any movie that resorts to cocaine snorting for one of its running gags -- as this one does -- immediately declares itself ineligible for any awards involving imagination.

Even the brilliant McKinnon, who plays an Australian visitor to the US, can't hit the necessary high notes, and the movie leaves us wondering what motivated the filmmakers to encourage McKinnon to channel her inner Naomi Watts.

Although designed as an ensemble comedy, the movie revolves around Johansson's Jess, a woman who has left her hard-partying college days behind to run for the state Senate. Once in Miami, Jess quickly sheds her sense of propriety to join what's supposed to be a fun weekend of clubbing hopping and debauchery.

Now and again, the movie offers scenes involving Jess's fiancé (Paul W. Downs). While the women are trying to be wild in Florida, Downs's character attends a sedate bachelor party. He and his buddies spend an evening at home in New York testing wines. Attendees include comedians Eric Andre, Hasan Minhaj and Bo Burnham, all mostly wasted.

Director Lucia Aniello doesn't do much to explore this bit of role reversal, and Downs's character quickly heads to Miami on a non-stop car trip involving adult diapers, stimulants and beer. Why adult diapers? So there's no need for him to make bathroom stops. A misunderstanding leads Jess's fiancé to believe his impending marriage may be endangered.

In Florida, the women stay at the upscale home of one of Jess's major donors. They also meet a couple of leering swingers played by Demi Moore and Ty Burrell.

Low on creativity, Rough Night at one point finds McKinnon's character feigning sex with the corpse that the women desperately are trying to hide. So, yes, this one tries everything, including a joke about necrophilia. Like the corpse, the joke dies. The movie isn't far behind.

She navigates a new life as a cyborg

Scarlett Johansson stars in Ghost in the Shell, a visually stunning but flawed version of a much-admired Japanese anime series.

The makers of Ghost in the Shell, a live-action version of a story that stems from a revered 1995 anime offering by Mamoru Oshii, have spared no expense trying to move the awe needle by creating a visual environment that befits an amazingly conceived future world.

Led by director Rupert Sanders, the Shell team places their movie somewhere between reality and imagination. Those who feared that this version would somehow diminish their feeling about the achievements of the original will have their own take on the movie. I'm not a purist, so this edition didn't bother me. Besides, there' nothing to stop anyone from watching the original, which derived from a manga comic.

Now for the controversy: Some commentators have been upset by the selection of Scarlett Johansson for the role of Major Motoko Kusanagi, a cyborg who strives to bring evildoers to justice. An American star playing a Japanese character? Surely, this role should have gone to an Asian actress, certainly a powerful argument.

The counter argument revolves partly around commercial considerations. A big-ticket production needs a big-ticket star. Perhaps to appease critics, the character Johansson plays is referred to only as "Major." I've also read that the filmmakers explain the ethnic shift by telling us that the character who died and whose brain was transplanted into a cyborg was Japanese. Johansson's cyborg ... well ... it's a synthetic creation that has been designed to look ethnically neutral and, yes fanboys, sexy in a flesh-colored, body-clinging suit that makes Johansson appear to be naked.

But its background as much as sensuality that qualifies Johansson for the role. She played an alien in 2013's Under the Skin. She's handled action in 2014's Lucy. And she's been an entirely artificial character, as the off-screen voice of a computer operating system in Her (2014).

I don't know if it constitutes high praise, but Johansson makes a pretty good cyborg, a character who's haunted by slivers of memory from her former human life.

To the extent that the movie has intellectual concerns, they revolve around questions of what exactly makes a person human. The idea is that advanced cyborgs are inhabited by what the movie refers to as "ghosts;" i.e., the souls of humans who have been developed into entirely new creatures -- in this case under the supervision of Dr. Ouelet (French actress Juliette Binoche speaking with an American accent).

There were times when I wished that Sanders (Snow White and the Huntsman) would wipe away a low-impact story and simply let us wander around the city he has created, an urbanscape where giant hologram advertisements are projected from buildings, where high-rise apartments reach for the sky and the streets feel alluring and alive.

