No medal for this profane comedy

A classic one-joke movie, The Bronze offers a few chuckles, but can't overcome the unpleasantness of its main character, a one-time Olympic gymnast (Melissa Rauch) whose career stalled with a Bronze medal. Years later, Rauch's Hope Ann Greggory has become an embittered, profanity-spewing woman whose personality is stuck in adolescence, complete with an ever-present pony tale, carefully arranged bangs and a refusal to wear anything but her Olympic warmup suit. Working from a script co-written by Rauch and her husband Winston, director Bryan Buckley seldom gets past a stream of profane humor delivered by Rauch in clipped staccato bursts. The joke, of course, is that Hope Ann Greggory looks like a pert cheerleader, but curses like an unrepentant sailor. Unable to move on with her life, Hope lives with her father (Gary Cole), a mailman who tolerates her massively annoying assaults. The story shifts gears when Hope is asked to train a rising star (Haley Lu Richardson). Thomas Middleditch plays the owner of the aging gym where Hope trains Richardson's character; Sebastian Stan portrays the egotistical coach of the US women's gymnastics team. A sex scene staged like a gymnastic routine serves as a comic high point, but the movie ultimately does precisely what you expect; it sells out its nasty side for a bit of soggy redemption. The Bronze might have worked as a skit, but can't make the cut as a movie.

They're trapped in a bunker

10 Cloverfield Lane generates low-key tension, but still packs a wallop.

Boasting only the loosest of connections to 2008's Cloverfield, 10 Cloverfield Lane generates plenty of tension before delivering a third-act jolt.

Director Dan Trachtenberg bravely challenges shock-hungry audiences by slowing the pace of a drama in which a young woman (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) awakens in a bunker built by a survivalist farmer (John Goodman) after her car spins off the road.

Goodman's Howard tells Winstead's Michelle that the US has suffered a terrible attack that has left the atmosphere poisoned. There are no survivors, he says.

Therein lies the source of the movie's tension: Is Howard a kidnapping monster or has the world really been ravaged by aliens or Russians, as he suggests?

Inside Howard's bunker, Winstead's Michelle also meets Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.), a young man who helped build the bunker and who was allowed in by the domineering Howard.

At times, the movie becomes a claustrophobic three-hander with the wary survivors trying to get along. They adjust to one another as best they can. They play board games. Howard watches a video tape of Pretty in Pink, perhaps the least likely choice for such a hulking colossus.

Trachtenberg slowly reveals the ways of the bunker, which is equipped with a kitchen and living room area, a pantry where food is kept, separate rooms for Michelle and Howard and an air filtration system that blocks out lethal gasses.

Both Gallagher and Winstead hold their own, but Goodman gives the movie's most compelling performance as a survivalist and conspiracy nut of intimidating bulk.

I won't say more, but 10 Cloverfield Lane deserves credit for not trying to mimic the found-footage approach of the original Cloverfield. You won't get dizzy watching it.

Before it's done, 10 Cloverfield Lane takes an unexpected turn or two. So don't be fooled by a bit of rope-a-dope pacing; by the end, the movie delivers a strong punch.

Confronting the Amazon's mysteries

Colombia's Embrace of the Serpent takes on two compelling river journeys.

The Colombian film Embrace of the Serpent sees white, western civilization as terminally exploitative. Moving deep into the Amazonian jungle, this rich and unsettling movie focuses on the life that's being trampled and squandered as rampant colonialism gobbles up the world's resources and murders its primal dreams.

Virtually a journey into an alien world, Embrace of the Serpent also reminds us that tribal life in the jungles had a striking abundance and that its loss does irreparable harm to the human spirit.

Photographing in black-and-white, director Ciro Guerra and cinematographer David Gallego take us on a trip down the Amazon: The result is a film steeped in exoticism and full of imminent dangers.

Guerra and his co-writer Jacques Toulemonde chronicle two different trips into the jungle, shifting between stories that are united by the presence of a shaman named Karamakate.

