Director: J.J. Abrams
Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Benedict Cumberbatch, Peter Weller, April Eve, Bruce Greenwood
Review: 3.5 stars (of five)

Although J.J. Abrams arguably squanders (again) a potentially great villain, he pulls off a Star Trek sequel with all the high-stakes, high-speed insanity of the first installment, but a better grip on the difficult art of breakneck story logic. That’s not to say that Abrams isn’t still putting runaway-train pacing ahead of all other concerns, but at least he rarely jettisons all pretense at logic.

(The weirdest nonsensical thing about this film is that the crew members all wear about six variations of uniform, which seems weirdly … fetishistic.)

One of Abrams’ triumphs in this sequel is that he, at moments, really captures the flavor of the original series. The opening sequence is, like the start of a James Bond movie, the tail end of a caper not strictly related to the story the film will tell. It feels, despite the high-speed frenzy of modern action films, like the old show, and has so much promise that the rest of the film disappoints for never quite reaching that height again.

A similar retro strength of the story is its moral dimension. Benedict Cumberbatch starts out as a basic terrorist (the film comes out just a little too close to last month’s Boston Marathon bombing, but it doesn’t dwell on the carnage of Cumberbatch’s initial, explosive attack), and Starfleet’s response is a futuristic version of the controversial, extrajudicial drone strikes that the U.S. has relied on so heavily in the Middle East. While Kirk is initially caught up in an understandable thirst for vengeance, Spock delivers a compelling and succinct argument against government-sponsored assassination outside the court system. Later, Peter Weller’s Admiral Marcus provides ample example of how, in facing a new and frightening enemy, we might go too far in defending our liberties, until we become as corrupt and vicious as our foes. (The Into Darkness subtitle can only refer, ultimately, to this dark side of ourselves, of U.S. or Western democracy as represented by the Federation and Starfleet.)

The story’s execution of this, by giving us a second villain who’s even flatter than Eric Bana in the previous episode, is imperfect, but nonetheless, it’s a welcome concept. At its best, Star Trek is always about more than action and adventure. You wouldn’t know that by watching the rest of the movie, though. Abrams puts a lot of gunplay into the movie, making it feel like a more militaristic thriller, a Bourne Identity for the 23^rd century. That’s not Star Trek, and neither is the closing action sequence, which is just a big chase/fight reminiscent of the floating-traffic bit in the second Star Wars prequel. Action directors today seem to think that louder, longer, and relentless is the way to deliver new thrills to jaded audiences, but it’s no more effective here than it was in the interminable climax to Iron Man 3.

Another plus: Abrams gives the larger cast more time to shine than their counterparts in the original movie series ever did. Uhura, Sulu, Scotty and Chekov each get at least one small, pivotal moment, whereas the original series often had little time for the crew beyond the core trio of Kirk, Spock and McCoy. Perhaps it’s the focus on the larger crew, and a greater sense of personal relationship (they touch each other for reassurance and comfort a lot, brief little moments) that results in Cumberbatch getting less development.

But no, that’s not true. Where Cumberbatch could’ve been one of the great Trek villains, as compelling as Ricardo Montalban’s Khan, the script demands that he instead spend too much time impersonating Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter–though of course, the savage arrogance here means that Cumberbatch can remind us of nobody so much as his own Sherlock Holmes gone to pathological extremes. Cumberbatch is great, but he deserved more attention from the writers.

(The film also gives us Klingons for the first time in this series, and wastes them on a cameo.  This probably means, alas, that Trek 3 will be “all-out war,” given the way Abrams likes to push the action.)

The film plays a lot with our memories of past Trek adventures, with the climax, particularly, riffing successfully on a pivotal Original adventure. It’s a lot of fun to watch—Abrams is that kind of clever, playing with memories and expectations and surprise variations. He and his writers are less successful with Kirk’s story arc, which contains implausible plotting and a vague and forgettable emotional journey. And while the developing Kirk-Spock friendship is explored again, the antagonism between the two, when we know they ultimately belong together, makes it feel weirdly like a romantic comedy, like you want to yell, “Just kiss him, already.”

Ultimately, Into Darkness is an enjoyable film, and Abrams seems to be improving in his handling of the franchise, but his decision to pander to modern action styling rather than fully embrace what Star Trek is and should be means this series of films, despite a great cast, may never fully capture the old magic.

Directed by: Shane Black
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Kingsley, Guy Pearce, Rebecca Hall, Don Cheadle
Review: 2.5 stars (of five)

Iron Man 3 is a bit of a disappointment. It’s a long slog, a disjointed blur that never entirely gels. It’s a series of events, bits, that doesn’t feel like a coherent, well-paced movie, largely because it isn’t.

