'Prada 2': Less devlish but still amusing

 

  It has been 20 years since The Devil Wears Prada became a box-office hit. The Devil Wears Prada 2, a belated sequel, reunites the principal players -- Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci -- for a movie that loads up on glamor, fashion, and unbridled ambition in the world of magazine publishing.

   Director David Frankel returns with a story that contrives to bring Hathaway's Andy Sachs back into the world of Miranda Priestly (Streep), the tyrannical taste-making editor of the first installment.  Tucci's loyal Nigel still works as the design maven at Priestly's Runway magazine, which resembles Vogue in stature in the world of high fashion.

   Blunt's Emily has moved on to an influential position with Dior, which receives a major plug here. She's still embroiled in a rivalry with Andy, who's more or less the movie's main character. 

    Andy's trouble's begin when the newspaper for which she has been working is closed, a bit of news delivered by text while half the staff is attending an awards ceremony. Andy's investigative reporting wins first prize, a Pyrrhic victory that precedes her unemployment.

     No unemployment checks for Andy, though; she's quickly hired to help bring some "integrity" to Runway, where she once worked. In the midst of a PR crisis, Runway's owner hires Andy behind Miranda's back.

     The luxe atmospherics, definitely part of the movie's appeal, seem a little at odds with the many lofty defenses of journalism that are launched, mostly by Andy.

    A few other characters work mostly in service of the plot. Justin Theroux plays gazillionnaire Benji Barnes, who also happens to be Emily's new love interest; Lucy Liu, plays Benji's wealthy ex-wife, a woman who's not caught up in all the corporate craziness, and Kenneth Branagh portrays Miranda's new love interest, a role that pretty much wastes his talents. Same goes for Patrick Brammall, who's squeezed in as Andy's partner in a superfluous romance.

    Devil Wears Prada 2 also plays a game of cinematic name-dropping with cameo appearances by Donatella Versace, Naomi Campbell, Heidi Klum, Tina Brown, Molly Jong-Fast, Kara Swisher, Jon Batiste, Marc Jacobs, Karl-Anthony Towns, and more. The movie even manages to add a number by  Lady Gaga to its bold-faced parade of glitter.

     Despite the celebrity glut, the real attraction centers on the interactions between the principal actors who are part of a scheme in which Andy tries to save the magazine and Miranda's job as a corporate takeover and major cutbacks loom.

     Miranda may be as haughty as ever, but Streep makes her a bit more subdued in this outing. If the rest of the cast breaks no new ground, the actors ably meet the script's requirements, and the movie passes easily.

     Put another way, Prada 2 delivers a fair measure of upscale amusement in an expectedly glossy package. 

     

Intrigue during a papal conclave

  It's hardly a surprise to watch a movie in which the selection of a new pope bristles with intrigue, personal ambition, and conflicting agendas, crosscurrents made more potent by their connection to ardently held beliefs. After all, cardinals are people, too.

   Basing his movie on a novel by Robert Harris, director Edward Berger (All Quiet on the Western Front) slowly develops the movie's political maneuvering as conflict emerges between those who want to keep the Church on a liberal track and those who yearn for the rigidity of the past.

   Berger pays meticulous attention to detail and relies heavily on a terrific set of performances. As dean of the College of Cardinals, Ralph Fiennes' Cardinal Lawrence has been assigned the unenviable task of running the fractious conclave at which a pope will be elected.  Election requires a two-thirds majority.

  The role fits Fiennes, an actor capable of great precision,  perfectly. A man of balance, Lawrence sides with the liberals but tries to maintain neutrality. To add further complication, he's also in the midst of a personal crisis of faith. He also must fight off his own candidacy for a job he insists he doesn't want. Others are more transparent. 

    Other key players are Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci), an opponent of the constrictions of traditionalism, and  Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto), a churchman who's unsettled by the rise of Third World cardinals. Tedesco wants the papacy returned to Italy -- with him as pope, of course. 

   Other cardinals include the Nigerian Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), an early frontrunner who, if elected, would become the first Black pontiff. Cardinal Tremblay (John Lithgow), a popular American, has his eye on the papal throne and makes no bones about it.

    Gradually, Cardinal Benitez from Kabul (Carlos Diehz) becomes a dark horse, an unknown who was a last-minute appointment by the late pope.     

    Essentially a movie about cloistered men, Conclave features Isabella Rossellini as Sister Agnes, a nun who reluctantly insinuates herself into the proceedings.

    Berger creates the same kind of interest found in the novel: We try to guess who'll emerge as the Church's leader. 

   Credit Berger and his team for creating first-class atmospherics -- both in terms of the movie's edgy score and a secluded church environment dominated by the proscribed behavior of ritual and majesty. 

