Not much fun in this theme park

Austenland seems more like a goofy costume party than a sharply honed comedy.

Austenland takes place mostly in Britain, but the movie wanders all over the place. It tries to be a spoof about the much-read and still-admired novels of Jane Austen, a moony romance and a broadly conceived comedy that just happens to be about an American woman (Keri Russell) who's only definable character trait involves an obsession with what she apparently views as the dreamy side of Austen's work. Director Jerusha Hess co-wrote the script with Shannon Hale, who also wrote the novel on which the movie is based. But judging by the evidence on screen, this duo shortchanges Austen's observational skills, as well as her trenchancy. Russell plays Jane Hayes, a woman who's so enamored of Austen that she keeps a cardboard cutout of Colin Firth (as Mr. Darcy in the 1995 TV mini-series of Austen's Pride and Prejudice) in her bedroom. Jane decides to visit a British resort -- Austenland of the title -- that promises to provide full immersion in an Austen-like world. Once in Britain, Jane meets a buxom but crude American woman (Jennifer Coolige)and begins to interact with the male staff, notably a stuffed-shirt of a man (JJ Field) who seems to have gotten into the full swing of things and a stablehand (Bret McKenzie), a rough-hewn guy who refuses to pretend to be an Austen character. As Mrs. Wattlesbrook, the owner of a resort that looks as if it costs a small fortune to maintain, Jane Seymour adds a welcome bit of bite, and Russell can look luminous. But the movie -- which isn't particularly funny -- mostly comes across as a costume party with a shortage of memorable guests.

A visually beautiful 'Grandmaster'

Even with flaws, Wong Kar-wai's martial-arts epic tends to sweep you away.

Director Wong Kar-wai 's second foray into the world of martial arts after 1994's Ashes of Time might be one of the most elegantly mounted martial arts movie yet.*

In telling the story of the great Ip Man -- the martial artist who trained the legendary Bruce Lee -- Wong has made a sprawling, beautiful epic that suffers only because it has been trimmed down for U.S. consumption.

Best known for creating sensual, luciously stylized images in movies such as In the Mood For Love (2000), Wong has met martial-arts material more than half way.

Wong's fight scenes are nicely assembled, pitting various martial arts schools against one another and also helping to anchor a review of Chinese history from the 1930s through the 1950s. The story includes the Japanese occupation of China, frictions between northern and southern China and lots of jockeying for position among various martial arts masters.

Those familiar with Wong's work won't be surprised to learn that Grandmaster also tells an ill-fated love story between two great martial artists, Tony Leung's Ip Man and Zhang Ziyi's Gong Er, a woman who devotes her life to restoring the lineage built by her father (Wang Qingxiang), a master from northern China.

Wong allows Zhang -- who's playing a gifted female martial artist in a male-dominated milieu -- to share the spotlight with Leung as the movie explores themes hinged on fate, skill and honor, often in sequences soaked in heavy rain.

I'm not certain how the staunchest of martial arts fans will react to Wong's movie because the story is told in an operatic style that embraces melodrama and because Wong has aimed higher than the genre sometimes demands.

But Wong doesn't slight the artistry of fighting. Author and boxing aficionado Norman Mailer used to call boxing matches a form of conversation. Wong seems to adopt a similar view, making clear that when skilled opponents face off, they're engaging in an exchange between warring spirits.

To this end, he makes fine use of the work of gifted fight choreographer Yuen Wo Ping, who stages the fight scenes, a job he also performed for movies such as The Matrix, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Drunken Master.

Because the movie has been altered for American audiences, Wong adds title cards that offer historical guidance to those of us who come up short on Chinese history and martial-arts lore. These title cards play roughly the same function they would in a silent movie.

Even Wong's detractors will have to admit that the director's collaboration with cinematographer Philippe Le Sourd's has resulted in some of the year's most gorgeous imagery.

And true to the ethos of these movies, the martial arts warriors all exude skill, but only reach the highest levels of achievement when their craft is tempered by a sense of duty and honor.

History turns Ip Man into an exile. He moves to Hong Kong at a time when the great martial artists are less revered than they once were. His commitment to his art isn't always recognized.

The version of The Grandmaster being released in the U.S. includes a few narrative lapses and a protracted ending, but no matter how you react to the story Wong tells, it's difficult not to be swept away by his unashamed commitment to style and rhapsodic displays of visual artistry.