Aside from Johansson, the rest of the cast is relegated to true supporting roles. Pilou Asbaek appears as Batou, Major's loyal and totally human partner. Takeshi Kitano plays Aramaki, a human who's not to be trifled with and who has an empathy for the cyborg plight. Michael Carmen Pitt portrays Kuze, a mysterious, hooded cyborg. Peter Ferdinando has been given stand-out moments as Cutter, a sinister character who runs a company that develops robots.

Some of the human characters have been "enhanced; i.e., they've chosen to develop certain parts of themselves with cybernetic infusions, something I thought about on the ride home from a preview screening as I debated about making yet another appointment with a chiropractor about recurrent back issues.

Fair to say, though, that Ghost's overwhelming visual achievements tend to dwarf any serious consideration of what it means to be human and an action-enhanced story tends to do what a surfeit of action sequences generally do -- numb our sensibilities, a liability that, for me, was abetted by Clint Mansell and Lorne Balfe's trance-inducing score.

So where do I come down on this mega-production that's probably going to cement Johansson into a long-running franchise? If you want to be overwhelmed by visuals, have at it. If you're looking for a high degree of involvement in a compelling story, be a little wary. And if you want to see a perfect fusion of story and visuals, you may want to be even warier.

'Captain America' takes sides

Opposing groups of Avengers square off in the latest movie from the Marvel Comics storehouse -- and it's all pretty entertaining.

I'm not sure what it means, but one of the best scenes in Captain America: Civil War doesn't involve Captain America. It occurs when Robert Downey Jr -- in Tony Stark mode -- visits Peter Parker (a.k.a. Spider Man) in the young man's Queens, NY apartment.

Downey and Tom Holland (the new Spider Man) play a comic duet in which the older more experienced Stark -- or Iron Man -- asks for help from a skittish teen-ager who'd rather finish his homework than join a major battle.

That's not to say that Captain America: Civil War shortchanges action, including a pitched battle at the Berlin airport between opposing Avenger factions -- the civil war of the title.

But even when its fighting, the movie often makes room for one-liners that serve as wry commentary on the preposterously swollen nature of what we're watching.

Following an Avengers movie isn't always an easy task for those who remain uninitiated in the mysteries of Marvel Comics.

Every character has a given name -- as in Natasha Romanoff -- and a superhero name. Romanoff, for example, is Black Widow. And then there's the task of remembering which actor is playing which Avenger. For the record, Scarlett Johansson portrays Black Widow.

Directors Anthony Russo and Joe Russo seem to assume we know all these characters, so he barrels ahead with a movie that mimics some of the concerns raised in the recent -- but much less enjoyable -- Batman v Superman.
As in that movie, we find superheroes struggling with consciences that have been piqued by growing awareness of the collateral damage they've wrought. Taking out bad guys creates much debris, some of it lethal to bystanders.

At one point, an increasingly tormented Iron Man is confronted by a mother (Alfre Woodard) who lost her son during one of Iron Man's escapades. Iron Man feels really bad, and Woodard -- in small appearance -- unloads on him with startling conviction.

The suggestion that people actually die and that others are left to grieve is welcome, but unlike the insistently dismal Batman v. Superman, a touch of seriousness doesn't undermine Civil War's comic-book instincts. Captain America takes a grim turn or two, but it's still fun.

Here's the gist: Upset by all the damage that the Avengers have caused, the US Secretary of State (William Hurt) decides to rein them in. The Avengers are asked to submit to the rule of a UN panel. Exactly why anyone thinks this will work remains a mystery.

Some Avengers agree to the new rules; others rebel against what they view as crippling restraints.

Among those who refuse to accept the new reality are Captain America (Chris Evans) and Falcon (Anthony Mackie). They want to remain independent fighters for ... well ... whatever it is they fight for.

Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) reluctantly goes along with the new order, as does Iron Man.

Meanwhile, the villainous Zemo (Daniel Bruhl) wreaks havoc, and Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stans) tries to renounce violence.

The Russos move the story with reasonable alacrity, and try to add emotional kick by straining old friendships and dredging up a haunting incident from Iron Man's past.

You've probably noticed that I haven't said much about Evans; maybe that's because there's not a whole lot to say about this straightforward guy who plies his trade with all-American efficiency. The movie is named for Captain America, but it belongs to the other Avengers, as well.

If you want to be cynical, you could say that the introduction of Spider Man and Chadwick Boseman's Black Panther are commercial ploys intended to revivify or expand Marvel's big-screen universe, but Civil War, finally, stands as its own entertainment.

