A disappointing 'Ella McCay'

 

 If you have fond memories of Terms of Endearment,  Broadcast News, and Good As It Gets, you've probably been looking forward to a new movie from director James L. Brooks. 

  No slouch as a writer/director, Brooks not only directed the three movies I mentioned, he also played a role in creating the landmark TV comedies, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Taxi.  Additionally, he's known as a creator and developer of The Simpsons.

 Ella McCay is Brooks's first movie since 2010's How Do You Know, which wasn't greeted with much enthusiasm. Still, as an admirer of Brooks's ability to create memorable characters in movies that hit plenty of strong notes, I was hoping for a bullseye.

  Aside from enjoying the always-welcome presence of Albert Brooks -- this time as a governor who resigns his position to take a job as Secretary of the Interior -- I spent much of Ella McCay fighting off disappointment. I expected a movie that spoke to the moment, and found one that seemed to have been taken from the day-old cinematic shelf.  

   Set in 2008, the movie gives a major role to Emma Mackey (Netflix's Sex Education). Mackey plays the title character, an amped-up policy wonk. As  a 34-year-old lieutenant governor, Ella lands the governor's job when Brooks' s character departs for Washington. 

   If you're looking for intermittent displays of charm, Mackey's performance may hit the spot, but the character she's playing didn't strike me as intriguing  enough to carry the film past Ella's commitment to   political pablum: She wants to help mothers and children.

   Perhaps to add some conflict, Brooks adds wrinkles involving a misuse of government property and the brewing jealousy of Ella's increasingly bitter husband (Jack Lowden). The owner of a pizza restaurant, Lowden's Ryan begins to resent his wife's success.

  A promising supporting cast can't put much spring into Ella McCay's step, either. Jamie Lee Curtis signs on as Ella's no-nonsense aunt, the woman who raised her. Woody Harrelson portrays Ella's philandering father, and Kumail Nanjiani plays Trooper Nash, the state cop who becomes Ella's loyal driver.

   Spike Fearn appears as Ella's brother Casey, a computer genius who's trying to win back the woman (Ayo Edebiri) he didn't know how to court. Brooks resolves the relationship a little too easily.

    Despite a variety of complications, the comedy often flatlines. We never learn what state Ella is governing, and her work as governor often plays second fiddle to her personal issues: coaxing her nerdy brother out of isolation, visiting her aunt, or dealing with her husband.

     No more need be said: My heart sank for Brooks, now 85, and for myself; I was hoping that Ella McCay would serve as a sparkling addendum to a strong career. What I got instead was what an admired editor I knew used to say when confronted with something he found wanting: "a tepid potato."

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.

    

Dealing with death at an early age

    Max, a teenager, has fallen into a coma as a result of terminal brain cancer. His mom brings him to a hospice where he'll receive palliative care. As it turns out, the young man has landed in the same Florida hospice where Terry Schiavo's husband is fighting a bitter right-to-die battle. 

   In Suncoast, director Laura Chinn’s debut film, the din of protest surrounds the hospice, but the movie doesn't boil with issue-driven fervor. 

   Instead, Chinn assays the strain caused by a Max's impending death while also exploring his younger sister's struggle to experience something akin to normal adolescence, assuming there is such a thing.

  Understandably unnerved, Max's single mother (Laura Linney) can't focus on much else. It's difficult for her to see that her son's illness also casts a shadow over her daughter (Nico Parker), a high school senior who has had to care for Max so Mom could work.

  Afraid to leave her son alone, Mom decides to move into the hospice with him. Parker's Doris is left on her own, a potentially enviable position for a teenager. 

   Despite some initial wariness, Doris allows a group of girls to host parties at her modest home. She begins to develop friends. She begins to see what she's been missing.

  Chinn mostly avoids mean-girl cliches, obtaining nicely modulated performances from her youthful cast and from Linney as a preoccupied woman who can't always suppress her rage. 

   The movie has a mild Christian backdrop. Woody Harrelson plays a widower and protest regular. Religious but not dogmatic, he tries to befriend Doris, encouraging her to acknowledge her grief.

   Harrelson's Paul doesn't allow his beliefs to stand in the way of trying to help a kid who doesn't share them, a nice touch, but his character seems a bit of digression.