*Ashes of Time was recut and re-released as Ashes of Time Redux in 2008.

A lukewarm serving of 'Passion'

Director Brian De Palma's latest, a sometimes silly thriller.

If you want to understand something about the important differences between Brian De Palma's Passion and the French movie that De Palma has re-made -- Alain Corneau's 2011 Love Crime -- think about the difference between Rachel McAdams and Kristin Scott Thomas.

Thomas projects the sophistication, maturity and canny intelligence required for a Dangerous Liaisons-style battle set in the high-stakes world of corporate intrigue. McAdams doesn't project that kind of depth, at least not in De Palma's overtly kinky version of a movie that even Thomas and Ludivine Sagnier couldn't entirely pull off.

Here's the basic set-up in De Palma's movie: McAdams plays the ambitious head of the Berlin branch of a global advertising agency. Noomi Rapace, the Swedish actress familiar from Prometheus and the original The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, portrays an advertising acolyte who finds herself in a quasi-erotic, intensely competitive relationship with her unscrupulous boss (McAdams).

If McAdams doesn't entirely convince, neither does Rapace, who seems to have difficulty finding the core of a character that never quite computes, and, by the movie's end, De Palma has added the kind of twists that can be as confounding as they are revealing.

The French version focuses on a less-then-glamorous agro-business that's interested in expanding into new markets. De Palma chooses advertising, which affords him ample opportunity to play around with ideas about image, reality and the ways in which sleek surfaces can conceal savage impulses.

The cast is augmented by Paul Anderson, as Christine's lover and accountant, and by Karoline Herfurth, who appears as a loyal assistant to Rapace's Isabelle.

At times, Passion seems to be aiming for the kind of augmented suspense that De Palma has displayed throughout a career that has produced mixed results -- from Carrie (yea) to The Black Dahlia (nay) with stops at movies such as Scarface and The Untouchables in between.

De Palma's work deserves to be taken seriously, but Passion makes for a forgettable (and sometimes silly) entry into the director's expansive filmography. As someone who respects De Palma, I wish it were otherwise. And, yes, I find something a little sad about a late-career movie that's not likely to gain De Palma much traction.

Complicated thriller misses mark

Tangled plot short-circuits Closed Circuit.

When it's clear from the outset that a movie's going bad, one tends to make quick adjustments, accepting failure and allowing any lingering expectations to slip quietly toward the nearest exit. It might be worse when a movie flirts with success for a while, but never really consummates the relationship.

The British thriller Closed Circuit falls into the second category. The movie begins well enough, creating an aura of grave seriousness and raising an important topical question: How far should governments go in limiting transparency when facing real security threats?

As director John Crowley's thriller progresses, it becomes clear that Steven Knight's screenplay is weaving such a complicated web that it will be forced to hack its way through an overabundance of detail -- often at the expense of character development that could have nourished greater involvement.

The action focuses on two attorneys (Eric Bana and Rebecca Hall) who are assigned to defend a Turkish immigrant (Denis Moschitto) who has been accused of an act of terrorism, setting off a bomb in a crowded London marketplace.

As advocates handling different parts of the case, Bana's Martin Rose and Hall's Claudia Simmons-Howe decide not to disclose to the court that they had an affair that soured, leaving rose with a ruined marriage.

Although both lawyers represent the same defendant, they have different tasks. Rose has been assigned the criminal part of the case; Claudia's job involves overcoming official resistance to sharing evidence that the government contends could compromise national security.

Both attorneys are on on the same side, but they're not supposed to talk to each other.

There's no point faulting the actors, who receive supporting help from Jim Broadbent, as an attorney general who encourages Rose to get with a program that's more interested in protecting the state than in giving the defendant a fair shake.

Also look for good work from Riz Ahmed as a government spy who's supposed to be helpful to Simmons-Howe, but who may have less honorable motives.

Crowley (Intermission and Boy A) works with cinematographer Andriano Goldman to give the movie a dark, edgy feel. But no amount of craft can justify the screenplay's cynicism, which seems to have been applied in ladle-sized helpings that drown out any honestly arrived at conviction.

A comedy about a wild pub crawl

The World's End scores in unexpected ways.

One shudders to think what The World's End might have been. Had the movie been made by anyone other than Edgar Wright -- the director of a trilogy of movies that began with Shaun of the Dead (2004) and continued with Hot Fuzz (2007) -- it probably would have been a kind of British knock-off of the Hangover movies, a comedy that attempted to max-out on sleaze and grossness.

