Eroll Flynn's last affair

A strong cast can't quite overcome the emotionally undernourished quality of The Last of Robin Hood, a look at the scandalous final days of iconic Hollywood hero Errol Flynn. A notorious womanizer and drinker, Flynn's final fling involved a 15-year-old girl.

Kevin Kline, an actor we don't seem to see enough of, makes a convincing Flynn, a fading star who readily concedes that he suffers from an irredeemably inflated ego. This Flynn seems to think that his powerful attraction to a teen-ager somehow justifies his behavior. How could he do other than be himself?

Dakota Fanning, who's now 20, plays Beverly Aadland, a teen-age show business wannabe who's seduced by Flynn, who still knows how work his roguish charm.

Writer/directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland also make room for Beverly's mother Florence, portrayed by a fine Susan Sarandon.

Although inconsistently used, the directors employ a device in which Florence -- who was pilloried in the tabloids after Flynn's death in 1959 at the age of 50 -- tells a sympathetic reporter (Jason Davis) the "real" story behind her daughter's affair with a big-screen legend.

Florence's own show-business aspirations as a dancer were thwarted after she lost a leg in an automobile accident.

Hardly an irresistible Lolita, Fanning's greatest achievement is to convince us that her character neither can act nor sing, not an easy achievement for the palpably talented Fanning.

For those unfamiliar with Flynn's story, this by-the-numbers tale should prove interesting enough, but an overly modest approach keeps The Last of Robin Hood from really getting under our skins.

There aren't many movies to which the following statement applies, but The Last of Robin Hood could have used a dash or two of tabloid fury.

When soldiers becomes murderers

It's hardly a fresh insight to say that the war in Afghanistan hasn't flooded the evening news with daily images of battlefield horror. It, therefore, has fallen largely to documentary filmmakers to bring the war, with all its contradictions and terrors, into our collective consciousness. The Kill Team, the latest such film, leaves us shaken as we listen to Private Adam Winfield (pictured above) tell us how his fellow soldiers were drawn into murdering Afghan civilians, apparently as a way of boosting body-count numbers. Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, who seems to have been the driving force behind such crimes, reportedly went so far as to collect fingers from his victims. Winfield corresponded with his father, a former Marine, about what he was seeing in Afghanistan, but couldn't find a way to expose the crimes without endangering his own life. Winfield's comrades explain the mind-set that led them astray, and include details of how they went about justifying murder. When they found weapons on the battlefield, they kept them for use as "drops;" i.e., weapons planted on civilians to make it seem as if they were threats. Director Dan Krauss, who had access to footage shot by the soldiers themselves, doesn't tell us whether we're watching an aberration or a common practice. But even if Winfield's story is entirely atypical, it illustrates a sobering point: Once the bullets start flying, there's no way to control everything that happens. Gibbs is serving a life sentence. The morally tormented Winfield wound up doing jail time, as well. He was sentenced to three years after a plea deal.

Music from the fringe

Michael Fassbender spends nearly all of Frank -- an oddball movie about an avant-garde rock musician -- wearing a giant head made of papier-mâché.

The head seems like the kind of amusing stunt David Byrne might have attempted back in the halcyon Talking Heads days, except for one thing: Frank never removes the beach-ball sized orb, even during what seem like normal conversations with his bandmates.

The look of the head is interesting for its near parodic ordinariness. The artificial head boasts a modest haircut, large blue eyes that look as if they might have been appropriated from one of those annoyingly wide-eyed Margaret Keane paintings and a perpetually open mouth.

Director Lenny Abrahamson and Fassbender use the disguise without undue flourish, a wise choice because it's weird enough without being italicized.

The band, by the way, is called Soronprfbs, an unpronounceable name that suggests that this group of musicians couldn't care less about how their music is received.

The story focuses on Jon, a keyboardist played by Domhnall Gleeson. Jon joins the band by accident after the group's keyboardist attempts suicide.

Jon soon finds himself spending almost a year with the group in a secluded hideout where Frank inches his way toward Soronprfbs' first album.