   Doris attends a Christian school but neither she nor her classmates are particularly religious and one of her teachers (Matt Walsh) conducts an ethics class that's so even-handed, it feels contrived.

  Through it all, Chinn doesn't forget that her story hinges on grief and loss. She brings the drama to its tear-jerking peak during Doris's prom, a celebration she's clearly earned even though it's taking place against a backdrop of illness and death.

   This keen sense of loss elevates the movie even when Chinn rounds off the sharp edges a better movie might have had. She makes the heartbreaking finality of what mother and daughter must face feel achingly real.

'Champions' is no slam-dunk

     Woody Harrelson plays a basketball coach with a bad temper in Champions, a movie in which Harrelson's Marcus falls from coaching grace, drives while under the influence, and winds up sentenced to community service. His assignment: coaching a team of developmentally disabled youngsters.

     Unlike in basketball games, no clear winner emerges in a movie that wobbles across familiar terrain. Director Bobby Farrelly remakes the Spanish film Campeones to mixed results. Echoes of The Bad News Bears and a variety of other underdog movies ring throughout. 

     Teaching the kids, who seem to enjoy goofy behavior, can be difficult: One of them (Bradley Edens) insists on shooting the ball backward over his head. He never makes a shot but considers himself a master at the art of celebration.

    The young players aren't highly skilled but one of them (Joshua Felder) had a shot at collegiate ball until he suffered a brain injury in a car accident. Felder's Darius could help the team. He refuses to play. Can Marcus change his mind? 

    Madison Tevlin plays Cosentino, the sole female member of the team and one of the more spirited young actors.

    Modest and minimally amusing, the movie introduces a bit of romance when Marcus realizes that a woman (Kaitlin Olson) he once slept with is the older sister of one of the players (Kevin Iannucci) on his happily inept team. 

   In addition to Harrelson, two other adults have notable roles: An underutilized Ernie Hudson plays the college basketball coach who fires assistant coach Marcus for bad behavior, thus getting the story started.

    Adopting a social worker's knowing but compassionate demeanor, Cheech Marin portrays Julio, the head of the community center where the team -- known as The Friends -- practices.

    A predictable story arc dribbles toward the inevitable big game while Marcus learns to set aside his bitterness and become a mensch and Iannucci's character struggles to convince his sister to allow him to move into a group home.

  In  the past, Farrelly has worked with his brother Peter on movies such as There's Something About Mary, Dumb and Dumber, and Shallow Hall.  That resume should let you know that Champions doesn't tug too hard on the heartstrings. I guess that's good.

  But the movie's various elements -- from raunchy teen humor to the conspicuous shattering of stereotypes -- don't cohere into a winning whole. Unlike more satisfying formula jobs,  Champions takes its shot only to watch the ball bounce off the rim.

'Venom': Noise and a lot more noise

 The second Venom movie has arrived. I guess that means someone, perhaps many someones, must have been waiting for it. If you're not a Marvel enthusiast, it probably helps to know that Venom began in the Spider-Man comics as an alien creature with a penchant for invading a human host and emerging as an unleashed helping of id and aggression. Personally, I've never much cared about the complex inter-related genealogy of the Marvel universe and that undoubtedly colors my approach to Venom: Let There Be Carnage, a comic-book movie directed by Andy Serkis and starring Tom Hardy. Hardy plays Eddie Brock, a San Francisco reporter whose body provides Venom with a host. Michelle Williams portrays the fiancee that kicked Eddie to the curb, and Woody Harrelson appears as Cletus Kasady, a criminal whose body becomes the host for a red "symbiotic'' beast called Carnage  -- or something like that. If you're a devotee, the movie may make more sense than it does to the uninitiated. Perhaps you won't even care whether it's coherent or not. There's mild amusement in watching Eddie argue with a creature that sprouts tentacles out of the poor man's back and occasionally emerges to stick its toothy alien face into Eddie's. Venom also does a pretty good job of wrecking Eddie's apartment, an act of colossal inconsideration in a city where rents tend to soar. Namoi Harris portrays Shriek, Kasady's love interest from a childhood in which they both were abused. Her weapon: the ability to scream so loud it can puncture eardrums. Serkis pours on the special effects and tries hard to live up tohe movie's subtitle, Let There Be Carnage. Effects dominate story: The real carnage, however, is inflicted on the screenplay. Yeah, there's noise, a few chuckles, dizzying action, and Hardy -- but one question: Where the hell is the movie to go with all that stuff?