Of course, Robert Downey Jr. is entertaining as cinema’s jerkiest, most sarcastic superhero, but four movies in (counting last summer’s modest art film, The Avengers), the smug strutting perhaps wears a little thin. Shane Black directs—and cowrites—a story that moves from action sequence to smart-ass zinger to action sequence relentlessly, but without much pizazz or inventiveness. The final action sequence has one dominant feature that we haven’t seen in an Iron Man outing so far, and Black and Co. run it into the ground. The dark, murky sequence, like the whole film, just goes on too long. At two hours, seven minutes, the film is maybe forty minutes longer than its story merits.

The real shame is that there’s some attempt here to give the film some depth. Downey’s character is going through a rough emotional patch after the finale to The Avengers, in which he flew a nuclear missile through a wormhole to attack an invading army that was doing a great job of destroying Manhattan. He’s got undiagnosed PTSD, somewhat poorly presented as a series of panic attacks, and that’s refreshing. Your average six-month stretch of Marvel Comics will destroy New York about two and a half times, never with consequence, but the greater realism of cinema perhaps demands more thought to such epic destruction and events of cosmic import.

Additionally, Downey’s relationship with rom-com foil Gwyneth Paltrow has advanced beyond the status quo of the first two films, his main motivation in facing the villain is deeply personal, and the film builds to an effort on the hero’s part to grow up and be a better man. Yet it’s all so slapdash in execution that none of it sticks, any more than the high-speed special effects, or the totally superfluous and disappointing 3D, have any impact.

Still, the film delivers much of what the Iron Man brand has been promising, and is arguably better than the second film in the trilogy. It has a really nice idea, which is to get Downey out of his armor as much as possible. But it runs way too long with the concept, so the film is often less Iron Man and more gadget-era James Bond. Whatever you call the ability to calibrate an idea and an audience’s appetite for “enough,” that thing is broken in this movie.

The story does have a few very nice twists, particularly from Ben Kingsley, who plays global terrorist known as The Mandarin. (The original comic-book Mandarin was a direct Fu Manchu ripoff that would almost certainly be offensive today. The movie updates the character into a global terrorist with a multicultural persona—Kingsley is never meant to be taken as Chinese, or connected to China—and deftly dodges potential tastelessness.

One wishes more had been done with the villains, and with Rebecca Hall’s character (a top scientist who had a one-night stand with Downey), and especially Don Cheadle. Cheadle’s a world-class actor, but the filmmakers draw no brilliance from him, and don’t come near to challenging Kingsley or Downey. (Also, Cheadle’s character is an Iron Man in his own right, who never really gets to use his own armor. Were the filmmakers afraid of upstaging Downey?)

In sum, the filmmakers have a lot of half-baked ideas but not enough heart, or real interest, to truly exploit them.

Eisner Award-winning author Greg Rucka is know for his gritty noir-influenced style, his critically acclaimed runs on mainstream titles like The Punisher and Batwoman and for his proclivity to write multi-faceted, bad-ass female protagonists

We recently sat down with Rucka as he ends a decade-long collaboration with Marvel and DC and throws himself full force into his creator owned projects, including Queen and Country and LAZARUS.

Who or what were your influences as a writer?

That’s not a short-answer question. There are honestly too many to count. I can go from Joyce Carol Oates to Raymond Chandler, Hemingway to Douglas Adams, and they’re all valid. Stephen Crane had a huge influence on me with regards to the portrayal of violence. Hawthorne always inspires me. Amongst my contemporaries, writers like Dennis Lehane and Michael Koryta have been influential.

Why choose comic books? What drew you to this particular medium as a creator?

I love the medium, it’s really as simple as that. Once I got into writing comics, I began to see more clearly how the medium could be used to tell some stories better than, say, novels or short stories or movies or plays. But, like all writers who work in comics, we’re here because we love them. It’s not a mystery. Comics are incredibly powerful, and they engage the reader in a truly unique way, requiring a participation that almost no other storytelling form can claim. I provide only half of the action in any given story – the reader provides the rest, supplies what’s missing in between the panels.

Renee Montoya from Gotham Central

The characters in Gotham Central seem so grounded in reality, how hard was it to work in the more fantastic elements of the world of Batman?

Not as hard as you might think. I come from a place where good writing, regardless of its setting, is contingent on being emotionally honest with your characters and your story. That honesty is what makes Central work, I think; the people may not be in the most believable situations, but their reactions, their words, their emotions, those are genuine. So, I suppose, I should say it wasn’t difficult for me to be true to the characters, and I don’t think it was a problem for Ed, either. Other writers… them, I’m not so sure about.

How do you feel about how DC “repurposed” Renee Montoya and Crispus Allen as mainstream superheroes after Gotham Central came to an end?

I don’t think they did repurpose them. The DC universe is a super-hero universe. Renee’s journey out of darkness and into becoming the Question was, for me, a very organic one. Crispus’ growth/change was much more problematic, for a variety of reasons. His ending was very fixed, and the idea of him becoming the Spectre was problematic as hell to me, for a variety of reasons.