    I had read Harris' novel and viewed its ending as more of a provocative punch line than a satisfying conclusion. The movie, which adheres closely to the novel,  has the same politically charged ending (no fair telling), and the third act tends to go a little over-the-top.

    By the end, the screenplay (by Harris and Peter Straughan) has expanded its thematic reach to a near  breaking point, but Conclave remains one of the most crisply acted and involving ensemble pieces of the year. 

 

Naomi Ackie dazzles as Whitney Houston

 As a biopic, director Kasi Lemmons’ Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody breaks little new ground. If you're familiar with Houston's story, you may not find many surprises. 

 Moreover, two  documentaries -- Nick Broomfield's Whitney: Can I Be Me and Kevin Macdonald's Whitney -- already have covered some of the same ground. 

  Happily, though, that's not the whole story. 

  Lemmons approaches the movie with an obvious love for Houston's work -- and a willingness to put plenty of it on display.

   I Wanna Dance With Somebody may not be a great movie but it boasts a terrific, star-making performance from British actress Naomi Ackie. 

   Ackie doesn't look like Houston but she projects the singer's undeniable power -- as an up-and-coming New Jersey kid, as an established star, and as a drug-addicted woman caught in a destructive celebrity spiral.

 Houston's voice was dubbed into the movie. Ackie may not be singing but she nails the songs as bravura performances. By the end of the movie, Ackie has so fully absorbed Houston's style that her work ranks as a memorable achievement.

   Of the supporting cast, Tamara Tunie has an impressive turn was Whitney's stage-mom mother; a stern Clarke Peters plays her controlling dad, and Stanley Tucci turns down the volume to portray Clive Davis, the record mogul who discovered Houston. 

   Written by Anthony McCarten, who also wrote Bohemian Rhapsody, which told the story of Freddie Mercury, the film samples Houston's off-camera life, including the developing conflict between Houston's husband Bobby Brown (Ashton Sanders) and her best friend and one-time lover Robyn Crawford (Nafessa Wiliams).

   Thankfully, Lemmons spares us the sight of an overdosed Houston who was found dead in a bathtub at a Beverly Hills hotel in 2012.  

   Lemmons sets us up for that scene near the movie's end but only implies it. Instead, she flashes back to a recreation of Houston's performance at the 1994 American Music Wards. Houston sings sang three challenging tunes: I Loves You Porgy, And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going, and I Have Nothing.

    The scene becomes a statement about all that was lost with Houston's death. Lemmons allows Houston to write her own musical epitaph, and I Wanna Dance With Somebody brings Ackie to the spellbinding moment she's earned.

Determining the worth of a human life

   There's nothing terribly distinguished about the filmmaking in Worth, the real-life story of a battle for justice that ripped its way through the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. 

   But director Sara Colangelo's issue-oriented focus makes Worth a movie that's likely to spur valuable discussions about morality, law, and bureaucracy.

   The movie also boasts a strong performance by Michael Keaton as Ken Feinberg, an attorney who took on a case that required him to define criteria for compensating those who lost loved ones when the twin towers collapsed on 9/11.

    A man of actuarial temperament, Feinberg begins the movie by drawing the distinction between philosophy and law. He knows that in a legal setting, determining the value of lost life inevitably leads to a dollar amount.

    Ergo, the movie's key issue. Should compensation be guided, as Feinberg initially proposes, by factors that would lead to a CEO receiving more than a janitor, say? Should funds be equally distributed to everyone or, at minimum, should each case receive individual treatment? 

     Feinberg sought out a task that few attorneys wanted. In the emotionally volatile wake of 9/11, he lobbied then- Attorney General John Ashcroft (Victor Slezak) for appointment as the fund's Special Master.

      He thought he could do good and convince 80 percent of the survivors to agree to the proposed settlement terms by a September 2003 deadline. 

    The objective: to avoid crippling individual suits against airlines, a flood of litigation that might have severely impacted the economy while tying up courts for years. 

   Stanley Tucci plays Charles Wolfe, a man who lost his wife on 9/11. He becomes an activist for more equitable distribution, organizing a FixTheFund movement. 

     Colangelo opts to keep the conflict at low-key levels, a wise decision because when any story involving 9/11 already has high enough stakes.

    She also presents scenes in which survivors tell their stories, including a back story about a New York City Fireman with a complicated history.

    The more personal side of the drama involves Feinberg's willingness to adopt a new approach, a part of the movie that may not be adequately dramatized. Still, Keaton's restrained performance helps to sell it -- at least partially.

    Worth may not reach the hoped-for heights but it suggests a harsh reality. No amount of money can make up for the loss of life -- but at some point, numbers rear their inescapable heads. Conflict seems the inevitable and sad result.

A couple on a journey toward the end

    Recently, it seems as if I've been watching nothing but movies about death and dying. That impression probably isn't entirely true and may stem from reading daily news reports about the pandemic and its ghastly mortality rate.