A deja vous helping of zombie comedy

Zombieland: Double Tap breaks little new ground and that may be just what the movie's fans want.

If you've seen the first Zombieland, you've pretty much seen the second.

Zombieland: Double Tap arrives 10 years after the release of the first movie with the original zombie- fighting crew offering the same brand of humor that made the first movie a hit. This isn't necessarily a bad thing.

If you've been hankering to see Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, and Abigail Breslin reprise their roles as destroyers of zombies, Double Tap delivers.

Of course, a few new faces have been added, notably a funny Zoey Deutch as the most cheerfully clueless blonde to hit the screen in a long time.

Those who care should know that the quartet of remaining humans from the first movie is still threatened by hordes of zombies, brain-eating creatures that began spreading after the world was struck by some sort of virus.

Early on, Eisenberg's Columbus, Harrelson's Tallahassee, Stone's Wichita, and Breslin's Little Rock take refuge in a devastated White House. After a bit of plot maneuvering, Little Rock hits the road with a guitar-playing hippie who appropriates Dylan songs. Little Rock evidently is headed for Graceland, the equally devastated home of the late Elvis Presley.

The trio of survivors (along with Deutch's Madison) follows, maybe for no other reason than to give the movie somewhere to go. The journey provides an opportunity for Rosario Dawson to enter the fray. Dawson's Nevada presides over the Hound Dog hotel, home of Elvis memorabilia and facsimiles of Graceland's garish rooms. At this point, Luke Wilson and Thomas Middleditch show up to play odd replicas of the characters portrayed by Harrelson and Eisenberg.

It's as if Columbus and Tallahassee meet themselves and, thus, are confronted by their own ridiculousness -- or something like that.

Ruben Fleischer, who also directed the first installment, keeps the proceedings zipping along, moving fast enough to fly over the bits that don't work.

Those who find the movie superfluous won't be wrong, but there are enough laughs to combat resistance, perhaps even among those who've already seen enough zombie-apocalypses to last a lifetime.

Besides, Double Tap passes in an acceptable 99 minutes, leaving many smashed zombie heads and a whole lot of silliness in its wake.

The lawmen who caught Bonnie & Clyde

It takes a certain amount of daring to make a movie that’s bound to be compared to a movie that has acquired iconic status among moviegoers. We’re talking Bonnie & Clyde, the 1967 classic starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway and directed by Arthur Penn. Director John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side), working from a screenplay by John Fusco, looks at the other side of the equation, the manhunt for two notorious gangsters during the economically depressed 1930s. The Highwaymen focuses on the Texas lawmen (Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson) who tracked and ultimately slaughtered two of American’s most famous criminals. Overly deliberate and nearly suffocated by a heavy emphasis on period trappings, the movie has the self-conscious feeling of a drama that’s steeped in a hard-boiled Texas point-of-view. Of the two actors, Harrelson proves more interesting as the drunken, shattered Maney Gault, a retired Texas Ranger who seems motivated by the need not to deny the violent past he shares with his former partner. As Frank Hamer, Costner invests heavily in the grim-faced seriousness of a man who believes evil must be obliterated. The choice makes sense but eventually proves a bit dull. A Netflix production, The Highwaymen raises interesting questions about the nature of the men who hunt outlaws. Are they any better than those they hunt? The movie, which spends very little time showing Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, also refers to the clash between the old-style lawmen represented by Costner and Harrelson and their younger counterparts. Hancock also exposes the disconnect between the brutality of Bonnie & Clyde, who shot lawmen in the face at point-blank range, and the celebrity they attained. Semi-successful attempts to add dramatic heft -- Hamer's confrontation with Henry Barrow, Clyde’s father (William Sadler), for example -- can be found but the movie's dirge-like tones make it a bit of slog. With Kim Dickens as Hamer‘s wife; John Carroll Lynch as the state official who insisted on involving Gault and Hamer in the chase; and Kathy Bates as Ma Ferguson, the first female governor of Texas and a character who might be worth a movie of her own.

'Solo' proves Han can fly alone

Old-school names and fresh faces combine in the latest Star Wars movie.

