Video review: "Ant-Man and the Wasp"

Some think the introduction of wholesale comedy into the superhero genre was a poor match with the generally dark tone of these films. But I welcome movies like “Ant-Man and the Wasp,” which aims for funny first, exciting second and perilous a far distant third.

After the shock-and-awe of “Avengers: Infinity War” and other flicks, we needed a dose of funny as antidote.

You may recall that Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) was a charming but loveable loser of a thief who suddenly found himself a super-hero after stumbling across the suit built by scientist Hank Pym (Michael Douglas). It allows him to shrink down to insect size, though gaining strength in the process, as well as command the bugs that bear his name.

His brief stint with the Avengers landed him on the wrong side of the law, and as the sequel opens he’s spent two years under house arrest. He’s determined to go the straight and narrow path for the sake of his daughter. But that all comes tumbling down when Hank and his daughter, Hope (Evangeline Lilly), come calling to recruit his help.

Hank and Hope are searching for their long-lost wife and mother, respectively, who was cast into the quantum zone 30 years ago while committing some derring-do. Essentially, she got shrunk down so small that she’s stuck in another dimension -- and they want Scott to go after her.

Hope has her own suit, which also boasts wings and several other add-ons, and goes by the moniker of the Wasp. Soon they’re a duo.

Spoiling the mix is the Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), a young woman with the ability to phase in and out of solidity. Her aims clash with Hank’s crew, and she’s also being helped by an old science rival of his, Bill Foster (Laurence Fishburne).

Walter Goggins shows up as a villainous technology dealer whose role is to turn up whenever the plot slows down to kick off some more thrown-downs.

Rudd is his usual twinkly self. There’s something about the innate amiableness of the actor that just makes you want to smile. God help us he never wants to go down the “I’m a serious artist” path and start cranking out doom-and-gloom Oscar bait movies.

“Ant-Man and the Wasp” is just what it looks like: a purely entertaining film that won’t ever bring you down.

Bonus features are decent. There are gag reels and outtakes, deleted scenes with commentary by director Peyton Reed, who also offers an introduction. Plus there are four making-of featurettes: “Back in the Ant Suit: Scott Lang,” “A Suit of Her Own: The Wasp,” “Subatomic Super Heroes: Hank & Janet” and “Quantum Perspective: The VFX and Production Design of ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp.’”

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Review: "Ant-Man and the Wasp"

One of the most frequent questions I get asked is, “When do you think the superhero genre is going to burn out?” And my answer is always the same, “When the movies get crappy.”

I’ve seen a subpar flick here and there (*cough* *cough* “Green Lantern”), but overall the state of the superhero movie remains strong. Marvel in particular seems to consistently have their ducks all in a row, with nary a stinker in over a decade. And, with “Avengers: Infinity War” earlier this summer, they still possess the ability to surprise and overwhelm us.

“Ant-Man and the Wasp” is the perfect counterprogramming -- or, if you will, antidote -- to all the downbeat energy that’s been dominating the genre lately.

Here is a fun, frivolous and amusing movie featuring a hero who’s several steps down from the world-beaters like Thor and Hulk. And the stakes are not the usual end-of-the-world scenarios, but simply a small group of people striving to meet personal (though largely benevolent) goals.

You may remember that Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) was a petty criminal who stumbled into the super-suit of scientist Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), which has the ability to shrink him to the size of an ant, where he gains strength and the ability to command the insects. Long story short, he got in trouble and ended up losing it all.

As this movie opens, he is nearly finished with two years of house arrest, having to wear an ankle bracelet and being annoyed by the uppity FBI agent assigned to watch him (Randall Park). But he again falls back in with Pym and his daughter, Hope (Evangeline Lilly), who wears her own version of the suit that includes wings.

Their mission is to bring back Pym’s wife, Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer), who disappeared 30 years ago when she had to “go sub-atomic” to defuse a nuclear missile, and as a result was trapped in some quantum netherworld.