The rest of the group is far from hospitable. Maggie Gyllenhaal appears as Clara, a woman who plays theremin and who makes no attempt to conceal her contempt for Jon, whose often cheery voice-over narration creates an ironic counterpoint to reality.

The group also includes the band's manager (Scoot McNairy), a drummer (Carla Azar) and a French-speaking bass player (Francois Civil) who also loathes Jon and regards him as a smiling no-talent.

The movie breaks its isolation when Jon arranges for the band to perform at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, a spawning ground for cutting edge bands.

Not surprisingly, Frank is ill-equipped for a coming-out party, and Gyllenhaal's Clara seems to view the entire idea of "entertaining" as a sell-out.

I've read that the movie is a riff on the real-life experiences of co-writer Jon Ronson, who wrote the screenplay with Peter Straughan. Ronson evidently worked with Chris Sievey, a British musician and comic who died in 2010. Sievey created a character named Frank Sidebottom, who wore a head very much like the one donned by Fassbender in the movie.

You don't have to know anything about that backstory to appreciate Abrahamson's movie, which deals with the fragility of genius in a way that can be quietly funny.

Jon attempts -- rather foolishly it seems -- to bring Frank's talents to a wider audience, something that takes its toll on Frank and leads to a finale that's mildly redemptive and touching in a bittersweet way.

Two Brits, lots of great scenery

The spot-on impressions done by Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon in The Trip to Italy tilt toward mockery.

Consider: When a smart mimic captures a well-known personality, the impression tends to underline the ways in which a distinctive talent may have veered toward shtick.

Coogan and Brydon -- who qualify as very smart mimics -- previously teamed in 2010's The Trip, which was directed by Michael Winterbottom who again takes the helm.

This time, Winterbottom creates space for Coogan and Brydon to do their bits as they travel through Italy's splendid Amalfi Coast -- hardly a job that seems like hardship duty for anyone involved.

There isn't much to the story, but low-key professional jealousy between the two comics spices the proceedings.

If you saw Coogan and Brydon's respective Michael Caine impressions and Brydon's Al Pacino in the previous movie, you may fault this one for not breaking sufficient new ground, but I didn't mind.

A bit of personal drama intrudes: Brydon has an affair with one of the crew members (Rosie Fellner) of a sail boat the two board. He's evidently having marital problems.

At one point, Coogan's teen-age son joins the food tour, which purportedly is being sponsored by a British newspaper.

Despite hints at real-life problems, neither Coogan nor Brydon seems particularly angst ridden. That makes The Trip to Italy a pleasantly witty journey through Italian cuisine as hosted by two men who admit that they don't qualify as food experts.

If there's a competition between the two men, I'd give the advantage to Brydon, who never misses a beat when it comes to turning any situation into an amusing riff.

Viewing requires tolerance for two guys who always seem to keep their comedy meters running. And, yes, that can be a trifle overbearing, like a bright light that never shuts off.

A look at a marriage -- with a twist

A therapist (Ted Danson) suggests that Sophie and Ethan, a troubled California couple played by Mark Duplass and Elisabeth Moss spend a relaxing weekend at an isolated rural retreat in The One I Love, a mind-stretching look at a marriage. The therapist believes a short time away from routine will help get the couple's relationship back on track. Figuring they don't have much to lose, Sophie and Ethan embark on a weekend that's destined to change their lives. Working from a script by Justin Lader, McDowell takes the movie in an unexpected direction, pushing the story into territory that's best discovered in a theater, not in a review. With help from Duplass and Moss, McDowell mostly sustains a guessing game in which marital issues are explored along with questions of identity. The movie revolves around an intriguing enough gimmick, but McDowell can't quite make the story gel. Still, Moss -- staking out new territory after her long run on Mad Men -- brings a sense of playful independence to her work, and McDowell earns credit for almost getting a novel movie across the finish line.

It's spy vs. spy in 'November Man'

Pierce Brosnan returns to espionage in a low-grade thriller.