Consider the plot: Wildly irresponsible Gary King (Simon Pegg) encourages five reluctant buddies to reunite to finish a pub crawl they began when they were young men eager to escape the confines of their hometown of Newton Haven, a northern English town with a generic look and no discernible distinctions.

For a time, it does seem as if Wright and his cohorts (a list that includes Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman and Eddie Marsan) plan to follow a fairly standard comedy map.

We know, for example, that Frost's Andy, who seems to have buttoned-down his life, will eventually loosen up and abandon his teetotalling ways. But Wright, who wrote the screenplay for The World's End with Pegg, has a stranger, sillier and much more creative movie in mind.

Suffice it to say that the screenplay adds a wild sci-fi twist when the former high-school buddies discover that their hometown has been invaded by aliens who have turned most of the population into robots.

Once this twist has been revealed, the movie becomes increasingly crazier and a lot more inventive, employing some witty and well-executed special effects and adding an appearance by Rosamund Pike, as the sister of one of the men and a love interest for two of them. A game Pierce Brosnan appears in an extended cameo as one of the boys' former teachers.

The World's End, by the way, is the entirely appropriate name of the bar where the pup crawl is supposed to conclude.

As chief instigator, Pegg provides the movie with its centerpiece, sustaining a performance that's at once crazed, gleeful and desperate: The rest of the crew keeps pace.

No point revealing the jokes, but they are plentiful and mostly funny. Wright also manages to infuse the comedy with a sense of abandon without losing control of his movie.

Neat trick: The World's End has just enough trenchancy to keep it from being lost in its own silliness and just enough silliness to keep us from having to take any of it too seriously.

Creativity grows in the desert

If you've never attended Burning Man, a week-long gathering that takes place every August in the parched Black Rock Desert of northern Nevada, Spark: A Burning Man Story will give you more than a passing idea about what makes the event so popular among its many devotees. As many as 60,000 people attend Burning Man, which not only tolerates but encourages what looks like rampant indulgence of both creative expression and unconventional thinking.

Directors Steve Brown and Jessie Deeter have made a documentary that has two major thrusts: One deals with growing pains experienced by an event that began with an impromptu, anarchic spirit, but which (of necessity) has had to adopt a degree of organizational efficiency that some view as a betrayal of the event's founding spirit.

In 1996, safety issues arose. The Burning Man organizers, who sometimes work under highly stressful conditions, had to make difficult decisions about how to manage a small, if temporary, city in the middle of nowhere.

Popularity also has posed problems, so much so that tickets to the 2012 Burning Man had to be distributed by lottery, a process that left many long-time supporters without access.

The rest of the film takes us to the 2012 edition of Burning Man, and, yes, there's something appealingly mad about the idea of assembling massive sculptures that are on display for a week before they're dismantled and carted away or even destroyed. An example: In 2012 A former Marine named Otto Von Danger built a wooden replica of Wall Street and then set it ablaze, much to the delight of a cheering throng.

Judging by the documentary -- which eventually succumbs to the tedium of over-exposure -- Burning Man's 2012 edition offered a mixture of exuberant creativity, lingering infantilism, left-over Hippie exhibitionism and playful countercultural vibes.

Whatever the value of Burning Man, the documentary makes it appear as if attendees work their butts off but have fun.

Is it my idea of a good time? Not really. But now, if anyone asks me (which I doubt they will) whether I have any interest in attending Burning Man, I'll have a ready reply: No need, I'll say. I saw the movie.

A comedy finds its voice

"In a world ... "

Remember when it seemed as if every Hollywood trailer began with those three words.

They were delivered in deep, sonorous and often momentous tones by the late Don LaFontaine , the man who provided the voice-over narration for more than 5,000 trailers. LaFontaine's voice became instantly recognizable to a generation of moviegoers who knew its sound even if they didn't know the name of the man to whom it belonged.

The new comedy In a World -- a debut film from director and actress Lake Bell -- takes a witty, engaging look at the contemporary world of voice-overs. Bell immerses us in a little-known corner of show-business, centering her comedy on a young woman (played by Bell) who's trying to make her mark.

Funny without feeling compelled to put pedal to the comic metal, In A World reminds us that every sphere of human activity -- regardless of how obscure -- tends to produce a hierarchy, an absurd pecking order built on a foundation of rampant egotism.