How does getting to play in the established DC and Marvel universes differ from when you write independent comics?

When you write for Marvel or DC, you’re using someone else’s very, very expensive toys. They get to dictate what you do with them, where they go, where they can’t. Working creator-owned, I’m my own master, and I can do as I see fit with my story and my people. That’s the biggest difference. It’s called work-for-hire for a reason, you know? Sometimes, it can be a bitter pill to be told you can’t do X, or you must participate in Y, and it will compromise the story you’re trying to tell, absolutely. The flip-side, however, is that you’re getting to write Batman or Superman or Wonder Woman, and that’s a chance to add to a legacy that only continues to grow.

You are reteaming with Michael Lark on LAZARUS. Tell me about the book.

LAZARUS is a hard sci-fi story set in a dystopian future, kind of like Children of Men meets The Godfather. The world’s economy has collapsed, and wealth now rests in the hands of a very, very small portion of the populace, amongst certain Families that will do almost anything to protect what they have. The rest of the population has been reduced to servitude or destitution.

LAZARUS

Forever Carlyle is the genetically modified daughter of the Carlyle family, their Lazarus, and her job is to protect the family from all threats, be them from other Families or from the Waste population that is always threatening to rise up.

It’s… pretty darn dark, actually.

Lazarus, Stumptown, Batwoman, Rachel Alves, Renee Montoya: You have a reputation for creating strong female characters that resonate with audiences. What draws you to create women leads so often?

I have answered this question so many times it’s hard for me not to repeat myself. The simple answer is, I like writing about women. A deeper answer is that these are traditionally male-dominated and male-agencied stories, and that by changing the gender of the protagonist, one can cast very old tropes in a new light. Sometimes, the story can be radically altered, sometimes now.

But, honestly, it simply comes down to this – I like women, I like women as heroes, I enjoy writing about them.

I’m intrigued by Lady Sabre & the Pirates of the Ineffable Aether. The Web would appear to be a great equalizer, as it puts the power of publishing in the hands of the creators, but not too many people are able to make money with it yet. Do you see it as a game changer? How do you monetize your work online or is that a concern for you at this point?

I’ve no idea how to successfully monetize, honestly, and frankly, if you figure it out, let me know. Right now, we’re looking to launch a kickstarter to fund our first trade collection, and hopefully that’ll help us recoup some of what we’ve invested.

That said, the web is the great publishing unknown. On it, you’re free to tell whatever story you like, to take it wherever you wish. In the traditional publishing windows, it’s very difficult to get your work out if it doesn’t fit into certain pigeon-holes, holes that the publishers perceive but that, in the main, aren’t really there. So the playing field for, at least, getting the material out there is more level. The downside is obviously that we all need to make a living, and you can only run at the web for so long before the money runs out.

I really enjoyed your run on The Punisher, and I was more than a little dismayed that Marvel undid the brilliant premise you left them with in less than a month. Do they have any plans to use Rachel Alvez? Are they even going to bother explaining how Frank got out of Tony’s super-prison?

I’ve no idea. I highly doubt they’ll use her again other than to kill her off at some point. And no, I don’t think they’ll ever explain how Frank got out of prison.

You broke pretty publicly with Marvel after they took you off The Punisher. Have the big two gotten worse to work for? Or are some creators just wising up to the limitations of work for hire?

Did I? It certainly didn’t seem that way to me at the time, I guess. My relationship with the Big Two is always changing, and I try very hard to never say never. I think Marvel and DC both are in very dire straits at the moment, honestly; they’re fighting to remain relevant as publishing houses rather than, say, IP farms, and neither are doing a very good job of it, in my opinion.

Working WFH is always a challenge, and I do think that we’re seeing more outlets for creators aside from Marvel and DC. Image has been very good to Michael and myself, and Dark Horse has been making great strides in the same way. But I think the one has led to the other – that the difficulties in working in the mainstream has forced creators to pursue other avenues.

Directed by: Brian Helgeland
Starring: Chadwick Boseman, Harrison Ford, Nicole Beharie, Alan Tudyk
Review: 3 stars (of five)

As a film, 42 is too heavy-handed and reverential, a sun-kissed hagiography that recreates a slice of history without seeming to reveal anything.  Because the film is about Jackie Robinson breaking baseball’s “color barrier,” that’s exactly what you want–if there’s a “dark side to the Jackie Robinson story,” I sure wouldn’t wanna see it.  So perhaps writer/director Brian Helgeland tells the story in the only possible tone, but that still detracts from it as a cinematic experience.

It’s one thing to present Robinson affectionately and as an unvarnished hero whose only flaw is he struggled, sometimes, to stomach the abuse he faced on and off the field.  It’s another to be so damned blatant about it.  By the time a character explicitly compares Robinson to Christ, the only surprise is the film took that long to get around to it.