Pierce Brosnan is beginning to look a bit long in the tooth for action-oriented spy antics. After all, it's been 12 years since Die Another Day, Brosnan's last run as the fabled 007.

Undeterred by passing time, Brosnan dives into a pit full of Eastern Europen mayhem to play CIA agent Peter Devereaux in The November Man, a loose adaptation of a 1986 novel by Bill Granger.

After a short prologue set in Montenegro in 2008, the movie leaps forward to a time when a retired Devereaux is called back into service by a tough-talking CIA boss (Bill Smitrovich), a guy who prides himself on his grasp of the world's brutal realities.

Devereaux's assignment: To travel to Moscow to help with the escape of a Russian woman (Mediha Musliovic) who supposedly has the goods on a Putin-like Russian (Lazar Ristovski') who's about to take over the country.

In the process, Devereaux gets crosswise with the agency, and finds himself burdened by a far-fetched plot and overly busy plot.

During the next 108 minutes, Devereaux must battle treachery within the CIA, take down an aspiring Russian baddie, save the life of a younger woman (Olga Kurylenko) and remind his former protege (Luke Bracey) that the old man still has it.

That's a big agenda, and director Roger Donaldson (The World's Fastest Indian (2005), Dante's Peak (1997) and No Way Out (1987) shuffles through it without making us care about much of the resultant intrigues.

Donaldson whips up tension here and there, but doesn't have much going for him other than the icy gravitas and sudden angry outbursts Brosnan brings to a role that strands him somewhere between hard-core action and worldly savvy -- with a trace of sadism thrown in for seasoning.

We've seen so many of these kinds of movies that just about everything in Novembmer Man feels second-hand.

The movie does accomplish one thing, though: It makes us long for the end of summer, and the start of a new movie season.

Repeat after me: We're almost there. We're almost there.

A return trip to 'Sin City'

It's lurid and creative, but what's the point?

It's rare that one's expectations are entirely met by a movie -- and it's not always a good thing when it happens.

Case in point: Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. Prior to the movie's preview screening, I imagined that this follow-up to Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez's 2005 Sin City would be another stylish immersion in a fantasy world composed of pulp impulses, noir gestures, brutal violence and fan-boy prurience.

Miller is a graphic novelist and sometime moviemaker. Rodriguez is a director of variable achievement. Together, they again serve up a movie that feels as if one is leafing through the pages of a graphic novel, entering a purportedly forbidden world where politicians are murderous, women are dressed for sex and half the male characters look as if they're mutants from an another planet.

And, yes, the movie is precisely what you expect.

Rodriguez and Miller create a world of uber-shlock that seems to derive from an exaggerated reading of noir ingredients and second-rate pulp fiction.

Noir, of course, had a socially critical dimension that completely eludes this second helping of Sin City. Besides, in combining several of Miller's stories, the movie challenges one's ability to sustain interest.

This helping of Sin City -- in which occasional splashes of color intrude on the heightened black-and-white imagery -- features a scorecard cast of names, some recognizable on screen, some not.

Among those who stand out are Josh Brolin, who takes over the role that Clive Owen played in the original; Eva Green, who plays the movie's sexy, deadly femme fatale; and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who stars in what ultimately feels like a satellite story about a young man who's lucky in cards and not so lucky at everything else.

Powers Boothe portrays the brutally smooth Senator Roark, a politician for whom the word "corrupt" would be a euphemism. Mickey Rourke returns as Marv, the freakish looking, motor-cycle riding avenger.

Some of the actors have extended roles, some (Ray Liotta as a lecherous businessman who's caught with his pants down) have cameos.

In the movie's best story, Brolin's character is irresistibly drawn to the duplicitous Ava. No matter what his brain tells him, he can't resist her siren call.

Miller and Rodriguez can't seamlessly blend the movie's several stories, and when the primary tale -- the one involving Green's Ava ends -- the movie essentially is over.

The rest feels like a death rattle, an obligatory advancement of loose ends that march zombie-like through what remains of the movie's 102-minute running time.