   Supernova, which stars Stanley Tucci and Colin Firth as  long-time lovers is a death movie with a double whammy. Tucci's Tusker, a novelist by trade, has an increasingly encompassing case of dementia. 

   This means that he's destined to disappear before he actually dies. Firth's Sam decides that they should take one last trip before Tusker's memory completely disintegrates and he no longer even recognizes Sam.

   The two pile into a van and travel through the English north country with a stop at Sam's sister's home. 

    Tusker takes medication meant to slow his decline, but he leaves it at home, a clue that the journey has a different final destination than the one Sam, a pianist, anticipates.

    Tucci and Firth convincingly create a couple with behavior patterns, endearments, and gentle squabbles that have evolved  over many years. 

    I called them lovers earlier in this review. That may be the wrong term. They're lovers, of course, but they're also an old couple who have grown entirely accustomed to each other's ways.

   Sam says he's fully prepared to spend the rest of his life caring for Tusker -- even it means going beyond the point where Tusker knows who he is. Tusker has another idea: I won't say what it is, but you probably already know. 

   The performances aren't showy and director Harry Macqueen doesn't hurry toward the end of the road for a couple engulfed in deep sorrow while still clinging to many of the routine interactions that have defined their relationship.

   Macqueen tends to be more even-handed than gut-wrenching. Supernova isn't a tear-jerker. The chemistry between the actors and the filmmakers results in a movie that's admirably respectful of the intimacy and burden a couple faces when confronting the inevitable.

    

She looked into the eye of war

Rosamund Pike portrays a journalist who couldn't say no to war.

A Private War tells the real-life story of Marie Colvin's life at work. Of course, a day’s work for Colvin, an award-winning war correspondent, upsets any notion of jobs as tedious, office-bound activities. Colvin made her living reporting from some of the world's worst war zones. She lost her left eye as the result of an explosion in Sri Lanka and ultimately died in Homs, Syria.

Colvin's great achievement in Homs was to put the world on notice that Syria’s embattled president, Bashar al-Assad, was not only bombing military targets but also was obliterating the city’s civilian population. Telling that story cost Colvin her life.

Directed by Matthew Heineman, previously known for documentaries, Private War quickly lays out the rationale for Colvin’s willingness to put herself in harm’s way. She argues that the world must know about the suffering bred by war. It must hear the stories of those who suffer.

Private War will be hailed for Rosamund Pike’s portrayal of Colvin, a skilled and confident reporter who couldn't escape war-born demons in the form of PTSD and alcoholism, two conditions she was unwilling to acknowledge.

Colvin wrote for the British Sunday Times but grew up in Long Island. Pike, who’s British, masters an American accent. More importantly, she captures Colvin’s no-nonsense approach to her job and her possibly self-destructive refusal to opt for safer forms of journalism even after she was forced to wear an eye patch from her Sri Lanka wounds.

At a party in London, a friend (Nikki Amuka-Bird) suggests that Colvin seek help. She can’t break through Colvin's addictive cycle: war reporting followed by troubled respites in London.

Colvin's editor (Tom Hollander) doesn't push her to take a desk job. She's too good at what she does. He jokes about her writing for the gardening section as if the only forms of journalism were those involving extreme danger and those relegated to the sleepy nether regions of feature sections.

Heineman structures the film as a series of harrowing war tours interrupted by glimpses of Pike’s life away from the battles she covered. He includes an underdeveloped relationship with Tony Shaw (Stanley Tucci), a wealthy businessman who says he’s interested in sexual adventures rather than one-night stands.

Colvin maintains her strongest relationship with a freelance war photographer played by Jamie Dornan, bearded and close to unrecognizable after his work in the Fifty Shades of Grey movies. Photographer and reporter are bonded by the hardships they endure as a team.

Always eager to set her own path (she sneered at embedded journalists), Colvin knew how to stay a step ahead of other reporters as she worked in ravaged countries such as Iraq and Syria. In Libya, she interviewed Gaddafi just before his fall. She was a go-to journalist when it came to war.

Heineman and his team put a great deal of effort into making authentically vivid scenes of battle chaos, civilian suffering and the obscene destruction of war.

Like Colvin, Heineman must have wanted to drive home the brutality of wars, particularly its impact on hapless civilians. Scenes of mayhem are luridly convincing -- if a bit numbing after a while.

A Private War certainly has its virtues, but there’s something a little off about the movie: Heineman has a point to make but not much story to tell: Without people such as Colvin, however flawed she might have been as a person, blood would be shed without outside scrutiny.

That's a powerful statement, but I wondered whether it might have made a more fitting tribute to Colvin to take one of her strong stories and turn it into a movie. What made Colvin great, I think, was that she had more interest in the stories she so compulsively told than in her self. So much so that she died telling them.

