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."

More tales from New York City

Rebecca Miller's Maggie's Plan finds amusement in its characters' pretensions.

Watching writer/director Rebecca Miller's Maggie's Plan, I wondered whether something magical hadn'toccurred. Had Woody Allen and Noah Baumbach merged into an entirely new third person?

You all know Allen, and are familiar with his New York state of mind. The Baumbach connection requires only a little more explanation. Baumbach (Frances Ha and Mistress America) has worked with Greta Gerwig on several films, and Gerwig plays a pivotal role in Maggie's Plan, a New York-based movie in which the dialogue sometimes sounds as if it's standing on Allen's shoulders.

But Miller has her own view, one that sees characters as trapped by their pretensions and by relationships that are swamped by ego and need. As such, Maggie's Plan is a mostly pleasing seriocomic take on contemporary relationships.

Gerwig portrays Maggie, a young woman who has created one of those fuzzy, new-economy livelihoods: She tries to link artists with the commercial world.

Though single, Maggie wants a child. She arranges to acquire the seed of a sperm donor, a fellow named Guy (Travis Fimmel) who's carving out a career as a Brooklyn pickle maker. The Bavarian, he says, qualifies as one of his best.

Maggie's best pals (Bill Hader and Maya Rudolph) are a cynical couple who already have a child and seem immune to the massive child-centeredness of so many new parents.

Of course, Maggie's path to motherhood can't be simple. Just before she begins negotiating the tricky procedure of self-impregnation, she meets John (Ethan Hawke), a "ficto-anthropology" professor who's working on a novel.

John has needs that aren't being satisfied by his wife (Julianne Moore), a Columbia professor with a major academic career. He also has two kids.

John asks Maggie to read the first chapter of his novel. She does. Because she seems to understand his authorial intentions, he falls for her. She falls for him, probably because she's buoyed by his reliance on her. She's needed.

Miller skips John's break-up, and moves ahead several years. Now married, John and Maggie have a daughter of their own, and Maggie often finds herself caring for John's kids from his previous marriage.

Nothing like marriage, kids and family entanglements to take the bloom off the romantic rose.

Maggie begins to see that she has turned herself into a capable (her word) helpmate who nurtures John's ego and tends to his domestic needs.

The rest of the plot should be discovered in a theater, but know that it's not the story that makes Maggie's Plan appealing. Rather, the actors and a collection of amusing small moments create a welcome sense that Maggie's Plan is as much a comedy of manners as a rom-com that revolves around another indeterminate Millennial woman.

Gerwig plays Maggie as an apparently guileless woman who might be the most unprovocative dresser (long skirts or dresses, sweaters and loafers) to appear in a movie for some time. Maggie looks like a woman who's doing a Diane Keaton impersonation, but can't get it right.

As an insecure academic with literary aspirations, Hawke is funny and credible. Hawke's John never seems to know where he's going, unless its on a journey into his own head.

But it falls to Moore to deliver a comic masterpiece of a performance as Georgette, a Danish woman with a bizarre European accent and a personality composed of acute angles. Massively stilted, Georgette probably sounds like she's giving a lecture even when she's brushing her teeth.

Miller explores what it's like to fall in and out love in what many aptly have described as a mash-up of stylistic contexts: from screwball comedy to personal drama.

Whatever it is, Maggie's Plan shows us something about the way the omelettes of contemporary lives are made -- by, as the saying goes, breaking lots of eggs.

In Miller's case, many of those eggs are cracked directly over the characters' heads.

An unblinking look at refugee life

Trying to survive in French housing projects is no picnic..

If you have any interest in the world's immigration problems, you owe it to yourself to see director Jacques Audiard's Dheepan, the story of three Sri Lankan refugees who wind up living in a bleak housing project in the downscale suburbs of Paris.

To escape Sri Lanka, Dheepan -- the movie's title character -- creates a faux family. Yalini (Kalieswari Srinivasan) poses as his wife and the mother of nine-year-old Illayall (Claudine Vinasithamby), an orphaned girl plucked -- almost at random -- from a refugee camp.

After arriving in France, Dheepan lands a job as a janitor in a complex of buildings that's overrun by violence and drugs.

Almost from the start, we know that Dheepan is no pushover; he's a former fighter with the Tamil Tigers, a group that opposed the Sri Lankan government in a long and brutal civil war.

As played by Jesuthasan Antonythasan, the quiet but alert Dheepan constantly must be on guard. He knows that his survival, as well as that of his impromptu family, hinges on his ability not to call undue attention to himself.