As a young man and, later, as an aging shaman, Karamakate -- played by two actors -- leads two different white men on searches for the Yakruna plant, a rare species known for producing psychedelic effects when ingested. Ultimately, the Yakruna becomes a vehicle for a white men to be schooled by the natural world, which Karamakate insists must be heard, not conquered.

The first journey begins in 1909. Young Karamakate (Nilbio Torres) is approached by Manduca (Yauenku Miguel), a native who has had exposure to whites. Manteca wants Karamakate to save the life of a German (Jan Bijvoet) explorer who has taken ill. Only the Yakruna plant can stave off death.

This white character -- Theo by name -- is based on Theodor Koch-Grunberg, a real Amazon explorer who wrote extensively about his encounters with indigenous peoples along the Amazon.

In the second story, Antonio Bolivar Salvador plays an aged but still imposing Karamakate; he agrees to help an American botanist (Brionne Davis) search for the Yakruna plant. Davis' character says he has devoted his life to plants, something Karamakate finds admirable.

But like his predecessor, Davis' Evan doesn't always find it easy to accept Karamakate's sternly applied discipline.

In both stories, a representative of an invasive civilization is said to be more interested in robbing the forest of rubber than in appreciating the lives of native peoples. And both white men are burdened by excess baggage -- suitcases full of equipment -- that they insist on piling into Karamakate's canoe.

By the time we meet the older Karamakate, he has begun to complain about having forgotten the ways of his people. He, too, may have lost his connection with ancient secrets.

Western religion is not spared. In one 1909 scene, Karamakate and his companion stumble upon a Christian missionary who abuses native children. In later scenes, we meet a strange group of cultists led by a man who proclaims himself the messiah and who seems to have submitted entirely to his darkest impulses.

Both of these incidents dramatize the distortions that occur when the values of the outside world penetrate the jungle and are allowed to marinate in isolation.

No description of events does justice to this odd and absorbing movie. Daringly, Embrace of the Serpent tries to cut away the obscurations that obscure the jungle's mystery.

I suppose, then, that it's possible to characterize Embrace of the Serpent, which seems aimed at western audiences, as an instructive and necessary act of trespass.

A frustrating 'Knight of Cups'

Director Terrence Malick's journey through Los Angeles.

I know many serious film lovers who are slavishly devoted to the films of director Terrence Malick, so much so that they transfer the brilliance and emotional depth of films such as The Tree of Life to lesser works, notably the recent To the Wonder (2012).

With Knight of Cups, Malik provides another test for devotees because this strange foray into the libidinous world of Hollywood leaves a gaping maw of consternation in its wake.

Malick begins with a quote from The Pilgrim's Progress, a 1678 Christian allegory. Author John Bunyan's work about a journey to the Celestial City isn't the only source Malick quotes: He also cites passages from The Hymn of the Pearl, a Gnostic myth about a boy sent to Egypt to retrieve a pearl from a serpent.

I bring all this up not to demonstrate my knowledge of Christian literature, which is -- at best -- confined to perusals of Wikipedia, but to suggest that Malick's willful obscurity seems a frustratingly protracted exercise in navel gazing as filtered through what feels like a dense spiritual fog.

Equally troublesome is Malick's tendency to pepper his films with the barely audible thoughts of his characters. He blurs their speech and de-emphasizes anything resembling human connection. His characters live in worlds of their own.

This approach has been likened to dreams; but dreams and poetry always have been tricky stuff for movies, and they can do a filmmaker in as quickly as they can save him or her.

In Knight of Cups, Malick mostly abandons linear storytelling as he soaks in the often beautiful imagery of his collaborating cinematographer, three-time Oscar winner Emmanuel Lubezki.

Taking its title from a tarot card, Knight of Cups casts the always adventurous Christian Bale as Rick, a screenwriter who's searching for meaning in his generally hollow life. Foundering in a sybaritic material world, Rick is a forsaken man.