'Beauty and the Beast:' One more time

Disney's reprise of its 1991 animated hit should please old fans and make some new ones.

The idea that love can break the spell of a powerful curse sounds as familiar to us as fairy tales themselves. In the case of Beauty and the Beast -- as imagined by Disney in a new live action version of its 1991 animated edition -- the Beast, a callous prince who has been cursed by a haggard old woman, must find love before the last petal drops off a rose kept in his dank castle. Absent such a love, the Beast and a gaggle of courtiers who've been turned into inanimate objects forever will be doomed to their cursed fates.

Disney's lavish remake its 26-year-old animated classic, Beauty and the Beastt, created little by way of anticipatory excitement for me. I'm no fan of remakes that take advantage of advances in digital technology just to wow us, in this case with talking versions of a clock, a teapot, a candelabra and a feather duster. And, yes, these digitally created do-dads probably show more personality than some of the story's human characters.

Having said that, this version -- starring Emma Watson (Beauty), Dan Stevens (Beast) and directed by Bill Condon (Dreamgirls) -- has enough whimsy and amusement to satisfy those who also will be buoyed by reprises of the Alan Menken/Tim Rice musical numbers -- with a couple of new additions.

Much of the credit for the movie's engaging collection of talking bric-a-brac goes to the actors who supplied the voice work: Emma Thompson voices Mrs. Potts, the teacup; Stanley Tucci gives life to as Maestro Cadenza, a harpsichord; Gugu Mbatha-Raw adds her vocal prowess to Plumette, the feather duster. The voice behind Cogsworth, the clock, belongs to Ian McKellen; and Ewan McGregor can be heard as Lumiere, a dashing candelabra.

Condon spices things up with references to Busby Berkeley, a ton of production design, a major investment in costumes and a generally capable cast that includes Luke Evans as the impossibly conceited and ultimately duplicitous Gaston and Josh Gad as his loyal sidekick LeFou.

You've probably read that Disney has made LeFou a gay character. That may be daring for a Disney version of Beauty and the Beast, but nothing in this upbeat entertainment seems designed to take the glow off the movie's mass-appeal luster.

The film even neuters the Beast, who has been given a leonine countenance -- with horns and bad teeth added for the sake of fright. This Beast makes threats on which he fails to deliver, and isn't quite as self-assured in his menace as you might expect.

Still, he's softened by Beauty, and by the end, it's difficult to say that anyone would mind if the Beast remained a beast rather than returning to his more Disnified form as a devilishly handsome prince.

In a nice touch, Beauty and the Beast begin their rapprochement when Belle (Beauty) discovers that the Beast has a well-stocked library. She's an avid reader, evidently the only one in the tiny village she and her father (Kevin Kline) call home.

There have, of course, been numerous versions of this 18th century tale from Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Velqleneuve, including Jean Cocteau's landmark 1946 version, but classic stories seem capable of enduring as many retellings as anyone possibly could desire.

This one opts for a visual razzle-dazzle that plays against Watson's plucky but somewhat ordinary Belle. I wouldn't say that Condon and company achieve perfection, but they've provided a lively, entertaining version of Disney's animated entry from the 1990s.

If we were going to have another Beauty and the Beast, I'm not sure what more we could have justifiably asked or expected.

Another 'Transformers' stomps into theaters

There's a new cast, but the approach is still metal-on-metal.

No point blaming director Michael Bay for trying to retool his Transformers franchise with a new cast, a ton of blurry action and a carload of unimaginative plotting.

And let's give some credit where it's due: Bay is master when it comes to creating imagery of destruction or utilizing CGI technology to transform his Autobots from cars into mega-robots. A shot of vast spacecraft hovering over Hong Kong like a giant, dark-winged bird shivers with menace.

That's right. Give Bay props for unashamed bravado and a reasonably astute understanding of his audience.

Which brings me to my point: It's not Bay we should fret over, but an audience that's willing to forgive narrative lapses, silly stories, action sequences in which it's not always possible to tell who's fighting whom and a tendency to equate loud noise with drama.

In this helping -- set two years after Transformers: Dark of the Moon -- Bay continues in customary fashion: He doesn't so much build toward a climax as leap into it, something like an eager kid cannonballing into a swimming pool. And when he does cook up a great image, he tends to repeat it.

Transformers: Age of Extinction jettisons Shia LaBeouf, and brings a new cast on-line.

No stranger to big-screen combat, Mark Wahlberg plays Cade Yaeger, a Texas widower and inventor who lives with his teen-age daughter (Nicola Peltz). Dad's not having much success as an inventor, but don't worry: Father and daughter quickly are caught up in trying to help robot Optimus Prime reassert himself after being severely damaged and winding up in Cade's workshop.