The villain is Hannah John-Kamen as Ava, aka the Ghost, who wears an alien-looking white suit and has the ability to phase in and out of solidity, so she can walk through walls and have bullets or fists pass right through her. Turns out her powers are more a curse than blessing, so she’s working on a cure along with Bill Foster (Laurence Fishburne), an old scientist rival of Pym’s.

The two groups soon butt heads, along with the X-factor of Sonny Burch (Walton Goggins), a criminal technology dealer who wants to steal Pym’s machines and sell them to the highest bidder.

Pym and Hope are officially on the lam, but are able to move around with the help of a multistory laboratory they can shrink down to dollhouse size, pick up and go. They also have a fleet of vehicles they keep shrunk down in an old Hot Wheels carrying case.

Rudd is a twinkly, funny presence as the lovable cad. His greatest desire is to spend time with his daughter, though he’s holding out hope for Hope. Michael Peña supplies much of the comedic energy as Luis, Scott’s right-hand man at the security company startup they’re running. Apparently it’s a novel idea to put a bunch of ex-cons in charge of protecting you.

Directed by Peyton Reed from a script by an overlarge bunch of writers, who I’ll not mention other than to say Rudd is among them, “Ant-Man and the Wasp” boasts lots of energy and action. You kind of have to wade through a bunch of scientific mumbo-jumbo -- quantum entanglements, diffusers, etc. -- to get to the good stuff, but fortunately the boring stuff doesn’t linger.

This is not the sort of movie you savor and think about long after. It’s more of a breezy popcorn flick that does its job, entertains you and then gets out of the way.

Video review: "Last Flag Flying"

Despite boasting some big names, “Last Flag Flying” hasn’t made any kind of impact during the awards cycle, and quickly disappeared from theaters after a holiday release. That’s a pity. It may not be the best film by Richard Linklater, who co-wrote the script with Darryl Ponicsan, based upon his book. But it’s a worthy look at men weighing their lives, recalling their misspent days of youth while sitting upon the precipice of old age.

Steve Carell, Laurence Fishburne and Bryan Cranston play Vietnam veterans who reunite in 2003 to bury the son of one of them after he died in the Iraq war. They haven’t kept in touch in the intervening years, so they’re getting together again for the first time in three decades.

They have undergone changes, of course, and the spaces between them have grown larger. The one who seems the most different from his past is Richard Mueller (Fishburne), who was a rampaging he-man nicknamed “the Mauler” back in the day, and now is a dignified country preacher. Though we soon learn he still has some bite left.

On the flip side, Sal (Cranston) is still the caustic, hard-drinking, hard-partying womanizer he was back in the day. He’s just exchanged his battlefield habitat for the bar scene. He keeps things moving with his constant observations and confrontational quips, mostly directed at Mueller.

Larry “Doc” Shepherd (Carell) was the young, quiet kid in Vietnam, and he’s grown up into a quiet, seemingly meek man. There was some bad business that left Doc in the Navy brig for a couple years, a hazy matter in which they were all complicit but for which he took the fall.

Out of a sense of guilt over the past misdeed, Sal and Richard agree to accompany Doc on his mission to bury his son. The movie becomes a physical and existential journey as they travel by car, train and bus to see this last bit of military service done. This is very much Linklater’s version of “The Last Detail.”

“Last Flag Flying” has a caustic political bent, but in the end, it’s more about these specific men than a broader indictment of war or “the system.” I, for one, enjoyed spending time with them and hearing their stories.

Bonus features are a mite slim. There’s a making-of documentary short, a featurette on Veterans Day, outtakes and deleted scenes.

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Review: "Last Flag Flying"

Just a short review today, as I'm in the midst of the holiday/awards season rush and watching movies at a brisk pace.

"Last Flag Flying" is pretty much writer/director Richard Linklater's attempt to do his version of "The Last Detail," the seminal 1973 film that helped launch Jack Nicholson's career about a pair of soldiers taking a comrade to military prison. It's a physical and metaphysical journey. Though instead of young bucks, we follow a trio of former Marines 30+ years after they served in Vietnam.