Another arguable flaw is the way credit for Robinson’s accomplishments is shared between the man and Brooklyn Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey.  It’s true that Rickey began planning to bring African Americans into Major League Baseball years before he found Robinson, and that by all intents he was motivated both by sincere opposition to racism and sound business sense.  But as presented in the film, Rickey–played by a gone-to-seed Harrison Ford–is a mastermind who pretty much scripts Robinson’s every move, repeatedly counseling the young infielder to turn the other cheek (see how easy it is?) to the brutal taunts of white, racist baseball fans and players.  It would be possible to come away feeling Robinson was merely Rickey’s creation, a stellar performer on the field who only succeeded at overcoming the challenges of racism through the patronage of Rickey.  On the other hand, Robinson relies on the support of many people, black and white, and that need not be to the player’s discredit.

I type this without a detailed history of Robinson’s career or Rickey’s, so it’s not a challenge to historical accuracy (although the film does take a few liberties and simplifications), but to the way the story comes across on film.  And despite these potential drawbacks, the film has a lot of strengths.  First off, it’s nice.  Chadwick Boseman’s Robinson is a strong, principled, nice guy who struggles to keep a justified temper in check, and it’s a temper that even at its worst is far less than his environment deserves.  His relationship with his wife is also a delight.  Nicole Beharie’s Rachel Robinson is charming, beautiful, dignified and effervescent.  It’s a pleasure to spend time with this inspiring duo.

Probably the most complex aspect in a film full of blatantly noble or blatantly racist characters is the evolution of the Dodgers team.  A number of the white players start and finish the film as unrepentant racists, but it’s those players who are uncomfortable with Robinson, unsure about black people, race relations in general, who make the film.  White athletes who have accepted societal racism without ever really thinking about it find themselves surrounded by virulent, vile racists and realize, slowly, that they don’t want to be on that side of history.  Of course, this film makes sure to flat out tell us how the hardcore racists are pushing people like this toward enlightenment, but the spoon-feeding in the script doesn’t ruin the quality of the performances.

The film recreates some key incidents in Robinson’s early career, episodes of blatant racism such as being turned away from hotels, facing hostility in his own locker room, and taking the insanely abusive taunts of a rival team’s manager (Alan Tudyk, gamely spouting an appalling string of discriminatory invective), and shortstop PeeWee Reese’s pause, in front of a racist crowd in Cincinnati, to famously drape an arm around his teammate’s shoulders.  It’s a little stunning from the perspective of the 21st century to think what a big deal that was.  But that’s what this film does: paints a picture of the world as it was in 1947, and gives us a taste of what Robinson’s remarkable achievement meant.

Kurt Busiek’s Astro City is a creator-owned comic book that started back in 1995, with Busiek providing writing, Brent Anderson on pencils and Alex Ross providing covers and character design. A critical and commercial success from the beginning, Astro City has been somewhat hampered bu an irregular publication schedule and it has struggled to find a long-time home with a publisher as the many of the smaller publishers have merged or been bought as the industry consolidated. After a recent health scare, Busiek announced that Astro City would be published by DC comics as an ongoing monthly title Badmouth managed to get Busiek to answer five questions about Astro City and working on a creator-owned comic.

Astro City is interesting in that it uses “super-heroes” as a setting, rather than a genre. The superheroics themselves are often superfluous to the story. Was that intentional?

Yes, although I wouldn’t quite describe it that way. I see it as solidly in the superhero genre, but in this case the action-adventure is the context, and the character stories are the focus, rather than the usual pattern, where the action-adventure is the focus and the character stuff is frosting on the cake. To mix a bunch of metaphors.

I wanted to explore what else can be done with superheroes, what else happens in that kind of world, if we look at what’s happening down the street and around the corner from the big adventure. So that’s where we started.

What kinds of opportunities does working on a creator-owned book offer? Drawbacks?

The quick, snappy answer is that the upside of doing creator-owned stuff is that you get to make it all up yourself, and the downside is that you have to make it all up yourself.

Working within an existing universe means you have access to all that stuff other people thought up — characters, ideas, themes, even unfinished story lines — and that can be a ton of fun. But there’s a lot to be said for telling your own story, your own way, from scratch. Add to that the other advantages of owning your own work — you don’t have to do what the boss tells you, because it’s yours, not theirs, and if there are movies or toys or whatever based on your project, them money comes to you. That kind of tips the scale over into creator-owned stuff being more attractive, as long as you can win over enough of an audience to keep going. But both have their strengths.

You obviously insert a lot of pastiche or archetypal characters into the book. How do you walk the line between paying homage and being derivative?