Director Ron Howard took over Solo: A Star Wars Story after the film already was five months into a production that, at the time, was being directed by Chris Lord and Phil Miller. Working from a script by the father/son team of Lawrence Kasdan and Jonathan Kasdan, Howard has given the resultant movie a bit of old pro feel -- albeit with a lot of fresh young faces.

Solo tired me out with a lengthy action sequence about three-quarters of the way through, but overall the origins story of Han Solo proves an entertaining enough addition to the Star Wars galaxy to drown out quibbles.

As the movie’s title promises, Solo tells the story of Han Solo and answers questions that, frankly, I’ve never spent a minute thinking about: How did Han get his name? When did he team up with Chewbacca? Was Han always a roguish, wisecracking space jockey?

The movie begins with Han (Alden Ehrenreich) scuffling to flee a harsh life on the oppressively trashy Planet Corellia, which he tries to escape with girlfriend Qi'ra (Emilia Clarke). Han makes it out. Qi'ra doesn’t.

Ford was 34 when the first Star Wars movie was released. Ehrenreich is 28. He seems to have mastered some of Ford’s attitude, occasionally revealing trace elements of Ford’s jaundiced ways in an expression or a look, but it's best to accept Ehrenreich as Solo and let go of comparisons.

The same goes for Donald Glover who plays Lando Calrissian. Solo and Lando meet at a card game that Howard handles crisply and with winking humor.

Although I tried not to nitpick my way through Solo, I will say that I had more trouble imagining that Glover, entertaining in his own right, grew into a character who looks like Billy Dee Williams, the original Lando.

All of this seems part of the now familiar Hollywood dictum that well-enough never should be left alone. And at some point, you have to wonder whether criticizing certain kinds of movies makes about as much sense as complaining about the local Walmart for not carrying Gucci or Versace.

I don’t mean to suggest that there’s no skill or quality in franchise filmmaking and it certainly doesn’t occur at bargain prices, but one presumes that the real reason that Solo exists is because, as the subtitle suggests, it’s part of the Star Wars brand.

And as you might speculate after perusing Ben Fritz’s new book, The Big Picture: The Fight for Hollywood’s Future, Harrison Ford and Billy Dee Williams are expendable. Han and Lando, not so much.

But I digress.

Howard tries and often maintains the cliff-hanger spirit that Lucas tried to infuse into all the Star Wars movies, and he includes an exciting sequence atop a speeding train that amps up the tension and action.

The train sequence takes place after Solo joins a band of thieves led by Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson) and the no-nonsense woman Beckett apparently loves (Thandie Newton).

Paul Bettany provides one of the movie’s best characters. Bettany plays Dreyden Vos, a cruel crime lord who presides over a nightclub. Thanks to unseen plot developments, Vos turns Qi'ra into a kind of personal consort.

Creatures abound with Phoebe Waller-Bridge doing a nice job voicing a droid that results in one of the movie's emotional high points. I also liked Rio Durant, a four-armed pilot who flies with Beckett, but don't take that as a suggestion that I'd like to see a movie based on Rio's backstory.

Of course, rebellion and the evil Empire create thematic winds -- maybe breezes in this case -- that blow through the movie as reminders of the large stakes that animate the main-event Star Wars movies.

Every now and again, the classic Star Wars musical theme turns up, a reminder that we're still in the teeming Star Wars universe. I wouldn’t have objected to hearing more of that theme, but Howard seems intent on striking a balance so that the movie is recognizably Star Wars while standing on its own. For the most part, he succeeds.

McDormand bristles in 'Three Billboards'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An inter-species fight for survival

In War for the Planet of the Apes, noble Caesar must lead the ape population to the promised land.

Has it come to this? Do we humans have so little faith in ourselves that we must look to apes for inspirational leadership? We are talking, of course, about Caesar, the ape given life by actor Andy Serkis and state-of-the-art digital effects in two previous Planet of the Apes movies.

In its latest edition -- War for the Planet of the Apes -- Caesar becomes a figure as large as Moses, a primate who must lead his fellow creatures out of the hostile wilderness created by murderous humans.

In this edition, the vile humans are represented by an American colonel, Woody Harrelson mainlining a mega helping of the same madness that gripped Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now. Harrelson's character holds the ape population hostage, turning them into forced laborers in what he views as a last-ditch effort to save mankind from the simian onslaught.