Devotees of Miller's work probably will be won over by the snide humor and outre violence. At one point, one of the character's eyes is plucked out.

But Sin City: A Dame to Kill For seems like a lot of work devoted to building a fantasy edifice that may tell us more about the sensibilities of those who dreamed up the fantasy than about the world it purports to describe.

To get back to where I started: Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is exactly what I thought it would be: creative, lurid, immature, and, perhaps, a bit pointless.

Life, death and a teen-age cellist

Another young adult novel finds its way to the screen.

If I Stay, a big-screen adaptation of a 2009 young-adult novel by Gayle Forman, proves something you may already know. The talented Chloe Grace Moretz can carry a movie, hardly a surprise after Moretz scored a big-screen breakthrough playing Hit-Girl in 2010's Kick-Ass . Moretz also held her own in 2010's Let Me In, and occupied the center of an unfortunate 2013 Carrie remake.

Moretz, who's a mere 17, doesn't look as if she's quite grown into adulthood yet, but you can see her beginning to blossom.

There's no faulting Moretz's performance in If I Stay, but the movie qualifies as a near-perfect example of a drama that provokes neither scorn nor admiration, a true middle-of-the-road effort.

Moretz plays Mia, an Oregon teen-ager and budding cellist who falls for Adam, a slightly older rock musician (Jamie Blackley).

If you've seen the movie's trailer you already know the story's gist. A terrible automobile accident involving Mia and her family sets the story in motion and determines its structure.

While languishing in a coma after an extensive surgery, Mia has an out-of-body experience. Her non-corporeal self wanders around the hospital checking in on her father (Joshua Leonard) and her younger brother (Jakob Davies), as well as on relatives and friends who've gathered to keep watch.

Generating more predictability than excitement, flashbacks arrive, most focusing on Mia's developing relationship with Blackley's Adam. We also get a couple of scenes with Mia's mother (Mireille Enos); she encourages Mia to pursue her relationship with Adam.

At first blush, Mia and Adam seem mismatched. She's demure and devoted to classical music. He's a rocker and chick magnet.

Unfortunately, the unfolding romance seems too serious for a girl who has yet to graduate from high school, undermining its power as a central story element for anyone past the age of 30.

Two questions develop: Will Mia pursue her cello dreams at Juilliard or will she hang back to maintain her relationship with Adam? The second question, of course, centers on whether Mia will pull out of her coma, whether -- in the movie's argot -- she'll choose life?

If I Stay seems intended by director R.J. Cutler as a tearjerker with serious overtones, a story designed to allow young adults to think about death while swooning over a romance.

Fair enough, but the movie comes off as too predictable to feel truly weighty and too weighty totally to dismiss. In all, this late-summer movie manages to cauterize highly dramatic events and, in the process, drain them of some of their much-needed emotion.

More men who've yet to grow up

If Matthew Weiner, creator of the landmark TV series Mad Men, accomplishes nothing else in his life, he will have earned a place in showbusiness history. Unfortunately, Weiner's first foray into big-screen entertainment isn't nearly as daring as his TV work. The major revelation offered by Are You Here are end-of-picture scenes in which Zach Galifianakis appears beardless. Other than that, you'll find only traces of Weiner's brilliance in a story about Ben and Steve, two friends (Galifianakis and Owen Wilson) who are going through separate crises. Things come to a head when Ben's father dies, and leaves him a ton of money, much to the dismay of Ben's more responsible sister, played by Amy Poehler). As it turns out, recently departed dad was living with a younger woman (Laura Ramsey), who attracts Steve's eye and who's stuck in full earth mother mode throughout proceedings. Questions arise: Will bipolar Ben finally start taking his meds? Will Steve, who works at an Annapolis TV station as a weatherman, ever set aside his glib, irresponsible ways? Neither Ben nor Steve is exceptionally interesting, which means the only reliable pleasure in Are You Here stems from some of Weiner's clever dialogue. It seems clear that Weiner wanted to do something that would be both funny and meaningful. I hope, in his next effort, he's more successful. This bromance takes few unexpected turns.