I don’t do any pastiche in Astro City, really. I know people don’t believe that, but we’re not trying to imitate other work, and “archetype” doesn’t mean “copy.” I started using the term to make a distinction, and a lot of readers seem to think that I must be just using a fancy word to mean “imitation.” But Samaritan (to pick an example) is not a copy of Supermen; they’re both built on the same archetypes, which is not the same thing. Superman is built on archetypes like “savior,” “outsider,” “immigrant,” “the hero in humble garb” and so on. Samaritan shares some of them — savior and outsider, certainly — but not all of them.

We do throw in little homages here and there in geographical names and things like that — nods to the rich history of comics that inspires us — but we’re not trying to tell other people’s stories, so I don’t worry about being derivative. In fact, I keep seeing readers gripe that Marvel or DC are being derivative of us, when we’re both simply exploring time-honored dramatic structures, not setting out to copy any specific thing.

Has the irregular publication schedule of the book helped or hurt the creative process? I was thinking of how Mike Mignola does Hellboy in these distinct story arcs, then let’s him lay fallow until the next idea hits.

I don’t think that’s how Mike did it — I think it was more a function of his drawing speed, when he was drawing the book himself. And we’ve got plenty of story ideas, so there’s never been a reason to let Astro City lie fallow for lack of story. The delays have all been due to either my health making it hard to get the book written, or Brent’s drawing speed being not quite up to a monthly schedule. If we were healthier and faster, we’d have gotten a lot more stories told over the years.

So I’d say it’s probably hurt, in that it’s slowed down our output when we’ve got plenty to explore. But it can’t be helped. We can only cope with it as best we can and keep rolling forward.

Can you tell us a little bit about the new Astro City ongoing title? Will there be any changes from the way the book has developed until this point?

Not really, no. There will be some new things developing in the series, since before, there was this long-simmering background story about the Silver Agent, and now that it’s over (or at least, reached a point of change), we’re exploring another background ‘mystery,’ about a character called The Broken Man, who’ll be on page one of our new first issue.

Other than that, though, we’re still telling the stories we want to tell — aside from the time I was so medicated I couldn’t write at all, I’ve been writing the whole time, building up scripts to keep us on schedule. So while to readers it seems like we stopped for three years, to us it’s just that we slowed down real slow for a while, but we’re still doing the same series, still going forward. We never really stopped, so it doesn’t feel like a new start to us, just like a welcome return to having this stuff get published, and shown to readers again…!

Director: Paul Weitz
Starring: Tina Fey, Paul Rudd, Nat Wolff, Lily Tomlin, Wallace Shawn, Gloria Reuben
Review: 2.5 stars (of five)

Admission has a strong cast and the admirable goal of making an adult movie about adult things, rather than a frat-level comedy about gross-out sight gags and characters distorted beyond human recognizability. It also deserves points for not being just another romantic comedy, in which fulfillment begins and ends with overcoming ludicrous obstacles to find completion in another.

But on the downside, the film’s script is painfully contrived, relying on a fantastic swirl of coincidence around Paul Rudd to make the story happen. Tina Fey is an admissions officer at Princeton who is shaken out of an unsatisfying life when she is moved to help a teenage boy’s longshot application to the university—and learns that the boy may be the child she gave up for adoption nearly 20 years ago. To set Fey on this journey, the film demands that we accept: Paul Rudd is the boy’s teacher, and believes in the kid. Upon on learning that the boy is adopted, and born on Valentine’s Day, he remembers that back in college, a girl he knew had described taking her roommate (whom Rudd never met) to give birth, and give up the baby, on Valentine’s Day. Rudd obtains Fey’s name somehow, tracks her down at Princeton (in the perfect position to help the troubled boy who must be her son) and engineers a reunion. That’s a lot of coincidence to swallow.

We first meet Fey in a loveless cohabitation in which the seeds of breakup-by-infidelity are clumsily planted for the viewer. At first it seems that the theme of the film will be Fey coming alive—she steadily sheds, or loses, all that is false or passionless in her detached, judgmental world. Eventually, after some decent misdirection, it becomes clear that the film is about her reconnecting with the idea of motherhood, or else, through that, the idea of being truly close and committed to someone. The film is carefully structured to reinforce the theme, wrapping Fey’s journey in numerous examples of well-meaning parental failures. But thematic unity and a strong cast never completely overcome the central plot contrivance, an uneven comedic tone and lackluster direction.

Speaking of the cast: Tina Fey is charming, vulnerable and disheveled as always, while Paul Rudd delivers a better, less-squishy version of his off-kilter, beta-male persona. Add the wonderful Lily Tomlin and, in a small role, Wallace Shawn, and you’ve got some serious, if understated power. On top of which, Nat Wolff as the teenager who may be Fey’s son handles does some really nice work.

I want to like this movie, and I do, on certain levels. It has a female lead (and even passes Bechdel), it has interesting themes, it wants to be both funny and grown up. But it doesn’t gel here. I wish it did, because we need studios taking chances on more films like this.