Some of the movie deals with typical issues faced by immigrants: struggling with a new language, enrolling a child in school, mastering the ebb and flow of daily life in strange surroundings.

All of this takes place against the lawless backdrop of housing projects where unemployment runs high and gunfire has become commonplace.

Audiard does nothing to mar a track record that includes movies such as the 2001 thriller Read My Lips and 2009s A Prophet. If you've seen either of those movies, you have a feel for Audiard's style, an unforced realism that centers on characters pushed into extreme situations.

In Dheepan, which won the Palme d'Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, Audiard builds toward a violent conclusion that, at first, may strike you as too similar to a B-movie helping of blazing revenge.

I won't give away more, but know that this eruption directly connects to Dheepan's past. There's only so much a man like him can take before he snaps, and when he snaps, he reverts to his warrior past.

A brief epilogue feels too good to be true, but Audiard may have decided he owed both his characters and his audience some respite from the hardcore realities he has depicted.

If so, I was more than ready for it.

The Louvre during World War II

A Russian director on how culture becomes a spoil of war.

One masterpiece in a lifetime may be more than we reasonably can expect from any artist. Russian Ark (2003) stands as such a work, director Alexandr Sokurov's tour de force.

In Russian Ark, Sokurov took us through St. Petersburg's Hermitage Museum in a single, resonant 100-minute take that allowed us to immerse in 200 years of Russian history.

So when Sokurov turned his attention to the Louvre in Francofonia, his latest movie, expectations inevitably ran high, perhaps so high that even Sokurov couldn't meet them.

In Francofonia, Sokurov takes an unfortunately discursive look at the fabled French museum during World War II, focusing on two men: Jacques Jaujard, the Louvre's war-time director, and Franz Wolff-Metternich, the German officer and art expert chosen by Hitler to preside over the Louvre.

Jaujard and Metternich had an uneasy relationship, but both wanted to preserve the artistic heritage of the West by ensuring that the Louvre would retain its status even after the war. Much of the Louvre's art was hidden around the country prior to the German occupation, and Metternich seems to respect efforts to keep the Louvre French.

Not content to limit himself, Sokurov uses the story of Jaujard and Metternich as the basis for a sometimes intriguing, often ponderous examination of deeper questions about the way art is acquired.

In Sokurov's view, art and war are inevitable bedfellows, an observation he shares in a narration that he delivers. When countries are conquered, art becomes a spoil of war.

Sokurov's observations thread through a movie that employs location shooting, awkwardly acted re-enactments involving Jaujard and Metternich, newsreel footage of the German occupation of Paris and appearances by actors playing Napoleon and Marianne, French symbol of liberty.

Sokuruv further confuses matters with a recurring piece of business in which he attempts to communicate with the captain of a ship that's carrying valuable art through a powerful storm. A culture's artistic heritage threatened by natural turmoil? An attempt to add another layer of metaphor?

Informative, self-involved, stimulating and scattered, Francofonia can't always find a balance between brilliance and banality. I'm not sure I'd call it a failed work, but I certainly wouldn't proclaim it a wonder, either.

Still, it was nothing short of brave for Sokurov to make another museum-based movie after Russian Ark. Or maybe it was folly: After all, any artist who creates a masterwork forever is condemned to compete with him or herself.

Andy Samberg hip hops for laughs

A rapper falls on hard times.

I wanted to laugh.

And I often did, but Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping -- Andy Samberg's new comedy -- isn't uproariously funny and its cascading series of musical parodies certainly can't touch the winner and still champion mock-doc satire, This is Spinal Tap.

Put another way, Samberg hasn't made Spinal Tap for the Hip-Hop generation.

That's not to say that the movie, which is stocked with a surfeit of musicians and SNL vets, doesn't occasionally strike gold -- or at least a significant amount of gold plate.

Hamburg plays Conner4Real, a rapper who broke into the business with two boyhood pals (Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer), teen-agers who hit it big with a group called Style Boyz.

After the breakup, Conner enjoys some solo success, but his eagerly awaited second album tanks.

Somber, Taccone and Schaffer are all members of The Lonely Island, the trio that created SNL Digital Shorts, comic videos that fans will recognize as precursors to this full-length effort.

As a promotional scheme and commercial tie-in, Conner's management team signs a misguided agreement with an appliance company named AquaSpin. Every time an AquaSpin appliance is turned on, a Conner4Real song plays. The result: global power outages and rampant hostility toward Conner.