When he's not engaged in sexual relationships, Rick is seen walking, driving his vintage convertible or looking at things. Of course, the gifted Lubezki gives Rick (and us) plenty at which to stare as Malick's camera explores Los Angeles.

Because most of Rick's quest (if that's what it is) involves women, Malick finds an opportunity to bring a diverse core of actresses to the screen.

Nancy (Cate Blanchett) plays Rick's ex-wife, a physician who works in a clinic. Karen (Teresa Palmer) appears as a Las Vegas stripper. Helen (Frieda Pinto) works as a model. Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) gets pregnant by Rick. She's married to someone else.

As if flipping through a deck of Tarot cards, Malick structures his story around chapter headings such as The Moon, The Hermit and more. It takes more effort than it's worth to connect these titles to the hazy unfolding of Malick's Los Angeles-based scenes, some which include Rick's father (Brian Dennehy) and his bother (Wes Bentley).

Father and son are locked in an explosively angry duet.

Antonio Banderas presides over a Hollywood party attended by various Hollywood "insiders," a boisterous Bacchanal.

At first, it seems as if Malick wants to make a movie about another lost soul snared by the siren call of Hollywood hedonism. But he also seems to want to give Rick's searchings spiritual meaning: A lost soul, Rick is separated from God and trying to establish a connection or maybe he's just seeking meaning in a godless world or maybe ...

Well, in the end, who really cares what Rick is seeking?

We've all got troubles of our own, and Malick never convinces us (or at least me) that we should get involved with his.

Young and ambitious in Brooklyn

Creative Control paints a telling portrait of life in the high-tech fast lane.

As a young Brooklynite working at an ultra-hip advertising agency, David (Benjamin Dickinson) finally has gotten creative control over an important account. He'll lead the campaign for a product called Augmenta, glasses that allow wearers to create virtual experiences that come close to simulating the real thing.

In David's case "the real thing" happens to be having sex with a co-worker (Alexia Rasmussen). He seldom takes off the glasses he's supposed to be selling.

This set-up may prime expectations for a derivative bit of sci-fi, but a mixture of fresh insight and observation turn Creative Control -- which Dickinson also directed -- into an up-to-the-minute comedy of manners.

Perhaps to facilitate his illusory sexual adventures, David makes sure not get along with his live-in girlfriend (Nora Zehtener). Zehtener's Juliette teaches yoga. She seems a "natural" alternative to David's high-tech mania.

By the end, though, the movie skewers Juliette, as well, turning her into an advocate for some sort of loopy, peak-consciousness experience.

Set in the near future, Creative Control imagines a world in which phones are made of translucent material. Today's familiar devices (cell phones, lap tops, etc.) have progressed.

Writing a text message, for example, is like writing on air, and at meetings, it's not unusual for someone to refer to a holographic chart that materializes over a conference table.

What saves Creative Control from being another screed about the ways in which technology separates us from the tumult of flesh-and-blood experience is Dickinson's spot-on portrayal of what it means to be young, upwardly mobile and wildly immature in Brooklyn.

Arrogant on the outside, David is a seething mass of insecurities on the inside. After a commanding performance at a client meeting, for example, he heads to the men's room to throw up. He's not nearly as sure of himself as he initially seems.

David decides to build the Augmenta campaign around the work of Reggie Watts, an experimental musician and comic (played by himself) who dispenses mind-altering drugs to the other characters. Watts devises what he sees as a deeply meaningful ad, but it probably couldn't sell water in a desert.

Dan Gill plays Wim, David's best friend, a fashion photographer who's in the midst of an affair with Rasmussen's Sophie -- and lots of other women, as well.

David increasingly has difficulty separating illusion from reality, but the real enjoyment in Dickinson's movie stems less from the disconnect between the real and the synthetic than from gorgeous black-and-white cinematography and from the way Dickinson captures David's urban milieu.