Director:  Park Chan-Wook
Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Matthew Goode, Nicole Kidman, Dermot Mulroney
Review: 3 stars (of five)

Stoker is not a satisfying moviegoing experience, which isn’t to say that it’s a bad piece of cinema. If you go to the movies expecting a story (and I generally do), you might feel underserved. But if you’re moved by style, performance and mood for their own sake, there’s much to like in this off-key, slow boil tale of suspense.

The basic plot: Eighteen-year-old India’s beloved father has died, and at the funeral, an uncle (Matthew Goode) whom she didn’t realize she had appears. He’s younger than the father, and handsome, and entirely creepy in a stares-from-across-the-room way. Insinuating himself into the grieving household, there seems to be a smoldering sexual tension between him and the self-possessed widow (Nicole Kidman). Yet he is clearly focused on India (Mia Wasikowska), who is introverted and cold to the degree that it’s shocking no one in this day and age is trying to medicate her. As the film progresses, relationships intensify, violence occurs, and the early sense that there’s something very wrong with Uncle Charlie bears fruit.

The pleasures in this film start with Park Chan-Wook’s quirky, off-kilter direction. He’s informed by Hitchcock, surely, but with more of an art film aesthetic. He used color, movement and, most particularly, sound to create a constant, low-grade discomfort. The three main characters are essentially as one-note as the descriptions above, yet the talented cast pulls out interesting shadings not so much with what the script gives them individually, but through their interaction with one another.

The story’s theme is stated in voiceover in the opening shots, as India tells us that we have no control over who we become, and that once we recognize this, we are free. The film, then, is the story of India’s emancipation from childhood and convention. But rather than being a typical tale of teen rebellion in which she discovers sex, drugs and rock and roll within MPAA-acceptable limits, here she’s deciding, ultimately, whether, and how, to embrace her inner sociopath. We realize pretty quickly that Uncle Charlie is a full-blown psychopath, and we come to suspect that India’s late father feared that the same bad seed had been planted in her. With the father gone, who is this quiet, affectless young woman going to be?

Where the film goes wrong, arguably, is with its failure to really satisfy in the most direct way. Emblematic of this is the title, Stoker, which is the name of the family in question. It’s also the name of one of the most famous writers in horror fiction, one indelibly linked with vampires. So for a horror/suspense film to invoke the name of one of the genre’s patron saints and provide no reason or payoff just feels like a mistake. You can’t quite figure out what they should’ve done with that title, but “nothing” wasn’t the answer.

The film crackles with sexual tension and subverted rage, but is discreet in bringing either fully to the screen. At times, we have questions about character and situation that would feel like plot holes in another film. And the filmmakers screw up remarkably with an early scene or two that suggest the connection between MIA and Charlie may be supernatural, an idea never followed up on at all.

I came out of the theater feeling like I’d seen something very well-made that might not be very good. My wife, as she is wont to do, put the whole review into two sentences: “I’m not sure I would recommend that film to anybody,” she said as we left the theater. “I’m really glad that we saw it.”

Director:  Don Scardino
Starring: Steve Carell, Steve Buscemi, Olivia Wilde, Jim Carrey, Alan Arkin
Review: 2.5 stars (of five)

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone feels like a card trick. You know that you’re being fooled, you know that the trick is pretty simple at heart, and you might even suspect exactly how it’s being done, but when the magician has craft and personality, you’re still entertained, in the way a familiar old song on the radio can charm you, get you to bob your head to the four-four beat, without really moving you. Which might be a problem if you had to pay ten bucks to hear the song.

This is the story of a man who has made it to early middle age as a shallow shell of a human, and he must lose everything to grow on the inside so that he can win back his friends, his status, and the love of an improbably beautiful younger woman. If we framed the beats of this script in outline form and took out specific references to setting such as “Las Vegas,” and “magician,” you’d be describing about 200 previous movies.

What perhaps saves the movie is that the people involved are great dancers, even to the must uninspired rhythm. There are several nice turns in the script that don’t count as surprises but manage to put nice specificity to fairly generic plot points. Carell is very good at playing the pompous but ultimately vulnerable blowhard, though I much prefer the relatable, more nuanced Steve Carell of The 40-Year-Old Virgin or Date Night to the blustering asshole he perfected on “The Daily Show.” Buscemi, however, does schmuck, goodhearted or otherwise, as well as anyone in the business. Olivia Wilde is plucky in the role of Girl Who Must Dislike the Hero Until She Must Like Him. If there’s a breakaway performance, it’s a gonzo turn from Jim Carrey, who plays an insanely self-abusive street musician whose guerrilla performances are leeching audiences from the tired casino-theater act of Carell and Buscemi. And a likable bit performance by Alan Arkin, who brings the only real passion this film has (besides Carey’s firm commitment to enjoyably intense weirdness).