Jack Reynor joins this chaotic mission. He plays Cade's daughter's boyfriend, a character who gives Wahlberg an opportunity to deliver cliched fatherly dialogue about his daughter's budding womanhood.

Stanley Tucci turns up as the head of a company that's trying to manufacture its own Autobots, and a depressed-looking Kelsey Grammer plays a CIA agent, a character who helps make government an easy target of audience mistrust and scorn.

Bingbing Li portrays one of Tucci's employees when the story shifts to Beijing en route to Hong Kong, where it concludes and concludes and then concludes some more.

But who really cares about the actors or even about the fate of humanity? The Transformer series belongs to the giant alien robots, who are beginning to make discoveries about themselves and who, it's suggested, might take over the entire story should another sequel follow.

No point rattling on. I saw the movie in IMAX and 3-D, which certainly aided Bay's efforts to present everything on a gargantuan scale.

As for Bay? He seems to hellbent not only on giving audiences what they want but on giving them so much of what they want, they'll be reduced to insensibility. Many people evidently consider this fun.

Two indies, a hit and a miss

NOT YOUR ORDINARY CHRISTMAS MOVIE

White Reindeer ultimately gets around to being a Christmas movie, but not without a whole lot of struggle. Director Zach Clark's seasonally placed story focuses on Suzanne (Anna Margaret Hollyman), a Virginia real estate agent whose husband is killed during a home break-in. Clark, who also wrote the screenplay, deals with the period of grief, dislocation and revelation following the death of Suzanne's husband. After her stunned entry into widowhood, an appropriately dazed Suzanne begins to learn things about her late husband that she didn't know, a journey of discovery that brings her into contact with a stripper (Laura Lemar-Goldsborough) who's raising a young daughter. As Christmas approaches, Suzanne also finds herself at swingers' party in her suburban neighborhood. Credit Clark with mining the humor and absurdity in Suzanne's situation. He takes the road-less-traveled for a Christmas movie, but manages to find his way to a redemptive finale.

ANOTHER FROM DIRECTOR NEIL LABUTE

Director Neil LaBute's Some Velvet Morning can feel like more like an exercise that a full-blown movie. Those familiar with LaBute's work -- his short films almost usually end with a twist that throws everything else into disarray -- may think the writer/director is playing familiar notes with a confined drama that centers on a male character's acid sarcasm and raging need. Alice Eve plays Velvet, a high priced hooker who answers the door of her Brooklyn brownstone to discover that a former lover (Stanley Tucci) has arrived for a surprise visit. Tucci's Fred is holding a couple of suitcases, and claims to have left his wife: He's apparently ready for a relationship with Velvet, even though he hasn't seen her for four years. LaBute fans won't be surprised to learn that Velvet and Fred spend much of the movie locked in battle. Cinematographer Rogier Stoffers gives LaBute's two-hander (set almost entirely in Velvet's brownstone) real visual tension, and Eve and Tucci know how to have at it. But if you're schooled in LaBute's work, you may be able to anticipate the movie's ending long before it arrives. If not, you may find yourself wondering exactly why you've been invited to this caustic and insular party.

More (and better) Hunger Games

The series continues with a strong second helping.

At the conclusion of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, I felt as if I'd been watching an old-fashioned serial -- only one that had been playing for two hours and 26 minutes. Even at this excessive length, the second big-screen adaptation of novelist Suzanne Collins's popular series, left me wanting more.

Much of the credit for this goes to Jennifer Lawrence , the fine actress who gives Catching Fire its conscience and its heart.

Moreover, the movie's visual environment -- skillfully created by director Francis Lawrence and a capable effects team -- enhances what amounts to an upgraded second helping of a franchise that's gaining both momentum and seriousness as it moves toward its finale.

Lawrence (the director) has a distinct advantage over his predecessor, director Gary Ross. Because he doesn't need to establish the world in which the action takes place, Lawrence is free to advance the story, and he wastes no time belaboring the obvious: The Hunger Games that define the movie have a disturbing contemporary relevance, reality TV carried to perverse extremes.

This edition finds Jennifer Lawrence's Katniss Everdeen as haunted as she is determined: In the last installment Katniss killed to survive: She now suffers the burdens of post traumatic stress disorder and lingering guilt.

The twist in the story finds Katniss and Josh Hutcherson's Peeta thrown back into competition as part of a ploy by the evil Capitol to extinguish any flames of rebellion that might be sparking in the various districts into which the country of Panem has been divided.

This particular competition -- staged to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Capitol's victory over an earlier rebellion -- pits previous Hunger Games winners against one another in what promises to be an even more brutal fight to the death. There's only one winner in a Hunger Games competition; i.e., one survivor.