Steve Carell, Laurence Fishburne and Bryan Cranston all give very naturalist, lived-in performances as once-close buddies who have gone their separate ways. Larry "Doc" Shepherd (Carell) was the youngest of the bunch (he technically served in the Navy) and the meekest, and still is. Richard Mueller (Fishburne), once known as "the Mauler" for his outrageous behavior, has become an easygoing reverend with a bum leg. Sal (Cranson) is the least changed of the bunch, a party animal and womanizer who is constantly cracking jokes and drinking.

The reason for their ad-hoc reunion is tragic: Doc's only child has died while serving with the Marines in Iraq, and he wants his old buddies with him to pick up the body and bury him. The story is set in 2003, and there is a caustic political tinge that marries the two wars -- how the government uses its fighting men poorly, then lies to their families about the true nature of their mission and their deaths. Darryl Ponicsan, upon whose book the movie is based, co-wrote the screenplay with Linklater.

The movie is essentially one freewheeling two-hour-long conversation, as the men make their way by car, train and bus on a circuitous trip to and from the military base. They talk about their lives, their marriages and relationships, their disappointments. Old memories are shared with warmth and laughter, like good scotch swirled in a favorite tumbler.

Much is spoken, but much is also left unsaid. There was a terrible event that occurred during their service, which resulted in another Marine dying and Doc serving time in the military brig for two years. The details are left hazy.

Cranston has a lot of fun with his part, the extroverted loudmouth who spends much of the early going trying to get a rise out of the good reverend. (He does.) He leans a little too heavily on a stumblebum accent replete with "deez" and "doze."

Carell is the polar opposite, quiet and polite, though he shows some determination with regards to the disposition of his son's resting place. Fishburne is charismatic and centered, and the film lets him talk about his faith without the usual winking or mockery.

J. Quinton Johnson plays Washington, a young Marine who served with Doc's kid and ends up accompanying them on part of their trip. Yul Vazquez plays the colonel in charge of the grieving detail, whose politeness masks other impulses.

"Last Flag Flying" was touted as a contender for the awards season, and while I liked it quite a bit I don't see it as being in that stratosphere. It's a sad, funny portrait of soldiers still coming to terms with who they were as youngsters, and the old men they are slowly becoming. It's intimate, insightful and never hits a false note.

Video review: "John Wick 2"

The best thing about the John Wick movies is that they do not pretend to be anything other than what they are: slick, ultra-violent escapism that mixes a grim revenge saga with gallows humor.

Keanu Reeves reprises his role as the reluctant hitman pulled back into a world of murder and double-crosses. Also returning is screenwriter Derek Kolstad, who dreamed up this nutty, vibrant world, and Chad Stahelski, a longtime stuntman and coordinator handpicked as director.

The actors and crew seem perfectly aligned in their goal, which is to deliver kick-ass mayhem with a minimum of fat or fuss.

Things pick up almost exactly where they left off. Wick completes his revenge on the Russian mobsters who killed his dog and stole his classic Mustang, with much damage to said pony car. Then new trouble surfaces: Santino D’Antonio (Ricardo Scamarcio), an Italian crime lord who wants Wick to knock off his sister so he can take her seat at the High Table – a sort of United Nations for villains.

Wick takes some convincing, but finally takes on the assignment.

There’s the usual army of disposable henchmen to take on, as well as a few elites: Common and Ruby Rose play veteran assassins who know Wick’s reputation from the old days. Wick gives better than he gets, but he still gets gradually worn down: pummeled, slashed, shot. He keeps going, if a bit more awkwardly with each step.

The stunts are the star of “John Wick 2,” and it’s a thrilling mix of amazing action that happens at a believable speed. Stahelski largely shoots Reeves in full body without a lot of cuts, so we can actually see the violence play out.

The ending makes no pretenses about setting up a “John Wick 3,” and I for one am happy to sign on for another ride.

Bonus features are good, anchored by a feature-length commentary track with Reeves and Stahelski. The best commentaries usually include input from both stars and filmmakers. The DVD edition also has two featurettes:  “As Above, So Below: The Underworld of John Wick” and “RetroWick: Exploring the Unexpected Success of John Wick.”