What torpedos the production is that it has only a confused facsimile of a heart. The film is about the collapse and resurrection of the two magicians’ lifelong friendship, but this isn’t served in the least. When the duo breaks up, Buscemi simply vanishes from the film, while Carell hits financial and personal bottom. Then he returns and they decide to be friends in a comically emotional moment that all but deliberately has no real emotion. We’re also meant to understand that Olivia Wilde goes from being a victim of Carell’s sexual harassment to falling in love with him because, well, at roughly 80 minutes in, that’s where we need to be. Similarly, there’s no reason to like or root for Carell’s character in any capacity. So the thoughtful viewer won’t.

Of note: The screenplay has four individually credited writers, and that many writers (plus any number whose contributions didn’t earn a credit with the SWG arbitrators) never bodes well.

Also, not only are many of the film’s “magic illusions” obvious works of camera or digital tricks, such that any sense of wonder at the sleight-of-hand elements is killed, but the final trick that gets the heroes back on top is improbable, impossible, unethical and illegal. In a word: Stupid. But the filmmakers don’t care, because this isn’t about the story so much as the story rhythms. The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is a kind of movie rather than an actual, individual movie.

Thus, there are a number of enjoyable scenes and performances in this film, and if someone drags you to see it, your time won’t be entirely wasted. But wait until you’re dragged.

Director:  Peter Webber
Starring: Matthew Fox, Tommy Lee Jones, Eriko Hatsune
Review: 3 stars (of five)

Emperor asks a question that is on the minds of maybe 15 people currently living on this planet: How much of World War II can we blame on Japanese Emperor Hirohito? (Partial answer: Pretty much none of the European part.)

Matthew Fox is the tightly wound general who, under Tommy Lee Jones’ egomaniacal hard-ass Douglas MacArthur, has ten days to decide whether to hang Hirohito for war crimes (mostly Pearl Harbor, which probably doesn’t make the top 20 in Japanese war crimes, but it’s the one that affected Americans …)

Hanging in the balance is not merely whether one inbred, cloistered autocrat would swing from a military gallows, but whether hanging him would set off a violent and sustained uprising of the Japanese people that would threaten the peace and the postwar miracle that eventually gave us racially charged, alarmist thrillers by Michael Crichton and the flood of Camrys flooding today’s freeways.

This Fellers was an interesting feller, with a checkered past that’s not touched on in the film. I can’t tell from my in-depth perusal of Wikipedia whether the movie’s portrayal of Fellers’ love for a Japanese woman has any historical bearing. I figure it must, because if the filmmakers had invented it from scratch, they would’ve woven it into the rest of the narrative better.

(A new site called “bonnerfellers.com,” apparently maintained by Fellers’ family, notes that Fellers did meet a Japanese exchange student in college and develop an interest in the country. It does not note whether that friend was female and whether it led to a tragic romantic obsession with finding her amid the rubble of postwar Japan. Like this film, it also doesn’t discuss Fellers’ problems in the Middle East theater with a broken code, or his post-Japan embrace of the racist John Birch society.)

The film interweaves Fellers’ pursuit of his Japanese enamorata (delicately realized by Eriko Hatsune) with his frustrating investigation of Hirohito. The film doesn’t establish enough of a parallel between Fellers’ desire to save Hirohito, and thus Japan, with his pursuit of his lost love, though all actors involved deliver moving performances.

The film portrays a Tokyo in utter ruins. America bombed Tokyo to dust, and then bombed the dust. Without dwelling on them, the film combines these subtly powerful images with its extrapolation of how Japan’s leaders set the course of war. What emerges is a complicated picture that make it hard to judge Japan (though a little reading up on the Imperial Army’s performance in the Philippines, China and Korea would go a long way to blunting your sympathies).

The nature of Japanese society, in particular the devotion of the nation, in that era, to an emperor who was seen as literally divine, is discussed repeatedly—but not fully or effectively explored. We know that postwar Japan lost its god king, but what became of that cultural devotion, that powerful sense of national identity? How did Hirohito and MacArthur change the nature of Japan to produce first Godzilla, then the Prius? Since the conclusion of the investigation is already a known historical fact, as is Japan’s meteoric recovery, it’s this kind of cultural question that has the most potential.

I went into the film as someone with a lot of interest in Japan, but I wondered whether the movie would hold the attention of the average American viewer, but the film was well-received at my screening. It’s a quiet, well-acted period drama that explores (with some apparent glossing and inaccuracy) a critical period in history, and that’s all good. That it doesn’t quite reach greatness is unfortunate, but we’re still left with an interesting and well-acted film.

Director:  Sam Raimi
Starring: James Franco, Michelle Williams, Rachel Weisz, Mila Kunis
Review: 3 stars (of five)

I enjoyed Oz, The Great and Powerful, because it had a great cast, captivating visuals and, most importantly, Sam Raimi at the helm. For many, enjoyment is the first and last question: I had a good time watching the film, and that’s all that needs be said. People as clear-headed as that, however, do not sit around typing up movie reviews, so none of us are getting out of here that easily.