There's a hitch in the plan, though. This time, combatants are much more likely to ally with one another because they all feel betrayed. Victories in earlier editions of the Hunger Games were supposed to guarantee the winners and their families lives of peaceful ease. The Capitol has reneged on its promise.

It doesn't take much familiarity with the Collins's novel to know that currents of rebellion flicker beneath the fascistic, authoritarian order that the Capitol ruthlessly enforces. Public floggings and arbitrary punishments makes us root for revolution.

The returning cast includes Donald Sutherland as President Snow, a man whose cunning is as thorough as his crisp enunciation. Liam Hemsworth returns as Gale, Katniss's old flame. Katniss's heart may belong to Gale, but she's forced into a phony romance with Peeta -- mostly to amuse the ever-observant powers-that-be in the Capitol. Will the sham become real?

Woody Harrelson reprises his role as Haymitch, an older former Hunger Games winner. Elizabeth Banks returns as Effie Trinket, the big-haired fashionista who presides over the public image of Katniss and Peeta. Lenny Kravitz is back as Cinna, Katniss's super-creative costumer; and Stanley Tucci again turns up as Caesar Flickerman, the host of the Hunger Games broadcast whose smile is as big as a billboard. A little of Tucci's over-the-top, parodic take on game show hosts goes a long way, even when used judiciously, as it is here.

The movie benefits from the addition of a few new characters: Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a game designer and master schemer, becomes the brains behind President Snow's malignant schemes. Plutarch has been charged with designing this edition's electronically controlled Hunger Game: It's called The Quarter Quell and includes poisonous fog, vicious baboons, swooping birds and a storm surge.

Also joining the fray are Jeffrey Wright, as a technically savvy warrior, and Sam Claffin, as an arrogant combatant, who turns out to be less selfish than we initially anticipate. Jena Malone has a nice turn as a Hunger Games participant who makes no attempt to hide her fury at having been drawn back into combat.

From the outset, the movie's effects team has ample opportunity to impress -- in the sleek imperial Capitol, on speeding trains and in decaying District 12, home to Katniss and Peeta, and, of course, in the action-packed games. (Oddly, the games might be the movie's least interesting achievement.)

The movie builds to a climax that neatly sets the stage for the final chapter, Mockingjay, which is scheduled to be released in two installments next year.

Unlike some franchises, Catching Fire isn't afraid to put some breathing space between its action set pieces. And this time, the movie seems more serious about immersing us in a class-divided society in which the misfortunes of the impoverished many support the decadence of the privileged few.

Beanstalk scales few new heights

Jack the Giant Slayer comes up short on magic.
Fee Fi, Ho Hum!
That pretty much sums up my response to Jack The Giant Slayer. This spiffed-up retelling of the Jack and Beanstalk fairy tale boasts a strong cast, a host of giants (one with two heads), a spunky princess and a beanstalk capable of putting Giant Redwoods to shame.

Director Bryan Singer, who tried to restart the Superman franchise with 2006's regrettable Superman Returns;but who has done better with the X-Men movies, seems to be looking for another franchise. In the process, Singer turns a fairy tale into a Medieval adventure (in 3-D, of course) that tries for mythic reach with a beanstalk that connects to a mysterious region where giants have dwelled since being banished from Earth.

Exactly how a land full of cliffs, rocks and forests remains suspended five miles above the Earth qualifies as a mystery, but why quibble about the laws of gravity in a fairy tale?

The appealingly modest Nicholas Hoult portrays Jack, a poor lad who's sent to market to sell his uncle's horse. Jack winds up trading the slightly emaciated horse for a handful of beans that results in the skyward growth of the mythic beanstalk, an impressive enough CGI creation.

In this sometimes awkwardly structured telling of a familiar tale, Jack must climb the beanstalk to rescue Princess Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson). Jack meets the princess in the town market, where she's trying to escape the overly regulated confines of the palace. On a later such foray, the princess winds up being transported (via beanstalk) to the land of the giants.

To accomplish his rescue mission, Jack joins a search party dispatched by King Brahmwell (Ian McShane), Isabelle's father. The courageous Elmont (Ewan McGregor), a knight in Brahmwell's court, leads the expedition, which is joined by Isabelle's conniving finance, the melodramatically duplicitous Roderick (Stanley Tucci).

The movie begins by introducing us to parallel stories, one about Jack as a young boy, and the other about Isabelle, as a girl. Both characters lose their loving mothers. To add to Jack's misery, he also loses his father. He's then pressed into farm labor by the uncle (Christopher Fairbank) who takes him in.

Last seen the surprisingly engaging Warm Bodies, Hoult proves well-cast as a young man who falls for a princess who's far above him in social station. Jack's farm-boy status isn't the only obstacle to love: Isabelle's father has promised his resistant daughter to Tucci's Roderick.