In case we don't get the similarities to Brando's Colonel Kurtz, the movie makes a wryly intended reference to "Ape-Pocalypse Now," but I think most audiences will have caught on without the visual prompting.

Harrelson pulls out as many stops as he can find to portray the evil Colonel who knows how to give his sadism a nearly convincing rationale, and the movie doesn't flinch when it comes to showing us the suffering inflicted on the apes that have been imprisoned in the Colonel's concentration camp.

Director Matt Reeves leaves little room for us to doubt where our rooting interests are meant to lie. The movie clearly sides with Caesar and his cohorts: an orangutan named Maurice (Karin Konoval) and an associate named Rocket (Terry Notary) among them.

Caesar faces the movie's greatest challenge: He must resist the call for personal vengeance against the Colonel, who's responsible for the death of Caesar's wife and his oldest son. Is Caesar a big enough personality to embrace such a noble cause?

Caesar is aided by a chimp called Bad Ape (voice by Steve Zahn), an escapee from a zoo who knows where to find the Colonel's hideous compound.

The special effects work obviously reaches superior levels, and the visual environment is convincing enough to carry a movie about the war between apes and humans. It's possible that performance capture -- the process by which an actor's motions are digitally translated into computer-generated apes -- never has been so effectively used, so much so that Reeves can include many close-ups of Caesar's saturnine countenance.

Perhaps to keep War from being entirely one-sided, we meet an orphan girl (Amiah Miller). She's taken in by the apes and cared for in a humane fashion.

Those left among the human population are devolving, losing their ability to speak. The apes, on the other hand, are progressing, beginning to master speech. For the moment, all but two of them communicate with sign language. But we know they'll soon be prattling away like the creatures already endowed with the capacity for speech.

The movie takes place 15 years after the lethal outbreak of simian flu, which has decimated humanity. No wonder Colonel is furious.

The settings -- from snow-covered landscapes to remote redoubts -- give the movie a chilled, desolate feeling. This "Ape-pocalypse" isn't exactly a ton of fun, obsessed as it is with its own seriousness. And if you don't like pounding drums, you'll hate Michael Giacchino's score.

The battle sequences are compelling enough, although Reeves's insistently grim approach tends to overwhelm the movie's small attempts at humor.

The point, of course, is that humans have disrupted the Edenic serenity of the planet. Screenwriter Mark Bomback elevates the idea of self-sacrifice in service of a worthy cause, something that human beings have trouble achieving in both the movie and in real life.

In the conclusion to this trilogy of most recent Planet of the Apes reboots, people become the last place to look for real expressions of humanity, which makes War for the Planet of the Apes either a powerful cautionary tale or one very expensive helping of misanthropy.

Another loner living on the margins

Based on graphic novel by Daniel Clowes, Wilson gives Woody Harrelson a much-deserved chance to carry a movie. Harrelson plays the title character, a loner who's part misanthrope and part zhlub, a guy whose rebellious streak has extended long past its expiration date. Wilson qualifies as one of those marginal figures that sometimes make it to the pop-cultural center ring, something on the order of Harvey Pekar, who became the subject of the movie American Splendor -- except Pekar actually did something: He wrote comics about his life. Wilson doesn't seem to do anything, aside from hang around his cluttered apartment and strike up inappropriate conversations with strangers. Evidently on his own since his marriage dissolved 17 years ago, Wilson seems to have nothing going for him. Mildly funny and ultimately able to find some pathos, Wilson nonetheless proves a dull entry into the world of downbeat literature that Clowes helped create with Ghost World, which became a movie 16 years ago. Despite its repetitive feel, the movie deals with a variety of events: the death of Wilson's father, Wilson's reunion with his ex-wife Pippi (Laura Dern), and the discovery that Pippi gave their infant daughter up for adoption. Wilson thought the baby had been aborted. As Wilson tries to worm his way back into Pippi's life, they drop in on Pippi's sister (Cheryl Hines), a visit that erupts into an implausibly brutal fight. Wilson and Pippi's weekend with their biological daughter, whom they track down at Wilson's insistence, results in Wilson's imprisonment for kidnapping. That's a lot of plot for a movie that doesn't feel as if it's going anywhere. Judy Greer becomes a late-picture love interest as the movie reaches its mildly sunny conclusion. A bearded Harrelson gives himself over to the role, holding the movie together with a shambling walk and hints of Wilson's decency. It couldn't have been an easy task because Wilson isn't the most intriguing of characters. Director Craig Johnson (Skeleton Twins) fully enters Wilson's world, but never really convinces us that it's worth joining him.