I had three questions or criteria to apply to this new adventure into the magical land invented by Frank L. Baum and made sacred in the hearts of millions of children by Victor Fleming’s 1939 film:

1. Is it a good and enjoyable film on its own merits?
2. Does it betray or enhance the 1939 classic?
3. Apart from how it relates to our memories of Judy Garland, is it suited to a young audience, because PG-13 rating or no, a new Oz spectacle is a magnet for young kids.

To the first question: There is much to enjoy here. James Franco is a good choice to play the young Midwestern huckster who becomes the Great and Powerful Oz. He plays youthful charm and greasy slickness in just the right balance to tell us the story of a man who cons a magical land of gullible boobs and manages to become a slightly better human being in the process. He is surrounded by three fantastic witches, with Michelle Williams, Mila Kunis and Rachel Weisz spanning the moral spectrum as the most notable powers in Oz.

Relying on some elements of Baum’s other Oz novels, the film deviates to become an origin story for Margaret Hamilton’s classic green witch, as we see how the Dorothy dynamic of wicked witches versus reclusive “wizard” was established. The story itself is a deliberate parallel of the familiar Dorothy tale. Oz is twister-transported to the technicolor wonderland, and promptly enlisted as a witch-killer. On his route to his wicked rendezvous, he picks up a few unlikely friends, and in the end triumphs over true magical power with a little homespun pluck and, in this case, some solid American science.

The whole thing is played with a little nudge-wink to the audience, a cheesy “puttin’ on a show” vibe that meshes well, for the most part, with the simple fairy-tale storytelling. At times, the CGI looks deliberately unconvincing, and you’re as aware of the green screen behind Franco as you are of the point behind Garland where the yellow brick road becomes the painted back wall of her set. There are also fantastically subtle nods to the origins of the scarecrow, lion and tin man without the painful and inappropriate cameos that would’ve been George Lucas’ primary mission in making this movie. And though Raimi’s story is more in line with the book Oz-verse than the better-known film (in which Dorothy merely dreams it all), Raimi includes some of the doubling used in that film, with a few actors playing dual roles in our world and Oz. Raimi’s tender affection for the source material is really what saves this film from the many kinds of disaster it should’ve been.

There are some missteps. Sometimes that tongue-in-cheek attitude detracts from the emotional impact, distancing us from the characters and situations. The film does have “heart” and a few moments of solid emotional wallop, but it seems that modern filmmakers weren’t confident in playing the straight sincerity of the 1939 film. Also, there’s an awful lot of emphasis put on Franco’s love of the ladies, and he spends a lot of his efforts on seduction. Nothing that a young child shouldn’t see, but it’s jarring in contrast with the sexless Fleming movie.

And one of Franco’s companions is a computer-generated china doll whose intro to the film is that her entire community, including her family, has just been brutally murdered. That’s not shown on screen, but it’s implied and discussed, and it seems a little much, frankly, for a film destined to draw such young audiences.

Second question: Does it make Judy Garland sad? Its contemporary attitude only slightly cheapens the classic world of Oz, and Raimi does nothing to directly “ruin” the earlier film. There’s the question of whether children exposed to this slick, digital, 3D Oz will retain a taste for the simpler, clunkier 1939 masterpiece, but that’s for parents to decide: At what age is your child ready to be ruined? You make the call. Beyond that question inherent to any modern take, this film does not disrespect its forebear.

Third Question: Can little kids see it? There is no more violence than in Return of the Jedi. There are flying monkeys scarier than the ones in The Wizard of Oz, and those old monkeys have somehow managed to terrify generations of five-year-olds, so be careful there. Again, there’s a little girl surviving genocide, and an Oz who’s all about romancin’ the babes, but the violence and the smooching shouldn’t freak out most kids. The story has a certain PG-13 sophistication, meaning that younger kids might do a lot of that “Mom, why is she going there?” and “What are they doing now?” But again, to say it’s on a level of adultness comparable to the Star Wars films (not as “adult” as Ep III, though) is probably a pretty good measurement.

In the end, I enjoyed the ride. I can’t get over the feeling that the film could be pulled apart and found more wanting than I’m describing—I’m not sure the script and character arcs hold up to detailed scrutiny, but I’m also not inclined to workshop the thing. It’s not going to join the Judy Garland film as a perennial masterpiece that endures for decades, but many of us will return to it more than once. And hey, it’s also not the brutal, criminal assault on childhood that was 2010′s The Nutcracker, so count your lucky stars, parents.

(An aside: Victor Fleming directed many films, few of them remembered today. But in 1939 he directed both The Wizard of Oz and Gone With The Wind. When that guy was hot, he was red freakin’ hot.)