After a few adventurers fall by the wayside, the rescue party reaches the land of the giants -- and the movie tries to whip up some menace. Bill Nighy (with a stop-action assist) portrays the evil General Fallon, who not only has a malicious head on his shoulder; he's got two. A character listed only as General Fallon's Small Head resides on Fallon's right shoulder and is voiced by John Kassir.
The rest of the giant crew looks appropriately motley. But this gaggle of Shreks gone bad doesn't inspire much real fear -- unless you happen to be very young, and although the giants (all male) feed on humans, I don't remember much gore.

I do, however, recall what felt like a excessively protracted finale. Singer builds toward a big battle sequence that takes place long after the movie's central conflict has been resolved. The movie's tumultuous ending plays like a special-effects add-on in which the destructive giants stage an earthly comeback, hoping to dine on lots of human prey.

Aside from a scene in which a haggard, nose-picking giant gives new meaning to the idea of "pigs in a blanket," Jack seems to be caught in an uncertain limbo: It's neither totally serious nor a major goof.

Bit by bit, Jack is seldom awful, but taken as a whole, the movie's too easy to shrug off. Maybe that's because Jack the Giant Slayer has been engineered for a blockbuster-sized splash this familiar story can't deliver.

No matter how much tinkering has been done to a classic tale, Jack seldom seems nimble or quick. But wait, that's a whole other Jack. As yet, no word on whether Hollywood plans to turn nursery rhymes into action adventures, but in these days of diminished expectation, I wouldn't rule it out.

Odds favor big-screen 'Hunger Games'

It's not as good as the book, but The Hunger Games has lots to recommend it.

Movie, good. Book, better.

We’re talking The Hunger Games, one of the more anticipated movies of a year that has yet to produce an entertainment with blockbuster potential. Adapted from the first in a trilogy of novels by Suzanne Collins,The Hunger Games surely will be scrutinized in the way all novels with devoted followings are; i.e., there will be intense interest in whether director Gary Ross (Seabiscuit and Pleasantville) has honored both the letter and the spirit of Collins’s novel.

Burdened by too much exposition and less emotionally resonant than the novel, the big-screen version of The Hunger Games nonetheless is marked by sufficient fear and fervor to push it onto the plus side of the ledger. Just as important, the filmmakers have found an actress (Jennifer Lawrence) who's capable of displaying the mixture of toughness and vulnerability the story demands.

For those unfamiliar with Collins’s work, a brief introduction:

The Hunger Games tells the story of Katniss Everdeen (Lawrence), a 16-year-old living in yet another dystopian future. After an unexplained apocalypse, the country of Panem replaced what we know as North America. The Capitol -- the most advanced part of Panem -- exploits and rules each of Panem’s 12 districts. Katniss hails from District 12, formerly Appalachia and one of the poorest sections of Panem.

Economic exploitation being insufficient torment for the residents of the districts, the Capitol each year stages The Hunger Games, a lethal contest that resembles the TV show Survivor. The name of every district child from the ages of 12 to 18 is put into a national lottery. One boy and one girl from each district are then selected to compete. The 24 competitors -- known as Tributes -- battle to the death. The last remaining Tribute wins. And it’s all on TV, of course.

Katniss, whose father died in a mining accident, has had plenty of time to hone her survival skills. She engages in illegal poaching to feed her emotionally crippled mother and her younger sister, exploring the forbidden forests around District 12 with her pal (and potential boyfriend) Gale (Liam Hemsworth).

The story begins in earnest when Katniss’s sister Prim (Willow Shields) is selected to represent District 12 in The Hunger Games. Katniss immediately volunteers to replace her sister, a substitution allowed by the rules of what otherwise seems an arbitrary game, which is manipulated by high-tech gamesmakers who control the game’s physical environments.

I won’t bother you with additional details except to say that Collins’s book, which consists of Katniss’s first-person account of the games, does a better job when it comes to exposition, probably because everything transpires from Katniss’ highly focused point-of-view.

In order to handle expository chores on screen, Ross is forced outside the arena, where we see the control room where technicians oversee the games. The bearded Seneca Crane (Wes Bentley) runs the control room. Look, it's never a good sign when a movie has to stop to explain itself.

In the book, Collins’s propulsive narrative gathers momentum from Katniss’s observations, doubts, craftiness and occasional deliriums. On screen, Katniss’s inner life becomes the responsibility of Lawrence, the young actress who was nominated for an Oscar for her work in Winter’s Bone. Lawrence must suggest with looks and presence what Katniss was able to convey with words in the novel. She gets awfully close, although I have to say that Lawrence wasn't quite as battered, desperate and crafty as the Katniss of my imagination, the one put there by Collins's prose.