Besides, fans may greet each introduction of a character from the Avengers' roster with satisfying smiles of recognition. Yes, that's War Machine (Don Cheadle). And look, it's Jeremy Renner's Hawkeye. Paul Rudd's Ant-Man? Yes, he's there, too.

It's hardly surprising that the Avengers civil war drags on too long or that it assaults us with noisy action and nerve-rattling clangor. But for all that, the big winner in this civil war may be the audience.

Captain America isn't exactly mindless, but it doesn't let a thought or two stand in the way of anyone's fun.

Disney scores with another 'Jungle Book'

CGI animals and a strong voice cast help director Jon Favreau sell a familiar tale.

Adaptations of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book don't exactly make for fresh news. So when I first saw the title on a list of 2016 releases, I found it difficult to get excited about another jungle journey, even one equipped with a CGI menagerie.

As it turns out, Disney's Jungle Book, directed by Jon Favreau, is bright (even in 3D), appealing and in at least one inspired sequence, engagingly loopy.

The story focuses on Mowgli (Neel Sethi), a boy who was raised by wolves and suddenly finds himself targeted by a tiger named Shere Kahn (voiced by Idris Elba).

The story is narrated by Bagheera (Ben Kingsley), the sagacious panther who first brought young Mowgli to Raksha (Lupita Nyong'o), the wolf who becomes his surrogate mother and who tries to instill him with the lore of the pack.

Elba gives voice to a convincing villain, a somewhat battered tiger who's motivated by a desire to keep fire out of the jungle. Shere Khan thinks it's not enough to exile Mowgli from the jungle by returning him to his human tribe. He wants to kill the boy.

In the early going, I half wondered whether Mowgli's flight through the jungle hadn't given Disney an excuse to produce a kiddie version of The Revenant, another wilderness survival epic. But Favreau balances the movie's convincingly dangerous situations with enough comic moments to keep fright in check.

To insure the success of its effort, Disney has surrounded first-timer Sethi with a strong voice cast. In addition to Kinglsey and Elba, you'll recognize Bill Murray as the voice of the conniving but good-spirited Baloo, a bear with a honey jones.

The movie even breaks into song with a Murray-voiced rendition of The Bare Necessities, which was used in Disney's 1967 animated version of The Jungle Book. The song seems awkwardly inserted because this version of Jungle Book isn't really a musical, but once you get past its slightly jarring arrival, the song is sort of fun.

Even though we never see him, Christopher Walken does scene-stealing work as the voice of King Louie, a giant orangutan with evil on his mind.

Louie wants Mowglie -- referred to by the animals as a "man cub" -- to return to his own kind, capture fire and deliver it to the power-hungry king who lives in an impressively created temple that has been overrun by all manner of monkeys.

Walken, too, is given a musical number, I Wanna Be Like You.

Animal purists may find this entirely anthropomorphic endeavor to be a little prone to cuteness. Despite Favreau's amazingly skillful use of CGI, the movie's spirit often follows a cartoon template with creatures (wolf cubs, for example) that are petting-zoo cuddly.

Although the movie expresses deep reverence for elephants -- all creatures bow before them -- it also makes sure to find a way to put a baby elephant into danger, an incident that provides the movie with an opportunity to showcase the human ingenuity that Mowgli possesses.

But there are also strangely alluring creatures that aren't quite as kid friendly: Ka, a giant snake voiced by Scarlett Johansson, tries to tempt Mowgli with her hypnotically seductive voice.

Favreau paces the movie at a speed that tends to help push criticism aside. Panthers with British accents? Why is it that some of the animals talk and some don't? And, most importantly, concerns about whether some of the realistically presented animal fights are too vivid for the youngest viewers to handle. The movie has been rated PG.

Overall, though, The Jungle Book proves entertaining and likable without delivering too heavy-handed a message about the way humans, the masters of fire, tend to destroy jungle habitats.

Stay put for the end credits, which are entertaining in their own right.

The Coens take on '50s Hollywood

Great cast, but Hail, Caesar! is enjoyable only in bits and pieces. Fortunately, some of those bits are inspired.