A strong comic cast, mostly underutilized, supports Stamberg's efforts. Tim Meadows plays Conner's manager), Sarah Silverman, his publicist and Maya Rudolph, a representative of the appliance company that goes into partnership with Conner. Bill Hader has a small part as a roadie and guitar wrangler.

You'll also see lots of real musicians: Questlove, Mariah Carey, Ringo Starr, Justin Timberlake, Snoop Dogg, Seal, D.J. Khaled, Usher, 50 Cent, Pharrell Williams and more.

The movie's collection of pop stars and rappers adds satirical weight. They talk with reverence about the StyleBoyz, an obvious joke because it's difficult to imagine that this group of white nerds could have made it big in the world of rap -- even by appropriating black styles.

In the album that flops, Conner goes way wrong with his choices. The main tune on his new album -- Not Gay -- is a belated cry for gender equality that lands with a thud, even with Conner's supposed genius for creating memorable catchphrases.

Much effort has gone into the movie's production numbers, presented as part of the sagging star's tour of the nation's arenas. The tour, by the way, eventually is hijacked by Conner's opening act, Hunter the Hungry (Chris Redd).

A Sacramento-bred suburban kid, Conner's egotistical personality seems less imaginatively conceived than some of the movie's rap lyrics.

Some of those lyrics are clever in a rude sort of way. I enjoyed a scene at an awards show that results in confusion over which crew is shooting which star's behind-the-scenes documentary. There's also something audaciously crazy about the idea that a rapper would write a song based on the way Spanish is spoken in Spain -- with a "lisp," says Conner.

So how do we sum up Popstar? Mostly sunny with sprinkles of laughs and no real taste for the rabid bite of satire.

Love in the time of paralysis

A British weepy that tries to get serious.

The title -- Me Before You -- sounds like it might be describing a self-help book for the terminally selfish.

But Me Before You has nothing to do with getting ahead in a ruthless, Trumpian world where deal-makers think of themselves as killers, and turn their adversaries into prey.

Actually, I'd like to see that movie, but Me Before You comes from a polar opposite direction. It's a bona fide weepy, so intent on wringing tears from its audience that complimentary boxes of tissues -- in a promotional wrapping, of course -- were handed out prior to a recent preview screening.

This adaptation of a popular 2012 novel by Jojo Moyes might have gotten somewhere if it hadn't starred an unbearably cute Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin, a guy who looks like a young Hugh Grant in a wheelchair. The story involves quadriplegia.

But that's just me. Clarke (Game of Thrones) and Claflin (The Hunger Games) are precisely the reason that the movie will work for those who are able to buy into it.

A glossy romance with a morbid twist, director Thea Sharrock's movie purports to deal with a few serious issues. Really, though, it's all about those tissues.

To prime the pump for a flow of tears, we're supposed to fall under the spell of the irrepressible Lou, a lower-class woman with a spiffed-up thrift store wardrobe and an unwillingness to appear in any two scenes wearing the same pair of shoes.

Lou's village also is home to a castle occupied by a wealthy family. Enter Will Traynor (Claflin), a hot shot investment guy who became a quadriplegic after being hit by a motorcycle while crossing a London Street.

Miserable that he no longer can be the dashing young man he once was, Will has sunk into a depression.

But wait ...

It's a sure bet that Lou, desperately in need of a job after losing employment at a local cafe, will try to reinvigorate Will's spirit when she's hired as his caretaker.

For his part, Will claims he'll never accept his new lot. If he can't be the man he was, he'd rather not be at all. He'll choose assisted suicide.

Will's parents -- Janet McTeer and Charles Dance -- give the movie gravitas. They're understandably concerned about their son.

McTeer and Dance also resemble drop-ins from another movie, reminders that this isn't a traditional rom-com, but a movie that wants to appeal to the same crowd that wept at The Fault in Our Stars.

Disability isn't the only obstacle to burgeoning love. Class issues intrude, as well. Will works to educate Lou, exposing her to subtitled films, books and Mozart. This isn't exactly Pygmalion, but you get the idea.

Clarke and Claflin develop some chemistry, but Clarke's Lou is bubbly to the point of overflow. She works overtime trying to persuade Will that he shouldn't travel to Switzerland, where assisted suicide is legal. She's a cheerleader for Team Life.

No self-respecting romance can proceed without glamor. Me Before You pours it on when Lou and Will visit Mauritius. He wants to give her a dream vacation, and she hopes that the trip will take his mind off any end-of-life plans.

To which I say: Assisted suicide should be a lot more than a plot device. It should be fully engaged as a subject.