Upgrade to the Blu-ray version, and you add seven more featurettes touching on various aspects of production, including a “Kill Count” just in case you were wondering how many people Wick offs during the movie. (It’s impressive.) Finally, there is a bonus short film, “Dog Wick.”

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Review: "John Wick: Chapter 2"

There was a certain feral purity to 2014’s “John Wick.” It was your standard chop-socky-and-gunplay action flick featuring a faded star, with one notable departure: the reason behind the orgy of blood made absolutely no sense.

I mean, what kind of retired assassin goes on a killing spree simply because some Russian goons stole his car and killed his puppy? Even if the latter was a posthumous gift from his recently departed wife? The sheer absurdity of the revenge motivation gave the movie a sort of bent edge -- suggesting that the eponymous killer may have just been using it as an unconscious excuse to dive back into this old life.

(Plus, I love puppies but they’re easily replaced. 1969 Mustang Boss 429s, on the other hand, don’t just grow on trees. #Priorities, man.)

The sequel takes up almost literally at the moment the last one ended, with John Wick (Keanu Reeves) wrapping things up with the Russians and reclaiming his ride -- though not without collateral damage.  (If the filmmakers did that to a real 429, we hates them forever.)

“John Wick: Chapter 2” is stylistically a retread of the first, though it takes us deeper into the lore of the underground assassins’ world that we stuck a toe into in the first movie. We learn of a “High Table” of crime syndicates, whom the assassins serve using their own complex set of rules.

This infrastructure includes “The Continental,” a fancy New York hotel that’s neutral ground where the killers can rest, heal and rearm. The manager, Winston (Ian McShane), enforces the house policy with severe exactitude. Now we learn there are Continentals in virtually every major city, including Rome, where most of the action takes place. Wick doles out gold coins accumulated during his gun-for-hire days to pay his way.

It turns out that Santino D’Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio), an Italian crime family prince, has a “marker” from John Wick, a promise to repay an old debt no matter what. Santino wants to kill his sister, Gianna (Claudia Gerini), so he can take her place at the High Table. Of course, Wick has sworn off his old life and will need… convincing.

Stunts are at the heart of “John Wick: Chapter 2,” so it’s no surprise it was directed by longtime stunt coordinator Chad Stahelski, who made his debut behind the camera with the last movie. Derek Kolstad returns as script man.

I like that the mayhem happens at a believable speed, without a whole lot of fast editing to cover up the choreography. Wick’s signature move is spinning around multiple opponents, grappling them and disabling with shots or kicks, and then finishing them off with a cap to the head.

Wick’s good, of course, but so is everybody else, and he takes a lot of hits that slow him down. For instance, when he gets stabbed in the leg, he limps for the rest of the movie. And his face gets gradually chewed up into dog food.

New opponents this go-round are Common as Cassian, an old pro in the game with a shared history and respect, and Ruby Rose as Ares, the chief lieutenant for Santino. Rose makes an impression with her boyish suits and haircut, and the fact her character is mute. Conveniently, Wick speaks sign language, so they can taunt each other via subtitles.

Laurence Fishburne turns up as a sort of shambolic king of the homeless underground, and John Leguizamo returns in a cameo as Wick’s friend and able mechanic.

Like a lot of Keanu Reeves’ performances, this one is rather hard to penetrate. Depending on the material, he can seem cool or wooden. He under-acts to the point of seeming like he doesn’t care about the talkie scenes, and is saving his energy for the fights.

I like that he doesn’t have the sort of snarly bravado we’re used to in action heroes; his John Wick genuinely seems like he’d rather be sitting around his mansion doing Sad Keanu memes, or anything else.

This movie vibrantly carries on the John Wick story, satisfactorily expands upon its world and makes no bones about setting up a part three. It even offers a possible reason why he gave such a damn about that vehicle -- beyond the fact that it’s the greatest muscle car ever made, of course.

Review: "Passengers"

“Passengers” is a lot cleverer and more contemplative than I took it for.

The trailers make it look like a dopey romance-in-space story starring the ridiculously cute couple of Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt. They’re two passengers on a massive colonization ship from Earth who get woken up from hyper-sleep 90 years too early, and have to face the prospect of their own mortality while falling head-over-heels in love -- quite literally, in zero gravity suits.