Despite the exclamation point in its title, the new Coen brothers film, Hail, Caesar!, isn't the sharpest or most emphatic of their many amazing efforts. A collection of sketches that both satirize and celebrate Hollywood of the 1950s, Hail, Caesar! lands the Coens in what for them is strange terrain: They've come up with a middle-ground addition to their idiosyncratic oeuvre with -- and this deserves underlining -- touches of entertaining brilliance.

There's a whisper of a story here: Fictional Capitol Studios finds itself in the midst of a major production. The movie is called Hail, Caesar!, and it carries the same heavily freighted subtitle as Ben-Hur, A Tale of the Christ. The plot, which offers echoes of The Robe focuses on a hardened Roman officer who eventually sees the light, rapturously submitting to a new faith when he encounters Christ on the cross.

Capitol's mega-buck epic stars Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), a slightly dissolute movie star who is also slightly dim.

During the filming of a scene, Whitlock is drugged and spirited away by extras who demand a $100,000 ransom. As it turns out, they are rebels with a cause, leftist screenwriters enamored of the Soviet Union who meet regularly to be lectured by Professor Marcuse (John Bluthal), an unveiled reference to Herbert Marcuse, a hero of the New Left during the 1960s.

It falls to Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), the studio's tough but perpetually burdened mogul, to return Whitlock to the set so that his mega-production can wrap. Eddie's part businessman and part fixer, a guy who's accustomed to covering the tracks of the studio's frequently wayward stars.

Eddie Mannix is modeled on a real-life MGM studio fixer of the same name. Here, Mannix is treated as decent but beleaguered man who's trying to keep the studio from running aground -- not an easy task when its stars have a penchant for landing themselves in embarrassing positions.

As Eddie puts out one Hollywood fire after another, he also entertains an offer from Lockheed, which wants to give him a high paying job that would allow for a more regular and presumably respectable life.

Now, very little about the plot matters. What makes the movie palatable are several winningly ludicrous snippets from Capitol's movies. Think of them as footnotes that are more interesting than the main body of the work.

One of the best involves a bone-headed decision to turn the studio's acrobatic cowboy star into a romantic lead, jamming him into comedy in which characters dress to the nines and speak in the kind of faux British -- or British-ish -- accents that were popular in some movies during the '30s and '40s.

Director Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes) is stuck with this egregious piece of miscasting. The scene in which Laurentz tries to prepare cowboy Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich) for sophisticated patter might be enough to justify the price of admission.

The same goes for brief appearances by Tilda Swinton, who plays two roles -- gossip pedaling, twin columnists Thora and Thessaly Thacker. Listen to the way Swinton says Eddie's name, giving it a twist that evokes the pleasures of a whole era of studio filmmaking.

And if you don't smile during a production number featuring Channing Tatum as a tap-dancing sailor who, along with his shipmates, contemplates life at sea without "dames," you're in an even worse mood than I usually find myself in.

And then there's a broadly comic bit involving Frances McDormand as C.C. Calhoun, a chain-smoking film editor.

For me, those were highpoint to be savored, along with numerous small touches.

Alas (to be as stilted as some of the dialogue in Capitol Studio's productions), not all of the sketches work so well. Though beautifully produced, an Esther Williams' style swimming number featuring Scarlett Johannson might have been included just to show that the Coens could do it.

Johansson plays DeeAnna Moran, a pregnant movie star who forces the studio to find ways to cover the fact that she's not married. Her story eventually leads to Jonah Hill, whose role amounts to little more than a forgettable cameo. Hill plays Joseph Silverman, a man who specializes in "personhood," a joke that's not really worth the trouble of explaining.

In A Serious Man, the Coens took on religion; their attempts to do the same here aren't nearly as rich. The movie opens with Mannix in a confessional booth where he establishes himself as a serious Catholic who's addicted to confession. Mannix feels guilty because he lies to his wife about having quit smoking, but his real guilt comes from working so hard to support a morally dubious and often lunatic enterprise.

Stretches of Hail, Caesar! proves only mildly amusing and some of the humor built around the Hail, Caesar epic struck me as more obvious than we expect from the Coens who've taken swipes at Hollywood before, notably in the feverishly brilliant Barton Fink.

Hail Caesar! may not rank at the top of Coen's impressive list, but it should do nothing to sour anyone on their work. My advice: Treat the movie as a smorgasbord. Pick what you like; forget the rest.