A second helping of big-screen trickery

Now You See Me 2 continues the adventures of magicians with larceny up their sleeves..

Now You See Me 2 attempts to occupy brave new franchise turf with a souped-up repetition of a formula that enjoyed success when the original was released in 2013.

Here's what I wrote about the original:

"If you bother to play Now You See Me back in your mind (and there's no compelling reason you should), you'll be hard-pressed to believe that the intricacies of its plot were remotely possible anywhere but in a screenwriter's imagination: Three writers were involved in creating the screenplay and story. They find entertaining moments in what otherwise amounts to a self-defeating hodgepodge of conceits, ploys and attempted fake-outs."

Now, I could say almost the same thing about a second installment that's more unashamedly outlandish than its predecessor and that replaces Isla Fisher with Lizzy Caplan, the female in these male-dominated proceedings. But, for me, this is a case in which the movie's 126-minute running time contains enough amusement to keep boredom at bay.

The movie's Horsemen (Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco and Caplan are still magicians with a taste for larceny and for staging the improbably big finale.

This time, The Horsemen are coerced into working for the evil Walter Marbry (Daniel Radcliffe), an entrepreneur who has staged the ultimate vanishing act: He has faked his own death.

Marbry wants the Horsemen to steal something called "the stick," some sort of gizmo capable of deprogramming any computer.

Director Jon M. Chu does a nice job with the scenes involving magic, presenting them with the swiftly efficient wave of his cinematic wand.

Of course, the tricks we see are possible only in a movie where reality readily can be altered and audiences are accustomed to suspending disbelief as easily as they reach for the next bite of popcorn.

Some of the movie takes place in Macau, where the magicians visit Iong's Magic Shop, supposedly the world's best magic store. A grandson (Jay Chou) and his grandma (Tsai Chin) run this cluttered emporium of tricks and illusions.

This year's version also throws in a half-brother for Harrelson's character, an evil sibling (also played by Harrelson) with a predatory smile and a curly wig that makes him look like a demented version of Matthew McConaughey, something McConaughey previously has accomplished all on his own. Still, it's a weird effect.

We also learn that Mark Ruffalo's Dylan -- the FBI agent who's actually in cahoots with the Horsemen -- has reason to harbor a long-standing grudge.

Also returning -- albeit on the movie's fringe -- are Morgan Freeman as Thaddeus Bradley, a man who has made his living exposing the ruses behind magic tricks, and Michael Caine, as ... well ... see the movie.

There's no need to over-praise (or over-trash) a movie such as Now You See Me 2. The actors wear their roles well, and the result is a caper movie that's not afraid to ask us to go with its magical flow -- no matter how phony it seems.

It may help to think of Now You See Me 2 as a teeming helping of what might be called "magic unrealism."

Hard times in Pennsylvania

Despite intense acting, Out of the Furnace doesn't quite make the cut.

Almost every moment in Out of the Furnace -- a brooding working-class drama steeped in Rust Belt realism -- seems amplified in what feels like a strained search for meaning.

Boasting a terrific bad-ass performance by Woody Harrelson, the movie nonetheless seems an ultimately failed attempt to give pulpy material a socially significant boost. Director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart) tries for thematic elevation by garnishing a revenge-oriented drama with woes created by diminished economic opportunity and the psychological suffering of Iraqi war veterans.

Cooper (Crazy Heart) builds his generally grim movie around an intense performance by Christian Bale, who plays Russell Baze, a Pennsylvania steel mill worker and the older brother of Rodney Baze (Casey Affleck), a troubled veteran of four tours in Iraq.

Credited to Brad Ingelsby and Cooper, the screenplay piles on plenty of complications.

Principal among these twists: Russell winds up in prison after a fatal car accident. He was drinking.

Meanwhile, Rodney pleads with a local bookmaker (Willem Dafoe) to arrange a big-money, bare-knuckle fight for him in New Jersey.

As it turns out, the Jersey bare-knuckle scene and a variety of other criminal activities are presided over by Harrelson's Harlan DeGroat, a character cast in the fires of unapologetic evil.