Josh Hutcherson plays Peeta Melark, the other competitor from District 12. A baker’s son, Peeta falls for Katniss, a development that gives the movie a bit of romantic spin -- or does it? Can competitors in this deadly game allow themselves to have feelings for one another? Are Peeta’s feelings real or are they part of a strategy related to winning the game?

The movie tries to include most of the events that kept the novel percolating, but shortchanges the more resonant emotions of Collins’s book, particularly those involving Katniss and Rue (Amandla Stenberg). A 12-year-old competitor from an agricultural district, Rue develops a touching relationship with Katniss during the games.

The movie’s adults are mostly well cast. Woody Harrelson plays a watered-down version of the dissolute Haymitch Abernathy, a District 12 competitor who won the 50th Hunger Games and a reluctant mentor to Peeta and Katniss, who have been thrust into the 74th edition of the games. Elizabeth Banks portrays Effie Trinket, the ridiculously pretentious woman appointed to escort Katniss and Peeta to the Capitol. Stanley Tucci shows up as Caesar Flickerman, the host of the Hunger Game TV interviews and a master of faux sincerity. Lenny Kravitz has a nice turn as Cinna, the Capitol resident who’s responsible for helping to shape Katniss’ public image. And Donald Sutherland plays the head of Panem, a cunning and cruel leader who seems to have been inserted mostly in preparation for the next installment.

Ross and cinematographer Tom Stern do a good job creating District 12, a grim, coal-mining area that has been given a look that evokes the Great Depression. But The Hunger Games isn’t exactly coy when it comes to dealing with themes such as the degradations of poverty, as well as exploitative TV, voyeurism, and political oppression. In a way, the movie is another hybrid, a picture that has been crossbred from Survivor, The Truman Show and maybe Lord of the Flies.

Collins’s book seems better paced than the movie, which -- in its quieter moments --falls a little flat, and I’m not sure how much the big-screen version will astonish and captivate those who haven’t read the book.

But Hunger Games is smarter than most fiction aimed at young adults, and it isn’t afraid to explore the dark, bloody terrain of a society that’s willing to amuse itself by brutalizing its children. To the Tributes, the games are a matter of life and death. For everyone else, they’re a TV show.


So a recommendation with only mild reservations. Taking a cue from Katniss’s weapon of choice -- the bow -- I’d say that The Hunger Games definitely hits the target, although it's no bull's eye. And now that the world of Collins’s novels has been established, it should be easier to give us an ever better second helping.

A salute for 'Captain America'

It may not be great, but the latest Marvel Comics origins movie is better than expected.

Captain America: The First Avenger begins where many comic book stories find their origins -- with vicious Nazis. As World War II rages, a fiendish Nazi harnesses a power that is both occult and mythical. Johann Schmidt, a fiend with the towering posture of a wannabe ubermensch, threatens to destroy all of the world's major cities.

Back in the U.S., diminutive Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is devastated by the 4-F rating he's assigned by his draft board. Rogers, who weighs an anemic 90 pounds, wants to fight for his country. Eventually, he's given an opportunity to participate in a top-secret program designed by German refugee scientist, Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci with a German accent).

Here's where the comic book fun begins in earnest. After being placed in a machine that zaps his cells, Rogers emerges with a health club physique. He also has lightening speed and the ability to out-leap even the most gifted high jumper. He's transformed into Captain America, and almost immediately swings into action.

I'm condensing, of course, but that's the gist of director Joe Johnston's hearty contribution to the origin stories that precede next year's release of The Avengers. Johnston, who directed the retro favorite Rocketeer, again dips into nostalgia. It's as if the 1940s world he creates == an America full of futuristic expositions and war-bond drives -- has been assembled from dozens of patriotic posters and old movies, a fantasy version of the past that's particularly satisfying.

Evans brings self-effacing charm to the title role. He's joined by a variety of strong performers. Tommy Lee Jones plays a gruff Army officer who's not entirely sold on Rogers' abilities. Hayley Atwell portrays the Army officer who assists in Rogers' training and who eventually becomes his love interest -- in chaste fashion, of course.

Villainy is supplied by Hugo Weaving who plays Dr. Schmidt, a character who eventually reveals himself as Red Skull, a man with a skeletal face that clearly places Johnston's movie in the land of the comic book. Red Skull looks as if his skin has been ripped off, exposing the raw underside of a countenance that already seemed plenty evil.

The action sequences in Captain America tend to be somewhat extended, which I found a bit boring. But there are plenty of battles for action fans, and a prologue and epilogue that explain how Captain America will be catapulted into the present for the upcoming Avengers movie.

And, yes, in some sense, Captain America, like Thor, is a preview of coming attractions for The Avengers, which promises a mega-helping of Marvel Comics heroism.

Still, Captain America has some kick, and it can be found in the star-spangled spirit that, like its title character, carries the day.