'Avengers' strikes again -- but not as deftly

Still, summer's first comic-book movie probably will connect with fans.

Avengers: Age of Ultron is the first of summer's bona-fide comic book movies. As such, it surely will score with fans of the series, as well as with those who've awoken from winter's hibernation hungry for another helping of their cherished Marvel superheroes.

Here's a list for those keeping score: Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Captain America (Chris Evans), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner).

These are the same actors who helped turn director Joss Whedon's The Avengers (2012) into an entertaining megahit.

This time out, Whedon and company provide a demonstration of what happens when a culture begins replicating itself, doling out the latest version of the same-old-same-old. The movie plays like an echo of its predecessor -- albeit a very loud one.

Also directed by Whedon, this edition alternates dull exposition with slam-bang action, some of it spectacularly created by the movie's welter of CGI geniuses. For my money, these unseen artists qualify as the movie's real stars, although they probably have been called upon to create more battles than any single movie needs.

The movie opens with an action-packed prologue set in the fictional eastern European country of Sokovia. The commotion has something do with invading the headquarters of Hydra. If you're an aficionado, you need no further explanation. If you're not, you probably don't care anyway.

The story's stakes, of course, are both high and par for the comic-book course: Our superheroes square off against Ultron (voice by James Spader), a super-intelligent robot (or at least some sort of metalic creature) created by Tony Stark, who's also Iron Man.

Uninspired by what he sees of humankind, Ultron decides that he wants to wipe out all of humanity.

Although it has been engineered to give each superhero time in the spotlight, the movie ultimately delivers a message about the importance of team work. The superheroes must use their unique individual skills to accomplish a joint task; i.e., rid the world of Ultron -- while delivering one-liners, of course.

The movie introduces several new characters, two of them twins played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen. Taylor-Johnson's Quicksilver is lightning fast; Olsen's Scarlet Witch has some kind of out-sized mental powers.

A few subplots also peek through the action, notably a digression into Hawkeye's civilian life and suggestions of romance between Hulk and Black Widow.

Paul Bettany shows up late the movie as a character named Vision: He reassures us that an invention with artificial intelligence can appreciate humans, despite not being one of them.

All of this tumult results in a somewhat confusing entertainment that still manages to wring a bit of sentiment out its finale.

Before the screening, I was mentioning to a companion that I'm starting to wear out on Robert Downey Jr.'s smart-and-smug act. Ultron did nothing to change my mind.

I enjoyed some of the big set pieces, but at 2 1/2 hours, my biggest reaction upon conclusion of Ultron was relief.

I also wondered whether Whedon and some the principal cast members might not feel the same way. These mega-productions definitely can wear you out.

'Chef' cooks up a good time

Jon Favreau's new comedy builds a father/son story around food.

In his new movie Chef, Jon Favreau plays a Los Angeles chef who's creatively stifled. Favreau's Carl Casper runs the kitchen at a successful restaurant, but no longer finds the menu challenging.

When Carl learns that a prominent food critic plans a visit, he decides it's time to show off the innovative skills that established his reputation when he worked in Miami.

Unfortunately the restaurant's owner (Dustin Hoffman) wants to stick to tried-and-true fare, giving customers what they seem to want.

It's not surprising that the city's most important reviewer (Oliver Platt) condemns Carl for having squandered his creative mojo.

Favreau also tosses Carl's personal information into the movie's frying pan. Carl's ex-wife (Sofia Vergara) might be the most supportive former wife ever: She's always trying to help him. Carl also has a young son (Emjay Anthony) with whom he spends insufficient time.

After losing his job and humiliating himself in a public confrontation with the antagonistic critic, Casper decides to return to Miami and ask a favor from his ex-wife's condescending first husband (Robert Downey Jr.)

Downey's character gives Carl a dilapidated food truck. Carl decides to spruce it up, and sell Cuban sandwiches. This back-to-basics move is designed to accomplish two things: It will revive Carl's foundering career and re-establish his relationship with his son.

The boy accompanies Carl and one of his former employees (John Leguizamo) on the cross-country trip back to Los Angeles. Food movie suddenly becomes road movie.

Chef is one of those movies that should be avoided if you're hungry. Cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau makes sure that the movie's food looks scrumptious and, when appropriate sumptuous.