Talk about the ultimate Meet Cute: “They found love along the way to a galaxy far, far away.”

Instead, director Morten Tyldum (“The Imitation Game”) and screenwriter Jon Spaights (“Doctor Strange”) give us something more ambitious and much darker. The syrupy love story is still there, but it’s leavened with moral quandaries and existential threats. The last act is pretty typical we-must-save-the-world action sequences, but what comes before sets it up convincingly.

Their ship is headed to a lush green planet across the cosmos. The Homestead II looks a lot like the ship in “Wall•E” -- a luxury ocean liner in space, with robots to cater to their every need. Except the 5,000 passengers and 258 crew are only supposed to wake up when they’re four months out from their destination.

Something goes wrong with the hyper-sleep pods, and as it happens, the two most attractive people onboard wake up. Aurora Lane is a journalist who found her life on Earth constraining and hungered for adventure. Her idea was to travel to the colony, spend a year living there and write a book about it, then travel back again in hyper-sleep, so she’d end up 250 years into the future.

Jim Preston is a much more down-to-earth guy. A mechanic living on a planet where it’s cheaper to buy new things than fix old ones -- sound familiar? -- he yearns for a place where his skillset is valuable. He dreams of building his own house on a distant planetside.

Their only other real companion is Arthur, a legless bartender android played by Michael Sheen. All the other robots are mechanized automatons, but Arthur’s been programmed to listen and react to psychological issues. He’s even smart enough to recognize his limitations.

“These are not robot questions,” he cautions at one point.

After an appropriate amount of sorta-courtship, Jim and Aurora eventually abandon hopes of saving themselves and dive deep into their “accidental happiness.”

Now, something happens in this movie that I can’t really tell you about. I kind of want to, because it’s critical to our discussion of why “Passengers” is a superior sci-fi film. Although the plot development has apparently been alluded to and/or outright discussed in articles about the movie, I can’t assume you’ve read them. The trailers certainly don’t spell it out. So I’m bound by my oath as a respectable critic not to say anymore.

…

OK, stuff that. I’ll talk about it, but not before uncorking one standard-issue Spoiler Warning®. Please, skip down so as not to ruin your experience.

Ready? Alright, the deal is that Jim’s hyper-sleep pod really does go kerflooey, but after spending a good chunk of time alone trying all sorts things to save himself, including getting back to sleep, he deliberately wakes up Aurora on his own -- after studying her profile and becoming smitten. Also, she looks like Jennifer Lawrence.

Now, it may sound creepy that a guy would do this, effectively condemning another person to death long before they reach their destination, just so he won’t be alone. And it may sound even creepier that he chooses the hottest girl on the ship to satisfy his primordial male urges.

The reason this sounds creepy is because it’s incredibly creepy and gross. Hiding-cameras-in-the-toilet creepy and gross. But because Pratt projects such an innate decency, and because the filmmakers take pains to explore the depth of his despair, we at least understand his choice without condoning it.

(Personally, I’d have woken up the person whose profile said they were a scientist who knows a lot about hyper-sleep pods, but that’s me.)

…

End Spoiler Warning®. I’d have used bigger ones but hey, these things aren’t cheap!

For those just rejoining us, suffice it to say that “Passengers” is much more than it seems on the surface. It’s a smart and sexy movie that also has some deep thoughts beyond the pretty façade. It’s less Star Wars and more Philip K. Dick.

Review: "Ride Along"

"Ride Along" is one of those aggressively dumb movies that almost make you feel bad for it, if it weren't vacuuming 10 bucks out of your pocket and an hour-forty of your life.

The set-up makes not a lick of sense, the characters do nonsensical things unburdened by the laws of man or science, and it tries to skate by on the personalities of its stars, Kevin Hart and Ice Cube.

Hart is a young, short, dizzyingly energetic comedian whose onscreen presence resembles early Eddie Murphy on speed. Ice Cube is not so young anymore, known for his surly sneer, and rather shrimpy himself, though sufficiently taller than Hart for his character to crack all sorts of wee-man jokes on him.