Bell's Carol faces major psychological and social roadblocks. She's trying to break into a male-dominated field currently ruled by her father (Fred Melamed), a voice-over actor who has had a major career and an ego to match.

We meet Melamed's Sam in a scene in which he tells Carol that she'll have to move out of his house because his new, 31-year-old girlfriend (Alexandra Holden) will be moving in.

Melamed, whose immense shaggy body is exposed in scenes set in a steam bath, qualifies as one of the most unusual screen presences around. He appeared as overly solicitous home-wrecker Sy Ableman in the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man. Here, Melamed becomes a reigning pasha of the voice-over world, a man so full of himself he believes he can pass his mantle to a younger successor, an equally puffed-up voice actor named Gustav Werner (Ken Marino).

And, of course, Sam enunciates as if careful pronunciation were all that's needed to demonstrate an obvious superiority of character.

Once ejected from her father's home, Carol takes up residence with her sister Dani (Michaela Watkins). Dani lives in a small apartment with her husband (Rob Corddry), a film editor who works at home. Dani works as a concierge in a Los Angeles hotel.

Not only does Bell capture the highly competitive world of vocal acting, but she also has made a smart and funny comedy that includes characters who are colorful, a little odd and mostly good company.

Principal among these is Louis (Demetri Martin), an insecure sound engineer who helps Carol's career and who also has a crush on her.

The movie eventually begins to revolve around a highly sought after voice over job, the trailer for a quartet of movies called The Amazon Games. The promotional plan for Amazon Games calls for revival of the legendary phrase, "In a world."

Bell, who has played secondary roles in movies such as What Happens in Vegas and who has appeared in TV shows such as The Practice, demonstrates talent both before and behind the camera.

In so doing, she's accomplished something commendable: She's made a movie about people whose preoccupations often make them seem silly, but who still refuse to be confined by the rigid borders of caricature.

A western in modern dress

Ain't Them Bodies Saints, grounded in Texas, but aiming for something bigger.

I don't know precisely what director David Lowery had in mind when he titled his Texas-based drama, Ain't Them Bodies Saints I do, however, know that there's something about Texas that inspires certain filmmakers to create characters who parcel out their words cautiously, as if they were hole cards to be turned over reluctantly but with no doubt about their ultimate power.

That's the feeling you get watching the characters in Lowery's movie, which moves to the kind of dreamy rhythms that have marked the work of filmmaker Terrence Malick. Lowery doesn't have Malick's grace, but he knows how to tell a story that's grounded in Texas color but which also strives to reach a mythic plane that transcends any specific location. Who knows? Maybe Texas really is a launching pad from which the mythic stratosphere becomes more readily attainable.

Ain't Them Bodies Saints tells the tale of Ruth (Rooney Mara), a woman who has had a long-standing involvement with Bob Muldoon (Casey Affleck), a bank robber who loves her more than he loves just about anything. Bob loves Ruth so much, he takes the rap for her in a post-robbery shoot-out that wounds a deputy; Bob turns his 25-year prison sentence into an act of self-sacrifice so that Ruth can remain free.

Bob writes letters to Ruth from his jail cell, and we know from the start that Bob's only purpose in life is to reunite with the woman who has since had his child, a daughter.

Almost all of this happens in what can be viewed as the film's prologue. The real story begins after Bob escapes from jail, returns to the town where Ruth lives and tries to re-enter her life, a goal that we know he'll never achieve because Ain't Them Bodies Saints is less like a traditional drama than an illustrated story book composed as accompaniment for a doleful country tune about ill-fated love.

With Bob on the loose, Patrick (Ben Foster), a local cop -- the very one wounded by Ruth -- adopts a vigilant attitude toward Ruth and her child. She's also watched over by Skeritt (Keith Carradine), who runs a local store and who evidently had a relationship with Bob and one of his running buddies when both were kids.

The key to the film's mystery is embodied in Mara, who plays a woman capable of reflecting emotion off both hard and soft surfaces. Ruth seldom smiles, and she's clearly not to be trifled with on any level.

If pressed, I'd say that Lowery has made a film about fate and tragedy. Ain't Them Bodies Saints opens with a title card that reads, "This was Texas," perhaps a suggestion that the film takes place in a past governed by the logic of a thousand westerns and that something -- perhaps the flinty, uncompromising integrity of its characters -- has been forever lost.