Favreau, who directs and who also wrote the screenplay, tempers an obvious feel-good spirit by keeping Carl from becoming entirely likable. He's a malcontent who doesn't know how to be happy, despite the fact that he receives encouragement from co-workers (Scarlett Johansson and Bobby Cannavale in small roles). He's a mass of irritations.

To achieve happiness, Carl must learn to balance his career and personal life. He must discover how to turn his life into a kind of on-going party with great food, an objective that's bolstered by the movie's soundtrack which has been seasoned with sounds from Cuba and New Orleans -- with dashes of R&B added for good measure.

Once the movie hits the road, it tends to drag a little, substituting travelogue and color for story momentum. Before the movie hit the three-quarter mark of its 115-minute length, I was ready for a bit of short-order editing.

Favreau came to prominence with the indie movie Swingers (1999), which he wrote and in which he acted. Because he also has directed big commercial movies such as Cowboys & Aliens, Iron Man, Iron Man 2 and Elf, he's received lots of praise for returning to his roots with a smaller, more intimate movie.

I'm not sure that big and small are the right measures of a director's success. I'd prefer to consider what we might call "the good-time" factor. By that measure, it's hard to fault Favreau's Chef. Bon appetit.

Living in an alien world

Under the Skin tells a different sort of tale.

Under the Skin, a deadpan helping of sci-fi, turns out to be an exceptionally strange affair.

Director Richard Glazer's movie brims with stylistic and thematic flourishes that give it an other-worldly aura -- an achievement of sorts because the movie is set almost entirely on Earth.

Glazer achieves this unsettling effect by showing us Earth -- mostly the Scottish city of Glasgow -- from the detached viewpont of an extraterrestrial.

Scarlett Johansson portrays a character who -- after the film's spacey beginning -- travels around Glasgow in a van. In a black wig and fur jacket, Johnanson looks attractive and remote, an alien who seems to be following a set of programmed instructions about how to relate to the men she encounters.

The mood is one of extreme alienation. The people walking Glascow's streets may think they're headed somewhere, but to us they appear purposeless, maybe even superfluous.

Johansson's character can be friendly when she needs to be; i.e., when she's luring men (some of them non-actors who reportedly didn't know they were being filmed) into her van.

We quickly come to regard this woman as a kind of deep-space femme fatale. She never delivers on her sexual promise, but takes her prey to a rundown hideout and then sinks them into a dark, fathomless murk from which they'll never return.

Glazer's adaptation of a Michel Faber novel keeps every scene dimly lit, making it feel as if we must fight our way into the movie.

If you've seen enough sci-fi, you'll probably surmise that Johansson's character is on an aien mission. What mission? Where does she come from?

Glazer leaves it to us to fill in the blanks or, more likely, to push such questions aside as irrelevant.

The movie's purposeful ambiguity suggests that Glazer wants to keep our minds working overtime, which isn't always easy because his uninflected style can tend toward monotony.

That's not to say that there aren't amazing sequences here. A rescue on a beach leaves a terrifying, pitiless aftertaste, particularly in the way it concludes.

I won't say more, but if you're troubled by the idea of watching a toddler in jeopardy, Under the Skin will provide you with material enough for several nightmares.

The images at the end of the movie put Johansson's earlier nudity (of which there's a fair amount) into a new and provocative light, turning Under the Skin into a meditation on the body. The movie's title encourages us to look deeper.

Johansson's playing a predatory creature who, at various times, explores the humanity that she has assumed, less with wonder than with stunned curiosity.

At one point, she even seems to take human emotion for a test run: She feels sorry for a man with a facial deformity, and later becomes sexually aroused with a man she meets at a bus stop.

In general, though, Johansson suppresses the user-friendly charms she brought to Her, a movie in which she was never seen. Here we see plenty of her -- and nothing at all.

Under the Skin marks Glazer's third movie, after 2000's Sexy Beast and 2004's Birth. He's definitely a talent, although one that's not easy to pin down.

Those who are so inclined can read all sorts of things into Glazer's movie -- and probably will. Others will find it interesting -- even trancelike -- but unrewarding overall.

I think I lean more toward the latter category. Murky, ambitious and remote, Under the Skin can be very much like its main character: serious and intriguing, but lacking a human core.