But wait ... there's more:
While he's in jail, Russell's former girlfriend Lena (Zoe Saldana) takes up with a new lover, a sheriff played by Forest Whitaker, who might just as well have found something else to do for all the impact the script allows his character to make.

We also meet Russell's uncle (Sam Shepard), a character who rounds out the cast of hard-working, salt-of-the-earth Pennsylvanians, guys who toed the line, drank their beer, prayed the rosary, asked for nothing and went deer hunting for recreation.

You can tell that a movie is going for high-voltage impact when Dafoe -- no stranger to tough-textured realism -- gives one of the film's more relaxed performances.

There's no reason to fault any of the acting, but Harrelson's frightening performance achieves stand-out prominence.

Harrelson's DeGroat makes his presence known in the movie's opening scene, a brutal encounter that takes place in a drive-in and which calls for DeGroat to ram a hotdog down his date's throat before mercilessly assaulting a good samaritan who tries to intervene in the poor woman's behalf. DeGroat's wearing shorts at the time, a sartorial choice that gives his violence an alarmingly informal air.

It's equally clear that Affleck's Rodney has veered out of control -- albeit in a completely different way. Rodney has no interest in working in a steel mill, has accumulated substantial gambling debts and simmers with rage over lost comrades and memories of war-time carnage.

Cooper and cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi do their best to give the gritty Pennsylvania settings -- steel mills, bars, dreary row houses and abandoned factories -- the kind of polished decay that movies can bring to towns that have seen better days.

Bale's deep-immersion performance doesn't leave much on the table, but Out of the Furnace can't quite transcend revenge impulses that ultimately take over and cheapen a drama that seems to be trying for more.

And try it does. If it were possible to get a hernia from attempting something meaningful, everyone involved in Out of the Furnace would need abdominal surgery. In the end, though, I'm not sure that this isn't a case in which black-and-blue marks outnumber serious insights -- despite all the heavy lifting.

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.

Too much plot mars the magic

Laden with characters and plot, Now You See Me -- a caper movie involving four magicians -- is more juggling act than magic show.

At one point during Now You See Me -- a caper movie about four larcenous magicians -- Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine are featured in a happily confrontational scene. Caine, as an arrogant tycoon used to getting his way, and Freeman, as a former magician who has built a TV career by exposing other people's tricks, are locked in a toe-to-toe, eyeball-to-eyeball exchange that's fun to watch.

My reperotire of tricks doesn't include mind reading, but I'd like to believe that both Caine and Freeman were thinking, "Take your best shot because no matter how good it is, I'll match it."

I'm not saying that this scene should be added to anyone's list of great movie moments or that it's in a particularly good movie, but it hints at what might have happened had director Louis Leterrier (Clash of the Titans, The Incredible Hulk and Transporter 2) been able to get beyond slick surfaces, brisk pacing and flashy camera work. Now You See Me suggests an anatomical impossibility: It's all pulse and no heart.

The movie begins in promising enough fashion, introducing us to four magicians, each with a distinct skill. Jesse Eisenberg plays Daniel Atlas, a whip-smart master of card tricks. Woody Harrelson portrays Merritt McKinney, a cynical mentalist. Dave Franco is Jack Wilder, a young man who claims to have paranormal mind powers but actually specializes in picking pockets, and Isla Fisher appears as Henley Reeves. Her act consists of trying to unshackle herself in a water tank that's about to be invaded by flesh eating piranhas.

The four magicians are summoned to New York City, where a mysterious and unseen figure involves them in a scheme to use complicated illusions to mask a series of heists -- and to provide the movie with a core of mystery: Just who's pulling the strings here?

This, of course, introduces the opportunity for Leterrier to toss around a variety of red herrings and to stage some glossy show-business spectacles: We see the magicians -- who form a group known as The Four Horsemen -- creating their illusions, most of which eventually are explained.

So long as the movie stays close to the four magicians, it's easy to remain involved, especially if you don't think too much about whether you're watching genuine sleight-of-hand or CGI-assisted magic. But Now You See Me eventually shifts its focus, concentrating on the FBI agent (Mark Ruffalo) who's trying to catch the magicians with help from an Interpol detective played by French actress Melanie Laurent.

Leterrier has been given lots of heavy acting artillery, and any one of the movie's large cast could have provided a compelling center. But instead of conjuring up wily character magic, Leterrier seems more like a juggler who's frantically trying to keep the movie's many plot points aloft.

