When no one wants to know the truth

Adam Driver stars in The Report, a movie about a senatorial aide who tries to uncover the real story behind CIA torture.

Adam Driver's single-minded intensity perfectly suits the character of Dan Jones, a Senate aide charged with investigating the CIA's use of torture in the days following 9/11.

Jones's boss -- Annette Bening's Sen. Dianne Feinstein as chair of the U.S. Select Committee on Intelligence -- supports him but exercises more caution than Jones would like.

It makes for a heady conflict, the committed truth-teller vs. the politically astute senator who wants to find the truth but who can't avoid playing all the angles. It works because Bening's too nuanced an actor to let us push Feinstein into the box of caricature.

If you're looking for a political slant, know this: The movie tries to balance anti-Bush leanings with a slam at the Obama administration, which wasn't eager to see Jones's report see daylight, either. Jon Hamm appears as an Obama aide who insists that his boss knows the score, even if he doesn't want to spread it across the nation's headlines.

Director Scott Z. Burns has assembled a fine group of supporting actors in what amounts to a by-the-numbers procedural about the ways one branch of government tries to exercise oversight over a government agency that relies on secrecy.

Maura Tierney portrays a CIA agent of single-minded intent; i.e., she sees nothing wrong with what became known as "enhanced interrogation techniques;" i.e., waterboarding and other forms of humiliation. Corey Stoll plays a lawyer who, at the film's opening, tries to school Jones in the unhappy fate of whistleblowers.

We also learn that the enhanced interrogation techniques were developed by independent contractors (Douglas Hodge and T. Ryder Smith) who challenged CIA agents who believed the best way to obtain information was to convince detainees that an agent was on their side. The argument: Not only were the enhanced interrogation techniques immoral; they didn't work.

Burns, who wrote the screenplays for The Bourne Ultimatum and An Inconvenient Truth) dutifully follows the drama as it depicts Jones's five-year effort to discover the truth. He also offers unflinching views of some of what the CIA did to detainees in its fruitless efforts to get the jump on terrorism.

The Report sometimes lacks the pulse-pounding excitement we expect from political thrillers, but it's a serious effort and it offers a rare view of the kind of person who can’t be sidetracked. For Jones, learning exactly what happened becomes a near-sacred duty.

The dinos return, but where's the fear?

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom falls short as big helping of entertainment.

If there's any emotional heft in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, it stems from the fate of the movie's genetically engineered dinosaurs. At this point in their big screen lives, these innocent creatures have come to represent a natural state that greedy humans have altered and abused. Some will get behind the wrath of the dinos, which is directed mostly at bad folks who want to profit from their revived existence (Gasp!) even turn them into the world's most deadly weapons. Had the picture been better, I might have joined them.

Director J.A. Bayona, known for his 2007 horror opus The Orphanage, limits his achievement by adhering to the required action formula. Here's a clue: The movie's dialogue relies heavily on the word "run." The fact that people need to tell one another to flee as massive thundering creatures approach at full speed stands as a greater indictment of human intelligence than anything else in this protracted stompfest.

Fallen Kingdom leans heavily on action while shortchanging build up, but I took the multiple instances in which Chris Pratt -- reprising his role as a kind of dino whisperer -- was slimed by various creatures as a welcome helping of self-mockery on the part of Bayona and his CGI crew. The movie could have used more such flippancy.

In the last Jurassic World film, Pratt teamed with Bryce Dallas Howard . The two reunite for an adventure in which a wealthy benefactor (James Cromwell) tries to save dinosaurs from imminent extinction by taking them off an island on which an active volcano is about to erupt.

Howard's Claire recruits a Pratt's Owen, who -- of course -- initially plays hard to get. He's busy building a cabin in the isolated woods and has had enough of dinosaurs. Still, he answers Claire's call.

Additions to the series include a nervous computer expert (Justice Smith) who provides some of the movie's many screams and a young woman (Daniella Pineda) who seems to function as a kind of punk veterinarian.

Of course, an evil military type also must crop up. Enter Ted Levine as Ken Wheatley, the brutally duplicitous organizer of the rescue mission. Keep your eye an assistant (Rafe Spall) to Cromwell's character, a guy who immediately becomes suspect by being too damn nice for his own good.

The movie divides its time between the island and the estate created by Cromwell's Benjamin Lockwood. Thanks to manipulations of plot that needn't be spelled out here, the dinos wind up on the estate, where they eventually race around, somewhat unexpectedly, indoors.