The upscale environment of David's office contrasts with the low-tech streets of Brooklyn. Despite the dizzying achievements of a youth-oriented business culture, Brooklyn remains recognizably Brooklyn.

Funny and fresh, Dickinson's movie manages -- and not incidentally -- to rake Brooklyn's hip young residents over some well-earned satirical coals. It's one of the season's bigger surprises.

London (and taste) under siege

This lame sequel to 2013's Olympus Has Fallen involves little more than sustained violence built around the need for Gerard Butler, who again plays a Secret Service agent, to squelch swarthy looking foes who have blown up much of London and who threaten the life of the US president (Aaron Eckhart). The plot kicks in when Britain's prime minister passes away, and Eckart's Benjamin Asher travels to London for the state funeral. The picture quickly reduces itself to following Eckhart and Butler as they race around London in an effort to save the president from being beheaded by the Barkawi family. The Barkawis are arms dealers seeking vengeance for being victimized by a US drone strike. As vice president Trumbull, a concerned looking Morgan Freeman presides over a table of US government types who fret about the situation. One might rattle on about the movie's unashamed bombast and exploitative violence (See Westminster Abby topple! Watch London Bridge blown apart!), but that would be a waste of my time and yours. London isn't the only thing that has fallen with the release of this noisy mess of a movie; so have my hopes of seeing Butler, an appealing enough actor, in something that didn't leave me rolling my eyes in dismay.

There's lots of fun in 'Zootopia'

Sometimes fun is the best ambition.

I have no idea whether Zootopia -- the latest animated fantasy from Disney -- will become a classic, but I do know that it scores high on the fun meter.

So three cheers for a story about Judy Hopps (voice by Ginnifer Goodwin), a bunny who aspires to become a cop in the city of Zootopia. Police work has been Judy's ambition since she was a child.

Primed for action and a do-gooder's career, Judy wants to leave the countryside and her family of underachieving carrot farmers.

When Judy arrives in the city, she becomes the first bunny on the Zootopia PD. An unimpressed chief Bogo (Idris Elba), arbitrarily decides that Judy's fit only for parking duty. He doesn't believe a bunny can hold her own on Zootopia's mean streets, hardly a surprising opinion from a water buffalo.

Zootopia is unique because the animals all get along. That's why it's called Zootopia. Predators and prey may not be the best of friends, but the former have learned to refrain from devouring the latter.

While handing out parking tickets, Judy meets Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), a conniving con artist of a fox who eventually teams with Judy to help crack a case involving the disappearance of 15 mammals.

If Judy can solve the mystery, she'll get herself off parking duty, maintain a position on the force and climb out of Chief Bogo's (you'll pardon the expression) dog house.

Judy and Nick make an odd couple as they learn some shocking news: Some predators suddenly are turning on prey, thereby threatening Zootopia's peaceable social structure.

Disney loads up on animals and voices, but I particularly enjoyed an arctic shrew mobster who'll remind adults in the audience of Don Corleone. Mr. Big, as he's called, is brought to gravelly voiced life by Maurice LaMarche.
Appropriately, I suppose, the Zootopia's DMV is staffed by sloths, a joke that surely will appeal to every adult who's ever endured what seems like an interminable wait at any department of motor vehicles.

The story evolves into a light-hearted police procedural that winds up preaching a lesson about acceptance and free will -- if that's not too grandiose a term for the fact that the animal characters are forced to decide whether to be ruled by instinct or choice.

Directors Byron Howard, Rich Moore and Jared Bush do a fine job of keeping Zootopia amusing for kids and equally enjoyable for the adults who accompany them to theaters.

Disney's animators seem to have had a grand time creating Zootopia -- which consists of districts such as Tundratown, Little Rodentia and Bunnyburrow.

OK, that's a bit theme-parkish, but dividing Zootopia into distinct environments must have kept the animators from getting bored. It also gives Judy and Nick an opportunity to venture into Zootopia's bad neighborhoods.