If you bother to play Now You See Me back in your mind (and there's no compelling reason you should), you'll be hard-pressed to believe that the intricacies of its plot were remotely possible anywhere but in a screenwriter's imagination: Three writers were involved in creating the screenplay and story. They find entertaining moments in what othewise amounts to a self-defeating hodge podge of conceits, ploys and attempted fake-outs.

One psychopath too many?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Another bad cop on the road to ruin

I don’t know if it's possible for an actor to give more to a role than Woody Harrelson gives in Rampart, another story about a massively corrupt cop whose life is mired in a multiplicity of betrayals -- not the least of which is the betrayal of responsibility as an officer of the law. It may help to think of Rampart as The Bad Lieutenant west, a movie that recalls director Abel Ferrara's sensational (as in tabloid “sensational”) 1992 look at a corrupt New York City detective played by Harvey Keitel

Rampart takes place in 1999, and is named for a real-life LAPD scandal involving police ties to gangs. But Rampart, which was directed by the gifted Owen Moverman (The Messenger), takes place after that scandal and presumably acquires its name because of the poisonous atmosphere of mistrust it generated around the already tarnished LAPD. Rampart is less an indictment of the LAPD than a roiling, agitated look at a uniformed cop who has been bad so long, he doesn’t even remember what good looks like.

Harrelson plays David Douglas Brown, a cop who has been given the nickname of “Date Rape” by his fellow officers: He's suspected of having killed a serial rapist, doling out his own brand of justice without the encumbrance of a trial. He’s a swaggering, cocky member of the LAPD who may actually think of himself as a good cop; i.e., one who prizes results over procedural niceties.

It's easy to see how a cop might fall into this trap: If you cross the line to achieve what you regard as a good end, how long before you cross it just because you can?

As this edgy -- even jagged -- movie progresses, Brown reveals himself as a lost soul who’s estranged from his current wife (Anne Heche), and who happens to be the sister of his former wife (Cynthia Nixon), a needless domestic complication in a script credited to James Ellroy and Moverman.

Brown’s also a father; he shares tender moments with his youngest daughter (Stella Schnabel), but his teen-age daughter (Brie Larson) treats him with rueful disregard. Because Brown's such a well-known louse, Larson's Helen evidently views her sullenness as a kind of entitlement.

After Messenger, a terrific little movie about two Army officers (Harrelson and Ben Foster) assigned to informing next of kins about loved ones who have been killed in battle, a lot of actors probably wanted to work with Moverman. His strong supporting cast includes Messenger vet Foster, as a wheelchair bound bum; Ice Cube, as an internal affairs investigator; Ned Beatty, as a retried cop who seems to have schooled Brown in corruption; and Robin Wright, as a lawyer and extracurricular love interest for Brown.

They’re all good, but the movie is caught in Brown’s corrupt swirl. Somewhere near the mid-picture mark, he's caught on camera beating a fleeing suspect, an incident that creates a Rodney King-style furor. He tries to rob a poker game to generate cash for himself, and winds up being investigated for an unlawful shooting. He smokes too much and drinks excessively. He's a dangerous wreck of a man, who offers arrogant rationalizations to the police psychologist (Sigourney Weaver) who questions him. He did time in Vietnam and has been on the crime front lines for decades. That's his rap.

Rampart aims for gritty truth, but may be too caught up in Brown's delirium to find any. You’ll find some overwrought scenes and lots of pulp-flavored cinematography as Rampart follows Brown’s descent into a private hell that, in the end, seems all too familiar -- not necessarily from reality, but from other movies that have tried to plumb the souls of other cops gone bad.

Harrelson deserves credit for pulling out all the stops, but Rampart is so hell bent on pushing his character beyond the moral pale, that it ultimately lets him down. Rampart is well-performed, but it often feels as tarnished as its main character.


Footnotes: I don't know what it means (probably nothing) but for those who collect coincidences: Brei Larson, who out-sullens just about every known teen-ager in Rampart, has a much lighter turn in 21 Jump Street, which also opens this week. Ice Cube, who plays an internal investigator for the LAPD in Rampart, portrays another cop in 21 Jump Street. Of Ice Cube's two performances, I prefer his work in Rampart, which allows him to break out of his one-note, scowling mode.