Lockwood's granddaughter Maisie (Isabella Sermon) joins in an effort to save the dinos from profiteers who eventually bring in an auctioneer (Toby Jones) to conduct the world's most malign rare species sale.

The dinosaurs have human allies, but the movie's heart belongs to Blue, a human-friendly velociraptor that was trained by Owen in the last movie. Unlike any of the human characters, Blue shows a degree of inner conflict: She must decide which humans to protect and which to turn into lunch.

The movie also includes a prologue and epilogue in which Jeff Goldblum, as a scientist testifying before a Senate Committee, condemns the hubris that was required to create these genetic marvels in the first place. He advises against rescuing the dinosaurs; for him, the pending volcanic eruption represents an opportunity for a reset.

Bayona can't entirely escape the trap of open-mouthed acting that often results from an extensive reliance on CGI: This involves asking actors to gawk at the special effects or scream with fear as the digitally created dinos bear their predatory teeth.

Braced by familiarity with this franchise, I seldom -- if ever -- shared the fear. We know the genre too well (and so does Bayona) to get beyond the rote deliverance of one action set piece after another as the movie stomps its way toward the ending that inevitably (and finally eerily) opens the door for the next chapter. I'm betting we'll see a lot more running, chomping and wholesale swallowing of those who trample ethical considerations in their relentless quest for profit.

What exactly these miscreants will do with all their money in a world they seem eager to destroy remains a mystery.

A middleweight's amazing comeback

Bleed for This tells a powerful story -- but doesn't always do it with distinction.

Boxing movies long have been a staple in Hollywood's repertoire with Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull still topping most lists of big-screen punch-outs.

Bleed for This, the story of Vinny Pazienza's amazing career in and out of the ring, stands as a medium grade, often dreary look at a man who sustained what should have been a career-ending, spinal-cord injury.

Instead of going down for the count after a devastating car wreck, Pazienza returned to win the middleweight title. His feat has been dubbed the greatest comeback in boxing history.

The minute you sit down to watch Bleed for This, which stars Miles Teller as the Rhode Island-bred "PazManian Devil," you know that the movie will end with videos showing the real man. Fair to say, surprise isn't the movie's strong suit.

In the hands of director Ben Younger (Boiler Room), Bleed for This revels in the working-class atmosphere that spawned Pazienza. The film takes place in a rough-and-tumble Italian American milieu with numerous scenes of Pazienza's family gathered around the dining room table, their Rhode Island accents thick enough to float in Narragansett Bay.

Younger offers a straightforward -- if condensed -- account of Pazienza's career, which certainly qualifies as a wonder of sorts.

After his injury, Pazienza was told he'd never fight again. Ignoring the diagnosis, he began training soon after his release from the hospital, an activity made more difficult by the halo that had been screwed into Pazienza's skull to hold his neck in place.

Two relationships bolster the story; one involves Pazienza's trainer Kevin Rooney (Aaron Eckhart with a dramatically receding hairline); the other centers on Vinny's father (Ciaran Hinds).

Hinds's performance has a kind of scowling rigidity that never entirely convinced me, but the movie tries to make its dramatic weight with a scene in which Hinds's Angelo Pazienza wonders whether he hasn't pushed his son too hard, and is, therefore, partly responsible for Vinny's plight.

Pazienza's relationship with Rooney doesn't have much by way of psychological subtext. The alcoholic Rooney helped Pazienza establish his career by encouraging him to move up two weight classes. Later, Rooney helped prepare Pazienza for a comeback that seemed impossible to everyone but the fallen fighter.

Teller doesn't have the physical bulk of the real fighter, but he gives the movie his all and the fight scenes are mostly convincing -- if cinematically routine.

Younger does a better job showing the physical pain involved in Pazienza's retraining. The most difficult scene to watch is one in which a doctor removes four screws from Pazienza's skull and drops them into a waiting receptacle. After three months, the halo was replaced by a neck brace.

Because the movie mostly celebrates Pazienza's determination, it doesn't waste much time counterpunching; i.e., considering the idea that a man who can't see any other role in life but that of a fighter might be tragically limited.

Pazienza's story obviously makes a strong subject for a movie, but Younger and company can't bring the movie to total victory -- either as a Rockyesque source of inspiration or as a Raging Bull-influenced hunk of tormented realism.

In fight-movie terms, I'd call it a draw.