At various times Judy must prove to herself and the world that she's no dumb bunny; the same goes for this frolic of a movie. The highest compliment I can pay Zootopia? It's no dumb bunny, either.

Feuding brothers and their sheep

Director Grimur Hakonarson's Rams is, by any definition, a small movie. But that doesn't mean, it's not a resonant one. In Rams, Hakonarson, a documentarian by trade, tells the story of two feuding brothers who tend sheep in an isolated part of Iceland. Bearded and as shaggy looking (perhaps more so) than the sheep they tend, the brothers (Theodor Juliusson) and Sigurour Sigurjonsson) constantly are competing over who has the best groomed sheep. It's impossible to watch a movie this spare in tone without thinking of the bible; i.e., Cain and Abel reflections seem entirely appropriate. The story kicks in when a plague hits the area; sheep are inflicted with scrapie, a fatal sheep disease that means entire flocks must be put down. Brother Gummy (Sigurjonsson) kills his sheep, but Kiddi (Juliusson) resists, ultimately hiding several of his most treasured animals in his basement. Although Hakonarson doesn't resist comic impulses, his movie can't help but turn serious and its ending manages a neat trick; it's both affirming and chastening. Again, small doesn't mean unimpressive: Rams serves up a haunting blend of rural realism, cultural eccentricity and near-mythic poetry.

A Norwegian helping of disaster

I don't know if I've said it in this context before, but those familiar with my movie tastes know that I'm a generally impartial fan of disaster movies.

Because I have many things about which I legitimately can worry, I never have spent much time trying to determine why I enjoy this particular brand of guilty pleasure.

I say only this, "Earthquake? Bring it on?" "Flash flood? I'm there." "Tornado? Well, why not?"

So it was with more than the usual anticipation that I watched The Wave, a Norwegian entry into the kind of wanton destruction only nature can deliver.

The first thing to know is that The Wave takes place far from any beach. The movie involves the separation of a massive chunk of rock from a cliff wall. This huge mass of rock and debris plunges into a fjord.

As a result, a 250-foot towering wall of water surges through the fjord, overwhelming the small town of Geiranger.

We've already had a serious tsunami movie (The Impossible). We don't need another, so director Roar Uthaug takes a different tack. He focuses on geologist Kristian Eikjord (Kristoffer Joner), a dad who works at a mountain station that monitors seismic activity in the cliff wall.

Kristin seems to like his job, but he's about to give it up. He has taken a position with an oil company, which offers a higher salary and more stability in a less remote part of the country.

At the last minute before the move, Kristian decides not to take his two kids (Jonas Hoff Oftebro and Edith Haagenrud-Sande) to the city, but to stay in Geiranger until he can shake the feeling that big trouble looms.

Kristian's wife (Ane Dahl Torp) already had agreed to stay behind in order to complete her work at the town's hotel.

I don't suppose I need to tell you that all hell breaks loose, and that husband and wife, each with a different child in tow, are separated.

The actors are likable enough to create the level of concern this sort of picture requires; the effects are good; and director Uthaug creates some nail-biting tension, particularly in scenes staged in the depths of a mountain fissure.

And, yes, the CGI rendered wave that descends of the tiny town is convincing enough to inspire the expected response, something along the lines of "Oh, shit."

None of this is to say that Uthaug totally avoids the cliches that weaken every Hollywood disaster movie. There's the usual tension between commercial concerns and life-saving procedures -- albeit in a lower key than usual. Worse yet, the movie's slide of rock is accompanied by an equally dense cascade of improbabilities and an unfortunate, last-minute bow at the altar of uplift.

OK, so The Wave won't be anyone's perfect movie, and it's not nearly as morally ambiguous as Ruben Ostlund's Force Majeure, a Swedish film about a family torn apart by an avalanche.

But as a good, old-fashioned hunk of big-screen disaster, you could do a lot worse than The Wave, say last year's far more expensive and less involving San Andreas.