Cube plays James, a tough Atlanta street cop, while Hart's Ben is a high school security guard and police wannabe who happens to be dating James' sister (Tika Sumpter). Ben convinces James to take him on a ride along so he can prove he's worthy of his sister's hand in marriage, while James is out to embarrass Ben enough to wash him out of law enforcement before he's even enrolled in the police academy, and hopefully out of his sister's life, too.

Director Tim Story and his quartet of screenwriters cue up every sticky situation imaginable, with James throwing Ben under the bus in various scenarios where he's expected to resolve the situation without even the benefit of a badge or a gun. This includes wrestling a honey-smeared man acting crazy at the farmer's market and confronting a gang of bikers, with one of dubious gender.

Never mind that in an actual ride along you'll be lucky if the police even let you get out of the car, let alone face down psychotics and stick-up men.

There's some vague plot machinations about dirty cops and a mysterious crime boss named Omar whom nobody as supposedly ever seen. Of course, he soon shows himself in the form of Laurence Fishburne, affording the audience a rare opportunity to witness an Oscar-caliber actor slumming in some really poor writing, and somehow making it seem even worse than it is.

I'm not sure what's harder to watch; the fact that Fishburne is called upon to deliver incredibly overwrought gangsta speech, or that he's very, very bad at it.

There are a couple of laughs in "Ride Along," mostly tied to Hart's manic, sporadically funny shtick. But this is one trip worth skipping.

Video review: "Man of Steel"

Rebooting a superhero franchise is a trickier business than it sounds. People remember the glory of “The Dark Knight” and forget how clunky “Batman Begins” was. Spider-Man fizzled out with one group and came back stronger with another cast and crew. They tried twice to get the Hulk off the ground and only succeeded by making him a supporting player in the Avengers.

Hollywood attempted to bring back Superman a few years ago, and the the movie was just OK, so now they’ve tried again, and the results are similarly so-so.

Don’t flog “Man of Steel” for a lack of effort: there are big, grasping ambitions contained in this version starring Brit actor Henry Cavill. Too many, in fact.

Director Zack Snyder and screenwriter David S. Goyer’s unwisely chose to shoehorn two movies worth of storytelling into one sprawling narrative and ended up with a film showing all the symptoms of a split personality.

Here Clark Kent spends the first half of the movie as a demi-god alienated (literally) from the rest of his world, and the second half trading epic haymakers with evil General Zod (Michael Shannon), a militaristic bully from his home world of Krypton.

Both halves work decently well on their own, but don’t mesh together in any way that satisfies. We’re missing the bridge between the two, where Clark adopts the persona of Superman and takes on the mantle of humanity’s noble protector.

(The original “Superman” from 1978 faced similar issues, and chose to shoot the two movies back-to-back, giving Zod and his henchman their own sequel to fill out.)

Personally, I preferred the first portion where Superman must find his own way between the paths laid out by his two father figures, his Kryptonian dad (Russell Crowe) and his adoptive family on Earth, with Kevin Costner making a strong turn as Pa Kent.

“Man of Steel” isn’t a bad movie, but it certainly doesn’t soar like it should have.

Video extras are quite good, though as is often the case, the best stuff costs more. The DVD version comes only with three featurettes on the mythology of Superman, training regimen for the action scenes and a rundown of Krypton technology.

Upgrade to the Blu-ray level and  you add “Journey of Discovery: Creating ‘Man of Steel,’” a feature-length making-of documentary film. You also get “Planet Krypton,” which goes into the history and sociology of Superman’s doomed home planet.

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Review: "Man of Steel"

A grand, and grandly disappointing venture, "Man of Steel" reaches for the sun in trying to reset the Superman franchise, then plummets to earth in a storm of hyperactive CGI action sequences and overstuffed plotting.

It begins with hope and even a touch of awe, a story of fathers and sons, less about a man who can lift buildings than a wayward soul seeking to find a home on an alien world. But then the bad guy arrives, even before the main character has had a chance to establish himself, and the movie is overtaken by standard villainous sneering and apocalyptic dooms.