Lowery's dialog puts an emphasis on conviction: When Carradine's character tells a thug who's looking to settle an old score that he'll kill him if he turns up again, we're supposed to know that Carradine's Skeritt means what he says. The man will not die an accidental death.

With its strange musical score, its improbabilities and its hard-scrabble ethos, Ain't Them Bodies Saintsmay be a bit too self-conscious for its own good. And I often wonder whether these kinds of movies depict credible characters or should be seen more as reflections of how filmmakers wish people were.

But if Ain't Them Bodies Saints is a story about tragic love, it's also a love song, sung to characters who pride themselves on looking even the worst possible news square in the eye.

Artists at odds and in love

Two unforgettable characters make Cutie and the Boxer a rare treat.

When Ushio Shinohara -- now 80 -- was a young man, he probably never dreamed that he'd be scuffling to sell his art, fretting over his inability to pay rent on his tiny Brooklyn loft or stuffing a suitcase with cardboard sculptures he hoped to sell in Japan.

When Shinohara moved from Japan to the U.S. in 1969, he was a young man of intense promise, an artist whose avant-garde approach garnered attention if not financial success. Infatuated with art and with himself, Shinohara kept working, but he also became an alcoholic party-animal who spent far too much time carousing with friends.

Shinohara and his wife Noriko now live in a cramped loft with a leaky roof and very little breathing room. She's also an artist, and at 59, she's just beginning to come into her own with a series of semi-autobiographical drawings built around two characters, Cutie and the aptly named Bullie.

Bullie is an obvious stand-in for Shinohara. If you want to understand Shinohara's attitude toward his wife, consider one of the statements he makes in Cutie and the Boxer, a beautifully crafted documentary about the life of a couple who have stayed together through lives marked by impoverishment, misery and struggle.

"The average one has to support the genius,'' says Shinohara, leaving no doubt about which one he believes himself to be.

Director Zachary Heinzerling, who served as his own director of photography, has made skillful use of scenes in which husband and wife interact. He also uses home movies from the past and a charming but tough-minded bit of animation made from Noriko's drawings about her life with a husband who's 21 year's her senior.

Noriko met her future husband when she arrived in New York at the tender age of 19, an aspiring artist who was wowed by Ushio's dynamism.

Shinohara's work includes what he calls "action paintings,'' paintings made by dipping foam-wrapped boxing gloves into buckets of paint and punching large canvases. Not surprisingly, these paintings acquire a blunt, provocative urgency.

Shinohara's cardboard sculptures -- many of motorcycles -- display equal amounts of wit and invention. He's not a deluded no-talent, and his lack of success doesn't seem to have diminished his opinion of himself.

If you're looking for a Japanese George and Martha, a couple who constantly slam each other verbally, you'll be disappointed. Cutie and the Boxer is not a wannabe Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Noriko tends to be honest, but matter-of-fact about her dissatisfactions, and although his ego, like his boxing paintings, still packs a wallop, Shinohara seems to know when it's advisable to back off.

Heinzerling approaches the competitiveness that inevitably results from two artists living together (they even share gallery space in one show) indirectly, capturing it Noriko's looks or Shinohara's off-hand comments.

Shinohara isn't the first charismatic artist to attract a younger woman, but what's unique about Cutie and the Boxer is the mystery at its core, the complex tie that has kept these two together for more than 40 years.

Noriko proves the more disarming of the two. Her pig-tails give her a pretty, girlish look, but when you see her art (much of it captioned), you begin to understand that she's taking quiet revenge on a husband who has dominated her a life.

The couple's son Alex also paints, but seems to have acquired his father's penchant for alcohol abuse. Noriko understands that the circumstances of her life have not been ideal for parenthood.

Heinszerling punctuates segments about the artists with beautifully rendered views of New York exteriors that provide small breaks from the Shinoharas' insularity.

Both Noriko and Ushio are devoted to art; he frets about what will and won't sell and both seem to understand that that they are bound to each other, just as they are bound to the creative processes that have ruled their lives.

Did Ushio squander his abilities by having far too much fun during the 1970s? Did Noriko indulge him more than she should have? Probably, but Heinzerling's film is less about nagging regret than about the inexplicable bond that keeps these two very distinctive people together.

At one point, Noriko says that they're like two plants in one pot. Sometimes, one gets more nourishment than the other. But, she says, when they both thrive together, the feeling cannot be surpassed.

This joint thriving may not be the norm for Ushio and Noriko, but then nothing seems entirely normal about this rare, intimate and genuinely involving film.