A final fillip of encouragement turns the story into a tale of self-actualization for Lou; her relationship with Will may be just what she needs to leave the constricted confines of her village and make her way in the larger world.

Call me callous, but the little box of promotional tissues still sits on a forsaken corner of my desk. It remains unopened.

It's possible to argue that Me Before You is well done, but well done teary-eyed schlock is still teary-eyed schlock.

'Dark Horse' is a good bet

If you're a habitual fan of the underdog (in this case a role played by a horse), you won't want to miss Dark Horse, a documentary set in an economically depressed Welsh village. The story: Some of the village's residents pooled meager resources, and bought a race horse. The participating owners chipped in about $14 a week to pay for and train the horse, which they named Dream Alliance. Director Louise Osmond interviews the backers of the colt, as well as the woman who began the journey, Jan Vokes. Vokes worked as a bartender in the town, which had fallen on hard times since the closure of its coal mine in the 1980s. Dark Horse includes some re-enactments, a technique I mostly don't like, but the story is irresistible, largely because we can't help but root for Vokes and her neighbors to add some triumph to lives that badly need bolstering. Just as important, these folks aren't in it only for the money; they love the horse. Maybe that's why the whole genial lot of them were able to become working-class heroes in the sport of kings.

Tripping on the stairway to heaven

A documentary takes an inside look at a cult and its leader.

No one asked, but here -- anyway -- a few tips for spiritual seekers: 1. Follow no one who asks you to break all ties with your family. 2. Unless you're entering a monastery, be suspicious of anyone who asks you to avoid romantic involvement. 3. Be wary of any spiritual path that lacks roots that go beyond last week.

Ignoring some of these rules, director Will Allen spent 22 years following a self-proclaimed guru who attracted some 150 adherents to a group called The Buddhafield.

Known as Michel, this supposedly enlightened being walked among his followers wearing a Speedo. Sun glasses covered what we later learn is the glassy-eyed stare of someone who claims to be able to transmit spiritual experiences to others.

In an exercise called "The Knowing," Michel introduces "select" members of the Buddhafield to a direct experience of the divine -- or something like that.

Consisting of footage Allen shot while in the cult -- he was in charge of the group's videography -- Holy Hell also presents testimony from many of Michel's now-disillusioned followers. The big source of their disillusionment: betrayed trust.

During so-called "therapy" sessions, Michel sexually abused some of his male devotees. Turns out that Michel was a second-rate actor who apparently found his calling among the susceptible.

According to the film, Michel still works his "magic" in Hawaii, where he has accumulated new followers.

Allen doesn't penetrate deeply enough into Michel's psyche to explain him, and from the outside, it's sometimes difficult to understand how so many apparently intelligent people fell under his sway.

The major gains for members of the Buddhafield seem to involve a sense of belonging and, perhaps, the notion that devotees are on a special road. And, yes, some are genuine seekers.

Holy Hell plays best as a cautionary tale. Beware of anyone who promises to show you the way to higher spiritual ground. There's a danger that the path will lead only to the leader's self-aggrandizement -- and possibly worse.

Taking matters into her own hands

A woman's protest against an insurance company..

At one time or another, just about everyone has had something bad to say about an insurance company. In the Mexican thriller A Monster With a Thousand Heads, a distraught woman (Jana Raluy) decides that there's only one way to obtain a drug for her husband, a man in the last stages of his battle with cancer.

Accompanied by her teen-age son (Sebastian Aguirre Boeda), Raluy's Sonia heads to the home of the doctor who denied her husband a pain-relieving drug that wasn't covered by her insurance company's formulary. Knowing that she'll likely meet with resistance, she has armed herself with a pistol.

Director Rodrigo Pla relies on our distrust of insurance companies and bureaucracy to create sympathy for Sonia, a woman who's acting out of desperation and perhaps denial about her husband's inevitable fate. < Sonia's first target is Dr. Villalba (Hugo Albores), the physician charged with coordinating her husband's care. He manages to avoid her until she's at the front door of his home.

The story then follows Sonia and the captive Villalba as they seek out various executives of the insurance company to obtain the necessary signatures for Sonia to be granted an exception that will allow her to buy the drug.

The outcome of Sonia's criminal foray is partially revealed because as the movie unfolds, we hear snippets from the court proceeding that follows Sonia's impromptu protest.

Although presented in an entirely realistic manner, A Monster With a Thousand Heads can be viewed as a fantasy of the downtrodden and frustrated, those who -- in seeking help -- are faced with stony indifference of people who act as if they are too important to be bothered with the pain and suffering of those they supposedly serve.