This film, directed by Zack Snyder and written by David S. Goyer, has a couple of main problems. The most obvious is that it's two movies worth of material shoehorned into one. And this leads directly to the other:
Superman never really gets to be Superman.

Oh, Henry Cavill does eventually don the familiar blue-and-red costume -- though, like everything else from the dead planet Krypton in the movie, it's reimagined with a hard-edged militaristic texture, less apparel than armor. The British actor has a quietly commanding presence onscreen; he believably personifies a demigod.

(Though his lean, almost emaciated face seems incongruously perched atop the mountain of muscles he packed onto his torso for this role.)

No, what I mean is that Clark Kent, aka Kal-El of Krypton, spends the first half of the movie trying to find out who he is, and the second half trading epic haymakers with his enemies -- laying waste to half of Metropolis in the process. There's a missing second act where Superman reveals himself to the world, earns their trust, and is embraced as humanity's champion.

Indeed, some of the film's most powerful scenes involve Clark receiving tutelage from his two fathers -- Jonathan Kent (a strong Kevin Costner), the Kansas farmer who found his crashed spaceship and raised him up, and Jor-El (Russell Crowe), the enlightened Krypton scientist who dispatched him as a babe to Earth to be mankind's savior.

(Underlining the notion of Kal-El-as-Christ, in this version of the Superman mythology he doesn't declare his extraordinary abilities until the age of 33, the same as a certain other celestial pilgrim.)

There's a push and pull between the two men's teachings: Jor-El (who communicates through a holographic representation of his consciousness) daring his natural-born son to embrace his potential for greatness, constantly testing his limits, while Kent urges caution and forbearance, forcing his adopted child to absorb the pain of being an outcast rather than inflicting society with a knowledge they're not ready to bear.

Really, this is all the film needs in terms of narrative to take flight, and for awhile at least, it soars.

Things are complicated by the infiltration of a nosy journalist, Lois Lane (Amy Adams), who comes asking questions about a mystery man who turns up here and there, performing amazing acts before disappearing. Clark and Lois form the beginnings of an important friendship, and we expect her to be the vehicle through which he emerges to the public.

But then General Zod arrives, and the quiet power the movie has built up is blasted away by a cacophony of explosions and destruction -- not to mention Hans Zimmer's bombastic musical score.

A usurper imprisoned by the Krypton leadership for an attempted coup, Zod sees himself as the true redeemer of his people, with dreams of establishing a new generation on this planet. (Of course, the existing species must go.)

Zod has about a dozen followers, each of whom replicates Superman's powers in Earth's atmosphere, or nearly so. And he's got an obligatory end-of-the-world plan ... actually, two: terraform the planet into a copy of Krypton, and some screwy twaddle about extracting the entire genetic plans for their race from Kal-El's cells.

Michael Shannon is terrific as Zod, a combination of arrogance and perseverance that allows him to justify unspeakable cruelty. And their fight scenes have a certain kinetic urgency, sometimes overindulged by Snyder, as their bodies slam through buildings like flotsam spun out of a tornado.

But this doesn't change the fact that Zod belongs in a separate movie, where his malevolence can sprawl and take root. Here, he shows up and immediately sets about his destructive plans, like a Cliff's Notes version of a cinematic scoundrel.

Superman may be capable of many astounding feats. But one thing he can't do is turn two films worth of storytelling into a single good one.

Video review: "Contagion"

"Contagion" is a well-made science fiction thriller that engages the intellect better than must such films generally do, but sometimes fails to grab our hearts along with our brains.

Director Steven Soderbergh assembles a huge cast of stars -- including Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Laurence Fishburne, Marion Cotillard, Jude Law and Elliott Gould -- and sets them to encounter an outbreak of a deadly virus called MEV-1. The human population starts dropping like flies, and it's up to a loose consortium of scientists and government officials to race for a cure before mankind finds itself exterminated.

Screenwriter Scott Z. Burns cleverly doesn't go for the usual end-of-the-world tropes, in which the disaster is seen through the eyes of a small band of survivors. Instead, he offers a newsier docu-drama feel in which humanity's soaring grace and grimy faults are left to play out with logic and sobering authenticity.

People grow selfish and petty, and governments begin the task of coldly calculating which lives are worth saving and which are not. But amid the panic is self-sacrifice and generosity.

Even though it's better at making us think than letting audiences feel the characters' plight, "Contagion" remains an ambitious, worthy portrait of fear and hope.

Extra features are fair at best. The DVD edition comes with only a single featurette, "Contagion: How a Virus Changes the World."

Upgrade to the Blu-ray/DVD combo, and you add two more featurettes: "False Comfort Zone: The Reality of Contagion" and "The Contagion Detectives."

Obviously, that's not a lot of infectious enthusiasm on the part of the filmmakers to provide extra goodies for those who pass up the Redbox kiosk to plunk down money to add "Contagion" to their permanent video library.

Movie: 3 stars out of four
Extras: 2 stars

Review: "Contagion"

"Contagion" is a gripping movie, but the things that make it good also limit how good it can be.

It's an attempt by director Steven Soderbergh, screenwriter Scott Z. Burns and a large ensemble cast to portray the outbreak of a world-wide epidemic in a realistic way rather than through a handful of descriptive characters and a melodramatic story arc. At this, it succeeds completely.

So instead of, say, a small group of survivors hacking their way through the remnants of a world turned upside down -- "28 Days Later" and "I Am Legend" are a couple of examples -- Soderbergh's film is a docu-drama that covers dozens of stories that intersect. This roving-eye approach allows us to observe as the populace grows uptight and scared, the government response becomes more and more sclerotic, and the center falls apart.

It's a sobering experience, watching heroic doctors and scientists racing against the clock to come up with a vaccine before the mathematical certainty of the disease's spread wipes the human race out. We also see the ugly side of humanity that reacts out of fear or avarice to exploit the situation -- such as Alan Krumwiede, a blogger played by Jude law who's convinced the government is controlling the situation to maximize pharmaceutical companies' profits.

(Great throwaway line from one of his targets: "Blogging isn't writing. It's graffiti with punctuation!")

But as engaging as this method of storytelling is on an intellectual level, the film often fails to grab us emotionally. Certain well-played scenes have power -- such as when one of the central characters, a crusading scientist working to solve the problem, becomes sick -- while others just sort of lay themselves out there, heavy on information but light on visceral impact.

And there's a few too many "science montages" of test tubes spinning in a centrifuge, specimens sealed in plastic, and people hobbling around in funny-looking environmental suits. Those scenes practically needed their own theme music.

I do respect the movie for its willingness to kill off characters without regard to the status of the actor who's playing them. Some famous faces end up thrown in a pit or on an autopsy table -- the latter being incredibly life-like and gruesome.

Likewise, some people who at first seem peripheral to the story, almost background characters, subtly nudge to the fore and become critical players. This "e pluribus unum" approach gives the film a realistic authenticity.

Matt Damon plays Mitch Emhoff, an unemployed house-husband whose wife, Beth (Gwyneth Paltrow), is one of the earliest people to contract the bug, later dubbed MEV-1. Only a partial list of other players includes Kate Winslet as an investigator with the Center for Disease Control, Laurence Fishburne as her do-gooder boss, Marion Cotillard as a World Health Organization expert, Chin Han as a Hong Kong official, Elliot Gould as a private researcher called in to help out, and Jennifer Ehle as a government researcher.

Interestingly, the movie has a few riffs on how such an outbreak might play out on the political front that tweak both the left and the right ends of the spectrum. There's some heartless corporations (are there any other kind in the movies?) looking to cash in, and at one point the nurses' union goes on strike, leaving dying patients in the lurch. Not to mention miles of government red tape to be sheared through.

Sounds crazy, but don't forget that part of the reason behind the slow response to Hurricane Katrina was that volunteer emergency workers were forced to sit through sexual harassment training before being sent to the Gulf.

"Contagion" uses an extreme situation to show us the breadth of our ragged humanity, its grace and its grubby failings. I just wish the movie could have been able to connect with hearts as well as it does heads.

3 stars out of four